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Burning Sands
CHAPTER I – A STUDY IN BEHAVIOUR
The music ceased. For a full minute the many dancers stood as the dance had left them, stranded, so to speak, upon the polished floor of the ballroom, clapping their white-gloved hands in what seemed to be an appeal to the tired musicians to release them from their awkward situation. The chef d’orchestre rose from his chair and shook his head, pointing to the beads of moisture upon his sallow forehead. Two or three couples, more merciful than their companions, turned and walked away; and therewith the whole company ceased their vain clapping, and, as though awakened from an hypnotic seizure, hastened to jam themselves into the heated, chattering mass which moved out of the brilliantly lighted room and dispersed into the shadows of the halls and passages beyond.
Lady Muriel Blair, to all appearances the only cool young person in the throng, led her perspiring partner towards a group of elderly women who sat fanning themselves near an open window, beyond which the palms could be seen redundant in the light of the moon. An enormous-bosomed matron, wearing a diamond tiara upon her dyed brown hair, and a rope of pearls about her naked pink shoulders, turned to her as she approached, and smiled upon her in a patronizing manner. She was the wife of Sir Henry Smith-Evered, Commander-in-chief of the British Forces in Egypt; and her smile was highly valued in Cairo society.
“You seem to be enjoying yourself, my dear,” she said, taking hold of the girl’s hand. “But you mustn’t get overtired in this heat. Wait another month, until the weather is cool, and then you can dance all night.”
“Oh, but I don’t feel it at all,” Lady Muriel replied, looking with mild disdain at her partner’s somewhat limp collar. “Father warned me that October in Cairo would be an ordeal, but so far I’ve simply loved it.”
Her voice had that very slight suggestion of husky tiredness in it which has a certain fascination. With her it was habitual.
“You’ve only been in Egypt twenty-four hours,” Lady Smith-Evered reminded her. “You must be careful.”
“Careful!” the girl muttered, with laughing scorn. “I hate the word.”
Her good-looking little partner, Rupert Helsingham, ran his finger around the inside of his collar, and adjusted his eyeglass. “Let’s go and sit on the veranda,” he suggested.
Lady Muriel turned an eye of mocking enquiry upon the General’s lady, who was her official chaperone (though the office had little, if any, meaning); for, in a strange country and in a diplomatic atmosphere, it was as well, she thought, to ascertain the proprieties. Lady Smith-Evered, aware of dear little Rupert’s strict regard on all occasions for his own reputation, nodded acquiescence; and therewith the young couple sauntered out of the room.
“A charming girl!” remarked the stout chaperone, turning her heavily powdered face to her companions.
“She is beautiful,” said Madam Pappadoulopolos, an expansive, black-eyed, black-haired, black-moustached, black-robed figure, wife of the Greek Consul-General.
“She has the sort of monkey-beauty of all the Blairs,” declared Mrs. Froscombe, the gaunt but romantic wife of the British Adviser to the Ministry of Irrigation. She spoke authoritatively. She had recently purchased a richly illustrated volume dealing with the history of that eminent family.
“It is a great responsibility for Lord Blair,” said Lady Smith-Evered. “Now that poor Lady Blair has been dead for over a year, he felt that he ought not to leave his only daughter, his only child, with her relations in England any longer; and, of course, it is very right that she should take her place as mistress here at the Residency, though I could really have acted as hostess for him perfectly well.”
“Indeed yes,” Madam Pappadoulopolos assented, warmly.
“You have a genius for that sort of thing,” murmured Mrs. Froscombe, staring out of the window at the moonlit garden.
“Thank you, Gladys dear,” said Lady Smith-Evered, smiling coldly at her friend’s averted face.
Muriel Blair’s type of beauty was in a way monkey-like, if so ludicrous a term can be employed in a laudatory sense to describe a face of great charm. She was of about the average height; her head was gracefully set upon her excellent neck and shoulders; and there was a sort of airy dignity in her carriage and step. Her enemies called her sullen at times, and named her Moody Muriel; her friends, on the contrary, described her as a personification of the spirit of Youth; while her feminine intimates said that, except for her dislike of the cold, she might have earned her living as a sculptor’s model.
She possessed a much to be envied mane of rather coarse brown hair which she wore coiled high upon her head; and her skin was that of a brunette, though there was some nice colour in her cheeks. Her eyes were good, and she had the habit of staring at her friends, sometimes, in a manner which seemed to indicate a fortuitous mimicry of childlike and incredulous questioning.
It was perhaps the tilt of her small nose and an occasional setting of her jaw which caused her undoubted beauty to be called monkey-like; or possibly it was the occasional defiance of her brown eyes, or the puckering of her eyebrows, or sometimes the sudden and whimsical grimace which she made when she was displeased.
As she seated herself now in the moonlight and leant back in the basket chair, Rupert Helsingham looked at her with admiration; and in the depths of his worldly little twenty-five-year-old mind he anticipated with pleasurably audacious hopes a season tinctured with romance. He held the position of Oriental Secretary at the Residency, and was considered to be a rising young man, something of an Arabic scholar, and an expert on points of native etiquette. She was his chief’s daughter, and heiress to the Blair estates. Every day they would meet; and probably, since she was rather adorable, he would fall in love with her, and perhaps she with him. It was a charming prospect.
His father had recently been created Baron Helsingham of Singleton. The old gentleman was the first of an ancient race of village squires who had ever performed any public service or received any royal recognition; and now he, the son and heir, might very possibly make the first notable matrimonial alliance of his line.
“I wonder what’s happened to my father,” said Muriel, breaking the silence engendered by Rupert’s reflections. “I haven’t seen him since the how-d’you-doing business.”
His whereabouts was only of casual interest to her, for she regarded him with no particular love, nor, indeed, did she know him at all intimately. His duties had taken him abroad a great deal during her childhood, while her education had kept her in England; and for the last three or four years he had passed almost entirely out of her scheme of things.
“He’s working in his study,” her companion replied, pointing to the wing of the house which went to form the angle wherein they were sitting. “He always dictates his telegrams at this time: he says he feels more benevolent after dinner. He’ll come into the ballroom presently, and say the correct thing to the correct people. He’s a paragon of tact, and, I can tell you, tact is needed here in Cairo! There’s such a mixture of nationalities to deal with. What languages do you speak?”
“Only French,” she replied.
“Good!” he laughed. “Speak French to everybody: especially to those who are not French. It makes them think that you think them cosmopolitan. Everybody wants to be thought cosmopolitan in a little place like this: it indicates that they have had the money to travel.”
“I shall look to you for guidance,” said Muriel, opening her mouth to yawn, and shutting it again as though remembering her manners.
“I’ll give you a golden rule to start with,” he answered. “Be very gracious to all foreigners, because every little politeness helps the international situation, but behave how you like to English people, because their social aspirations require them to speak of you as dear Lady Muriel, however fiercely they burn with resentment.”
Muriel smiled. She had a really fascinating smile, and her teeth were worthy of the great care she gave to them. “And how must I treat an Egyptian – I mean an Egyptian gentleman?” she enquired.
“There isn’t such a thing,” he laughed, having very insular ideas as to the meaning of the word.
“Well,