Burning Sands

Hussein had prepared a very excellent meal, not sparing the store-cupboard; and he had opened a particularly large fiasco of Italian red-wine to grace the occasion. He had donned a clean white garment, held in at the waist by a crimson sash; and as he noiselessly entered or left the room he seemed to Muriel to have taken to himself the nature of a geni out of a tale of the Arabian Nights.

When at last the meal was finished, and cleared away, and she and Daniel were seated in the deck chairs at the open window to drink their coffee, Muriel felt that the whole world of actuality had slid from her, leaving her enthroned with her lover in a palace of glorious dream; and when, out of the darkness of the palm-groves below, there came to their ears the distant and wandering sound of a flute, played by some unseen goatherd passing homewards with his flock, the magic of the desert was almost overpowering in the measure of its enchantment. She was bewildered and intoxicated by it; and in Daniel’s eyes she found, too, a light of love such as she had never seen there before.

The hours passed unnoticed, for time had ceased to be; and it was already late when at last Daniel arose, and stood looking down at her with a smile upon his face. “Well,” he said, with a sigh, “I didn’t think anything would induce me to return to Cairo so soon; but now… When shall we start?”

Muriel looked at him in surprise. “O Daniel,” she whispered, “there’s no hurry, is there? The Bindanes won’t be going back for a fortnight.”

Her low voice set his heart beating for a moment, but he did not take the real significance of her words.

“Well,” he said. “I suppose it will be all right for you to be here for a day or two; and then we can ride straight to Cairo and be married by special licence or whatever they call it.” He lifted her fingers to his lips. “Oh, darling, in less than a week you’ll be my wife!”

Muriel stared at him, wide-eyed. It was as though she had suddenly awakened from a dream. “Oh, but the family will be horrified,” she said. “Everybody will expect a proper wedding in London: after we get home – in May or June. You’ll have to make that concession to the world, my darling.”

Daniel laughed. “Yes, but what about our compromising situation, here?” he asked. “Don’t you see, my sweet, what I mean? Your bolting from the Bindanes is to me a sort of sacred and wonderful thing that you have done, because you’ve put your fate irrevocably in my hands. To my way of thinking we are already married, because you have openly abandoned everything and come to me; but I’m not going to give anybody the chance to question our acts. We belong to each other, and the quicker the position is regularized, so to speak, the better.”

“But who is to find out?” she said. “If I stay with you till the Bindanes come, nobody will hear of it in Cairo.”

He looked quickly at her, his brows drawn together. “What d’you mean?” he asked, as though he could not follow the workings of her mind.

She laughed. “I mean, I’ve arranged it all,” she answered. “Kate is to say I was ill, and that I came to you so as not to be a nuisance to them. She can prevent her husband ever giving me away, and I should think you could manage the others, or at any rate keep them from talking until we’re married.”

He did not answer, but his eyes were fixed upon her. She got up from their chair, and put her hands about his neck. “This is to be our wonderful fortnight, darling,” she whispered. “It is to be our secret.”

He lifted her arms from his shoulders, holding her wrists. “I don’t understand,” he said, and his voice was hard.

She looked at him with wonder. She could not comprehend what was troubling him. “Darling, what’s the matter?” she asked, in dismay. “What I mean is that I’ve done what you always wanted me to do: I’ve broken loose; only I’ve chosen my opportunity, and arranged it so that people won’t talk.”

Still he did not take his eyes from her; but he removed his hand from her wrist. “You mean,” he said very slowly, “that you will return with the Bindanes, and finish up the Cairo season?”

“Well,” she answered, “I’ve got all sorts of more or less official engagements, you know.”

“This is to be just a stolen fortnight?” he asked, and she was frightened by the stern tones of his voice.

She nodded, and again her arms sought his shoulders. But he stepped back quickly from her, and his hand passed across has forehead.

“You are going to cover up your tracks with a pack of lies,” he said, his breath sounding like that of one in pain. “And then you are going back to your dances and your parties, pretending nothing has happened.”

“Oh, you don’t understand,” she cried. “I’ve given myself to you, body and soul.”

