Part 32 (1/2)
”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?”