There was a King in Egypt Part 32

"You behaved splendidly! I knew it was an awful trial to you. You knew I understood, Meg?"

"It was a trial," Meg said, "but why am I so little when I am put to the test, and why do I feel so big, so far above such contemptible things, when I look at a distance like that?"

"Because you're a darling, human woman, Meg." Michael's arms went round her. "Because there would be no merit in our victories if the battles were quite easy."

"I suppose not, but for your belief in me, Mike, I want to be as big as the biggest thoughts I've got, and I'm only as small as my meanest."

"You are the mistress of my happiness, Meg."

Meg's eyes shone with understanding, while his words called up the figure and the bright rays of Akhnaton.

"Freddy said that I am to act as a curb on your unpractical tendencies, Mike. I felt very deceitful. He doesn't know how much I've aided and abetted them."

"He never imagined that he'd a practical mystic for a sister, did he?"

"Never," Meg said.

"But that's what you are, dearest--a practical mystic. You are a woman with two sides to your nature--the intensely practical and the subconsciously mystic. Egypt has developed the mystic half--your Lampton forbears are responsible for the other."

"The Lampton half of me keeps my two feet firmly planted on the earth, Mike."

"The mystic half loves this silly drifter." He pressed her to him.

"The practical half says, come back to the hut and help Freddy."

And so they went.

PART II

CHAPTER I

Michael's travels in the Eastern desert had barely extended over a three days' journey by camel and some hours spent on the Egyptian State Railway, which runs by the banks of the Nile.

The town of Luxor lies on the right or east bank of the Nile, four hundred and fifty miles to the south of Cairo. Tel-el-Amarna, or "The City of the Horizon," Akhnaton's capital, lies about a hundred and sixty miles south of Cairo. Michael could very easily have gone almost all the way to the modern station of Tel-el-Amarna, or Haggi Kandil, by boat or by train from Luxor, which faces the Theban Hills, in whose bowels lies the great Theban necropolis, the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings, which had been his home for some months. But that was not his idea; he wished to spend all his days in the solitude of the desert, so he started his journey at a point half-way between Luxor and Tel-el-Amarna.

This was not his first pilgrimage to the eastern desert.

Luxor and a.s.suan both lie on the east bank of the Nile; the great Arabian Desert in Egypt stretches from the Suez Ca.n.a.l to a.s.suan; after a.s.suan it is called the Nubian Desert. The Libyan Desert stretches from Cairo to a.s.suan, but on the western bank of the Nile. Michael's desire was for the uninterrupted ocean of sand which stretches from the sh.o.r.es of the Atlantic to the cliffs which give the Nile its sunsets. Its infinity of s.p.a.ce drew him to it.

In the desert, where a traveller begins his day at dawn and ends it at sundown, where the slow tread of his camel is only interrupted by a short halt for the midday meal, and the days roll on and into each other as the sand-dunes roll on and into succeeding sand-dunes, the sense of hours and days becomes lost. With nothing in front of the eye but an infinity of sky and distance and nothing active in that distance but dazzling heat, moving over the desert, the mind becomes a part of the intense solitude.

The traveller's ego is comatized; he takes his place with the elements.

When the traveller's long day's march is done, the wonder of the starlit nights makes his past life seem still more unreal. It has been truly said that the solitary contemplation of the desert stars either for ever convinces a doubter of the certainty of a G.o.d, or confirms his opinions as an Atheist. When Michael was alone with the stars, the Sweet Singer of Israel's words ever rang in his ears:

"When I consider Thy heavens, the work of Thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which Thou hast ordained;

"What is man, that Thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that Thou visitest him?"

During the three days spent on camel-back in the desert nothing had happened which the world calls happening. Michael's small equipment was proving itself entirely satisfactory and sufficient for his needs. His guide and his servants were both agreeable and obedient. His head-man or guide was none other than the soothsayer who had predicted the astonis.h.i.+ng wealth of the tomb which Freddy had discovered. He had travelled far and wide in the great Arabian Desert and he had also helped at the excavations at Tel-el-Amarna.

Although apparently nothing had happened, no events which would bear recording in the diary of a practical explorer, yet much had happened which evaded the limitations of words. The things which had happened were the great things which mattered to Michael's mind. They had produced an extraordinary sense of repose; they had settled his nerves and allowed his convictions to steadily develop, to emerge from shadowy dreams. If he thought less constantly of Margaret as the days wore on, it was with more satisfaction and confidence. He ceased to blame himself for confessing his love; he accepted that also as an act of the guiding Hand.

On the desert march Michael generally went at the head of his cavalcade.

He liked the wide sweep for the eye, the great expanse, undisturbed, even by such picturesque figures as the natives on their camels. Over and over again he rode for hours in a beautiful dream; he gave himself up to the intoxication of immensity. At such times the thought would come to him that if he turned the universe upside-down, nothing would happen.

The high heavens would be made of golden sand and the limitless earth of bright blue--that would be all the difference; nothing would tumble about, for there was nothing to tumble; nothing would be standing on its head, for there was nothing which had a head to stand on. G.o.d's world was as it had been before the creation of man.

Since his _Hijrah_, as Freddy called his flight from the valley, he had ceased to think about his own standing on his head. He had accepted the fact that a man must work out his own life as truly as he must work out his own salvation. To be a weak copy of Freddy would be contemptible; it would be better to be an out-and-out failure and drifter for the rest of his days. As a failure he would at least be living the life he best understood, the life which to him seemed fuller than the lives lived by successful materialists.

