Lord Blair rose from his chair as the door opened, and removed from his
thin, furtive nose a pair of large horn-rimmed spectacles which he
always wore when quite alone in his study.
"Come in, come in, my dear Mr. Lane," he exclaimed, taking a few blithe
steps forward and shaking his visitor warmly by the hand. "I'm very
well, thank you, very well indeed, and so are you, I see. That's right,
that's good,--splendid! Dear me, what physique! What a picture of
health! How did you get here so quickly?--do take a seat, do be seated.
Yes, yes, to be sure! Have a cigar? Now, where did I put my cigars?"
He pushed a leather arm-chair around, so that it faced his own desk
chair, and began at once to hunt for his cigar-box, lifting and
replacing stacks of papers and books, glancing rapidly, like some sort
of rodent, around the room, and then again searching under his papers.
"Thanks," said Daniel Lane, "I'll smoke my pipe, if it won't make you
sick."
"Tut, tut!" Lord Blair laughed, extending his delicate hands in a
comprehensive gesture. "I sometimes smoke a pipe myself: I enjoy it. A
good, honest, English smoke! Dear me, where _are_ my cigars?"
Lord Blair was a little man of somewhat remarkable
appearance--remarkable, that is to say, when considered in relation to
his historic name and excellent diplomatic record. In a company of
elderly club waiters he would, on superficial observation, have passed
unnoticed. He bore very little resemblance to his daughter; and, in
fact, he was often disposed to believe his late wife's declaration, made
whenever she desired to taunt him, that Muriel was no child of his. Lady
Blair had had many lovers; and it is notorious that twenty odd years ago
in Mayfair there was an exceptionally violent epidemic of adultery.
He himself had thin auburn hair, now nearly grey, neatly parted in the
middle; nervous, quick-moving brown eyes; closely cut 'mutton-chop'
whiskers; an otherwise clean-shaven, sharp-featured face; and a wide
mouth, furnished with two somewhat apparent rows of false teeth. His
smile was kindly and gracious, and his expression, in spite of a certain
vigilance, mild.
The evening dress which he was now wearing was noteworthy in four
particulars: his collar was so big for him that one might suppose that,
in moments of danger, his head totally disappeared into it; his bow-tie
was exceptionally wide and large; his links and studs were, as such
things go, enormous; and the legs of his trousers were cut so tightly as
to be bordering on the comic. In other respects there was nothing
striking in his appearance, except, perhaps, a general cleanliness,
almost a fastidiousness, especially to be noticed in the polished
surface of his chin and jaw, and in his carefully manicured
finger-nails.
Daniel Lane pulled out his pipe and began to fill it from a worn old
pouch. "Please don't bother about cigars," he said, as Lord Blair
extended his hand towards the bell. "Tell me why you sent for me. Your
letter was brought over from El Homra by a nigger corporal of your
precious frontier-patrol, who nearly lamed his camel in trying to do the
thirty miles in under four hours. My Bedouin friends thought at the very
least that the King of England was dying and wished to give me his
blessing."
"Dear, dear!--it was not so urgent as all that," his Lordship replied.
"I told them to mark the letter "Express," but I trust, I do trust, the
message itself was not peremptory."
"Not at all," the other replied. "I was mighty glad of an excuse to come
into Cairo; I wanted to do some shopping; and there was another reason
also. A young cousin of mine--in the Guards--has come to Cairo, with his
regiment, and I ought to see him about some family business. I should
probably have let it slide if you hadn't sent for me. Tell me, what's
your trouble?"
"Ah, that's the point!--you always come to the point quickly. It's
capital, capital!" Lord Blair leaned forward and tapped his friend's
knee with a sort of affection. "I don't know where I should be without
your advice, Mr. Lane--Daniel: may I call you Daniel?"
"Sure," said Daniel, laconically.
"When I came here two years ago, my predecessor said to me 'When in
doubt, send for Daniel Lane.' Do you remember how worried, indeed how
shaken--yes, I may say shaken--I was by the Michael Pasha affair? How
you laughed! Dear me, you were positively rude to me; and how right you
were! Personally I should have had him deported: it never occurred to me
to convert him into a friend."
His visitor smiled. "'Bind a brave enemy with the chains of
absolution,'" he said.
