Buch lesen: «Burning Sands», Seite 20
When at last she recovered full consciousness she found to her infinite surprise that the day was breaking, and that Daniel was in the act of depositing her upon the sand at the edge of the half-way pool.
“Good heavens!” she exclaimed. “How far have you carried me, man?”
“About five miles,” he said, rubbing his stiff arms. “Now for a bit of a rest.”
She was wide awake again, and to her great relief she found that her feet were no longer burning. Their wretched captive, however, was entirely exhausted, and was stretched upon his stomach, drinking greedily from the pool.
Daniel himself did not show any marked signs of fatigue. A walk of eighteen miles was nothing to him, and the burden of Muriel’s weight was not intolerable to a man of his colossal strength.
When half an hour later, they resumed their journey the sun was rising above the distant hills. They walked off alone, for Daniel had extracted an inviolable promise from their captive to rest where he was until noon before setting out on his return journey; and he had given the man a few biscuits and a slice or two of meat to keep him going. Both Muriel and Daniel had bathed their feet in the pool, and having eaten a square meal they fared forth once more with some degree of vigour.
As the sun increased in power, however, this sense of freshness vanished, and but five miles had been covered when Daniel was obliged once more to take his companion in his arms, in spite of her valiant protests. This time he set her upon his shoulder, clasping her about the legs, and every mile or two he varied the position.
From the pool to the hills which divided the plain from El Homra was, roughly, ten miles, and when at last they mounted, at about ten o’clock, on to the high ground, Daniel was already feeling the strain. For the next couple of miles Muriel limped along by his side; and now their practical immunity from capture permitted them to take an occasional rest in the shade of the rocks.
The last three miles of the journey were very exhausting to them both, for it was now noon, and the sun was intensely hot. Their water-bottles were nearly empty and their provisions were all gone; but the sight of the Oasis in the distance served to keep up their courage.
Muriel, much against her inclinations, had now to be carried almost continuously, but Daniel would not listen to her repeated requests that he would leave her while he went on to fetch help. He still feared a possible pursuit, for even so near to their goal they were travelling through uninhabited and utterly isolated country. He set his teeth, therefore, and carried her forward, now on this shoulder, now on that, now upon his back, and now, as originally, in his arms. He was aching from head to toe, and his feet felt like burning coals of fire, while the perspiration issued from every pore.
“Gee!” he said, as he set her down a mile from their destination, “this has been some walk!”
He took her in his arms again, and set out upon the last lap. The buildings of the police headquarters were now clearly visible against the palms, and near them stood the tents which told them that the Bindanes had returned from the north.
Muriel looked up at his haggard face. “I’m ashamed of myself for being so feeble,” she said. “It is very humiliating for me to have to be carried by you, of all people.”
For answer he suddenly bent her head down and kissed her.
Muriel uttered an exclamation. “Put me down!” she cried. “How dare you!”
Again he kissed her, holding her up in his arms as her legs kicked at his hip. She freed her hand and pressed it into his face.
“If you do that,” he laughed, “I’ll drop you.”
“How dare you!” she repeated. “Oh, you brute!”
He threw his head back, and looked up at the sun from under the brim of his battered old hat. “It’s been an extraordinary fortnight,” he panted, as though he were addressing the heavens.
Muriel did not answer, but she was breathing hard as he looked down into her face once more, and her eyes were wide with anger.
“I’ve learned a lot about you,” he said, “during these days; and I guess you’re worth winning, after all.”
“In that case,” she replied furiously, “I guess you’ll be sorry that you’ve lost me.”
“Have I lost you, Muriel?” he asked.
“You have,” she replied, shortly and decisively. “What else did you expect, after the way you have insulted and bullied me? You’ve lost me for ever.”
The intensity with which she spoke silenced him; and thus they came stumbling into the camp.
CHAPTER XXXI – PAYING THE PRICE
“Kate! – where are you?” Muriel called, as she stood in the blazing sun in the midst of the silent camp.
