When Margaret discovered that her desire for theatre-going was still unabated and unsatisfied, and that she considered that there was no pleasure on earth which wealth could bring her to be compared to the excitement of a "first night," as viewed from the gallery, she determined to give her a treat. She had not been to the theatre for many years; the necessary shilling for the gallery was never forthcoming; picking down old uniforms was not a lucrative occupation.

Margaret contrived to put the necessary shilling in her way by leaving it lying on the seat when she got up.

When she appeared in the garden-square the next day, the aged comedian told her about her "find," and asked her anxiously if she had lost a shilling. Margaret lied n.o.bly; yet her lie was only half a lie, for she certainly had not lost it. She had vividly realized the finding of it.

Margaret never laid out a shilling to better account. It was returned to her fourfold as she listened to the glowing descriptions and the good criticisms of the first performance of one of the most popular war-plays which had been played in London.

And so the days pa.s.sed and ran into each other, impersonal and unselfish days. The story of Margaret's individual life was marking time; but if her romance was arrested, her sympathies were expanding.

It was impossible for her to be dull, and she did not allow herself to be sad. Freddy's example forbade self-pity or repining.

Of society in London she knew nothing and cared less. The war had put "society" out of fashion. If she could count amongst her friends many strange and questionable characters, they helped and cheered her as nothing else could have done. More than one poor home in which there was little food and much courage looked forward to the visits of the tall, dark girl, whom they called by no other name than "Our V.A.D."

It was her intimate acquaintance with the inner life of some of London's poor, and the example they unconsciously set her by their cheerful acceptance of their pitiful circ.u.mstances and hideous surroundings, which made Margaret see how contemptible it would be to indulge in self-pity or repining. They expected so little, while she wanted so much--perfect happiness as well as worldly prosperity. They contrived to get enjoyment out of life even when it seemed to her that they would be better dead. She had a thousand things in life which had been denied to them. How could she expect to be given everything?

There she was face to face with crowds of human beings who exaggerated their joys and rose above their afflictions. The unconquerable courage of the poor--that was what life in London was teaching Margaret.

It was one wet afternoon when she was seated in a Lyons' tea-shop, in a crowded part of a West End shopping district, waiting for a cup of coffee to be brought to her, that the strange incident happened. To make use of her time, she had taken out a small writing-tablet which she carried in a bag with her knitting, and was beginning to write a letter to her Aunt Anna. She had written the first words, "Dear Aunt Anna," and had paused before writing further. Her pencil was close to her tablet; her mind was thinking of what she was going to say.

Suddenly her hand began writing very fast, automatically, something after the manner in which an actor writes on the stage. Margaret let it write swiftly and uninterruptedly, without either considering it strange that it should be doing so, or wondering, at the time, what she was writing. Her thoughts had, in a curious way, become subservient to her actions. Afterwards, when she tried to remember what she had felt, she could recollect no impression.

When the quick movement of her hand stopped and the automatic writing ceased, her powers of thought seemed suddenly to rea.s.sert themselves.

Probably what she had been writing was mere unintelligible scribble.

Margaret had never heard of the writing of the "unseen hand." She was more nervous than she was aware of; there was a heavy beating at her heart, a wonder in her mind. She looked with apprehension at the sheet of paper on the tablet. Her hand had certainly written something, but the writing was not her own. It was untidy and broken. She tried to read it, but the first words made her so nervous that she could not go any further. They brought the colour flying to her face, but it quickly left it; she became wide-eyed; her hands trembled. It was horrible to think that some outside influence had taken possession of her actions. She fought for self-control, and managed to read the message.

"The rays of Aton, which encompa.s.s all lands, will protect him, the enemy will fear him because of them. The living Aton, beside Whom there is no other, this hath He ordained. The Light of Aton will scatter the enemy and turn his hand from victory. When the chicken crieth in the egg-sh.e.l.l, He giveth it life, delighting that it should chirp with all its might. The same Aton, Who liveth for ever, Who slumbers not, neither does He sleep, knows the wishes of your heart.

