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Wonderful Year

<div><h1>CHAPTER XVIII</h1></div> CAIRO station. An illumination of livid blue. A horde of brown-legged turbaned figures wearing red jerseys on which flaunted in white the names of hotels, and reconstructing Babel. An urbane official, lifting a gold-banded cap in the middle of a small oasis of silence and inviting Martin in the name of the Semiramis Hotel, to surrender luggage and all other cares to his keeping, and to follow the stream through the exit to the hotel motor. A phantasmagoria of East and West rendered more fantastic by the shadows cast by the high arc-lamps. He had lost sight of Fortinbras, who bag in hand—his impedimenta being of the scantiest—had disappeared in quest of the palm-tree against whose trunk he presumably was to pass the night. Martin emerged from the station, entered the automobile, one of a long row, and waited with his fellow passengers until the roof was stacked with luggage. Then the drive through European streets suggestive of Paris and the sudden halt at the hotel. A dazzling vision of a lounge, a swift upward journey in a lift worked by a Nubian gorgeous in scarlet and gold, a walk down a corridor, a door flung open, and Martin found himself in his bedroom. An Arab brought hot water and retired. Martin opened the shutters of the window and looked out. It was hard moonlight. Beneath him shimmered a broad ribbon of water, against which were silhouetted outlandish masts and spars of craft moored against the embankment. The dark mass on the further shore seemed to be pleasant woods. The water could be nothing else than the Nile; the sacred river; the first river in which he had taken a romantic interest, on account of Moses and the Ark and Pharaoh’s daughter; the mighty river which is the very life of a vast country; the most famous river in the world. He regarded it with a curious mixture of awe and disappointment. On his right it was crossed by a bridge dotted with the slowly moving lamps of carts and now and then flashing with the headlights of a motor-car. It was not unlike any ordinary river—the Thames, the Seine, the Rhone at Geneva. He had imagined it broad as the Amazon. Yet it was wonderful; the historic water, the moonlight, the clear Egyptian air in which floated a vague perfume of spice, the dimly seen long-robed figures seated on a bench by the parapet on the other side of the road, whose guttural talk rose like a proclamation of the Orient. He leaned out over the iron railing. On his left stood out dreamily defined against the sky two shadowy little triangles. He wondered what they could be. Suddenly came the shock of certainty. They were the Pyramids. He rubbed his eyes and looked again. A thrill ran over his skin. He had not counted on being brought up bang, as it were, against them. He had imagined that one journeyed for half a day on a camel through a trackless desert in order to visit these wonders of the world: but here he was staring at them from the hotel-window of a luxurious capital. He stared at them for a long time. Yes: there was the Nile; there were the Pyramids; and, after a knock at the door, there was his luggage. He became conscious of hunger; also of Lucilla more splendid than moonlit Nile and Pyramids and all the splendours of Egypt put together. Hunger—it was half-past nine and he had eaten nothing since lunch on ship-board—counselled speedy ablutions and a descent in quest of food. Lucilla ordained correctitude of vesture. His first evening on board ship had taught him that dinner jacket suit and black tie were the only wear. He changed and went downstairs. A chasseur informed him that Miss Merriton was staying in the hotel, but that she had gone to the dance at the Savoy. When would she be back? The chasseur, a child rendered old by accumulated knowledge of trivial fact, replied that Cairo was very gay this season, that dances went on till the morning hours, and insinuated that Miss Merriton was as gay as anybody. Martin walked through the lounge into the restaurant and supped. He supped exceedingly well. Bearing in mind Fortinbras’s counsel of lordliness and the ways of lordly motorists passing through Brantôme, he ordered a pint of champagne. He was served by an impeccable waiter with lilac revers and brass buttons to his coat. He noted the livery with a professional eye. The restaurant was comparatively empty. Only at one table sat a party of correctly dressed men and women. A few others were occupied by his travelling companions, still in the garb of travel. Martin mellowed by the champagne, adjusted his black tie and preened his white shirt front, in the