Burning Sands

Near the window he saw Lady Smith-Evered, talking to a pale young Guardsman, who appeared to be in immediate need of a tonic. He went over to her, and made his salutations with cordiality, for a year ago he had made her acquaintance at the Residency, and he had a vague recollection that she had taken offence at something or other he had said. He held out his hand, but once more his pocket became its sudden place of refuge as she bowed with all the stiffness that her undulating figure permitted, and, with no more than a glance in his direction, turned to continue her conversation with the Guardsman.

In another part of the room an elderly man with sleek, grey hair was talking to a heavy matron whose respectable cloth dress looked as though it had been made for her by a builder of club-room furniture. Daniel thought he recognized the man, and took a few steps towards him, but, deciding that he was mistaken, turned on his heel and, narrowly avoiding a collision with a small table, returned to Muriel.

The curious thing was that though these situations were embarrassing, he did not appear awkward. Muriel observed this remarkable fact, and wondered at it. He was certainly out of place in a drawing-room, she thought, but he was not therefore out of countenance; and his sang-froid seemed to deserve a more friendly treatment than it was receiving. She therefore got up as he approached her, and in a very audible voice asked him if he would let her help him to arrange his official quarters on the morrow.

He thanked her, and then, lowering his voice, asked her if she could explain Lady Smith-Evered’s very marked hostility.

“Why, don’t you know?” Muriel whispered. “She told me all about it: she said you had run down the Army once when you were talking to her last year.”

“Nonsense,” said Daniel, “I’m sure I never did.”

Muriel nodded. “Yes, you did. She said you spoke of the officers of her pet regiment as men who looked as though they’d been through the ranks.”

“But I meant that as a compliment,” he answered. “I meant they looked as though they weren’t afraid of hard work. Had she any other complaints?”

“No, I think that was her only grievance.”

Before she could stop him, he turned and walked straight across the room to Lady Smith-Evered, and came to a halt immediately in front of her.

“I was just asking Lady Muriel how I had offended you,” he said, with disconcerting directness; “and she tells me it was because you thought I had disparaged some of our soldier friends.”

The General’s lady flushed. He saw the red glow creep up from her neck to her face, under the thick powder, and her eyes gleamed menacingly; but she only inclined her head.

“I want to apologize,” he went on. “I’m most awfully sorry: my remarks were stupid, and I think I must have been trying to say something bright. Will you please forgive me?”

The flush deepened. “I’m glad you apologize,” she said, and she glanced at the Guardsman beside her, as though to bid him take notice of what she supposed to be the discomfiture of the offender.

“I’m very glad that you accept my apology,” he said, and with a bow he left her.

“What on earth did you say?” asked Muriel, when he had returned to her.

“I apologized,” he answered, quietly.

“Ate humble pie?” she queried, with a touch of disdain.

“I had hurt her feelings: I’m always sorry to annoy anybody,” he replied.

“Well,” she remarked, “I think you’ve rather annoyedme now, by climbing down like that.” She did not feel that humility suited him, and she was conscious of a sense of disappointment.

“My good girl,” he whispered, “you’ve got a lot to learn from the philosophers. You must let me put you through a course of reading.”

Her disappointment flamed into anger at his words, and she responded coldly to his adieux. When he had left the room she sat down once more upon the sofa, and in the few moments of silence which followed, she experienced a variety of sensations. She felt as though he were the schoolmaster again who had scolded her; she felt abashed and did not know why; she felt angry with him, and, after their happy hours together, her displeasure fell like a destructive hand upon the day’s edifice; she felt that they belonged to different worlds, and that it was hopeless to attempt to understand him; she felt that she was right and he was wrong, and yet there was a doubt at the back of her mind as to whether the opposite might not somehow be the case.

CHAPTER XIV – THE COURT PHILOSOPHER

In the West an interest in Philosophy is considered to be an indication of eccentricity; and the thought brings before the imagination some long-haired and ancient professor, detached from the active world, wandering around a college quadrangle, his hands folded, and his face upturned to the sky as though averted from the stains of spilt food upon his breast. In the East, however, the Philosopher is held in high honour; and his vocation calls to mind a thousand tranquil figures each of whom has been the power behind an Oriental throne.

