Burning Sands

“Why, what is the matter, Daniel?” Lord Blair asked, as he entered the room. “You looked troubled.”

“I am more than troubled,” said Daniel. “I’m in despair. It’s about Muriel: I’m afraid we’ve had a definite quarrel.”

Lord Blair wiggled in his chair, apparently with annoyance, though possibly with nothing more than an itch.

“Ah – a lovers’ tiff …” he commented; but Daniel stopped him with a gesture.

“No, it’s a total estrangement,” he said, fiercely. “It’s been growing gradually, and now there’s nothing to be done. I’ve come to give you my resignation. I’m going back to El Hamrân.”

Lord Blair suddenly sat back in his chair, his eyes fixed on his friend, the tips of his fingers touching the edge of the table as though some movement had been arrested. “My dear Daniel,” he said at last, and he spoke sharply, “control yourself! This is an absurd situation.”

“Oh yes, I know,” Daniel replied, “you think I’m just a fool in love, who’s going off in a huff. No, that’s not it. I want to go because I’ve lost my happiness since I’ve been in Cairo: I’m utterly out of tune with the people I meet. Why, yesterday at the Cavillands’ I could feel myself being a boor and a bore. I couldn’t laugh… Yes, that’s it; since I’ve been amongst all these witty people I’ve forgotten how to laugh. Good God! – I hav’n’t smiled for weeks. Out there in the desert, when my mind was at peace, I was always full of laughter; I was always chuckling to myself, just from sheer light-heartedness or whatever you like to call it. But here my heart’s in my boots, and I’m blue all day long. I can’t even whistle.”

“I think – indeed, I am sure – you are taking things too seriously,” said Lord Blair.

“You’re right,” Daniel answered, quickly, interrupting him. “The gay life makes me painfully serious; this fashionable stuff fills me with gloom. It’s all this blasted chase after amusement, this immense preoccupation with the surface of things, that gives me the hump. You see, to my way of thinking, light-heartedness only comes from a tranquil sort of mind. It’s something deep inside oneself; one doesn’t get it from outside – though, on the other hand, outside things do certainly obscure one’s inner vision. Real happiness – not just pleasure – seems to be absolutely essential to life and to all human relations. It’s the key to diplomacy. You’ve got to see the fun of things, you’ve got to bubble inside with happiness before you can really govern or be governed. You’ve got to be the exact opposite of sinister, and nearly the opposite of solemn, before you can get any punch into your dealings with your fellow men, don’t you think? And how, in God’s name, can one be happy unless there is the right mental atmosphere of truth, and sincerity, and trust, and benevolence, and broad understanding?”

He spoke with intensity, and the movement of his hands added expression to his words.

“But do you realize,” said Lord Blair, “what an immense, what an unqualified success your work here has been? And now you would throw it all up just because a chit of a girl has annoyed you.”

“No, you don’t understand,” Daniel replied. “I might have been able to ignore all this miserable Society business; but when Muriel and I grew fond of one another I was drawn into it. And then, gradually, I began to see that that was her world. At first I hoped she would be the buffer between me and that world, and a non-conductor, so to speak, but I find that she transmits the shocks to me direct.”

He told Lord Blair something of the more tangible trouble between them, but he would not reveal all the bitter yearning of his heart. He might have said “I love her, I want her to be wholly mine, I want her to come over to my way of thinking so that I can show her where real happiness is to be found.” He might have said “I am distracted by her, and I want to go away to forget her dear eyes, and the touch of her lips, and the intoxication of her personality.” But on these matters he was silent.

As he talked his mind was filled with a passionate desire for the peace of the desert. He was like a monk, longing for the refuge of his quiet monastery walls; and he seemed to hear in his heart the gentle voice of the wilderness calling to him to come back into the sweet smiling solitude, away from the sorrows of the superficial world.

“I must go back to El Hamrân,” he said. “I beg you not to stop me.”

Lord Blair looked at him with pity. He was in the presence of an emotion which he could not altogether understand, but the reality of which was very apparent. “There must be no question,” he said, “of your resignation. Go away for a time, if you wish, but you mustn’t play the deserter.”

An idea had suddenly come into his head, and he turned to Daniel with relief in his anxious eyes. “Now listen to me,” he said. “Go back to El Hamrân: I can send you there on business.”

