The Way of the Spirit

BY
H. RIDER HAGGARD
AUTHOR OF “JESS,” “STELLA FREGELIUS,” ETC.

“Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth…and walk
in the ways of thine heart, and in the sight of thine
eyes; but know thou that for all these things God will
bring thee into judgment.”
“To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the
tree of life which is in the midst of the paradise of God.”

LONDON
HUTCHINSON & CO.
PATERNOSTER ROW
1906

Dedication

MY DEAR KIPLING,—Both of us believe that there are higher aims in life than the weaving of stories well or ill, and according to our separate occasions strive to fulfil this faith.

Still, when we talked together of the plan of this tale, and when you read the written book, your judgment thereof was such as all of us hope for from an honest and instructed friend—generally in vain.

So, as you found interest in it, I offer it to you, in token of much I cannot write. But you will understand.—

To Rudyard Kipling, Esq.
Ditchingham, 14th August, 1905.

CONTENTS

AUTHOR’S NOTE

This tale was written two years ago as the result of reflections which occurred to me among the Egyptian sands and the empty cells of long-departed anchorites.

Perhaps in printing it I should ask forgiveness for my deviation from the familiar, trodden pathway of adventure, since in the course of a literary experience extending now, I regret to say, over more than a quarter of a century, often I have seen that he who attempts to step off the line chalked out for him by custom or opinion is apt to be driven back with stones and shoutings. Indeed, there are some who seem to think it very improper that an author should seek, however rarely, to address himself to a new line of thought or group of readers. As he began so he must go on, they say. Yet I have ventured on the history of Rupert Ullershaw’s great, and to all appearance successful Platonic experiment, chiefly because this problem interested me: Under the conditions in which fortune placed him in the East, was he right or wrong in clinging to an iron interpretation of a vow of his youth and to the strict letter of his Western Law? And was he bound to return to the English wife who had treated him so ill, as, in the end, he made up his mind to do? In short, should or should not circumstances be allowed to alter moral cases?

The question is solved in one way in this book, but although she herself was a party to that solution, looking at the matter with Mea’s eyes it seems capable of a different reading. Still, given a sufficiency of faith, I believe that set down here to be the true answer. Also, whatever its exact cause and nature, there must be something satisfying and noble in utter Renunciation for Conscience’ sake, even when surrounding and popular judgment demands no such sacrifice. At least this is one view of Life, its aspirations and possibilities; that which wearies of its native soil, that which lifts its face toward the Stars.

Otherwise, why did those old anchorites wear the stone beds of their cells so thin? Why, in this fashion or in that, do their successors still wear them thin everywhere in the wide earth, especially in the wise and ancient East? I think the reply is Faith: that Faith which bore Rupert and Mea to what they held to be a glorious issue of their long probation—that Faith in personal survival and reunion, without the support of which in one form or another, faint and flickering, as it may be, the happiness or even the continuance of our human world is so difficult to imagine.

H.R.H.

THE WAY OF THE SPIRIT
PROLOGUE

The last pitiful shifts of shame, the last agonised doublings of despair when the net is about the head and the victor’s trident at the throat—who can enjoy the story of such things as these? Yet because they rough-hewed the character of Rupert Ullershaw, because from his part in them he fashioned the steps whereby he climbed to that height of renunciation which was the only throne he ever knew, something of it must be told. A very little will suffice; the barest facts are all we need.

Upon a certain July evening, Lord and Lady Devene sat at dinner alone in a very fine room of a very fine house in Portland Place. They were a striking couple, the husband much older than the wife; indeed, he was fifty years of age, and she in the prime of womanhood. The face of Lord Devene, neutral tinted, almost colourless, was full of strength and of a certain sardonic ability. His small grey eyes, set beneath shaggy, overhanging eyebrows that were sandy-coloured like his straight hair, seemed to pierce to the heart of men and things, and his talk, when he had anything to say upon a matter that moved him, was keen and uncompromising. It was a very bitter face, and his words were often very bitter words, which seems curious, as this man enjoyed good health, was rich, powerful, and set by birth and fortune far above the vast majority of other men.

Yet there were flies in his silver spoon of honey. For instance, he hated his wife, as from the first she hated him; for instance, he who greatly desired sons to carry on his wealth and line had no children; for instance, his sharp, acrimonious intellect had broken through all beliefs and overthrown all conventions, yet the ghost of dead belief still haunted him, and convention still shackled his hands and feet. For he could find no other rocks whereon to rest or cling as he was borne forward by the universal tide which at last rips over the rough edges of the world.

The woman, Clara, Lady Devene, was physically magnificent; tall, with a regal-looking head, richly coloured, ivory-skinned, perfectly developed in every part, except perhaps her brain: Good-natured, courageous after a fashion, well-meaning, affectionate, tenacious of what she had learned in youth, but impulsive and quite elementary in her tendencies and outlook; one who would have wished to live her own life and go her own way like an amiable, high-class savage, worshipping the sun and the stars, the thunder and the rain, principally because she could not understand them, and at times they frightened her. Such was Clara, Lady Devene. She was not imaginative, she lived in the present for the present. She never heard the roll of the wheels of Fate echoing, solemn and ceaseless, through the thin, fitful turmoil of our lives, like the boom of distant battle-guns that shape the destinies of empires discerned through the bray of brass bands upon an esplanade.

No; Clara was not imaginative, although she had a heart, although, for example, from year to year she could grieve over the man whom once she had jilted or been forced to jilt (and who afterwards died of drink), in order to take her “chance in life” and marry Lord Devene whom she cordially disliked; whom she knew, moreover, to be self-seeking and cross-souled, as each in his or her degree were all his race from the first remembered Ullershaw down to himself and his collaterals. Ultimately, such primitive and unhappy women are apt to find some lover, especially if he reminds them of their first. Lady Devene had done so at any rate, and that lover, as it chanced, was scarcely more than a lad, her husband’s heir and cousin, a well-meaning but hot-hearted youth, whom she had befooled with her flatteries and with her beauty, and now doted on in a fashion common enough under such circumstances. Moreover, she had been found out, as she was bound to be, and the thing had come to its inevitable issue. The birds were blind, and Lord Devene was no man to spread his nets in vain.

Lady Devene was not imaginative—it has been said. Yet when her husband, lifting a large glass of claret to his lips, suddenly let it fall, so that the red wine ran over the white table-cloth like new-shed blood upon snow, and the delicate glass was shattered, she shivered, she knew not why; perhaps because instinct told her that this was no accident, but a symbol of something which was to come. For once she heard the boom of those battle-guns of Fate above the braying of the brass band on her life’s tawdry esplanade. There rose in her mind, indeed, the words of an old song that she used to sing—for she had a beautiful voice, everything about her was beautiful—a melancholy old song, which began:

“Broken is the bowl of life, spilled is its ruby wine;
Behind us lie the sins of earth, before, the doom Divine!”

It was a great favourite with that unlucky dead lover of hers who had taken to drink, and whom she had jilted—before he took to drink. The memory disturbed her. She rose from the table, saying that she was going to her own sitting-room. Lord Devene answered that he would come too, and she stared at him, for he was not in the habit of visiting her apartments. In practice they had lived separate for years.

Husband and wife stood face to face in that darkened room, for the lamps were not lit, and a cloud obscured the moon which till now had shone through the open windows.

The truth was out. She knew the worst, and it was very bad.

“Do you mean to murder me?” she asked, in a hoarse voice, for the deadly hate in the man’s every word and movement suggested nothing less to her mind.

“No,” he answered; “only to divorce you. I mean to be rid of you—at last. I mean to marry again. I wish to leave heirs behind me. Your young friend shall not have my wealth and title if I can help it.”

“Divorce me? You? You?”

“You can prove nothing against me, Clara, and I shall deny everything, whereas I can prove all against you. This poor lad will have to marry you. Really I am sorry for him, for what chance had he against you? I do not like to see one of my name made ridiculous, and it will ruin him.”

“He shall not marry me,” she answered fiercely. “I love him too well.”

“You can settle that as you like between you. Go back to your reverend parent’s house if you choose, and take to religion. You will be an ornament to any Deanery. Or if you do not choose—” and with a dim, expressive gesture, he waved his hand towards the countless lights of London that glimmered beneath them.

She thought a while, leaning on the back of a chair and breathing heavily. Then that elementary courage of hers flared up, and she said:

“George, you want to be free from me. You noticed the beginning of my folly and sent us abroad together; it was all another plot—I quite understand. Now, life is uncertain, and you have made mine very miserable. If anything should chance to happen to me—soon, would there be any scandal? I ask it, not for my own sake, but for that of my old father, and my sisters and their children.”

“No,” he replied slowly. “In that sad and improbable event there would be no scandal. Only foolish birds foul their own nests unless they are driven to it.”

Again she was silent, then drew back from him and said:

“Thank you, I do not think there is anything to add. Go away, please.”

“Clara,” he answered, in his cold, deliberate voice, “you are worn out—naturally. Well, you want sleep, it will be a good friend to you to-night. But remember, that chloral you are so fond of is dangerous stuff; take enough if you like, but not too much!”

“Yes,” she replied heavily, “I know. I will take enough—but not too much.”

For a moment there was deep silence between them in that dark room. Then suddenly the great moon appeared again above the clouds, revealing their living faces to each other for the last time. That of the woman was tragic and dreadful; already death seemed to stare from her wide eyes, and that of the man somewhat frightened, yet remorseless. He was not one of those who recoil from their Rubicon.

“Good-bye,” he said quickly; “I am going down to Devene by the late train, but I shall be back in town to-morrow morning—to see my lawyer.”

With a white and ghost-like arm she pointed first to the door, then through the window-place upwards towards the ominous, brooding sky, and spoke in a solemn whisper:

“George,” she said, “you know that you are a hundred times worse than I, and whatever I am, you have made me, who first forced me to marry you because I was beautiful, and then when you wearied of me, treated me as you have done for years. God judge between us, for I say that as you have had no pity, so you shall find none. It is not I who speak to you from the brink of my grave, but something within me.”

It was morning, and Rupert Ullershaw stood at the door of the Portland Place house, whither he had come to call upon Lady Devene, to whom he brought a birthday gift which he had saved for months to buy. He was a somewhat rugged-faced lad, with frank grey eyes; finely built also, broad-shouldered, long-armed, athletic, though in movement slow and deliberate. There was trouble in those eyes of his, who already had found out thus early in his youth that though “bread of deceit is sweet to a man, afterwards his mouth shall be filled with gravel.” Also, he had other anxieties who was the only son and hope of his widowed mother, and of a father, Captain Ullershaw, Devene’s relation, whose conduct had broken her heart and beggared her of the great fortune for which she had been married. Now Rupert, the son, had just passed out of Woolwich, where, when his feet fell into this bitter snare, he had been studying in the hope of making a career for himself in the army.

Presently the butler, a dark, melancholy-looking person, opened the door, and Rupert saw at once that the man was strangely disturbed; indeed, he looked as though he had been crying.

“Is Lady Devene in?” Rupert asked as a matter of form.

“In, sir, yes; she’ll never go out no more, except once,” answered the butler, speaking with a gulp in his throat. “Haven’t you heard, sir, haven’t you heard?” he went on wildly.

“Heard what?” gasped Rupert, catching at the door frame.

“Dead, Mr. Ullershaw, dead—accident—overdose of chloral they say! His lordship found her an hour ago, and the doctors have just left.”

Meanwhile, in the room above, Lord Devene stood alone, contemplating the still and awful beauty of the dead. Then rousing himself, he took the hearth-brush, and with it swept certain frail ashes of burnt paper down between the bars of the low grate so that they crumbled up and were no more seen.

“I never believed that she would dare to do it,” he thought to himself. “After all, she had courage, and she was right, I am worse than she was,—as she would judge. Well, I have won the game and am rid of her at last, and without scandal. So—let the dead bury their dead!”

When Rupert, who had come up from Woolwich that morning, reached the little house in Regent’s Park, which was his mother’s home, he found a letter awaiting him. It had been posted late on the previous night, and was unsigned and undated, but in Clara’s hand, being written on a plain sheet and enclosed, as a blind, in a conventional note asking him to luncheon. Its piteous, its terrible contents need not be described; suffice it to say that from them he learned all the truth. He read it twice, then had the wit to destroy it by fire. In that awful hour of shock and remorse the glamour and the madness departed from him, and he, who at heart was good enough, understood whither they had led his feet.

After this Rupert Ullershaw was very ill, so ill that he lay in bed a long time, wandered in his mind, and was like to die. But his powerful constitution carried his young body through the effects of a blow from which inwardly he never really quite recovered. In the end, when he was getting better, he told his mother everything. Mrs. Ullershaw was a strong, reserved woman, with a broad, patient face and smooth, iron-grey hair; one who had endured much and through it kept her simple faith and trust in Providence—yes, even when she thought that the evil in her son’s blood was mastering him, that evil from which no Ullershaw was altogether free, and that he was beginning to walk in the footsteps of his father and of that ill guide and tempter, his cousin, Lord Devene. She heard him out, her quiet eyes fixed upon his face that was altered almost into age by passion, illness and repentance—heard him without a word.

Then she made one of the great efforts of her life, and in the stress of her appeal even became eloquent. She told Rupert all she knew of those brilliant, erratic, unprincipled Ullershaws from whom he sprang, and counted before his eyes the harvest of Dead Sea apples that they had gathered. She showed him how great was his own wrong-doing, and how imminent the doom from which he had but just escaped—that doom which had destroyed the unhappy Clara after she was meshed in the Ullershaw net, and corrupted by their example and philosophy which put the pride of life and gratification of self above obedience to law human or Divine. She pointed out to him that he had received his warning, that he stood at the parting of the ways, that his happiness and welfare for all time depended upon the path he chose. She, who rarely spoke of herself, even appealed to him to remember his mother, who had endured so much at the hands of his family, and not to bring her grey hairs with sorrow to the grave; to live for work and not for pleasure; to shun the society of idle folk who can be happy in the midst of corruption, and who are rich in everything except good deeds.

“Set another ideal before your eyes, my son,” she said, “that of renunciation, and learn that when you seem to renounce you really gain. Follow the way of the Spirit, not that of the Flesh. Conquer yourself and the weakness which comes of your blood, however hard that may be. Self-denial is not really difficult, and its fruits are beautiful; in them you will find peace. Life is not long, my boy, but remorse may be a perpetual agony. So live, then, that having obtained forgiveness for what you have done amiss, it may not be there to torment you when you come to die.”

As it chanced, her words fell in a fruitful soil well prepared to receive them—a strong soil, also—one which could grow corn as well as weeds.

“Mother,” Rupert answered simply. “I will. I swear to you that whatever it costs me I will,” and stretching out his wasted arms he drew down her grey head and kissed her on the brow.

This history will show how he kept that sick-bed promise under circumstances when few would have blamed him for its breach. Romantic as Rupert Ullershaw’s life was destined to be, thenceforward it was quite unstained.

CHAPTER I.
THE VOICE OF THE SINGING SAND

More than eleven years have gone by, and the scene upon which our curtain rises again is different indeed to that upon which it fell. In place of that little London house where Rupert had lain sick, behold the mouth of a cliff-hewn temple, and on the face of it, cut from the solid rock, four colossal statues of an Egyptian king, nearly seventy feet high each of them, that gaze for ever across the waters of the Nile and the desert beyond—that unchanging desert whence for three thousand five hundred years, dawn by dawn, they have greeted the newly-risen sun. For this place is the temple of Abu-Simbel below the Second Cataract of the Nile in the Soudan.

It is afternoon in the month of September, of the year 1889, and beneath one of the colossi near to the entrance of the temple is seated a British officer in uniform—a big, bearded, rugged-faced man, with clear grey eyes, and an expression that at this moment, at any rate, would have impressed an observer as remarkable for intensity and power. Indeed, in this respect it was not unlike that stamped upon the stone countenances of the mighty statues above him. There was in it something of the same calm, patient strength—something of that air of contemptuous expectancy with which the old Egyptian sculptors had the art of clothing those effigies of their gods and kings.

It would have been hard to recognise in this man the lad whom we left recovering from a sore sickness, for some twelve years of work, thought, struggle, and self-control—chisels, all of them, that cut deeply—had made their marks upon him. Yet it was Rupert Ullershaw and no other.

The history of that period of his life can be given in few words. He had entered the army and gone to India, and there done very well. Having been fortunate enough to be employed in two of our little frontier wars, attention had been called to his conspicuous professional abilities. As it chanced also he was a studious man, and the fact that he devoted himself but little to amusements—save to big-game shooting when it came in his way—left him plenty of time for study. A chance conversation with a friend who had travelled much in the East, and who pointed out to him how advantageous it might be for his future to have a knowledge of Arabic, with which very few English officers were acquainted at the time, caused him to turn his attention to that language. These labours of his becoming known to those in authority, the Indian Government appointed him upon some sudden need to a semi-diplomatic office on the Persian Gulf. Here he did well, and although he never got the full public credit of it, was fortunate enough to avert a serious trouble that might have grown to large proportions and involved a naval demonstration. In recognition of his services he was advanced in rank and made a C.B. at a very early age, with the result that, had he wished it, he might have entered on a diplomatic career with every hope of distinction.

But Rupert was, above all things, a soldier, so turning his back upon these pleasant prospects, he applied to be allowed to serve in Egypt, a request that was readily granted on account of his knowledge of Arabic. Here in one capacity or another he took part in various campaigns, being present at the battles of El-Teb and Tamai, in the latter of which he was wounded. Afterwards he marched with Sir Herbert Stewart from Dongola and fought with him at Abu-Klea. Returning to Egypt after the death of Gordon, he was employed as an Intelligence officer at Cairo, and finally made a lieutenant-colonel in the Egyptian army. In this capacity he accompanied General Grenfell up the Nile, and took part in the battle of Toski, where the Dervishes were routed on 3rd August, 1889. Then he was stationed at Abu-Simbel, a few miles away, to make arrangements as to the disposal of prisoners, and subsequently to carry on negotiations with certain Arab chiefs whose loyalty remained doubtful.

Such is a brief record of those years of the life of Rupert Ullershaw, with which, eventful as they were, our story has nothing to do. He had done exceedingly well; indeed, there were few officers of his standing who could look to the future with greater confidence, for although he appeared older than his years, he was still a young man; moreover, he was liked and respected by all who knew him, and notwithstanding his success, almost without enemies. It only remains to add that he had kept the promise which he made to his mother upon his sick-bed to the very letter. Ever since that sad first entanglement, Rupert’s life had been spotless.

The sun was beginning to sink, and its rays made red pathways on the flooded Nile, and bathed the desert beyond with a tremulous, rosy light, in which isolated mountains, that in shape exactly resembled pyramids, stood up here and there like the monuments of kings. The scene was extraordinarily beautiful; silent also, for Rupert had pitched his camp, and that of his small escort, half a mile away further up the river. As he watched, the solemnities of the time and place sank into his heart, stilling the transient emotions of the moment, and tuning his mind until it was in key with its surroundings, an instrument open to the subtle influences of the past and future.

Here in the shadow of the mighty works of men who had been dead for a hundred generations, and looking out upon the river, the desert, and the mountains, which to them must have seemed as unutterably ancient as they did to him this day, his own absolute insignificance came home to Rupert as perhaps it had never done before. He thought of his petty strivings for personal advancement, and a smile grew upon his face like the smile upon that of the god-king above him. Through the waste of all the weary ages, how many men, he wondered, even in this desolate spot, had brooded on the hope of such advantage, and gone forth, but few to triumph, the most to fail, and all of them to learn within some short years that failure and success are one when forgetfulness has covered them. Thus the warning of the past laid its heavy hand upon him and pressed his spirit down, and the sound of the Nile flowing on, flowing ever from the far-off mountains of its birth through the desert to the sea, murmured in his ear that like those of Job, his days were “swifter than a post,” sung in his ear the song of Koholeth: Vanity of vanities: all is vanity. Rupert grew sad as the shadow of the hills which gathered deep about him, empty and desolate of mind as the vast, deserted temple at whose mouth he sat, the fane of a faith that was more dead than were its worshippers. Then suddenly he remembered how that morning at the dawn he had seen those cups of shadow filled with overflowing light, and how by it on the walls of that very temple he had read prayers of faith and affirmations strangely certain, of the eternity of all good works and the resurrection of all good men, in which they who carved them five-and-thirty centuries before, believed as firmly as he believed to-day.

Now it was the future that spoke to him as his heart took hope once more. Oh! he knew full surely—it came upon him with a strange conviction—that though many troubles and much bitterness might await him, though he might be born to sorrows as the sparks fly upwards, yet he should not live uselessly, or endure death in vain, that no life, not even that of the ant which toiled ceaselessly at his side in the yellow sand, was devoid of purpose or barren of result; that chance and accident did not exist; that every riddle had its answer, and every pang its issue in some new birth; that of the cloth of thoughts and deeds which he wove now would be fashioned the garment that he must wear hereafter.

Thus brooded Rupert Ullershaw after his fashion when alone, as indeed he loved to be, for he was a man who faced things and found truth oftenest in solitude.

Tired of these reflections, natural as they might be in such a time and spot, at length he rose, went a few paces to look at the lonely grave of a comrade whose working day was over, then with a sigh bethought him that now the afternoon was cooler, he would take some exercise before the darkness fell. Rupert loved all the sights and sounds of Nature, and remembering that the sunset would be fine seen from the top of a cliff behind him, he set to work to toil up the steep slope of sand, following a little track made by the jackals from the river-bank to their holes in the rocks, for he knew that these cunning animals would choose the easiest path.

Reaching the crest at length, he paused a while to look at the endless desert and the fiery ball of the sun sinking towards it so swiftly that he could almost see it move, as it does, or seems to do in Egypt. It was going down behind two distant, solitary mountains; indeed, for a few seconds, perhaps a minute, its great red globe seemed to rest upon the very point of one of these mountains. Contemplating it and them, he recalled a legend which an old Arab had told him, that beyond those mountains was a temple larger and finer than Abu-Simbel. He had asked how far it was away and why no one went there, and learned that it was a great distance off, deep in the desert, and that if anyone looked upon it he died, for it was the home of magicians who did not call on Allah and rejected his prophet. Therefore no one did look, only the legend remained, which, the Arab had added, without doubt was true.

Forgetting the tale of this fabled temple, Rupert pursued his walk past the graves of some of the Khalifa’s emirs who had been wounded in the battle of Toski, a few miles away, and when they succumbed, hastily buried where they died by their retreating comrades. He knew the man who lay beneath one of the rough piles of stones—a brave Dervish of high rank, who had very nearly put an end to himself and his earthly adventures. He could see the fellow coming at him now, yelling his war-cry and shaking his great spear. Luckily he had his revolver in his hand and was able to shoot before that spear fell. The bullet struck his enemy somewhere in the head, for he saw the blood appear and the man reel off from him as though he were drunk. Then he lost sight of him in the turmoil and slaughter, but afterwards was told that he died upon the retreat, and was shown his grave by a prisoner who had helped to bury him.

Whilst he was regarding it with the respect that one brave man has for another, even though that other be a cruel and fanatical heathen, Rupert became aware of a shadow falling upon him, which, from its long, ugly shape, he knew must be cast by a camel. Turning, he perceived a white dromedary bearing down upon him swiftly, its soft, sponge-like hoofs making so little noise upon the sand that he had never heard it coming. On the back of the camel sat an Arab sheik, who held three spears in his hand, one large and two small. Suspecting a sudden attack, as well might happen to him in that lonely place at the hands of a fanatic, he sprang back behind the grave and drew his pistol, whereon the man called out to him to put it up in the name of God as he came in peace, not war.

“Dismount,” answered Rupert sternly, “and throw down your spears.”

The Arab stopped his dromedary, commanded it to kneel, and slipping from the saddle, laid down the spears and bowed himself humbly.

“What are your name and business,” asked Rupert, “and why do you come on me thus alone?”

“Bey,” he answered, “I am Ibrahim, the Sheik of the Land of the Sweet Wells out yonder. I came to your camp with my attendants, and being told that you were here upon the hill-top, followed to speak with you, if it pleases you to open your ears to me.”

Rupert studied his visitor. He was a very handsome but cruel-looking man of about forty years of age, with flashing black eyes, a hooked nose, and a short, pointed beard which had begun to turn grey.

“I know you,” he said. “You are a traitor to the Government of Egypt, from which you have taken many benefits. You received the Khalifa’s General, Wad en-Negumi, and supplied him with food, water, and camels. Had it not been for you, perhaps he could not have advanced, and had it not been for you, many more of his people must have been captured. How dare you show your face to me?”

“Bey,” said the Sheik humbly, “that story is not true. What I did for Abdullah’s soldiers, I did because I must, or die. May his name be accursed!” and he spat upon the ground. “Now I come to seek justice from you, who have power here.”

“Go on,” said Rupert, “you shall have justice, I promise you—if I can give it.”

“Bey, a detachment of the Egyptian troops mounted upon camels have swept down upon me and robbed me. They have taken away all my sheep and most of the dromedaries, and killed three of my people who strove to protect them. More, they have insulted my women—yes, they, those dogs of Fellaheen. In the name of Allah, I pray you order that my property should be restored, or if you cannot do so, write to Cairo on my behalf, for I am a true man, and the Khedive is my lord and no other.”

“Yet,” answered Rupert, “yet, Sheik Ibrahim, I have seen a certain letter written by you to the impostor, Abdullah, the Khalifa, in which you offer him assistance, should he invade Egypt and take the road that runs past the Sweet Wells.”

Ibrahim’s face fell. “That letter was forged,” he said sullenly.

“Then, friend, how comes it that you know anything about it?” asked Rupert. “Get you back to your tribe and be thankful that, now the Khedive is victorious, his soldiers did not take you as well as your sheep. Know that you are a man with a mark against his name, and bear yourself more faithfully, lest this should be your lot”—and with his foot he touched the grave of the emir across which they talked.

The Sheik made no answer. Going to his dromedary, he climbed into the saddle, bade the beast rise, and rode off a little way. At a distance of about forty yards, which doubtless he judged to be out of revolver shot, he halted and began a furious tirade of abuse.

“Infidel dog!” he shouted, with some added insults directed against Rupert’s forbears, “you who stand there with your defiling foot upon the grave of the true believer whom you killed, hear me. You refuse me justice and accuse me of having helped the Khalifa. Be careful lest I should help him, I who am the Sheik of the Territories of the Sweet Wells, the road whereby he will come to take Egypt with fifty thousand dervishes at his back, who will not be fool enough to march down the river-bank and be shelled by your guns from steamboats. My tribe is a strong one, and we live in a mountainous country whence we cannot be hunted, though your hounds of Fellaheen took us unawares the other day. Oh! be careful lest I should catch you, white Bey, whose face I shall not forget. If ever I do, I will pay you back for the affront you put upon me, a true man. I swear it by my father’s head. Yes, then you shall choose between the faith and death; then you shall acknowledge that Mahomet is the prophet of Allah, you Cross-worshipping infidel, and that he whom you name an impostor shall drive you and all your foul race into the sea.”

“You forget yourself, Sheik of the Sweet Wells,” answered Rupert quietly, “and forget also that the future is the gift of God and not shaped by man. Begone, now! Begone at once, lest I, too, grow angry and summon my soldiers to take you and throw you in prison where you deserve to be. Off, and let me see your face no more, you who dare to threaten your sovereign, for I think that when we meet again it will be the herald of your death.”

Ibrahim sat up upon his camel and opened his mouth to answer, but there was something in the stern, fateful bearing of the Englishman which seemed to quiet him. At any rate, he turned the beast and urging it to a trot, departed swiftly across the desert.

“A very dangerous man,” reflected Rupert. “I will report the matter at once and have him looked after. I wish they had left his sheep alone and taken him, as no doubt he knows I said that they ought to do. Somehow, I don’t feel as though I had seen the last of that fellow.” Then dismissing the matter of this rebel sheik from his mind, he continued his walk and crossed the mountain plateau.

Presently Rupert came to the path by which he intended to descend. It was a strange one, none other indeed than a perfect waterfall of golden sand set at so steep an angle that the descent of it appeared dangerous, if not impossible, as would doubtless be the case had that slope been of rock. Being of sand, however, the feet of the traveller sink into it and so keep him from slipping. Then, if he is fortunate, for this thing does not always happen, he may enjoy a curious experience. As he moves transversely to and fro across the face of the slide, all about him the sand begins to flow like water, till at length it pours itself into the Nile below and is swept away. More, as it flows it sings, a very wild song, a moaning, melancholy noise that cannot be described on paper, which is caused, they say, by the vibration of the mountain rocks beneath the weight of the rolling sand. From time to time Rupert paused in his descent and listened to this strange, thrilling sound until it died away altogether, when wearying of the amusement, he scrambled down the rest of the hill-side and reached the bank of the Nile.

Here his reflections were again broken in upon, this time by a woman. Indeed he had seen her as he descended, and knew her at once for the old gipsy who for the past year or two had lived in a hovel close by, and earned, or appeared to earn her living by cultivating a strip of land upon the borders of the Nile. As it chanced, Rupert had been able a month or so before to secure repayment to her of the value of her little crop which had been eaten up by the transport animals, and the restoration of her milch goats that the soldiers had seized. From that moment the old woman had been his devoted friend, and often he would spend a pleasant hour in talking to her in her hut, or while she laboured in her garden.

To look at, Bakhita, for so she was named, was a curious person, quite distinct from the Egyptian and Soudanese women, being tall, thin, very light-coloured for an Eastern, with well-cut features and a bush of snow-white hair which hung down upon her shoulders. Indeed she was so different from themselves that she was known as the Gipsy by all the natives in the district, and consequently, of course, credited with various magical powers and much secret knowledge—with truth in the latter case.

