Burning Sands Part 41

The boy's voice pa.s.sed into the distance; and Muriel stood gazing in front of her in silence, while the golden light faded from the palms as the sun went down.

At length she turned to Daniel, asking him to show her over his house; and, arm in arm, therefore, they went out of the airy, whitewashed living-room, coming presently to the old monks' refectory, with its roofing of dried cornstalks, and so to the servants' quarters and the kitchen, and thence to the ruined tower at the top of which Daniel was wont to sleep. They ascended this tower together, and from its summit Muriel could see the whole extent of the building; and, in a rapid pa.s.sage of thought, she realized with inward satisfaction that the story of his harim was a fabrication.

The view from here was magnificent. In the west, above the rugged line of the dark hills, the sunset was revealed to her in sudden, overpowering splendour. To the east the Oasis lay in cool shadow; and here and there a thin wisp of smoke rose into the air. Beyond lay the silent desert, and the far-off ranges of pink and mauve hills; and above them the sky was turquoise, fading into grey-blue. The wind had dropped, and now the chattering of the sparrows was ceasing, so that there seemed to be an increasing hush upon all things.

The foliage of the palms screened from sight any movement of human life in the Oasis; and Muriel had the feeling that she and Daniel stood quite alone in this vast setting, like two little sparks of vibrant energy dropped down from the hand of Fate in an empty, motionless world.

She looked up at him as he stood before her, his rough grey shirt thrown open at the neck, his sleeves rolled back from his bronzed arms, and his white trousers held up by an old sash of faded red and yellow silk knotted about his waist. He looked down at her, dressed in her silk sweater, and the same white serge skirt with the little stripe of grey in it which she had been wearing that afternoon at Sakkara. And as their eyes met they both laughed, like two playmates of childhood who had quarrelled, and whose quarrel was now forgotten.

Presently he led her down the stairs again and across the outer kitchen yard. Here her dragoman, Mustafa, was waiting to take his orders; and he now asked permission to ride over to the house of his brother-in-law, which was situated at the far end of the Oasis, and there to spend the night; and this Muriel at once gave him.

"Where are the camels?" she asked; and in reply he pointed to a shed built against the outer wall of the monastery near the entrance. Here, also, were the three yellow dogs, who, knowing her well, came now to her with the fawning att.i.tudes and uncertainly wagging tails of the real pariah breed.

Hussein was lighting the lamps in the living-room when they returned; and he paused to ask whether the evening meal should be served at the usual hour. Daniel referred him to Muriel. "Any time you like," she answered, smiling happily at Daniel, as though even the arranging of such trivial details were a matter of delight. "I want a bath first, if I can have one."

At this Daniel suddenly laughed. "Gee!" he exclaimed, "I'd forgotten to fix up a bedroom for you." He scratched his head. "Now where on earth am I to put you?"

There was a small whitewashed chamber-originally a monk's cell-opening off the refectory. This, Daniel used as his dressing-room, and in it stood his large tin foot-bath. He now told his servant, therefore, to set up the spare camp-bed in that room, to prepare the bath, and to remove his own belongings to the chamber at the base of the tower below the stairs.

"You won't be nervous alone there, will you?" he asked her, and she shook her head. "If you feel lonely or frightened, you've only got to slip round to my tower and shout to me, or come up the stairs and wake me up."

To Muriel there seemed to be a wonderful intimacy in his words, and she pictured herself creeping up the dark staircase in the night, and standing by her lover's bedside under the stars, whispering to him that she could not sleep.

Hussein was not long in carrying out his instructions, and soon he came back to announce that the bath was ready. Therewith, Daniel took Muriel to this room, which looked exceedingly clean and comfortable in the lamplight. Towels and jugs of hot and cold water stood upon the gra.s.s-matted floor beside the bath-tub; the camp-bed had been made up in one corner; and Muriel's dressing-case stood upon a chair near a table above which a looking-gla.s.s was hung. In place of a door a gra.s.s mat was suspended across the entrance; and the unglazed window, looking westwards on to the open desert, was fitted with rough wooden shutters now standing open to the warm night.