He hunted about amongst his papers, and presently produced the memorandum which Benifett Bindane had handed to him. “Here are some matters upon which Mr. Bindane desires information before he starts his tour of the Oases in three or four weeks’ time. You can send your answers in to him on his arrival at El Homra; and after that you can wait at El Hamrân in case he comes there. After that I won’t hurry you to return: I can give you leave of absence. And then, when your mind is more settled you can come back here. The winter season will be over, and what you call ‘Society’ will have left the country for the summer.”

Daniel fell in with the suggestion gladly. “You are very patient with me,” he said. “I don’t deserve it: I feel I’m being very cranky.”

“I don’t want to lose you,” the elder man replied, and his sincerity was apparent. But he was much startled when Daniel asked if he might leave at once.

“Today?” he exclaimed, in surprise.

“Yes, now,” said Daniel, emphatically. “There are practically no outstanding matters. I can put Lestrange wise about everything in ten minutes.”

Lord Blair looked at him, curiously. “Muriel won’t be back from Mena House until this evening,” he said. “Don’t you want to see her before you go?”

“No,” he replied, quickly and decisively, rising to go, “I have nothing to say to her.”

Lord Blair sighed as they walked to the door. “Daniel,” he said, “all this is a great blow to me.”

Thus it came about that an hour after Daniel had arrived at the Residency he was on his way back to the desert, his teeth set, and his brain occupied, by force of will, with his plans. He did not dare to look into the future: he was going, as a sick man goes to an operation, to find by a path of pain the health of mind that he had lost. Perhaps he would return to the Residency; perhaps he would not; but for the present it was of paramount importance that he should master his complaint, and regain the power to see clearly, the power to work happily, the power to laugh.

By mid-afternoon his camp was struck, and he was ready to depart. A camel-owner in the village of Kafr-el-Harâm, near the Pyramids, had supplied the necessary camels and men at a moment’s notice, hastened by the enthusiasm of Hussein and his brother, both overjoyed at the good fortune which was to take them so suddenly back to their home. Some of the tents and the unnecessary articles of furniture had been stored in the village at the house of a native friend; and the remainder were packed upon the camels.

As the afternoon shadows were lengthening the start was made. The camels, grumbling and complaining, lurched to their feet; the three dogs, barking with excitement, ran in circles around the company; and Daniel, swinging into his saddle, took his place at the head of the caravan. In single file, and at a slow trot, they moved away westwards, their long shadows stretching out behind them; and soon they had disappeared into the waste of sand and rocks, golden in the light of the descending sun.

An hour later the picnic party, coming back from a point to the south, rode towards the Pyramids. Muriel had been very silent all day; but Kate, who was in her confidence, had helped her to conceal her depression, and now was riding by her side, a little removed from the others. The desert had had a soothing influence upon the raw wound which the quarrel of the previous day had inflicted; and Muriel was already somewhat happier in her mind.

“Don’t you worry, old girl,” said Kate. “Men have got to be managed, and you’ll soon put things ship-shape in the morning.”

“But the morning is so far off,” Muriel replied, pathetically.

She did not altogether understand what the trouble was about. Daniel had attacked her so suddenly, just when she had been wholly engaged in attacking him. So far as she could make out, he had been angry with her because she had made a fuss about his relationship with Lizette. “I suppose,” she thought to herself, “he thinks a woman oughtn’t to question a man’s movements, or know anything about what he is doing when he is not with her. It doesn’t seem fair somehow…”

She did not in the least realize that Daniel’s hostility had been aroused by her belief that there was anything between him and Lizette, and by her readiness, in spite of that belief, to overlook his supposed deception as soon as she had vented her feelings by a brief show of temper. She felt that he had been harsh, and rather brazen about the whole thing; and yet, so greatly did she yearn for his love, she was prepared to forgive even his brutality.

She turned to her companion. “I don’t think I can wait till the morning,” she said. “I’m going to ride over to his camp now, and say I’m sorry. It’s only a mile out of the way, and I’ll be home almost as soon as you.”

Kate was sympathetic. “Go on, then,” she replied. “I’ll hint to the others that you’ve got a stomach-ache or something, and have ridden on. And let me see more colour in that old mug of yours when you get back.”