“Yes,” he scoffed, his voice rising. “You’ve given yourself to me for a fortnight. A sneaking fortnight that you think nobody will ever hear about. A fortnight sandwiched in between the middle and the end of the Cairo season, to fill up the blank time while your father is away.”

“But I never want to go back,” she answered, her voice trembling.

“If that is true,” he said, “why have you arranged everything for your return? You’ve given yourself to me, you say! Yes, for a stolen fortnight, as you call it yourself: it is to be just an underhand little intrigue. Good God! – and I believed you had given up everything for your love’s sake; and now I find you’ve given up nothing. You’ve taken all the necessary steps to prevent your action being decisive, to make your return to society perfectly easy. And I thought you had burnt your boats!”

She faced him angrily. “Oh, you’re incomprehensible,” she exclaimed. “You let me see in every possible way that you want me to give myself to you and to follow you into the desert; you let me understand that this is what you expect of a woman; you knew that I had heard about your affairs with the Bedouin women here; you didn’t seem to mind my having heard about Lizette: and then, when I accept your point of view and come to you, you tell me I’ve done wrong.”

“What on earth are you saying?” he cried. “What do you mean about Bedouin women? I have never had any relations whatsoever with native women in my life – never. And as for Lizette, I didn’t tell at the time, because I wanted you to trust me of your own accord; but I will tell you now. I’ve only spoken to her twice in my life. Once we had supper together, and once we had coffee together in a restaurant. That is the beginning and the end of my relationship with her. Do you mean to say that thinking me a sort of libertine, you have come out to live with me here as my mistress for a fortnight? Is that what you mean?”

She did not reply. She sat down on a cane chair near the table, and twisted her handkerchief to and fro with her fingers. The expression on her pale face revealed the black despair of her heart.

“Answer me!” he said, sharply.

“I have no answer,” she replied. “I thought you wanted me, I thought you loved me.”

He turned from her, sick at heart. It seemed now to him that his worst fears were realized: he could almost have called her “Harlot.” In no wise had she abandoned the world and run to him, defying the conventions because she desired to be his mate. She had merely planned a secret love-affair: she had just slipped out of the ballroom, so to speak, to enjoy an amorous interlude, and she would be back amongst the dancers once more before anybody had missed her. This sort of clandestine, cunningly arranged affair was an insult to the whole idea of union: it was an intrigue out of a French novel.

He looked at her once more as she sat at the table, and, in his revulsion of feeling, he thought her kimono gaudy. The expression on her face was angry, almost sullen.

“I think you must be mad,” she said. “In Cairo you wouldn’t be publicly engaged to me, and you made me understand quite clearly that it wasn’t our actual marriage you were thinking about: you wanted me to run away with you. You always jibbed at the thought of marriage, and were silent about it; but you talked freely enough about our life together. You made it quite clear that you regarded morals with contempt; and now, you suddenly have scruples, and pretend that you are shocked at my having taken steps to prevent a scandal which would hurt my father’s reputation.”

“If you were afraid of a scandal,” he answered, quickly, “why did you come at all? When you arrived this afternoon I thought you had left that question to me, and were ready to get married at once, which was the only way to avoid hurting your father – unless I had sent you back this very night to Kate Bindane. No, you weren’t afraid of a scandal: you arranged it all too cleverly for there to be much risk.”

“I was prepared to marry you,” she said, “if you really wanted marriage.”

“And if I didn’t,” he replied, “you were prepared to live with me for a fortnight. Oh, you make me ashamed!”

“I wanted to save you from these other women,” she protested.

“I tell you there never were any other women,” he answered. “I’m not a man out of one of your horrible novels.”

“I don’t know what you are driving at,” she exclaimed. “Anyway I won’t be played fast and loose with like this. I shall go back to my friends tomorrow, and I hope I shall never see you again.”

Suddenly her voice broke, and throwing her arms out across the table, she laid her head upon them, and cried bitterly.

Daniel did not move. His heart was hardened against her, and he told himself that her tears were but one of the wiles of her sex.

