Burning Sands

Muriel stared at him with round, frightened eyes; but Lord Barthampton had shot his arrow, and now desired only to make his escape.

“I must be going,” he said, nervously. “I oughtn’t to have told you that: it slipped out.”

He could see plainly enough that she was grievously wounded; and his conscience certainly smote him, though it smote with a gentle forgiving hand.

She turned away from him with tears in her eyes; and he, feeling decidedly awkward, bade her “good-bye,” and hastened out of the room.

In the hall he came upon Benifett Bindane, who was also making towards the front door. The two malefactors greeted one another; and Mr. Bindane being, as Kate had said, “very fond of lords,” attached himself to the younger man with evident pleasure.

“That’s a smart turn-out,” he remarked, as they came out of the house into the glare of the sunshine.

“Give you a lift?” asked Lord Barthampton. “Anywhere you like.”

“Thanks,” the other replied. “I’m going to the Turf Club.”

“Right-o!” said his friend. “In you get. Hold her head, damn you, you little black monkey!” he shouted to the diminutive groom. “Now then! —imshee riglak!” – which he believed to be Arabic.

They drove off at a rattling pace, presently scattering the native traffic in the open square outside the Kars-el-Nil barracks, and nearly unseating a venerable sheikh from his slow-moving donkey.

“Why don’t you get out of the way!” shouted Lord Barthampton, turning a red face to the mild brown wrinkles of the clinging rider. “Lord! these niggers make me impatient.”

“Yes,” said his companion, who always disliked a show of temper, “I notice that it’s only the English resident officials who have learned to be patient with them.”

Arrived at the Turf Club, Lord Barthampton accepted Mr. Bindane’s invitation to refresh himself with dry ginger-ale; for, during the drive, a good idea (with him something of a rarity) had come into his head. He had suddenly recollected that Kate Bindane was Lady Muriel’s bosom friend; and it had occurred to him that if he could obtain the sympathy of the husband, the wife might plead his cause. It would be better not to say very much: he would adopt the manner which, he felt sure, was natural to him, namely that of the stern, silent Englishman.

He therefore lowered his brows as he entered the club, and looked with frowning melancholy upon the groups of laughing and chattering young men about him.

“God, what a noise!” he muttered as he sank into a seat.

Mr. Bindane stared vacantly around, and waving a flapper-like hand to a passing waiter, ordered the ginger-ale as though he were totally indifferent as to whether he ever got it or not.

“I’m feeling a bit blue today,” said Lord Barthampton, leaning back gloomily in his chair.

“What’s the matter?” asked his friend.

“I’m in love,” was the short reply.

Mr. Bindane was mildly interested. “Who with?” he asked.

“Lady Muriel,” the other replied, between his clenched teeth. He was anxious to convey an impression of sorrow sternly controlled.

“A very charming young lady,” said Mr. Bindane, “and my wife’s best friend.”

“Yes, that’s why I’m telling you,” replied Lord Barthampton, looking knowingly at him. “I’ve been wondering if you could get her to put in a word for me.”

“I’ll see,” said Benifett Bindane.

“Thanks awfully,” answered his companion.

That was all. There was no more said upon the subject; but Charles Barthampton felt that the brief and pointed conversation had been very British and straightforward. There had been no mincing of matters; what he had said had been short and soldierly, as man to man.

When he was once more alone, Mr. Bindane lay for awhile loosely in the deep red-leather chair. His open mouth, his vacant eyes, the perpetual pallor of his face, and his crumpled attitude of collapse, might have led an observer to suppose that he had passed quietly away. He was, however, merely absorbed in a series of interesting thoughts. He was thinking that a possible engagement between Lady Muriel and Lord Barthampton would probably have the effect of sending Daniel Lane back to the desert in despair. He was thinking what a great deal of tact would be needed in buying up the land of the Oases from the natives, as he intended ultimately to do. He was thinking how very tactful Daniel Lane was said to be; and how wasted, commercially, he seemed to be at the Residency.

