It Happened in Egypt Part 15

"If we're to meet them between nine and ten at the Sphinx," said Monny briskly, "don't you think, Lord Ernest, you'd better hurry and get your people off, so we can set out ourselves?"

"I'm going," I a.s.sured her. "But I thought we planned to give them a long start, in hopes that they might be ready to come back by the time we arrived?"

"Oh, well," she said, "that will make it very late, won't it, and we may miss Aunt Clara? Anyhow, lots of other creatures just as bad as yours will be there, for we can't engage the desert like a private sitting-room."

That settled it. I dashed downstairs and sorted out my charges. They had got themselves up in all kinds of costumes, for this "act." One man had on a folding opera-hat, which he had thought just the right thing for Egypt, as it was so easy to pack! Girls in evening dress; men young and old in helmets and straw hats, ancient maidens, and fat married ladies, in dust cloaks or ball gowns, climbed or leaped or scrambled onto camels, with shrieks of joy or moans of horror: or else they tumbled onto donkeys which bounded away before the riders were well on their backs. And men, women, and animals were shouting, giggling, groaning, gabbling, snarling, and squeaking; an extraordinary procession to pay honour to the Pyramids and the lonely Sphinx.

We of the roof-party considered ourselves, figuratively speaking, above camels, far above donkeys, and scornful of motor-cars, in which it was irreverent to charge up to the Great Pyramid as if to the door of a cafe. We walked, and Monny still lent herself to me; but she no longer bubbled over with delight at everything. A subdued mood was upon her, and her eyes looked sad, even anxious, in the translucent light which was not so much like earthly moonlight as the beginning of sunrise in some far, magic dreamland. She had the pathetic air of a spoiled child who begins suddenly, if only vaguely, to realize that it cannot have everything it wants in the world. And she merely smiled when I told her how, to insure the peace of the desert, I had offered a prize of a large blue scarab as big as a paperweight, for that member of the Set who did not even say "Oh!" to the Sphinx. "Antoun" had "vetted" the alleged scarab and p.r.o.nounced it a modern forgery; but n.o.body else knew that, and as a prize it was popular.

The sky had that clear pale blue of dawn, when day first realizes that, though born of night, it is no longer night. Ca.s.seopeia's Chair and Orion were being tossed about the burning heavens like golden furniture out of a house on fire; and one great star-jewel had fallen on the apex of cruel Khufu's Pyramid. I should have liked to believe it was Sirius, the "lucky" star sacred to Isis and Hathor; but Monny's schoolgirl knowledge of astronomy bereft me of that innocent pleasure. No wonder that the ancient Egyptians, with such jewels in their blue treasure-house, were famous astrologers and astronomers before the days when Rameses' daughter found Moses in the bulrushes of Roda Island!

The stars spoke to us as we walked, soft-footed, through the sand; and the pure wind of the desert spoke other words of the same language, the language of the Universe and of Nature. Here and there yellow lights in a distant camp flashed out like fireflies; far away across the billowing sands, rocks bleached like bone gave an effect of surf on an unseen sh.o.r.e; now and then a silent, swift-moving Arab stealing out of shadow, might have been the White Woman who haunts the Sphinx, hurrying to a fatal tryst: and the Great Pyramid seemed to float between desert sand and cloudless sky like the golden palace of Aladdin being transported through air by the Geni of the Lamp. There never was such gold as this gold of sand and pyramids, under the moon! We said that it was like condensed sun rays, so vivid, so bright, that the moon could not steal its colour. Cloudlike white figures were running up Khufu's geometric mountain; Arabs expecting money when they should come leaping down, whole or in pieces. And the khaki uniforms of British soldiers mounting or descending for their own stolid amus.e.m.e.nt, made the Pyramid itself seem to be writhing, so like was the colour of the cloth to that of the stone. No use being angry because the monument was crawling with Tommies! The Pyramids were as much theirs as ours. And probably Napoleon's soldiers spent their moonlit evenings in the same way; a thought which somehow made the thing seem less intolerable.

