скачать книгу бесплатно
Very slowly his cousin responded, and a cold, trembling, clammy hand was placed in his own.
“Very well, then, good-bye, Cousin Charles. I’m off to the desert now. I don’t know when we’ll meet again.”
He took his cousin’s revolver from his pocket and, putting it back in the place where he had found it, closed the drawer. “May I take one of your cigars?” he asked. His pipe had gone out.
“Y-yes, of course,” the wretched man replied, still standing like one in a dream.
Daniel took the cigar, lit it, and, turning round, walked out of the room.
In the blazing sunlight outside he paused and stared across the dazzling open space, which, towards the west, led down to the Nile. A scorching wind beat in his face, and blew the dust of his footsteps towards the building which he had left. “Phew!” he whispered. “Thus goes ten thousand pounds a year and a peerage!”
He gazed across the river to the shimmering line of the desert which could be seen in the distance between the palms, and held out his hands towards it.
CHAPTER VI – TOWARDS THE SUNSET
During the warm weather an afternoon siesta is habitual to the residents in Egypt, and Muriel at once lent her support to the custom with undisguised approval. This was but her third day in Cairo, yet, as soon as Daniel Lane had taken his departure, she went up to her room as though to the manner born, and slipped off her dress.
The bed looked cool and inviting, and a mass of white roses upon a table beside her pillow spread a gentle fragrance through the room; but this she thoughtlessly dissipated by lighting a Turkish cigarette. She did not particularly want to smoke, but she felt that the little gold-tipped cigarette was in keeping with her state of dainty semi-undress, with her somewhat exotic surroundings, and with the French novel which she had selected as an inducement to sleep.
Anybody peeping at her through the keyhole as she lay upon the rose-bud coverlet, bare arms and silk-stockinged legs asprawl, would have been hard put to it to decide whether here rested the girlish chastity of English tradition or the naughtiness of French fiction; for nowadays, when the one has had the hardihood at last to claim its share of the habiliments of the other, appearances are astonishingly deceptive. Actually, however, Muriel was but an innocent production of that form of upbringing which, while encouraging independence of action, accustoms the minds to the standards of the seraglio.
She had moved freely in the segment of London society which patronizes Covent Garden, hobnobs with the stage, and becomes ecstatic over the latest painter, sculptor, poet, or dancer. She had been shown all the little vices and failings of the world in their most attractive guise; and for her special edification the ancient virtues had been rendered even more seemingly ridiculous than the virtuous themselves had made them. Obediently she had laid her thoughtless tribute at the altar of the alluring goddess of today; and she had been shown the correct posture of obeisance that was to be made to the World, the Flesh, and the Devil.
She had been taught, if she had not actually mastered, all the short cuts to that appearance of culture which is so highly appraised; and, in matters of taste and form, she had been shown how to be bizarre without being crude, audacious without being vulgar. She knew just what to say about men of letters, and what books to leave lying about the room; and in regard to politics, the church, and sport, she had been shown how to lump the three together under the one heading of “Tradition.”
It was now three years since this part of her education had begun; and yet she had passed through the school with a surprisingly unsullied mind. Like most pupils of her age, she was, of course, in complete outward subjection to Mistress Fashion; but a spirit of mutiny still plotted in the dark chambers of her heart.
She had not yet altogether stupefied herself into that chronic semblance of light-heartedness which passes for happiness; and there were moments when in inward revolt she sent her entire circle of friends to blazes. At such times she was vaguely aware that, in some subtle manner, she was in bondage; but so carefully had she been trained to wear her golden chains with grace that the fleeting consciousness of their presence induced little more than an extra yawn or two, and a more luxurious enjoyment of any opportunity to kick up her heels.
As she lay now upon the bed, she was not conscious of any lack of freedom in her life, and yet she was profoundly happy to be out here in Egypt, where the day’s routine was not so hide-bound as it was in England.
The drone of the flies and the plaintive cry of the circling kites, the incessant cawing of the crows in the garden, and the occasional song of the boatmen on the Nile, soon lulled her to sleep; and it was four o’clock before she arose to dress herself for her ride with Rupert Helsingham. When she descended the stairs half an hour later, she was wearing a new riding-habit of white linen and a wide-brimmed felt hat in which she was conscious of appearing at her best.
Rupert, too, who awaited her at the tea-table in the drawing-room, was aware of his own becoming costume; and the spurs upon his highly polished boots clicked more frequently than was necessary. He was certainly good-looking, if somewhat undersized.
“I’ve told them to meet us with the horses on the other side of the water,” he said. “We’ll go across in the launch, which will save a long round by the bridge.”
