The Sword of Fate (5 page)

“How long have you been stationed in Alexandria?”

“I’m only here on leave,” I told her, “and I should have returned to my unit tonight, but owing to the crash I’ve now got an extra six days.”

“Is your head quite all right now?”

“Yes, thanks. It was pretty painful at first, but for the last few days I’ve suffered no ill-effects except slight headaches.”

Again that silence, so strange and so embarrassing to me, fell between us. There were a hundred things that I wanted to ask her and I knew so well that I was absolutely throwing away those golden moments when I should have been exerting myself to the utmost to entertain and interest. Yet somehow that half-serious, half-amusing chatter which usually came so glibly to my tongue when I was alone like this with a girl continued to elude me.

We could not have been sitting there much more than ten minutes, although it seemed like an hour, when she suddenly stood up and announced:

“It’s getting late. I must go in.”

“No, no, please don’t!” I protested hastily. “I’ve got so much that I want to say to you.”

“Really!” Her eyebrows arched and the smile which, when it appeared, seemed to light up her whole face, came again. “I was beginning to think that you were one of those strong, silent men that women novelists write about.”

“I’m not,” I assured her, “not in the ordinary way, at least. It’s just the absolutely devastating effect that you have on me.”

“Whatever do you mean?”

“Simply that, normally, I’ve always got masses of things to talk about, and that, for the whole of the past week, I’ve been simply dying to talk to you; but, now that I’ve got the chance, I feel as shy and tongue-tied as a boy of sixteen at his first dance.”

“You know,” she said, “I believe you really mean that and it’s the nicest thing you could possibly have said; but I’m going in now, all the same.”

For a moment I was torn between two urges: the one to make
her stay because I could not bear that she should rob me of her presence so soon; the other, springing from the few wits which were all that I seemed able to retain while with her, that having quite fortuitously, by my long awkward silences, created a better impression with her than I ever could have done by amusing banter and glib flattery, wisdom dictated that I should not jeopardise my gain by pressing her to remain.

She held out her hand and I kissed it, but before I released it I said swiftly, “If you insist on going now, at least promise to let me see you again.”

“You must not come to the house,” she said firmly. “That is impossible.”

“May I come over the garden wall again at the same time tomorrow night?” I begged. “Please, please let me come. You said your mother was not coming back until the day after tomorrow, so please give me a chance tomorrow night to say all those things that I meant to say tonight.”

“Very well; but there’s no need to come in over the wall. Be outside the little door just before midnight and I’ll let you in.” With a last swift smile she turned and ran lightly up some steps towards the house.

It was not until she had disappeared that it occurred to me that she might have let me out; but as a result of her promise to see me again, I was in such a state of elation that I made my way back over the high wall with scarcely a thought about it.

As I strode along the road
en route
for my hotel, my heart was still hammering in my breast from the excitement of that queer meeting. It could hardly have been less satisfactory, regarded from the angle that I knew hardly a thing more about her than I had two hours before. But for some reason for which there did not seem to be the slightest justification I felt that more had happened in those ten or fifteen minutes that we had been together than if I had spent whole days in some other woman’s company. I had told her that I found her beautiful; she had admitted to me that she found me good-looking and she had promised to let me into the garden herself on the following night. What more could any lover need to make his heart rejoice?

It was then that the thought of the other man, with whom Daphnis had been in the garden and had evidently let in by the door in the wall, came flashing back to me. It was like a hammer-blow, shattering the delicate fabric of romance that I was already so eagerly weaving about her.

Who was he? How well did she know him? The very fact that
she received him alone in secret warred horribly with the conception that I had formed of her as sheltered from all contacts with the outside world and utterly unspoiled. True, with me she had seemed frank and even ingenuous, but although I fought against it I could not prevent myself doubting if she could really be the innocent angel that she appeared.

