CHAPTER III

What was Margaret doing that night?

Many days had pa.s.sed since she had heard from Michael, but there was nothing in that to cause her anxiety. She did not expect to hear from him after his desert journey had begun, except by happy chance. If he pa.s.sed a desert mail-carrier, he would give him a letter to be posted when he arrived at the nearest town.

A desert mail-carrier is a weird object to Western eyes or to the eyes of a city-dweller. Almost naked, he travels across the desert on swift camels, carrying a long sword for the protection of the royal mails.

So far Margaret had received no desert letter. Her days had pa.s.sed smoothly and swiftly, for Freddy had kept her hard at work. Each day her interest in his work intensified; the more she learned of Egyptology and of archaeology generally, the more wholly absorbing it became. She had developed into a very essential member of the camp.

With splendid common sense and determination, she had succeeded in throwing herself body and soul into the work which filled her days.

She had made up her mind when she parted with Michael that not even by thought would she r.e.t.a.r.d his work and mission. When she allowed her mind to travel to him, it was to convey currents of stimulating love and encouragement. If thoughts are things, as he always told her, then the things her thoughts were to give him must be happiness and confidence. Keeping this steadily before her, she had spent healthy, happy days with her brother. In their sympathies and interests they had drawn even closer together. Strangers might well have taken them for lovers, so eagerly did they look forward each morning to their long evening to be spent together. There was very little time for play; their days were made up of hard, exacting work.

Experts were busy forming their opinions and writing their official reports upon the contested subjects connected with the tomb. The mythological and archaeological finds in it were of exceptional interest.

On this night, when Millicent in the eastern desert had held up her arms to the heavens and questioned the unseen, Margaret had gone early to bed. For some reason--perhaps owing to the great heat of the day and to the airlessness of the chamber of the tomb where she had been painting, she had felt a bit "nervy," as she had expressed her state of being to Freddy. She had tried to read, but had failed. Her thoughts had wandered; her memory had retained nothing of what she had read; at the end of a paragraph she knew as little of what it had been about as though she had never read it. Concentration was beyond her power.

"I'm only wasting time, Freddy," she said after a last desperate effort to concentrate her thoughts on her book. "I'm going to bed. If I talked, I'd probably grouse--that's how I feel."

"Right you are, old girl. I'll soon be off, too. How'd you like to go to Luxor for a few days?"

"Oh, no, Freddy!" Meg's whole being rejected the idea.

"All right--only don't get the jumps."

"A good sleep will put me right," she bent her head as she pa.s.sed her brother and lightly kissed his glittering hair. He was busy with a plan, of extraordinarily minute details. "You're such a dear, Freddy."

"Rot!"

"You are, a thumping old dear."

"Don't you worry, old girl. Mike's all right. Bad news travels on bat's wings, so they say. You'd have heard long before this if anything was wrong."

It was just like Freddy to understand. Meg felt cheered. She sat herself down beside him, quite close to his elbow, and watched him for some moments. They were perfectly silent. Freddy's practical, healthy, buoyant personality soothed her. Her big love for him brought a sudden lump to her throat. Happy tears dimmed her sight. Hungrily she pressed his arm close to hers and rubbed her cheek against his coat. The next moment she had left the room.

Freddy's eyes followed her. "Not the life for a girl, somehow," he said, a line of worry puckering his forehead, and for a few moments his thoughts deserted his work. It became faulty; he had to use his india-rubber over and over again. It was Meg's vision of Akhnaton that had intruded itself upon his work; he must drag his thoughts back again.

Meg had told him about her vision. Before the tomb had been opened, Freddy would have completely pooh-poohed the whole thing. He gave no real credence to it now; still, there was a subtle difference in his att.i.tude towards the whole subject of the supernatural. His mind did not so completely reject it as he thought. The extraordinary exactness of the seer's vision of the inside of the tomb had not been without its effect. He also knew how constantly and ardently Akhnaton had prayed that his spirit might "go forth to see the sun's rays," that his "two eyes might be opened to see the sun," that he might "obtain a sight of the beauty of each recurring sunrise."

