The furnace of iron

Chapter I

Evelyn Moresby and Agnes Lumsden had first met, silent, round-eyed children in white pinafores, at a kindergarten. They had gone on to the same school and thence to a musical college where both worked far harder than there was any necessity for them to do, as neither really needed for professional purposes the thorough training she was acquiring. Their famiUes were in good circumstances and had been drawn together by the affection between the two girls. Agnes and Evelyn exchanged daily confidences under the trees in the pretty square which fronted both houses, and called for each other when their hours coincided to go to work at the great red-brick college clanging with the din of music, down the ordered London streets two miles away. The girls, young, enthusiastic, sensitive and full of artistic aspiration, lived through the spring of their days to the rhythm of fine music. Mr. Lumsden looked across his breakfast-table at his bright daughter and her happy, contented mother, and when he set out on his daily walk for exercise to his office in Great Queen Street, he often carried with him a pleasant picture of them in his mind's eye. Sometimes, too, he thought of Evel}^! Moresby, erratic, dreaming, moody now and then and almost sullen, but with eyes honest and steady as his own daughter's.

Possibly the atmosphere in which she lived was not altogether healthy for a growing girl. Her aunts, in whose flat she had had a place since she was orphaned at an early age, were deeply interested in Missions to far countries. Temporal subjects of current interest had no place in this household. Newspapers of secular origin were never received here, so what news of the outside world Evelyn ever learned till she went to the college, was gleaned from the papers she occasionally picked up at the Lumsdens', or gathered vaguely from the ecclesiastical journals which bemoaned or lauded this or that state of affairs in so far as it hindered or furthered the aims of the writers. Evelyn usually saw only the posters in the streets. So her views of hfe were a curious jumble of the theatrical, the sane (her own) and the limited, stereotyped religious.

The college was a very useful influence upon her life. There for the first time she met young men of her own age, measured herself beside them working for a common cause, and found some her superiors, others her inferiors, and learnt to regard them without that suspicious awe which almost invariably lives secret but rooted in the religious female mind regarding all things masculine. But there were many things also there that Evelyn did not learn — the difference between creeping evil intent under fair words and the careless offending speech of thoughtlessness. However, no evil came her way. Her aunts thought it did, the first evening that, greatly daring, she bought for a halfpenny at the underground railway station on her way home a pink evening paper with the latest cricket scores in it.

When she unfolded it after dinner in the tasteful drawing-room (for though her aunts martyred their intelligence, fortunately for their hard-working niece they had never thought of stinting the body) she was quite prepared for her Aunt Julia's dry voice :

" Pray, what is that gay-looking publication, niece ? I have not seen you with one like it before, I think ? "

The girl passed it over. " I like cricket. I went with Agnes to Lord's this afternoon."

Her younger aunt looked up from the red flannel petticoat she was making for the coming wintry months of trial in the slums. " Games are waste of time. I never played them."

Eveljm was used to keeping silence, young as she was, under great provocation to retort.

" I don't know that this college is a good field for you, niece," remarked the elder lady, handing back the flimsy sheets. " It seems to sow varied seed, and the harvest, I suppose, will show tares as well as wheat. We shall have you smoking soon."

" I — I have smoked," ventured the girl, " once or twice. I rather liked it." More boldly, under the spectacled gaze now turned upon her — " I don't see any harm in it. As for the college. Aunt Julia, you know I mean to go on till I get my degree, if it takes twenty years ! So does Agnes."

" Talk, all talk," replied the elder lady with an air of finality. " Oh, you will get your degree, I daresay ; I was not thinking of that. You have such an exaggerated idea of your music. You think it has power to drive the world — now. But the time will come when you will care about no tune. By the way, this is Saturday night. You are evidently not thinking of choir-practice ! "

Evel5m had consented, as a measure of conciliation to her aunts' prejudices, to sing in their church choir. " No, I needn't, I thought," she answered. " I can sing my share to-morrow at sight." She said this, knowing, however, that it was as Greek to her hearers. They could not grasp that all music, church and secular, follows definite rules of form, and Evelyn, versed in them all as she was, need not labour as did the untaught choristers. At sight of the printed notes upon the page, hymn tune or Kyrie Eleison sprang full-formed to her mental ear.

Then she settled down to write contrapuntal harmonies, a canon and fugue, that had been set for her class's task that week, and was soon so immersed that she never even heard the advent of noisy little Maud with the letters of the ten o'clock post.

" Is this a work specially sent to our hand ? " was the first speech in reverent tones that pierced, stayed and eventually stilled the revolving threads of theme, counter- theme and first, second and third subjects in Evelyn's busy brain.