hope that the tweed-clad newcomers would see him and marvel and learn from him, Martin Overshaw, obscure and ignorant adventurer, what was required by English decorum. After his meal he sat in the lounge and ordered Turkish coffee, liqueur brandy and cigarettes. And so, luxuriously housed, clothed and fed, he entered on the newest phase of his new life. Six months ago he had considered his sportive ride through France with Corinna a thrilling adventure. He smiled at his simplicity. An adventure, that tame jog-trot tour! As comparable to this as his then companion to the radiant lady of his present quest. Now, indeed, he had burned his boats, thrown his cap over the windmills, cast his frock to the nettles. The reckless folly of it all had kept his veins a-tingle, his head awhirl. At every moment during the past fortnight something amazingly new had flashed into his horizon. The very sleeping-berth in the train de luxe had been a fresh experience. So too was the awakening to the warmth and sunshine of Marseilles. Save for a crowded hour of inglorious life (he was a poor sailor) now and then on cross-channel boats he had never set foot on a ship. He wandered about the ocean-going liner with a child’s delight. Fortune favoured him with a spell of blue weather. He scoffed at sea-sickness. The meals characterised by many passengers as abominable, he devoured as though they were Lucullian feasts. He made acquaintance with folks going not only to Egypt, but to Peshawar and Mandalay and Singapore and other places with haunting names. Some shocked him by calling them God-forsaken holes and cursing their luck. Others, mainly women, going thither for the first time shared his emotions. . . . He was surprised at the ease with which he fell into casual talk with strangers. Sometimes a child was a means of introduction to its mother. Sometimes a woman in the next deck-chair would open a conversation. Sometimes Fortinbras chatting with a knot of people would catch him as he passed and present him blandly. Among the minor things that gave him cause for wonder was the swift popularity of his companion. No longer did his costume stamp Fortinbras as a man apart from the laity. He wore the easy tweeds and soft felt hat of a score of other elderly gentlemen on board: even the gold watch-chain, which he had redeemed after a long, long sojourn at the Mount of Piety. But this very commonplace of his attire brought into relief the nobility of his appearance. His massive face lined with care, his broad brow, his prominent light blue kindly eyes, his pursy and benevolent mouth, his magnificent Abbé Liszt shock of white hair, now carefully tended, his impressive air of dignity—all marked him as a personage of distinction. He aroused the idle curiosity of the idle voyagers. Husbands were bidden by wives to talk to him and see what he was like. Husbands obeyed, as is the human though marriage-vow-subversive way of husbands, and meekly returned with information. A capital fellow; most interesting chap; English of course; very courtly old bird; like so-and-so who was Ambassador; old school; knows everything; talks like a book. Quoth any one of the wives, her woman’s mind intent on the particular. “But who is he?” The careless husband, his masculine mind merely concerned with the general, did not know. He had not thought of asking. How could he ask? And what did it matter? The wife sighed. “Bring him along and I will soon find out.” Fortinbras at fit opportunity was brought along. The lady unconsciously surrendered to his spell—one has not practised as a marchand de bonheur for nothing. “Now I know all about him,” said any one of the wives to any one of the husbands. “Why are men so stupid? He is an old Winchester boy. He is a retired philosopher and he lives in France.” That was all she learned about Fortinbras; but Fortinbras in that trial interview learned everything about the lady serenely unconscious of intimate avowal. “My young friend,” said he to Martin, “the secret of social influence is to present yourself to each individual rather as a sympathetic intelligence, than as a forceful personality. The patient takes no interest in the morbid symptoms of his physician: but every patient is eager to discuss his symptoms with the kindly physician who will listen to them free, gratis and for nothing. By adopting this attitude I can evoke from one the dramatic ambitions of her secret heart, from another the history of her children’s ailments and the recipe for the family cough-cure, from a third the moving story of strained relations with his parents because he desired to marry his uncle’s typist, the elderly crown and glory of