After a hasty cup of tea, therefore, they walked through the garden to the landing-steps, and were soon speeding over the river in the glare of the afternoon sun, the cloudless heavens above them and the swift-flowing waters of the ancient Nile shining beneath.
They landed amidst the cool shade of the palms on the opposite bank, near a road along which many native carriages and English dogcarts were passing to and fro, this being the fashionable hour for taking the air; and many curious eyes were turned upon the immaculate couple as they mounted their horses, for the white launch with its little Union Jack at the stern, and the scarlet livery of the native attendants, revealed their identity, and Lady Muriel’s charms had already become a topic of general conversation.
“Which way would you like to go?” asked Rupert. “By the native roads across the fields, or straight along the main road out to Mena House?”
Muriel looked quickly at him. “Mena House?” she said. “Isn’t that on the edge of the desert, where Mr. Lane said he was starting from?”
Her companion nodded. “Yes,” he answered. “We would probably run into him. Shall we go the other way?”
Muriel drew rein for a moment. She would like to take her first view over that garden wall of which Daniel Lane had spoken, and it might be interesting to watch him ride away towards the setting sun. She might even have an opportunity of firing a parting shot at him – something about his rumoured harîm of Bedouin women to whom he seemed so anxious to return. She would like to hurt him.
“No, let’s go to Mena House,” she answered at length, and she gave as her reason her anxiety to see the Pyramids which stand on the edge of the desert, dominating the well-known Mena House Hotel.
Rupert looked at his watch. “It’s nearly five,” he remarked, without any particular reason. He was not thinking of the hour of Daniel Lane’s departure.
But Muriel was thinking of it, and, for answer, she urged her horse forward.
“I enjoy a good long gallop, don’t you?” she said, as they turned into the avenue of acacias which runs in a fine straight line out to the desert, flanked by a riding-track of soft earth.
“It’s a bit hot for anything strenuous, isn’t it?” he suggested. He wanted to ride quietly and talk to her as they went.
For some distance they trotted in silence, but at length Muriel shortened her rein. “Come in!” she laughed, and therewith she gave her restless Arab a touch with her heel, and instantly was off and away in a cloud of dust, as though she and her horse had been discharged in one piece from some monstrous gun.
Rupert swore peevishly, and followed in her wake, presently overtaking her and galloping by her side. The tree-trunks on either hand seemed to whirl past them, and the foliage, which met overhead, formed a sort of tunnel pierced at one side by stabbing shafts of dazzling sunlight. The effect was blinding, and soon Rupert, an excellent horseman, began to feel as though he were the maddened villain of some flickering film of the Wild West, whose career had soon to end in a frightful tumble.
“Isn’t it lovely?” shouted Muriel, ecstatically. Her blood seemed to be boiling in her veins; she glowed like a fiery immortal being, full of tremendous excitement and enthusiasm. This was life! – this was youth! She dragged her hat over her eyes, regardless of her own appearance, regardless of the hat’s. She felt entirely crazy, and presumably her horse felt the same, for not for a moment did he slacken his thundering speed. The warm wind whistled in her ears; occasional roadside villas appeared to whirl past almost as soon as they were sighted; an automobile, full of gesticulating Egyptians, raced them and had difficulty in beating them; the electric tram from the Pyramids to Cairo appeared to leap past them with wildly clanging bell; she caught sudden glimpses of peasant carts and an occasional smart carriage, astonished brown faces and smiling white ones. Her hair began to come down.
At last her horse had had enough, and his gallop decreased to a trot, his trot to a walk. Her companion turned a laughing red face to her. He had caught the infection of her spirits, and, like her, was conscious of a burning sense of youth and strength. The perspiration was streaming down his cheeks.
“Phew!” he exclaimed, and recklessly mopped his forehead with a coloured silk handkerchief intended only for a breast-pocket ornament. “D’you often get taken like that?”
Muriel laughed excitedly, and, twisting the reins around her arm, pulled off her hat, thereby letting loose a tumbling mass of brown hair, which fell about her shoulders. Then, handing the hat to Rupert to hold, she raised her hands and coiled up the hair on to her head again, fastening it with the few remaining hairpins.
Rupert uttered an ordinary, vulgar whistle. He, too, had been galloped into naturalness. “By Jove!” he cried. “You have got glorious hair!”
Muriel settled her hat upon her head once more, and picked up her reins.
“I’ll let it down properly for you some day,” she said. At that moment she would have stood on her head, had anybody dared her to do so. A law should be passed prohibiting women from galloping.
“I’ll kiss you if you do,” replied Rupert. The law should, perhaps, include young men as well.
He was startled at his audacity; but Muriel was not in a mental condition to do otherwise than laugh.
