It Happened in Egypt Part 10

But I got to my feet--and nothing happened. I seemed to be in a dream, of having shot up to a gigantic height, and having put on the wrong clothes, or none. My hands weighed two pounds each, and ought to have been at the butcher's. My mouth was the size of a negro minstrel's, and so full of large bones which once had been teeth that I could not utter a syllable. I clacked my jaws, and emitted a hacking cough which fortunately so much resembled that of a professional lecturer that I kept my senses. Not only did I keep them, but they seemed suddenly to become my servants. The thought of a certain fable jumped into my head, and I began thereupon to speak; although I had forgotten everything I had ever read of Egyptian history.

"It happens," said I, in a phonographic voice, "that I was born in Egypt. I played with clay G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses instead of tin soldiers. I preferred stories of Egypt's past and present to tales of adventure. I confess to you what I fear I didn't confess to Sir Marcus Lark. The trouble is, I'm stuffed too full of facts about Egypt. I want you to help me get them out, and not duplicate yours. No doubt all of you, in travelling to the East, have packed your brains with knowledge as well as your boxes with guide books. Why should I bore you by telling you things that you were born knowing? A plan has occurred to me by which your knowledge can be turned into account. As I said, I beg your help.

And permission to drink a cup of coffee would be first aid."

People laughed, whether at me, or with me, I was not sure; yet I felt that I had tickled their curiosity. Coffee was going round. Corkran was unctuously sipping his, and had not expected me to receive mine till after the battle. But I got it in spite of him, and mapped out a programme as I drank. Then I ceased to tremble before the confused a.s.semblage or bird-headed G.o.ds, cat-faced G.o.ddesses, and sacred vultures that danced or flapped in my brain.

I no longer felt inclined to commit suicide because I could remember nothing about Egypt except that the Delta was shaped like a lily, with the Fayum for a bud, and the Nile for its stem: that Alexander the Macedonian defeated Darius the Persian B. C. three hundred and something; that ancient Egyptians loved beer, but were forbidden to eat beans.

"My proposal is," I went on, "that before I unload any of my knowledge upon you, I gleam some idea of what you know already. Thus I can spare you repet.i.tions. Any one who has anything particularly interesting to say about Egypt, let him--or her--hold up a hand."

Now was the crucial moment. If no hand went up, I was lost. But hardly were the words out of my mouth when there was a waving as if in a wind-swept wheatfield _Place aux dames!_ I called upon Miss Ha.s.sett-Bean to begin. She rustled silkily up, bowing to me, then directing an acetylene glare upon Colonel Corkran's end of the room. She was, I foresaw, about to kill two birds with one stone, to say nothing of the marmoset, who fell off her arm into General Harlow's coffee and created a brief diversion. As soon, however, as the monkey was rescued and before General Harlow's shirt front was dried, the lady began to speak.

"We all thank Lord Ernest," she said, looking from the colonel to the Reverend Wyman Watts, and back again, "for sparing us one of those commonplace inflictions from which we've nightly suffered on board this yacht. If we didn't know already, such school-book facts as Christianity being introduced to Egypt by St. Mark in Nero's time, and Moses and Plato both studying philosophy at Heliopolis, and things like that, we wouldn't be spending our money with Sir Marcus A. Lark to see Egypt. Never before have we been encouraged to air our views. Those of us with political opinions have been snubbed; and we who are interested in Woman Suffrage have been a.s.sured that we'll find nothing to please us in the land of Veiled Women. At last I am given a chance to state without being interrupted that Egypt was once the most enlightened country in her treatment of women. Long before the time of the Greeks, and even before the Shepherd Kings Mr. Watts has told us so much about, using his Old Testament as if it were a Baedeker, the women of Ancient Egypt had rights according to their cla.s.s. Queens and princesses were considered equal with their husbands. Women were great musicians, playing on many instruments, especially the sistrum, sacred to the G.o.ddess Hathor. And weren't all the best G.o.ds G.o.ddesses, when you come to think of it? Women used to drive their own chariots, as we do our motors, and hold salons, like the French ladies. There was Rhodopis, for instance, who married the brother of Sappho. I wonder if Colonel Corkran could have told you that the story of Cinderella comes from an anecdote of Rhodopis? I hardly think that he's been able to spare enough time from bridge to study Strabo, who was the Baedeker of Egypt for tourists six hundred years before Christ. An eagle saw Rhodopis bathing, and stealing one of her sandals flew with it to Memphis, where he dropped it into the king's lap. It was so small and dainty that King Hophra scoured Egypt for the owner, and when he found her at last, according to Strabo, made her his queen."