It seemed likely, assented the other sister in a hushed voice. What an opportunity, one that they had often prayed for, to practice and put to the proof the fiery eloquence with which both ladies believed themselves gifted !

And then one of them read aloud the communication that caused such exaltation, and Evelyn, the threads of her melodies broken like a web in the making, listened perforce. The letter came from Egypt, from a distant cousin who was an official there of unknown position or capacity, but regarded by these two ladies as something like a nabob of the long past times of the East India Company.

" How far this letter has travelled ! " said Aunt Julia. " All the way from the mysterious, pagan Orient ! "

THE FURNACE OF IRON ii

" I wonder what the young man will be like ? " mused Aunt Esther, who prided herself on the practical outlook she took of Life. She was thinking as she cut out her flannel petticoats that through the efforts of this prospective convert she and her sister might alone enjoy the uplifting triumph of all mighty Islam's overthrow.

George Carlyon wrote apprising them of a young Egyptian's arrival in London to study various branches of exact science in order in due time to instruct his brethren. "He is a presentable young fellow and well-connected. Be kind to him, as he is a total stranger to the roaring metropolis, and you may teach him a little that he doesn't know yet and keep him out of trouble. His people hold me responsible for his reception and I dare not disappoint them. He is, I believe, very clever when he chooses to work. His religion is already yielding to the blandishments of education, I fancy, and he may end by turning Christian. Do you feel incUned to try your hand on him ? Whatever happens he is well worth the trouble. His course is for two years. I have given him an introduction to you which he will soon present in person. Try conversion if you like, but at any rate be kind to him."

A week before, seated in the writing-room at the Cairo Club, he had said to himself as he sealed the envelope :

" That ought to fetch them. It'll make no difference to him, of course. But still. . . . No matter what he does they'll swallow it all now."

Then the idea occurred to him that they might tell Abdul Mahabbi in the innocence of their hearts that he had advised them to convert him, which would never do. So he broke open the envelope and added a postscript to that effect. Then he re-sealed the letter and descending the steps to the outer air dropped it into the post-box that hung on the Club wall, and went his way home through the darkening twilight with the bats and the stars overhead and the irregular house-tops silhouetted against the fading fires of the sunset glow. It never occurred to him how his more distant young cousin Evelyn might look upon this child of the East.

" I wonder what he will be like ? " was Evelyn's thought also, but unlike her aunt she did not speak it. The young man's appearance upon her horizon had a far more personal and intimate application than to the elder ladies, from the mere fact that he was young like herself. She had never spoken with anyone of different complexion, scarcely even to a European of another race. The foreign professors at the college were regarded by most of the students as part children to be tolerantly humoured and part alien beings whose outlook it was impossible to understand. Travel, further than to Brittany and such excursions, had been denied her, so she had no idea of the teeming East, which is in some ways so much more lethargic and in others so much more energetic than the West. Her aunts' idea of it was an arid waste under a burning sun interspersed with mission camps where the heathen crowded round in the parched stillness, having come from heaven knew where, without vocation, and clad in nothing or very little, to listen to bearded patriarchal preachers who garnered in souls as harvesters cut grain. Practical points such as language and previous religious conviction were dismissed as minor considerations. Perhaps the Misses Moresby thought that the speech of the soul carried clear and ringing through whatever medium was used. That the missions were as a drop in the ocean of squalid, squirming Eastern life and won even a hearing with the very greatest difficulty among the din of bazars and the counter-attractions of processions was beyond their wildest imagining.

" What is an omdeh ? " was a point they soon mooted. It must be something of note or George Carlyon would not have mentioned it. Carlyon had done so with a twinkle in his eye, intending to play upon them, which was his reason for giving no explanation of the term. He correctly believed they would exaggerate its importance. They mentally gifted Abdul Mahabbi with the title of " prince," the romance of loneUness in an alien land, and last and least, for these ladies had, to do them justice, no worldly guile, they credited him with untold wealth.

There was no one to inform them that an omdeh is only the most important personage in a village which therefore elects him to be its mayor, and his office is not hereditary ; nor was Mahabbi senior possessed of great riches. Young Abdul's views might some day carry the weight his father's counsels did among his fellow omdehs, but not yet. At present the young man aspired to a post in the Government, which under existing circumstances he considered himself pretty sure to get. He aspired also to one other thing, not so easy to secure.

" When will he come ? " was the next point for settlement. The letter mentioned when the term began at the university where he was enrolled a student, a date already past, but gave no address.

