Burning Sands

CHAPTER X – “FOR TOMORROW WE DIE”

Amidst the wildest clamour the rowing-boat was launched, and two red-jerseyed native sailors took the oars, while a third, shouting and gesticulating, stood at the tiller holding up a hurricane-lamp. Just as they pushed off, Professor Hyley, carrying another lantern, tumbled into the stern; and, in the unreasoning excitement of the moment, called out “Mr. Helsingham, Mr. Helsingham! Hi, hi! Mr. Helsingham!” in a piping voice which sounded through the darkness like that of a lost soul.

The pandemonium upon the steamer was appalling. The jabbering native sailors ran aimlessly to and fro, flinging ropes and buoys into the river from the vessel’s stern; while the Egyptian captain, completely losing his head, rang and bawled orders down to the engine-room, as a result of which the paddle-wheels churned up the water, now this way, now that. Lady Smith-Evered and Mr. Bindane leant over the rail, shouting instructions to Professor Hyley as the boat dropped into the distance.

Muriel and Kate Bindane stood together in agonized silence. There was nothing to be done; for there was not a second rowing-boat, nor were there any available lamps or buoys. Their eyes were fixed upon the two points of light drifting astern, and on the illuminated figures of the searchers. And now the misshapen moon, in its last quarter, crept out from behind the horizon, as though curious to know what all the pother was about, but too disdainful to throw any light upon the scene.

At length there were renewed shouts from the boat, and much splashing of the oars; and presently it was apparent that the men were lifting something out of the ink-black water. A few minutes of horrible suspense ensued as the searchers returned; and at last, in a dazed condition, Muriel watched them raise the limp, dripping form out of the boat and lay it on the deck.

Mr. Bindane’s servant, Dixon, knew something about the method of resuscitation to be employed in such cases; and, with the aid of Muriel and Professor Hyley, the sodden clothes were removed from the upper part of the prostrate figure, and the bare white arms were worked to and fro. Brandy in a teaspoon was forced between the blue lips by Kate Bindane, who sent her helpless and apparently callous husband off with the weeping Lady Smith-Evered to fetch blankets and the one hot-water bottle which chanced to be available.

Their efforts, however, were all in vain. With the tears flowing from her eyes, Muriel rose from the puddle of water in which she had been kneeling, and stood clinging to Kate’s arm.

“He’s dead,” she sobbed. “He’s been dead all the time;” and a shudder almost of repulsion shook her.

She dried her tears and tried hard to pull herself together: she felt that this undefined feeling of disgust was unworthy of any woman, and was altogether despicable in one who had been so lately clasped in Rupert’s arms. She wanted to run away, and that primitive instinct which produces in the mind the nameless horror of a dead body was strong upon her. Yet, bracing herself, she resisted the sensation of nausea, and stood staring down at the prostrate figure before her, vividly illuminated in the glare of the electric light.

His mouth, from which the water oozed, was slightly open, and a pale, swollen tongue protruded somewhat from between his lips. His eyes were closed, and wet strands of dark hair were plastered over his forehead. His bare neck and shoulders looked thin and poor; and damp wisps of hair covered his chest. The soaked, black trousers clung to his legs; and his ill-shapen toes, from which the socks and shoes had been removed, were ghastly in their greenish whiteness as they rested upon the hot-water bottle.

Suddenly she swayed, and the lights seemed to grow dim. She heard Kate Bindane call out sharply for the brandy, and she was dimly conscious that she was being led away by her maid, Ada. Her perceptions, however, were not clear again until she aroused herself to find that she was lying upon her bed in her cabin, and that Mr. Bindane was standing at the door, staring down at her with his mouth open.

She sat up quickly. “Did I faint?” she said, as the horror of remembrance came upon her once more.

“No,” he answered. “You were only a bit giddy. You must try to sleep: we’re all going to try to. We shall be back in Cairo before sunrise.”

“Where is he?” she asked, pressing her fingers to her pale face.

“On the sofa at the end of the deck,” he said.

She sprang to her feet. “No, no!” she cried. “Not there – please not there!”

