A native doctor belonging to the Ministry of Public Health arrived at
Kôm-es-Sultân during the afternoon, having travelled up from Luxor
in response to the telegram reporting the infection; and to his care
the patient was handed over by Morgan, who had refused to budge until
proper arrangements could be made. When, a few days later, the sick
man was able to be moved, he was conveyed down to Luxor in a small
river-steamer belonging to the sugar factory; and, after ten days in
the local hospital, where, in spite of the great heat, he was very
tolerably comfortable, he was able to go north in the sleeping-car which,
on certain nights during the summer weeks, was attached to the Cairo
express, for the benefit of perspiring English officers coming down from
the Sudan, and weary officials whose work had called them out into these
sun-scorched districts of Upper Egypt.
The doctor in Cairo advised him to move down to the sea as soon as
possible; and thus, one early evening at the end of June, as the glare
of the day was giving place to the long shadows of sunset, Jim found
himself driving through the streets of Alexandria towards the little
Hotel des Beaux-Esprits which stands at the edge of the Mediterranean,
not far outside the city, and which had been recommended to him as the
inexpensive resort of artists and men of letters.
He leant back in the carriage luxuriously, and drank the cool air into
his lungs with a satisfaction which those alone may understand who have
known what it is to make this journey out of the inferno of an Upper
Egyptian summer into the comparatively temperate climate of the sea
coast. The streets of Alexandria are much like those of an Italian or
southern French city; and as he looked about him at the pleasant shops
and the crowds of pedestrians, for the most part European or Levantine,
he felt as though he had recovered from some sort of tortured madness,
and had suddenly come back to the comprehension and the relish of
intelligent life.
For the present there was nothing to mar his happiness. The greater
part of a year’s salary lay awaiting him in the bank, for in the desert
there had been no means of spending money, and his losses had equalled
his winnings at those daily games of cards which had at length become so
tedious. The mines would remain idle in any event until the temperature
began to fall, in September; and thus for the two months of his summer
leave he could take his ease, and could postpone for some weeks yet his
decision as to whether he would return to that fiery exile, or would fare
forth again upon his nomadic travels.
His recent experiences had been a severe shock to him, and for the time
being, at any rate, he felt that he never wished to see the desert again.
But perhaps when a few weeks of this cool sea air had set him on his
feet once more, the thought of his return to the mines would have lost
its terror.
At the hotel he was received by the fat and motherly proprietress, who,
having diffidently asked for and enthusiastically received a week’s
payment in advance, led him to an airy room overlooking the sea, and left
him with many assurances that he would here speedily recover from the
indefinite stomachic disturbances which he told her had recently laid him
low.
On his way through Cairo he had purchased quite a respectable suit of
white linen, and so soon as he was alone he set about the happy business
of arraying himself as a civilized personage. Although much exhausted by
his journey he was eager to go down and sit at one of the little tables
overlooking the sea, there to drink his _bouillon_, and to make himself
acquainted with his fellow guests; and he paid very little regard to
the shaking of his knees and the apparent swaying of the floor when a
struggle with his unruly hair had taxed his strength. Prudence suggested
that he should remain in his room and rest; but, having been in exile
so long, he could not resist the desire to be downstairs, enjoying
the coolness of the evening, looking at people and talking to them,
or listening to the music provided by the mandolines and guitars of a
company of Italians who, presumably, earned their living by going the
round of the smaller hotels, and the strains of whose romantic songs now
came to him, mingled with the gentle surge of the waves.
Presently, therefore, he issued from his room, and, making for the
stairs, found himself walking behind a young woman similarly purposed.
He had not spoken to a female of any kind for nearly a year, and this
fact may have accounted for the quite surprising impression her back
view made upon him. It seemed to him that she had a wonderful pair of
shoulders, startling black hair, and an excellent figure excellently
garbed. He hoped devoutly that she was pretty; but, as she turned to
glance at him, he saw that her face was perhaps more interesting than
actually beautiful. It was like an ancient Egyptian bas-relief—an Isis or
a Hathor. It was sufficiently strange, indeed, with the high cheek-bones,
the raven-black hair, and the wise, smiling mouth, to arouse his
curiosity, and her dark-fringed grey eyes seemed frankly to invite his
admiration.
At the foot of the stairs, when he was close behind her, he suddenly felt
giddy again, and swayed towards her; at which she stared at him in cold
surprise.
“I beg your pardon,” he said, clutching at the banister, and wondering
why the light had become so dim.
A moment later he pitched forward, grabbed at the hand she instantly held
out to him, and knew no more.
When he recovered consciousness he was lying upon the bed in his own
room, and this black-haired woman whom he had seen upon the stairs was
leaning over him—like a mother, he thought—dabbing his forehead with
water.
