The way of the spirit

by H. Rider Haggard

Again there was a murmur which covered up the speaker’s voice, and in the midst of it Dick whispered to Edith:

“Rather rough on you to drop in for this yarn, but it is always well to hear both sides of a case.”

She made no answer. Her face was like that of the stone statue against which she leant. Again the unconcerned, brassy voice of the interpreter took up the tale:

“Zahed says that while he prepared for death in the river, in the mist above the water he saw a picture of their and his loved lady’s face, and Allah brought into his mind a promise which he had made to her that if the ties of his duty were broken, he would return to be her brother and friend. Thus he was prevented from committing a great crime—a crime like that the man they had been speaking of had committed, and he had returned. As all there could bear witness, he, remembering the oaths which he had sworn to the wife who had rejected him, had been no more to Tama than a brother and a friend. This was not easy, since she and all of them knew that he loved her well, and he believed that she loved him well.”

“Aye, that I do,” broke in Mea, in a voice of infinite tenderness. “I love him more than life, more than anything that is, has been, or shall be. I love him, oh! I love him, as much as he loves me.”

“It is so, we see with our eyes,” said the multitude.

“Well, now, he came to the nut that lay hid in the rough stone of his story. His lot had been hard. They would all of them think it hard that because of their duty their lady and he must live as they lived, one, yet separated, practising the great doctrine of Renunciation, having no hope of children to follow after them.”

The audience agreed that it was exceedingly hard.

“They thought so, and so it had been at first, yet it had come to this, they loved their state and did not wish to change it, they who looked forward to other things, and to a life when the righteousness which they practised here would bring them yet closer together than they had ever been. They were quite happy who spent their days without remorse for the past or fear for the future; they for whom death had no terrors, but was rather a gate of joy which they would pass gladly hand-in-hand. That was the nut of the story; bitter as it might be to the taste, it had in it the germ of life. Lo! they had planted it on the earth, and yet even here, although as yet they did not see its flower, it had grown to a very pleasant tree under the shade of which they rested for a while and were content. Let all of them there lay this poor example to their hearts. Let them not be discouraged when God seemed to deal hardly with them, like that poor man, their brother, who was dead by his own hand, since if in their degree they also practised Renunciation, made repentance, and for right’s sake abstained from sin, they would certainly find a reward.

“Some of them had spoken of vengeance, that thirst for vengeance, which the other day had caused another of them to commit murder. Let them flee from the thought of it. Their lady here had practised vengeance upon the bodies of those cruel Arabs who had slain his people and tortured himself, but now neither he nor she were happier on that account. The blood of those misguided men was on their hands, who, if they had left them alone, would doubtless have been rewarded according to their deeds, but not through them, or, what was far better, would have lived to repent and find forgiveness. Forgiveness was the command of the merciful God who forgave all that sought it of Him, and it should not be withheld even by the best of them who still had so much to be forgiven.”