Daniel had deposited her here, and was now hastening, in a last spurt of energy, towards the police headquarters, intent on gathering a force to return with him to El Hamrân.
“Good Lord! – it’s Muriel,” came a voice from one of the tents, and Kate Bindane ran out into the sunlight, shading her eyes with her hand.
She slapped Muriel lustily on the back, and led her to an empty tent, where she put her arms about her and kissed her. “My word! – you’re looking tired!” she laughed. “Have you had a wonderful time?”
“Lovely,” said Muriel, sitting down upon the camp bed.
“Where are your camels? – where’s Daniel?” Kate asked, somewhat bewildered.
“Oh, we walked back,” Muriel answered, with a casual gesture. “I’m feeling quite tired.” She began to laugh hysterically.
“D’you mean to say he made you walk?” her friend asked, incredulously.
“There wasn’t much choice,” she replied. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, get me something to drink, something long – miles long, and cold. I’ll tell you all about it presently.”
Kate hurried away to find refreshments, and as she crossed the hot sand once more, carrying an assortment of bottles, she encountered Daniel coming back with the local police officer. He pulled off his hat and shook hands with her, rapidly.
“How d’you do,” he said. “Have you got a spare tent where I can have an hour’s sleep?”
Kate stared at him. “You seem very pleased to see me,” she laughed. “You’re bubbling over with news, aren’t you?”
“So sorry,” he replied. “Muriel will tell you: there’s been a bit of trouble at El Hamrân. I’m going back there with the police presently. Can I doss down in here?” He pointed to the tent behind him; and, hardly waiting for her reply, walked into it, telling the officer to arouse him in an hour’s time.
Kate shrugged her shoulders, and went back to Muriel, whom she found pulling off her boots and stockings.
“Muriel, what’s happened?” she asked. “Daniel says he’s going back to El Hamrân with the police in an hour’s time.”
Muriel looked up, her face flushed. “Oh, the man’s mad!” she declared. “He’s fagged out. He carried me half the way.”
Rapidly she told her friend of the trouble in the Oasis and of their escape, while Kate, uttering ejaculations of awe, plied her with refreshment and helped her to pull off some of her clothes. Muriel was far too exhausted to give a very intelligible account of their adventures; and while yet Kate was fussing around, dabbing her feet with eau de cologne, and rubbing her legs, she suddenly fell off to sleep.
Benifett Bindane listened, later, to his wife’s version of the story with marked interest.
“Well,” he said, at length, “that settles our plans for us. We’ll start back for Cairo tomorrow.” He looked at his wife curiously. “I wonder what Lord Blair will say to it all,” he mused.
“He must never know that Muriel wasn’t with us,” said Kate.
“That’s impossible,” he replied. “I shall have to tell him the truth.”
“Benifett!” exclaimed his wife, staring at him in horror. “You’re not going to give her away, are you?”
His mouth hung open for some moments. “I’ve been thinking it over,” he said, at length, “and it seems to me that Lord Blair will have to be told. If it leaked out, and we were found to have lied to him, there’d be no hope of doing business with him in the future.”
“Business!” Kate snorted. “Oh, man alive, is business the only thing in life?” She turned away in disgust.
“No,” he answered, “it’s not the only thing, but it happens to be my hobby, Kate, as you knew quite well when you married me. And I may as well say now, that I am very hurt at the way you sneer at what is meat and drink to me. I hope you’ll think that over.”
He looked very nearly pathetic as he spoke; and his wife was sufficiently touched by his dejection to turn an angry scene into one of affectionate conciliation.
“P’r’aps you’re right,” she said; and presently they went out together to see what was happening to Daniel.
They found him just emerging from the tent where he had slept. It was evident that he was still thoroughly tired; but a group of troopers and their camels outside the police buildings indicated that, nevertheless, an immediate start was to be made.