Daniel Lane was a philosopher by inclination and by education, and his great common sense was the definite consequence of careful reasoning.

He believed that Right was an unconquerable force which needed no display of manners or sounding of trumpets to signal its movement; and so long as he did not offend against the laws formulated by his philosophy, he did not look for difficulties or defeat.

Nor was he a man who could be terrorized by any threats; and though Lord Blair had warned him that assassination was a likely end to a political career in Cairo, he was not in the slightest degree troubled by the thought. Very reluctantly he consented to profit by the activities of the Secret Service; and he determined to dispense with their aid as soon as he had made himself acquainted with the ramifications of native intrigue.

He began his work at the Residency, therefore, without trepidation; and on the first morning of his official employment he inaugurated a procedure which before nightfall was the talk of many in the native quarter.

In a secluded corner of the garden, at the end of a short terrace at the edge of the Nile, there was a luxuriant group of palms, in the shade of which stood a marble bench of Arabic design, built in a half-circle upon a base of Damascus tiles. A mass of shrubs and prolific rose bushes shut it off from the main grounds; while from passing boats it was screened by a low parapet covered by a wild tangle of flowering creepers. This sheltered and peaceful alcove was promptly appropriated by Daniel, and in this setting he made his appearance in the political life of Cairo.

His first visitor was a wealthy, silk-robed land-owner from Upper Egypt, who desired to lay certain complaints before the British authorities, in regard to the hostile actions of a native inspector of Irrigation. The man had been shown into the waiting-room in the Residency, where he had been filled with anxiety by the ticking of the typewriters in the adjoining room, the constant ringing of telephone bells, and the hurried passage to and fro of clerks and liveried servants. He had wondered whether he knew sufficient English to make himself understood without the aid of an interpreter, and whether, if the interpreter’s services were required, he would have to give him very handsomebackshish to render his tongue persuasive.

Therefore, when he was led presently across the lawn to the sunny terrace beside the Nile, where he came upon a mild and quiet figure who stood smoking his pipe, and idly tossing pebbles into the placid waters, and who now greeted him in the benevolent language of the Koran, his agitation left him upon the moment, and with it went the need of cunning. He stated his case frankly, as he strolled to and fro with Daniel in the sunlight, and he blessed God and his Prophet that the interview which he had dreaded so long in anticipation should prove so undisturbing in actuality.

Daniel next found himself seated upon the marble bench with a caravan-master who had failed through the ordinary channels to obtain redress for the illegal seizure of certain goods at the Tripolitan frontier; and this personage’s amazement at the Englishman’s knowledge of the desert routes was profound.

Later, a deputation of sheikhs from Dongola was received in the shade of the rustling palms: grave, anxious men who had come to speak of the disaffection of certain neighbouring tribes, and to express their own loyalty, which was somewhat in doubt.

At the close of the interview, while he was warning them against revolt, Daniel happened to notice a bundle of stout wooden faggots lying near by in readiness for use as supports for some young trees which had recently been planted. He went across to them, and selecting one of them, carried it back to his seat upon the bench; and presently, turning to the sheikhs, he asked if any man amongst them could break such a faggot across his knees.

The youngest member of the deputation, a magnificent specimen of negroid humanity, took the faggot in his brown hands, and strained his muscles in the attempt to break it, but without success. His colleagues, older men, made no trial of their lesser strength, but were satisfied to declare the task to be impossible.

Daniel rose and took it from them, and a moment later flung it to the ground in two halves. “That faggot,” he said, quietly resuming his seat, “may be likened to the land of Dongola, which is to be the strong support of the fruit-bearing tree of the Sudan. But if it fail in its useful duty, it may thus be broken asunder by hands more powerful than yours, and be cast into the flames.”

To the native mind a demonstration of this kind was more potent than any words, and the deputation of sheikhs left the alcove, carrying with them a tale which would be told to their children’s children.

As they retreated across the lawn towards the entrance, Daniel suddenly caught sight of Muriel, whose face peered out from amongst the rose bushes, as though she were looking to see if he were alone.

