Part 69 (1/2)

During the short time which Freddy was at the Front, how different her thoughts had been! His beauty and ability seemed to say to her, as she watched him on that memorable afternoon at the station, ”Whom the G.o.ds love die young.” He seemed to typify to her England's brave and beautiful young whom the war chose for its victims. The wages of the war were England's youth and devotion. She knew that much as Freddy loved his work and enjoyed his life, he would be the last to grudge his death. It was she herself who so ardently wished that he had died in action; that his brains and ability had been given a chance; that he could have done as he would have wished to do, taken a life for a life; that he could avenge in honest warfare the hideous death of his comrades.

This letter from Hada.s.sah made Margaret realize the awful fact that Freddy was dead as nothing else had done, that his death meant that she could never, never again consult him, or speak to him, or hope to hear from him. It was not only a case of patience and the distance of half the world between them; it was a case of never, never again on this earth. She had scarcely known the meaning of death until this starvation for his sympathy revealed itself to her. The awful difference between mere distance and death had escaped her. Hundreds of men were dying, but death was talked of unconvincingly, superficially.

Now, by some strange means, she suddenly saw the years of doing without Freddy stretching out before her. The Valley where his work lay would never see him again. His brains and extraordinary energy were lost to the world; his archaeological work would be taken over by others.

The pent-up tears which Margaret had not shed when she received the news of his death, or during all the busy days which followed it, mingled themselves with the unrestrained weeping which Nature sent to save her overwrought system. She cried uninterruptedly, until the urgency of tears subsided. She dried her eyes and braced herself up.

Her weeping had stopped suddenly; it had exhausted itself.

It seemed to her that she could almost hear a voice repeating to her a sentence out of Hada.s.sah's letter. It was strikingly like Hada.s.sah's own voice. ”Try to remember that your wonderful brother is still doing his bit. He is working hard, wherever he is--be sure of this, for it is what he would wish.”

Margaret carried this thought in her mind as she returned to her pantry. Hada.s.sah was right. Freddy was working; wherever he was, he was busy, for he could not be happy if he was not working and helping on the cause of the Allies. Freddy had been one of the few enthusiasts in the early days of the war who had never pretended, even to himself, that England's primary object in declaring war against Germany was to avenge the devastation of Belgium. He knew that England had to enter it to save herself and France from a similar devastation.

When she was busy at work again, Margaret said to herself, ”Of all the strange things which have happened during the last six months, perhaps the strangest of all is the fact that in all the wide world, the only human being to whom I should dream of applying for help or for sympathy in the things that matter is Hada.s.sah Ireton, Hada.s.sah the Syrian, whose marriage with an Englishman of good family would have so shocked and horrified me not so very long ago!”

A smile of amus.e.m.e.nt changed the expression of her face. She was thinking of Hada.s.sah as she really was, and of the outcast Hada.s.sah as she would have pictured her. The smile lost itself in the shame with which the memory of her ignorance and prejudice filled her. How well Hada.s.sah and her husband could afford to forget the narrow-mindedness and the conceit of it all!

CHAPTER XXII

And now to return to Michael. During the weary weeks of anxiety and suffering which Margaret spent in Egypt before she sailed for England, Michael lay hovering between life and death in the _Omdeh's_ house near the subterranean village in the Libyan Desert.

Abdul had taken him there when he gathered him up in his strong arms on the eventful evening when he left the excavation-tent in the hills. A violent attack of fever, made more serious and difficult to throw off by the overwrought condition of his nerves, kept Michael a helpless exile in the hands of the hospitable but somewhat ignorant _Omdeh_ and the devoted Abdul.

When the fever was at its height, Michael was very often delirious; in his ramblings he let the discreet Abdul see deep down into the secret hiding-places of his heart. Sometimes he spoke in English, and sometimes in Arabic. Abdul could understand a great deal more English than he could speak, and as Michael often repeated the same things in Arabic--when he thought he was addressing Abdul--he soon found the key to much which, without the Arabic translation and constant reiteration, might have escaped his understanding. Arabs learn a language with extraordinary rapidity; it is no unusual thing to meet a dragoman who can understand three or four languages, and speak a fair smattering of each; the same man is probably unable to read or write in any one of the four. From the deep waters of affliction came strange and terrible revelations, of desires and temptations which the conscious man had not allowed himself to recognize. In his helplessness they leapt forth and proclaimed themselves unmistakably. He innocently betrayed the nature of the woman who had earned Abdul's hatred.

At other times he called upon Margaret and implored her forgiveness, denouncing the woman who had followed him. He cursed her in horrible words. Even Abdul was surprised at their impiety. Once, when Abdul laid his fine fingers on his burning forehead, Michael took his hand eagerly and tried to kiss it. The next instant he rejected it and with the strength of delirium threw it from him and tried to get out of bed.

”That's not Margaret's hand?” he said angrily. ”And I want no other woman than Margaret. I have told you that before--I belong to Margaret, I am Margaret's body and soul. I told you that the first time we ate our meal together, even before your white tent went up.”

When Abdul managed to subdue his master's fears, he laughed wildly and idiotically. ”Of course it is only you, Abdul. I had forgotten. I seem to forget everything . . . I thought that . . .” here his words became incoherent. ”I was so tired, Abdul, and you were sitting up in the sky above the horizon . . . so very tired.”

Abdul fanned his babbling master and offered him a cooling drink.

Michael swallowed it eagerly; his bright eyes gazed pitifully into Abdul's after the last drain was swallowed.

”Don't let the other woman come near me,” he pleaded. ”She is wearing all Akhnaton's precious stones--they are hung round her neck, her b.r.e.a.s.t.s are covered with them. But her skin is so white and tender, the sun is burning it--I must lend her my coat.” He laughed horribly.

”Mean little beast, Abdul, how frightened she was! The saint gave me the amethyst--it's for Margaret.”

Abdul listened to these strange outpourings with the philosophy and trust of a devout Moslem. If Allah willed it, He would let his master recover. He had put the Effendi in his care, and no trouble was anything but a pleasure to him if it brought some sense of ease and comfort to the delirious Michael.

The _Omdeh_ was the very soul of hospitality. He observed the teachings of the Koran in the spirit as well as in the letter. He spoke no English, so he was ignorant of all that Michael's delirious words conveyed to Abdul. On his master's concerns, Abdul was a well of secrecy.

By night and by day he heard him go over the same ground again and again. His life in Egypt for the last few months was expressed in broken sentences and vivid declarations, uttered sometimes with astonis.h.i.+ng gravity and lucidity. At times Abdul was deceived into thinking that he was conscious, that his reasoning powers had returned, that he was quite sensible. But he was soon undeceived by a sudden breaking-off in the continuity of the words, or a return to confused, half-meaningless sentences. It was only by the constant repet.i.tion that Abdul learned the whole truth. A bit out of one raving fitted into another, and things hard to explain were made clear.

Once he said very gravely, ”Hada.s.sah Ireton will help Margaret, the beautiful Hada.s.sah. She is more beautiful than Margaret, Abdul, much more beautiful, but Margaret is the mistress of my happiness.”

Abdul answered by saying, ”_Aiwah_, Effendi, she is your guarded lady, she will be the mother of your sons.”

”She who sends me to rest with a sweet voice, and with her beautiful hands bearing two sistrums.”

Abdul was ignorant of the fact that his master was quoting the words of Akhnaton, as written in the tomb of Ay in reference to his queen. He thought they were his master's own words, and so thinking, his heart was cheered, for Michael's voice was gentle and reasonable. But the hope was suddenly wiped out.