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“French art?” he laughed. “Rather! I’ve got a collection of postcards – I’ve framed some of them; and I take La Vie Parisienne regularly.”
Muriel sighed. “No, I’m afraid that won’t help,” she said.
“Well, try him on English art,” he suggested. “Good stuff, you know – Landseer and Leighton and Alma-Tadema.”
“No,” said Muriel gravely, “he’s very modern.”
“Oh, modern, is he? Then what about Kirchner? Or Cecil Aldin? – but I don’t suppose he knows a fox from a hound.” He leaned forward and stared at the Prince. “Queer little devil, isn’t he, what? Doesn’t look much like a nigger.”
“Why should he?” Muriel asked. “The Royal house is Albanian – pure Turkish.”
“Oh, I lump them all together,” he answered, with a gesture of his red hand. “Quaint country, Egypt, isn’t it? What d’you think of it?”
“So far, I like it immensely,” she replied. “But I shouldn’t think it was an interesting place for a soldier. What do your men think of it?”
“I don’t know: I’ve never asked ’em,” he replied. “Not much, I shouldn’t think. There are not enough housemaids to go round, and the beer’s atrocious. I can’t think why we’re not kept in London; after all, we’re the Guards. They ought to leave the dirty work to the ordinary regiments of the line. I don’t see why we should be made to sweat out here. It’s these Radicals: they never can mind their own business.”
“Father and I are Radicals, you know,” she smiled. “And our forebears were Whigs before us.”
“Beg pardon,” he said, with a grunt. “I’d forgotten my history lessons. We Lanes were always Tories.”
Muriel glanced at him quickly. “Oh, I’d quite forgotten,” she said, with interest. “Of course, you’re a Lane. I wonder if you’re any relation to a certain Daniel Lane?”
Lord Barthampton’s face fell. “How d’you come to know Daniel Lane?” he asked, as he busied himself with his food.
“I met him the other day,” she answered. “He’s a friend of my father’s. Oh, yes, I remember now: he said he had a relation out here in the Guards.”
“Yes,” he replied, with his mouth full. “He’s a cousin; but I hardly know him. He’s spent much of his life in the States.”
“Tell me about him,” she said. She was all interest.
“I don’t know anything to tell you,” he answered, casually. “He’s a crank – lives with the niggers in the desert or something. Looks like a tramp.”
“He’s very clever, isn’t he? My father thinks the world of him.”
Lord Barthampton noisily threw down his knife and fork. “There’s not much love lost between him and me,” he said, and relapsed into silence; while Muriel, seeing that she had touched upon a sore subject, took the opportunity to resume her conversation with her partner.
Late that evening, after the guests had departed, Muriel, prompted by a sense of duty, found herself in the library, bidding a motherly good-night to her father, who was smoking a final cigar, and was standing before the empty fireplace, his hands under his coattails in unconscious retention of the habits of other days.
“By the way,” she said, “did you know that Lord Barthampton was Daniel Lane’s cousin?”
“You don’t say so!” he exclaimed. “Well, well! I had no idea.”
He opened a bookcase, and lifting out Burke’s Peerage, turned over its pages with evident interest. After a few moment’s study, he uttered a little ejaculation.
“Dear me, dear me!” he remarked. “Daniel is not only his cousin, but his heir presumptive.” He stroked his chin, and carried the bulky volume nearer to the light. “Hm! Well, well – to be sure!” he muttered.
He laid the book down, and clasping his hands behind his back, walked to and fro across the room, while Muriel turned to glance at the family record.
As she looked up once more, her father paused, his head on one side, his fingers stroking his jaw. “Now, if that lout were to die …” he mused.
“D’you mean Mr. Lane?” asked Muriel innocently.
“No, no! Tut, tut!” exclaimed her father, pinching the lobe of her ear, and then, as though afraid of giving offence, patting her cheek instead. “Daniel Lane is not a lout! I was referring to his cousin. If Daniel were to inherit – ”
“If he were to inherit,” Muriel put in, as he paused, “there’d be a panic in the House of Lords – peers hiding under benches, Lord Chancellor flung into gallery, Archbishop popped into waste-paper basket – ”
Lord Blair raised his delicate hand in protest: his thoughts were more serious. “You know,” he said, “that man is wasting himself in the desert. I wish I could persuade him to accept some official position in Cairo. I should like to push him into prominence – oblige him, force him, to take an active part in the government of this country.”
