Burning Sands Part 45

"Look here," Daniel broke out at last, "I don't know what you feel about it, but for my own part I rather object to this silence."

"I have nothing to say to you," she replied.

"That doesn't matter," he said. "I will do the talking. I shall choose a subject and talk about it: you can listen if you want to."

Therewith he gave her an account of the Bedouin tribes of this part of the desert, how they had come to settle there, how he had recovered a part of their history from the old tales and ballads which he had recorded; and he told her something of their curious laws and customs.

Muriel's face did not betray any interest whatsoever, but Daniel persevered courageously until the meal was finished.

"You can stay in this room and read a book if you like," he said to her, as they rose from the table.

Muriel looked at him coldly. "Thank you," she replied, with an emphasis which she hoped was withering, "I prefer to go to my room. Good-night!"

And with that she took her departure.

The day had seemed intolerably long to her, and her smouldering anger had flamed up within her at frequent intervals. She realized that Daniel was playing the schoolmaster to her, and she was determined not to knuckle under to him. If he had decided to keep her a prisoner here for the full fortnight, she would do her best to make him thoroughly uncomfortable. His cool, impersonal att.i.tude annoyed her; she was amazed that a man who but yesterday was branding her with his burning kisses could be today so entirely detached from emotion, and she flushed at the insult of it.

Her only consolation lay in the thought that he was injuring himself by his behaviour. She would now never be even so much as a sister to him-not even so much as a friend. When she had escaped from this horrible place she would go to England, and soon, no doubt, she would marry a nice, ordinary man, with sleek hair and a tooth-brush moustache and long, thin legs; and as she came out of the church after the marriage ceremony she would catch sight of Daniel in the crowd and would smile contemptuously at him....

She was very tired, and many minutes had not pa.s.sed before she abandoned the pretence of reading the anthology of English verse which Daniel had placed in her room on the previous evening, nor was it long before she fell into a deep and dreamless sleep which held her as it were entombed until Hussein caused her resurrection by bringing in the bath-water in the morning.

The cool breeze and the sparkling air brought a certain feeling of well-being into her heart; but the meeting with Daniel at the breakfast table was a wretched business, and was made all the more distasteful by his evident good health and the morning freshness of his mind.

"I hope you are feeling fit," he said to her. "We have a busy morning before us."

That he was not speaking in jest was proved by the event. Soon after breakfast he took her down to the house of Sheikh Ali, and introduced her to the old man and his son Ibrahim. Thereafter the four of them walked over to the open ground outside the mosque, where a large number of men and camels were gathered, while on the outskirts of the area many women and children stood in the shade of the palms. Daniel explained to her that a large number of the chief men of the El Hamran were setting out upon the long journey to the far-off Oasis of El Khargeh, where there was to be a great gathering of the tribes. Sheikh Ali himself was too old and too feeble to go with the caravan, and his eldest son, Ibrahim, was remaining with him; but his younger sons and most of his male relatives and adherents were going.

She watched the animated scene with interest, and the hubbub came to her ears with the wonder of novelty-the women uttering their strange, whinnying cries in token of their grief at parting with their husbands; the white-bearded old Sheikh embracing his sons, like a Biblical picture come to life; the diversely robed figures steering their camels in circles and firing their rifles in the air; the barking of innumerable dogs skulking amongst the palms; and over all the brilliant sunshine and the deep blue of the sky.

She and Daniel shook hands with a very large number of men, and, as she walked homewards after the caravan had departed, she had a confused memory of smiling bearded faces, dark eyes, and many-coloured robes fluttering in the wind.

After sundown he took her down to the village, armed with pots of ointment, to help him to doctor the eyes of two little grandchildren of the Sheikh, who were suffering from ophthalmia, and whose sight his daily ministrations were saving. And in the evening he continued his writing, leaving her to read a book until, with many yawns, she betook herself to her room.

This day was typical of all the others in that surprising fortnight.

