Tired after the dance, Lady Muriel stayed upstairs next day until the
luncheon hour. The long windows of her room led out on to a balcony
which, being on the west side of the house, remained in the shade for
most of the morning; and here in a comfortable basket chair, she lay
back idly glancing at the week-old magazines and illustrated papers
which the mail had just brought from England. While the sun was not yet
high in the heavens the shadow cast by the house was broad enough to
mitigate to the eyes the glare of the Egyptian day; and every now and
then she laid down her literature to gaze at the brilliant scene before
her.
The grounds of the Residency, with the rare flowering trees and imported
varieties of palm, the masses of variegated flowers and the fresh-sown
lawns of vivid grass, looked like well-kept Botanical Gardens, and
appealed more to her cultivated tastes than to the original emotions of
her nature. It was all very elegant and civilized and pleasing, and
seemed correspondent to the charming new garment--all silk and lace and
ribbons--which she was wearing, and to the fashionable literature which
she was reading. She, the balcony, the garden, and the deep blue sky
might have been a picture on the cover of a society journal.
But when she raised her eyes, and looked over the Nile, which flowed
past the white terrace at the bottom of the lawn, and allowed her gaze
to rest upon the long line of the distant desert on the opposite bank,
the aspect of things, outward and inward, was altered; and momentarily
she felt the play of disused or wholly novel sensations lightly touching
upon her heart.
So far she was delighted with her experience of Egypt. She enjoyed the
heat; she was charmed by the somewhat luxurious life at the Residency;
and the deference paid to her as the Great Man's daughter amused and
pleased her. At the dance the previous night she had met half a dozen
very possible young officers; and the secretaries whom she saw every day
were pleasant enough, little Rupert Helsingham being quite amusing. That
afternoon she was going to ride with him, which would be jolly....
There was, however, one small and almost insignificant source of unease
in her mind, one little blot upon the enjoyment of the last two or three
days. A ruffianly fellow had treated her in a manner bordering on
rudeness, and in his presence she had felt stupid. He had shown at first
complete indifference to her, and later he had spoken with a sort of
easy familiarity which suggested a long experience in dealing with her
sex, but no ability to discriminate between the bondwoman and the free.
And she had behaved as a bondwoman.
The recollection caused her now to tap her foot angrily upon the tiled
floor, and to draw the delicate line of her eyebrows into a puckered
frown. The thought which lay at the root of her discomfort was this: she
had pretended that their previous meeting had been at the house of the
Duchess of Strathness simply because she had been lashed into a desire
to assert her own standing in response to his lack of respect. The
Duchess was her most exalted relative: she was a Royal Princess who had
married the Duke, and the Duke was cousin to her mother. She knew quite
well that she had not met Mr. Lane there: she had uttered the words
before her nicer instincts had had time to prevail.
She had said it in self-defence--to make an impression; and his reply,
whether he had meant it as a snub or not, had stung her. "I'm so bad at
names: what's she like?" Her Royal Highness Princess Augusta Maria,
Duchess of Strathness! Of course it was a snub; and she had deserved it.
He couldn't have made a more shattering reply: he couldn't have said
more plainly to her "Now, no airs with me, please!--to me you are just
you."
The recollection of the incident was unpleasant; it made her feel small.
She had behaved no better than the servants and shopkeepers who delight
to speak in familiar terms of duchesses and dukes. However!... she did
not suppose that she would see the man again: he belonged to the desert,
not to Cairo; and with this consolation, she dismissed the matter from
her mind.
When at last she descended the stairs at the sound of the gong, she came
upon General Smith-Evered, who had called to see Lord Blair upon some
matter of business, and was just stumping across the hall on his way
out. He was a very martial little man. He greeted her with jocularity
tempered by deference; he kissed her hand in what he believed to be a
very charming old-world manner; he told her what a radiant vision she
made as she walked down the great staircase in her pretty summer dress;
he described himself as a bluff old soldier fairly bowled over by her
youthful grace; and he slapped his leggings with his cane and gloves and
kissed his fingers to England, home and beauty.
