It Happened in Egypt Part 17

With a chastened, not to say shattered air, she curled herself up on the sheepskin-covered cushion which was the ugly Duckling's saddle.

This time it was "Antoun" who settled her into place, with her feet meekly crossed; and the caricature of a camel rose like a sofa at a spiritualistic seance. Strange to say, however, when all were ready to start, Monny appeared more comfortably lodged than any of the camel-riding ladies; and the thought entered my mind that perhaps Anthony had, with extreme subtlety, taken this roundabout way of benefitting Miss Gilder.

After this we got off with only a few minor mishaps. The one remaining incident of note was the arrival on the scene, as we left it, of another caravan--a small caravan consisting of two Europeans--a few laden camels, and camel-boys marshalled by one dragoman. The dragoman was Bedr el Gemaly, and he smiled at us as affectionately as though we had not driven him from us in disgrace.

"How forgiving Arabs are, even when they're not converted!" remarked Rachel Guest, by whose side I happened to be riding.

"He isn't an Arab," said I. "He's an Armenian. And both are supposed to be the reverse of forgiving. But he's found another job quickly, so he can afford to let bygones be bygones."

"Oh, he would _anyway_!" Miss Guest exclaimed, warmly. "Poor fellow, you've all done him a great injustice, but I'm thankful he's not going to suffer for it. I wonder if he and his people are bound the same way we are?"

I feared that this was likely to be the case, as we were going the conventional round, sticking--as one might say--to suburban desert, on our way to the Fayum. But, as Monny observed the other night, we couldn't engage the desert like a private sitting-room. I would, however, have preferred sharing it with most people rather than Bedr and his clients, though the two latter looked singularly harmless, almost Germanic.

We went on more or less happily, though I noticed that whenever a camel changed its walk for a trot, each one of the ladies reached back a desperate hand to clutch the saddle and save her spine from the bruising b.u.mp! b.u.mp! which smote the bone with every step. As for me, that feeling of middle age began to creep on while my coast-guard camel and I were getting acquainted. I tried to distract my thoughts from the end of my spine, by concentrating them in admiration upon the scene.

There was the Sphinx welcoming us with an immense smile of benevolence, as suitable to the sunshine as had been her mysterious solemnity to the moonlight. There, far away to the left, the spire-crowned Citadel floated in translucent azure. Its domes and minarets, and the long serrated line of the Mokattam Hills were carved against the sky in the yellow-rose of pink topaz. Shafts of light gave to jagged shapes and terraces of rock on the low mountains an appearance of temples and palaces, very n.o.ble and splendid, as must have been the first glimpse of Ancient Egypt to desert-worn fugitives from famine in Palestine.

Between us and the Nile, hiding the sparkling water as we rode, went a dark line of palms, purple, with glints of peac.o.c.k-feather green, in the distance. Hundreds of tiny birds flew up into the burning blue like a black spray, and the sand was patterned by their feet, in designs intricate as lace. Wherever lay a patch of white and yellow flowers or of rough gra.s.s no bigger than a prayer rug, a lark soared from its nest singing its jewel-song; and here and there a gentle hoopoo reared the crown which rewarded it for guiding lost King Solomon and his starving army to safety.

All this was beautiful; but I wondered painfully if Monny could be happy in spite of the b.u.mps, now that the desert was taking her.

Strange, how a disagreeable sensation constantly repeated at the end of a mere bone can change a man's outlook on life! If Monny had come to my camel-side and whispered, "I found your buried letter, oh, Men-Kheper-R.

Behold that bird now flying toward you. It is my Ba--my Heart or Soul-bird carrying the gift of my love:" I should with difficulty have prevented myself from snapping out, "Thanks very much; but, my good girl, I'm in no mood to talk tommy-rot."

It was sympathy, kind, friendly sympathy I yearned for, not spoken in words, but given from soft, sweet eyes, as little Biddy had given it when I tore my hands and barked my shins birds'-nesting on the rocks a hundred years ago.

I think we should have liked the excuse to stop and gaze at the ruinous Pyramids of Abusir; but the dragoman-guide supplied by Slaney urged us on to the great plateau of the Pyramids and Necropolis of Sakkara.