Thus they arrived, like two flushed children, at the end of the road, the hotel on their right, the mighty Pyramids rising up like hand-made mountains on their left, backed by the descending sun. In front of them stretched the desert – a ridge of white and yellow shelving rocks, and great shadowed slopes of sand mounting to the clear sky. Southwards, at the foot of the hills, stood a native village, the clustered white houses and dignified groups of palms reflected in the still waters of the inundation which, at this time of the year, cover the surrounding fields.
Outside the hotel several Bedouin dragomans sauntered about or sat smoking and chatting; and a few camels and donkeys, saddled in readiness for hire, stood tethered near by.
Muriel hardly glanced at the Pyramids: they had been visible to her through the trees during most of the ride, and they were just as she had pictured them. But the Bedouin in their flowing silks, the betasselled camels, and the background of the desert made a picture which delighted her eyes.
“What’s the time?” she asked. “I wonder if he has gone.”
It was some seconds before Rupert took her meaning: he had forgotten about Daniel Lane. He looked at his watch: it was half-past five.
“I’ll ask some of these fellows if they’ve seen him,” he said, perhaps a little put out. A shadow had fallen upon the gay opening scene of his romance.
He rode forward, and soon elicited the information that “the Englishman who came in from the desert” had but a few minutes ago gone up the hill to the rocky plateau above, where his camels were awaiting him.
“We’ve missed him,” he said, returning to her. “He’s just gone.”
“Well, let’s ride after him,” she answered, and without further remark she trotted up the short, winding road which led on to the higher ground. Rupert followed her, musing upon the inscrutable ways of women.
The road lay in the shadow of the hillside, but as they reached the summit they came into the full glare of the setting sun which was now nearing the distant horizon. On their left the Pyramids towered up into the blazing sky, but before them the rock-strewn plateau lay open and vast, and over it the wind blew warm and mysterious.
Muriel arched her hand above her eyes and looked about her.
“There he is!” she cried at length, directing her companion to a little group in a sandy hollow about a hundred yards distant, and therewith they both trotted forward.
Daniel Lane was about to mount his camel as they approached. Muriel waved her hand to him, whereat he pulled off his well-worn hat and laughed aloud.
“That’s odd!” he said. “I had a sort of feeling you’d come.”
Muriel stared at him, and her responding smile died upon her lips.
“We rode in this direction quite at random,” said she, coldly. “I don’t yet know one way from another.”
“Well, you’ve found your way to the desert quickly enough,” he replied. “You know there are some people who seem to be drawn towards it at once.”
Muriel glanced about her. “I think it looks a horrid place,” she said, which was entirely untruthful. “I don’t feel at all drawn to it.”
She turned to Rupert Helsingham. He was slowly riding round the four camels which crouched, grunting, on the sand, in charge of two lean and wild-looking men of the desert, whose appearance was strikingly different from that of the Bedouin of the Pyramids, grown prosperous in their profession as guides and dragomans to the sightseers. Three of the camels were saddled, the seat in each case being covered by a rough sheepskin, and having on either side a coarsely embroidered bag containing food, while a rifle and two water-bottles were slung across the back. The fourth camel, which was to be led by one of the riders, was lightly laden with stores and various purchases made in Cairo, and two small water-skins depended at its sides.
“I travel light, you see,” said Daniel, as Rupert returned to them.
“Yes, you couldn’t otherwise have come in at the pace you did,” he answered. “Are you going back at the same rate?”
Daniel laughed. “Oh, no,” he said. “I shall travel in easy stages, taking five or six days probably – as long as the food lasts, in fact. We can pick up water at the wells, and if we shoot anything we can take it still slower.”
Muriel looked curiously at him. “Then why were you in such a hurry to be off?” she asked.
“One night in a Cairo hotel is enough for me,” he answered. “I’m starting now so as to get ten or fifteen miles away by bedtime, where I can sleep peacefully on the clean sand, away from mosquitoes and bad smells and noise. And then we can just saunter. So long as we plan to reach a water-hole every two days, there’s nothing to hurry us.”
He turned towards the sunset and breathed in the pure air with evident satisfaction. “It’s splendid to think there’s all that empty space in front of one!” he exclaimed. “In a few minutes now I shall be swallowed up in it! Gee! I’ll think of you tonight, my girl, in your stuffy bedroom; and you can envy me lying under God’s heaven, talking with my two good friends here about cities and slavery and civilization and things, till we yawn ourselves to sleep.”
Muriel’s interest in him began to revive. “It sounds wonderful,” she said, doubtfully.