"If Strabo was right, she lived long before Sappho's day!" interpolated the colonel's voice.

"Of course, Strabo was right. There were two of Rhodopis. Everybody knows that. The Third Pyramid was built for the tomb of the first one, _not_ for King Mycineris, _I_ believe. Why shouldn't a woman have a Pyramid to herself? The Sphinx is a woman, as I will insist to my dying day, if it were my last word! I hope Lord Ernest won't ram down our throats any nonsense about that n.o.ble and graceful tribute to the Mystery of Womanhood being a stupid King Harmachis, or h.o.r.emkhu. I wouldn't believe it if I found a hundred nasty stone beards lying buried in the sand under her chin, instead of one, which could easily have been put there to deceive people. Probably King Harmachis had the Sphinx altered to look like him. No wonder she shuddered at such profanation, and shed her false beard. There you have my theory. And as for Egypt being now the land of Veiled Women, where Suffragettes find no sympathy, I've heard that the prophet's order for veiling has been purposely misconstrued by tyrannical men, with their usual jealousy.

Even Mohammed himself was jealous."

With this Miss Ha.s.sett-Bean sat down, amid fitful applause; and at my earnest request, Miss Enid Biddell, the prettier twin, stood bravely up. She wished, before the subject was changed, to tell some little things she had read about the girls of Ancient Egypt, how like they were to girls of to-day, in all their ways, especially in--in things concerning love. It was they who first questioned the petals of flowers for their lovers' loyalty. How much they thought about their clothes, too, getting their best things from foreign countries, as women did now, from Paris! It was so funny to read how the girls of Old Egypt had consulted palmists and fortune tellers and astrologers just as girls did in Bond Street now; and that what 'Billikens' and 'Swasticas' and birth-stones were to us, images of G.o.ds were to the girls of Egypt who lived before the days of Moses! They had scarab rings with magic inscriptions, and sacred apes for the symbol of Intelligence, and lucky eyes of Horus, wounded by the wicked G.o.d Set, and cured by the love of Isis. On their bracelets and necklaces they hung charms, and their dressing-tables were covered with images of favourite G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses. Hathor, the G.o.ddess of Love and Joy, was supposed to give her choicest gifts to girls who wore her special colour (that green-blue in the Temple of Edfu which Robert Hichens calls "the colour of love") and to those who had her pet stones, emeralds, or turquoises.

Nowadays, in Egypt, the jewels of the women Were only lent to them by their men, and could be taken away as a punishment, or be p.a.w.ned or sold in case of need; but in old days Egyptian women had all their most beautiful possessions buried with them.

When her sister had finished I urged the other twin to speak, and timidly Miss Elaine repeated to us what a friend of hers, a clergyman (here a blush) had told her. That the Red Sea was not red but a brighter blue than any sea in the world, and called red only because it washed the Red Lands. Her friend had written down for her in verse _such_ a sweet legend about the Nile rising every spring from a single tear shed by Isis, a _much_ more powerful G.o.ddess than Hathor, because she was the G.o.ddess of goodness as well as love. And the Nile used to be named Sihor by the Egyptians; and the year separated into three seasons, Flood time, Seed time, and Harvest. Miss Biddell's friend was writing a book about Egypt and was going to divide it in three parts like that. It was to be dedicated to _her_.

