Her heart sank: she felt like a schoolgirl in the presence of a master who had lately punished her. “Oh, good morning,” she answered, but she did not offer him her hand.
She turned again to the flowers. “Are you waiting to see my father?” she asked, as she aimlessly withdrew a rose from the bunch and inserted it again at another angle.
“I’ve come to lunch,” he said. “I’m early, I suppose. My watch is busted.”
Deeper sank her heart. “No, you’re not early,” she replied, “the gong’s gone.”
“Good!” he exclaimed; “then you haven’t got a party. I was shy about my clothes.”
He was wearing the same clothes in which she had seen him the night before, except that he appeared to have a clean collar and shirt, his hair was carefully combed back, and he had evidently visited a barber.
“Do sit down,” she said.
“Thanks,” he answered, and remained where he was, his hands deep in the pockets of his jacket, and his eyes fixed upon her.
There was an awkward pause, awkward, that is to say, to Muriel, who could not for the life of her think what to talk about.
“Will you smoke a cigarette?” she asked, handing him the box as a preliminary to an escape from the room.
He took it from her unthinkingly, and, without opening it, put it down upon a table.
“I’ve remembered where it was we met,” he remarked suddenly, as she moved towards the door.
“Really?” There was a note of assumed indifference in her voice; and, as she turned and came back to him, she made a desperate attempt to emulate the cucumber. She felt that there was a challenge in his words, in face of which she could not honourably run away.
“Yes,” he said. “It was at Eastbourne, at your school. I came down to see your head mistress, who was a friend of mine; and they let you come into the drawing-room to tea.”
A wave of recollection passed over her mind. “Of course,” she exclaimed, “that was it.”
They had let her, they had allowed her, to come into the drawing-room to have the honour of making his acquaintance! She paused: the scene of their meeting developed in her mind. A girl had rushed into the schoolroom where she was reading, and had told her that she and one or two others were to go into the drawing-room to make themselves polite to this man, who was described as a great scholar and explorer. She had gone in shyly, and had shaken hands with him, and he had stared at her and, later, had turned his back on her; and, after he had gone, the headmistress had commended her manners as having been quiet, ladylike, and respectful. Respectful!
He was smiling at her when she looked up at him once more. “You were wrong about it being at your cousin’s,” he said.
Muriel felt as though she had been smacked. “Oh, I only suggested that,” she replied, witheringly, “to help you out. I didn’t really suppose that you knew her.”
“I know very few people,” he answered, unmoved. “I can’t afford the time. Life is such a ‘brief candle’ that a man has to choose one of its two pleasures – sociability or study: he can’t enjoy both.”
She looked at him curiously. He must have a tough hide, she thought, to be unruffled by a remark so biting as that she had made. For a moment she stared straight at him, her hand resting on her hip. Then she caught sight of herself in the great mirror against the wall, and her hand slipped hastily from its resting-place: her attitude had been that of a common Spanish dancing-girl. Her eyes fell before his.
“I’ll go and find the others,” she said, and turned from him.
As she did so Lord Blair hurried into the room. He was wearing a hot-weather suit of some sort of drab-coloured silk, straight from the laundry, where, one might have supposed, the trousers had been accidentally shrunk. His stiff and spacious collar, and his expansive tie, folded in the four-in-hand manner and fastened with a large gold pin, detracted from the sense of coolness suggested by his suit; but a rose in his buttonhole gave a comfortable touch of nature to an otherwise artificial figure.
“Ah, good morning, Muriel dear,” he exclaimed, giving her cheek a friendly but quite unaffectionate kiss. “You’ve had a lazy morning, eh? Feel the heat, no doubt. Yes? No? Ah, that’s good, that’s capital! Good morning Mr. Lane, or Daniel, I should say, since you permit it. I hope Muriel has been amusing you.”
“She has,” said Daniel, and Muriel blushed.
Rupert Helsingham entered the room; and, when he had made his salutations, Muriel turned to him with relief, strolling with him across to the windows through which the warm scented air of the garden drifted, bringing with it the drone of the flies and the incessant rustle of the palms.
“Please see that I don’t sit next to that horrible man at lunch,” she whispered.
“There’s no choice,” he answered. “The four of us are alone today.”
“Shall we go in?” said Lord Blair, nodding vigorously to Muriel; and the three men followed her into the dining-room.
The meal proved to be less of an ordeal than she had expected. Their visitor talked at first almost exclusively to his host, who showed him, and discussed, the draft of his reply to the Minister of War; and Muriel made herself quite entrancing to Rupert Helsingham. Under ordinary circumstances she was, in spite of occasional lapses into bored silence, a quick and witty talker; one who speedily established a sympathetic connection with the person with whom she was conversing; and her laughter was frequent and infectious. It was only this Daniel Lane who had such a disturbing effect upon her equanimity; but here, at the opposite side of a large table, she seemed to be out of range of his influence, and she rejoiced in her unimpaired power to captivate the little Diplomatic secretary.
“I am going to call you Rupert at once,” she said to him; and, breaking in on the opposite conversation, “Father,” she demanded, “d’you mind if I call this man by his Christian name? Everybody seems to.”
Lord Blair laughed, holding out his hands in a gesture which indicated that he took no responsibility, and turned to Daniel. “Do you think I ought to let her?” he asked.
To Muriel his remark could hardly have been more unfortunate, and a momentary frown gathered upon her face.
“I think it’s a good idea,” replied Daniel, looking quietly at her. “Then if you quarrel you can revert to ‘Mr. Helsingham’ with telling effect.”
Muriel made a slight movement, not far removed from a toss of her head, and, without giving any reply, continued her conversation to Rupert.
The meal was nearly finished when she became aware that her friend was not paying full attention to her remarks, but was listening to Daniel Lane, whose tongue a glass of wine had loosened, and who was speaking in a low vibrating voice, describing some phases of his life in the desert. At this she, too, began to listen, at first with some irritation, but soon with genuine interest. She had supposed him to be more or less monosyllabic, and she was astonished at his command of languages.
As she fixed her eyes upon him he glanced at her for a moment, and there was a pause in his words. For the first time he was conscious of a look of friendship in her face; and his heart responded to the expression. The pause was hardly noticeable, but to him it was as though something of importance had happened; and when he turned again to continue to address himself to his host, there was a warm impulse behind his words. Muriel thereafter made no further remark to Rupert; but leaning her elbow upon the table, and fingering some grapes, gave her undivided attention to the speaker.
“It’s always a matter of surprise to me,” he was saying, “that people don’t come out more often into the desert. You all sit here in this garden of Egypt, this little strip of fertile land on the banks of the Nile, and you look up at the great wall of the hills to east and west; but you don’t ever seem to think of climbing over and running away into the wonderful country beyond.”
Was