her sex, and from a fourth an intricate account of a peculiarly shady deal in lard.” “That sounds all right,” said Martin; “but in order to get people to talk to you—say in the four cases you have mentioned, you must know something about the theatre, bronchitis, love and the lard-trade.” Said Fortinbras, touching the young man’s shoulder: “The experienced altruist with an eye to his own advantage knows something about everything.” Martin, following the precepts of his Mentor, practised the arts of fence, parrying the thrusts of personal questions on the part of his opponent and riposting with such questions on his own. “It is necessary,” said the sage. “What are you among these respectable Britons of substance, but an adventurer? Put yourself at the mercy of one of these old warriors with grey motor-veils and steel knitting needles and she will pluck out the heart of your mystery in a jiffy and throw it on the deck for all to feed on.” Thus the voyage—incidentally was it not to Cythæra?—transcended all his dreams of social amenity. It was a long protracted party in which he lost his shyness, finding frank welcome on all sides. To the man of thirty who had been deprived, all his man’s life, of the commonplace general intercourse with his kind, this daily talk with a girl here, a young married woman there, an old lady somewhere else, and all sorts and conditions of men in the smoking room and on deck, was nothing less than a kind of social debauch, intoxicating him, keeping him blissfully awake of nights in his upper berth, while Fortinbras snored below. Then soon after daybreak, to mount to the wet, sunlit deck after his cold, sea-water bath; perhaps to meet a hardy and healthy English girl, fresh as the Ægean morning; to tramp up and down with her for development of appetite, talking of nothing but the glitter of the sea, the stuffiness of cabins, the dishes they each would choose for breakfast; to descend into the warm, comforting smell of the dining-saloon; to fall voraciously on porridge and eggs and kidneys and marmalade; to go on deck again knowing that in a couple of hours’ time stewards would come to him fainting from hunger with bowls of chicken broth, that in an hour or two afterwards there would be lunch to be selected from a menu a foot long in close print, and so on during the golden and esurient day; to meet Fortinbras, late and luxurious riser; to bask for an hour, like a plum, in the sunshine of his wisdom; to continue the debauch of the day before; to sight great sailing vessels with bellying canvas, resplendent majesty of past centuries, or, on the other hand, the grey grim blocks of battleships; to pass the sloping shores of historic islands—Crete, home of the Minotaur, whose inhabitants—(Cretans are liars. Cretans are men. Therefore all men are liars)—had furnished the stock example of fallacy in the Syllogism; to watch the green wake cleaving the dark-blue sea; to make his way up and down decks, through the steerage, and stand in the bows, swept by the exhilarating air, with the pulse racking sense that he was speeding to the lodestar of his one desire—to find wildness of delight in these commonplaces of travel; to live as he lived, to vibrate as he vibrated with every nerve from dawn to dawn, to be drunk with the sheer ecstasy of existence, so that the past becomes a black abyss, and the future an amethystine haze glorified by the Sons of the Morning singing for joy, is given but to few, is given to none but poor, starved souls, is given to none of the poor, starved souls but those whom the high Gods in obedience to their throw of the dice happen to select. Martin sitting in a deep armchair in the Semiramis Hotel dreamed of all these things, unconscious of the flight of time. Suddenly he became aware that he was the only occupant of the lounge, all the other folk having returned soberly to their rooms. Already a few early arrivals from the Savoy dance passed across the outer hall on their way to the lift. Drowsy with happiness he went to bed. To-morrow, Lucilla. <hr class='tbk'/> He became aware of her standing by the bureau licking a stamp to put on a letter. She wore a white coat and skirt and a straw hat with cherries on it. He could not see her face, but he guessed the blue veins on the uplifted, ungloved hand that held the stamp. On his approach, she turned and uttered a little laughing gasp of recognition, stuck the stamp on hastily and stretched out her hand. “Why,” she cried, “it’s you! You really have come!” “Did you think I would break my promise?” he asked, his eyes drinking in her beauty. “I didn’t know how seriously you regarded it.” “I’ve thought of nothing but