Haggard Anthology Vol 13, page 1
Haggard Anthology
Vol 13
by
H. Rider Haggard
Book Index
The Way of the Spirit
The Ghost Kings
The Yellow God
The Lady of Blossholme
The Way of the Spirit
First Published 1906
"Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth… and walk
in the ways of thine heart, and in the sight of thine
eyes; but know thou that for all these things God will
bring thee into judgment."
"To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the
tree of life which is in the midst of the paradise of God."
DEDICATION
My dear Kipling,— Both of us believe that there are higher aims in life than the weaving of stories well or ill, and according to our separate occasions strive to fulfil this faith.
Still, when we talked together of the plan of this tale, and when you read the written book, your judgment thereof was such as all of us hope for from an honest and instructed friend-generally in vain.
So, as you found interest in it, I offer it to you, in token of much I cannot write. But you will understand.—
Ever sincerely yours,
H. Rider Haggard.
To Rudyard Kipling, Esq.
Ditchingham, 14th August, 1905.
Contents
Author's Note
Prologue
I. The Voice of the Singing Sand
II. Two Letters
III. The Return of Rupert
IV. A Business Conversation
V. The Dinner-Party
VI. Rupert Falls in Love
VII. Engaged
VIII. Edith's Crushed Lilies
IX. Rupert Accepts a Mission
X. Married
XI. An Offering to the Gods
XII. The Wandering Players
XIII. The End of the Fight
XIV. Mea Makes a Proposal
XV. Rupert Makes Obeisance
XVI. Meanwhile
XVII. Welcome Home!
XVIII. The Happy, Happy Life
XIX. After Seven Years
XX. Revelations
XXI. Zahed
XXII. Edith and Mea
XXIII. The Wheel Turns
XXIV. Renunciation
AUTHOR'S NOTE
This tale was written two years ago as the result of reflections which occurred to me among the Egyptian sands and the empty cells of long-departed anchorites.
Perhaps in printing it I should ask forgiveness for my deviation from the familiar, trodden pathway of adventure, since in the course of a literary experience extending now, I regret to say, over more than a quarter of a century, often I have seen that he who attempts to step off the line chalked out for him by custom or opinion is apt to be driven back with stones and shoutings. Indeed, there are some who seem to think it very improper that an author should seek, however rarely, to address himself to a new line of thought or group of readers. As he began so he must go on, they say. Yet I have ventured on the history of Rupert Ullershaw's great, and to all appearance successful Platonic experiment, chiefly because this problem interested me: Under the conditions in which fortune placed him in the East, was he right or wrong in clinging to an iron interpretation of a vow of his youth and to the strict letter of his Western Law? And was he bound to return to the English wife who had treated him so ill, as, in the end, he made up his mind to do? In short, should or should not circumstances be allowed to alter moral cases?
The question is solved in one way in this book, but although she herself was a party to that solution, looking at the matter with Mea's eyes it seems capable of a different reading. Still, given a sufficiency of faith, I believe that set down here to be the true answer. Also, whatever its exact cause and nature, there must be something satisfying and noble in utter Renunciation for Conscience' sake, even when surrounding and popular judgment demands no such sacrifice. At least this is one view of Life, its aspirations and possibilities; that which wearies of its native soil, that which lifts its face toward the Stars.
Otherwise, why did those old anchorites wear the stone beds of their cells so thin? Why, in this fashion or in that, do their successors still wear them thin everywhere in the wide earth, especially in the wise and ancient East? I think the reply is Faith: that Faith which bore Rupert and Mea to what they held to be a glorious issue of their long probation-that Faith in personal survival and reunion, without the support of which in one form or another, faint and flickering as it may be, the happiness or even the continuance of our human world is so difficult to imagine.
H. R. H.
PROLOGUE
The last pitiful shifts of shame, the last agonised doublings of despair when the net is about the head and the victor's trident at the throat—who can enjoy the story of such things as these? Yet because they rough-hewed the character of Rupert Ullershaw, because from his part in them he fashioned the steps whereby he climbed to that height of renunciation which was the only throne he ever knew, something of it must be told. A very little will suffice; the barest facts are all we need.
Upon a certain July evening, Lord and Lady Devene sat at dinner alone in a very fine room of a very fine house in Portland Place. They were a striking couple, the husband much older than the wife; indeed, he was fifty years of age, and she in the prime of womanhood. The face of Lord Devene, neutral tinted, almost colourless, was full of strength and of a certain sardonic ability. His small grey eyes, set beneath shaggy, overhanging eyebrows that were sandy-coloured like his straight hair, seemed to pierce to the heart of men and things, and his talk, when he had anything to say upon a matter that moved him, was keen and uncompromising. It was a very bitter face, and his words were often very bitter words, which seems curious, as this man enjoyed good health, was rich, powerful, and set by birth and fortune far above the vast majority of other men.
