Burning Sands Part 29

Once he came so near to a definite offer of marriage that she held her breath. Yet what he said was but this: "Life is short, and there is no time for a mistake. Think, Muriel, think!-You and I will soon have to make a decision which cannot be altered. Think of all those things in my method of life which you don't like or don't understand. Because the choice is close at hand."

And in her bedroom, in the darkness of the night, she had thought; but her thoughts had travelled in circles, leading her nowhere. Perhaps, she said to herself, he wished to hint that there were ugly aspects of his life which she ought to take into consideration: perhaps he was referring to those Bedouin women who were said to have been his mistresses in the desert; or perhaps his frequent visits to the bazaars and to native houses were not entirely dictated by the needs of his work. She knew that women of the poorer cla.s.ses often came to see him at the Residency; and the stories which had come to her ears of his goodness to widows and dest.i.tute paupers might have their origin in less worthy circ.u.mstances than was supposed. It looked as though his conscience were smiting him.

He had said to her: "The woman who loves me must give up much." Was he suggesting, she wondered, that she should defy the conventions and fly with him into the desert? Perhaps he had no thought of marriage: he only wanted her to ride beside him over the limitless wilderness, and to sleep with him under the stars. His words might be interpreted as meaning that since one day they would grow tired of one another and he would leave her to fish for herself, she ought to consider carefully whether the adventure were worth while. But, no: that could hardly be his meaning, though his refraining from a definite proposal of marriage was suspicious.

Another matter greatly puzzled her. He did not seem to be jealous of her familiarity with other men; and though during the last few days she had rather enjoyed the novel experience of asking his permission, more or less, when she was going out on what she termed a "joy-ride," she had observed that he a.s.sumed no authority over her. He appeared to be quite indifferent to her exits from, and interested only by her entries on to, the stage of life.

Daniel, as a matter of fact, was determined to eradicate all those fierce feelings of jealousy which shamefully he was aware she had aroused in him. The green-eyed monster was a prehistoric beast, unfitting the fair pastures of a philosopher's mind; and he would have none of it. He believed pa.s.sionately in freedom; and he was resolved to regard love not as a prison but as a sphere of unbounded liberty-for man and woman alike.

He was wroth with himself when he wished to break the heads of the young men who hovered around her. He had not believed himself capable of such disturbances; and his control was exerted to so much purpose that Muriel mistook it for indifference.

Fortunately he was usually back in the solitude of his camp by mid-afternoon, and he did not have to watch Muriel setting out for her almost nightly dinners, dances, or opera-parties; and when, next day, she used to relate her adventures, he would oblige himself to show amus.e.m.e.nt and interest, though only black unrest could have been found in his heart. He was impatient for the time when she should grow weary of her amus.e.m.e.nts, and thus show that her heart was full of sweeter interest, but he had no wish to force her to leave all, as it were, and come to him.

Muriel, on her part, was increasingly annoyed at his apparent indifference; and matters reached a crisis one afternoon at the end of the first week in January. An expedition to the ancient necropolis of Sakkara had been arranged, the party consisting of Muriel, Daniel, Mr.

and Mrs. Bindane, and John Dregge, one of the younger Secretaries at the Residency. The Tombs of Sakkara stand at the edge of the desert, some ten miles south of Mena House; and the excursion was made on horseback, servants having been sent on ahead to prepare tea at the little rest-house in the necropolis.

During the outward journey Benifett Bindane rode close to Daniel, cross-questioning him in regard to the possibilities of agricultural development in the Oases. He had decided to make a journey at the end of February through the great chain of these oases; and Lord Blair, who, as has been said, was keenly interested in the project, had already begun to make arrangements for the expedition. Daniel was surprised to find that Mr. Bindane had fully grasped all the essentials of the scheme, and, in spite of his lethargic appearance, seemed to be making himself master of the facts.

The subject was very interesting to both men, and Kate Bindane, who rode with them, put in some shrewd observations; but meanwhile Lady Muriel was left to ride ahead with John Dregge, and their two horses could be seen moving close abreast, while Muriel's laughter frequently floated back to them with the suggestion that she was enjoying herself thoroughly.

This, however, was not the fact. She did not like her companion, who was a very proper young man with a sallow face, side whiskers in the Byronic style, a b.u.t.ton of a mouth, and small, watchful eyes.

