CAIRO station. An illumination of livid blue. A horde of brown-legged
turbaned figures wearing red jerseys on which flaunted in white the
names of hotels, and reconstructing Babel. An urbane official, lifting a
gold-banded cap in the middle of a small oasis of silence and inviting
Martin in the name of the Semiramis Hotel, to surrender luggage and all
other cares to his keeping, and to follow the stream through the exit to
the hotel motor. A phantasmagoria of East and West rendered more
fantastic by the shadows cast by the high arc-lamps. He had lost sight
of Fortinbras, who bag in hand—his impedimenta being of the
scantiest—had disappeared in quest of the palm-tree against whose trunk
he presumably was to pass the night. Martin emerged from the station,
entered the automobile, one of a long row, and waited with his fellow
passengers until the roof was stacked with luggage. Then the drive
through European streets suggestive of Paris and the sudden halt at the
hotel. A dazzling vision of a lounge, a swift upward journey in a lift
worked by a Nubian gorgeous in scarlet and gold, a walk down a corridor,
a door flung open, and Martin found himself in his bedroom. An Arab
brought hot water and retired.
Martin opened the shutters of the window and looked out. It was hard
moonlight. Beneath him shimmered a broad ribbon of water, against which
were silhouetted outlandish masts and spars of craft moored against the
embankment. The dark mass on the further shore seemed to be pleasant
woods. The water could be nothing else than the Nile; the sacred river;
the first river in which he had taken a romantic interest, on account of
Moses and the Ark and Pharaoh’s daughter; the mighty river which is the
very life of a vast country; the most famous river in the world. He
regarded it with a curious mixture of awe and disappointment. On his
right it was crossed by a bridge dotted with the slowly moving lamps of
carts and now and then flashing with the headlights of a motor-car. It
was not unlike any ordinary river—the Thames, the Seine, the Rhone at
Geneva. He had imagined it broad as the Amazon.
Yet it was wonderful; the historic water, the moonlight, the clear
Egyptian air in which floated a vague perfume of spice, the dimly seen
long-robed figures seated on a bench by the parapet on the other side of
the road, whose guttural talk rose like a proclamation of the Orient. He
leaned out over the iron railing. On his left stood out dreamily defined
against the sky two shadowy little triangles. He wondered what they
could be. Suddenly came the shock of certainty. They were the Pyramids.
He rubbed his eyes and looked again. A thrill ran over his skin. He had
not counted on being brought up bang, as it were, against them. He had
imagined that one journeyed for half a day on a camel through a
trackless desert in order to visit these wonders of the world: but here
he was staring at them from the hotel-window of a luxurious capital. He
stared at them for a long time. Yes: there was the Nile; there were the
Pyramids; and, after a knock at the door, there was his luggage. He
became conscious of hunger; also of Lucilla more splendid than moonlit
Nile and Pyramids and all the splendours of Egypt put together.
Hunger—it was half-past nine and he had eaten nothing since lunch on
ship-board—counselled speedy ablutions and a descent in quest of food.
Lucilla ordained correctitude of vesture. His first evening on board
ship had taught him that dinner jacket suit and black tie were the only
wear. He changed and went downstairs.
A chasseur informed him that Miss Merriton was staying in the hotel, but
that she had gone to the dance at the Savoy. When would she be back? The
chasseur, a child rendered old by accumulated knowledge of trivial fact,
replied that Cairo was very gay this season, that dances went on till
the morning hours, and insinuated that Miss Merriton was as gay as
anybody. Martin walked through the lounge into the restaurant and
supped. He supped exceedingly well. Bearing in mind Fortinbras’s counsel
of lordliness and the ways of lordly motorists passing through Brantôme,
he ordered a pint of champagne. He was served by an impeccable waiter
with lilac revers and brass buttons to his coat. He noted the livery
with a professional eye. The restaurant was comparatively empty. Only at
one table sat a party of correctly dressed men and women. A few others
were occupied by his travelling companions, still in the garb of travel.
Martin mellowed by the champagne, adjusted his black tie and preened his
white shirt front, in the hope that the tweed-clad newcomers would see
him and marvel and learn from him, Martin Overshaw, obscure and ignorant
adventurer, what was required by English decorum. After his meal he sat
in the lounge and ordered Turkish coffee, liqueur brandy and cigarettes.