Bless the dear creatures, how they kept the ball rolling to please themselves, and--indirectly--to sort out my stock of ideas!

Harry Snell, the newspaper man, was not hard to persuade to his feet.

He was studying the resemblance between Arabic and English words. He had found out, among other things, that Tallyho was "Tallyhoon,"

brought home by the Crusaders. He even had a theory that some of our words came from the early Egyptian. "Amen," for instance, he believed to be derived from "Amon," the name of the great G.o.d, father of all the other G.o.ds of Egypt, which was cried aloud, he understood, in the temples, during religious services. The parson jumped eagerly up to dispute this theory, and happily forgetful of me, seized the opportunity to spring upon us a few facts from his own store. When, however, Mr. Watts' discourse got him as far as Joseph's Well in the Citadel, General Harlow could bear no more, but sprang up to inform us that the Joseph of the Well in the Citadel was quite another Joseph, some Yusef of the Arab conquerors. The general knew all about that, because his son was stationed in the Citadel. And he proceeded to meander on historically, over a period between the first Arab conqueror Amru, to Haroun-al-Raschid, a.s.suring us that old Cairo was the city of the Arabian Nights. He would, to my joy, have gone on indefinitely from Saladin to Napoleon if Sir John Biddell, as the only baronet on board, had not cut the only general short. He is a square man whose portrait could be properly done only by a Cubist. "Too much history, my friend!"

he shouted, getting up with the manner of one accustomed to making dinner-table speeches. "What most of us are coming to Egypt for is _mummies_. Egyptian history is too troublesome, anyhow, for a normal man to grasp. Give me mummies! There's something _in_ them. Why, even if you get a king or queen fixed in your head, somebody who's paid to make you know things you don't know" (an eye-shot for Corkran) "comes along and swears they didn't exist. Now, there's Mena. I'd pinned him like a stuck b.u.t.terfly. I could remember that he was the first known king, and founded Memphis and lived six thousand years before Christ, all because we're going to stay at Mena House, which is named after him. I don't know why I remembered him that way, but I did. Just as I could recall the queen with a name like a sneeze by thinking of her as Queen Hat-and-Shoes. Now Colonel Corkran informs us that we must p.r.o.nounce her, in a different way. And what's the consequence to me?

I've ceased to try and keep track of her. King Mena, too, is lost to me forever, through the over-conscientiousness of our late conductor, who says there never was a Mena, only several kings they've mixed into one.

I seem to be the one who's most mixed up! To whet my appet.i.te for Egypt now, I have to have something tasty. Where's the good of stuffing my mind with a string of names which I couldn't mention to any one at home, because I can't p.r.o.nounce them? The word Dynasty (he p.r.o.nounced it Die-nasty) makes me sick! Luckily I feel that n.o.body else will know any more than I do. I'm coming to Egypt for a rest-cure, because I don't have to learn its history. But some lecturers won't let me have a minute's peace. A king named Sneferu couldn't expect to appeal to a man like me, even if he did build the oldest Pyramid, and even if you could show me his mummy, which you can't. But I draw the line at kings without mummies. I don't want to know them. Now, my wife is against mummies on show. She's heard that the malignance of mummies, especially in museums, is incredible. And she thinks it a judgment that some of the most distinguished ones are going bad. She says it's spite. I say its management. But I'm not ready to sit down yet! My wife means to start a society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Mummies, with the object of sending them back to their tombs where they can rest in that state of death it pleased their G.o.ds to call them to. Their object was eternal privacy, and they spent more on their tombs than their houses, because they expected to be dead a long tune, and wanted all the comforts of home. But I judge mummies by myself. It wouldn't have taken me these thousands of years to realize how narrow and un-christian my notions had been. I should see that I owed some duty to the world; and as so much posterity had rolled by since my day, I'd feel that lying in a museum at some large place like Cairo, was, after all, the only way to keep my name before the public. Now, that brings me to my tip for Lord Ernest. He asks what there is we don't know, and want to know.