Quietly and impersonally he led her through her duties, obliging her to make herself useful in a score of different ways. Now he set her to the task of cla.s.sifying his photographs and notes; now he sent her down to the animals' hospital to doctor the camels' sores; now he asked her to ma.s.sage the sprained ankle of a small girl who had been brought to the house for treatment; now he made her grace with her presence a village wedding festival; and now he dispatched her with milk and eggs to the hovel of a blind old woman who lived on her neighbours' charity.

In the afternoons he would take her for painfully long tramps over the desert, for the good of her health as he told her; and when the silence became oppressive he would talk to her, whether she listened or no, about the nature of the birds they saw or whose footprints were marked upon the sand, about the geological formation of the country, about the jackals and their habits, and so forth. During their meals together he attempted, cold-bloodedly, to enlighten her on many subjects, and sometimes he would talk philosophy to her, endeavouring to give her a new standpoint on certain age-old themes, but "You do like preaching, don't you?" was the kind of response he received.

Sitting opposite to him at the table, it seemed to him that she carried herself with great dignity; and he had to admit that, under the circ.u.mstances, she was a great deal more self-possessed and high-mettled than he had expected her to be. She stood up to him, so to speak, and there were times at which he had the feeling, though he did not show it, that he was behaving like a boor.

On one occasion in particular he was conscious of having been put to rights by her. He had been talking about the sincerity of Islam, and had said how wise the Prophet was to refuse to organize a priesthood, preferring to leave the faith in the hands of the laity.

"It is so different from the empty ceremonials of our own religion," he said. "It seems to me that the Church's idea of the imitation of Christ is generally a burlesque in bad taste."

"In every walk of life," she replied, "there are men who make an outward hash of their inner ideals. You, for example, have great ideas as to what women should be; but in actual fact you make a terrible mess of your dealings with them."

"I wonder," he mused. It was as though he had been chastised.

She did not continue the argument. That was, to Daniel, the baffling thing about her: she was growing so quiet now that she was in his power.

She performed the tasks he set her almost in silence, and he could never tell whether she were learning her lesson or whether she were treating him with contempt as a man who lacked sympathetic understanding.

In her silence he seemed to find the quiet suggestion that she knew already all he wished to teach her; and there were moments when he felt that he had estranged himself needlessly from her. At such times he was obliged to remind himself that she had deliberately treated his love as a romantic adventure, and such treatment had had to be dealt with drastically. It was better that it should die outright than live to bring misery to them both; and with this thought he steeled his heart.

Thus the days pa.s.sed by-days of brilliant sunshine and warm, mysterious nights, of active toil and healthy sleep; days meant for love and companionship, but turned down, one after the other, in cold antagonism and frigid reticence. Sometimes in the evening, after she had gone to her room, he would sit with his head buried in his hands, calling himself a fool and loathing his role of schoolmaster; and more than once there was a black hour of despair when, had she come to him, she would have been astonished to see his huge arms spread out across the table and his head sunk upon his mighty breast.

CHAPTER XXIX-IN THE PRESENCE OF DEATH

By the middle of March Muriel's enforced residence at El Hamran was drawing to a close. Already she had been with Daniel for eleven or twelve days, and he had kept her so busy that the time had pa.s.sed rapidly. These days had been like a fantastic dream to her, and she could hardly believe in the reality of her actions. The whole situation was absurd; and yet, notwithstanding her artificial outward stiffness and her actual inward rebellion, she was conscious that her experience had not been unprofitable.

In spite of Daniel's hectoring and churlish manners-for so she thought them-she felt that she had seen something of life as it is lived under primitive conditions which otherwise she would never have known. She had even experienced, latterly, a pleasant sense of calm while she had been carrying out her duties: it was almost as though being under orders were a satisfactory condition-now and then. And as to her physical health, she was obliged to admit that she had never before felt so thoroughly fit.

