There was a King in Egypt Part 64

"I don't know about repaying Mike," she said coldly. "There are some things which can never be repaid or bought."

Meg certainly got as good as she had given. "I never meant to suggest that I had so much wealth that it would be a burden to me. I think I shall find some way of spending it enjoyably." She turned to the left wing of the corridor; her bedroom lay there. "Now I must say good-night," she said, still more coolly. "I have a great deal to do."

She looked down at her dress. "My luggage has never come on from Luxor--it's such a nuisance. I had to wear a 'dug-out' to-night, a blouse and skirt I wore in the desert. They have lain packed all that time--I never thought I should have to wear them again." As she spoke, she visualized her last evening in the camp, when she had given Ha.s.san her instructions for their flitting. She had worn the blouse that same evening.

"It looks very nice," Margaret said carelessly.

"Oh, it's terrible! I didn't venture to come down to _table d'hote_ in it--I dined in my room. Good-night."

"You still wear your eye of Horus?" Margaret said; she had noticed the amulet the moment she saw Millicent in the lift.

"Of course! It is my most treasured possession."

Margaret longed to tell her that she knew where the bit of blue faience had been found on the day when it was lost in the hut. She burned to say, "You little prying cat, you read my diary!" instead of which she said, quite calmly:

"The Divine Eye ought to have known better than to be the cause of Mohammed Ali's telling one of his finest lies."

"What do you mean?" Millicent asked. But even as she spoke, her face paled a little. "Your language has become quite cryptic--the result, I suppose, of your work in the tombs!"

"Probably," Margaret said. "Life in the Valley has taught me many things--but first and foremost, above all others, it has shown me the power and the danger of _baksheesh_. Good-night," she added quickly.

"I've been keeping you."

Millicent looked at her with steely eyes. Meg's words were not too cryptic for her comprehension. "Good-night," she said. "When I hear from Mike, I'll let you know."

When Margaret reached her room, she flung off her self-restraint.

Catching up a sofa-cus.h.i.+on, she flung it at an imaginary Millicent; two more went flying in the same direction.

"Oh, you beast, you hateful little beast!" she cried. "I believe you have won, after all! I wanted to find out if Michael was to blame, I wanted to make you confess that you trapped and followed him into the desert! And all I succeeded in doing was to hear from your own lips what all the hateful tongues in Egypt have been screaming and shouting in my ears for weeks past!" She sank down on the low sofa. "My pride spoilt everything. I wouldn't let you know that I cared, that I didn't know a word about anything, that I have never heard a line from Michael." Her mind stood at attention; a new thought held it. The holy man! Millicent had spoken of the holy man. Was he the "child of G.o.d" who was to lead Mike to the hidden treasure? She groaned. Oh, why had she not questioned her, why had she not controlled her own anger and her pride, and learnt from Millicent a thousand things she longed to know? She had not even asked her at what definite place in the desert she had left Michael! She had asked her absolutely nothing which would help her to find him. She had only gleaned from her the one fact, the fact which made it absolutely imperative for her to return at once to England. Her pride was so cruelly injured that she accepted that fact as absolute. Even if Michael was entirely innocent of any dishonour to herself, it was impossible not to feel wounded and hurt to the quick by his silence. She had sworn to trust him, but was he not asking too much of human nature? Might he not have given a thought to the fact that Freddy and all the world would condemn him?

Of Michael's health Millicent had told her nothing. She had spoken in a manner which suggested that she had left him in the enjoyment of perfect health. Her excuses for him to Freddy had melted into thin air. How was she to tell Hada.s.sah Ireton? Hada.s.sah, whose complete trust had made her ashamed of Freddy.

She had gone to her room early, but it was far into the night before she began to undress and get ready for bed. She was tired and unhappy and for once she allowed herself to accuse Michael. She began by saying that he had been thoughtless and neglectful, that he ought to have managed somehow to get a letter through to her as soon as Millicent appeared on the scene. She felt convinced that she would have contrived to let him hear under similar circ.u.mstances it . . .

well, if she had wanted him to hear, if she had had a satisfactory explanation to offer. It was the horrible "if" which kept Margaret awake. That mustard-seed of suspicion grew and grew until its flowers of evil covered her whole world. Thought can make our heaven or our h.e.l.l. Margaret's thoughts that night created no divine vision, no fair City of the Horizon.

If Millicent had come back to Cairo, because of business, surely Michael could have sent a letter by her servants, even if he had not cared to entrust it into her own hands. That was the thought which triumphed--it shed its darkness over the things of light.

CHAPTER XVI

The next morning Margaret rose early. During her long and sleepless night she had reviewed her position over and over again; there seemed to be no way out of it. She must and would keep her promise to Freddy.

It is impossible to give a lucid interpretation of her tortured feelings. In her practical, reasoning mind her thoughts were black and suspicious; her heart was full of doubts, anger, wounded pride; while in the background, still s.h.i.+ning like the dim light on the horizon at the approach of dawn, was her unconquerable belief in her lover's honour.

She felt compelled to act up to her practical judgment, to her promise that she would go home to England if she heard from either Michael's or Millicent's own lips that they had been together in the desert. But it was the horizon-light which helped her and made her able to bear the shock of Millicent's brutal announcement.