“That’s better,” he heard her say. “You’ll be all right now.”
He sat up, at once fully aware of his situation. “I’m awfully sorry,” he
exclaimed. “Did I faint?”
“Yes,” was the answer. “I caught you as you fell.”
Jim swore under his breath. “I’ve been ill,” he said. “I didn’t realize I
was so weak. Did I make an awful ass of myself?”
“No,” she smiled, “you did it quite gracefully; and there was nobody
about; they were all at dinner.”
“Who brought me up here?” he asked.
“I and the two native servants,” she laughed, and her laughter was
pleasant to hear. “Are you in the habit of fainting?”
“I’ve never fainted before in my life,” said Jim, warmly, “until I had
this go of cholera.”
“Cholera?” she ejaculated. “You’ve had _cholera_? How long ago?”
“Oh, I’m not infectious,” he smiled. “It was quite a while ago.” He gave
her the facts with weary brevity: it was a picture that he wished to
banish from the gallery of his memory.
“But, my dear friend,” she said, “when you’ve just come out of the jaws
of death like that, you must take things easy. You ought to be in bed,
toying with a spoonful of jelly and a grape. What’s your name?”
“Jim,” he answered. “What’s yours?”
“That is of no consequence,” she replied, smiling at him, as he thought
to himself, like a heathen idol.
He was silent for a few moments. He was not quite sure whether it
would not now be as well to kill Mr. Easton and resuscitate Mr.
Tundering-West, for at the moment he was anxious to forget entirely
his Bedouin life and his exile at the mines, and he was no longer a
disreputable beggar.
“I’ll call you ‘Sister,’” he said at length. “That’s what the patients at
the hospital call the nurse, isn’t it?”
“I’m afraid I’m not much of a nurse,” she replied. “I’ve torn your collar
in getting it open, and I’ve dripped water all down your coat.”
“I bumped into you when I fell, didn’t I?” he asked, trying to recollect
what had happened.
“Yes,” she answered. “I thought you were drunk.”
“Thanks awfully,” he said.
“Have you any friends to look after you?” she enquired presently.
“No, nobody, Sister,” he replied. “Have you?”
She shook her head. “I hardly know anybody, either. I’m a painter. I’ve
just come over from Italy to do some work.” She fetched a towel from the
washing-stand. “Now, hold your head up, and let me dry your neck.”
“I suppose you don’t happen to have a brandy and soda about you?” he
asked, when she had tidied him up. He was feeling very fairly well again,
but sorely in need of a stimulant.
“I’ll go and get you one,” she replied; and before he could make any
polite protest she had left the room.
He got up at once from the bed, went with shaking legs to the
dressing-table and stared at himself in the glass. “Good Lord!” he
muttered. “I look like an organ-grinder after a night out.” He combed
his damp hair back from his forehead, and sat himself down on the
sofa near the open window, a shaded candle by his side. The night was
soothingly windless and quiet, and a wonderful full moon was rising clear
of the haze above the sea; and so extraordinary was it to him to feel the
air about him temperate and kind that presently a mood of great content
descended upon him, and, after his startling experience, he was no longer
restless to join the company downstairs.
In a short time his nurse returned, bringing him the brandy-and-soda; and
when this had been swallowed he began to think the world a very pleasant
place.
She fetched two pillows from the bed, and in motherly fashion placed them
behind his head; then, sitting down on a small armchair which stood near
the sofa, she asked him whether he intended to stay long in Alexandria.
“I have no plans,” he told her. “As long as I’ve got any money in the
bank I never do have any. When the money’s spent, then I shall begin to
think what to do next. I’m just one of the Bedouin of life.”
“I am a wanderer, too,” she said. And therewith they began to talk to one
another as only wanderers can talk. There were many places in France and
Italy known to them both, and it appeared that they had been in Ceylon
at the same time, she in Colombo, and he up-country in search of his
moonstones.
He felt very much at ease with her, coming soon, indeed, to regard her
as a potential confidant of his dreams. Her enigmatic face was curiously
attractive to him, particularly so, in fact, just now, with the screen of
the candle casting a soft shadow upon it, so that the grey eyes seemed to
be looking at him through a veil. He began to wonder, indeed, why it was
that at first sight he had not regarded her as beautiful.
For half an hour or more they talked quietly but eagerly together, while
the moon rose over the sea until its pale light penetrated into the room,
and blanched the heavy shadows.
“Well, I’m very glad I fainted,” he said, lightly, observing that she was
about to take her departure.
“So am I,” she answered, smiling at him as though all the secrets of all
the world were in her wise keeping.
“Tell me, Sister,” he asked. “Are you all alone in the world?”
“Yes.”
