Bedouin Love

by Arthur E. P. Brome Weigall

Each week the post-boat on its way to Wady Halfa delivered to them a letter from England in which Ian’s nurse gave them news of her charge; but this was almost their only connection with the outside world, for they usually avoided the temple when the weekly party of tourists were ashore. Eagerly they read these letters, which told of the boy’s boisterous health in the vigorous air of an English watering-place; and afterwards they would sit hand-in-hand talking of him and of his future. Jim was immensely proud of his son, and many were the plans that developed in his head for the child’s happiness and good standing. It would not be long now before he would be able to confess to Monimé his true name and position, and to tell her that a home and an income were assured to the boy.

Love is a kind of interpreter of the beauties of nature; and in these sun-bathed days Jim’s heart seemed to be opened to a greater appreciation of the wonders of creation than he had ever known before. In the winter season there is an amazing brilliancy of colour in a Nubian landscape, and the air is so clear that to him it seemed as though he were ever looking at some vast kaleidoscopic pattern of glittering jewels set in green and blue and gold, to which his brain responded with radiant scintillations of feeling.

In whatever direction his eyes chanced to turn he found some sight to charm him. Now it was a kingfisher hovering in mid-air beside the dahabiyeh, or falling like a stone into the water; now it was a bronzed goatherd, flute in hand, wandering with his flock under the acacias beside the water; and now it was a desert hare, with its little white tail, bounding away over the plateau at the summit of the cliffs. Sometimes a great flight of red flamingos would pass slowly across the blue sky; or in the darkness of the night the whirr of unseen wings would tell of the migration of a flock of wild duck. Sometimes in his rambles he would disturb the slumbers of a little jackal, which would go scuttling off into the desert, while he waved his hand to it. Or again, a lizard basking on a rock, or a pair of white butterflies dancing in the sunlit air, would hold him for a moment enthralled.

The grasses and creepers which grew amidst the tumbled boulders at the edge of the Nile would now attract his attention; and again a great palm, spreading its rustling branches to the sunlight and casting a liquid blue shadow upon the ground, would hold his gaze. Here there was the ribbed back of a sand-drift to delight him with its symmetry; there a distant headland jutting out into the mirror of the water. Sometimes he would lie face downwards upon the sand to admire the vari-coloured pebbles and fragments of stone—gypsum, quartz, flint, cornelian, diorite, syenite, hæmatite, serpentine, granite, and so forth; and sometimes he would go racing over the desert, bewitched by the riotous north wind itself and the sparkle of the air.

But ever he came back at length to the woman who, like the presiding Hathor, was the fount of this overflowing happiness of his heart. In the glory of the day he watched her as she walked in the sunlight, the breeze fluttering her pretty dress, or as she slid with him, laughing, down the slope of the great sand-drift beside the temple; or again as she ran hand-in-hand with him along the edge of the river after a morning swim, her black hair let down and tossing about her shoulders.

By night he watched her as she stood in the star-light, like a mysterious spirit of this ancient land; or as she came out from the dark halls of the temple, like the goddess herself, gliding towards him in a moonbeam with divine white arms extended, and the smile of everlasting love upon her shadowed lips. In the dim light of their cabin he saw her as she lay by his side, her eyes reflecting the gleam of the stars, the perfect curve of her breast scarcely apparent save to his touch, and her whispered words coming to him out of the veil of the midnight.

It is not easy to select from the nebulous narrative of these secluded days any particular occurrence which may here be recorded; yet there was no lack of incident, no dulness, no stagnation, such as he had experienced in the seclusion of Eversfield. Towards sunset one afternoon he and she were walking together upon the high desert at the summit of the cliffs, and were traversing an area which in Pharaonic days was used as a cemetery. Here there are a number of small square tomb-shafts cut perpendicularly into the flat surface of the rock, at the bottom of which the mummies of the Nubian princes of this district were interred. These burials have all been ransacked in past ages by thieves in search of the golden ornaments which were placed upon the bodies; and now the shafts lie open, partially filled with blown sand.

Presently Jim paused to throw a stone at a mark which chanced to present itself; but, missing his aim, he picked up a handful of pebbles and threw them one by one at his target until his idle purpose was accomplished. Meanwhile Monimé had strolled ahead, and Jim now ran forward to overtake her. The setting sun, however, dazzled his eyes, and suddenly he stumbled at the brink of one of these open tombs. There was a confused moment in which he clutched desperately at the edge of the rock, and then, falling backwards, his head struck the side of the shaft, and he went crashing to the bottom, twenty feet below, landing upon the soft sand with a thud which seemed to shake the very teeth in his jaws.

For some moments he sat dazed, while little points of light danced before his eyes, and the blood slowly ran down his cheek from a wound amidst his hair. Then he looked around him at the four solid walls which imprisoned him, and up at the square of the blue sky above him, and swore aloud at himself for a fool.

A few seconds later the horrified face of Monimé came into view at the top of the shaft, and, to reassure her, he broke into laughter, telling her he was unhurt and describing how the accident had happened.