He felt a sort of gloomy interest in the group before him; and, as his presence seemed to be unnoticed, he leaned against the jamb of the door, hat in hand, watching the scene through a recurrent haze of tobacco-smoke.
“I suggest,” Mrs. Cavilland was saying to Muriel whose back was turned to him, “that we drive up the Mousky, and go first to the scent bazaar. Willie Purdett, here, wants to buy some scent for his mother – Lady Mary, you know. And then I must go to the brass bazaar: I promised dear Lady Agatha Lawer I’d get her one of those tea-tray things. She so hates going to the bazaars herself: she says they’re so smelly. Personally, I simply love the East…”
Muriel took her seat in the car, and as she did so she caught sight of Daniel.
“Hullo!” she exclaimed, “I thought you’d gone.”
He took his pipe out of his mouth, and told her he was just going.
Muriel introduced him to Mrs. Cavilland, who stared at him with disdain, casting a withering glance upon the disreputable hat he was holding in one hand, and upon the pipe in the other. She then turned away as though the sight were unbearable.
“Mr. Lane is a cousin of your friend Charles Barthampton,” Muriel told her; and thereat her manner changed with surprising suddenness, for the British peerage was as meat and drink to her.
“Why, of course,” she answered, “I can see the likeness now;” and she glanced with surprise at the mischievous smile – almost a wink – which Muriel directed at him. “You’re new to Cairo?” she added. ”You must come and see me: I’m always at home on Tuesdays.“
“Yes,” said Muriel, “that will be very nice for him: he loves tea-parties, don’t you, Daniel dear?”
Daniel looked at her curiously. His Christian name sounded strange from her lips, and he wondered why she had used it now for the first time. Her expression suggested that there was a private joke between them, and the intimacy pleased him.
“Yes, Muriel dear,” he replied, gravely, and Muriel gasped; “but you needn’t blurt out my secret.” He turned to Mrs. Cavilland as though to explain. “I’m rather addicted to tea-drinking and quiet gossip,” he said.
Mrs. Cavilland thought him somewhat forward, but she excused it in one who was so well-connected. “We tear each other to pieces on Tuesdays,” she laughed.
He did not reply. He was still wondering why his name, Daniel, should have sounded so pleasant to his ears, and why the expression of silent understanding on Muriel’s face should have stirred him so subtly. It was as though their friendship had taken a leap forward.
He stepped to the side of the car, and put his hand on Muriel’s arm. “Don’t get too tired,” he said, “or you won’t enjoy your dance tonight.”
“Are you coming?” Mrs. Cavilland asked him.
“No,” he answered, “I have a previous engagement with a lady in the desert.”
“Who?” asked Muriel, quickly. She was taken off her guard.
“A very dear friend,” he replied. “Her name is Sleep.”
CHAPTER XV – A BALL AT THE GENERAL’S
Lady Smith-Evered’s dance was a social event of much importance, and those members of the English community who were not invited had perforce to regard themselves as outside the ranks of the elect: a fact which led that night to much moodiness on the part of ambitious young women who wandered about their creditable little flats and houses, hating their mediocre husbands. On the other hand, those to whom invitations had come somewhat unexpectedly, vied with one another in their efforts to indicate that their presence at the General’s house was to be regarded as a matter of course; and herein, perhaps, lay the explanation of those curious demonstrations of nonchalance which were so frequently to be observed – the careless attitudes, the friendly words to the servants behind the supper buffet, the assumed knowledge of the plan of the house and garden, and the casual remarks to host and hostess.
Muriel, of course, was the outstanding figure of the ball: not so much because of her looks, for there were many well-favoured young women in the ballroom, nor because of her charming frock, for the beginning of the winter season in Cairo is notable for a general display of recent purchases; but rather because she was her father’s daughter, and, as his heiress, one of the most frequent victims of the familiarities of the London Press.
She paid little attention, however, to the many pairs of eyes which scrutinized her; for she had come here to enjoy herself, and her dancing program was full.
As an opening to the ball, she danced with the General; but her efforts to avoid having her toes trodden upon caused her to indulge in such antics that she speedily manœuvred him to a convenient sofa, where he puffed and blew until the military band had ceased and again renewed its conscientious din.
There are few noises so dispiriting as a British military band’s rendering of American ragtime; but, as has already been stated, Muriel was determined to enjoy herself, and, save for an occasional desire to sandbag the conductor, she was entirely untroubled by ill-humoured thoughts as her elegant partners swung her around the room, or led her out to rest in the illuminated garden, where a hundred gaily coloured Chinese lanterns dispelled the mystic sorrow of the moonlight.
