Burning Sands

  CHAPTER XXIV--THE GREAT ADVENTURE

  As the days passed, and the Bindanes' departure for the Oases drew near,Muriel's rather feeble resolution not to accompany them steadilyweakened. Lord Blair had done his best to alter her decision, and theGreat Man could be a clever strategist: his daughter, indeed, would havehad little chance of opposing his wishes successfully in this mattereven had she battled against him with a whole heart, but in thevacillating condition to which love had brought her she had no chance atall.

  "Don't be a dam' fool," Kate Bindane said to her one morning at theResidency. "What's the good of moping about outside the ropes like aheavyweight with a stomach-ache? You know you're fed up with everybodyhere: Gor' blimy!--why don't you swallow your maidenly pride, and put onthe gloves, and have three rounds with Fate? It's better to be countedout than never to have boxed at all. Tennyson."

  Thus it came about that at the end of February, when Lord Blair took thetrain southwards upon his journey to the Sudan, Lady Muriel set outwestwards as a member of the Bindanes' elaborate caravan. The start wasmade one morning from Mena House, and so great was the general confusionand hullabaloo that Muriel's thoughts did not begin to clarifythemselves until a ride of two hours had brought them to the rockyvalley wherein they halted to eat their luncheon.

  Here, seating herself upon the rocks at the foot of the cliff, sheshaded her eyes with her hand, and surveyed the animated scene withamused interest. There was Kate, in a white coat and skirt, and asun-helmet, stumping over the sand to cure the "pins-and-needles" fromwhich she was suffering; her husband, in a grey flannel suit and agreen-veiled helmet, was still seated upon his camel as though he hadforgotten to dismount; his man, Dixon, rather fat and red, and wearinghis new gaiters apparently back to front, was hastening to his master'sassistance; and the two imposing native dragomans, in silks all aflutterin the wind, were shouting unnecessary orders to the Egyptian cook and_sofragi_ to hasten the luncheon.

  A few yards down the valley a khaki-clad Egyptian police-officer,wearing his red _tarboush_, or fez, at a rakish angle, was givinginstructions to his four negro troopers; a fat native gentleman from theMinistry of Agriculture was mopping his forehead as he stood beside hisgrumbling camel, and the Egyptian secretary to the party, a dapper youthwith mud-coloured complexion and coal-black eyes, had just thrownhimself down in the shade and had removed the _tarboush_ from hisclose-cropped head, in conscious defiance of local etiquette.

  The baggage camels, carrying the camp equipment, the stores, and thetanks of water, were lurching at a walking pace along the valley, led byblue-robed camel-men, under the orders of the caravan-master, agrey-bearded Arab who rode sleepily at the head of the line. These werenot to halt at the midday hour, but, pushing ahead, they would beovertaken later in the day by the swifter riding-camels; and Murielwatched them now as they slowly jogged along the little-used trackbetween the yellow cliffs, the brilliant sun striking down upon themfrom a deep blue sky in which compact little bundles of snow-white cloudwent scudding past.

  There was a boisterous breeze blowing, and the tingling glow of the sunand wind upon her cheeks, as she sat perched high upon the rocks, seemedto match the exhilaration of her heart. The morning's ride had shakenher brain free from the heavy gloom of the last three weeks; and alreadythe shining open spaces of the desert had produced their effect uponher, so that she felt as though her mind had had a cold bath.

  It was good to be up and doing; it was good to be setting out upon thisadventure, the ambiguousness of which seemed every moment to be growingless disconcerting; it was good to be in this great playground where therules of her life's schoolroom were mainly in abeyance. Up here in thesesplendid spaces it would not matter if she pulled her skirt off, or lether hair down, or turned a cartwheel, or stood on her head. Already shewas whistling loudly, and throwing fragments of stone into the valleybefore her, in the manner of a child upon the seashore; and all herlove-sick sorrows of yesterday seemed to have vanished in the exaltationof youth and youth's well-being.