She leant forward in her saddle, and struck her companion’s horse with her cane, so that he went off at a gallop across the sand.

Bearing off to the left, Muriel soon described the head of rock which overlooked the camp; but approaching it thus from the south she knew that the tents would not come into view until she had rounded this ridge.

She had no idea what she was going to say. She thought only that she would go into his tent, where she would probably find him writing at his table; and she would put her arms about him, and tell him that she could not live under his displeasure.

At last she reached the rocks; and, as she rode round them, she drew up her reins and prepared to dismount. Then, with horrible suddenness, the truth was, as it were flung at her. Where she had thought to see the tents, there was only a patch of broken-up sand, a few bits of paper and straw, and innumerable footprints.

She uttered a little cry of dismay, and, with wide, frightened eyes, gazed about her. The footprints of the camels passed in a thin line out to the west, and she could see them winding away into the silent desert.

CHAPTER XXIII – THE NATURE OF WOMEN

Kate Bindane had just gone up to her room and was standing there alone, examining herself disapprovingly in the long mirror, when Muriel staggered in, her face white, her knees giving way.

“Kate!” she cried. “He’s gone!”

She threw herself down on the floor in front of a low arm-chair, and spreading her arms across its seat, buried her face in them.

Her friend stood perfectly still for a few moments, staring down at her in amazement. She had never before seen Muriel give way to uncontrolled grief in this manner; and she was frightened by the terrible rasping of her muffled sobs, and by the convulsive heaving of her shoulders. She did not know what to do, and her hands hesitated uncertainly between the whiskey-bottle standing on a shelf and the smelling-salts upon the dressing-table near to it.

At last, discarding the stimulants, she knelt down by her friend’s side, and put her strong arm around her. The tears had come into her own eyes, and as she patted Muriel’s shoulder, she fumbled for her handkerchief with her disengaged hand.

“Hush, hush, my darling!” she whispered. “Tell me what has happened.”

“He’s gone,” Muriel sobbed. “The camp’s gone. I saw the track of his camels leading away into the desert.”

She could say no more, and for a considerable time continued her passionate weeping.

At length she raised her head. “There are only some bits of paper and things left,” she moaned; and therewith she returned to her bitter tears.

Kate rose to her feet. “I am going to ’phone your father,” she said, “and ask him what has happened.”

She gave Muriel an encouraging pat, and hastened into the adjoining sitting-room, where a telephone was affixed to the wall. A few minutes later she was speaking to Lord Blair, asking him the reason of Daniel’s departure.

“We’ve just seen the deserted site of his camp,” she said, “and poor Muriel is in floods of tears.”

“Dear, dear!” came the reply. “Poor girl! Tell her Daniel has only gone away for a short time. I have had to send him to the Oases on business, that’s all.”

“Rather sudden, wasn’t it?” queried Kate.

Lord Blair coughed. “Daniel is always very prompt to act, when action has to be taken,” he said.

“Didn’t he leave any note or message for Muriel?”

“No, none,” was the reply. “He went away in a great hurry. Am I to expect Muriel back to dinner?”

“With her eyes bunged up?” exclaimed Kate, impatiently. “Of course not. I’ll send her back to you in the morning. Hav’n’t you anything to say to comfort her?”

There was a pause. “Yes,” he replied at length, “tell her I’ve just seen Ada going upstairs with two bandboxes. She says they are new night-dresses from Maison Duprez.”

Kate uttered a contemptuous grunt. “That’s the last thing to tell her!” she exclaimed. “Good-night.”

She slammed down the receiver, and, going back to her bedroom, repeated to Muriel her father’s explanation of Daniel’s departure. This brought some comfort into the girl’s forlorn heart; and a second outburst of tears, which occurred an hour or so later, was due more to a kind of self-pity, perhaps, than to despair.

“It’s so unkind of him,” she cried, “to go off without even saying good-bye, or leaving a note.”

“But from what I gather,” Kate replied, “he doesn’t think you really care much about him.”

“Ah, I do, I do,” Muriel wailed, wringing her hands.

“Well, you know,” Kate commented, somewhat brutally, “seeing how you’ve been carrying on this last month, I shouldn’t have said myself that you were really stuck on him.”

