Burning Sands Part 6

"Ah, good morning, Muriel dear," he exclaimed, giving her cheek a friendly but quite unaffectionate kiss. "You've had a lazy morning, eh?

Feel the heat, no doubt. Yes? No? Ah, that's good, that's capital! Good morning Mr. Lane, or Daniel, I should say, since you permit it. I hope Muriel has been amusing you."

"She has," said Daniel, and Muriel blushed.

Rupert Helsingham entered the room; and, when he had made his salutations, Muriel turned to him with relief, strolling with him across to the windows through which the warm scented air of the garden drifted, bringing with it the drone of the flies and the incessant rustle of the palms.

"Please see that I don't sit next to that horrible man at lunch," she whispered.

"There's no choice," he answered. "The four of us are alone today."

"Shall we go in?" said Lord Blair, nodding vigorously to Muriel; and the three men followed her into the dining-room.

The meal proved to be less of an ordeal than she had expected. Their visitor talked at first almost exclusively to his host, who showed him, and discussed, the draft of his reply to the Minister of War; and Muriel made herself quite entrancing to Rupert Helsingham. Under ordinary circ.u.mstances she was, in spite of occasional lapses into bored silence, a quick and witty talker; one who speedily established a sympathetic connection with the person with whom she was conversing; and her laughter was frequent and infectious. It was only this Daniel Lane who had such a disturbing effect upon her equanimity; but here, at the opposite side of a large table, she seemed to be out of range of his influence, and she rejoiced in her unimpaired power to captivate the little Diplomatic secretary.

"I am going to call you Rupert at once," she said to him; and, breaking in on the opposite conversation, "Father," she demanded, "d'you mind if I call this man by his Christian name? Everybody seems to."

Lord Blair laughed, holding out his hands in a gesture which indicated that he took no responsibility, and turned to Daniel. "Do you think I ought to let her?" he asked.

To Muriel his remark could hardly have been more unfortunate, and a momentary frown gathered upon her face.

"I think it's a good idea," replied Daniel, looking quietly at her.

"Then if you quarrel you can revert to 'Mr. Helsingham' with telling effect."

Muriel made a slight movement, not far removed from a toss of her head, and, without giving any reply, continued her conversation to Rupert.

The meal was nearly finished when she became aware that her friend was not paying full attention to her remarks, but was listening to Daniel Lane, whose tongue a gla.s.s of wine had loosened, and who was speaking in a low vibrating voice, describing some phases of his life in the desert.

At this she, too, began to listen, at first with some irritation, but soon with genuine interest. She had supposed him to be more or less monosyllabic, and she was astonished at his command of languages.

As she fixed her eyes upon him he glanced at her for a moment, and there was a pause in his words. For the first time he was conscious of a look of friendship in her face; and his heart responded to the expression.

The pause was hardly noticeable, but to him it was as though something of importance had happened; and when he turned again to continue to address himself to his host, there was a warm impulse behind his words.

Muriel thereafter made no further remark to Rupert; but leaning her elbow upon the table, and fingering some grapes, gave her undivided attention to the speaker.

"It's always a matter of surprise to me," he was saying, "that people don't come out more often into the desert. You all sit here in this garden of Egypt, this little strip of fertile land on the banks of the Nile, and you look up at the great wall of the hills to east and west; but you don't ever seem to think of climbing over and running away into the wonderful country beyond."

Was it, he asked, that they were afraid of the roads that led nowhere-in-particular, and the tracks that wandered like meandering dreams? Why, those were the best kind of roads, because they merely took your feet wherever your heart suggested-to shady places where you could sprawl on the cool sand; or up to rocks where the sun beat on you and the invigorating wind blew on your face; or down to wells of good water where you could drink your fill and take your rest in the shade of the tamarisks; or along echoing valleys where there was always an interesting turning just ahead; or into the flat plains where the mirage receded before you.

"You soon grow desert-wise," he said: "you can't get lost; and at last the tracks will always bring you to some Abraham's tent, and he'll lift up his eyes and see you, and come running to you to bid you welcome. And there's bread for you, and honey, and curds, and camel's milk, and maybe venison; and tobacco; and quiet, courteous talk far into the night, under the stars; and perhaps a boy's full-throated song.... I can't think how you can live your crabbed life here in Cairo, when there's all that vast liberty so near at hand."

Muriel sipped her coffee, and listened, with a kind of excitement. His voice had some quality in it which seemed to arouse a response deep in the unfrequented places of her mind. It was as though she saw with her own eyes the scenes which he was describing. With him she ascended the bridlepath over the wall of the hills, and ran laughing down into the valleys beyond, the wind in her face and the sun at her back; with him she went sliding down the golden drifts of sand, or sprang from rock to rock along the course of forgotten torrents; and with him she sat at the camp fire and listened to the far-off cry of the little jackals.

He told of warm moonlight nights spent in the open, when the drowsy eye looks up at the Milky Way, and the mind drifts into sleep, rocked, as it were, in a cradle slung between the planets. He spoke of the first sweet vision of the opalescent dawn, when sleep ends in quiet wakefulness, without a middle period of stupor; and of the rising sun over the low horizon, when every pebble casts a liquid blue shadow and the shallowest footprints in the sand look like little pools of water.

He told of blazing days; of long journeys across hills and plains; of the drumming of the pads of the camels upon the hard tracks; of deep, shadowed gorges, and precipices touched only at the summit by the glare of the sun; of the endless waves of the sand drifts, their sharp ridges seen against the sky, like gold against blue enamel; of flaming sunsets, and mysterious dusks, when, by creeping over the top of a hillock, one might look down at ghostly gazelle drinking from a pool, and might listen to the sucking in of the water.