  She watched the servants, in the distance at the other side of thevalley, spreading the picnic luncheon on a white tablecloth laid upon ashaded patch of sand; and when at length the meal appeared to be ready,she took a flying leap down from the rock where she had been sitting,and landed sprawling upon the sand-drift below. The sensation pleasedher, and, clambering up the rocks once more, she repeated the jump, thistime arriving with a considerable thud upon her back, and sliding downthe drift with her legs in the air.

  She hopped across the valley, rubbing herself, and was presently joinedby the Bindanes.

  "I feel about twelve years old," she told them; and indeed at the momentshe did not look much more than that age. "The desert is having anextraordinary effect on me."

  "But we're only ten or twelve miles into it so far," said the practicalKate. "You wait another week...."

  "If I go on at this rate," Muriel laughed, "I'll be in arms by the timewe reach the Oases."

  "I wonder whose," muttered Kate, with a smile; but her friend's face atonce became serious. It was a jarring note, and it nearly ruined thejoviality of the picnic.

  The afternoon ride carried them another fifteen miles; and towardssunset they came to a halt in the midst of a wide flat plain of sand,across which a winding ribbon of stunted tamarisks and sparse vegetationmarked the bed of a primeval river now reduced to a mere subterraneaninfiltration. In the far distance on all sides the low hills hemmed themin, like a rugged wall encircling a sacred and enchanted area.

  The tents were pitched amongst the low-growing bushes in the dry,shingly bed of the stream; and the hobbled camels were turned loose tocrop such twigs and grasses as they found edible. Muriel, meanwhile,wandered away into the open desert; and presently, like warm sand, andresting her chin on her hands, watched the sun go down behind the purplehills.

  For some time the excitements of the day, and the physical exhilarationproduced by her long ride in the sun and wind, held her from thought.But at length the dreamlike silence of the wilderness, the amazing senseof isolation from the outside world, began to release her mind from thecaptivity of the flesh, so that becoming one with the immensity ofnature, her spirit drifted out into the sunset with the freedom of lightor air.

  The little deeds of all her yesterdays appeared suddenly insignificantto her, and she began to feel that life, and the happiness of life, wassomething far greater than she had supposed. She wondered why she hadbeen troubled with regard to Daniel: he was just an expression ofnature, as she was: and here, in the solitude he so dearly loved, sheseemed to understand for the first time his scorn of the intricacies ofmodern civilization. Here all was so simple, so devoid of complexities,that she laughed aloud. It was only her wits, the mere fringe of hermind, which had veiled her spirit from his spirit; but now she hadshaken herself loose from these ornamentations of life, and stood as itwere, revealed like a lost fragment dropped at last into place in thegreat design.

  She rose to her feet at length, with a sense of light-heartedness suchas she had never before known; and, returning to the camp in thegathering dusk, she looked with amused pity at Benifett Bindane who satin a deck-chair reading the _Financial News_ by the light of aglass-protected candle.

  "Just look at him!" said Kate, who, herself, had been admiring thesunset. "Isn't it pitiful?"

  Mr. Bindane laid the paper down, and stared at his wife withuncomprehending eyes.

  "The market is showing a good deal of weakness in Home Rails," he saidto his wife; "but your South Africans are all buoyant enough, so youneedn't worry."

  "Worry!" exclaimed Kate, contemptuously, and turned from him to thefading light in the west.

  "I'm glad I bought those Nitrates," he went on, addressing the back ofher neck; "they're improving, so far as one can tell from the closingquotations given here."

  He held the newspaper out, but she struck at it viciously with her hand.

  "Oh, for God's sake shut up!" she cried. "It's money, money, money allthe time with
you."

  "I was speaking," he said, very slowly, and as though he had been hurt,"of stock I had bought for you, my dear."

  Kate turned to him, and her friend observed that her face softened, asthough at the thought that in his own way he was showing his affectionfor her. But the picture was, nevertheless, pathetic; and therecollection passed through Muriel's mind, in sudden illumination, thatDaniel was entirely free from financial interests. So long as he earneda reasonable living he never seemed to trouble himself about money.