“You don’t understand,” Muriel moaned. “I wanted to be properly engaged to him, but he wouldn’t hear of it – I told you at the time. I don’t believe he ever wanted to marry me at all,” she exclaimed, passionately. “I believe he only wanted me to run away with him.”

Suddenly she looked up, with a curious light in her face. “I wonder…” She paused. She recalled the words he had said when he first knew her: “Why don’t you break loose?” And then last night he had said: “I shall never get to the real you until you cut loose from all this.” Could it be that the manner of his going away was meant to be a sort of silent gesture, a beckoning to her to follow?

She was so absorbed in her thoughts that her tears dried upon her face; and presently Kate was able to induce her to make somewhat more than a pretence of tasting the little dinner which had been sent up to them.

Later in the evening, when Benifett Bindane had come upstairs, and when Muriel had gone to her own room, Kate told her husband that she would sleep that night with her friend.

“As you wish, my dear,” he answered pleasantly. “You must help her to get over this business. She’ll soon live it down, I expect.”

Kate looked annoyed. “You needn’t be so damned cheerful about it,” she said. “I sometimes think you haven’t got a heart at all.”

He sat down loosely, and stared at her for some moments, as though about to make a profound remark.

“Spit it out,” said Kate encouragingly.

“I was just thinking,” he droned, “that I shall probably get Lane as our General Manager after all.”

She turned upon him. “Oh, you cold-blooded brute! It’s always business first with you. I suppose you’re hoping he’ll never want to come back to Cairo.”

“Well,” he mused, “he evidently feels that life in the Oases suits him better.”

“Ugh!” his wife ejaculated. “I suppose you think he’ll be content to be a sort of pasha out there, with his harîm of Bedouin women; raking in a fat salary from your precious Company, and fleecing the natives to fill your pockets. It’s a pretty picture!”

“Well, it isn’t a prettier picture,” he answered, “to think of a fine man like that messing about Cairo, wasting his time at dinner parties and dances on a wretched Foreign Office pittance.”

Kate did not continue the discussion, and it was not long before she went to her friend’s room, where, entering quietly, she found Muriel standing in her nightdress at the western window, her bare arms resting on the high sill, and her gaze fixed upon the obscurity of the desert which lay black and desolate under the stars. The window was open, and the drifting night-wind stirred the mass of her dark hair which fell about her shoulders.

She turned quickly as she heard the footstep, and Kate was dismayed at the pallor of her face.

“I can’t make him out,” Muriel said. “I can’t make him out. Right out there somewhere, in that blackness, he is smoking his pipe and stroking his dogs and yawning himself to sleep. And yet he must know that I’m here, calling to him and crying to him.”

She stretched out her arms, her fists clenched. “O God!” she muttered, “Let me understand him, let me see what’s in his mind.”

Kate drew the curtain across the window, as though she would shut out the dark menace of the desert, and drew her friend towards the bed.

“It’ll all come out in the wash, old girl,” she choked. “You’re not the only woman who finds her man incomprehensible sometimes.”

She looked at Muriel and Muriel at her; and suddenly, like two children, they put their heads each upon the other’s shoulder, and sobbed as though their hearts would break.

When Muriel returned next morning to the Residency, she went up to her own sitting-room at once; and presently she sent a message down to her father, who was at work in his study, asking him to come to her as soon as he had a few minutes to spare: nor was it long before he came tripping into the room.

It was evident that he felt the situation to be somewhat awkward; for his remarks began on a piping note of jocularity, and so rapidly descended the scale to one of profound melancholy that Muriel was reminded of a gramophone running down.

“Father,” she said presently, “I want you to tell me exactly what Daniel said about me before he left. I suppose he told you that we had had a quarrel.”

Lord Blair seemed puzzled, and he raised his hands in a gesture indicating his lack of grasp of the essential points in Daniel’s recent tirade.

“Yes, he told me about the little tiff; but I really don’t know whether I apprehend his meaning exactly. He was very much upset, very overwrought. It seems, if I have understood him aright, that he finds fault with you because you are rather – what shall I say? – rather given to the superficialities of our civilization. He would prefer you in puris naturalibus” – he corrected himself – ”that is to say metaphorically speaking. He said that ‘the fashionable world,’ as he called it, filled him with gloom, gave him the … ah … hump, I think he said; and he was disappointed to find that you associated yourself so fully with the frivolities of society, and were so foreign to the liberties, the sincerities, of more primitive conditions. I don’t know whether I am making myself clear.“

“Perfectly,” said Muriel. “I suppose he would have preferred to see me turning head over heels in the desert in puris … what-you-said-ibus.”

