There, on the terrace of Shepheard’s, on the noon of his arrival, he found Fortinbras. The Dealer in Happiness, economically personally (though philosophically) conducted, had also visited Luxor and had brought away a rich harvest of observation. He bestowed it liberally on Martin, who, listening with perplexed brow, wondered whether he himself had brought away but chaff. After a while Fortinbras enquired:
“And the stock we wot of—is it still booming?”
Martin said: “I’ve been inconceivably happy. Don’t let us talk about it.”
Presently Lucilla and Mrs. Dangerfield joined them and Fortinbras was carried off to the Semiramis to lunch. It was a gay meal. The Watney-Holcombes had gathered in a few young soldiers, and youth asserted itself joyously. Fortinbras, urbane and debonair, laughed with the youngest. The subalterns thinking him a personage of high importance who was unbending for their benefit, paid him touching deference. He exerted himself to please, dealing out happiness lavishly; yet his bland eyes kept keen watch on Martin and Lucilla sitting together on the opposite side of the great round table. Once he caught and held her glance for a few seconds; then she flushed, as it seemed, angrily, and flung him an irrelevant question about Félise. When the meal was over and he had taken leave of his hosts, he said to Martin, who accompanied him to the West door by which he elected to emerge:
“Either you will never want me again, or you will want a friendly hand more than you have wanted a friendly hand in your life before—and I am leaving this land of enchantment the day after to-morrow. Dulce est dissipere etc. But dissipation is the thief of professional advancement. If a dealer in cheaper and shoddier happiness arises in the quartier I am lost. There was already before I left, a conscientious and conscienceless Teuton who was trying to steal my thunder and retail it at the ignominous rate of a franc a reverberation. I cannot afford to let things drift. Neither, my son,” he tapped the young man impressively on the shoulder. “Neither can you.”
Martin straightened himself, half resentful, and twirled his trim moustache.
“It’s all very well, my son,” said Fortinbras with his benevolent smile, “but all the let-Hell-come airs in the world can’t do anything else but intensify the fact that you’re a Soldier of Fortune. Faint heart—you know the jingle—and faintness of heart is not the attribute of a soldier. Good-bye, my dear Martin.” He held out his hand. “You will see me to-morrow at our usual haunt.”
Fortinbras waved adieu. Martin lit a cigarette and sat in a far corner of the verandah. The westering sun beat heavily on the striped awning. Further along, by the door, a small group of visitors were gathered round an Indian juggler. For the first time, almost, since his landing in Egypt, he permitted himself to think. A Soldier of Fortune. The words conveyed sinister significance: a predatory swash-buckler in search of any fortune to his hand: Lucilla’s fortune. Hitherto he had blinded himself to sordid considerations. He had dived, figuratively speaking, into his bag of sovereigns, as into a purse of Fortunatus. The magic of destiny would provide for his material wants. What to him, soul-centred on the ineffable woman, were such unimportant and mean preoccupations? He had lived in his dream. He had lived in his intoxication. He had lived of late in the splendour of a seismic moment. And now, crash! he came to earth. A Soldier of Fortune. An adventurer. A swindler. The brutal commonsense aspect grinned in his face. On ship-board Fortinbras had warned him that he was an adventurer. He had not heeded. . . . He was a Soldier of Fortune. He must strike the iron while it was hot. That was what Fortinbras meant. He must secure the heiress. He hated Fortinbras. The sudden realisation of his position devastated his soul. And yet he loved her. He desired her as he had not dreamed it to be in a man’s power to desire.
At last his glance rested on the little crowd around the Indian juggler; and then suddenly he became aware of her flashing like a dove among crows. Her lips and eyes were filled with a child’s laughter at the foolish conjuring. When the trick was over she turned and, seeing him, smiled. He beckoned. She complied, with the afterglow of amusement on her face; but when she came near him her expression changed.
“Why, what’s the matter?” she asked.