Chapter 42

discovery. She came to try and help you. She is in trouble." Margaret's voice told Michael more than her words.

"She scarcely deserves your pity," he said. "Only her own heart knows how she has tricked us both . . . there are some things one cannot forgive . . . Millicent knows."

The black figure slipped from the couch to the floor. "Look, I will kneel at your Margaret's feet," she said in tones of abject shame. "Tell her everything. Tell her what a beast she has been kind to. She ought to know." She raised her head. "I think I shall enjoy the agony--anything but this living death."

She pressed her hands on Margaret's feet. "I am far worse than you knew! You are not made like me, you won't even understand if he tells you the things I did."

"I don't wish to speak of it to Margaret," Michael said. "Get up. I have seen your penitence once too often to believe in it now--get up."

"Oh," Millicent moaned, "I know, I know! You think this is just another bit of the old Millicent. It isn't--it is true."

"Get up," Margaret said kindly. "I was only trying to be kind because . . . well, perhaps it is because I am so happy myself that I can afford to forgive you. Don't kneel like that . . . I hate to see you. Michael knows how little I deserve it . . . I have hated you with all my heart and soul, I have longed for my revenge."

"My God!" Michael said quickly, "I hate to see the little coward near you! How dared you come? Get up!" he said again. "And clear out! I thought we had finished with you for ever!"

Millicent dragged herself to her feet. She stood before him, a slender, nun-like figure; one of the black shawls which enveloped her had fallen to the floor.

"Go on, say all you feel--I deserve it, every word of it! I left you to your fate when you were in danger, I fled from the camp with but one idea in my head--my own safety, my desire to get as far as I could from the infection of smallpox. I carried the hateful disease with me; I am so disfigured that you must never see me. Never!" Her words ended in a low cry of self-pity.

"My God!" Michael said. "Are you speaking the truth! Did you get smallpox?" He knew that the blame was partly his.

"Yes, but don't look at me. I can't bear it. Anything but that, oh not that!" Michael had stooped to raise her a veil.

His eyes met Margaret's. "Poor soul!" he said. "Poor little soul!"

"Yes, fate has punished me," Millicent said. "You can do no more."

Michael groaned. "We have not talked of it all yet, Margaret," he said miserably, "the horror of the smallpox."

"Millicent has told me about it, Michael." She tried to smile. "It is a thing of the past. What good will talking do? We are happy again."

Millicent turned to Michael. "I have told her a very little," she said. "And now I have something which I must tell you. When I saw her in Cairo I told her that I had been with you, I told her that you would write to me, I inferred that you and I were lovers."

Michael bent his head. He was innocent of any deed of unfaithfulness, but what of his desires? What of the night when Margaret's presence had saved him? He wondered if she was conscious of the part she had played in his renunciation.

"And you still trusted me?" Michael's words were so full of gratitude and wonder that Margaret's veins were flooded with happiness. How greatly he had been tempted!

"I remembered my promise. More than once it seemed to me that I succeeded in being very near you."

Her eyes questioned him. He understood; his eyes answered her.

"I told her that I had been with you," Millicent said, "but not for how long. She never dreamed that my coming was quite unknown to you, that I was with you for so short a time, that you hated my presence in the camp. How well she knew you!"

Margaret turned to Michael. "Yes, I knew him," she said. "Thank God, I knew him! We learnt to know each other in the Valley, and I think I realized the situation better than you thought I did."

"But I must tell you, I must show you even more than you dream of how true and loyal he has been."

"No, no, please don't," Margaret said. "Michael has told me all I want to know." She was sorry for Michael's embarrassment; he writhed under the whole thing.

Millicent paid no attention to her words. She repeated the story for Margaret's benefit. Michael turned away impatiently. He had meant to tell Margaret all the details of his life in the desert when they were married and alone together.

"As I told you," Millicent said, "I met him in the desert. I had found out where he was going to. He was furiously angry . . . he wanted me to go back. I stayed against his wishes. The saint turning up the same day as I did made him forget me. I often tried to win him from you . . . and I thought I was succeeding. The only reason he didn't turn me out of the camp was because of my equipment and food--they were good for the holy man, who was ill. He was sickening with the smallpox, only we didn't know it. Michael took him into his camp. I told you about that. We didn't know what was the matter with him, but Michael behaved like an angel to the lunatic. When he discovered that he had smallpox, I implored him to leave him. When he wouldn't, I fled. That very night I left him alone, even though I had told him that I loved him--I had offered myself to him. I took all my luxuries with me. I was mad . . . furiously angry. He had taken the sick man in against all my entreaties; he had scorned my love. The next morning Hassan told me that one of my men had deserted, left our camp at dawn."

