The way of the spirit

by H. Rider Haggard

Edith was with Rupert as often as possible; she even took long rides which she hated, in order to share his company, whilst with a feverish earnestness he discoursed to her of all things in heaven and earth, except those things which leapt to the lips of both of them. She watched him at his work, and learned to understand how great that work was and how well it had been done. She perceived that he was adored by all, from Mea herself down to the little children that could hardly walk, and began to comprehend the qualities which made him thus universally beloved. More—the truth may as well be told at once—now, for the first time in her life, they produced a deep impression upon her.

At last Edith began to fall in love with, or if that is too strong a term, at any rate really to admire her husband, not his nature only, but his outward self as well, that self which to her had once seemed so hateful, especially when she compared him with another man. Now, by some strange turn of the wheel of her instincts, it was that other man who was hateful, from whom she shrank as once she had shrunk from Rupert, taking infinite pains to avoid his company, and still more the tendernesses which he occasionally tried to proffer; he who also had grown very jealous. The fact of Mea’s obvious adoration of Rupert may, of course, in the case of a character like Edith’s, have had much to do with this moral and physical volte-face, but it was by no means its only cause. Retribution had fallen upon her; the hand of Fate had pressed her down before this man’s feet.

Yet the worst of it was that she made no real progress with him. Rupert was most courteous and polite, very charming indeed, but she felt that all these things were an armour which she could not pierce, that as he had once said, his nature and his spirit rose in repugnance against her. Twice or thrice she took some opportunity to touch him, only to become aware that he shrank from her, not with the quick movement of a man who desires to avoid being betrayed into feeling, or led into temptation, but because of an unconquerable innate distaste—quite a different thing. She remembered his dreadful words of divorce, how he had said that henceforth he hated her, and that even should she in the future swear that she loved him, he would not lay a finger-tip upon her. Why should he indeed when another woman, more faithful, more spiritual—and yes, she must admit it, more lovely, was the companion of his every waking thought and hour.

See Edith now after she has spent fourteen days in her husband’s company. She is tired with the long ride she has taken in the hot sun just to be with him, feigning an interest in things which she did not understand, about the propagation of date-palms, for instance, as though she cared anything whether they grew from seed or offshoots. Tired, too, with her long, unceasing effort to show him her best side, to look cool and attractive in that heat and mounted on a skittish horse which frightened her. (How, she wondered, did Mea contrive never to seem hot or to lose her dignity, and why did her hair always remain so crisp and unruffled even beneath her white head-dress?) Annoyed also by Dick, who had accompanied her home and showed his ever-growing jealousy in a most unpleasant fashion, firing arrow after arrow of his coarse sarcasm at her, even reminding her of that afternoon years ago when her husband was supposed to be dead and she became engaged to him. She had scarcely replied; it did not seem worth while, only in her heart she vowed that should she ever have an opportunity, she would be rid of Dick once and for all. Yes, she did not care what he might say or what letters he threatened to publish, she would face it out and have done with him, as she wished that she had found courage to do long ago.

Now she was in her own room, and stretched face downwards upon her angarib or native bedstead, she sobbed in the bitterness of her soul. All her wiles, all her charm could not prevail against that small but royal-looking Eastern woman with the ready wit, the single aim, the mysterious face and the eyes like Fate, who had risen up against her and taken with gratitude the man whom she had once rejected, contented if only she might own his heart. Had it been otherwise, quarrels might have arisen, or he might have wearied of her; but that was the worst of it, where there was no marriage there could be no wearying. Always she stretched before him a garden of Eden, a paradise from which he was turned back by the flame-sworded angels of his own strict righteousness and oath. And into the rival garden which she, Edith, had to offer, whereof the gates, once so locked and barred, now stood wide, he showed no wish to wander.

What would be the end of it, when, at the expiration of the month again she faced that alien multitude with their stony, contemptuous eyes? Oh! surely then she would hear that he had taken counsel with himself and that conscience of his; that he found no law which forced him to return to a woman who had spurned him; that he offered her his title and his wealth and wished her well, but that himself he would bide where he was and discuss philosophy, and doubtless other things, with his lady Tama, the beautiful and perfect.

It was too much. Edith gave way to grief uncontrolled, her sobs echoed in the empty room so loudly that Tabitha heard them through the thin partition wall and came in to see what was the matter.

“Are you ill?” she asked.

Edith in her night-dress sat up on the angarib, her face wet with tears, her hair falling about her shoulders.

“I suppose so,” she answered. “At least I am unhappy, which is the same thing.”