Burning Sands

He went into his cabin and shut the door briskly. He sat down on the edge of the narrow bed, and stared critically at himself in the mirror opposite. He was quite good-looking. He wondered how Lord Blair would take it. After all, it was not a bad match for his daughter: he was the son and heir of a Peer of the Realm, and his father had a very nice little estate.

In the cabin opposite, Muriel, likewise, sat upon the edge of her bed. She had been crying, and there were still tears in her eyes. Surely, she thought, this must be love that had come to her, though sudden and unexpected had been its advent. She was profoundly stirred, and wonderingly she recalled every moment of the experience through which she had just passed. It had been so sweet; his eyes had looked into hers so tenderly; his lips had aroused something so mighty within her. Of course she would marry him if he asked her; but she was so selfish, so stupid, and he was so clever. Everybody loved him: perhaps he would quickly grow tired of her…

At tea-time she could not look at him. She talked at random to the others, and as they all sat afterwards on deck watching the sun go down, she still kept aloof from him. Later, in dressing for dinner, she exacted particular care from her maid; and she was thankful that she had brought her most becoming dress with her.

“My dear, you look a dream!” exclaimed Kate Bindane as she came into the dining-room. “A dam’ sight too beautiful for my liking! I’ll have to keep my old man out of your way, or you’ll make him feel all of a twitter. As it is, I see him eyeing you all the time. He’s a dark horse, is Benifett: you never know what he’s up to.”

And certainly during dinner his watery eyes were fixed upon her from time to time with disconcerting directness. A glass or two of champagne helped her to overcome a feeling of shyness in relation to Rupert, and soon she became conscious of a growing excitement. She wondered what would happen before the evening was over, and alternately she longed for the meal to come to an end, and was dismayed to find it advancing so quickly. She talked feverishly, and, indeed, Lady Smith-Evered once felt it her duty to make signs to the butler to refrain from filling the girl’s glass. Muriel, however, observed the signal, and laughed aloud.

“Am I talking too fast or something?” she asked, holding up her empty glass to the hesitating butler.

“No, it’s only that wine is not very good for one in this climate,” whispered Lady Smith-Evered, her expression hinting at strange things.

“It can’t hurt her,” said Mr. Bindane, yet he drank only water himself.

As they went up on deck for their coffee, Muriel felt her face burning and her heart thumping; and when Rupert stood at her side and surreptitiously touched her hand she experienced so wondrous a thrill of emotion that she forgot what she was saying at the moment to Professor Hyley, and their conversation – something about ancient Egyptian gods – completely broke down.

Owing to some engine-trouble earlier in the day the steamer had not nearly reached its destination; and now, for the sake of the passengers’ comfort, it was travelling quietly and at a much reduced pace. The night was warm, windless, and intensely dark, for the waning moon had not yet risen; but the stars were brilliant, and the Milky Way stretched across the heavens like a band of ghostly silver.

As soon as the coffee cups were removed Mr. Bindane proposed the inevitable game of bridge, and therewith their host and hostess, Lady Smith-Evered, and the Professor descended to the saloon, Muriel and Rupert remaining on deck – by the tacit and tactful arrangement of Kate Bindane, who seemed to anticipate their inclinations.

“There’s a nice little cosy corner at the stern,” she whispered to Rupert, and gave him a friendly dig in the ribs. Fortunately Muriel was out of earshot.

To the stern, therefore, he led his companion when at length they were left alone, and here on a comfortable sofa they seated themselves. Nor did he allow many moments to pass before he attempted to resume the intimacy of the afternoon. Muriel, however, was self-conscious, and as he kissed her she gently thrust him away from her.

“Don’t,” she muttered. “Please don’t, Rupert, dear.”

There was a tone of anguish in her voice, for at the dawn of love a woman feels terror such as no man can understand. Instinctively, and without definite reasoning, she dreads the consequences of her actions; and whereas a man’s new love is glorious with the exultation of careless conquest, a woman’s is tender with the vision of uncomprehended pain to be. At the lightest touch of a new lover’s lips she catches sight of her whole destiny; and where a man rejoices, a woman quakes.

Rupert was abashed, and, releasing her from his grasp, stared before him into the darkness, while Muriel waited for him to make her quake again: it was a wonderful sensation.