And so, luxuriously housed, clothed and fed, he entered on the newest
phase of his new life.
Six months ago he had considered his sportive ride through France with
Corinna a thrilling adventure. He smiled at his simplicity. An
adventure, that tame jog-trot tour! As comparable to this as his then
companion to the radiant lady of his present quest. Now, indeed, he had
burned his boats, thrown his cap over the windmills, cast his frock to
the nettles. The reckless folly of it all had kept his veins a-tingle,
his head awhirl. At every moment during the past fortnight something
amazingly new had flashed into his horizon. The very sleeping-berth in
the train de luxe had been a fresh experience. So too was the awakening
to the warmth and sunshine of Marseilles. Save for a crowded hour of
inglorious life (he was a poor sailor) now and then on cross-channel
boats he had never set foot on a ship. He wandered about the ocean-going
liner with a child’s delight. Fortune favoured him with a spell of blue
weather. He scoffed at sea-sickness. The meals characterised by many
passengers as abominable, he devoured as though they were Lucullian
feasts. He made acquaintance with folks going not only to Egypt, but to
Peshawar and Mandalay and Singapore and other places with haunting
names. Some shocked him by calling them God-forsaken holes and cursing
their luck. Others, mainly women, going thither for the first time
shared his emotions. . . . He was surprised at the ease with which he
fell into casual talk with strangers. Sometimes a child was a means of
introduction to its mother. Sometimes a woman in the next deck-chair
would open a conversation. Sometimes Fortinbras chatting with a knot of
people would catch him as he passed and present him blandly.
Among the minor things that gave him cause for wonder was the swift
popularity of his companion. No longer did his costume stamp Fortinbras
as a man apart from the laity. He wore the easy tweeds and soft felt hat
of a score of other elderly gentlemen on board: even the gold
watch-chain, which he had redeemed after a long, long sojourn at the
Mount of Piety. But this very commonplace of his attire brought into
relief the nobility of his appearance. His massive face lined with care,
his broad brow, his prominent light blue kindly eyes, his pursy and
benevolent mouth, his magnificent Abbé Liszt shock of white hair, now
carefully tended, his impressive air of dignity—all marked him as a
personage of distinction. He aroused the idle curiosity of the idle
voyagers. Husbands were bidden by wives to talk to him and see what he
was like. Husbands obeyed, as is the human though
marriage-vow-subversive way of husbands, and meekly returned with
information. A capital fellow; most interesting chap; English of course;
very courtly old bird; like so-and-so who was Ambassador; old school;
knows everything; talks like a book. Quoth any one of the wives, her
woman’s mind intent on the particular. “But who _is_ he?” The careless
husband, his masculine mind merely concerned with the general, did not
know. He had not thought of asking. How could he ask? And what did it
matter? The wife sighed. “Bring him along and I will soon find out.”
Fortinbras at fit opportunity was brought along. The lady unconsciously
surrendered to his spell—one has not practised as a _marchand de
bonheur_ for nothing. “Now I know all about him,” said any one of the
wives to any one of the husbands. “Why are men so stupid? He is an old
Winchester boy. He is a retired philosopher and he lives in France.”
That was all she learned about Fortinbras; but Fortinbras in that trial
interview learned everything about the lady serenely unconscious of
intimate avowal.
“My young friend,” said he to Martin, “the secret of social influence is
to present yourself to each individual rather as a sympathetic
intelligence, than as a forceful personality. The patient takes no
interest in the morbid symptoms of his physician: but every patient is
eager to discuss his symptoms with the kindly physician who will listen
to them free, gratis and for nothing. By adopting this attitude I can
evoke from one the dramatic ambitions of her secret heart, from another
the history of her children’s ailments and the recipe for the family
cough-cure, from a third the moving story of strained relations with his
parents because he desired to marry his uncle’s typist, the elderly
crown and glory of her sex, and from a fourth an intricate account of a
peculiarly shady deal in lard.”
“That sounds all right,” said Martin; “but in order to get people to
talk to you—say in the four cases you have mentioned, you must know
something about the theatre, bronchitis, love and the lard-trade.”
Said Fortinbras, touching the young man’s shoulder:
“The experienced altruist with an eye to his own advantage knows
something about everything.”
