"Do you remember your first impression of me?"
"Perfectly."
"I am not clever, but in other respects you were about right. I was tired of everything and particularly tired of myself. It was a sudden whim. I began it in order to get away from myself."
"But why did you go on with it?"
"I went on with it to be with you."
She looked away from him, and there was a quick flush of colour in her cheeks. "Anyhow," she said, "the mistake is at an end now. I must be going." But she did not speak very resolutely.
"Will you forgive me before you go?"
"Why should I forgive you?"
"Because," said the young man, with some audacity, "I have done you a very great service."
Her eyebrows were interrogative.
"Yes, I have stopped you from meeting this Pepper person. I know your motives. I don"t believe in the vanity at all. It is natural to be pleased when one"s work is praised; I"m always pleased if anybody likes my music. I do believe that you were actuated solely by your kindness of heart and nothing else. But you were doing an indiscreet thing, and I feel sure from his letters that this man would have misunderstood it.
Even if he had not shown presumption in his manner to you, I am sure he would have talked you over afterwards at his disgusting boarding-house and with his fellow-clerks. Why did he propose a meeting at all? Why could he not have submitted his doggerel to you by post, if you were kind enough to look at it for him? Why did he suggest this red rose nonsense if he had not got some romantic ideas in his stupid head? The man"s impertinence simply staggers me."
She smiled a little. "You are right perhaps. It was indiscreet. But you are too hard on him."
"I don"t think so. I want you to promise me you will not meet him. You can write and say that you have changed your mind; he can post his verses to you, if you want to let him down easily."
"Very well. I think that would be best, though I don"t know why I should promise you. Good-bye."
"Already?"
"I live away at Surbiton. I have a train to catch."
"Am I forgiven?"
"Yes; quite."
"Then let me at least take you as far as Waterloo."
She said nothing. But they went to Waterloo together, and in the cab they explained quite a number of things about themselves to each other.
He also got into the train with her, and they had the carriage to themselves. And there he told her that he loved her and wished to marry her, and he did it far more beautifully than a bare record of the facts can suggest.
She tried to speak three times and failed. So he understood her perfectly.
And some few minuter after they had exchanged their hearts" love, they also exchanged their names and addresses.
Lady Mabel Silverton says that it is a perfectly ideal marriage. The world thinks that he might have done much better for himself. He is inclined to agree with Lady Mabel. His wife would say that she agreed with the world; but I should doubt her sincerity.
HASHEESH
I
The season was nearly at its end. On the terrace of Shepherd"s were many groups, German, American and English, stopping for a few days in Cairo on their way home. In the street in front of the terrace the hawkers displayed their wares--panpipes, fly-whisks, images of the Sphinx, picture post-cards, matches. One offered for sale an inlaid table that he carried on his head. Another handed up an old flint-lock pistol, heavily mounted in silver, for the inspection of a pretty girl from Cincinnati. Every now and then a carriage drove up, and a party of tourists pa.s.sed up the steps, followed by a dragoman laden with kodaks, and dust cloaks, and bazaar purchases. The bright sunlight flooded a scene of brilliant colours.
At one of the tables--next to that where the pretty girl from Cincinnati was sipping her tea--sat three men of different ages. Mr Nathaniel Brookes, a man of some sixty years and rather distinguished appearance, was discussing total prohibitions with Dr Henson-Blake. The doctor was a man of wiry build, with the face of a hawk, and that indescribable look which comes only of strength and experience. The third man listened and fidgeted. From babyhood he had been precocious and preferred to a.s.sociate with those who were older than he was. In consequence he sometimes had to sit, as now, rather on the outside of the a.s.sociation.
He smoked endless cigarettes and drank something which was cold and not good for him out of a long gla.s.s in which the ice tinkled pleasantly. He was a fair-haired young man whom the sun had merely freckled. He wore a single eye-gla.s.s, but did not always dare to use it. When you had got to the bottom of his failings you found fundamentally by no means a bad sort of man, by name Percival Lake. This was his first year in Egypt.
Both Brookes and the doctor had known Egypt for many years.
It was Brookes who was speaking. "The Fellaheen should be allowed to dig," he said, "and it should be made well worth their while to dig."
"But they do," said the doctor. "They all of them do it in the summer, and they always have done."
"Yes," said Brookes. "Prohibitions which are too strict are always evaded. It"s the same thing with hasheesh. But what I mean is that if we succeed in stopping the Fellaheen from digging, the working European Egyptologist will find very little. The native will take care of that, and this is a case where the native has knowledge that the European can get only from him."
"That"s possible," the doctor agreed.
"What"s that about hasheesh?" the young man asked. "I thought it was the kind of drug that one came across frequently in stories, and rarely in chemist"s shops, and nowhere else."
"Nominally," said Brookes, "there is no hasheesh in Egypt. It is not allowed. It is contraband. I forget how many tons of it were seized last year, and I should be sorry to say how much managed to get through."
"Then the natives really use it?"
"Of course they do. There is a common type in all races which requires a nerve alterative and will have it. If religion or sentiment or custom shuts out alcohol, then it will be opium or hasheesh. Egypt goes for hasheesh."
"And the prohibition is of no use?" asked Lake.
"I wouldn"t say that," Brookes replied grimly. "If a native has a quarrel with his neighbour, he can--and sometimes does--sow cannabis Indica on his neighbour"s land and then report him for growing illegal stuff as soon as the crop comes up. That is useful. Speaking seriously, the prohibition may lessen the amount of hasheesh consumed, and undoubtedly has raised its price considerably--vices are the monopoly of the rich. All the same, I had a boy working on my dahabeeah last year who was an excellent fellow. This year he was impossible, and I had to sack him. That was hasheesh."
"And what is the effect of it?"
"Ask the doctor."
"If you take enough and take it long enough," said Dr Henson-Blake, "the effect is insanity. The given percentage in the asylums is fairly high, and should perhaps be higher. They don"t admit that they smoke hasheesh or have ever smoked it if they can help it, and it cannot always be spotted."
"But what is the immediate effect?"
"A sense of _bien etre_, of the absence of all worry. Sometimes there are delusions. The typical smoker generally gets an excessive vanity--swelled head--and becomes very quarrelsome. That is why Brookes had to sack that boy of his."
"All the same," said Lake, "I should very much like to try it."
"If I thought you meant that--" the doctor began, with the suspicion of a sneer.
Lake was rather angry. "I can a.s.sure you I am not talking for effect.
There are some people who don"t, you know."