The way of the spirit

by H. Rider Haggard

Mastering a desire to choke, Edith followed the woman’s glance to the man at her side, for they sat together like the solemn, stately figures of husband and wife upon the Egyptian stele which years ago Rupert had brought from Egypt. Oh! it was Rupert, without a doubt, but Rupert changed. Could that noble-looking chieftain in the flowing robes of white which hid his feet, and the stately head-dress, also of white, that fell upon his broad shoulders, be the same creature who, clad in his cheap and hideous garments, she had dismissed from her drawing-room in London as repulsive beyond bearing? Then his beard was fiery red and straggling; now it was iron-grey, trimmed square, and massive like his shoulders and his head. Then the eye that remained to him was red and bloodshot; now it was large and luminous. The face also had grown spiritual, like that of his companion, a light seemed to shine upon it which smoothed away its ruggedness. If not handsome, he looked what he was—a leader of men, refined, good, noble, a man to love and to revere.

All this Edith understood in a flash, and by the light of that illumination understood also for the first time the completeness of her own wicked folly. There, set above the common crowd, adored and adorable, with his beauteous consort, was the husband whom she had cast away like dirt—for Dick’s sake. He, Dick, was speaking in her ear, and she turned her head and glanced at him. His heavy eyes were staring greedily at the loveliness of Mea; his fat, yellowish cheeks lay in folds above the not too well shaven chin. He wiped his bald head with a handkerchief that was no longer clean, and smelt of cigarettes and whisky.

“By Jingo!” Dick was saying, “that little woman is something like, isn’t she? No wonder our pious friend stopped in the Soudan. You are nice-looking, Edith, but you have all your work cut out to get him away from that houri. You had better go home and apply for a divorce on the ground of desertion, just to save your face.”

“Be silent,” she whispered, almost in a hiss, and with a fierce flash of her eyes.

Must she listen to Dick’s ribaldry at such a moment? Oh! now she was sure of it, it was he whom she hated, not Rupert.

Rupert was speaking in Arabic, and in a rich, slow voice that reached the remotest recesses of that immemorial hall, emphasising his words by quiet and dignified motions of his hands. He was speaking, and every soul of that great company, in utter silence and with heads bent in respect, hung upon his wisdom.

Tabitha poked the interpreter with the point of her white umbrella and whispered.

“Tell me, Achmet,” she said, “what do his lordship say?”

Achmet listened, and from time to time interpreted the sense of Rupert’s remarks in a low, rapid voice which none of the audience, who were unaware of their presence, overheard.

“The noble lord, Zahed,” he informed them, “talks of gratitude to God, which some of them have forgot; he shows them how they should all be very grateful. He tells them his own story.”