“Why shouldn’t I kiss you, Muriel?” he asked. “You love me, you know you do.” He turned to her, and his face came close to hers. “You do love me, don’t you?”

For answer she ran her fingers through his hair and looked long at him. In the dim light he could see that she was searching his face as though endeavouring to find in it the assurance her womanhood required. He hoped that her hands were not untidying him beyond quick repair: he very much disliked having his hair ruffled.

Again he put his arms about her, and now she did not resist. Her eyes closed, and as in a dream she gave herself up to the emotion of the moment. In some miraculous manner it seemed to her Rupert had developed, and his arms that now enfolded her were suddenly endowed with celestial strength. It was as though by loving her he had identified himself with a force far greater than his own; and even the broken words which he uttered seemed to have a more profound meaning. She forgot that she had read such words in many a short story, many a novel; they sounded beautiful to her; they came to her ears with all the enchantment of things never before spoken in the whole history of the world.

“O Rupert,” she murmured, “do I mean all that to you?”

“You mean heaven and hell to me, Muriel,” he said, dramatically.

For a considerable time – though time to her stood still – they sat together in the darkness, closely held in one another’s arms, his cheek and his lips pressed against her bare shoulder and neck; and as the moments passed the intoxication of love began to bewilder him as it had already overwhelmed her. Her skin was so warm, so soft, so alluring, and the surge of her breath was so entrancing!

Suddenly they became conscious of the sound of much shouting amongst the native crew, and at the same time the drone of the paddle-wheels ceased. Rupert raised his head, and his hands began instinctively to tidy his hair and to arrange his disordered tie.

“We must have arrived,” he said. “The others will be coming up on deck: we’d better move.”

He stood up, and Muriel sank back into the corner of the sofa, her arm across her eyes. For some moments she seemed to be unable to bring her mind down from the heights of her dream; and Rupert watched her with anxiety, hoping that she would speedily master herself.

“Come,” he said. “Let’s walk along the deck.”

Very slowly she rose to her feet, and, with a sigh, put her arm in his.

The steamer had evidently reached its destination, and the captain’s bell incessantly rang his orders to the engine-room, while the hurried tread of bare feet could be heard on the bridge above them as they came into the soft light amidships. On one side the bank of the river could be discerned in the darkness, still some thirty or forty feet distant; on the other the open water stretched, reflecting the innumerable stars. To this latter side Rupert led her, and, leaning his back against the railing above the now silent paddle-wheel, he held his hand out to her as she stood before him.

“Muriel,” he whispered, when fervently he had kissed her fingers, “will you be my wife?”

She drew in her breath sharply, and her hands clasped themselves against her breast. She had been waiting for these words, but now when she heard them they frightened her. Somehow in the light of the electric lamps her dream in the darkness had faded, and there was a sense of cooler reality in her mind, a kind of reaction. Why should she say ‘Yes’ at once? Ought she not to try him yet a little while before she gave herself to him? She remembered that until today she had not known that she loved him: perhaps it was all an illusion, created by the Nile.

He saw the look in her face, and as he leaned back heavily against the railing his heart sank within him. Was she only playing with him? Did she only feel for him what he felt for her?

“Well?” he asked, and his hands were clenched upon the iron rail.

She did not answer. She stood staring at him with fixed eyes, and as she did so a sensation of annoyance passed across his mind.

“Ah!” he muttered. “You don’t love me. You’re only amusing yourself with me.”

“Rupert!” she exclaimed.

Seeing that his tactics were correct, he allowed his anger to develop. He made a dramatic gesture and flung himself back against the railing. At the same moment the paddle-wheel beneath him began suddenly to revolve, as the captain manœuvred the ship towards the shore. There was a slight lurch; Rupert uttered an exclamation; he seemed to sway away from her; and, heels over head, he fell into the churning water.

Muriel sprang forward. In the half-light she saw the soles of his shoes disappear as the black water swallowed him; then a dripping, writhing form was lifted on a blade of the paddle and tossed into the air. She saw his horrified eyes and his spread fingers. She heard him shriek…

“Help!” she screamed, and, screaming, she rushed across the deck. “Help! Help!”

