The Valley of the Kings Part 4

But Iskender knew that it was of the cheapest: the whole feast had not cost his uncle ten piasters. When the Emir, at taking leave, put two mejidis in Abdullah's hand, he bit his lip and cursed the old man's guile.

Thenceforth he determined to keep all English-speaking persons at a distance, since their whole endeavour seemed to be to cheat his loved Emir. But it was not so easy to discard his old acquaintance.

That same evening, after parting from his patron, he ran right into the arms of a pair of merry fellows, who announced their playful purpose to detain him. Both wore their fezzes at a rakish angle, both had a rosary dangling fashionably from the left hand, both talked and laughed uproariously--secure in their employment by a foreign tourist agency from the disgust of the Muslim population, whose scowls shadowed them.

Elias Abdul Messih was one of them. The other, who boasted a very large hooked nose, like a parrot's beak, which reduced the rest of his face to insignificance, was Yuhanna Mahbub, a famous bully.

"Now we have thee!" cried Elias, laughing loudly. "By Allah, it is rude in thee to shun thy friends."

"Is it true that the Emir gives thee an English pound every day?"

inquired Yuhanna.

"He is good enough to treat me as a brother, and has sworn, of his benevolence, to make my fortune," Iskender modestly admitted.

"Pshaw! Promises--I know them!" sneered Yuhanna. "Coined money is the only thing I put my faith in."

"We crave a boon of thee," pursued Elias coaxingly. "Bring the khawajah to the house of Karlsberger to-morrow afternoon. We will make a feast in his honour and thine. Say yes, O my soul!"

"Aye, promise," snarled Yuhanna, "or we shall know thou hast a mind to slight us, and take steps accordingly."

Iskender promised, with intent to fail them, for the Emir's protection made their threat quite harmless. He pursued his way down a sandy road through the orange-gardens, which looked black beneath the sunset--of unusual splendour owing to the presence in the sky of ragged clouds. A fellah who pa.s.sed remarked that rain was coming.

"Art on the way to visit me?" A hand fell suddenly upon Iskender's shoulder. A tall black-clad form had overtaken him, unheard by reason of the m.u.f.fling sand. It was the priest Mitri. "Or dost thou fear to incur the anger of the English missionaries? By Allah, thou art wrong to fear them. Their religion is of man's devising; its aim is worldly comfort, which will fail them at the Last Day; whereas ours is the faith of Christ and the Holy Apostles, the same for which thy fathers suffered ages before the invention of the Brutestant heresy. It is the faith of the true Romans who reigned in the city of Costantin, when Rome had reaped the reward of her heathen iniquity and lay in ruins, a haunt of brigands and wild beasts. Is it not a sin that, after the lapse of so many ages, people calling themselves Christians, people who have never suffered hardship for their faith as we do, come hither and wage war upon the Church in her bound and crippled state, seducing the feeble and the avaricious by the spectacle of their wealth and the prospect of foreign protection? These heretics--and the Muscovites, our co-religionists, alas! with them--conspire against the Sultan, who is our sole defender. With the Muslimin we have in common language, country, and the intercourse of daily life. Therefore, I say, a Muslim is less abominable before Allah than a Latin or a Brutestant."

The priest stopped speaking suddenly and embraced Iskender, kissing him repeatedly on both cheeks. At the same moment a little cavalcade went ambling by, which solved the riddle of his strange behaviour. Iskender caught a scowl of disapproval from the Sitt Carulin, a glance of agonised appeal from the Sitt Hilda, and then a malicious grin from old Costantin, as he ran by on foot, prodding with his staff the hindmost jacka.s.s, on which the Sitt Jane sat up with face averted. The three ladies were clad in white with mushroom hats and fluttering face-veils.

Their bodies bulged now here, now there, like sacks of grain, obedient to the motion of the trotting donkeys.

"There they go, mothers of all contention, shameless meddlers!" said Mitri, peering after them in the twilight. "Ha, ha! I angered them, the praise to Allah. I made them tremble for their nursling!"

Iskender made no answer, feeling angry with the priest. At that reproachful glance of the Sitt Hilda, all his childhood had risen up and testified against him. His heart was stricken with profound compunction. He broke away from Mitri as soon as possible, refusing an invitation to enter his house and argue with him, and sped on across the sandhills to his own home. There, in the little house, a lamp was lighted; his mother stood at the doorway looking out for him.

Breathless, he informed her of his encounter with the Mission ladies, and the priest's vile trick to shame him.

"Aha," she laughed, "a famous joker is our father Mitri. I would give much to have seen the faces of those harridans! Nevertheless, may his house be destroyed, for he has done me an ill-turn with his foolery.