After some two or three hours of dancing, however, she began to grow weary; and when something went wrong temporarily with the suspender which held up one of her stockings, she was glad enough to come to rest in the supper-room. Here she seated herself next to her hostess, who was just forming a big party at a little table, and who was jovially endeavouring to pretend that there was much fun to be derived from jamming oneself into the smallest possible space and eating with one hand.
Lady Smith-Evered, having swallowed during the evening quite a lot of champagne, was in a talkative and even confidential mood. On several occasions she nudged Muriel, and whispered loudly to her from behind her fan, calling her attention to the General, who, at a neighbouring table, was flirting resolutely with Kate Bindane.
“He’s such a Lothario,” she whispered: “I’m quite thankful he’s growing old; though, mind you, he doesn’t often show signs of age yet.” She laughed hoarsely, and turned her eyes upwards with a nod to express admiration for his virility.
Muriel, as she looked at her, conceived a violent horror of old age; and inwardly she prayed that in her own case she would know when to abandon the thoughts which only Youth can make beautiful.
“Women used to be mad about him,” Lady Smith-Evered went on presently, still speaking in husky asides, “but I don’t think he was unfaithful to me, except, perhaps, when he was in India.” She munched her lobster-salad in silence for a few moments. “One can’t blame him for that, poor dear,” she mused at length. “Men will be men – especially in that climate…!”
Muriel turned away in shame, and at once caught the eye of Lord Barthampton, who was one of the party. He was staring at her from the opposite side of the table.
“Lady Muriel,” he said, raising his glass to her, “Your very good health. Cheerio!”
Muriel thanked him, and busied herself in prodding at the food upon her plate which was a full arm’s length away from her.
“Do let me feed you,” said the good-looking youth who was sitting beside her, and who had managed to ram himself closer to the table.
He picked up her plate, and, screwing himself round on his chair, presented a morsel on the end of the fork to her lips. The intimate operation delighted him, and as he repeated it, Muriel observed the excitement in his face. It is a most dangerous thing to feed a woman: it arouses the dormant instincts of the Pliocene Age.
Lady Smith-Evered patted her hand archly. “You mustn’t let him do that,” she whispered. “That’s the way doves begin. And look at Charles Barthampton: he’s madly jealous.”
“Jealous? – Why?” asked Muriel, glancing at Lord Barthampton, who was scowling at her across the table.
“My dear, haven’t you eyes? Can’t you see that he is making a dead set at you?”
“Oh, nonsense,” said Muriel, a little crossly. “I’ve only met him once or twice, and this evening I’ve had half a dance with him.”
Lady Smith-Evered smiled knowingly. “He’s a very eligible young man,” she purred.
“He drinks,” Muriel remarked, shortly.
“Oh, but he has turned over a new leaf,” her hostess replied. “Didn’t you notice he drank your health in soda-water just now? He’s a very good sort. What a difference there is between him and that extraordinary cousin of his!”
“There is, indeed,” Muriel answered, with feeling.
The youth beside her had abandoned his attempts to feed her, and was excitedly filling his own mouth with good things, women and food being associated ideas in his pristine young mind.
“Did you notice how he apologized to me?” Lady Smith-Evered remarked.
“Who?” asked Muriel. Her thoughts were wandering.
“Mr. Lane,” she answered. “It was a great triumph.”
“Who for? You, or Mr. Lane?” Muriel’s heart beat as she asked the question, for it was meant to be a blow in defence of the man she was beginning to regard as her good friend.
Lady Smith-Evered was too befogged to divine her meaning. “It was a triumph for me,” she declared. “People generally find it better to be in my good books.” She made a menacing gesture to the company at large; and three or four young officers, not quite catching her words, but judging by her expression that she was demanding their approbation, nodded their heads wisely. “But of course he’s not quite right in his head,” she went on. “He has lived alone in the desert too much. Why, my dear, do you know what I saw him doing yesterday in the street?”
“What?” asked Muriel, at once alert.
“It was just outside the Residency,” she said. “I was talking to him, when a donkey, left alone in a native vegetable cart, got its leg over the shaft and started kicking. Well!.. He lifted the creature clean off the ground, got its leg back between the shafts, and then took hold of its ear and whispered into it: ‘Oh, you absurd ridiculous ass!’ It sounded quite uncanny.”
Lord Barthampton got up ponderously from his seat and came round the table to Muriel. “The music’s started again,” he said. “It’s our dance, isn’t it? Are you ready?”
Muriel rose, somewhat relieved to take her departure from the supper-table. As she did so her hostess again nudged her heavily.
“Just look at the General!” she whispered.
Kate Bindane turned round, and, catching Muriel’s eye, burst out laughing; while the General, finding his wife’s gaze fixed upon him, put his hand playfully over his face.
“What’s the joke?” Muriel asked.
“Sir Henry is telling risky stories,” replied Kate.
“It’s all right, my dear,” said the General, waving his hand to his wife. “It’s only the one about the little boy and the Sunday school teacher.”
