The way of the spirit

by H. Rider Haggard

And Rupert went.

“It was not so bad as it might have been,” thought Edith to herself, as rubbing her face with her lace handkerchief the while, she watched the door close behind him, “and really he is very nice. Oh, why can’t I care for him more? If I could, we should be happy, whereas now, I don’t know. Fancy his telling me that story! What a curious man! It must have been Clara. I have heard something of the sort. Dick suggested as much, but I thought it was only one of his scandals. That’s why Cousin George hates him so—for he does hate him, although he insists upon my marrying him. Yes, I see it all now, and I can remember that she was a very beautiful and a very foolish woman. Poor innocent Rupert!”

Rupert came down to dinner ten minutes late, to find that everybody had gone in. Arriving under cover of the fish, he took the chair which was left for him by Lady Devene, who always liked him to sit upon her right hand. Edith, he noted with sorrow, was some way off, between two of the shooting guests, and three places removed from Dick, who occupied the end of the table.

“Ach! my dear Rupert,” said Lady Devene, “you are terribly late, and I could wait no longer, it spoils the cook. Now you shall have no soup as a punishment. What? Did you go to sleep over that big book of yours up in the library?”

He made some excuse, and the matter passed off, while he ate, or pretended to eat his fish in silence. Indeed to him, in his excited state of mind, this splendid and rather lengthy New Year’s feast proved the strangest of entertainments. There was a curious air of unreality about it. Could he, Rupert, after the wonderful and glorious thing that had happened to him utterly changing the vista of his life, making it grand and noble as the columns of Karnac beneath the moon, be the same Rupert who had gone out shooting that morning? Could the handsome, phlegmatic German lady who sat by him discoursing on the cooking be the same passion-torn, doom-haunted woman, who told him how she had crawled upon her knees after her mocking husband for the prize of her infant’s soul? Nay, was it she who sat there at all? Was it not another, whom he well remembered in that seat, the lovely Clara, with her splendid, unhappy eyes full of the presage of death and destruction; those eyes that he felt still watched him, he knew not whence, reproaching him, warning him he knew not of what? Was the gay and beautiful lady yonder, who laughed and joked with her companions, the same Edith to whom he had vowed himself not an hour gone? Yes, it must be so, for there upon her finger gleamed his golden ring, and what was more, Dick had seen it, for he was watching her hand with a frown upon his handsome face.

Why, too, Rupert wondered, did another vision thrust itself upon him at this moment, that of the temple of Abu-Simbel bathed in the evening lights which turned the waters of the Nile red as though with blood, and of the smiling and colossal statues of the first monarch of long ago, whose ring was set upon Edith’s hand in token of their troth? Of the dark, white-haired figure of old Bakhita also, who had not crossed his mind for many a day, standing there among the rocks and calling to him that they would meet again, calling to Dick and Edith also, something that he could not understand, and then turning to speak to a shadow behind her.

The meal ended at last, and as was the custom in this house, everyone, men and women, left the table together to go into the great hall hung with holly and with mistletoe, where there would be music, and perhaps dancing to follow, and all might smoke who wished. Here were some other guests, the village clergyman’s daughters and two families from the neighbourhood, making a party of twenty or thirty in all, and here also was Mrs. Ullershaw, who had dined in her own room, and come down to see the old year out.

Rupert went to sit by his mother, for a kind of shyness kept him away from Edith. She laid her hand on his, and with a smile that made her grey and careworn face beautiful, said how happy she was, after so many lonely years, to be at the birth of one more of them with him, even though it should prove her last.

“Don’t talk like that, mother,” he answered, “it is painful.”

“Yes, dear,” she replied, in her gentle voice, “but all life is painful, a long road of renunciation with farewells for milestones. And when we think ourselves most happy, as I do to-night, then we should remember these truths more even than at other times. The moment is all we have, dear; beyond it lies the Will of God, and nothing that we can call our own.”