"Stop, that's enough!" Michael cried. "Stop it!" Every word had lashed his nerves and brought back to his memory his own struggles, his own weakness.

"I fled," Millicent went on, not heeding his interruption. "I spent some weeks in Upper Egypt. I thought I had escaped the horrible disease. . . . I thought Hassan had taken every precaution. He sent some of my boxes straight on to Cairo; I opened them the night I saw you. They must have carried the infection--that is how I got smallpox. It lay in wait for me." She paused, breathless, and then went on excitedly: "I know nothing about the treasure. I am absolutely innocent in that one respect. I can tell you nothing more, nothing."

As Millicent ceased speaking, Michael took up her story.

"Margaret," he said, "some days after she left us the saint died. When he was buried, we moved on." As he spoke, he visualized the desert burial. "We journeyed to the hills. On our way we passed through a subterranean village--a terrible place, of flies and filth! The _Omdeh_ of the village, a fine old gentleman, told us of the growing unrest among the desert tribes--German work, of course; we are seeing the fruit of it now. I paid no heed to him; I felt too ill, too tired. I only cared about reaching the hills. When we did reach them, we found that a camp was already established. Information had been given to the Government." He heaved a deep sigh. "The thing was out of my hands. I suppose the shock finished me for the time being, for when I left the excavation-camp I became ill, so ill that Abdul had to take me as quickly as he could to the _Omdeh's_ house near the subterranean village. I stayed there until late on in May." He stopped abruptly.

"The rest won't bear speaking about. What made things so much worse, Meg, was thinking about what you would be suffering, what Freddy would be saying." His eyes sought Margaret's. "It is best to forget, it is wiser to think of tomorrow."

"Yes, let us forget all about it," Margaret said. Michael's expression frightened her. As a soldier he had enough to bear without raking up what was past.

"Abdul became as dear to me as a brother," Michael said quietly. "His devotion was wonderful! We are not of the same faith"--he was speaking to himself--"but our God is the same God, our love for Him the same. Abdul knew that."

"And your illness?" Millicent said. "Was it smallpox?"

"No, no--none of my camp caught it. It was enteric fever. I suppose I was worn out, both mentally and physically. The disappointment about the treasure was the last straw, it was so cruel. I am able to accept it now, it doesn't hurt me any longer. The war has done that; the war is like concentrated time--it obliterates and wipes out, and even heals."

"But you discovered it, Michael! You were the real discoverer. If it hadn't been for you, and for your special knowledge, the man who stole it, who gave the information, would never have found it. And, after all, as Michael Ireton says, that is the main point of interest." Margaret's eyes glowed with pride. "And haven't you heard the sequel to that tragedy?--the finding of some ancient jewels which the thief must have dropped in the desert, not so very far from the hill-chambers?"

As Michael had not heard that the gems had been found, Margaret told him the story which Hadassah had written to her.

"They prove, Mike, what after all is to us the most important fact in the whole affair--that you were right, that all the information given you by the seer was correct."

Margaret did not include her vision of Akhnaton in Millicent's presence; it was always a sacred subject between them.

"That is what Abdul said, and I know it is true. But who can prove it? To the disbelieving no one can prove that there was any treasure, any gold or great wealth of jewels." He looked into Margaret's eyes. He said plainly, "Freddy died unconvinced on that point."

Margaret understood. She had so often wished that Freddy could have known all that had transpired since his death.

"I will spend all my money and wits on finding the wretch," Millicent said humbly. "I will hunt this treasure to earth. If there were jewels, they shall be found. I will never stop until I have traced them, never! That will give me some interest in life--if you will let me do it, that is to say."

"The jewels will all be cut by this time, the gold will be melted. No one will be able to recognize them."

"You can't find the thief," Margaret said. "He died of smallpox--Mr. Ireton heard that from the Government authorities. They set detectives on his track, and discovered his whereabouts, but he was unconscious. They think that he buried the treasure, that it is again lost to the world. It is still waiting for you, Mike."

"I know that there were many more jewels where the crimson amethyst came from," Michael said, "whether they are ever found again or not." He was thinking of the words of his old friend in el-Azhar. If he came out of the war alive, he might again hope to discover them.

"I can do something else," Millicent spoke pleadingly. "Say you will let me! I am rich--my money is no good to me."

Michael looked at her for an explanation. His eyes were cold.