Egypt, since I said you had pointed out the way,” he replied. “You commanded. I obeyed.” She caught up her long parasol and gloves that lay on the ledge of the bureau. “If everybody did everything I told them,” she laughed, “I should have my hands full. They don’t, as a general rule, but when they do I take it as a compliment. It makes me feel good to see you. When did you come?” She put him through a short catechism. What boat? What kind of voyage? Where was he staying? . . . Finally: “Do you know many people in Cairo?” “Not a soul,” said Martin. With both arms behind her back, she rested lightly on the parasol, and beamed graciously. “I know millions,” she said, not without a touch of exaggeration which pleased him. “Would you like to trust yourself to me, put yourself entirely in my hands?” “I could dream of nothing more enchanting,” replied Martin. “But——” “But——?” “I don’t want to make myself an infliction.” “You’re going to be a delight. You know in the cinematograph how an invisible pencil writes things on the sheet—or how a message is stamped out on the tape, and you look and wonder what’s coming next. Well, I want to see how this country is going to be stamped letter by letter on your virgin mind. It’s a thing I’ve been longing for—to show somebody with sense like yourself, Egypt of the Pharaohs and Egypt of the English. How long can you stay?” “Indefinitely,” said Martin. “I have no plans.” “From here you might go to Honolulu or Rangoon?” “Or Greenland or Cape Horn,” said Martin. She nodded smiling approval. “That is what I call a free and enlightened Citizen of the World. Let us sit down. I’m waiting for my friend, Mrs. Dangerfield of Philadelphia. Her husband’s here too. You will like them. I generally travel round with somebody, just for the sake of a table-companion. I’m silly enough to feel a fool eating alone every day in a restaurant.” He drew a wicker chair for her and sat beside her. She deposited parasol and gloves on the little round table, and swept him with a quizzical glance from his well-fitting brown shoes to his trim black hair. “May I without impertinence compliment you on your colour-scheme?” His olive cheek flushed like a girl’s. He had devoted an hour’s concentrated thought to it before he rose. How should he appear in the presence of the divinity? He had decided on grey flannels, grey shirt, purple socks and tie. He wondered whether she guessed the part she had played in his anxious selection. Remembering the splotch of grease, he said: “I hadn’t much choice of clothes when you last saw me.” She laughed. “Tell me all about Brantôme. How is my dear little friend Félise?” He gave her discreet news. “And the incomparable Fortinbras?” “You’ll doubtless soon be able to judge for yourself. He’s here.” “In Cairo? You don’t say!” Mingled with her expression of surprise was a little perplexity of the brow, as though, seeing the Fortinbras of the Petit Cornichon, she wondered what on earth she could do with him. “He came with me,” said Martin. “Is he staying in this hotel?” “No,” said Martin. Her brow grew smooth again. “How did he manage to get all this way? Has he retired from business?” “I don’t think so. He needed a holiday. You see he came into a little money on the death of his wife.” “His wife dead?” Lucilla queried. “Félise’s mother? I didn’t know. Perhaps that’s why she hasn’t written to me for such a long time. I think there must be some queer story connected with that mother,” she added shrewdly. “Anyway, Fortinbras can’t be broken-hearted, or he wouldn’t come on a jaunt to Egypt.” Too well-bred to examine Martin on his friend’s private affairs, she changed the talk in her quick, imperious way. Martin sat like a man bewitched, fascinated by her remembered beauties—the lazy music of her voice, her mobile lips, her brown eyelashes. . . . His heart beat at the realisation of so many dreams. He listened, his brain scarcely following what she said; that she spoke with the tongue of an angel was enough. Presently a stout, pleasant-faced woman of thirty came towards them with many apologies for lateness. This was Mrs. Dangerfield. Lucilla presented Martin. “Behold in me the complete dragoman. Mr. Overshaw has engaged me for the season. It’s his first visit to Egypt and I’m going to show him round. I’ll draw up a programme for a personally conducted tour, every hour accounted for and replete with distraction.” “It sounds dreadful,” laughed Mrs. Dangerfield. “Do you think you’ll survive, Mr. Overshaw?” “Not only that,” said Martin, “but I hope for a new lease of life.” “We start,” said Lucilla, “with a drive through the town, during which I shall point out the Kasr-el-Nil