Lady Smith-Evered laughed huskily. “I’m glad it’s no worse,” she declared. “Henry, you must behave yourself.”
“She’s egging me on,” he replied, slapping his thigh.
“Now then, now then!” exclaimed Kate, “none o’ your sauce.”
Muriel put her hand on Lord Barthampton’s arm, and turned away. She was feeling an indefinable sense of disgust; and she was glad to merge once more into the revolving mass of dancers, and to allow the brazen music to beat the thoughts out of her brain. Her partner did not speak. He was turning over in his mind the possibilities of future happiness, and the effort absorbed his attention, so that his dancing, never of a high standard, became atrocious.
The only solution of his perplexing problem was for him to marry a rich wife: then, if Daniel were to reveal the secret of his birth, he would not suffer a knock-out blow. He would lose his title and the fortune which went with it, but he would have refeathered his nest, and all would be well. And the partner with whom he was now dancing was an heiress, and a jolly fine girl into the bargain.
He was making praiseworthy efforts to check the downward course of his career, and ever since his interview with his cousin, he had been on the water-waggon; but, even though his reform were complete, was Daniel to be trusted not to dispossess him? He doubted it: the temptation would be too great. What a dirty trick his father had played him! But he wasn’t so easily floored: he would obtain another fortune by marriage, and then he could tell Cousin Daniel to go to hell.
“You’re looking very glum,” said Muriel, as they wandered out, presently, into the garden.
Lord Barthampton braced himself. “Yes, I am a bit down in the mouth, little woman,” he murmured. “You know, even we soldier fellows get the hump sometimes – sort of lonely.”
Muriel glanced at him apprehensively. She saw at once that the moonlight and the lanterns had had an instant effect upon him, and she presumed that he would now become sentimental. Self-pity is the token of a fool, and her feminine intuition told her that, since he was worse than a fool, he would probably picture himself as a stern, silent Englishman of heroic mould bravely battling against a deep and poetic loneliness.
She sighed sweetly, for there was always something of the rogue in her. “Yes, I understand,” she whispered, and she pressed her fingers sympathetically upon his arm.
His line of attack seemed to be justified, and he developed it with ardour. “Sometimes a chap comes to the end of his tether,” he went on, but paused again and squared his shoulders. “However, one’s got to keep a stiff upper lip, eh? We’re out here, far from home, just to do our duty, so we mustn’t grouse. We have to keep the old flag flying.”
“The dear old flag,” said Muriel fervently, feeling rather a beast thus to play up to him, but excusing herself on the grounds of curiosity as to what he would say next.
“Sometimes it’s hard, though,” he confessed, “and I’m afraid I’ve been reduced more than once to the whisky bottle and baccarat and bad company. Ah! I know that sounds weak,” he exclaimed, as she uttered a little squeak of distress, “but you don’t know the temptations of a lonely man, with nothing to do, cursed with wealth…”
“O, but I can guess,” she replied, intoning her words as though she were speaking Shakespearian lines. “Sunday afternoons, leaning over the parapet, with nothing to do but spit in the river – why shouldn’t you join in a game of chance, instead of going to church? I can quite understand it.”
He looked at her in astonishment, wondering if she were pulling his leg; but in the moonlight he saw only a sympathetic girl, gazing into the distance with an expression of saintly purity.
“It’s worse than that,” he sighed. “A man has temptations that you couldn’t understand, little woman. What he wants is the pure friendship of a girl.”
“An English girl,” she murmured, with fervour.
He bent forward and looked into her eyes. “Lady Muriel,” he said, “will you be a friend to me? Will you be my little English rose?”
“Lord Barthampton …” she began, wondering how she could terminate a jest of which she was already tiring.
He checked her. “Please call me ‘Charles,’” he begged.
The music began again in the ballroom, and Muriel rose with alacrity. “Come,” she said, dramatically. “Let us go back to the gay and frivolous world.”
“Right-o!” he exclaimed, brightly, inadvertently changing his tone now that the desired impression seemed to have been made.
As they entered the house they encountered Lord Blair, who had looked in at the dance for the purpose of demonstrating the perfect agreement between the diplomatic and the military services, for it so happened that his own policy and that of the General disagreed on every occasion and on every essential point. He was standing in the hall, having just made a parade of the ballroom with his hostess, and the latter was now talking to him, calling him “George” for the benefit of the guests who happened to be within earshot.
As the girl and her partner approached, Lady Smith-Evered whispered that Lord Barthampton seemed very attracted to Muriel; and she repeated her assertion that he was a very eligible young man.
At this, however, a frown gathered upon Lord Blair’s forehead, and he made a deprecating gesture with his thin hand. He had other plans for his daughter which, if not yet mature, were already in train; and, it must be confessed, he wished Barthampton an early and comfortable demise.
