The Sword of Fate (16 page)

“Splendid!” I said eagerly. “I’ll be there to the minute and keep a sharp lookout for you. But I won’t bring the car I hire too close to the building in case any of your friends who might be going in or out see you drive off with me.”

It was Daphnis who a few minutes afterwards suggested that we ought to go inside and join the others, and reluctantly I agreed. Twenty minutes later we parted with formal smiles, and through the front window I saw her driven away by an elderly Eurasian chauffeur in a large old-fashioned pale blue Rolls.

That night I threw a party at the Cecil for Barbara, and all the friends I could persuade her to invite to it. For the first time in months I was really happy, and I wanted everybody else to be happy, too. My meeting with Daphnis had proved infinitely more successful than I had dared to hope. True, I had failed to convince her fully that the Italians were not the little heroes that she had always pictured them, and there was still just a remote possibility that Major Cozelli’s suspicion that she was working for them was correct. The mystery of the man she had met in the garden and
whose voice had filled me with such acute perturbation had also not been cleared up. But when a really favourable opportunity occurred I could ask her about that; and in the meantime, since she was so plainly distressed for the Greeks, it was hardly conceivable that she was acting as a secret agent for their enemies. For the moment it was enough that Daphnis could no more keep her thoughts from me than I could mine from her, to make my heart sing with joy.

After lunch next day I took up my position with the smartest hired car that I could find about a hundred and fifty yards to the north of a big building in the Sidi el Mitwalli, which had large brand new streamers draped across its frontage calling upon all Greeks in Alexandria to give every aid that they could in the defence of the sacred soil of the Hellenes.

Ten minutes after my arrival the old-fashioned pale blue Rolls drove up. Daphnis got out and went into the building, while the car drove off. She was inside for about seven minutes, then coming out again she glanced quickly up and down the street. I was standing on the pavement beside my car, and directly she caught sight of me I got into it, started the engine and drove slowly out of the main thoroughfare into a small side street, where I halted. Two minutes afterwards Daphnis, deliciously flushed and trembling with excitement, scrambled in beside me.

“Have you never cut a party like that before to do something you wouldn’t like your mother to know about?” I asked, as we drove away.

“Yes,” she laughed a little breathlessly. “Another girl and I used to play truant from the meetings of the Orthodox Church Working Guild sometimes last year. We managed to see three films that we’d been forbidden, to go to, and each time it was a tremendous adventure. I think things will be all right today. I spoke to several people I know who are working in different rooms and each of them will probably think that I’m working with one of the others.”

“You’re a bold bad woman!” I mocked her, and I could have laughed aloud now at the cadaverous Major Cozelli’s absurd suggestion that this adorable child-woman might possibly be an Italian spy.

I drove out through the back of the town to the open country beside Lake Mareotis. In these days it is not a lake at all but marshy ground, much of which has been reclaimed for sugar plantations and other crops. It runs for several miles, and I followed its northern edge through half a dozen straggling native
villages where humped oxen, goats, chickens, native children and myriads of flies huddled together in dusty squalor, until we reached more open country in the neighbourhood of Maryut. Turning off the high road, I headed for a big grove of date palms, and driving slowly through it pulled up the car near a small ruined temple.

The little building was of the so-called decadent Ptolemaic period and only a mere two thousand years old, so it probably had no more than a couple of lines in the guide-books, and even the troops, who had now taken the place of the pre-war tourists as the sightseers of Egypt, were hardly likely to bother to visit it.

A padlocked board door had been fitted against the entrance to the shrine, as the Egyptian Government is a firm believer in not allowing visitors to Egypt to see even the least interesting of the ancient monuments without paying for it. Doubtless a local Arab guide, living somewhere near by, made a few piastres a month by being dug out once a week or so to show really keen archaeologists round the dark dank chamber by the light of a guttering candle; but the last thing that Daphnis and I were thinking of that afternoon was wall sculptures and the long-dead Pharaohs.

