“I can not understand you.”
“You will yet.”
“But why not try to understand me? Can you not find in my ideas the very essence of Bahaism? Can you not come up to my height and behold there the star that you have taken for your guide? My Truth, Jamilah, can you not see that? Love and Faith, free from all sectarianism and all earthly authority—what is Bahaism or Mohammedanism or Christianity beside them? Moreover, I have a mission. And to love me you must believe in me, not in the Baha. You laugh at my dream. But one day it will be realised. A great Arab Empire in the borderland of the Orient and Occident, in this very heart of the world, this Arabia, this Egypt, this Field of the Cloth of Gold, so to speak, where the Male and Female of the Spirit shall give birth to a unifying faith, a unifying art, a unifying truth—”
“Vagaries, chimeras,” interrupted Mrs. Gotfry. “Bahaism is established, and it needs a great apostle. It needs you; it will have you. I will have you. Your destiny is interwoven with mine. You can not flee it, do what you may. We are ruled by our stars, Khalid. And if you do not realise this now, you will realise it tomorrow. Here, give me your hand.”
“I can not.”
“Very well, then. Goodbye—au revoir. In three months you will change your mind. In three months I will return to the East and find you waiting for me, even here in this desert. Think on it, and take care of yourself. Au revoir.”
In this strange, mysterious manner, after pacing for hours on the sand in the sheen of the full moon, Mrs. Gotfry says farewell to Khalid.
He sits on a rock near his tent and ponders for hours. He seeks in the stars, as it were, a clue to the love of this woman, which he first thought to be unfathomable. There it is, the stars seem to say. And he looks into the sand-grave near him, where little Najib practises how to die. Yes; a fitting symbol of the life and love called modern, boasting of freedom. They dance their dervish dance, these people, even like Khalid’s little Najib, and fall into their sand-graves, and fold their arms and smile: “We are in love—or we are out of it.” Which is the same. No: he’ll have none of this. A heart as simple as this desert sand, as deep in affection as this heaven, untainted by the uncertainties and doubts and caprices of modern life—only in such a heart is the love that endures, the love divine and eternal.
He goes into Najma’s tent. The mother and her child are sound asleep. He stands between the bed and the cot contemplating the simplicity and innocence and truth, which are more eloquent in Najib’s brow than aught of human speech. His little hand raised above his head seems to point to a star which could be seen through an opening in the canvas. Was it his star—the star that he saw in the sand-grave—the star that is calling to him?—
But let us resume our narration.
A fortnight after Mrs. Gotfry’s departure Shakib leaves the camp to live in Cairo. He is now become poet-laureate to one of the big pashas.
Khalid is left alone with Najma and Najib.
And one day, when they are playing a game of “donkey,”—Khalid carried Najib on his back, ran on all four around the tent, and Najma was the donkey-driver—the child of a sudden utters a shriek and falls on the sand. He is in convulsions; and after the relaxation, lo, his right hand is palsied, his mouth awry, and his eyes asquint. Khalid finds a young doctor at al-Hayat, and his diagnosis of the case does not disturb the mind. It is infantile paralysis, a disease common with delicate children. And the doctor, who is of a kind and demonstrative humour, discourses at length on the disease, speaks of many worse cases of its kind he cured, and assures the mother that within a month the child will recover. For the present he can but prescribe a purgative and a massage of the arm and spine. On the third visit, he examines the child’s faeces and is happy to have discovered the seat and cause of the affection. The liver is not performing its function; and given such weak nerves as the child’s, a torpid liver in certain cases will produce paralysis.
But Khalid is not satisfied with this. He places the doctor’s prescription in his pocket, and goes down to Cairo for a specialist. He comes, this one, to disturb their peace of mind with his indecision. It is not infantile paralysis, and he can not yet say what it is. Khalid meanwhile is poring over medical books on all the diseases that children are heir to.
On the fifth day the child falls again in convulsions, and the left arm, too, is paralysed. They take him down to Cairo; and Medicine, considering the disease of his mother, guesses a third time—tuberculosis of the spine, it says—and guesses wrong. Again, considering the strabismus, the obliquity of the mouth, the palsy in the arms, and the convulsions, we guess closely, but ominously. Nay, Medicine is positive this time; for a fifth and a sixth Guesser confirm the others. Here we have a case of cerebral meningitis. That is certain; that is fatal.
Najib is placed under treatment. They cut his hair, his beautiful flow of dark hair; rub
