There was a King in Egypt Part 57

"You're a rum chap," the stranger said, as he noticed that a glint of humour had for the moment driven the expression of exhaustion from Michael's eyes. "Anyhow, I hope you'll not feel too knocked up when you arrive in camp, and that we'll meet again."

"I feel as if I could sleep for a year."

"Have another whisky before you go?"

"No thanks. I think one has been more than enough--it's made me confoundedly tired."

They were standing at the open front of the tent.

"Good-bye," Michael said. "And thanks most awfully for your hospitality. I suppose you won't settle on the work here until next season?"

"No, it will be hot enough at the end of three weeks, though it's cooler here than with Lampton in the Valley. If the money is forthcoming, we shall take up work again next October."

They parted abruptly, as Englishmen do. Two _fellahin_, mere hewers of wood and drawers of water, would have gone through a set formula of graceful words before they separated. They are ever mindful of the teachings of the Koran, which says:

"If you are greeted with a greeting, then greet ye with a better greeting. G.o.d taketh account of all things."

Michael had turned his back on the stranger and the waving flag.

Mechanically he put his hand to his belt-pouch. Yes, the crimson amethyst was still there. He felt for it as though he were in a dream.

The bright light made him giddy. The stone was his link with and his tangible a.s.surance that the life which he had led for the past weeks was a reality; it was his sacred token that the vision of Akhnaton was no mere phantom of an over-imaginative brain. Yet, even as he felt its hard substance between his thumb and forefinger, he wondered if it was really there. He knew that imagination can create strange things; phantom tumours have been produced by imagination, tumours which are visible to a physician's eye while the patient is conscious and his mind obsessed with the conviction that it is there; he knew that such swellings disappear when the patient is asleep. He felt dazed, and as if he himself were unreal; his feet refused to tread firmly on the earth; they never managed to reach it. When he looked for Abdul and the camels, they were floating in the heavens above the horizon, miles and miles away; there was a belt of sky between them and the desert sand. If his legs had been paralysed, they could not have felt heavier or more useless.

He struggled on, but very soon the desert and the sky became one; the world in front of him rose suddenly up and stood on end. It was quite impossible to reach Abdul--he was receding as the horizon recedes when a clear atmosphere foreshortens the distance. In his brain there was a confused jumble; it was full of things which had no meaning or cohesion. Millicent was the centre of the absurd medley, Millicent, naked and unashamed, her slender figure as thickly covered with uncut jewels of huge dimensions as the statues of Diana of Ephesus are covered with b.r.e.a.s.t.s. The jewelled vision of Millicent dominated every other picture in his brain. It was clearer than the village of flies, or the African's cell in far-off el-Azhar, or the procession of white figures returning from the burial of the desert saint. It moved along in the clear air in front of him. He had no reasoning powers left, or he would have asked himself why his subconscious brain had fas.h.i.+oned this vision of Millicent wearing the sacred jewels when he still believed in her innocence. The clear voice, man's divine messenger, had kept him a.s.sured of the truth of his conviction.

Everything was dreadfully confused. He wished that the horizon would not come right forward and almost throw him off his balance. He seemed to be constantly hitting up against it. And Abdul, why was he floating further and further away? The harder he tried to get to him, the further he went. And yet he could actually hear him reciting his prayers. He was telling his rosary. Why did he tantalize him by coming so near and then floating off again? Sometimes he came so near that he could see his fine fingers automatically pulling the beads along the string; a ta.s.sel of red silk hung from the end of it. There were ninety-nine small red beads and one large one. He had reached the fifty-ninth. Michael could tell that, because the words "O Giver of Life" came to him sonorously across the desert stillness. The next one would be "O Giver of Death," but Abdul had floated away again. Now he had come back; he had said "O Living One," "O Enduring," "O Source of Discovery."

