His Hour Part 2

And they climbed the bank on to the avenue from Cairo.

"And you?" Tamara could not prevent herself from asking. "Where do you go?"

"To h.e.l.l, sometimes," he answered, and his eyes were full of mist, "but tonight I shall go to bed for a change."

Tamara was nonplussed. She felt intensely commonplace. She was even a little cross with herself. Why had she asked a question?

The Arab horse now took it into his head to curvet and bound in the air for no apparent reason, but the young man did not stir an inch--he laughed.

"Go on, my beauty," he said. "I like you to be so. It shows you are alive."

As they approached the hotel, Tamara began to hope no one would see them. No one who could tell Millicent that she had a companion. She bent down and said rather primly to the young man who was again at her side:

"I am quite safe now, thank you. I need not trouble you any further.

Good-bye! and I am so obliged to you for showing me a new way home."

He looked up at her, and his whole face was lit with a whimsical smile.

"Yes, at the gate," he said. "Don't be nervous. I will go at the gate."

Tamara did not speak, and presently they came to the turning into the hotel. Then he stopped.

"I suppose we shall meet again some day," he said. "They have a proverb here, 'Meet before dawn--part not till dawn.' They see into the future in a few drops of water in any hollow thing. Well, good-night"--and before she could answer he was off beyond the hotel up the road and then turning to the right on a sand-path, galloped out of sight into what must be the vast desert.

Where on earth could he be going to?--possibly the devil--if one knew.

CHAPTER II

When Tamara woke in the morning the recollection of her camel ride seemed like a dream. She sat for a long time at the window of her room looking out toward the green world and Cairo. She was trying to adjust things in her mind. This stranger had certainly produced an effect upon her.

She wondered who he was, and how he would look in daylight--and above all whither he had galloped into the desert. Then she wondered at herself. The whole thing was so out of her line--so bizarre--in a life of carefully balanced proprieties. And were the thoughts the Sphinx had awaked in her brain true? Yes, certainly she had been ruled by others always--and had never developed her own soul.

She was very sensitive--that last whimsical smile of the unknown had humiliated her. She felt he had laughed at her prim propriety in wishing to get rid of him before the gate. Indeed, she suddenly felt he might laugh at a good many of the things she did. And this ruffled her serenity. She put up her slender hands and pushed the thick hair back from her forehead with an impatient gesture. It all made her dissatisfied with herself and full of unrest.

"You don't tell me a thing about your Sphinx excursion last night, Tamara," Millicent Hardcastle said at breakfast, rather peevishly. They were sipping coffee together in the latter's room in dressing-gowns.

"Was it nice, and had the tourists quite departed?"

"It was wonderful!" and Tamara leant back and looked into distance.

"There were no tourists, and it made me think a number of new things--we seem such ordinary people, Millicent."

Mrs. Hardcastle glanced up surprised, not to say offended, with coffee cup poised in the air.

"Yes--you may wonder, but it is true, Milly--we do the same things every day, and think the same thoughts, and are just thoroughly commonplace and uninteresting."

"And you came to these conclusions from gazing at the Sphinx?" Mrs.

Hardcastle asked.

"Yes," said Tamara, the pink deepening for a moment in her cheeks. In her whole life she hardly ever had had a secret. "I sat there, Millicent, in the sand opposite the strange image, and it seemed to smile and mock at all little things; it appeared perfectly ridiculous that we pay so much attention to what the world says or thinks. I could not help looking back to the time when you and I were at Dresden together. What dull lives we have both led since! Yours perhaps more filled than mine has been, because you have children; but really we have both been browsing like sheep."

Mrs. Hardcastle now was almost irritated.

"I cannot agree with you," she said. "Our lives have been full of good and pleasant things--and I hope, dear, we have both done our duty."

This, of course, ended the matter! It was so undoubtedly true--each had done her duty.

After breakfast they started for a last donkey-ride, as they must return to Cairo in time for the Khedive's ball that night, which, as distinguished English ladies, they were being taken to by their compatriots at the Agency. Then on the morrow they were to start for Europe. Mrs. Hardcastle could not spare more time away from her babies.

Their visit had only been of four short weeks, and now it was December 27, and home and husband called her.

For Tamara's part, she could do as she pleased; indeed, for two pins she would have stayed on in Egypt.

But that was not the intention of fate!

"Do let us go up that sand-path, Millicent," she said, when they turned out of the hotel gate. "We have never been there, and I would like to see where it leads to--perhaps we shall get quite a new vista from the top----"

And so they went.

What she expected to find she did not ask herself. In any case they rode on, eventually coming out at a small enclosure where stood a sort of bungalow in those days--it is probably pulled down now, but then it stood with a wonderful view over the desert, and over the green world.

Tamara had vaguely observed it in the distance before, but imagined it to be some water-tower of the hotel, it was so bare and gaunt. It had been built by some mad Italian, they heard afterward, for rest and quiet.

It was a quaint place with tiny windows high up, evidently to light a studio, and there was a veranda to look at the view towards the Nile.

When they got fairly close they could see that on this veranda a young man was stretched at full length. A long wicker chair supported him, while he read a French novel. They--at least Tamara--could see the yellow back of the book, and also, one regrets to add, she was conscious that the young man was only clothed in blue and white striped silk pyjamas!--the jacket of which was open and showed his chest--and one foot, stretched out and hanging over the back of another low chair, was--actually bare!

Mrs. Hardcastle touched her donkey and hurried past--the path went so very near this unseemly sight! And Tamara followed, but not before the young man had time to raise himself and frown with fury. She almost imagined she heard him saying "Those devils of tourists!" Then with the corner of her eye ere they got out of sight, she perceived that a blue-clad Arab brought coffee on a little tray.

She glowed with annoyance. Did he think she had come to look at him?

Did he--he certainly was quite uninterested, for he must have recognized her; but perhaps not; people look so different in large straw hats to what they appear with scarves of chiffon tied over their heads. But why had she come this way at all? She wished a thousand times she had suggested going round the pyramids instead.

"Tamara," said Mrs. Hardcastle, when they were safely descending the further sand-path, with no unclothed young giant in view, "did you see there was a _man_ in that chair? What a dreadful person to be lying on the balcony--undressed!"

"I never noticed," said Tamara, without a blush. "I am surprised at you having looked, Millie--when this view is so fine."

"But, my dear child, I could not possibly help seeing him. How you did not notice, I can't think; he had pyjamas on, Tamara--and _bare feet!"_

Mrs. Hardcastle almost whispered the last terrible words.

"I suppose he felt hot," said Tamara; "it is a grilling day."

"But really, dear, no nice people, in any weather, remain--er--undressed at twelve o'clock in the day for pa.s.sers-by to look at--do they?"

"Well, perhaps he isn't a nice person," allowed Tamara. "He may be mad.

What was he like, since you saw so much, Millicent?"

Mrs. Hardcastle glanced over her shoulder reproachfully. "You really speak as though I had looked on purpose," she said. "He seemed very long--and not fat. I suppose, as his hair was not very dark, he must be an Englishman."