" Don't you think it'll be to-morrow ? " asked Miss Esther hopefully.

The early autumn days passed and he did not come.

For a week there were hot scones as well as buttered toast for tea in the drawing-room, but they were toasted to no purpose — for him, at least.

" I don't believe he is coming," said Evelyn cheerfully, one evening on her return from college. So, with a tinge of regret colouring for a moment her indifference, she settled down in the empty drawing-room to the piano to play for her own enjoyment a Chopin Ballade. The dreamy, exotic, sometimes frenzied music poured out of the instrument, without apparent effort on her part.

When the door opened and Maud ushered in a swarthy, well-built stranger, Evelyn's only feeling was annoyance at being interrupted. The girl could just as well have kept him waiting outside till the Ballade was finished. It would have been only a minute or two.

So she rose from the music-stool with no very good grace and came forward to greet the newcomer. For the moment she was alone ; her aunts seldom stayed in the drawing-room after tea. Their sociable time was after dinner.

" You must be Mr. Mahabbi," said she, wishing to disengage her hand a moment before he let it go, bowing over it in a slightly foreign, courteous way that gave her a momentary panic lest he should kiss it. Also, his hand was colder than her own and a trifle moist. " Froggy," she called it later, in reporting the incident to Agnes.

As he straightened himself smiling, he raised his dark eyes to hers. She found them fine eyes, very steady, very bright and very smiling. There was something watchful in them too. The whites were bluish.

" Please sit down," she said, making for the bell. " You will have some tea, won't you ? "

He refused, smiling, and seated himself on the sofa. It was most like a divan of anything in the room. " But if I may smoke ? " in perfect English, though with an intonation strange to her ear. The words, too, came with a somewhat hurried, clipped rush.

" My aunts will be here soon. The maid wiU tell them you are here, or shall I go ? "

" No, do not go away. They will come," he replied calmly, lighting a cigarette and taking her permission for granted. In all households where he went everyone smoked as a matter of course, servants and all. The thought rapidly crossed her mind — ^what would her aunts say ? But for the moment it did not matter. Here he was, and smoking the most aromatic and fragrant cigarette ! Its scent made her long for one too. But he was speaking.

" You were playing when I came in, and were not very pleased to be interrupted, was it not so ? Please continue. I like music."

She needed no further encouragement. At once she went to the piano and recommenced the Ballade. It was curious that until she was half way through it the sphinx-like figure seated on the sofa made no impression upon her consciousness at all. The dreamworld of music possessed her soul, but gradually it faded, and her thoughts were driven from the music until nothing was in her mind but the consciousness of Mahabbi's presence. He seemed to fiU the room to the point of almost physical discomfort to herself, and she resented the indignity of the pressure. Suddenly she broke off and rose.

" Why do you stop ? " he asked below wreaths of curling smoke, through which she saw the watchful dark eyes.

" Oh, I am not in the mood," she returned restlessly, closed the piano with a movement no less definite than her expression and came forward to seek a chair. He did not rise to find her one.

" I am sorry," rejoined he quietly in his voice that had an unnameable twang like a bitter touch in an otherwise agreeable melange. "It is very fine."

That quiet appreciation was worth much more to her than any enthusiasm. She did not know it was said because he had taken her measure, and judged it would please her.

Then her aunts came in, and would not be satisfied vmtil he had been given tea, which he disliked and accepted with charming grace.

" You are a bad hostess, Evelyn ! " remarked Aunt Julia with composed censure. " See, he wanted it, and you only played to him. We heard you."

" Ah, that was because I asked Miss — Miss Moresby to make music for me. I do not really need this tea though it is very pleasant. I would not die for want of it, you know ! " with a slight ripple of low laughter. " May I offer you cigarettes, ladies ? No ? Ah, perhaps you do not like the taste. So — Miss Moresby, you will try one ? You will find it good. I brought them from Cairo with me."

To her aunts' silent disapproval and Abdul's amusement behind his sweetly grave exterior, Evel}^ took one from the snake-skin case he extended. He read all three like open books.

" We had Mr. Carlyon's letter about you some time ago," said Aunt Julia.

The young man was instantly aware she required an explanation why he had dallied so long, and furnished one forthwith, though it bore smaU resemblance to the purpose that had really determined his delay. A past master in the art of making the most of himself he had waited until they must have wondered about him a good deal. Having whetted their interest and curiosity, he then turned up to reap the benefit. His tactics met their reward, in the two elder ladies. Of the yoimger he was not so sure. Not long after her aunts' arrival Evelyn threw her cigarette into the fire with a word of apology, though secretly glad to be rid of it — it was stronger than any she had ever yet tried, and had some queer, exciting quaUty about it — and gathered up a sheaf of manuscript music sheets.

