Burning Sands Part 26

"No, I'll leave that to you," Daniel answered with a smile. "But there's one thing I should like to ask you: have you taken any steps yet to give anything to the poor?"

His cousin shook his head.

"Well, hurry up and do so," said Daniel.

Once more Lord Barthampton rose from his chair, and this time to his relief, he was not pushed back again. "I'm late for the show," he grumbled, "and anyway it's no fun staying here, being put through my paces. You've got all the cards, and the game's in your hands. It makes me sick."

"Yes, I'm sorry," Daniel replied, and he spoke with sincerity. "But don't worry yourself. You're going on fine."

With that he let him go.

Upon the following day, Lord Blair again acted in a manner which showed the movement of his thoughts. Muriel was going out to lunch at Mena House, and Daniel suggested that she and the Bindanes should ride over to his camp to tea. Lord Blair appeared to be delighted at the proposal, and gave it such hearty support that Muriel was constrained to accept the invitation.

Thus it came about, that soon after four o'clock Daniel was helping his three visitors to dismount from the hired camels which had jolted them over the desert to his tents; and no sooner had the attendant camel-men taken charge of the animals, than he found himself smilingly following in his friends' wake as Muriel began enthusiastically to conduct them around the camp, as though she were its proprietress.

She pointed out the various lockers and revealed their contents with pride; she showed how this table folded up, or how that chair could be converted into a bed; she called attention to the portable book-shelf, and held up for inspection some of the volumes which she had arranged; she introduced the three yellow dogs, and explained the merits of the kennel she had built for them.

In her interest and pride in the work of her hands there was a complete absence of self-consciousness; and the situation engendered so warm a sense of intimacy that she found herself calling Daniel by his Christian name, as though this had long been her habit.

When tea had been drunk and the sun was setting, Kate Bindane took her husband by the arm and suggested a stroll. At this, however, Muriel's mind returned to the conventions, and she intimated her desire to accompany them. But Kate, profiting by Daniel's momentary absence with Benifett Bindane, argued the point with her.

"You stay with Mr. Lane, old girl," she said. "He wants to be with you, I'm sure; and any way I want to be alone with Benifett. d.a.m.n it, we're on our honeymoon!"

There was a touch of wistfulness in her friend's jocular words; and Muriel had seen enough of their married life to be understanding. Kate Bindane had a romantic heart under her uncompromising exterior; and her cold-blooded husband, to whom she was obviously devoted, must have played the lover about as ardently as a jellyfish. But out here in the solitude, the glory of the setting sun might infuse a little warmth into his veins, and might lift his thoughts above those schemes of commercial enterprise which seemed to const.i.tute his sole interest in Egypt.

The two couples therefore separated for a while; and Muriel strolled with Daniel to a cl.u.s.ter of rocks, amidst which they presently seated themselves upon the slope of a sand-drift, facing towards the south and west. Before them, framed between the great boulders of sun-browned limestone, the desert stretched out to the purple hills in the distance; and above the hills the glory of the cloud-flecked western sky was spread like a vision of the Isles of the Blessed.

The evening was warm and windless, and no sound came to their ears except the occasional twitter of an early bat, and the far-off wail of a circling kestrel. It was as though some magical leap through time had been accomplished, whereby they two had alighted upon the earth in an age before the advent of man and beast, or after the last trump had left the planet again desolate. Yet there was no sense of death in these rock-strewn s.p.a.ces, but rather a pulse of sleeping nature which held the reiterated promise of life. The sand upon which they lay was warm and golden, and the rocks about them were not cold nor dead to the touch.

Muriel lay upon the slope, her hands behind her head; and Daniel, sitting beside her, and looking down at her with his calm blue eyes, had the sunset as his aureola, so that he put her in mind of some figure by Bonozzo Gozzoli painted against gold. His ma.s.sive head and shoulders seemed to tower above her like those of a rugged presence rising out of the rocks and sand of the wilderness; and she noticed for the first time that his face was reminiscent of Watts' "Samson," a picture which had always delighted her.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _A SCENE FROM THE PHOTOPLAY-BURNING SANDS_]

Neither she nor he found any need of words, and for some time there was almost complete silence between them, so that one might have supposed the spell of the desert to have bewitched them. His hands idly played with the sand; and, as the grains ran between his fingers, she seemed to feel the memories of all her days slipping from her, until only this one little moment of the present remained.

"Well?" she asked at last, and there was the question of all the ages in her eyes.

"No man can escape his destiny," he replied; but the words did not seem to be detached: rather they were the conclusion of a mute a.n.a.lysis to which they had both contributed.

Again there fell a silence between them, a silence, however, so filled with unspoken words that in it their relationship grew immeasurably more close. The glory of the sunset began to fade, and the veil of the twilight descended gently about them; but in their hearts it was dawn, and the sunrise was very near.

At length he arose and stretched his arms to their full extent. Muriel gazed up at him, wondering how he would choose to seal the compact which, so it seemed, had been made between them in this period of their silence. Suddenly she was conscious that her heart was beating fast, and its throbbing brought her back from her dream.

She sat up, and looked at him for a moment with fear in her eyes; for it was as though she had spoken words in the depths of her being which her tongue would have been too reticent to utter.

