At the station he found that a train was about to leave for Cairo. He boarded it and booked a seat in the dining car. Since breakfast he had had nothing but two Syrian pastries and a tiny cup of coffee. Until dinner was announced he sat staring through the window, as the train sped beside the canal, which was revealed from time to time by the searchlights of lonely steamers feeling their way to or from Suez. The other occupants of his compartment were swarthy, prosperous men, whose noses and eyes reminded Paul of illustrations in the family Bible at Hale's Turning.
When he took his place at the table he found opposite him a robust young man of thirty-two or three with fiery hair and alert blue eyes. His appearance, manner and apparel proclaimed him Irish-American. Paul suspected him of a desire to make talk and addressed himself to his food. Casual conversation could only be built on a foundation of self-confidence. The stranger, having enough and to spare, overrode Paul's reserve.
"I wouldn't eat that if I was you, friend," he began.
Paul, on the point of lifting a slice of tomato to his mouth, paused and looked at the speaker.
"Why not?"
"It ain't safe to eat uncooked vegetables in this part of the world. You're new here, ain't you?"
Paul laughed, and went on eating his salad. "Yes, but hungry enough to take risks."
"Then don't ever say I didn't warn you!" The American spoke with his mouth full of baked potato.
"Thanks," said Paul, at a loss to handle the other's abrupt goodwill.
The American read encouragement in Paul's hesitation. Pointing with his fork to an untouched slice of tomato, he announced, in genial tones:
"I fired one o' them at a priest once—in school."
"Good for you!" Paul exclaimed. "Did you hit him?"
"Did I? Say, listen, I can see the juice runnin' down Father Mulligan's neck to this day."
"Did you get caned for it?"
"Caned! I got canned. They kicked me out o' school so hard I'm still goin'!'
"A bit drastic," Paul commented.
"They was tryin' to make priests of us. Can you imagine me bein' a priest?"
"It does take a bit of imagining."
The American was reliving his past. "What didn't hit Father Mulligan kept on goin', see. It was in geography, and there was a map of the world on the blackboard. After bustin' on his jaw the remains of the vegetable landed just about here," and he waved his hand toward the black wilderness outside the window.
"About here?"
"It finally struck the middle of the world—get me? Egypt roughly."
"Oh—I see. So you, being Irish and consequently superstitious, took it as an omen—came here in accordance with that fateful indication? A sort of dickory-dickory-dock decision."
The American's eyes flashed blue. "That's about the size of it. After I'd put Egypt on the map, so to speak, why I felt like I sort of owned it, see, and finally come over."
"Had any luck?"
"Well, friend, I been here three year now, and I guess I've livened the old place up some. If you're not busy to-morrow drop around and see my joint. There ain't another like it in the known world."
"I'll bet there's not," said Paul with conviction.
Over coffee and cigars the American talked of his youthful struggle, his experience as grocer's clerk, book agent, and drummer for furniture and hardware. Eventually he had persuaded a syndicate of manufacturers to send him to Egypt.
"I got the agency now for two hundred and forty-nine lines," he exclaimed. "Everything on God's earth from stone-crushers to corn-plasters. I been wearing samples, riding on samples, brushing my teeth with samples, and feeding samples to the dog, see."
"And who buys your wares—natives or Europeans?"
"Both—but natives mostly. I've just sold five hundred pair of rubbers, and it hasn't rained here since Moses was a baby. Soon I'll be sellin' 'em snow-shoes!
"I got a native staff for unpacking and shipping and gettin' me in a mess generally, and an Armenian girl typist and bookkeeper to get me out again. Gee, she's a wonder—talks every known tongue bar Choctaw."
"Don't you find it pretty strenuous?"
"You said it! I been up to Port Saïd to tell the American Consul to watch out for a good man. Englishmen won't peddle chewing gum round the native quarters. I like 'em, mind you—but I can't work with 'em. They want to sell goods like thermometers and spy-glasses, which don't pay like chewing-gum. Gum's infra dig, but it brings in the kale."
"I suppose Cairo is full of human oddities," Paul remarked. "Strange minglings of tribes?"
"Most of 'em don't know their own selves what the devil they are."
"Then I ought to fit somewhere."
"Staying for good?"
"It's time I stayed somewhere permanently. I've been nearly everywhere, you know, temporarily."
"Then that'll account for your accent."
"It accounts for many things. Or, to put it the other way round, many things account for it—for my nomadism." He felt he was being too precious for his audience, but went on. "I mean that accidents of birth, circumstance, and temperament send one roaming over the world." He had almost said, under the influence of the other's idiom, "the known world."
