University of Virginia Library

19. CHAPTER XIX.
THE BEDOUIN IN THE DESERT.

With the morrow came Mr. Monckton, and
Beatrice, somewhat to her own surprise, found
herself interested in his coming.

“You will see him, June, will you not?
asked she of Mrs. Charlton, who was doing
Sultana in a cashmere wrapper, with her slippered
feet curled under her, upon the lounge
in Miss Wansted's sitting-room.

“Must I? For whom did he ask, Thomas?”

“He is with Mr. Barstow, ma'am, and Mr.
Barstow told me to speak to the ladies.”

“Oh! well; if your uncle is down-stairs,
there is no need of my going—and really I am
so comfortable. Tell him, please, Trix, that I
am used up with last evening's gayeties—that
is, if he inquires.” And Mrs. Charlton, with a
luxurious sigh, sank back among her cushions,
as Beatrice, with a little smile upon her lips,
went down-stairs, and glided into the drawing-room
with the stately and yet graceful motion
characteristic of her.

Monckton stood, hat and cane in hand,
looking at a picture upon the wall. It was
an odd bit, the freak of some dreamy artist,
starving with cold in his barren garret, perhaps,
and mocking the sufferings of his body
with the illimitable fancies of his soul. At
least, that was the theory Beatrice had framed
about this sketch, and for the sake of the
theory, had asked her uncle to buy it.

An immense level plain—Sahara perhaps—
stretching away in such admirable perspective
that the eye returned from seeking the vanishing-point,
weary and strained—a coppery
sky arching the yellow sand, with no cloud
upon it except the faint white wreaths so expressive
of intense heat—the last faint breath
of earth, as they seem, sent up in an expiring
prayer to heaven.

In the midst of this plain, a fallen camel,
lying with outstretched neck, gaping mouth,
and staring eyeballs, the limbs slightly convulsed
in dying agony, and standing upon his
prostrate body a solitary Arab, shading his
eyes with his hand, and searching the horizon
for the help that we read in the whole tone of
the piece was not to come.

One long shadow of man and beast stretched
far toward the West, and faded into the sands
by fine gradations of color.

That was all; and yet Miss Wansted had
gazed for an hour at that picture, and turned
away unsatisfied.

“Good-morning, Mr. Monckton,” said she
now. “Do you remember the scene?”

“I beg your pardon—good-morning,” said
the traveller, cordially extending his hand.
“Yes, I remember the scene.”

“You remember it!”

“Yes, or rather I remember as much of it
as human eye ever saw.”

“Oh! what do you mean? Pray tell me all
about it.”

And Beatrice, with a look of excited interest,
rare enough upon her statuesque features,
sank into a seat, and motioned her guest to
another, her eyes continuing the eager inquiry
of her lips.

Monckton smiled, well pleased.

“It is a fortunate chance for me to have noticed
this picture this morning, since it gives
me an opportunity of gratifying you,” said he,
so simply that the words rang true, and not
with the hollow tinkle of flattery.

“It was three years ago,” pursued the traveller,
“that I, journeying from Cairo to Damascus,
chose to pursue the old desert route, and
in the old desert fashion; for to my mind, this
invasion of the Orient by steam, and this erection
of railway stations and free-lunch booths
within the shadow of the Pyramids, and
under the very eyes of the Sphinx, is a sacrilege
likely enough to bring back old Cheops
to avenge it; and one looks to see each grain
of sand become a dusky warrior, armed with
bow and spear, and hungry for the slaughter.
At any rate, I preferred the camels and the
caravan, and so did Floyd, a young artist
whom I found hanging about Cairo, full of
fancies and inspiration, and singularly empty
of every thing else. Finding that he was
eager to get to Damascus, and utterly devoid
of means, I offered him an opportunity, and we
set out.”

“How grateful he must have felt to you!”
said Beatrice softly, while her shining eyes
spoke sweet applause of the generous deed.
But Monckton laughed.

“Grateful!” echoed he. “Pardon me, Miss
Wansted, but that remark speaks better for
your heart than your experience. No man is
grateful for having what he fancies his rights
offered him as an alms, and I saved myself
from Floyd's enmity only by asking him to
come along as a protector and reliable companion,
for I had no white man with me then.
As for the camels and provisions, they were
already engaged, and his presence made no
difference, which view of the case he obligingly
accepted, and consented to oblige me.

“Four days out of Cairo, Floyd and I, indulging
in an eccentric tour around an oasis,
missed our company just at nightfall, and
were forced to encamp upon the sand. Early
in the morning, we remounted, and just before
falling in with our men, we came upon that
scene—with a difference, for the poor Bedouin
lay with his head upon his camel's neck, as
dead as he. The camel, we noticed, had been
wounded in the leg, probably in some desert
fray, and had been unable to bring his master
to the journey's end before both were exhausted
and fell, almost within sight of harbor.
Floyd seemed very much impressed, and
lingered longer than I liked, examining now
the group, now the surrounding scene, with a
dreamy look in his eyes that I was sure meant
picture. At last he got out his sketch-book,
and in half a dozen strokes caught the spirit
of the whole thing. Just then our fellows came
up; they had missed us in the dark, and were
now retracing their steps to look for us.
They made very light of their fallen countryman,
and even refused to bury him, saying—
as I suppose truly—that if they did take the
trouble, the wind or the jackals would undo
their labor before another day. So we rode
on, and left them as they lay.

