It Happened in Egypt Part 25

I asked anxiously.

"It's not a cold in my head," she confessed. "It's a dreadful, dreadful pain in my heart. And you're the only one who can cure it."

For a fearful moment I thought that she was going to propose. One hears of these awful visitations. But I need not have trembled.

"I feel as if I could say anything to you," she murmured. "You are so understanding, and so sympathetic."

It was on the tip of my tongue to reply that it was my duty as Conductor to be so, and that, if I succeeded, a mountain full of hidden treasure might perhaps reward me. But just in time I realized that this speech would not be tactful. Instead of speaking, I looked at her and let her go on.

"It's Harry Snell," she said. "You have influence with him. He thinks you such a great swell, he'd hate to do anything you would call unworthy of a gentleman. He--he's making me so unhappy. He's done --everything--to win my love and now--now he's gone over to that Miss Guest." The donkey having begun inopportunely to trot, the words were jolted out, one after another, like a shower of pebbles. And they fell on my feelings like paving stones. She expected _me_ to do something about it! Horrible! I should almost have preferred the proposal.

"My dear Miss Biddell," I soothed her in my best salad-oil voice, cultivated at the Emba.s.sy, "you are much prettier than Miss Guest, and you can win Snell back easily if you want him. Probably he's only flirting, to make you jealous."

"It's me he was flirting with," she moaned. "But I _don't_ believe he cares for Miss Guest. It's only a case of 'follow my leader,' because other men like her so much. Nothing succeeds like success, you know.

And other men's admiration is the most becoming background a girl can have. He told Mrs. Harlow it was haunting him, that Elaine and I would get fat like our mother, and the men who married us would have to spend dull years seeing us slowly grow into mother's likeness. Wasn't it cruel? And we eat scarcely _anything_ except pickles on purpose to keep thin. But that's only his excuse. It's the romance of the situation, and the _secret_ that appeals to him."

"What secret?" I felt ent.i.tled to inquire.

"Why, the secret between those two girls, Miss Gilder and Miss Guest.

You _know_ what all the men believe about them, don't you? But of course you do."

"But of course I don't."

"Why, that they've changed places, to deceive people, just as heiresses and poor girls do in old-fashioned plays or books. They think Miss Gilder (I mean the girl we _call_ Miss Gilder) is really the school-teacher, and the one we call Miss Guest, and that all the men are after, is Rosamond Gilder the cannon heiress."

"Whew!" I whistled, b.u.mpily, as my donkey kept up with Enid's. "For goodness' sake, what makes them think that?"

"I don't know exactly how the story started, but it seems _authentic_.

Have you known them long?"

"Only since Naples. But--"

"Then you can't be certain whether it's true or not?"

I paused, swallowing an answer. So _this_ was the explanation of the Monny puzzle! Yet it was but the first word of another enigma. _Who_ was responsible for the wild story? There was more than met the eye--or ear--in this. I could hardly believe that Monny would have chosen, or Rachel dared, to start this rumour, though it might have amused the real heiress, and suited the false one, to watch it run. I dared not contradict it flatly, without consulting Brigit or the Gilded Rose herself. It was not my business to be a spoil-sport, if there were sport to spoil, no matter how sternly I might disapprove.

"In the matter of actual knowledge, I have very little about Miss Gilder," I decided to reply, "except that she's charming enough and pretty enough for any man to fall in love with, if she hadn't a penny.

As for Miss Guest"

"Miss Guest is a cat! And if _only_ you'll tell Harry Snell so, I'll bless you all my life."

"Good gracious! I couldn't do that."