He was munching biscuits as he shook hands with Mr. Bindane. “I’m sorry I can’t stay,” he said. “I’ve got to set this business to rights at once. But I dare say we’ll meet in Cairo before you leave for England. Good-bye!” He held out his hand, but Kate checked him.
“I’ll go and see if Muriel is awake,” she said.
“No, never mind,” Daniel answered, with his mouth full. “I won’t disturb her. Please tell her I’m coming to Cairo within a month from now.”
He waved his hand to them, and hurried away; and presently they saw him mount his camel and ride away southwards, followed by half a dozen troopers, their rifles slung across their shoulders.
“Well, I’m blowed!” muttered Kate.
“It seems to me it’s business first with him, too,” remarked Mr. Bindane, looking vacantly before him.
“Oh, rot!” replied his wife. “From what Muriel says it appears that he had promised the old Sheikh that his son should hold office after him; and he’s going to keep his word.”
That night Muriel confessed the whole truth to her friend, only exacting the promise that she would not tell of her humiliation to Benifett. She related the events without emotion, her voice steady and the expression of her face calm. It was as though she were telling the story of some other woman in whom she felt no personal interest. It was as though Daniel had now passed entirely out of her life.
“I’m going to marry the first man who proposes to me,” she said, setting her jaw.
“Well, you’ll have to look sharp about it,” Kate replied. “He’s coming to carry you off by the hair in a month’s time, and don’t you forget it.”
Muriel put out her hand quickly, and touched her friend’s arm. “No, you don’t understand him,” she said. “He’s not a bit that sort of man…”
She checked herself, feeling that she had no desire to be inveigled into discussing his character.
Next morning, soon after breakfast, the start was made on the return journey to the Nile. Muriel, after a long sleep, was quite recovered from her fatigue; but she did not feel happy, and the wide vistas of the desert did not make the same appeal to her as on the outward journey. She felt herself to be very much older, very much more subdued; and there was, as it were, a veil between her eyes and the beauty of the wilderness.
Moreover, she was very self-conscious. It seemed to her that she had lost caste; and, now that all the alarums and excursions were over, she was not a little dismayed at the affront she had put upon the conventions. Benifett Bindane’s attitude to her was non-committal, but in his evasion of the subject of her adventures he displayed an awkwardness which she found almost insulting.
And then the natives… She felt as though many pairs of eyes were upon her, and more than once it seemed to her that she was not being treated with the same deference as formerly.
Once, when her camel had lagged behind the others, she found herself riding beside the Egyptian secretary of the expedition, a young man who evidently regarded his personal appearance with favour; and it seemed to her that he turned his dark eyes upon her with a boldness which she had not previously observed.
But the most galling experience was provided by her dragoman, Mustafa, who took the opportunity to speak to her on the day of their departure, when she was sitting alone, waiting for the picnic luncheon to be served.
“I hope my leddy was varry happy at El Hamrân,” he said, grinning at her boldly.
“Thank you, yes,” she answered, fiddling with her shoe.
“Mistair Lane he varry nice gentleman,” he went on; and then, leaning forward, he lowered his voice. “Mustafa know the beesness: he say nudding; he keep varry quiet, my leddy. No talk ’bout El Hamrân…”
“What d’you mean?” she exclaimed angrily, but he only smiled at her, and salaamed.
It was disgusting, and she felt a cold shiver creep down her spine, as she hastened across to the others.
As she jogged along, day after day, towards Cairo her thoughts were given more and more to the subject of her coming return to her father. What was she going to say to him? It had all seemed so easy before: she had thought that there would be no difficulty in concocting a plausible story. But now the idea of inventing a pack of lies revolted her; and as they drew ever nearer to the Nile there grew steadily in her mind a determination to tell him the truth.
Daniel, it seemed to her, had deliberately left her to extricate herself; and at the thought her heart was filled with renewed anger against him. Yet had she not told him that her plans were all laid to prevent gossip, to prevent her father’s name being injured? He probably supposed that there would be no scandal; and, after all, why should there be? A little talk in the native quarter, perhaps, that would be all. But these lies she would have to tell her father! They hung over her like a menacing storm.
