During the ensuing fortnight circumstances were not favourable to the
development of their romance. Daniel was closely occupied with the
settling of certain political difficulties which had cropped up; and
Muriel, on her part, found herself much occupied with the social
functions of the Residency which, in the month of January, are always
very exacting.
But if there were few opportunities for the tender intimacy of love,
there was now the compensation of a very sweet understanding between
them. There was no need, so it seemed, for a formal betrothal: the
engagement was mutually assumed, and, though no binding words had been
spoken, Lord Blair did not have to ask again what were their intentions.
Muriel was, of course, a little disturbed at Daniel's refusal to allow a
definite announcement to be made, or even an irrevocable word to be
spoken between them; but actually his attitude was quite understandable.
He was keenly aware that his method of life was somewhat peculiar, and
he was modest enough to regard himself as a thoroughly undesirable
husband.
Muriel had told him all about the Rupert Helsingham affair, and, with
some degree of correctness, he had attributed it to the enchantment of
the Nile. He had realized, too, that in his own case his most intimate
moments with her had occurred under exceptionally romantic
circumstances; and though he was too deeply in love thus to explain away
her emotions, he could not blind himself to the possibility that their
origin was less profound than their intensity suggested.
He was determined not to bind her yet awhile; for, he argued to himself,
if the miracle had happened, if really she had found in him her eternal
partner, time would prove the fact to them; but if she had been building
her love on the deceptive foundations of romantic passion, nothing but
ultimate misery would come of the immediate exchange of mutual vows.
Being a philosopher, he did not judge love's day by the tempest of its
passion: indeed, he mistrusted such storms as a frequent cause of
disastrous miscalculation. But Muriel, being woman pure and simple--if
ever there could be a woman of her upbringing either pure or simple--did
not analyse her feelings nor mistrust them. She knew only that Daniel
hung like a thunderstorm over the meadows of her heart, and she waited
in breathless, headaching silence for his lightnings and his torrents to
descend upon her.
There was one aspect of the matter, however, which troubled him. Muriel,
he recognized, belonged to a section of English society which was very
lax in its morals; and he knew quite well that, in the darkness of the
desert on the memorable night of their return from Sakkara, she had been
entirely carried away by her love. The fact did not disturb him in
itself, for he was a believer in instinct, and his judgment was not
influenced by the conventions. If she really loved him, and if they had
mutually taken one another for a life-partnership, no marriage ceremony
would make the compact in his eyes more binding, and her desire at once
to identify her life irrevocably with that of the chosen one would be
comprehended and condoned by him.
But there was the fear at the back of his mind lest she had entered upon
the adventure lightly. He knew too much about the ways of Mayfair:
perhaps, indeed, his abhorrence of all that that name stood for was
exaggerated. Her upbringing, therefore, caused him anxiety: not, be it
understood, because of her possible willingness to break the traditional
law, but because she might be willing to break it lightly. He hated
himself for doubting her; but she was a child of Society, a daughter of
the Old Harlot, and no member of her particular branch of that family
was above suspicion.
One day, yearning for an hour alone with her, he asked her to come out
to his camp on the following evening. She was to dine with the Bindanes
at Mena House, and he suggested that he should call for her after
dinner, when the young moon would be low in the heavens, and that they
should ride out to his tents and talk for a little while.
Muriel fell in with the scheme readily enough; but there was something
in her manner and in the expression of her face which indicated that she
took the step with deliberation, fully conscious of all that it might
involve. And, in actual fact, she did not care what happened. She only
wanted to belong to him, to feel that she was in his power and he in
hers.
But on the next morning she awoke with a bad cold in her head, and she
was obliged to take to her bed. One cannot be really romantic with one's
nose running, and any of love's most wonderful situations may be ruined
by a sneeze.
A few days later, when she was more or less recovered, Daniel told her
how disappointed he had been that the arrangement had fallen through.
"I expect it was my guardian angel," she whispered, with a laugh. "I had
made up my mind to come; and I suppose the angel read my thoughts, and
said 'You'd better not,' and sprinkled a handful of germs over me."
