It Happened in Egypt Part 20

Down below us, seen as from a bird's-eye view, lay a vast, unroofed honeycomb. It's size was incredible. The thing could not really be there. It was a startling dream, that endless gold-brown city of regular streets, and mud brick buildings, big and small, shops and houses, theatres and libraries, lacking only their roofs, deserted save by ghosts for thousands of years, yet looking as though it had been destroyed by a cyclone yesterday. Down there in the devastated beehive myriads of bees still worked frantically, human bees, which Cleopatra said were reincarnations of those who had owned slaves and killed them with forced labour, when Shetet was among the richest cities of the "Two Lands." These bees of to-day worked to destroy, not to recreate, for the crumbling brick is the best of fertilizers--and fertilizing their land is the one great interest in life for the Fellaheen of the Fayoum. Furiously they tore at the remaining walls; furiously they packed away their treasure of dried mud in sacks; furiously they piled it on backs of donkeys and rushed away to make room for others. Each instant hundreds of wild figures in dusty black or blue scampered off, beating loaded donkeys, only to be replaced by hundreds more doing the same thing in the same manner. Yet always a few forms remained stationary. They were police guardians of the ruins, men armed with staves, whose business was to oversee each worker's sack, lest some rare roll of papyri, some rich jewel which once adorned a pampered crocodile of the lake, should be found and stolen. Glimpsed through the red flame of blowing, ruby dust, the scene was a vision of Inferno; we on our mount looking down on it were in company of Dante and Virgil.

The rest of the day we gave to a light-railway excursion to Illahun and the brick Pyramid of Hawara. There was much laughing and shrieking among the girls of the Set (I don't count Monny, who shrieks for nothing less terrible than the largest spiders) as Arabs pushed our trolley cars along the line; and we were frivolous even on the site of the labyrinth which was, perhaps, copied from the Labyrinth of Crete.

The Set were frankly disappointed in the few remains of granite columns and carvings; but vague memories of jewels seen at the Egyptian Museum waked an interest in the brick pyramid tomb at Hawara where King Amenemhat and his daughter Ptah-nefru lay for a few thousand years. All of us were eager for the "last camp tea," when we got "home" from our expedition, and it was then that the tragedy happened: the tragedy of the black lamb.

How could I guess, when Yusef said the camel-boys wanted money to buy meat as a feast for the last day, that they meant to buy it alive?

When we arrived in camp, an idyllic scene was being enacted. A woolly black lamb with a particularly engaging facial expression was being hospitably entertained by all our men with the exception of the chef.

They formed an admiring ring round it, taking turns in feeding it with bersim, and patting its delightfully innocent head. It was difficult to say which was happier, the charming guest or its kind hosts.

"How _sweet_ of them!" said Miss Ha.s.sett-Bean. "I must write a few verses about this, for our home paper!"

Everybody joined with her in thinking the Arabs sweet, and Enid Biddell went round and took up a collection. The men arranged a football match for our benefit, to show their grat.i.tude, and played so well and were so picturesque that Sir John and other ardent sportsmen pressed more money upon them. It was altogether a red-letter day for the camel-boys, quite apart from the fact that they would get rid of their n.o.ble benefactors to-morrow; and by way of a climax they had what we supposed to be a bonfire at dark.

"Aren't all those white figures wonderful, grouped round the blaze?"

asked Monny, who appeared on the whole satisfied with the way in which the desert had taken her. "And look, the flames are reflected on the clouds. I do believe it's going to _rain_, if such a thing can happen here! I hope it won't spoil the poor darlings' celebration. Why, they seem to have something big and black hanging over the fire. What _can_ it be? Oh, it looks awful!"

"It is not awful, mees," Yusef, standing near, good naturedly rea.s.sured her. "It very naice. It is the lamb, they cook for their supper. The genelman, milord, he give them money to buy it."

"Lamb?" shrieked Monny, in a wild voice which brought a crowd round us.

"_Lamb_! Not--oh, not--"

"Yes, mees, you all see it feeded when you come home, when you say it so sweet. Camel-boys find sweeter now!"

"Oh!" the girl exclaimed. "Fiends! They invited that lamb here, and brought it in their arms and played with it and did everything they could to make it think it was having a pleasant afternoon, and then --they _killed_ it!"

"Of course, yes, mees," said Yusef, puzzled. "Why else for milord tell they can buy it? They kill and pound it up to make it good, and soon they eat in honour of the genelmen and ladies who have been so kind this naice trip."

"I should like to kill _them_!" gasped Monny, preparing to cry, and flinging herself into Biddy's arms. "Oh--_somebody_ give me a hanky --quick!"

We all felt mechanically in our pockets; but I, being nearest, was first in the field. It was a shock to see Monny wave my handkerchief away with a gesture of horror, and bury her face in a far inferior one tendered by Anthony.

"No _wonder_!" exclaimed Miss Ha.s.sett-Bean, who is not, as a rule, a Monny-ite. "You're _quite_ right, Miss Gilder. Lord Ernest Borrow, I don't see _much_ difference between you and a murderer!"

