Burning Sands

CHAPTER XXVIII – THE SURPRISING FORTNIGHT

It was mid-morning when they reached the house, and Daniel advised Muriel to go at once to her room, whither Hussein presently brought refreshments and cans of water for the bath.

“Send Mustafa to me,” she said to him, but, understanding no English, and grasping only the name of the dragoman, he pointed towards the Oasis, indicating by signs that the man had not yet returned.

At this she went to the door of her room and called out sharply “Mr. Lane!”

Daniel, who at the moment had just ducked his head in a pail of water, came into the refectory drying his hair with a towel.

“What’s the matter?” he asked. “Anything I can do for you?”

“Where’s my dragoman?” she asked, suspiciously.

“I don’t know,” he replied. “I haven’t touched him.”

Hussein volunteered the information that Mustafa had not yet returned, and Daniel translated the statement into English.

“Well, when he comes,” she said, “please send him to me at once.”

“No,” he replied, very decisively, “I’m going to send him straight off to El Homra before he hears of our little trouble this morning. I can trust Hussein to say nothing in the village, but Mustafa I don’t know very well.”

She turned angrily to him. “You do like bullying women, don’t you!” she sneered.

He looked at her with steady, serene eyes, “You won’t need a dragoman for a fortnight,” he remarked. “He may as well make himself useful to the Bindanes.”

With that he went back to his ablutions, and when, half an hour later, Mustafa made his appearance, Daniel immediately sent him off on his long journey, telling him to convey his compliments to Mr. and Mrs. Bindane and to say that her Ladyship was in the best of health, and would come back to them on the thirteenth day from now.

This done, he called Hussein to him and spoke to him somewhat after this manner: “Her Excellency,” he said, “desires to go back to her friends, but I believe I shall be carrying out the wishes of her father by obliging her to remain here. You will therefore take her camel and mine into the village, so that she cannot get at them; and you will notify me at once if she leaves the house. Otherwise you are to treat her with the deference due to her high rank; and I think it will be best to make no mention of what I have told you to your friends.”

Hussein bowed, and at once went off to find a suitable stable for the camels.

When luncheon was announced a couple of hours later Muriel came into the living-room, carrying herself with dignity.

“Am I obliged to eat my meals with you?” she asked.

“It will be more convenient,” he replied.

“I shall probably be sick,” she muttered.

“You’ll get used to it,” he answered; and therewith they sat down at the table.

The meal was eaten in a distressing silence, broken only by Daniel’s polite profferring of salt, pepper, and the like, and by his pressing but vain invitations to her to eat a little more of this or that dish. When at length they rose from the table, he advised her to go to her room to rest. “You must be very tired,” he said, “after getting up so early, and all that excitement.”

“I’ll lie down,” she replied, “but I don’t suppose I shall sleep. The very fact of being anywhere near you disgusts me too much to allow me to go to sleep.”

“You must try to master that feeling,” he said, with perfect seriousness. “It hurts nobody but yourself. I can quite understand your being angry; but I think Al Ghazzali, the Muslim philosopher, put the matter in a nutshell when he said: ‘God loves those who swallow down their anger, and not those who have no anger at all.’ It only makes you yourself miserable to be in a temper; but try to say to yourself that you won’t let me be of such importance in your life as to have the power to upset you. You ought to say: ‘Nothing that this fellow does can shake my equanimity: he has absolutely no power over my inner self.’ If you can really say that to yourself you’ll sleep all right. There’ll be some tea going at half-past four.”

She stared at him freezingly and went out of the room, while Daniel quietly settled down to his writing, refusing to allow himself any further thoughts in regard to her.

At tea-time he told her that he wanted her to come down into the Oasis with him. “It will take your thoughts off yourself,” he said.

“Thank you,” she replied. “I prefer to stay here in my prison. I wish you’d realize that your society is obnoxious to me. I hate the sight of you.”

“I quite understand that,” he said, “but, all the same, I want you to come, please.”