CHAPTER XXI – THE CLASH

During the next three days Muriel flung herself into her social engagements with desperation. She wanted to prevent herself from thinking about Daniel, for her attitude towards him baffled her and put her out of conceit with herself. She was violently jealous of this Lizette, whoever she might be; but, somehow her jealousy did not estrange her from her lover. All the more passionately she wanted Daniel to belong to her: she wanted to step into his life, to drive all else out, and to take possession of him. It is true that she meant to hurt him, to punish him; but, even while being angry with him, she knew that she would ultimately forgive him.

Had her training been other than that of the typical young woman of the world, she would probably have regarded her relationship to him as at an end; but she had been brought up to the idea that men have to be indulged in their little peccadillos and excused for their excesses, and now, somewhat to her own annoyance, she found herself exonerating him. She was hurt, she was offended, she was jealous, she was disgusted; but she was not completely estranged. She declared to herself with her lips that she could never feel the same to him again; but her heart, by its very sorrows, gave the lie to her passionate mutterings.

She did not have many opportunities of speaking to him during these three days, and she shunned the beginning of what she knew was going to be a serious quarrel. But on the fourth day circumstances threw them together: and then the trouble began.

They had both accepted an invitation to luncheon with Colonel and Mrs. Cavilland; and, Muriel’s presence being the social feature of the occasion, she did not feel that she ought to disappoint her hostess. Nor could she avoid driving to the house in Daniel’s company; and it was only the shortness of the distance that prevented some sort of an outburst.

As it was, she was distant and preoccupied, and Daniel looked at her every now and then, wondering what could be the matter.

Lady Smith-Evered was one of the guests; and the question as to whether the Colonel should take her or Lady Muriel as his partner must have been the subject of much discussion. It had evidently been decided, however, that the daughter of Lord Blair took precedence of the wife of Sir Henry Smith-Evered; and Colonel Cavilland therefore led the former into the dining-room, and to Daniel fell the duty of giving his arm to the latter.

Lady Smith-Evered plainly showed her indignation at this outrage by a mere colonel of Dragoons upon the martial dignity of the Commander-in-Chief; and for much of the meal she hardly spoke a word. Daniel was thus left to look about him; and he observed how gaily Muriel laughed and joked with her partner, and with Captain Purdett upon her other hand.

Snatches of her conversation came to his ears; and he was conscious, as ever, that the things she said in public had no relation to those meant for his private hearing. When she was alone with him she spoke with frankness and sincerity; but to other people she seemed to be striving after an effect, and just now, somehow, he would have liked to have shaken her, even though she made him laugh.

The colonel was talking about the recent discovery at Alexandria of a Greek papyrus, extracts from which had appeared in translation in the Egyptian Gazette.

“It’s a treatise on love,” Colonel Cavilland was saying. “The Greeks were specialists on that subject.”

“Oh, I thought they were general practitioners,” Muriel replied, and was rewarded with a burst of laughter.

He spoke of the passages quoted as being very charming, direct, and simple; and Muriel remarked that she had always thought of the Greeks as wicked old men who sat on cold marble and made hot epigrams.

“But in this case,” he laughed, “the author seems to have been a poor shepherd.”

“Then no wonder his views were peculiar,” said she. “‘Poverty makes us acquainted with strange bedfellows,’ they say.”

The colonel glanced at her apprehensively, but Muriel’s face seemed to show perfect innocence. “Oh, well, for that matter,” she added, musingly, “I suppose wealth does, too.”

Her host’s breath appeared to be taken away by her audacity. He was not used to the style of chatter current in what are called “smart” circles. He caught Daniel’s eye, and, seeing that he had been listening, winked at him; but Daniel turned quickly away, and made another abortive attempt to engage Lady Smith-Evered in conversation.

Mrs. Cavilland observed his difficulties, and helped him to enter the gaieties at her end of the table; but here, again, he felt himself to be out of harmony with the laughter, and he began to think himself a very surly fellow.

Mrs. Cavilland was amusing her neighbours by making fun of the wives of the minor officials in Cairo; and she was clever enough to rend them so gently that her feline claws were hardly to be observed, her victims seeming, as it were, to fall to pieces of their own accord.

“What a cat I am!” she laughed. “Mr. Lane, I can see your disapproving eye on me.”

Lady Smith-Evered leant forward. “Mr. Lane disapproves of everything English,” she said. “He prefers natives.”