She buried her face in her hands; and Benifett Bindane, disliking hysteria, hurried away to the saloon, where he played Patience by himself until the small hours; while his wife, Kate, wedging herself into Muriel’s narrow bed, comforted her friend until dozing sleep fell upon them.

The next two or three days were like a nightmare. An impenetrable gloom seemed to rest upon the Residency; and, although the body lay in the mortuary of a neighbouring hospital, it was as though the presence of death were actually in the house.

The funeral came almost as a relief; and when the imposing ceremony was at an end, she felt as though the weight were beginning to be lifted from her heart. For the first time since the tragedy she was able to speak of it with calmness.

“You know, father dear,” she said, “Rupert and I came to mean a very great deal to one another in these few weeks that we’ve been together.”

He glanced at her timidly, and patted her hand.

“Yes,” he answered, “I have eyes, Muriel.”

She turned and looked at him with a little smile of confidence. “We were going to be married,” she said.

He started violently. “What!” he exclaimed. “Well, well, we must see about that.”

“It’s no good seeing about it, father,” she corrected him, feeling an hysterical desire to laugh; “he’s dead.”

“The poor boy, the poor boy!” he murmured. “Such a capital fellow.”

“It was just after he had proposed to me that he fell overboard,” she told him.

“Dear me, dear me!” he sighed. “And you had accepted him? I suppose the shock… How very, very sad! – He just fell backwards.”

Awkwardly, but with great tenderness, he put his arm about her. “You must forget all about it,” he whispered. “You must have a good time.”

“It was so ghastly,” she said. “You see, when he asked me to be his wife, I didn’t say ‘yes.’”

“Of course not, of course not,” he murmured. “Very proper, I’m sure.”

“But he thought I was only playing with him,” she faltered. “He was so angry, so hurt. And then the paddle-wheel started with a jerk, and he overbalanced.”

“Ah, my dear,” he answered, “the course of true love never runs smoothly. An ancient saw, but a very true one! But you are young: you will soon get over it. You must throw yourself into your duties as hostess at the Residency; and, in the first place, I want you to help me in a little scheme I have in mind.”

Muriel guessed what was coming, and her feelings were peculiarly diversified.

“I want to persuade Daniel Lane to accept some official position,” he said. “Of course I can’t offer him the mere Oriental Secretaryship which poor dear Rupert has left vacant; but I think its scope and importance could be greatly extended, amplified, and he might be tempted.”

“I doubt it,” Muriel replied. She did not know quite what to say.

“I shall write to him at once,” Lord Blair went on, nodding archly at her. “I shall say how whole-heartedly you second my proposal.”

Muriel stiffened. “O, no, please,” she answered, quickly, and the colour mounted to her face. “Please leave me out of it; Mr. Lane and I have nothing in common. I hardly know him, and much of what I do know I dislike.”

Her father’s face fell. There is no telling how far his scheming mind had advanced into the future, nor what plans he was forming for the well-being of his only child. It may only be stated with certainty that he had a very great admiration for Daniel, and that he was not blind to the fact that the object of this admiration was heir-presumptive to a man who, by common report, was drinking himself to death.

To Muriel, however, the prospect of having the masterful Mr. Lane actually on the premises was disturbing in the extreme, and, during the ensuing days, added not a little to her mental distress.

She greatly missed Rupert’s entertaining company; and although, as the days passed, she realized that his death was not as shattering a blow to her as she had thought, the remembrance of their brief romance often brought the tears to her eyes. Yet even as she wiped them away she was conscious that her sorrows were aroused rather by the tragedy itself than by her own heart’s desolation. It is true that her emotions had been deeply stirred by his passion; but gradually the fires, lighted for so brief a moment, died down, and she was obliged to admit that her heart was not broken.

But if the romantic effect of the sad affair was proved in these few days to be less severe than she had at first supposed, there was another aspect of the matter which had a very profound bearing upon her mental attitude. The sudden termination of Rupert’s career had set her thinking about life in a way that she had never thought before. If death were always so near at hand, if so simple an accident so quickly put out the little lamp of existence, ought one not to concentrate all the forces of the human constitution upon the enjoyment of each passing hour?

