A Patient of the Desert
I spent the next two days in absolute solitude, and got through a
tremendous quantity of toil. In fact, I added two whole chapters to my
treatise on the Nile monuments and I arranged the details of a third.
By the end of that time, however, I was ravenously hungry. I had been
too engrossed in labour to think of eating anything but biscuits. And
appetite at last turned me out of the tent. I looked around for my
Arabs and saw sand and sky--no living thing--oh, yes, there was my
donkey. The little beast had eaten his way through a truss of straw,
and was asleep. Strolling over to the ruined pylon, I glanced down into
the hole my Arabs had excavated. It was empty. "Gad!" I exclaimed.
"They must still be working for Ottley." I had to build a fire and turn
cook, willy nilly. Later, fortified with the pleasant conviction of a
good dinner, I turned my telescope on the Hill of Rakh. An Arab stood
on the treeless summit leaning on a rifle whose barrel glittered in the
sunlight. I was puzzled. He was manifestly posted there as sentinel,
but why? I watched him till dark, but he did not move. That night I
shot a jackal--omen of disaster. It was long before I slept. Yet I
seemed only to have slumbered a moment or two when I awoke. A voice
called my name aloud. "Dr. Pinsent! Dr. Pinsent!" I started upright and
listened, nerves on edge.
"Dr. Pinsent!"
"Who calls?" I shouted.
"I--May Ottley."
"Miss Ottley!" I hopped out of my bag bed like a cricket. "Just a
moment." I struck a light and, grabbing at my clothes, proceeded to
dress like mad. Thus for thirty seconds; then I remembered how I had
been treated, and went slower. Then I thought--"Pinsent, you're a
cad--she's a woman, and perhaps in trouble." So I got up steam again
and called out, "Nothing wrong, I hope?"
"Yes," said Miss Ottley. Well, here was a woman of business, at any
rate. She seemed to know the use of words, and valued them accordingly.
Waste not, want not. I drew on my jacket and lifted the flap. An Arab
rustled past me.
"Hello!" said I. "Not so fast, my man."
But it was Miss Ottley. I stepped back, bewildered. Her hair was tucked
away in a sort of turban, and she was wrapped from head to heel in
a burnous that had once been white--very long ago. But the costume,
though dirty, was becoming. She sank upon a camp stool and asked at
once for water. She seemed very tired. My bag was empty. I hurried
off without a word to the barrel in the temple. When I returned she
was asleep where she sat. I touched her shoulder and she started
up, suppressing a scream. "Now," said I, as she put down the cup.
Miss Ottley stood up. "A bad thing has happened," she began. "The
sarcophagus was filled with treasure, gold and silver in bars, and
other things. The Arabs went mad. My father fought like a paladin and
held them off for a day and a half. But soon after dark this evening a
caravan arrived. The fight was renewed and my father was wounded. The
Arabs secured the treasure and fled into the desert. The dragoman only
kept faith with us. He has gone by the river to Khonsu for troops. I
hurried here for you. I ran almost all the way. Will you come? Father
is very ill. He has lost a lot of blood. He was shot in the shoulder."
I nodded, caught up my revolver and surgical pack and rushed out of the
tent. In two minutes I had saddled the donkey. Miss Ottley was standing
by the door of the tent. I lifted her on the beast and we started off
in silence. An hour later she spoke.
"There is one thing I like about you," she announced. "You haven't much
to say for yourself, but you are a worker."
"Tu quoque," I replied. "You must have done that twelve miles in record
time. It is not yet two o'clock."
"I made it in two hours, I think."
"You are an athlete, by Jove!"
"I am no bread-and-butter miss, at any rate. This donkey has a bad
pace, don't you think?"
I kicked the brute into a trot and ran beside it. The Hill of Rakh soon
began to loom large among the stars on the horizon. "I suppose you were
pretty wild at our cavalier treatment of you the other evening," said
Miss Ottley.
"Well, yes," I admitted.
"We were sorry when the fight came."
"No doubt," said I.
"It served us right, eh?"
"That is my opinion."
"Do you bear malice still?"
"I am thinking of your father's wound."
"That atones?"
"Your twelve-mile run helps."
"But you are still angry with us?"
"Does it matter? I am serving you."
"Be generous," said Miss Ottley. "We have been sufficiently punished.
Not only have we lost the treasure, but there was no mummy in the
sarcophagus."
"Be a lady and apologise," I retorted.
"No," said she, with a most spirited inflection. "It is not a woman's
place."
"Then be silent or change the topic," I growled.