I collected a few things that I had brought with me in the car, and entering the open forecourt of the temple we sat down on the sun-warmed stone of a fallen monolith, the lotus flower capital of which had once helped to support the gaily-painted ceiling of the forecourt, now long since crumbled in the dust.

The things I had brought in the car were the largest box of chocolates that I had been able to buy that morning, a big packet of real
foie gras
sandwiches that I had had made up for me at the hotel, and a bottle of Louis Roederer 1928 in a pail of ice. Why I should have imagined that Daphnis would be hungry or wish to drink champagne in the middle of the afternoon, I can’t think; but perhaps it was because I was debarred from entertaining her in the ordinary way to lunch or dinner, and was so anxious to give her the best of everything that money could buy.

On seeing the things she asked me if, for some reason, I had missed my lunch, but on my explaining that I’d only brought them just in case, she insisted on eating some of the sandwiches, and as it turned out the warmth in that sheltered sunbaked place made the iced champagne by no means unwelcome to both of us.

She seemed gayer and happier this afternoon than at any time that I had previously seen her, and I really began to wonder if she regarded this friendship business as a serious proposition, but
I felt sure that it could not satisfy her for long any more than it would me. We laughed a lot during the first hour that we were there, perhaps because we both felt that we had plenty of time before us; but as the afternoon wore on both of us became conscious of a gradually growing tension in which it became more and more difficult to talk about indifferent matters, until finally we fell silent.

It was very still there; not a breath of wind rippled the palm fronds which hung gracefully from the tufted tops of the tall trees beyond the wall. For a few moments I watched a lisard frisking about the cracked and battered bas-relief on the inside of the temple gateway, until it disappeared into a hole under the god Anubis’ head. Then I followed the point of Daphnis’ parasol, with which she was drawing pictures in the age-old dust.

As we were sitting now, countless other lovers must have sat in that self-same spot. Travelling English, German and American couples of George V, Edward VII, or Queen Victoria’s times; French soldiers of Napoleon’s army and British sailors from Nelson’s ships, making love to some Pasha’s daughter who had escaped the vigilance of her duenna for the afternoon; Mamelukes, Crusaders, early Christians, Romans, Phoenicians, and Greeks; all must have passed that way and doubtless lingered there, since the place had been abandoned by its priests and fallen into ruin. But for them time had not been such a slave-driver as it is with us. In the not far distant modern city ten thousand clocks were inexorably ticking away. I had to get Daphnis back there by five o’clock and I must leave it again to return to the Front that evening.

Very gently I laid my large hand over Daphnis’ small one and stopped her drawing with the parasol, as I said: “You know, darling, I’m afraid it’s impossible for us to be only friends. Men and women can be friends—my friendship with Barbara Wishart is a good instance of that—but only where nothing deeper has been touched in either of them or where both have indulged their passion for each other, and it has burnt out. Neither state applies to you and me. We’ve started something and we’ve got to see it through to its logical conclusion or else tear the whole thing out, root and branch.”

She went a little pale as she replied, with a lightness which I could see was assumed:

“All right. If you don’t want to be friends perhaps we’d better not see each other again. I’m over the worst effects of our affair already.”

“Are you quite sure of that? Absolutely dead certain that you never want to see me again?”

“No. I do want to see you,” she answered a little hoarsely, “but—but as a friend.”

I was very tempted to let it go at that. It seemed, when I thought of the apparent finality of that night in August at the dance, that she had since come more than half-way to meet me; but I felt that if only I had the guts to stand out I might succeed in winning her back altogether.

“How can we be friends?” I reasoned. “It’s nearly seven months now since we met. Each time I’ve seen you I’ve suffered the tortures of the damned for weeks afterwards from the longing to hold you in my arms. And for your part, however much you pretend that you don’t, you still want to feel my kisses. That’s true, isn’t it?”

“Yes, Julian,” her voice was only a whisper.

I put one arm about her shoulders and drew her unresisting towards me. While I had been speaking she had remained staring at the ground, so that the brim of her hat hid her face from me, but now she lifted it and I saw that she was crying.

Suddenly her arms were round my neck, and she was clinging to me while she sobbed as though her very heart would break.