Muriel knew the type well--in real life, on the stage, and in the comic
papers; nevertheless, she felt pleased with the rotund compliments, and
there was a pleasurable sense of well-being in her mind as she entered
the drawing-room. Here the sun-blinds shaded the long French windows,
and the light in the room was so subdued that she did not observe at
once that she was not alone. She had paused to rearrange a vase of
flowers which stood upon a small table, when a movement behind her
caused her to turn; and she found herself face to face with Daniel Lane,
who had just risen from the sofa.
"Good morning!" he said, gravely looking at her with his deep-set blue
eyes.
Her heart sank: she felt like a schoolgirl in the presence of a master
who had lately punished her. "Oh, good morning," she answered, but she
did not offer him her hand.
She turned again to the flowers. "Are you waiting to see my father?" she
asked, as she aimlessly withdrew a rose from the bunch and inserted it
again at another angle.
"I've come to lunch," he said. "I'm early, I suppose. My watch is
busted."
Deeper sank her heart. "No, you're not early," she replied, "the gong's
gone."
"Good!" he exclaimed; "then you haven't got a party. I was shy about my
clothes."
He was wearing the same clothes in which she had seen him the night
before, except that he appeared to have a clean collar and shirt, his
hair was carefully combed back, and he had evidently visited a barber.
"Do sit down," she said.
"Thanks," he answered, and remained where he was, his hands deep in the
pockets of his jacket, and his eyes fixed upon her.
There was an awkward pause, awkward, that is to say, to Muriel, who
could not for the life of her think what to talk about.
"Will you smoke a cigarette?" she asked, handing him the box as a
preliminary to an escape from the room.
He took it from her unthinkingly, and, without opening it, put it down
upon a table.
"I've remembered where it was we met," he remarked suddenly, as she
moved towards the door.
"Really?" There was a note of assumed indifference in her voice; and, as
she turned and came back to him, she made a desperate attempt to emulate
the cucumber. She felt that there was a challenge in his words, in face
of which she could not honourably run away.
"Yes," he said. "It was at Eastbourne, at your school. I came down to
see your head mistress, who was a friend of mine; and they let you come
into the drawing-room to tea."
A wave of recollection passed over her mind. "Of course," she exclaimed,
"that was it."
They had let her, they had _allowed_ her, to come into the drawing-room
to have the honour of making his acquaintance! She paused: the scene of
their meeting developed in her mind. A girl had rushed into the
schoolroom where she was reading, and had told her that she and one or
two others were to go into the drawing-room to make themselves polite to
this man, who was described as a great scholar and explorer. She had
gone in shyly, and had shaken hands with him, and he had stared at her
and, later, had turned his back on her; and, after he had gone, the
headmistress had commended her manners as having been quiet, ladylike,
and respectful. Respectful!
He was smiling at her when she looked up at him once more. "You were
wrong about it being at your cousin's," he said.
Muriel felt as though she had been smacked. "Oh, I only suggested that,"
she replied, witheringly, "to help you out. I didn't really suppose that
you knew her."
"I know very few people," he answered, unmoved. "I can't afford the
time. Life is such a 'brief candle' that a man has to choose one of its
two pleasures--sociability or study: he can't enjoy both."
She looked at him curiously. He must have a tough hide, she thought, to
be unruffled by a remark so biting as that she had made. For a moment
she stared straight at him, her hand resting on her hip. Then she caught
sight of herself in the great mirror against the wall, and her hand
slipped hastily from its resting-place: her attitude had been that of a
common Spanish dancing-girl. Her eyes fell before his.
"I'll go and find the others," she said, and turned from him.
As she did so Lord Blair hurried into the room. He was wearing a
hot-weather suit of some sort of drab-coloured silk, straight from the
laundry, where, one might have supposed, the trousers had been
accidentally shrunk. His stiff and spacious collar, and his expansive
tie, folded in the four-in-hand manner and fastened with a large gold
pin, detracted from the sense of coolness suggested by his suit; but a
rose in his buttonhole gave a comfortable touch of nature to an
otherwise artificial figure.
"Ah, good morning, Muriel dear," he exclaimed, giving her cheek a
friendly but quite unaffectionate kiss. "You've had a lazy morning, eh?
