There was a King in Egypt Part 38

"He will be all right in the morning. Some food and sleep will set him on his way again." Michael's eyes expressed the fact that his thoughts had travelled to Millicent's own position in his camp. She had wished to avoid this; she had tried to obliterate her own personality. Her desire was to let Mike get pleasantly accustomed to her companions.h.i.+p, to her place in his camp, to her harmless presence. She felt certain that if she could manage it for a day or two, he would let things slide. It was his nature to drift.

The evening was almost at its close; night was drawing near. The evening star, with its one clear call, had appeared in the pale sky, guarded by the soft pure crescent of a new moon. The single star in the vast heavens made a tender appeal to the hearts of both Millicent and Michael. It intensified their solitude. It touched their senses with longing. If Margaret had been with Michael, his arms would have encircled her.

Millicent owed her self-restraint to her calculating common sense. To have had a lover on such a night as this would have been a splendid reward for all her trouble. In her heart she called the man at her side a fool, a pitiful fool, and herself an idiot for loving him.

"It was a beautiful idea for Mohammed's banner," Michael said at length. He had driven the thought even of Margaret from his mind.

Suggestion is too potent a drug.

"Was that what he took it from?" Millicent said. "I never thought of it before--of course, it must have been."

"He must often have watched the evening star as we are watching it now, when he was a boy living in the desert. Later on, when he became the warrior prophet, he must have visualized the heavens as the background of his banner, and taken the evening star and the crescent moon as his symbols--the star and the crescent of Islam." Michael paused. "In the same way, the full rays of the sun became the symbol of Aton, Akhnaton's G.o.d and loving father."

"Your friend?" Millicent said eagerly; it pleased her that Michael should speak of the things nearest his heart. He was allowing her to approach him.

Michael laughed. "And yours, too, I hope?"

"Why?" Millicent's heart quickened.

"Because Akhnaton was the first man to preach simplicity, honesty, frankness and sincerity, and he preached it from a throne. He was the first Pharaoh to be a humanitarian, the first man in whose heart there was no trace of barbarism." [1]

"Really?" Millicent said. Michael's earnestness forbade levity. "How interesting! Do tell me more about him."

"He was the first human being to understand rightly the meaning of divinity."

"But what he taught didn't last. We owe nothing to his doctrines, do we? Did it ever spread beyond his own kingdom?"

"Like other great teachers, he sacrificed all to his principles. Yet there can be no question that his ideals will hold good 'till the swan turns black and the crow turns white, till the hills rise up and travel and the deeps rush into the rivers.' That's how Weigall ends up the life he has written of the great reformer. How can you say that we owe nothing to him? You might as well say that we owe nothing to any of the great men of whom we have never heard, and yet you know that thought affects the whole world. Akhnaton made himself immortal by his prophecies--they were the eternal truths revealed to him by G.o.d."

"By a prophet, do you mean that he was a prophet like Moses, Jeremiah, Isaiah and so on?"

"I mean that prophets were the seers to whom G.o.d communicated knowledge. Prophets were the people to whom He made revelations; he enlightened their minds; He certainly revealed Himself to Akhnaton, or how else could he, in that age of darkness, have evolved for himself an almost perfect conception of divinity? Weigall says 'he evolved a monotheist's religion second only to Christianity itself in its purity of tone.' If G.o.d had not revealed Himself to Akhnaton as He did later on to Moses and Abraham, and as I believe He still does to our true reformers, how could he, as Weigall says, have evolved his beautiful religion 'in an age of superst.i.tion, and in a land where the grossest polytheism reigned absolutely supreme'?"

"And are you now on your way to visit his tomb, Mike? How thrilling!"

"Yes," Michael said. He answered her simply, forgetful of the fact that she could only have obtained her information on this point in an underhand manner.

"You know where it is?"

"He was buried in the hills which lie beyond his city."

"Tel-el-Amarna?"

"Yes, the City of the Horizon, the capital he built when he found it necessary for the progress of his new religion to get away from Thebes, from the priests of Amon-Ra."

Michael's thoughts became absorbed. They travelled to the mid-African in el-Azhar and then became mixed up with this meeting with the desert-saint. Could this poor, emaciated figure, so shrunken and worn with tropical fevers and famished for want of food, have any knowledge of the hidden treasure which the seer had visualized?

Millicent allowed his thoughts to wander. She knew the force of silent companions.h.i.+p. She knew that, although he was apparently far from her, he was conscious of her presence. She would have liked to ask him a thousand questions, to have talked rather than held her peace; but her instinct as a woman forbade it. Something told her that during their talk Michael was one half saint, one half man, and the man-power was stronger than he knew.

