Burning Sands

“Don’t be a damned fool,” her friend ejaculated, angrily.

Muriel shrugged her shoulders. “I shall take my dragoman with me,” she went on. “He knows all the roads hereabouts. I shall be quite safe. I’m going to Daniel for a fortnight: I’ve thought it all out, and I know now that’s what he’s been wanting me to do. You’ll find me at El Hamrân when you come there – if you do come, and, if not, I’ll join you here.”

“But, my good idiot,” cried her friend, “there’ll be the most awful scandal! What d’you think Benifett will say?”

“I’ll leave that for you to find out,” she answered. “I don’t see Master Benifett changing his plans for anybody. You can say I was ill, and therefore went off to Daniel so that I shouldn’t spoil your trip or delay you. Father need never know, and I’m sure Benifett won’t give me away. Not that a scandal isn’t just what he wants. Doesn’t he want to oblige Daniel to remain here in the Oases? – Oh, but I know what I’m doing. Daniel never wanted to marry me: he wanted me to run away with him.”

“Yes, but where are you going to run to?”

“To seed,” Muriel replied, with a little laugh. “I can’t help it. He’s won: I can’t stay away from him. I’m going to have this fortnight with him, if I hang for it!”

“Oh, you’re mad!” exclaimed Kate, and, clutching hold of Muriel’s arm, she led her into her tent.

Here they argued the matter to and fro; but it was apparent from the first that the thing was irrevocably sealed, and that all the details of the plan had been thought out so as to prevent the adventure becoming public.

“Very possibly there’ll be no scandal at all,” said Muriel; “the natives can be bribed not to tell. I shall come back with you to Cairo when you return there, and who is going to give me away?”

“But what is a fortnight?” asked Kate, in despair. “Good God! – what is a fortnight, when it means even the possible ruin of your whole life?”

“I can’t look so far ahead,” Muriel replied. “I only know I want him now. And I’m going to him, Kate; I’m going to the man I love, the man who loves me!”

She ran out of the tent, calling to her dragoman, Mustafa, who appeared at once from the domestic quarters. He received the news without perturbation.

“Yes, my leddy,” he said. “I varry pleased. My wife’s brother him live at El Hamrân. Thirty mile’ – it is nudding: five, six hours riding; and the road him varry good, varry straight.”

She told him to get two camels ready at once, to fill the water-bottles, collect a few eatables, and – to hold his tongue. “I have to take some important papers over to Mr. Lane,” she said, and he smiled at the lie.

Her large dressing-case was already packed; but, returning to her tent, she opened it to put into it her little revolver, which, for the fun of the thing, she had purchased in Cairo. This done, she went back to Kate, who received her in cold silence.

“Oh, Kate,” she cried, “don’t be beastly to me. I’m only going to do the sort of thing that’s been done by most of the girls we know. It’s human nature, Kate. When you love a man and feel you absolutely can’t live without him, you’ve got to surrender to him and do what he wants; and I know now that this is what he’s been asking me to do all along.” She put her arms about her neck, and kissed her.

Kate looked at her sorrowfully, and her face softened. “Muriel, you blinkin’ idiot,” she said, “I don’t know what’ll come of this, but whatever happens, old bean, I’m with you.”

CHAPTER XXV – BREAKING LOOSE

The road, or rather camel-track, from El Homra to El Hamrân passes across a wide plain of comparatively flat sand, which looks like the bed of a vast lake from which the waters have been drained off. It is a huge hollow separated by high ground from the smaller basin in which the former oasis is situated. Ranges of hills form the boundaries of this area, those to the east being high and many-peaked, the others low and undulating; and from one side of the plain to the other must be something like twenty miles. There are three wells between the two oases, the second being practically in the centre of the plain, and marking the half-way point of the journey.

Muriel and her dragoman reached this well at about one o’clock, when the sun was almost directly overhead and the glare intense. It was a deep pool not more than a dozen feet from side to side; but in the clear water the blue of the sky was so vividly reflected that Muriel, as she stood staring down into it, had the impression that the earth was flat and that she was looking through a hole into further spaces of empty air beneath.