Rupert greeted her in Arabic, which by now he spoke extraordinarily well, and held out his hand for her to shake. She took it, and bending down touched it with her lips.

“I was waiting for you, my father,” she said.

“Supposing you call me ‘your son,’” he answered, laughing, with a glance at her white locks.

“Oh!” she replied, “some of us have fathers that are not of the flesh. I am old, but perhaps your spirit is older than mine.”

“All things are possible,” said Rupert gravely. “But now, what is the business?”

“I fear I am too late with my business,” she answered. “I came to warn you against the Sheik Ibrahim, who passed my hut a little while ago on his way to visit you at your camp. But you have already seen him, have you not?”

“Yes, Bakhita; but how do you know that?”

“Oh!” she replied evasively; “I heard his angry voice coming down the wind from the top of yonder hill. I think that he was threatening and cursing you.”

Rupert nodded.

“I am sorry. I have known this man from childhood and his father before him, for he has done much hurt to my people, and would do more. That is why I live here; to watch him. He is a very evil man, cruel and full of the spirit of revenge. Also, it would have been well to speak him soft, for his tribe is strong and he may give trouble to the Government. It is true, as he says, that the soldiers did handle him with roughness, for one of them had grudges against him.”

“What is said, is said,” answered Rupert indifferently. “But tell me, mother, how do you come to know so much—about many things?”

“I? Oh! I sit by the river and listen, and the river tells me its tidings—tidings from the north, tidings from the south; the river tells me all. Although you white men cannot hear it, that old river has a voice for those whose ears are opened.”

“And how about tidings from east and west where the river does not run?” asked Rupert, smiling.

“Tidings from the east and west? Oh! thence and thither blow the winds, and those whose eyes are opened, see more in them than dust. They have their voices too, those old, old winds, and they tell me tales of the kings of my people who are dead, and of the loves and wars of long ago.”

Rupert laughed outright.

“You are a very clever woman, mother,” he said, “but be careful that they don’t arrest you as a Mahdist spy, for you won’t be able to call the Nile and the Campsine wind as witnesses.”

“Ah! you laugh at me,” she answered, shaking her old head, “but you wonderful white folk have still much to learn from the East that was grey with time when the first of your forefathers yet lay within the womb. I tell you, Rupert Bey, that all Nature has its voices, and that some of them speak of the past, some of the present, and some of the future. Yes; even that moving sand down which you climbed but now has its own voice.”

“I know that well enough, for I heard it, but I can’t explain to you the reason in Arabic.”

“You heard it; yes, and you would tell me that it is caused by sand rubbing up against rocks, or by rocks singing to the sound of the sand like a harp to the wind, and so, without doubt, it is. You heard the voice, wise white father, but tell me, did you understand its talk? Listen!” she went on, without waiting for an answer, “I, seated here watching you as you climbed, I heard what the sand said about you and others with whom your life has to do. Oh, no; I am not a common fortune-teller. I do not look at hands and make squares in the dust, or throw bones and pebbles, or gaze into pools of ink. Yet sometimes when the voice speaks to me, then I know, and never so well as of him whose feet are set upon the Singing Sand.”

“Indeed, mother; and what was its song of me?”

“I shall not tell you,” she answered, shaking her head. “It is not lawful that I should tell you, and if I did, you would only set me down as a common cheat—of whom there are many.”

“What had the song of the sand to say of me?” he repeated carelessly, for he was only half-listening to her talk.

“Much, Rupert Bey,” she answered; “much that is sad and more that is noble.”

“Noble! That should mean the peerage at least. Well, everything considered, it is a pretty safe prophecy,” he muttered to himself, with a laugh, and turned to leave her, then checked himself and asked: “Tell me, Bakhita, what do you know of the lost temple in the desert yonder?”

Instantly she became very attentive, and answered him with another question:

“How can I know anything of it, if it is lost? But what do you know?”

“I, mother? Nothing; I am interested by the story and in old temples, that is all, and I was certain that a person who can interpret the voices of the river, the winds, and the sands, must know all about it.”

“Well, perhaps I do,” she answered coolly. “Perhaps I would tell you also to whom I am so grateful. Come to my hut and we will see.”

“No,” he said, “not to-night. I must go back to my camp; I have letters to write. Another time, Bakhita.”

“Very well, another time, and afterwards perhaps we may visit that temple together. Who can say? But I think that you will have letters to read as well as to write this evening. Listen!” and she held up her hand and bent her head towards the river.

“I hear nothing except a jackal howling,” he answered.

“Don’t you? I hear the beat of a steamer’s paddles. She will be moored by Abu-Simbel in just three hours.”

“Nonsense!” said Rupert. “I don’t expect her for a week.”

“People often get what they don’t expect,” she answered. “Good-night, Rupert Bey! All the gods that ever were in Egypt have you in their keeping till we meet again.”

Then she turned without more words, and by the light of the risen moon began to pick her way swiftly among the rocks fallen from the cliff face, that lay on the brink of the flooded Nile, till half a mile or so further north she passed through the fence of her garden and came to her own mud hut.

Here Bakhita sat down on the ground by its door, and was very thoughtful whilst she awaited the coming of the steamer, of which either her own ears or perhaps some traveller had warned her. For Bakhita also expected a letter, or, at any rate, a message, and she was thinking of the writer or the sender.

“A mad whim,” she said to herself. “Had not Tama wisdom enough of her own, which comes to her with her blood, that she needs must go to learn that of these white people, and to do so, leave her high place to mix even with the daughters of Fellaheen, and hide her beauty behind the yashmak of a worshipper of the false Prophet? Surely the god of our fathers must have struck her mad, and now she is in great danger at the hands of that dog Ibrahim. Yet, who knows? This madness may be true wisdom. Oh! there are things too high for me, nor can my skill read all her fate. So here at my post I bide to watch and learn as I was bidden.”

CHAPTER II.
TWO LETTERS

When Rupert reached his camp beyond the great temple, he asked the sergeant of his guard whether the Sheik Ibrahim had been there with his servants. The soldier answered that he had seen no sheik.

“He must have been watching to find me alone; lucky I had my pistol with me,” thought Rupert to himself.

Then he ate his dinner, and afterwards sat down and wrote a report of this and other matters to his superiors in Cairo. As he finished copying the paper, to his surprise he heard a steamer hoot, and next minute his orderly informed him that a boat coming up stream was making fast opposite to the temple.

“So old Bakhita was right, after all. What long ears she must have,” thought Rupert, as he started to board the steamer.

She proved to be a Government boat from Assouan, carrying a company of Egyptian troops under the command of a brother-officer of his own, who brought him despatches and private letters. Though one of the latter was in the handwriting of his mother, from whom he was most anxious to hear, as no letter of hers had reached him for some time, it was characteristic of Rupert that he read the despatches first. Amongst other things, these contained an order that he should proceed at once to Cairo, there to advise with his chiefs on certain matters connected with the state of affairs in the Wady-Halfa district. They informed him also that the officer who brought them would stay to carry on his work at Abu-Simbel.

As the boat was to start down Nile at dawn, Rupert spent most of the night in making arrangements with his successor, and in instructing him as to the political position. When this duty was finished, and the company of soldiers had been disembarked and camped, his own packing claimed attention, so that, in the end, he did not get aboard the steamer till nearly four o’clock in the morning—that is, about an hour before she cast off. Going at once to his cabin, Rupert opened his mother’s envelope, to find that the letter within was written with pencil, and in a very shaky hand. Consumed by anxiety, he began to read. It ran as follows;—

My Dearest Son,—My last letter to you was that which I wrote to say how thankful I was to hear that by God’s mercy you had safely passed the great dangers of the battle of Toski, and the delight with which I saw you so favourably spoken of in the official despatches reporting the victory.

That was five weeks ago, and I have not written since because, dear Rupert, I have been somewhat seriously ill and was not able to do so. Nor would I let anyone else write lest you should be frightened. One night, Rupert, whilst reading my Bible before going to bed, a very strange feeling suddenly came over me, and I remember no more for two days. When I recovered consciousness the doctor told me that I had had a stroke, I could not quite make out of what kind, nor does it matter. He added, not then but afterwards, that for a while my condition was precarious, and intimated to me that although all danger had passed for the present and I might live for years, this was without doubt a warning. Of course I understood what he meant and asked no more.

My dearest boy, as you know, I do not fear death, especially if it should come in so merciful a form. But on the other hand, I do not wish to die without seeing you again. So, if it is possible, and your career will not be greatly injured thereby, I write to ask you to come to England as soon as you can, for, Rupert, it is now well over eleven years since you left home, during all which time I have not seen your face except in dreams.

I cannot write much, for my left arm is paralysed, and all that side of my body very stiff and helpless, which makes it difficult for me to sit up, so I am asking your cousin, Edith Bonnythorne, to tell you what news there is. One piece, however, I must mention, since a young woman might not like to speak of it in writing to a gentleman.

There has been another of those sad disappointments in Lord Devene’s family, the sixth, I think, since his remarriage. This time the child, a boy, was born at seven months. Every possible effort was made to save his life; indeed I am told that the poor little thing was put into a kind of incubator, the latest invention, which is said to be very successful in such cases. But it was of no use, the child died. So, although I know you care nothing about it, you are once more his heir, and I think likely to remain so.

Poor Lady Devene has been to see me. She is a good sort of woman, although very narrow in her religious views, I think she calls herself a Calvinist (fancy his marrying a Calvinist!). She grieves more over the fact that the child was not christened than because of its sad death. Indeed, speaking half in German and half in English, as is her way when moved, she said right out that she believed it died because Lord Devene would not have the ceremony performed lest it should catch a chill, and added that she was sure no child of theirs would ever live unless her husband abandoned his godless and free-thinking ways. Lastly, she declared that she wished she had never married him, but supposed that it was so ordained in punishment of her sins, the worst of which was that being dazzled by the prospect of so brilliant a match, she had accepted what he told her about his religious principles without satisfying herself that he spoke the truth. I hear that there was a great quarrel between them as to this matter of the christening, in which she seems to have had the best of it, although he would not give way, for Tabitha (that is her name) is very stolid and strong-willed when she likes. At any rate, he lost his temper and became violent, saying he wished that either she or he were dead, to which she answered that she did not take chloral. I tell you all this because I think you ought to know. It is a sad story, and I cannot help believing that there is something in what poor Lady Devene says. Do try to come to see me, my dearest, dearest Rupert.—Your ever loving mother,

MARY ULLERSHAW

Rupert was deeply moved by the contents of this letter. His mother was the one being whom he really loved upon earth; and although of course he always contemplated such a possibility in a vague fashion, the fact that she might die at any moment, that she had indeed been very near to death, absolutely overwhelmed him. He had never taken any leave heretofore: first, because he shrank from returning to England and the inevitable meeting with Lord Devene, and secondly, for the reason that his career had moved forward so rapidly from point to point and from place to place, that at no given time had it been convenient so to do without the loss of some considerable opportunity.

Now he knew that in this matter he had been wrong and selfish, also that it might be too late to repair his fault. Rupert determined then and there that he would sail for home by the first steamer, even if he had to resign his commission in the Egyptian Army in order to do so. His mind made up on this point, he took up the second envelope directed in clear and fastidious-looking writing to Lieutenant-Colonel Ullershaw, C.B., D.S.O., etc., etc., Egyptian Army.

“Well, she has got it all in—just like Edith,” he thought to himself, as his eye fell upon this somewhat elaborate superscription. Then he opened and read the letter.

Like all that came from her—and he received several every year, since it seemed that Edith Bonnythorne did not wish her absent relative to forget her—it was long, well-balanced and worded, giving the idea that it had been carefully composed and perhaps copied. It began with warm congratulations to her dear Cousin Rupert upon his escape from harm in the battle of Toski, of which she said she had read the accounts with her heart in her mouth, and on the credit that he had won, which, she added, made her even prouder of him than she had been before.

Then it told him all the details of his mother’s illness, whereof the issue, she said, had been awaited with the greatest anxiety, since, for a few hours, it was thought that she must die.

Next she passed on to general news, informing him that horse-racing, gambling debts and general extravagance had involved Dick Learmer, who was a cousin of both of them, in such difficulties that bankruptcy proceedings had been commenced against him. In the end, however, Lord Devene had come to the rescue and compounded with his creditors. Moreover, he had appointed him his private secretary, with good pay—for he earned nothing at the Bar—and as he was a capital speaker and popular, talked of putting him up to contest, in the Liberal interest, that division of the county in which the Devene estates were situated, as he disliked the sitting member, a Conservative, and wished to oust him.

“So,” added Edith, “Dick has fallen on his feet again when it seemed all over with him. I confess that I am glad both for his own sake and because these family scandals are very disagreeable.”

Lord Devene himself, she continued, was in a dreadful state of mind over the death of the baby boy. Indeed she could never have believed that anything would have moved him so much. Also, his domestic relations appeared to be very unhappy, as he and his wife constantly quarrelled over religious questions. What was more, on the whole she had the best of it, since his gibes and sarcasms took not the slightest effect upon her and she seldom lost her temper. What would be the end of it Edith could not guess, but he was growing to look quite old and ill. The letter ended by imploring Rupert to come home to visit his mother, whom otherwise he might not see again, and to rest a little while after so many years of hard work. Further, it would, she was sure, be to his interest to make the acquaintance of the leading people in London, who were always ready to push on a successful man with good social and professional prospects if only they remembered that he existed.

Rupert laid this letter down by that from his mother and began to think, for he was too tired and excited with various emotions to be able to sleep.

He remembered the last time that he had seen Edith Bonnythorne and Dick Learmer. It was when he was lying ill after that terrible affair many years before. They were both of them second cousins of his own and of each other, being, like all the rest of the family, descendants by the male or female side of the old Ullershaw who had married a brewer’s heiress, and accumulated the vast fortune that was now in the possession of Lord Devene. Edith was the daughter of a certain Mr. Bonnythorne, a High-Church clergyman, who went over to Rome, into a monastery indeed, and died there. The wife from whom he had separated some time before he took this step, it was said because of her friendship with her relative, Lord Devene, of whom Mr. Bonnythorne disapproved, was a woman of extraordinary beauty, charm, and wit, but she also had died long ago.

Dick Learmer, the next heir to the entailed Devene wealth after Rupert himself, though the title would not descend to him under the special remainders of the original Patent, was the son of a Chancery barrister of Spanish extraction, whose family, the real name of which was Lerma, had been naturalised in England for some generations. This Mr. Learmer had died young, leaving his wife, another of the Ullershaws, and his son Richard well provided for, but no more. After her mother’s death, Edith Bonnythorne, who had nothing, went to live with the widowed Mrs. Learmer, and thus it came about that she and Dick were brought up very much together. It was said, or so Rupert had heard, that the childless Lord Devene wished to take her into his own house, but that his first wife, Clara, refused to receive her, which was one of the causes of the estrangement between her and her husband.

Rupert could recall, with great distinctness, the appearance of Dick Learmer and Edith Bonnythorne as they had stood beside his bedside all those years ago. At that time Dick was in his twenty-second year. First he had intended to be a doctor, but after a while gave up medicine and began to eat his dinners for the Bar, to which profession he now belonged. He was then a dissipated and extravagant young man, but singularly handsome, and very popular among women. Perhaps they admired his fine dark and rather languid eyes, shaded by long lashes, his oval face and richly-coloured complexion, and his curling chestnut hair, all of which he had inherited with his Spanish blood. Or his somewhat sentimental yet passionate disposition, and the readiness of his address may have appealed to them. At any rate, they liked him, and his cousin, Edith Bonnythorne, then still a school-girl, was no exception to this rule, although even at that age she knew his faults and would lecture him upon them.

She had been a beautiful child, this Edith, with her tall figure and light, graceful carriage, so much so that people often turned to look at her; very regular features, delicately-arched eyebrows, a broad forehead, upon which the rippling hair of reddish gold grew low; large dark blue eyes, somewhat heavy-lidded; a perfectly chiselled nose and mouth, with red lips that opened a little over the white teeth when she smiled; small feet and hands, tapering fingers and almond-shaped nails. Such was Edith’s appearance as Rupert remembered her.

Well, he must go home; he must see all these people, which, with the exception of his mother, was the last thing that he wished to do. Their lives and his, which had diverged so widely, were about to cross again, so, continuing this line of thought, he set himself to recollect what he had heard of them of late years. After all, it was not much, for he had never made any inquiries.

Lord Devene’s second wife, whom he married within ten months of Clara’s death, was, he understood, a German of good family, who had filled the place of companion to a dowager lady of title. He had married her, so Rupert heard, on what he called scientific principles; in short, because German women were supposed to be models of the domestic virtues. But why she had married Lord Devene he had no idea, unless it were because he was Lord Devene. The results had not been quite satisfactory; indeed, as these letters showed, marriage on scientific principles had, in this case, proved a dismal failure.

Of course all this was much to his own temporal advantage, but the fact gave Rupert little joy; indeed, he would have been glad without reservation if his cousin Devene were at that moment the father of a flourishing family of sons. He did not want to succeed to the wealth and title, should he live to do so; he had no liking for this kind of inherited pomp which he had done nothing to earn, or for the life that it would involve. With the mysterious sixth sense, which most of us have in greater or less degree, he understood, indeed he was sure, that these honours and riches would bring him no happiness; moreover, for reasons that the reader can guess, he detested the very name of Devene. Still this was the present situation, and he could only hope that it might change.

For the rest, his cousin, the handsome, pleasure-loving, sensuous-natured, and unprincipled Dick Learmer, of whom Edith spoke in her letter, had so far closely followed the course which he would have predicted for him. On his mother’s death he had come into his moderate fortune of about £1,000 a year, and dissipated it with graceful ease. Now he was hanger-on and head bottle-washer to Lord Devene, the worst fate, Rupert reflected, that could befall most men, and one that was in no way improved by the prospect of becoming a dummy member of Parliament; a puppet who must dance in whatever fashion pleased his patron and paymaster. Rupert remembered also that some years before he had heard talk of an engagement between Dick and their cousin Edith. If there was ever any truth in this rumour, evidently it had come to nothing. Probably there was some truth once, for he remembered that even when she was still a girl Dick always appeared to be attached to Edith, an affection which she seemed to reciprocate. Doubtless if this surmise were correct, she had shown her good sense by putting an end to the affair when she came to know the man’s true character.

As for Edith herself, by an arrangement, of which he did not quite understand the details, but that seemed to be convenient to them both, financially and otherwise, for the last five years she had been living in his mother’s house, whither she migrated on the death of Mrs. Learmer. Although in her letters to him his mother never wrote of her with enthusiasm, on the other hand, she never complained of her, unless it were a complaint to say that Edith seemed dissatisfied with her prospects and position in life, which, she added, was not wonderful when her great beauty and considerable talents were taken into account. How did it happen, Rupert wondered, that a person who was said to be so lovely, and, to judge from her photographs, with justice; so clever also, had reached her present age without marrying? Probably it was because she had met nobody whom she cared about, and if so, this did credit to her heart, as the breaking off of her relations with Dick, if they ever existed, had done to her common-sense.

Well, doubtless he would soon find out all about these matters for himself, and—the steamer was starting. With a sigh Rupert put his letters into his pocket and went on deck. In the east the sun rose, a huge, golden ball, and its straight, powerful rays struck full on the colossi seated above the door of Abu-Simbel, and penetrated in spears of light far into the temple’s mysterious and pillared depths. As they smiled on him when first he saw them, so those solemn, stony giants smiled on him in farewell. He wondered whether he would ever look on them again, these hoary monuments that had stared their adieux to so many generations of Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Persians, Saracens, and Christian men. He did not know, and yet again that sixth sense told him that he would. So did old Bakhita, for when a few minutes afterwards they steamed past her hut, she stood upon the bank and called to him:

“Farewell, Rupert Bey! farewell for a little while—till you come once more!”

He waved his hand and watched her tall figure until a bend of the river hid it, then, feeling drowsy at last, Rupert went into his cabin and lay down to sleep.

CHAPTER III.
THE RETURN OF RUPERT

On one very dreary day in late September, Rupert, after an absence of nearly twelve years, again set foot on English soil. His ship was due at Plymouth early in the morning, and, as at about ten o’clock on the previous night he had been engaged in watching the Ushant light blinking fiercely upon the horizon until at last it went out like a dying lamp, he expected to land there by nine o’clock at the latest. But although the night seemed clear enough as he smoked his pipe before turning in and counted the lamps, green and red, of the many vessels bearing down this ocean highway to make Ushant, and passing some of them, within a few hundred yards of the liner; afterwards in the mouth of the Channel the fog came down.

Like most old travellers on the sea, at the change of speed of the engines he awoke instantly. Then the syren began its melancholy hooting, repeated at intervals of two minutes. Rising, Rupert looked through his open porthole to find that they had run into a bank of dense fog through which they must pass dead-slow for hours, screaming their apprehensions into the white and woolly gloom, whence from time to time they were answered by other vessels as frightened as themselves.

Although the sun showed through it like a yellow Chinese lantern, not till ten o’clock in the morning did that mist lift, with the result that it was four in the afternoon when they dropped anchor in Plymouth harbour.

Two and a half more hours were taken up in transhipping baggage, silver bullion, and passengers to the tug, and in passing the Customs, so that the special train did not steam out of Plymouth Station until after sunset. Rupert, a person quite regardless of appearances, and one to whom money was valuable, took a second-class ticket, and, as a result, found that he had a carriage to himself. Here, in the south of England, the evening was mild, and letting down the window he looked out. A soft, fast-falling rain gave to the autumn ruin of the landscape a stamp of peculiar sadness. Melancholy cattle stood at the gates of sodden fields, leaves fell from the trees beneath puffs of wind, women under umbrellas hurried to their cottage homes, and, unlighted as yet by lamps, unwarmed by the glow of fires, the grey stone farmsteads appeared deserted. To one accustomed for years to the sun of the East, and to its solemn, starry nights, the scene seemed desolate indeed, and its gloom sank deep into Rupert’s heart.

He wished that he had not come to England. He wondered what awaited him there, and whether his mother were alive or dead. It might well chance that the latter was the case, for since the letter which he received at Abu-Simbel, he had no tidings of her, and although he had telegraphed his arrival from the steamer, of course there was no time for him to receive an answer. He had hoped, indeed, for news at Plymouth, and had stood twenty minutes waiting his turn at the purser’s window, only to be told that there were no letters or telegrams for him.

At first Rupert was alarmed, then remembered that as he had neglected to wire the name of his ship from Port Said, he could scarcely expect to hear from his mother on board of her. Therefore, the absence of them meant nothing. And yet he was frightened, he knew not of what, much more frightened than ever he had been at the beginning of a battle, or when entering on any other risky enterprise. Danger, real danger, seemed to be nearer to him.

At Exeter Rupert bought some evening papers, the first he had seen for years, and in reading them forgot his indefinite anxieties. So the time went by somehow till at length, stretched out endlessly around him, he saw the lights of the squalid suburbs of London whereof they do but seem to accentuate the dreary sameness; a whole firmament of fallen stars relieved here and there by the tawdry constellation of a gin-house.

Paddington at last! Into the great, empty station runs the double-engined train. Still although it is half-past eleven at night a number of people are standing upon one of the platforms, that at which it halts. These are friends and relations who have come to greet sundry of the passengers on their return to England. There, for instance, is a young wife, who, catching sight of her husband’s face, runs along by the carriage door heedless of the remonstrances of the porters with whom she collides violently, until it comes to a standstill. Then in an instant that long-divided pair are in each other’s arms again, and Rupert turns his head away so as not to spy upon their happiness, muttering to himself: “Lucky fellow, who has someone to care for him,” and descends on to the platform, looking for a porter to help him with his hand baggage. As it chances he has to wait a while, since all the men available have gone to the aid of the first-class passengers, leaving the few “seconds” to look after themselves.

While Rupert stood thus patiently he became aware of a tall lady wearing a long cloak who was searching the faces of the crowd. Disappointed she began to walk past him towards another group by a saloon carriage further down the train, and their eyes met.

“Surely,” he said, starting and lifting his hat, “you must be my cousin Edith grown up.”

“Oh, Rupert, there you are!” she exclaimed, in a low, pleasant voice and holding out her slender hand. “Yes, of course it is I, grown up, and old too.”

“One moment,” he interrupted, for her dark cloak and hat suggested to him that she might have come to break bad tidings. “Tell me how—what is the news of my mother?”

“She is much better and sends her love, but of course could not come to meet you.”

The anxiety left Rupert’s face.

“Thank God!” he said, with a sigh of relief. “Ah! here’s a porter, now let us see about the luggage.”

“I could not find you anywhere, although you are so big,” said Edith, as having secured a four-wheeled cab they followed the man to one of the vans. “Where did you hide yourself, Rupert? I thought that you were not in the train at all.”

“Nowhere. I stood for nearly five minutes by those second-class carriages.”

“Oh! I never looked there; I did not think—” and she checked herself.

“Hi! that’s one of mine,” exclaimed Rupert, pointing to a battered tin case with Lieutenant R. Ullershaw, R.A., painted on it.

“I remember that box,” said Edith. “I can see it now standing in the hall of your house with the name in beautiful, fresh, white letters. I came to say good-bye to you, but you were out.”

“You are very observant!” he said, looking at her with curiosity. “Well, it has seen some wear since then—like its owner.”

“Yes,” she said demurely; “only the difference is that the wear has much improved you,” and she glanced at the tall, soldier-like form before her with admiration in her eyes.

“Don’t pay me compliments,” Rupert replied, colouring. “I am not accustomed to them; and if you do, I shall be obliged to return them with interest.”

“You can’t,” Edith answered merrily. “There is nothing of me to be seen in this cloak.”

“Except your face, which is beautiful enough,” he blurted out, whereat it was her turn to colour.

“There,” he went on awkwardly, as at length the cab started, piled up with luggage. “It was awfully kind of you to come to meet me, all alone too, and so late. I never expected it, and I am most grateful.”

“Why, Rupert, how can you suppose that I should do anything else? Unless I had broken my leg or something, I should have been there if it had been three in the morning. It’s the greatest pleasure I have had for a long while, and, Rupert, I—I mean we—are all so proud of you.”

“Oh, please don’t, Edith,” he broke in. “I have done nothing more than my duty, not very well always, and have been rewarded much above my merits, while many better men were overlooked—perhaps because I am supposed to have prospects. Say no more about it or we shall quarrel.”

“Then I won’t. I don’t want to quarrel, I want to be friends with you, for I haven’t many. But you mustn’t be angry if I can’t help feeling proud all the same that one among the lot of us has at last done something worth the doing, instead of wasting his time and strength and money in every sort of horrid dissipation, like horse-racing and gambling.”

Rupert muttered something about such occupations always leading to trouble.

“Yes, indeed,” she answered, “and you mustn’t think me a prig for speaking like that, for I am not good myself a bit. I wish I were. But we had such a lesson lately, with that wretched Dick with whom I was brought up like a sister, you know, and scandals in the paper, and all that sort of thing, that I can’t help feeling rather bitter, and glad that there is one of us whose name appears in the papers in another way.”

As she spoke the light of a passing carriage-lamp fell full upon her earnest face and wide blue eyes, and Rupert understood how pure and beautiful they were.

Certainly had she so designed it, Edith could have found no better way and opportunity of making an excellent first impression upon the somewhat simple mind of her cousin Rupert.

At length the growler lumbered up to the well-remembered door of the little house in Regent’s Park that he had left so many years ago.

“Go in, Rupert, go at once,” said Edith. “Your dear mother is wild to see you. I’ll pay the cab.”

He hesitated a little, then muttering that it was very good of her, gave way, and ran rather than walked up the steps and through the door which the servant had opened at the sound of wheels, up the stairs also, to the drawing-room on the first floor. And here at last, seated in an invalid-chair, her stiff arms outstretched to clasp him, and words of joy and blessing upon her pale lips, he found the beloved mother whom he had not seen for so many years.

“Now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen—” she murmured presently, and broke off, for her tears choked her.

Rupert rose from his knees by her side, and turning his head away, said in a gruff voice that he must go to see about the luggage. So down he went to find Edith and the two servants struggling madly with his things which the grumpy cabman had refused to bring in.

“Leave go, Edith,” he said angrily. “How can you? Why did you not call me?”

“Because I wouldn’t interrupt you,” she gasped, “but oh, Rupert, do you pack your boxes full of lead, or are all your savings in them?”

“No,” he answered, “only a couple of stone steles and a large bronze Osiris—an Egyptian god, I mean. Go away, you girls, I will see about them to-morrow; my night things are in the bag.”

They went readily enough, who desired no further acquaintance with the Colonel’s boxes, one down to the kitchen, the other upstairs with the bag, leaving Rupert and Edith alone.

“Imagine,” she said—“imagine a man who travels about with Egyptian gods in his portmanteau instead of clothes! Well, Rupert, I have sacrificed my best gloves on the altar of your gods,” and she held up her hand and showed the kid split right across.

“I’ll give you another pair,” he ejaculated, still covered with confusion, as they passed together into the dining-room where his supper was waiting.

“Dear me,” said Edith, “this unwonted exercise has made me very hot,” and she threw off first her long cloak, and then her hat, and stood before him in the lamplight.

Oh, she was beautiful, beautiful! or so thought this dweller in deserts, whose heart and mind were soft as wax with joy and thankfulness, and who for years had scarcely spoken to English ladies.

