Burning Sands

“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.

Mrs. Bindane turned sharply and stared at him. “Now what has Lord Blair to do with you, Benifett?” she asked in surprise. “I didn’t know you knew him.”

Her husband flapped a loose hand. “I’ve met his Lordship,” he said.

“His Lordship,” mimicked the impossible Kate, giving a nod of simulated awe. “Rupert, my lad, go and tell the boss he’s wanted in the shop.”

“I’d like to see him,” murmured Mr. Bindane, quite unmoved.

“Well, I never!” said his wife.

“I’ll go and see if he’s busy,” Rupert volunteered.

“Thanks,” droned Mr. Bindane, his mouth dropping more widely open than usual.

“Well, you have got some nerve!” exclaimed his wife.

Rupert went out of the room, and sought the Great Man in his study.

“What is it, what is it?” Lord Blair muttered with some irritation, looking up from a mass of disordered papers.

“Oh, sorry, sir,” said Rupert. “I didn’t know you were busy. There’s somebody here who wants to see you.”

“I can’t see anybody – no, nobody,” Lord Blair expostulated. “What’s he want? Who is he?”

“A Mr. Bindane. He’s in the drawing-room with Lady Muriel.”

Lord Blair sat up briskly. “Benifett Bindane?” he asked, sharply.

Rupert nodded, and thereat the Great Man jumped to his feet.

“Where is he?” he exclaimed. “Show him in at once. Dear me, dear me! How fortunate! I had no idea he was in Egypt. No, I’ll come into the drawing-room.”

He hurried past Rupert, and hastened across the corridor.

“How d’you do, my dear sir, how d’you do,” he exclaimed, as he tripped into the room and wrung his visitor’s feeble hand.

“My wife,” said Mr. Bindane, bowing towards his startled spouse.

Lord Blair took her hand in both his own. “An old friend!” he cried. “Capital, capital! We were reading about your marriage the other day. Splendid!” And he beamed from one to the other. Then, turning again to Mr. Bindane, “You’ve come to see for yourself, eh?” he exclaimed. “Very wise, very wise indeed.”

“It’s a pleasure trip,” the other replied; “our honeymoon, you know.”

“Of course, yes,” muttered Lord Blair. “Business and pleasure!”

“Business?” muttered Mrs. Bindane. “It’s the first I’ve heard of it. What a dark horse you are, Benifett.” And she abused him roundly in that absurd mimicry of the dialect of the slums which was habitual with her.

Muriel looked vacant. Her thoughts were racing ahead. Here was the desired accomplice, married to a rich fool who was evidently on the best of terms with her father. They had a private steamer on the Nile. Could anything be better, more secluded, more romantic? All she had to do was to find her Romeo.

CHAPTER IX – ON THE NILE

Muriel was not slow to spy out the possibilities of her friend’s steamer. Her father, she soon discovered, was glad enough that she should make herself agreeable to the Bindanes; for, as he explained to her at some length, Mr. Bindane was at that time engaged in raising an enormous sum of money for agricultural investment in the western oases of Egypt, and it was of great importance that the luxurious river-steamer and the Residency should be on intimate terms.

For years Lord Blair and his predecessors had endeavoured in vain to interest the financial world in the mineral products and rich soil of the chain of oases which spreads across the desert between Egypt and Tripoli. But nobody, least of all the Government, would yet trust their money in an outlying territory so recently explored and opened up. Then Benifett Bindane had wandered into the Foreign Office, when Lord Blair was on leave in England, and had remarked laconically that he would raise the necessary millions.

At first he had hardly been taken seriously, for he looked such a fool. Later it was thought that because he looked such a fool it might be worth while to help him to part with his money; and finally it was discovered that he was not such a fool as he looked. The money he proposed to find was to be mostly other people’s, those other people being likely to be persuaded by the fact that the money would appear to be mostly his own. He had promised to send somebody out to Egypt to investigate, and now, quietly and without any apparent pretext other than that of his honeymoon, he had come himself.

Three or four days after the Bindanes’ arrival a thirty hours’ excursion up the river was planned, the party consisting of the bridal couple, Lady Muriel, Lady Smith-Evered, Rupert Helsingham, and Professor Hyley, the Egyptologist. The Pyramid of Meidûm, some fifty miles upstream from Cairo, was the objective; and it was proposed to start at noon, to moor for the night near the village of Meidûm, to ride over to the ruins on the following morning, and to make the return journey to Cairo during the afternoon and evening.

Muriel boarded the steamer when the time came with keen interest hidden under a casual exterior. For her it was to be a sort of trial run: she was going to study the romantic possibilities of the Nile. If the trip provided opportunities for Rupert Helsingham to make love to her, in which direction his recent actions had begun to point, she would try to arrange further excursions, perhaps with him, perhaps in other company.

The professor was a neat and natty little man, with prominent teeth and wistful eyes, a eunuch’s voice and pretty manners; and an hour had not passed before it was apparent that the General’s lady had taken him to her bosom. He examined an antique scarab ring upon her finger, and told her to what dynasty it was to be dated; he showed her a somewhat similar ring upon his own finger, and said it was not so good nor so old a specimen as hers; he remarked what a fine old English soldier the General was, and he sighed to think how few were left of that breed; he poked delicate and kindly fun at the younger hostesses of Cairo, and compared their social efforts with those of the elder generation, so admirably represented by the lady to whom he was speaking. Lady Smith-Evered thought him a dear little man, a designation the first two words of which were certainly applicable.