She stood off from herself as an artist stands back from his picture, and she saw that she was but a shadow amongst shadows, a speck of vapour passing across time’s fixed stare, having no substance of which one could say, “this at least will remain.” Today she was here; tomorrow she would be dissolved and gone.

To Kate Bindane she confessed all that had occurred on that fatal night. “I don’t want to be romantic,” she told her. “I don’t want to make more of the thing than there was really in it. But his death means more to me than it does to any of you others. I can’t forget the sight of the soles of his shoes disappearing into that black water. It’s as though I’d seen Death himself swallow him up. I had always thought of Death as a sort of unknown country where one goes to; but in this case I saw it come for him and swallow him. I saw it as an ink-black monster; it snapped him up, and spit out the limp shell of him, but kept the essence of him in its stomach. And it’s waiting to snap up you and me. It’s close at hand, always close at hand…”

She shuddered as she spoke; and her friend, putting her strong arm around her, found difficulty in soothing her.

“Well, perhaps,” she replied, “it was an act of Providence to save you from a mistaken marriage.”

“O, but he loved me,” said Muriel, “and I should have come to love him entirely. He was so sweet, so good-natured.”

“Perhaps there’s something better in store for you, old girl.”

Muriel shook her head. “No,” she answered, “there’s nothing much but Death for any of us. It all comes to that in the end: it all leads just to Death.”

“Well, then, let’s eat, drink, and be merry,” said her friend.

“Yes,” Muriel replied, with conviction. “That’s what I’m going to do. Omar Khayyam was right: I’ve been reading him again.”

“He was a wise old bird,” Kate Bindane commented. “Wasn’t he the fellow who said something about a bottle of claret and a hunk of bread-and-butter in the desert? I’ve always thought it a fine conception of bliss.”

Muriel clasped her hands together, and looked up with youthful fervour. “Yes,” she replied, “and he said ‘Ah, make the most of what we yet may spend, Before we too into the dust descend,’ and ‘Ah, fill the cup: – what boots it to repeat how time is slipping underneath our feet.’”

“Yes,” said Kate, “I always remember that line by thinking of boots and slippers and feet.”

Muriel was speaking with too much earnestness to give heed to her friend’s lack of poetic reverence. “Life’s so short,” she went on, “that I’m going to make the most of it. I’m going to have my fling, Kate. I’m going to be merry.”

“Right-o!” said Kate. “I’m with you, old bean.”

CHAPTER XI – THE OASIS IN THE DESERT

Upon a day towards the end of November, Daniel Lane was seated upon the clean sand of the outer courtyard of the little mosque which stood at the southern end of the Oasis of El Hamrân. It was the hour of noon, and the shadow cast by the small, squat minaret behind him extended no further than his white canvas shoes, as he leaned his back against the unbaked bricks, and stared before him across the glaring enclosure to the palm-groves outside the open gateway.

In spite of the heat of the sun, the blue shadow in which he rested still afforded a pleasant coolness; and clad in a somewhat frayed tennis shirt, open at the neck, and a pair of well-worn grey flannel trousers, held up by a stout leather belt, his figure gave the appearance of such comfort and ease that his lazy reluctance to rise and go home to his midday meal was understandable.

Five Bedouin Arabs who had been laughing and talking with him, were now standing a few yards distant at the whitewashed door of the mosque, and were engaged in removing their red shoes before entering the sacred building; while, at the same time, they were conversing together in undertones, as though discussing some matter of importance.

Daniel sprawled to his feet, and, pulling his hat over his eyes, walked towards the whitewashed gateway which gleamed with dazzling brilliance against the deep blue of the sky and the green of the palms; but as he moved away his Bedouin friends hastened to him across the hot sand, and one of the number, the white-bearded Sheikh Ali, the headman of the Oasis, laid a hand upon his arm.

“My friend,” he faltered, speaking in the liquid-sounding Arabic of the western desert, “there is something I would say to you.” He seemed to hesitate.

“He is wise who listens to the wise,” Daniel replied, taking hold of the Sheikh’s hand, in the native manner of friends.

