It Happened in Egypt Part 36

"I am almost happy now," Monny went on. "Happier than I thought I could be, with things as they are. I used to be miserable, partly about myself, partly because I thought you were in love with Biddy (you were so much nicer to her than me!), and partly because I believed, till I knew you well, that you wanted to marry Aunt Clara for money, though you cared for someone else. I even told Lord Ernest that about you. I had to tell somebody! And besides, I felt it would be good for him to think you cared for Biddy. Being jealous might wake him up to see that he was in love with her himself. He really is rather a duffer, at times! And oh, talking of him and Biddy reminds me of them! Where can they be, all this time?"

"Heaven alone knows--or cares," replied Anthony. And I realized the truth of the proverb about listeners, even where their best friends are concerned. I was obliged to kiss Biddy to keep from laughing out loud.

And she couldn't scream or box my ears, or all our dreadful precautions would have been vain.

"We must find them," said Monny.

"Why?"

"Oh, if we don't, they might find us."

Anthony laughed--a give-away, English-sounding laugh. But Monny did not recognize its birthplace. Her own laugh interrupted it too soon, ringing out so happily, it probably surprised herself.

"_If_ they find us here!" quavered Biddy, clinging to me.

"They can't, if only you'll let me hold you tight enough," I whispered.

"If they look in, they'll just take us for a black spot in the dark!"

But they didn't look in. They went downstairs. And then was the time to get in the rest of my deadly work with Biddy. We _must_ wait a few minutes, or they couldn't help knowing we'd been near them: and I made the best use of those few minutes. Biddy wouldn't promise anything, but said that she would think it over, and let me know the result of her thinking in a day or two.

To our great surprise, on arriving in open air at the level of the roof below, we saw that the sun was gone, and a slim young moon was sliding down the rose-red trail. It is indeed wonderful, say prophets of the obvious, how quickly time pa.s.ses when your attention is engaged! And one comfort of being obvious is, that you are generally right.

We tried to flit forth from the dark recess of the pylon stairway without being seen or heard; but as luck would have it, Monny and Fenton had had just time to discover that our boat was gone. The girl was hunting for us, to see if we were "anywhere," or if in some mad freak we could have gone off and left them to their fate. As we sneaked guiltily out, she caught us.

"Biddy! Lord Ernest!" she exclaimed. "Why--why--you have been _upstairs_!"

A good rule for diplomats, duffers, and others, is never to tell a falsehood when there is no hope that any one will believe it.

"We--er--yes," we both mumbled.

"But--there isn't any upstairs except--where we were."

"Yes there is," Biddy a.s.sured her hastily--too hastily. "You were on the roof. We were in the little room of the guardian."

"He showed it to us. There's a window. Oh, we were _under_ it! You must both have heard."

"Murder will out," I said, with the calmness of despair. But then it occurred to me that there was a way of using the weapon which threatened, as a boomerang.

"Dearest," Biddy adjured her beloved, humbly, "you wouldn't have had us spoil everything by moving, would you? I said to the Duffer when he wanted to do something desperate, 'If we interrupt them, nothing will ever come right--'"

"Besides, we were too busy getting engaged ourselves," said I, "to bother for long about what anybody else was saying or doing."

"You _were_! Oh, Biddy, that's what I've prayed for."

"Nothing of the sort!" began Mrs. O'Brien, ferociously. But the boomerang had come to my hand, and I'd caught it on the fly. Before she could go on contradicting me, Anthony, followed by the guardian of the temple, had mounted the steps from the lower ledge of the roof, where we had landed in the afternoon.

"It wasn't you who took the boat, then, for a joke!" said Fenton, at sight of us. And the mystery of our felucca's disappearance had to be discussed. Biddy saw to it that Monny couldn't edge in a word on the forbidden subject. How those two would talk later, in Miss Gilder's stateroom!

n.o.body could explain what had happened, not even the guardian. He, it seemed, spent his night at the siren temple in the water, sleeping in the cell where I had blackmailed Biddy, and not even appearing to know that the custom scintillated with romance. By and by his companion who joined him for night work, would arrive in a small boat, bringing food; but this man rowed himself, and neither could leave the temple again that night.