Certainly the promise of Edith’s youth had been fulfilled. The perfect shape, so light and graceful, and yet so tall, the waving hair of rich gold that gleamed like a crown upon her white brow, the large, deep blue eyes, the fine-cut features, redeemed from pride by the rounded cheeks and chin; the gliding, measured movements; all these graces remarkable enough separately, when considered as a whole, made of Edith a most attractive and gracious, if not an absolutely lovely woman. Then and there her charm went home to him; although as yet he did not know it, then and there Rupert fell in love with her, he who had never thought of any woman in such a sense since boyhood, and what is more, his transparent eyes told her the story.

For a few seconds they stood looking at each other; then she said:

“Would you like to speak to your mother for a few minutes while the cook sends up the soup? Oh, you must eat it, or she will be so disappointed, and so shall I, for we have been making it all the afternoon.”

So he went. As the door closed behind him Edith sank into a chair like a person who is suddenly relieved from some mental strain, and her face became very thoughtful.

“That is over,” she said to herself, “and far better than I expected. He does not care for anybody, I am sure, and—the question is—do I like him? I don’t think so, although he is handsome in his way, and a man. There is still a wall between us as in childhood—we are different. No, I don’t think that I care for him,” and she shivered a little. “Also there is that wretched Dick to be considered now as always. Oh; Dick, Dick! if I don’t take this chance it is the third I shall have thrown away for you. You worthless Dick, who are yet the only man who does not make me shiver. But I am not sure. He is good; he is distinguished; he will almost certainly be Lord Devene, and beggars can’t be choosers. Well, there is plenty of time to think, and meanwhile I will try to make him thoroughly in love with me before he meets other women.”

Then the door opened, and the maid came in with the soup.

Such was the home-coming of Rupert Ullershaw.

CHAPTER IV.
A BUSINESS CONVERSATION

Edith, who was not an early riser, breakfasted in her own room. At half-past nine on the morning following Rupert’s arrival the maid as usual brought up her tray, a newspaper—the Morning Post—and three letters. Two of these were of a sort with which she was very familiar, unpaid millinery bills, but the third was addressed in Lord Devene’s unmistakable handwriting, that was of as hard and uncompromising an appearance as his own face. Throwing aside the bills with a shrug of her rounded shoulders, she opened her noble relative’s epistle. It was brief and to the point:

Dear Edith,—Come round after breakfast if you can. I shall be in till 10.45, and wish to speak to you.—

Yours,

Devene.

“Bother!” she said, as she laid it down. “I shall have to scurry through my dressing and take a cab. Well, he must pay for it. I wonder what he wants.”

Lord Devene now lived at Grosvenor Square. Even in the minds of the most progressive latter-day agnostics primeval superstitions are apt to linger. Perhaps it was some sentiment of the sort which causes an African savage to burn the hut where a death has occurred and build himself a new one, that induced Lord Devene to sell the Portland Place house after the tragic decease of his first wife, at far below its value, and buy himself another, though it is fair to add that the reason he gave for the transaction was the state of the domestic drains. However this may have been, Lady Devene Number Two never slept in the haunted chamber of Lady Devene Number One.

At 10.46 precisely Edith paid off her cab at the spacious steps of the Grosvenor Square mansion.

“Is Lord Devene in?” she asked of the butler, the same quiet, dark individual who had filled the office years ago in Portland Place.

“Yes, Miss Bonnythorne,” he answered respectfully; “but I was just brushing his hat,” and he glanced doubtfully at the clock.

“Show me in, Talbot; he wishes to see me,” she said, and Talbot bowed in acquiescence.

Although no orders had been given to that effect, it was understood in this establishment that what Miss Bonnythorne desired was to be done.

A few seconds later she was ushered into the long library behind the dining-room, at the end of which Lord Devene was engaged in stamping a letter on a beautiful buhl writing-table near the window.

“Ah! my dear Edith,” he said, in his hard, clear voice, as she glided slowly towards him, “you are only just in time. Another half-minute and I should have been gone.”

“Half a minute is as good as a century,” she answered. “Lots of things can happen in half a minute, Cousin George. One might die in it, for instance.”

“Yes,” he replied, “or be born, which is worse, or commit a murder, or engage oneself to be married, or as you justly remark, do lots of things. Life is made up of half-minutes, isn’t it—most of them very bad ones,” and he looked at her and smiled that peculiar smile of his which never seemed to get away from the region of his mouth. Pleasant-natured people generally smile with their eyes, others of a different character from their lips alone, like a dog, which is apt to give a sarcastic air to that variable and modified expression of inward satisfaction.

Lord Devene had changed a good deal since last we met him. Then he was sandy-coloured, now he had become grey; indeed his peaked beard was quite white. The wrinkles upon his face also had deepened very much, and even in that not over-lighted room black crow’s-feet were visible beneath his quick, restless eyes. Advancing age had laid its hand upon him although he was barely sixty-three. Also, he had lost something of his old defiant air; his iron will and resolution seemed to have weakened beneath the attacks of circumstance. He hesitated sometimes and looked at the other side of an argument; he was less sure of his deduced facts, less resolute in their application to his private affairs.

“You look tired,” said Edith, as he came forward and kissed her cool, pink cheek.

“Tired!” he exclaimed, with something like a groan and sinking into a chair. “Would you not be tired if you had scarcely closed your eyes for three nights? Edith, I can’t sleep, and I don’t know what is to be the end of it, I don’t indeed.”

She threw an anxious glance at him, for these two, notwithstanding the difference of their age and sex, were bound together by strong ties of sympathy, and she was really grieved that he should be ill.

“I am so sorry,” she said, in a gentle voice. “Insomnia is a terrible nuisance, but don’t trouble yourself too much about it, the fit will pass off.”

“Yes,” he answered grimly, “it will pass off, because I shall take drugs this evening. I always do the fourth night, though I hate them.”

“Those stuffs sometimes lead to accidents, Cousin George,” replied Edith, pretending to be absorbed in tracing the flowers of the carpet with the point of her umbrella, but really watching his weary face from beneath her long eyelashes.

“Yes, they sometimes lead to accidents,” he repeated after her, “as I have good reason to know. But after all, accidents are not always undesirable. I daresay that life still seems a very pleasant thing to you, Edith, yet others may think differently.”

“You ought not to, Cousin George, with your position and wealth.”

“I am old enough to know, Edith, that position and wealth, which you rate so highly, do not necessarily spell happiness, or even content. After all, what am I? A rich peer at whose name old women and clergymen turn up their eyes, they don’t quite know why, and whom men are afraid of because I can say sharp things—just one of the very common crowd of rich peers, no more. Then for my private life. Nothing interests me now; like the Roman Emperor I can’t find a new excitement, even horse-racing and high stakes bore me. And at home, you know what it is. Well, I am not the first man who has bought a cow and found that she can butt—and bellow.”

Edith smiled, for the vigour of the allusion tickled her.

“You know my one hope,” he went on, almost with passion, “or if you don’t, you are old enough and have brains enough to understand. I wanted sons sprung from a quiet, solid stock, sons who could make some good use of all this trash of titles and of riches which it is too late for me to do myself; men who would bear an honourable name and do honourable deeds, not fritter away their youth in pleasures as I did, or in what I took for pleasures, their manhood in the pursuit of idle philosophies that lead nowhere, and the accumulation of useless cash, and their old age in regrets and apprehensions. I wanted sons, it was my one ambition, but—” and he waved his hand through the empty air—“where are my sons?”

Now Edith knew Lord Devene to be a hard man where his interests were concerned, wicked even, as the word is generally understood, as for instance, Mrs. Ullershaw would understand it. Thus he would gibe at morality and all established ideas, and of every form of religion make an open mock. Yet at this moment there was something so pathetic, so tragic even, about his aspect and attitude, that her heart, none of the softest, ached for him. It was evident to her that his cold, calculated system of life had utterly broken down, that he was exceedingly unhappy—in fact, a complete failure; that although, as he had so often demonstrated, there exists nothing in the world beyond the outward and visible, of which our brain and bodies are a part, yet strong as he was that nothing had been too much for him. He was conquered by a shadow, and in its effects at least that shadow seemed very like the real and solid thing which some folk call Fate, and others the Hand of God. The idea disturbed Edith, it was unpleasant, as sickness and the thought of death are unpleasant. Therefore, after the fashion of her nature, she fled from it, and to turn the subject put the first question that came into her mind:

“How is Tabitha to-day?”

Instantly all pathos, with the touch of dignity that was bred of it, left him and he began to sneer.

“Thank you; that noble and exalted haus-frau appears to be very well. Having paid her morning visit to the kitchen and scolded the cook for extravagance until, I regret to say, she gave notice, she is now seated in her dressing-gown reading a holy German work upon predestination, from which she has been so good as to translate to me some passages that appeared to her to bear directly upon my spiritual future. But I didn’t send for you to talk about my wife and her grotesque views. Rupert Ullershaw is back, is he not?”

She nodded.

“Tell me about him. What is he like?”

“Tall, strong, handsome in a kind of way, except for his untidy hair and the lines upon his brow, which make him look as though he had been trying to solve an acrostic for ten years, old looking for his age, awkward in his manner and slow of speech.”

“A good portrait,” he said approvingly, “of the outside. Now for the in.”

Edith rubbed her forehead, as was her manner when deliberating.

“That’s hard,” she answered, “for how can one describe what one doesn’t understand? But I’ll try just to get him into my mind as I see him. I think—well, I think that he is very much the sort of man you said just now you would like your sons to be, if you had any.”

Lord Devene started as though something had pricked him.

“I beg pardon,” Edith added hurriedly. “I mean that he is thoroughly industrious, conscientious, religious, and all the other good ‘ouses.’ Would you believe it? After he had gone to bed last night, he came downstairs in an old ulster and undid a great box with a rope round it in order to get a Bible out. I heard the noise, and thinking one of the servants must be ill, or something, went to see what was the matter. There at 2.30 a.m. I met him on the stairs in that costume, and a queer couple we must have looked. I asked him what on earth he was doing with the luggage. Thereon he calmly explained that by mistake he put his Bible into the trunk he had in his cabin, and that as he did not like to disturb me to borrow one at that time of night he had to go to find it, and he showed me a large, frayed book which had been rebound, by himself he remarked, with a deer’s skin. He added gravely that it was his custom always to read a portion of the Scriptures—that’s what he said—before going to bed, that he hadn’t missed doing so for years and wasn’t going to now. I answered that was what I called true religion, and we parted. I didn’t tell him how glad I was that he hadn’t knocked me up and asked for a Bible, for upon my word, I don’t know where I should have found one.”

Lord Devene laughed heartily, for Edith’s description of the scene tickled his sense of humour.

“Why,” he said, “he ought to have married Tabitha,” “there would have been a pair of them. I expect they will get on capitally together, as—” and he checked himself, then added, “What an uncommonly queer fish he must be, though he wasn’t always such a model youth. Well, whether because of the Bible or in spite of it, Master Rupert has done very well. He is a man with a career before him; there is no doubt of that—a career, and in all probability,” and he sighed, “other things, for no one can do without sleep for ever.”

She nodded her head again, but said nothing, seeing that there was more to come.

“Is this military saint married by any chance?” he asked.

“Oh, no! certainly not.”

“Or engaged?”

“Not in the least, I imagine. I should say that he has scarcely spoken to a woman for years. He seems so—so—”

“Is innocent the word you were looking for? Well, so much the better. Look here, Edith, you’ve got to marry him.”

She made a droll little face and answered:

“This is very sudden—isn’t that the right thing to say? But might I ask why?”

“For two reasons. Because it is to your interest, and, a better one still, because I wish it.”

“Let me see,” said Edith. “What are you and I to each other? Second cousins once removed, I think?”

“Yes; second cousins once removed, and more—friends,” he answered, with slow emphasis.

“Well, has a second cousin once removed and a friend the right to tell a woman whom she must marry?”

“Certainly, under the circumstances. This fellow will probably be my heir; I must face that fact, for Tabitha will scarcely get over those habits of hers now—at any rate, the doctors don’t think so. So I wish him to marry someone for whom I have affection, especially as I expect that notwithstanding his religious tomfooleries, etc., he is the sort of man who makes a good husband.”

“And supposing the doctors are wrong about Tabitha?” asked Edith calmly, for these two did not shrink from plain speaking.

“If so, you must still be provided for, and, my dear Edith, allow me to remark that you are not quite a chicken, and, for some cause or other, have not provided for yourself so far.”

“I don’t think I should live in any great luxury on Rupert’s pay,” she suggested, “even if he were willing to share it with me.”

“Perhaps not; but on the day of your wedding with him I pay to the account of your trustees £25,000, and there may be more, whatever happens—when I get to sleep at last.”

“That is very kind and generous of you, Cousin George,” she answered, with sincerity, “and I’m sure I don’t know why you should do it—for a second cousin once removed. But why on my wedding-day with Rupert particularly?”

“I have told you, because I wish it, and why not with him? Do you dislike the man?”

She shrugged her shoulders. “I have not fallen in love; I am not given that way.”

He looked her straight in the eyes.

“No,” he answered, “because you have always been ‘in love,’ as you call it, with that rascal Dick. Now, don’t trouble to fence with me, for I know. Dick can be communicative at times—after dinner.”

Edith did not try to fence, only she said, with some bitterness and colouring a little:

“Then that’s the worst thing I have heard about him yet, which is saying a good deal.”

“Yes; never trust a man who brags of his conquests. Listen, Edith! I help Dick because he amuses me, and is useful. That’s why I am going to make him a member of Parliament. Now I can’t prevent your marrying him, if you like, and are fool enough, which to me is inconceivable. But if you do, out goes Dick, and there will be no £25,000 paid to your trustees.”

“That’s rather hard, isn’t it, Cousin George?”

“No; it is merciful. Edith, I will not allow you to marry that worthless, unstable scamp of a fellow if I can help it, and for your own sake, because I am fond of you.”

“I never said I wanted to marry him.”

“No; but because of him you don’t want to marry anybody else, which comes to much the same thing, so far as your future is concerned.”

She thought a little while, rubbing her forehead as before, then replied:

“Well, all this is very clear and outspoken, but I suppose that you don’t expect an answer at once. Remember that Rupert himself may have views. He is quite the sort of man who will not marry at all, on principle. Also, you only have my account to go on, you have not seen him yet since he was a boy. When you have, you may cease to think this proposed—arrangement—desirable.”

“Quite true,” he answered. “You have a very logical mind. Bring him to dinner here to-night, and we will talk the matter over again in a few days’ time.”

Edith rose to go, but he stopped her.

“How is your banking account?” he asked.

“For all practical purposes I believe it has ceased to exist,” she answered gravely, for the matter was one which really troubled her.

He smiled, and taking his book from a drawer, filled in a cheque.

“There,” he said; “that may help to keep the wolf from the door for a little while, and I daresay you want some dresses.”

Edith looked at the cheque; it was for £250.

“You really are very kind to me,” she said, “and whoever may dislike you, I don’t. I love you.”

“Me or the money?” he asked, lifting his eyebrows.

“You, you,” she answered, then kissed him and went away.

“I think,” reflected Lord Devene to himself, as the door closed behind her, “this is almost the first time for over twenty years I ever heard anybody say that to me who meant it. She must marry Rupert; it is her great chance in life, and hasn’t she as much right to these good things as that pious bear.”

CHAPTER V.
THE DINNER-PARTY

When Edith reached home it was to find that Rupert had been engaged all the morning in unpacking his baggage. Now he had just set up the two steles, which, it may be explained for the benefit of the uninitiated, are sepulchral tablets whereon the old Egyptians inscribed the records of their lives, or sometimes prayers. They were massive articles, as Edith had discovered on the previous night, most suitable to their original purpose in a tomb, but somewhat out of place in a very small London drawing-room, perched respectively on a piano and the top-shelf of a Chippendale bookcase.

“Don’t they look well, mother?” he was saying.

“Yes, dear, yes,” answered Mrs. Ullershaw doubtfully; “but perhaps a little solid and time-worn.”

“Time-worn! I should think they are,” he answered. “One of them is about four, and the other three thousand years old, but the more recent—no, not that of the man and his wife seated side by side—the other, is much the more valuable. It comes from Tel-el-Amarna, which, as of course you know, was the city built by the heretic king, Khuen-Aten, and was put up in the tomb of one of the royal princesses. Look at her picture on the top, with the globe of the sun above, and from it the rays ending in hands all stretched out in blessing over her. I’ll translate it to you, if you like.”

At this moment there was a most ominous crack, whereon Edith, who had entered unobserved, remarked mildly:

“If I were you, Rupert, I should put it on the floor first, for that—Ah! I thought so!”

As she spoke, the poor top-shelf buckled and broke, and down came the monument with a crash. Rupert sprang at it, dumb with fear, lifting it in his strong arms as though it were a toy.

“Thank Heaven!” he ejaculated, “it isn’t injured.”

“No,” said Edith, “but the bookcase is.”

Then he set to work to find another place for it, this time, at his mother’s suggestion, on the ground. There remained, however, the Osiris, a really magnificent bronze, between two and three feet in height, which could not possibly be accommodated.

“I know,” said Rupert, and shouldering the god, he marched it off downstairs.

“Do you think, Cousin Mary,” asked Edith, as she watched him depart with this relic of the past, “that Rupert could be persuaded to remove those two shabby tombstones also?”

Mrs. Ullershaw shook her head.

“No. Please don’t mention it, dear. He has set his heart on having them here, and says he has been thinking how nice they would look in this room for years. Besides, he would only take them into the dining-room.”

“Then let them stay,” answered Edith decidedly. “I can’t eat my dinner before those memorials of the dead. I suppose he has not brought a mummy too.”

“It seems that he had one, dear, but was obliged to leave it behind, because they would not have it on board the ship unless he would pay for it at what he calls ‘corpse-rate.’”

“There is always something to be thankful for,” said Edith, as she went to take off her hat.

When, however, she came down to luncheon, and found the great bronze Osiris standing among the plates on the sideboard, her sense of gratitude was lessened, but as Rupert was delighted with the effect, she made no comment.

Whilst they were at their meal a note arrived for Rupert, whose brow puckered at the sight of the handwriting which he remembered well enough.

“Who is it from, dear?” asked Mrs. Ullershaw, when he had read it.

“Lord Devene,” he answered shortly. “He wants Edith and myself to dine this evening, and says that he has got the Under-Secretary for War, Lord Southwick, to meet me. Of course I can’t go and leave you alone the first night I am at home. I’ll write and say so.”

“Let me see the note first, dear. Edith, you read it; I have not got my spectacles.”

So she read:

Dear Rupert,—Welcome home, and, my dear fellow, a hundred congratulations! You have done splendidly. I hear your praises on all sides, and I am very proud of you. But I want to tell you all this in person. Come and dine to-night with Edith at eight. I have just met Southwick, the Under-Secretary for War, at the club, and he is most anxious to have a private talk with you before you report yourself, so he has put off something or other in order to meet you. I took the liberty of saying that he was sure to do this, as I knew that you could not as yet have made any engagements.—

Your affectionate cousin,

DEVENE.

“I think that you must go, dear,” said his mother.

“But I don’t wish to,” Rupert answered, with energy. “I hate dinner-parties.”

“Dear, sooner or later you will have to, so why not now? Also Edith would be disappointed.”

“Yes, of course,” said that young lady. “I want to meet Lord Southwick. They say he is the greatest bore in London; quite a curiosity in his own line.”

Then Rupert gave way, and having sent a verbal acceptance by the footman, for the rest of the luncheon was as solemn as the bronze Osiris on the sideboard.

To a man like Rupert that dinner-party was indeed a terrible ordeal. Time had scarcely softened his vivid recollection of that horror of the past, over which he still mourned day by day with the most heart-felt remorse. With a shuddering of the soul he remembered its last dreadful chapter, and now almost he felt as though the book of some new tragedy, in which he must play the leading part, was about to be opened in the fateful company of Lord Devene. Most heartily did he wish himself back in the society of old Bakhita, or even of the Sheik of the Sweet Wells, in the Soudan, or in any other desolate place, so long as it was far from Mayfair. He even regretted having come home; but how could he refuse to do so at his mother’s prayer? Well, it must be faced; escape was impossible, so he set his teeth and prepared to go through with the thing.

“Great Heavens, what a man!” reflected Edith to herself, glancing at his stern countenance, as he helped her from the cab that evening. “One might think he was going to execution, not to dinner.”

The door—how grateful Rupert felt that it was a different door—opened, and there his gratitude faded, for behind the footman stood that identical spare, sombre-looking man who had told him of Clara’s death. He had not changed in the slightest, Rupert would have known him a hundred yards off; and what was more, it seemed to him that the obsequious smile with which the butler greeted him had a special quality, that the sight of him suggested interesting memories to the smiler. What if this man—bah! the very thought of it made him feel cold down the back.

Edith vanished to take off her cloak, and he, who must wait for her, was left alone with that black, smiling demon.

“Glad to see you back safe and sound, Colonel,” he said, as he took his coat.

“Wish I could say the same,” grunted Rupert involuntarily.

The butler thought a little, for this cryptic sentence puzzled him; then taking the point, as he imagined, went on:

“Ah! I daresay you feel the changes, sir—in this establishment, I mean. Well,”—and he glanced cautiously, first behind him and then at the powdered footmen by the door, “I am sure you won’t betray me, sir, if I say that so do we. Her second ladyship, sir, isn’t what her first ladyship was,” and he sighed with genuine regret, for most of the servants had been very fond of poor Clara, who always tried to shield them from his lordship’s anger, and was generous. “Her present ladyship, sir, preaches and drives, and makes us read tracts, sir,” he added, with peculiar bitterness, “whereas we loved her first ladyship”—here his voice sank to a whisper—“almost as much as you did, sir.”

At this moment, to Rupert’s intense relief, for really his head was swimming beneath the horror of these confidences, the double front doors were thrown wide, and through them walked a stiff, poker-like man wearing an eyeglass, who, he gathered, was Lord Southwick. The butler, whose somewhat saturnine appearance in truth covered an excellent heart, and who really was delighted to see Rupert, if for no other reason, because his late mistress had been so fond of him, was obliged to step forward to take Lord Southwick’s coat. At this moment, too, Edith arrived, looking radiant in a dress of black and silver, saying:

“Now, Rupert, I am ready.”

“So am I, I am sure,” he answered.

“Well, don’t be reproachful, I have not been very long,” and she fixed her gaze upon his head.

“Is anything wrong with my hair?” he asked, becoming aware of it.

“I don’t know until you take your hat off,” she replied gently, but wondering how long it might be since her distinguished cousin had gone out to dinner.

Rupert snatched off the hat and thrust it into the unwilling hands of one of the door footmen, for it was not his business to receive hats. Then, piloted by other footmen who met them at intervals, at length Miss Bonnythorne and Colonel Ullershaw were announced, in stentorian tones, at the threshold of the great drawing-room.

On the further side of the apartment two men were leaning against a marble mantel-piece, for the night was chilly, and a small fire burned on the hearth; while at a little distance, engaged apparently in looking straight before her, a placid, handsome-looking woman of stout proportions, with great coils of hair wound about her head, sat upon an Empire sofa, her hands folded upon her plain black dress, which was unrelieved by any jewellery.

For a moment Rupert’s recognition of the men was merely automatic, since all his attention was taken up by the splendid mantel-piece that he remembered well, and on which he seemed to see the ghost of Clara leaning as she was wont to do. Yes; it was the same that had stood in her boudoir, moved here as too valuable to be left in the old mansion. He could not mistake those statues which supported the shelf above. A mist gathered before his eyes, and when it cleared he saw Lord Devene advancing on him with outstretched hand, nodding affectionately to Edith as he came.

The same man, he thought, only several degrees greyer in tone, and not quite so firm in his walk. Then, in the actual presence of his enemy—for so he felt him to be, now as always—the courage of the conscience-haunted Rupert returned to him, and he determined to play his part to the best of his ability.

As he approached, Lord Devene was thinking to himself: “Edith summed him up very well, as usual—a bear, but a fine, right-minded bear who has learnt his lesson once and for all. It is written on his face.” Then he said in the most hearty fashion that he was able to command, though no affectation of cordiality could altogether deaden the brassy ring of that well-remembered voice:

“Ah! here you are, punctual as a soldier should be, and very welcome, I can tell you, my dear Rupert. I am delighted to see you back safe and sound, and bringing your sheaves with you in the shape of all sorts of honours,” and taking Rupert’s great, sunburnt palm in his dry hand, he shook it, adding: “Why, what a big fellow you have become in every sense of the word. Don’t ask me to mount you this season.”

“Thank you,” said Rupert simply, then fixing on the allusion to his personal appearance as easiest to deal with, went on. “Afraid one is apt to grow stout in Egypt. Can’t get enough exercise, too much sun there. How are you?”

Then he stopped, for another voice, also well-remembered, was addressing him, and he turned to see his cousin Dick. Undoubtedly, even at that moment he noticed it, for by constitution and training Rupert was observant, Dick was a very handsome man. The dark and languid eyes looked a little tired, it was true, and the oval face had lost some of its colour. Still, it and the graceful, shapely form remained attractive to behold—at least, so thought many women.

“How do you do, my hero of a hundred fights?” said Dick, in the drawling, rather sarcastic voice which had always irritated his cousin as a boy, and still irritated him to-day.

“Very well, thank you, Dick,” answered Rupert, “but I’m not a hero, and I have not been in a hundred fights.”

“It’s near enough,” said Dick, shaking his hand in a somewhat weary fashion. “A man is what people choose to think of him, the exact facts don’t matter. We have called you the family hero for years, and as our records reveal no other, of course we make the most of you.”

“Then please stop calling me so now, there’s a good fellow, for I don’t like it. I am only a very ordinary officer in the Egyptian army.”

“The great were ever modest,” answered the exasperating Dick. “Why—” and he fixed his eyes upon his cousin’s rather seedy dress-coat, “I hoped that you would come with all your orders on. Well, we’ll get you to a public dinner where you will have to wear them.”

“Stop talking nonsense, Dick,” said Edith sharply, for she saw that Rupert was beginning to grow angry, and feared lest his cousin’s jealous chaff should produce some explosion. “Here are Lord Southwick and the other people at last. Come, Rupert; I want to introduce you to Lady Devene.”

So Rupert was introduced to her ladyship, who, awaking from her private meditations, held out her plump hand, looked him in the face with her fine, china-blue eyes, and said, with a German accent:

“Ah! you are the Colonel Ullershaw of whom I hear so much, the soldier who has been fighting bravely for the English. I am very glad to see you. I like soldiers; my father was a soldier, but the French killed him at Gravelotte. You are very welcome.”

Rupert bowed, and as he did so felt that this lady spoke the truth, and that her greeting was cordial and without reservation. From the beginning he conceived a regard for this German peeress, feeling her to be sound and honest, according to her lights. Then Lord Devene brought up Lord Southwick and introduced him, first to his wife and next to Rupert. After this the other guests claimed attention, and Rupert was able to retire and employ himself in examining the pictures until dinner was announced.

To his delight he found that Edith was given to him as a partner.

“I am glad,” he said shyly, as they went together down the broad stair. “I never hoped for such luck.”

She looked at him innocently and asked: “What luck?”

“Why, having to take you down instead of one of those strangers.”

“I am sure it is very nice of you to say so, Rupert, and I appreciate it,” she answered, smiling.

“Yes,” said the voice of Dick behind them, “but, old fellow, you should pay your compliments in a whisper. Sound travels up these London staircases,” and he and his partner, a pretty and piquante heiress, laughed merrily.

“Take no notice of that impertinent Dick,” said Edith as they entered the dining-room; “it is only his way.”

“I don’t like his way; I never did,” grumbled Rupert.

Nor, to tell the truth, did Edith, who knew well that Dick was furiously jealous, and feared lest he should go too far and show it openly.

At dinner Rupert found himself seated on the left of Lady Devene, who was at the head of the table, and opposite to Lord Southwick, who had of course taken her down. Next to Lord Southwick was the pretty heiress, and by her Dick, who therefore sat almost opposite to Edith. With the rest of the company we need not concern ourselves.

The dinner went on as dinners in big houses do. After he had drunk some champagne, Dick began to flirt ostentatiously with the pretty heiress, who appeared to be quite equal to the occasion; his object being, as Edith was aware, to make her jealous, or at least angry. Lady Devene, in her German accent, conversed with Lord Southwick about cooking—a subject in which he did not seem to take the slightest interest; while Edith drew on Rupert to tell her of the Soudan and the military operations there in which he had shared. This subject suited him well, and Lord Devene, watching the pair of them from the bottom of the table, soon understood that he was talking in a manner that compelled the respect of her intelligence, since she listened to him intently enough.

Although Rupert did not know it, Lord Southwick began to listen also, and having exhausted the subject of entrées, so did Lady Devene.

“What was that you said about the advantages of the Suakim-Berber route, Colonel Ullershaw?” asked Lord Southwick, presently fixing his eyeglass upon him.

Rupert repeated his remarks.

“Hum,” commented Lord Southwick. “Wolseley thought otherwise.”

“I did not mean to set up my opinion against that of Lord Wolseley, my lord,” answered Rupert, “it was only a private view I was expressing to Miss Bonnythorne.”

“And a very sound view too, in my judgment,” said the Under-Secretary, in the precise, official manner that rarely deserted him; “indeed, events have proved it to be so. Moreover, Colonel Ullershaw, your opinion is undoubtedly entitled to respect. I know it; for after hearing that I was to meet you at dinner, I looked up your record at the War Office and read a private memorandum, which you may remember writing for the information of your superior officers, though perhaps you were not aware that it was forwarded home.”