"What's your line?"
"I haven't decided yet. I'm looking for ideas."
The American puffed hard at his cigar, then leaned forward impulsively. "Say, listen!" he exclaimed. "Mebbe you and me could join forces!"
Paul wondered whether he had enough strength of character to peddle chewing gum.
The American accompanied him back to his compartment and expatiated upon social and commercial conditions in Egypt.
"Where are you stayin'?" he asked, as the train drew into the terminus.
Paul briefly explained the situation.
His companion pursed his lips, slapped Paul on the shoulders, then said:
"Listen here, son, you're comin' right along with papa, see. I got two rooms at Shepheard's. I only live there because it's good for trade. Got to keep up the bluff, you know. I'll sleep you on a sofa. My name's Coyle—Patrick Coyle."
Paul gratefully took the hand extended to him. "Mine's Minas," he said. "I'm sure it's most awfully decent of you to"
"Aw, keep the change," briskly interposed his new friend. Paul was awakened next morning by a cold nose and a pair of clumsy paws. He was being earnestly smelt and he could hear an unwieldy tail, somewhere near the floor, thudding forth the time to an inward scherzo. He pulled the puppy on the sofa beside him, dodging its familiar tongue.
Encouraged by this reception, Aïda, by means of sniffs and writhings, sudden rigidities, sudden collapses, and a crescendo of tail-waggings, descanted on the joys of outdoor life. She had already roused her master, and there were sounds of rushing water from the direction of the bathroom.
Paul sprang up and went to the open window, shivering at the chill of the morning air. The thin November sunlight had splashed its way into the garden at the back of the hotel, casting lacy shadows on the orange sand and picking out gay colours in the flower-beds.
Breakfast, consisting of coffee, rolls, shredded wheat—in sample cakes—and cream, was brought into the sitting-room half an hour later, and Aïda, with a deep, explosive sigh of resignation, collapsed before the closed door.
"What's her nationality? She looks a mut like everybody and everything else in this land, where even the breakfasts are Turkish-American."
"She is," Patrick assented. "A lady that was staying here for her health had a prize female cocker spaniel which got loose one day. The old dame hoped for the best, see, but the worst happened, and the spaniel up and had Ada—I named her after the opera. Mrs. Thingamatite was mad as a hatter and ordered the litter drowned. I happened along as the guy was takin' 'em to the Nile in a bag, and rescued this one, not realizing it was a her. I had nothin' to feed her with but a sample fountain-pen filler. One night she got rambunctious and bit the glass, and I near strangled her tryin' to make her spit it out, see. After that I put rubber over it and all was well.
"You're a homely hound, ain't you, Ada? Just a plain she-dog, just nothing, see."
Aïda had constructed this as an invitation to breakfast, and came towards the table, to be affectionately mauled.
Paul was touched by this domesticity. "There's a great deal to be said for internationalism, even in dogs," he philosophized. "Aïda may be impossible socially, but she's very human—probably more so than her prize mamma. Lines of racial demarcation will gradually get blurred as the world goes on. They'll have to, or the world won't go on. It's a pet theory of mine that we'll all end by being a world-wide family."
"You wouldn't like your grandchildren being half Chinese, would you?"
"I shouldn't mind. As far as that goes, there's no telling what our great-to-the-nth-power grandfathers may have been. It's highly probable that you and I and your Arab servant are related, if one could trace back far enough."
"Thanks be to God we can't then, for I'd brain that nigger if I found he was a relative of mine. He nearly started an Egyptian revolt when Ada stepped on his prayer-rug. She makes Abdul, my chief clerk's, life a merry hell with her poor wet nose. Don't you, old girl? Yes—we're going day-days now."
They called at a neighbouring garage for Patrick's most practical sample, a motor-cycle with a passenger seat at the rear and a basket attachment in front for Aïda, who was grovelling and baying her ecstasy in tones which, had her mother been there to hear, would have served as a mortifying reminder of her guilt.
"I'll ride you round the old burg," said Patrick, when his guest was safely perched behind and Aïda's tail had been tucked in.
"Everybody's used to me and Ada now," said Patrick. "At first the natives collected in crowds. It was free publicity for the byke. Not that I ride it for that. I'm just naturally odd. I'm me own trade-mark; I got a commercial personality."
By this time the engine was in an uproar, and two minutes later the trio were speeding past the deserted terrace of the hotel.
True to his word, Patrick whizzed the length and breadth of Cairo, past mosques and palaces, bearing down on groups of red-slippered natives, for the fun of seeing them scatter. "It amuses the child," he sang back after one close shave.