“Oh, it’s not as bad as that,” Daniel replied, with a smile. “I’ve got the greatest admiration for my countrymen in the rough…”

He checked himself. He felt that he was being a boor. He wanted to add: “but I detest the ways of this politely infamous thing called Society.”

It was Muriel, strangely enough, who came to his rescue. “Oh, don’t take any notice of him,” she said, speaking across the table. “That’s only his fun.”

If she spoke with bitterness she concealed the fact; and Mrs. Cavilland, knowing that he had lived much of his life in America, presumed that his form of drollery must be of that kind to which English people are notoriously obtuse. She did not wish to be thought slow in the uptake, and she therefore laughed merrily, declaring that he was “a perfect scream,” which so tickled Daniel that he, too, smiled.

There was to be a garden party at the Residency that afternoon, which, owing to the anticipated presence of a number of native dignitaries, he would be obliged to attend. As soon as luncheon was finished, therefore, he whispered to Muriel, suggesting that they should leave early, and thus have a little time together before the afternoon’s function.

“I must have an hour alone with you, Muriel,” he said. “I’m feeling all on edge.”

Muriel shook her head. “Can’t be done,” she answered casually. “I’ve promised Willie Purdett I’d go for a spin with him in his new car.”

“Well, tell him you’ve changed your mind,” he said, deliberately. “I want you.”

“I’m afraid you’re too late, my dear,” replied Muriel, and turned away from him.

Later, at the garden party he watched her as she moved about the lawn; and he seemed to be unusually sensitive to the number of young men who hovered around her. His philosophy had wholly deserted him, and his mind was disturbed and miserable.

Once he joined a group in which she was the principal figure; and again he was distressed by the tone of her remarks. It was almost as though she were trying to offend his ear.

Somebody had said “The good die young,” but Daniel had not heard the earlier part of the conversation; and Muriel replied, “Yes, dullness is the most deadly thing on earth, and the most contagious.”

He did not wait to hear more: he turned his back on her and walked away, his heart heavy within him. He was utterly out of tune with her.

That evening she was to dine with the Bindanes at Mena House and to spend the night with them, so as to be ready for an early start next morning upon an all-day excursion into the desert. It was to be a large and elegant picnic; and Daniel had been glad to be able to make his work an excuse for not joining the party.

Soon after dark, therefore, he found himself driving out to the Pyramids with Muriel and her maid; and on reaching the hotel he asked her to come into the garden for the half-hour before the first gong would ring.

“Oh, it’s so dark out there,” she replied. “I want to have a talk to you, too. Couldn’t we find a corner in the lounge?”

“No,” he said, “it’s stuffy inside.”

He took her arm, and led her towards the dense group of trees which surrounded the tennis court. She did not resist. This state of veiled hostility was intolerable, and she welcomed the thought of a pitched battle with him.

The night was moonless; and the hot south wind which had been blowing during the day had dropped, leaving the upper air so filled with a hazy dust that the stars were dim. The darkness, when they had passed out of the range of the hotel lights, was intense; and it was with difficulty that they found their way to a bench upon the lawn, under the blackness of the overhanging foliage.

Here they seated themselves in silence; and, though they were close to one another, each could feel, rather than see, the presence of the other. The distant clanging of the tram-car bells, and an occasional grumble of an automobile, reminded them that civilization was not far removed; but here in the obscurity all was hushed, and there was a sense of detachment from the busy ways of mankind which was accentuated by the ominous hooting of an owl and by the gentle rustle of the trees, as the leaves were stirred by the dying wind.

“Well?” said Muriel.

“Well?” he replied. “Let’s have it out.”

“Oh, then you know there’s something wrong.”

“I know you have been trying to hurt me for the past two or three days,” he answered.

He put his hand upon hers as it rested on her knee, and drew her towards him; but she resisted the movement, and he noticed that her fingers, which pushed his own away, were cold.

“Tell me,” he said. “What has been the matter? You have made me very unhappy.”

“There’s nothing to tell,” she answered. “Only …”

“Only what?”

“I don’t think you know what love is,” she murmured, and her voice was so low that her words were almost lost in the darkness.

