A native doctor belonging to the Ministry of Public Health arrived at K?m-es-Sultan during the afternoon, having travelled up from Luxor in response to the telegram reporting the infection; and to his care the patient was handed over by Morgan, who had refused to budge until proper arrangements could be made. When, a few days later, the sick man was able to be moved, he was conveyed down to Luxor in a small river-steamer belonging to the sugar factory; and, after ten days in the local hospital, where, in spite of the great heat, he was very tolerably comfortable, he was able to go north in the sleeping-car which, on certain nights during the summer weeks, was attached to the Cairo express, for the benefit of perspiring English officers coming down from the Sudan, and weary officials whose work had called them out into these sun-scorched districts of Upper Egypt. The doctor in Cairo advised him to move down to the sea as soon as possible; and thus, one early evening at the end of June, as the glare of the day was giving place to the long shadows of sunset, Jim found himself driving through the streets of Alexandria towards the little Hotel des Beaux-Esprits which stands at the edge of the Mediterranean, not far outside the city, and which had been recommended[24] to him as the inexpensive resort of artists and men of letters.
He leant back in the carriage luxuriously, and drank the cool air into his lungs with a satisfaction which those alone may understand who have known what it is to make this journey out of the inferno of an Upper Egyptian summer into the comparatively temperate climate of the sea coast. The streets of Alexandria are much like those of an Italian or southern French city; and as he looked about him at the pleasant shops and the crowds of pedestrians, for the most part European or Levantine, he felt as though he had recovered from some sort of tortured madness, and had suddenly come back to the comprehension and the relish of intelligent life.
For the present there was nothing to mar his happiness. The greater part of a year’s salary lay awaiting him in the bank, for in the desert there had been no means of spending money, and his losses had equalled his winnings at those daily games of cards which had at length become so tedious. The mines would remain idle in any event until the temperature began to fall, in September; and thus for the two months of his summer leave he could take his ease, and could postpone for some weeks yet his decision as to whether he would return to that fiery exile, or would fare forth again upon his nomadic travels.
His recent experiences had been a severe shock to him, and for the time being, at any rate, he felt that he never wished to see the desert again. But perhaps when a few weeks of this cool sea air had[25] set him on his feet once more, the thought of his return to the mines would have lost its terror.
At the hotel he was received by the fat and motherly proprietress, who, having diffidently asked for and enthusiastically received a week’s payment in advance, led him to an airy room overlooking the sea, and left him with many assurances that he would here speedily recover from the indefinite stomachic disturbances which he told her had recently laid him low.
On his way through Cairo he had purchased quite a respectable suit of white linen, and so soon as he was alone he set about the happy business of arraying himself as a civilized personage. Although much exhausted by his journey he was eager to go down and sit at one of the little tables overlooking the sea, there to drink his bouillon, and to make himself acquainted with his fellow guests; and he paid very little regard to the shaking of his knees and the apparent swaying of the floor when a struggle with his unruly hair had taxed his strength. Prudence suggested that he should remain in his room and rest; but, having been in exile so long, he could not resist the desire to be downstairs, enjoying the coolness of the evening, looking at people and talking to them, or listening to the music provided by the mandolines and guitars of a company of Italians who, presumably, earned their living by going the round of the smaller hotels, and the strains of whose romantic songs now came to him, mingled with the gentle surge of the waves.
Presently, therefore, he issued from his room, and, making for the stairs, found himself walking[26] behind a young woman similarly purposed. He had not spoken to a female of any kind for nearly a year, and this fact may have accounted for the quite surprising impression her back view made upon him. It seemed to him that she had a wonderful pair of shoulders, startling black hair, and an excellent figure excellently garbed. He hoped devoutly that she was pretty; but, as she turned to glance at him, he saw that her face was perhaps more interesting than actually beautiful. It was like an ancient Egyptian bas-relief—an Isis or a Hathor. It was sufficiently strange, indeed, with the high cheek-bones, the raven-black hair, and the wise, smiling mouth, to arouse his curiosity, and her dark-fringed grey eyes seemed frankly to invite his admiration.
At the foot of the stairs, when he was close behind her, he suddenly felt giddy again, and swayed towards her; at which she stared at him in cold surprise.
“I beg your pardon,” he said, clutching at the banister, and wondering why the light had become so dim.
A moment later he pitched forward, grabbed at the hand she instantly held out to him, and knew no more.
When he recovered consciousness he was lying upon the bed in his own room, and this black-haired woman whom he had seen upon the stairs was leaning over him—like a mother, he thought—dabbing his forehead with water.