When Meg went to bed, she slept soundly, very soundly. She must have been asleep for some hours when suddenly she awoke with unusual alertness. The intensity of her dream had wakened her. She had heard Michael's voice crying, as though it were vainly trying to reach her.

It was as clear as the overseer's whistle each morning; it had wakened her just as suddenly. The anguish of his soul came to her out of the silence. Three times he had called her distinctly.

She started up, with the words "Yes, Mike, I'm coming." They were said before she realized that she was separated from him by the Valley and the river and the eastern desert.

Sitting up in bed she listened. Everything was still. She jumped out of bed and looked out of the window. The stars in the sky shone down on the hills which covered the sleeping Pharaohs as they had shone when Michael had told her that he loved her, as they had shone before the Valley became a city of the dead.

Margaret slipped on her dressing-gown and opened the door. She went quietly out and stood in front of the hut, with eyes raised to the heavens. She felt as if her heart was bursting with the prayers that filled it. What could she do? Nothing--nothing but give herself up to G.o.d, open her heart and reveal its burden to the Lord of all worlds, trust her inarticulate prayers to His everlasting mercy. Very softly she whispered, almost ashamed of her own impotence, "I want to go to Michael. Allow my spirit to console him."

Her hands were clenched. An imploring agony held her unconscious of all else but her desire to get outside herself and appear to her lover.

She had no more words; speech was needless. Her wants were as infinitely beyond the limits of speech, as infinity is beyond our conception of s.p.a.ce or time.

For a few minutes she stood lost in the one thought. And who shall say in what name her prayer was answered by the divine mercy?

Gradually a subtle untightening of her muscles relaxed her hands even while they remained folded. Something had gone out of her. Was it virtue? Unconscious of her material self, for her thoughts had not yet returned from their mission of healing, she remained standing in the same att.i.tude of appeal.

Suddenly her imagination folded her in her lover's arms. She heard him say, "My beautiful Meg, the stars adore you!"

And she answered, "I am with you, Mike, just as I was on that night when your love made a new world for me. You called to me and so I came. Your arms are round me. . . . I can hear your voice."

Margaret sighed. Consciousness of her material surroundings was returning. She heard a step behind her; someone was present. It was Freddy.

"What are you doing, Meg?" he said anxiously.

She turned swiftly to him. "Oh, Freddy, Michael wanted me. My dream was too real not to have some meaning. I couldn't bear it--I had to try to help him!"

"You were dreaming? You were in bed?"

"Yes, and sound asleep. Suddenly he called me. It was extraordinarily real." Meg put her hands up to her head as though it was tired.

"But you can't help him by standing out here. It's too chilly."

Meg shivered. "It is cold," she said wearily. "And I'm awfully tired."

Freddy linked his arm through his sister's. "Let's sit and talk together indoors, for a bit. Have a cigarette?"

Meg thanked him with tired eyes. Freddy put his hands on her shoulders as she sank into a deck-chair, and looked into her eyes. "No more visions, old girl?"

"No, Freddy, oh no, no vision." Meg spoke dreamily, absently, and with an exhaustion which worried her brother.

"Then why so tired?"

"I don't know. I suppose it was my dream. I feel as if I'd travelled for days and days!"

"Look here, you're going to have some of this." Freddy poured out a small portion of brandy into a gla.s.s and made her swallow it. "The desert plays the d.i.c.kens with the strongest nerves. Don't be so rash again, Meg."

"I promise." Meg swallowed the brandy and Freddy lit her cigarette.

With a tact she little dreamed of he contrived to divert her thoughts into a channel far removed from the eastern desert and personal matters.

The news from home for the last few weeks had been far from satisfactory. English politics seemed to revolve round the atrocious acts of the suffragettes who believed in the militant policy and the disturbances in Ireland. Freddy's sympathies, of course, were with Ulster; the Nationalists and Sinn Feiners belonged to the unemployable unemployed cla.s.s of agitators who "walk on their heads."

When at last the brother and sister parted, Meg was restored both in mind and body to her normal healthy condition.

CHAPTER IV