She was silent. We arrived an hour later at the mountain. I was bathed
in perspiration and as tired as a dog. But Miss Ottley had no time
to notice my condition. She slipped off the donkey and hurried away
through the smaller of the three pylons that fronted a small temple
hollowed out of the rock face of the hill. There was no sign of tent,
so I concluded that Sir Robert had made his camp within the temple. I
hitched the ass to a stake and cooled off, thanking Providence for a
cool breeze that swept up from the placid surface of the Nile. Day was
already showing signs of breaking, and a broad flight of long-legged
flamingoes hurried its coming with a flash of scarlet just above the
eastern horizon. The distant howling of a hyena was borne to me in
fitful snatches on the wind. The earth was wrapped in mystery and
melancholy. Oh, Egypt! Egypt, land of sun-lit spaces and illimitable
shadows; of grandeur and of squalor without peer; of happy dreams and
sad awakenings; of centuries ingloriously oblivious of glory; of sleep
and sphinx-browed, age-bound silences; of darkly smiling and impotent
despair. What a mistress for a man of curiosity and of imagination!
Little wonder that since I had been caught in her magic and most
jealous spell the face of no human being had possessed the power to
threaten her supremacy or cancel my allegiance to the mystic desert
queen.
"Dr. Pinsent!"
I awoke from my reverie with a start. "This way," said Miss Ottley. I
bowed and followed her into the temple, through a broad but low stone
doorway, past a row of broken granite columns. A light within showed
us the path. The chamber was about eighteen feet square; there was
another of equal size beyond it, in the heart of the hill. An immense
sarcophagus composed entirely of lead almost blocked the door. The lid,
carved to represent the figure and face of a tall grave-featured man,
was propped up on end against a pillar. The sarcophagus was empty.
Beyond stood a trestle cot, a table and a lamp. Sir Robert Ottley
lay upon the cot. He was awake, but evidently unconscious, and in a
high fever. I examined his wound and prepared for action. There was
an oil stove in the room. I lighted it and set water to boil. Miss
Ottley watched me with an expression I shall not forget easily. Her
face was as wan as that of a ghost; and her big red-brown eyes glowed
like coals, and were ringed with purple hollows. She was manifestly
worn out and on the verge of a breakdown. But although I begged her
to retire, she curtly refused. Judging by her eyes, she was my enemy,
and a critical enemy at that. When everything was ready I walked over
to her, picked her up in my arms and carried her struggling like a
wildcat to the door. Then I put her out and blocked the entrance with
the lid of the sarcophagus. She panted--"I hate you," from behind it.
Then she began to cry. I said nothing. It seemed one of those occasions
wherein silence was golden. I tied Sir Robert to the cot and set to
work. Half an hour later I found the bullet under his clavicle, and
then dressed the wound and bound him up. He came out of the influence
of the anæsthetic in his sober senses; but he was so eager to tell me
all his disappointment that I gave him a hypodermic dose of morphia,
and he dropped asleep in the middle of a rabid diatribe against Arabs
in general and our Arabs in particular.
I found Miss Ottley reclining against a ruined pillar in an angle of
the pylon. She had cried herself to sleep and was breathing like a
child. I slipped out and found the Arab's store-house and kitchen.
Luckily the gold had exhausted their cupidity. The stores were
untouched. I lighted a fire and prepared a meal--coffee and curry
for Miss Ottley and myself; beef tea and arrowroot for the invalid.
By that time the sun was riding high in the heavens, but Miss Ottley
still slept. Willing to assist her rest I secured a cushion from the
chamber and pushed it gently beneath her head. She sighed and turned
over, allowing me to see her face. I examined it and found it good.
The features were well-nigh perfect, from the little Grecian nose to
the round chin. But it was a face instinct with pride, the pride of a
female Lucifer. And her form was in keeping. "God save her husband,"
was my conclusion. And I ate a hearty breakfast, watching her and
pitying him, whoever he should be.
Sir Robert woke about noon, and although a little feverish, I was quite
satisfied with his progress. After eating a dish of what he feelingly
described as "muck" he went to sleep again. I prepared a second meal
and brought it on a box to where Miss Ottley still lay sleeping. Then
I sat down and coughed. Her eyes opened at once and she looked at me.
It is marvellous what a woman's glance can do. I became instantly
conscious of a dirty face, unkempt hair, and a nine-weeks' growth of
beard. In order to conceal my appreciation of my ugliness I grinned.
"Ugh!" murmured Miss Ottley, and she got up.
"Sir Robert is asleep," I observed. "I found the bullet. He has had
lunch and is going on nicely. You had better eat something."
She gave me a glance of scorn and glided into the temple. I helped her
to a plate of curry, poured out a cup of coffee and made myself scarce.
