Part 26 (1/2)

”No, I'll leave that to you,” Daniel answered with a smile. ”But there's one thing I should like to ask you: have you taken any steps yet to give anything to the poor?”

His cousin shook his head.

”Well, hurry up and do so,” said Daniel.

Once more Lord Barthampton rose from his chair, and this time to his relief, he was not pushed back again. ”I'm late for the show,” he grumbled, ”and anyway it's no fun staying here, being put through my paces. You've got all the cards, and the game's in your hands. It makes me sick.”

”Yes, I'm sorry,” Daniel replied, and he spoke with sincerity. ”But don't worry yourself. You're going on fine.”

With that he let him go.

Upon the following day, Lord Blair again acted in a manner which showed the movement of his thoughts. Muriel was going out to lunch at Mena House, and Daniel suggested that she and the Bindanes should ride over to his camp to tea. Lord Blair appeared to be delighted at the proposal, and gave it such hearty support that Muriel was constrained to accept the invitation.

Thus it came about, that soon after four o'clock Daniel was helping his three visitors to dismount from the hired camels which had jolted them over the desert to his tents; and no sooner had the attendant camel-men taken charge of the animals, than he found himself smilingly following in his friends' wake as Muriel began enthusiastically to conduct them around the camp, as though she were its proprietress.

She pointed out the various lockers and revealed their contents with pride; she showed how this table folded up, or how that chair could be converted into a bed; she called attention to the portable book-shelf, and held up for inspection some of the volumes which she had arranged; she introduced the three yellow dogs, and explained the merits of the kennel she had built for them.

In her interest and pride in the work of her hands there was a complete absence of self-consciousness; and the situation engendered so warm a sense of intimacy that she found herself calling Daniel by his Christian name, as though this had long been her habit.

When tea had been drunk and the sun was setting, Kate Bindane took her husband by the arm and suggested a stroll. At this, however, Muriel's mind returned to the conventions, and she intimated her desire to accompany them. But Kate, profiting by Daniel's momentary absence with Benifett Bindane, argued the point with her.

”You stay with Mr. Lane, old girl,” she said. ”He wants to be with you, I'm sure; and any way I want to be alone with Benifett. d.a.m.n it, we're on our honeymoon!”

There was a touch of wistfulness in her friend's jocular words; and Muriel had seen enough of their married life to be understanding. Kate Bindane had a romantic heart under her uncompromising exterior; and her cold-blooded husband, to whom she was obviously devoted, must have played the lover about as ardently as a jellyfish. But out here in the solitude, the glory of the setting sun might infuse a little warmth into his veins, and might lift his thoughts above those schemes of commercial enterprise which seemed to const.i.tute his sole interest in Egypt.

The two couples therefore separated for a while; and Muriel strolled with Daniel to a cl.u.s.ter of rocks, amidst which they presently seated themselves upon the slope of a sand-drift, facing towards the south and west. Before them, framed between the great boulders of sun-browned limestone, the desert stretched out to the purple hills in the distance; and above the hills the glory of the cloud-flecked western sky was spread like a vision of the Isles of the Blessed.

The evening was warm and windless, and no sound came to their ears except the occasional twitter of an early bat, and the far-off wail of a circling kestrel. It was as though some magical leap through time had been accomplished, whereby they two had alighted upon the earth in an age before the advent of man and beast, or after the last trump had left the planet again desolate. Yet there was no sense of death in these rock-strewn s.p.a.ces, but rather a pulse of sleeping nature which held the reiterated promise of life. The sand upon which they lay was warm and golden, and the rocks about them were not cold nor dead to the touch.

Muriel lay upon the slope, her hands behind her head; and Daniel, sitting beside her, and looking down at her with his calm blue eyes, had the sunset as his aureola, so that he put her in mind of some figure by Bonozzo Gozzoli painted against gold. His ma.s.sive head and shoulders seemed to tower above her like those of a rugged presence rising out of the rocks and sand of the wilderness; and she noticed for the first time that his face was reminiscent of Watts' ”Samson,” a picture which had always delighted her.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _A SCENE FROM THE PHOTOPLAY-BURNING SANDS_]

Neither she nor he found any need of words, and for some time there was almost complete silence between them, so that one might have supposed the spell of the desert to have bewitched them. His hands idly played with the sand; and, as the grains ran between his fingers, she seemed to feel the memories of all her days slipping from her, until only this one little moment of the present remained.

”Well?” she asked at last, and there was the question of all the ages in her eyes.

”No man can escape his destiny,” he replied; but the words did not seem to be detached: rather they were the conclusion of a mute a.n.a.lysis to which they had both contributed.

Again there fell a silence between them, a silence, however, so filled with unspoken words that in it their relations.h.i.+p grew immeasurably more close. The glory of the sunset began to fade, and the veil of the twilight descended gently about them; but in their hearts it was dawn, and the sunrise was very near.

At length he arose and stretched his arms to their full extent. Muriel gazed up at him, wondering how he would choose to seal the compact which, so it seemed, had been made between them in this period of their silence. Suddenly she was conscious that her heart was beating fast, and its throbbing brought her back from her dream.

She sat up, and looked at him for a moment with fear in her eyes; for it was as though she had spoken words in the depths of her being which her tongue would have been too reticent to utter.

Daniel clasped his hands behind the back of his head, and stood watching her, a whimsical smile on his face. His expression was one of perplexity, almost of amus.e.m.e.nt at the incomprehensibility of Fate.

”Come,” he said, ”we had better be going, Muriel, my dear.”