The Lord of Peace will not tolerate the victory of those who delight in strife. His rays, bright, great, gleaming, high above all earth. . . ."

There the writing became almost indecipherable; many words were quite meaningless; only the end of the last line was distinct:

"To the mistress of his happiness, Aton, the Loving Father, giveth counsel."

When Margaret had finished reading the amazing thing that her hand had written, she was faint and frightened. What had come over her? How could she account for the mysterious thing which had happened?

The state of her nerves prevented her thinking connectedly or sensibly.

The meaning of the message scarcely formed any part of her bewilderment; it was the automatic writing itself which disturbed her.

It made her very unhappy. She had never heard of anything like it happening to anyone else. She wished that she had only dreamed it; but there the words were, lying on the tablet before her. If she was real, they were real.

It was so long since she had read anything about Akhnaton's Aton-worship that she could not have composed the sentences in exactly the manner of the Pharaoh's writing if she had set herself down in a retired place and tried very hard to remember his style and his language. Here, in this modern and vulgar tea-room, filled with men and youths in khaki and shop-girls in cheap and showy finery, she had suddenly and unconsciously written a thing which had absolutely nothing to do with her thoughts or surroundings.

The girl who brought her coffee and was standing waiting to make out her bill, looked at her sympathically and asked her if she felt ill.

At the sound of her voice, Margaret dragged her thoughts back to the fact that she had been waiting for a cup of coffee.

"No," she said, jerkily. "I am not ill, only a little tired, thank you."

"You're working hard, I suppose? One coffee, threepence," she jotted down. "Are you in a hospital? I wish I was nursing, instead of doing this."

Margaret looked at her blankly for a moment. She wished that she would not talk to her; she felt afraid of her own answers.

"No, I'm not nursing--I'm a pantry-maid in a private convalescent hospital."

"Well, I never!" the girl said; she was not ignorant of Margaret's good breeding. "Do you like the work?"

"It's very like your work, I suppose. I never stop to think about whether I like it or not. Someone has to do it, and I've been given it--every little helps."

"Isn't that splendid?" the girl said. "And I don't suppose you ever worked before?"

"Not in that way," Margaret said. She smiled a queer sort of smile, as her thoughts flew back to her work in the hut, the cleaning and sorting of delicate fragments and amulets which had been made and treasured by a people of whom the girl had probably never even heard, the mascots and art-treasures of a forgotten civilization, which had lasted for thousands of years.

Margaret paid for her coffee, and looked at the clock. She had only a few minutes in which to drink it. She poured in all the cream which she had ordered to cool it, but still it was too hot to drink. While she waited she wondered whether her hand would write anything else if she left it lying on her writing pad. Nervously she took up her pencil and while she tried to sip her coffee, she left her right hand lying on the pad just as it had been before.

Nothing happened. Her hand never moved; she was extremely conscious of her own feelings and expectations.

She looked at the writing on the tablet once more. Yes, it was totally and absolutely unlike her own. She tore off the sheet on which it was written and folded it up and put it safely in her note-case. If she was to drink her coffee, there was no more time for thought.

Hurriedly she left the crowded tea-rooms and started off in the direction of her hospital.

It was well for her that she had to hurry, and that her thoughts for the next few hours had to be given to the carrying-out of everyday things. With practised mind-control she put the incident of the "unseen hand" away from her as far as she could. When it came creeping back again, like leaking water, into the foreground of her thoughts, she fought it splendidly.

Freddy had so extremely disliked her dabbling, as he called it, in occult matters, that for his sake, for his memory, she must not allow herself to be mastered by it. She had scarcely ever allowed herself to think even about her vision in the Valley for this very reason, and had refused to be drawn into the wave of fortune-telling by palmistry and by crystal-gazing and psychic sciences which the war had given birth to in London. The nurses and the staff generally at the hospital spent a great deal of time and money on palmists.

