Lord Barthampton paced the floor, chewing his lips, his heavy brows knitted. "I see," he said, at length. "And you think that it will help me if I hold this piece of information over her head."
Mr. Bindane"s blank expression indicated that nothing of the kind had entered his head-in fact, that nothing of any kind had ever entered it.
"You could have heard it from the natives," he said. "They all know she was at El Hamran while we went north. If I hadn"t let it slip out like this, no doubt you would have heard it from somebody else in time."
"No doubt," the other answered, and he drained his gla.s.s once more.
Benifett Bindane also rose from his chair. He was alarmed, and the qualms of conscience were upon him. "Of course it was just an escapade,"
he murmured. "I don"t suppose there was anything wrong in it."
"Well, I won"t use the information, unless I"ve got to," said Lord Barthampton.
As they issued from the library, they heard the sound of an automobile driving up to the door. "That"s probably her," Mr. Bindane remarked.
"You"d better go and wait in the drawing-room, and I"ll make myself scarce."
He patted the young man on the shoulders and hurried up the stairs to his room, while Charles Barthampton, nervously tidying himself, went into the drawing-room, where a footman was arranging the tea-table.
He had not long to wait. In a few minutes Muriel entered, and, seeing him, held out her hand.
"Hullo!" she said. "You here again?"
"I don"t seem to be able to keep away from you for long," he sighed.
"Can I see you alone?"
Muriel glanced at him quickly. There was an expression of ludicrous agony upon his face, and she knew full well what he had come to say to her. "Let"s have tea, first," she answered. "It will fortify us."
He stared anxiously at her, but all further preliminary remarks were checked by the entrance of Kate Bindane; and soon two or three callers were ushered in.
It was a long time before he managed successfully to outstay the other visitors; but at length he found himself alone with Muriel. The removal of the tea-tray caused another interruption; and he refrained with difficulty from cursing aloud when the footman again entered to switch on the lights.
At last, however, the moment for his declaration arrived, and Muriel settled herself down upon the cushions of the sofa to hear him, as though she were preparing to listen to a recital upon the grand piano.
"Now tell me," she said, "what it is that you want to say to me."
He was standing in front of her, the fingers of his hand scratching his ear. He cleared his throat. "Well, it"s like this," he began. "Ever since I"ve known you I"ve felt that there was something lacking in my life...."
"I was wondering how you"d begin," she said, interrupting him.
He flushed, and hastened on with his prepared speech. "Even soldiers, you know, long for the comforts of home. I suppose every Englishman likes to think of his own fireside...."
"Not in this weather, surely," she put in, again interrupting him.
He hurried on. "... With the woman he loves, seated before him, after the day"s toil is over."
"Are you proposing to me?" she asked, wishing mercifully to cut him short.
"Well, yes, I am," he answered, with a deep sigh. "Ah, don"t be cruel to me. You know that I love you. I"m quite well off: I can give you a fairly comfortable time of it."
"Yes, but they say you have led a very wild life," she told him. "You said yourself that you drank."
"I"ve sown my wild oats, little woman," he sighed.
"But drink is such a dreadful thing," she murmured. "I wonder your conscience hasn"t p.r.i.c.ked you. Or are you one of those people who have no conscience, only a religion?"
Without waiting to reply he returned to the speech which he had memorized, and drew a picture of his English home: the snow on the ground at Noel, the bells of the little church ringing, the Yule log, and his tenants singing carols to them as they dined in the great hall.
It reminded Muriel of a Christmas-card-something with sparkling stuff powdered over it, and "Hark, the herald angels sing" printed in the corner.
Lord Barthampton, however, was very much touched by his own eloquence; and, coming close to her, he held out his hands. "Will you?" he said, brokenly.
"I must have time to think," she answered. "This is so sudden." Then, with deep seriousness, she added: "Yes, I want to think it over."
"Well, I"m going off to the Fayoum tomorrow to shoot," he told her. "May I come for my answer in three days from now?"
"Very well," she replied.
He seized her hand in his, and pressed it fervently to his lips. Then, as though overcome with emotion, he whispered, "G.o.d bless you, little woman," and, turning, walked slowly out of the room.
