Part 37 (1/2)
”Ugh!” his wife e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. ”I suppose you think he'll be content to be a sort of pasha out there, with his harim of Bedouin women; raking in a fat salary from your precious Company, and fleecing the natives to fill your pockets. It's a pretty picture!”
[Ill.u.s.tration: _A SCENE FROM THE PHOTOPLAY-BURNING SANDS_]
”Well, it isn't a prettier picture,” he answered, ”to think of a fine man like that messing about Cairo, wasting his time at dinner parties and dances on a wretched Foreign Office pittance.”
Kate did not continue the discussion, and it was not long before she went to her friend's room, where, entering quietly, she found Muriel standing in her nightdress at the western window, her bare arms resting on the high sill, and her gaze fixed upon the obscurity of the desert which lay black and desolate under the stars. The window was open, and the drifting night-wind stirred the ma.s.s of her dark hair which fell about her shoulders.
She turned quickly as she heard the footstep, and Kate was dismayed at the pallor of her face.
”I can't make him out,” Muriel said. ”I can't make him out. Right out there somewhere, in that blackness, he is smoking his pipe and stroking his dogs and yawning himself to sleep. And yet he must know that I'm here, calling to him and crying to him.”
She stretched out her arms, her fists clenched. ”O G.o.d!” she muttered, ”Let me understand him, let me see what's in his mind.”
Kate drew the curtain across the window, as though she would shut out the dark menace of the desert, and drew her friend towards the bed.
”It'll all come out in the wash, old girl,” she choked. ”You're not the only woman who finds her man incomprehensible sometimes.”
She looked at Muriel and Muriel at her; and suddenly, like two children, they put their heads each upon the other's shoulder, and sobbed as though their hearts would break.
When Muriel returned next morning to the Residency, she went up to her own sitting-room at once; and presently she sent a message down to her father, who was at work in his study, asking him to come to her as soon as he had a few minutes to spare: nor was it long before he came tripping into the room.
It was evident that he felt the situation to be somewhat awkward; for his remarks began on a piping note of jocularity, and so rapidly descended the scale to one of profound melancholy that Muriel was reminded of a gramophone running down.
”Father,” she said presently, ”I want you to tell me exactly what Daniel said about me before he left. I suppose he told you that we had had a quarrel.”
Lord Blair seemed puzzled, and he raised his hands in a gesture indicating his lack of grasp of the essential points in Daniel's recent tirade.
”Yes, he told me about the little tiff; but I really don't know whether I apprehend his meaning exactly. He was very much upset, very overwrought. It seems, if I have understood him aright, that he finds fault with you because you are rather-what shall I say?-rather given to the superficialities of our civilization. He would prefer you _in puris naturalibus_”-he corrected himself-”that is to say metaphorically speaking. He said that 'the fas.h.i.+onable world,' as he called it, filled him with gloom, gave him the ... ah ... hump, I think he said; and he was disappointed to find that you a.s.sociated yourself so fully with the frivolities of society, and were so foreign to the liberties, the sincerities, of more primitive conditions. I don't know whether I am making myself clear.”
”Perfectly,” said Muriel. ”I suppose he would have preferred to see me turning head over heels in the desert _in puris_ ...
what-you-said-_ibus_.”
”I take it,” Lord Blair explained, ”that he was referring to your mental, not your physical att.i.tude.”
”Oh, quite so,” replied Muriel; and she burst out laughing, but her laughter was very close to tears.
Lord Blair patted her cheek. ”Ah, Muriel,” he said, his manner again becoming serious, ”you mustn't lose Daniel. I would rather that he were your husband than any man living.”
”But I don't think he wants to be my husband, or anybody's husband,” she replied.
”He is deeply in love with you,” her father told her.
”That's another matter,” said she; and Lord Blair glanced at her in perplexity.
He was not altogether sorry that events had taken their present course; for it seemed to him that this temporary disunion would have a salutary effect on his daughter's character. He could see clearly the faults of which Daniel complained; and he could not help thinking that this forceful show of disgust on her lover's part would be instrumental in arousing her to the more serious things of life. It would be a lesson to her which would serve to fit her to be the wife of a man of genuine sincerity.
Moreover, in the case of Daniel, his sudden return to El Hamran, with his heart left behind him here at the Residency, would probably dispel, once and for all, that haunting dream of his desert paradise which otherwise would always cause him to be restless in Cairo. This time, if he were made of flesh and blood, he would find the desert intolerable, and in a few weeks he would probably be lured back to civilization by the call of his manhood.
That Daniel should marry Muriel, and take up his permanent position at the Residency, was his most ardent hope; and as the present events had occurred he had fitted them each into place in his growing plan of action.