There was a King in Egypt Part 7

"As I told you," Margaret continued, "he had a very strangely-shaped head, more curiously-shaped than I can describe--very long and sloping upwards to the back. He wore a high head-dress which seemed too heavy for his slender neck. Coming from behind it there were bright rays, just like rays of the sun--I have never seen anything like them in any picture . . . oh, it must have been a dream! It all sounds quite absurd." Margaret's trembling voice belied her words.

"Akhnaton!" Michael cried excitedly. "Now there can be no doubt. Oh, Meg!" He had unconsciously been using Freddy's pet-name for her, his hand sought hers sympathetically.

Margaret prized the word "Meg" as it came affectionately from his lips.

"Meg, it is all too wonderful!"

Michael said no more; he had buried his face in his two hands. He would have given his youth to have seen what Margaret had seen.

"Then you don't think it was a dream?"

"How could you have dreamed the very appearance of Akhnaton, or dreamed his personality, when you have never heard of him?"

"I suppose I couldn't," she said. "But was Akhnaton unlike any other Pharaoh of Egypt?"

"As unlike as St. Francis was to Nero."

A sudden idea came to Margaret. "But," she said, "he spoke to me in English, in my own language. If it was really the spirit of Akhnaton, how could he?"

"Dear Meg, there are more things in divine philosophy than are dreamed of by you or me. In what language did Our Saviour speak to St.

Francis, who was an Italian, and to St. Catherine?"

"That is true," Margaret said, in a changed tone. "Will you tell me all about this Pharaoh?"

Michael thought before answering her question, and then he said, "I'd rather not, not yet."

"But why?"

"Because I don't want to put any ideas into your head. All this has come perfectly naturally, and through a modern who was totally ignorant of the message she was conveying. If you were to receive another message, if you ever were to see Akhnaton again, and you knew all about him, it would not be the same thing."

"Oh," Margaret said quickly, "I forgot--he said as he disappeared, 'I will return.'" She gave a deep-drawn sigh and said nervously, "Do you think he will?"

"Will you be afraid? Were you afraid?" Michael's arm had slipped almost round her shoulders. It was a moment when close human contact came very graciously to the girl.

"Afraid? No, he was too gentle, too sad--there was absolutely nothing to be afraid of. I didn't stop to think of the supernaturalness of the vision--I was much too interested. If it was a ghost, I shall never be afraid of ghosts again."

Michael s.h.i.+vered.

Meg looked at him. She had hurt him; she felt a slight shrinking in his sympathy.

"Don't speak of ghosts, Meg--I hate the term, with all its cheapness and irreverence!"

"Then you believe in visions? You are convinced that I have not dreamed all this?"

"If it had been Freddy who had told me, I should have said that he had been asleep and dreamed it, because he knows all about Akhnaton. We are constantly discussing his character, a character I admire much more than he does. But as it was you who saw him and you who have described him as accurately as if you had his portrait in front of you, I feel certain it was not a dream."

Meg remained silent, while her thoughts worked with a new and amazing rapidity. In Egypt she felt that anything was possible; the supernatural might very soon become natural. And certainly the face which she had seen was so unlike the types of the conventional figures of the Egyptian kings she would have visualized if she had tried her best to picture one from imagination, that she began to wonder if Michael was right in his a.s.sumption that she had actually seen and been in communication with the spirit of Akhnaton.

"But why should he have chosen me, this great Pharaoh?" she said.

"Modern me, with no knowledge whatsoever of his kingdom or his beliefs!"

"Ah, why?" Michael said. "Have we ever been told why Mary was chosen to be the Mother of Jesus, the Divine Man Who taught the world what Akhnaton tried to teach his people thirteen hundred years before His coming--that the Kingdom of G.o.d is within us? Who can tell the manner or the means by which G.o.d works? Not half, or a quarter, of the Christian world knows, Meg, how often G.o.d speaks to them through mysterious channels--through spirits, if you like. When people are inspired to do good works, to lead what the material world calls holy lives, G.o.d has spoken to them, the G.o.d Who is within them, the G.o.d Who brought you and me together, Meg, to enjoy this valley. Its emptiness and stillness is full of G.o.d. Don't you feel that its beauty and solitude are due to His presence?"

Meg s.h.i.+vered. "I know what you mean."