Many stars had appeared in the sky, which had deepened. It was now the violet-blue of a desert night. The pa.s.sion of the heavens was beginning. Could man and woman remain outside it?

In the distance an occasional roar from one of the camels interrupted the silence. Surely it was a night for love, the love that needs no telling?

Millicent and Michael were seated on the sand, gazing into the deepening heavens. Michael was sorely disturbed.

"Could anything be more Eastern?" Millicent said dreamily. In speech she had to walk very carefully. Her mystic baffled her.

"Nothing," Michael said. "Isn't it sad to think what city-dwellers miss?"

"I love even the roar of the camels, don't you?" Her eyes were looking at the animals, as they knelt at rest in the distance, their long day's journey done. What stored-up revenge their roars suggest! They always seem to say, "My day will come, if it is yours to-day."

"Let's think of the most English thing we can, Mike," she said suddenly, "just by way of contrast."

They thought for a moment or two in silence. The arid desert was softened by the absence of the sun, its desolation was made more manifest. At night even more than by day, you could feel the immensity of its distance, its silent rolling from ocean to ocean. Nothing speaks to man's heart more eloquently than the voice of perfect silence.

For the sake of prudence Michael was consenting to Millicent's suggestion to think of the most English scene he could. Was it a village public-house, full of hearty English yokels, drinking their evening tankards of beer? This was about the time they would a.s.semble.

He had not yet formed his picture into words, Millicent had not spoken, when suddenly Abdul appeared and begged permission to speak to his master.

The sick man was better; he had eaten some food and was conscious.

Abdul had evidently some information which was for his master's ear alone. He politely inferred that he could not say it before the honourable lady.

Michael rose from his seat beside Millicent, who, being wise in her generation, said: "Then I will say good-night and go to bed. I am very tired."

"Good-night," Michael said brightly, while a sudden sense of relief came to his heart. "I think you are very wise. You must be quite tired out."

"So far, so good," Millicent said when she was alone. "What a weird mystic I've attached myself to!" She alluded to Michael, not to the Moslem saint.

Her camp-outfit was so complete that in her desert bedroom there was scarcely an item missing which could ensure her comfort. She contemplated going to bed with enjoyment. Where money is, there also are the fleshpots of Egypt, even if it is in the waterless tracts of the Arabian desert.

Material comforts meant very much to Millicent. She enjoyed using all the little accessories belonging to a fastidious woman's toilet; she enjoyed, too, the occupation of expending care on her person. Her rising up and lying down were ceremonies which she performed with unremitting attention. In her tent in the desert her perfumes and cosmetics and bath-salts afforded her a curious satisfaction. They told her that her management had been perfect; they appealed to her barbaric love of contrasts. It fed her pride very pleasantly to know that she could command these luxuries; to know that by her own wealth she could bring the trivialities of civilization into the elemental life of the desert excited her senses.

Her natural beauty could have triumphed over the ravages made by the sun and the dry desert air. She was one of those fortunate women who needed few, if any, of the absurdities which she carried about with her wheresoever she went. To have done without them would have been to deprive herself of a very genuine pleasure, to have starved one of her eager appet.i.tes. Margaret's rapid tub, the swift brus.h.i.+ng and combing and plaiting of her dark hair, generally while she read some pa.s.sage from a book which interested her, and her total disregard for cosmetics, would have horrified Millicent if she had known of her habits. The height of civilization to Millicent was expressed in a luxuriously-appointed dressing-table and in an excessive care of her body. Progress touched its high-water mark in the perfection of her creature comforts. Taken from this standpoint, progress could scarcely go any further, or so Michael would have thought if he had watched her ritual of going to bed.

She dawdled pleasantly through it, enjoying every moment of the time, appreciating the handling of artistically-designed silver objects, performing with care the was.h.i.+ng of her face with oatmeal and the dusting of her fair skin with the latest luxury in powder. She liked to take the same care of her person as a young mother takes of her first baby, and--as she expressed it--to smell like one when the ceremony was finished.

Her love of contrasts appealed to her, when she stood, all ready for bed in her foolish nightgown--a mere veil of chiffon--becomingly guarded by a j.a.panese kimono of the softest silk. She visualized the timeless desert outside her tent, the trackless ocean of silence, the uninhabited primitive world. She felt like a queen, travelling in state through a waterless, foodless world.

She held up her empty arms. Some other night! Some other night! Her heart a.s.sured her. With a sigh of content she lay down to sleep, well satisfied with her own diplomacy and cunning. Her last conscious thoughts were of Margaret Lampton. What was she doing to-night? What were her thoughts?

Late that night, as Abdul pa.s.sed the Englishwoman's tent, he spat at her door.

[1] Weigall's _Akhnaton, Pharaoh of Egypt_.