Martin, following the precepts of his Mentor, practised the arts of
fence, parrying the thrusts of personal questions on the part of his
opponent and riposting with such questions on his own.
“It is necessary,” said the sage. “What are you among these respectable
Britons of substance, but an adventurer? Put yourself at the mercy of
one of these old warriors with grey motor-veils and steel knitting
needles and she will pluck out the heart of your mystery in a jiffy and
throw it on the deck for all to feed on.”
Thus the voyage—incidentally was it not to Cythæra?—transcended all
his dreams of social amenity. It was a long protracted party in which he
lost his shyness, finding frank welcome on all sides. To the man of
thirty who had been deprived, all his man’s life, of the commonplace
general intercourse with his kind, this daily talk with a girl here, a
young married woman there, an old lady somewhere else, and all sorts and
conditions of men in the smoking room and on deck, was nothing less than
a kind of social debauch, intoxicating him, keeping him blissfully awake
of nights in his upper berth, while Fortinbras snored below. Then soon
after daybreak, to mount to the wet, sunlit deck after his cold,
sea-water bath; perhaps to meet a hardy and healthy English girl, fresh
as the Ægean morning; to tramp up and down with her for development of
appetite, talking of nothing but the glitter of the sea, the stuffiness
of cabins, the dishes they each would choose for breakfast; to descend
into the warm, comforting smell of the dining-saloon; to fall
voraciously on porridge and eggs and kidneys and marmalade; to go on
deck again knowing that in a couple of hours’ time stewards would come
to him fainting from hunger with bowls of chicken broth, that in an hour
or two afterwards there would be lunch to be selected from a menu a foot
long in close print, and so on during the golden and esurient day; to
meet Fortinbras, late and luxurious riser; to bask for an hour, like a
plum, in the sunshine of his wisdom; to continue the debauch of the day
before; to sight great sailing vessels with bellying canvas, resplendent
majesty of past centuries, or, on the other hand, the grey grim blocks
of battleships; to pass the sloping shores of historic islands—Crete,
home of the Minotaur, whose inhabitants—(Cretans are liars. Cretans are
men. Therefore all men are liars)—had furnished the stock example of
fallacy in the Syllogism; to watch the green wake cleaving the dark-blue
sea; to make his way up and down decks, through the steerage, and stand
in the bows, swept by the exhilarating air, with the pulse racking sense
that he was speeding to the lodestar of his one desire—to find wildness
of delight in these commonplaces of travel; to live as he lived, to
vibrate as he vibrated with every nerve from dawn to dawn, to be drunk
with the sheer ecstasy of existence, so that the past becomes a black
abyss, and the future an amethystine haze glorified by the Sons of the
Morning singing for joy, is given but to few, is given to none but poor,
starved souls, is given to none of the poor, starved souls but those
whom the high Gods in obedience to their throw of the dice happen to
select.
Martin sitting in a deep armchair in the Semiramis Hotel dreamed of all
these things, unconscious of the flight of time. Suddenly he became
aware that he was the only occupant of the lounge, all the other folk
having returned soberly to their rooms. Already a few early arrivals
from the Savoy dance passed across the outer hall on their way to the
lift. Drowsy with happiness he went to bed. To-morrow, Lucilla.
* * * * *
He became aware of her standing by the bureau licking a stamp to put on
a letter. She wore a white coat and skirt and a straw hat with cherries
on it. He could not see her face, but he guessed the blue veins on the
uplifted, ungloved hand that held the stamp. On his approach, she turned
and uttered a little laughing gasp of recognition, stuck the stamp on
hastily and stretched out her hand.
“Why,” she cried, “it’s you! You really have come!”
“Did you think I would break my promise?” he asked, his eyes drinking in
her beauty.
“I didn’t know how seriously you regarded it.”
“I’ve thought of nothing but Egypt, since I said you had pointed out the
way,” he replied. “You commanded. I obeyed.”
She caught up her long parasol and gloves that lay on the ledge of the
bureau. “If everybody did everything I told them,” she laughed, “I
should have my hands full. They don’t, as a general rule, but when they
do I take it as a compliment. It makes me feel good to see you. When did
you come?”
She put him through a short catechism. What boat? What kind of voyage?