Daniel was loathe to leave her even for this little while, and he stood with his arm about her while she unfastened her dressing-case. He helped her to lay out her brushes and toilet utensils; and there was a peculiar and very tender sense of intimate companionship as she handed him her slippers to place beside the bed and her nightdress to lay upon the pillow. He made no attempt to go when she began to take the hairpins from her hair; and, when it fell about her shoulders, he took her in his arms once more, calling her by so many loving names that her brain seemed to be singing with them, and she could feel her riotous heart beating as it were in her throat.

At last he left her, and went to his own improvised dressing-room, to put on more presentable clothes; but when he was ready, and she had not yet made her reappearance, he went back to her doorway and spoke to her through the screen of the gra.s.s-matting.

She told him he might enter, and he found her sitting before the mirror fastening up her hair. She was dressed now in a kind of kimono; and he seized her bare white arms, which were raised above her head, kissing them fervently.

When at length her toilet was finished, he led her back to the living-room, where soon the evening meal was served at a small table upon which two candles burned at either side of a bowl of wild flowers hastily picked in the fields, where, at this time of the year, they grow in great abundance; and never in all their lives had either of them felt so completely happy. Through the open window the stars glinted in the wonderful sky, like amazing jewels sprinkled upon velvet; and the dimly lit room, with its series of shadowy domes, seemed to be a magical banquet-hall, its walls of alabaster and its flooring of marble. It was somewhat bare of furniture, for many things had been left behind at the Pyramids; but its very bareness enhanced its Oriental effect and added to its enchantment.

Hussein had prepared a very excellent meal, not sparing the store-cupboard; and he had opened a particularly large fiasco of Italian red-wine to grace the occasion. He had donned a clean white garment, held in at the waist by a crimson sash; and as he noiselessly entered or left the room he seemed to Muriel to have taken to himself the nature of a geni out of a tale of the _Arabian Nights_.

When at last the meal was finished, and cleared away, and she and Daniel were seated in the deck chairs at the open window to drink their coffee, Muriel felt that the whole world of actuality had slid from her, leaving her enthroned with her lover in a palace of glorious dream; and when, out of the darkness of the palm-groves below, there came to their ears the distant and wandering sound of a flute, played by some unseen goatherd pa.s.sing homewards with his flock, the magic of the desert was almost overpowering in the measure of its enchantment. She was bewildered and intoxicated by it; and in Daniel's eyes she found, too, a light of love such as she had never seen there before.

The hours pa.s.sed unnoticed, for time had ceased to be; and it was already late when at last Daniel arose, and stood looking down at her with a smile upon his face. "Well," he said, with a sigh, "I didn't think anything would induce me to return to Cairo so soon; but now....

When shall we start?"

Muriel looked at him in surprise. "O Daniel," she whispered, "there's no hurry, is there? The Bindanes won't be going back for a fortnight."

Her low voice set his heart beating for a moment, but he did not take the real significance of her words.

"Well," he said. "I suppose it will be all right for you to be here for a day or two; and then we can ride straight to Cairo and be married by special licence or whatever they call it." He lifted her fingers to his lips. "Oh, darling, in less than a week you'll be my wife!"

Muriel stared at him, wide-eyed. It was as though she had suddenly awakened from a dream. "Oh, but the family will be horrified," she said.

"Everybody will expect a proper wedding in London: after we get home-in May or June. You'll have to make that concession to the world, my darling."

Daniel laughed. "Yes, but what about our compromising situation, here?"

he asked. "Don't you see, my sweet, what I mean? Your bolting from the Bindanes is to me a sort of sacred and wonderful thing that you have done, because you've put your fate irrevocably in my hands. To my way of thinking we are already married, because you have openly abandoned everything and come to me; but I'm not going to give anybody the chance to question our acts. We belong to each other, and the quicker the position is regularized, so to speak, the better."

"But who is to find out?" she said. "If I stay with you till the Bindanes come, n.o.body will hear of it in Cairo."

He looked quickly at her, his brows drawn together. "What d'you mean?"

he asked, as though he could not follow the workings of her mind.

She laughed. "I mean, I've arranged it all," she answered. "Kate is to say I was ill, and that I came to you so as not to be a nuisance to them. She can prevent her husband ever giving me away, and I should think you could manage the others, or at any rate keep them from talking until we're married."