There, on the terrace of Marriette's House, we saw a crowd of Cook's tourists from Bedrachen, and I had some moments of guilty fear lest my Secret should leak out, as their dragoman rushed down and warmly greeted ours. But in the throes of rolling off their camels for the first time, the ever-wakeful suspicions of the Set were submerged under physical emotions. It's an ill camel that b.u.mps no one any good!

I was only too glad to lure my charges away from danger-zone; and luckily it was so early that the influential ones who never lunched until two "at home," gave the word, "Tombs before food." Girding up its aching loins, the procession allowed itself to be led by me and my dragoman down inclined planes into dark, mysteriously warm pa.s.sages where our lights were wandering red stars. Now and then a face would start suddenly out of the gloom, haloed with candle-light: and in this way, Biddy's flashed upon me, starry-eyed. "Oh, I'm glad to see you!"

she whispered. Bedr and his two tourists are here. I'm afraid!"

"My dear child," I said soothingly, but not as soothingly as if I hadn't had toothache in the spine, "you may be afraid of Bedr, but hardly of two stout Germans in check suits."

"Not if they _are_ Germans. But are they? Just now one of their candles almost collided with mine, and his eyes stared so! Then they looked over my head at Monny, who was behind me. And where she is now, heaven knows!"

"Nothing can happen to either of you here," I a.s.sured her. "And probably our fuss about Bedr is much ado about nothing. We have no evidence--"

"The man who stared at me over his candle has a scar on his forehead,"

said Biddy. "Maybe he got it in that row in front of the House of the Crocodile. Maybe he is Burke, and has just come out of the hospital."

"Most likely he is Schmidt, and adorned himself with the wound in a student duel," said I.

"It's too fresh-looking. He must be over thirty," she objected, but at that moment Miss Ha.s.sett-Bean loomed into sight; and in the stuffy atmosphere of the tomb felt the need of my arm to keep her from fainting.

We "did" the Pyramid of Unas, dilapidated without, secretively beautiful within. We went from tomb to tomb, lingering long in the labyrinthine Mansion of Mereruka who, ruddy and large as life, stepped hospitably down in statue-form from his stela recess, to welcome us in the name of himself and wife. Almost he seemed to wave his hands and say, "Look at these nice pictures of me and my family and our ways of life, painted on the walls--our servants, our dwarfs, our mountebanks and acrobats, our flocks and herds. Sorry there's no refreshment at present on my alabaster mastaba, or table of offerings, but you see I didn't prepare for visitors outside my own immediate circle of Ka's and Ba's. Still, as you _have_ come, make yourselves at home, and take pot luck. I think when you've examined everything, you'll admit that you haven't a Soul-House in Europe to touch mine which, if I do say it, is the best thing this side of Thebes."

Next came the Tomb of Thi; but by this time, mural representations of fish, flesh, and fruit began to be aggravating. It would be past two before we could reach our luncheon-tent; and somehow it seemed less desirable to feed after than before that sacred hour, though the custom be sanctioned by royalty. "Another tomb to see before lunch?" groaned Sir John Biddell, when the dragoman firmly insisted on the Apis Mausoleum. "Oh, darn! _Need_ we? What? Where they buried _Bulls_? I'd as soon see a slaughter house, on an empty stomach. Lady Biddell and I will go sit in the shadow of our camels."

And they did; nor would they believe the twins' a.s.sertions that the dark Mausoleum, with its cavernous rock chambers and granite vaults, was the most impressive thing they had seen in Egypt. "You say that to be aggravating, because we weren't there," I heard Lady Biddell snap, over the grumbling of the camels.

The sky blazed down and the sand blazed up. The desert was white-hot, with a silver whiteness hotter than gold, and the foreshortened shadows were turquoise blue. It was heaven to arrive at a miniature oasis, and see the open-fronted, awninged luncheon-tent reflected with its green frame of palms, in a clear lagoon, thoughtfully left by the receding Nile. At sight of this picture, my popularity went up with a bound. It really was a lovely vision: the big tent lined with Egyptian applique work in many colors, the porchlike roof extension supported by poles, and in its shadow a white table loaded with good things and guarded by Arab waiters waving beaded fly-whisks. As we lingered over our chicken-salad, fruit, and cool drinks, and lazily watched our camels munching bersim, all our first enthusiasm for these interesting beasts streamed back. The ladies called them poor dears, and sweet things; and the men marvelled at their calm endurance, or the number of their leg-joints.