Rupert coloured and muttered that he was not.

“I wish that it had been acted on,” continued Lord Southwick, “but it wasn’t, and there’s an end. By the way—it is rather unkind to speak of it—but did you know, Colonel Ullershaw, that you were once recommended for the V.C.—after Tamai where you were wounded?”

Rendered absolutely speechless, Rupert shook his head.

“Well, you were; and what’s more,” he went on, with a twinkle in his eye, “you would have got it if your name hadn’t happened to begin with a U. You see, the persons recommended of about equal merit or interest were put down alphabetically; and as there were only a certain number of crosses to be given, a fellow whose name began with T got one and you didn’t. It wasn’t my system, I may add, but as the man who was responsible for it is dead, and many things have happened since then, I don’t mind telling the story.”

“I am very glad,” blurted out Rupert. “I never did anything to deserve the V.C.”

Now this noble Under-Secretary who had been an official all his life—for he succeeded to his peerage in an accidental fashion—who looked like a ramrod, and who was reputed to be such a bore, was yet a man with a kind heart, an appreciation of worth and a sense of justice. Perhaps it was these qualities, or some of them, which caused him to answer:

“Well, you know best, and if so, it shows that the alphabetical system works better than might have been expected. But now give me your opinion, and you too, Lady Devene, on this case. An officer posted a picket outside a square. The square was attacked, picket cut off. Result of the attack indecisive, enemy being in possession of the bush about the square. Officer who posted the picket rather badly hurt by a spear through the shoulder—”

“I beg you,” broke in Rupert; but Lord Southwick went on imperturbably:

“A wounded man crept into the square at night saying that he had survived the massacre of the picket and got through the enemy, but that the sergeant who was stabbed through the leg lay in a clump of bush about six hundred yards away, and had not yet been discovered by the Arabs, who occupied a donga in great force between the camp and the said clump of bush. It being impracticable to send a rescue party, the wounded officer dresses himself up in the jibba and turban of a dead Arab, and thus disguised, gets through the donga, finds the wounded man, and a storm coming on, contrives somehow or other to lead, or rather to carry him back to camp, doing the last hundred yards under a heavy fire both from the Arabs and our own sentries. Now did that officer deserve the Victoria Cross?”

“Ach! mein Gott, I should think so,” said the phlegmatic Lady Devene, with a force quite foreign to her nature as it was commonly understood by her surroundings. “What was the name of that brave man? I should like to know it.”

“I forget,” answered Lord Southwick, with a stony grin. “Ask Colonel Ullershaw. He may remember the incident.”

“Who was it, Rupert?” said Edith, and the whole long table listened for the reply.

Then was the Recording Angel forced to add another to the list of Rupert’s crimes, for he lied, and boldly.

“I don’t know, I am sure. Never heard of the business; but if it happened at all, I should say that the story has been greatly exaggerated.”

A smile and a titter went round the table, and the Under-Secretary grinned again and changed the subject.

For fully three minutes Lady Devene was lost in deep meditation. Then suddenly, while her husband was telling some story of grouse-shooting on a Scotch moor, from which they had just returned, she broke in in a loud voice, thumping her heavy hand upon the table:

“Himmel! I see it now. It is Lord Southwick’s little joke. You are that man, Colonel Ullershaw.”

Whereat the company broke into a roar of laughter, and Rupert nearly died of shame.

The feast was over at last, and Lord Devene came into the hall to bid his guests good-bye.

“Well,” asked Edith, as he helped her with her cloak, “you have seen him. What do you say now?”

“Excelsior!” he said. “You must climb that difficult height. You must marry him; that is, if you can, which I very much doubt.”

“Do you indeed?” answered Edith. “Almost am I minded to try—for the sake of argument. Good-night!”

“Didn’t I tell you he was a hero?” sneered Dick, as he led her to the cab. “Poor Edith! I pity you, exposed to the fascinations of such a warrior.”

“Do you indeed,” she repeated. “Well, I admit they are rather dangerous.”

Meanwhile Lord Southwick had button-holed Rupert by the front door.

“I shall expect to see you, Ullershaw, at the War Office, where I wish to introduce you to the Secretary of State,” he was saying. “Would to-morrow at half-past twelve suit you?”

Rupert, understanding that he had received an order, answered:

“Certainly, my lord, I will be there.”

CHAPTER VI.
RUPERT FALLS IN LOVE

The next morning Rupert attended at the War Office, and actually was introduced by Lord Southwick to the Secretary of State. His conversation with the great man was not long—three minutes must have covered it. Still, even a person of Rupert’s rather unusual modesty could scarcely fail to understand from its tone that he was looked on with favour in high places. The Right Honourable gentleman went so far indeed as to congratulate him upon his past services, of which he had evidently been informed, and to hint that his future might be brilliant. He asked him for how long he was on leave, and when he was told six months, smiled and remarked that it was a long time for so active a soldier to remain idle, adding:

“Now, if we wanted to send you anywhere before it expires, would you be willing to go?”

“Certainly, sir,” replied Rupert, with enthusiasm, for already he seemed to have had almost enough of London, and for the moment forgot about his mother, forgot also that return to duty would mean separation from Edith, whose society he had begun to find so agreeable.

“Very well, Colonel Ullershaw,” answered the Secretary of State. “Remember about it, Southwick, will you? All sorts of things keep cropping up out there in Egypt and the Soudan, and Colonel Ullershaw might be the man to deal with some of them,” and he held out his hand to show that the interview was over.

“You have made an excellent impression, I am sure,” said Lord Southwick to him in the outer room. “Only let me give you a tip. Our chief is rather arbitrary in his ways, and expects to find the promptness upon which he prides himself reflected in others. If he should wish to employ you, as is quite likely, don’t hesitate or ask for time to consider, but fall in with his views at once. It will be better for you afterwards, as if you don’t, you probably will not be asked again.”

Rupert thanked him for the hint and departed, reflecting that he was scarcely likely to hear more of the matter, especially as there were plenty of officers in Egypt capable of carrying out any mission or special service for which occasion might arise. He forgot that he was already considered successful; that he was, moreover, and probably would remain the heir to a very wealthy peerage; in short, a person such as those in authority like to employ, since unto him that hath shall be given.

Soon Rupert discovered that this attitude towards himself was very general; indeed, in a small way, he became something of a lion. In addition to his other advantages, Lord Southwick’s Victoria Cross story, of which he was known to be the hero, had got about, with various embellishments, and excited curiosity, especially among women. When town filled again, he was asked to public dinners, where, as Dick had prophesied, he was obliged to wear his orders. The first two or three he rather enjoyed, but at length there came one when, to his horror, in the unexpected absence of some distinguished general, suddenly he found himself obliged to return thanks for the army. In fact, he got through it pretty well, as was testified by the cheers of a not too critical audience, but convinced that his failure had been complete, he went home in great trouble.

“What is the matter?” asked his mother, noting his gloomy face as he stalked into the little drawing-room which he seemed to fill with his uniform and decorations; and Edith added: “Why are you home so early?”

“I came away before the end,” he said solemnly; “they forced me to speak, and I made a fool of myself.”

Knowing Rupert, they did not take this statement too seriously, though Edith was somewhat relieved when, from the reports in the newspapers next morning, and from private inquiry, she satisfied herself that he had really done rather well.

However this might be, Rupert would go no more to public dinners, dreading lest again he should hear that awful and inaccurate eulogium of himself, and be once more requested to get up and give his views upon nothing in particular. However, plenty of private entertainments remained, and to these Edith saw that he did go, although it is true she did not particularly enjoy exposing him to the fascinations of various unengaged young ladies. But her cousin Devene’s strict injunction notwithstanding, Edith had as yet by no means made up her mind to marry Rupert herself. She was thinking the matter over, very closely, that is all, and meanwhile had fully determined that he should marry no one else. So she was jealous of him, not for affection’s sake, but for fear lest she should be forestalled.

Of affection, indeed, she had none for Rupert; if anything, she shrank from him personally—this big, rugged man—and his inner self she could not understand at all. He would converse with her on Egyptology and the art of war, and other subjects that bored her to death, not excluding religion at times. He would be earnest and take solemn views of things, conscientious also to an extent that was absolutely painful, even going so far as to reprove her for trifling society fibs. They had nothing in common—their two natures were as dissimilar as is the babbling stream from the black and iron rock over which it runs. Edith lived in the day for the day, to catch the sunlight, to flee from the shadow. Rupert remembered always that the day would soon be done, and that then must be rendered the account thereof; that the watchword of life should be Duty and Self-effacement for the common good, the greatest gain of man.

At present, it is true, Edith had the art to hide these abysmal differences from his somewhat innocent eyes, although he did now and again wonder if she were not a little shallow. She listened to his discourses on the Pharaohs; she suffered him to draw her plans of battles which she was apt to look at upside down; she even took an apparent interest in his rather alarming views of human responsibilities, and his belief in redemption that must be earned by sacrifice. But oh! it was pain and grief to Edith, and though she was far too clever to show it in his presence, or even in that of his mother, when he had gone she would rise and dance about the room in joy at her deliverance; yes, and allow Dick to seek her out and even endure his tiresome jealousy for the mere pleasure of that congenial fellowship. But she never allowed him any more, being too wise to compromise herself in such a fashion.

“Oh!” Edith reflected to herself again and again, “if these things were done in the green tree, what would be done in the dry?” If Rupert was so insufferable even as an admirer, what would he be like when he had assumed what she felt sure he would call the “duties and responsibilities of matrimony,” in which she would be expected to take a daily and an ample part?

Meanwhile, her business was to make him fond of her—to persuade him that she was absolutely charming and necessary to his existence. Nor did Edith fail at the task. Gradually Rupert grew to adore her, till at length, like a sudden light, there arose in his mind an appreciation of the stupendous fact that, all unworthy as he was of such perfections, he might dare to cherish the ambition of making her his wife.

After all, Rupert was very human, and one who had long acknowledged the fact that though it may be salutary for his soul’s health, it is not good for man to live alone. With that one unfortunate exception in his early youth, he had fled from women, not because he did not like them, who was no misogynist, but because he deemed it right. But now, when he came to think of it, why should he not marry like other men, and be happy in his wife’s love, and leave children—he who loved children—behind him, like other men? It was a great idea, and with Edith at his side, it grew upon him fast, unaware, as he remained, that the suggestion was one which emanated from the said Edith—not in words, but in a thousand acts and glances. He began to pay solemn court to her; he was dreadfully respectful and considerate; he blushed if any word with a double meaning were uttered in her presence, and when other men looked at her with admiration—and many did—he felt furious.

He gave her gifts also. The first of them was a huge blue scarabæus, set in gold, which, he informed her, he had himself removed from the breast of a body, where it had rested for three thousand years. Edith loathed that scarabæus, both for its associations and because it did not match any of her dresses; also because it assured her that the day of decision was drawing nigh: Yet she was obliged to wear it sometimes, until she managed to let it fall upon the pavement, where it was broken to bits, which bits she showed to Rupert, as it appeared to him, almost with tears. He consoled her, though his heart was wrung, for the thing was really good, and next week in triumph produced another and a larger one!

Such were the humours of the situation; its tragedies, very real ones, were to come!

It happened thus: Lord Devene, both for change of air and because he hated Christmas and everything to do with it, departed, as was his custom at that time of year, to spend a month at Naples. Thereon Lady Devene, as was her custom, migrated to Devene, the family place in Sussex. Now although the estates here were not so very large, for most of the Devene real property consisted of an acre or two of houses in Shoreditch, a colliery, and the ancestral brewery, the house was magnificent and extensive. To be there alone oppressed even Lady Devene’s phlegmatic temperament, so she asked various people who were more or less congenial to share her solitude. More especially did she insist that Rupert and his mother should come, for she liked them both, particularly Rupert. This involved the asking of Edith, whom she did not like, while Dick Learmer would be present as a matter of course in his capacity of secretary and factotum.

Rupert did not want to accept, although the shooting was excellent and he was fond of shooting. Even when Edith said that she should go anyhow—for in secret she longed for the relief of a little of Dick’s society, in love as he was—he still hesitated. Then she remarked that it would be scarcely kind of him to deprive his mother of her only outing, since, if he stayed in London, she would stay also. So in the end Rupert yielded, for circumstances were too much for him. Yet he hated being obliged to accept this hospitality. Lord Devene might be absent, it was true, but the saturnine if friendly butler, and many painful memories, remained. Once before, when he was nineteen, Rupert had spent a Christmas at Devene!

It was New Year’s Eve. That day, which was fine and frosty, was devoted to the shooting of the home coverts, where, as they lay extremely well upon the ridges of hills with little valleys between and not a pheasant had as yet been so much as fired at in them, the sport was very fine. Some of the ladies who were staying in the house, and amongst them Edith, came out after luncheon to see the shooting of the last beat, which was the great stand of the day, for it took over an hour to do, and if the guns were good, generally between three and four hundred pheasants were killed there. Here the woods ran down to a point, beyond which lay a valley. The guns were posted close together on the further side of this valley in a gorge that led to a covert called the Wilderness, since, had they stood at the bottom, the pheasants would have passed over practically out of shot. As it was, they all sped on down the gorge, heading for the Wilderness a quarter of a mile away, and still travelling at a great height. Indeed, it was a good shot who brought down one in three of these pheasants at this time of year when they flew so boldly.

Rupert’s place was at the centre of the gorge where the birds came highest, and a little above him, about five-and-twenty yards to his right, stood Dick Learmer, who, of course, arranged the shoot, and who was what in sporting parlance is called an “artist” at driven birds, though not so good when they had to be walked up, as he was easily tired and put off his form. He had placed Rupert in this very difficult spot, which was in full view of all the line of guns and one generally reserved for some great performer, because he was sure that, being totally unaccustomed to that kind of sport, he would make an exhibition of himself, especially as he had only one gun which must soon get very hot.

As it chanced, however, the young man who carried Rupert’s cartridges, knowing this, lent him a thick dogskin glove for his left hand and ventured to give him a little good advice, namely, to stick to cocks, which were more easily seen, and of these only to fire at such birds as were coming straight over him. Rupert thanked him and chatted with Edith, who was his companion, until the sport began, remarking that it was very kind of Dick to have given him such a good place, which should have been occupied by a better man.

Presently the pheasants began to fly, and in that still air, cold with coming frost, went straight as arrows for their refuge in the Wilderness. The first cock came over at an enormous height.

“Fire ten yards ahead of it, sir,” said the wise young man “and chuck back.”

Rupert obeyed, and as his cartridges chanced to be loaded with No. 4 shot, brought down the bird, which fell stone-dead far behind him.

“Bravo!” said the gun on his left, “that was a good shot,” and indeed its unexpected success put Rupert into excellent spirits and made him think that the thing was not so difficult after all.

Therefore, in the issue he did not find it difficult, for always remembering the instructions of his mentor to fire ten yards ahead, and never lifting his gun save at those cocks that came straight over him, letting all hens and wide birds go by, his success, with the help of the No. 4, was remarkable. Indeed, he brought down nearly as many birds with his one gun as most of the other sportsmen did with two, greatly to the delight of Edith, who from the beginning had fathomed Dick’s kind intentions.

But Dick was not delighted, for this petty success of his rival irritated him. Therefore, as the long drive went on, meanly enough he set himself to disconcert him in a very unsportsmanlike manner. Noticing that Rupert was firing at those cocks that passed right over his head, neglecting his own birds whereof there were a plenty, Dick devoted himself to Rupert’s, killing a number of them with long cross shots before Rupert could get off his gun.

Rupert said nothing, for there was nothing to say, though he could not help feeling a little annoyed, till at last he did speak—to Edith, asking why Dick did not confine himself to his own pheasants.

“Oh!” she answered, shrugging her shoulders, “because he’s jealous even about his wretched shooting.”

Then an accident happened, for one of the cocks, shot far forward by Dick in this unlawful fashion, in falling, struck Edith on the shoulder and knocked her straight backwards to the ground, where she lay quite still for a few moments, then sat up crying with the pain and gasping:

“Oh, it has hurt me so!”

Now Rupert’s wrath broke out, and he shouted to Dick, who pretended not to have seen what had happened:

“Stop shooting and come here.”

So Dick came.

“Look at the end of your infernal, unsportsmanlike tricks,” said Rupert, his eyes blazing with anger. “You might have killed her.”

“I am dreadfully sorry,” answered Dick (and he was), “but really I don’t see how I am responsible for the accident. It must have been your bird that struck her.”

“It was not my bird, and you know it. Loader, who shot that pheasant?”

“Mr. Learmer, sir. It was coming over you very high, but Mr. Learmer fired before you could, and killed it.”

Just then Edith staggered to her feet, looking very white.

“Go back to your stand, Dick,” she said, “Rupert will help me home. Give me your arm, Rupert.”

So very gently, half-supporting her as he had done many a wounded man, Rupert led her to the house, which was not far away, in his grief and confusion speaking tender words to her as they went, even to the length of calling her “dear” and “dearest.” Edith did not answer him, who had a good excuse for keeping silent, although in reality she was much more frightened than hurt. But on the other hand, neither did she attempt to escape from the arm that was placed about her waist to bear her weight.

When she had reached her room, taken off her things and rubbed some liniment on the bruise—for she refused to allow the doctor to be sent for—Edith sat down in a chair before the fire and began to think. The crisis was at hand, that bird from the skies had precipitated it. After those words of Rupert’s, things could not stay where they were. He must propose to her. But the question was—should she accept him? She had been debating the point with herself that very morning, and practically had answered it in the negative. Notwithstanding Lord Devene’s injunctions and the money which depended upon her obedience, so consumedly had Rupert bored her of late, so greatly did she dislike the idea of him as a lover and a husband, so infinite was the distance between them although his passion blinded him to the fact, that she had made up her mind to take the risks and have done with it all, to tell him that she had always looked upon him “as a friend and cousin,” no more. Of course, under the circumstances, this would have been the kindest course towards Rupert, but that was a matter with which Edith never troubled her head. She looked at the question from the point of view of her own comfort and advantage and no other.

Well, this was her conclusion of the morning. The problem was—did it still hold good at the fall of night? She thought not. After all, Edith had the instincts of a lady, and this incident of the shooting, especially that of his pretending that it was not he who had shot the bird, revealed to her very clearly that in addition to his worthlessness and vices, Dick lacked those of a gentleman. That he was a coward also, who feigned ignorance of her hurt because he feared Rupert’s anger, although she knew well that he must have been longing to run to her, whose one redeeming virtue in her eyes was that he worshipped the ground she walked on. Now Rupert was a gentleman to his finger-tips, strong, tender, and true, and with him she would be safe all her life. More, her anxieties would be at an end; probably she would become a peeress, the mistress of great rank and fortune, both of which she desired intensely; at the worst, she would be provided for, and the wife of a distinguished man who loved her, and who therefore would put up with much.

Yet Edith hesitated, for all these good things must be bought at the price of Rupert’s constant company for years and years until one of them deceased. She was very unhappy and—her shoulder hurt. She wished that something would come to decide her doubts, to take the responsibility out of her hands. Under the circumstances, many girls might have fallen back upon petitions for light and guidance to the Power that they believed to direct their destinies; but this was not Edith’s way. Lord Devene’s teaching had sunk deep into her heart, and she lacked faith in anything save the great blind, terrible, tumultuous world, whereon, born as she thought, of the will of the flesh alone, she flittered from darkness into darkness.

The maid brought up her tea, and on the tray was a letter which had come by the second post. It proved to be from Lord Devene, and began by giving her a sarcastic and amusing account of the humours of a Naples hotel. Its ending showed, however, that this was not the object of the epistle. It ran:

I hear that you are all at Devene, including the Family Hero, who, I hope, has had his hair cut and bought himself a new hat. The party must be amusing. Write and tell me how many of them come down to morning prayers. Write and tell me your news also, my dear Edith, which I await with anxiety. It is time that matter was settled, for if it is left too long, R. may be sent spinning to the other end of the world, and be no more heard of for years. I will not recapitulate my arguments. I, who have your true interests at heart, wish it for good reasons, and that is enough. Trust yourself to me in this matter, Edith; I take the responsibility, who know more and see further than you do. Do not let any foolish whims, any girlish weakness, stand between you and your future. I have said; I beg of you to listen and obey.—

Your affectionate,

DEVENE.

Edith laid down the letter with a sigh of relief. The decision had been made for her and she was glad. She would marry Rupert. It was certain now that if they both lived she would marry Rupert as her cousin George commanded her to do—for it was a command, no less. Yes; she was glad, as, notwithstanding her hurts, she dressed herself for conquest, determining to do the thing at once, and have that engagement scene a bad memory behind her.

But if there is any vision, any knowledge among those who dwell beyond, certain guardian angels upon this fateful night must have made up their books sad-eyed and sore-hearted.

CHAPTER VII.
ENGAGED

Not wishing to meet Dick until his temper was more composed after that day’s adventure, Rupert did not go into the smoking or billiard-rooms before dinner, but retired to the library, purposing to spend there those dreary three hours which, in a country house, must be got through somehow between the advance of the mid-winter twilight and the welcome sound of the dressing-bell. His intention was to read a commentary on the Koran, if the somewhat agitated state of his mind would allow him to do so, for he loved to acquire miscellaneous learning, especially if it bore upon the East, its antiquities, religions, or affairs, a fact that Edith had good reason to lament. As it happened, this laudable project for the utilisation of spare time was frustrated by Lady Devene, who, finding out his whereabouts from the gloomy butler returning with an empty tea-cup, came to inquire of him the cause of Edith’s accident. He told her the facts in his usual unvarnished style, minimising Dick’s share in it as much as possible. But in spite of her phlegmatic exterior, Lady Devene was a quick judge of truth and character.

“Ach!” she said, “it is Dick’s tricks again, and I do not like Dick; he is a bad lot, vain of his face, throwing himself head down upon any pleasure that comes, not working for himself; but what is the English word? Ah! I have it—a cadger, a bit of bad money that looks all right outside, no God-fearing man, in that way like his lordship” (she always called her husband “his lordship”), “but without his brains; one wicked by weakness, not by will.”

Rupert looked at her, not knowing exactly what to say.

“Ach!” she went on, “you stare at me; you who are his cousin think that I, who am his wife, am hard upon his lordship, but, mein Gott! who can be hard upon iron? It is the iron is hardest, and hurts what hits it. I say he is a terrible man.”

“Then,” asked Rupert solemnly, “why did you marry him?”

She looked up and down the great, lonely room lined with books, into which none save the housemaids ever penetrated, and then at the closed door behind her, and answered:

“I will tell you, Rupert, who are honest, who think as I do and believe in a God and judgment. I am well born in my own country, very well born, of an older and more distinguished family than any of you, who made your money out of brewing but the other day. But after my father’s death in the war we were poor, my mother and I, so when that rich old Lady Hodgson, who was German born, you know, and a friend of our family, asked me to come to live with her for eight months of every year, and paid me well for it, why, I came. There I met his lordship, who found out that I sent most of my salary home to my mother, and that I thought otherwise than the fashionable English ladies about many things—children, for instance, and after the death of her first ladyship began to take much notice of me. At last one day he proposed, and I said, ‘No,’ for I always doubted that man. Then, oh! he was clever. What do you think he did? You see, he knew that I am brought up religious, so he tells me that he is greatly troubled by doubts, and that the real reason why he wants to marry me is that he thinks that I would be able to give him peace of soul again, and to bring him back into the fold of faith—yes, those were his words, ‘the fold of faith.’ Him! that black lamb!” she added, with a gasp of indignation, while Rupert burst out laughing.

“Ah!” she went on, “for you it is funny, but not for me. Well, he over-persuades me, he tells me I shall be wicked if I turn a penitent soul back from the door of life by refusing to have anything to do with it, and so on, and so on, till, sheep’s-head that I am, I believe him: Also my mother wish the marriage, and I liked to be noble in your country as well as my own. So I marry him and find out. The fold of faith! The door of life! Oh! the black goats live in that fold of his—the black, left-hand goats—and the door he knocks at, it is the door of hell. I find he believes in nothing, and when I reproach him, he tells me that it was only his little joke—his little joke to make me marry him, because he thought I should be a good, useful, domestic wife and a fine, handsome mother for his children. Ach! Mein Gott, he said it was a little joke—” and rising from her chair in her woe and indignation, Tabitha held up her hands and turned her fair face to heaven, with a look on it like that of a saint who has just felt the first stroke of martyrdom. Indeed it was a very strange scene, and one that impressed Rupert deeply.

“And what has been the end about his children?” she went on tempestuously. “I have had how many—six, seven—oh! I do my duty, I promise and I pay, but these children they do not live. How can they live with that wicked man for father? The last—it lived some time, and I beg him to have it christened—yes, I crawl about on my knees on the floor after him and beg him let it be made a Christian, and he mocked me and my ‘silly superstitions,’ and he say he will not have it because the child will catch cold. And the child it do catch cold, the cold of death, and now that poor little soul of his it must live on unredeemed for ever, and perhaps, oh, perhaps suffer terribly because of the sin of that wicked man.”

“Don’t say that,” said Rupert, “it’s a hard creed, and I won’t believe a word of it. The innocent can’t be made to suffer for the guilty.”

“Ah! but I do say it, and I do believe it, for I was so taught, and I tell you it torments me, and, Rupert, no child of mine will ever live! You will be the heir of all these lands and drink-shops and moneys, and may they bring you joy. As for me, I wish I were where her first ladyship is. Oh! I know they say he murdered her, that poor Clara, or drove her to death, and I daresay when I have no more children he will do the same to me. Well, I care nothing. And now I have told you and eased my heart, who have no friend but God since my mother died, and I thank you for listening so patient to my sad story, because I should like one of you to know the truth after it is all over—the truth of what comes to women who are led away by false words and the love of place and riches;” and once more throwing up her arms, she uttered two or three dry, hard sobs, then to Rupert’s infinite relief, turned and left the room.

It seemed to be his fate to receive the confidences of the wives of Lord Devene, and Heaven knows he did not desire this second edition of them. Yet his heart bled for the poor German lady who had been beguiled to fill a place which, for all its seeming grandeur, was to her a very habitation in Purgatory, since day by day she saw her most cherished convictions trampled upon and scorned; while the cruel articles of her narrow creed bred in her mind the belief, or rather the mania, that the sin of the father was wreaked upon the bodies of her children, and even had power to pursue and torment their innocent souls. In its way, this tragedy was as great as that of her whom she succeeded, the wretched woman who, in her lawless search for relief from loveless misery, had found but death. Yet, alas! upon the head of that one he had brought down the evil, and the head of this one he was powerless to protect.

Nor, indeed, did Rupert wish to encourage such painful conversations, confidences, and the intimacy that must result from them. Therefore he was determined that he would get away from Tabitha’s house as soon as possible. But first he must find an opportunity of speaking to Edith and learn his fate. Indeed, after the words which had broken from his lips that day, it was his duty so to do. If only it could be accomplished this night, as it chanced he had a good excuse for departing on the following morning, since he had received a telegram from an old brother-officer, with whom he was engaged to stay in Norfolk, shifting the date of the visit and begging him, if possible, to come down on the morrow instead of that day week.

As Rupert reflected thus, staring at the fire before which he stood, he heard the door open and close behind him, and turned round in alarm, thinking that Lady Devene had come back again. But it was not Lady Devene, it was Edith already dressed for dinner in a clinging robe of some soft white material, high because of the bruise on her shoulder; a bunch of forced lilies of the valley at her breast, her rich golden hair rippling upon either side of her small head and twisted into a great knot behind, and for ornaments a close-fitting necklace of fine pearls, Lord Devene’s latest gift to her, and Rupert’s great blue scarabæus, a single and imposing touch of colour in the whiteness of her dress.

“Oh,” she said, “I came to look for Tabitha. What an awful name that is, it always sticks in my throat”—(this was a fib, because she had passed Lady Devene on the stairs, but it served her purpose)—“not to disturb your studies, my learned cousin. Don’t look so alarmed, I will go away again.”

“Oh, please don’t,” he answered. “Sit down here, do, and warm yourself. I was just—hoping to see you, and—behold! you glide into the room like, like—an angel into a dream.”

“In answer to the prayers of a saint, I suppose,” she replied. “Really, Rupert, you are growing quite poetical. Who taught you such pretty metaphors? It must have been a woman, I am sure.”

“Yes,” he answered boldly, “that is, if it is pretty—a woman called Edith.”

She coloured a little, not expecting anything so direct, but sat down in the chair staring at the fire with her beautiful dark blue eyes, and said, as though to turn the conversation:

“You asked about my shoulder, or if you didn’t, you ought to have done. Well, there is a bruise on it as big as a saucer, all here,” and with her first finger she drew a ring upon her dress.

“Confound him!” muttered Rupert.

“Him! Who? Dick or the cock-pheasant? Well, it doesn’t matter. I agree, confound both of them.”

Then there came a pause, and Rupert wrung his hands as though he were washing them or suffering pain, so that Edith could not help observing how large and red they looked in the firelight. She wished that he were wearing gloves, or would keep them in his pockets. It would make matters easier for her.

“I’m awfully glad you have come,” he said awkwardly, feeling that if he didn’t say something soon she would shortly go, “because I want to speak to you.”

“What about? Nothing disagreeable, I hope. Has Tabitha been making confidences to you? If so, please do not pass them on to me, for they obliterate the romance and discredit the holy state of matrimony.”

“Confound Tabitha,” said Rupert again, “and her confidences!” for he was quite bewildered, and uttered automatically the first words that came into his mind.

“Again I agree, but soon we shall involve all our relatives in one universal condemnation, so let us drop that topic.”