Her att.i.tude to her monitor was one of unbending hostility, but now no longer of furious anger. She was not afraid of him, but very decidedly she did not feel the contempt for him which she endeavoured to show. She regarded him as a man of difficult and contrary character, but she now realized that she had greatly misjudged his outlook upon life. She had thought that in regard to women he was a prurient savage: she now knew that he was a high-principled and rather fastidious celibate.

Undoubtedly he had taught her the lesson of her life, but she was certainly not going to grasp his hand and thank him kindly on that account. He had built up a barrier between them which would remain a fixture for all time, and, though her heart often ached, she was far too estranged from him to think of any future intimacy whatsoever between them.

Only in one respect, in these days of their life together, did she feel drawn towards him. He had an indefinably benevolent and humorous att.i.tude towards life, of which she was daily more conscious. It was something which could not be described, but on more than one occasion it nearly served to break down the wall of ice within in which she had enclosed herself. Sometimes it would be merely that he stopped in his walk to make an absurd remark to a pa.s.sing cow or to a wandering goat; sometimes it would be the way in which he played with his dogs; or sometimes it was his manner to the native children which would cause her to unbend towards him. It was as though he had a private joke with every living creature. It was too quiet to be termed joviality: it was in no wise rollicking. It was a subtle droll and whimsical good-nature; it seemed almost as if, conscious of his own great strength, he were saying "Bless your little heart!" to all things weaker than he.

One morning, just as they were finishing a silent breakfast, Hussein entered the room, and delivered himself of a few rapid words in the Arabic tongue, which so much upset Daniel that he rose to his feet and paced up and down the floor in great perturbation.

"Anything wrong?" asked Muriel, temporarily unfreezing.

"Yes; very bad news," he replied. "Old Sheikh Ali is very ill. It sounds like pneumonia. I must go down to him at once."

He s.n.a.t.c.hed up his hat, and, without taking any further notice of Muriel, hurried out of the room. Sheikh Ali was a man whom he loved and respected, and the possible death of his friend was so great a sorrow to him that his mind was filled full of darkness, like a room in which the blinds have suddenly been pulled down. And the condition in which he found the old man confirmed his worst fears; and presently, in deep anxiety, he hastened back to the house to procure the necessaries for his proper nursing.

"Will you come with me," he said to Muriel, "and help me to look after him?"

She hesitated. "I am not much good as a nurse," she demurred, "but I'll do what I can."

"Thank you," he replied, and the words were uttered with genuine grat.i.tude.

Daniel knew something of the rudiments of medical science, and he was aware that there was very little to be done in a case of pneumonia except to keep the patient warm and to maintain his strength. When he returned, therefore, to the Sheikh's house with Muriel, he was carrying with him a small oil stove with which to warm the sick-room at night, and a pillow in its clean white cover was thrust under his arm, while Muriel held a basket containing a number of articles from the store-cupboard and medicine-chest.

The house, a whitewashed building of two storeys, stood amongst the palms, not more than three or four hundred yards distant from the monastery. As they approached it they heard the sound of wailing in the women's quarters, and at this Daniel uttered an exclamation of disgust.

"Oh, these women!" he muttered. "We mustn't let them do that. Wait a minute."

He went to the side door and knocked upon it. An old negress, a servant of the house, opened the door, her eyes red with weeping, and her withered breast bare.

"The Sheikh is dying, the Sheikh is dying!" she wailed, as Daniel questioned her.

He put his hand on her shoulder. "Go and tell them," he said, "that if I hear another sound of weeping I shall send somebody to beat you all with a stick. Do you not know the saying of the Prophet: 'Trust in G.o.d, but tether the camel'? If G.o.d has decreed that your camel shall run away it will certainly run away, but nevertheless you must do your part in preventing it. If the Sheikh is going to die he will die; but until he is dead you must do all you can to tether him to life. Let me hear no more sounds of mourning until the breath has left his body. In my country we say 'While there is life there is hope.' Go now and hope-hope in silence."

He pushed her back into the house and returned to Muriel.