The sun had sunk behind the low line of the horizon when at length Daniel bid good-bye and mounted his camel. Rupert, who was impatient to be back, had already turned his horse’s head and was slowly moving away as the four camels, snarling and complaining in their wonted manner, rose upon their long legs, lifting their riders high above the ground; but Muriel remained for a moment or two, curbing her restless horse, while Daniel looked down at her from his lofty seat.
“I’ve enjoyed meeting you,” he said. “I’m afraid you think I’m very rude and rough. I don’t mean to be, only – ”
“Only what?” she asked, as he paused.
“Yes?” She was all attention now.
“Only when I meet a girl like you – ”
“Oh, I don’t know,” he said, and there came a look of great earnestness into his eyes. “There’s so much you’ve got to unlearn, my dear.”
He struck his camel lightly with his stick, and trotted away. Then, turning in his saddle, he put his hand to his mouth and called out to her: “Why don’t you break loose?”
Muriel made a gesture indicating that she did not understand, but his head was again averted, and he did not look round. She watched him, as, followed by the men, he slid silently away into the barren vastness of the desert. He seemed to be riding straight into the glory of the sunset.
Then she wheeled her horse around, and cantered after her companion. Far off in front of her now the city was spread out amongst its trees and luxuriant fields. From the high ground she looked down on distant roofs of palaces and mansions, domes and cupolas, minarets and towers, and the lights began to twinkle in the windows along the embankment of the Nile. It looked like an enticing magic City of Happiness; and she glanced over her shoulder with a sudden wave of terror at the darkening immensity of the desert behind.
CHAPTER VII – THE DESERT AND THE CITY
Daniel’s mind was not at ease as he rode through the gathering darkness. His thoughts had been shaken out of their habitual tranquillity by his few hours in the city, and he had the feeling that he had turned his back upon a picture which he would have liked a little longer to contemplate, that he had shut a book in which he would have preferred to read yet another chapter. But when the moon rose and cast its early mystery upon the empty wilderness around him, a greater calm fell upon him, and he began to appreciate once more that sense of detachment from the restless doings of the world which is the particular gift of the desert.
For two hours or more he rode in silence, and ever as he passed deeper into the great void before him his musing mind contemplated with increasing serenity the events of the last night and day. Out here in this everlasting calm he could smile at the little agitations which had beset him in Cairo, and could observe their triviality. Here the strident call of flesh and blood was hushed, and the equable balance of mind and body was able to be resumed. No wonder, he thought to himself that the monks of old had hidden themselves in the wilderness: they had discovered a blessed equanimity, and a consequent happiness not to be found in the busy thoroughfares of the city.
At length he called a halt in a rugged valley, through which a stream had flowed in bygone ages. Its bed of fine shingle and sand made a soft and pliable resting-place; and here he ate his evening meal, lying back upon his sheepskin thereafter, smoking his pipe and talking to his friends, until sleep came to him.
On the following day they rode no more than five-and-twenty miles, taking a course somewhat more roundabout than that of their outward journey, and it was mid-afternoon when they reached the water-hole at which the night was to be spent. Riding round a bend in a precipitous valley, Daniel, who was some distance ahead of his retainers, suddenly found himself looking down upon the rocky hollow in which lay the little pool of water, so blue in its setting of mellow sun-bathed rocks that it seemed even deeper in tone than the sky it reflected. Here grew the greenest reeds and rushes, and, mirrored in the water, there was a delicate tamarisk whose soft foliage swayed in the breeze as though setting the time to the nodding dance of the reeds.
Sitting beside the pool a little girl was tending a few goats whose bleating came merrily to his ears on the wind. She had not heard the soft pads of his approaching camel, and he was almost upon her before she looked up. With a cry of surprise she fled down the valley, and suddenly, from amidst the shadows of the boulders, a grey-bearded son of the desert stepped forth into the sunlight, an ancient broadsword in his hands, and a ragged cloak of many colours thrown over his shoulders.
Daniel dismounted from his camel, and exchanged greetings with the patriarch, while the little girl hid herself behind the man’s thin brown legs, and the goats leaped upon the rocks to stare at the stranger from a safe distance.
“Never fear, little one,” said the old man as he patted the child’s head. “This is only an Englishman. There are many such: they harm not.”
The old goatherd, and two of his grandsons, who presently made their appearance, proved to be related to families in the Oasis of El Hamrân where Daniel resided; and the talk during the evening meal was all of mutual acquaintances, of the movements of various groups of Bedouin, of camping-grounds and water-holes.