I'll answer for us all, being used to feel the pulse of crowds. We want to know what the deuce Ancient Egyptians really believed about death and religion. Had they any sense, or were they just plain fools?"

On the tide of applause which congratulated the boat's only baronet, I rose. I felt that I was on the crest of the wave; for the ancient religion of Egypt appeals to me; and as I now had reason to hope that others were comfortably ignorant of my subject I could spread myself as much as I pleased.

"The Ancient Egyptians were far from being fools," I answered Sir John with the air of being in their confidence. "We who are tempted to think so, don't take the trouble to try the key of their Faith in its door. I might say that its door was the door of the Tomb. If we go through that door into the Kingdom of Osiris, Amenti, which the Greeks renamed Hades, the mysteries which appear tangled sort themselves graciously out. The story of Isis the Great Enchantress, and her search for the body of her husband Osiris, murdered by Set, his wicked and jealous brother, Spirit of Evil, is perhaps the most lovable legend of the world. But in hearing that Horus, the son of Isis, was really the same G.o.d as Osiris, modern ideas begin to get mixed, and confuse themselves over Isis, G.o.ddess of love and goodness, cow-headed Hathor, mistress of love and joy, cat-headed Pasht and lioness-headed Sekhet, G.o.ddesses of love and pa.s.sion. There's hawk-headed Horus, the youth, too; and Horus the child, represented in statues with his thumb in his mouth. How is one to make sense of them all? But once you have the key, it is easy and even beautiful. The esoteric or secret religion known to the high priests and the instructed ones was different from the animal-worship and adoration of bird-headed deities, which gave the common people such interest in daily life. They would have been lost without their monsters; and the priests would have been lost without the temples necessary for the worship of such a menagerie. For Egypt was a priest-ridden country in old days. The explanation of the many G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses was this: each was a different phase of the one G.o.d, R, the Sun, by whom and through whom only the world could exist. Animals and birds were chosen to express the different phases, because animals were considered to be nearer nature, therefore nearer G.o.d than human beings; besides, to give a G.o.d the head of a man would not set him apart from humanity, as it would to make him appear with the body of a man and the head of some bird or beast. Horus, finished off with the head of a hawk (that sacred bird who could look the sun in the face), became to the uneducated eye a supernatural being, which he would not have been with the face of a smiling youth. The child Horus, or Harpocrates, was not respected as was Horus of the Hawk Head. He was merely petted and loved. Even Set, G.o.d of evil, wasn't all bad. He was the Spirit of Storm and Strife in Nature, and had to be propitiated by the ignorant.

Typhon, or Typhoon, and he were one. Red was his colour, and red-haired people were his children. There were a hundred phases of the one G.o.d, each made incarnate, given his own mission, and worshipped in a different place. It's an ill wind (of Set) that blows n.o.body good, and animals had a gorgeous time in those days. Very few weren't sacred for some reason or other. It was death and destruction to kill a cat. And I don't think that cats have forgotten to this day the importance they had in Egypt. It's made them the most supercilious of animals.

"If Amon-R were angry he could become Menthu, the war G.o.d. If he were inclined to be gentle, he could shrink to the dimensions of Horus, child-G.o.d of the Rising Sun. If he were weary, he could rest as the old G.o.d Tum, of the Setting Sun. Probably G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses never enjoyed themselves so much as in Ancient Egypt; and though it does seem a drawback from our artistic point of view for Hathor to have the head or ears of a cow, for wise Thoth to have the long beak of an ibis, and so on, it was for them only an amusing kind of masquerade or 'tete' party, on the walls of the temples and tombs. At home, they could be what they liked. Think how interesting for the Egyptians to have all these queer G.o.ds, and what variety it gave to their lives. Perhaps the priests really meant well in keeping the secret of the One G.o.d for themselves and the kings, as the people weren't fitted to bear its solemnity.