A few yards distant there were some tamarisks, providing a little patch of shade, almost as blue as the sky and water; and a stone’s throw away there was a hillock of sand upon which grew a few low and dusty bushes. With these exceptions there was no vegetation to be seen, and the sand stretched out in all directions, barren and dazzling, until the surface was lost in vaporous mirage, so that the far-off hills looked like islands floating above the haze.

She called her dragoman to her. “Mustafa,” she said, “I’m going to bathe. You must go and sit behind that hillock over there, and you mustn’t move till I tell you you may.”

Servants in the East are ever accustomed to be told to take themselves off in this fashion, when their native mistresses desire to amuse themselves; and he now received his orders from the daughter of the foreign ruler of Egypt without surprise. He quickly filled the water-bottles from the pool, and, telling her that he would prepare the luncheon on the other side of the hillock, walked off across the sand.

As soon as she was alone, Muriel divested herself of her clothes in the shelter of the tamarisks, and plunged into the cool water. Never in her life had she felt so boisterously, recklessly happy; never before had she realized how cramped her existence had been. Here in these empty spaces of the world she was like a child with all the delights of the open garden to herself; and presently she would slip into the next garden and greet there her playmate.

As she splashed in the water she learned for the first time the wonderful sensation of bathing without the weight of a costume about her limbs; and her thoughts flashed back with disdain to those elegant days at fashionable seaside resorts where she had almost feared to let the waves wet her dainty bathing-dress, and where she had been aware of opera glasses levelled upon her as she walked sedately into the sea.

From side to side of the little pool she swam, tossing the water into the air in showers of sparkling drops; and, presently, when, clambering back on to the sand, she stood with arms stretched out to the sunlight, she felt that at last she knew the meaning of life.

The hot sun dried her body, without much need of the aid of her handkerchief; and when she was dressed she hastened with a wonderful appetite to her luncheon. Mustafa, being a well-trained dragoman, did not trouble her with his presence; and she was thus able to make very frank inroads into the tongue and sweet-pickles, the biscuits and the jam, which he had provided. And after the meal she lay back in the shade, against the slope of the sand, and slept for half an hour in profound content.

She awoke with the conviction that at last all was well with her. It seemed to her that what Daniel had all along desired was that she should renounce “the World,” as he called it, and come to him; and now, in these last few days, she had realized that this was no renunciation at all. He had been perfectly right: a life in the open was the only life for Youth; and here, not in the cities, real happiness was to be found.

All he had asked of her was to break loose from her conventional existence, and to come to him; and now she knew how incomprehensible her reluctance must have seemed to him. He had been holding out to her the free joys of her youth: he had been saying to her, “Come and be my playmate and my dear companion,” and when she had refused, he had gone off by himself, bidding her follow him if at last she should shake herself free of her imaginary bonds. How stupid to him, how vulgar, must have been her wish for a correct betrothal! – no wonder he had given up in dismay.

Such thoughts occupied her brain during the afternoon as she trotted exultantly, and with wild and reckless freedom from all restraint, towards El Hamrân; but very different were the thoughts in the mind of Daniel Lane, as, all unaware of her proximity, he sat peacefully in his room, putting the finishing touches to his interrupted study of the customs of the Bedouin of the Oases.

In a manner it might be said that he was content. He had fought a terrible battle with himself during these five-and-twenty days since he had left Cairo, and his mighty spirit had won the victory over his mutinous body. Like a monk abandoning the pleasures of the world, he had crushed within him the one passionate episode of his continent life.

Throughout his strenuous manhood he had put away from him the call of the flesh: he had mastered his body, and had subordinated all other interests to those of his work. In a sense he had lived the life of an ascetic, save that he had not actually mortified his body. He had governed and controlled his physical instincts, but he had found no need to break them with rods. In perfect health, in perfect physical fitness, he had passed his days, filled with that deep, laughing happiness which comes from a quiet mind. His gigantic muscles were ever ruled by his mighty reason; and serene, smiling tranquillity had been his reward.

It was only since Muriel had come into his life that he had known any disturbance; for she was practically the first woman with whom he had ever been on intimate terms. And when she had failed him he had beaten out the very thought of her from his riotous heart, and had fled to the placid sanctuary of the desert, there to recover his equanimity.