She was growing decidedly cross-"turning nasty" as they say; and though she laughed loudly so that Daniel should hear, she made two or three remarks to Mr. Dregge which were neither kind nor clever. The three o'clock sun was extremely hot, the glare was intense, and her horse-a borrowed one-had an objectionable habit of ambling when she wished him to trot and of walking when she attempted to correct the amble.

When at last their destination was reached, and all five of them were together again, she would not so much as look in Daniel's direction. Tea was served at a tressel-table on the veranda of the rest-house, an island of cool shadow in the golden sea of sand; but Muriel enjoyed neither the meal nor the view. Nor did she give any great attention to the beauties of the sculptured tombs and mausoleum which they subsequently visited; and she felt only impatience when Daniel spoke with enthusiasm of the grace of the ancient figures.

"We haven't advanced much in these thousands of years, have we?" he said to her.

"No," she answered, "and judging by the progress made in the last ten days, it'll be many thousands of years more before anything happens."

Daniel glanced quickly at her, with an inward chuckle, but she turned from him with her head in the air.

The return journey was begun some time after the sun had set, and complete darkness descended upon them while they were still two or three miles from the hotel. Daniel now rode beside Muriel; and the others having pushed ahead, they presently found themselves completely alone, moving through the indigo of the night like two phantom riders wandering over the uninhabited plains of the moon.

The air was cold, and sharp; and the stars gleamed overhead, so numberless, so vivid, that the tremendous sky was densely spangled and jewelled, in brilliance unknown to the western eye. It is only in clear, dry air such as this that one actually sees the heavens as a vault, an inverted bowl of deep royal blue, with the Milky Way arched across like a vaporous white rainbow, and the greater stars and planets standing out in bold patterns amidst the glittering atoms powdered over the whole amazing area.

The pathway was obscure, and Daniel had to guide himself by the great Pyramids which were silhouetted on the horizon against the stars; but riding became altogether dangerous while yet there was over a mile to go, and he proposed that they should dismount and lead their stumbling horses.

Muriel followed his lead without protest; and Daniel, taking hold of her arm with one hand, and leading the horses with the other, piloted her slowly over the rough ground. He was very tenderly solicitous, anxiously enquiring whether she were cold or tired; and she, stirred by the marvel of the night, very largely forgot her anger. This trudging through the intense darkness was having an extraordinary effect upon her mind: she began to feel that her safety, indeed her very existence, depended upon the giant of the desert who held her arm so firmly.

"I'm glad you're with me," she said to him. "I should be frightened with anybody else."

"Frightened?" he asked. "But don't you feel, as I do, that the desert at night is protective? Down there in the inhabited lands there are robbers and murderers of body or mind; but up here I'm in my own kingdom: I go wherever I like, do whatever I like, and there's n.o.body to disturb me and n.o.body I disturb except a shy little jackal or two."

Presently Muriel paused. "Wait a minute," she said. "My boot has got some sand in it."

She sat down upon the ground and pulled it off; while Daniel, being in no hurry to return to the world, tethered the horses by rolling a small boulder on to the trailing ends of the reins. This done, he came to her, and, sitting beside her, helped her to put on the boot once more.

She was tired physically, and tired also of being angry. The astonishing solitude caused her heart, as it were, to go to him for companionship.

Here in this tremendous silence, in this enveloping obscurity, she seemed to belong to him, to be his property.

He put his arms about her. "Why have you been so unfriendly to me today?" he asked, reproachfully.

She leaned her head back, and her hand went up around his neck. "Because I love you, Daniel," she whispered.

She drew him down to her. At that moment she had no morals: she had shaken the conventions from her like so many pieces of useless armour.

Her education had ever taught her to put small value upon such methods of protection; and now, with a mental shrug, they fell wholly from her.

She wished only to be his, body and soul: here couched in the lap of this great Mother Earth, and in the presence of the starry host of heaven.

For a moment Daniel held her tightly within his arms; and the tempest of his pa.s.sion carried him forward to the brink of heedless disaster. But mentally, as well as physically, he was a mighty man; and now his philosophic training in control did not fail him.

Roughly he threw her arms from him, and, rising to his feet, gripped her wrist. "Get up," he commanded her. "For G.o.d's sake get up!"