The ladies are certain to come here tomorrow, deafening me with the outcry of their poisonous spite. For thee, it recks not, thou hast thy Emir. In sh' Allah thou wilt soon get money from him. Then thou canst laugh at the malevolence of these hypocrites!"

But Iskender was not to be so easily consoled. He lay awake that night, a prey to poignant self-disgust, remembering in turn his happy childhood at the Mission, his love for the Sitt Hilda, and his recent frowardness, each with a vividness that hurt his brain. Even the patronage of a great Emir seemed nothing worth as compared with the affection of those who had brought him up. The Emir spoke lightly of religion; he despised the missionaries; it might well be he was wicked, a servant of the Evil One, a creature of that outer darkness into which he (Iskender) had fallen through his own fault. Then he thought of the priest Mitri, and of the beautiful child who for a moment had ensnared his fancy; and was overwhelmed with pity for himself. He belonged to n.o.body. The missionaries loved him so little that they were content to cast him off for small offences; while for the Orthodox he remained a Protestant, a filthy thing. In his thirst for comfort he was driven back on dreams of greatness, of buried treasure some day to be found, which would cause the English and the natives of the land alike to grovel in the dirt before him. Warmed by such thoughts he fell asleep at last.

When he awoke in the morning his mind was healed. He viewed the Mission with the old resentment, and placed his every hope in the Emir.

On his way to the hotel he saw the daughter of Mitri throwing crumbs to the church pigeons, and blew a kiss to her with words of love, only to laugh loud when, picking up a stone, she cursed his father. At the entering-in of the town he was accosted by Elias, who sprang suddenly from the shade of a cactus-hedge. Yuhanna followed, yawning. It was clear that they had been lying in wait.

"This afternoon, at the house of Karlsberger; forget not," Elias cried.

"We have ordered a fine feast in thy friend's honour."

"Fail us not, or it shall be the worse for thee," put in Yuhanna.

Iskender swore obedience to their will and hurried on, mentally resolved to hire horses and take his Emir for a ride until the evening.

It would be easy to say the Frank had willed it so, in which case none could blame him. With this in mind he entered the hotel. But again his Emir proved refractory. The air that morning oppressed him, he declared, and the sons of Musa said that it was going to rain. He proposed a stroll to some near spot among the gardens, where he could read while his companion sketched.

Iskender still had hope to foil the dragomans. He led his patron in a direction opposite to that where he had left Elias. But, looking back, he saw two figures shadowing them, and knew the game was up.

In fact, no sooner had they found a cool retreat than Elias and Yuhanna sauntered up, hailing Iskender with delight as loving comrades. He was obliged to present them to his Emir, and from the moment of introduction they had words for no one else, inquiring how his Honour liked the place, and asking if he knew this and that great lord of the English with whom they, by their own accounts, stood high in favour.

They presented their invitation with every circ.u.mstance of respect, and the Emir accepted it; and then, by the veriest accident, the eyes of Yuhanna happened to light upon the ousted youth.

"Ah," he exclaimed, "you like this little one, our dear Iskender! A good boy, sir, only don't know much yet. Baints fery nicely, for a young 'un. He show you, sir, the way this afternoon."

A tear fell splash upon Iskender's drawing-book.

CHAPTER V

The house of Karlsberger stood in a hollow of the southern sandhills, only discoverable on a close approach, so that the sight of its red roof, something like an extinguisher, came always as a surprise.

Its owner was of the number of those Jewish immigrants who, lured by the offer of perpetual charity, had of late years come in their thousands to occupy lands provided by their rich co-religionists. But the life of a husbandman soon palled on Karlsberger, accustomed to trade upon the vices of a European city; and his wife, a former harlot, shared his disgust. As soon as he could gather money enough he had left agriculture to the dullards, and built this house near the town as a rendezvous for all who loved the flavour of depravity. For the dragomans and their kind the house of Karlsberger stood for the fashion and gay life of Europe.

Thither Iskender conducted his lord in the manner of a reluctant follower rather than a guide. He had said all he could to dissuade the Frank from going, had exaggerated the ill repute of the place, and called the dragomans low, drunken blackguards; but all in vain. The Emir was bent on going; and his slave went with him miserably, feeling sure that the kindness he had himself inspired would not survive the introduction to a set of dashing fellows, whose profession it was to win the hearts of foreigners. The air was sultry, the expanse of sand glared hatefully beneath a sky veiled all over with thin cloud. All nature, in accordance with his mood, seemed glum and spiteful.