Yet if she told the truth, what then? Daniel’s reputation would suffer as much as hers: she wondered whether he had realized this fact, when he had obliged her to stay with him for the full fortnight.
Yes, she would tell the truth. It would be a ghastly ordeal, that hour when she would have to face her father; but it would be better than lies, and shufflings, and the crooked ways of which she had seen so much amongst the women she had known in her life.
Suddenly the realization came to her that her character was not such as theirs, that it took no delight in intrigue; and upon that disclosure there followed a new understanding of Daniel’s attitude to her when she had told him of her arrangements for their secret fortnight.
“Good heavens!” she exclaimed, almost speaking aloud in the surprise of her sudden shame. “What a sneaking little liar I must have seemed to him!”
At last one day, in the blaze of noon, they descended from the desert and dismounted from their camels at the gates of Mena House Hotel. Now, towards the end of March, the days were growing hot, and Muriel appreciated to the full the cool halls and shaded rooms of the hotel, and at luncheon the ice which tinkled in her glass seemed to be a very gift of the gods.
Amongst her letters, addressed to the care of Mr. Bindane, she found one from her father, written from the White Nile; and her heart leaped with sudden relief when she read in it that he had decided to extend his tour through the Sudan, and would not be back in Cairo for another three weeks. He suggested to her that she should invite the Bindanes to stay at the Residency, so that Kate could be with her, thereby relieving Lady Smith-Evered of the responsibility of upholding the conventions by her otherwise unnecessary presence; or else that she should remain at Mena House with them until his return.
She therefore put the two alternatives to her friends, and, though Kate was all for remaining where they were, her husband could not resist the aristocratic enticement of the Residency. Next day, therefore, they made their adieux to the desert and drove into Cairo. Muriel’s relief at not having yet to face her father had raised her spirits; and for the first time for many days she appeared once more to be vivacious and conscious of the enjoyments of life.
All went well for a week or more. Muriel entertained her guests at the Residency with painstaking care; and every day had its list of engagements. Indeed she was glad of the task, for, now that her life had resumed its unadventurous course, she could not keep her mind from thinking over the events of the last few months, although her recollections brought her nothing but searchings of heart.
Towards Daniel she maintained an attitude of estrangement. Though her eyes had been opened to her own shortcomings, and she was no longer so sure of herself as to be able to censure him without qualification, yet she wanted to assert herself, and to show him that she was mistress of her own destiny; and, like a spectator of her own life, she almost hoped that she would find herself belonging to some other man by the time that Daniel returned, so that she would be able to say, “There now! – you’ve lost me, you see.”
The bombshell fell unexpectedly. One morning Lady Smith-Evered came over to the Residency soon after breakfast, and asked Muriel if she might see her alone. She had been dining with them only the night before, and Muriel did not, therefore, anticipate any serious trouble.
They went into the library together, and no sooner was the door shut than the elder woman sat herself down in the desk chair, and cleared her throat as though she were about to make a speech.
“Now Muriel,” she began, “I want you to tell me the truth, please. I have acted more or less as your chaperone throughout the winter, and I’m sure you can trust me to do what is right. I want you to give me a direct answer to a direct question: did you or did you not spend a fortnight alone with Mr. Lane in the Oases?”
For a moment Muriel’s head was in a whirl, and she felt the colour mounting to her cheeks, as she hesitated to face the sudden crisis. Then, fortifying herself to meet the situation with candour, she looked at her questioner straight in the face.
“Tell me, first,” she replied, “the story you have heard.”
Lady Smith-Evered shrugged her shoulders. “I see no reason why I should not. My maid told me late last night that she had heard it from our native cook, who had heard it in the bazaars. The story was simply that you left the Bindanes and went to stay with that man. I thought the best thing I could do, and the General agreed, was to come and ask you straight.”
