What was Margaret doing that night?
Many days had passed 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
passed 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 passed
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 retard 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 passed 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
attitude 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
God, 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 space 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 attitude 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 glass and made her swallow it. "The
desert plays the dickens 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 class 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.