“No,” he said at length, coming suddenly to a decision, “you shall not go back tomorrow. You have come here for a fortnight, and have made arrangements for your visit to be secret. You say there is no fear of a scandal such as would hurt your father. Very well then, you shall stay here a fortnight whether you want to or not. I propose that we get to know each other: we’ve had enough misunderstandings. You have misunderstood everything I have ever said to you: it has all been warped and twisted by your miserable society attitude of mind.”

“I shall never understand you,” she answered, raising her head, and drying her eyes with the back of her hand. “This is quite final. You’ve insulted me and humiliated me. I might have known that that was what you’d do.”

“Very well,” he said, “I think you had better go to your room now. Remember, you are going to stay here for the full fortnight.”

“I shall do no such thing,” she declared, facing him defiantly.

He gripped hold of her wrist. “Do you want me to have to lock you up?” he asked; and she quailed before the authority of his voice.

He went across to the door and opened it. Outside, upon the floor, a hurricane lamp was burning; and this he picked up.

“Here’s a lamp,” he said, “and here are matches. Now go to bed.”

She took them from him in silence, and slowly walked out of the room.

He watched her as she passed across the refectory, the light from her lantern casting her swaying shadow in huge size upon the ruinous walls. Then he shut the door, and sitting down at the table, buried his face in his hands.

CHAPTER XXVII – THE FLIGHT

For a long time Daniel lay awake upon his bed at the top of the tower, while his thoughts passed through a number of recurrent phases. More than once he felt that he had made a mountain out of a molehill; but this attitude of mind was dismissed by the recollection that, whether Muriel truly loved him or not, she had come to him “on the sly,” and, by planning this surreptitious interlude (for she had meant it to be no more than that) she had invested their relationship with that very atmosphere of intrigue which he so strongly resented.

He saw in her action the influence of that small section of London society which he abhorred, wherein the women appeared to him to be secret courtesans who would neither abide by the traditional law nor openly flout it; and he was determined either to eradicate that influence or to lose Muriel. He was not entirely clear in his mind as to what he was going to do with her in the Oasis for this fortnight; but of this he was sure, that she needed a lesson, and that he was going to take her in hand, remorselessly, whatever might be the consequences.

The moon, in the last quarter, rose above the far-off hills while yet he was wearily thinking, and realizing thus that daybreak was not more than two hours distant, he obliged himself by force of will, to compose his mind for sleep. In this he was successful and presently he fell into a deep slumber from which it would have been difficult to wake him.

Meanwhile, Muriel had also watched the dim light of the rising moon as it slowly spread over the desert. She had slept for two or three hours – a miserable sleep of exhaustion; but when she was awakened by the hooting of an owl outside the window, she lit her lamp and made no further attempt at repose.

Her one idea was to get away from Daniel and to go back to Kate Bindane, who would still be alone at El Homra until the end of the coming day. She did not want to wait until daybreak, for if Daniel were awake he would perhaps try to stop her; and now the slight illumination given by the moon encouraged her to make her immediate escape. She could hardly miss the road: all she had to do was to mount her camel and ride straight ahead.

Hastily she put on her clothes, and soon she had crept out into the refectory, carrying her heavy dressing-case in her hand. She had slipped her revolver into one of the pockets of her skirt, and in the other she had placed a packet of chocolate unused on the previous day, while her water-bottle was slung across her shoulder.

Her heart was beating, and she was frightened at the prospect of the long journey alone, but there was no practicable way of getting into touch with her dragoman, and she was obliged, therefore, to steel herself for the adventure.

By a stroke of good luck she found the three dogs wandering about the refectory, and they were thus not startled into barking: they followed her with wagging tails as she made her way to the camel-shed outside. There were no doors to open, nor bolts or bars to unfasten; and she could hear the servants snoring at the other end of the building.

Creeping into the shed, lantern in hand, she found her camel and Daniel’s kneeling side by side upon the sand, dreamily chewing the cud, and, having learned the tricks of the stable during her journey from Cairo, she quickly slipped a rope around the bent knee-joint of the foreleg of her own beast, thus preventing it from rising.

