When Tamara woke in the morning the recollection of her camel ride
seemed like a dream. She sat for a long time at the window of her room
looking out toward the green world and Cairo. She was trying to adjust
things in her mind. This stranger had certainly produced an effect upon
her.
She wondered who he was, and how he would look in daylight--and above
all whither he had galloped into the desert. Then she wondered at
herself. The whole thing was so out of her line--so bizarre--in a life
of carefully balanced proprieties. And were the thoughts the Sphinx had
awaked in her brain true? Yes, certainly she had been ruled by others
always--and had never developed her own soul.
She was very sensitive--that last whimsical smile of the unknown had
humiliated her. She felt he had laughed at her prim propriety in
wishing to get rid of him before the gate. Indeed, she suddenly felt he
might laugh at a good many of the things she did. And this ruffled her
serenity. She put up her slender hands and pushed the thick hair back
from her forehead with an impatient gesture. It all made her
dissatisfied with herself and full of unrest.
"You don't tell me a thing about your Sphinx excursion last night,
Tamara," Millicent Hardcastle said at breakfast, rather peevishly. They
were sipping coffee together in the latter's room in dressing-gowns.
"Was it nice, and had the tourists quite departed?"
"It was wonderful!" and Tamara leant back and looked into distance.
"There were no tourists, and it made me think a number of new
things--we seem such ordinary people, Millicent."
Mrs. Hardcastle glanced up surprised, not to say offended, with coffee
cup poised in the air.
"Yes--you may wonder, but it is true, Milly--we do the same things
every day, and think the same thoughts, and are just thoroughly
commonplace and uninteresting."
"And you came to these conclusions from gazing at the Sphinx?" Mrs.
Hardcastle asked.
"Yes," said Tamara, the pink deepening for a moment in her cheeks. In
her whole life she hardly ever had had a secret. "I sat there,
Millicent, in the sand opposite the strange image, and it seemed to
smile and mock at all little things; it appeared perfectly ridiculous
that we pay so much attention to what the world says or thinks. I could
not help looking back to the time when you and I were at Dresden
together. What dull lives we have both led since! Yours perhaps more
filled than mine has been, because you have children; but really we
have both been browsing like sheep."
Mrs. Hardcastle now was almost irritated.
"I cannot agree with you," she said. "Our lives have been full of good
and pleasant things--and I hope, dear, we have both done our duty."
This, of course, ended the matter! It was so undoubtedly true--each had
done her duty.
After breakfast they started for a last donkey-ride, as they must
return to Cairo in time for the Khedive's ball that night, which, as
distinguished English ladies, they were being taken to by their
compatriots at the Agency. Then on the morrow they were to start for
Europe. Mrs. Hardcastle could not spare more time away from her babies.
Their visit had only been of four short weeks, and now it was December
27, and home and husband called her.
For Tamara's part, she could do as she pleased; indeed, for two pins
she would have stayed on in Egypt.
But that was not the intention of fate!
"Do let us go up that sand-path, Millicent," she said, when they turned
out of the hotel gate. "We have never been there, and I would like to
see where it leads to--perhaps we shall get quite a new vista from the
top----"
And so they went.
What she expected to find she did not ask herself. In any case they
rode on, eventually coming out at a small enclosure where stood a sort
of bungalow in those days--it is probably pulled down now, but then it
stood with a wonderful view over the desert, and over the green world.
Tamara had vaguely observed it in the distance before, but imagined it
to be some water-tower of the hotel, it was so bare and gaunt. It had
been built by some mad Italian, they heard afterward, for rest and
quiet.
It was a quaint place with tiny windows high up, evidently to light a
studio, and there was a veranda to look at the view towards the Nile.
When they got fairly close they could see that on this veranda a young
man was stretched at full length. A long wicker chair supported him,
while he read a French novel. They--at least Tamara--could see the
yellow back of the book, and also, one regrets to add, she was
conscious that the young man was only clothed in blue and white striped
silk pyjamas!--the jacket of which was open and showed his chest--and
one foot, stretched out and hanging over the back of another low chair,
was--actually bare!
Mrs. Hardcastle touched her donkey and hurried past--the path went so
very near this unseemly sight! And Tamara followed, but not before the
young man had time to raise himself and frown with fury. She almost
imagined she heard him saying "Those devils of tourists!" Then with the
corner of her eye ere they got out of sight, she perceived that a
blue-clad Arab brought coffee on a little tray.
She glowed with annoyance. Did he think she had come to look at him?
Did he--he certainly was quite uninterested, for he must have
recognized her; but perhaps not; people look so different in large
straw hats to what they appear with scarves of chiffon tied over their
heads. But why had she come this way at all? She wished a thousand
times she had suggested going round the pyramids instead.
"Tamara," said Mrs. Hardcastle, when they were safely descending the
further sand-path, with no unclothed young giant in view, "did you see
there was a _man_ in that chair? What a dreadful person to be lying on
the balcony--undressed!"
"I never noticed," said Tamara, without a blush. "I am surprised at you
having looked, Millie--when this view is so fine."
"But, my dear child, I could not possibly help seeing him. How you did
not notice, I can't think; he had pyjamas on, Tamara--and _bare feet!"_
Mrs. Hardcastle almost whispered the last terrible words.
"I suppose he felt hot," said Tamara; "it is a grilling day."
"But really, dear, no nice people, in any weather,
remain--er--undressed at twelve o'clock in the day for passers-by to
look at--do they?"
"Well, perhaps he isn't a nice person," allowed Tamara. "He may be mad.
What was he like, since you saw so much, Millicent?"
Mrs. Hardcastle glanced over her shoulder reproachfully. "You really
speak as though I had looked on purpose," she said. "He seemed very
long--and not fat. I suppose, as his hair was not very dark, he must be
an Englishman."
"Oh, dear, no!" exclaimed Tamara. "Not an Englishman." Then seeing her
friend's expression of surprise, "I mean, it isn't likely an Englishman
would lie on his balcony in pyjamas--at least not the ones we see in
Cairo; they--they are too busy, aren't they?"
This miserably lame explanation seemed to satisfy Millicent. It was too
hot and too disagreeable, she felt, clinging to the donkey while it
descended the steep path, to continue the subject further, having to
turn one's head over the shoulder like that; but when they got on the
broad level she began again:
"Possibly it was a madman, Tamara, sent here with a keeper--in that
out-of-the-way place. How fortunate we had the donkey boys with us!"
Tamara laughed.
"You dear goose, Millie, he couldn't have eaten us up, you know; and he
was not doing the least harm, poor thing. We should not have gone that
way; it may have been his private path."
"Still, no one should lie about undressed," Mrs. Hardcastle protested.
"It is not at all nice. Girls might have been riding with us, and how
dreadful it would have been then."
"Let us forget it, pet!" Tamara laughed, "and trot on and get some real
exercise."
So off they started.
Just as they were turning out of the hotel gate, late in the same
afternoon, a young man on an Arab horse passed the carriage. He was in
ordinary riding dress, and looked a slim, graceful sight as he trotted
ahead.
He never glanced their way. But while Tamara felt a sudden emotion of
sorts, Mrs. Hardcastle exclaimed:
"Look, look! I am sure that is he--the mad man who wore those pyjamas."