CHAPTER X – “FOR TOMORROW WE DIE”

Amidst the wildest clamour the rowing-boat was launched, and two red-jerseyed native sailors took the oars, while a third, shouting and gesticulating, stood at the tiller holding up a hurricane-lamp. Just as they pushed off, Professor Hyley, carrying another lantern, tumbled into the stern; and, in the unreasoning excitement of the moment, called out “Mr. Helsingham, Mr. Helsingham! Hi, hi! Mr. Helsingham!” in a piping voice which sounded through the darkness like that of a lost soul.

The pandemonium upon the steamer was appalling. The jabbering native sailors ran aimlessly to and fro, flinging ropes and buoys into the river from the vessel’s stern; while the Egyptian captain, completely losing his head, rang and bawled orders down to the engine-room, as a result of which the paddle-wheels churned up the water, now this way, now that. Lady Smith-Evered and Mr. Bindane leant over the rail, shouting instructions to Professor Hyley as the boat dropped into the distance.

Muriel and Kate Bindane stood together in agonized silence. There was nothing to be done; for there was not a second rowing-boat, nor were there any available lamps or buoys. Their eyes were fixed upon the two points of light drifting astern, and on the illuminated figures of the searchers. And now the misshapen moon, in its last quarter, crept out from behind the horizon, as though curious to know what all the pother was about, but too disdainful to throw any light upon the scene.

At length there were renewed shouts from the boat, and much splashing of the oars; and presently it was apparent that the men were lifting something out of the ink-black water. A few minutes of horrible suspense ensued as the searchers returned; and at last, in a dazed condition, Muriel watched them raise the limp, dripping form out of the boat and lay it on the deck.

Mr. Bindane’s servant, Dixon, knew something about the method of resuscitation to be employed in such cases; and, with the aid of Muriel and Professor Hyley, the sodden clothes were removed from the upper part of the prostrate figure, and the bare white arms were worked to and fro. Brandy in a teaspoon was forced between the blue lips by Kate Bindane, who sent her helpless and apparently callous husband off with the weeping Lady Smith-Evered to fetch blankets and the one hot-water bottle which chanced to be available.

Their efforts, however, were all in vain. With the tears flowing from her eyes, Muriel rose from the puddle of water in which she had been kneeling, and stood clinging to Kate’s arm.

“He’s dead,” she sobbed. “He’s been dead all the time;” and a shudder almost of repulsion shook her.

She dried her tears and tried hard to pull herself together: she felt that this undefined feeling of disgust was unworthy of any woman, and was altogether despicable in one who had been so lately clasped in Rupert’s arms. She wanted to run away, and that primitive instinct which produces in the mind the nameless horror of a dead body was strong upon her. Yet, bracing herself, she resisted the sensation of nausea, and stood staring down at the prostrate figure before her, vividly illuminated in the glare of the electric light.

His mouth, from which the water oozed, was slightly open, and a pale, swollen tongue protruded somewhat from between his lips. His eyes were closed, and wet strands of dark hair were plastered over his forehead. His bare neck and shoulders looked thin and poor; and damp wisps of hair covered his chest. The soaked, black trousers clung to his legs; and his ill-shapen toes, from which the socks and shoes had been removed, were ghastly in their greenish whiteness as they rested upon the hot-water bottle.

Suddenly she swayed, and the lights seemed to grow dim. She heard Kate Bindane call out sharply for the brandy, and she was dimly conscious that she was being led away by her maid, Ada. Her perceptions, however, were not clear again until she aroused herself to find that she was lying upon her bed in her cabin, and that Mr. Bindane was standing at the door, staring down at her with his mouth open.

She sat up quickly. “Did I faint?” she said, as the horror of remembrance came upon her once more.

“No,” he answered. “You were only a bit giddy. You must try to sleep: we’re all going to try to. We shall be back in Cairo before sunrise.”

“Where is he?” she asked, pressing her fingers to her pale face.

“On the sofa at the end of the deck,” he said.

She sprang to her feet. “No, no!” she cried. “Not there – please not there!”

She buried her face in her hands; and Benifett Bindane, disliking hysteria, hurried away to the saloon, where he played Patience by himself until the small hours; while his wife, Kate, wedging herself into Muriel’s narrow bed, comforted her friend until dozing sleep fell upon them.

The next two or three days were like a nightmare. An impenetrable gloom seemed to rest upon the Residency; and, although the body lay in the mortuary of a neighbouring hospital, it was as though the presence of death were actually in the house.

