E-text prepared by Al Haines
THE GREAT AMULET
by
MAUD DIVER
"Love is the greatest Amulet that makes this world a garden: and 'Hopecomes to all' outwears the accidents of life; and reaches withtremulous hands beyond the grave and Death."
—R. L. S.
"Four things come not back to man or woman: the sped arrow; the spokenword; the past life; and the neglected opportunity."
—Omar El Khuttub.
THE GREAT AMULET
by
MAUD DIVER
Author of "Captain Desmond, V.C."
Shilling Edition
William Blackwood and Sons
Edinburgh and London
MCMXV
All rights reserved
THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO
TRIX FLEMING
IN MEMORY OF DALHOUSIE DAYS.
Let thy heart see that still the same
Burns early friendship's sacred flame,
The affinities have strongest part
In youth, to draw men heart to heart:
As life draws on, and finds no rest,
The individual in each breast
Is tyrannous to sunder them.
—Rossetti.
CONTENTS.
PROLOGUE
BOOK I.
AFTER FIVE YEARS
BOOK II.
JUST IMPEDIMENT
BOOK III.
THE TENTS OF ISHMAEL
BOOK IV.
THE VALLEY OF DECISION
THE GREAT AMULET.
PROLOGUE.
I.
"The little more, and how much it is!
The little less, and what worlds away."
—Browning.
No one in Zermatt dreamed that a wedding had been solemnised in theEnglish church on that September afternoon of the early eighties.Tourists and townsfolk alike had been cheated of a legitimate thrill ofinterest and speculation. Nor would even the most percipient haverecognised as bride and bridegroom the tall dark Englishman, in a roughshooting suit, and the girl, in simple white travelling gear, who stoodtogether, an hour later, on the outskirts of the little town, and tookleave of their solitary wedding guest:—an artist cap-à-pie;velveteen coat, loosely knotted tie, and soft felt hat complete.
In this Bohemian garb Michael Maurice,—as the bride's brother,—hadled his sister up the aisle, and duly surrendered her to Captain Lenox,R.A., serenely unaware, the while, of censorious side-glances bestowedupon him by the ascetic-featured chaplain, who had an air ofofficiating under protest, of silently asserting his own aloofness fromthis hole-and-corner method of procedure. But his attitude waspowerless to affect the exalted emotion of that strange half-hour,wherein, by the repetition of a few simple, forcible words, a man andwoman take upon themselves the hardest task on earth with a valiantassurance which is at once pathetic and sublime.
To Quita Maurice, impressionable at all times, the absence of ceremony,of those trivialities which obscure and belittle the one supreme fact,gave an a