“If I refuse,” she retorted, “I suppose you’ll drag me down by the hair?”

“No.” he replied, “not by your hair: only by your hand.”

She was too tired to put up any resistance, and soon they left the house together, descending by the rough path down the cliffs to the lower level, where the shadow lay deep.

Presently they entered the forest of palms, wherein, here and there stood a mud-brick hut or cluster of huts, upon the flat roofs of which the goats and chickens ran about, and sometimes a dog looked down at them and barked.

The shadow of the cliffs extended for some distance, like a blue veil, but further ahead the sun still struck down upon the Oasis, and the mellow light, seen between the tree-trunks and foliage, was made so rich by contrast with the cool tones of the shadowed foreground that Muriel was constrained to remark on its beauty. Pigeons fluttered to and fro amongst the trees, those close at hand being white as snow, but those in the sunlit distance appearing to flash before the eyes like gilded birds of a fairy tale.

Soon they passed out of the shadow, and now the sunlight was sprinkled upon them from between the rustling palm-branches overhead, and the dust of their footsteps was like a haze of powdered gold. Before them, in a clearing, a number of rough buildings, some of them whitewashed, encircled an open space of sun-baked ground wherein a number of natives sauntered to and fro. Here there were a few stalls, sheltered by tenting or tattered fragments of brown camel-cloth: grain being on sale at one of them; at another, basket-work; at another, pottery.

The loiterers and salesmen greeted Daniel with polite salaams, and to some of them he spoke a few words; but they were too well-mannered, or perhaps too indifferent, to show any particular interest in Muriel, and even when she paused to pat the shaven head of a little naked urchin, and to give him a piastre, there were few curious eyes upon her. The villagers seemed to be dawdling through a peaceful dream, unruffled by the ardours and eagerness to which the Westerner is accustomed; and Muriel had the feeling that she had come into a lull in the breeze of life, as when a sailing boat is becalmed and the sails flap idly. Even the tempest in her heart was quietened, and the warmth of the evening caused her to feel a languor that was temporarily almost serene.

Daniel led her across the open ground to a lane between the ramshackle buildings on the far side. Here, at a crazy-looking door, he paused.

“I want you just to shake hands with an old man,” he said. “He acted as guide years ago to one of your father’s predecessors.”

“There’s no need to say who I am, is there?” she asked, a little anxiously.

He smiled. “Your dragoman will have spread the news already.”

“I told him not to,” she answered.

Daniel made a gesture of impatience. “We must try to correct that,” he said. “Secrecy is very unpleasant, though it is sometimes necessary. You’ll find it always best to be frank when you can.”

In response to his knocking the door was opened by a small, smirking boy, and they entered a little yard, wherein a clean cow, several emaciated hens, and a couple of goats wandered about in front of a two-roomed house, the rear wall of which appeared to be about to collapse. Here a dim-eyed old man sat upon a native bedstead of split palm-branches, engaged in hunting for fleas in his cloak, and, as his gnarled old fingers plucked at the folds, his grey-bearded mouth was pursed and pushed forward in the manner of a monkey.

He rose, creaking, to his feet as he caught sight of his visitors, and, tottering forward, grasped Daniel’s extended hand, who then introduced him to Muriel.

Daniel spoke to him in Arabic, and presently, turning to his companion, asked her to say something to the old man.

“What shall I say?” Muriel enquired.

“He is very old,” Daniel replied. “Wish that God’s face may shine upon him. Say you hope the evening of his life may be full of peace and blessedness.”

“Yes, tell him that,” she answered.

“Anything else?” he asked.

“Oh, make up something for me,” she replied.

“No,” he answered, severely. “Please take your thoughts from yourself, and concentrate them on this old fellow. Think what is the best thing you can wish him. Think hard.”

Muriel glanced at him in surprise, while her host turned his fading eyes to Daniel, asking what she was saying.

“She is trying to think what is the most blessed wish she can make for you,” he replied, speaking in Arabic; and the old man beamed upon her.

