The way of the spirit

by H. Rider Haggard

“I will offer again to go to Egypt with him. Indeed now I wish to go, away from all of you. And I wish, too, that I might die there, even of that horrid cholera,” she added fiercely. “But I tell you that I know Rupert, and that it is now, as you say, too late. After that wretched scene at dinner he will never take me, because he will think that to do so would be to cast a reflection upon me, and to admit that it was I who did not wish to accompany him, not he who did not wish to take me.”

“Possibly,” answered Lord Devene. “I have always found the loosing of knots very difficult; the wise people are those who do not tie them.”

Then she crept away to bed broken and sore-hearted. After she had gone Lord Devene smoked two more cigarettes. Next he sat down and drafted a letter with great care, which ultimately he copied out, directed to Colonel Ullershaw, and put away.

Here it may be stated that Edith proved to be absolutely right. Although he would have given nearly all he had to take her with him, when it was put to him on the morrow in the presence of Lord Devene, in spite of everything that Edith could say, Rupert positively refused to consent to her coming, and for the exact reasons which she foresaw would sway him. He was too loyal to do anything which he thought would in the smallest degree asperse her. When Lord Devene intervened, moreover, he only answered haughtily that he was the best judge of the matter which concerned his wife and himself alone.

Thus, then, this question was finally decided.

The impression left upon Rupert’s mind by his wedding was hazy and tumultuous. Most of that morning he had been obliged to spend at the War Office arranging the details of his mission. Thence he rushed home to finish his packing, dress, and convey his luggage to Charing Cross, finally arriving at St. George’s, Hanover Square, only a few minutes before the bride.

The best man, his old Indian friend whom he had gone to stay with on the day after his engagement, hustled him into a pew, scolding him for being late, telling him to put on his gloves and asking him what he had done with the ring, which was only discovered after great difficulty. Vaguely Rupert noticed that the place was crowded with fashionable-looking people, who all seemed to be staring at him, as he thought, because his hair was untidy, which it was. Then the organ began to play, and the fashionable congregation turned and stared down the aisle, while his friend trod on his foot, poked him in the ribs, and adjured him in a loud whisper to wake up and look alive, as the bride was coming.

He looked, and there, followed by her train of bridesmaids—tall, pale, lovely—white and wonderful in her shimmering satin and pearls, Edith floated towards him up the aisle like a vision out of heaven. From that moment Rupert saw nothing else, not even Lord Devene, who gave her away. The brilliant congregation, the robed bishop and clergymen, the fussy and ubiquitous best man, the smiling bridesmaids, the stony Lord Southwick, all vanished into space. Nothing remained save the pale, earnest face of Edith in which the eyes shone like stars at dawn. Nothing did he seem to hear save her whispered “I will.”

It was over; he remembered signing a book, kissing his wife and his mother, and driving with the former in a fine carriage to Grosvenor Square. She asked him whether he had got his luggage safely to the station, and then it seemed that of a sudden, before he had even time to answer, they arrived at the house, where policemen were keeping a passage clear beneath an awning. As he helped Edith to descend from the carriage an old woman remarked audibly:

“Pore fellow, he don’t know what he’s in for!” which struck him as an unkind saying.