Margaret could honestly say to herself that no one had sought those strange experiences less than she had, no one had been less interested in Spiritualism and black magic, as it used to be called, than she had been--and, indeed, still was. Michael had called her his practical mystic, yet she had never felt herself to be one.

For Freddy's sake she would not encourage this new phase of the super-mind which had suddenly come to her. He had considered spiritualism a dangerous and undesirable study. With only his memory to cling to, she would do nothing which would cause him any trouble.

Here again was the Lampton ancestor-worship developing to its fullest.

CHAPTER XX

When Margaret got back to her hospital, she found no time for psychic reflections, for news had come that a fresh consignment of patients was to arrive at the hospital the next morning, and as the number was considerably more than they had expected, or the wards had beds for, it meant that the staff, from the humblest to the highest in command, had plenty of extra work to do.

She did a hundred and one odd jobs which kept her busy until nine o'clock. A V.A.D. whose duty it was to run the lift was ill; she had had to go home, so Margaret took her place until a girl-scout appeared, who was a sister of one of the staff-nurses. The proud girl-scout became lift-boy in her after-school-hours and kept the post until the V.A.D. was well enough to resume her work. During the day the V.A.D.s filled the post between them, taking it in turn.

It was not until all her work was done, and Margaret was alone in her bedroom, with its air of ghostly fashion, that she found it increasingly difficult to drive the incident of the automatic writing from her mind.

She did not wish to think of it because of her promise to Freddy. While she had been busy it had never entered her head. Certainly Satan finds some mischief for idle thoughts as well as for idle hands to do. But was it Satan who had sent these thoughts? Was she dabbling in black or in white magic?

She wondered whether, if she looked at the writing once more, and thought over every incident of the strange occurrence which had happened to her, very clearly and thoroughly, it would help her to drive it from her mind, in the same way as saying some haunting lines of a poem over and over again will often drown their insistence in our ears. Certainly she must make an effort to free herself from the obsession of the incident. It was unnerving her.

She took the sheet of paper out of her note-case and read the writing on it aloud, very distinctly and slowly. She said the words thoughtfully, so as to get their precise value. As she read them, she tried her utmost to subdue the increasing nervousness which they produced, a nervousness which she certainly had not in any way experienced when her hand had hurriedly written down the words.

As she read them aloud, she realized with a sudden and astounding clearness their true meaning, which had either escaped her intelligence, or she had been too astonished and interested in her own action to appreciate before. Her first feeling had been one of amazement and interest; now she felt quite convinced that the message had been sent to her to tell her that Michael was at the Front, that she was not to trouble or be afraid, for his safety was in divine hands.

How much or how little her super-senses had understood this fact she could not be certain. Her over-self was an independent factor. Her natural consciousness had certainly not appreciated the news. She had never said the fact to herself, or derived any comfort from it, or questioned it. She had been too overwhelmed by the practical evidence that she was once more in touch with her vision to grasp the real purpose of the message. Its value had been lost upon her, even though it had told her that Michael was fighting, that he was in the war. But was he?

That was the question which her natural mind forced upon her. She must take it on faith or reject the whole thing as a fabrication of her own brain.

The writing had told her that the Light of Aton would guard him, that the rays of Aton, which were G.o.d's symbol on earth, would encompa.s.s him and confound his enemies. To the reasoning, practical Margaret it seemed incredible nonsense, and yet Egypt had taught her that nothing is incredible. She had thought of many solutions of the problem of Michael's disappearance, many answers to her riddle of the sands, but she had, to her conscious knowledge, never once imagined that he would be taking part in this most horrible of all wars. Knowing his views upon the subject of war, the possibility had never entered her mind that he might have volunteered to fight in it. He had said over and over again that Germany's desire for war was a myth, a mere mania which obsessed a certain cla.s.s of mind; that if such a thing happened it would be the death-blow to the spread of Christianity, and rightly so, for a religion which had done no more for the most scientifically-advanced race in the world was not likely to be adopted by non-Christian races.