To him she had seemed to be tainted by her contact with that section of society whose artificiality he so heartily disliked. These people paid outward court to the conventions of life, but in secret they treated in the lightest manner the very bases upon which these conventions were founded. Being satisfied with the surface of things, they lived their lives in turmoil and called it pleasure; nor had they any idea of that deeper happiness which comes from contact with fundamental truth and simplicity.

And Muriel had been as blind as the blindest of them. She only played with life – skimmed over the surface, snatching at such pleasures as lay to hand.

If she had turned her back on her dances and her parties, and had come to him and had said, “Take me into the desert for ever,” he would have believed in her love, and nothing could have held them apart; but, whether correctly or incorrectly he knew not, he had had the impression that she had wished to fill but an idle hour with the sweets of love, just as, so it seemed to him, all fair women of Mayfair were wont to do.

Therefore he had come back to the clear and open spaces of the desert; and here, in the ruined monastery which for so long had been his home, he had sought and found once more his peace of mind. In a few weeks’ time he would return to Cairo; but in future he would arrange to receive his Egyptian visitors away from the Residency, at some house in the native quarter where he could work without distraction.

As he sat writing in his shirt-sleeves at his table near the window and the sun was descending towards the horizon, his attention was attracted by the barking of his dogs, and he wondered whether some native from the village had come to see him. He was concerned just now in regard to the growing quarrel between the two main families of the Oasis, and visits were frequently paid to him by persons connected with the great feud.

The barking, however, presently ceased abruptly, and therewith he went on with his work. The room was large, and the loud chattering of the sparrows in the palms outside the window prevented him from hearing the opening of the door behind him. He was not aware that his servant, Hussein, had entered, agog with excitement; nor did he see Muriel, who, followed him, as she waved him out of the room, and shut the door behind her.

It was only when she was close to him that he heard the footstep and looked around.

He sprang to his feet. “Muriel!” he exclaimed, as he stared at her in astonishment.

She did not speak. She ran to him, and, throwing her hands around his neck, was lifted from the ground in his arms. For a few moments she did nothing but kiss him – she rained kisses on his mouth and his bewildered face in a very frenzy of love, so that he gasped. Then her hands, slipping from behind his neck, passed over his forehead and his cheeks, and through his hair, patting him and stroking him; while her hat fell off, unnoticed, and her feet dangled above the ground, vainly seeking for foothold in the vicinity of his shins.

At last, having been lowered to the ground, she stood before him, her hands held in his, her face flushed, her hair falling down.

“Oh, my darling,” she cried, “I couldn’t live without you any longer. I’ve broken loose: I’ve run away and come to you.”

And, as his arms went about her once more, nigh crushing the breath out of her, she shut her eyes and received his answering kisses in passionate glorious silence.

CHAPTER XXVI – THE STOLEN HOUR

She had come to him! Impelled by her love she had come to him! That was the jubilant thought in Daniel’s rejoicing heart. At last she had turned her back upon the amusements and pleasures of the old life, finding them altogether unsatisfying now, and she had come to him! She loved him, and she had given up all to come to him! No longer was romance to be sandwiched in between race-meetings and dances, between “At Homes” and opera-parties: she had renounced the whole thing, and had come to him!

“How did you manage it?” he said, looking at her with admiration in his eyes.

“Oh, it was quite simple,” she laughed. “There was nothing extraordinary in my joining the Bindanes on their trip; and then …”

She told him how she had waited until Mr. Bindane was out of the way, and had then made a bolt for it.

“But what is the next step?” he asked. “What about the future?”

“Oh, man,” she cried, “don’t talk about the future – that can wait till you have time to think.”

The words may have had no particular significance, but to Daniel they seemed to be the most wonderful he had ever heard. They meant to him that she trusted him, that she placed her future in his hands, that she gave herself unreservedly to him. She left it to him to think out what he was going to do with her…

He looked at her with deep gratitude in his face; for she had, as it were, crowned him as lord of their destinies and enthroned him upon the very pinnacle of eventuality.