Fancy how amusing it was for the children to be told, on silver-bright nights, about Khonsu, G.o.d of the moon, always young, wearing the curled lock of youth on his brow--who staked five nights of his light playing draughts with Thoth, father of Magic. But he had a more serious phase, for when he was not a gambler he was an Expeller of Demons, a most popular accomplishment. Indeed, almost every G.o.d had several thriving businesses, conducted under different aliases. Khnum the Creator, dweller at the Cataracts, is my favourite, and is still busy, as he looks after the rise and fall of the river. Hekt, G.o.ddess of birth, was a pal of his, in spite of her appalling ugliness; and she used to kneel by his potter's wheel. While he fashioned the clay she would hold the Sign of Life, so that spirit might enter into the formed body when Khnum got it to the right state. For very important babies, royal ones or geniuses, she held a Sign of Life in each hand, which made them extraordinarily vital. When you arrive in Egypt, the first thing you'll be asked to buy will be the Sign, or Key of Life, in the shape of paper knives or brooches or what not, and it will be pointed out to you in tombs till you're tired and sick of it. You can buy Hekt, too, and funny old Bes, nurse-G.o.ddess of children, quite the golliwog of her day; and all the other G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses will be offered to you, to say nothing of the kings who were ent.i.tled to worship themselves as G.o.ds if they wanted to.

"It's easy, you see, to make fun of the ancient religion, and other nations did make fun of it. But to be serious, the priests were nearer right than it would seem; for they believed that G.o.d was All: that there was nothing in this or any Universe which was not part of G.o.d."

That note was my highest, and I stopped on it. Besides, I could think of nothing more to say. I ventured to sit down; and because the people were glad to hear the last of me, or because I had helped them finish their almonds and raisins, they applauded. Secretly I shook hands with myself, as the monkey must have done, when, with the catspaw, he had pulled the hot chestnuts out of the fire. I had carefully selected my chestnuts--and waited till they were cool. Also, I had disappointed Colonel Corkran.

CHAPTER IX

WHAT HAPPENED WHEN MY BACK WAS TURNED

Three letters for me, brought out by the pilot! One I had expected from Anthony; but my heart gave a bound as I recognized Brigit's handwriting, not seen for years; and instinct told me that the third was from Monny Gilder.

My one thought for the last two days, steaming back from the Piraeus to Alexandria, had been that I was drawing nearer to Cairo, and to those whose doings in my absence pulled at my curiosity and keyed my interest to breaking point. But if you think that I tore open those envelopes and greedily absorbed their contents the moment they were put into my hands, you have never been a conductor or even an observant pa.s.senger on a "pleasure yacht." When the letters arrived I was engaged in persuading breakfast-lingerers (they of the eggs-and-bacon habit, who ought never to leave their peaceful English homes) that it would give them more real pleasure to be first in the sh.o.r.e boats than last at the table. Then to get them into the boats; then to hypnotize Lady Biddell and Mrs. Harlow into the belief that they would not, could not, be seasick on the dancing waves which bobbed us up and down. No time to think of the letters; much less to feel the strangeness of fate which brought me back in such queer circ.u.mstances to the port I had entered on the _Laconia_ eight days ago.

"As soon as we get on sh.o.r.e," I soothed my gnawing impatience, "I'll steal a minute somehow." But each moment was so conspicuously labelled that I could not be a thief of time--my time, which was my charges'

time, bought and paid for by Sir Marcus Lark.

This was not the first occasion on which I'd heard the clanking of my chains, for, although I flattered myself that I was a popular success, popularity had penalties. On the night of the lecture I had used the pa.s.sengers. Since then they had used me. Old ladies appealed to me on questions of etiquette, health or religion, and retailed my answers, not always correctly. Girls asked my advice about keeping up flirtations, and men wanted my help in getting out of them. I was expected to spout pages of Strabo or Pliny at an instant's notice; I must know why Plato went to Egypt, or how long he stayed; and be umpire between American and British bridge-players. I must be able to explain the true meaning and age of the Sphinx; invent new deck games; and show those who hadn't learned, how to dance the Tango. But with those three letters burning over my heart the duties of conductor became infuriating.

