Snape, I felt, would believe this; Bates and Mrs. Rattray would not care, so long as I returned at last in safety and health; and some day I would tell the whole story to the bishop. There was really no one else who would be either curious or concerned, though Marshall would doubtless be glad not to have to apply to a court of law to “presume my death,” and some day I would certainly swagger a little in my corner at the Athenæum about my adventure in the sand, and my exploration of the Temple of Osiris.
I had begun to think of myself as more in my element at the Savage or the Travellers’!
I posted Captain Welfare’s letter to his agent and we arrived at Van Ermengen’s Hotel, a pleasant spacious place facing the sea, from which it was only separated by the wide tram-girt road and the sea-wall.
Van Ermengen, the proprietor, met us in the hall. He was a thin, grave man, with a hard face so narrow that his profile seemed to be cut out of the edge of it. He had a cramped mouth and restless, rather anxious eyes, as colourless as his face and hair.
He received me very graciously, and made no difficulty about my wagon-load of packing-cases. He instructed Jakoub, who arranged with the hall-porter about their disposal. He seemed very anxious to explain to me that he was of English “nationality,” and that his establishment was run on “English lines.” He did not seem to know Jakoub, and apparently had no curiosity about me, not even asking my name, or expecting me to write it in a book.
I suppose it is impossible to take me for anything but a British parson, for he had assumed my nationality before I spoke, and addressed me in English.
It was my first experience of a European hotel in the Near East, and I was a little astonished at the vast size and the bareness of my bedroom. But it was delightfully cool. The sun was just setting over the sea on which three tall windows of my chamber looked, and the sea-breeze blew freshly into the room. I looked out longingly with the desire to see the sails of the Astarte coming into port; but there was nothing in sight but a couple of feluccas and a distant steamer.
A window at the side opened on a narrow street, and I looked down curiously at the busy Oriental scene in the violet transparency that fills the streets of Alexandria at sunset.
Then I went and wallowed long and luxuriously in a great bath, and shaved myself decently and respectably again.
After my scorching in the desert the evening seemed cool enough for ordinary clothes, and it was with a curious sense of luxury that I put on the dark clerical suit that had last been folded by Bates in my dressing-room at home.