The funeral came almost as a relief; and when the imposing ceremony was at an end, she felt as though the weight were beginning to be lifted from her heart. For the first time since the tragedy she was able to speak of it with calmness.

“You know, father dear,” she said, “Rupert and I came to mean a very great deal to one another in these few weeks that we’ve been together.”

He glanced at her timidly, and patted her hand.

“Yes,” he answered, “I have eyes, Muriel.”

She turned and looked at him with a little smile of confidence. “We were going to be married,” she said.

He started violently. “What!” he exclaimed. “Well, well, we must see about that.”

“It’s no good seeing about it, father,” she corrected him, feeling an hysterical desire to laugh; “he’s dead.”

“The poor boy, the poor boy!” he murmured. “Such a capital fellow.”

“It was just after he had proposed to me that he fell overboard,” she told him.

“Dear me, dear me!” he sighed. “And you had accepted him? I suppose the shock… How very, very sad! – He just fell backwards.”

Awkwardly, but with great tenderness, he put his arm about her. “You must forget all about it,” he whispered. “You must have a good time.”

“It was so ghastly,” she said. “You see, when he asked me to be his wife, I didn’t say ‘yes.’”

“Of course not, of course not,” he murmured. “Very proper, I’m sure.”

“But he thought I was only playing with him,” she faltered. “He was so angry, so hurt. And then the paddle-wheel started with a jerk, and he overbalanced.”

“Ah, my dear,” he answered, “the course of true love never runs smoothly. An ancient saw, but a very true one! But you are young: you will soon get over it. You must throw yourself into your duties as hostess at the Residency; and, in the first place, I want you to help me in a little scheme I have in mind.”

Muriel guessed what was coming, and her feelings were peculiarly diversified.

“I want to persuade Daniel Lane to accept some official position,” he said. “Of course I can’t offer him the mere Oriental Secretaryship which poor dear Rupert has left vacant; but I think its scope and importance could be greatly extended, amplified, and he might be tempted.”

“I doubt it,” Muriel replied. She did not know quite what to say.

“I shall write to him at once,” Lord Blair went on, nodding archly at her. “I shall say how whole-heartedly you second my proposal.”

Muriel stiffened. “O, no, please,” she answered, quickly, and the colour mounted to her face. “Please leave me out of it; Mr. Lane and I have nothing in common. I hardly know him, and much of what I do know I dislike.”

Her father’s face fell. There is no telling how far his scheming mind had advanced into the future, nor what plans he was forming for the well-being of his only child. It may only be stated with certainty that he had a very great admiration for Daniel, and that he was not blind to the fact that the object of this admiration was heir-presumptive to a man who, by common report, was drinking himself to death.

To Muriel, however, the prospect of having the masterful Mr. Lane actually on the premises was disturbing in the extreme, and, during the ensuing days, added not a little to her mental distress.

She greatly missed Rupert’s entertaining company; and although, as the days passed, she realized that his death was not as shattering a blow to her as she had thought, the remembrance of their brief romance often brought the tears to her eyes. Yet even as she wiped them away she was conscious that her sorrows were aroused rather by the tragedy itself than by her own heart’s desolation. It is true that her emotions had been deeply stirred by his passion; but gradually the fires, lighted for so brief a moment, died down, and she was obliged to admit that her heart was not broken.

But if the romantic effect of the sad affair was proved in these few days to be less severe than she had at first supposed, there was another aspect of the matter which had a very profound bearing upon her mental attitude. The sudden termination of Rupert’s career had set her thinking about life in a way that she had never thought before. If death were always so near at hand, if so simple an accident so quickly put out the little lamp of existence, ought one not to concentrate all the forces of the human constitution upon the enjoyment of each passing hour?

She stood off from herself as an artist stands back from his picture, and she saw that she was but a shadow amongst shadows, a speck of vapour passing across time’s fixed stare, having no substance of which one could say, “this at least will remain.” Today she was here; tomorrow she would be dissolved and gone.

