The Way of the Spirit | Page 6

carry
on negotiations with certain Arab chiefs whose loyalty remained
doubtful.
Such is a brief record of those years of the life of Rupert Ullershaw,
with which, eventful as they were, our story has nothing to do. He had
done exceedingly well; indeed, there were few officers of his standing
who could look to the future with greater confidence, for although he
appeared older than his years, he was still a young man; moreover, he
was liked and respected by all who knew him, and notwithstanding his
success, almost without enemies. It only remains to add that he kept the
promise which he made to his mother upon his sick-bed to the very
letter. Ever since that sad first entanglement, Rupert's life had been
spotless.
The sun was beginning to sink, and its rays made red pathways on the
flooded Nile, and bathed the desert beyond with a tremulous, rosy light,
in which isolated mountains, that in shape exactly resembled pyramids,
stood up here and there like the monuments of kings. The scene was

extraordinarily beautiful; silent, also, for Rupert had pitched his camp,
and that of his small escort, half a mile away further up the river. As he
watched, the solemnities of the time and place sank into his heart,
stilling the transient emotions of the moment, and tuning his mind until
it was in key with its surroundings, an instrument open to the subtle
influences of the past and future.
Here in the shadow of the mighty works of men who had been dead for
a hundred generations, and looking out upon the river, the desert, and
the mountains, which to them must have seemed as unutterably ancient
as they did to him this day, his own absolute insignificance came home
to Rupert as perhaps it had never done before. He thought of his petty
strivings for personal advancement, and a smile grew upon his face like
the smile upon that of the god-king above him. Through the waste of all
the weary ages, how many men, he wondered, even in this desolate spot,
had brooded on the hope of such advantage, and gone forth, but few to
triumph, the most to fail, and all of them to learn within some short
years that failure and success are one when forgetfulness has covered
them. Thus the warning of the past laid its heavy hand upon him and
pressed his spirit down, and the sound of the Nile flowing on, flowing
ever from the far-off mountains of its birth through the desert to the sea,
murmured in his ear that like those of Job, his days were "swifter than a
post," sung in his ear the song of Koholeth: Vanity of vanities: all is
vanity.
Rupert grew sad as the shadow of the hills which gathered deep about
him, empty and desolate of mind as the vast, deserted temple at whose
mouth he sat, the fane of a faith that was more dead than were its
worshippers. Then suddenly he remembered how that morning at the
dawn he had seen those cups of shadow filled with overflowing light,
and how by it on the walls of that very temple he had read prayers of
faith and affirmations strangely certain, of the eternity of all good
works and the resurrection of all good men, in which they who carved
them five-and-thirty centuries before, believed as firmly as he believed
to-day.
Now it was the future that spoke to him as his heart took hope once

more. Oh! he knew full surely--it came upon him with a strange
conviction--that though many troubles and much bitterness might await
him, though he might be born to sorrows as the sparks fly upwards, yet
he should not live uselessly, or endure death in vain, that no life, not
even that of the ant which toiled ceaselessly at his side in the yellow
sand, was devoid of purpose or barren of result; that chance and
accident did not exist; that every riddle had its answer, and every pang
its issue in some new birth; that of the cloth of thoughts and deeds
which he wove now would be fashioned the garment that he must wear
hereafter.
Thus brooded Rupert Ullershaw after his fashion when alone, as indeed
he loved to be, for he was a man who faced things and found truth
oftenest in solitude.
Tired of these reflections, natural as they might be in such a time and
spot, at length he rose, went a few paces to look at the lonely grave of a
comrade whose working day was over, then with a sigh bethought him
that now the afternoon was cooler, he would take some exercise before
the darkness fell. Rupert loved all the sights and sounds of Nature, and
remembering that the