Muriel made an effort, and, taking his horny hand in hers, told him that she hoped he would keep his health and that his affairs would prosper. With an eye on his cloak, she wanted to add that she hoped he would have good hunting, but she restrained herself.

Daniel translated the words into the native tongue, and, after a brief conversation, they took their departure.

As they walked down the lane Muriel asked him, freezingly, why he had so particularly wished her to make herself polite to the old man.

“I had no reason,” he answered, “except that I wanted you to think of him and not of yourself.”

“Why?” she asked with increasing ill-humor. “Am I usually selfish?”

“You have been trained to think first of yourself,” he answered, with disconcerting candour, “though by nature you are not really selfish at all. During this fortnight I want you to think mostly of other people.”

She had no time to reply before Daniel stopped at another and larger door, which he pushed open without a preliminary knock. Here, in a shed, two camels and a donkey stood feeding from a trough.

“This,” he told her, “is my hospital for sick animals. Both these camels have saddle-sores, as you see, and the old moke foaled the other day, but the youngster died. She is very depressed about it.”

Muriel was interested, and patted the donkey affectionately, while Daniel, stepping on to an inverted box, examined the camels’ sores.

“Just hand me that bottle over there,” he said. “It’s my patent mixture of carbolic and lamp-oil. It keeps the flies off, and heals up the sores mighty quick.”

Muriel haughtily gave him the bottle, and watched him as he poured a few drops on to the wounds. Her attention was presently attracted by a board nailed to the wall, upon which an inscription was written in large, flowing Arabic characters.

“What does that say?” she asked, forgetting for the moment that she was not really desirous of holding any communication with him.

“It is a quotation from the Koran,” he told her. “I wrote it and stuck it up for a lesson to these people. It reads ‘The Prophet has written: There is no beaston earth, nor bird that flieth, but the same is a people like unto you, and unto God shall they return.’”

“I like that,” she said.

He fetched a broom from the corner of the shed and held it out to her. “Would you mind just sweeping the ground a bit while I clean up the troughs?” he asked. “The native attendant is off duty today.”

He busied himself with his work, and Muriel, making a grimace, did as she was bid. It was less awkward than standing still, and the cause was good though the job unpleasant.

They walked home in silence through the gathering dusk. Daniel offered her his hand to help her up the steep path which ascended the cliff to his house, but she frigidly refused it; and when, presently, she stumbled and nearly fell, she scrambled to her feet once more in surprisingly quick time, as though to avoid his proffered aid.

Later she sat down to the evening meal without uttering a word, and the silence was extremely oppressive.

“Look here,” Daniel broke out at last, “I don’t know what you feel about it, but for my own part I rather object to this silence.”

“I have nothing to say to you,” she replied.

“That doesn’t matter,” he said. “I will do the talking. I shall choose a subject and talk about it: you can listen if you want to.”

Therewith he gave her an account of the Bedouin tribes of this part of the desert, how they had come to settle there, how he had recovered a part of their history from the old tales and ballads which he had recorded; and he told her something of their curious laws and customs.

Muriel’s face did not betray any interest whatsoever, but Daniel persevered courageously until the meal was finished.

“You can stay in this room and read a book if you like,” he said to her, as they rose from the table.

Muriel looked at him coldly. “Thank you,” she replied, with an emphasis which she hoped was withering, “I prefer to go to my room. Good-night!” And with that she took her departure.

The day had seemed intolerably long to her, and her smouldering anger had flamed up within her at frequent intervals. She realized that Daniel was playing the schoolmaster to her, and she was determined not to knuckle under to him. If he had decided to keep her a prisoner here for the full fortnight, she would do her best to make him thoroughly uncomfortable. His cool, impersonal attitude annoyed her; she was amazed that a man who but yesterday was branding her with his burning kisses could be today so entirely detached from emotion, and she flushed at the insult of it.