An expression almost of sadness came into his face. “I sometimes feel,” he went on, “that we diplomatists, products of the Foreign Office, are totally unfitted to rule a mediæval country such as this. Look at me, Muriel; am I the romantic figure to impress the native mind? Egypt does not want diplomacy; she wants physical strength combined with philosophy – she wants a man who is a mighty hunter before the Lord, a giant, a hero out of a legend.”
“Oh, father dear,” Muriel replied, “everybody says you are the ideal ruler.” She felt sorry for him: he seemed such an insignificant little figure, so fussy, so well-meaning, and just now so modest.
“No,” he continued, “I don’t understand the native mind; I must confess, I don’t understand it. And I sometimes think that I am not serving the best interests of England. I want my country to be respected, Muriel; I have such vast ambition for England. I want our manhood to be seen to the best advantage, so that the natives may say: ‘Since we are to be ruled, let us be glad that we are ruled by men.’”
Muriel put her hands upon his shoulders. For the first time she really liked him. “I think you’re splendid, father,” she said.
“Now, if Daniel Lane took his position in society,” he mused, “if, for instance, he were Lord Barthampton, there would be no difficulty. I could push him forward, and in a few years he would be old enough to succeed me here at the Residency. A little more care about his appearance, perhaps – ”
“And a little less rudeness,” said Muriel.
“No, he is not rude,” Lord Blair corrected her. “He is only unceremonious.”
There was a tap at the door, and Rupert entered. He was the only one of the Secretaries who lived on the premises.
“I’m just off to bed,” he said. “Is there anything you want me to do, sir?”
Lord Blair looked at him, as though waking from a dream. “Let me see, yes, there was something I was going to ask you to do. What was it, now? Dear, dear! How bad my memory is! Ah, yes, I have it! A letter: I want you to acknowledge it formally, the first thing in the morning. It’s on my study table. No, you could not find it in all that litter. I must really have a grand tidying-up, I must indeed. One moment: I’ll get it for you.”
He hurried from the room, in short, nervous steps, and, as he disappeared, Rupert turned to Muriel. “By Jove!” he exclaimed. “You do look beautiful tonight. I could hardly take my eyes off you all the evening.”
Muriel smiled happily. “I’m glad you think so. I thought I looked a sight; and Prince What’s-his-name was evidently bored with me.”
“On the contrary,” he answered, “he told me he thought you were charming, and such a connoisseur.”
“Of what,” she asked brightly.
“Of the art of the Stone Age, he said. I don’t know what he meant.”
Muriel flushed. “The little beast!” she cried, angrily. “He was trying to be rude.”
“Rude, was he?” said Rupert, viciously. He assumed a fighting attitude, and, when Muriel had frankly explained the insinuation of the remark, he set his teeth and made a determined attempt to appear grim.
“He’ll get one in the jaw, if he doesn’t look out,” he muttered.
Lord Blair re-entered the room, carrying the letter (for some unknown reason) extended in his thumb and first finger as though it smelt. He paused on seeing Rupert’s simulation of pugilism, and looked at him critically, as it were measuring the young man’s capacities in that arena. Then he shook his head sadly, and handed him the letter.
When Rupert had left them, Lord Blair turned to his daughter. “Undersized,” he murmured, “sadly undersized.”
“Oh, not so very,” said Muriel, divining his thoughts. “And, any way, he’s a good-looking boy, and his manners are charming. I’m growing very fond of Rupert.”
Lord Blair glanced at her quickly.
CHAPTER VIII – THE ACCOMPLICE
Undoubtedly the ancients were quite right in regarding youth as a kind of fever, an intermittent sickness lasting from puberty to middle age. In Egypt this particular illness is rampant: everybody who is not old feels youthful, and the actually youthful have hours of violent delirium.
As the weather, in the last days of October, became cooler and more stimulating, Lady Muriel began to experience a series of startling sensations. She felt excited, and her mind turned itself to a heated study of the romantic possibilities of existence at the Residency. She had always been told that a young woman’s life was divided into two distinct ages, the first being a period filled with romantic episodes and terminated by marriage, and the second being a period crowded with very serious love affairs and only curtailed by age or the divorce court.
So far she could safely say that she had only been in love three times. Once at Eastbourne, during her school-days, she had fallen into a divine frenzy over a curate, who had been a rugger blue at Oxford, and who, in a certain brief and desperate sofa-episode, had apparently mistaken her for the football with which he was touching down a try, but who, a moment later, had recovered his feet and had staggered out into the night calling upon God for mercy upon a married man. She had nursed her bruises and had sorrowed for him for many days, ardently desiring to poison his wife and all her babies, but his sudden appointment to a far-away living had closed the story.