In sight of the house he pointed to it without a word. It looked in truth a pretty place for a great prince to visit. With a gloomy satisfaction Iskender noticed filth about the threshold, and shabby garments spread to dry upon the window-sill.

Sounds of talk and laughter came from the open door. They ceased directly the Emir was seen by those within; and some dozen men, a.s.sembled in a narrow room, rose as one and saluted. The room had been roughly cleaned for the occasion, the dust and filth of the floor having been swept into the four corners, where it lay in heaps. The ceiling and the white-washed walls were grimy, and dust made a bloom on the ragged curtains of the window, looped pretentiously; a three-legged table all but filled the room, leaving just room for one to pa.s.s around it. His lord was ushered to the seat of honour, a sofa covered with a fabric which had once been plush, but now resembled draggled sealskin; while Iskender went quite unnoticed till the wife of Karlsberger--a bulky slattern, who kept shuffling in and out with plates and gla.s.ses--perceived his need, and placed a stool for him. Through confusion and annoyance he caught nothing of the conversation till Elias, in a mincing voice, announced:

"The grub quite ready."

The Englishman laughed at that; upon which Elias, dancing up to him, exclaimed:

"You are a good fellow; I see that. I like you, and so blease to see you here."

All then drew close to the table, on which were set forth many tempting viands, including mottled discs of German sausage, anchovies, pickled gherkins, and huge chunks of Frankish bread. A bottle of rum and a bottle of gin stood one at each end of the board, attended by gla.s.ses of all shapes and sizes.

"Allow me to helb you, sir--a bit of sausage?" cried Elias, seizing a knife and presenting it at the dish in question. The Emir laughed again, which was the signal for an obsequious roar. He said he would prefer some bread and anchovy, and could help himself. He accepted a little of the rum for politeness' sake, and then professed himself satisfied. After some outcry on his lack of appet.i.te the rest of the party fell to with avidity. The presence of his uncle, which he now realised for the first time, relieved Iskender from the fear of personal indignity. He, too, attacked the victuals with good appet.i.te, but refused the spirits, strong in the example of Abdullah's abstinence. The work of eating was soon done, and every one sat back for conversation. There was much ostentatious picking of teeth, and noises of repletion came from all sides. Tongues were loosed, and vied one with another to display deep knowledge of the English speech and manners. The company abounded in expressions such as "old chap,"

"never say die," and "right you are!" which Iskender, from his education, knew to be inappropriate. Every one too, except Abdullah, made believe to revel in the gin and rum, out of compliment to the guest, whose national drink it was; but Iskender was not deceived by their hilarity. Sitting at the opposite end of the room to his patron, he saw the wry faces which were turned away at every sip. Elias, quite beside himself with adulation, and intoxicated already by the success of his facetious sallies, drank and drank again with convivial gestures.

"Ha, ha!" he cried, "I'm feelin' deflish habby. So fery nice to be with English beeble. The English are our friends; they're Christians like what we are. Blease G.o.d, they take this country like they taken Egybt, and gif the Turks an' Muslims good old h.e.l.l! Ha, ha! we're English, we are, just the same. The Turks all done for--no dam' good.

The Christians kick 'em all the time. They got to lick our boots, that's sure. The English they soon string up the rotten ole Sultan, first they christen 'im jus' for luck----"

His words were drowned in cries of horrified protest; his neighbours at the table flung themselves upon the rash talker, stopping his mouth forcibly with their hands; while old Abdullah rose up in authority and loudly denounced such sentiments as high treason, with glances at the open door as at an audience. Iskender could see the Frank was quite bewildered; he sat smiling on all that occurred without intelligence.

Elias, when let go, was laughing heartily.

"Well, I neffer!" he observed. "Who's afraid?"

Just then Khalil, the concertina-player, a dull-eyed, fattish man, who had kept silence, suddenly drew all eyes upon himself by picking up his instrument from the floor and playing a few chords softly.

"All right, Khalil! Come along then! Neffer say die, ole chabbie!"

Elias encouraged him.

"I blay you 'Bob goose the Whistle,'" said the musician seriously, and at once struck up a jerky Frankish tune, with eyes intently fixed on the Emir, garnering his every smile and sign of pleasure. When his Honour showed a disposition to sing the words of the refrain, he played more loudly than before in triumph. All present flung back their heads and bawled in discord, producing a din so horrible that the Jew Karlsberger, with his wife and child, appeared from an inner room with scared white faces.

"Merciful Allah, make less noise!" the Israelite besought the revellers. "If a Muslim were to hear you, I am ruined."