To Kate Bindane she confessed all that had occurred on that fatal night. “I don’t want to be romantic,” she told her. “I don’t want to make more of the thing than there was really in it. But his death means more to me than it does to any of you others. I can’t forget the sight of the soles of his shoes disappearing into that black water. It’s as though I’d seen Death himself swallow him up. I had always thought of Death as a sort of unknown country where one goes to; but in this case I saw it come for him and swallow him. I saw it as an ink-black monster; it snapped him up, and spit out the limp shell of him, but kept the essence of him in its stomach. And it’s waiting to snap up you and me. It’s close at hand, always close at hand…”

She shuddered as she spoke; and her friend, putting her strong arm around her, found difficulty in soothing her.

“Well, perhaps,” she replied, “it was an act of Providence to save you from a mistaken marriage.”

“O, but he loved me,” said Muriel, “and I should have come to love him entirely. He was so sweet, so good-natured.”

“Perhaps there’s something better in store for you, old girl.”

Muriel shook her head. “No,” she answered, “there’s nothing much but Death for any of us. It all comes to that in the end: it all leads just to Death.”

“Well, then, let’s eat, drink, and be merry,” said her friend.

“Yes,” Muriel replied, with conviction. “That’s what I’m going to do. Omar Khayyam was right: I’ve been reading him again.”

“He was a wise old bird,” Kate Bindane commented. “Wasn’t he the fellow who said something about a bottle of claret and a hunk of bread-and-butter in the desert? I’ve always thought it a fine conception of bliss.”

Muriel clasped her hands together, and looked up with youthful fervour. “Yes,” she replied, “and he said ‘Ah, make the most of what we yet may spend, Before we too into the dust descend,’ and ‘Ah, fill the cup: – what boots it to repeat how time is slipping underneath our feet.’”

“Yes,” said Kate, “I always remember that line by thinking of boots and slippers and feet.”

Muriel was speaking with too much earnestness to give heed to her friend’s lack of poetic reverence. “Life’s so short,” she went on, “that I’m going to make the most of it. I’m going to have my fling, Kate. I’m going to be merry.”

“Right-o!” said Kate. “I’m with you, old bean.”

CHAPTER XI – THE OASIS IN THE DESERT

Upon a day towards the end of November, Daniel Lane was seated upon the clean sand of the outer courtyard of the little mosque which stood at the southern end of the Oasis of El Hamrân. It was the hour of noon, and the shadow cast by the small, squat minaret behind him extended no further than his white canvas shoes, as he leaned his back against the unbaked bricks, and stared before him across the glaring enclosure to the palm-groves outside the open gateway.

In spite of the heat of the sun, the blue shadow in which he rested still afforded a pleasant coolness; and clad in a somewhat frayed tennis shirt, open at the neck, and a pair of well-worn grey flannel trousers, held up by a stout leather belt, his figure gave the appearance of such comfort and ease that his lazy reluctance to rise and go home to his midday meal was understandable.

Five Bedouin Arabs who had been laughing and talking with him, were now standing a few yards distant at the whitewashed door of the mosque, and were engaged in removing their red shoes before entering the sacred building; while, at the same time, they were conversing together in undertones, as though discussing some matter of importance.

Daniel sprawled to his feet, and, pulling his hat over his eyes, walked towards the whitewashed gateway which gleamed with dazzling brilliance against the deep blue of the sky and the green of the palms; but as he moved away his Bedouin friends hastened to him across the hot sand, and one of the number, the white-bearded Sheikh Ali, the headman of the Oasis, laid a hand upon his arm.

“My friend,” he faltered, speaking in the liquid-sounding Arabic of the western desert, “there is something I would say to you.” He seemed to hesitate.

“He is wise who listens to the wise,” Daniel replied, taking hold of the Sheikh’s hand, in the native manner of friends.

The old man smiled. “The Prophet has written: ‘Seek wisdom even if it were only to be found in China’,” he said.

Daniel looked into the kindly and, indeed, saintly face with perplexity. He was wondering what was to come; and, raising his arms, he clasped his two hands at the back of his neck, an attitude he was wont to assume when he was puzzled.

The four others, who had been hovering shyly at a little distance, came forward; and the Sheikh, as though emboldened by their support, bared his heart without much further preamble. He pointed out, as Daniel well knew, that there was a feud of many years standing in the Oasis, between the family of the speaker and that of a former Sheikh who had been dispossessed of his office. The quarrel had become almost traditional; and though, up till now, no very serious incident had occurred, there was a growing danger that a brawl might take place in which somebody might be shot, and that thus the feud might become an endless vendetta with its reciprocal crimes of violence.