Burning Sands Part 2

"Oh, who was that?" asked her chaperone, with interest.

"A certain Daniel Lane," she replied.

Lady Smith-Evered gave a gesture of impatience. "Oh, _that_ man!" she exclaimed. "He's in Cairo again, is he? He's an absolute outsider."

"What is he?-What's he do?" Muriel asked, desiring further particulars.

"Ah! That's the mystery," said Lady Smith-Evered, with a look of profound knowing. "Incidentally, my dear, he is said to keep a harim of Bedouin women somewhere out in the desert. I shouldn't be surprised if every night he beat them all soundly and sent them where the rhyme says."

She laughed nastily, and Muriel made a grimace.

CHAPTER II-THE FREEDOM OF THE DESERT

Lord Blair rose from his chair as the door opened, and removed from his thin, furtive nose a pair of large horn-rimmed spectacles which he always wore when quite alone in his study.

"Come in, come in, my dear Mr. Lane," he exclaimed, taking a few blithe steps forward and shaking his visitor warmly by the hand. "I'm very well, thank you, very well indeed, and so are you, I see. That's right, that's good,-splendid! Dear me, what physique! What a picture of health!

How did you get here so quickly?-do take a seat, do be seated. Yes, yes, to be sure! Have a cigar? Now, where did I put my cigars?"

He pushed a leather arm-chair around, so that it faced his own desk chair, and began at once to hunt for his cigar-box, lifting and replacing stacks of papers and books, glancing rapidly, like some sort of rodent, around the room, and then again searching under his papers.

"Thanks," said Daniel Lane, "I'll smoke my pipe, if it won't make you sick."

"Tut, tut!" Lord Blair laughed, extending his delicate hands in a comprehensive gesture. "I sometimes smoke a pipe myself: I enjoy it. A good, honest, English smoke! Dear me, where _are_ my cigars?"

Lord Blair was a little man of somewhat remarkable appearance-remarkable, that is to say, when considered in relation to his historic name and excellent diplomatic record. In a company of elderly club waiters he would, on superficial observation, have pa.s.sed unnoticed. He bore very little resemblance to his daughter; and, in fact, he was often disposed to believe his late wife's declaration, made whenever she desired to taunt him, that Muriel was no child of his. Lady Blair had had many lovers; and it is notorious that twenty odd years ago in Mayfair there was an exceptionally violent epidemic of adultery.

He himself had thin auburn hair, now nearly grey, neatly parted in the middle; nervous, quick-moving brown eyes; closely cut 'mutton-chop'

whiskers; an otherwise clean-shaven, sharp-featured face; and a wide mouth, furnished with two somewhat apparent rows of false teeth. His smile was kindly and gracious, and his expression, in spite of a certain vigilance, mild.

The evening dress which he was now wearing was noteworthy in four particulars: his collar was so big for him that one might suppose that, in moments of danger, his head totally disappeared into it; his bow-tie was exceptionally wide and large; his links and studs were, as such things go, enormous; and the legs of his trousers were cut so tightly as to be bordering on the comic. In other respects there was nothing striking in his appearance, except, perhaps, a general cleanliness, almost a fastidiousness, especially to be noticed in the polished surface of his chin and jaw, and in his carefully manicured finger-nails.

Daniel Lane pulled out his pipe and began to fill it from a worn old pouch. "Please don't bother about cigars," he said, as Lord Blair extended his hand towards the bell. "Tell me why you sent for me. Your letter was brought over from El Homra by a n.i.g.g.e.r corporal of your precious frontier-patrol, who nearly lamed his camel in trying to do the thirty miles in under four hours. My Bedouin friends thought at the very least that the King of England was dying and wished to give me his blessing."

"Dear, dear!-it was not so urgent as all that," his Lords.h.i.+p replied. "I told them to mark the letter "Express," but I trust, I do trust, the message itself was not peremptory."

"Not at all," the other replied. "I was mighty glad of an excuse to come into Cairo; I wanted to do some shopping; and there was another reason also. A young cousin of mine-in the Guards-has come to Cairo, with his regiment, and I ought to see him about some family business. I should probably have let it slide if you hadn't sent for me. Tell me, what's your trouble?"

"Ah, that's the point!-you always come to the point quickly. It's capital, capital!" Lord Blair leaned forward and tapped his friend's knee with a sort of affection. "I don't know where I should be without your advice, Mr. Lane-Daniel: may I call you Daniel?"

"Sure," said Daniel, laconically.

"When I came here two years ago, my predecessor said to me 'When in doubt, send for Daniel Lane.' Do you remember how worried, indeed how shaken-yes, I may say shaken-I was by the Michael Pasha affair? How you laughed! Dear me, you were positively rude to me; and how right you were! Personally I should have had him deported: it never occurred to me to convert him into a friend."