Yet there were flies in his silver spoon of honey. For instance, he hated his wife, as from the first she hated him; for instance, he who greatly desired sons to carry on his wealth and line had no children; for instance, his sharp, acrimonious intellect had broken through all beliefs and overthrown all conventions, yet the ghost of dead belief still haunted him, and convention still shackled his hands and feet. For he could find no other rocks whereon to rest or cling as he was borne forward by the universal tide which at last rips over the rough edges of the world.
The woman, Clara, Lady Devene, was physically magnificent; tall, with a regal-looking head, richly coloured, ivory-skinned, perfectly developed in every part, except perhaps her brain. Good-natured, courageous after a fashion, well-meaning, affectionate, tenacious of what she had learned in youth, but impulsive and quite elementary in her tendencies and outlook; one who would have wished to live her own life and go her own way like an amiable, high-class savage, worshipping the sun and stars, the thunder and the rain, principally because she could not understand them, and at times they frightened her. Such was Clara, Lady Devene. She was not imaginative, she lived in the present for the present. She never heard the roll of the wheels of Fate echoing, solemn and ceaseless, through the thin, fitful turmoil of our lives, like the boom of distant battle-guns that shape the destinies of empires discerned through the bray of brass bands upon an esplanade.
No; Clara was not imaginative, although she had a heart, although, for example, from year to year she could grieve over the man whom once she had jilted or been forced to jilt (and who afterwards died of drink), in order to take her "chance in life" and marry Lord Devene whom she cordially disliked; whom she knew, moreover, to be self-seeking and cross-souled, as each in his or her degree were all his race from the first remembered Ullershaw down to himself and his collaterals. Ultimately, such primitive and unhappy women are apt to find some lover, especially if he reminds them of their first. Lady Devene had done so at any rate, and that lover, as it chanced, was scarcely more than a lad, her husband's heir and cousin, a well-meaning but hot-hearted youth, whom she had befooled with her flatteries and her beauty, and now doted on in a fashion common enough under such circumstances. Moreover, she had been found out, as she was bound to be, and the thing had come to its inevitable issue. The birds were blind, and Lord Devene was no man in spread his nets in vain.
Lady Devene was not imaginative—it has been said. Yet when her husband, lifting a large glass of claret to his lips, suddenly let it fall, so that the red wine ran over the white table-cloth like new-shed blood upon snow, and the delicate glass was shattered, she shivered, she knew not why; perhaps because instinct told her that this was no accident, but a symbol of something which was to come. For once she heard the boom of those battle-guns of Fate above the braying of the brass band on her life's tawny esplanade. There rose in her mind, indeed, the words of an old song that she used to sing—for she had a beautiful voice, everything about her was beautiful—a melancholy old song, which began:
"Broken is the bowl of life, spilled is its ruby wine;
Behind us lie the sins of earth, before, the doom Divine!"
It was a great favourite with that unlucky dead lover of hers who had taken to drink, and whom she had jilted—before he took to drink. The memory disturbed her. She rose from the table, saying that she was going to her own sitting-room. Lord Devene answered that he would come too, and she stared at him, for he was not in the habit of visiting her apartments. In practice they had lived separate for years.
Husband and wife stood face to face in that darkened room, for the lamps were not lit, and a cloud obscured the moon which till now had shone through the open windows.
The truth was out. She knew the worst, and it was very bad.
"Do you mean to murder me?" she asked, in a hoarse voice, for the deadly hate in the man's every word and movement suggested nothing less to her mind.
"No," he answered; "only to divorce you. I mean to be rid of you—at last. I mean to marry again. I wish to leave heirs behind me. Your young friend shall not have my wealth and title if I can help it."
"Divorce me? You? You?"
"You can prove nothing against me, Clara, and I shall deny everything, whereas I can prove all against you. This poor lad will have to marry you. Really I am sorry for him, for what chance had he against you? I do not like to see one of my name made ridiculous, and it will ruin him."
"He shall not marry me," she answered fiercely. "I love him too well."
"You can settle that as you like between you. Go back to your reverend parent's house if you choose, and take to religion. You will be an ornament to any Deanery. Or if you do not choose—" and with a dim, expressive gesture, he waved his hand towards the countless lights of London that glimmered beneath them.
She thought a while, leaning on the back of a chair and breathing heavily. Then that elementary courage of hers flared up, and she said:
"George, you want to be free from me. You noticed the beginning of my folly and sent us abroad together; it was all another plot—I quite understand. Now, life is uncertain, and you have made mine very miserable. If anything should chance to happen to me—soon, would there be any scandal? I ask it, not for my own sake, but for that of my old father, and my sisters and their children."
"No," he replied slowly. "In that sad and improbable event there would be no scandal. Only foolish birds foul their own nests unless they are driven to it."
Again she was silent, then drew back from him and said:
"Thank you, I do not think there is anything to add. Go away, please."
"Clara," he answered, in his cold, deliberate voice, "you are worn out—naturally. Well, you want sleep, it will be a good friend to you to-night. But remember, that chloral you are so fond of is dangerous stuff; take enough if you like, but not too much!"
"Yes," she replied heavily, "I know. I will take enough—but not too much."