Daniel was startled. "Why, you don't think that I...?" He paused. Men
are seldom so plain-spoken as women, and seldom face facts so
deliberately.
On the following afternoon he was obliged to go to the railway station
to pay his farewell respects to a native dignitary on his departure for
England upon a commercial mission; and, while walking back through the
Levantine shopping quarter, he came upon Lizette who, as he now
recollected, lived in this part of the city.
He had not seen her since that night, three and a half months ago, when
he had taken her out to supper at Berto's; and he was distressed to
observe the change that had taken place in her. She was looking thin and
haggard, and her eyes were like the melancholy eyes of a sick dog.
She glanced at him as she approached and a quick smile of pleasure came
into her face; but the etiquette which is always observed in the best
circles on such occasions prevented her from showing recognition of a
client in a public place. (Money-lenders and dentists follow much the
same code.)
Daniel, however, knew nothing about such rules of polite conduct. If
Lizette were good enough to talk to in a restaurant she ought to be good
enough to salute in the street. He therefore pulled off his hat as she
passed, and, pausing, bid her good day.
"I believe you've forgotten me," he declared.
"Forgotten?--no!" she exclaimed. "I not ever forget that pig Barthampton
jete par terre."
"I'm sorry that's what you remember me by," he answered, seriously.
"I remember many things," she said. "But now you are so great, so
important: one say you are like the Wazir of Egypt. I astonish me that
you speak here in the street. Lizette belong to the night, and to the
American Bar."
She spoke with bitterness, and Daniel was sorry for her. She looked ill;
and the afternoon sun seemed to disintegrate the bloom of the powder
upon her face.
"You're not looking very well," he commented. "Is there anything the
matter?"
She shrugged her shoulders. "The matter is here," she answered, tapping
her heart.
"In love?" he asked.
"No, not love," she replied, with sudden intensity. "Hate, hate!"
He shook his head. "That's bad. Whom do you hate?"
"Men," she said.
There was tragedy in her face; and Daniel, in his simple wisdom, guessed
that what she needed was the friendship of a man who had no ulterior
motive. He looked along the street, and, seeing that there was a large
French cafe on the opposite side, asked her whether she would care to go
in there and have coffee with him.
[Illustration: _A SCENE FROM THE PHOTOPLAY--BURNING SANDS_]
She hesitated for a moment; but when he had explained that he had no
more than half an hour to spare, and that he could not employ the time
better than by talking to her, she crossed the street with him and
entered the cafe.
"Now tell me what your trouble is," he said, when they were sipping
their coffee at a table in the almost deserted saloon.
"O, it is nothing," she replied. "I suppose I am ill. I have--how do you
say?--the 'ump, eh? If I had the courage I should suicide myself; but
the priest he tell me that the little devils in hell are men, and the
angels in heaven are men: so you see I cannot escape from men."
"Oh, men are not so bad," he told her. "You, of course, see them under
rather startling circumstances; and, if I may say so, you can't always
judge of what a man is by looking at a subaltern in the Guards."
She laughed. "But they tell me they are the elite of England."
"Yes, poor lads," he answered; "but it's not their fault that they think
so: it's due to other men being so bashful."
Almost as he spoke a young officer walked past the cafe, under the
awnings, with an expression on his face which suggested that he detected
a very unpleasant smell in the world. He glanced into the saloon, and,
seeing Lizette, looked quickly in the other direction.
"That is one of them," she said. "He come to me every Sunday after
Church."
Daniel turned his eyes to her, and there was pity and horror in them.
"Ah, my girl, no wonder you hate us," he declared. "If I were you, I'd
try not to speak to a man for, say, six months."
"But how to live?" she asked. "I must get the money to live."
She moved her head from side to side in despair; and Daniel, searching
his brains for a solution of the problem, stared out into the sun-bathed
street, his brows puckered, his fingers combing back his unruly hair.
"Gee!" he muttered. "You're in a fix! Hav'n't you got any relations in
Marseilles?"