That was the sixty-third bead. Why had Abdul stopped at that one? Why did he keep on repeating the words "O Source of Discovery," "O Source of Discovery"? He ought to pa.s.s on to the next--"O Worthy of All Honour," and after that the sixty-fifth, "O Thou Only One." No one ever stopped at the sixty-third bead; all the attributes of Allah had to be recited. But Abdul was still saying it over and over again. "O Source of Discovery," "O Source of Discovery." The words danced before Michael's eyes in letters of gold, like the advertis.e.m.e.nt of Bovril which he had watched so often from the Thames Embankment, as it appeared and disappeared in the sky across the river.

And then again the letters were obliterated by the nude figure of Millicent, with her hanging b.r.e.a.s.t.s of jewels. How delicate her limbs were, how white her skin! The sun would blister it; if he could only reach her, he would give her his coat. Like himself, she was walking in the clear air and not on the firm earth. She was walking as St.

Peter had walked on the waves of the sea.

Then something happened. He stumbled and would have fallen, but for a great strength which gathered him up and sheltered him under the shadow of Everlasting Arms.

Abdul, with Eastern philosophy, had sat himself down to wait while his master interviewed the director of the "dig." His soul was vexed and his mind was ill at ease. His master's health was the princ.i.p.al cause of his anxiety. His anger at the harlot, and his disappointment, mingled with this anxiety, made him unusually despondent.

He seated himself on a knoll where his master could easily see him when he left the excavator's tent. It was not yet time for the performance of his maghrib, or sunset prayer, which had to be said a few minutes after the sun had set. He began to recite his rosary, telling an attribute of G.o.d to each bead. When he had got about half-way through the long list of names which form the Mohammedan rosary and by which the Moslem addresses his Creator, he saw Michael leave the tent and walk out into the sunlight.

For a moment or two he seemed to be walking quite steadily and to be coming towards him. Then suddenly he began to stagger and lurch like a drunken man.

Abdul rose from his seat and hurried towards him. What had seemed such a long way to Michael had only been a few yards. His visions and fears and the constant repet.i.tion of the sixty-third attribute of Allah had been concentrated into the last few seconds before he stumbled and fell, just as our dreams are enacted in the last moments before we wake. Abdul had scarcely said the words "O Source of Discovery" for the first time when he rose from his seat and hurried to his master, who had stumbled and fallen. In his Moslem arms was G.o.d's Everlasting Mercy.

CHAPTER XII

The heat in the Valley had become intense. The work in the excavation-camp was at a standstill; nothing more could be done on the actual site until the late autumn.

Margaret and Freddy were soon to say good-bye to the little hut which had been their home for many months.

No direct news had come to them of Michael. Freddy had heard many accounts and varying reports from unreliable sources of his travels in the eastern desert. He was almost convinced that Michael's silence was due to the fact that there was some foundation for the scandal, which was persistent, that Millicent was one of his party. The report had drifted to him from so many sources that he could scarcely doubt it.

It had sprung up and flourished like seed blown over light soil. He was loath to believe that his friend, even if it had not been by his own willing or desire, should have permitted the woman to stay with him when he was Margaret's acknowledged lover. He despised him for being such a weak fool. If Freddy could have left his work, he would have started off without delay to look for Michael, or at least he would have contrived to discover the reason for his silence and what degree of truth there was in the story of Millicent's being with him.

Situated as he was, it was impossible for him to desert his post. He had purposely avoided opening up the subject again with Margaret; it was better to wait until a sufficient length of time had elapsed and then, if no word came from Michael, he would speak to her again and hold her to her promise to return home and try to drive the whole affair from her mind.

Even as he said the words to himself, he knew that they were absurd, that such a thing was hopeless. Meg was not the sort of woman to trust and love a man and then forget him. There could be no driving him from her mind. Freddy knew that she had enough strength of character to do whatever she thought was right. If circ.u.mstances compelled her to give Michael up, she would do it, but in so doing her youth would be killed, her heart broken. Her life would have to be re-made. A love like Margaret's was a serious thing; Freddy realized that. He must go to work carefully and judiciously.