For the whole three days in the desert he had scarcely pa.s.sed a living creature; it was the most desolate journey he had ever taken. Some portions of the great desert are much more barren than others, more extraordinarily desolate. The whole thing, of course, depends upon the all-important water. One writer's words explain the matter concisely--"there are two kinds of desert in Egypt, the desert of sand, which is only desert because it is left without water, and the desert which is desert because nothing profitable will grow there."

Probably the country over which Michael had travelled belonged to the last type of desert. There had been wonderful effects of light and shade and strange changes in the colour of the sand and rocks, owing to geological reasons. Sometimes such strange effects that he found it hard to believe, from a distance, that there were not bright carpets or gay flowers spread on the sands.

To the uninitiated it sounds as if such a journey could become dangerously monotonous and boring, and so it would to the eye or mind which has not the true desert instinct. Michael's had it. He loved its pa.s.sionate intensity of sky and s.p.a.ce as a true sailor loves the ocean.

He loved his "s.h.i.+p of the desert," which bore him silently over the rolling waves of sand, as a Jack Tar loves his s.h.i.+p. He loved the stories of the desert which his guide told him at night under the southern stars, as an English Jack Tar loves his fo'c's'e yarns.

Although nothing ever happened, there was for Michael something happening every minute, some fresh beauty which revealed a new phase of Nature, some geological surprise which changed the colour and atmospheric effect of his surroundings. At one time mirage after mirage appeared and disappeared like delicate, subtle dreams; fair cities sprang up on the horizon with white-winged sailing-boats drifting on their waters; tall palm-trees, black against the light, stood up and refreshed the eye, only to become fainter and fainter until they were no more.

These fair Jerusalems, G.o.d's help to tired travellers, with eyes grown weary of emptiness and s.p.a.ce, made beautiful interludes in the day's march. Since their first day's march they had seen no real desert villages, with their much-treasured palm-trees and picturesque inhabitants, for they had made for the open desert. Where palm-trees grow, there are also human habitations and Government taxes. Anything green in the desert which is of lasting duration is the result of artificial irrigation. But if the sand brings forth no food for man or beast, its emptiness holds a world of prayers and desires.

It was about noon of the fourth day of Michael's journey when he saw in the distance a cavalcade of camels riding towards him. It had emerged out of nothing; suddenly it became clearer and clearer. Was it mirage?

It was still so distant that it might yet prove an optical delusion.

He stopped his camel. Abdul, seeing that his master evidently wanted something, rode forward quickly.

"Look, Abdul," Michael said, "can you see some camels coming towards us?"

Abdul had no need to look. His eyes could see much further than Michael's. He had already noticed the cavalcade.

"_Aiwah, Effendi_, they are camels carrying real human beings." His master's words had implied that he wondered if he was looking at a mirage. Michael had never seen a mirage of anything but scenery, villages with minarets and rivers with boats--reflections, in fact, of distant towns.

Abdul a.s.sured his master that the camels were real camels and that he was almost certain that it was an European outfit; it did not belong to desert natives.

Michael again rode on ahead for a few moments. He wondered where the travellers were coming from, and whither they were bound. This fourth morning's journey had certainly brought them slightly nearer again to the border of civilization. He knew that they were skirting an ancient oasis. Perhaps the travellers had come from it. He was still some distance from Tel-el-Amarna--not the modern Tel-el-Amarna or Haggi Kandil, which lies about five miles back from the banks of the river, where pa.s.sengers travelling by railway alight when they come from Cairo to visit the ruins of the ancient city--but the ruins of Akhnaton's capital. At the point on the Nile where Akhnaton chose to build his city, the limestone cliffs go back from the river about three miles, returning to it some six miles further on.

Michael's objective was not the ruins of Akhnaton's city, but the desert and the hills which lie beyond it. The boundaries of the "City of the Horizon," Akhnaton's new capital, the seat of the heretic King, were so carefully laid down and defined by him that there has been no mistaking its exact size and circ.u.mference.

Michael was going to the original tomb of Akhnaton, cut out of the hills which formed a half-crescent round the city, like a bay, reaching back from the river. In these encircling hills the King's body was buried; the hills were his chosen resting-place.

"Here Akhnaton elected to be buried, where hyenas prowled and jackals wandered, and where the desolate cry of the night-owls echoed over the rocks. In winter the wind sweeps up the valley and howls round the rocks; in summer the sun makes it a veritable furnace, unendurable to man. There is nothing here to remind one of the G.o.d Who watches over him, and the tender Aton of the Pharaoh's conception would seem to have abandoned this place to the spirits of evil. There are no flowers where Akhnaton cut his sepulchre, and no birds sing; for the King believed that his soul, caught up into the noon of Paradise, would need no more delights on earth.

"The tomb consisted of a pa.s.sage descending into the hill and leading to a rock-cut hall, the roof of which was supported by four columns. Here stood the sarcophagus of pink granite in which the Pharaoh's mummy would lie. The walls of this hall were covered with scenes carved in plaster, representing various phases in the Aton wors.h.i.+p. From the pa.s.sage there led another small chamber, beyond which a further pa.s.sage was cut, perhaps to lead to the second hall in which the Queen should be buried, but the work was never finished." [1]