At the summit of the Mohattam Hill they paused. Paul looked down at the huddle of roofs and streets surmounted by a hundred minarets, and thought of the biblical illustration of the temptation on the mount. Far away beyond the valley of the river, the pyramids were silhouetted like tents against the sky.
The world before his eyes resembled an iridescent bubble. For the incomparable panorama, for the boundless spaciousness of earth and sky, for the living antiquity of it all, the solidity of the stone and the delicacy of pale lights and colours that played over it, he felt emotions too deep for utterance. The prosaic commentaries of his companion he scarcely heard. Relieved from the immediate care of having to find a livelihood, he was free to absorb impressions. Every object, every colour and sonnd, were registering themselves on the sensitive plate of his mind, and he had to make an effort to respond to the other man's announcement that it was time to turn back.
Patrick made straight for the heart of the native quarter.
"They said I was a fool to think of coming down here," he explained as he steered a precarious course through the narrow, swarming Mouski. "So I just clowned around to let 'em keep on thinkin' I was one, see. I even half thought so myself, till some of the wise guys from the European quarter come down and tried to buy me out. Then my shares went up in me own eyes. It pays to think big, believe me. Well, this here's the joint."
They entered a narrow doorway and mounted dark stairs, past store-rooms filled with packing cases, to a dapper office furnished in mahogany and brightened by flowers. Patrick introduced Abdul and Mademoiselle Arzoumanian, the typist, a pallid young woman of thirty-odd, with a flat white nose, disconcertingly large black eyes, and a mop of rust-coloured hair. She wore a black frock and high-heeled shoes. Her hands were as broad as they were long, and her fan-shaped nails showed traces of having been bitten. Paul had the sensation of being in the presence of a moral dwarf.
He wandered forth to inspect the unparalleled assortment of commodities, while his friend dictated contracts couched in grandiloquent terms, gave instructions in bad Arabic and bad French, and interviewed prospective buyers—Greeks, Turks, Syrians, Armenians, Arabs—Mademoiselle acting as interpreter. At 1.30 Abdul closed the office door, and Patrick leaned back in his swivel chair. Mademoiselle had gone into an improvised kitchen to cook luncheon, and Abdul was producing linen, crockery, and silver.
Places were laid for four, and Paul, who had just left a ship on which the Lascar crew were regarded as some species of lower animal, was a little shocked when Abdul sat down with them. But he covered his surprise as successfully as Abdul concealed his horror at the pork chops the three infidels were preparing to devour. There were great slabs of unleavened bread and a variety of sample pickles and jams. Abdul was encouraged to talk, and waxed eloquent in weird English. He spoke of a riot in the streets which had made his legs tremble. "It was very shame!" he concluded, with tragic eyes. By "shame" he meant "terrifying," just as by "famous" he meant "agreeable to the palate." The divergence of his vocabulary from the English norm was as wide as that of journeymen from that of metaphysicians; yet, Paul mused, one could with a little imagination reconcile any verbal discrepancies, One listened to a specialized vocabulary until one had heard it in a sufficient number of connotations to commence transposing. If this sort of thing were conscientiously done, one might end by discovering that every human being was saying exactly the same thing as every other. Every utterance, when balanced by the sum of circumferences which had brought it into formulation, was simply part of the One utterance, the eternal verity, just as every colour was simply a part of the spectrum that constituted light. Once we were intelligent enough to take this fact into reckoning, we should enter for the first time in history upon an era of civilization. He was sure Babel was the stumbling block in the way of human progress.
After luncheon they mounted to the dazzling white roof. The old city sent up a thousand muffled sounds. Against patches of light and shade moved a living kaleidoscope: olive and copper faces under scarlet tarbooches; flowing gallabias of purple and garnet; vermilion and lemon-coloured slippers; lilac cotton tunics and jade silk scarfs; pasty black-gowned women with coquettishly transparent white veils. And through the tortuous thoroughfares passed donkeys laden with emerald-green fodder. Paul was lazy-minded enough to wonder how the beasts dared eat it uncooked.
"We got to celebrate," said Patrick, "seeing it's your first visit," and he called out in Arabic to a dirty little girl behind a dirty Nottingham curtain.
One by one the windows of neighbouring houses filled with the faces of women and children who showed a deep indulgent interest in the proceedings.