Then wearying of this fence, desiring to get the thing over, to have done with it, to see the doubtful bond signed, sealed, and delivered, suddenly Edith sat up in her chair and looked at him. The blue eyes opened wide, and there came into them a light which he had never seen before, a splendid, dazzling light as though some veil of darkness had been withdrawn, revealing a hid glory; as though at last she suffered him to behold her soul. The face changed also, upon it the mask of coldness broke as ice breaks suddenly beneath the blaze of the sun and the breath of the western wind, disclosing, or seeming to disclose, a river of pure love that ran beneath. For one moment he resisted her as sometimes a moth appears to resist the splendour of flame, not because he desired to fight against his fate, but rather to let the wonder and the mystery of this sudden change engrave themselves for ever on his heart. Then as the white lids sank extinguishing those fires, till the shadow of the long lashes lay upon her cheek, he spoke in a low and hurried voice:

“I am all unworthy,” he said, “I am not fit to touch your hand; but I cannot help it. I love you, and I dare to ask—oh, Edith, I dare to ask!—that you will give your life to me.”

She sat quite still, making no motion of acceptance or dissent. It was as though she wished to hear more ere she spoke. But he, too, was silent—frightened, perhaps, by her stillness—finding no other words in which to recast the truth that he had uttered once and for all. Again the white lids were lifted, and again the wide eyes looked at him, but this time with no syren glance, for they were troubled—almost tearful. Then whilst he wondered how he should read their message, Edith rose slowly, and with an infinite deliberation raised her hand and held it out towards him. At length he understood, and taking that delicate hand, he pressed his lips upon it, then, greatly daring, placed his arms about her, drew her to him, and kissed her on the brow and lips.

“My shoulder,” she murmured faintly; “it hurts,” and full of contrition he let her sink back into her chair.

“Do you love me? Say that you love me, Edith,” he whispered, bending over her.

“Have I not said?” she answered, glancing at her hand. “Do women—” and she ceased, and to Rupert this speech, and all that it conveyed, seemed the most beautiful avowal that ever passed the lips of pure and perfect maidenhood.

When the heart is too full for words, surely they are best left untried. Another thought came to him—a painful thought—for he moved uneasily, and turned red to the eyes, or rather, to the puckered brow above them.

“I must tell you,” he said presently; “it is only right, and after you have heard you must finally decide, for I will not begin our engagement by keeping back anything from you whom I worship. Only you will not ask for names.”

She lifted her head, as though in remonstrance, then reflecting that it is always well to know a man’s secrets, checked herself. Also she was curious. What could this saint of a Rupert have done that was wrong?

“Once,” he continued, slowly and painfully, “I committed a great sin—a love affair—a married woman. She is dead; it is all over, and, thank God! I have nothing more to confess to you.”

Edith tried to appear grieved, but in reality, she was so intensely interested—so astonished, too, that any woman could have betrayed Rupert into an affaire galante—that to a dispassionate observer her effort might have seemed unsuccessful.

“I don’t want to preach,” she said. “I have been told that men are very different from what they expect us to be. Still, it was good of you to tell me, and there is no more to say, is there, except—” and she clasped her hands and looked up at him—“Oh, Rupert! I do hope that it was not—lately—for I thought—I thought—”

“Great Heavens!” he said, aghast; “why, it was when I was a boy, years and years ago.”

“Oh!” she answered, “that makes it better, doesn’t it?”

“It makes it less dreadful, perhaps,” he said, “for I lost my reason almost, and did not understand.”

“Well, who am I that I should judge you, Rupert? Let us never speak of it again.”

“I am sure I don’t want to,” he replied, with fervour; “but indeed you are good and kind, Edith. I never expected it; I was afraid that when you had heard you would turn your back upon me.”

“We are taught to forgive one another,” she answered, a little smile that would not be suppressed trembling about the corners of her mouth; and again she held out her hand—this time the left—and suffered him to kiss it.

In fact, he did more, for drawing off the only ring he ever wore, an ancient gold ring carved with a strange device—it was the throne-name of a Pharaoh, which Pharaoh himself had worn for three thousand years within the tomb—he put it on her third finger as a sign and a token for ever.

“Another of those unlucky mummy things,” reflected Edith. “I wish I could get clear of the Egyptians and everything to do with them. They seem to haunt me.”

But she said nothing, only lifting the ring she touched it with her lips, a sight that may have surprised the spirit of Pharaoh.

“Rupert,” she said, “don’t say anything of this to-night, except to your mother, if you wish. You understand, Dick’s temper is so very unpleasant, though,” she added, with emphasis, “I hope you understand also that I have no confessions to make to you about him or anybody else. I can’t help it if he has always—pursued me.”

“He had better give up his pursuit now,” grumbled Rupert, “or there will be trouble.”

“Quite so. Well, I have no doubt he will, when he comes to know, only, to tell the truth, I would rather he didn’t know while you are here. I don’t want a scene.”

“Well, if you like, dearest,” said Rupert, “although I hate it, I can go away to-morrow morning, and meet you in a few days in London,” and he told her of his shooting engagement.

“That will suit very well indeed,” she said, with relief, “although, as you say, it is horrid under our new circumstances, especially as to catch that train at Liverpool Street, you will have to leave by eight to-morrow. Well, you will be back on Saturday, so we must make the best of it. Good gracious, look at the clock, the dinner-bell will ring in two minutes, and you are not dressed. Go at once, dear, or—it will be noticed. There, that is enough. Go, darling, my lover who will be my husband, go.”

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.”

Rupert made no answer, for this talk of hers all seemed part of his fantastic imaginings at the dinner-table, a sad music to which they were set. Yet he remembered that once before she had spoken to him of renunciation when, as a lad, he lay sick after the death of Clara; remembered, too, that from that day to this he had practised its stern creed, devoting himself to duty and following after faith. Why, now on this joyous night, the night of his re-birth in honest love, did his mother again preach to him her stern creed of renunciation?

At least it was one in which that company did not believe. How merry they were, as though there were no such things as sorrow, sickness, and death, or bitter disillusionment, that is worse than death. Listen! the music began, and see, they were dancing. Dick was waltzing with Edith, and notwithstanding her hurt shoulder, seemed to be holding her close enough. They danced beautifully, like one creature, their bodies moving like a single body. Why should he mind it when she was his, and his alone? Why should he feel sore because he whose life had been occupied in stern business had never found time to learn to dance?

Hark! the sound of the bells from the neighbouring church floated sweetly, solemnly into the hall, dominating the music. The year was dying, the new year was at hand. Edith ceased her waltzing and came towards Rupert, one tall, white figure on that wide expanse of polished floor, and so graceful were her slow movements that they put him in mind of a sea-gull floating through the air, or a swan gliding on the water. To him she came, smiling sweetly, then as the turret clock boomed out the hour of midnight, whispered in his ear:

“I whom you have made so happy wish you a happy New Year—with me, Rupert,” and turning, she curtseyed to him ever so little.

In the chorus of general congratulations no one heard her low speech, though Mrs. Ullershaw noted the curtsey and the look upon Edith’s face—Rupert’s she could not see, for his back was to her—and wondered what they meant, not without anxiety. Could it be—well, if it was, why should the thing trouble her? Yet troubled she was, without a doubt, so much so that all this scene of gaiety became distasteful to her, and she watched for an opportunity to rise and slip away.

Meanwhile Rupert was enraptured, enchanted with delight, so much so that he could find no answer to Edith’s charming speech, except to mutter—“Thank you. Thank you.” Words would not come, and to go down upon his knees before her, which struck him as the only fitting acknowledgment of that graceful salutation, was clearly impossible. She smiled at his embarrassment, thinking to herself how differently the ready-witted Dick, whose side she had just left, would have dealt with such a situation, then went on quickly:

“Your mother is preparing to leave us, and you will wish to go with her. So good-night, dearest, for I am tired, and shan’t stop here long. I shall count the days till we meet in London. Again, good-night, good-night!” and brushing her hand against his as she passed, she left him.

CHAPTER VIII.
EDITH’S CRUSHED LILIES

“Rupert,” said his mother, “I want you to give me your arm to my room, I am going to bed.”

“Certainly,” he answered, “but wait one minute, dear. I have to take that eight o’clock train to-morrow morning, so I will just say good-bye to Tabitha, as I shan’t come back again.”

Mrs. Ullershaw breathed more freely. If there were anything in the wind about Edith he would not be taking the eight o’clock train.

“Go,” she said; “I’ll wait.”

Lady Devene was by herself, since amongst that gay throng of young people no one took much note of her, seated in a big oak chair on a little dais at the end of the hall far away from the fire and hot water coils, for she found the heat oppressive. As he made his way towards her even the preoccupied Rupert could not help noticing how imposing she looked in her simple black dress, which contrasted so markedly with her golden hair and white and massive face, set up there above them all, elbow on knee and chin on hand, her blue eyes gazing over their heads at nothingness. In reality, the miserable woman was greeting the New Year in her own fashion, not with gaiety and laughter, but with repentance for her sins during that which was past, and prayers for support during that which was to come.

“Ach, Rupert!” she said, rousing herself and smiling pleasantly as she always did at him, “it is kind of you to leave those young people and their jokes to come to talk with the German frau, for that is what they call me among themselves, and indeed what I am.”

“I am afraid,” he said, “I have only come to say good-night, or rather good-bye, for I must go to town to-morrow morning before you will be down.”

She looked at him sharply.

“So I have driven you away with my tale of troubles. Well, I thought that I should, and you are wise to leave this house where there is so much misery, dead and living, for no good thing can happen in it, no good thing can come out of it—”

“Indeed,” broke in Rupert, “that is not why I am going at all, it is because—” and he told her of the visit he must pay.

“You do not speak fibs well like the rest of them, Rupert; you have some other reason, I see it on your face, something to do with that dreadful Dick, I suppose, or his—ach! what is the English word—his flame, Edith. What? Has she been playing tricks with you too? If so, beware of her; I tell you, that woman is dangerous; she will breed trouble in the world like his lordship.”

Rupert felt very angry, then he looked at that calm, fateful face which a few hours before he had seen so impassioned, and all his anger died, and was replaced by a fear which chilled him from head to heel. He felt that this brooding, lonely woman had insight, born perhaps of her own continual griefs; that she saw deep into the heart of things. He who understood her, who sympathised with, even if he did not entirely adopt her stern religious views, who knew that prayer and suffering are the parents of true sight, felt sure that this sight was hers. At least he felt it for a moment, then the unpleasant conviction passed away, for how could its blackness endure in the light of the rosy optimism of new-risen and successful love?

“You are morbid,” he said, “and although I am sure you do not wish to be so, that makes you unjust, makes you pass hard judgments.”

“Doubtless it is true,” she replied, with a sigh, “and I thank you for telling me my faults. Yes, Rupert, I am morbid, unjust, a passer of hard judgments, who must endure hard judgment,” and she bowed her stately, gold-crowned head as before the appointed stroke of wrath, then held out her hand and said simply: “Good-bye, Rupert! I do not suppose that you will often come to see me more—ach! why should you? Still if you do, you will be welcome, for on you I pass no hard judgments, and never shall, whatever they say of you.”

So he shook her hand and went away saddened.

Giving his mother his arm, for she was very infirm, Rupert led her quietly out of a side door and down the long passages to her room, which was next to his own at the end of the house, for stairs being difficult to her, she slept on the ground floor, and he at hand to keep her company.

“Mother,” he said, when he had put her in her chair and stirred the fire to a blaze, “I have something to tell you.”

She looked up quickly, for her alarm had returned, and said: “What is it, Rupert?”

“Don’t look frightened, dear,” he replied, “nothing bad, something very good, very happy. I am engaged to be married to Edith, and I have come to ask your blessing on me, or rather on both of us, for she is now a part of me.”

“Oh, Rupert, you have that always,” she answered, sinking back in her chair; “but I am astonished.”

“Why?” he asked, in a vexed voice, for he had expected a flow of enthusiasm that would match his own, not this chilly air of wonderment.

“Because—of course, nobody ever told me so—but I always understood that it was Dick Learmer whom Edith cared for, that is why I never thought anything of her little empressé ways with you.”

Again, Rupert was staggered. Dick—always Dick, first from Lady Devene and now from his mother. What could be the meaning of it? Then again optimism came to his aid, he who knew full surely that Dick was nothing to Edith.

“You are mistaken there for once, mother,” he said, with a cheerful laugh. “I knew from the first what she thought about Dick, for she spoke very seriously to me of him and his performances in a way she would never have done if there were anything in this silly idea.”

“Women often do speak seriously of the bad behaviour of the man of whom they are fond, especially to one whom they think may influence him for good,” replied his mother, with the wistful smile which she was wont to wear when thinking of her own deep affection for a man who had deserved it little.

“Perhaps,” he said. “All I have to say is that if ever there was anything—and I know there wasn’t—it is as dead as last month’s moon.”

Mrs. Ullershaw thought to herself that this simile drawn from the changeful moon, that waxes anew as surely as it wanes, was scarcely fortunate. But she kept a watch upon her lips.

“I am very glad to hear it,” she said, “and no doubt it was all a mistake, since, of course, if she had wished it, she might have married Dick long ago, before you came into her life at all. Well, dearest, I can only say that I wish you every happiness, and pray that she may be as good a wife to you as I know you will be husband to her. She is lovely,” she went on, as though summing up Edith’s best points, “one of the most graceful and finished women whom I have ever seen; she is very clever in her own way, too, though perhaps not in yours; thoughtful and observant. Ambitious also, and will therefore make an excellent wife for a man with a career. She is good-tempered and kind, as I know, for we have always got on well during the years we have lived together. Yes, you will be considered very fortunate, Rupert.”

“These are her advantages, what are her drawbacks?” he asked shrewdly, feeling that his mother was keeping something from him, “though I must say at once that in my eyes she has none.”

“Which is as it should be, Rupert. Well, I will tell you frankly, so that you may guard against them if I am right. Edith likes pleasure and the good things of the world, as, after all, is only natural, and she is extravagant, which perhaps in certain circumstances will not matter. Again, I hope you will never fall ill, for she is not a good nurse, not from unkindness, but because she has a constitutional horror of all ill-health or unsightliness. I have seen her turn white at meeting a cripple even, and I don’t think that she has ever quite liked sitting with me since I had that stroke, especially while it disfigured my face and made the lower eyelid drop.”

“We all have failings which we can’t help,” he answered; “natural antipathies that are born in us, and I am glad to say I am fairly sound at present. So I don’t think much of that black list, mother. Anything to add to it?”

She hesitated, then said:

“Only one thing, dear. It does strike me as curious that such a girl as Edith should be so attached to men like Dick Learmer and Lord Devene, for she is fond of them both.”

“Relationship, I suppose; also the latter has been very kind to her, and doubtless she is grateful.”

“Yes, most kind; indeed, he was her guardian until she came of age, and has practically supported her for years. But it isn’t gratitude, it is sympathy between her and him. They are as alike in character, mentally, I mean, as—as they are in face.”

Rupert laughed, for to compare the blooming Edith with the faded, wrinkled Devene, or even her quick humour that turned men and things to mild ridicule, with his savage cynicism which tore them both to pieces and stamped upon their fragments, seemed absurd.

“I can’t see the slightest resemblance,” he said. “You are cultivating imagination in your old age, mother.”

She looked up to answer, then thought a moment, and remarked:

“I daresay that you are perfectly right, Rupert, and that these things are all my fancy; only, my dear boy, try to make her go to church from time to time, that can’t do any woman harm. Now I have done with criticisms, and if I have made a few, you must forgive me; it is only because I find it hard to think that any woman can be worthy of you, and of course the best of us are not perfect, except to a lover. On the whole, I think that I may congratulate you, and I do so from my heart. God bless you both; you, my son, and Edith, my daughter, for as such I shall regard her. Now, dear, good-night, I am tired. Ring the bell for the maid, will you?”

He did so, and then by an afterthought said:

“You remember that I have to go away. You will speak to Edith, won’t you?”

“Of course, my love, when Edith speaks to me,” the old lady replied, with gentle dignity. “But why, under the circumstances, are you going?”

At that moment the maid entered the room, so he gave no answer, only made a few remarks about the manner of his mother’s journey back to town and kissed her in good-bye.

When the maid had left again Mrs. Ullershaw, as was her custom, said her prayers, offering up petitions long and earnest for the welfare of her beloved only son, and that the woman whom he had chosen might prove a blessing to him. But from those prayers she could take no comfort, they seemed to fall back upon her head like dead things, rejected, or unheard, she knew not which. Often she had thought to herself how happy she would be when Rupert came to tell her that he had chosen a wife, yet now that he had chosen, she was not happy.

Oh, she would tell the truth to her own heart since it must never pass her lips. She did not trust this gay and lovely woman; she thought her irreligious, worldly, and self-seeking; she believed that she had engaged herself to Rupert because he was the heir to a peerage and great wealth, distinguished also; not because she loved him. Although her son was of it, she hated the stock whence Edith sprang; as she knew now, from the first Ullershaw, who founded the great fortunes of the family, in this way or that they had all been bad, and Edith, she was certain, had not escaped that taint of blood. Even in Rupert, as the adventure of his youth proved, it was present, and only by discipline and self-denial had he overcome his nature. But Edith and self-denial were far apart. Yes; a cold shadow fell upon her prayers, and it was cast by the beautiful form of Edith—Edith who held Rupert’s destiny in her hands.

Within a few feet of her Rupert also offered up his petitions, or rather his paean of thanksgiving and praise for the glory that had fallen from Heaven upon his mortal head, for the pure and beautiful love which he had won that should be his lamp through life and in death his guiding-star.

A while after Rupert had gone, half an hour perhaps, Edith, noticing that Dick had left the hall, as she thought to see off the last of the departing guests, took the opportunity to slip away to bed since she wished for no more of his company that night. Yet she was not destined to escape it, for as she passed the door of the library on her way up stairs, that same room in which Rupert had proposed to her, she found Dick standing there.

“Oh,” he said, “I was looking for you. Just come in and tell me if this belongs to you. I think you must have left it behind.”

Carelessly, without design or thought, she stepped into the room, whereon he closed the door, and as though by accident placed himself between it and her.

“Well, what is it?” she asked, for her curiosity was stirred; she thought that she might have dropped something during her interview with Rupert. “Where is it? What have I lost?”

“That’s just what I want to ask you,” he answered, with a scarcely suppressed sneer. “Is it perhaps what you are pleased to call your heart?”

“I beg your pardon?” said Edith interrogatively.

“Well, on the whole, you may have reason to do so. Come, Edith, no secrets between old friends. Why do you wear that ring upon your finger? It was on Ullershaw’s this morning.”

She reflected a moment, then with characteristic courage came to the conclusion that she might as well get it over at once. The same instinct that had prompted her to become engaged to Rupert within half an hour of having made up her mind to the deed, made her determine to take the opportunity to break once and for all with her evil genius, Dick.

“Oh,” she answered calmly, “didn’t I tell you? I meant to in the hall. Why, for the usual reason that one wears a ring upon that finger—because I am engaged to him.”

Dick went perfectly white, and his black eyes glowed in his head like half-extinguished fires.

“You false—”

She held up her hand, and he left the sentence unfinished.

“Don’t speak that which you might regret and I might remember, Dick; but since you force me to it, listen for a moment to me, and then let us say good-night, or good-bye, as you wish. I have been faithful to that old, silly promise, wrung from me as a girl. For you I have lost opportunity after opportunity, hoping that you would mend, imploring you to mend, and you, you know well how you have treated me, and what you are to-day, a discredited man, the toady of Lord Devene, living on his bounty because you are useful to him. Yet I clung to you who am a fool, and only this morning I made up my mind to reject Rupert also. Then you played that trick at the shooting; you pretended not to see that I was hurt, you pretended that you did not fire the shot, because you are mean and were afraid of Rupert. I tell you that as I sat upon the ground there and understood, in a flash I saw you as you are, and I had done with you. Compare yourself with him and you too will understand. And now, move away from that door and let me go.”

“I understand perfectly well that Rupert is the heir to a peerage and I am not,” he answered, who saw that, being defenceless, his only safety lay in attack. “You have sold yourself, Edith, sold yourself to a man you don’t care that for,” and he snapped his fingers. “Oh, don’t take the trouble to lie to me, you know you don’t, and you know that I know it too. You have just made a fool of him to suit yourself, as you can with most men when you please, and though I don’t like the infernal, pious prig, I tell you I am sorry for him, poor beggar.”

“Have you done?” asked Edith calmly.

“No, not yet. You sneer at me and turn up your eyes—yes, you—because I am not a kind of saint fit to go in double harness with this Rupert, and because, not being the next heir to great rank and fortune, I haven’t been plastered over with decorations like he has for shooting savages in the Soudan because, too, as I must live somehow, I do so out of Devene. Well, my most immaculate Edith, and how do you live yourself? Who paid for that pretty dress upon your back, and those pearls? Not Rupert as yet, I suppose? Where did you get the money from with which you helped me once? I wish you would tell me, because I have never seen you work, and I would like to have the secret of plenty for nothing.”

“What is the good of asking questions of which you perfectly well know the answer, Dick? Of course George has helped me. Why shouldn’t he, as he can quite well afford to, and is the head of the family? Now I am going to help myself in the only way a woman can, by prudent and respectable marriage, entered on, I will tell you in confidence, with the approval, or rather by the especial wish of George himself.”

“Good Lord!” said Dick, with a bitter laugh. “What a grudge he must have against the man to set you on to marry him! Now I am certain there is something in all that old talk about the saint in his boyhood and the lovely and lamented Clara. No; just spare me three minutes longer. It would be a pity to spoil this conversation. Has it ever occurred to you, most virtuous Edith, that whatever I am—and I don’t set up for much—it is you who are responsible for me; you who led me on and threw me off by fits, just as it suited you; you who for your own worldly reasons never would marry, or even become openly engaged to me, although you said you loved me—”

“I never said that,” broke in Edith, rousing herself from her attitude of affected indifference to this tirade. “I never said I loved you, and for a very good reason, because I don’t, and never did, you or any other man. I can’t—as yet, but one day perhaps I shall, and then—I may have said that you attracted me—me, who stand before you, not my heart, which is quite a different matter, as men like you should know well enough.”

“Men like me can only judge of emotions by the manner of their expression. Even when they do not believe what she says, they take it for granted that a woman means what she does. Well, to return, I say that you are responsible, you and no other. If you had let me, I would have married you and changed my ways, but though you were ‘attracted,’ this you would never do because we should have been poor. So you sent me off to others, and then, when it amused you, drew me back again, and thus sank me deeper into the mud, until you ruined me.”

“Did I not tell you that you are a coward, Dick, though I never thought that you would prove it out of your own mouth within five minutes. Only cowards put the burden of their own wrong-doing upon the heads of others. So far from ruining you, I tried to save you. You say that I played with you; it is not the truth. The truth is, that from time to time I associated with you again, hoping against hope that you might have reformed. Could I have believed that you meant to turn over a new leaf, I think that I would have risked all and married you, but, thank God! I was saved from that. And now I have done with you. Go your way, and let me go mine.”

“Done with me? Not quite, I think, for perhaps the old ‘attraction’ still remains, and with most women that means repulsion from other men. Let us see now,” and suddenly, without giving her a single hint of his intention, he caught her in his arms and kissed her passionately. “There,” he said, as he let her go, “perhaps you will forgive an old lover—although you are engaged to a new one?”

“Dick,” she said, in a low voice, “listen to me and remember this. If you touch me like that again, I will go straight to Rupert, and I think he would kill you. As I am not strong enough to protect myself from insult, I must find one who is. More, you talk as though I had been in the habit of allowing you to embrace me, perhaps to pave the way for demands of blackmail. What are the facts? Eight or nine years ago, when I made that foolish promise, you kissed me once, and never again from that hour to this. Dick, you coward! I am indeed grateful that I never felt more than a passing attraction for you. Now open that door, or I ring the bell and send for Colonel Ullershaw.”

So Dick opened it, and without another word she swept past him.

Edith reached her room so thoroughly upset that she did what she had not done since her mother’s death—sat down and cried. Like other people, she had her good points, and when she seemed to be worst, it was not really of her own will, but because circumstances overwhelmed her. She could not help it if she liked, or, as she put it, had been “attracted” by Dick, with whom she was brought up, and whose ingrained natural weakness appealed to that sense of protection which is so common among women, and finds its last expression in the joys and fears of motherhood.

Every word she had spoken to him was true. Before she was out of her teens, overborne by his passionate attack, she had made some conditional promise that she would marry him at an undefined date in the future, and it was then for the first and—until this night—the last time that he had kissed her. She had done her best to keep him straight, an utterly impossible task, for his ways were congenitally crooked, and during those periods when he seemed to mend, had received him back into her favour. Only that day she had at last convinced herself that he was beyond hope, with the results which we know. And now he had behaved thus, insulting her in a dozen directions with the gibes of his bitter tongue, and at last most grossly by taking advantage of his strength and opportunity to do what he had done.

The worst of it was that she could not be as angry with him as she ought, perhaps because she knew that his outrageous talk and behaviour sprang from the one true and permanent thing in the fickle constitution of Dick’s character—his love for her. That love, indeed, was of the most unsatisfactory kind. For instance, it did not urge him on to honest effort, or suffice to keep him straight, in any sense. Yet it existed, and must be reckoned with, nor was she upon whom it was outpoured the person likely to take too harsh a view even of its excesses. She could ruin Dick if she liked. A word to Lord Devene, and another to Rupert, would be sufficient to turn him out to starve upon the world, so that within six months he might be sought for and found upon the box of a hansom cab, or in the bunk of a Salvation Army shelter. Yet she knew that she would never speak those words, and that he knew it also. Alas! even those insolent kisses of his had angered rather than outraged her; after them she did not rub her face with her handkerchief as she had done once that day.

Again, it was not her fault if she shrank from Rupert, whom she ought to, and theoretically did, adore. It was in her blood, and she was not mistress of her blood; for all her strength and will she was but a feather blown by the wind, and as yet she could find no weight to enable her to stand against that wind. Still, her resolution never wavered; she had made up her mind to marry Rupert—yes, and to make him as good a wife as she could be, and marry him she would. Now there were dangers ahead of her. Someone might have seen her go into that library with Dick at near one o’clock in the morning. Dick himself might drop hints; he was capable of it, or worse. She must take her precautions. For a moment Edith thought, then going to a table, took a piece of paper and wrote upon it:

1st January. 2 A.M.
To Rupert,—A promise for the New Year, and a remembrance of the old, from her who loves him best of all upon the earth.

E.

Then she directed an envelope, and on the top of it wrote that it was to be delivered to Colonel Ullershaw before he left, and took from her breast the lilies she had worn, which she was sure he would know again, purposing to enclose them in the letter, only to find that in her efforts to free herself from Dick, they had been crushed to a shapeless mass. Almost did Edith begin to weep again with vexation, for she could think of nothing else to send, and was too weary to compose another letter. At this moment she remembered that these were not all the lilies which the gardener had sent up to her. In a glass stood the remainder of them. She went to it, and carefully counted out an equal number of sprays and leaves, tied them with the same wire, and having thrown those that were broken into the grate to burn, enclosed them in the envelope.

“He will never know the difference,” she murmured to herself, with a dreary little smile, “for when they are in love who can tell the false from the true?”

CHAPTER IX.
RUPERT ACCEPTS A MISSION

The interval between the 1st of January and the 13th of April, the day of Rupert’s marriage, may be briefly passed over. All the actors are on the scene, except those who have to arrive out of the Soudanese desert; their characters and objects are known, and it remains only to follow the development of the human forces which have been set in motion to their inevitable end, whatever that may be.

The choosing of this date, the 13th, which chanced to be a Friday, was one of the grim little jokes of Lord Devene, from whose house the marriage was to take place; a public protest against the prevalence of vulgar superstitions by one who held all such folly in contempt. To these Rupert, a plain-sailing man who believed his days to be directed from above, was certainly less open than most, although even he, by choice, would have avoided anything that might suggest unpleasant thoughts. Edith, however, neglectful as she was of any form of religion, still felt such ancient and obscure influences, and protested, but in vain. The date suited him, said her cousin. There were reasons why the marriage could not take place before, and on Saturday, the 14th, he had to go away for a fortnight to be present in Lancashire at an arbitration which would be lengthy, and held in situ as to legal matters connected with his coal-mines. So she yielded, and the invitations were issued for Friday, the 13th of April.

Meanwhile things went on much as might be expected. Rupert sat in Edith’s pocket and beamed on her all day, never guessing, poor, blind man, that at times he bored her almost to madness. Still she played her part faithfully and well, paying him back word for word and smile for smile, if not always tenderness for tenderness. Mrs. Ullershaw, having shaken off her preliminary fears and doubts, was cheerful in her demeanour, and being happy in the happiness of her son, proclaimed on every occasion her complete contentment with the match. Lord Devene appeared pleased also, as indeed he was, and lost no opportunity of holding up Rupert as a model lover, while that unfortunate man writhed beneath his sarcasms.

Thus once—it was after one of those Grosvenor Square dinners which Rupert hated so heartily, he found a chance of pointing a moral in his best manner. Rupert, as usual, had planted himself by Edith in a corner of the room, whence, much as she wished it, she could not escape, making of her and himself the object of the amused attention of the company.

“Look at them,” said Lord Devene, who had unexpectedly entered, with a smile and a wave of the hand that made everybody laugh, especially Dick, who found their aspect absurd.

“Rupert, do get up,” said Edith; “they are laughing at us.”

“Then let them laugh,” he grumbled, as he obeyed, following her sheepishly to the centre of the room.

