The swiftness of that leap, however, was not so swift but that he could
easily have used his spear. Indeed, he gripped it strongly. His skill,
his strength, his aim--he knew them well enough. But hate and love,
fastening upon his heart, held all his muscles still. He hesitated. He
was no murderer, yet he paused. He heard the roar, the ugly thud, the
crash, the cry for help--too late ... and when, an instant afterwards,
his steel plunged into the great beast's heart, the human heart and
life he might have saved lay still for ever.... He heard the water
rushing past, an icy wind came down the gorge against his naked back,
he saw the fire shine upon the farther bank ... and the figure of a
girl in skins was wading across, seeking out the shallow places in the
dusk, and calling wildly as she came.... Then darkness hid the entire
landscape, yet a darkness that was deeper, bluer than the velvet of the
night alone....

And he shrieked aloud in his remorseful anguish: "May the gods
forgive me, for I did not mean it! Oh, that I might undo ... that
I might repay...!" That his cries disturbed the weary occupants in more than one bed is
certain, but he remembers chiefly that a nurse was quickly by his side,
and that something she gave him soothed his violent pain and helped
him into deeper sleep again. There was, he noticed, anyhow, no longer
the soft, clear, blazing light about his cousin's bed. He saw only the
faint glitter of the oil-lamps down the length of the great room....

And some weeks later he went back to fight. The picture, however, never
left his memory. It stayed with him as an actual reality that was
neither delusion nor hallucination. He believed that he understood at
last the meaning of the tie that had fettered him and puzzled him so
long. The memory of those far-off days of shepherding beneath the stars
of long ago remained vividly beside him. He kept his secret, however. In many a talk with his cousin beneath the nearer stars of Flanders no
word of it ever passed his lips. The friendship between them, meanwhile, experienced a curious
deepening, though unacknowledged in any spoken words. Smith, at any
rate, on his side, put into it an affection that was a brave man's
love. He watched over his cousin. In the fighting especially, when
possible, he sought to protect and shield him, regardless of his own
personal safety. He delighted secretly in the honours his cousin had
already won. He himself was not yet even mentioned in dispatches, and
no public distinction of any kind had come his way. His V.C. eventually--well, he was no longer occupying his body when it
was bestowed. He had already "left." ... He was now conscious, possibly,
of other experiences besides that one of ancient, primitive days when
he and his brother were shepherding beneath other stars. But the
reckless heroism which saved his cousin under fire may later enshrine
another memory which, at some far future time, shall reawaken as a
"hallucination" from a Past that to-day is called the Present.... The
notion, at any rate, flashed across his mind before he "left." IX

AN EGYPTIAN HORNET


The word has an angry, malignant sound that brings the idea of
attack vividly into the mind. There is a vicious sting about it
somewhere--even a foreigner, ignorant of the meaning, must feel it. A hornet is wicked; it darts and stabs; it pierces, aiming without
provocation for the face and eyes. The name suggests a metallic droning
of evil wings, fierce flight, and poisonous assault. Though black and
yellow, it sounds scarlet. There is blood in it. A striped tiger of the
air in concentrated form! There is no escape--if it attacks. In Egypt an ordinary bee is the size of an English hornet, but the
Egyptian hornet is enormous. It is truly monstrous--an ominous, dying
terror. It shares that universal quality of the land of the Sphinx and
Pyramids--great size. It is a formidable insect, worse than scorpion
or tarantula. The Rev. James Milligan, meeting one for the first
time, realised the meaning of another word as well, a word he used
prolifically in his eloquent sermons--devil. One morning in April, when the heat began to bring the insects out,
he rose as usual betimes and went across the wide stone corridor to
his bath. The desert already glared in through the open windows. The
heat would be afflicting later in the day, but at this early hour the
cool north wind blew pleasantly down the hotel passages. It was Sunday,
and at half-past eight o'clock he would appear to conduct the morning
service for the English visitors. The floor of the passage-way was cold
beneath his feet in their thin native slippers of bright yellow. He was
neither young nor old; his salary was comfortable; he had a competency
of his own, without wife or children to absorb it; the dry climate
had been recommended to him; and--the big hotel took him in for next
to nothing. And he was thoroughly pleased with himself, for he was a
sleek, vain, pompous, well-advertised personality, but mean as a rat. No worries of any kind were on his mind as, carrying sponge and towel,
scented soap and a bottle of Scrubb's ammonia, he travelled amiably
across the deserted, shining corridor to the bathroom. And nothing
went wrong with the Rev. James Milligan until he opened the door, and
his eye fell upon a dark, suspicious-looking object clinging to the
window-pane in front of him. And even then, at first, he felt no anxiety or alarm, but merely a
natural curiosity to know exactly what it was--this little clot of an
odd-shaped, elongated thing that stuck there on the wooden framework
six feet before his aquiline nose. He went straight up to it to
see--then stopped dead. His heart gave a distinct, unclerical leap. His
lips formed themselves into unregenerate shape. He gasped: "Good God! What is it?" For something unholy, something wicked as a secret sin,
stuck there before his eyes in the patch of blazing sunshine. He caught
his breath. For a moment he was unable to move, as though the sight half
fascinated him. Then, cautiously and very slowly--stealthily, in
fact--he withdrew towards the door he had just entered. Fearful of
making the smallest sound, he retraced his steps on tiptoe. His
yellow slippers shuffled. His dry sponge fell, and bounded till it
settled, rolling close beneath the horribly attractive object facing
him. From the safety of the open door, with ample space for retreat
behind him, he paused and stared. His entire being focused itself in
his eyes. It was a hornet that he saw. It hung there, motionless and
threatening, between him and the bathroom door. And at first he merely
exclaimed--below his breath--"Good God! It's an Egyptian hornet!" Being a man with a reputation for decided action, however, he soon
recovered himself. He was well schooled in self-control. When people
left his church at the beginning of the sermon, no muscle of his face
betrayed the wounded vanity and annoyance that burned deep in his
heart.