He could not take his eyes from her as she stood at the window, the reflected light of the sunset in her face, her well-proportioned figure seeming to be more vigorous, more athletic, than he had known it before. Her smile, always brilliant, was now intoxicating to him; and her eyes were filled with such tenderness that he could find no adequate response to their appeal. It was as though his kisses and his words of love were all insufficient to this great hour; and, with inward, joyous laughter, he found himself baffled in his search for means of expression.

He lifted her up in his arms, and kissed her throat and her shoulders and her knees. He lowered her to her feet again, and, with his arm about her, walked half-way across the room and back. He buried his face in her hair; held her hand to his mouth and kissed her fingers one by one; he sat her in a deck-chair, and, kneeling before her, laid his head for a moment upon her lap.

She was his, she belonged to him! – the thought went coursing through his brain in headlong career, breaking down his reserve, overthrowing the walls of the citadel of his being.

At last, forcing himself down from the heights to the practicalities, he went to the door and shouted for tea; but Hussein, who, like most loyal Egyptian servants, regarded himself, with due deference, as ibn el bêt, “son of the house,” or “one of the family” as we should say, had thrown himself whole-heartedly into his master’s excitement, and had already prepared the tea and had opened the choicest tin of biscuits in the store-cupboard.

Muriel was hungry after her long ride; but she had so much to say, and the interruptions induced by their love were so frequent, that the meal occupied a great deal of time. She told him of the journey from Egypt, and of the wonders of the desert which had been revealed to her; she spoke of the bath that day in the pool at the roadside; she described her sensations of increasing happiness and well-being as day by day the old routine of her life had slipped further from her; and she talked with enthusiasm of the beauties of El Hamrân as she had approached it just now from the high ground.

“I spotted this old ruin of yours from miles away,” she said, “and we skirted along the high ground on this side of the Oasis until we came without a single wrong turning to your door.”

She went to the window, and, standing there with her arm linked in his, gazed in silence over the shimmering sea of the tree-tops. Upon the near side the shadow of the cliffs was spread, and the foliage seemed here to be tinged with cobalt and purple; but on the far side the mellow light of the vanishing sun still bathed the green of the leaves with a tincture of gold and copper.

The chirping of thousands of sparrows, as they gathered themselves in the branches to roost, filled the air with clamorous sound; and at the foot of the cliff, just below the window, a string of camels went by, the foremost being ridden by a small boy, dressed in a single garment of blue cotton, who was exultantly carolling a native song in a full-throated voice which, with its chucks and gurgles, seemed to be an imitation of the nightingale.

“What is he singing about?” Muriel asked. “He’s nearly bursting with it.”

“It is a part of the story of Leila and her lover Majnûn,” Daniel explained, after listening for a few moments; “the part where the Sultan sees Leila, and tells Majnûn that he doesn’t think she is anything to write home about; and Majnûn says: ‘O King, if you could only see her from the window of Majnûn’s eyes, the miracle of her beauty would be made known to you.’”

The boy’s voice passed into the distance; and Muriel stood gazing in front of her in silence, while the golden light faded from the palms as the sun went down.

At length she turned to Daniel, asking him to show her over his house; and, arm in arm, therefore, they went out of the airy, whitewashed living-room, coming presently to the old monks’ refectory, with its roofing of dried cornstalks, and so to the servants’ quarters and the kitchen, and thence to the ruined tower at the top of which Daniel was wont to sleep. They ascended this tower together, and from its summit Muriel could see the whole extent of the building; and, in a rapid passage of thought, she realized with inward satisfaction that the story of his harîm was a fabrication.

The view from here was magnificent. In the west, above the rugged line of the dark hills, the sunset was revealed to her in sudden, overpowering splendour. To the east the Oasis lay in cool shadow; and here and there a thin wisp of smoke rose into the air. Beyond lay the silent desert, and the far-off ranges of pink and mauve hills; and above them the sky was turquoise, fading into grey-blue. The wind had dropped, and now the chattering of the sparrows was ceasing, so that there seemed to be an increasing hush upon all things.

The foliage of the palms screened from sight any movement of human life in the Oasis; and Muriel had the feeling that she and Daniel stood quite alone in this vast setting, like two little sparks of vibrant energy dropped down from the hand of Fate in an empty, motionless world.