"Yes, yes, very true," replied Lord Blair, still hunting about for the
cigars. "Very true, very daring: a policy for brave men." He started
into rigidity, as though at a sudden thought: one might have supposed
that he had recollected where he had put the cigars. "Daniel!" he
exclaimed, "you bring with you an air of the mediaeval! That's it! One
always forgets that Egypt is mediaeval."
Daniel blew a cloud of oriental tobacco-smoke through his nostrils, at
which his host frenziedly renewed his search for the less pungent
cigars. "About this business you want to ask my advice upon ...?" he
asked.
"Ah yes, you must be tired," his Lordship murmured. "You want to go to
bed after your long ride. Let me put you up here. I'll ring and have a
room prepared."
"No thanks," said Daniel, firmly. "I've left my kit at the Orient Hotel.
But fire away, and I'll give you my opinion either at once or in the
morning."
Lord Blair laid his thin fingers upon a document, and handed it to his
friend. "Read that," he said, and therewith leaned back in his chair,
his dark eyes glancing anxiously about the room.
The document was written in Arabic, and beneath the flowing script a
secretary had pencilled an English translation. "The translation is
appended," remarked his Lordship, as Daniel bent forward to study the
paper in the light of the electric reading-lamp.
"I prefer the original," he replied, with a smile, "I don't trust
translations: they lose the spirit."
For some considerable time there was silence. Suddenly Lord Blair rose
from his chair, and hurried across to a cupboard, from which he returned
bearing in triumph the missing cigars. He proffered them to his visitor,
who, without raising his eyes, took one, smelt it, and put it in his
breast pocket.
At length, through a cloud of smoke, Daniel looked up. "The man's a
fool," he said, and laid the paper back upon the table.
"You think I ought to refuse?" asked Lord Blair.
"No, procrastinate. That's the basis of diplomacy, isn't it?"
The document in question was a request made by the Egyptian Minister of
War that the nomadic Bedouin tribes of the desert should be brought
under the Conscription Act, from which, until now, they had been exempt.
"I ventured to ask you to come in," said his Lordship, "because I am
sure, indeed I know, you have the interests of these rascals at heart. I
thought you would wish to be consulted; and at the same time I felt that
you would be able to tell me just what the consequences would be of any
action of this kind."
Daniel nodded. "Yes, I can tell you the consequences," he answered. "If
you conscribe them, they will evade the law by all possible means, and
you will turn honest men into law-breakers."
"But, as you see, he suggests that it will bring the benefits of
discipline into their lives," Lord Blair argued. "And if some of them
escape across the frontiers into Arabia or Tripoli, it will be, surely
it will be, no great loss to Egypt."
Daniel spread out his hands. "What is military discipline?" he asked.
"Good Lord!--d'you think the Bedouin will be better men for having
learnt to form fours and present arms? Will barrack life in dirty cities
bring them some mystic benefit which they have missed in the open spaces
of the clean desert? Don't you realize that it is just their freedom
from the taint of what we call civilization that gives them their
particular good qualities? Why is it that the man of the desert is
faithful and honourable and truthful? Because time and money and power
and ambition and success and cunning are nothing to him. Because he is
not herded with other men."
He leant forward earnestly. "Lord Blair," he said, and his voice was
grave, "hasn't the thought ever come to you that we civilized people,
with our rules and regulations, our etiquette and our conventions, have
built up a structure which screens us from the face of the sun?"
"Ah, yes, indeed, my dear Daniel," he replied. "Back to the land: the
simple life: Fresh Air Fund--a capital sentiment. But, you know, I am
very anxious, most anxious, not to offend this particular minister--most
anxious."
His visitor relapsed into silence, and the volume of smoke which issued
from his mouth was some indication that he had much to say which he
preferred to leave unsaid.
At length he took the pipe from between his teeth. "You had better fix
your frontiers first," he declared. "There'll be a fine old row if
Egyptian patrols blunder into foreign territory. There's your chance for
procrastination. Send out a commission to settle the desert frontiers
definitely. That'll keep you all wrangling comfortably for five years."
"Ah!--that is an idea, a very good idea," replied Lord Blair, bringing
the tips of the fingers of one hand against those of the other sharply
and repeatedly.
"Write to the minister," Daniel went on, "and tell him you don't
altogether agree with him, but that you will consent to the preliminary
step of fixing the frontiers. Before that's accomplished you may both be
dead."
"I trust not, I trust not," murmured Lord Blair.