"I mean, tell him you think she isn't the heiress, that she's only what she seems to be, and nothing mysterious or interesting. He'll believe _you_! Why, she _can't_ have any money, or even a nice mind. She always writes 'No,' with her finger on top of her cold cream at hotels, she told me so herself. Not that it's any good with Arabs, they don't want to steal cold cream. But such a trick would never occur to a rich girl, would it? She grows vainer every day, too, till one can just see vanity spouting from the top of her head. She intends to use this mistake people are making about her, to bag a rich man like Harry Snell, or a successful one with a big, growing reputation like Mr. Bailey the American sculptor. You _will_ help me save Harry from her, and bring him back to me, won't you? You're the only one he'll listen to. If you don't speak, I shall simply jump overboard into the Nile, and Sir Marcus Lark would _hate_ that."

"So should I, dear Miss Biddell," I a.s.sured her. "But what can I possibly do in--in such a very intimate matter?"

"Why, you're a diplomat, aren't you? I thought they always knew what to do. You make us all dance to your tune like puppets, and imagine we're prancing about to please ourselves. Tell him he's breaking my heart."

"By Jove! You're not in earnest?"

"I am. Oh, he must come back! I thought on board the _Candace_ we were as good as engaged. I--I submitted to his kisses, and now--"

"'Submitted' is a good word," I sneered to my inner self, but outwardly I submitted a handkerchief to the lady, as she had lost hers in one of the last donkey jolts, and ventured to insert sympathetically into a pause a small suggestion. It was usual, I reminded Miss Biddell, if a gentleman's intentions had to be asked, that the father did the asking.

This hint, however, fell flatter than a flounder; and all the way to Abydos, most sacred temple of ancient Egypt, I was persecuted with Enid Biddell's woes, when I should have been free to meditate upon the tragic history of Isis and Osiris. It was here that the head of the murdered G.o.d was buried, and perhaps his whole body, when the magic secret of Thoth had enabled Isis to collect the fourteen separate pieces Set had hidden. Many temples claimed the sacred body of Osiris, ruler over departed spirits and Amenti, their dim dwelling place beyond the western desert; Philae and Memphis among others; but it was Abydos to which the Egyptians give their most reverent faith, as the true burial place of the Beloved One. It was there they wished to lie when they died and were mummied, in order to rest through eternity near the relic of their most precious G.o.d. Thus a necropolis grew like a poppy-garden of sleep, round the temple; and a city rose also. But even in the long-ago time of Strabo, the city was reduced to a village, and all traces of the shrine had vanished. The great white jewel of the temples--temple of Seti I, and the temple of his son Rameses II--remain to this day, however, with the Tablet of Ancestors which has helped in the tracing of Egyptian history. Therefore is it that this treasure of the Nile-desert is still a shrine for travellers from the four corners of the earth.

After the long, straight road, and a high, sudden hill, we came face to face with the marble-white columns of the outer court. If I had been with Brigit or Monny, I could have run back into the past, hand in hand with either, to see with my mind's eyes the white limestone palace of Memnon, copied from the Labyrinth, standing above the city between the ca.n.a.l and the desert. I should have peered into the depths of its fountain; and with a hand shading my eyeb.a.l.l.s from the sun I should have gazed at the grove of Horus' sacred acanthus trees, dark against the burning blue. I should have found the Royal tombs which Rameses restored, grouped near the buried body of Osiris. But bad luck gave me Enid Biddell for my companion. She would not let any one else come near me, even had the Right Somebody wished to dispute my battered remains with her. "Antoun Effendi" had the others hypnotized, and I wondered if they noticed how like his boldly cut profile was to certain portraits of the youthful Rameses carved on the glittering white walls. So splendid were they that had I been a woman my spirit would have rushed back along the sand-obliterated, devious paths of Egypt's history, to find and fall at the feet of their original. But--there was Antoun, much easier to get at, and perhaps better worth the gift of a woman's heart than Rameses the Great with all his faults and cruelties!