“That’s better,” he heard her say. “You’ll be all right now.”
[27]
He sat up, at once fully aware of his situation. “I’m awfully sorry,” he exclaimed. “Did I faint?”
“Yes,” was the answer. “I caught you as you fell.”
Jim swore under his breath. “I’ve been ill,” he said. “I didn’t realize I was so weak. Did I make an awful ass of myself?”
“No,” she smiled, “you did it quite gracefully; and there was nobody about; they were all at dinner.”
“Who brought me up here?” he asked.
“I and the two native servants,” she laughed, and her laughter was pleasant to hear. “Are you in the habit of fainting?”
“I’ve never fainted before in my life,” said Jim, warmly, “until I had this go of cholera.”
“Cholera?” she ejaculated. “You’ve had cholera? How long ago?”
“Oh, I’m not infectious,” he smiled. “It was quite a while ago.” He gave her the facts with weary brevity: it was a picture that he wished to banish from the gallery of his memory.
“But, my dear friend,” she said, “when you’ve just come out of the jaws of death like that, you must take things easy. You ought to be in bed, toying with a spoonful of jelly and a grape. What’s your name?”
“Jim,” he answered. “What’s yours?”
“That is of no consequence,” she replied, smiling at him, as he thought to himself, like a heathen idol.
He was silent for a few moments. He was not quite sure whether it would not now be as well to[28] kill Mr. Easton and resuscitate Mr. Tundering-West, for at the moment he was anxious to forget entirely his Bedouin life and his exile at the mines, and he was no longer a disreputable beggar.
“I’ll call you ‘Sister,’” he said at length. “That’s what the patients at the hospital call the nurse, isn’t it?”
“I’m afraid I’m not much of a nurse,” she replied. “I’ve torn your collar in getting it open, and I’ve dripped water all down your coat.”
“I bumped into you when I fell, didn’t I?” he asked, trying to recollect what had happened.
“Yes,” she answered. “I thought you were drunk.”
“Thanks awfully,” he said.
“Have you any friends to look after you?” she enquired presently.
“No, nobody, Sister,” he replied. “Have you?”
She shook her head. “I hardly know anybody, either. I’m a painter. I’ve just come over from Italy to do some work.” She fetched a towel from the washing-stand. “Now, hold your head up, and let me dry your neck.”
“I suppose you don’t happen to have a brandy and soda about you?” he asked, when she had tidied him up. He was feeling very fairly well again, but sorely in need of a stimulant.
“I’ll go and get you one,” she replied; and before he could make any polite protest she had left the room.
He got up at once from the bed, went with shaking legs to the dressing-table and stared at himself in the glass. “Good Lord!” he muttered. “I look[29] like an organ-grinder after a night out.” He combed his damp hair back from his forehead, and sat himself down on the sofa near the open window, a shaded candle by his side. The night was soothingly windless and quiet, and a wonderful full moon was rising clear of the haze above the sea; and so extraordinary was it to him to feel the air about him temperate and kind that presently a mood of great content descended upon him, and, after his startling experience, he was no longer restless to join the company downstairs.
In a short time his nurse returned, bringing him the brandy-and-soda; and when this had been swallowed he began to think the world a very pleasant place.
She fetched two pillows from the bed, and in motherly fashion placed them behind his head; then, sitting down on a small armchair which stood near the sofa, she asked him whether he intended to stay long in Alexandria.
“I have no plans,” he told her. “As long as I’ve got any money in the bank I never do have any. When the money’s spent, then I shall begin to think what to do next. I’m just one of the Bedouin of life.”
“I am a wanderer, too,” she said. And therewith they began to talk to one another as only wanderers can talk. There were many places in France and Italy known to them both, and it appeared that they had been in Ceylon at the same time, she in Colombo, and he up-country in search of his moonstones.
He felt very much at ease with her, coming soon,[30] indeed, to regard her as a potential confidant of his dreams. Her enigmatic face was curiously attractive to him, particularly so, in fact, just now, with the screen of the candle casting a soft shadow upon it, so that the grey eyes seemed to be looking at him through a veil. He began to wonder, indeed, why it was that at first sight he had not regarded her as beautiful.
For half an hour or more they talked quietly but eagerly together, while the moon rose over the sea until its pale light penetrated into the room, and blanched the heavy shadows.
“Well, I’m very glad I fainted,” he said, lightly, observing that she was about to take her departure.
“So am I,” she answered, smiling at him as though all the secrets of all the world were in her wise keeping.
“Tell me, Sister,” he asked. “Are you all alone in the world?”
“Yes.”