For a minute, I did not know what she meant. Then it broke upon me that the Arabs' monstrous breach of hospitality to the lamb was laid at my door. I jabbered explanations, but no one listened; and just then the rain, which n.o.body had believed in, seized the opportunity of coming down in floods. The camels roared with rage and surprise; the camel-boys swore Arab oaths; the fire sputtered, and what became of the half-cooked lamb I shall never know. We rushed for the dining-tent, all soaked in an instant, with the exception of Brigit and Monny, whom "Antoun" protected with a long cloak.

Dinner was a gloomy feast, which might have been composed of funeral baked meats, though the chef himself came to the door and vowed by all his saints that the lamb cutlets were not from _that_ lamb. So well did he exonerate himself, so eloquently did he protest that he had nothing to do with the camel-boys' orgy, that another special collection was taken up for him.

"Poor, dear old gentleman!" sighed Miss Ha.s.sett-Bean. "I shall never be able to forget him. When I'm out of this awful country of _cannibals_, and safe in my own home, he will simply haunt me, pa.s.sing his respectable old age, black though he is, chasing across deserts on camels, wrapped in a blanket and covered with chicken coops, at the mercy of any queer Christian who can afford to pay for him. It's a _tragedy_!"

Perhaps she wrote her poem about the cook instead of the camel-boys.

Luckily, however, at the last moment I remembered a superst.i.tion of the Ancient Egyptians. They were in the habit of sacrificing a black lamb to propitiate Set, the sender of storms. Our lamb _was_ black: and at the hour of his untimely death a storm was coming up. The dreadful deed, therefore, was turned into a Rite.

CHAPTER XVI

AN OILED HAND

That is where my diary of the desert stopped; for the adventure that ended our trip was not of the sort that mixes well with tragedies of lambs.

Before dinner Monny had apologized for refusing my handkerchief, I really believe because she was sorry she had misunderstood, _not_ because the rain had leaked through her tent, and she wanted me to give her mine. In fact, she and Biddy refused pointblank at first when Anthony and I suggested the change. They would not have told us that the water had come in on their beds if they had thought we would suggest such a thing. All they wished for was to have the tent-roof somehow mended before matters got worse. But we insisted, especially Fenton; and he is difficult to disobey. A look from him, and a drawing together of the black eyebrows has the same effect on the mind of a rebellious woman as an "Off with her head!" from an Arabian Nights Sultan, while I might vainly exert my ingenuity to achieve the result he gets by sheer mysterious magnetism.

It was bedtime when the leak showed itself, but the change of quarters was accomplished with military quickness and precision, as Fenton's undertakings generally are; and almost before they knew what had happened, Monny and Brigit, who had been tent-mates during the tour, found themselves transferred bag and baggage to our tent, with the last clean sheets in the bedroom-Arab's possession.

Transferred, we set ourselves to making repairs, and soon patched up the leaks. Rain at this season comes so rarely, it was not surprising that a st.i.tch or two had been neglected.

Only the pillows and upper blankets had had time to get wet, and we had but to remove the coverings and turn the pillows. We both did this simultaneously, and simultaneously exclaimed "Hullo!"

"They've left their treasures" said Anthony, not with quite the masculine scorn of feminine weaknesses I was used to noticing in him.

Indeed, he spoke almost tenderly, as a father might speak at finding the forgotten doll of an absent child.

Each of us stood with a wet pillow in his hand, gazing at his borrowed bunk. In the one I had selected, lay a small chamois-skin bag, attached to a narrow pink ribbon. In the bed chosen by Fenton, was a tiny white enamelled watch, on a platinum chain. Both these things had been covered by their respective owners' pillows, and forgotten in the hasty change of quarters. The watch was Monny's. She wore it round her neck every day--therefore the chamois-skin bag on the other bed must be Brigit's. I told myself that in it she probably kept her pathetic store of money, hidden under her bodice by day, her pillow by night; and beholding this intimate souvenir of my childhood's friend, my heart yearned over her.

"Too late to rouse them up now," said Anthony.

"Yes," said I. "We must have been twenty minutes or half an hour getting the roof to rights. They may be asleep, and if not, they won't worry anyhow. They'll know that their things are safe till to-morrow morning."

Fenton agreed with this verdict, and each keeping charge of his own treasure trove, we went to bed and to sleep.

I am a champion dreamer. So much so, that I often find the life of dreamland rivalling in interest the life this side of sleep. I look forward to my dreams, as some people look forward to an interesting dinner-party; but that night I was too tired to inspect the dream-menu, before lying down to it. The first thing I knew, a handsome Egyptian G.o.d with crystal eyes, like those which Bill Bailey means to make the fashion, stood by my bedside. I asked him politely whether he were R or Osiris, deliberately picking the two best G.o.ds of the bunch in order to flatter him; but without answering, he pointed a bronze hand to the mat on which he stood. It was a white mat, and on it I read a word which evidently he meant me to take as his name: TAM HTAB. For an instant it seemed to me a fine name for an Egyptian G.o.d, though I hadn't met it before. Then I burst out laughing disrespectfully. "Why, you're only a Bath Mat wrong side out!" I heard myself sneering; and the G.o.d disappeared as a flash of lightning comes and is gone. In going, however, he stumbled slightly against the bed. It was a mere touch; but that, or my own voice, half waked me up.

