There was a King in Egypt Part 48

"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."

They obliterated the desert, with its immortal voices, its pa.s.sionate appeals. He was no longer wandering lonely as a cloud. He was happy, he was one with the dancing daffodils, as he watched them

"Tossing their heads in sprightly dance."

To how many weary minds has the poem brought the same solace, the same spiritual refreshment?

"Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze."

His fingers relaxed their hold on the book. It dropped from his hand.

Margaret stood among the daffodils, Margaret, with her steadfast eyes and dark-brown head, Margaret calling to him in the breeze.

At dawn, when Abdul came to wake his master, he found the candle still burning. It was a little bit of wick floating in melted grease, like a light in a saint's tomb. The book which the Effendi had been reading had fallen to the floor.

Abdul looked at his master anxiously. He must have been reading very late. Why had he not been asleep? He ought to have refreshed himself for his long journey. For many days past he had looked tired and anxious.

Abdul folded his hands while he looked at the sleeping Michael.

"_Al hamdu lillah_ (thank G.o.d)," he said. "The Effendi has been in pleasant company."

CHAPTER VIII

The camp had moved on. Two days had pa.s.sed since the saint had been laid to rest. They were now making for a rock-village, which would take them slightly out of their direct route, but from Abdul's account of the place Michael thought that the delay would be well worth while.

A short extension of their journey could make but little difference to the finding of the treasure.

The village was a subterranean one; its streets and dwelling-houses were cut out of the desert-rock. It had been inhabited by desert people since immemorial times. Obviously its origin had been for secrecy and security. Fugitives had probably made it and lived in it just as the early Christians, during their period of persecution, lived in the catacombs in Rome.

Michael had been far from well for some days past. Abdul was anxious about his health. There had been no fresh cases of smallpox in the camp and Michael's present condition indicated a touch of fever rather than any contagious malady. He often felt sick; he was easily tired and his excellent powers of sleeping had deserted him.

He was troubled about Margaret. He had neither heard from her nor was he certain that she had received any of his letters. During the saint's illness he had written her two letters, which his friends at the Bedouin camp had promised to deliver to the next desert mail-carrier who pa.s.sed their hamlet. He had sent a runner to the village to which he had told Margaret that she was to write. The runner returned, bearing no letter.

It was consistent with native etiquette that he should pay a visit to the _omdeh_ of the subterranean village, which he wished to pa.s.s through. Abdul had a slight acquaintance with him and, being more than a little anxious about his master's health, he thought that Michael's visit to him might prove of value should any serious illness overtake him.

It was about three o'clock in the afternoon when they arrived at the entrance of the village, an uninviting underground labyrinth, where the sun never penetrated and where men, women and children lived in homes cut out of the virgin rock. It was, of course, necessary to leave their camels and go through the village on foot. Abdul told the servants that he alone would go with his master; they were to meet them in the desert at the other entrance to the village.

As Michael followed the tall figure of Abdul through the narrow streets, which were as dark as railway tunnels, he felt horribly sick.

He was well accustomed to the torment of Egyptian flies, but these particular flies belonged to the order of things whose deeds, being evil, loved darkness. They covered his face and hands the very moment after he had shaken them off. Do what he would, he could not keep them away from the corners of his mouth or from going up his nostrils.

"Abdul," he said, "this gives one a new vision of h.e.l.l. Look at those disgusting children!" He pointed to the groups of pale mites, with yellow skins and frail bodies, who were paying like puppies in the garbage of the narrow pathway; their faces were covered with large black house-flies--they hung in cl.u.s.ters from their eyes and ears and from the corners of their mouths.

"_Aiwah_, Effendi, but these people will live in no other surroundings.

They prefer this darkness, this unwholesome atmosphere."

"And these awful flies?"