Back in my bedroom, I turned the problem over and over in my mind. First I rated myself for my unworthy suspicions of her, then for my own stupidity in seeking to make her a spotless idol when experience had already taught me that girls are no better than men in any way, and that it is only the unwanted or half-witted among women who go through life without demonstrating at some time or other that they have feet of clay.

In my sober senses, the last thing that I really wanted was that Daphnis should turn out to be a priggish little fool; yet in my state of exultation I felt quite capable of murdering anybody who might attempt to besmirch her by as much as a breath, and the thought that she might have already been besmirched by much more than a breath was positive torture to me.

Perhaps my acute mental distress was partially accounted for by the absolute conviction that somewhere I had met the man who had been with her and that he was an evil personality. I tried again to remember where I had heard that voice before, but I could not, and although my troubled brain made capital out of an instinctive dread of this unknown man as a possible threat to Daphnis, I think I would have felt the same had his voice been quite unknown to me and full of charm.

The whole fact of the matter was that for the first time in my life I was suffering from blind, unreasoning jealousy. At last I fell into an uneasy sleep in which I dreamed that I was trying to strangle the owner of that voice, having just rescued Daphnis from him.

When I awoke I was at first under the impression that the whole of the previous night’s adventure had been nothing but a dream. That may have been due to the moonlight, which had lent it a certain unreality, and from my never before having played so silent a part in any love-scene or participated in one less concrete. It was not until I had got out of bed and opened the drawer in which lay my rope and grapnel that I was fully convinced that I had actually climbed over Daphnis’ wall; yet there still remained something unreal about the whole business.

It was quite impossible to reconcile the facts that she had deliberately come down to meet me, her naïve admission that she
thought me so good-looking, and her evident fear of being discovered talking to a strange man in her garden with the discovery that she had received another man there just before my arrival, also in secret, and one whose words had definitely given the impression that he was her accepted lover.

After a bit I began to wonder if it was the first part of the affair that I had dreamed and that there had been no other man at all. It was just conceivable that while I was sitting behind the shrubs waiting for Daphnis I had dropped off to sleep for a few moments, and that, in actual fact, she had not been down in the garden at all that night until she came down to meet me.

I tried to put the whole worrying problem out of my mind, yet all day it kept recurring to me as I waited with the utmost impatience for evening to come so that I could be with Daphnis again. Just before dinner it occurred to me that if there
were
another man, she might again be seeing him that night before she met me, so spurred on by my crazy jealousy I decided that I would go early and see.

By half past ten I was lurking in the shadows that fringed one side of the street on which the garden of Daphnis’ house abutted. For an hour and a half I loitered about within sight of the postern door, but no one came to knock it and it never opened to let anyone in or out.

A little before midnight I took up my position just outside it; soon afterwards the key turned in the lock and the door was opened a fraction.

“Daphnis!” I whispered.

“Julian!” came the whisper back, and a hand was stretched out to draw me inside.

What happened exactly I have no idea, but the second the door was closed I had her in my arms. She was trembling slightly, but her arms were fastened tight about my neck, and in the moonlight I could see her smiling as she turned her face up for my kiss.

That sudden instinctive embrace was all the more surprising in that the night before I hadn’t even thought of trying to kiss her. I feel quite sure that I should have ruined everything if I had. She was very young and I was quite willing to wait. As it was, I suppose that she had been thinking about me all day and waiting for this moment just as I had. In any case, those few marvellous minutes when I held her in my arms for the first time were unadulterated bliss.

Afterwards we talked—what of, I don’t remember; just about
each other and our likes and dislikes, and silly inconsequent things which to us seemed terribly important and quite wonderful because we felt the same about them. That spontaneous embrace had certainly done something to us. We were utterly different people from those who had sat tongue-tied in that garden the night before. We were very careful not to make a noise but, as she lay in the crook of my arm on the stone bench near the fountain, we laughed a lot and talked interminably between kisses. Many, many kisses and it was nearly four o’clock in the morning before she said that she really must go in.

“How about our meeting again?” I asked anxiously. “Your mother is coming home tomorrow, or today rather, isn’t she?”