The saddle was heavy, and was furnished with a number of confusing straps; but, after a somewhat prolonged struggle, she managed at length to adjust it, and to tie her dressing-case on to the back pommel. Then, removing the tether, she held the nose-rope in one hand, and prodded the unwilling beast with her toe until it floundered to its legs, snarling and complaining as is the habit of the breed.

Leading it out into the open she buckled the girth in a fashion, but for some minutes she failed to make the creature kneel so as to allow her to climb into the saddle. She tugged at the nose-rope, and tapped its legs with her crop, but presently she was obliged to desist, owing to her fear that its whining grumbles would be heard.

She was in despair and was very near to tears, when suddenly she recollected that the native makes a certain noise in the roof of his mouth, like the rolling of a German ch, when he wishes his camel to kneel; and no sooner had she imitated this sound than the creature went down on its knees with the utmost docility. She clambered into the saddle with a sigh of relief, and a moment later was trotting silently northwards while the dogs stared at her in mild surprise as they stood in the light of the lantern which she had left burning at the doorway of the shed.

The soft pads made little sound as she passed under the outer walls of the monastery, and, looking up at the tower, she saw no signs of movement, for Daniel was fast asleep. Nor was there any indication of human life in the Oasis below her as she trotted along the cliff-tops, but the sporadic barking of the village dogs much alarmed her.

The day was now breaking in the east, while the moon also gave a certain amount of light; and she therefore found the track with ease, and in less than half an hour had left the Oasis behind and was heading out into the open desert across the high ground.

The excitement of her escape had prevented her from thinking of her actual sorrow, and now she was too nervous, too overawed by her surroundings, to be conscious of more than a general horror. A six hours’ ride across an absolutely uninhabited and lifeless stretch of country, with nothing but a packet of chocolate for sustenance, was likely to be a physical ordeal; and already she knew that the nervous strain was going to be very great.

As has been said, there were three wells upon the route, and the nearest of these, some six miles from the Oasis, she reached within the hour. The sun being now well above the horizon, she did not halt; for she realized that Daniel, on his tower top, would already have been awakened by its rays, and would perhaps be even now in pursuit.

This, in fact, was the case. When he had descended from the tower he had quickly discovered her flight, and had sent Hussein scuttling into the stable, while he himself put on a shirt and a pair of trousers and slipped his bare feet into the old canvas shoes which lay to hand.

Snatching his water-bottle and a tin of biscuits from the living-room, and pocketing his pipe and pouch, he ran through the refectory like a charging bull, sprang on to his camel, and was off and away before his servant had recovered from his first astonishment.

“Walla kilma!” he shouted to the staring Hussein, which means “Not a word!” And the loyal native thereupon went back to the kitchen, muttering to himself ”His Excellency has gone hunting,“ as though to convince himself of the veracity of the statement, which, after all, was not very far removed from the truth.

As Daniel raced along in the sparkling sunshine he could detect here and there the marks of Muriel’s camel upon the tracks before him, and he knew that, at the pace at which he was travelling, he would have the chance of overtaking her before she had accomplished half the journey back to El Homra; for he had not been long asleep, and her departure could not have taken place earlier without attracting his attention. He therefore settled down to a protracted and pounding chase, and in the brisk morning air his steed did not fail to show its mettle.

He was travelling at twice Muriel’s pace, and he caught sight of her, and she of him, as he descended from the high ground into the wide plain which lay between the two oases. She was over a mile ahead of him, a mere speck, like a little fly crawling across a vast brazen dish, and a considerable time passed before he had come close enough to observe her movements.

He saw her now urging her camel forward, beating it with her crop. Her hat had been discarded, and her hair had fallen down and was being tossed out behind her by the north wind like a fluttering banner.

She turned to glance at him, and he saw her flushed face, as again she belaboured her tired beast. He was about to call out to her when suddenly her camel stumbled. The loosely buckled girth gave way, and the saddle slipped over to one side. For a moment she clutched on to it, while her camel went round in a circle as though about to overbalance and fall on top of her. Then she slid to the ground, fell on her hands and knees, picked herself up, and set off running like a maniac, while the startled camel went staggering off to one side.

Daniel did not slacken his pace, and in a few moments he was close upon her heels.