" What are you going to do ? " asked Miss Esther.

There was a trio in four parts that had to be written before the week was up. " If I don't start on it soon there'll be a rush later," said the girl. " You'll forgive me, I know, Mr, Mahabbi. You appreciate music, don't you ? "

The young fellow looked meditatively at the door she closed after her and a small smile turned up the comers of his delicate, full lips. His face at that moment bore great resemblance to those in granite of the Rameses of old ; all their mocking, tolerant, but adamant determination was there, but the Misses Moresby had never seen those ancient statues.

" You must forgive her," apologised Miss JuHa. " She doesn't mean to be rude. She is only a child."

" Oh, I do not mind ! " came the soft, rather purring voice. " She is much occupied with her music. It will not hurt her. She will soon learn other things."

When he went away, leaving a very suave, plastic impression behind him, Abdul Effendi Mahabbi was well pleased. He had been cordially pressed to come again.

B

Chapter II

Very enthusiastic was Miss Julia's letter to her cousin George Carlyon, on the subject of this stranger he had sent within their gates, whom it was " a boon to know and so receptive," A letter that caused the official brows to rise and the officially composed features to relax in a smile of some content.

" Played the right cards," said he to himself. " Clever young beggar, he has caught on."

Several days went by, however, before the young man presented himself within the radius of the Moresby ladies again. He took his time over his studies, absented himself when he chose and considered the most important business of his life for the moment was to find out all he could about places of entertainment. Plays bored him, they were always about nothing in his opinion. Music-halls he found least dull. At any rate there he might smoke, and sometimes there was something to look at. He wondered whether the apparently absorbed Miss Evelyn Moresby thought of such things. The old women, of course, would not ; they were too old. That anyone other than a carpenter or man of a trade could be entirely merged in an art could not occur to him. Hitherto he had never seen it, more particularly in a woman. And he came to the conclusion that there must be someone somewhere in whose sight the girl must wish to find favour, because she cultivated her music so assiduously. That man he intended to oust. He made this resolve, having seen her but once, that was enough for him. An Egyptian

i8 never sees his bride of his own race until the moment he lifts her veil on the wedding-day.

" Cogitating again ! " remarked a fellow-student, invading his top-floor lodgings, of which the door generally stood open when he was at home. " You do an awful lot of thinking ! Why don't you turn some of it on to your work ? "

Abdul Mahabbi looked up at the stubby, spectacled young man who stood over him. " The work is well enough," he remarked with indolent indifference. " I am stud5^ng English ways as well as work."

" Find us a lot of tom-fools, eh ? " rejoined the other, taking up a note-book. " I shouldn't wonder. Well, I came round to see if you'd come for a tramp to-day on Hampstead Heath."

The young Egyptian did not move save to pass a brown hand over his curly black hair. "No, I do not want exercise to-day. I shall take a sleep this afternoon and then go to call upon some ladies of my acquaintance. I did not sleep well last night."

" Too much of Macpherson's whisky ? He told me you had had a good deal for a chap who wasn't used to it. I thought you Mohammedans didn't drink ? "

Mahabbi made no answer. What he chose to do was his own concern alone — in England.

" Well, so long, then ! Salaam-aleikoom, isn't that the right thing to say ? Ta-ta ! " and the fuzzy, spectacled youth went his way. Mahabbi listened to his footsteps descending the oilclothed stairs till they faded from hearing, and then he spat, with no very pleasant expression on his dark, fine-cut face.

" Salaam aleikoom ! " said he to himself, giving the phrase the correct guttural intonation. ' ' ' Peace be unto you ! ' No, even yet I say that to no Christian dog ! "

In truth the past evening had been a somewhat unusual experience for him. A group of young men in a fellow-student's rooms first had had drinks till all were slightly fuddled, and then had advanced arguments socialistic and scientific of more or less absurdity, and had wound up the evening with songs varying from " Auld Lang Syne " to the latest musichall catch, rendered in a manner over which it would be more refined to draw a veil. Mahabbi listened, however, with the same appreciation he had yielded to the thoughtfully rendered poetic Chopin that Evelyn had given him. Neither was like the barbaric clash of his own country's music, the maddening din and insistent rhythm that first dazed and then fevered the senses. That was the only music, in his opinion, that justified its existence.