He dragged her up to him, and his fingers must have left bruises upon her arm.

"O Daniel," she murmured, and in her abandonment there was almost laughter in her words, and almost tears. "I'm yours-yours to do what you like with. You can put me in your harim if you want to."

He turned from her, and fetched the horses. "Fool, fool!" said his body to his mind. "Again, misunderstanding the meaning of life, you have robbed me." "Be silent, rebel," said his mind to his body. "Give me time to see if her pa.s.sion be love." "Is there any difference?" sneered his body; and his mind replied, "Had I not thought so, you should have had your way."

CHAPTER XIX-THE SEEDS OF SORROW

During the ensuing fortnight circ.u.mstances were not favourable to the development of their romance. Daniel was closely occupied with the settling of certain political difficulties which had cropped up; and Muriel, on her part, found herself much occupied with the social functions of the Residency which, in the month of January, are always very exacting.

But if there were few opportunities for the tender intimacy of love, there was now the compensation of a very sweet understanding between them. There was no need, so it seemed, for a formal betrothal: the engagement was mutually a.s.sumed, and, though no binding words had been spoken, Lord Blair did not have to ask again what were their intentions.

Muriel was, of course, a little disturbed at Daniel's refusal to allow a definite announcement to be made, or even an irrevocable word to be spoken between them; but actually his att.i.tude was quite understandable.

He was keenly aware that his method of life was somewhat peculiar, and he was modest enough to regard himself as a thoroughly undesirable husband.

Muriel had told him all about the Rupert Helsingham affair, and, with some degree of correctness, he had attributed it to the enchantment of the Nile. He had realized, too, that in his own case his most intimate moments with her had occurred under exceptionally romantic circ.u.mstances; and though he was too deeply in love thus to explain away her emotions, he could not blind himself to the possibility that their origin was less profound than their intensity suggested.

He was determined not to bind her yet awhile; for, he argued to himself, if the miracle had happened, if really she had found in him her eternal partner, time would prove the fact to them; but if she had been building her love on the deceptive foundations of romantic pa.s.sion, nothing but ultimate misery would come of the immediate exchange of mutual vows.

Being a philosopher, he did not judge love's day by the tempest of its pa.s.sion: indeed, he mistrusted such storms as a frequent cause of disastrous miscalculation. But Muriel, being woman pure and simple-if ever there could be a woman of her upbringing either pure or simple-did not a.n.a.lyse her feelings nor mistrust them. She knew only that Daniel hung like a thunderstorm over the meadows of her heart, and she waited in breathless, headaching silence for his lightnings and his torrents to descend upon her.

There was one aspect of the matter, however, which troubled him. Muriel, he recognized, belonged to a section of English society which was very lax in its morals; and he knew quite well that, in the darkness of the desert on the memorable night of their return from Sakkara, she had been entirely carried away by her love. The fact did not disturb him in itself, for he was a believer in instinct, and his judgment was not influenced by the conventions. If she really loved him, and if they had mutually taken one another for a life-partnership, no marriage ceremony would make the compact in his eyes more binding, and her desire at once to identify her life irrevocably with that of the chosen one would be comprehended and condoned by him.

But there was the fear at the back of his mind lest she had entered upon the adventure lightly. He knew too much about the ways of Mayfair: perhaps, indeed, his abhorrence of all that that name stood for was exaggerated. Her upbringing, therefore, caused him anxiety: not, be it understood, because of her possible willingness to break the traditional law, but because she might be willing to break it lightly. He hated himself for doubting her; but she was a child of Society, a daughter of the Old Harlot, and no member of her particular branch of that family was above suspicion.

One day, yearning for an hour alone with her, he asked her to come out to his camp on the following evening. She was to dine with the Bindanes at Mena House, and he suggested that he should call for her after dinner, when the young moon would be low in the heavens, and that they should ride out to his tents and talk for a little while.

Muriel fell in with the scheme readily enough; but there was something in her manner and in the expression of her face which indicated that she took the step with deliberation, fully conscious of all that it might involve. And, in actual fact, she did not care what happened. She only wanted to belong to him, to feel that she was in his power and he in hers.

But on the next morning she awoke with a bad cold in her head, and she was obliged to take to her bed. One cannot be really romantic with one's nose running, and any of love's most wonderful situations may be ruined by a sneeze.