Part 29 (1/2)

”No--I meant, is he still in the valley, or are you two alone here?

How deliciously romantic!” Millicent sighed. The sigh was more suggestive than her words.

”My brother is in the tomb at this moment,” Meg said. ”You seem to have very extraordinary ideas of the ways of excavators”--she had flushed to the roots of her hair--”of the behaviour of ordinary English people.”

”What was the desert made for, but freedom, my dear? If one can't live in this valley as one wants to, where can one, I should like to know?”

”We are living as we like,” Meg said. ”Your ideas of freedom may not be mine. Our interests lie apart--our ideas of enjoyment are, as far as I can understand, poles apart.”

”A foolish waste of time, my dear, that's all I can say. May I smoke?”

Michael handed her a box of cigarettes; he noticed the exquisite refinement of her hands as she picked out a cigarette, her brightly-polished nails. ”Thanks, dear,” she said, as she lit the cigarette from the match which he held out to her--the ”dear” was for Meg's benefit; for as their eyes met hers were full of genuine fun and mischief.

”I must tease her,” she said, in a low whisper; Meg had gone to the end of the room. ”I love shocking those dark eyes--I enjoy making her hate me. It's only fun.”

Meg's heart was beating. How dared she call Michael ”dear”? How dared she intrude herself uninvited upon their simple life? Her beauty, her foolish feminine clothes, angered her. She hated Millicent's fine skin, which was, even in the desert heat, as poreless as a baby's. It was a wonderful skin for a grown person, let alone for a woman of Millicent Mervill's age. Meg thought of the dried mummy's lips. One day that pure soft flesh, which held the tints of a field daisy, would be more revolting to look at if it were unearthed than the skin of the three-thousand-year-old queen. If Meg had possessed a wis.h.i.+ng-ring, it would not have taken long to effect the inevitable change.

The impudence of the woman maddened her. She knew that she could not, even if she had wished to, behave as she did. Millicent did exactly as she liked, as the impulse of the minute suggested.

Meg wondered how she had pa.s.sed the time while they were at the tomb.

Had she examined any private object in the hut? Had she interviewed the servants? She was quite capable of doing it.

She heard her whisper to Mike. Her own sensitiveness now drove her out of the hut; if they wished to speak in whispers, let them speak. She stood sullenly outside the door.

Why did not some strong man strangle women like Millicent Mervill? Why had not she herself the courage to tell her what she thought of her?

Probably Millicent would only smile and show her perfect teeth--they always made Meg furious, because they were even better than her own, and hers were, so she thought, her strongest a.s.set--and say, ”Poor girl! You are a little overtired”; or she would say, ”You have so much to make you happy, dear, and I have so little. Don't be unkind--I only long for sympathy.”

Millicent's moments of self-pity were mean and contemptible and yet they were effective.

The only thing to do was to leave the two alone, to trust Michael and go about her business.

Presently she heard Michael say: ”Well, I'll leave you to rest until lunch-time--I can't idle while Freddy is working like a n.i.g.g.e.r. You'll be all right, I know, with your book and a cigarette.”

Margaret slipped round to the back of the hut; she did not want to speak to Michael; she was thankful that he had left Mrs. Mervill, but his voice had been too kind, too nice. Meg did not know what she would have liked him to do, what he could have done otherwise. She only knew that the niceness of his voice annoyed her.

When the overseer's whistle for the workmen to ”down picks and spades”

sounded and the time was ripe for Freddy to appear, Margaret sauntered off to meet him. When she saw him coming she hurried towards him. How she loved him!

When they met she said, ”That cat Mrs. Mervill is here. Oh, Freddy, I hate her!”

Freddy laughed. Millicent Mervill, with her extreme modernity and virile pa.s.sions, was so far removed from the thought of the tomb, from the brown mummy, whose golden ribbons he had been examining; his sister's annoyance was so utterly unlike her mood of the earlier morning! He had never seen Meg so moved as she had been in the tomb.

He felt a little relieved that a very human and irritating influence had suddenly thrust itself across her path. Meg was getting too enthralled in Egypt. These thoughts flashed through his mind.

”Good old Meg,” he said tenderly. ”The fighting Lampton's roused, is it?”

”Yes,” Meg said. ”I am roused. She's so insolent, Freddy.”

”What?” he said, stopping her before she got further. ”Insolent? to whom?”

”To . . .” Meg hesitated. ”To life,” she said abruptly. ”She says things that I could hit her for saying. Freddy, do squash her!--she suggests something nasty with every word she utters.”