Barracks, the Bank of Egypt and the Opera House. Then we shall enter on the shopping expedition in the Mousky, where I shall prevent Mrs. Dangerfield from being robbed while bargaining for Persian lacq. I’m ready, Laura, if you are.” She led the way out. Martin exchanging words of commonplace with Mrs. Dangerfield, followed in an ecstasy. Did ever woman, outside Botticelli’s Primavera, walk with such lissomeness? A chasseur turned the four-flanged doors and they emerged into the clear morning sunshine. The old bearded Arab carriage porter called an hotel arabeah from the stand. But while the driver, correct in metal-buttoned livery coat and tarbush, was dashing up with his pair, Martin caught sight of Fortinbras walking towards them. “There he is,” said Martin. “Who?” “Fortinbras.” “Nonsense,” said Lucilla. “That’s an English Cabinet Minister, or an American millionaire, or the keeper of a gambling saloon.” But when he came nearer, she admitted it was Fortinbras. She waved her hand in recognition. Nothing could have been more charming than her greeting; nothing more urbane than his acknowledgment, or his bow, on introduction to Mrs. Dangerfield. He had come, said he, to lay his respectful homage at her feet; also to see how his young friend was faring in a strange land. Lucilla asked him where he was staying. “When last I saw you,” he answered, “I said something about the perch of the old vulture.” She eyed him, smiling: “You look more like the wanton lapwing.” “In that case I need even a smaller perch, the merest twig.” “But ‘Merest Twig, Cairo,’ isn’t an address,” cried Lucilla. “How am I to get hold of you when I want you?” Fortinbras regarded her with humorous benevolence. The question was characteristic. He knew her to be generous, warm-hearted and impatient of trivial convention: therefore he had not hesitated to go to her in his anxious hour; but he also knew how those long delicate fingers had an irresistible habit of drawing unwary humans into her harmless web. He had not come to Cairo just to walk into Lucilla’s parlour. He wanted to buzz about Egypt in philosophic and economical independence. “That, my dear Lucilla,” said he, “is one more enigma to be put to the credit of the Land of Riddles.” Ibrahim stood impassively holding open the door of the arabeah. A couple of dragomen in resplendent robes and turbans, seeing a new and prosperous English tourist, had risen from their bench on the other side of the road and lounged gracefully forward. “You’re the most exasperating person I ever met,” exclaimed Lucilla. “But while I have you, I’m going to keep you. Come to lunch at one-fifteen. If you don’t I’ll never speak to you again.” “I’ll come to lunch at one-fifteen, with very great pleasure,” said Fortinbras. The ladies entered the carriage. Martin said hastily: “You gave me the slip last night.” “I did,” said Fortinbras. He drew the young man a pace aside, and whispered: “You think those are doves harnessed to the chariot. They’re not. They’re horses.” Martin broke away with a laugh, and sprang to the back seat of the carriage. It drove off. The dragoman came up to the lonely Fortinbras. Did he want a guide? The Citadel, the Pyramids, Sakkara? Fortinbras turned to the impassive Ibrahim and in his grand manner and with impressive gesture said: “Will you tell them they are too beautiful. They would eclipse the splendour of all the monuments I am here to visit.” He walked away and Ibrahim, translating roughly to the dragomen, conveyed uncomplimentary references to the virtue of their grandmothers. Meanwhile Martin, in beatitude, sat on the little seat, facing his goddess. She was an integral part of the exotic setting of Cairo. It was less real life than an Arabian Night’s tale. She was interfused with all the sunshine and colour and wonder. Only the camels padding along in single file, their bodies half hidden beneath packs of coarse grass, seemed alien to her. They held up their heads, as the carriage passed them, with a damnably supercilious air. One of them seemed to catch his eye and express contempt unfathomable. He shook a fist at him. “I hate those brutes,” said he. “Good gracious! Why?” asked Lucilla. “They’re so picturesque! A camel is the one thing I really can draw properly.” “Well, I dislike them intensely,” said he. “They’re inhuman.” He could not translate his unformulated thought into conventional words. But he knew that at the summons of the high gods all the world of animate beings would fall down and worship her: every breathing thing but the camel. He hated the camel. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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