“My sweet!” I murmured. “Please, please, I can’t bear the thought that it’s I who have made you cry.”

“Oh, Julian!” she sobbed. “I love you—I love you so much. I think I’d die now if I could never see you again.”

It was surrender, complete and utter surrender; but I felt no sense of triumph, only a breathless joy and timid hesitant wonder. How could a girl so sweet and so unspoilt really care for a cynical worthless devil like myself? Yet she had said “I love you!” and I was kissing away her warm wet tears as she repeated again and again, “Oh, Julian, I love you, I love you so!”

For what seemed a long time we clung together, murmuring little phrases until her tears were dried and the smiles came like sunshine after rain, lighting up her lovely shining eyes.

She had thrown aside her hat and her dark head was nestling on my shoulder. Under her thin dress I could feel her heart beating against my side. Raising one of her hands to my lips I kissed it and said:

“Listen, darling. We understand each other now, don’t we? Nothing else matters but the fact that we love each other and that you’re going to marry me.”

“Yes,” she murmured.

“When?” I asked.

“Whenever you like.”

I caught my breath, hardly daring to believe that I had heard her whispered words aright; but she went on: “I was a fool to believe that stupid fortune-teller who said that we were not meant for each other, and that only misfortune could come from my allowing myself to fall in love with you. I’ve kept you waiting so long; all I want now is to make you happy.”

“I must go back tonight,” I said, “but as soon as I see my Colonel I can put in for special marriage leave. How about your parents, though? I don’t want to come between you and them, so perhaps it would be best if I saw your stepfather before I leave this evening.”

She shook her head. “I’d rather break it to them myself, if you don’t mind. My wanting to get married at once will be an awful shock to them. I simply wouldn’t dare suggest it if they didn’t know about you already. Fortunately they both liked you when you came to the house, and of course they knew that I broke off my engagement to Paolo because of you; but—but there’ll be an awful lot of explaining to do. I’m sure things will go much more smoothly if you leave it to me to choose the right moment.”

“How long is it likely to be before one occurs?” I asked. “A few days, a week, or more than that? I shall be terribly anxious until I know that everything’s going to be all right.”

“Give me a week. I promise I won’t keep you waiting longer.”

“Just as you wish, angel. But in that case it’d be better if I don’t apply for marriage leave until I hear from you, and I’m due for a week’s leave towards the end of this month, anyway. It might be an idea to combine the two, as that would give us a much longer honeymoon.”

“Oh do, Julian!” She sat up and clasped her hands. “That would be much better because it would give me time to turn round in.”

“You’re not in half such a hurry as I am,” I teased her.

“It’s not that, silly, but a girl only gets married once in her life; at least, that’s the way I’ve always wanted it to be, and I know that it will be with you. You wouldn’t grudge me a proper wedding, would you, with a lovely dress and bridesmaids, and a trousseau and everything? All those things take time to arrange, you know. Mother would want it that way, I’m certain, and it will be much easier for me to win her over if I say that we’re going to get married at the end of November than if I declare that, whether
she likes it or not, I’m going to marry you at the end of next week.”

“All right, beloved, that’s settled then.” I smiled and took her in my arms again.

A long shadow thrown by the old temple gateway roused us to the fact that she would be shockingly late if we did not set off back to Alex at once, and after a last kiss we hurried to the car.

On the way in I said that probably one of the stiffest fences to be faced would be her parents’ fear that she was rushing into marriage with someone who could not support her. Families like the Diamopholi, to whom marriages by arrangement were almost a sacred creed, would naturally be shocked out of their senses at the idea of what in their eyes would seem a war marriage based on infatuation with a complete outsider. They would perhaps even lock Daphnis up or pack her off to South Africa or somewhere, unless at least some satisfactory settlement was put forward to lull their worst apprehensions. To get over this I suggested that I should write to Essex Pasha, who was the one person in Egypt who knew all about me, and ask him to call on Diamopholus
pére
. I felt sure that he would vouch for my character, and I would also empower him to make any marriage settlement on my behalf that lay within my considerable means.