For one whole night she had faced the certain fact that Millicent had camped in the desert with Michael. Anyone who has considered the ceaseless workings of the human brain will understand what no pen could describe--the countless arguments for and against her lover's honour which came and went in an endless rotation in Margaret's mind.

She was glad when daylight flooded the room and she could get up and take the definite steps which would settle her doom. There is nothing so unendurable as lying in bed, a victim to miserable thoughts.

As soon as she was dressed she wrote a brief letter to Freddy. She felt like a criminal writing a warrant for her own arrest, but as the thing had to be done, it was best to get it over soon as possible.

"DEAR CHUM,

"Last night I saw Millicent Mervill and what she told me leaves me no choice. I will keep my promise and go back to England. A boat goes next Tuesday; if I can book a pa.s.sage I shall go by it. Until then I will stay with Hada.s.sah Ireton. I like her most awfully.

"Please don't think that by keeping my promise to you I am condemning Mike or that I have given up hope that one day he will be able to explain everything satisfactorily. Don't worry about me, dear old thing. I'm all right and I will take every care of myself, so keep your mind easy on that point. I'm not nearly so wretched as I should be if I believed everything that this letter implies.

"Yours ever,

"MEG.

"P.S.--Millicent pretended not to know anything about the information which the Government has received. She told me, with an air of beautiful innocence, that an uncle in Australia had left her a nice legacy. Funny isn't it? I think I managed to behave pretty well--the shades of our ancestors guarded me, I suppose."

When the letter was posted, and could not be retrieved, Meg went into the coffee-room and tried to soothe her soul with material comforts.

An excellent cup of coffee made a good beginning. The letter settling her fate was in the post-office; she was going home to England in a few days. She was trying to swallow the hard facts with each mouthful which she drank.

What a contrast her leaving Egypt would be to her arrival in the country! How flattened out and disillusioned she would feel! What an ordinary, everyday ending to her vivid romance in the Valley! When she thought of the little hut, almost hidden in one of the many wrinkles of the hills, she smiled. Her senses glowed; she visualized the arid scene, suddenly transformed into an Eden with Love's pa.s.sion-flowers.

No garden in paradise could suggest to a Moslem mind diviner voices or greater radiance. Cairo, with its confusion of sounds and its medley of human races, was empty and meaningless; it was wiped out. She was once more in the Valley, where life was vital and human.

After a little time of happy dreaming, the bitter fact came back to her, like a cold wind disturbing a summer's heat, that she had actually written to her brother promising him that she would go home. What would Hada.s.sah think? What did her own conscience say?

Yet only one hour ago she had felt convinced that she was doing her duty, that her honour and womanly pride demanded that she should keep her promise. She had nerved herself against a thousand inner voices to obey her brother. She blushed for shame. In writing the letter she had practically admitted Michael's unfaithfulness as a lover. How could she have allowed herself to be so devastated by jealousy, have allowed her mind to be so concentrated on the unlovely side of the story? Even Hada.s.sah Ireton had scorned it, while she, "the mistress of Mike's happiness," had doubted and despaired!

Poor Margaret! If she had been less human, her Valley of Eden had held no flowers. The desert had been a wilderness indeed.

The psychic and devotional side of her lover's nature engrossed her thoughts. She recalled to her mind all that he had taught and explained to her about the views and religion of the tragic Pharaoh, the world's first conscientious objector.

Since she had heard of the scandal, she had scarcely thought of the occult and psychic side of the journey. Her att.i.tude had been self-engrossed and materialistic.

She sighed. How difficult it was to drive self out of one's thoughts, for was there anything as interesting in the whole of the wonderful world as one's self, one's miserably unworthy, puny self?

Hada.s.sah had truly said, "We have two selves . . . what armed enemies they are!" Surely she, Margaret, had more than two selves? It seemed to her that she had a hundred, for every hour of the day and year.

Long ago, in her untroubled college days, she had been one woman, with one mind and one purpose--her intellectual work. Egypt had changed her. The great mother of the world-civilization had revealed to her some of the amazing secrets hidden in the human heart; from her immortal treasury of things good and evil she had bestowed upon her child the jewel of suffering, the pearl of pa.s.sion. As a devout pupil Margaret had knelt at her knee.

In her very modern surroundings she felt quite another being from the Margaret who had seen the vision of Akhnaton in the Valley. She had allowed herself to forget that she had been instrumental in developing the psychic side of Michael's nature. The thought of it now seemed absurd; it was probable that her surroundings and her work had been accountable for the visions. Her imagination had unconsciously pictured them.

And yet there was a sound argument against this common-sense, practical view of the thing, for she had visualized almost exactly the type and individuality of a character in history of whom she was totally ignorant. Even in the modern hotel, in her everyday surroundings, she could see with extraordinary clearness the rays of light which had surrounded that head. Nothing could ever obliterate the picture of the suffering Pharaoh from her memory.

She had left the breakfast-room, and as she waited for the lift to descend, she was almost afraid that it would bring Millicent down with it from the floor above. But it did not. There was a grain of disappointment in the elements which made up Margaret's feelings as she saw that it was empty. The Lampton combative instinct demanded a fight to the finish, and an open, broad-daylight attack.