Crowds of birds lived in interstices of the broken columns, and their tiny faces peeped out like flowers growing among rocks, their eyes bright and arresting as personal anecdotes in long, dull chapters of history. They seemed to look at me, and sympathize, c.o.c.king their heads on one side as if to say, "Poor, foolish, modern man, why don't you make a virtue of necessity and get rid of this still more foolish modern maid, by promising her anything she asks? Then you can go listen to that princely looking person in the green turban, who might be descended from the kings our ancestors used to behold. He does seem to know something about the history of this place, on which _we_ are authorities! The dragomans who bring crowds of tourists to our temple and gabble nonsense, put us really off our feed. Peep, peep! Just hear him tell about the staircase we're so proud of. Did _you_ know there was a picture of it in the Book of The Dead, with Osiris standing at the top, like a good host waiting to receive his guests? Well, then, if you didn't, do anything you must to escape from that lovesick girl, while there's time to hear a real scholar talk of 'Him who is at the Head of the Staircase!' Peep, peep! Hurry up, or you'll lose it all, you Silly. Of course, the real staircase is in Amenti, which your Roman Catholics call Purgatory; and no doubt Osiris is standing on it to this day."

So I took the birds' advice, and promised Enid to have a "heart to heart" talk with Harry Snell. Satisfied that she had got all that was to be got out of me, she powdered her nose (in the same spirit that David anointed his head) and attached herself to Rachel, in whose train was the Desired One. Thus basely did I free myself to enjoy the society of Biddy and Osiris, with lovely carved glimpses of Isis thrown in, to say nothing of Seti I and Rameses II. Trying to push into the background of my mind the nauseating thought of my vow and its fulfillment, I helped Brigit and Monny take snapshots of King Seti showing his son Rameses how to la.s.so, and also to catch by its tail the most fascinating of bulls. They were on the wall, of course (Rameses and Seti, I mean, not Brigit and Monny), but seemed so real they might leap off at any instant; and so charmed was Monny with Rameses' braided "lock of youth" that she resolved to try one over her left temple in connection with an Egyptian Princess costume she was having made for some future fancy-dress ball. "I can't take a grain of interest in any one but Egyptian Princes and Princesses and their profiles," she exclaimed; then blushed faintly and added, "I mean Princes and Princesses of the _past_."

We got some good pictures of the temple of Seti, for Monny had an apparatus for natural colour photography which gave sensational results in ancient wall-paintings--when any one except Monny herself did the taking. It was better still in the Seven Chapels, the holy of holies at Abydos, and in the joy of my first colour photography I forgot the doom ahead. Appropriately, the sword I had hung up over my own cranium descended in the Necropolis, at that place of tombs called Umm el-Ka'ab, "Mother of Pots." n.o.body wanted to see the fragments of this mother's pots, but I insisted on a brief visit, as important discoveries have been made there, among the most important in Egypt. It was a dreary place where Harry Snell strolled up and caught me alone, gazing at a desolation of sandy hillocks, full of undiscovered treasure.

"Look here," said he. "You're supposed to know everything. Tell me why they call seats outside shops in bazaars, and tombs of the Ancient Empire by the same name: mastaba?"

I explained that mastaba was an Arab word meaning bench. Then, realizing that it would be flying in the face of Providence not to get the ordeal over while my blood was up, I spoke of Enid. Among the shattered pots and yawning sepulchres, I racked up her broken heart and blighted affections. I talked to Snell like a brother, and when he had heard me through in silence, to the place where words and breath failed, I thought that I had moved him. His eyes were downcast. I fancied that I saw a mist as of tears, a man's slow tears. Then suddenly he opened his eyelids wide, and glared--a glare stony as the pots, and as the desert hills. "Borrow," he said, "I thought you were a good fellow and a man of the world. I see now that you're a d.a.m.ned sentimental a.s.s."

With this he stalked off, and I could not run after him to bash his head, because what he said was perfectly true. I was almost sorry that evening, on board the boat, when he apologized and the Nile-dream went on as if I hadn't broken it by being the sort of fool Snell had said that I was.