“A year later, a package reached me in
Rome charged with so much expressage that
it nearly ruined me. Within was this picture,
and a note from Floyd, who said that he sent it
me as a remembrance of our pleasant journey
across the desert. Of course I knew that it
meant camel hire and hard biscuit; but if it
soothed his feelings to put it in the way he
did, it could not injure mine to accept both his
picture and his definition of its meaning, as I
did. Having no provision for picture transportation,
however, I gave it soon after to a
man who seemed to fancy it excessively, but
who has, it appears, parted with it for filthy
lucre. Do you know where Mr. Barstow
found it?”

“At an auction sale of paintings in New-York.
He asked Mrs. Charlton and me to go
and look at them, and mark in the catalogue
what we should like. I selected this,” said
Beatrice, looking with a new interest at the
desert scene.

“But,” resumed she presently, feeling a
little nervously that Mr. Monckton's eyes were
as earnestly fixed upon her face as hers upon
the picture—“but I wonder that you did not
keep it for yourself.”

“What should I do with it?”

“Bring it home with you when you came.”
Monckton smiled sadly.

“Miss Wansted, you speak in a language I

cannot understand. I have no home. I have
never known one. My childhood was passed
at school, my youth at foreign colleges; my
manhood has been as nomadic and as ignorant
of the sweet influences of home as that of
the Bedouin, whose death may but foreshadow
mine.”

And as the traveller fixed his eyes upon the
picture, a softness rarely seen in those piercing
orbs crossed their depths, and lent a strange
charm to the thin, brown face most persons
found so hard and unemotional.

The next moment he turned sharply, and
met the full, pitying gaze of those other eyes
whose hazel beauty he had already confessed.

“You are very good, Miss Wansted,” said
he, answering the unspoken sympathy of that
look. “But I should beg your pardon for my
bad taste. This is but another proof of what
I told you last night, that I have become a
mere uncivilized savage, unfit for society, and
unworthy of the patience you have vouchsafed
me.”

“Last night I proposed that we should drop
the beau monde, and talk like simply a man
and woman,” said Beatrice softly.

Monckton shot a keen glance at her face.
He found it slightly flushed, smiling, and
guileless as water, and he leaned toward it
eagerly.

“Miss Wansted you tempt me strangely,”
said he.

“In what manner?” asked Beatrice, smiling
still.

“To believe in you, to feel again that human
faith and interest which I had thought dried
out of my life forever. Miss Wansted, if this
is folly, if it is unconventional, inadmissible
perhaps, you should blame yourself. You
bid me with those candid eyes to be natural,
to speak from the heart out, and I speak as I
have not spoken for years, as I thought never
to speak again. Do you pardon me?”

“For what? Obedience?” asked Beatrice,
the subtle smile of power in her eyes.

“Yes,” said Monckton, steadily regarding
her. “I have been for many years out of the
artificial and hollow world we call society,
but I do not think I have lost the power of
discriminating between a fresh and ardent
nature, as yet uncorrupted and untrammelled
by that world, and—a finished coquette.”

“Is it so difficult to distinguish between the
two?” asked Beatrice.

“More difficult than to determine between
a gem of the Palais Royal and a genuine
diamond,” said Monckton. “And yet I am
sure that I am not mistaken.”

“And if you are not?” asked Beatrice.

“If I am not, I should dare to hope that
I might once more possess a friend; that
sympathy and confidence and the honest
speech of heart to heart were not yet dead-letter
phrases for me, and that one spot of
earth, one human being, might become to me
of more importance than another. Miss Wansted,
it is for you to rebuke, if you will, this
last and wildest folly of a life outwardly prosperous,
and inwardly blank and desolate as
that Sahara. Do you find my presumption
something too monstrous for reproof?”

“Why should I, Mr. Monckton? I urged
you to throw aside the idea of etiquette, and
speak to me as honest man to honest woman.
You have done so, and I thank you. After
that, if you find my sympathy in the homeless
and friendless life you describe of any value,
it is yours; if you care to try whether that
sympathy and our mutual liking can become
a friendship, I will help you; and if it is so, you
will be no better pleased than I, for I too am
lonely, and sometimes heart-sick, and I too
need a friend.”

Her voice softened and faltered upon the
last words, and Monckton looked at her as
shrewdly and more kindly than Juanita Charlton
had done in first espying her heart-wound.
Past masters both, in this world's lore, they
had both found it quickly enough, and viewed
it, the one with the indulgent and delicate
pity of man for woman, the other with the
scornful and inquisitive pity of woman for
woman.

“Then, Heaven helping us, we two are to
become friends,” said Monckton, rising and
offering his hand.

“Yes,” replied Beatrice, laying hers in it
with a confiding smile.