It hurt him more than Meg ever knew, to watch her suffering and ever-growing anxiety. She made no complaint and very seldom alluded to her lover's silence or to his absence. When she spoke of him, it was generally to recall some happy incident which had happened in their secluded life, little things culled from the store-closet of her precious memories.

It was to the stars and to the wide heavens that her heart relieved itself. They heard the full story of her trust and loyalty and the confessions of her jealous woman's heart; they bore her cry to the understanding ear.

It was impossible for Margaret to believe any wrong of her lover. If she had short waves of doubt and agonizing moments of uncertainty and indecision, they were always dispelled by the sudden inflow of beautiful thoughts, which came like divine visions to her, as direct a.s.surances of Mike's loyalty and steadfastness.

It was Freddy who caused her the cruellest suffering. It was so dreadful to think that he, of all people, doubted, distrusted Mike! If she had not cared for him so greatly it would not have mattered, but apart from Michael he was the being she loved and respected most on earth. His eyes haunted her; the doubt in them never left her mind; it argued against her finer judgment. That her dear chum should be working against her higher voice, her super-self, troubled her. It seemed to set up a barrier between them, which was the cruellest part of the whole affair. If he would only let her alone, she would go to some cooler spot and there wait and wait until Michael came to her, for she knew that he would come back to her, bringing her the same beautiful love as he had carried away. She knew perfectly well that in spite of her foolish fits of depression and distrust, he was wholly and absolutely hers while he was alive on this earth.

Freddy bore the expression of one who was waiting to deliver judgment.

Meg could see his annoyance kindling day by day. She could feel him looking at her when he thought that she was not noticing. The deeper circles under her eyes told Freddy their tale; the sagging of her clothes, as they hung from her boyish limbs, the pitiful flattening of her young b.r.e.a.s.t.s. This new and delicate-looking Margaret was very beautiful. Our Lady of Sorrows had laid her hand upon her with a softening grace; the new Meg had acquired what boyish Meg had never possessed. Under her eyes, on her clear skin there were dark shadows, which looked as if they had been made by the impress of carboned thumbs which had pressed tired eyes to sleep. Meg's steadfast, honest eyes now expressed things of a deeper meaning than mere comrades.h.i.+p and brains; their beauty was quickened by the soul of suffering. Even in Freddy's eyes she was much more attractive than she had been six months ago. She was now a great deal more than merely pretty. As he watched her bearing her anxiety and what appeared to him her humiliation with so much calm dignity and braveness, he said to himself over and over again, "She's a thousand times too good for a man who could behave like a weak fool, if indeed Mike isn't worse!"

He was looking at her now, as she lay in a deck-chair, her eyes closed and her hands folded across her book. They had both been reading, after a hard day's work. Meg had not turned many pages of her book; her thoughts had wandered. As she felt her brother's eyes upon hers, she raised her eyelids and looked at him steadily as she said:

"Freddy, I'm going to see Hada.s.sah Ireton."

Freddy sat bolt upright. He, too, had been lying stretched out on a lounge-chair.

"Going to see Mrs. Ireton? But you don't know her!"

He did not ask Meg why she was going; he knew.

"That doesn't matter--I know all about her. My heart and mind know her, and, after all, that's the important thing--it's the only thing that matters."

"But, Meg----"

"Chum, no 'buts'--'buts' belong to small things. This is my life. We must do something. You can't leave your work; I am no longer needed."

"But what can Hada.s.sah Ireton do?"

"I don't know--she'll know, I feel she'll know. That's why I'm going."

She paused. "I've been told to go."

"Oh, nonsense! How's this going to clear things up?" Freddy paused.

"I don't know. If I did, I shouldn't go to the Iretons'. It's because I don't know, and nothing's being done, that I mean to go to her and consult her."

"But why on earth trouble a stranger? I dislike the idea."

"There are some human beings who are never strangers. Suffering unites people. Hada.s.sah Ireton has suffered."

Freddy knocked the ash from his cigarette. A lump had risen up in his throat.