It was an awful day; for what was Pompey's Pillar to me while I remained ignorant of my friends' adventures? As I discoursed (more or less) learnedly about Diocletian, and Ptolemy's plot to drown Pompey in the Nile, something inside was asking, "Has Anthony fallen in love with Monny Gilder?" "What sc.r.a.pes has that blessed girl got into?" "Has anything happened to worry Biddy?" Even that nameless but incomparable tomb on the hill of Kom esh-Shukafa could not distract my thoughts from the sealed envelopes; and three very modern handwritings came obstinately between my eyes and the matchless wall-paintings--paintings as fresh in their underground hiding-place as if finished yesterday instead of in days when it was dowdy to be pagan, fashionable to be Christian.

Corkran, as a soldier, had to guide a band to Aboukir, and chat about Nelson; point out the medieval fort of Kait Bey, and dash with hired motors to Adjemi, where Napoleon landed. Kruger took a few studious pilgrims to that unspoiled Oriental Nile town where the Rosetta Stone gave the secrets of Ancient Egypt to the world. It was mine to pilot the "frivolous lot"; to escort them in carriages round the Italian-looking city when they had absorbed its two chief sights; to give them a glimpse of the Museum, and to let them see the beauty and fashion of Alexandria driving out to San Stefano in the late afternoon. Still I had no chance to read my letters; but, thought I at the hotel, "Now at last, it has come!" Not at all! People's trunks were missing, or in the wrong rooms. It was I who had to sooth alarms, and calm rising storms.

It was I who must a.s.sure Mrs. Harlow that her room was really preferable to that of Lady Biddell; and Lady Biddell that she, and not Miss Ha.s.sett-Bean, had the best in the hotel. Still, I had ten minutes to dress for dinner. Like Mr. Gladstone, I could do it in five, and have five left for my letters. But hardly had I slipped a paper knife under the flap of Monny's envelope (I should have felt a vandal to tear it) when one of the hotel managers knocked at my door. A gentleman was being very angry in the dining-room. He insisted on seeing me. He said he had been Lord Mayor of London, and ought to have a window-table. All these were previously engaged. What was to be done? Would I kindly come at once?

I persuaded Sir John that window-tables were the least desirable, owing to draughts, and returning to my room, had four minutes to dress or risk further rows. After dinner Miss Ha.s.sett-Bean burst into tears because she was alone in the world owing to the marmoset's death from seasickness; and now that she was growing old n.o.body cared to talk to her. I argued that people were shy because she was more important than they, and had a reputation for satire. It took half an hour for the lady's nose to go from red to pink (I think she had papier poudre in her handkerchief); and then I was obliged to walk on the beach with Miss Enid Biddell to keep Mr. Watts from proposing. As Snell relieved me from sentry duty, I was called by Kruger to discuss certain details of next morning's start for Cairo; and at midnight, when I crawled to my room a shattered wreck, the letters were still unread.

"I'm incapable of caring now," I groaned, "what has happened to any of them. If an earthquake has swallowed up our mountain, and Anthony's married Monny, and Brigit's been abducted, or vice versa, and Miss Guest has gone off with the jewels, it will leave me calm."

That was the spirit in which I tossed up a coin to see which letter to read first. Heads, Monny's; tails, Anthony's; but the penny rolled away, far under the bed where collar-b.u.t.tons go, and so--I opened Biddy's. She began:

MY DEAR GOOD DUFFER!

For any sake hurry back. Make an excuse to leave your pilgrims the minute you get this, and take the first train to Cairo. Surely the late conductor can be your understudy, and trot the people round Alexandria for a day? We need you more than they do. I picture you reading this early in the morning, with Alexandria still in the distance; for you said you'd arrange to have letters come out to the yacht by the pilot.

