It Happened in Egypt | Page 5

you."
"Well--though it's unimportant compared to what you have to tell! I'm an insignificant second secretary to Sir Raymond Ronalds, the British Ambassador at Rome. I've got four months' leave----"
"Ah, that's what comes of duffing so skilfully, and avoiding all the things you didn't want to do, till you got exactly what you did want! I remember when we were small boy and girl, and you used to walk down to the vicarage every day, to talk Greek or Latin or something with father----"
"No, to see you!"
"Well, you used to tell me, if you couldn't be the greatest prize-fighter or the greatest opera-singer in the world, you thought you'd like to be a diplomat.
"I haven't become a diplomat yet, in spite of Foreign Office grubbing. But I've been enjoying life pretty well, fagging up Arabic and modern Greek, and playing about with pleasant people, while pretending to do my duty. Now I've got leave on account of a mild fever which turned out a blessing in disguise. I could have found no other excuse for Egypt this winter."
"You speak as if you had some special reason for going to Egypt."
"I've been wishing to go, more or less, for years, because you know--if you haven't forgotten--I was accidentally born in Cairo while my father was fighting in Alexandria. My earliest recollections are of Egypt, for we lived there till I was four--about the time I met and fell in love with you. I've always thought I'd like to polish up old memories. But my special hurry is because I'm anxious to meet a friend, a chap I admire and love beyond all others. I want to see him for his own sake, and for the sake of a plan we have, which may make a lot of difference for our future."
"How exciting! Did I ever know him?"
"I think not."
"Well? Don't you mean to tell me who he is?"
I hesitated, sorry I had let myself go: because Anthony had written that he didn't want his movements discussed at present.
"I'll tell you another time," I said. "I want to talk about you. Anybody else is irrelevant."
"Clever Duffer! Your friend is a secret."
"Not he! But if there's a secret anywhere, it's only a dull, dusty sort of secret. You wouldn't be interested."
"Women never are, in secrets. Well, I'm glad somebody else besides myself has a mystery to hide."
"You're very quick."
"I'm Irish! But I'm merciful. No more questions--till you're off your guard. You're free to ask me all you like, if there's anything you care to know which horrid newspapers haven't told you these last few years."
"There are a thousand things. You didn't answer anybody's letters, after--after----"
"After Richard died. Oh, I can talk about it, now. It was the best thing that could happen for him, poor fellow. Life in hiding was purgatory. No, I couldn't answer letters, though my old friends (you among them) wanted to be kind. There wasn't anything I could let anybody do for me. Monny Gilder's different. You'll soon see why."
I smiled indulgently. But, though I was to be introduced to Miss Gilder for the purpose of being eventually gilded by her, at the instant my thoughts were for my childhood's sweetheart.
Brigit Burne made a terrible mess of things in marrying, when she was eighteen or so, Richard O'Brien, in the height of his celebrity as a socialist leader. People still believed in him then, at the time of his famous lecturing tour and visit to his birthplace on our green island; and though he was more than twice her age, the fascination he had for Biddy surprised few who knew him.
He was eloquent, in a fiery way. He had extraordinary eyes, and it was his pride to resemble portraits of Lord Byron. After an acquaintance of a month, Biddy married O'Brien (I had just gone up to Oxford at the time, or I should have tried not to let it happen), went to America with him, and voluntarily ceased to exist for her friends.
Poor girl, she must have had an awakening! He had posed as a bachelor; but after her marriage she found out (and the world with her) that he was a widower with one child, a little girl he had practically abandoned. Biddy adopted her, though the mother had been a rather undesirable Frenchwoman; and now when I saw her smiling at the tall white girl on the Laconia, I had thought for an instant that Biddy and her stepdaughter might be in flight together. O'Brien was a drunkard, as well as a demagogue; and not long after Brigit's flitting with him there was a scandal about the accepting of bribes from politicians on the opposing side, apparently his greatest enemies; but a minor scandal compared to what came some years afterward. O'Brien's name was implicated in the