Feel the heat, no doubt. Yes? No? Ah, that's good, that's capital! Good
morning Mr. Lane, or Daniel, I should say, since you permit it. I hope
Muriel has been amusing you."
"She has," said Daniel, and Muriel blushed.
Rupert Helsingham entered the room; and, when he had made his
salutations, Muriel turned to him with relief, strolling with him across
to the windows through which the warm scented air of the garden drifted,
bringing with it the drone of the flies and the incessant rustle of the
palms.
"Please see that I don't sit next to that horrible man at lunch," she
whispered.
"There's no choice," he answered. "The four of us are alone today."
"Shall we go in?" said Lord Blair, nodding vigorously to Muriel; and the
three men followed her into the dining-room.
The meal proved to be less of an ordeal than she had expected. Their
visitor talked at first almost exclusively to his host, who showed him,
and discussed, the draft of his reply to the Minister of War; and Muriel
made herself quite entrancing to Rupert Helsingham. Under ordinary
circumstances she was, in spite of occasional lapses into bored silence,
a quick and witty talker; one who speedily established a sympathetic
connection with the person with whom she was conversing; and her
laughter was frequent and infectious. It was only this Daniel Lane who
had such a disturbing effect upon her equanimity; but here, at the
opposite side of a large table, she seemed to be out of range of his
influence, and she rejoiced in her unimpaired power to captivate the
little Diplomatic secretary.
"I am going to call you Rupert at once," she said to him; and, breaking
in on the opposite conversation, "Father," she demanded, "d'you mind if
I call this man by his Christian name? Everybody seems to."
Lord Blair laughed, holding out his hands in a gesture which indicated
that he took no responsibility, and turned to Daniel. "Do you think I
ought to let her?" he asked.
To Muriel his remark could hardly have been more unfortunate, and a
momentary frown gathered upon her face.
"I think it's a good idea," replied Daniel, looking quietly at her.
"Then if you quarrel you can revert to 'Mr. Helsingham' with telling
effect."
Muriel made a slight movement, not far removed from a toss of her head,
and, without giving any reply, continued her conversation to Rupert.
The meal was nearly finished when she became aware that her friend was
not paying full attention to her remarks, but was listening to Daniel
Lane, whose tongue a glass of wine had loosened, and who was speaking in
a low vibrating voice, describing some phases of his life in the desert.
At this she, too, began to listen, at first with some irritation, but
soon with genuine interest. She had supposed him to be more or less
monosyllabic, and she was astonished at his command of languages.
As she fixed her eyes upon him he glanced at her for a moment, and there
was a pause in his words. For the first time he was conscious of a look
of friendship in her face; and his heart responded to the expression.
The pause was hardly noticeable, but to him it was as though something
of importance had happened; and when he turned again to continue to
address himself to his host, there was a warm impulse behind his words.
Muriel thereafter made no further remark to Rupert; but leaning her
elbow upon the table, and fingering some grapes, gave her undivided
attention to the speaker.
"It's always a matter of surprise to me," he was saying, "that people
don't come out more often into the desert. You all sit here in this
garden of Egypt, this little strip of fertile land on the banks of the
Nile, and you look up at the great wall of the hills to east and west;
but you don't ever seem to think of climbing over and running away into
the wonderful country beyond."
Was it, he asked, that they were afraid of the roads that led
nowhere-in-particular, and the tracks that wandered like meandering
dreams? Why, those were the best kind of roads, because they merely took
your feet wherever your heart suggested--to shady places where you could
sprawl on the cool sand; or up to rocks where the sun beat on you and
the invigorating wind blew on your face; or down to wells of good water
where you could drink your fill and take your rest in the shade of the
tamarisks; or along echoing valleys where there was always an
interesting turning just ahead; or into the flat plains where the mirage
receded before you.
"You soon grow desert-wise," he said: "you can't get lost; and at last
the tracks will always bring you to some Abraham's tent, and he'll lift
up his eyes and see you, and come running to you to bid you welcome. And
there's bread for you, and honey, and curds, and camel's milk, and maybe
venison; and tobacco; and quiet, courteous talk far into the night,
under the stars; and perhaps a boy's full-throated song.... I can't
think how you can live your crabbed life here in Cairo, when there's all
that vast liberty so near at hand."