The following afternoon before the lamps were lit he was seated in the Moresby drawing-room waiting for his hostesses to come in, and looking out of the French windows that gave upon the small balcony which overhung the trees of the Square. This outlook was as charming as it was unexpected for London. The foliage was still thick with leaves, which were, however, just turning yellow and brown, preparatory to falling and sweeping about the streets in the wind. While Mahabbi waited and smoked there came a ring at an electric bell somewhere outside, and presently an Englishman was ushered in, grey-haired and smooth-shaven, with quiet eyes. He gave Mahabbi one glance, and his naturally tight lips drew together in even a straighter line than usual. For some moments silence reigned. The glow from the fire accentuated Mahabbi's repose, giving a new look of dignity to his slightly Semitic profile.

" Scented cigarettes, aren't they ? " came the Englishman's cool tones.

" Yes," answered the Egyptian, opening his case. " I brought them with me. There is opium."

The solicitor shook his head at the offer. " No, thanks. You have been in England then only a short time ? " In his mind he was commenting upon the taste of the young man's making himself so much at home upon so casual an acquaintance. Little that the Misses Moresby did in the cause of their Faith surprised him now, for he had known them many years, and he instantly reahsed that here was a " case."

" Are you a Mohammedan ? " asked Mr. Thome, thereby giving Mahabbi the first inkling of the reason he was welcomed to this house. It scarcely surprised him — he always sought reasons of policy for every action of others — and his slight fleeting smile passed unnoticed in the dusk of the firelight.

"Oh, are you sitting in the dark ? " cried Miss Julia, when she bustled in. " How careless of Maud ! " switching on the light. Abdul Mahabbi was then revealed to Mr. Thome in all the detail that that gentleman wished to avoid. He left after giving a message for Evelyn that he would be round in his motor on Sunday morning to take her to golf, and the Egyptian wriggled a little deeper into his chair. Now somehow he felt more comfortable.

" Is Miss Evelyn not at home, then ? " he asked. Resentment against the easy manner of Thome's invitation to the girl stirred in him. The discrepancy of years was no check to his jealousy. " Will she go with him ? " came from him before he thought. Then he was annoyed with himself for such self-revelation, but the lady noticed nothing. She was busy mending the fire.

" Oh, yes, they always do. Every Sunday," she answered, coming back. " Evelyn gets so little exercise, it does her good."

" Perhaps she will come out with me for a walk one day on — Hampstead Heath ? " he ventured, recalling his fellow-student's suggestion. " I — go for walks sometimes." He did, but rarely, and never in the country for the sake of seeing mere pines and gorse, dunes and clouds.

" I daresay she would like it very much, but," indulgently, " in that case one of us old ones must come too. You see, we have known you such a very short time. It is so different with Mr. Thorne. He has known her all her life."

" Are they going to marry ? " asked the young man, concealing his anger. If one of the aunts came too, what progress in intimacy would be possible ?

She laughed. " Oh dear no ! He is married already. Why, his eldest boy is nearly her age. He may go with them on Sunday. He is in his father's office."

Abdul's hand gripped the carved arm of his chair and clinched till he hurt himself. It was low beside his knee, and she did not see it. Not that she would ever have understood.

There was no time to lose, he decided. Rivals were already in the field. " Perhaps one evening you will bring Miss Moresby to a theatre with me ? " he suggested, and on her mild acceptance the tense unseen grip relaxed. He fixed an evening there and then, and she remarked that she had some idea that Evelyn was engaged on that date for a concert, but whether afternoon or evening she did not know. Evelyn must speak for herself.

" I will tell her to write and let you know to-night when she is free. She is not very fond of going out in the evenings, you know. She works too hard. Girls are not as strong as men. But this time I daresay she would go." Miss Julia had no intention of being ungracious or of irritating Mahabbi, but she achieved both effects in a manner to convince him once for all that she was a past master in diplomacy.

He was duly grateful for her condescension, and then came the opening gambit that he expected. She showed a motherly interest in his labours and way of life, very different from his own people, no doubt. . . .

" Ah, yes, but I do not mind," he answered negligently. " Changes come, and we cannot remain the same."

Her heart beat a little quicker. What did he mean unless it was that his mind was broadening ?

" You are getting on well with your work, then ? " she pursued.

He assented easily, and mentioned that the hours were not severe.

" Oh, I always understood the work was very hard there ! "

" / do not find it so," and he lit another cigarette. The room was already heavy with the odour of the opium-touched weed, but the maiden lady quite liked it. She did not resent the somewhat sinuous young man's assumptions in her house ; she was growing accustomed to them as the usage of a different race. " I shall be almost sorry to go away," he went on. " There is so much freedom here."