In the dream were Nile cities, with crowding houses whose walls were heightened by tier upon tier of rose-and-white pots, moulded in with honey-coloured mud. There were stretches of sandy sh.o.r.e, and green gloom of palm groves. There were domed tombs of saints, glittering like snow-palaces in the sun. There were great golden mounds inlaid with strips of paler gold picked out with ebony. There were sinister hillsides cut into squarely by door-holes, leading to cave-dwellings.

There were always shadoofs, where giant soup-ladles everlastingly dipped water and threw it out again, mounting up from level to level of the brown, d.y.k.e-like sh.o.r.e. The wistful, musical wail of the men at the wells was as near to the voice of Nature as the sighing of wind, or the breaking of waves which has never ceased since the world began.

Sometimes the horizon was opal, sometimes it throbbed with azure fire, or blazed ruby red, as the torch of sunset swept west and east before the emerald darkness fell. When our _Enchantress_ landed, great flocks of kites, like in form and wing to the sacred vulture of Egypt, flew to welcome us with swoopings of wide purple wings. Their shadows on the water were like pa.s.sing spirits; and at night when the Nubian boatmen danced, their feet thudding on the lower deck to the cry of the darabukah, the Nile whispered of the past, with a tinkling whisper, like the music of Hathor's sacred sistrum. Gya.s.sas glided by, loaded with pots like magic melons, long masts pointing as though they had been wands in the hands of astrologers: and the reflection of the piled pots as they moved gave vague glimpses as of sunken treasure.

Denderah meant work for Fenton. There had been trouble there, and tourists had complained of insults. It was the Hadji's business to find out whether natives or Europeans had been more to blame, and whether there were wrongs to right, misunderstandings to adjust. But to the rest of us, Denderah meant the sacred temple of Hathor, G.o.ddess of Love, in some ways one of the most beautiful of all the Nile temples; though, being not much over two thousand years old (it was built upon ruins more ancient than King Menes) archeologists like Neill Sheridan cla.s.s it as "late Ptolemaic," uninterestingly modern.

Mrs. East had been looking forward to the temple of Denderah more eagerly than to any other, because she had read that on an outer wall was carved the portrait of Cleopatra the Great. That of Caesarion was there also, as she must have known; but Cleopatra's son was never referred to by her reincarnation, who chose to ignore the Caesar incident. Mrs. East had not yet deigned to mount a donkey, but to reach the temple she must do so or walk, or sway in a dangerous looking _chaise a porteur_. Rather than miss the joy of seeing herself on a stone wall as others had had the privilege of seeing her for two thousand years, she consented to accept as a seat a large gray animal, ta.s.selled with red to keep off flies and evil eyes. "Won't you ride with me, Antoun Effendi?" she asked. "I'm afraid. This creature looks as large as an elephant and as wild as a zebra. I feel _you_ could calm him." But Antoun Effendi was not going to ride. He had other fish to fry; and poor Cleopatra's luminous dark eyes were like overflowing lakes, when he had politely excused himself on the plea of a pressing engagement. I felt sure that she would have been kind to Sir Marcus if at that moment he could have appeared from behind the picturesque group of bead-necklace sellers, or emerged from one of the huge bright-coloured baskets exposed for sale on a hill of brown-gold sand.

I don't know whether it made things better or worse that the gray donkey should be named "Cleopatra," but it was evidently a blow when the animal's white-robed attendant announced himself as Anthony.

"I can't and won't have the creature with me!" she murmured, as I helped her to mount when she had pushed the boy aside. "Thank you, Lord Ernest. You're very kind. But Antoun ought to have been here. Fancy seeing _this_ temple, of all others, without an Anthony of any sort on the horizon! A pity it isn't _your_ middle name! If you could spare time to ride with me, that would be better than nothing!"

"I'll be delighted," I said hypocritically, for I had been dying to talk with Brigit about the Monny and Rachel imbroglio which, as a hard-worked Conductor, I had not since Abydos found a chance to discuss.

