LURE OF SOULS

I

This is the story which Bernard Fane told me one afternoon as we sat sipping China tea in the Heliopolis Palace Hotel, following a round upon the neighboring links.

The life of a master at the training college (said Fane) is beastly uneventful, taken all around; not even _your_ keen sense of the romantic could long survive it. The duties are not very exacting, certainly, and in our own way I suppose we are Empire builders of a sort; but when you ask me for a true story of Egyptian life, I find myself floored at once.

We all come out with the idea of the mystic East strong upon us, but it is an idea that rarely survives one summer in Cairo. Personally, I made a more promising start than the average; an adventure came my way on the very day I landed in Port Said, in fact it began on the way out. But alas! it was not only the first, but the last adventure which Egypt has offered me.

I have not related the story more than five hundred times, so that you will excuse me if I foozle it in places. I will leave you to do the polishing.

On my first trip out, then, I joined the ship at Ma.r.s.eilles, and saw my cabin trunk placed in a nice deck berth, with the liveliest satisfaction. Walking along the white promenade deck, I felt no end of a man of the world. Every Anglo-Indian that I met seemed a figure from the pages of Kipling, and when I accidentally blundered into the _ayahs'_ quarters, I could almost hear the jangle of the temple bells, so primed was I with traditions of the Orient--the traditions one gathers from books of the lighter sort, I mean.

You will see that in those days I was not a bit _blase_; the glamour of the East was very real to me. For that matter, it is more real than ever, now; Near or Far, the East has a call which, once heard, can never be forgotten, and never be unheeded. But the call it makes to those who have never been there is out of tune, I have learned; or rather, it is not in the right key.

Well, I had a most glorious bath--I am sybarite enough to love the luxuriance of your modern liner--got into blue serge, and felt no end of an adventurer. There was a notice on the gangway that the steamer would not leave Ma.r.s.eilles until ten o'clock at night, but I was far too young a traveller to risk missing the boat by going ash.o.r.e again.

You know the feeling? Consequently I took my place in the saloon for dinner, and vaguely wondered why n.o.body else had dressed for the function. I was a proper Johnny Raw, no end of a Johnny Raw, but I enjoyed it all immensely, nevertheless. I personally superintended the departure of the ship, and believed that every deck-hand took me for a hardened globe-trotter; and when at last I sought my cosy cabin, all spotlessly white, with my trunk tucked under the bunk, and, drawing the little red curtain, I sat down to sum up the sensations of the day, I was thoroughly satisfied with it all.

Gad! novelty is the keynote of life, don't you think? When one is young, one envies older and more experienced men, but what has the world left of novelty to offer them? The simple matter of joining a steamboat, and taking possession of my berth, had afforded me thrills which some of my fellow-pa.s.sengers--those whom I envied the most for the stories of life written upon their tanned features--could only hope to taste by means of big-game hunting, now, or other far-fetched methods of thrill-giving.

It wore off a bit the next day, of course, and I found that once one has settled down to it, ocean traveling is merely floating hotel life.

But many of my fellow-pa.s.sengers (the boat was fairly full) still appealed to me as books of romance which I longed to open. And before the end of that second day, I became possessed of the idea that there was some deep mystery aboard. Since this was my first voyage, something of that sort was to be expected of me; but it happened that I stood by no means alone in this belief.

In the smoking-room, after dinner, I got into conversation with a chap of about my own age who was bound for Colombo--tea-planting. We chatted on different topics for half an hour, and discovered that we had mutual friends, or rather, the other fellow discovered it.

"Have you noticed," he said, "a distinguished-looking Indian personage, who, with three native friends, sits at the small corner table on our left?"

Hamilton--that was my acquaintance's name--was my right-hand neighbor at the chief officer's table, and I recollected the group to which he referred immediately.

"Yes," I replied; "who are they?"

"I don't know," answered Hamilton, "but I have a suspicion that they are mysterious."

"Mysterious?"

"Well, they joined at Ma.r.s.eilles, just before yourself. They were received by the skipper in person, and two of them were closeted in his cabin for twenty minutes or more."

"What do you make of that?"

"Can't make anything of it, but their whole behavior strikes me as peculiar, somehow. I cannot quite explain myself, but you say that you have noticed something of the sort, yourself?"

"They certainly keep very much to themselves," I said. Hamilton glanced at me quickly.

"Naturally," he replied.

Not desiring to appear stupid, I did not ask him to elucidate this remark, although at the time it meant nothing to me. Of course I have learned since, as everyone learns whose lines are cast among Orientals, that iron barriers divide the races. But at the time I knew nothing of this--as will shortly appear.

During breakfast on the following morning, I glanced several times at the mysterious quartette. They had been placed at a separate table and were served with different courses from the rest of the pa.s.sengers. I was not the only member of the company who found them interesting, but the Anglo-Indians on board, to a man, left the native party severely alone. You know the icy aloofness of the Anglo-Indians?

My second day at sea wore on, uneventfully enough; the bugle had already announced the hour for dressing, and the boat-deck outside my berth, where I had had my chair placed, was practically deserted, when something occurred to turn my thoughts from the four Indians.

