Part 16 (1/2)
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 sh.e.l.l 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-b.u.t.ter 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 Hamran. 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 s.h.i.+rt, 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 att.i.tude he was wont to a.s.sume when he was puzzled.