The way of the spirit

by H. Rider Haggard

For a moment Rupert hesitated, then remembering that there were but two of them and that he was armed, yielded to impulse, or to the pressure of Destiny, and began very cautiously to creep towards that light. Down the long hall he went, feeling his way from column to column, through the doorway to the smaller hall, and guided by the star of flame, down that also into a narrow transverse chamber that gives access to the central sanctuary and the apartments on its either side. At the entrance of the holy place he stopped, and cautiously looked round the projecting rock that once had supported its massive door. Then—for this sanctuary is not large—he saw a very strange and interesting sight.

On the square, solid altar where, for more than a thousand years, offerings had once been made to the gods of Egypt, and to the great Rameses, who, when he hewed this temple, placed himself among their number, stood a lamp, having at the back of it a piece of rock fallen from the ceiling, and set edgeways in such a fashion as to throw the most of its light forward. This light struck upon the shattered, seated figures of the four gods that were worshipped here, and still remain staring down their desolated shrine: Ptah, Ammon-Ra, Rameses himself, and Harmachis, god of Dawn, crowned with the emblem of the disc of the sun. Also they struck upon what, under the circumstances, seemed more wonderful even than they are, the figures of two women standing face to face on either side of the line of gods, to whom they appeared to be making invocations.

Rupert knew one of them at once—it was the old gipsy Bakhita, of whom, until he passed her house that afternoon and noticed some fine white dromedaries tethered by it, he had not thought for months, not since the night of his betrothal indeed, when she thrust her shadow among the company gathered at Devene to welcome the New Year. She was clothed in a dark, clinging gown, with a close-fitting wimple upon her head, that gave her the air of a priestess, which, indeed, as he guessed at once, was the part she played. But on her Rupert’s glance did not linger long, for it flew to her companion and there remained.

She was a young woman—perhaps two- or three-and-twenty years of age—small, delicate, slender, but beautifully fashioned, and so light in colour as to be almost white. For dress she wore thin draperies—so thin that her rounded shape and limbs were visible through them, and so white that they gleamed like snow. About her waist was a girdle of silver, and set upon the dark, curling hair that rested stiffly on her shoulders, like that of some sculptured Egyptian queen, a circlet of gold, from which rose the symbol of the sun’s disc, and in front of it the hooded asp.

Rupert saw these things and gasped, as well he might, for unless his eyes deceived him or he dreamed, he beheld what no man had seen for more than a thousand years—one of the royal race of Egypt making offering to her gods. There could be no doubt about it. The dress, though simplified, was the same, and the uræus on her brow—which none that were not of the direct family of the Pharaohs, or tied to him as lawful wife, would have dared to wear—told their own tale. Moreover, in one hand she held a bowl of glass, and in the other a jar of alabaster, and from the jar she poured a libation into the bowl and offered it to Harmachis, saying, in a sweet voice, and in Arabic, Bakhita prompting her to the words:

“Grant, I pray thee, O thou clothed with the sun, which is the symbol of the spirit, a safe journey to me, by blood the last of thy priestesses, and to this woman, thy worshipper, who is of my kin!”

As she spoke she turned her head, and the light of the lamp fell full upon her face, and it was lovely as a flower, clothed with a kind of beauty that was new to Rupert, for never had he seen its like. The large eyes—dark, liquid, and lustrous—the broad and noble brow, the lips somewhat full and red, in type purely Eastern, the fine-cut nose spreading a little at the nostrils, the rounded, childish cheeks, the firm yet dimpled chin, were all set like a framed picture in the straight-trimmed, formal masses of that curling hair. Taken separately, there was nothing wonderful about these features, but together, animated and illumined by that sweet, slow smile and the tremulous mystery of the proud yet pleading eyes, ah! who had ever seen their fellow?

In his anxiety to witness more of this most fascinating spectacle, Rupert thrust himself further forward. In so doing the hand that supported the weight of his body slipped on the rock, against which his signet-ring grated, making a loud noise in the utter silence of that dead place.

Bakhita, whose ears were quick as those of any fox, heard it, and wheeling round, sprang to the lamp, snatched it from the altar, and rushed to the doorway. Rupert attempted to retreat across the corridor, purposing to take refuge in one of the side-chambers which open out of the inner hall. It was too late. She was on him, so realising the danger of leaving his back exposed, he turned, and they came face to face.

“Bakhita,” he said, “it is I,” for already a knife flashed in her hand.