We climbed to the vast platform of the Ghizeh Pyramids, and then plunged into the billows of the desert, in quest of the Sphinx. Sir Marcus was ent.i.tled to call himself the pioneer, but we needed no one to show us the way. It was but too clearly indicated by the bands of pilgrims, going or returning. And among the latter were those whom Monny callously referred to as "poor Lord Ernest's crowd." Miss Ha.s.sett-Bean and the Biddell girls made us linger, with sand trickling over the tops of our shoes, while they poured into our ears their impressions of the Sphinx. Miss H. B. thought that She (with a capital S) was a combination of G.o.ddess, Prophetess, and Mystery. Enid thought she was like an Irish washerwoman making a face; and Elaine said she was the image of their bulldog at home. Monny (after a sandy introduction) listened to these verbal vandalisms in horrified silence.

I could see that she was exerting herself, for my sake, to be civil to my charges (who were more interested in her than they had been in the Sphinx), and that, if she could have done so without hurting their feelings, she would have struck them dead. But my fears that their mental suggestions might obsess her were baseless. She did not speak when the golden billows parted to give us a first vision of the great Mystery of the Desert. I had led Monny by a roundabout way, and instead of seeing the Sphinx from the back, we came upon her face to face, as she gazed with her wonderful, all-knowing eyes, straight into that world beyond knowledge which lies somewhere east of the moon. Veiled by the night in silver and blue, with a proud lift of the head, she faced past and future, which were one for her, and the present, nothing. The moon gave back for a few hours all her lost loveliness, of which men had robbed her, seeming miraculously to restore the broken features, whole and beautiful as they had been in her youth before history began.

It was as if in the moon's rays were silver hands, mending the marred majesty, giving life to the eyes and to the haunting, secret smile. I thought of the story of King Harmachis: how he dreamed that the Sphinx came to him, saying that the sand pressed upon her, and she could not breathe. n.o.body since his day had for long left her buried!

"What does it mean to you?" I broke the silence to ask.

"I don't know," Monny said. "All I know is that she's more wonderful than I expected, and as beautiful as the loveliest marble Venus of Italy, though a thousand times greater--if one perfect thing can be greater than another. She's so great that I don't think she can be meant to be a woman--or even a man. She is like a _soul_ carved in stone."

"All in a moment you have guessed the riddle!" I exclaimed, liking and understanding the girl better than I had liked or understood her yet.

"I believe that's the secret of the Sphinx. The king who had this stupendous idea, and caused it to be carried out, said to some inspired sculptor, 'Make for me from the rock of the desert, a portrait, not of me as I am seen by men, in my mortal part or Khat, for that can be placed elsewhere; but an image of my real self, my soul or Ka, looking past the small things of this world into eternity, which lies beyond this desert and all deserts.' Then the sculptor made the Sphinx, and gave it such grandeur, such mystery of countenance that instinctively the souls of people recognized the _soul look_. You have a soul, and it told you the secret. Only those who have no souls find the Sphinx heavy or hideous, or utterly beyond their comprehension."

"Have I a soul?" Monny asked, dreamily. "Men I've known have told me I haven't. Yet sometimes I've thought I felt it fluttering. And if I have a soul, I shall find it in Egypt. Oh, I shall! Something--yes, the Sphinx herself!--tells me that."

I was tempted to ask "What about a heart?" And then--in a violent hurry, before anybody came--to mention my own, into which the moon seemed pouring a little of the honey it had brought for the Sphinx. I did feel that some one owed a moonlight proposal under the Sphinx's nose (or the place where its nose had been) to such a girl as Monny.

Her Egyptian experience could never be perfect and complete unless she were proposed to on the night of the full moon, with the Sphinx's blessing; and as no better man was here to do it, I could not be thought conceited if I took the duty upon myself. Besides, Brigit would so thoroughly approve!

"Look here, Biddy, I mean Monny," I began hastily, "there's something I want to tell you, something very important you ought to know, because matters can't go on much longer as they are--"

"Is it something about 'Antoun'?" she broke in, with a little gasp, as I paused for breath and courage. "If it is, maybe I know it already!"

Extraordinary, the relief I felt! I ought to have suffered a shock of disappointment, because I couldn't possibly finish a proposal after such an interruption. But instead, my spirits went up with a bound.

Probably, however, that was because her hint was a whip to my curiosity. "_What_ do you know about 'Antoun'?" I asked.

Perhaps I forgot to lower my voice; or perhaps voices carry far across desert-s.p.a.ces, as across water. Anyhow the clear tones of Cleopatra answered like an echo. "Antoun--Antoun! I hear Lord Ernest calling."

