I
Dimsdale’s prospects had suddenly ceased by the productive marriage of a
rich uncle late in life; and then his career began. He went to Egypt
at the time when men who knew things had their chance to do things.
His information was general and discursive, but he had a real gift for
science: an inheritance from a grandfather who received a peerage for
abstruse political letters written to the Times and lectures before the
Royal Institution. Besides, he had known well and loved inadvertently
the Hon. Lucy Gray, who kept a kind of social kindergarten for confiding
man, whose wisdom was as accurate as her face was fair, her manners
simple, and her tongue demure and biting.
Egypt offered an opportunity for a man like Dimsdale, and he always said
that his going there was the one inspiration of his life. He did not
know that this inspiration came from Lucy Gray. She had purposely thrown
him in the way of General Duncan Pasha, who, making a reputation in
Egypt, had been rewarded by a good command in England and a K.C.B.
After a talk with the General, who had spent his Egyptian days in the
agreeable strife with native premiers and hesitating Khedives, Dimsdale
rose elated, with his mission in his hand. After the knock-down blow his
uncle had given him, he was in a fighting mood. General Duncan’s tale
had come at the psychological moment, and hot with inspiration he had
gone straight off to Lucy Gray with his steamship ticket in his pocket,
and told her he was going to spend his life in the service of the pasha
and the fellah. When she asked him a little bitingly what form his
disciplined energy would take, he promptly answered: “Irrigation.”
She laughed in his face softly. “What do you know about irrigation?” she
asked.
“I can learn it--it’s the game to play out there, I’m sure of that,” he
answered.
“It doesn’t sound distinguished,” she remarked drily. Because she smiled
satirically at him, and was unresponsive to his enthusiasm, and gave him
no chance to tell her of the nobility of the work in which he was going
to put his life; of the work of the Pharaohs in their day, the hope of
Napoleon in his, and the creed Mahomet Ali held and practised, that
the Nile was Egypt and Egypt was irrigation--because of this he became
angry, said unkind things, drew acid comments upon himself, and left
her with a last good-bye. He did not realise that he had played into the
hands of Lucy Gray in a very childish manner. For in scheming that he
should go to Egypt she had planned also that he should break with her;
for she never had any real intention of marrying him, and yet it was
difficult to make him turn his back on her, while at the same time she
was too tender of his feelings to turn her back on him. She held that
anger was the least injurious of all grounds for separation. In anger
there was no humiliation. There was something dignified and brave about
a quarrel, while a growing coolness which must end in what the world
called “jilting” was humiliating. Besides, people who quarrel and
separate may meet again and begin over again: impossible in the other
circumstance.