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Burning Sands. Weigall Arthur Edward Pearse Brome
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Автор произведения Weigall Arthur Edward Pearse Brome
Жанр Зарубежная классика
Издательство Public Domain
When Rupert had left them, Lord Blair turned to his daughter. “Undersized,” he murmured, “sadly undersized.”
“Oh, not so very,” said Muriel, divining his thoughts. “And, any way, he’s a good-looking boy, and his manners are charming. I’m growing very fond of Rupert.”
Lord Blair glanced at her quickly.
CHAPTER VIII – THE ACCOMPLICE
Undoubtedly the ancients were quite right in regarding youth as a kind of fever, an intermittent sickness lasting from puberty to middle age. In Egypt this particular illness is rampant: everybody who is not old feels youthful, and the actually youthful have hours of violent delirium.
As the weather, in the last days of October, became cooler and more stimulating, Lady Muriel began to experience a series of startling sensations. She felt excited, and her mind turned itself to a heated study of the romantic possibilities of existence at the Residency. She had always been told that a young woman’s life was divided into two distinct ages, the first being a period filled with romantic episodes and terminated by marriage, and the second being a period crowded with very serious love affairs and only curtailed by age or the divorce court.
So far she could safely say that she had only been in love three times. Once at Eastbourne, during her school-days, she had fallen into a divine frenzy over a curate, who had been a rugger blue at Oxford, and who, in a certain brief and desperate sofa-episode, had apparently mistaken her for the football with which he was touching down a try, but who, a moment later, had recovered his feet and had staggered out into the night calling upon God for mercy upon a married man. She had nursed her bruises and had sorrowed for him for many days, ardently desiring to poison his wife and all her babies, but his sudden appointment to a far-away living had closed the story.
A year later she fell in love with a Russian singer who, at the time, was being heavily lionized in London; but, as luck would have it, she met three of his mistresses in one day, and the fright sobered her.
The third episode had been much more prosaic. The man was merely a young Member of Parliament who made his overtures in the most approved style, and might have succeeded in capturing her, had it not been discovered on the day the engagement was to be announced that he had borrowed money on the strength of the coming alliance. In this case she had not grieved for long: indeed, when she happened to see him a week later she had already sufficiently recovered to observe that his eyes were set too close together, his teeth were like a rabbit’s, his hands too hairy, his head not hairy enough, and his legs bandy.
That was a year ago, and since then she had been entirely heart-whole. Now, however, the starry Egyptian nights, the sun-bathed days, the multitude of officers, officials, and diplomats whose acquaintance she was making, and the general court paid to her, both as a charming woman and as the Great Man’s daughter, were beginning to stimulate her senses.
One morning, at the beginning of November, as she sat up in her bed, playing with her toes, the thought came strongly to her that her season in Egypt ought to be graced by some exceptional romance. Here was the setting for the play; here was the heroine; but where was the hero? It was true that Rupert Helsingham, of whom she had grown quite fond, was becoming daily more bold; but he had ever an eye on her father, on whom depended his budding career. In her exposed position whatever romance came to her would have to be conducted on very correct lines; and would probably be expected to end in marriage; but she did not want to be married. Indeed, the thought appalled her. She vastly preferred the idea of a great sorrow, a heartbreaking parting under the stars, a life-long devotion to a sad, sweet memory. But that a man should walk nightly into her bedroom in his striped pyjamas was a horrible thought.
Pensively she gazed at her toes, upon which a shaft of the morning sunlight was striking. They were pretty toes. A man’s feet usually had corns on them. No, she had little wish for a bare-footed romance: the hero she pictured would make love in his boots, and tragedy should descend before the hour came to take them off.
Everything pointed to a clandestine affair – something in a garden, with the scent of roses in it; or in a boat floating down the Nile, very placid and mysterious; or far away in the desert…
In the desert! The thought brought back to her mind the parting words of Daniel Lane. “Why don’t you break loose?” Several times she had wondered what he had meant: whether he were suggesting a breaking away from the routine of her life, or whether he were advising her to run amuck in a moral sense. The latter, it seemed to her, was the more probable, judging by his reputation; but this was not a form of entertainment that appealed to her. She did not mind playing with fire, but she had no wish at all to be burnt. Her education had trained her to think lightly of the chastity of others, but so far it had not injured her own natural continence.
Getting out of bed she stood for a few moments in the middle of the room, staring through the open window at the distant line of the desert. Yes, the desert would be a wonderful setting for a romance; and yet even there she would not seem to be quite alone, quite unobserved. In her mind the whole of those vast spaces belonged, somehow, to Daniel Lane. She would feel his disturbing influence there: his head would rise from behind a rock, and his quiet eyes would stare mockingly at her and her lover, whoever he might be. He might even stroll forward, pick up the wretched Romeo, with a yawn throw him over the cliffs, seat himself by her side instead, and light his pipe. And if she protested he might whistle up half a dozen cut-throat Bedouin and peg her to the ground for the jackals to sniff at till he was ready to put her in his harîm.
She laughed nervously to herself as she went to her bath; and her thoughts turned again to the possibilities of the garden and the Nile, and once more the difficulties of her position were manifest. Female accomplices are required in romance: she had none. There was her maid, Ada, a large Scotchwoman, who would play the part about as nimbly as a hobbled cow. Lady Smith-Evered was not to be trusted with secrets, even if she were able to be flattered into acquiescence. There was no other woman in Cairo with whom she was at all well acquainted as yet, and none that gave promise of the paradoxical but necessary combination of self-effacement and presence of mind.
What she required was the friendship of a young married woman without stain and without scruple. Then there would be some hope that the season would not be entirely barren of romance, and, when she returned to England in the spring, she would not be in the painful necessity of having to invent confidences for the ears of her girl friends.
There is, however, an ancient and once very popular Egyptian god who seems to have survived to the present day, if one may judge by the strange events which take place in the land of the Pharaohs. By the Greeks he was called Pan-Who-is-Within-Hearing; and he must certainly have been sitting in the bathroom. For no sooner had Muriel dressed and come downstairs than the accomplice walked straight into the house.
Muriel had just entered the drawing-room by one door when a footman threw open the opposite door and announced “Mr. and Mrs. Benifett Bindane.”
A moment later a plump, square-shouldered young woman hurried into the room and flung herself into Muriel’s arms. “Muriel – you darling!” she cried, and “Kate – my dear!” cried Muriel, as they kissed one another affectionately.
Mrs. Bindane beckoned to the middle-aged man who had followed her into the room. “This person is my husband,” she said. “I think you saw him when he was courting me.”
He came forward and gave Muriel a limp hand. He was very tall, and appeared to be invertebrate; he had watery blue eyes, thin yellow hair, a long, white, clean-shaven face, and a wet mouth which was seldom, if ever, shut.
“Benifett, my dear,” said his capable, handsome wife, “say something polite to the lady.”
“How-de-do,” he murmured, staring at her awkwardly.
“Yes, I think we did meet once, didn’t we?” said Muriel.
Mrs. Bindane intervened. “Yes, don’t you remember? At the pictures, when we were keeping company. We got wed at our chapel ten days ago – such a to-do as you