George Walker At Suez | Page 6

into the boat at Suez.
The Robinsons were allowed time to breakfast at that cavernous
hotel--which looked to me like a scheme to save the expense of the
passengers' meal on board the ship--and then they were off. I shook
hands with him heartily as I parted with him at the quay, and wished
him well through all his troubles. A man who takes a wife and five
young children out into a colony, and that with his pockets but
indifferently lined, certainly has his troubles before him. So he has at
home, no doubt; but, judging for myself, I should always prefer
sticking to the old ship as long as there is a bag of biscuits in the locker.
Poor Robinson! I have never heard a word of him or his since that day,
and sincerely trust that the baby was none the worse for the little
accident in the box.
And now I had the prospect of a week before me at Suez, and the
Robinsons had not been gone half an hour before I began to feel that I
should have been better off even at Cairo. I secured a bedroom at the
hotel--I might have secured sixty bedrooms had I wanted them-- and
then went out and stood at the front door, or gate. It is a large house,
built round a quadrangle, looking with one front towards the head of
the Red Sea, and with the other into and on a sandy, dead-looking, open
square. There I stood for ten minutes, and finding that it was too hot to
go forth, returned to the long cavernous room in which we had
breakfasted. In that long cavernous room I was destined to eat all my
meals for the next six days. Now at Cairo I could, at any rate, see my
fellow-creatures at their food. So I lit a cigar, and began to wonder
whether I could survive the week. It was now clear to me that I had
done a very rash thing in coming to Suez with the Robinsons.

Somebody about the place had asked me my name, and I had told it
plainly--George Walker. I never was ashamed of my name yet, and
never had cause to be. I believe at this day it will go as far in Friday
Street as any other. A man may be popular, or he may not. That
depends mostly on circumstances which are in themselves trifling. But
the value of his name depends on the way in which he is known at his
bank. I have never dealt in tea spoons or gravy spoons, but my name
will go as far as another name. "George Walker," I answered, therefore,
in a tone of some little authority, to the man who asked me, and who
sat inside the gate of the hotel in an old dressing-gown and slippers.
That was a melancholy day with me, and twenty times before dinner
did I wish myself back at Cairo. I had been travelling all night, and
therefore hoped that I might get through some little time in sleeping,
but the mosquitoes attacked me the moment I laid myself down. In
other places mosquitoes torment you only at night, but at Suez they
buzz around you, without ceasing, at all hours. A scorching sun was
blazing overhead, and absolutely forbade me to leave the house. I stood
for a while in the verandah, looking down at the few small vessels
which were moored to the quay, but there was no life in them; not a sail
was set, not a boatman or a sailor was to be seen, and the very water
looked as though it were hot. I could fancy the glare of the sun was
cracking the paint on the gunwales of the boats. I was the only visitor
in the house, and during all the long hours of the morning it seemed as
though the servants had deserted it.
I dined at four; not that I chose that hour, but because no choice was
given to me. At the hotels in Egypt one has to dine at an hour fixed by
the landlord, and no entreaties will suffice to obtain a meal at any other.
So at four I dined, and after dinner was again reduced to despair.
I was sitting in the cavernous chamber almost mad at the prospect of
the week before me, when I heard a noise as of various feet in the
passage leading from the quadrangle. Was it possible that other human
beings were coming into the hotel--Christian human beings at whom I
could look, whose voices I could hear, whose words I could understand,
and with whom I might possibly associate? I did not move, however,
for I was still hot, and