CHAPTER x.x.xIII-THE RETURN
Daniel"s work at El Hamran was soon accomplished. When he returned there with the police, he was not empowered to use the aid of the law further than to restore order, to release the camels which had been seized, and to liberate Ibrahim from his illegal semi-captivity. The officer in command of the troopers, however, was aware that the messengers who had been dispatched at top speed to Cairo would bring back instructions to him to act in accordance with the Englishman"s dispositions; and thus Ibrahim had been recognized already as Sheikh by the time that the official confirmation of his appointment arrived, and when the men who had made the journey to El Khargeh returned home, the abortive revolt was a thing of the past.
Daniel, however, was unable to reconcile the two parties, and the feud thereafter continued its tedious course, though now in a more underground manner. He was disappointed in the failure of his attempts at conciliation, and was disgusted at the bickerings and the petty insults exchanged between the one faction and the other. The tranquillity of the desert had been rudely disturbed.
It was, thus, with a feeling of relief that he packed up his belongings once more, and turned his face towards Cairo. It was now the middle of April, and he crossed the desert in a blaze of burning sunshine, but his mind was so much occupied with his thoughts that he took little notice of his surroundings. The shimmer of heat rising from the sand, the haze of the distances, and the red dusk of the warm evenings, seemed but to carry his sad heart into the region of speculation; and, at nights, the stars and the crescent of the new moon lifted him into a sphere in which his brain worked with terrible clarity.
He saw his life spread out before his inward consciousness like a tale written in a fair hand upon an open scroll, wherein his mistakes and his shortcomings were inscribed in bolder letters, very apparent to the eye.
It seemed to him that his att.i.tude towards Muriel, towards humanity, had been illiberal, too one-sided. There had been need of so much greater tolerance: he had been too inclined to be impulsive, to jump to a conclusion.
In teaching Muriel the lesson that the love between a man and a woman should be a thing of frankness and permanence, not s.n.a.t.c.hed at in secret, nor lightly conceived, he had learned as much as he had taught.
He had found in her all manner of qualities to which he had paid insufficient regard-dignity, control, bravery in face of danger, and courage to act according to the dictates of her heart.
He saw now that while she had walked the pathways of that world which he had despised, he had taken refuge, like a coward, in the desert; yet she, in spite of the pitfalls and the sloughs which he had shunned, was not at heart contaminated. She had honestly believed that he had wished her to come to him in the desert, and she had obeyed him. A less impulsive man would have treated her mistake gently, and with more understanding, as being something for which her lax education and not her brave heart was to blame.
In an agony of mind he asked himself whether he had really lost her. He would go to her; he would make her look right into his mind, so that she should see how greatly he had need of her. But would she have pity on him?
Would she have pity on him?... Suddenly an essential aspect of the relationship of man and woman flashed before him. Man, mighty man, was but a lonely, blundering wanderer, a weak thing, a dweller in the desert, seeking where to lay his head. With all his strength, with all his masterful handling of events, man was yet a vagabond in the world, until he had found his mate; and woman, in spite of the greater sway of her thoughtless instincts, held for him the keys, as it were, of his heart"s home. From the summit of her weakness she could look down upon his strength, and could smile at his struggle to surmount the obstacles which he had placed in his own path. In the loneliness of his soul she could look down and pity him, and take him to her breast, and heal his wounds.
Over and over again he asked himself whether she would turn from him when he came to her now, or whether she would forgive and be forgiven.
He was feeling mentally and physically tired, yet he found no respite from his dark thoughts as he jogged along; and when at last he came into sight of Cairo and the Pyramids he was nigh exhausted by his anxiety to know what was to be his fate.
He reached his old camping-ground at about three o"clock in the afternoon, and in a short time one of the tents had been erected, wherein he was able to have a wash and a change of clothes. He then left his retainers to pitch the other tents and to arrange the camp, and, mounting his camel once more, rode to Mena House, where he boarded the electric tram for Cairo.
Weary though he was, he was desperately impatient to find Muriel and to get this matter settled at once. Nothing else was of the slightest importance.
At the terminus of the tramway he jumped into a carriage, calling to the coachman to drive "like the wind" to the Residency; and, arrived there, he handed to the _bowab_ at the gate a generous sum, telling him to keep the driver waiting for a good half-hour before paying him off, so that the sweating horses should have a rest after their exertions.