Where was he staying? . . . Finally:
“Do you know many people in Cairo?”
“Not a soul,” said Martin.
With both arms behind her back, she rested lightly on the parasol, and
beamed graciously.
“I know millions,” she said, not without a touch of exaggeration which
pleased him. “Would you like to trust yourself to me, put yourself
entirely in my hands?”
“I could dream of nothing more enchanting,” replied Martin. “But——”
“But——?”
“I don’t want to make myself an infliction.”
“You’re going to be a delight. You know in the cinematograph how an
invisible pencil writes things on the sheet—or how a message is stamped
out on the tape, and you look and wonder what’s coming next. Well, I
want to see how this country is going to be stamped letter by letter on
your virgin mind. It’s a thing I’ve been longing for—to show somebody
with sense like yourself, Egypt of the Pharaohs and Egypt of the
English. How long can you stay?”
“Indefinitely,” said Martin. “I have no plans.”
“From here you might go to Honolulu or Rangoon?”
“Or Greenland or Cape Horn,” said Martin.
She nodded smiling approval. “That is what I call a free and enlightened
Citizen of the World. Let us sit down. I’m waiting for my friend, Mrs.
Dangerfield of Philadelphia. Her husband’s here too. You will like them.
I generally travel round with somebody, just for the sake of a
table-companion. I’m silly enough to feel a fool eating alone every day
in a restaurant.”
He drew a wicker chair for her and sat beside her. She deposited parasol
and gloves on the little round table, and swept him with a quizzical
glance from his well-fitting brown shoes to his trim black hair.
“May I without impertinence compliment you on your colour-scheme?”
His olive cheek flushed like a girl’s. He had devoted an hour’s
concentrated thought to it before he rose. How should he appear in the
presence of the divinity? He had decided on grey flannels, grey shirt,
purple socks and tie. He wondered whether she guessed the part she had
played in his anxious selection. Remembering the splotch of grease, he
said:
“I hadn’t much choice of clothes when you last saw me.”
She laughed. “Tell me all about Brantôme. How is my dear little friend
Félise?”
He gave her discreet news. “And the incomparable Fortinbras?”
“You’ll doubtless soon be able to judge for yourself. He’s here.”
“In Cairo? You don’t say!”
Mingled with her expression of surprise was a little perplexity of the
brow, as though, seeing the Fortinbras of the Petit Cornichon, she
wondered what on earth she could do with him.
“He came with me,” said Martin.
“Is he staying in this hotel?”
“No,” said Martin.
Her brow grew smooth again. “How did he manage to get all this way? Has
he retired from business?”
“I don’t think so. He needed a holiday. You see he came into a little
money on the death of his wife.”
“His wife dead?” Lucilla queried. “Félise’s mother? I didn’t know.
Perhaps that’s why she hasn’t written to me for such a long time. I
think there must be some queer story connected with that mother,” she
added shrewdly. “Anyway, Fortinbras can’t be broken-hearted, or he
wouldn’t come on a jaunt to Egypt.”
Too well-bred to examine Martin on his friend’s private affairs, she
changed the talk in her quick, imperious way. Martin sat like a man
bewitched, fascinated by her remembered beauties—the lazy music of her
voice, her mobile lips, her brown eyelashes. . . . His heart beat at the
realisation of so many dreams. He listened, his brain scarcely following
what she said; that she spoke with the tongue of an angel was enough.
Presently a stout, pleasant-faced woman of thirty came towards them with
many apologies for lateness. This was Mrs. Dangerfield. Lucilla
presented Martin.
“Behold in me the complete dragoman. Mr. Overshaw has engaged me for the
season. It’s his first visit to Egypt and I’m going to show him round.
I’ll draw up a programme for a personally conducted tour, every hour
accounted for and replete with distraction.”
“It sounds dreadful,” laughed Mrs. Dangerfield. “Do you think you’ll
survive, Mr. Overshaw?”
“Not only that,” said Martin, “but I hope for a new lease of life.”
“We start,” said Lucilla, “with a drive through the town, during which I
shall point out the Kasr-el-Nil Barracks, the Bank of Egypt and the
Opera House. Then we shall enter on the shopping expedition in the
Mousky, where I shall prevent Mrs. Dangerfield from being robbed while
bargaining for Persian lacq. I’m ready, Laura, if you are.”