The old man smiled. “The Prophet has written: ‘Seek wisdom even if it were only to be found in China’,” he said.

Daniel looked into the kindly and, indeed, saintly face with perplexity. He was wondering what was to come; and, raising his arms, he clasped his two hands at the back of his neck, an attitude he was wont to assume when he was puzzled.

The four others, who had been hovering shyly at a little distance, came forward; and the Sheikh, as though emboldened by their support, bared his heart without much further preamble. He pointed out, as Daniel well knew, that there was a feud of many years standing in the Oasis, between the family of the speaker and that of a former Sheikh who had been dispossessed of his office. The quarrel had become almost traditional; and though, up till now, no very serious incident had occurred, there was a growing danger that a brawl might take place in which somebody might be shot, and that thus the feud might become an endless vendetta with its reciprocal crimes of violence.

Stripped of its pious and flowery decorations, the proposition put forward by the Sheikh was of the simplest character. He proposed that the Englishman should act as judge and mediator between the two families, and should hold a court at which the whole trouble should be ventilated; and so insistent was he that Daniel was obliged to acquiesce.

“Praise be to God!” exclaimed the old man, when at length he had received the definite answer he desired; and with many pious ejaculations of gratitude he and his friends turned to enter the mosque, while Daniel passed out through the gateway into the rustling palm-grove beyond.

His way led him for four or five hundred yards through the shade of the thickly growing trees – a dusty shade, pierced by innumerable little shafts of sunlight; but presently he came out once more under the dazzling sky, and, bearing off to the left, mounted a rugged path which ascended the sloping side of a sandy hill, till, reaching the summit, it passed over level ground towards his house which stood upon a spur of rock overlooking the Oasis.

Two years ago, when he had come to reside at El Hamrân to make, for the Institute which had commissioned him, a study of the manners and customs of the Bedouin, he had here found the abandoned ruins of an ancient Coptic monastery, dating from the days when Christianity was still the religion of the Egyptians; and he had established himself in their shelter, and later had rebuilt some of the rooms, so that now his place of abode had come to be a much-loved desert home, where month after month was passed in quiet study, and the days slipped by in placid contentment.

From the windows of his rooms he could look down over the whole extent of the dreamy little Oasis, with its sun-baked palm-groves, some three miles in length and half a mile in breadth, its houses and tents, its dozen wells, its few acres of tilled ground, and its miniature mosque. All these lay in a kind of basin, surrounded by the cliffs and low hills of the vast desert; and from his vantage-point he could look over the swaying green sea of the massed palm-tops to the barren plateau around about, and on a clear day he could just discern, far away to the east, the first of the ranges of the hills which rose between his isolated home and the far-off valley of the Nile.

At the ruined gateway of his dwelling he was met by his three yellow dogs who had been with him since they were puppies, and were fairly well-mannered considering their low pariah breed; and while he was playing with them, his servant, Hussein, came out to tell him that his luncheon was served. Therewith he crossed the courtyard of the old monastery, with its shattered row of cells to right and left, and its still lofty walls of unbaked bricks, and entered the large refectory which he had caused to be roofed over with palm-beams and dried cornstalks spread in a loose thatch, and which now served as a kind of entrance hall to his apartments. Upon its plastered walls some of the ancient frescoes were still visible; and here and there a Coptic inscription in dim red paint recorded the names of pious sentiments of long forgotten monks; while over the ruined doorway there was an indistinct figure of St. Michael, the patron saint of the place, whose pale eyes and smudged lips seemed to look down on him with faded and vacant mirth.

A rebuilt doorway in the right-hand wall led into his whitewashed living room, at the northeast end of which two large casements framed the splendid view over the Oasis and the desert.

In a corner of the room, on a small table, a simple but not uninviting meal was spread upon a spotless tablecloth. Fresh poultry and eggs were always plentiful in the Oasis; and on the store-room shelves there was a large and varied supply of preserved foods, and even delicacies, which had been brought over some months ago in a train of camels from Cairo.