Her only consolation lay in the thought that he was injuring himself by his behaviour. She would now never be even so much as a sister to him – not even so much as a friend. When she had escaped from this horrible place she would go to England, and soon, no doubt, she would marry a nice, ordinary man, with sleek hair and a tooth-brush moustache and long, thin legs; and as she came out of the church after the marriage ceremony she would catch sight of Daniel in the crowd and would smile contemptuously at him…

She was very tired, and many minutes had not passed before she abandoned the pretence of reading the anthology of English verse which Daniel had placed in her room on the previous evening, nor was it long before she fell into a deep and dreamless sleep which held her as it were entombed until Hussein caused her resurrection by bringing in the bath-water in the morning.

The cool breeze and the sparkling air brought a certain feeling of well-being into her heart; but the meeting with Daniel at the breakfast table was a wretched business, and was made all the more distasteful by his evident good health and the morning freshness of his mind.

“I hope you are feeling fit,” he said to her. “We have a busy morning before us.”

That he was not speaking in jest was proved by the event. Soon after breakfast he took her down to the house of Sheikh Ali, and introduced her to the old man and his son Ibrahîm. Thereafter the four of them walked over to the open ground outside the mosque, where a large number of men and camels were gathered, while on the outskirts of the area many women and children stood in the shade of the palms. Daniel explained to her that a large number of the chief men of the El Hamrân were setting out upon the long journey to the far-off Oasis of El Khargeh, where there was to be a great gathering of the tribes. Sheikh Ali himself was too old and too feeble to go with the caravan, and his eldest son, Ibrahîm, was remaining with him; but his younger sons and most of his male relatives and adherents were going.

She watched the animated scene with interest, and the hubbub came to her ears with the wonder of novelty – the women uttering their strange, whinnying cries in token of their grief at parting with their husbands; the white-bearded old Sheikh embracing his sons, like a Biblical picture come to life; the diversely robed figures steering their camels in circles and firing their rifles in the air; the barking of innumerable dogs skulking amongst the palms; and over all the brilliant sunshine and the deep blue of the sky.

She and Daniel shook hands with a very large number of men, and, as she walked homewards after the caravan had departed, she had a confused memory of smiling bearded faces, dark eyes, and many-coloured robes fluttering in the wind.

After sundown he took her down to the village, armed with pots of ointment, to help him to doctor the eyes of two little grandchildren of the Sheikh, who were suffering from ophthalmia, and whose sight his daily ministrations were saving. And in the evening he continued his writing, leaving her to read a book until, with many yawns, she betook herself to her room.

This day was typical of all the others in that surprising fortnight. Quietly and impersonally he led her through her duties, obliging her to make herself useful in a score of different ways. Now he set her to the task of classifying his photographs and notes; now he sent her down to the animals’ hospital to doctor the camels’ sores; now he asked her to massage the sprained ankle of a small girl who had been brought to the house for treatment; now he made her grace with her presence a village wedding festival; and now he dispatched her with milk and eggs to the hovel of a blind old woman who lived on her neighbours’ charity.

In the afternoons he would take her for painfully long tramps over the desert, for the good of her health as he told her; and when the silence became oppressive he would talk to her, whether she listened or no, about the nature of the birds they saw or whose footprints were marked upon the sand, about the geological formation of the country, about the jackals and their habits, and so forth. During their meals together he attempted, cold-bloodedly, to enlighten her on many subjects, and sometimes he would talk philosophy to her, endeavouring to give her a new standpoint on certain age-old themes, but “You do like preaching, don’t you?” was the kind of response he received.

Sitting opposite to him at the table, it seemed to him that she carried herself with great dignity; and he had to admit that, under the circumstances, she was a great deal more self-possessed and high-mettled than he had expected her to be. She stood up to him, so to speak, and there were times at which he had the feeling, though he did not show it, that he was behaving like a boor.

On one occasion in particular he was conscious of having been put to rights by her. He had been talking about the sincerity of Islâm, and had said how wise the Prophet was to refuse to organize a priesthood, preferring to leave the faith in the hands of the laity.