“They just love each other, don’t they!” Rupert whispered to Muriel.

“Yes,” she replied. “I think that disposes of my chaperone.”

She made the remark with evident satisfaction, and Rupert glanced quickly at her. His heart was beating fast.

“You seem glad,” he said.

Muriel shrugged her shoulders.

The afternoon was hot, and as the party lounged on deck the glare of the sunlight upon the mirror of the water was dazzling. Mr. Bindane put on a pair of blue spectacles, and presently gave vent to a series of hay-feverish sneezes.

“Good God!” exclaimed his wife. “Look at what I’ve married!” She seized his unresisting arm.

“Come, Benifett, let’s go and lie down in the cabin.”

“A good idea,” said Lady Smith-Evered, thankfully following her hostess below. “I shall go to my cabin too.”

“I think forty winks for me, also,” the Professor presently remarked, feeling himself to be de trop.

“Are you going to have a siesta?” asked Rupert, looking at Muriel with fervour in his eyes.

“Not unless I fall off to sleep in this comfy chair,” she answered. “In that case, you must promise to wake me if my mouth drops open. Pull up your chair close to mine, and tell me the story of your life.”

Rupert stood up, and, taking off his coat, rolled back his shirt-sleeves, revealing a pair of well-made blue-veined arms. The leather belt which held up his white flannel trousers was pulled in tightly, and Muriel did not fail to admire the slimness of his waist as he settled himself in the long deck-chair at her side.

They were screened from the sun by an Arabic awning of many colours, and their eyes looked out across the oily surface of the water to the luxuriant river bank which seemed to pass before them like an unfolding picture, now revealing the open fields, now a village basking in the sunlight, now groups of palms and cedars in the deep shadows of which the peasants rested with their flocks, and now a native villa with mysterious latticed shutters and silent walled gardens. Every hundred yards or so there was a sakieh, by which the water was raised from the river into the irrigation channels; and as each came into sight the creaking of the great wooden cogwheel, and the song of the half-naked boy who drove his patient ox round and round, drifted to their ears, drowsily and with plaintive monotony.

Neither Muriel nor Rupert talked much, but their sleepy proximity engendered a quiet sympathy between them more potent than any words. Her hands lay idly in her lap; and presently, with a lazy movement, he extended his arm and let it fall across hers, so that his hand rested upon her hand. She turned slightly and smiled at him, but she did not move. Their two heads, each upon its cushion, drooped closer together. Muriel’s eyes closed, and, with a sense of gentle happiness pervading her mind, she fell asleep.

When she woke up, a quarter of an hour later, she knew that Rupert had just kissed her: she still felt the touch of his lips. She did not resent it; it was not unexpected. But somehow she felt that she was no longer carrying out an experiment. The handsome young man beside her, after these few weeks of probation, had managed, somehow, to step into the sanctuary of her heart, and had seated himself audaciously upon the throne which had stood vacant these many months.

She sat up in her chair and passed her hands across her eyes. Then she turned, and, with a smile upon her lips, looked steadily at her companion.

“You kissed me,” she said. She spoke in a tone almost of awe.

“Yes,” he answered, and his voice failed him. He turned his eyes to the bank of the river and clenched his teeth. He felt very uncomfortable.

“Why?” she asked. Her face was very close to his, and his hand was about her wrist.

“Because I love you, Muriel,” he whispered; and the hoarseness of his voice would have seemed comical to her had she been in a normal condition.

Suddenly he put his arm about her shoulder and pulled her down to him, so that her head lay upon his breast and her hair touched his face. She did not resist; the drowsy warmth of the afternoon, the Oriental beauty of their surroundings, and the still unevaporated magic of that great enchanter, Sleep, held her powerless.

Again and again he kissed her – kissed her mouth and her eyes, her forehead and her cheeks, her throat and her hair; and with each touch of his lips the fires of her womanhood leaped up within her, so that in these few moments the whole course of her life, so it seemed to her, was changed, and new directions, new vistas, were revealed in intense illumination.

At last, dazed and flushed, she released herself from his hold and stood before him, her fingers clasping and unclasping themselves, her eyes wild and yet tender in their wildness.

“Rupert!” she gasped. “O Rupert!”

Suddenly she turned and ran to the companionway, and the next moment had disappeared.

Rupert sprang from his chair, and banged his fist into the palm of his other hand. “Gad!” he cried aloud, and there was exultation in his voice. He walked the length of the deck, with his hands in his pockets; then he sat down, and immediately got up again. His knees seemed to be trembling under him. He wondered whether that was a symptom of love, and decided that it was not. No he was not in love; he was just excited. And no wonder! Muriel was one of the great heiresses of England, and one of the most charming girls on the market, so to speak; and he had practically got her! Well, perhaps he was in love: her kisses were wonderful; the feeling of closeness to her was exquisite! How delighted his father would be! “Lady Muriel Helsingham,” and, in time to come, “Lady Helsingham of Singleton!” And all that money!

He lit a cigarette, puffed frenziedly at it, and threw it into the river. Then he, too, went below.

Muriel’s cabin was opposite his own, and at the door he paused and listened. He thought he heard her sigh, and his heart heat faster. She was madly in love with him! Why hadn’t he acted sooner? His school-friend had been perfectly right: a man has only got to take his courage in both hands and attack a woman forcibly, and she succumbs.