"You will lend the boat to us," said Anthony. "We'll row, and send it back to you here by some one who is trustworthy."

"We have no right to lend the boat," returned the Nubian.

"Then I will steal it," replied the Hadji.

But none of us cared how long a time might pa.s.s before deliverance came. The _Enchantress Isis_ couldn't steam away and leave her Conductor behind. As Mrs. East had disappeared, I vaguely a.s.sociated the puzzle of our missing craft with Sir Marcus; and anyhow, curiosity wasn't the strongest emotion in my being just then. I thought that perhaps never in my life again would love and romance and beauty all blend together in one, as here at Philae in the moonlight. The sharp sickle of the young moon cut a silver edge on each tiny wave, that murmured against the submerged pillars like a chanting of priests under the sea. The temple commemorating love triumphant was carved in silver, and drowned in a silver flood. The flowering capitals of the columns as they showed above the water, blossomed white as lilies bound together in sheaves with silver cords, and placed before an altar.

Yes, Egypt was giving us what we asked. But would she give us all we asked? Just as there might have been a renewed chance of getting an answer to this question, black men in a black boat hailed us. Sir Marcus had deigned at last to remember our plight.

CHAPTER XXVII

THE INNER SANCTUARY

We made a sensation when we returned to the fold. Everybody wondered so much that they gave us no time to answer their questions, even if we would. But somehow it seemed to be taken for granted that the whole thing was my fault. Perhaps Mrs. East or Sir Marcus had spread the report. I let it pa.s.s.

As for Sir Marcus, he stayed only long enough for a talk with me. It began with trumped-up business, and ended in a confession. She had snubbed him, it seemed. Snubs being new to Sir Marcus, he had been dazed, and had forgotten for a while to send us a boat. I a.s.sured him that we bore no grudge, really none whatever. It had been quite an adventure. And I tried to cheer him up. Better luck next time! Why wouldn't he go on with us? Fenton and I could chum together, to give him cabin-room. And Neill Sheridan, the American Egyptologist, had let me know that he was obliged to leave us at Wady Haifa. There would be an empty cabin, going down again. But no, the "Boss" refused his Conductor's hospitality. "I think the less she sees of me, the better she likes me," he said dismally. "She was civil enough until I--but no matter. I suppose a man can't expect his luck to always hold."

"Don't split your infinitives till things get desperate," I begged. "It hasn't come to that yet. If you must go back, I'll take it on my shoulders to watch your private interests a bit, as well as the rest.

Look out for a telegram one of these fine days, saying 'Come at once.'

You'll know what it means."

"I will, bless you, my boy," he said heartily. "Though I am hanged if I know what you mean by a split infinitive. I hope if its improper, I've never inadvertently done it before a lady."

There seemed to be an atmosphere of suspense for everybody who mattered, as we steamed on between strange black mountainettes, and tiger-golden sands toward Wady Halfa. Anthony was in suspense about the way his fate might arrange itself at Khartum. I was in suspense as to Biddy's decision, which nothing I was able to say could wheedle or browbeat out of her. He and I were both in suspense together, about the Mountain of the Golden Pyramid. It would be ours now, we knew that. But what would be in it? Would it be full of treasure, or full of nothing but mountain, just as a crusty baked pudding is full of pudding? The doubt was harder to bear, now that Anthony was in love with a very rich girl, and desired something from the mountain more substantial than the adventure which would once have contented him. Harder to bear for me, too, wanting Biddy and wanting to give her luxury as well as peace, such as she had never known in her life of tragedy and brave laughter.

Monny was in suspense quite equal to Anthony's about Khartum, and what could possibly happen there to give her happiness. Brigit was in suspense about the two men who had so strangely and secretly worked with their spy, Bedr, and whom she expected to meet again later. Rachel was in suspense about Bailey, although I had told her it was "going to be all right," and he had said not a word of the business to her. What she wanted, was to make sure of him, and there was the difficulty at present, since we had failed to arrange for a registry-office or a clergyman on board. Other hearts were no doubt throbbing with the same emotions, but they were of comparatively small importance to me.

