Lost trumpet

44
THE LOST TRUMPET
and Pelagueya, coming out of days of agony and
dazed disbelief, had turned to my friendship for
months, till I had remembered things older than
friendship——
Spectator unmoving on the fringe of life ! Fool
and renegade and dreaming traitor as I had known
myself. For, a morning three months after the death
of Gault, I had journeyed down to Abu Zabal with
but one intent and one purpose ; a winter day of
clarity and cold sunshine; and Pelagueya’s eyes,
questioning and clear. And I had looked in those
eyes, and suddenly had known myself old and sick
and tired, fit subject for the jeers of a tourist-tout
in a later day.
Love—I could not cease to love her though I
tried. And I found it a love as remote from life and
reality, the touch of her and the sight of her and
the sweet blood in her body, as the ghost desire
that haunted still the bones of Gault in wild
Mesheen . . .
Subchapter in
It was late that night when I left Abbassieh and
trudged out on the long lamp-lit road to Heliopolis.
And suddenly I found myself footsore and tired
enough from my long strayings in the Cairene streets
after leaving the shelter of Simon’s hospitable awning.
For an unreasoning urge had come upon me there
to revisit those streets and scenes across which the
locust had flown, devouring ten years of my life.