“Hullo!” he called out; “what are you doing here?”

“Spying on you,” she answered, coming out into the open, her arms full of roses which she had been picking.

“That’s very wrong of you,” he said.

“Well, you’ve taken possession of my particular corner,” she laughed, “and I always get my roses from here.”

“I’m sorry,” he replied as they seated themselves upon the marble bench. “I though you slacked about upstairs until midday.”

She looked at him squarely. “You’ve got a wrong idea about me altogether,” she declared. “It’s true I don’t spend my mornings in smashing up Government property… By the way, why did you break that wooden stake across your knee?”

He laughed quietly. “It was a parable: it represented a certain province of the Soudan, and its possible fate at England’s hands.”

She thought it out. “I wonder what would have happened,” she mused, “if you’d found that you couldn’t break it. I suppose in that case you would have said it represented England.”

“No,” he answered, “I should have been in a bad fix, and it would have served me right for showing off. But I don’t often attempt what I don’t think I can do. It’s a bad thing to fumble about with anything that’s beyond one, like a dog with an uncrackable bone.”

“Somebody ought to have invented a proverb,” she said, “like ‘Don’t worry what you can’t bite.’ But, you know, you’re fumbling about with me very badly.”

“Would you rather I bit clean through you right away?” he asked. “Supposing I said I thought I had smashed you open already…?”

“I’d pity your strange delusion,” she answered, and they both laughed, though Muriel did not feel hilarious.

“Well, supposing I just said I thought I could do so, and was going to try?”

“I’d reply: ‘Any thing, so long as you don’t worry me.’”

Again they laughed, and this time Muriel did so with more sincerity, for she felt that she had answered him well.

He took a rose from the bunch in her hands, and smelt it thoughtfully. “Yes, I’m going to try,” he said at length. “I’m going to understand you, and then make you understand yourself. I’m going to show you yourself.”

“You’re a busy man,” she answered, at once estranged; “you’d better not take on any new job.”

“It’s worth while, I think,” he replied.

There was something in his voice which changed the tone of their conversation, and arrested the development of her hostile feelings. The flippancy of their words died away, and a new seriousness, a salient eventfulness, took its place. Suddenly Muriel was filled with longing to be understood, to be laid bare mentally both to him and to herself. She felt solitary and her heart cried out for the enlightenment of friendship; yet she did not dare to make an intimate of this man, whose treatment of her sex did not seem to be conspicuously delicate. Nevertheless the inadequacy, the inutility of her method of life was very forcibly presented to her, and she seemed to be beating at the bars of her cage. There was something so flat and unprofitable in all that she had done, and the desire was urgent in her to realize herself and expand.

“O, I want to be taught,” she exclaimed, “I want to be taught…” She checked herself, and was silent.

He looked at her in surprise, for she uttered the words with intensity, and it was clear that she meant them; but it was not clear that they were prompted by more than a passing emotion, for presently she began to talk about the lighter things of her life, and she spoke of the various events in prospect which would keep her from brooding. The greater part of each day for the next week or so was already filled; and Muriel spoke of these coming events as though they were dispensations granted to her by a benevolent Fortune for her heart’s comfort.

“I’ve come to the conclusion,” she said, “that the only way to be happy is to be surrounded by amusing people, so that there is no opportunity for thinking about oneself.”

He shook his head. “No, you’re wrong. Your happiness must come from within, from the contentment and fullness of your own mind. The Buddha once said ‘Let us dwell free from yearning, among men who are anxious’; and there is an anonymous Oriental poem which says something about the lost paradise being hidden, really, in the human breast. My good girl,” he exclaimed, warming to his subject, “don’t you realize that what you can get from this restless world of ‘society’ you live in is only pleasure, not happiness, and even at that it doesn’t last. You are like a punctured wheel: so long as people are pumping you up, you seem to be all right, but when they leave you alone you go flat, because your inner tube isn’t sound. You ought to be alone in the desert for a bit: it would do you all the good in the world.”

Muriel looked at him questioningly. “Were you alone in the desert?” she asked. There had come into her mind a vision of that harîm of which she had heard tell.