Our feelings were all so different and so much more intense than they had been, that the extraordinary difference in the scenery gave us a vague sense of satisfaction. We were in another world, now that we had heard the first cataract's roar, and left it behind; a world utterly unlike any conceptions we had formed of Egypt. But we did not for a long time leave the influence of the Barrage. Black rocks ringed in a blue basin so lake-like that it was hard to realize it as the Nile. Now and then a yellow river of sand poured down to the sapphire sea, and where its bright waves were reflected, the water became liquid gold under a surface of blue gla.s.s. The sky was overcast, and through a thick silver veil, the sun shone with a mystic light as of a lamp burning in an alabaster globe; yet the flaming gold of the sand created an illusion as of sunshine. It was as if the treasure of all the lost mines of Nub had been flung out on the black rocks, and lay in a glittering carpet there.

We pa.s.sed small, submerged temples, with their foreheads just above water; drowning palm groves whose plumes trailed sadly on the blue expanse, and deserted mud-villages where the high Nile looked in at open doors to say, "This is for Egypt's good!"

Then there was the little Temple of Dendur, whose patron G.o.ddess was prayed to spit if rain were needed; and so many other ruined temples that we lost count (though one was the largest in Nubia) until we came to Wadi-es-Sabua, "the Valley of the Lions." This we remembered, not because it was imposing, or because it had a dromos of n.o.ble-faced sphinxes--the only hawk-faced ones in Egypt--or because of its prehistoric writings, on dark boulders; or because it had been used as a Christian Church: but owing to the fact that the ladies bought rag dolls from little Nubian girls, who wore their hair in a million greased braids. Here the influence of the Dam faded out of sight.

Forlorn trees and houses no longer crawled half out of water. Mountains crowded down to the sh.o.r.e, wild and dark and stately as Nubian warriors of ancient days. Then came Korosko, point of departure for the old caravan route, where kings of forgotten Egyptian dynasties sent for acacia wood, and Englishmen in the Campaign of the Cataracts fought and died; deserted now, with houses dead and decayed, their windows staring like the eye-sockets of skulls; and the black, tortured mountain-shapes behind, lurking in the background as hyenas lurk to prey. More temples, and many sakkeyehs (no shadoofs here, on the Upper Nile) but few boats.

The s.p.a.cious times were past, when loads of pink granite, honey-coloured sandstone, fragrant woods, and spices from the Land of Punt, went floating down the stream!

There were tombs as well as temples which we might have seen, savage gorges and mild green hills. There was the great grim fort of Kasr Ibrim; and at last--there was Abu Simbel.

Somehow I knew that things were bound to happen at Abu Simbel. I didn't know what they would be, but they hovered invisible at my berth-side in the night, and whispered to warn me that I might expect them.

A few people rose stealthily before dawn to prepare for Abu Simbel, because it had been hammered into their intellects by me that this Rock-Temple was the Great Thing of the Upper Nile. Also that every he, she, or it, who did not behold the place at sunrise would be as mean a worm as one who had not read the "Arabian Nights."

Not everybody heeded the advice, though at bedtime most had resolved to do so. We had anch.o.r.ed for the night not far off, in order to have the mysterious light before sun-up, to go on again, and see the grand approach to the grandest temple of the Old World. But after all, most of the cabin eyelids were still down when we arrived before dawn at our journey's end, and only a few intrepid ghosts flitted out on deck; elderly male ghosts in thick dressing-gowns: youthful ghosts of the same s.e.x, fully clothed and decently groomed because of cloaked girl-ghosts, with floating hair (if there were enough to float effectively: others made a virtue of having it put up): and middle-aged female ghosts, with transformations apparently hind-side in front.

No ghost's looks mattered much, however, for good or ill, once the slowly moving _Enchantress_ had swept aside a purple curtain of distance and shown us such a stagesetting as only Nature's stupendous theatre can give.