"Don't be nervous. It is a great privilege, this sense of the divine, this beautiful closeness to G.o.d, this cutting off of our material selves, this knowledge of our Kingdom of Heaven within us."

"I am far more earth-tied than you, Mike. I do feel these things, but more feebly, less convincingly. I have never thought much about them.

We Lamptons are very practical; all our men have led good, clean, straightforward lives, and our women have not made bad wives and mothers, but I don't think we have been idealists, or very religious.

Our sense of honour more than our beliefs has kept us straight."

"Poor, poor Akhnaton!" Michael said. His thoughts had strayed while Margaret spoke.

"Why do you say 'Poor Akhnaton?' Why was he so sad?"

Michael evaded the question by saying, "We won't speak of this to anyone, if you don't mind. Let it be just between you and me."

Margaret hesitated for a moment. There was something stirring and pleasurable to her emotions in the idea of having a secret with Michael; it was like possessing a part of him all to herself; yet she shrank from keeping back anything from Freddy. Even this dream--if it was only a dream--she would naturally have told to him, because it held such a wonderful idea; it would have interested him. It was interesting from the scientific point of view, the fact that she should have been able to project her unconscious brain into the history which she was going to study and accurately visualize and create for herself the personality and teachings of a Pharaoh of whom she had never heard.

If it had been the great Rameses, or any Biblical character who in later years entered into Egyptian history, it would have meant less, for already the personality of the great builder-king of Egypt was known to her, by the frequency with which she had heard the expression "Rameses the Great." But of the heretic Pharaoh she had never heard.

"Do you mind not mentioning it even to your brother?" Mike said. "If he was not in sympathy with my belief that it was not a dream, he might unconsciously affect you--he would probably tell you much that I would rather you didn't know until we find out more."

Margaret gave her promise willingly. Michael's reason seemed to her such a justifiable one that their secret might be kept even from Freddy.

Presently Freddy shouted out, "I'm off to bed, Meg--kick Mike out and go to yours--you've had a long day."

As Mike said good-night, Margaret noticed how strained and grave he was. "Don't look so serious!" She tried to speak lightly. "To-morrow we shall both say that it was all a dream. Fancy an Egyptian Pharaoh rising out of his tomb below the hills to speak to me! I'm not going to think of it any more--I'll send myself to sleep by trying to say the Arabic alphabet backwards."

Michael did not look any the less grave. "He was brought to the valley," he said, "to his mother's tomb, and I don't suppose that I am the first person to receive a message from him--perhaps the first European, but then, I love his teachings. They have not been known very long."

"He said he had come to see what his people were doing. Do you really think he has given this message to others?"

"Why not?--in another manner. These holy men in Egypt who feel compelled to give up their lives to preaching and praying, and who travel from desert-town to desert-town, calling on the people to wors.h.i.+p the one and only G.o.d--who knows what the manner of their call was, or how G.o.d came to them?"

"Then you think that G.o.d came to-night, in this valley, in the form of Akhnaton, to you through me?"

"I certainly do. Akhnaton, like Christ, became divine. We could all be divine if we allowed ourselves to be."

"Good-night," Meg said, for Freddy was shouting again. "It's late, and I'm afraid I am too matter-of-fact and far too materialistic to follow your ideas and beliefs."

"I wish I followed what I believe," Mike said. "On a night like this you can't help believing that G.o.d is in the yellow sand and in the blue sky and in the beautiful stillness. He is in you and me and around us.

The hills look very holy, don't they? But to-morrow it will be so easy to forget, to take everything for granted, or to behave as if chance had produced G.o.d's world." He held her hand for one moment longer than was necessary. "One is so closely in touch with the beauty of G.o.d here, Meg. In busy Luxor or Cairo, or in any city, material things are the things that matter. G.o.d is forgotten, set aside . . . man's ingenuity is so much more obvious."

"I know," Meg said. "Do you wonder at hermits and saints?" She smiled a beautiful "Good-night."

When she was alone in her room, she opened Maspero's _Dawn of Civilization_, which Freddy had placed there for her. She turned over its pages idly. "I wonder if I should find anything about Akhnaton here," she said, "or if this is too early history?"

Suddenly she closed the book. "No, I won't--I will keep my promise. I won't read anything about him."