It was a glorious evening, with the sun setting out across the Mediterranean in such a red blaze of glory that I sat watching it fascinatedly, my book lying unheeded on the deck beside me. Right and left of me men occupying the other deck cabins had lighted up, and were busily dressing. Right aft was a corner cabin, larger than the others, and suddenly I observed the door of this to open.

A slim figure glided out on to the deck, and began to advance toward me. It proved to be that of a woman or girl dressed in clinging black silk, and wearing a _yashmak_! She had a richly embroidered shawl thrown over her head and shoulders, and in that coy half-light she presented a dazzlingly beautiful picture.

It was my first sight of a _yashmak_, and, because it was worn by a marvelously pretty woman, the thousands seen since have never entirely lost their charm for me. I could detect the lines of an exquisitely chiseled nose, and the long dark eyes of the apparition were entirely unforgettable. The hand with which she held her shawl about her was of ivory smoothness, and, like a little red lamp, a great ruby blazed upon the index finger.

With her high-heeled shoes tapping daintily upon the deck she advanced; then, suddenly perceiving that the promenade was not entirely deserted, she turned, but not hastily or rudely, and glided back to her cabin.

I have endeavored to outline for your benefit the state of my mind at this period, hinting how keenly alive I was to romance of any sort, provided it wore the guise of the Orient; so that it will be unnecessary for me to explain how strong an impression this episode made upon me. The Indian party was forgotten, and as I hastily dressed and descended to dinner, I scarcely listened to Hamilton when he bent toward me and whispered something about the "Strong Room."

My gaze was roaming about the s.p.a.cious saloon. Even in those days I might have known better; I might have known that no Mohammedan woman would take her meals in a public saloon. But I was too dazzled by my memories to summon to my aid such fragments of knowledge respecting Eastern customs as were mine.

Well, some little time elapsed before I saw or heard anything further of the houri. I began to settle down to the routine of the trip, and (you know how news circulates through a ship?) it was not very long before I knew as much as any of the other pa.s.sengers knew.

Hamilton was a sort of filter through which it all came to me, and of course it was not undiluted, but colored with his own views. The lady of the _yashmak_, he informed me, was a member of the household of a wealthy Moslem in the neighborhood of Damascus. She was travelling via Port Said, and taking a Khedivial boat from there to Beyrt. He was a perfect mine of information, but his real interest was centered all the time on the party of four Indians.

"They are emissaries of the Rajah of Bhotana," he informed me confidentially. "The mystery begins to clear up. You must have read about a month ago that Lola de l'Iris was selling some of her jewelery and devoting the proceeds to the founding of an orphanage or something of the kind; quite a unique advertis.e.m.e.nt. Well, the famous Indian diamond presented to her by one of the crowned heads of Europe was amongst the bunch which she sold; and after staying in the West for over fifty years, it is again on its way back to the East where it came from."

I began to recollect the circ.u.mstances, now; the historic Indian diamond--I do not know Hindustani, but its name translated means "Lure of Souls"--had been in the possession of the dancer for many years, and its sale for such a purpose had turned the limelight upon her most enviably. It was a new idea in advertising, and had proved an admirable success.

So the four reticent gentlemen were the guardians of the diamond.

Under normal circ.u.mstances this might have been interesting, but, as I have tried to make clear, another matter engrossed my attention. In fact, I was living in a dream-world.

Of course, my opportunity came, in due course. One evening, as I mooned on the shadowy deck--which was quite deserted, because an extempore dance was taking place on the deck below--_she_ came gliding along towards me. I could see her eyes sparkling in the moonlight.

At first I feared that she was going to turn back. She hesitated, in a wildly alluring manner, when first she saw me sitting there watching her. Then, turning her head aside, she came on, and pa.s.sed me. I never took my eyes off that graceful figure for a moment.

Coming to the rail, she leaned and looked out toward the coast of Crete, where silver tracings in the blue marked the mountain peaks; then, shivering slightly, and wrapping her embroidered shawl more closely about her shoulders, she retraced her steps.

Not a yard from where I sat, she dropped a little silk handkerchief on the deck!

How my heart leapt at that! the rest was a magical whirl; and ten seconds later I was chatting with her.

She spoke fluent French, but little English.

She appealed to me in a way that was new and almost irresistible; it was an appeal quite Oriental, sensuous--indescribable. I just wanted to take her in my arms and kiss those tantalizing lips; talking seemed a waste of time. Of course, I cannot hope to make you understand; but it was extraordinary. I felt that I was losing my head; the glances of those long dark eyes were setting me on fire.

Suddenly, she terminated this, our first _tete-a-tete_. She raised her finger to her veiled lips and glided away into the shadows like a phantom. A sentence died, unfinished, on my tongue. I turned, and looked over my shoulder.

Gad! I got a fright! A most hideous Oriental of some kind, having only one eye but that afire with malignancy, was watching me from where he stood half concealed by a boat.

My lily of Damascus was guarded!

Humming, with an a.s.sumption of unconcern, I strolled away and joined the dancers below.