“Well, I wasn’t exactly alone …” he replied; for he had many friends among the natives.

His answer gave fresh colour to her thoughts, and a sense of annoyance crept over her.

“It seems to me,” she remarked, “that I ought to remind you of the Biblical saying, ‘Physician, heal thyself.’”

She got up, and, with a little nod to him, strolled back to the rose-bushes. He watched her as she added fresh blooms to the bunch she was carrying; and he noticed how the sunlight caught her hair and made it beautiful. He would have liked to have gone after her and taken her in his arms.

Presently he returned to the house, and, finding that there were no more native visitors, went to talk over serious matters of policy with the regular Secretaries.

He remained to luncheon at the Residency, and at the table Lord Blair enquired eagerly as to whether he had found his first morning’s work interesting, and appeared to be relieved to hear that such was the case.

Muriel joined in the conversation. “I was eavesdropping behind the bushes,” she said, “and I can say with confidence that Mr. Lane enjoyed it all thoroughly, especially the part where he smashed up the gardener’s work of weeks.” Therewith she related the incident of the wooden stake, but in her narrative the faggot became an immense tree-trunk.

Lord Blair rubbed his hands. “That’s the sort of thing!” he exclaimed. “Dear me, dear me! – what strength you have, Daniel!”

“Yes,” said Muriel, “his mere presence would make the dullest party piquant. One has only to recollect that if he were suddenly to get out of control, every person in the vicinity would run the risk of being banged into a boneless emulsion…”

She broke off with a laugh, and Daniel smiled affably. Somehow, in spite of his Herculean proportions, he was not a man one would associate with violence.

After luncheon, Daniel spent some time in talking to Lord Blair in regard to native affairs; and it was already half past three when he left the Great Man’s study, and walked across the hall to the main entrance. Here he encountered Lady Muriel, who was just going off upon her visit to the bazaars. She was about to step into a very new and luxurious automobile, which Mrs. de Courcy Cavilland, wife of the Colonel of the Dragoons, had recently purchased to the honour of the regiment and to the dismay of her husband. This lady, a small fluffy woman, with innocent blue eyes and sharp little teeth, was making gushing remarks to Muriel as Daniel appeared at the head of the steps; and three young Dragoon officers were standing behind her, like nice little dogs awaiting their turn to go through their tricks. Actually they were excellent fellows, but in the presence of their colonel’s wife, they bore little resemblance to the fire-eating cavalrymen of tradition; and Daniel, as he looked down upon them from the top of the steps, wondered which was the more disastrous influence in a regiment – that of the colonel’s wife upon the younger officers, or that of the younger officers upon the colonel’s wife.

He felt a sort of gloomy interest in the group before him; and, as his presence seemed to be unnoticed, he leaned against the jamb of the door, hat in hand, watching the scene through a recurrent haze of tobacco-smoke.

“I suggest,” Mrs. Cavilland was saying to Muriel whose back was turned to him, “that we drive up the Mousky, and go first to the scent bazaar. Willie Purdett, here, wants to buy some scent for his mother – Lady Mary, you know. And then I must go to the brass bazaar: I promised dear Lady Agatha Lawer I’d get her one of those tea-tray things. She so hates going to the bazaars herself: she says they’re so smelly. Personally, I simply love the East…”

Muriel took her seat in the car, and as she did so she caught sight of Daniel.

“Hullo!” she exclaimed, “I thought you’d gone.”

He took his pipe out of his mouth, and told her he was just going.

Muriel introduced him to Mrs. Cavilland, who stared at him with disdain, casting a withering glance upon the disreputable hat he was holding in one hand, and upon the pipe in the other. She then turned away as though the sight were unbearable.

“Mr. Lane is a cousin of your friend Charles Barthampton,” Muriel told her; and thereat her manner changed with surprising suddenness, for the British peerage was as meat and drink to her.

“Why, of course,” she answered, “I can see the likeness now;” and she glanced with surprise at the mischievous smile – almost a wink – which Muriel directed at him. “You’re new to Cairo?” she added. ”You must come and see me: I’m always at home on Tuesdays.“

“Yes,” said Muriel, “that will be very nice for him: he loves tea-parties, don’t you, Daniel dear?”