After a whispered consultation with her family the little girl thrust her brown legs over the sill and dropped to the roof, advancing half boldly, half diffidently while Aïda went forward with an official air to smell her. Abdul fetched boxes for the two men to sit on, and the girl tossed back her hair, pulled at her greasy pink frock, wriggled her bare toes, and over her shoulder exchanged pleasantries with her sisters.
Then from the window, Mamma began to beat a tom-tom, which had an automatic effect upon the girl. Her little flat stomach and flat lips swayed; her slender arms rippled from shoulder to finger-tips.
The festive spirit spread beyond the windows and rooftops to the street, and a blind, strolling nut-vender, singing topical ditties to attract custom, was induced to mount the stairs with his boy guide and contribute his talent. Abdul procured additional performers, and soon an assortment of Arabs, Turks, and hulking Sudanese niggers were performing strange dances whilst others chanted strange tunes, and all old Cairo rested from loafing to watch.
The nut-vender sang of a notorious fat beauty of the town. Patrick, his hat pulled over his eyes, sat bolt upright on his box, earnestly bossing the show. "Quaeesh!" was his expression for approval, sparingly vouchsafed. By way of honorarium he distributed samples of chewing-gum and toothpaste from a large open box. From time to time he tossed packages to the thronged windows and balconies, and the "celebration" became, in true Irish-American fashion, a capital "ad."
Paul courted the midday sun, felt his nose getting red under it. His box was tilted back, and he was lost in an indolent dream. He saw Aïda striving to scale a wall and "adjust" a cat who merely blinked at her efforts. He thought, what a privilege to have been born a Sudanese nigger with gigantic hands and steel thighs, unable to think or even be distressed by the vague weight of unthinkability, unable to do anything but work and grovel and grin, with a flash of white teeth and husky gurgle, and do it from morning to night. He recalled the image of Becky States, and in imagination heard her melodious, growling baritone. Becky and that enormous coon! She would straightway have behaved like the prize spaniel.
The tom-tom beat unceasingly. The little flat stomach never flagged. A toothless Turk pranced around the girl, uttering ribaldries that sent a rustle of merriment from window to window, and the niggers, lithe and powerful under their dingy pinafores, capered with unbelievable grace, to the droning accompaniment of cracked old throats.
Paul was losing all hold of fact. His body was anæsthetized. His faculties had been distilled into an essence which pervaded the scene. He was the scene; he was the blind nut-vender, the dirty little girl, the puppy staring covetously at the cat, the gold and turquoise of air and sky, the pearly sheen of a minaret; their identity was his
Until a voice said in his ear, "Say, listen, Minas, what do you think of Mademoiselle?"
Paul came slowly out of his trance. For a moment he could attach no meaning to the words, and had to piece them together. What did he think of the Armenian typist?
"I've barely made her acquaintance," he temporized. "Why?"
"She's my fiancée," announced Patrick.
Paul sat up with a start and involuntarily cried, "No!"
Then he realized he had wounded his friend, and set about to transform the implied protest of the exclamation into mere surprised interest. Patrick accepted this, along with Paul's perfunctory congratulations, and loudly praised the young woman's qualities.
"She's a wonder," was the refrain. "Speaks every known tongue."
Paul had observed that Aïda avoided Mademoiselle. That told him more than Pat's loquacious eulogies. His next mission then loomed before him. He must prevent Patrick Coyle from running untrue to type.
Within a few days Paul was appointed salesman, with a small salary and liberal commission. It was decided he should occupy himself with dealers of European origin, leaving his employer free to concentrate his attention on the natives. From the first Paul felt hostility behind the ingenuous smiles of Mademoiselle Arzoumanian, and knew his appointment had been made in defiance of her counsels. He concluded that Pat counted on him to win the confidence of merchants who were put off by brusque Irish-American methods, and he smiled at the thought that he should be chosen to beguile the conventional: he whose whole life had been an ode to vagrancy! Yet it flattered him that the man of business had detected, through the welter of the mariner's personality, some guiding current, some consistency definite enough to warrant his being placed in the category of men capable of meeting conventionality on its own ground.
His new status obliged him to take stock of his qualifications. Business experience was lacking, but his knowledge of men was fairly sound. He had discovered that the best way to gratify one's curiosity about people was to catch them off their guard; consequently he had cultivated disarming manners. His life at sea had not blunted the eminent presentability of his starched and combed childhood.
He was conscious of the favourable impression he made during his first weeks in Cairo. When he had come to terms with Patrick Coyle he had ordered a wardrobe and engaged a small room at Shepheard's. Lounging in company with his friend, he noticed that acquaintances of Coyle's lingered to be introduced, and that their manner towards himself was an appreciable shade more deferential than toward the Irishman. This bred in him a slight contempt towards strangers that served to increase his prestige. Pat, swallowing his pride one evening, made an admission which confirmed Paul's observation.
