His Hour. Glyn Elinor
"You see," he said, "we skirt these rocks and then we shall ride through the village. One can very well imagine it has been the same always."
They entered the little town. The streets were extremely narrow and the dark houses gave an air of mystery—a speculation—what could be going on behind those closed shutters? Here and there a straight blue-clad figure slunk away round a corner. There was a deep silence and the moonlight made the shadows sharp as a knife. Then a shaft of red light would shoot from some strange low hovel as they passed, and they could see inside a circle of Arab Bedouins crouching over a fire. There seemed no hilarity, their faces were solemn as the grave.
Presently, in the narrowest and darkest street, there was a sound of tom-toms, strains of weird music and voices, and through the chinks of the half-opened shutters light streamed across the road—while a small crowd of Arabs were grouped about the gate in the wall holding donkeys and a camel.
"A wedding," said the young man. "They have escorted the bride. What pleasure to raise a veil and see a black face! But each one to his taste."
Tamara looked up at the window. She wondered what could be happening within—were the other wives there as well? She would have liked to have asked.
The young man saw her hesitation and said laconically—
"Well?"
"They are having a party," Tamara replied, with lame obviousness.
"Of course," said the young man. "Weddings and funerals—equally good occasions for company. They are so wise they leave all to fate; they do not tear their eyes out for something they cannot have—and fight after disappointment. They are philosophers, these Arabs."
The little crowd round the gate now barred the road, half good humoredly, half with menace.
"So, so," said the young man, riding in front. Then he laughed, and putting his hand in his pocket, brought out a quantity of silver and flung it among them with merry words in Arabic, while he pointed to the windows of the house.
Then he seized the bridle of Tamara's camel and started his horse forward. The crowd smiled now and began scrambling for the baksheesh, and so they got through in peace.
Neither spoke until they were in a silent lane again.
"Sometimes they can be quite disagreeable," he said, "but it is amusing to see it all. The Sheikh lives here—he fancies the pyramids belong to him, just as the Khedive fancies all Egypt is his—life is mostly imagination."
Now Tamara could see his face better as he looked up to her superior height on the camel. He had a little moustache and peculiarly chiseled lips—too chiseled for a man, she thought for a moment, until she noticed the firm jaw. His eyes were sleepy—slightly Oriental in their setting, and looked very dark, and yet something made her think that in daylight they might be blue or gray.
He did not smile at all; as he spoke his face was grave, but when something made him laugh as they turned the next corner, it transformed him. It was the rippling spontaneous gaiety of a child.
Two goats had got loose from opposite hovels and were butting at one another in the middle of the road.
He pulled up his horse and watched.
"I like any fight," he said.
But the goats fled in fear of him, so they went on.
Tamara was wondering why she felt so stupid. She wanted to ask her strange companion a number of questions. Who he was? What he was doing at the Sphinx?—and indeed in Egypt. Why he had spoken to her at all?—and yet appeared absolutely indifferent as they rode along! He had not asked her a single question or expressed the least curiosity. For some reason she felt piqued.
Presently they emerged at the end of the village where there was a small lake left by the retirement of the Nile. The moon, almost full, was mirrored in it. The scene was one of extreme beauty. The pyramids appeared an old rose pink, and everything else in tones of sapphire—not the green-blue of moonlight in other countries. All was breathlessly still and lifeless. Only they two, and the camel boys, alone in the night.
The dark line of trees which border the road faced them, and they rode slowly in that direction.
"You are going to the hotel, I suppose?" he said. "I will see you safely to it."
And they climbed the bank on to the avenue from Cairo.
"And you?" Tamara could not prevent herself from asking. "Where do you go?"
"To hell, sometimes," he answered, and his eyes were full of mist, "but tonight I shall go to bed for a change."
Tamara was nonplussed. She felt intensely commonplace. She was even a little cross with herself. Why had she asked a question?
The Arab horse now took it into his head to curvet and bound in the air for no apparent reason, but the young man did not stir an inch—he laughed.
"Go on, my beauty," he said. "I like you to be so. It shows you are alive."
As they approached the hotel, Tamara began to hope no one would see them. No one who could tell Millicent that she had a companion. She bent down and said rather primly to the young man who was again at her side:
"I am quite safe now, thank you. I need not trouble you any further.
Good-bye! and I am so obliged to you for showing me a new way home."
He looked up at her, and his whole face was lit with a whimsical smile.
"Yes, at the gate," he said. "Don't be nervous. I will go at the gate."
Tamara did not speak, and presently they came to the turning into the hotel. Then he stopped.
"I suppose we shall meet again some day," he said. "They have a proverb here, 'Meet before dawn—part not till dawn.' They see into the future in a few drops of water in any hollow thing. Well, good-night"—and before she could answer he was off beyond the hotel up the road and then turning to the right on a sand-path, galloped out of sight into what must be the vast desert.
Where on earth could he be going to?—possibly the devil—if one knew.
CHAPTER II
When Tamara woke in the morning the recollection of her camel ride seemed like a dream. She sat for a long time at the window of her room looking out toward the green world and Cairo. She was trying to adjust things in her mind. This stranger had certainly produced an effect upon her.
She wondered who he was, and how he would look in daylight—and above all whither he had galloped into the desert. Then she wondered at herself. The whole thing was so out of her line—so bizarre—in a life of carefully balanced proprieties. And were the thoughts the Sphinx had awaked in her brain true? Yes, certainly she had been ruled by others always—and had never developed her own soul.
She was very sensitive—that last whimsical smile of the unknown had humiliated her. She felt he had laughed at her prim propriety in wishing to get rid of him before the gate. Indeed, she suddenly felt he might laugh at a good many of the things she did. And this ruffled her serenity. She put up her slender hands and pushed the thick hair back from her forehead with an impatient gesture. It all made her dissatisfied with herself and full of unrest.
"You don't tell me a thing about your Sphinx excursion last night,
Tamara," Millicent Hardcastle said at breakfast, rather peevishly. They
were sipping coffee together in the latter's room in dressing-gowns.
"Was it nice, and had the tourists quite departed?"
"It was wonderful!" and Tamara leant back and looked into distance. "There were no tourists, and it made me think a number of new things—we seem such