His visitor smiled. "'Bind a brave enemy with the chains of absolution,'" he said.

"Yes, yes, very true," replied Lord Blair, still hunting about for the cigars. "Very true, very daring: a policy for brave men." He started into rigidity, as though at a sudden thought: one might have supposed that he had recollected where he had put the cigars. "Daniel!" he exclaimed, "you bring with you an air of the mediaeval! That's it! One always forgets that Egypt is mediaeval."

Daniel blew a cloud of oriental tobacco-smoke through his nostrils, at which his host frenziedly renewed his search for the less pungent cigars. "About this business you want to ask my advice upon ...?" he asked.

"Ah yes, you must be tired," his Lords.h.i.+p murmured. "You want to go to bed after your long ride. Let me put you up here. I'll ring and have a room prepared."

"No thanks," said Daniel, firmly. "I've left my kit at the Orient Hotel.

But fire away, and I'll give you my opinion either at once or in the morning."

Lord Blair laid his thin fingers upon a doc.u.ment, and handed it to his friend. "Read that," he said, and therewith leaned back in his chair, his dark eyes glancing anxiously about the room.

The doc.u.ment was written in Arabic, and beneath the flowing script a secretary had pencilled an English translation. "The translation is appended," remarked his Lords.h.i.+p, as Daniel bent forward to study the paper in the light of the electric reading-lamp.

"I prefer the original," he replied, with a smile, "I don't trust translations: they lose the spirit."

For some considerable time there was silence. Suddenly Lord Blair rose from his chair, and hurried across to a cupboard, from which he returned bearing in triumph the missing cigars. He proffered them to his visitor, who, without raising his eyes, took one, smelt it, and put it in his breast pocket.

At length, through a cloud of smoke, Daniel looked up. "The man's a fool," he said, and laid the paper back upon the table.

"You think I ought to refuse?" asked Lord Blair.

"No, procrastinate. That's the basis of diplomacy, isn't it?"

The doc.u.ment in question was a request made by the Egyptian Minister of War that the nomadic Bedouin tribes of the desert should be brought under the Conscription Act, from which, until now, they had been exempt.

"I ventured to ask you to come in," said his Lords.h.i.+p, "because I am sure, indeed I know, you have the interests of these rascals at heart. I thought you would wish to be consulted; and at the same time I felt that you would be able to tell me just what the consequences would be of any action of this kind."

Daniel nodded. "Yes, I can tell you the consequences," he answered. "If you conscribe them, they will evade the law by all possible means, and you will turn honest men into law-breakers."

"But, as you see, he suggests that it will bring the benefits of discipline into their lives," Lord Blair argued. "And if some of them escape across the frontiers into Arabia or Tripoli, it will be, surely it will be, no great loss to Egypt."

Daniel spread out his hands. "What is military discipline?" he asked.

"Good Lord!-d'you think the Bedouin will be better men for having learnt to form fours and present arms? Will barrack life in dirty cities bring them some mystic benefit which they have missed in the open s.p.a.ces of the clean desert? Don't you realize that it is just their freedom from the taint of what we call civilization that gives them their particular good qualities? Why is it that the man of the desert is faithful and honourable and truthful? Because time and money and power and ambition and success and cunning are nothing to him. Because he is not herded with other men."

He leant forward earnestly. "Lord Blair," he said, and his voice was grave, "hasn't the thought ever come to you that we civilized people, with our rules and regulations, our etiquette and our conventions, have built up a structure which screens us from the face of the sun?"

"Ah, yes, indeed, my dear Daniel," he replied. "Back to the land: the simple life: Fresh Air Fund-a capital sentiment. But, you know, I am very anxious, most anxious, not to offend this particular minister-most anxious."

His visitor relapsed into silence, and the volume of smoke which issued from his mouth was some indication that he had much to say which he preferred to leave unsaid.

At length he took the pipe from between his teeth. "You had better fix your frontiers first," he declared. "There'll be a fine old row if Egyptian patrols blunder into foreign territory. There's your chance for procrastination. Send out a commission to settle the desert frontiers definitely. That'll keep you all wrangling comfortably for five years."

"Ah!-that is an idea, a very good idea," replied Lord Blair, bringing the tips of the fingers of one hand against those of the other sharply and repeatedly.

"Write to the minister," Daniel went on, "and tell him you don't altogether agree with him, but that you will consent to the preliminary step of fixing the frontiers. Before that's accomplished you may both be dead."

"I trust not, I trust not," murmured Lord Blair.

"Or retired," said his friend; and his Lords.h.i.+p nodded his thanks for the correction.