“No, it’s a total estrangement,” he said, fiercely. “It’s been growing gradually, and now there’s nothing to be done. I’ve come to give you my resignation. I’m going back to El Hamrân.”
Lord Blair suddenly sat back in his chair, his eyes fixed on his friend, the tips of his fingers touching the edge of the table as though some movement had been arrested. “My dear Daniel,” he said at last, and he spoke sharply, “control yourself! This is an absurd situation.”
“Oh yes, I know,” Daniel replied, “you think I’m just a fool in love, who’s going off in a huff. No, that’s not it. I want to go because I’ve lost my happiness since I’ve been in Cairo: I’m utterly out of tune with the people I meet. Why, yesterday at the Cavillands’ I could feel myself being a boor and a bore. I couldn’t laugh.... Yes, that’s it; since I’ve been amongst all these witty people I’ve forgotten how to laugh. Good God!—I hav’n’t smiled for weeks. Out there in the desert, when my mind was at peace, I was always full of laughter; I was always chuckling to myself, just from sheer light-heartedness or whatever you like to call it. But here my heart’s in my boots, and I’m blue all day long. I can’t even whistle.”
“I think—indeed, I am sure—you are taking things too seriously,” said Lord Blair.
“You’re right,” Daniel answered, quickly, interrupting him. “The gay life makes me painfully serious; this fashionable stuff fills me with gloom. It’s all this blasted chase after amusement, this immense preoccupation with the surface of things, that gives me the hump. You see, to my way of thinking, light-heartedness only comes from a tranquil sort of mind. It’s something deep inside oneself; one doesn’t get it from outside—though, on the other hand, outside things do certainly obscure one’s inner vision. Real happiness—not just pleasure—seems to be absolutely essential to life and to all human relations. It’s the key to diplomacy. You’ve got to see the fun of things, you’ve got to bubble inside with happiness before you can really govern or be governed. You’ve got to be the exact opposite of sinister, and nearly the opposite of solemn, before you can get any punch into your dealings with your fellow men, don’t you think? And how, in God’s name, can one be happy unless there is the right mental atmosphere of truth, and sincerity, and trust, and benevolence, and broad understanding?”
He spoke with intensity, and the movement of his hands added expression to his words.
“But do you realize,” said Lord Blair, “what an immense, what an unqualified success your work here has been? And now you would throw it all up just because a chit of a girl has annoyed you.”
“No, you don’t understand,” Daniel replied. “I might have been able to ignore all this miserable Society business; but when Muriel and I grew fond of one another I was drawn into it. And then, gradually, I began to see that that was her world. At first I hoped she would be the buffer between me and that world, and a non-conductor, so to speak, but I find that she transmits the shocks to me direct.”
He told Lord Blair something of the more tangible trouble between them, but he would not reveal all the bitter yearning of his heart. He might have said “I love her, I want her to be wholly mine, I want her to come over to my way of thinking so that I can show her where real happiness is to be found.” He might have said “I am distracted by her, and I want to go away to forget her dear eyes, and the touch of her lips, and the intoxication of her personality.” But on these matters he was silent.
As he talked his mind was filled with a passionate desire for the peace of the desert. He was like a monk, longing for the refuge of his quiet monastery walls; and he seemed to hear in his heart the gentle voice of the wilderness calling to him to come back into the sweet smiling solitude, away from the sorrows of the superficial world.