While they advanced, some new sally which they could not hear provoked a fresh outburst of merriment.

“What is it that amuses you?” asked Rupert crossly.

“Ach, Rupert,” said Lady Devene, “they laugh at you because you do like to sit alone with your betrothed; but I do not laugh, I think it is quite proper.”

“Tabitha puts it too roughly,” broke in Lord Devene. “We are not making fun of beauty and valour completing each other so charmingly in that far corner, we are paying them our tribute of joyous and respectful admiration. I confess that it delights me, who am getting old and cynical, to see people so enraptured by mere companionship. That, my dear Rupert, is what comes of not being blasé. With the excellent Frenchman, you can say: ‘J’aime éperdument et pour toujours car je n’ai jamais éparpillé mon cœur; le parfait amour c’est la couronne de la vertu.’ Now you reap the rich reward of a youth which I believe to have been immaculate. Happy is the man who, thrusting aside, or being thrust aside of opportunity, reserves his first great passion for his wife.”

A renewed titter greeted this very elaborate sarcasm, for so everyone felt it to be, especially Rupert, who coloured violently. Only Lady Devene came to his aid and tried to cover his confusion.

“Bah!” she said, “your wit, George, seems to smell of the lamp and to have a nasty sting in its tail. Why should you mock at these young people because they are honest enough to show that they are fond of each other, as they ought to be? Pay no attention and go back to your corner, my dears, and I will come and sit in front of you; or at least tell them they should be sorry they cannot say they have not scattered their hearts about; that is what the French word means, doesn’t it?”

Then in the amusement that was caused by Lady Devene’s mixed metaphors and quaint suggestion that with her ample form she should shelter the confidences of Rupert and Edith from prying eyes, the joke was turned from them to her, as she meant that it should be, and finally forgotten. But neither Rupert nor Edith forgot it. Never again did they sit close together in that Grosvenor Square drawing-room, even in the fancied absence of Lord Devene, a result for which Edith, who hated such public demonstrations, was truly grateful.

For a while after the announcement of the engagement Rupert and Dick had seen as little of each other as was possible, the former, because he had not forgiven Dick’s conduct at the shooting party, which impressed his mind far more than the vague talk about him and Edith in the past. In this, indeed, he had never believed, and his nature being utterly unsuspicious, it was now totally forgotten. As for Dick, he had his own reasons for the avoidance of his successful rival, whom all men and women united to honour. By degrees, however, Edith, who lived in perpetual fear of some passionate outburst from Dick, managed to patch up their differences, at least to the outward eye, for the abyss between them was too wide to be ever really bridged. Indeed, her efforts in this direction nearly resulted in what she most wanted to avoid, an open quarrel.

It came about in this fashion. The opportunity which had been foreseen arose; the sitting member for that county division in which Lord Devene lived had retired, and Dick was put up to contest the seat in the Radical interest against a strong and popular Conservative candidate. His chances of success were fair, as the constituency was notoriously fickle, and public feeling just then was running against the Tories. Also Lord Devene, although as a peer he could take no active part in the election, was using his great wealth and interest in every legitimate way to secure his nominee’s return.

When the contest, with the details of which we need not concern ourselves, drew near its close, Dick himself suggested that it might help him, and give variety to one of his larger meetings, if Rupert would come and talk a little about Egypt and the Arabs with whom he had fought so often. He knew well that although country people will attend political gatherings and shout on this side or on that according as they think that their personal advantage lies, all the best of them are in reality far more interested in exciting stories of fact from someone whom they respect, than in the polemics of party politicians.

When the suggestion was made to him, needless to say, Rupert declined it at once. Theoretically, he was a Liberal; that is to say, like most good and earnest men he desired the welfare of the people and the promotion of all measures by which it might be furthered. But on the other hand, he was no bitter Radical of the stamp of Lord Devene, who wished to pull down and burn for the sake of the crash and the flare; and he was, on the other hand, what nowadays is called an Imperialist, believing in the mission of Britain among the peoples of the earth, and desiring the consolidation of her empire’s might because it meant justice, peace, and individual security; because it freed the slave, paralysed the hands of rapine, and caused the corn to grow and the child to laugh.

Now Rupert did not consider that these causes would be promoted by the return of Dick to Parliament, where he would sit as a mouthpiece of Lord Devene. Then Edith intervened, and dropping Dick out of the matter, asked him to do this for her sake. She explained that for family reasons it would be a good thing if Dick won this seat, as thereby a new career would be open to him who sadly needed one; also that Dick himself would be most grateful.

The end of it was that Rupert consented, forgetting, or not being aware, that as an officer on leave he had no business to appear upon a party platform, a fact of which Dick did not think it necessary to remind him.

The meeting, which was one of the last of the campaign, took place in the corn-hall of a small country town, and was crowded by the supporters of Dick and a large contingent of his opponents. The candidate himself, who spoke glibly and well enough, for as Edith and others had often found out, Dick did not lack for readiness, gave his address, which was cheered by his friends and groaned at by his foes. It was of the stereotyped order—that is to say, utterly worthless, a mere collection of the parrot platitudes of the hour by which the great heart of the people was supposed to be moved, but for all that, well and forcibly delivered.

Then followed a heavy and long-winded member of Parliament, at whom, before he had done, the whole room hooted, while some of the occupants of the back benches began to sing and shuffle their feet. Next the chairman, a prosperous local manufacturer, rose and said that he was going to call upon Colonel Ullershaw of the Egyptian army, Companion of the Bath, member of the Distinguished Service Order, and of the Turkish Order of the Medjidie (he called it “Gee-gee,” or something like it), and the possessor of various medals, to say nothing of his being the relative and present heir of their most esteemed friend and neighbour, the noble Lord Devene, and therefore intimately connected with every one of them, to address them. The gallant Colonel would not make them a political speech, as they had had enough of politics for that night (at this the audience enthusiastically shouted, Hear, hear!), but he would tell them about the wars in Egypt which, although many of them did not approve of those wars, were still interesting to hear about as at any rate they paid for them (more hear! hears!). He might well call him gallant, as they would say also when he told them the following story, and to the absolute horror of Rupert, who was literally writhing on a back seat behind this dreadful man, and to the amusement of Edith sitting at his side, he proceeded to give a highly-coloured and garbled version of the exploit that did not win him the Victoria Cross, whereon a voice shouted:

“That’s all true. I was there. I saw the Colonel come in with the man.” (Renewed and tempestuous cheers.)

There being no help for it, Rupert rose, and was warmly greeted. He had never given his mind to public speaking, and although his voice was good and resonant, it cannot be said that at the beginning his remarks compelled attention. Indeed, after five minutes of them, Dick and his agent, counting him a failure, began to consult as to how they could get him down, while Edith felt mortified. Then, as he wandered on with a long and scientific account of the Egyptian campaigns, someone shouted: “Stow all that history book, and tell us about Gordon.”

Instantly Rupert took fire, for Gordon was his favourite hero, the man whom he had known, loved and revered above all other men. He began to tell them about Gordon, about his glorious and desperate enterprise undertaken at the request of the Government, about his splendid fight against overwhelming odds, whilst sick at heart he awaited the relief which was sent too late; about that journey to save him in which he, Rupert, had shared, about the details of his martyr-death. Then, quite forgetting the occasion and whom he had come to support, he broke into a really eloquent tirade against those whom he considered to be responsible for the desertion of Gordon.

To finish up with, in answer to the suggestion of a voice in the audience that Gordon was not really dead, he actually quoted some well-known lines of poetry which he had by heart:

“He will not come again, whatever our need,
He will not come, who is happy, being freed
From the deathly flesh and perishable things,
And lies of statesmen and rewards of kings,”

and then suddenly sat down amidst a tempest of cheers, mingled with cries of “Shame!” in which the whole room joined.

“Great Heavens!” said Dick fiercely, to his agent, “I believe that speech will lose us the election.”

“Shouldn’t wonder,” answered the agent grimly. “Whatever did you get him here for? Better have stuck to the party patter.”

Meanwhile a man, standing on a form, bawled out:

“And is them the beggars as you wishes us to vote for, master?”

Whereon followed what the local paper (luckily for Rupert his remarks were reported nowhere else) described as “great confusion,” which culminated in something like a free fight.

In the midst of all this tumult, Dick, who was beside himself with passion, forced his way to Rupert, and almost shaking his fist in his face, shouted at him:

“Damn you! You did that on purpose. You’ve lost me the seat, but sooner or later I’ll be even with you, you canting hypocrite—”

He got no further, for next instant Rupert’s heavy right hand fell upon his shoulder and forced him to a chair.

“You don’t know what you are saying,” he said; “but speak like that again, and I’ll throw you off the platform.”

Then Dick, feeling that iron grip still upon his shoulder, was silent.

Here we may close the account of this curious scene, which once more showed the undesirability of invoking the aid of inexperienced and too honest persons at party meetings. To Dick the matter was serious enough, but to Edith’s surprise, Lord Devene, whom she had thought would be angry, was intensely amused. Indeed, he went so far as to say that whether Dick got in or not, that one delightful story was worth the cost of the entire campaign.

When Rupert came to understand what he had done, needless to say he showed much penitence, and wrote a letter of apology to Dick, in which he “regretted having spoken the truth about Gordon in the excitement of the moment,” and gave him leave, if he wished, “to publish this letter.” Of this kind offer Dick did not avail himself. Under advice, however, he wrote back, saying sarcastically that the fault was his, who should have remembered that “distinguished men of action were rarely adepts at public speaking, and could not be expected to understand the exigencies of party affairs, which seldom made it desirable to drag the last veil from Truth, however pure and beautiful she might be.” He concluded by apologising, in his turn, for any words that he might have spoken “in the excitement of the moment.”

Thus, outwardly, at any rate, matters were patched up between them; still Dick did not forget his promise to be even sooner or later, or indeed the weight of Rupert’s hand, of which his shoulder showed traces for many a day.

As for the end of the contest, the Devene money and interest prevailed at last, Dick being returned triumphantly with a small but sufficient majority of fifteen votes, reduced to thirteen on a recount. A few days later he took his seat in the House, where he was enthusiastically received by his party, to which the winning of this election was of consequence.

Dick had not very long to wait for his first opportunity of “coming even” with Rupert. As it chanced, on the 11th of April, two days before the marriage, he met and fell into conversation with Lord Southwick in the lobby of the House.

“By the way,” said his lordship, “rather a pity that Ullershaw is just going to be married; we have got a job that would exactly suit him.”

“What is that?” asked Dick, pricking up his ears.

“Oh! a man is wanted who knows those rascally Arab sheiks who live about the frontier at Wady-Halfa—secret service mission, to get round them privately, you know; I can’t tell you the details, not that I think you would give me away to your people. The officer sent must be thoroughly acquainted with Arabic, and with the beastly manners and customs of the natives. Ullershaw’s name came up at once as the very man, but I said that I was going to his wedding in two days, so as we couldn’t think of anyone else, the matter was left over till to-morrow afternoon.”

“When would he have to start?” asked Dick.

“At once, the thing is urgent; on Friday by the Brindisi mail, about seven o’clock in the evening, and you see he is to be married that afternoon. It’s a thousand pities, as it would have been a great chance for him and for us too.”

Dick thought a moment and light came to him.

“My cousin Ullershaw is a curious fellow,” he said, “and I am not by any means certain that he would let his marriage stand in the way of duty, if it were put to him like that. How long would this mission take?”

“Oh! he could be back here in three months, but—er—you know—it would not be entirely devoid of risk. That’s why we must have someone whose nerve can be really relied on.”

“Ullershaw likes risks. As you say, it would suit him down to the ground. Look here, Lord Southwick! why don’t you give him the chance? It would be kind of you. It’s a shame to take away a fellow’s opportunities because he commits the crime of getting married, and matrimonial bliss will generally keep three months. Send for him and ask him. At any rate, he will appreciate the compliment.”

“Don’t think I should if I had only been married an hour or two,” said Lord Southwick. “However, the public service must be considered, so I will hear what my chief says. Where will a wire find him?”

Dick gave the address, and as an afterthought added that of Lord Devene in Grosvenor Square, where it occurred to him that Rupert would very likely be on the following afternoon, suggesting that it would be wise to send any telegram in duplicate.

“Very well,” said the Under-Secretary, as he made a note of the addresses. “I will settle it one way or another to-morrow afternoon; shan’t get the chance before,” and he turned to go.

“One word,” broke in Dick. “I shall take it as a favour if you don’t mention my name in connection with this matter. Of course I want to do him a good turn, but there is no knowing how the lady will take it, and I might get wigged afterwards.”

“All right,” answered Lord Southwick, with a laugh, “I’ll remember.”

“I don’t think that Edith would see spending her honeymoon amongst the savages of the Soudan,” reflected Dick to himself, with a crooked little smile, as he made his way into the House. “‘Not devoid of risk.’ Yes, Rupert’s friend, Gordon, went on a special mission to the Soudan, and did not come back.”

On the following afternoon about four o’clock, as Rupert was leaving his mother’s house to see Edith in Grosvenor Square, where she had taken up her abode, a messenger put a telegram into his hand, which read:

Come to the War Office at once. Must speak with you upon very important business. Will wait here till five.

SOUTHWICK.

Wondering what he was wanted for, Rupert told his cabman to drive to Pall Mall, and within half an hour of the receipt of the telegram sent in his card. Presently he was shown, not to the Under-Secretary’s room, but into another, where he found the Secretary of State, and with him, Lord Southwick.

“Prompt, very prompt, I see, Colonel Ullershaw,” said the former, “an excellent quality in an officer. Now sit down and I will just go over the main points of this business. If you undertake it, Lord Southwick will explain the details afterwards. You know the Wady-Halfa district and the Shillook Arabs and their headmen, don’t you, and you can speak Arabic well, can’t you? Also you have had diplomatic experience, haven’t you?”

“Yes, sir, to all four questions,” answered Rupert.

“Very good. These Shillooks have been giving a lot of trouble, raiding and killing people about Abu-Simbel and so forth. According to our reports, which you can see afterwards, they have been stirred up by a rascal called Ibrahim, the Sheik of the Sweet Wells. Do you know him?”

“Yes, sir,” replied Rupert, with a little smile, “he threatened to murder me the other day.”

“I can quite believe it. Now see here. We are advised that several of these Shillook chiefs, including the one who has the most influence, are getting tired of the Khalifa and his little ways, and are, in short, open to treat, if only they can be got at by someone whom they know and have their palms well-greased. Now, for various reasons, the Egyptian Government does not wish to send an embassy to them, or any officer who is at present on the spot. You see the Khalifa would hear of it at once and might come down on them. What is wanted is an envoy travelling apparently on his own business, or if it is feasible, disguised as an Arab, who will slip through to them quietly and arrange a treaty. I need not say that, whoever did this satisfactorily, would earn the gratitude of the Egyptian Government, and would not be overlooked at the proper time. Now, Colonel Ullershaw, it has occurred to us that you are the very man for this affair, especially as you would take our complete confidence with you.”

“I am much honoured,” said Rupert, flushing at the compliment. “I should like the mission above all things, especially as I understand these men, one or two of whom are rather friends of mine. Indeed, the most influential of them accompanied me on a shooting expedition, and if anyone can move him, I think I can.”

“There would be risks,” put in Lord Southwick meaningly, for under the circumstances his kind heart misgave him.

“I don’t mind risks, or, at least, I am accustomed to them, my lord,” said Rupert quietly.

“There is another point,” went on Lord Southwick. “Supposing that you were to fail—and failure must be contemplated—it might be needful, as no forward policy has been announced at present, for those in authority not to take any official notice of the affair, which would possibly be used as a handle for attack upon them. You would, therefore, receive no written instructions, and the necessary money would be handed to you in gold.”

“I quite understand,” answered Rupert, “and so long as I am not thought the worse of in such an event, or made to suffer for it, it is all the same to me. Only,” he added, suddenly remembering his forthcoming marriage, “when should I have to start?”

“By the evening mail to-morrow,” said the Secretary of State, “for the conditions may change and will not bear delay.”

Rupert’s jaw fell. “I am to be married to-morrow at half-past two, sir.”

The Secretary of State and Lord Southwick looked at each other; then the former spoke.

“We know that, Colonel Ullershaw, especially as one of us is to have the pleasure of attending your wedding. Still, in your own interests and what we are sure you will consider much more, in those of your country, we felt it right to give you the first offer of this delicate and responsible mission. Situated as you are, we do not urge you to accept it, especially as in the event of your refusal, for which we shall not in the least blame you, we have another officer waiting to take your place. At the same time, I tell you candidly that I do not think you will refuse, because I believe you to be a man who sets duty above every other earthly consideration. And now, sorry as I am to hurry you when there is so much to be considered on both sides, I must ask for your decision, as the other gentleman must absolutely have twenty-four hours in which to make his preparations.”

Rupert rose and walked twice up and down the room, while they watched him—Lord Southwick very uneasily. At the second turn, he halted opposite to the Secretary of State.

“You used the word duty, sir,” he said, “and therefore I have little choice in the matter. I accept the mission with which you have been pleased to honour me.”

Lord Southwick opened his mouth to speak, but the Secretary of State cut him short.

“As Colonel Ullershaw has accepted, I do not think we need waste further time in discussion. Colonel Ullershaw, I congratulate you on the spirit that you have shown, which, as I thought it would, from your record and the judgment I formed of you at our previous interview, has led you to place your duty to your Queen and country before your personal happiness and convenience. I trust—and indeed I may say I believe—that our arrangement of this afternoon may prove, not the starting-point, it is true, but a very high step in a great and distinguished career. Good-day; I wish you all success. Lord Southwick will join you in his room presently and settle the details.”

“It seems a little rough,” said Lord Southwick, as the door closed behind Rupert, “on his marriage day and so forth. Supposing he got killed, as he very likely will.”

“Many men, as good or better, have come to grief in doing their duty,” answered his chief, a pompous individual who modelled himself upon the Spartans, at any rate where other people were concerned. “He must take his chance like the rest. Give him the K.C.B. and that sort of thing if he gets through, you know.”

“K.C.B.s aren’t much use to dead men, or their widows either,” grumbled Lord Southwick. “I rather wish we hadn’t talked to him about duty; you see, he is a quixotic sort of fellow, and really, as he isn’t even to have a commission, there can’t be any duty in the matter. He’s only a kind of volunteer on a second-class, forlorn hope, to prepare the way by bribes and otherwise for an advance about which nothing is to be said, with the chance of being repudiated as having exceeded his instructions if anything goes wrong.”

“Really, Southwick,” said his chief uneasily, “it is a pity all this didn’t occur to you before you urged his employment—on the representations of his family, I understood. Anyway, it’s settled now, and we can’t go back on it. Besides, from a public point of view, it was important to get Ullershaw, who really is the only man, for that Major What’s-his-name is an ignorant and conceited fellow, with nothing to recommend him except his knowledge of Arabic, who would have been sure to make a mess. With the example of what has happened in the past before our eyes, we can’t commit ourselves in writing over a job of this sort. If he gets killed—he gets killed, and we are not to blame. If he comes through, he is made a K.C.B., and enjoys his honeymoon all the more. So don’t let’s bother about him. Is there anything else? No. Then good-bye; I’ll be off to the House.”

CHAPTER X.
MARRIED

Rupert left the War Office a very thoughtful man. He had spent nearly an hour with Lord Southwick, going into the details of his mission, of which he now realised the danger and complexity, for it was one of those fantastic embassies which seem easy enough to men in authority at home who are not called upon to execute them in person. All this he did not mind, however, for it appealed to his love of adventure; moreover, he had good hopes of bringing the thing to a successful issue, and understood the importance of its object, namely, to facilitate an ultimate advance against the Khalifa, and to help to checkmate Osman Digna, the chief who was making himself unpleasantly active in the neighbourhood of Suakim.

But what would Edith say? And on the very day of their marriage. The luck was hard! He drove to Grosvenor Square, but Edith was trying on her wedding dress and would not see him. She sent down a note to say that it would be most unlucky, adding that she had waited for him an hour and a half, and at last was obliged to go upstairs as the dressmaker could not stay any longer.

So he went on home, for he had to change his clothes and escort his mother to Grosvenor Square where, somewhat against her will, she was to dine and sleep. It was not till they were in the carriage that he found an opportunity of telling her what had occurred.

Mrs. Ullershaw was dismayed: she was overwhelmed. Yet how could she blame him? All she could say was—that it seemed very unfortunate, and she supposed that instead of going to Paris, Edith would accompany him to Egypt. Then they arrived at Grosvenor Square, and further conversation became impossible.

They were early, and Rupert sent a message to Edith to say that he wished to speak to her in Lady Devene’s boudoir. Presently she arrived beautifully dressed, and began at once to reproach him for not having called in the afternoon as he promised.

“You will forgive me when you know why,” he answered and blurted out the whole story.

She listened in astonishment, then said:

“Am I to understand that you are going off to the Soudan to-morrow, three hours after our marriage?”

“Yes, yes, dear. I had no choice; it was put to me as a matter of duty, and by the Secretary of State himself. Also, if I had refused, I am sure that it would have been remembered against me; and as you know, it is important now that I should get on, for your sake.”

“Men are generally supposed to have duties towards their wives,” she answered, but in a softer tone, for his remark about his career appealed to her.

He was right. Edith considered it very important that he should get on.

Also, now that she came to think of it, this swift and sudden separation would, after all, be no overwhelming blow to her. She seemed to have seen plenty of Rupert lately, and was quite willing to postpone that continual and more intimate relationship which it is the object of marriage to establish. Had she been what is called in love, it would doubtless be different, but Edith’s bosom glowed with no such ardours, of which, she reflected, Rupert had enough for both of them. The obvious conclusion was that it is quite as easy to respect, admire, and even sympathise with a spouse in the Soudan as with one living in London. Then as she was preparing herself to admit, as grudgingly as possible, that this change might be for the best, however much it tore her feelings, a new idea occurred to her. Probably Rupert expected that she would accompany him at twenty-four hours’ notice.

“It is dreadfully sad to be separated so soon,” she said, with a little sob. “I suppose that I could not come with you?”

Rupert’s face brightened.

“Well,” he said, “you could, but of course there are difficulties; not much time to get ready; hot season beginning and the cholera outbreak that is really bad in Cairo and Alexandria, at one of which I should have to leave you.”

“I can’t pretend, Rupert dear, that heat agrees with me, or that I should enjoy getting the cholera, which I am sure I should, for I always catch things, but at the same time,” Edith answered, looking at him with her sweet eyes, “I am perfectly willing to take the risk if you think I could be the slightest comfort or help to you.”

“Comfort, yes; help, no, rather in the way,” he muttered more to himself than to her.

For a struggle was going on in Rupert’s mind. He positively could not bear the idea of parting with his wife almost at the church door. It was a bitter disappointment to him, as it must be to any man who marries from motives of affection, and the very thought of it caused his heart to ache physically. At the same time, he knew that Edith did feel heat, for his mother had told him this, and the cholera was so virulent that he heard by letter from Cairo that every European there, also at Port Said and Alexandria, especially women and children, who could afford or contrive to get away, had done so. Could he take this utterly unacclimatised English lady thither at such a time, just out of selfishness, and at the beginning of the hot weather? Supposing she fell ill! Supposing anything happened to her! He turned white at the mere thought of such a thing, and said:

“Edith, I don’t want to disappoint you, but I think you had better not come till the summer is over and we are clear of the cholera. Then you can join me in Cairo, or more probably I shall be able to fetch you.”

“It must be as you wish, dear,” she answered, with a sigh, “for I can’t set up my opinion against yours. I would offer to come out with you, at any rate as far as Egypt, only I am afraid it would be a quite useless expense, as I am such a miserable traveller that even the train makes me sick, and as for the sea—! Then there would be the returning all alone, and no arrangements made about your mother into the bargain. However, don’t you think I might try it?”

“Yes—no, I suppose not, it seems absurd. Oh, curse the Secretary of State and Lord Southwick, and the whole War Office down to the cellars, with all the clans of the Shillooks thrown in. I beg your pardon, I shouldn’t speak like that before you, but really it is enough to drive a man mad,” and yielding for once to an access of his honest passion, Rupert swept her up into his strong arms and kissed her again and again.

Edith did not resist, she even smiled and returned about one per cent. of his endearments. Still this tempestuous end to that fateful conversation did nothing to make her more anxious to reverse the agreement at which they had arrived, rather the contrary indeed. Yet, and the conviction smote her with a sense of shame as it came suddenly home to her, the worst of it was, she knew that if Dick had stood in Rupert’s place, and Dick had been unexpectedly ordered to Egypt, not the sea, nor the heat, nor even the cholera which she feared and loathed, would have prevented her from accompanying him.

At dinner the whole thing came out, except the details of Rupert’s mission, which, of course, were secret, and it cannot be said that the news added to the gaiety of the meal. Although his appetite did not seem to be affected, Dick was most sympathetic, especially to Edith. Lord Devene said little, but looked vexed and thought the more; Edith sat distraite and silent; Rupert was gloomy, while Mrs. Ullershaw, who felt this upset keenly for her own sake as well as her son’s, seemed to be nigh to tears. Only Tabitha was emphatic and vigorous, for no one else seemed to have the heart to discuss the matter. Like Rupert she objurgated the War Office, and especially the man, whoever he might be, who had conceived the idea of sending him at such a time. “A schemeful wretch”—“One without shame,” she called him, translating, as was her custom, from the German in which she thought. Nor was the definition inaccurate, while the vigour with which she launched it caused Dick to hope sincerely that Lord Southwick would remember his promise to conceal his private but important share in the transaction.

“Ach! my dear Edith,” she went on, “it is awkward for you also, for however will you get ready to start for the East by to-morrow night?”

This was a bomb-shell, and its explosion nearly shook Edith out of her wonted composure.

“I am not going,” she said, in a hesitating voice, “Dick does—”

“Dick! What has Dick to do with it?” exclaimed her ladyship, pouncing on her like a heavy cat on a mouse.

“Nothing, I assure you,” broke in Dick himself, in alarm. “She meant Rupert.”

“Ach! I am glad to hear it. It does seem to me that there is too much Dick about Edith, even when she is getting married; yes, and everywhere.”

“I really think that Tabitha is right; there is too much Dick,” reflected her husband, but aloud he said nothing, only sipped his champagne and watched the play.

Nor, although he looked daggers, did Dick say anything, for he was afraid of Lady Devene, and respected the acumen which was hid beneath her stout and placid exterior. Then with his usual chivalry, Rupert, ignoring the Dick side of the business, came to the rescue and explained that he, and he alone, was responsible for Edith’s stopping in England, giving the reasons with which we are acquainted.

Lady Devene listened patiently as she always did to Rupert while he blundered through his story.

When it was finished, Edith, who had found time to collect herself, said in a somewhat offended voice:

“You see now you were unjust to me, Tabitha. I—I wished to go.”

Next moment she wished something else, namely, that she had remained silent, for Lady Devene answered with calm conviction:

“Indeed—is it so? Then I am sorry you have not more influence with him. It would have been better that you should go. Why did you tell him that you were afraid of the hot sun and of the cholera sickness? He would not have thought of it himself, who is afraid of nothing. Come, the subject is unpleasant; let us go upstairs and talk of the wedding presents.”

So they went and not too soon, for what between doubt, anger, and a guilty conscience, Edith was on the verge of tears.

That night after Rupert had departed Edith and Lord Devene spoke together in the library.

“What is the meaning of all this?” he said to her. “First, tell me, who engineered this mission of Rupert’s? Did you?”

“No, indeed,” she answered, with passion, filled for once with conscious innocence. “How can you accuse me of such a thing?”

“I am glad to hear it,” he replied, taking no notice of her indignation. “Then, as I thought, it was Dick. Be quiet and listen! Rupert’s employment was suggested more than a week ago. I heard about it in the House of Lords and put a stopper on it. I know that Dick saw Southwick yesterday, because the latter mentioned it in a note to me, since which time the idea has revived. You can form your own conclusions.”

“It is impossible,” broke in Edith. “He would never be so mean.”

“You have a high idea of your cousin, whom, for my part, I think capable of anything low. Well, it does not matter, it is done and cannot be undone. Now of course Tabitha was right. I admire her power of getting to the heart of things. Whatever may have passed between you, it was you who would not go to Egypt, not Rupert who would not take you. You know well enough that you could have made him take you; you could have refused to be left behind; but you talked about sea-sickness and heat and cholera—he let it all out at table.”

Edith sat silent. As other women had found before her, it was useless to argue with this remorseless man, especially when he had truth upon his side.

“Now,” he went on, “why did you refuse to go? Oh, pray save yourself the trouble of invention. I will tell you. As Tabitha says, because there is still too much Dick. You do not like the man who is going to be your husband, Edith; you shrink from him; oh, I have seen you clench your hand and set your lips when he touched you. You are glad of this opportunity to postpone your married life. It has even occurred to you,” and he bent over her and looked her in the eyes, “that from such missions as this, men often do not come back, as it has occurred to Dick. They pass away in a blaze of glory and become immortal, like Gordon, or they vanish silently, unnoted, and unremembered, like many another man almost as brave and great as he.”

Edith could bear it no longer, but sprang to her feet with a cry of: “Not that! Not that!”

“Not that, as yet, but all the rest, eh?”

“If so, am I responsible?” she answered. “Did I make my own heart, and who forced me into this marriage?”

