Afterwards Part 49

He beckoned to a tall, pock-marked Arab in a dusty fez and faded blue djibbeh, and by dint of lavish promises secured his noisy but efficient services, with the result that in an incredibly short s.p.a.ce of time the luggage was safely tumbled into the train and Anstice and Sir Richard faced each other, exhausted but triumphant, in an otherwise empty carriage.

"By Jove, but those beggars make me hot!" Anstice threw himself back into his corner and drew a long breath. "It's always a mystery to me how people who live in hot climates are so beastly energetic! They seem to have quicksilver in their veins, not blood."

"Yet they are lethargic enough at times," returned Sir Richard, pointing to a rec.u.mbent form lying unconcernedly on the platform a few feet from their open window. "Look at that fellow sleeping there--he doesn't care in the least what goes on around him--and many times in the street one has to move off the pavement to avoid stepping on some idle beggar who's drawn the hood of his garment over his head and gone to sleep, literally among the feet of the pa.s.sers-by!"

As the train proceeded on its way Sir Richard outlined the situation a little more fully to his keenly-interested companion.

"When I left, Mrs. Wood had pretty well taken up her abode with Iris,"

he said. "Their servants--native, of course--behaved badly, as those mongrel Arabs often do, and promptly deserted us soon as they found there was likely to be trouble ahead. All but one, a very decent chap called Ha.s.san, who is really fond of Iris and would do a lot for her."

"The other people in the village--Bedouins, I think you said?--how do they get on with their white neighbours?"

Sir Richard's forehead suddenly puckered into a worried frown.

"Not too well," he said slowly. "The fact is, I believe they resented the European people settling there at all. As I told you, it is a tiny settlement--just thirty or so Bedouins who cultivate the land and grow vegetables, which they hawk to other villages a day's march away. They daren't openly complain, of course, but I believe they would like to drive the white folks out; especially young Garnett, who is really beating them at their own game as a clever agriculturist."

"There is never any trouble, I suppose?" Somehow Anstice felt a vague uneasiness at the thought of Iris Cheniston shut up in a desert colony among sullenly hostile neighbours.

"Oh, no, the Bedouins know the English Government won't allow any hanky-panky." Sir Richard voiced the a.s.sertion so emphatically that a tiny seed of doubt sprang up in his hearer's heart. "I confess I should rather like to see Iris and Bruce settle down to civilized life again, but this is only a holiday, and they won't be there long. Unless----" He paused and Anstice guessed only too surely the ominous nature of the pause.

With an instinctive desire to rea.s.sure the other man he spoke quickly.

"Perhaps when Cheniston is better they will fall in with your advice. No doubt he will require a change after this illness, and very often, you know, a man who has been ill takes a dislike to his surroundings, and is only too ready to exchange them for others."

"Quite so." Sir Richard spoke absently, looking out of the window the while, and since he was apparently disinclined for conversation, Anstice followed his example, seeing plenty to interest him in the panorama spread before his eyes in this strange and fascinating land, this living frieze of pictures which might have been transplanted bodily from the pages of the Old Testament itself.

Once, when the train came to a standstill at Ismailia, Sir Richard roused himself to speech.

"Of course, should the Bedouins ever rise against the strangers in their midst," he said, repelling with a gesture the attentions of a tall water-seller who thrust a bra.s.s saucer containing a doubtful-looking liquid through the carriage window, "things might be serious. True, there are not more than a couple of score of them, and so far, with the exception of a _fracas_ with Garnett over some vegetables they stole from him, they have been peaceable enough."

"I see. And, as you say, they know quite well that the British Government is behind this handful of English people, and knowing that reprisals would be certain to follow any lawlessness, I should say they are too wise to put themselves in the wrong. After all, too, these people are not doing them any harm by living in their midst."

"You are right, Anstice, and I'm a silly old fool for letting my imagination run riot in this way." Sir Richard sat upright and gazed out at the world of sun and sand through which they were pa.s.sing. "As you say, they would not dare--and in any case as soon as Bruce can travel we will bring them back to civilization."

"By the way, how soon can we start?" The bare thought of meeting Iris sent the blood humming wildly through Anstice's veins; and he awaited Sir Richard's reply with barely-concealed impatience.

"Well, we shall reach Cairo--if this confounded train doesn't break down _en route_--about dinner-time. It would be no use attempting to start to-night--the horses must be ordered for to-morrow morning, as early as you like. And no doubt you will want to take one or two things with you."

Anstice nodded.

"Yes--but they won't take long to procure. As for baggage--we travel light?"

"Yes--just what we can carry. I have plenty of things out there--can give you all you need," said Sir Richard more briskly. "And if all goes well we need not antic.i.p.ate a long stay. Now, how about a cup of tea?

This beastly sand has gone down my throat in bushels."

He called the Soudanese attendant and gave him an order, and over the indifferent tea and Huntley and Palmer biscuits which were presently brought to them, he and Anstice discussed Littlefield and other matters widely removed from the subject of their former conversation.

It was seven o'clock when the train finally ran into the station at Cairo, humming like a beehive with its crowded native life, and ten minutes later the two men were driving through the busy streets beneath the clear green evening sky on the way to the hotel chosen by Sir Richard.