She looked up at him as he stood before her, his rough grey shirt thrown open at the neck, his sleeves rolled back from his bronzed arms, and his white trousers held up by an old sash of faded red and yellow silk knotted about his waist. He looked down at her, dressed in her silk sweater, and the same white serge skirt with the little stripe of grey in it which she had been wearing that afternoon at Sakkâra. And as their eyes met they both laughed, like two playmates of childhood who had quarrelled, and whose quarrel was now forgotten.

Presently he led her down the stairs again and across the outer kitchen yard. Here her dragoman, Mustafa, was waiting to take his orders; and he now asked permission to ride over to the house of his brother-in-law, which was situated at the far end of the Oasis, and there to spend the night; and this Muriel at once gave him.

“Where are the camels?” she asked; and in reply he pointed to a shed built against the outer wall of the monastery near the entrance. Here, also, were the three yellow dogs, who, knowing her well, came now to her with the fawning attitudes and uncertainly wagging tails of the real pariah breed.

Hussein was lighting the lamps in the living-room when they returned; and he paused to ask whether the evening meal should be served at the usual hour. Daniel referred him to Muriel. “Any time you like,” she answered, smiling happily at Daniel, as though even the arranging of such trivial details were a matter of delight. “I want a bath first, if I can have one.”

At this Daniel suddenly laughed. “Gee!” he exclaimed, “I’d forgotten to fix up a bedroom for you.” He scratched his head. “Now where on earth am I to put you?”

There was a small whitewashed chamber – originally a monk’s cell – opening off the refectory. This, Daniel used as his dressing-room, and in it stood his large tin foot-bath. He now told his servant, therefore, to set up the spare camp-bed in that room, to prepare the bath, and to remove his own belongings to the chamber at the base of the tower below the stairs.

“You won’t be nervous alone there, will you?” he asked her, and she shook her head. “If you feel lonely or frightened, you’ve only got to slip round to my tower and shout to me, or come up the stairs and wake me up.”

To Muriel there seemed to be a wonderful intimacy in his words, and she pictured herself creeping up the dark staircase in the night, and standing by her lover’s bedside under the stars, whispering to him that she could not sleep.

Hussein was not long in carrying out his instructions, and soon he came back to announce that the bath was ready. Therewith, Daniel took Muriel to this room, which looked exceedingly clean and comfortable in the lamplight. Towels and jugs of hot and cold water stood upon the grass-matted floor beside the bath-tub; the camp-bed had been made up in one corner; and Muriel’s dressing-case stood upon a chair near a table above which a looking-glass was hung. In place of a door a grass mat was suspended across the entrance; and the unglazed window, looking westwards on to the open desert, was fitted with rough wooden shutters now standing open to the warm night.

Daniel was loathe to leave her even for this little while, and he stood with his arm about her while she unfastened her dressing-case. He helped her to lay out her brushes and toilet utensils; and there was a peculiar and very tender sense of intimate companionship as she handed him her slippers to place beside the bed and her nightdress to lay upon the pillow. He made no attempt to go when she began to take the hairpins from her hair; and, when it fell about her shoulders, he took her in his arms once more, calling her by so many loving names that her brain seemed to be singing with them, and she could feel her riotous heart beating as it were in her throat.

At last he left her, and went to his own improvised dressing-room, to put on more presentable clothes; but when he was ready, and she had not yet made her reappearance, he went back to her doorway and spoke to her through the screen of the grass-matting.

She told him he might enter, and he found her sitting before the mirror fastening up her hair. She was dressed now in a kind of kimono; and he seized her bare white arms, which were raised above her head, kissing them fervently.

When at length her toilet was finished, he led her back to the living-room, where soon the evening meal was served at a small table upon which two candles burned at either side of a bowl of wild flowers hastily picked in the fields, where, at this time of the year, they grow in great abundance; and never in all their lives had either of them felt so completely happy. Through the open window the stars glinted in the wonderful sky, like amazing jewels sprinkled upon velvet; and the dimly lit room, with its series of shadowy domes, seemed to be a magical banquet-hall, its walls of alabaster and its flooring of marble. It was somewhat bare of furniture, for many things had been left behind at the Pyramids; but its very bareness enhanced its Oriental effect and added to its enchantment.