Stories by English Authors: Africa Part 20

There was enough water in them to last him two or three days. It was the hour of sunset when she arrived, and she instantly set out desertward, carrying a basket containing wine and food. She had determined to live at the hotel until the days of persecution were past. The heavy sand made it hard to proceed rapidly, but she struggled on bravely, and when far enough from civilisation called aloud the signal-word agreed on.

But no one answered. All through the night she wandered, searching, till within an hour of sunrise; then she gave way and sat weeping on the sand. With daylight she rose to her feet, determined to find her lover, but had scarcely gone twenty yards before, with a low cry of grief, she knelt beside the body of a dead man. In the half-eaten, decayed features she recognised Gregorio and knew she had come too late. Undeterred by the hideous spectacle, she kissed him tenderly and lay beside him.

The sun mounted slowly in the heavens.

The living figure lay as lifeless as the dead. But after a while the woman rose and dug with her hands a hollow in the sand. She heeded not the heat, nor the flight of time, and by evening her work was done.

Raising the body in her arms, she carried it to the hollow and laid it gently down, then tearfully shovelled back the sand till it was hidden.

So Gregorio found a tomb. Nor did it remain unconsecrated, for beside it Madam Marx knelt and spoke with faltering lips the remnants of the prayers she had learned when a child. As she prayed she watched vaguely a steamer disappear behind the horizon.

The khedival mail-boat _Ramses_ sped swiftly over the unruffled surface of the sea. At the stern a tall fair Englishman sat looking on the level sh.o.r.es of Egypt and the minarets of Alexandria. With a sad smile he turned to the child who called to him by his name. They were a strange pair, for the boy was dark, and foreign-looking, and there was something of cunning in his restless black eyes. The man's large hand rested softly on the raven curls of the youngster as he muttered to himself:

"For her sake I will watch over you, and you shall grow up to be a true man."

So Xantippe's life had not been lived in vain, for she had loved and been loved, and her memory was sweet to her lover. Moreover, Gregorio's dreams of wealth for his son were to find fulfilment, and the sand of the desert, maybe, lies lightly on him.