“But that is just what I was going to say to you,” he replied.

She uttered a little laugh. “It seems that we shall always interpret things differently,” she said.

She turned to him, and in the obscurity his face seemed strange to her. She could not construct the features, nor supply the well-known lines now lost in the shadow. She saw only the great forehead, faintly white, and the upper part of his cheeks; but his eyes were hidden in two deep cavities of blackness, and all expression was extinguished.

“There will always be these misunderstandings,” he told her, “so long as you are tied to this sort of social life.”

“I prefer it to the underworld,” she answered, and her heart beat, for she was launching her attack.

“What d’you mean by the ‘underworld’?” he asked.

“The world that Lizette belongs to,” she replied.

She had said it! – she had hurled her lightning, and now she waited for the roll of the thunder. But there was no cracking of the heavens: only silence; and, as she waited, she could feel the beating of her pulse in her throat.

At last he spoke, and his voice was quiet and clear.

“Please tell me exactly what Cousin Charles has said about Lizette.”

She turned quickly on him. “Why should you think it was Charles Barthampton who told me?”

“Because I was with Lizette the day I first met him,” he answered.

“Then you don’t deny it?”

“Deny it?” he repeated, with scorn in his voice. “Why on earth should I deny it?”

She shrugged her shoulders. “A man generally denies that sort of thing to the girl he wants to marry,” she said.

“That only shows how little you understand me,” he replied, and there was despair in his words.

“O, I understand you well enough,” she answered, bitterly. “You are just like all men. But what I can’t understand is how you could be going about with that woman at the same time that you were making love to me.”

Again he was silent. It seemed that he had to turn her words over in his mind before their significance was clear.

“You mean,” he said at length, “that if I had told you Lizette was an old flame of mine now set aside, you would have condoned it?”

“Women have to forgive a great deal in the men they love,” she answered.

“You mean,” he went on, ruthlessly, “that you think me capable of coming to you with that woman’s kisses on my lips?”

It was she, now, who was silent for a while. “I’ve got to think you capable of it,” she said at last. “You were with her only a few days ago.”

“Yes,” he answered. “I was with her, as you say, a few days ago. Well?”

She moved restlessly in her seat. “That’s not the way to ask my forgiveness,” she said.

Suddenly his shadowy bulk seemed to loom up above her. He gripped her wrist with his left hand, and drew her towards him; while the fingers of his right hand laid themselves upon her throat. His face came close to hers.

“How dare you!” he whispered. “How dare you think of me like that? D’you mean to say that if all this were true, if I were living with that woman, you would be prepared to forgive me?”

She did not speak. “Answer me!” he cried, and his arms crushed her to him.

“I don’t know,” she gasped. “I only know I love you, Daniel.”

He loosed his hold upon her. “Oh, you’re tainted,” he exclaimed. “Intrigues, jealousies, deceptions, quarrels, reconciliations – they’re all part of your scheme of life. I suppose you revel in them, just as you revel in the latest divorce case at your gossiping tea-parties, and the latest dresses from Paris, and the latest dancing craze, and the latest thing in erotic pictures or sensuous music…”

Muriel put her hands over her ears. “I won’t listen!” she cried. “You don’t know what you’re saying.”

He stood in front of her, his hands driven into the pockets of his coat. His massive head and shoulders shut out the misty stars, and as she looked up at him he appeared to her as a black and vaporous elemental risen from the ancient soil of Egypt.

It was evident that he was trying to control his anger; and when he spoke again his voice was quiet and restrained.

“I’m afraid I must seem to you very rude,” he said, “but when one is speaking out of the pit of despair the words one utters are black words. These last few days I’ve been seeing you with critical eyes: watching you, listening to you. And the result is …”

“What?” she asked, as he paused.

“I realize more and more how I dislike all this fooling with the surface of things – surface emotions, surface wit, surface honesty. I can’t get down to the real You: the veneer is so thick. All that I have seen and heard belongs to the superficial. I’m beginning to think there’s nothing real or solid under it all. The things you say are clever empty things; the things you do…”

She rose to her feet and faced him – a shadow confronting a shadow.