"The Angleterre--it's quieter than Shepheard's," he said, "and anyhow it is only for one night. After dinner we'll go and make arrangements for an early start. That will suit you all right?"

"The earlier the better," returned Anstice promptly, and as their carriage drew up before the hotel he sprang out with an eagerness which seemed to betoken a readiness to start forthwith.

By ten o'clock that night all arrangements were made, horses bespoken, baggage packed, and all necessaries purchased, and shortly afterwards the two men exchanged cordial good-nights and retired to their respective rooms to seek the refreshment of sleep in preparation for the morrow's early start.

But though Sir Richard, his mind relieved by his meeting with Anstice, fell into a sound slumber ten minutes after he laid his head down on his pillow, Anstice lay awake all night between the white walls of his mosquito curtains.

For there was that in his thoughts which effectually banished sleep.

CHAPTER II

Anstice never forgot that first day's ride over the desert sand. They had started early, very shortly, indeed, after daybreak, and by the time the sun was fully risen they were already some miles on their way.

It was a heavenly morning, the dry and glittering air full of that peculiar, crisp sparkle which mounts to one's head like champagne. The sand shone and twinkled in the yellow suns.h.i.+ne with an almost dazzling effect, and the pale blue sky had not yet taken on the pitiless ultramarine hue which comes with the brazen noon.

The horses, too, seemed alive to the exhilarating quality of the air.

They curvetted and danced over the sand, tossing their arched necks and lifting their feet daintily as though they were conscious of the beauty and fitness of their own motion.

"By Jove, Sir Richard, life is worth living on a morning like this!"

Anstice threw back his head and inhaled large draughts of the intoxicating, sun-warmed air. "Why on earth do we herd in cities when there are glorious tracts of desert land where one might pitch one's tent! I declare I wish I were a nomad myself!"

"You feel like that?" Sir Richard looked a trifle wistfully at the younger man, envying him his superior youth and more robust physique.

"For my part I confess to a distrust of the desert. It seems to me as though there were a blight on these huge tracts of sand, as though the Creator had regretted their creation, yet was too perfect a Worker to try, by altering the original purpose of His handiwork, to turn them into something for which they were not intended."

He paused, pulling up his horse and turning in his saddle to survey the yellow and brown waste over which they had come.

"I suppose, as an Englishman whose forbears have always clung to the soil, I find more pleasure in beholding an English landscape," he said, with a smile which was half apologetic. "The ideal of making two blades of gra.s.s spring where there was but one before may not be a very exalted one, but I confess I see more beauty in a field of grain waving under the August sun, than in these acres of yellow sand, and the thought of a perpetual summer, with never the soft grey tones of an autumn sky or the crisp frostiness of a winter's morning--well, it doesn't appeal to my John Bull soul!"

He laughed, ashamed of his vehemence, and the horses sprang gaily forward, glad to be moving again after even so brief a halt.

All through the morning they rode, resting for an hour or two at noon; and in the late afternoon they remounted their horses and fared forth once more in search of the camping-place Sir Richard had in mind.

By dint of compa.s.ses and an unusually accurate sense of location, the older man had staked their course with admirable directness, and as the moon rose they drew rein at the appointed destination, a wild and rocky valley whose caves offered a natural protection from the chill night breeze which blew with disconcerting freshness over the loose, salt-impregnated sand.

Here, thanks to the ever-useful thermos flask, they enjoyed a sufficient meal of hot soup, followed by a mult.i.tude of sandwiches of divers kinds; and when, after a pull at their respective flasks, the two lit their pipes and stretched their limbs, cramped by the day's exertions, Anstice, at least, felt more at peace with the world than he had felt for years.

To be hastening towards Iris Cheniston, to be sure of meeting her within twenty-four hours, sure of seeing the kind friendliness of her wide grey eyes, of hearing the soft cooing notes of her voice, was enough to make a man content with his lot; and the fact that he was journeying towards her in order to do his best to save the life of the one human being who stood between him and his happiness lost all its irony when he remembered that it was in reality Iris herself for whom this service was undertaken.

The next morning found them early astir; and as their horses danced over the sand, literally throwing the miles behind them, Sir Richard's spirits, which had been somewhat fluctuating, rose with a bound. He whistled gaily as they rode, ever and anon breaking off to conjecture on the nature of the welcome they might reasonably expect to receive; and when he spoke, as he did frequently, of his son-in-law, his prognostications, in striking contrast with his former pessimism, were couched in the most hopeful language.

Strange to say, as his spirits rose, so did those of Anstice sink. An odd foreboding, a premonition for which he could not account, displaced the gladness from his heart; and as they rode on and ever onwards he told himself that they were surely riding towards tragedy.

Possibly it was the Celtic strain in him which rendered him liable to these strange and perverse forebodings of evil. On sundry other occasions in his earlier youth he had fallen with appalling swiftness from the heights of glad antic.i.p.ation to the depths of a certain and most unwelcome gloom; and now, quite suddenly, he found himself involved in a black and rayless melancholy which seemed to fortell some catastrophic happening at hand.

It was with more and more difficulty that he replied to Sir Richard's hopeful prophecies; and so strong upon him was the premonition of disaster that when he learned at last that they were within an hour or two's ride of their destination he spurred on his still willing steed in a sudden desire to know the worst which was to befall.