“Yes,” said Daphnis sadly.

“Can’t I possibly call?” I suggested. “After all, I was carried into your house as the victim of an accident, and you administered first-aid. It’s only common politeness to call and return thanks for such kindness in any part of the world.”

“No, no!” she said hastily. “You mustn’t do that. In any case, I shouldn’t be allowed to see you alone.”

“Not at first, perhaps. But if I get to know your mother—”

“No. I forbid you to. She became frightfully suspicious when you sent all those flowers so the meeting could only be disagreeable. I beg you not to call. You won’t, Julian, will you?”

“Of course not, darling, if you’re so terribly set against it, but how
am
I to see you?”

She thought for a moment, then she said: “I go riding every morning on the sands out at Stanley Bay. If you can get a mount, you could meet me there and we could have a gallop together.”

“Grand. What time?”

“Eight o’clock. But I shan’t go tomorrow morning, because it’s so late now. I shall leave a note for my maid to tell Alcis that I’m not well.”

“Who’s Alcis?”

“My cousin. She has been staying with us for the last few weeks and we don’t have to take a groom if we go riding together; but I’m sure that I can trust her.”

I tried to hide my groan under a laugh as I said, “D’you mean that the three of us will have to remain in a party the whole time?”

“I am afraid so,” she nodded her head vigorously. “You see, Alcis couldn’t leave me and I couldn’t leave her in case someone saw either of us riding alone. If Mother heard of it we’d get into frightful hot water for exposing ourselves to the possibility of unwelcome attentions.”

This sounded fantastic on the lips of the young woman who was just reaching maturity in the year 1940, but the crumbling walls, the sun-baked paths and the fronds of the palm trees etched against the moonlit sky reminded me that I was in Egypt, the land of the dope-pedlar and the whiteslaver. In any country where the races are mixed the men naturally take every precaution to protect their women from any form of interference. One could not blame the Greek colony for the strict chaperonage that they imposed upon their women.

“All right,” I agreed reluctantly; “but that means it will be more than twenty-four hours before I’ll be able even to see you again.”

She laid a soft hand on mine. “I’m so sorry, but there’s nothing that I can do—nothing. You must wait till Thursday morning and you must go now, because I’m tired; happy, but so tired.”

Hand in hand we walked slowly to the bottom of the garden. I made our final embrace last as long as possible, but at length she broke away from me and pushed me through the low door into the street. I was still standing there, breathless and a little bewildered, after she had locked it, and I had lost the sound of her retreating footfalls along the sandy path.

Next morning I slept late and whiled away the rest of the day as well as I could by writing Daphnis a letter. In it I said all the absurd things that lovers always say about the object of their devotion and it rambled on for about fourteen pages, but I did not dare to post it in case, when Daphnis received it, her mother happened to be in the room, as a letter of such length would have been certain to provoke awkward questions.

I had arranged with the hall-porter, about a horse and to be called early on the Thursday, so, when I arrived downstairs at half past seven, I found quite a presentable hack being held by an Arab boy ready for me. Twenty minutes later I was at Stanley Bay and it was not long before I saw two girls clad in white silk shirts and jodhpurs riding towards me, one of whom, by the outline of her dark hair and the set of her head on her shoulders, I knew at once as Daphnis.

They pulled up some fifty yards away from me, and upon Daphnis’ waving her hand I rode over to join them. The cousin, Mademoiselle Alcis Diamopholus, to whom I was introduced, was a plump, round-faced girl with dull reddy-brown hair and small bright dark eyes, rather like a monkey’s.

She was obviously thrilled to the marrow at being made Daphnis’ confidante about her clandestine acquaintance with a
British officer, and positively bursting with curiosity about myself. I did my best to answer her questions politely, while inwardly cursing her presence, which made any chance of private conversation with Daphnis out of the question, at all events for the moment, and as the three of us rode along together the talk inevitably turned upon the war.