“We seem to be getting further away all the time from the original point of contention,” she said, her voice rising. “I suppose that is what is called ‘confusing the issue.’ It is rather clever. But please try to remember that I am accusing you of deceit and disgusting duplicity. I am accusing you of being with a woman whom even your obnoxious cousin couldn’t stand seeing you with, so that he had to try to separate you.”

“Oh, he said that, did he?” Daniel’s tone was apathetic.

“Do you deny it?” she asked, quickly.

“No,” he answered. “If you believe the story, it has served its purpose.”

“How can I not believe it?” she cried. “You don’t deny it.”

“Why should I deny it?” he demanded. “It is not a compromise with you I am looking for: I am looking for your trust.”

“Trust!” she scoffed. “You come to me and whisper to me of your wonderful desert, and the wonderful times we shall have there together; you tell me that I am your mate, your sweetheart; your chosen one: and all the time you are carrying on a liaison with a wretched woman in a back street.”

“Yes,” he answered, “and, believing that, you decide to have it out with me and then make it up. Oh, you sicken me! If I were to tell you the whole thing were nonsense, you wouldn’t believe me. You might even be disappointed. The tale would have been found to have no point: it wouldn’t be up to the standard of the stuff you read in your French novels.”

Muriel sat down upon the bench once more, and her hands fell listlessly to her sides. “I don’t think there’s any use in talking,” she murmured.

“No, none,” he answered. “I shall never get to the real you until you cut loose from all this. We belong at present to different worlds. I’m all at sea when I try to look at things from your point of view.”

“Very well, then,” she said. “Please take me back to the hotel. I shall be late for dinner.”

There was a complete silence between them as they made their way through the trees and along the gravel path towards the strongly-illuminated veranda. Through open doors the lounge could be seen, and here groups of visitors were gathering in readiness for dinner. The chatter of voices and little gusts of laughter came to their ears as they approached; and an elegant young man at the piano was lazily fingering the notes of Georges Hüe’s haunting J’ai pleuré en rêve.

Daniel paused at the steps of the veranda, but Muriel walked on, and, without turning her head, passed into the house. He stood for a moment, after she had gone, staring into the brightly lit room with dazed uncomprehending eyes: then he turned towards the desert, and presently was engulfed in the night.

CHAPTER XXII – THE CALL OF THE DESERT

As soon as Daniel arrived at the Residency next morning he sent a message to Lord Blair, asking that he might see him. He had hardly slept at all during the night, and his haggard face showed the ravages of his emotion.

Lying on his bed upon the rocks above his camp, he had striven to examine the entire situation with an impartial mind; and he would not admit that his philosophy had failed him. His reason strove to assert itself, and to quell the tumult of his tortured heart; and again and again he reminded himself that there was no such thing as sorrow of the soul. It was only his body that was miserable; and could he but manage to identify himself with the spiritual aspect of his entity, the pain of the material world would be forgotten in the serenity of his spirit. This was a first principle of his philosophy; and yet it seemed now to be utterly beyond his attainment.

“I could not believe in a merciful God,” he thought to himself, “unless I believed that He had placed within the reach of every man the means to overcome sorrow. Therefore the means must be at hand, if only I can take hold of them.”

And again: “My reason, my soul, is unconquerable. It stands above my miserable body. If only I can look at this disaster with the calm eyes of the spirit, I shall get the victory over the wretched torment of my heart.”

In itself the actual quarrel with Muriel had presented no insuperable obstacle to their relationship. Had the trouble been an isolated incident, it would not have been difficult for them to have kissed and made friends; but Daniel realized that the differences between them had been growing for some time, and for many days now it had seemed clear to him that Muriel was too chained in the prison of her class ever to understand the freedom of the desert. He despaired of her; yet he loved her so deeply that their estrangement was, beyond all words, terrible to him.

While he waited in his room for Lord Blair’s reply, he paced to and fro; and in his weary brain the battle which had raged all night came ever nearer to a definite issue.

“I must get away from it all,” he kept saying to himself. “I must go back to the desert, for only there shall I find peace.”

At length a servant came to him, saying that Lord Blair would receive him; and thereat he betook himself to the Great Man’s study, his impulsive mind made up on the instant and eager to meet his destiny.