“I take it,” Lord Blair explained, “that he was referring to your mental, not your physical attitude.”

“Oh, quite so,” replied Muriel; and she burst out laughing, but her laughter was very close to tears.

Lord Blair patted her cheek. “Ah, Muriel,” he said, his manner again becoming serious, “you mustn’t lose Daniel. I would rather that he were your husband than any man living.”

“But I don’t think he wants to be my husband, or anybody’s husband,” she replied.

“He is deeply in love with you,” her father told her.

“That’s another matter,” said she; and Lord Blair glanced at her in perplexity.

He was not altogether sorry that events had taken their present course; for it seemed to him that this temporary disunion would have a salutary effect on his daughter’s character. He could see clearly the faults of which Daniel complained; and he could not help thinking that this forceful show of disgust on her lover’s part would be instrumental in arousing her to the more serious things of life. It would be a lesson to her which would serve to fit her to be the wife of a man of genuine sincerity.

Moreover, in the case of Daniel, his sudden return to El Hamrân, with his heart left behind him here at the Residency, would probably dispel, once and for all, that haunting dream of his desert paradise which otherwise would always cause him to be restless in Cairo. This time, if he were made of flesh and blood, he would find the desert intolerable, and in a few weeks he would probably be lured back to civilization by the call of his manhood.

That Daniel should marry Muriel, and take up his permanent position at the Residency, was his most ardent hope; and as the present events had occurred he had fitted them each into place in his growing plan of action.

In brief, his scheme was as follows. At the end of the month he himself would have to go up to the Sudan on his annual tour of inspection; and about the same time the Bindanes would be going to the Oases. He had expected to take his daughter with him to the Sudan, but, instead, he would send her with the Bindanes, and thus she would be in a position to effect a reconciliation with Daniel on his own ground, so to speak. Hardy Muriel on camel-back in the desert would be more likely to win him than dainty Muriel in the ballroom; and Lord Blair, priding himself on his strategy, had almost come to believe that his sending Daniel off to El Hamrân had been a definite move in his game, made with the object of bringing about this romantic meeting in the desert.

He rubbed his hands together now as he prepared to tell Muriel of his plan, so far as she ought to know it.

“Now, my dear,” he said to her, “you must not fret. I have a little scheme in my mind, of which I think you will approve. I am going to try to arrange for you to go out to the Oases with our friends; and thus you will be able to see Daniel for a day or two, and, if so you wish, you will be able to make it up with him.”

He stood back from her, and beamed upon her, his hands raised as though he were beating time to a visionary orchestra. But as he saw the expression in her eyes his face fell, and his hands sank to his side. He looked at her in dismay, and the thought came into his mind that she was undoubtedly a Blair; for, like all the Blairs in a temper, she resembled a beautiful monkey. Her eyebrows were knitted, her eyes were round and wide open, her lips were pursed, and her jaw was set. He had never realized before how very attractive she was.

“Do you suppose,” she said, slowly and distinctly, “that I shall again put myself in a position to be snubbed? Do you think I would lower myself to go out to him in the desert and ask his forgiveness? No! If he wants me he can come back and ask my forgiveness.”

He watched her anxiously as she turned haughtily away. Then he shrugged his shoulders. “You both seem determined to lose one another,” he remarked; and presently, like a man who has no time to waste, he stepped back to the door and opened it.

“I never want to see him again,” said Muriel over her shoulder.

Lord Blair did not answer, but, shutting the door with a snap, left her to her bitter reflections.

Five minutes later a message was brought up from Lady Smith-Evered, who had called to consult her in regard to a proposed picnic; and Muriel therefore went downstairs to the drawing-room. There she found her imposing visitor seated upon the sofa behind a great bunch of pink peonies which stood in a vase upon a low table. She had evidently been walking in the hot sun, and her face, in spite of its powder, was itself extraordinarily suggestive of a pink peony in full bloom, so that, appearing as it seemed to do from amongst these showy flowers, it was like a burlesque of caricature of the works of nature.