"Say, listen, sonny," said Patrick, when a prominent official had stopped to chat with them in the foyer of the opera house, after a performance of Carmen. "That guy used to cut me till you turned up. Gee, the way you got 'em all guessing is a treat. The more I try to be classy, the more of a low-life bum I look, and I guess I'll never learn any different."
Paul laughed and linked his arm in that of his employer. "Rot," he said consolingly, though he was glowingly aware of the glances cast upon him by beautiful women. "It's all humbug. That ass who stopped to talk just now hasn't a warm drop of blood in his veins however blue it may be. He's a nabob because he has a title and a diplomatic post; but he has the soul of a remittance man. It's no credit to me that I'm able to meet wasters like Lord Henry Shroton and women like his wife on their own terms. There's not a man here whose friendship I should consider half as much a privilege as I consider yours. And to prove it, I'm going to avenge you. So far I've warded off their overtures on your account. If they didn't invite you, they couldn't have me. But to-night I've a new idea. Lady Henry S. has asked me to call. Quite regardless of my estate. For that matter she wouldn't be bothered with a crown prince who squinted. But she's intrigued by your humble assistant's 'dark hair and lovesome mien.' Eh bien, mon vieux, I'll grace her bally tea table! She's the thin end of the wedge. Before I'm through with her, his lordship will have dropped a potent word in the ear of that climbing draper man, Markwick, and if Markwick, via Lord Henry, via Lady ditto, via me, doesn't send you a thumping order, then I'll forfeit my salary for the next six months. We'll make them pay through the nose for their snubs. I'm no hand at sticking up posters in the bazaars; that's American publicity, and your pidgin. I'm beginning to see the English idea of business through connexions. We're Jack Spratt and his wife—and betwixt us both, by God, we'll lick the platter clean."
Pat's imagination was kindled, and his eves flashed nervously. "Listen here, sonny," he said. "If you can land a thousand-pound order from Markwick's as a starter, I'll make you a partner."
"Pooh—a paltry thousand! I thought you thought big!"
Pat looked dubious. "Markwick's the kind of a mean son-of-a-gun who'd look in your mouth to see if your back teeth were filled with zinc. He's conservative and has always done his buying in England, like his old man before him."
"Mrs. Markwick would give an eye-tooth, though, to be invited to one of Lady Henry's crushes."
Pat stared. "I don't get you. Are you going to make love to her too?"
"God forfend! Besides I can't tackle her direct, for she wouldn't even condescend to put up her lorgnette to look at me. Being a mere bourgeoise she has to be particular whom she knows."
"Then how the devil"
"But when she finds out that I have the entrée to Lady Henry's"
"How did you get the entrée?"
"Just because I didn't seem to want it—as I didn't."
Pat was exasperated, as well as bewildered, and Paul explained. "This afternoon I dropped into the Savoy. The Shrotons were there with some people who were on their way inland to shoot big game. One of the ladies noticed me, and by and by old Henry strolled over. Wouldn't I come and be presented to his wife? So I had to. She asked me a few test questions. Did I shoot? Did I play polo? What did I think of the new American dances? Then somebody wondered: what the orchestra were playing, and I said they had all but given the coup de grâce to Schubert's Unfinished Symphony."
"Unfinished?"
"Yes, it's all right. Don't interrupt. Lady Henry—Cora, as they call her—at this sign of intelligence on my part, felt justified in having picked me up, and said, 'I suppose you are very musical, Mr. Minas; you look musical; do you play the piano?'"
"Do you?"
"Naturally."
"Well, I'm damned!"
"So she asked if I'd play for her some day; she adored music—'really good music.' That's what they all say."
"But whoa your horses. That's a long ways from Markwick's order."
"Not nearly so long as you imagine. You didn't see Cora's eyelids when she said I looked musical."
"Murder!"
They had made their way back to the hotel. Another idea had leapt into Paul's head.
"What a pity you're so happily engaged to be married," he threw out, with a feeling of guilt at the insincerity of the remark.
"Why?"
"Because Lucia and Beatrice and Ivy Markwick have all to go off. Lucia's overdue."
"There's your chance, then," said Pat irritably. "You once told me you were an adventurer."
"I am, but a most quixotic one, and young women aren't my game just now."
"What the devil is your game?"
"My game is rushing into places where even you fear to tread, old fellow, and rushing in to get bacon for you."