“Oh, please understand me, Edith. I do not in the least blame you for disliking Rupert; indeed it is a sentiment in which you have my hearty sympathy, for no one can dislike him more than I do, or, I may add, with better cause. As for the rest, I suggested the marriage to you, I did not force you into that marriage. I still suggest it for the most excellent reasons which far over-ride petty personal likes or dislikes, but still I do not force you. Make this mission of Rupert’s an excuse for postponing it if you will, after which it can quietly drop out of sight. Only then, remember, that a document which I have signed to-day goes into the fire, or rather two documents, a settlement and a will. Remember that Dick goes out of this house, and as a consequence, out of the House of Commons also and into the gutter which Nature has fitted him to adorn. And lastly, remember that henceforth you make your own way in the world and provide for your own necessities. Now you will understand that I force you to nothing, for where that precious organ which they call their hearts are concerned, high-minded women—like yourself—will not let such material trifles weigh with them.”

Edith stood still as a statue. Then drawing the rose from her bosom she began to tear it to pieces, petal by petal. Lord Devene lit a cigarette, and waited till the rose was stripped down to its calyx.

“Well,” he asked, “does the oracle declare itself? I daresay it is as likely to be correct as any other,” and he glanced at the petals on the floor and the stalk in her hand.

“Why are you so cruel to me?” Edith moaned, thereby acknowledging that she had found her master, and letting the stalk fall. “It is not manly to mock a defenceless woman who has many troubles.”

A shade of compunction passed across his steely face, of affection even.

“Forgive me,” he said, “I do not wish to hurt you, but we are people of the world, and have to deal with facts, not with sentiments and fancies. I put the facts clearly, that is all.”

“What are your facts?” went on Edith. “That I am in love with Dick Learmer. I deny it. I am not, and never have been; but this is true, that he does in some way attract me, one side of me, even when with my mind I dislike and despise him. That I detest Rupert whom I am going to marry. I deny it; but it is true that he repels me, one side of me, even when with my mind I appreciate and honour him, who is worth all of us, except perhaps Tabitha. As a father or a brother I should adore Rupert Ullershaw. Now you think that I am going to marry him for the money and the prospects, and from fear of your anger—it is not altogether so. I do not know if you will understand me, or even if I can make myself intelligible. But I tell you that although it would ruin me, for I know you keep your word, I would do what you suggest and postpone this marriage as a preliminary to breaking it off, were it not for one thing. It is this. I feel as though that personal aversion which I have is but accidental and temporary, that a time may and must come when it will break down and vanish, and that then I shall love him as I desire to do, with my heart, my body, and my soul.”

Lord Devene stared at her.

“Curious and most interesting,” he said. “No; that is not satire. I quite believe you, and I think it very likely that what you feel in yourself will come about—probably too late. Meanwhile, to deal with the evil of the present day, are you going to accompany him to Egypt or will you await the coming of this—this psychological change of the inner woman?”

Edith evidently had no spirit left to enable her to reply to this barbed shaft. She only said:

“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.

Then came the reception, a long, long ceremony, remarkable for the multitude of strange faces and for a room set out with wedding gifts which were “numerous and costly.” Champagne was drunk also, and the bride’s health proposed by Lord Southwick, who described her as one of the loveliest and most charming young ladies in London, a truth at which everyone cheered, for it was obvious. He ended with a panegyric on Rupert himself, briefly recapitulating his services and the distinctions which he had won, which were, he was convinced, only earnests of those greater distinctions that remained for him to win. Finally, he regretted that the call of duty, to which this gallant officer had never been able to turn a deaf ear, forced him to separate, he was glad to say for but a short while only, from his beautiful and new-wed wife.

Rupert replied, thanking the proposer and the company for their good wishes. He added that there were trials which all men had to face unexpectedly, and this early and sudden separation was one of the greatest that had come to him, especially as it had obliged him to refuse his wife’s first request, that she might be allowed to accompany him to Egypt, which he was forced to do because of the cholera that was raging there.

Then he stopped, and Edith thanked him for his words with a grateful smile while the guests began to melt away. Dick sauntered up, beautifully arrayed, and remarking sympathetically that they had only three hours before the departure of the train, asked, in a voice loud enough to attract general attention, where they had finally decided to spend their honeymoon.

Edith drew herself up and answered: “Here in London when Rupert returns from the Soudan, or perhaps in Egypt,” after which public announcement, until they were together in the carriage going to the station, her husband found it impossible to secure even a private word with her. Again the subtle Dick had succeeded in adding one more course to the wall which it was his evil aim to build between Rupert and his wife.

The one thing which always stood out in Rupert’s mind above the level of the grey and dim confusion of this marriage, like a black mountain-point from an evening mist, was his farewell to his mother. While he made his last preparations for his journey, finding that Edith was not with him, she came timidly to the room and sat by his side. Mrs. Ullershaw was sad, but strove to conquer her mood, or at any rate, to hide it, speaking cheerfully of the honour that had been done him by the Government and the advantage that he might hope for as a consequence. Rupert, too, strove to be cheerful, though the frost of gloom that fell on him, colder and yet more cold, nipped his heart and killed all joy. She felt it, and at length, poor, loving woman, her grief got the better of her and she burst into tears.

“Oh, why does not Edith accompany you?” she said. “I cannot bear to think of your going out there alone within three hours of your marriage. If only I could have had a little more time, ill and feeble as I am, I would have come with you as far as Cairo, for, my boy, my boy! how can I know that I shall ever see you again?”

Then after his manner Rupert turned and faced the situation, simply and plainly.

“You can’t know, dearest mother,” he said, “neither of us can know; but what does it matter? Sooner or later that separation must come, but fortunately we are both of us convinced that it will be the last. Even to-day when I should be so happy, I cannot pretend that the world satisfies me; indeed it seems as full of pains and troubles as ever, for things have gone wrong and my anxieties are increased. Well, very soon the world will pass from beneath our feet, and then, as you have taught me and I am sure, the true life begins. This I promise, as I promised you years ago, that while I live I will try to be honest and upright as you are, so that at the last we may be together again. If you go first, then wait for me, as, if I should be called away, I will wait for you.”

She turned her streaming face towards him and smiled and there was something in the smile that frightened and thrilled him, for it was not altogether of the earth.

“I know it,” she whispered—“all, all. It is true, and I bless God who has tied us together everlastingly. They are calling you. Go, Rupert. No, I cannot come, I do not wish those people to see my grief. Go; and God’s blessing and mine go with you, as they shall,” and she laid her trembling hand upon his head in benediction while he knelt beside her.

Then he kissed her and they parted.

In the hall they were all waiting, Edith in the charming travelling-dress which she had designed for her going away. He said good-bye to them, Lord Devene remarking with a smile that he was afraid he was already beginning to find out that even matrimony, though it was said to have descended from on high, could not escape its share of shadow. Dick congratulated him warmly upon things in general and wished that he had his chance which, he was sure, would bring him every sort of good fortune, whereon Lady Devene muttered, “Unberufen!” and looked indignantly at Edith, and the saturnine butler, who, thrusting aside the footman, showed him to the carriage—for he was really attached to Rupert—muttered that he only hoped that he “should see him back alive out of them there savage parts.”

The door of the carriage slammed, the footman, with his wedding favour still upon his breast, touched his hat and sprang to the box, the coachman waved his white beribboned whip, and the horses started forward into the gloom, for rain was falling heavily. So at last he was alone with Edith—for about ten minutes.

She took his hand affectionately, more she could not have done had she wished, since the passers-by stared idly at the blazoned, aristocratic-looking carriage and the horses and servants decked with wedding favours. She reminded him how they had driven together from the station when he arrived from the East, and said how strange it was that now she should be driving with him to the station as his wife to see him off again to the East. Indeed she talked far more than he did whose heart felt too full for words, and who had looked forward for months to a very different departure with his bride. Suddenly he remembered that he had not given her the address to which she must write to him in Cairo, and the rest of their brief journey was occupied in his efforts to put it down as well as the jolting of the carriage would allow.

Then came the confusion of the station, where porters, thinking that they were a couple going away upon their honeymoon, and finding out his name from the coachman, rushed after him calling hi! “Colonel,” or sometimes “My lord,” and were ultimately much astonished to discover that he was travelling alone by the Brindisi mail. Everything was arranged at last, and the pair stood together forlornly at the door of his smoking carriage in which there were two other passengers. Then as the guard called to him to take his seat, the footman stepped forward, touched his hat again, and handed him a letter with the message that it was from his lordship, who said that there was no answer. Rupert thrust it into the pocket of his ulster, embraced his wife, who wiped her eyes with her handkerchief and tried to smile, and after another long minute which seemed an eternity of time, the great engine whistled and the train moved forward into the rain and the darkness.

Rupert sat still for a little, while the image of Edith standing alone upon the platform faded from his sight, waiting for the confusion of his mind to clear. Then he put his hand into his pocket to find his pipe, more from habit than from any desire to smoke, and in doing so, found something else—Lord Devene’s letter, which he had forgotten.

What was he writing to him about, he wondered, as he broke the seal of many quarterings and began to read. This was the letter:

My Dear Rupert,—When you told me that you had insured your life for £10,000 and settled the amount upon Edith, I intimated to you that I also proposed to make her a wedding present in money. (“So he did,” thought Rupert, “I had forgotten all about it.” ) I now write to say that I have carried out this arrangement. Under deed I have paid to her trustees, and settled to her separate use, the capital sum of £25,000, of which the interest will be paid to her quarterly, she having the right to dispose of the corpus by will in favour of anyone whom she may wish. In the event of her having children, however, it is to be divided in equal shares among them at her death.

“That’s a lot,” thought Rupert to himself. “I wonder why he gave her so much. Well, it will make her life easier.” Then he went on with the letter and found the answer to his question.

Perhaps you will wonder why I am so liberal, so I may as well tell you at once what possibly you have guessed; what, indeed, although she does not know it, you must learn sooner or later. Edith is my daughter.

These words seemed to stun Rupert. He felt the weight of the blow without appreciating its significance. Three times did he re-read them. Then at last their full meaning came home to him, and with it a knowledge that he must control himself, that he must say or do nothing violent, show no strong emotion even, for those two other men in the carriage, whose curiosity, it was clear, had been deeply excited concerning him, were watching him over the tops of their newspapers. He would read on and think afterwards.

It is very possible that my late wife Clara, with whom you will remember you used to be friendly in your youth, may have expressed to you, as she often did to others, her jealousy and hatred of Marian Bonnythorne. It was well-founded, though Clara, from whom I was practically separated for many years before her death, had no real cause to complain of the matter. Nor indeed had Bonnythorne, who, after a long course of neglect, deserted his wife to go into a monastery, leaving her to me to support. You will not wish for details, as my present action will assure you of the truth of what I write. Nor do I intend to make any excuses. I look back to my intimacy with Marian Bonnythorne, of whom I was truly fond and who was fond of me, as the pleasantest episode in an existence that, notwithstanding my worldly advantages, I have not found delightful. I am very glad that Edith was born, as it is probable that she will prove the only issue whom I shall leave, and the fact of her illegitimacy does not in the least affect me, who have no high opinion of our matrimonial system. I regard Edith, indeed, with as much affection as though I could acknowledge her to be my child before the world, which, for her sake, I cannot do.

To proceed. It will now be clear to you why I forwarded this marriage between you and my daughter by every means in my power; why also I have kept the truth from both of you, fearing lest, did you know it, some of the absurd notions of which I observe you to be a victim, might lead you to be mean enough to break your engagement.

I have no reason, Rupert, to hold you in special regard. Of one matter I will not speak; indeed, though not of your own will—if you had one in those days—you did me a good turn there. I bear you no grudge, as I trust you will bear me none when you fold up this letter. But there is another cause for our want of sympathy. I have earnestly desired to have sons of my own, an inbred weakness which I confess has become almost a mania, but when I look for those sons, in their place I see you. You will inherit the rank and great wealth which should have belonged to them. It is therefore obvious and natural that I should wish my only child to share these with you, and her children to take them in their turn. One word more.

I respect you. I think you have grown into a good man according to your lights, although they are not mine, and you have done what none of us have succeeded in doing before, earned yourself an honourable position by your own exertions. Therefore I can with confidence and satisfaction leave Edith in your hands, especially as you have chanced to become earnestly attached to her, and as otherwise she would in all probability have fallen into those of that scamp, Dick Learmer, a man of whom I warn you to beware.—

Very truly yours,

DEVENE.

P.S. I am exceedingly sorry that this contretemps about your being ordered to Egypt should have happened at such a moment. You should have insisted upon Edith accompanying you, for carpe diem and its joys is an excellent motto, and it is unwise to leave behind you a wife who is only so in name. But as usual, your own obstinacy and quixotic notions have stood in your way, since when Edith offered to go this morning, you forbade her to do so in my presence. I could say no more, and you must abide the issue. Believe me, I earnestly wish your safe return for both your sakes.

D.

Rupert replaced the letter in its envelope and thrust it into his pocket. There was nothing to be said; nothing to be done. Fate had him in its net. But oh! how would it all end? He asked it of the night; he asked it of his own heart; but no answer came. Only the beat of the wheels as they rushed forward shaped themselves to words and said to him:

“You have married Devene’s daughter. Poor man! Poor man! Poor man!”

That was their song through England, France, and Italy. Then the thudding of the screw took up its burden, and chanted it until he saw the low coasts of Egypt outlined before him and set his face to duty once again.

CHAPTER XI.
AN OFFERING TO THE GODS

About six weeks after he had said farewell to Edith at Charing Cross Station, Rupert found himself once more upon the banks of the Nile and staring by the light of the full moon at the colossal statues that sit upon the façade of Abu-Simbel. So much had happened to him since last he contemplated their gentle, stony smile that its unvarying sameness struck him as irritating and almost strange. Somehow, he expected that they would look different.

Certainly Rupert looked different; so much so, that if they had been endowed with remembrance, the statues would scarcely have known him again, for now he was dressed in the flowing robes of an Arab sheik. These could not, as he knew, suffice to disguise his Western origin. Still, in a desert land, devastated by war, through which few travelled, they might, he hoped, render him less conspicuous to the keen eyes of wandering Arabs, or even of spies surveying his little caravan from the shelter of a bush or the top of a sand-hill a mile or two away.

For the rest, it was his intention, if accused, to declare himself a European, of the German race, making a journey to sell merchandise to certain sheiks whom he had been informed were anxious to buy at good prices. For this purpose he had a licence to trade, signed by the authorities at Cairo, in favour of one Mahommed, a German who had turned Mussulman, and whose European name was Carl Gottschalk. This merchandise of his, which was loaded upon eight camels, consisted of cotton goods, sugar, copper wire, and oddly enough, a certain quantity of guns and ammunition, also what was a strange possession for a trader setting out upon a trip, about £1,000 in gold. All these things, it is scarcely necessary to explain, were in reality designed to be used as presents to propitiate the wavering frontier chiefs, to whom he was the accredited envoy, and to dispose them to assist instead of opposing the forward movement which was then in contemplation as a first step in the re-conquest of the Soudan.

He had started some days before from Derr, opposite to Korosko, with his caravan of about thirty camels and some five-and-twenty trained and trusted men, most of them Soudanese, all of whom had seen military service, although they were disguised as drivers and attendants. At Abu-Simbel he was to receive certain reports from spies, who had been sent on to collect information, and then to strike out into the desert to fulfil the object of his mission.

In order that he might be able to think over the hazardous details of the work before him in quiet—for even at night the grumbling of the camels about his camp, which was pitched a few hundred yards away, disturbed him—Rupert entered the hypostyle hall of the rock-hewn temple and seated himself upon the dry sand that had drifted into it, resting his back against the third of the northern row of the huge effigies of Rameses II., which are clothed in the wrappings of Osiris and bear his crook and scourge. Here the darkness was relieved only by a faint ray of moonlight, which crept up the solemn, central aisle, and the silence was that of a tomb.

When he had been in the place for half an hour or so, weary with thinking, Rupert began to doze, but was awakened suddenly by the sound of feet moving over sand, and looking up, saw two figures glide past him, one of them somewhat taller than the other, to vanish into the recesses of the temple so quietly that they might well have been ghosts of its ancient worshippers. For a while he remained still, wondering who these were, and what they could be doing in such a place at midnight, or near it, when all men slept.

At first he thought that he would follow them, then remembered that he was not seeking adventures, and that, after all, it was no business of his to interfere with them, so long as they left him alone. Therefore, being now wide awake again, he pursued his cogitations, purposing to rise presently and return to his camp to sleep. A few minutes later, ten perhaps, chancing to glance up the great temple, Rupert perceived far, far away, a tiny star of light. From where he was it looked no stronger than that of a distant planet in a cloudy sky, or of a glow-worm amongst the tall grasses of a bank. This light roused his curiosity, as he guessed that it must have to do with the figures that had passed him. Probably they were treasure-seekers, he reflected, engaged in digging in the sanctuary, which in the day-time they did not dare to do. They might even have found the secret of the crypt that he always believed to exist under Abu-Simbel, wherein very possibly its gold and silver treasures were still hidden from the eyes of men. The thought excited him who, as Edith had good cause to know, was an ardent Egyptologist.

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.

She let her arm fall and scanned him.

“Rupert Bey!” she exclaimed. “So you are back again. Well, I have heard, also I always knew that you would come. But what do you here disguised as an Arab sheik? And why do you spy upon us at our rites? Oh! I tell you that had you not been Rupert Bey, by now you were a dead man.”

Meanwhile, the younger woman, who had followed Bakhita, not knowing the cause of the disturbance, actually stumbled against him, then recoiling, stood still, and in her amazement slowly let her hand sink, thereby emptying upon his feet the contents of the bowl she held.

It was a very curious sight—this big Englishman in his Arab robe, standing quite still and upright, lest any show of fear should bring about a knife-thrust, and the beautiful Eastern woman in her sacred but diaphanous garb, wearing the disc and the imposing emblem of Egyptian royalty, and slowly pouring her involuntary libation upon his feet. Its setting also was strange. All around were the great columns and carven walls, and staring down at them from beyond the altar those mutilated but still awful gods.

“Put up that knife,” he said, “and come into this side-chamber and I will tell you.”

Bakhita stooped, and lifting a dark, camel-hair cloak from where it lay on the floor near to the altar, threw it about the shoulders of her companion, drawing its hood over her head. Then taking her by the hand, she said to Rupert:

“We follow!” and led the way between the columns to the first chamber that opened on their right. It was a rough place, which probably in past ages had served as a storeroom of the temple, peopled with many bats that flittered to and fro unceasingly, uttering thin cries. Setting down the lamp upon one of the stone benches or tables with which it was furnished on either side, she said: “We are your servants, Rupert Bey,” adding, with her grim smile: “Have we not poured a libation to you?” and she looked at his feet wet with the contents of the glass bowl.

“It was not to me that you came here to pour libations,” he answered, laughing. “Now tell me, friend. What was this lady doing?” and he bowed towards the younger woman, “for never have I been more curious to learn anything upon earth.”

“Tell us first what you were doing, Rupert Bey? Nay, not about your business—I know all that—but why you followed us into the sanctuary?”

“For the same reason that you followed me into the temple—by pure accident. I was seated at the feet of one of the columns when you passed me, though who you were I did not guess. Afterwards, seeing the light, I came to look. That is my story; now for yours.”

“Mea,” she said, “tell him what you will. He has seen; but he is a true man, and I think will keep our secrets if he promises, especially as he knows that if he does not, then I will do my best to kill him.”

Rupert laughed, for he was not frightened at Bakhita’s threats. Meanwhile the lady called Mea was searching his face with those wondrous eyes of hers. Then she spoke in a low, rich voice and in English, not Arabic.

“Will you promise to be true to me, Gentleman?” she asked, in a curious idiom and speaking with a strong accent.

“If you mean not to tell your secrets, certainly!” he answered, smiling.

“My secrets, they are very little ones, only babies so high,” and she held her hand near to the floor. “You see, Bey, I live far out in the desert, and my people and I, we still old Egyptians though we cannot read their writings, and only remember a little—a very little, about the gods and what they mean. Now, dressed like my mothers when they pray, I come here to-night with Bakhita, my aunt, your friend, to make offering to that god with the sun upon his head, because I in much danger and wish to ask him to bring me safe back to my own place.”

“Where, then, do you come from, lady?”

“I? I come from school—Mission School at Luxor. I tired of living in the stupid dark, so I go there two year ago to learn all about the white people, and the English talk, and—” she added with triumph, “you hear, I learned him.”

“Yes,” he said, “you learned him very well. And what else did you learn?”

“Much. Reading, writing, ’rithmetic, gography, history of U.S.A., British Empire, and old Egypt, especially old Egypt, because I one of him, though they no know that who think me common girl, no one know that but you, Bey, who catch me in act of worship. I learn religion too, and think it very good, much the same as mine, only different.”

“Are you a Christian, then, lady?” asked Rupert again.

She shook her head, causing the disc and little golden snake she wore to glisten in the lamp-light.

“No, not quite Christian, only half, not baptized. I afraid if baptized, make old fellows—” and she pointed towards the gods in the sanctuary, “angry and bring bad luck.”

“I perceive that in all things you are too superstitious,” said Rupert, quoting aloud to himself.

She looked puzzled, then her face brightened as the meaning of the last word came home to her.

“No,” she said, “not superstitious like beastly Mahommedan, only afraid. That why I come here in not decent night-dress,” and she held out her little foot naked except for the sandal, and again shook her head as though in regret for a state of affairs over which she had no control.

Rupert laughed loudly, causing the bats which had settled to flitter from the roof again, and Mea, who seemed to be a merry little soul, joined in his laughter. This made old Bakhita angry, and she reproved them both in a stern voice.

“Do not cackle here,” she said, in Arabic, “in the very house of the gods, though it is true that to one of you they are no gods, and already the other has a foot set in that same path,” and she glanced wrathfully at Mea. “Listen, Bey! I make a request of you. I do not ask for myself, who am old and ugly, but for this lady. I have heard that you ride to-morrow at night-fall. Now our road is yours, for I know the sheiks to whom you go. Give us and our two servants leave to ride with you. We have good camels of our own,” and she looked at him with anxious eyes.

“Why do you want my escort, and whither?” he asked doubtfully.

“Why? For this reason. Do you remember the Sheik Ibrahim, he of the Sweet Wells? Yes, I see you do. Well, he is an old enemy of our house. He asked for the lady here in marriage, and was refused. Yes, the dog, he dared to ask that after once, by ill chance, he had seen her beauty. Now he has found out that we are going to make this journey, and his plan is to take her as already he has tried to take her at Luxor. But if we were with you, that he would not dare to do, for he has prostrated himself to the Government since you were away, and will not touch one whom he knows to be their envoy, although you may call yourself Mahommed, and be dressed like an Arab.”

“I am not sure of that,” answered Rupert. “Friend Ibrahim does not love me.”

“No; but he fears you, which is better. With you we should be safe.”

“How long do you wish to travel with me?”

“Two days only, till you come to the pass in the Jebal Marru. There you will follow along the mountains, but we cross them, and go on into the desert that is called Tebu till we come to more mountains and a certain secret oasis among them, which we name Tama, where no white man has ever set his foot. A while ago, Bey, you asked me of the lost temple. It stands there in our home, and I promise you this—let us ride in your shadow, and whenever you have leisure I will show you that temple in payment. Yes; and the wonders of the burying-place of the kings of the desert who once ruled there, and whose child, the lady Tama, stands at your side. Refuse, and I swear that you shall never see them.”

“The bribe is great,” said Rupert, “but, mother, I must not take bribes.”

“No,” she answered, “it is your business to offer them, is it not, else why do you carry so much gold in your baggage? Ah! you see I have good spies.”

“So good,” he said, “that evidently on this point they have misinformed you,” for he was sure that she was but guessing. “Well,” he repeated, “I must not be bribed, and pleasant as would be the company of both of you, I have other game to hunt.”

Mea drew herself up, looking wonderfully dignified notwithstanding her lack of height, and said in Arabic:

“My aunt, our request is refused; it is not seemly that we should ask again. We will go down the Nile a little, and hide till our messengers bring us an escort. Let us bid this Bey farewell; we keep him from his sleep.”

“Perhaps the Bey has not done speaking,” said Bakhita, who saw that Rupert had but paused in his words.

“You are right, mother, as usual,” he went on, “and you know so much that I do not mind telling you a little more. It is my object to travel as a merchant; in fact,” he added, “I have taken to that business which is more profitable than fighting.”

Bakhita waved her hand to indicate that to attempt to throw dust in her eyes was mere waste of time, and he continued, smiling:

“Now merchants often take women with them, calling them their wives or daughters, purposing to sell or to make gifts of them to great emirs or sultans, whereas soldiers never do. Therefore, perhaps if you were in my company I should look more like a merchant, so I think that if you wish it I will take you. No, no, do not bow to me, for my own sake, not yours, especially as we are not sure of the way to the Jebal Marru, and doubtless you can guide us. Also have no fear; all that I have seen and heard is secret, though one day I hope that you will show me that temple in the oasis. Now I ride to-morrow at moonrise as I wish to pass the Sweet Wells the next night when men are asleep. You and your two servants can meet me where the path joins the road beyond the hill.”

Bakhita seized his hand and kissed it. Evidently her mind was much relieved, and she was very grateful. Fearing lest her companion should follow her example, Rupert, who disliked such displays, said to her:

“Now that this is settled, are you not going to finish pouring your libations on the feet of the god yonder?”

Mea shook her head and answered:

“That I no can do; the libation is all poured on the feet of the man. I hope the god will not be, what you call it, jealous, and make you pay,” and lifting the alabaster vessel she turned it upside down to show that it was empty.

“Then I will say good-night,” said Rupert, “as perhaps it is best that we should not leave this place together. To-morrow, half an hour after moonrise, at the cross-paths, unless you should change your minds and go alone. Remember, I cannot wait,” and bowing to Mea he left the chamber and groped his way down the hall towards the faint light that flowed through the door-place of the temple.

When he had gone the two women looked at each other.

“My aunt,” said the younger, “have we done well? Shall we not bring that Bey into danger at the hands of the cursed Ibrahim?”

“Perhaps,” answered Bakhita coolly. “If so, he takes us for his own sake, not for ours; you heard his words.”

“Yes; but I do not believe them. It is for your sake that he does this because he thinks that you are his friend. If Ibrahim knows that we are with him, he will attack him and then—”

“And then,” answered Bakhita; “well, I am told that Rupert Bey fights very well, and his men are brave and trained to war. Also it is necessary for us to find an escort. Had you come when you said you would a hundred of your own tribe would have brought you safely across the desert, but being frightened because Ibrahim tried to steal you at Luxor, you chose otherwise, and now it is not safe for you to bide here till we can send for them. Still, if you do not wish to travel with this Englishman, put on a blue robe and a yashmak and go to his tent to-morrow as if to sell corn, and tell him so, for I will not.”

Mea thought a while, then looked up and said:

“Nay; I do wish to travel with him, for Fate made me pour the libation of the god upon his feet, and therefore is it that I wish to travel with him.”

CHAPTER XII.
THE WANDERING PLAYERS

The moon was up, and Rupert, in his Arab garb and mounted on a dromedary, rode at the head of his caravan towards the district called Sheb, in which the Sweet Wells were situated. A few miles from Abu-Simbel, where the paths crossed, his head-man, a sergeant named Abdullah, drew his attention to four figures on white camels who appeared to be waiting for them, and asked if he should go forward to learn their business. Rupert answered no, as they were only two women and their servants to whom he had promised escort as far as Jebal Marru. The man saluted and said nothing. Presently the four joined the caravan, two veiled bundles, in whom indeed it would have been difficult to recognise Bakhita and Mea, placing themselves beside him and the men falling behind.

“So you have come,” said Rupert, saluting them.

“Bey, we have come,” answered Bakhita. “What else did you expect?” and without more words they rode forward across the desert.

Presently, in the midst of the intense silence, far away as yet, they heard a sound of wild music that grew clearer as they advanced. It was a very thrilling music, shrill and piercing and accompanied by the roll of drums.

“What is it?” asked Rupert of Bakhita.

“The Wandering Players,” she answered, “and I wish that we had not met them.”

“Why not?”

“Because they bring ill fortune, Bey.”

“Nonsense!” he exclaimed. “You mean that they want baksheesh.”

“Then offer it to them and see,” she said.

Now they were passing a fold in the sand-hills, and on the crest of one of these hills, that to the right, Rupert perceived the Wandering Players. There were five of them, all seated upon the sand, and all so wrapped up that nothing could be seen of them, at any rate, in that light. The three who faced the caravan were playing upon bell-mouthed pipes, and the two who squatted opposite to them kept time upon drums which they beat with wonderful rapidity. As the caravan approached, this savage music grew very weird and moving; indeed its quality was such that once heard it could scarcely be forgotten. It seemed to cry and wail, yet there were notes in it of surprising sweetness.

“Give those players ten piastres for their trouble,” said Rupert to his sergeant, Abdullah; and muttering something, the man guided his camel up the slope towards them, then offered them the money.

They took not the slightest notice of him, only played on more wildly than before, till at length he threw the coins upon the ground and left them.

“I think they are ghosts, not men,” he reported to Rupert, “since there are no people in this country who will not take baksheesh.”

“Ripe fruit does not remain unplucked,” answered Rupert, in the words of the Arab proverb, “and that which falls the children gather.”

Still, he wished that he had gone to look at the people himself, if only to discover what tribe it was that produced such remarkable players. Then they rode forward, and for some furlongs the penetrating sound of those pipes and the gusty rolling of the drums seemed to keep time with the swinging step of their camels, till at last the music grew fitful and faint and died away in the distance.