Daniel looked at her curiously. His Christian name sounded strange from her lips, and he wondered why she had used it now for the first time. Her expression suggested that there was a private joke between them, and the intimacy pleased him.

“Yes, Muriel dear,” he replied, gravely, and Muriel gasped; “but you needn’t blurt out my secret.” He turned to Mrs. Cavilland as though to explain. “I’m rather addicted to tea-drinking and quiet gossip,” he said.

Mrs. Cavilland thought him somewhat forward, but she excused it in one who was so well-connected. “We tear each other to pieces on Tuesdays,” she laughed.

He did not reply. He was still wondering why his name, Daniel, should have sounded so pleasant to his ears, and why the expression of silent understanding on Muriel’s face should have stirred him so subtly. It was as though their friendship had taken a leap forward.

He stepped to the side of the car, and put his hand on Muriel’s arm. “Don’t get too tired,” he said, “or you won’t enjoy your dance tonight.”

“Are you coming?” Mrs. Cavilland asked him.

“No,” he answered, “I have a previous engagement with a lady in the desert.”

“Who?” asked Muriel, quickly. She was taken off her guard.

“A very dear friend,” he replied. “Her name is Sleep.”

CHAPTER XV – A BALL AT THE GENERAL’S

Lady Smith-Evered’s dance was a social event of much importance, and those members of the English community who were not invited had perforce to regard themselves as outside the ranks of the elect: a fact which led that night to much moodiness on the part of ambitious young women who wandered about their creditable little flats and houses, hating their mediocre husbands. On the other hand, those to whom invitations had come somewhat unexpectedly, vied with one another in their efforts to indicate that their presence at the General’s house was to be regarded as a matter of course; and herein, perhaps, lay the explanation of those curious demonstrations of nonchalance which were so frequently to be observed – the careless attitudes, the friendly words to the servants behind the supper buffet, the assumed knowledge of the plan of the house and garden, and the casual remarks to host and hostess.

Muriel, of course, was the outstanding figure of the ball: not so much because of her looks, for there were many well-favoured young women in the ballroom, nor because of her charming frock, for the beginning of the winter season in Cairo is notable for a general display of recent purchases; but rather because she was her father’s daughter, and, as his heiress, one of the most frequent victims of the familiarities of the London Press.

She paid little attention, however, to the many pairs of eyes which scrutinized her; for she had come here to enjoy herself, and her dancing program was full.

As an opening to the ball, she danced with the General; but her efforts to avoid having her toes trodden upon caused her to indulge in such antics that she speedily manœuvred him to a convenient sofa, where he puffed and blew until the military band had ceased and again renewed its conscientious din.

There are few noises so dispiriting as a British military band’s rendering of American ragtime; but, as has already been stated, Muriel was determined to enjoy herself, and, save for an occasional desire to sandbag the conductor, she was entirely untroubled by ill-humoured thoughts as her elegant partners swung her around the room, or led her out to rest in the illuminated garden, where a hundred gaily coloured Chinese lanterns dispelled the mystic sorrow of the moonlight.

After some two or three hours of dancing, however, she began to grow weary; and when something went wrong temporarily with the suspender which held up one of her stockings, she was glad enough to come to rest in the supper-room. Here she seated herself next to her hostess, who was just forming a big party at a little table, and who was jovially endeavouring to pretend that there was much fun to be derived from jamming oneself into the smallest possible space and eating with one hand.

Lady Smith-Evered, having swallowed during the evening quite a lot of champagne, was in a talkative and even confidential mood. On several occasions she nudged Muriel, and whispered loudly to her from behind her fan, calling her attention to the General, who, at a neighbouring table, was flirting resolutely with Kate Bindane.

“He’s such a Lothario,” she whispered: “I’m quite thankful he’s growing old; though, mind you, he doesn’t often show signs of age yet.” She laughed hoarsely, and turned her eyes upwards with a nod to express admiration for his virility.

Muriel, as she looked at her, conceived a violent horror of old age; and inwardly she prayed that in her own case she would know when to abandon the thoughts which only Youth can make beautiful.