“My dear old Martin,” she said, impulsively throwing an arm round him and gripping his shoulder. “I’m a beast, and a brute, and I hate everybody and everything in this infernal world. But I do wish you the very best of good luck.”
She opened the door and with both hands thrust him gently forth; then quickly she closed the door all but a few inches behind him, and through the slit she cried:
“Give my love to Lucilla!”
The door banged, and Martin descended the five flights of stairs, lost in the maze of the Eternal Feminine.
CHAPTER XVIII
CAIRO station. An illumination of livid blue. A horde of brown-legged turbaned figures wearing red jerseys on which flaunted in white the names of hotels, and reconstructing Babel. An urbane official, lifting a gold-banded cap in the middle of a small oasis of silence and inviting Martin in the name of the Semiramis Hotel, to surrender luggage and all other cares to his keeping, and to follow the stream through the exit to the hotel motor. A phantasmagoria of East and West rendered more fantastic by the shadows cast by the high arc-lamps. He had lost sight of Fortinbras, who bag in hand—his impedimenta being of the scantiest—had disappeared in quest of the palm-tree against whose trunk he presumably was to pass the night. Martin emerged from the station, entered the automobile, one of a long row, and waited with his fellow passengers until the roof was stacked with luggage. Then the drive through European streets suggestive of Paris and the sudden halt at the hotel. A dazzling vision of a lounge, a swift upward journey in a lift worked by a Nubian gorgeous in scarlet and gold, a walk down a corridor, a door flung open, and Martin found himself in his bedroom. An Arab brought hot water and retired.
Martin opened the shutters of the window and looked out. It was hard moonlight. Beneath him shimmered a broad ribbon of water, against which were silhouetted outlandish masts and spars of craft moored against the embankment. The dark mass on the further shore seemed to be pleasant woods. The water could be nothing else than the Nile; the sacred river; the first river in which he had taken a romantic interest, on account of Moses and the Ark and Pharaoh’s daughter; the mighty river which is the very life of a vast country; the most famous river in the world. He regarded it with a curious mixture of awe and disappointment. On his right it was crossed by a bridge dotted with the slowly moving lamps of carts and now and then flashing with the headlights of a motor-car. It was not unlike any ordinary river—the Thames, the Seine, the Rhone at Geneva. He had imagined it broad as the Amazon.
Yet it was wonderful; the historic water, the moonlight, the clear Egyptian air in which floated a vague perfume of spice, the dimly seen long-robed figures seated on a bench by the parapet on the other side of the road, whose guttural talk rose like a proclamation of the Orient. He leaned out over the iron railing. On his left stood out dreamily defined against the sky two shadowy little triangles. He wondered what they could be. Suddenly came the shock of certainty. They were the Pyramids. He rubbed his eyes and looked again. A thrill ran over his skin. He had not counted on being brought up bang, as it were, against them. He had imagined that one journeyed for half a day on a camel through a trackless desert in order to visit these wonders of the world: but here he was staring at them from the hotel-window of a luxurious capital. He stared at them for a long time. Yes: there was the Nile; there were the Pyramids; and, after a knock at the door, there was his luggage. He became conscious of hunger; also of Lucilla more splendid than moonlit Nile and Pyramids and all the splendours of Egypt put together. Hunger—it was half-past nine and he had eaten nothing since lunch on ship-board—counselled speedy ablutions and a descent in quest of food. Lucilla ordained correctitude of vesture. His first evening on board ship had taught him that dinner jacket suit and black tie were the only wear. He changed and went downstairs.
A chasseur informed him that Miss Merriton was staying in the hotel, but that she had gone to the dance at the Savoy. When would she be back? The chasseur, a child rendered old by accumulated knowledge of trivial fact, replied that Cairo was very gay this season, that dances went on till the morning hours, and insinuated that Miss Merriton was as gay as anybody. Martin walked through the lounge into the restaurant and supped. He supped exceedingly well. Bearing in mind Fortinbras’s counsel of lordliness and the ways of lordly motorists passing through Brantôme, he ordered a pint of champagne. He was served by an impeccable waiter with lilac revers and brass buttons to his coat. He noted the livery with a professional eye. The restaurant was comparatively empty. Only at one table sat a party of correctly dressed men and women. A few others were occupied by his travelling companions, still in the garb of travel. Martin mellowed by the champagne, adjusted his black tie and preened his white shirt front, in the hope that the tweed-clad newcomers would see him and marvel and learn from him, Martin Overshaw, obscure and ignorant adventurer, what was required by English decorum. After his meal he sat in the lounge and ordered Turkish coffee, liqueur brandy and cigarettes. And so, luxuriously housed, clothed and fed, he entered on the newest phase of his new life.
Six months ago he had considered his sportive ride through France with Corinna a thrilling adventure. He smiled at his simplicity. An adventure, that tame jog-trot tour! As comparable to this as his then companion to the radiant lady of his present quest. Now, indeed, he had burned his boats, thrown his cap over the windmills, cast his frock to the nettles. The reckless folly of it all had kept his veins a-tingle, his head awhirl. At every moment during the past fortnight something amazingly new had flashed into his horizon. The very sleeping-berth in the train de luxe had been a fresh experience. So too was the awakening to the warmth and sunshine of Marseilles. Save for a crowded hour of inglorious life (he was a poor sailor) now and then on cross-channel boats he had never set foot on a ship. He wandered about the ocean-going liner with a child’s delight. Fortune favoured him with a spell of blue weather. He scoffed at sea-sickness. The meals characterised by many passengers as abominable, he devoured as though they were Lucullian feasts. He made acquaintance with folks going not only to Egypt, but to Peshawar and Mandalay and Singapore and other places with haunting names. Some shocked him by calling them God-forsaken holes and cursing their luck. Others, mainly women, going thither for the first time shared his emotions. . . . He was surprised at the ease with which he fell into casual talk with strangers. Sometimes a child was a means of introduction to its mother. Sometimes a woman in the next deck-chair would open a conversation. Sometimes Fortinbras chatting with a knot of people would catch him as he passed and present him blandly.