Burning Sands Part 16

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 sh.e.l.l 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-b.u.t.ter 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 Hamran. 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 att.i.tude he was wont to a.s.sume 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.

Stripped of its pious and flowery decorations, the proposition put forward by the Sheikh was of the simplest character. He proposed that the Englishman should act as judge and mediator between the two families, and should hold a court at which the whole trouble should be ventilated; and so insistent was he that Daniel was obliged to acquiesce.

"Praise be to G.o.d!" exclaimed the old man, when at length he had received the definite answer he desired; and with many pious e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns of grat.i.tude he and his friends turned to enter the mosque, while Daniel pa.s.sed out through the gateway into the rustling palm-grove beyond.

His way led him for four or five hundred yards through the shade of the thickly growing trees-a dusty shade, pierced by innumerable little shafts of sunlight; but presently he came out once more under the dazzling sky, and, bearing off to the left, mounted a rugged path which ascended the sloping side of a sandy hill, till, reaching the summit, it pa.s.sed over level ground towards his house which stood upon a spur of rock overlooking the Oasis.

Two years ago, when he had come to reside at El Hamran to make, for the Inst.i.tute which had commissioned him, a study of the manners and customs of the Bedouin, he had here found the abandoned ruins of an ancient Coptic monastery, dating from the days when Christianity was still the religion of the Egyptians; and he had established himself in their shelter, and later had rebuilt some of the rooms, so that now his place of abode had come to be a much-loved desert home, where month after month was pa.s.sed in quiet study, and the days slipped by in placid contentment.

From the windows of his rooms he could look down over the whole extent of the dreamy little Oasis, with its sun-baked palm-groves, some three miles in length and half a mile in breadth, its houses and tents, its dozen wells, its few acres of tilled ground, and its miniature mosque.

All these lay in a kind of basin, surrounded by the cliffs and low hills of the vast desert; and from his vantage-point he could look over the swaying green sea of the ma.s.sed palm-tops to the barren plateau around about, and on a clear day he could just discern, far away to the east, the first of the ranges of the hills which rose between his isolated home and the far-off valley of the Nile.

At the ruined gateway of his dwelling he was met by his three yellow dogs who had been with him since they were puppies, and were fairly well-mannered considering their low pariah breed; and while he was playing with them, his servant, Hussein, came out to tell him that his luncheon was served. Therewith he crossed the courtyard of the old monastery, with its shattered row of cells to right and left, and its still lofty walls of unbaked bricks, and entered the large refectory which he had caused to be roofed over with palm-beams and dried cornstalks spread in a loose thatch, and which now served as a kind of entrance hall to his apartments. Upon its plastered walls some of the ancient frescoes were still visible; and here and there a Coptic inscription in dim red paint recorded the names of pious sentiments of long forgotten monks; while over the ruined doorway there was an indistinct figure of St. Michael, the patron saint of the place, whose pale eyes and smudged lips seemed to look down on him with faded and vacant mirth.

A rebuilt doorway in the right-hand wall led into his whitewashed living room, at the northeast end of which two large cas.e.m.e.nts framed the splendid view over the Oasis and the desert.

In a corner of the room, on a small table, a simple but not uninviting meal was spread upon a spotless tablecloth. Fresh poultry and eggs were always plentiful in the Oasis; and on the store-room shelves there was a large and varied supply of preserved foods, and even delicacies, which had been brought over some months ago in a train of camels from Cairo.

Daniel sat down to his meal with good appet.i.te; and as he munched his food in silence his gaze travelled round the airy room and brought back to his heart a glow of pleasant contentment. After all, what could the outside world give him in exchange for the peace and comfort of his desert home? Here he had the intellectual companionship of his books and his work, the simple friendship of courteous, good-hearted men, who had come to regard him as a kind of teacher, and the devotion of three well-meaning, if somewhat degenerate, yellow dogs. Here the brilliant sun, and the splendid north wind, which blew continuously from the distant Mediterranean across the great intervening s.p.a.ces of clean desert, brought vigour and health to his body and a kind of laughing enthusiasm to his brain. Here he could amuse himself by long rambling walks in the freedom of the empty desert, or, with his gun, could make exciting expeditions in search of gazelle. Here, on the flat roof at the top of one of the ancient towers of the monastery, he slept each night under the blazing stars, lying in his comfortable camp-bed, breathing the purest air in all the world, and gazing up into the vault of the heavens, till the calm sleep of a child descended upon him. And here from golden sunrise to golden sunset the days slipped by, each brought to perfection by that greatest of all human blessings, an untroubled mind.

He rose from the table, and, lighting his pipe, sank luxuriously into a deck-chair, a book of the poems of Hafiz in his hand, a cup of Turkish coffee by his side, his feet resting crossed upon a wooden stool, and the cry of the hawks and the drone of the bees making music in his ears.

The barking of the dogs outside, followed by a knock at the door, aroused him; and his servant entered the room. "Sir," he said, "a soldier of the Frontier Patrol has ridden in from El Homra, bringing a letter for your Excellency."

Daniel threw down his book, and, making a broad gesture with his hands, looked up at the smiling Hussein with a frowning pretence of anger.

"Curses upon his father!" he thundered. "Will his confounded masters never leave me in peace? Bring him in to me."

A few moments later a smart, khaki-clad negro was shown into the room, who saluted in military fashion, and produced a sealed envelope from the breast pocket of his tunic.

Daniel saw at a glance that the letter was from Lord Blair, as he had expected. He opened it with misgiving, and read it through without any apparent change of expression, though it was noticeable that the pipe in his mouth was allowed to go out. Then he slowly folded the sheets, and, thrusting them into his pocket, rose from his chair.

"I cannot give you my answer until tomorrow morning," he said to the messenger. "Go now and look after your camel, while Hussein prepares food for you; and in the morning you may carry back my reply."

As soon as he was alone once more, he pulled the letter from his pocket, and spreading it out upon the window-sill, stood bending over it, with wrinkled brows and brooding eyes, his elbows resting upon the sill and his head in his hands.

MY DEAR DANIEL,

You will be surprised to hear from me again so soon, and you will, I dare say, think me something of a nuisance. I am sorry to say that a sad calamity has befallen us. Poor young Rupert Helsingham was accidentally drowned in the Nile not many days after you returned to the desert; and we have all been very much cut up, especially my daughter, Muriel, in whose presence the tragedy occurred. You will recollect that Helsingham held the position here of Oriental Secretary; and it now falls to me to fill the vacancy. I have therefore decided greatly to extend the functions of the post and to offer it to you; and I shall esteem myself fortunate if you decide to accept it. As I am very anxious to increase by every means the respect in which the holder of the position should be held by the native population, I would propose to recommend you to His Majesty's Government for early elevation to Knighthood, an honour which your scholarly attainments and your services to the Residency fully deserve. I trust, my dear Daniel, that you will give me the reply that I desire; and I am sure you will know what a personal pleasure it will be both to me and to my daughter to have you at the Residency.

Yours very sincerely,

BLAIR.

After reading through the letter two or three times, he stood for some minutes staring before him with unseeing eyes. His first impulse had been to reject the invitation on the instant, for he detested officialdom and all its ways; and the thought of connecting himself with the social life of the Residency was horrifying. But now, against his inclinations, he obliged himself to consider the proposition with an open mind.