She nodded, but without animation. "There is my brother
Georges-Antoine...."
"Does he know how you earn your living?" he asked.
"No," she replied. "He think I make the hat."
"How much money have you saved?" he enquired.
She shook her head. "None."
"Well, look here," he said. "I'll pay your fare back to France, if
you'll go."
She stared at him incredulously. "Why you say that?" she asked.
"Because I hate to see a girl like you behaving like a filthy beast," he
answered sternly. "Oh, why were you such a fool as to start this life?"
"It begin," she sighed, "it begin so sweet. I was very young; and the
man he love me so much. He was the real amant-passione--what you do not
know in England. He used to kiss me until my head went round and round;
and I was like a mad one when he came into the room. Never in my life
again or before was I so drunken by a man...."
Daniel watched her as she told the story of her youthful love, and he
saw her eyes grow drowsy and full of memories.
"You must have been very happy," he said at length.
"Yes, I was happy," she answered, "but I paid for the happiness with
tears and weeping and bitterness."
"Why?--did he desert you?"
Her voice, which had grown so tender and so near to a whisper, became
light and clear in tone once more. "No," she said, with an almost
flippant gesture of the hand, "he died. He had the--how do you say?--the
gall-stones."
Daniel finished his coffee, pensively. The tale, and especially its
ending, had a sound of stark and terrible truth about it.
"Then what happened?" he asked.
"Oh, then I was a good girl for half a year, perhaps; but presently when
another man made the love to me, I say to myself: 'If once, then why not
twice?' He was a soldier, big, very strong like you." She looked at him
closely. "Yes, he were very like you; and I thought in my heart, 'I love
him because he is so brave, and I am like a little bird in his hands.'"
She laughed. "Oh, I knew he was a man a bonne fortunes. He had many
girls; but in love all women are like the Orientals, is it not?--and I
was content to have my day, like the new one in the harim of the
Egyptian pasha here...."
Daniel suddenly clenched the fingers of his hand which rested upon the
table. Muriel's words came into his mind: "You can put me in your harim
if you want to." They rang in his ears again, and his heart seemed to
stand still in fear.
The murmur of Lizette's voice continued, and he listened in terror now
as she told of her second love.
"Then one night," she was saying, "we walked together on the road by the
sea, the Chemin de la Corniche, you know; and the beautiful stars were
in the sky, and there were little lights across the water on the islands
of Ratonneau and Pomegne. And I was so tired, and I sat down on the
rocks by the sea, and we were all alone...."
Daniel stopped her with a sudden movement of his hand. "I know, I know,"
he said. "Don't tell me!"
"O, I soon forgot my love," she laughed, thinking that the intensity
with which he spoke denoted his concern for her sorrows. "A few months,
a few weeks, perhaps, and it was finish. Then some one else, and some
one else, and some one else...."
He rose from the table, sick at heart. "I must be going," he said. "If
you will accept my offer, write to me at the Residency, and I'll send
you the money for you to go to your brother."
She looked at his troubled face with a question in her eyes. "I think
you not like me," she sighed. "I think you have the disgust."
He shook his head. "No," he answered, "I think you were not much
different from other women at first."
"And afterwards?"
"I suppose one's feelings soon get blunted," he replied; "and you had
need of money."
She assumed an expression, an attitude, not far removed from dignity.
"Thank you for being--how you say? _fair_ to me," she said.
He paid his bill, and walked out of the cafe into the blaze of the
afternoon sun; but between him and its brilliance the shadow of doubt
had descended. "I am not the first of Muriel's lovers," he groaned in
his heart. "How do I know that I am the last?"
He walked through the city, seeing nothing, hearing nothing, by reason
of the clamour in his mind; but as he came down to the river, he raised
his eyes and stared out into the west, where the sun was descending
towards the far-off hills of the wilderness.
He stood stock still, and his lips moved. "Oh, peace of mind!" he was
whispering. "Will you never come down to me here in the valley? Must I
go up into the desert to find you once more?"