Monny was gay and charming, and looked at me so kindly that I thought she must mean to give a favorable answer to the buried letter. I blessed Cleopatra for the "tip" she had given, though I wondered what was the "humiliation" from which I could save her niece. "After all,"

said I, "the desert trip's going to pan out a success." But it must have been about this time that the wind rose. It blew Miss Ha.s.sett-Bean's hat up instead of down, and other hats off, when we had started again--and it blew into our eyes grains of sand as large as able bodied paving-stones. Also, as we pa.s.sed through a picturesque mud-village which ought to have pleased everybody, it blew into our noses smells which Lady Biddell knew would give us plague. As if this were not enough, the sandcart nearly turned over in a rut, and Miss Ha.s.sett-Bean said that she must go home or be left to die in the desert. I had to lead the little stallion before she would consent to go on, and realized when I had ploughed through fifty yards of sand, that the manicured sn.o.b of a leader was a thin brown hero. By the time I had had a mile or two of this, the dark Pyramids of Dahshur were visible, and I knew that our camp was to be pitched not far beyond. My first emotion was pleasure; my second, panic.

What if Slaney had forgotten his promise to remove the Cook labels?

Since remounting Farag (only the coastguard camels had names; the baggage-beasts smelt as sweet without) Monny and I had been b.u.mping along side by side, and she had just said, "If I tell you something, you'll never breathe it to a soul, will you?" when I saw those Pyramids, and was smitten with the fear of Cook.

"Never!" I vowed, torn between the desire to hear her secret, and to dash ahead of the caravan into camp.

"It's about 'Antoun,'" Monny went on. "You know I said to you the other night, that perhaps I knew something about him?"

"Yes--er--oh, yes!"

We were within a few hundred yards of the Pyramids now. At any instant the camp might burst into sight.

"You don't look interested!"

"But I am, awfully!"

"You're _sure_ you won't tell?"

"_Dead_ sure."

(Was that a flag fluttering on the horizon?)

"Well, then--it isn't _my_ business, of course. But one can't help being interested in him, he's such a--such a romantic sort of figure, as you said yourself. And there's something so high and n.o.ble about him--I mean, about his looks and manners--that one hates to be disappointed."

"You _would_ have him with us, you know!"

"I know. And--and I'm glad I--we--_have_ got him. It's a--it's an experience. I suppose he's rather wonderful. But don't you think he ought to remember that he isn't _exactly_ a prince? He isn't even called Bey. And if he were, its not the same as being a prince of Ancient Egypt."

"In what way has he presumed on his--er--near--princehood?"

"I believe he has--fallen in love with Biddy!"

"By Jove! _Let_ the flag flutter!"

"What flag?"

"Oh--er--that was only an expression. They use it where I live. Why shouldn't he fall in love with Biddy, when you come to think of it?"

"He's of a darker race. Though--he does seem so like _us_. Of course she couldn't marry him. It wouldn't do. _Would_ it?"

"I don't know. I must think it over. Is that all you were going to tell me?"

"No. I suppose it's natural he should fall in love with Biddy. She's _so_ attractive! But the worst part about it is that he has _proposed_ to Aunt Clara."

"Not possible!"

"Yes. He has. I saw part of the letter--the first part. She's the only one of us who thinks it would be right to marry a man of Egyptian blood, because you know she believes she's Egyptian herself--and she's always talking about reincarnations. _I_ don't see that It's such a wonderful coincidence his name being 'Antoun.' It wouldn't be so bad if he were in love with her; but it's Biddy who is always right in everything she says and does, according to him--just as I am always wrong. Aunt Clara is richer than Biddy. I can't bear to fancy that's why he has proposed; it would take away all the romance"