The Map of Love Read Online Free PDF Page A

the children hesitates.
    In the street, Anna starts to hurry. It is four o’clock and the light is fading fast.
    I have failed him. I am constantly and repeatedly failing him. If I could but find the key to the locked door of his mind, I could sweep out all the tenors that lurk there. And he would be well again.
    For I know there are tenors and they have to do with the mission he has been engaged upon, which culminated earlier this week in the signing of the Soudan Convention. An event whichhas greatly angered Sir Charles and his friends so that they have written to
The Times:
    Sir,
What would be said in private life, if a guardian and trustee who had undertaken to manage the estate of a minor, allowed the estate to run to ruin and then took possession of it as being worthless? In 1884 we forced the Egyptian Government to abandon the Soudan and leave it derelict, and now, the opportunity having occurred, we are taking possession of the country as belonging to nobody. It is a comment on the tone of the age that we should be doing this with the apparent approval of the whole world, moral and religious.
    It would also appear, according to the Convention signed by Lord Cromer and Boutros Pasha, that we are saddling on Egypt the whole cost and labour of the war of reconquest not yet completed and making her budget responsible for the Soudan deficits.
    This invention, the British Empire, will be the ruin of our position as an honest Kingdom.
    Yours etc.
    Sir Charles tells me that George Wyndham said to him plainly that it is agreed by the Powers that the aim of African operations is to civilise Africa in the interests of Europe and that to gain that end all means are good.
    I cannot believe George truly meant that ‘all’ means are good — but he is Under-Secretary for War and is bound to espouse more warlike principles than Sir Charles would think right.
    I wish to ask Sir Charles to speak to Edward about the Soudan and to try to unlock — but I fear Sir Charles is too impatient and of too volatile a temper. My father would have been a better man for the task, for it was in his nature to be gentle —
     *   *   *
    Dear God, dear sweet Lord Jesus, I pray constantly for my husband’s mind and for his soul. He is grown weaker and cannot or will not leave his room.
     *   *   *
    Caroline came to visit and told me how they say Kitchener’s men desecrated the body of the Mahdi whom the natives believe to be a Holy Man and how Billy Gordon cut off his head that the General might use it for an inkwell. It cannot be true, for if it were — I
truly fear for Edward now.
     *   *   *
    Sir Charles tells me that Billy Gordon confirms the story of the cutting of the head, but is angry that the deed is imputed to him — but he will not say who did it. Sir Charles did not wish to speak of this at first, but when he learned how much I knew already, he saw that it could not be helped and that it would be kinder to allow me to speak with him, for surely there is no one else to whom I can talk of this.
    Oh, how I wish now more than ever for the presence of my beloved mother! For I feel sure she would advise me on some simple, womanly way to reach my poor, imprisoned husband. I have no confidante save Caroline Bourke and she, I fear, carries my own personal interest — as she sees it — too close to her heart to be able to advise me how I can best help my husband.
     *   *   *
    Edward brings up everything we give him now. His stomach cannot retain so much as a cupful of thin gruel and I fancy he is attempting to purge himself of — all manner of things. I beg him to take heart, for our Lord surely watches over him as he watches over us all and God judges the actions of men but surely too He judges them by their hearts and their minds, else how can one act be held distinct from another? And surely that distinction He would make — but Edward turns away.
    Meanwhile, I find out that General Gordon’s sister has