"God knows I don't want Lucia Markwick."
"Nor Beatrice, nor yet Ivy," asserted Paul. "I merely said, what a pity you're so happily engaged."
"I didn't like the way you said it."
"I'm sorry."
Patrick was still ruffled when Paul accepted an offer of whisky and soda in his rooms, where they were rapturously received by the imprisoned Aïda.
"You don't approve of Mademoiselle," Pat ventured bluntly.
Paul weighed the answer. "I approve of her as a shrewd little Armenian."
"But not as my future wife? I thought you didn't believe in drawing the line between nationalities."
"It's a question not of nationality but of personal quality. An ambitious man has to make his way in society as well as in business, and society judges him through the front his wife is able to put up. Would Mademoiselle feel at home at a reception given, say, by the American Consul-General? And could Mrs. Consul-General invite your in-laws?" Paul felt the thrusts cruel and found a way to mitigate them. "My attitude may be influenced by the fact that Mademoiselle distrusts me."
"What makes you think so?"
"Well, she does, Pat—as you must know. If it weren't so damned nosy of me, I'd ask you to make a compact."
Pat waited.
"That you refrain from making any definite arrangements towards getting married till I prove Mademoiselle's distrust of my capacities unfounded. Give me time to do that, then I'll have a better right to butt into your private affairs."
Pat reflected deeply. His irritability had gone, and a depression quite foreign to him taken its place. "Done!" he finally surprised Paul by announcing.
As Paul was leaving the room, Pat made a further admission. "I've been awful lonesome in this burg." Then with a whimsical, lugubrious humour he added, "I had to propose to somebody, didn't I?"
Paul just prevented himself from saying, "And Mademoiselle saw to it that she was the somebody." He waited silently for more, and Pat, holding open the door, went on:
"Do you think you can stay in with that crowd?"
"The Shrotons? I have no such intention. From them I'm going on to the really useful nabobs—the commercial ones—the Jews and the Beys and the Pashas."
"How for the love of Mike?"
"I don't know."
"It's easier said than done, believe me!"
"Of course—otherwise it wouldn't be worth attempting."
"You're ambitious too."
"In a quixotic way."
"Listen here, sonny, do you realize what makin' up to frivolous women involves?'
Flippancy, Paul felt, was what his friend needed to bring him out of his despondency. "A sailor doesn't set a very high value on his virtue," he laughed.
Pat, he knew, did—but Paul could respect a point of view he didn't share.
"Well, I don't want to cramp your style any—only don't get yourself talked about."
"That—from you! What about your antics, the topic of the town!"
"It's a different kind of antics and a different kind of talk, see. My reputation's A-one."
Paul was tickled at the literalness of Pat's interpretations. "I promise that the firm won't get into bad odour through me," he said.
"Don't go losing your head, then."
"Nor my heart nor my money—at bridge. I'll try to make on all three scores: head, heart, and pocket. You'll see."
At last Pat rallied, and suddenly laughed. "Doggone, I half believe you," he confessed.
"I should hope you did! This time next year you and Aïda will be dashing around in a shiny car, fairly smelling the poor people."
"It'll be a partnership car."
"I've told you I'm not out for a partnership."
"What the devil are you out for?"
"I don't quite know. Certainly you wouldn't understand if I tried to tell you—even though you are a romantic Irishman."
"Then good night, and to hell with you," growled Patrick.
"Ditto to that," said Paul. "May I take Aïda to bed with me to-night?"
"No, you got a damn sight too many Fraus as it is," and the door closed with a snap.
In his own room Paul recalled the old Viennese quandary: his eternal suspense between a romantic and realistic attitude toward life. For the moment, he mused, he was pursuing a quixotic goal, making his way towards it by an avenue paved with solid realities.
An air from the fortune-telling scene in the evening's opera came into his head, and as he undressed he softly hummed it:
"Et maintenant, parlez mes belles; de l'avenir donnez-nous des nouvelles. Dites-nous qui nous trahira; dites-nous qui nous aimera."
He was buoyed up with youthful confidence. Why consult cards to ascertain who would fall in love with one, and who betray? Every creature was a potential lover and a potential traitor. One had only to inspire the love and forestall the treachery as the case might require. An unfair game? Not unless one deliberately cheated. There were well-recognized rules, with a certain margin allowed for insidious graces. Besides, if the end were a good end, one gave oneself the benefit of the doubt where means were concerned. Paul was convinced that the end, in this case—which consisted in helping to solidify the welfare of a man who had gone out of his way to rescue him—was an end worth attaining by any means at his disposal.