For a moment there was deep silence between them in that dark room. Then suddenly the great moon appeared again above the clouds, revealing their living faces to each other for the last time. That of the woman was tragic and dreadful; already death seemed to stare from her wide eyes, and that of the man somewhat frightened, yet remorseless. He was not one of those who recoil from their Rubicon.
"Good-bye," he said quickly; "I am going down to Devene by the late train, but I shall be back in town to-morrow morning—to see my lawyer."
With a white and ghost-like arm she pointed first to the door, then through the window-place upwards towards the ominous, brooding sky, and spoke in a solemn whisper:
"George," she said, "you know that you are a hundred times worse than I, and whatever I am, you have made me, who first forced me to marry you because I was beautiful, and then when you wearied of me, treated me as you have done for years. God judge between us, for I say that as you have had no pity, so you shall find none. It is not I who speak to you from the brink of my grave, but something within me."
* * * * *
It was morning, and Rupert Ullershaw stood at the door of the Portland Place house, whither he had come to call upon Lady Devene, to whom he brought a birthday gift which he had saved for months to buy. He was a somewhat rugged-faced lad, with frank grey eyes; finely built also, broad-shouldered, long-armed, athletic, though in movement slow and deliberate. There was trouble in those eyes of his, who already had found out thus early in his youth that though "bread of deceit is sweet to a man, afterwards his mouth shall be filled with gravel." Also, he had other anxieties who was the only son and hope of his widowed mother, and of a father, Captain Ullershaw, Devene's relation, whose conduct had broken her heart and beggared her of the great fortune for which she had been married. Now Rupert, the son, had just passed out of Woolwich, where, when his feet fell into this bitter snare, he had been studying in the hope of making a career for himself in the army.
Presently the butler, a dark, melancholy-looking person, opened the door, and Rupert saw at once that the man was strangely disturbed; indeed, he looked as though he had been crying.
"Is Lady Devene in?" Rupert asked as a matter of form.
"In, sir, yes; she'll never go out no more, except once," answered the butler, speaking with a gulp in his throat. "Haven't you heard, sir, haven't you heard?" he went on wildly.
"Heard what?" gasped Rupert, clutching at the door frame.
"Dead, Mr. Ullershaw, dead—accident—overdose of chloral they say! His lordship found her an hour ago, and the doctors have just left."
* * * * *
Meanwhile, in the room above, Lord Devene stood alone, contemplating the still and awful beauty of the dead. Then rousing himself, he took the hearth-brush, and with it swept certain frail ashes of burnt paper down between the bars of the low grate so that they crumbled up and were no more seen.
"I never believed that she would dare to do it," he thought to himself. "After all, she had courage, and she was right, I am worse than she was—as she would judge. Well, I have won the game and am rid of her at last, and without scandal. So—let the dead bury their dead!"
* * * * *
When Rupert, who had come up from Woolwich that morning, reached the little house in Regent's Park, which was his mother's home, he found a letter awaiting him. It had been posted late on the previous night, and was unsigned and undated, but in Clara's hand, being written on a plain sheet, and enclosed, as a blind, in a conventional note asking him to luncheon. Its piteous, its terrible contents need not be described; suffice to say that from them he learned all the truth. He read it twice, then had the wit to destroy it by fire. In that awful hour of shock and remorse the glamour and the madness departed from him, and he, who at heart was good enough, understood whither they had led his feet.
After this Rupert Ullershaw was very ill, so ill that he lay in bed a long time, wandered in his mind, and was like to die. But his powerful constitution carried his young body through the effects of a blow from which inwardly he never really quite recovered. In the end, when he was getting better, he told his mother everything. Mrs. Ullershaw was a strong, reserved woman, with a broad, patient face and smooth, iron-grey hair; one who had endured much and through it kept her simple faith and trust in Providence—yes, even when she thought that the evil in her son's blood was mastering him, that evil from which no Ullershaw was altogether free, and that he was beginning to walk in the footsteps of his father and of that ill guide and tempter, his cousin, Lord Devene. She heard him out, her quiet eyes fixed upon his face that was altered almost into age by passion, illness and repentance—heard him without a word.
Then she made one of the great efforts of her life, and in the stress of her appeal even became eloquent. She told Rupert all she knew of those brilliant, erratic, unprincipled Ullershaws from whom he sprang, and counted before his eyes the harvest of Dead Sea apples that they had gathered. She showed him how great was his own wrong-doing, and how imminent the doom from which he had but just escaped—that doom which had destroyed the unhappy Clara after she was meshed in the Ullershaw net, and corrupted by their example and philosophy which put the pride of life and gratification of self above obedience to law human or Divine. She pointed out to him that he had received his warning, that he stood at the parting of the ways, that his happiness and welfare for all time depended upon the path he chose. She, who rarely spoke of herself, even appealed to him to remember his mother, who had endured so much at the hands of his family, and not to bring her grey hairs with sorrow to the grave; to live for work and not for pleasure; to shun the society of idle folk who can be happy in the midst of corruption, and who are rich in everything except good deeds.
