Part 48 (1/2)

”My help was unworthy of mention, the merest human sympathy for the helpless and suffering. Who could have done less?”

”We consider sympathy the next best thing to a proper belief in G.o.d, sympathy for others.” Abdul bowed. ”The Effendi has much sympathy--he himself is not aware of how much.”

”Thank you, Abdul, but I do believe in G.o.d. I believe in Him so fully and unreservedly that I often wonder why I am not a good man.

Sometimes I am not so bad, or I think I am not, for I am very conscious of Him, He is very near to me. At other times the world is a wilderness and G.o.d is very far.”

”We are never far from G.o.d, Effendi. We cannot be. He is closer to us than the hairs of our head, there is nothing nearer than G.o.d.”

”I know that, Abdul, I know it, but yet these lapses come. I feel alone, abandoned, useless, my life purposeless, wasted.”

”A man has no choice, Effendi, in settling the aims of his life. He does not enter the world or leave it as he desires. The true aim of his life consists in the knowing and wors.h.i.+pping of G.o.d and living for His sake. Our Holy Book says, 'Verily the religion which gives a true knowledge of G.o.d and directs in the most excellent way of His wors.h.i.+p is Islam. Islam responds to and supplies the demands of human nature, and G.o.d has created man after the model of Islam and for Islam. He has willed it that man should devote his faculties to the love, obedience and wors.h.i.+p of G.o.d, for it is for this reason that Almighty G.o.d has granted him faculties which are suited to Islam.'”

Michael listened with reverent attention. He knew that Abdul was conferring a special favour on him in that he was actually quoting the very words of the Holy Koran to a Christian. As a matter of fact, Abdul had ceased to think of Michael as a Christian--from his Moslem point of view, as an enemy of Islam. He rather considered his condition as that of one who was searching for the Light and would eventually enjoy the perfection of Islam. He knew that Michael did not divide the honours of the one and only G.o.d; he believed, as Moslems believe, that the Effendi Jesus was not the Son of G.o.d, but a prophet to whom G.o.d had revealed Himself.

When they parted for the night, Abdul was again the practical servant, the excellent dragoman. By dawn the camp would be on its way to its objective, the hills beyond the outline of the lost ”City of the Horizon.” Abdul, the visionary and the pious Moslem, was as keen about reaching Akhnaton's treasure as Pizarro was obsessed with the reports of the wealth of Peru.

For half of that short night Michael tried unsuccessfully to sleep. He needed rest, for it had been a trying and eventful day, beginning with the saint's death and ending with his solemn and picturesque burial.

Sleep was indeed very far from him. His brain was too excited; his nerves were beginning to feel the strain of the dry desert air. The moment he closed his eyes he could see the emaciated frame of the dying saint as he had last seen him, a few hours before his death. He could hear with extraordinary persistence the cries of ”Allah! Allah! There is no strength nor power but in G.o.d. To G.o.d we belong, to Him we must return.” The words had never left the desert stillness; the air held them and repeated them time after time.

He could see Abdul reverently pull the eyelids over the death-glazed eyes; he could see the weeping mourners perform the last ceremonies for the dead saint.

Then the scene would change to the one he had watched in the evening--the white figures, with blue scarves of mourning wound round their heads, bearing the saint reverently across the golden sands.

How tender it had all been, how vivid the clear, open light of uninterrupted s.p.a.ce and cloudless sky!

And now it was all over. He had met the holy man who was to lead him to the secret spot where the treasure lay; he had heard from his lips the account of how he had accidentally come across the crocks of gold, when he had made for himself a dwelling-place in a cave in the heart of the hills. The crocks were full of blocks of Nubian gold; the jewels were in caskets which had fallen to pieces, even before his eyes, when the winds of the desert had reached them.

Was it all a wonderful dream? Had he really in his possession the crimson amethyst, of Oriental beauty, which the saint had carried in his ear? Was it locked in the belt-purse which he wore under his clothes by day and laid under his pillow by night? He put his hand below his pillow and opened the purse; no doubt his fingers would feel the jewel. But what was there to tell him that it was really there, that he was not the victim of some strange hallucination? Thoughts were things. Had he thought about this treasure until it had become to him an actual reality?

Then vision after vision was forced upon his sight--Millicent in her varying moods, the saint's ecstasies, the now familiar figures of the Bedouin, bearing their offerings to the sick man, their polite and beautiful expressions as they laid the eggs and milk at his feet. He got so tired of the visualizing and recitation of all that he had seen and heard during the days which he had spent in anxious uncertainty that he could endure it no longer.

He got up and lit his candle; things would seem more real in the light.

He stretched out his hand for the book which always lay near his bed.

The Open Road, his Bible and this little volume of selected verse const.i.tuted his desert library. He wanted a poem which would completely transfer his thoughts from the throbbing present, which would change the arid desert and limitless s.p.a.ce into green England, with its enclosing hedges and leafy woods. His nerves were jaded; they needed the relaxation of moderation. Knowing almost every poem in the volume, he quickly found Bliss Carman's ”Ode to the Daisies.” His mind recited it even before his eyes saw the words:

”Over the shoulders and slopes to the dune I saw the white daisies go down to the sea, A host in the suns.h.i.+ne, an army in June, The people G.o.d sends us to set our hearts free.”

He read the next verse and then turned to Wordsworth's immortal lines:

”I wandered lonely as a cloud . . .”

He read the poem through, although he knew each dear, familiar word of it. Reading it helped his powers of concentration. It was amazing how quickly the suggestion of the words soothed him. As clearly as he had seen all the events of the day repeating themselves, he now saw the host of golden daffodils,

”Beside the lake, beneath the trees.”