In bed the music of the card scene kept running in his head:
"Dans le livre d'en haut si ta page est heureuse, mêle et coupe sans peur; la carte sous tes doigts se tournera joyeuse, t'annonçant le bonheur.
"Mais si tu dois mourir, si le mot redoutable est écrit par le sort, recommence vingt fois, la carte impitoyable répètera la mort."
It was grim. Now that the lights were turned out and the resplendent dress suit put aside, he felt less sanguine. What could a single man's fanciful darts avail against the stone walls of worldliness! And when that man was—of all the indeterminate men in the world—Paul Minas!
Mais si tu dois mourir—why should that phrase come back again and again, with its accompaniment of solemn, muffled chords!
He thrust it from him and snuggled his head on the pillow. After all, everything was on the cards. Let them reveal what they might. If one was doomed, one was doomed.
It took Paul three months to break down the Markwick defences. The period was a nerve-racking one, for apart from the delicacy of the negotiations he had to breast the undercurrent of Mademoiselle's enmity and keep reassuring Pat that the time he spent out of the office was not being dissipated. To catch glimpses of his salesman, elegantly garbed, setting out for gymkhanas, or to hear from his lips chit-chat brought back from clubs and drawing-rooms, was a drastic test of Pat's faith. A tension marked their relationship until the letter arrived containing a big order from the refractory merchant. Paul stood with his hands on Patrick's shoulders while they read it through to the paragraph which ran: "If you can deliver the above in satisfactory condition by May fifteenth, at the latest, we shall be pleased to confer with your representative regarding orders for autumn and winter stock."
"Well?" inquired Paul, with suppressed triumph.
Pat rose with a smile of relief. "Congratulations!" he said. "You put it over great. How you done it I don't know."
"But I did," said Paul, like a child claiming full credit for having been good.
"What's the next move?"
"Alexandria," Paul unexpectedly announced.
"Why, have you cleaned out Cairo already?"
"By no means. But there's a conclave in Alexandria next week, and I've scared up some useful letters of introduction. And incidentally some cotton tips."
A little piqued, he decided not to explain his plans in detail. But he was amply avenged three weeks later when he was able to walk into the office with a bunch of contracts which surpassed the total orders obtained by his three predecessors. Pat was won over. "Say, sonny," he concluded, "I guess I got to hand it to you this time."
Thereafter Paul decided to forego a regular salary that he might feel free to absent himself from the office whenever the mood seized him. Its atmosphere was becoming distasteful. His first success had made Mademoiselle realize the necessity of changing her tactics. Distrustful glances had given place to glances of a propitiatory nature, and her smiles had grown more disarmingly naïve. On one occasion, when Paul had driven a splinter into his finger whilst helping to open a packing case, she had held his hand in hers far longer than necessary. And to add to his disgust, he knew Pat had observed her.
For a year he solicited orders in his own devious ways. From time to time he journeyed up the river, often as a guest, and disregarded no opportunity to foregathcr with influential groups. For the first time in his life he was playing a definite social game, and, while he chafed at its insincerity, he found it instructive.
Although it was a game of blandishments, it required pertinacity. Along with the diversion, there was a vast amount of annoyance and boredom. He played the game within the rules of his own standards of honour, even though it involved occasional intrigues which violated the tenets of a strict morality. Conventional morality, he concluded, was an ideal beyond the attainment of the most conventional of men. Certainly he had met no perfect exemplar of it. Compared with the illicit traffickings of those with whom he competed, his own intrigues seemed childlike and straightforward. His whole policy had been to obtain, for himself and his friend, as high a price as possible for whatever he could persuade people they needed. He studied the idiosyncrasies and ambitions of utilizable men and women, then set about gratifying them; for which service he induced them to buy, or constrain their sycophants to buy, Patrick Coyle's reputable commodities.
During the second year of his association with Patrick Coyle, notwithstanding the impetus given to their activities by the acquisition of a car and other tangible signs of prosperity, Paul found the social round growing irksome. The exhilaration of being sought after by fashionable hostesses gave place to ennui. The pleasure of knowing himself able to cut a dash gave place to disgust at the pettiness of dash-cutting. Wide acquaintanceship involved myriad obligations and drew his energies into silly channels. Fate had ordained for him a life of meditation, and he began to resent the daily incursions on his privacy. Not even in Vienna had his environment been so cumbered with people. From a source of stimulation, the multitude became a source of confusion. He was losing sight of truth under the stress of play-acting, and only the determination to fulfil his compact kept him in his rôle.