“Do you think it’s quite correct to be sitting in a strange man’s room?”
“Perfectly.”
“Tramp!” he said.
“Vagrant!” she replied.
She rose, and stood awhile gazing out of the open window—a mysterious figure, looking like old gold in the light of the reading-lamp, set against the sheen of the moon.
“It’s a wonderful night,” he remarked. “You have no idea what it means to me to feel cool and comfortable. The desert up-country is the very devil in summer.”
[31]
“Yes,” she replied, turning to him, “one can understand why Cleopatra and her Ptolemy ancestors left the old cities of the south, and built their palaces here beside the sea.”
He smiled, knowingly. “If she had lived up there in Thebes where the old Pharaohs sweated, there wouldn’t have been any affair with Antony. She would have been too busy taking cold baths and whisking the flies away. But down here—why, the sound of the sea in the night would have been enough by itself to do the trick.”
She looked at him curiously. “To me,” she said, “the sound of the sea on a summer night is the most tragic and the most beautiful thing in the world. If I ever gave up wandering and came to rest, it would be in a little white villa somewhere on the shores of the Mediterranean.”
“No, for my part, I want to go north just now,” he rejoined. “I’m tired of the east and the south: I’ve got a longing for England.”
“It won’t last,” she smiled. “You don’t fit in with England, somehow.”
“Oh, I’m a typical Devon man,” he declared, recalling, with a sudden feeling of pride, the original home of his family, previous to their migration into Oxfordshire.
She looked at him with a smile. “That accounts for it,” she said. “The men of Devon so often have the wandering spirit.” She held out her hand. “I must go now. Good night!—I’ll come and see how you are in the morning. My room is next to yours, if you want anything.”
“Good night, Sister!” he answered. “I’m most[32] awfully obliged to you. You’ve done me a power of good.”
She smiled at him with the calm, mysterious expression of the old gods and goddesses carved upon the temple walls, and went out of the room; and thereafter he lay back on his pillows, musing on her attractive personality, and wondering who she was. He was still wondering when, some minutes later, the native servant entered with a tray upon which there was a cup of soup, some jelly, and a bunch of grapes.
“Madam she say you to drink it all the soup,” said the man, “but only eat three grapes, only three, she say, sir, please.”
“Very well,” Jim answered, feeling rather pleased thus to receive orders from her.
That night he slept soundly, and awoke refreshed and almost vigorous. After breakfast in bed he got up, and he had been dressed for some time when his self-constituted nurse came to him.
“Oh, I’m glad you’re up,” she said, giving his hand an honest shake. “I’m going to take you out on the verandah downstairs. It’s beautifully cool there.”
Jim was delighted. She looked so very nice this morning, he thought, in her pretty summer dress and wide-brimmed hat; and her smile was radiant. He held an impression from the night before that she was a creature of mystery, a woman out of a legend; and it was quite a relief to him to find that now in the daylight she was a normal being.
As they descended the stairs she put her hand under his elbow to aid him, and, though the assistance[33] was quite unnecessary, it pleased him so much that he was conscious of an inclination to play the invalid with closer similitude than actuality warranted. Nobody had ever looked after him since he was a child, and, as in the case of all men who believe they detest feminine aid, the experience was surprisingly gratifying.
On the verandah they sat together in two basket chairs, and presently she so directed their conversation that he found himself talking to her as though she were his oldest friend. He told her tales of the desert, described his life at the mines, and tried to explain the dread he felt at the thought of returning to them. There was no complaint in his words: he was something of a fatalist, and, being obliged to earn his bread and butter, he supposed his lot to be no worse than that of hosts of other men. After all, anything was better than sitting on an office stool.
She listened to him, encouraging him to talk; and the morning was gone before he suddenly became conscious that she and not he had played the part of listener.
“Good lord!” he exclaimed. “How I must be boring you! There goes the bell for déjeuner. Why didn’t you stop me?”
“I was interested,” she replied, turning her head aside. “You have shown me a part of life I knew nothing about. My own wanderings have been so much more sophisticated, so much more ordinary.” She looked round at him quickly. “By the way, I am leaving you to-morrow. I have to go to Cairo for a week or so.”
[34]
Jim’s face fell. “Oh damn!” he said. His disappointment was intense. “Why should you go to Cairo?” he asked gloomily. “It’s a beastly, hot, unhealthy place at this time of year.”
“I shan’t be gone long,” she answered. “I just have to paint one picture. And when I come back I shall expect to find you strong and well once more. Then we can do all sorts of wonderful things together.” She paused, looking at him intently. “That is something for us to look forward to,” she added, as though she were talking to herself.