H. Rider Haggard

“ These are apt to believe, as Lord Devene believed, that this thousandth part which they see bathed in the vivid, daily sunlight is all that there is to see. They imagine that because only one tiny angle of the great jewel catches and reflects the light, the rest must be dark and valueless. They look upon the point of rock showing above the ocean and forget that in its secret depths lies hid a mountain range, an island, a continent, a world, perhaps, whereof this topmost peak alone appears.
With Rupert, to whom such reflections were familiar, it was not so. ”

“ I am not unkind. Ask my people here if I have ever slain, or even beaten one of them without a cause, but that sight, it made me like a leopard whose cubs have been killed before her eyes. Think not the worse of me. I will repent, I will learn better, but oh! I am glad that I drove the spear through the heart of Ibrahim and watched him die. And Bakhita is worse than I am, remember that, she wished to kill him slowly.”
“What is done, is done,” answered Rupert. “This desert is a cruel place, and God forgive us all for many things.” ”

“ When the tongue is hanging from the jaws with thirst, when the brows throb with fatigue and pain, and the heart is well-nigh bursting with rage, grief for those who will be seen no more, and apprehensions of the dreadful end, who can think of the cup and chaplets of fame, and the empty trappings of honour?
At least Rupert could not. He fought on grimly; he did his best. Two rushes he repelled, for now that their fire slackened, the Arabs were trying to make an end of them with the spear. In the intervals that followed these rushes Rupert thought of Edith. ”

“ Sometimes hopes fail, and death stands where life should have been. This may chance to you, Rupert Bey, yonder in the cold, western land of the setting sun.”
“Do you mean that I shall find my wife dead?” he asked, with a quiver in his voice. “Is that the picture you saw in your pool?”
“Nay; I saw it not; I do not know. I think she lives and is well. But there are other sorts of death. Faith can die, hope can die, love can die. I tell you I know not, I know nothing; I have no magic; I believe in no divination. I only believe in what my heart tells me, and perchance it tells me wrong. ”

“ Only I fear me, Rupert, that as my beauty wanes, you who are tied to me but by the spirit, you who do not see me re-arise in children, may weary of this jealous, half-wild daughter of the desert—for jealous I know I still shall be.”
Now it was his turn to say “Fear not, Mea, fear not; broken body and broken spirit have come home together, have come home to you like a swallow in the spring, and they will seek no other nest.” ”

“ For the rest those palms and mountain-tops, those bubbling waters and green fields, that solemn, ruined temple and those towering pylons, were better than the parks and streets of London, or that hateful habitation in Grosvenor Square where Lord Devene leant against his haunted marble mantel-piece and mocked. Indeed, had it not been for Edith and his mother, Rupert would, he felt, be content, now that his career had gone, to renounce the world and live in Tama all his days. ”

“ Whilst he was regarding it with the respect that one brave man has for another, even though that other be a cruel and fanatical heathen, Rupert became aware of a shadow falling upon him, which, from its long, ugly shape, he knew must be cast by a camel. Turning, he perceived a white dromedary bearing down upon him swiftly, its soft, sponge-like hoofs making so little noise upon the sand that he had never heard it coming. On the back of the camel sat an Arab sheik, who held three spears in his hand, one large and two small. ”

“ I daresay that you are perfectly right, Rupert, and that these things are all my fancy; only, my dear boy, try to make her go to church from time to time, that can’t do any woman harm. Now I have done with criticisms, and if I have made a few, you must forgive me; it is only because I find it hard to think that any woman can be worthy of you, and of course the best of us are not perfect, except to a lover. On the whole, I think that I may congratulate you, and I do so from my heart. God bless you both; you, my son, and Edith, my daughter, for as such I shall regard her. ”

“ Rupert, my husband, before the God that made me, I tell you the honest truth. I love you now, body and soul; it was only Dick that stood between us, and he is gone from me for ever. I am miserable because I may not be near you, and, if you will forgive all the past, and come back to me, no man in the world shall have a better wife, or one more obedient to his wishes. I know it is much to ask; I know I do not deserve it, and I know, too, that this beautiful lady Mea loves you, and that she is as true and good as you are. ”

“ I will live! Yes, I will keep my life like a jewel beyond price, because I shall know, even if you do not come, that you may come some time, and that if you never come, yet you would have come if you could—that the marsh-light is true fire, and that the flower will one day be a star. For soon or late we shall meet again, Rupert Bey! ”

“ Those of one young queen, or rather chieftainess, who had died a few years before the birth of Christ were indeed of remarkable beauty and great value, comprising a crown of gold filagree and enamelled flowers of marvellous workmanship, inlaid pectoral and bracelets and a sceptre of gold surmounted by a crystal symbol of the sun. Mea took them from the body and arrayed herself in them and stood before Rupert a queen of Egypt, as once he had seen her stand in the sanctuary at Abu-Simbel. Very wonderful she looked thus with the lamp-light shining upon her in that awesome, silent place. ”

“ EDITH AND MEA
Edith had heard it all. Not one bitter taunt, not one rough word had that merciless interpreter glossed over. She had heard herself called “a woman who should be scourged with rods” and “a daughter of Satan.” She had heard herself, while Dick sniggered behind her, and Tabitha strove to repress a smile that she felt to be unholy, compared to mire in which, if a man rolled, he could never be clean again, and to a sower of poisonous weeds, and this by that other hateful woman who had bewitched her husband with her beauty. She could bear no more ”