“Do you think it’s quite correct to be sitting in a strange man’s room?”
“Perfectly.”
“Tramp!” he said.
“Vagrant!” she replied.
She rose, and stood awhile gazing out of the open window—a mysterious
figure, looking like old gold in the light of the reading-lamp, set
against the sheen of the moon.
“It’s a wonderful night,” he remarked. “You have no idea what it means to
me to feel cool and comfortable. The desert up-country is the very devil
in summer.”
“Yes,” she replied, turning to him, “one can understand why Cleopatra and
her Ptolemy ancestors left the old cities of the south, and built their
palaces here beside the sea.”
He smiled, knowingly. “If she had lived up there in Thebes where the old
Pharaohs sweated, there wouldn’t have been any affair with Antony. She
would have been too busy taking cold baths and whisking the flies away.
But down here—why, the sound of the sea in the night would have been
enough by itself to do the trick.”
She looked at him curiously. “To me,” she said, “the sound of the sea on
a summer night is the most tragic and the most beautiful thing in the
world. If I ever gave up wandering and came to rest, it would be in a
little white villa somewhere on the shores of the Mediterranean.”
“No, for my part, I want to go north just now,” he rejoined. “I’m tired
of the east and the south: I’ve got a longing for England.”
“It won’t last,” she smiled. “You don’t fit in with England, somehow.”
“Oh, I’m a typical Devon man,” he declared, recalling, with a sudden
feeling of pride, the original home of his family, previous to their
migration into Oxfordshire.
She looked at him with a smile. “That accounts for it,” she said. “The
men of Devon so often have the wandering spirit.” She held out her hand.
“I must go now. Good night!—I’ll come and see how you are in the morning.
My room is next to yours, if you want anything.”
“Good night, Sister!” he answered. “I’m most awfully obliged to you.
You’ve done me a power of good.”
She smiled at him with the calm, mysterious expression of the old gods
and goddesses carved upon the temple walls, and went out of the room;
and thereafter he lay back on his pillows, musing on her attractive
personality, and wondering who she was. He was still wondering when, some
minutes later, the native servant entered with a tray upon which there
was a cup of soup, some jelly, and a bunch of grapes.
“Madam she say you to drink it _all_ the soup,” said the man, “but only
eat three grapes, only _three_, she say, sir, please.”
“Very well,” Jim answered, feeling rather pleased thus to receive orders
from her.
That night he slept soundly, and awoke refreshed and almost vigorous.
After breakfast in bed he got up, and he had been dressed for some time
when his self-constituted nurse came to him.
“Oh, I’m glad you’re up,” she said, giving his hand an honest shake. “I’m
going to take you out on the verandah downstairs. It’s beautifully cool
there.”
Jim was delighted. She looked so very nice this morning, he thought, in
her pretty summer dress and wide-brimmed hat; and her smile was radiant.
He held an impression from the night before that she was a creature of
mystery, a woman out of a legend; and it was quite a relief to him to
find that now in the daylight she was a normal being.
As they descended the stairs she put her hand under his elbow to aid him,
and, though the assistance was quite unnecessary, it pleased him so much
that he was conscious of an inclination to play the invalid with closer
similitude than actuality warranted. Nobody had ever looked after him
since he was a child, and, as in the case of all men who believe they
detest feminine aid, the experience was surprisingly gratifying.
On the verandah they sat together in two basket chairs, and presently
she so directed their conversation that he found himself talking to her
as though she were his oldest friend. He told her tales of the desert,
described his life at the mines, and tried to explain the dread he felt
at the thought of returning to them. There was no complaint in his words:
he was something of a fatalist, and, being obliged to earn his bread and
butter, he supposed his lot to be no worse than that of hosts of other
men. After all, anything was better than sitting on an office stool.
She listened to him, encouraging him to talk; and the morning was gone
before he suddenly became conscious that she and not he had played the
part of listener.
“Good lord!” he exclaimed. “How I must be boring you! There goes the bell
for _déjeuner_. Why didn’t you stop me?”
“I was interested,” she replied, turning her head aside. “You have shown
me a part of life I knew nothing about. My own wanderings have been so
much more sophisticated, so much more ordinary.” She looked round at him
quickly. “By the way, I am leaving you to-morrow. I have to go to Cairo
for a week or so.”
Jim’s face fell. “Oh damn!” he said. His disappointment was intense.
“Why should you go to Cairo?” he asked gloomily. “It’s a beastly, hot,
unhealthy place at this time of year.”
“I shan’t be gone long,” she answered. “I just have to paint one picture.
And when I come back I shall expect to find you strong and well once
more. Then we can do all sorts of wonderful things together.” She paused,
looking at him intently. “That is something for us to look forward to,”
she added, as though she were talking to herself.