He tried to forget that passionate scene, and when he did think of it his modesty prompted him to believe that it really meant nothing. Eastern women were, he knew, very impulsive, also very changeful. Probably what had moved her, although at the time she did not know it, was not devotion to a shattered hulk of a man like himself, but as she had said at the beginning, pity for his sad state of which indirectly she was the cause.
Al least he hoped that it was so, and what we hope earnestly in time we may come to believe. So that trouble was smoothed away, or at any rate remained in abeyance.
For the rest those palms and mountain-tops, those bubbling waters and green fields, that solemn, ruined temple and those towering pylons, were better than the parks and streets of London, or that hateful habitation in Grosvenor Square where Lord Devene leant against his haunted marble mantel-piece and mocked. Indeed, had it not been for Edith and his mother, Rupert would, he felt, be content, now that his career had gone, to renounce the world and live in Tama all his days. But these two—the wife who must think herself a widow, and the mother who believed herself sonless, he longed ceaselessly to see again. For their sakes, day by day he watched for an opportunity of escape.
At length it came.
“Rupert Bey,” said Mea quietly to him one morning in Arabic as they sat down to their usual lesson, “I have good news for you. By this time to-morrow you may be gone from here,” and whilst pretending to look down at the parchment upon which she was writing with a reed pen, as her forefathers might have done twenty centuries before—for paper was scarce with them—she watched his face from beneath her long lashes.
The intelligence stunned him a little, preventing—perhaps fortunately—any outbreak of exuberant joy. Indeed, he only answered in the words of the Arabic proverb:
“After calm, storm; after peace, war,” and the reply seemed to satisfy Mea, although she knew that this proverb had an end to it “after death, paradise—or hell.”
“How, Mea?” he asked presently.
“A big caravan, too strong to be attacked, is going to cross the Nile above Wady-Halfa and pass through the Nubian desert to the shores of the Red Sea beyond the country that is held by Osman Digna. Its chief, who is known to our people, and a true man, makes the pilgrimage to Mecca. I have sent messengers to him. He is willing that you should accompany him, only you must not say who you are, and if they meet any white men you must promise not to talk to them. Otherwise, you may bring him into trouble for the befriending of a Christian.”
“I will promise that,” answered Rupert.