Daniel sat down to his meal with good appetite; and as he munched his food in silence his gaze travelled round the airy room and brought back to his heart a glow of pleasant contentment. After all, what could the outside world give him in exchange for the peace and comfort of his desert home? Here he had the intellectual companionship of his books and his work, the simple friendship of courteous, good-hearted men, who had come to regard him as a kind of teacher, and the devotion of three well-meaning, if somewhat degenerate, yellow dogs. Here the brilliant sun, and the splendid north wind, which blew continuously from the distant Mediterranean across the great intervening spaces of clean desert, brought vigour and health to his body and a kind of laughing enthusiasm to his brain. Here he could amuse himself by long rambling walks in the freedom of the empty desert, or, with his gun, could make exciting expeditions in search of gazelle. Here, on the flat roof at the top of one of the ancient towers of the monastery, he slept each night under the blazing stars, lying in his comfortable camp-bed, breathing the purest air in all the world, and gazing up into the vault of the heavens, till the calm sleep of a child descended upon him. And here from golden sunrise to golden sunset the days slipped by, each brought to perfection by that greatest of all human blessings, an untroubled mind.

He rose from the table, and, lighting his pipe, sank luxuriously into a deck-chair, a book of the poems of Hafiz in his hand, a cup of Turkish coffee by his side, his feet resting crossed upon a wooden stool, and the cry of the hawks and the drone of the bees making music in his ears.

The barking of the dogs outside, followed by a knock at the door, aroused him; and his servant entered the room. “Sir,” he said, “a soldier of the Frontier Patrol has ridden in from El Homra, bringing a letter for your Excellency.”

Daniel threw down his book, and, making a broad gesture with his hands, looked up at the smiling Hussein with a frowning pretence of anger.

“Curses upon his father!” he thundered. “Will his confounded masters never leave me in peace? Bring him in to me.”

A few moments later a smart, khaki-clad negro was shown into the room, who saluted in military fashion, and produced a sealed envelope from the breast pocket of his tunic.

Daniel saw at a glance that the letter was from Lord Blair, as he had expected. He opened it with misgiving, and read it through without any apparent change of expression, though it was noticeable that the pipe in his mouth was allowed to go out. Then he slowly folded the sheets, and, thrusting them into his pocket, rose from his chair.

“I cannot give you my answer until tomorrow morning,” he said to the messenger. “Go now and look after your camel, while Hussein prepares food for you; and in the morning you may carry back my reply.”

As soon as he was alone once more, he pulled the letter from his pocket, and spreading it out upon the window-sill, stood bending over it, with wrinkled brows and brooding eyes, his elbows resting upon the sill and his head in his hands.

MY DEAR DANIEL,

You will be surprised to hear from me again so soon, and you will, I dare say, think me something of a nuisance. I am sorry to say that a sad calamity has befallen us. Poor young Rupert Helsingham was accidentally drowned in the Nile not many days after you returned to the desert; and we have all been very much cut up, especially my daughter, Muriel, in whose presence the tragedy occurred. You will recollect that Helsingham held the position here of Oriental Secretary; and it now falls to me to fill the vacancy. I have therefore decided greatly to extend the functions of the post and to offer it to you; and I shall esteem myself fortunate if you decide to accept it. As I am very anxious to increase by every means the respect in which the holder of the position should be held by the native population, I would propose to recommend you to His Majesty’s Government for early elevation to Knighthood, an honour which your scholarly attainments and your services to the Residency fully deserve. I trust, my dear Daniel, that you will give me the reply that I desire; and I am sure you will know what a personal pleasure it will be both to me and to my daughter to have you at the Residency.

Yours very sincerely,

BLAIR.

After reading through the letter two or three times, he stood for some minutes staring before him with unseeing eyes. His first impulse had been to reject the invitation on the instant, for he detested officialdom and all its ways; and the thought of connecting himself with the social life of the Residency was horrifying. But now, against his inclinations, he obliged himself to consider the proposition with an open mind.