She led the way out. Martin exchanging words of commonplace with Mrs.
Dangerfield, followed in an ecstasy. Did ever woman, outside
Botticelli’s _Primavera_, walk with such lissomeness? A chasseur turned
the four-flanged doors and they emerged into the clear morning sunshine.
The old bearded Arab carriage porter called an hotel _arabeah_ from the
stand. But while the driver, correct in metal-buttoned livery coat and
tarbush, was dashing up with his pair, Martin caught sight of Fortinbras
walking towards them.
“There he is,” said Martin.
“Who?”
“Fortinbras.”
“Nonsense,” said Lucilla. “That’s an English Cabinet Minister, or an
American millionaire, or the keeper of a gambling saloon.”
But when he came nearer, she admitted it was Fortinbras. She waved her
hand in recognition. Nothing could have been more charming than her
greeting; nothing more urbane than his acknowledgment, or his bow, on
introduction to Mrs. Dangerfield. He had come, said he, to lay his
respectful homage at her feet; also to see how his young friend was
faring in a strange land. Lucilla asked him where he was staying.
“When last I saw you,” he answered, “I said something about the perch of
the old vulture.”
She eyed him, smiling: “You look more like the wanton lapwing.”
“In that case I need even a smaller perch, the merest twig.”
“But ‘Merest Twig, Cairo,’ isn’t an address,” cried Lucilla. “How am I
to get hold of you when I want you?”
Fortinbras regarded her with humorous benevolence. The question was
characteristic. He knew her to be generous, warm-hearted and impatient
of trivial convention: therefore he had not hesitated to go to her in
his anxious hour; but he also knew how those long delicate fingers had
an irresistible habit of drawing unwary humans into her harmless web. He
had not come to Cairo just to walk into Lucilla’s parlour. He wanted to
buzz about Egypt in philosophic and economical independence.
“That, my dear Lucilla,” said he, “is one more enigma to be put to the
credit of the Land of Riddles.”
Ibrahim stood impassively holding open the door of the _arabeah_. A
couple of dragomen in resplendent robes and turbans, seeing a new and
prosperous English tourist, had risen from their bench on the other side
of the road and lounged gracefully forward.
“You’re the most exasperating person I ever met,” exclaimed Lucilla.
“But while I have you, I’m going to keep you. Come to lunch at
one-fifteen. If you don’t I’ll never speak to you again.”
“I’ll come to lunch at one-fifteen, with very great pleasure,” said
Fortinbras.
The ladies entered the carriage. Martin said hastily:
“You gave me the slip last night.”
“I did,” said Fortinbras. He drew the young man a pace aside, and
whispered: “You think those are doves harnessed to the chariot. They’re
not. They’re horses.”
Martin broke away with a laugh, and sprang to the back seat of the
carriage. It drove off. The dragoman came up to the lonely Fortinbras.
Did he want a guide? The Citadel, the Pyramids, Sakkara? Fortinbras
turned to the impassive Ibrahim and in his grand manner and with
impressive gesture said:
“Will you tell them they are too beautiful. They would eclipse the
splendour of all the monuments I am here to visit.”
He walked away and Ibrahim, translating roughly to the dragomen,
conveyed uncomplimentary references to the virtue of their grandmothers.
Meanwhile Martin, in beatitude, sat on the little seat, facing his
goddess. She was an integral part of the exotic setting of Cairo. It was
less real life than an Arabian Night’s tale. She was interfused with all
the sunshine and colour and wonder. Only the camels padding along in
single file, their bodies half hidden beneath packs of coarse grass,
seemed alien to her. They held up their heads, as the carriage passed
them, with a damnably supercilious air. One of them seemed to catch his
eye and express contempt unfathomable. He shook a fist at him.
“I hate those brutes,” said he.
“Good gracious! Why?” asked Lucilla. “They’re so picturesque! A camel is
the one thing I really can draw properly.”
“Well, I dislike them intensely,” said he. “They’re inhuman.”
He could not translate his unformulated thought into conventional words.
But he knew that at the summons of the high gods all the world of
animate beings would fall down and worship her: every breathing thing
but the camel. He hated the camel.