  Next morning they were in the saddle by eight o'clock, while yet the sunwas low in the heavens and the air cold and sharp. Crossing the wideplain in which they had camped, they passed into the echoing valleysamongst the hills; and for the next three days they made their waythrough rugged and broken country, now mounting some eminence whencethey surveyed a wide prospect in which range behind range of ruggedpeaks was revealed to them, now losing themselves in the intricatevalleys, where they rode in the blue shadow of the cliffs, and where thesound of their voices and their laughter was flung back at them from thewalls of rock.

  Each night they camped beside some water-hole or well, known by name totheir guides, but which to them seemed to be a deserted and unvisitedplace, frequented only by the unseen gazelle whose footprints weremarked upon the sand. It was cold here in the high ground, and they wereglad of all the blankets which they had brought; but in the mornings thesun soon warmed them, and by noon they were glad to take their rest inthe shade.

  It was in the afternoon of the fifth day of their journey that,descending from the higher level, they came into sight of the littleOasis of El Homra, set like an emerald in the golden bowl of the desert.Muriel was riding beside Kate Bindane when, emerging from the maze ofthe hills, they first looked down into this wide basin in the centre ofwhich the Oasis was situated; and both she and her friend uttered a cryof delight.

  In the case of Muriel the ejaculation was a response to the grandeur ofthe scene; but in that of her friend the exclamation was one of devoutthankfulness that the outward journey was nearing its end. Being heavilybuilt and somewhat stout Kate had suffered very much more severely fromthe long-protracted jolting than she had been willing to admit; andthere were many very sore places upon her body which caused the thoughtof much further exercise of this kind to be intolerable.

  "You won't catch me coming out here again," she declared, "until theCompany has built its light railway. Five days of blinkin'torture!--that's what it's been. And to think that five hours by trainwould have done it...!"

  Muriel looked at her in dismay. "I'd much rather not think we were sonear Cairo as that," she answered. "The whole pleasure of the thing isthat we're so cut off from civilization."

  Kate groaned. "Well, I'm glad to say I've brought a bit of civilizationwith me in the shape of a pot of ointment and a roll of lint."

  Her further remarks, however, were checked by her efforts to pull in hercamel; for the west wind had brought to its nostrils the scent ofvegetation, and its pace had suddenly increased.

  Muriel turned in her saddle as her own beast hurried forward, and wavedher hand excitedly to Mr. Bindane, who was holding on to his pommelswith both hands, his head wobbling, and his body swaying.

  As they neared their destination the police officer overtook her, anddirected her towards the south end of the Oasis, where, a little removedfrom the palm-groves, some whitewashed buildings were clusteredtogether. He explained that these formed the headquarters of theFrontier Patrol, near which their camp would be pitched; and soon he hadgalloped ahead, followed by one of his troopers, to herald theirarrival.

  The sun was setting when at last the party dismounted within the walledcompound of the outpost; and it was dark before the baggage caravan camecreaking and grunting into the circle of light cast by the lanterns ofthe police. Kate and her husband had at once gone into the bare-walledroom which had been placed at their disposal; but Muriel, who wasexperiencing an extraordinary sense of activity, went out with thedragoman to supervise the erection of the tents in the open desert somelittle distance from the buildings.

  For some time she lent a hand to the work, but at length she sat herselfdown upon a derelict packing-case, and watched the figures moving to andfro, now lit up by the flickering light of the lanterns, now passingagain into the darkness.

  The evening was warm, for the month of March had begun; and there wasnot that sharp tingle in the air which had been experienced up in thehigh ground they had lately traversed. On her one hand there were thedark palm-groves, their branches silhouetted against the brilliantstars: she could hear the rustling of the leaves, and there came to herears, also, the sound of a flute, the notes rising and falling inplaintive inconsequence like babbling water in a forest at night. On herother hand the open desert lay obscure and mysterious, the darkness mademore intense by contrast with the flicker of the lanterns and the lightissuing from the open doorways of the adjacent buildings.