“Thank you,” Muriel replied. “Yes, it’s perfectly true.”
Lady Smith-Evered threw up her fat hands. “My dear girl! – what on earth made you do such a foolhardy thing? You might have known the natives would talk. Of course I guessed you were in love with him, otherwise you would never have been so rude to me as you were that day when I asked you why he had left the Residency so suddenly. But I never dreamed that things had gone so far. Supposing you have a baby…?”
An expression of amazed indignation came into Muriel’s eyes, and for a few moments she was absolutely dumb. It was as though she had had a lump of mud flung straight at her face; and at first she experienced only burning resentment and blinding anger. Then, suddenly, she saw things as they were: the thought had never come to her until now in all its crudeness, its stark nakedness.
“How can you suggest such a thing?” she answered at last, lamely, her indignation strengthening her voice but not her wits.
“You must have been mad,” said Lady Smith-Evered. “And at your age, too! It was more than naughtiness: it was downright folly. And as for the man, he deserves to be thrashed.”
“But you don’t understand,” Muriel gasped. “There was no intimacy of any kind.”
Her visitor moved impatiently on her chair. “Oh, don’t tell me such fibs,” she exclaimed. “My dear Muriel, I am a woman of the world. I only want to help you.”
Her words only served to accentuate the girl’s alarm.
“But it’s true,” she cried. “I swear to you there was nothing of that kind between us.”
Lady Smith-Evered stared at her. “You can’t expect me or anybody else to believe that. Why, the man is a notorious bad character in regard to women.”
“No, he’s not,” she answered. “He may be a brute in other ways, but all this rot about his Bedouin harîm is just the silly talk of Cairo. I’m not going to beg you to believe me. I’m just telling you the truth; and if you don’t think it’s the truth you can go to …”
She checked herself suddenly.
“But what are we to do?” said the elder woman, spreading out her hands. “I’m not a prude; but the whole thing is shocking in a country like this. How are we to prevent it ever coming to your father’s ears?”
“I’m going to tell him as soon as he comes back,” Muriel replied.
“Oh, you’re incorrigible,” exclaimed Lady Smith-Evered, angrily. “You hav’n’t got the sense even to know when to hold your tongue.” She rose to her feet and paced up and down the room. “What’s to be done? Will you please tell me what’s to be done?”
“Nothing much,” Muriel answered. She was becoming calmer now. She saw herself in a new light, and her humiliation was extreme. Lady Smith-Evered belonged to that world which Daniel had tried to teach her to despise; and in this woman’s eyes she appeared merely as a foolish, naughty girl, whose rash actions had to be covered up by some sort of lie. She would have infinitely preferred it if she had been instantly ostracized and cut.
“Of course,” Lady Smith-Evered went on, “I shall tell my maid that the whole thing is nonsense; and it’s just possible that the story will go no further. But you ought to be ashamed of yourself for taking such risks. And I have no words to express what I feel about Mr. Lane.”
“Oh, please leave him out of it,” Muriel exclaimed. “He never asked me to come, or knew I was coming.”
Lady Smith-Evered sniffed. “He knows his own power over women,” she said.
Muriel turned upon her fiercely. “I tell you he is in no way to blame.”
Her visitor bowed. “I respect you for trying to defend him,” she answered. “We women always defend the men we love.”
“But I don’t love him,” she cried. “I hate the sight of him.”
Lady Smith-Evered spread out her hands again, evidently baffled. “That makes it all the worse,” she said. “Romance is whitewash for the sepulchres of passion: it makes these things presentable; but if you say the affair was not prompted by love, then I absolutely fail to understand you. It sounds unnatural, indecent.”
She moved towards the door. “I’ll do my best to hush it up,” she concluded; “but the sooner you get married to some nice easy-going Englishman the better. These sort of things are more comme il faut after marriage, my dear.”
And with that she left the room.