When the moon was down, about three hours before the dawn, they halted by a well and slept till daylight, Bakhita and Mea occupying a little tent apart, which their servants pitched for them, and the camels grazing upon the desert scrub. While the sky was still grey, Rupert drank the coffee that had been made for him, and sent two pannikins of it, with some biscuits, to the women’s tent. One was kept and one returned untouched.

“Who does not drink?” he asked idly.

“Bakhita, Bey. She says she touches no white man’s liquor.”

“So you know her?” said Rupert.

“Oh, yes, Bey,” answered the man sulkily, “and we shall all of us know her better before we part, for she is a gipsy from the far desert, and has the evil eye. I felt cold all down my back when we met her last night—colder even than when that music played which is made by ghosts out of the tombs.”

“Those who remain silent cannot speak folly,” said Rupert, in another proverb, and dismissed the man.

Then they marched on, camping again in the afternoon until the moon should rise. That night, about one o’clock, they came to the Sweet Wells, and stopped to give the camels drink and to fill their water-bags. Rupert had arranged to arrive here at this hour when he thought that the sheik Ibrahim would be asleep and not likely to oppose their passage. For the same reason, he kept as far as possible from the town, if it could be so called, but soon saw that his progress was being watched, since men were sitting about on sand-heaps and in the shadow of thorn trees. Indeed, one of these rose unexpectedly before them and asked who they were and why they passed through the territory of his chief without offering a present.

By Rupert’s direction the sergeant, Abdullah, answered that they were a trading party who hoped to see Ibrahim on their return, when they would make him a good present. He did not add, however, that it was Rupert’s wish to avoid meeting this truculent and treacherous man until he had bound over the powerful sheiks who lived beyond him to the interests of the Government, when, as he knew, he would have nothing to fear from the chief of the Sweet Wells and his handful of fighting men.

The sentry answered that it was well, especially as he could not now see Ibrahim, who had gone away with a number of his tribe, having ridden towards Wady-Halfa that very day. Then staring hard at the two veiled women upon their camels, he asked whether the gipsy, Bakhita, and her daughter were travelling with them. Abdullah hastily answered no, adding that the two women were his relations whom he was taking to visit their families. The man said no more, so with the usual salutations they passed on.

“Why did you say that, Abdullah?” asked Rupert.

“Because, Bey, had he known who these female bringers of ill-luck are, we should soon have had the whole tribe of them about us. It is said everywhere that Ibrahim wishes to take the young one, who is a great chieftainess, for a wife, and that he had sworn to do so.”

“Lies are stones that fall on the head of the thrower,” replied Rupert, for he was troubled and uneasy, and now wished sincerely that he had refused to escort Bakhita and her beautiful niece who made offerings to Egyptian gods to secure a safe journey across the desert.

He sent for Bakhita and the girl, who guided their camels alongside of his.

“Tell me,” he said, “what is this story about the lady here and the sheik Ibrahim, who, it seems, is really looking out for her?”

“What I told you, Bey,” Bakhita answered. “In old days, when Ibrahim’s tribe was the stronger, our people fought him and drove him back over the Jebal Marru—that was more than a hundred years ago. In the summer before last, when my lady of Tama and I, with a large escort, were coming from our home to the Nile, we camped at the Sweet Wells and accepted a present of food from the sheik Ibrahim. In the morning before we marched he visited us, and by misfortune saw Mea unveiled and was set on fire by her beauty, so that at once he asked her in marriage, the dog of a Prophet-worshipper. Having many men with us, I answered him as he deserved, whereon, growing angry, he replied that that which was refused could still be taken, but since we had eaten his salt, it must be done another time. So we parted, for we were too strong to be attacked. Now through his spies at Luxor and along the Nile he has learned that Mea is come back, which she did hurriedly when not expected, because he tried to kidnap her in Luxor itself. So it came about that I had no escort ready for her. Nor did I dare to stop at Abu-Simbel, for I heard that he proposed to attack us there so soon as you were gone, and there was no steamer by which she could descend the Nile again, whereof his people watch the banks. Therefore we sought your merciful protection.”

“I think that before all is done you are likely to need it,” said Rupert, “and were I what I seem that would not trouble me, but now I am afraid.”

“Let us leave the Bey and take our chance,” said Mea, speaking across him to her aunt in Arabic. “It is not right that we should bring him into danger. I told you so from the first.”

“Yes,” answered Bakhita briefly, “if the Bey so wishes.”

Rupert glanced at Mea, who had drawn her veil aside, perhaps that she might see him better. The moonlight shone upon her sweet face, and he perceived that her eyes were full of fear. Evidently she dreaded the sheik very much indeed, who knew that in this lawless land where might was right, he could take her without question if he were able, and force her into his harem.

“The Bey does not so wish,” he said. “You are with me; bide with me. Often the thing we fear does not happen, my lady Tama.”

With a grateful glance and a sigh of relief, Mea let fall her veil again, and both of them dropped back into their accustomed place in the caravan. At their next halt Rupert noted that one of Bakhita’s two attendants remounted his swift dromedary, after it had been watered and allowed to feed a while, and started forward at a trot. Again he sent for Bakhita and asked where the man had gone. She answered that he had been despatched as a messenger to their tribe in the hope that he would get through the mountains unmolested. His orders were that, could he succeed in this, he was to collect a hundred men as soon as possible and bring them to meet their lady.

As it appeared, however, that the oasis which was Mea’s home could not be reached by the swiftest camel under several days’ journey, Rupert did not concern himself further about the matter. Only Abdullah grumbled, saying that he believed the man was a spy who had gone forward to make trouble. For Abdullah, who had discovered that Bakhita and her three companions were neither Christians nor Mahommedans, was full of suspicion, especially as he and the rest of Rupert’s escort were convinced that the old woman was a witch with the evil eye and probably in the pay of the Khalifa. Such, indeed, had been her reputation at Abu-Simbel, to which Bakhita’s curious knowledge of events and private histories, together with her very remarkable powers of observation, gave much colour.

On the night following that of these events, the party camped by some water at the foot of the rugged and barren range of hills known as Jebal Marru, in the very mouth of the pass, indeed, through which ran the only practicable road, that was used, though rarely, by travellers journeying from one desert to the other. At its entrance this path was very narrow, a mere cleft in the rock, not more than fifty or sixty feet wide, and flanked on either side by sheer cliffs. Here Rupert and Bakhita and her companions were to part, for his road to the village of the first sheik whom he was going to visit ran along the foot of the hills, whereas theirs passed through them. At the earliest dawn they struck their camp, which they could not do before, since the road was too rough to attempt in the dark, and Rupert having seen that everything was in order for the march, went to bid good-bye to Bakhita and her niece.

While they were thanking him very heartily for his escort in the fine language common to Orientals, which on this occasion was meant earnestly enough, Abdullah hurried up and announced, in an alarmed voice, that a band of over a hundred men, mounted on camels and horses, was advancing upon them. He added that he believed them to be the chief Ibrahim and his followers. Instantly Rupert ordered that all the camels should be driven into the mouth of the pass, and that the men, with their rifles and a good supply of ammunition, should take refuge behind the boulders that were strewn about, in case an attack was contemplated. Then turning to Bakhita, he said quickly:

“Your camels are good and fresh. If you take my advice you will be gone. Probably they will not get through us for some time.”

Bakhita said the counsel was wise, and ordered the camel, upon which she was already seated, to rise; but the girl seemed to hesitate. Stepping to Rupert as he turned away, she seized his hand and pressed it against her forehead, murmuring in her peculiar English:

“This trouble not my fault, all old woman Bakhita’s fault, who think of nobody but me, not of you at all. I—I think much of you, my heart sick, I cry my eyes out. Good-bye! God bless you and damn Ibrahim.”

Even then Rupert could not help smiling at this peculiar valedictory address. At that moment a man came and spoke to him, and when next he looked, Bakhita, Mea, and their servant were already vanishing round the bend of the pass. Now, as he wished to show no fear, he ordered his men to sit about as though they were still camping, but to keep their rifles ready, and accompanied by Abdullah and another soldier, went to a large rock in front of them, sat down, lit his pipe and waited.

By this time the band was quite close and had halted. Presently two men rode out from among them, in whom Rupert recognised his old acquaintance the sheik Ibrahim, and the sentry with whom they had spoken near the Sweet Wells. Ibrahim rode up, and from a distance asked if he had peace.

“Those who bring peace find it,” answered Rupert.

Then Ibrahim dismounted and walked forward alone, leaving his servant to hold his horse. Rupert also walked forward until they met and exchanged salutations.

“Bey,” said Ibrahim, surveying Rupert’s garb with his flashing eyes, “you have changed your dress since last we spoke yonder on the hill above Abu-Simbel. Tell me, have you changed your heart also and become a servant of the Prophet whom I can greet as brother?”

“You had other names for me than brother at Abu-Simbel,” answered Rupert evasively. “What is your business, Sheik Ibrahim, with the merchant Mahommed, who, by the way, offers you his congratulations, having learned that now you also are a servant of the Government.”

“My business, Bey,” he replied, “has nothing to with the Government, or with you. Two women are travelling with you who are my property. Hand them over to me.”

“Two free women were travelling with me, Sheik, but I cannot give them to you as they are gone.”

“Whither?” asked Ibrahim.

“Really, I do not know, it is their own affair,” said Rupert calmly.

Now the sheik’s evil temper began to get the better of him.

“You lie,” he said. “I will search your camp, for they are hidden there.”

“If you wish to find rifle bullets, search,” replied Rupert significantly. “Listen, Ibrahim! I am camped here, and here I shall stay until you go, since I do not trust you and will not expose myself to attack upon the road. If you venture on violence, it is possible that you may succeed, since my mission is peaceful and I have but few men. But then the Khedive, your lord, will stamp you out, you and your tribe, and so there will be an end of an evil and dangerous man. I have spoken, go in peace.”

“By Allah! no,” shouted the Arab, “I come in war, for besides that of these women there is an old account to settle between you and me, who caused my town to be raided by the Government of Egypt, my women to be insulted, and my herds to be taken. Choose now. Hand over to me your camels, your merchandise and your arms, and of my mercy I will let you go. Resist, and I will take them all and offer to you, infidel, the choice between death and Islam.”

“Empty drums make a loud noise,” replied Rupert contemptuously, whereon the Arab, lifting the spear which he carried, hurled it at him.

Rupert sprang to one side, so that the weapon missed him by a hair’s-breadth.

“Now,” he said, “I can shoot you if I wish; but I will not forget my honour because you forget yours. Dog! God will avenge your treachery on you.”

“By my beard!” roared the Arab, “I will avenge Allah on you—yes, your infidel lips shall kiss his holy name.”

Then Rupert walked towards his men, who were running out to his assistance.

“Back,” he said, “and take cover. Ibrahim is about to attack us.”

So they went back and, since flight seemed utterly impracticable, having hastily tethered the camels in a recess of the cliff out of reach of rifle fire, lay down, every man behind a rock. Here Rupert addressed them, telling them what had passed, and saying they must either fight or be robbed and made prisoners, which would probably mean their death, since Ibrahim would not dare to allow any of them to live and be witnesses against him when he was brought to account for this great crime. Therefore, though they were but few, as they, mounted on camels, could not run from horsemen, it was wise that they should do their best.

The soldiers, who were all of them brave men, answered that it was so, they were few, still they would fight and try to beat off these Arabs. Only Abdullah looked downcast, and added that this trouble came upon them through the women, and that it would have been good to give them to Ibrahim.

“Would you think so if they were your wives or daughters?” asked Rupert scornfully. “How could I surrender them who had eaten of my bread and salt? Also they have gone. But if you are afraid, Abdullah, do you take a camel and follow them. The rest of us will hold the pass and give you time to get away.”

Now some of the servants began to mock Abdullah and to call him “woman” and “coward.”

So the man grew ashamed and said that he would show them that he was as brave as they.

Then a rifle bullet, evidently aimed at Rupert, who was standing up to address the soldiers, whistled past his head and flattened on the rock behind. The fight had begun.

Rupert saw the man who had fired the shot from the back of his camel about two hundred yards away, for the smoke hung over him. Snatching up the Winchester repeating rifle which he carried, he set the sight rapidly, aimed and fired. He was an excellent game and target shot, nor did his skill fail him now. Almost instantly they heard the clap of a bullet and saw the Arab—it was that very sentry with whom they had spoken at the Sweet Wells—throw up his arms and pitch heavily from the saddle to the ground.

The soldiers shouted, thinking this a good omen, and at once opened fire, killing or wounding several of their enemies, whereon the Arabs hastened to take shelter, sending their horses and camels out of reach of the bullets.

The mouth of the pass was strewn with large stones, and creeping from one to another of them, the Arabs advanced slowly, pouring in a heavy fire as they came. As it chanced, this did but little damage, for Rupert’s cover was good, while as they moved forward his rifles found out several of them. Thus things went on for a full hour, till at length Rupert saw the head of a soldier near him, who had incautiously exposed himself, drop forward on to the rock. He was shot through the brain, and immediately afterwards one of his comrades, who rose to lift him, thinking that he might be only wounded, received a bullet in the shoulder.

So the fight stood for all that live-long day. No more men were hit, for after this lesson they dared not show themselves, and unless they did so, the enemy did not fire. There they lay, cramped up behind their stones and baked in the burning sun. Of food they had plenty, but as it happened the water, of which there was none here, was scarce, for they had used nearly all of it on the previous night, expecting to be able to refill their bags at a well a little further along the mountains. Although it was husbanded, soon the last drop had been drunk, so that towards evening they began to suffer from thirst.

At length the sun sank and the darkness came.

CHAPTER XIII.
THE END OF THE FIGHT

Now during all these weary hours Rupert had been taking counsel with himself. He was skilled in Arab warfare, and guessed that Ibrahim’s plan was not to attempt to rush him in the daylight, which at best would cost him many more men and might mean defeat, but to get among his little band with the spear under cover of the night, or perhaps just at the break of dawn. Utterly outnumbered as they were, to such a move as this there could be but one end—annihilation. It was, however, possible that it would not be made; that the Arabs would be content to continue their present tactics, knowing that Rupert had no hope of succour, and that soon or late thirst must conquer him. Therefore it would seem that he was driven to choose between two alternatives—surrender or retreat. He gathered his men together and addressed them through the darkness, not hiding from them how desperate he thought their plight.

Under the circumstances, he said, if they wished to surrender he would not forbid them, only then he believed that whatever promises were made, they would all be killed, or at the best taken away and sold as slaves to the Khalifa, or his emirs, with whom, doubtless, Ibrahim was in league. For himself, however, he should certainly not surrender, but choosing the best place he could find, fight on till he was killed like Gordon.

With one voice the soldiers said they would not suffer this; their business was to die with their captain, not desert him: they were Soudanese and men, not Fellaheen.

He thanked them simply, and put before them the second alternative—that of retreat. The pass behind them was open, though none of them had ever travelled it, and a map he had showed a water-hole about some thirty miles away in the desert beyond, which they might reach. Or failing that, when they were clear of the pass they could turn and skirt along the mountains, taking their chance of water and of safety. Or they could try to cut their way back to Wady-Halfa, a thing however that seemed hopeless, since if they got through, they would be overtaken, surrounded and picked off in the open desert.

Having discussed the matter among themselves the men announced their decision that flight was best. For the rest, they said, they resigned themselves to el Mektub which means “to that which is written”; or in other words, to Destiny. Then Rupert called the roll to see that all were present. Two did not answer to their names—the dead man and the sergeant Abdullah. At first it was thought that the latter had been killed also, till someone remembered that early in the afternoon he had gone to tend and feed the camels, since when he had not been seen. Afterwards it was discovered that, anticipating his commander’s plan, he had already retreated—with the best camel—an act of cowardice which, it will be seen, produced very grave results to Rupert, and indeed profoundly influenced his subsequent career. For here it may be said at once that Abdullah got back to the Nile in safety by skirting round the mountains, and needless to add, made his own report to the authorities, which, as it happened, there was no one to contradict.

Now, their counsel taken, the little band set themselves to carry it out as best they could without delay, since they knew not at what moment the attack might be delivered. First they built a fire of whatever material they could collect and lit it, so as to suggest to the Arabs that they remained in camp there. Also, having said the prayers for the dead over him, they set their fallen companion behind a stone, above which one hand and his rifle projected, in such a position that the light of the fire fell upon them. Two of the worst camels also they left behind, that their roaring might deceive the enemy into the belief that the caravan had not moved. This done they started as noiselessly as possible, only to find that their task was more difficult even than they thought.

The moon not being up, the darkness in that narrow gorge was intense; moreover, the pass was strewn with boulders and pitted with holes washed out by water, in one of which a camel soon broke its leg and had to be killed with a knife and left with its valuable load. Not half a mile further on another camel fell over a bank or precipice—they could not tell which—and vanished, while a man twisted his ankle, and a second, stumbling, struck his forehead against a stone and cut it badly. After this Rupert ordered a halt till the moon rose since to proceed was practically impossible. At length the moon came, but the sky was cloudy, also she was on the wane; so they found themselves but little better off in that deep gulf. Still they struggled on, praying for daylight, and taking comfort from the thought that if the Arabs followed, matters would be equally bad for them.

The sky turned grey, the dawn broke, and then with the startling suddenness that will be familiar to all travellers in the Egyptian desert, the sun rose, and by its light they pushed forward. For a mile or so all went well till they came to a place where the pass opened out, and its sides, no longer precipitous, were clothed with scrub and boulders. Then suddenly from behind one of these boulders rang out a rifle shot. A few yards ahead, in the centre of the valley, was a little hill or kopje, also boulder-strewn, and understanding at once what had happened, namely, that the Arabs, foreseeing this retreat, probably on the previous afternoon, had sent most of their force over the mountains to waylay them, Rupert shouted to his band to make for this kopje and hold it.

They did so under a fierce fire, but as the Arab shooting was bad and the mist still hung at the bottom of the valley, without much loss. On the kopje were two or three of the enemy’s marksmen whom they dislodged and killed. Then taking the best positions they could find, the little company prepared itself to inflict all the damage it could upon its foes before it met its inevitable doom. Although a man fell now and again this was delayed for several hours, until at length the rest of the Arabs, who had followed them down the pass, arrived.

Then came the last bitter struggle. Such things sound heroic to tell of—the forlorn stands of the few against the many always do—but in practice they are only dreadful; the glory is naught but a residuum deposited in the cauldrons of their sanguinary and seething horror by the powerful precipitants of distance, romance, and time.

Thus this last desperate fight of a few wearied men against many may be noble to read of, but in fact it was merely hideous. Brave things were done by these black Soudanese, who, if they are well led and trust their leader, will not surrender with a loss of about five per cent in killed and wounded; indeed surrender was talked of no more. But though it was emphasised thereby, who could think of gallantry when a man shot through the bowels lay writhing on the ground beside him, cursing and praying by turns, but still loading his gun, and, in the pauses of his paroxysms, bringing other men to their death. When the tongue is hanging from the jaws with thirst, when the brows throb with fatigue and pain, and the heart is well-nigh bursting with rage, grief for those who will be seen no more, and apprehensions of the dreadful end, who can think of the cup and chaplets of fame, and the empty trappings of honour?

At least Rupert could not. He fought on grimly; he did his best. Two rushes he repelled, for now that their fire slackened, the Arabs were trying to make an end of them with the spear. In the intervals that followed these rushes Rupert thought of Edith. He wondered what she was doing, and remembered that without doubt she would be comfortably in bed and asleep, dreaming no dreams of him and his sore plight. He wondered if when he died, as he must do in a few minutes, it would wake her, or whether she would still sleep on as his spirit passed. Then he remembered the other woman, that strange, high-bred native girl, and it came into his mind that she would wake however sound she slept, and that there would be vengeance taken for this death of his, the wild vengeance of the desert. Next he forgot all such things, and shook a dying comrade by the hand.

“Kismet!” said the man, with a ghastly smile, “and we have killed more of them than they can kill of us. The water of the Sweet Wells will be bitter for a while. Allah is good and Paradise pleasant. Are you hurt, Bey?”

“Not yet,” he answered, “but wait, I come presently. Ah! that got him fair.”

“No, don’t come,” answered the man, “live on if you may. He who lives long sees much, and amongst other things vengeance on his enemies. Live on, and you will see the sheik Ibrahim hanging to the bough of a thorn.”

Then the soldier grunted, rolled on to his face, and was dead.

Puffs of smoke spurted from behind rocks; spears shone in the sunlight; hoarse voices announced the fact which nobody contradicted—that Allah was great and Mahomet was his prophet; here and there men fell forward or backward, still declaring that Allah was great, and instantly departed from the body to put the argument to proof. Blood ran in thin, black streams, and was soaked up by the thankful soil; men died beneath the hands of their fellow-men as in this devil-ridden world they have done from the beginning, and will do till the end. Untouched by some miracle, Rupert still fought on. His rifle was empty; a tall, bearded Arab had fallen before its last shot. Then quite close to him he saw Ibrahim, and remembering his revolver, drew it, when suddenly a heavy blow from behind felled him to the ground.

Rupert came to himself again, and by degrees understood dimly that he was not dead, since he lay where he had fallen, and all about him were slain and wounded men. Near by, also, stood two of his own people, captives, with their hands tied behind them. The sheik Ibrahim was questioning them, promising them life if they would tell him where they had hidden away the gipsy Bakhita and her companion, the lady Mea. They answered that they accepted his terms, and would do so with pleasure. They were hidden in the desert, whither they had departed before the beginning of the fight, so if he wanted them he had best go look for them there.

This answer seemed to infuriate the sheik, who called to some of his people to kill “these dogs.” They came, whereon the two men, putting down their heads, butted at them like rams, and knocking one of them down, jumped and trampled on his face until the cruel swords did their work with them and they died there. Then the wounded were killed also, so that presently, of all his company, Rupert alone was left alive.

Now they caught hold of him and asked him questions about the women, but he pretended not to be able to speak because of thirst, pointing to his throat and mouth. The artifice succeeded, for they brought him water, of which he stood in terrible need. The bowl was large, but he emptied all of it, and felt his life come back to him. Now Ibrahim addressed him.

“Dog of an unbeliever,” he said, “you see that your cunning and courage have not availed against the decrees of Allah who has destroyed all your band!”

“It is so,” answered Rupert; “but he seems to have destroyed many of yours also. Here I count over twenty of your dead, and thirty wounded. Allah is just, and takes life for life.”

“Blaspheme not, dog! Of Allah I will speak to you afterwards. Tell me—where are the women?”

“Those brave men whom you murdered after promising them their lives have told you; they are in the desert. Go; search for them there. Come; I tire of this talk. Murder me also, and begone to meet the doom that God prepares in this world and the next for the traitor and the liar.”

“You wish to die, then?” asked Ibrahim, lifting his spear.

“Aye; why not? My people are slaughtered; I would join them. Also, I must make report of you and your deeds, and prepare you a place.”

The Arab dropped his spear; Rupert’s words seemed to frighten him.

“Not yet, nor so swiftly,” he said. “Bind him and put him on a camel. He shall see us catch these women, and after that we will judge him according to the law.”

So they tied Rupert with ropes, and set him on his own dromedary. Presently he started forward with the Arabs—about forty of them. The rest were either dead or wounded, or had been left to convey the latter and the rich booty, including the thousand pounds in gold, back to the Sweet Wells. At the mouth of the pass, a few miles further on, they searched, and in some soft soil found the spoor of the camels ridden by Bakhita, Mea, and their servant, and seeing that it led out into the desert beyond, followed swiftly. All that day they rode till they came to the water-pool that was marked upon the map, and here, being very weary after their desperate fight and long travelling, the Arabs would go no further, although their sheik urged them to do so. So they camped there by the water, and ate dates and cakes of flour, some of which were given to Rupert.

Whilst they ate, an old man and two old women, one of them blind—wanderers who were hidden in the scrub near the water—crept out and begged for food. It was given to them, and when they had filled themselves, Ibrahim asked them if two women and a man mounted on camels had passed that way.

They answered, yes, about thirty hours before. By this time they must be far away as, after only a short rest to water their camels and to eat, they had departed very swiftly.

Now Ibrahim understood that his prey had escaped him. Indeed, the Arabs refused to follow them any further into the desert, where they feared they might be trapped by Mea’s people, and die like their brethren in the pass. His rage knew no bounds, since he was well aware the booty that he had taken could not in the least compensate for the death of so many of his best men; whose loss in a private quarrel, moreover, would be bitterly resented by the tribe, and especially by the women. He was sure, also, that as Rupert had said, the Government would avenge this great murder by sending an expedition against him, which could only be avoided by his escaping with the remainder of his people to join the Khalifa.

Lastly, all had been done in vain, since the woman, Mea, whom he desired with the fierce intensity which is characteristic of the inhabitants of the Soudan, had got away safely to her own land of Tama which was far too strong for him to attack. All these ills and others had been brought upon him, he reflected, by his old enemy, the English Bey, who had protected Mea, and with his small band fought so stubbornly in the pass that he had been unable to pursue and capture her. Hate of this dogged infidel boiled up in Ibrahim’s black and cruel heart, till with a flash of joy he remembered that at least he could make him pay for these misfortunes.

Suddenly he gave orders that the prisoner should be led before him. Accordingly he was brought to where Ibrahim sat near the cooking fire under the shadow of an ancient and wide-spreading thorn.

“What is your pleasure with me, Sheik?” asked Rupert calmly. “Is the appointed hour at hand? If so, be swift, for I am tired and wish to sleep.”

“Not yet, dog,” answered Ibrahim; “and perhaps not at all, for I remember the saying: ‘He is merciful who forgives.’ Though an infidel, you are a brave man.”

“I do not ask your forgiveness; it is you who should ask mine, who have again broken faith with your master the Khedive and murdered my people without cause,” answered Rupert proudly.

“Nor do I offer it,” said Ibrahim; “but Allah offers, and I am his servant. Once—do you remember?—I promised you that a day would come when I should command you to make choice between death and Islam. It is here. Choose now. Accept the faith publicly, which should not be hard to you, seeing that already you wear the garb and travel under the holy name of the Prophet; write it in a letter to your masters at Cairo that you renounce them and are one of the faithful, and that you blame me not, and go free. Or refuse and die an infidel. I have said.”

Rupert laughed in his face.

“Have done with such idle talk,” he answered. “Am I a child or a woman that I should be frightened by death which I have faced a score of times since yesterday? Traitor Ibrahim, you can bind my body, but not my spirit. I have chosen.”

So he spoke and stood still, awaiting death. But it did not come. Ibrahim turned aside and consulted with some of his people. Then with a cruel smile he said:

“I will not be provoked. I will still show mercy and give your stubborn spirit time for repentance, that it may not lose the joys of Paradise. Throw him down.”

They obeyed, and as he lay on his back staring through the branches of the tree at the tender sky above, Rupert saw one man, whom he had heard speaking of himself as a butcher by trade, draw his sword, while another heated the broad blade of a spear in the fire. Then for the first time he felt afraid. Death he did not fear—but mutilation!

Fourteen hours had gone by and Rupert was still living. Yes, although they had hacked off his right foot, and in the morning when again he refused to accept the Koran, burnt out his left eye and scored his cheek with a hot iron, being strong, he still lived. Now he was seated on the saddle of a dromedary beneath the thorn tree, a noose about his neck, the rope to which it was attached being thrown over a bough of the tree. They were about to hang him, but first, again in the name of mercy, gave him a little while to change his mind and accept the faith.

The agonies of his body and his soul were very great, but Rupert still sat there proudly, the ruin of a man, uttering no complaint, making no plea for pity. Only in his heart he wondered humbly what he had done that these terrors should come upon him. Then he remembered that in this blood-stained Soudan, the home of fanaticism and devilry, many a man as good or better than himself—yes, and many a woman also, had been called upon to suffer even worse things, and bowed his mangled head in submission to the decree of Destiny. Never once during those long hours of torment had he dreamed of purchasing its remission, as by a word he could have done. For this he took no credit to himself, whose faith and pride were both too deeply rooted to permit him even to entertain the thought.

This world was ended for him; none would ever know even the hideous fashion of his farewell to the sun. Now he had but one desire left—to show no sign of pain or fear to his tormentors, and brave and loyal to the last, to enter on the next. Even those heartless fiends marvelled at his courage, and grew half ashamed of their red work. They wished to let him go, but Ibrahim said nay, it was too late, he must die for their safety’s sake. Indeed, even had Rupert been weak and entered Islam, it was still his intention that he should die. Only the Arab wished to break his spirit first as he had broken his body.

They had left him alone a while, knowing that he could not stir, and were saddling their beasts. Now they came back, all of them, and stood in front of him, watching him with curious eyes. God be thanked! the end was at hand, and soon he would feel no more of those racking pains. There they stood, grave and silent, pitying him in their hearts, all except Ibrahim, who chose this moment to expound to his victim the principal doctrines of the Koran, and to assure him that he must certainly go to hell.

Rupert made no answer, only looked over the heads of his tormentors, with the eye that was left to him, at the little slope of land opposite, of which the crest ran not more than a hundred yards away. Was he mad, or was he altogether blind, and did he perhaps see visions in his blindness? If not, coming over the brow of that hill were horsemen, armed with spears, and amongst them a woman, who also held in her hand a spear. They looked, they halted, they spread out, but the murderers, intent upon the face of the dying man, never heard the sound of them on that soft sand and against the strong desert wind.

“It is without avail,” Ibrahim said. “The infidel dog rejects the cup of mercy; let him die the death of a dog,” and he seized the rope.

“One moment,” broke in Rupert, in a thick voice, “that last point of yours, Sheik, touches my reason; light breaks upon me from on high. Repeat it, I pray you.”