A woman and the little girl, her daughter, sat amidst the rocks in the background as they talked, and Daniel observed that the child was nursing a primitive doll made of three sticks and a piece of rag, and that at length she fell asleep with this poor proxy held close in her brown arms. Later in the evening, therefore, in the light of the moon, he fashioned a very much more convincing article out of sticks, string, and a handkerchief; and with his fountain-pen he outlined an audacious face, which, with a few combings from his sheepskin in the place of hair, gave an appearance of striking and awful reality to the figure.
The goatherds encouraged his efforts with excited laughter, and when, at last, the doll was finished, he walked over to the sleeping girl and placed it in her arms.
On the third day they made good going, passing across a range of low hills, and descending into a wide plain where they disturbed a herd of gazelle, which went galloping off at their approach and were lost in the haze of the distance.
So they journeyed in easy stages; and day by day Daniel more fully resumed that jovial, contented mind which is the basis of happiness. The benign influence of sun and breeze and open space was upon him once more, and his heart was filled as it were with laughter. Riding ever westward, he seemed to be following the course of the sun; and each evening, as it passed down behind the horizon ahead, it marked tomorrow’s track, as though bidding him come deeper, ever deeper, into the merry freedom of the desert. He whistled a tune to himself as he rode through echoing valleys; he sang at the top of his voice as, far ahead of his men, he passed over the hills, and viewed the great vistas before him; and as he drew near to the oasis which was his destination, and observed once again the presence of birds and the tracks of jackals, he urged his camel forward with many an endearing and persuasive word.
Now he met with goatherds and camelherds who were his friends, and merrily he called his greetings to them; now he knew the lie of the country, and noted the places where, from time to time, he had camped or rested in the shade at noon when he had been out hunting gazelle, or tracking the jackals to their lairs, by way of exercise. Now the west wind brought the faint scent of the cultivated land to his sensitive nostrils, and his camel lifted its head to snuff at the breeze.
At last, in a golden sunset, amidst the chattering of innumerable sparrows, he descended from the barren hills into the dense palm groves of the Oasis of El Hamrân, from whose shadows the white-robed figures of the Bedouin emerged to greet him.
An all-pervading peace enfolded him, and his short visit to civilized life seemed like a dream that was fading from his memory. The city beside the Nile had become a thing of unreality, and he had awakened, as it were, to the happy sunshine of life’s placid day, and was eager to be once more at his work.
Yet, in far-away Cairo, there were five minds at least which retained a vivid recollection of his brief incursion into the city. There was Lord Barthampton, who, for forty-eight hours after Daniel’s departure, had lain in a drunken stupor which, for form’s sake, was termed a touch of the sun; and who, thereafter, had forsworn all intoxicating liquor, and had resumed his place at the mess in the sullen silence of one who has returned unwillingly to the fold.
There was Lizette, who had wept a little, and for a little while had bemoaned her lot, and who, later, had gone, as was her wont, to the Franciscan Church, and had said her beads and had prayed that one day she might meet again the mighty man who had sent the pig Barthampton so beautifully sprawling upon the floor.
There was Lord Blair, who had received an effusive reply from the gratified Minister of War, and, thereat, had schemed and plotted to bring the wise Daniel within closer reach of the Residency. There was Rupert Helsingham, who, ever since the ride to Mena House, had been filled with matrimonial dreams and fears of rivalry, and had racked his brains to decide upon a course of action which should give him opportunities of displaying those brutal tendencies of manhood which seemed to be so successful with the opposite sex.
And lastly, there was Muriel, who had aroused Rupert’s jealousy by talking from time to time about Daniel, with a sort of defiance in her voice which could almost be mistaken for awe.
It was inevitable that she and Charles Barthampton should meet: it was only strange that they had not met before in London. On the same evening upon which Daniel had arrived at his home in El Hamrân, his cousin was a guest at dinner at the Residency, where he found himself seated next to Muriel. The latter had been taken into dinner by one of the Egyptian princes, an elegant personage who had lived most of his life in Vienna, Paris, and Monte Carlo, and whose contempt for the English was only equalled by his scorn of the Egyptians. He was an authority on modern French art; and when Muriel, in a frenzy of tact, had rushed the conversation again and again into that province, and had exhausted all that she knew by rote upon the subject, she was glad of an opportunity to turn in the opposite direction and address herself to Barthampton.
He, on his part, had taken in the daughter of the French Consul-General, who was much more interested in Rupert Helsingham upon her other hand; and, being thus left alone to play with his toast and sip his wine, he had turned to Muriel with relief.
“I can’t talk to this French girl,” he whispered. “She doesn’t understand English, and my French isn’t exactly ladylike.”
“Well, do you know anything about French art?” she asked, hopefully. “I’m sitting next to a connoisseur, and I’ve run dry.”