"TAM HTAB," I mumbled dreamily; and was just reminding myself before dropping off to sleep again that I must tell Biddy about the new bath G.o.d, when I realized that he had not quite gone. No, not quite gone! It must be he who still lingered by the bed, for it could be n.o.body else.

Anthony would not come and hover silently at my bedside in the middle of the night. Besides, I was almost awake now, and I could hear the gentle, regular breathing of a man asleep: Anthony's breathing.

"Go away, TAM HTAB," I tried to say, but I was not awake enough to speak. He was bending over the bed. His face was near to mine. I felt rather than saw it. "How could I see in the dark?" sleepily, even fretfully, I asked myself. And yet, _was_ the tent dark?...It had been, I remembered that. I remembered that Anthony had got to bed first, and I had extinguished the two candles on the washhand-stand. Afterward, I had had to grope my way to the bed. Now, however, there was a light...a very faint, rather curious light. There seemed to be only a square of it, a square sloped off at the top. It was opposite my eyes, which really were open now, I felt sure. I couldn't be dreaming this. It was like a queer-shaped window in the blackness, a window full of starlight, but close to the floor. Then the rain must have stopped. The stars must be out. Yes, but how could I see that? There was no window in the tent.

This thought dragged the last film of sleep off my tired brain, like a veil s.n.a.t.c.hed away by impatient fingers on an unseen hand.

Odd! Those very words said over themselves in my head: "Fingers on an unseen hand." And that was because a hand was being slipped cautiously, inch by inch, under my pillow. It was the Egyptian G.o.d's hand. But I knew suddenly that the dream-G.o.d had turned into a thief: that the silver-glimmering square of light was one of the tent flaps unb.u.t.toned and turned back. That the man must stealthily have pulled up a peg or two while we slept our heavy sleep, must have crept into the tent, soft-footed over the thick rugs, and now here he was, trying to steal.

After that, I did not go on with the thought. My dull reasoning snapped off as short as a dry stick. I made a grab for the hand under my pillow, seized a wrist, held it for an instant in a grip which must have hurt, then had the shame and disappointment of feeling it slip out of my grasp, like a greased snake. There was a stifled exclamation of pain or surprise, scarcely louder than a sigh, and I was out of bed and after a shadow that ran for the low square of starlight. Something caught and tripped me as I reached the opening. What it was I did not know then and don't know now, but I had a vague impression that it was warm. If I had stumbled against a bare leg thrust out to stop me, it would have felt like that. Yet it could not have been the leg of the man running away. He was using both his, and must have used them well, for I was up and out from under the lifted tent flap which had fallen on top of me as I tumbled, before I could have counted five. Very wide awake now, I stood in the rough, sandy gra.s.s, under a sky encrusted with stars, and could see no one. Barefooted, I pattered this way and that, searching every shadow, but the whole camp seemed an abode of peace. There was not a sound or movement even in the black ring of sleeping camels. Rain had driven to shelter the roving dogs which had troubled us last night. The camp lanterns burned clear and strong, yellow and crude in the silver flood of starlight which dulled their radiance. The smell of earth and gra.s.s after the heavy shower was like the fragrance of tea roses. Could it be that an evil, stealthy presence had but just broken this sweet serenity with its vile intention, or had the whole incident been after all a singularly vivid dream? I should have believed so, if my hand which had clutched that other hand, had not been slippery with oil.

No, I had not dreamed. And suddenly a troubling thought leaped into my mind. "Biddy!" The name sprang to my lips and spoke itself aloud.

If this were for her! I had laughed at her forebodings. Sensational revenges such as she feared seemed so incongruous, so utterly unsuited to those laughing, long-lashed eyes of hers! Yet she had in her past life lived side by side with fear and tragedy for more years than I liked to count. And as she said, men such as those whom Richard O'Brien had betrayed had been known to reach out very far to take revenge.

Biddy had done nothing. Surely they owed her no grudge. But she had known things. Perhaps they thought that she knew even more than she did know. Their organization was rich as well as powerful. It had many branches. Yet why should men use its power to hurt the widow of a dead enemy, now that they--or fate--had put him underground?

In a flash I remembered the chamois-skin bag, which she had forgotten under the pillow: and lifting the loosened canvas flap with its dangling pegs, I stooped to go back into the tent. Inside, I expected to find darkness, but instead I found light; Anthony up, setting a match to a candle wick, and looking a tall, dark silhouette in his pyjamas.

"What's the row?" he calmly wanted to know--too calmly to suit my ruffled mood.

"A thief, that's all," I answered, hastily searching under the pillow where the unseen hand had been. Sheet and pillow-case were slimy with oil, yet the chamois-skin bag was safe. "But he didn't get what he wanted!" I finished.

"Good," said Anthony, who had lighted both candles. "Let's go look for him."