“Stop!” he called, coming to a halt. “It’s no good running like that!”

For answer she suddenly swung round and faced him, panting and distracted. Her hand dived into her pocket, and issued again holding her revolver. He saw the sunlight flash upon it as she pointed it at him.

His camel was well trained, and he did not wait to tether it. Vaulting from the saddle he walked rapidly towards her, regardless of the menace of the weapon which covered him.

“Don’t dare to come any nearer,” she gasped, “or I’ll shoot you, you brute!”

He stretched out his arms. “Very well, shoot!” he said. “Good God! D’you think I value my life now?”

He saw her fingers press the trigger. There was a flash, a sharp report, and the bullet went singing past his ear, not close enough, perhaps, to suggest that she had taken aim at him, but not so distant that he could ignore it. He ran at her, therefore, and grasped her wrist, so that the revolver fell to the ground. Instantly she flung herself upon her knees and grabbed at it with her left hand, but he dragged her back by her arm, pulling her to her feet.

“You beast!” she exclaimed. “Leave me alone!” and she struck at him with her free hand. Her eyes were flashing, and her hair was tossed about her shoulders.

He put his arm about her, holding her as in a vice, and, stooping, he picked up and pocketed her revolver.

“Now sit down there,” he said, lowering her on to the sand, “and get your breath.”

She saw that there was no use in resisting, and she sat, therefore, glaring up at him as he stood before her.

He turned his head and glanced at the camels, and as he did so she stretched out her foot and kicked his shins.

“Ough!” he exclaimed. “Don’t do that – it hurts!”

“Oh, I wish we were near Cairo,” she cried. “I’d turn the servants on to you and have you whipped. Go and fetch my camel!”

“Yes,” he answered, “I’m just going to. And don’t you start running away again, or I’ll not be so gentle with you when I catch you.”

He hastened across the desert, and, without any difficulty, caught Muriel’s wandering and tired animal, and readjusted the saddle. Soon he had tethered it beside his own; and coming back to her, he sat himself down a yard or two away from her, and lit his pipe.

“Say when you’re ready to start back,” he said, stretching himself out and resting his head upon his elbow.

“I’m not coming back with you,” she replied. “I’m going back to El Homra.”

“No, you’re not,” he told her. “You’re going to stay with me for this fortnight you’ve so carefully planned.”

She scrambled to her feet, her fists clenched. “If you try to force me to come with you,” she burst out, “I shall … I shall bite you.”

He also stood up. “Now look here,” he said. “Understand me: you’re going back with me, whether you like it or not. And if you struggle I shall tie you up. Now, come along quietly.”

He caught hold of her wrist, and led her towards the camels.

“Take your hand off my arm!” she gasped. “You’ve got me in your power now, but you just wait till my father hears of this. He’ll have you hounded out of Egypt.”

He did not reply, but releasing her, left her to climb into the saddle.

“Go and get my crop,” she said. “I dropped it somewhere here.”

“Very well,” he replied, “but, remember, if you ride off while my back is turned, I’ll come after you and tie your hands behind your back.”

Muriel wriggled furiously in her seat, but she knew that it was useless to attempt to escape. Presently Daniel found her crop and brought it back to her. Then he mounted his camel, and the two of them rode off southwards side by side.

“We shall come across your hat soon,” he said. “Be on the lookout for it. You’ll get sunstroke without it, in spite of all that mass of hair.”

She uttered something like a growl as she jogged along beside him over the blazing sand.

CHAPTER XXVIII – THE SURPRISING FORTNIGHT

It was mid-morning when they reached the house, and Daniel advised Muriel to go at once to her room, whither Hussein presently brought refreshments and cans of water for the bath.

“Send Mustafa to me,” she said to him, but, understanding no English, and grasping only the name of the dragoman, he pointed towards the Oasis, indicating by signs that the man had not yet returned.

At this she went to the door of her room and called out sharply “Mr. Lane!”

Daniel, who at the moment had just ducked his head in a pail of water, came into the refectory drying his hair with a towel.

“What’s the matter?” he asked. “Anything I can do for you?”

“Where’s my dragoman?” she asked, suspiciously.