Muriel presently wandered off with her chaperone, Lady Smith-Evered; and Lord Blair thereupon suggested that her late partner should come with him into the smoking-room for a quiet cigar. The heavy-jowled young man was inwardly astonished at the mark of consideration, and the thought entered his slow-working mind that Lady Muriel’s father was taking an anticipatory interest in him.
The smoking-room not being open to the ordinary guests, the two men found themselves alone in it; and Lord Blair at once took up his stand, as was his wont, upon the hearthrug, and made his customary pretence of warming a certain part of his anatomy before the empty grate. Lord Barthampton, meanwhile, seated himself upon the arm of a neighbouring chair, and lit the cigar which had been proffered to him.
“I’m afraid I shall never persuade your cousin Daniel to come to these sort of functions,” the elder man remarked, after a few casual references had been made to the evening’s entertainment.
“No, he’s a queer fellow,” the other responded, shortly.
“I have the greatest admiration for him,” Lord Blair declared. “Tell me, is he not your heir presumptive?” His words indicated only a polite interest.
“Yes,” said Barthampton, puffing heavily at his cigar, and shifting his legs. “But, of course, I shall marry soon – when I find the right girl…”
“Of course, of course,” Lord Blair replied. “Very right, very proper. But …” he paused, “there is no hurry, is there?”
“I’d like to have a son and heir,” the other responded. “You see there’s a good deal of property involved. Luckily, I need not marry for money: I’ve got plenty.” He was anxious to announce his eligibility.
“Well,” said Lord Blair, speaking out of the blacker depths of his scheming mind, “take my advice, my dear fellow, and don’t marry yet awhile. ‘Marry in haste and repent at leisure,’ you know – a very true adage. You have a long life before you … plenty of time, plenty, to make your choice with care.”
“Yes, I’m pretty healthy,” he answered; and Lord Blair looked at him critically, hoping that he was mistaken.
“Does the climate agree with you out here?” he asked, hopefully.
“Well, I can’t say I exactly enjoyed the summer,” Lord Barthampton laughed. “A heavy fellow like me feels the heat.”
Lord Blair’s spirits rose. “A little tightness, perhaps, at the back of the head, eh?” His thoughts were running on the possibilities of apoplexy.
“No,” he answered, “but I’m always in such a devil of a sweat.”
“Yes, yes, very natural, I’m sure,” Lord Blair murmured. “And a little short of breath sometimes, I dare say?”
The younger man stared at him warily. He was wondering whether the questions were those of a prospective father-in-law; and he decided that it was his policy to show as clean a bill of health as possible.
“Oh, I’m as sound as a bell,” he laughed.
Lord Blair’s face fell. If apoplexy were unlikely to carry him off, perhaps there was some hope of kidney-trouble: there were ominous pouches under the young man’s eyes.
“Some people,” he said, “find that they suffer out here from pains in the small of the back – stabbing pains, you know, with a sensation of burning…”
“Do they, now?” the other replied, quite interested. “No, I can’t say I ever felt ’em.”
Again Lord Blair’s hopes were dashed to the ground. He knew, however, that Barthampton was a heavy drinker, and he introduced the subject with manifest interest, and with a disregard of principle which sorely troubled him.
“Doctors sometimes advise abstemiousness out here,” he said, “but personally I think a little stimulant is a good thing.”
Lord Barthampton warmed to him. “So do I,” he replied heartily. “Still, for the present I’m absolutely on the water-waggon.”
“Dear, dear!” muttered Lord Blair, fidgetting openly. “Dear me! – dear me! That’s a little drastic, isn’t it? – a little unnecessary?”
“I don’t suppose I’ll keep it up for long,” was the reply.
“No, why should you?” Lord Blair commented, and the younger man thought him very broad-minded.
The conversation was interrupted by the entrance of the General, in search of a quiet corner for a smoke, and Lord Blair, much dispirited, presently made his way back to the ballroom, and thence home to bed. His daughter, however, remained till past three o’clock in the morning, and at last was one of the little group of enthusiasts which kept up the revels to the accompaniment of amateur efforts on the piano, after the weary band had dispersed.
She traversed the short distance back to the Residency under the protection of Lord Barthampton; who had managed by sheer obstinacy to obtain this office for himself; and as she said “good-night,” to him upon the doorstep, he held her hand in his somewhat longer than was necessary.
“I shall always remember tonight,” he said, “as the first time I have really got to know you.”
“Will you?” she replied, feebly, not finding any appropriate comment.
“Yes,” he answered. “Good-night, little woman. Think kindly of your lonely friend.” He came closer to her. “If ever you hear anything against me from Cousin Daniel, take it with a pinch of salt.”
“Oh, I always rely on my own judgment,” she answered; and with that she passed into the house.