I shall expect a telegram saying by what train you'll arrive here in the afternoon. You'll understand when I've told you everything, why it's _necessary_ for you to hurry.

We have done and seen so many things, it seems years instead of days since you left us in care of that handsome Hadji of yours. I wonder if really you didn't suspect that I guessed who he was; or _did_ you suspect; and didn't care? I caught the look in your eyes, when you first saw him standing under the terrace at Shepheard's, and then, when the name "Antoun Effendi" came up in the conversation, I put two and two together. Mrs. East guesses, also. I don't know if she did from the first, but she does now. It isn't a question of "guessing" with either of us, really. It's a certainty. Not that she's said anything to me or I to her. That is the malady of us all since you went. We are boiling with secret thoughts, and keeping them to ourselves, which is bad for us and for each other in the long run. I haven't told Monny that the "Egyptian Prince," as Rachel Guest has nicknamed him, is your friend Captain Anthony Fenton playing some deep game, partly connected with us, partly connected with a secret of his and yours; the secret you said was a "dusty" one in which women would not be interested. I haven't told her, because I don't want her to know. She is always talking and thinking about him, and is vexed with herself for doing so.

She tries to stop, but can't. If she knew who he was, she wouldn't try to stop. She'd let herself go, and feel she was living in a beautiful romance. So she is living in a romance, but I want you to be the hero of it, not your Anthony Fenton. That's why I don't open her eyes to the game that's going on. The man is a perfect devil. Not a bad devil, but a wild devil.

Mrs. East doesn't tell Monny that Antoun is "Anthony with an h" because she is enjoying the thought that she alone knows the wonderful truth.

She imagines that she is in love with him. She believes Fate has brought them together--that he is a "reincarnation," as she is, and that they ought to belong to each other. Well, let them! She isn't more than six or seven years older than he, and she's rich (though poor compared to Monny, of course), and every day she grows handsomer. So does Monny. As for Rachel Guest--but she is in another part of my story. Yet no, come to think of it, I'll bring her in now, because if it weren't for developments concerning that young woman, I might be able to wait one more day without begging you to come to us. She is taking Monny away from me; and something odd is going on, I can't make out what. Anyhow, that horrid Bedr el Gemaly is in it. And there's to be a climax, I'm sure, to-morrow night. You'll get this letter to-morrow morning, for I'm writing it early, with my hair down my back, and my coffee not ordered, though I'm starving. We've left Shepheard's because Monny wanted to live for a few days in a hotel close to the Nile; and we were all pleased with the plan, for this was once a palace of Khedive Ismael, and his furniture's still in it, the wildest mixture of Orientalized French taste. There's a garden, with paths of vermilion sand brought from somewhere in the desert. But the most convulsive things live along the Nile Valley and spend their nights braying, hooting, cooing, whining, bellowing, and barking. If only the donkeys and dogs and birds and a few other sacred animals of Egypt would be a little more reticent, especially after dark, the country would be faultless. But what with worrying myself, and listening to furred and feathered creatures worrying themselves, I couldn't sleep last night, and I want you to help me! You'll be here to-morrow afternoon, and I shall stay in to receive you instead of going to the bazaars with the others, chaperoned by that dark-eyed devil of yours, "Antoun." I was there all yesterday, watching crowds of tourists buy beautiful expensive things for themselves, and horrid inexpensive things to take to their friends. Cleopatra purchased some disgracefully cheap pearls no self-respecting _mummy_ would be seen in; and my prophetic soul tells me that she's going to try and dissolve them in wine.

There's to be a fancy dress ball at this hotel to-morrow night--or rather in the adjacent Casino, which is one reason we migrated here; and praise the saints you'll be in time for it because if anything's going to happen, you'll be able to stop whatever it is. If I were supposed to know that Antoun was Anthony Fenton, I might take him into my counsels. As it is, I can't. And anyhow, it wouldn't do much good, at present, because a silent duel is going on between him and Monny. He is bent on compelling her to acknowledge his authority. She is bent on resisting it--which is a great compliment to his power--but he doesn't know that, for he doesn't know Monny yet. It would be fun to watch them together, if I hadn't your interests to think of.

