The way of the spirit

by H. Rider Haggard

Here at least there were no ifs or buts. She would understand, she would console; his misfortunes would only make him dearer to her. For the rest, sufficient to the day was its evil—the morrow must take care of itself. It was indeed sufficient.

Now while the old tramp lumbers up the Thames through the grey December mist and sleet, let us turn for a few minutes to the fortunes of some of the other personages in this history.

After her husband’s departure, Edith returned to live with Mrs. Ullershaw, which was an inexpensive arrangement, and, as she explained to Dick, the right kind of thing to do. Several letters arrived from Rupert, the last written at Abu-Simbel the night before he began his fatal journey, and some were sent in reply which he never received. Then came the long silence, and after it the awful, sudden catastrophe of which they learned first from a Cairo telegram in an evening paper. Rupert was dead, and she, Edith, who had never been a wife, was left a widow. The blow overwhelmed her. All her card castle came tumbling about her ears. Now she could never be the partner in a brilliant and successful career, and the husband whose virtues she recognised, and of whom she would have been proud, was taken from her into the darkness of a desert grave, he who in due course should have made of her one of the richest peeresses in England. Yes, now those gay dresses must be exchanged for a widow’s weeds. She was furious with a Fate that had played such a trick upon her; even her tears were more those of anger than of sorrow, though in her fashion she mourned him truly.

Dick came to console her; he came very soon. Already he had been at the War Office and mastered the points of Abdullah’s garbled tale, which, as though unwillingly, he told to Edith, leaving her to put upon it what construction she chose.

“It is nonsense,” she said angrily, for in her heart she did not believe it at all. “Poor Rupert would never have got into any silly mess with a savage.”

“Of course it is nonsense,” he answered, taking her cue; “but it is not a question of morality, it’s a question of wisdom. By mixing himself up with these women he brought about the murder of the whole lot and the utter failure of his mission. In a way, it is as well for him that he is gone, poor dear fellow, for he had completely done for himself. Well, it doesn’t matter now.”

“No,” she answered heavily, “it doesn’t matter now.”

Yet when Dick, as a relative, although of the other political party, was confidentially consulted by the Secretary of State and Lord Southwick before the former gave those answers in the House, he talked somewhat differently, adopting the tone indeed of a tolerant man of the world.

“Of the facts,” he said, “he knew little more than they did; but of course poor Ullershaw had his weaknesses like other men,” and he smiled as though at amusing recollections, “and the desert was a lonely place, and this Abdullah described one of the women as young and beautiful. Who could say, and what did it matter?” and so forth.

But the Secretary of State, an austere man who did not like to see his schemes wrecked, and himself attacked on account of such ‘weaknesses,’ thought that it mattered a great deal. Hence the tone of his answers in the House, for it never occurred to him, or indeed to Lord Southwick, that a relation would have said as much as Dick did, unless he was very sure of his ground. In fact, they were certain that he was putting forward the best version of the truth and of Ullershaw’s character that was possible under the circumstances. Who would wish, they reflected, to throw a darker shade upon the reputation of a dead man than he was absolutely forced to do by the pressure of sure and certain knowledge?