Land of Marvels Read Free Page B

a language less vague was being spoken elsewhere. Manning spoke Arabic, he had an escort of armed Shammar tribesmen, he had traveled on camelback through the regions west of the Tigris and southward across al-Jazirah. After some days of ranging about among the headwaters of the Khabur he was leaving for Damascus next morning, a journey that would involve crossing the northern part of the Syrian Desert. The reason given out for these extensive travels was the need for reliable survey maps, and in fact Manning did occupy himself with these. But his main employment—Somerville knew this from Jehar, who sometimes, in the hope of baksheesh, included such items of information in his news of the railway line—was speaking to tribal leaders, offering rewards in the name of King George for promises of allegiance in the event of war, seeking to determine the number of friendly rifles. It was an enterprise that had caused a good deal of mirth to Palmer when he had heard of it. To take the trouble to record this information and transmit it to military intelligence in London for future reference in the event of war, when it was known on every hand that the promises of the sheikhs shifted with the desert breezes . . .
    “Rapidly approaching,” the major said now, pointedly looking away from Somerville. “Those were the words used.”
    A silence followed this, broken by Patricia, not out of tact so much as out of impatience with people who got so huffy over what was after all only a form of words. “Too many prophecies flying around, royal and otherwise,” she said briskly. “It’s dead easy to make prophecies, you can always adapt them to events and pretend you meant something different.”
    It was a presumptuous thing to say, in Edith’s view, improper too, unwomanly, trying to tell the men their business. Seeing the way Palmer smiled and nodded in full approval, she felt an increase of contempt for him. She noted the steady, unabashed regard of the girl’s gray eyes, the delicate flush of the complexion, the mouth still childlike in its softness. To have studied modern history at Cambridge was all very well, but women should behave as women, not try to talk about politics on equal terms with the men. The girl was so heedless, so inviolable in her self-absorption . . . Edith drank some coffee, thought it needed more sugar, reached for the bowl.
    “The only important commercial interest that is approaching rapidly is a German one.” Somerville at once regretted this remark. He had not mentioned the news of the bridge, held back by an instinct of secrecy betrayed by his words now, he felt, and absurd in any case since everyone at the table must know he was referring to the Baghdad Railway. This great project, financed by the Deutsche Bank, was designed to link Constantinople to the Persian Gulf. It was not the fact of it he had wanted to disguise, but his own private belief, gaining on him daily in spite of his efforts to resist it, that it was aiming at him.
    He had risen as he spoke as if to forestall any further talk of the line, and he now smiled around the table in farewell. “I’d better walk over and see how things are going,” he said. And then, to Palmer: “Shall we have another look at that piece of ivory first?”
    Palmer got to his feet, though it seemed with a certain unwillingness to leave Patricia’s side. Together the two men made their way to the large stone-flagged room opening onto the courtyard, where most of the work of restoration was carried out.
    The ivory lay flat on one of the small tables, resting on a thick bed of black felt. Patricia had been eager to be given the task of preliminary cleaning, and Palmer had wanted to please her, so Somerville, after some hesitation, had agreed. It had meant no more than removing the marks of clay on the surface by means of a soft brush with wetted bristles, but he was obliged to admit that she had done it well. It was possible to see now that the background