Returning a quarter of an hour later, I found the plate bare, the cup
empty and not a crumb left on the box. I took the things away and
washed them, and my own face. Then I shaved with a pocket amputation
knife, using for mirror a pot of soapy water; and I brushed my too
abundant locks into something like order with a bunch of stubble which
I converted into a hair brush with a tomahawk and a piece of twine.
Feeling prodigiously civilised and almost respectable, I strolled back
to the pylon, sat down on Miss Ottley's cushion, and lighted my pipe.
About two minutes later Miss Ottley appeared.
"Patient awake?" I asked.
"No," said Miss Ottley. "What an objectionable smell of tobacco!"
War to the knife evidently. I stood up. "When you need me shout," I
remarked, and strolled off, puffing stolidly. But I saw her face as I
turned, and it was crimson, perhaps with surprise that I could be as
rude as she, perhaps with mortification that I had dared. If ever a
girl needed a dressing down it was she who stood in the pylon staring
after me. I squatted in the shadow of a rock and spent the afternoon
stupefying over-friendly flies with the fumes of prime Turkish. She
shouted just before sundown. Her father was delirious, she said. I
found him raving and tearing at his bandages. He was haunted with an
hallucination of phantom cats. The whole cavern, he declared, was
filled with cats; black as Erebus with flaming yellow eyes. I shooed
them away and after some trouble calmed the poor old man. But it
was going to be a bad case, that was plain. Luckily the cave temple
was, comparatively speaking, cool. I spent the evening disinfecting
every cranny, and quietly dispersing the suspicious dust of vanished
centuries. When I had finished it smelt carbolically wholesome and was
as clean as a London hospital, even to the ceiling. Miss Ottley sat
all the while by her father's cot, and occasionally sneezed to relieve
her feelings. I had very little sympathy for her distress. I said to
her, "You will take first watch, I'll sleep in the pylon. Call me at
midnight." Then I placed my watch on the edge of the sarcophagus and
went out. She said nothing. I woke at dawn. She was sitting like a
statue beside her father's bedside. Her face was grey. Sir Robert was
asleep, but breathing stertorously. I beckoned her out to the pylon.
"See here, Miss Ottley," I said, in a cold rage, "I'm not going to beat
about the bush with you. I told you to call me at midnight. Kindly
explain your disobedience."
"I am not your servant to obey your orders," she retorted icily.
"No," said I, "you prefer to serve your own prickly pride to behaving
sensibly. But let me tell you this--your father's life depends on
careful nursing. And that is impossible unless we apportion the work
properly between us. You'll be fit for nothing today, and my task will
be doubled in consequence. A little more of such folly and you'll
break down altogether. You are strung up to more than concert pitch.
As for me--I am not a machine, and though I am prepared to do my best
out of mere humanity, I don't pretend to do the impossible. Nor shall
I answer for your father's life if you force me to nurse two patients
single-handed."
She looked me straight in the eye. "Very well, sir, I shall henceforth
rigidly obey you."
"You must," I said and strode into the open. When I had prepared
breakfast, she did not want to eat. But I had only to frown and she
succumbed. Afterwards I made her lie down, and she slept through Sir
Robert's groaning. It was a hideous day. The patient grew steadily
worse, and so great was his strength, despite his diminutive size, that
our struggles wore me out at last and I was obliged to strap him down.
By nightfall he was a maniac, and his yells could be heard, I make no
doubt, a mile around. And the worst of it was that my stock of bromide
was gone. I had to dose him with morphia. But I had not to speak to
Miss Ottley again. She woke me out of a delicious sleep at a quarter to
the hour. She was quite composed, but as pale as a sheet.
"My father is going to die, I think," she whispered.
I went in and looked at him. He was straining like a tiger at his
bonds. "Not to-night, at any rate," I observed. "He has the strength of
six. You go straight to bed!"
She went off as meek as any lamb, and I began to talk to Sir Robert.
Our conversation was somewhat entertaining. He was Ixion chained to the
wheel. I was Sisyphus with a day off duty. We commiserated one another
on our penalties, and bitterly assailed King Pluto's unsympathetic
government. Finally we conspired to dethrone him and give the crown of
Hades to Proserpine, whose putatively tender heart might be reckoned
on occasionally to mitigate the anguish of our punishment. He fell
into a fitful doze at last with his hand in mine, but he soon awoke,
and with a yell announced the return of the imaginary plague of cats.
On the whole, the night was worse than the day. And morning was no
blessing. Sir Robert had shed five and forty years. He was once again
at college, and if his unwilling confessions are to be relied upon, and
his language, he must have been a precious handful for his masters. But
now he steadily lost strength, and the flame of fever ate him up before
our eyes. As the shadows lengthened into afternoon I began to look for
the crisis.