"Or retired," said his friend; and his Lordship nodded his thanks for
the correction.
It was not long before Daniel rose to take his departure. "Oh, by the
way," he said, with a broad smile, "I have one little favor to ask
you...."
"Certainly, certainly," responded Lord Blair warmly. "Anything I can do,
I'm sure--anything. You have put me under a great obligation by coming
so promptly to my aid in this matter."
"Well, will you be so good as to walk as far as your front gate with me?
There's something I want to show you."
Lord Blair, somewhat mystified, accompanied him on to the veranda; and
here they chanced upon Lady Muriel again taking the air with Rupert
Helsingham who was once more her partner. The couple were strolling
towards them as they came out of the house.
Daniel made for the steps. "What I want you to see is over here," he
said, pointing to the gateway.
"One moment," Lord Blair interjected, taking hold of his arm. "I want to
introduce you to my daughter."
He called Muriel to him, who replied somewhat coldly that she had
already met Mr. Lane.
"Really?" exclaimed his Lordship. "Splendid, capital!"
"Yes," said Daniel, taking his pipe out of his mouth, "when she was
quite a kid; but I'm blest if I know where it was."
He was standing again almost with his back to Muriel, his pipe between
his teeth, and once more a sense of annoyance entered her mind. She
would have liked to pinch him, but for all she knew he might turn round
and fling her into the middle of the drive. She racked her brains for
something to say, something which would show him that she was not to be
ignored in this fashion.
"Ah," she exclaimed suddenly, "now I remember. It was in the Highlands
that we met. You came over to tea with us: I was staying with my cousin
the Duchess of Strathness."
Daniel scratched his head. "I'm so bad at names," he said. "What's she
like?"
Lord Blair uttered a sudden guffaw, but Muriel did not treat the matter
so lightly. A man with gentlemanly instincts, she thought to herself,
would at any rate _pretend_ he remembered.
"Oh, why bother to think it out?" she answered, her foot ominously
tapping the floor. "It's of no consequence."
"None," Daniel replied, looking at her with his steady laughing eyes.
"You're still you, and I'm still I.... But I did like your pigtails."
Muriel turned to her partner, who stood anxiously fiddling with his
eyeglass. "Come along," she said; "let's go back. The music's begun
again."
She nodded with decided coolness to Daniel, and turned away. He gazed
after her in silence for a moment; then he put his hand on her father's
arm, and gently propelled him towards the gates.
As they walked down the drive in the moonlight, the sentry peered at
them through the iron bars, and, recognizing Lord Blair, suddenly
presented arms, becoming thereat a very passable imitation of a waxwork
figure.
Lord Blair put his arm in Daniel's. "What is it you wanted to show me?"
he asked, as they passed through the gate and stood upon the pavement
outside.
"A good soldier," said Daniel, indicating the sentry, whose face assumed
an expression of mingled anxiety and astonishment. "I wanted to call
your attention to this lad. Do you think you could put in a word for him
to his colonel? I was very much struck this evening with the way in
which he dealt with a ruffianly tramp who apparently wanted to get into
the grounds. He showed great self-restraint combined with determination
and devotion to duty." There was not the trace of a smile upon his face.
Lord Blair turned to the rigid Scotchman, whose mouth had fallen open.
"What's your name, my man?" he asked.
"John Macdonald, me Lord," he answered unsteadily.
"Now, will you make a note of it?" said Daniel. "And if you get a
chance, recommend him for his soldierly conduct. Or, better still, send
him a little present as a mark of your regard."
"Certainly, certainly," replied Lord Blair, still somewhat puzzled.
"Thanks, that's all," said Daniel. "Good-night."
"Will you come to luncheon tomorrow?" Lord Blair asked, as they shook
hands. "I will then show you the draft of my reply to the Minister of
War."
"Thank you," Daniel answered, knocking the ashes from his pipe. "I'll be
delighted, if it isn't a party. I haven't got any respectable clothes
with me."
"Tut, tut!" murmured his Lordship. "Come in anything you like." And with
that he patted his friend on the arm, and hastened with little tripping
steps back to the house.
Daniel put his hands in his pockets and faced the sentry, who was once
more standing at ease. "John Macdonald," he said, "is the account
square?"
The Scotchman looked at him with a twinkle in his eye. "Ye mus' na'
speak tae th' sentry on duty," he answered.
Daniel uttered a chuckle, and walked off across the square.