Besides, Biddy had whispered in pa.s.sing that a letter just delivered at Denderah, had brought exciting news of Esme O'Brien: But I was sorry for Cleopatra, and wondered whether I could manage after all to hint an explanation of the hieroglyphic love-letter--that fatal letter of mine which had stealthily made mischief between Mrs. East and Anthony. I didn't quite see how the subject was to be broached: still, some way might open. "I'm sorry about the middle name," I said. "But if I a.s.sumed it--like a virtue which I have not--I should be the third person connected with this trip, labelled the same fashion."

"Who is the second person?" she asked abruptly, as all the animals of the party started to trot vivaciously through the blowing yellow sand.

"Sir Marcus. Surely you've heard that his 'A' stands for Antonius?"

"Good heavens!" she gasped: and I hardly knew whether it was the shock of my news, or a jolt of the donkey which forced the exclamation.

Whatever it was, the emotion she felt bound her to silence after that one outburst. She said not a word, and did not even groan or threaten to fall off when both our beasts broke into a thumping gallop. In silence we swept round that great bulk of rubbish heap, Roman and early Christian, under which lies An, the town of the Column. Cleopatra did not cry out when suddenly we came in sight of Hathor's temple, honey-gold against the turquoise sky, and vast as some Wagnerian palace of the G.o.ds. The ta.s.selled donkey (or I) had given her cause to think. Or perhaps she did not consider me worth talking to, as we approached the temple toward which all her previous travelling had been a mere pilgrimage. Still silently, when we had left our donkeys and were following the crowd up the dromos (Harry Snell actually with Enid, thanks to me and the wisdom of second thoughts), Cleopatra's eyes wandered over the Hathor-headed columns with their clinging colour; and over the portal with its brilliant ma.s.s of yellow, of dark Pompeian red, and the green-blue sacred to Hathor, whom Horus loved --Venus-Hathor, whose priestesses danced within these walls in Cleopatra's day. "Oh, this red and this green-blue were my colours, I remember," she murmured, and then hardly spoke when I walked with her in the gloom of the temple itself--the rich gloom under heavily ornamented ceilings.

She wanted to save the portrait till the last, she announced, until after she had seen everything else: and she didn't care _what_ Mr.

Sheridan said about her temple; it was wonderful. I tried to interest her in the crocodiles, which had been detested and persecuted at Denderah in the late Cleopatra's time as ardently as they were worshipped at Crocodilopolis and other places. I joked about Old Egypt having consisted of "crocs and non crocs," just as the inhabitants of Florence had to be Guelphs or Ghibellines. I explained carefully the geography of the place, or rather, "reminded" Cleopatra of it, adding details of the ca.n.a.l which once led to Koptos, where the magic book of the Wisdom of Thoth lay hidden under the Nile. I could not waken Mrs.

East from reverie to interest, as Antoun would have had the power to do; but my vanity was not hurt. It was only my curiosity which suffered, for I wanted desperately to know whether the donkey had seriously jolted the lady's spine, or whether the news that Sir M. A.

Lark was Marcus Antonius, not a more obvious Marcus Aurelius, had fired her imagination.

In any case I devoted myself to her while Monny and Brigit frolicked with others; and I had a reward of a kind. When we had seen all the halls and chambers, and the crypt with its carvings all fresh as if made yesterday; when we had been on the roof where chanting priests had once awaited the rising of Sirius; when I had taken her outside the temple, where blowing columns of dusty sand rose like incense from hidden altars of Hathor, we stood at last alone together, gazing up at the figures of Cleopatra and her son. The wall on which they were carved rose behind the Holy of Holies, where the golden statue of the G.o.ddess had been kept; but alas, the figures themselves! Alas! I knew how Cleopatra must be feeling; and I dared not speak. Perhaps she was even blushing: but I did not look. Instead, I gazed helplessly up at that exposed, misshapen form, that flaccid chin.

"Thank heaven it's only _you_ who are with me!" breathed Mrs. East.