Muriel sipped her coffee, and listened, with a kind of excitement. His
voice had some quality in it which seemed to arouse a response deep in
the unfrequented places of her mind. It was as though she saw with her
own eyes the scenes which he was describing. With him she ascended the
bridlepath over the wall of the hills, and ran laughing down into the
valleys beyond, the wind in her face and the sun at her back; with him
she went sliding down the golden drifts of sand, or sprang from rock to
rock along the course of forgotten torrents; and with him she sat at the
camp fire and listened to the far-off cry of the little jackals.
He told of warm moonlight nights spent in the open, when the drowsy eye
looks up at the Milky Way, and the mind drifts into sleep, rocked, as it
were, in a cradle slung between the planets. He spoke of the first sweet
vision of the opalescent dawn, when sleep ends in quiet wakefulness,
without a middle period of stupor; and of the rising sun over the low
horizon, when every pebble casts a liquid blue shadow and the shallowest
footprints in the sand look like little pools of water.
He told of blazing days; of long journeys across hills and plains; of
the drumming of the pads of the camels upon the hard tracks; of deep,
shadowed gorges, and precipices touched only at the summit by the glare
of the sun; of the endless waves of the sand drifts, their sharp ridges
seen against the sky, like gold against blue enamel; of flaming sunsets,
and mysterious dusks, when, by creeping over the top of a hillock, one
might look down at ghostly gazelle drinking from a pool, and might
listen to the sucking in of the water.
And more especially he spoke of the freedom of the desert. "Ah, there's
liberty for you!" he exclaimed, and his eyes seemed to be alight with
his enthusiasm. "That's the life for a man! There are no clocks out
there, no miserable appointments to keep, no laying of foolish
foundation stones, or inspecting of sweating troops, no diplomatic
speeches, no wordy documents signifying nothing. Out there the men that
you meet speak the truth openly, and do all that they have to do without
cunning, and without fuss or frills. If you are wandering and hungry
they give you shelter and feed you; if they like you they treat you as a
brother; and when they wish to kill you they tell you so, and give you
four-and-twenty hours in which to quit. They are free men, and to them
all men have the status of the free; all partake, so to speak, of the
liberty of the desert."
He stopped rather abruptly: it was as though suddenly he had become
conscious that he had engaged the attention of the company, and was
abashed.
"You make me quite restless," said Lord Blair, as they rose from the
table. "Some day you will find me, even conservative me, setting out
into that happy playground beyond the horizon. Aha! I grow lyrical,
too!"
"I've stayed too long," said Daniel. "I must say good-bye at once. I
have a lot of shopping to do, and I told my men to meet me with the
camels at five o'clock at Mena House."
"What!--are you going back at once?" exclaimed Rupert Helsingham,
adjusting his eyeglass.
"Yes, I've had enough of Cairo," he laughed. "I feel like a fish out of
water here, or rather, I feel like a jackal that has ventured into a
village and must make tracks over the wall and away. I've stolen a
square meal and I'm off again."
He stood at the door smiling at them. He seemed now to radiate
imperturbable and rather disconcerting happiness: it was as though he
regarded life as a quiet, good-natured comedy, and the friends before
him as participators in the fun. His talking about the desert had, as it
were, softened his uncouthness, and had made him of a sudden
surprisingly intelligible.
"I'm immensely obliged to you for coming," said Lord Blair, warmly
clasping his hand. "In fact I can't tell you how highly I value your
advice and friendship."
Muriel held out her hand. She saw this man in a new light, and her
hostility was temporarily checked. His words had aroused in her a number
of perplexing sensations: it was like tasting a new fruit, in part
sweet, in part bitter.
"I've enjoyed listening to you," she said, frankly.
"I've enjoyed talking to you," he replied, his voice sinking, but his
eyes fixed powerfully upon her.
There was something dominating in his manner which again caused her to
be perverse. "I thought you were talking to my father," she answered
casually.
"No," he said, "I was speaking to _you_."