  It was so strange to feel that she was separated from El Hamran, andfrom the man she loved, by no more than thirty miles--an easy day's rideto the southwest; and her heart was restless as she realized that Mr.Bindane proposed to make an extended tour of the northern Oases beforegetting into touch with Daniel. It seemed to her that she could nottolerate another day of absence from him; and a wild thought entered hermind that she would give her friends the slip next morning and ridealone to El Hamran. It was, indeed, the thought of such an escapadewhich sent her presently hurrying back to the light of the outpost, asthough in flight from the mad suggestions of the starlit spaces abouther.

  The evening meal was served in the room where Mr. and Mrs. Bindane hadsettled themselves; and it was still early when they went to theirtents. Muriel was already yawning loudly, as she helped Kate to doctorherself; and no sooner was she alone than she crawled into bed, and, inspite of the barking of the dogs, the lowing of the cattle, and thebraying of a donkey; fell instantly asleep.

  On the following morning Benifett Bindane displayed unwonted briskness,and, after an early breakfast, set out with the native officials to makea tour of inspection of the Oasis. His plan was to continue his journeynext day to the large Oasis of El Arabah, to the northwest, where hewould spend the night. Then, returning to El Homra, where they were atpresent, he would ride northwards on a tour which would occupy twelve orthirteen days; and that being accomplished, he would, if necessary,visit El Hamran where Daniel was staying, though he had now received thelatter's very full reply to the questions on which he had desiredinformation.

  When he got back to the camp, however, after his first day's work, hefound that his wife and Lady Muriel had made certain plans of their own,consequent upon Kate's abrasions. They had decided to remain where theywere while Mr. Bindane paid his short visit to El Arabah; and it washoped that on his return his wife would be sufficiently recovered to gonorth with him on his longer trip.

  He received the news with apparent indifference, merely remarking thathe would take with him on this short trip only one servant and one tent,leaving the remainder of the camp where it was, under the care of thetwo dragomans. The Bedouin of the Oases were a peaceful, law-abidingpeople; and the two ladies would be as safe here, he well knew, as theywould be in an English village at home.

  That night, after Muriel had gone to her bed, Kate Bindane took herhusband into her confidence.

  "I don't know what's going on in Muriel's head," she told him, "but itseems to me that she's about the most love-sick creature I've everstruck. She won't even look in any other direction except the southwest,because that's where her Daniel is."

  A slight expression of interest came into her husband's blank face. Hewas sitting in his striped pyjamas on the side of his bed, scratchinghimself dreamily; but now he paused and his arms fell loosely upon hispointed knees. "I thought," he said, "she had got over all that. She hasbeen jolly enough all the way here."

  "Yes," answered Kate, "but now that she's within a day's ride of heryoung man, she seems to have come over all fu
nny-like. I can't make herout." She waited a moment. "Wouldn't it be possible for us to go to ElHamran before we make the northern trip?" she asked, poking the wick ofthe candle, absently, with the stump of a match.

  Her husband shook his head. "No," he replied. "The plans are all fixed.And, you see, I don't suppose Mr. Lane will give me more than a coupleof days of his time just now; and I'd rather have it at the end of mytour, when I know what I'm talking about, than now when I hav'n't yetseen the lie of the land. I want to be able to come to him with adefinite offer."

  He relapsed into silence for some time, resuming his leisurelyscratching; but at length he surprised his wife by asking a furtherquestion as to Muriel's state of mind.

  "Why, Benifett," she said, smiling upon him, "you seem quite interested.You know, I believe you're rather a sport, after all."

  He looked at her with his mouth open. "Oh, it's a recognized maxim ofthe commercial world," he answered: "'Make yourself a party to the loveaffairs of your business friends.'"

  "But Muriel isn't a business friend," said Kate.

  "No," he replied, "but her father is." And with that enigmatical remark,he blew out the candle.

  At sunrise next day he was up and about; and an hour later he hadassembled his party for the start upon their journey. Kate and Murielwatched them as they filed out of the compound in front of the policebuildings, in the brilliant light of the morning.

  "Tomorrow evening, probably," called Mr. Bindane, waving his hand tothem; and, "No hurry," replied Kate, casually: "we'll be quite allright."

