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 Brant?me, 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 Cyth?ra?—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 ?gean 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 ............