And more especially he spoke of the freedom of the desert. "Ah, there's liberty for you!" he exclaimed, and his eyes seemed to be alight with his enthusiasm. "That's the life for a man! There are no clocks out there, no miserable appointments to keep, no laying of foolish foundation stones, or inspecting of sweating troops, no diplomatic speeches, no wordy doc.u.ments signifying nothing. Out there the men that you meet speak the truth openly, and do all that they have to do without cunning, and without fuss or frills. If you are wandering and hungry they give you shelter and feed you; if they like you they treat you as a brother; and when they wish to kill you they tell you so, and give you four-and-twenty hours in which to quit. They are free men, and to them all men have the status of the free; all partake, so to speak, of the liberty of the desert."

He stopped rather abruptly: it was as though suddenly he had become conscious that he had engaged the attention of the company, and was abashed.

"You make me quite restless," said Lord Blair, as they rose from the table. "Some day you will find me, even conservative me, setting out into that happy playground beyond the horizon. Aha! I grow lyrical, too!"

"I've stayed too long," said Daniel. "I must say good-bye at once. I have a lot of shopping to do, and I told my men to meet me with the camels at five o'clock at Mena House."

"What!-are you going back at once?" exclaimed Rupert Helsingham, adjusting his eyegla.s.s.

"Yes, I've had enough of Cairo," he laughed. "I feel like a fish out of water here, or rather, I feel like a jackal that has ventured into a village and must make tracks over the wall and away. I've stolen a square meal and I'm off again."

He stood at the door smiling at them. He seemed now to radiate imperturbable and rather disconcerting happiness: it was as though he regarded life as a quiet, good-natured comedy, and the friends before him as partic.i.p.ators in the fun. His talking about the desert had, as it were, softened his uncouthness, and had made him of a sudden surprisingly intelligible.

"I'm immensely obliged to you for coming," said Lord Blair, warmly clasping his hand. "In fact I can't tell you how highly I value your advice and friendship."

Muriel held out her hand. She saw this man in a new light, and her hostility was temporarily checked. His words had aroused in her a number of perplexing sensations: it was like tasting a new fruit, in part sweet, in part bitter.

"I've enjoyed listening to you," she said, frankly.

"I've enjoyed talking to you," he replied, his voice sinking, but his eyes fixed powerfully upon her.

There was something dominating in his manner which again caused her to be perverse. "I thought you were talking to my father," she answered casually.

"No," he said, "I was speaking to _you_."

CHAPTER V-FAMILY AFFAIRS

Daniel Lane left the Residency with curiously mixed feelings; and as he made his way through the sun-scorched streets, he found some difficulty in bringing his thoughts to bear upon the afternoon's business. He felt that he had talked too much: it was almost as though he had faithlessly given away secrets that were sacred. Lord Blair and young Helsingham were hardly possessed of ears in which to repeat the confidences of the desert; and as for Lady Muriel, he was not in a position to say whether she had received his words with real understanding or not.

He had enjoyed his luncheon, and he was obliged to confess to himself that dainty dishes and a handsome table were by no means to be despised.

On the other hand, he had been conscious of an artificiality, a sort of pose in much that was said or done at the Residency. His long absences from his countrymen had made him rather critical, and seemed now to reveal what might otherwise have pa.s.sed undetected.

On the previous evening Muriel Blair had appeared to him-in her diamonds and frills and high-heeled shoes-to const.i.tute as artificial a picture as could well be imagined; and he was disconcerted by the fact that nevertheless she had looked delightful. And today he had overheard fragments of her conversation with Rupert Helsingham, and had been alternately charmed and distressed by the manner in which they exhibited to one another their familiarity with all that was thought to represent modern culture and refinement of taste. It had seemed to be such empty wit; and yet the effect was often, as though by accident, quite close to the truth.

"Epstein is plain-spoken by implication"; ... "dear Augustus John! He's a striking instance of the power of matter over mind"; ... "I always enjoy the Russian dancers: they are so stupid"; ... "the trouble with English Art is that it is so Scotch"; ... and so forth.

It was the wit of a certain section of London society, and it troubled him because it was restless and superficial; and he did not want to find an attractive girl, such as Muriel Blair, to be a kind of dragon-fly of a summer's day. He would like to take her right out of her environment; and yet-oh, he could not be bothered with her!

With an effort he collected his thoughts, and, standing still at the street corner, studied his notebook and his watch. The first thing to be done was to go to find his cousin, to whom he had already sent a note saying that he would call upon him in the early afternoon, a time of day when at this season of the year most reasonable people remained within doors. He had long dreaded the visit to this unknown relative; and now after the tussle of the previous night, he felt keenly the awkwardness of the situation. However, the painful family duty could not be shirked, and the sooner it was over the better.

He turned off to his left, and walked quickly over to the barracks, which were not far distant; and at the gates he enquired his way to the officers' quarters.

"Who d'you want to see, mate?" said a young corporal who sat in the shadow of the archway, picking his teeth.

Daniel told him.

"Oh, 'im!" chuckled the soldier. "Are you the man from Kodak's? I 'eard him a-cursin' and a-swearin' this morning when 'e smashed 'is camera.

Just 'ere, it was. 'E'll give you 'Ell!-'e says the strap broke. It's always somebody else's fault with 'is Lordship."

Daniel smiled. "A bit impatient like, is he?" he asked. He saw no point in explaining his ident.i.ty.