To some extent it might be said that his work in the Oasis was finished: his notebooks contained an enormous mass of information. Yet he was loth to consider that his task was accomplished. El Hamrân and its inhabitants, and especially the saintly and benevolent Sheikh Ali, had become very dear to him; and the detachment from the world made an appeal to his nature which was very strong. His occasional journeys to Cairo were always disturbing to the peace of his mind; and how then could he expect to be happy in close daily contact with all that produced unrest?

There was this girl Muriel Blair, who, against his reason, had made some sort of impression upon him which was hard to eradicate. He had tried his best, even to the point of rudeness, to ignore her; and yet he had found himself interested in her welfare, and, on his return journey to the Oasis, he had given more thought to her than he supposed she deserved. And now he had to confess that Lord Blair’s reference to her in his letter had aroused the response it was intended to arouse.

During the whole afternoon he turned the matter over in his mind, and at sunset he went out for a rambling walk into the desert behind his house; nor did he return until his mind was made up.

As he entered his gateway in the gathering darkness, he was met by the Sheikh, who had come to discuss further the subject which he had opened that morning.

Daniel led him into his lamp-lit sitting-room, and bade him be seated; but when the old man began to discuss the merits of his case and those of his enemy, his host held up his hand.

“I would first ask your advice upon my own affairs,” he said. “My heart is sad tonight, my father.”

“Let me share your sorrow,” the Sheikh replied, with simple sincerity.

“My father,” said Daniel, “you have told me that long years ago you resided for some years in Cairo and other great cities.”

The Sheikh nodded his head. “It is so,” he replied.

“Were you happy there?”

“My son, I was young.”

“I mean,” said Daniel, “do you believe that happiness is to be found in cities?”

The old man raised his hand and moved it from side to side. “No,” he answered, “not happiness – only pleasure. Why do you ask?”

“Because I received a letter today…”

“I saw the messenger,” said the Sheikh.

“I have been offered a position of some importance in Cairo. My friends want me to leave El Hamrân, and to live in Egypt.”

Sheikh Ali uttered an exclamation of distress. “What is your reply?” he asked.

“Advise me, my father,” Daniel answered.

The Sheikh leant forward and silently examined his red leather shoes. For some moments no word was spoken. At length he looked up, and his hand stroked his white beard. “What use is it for me to advise you?” he said. “Your decision is already made. You will leave us; but it is not the glory of office which attracts you, nor yet the call of your duty which bids you depart.”

“What then is it?” Daniel asked.

“My friend,” he answered, after a pause, “no son of Adam, having strength and vitality such as yours, and enjoying the springtime of life, can remain a dervish, an ascetic. It is true that you care little for the world, that you do not desire fine clothes, nor wealth, nor possessions. Yet you are man, and man looks for his mate. You go to choose for yourself a wife.”

Daniel smiled. “You are mistaken,” he answered. “I shall not marry for some years to come.”

The Sheikh shook his head. “No man knows the secrets of his own heart,” he replied, “yet his friend may read them like a book written in a fair hand. I say again, you go to choose for yourself a wife.”

The ready denial was checked upon Daniel’s lips. For a moment he paused, and it seemed to him that a sidelight had been flashed upon the workings of his brain: then he dismissed the thought as being something very nearly fantastic.

“No,” he said, “I am going because I believe it to be my duty. My country needs me.”

The Sheikh made a gesture which seemed to indicate the uselessness of argument. “It is not good for a man to live alone,” he answered, with a sigh. “Some day, perhaps, you will return to us, bringing with you your wife.”

Daniel smiled again, but there was sadness in his face. “El Hamrân is my wife,” he said. “When I go, my heart will remain here.”

“When will your Excellency leave?” the Sheikh asked, becoming suddenly a man of action.

“In a few days” the other answered; “as soon as this matter of feud is set to rights.” And therewith he turned the conversation into that channel.

In the night as he lay upon his bed upon the tower-top, gazing up into the immensity of the heavens, he repeated to himself, almost with derision, the words of the Sheikh: “You go to choose for yourself a wife.” It was absurd, and yet somehow the thought made a way for itself amongst the crowded places of his mind. To choose for himself a wife…!

“Good Lord!” he muttered; “what a horrible idea!”