“But, dear me, you would have discovered mine! I couldn’t have kept it up for an hour. You surely don’t expect me to lecture on improving topics!” cried Hilliard, in such transparent amaze that Esmeralda could not but be convinced of his sincerity.
“Then you are not clever either!” she exclaimed. “What a relief! Now we can just talk comfortably, and not pretend any more. But at any rate you have seen more than we have. Have you travelled much? What have you seen? What countries have you been in?”
“I can hardly say straight off. Let me count. France, Belgium, Switzerland, Germany, Italy, Greece, Turkey—”
The “Ohs!” and “Ahs!” of astonishment had been steadily gaining in volume, but at the sound of this last name they reached a perfect shriek of delight. There was something so very strange and mysterious about Turkey that even to see a man who had visited its borders gave one a thrill of excitement. Pixie’s premeditated boast that she had been in Surbiton died upon her lips, and Esmeralda’s eyes grew soft with wonder.
“Turkey! Oh, you are a traveller! What on earth made you go to Turkey?”
“It was part of a tour on which my uncle took me after leaving the University, and I went even farther afield than that,—to Palestine and Egypt. You would like Egypt even better than Turkey, Miss Joan, for there, thanks to our rule, you have picturesqueness without squalor, whereas Turkey does not stand a close inspection. We were thankful to leave Constantinople after a very few days, but were sad indeed to turn our backs on fascinating Cairo. If I had the seven-leagued boots, I should be a frequent visitor over there.”
The two sisters linked arms, and gazed at him with awe-stricken eyes.
“And you have seen veiled women,” sighed Esmeralda softly, “and Mont Blanc, and the Pyramids, and the desert, and the Red Sea, and Saint Peter’s at Rome, and all the things I have dreamt about ever since I was a child! Oh, you are lucky! I think I should die with joy if anyone offered to take me a trip like that. Did you have any adventures? What did you like best? Begin at the beginning, and tell us all about it!”
Well, as our American cousins would say, this was rather a large order; but Hilliard could refuse nothing to such an audience, and, if the truth must be told, had his full share of the traveller’s love of relating his experiences. He passed lightly over days spent in countries near home, but grew even more and more animated as he went farther afield and reached the Eastern surroundings in which he delighted.
“Shall I tell you about Palestine? I never knew anything stranger than arriving at that railway station and seeing ‘Jerusalem’ written up on the hoardings. It seemed extraordinary to have a station there at all, and such a station! It was in autumn, and everything was white with dust. Outside in the road were a number of the most extraordinary-looking vehicles you can possibly imagine, white as if they had been kept in a flour mill, and as decrepit as if a hundred years had passed since they were last used. How they kept together at all was a marvel to me, and as for the harness, there was more string than leather to be seen. The drive from the station to the hotel was one of the most exciting things I ever experienced. I am not nervous, and have had as much driving as most fellows, but that was a bit too much even for me. The road is very hilly, turns sharply at many corners, and is, of course, badly made to the last degree, so that it would have seemed difficult enough to manage suck crazy vehicles even at a foot-pace; but our fellow drove as if the Furies were at his back, as if it were a question of life and death to get to the hotel before any of his companions. He stood up on the box and shouted to his horses; he lashed at them with his whip; he yelled imprecations to the rivals who were galloping in pursuit. When an especially dangerous corner came in view, two drivers made for it in a reckless stampede, which made it seem certain that one or other must be hurled to the bottom of the hill. A lady inside our carriage burst into a flood of tears, and I believe her companions were all clinging to one another in terror. As for me, I was on the box, and I never passed a more exciting ten minutes. We were told afterwards that we had had the best driver in Jerusalem, but I never engaged his services again.