Biddy--dear little matchmaking Biddy--had managed Sir Marcus, Bill Bailey and Rachel, as a circus rider manages three spirited white horses at one time. The desert was her ring, and she had reined her steeds to her will, keeping them out of my way and Monny's at all costs, no matter whether they saw the Sphinx in back view or noseless profile. But Mrs. East's princ.i.p.al occupation in life was not to get me engaged to the Gilded Rose. And either she lost her presence of mind, or else she was not so much enjoying her moonlight tete-a-tete with Fenton, that it was worth while to hide from us behind a sand dune.

The two emerged from a gulf of shadow, Anthony very splendid under the moon, a true man of the desert. I thought I heard Monny draw in a little sharp breath as she saw that n.o.ble incarnation of Egypt (so he must have seemed, unless she knew the British reality of him) walking beside Cleopatra.

Then up came the others, Sir Marcus impossible to restrain; and we all talked together as people are expected to talk when they have come thousands of miles to see these monuments of Egypt. Yes, yes!

Wonderful--incredible! Which do you find more impressive, the Sphinx or the Pyramids? Isn't it a pity they let the temple between the paws remain buried? And aren't the Pyramids just like t.i.tanic, golden beehives? And can't you simply _see_ the swarming builders, like bees themselves, working for twenty years?

Thus we jabbered; and others, many others, appeared to dispute the scene with us, to break the magic of the moonlight, and to puncture the vast silence of the desert with their cooings and gurglings and chatterings in German, English, Arabic, and every other language known since the Tower of Babel. Arab guides lit up the Sphinx with flaring magnesium, an impertinence that should have made hideous with hate the insulted features, but instead turned them for a thrilling instant of suspense into marble. Indeed, none of our petty vulgarities could jar or even fret the majestic calm of the desert and the stone Mystery among its billows. The Sphinx gazed above and past us all. She was like some royal captive surrounded by a rabble mob, yet as undisturbed in soul as though her puny, hooting tormentors had no existence. It was not so much that she scorned us, as that she did not know we were there.

When we sorted ourselves out, to escape Sir Marcus, Cleopatra deigned to make use of me, having first observed (with burning interest) that Monny and Rachel were with Bailey, and that "Antoun" was pointing things out to Brigit O'Brien, as it is Man's metier (in pictures and advertis.e.m.e.nts) to point things out to Woman.

"It's been a wonderful evening," Mrs. East said. "It has made up for everything I suffered last night. We brought dinner out into the desert, in that smallest tea-basket, you know, and ate it together, he and I--Antony and I. There! I may as well confess that's what I call him to myself, for I've guessed your secret--and his. But don't be afraid. I won't tell a soul. It's too romantic and fascinating for words--or to put into words. He let me have my fortune told by an Arab sand diviner, who came while we were at dinner. I can't repeat to you what the fortune-teller said. But I feel as if I were living in a book.

Oh, if only I were writing it myself and could make everything happen just as I want it to happen! Do you know one thing I would put into the story?"

"No, I can't think," I said, rather anxiously.

"I would have _you_ propose to Monny."

"Oh--by Jove, Mrs. East!"

"Why--don't you admire her?"

"But of course. She's irresistible. Only she's so horribly rich. And besides, she doesn't think of me in that way."

"You can't be sure. Now, Lord Ernest, I'm going to whisper you a secret. I believe--I really do--that Monny would be _glad_ if you'd propose. If I were in your place, if I _liked_ her, I would do so as soon as possible. It might save her from humiliation--from a great trouble."

Being a duffer, I could only say once again, "By Jove!"

CHAPTER XIII

AN UNDERGROUND PROPOSAL

I didn't sleep much that night, for thinking of Monny; and when I did sleep, I dreamed of her; tangled dreams, in which she was Monny Gilder with Brigit O'Brien's eyes. Could it be possible that she liked me?

Mrs. East ought to know. I made up my mind that to-morrow I would begin by feeling my way, but when to-morrow came I had no time to feel anything which concerned my private affairs.

It seemed, or so I was told "for my own good" by Miss Ha.s.sett-Bean, that the Candace people thought it "sn.o.bby" for me to have indulged in a private dinner-party, and to have hustled them off in a drove to the Sphinx while I went leisurely with my smart friends. They knew all about the feast on the roof, and were of opinion that they ought to have been there. Did I consider my American heiress better than they, better even than the family of an ex-Lord Mayor? If I wished to make up lost ground, I must devote myself to duty, and be nicer than ever to everybody.