“It is so different from the empty ceremonials of our own religion,” he said. “It seems to me that the Church’s idea of the imitation of Christ is generally a burlesque in bad taste.”

“In every walk of life,” she replied, “there are men who make an outward hash of their inner ideals. You, for example, have great ideas as to what women should be; but in actual fact you make a terrible mess of your dealings with them.”

“I wonder,” he mused. It was as though he had been chastised.

She did not continue the argument. That was, to Daniel, the baffling thing about her: she was growing so quiet now that she was in his power. She performed the tasks he set her almost in silence, and he could never tell whether she were learning her lesson or whether she were treating him with contempt as a man who lacked sympathetic understanding.

In her silence he seemed to find the quiet suggestion that she knew already all he wished to teach her; and there were moments when he felt that he had estranged himself needlessly from her. At such times he was obliged to remind himself that she had deliberately treated his love as a romantic adventure, and such treatment had had to be dealt with drastically. It was better that it should die outright than live to bring misery to them both; and with this thought he steeled his heart.

Thus the days passed by – days of brilliant sunshine and warm, mysterious nights, of active toil and healthy sleep; days meant for love and companionship, but turned down, one after the other, in cold antagonism and frigid reticence. Sometimes in the evening, after she had gone to her room, he would sit with his head buried in his hands, calling himself a fool and loathing his rôle of schoolmaster; and more than once there was a black hour of despair when, had she come to him, she would have been astonished to see his huge arms spread out across the table and his head sunk upon his mighty breast.

CHAPTER XXIX – IN THE PRESENCE OF DEATH

By the middle of March Muriel’s enforced residence at El Hamrân was drawing to a close. Already she had been with Daniel for eleven or twelve days, and he had kept her so busy that the time had passed rapidly. These days had been like a fantastic dream to her, and she could hardly believe in the reality of her actions. The whole situation was absurd; and yet, notwithstanding her artificial outward stiffness and her actual inward rebellion, she was conscious that her experience had not been unprofitable.

In spite of Daniel’s hectoring and churlish manners – for so she thought them – she felt that she had seen something of life as it is lived under primitive conditions which otherwise she would never have known. She had even experienced, latterly, a pleasant sense of calm while she had been carrying out her duties: it was almost as though being under orders were a satisfactory condition – now and then. And as to her physical health, she was obliged to admit that she had never before felt so thoroughly fit.

Her attitude to her monitor was one of unbending hostility, but now no longer of furious anger. She was not afraid of him, but very decidedly she did not feel the contempt for him which she endeavoured to show. She regarded him as a man of difficult and contrary character, but she now realized that she had greatly misjudged his outlook upon life. She had thought that in regard to women he was a prurient savage: she now knew that he was a high-principled and rather fastidious celibate.

Undoubtedly he had taught her the lesson of her life, but she was certainly not going to grasp his hand and thank him kindly on that account. He had built up a barrier between them which would remain a fixture for all time, and, though her heart often ached, she was far too estranged from him to think of any future intimacy whatsoever between them.

Only in one respect, in these days of their life together, did she feel drawn towards him. He had an indefinably benevolent and humorous attitude towards life, of which she was daily more conscious. It was something which could not be described, but on more than one occasion it nearly served to break down the wall of ice within in which she had enclosed herself. Sometimes it would be merely that he stopped in his walk to make an absurd remark to a passing cow or to a wandering goat; sometimes it would be the way in which he played with his dogs; or sometimes it was his manner to the native children which would cause her to unbend towards him. It was as though he had a private joke with every living creature. It was too quiet to be termed joviality: it was in no wise rollicking. It was a subtle droll and whimsical good-nature; it seemed almost as if, conscious of his own great strength, he were saying “Bless your little heart!” to all things weaker than he.

One morning, just as they were finishing a silent breakfast, Hussein entered the room, and delivered himself of a few rapid words in the Arabic tongue, which so much upset Daniel that he rose to his feet and paced up and down the floor in great perturbation.