"I will take you," he said. "And if you like to stay longer than I can stop away from our guests, I'll give you another guide."
He turned to Biddy and me. (Cleopatra was dancing with Baron Rudolph von Slatin Pasha, gorgeous in medals and stars: Brigit and I had just stopped.)
"Would you like to come, too?" the Sirdar asked.
I answered for Biddy, knowing what she would want me to say. And still the sense of being a spectator in a wonderful theatre was dreamily upon me. Stronger and stronger the impression grew, as the Sirdar led us out onto a wide loggia white with moonlight, and up a flight of stairs to a flat roof. Overhead a sky of milk was spangled with flashing stars. Beneath our eyes lay the palace gardens, where the torches of the Sudanese band glowed like transfixed fireflies, in the pale moon-rays. Palms and acacias and jewelled flower-beds, were cut out sharply in vivid colour by the lights which streamed from open windows. Beyond —past the zone of violet shadow so like a stage background—was the sheen of the river, bright as spilt mercury under the moon. And beyond again, on the other side of the Nile, the tawny flame of that desert across which came the Khalifa's fierce army. "This is where Gordon used to stand," the Sirdar stopped us near the parapet. "Only the roof was one story lower then. He climbed up here every day, till the last, to look out across the desert, saying: 'The English will come!' There's a black gardener I have, who thinks he meets him now, on moonlight nights like this, walking in the garden. It wasn't much of a garden in his day; only palms and orange trees: but a rose-bush he planted and loved is alive still. I've just asked one of my officers —one whom I particularly want you to meet, Miss Gilder—to pluck a rose from Gordon's bush and bring it to you here. He knows where to find us; and when he comes, I must go back to the ballroom and leave you—all three—to his guidance. Lord Ernest and he used to be friends as boys, I believe. Perhaps you've heard him speak of Captain Anthony Fenton?"
"Perhaps. I don't remember," Monny answered, apologetically. She, so self-confident and self-possessed, was charmingly shy with this great soldier who had made history in the Sudan.
"If you don't remember, Lord Ernest can't have done justice to the subject. Fenton's one of the finest young officers in Egypt, or indeed, in the service. We're rather proud of him. Lately he's been employed on a special mission, which he has carried out extremely well. Few others could have done it, for a man of great audacity and self-restraint was needed: a combination hard to find. He has been in the Balkans. And since, has had a particularly delicate task intrusted to him, to be conducted with absolute secrecy. No 'kudos' to be got out of it in case of success. And failure would almost certainly have cost his life. It was a question of disguise, and getting at the native heart."
"It sounds like something in a story book," said Monny, while Brigit and I kept mum, drinking in gulps of moonlight.
"Yes," the Sirdar agreed, "or the autobiography of Sir Richard Burton. Fenton has the same extraordinary gift of language and dialect that Burton had: the art of 'make-up,' too; and he's been to Mecca; a great adventure I believe he had. Perhaps you can get him to talk of it: though he's not fond of talking about himself. Altogether he's what I sometimes hear the ladies call 'a romantic figure.' His father was a famous soldier. If you were English you would have heard of him. He broke off a brilliant career in Egypt by running away with a beautiful princess. She was practically all Greek and Italian, though her father called himself a Turk: no Egyptian blood whatever. But there was a great row, of course, and Charles Fenton left the Army. Now Anthony Fenton's grandfather, who lives in Constantinople, would like to adopt his grandson: but the young man is in every sense of the word an Englishman, devoted to his career, and doesn't want a fortune or a Turkish title."
"Why, that sounds—" Monny faltered.
"Like a man of character, and a born soldier, doesn't it? Here he comes now."