This was one of the moments when I was tempted to throw over my job; but I remembered the reward, and set myself once more to the earning of it. For the next few days I scarcely saw Monny or Brigit, or even heard what was happening to them--for they had "done" the princ.i.p.al sights of Cairo, and I (at the head of the _Candace_ crowd) was "doing" them. As if in a game of "Follow my Leader," I led the band from mosque to mosque; not indeed visiting the whole two hundred and sixty-four, but calling on the best ones. To begin with, I collected the Set on the height of the Citadel, which commands all Cairo, the platform of the Pyramids (not only the Ghizeh Pyramids but the sixty odd others, which newcomers don't talk about): the tawny Mokattam Hills, and the silver-blue serpent of the Nile. From this vantage place I pointed out the things we had to see in the city spread out below us, so that on the vaguest minds the picture might be painted in its entirety, before they began to absorb details on that mosaic map which was Cairo. The tombs of the Mamelukes, strangely shaped monuments, vague and white as squatting ghosts; the graves of the Caliphs; the historic gates of el-Kahira; and the many ancient mosques, whose minarets soared against the blue like tall-stemmed flowers in a palace garden.

Mentally fortified by this bird's-eye view from the Citadel (of course, I had to trot them up again for the sunset), my charges let themselves be led from mosque to mosque, from tomb to tomb. Some, possessed with a demoniac desire to get their money's worth of Egypt, were unable to enjoy any sight, in their nervous dread of missing some other spectacle, which people at home might ask them about. These strained their wearied intelligences to see more than they possibly could at any one moment, unless they had eyes all round their heads; and others, of an even more irritating type, never lifted the few eyes they had from the pages of guide-books. I liked better those who, like Monny, frankly said that they didn't wish to have their minds tidied up, and be told a string of things about Egypt. They just wanted to _feel_ the things, and let them slowly soak in. And the nice, lazy, Southern Americans, who said they were "tomb shy," and loitered about, betting from one to six scarabs on the speed of fleas, or donkeys, while I whipped forth for their tired companions a dull drove of facts fattened for their benefit.

Mosques and churches and tombs had to be visited, but did not appeal to all tastes. The Bazaars did. So did the Zoo, more fascinating than any other zoo, because each animal has its trick, or pet, or plaything.

As an excuse to see Monny and the rest of my friends, I got up a moonlight digging expedition at Fustat, those great mounds of rubbish and buried treasure near Egyptian Babylon where a city was burnt lest it should fall into the hands of the Crusaders. Monny and her party were invited to join us, and accepted the invitation, piloted by "Antoun." And concerning this entertainment, I had an idea. Those who choose to dig among these desert-like sandhills, between the Coptic churches of Babylon and the tombs of the Mamelukes, may chance on something of value, especially after a windstorm or a landslip: bits of Persian pottery, fragments of iridescent gla.s.s, broken bracelets of enamel, opaline beads, or tiny G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses. Why should I not (thought I) apportion off to each member of the band his or her own digging patch? This would save squabbling, and would provide an opportunity for me to propose in a unique way to Monny.

Regarding the idea as an inspiration, I carried it out scientifically.

Helped by Anthony, after the sun had set and the mounds were deserted, I staked out the most promising "claims," and marked each s.p.a.ce with the name of the "miner" for whom I intended it. In Monny's patch, near the surface where she could not possibly miss it, I buried a letter wrapped round a cow-eared head of Hathor which I had bought at the Egyptian Museum-shop. Now, in justice to myself, I must tell you that this letter was no common letter, such as any Tom, d.i.c.k, or Harry may write to the Mary Jane Smith of the moment. It was a missive which cost me midnight electricity and brain-strain; for not only must I appeal to my lady, I must also suit an environment.

Monny had taken up the study of hieroglyphics, in order to appreciate intelligently the tombs and temples of the Nile. She had bought books, and was learning with the energy of a stenographer, to write and read.

She wrote out exercises, and submitted them for correction to "Antoun"

who, as an Egyptian, was to be considered an authority. "Of course,"

she explained to me, "one comes here thinking that all Egyptians nowadays, even Copts, are Arabs. But _he_ says that Egyptians are as Egyptian as they ever were, because Arab invasion has left little more trace in their blood than the Romans left in the blood of the English.

It interests me _much_ more to feel when I'm in Egypt that I'm among real Egyptians."

With this in my mind, I was convinced that a love letter in hieroglyphics, unearthed by moonlight in the mounds of Fustat, would please Monny.