“ As for Dick Learmer, with the exception of the birth of this to him inopportune child, which now stood between him and the Devene wealth, his fortunes seemed to wax as those of his rival, Rupert, waned and vanished. He was a clever man, with an agreeable manner and a certain gift of shallow but rather amusing speech; the kind of speech that entertains and even impresses for the moment, but behind which there is neither thought nor power. ”

“ She grew quiet, quick, resourceful.
“Is it so?” she said. “Then that old teacher, he must be, what you call him, a prophet—or perhaps he hear you come. You want seek Lord Devene, him whom you spit on when he was Rupert Ullershaw Bey? Yes? Well, Zahed no look as though he wish to go away with you, his face all change,” and she pointed to Rupert’s agonised countenance.
“I am speaking to my husband, not to you, woman,” said Edith.
Mea shook her beautiful head and smiled.
“Woman wrong word. I great lady here; lady whom he love but no marry—till you die, alas!” ”

“ This was a great work for one man to do in so short a time, and as he looked around upon the result of the labours of his hand and heart, Rupert in secret was conscious of a certain pride. He felt that his misfortunes had worked together for good to others as well as to himself. He felt that he had not lived in vain, and that when he died, the seed which he had sown would bear fruit a hundredfold. Happy is the man who can know as much as this, and few there are that know it. ”

“ You came; you found the face which smiled on you; you kept the letter of your oath to the false woman, but you broke its spirit. You loved her, our lady Tama, and she loved you; you said, both of you: ‘We renounce because we love so much. We are good lest in time to come our sin should separate us. To gain much you gave a little, you whose eyes are opened, you who see something of the truth, who know that this life is no more than the oasis of Tama compared to the great stars above, those stars which you will one day travel.’
“Listen to me, Zahed, I speak for your instruction. ”

“ Even in health and strength, Rupert was the least vain of men, but broken, mutilated, scarred, blinded as he was, a horror such as those that sit the streets of Cairo to beg for alms, it never even occurred to him that a woman, lovely, and in her own world high-placed as he knew Mea to be, would think of him as more than a friend to whom she was grateful for service rendered. ”

“ The agonies of his body and his soul were very great, but Rupert still sat there proudly, the ruin of a man, uttering no complaint, making no plea for pity. Only in his heart he wondered humbly what he had done that these terrors should come upon him. Then he remembered that in this blood-stained Soudan, the home of fanaticism and devilry, many a man as good or better than himself—yes, and many a woman also, had been called upon to suffer even worse things, and bowed his mangled head in submission to the decree of Destiny. ”

“ As she spoke she turned her head, and the light of the lamp fell full upon her face, and it was lovely as a flower, clothed with a kind of beauty that was new to Rupert, for never had he seen its like. The large eyes—dark, liquid, and lustrous—the broad and noble brow, the lips somewhat full and red, in type purely Eastern, the fine-cut nose spreading a little at the nostrils, the rounded, childish cheeks, the firm yet dimpled chin, were all set like a framed picture in the straight-trimmed, formal masses of that curling hair. ”

“ He laughed a little and said:
“You don’t really believe all that, do you, Bakhita? Those old gods have been dead for many an age.”
“I am not sure what I believe,” she answered, “but departed faiths still haunt the blood of those whose fathers held them, and the ancient gods live on in other forms. To-day none worship ours, save I, for Mea turned from him to you, and the people have forgotten long ago. Well, I was sure that ill-luck would come, and so it has. Still, I do not blame you, Rupert Bey, who are brave and honest, and have dealt well by her whom you might have betrayed and left. ”

“ Forgetting the tale of this fabled temple, Rupert pursued his walk past the graves of some of the Khalifa’s emirs who had been wounded in the battle of Toski, a few miles away, and when they succumbed, hastily buried where they died by their retreating comrades. He knew the man who lay beneath one of the rough piles of stones—a brave Dervish of high rank, who had very nearly put an end to himself and his earthly adventures. He could see the fellow coming at him now, yelling his war-cry and shaking his great spear. ”

“ In place of that little London house where Rupert had lain sick, behold the mouth of a cliff-hewn temple, and on the face of it, cut from the solid rock, four colossal statues of an Egyptian king, nearly seventy feet high each of them, that gaze for ever across the waters of the Nile and the desert beyond—that unchanging desert whence for three thousand five hundred years, dawn by dawn, they have greeted the newly-risen sun. For this place is the temple of Abu-Simbel below the Second Cataract of the Nile in the Soudan. ”

“ Mea’s face was thinner, the rich, full lips had a little wistful droop; the great, pleading eyes had grown spiritual, as though with continual looking over the edge of the world; the air of mystery which her features always wore had deepened; also, her figure was somewhat less rounded than it appeared in those unregenerate days when she turned herself about before Rupert, and assured him that she was “not so bad.” ”

“ Did God decree that a man should leave those with whom he lives in innocence, to share the home of his betrayer whom he hates? Is it virtue to be made vile? Is it righteous to clothe oneself in the rags of another’s wickedness? Make reply, you babbler, old in self-conceit, you who think to gain honour by defeating your lord in words before his people. ”

“ Blood ran in thin, black streams, and was soaked up by the thankful soil; men died beneath the hands of their fellow-men as in this devil-ridden world they have done from the beginning, and will do till the end. Untouched by some miracle, Rupert still fought on. His rifle was empty; a tall, bearded Arab had fallen before its last shot. Then quite close to him he saw Ibrahim, and remembering his revolver, drew it, when suddenly a heavy blow from behind felled him to the ground. ”