Whenever the babel became too insistent, he fled from the city, hired a donkey, ferried it across the river, and took refuge in the desert. There, after an hour's riding, he would rest, and by yielding his soul over to the desert, which like the sea symbolized eternity, achieve a sense of his own puniness compensated by an exalted sense of relationship with the cosmic intelligence. Then his life, and all forms of life, took on the aspect of reflections passing across the face of a mirror; and he captured a sense of permanence in the thought that the reflections were inextricably related to some vague source which, like a spiritual sun, was responsible for their projection.
After excursions of this sort he came back with renewed energy and a clarified focus. But more exhaustive analyses of the social amalgam revealed hitherto unsuspected proportions of hypocrisy, and as the months went on he found it necessary to inoculate himself with correspondingly increased doses of cynical wisdom. His contempt for worldliness grew with his skill in handling the world's weapons. He became taciturn. With Pat alone could he throw off restraint, and from time to time let himself be borne along by the American's infallible common sense, just as in days gone by, he had ridden on Otto's broad shoulders.
As in the case of his other quixotic tilts with the world, he had had to face disillusionment. It had been unreasonable to assume that Pat would rise superbly to the openings he was able to make for him, yet he could not deny that Pat's matter-of-factness was discouraging. Imagination of a kind Pat had in abundance, but he was not given to ascending pinnacles for the sake of picturesque views. He was a true friend and a staunch bargainer, but not an artist; and Paul, in spite of himself, exacted of his friends that they should be artists. Vaguely he had expected that Pat would develop under his guidance, and acquire some of his own sublime disdain for the world, as his business waxed. Instead of which Pat's respect for the world increased with his deposits in the bank.
But Paul played on, for lack of grander games. His nomadic nature had begun to reassert itself, goaded by a conscience which reminded him that he was neglecting the deep, unknown message he had been put into the universe to deliver.
Once more he buried himself in wise books; once more he delved into his mind for some clue to his mission. Solitary trips to the desert became more frequent; and every day he sought poise and direction by suspending all thought for a half-hour in a sort of waking trance—a trick he had learned, after long practice, through contact with the followers of adepts in ancient religions.
For some months his only definite aim had been to make his friend see, by subtle contrasts, the unwisdom of linking himself irrevocably to the Armenian "dactylo." After a good deal of scheming, he had introduced Pat into the houses of most of the people whom it was to Pat's advantage to cultivate. In these houses Pat had dined and danced with English, American and French girls with whom he must inevitably have compared his clever but unpresentable little fiancée. The subject of his marriage was never discussed, but Paul had intuitively known that the plans were not going forward smoothly.
Then one day he arrived at the office to find Pat bearing the brunt of a stormy scene. Mademoiselle was sitting pale, hard-eyed, silent, unhappy, while Pat, in his most unbridled American, parried thrusts levelled at him in broken English by Mademoiselle's exasperated father and brother and uncle—an unappetizing crew.
Paul withdrew hastily to the domain of Abdul and the Sudanese porters, but remained in the building until he heard the angry visitors descending the stairs. To his surprise Mademoiselle followed them. In her little black dress and coquettish high-heeled slippers, she looked old and defeated. Paul pitied her, but still resented her hold over his friend. Except for the hat she wore, she might have been mistaken for a venturesome Turkish woman abroad without a veil. The flabby white skin, the coal-black brows setting off her unpleasantly large eyes, the childlike steps and bearing, were suggestive of a harem.
Paul hurried back to the office. Pat was standing by the swivel chair, his hands in his pockets, gloomy and disgusted. Aïda looked towards the intruder for an explanation.
"The bastards!" exclaimed Patrick finally.
"What did they want?"
"Want! They had the nerve to try and bone me for more money, on account of postponing the wedding."
"More?"
Pat paced the floor. "You see I had to pay the old son-of-a-gun a lump sum, to get his consent in the first place."
Paul refrained from exclaiming that the old man ought to have been glad to subsidize the marriage. He was reputed to be well off.
"Did you pay up?"
"Not on your tin-type. They tried bluffin', threatened to sue me."
"And Mademoiselle?"
Pat came to a halt, his blue eyes blazing with indignation. "Would you believe it, Paul, she stuck up for 'em—for them mangy sons-o'-bitches! She wouldn't actually accuse me of wanting to get out of it, see, but she backed 'em up by noddin' her head—like a frightened kid. That's what finished me."
"Finished?"
"Finished! I gave her a month's salary on the spot and fired her. To hell with 'em."