A year later she fell in love with a Russian singer who, at the time, was being heavily lionized in London; but, as luck would have it, she met three of his mistresses in one day, and the fright sobered her.
The third episode had been much more prosaic. The man was merely a young Member of Parliament who made his overtures in the most approved style, and might have succeeded in capturing her, had it not been discovered on the day the engagement was to be announced that he had borrowed money on the strength of the coming alliance. In this case she had not grieved for long: indeed, when she happened to see him a week later she had already sufficiently recovered to observe that his eyes were set too close together, his teeth were like a rabbit’s, his hands too hairy, his head not hairy enough, and his legs bandy.
That was a year ago, and since then she had been entirely heart-whole. Now, however, the starry Egyptian nights, the sun-bathed days, the multitude of officers, officials, and diplomats whose acquaintance she was making, and the general court paid to her, both as a charming woman and as the Great Man’s daughter, were beginning to stimulate her senses.
One morning, at the beginning of November, as she sat up in her bed, playing with her toes, the thought came strongly to her that her season in Egypt ought to be graced by some exceptional romance. Here was the setting for the play; here was the heroine; but where was the hero? It was true that Rupert Helsingham, of whom she had grown quite fond, was becoming daily more bold; but he had ever an eye on her father, on whom depended his budding career. In her exposed position whatever romance came to her would have to be conducted on very correct lines; and would probably be expected to end in marriage; but she did not want to be married. Indeed, the thought appalled her. She vastly preferred the idea of a great sorrow, a heartbreaking parting under the stars, a life-long devotion to a sad, sweet memory. But that a man should walk nightly into her bedroom in his striped pyjamas was a horrible thought.
Pensively she gazed at her toes, upon which a shaft of the morning sunlight was striking. They were pretty toes. A man’s feet usually had corns on them. No, she had little wish for a bare-footed romance: the hero she pictured would make love in his boots, and tragedy should descend before the hour came to take them off.
Everything pointed to a clandestine affair – something in a garden, with the scent of roses in it; or in a boat floating down the Nile, very placid and mysterious; or far away in the desert…
In the desert! The thought brought back to her mind the parting words of Daniel Lane. “Why don’t you break loose?” Several times she had wondered what he had meant: whether he were suggesting a breaking away from the routine of her life, or whether he were advising her to run amuck in a moral sense. The latter, it seemed to her, was the more probable, judging by his reputation; but this was not a form of entertainment that appealed to her. She did not mind playing with fire, but she had no wish at all to be burnt. Her education had trained her to think lightly of the chastity of others, but so far it had not injured her own natural continence.
Getting out of bed she stood for a few moments in the middle of the room, staring through the open window at the distant line of the desert. Yes, the desert would be a wonderful setting for a romance; and yet even there she would not seem to be quite alone, quite unobserved. In her mind the whole of those vast spaces belonged, somehow, to Daniel Lane. She would feel his disturbing influence there: his head would rise from behind a rock, and his quiet eyes would stare mockingly at her and her lover, whoever he might be. He might even stroll forward, pick up the wretched Romeo, with a yawn throw him over the cliffs, seat himself by her side instead, and light his pipe. And if she protested he might whistle up half a dozen cut-throat Bedouin and peg her to the ground for the jackals to sniff at till he was ready to put her in his harîm.
She laughed nervously to herself as she went to her bath; and her thoughts turned again to the possibilities of the garden and the Nile, and once more the difficulties of her position were manifest. Female accomplices are required in romance: she had none. There was her maid, Ada, a large Scotchwoman, who would play the part about as nimbly as a hobbled cow. Lady Smith-Evered was not to be trusted with secrets, even if she were able to be flattered into acquiescence. There was no other woman in Cairo with whom she was at all well acquainted as yet, and none that gave promise of the paradoxical but necessary combination of self-effacement and presence of mind.
What she required was the friendship of a young married woman without stain and without scruple. Then there would be some hope that the season would not be entirely barren of romance, and, when she returned to England in the spring, she would not be in the painful necessity of having to invent confidences for the ears of her girl friends.
There is, however, an ancient and once very popular Egyptian god who seems to have survived to the present day, if one may judge by the strange events which take place in the land of the Pharaohs. By the Greeks he was called Pan-Who-is-Within-Hearing; and he must certainly have been sitting in the bathroom. For no sooner had Muriel dressed and come downstairs than the accomplice walked straight into the house.