Daniel clasped his hands behind the back of his head, and stood watching her, a whimsical smile on his face. His expression was one of perplexity, almost of amus.e.m.e.nt at the incomprehensibility of Fate.

"Come," he said, "we had better be going, Muriel, my dear."

He took her hand in his and raised her to her feet.

"Yes, Daniel, we had better be going," she replied.

She linked her arm in his; and thus they walked slowly back to the tents, he looking down at her, and she looking up at him, and around them the vast s.p.a.ces of the desert already dim with the coming of night.

CHAPTER XVII-DESTINY

Upon the following morning, before eleven o'clock, Muriel installed herself in a hammock slung from the lower branches of a shady sycamore, some yards distant from the rose-bushes and shrubs which screened her favourite alcove, now appropriated by Daniel. She had brought with her from the house a handful of fashion-papers and ill.u.s.trated journals, but these she did not read as, with one foot touching the ground, she swung herself gently to and fro. She looked up through the tracery of the foliage to the brilliant blue of the sky, and her mind was too occupied with her thoughts to give its attention to the latest manner in which the women of Paris, London, and New York were adorning their nakedness.

Little shafts of sunlight, like fiery rods, pierced through the cool blue shadow wherein she lay; and beyond the protection of the heavy foliage the lawn of newly-sown gra.s.s gleamed in the radiance of the morning. The faithful northwest wind, which almost daily blows over the desert from the Mediterranean, was gently rustling the greenery overhead, and rattling the hard leaves of the palms; and she could hear the cry of the circling kites above her, though she could only see these scavengers of the air when they swooped and tumbled down, as though in play, to s.n.a.t.c.h at any edible fragments floating upon the surface of the Nile.

All around her she was aware of the joy of existence, flashing out like laughter and vibrating like song. The water sprinkled upon the lawn by the garden hose seemed to be making merry in the sunshine; a black and grey cow lurching across the gra.s.s seemed to be overcome with hilarity; the palm-leaves swaying in the breeze might have been shaking with mirth; and the babbling of the river as it swirled past the terrace was like an endless lyric of well-being.

Muriel was too happily content to indulge in any profound self-a.n.a.lysis; but vaguely she was conscious that her life had entered upon a new phase, and shamelessly she asked herself whether the guiding hand were love. She had realized for some time that Rupert Helsingham had made a spurious impression upon her heart, and during the recent weeks of amus.e.m.e.nt she had come to wonder how it was that he had aroused any emotion in her, except that caused by his tragic death.

Now, however, she was aglow with buoyant happiness, and she had a persistent feeling that all was well with her. Yesterday, on her return from Daniel's camp, she had spoken to Kate Bindane of this sense of well-being, and her friend's reply had set her laughing.

"My dear," Kate had said, "I'm sure I don't want to mess up your bright picture of things; but in my opinion, look at it as you will, the joy of life is always some sort of an itch and the scratching of it."

But today Muriel felt that the definition was false. Her happiness was intangible, and all that she could say with certainty was that it was the result of her little time of silence yesterday in the desert.

It had been so quiet and gentle, so entirely opposite to the prehistoric rough-and-tumble which might have been expected. Her thoughts went back to the incident of the curate at Eastbourne, who had banged her about on the sofa, and would have rolled her on the floor, had not the ten commandments suddenly affrighted him. She thought, too, of Rupert and his impa.s.sioned kisses: he had left red marks on her shoulder.

But Daniel had been so silent, so tender, and withal so genuine. He had seemed to be part of the vast sky and desert around him, enfolding her, and harming her not. Yet with a twist of his hand he could have killed her.

In the distance she heard the murmur of his voice as he talked to his native visitors in the alcove; and she had a curious feeling that his proximity was protective. She was no longer afraid, or even shy of him.

Presently, across the lawn, she saw him dismissing three silk-robed Egyptians; and, when they had taken their departure, he waved his hand to her before returning once more behind the screen of roses and trees.

The signal was like the caress of an old friend, and by it her happiness was enhanced.

A few minutes later she watched another caller being piloted by a native servant across the lawn to the alcove. He was a young _effendi_ wearing European clothes and the usual red _tarboush_ or fez-an unhealthy little man, who paused once to cough and to spit unpleasantly.

Lazily she watched the servant return to the house, and she hoped that Daniel was finding his new visitor interesting.

She closed her eyes, and sleep was stealing upon her when suddenly she was startled into full consciousness by the sharp crack of a pistol-shot. She sprang out of the hammock and stood for a moment staring about her, her heart beating.

The sound had come from the direction of the alcove, but now all was silent once more. Evidently n.o.body in the house had heard the shot; and she might have thought it to have been an illusion of sleep, had it not been for the manifest excitement of the birds which had risen from the branches of the trees around.

Almost without definite thought she hastened across the lawn, and paused, listening, near the rose bushes. A whimpering sound of moaning came to her ears; and at this she ran forward impulsively, and, a moment later, came to a sudden halt upon the secluded terrace.

Before her, upon the flagstones, crouched the figure of the young Egyptian. He was holding his right wrist in his left hand, and was staring up, with open mouth, at Daniel who stood over him, fingering a revolver which now he slipped quietly into his pocket as he caught sight of her.

"Go away, Muriel!" he exclaimed in surprise. "What are you doing here?"