He did not answer, but his eyes were fixed upon her. She got up from their chair, and put her hands about his neck. "This is to be our wonderful fortnight, darling," she whispered. "It is to be our secret."

He lifted her arms from his shoulders, holding her wrists. "I don't understand," he said, and his voice was hard.

She looked at him with wonder. She could not comprehend what was troubling him. "Darling, what's the matter?" she asked, in dismay. "What I mean is that I've done what you always wanted me to do: I've broken loose; only I've chosen my opportunity, and arranged it so that people won't talk."

Still he did not take his eyes from her; but he removed his hand from her wrist. "You mean," he said very slowly, "that you will return with the Bindanes, and finish up the Cairo season?"

"Well," she answered, "I've got all sorts of more or less official engagements, you know."

"This is to be just a stolen fortnight?" he asked, and she was frightened by the stern tones of his voice.

She nodded, and again her arms sought his shoulders. But he stepped back quickly from her, and his hand pa.s.sed across has forehead.

"You are going to cover up your tracks with a pack of lies," he said, his breath sounding like that of one in pain. "And then you are going back to your dances and your parties, pretending nothing has happened."

"Oh, you don't understand," she cried. "I've given myself to you, body and soul."

"Yes," he scoffed, his voice rising. "You've given yourself to me for a fortnight. A sneaking fortnight that you think n.o.body will ever hear about. A fortnight sandwiched in between the middle and the end of the Cairo season, to fill up the blank time while your father is away."

"But I never want to go back," she answered, her voice trembling.

"If that is true," he said, "why have you arranged everything for your return? You've given yourself to me, you say! Yes, for a stolen fortnight, as you call it yourself: it is to be just an underhand little intrigue. Good G.o.d!-and I believed you had given up everything for your love's sake; and now I find you've given up nothing. You've taken all the necessary steps to prevent your action being decisive, to make your return to society perfectly easy. And I thought you had burnt your boats!"

She faced him angrily. "Oh, you're incomprehensible," she exclaimed.

"You let me see in every possible way that you want me to give myself to you and to follow you into the desert; you let me understand that this is what you expect of a woman; you knew that I had heard about your affairs with the Bedouin women here; you didn't seem to mind my having heard about Lizette: and then, when I accept your point of view and come to you, you tell me I've done wrong."

"What on earth are you saying?" he cried. "What do you mean about Bedouin women? I have never had any relations whatsoever with native women in my life-never. And as for Lizette, I didn't tell at the time, because I wanted you to trust me of your own accord; but I will tell you now. I've only spoken to her twice in my life. Once we had supper together, and once we had coffee together in a restaurant. That is the beginning and the end of my relationship with her. Do you mean to say that thinking me a sort of libertine, you have come out to live with me here as my mistress for a fortnight? Is that what you mean?"

She did not reply. She sat down on a cane chair near the table, and twisted her handkerchief to and fro with her fingers. The expression on her pale face revealed the black despair of her heart.

"Answer me!" he said, sharply.

"I have no answer," she replied. "I thought you wanted me, I thought you loved me."

He turned from her, sick at heart. It seemed now to him that his worst fears were realized: he could almost have called her "Harlot." In no wise had she abandoned the world and run to him, defying the conventions because she desired to be his mate. She had merely planned a secret love-affair: she had just slipped out of the ballroom, so to speak, to enjoy an amorous interlude, and she would be back amongst the dancers once more before anybody had missed her. This sort of clandestine, cunningly arranged affair was an insult to the whole idea of union: it was an intrigue out of a French novel.

He looked at her once more as she sat at the table, and, in his revulsion of feeling, he thought her kimono gaudy. The expression on her face was angry, almost sullen.

"I think you must be mad," she said. "In Cairo you wouldn't be publicly engaged to me, and you made me understand quite clearly that it wasn't our actual marriage you were thinking about: you wanted me to run away with you. You always jibbed at the thought of marriage, and were silent about it; but you talked freely enough about our life together. You made it quite clear that you regarded morals with contempt; and now, you suddenly have scruples, and pretend that you are shocked at my having taken steps to prevent a scandal which would hurt my father's reputation."