Muriel had just entered the drawing-room by one door when a footman threw open the opposite door and announced “Mr. and Mrs. Benifett Bindane.”
A moment later a plump, square-shouldered young woman hurried into the room and flung herself into Muriel’s arms. “Muriel – you darling!” she cried, and “Kate – my dear!” cried Muriel, as they kissed one another affectionately.
Mrs. Bindane beckoned to the middle-aged man who had followed her into the room. “This person is my husband,” she said. “I think you saw him when he was courting me.”
He came forward and gave Muriel a limp hand. He was very tall, and appeared to be invertebrate; he had watery blue eyes, thin yellow hair, a long, white, clean-shaven face, and a wet mouth which was seldom, if ever, shut.
“Benifett, my dear,” said his capable, handsome wife, “say something polite to the lady.”
“How-de-do,” he murmured, staring at her awkwardly.
“Yes, I think we did meet once, didn’t we?” said Muriel.
Mrs. Bindane intervened. “Yes, don’t you remember? At the pictures, when we were keeping company. We got wed at our chapel ten days ago – such a to-do as you never saw! And afterwards a real beano at the Fried Fish Shop: beer by the barrel, and port too! And Pa gave me away, in his evening dress, red handkerchief and all!”
Such was her peculiar and characteristic way of referring to the fact that she had introduced Muriel to her fiancé one night at Covent Garden, and that she had been married to him at St. Margaret’s, Westminster, where she had been given away by her father, Lord Voycey, a reception being later held at her paternal home in Berkeley Square.
“I didn’t know you were coming out here,” said Muriel. “It’s splendid.”
“We only decided on Egypt at the last minute,” explained Mr. Bindane. “Kate was so anxious to go up the Nile.”
“It’s a blinkin’ fine river, I’m told,” remarked his wife, at which he smiled reprovingly.
Her friend’s language was notorious, though actually she seldom approached an oath except in mimicry. She was a woman of five-and-twenty, and for seven years she had delighted London with her pretended vulgarity. Her husband, on the other hand, was more or less unknown to the metropolis, though, as the inheritor from his father of an enormous fortune, his name had lately been heard in Mayfair, while in the City it was well known. People said he was a fool; and everybody supposed that the eccentric Kate had married him for his money. As a matter of fact, she had married him for love.
“Where are you staying?” Muriel asked.
“We’ve got a little paddle-wheeled steamer on the river,” he replied. “We arrived last night.”
“And of course we came round to see you at once,” said Kate. “Benifett’s rather a snob, you know: loves lords and ladies. So do I. How’s your pa?”
“Oh, just the same as always,” Muriel answered. “I don’t seem to see much of him.”
“People say he’s rather a success at running this ’ere country,” the other remarked. “Personally, I detest the man: I think he’s neglected you shamefully all your life.”
“Oh, father’s all right,” said Muriel. “I’m very fond of him.”
“Rot!” muttered her friend.
For some time they exchanged their news, and Muriel gave some account of the quiet life she had spent since her arrival.
“Any decent men?” Mrs. Bindane asked. “What about little Rupert Helsingham?”
“Oh, d’you know him?”
“Lord! yes. He stayed with us once when he and I were kiddies. I saw him when he was on leave last summer: he’s grown into a handsome little fellow.”
She asked if he were on the premises, and whether she might see him. In reply, Muriel rang the bell, and sent a message to the office where Rupert usually spent his mornings in interviewing native dignitaries.
“Here’s a friend of yours,” she said to him as he came into the room, and there ensued a rapid exchange of merry greetings.
“This is what I’ve married,” remarked Mrs. Bindane, taking her husband’s hand in hers and delivering it into Rupert’s friendly grasp.
“How-de-do,” said Mr. Bindane, looking down from his great height at the dapper little man before him.
“Glad to meet you, sir,” said Rupert, looking up at the limp figure, which gave the appearance of being about to fall to pieces at any moment.
“His father’s a lord, dear,” whispered Mrs. Bindane to her husband, in a hoarse aside.
“You’re just as impossible as ever, Kate,” laughed Rupert.
“It’s my common blood,” said she. “One of my ancestors married his cook: she was the woman who cooked that surfeit of lampreys King John died of.”
“Is Lord Blair in?” Mr. Bindane asked, very suddenly.