  With that he moved away, riding with the fat Egyptian from the Ministryof Agriculture. Behind him followed the police-officer and the nativesecretary, and after them went their servants and baggage camels.

  As the cavalcade passed out of sight behind the palm-trees, Kate turnedto her friend. "Now for a quiet time with the ointment pot," shelaughed; but her words were checked as she observed the surprisingexpression on Muriel's face. "Why, what's the matter?" she exclaimed.

  Muriel caught hold of her arm. "Kate," she said, "I'm going to shockyou. I'm going to Daniel."

  Mrs. Bindane stood perfectly still, her hands upon her hips in themanner of a fishwife. "What the Hell d'you mean?" she asked.

  Muriel confronted her, the monkey expression suddenly developing uponher face--her jaw set, her eyes wide open. "I'm going to leave you,Kate," she said. "I made up my mind in the night. I can't bear itanother moment: I'm going to start at once."

  "Don't be a damned fool," her friend ejaculated, angrily.

  Muriel shrugged her shoulders. "I shall take my dragoman with me," shewent on. "He knows all the roads hereabouts. I shall be quite safe. I'mgoing to Daniel for a fortnight: I've thought it all out, and I know nowthat's what he's been wanting me to do. You'll find me at El Hamran whenyou come there--if you do come, and, if not, I'll join you here."

  "But, my good idiot," cried her friend, "there'll be the most awfulscandal! What d'you think Benifett will say?"

  "I'll leave that for you to find out," she answered. "I don't see MasterBenifett changing his plans for anybody. You can say I was ill, andtherefore went off to Daniel so that I shouldn't spoil your trip ordelay you. Father need never know, and I'm sure Benifett won't give meaway. Not that a scandal isn't just what he wants. Doesn't he want tooblige Daniel to remain here in the Oases?--Oh, but I know what I'mdoing. Daniel never wanted to marry me: he wanted me to run away withhim."

  "Yes, but where are you going to run to?"

  "To seed," Muriel replied, with a little laugh. "I can't help it. He'swon: I can't stay away from him. I'm going to have this fortnight withhim, if I hang for it!"

  "Oh, you're mad!" exclaimed Kate, and, clutching hold of Muriel's arm,she led her into her tent.

  Here they argued the matter to and fro; but it was apparent from thefirst that the thing was irrevocably sealed, and that all the details ofthe plan had been thought out so as to prevent the adventure becomingpublic.

  "Very possibly there'll be no scandal at all," said Muriel; "the nativescan be bribed not to tell. I shall come back with you to Cairo when youreturn there, and who is going to give me away?"

  "But what is a fortnight?" asked Kate, in despair. "Good God!--what is afortnight, when it means even the _possible_ ruin of your whole life?"

  "I can't look so far ahead," Muriel replied. "I only know I want himnow. And I'm going to him, Kate; I'm going to the man I love, the manwho loves me!"

  She ran out of the tent, calling to her dragoman, Mustafa, who appearedat once from the domestic quarters. He received the news withoutperturbation.

  "Yes, my leddy," he said. "I varry pleased. My wife's brother him liveat El Hamran. Thirty mile'--it is nudding: five, six hours riding; andthe road him varry good, varry straight."

  She told him to get two camels ready at once, to fill the water-bottles,collect a few eatables, and--to hold his tongue. "I have to take someimportant papers over to Mr. Lane," she said, and he smiled at the lie.

  Her large dressing-case was already packed; but, returning to her tent,she opened it to put into it her little revolver, which, for the fun ofthe thing, she had purchased in Cairo. This done, she went back to Kate,who received her in cold silence.

  "Oh, Kate," she cried, "don't be beastly to me. I'm only going to do thesort of thing that's been done by most of the girls we know. It's humannature, Kate. When you love a man and feel you absolutely can't livewithout him, you've got to surrender to him and do what he wants; and Iknow now that this is what he's been asking me to do all along." She puther arms about her neck, and kissed her.

  Kate looked at her sorrowfully, and her face softened. "Muriel, youblinkin' idiot," she said, "I don't know what'll come of this, butwhatever happens, old bean, I'm with you."