"I can spend some of my money in paying the expenses of the digging, for excavating on the site. The war will put a stop to all excavating work in Egypt and the Holy Land so far as England is concerned, but if I give sufficient money, you can employ the best Egyptologists in America, so that the work can go on this autumn. You will not have to wait until the war is over before you find out all there is to be known on the subject."

"The papyri will prove a great deal," Michael said; "they found papyri." Millicent's words scarcely penetrated to his brain. He was obsessed with the idea that the Egyptologists suspected that the treasure was again buried. If it was, how exactly it all tallied with the African's vision!

"I believe that there is very little excavating work to be done," Margaret said. "I have had so little time with Hadassah that I have not even referred to the subject." She smiled, surprised at the fact when it was brought before her. "But in a letter she told me that the chambers were singularly perfect. They are cut in the virgin rock; they are not extensive, but nothing had been destroyed. One of the chambers was evidently intended for a royal treasury."

"In Flanders," Michael said, "life is very real." He turned to the window as he spoke; Margaret's news had troubled him. "Germany has made all our lives horribly real. What you have told me seems to belong to another state of our existence." His eyes were far away from either Margaret or Millicent; they were with his comrades in the trenches. "When I was knee-deep in mud in the trenches I often thought that our hut-home in the silent Valley was a dream, a beautiful dream, one of those dreams we can never forget, however long we live, but only a dream."

He drew himself up. "We have been brought back to firm earth. Our apprenticeship on this side isn't finished, Meg. We aren't ready to fully understand the things beyond. While we are on this earth, I believe it is wiser to rest content with the things that are here." He smiled. "Perhaps Freddy is right--it is wiser to walk on our two feet."

"Perhaps it is," Margaret said wistfully. "But thank God I trusted to the progress of one person who occasionally walks on his head."

While Michael's back was turned to the door, and Margaret was looking at him with eyes of sympathy, and with the knowledge in her heart that he was living over again scenes and actions in Flanders which left her far behind him, Millicent had slipped from the room. With her white corset-boxes in her arms she fled downstairs and silently opened the front door. As silently it shut behind her.

For a moment she paused, before descending the steps. London was there in front of her, London with its luxuries and its sins, which not even the strength of Germany or the sacrifice of young lives could obliterate. The spring made no call to her; the sunshine mocked her because of her empty world.

* * * * * *

When Michael and Margaret discovered that she was gone, they stood for a little while locked in each other's arms. As Margaret raised her head from Michael's breast, he bent his head and kissed her lips.

"Dearest," he said, "you and I can afford to forgive her, poor lonely little soul!"

"I can forgive anybody anything, Mike."

"Even the Kaiser, beloved woman?"

Margaret shivered. "Don't let's think of him--not for eleven days, at least."

"We shall be able to be sorry for even him some day," he said. His confident tones delighted her, for his mention of the war had brought the angel with the flaming sword into her Eden.

"You really think so, Mike? Your inner self feels it? Sometimes I almost despair--they are so strong, so clever."

"I do believe it," he said. "You foolish woman, of course I believe it. The day may be a long way off, but it is coming, just the same. The triumph of light over darkness, Meg, the old, old fight--we shall see the resurrection of Osiris and the defeat of Set all over again. The sun of righteousness will stream over the world when the devil of militarism is crushed for ever."

He kissed her again rapturously. Their time together was so short; it left them little opportunity for lengthy talks on any subject. The way in which Michael broke off in the middle of his sentences to make love to her, and question her eagerly and impetuously, suggested the hosts that disturbed his mind. He wanted to tell her all about the old African's idea of the meaning of the war, and about his visualizing of the treasure for the second time; but he wanted still more her lips and her own exquisite assurances of her love for him, the eternal subject, which neither age nor war can affect. The one important fact which could not wait was that tomorrow she was to be his wife, and if he did not let her return to her preparations, there was the possibility that some hitch a might occur. So they went back to Hadassah and told her all that had happened.

For everyone concerned the rest of that day flew on wings. Each hour passed like a flash. Bed-time came, and Margaret scarcely seemed to have achieved half or quarter of the things she had meant to do.

A telegram had arrived, in answer to hers, from the aunt with whom she had lived as a child and young girl. The bride-elect had felt just a little worried about her aunt; she had written her a letter which she would receive on her wedding morning. In it Margaret had told her all about her friendship with Michael while she was living with Freddy in Egypt, and of Freddy's friendship with him, which was of a much longer duration. Also, she took pains to assure her aunt that, as far as pedigree was concerned, he had the blood of Irish kings in his veins.