He hasn't got rid of Bedr el Gemaly; but he would have done so, I'm sure, if it hadn't been for an unexpected turn of the wheel, by the hand of Fate in the person of Rachel Guest. Her hand is never _off_ the wheel just now! The few days since you have been away have brought out the true inwardness of her. _Felis Domestica_ with very little _Domestica!_ Perhaps it's the air of Egypt which is having a really extraordinary effect on all of us; perhaps it's the fact that Monny has given Rachel a lot of lovely clothes which have rejuvenated and apparently revitalized her. But you will see for yourself, and talk things over with Your old friend, Biddy.

This was a nice letter to read, heaven knew how many hours too late!

My fatigue had slipped off like the skin off a grape. I felt energetic enough to start out and walk to Cairo. What could be in Biddy's mind?

And what must she have thought when afternoon and evening pa.s.sed without even a telegram? The evening paper, if she had happened to look, would have told her that the _Candace_ had reached Alexandria in the morning, as she expected; and she could neither have guessed nor believed that the whole day would pa.s.s without my having a chance to read her letter. I ransacked the writing-table drawers for a telegraph form; and finding one had begun to address it, when I stopped. The message could not go out until morning. Meanwhile there were Monny's and Anthony's letters to read. One or both might give me some clue to the "climax" Biddy feared for to-night at the ball. I cut open Monny's envelope, which had on it an alluring sunset picture of the Pyramids and the name of the hotel. Hastily I ran through the pages. Not a hint of anything disquieting! If I had read her letter instead of Brigit's I might have gone to my well-earned rest without a qualm.

"Dear Lord Ernest," Miss Gilder addressed me, in a handwriting which to any "expert" would reveal some originality, more pride, still more conscientiousness, any amount of self-will, and singularly little conceit. An odd combination! But the Gilded Rose is that. She went on:

You asked me to write to you while you were away, and tell you the news, and what I thought about things. But I'm thinking so much and so fast that I can't sort out my thoughts. I suppose it must be so with every one who comes to Egypt for the first time. Everything fascinates and absorbs me, even more than I had hoped it would--almost too much, I feel sometimes. Your Antoun Effendi is a very good guide, and I am not sorry that we have him--except once in a while. And now and then I'm glad. We're proud of his looks when we go about, for every one stares at him and envies us for having him to take us about, instead of being condemned to a mere dragoman. Oh, talking of dragomen (you see I _will_ call them that!), we still have Bedr, though I know you thought we ought to give him up, and I don't see how we are ever to discharge him now, for he has attached himself to Rachel G. in the most wonderful way. It is _pathetic_. It began with a talk they had the day you left, about his having been in America, and about _religion_. She found him half inclined to be converted, and of course, her goodness and unselfishness made her long to s.n.a.t.c.h him like a brand from the burning. He thinks no one ever talked so wonderfully about religion as she does, which she, dear thing, attributes to the fact that she taught Sunday-school in Salem. She says, if she can have him to work upon even for a few weeks, she is sure to make him a convert.

We haven't wasted a minute since you went away, but have seen sights from morning till night, so as not to have missed anything when we leave Cairo on the _Enchantress Isis_. I hope you'll be pleased that I've given up my dream of having a private dahabeah, and that we shall be with you on Sir Marcus Lark's boat. She is really a beauty. Antoun took us over her, and on board we met Sir Marcus, who was showing some friends round. Antoun introduced him to us. I think Sir M. asked him to do it. We had great fun, for Sir Marcus seemed to take the most violent fancy to Aunt Clara, who didn't like him at all. She says now that she believes when she was Cleopatra he was Caesar, and that it's a pity he can't wear a wreath to hide his baldness, as she remembers his doing then. It's only a _very_ little bald spot, really, and Rachel Guest says it reminds her of a tonsure on the head of a fine-looking monk.