Part 2 (1/2)

”I shouldn't wonder. Selamlik, the old leper, 'll lay in wait for him.

He'll get lost in the sugar-cane one of these evenings soon.”

”Couldn't we...” d.i.c.ky paused.

Fielding started, looked at d.i.c.ky intently, and then shook his head sadly. ”It's no good, d.i.c.ky. It never is.”

”'While the lamp holds out to burn...'” said d.i.c.ky, and lighted another cigarette.

Precisely at seven o'clock Heatherby appeared. He had on a dress-suit, brown and rusty, a white tie made of a handkerchief torn in two, and a pair of patent leather shoes, scraggy and cracked.

Fielding behaved well, d.i.c.ky was amiable and attentive, and the dinner being ready to the instant, there was no waiting, there were no awkward pauses. No names of English people were mentioned, England was not named; nor Cairo, nor anything that English people abroad love to discuss. The fellah, the pasha, the Soudan were the only topics. Under Fielding's courtesy and d.i.c.ky's acute suggestions, Heatherby's weakened brain awaked, and he talked intelligently, till the moment coffee was brought in. Then, as Mahommed Seti retired, Heatherby suddenly threw himself forward, his arms on the table, and burst into sobs.

”Oh, you fellows, you fellows!” he said. There was silence for a minute, then he sobbed out again: ”It's the first time I've been treated like a gentleman by men that knew me, these fifteen years. It--it gets me in the throat!”

His body shook with sobs. Fielding and d.i.c.ky were uncomfortable, for these were not the sobs of a driveller or a drunkard. Behind them was the blank failure of a life--fifteen years of miserable torture, of degradation, of a daily descent lower into the pit, of the servitude of shame. When at last he raised his streaming eyes, Fielding and d.i.c.ky could see the haunting terror of the soul, at whose elbow, as it were, every man cried: ”You are without the pale!” That look told them how Heatherby of the Buffs had gone from table d'hote to table d'hote of Europe, from town to town, from village to village, to make acquaintances who repulsed him when they discovered who he really was.

Shady Heatherby, who cheated at cards!

Once Fielding made as if to put a hand on his shoulder and speak to him, but d.i.c.ky intervened with a look. The two drank their coffee, Fielding a little uneasily; but yet in his face there was a new look: of inquiry, of kindness, even of hope.

Presently d.i.c.ky flashed a look and nodded towards the door, and Fielding dropped his cigar and went on deck, and called down to Holgate the engineer:

”Get up steam, and make for Luxor. It's moonlight, and we're safe enough in this high Nile, eh, Holgate?”

”Safe enough, or aw'm a Dootchman,” said Holgate. Then they talked in a low voice together. Down in the saloon, d.i.c.ky sat watching Heatherby. At last the Lost One raised his head again.

”It's worth more to me, this night, than you fellows know,” he said brokenly.

”That's all right,” said d.i.c.ky. ”Have a cigar?”

He shook his head. ”It's come at the right time. I wanted to be treated like an Englishman once more--just once more.”

”Don't worry. Take in a reef and go steady for a bit. The milk's spilt, but there are other meadows....” d.i.c.ky waved an arm up the river, up towards the Soudan!

The Lost One nodded, then his eyes blazed up and took on a hungry look.

His voice suddenly came in a whisper.

”Gordon was a white man. Gordon said to me three years ago: 'Come with me, I'll help you on. You don't need to live, if you don't want to. Most of us will get knocked out up there in the Soudan.' Gordon said that to me. But there was another fellow with Gordon who knew me, and I couldn't face it. So I stayed behind here. I've been everything, anything, to that swine, Selamlik Pasha; but when he told me yesterday to bring him the daughter of the Arab he killed with his kourbash, I jibbed. I couldn't stand that. Her father had fed me more than once. I jibbed--by G.o.d, I jibbed! I said I was an Englishman, and I'd see him d.a.m.ned first.

I said it, and I shot the horse, and I'd have shot him--what's that?”

There was a churning below. The Amenhotep was moving from the bank.

”She's going--the boat's going,” said the Lost One, trembling to his feet.

”Sit down,” said d.i.c.ky, and gripped him by the arm. ”Where are you taking me?” asked Heatherby, a strange, excited look in his face.

”Up the river.”