The Yoke Part 34

Her face was so near to him that he felt the glow from her warm cheek.

His gaze met hers and, for a moment, dwelt.

All the attraction of her gorgeous habiliments, her warm a.s.surance and her inceptive tenderness detached themselves from the general fusion and became distinct. Her beauty, her fervor, her audacity, were not unusually p.r.o.nounced on this occasion, but the spell for Kenkenes was broken and the inner working's were open to him. Different indeed was the picture that rose before his mind--a picture of a fair face, wondrously and spiritually beautiful; of the quick blush and sweet dignity and unapproachable womanhood. His eyes fell and for a moment his lids were unsteady, but the color surged back into his cheeks and his lips tightened.

He took Io's hands, which were clasped across his knee, and rising, gave the chair to Ta-meri. He found a taboret for himself, and as he put it down at her feet, he saw Nechutes fling himself into a chair and scowl blackly at the nomarch's daughter. Kenkenes sighed and interested himself in the babble that went on about him.

The first word he distinguished was the name of Har-hat, p.r.o.nounced in clear tones. Menes, who sat next to Kenkenes, put out his foot and trod on the speaker's toes. The man was Siptah.

"Choke before thou utterest that name again," the captain said in a whisper, "else thou wilt have Rameses abusing Har-hat before his daughter."

"What matters it to me, his temper or her hurt?" Siptah snarled.

"Churl!" responded Menes, amiably.

"What is amiss between the heir and the fan-bearer?" Kenkenes asked.

"Everything! Rameses fairly suffocates in the presence of the new adviser. The Pharaoh is sadly torn between the twain. He worships Rameses and, body of Osiris! how he loves Har-hat! But sometime the council chamber with the trio therein will fall--the walls outward, the roof, up--mark me!"

Again, clear and with offensive emphasis, Siptah's voice was heard disputing, in the general babble.

"Magnify the cowardice of the Rebu if you will, but it was Har-hat who made them afraid," he was saying.

The slow eyes of Rameses turned in the direction of the tacit challenge. Menes' black brows knitted at Siptah, but Kenkenes came to the rescue. A lyre, the inevitable instrument of ancient revels, was near him and he caught it up, sweeping his fingers strongly across the strings.

A momentary silence fell, broken at once by the applause of the peace-loving, who cried, "Sing for us, Kenkenes!"

He shook his head, smiling. "I did but test the harmony of the strings; harmony is grateful to mine ear."

Menes' lips twitched. "If harmony is here," he said with meaning, "you will find it in the instrument."

Again, a voice from the general conversation broke in--this time from Rameses.

"Kenkenes hath outlasted an army of other singers. I knew him as such when mine uncles yet lived and my father was many moves from the throne. It was while we dwelt unroyally here in Memphis. They made thee sing in the temple, Kenkenes. Dost thou remember?"

"Aye," Ta-user took it up. "They made thee sing in the temple and it went sore against thee, Kenkenes. Most of the upper cla.s.ses in the college here were hoa.r.s.e or treble by turns, and the priests required thee by force from thy tutors because thou couldst sing. Thou wast a stubborn lad, as pretty as a mimosa and as surly as a caged lion. I can see thee now chanting, with a voice like a lark, and frowning like a very demon from Amenti!"

The princess laughed musically at her own narration and received the applause of the others with a serene countenance. She had repaid Kenkenes for his implied championship of her cause earlier in the evening.

"Art still as reluctant, Kenkenes?" the Lady Senci called to him.

Kenkenes looked at the lyre and did not answer at once. There was no song in his heart and a moody silence seemed more like to possess his lips. His audience, too, was not in the temper for song. He took in the expression of the guests with a single comprehensive glance.

Siptah's hands were clenched and his face was blackened with a frown.

Ta-user's silken brows were lifted, and even the pallid countenance of the prince was set and his eyes were fixed on nothing. Seti was entangled by the princess' witchery and he saw no one else. Io, blanched and miserable, forgotten by Seti, forgot all others. In his heart Kenkenes knew that Nechutes was unhappy and Hotep and Masanath; and even if there were those in the banquet-room who had no overweening sorrow, the evident discontent of the troubled oppressed them.

Far from finding inspiration for song in the faces of the guests, Kenkenes felt an impulse to rush out of the atmosphere of unrest and unhappiness into the solitary night, where no intrusion of another's sorrow could dispute the great triumph of his own grief. The bitter soul in him longed to laugh at the idea of singing.

The hesitation between Senci's invitation and his answer was not noticeable. He put the instrument out of his reach, tossing it on a cushion a little distance away.

"Not so reluctant," he said, turning his face toward the lady, "as unready. I have exhausted my trove of songs for this self-same company,--wherefore they will not listen to reiteration, which is ever insipid."

Senci wisely accepted his excuse, and pressed him no further. One or two of the more observant members of the company looked at him, with comprehension in their eyes. Seldom, indeed, had Kenkenes refused to sing, and his reluctance corroborated their suspicions that all was not well with the young artist.

The irrepressible Menes observed to Io in one of his characteristic undertones, but so that all the company heard it: "What makes us surly to-night? Look at Kenkenes; I think he is in love! What aileth thee, sweet Io? Hast lost much to that gambling pair--Ta-meri and Nechutes?

And behold thy fellows! What a sulky lot! I am the most cheerful spirit among us."

"Boast not," she responded; "it is not a virtue in you. You would be blithe in Amenti, for one can not get mournful music out of a timbrel."

The soldier's eyes opened, and he caught at her, but she eluded him and growled prettily under her breath.

"Come, Bast," he cried, making after her. "Kit, kit, kit!"

She sprang away with a little shriek and Kenkenes, throwing out his arm, caught her and drew her close.

"Menes is malevolent--" he began.

"Aye, malevolent as Mesu!" she panted.

"What!" the soldier cried. "Has the Hebrew sorcerer already become a bugbear to the children?"

"If he become not a bugbear to all Egypt, we may thank the G.o.ds,"

Siptah put in.

Rameses laughed scornfully, but Ta-user and Seti spoke simultaneously:

"Siptah speaks truly."

"Yea, Menes," the heir scoffed; "he hath already become a bugbear to the infants. Hear them confess it?"

Siptah buried his clenched hand in a cushion on the floor near him.

"O thou paternal Prince," he said, "repeat us a prayer of exorcism as a father should, and rid us of our fears."

"And pursuant of the custom bewailed an hour agone, we shall return thanks to the Pharaoh, for the things thou dost achieve, O our Rameses," Menes added.

"If there are any prayers said," the prince replied, "the Hebrews will say them. Mine exorcism will be harsher than formulas."

The rest of the company ceased their undertone and listened.

"Wilt thou tell us again what thou hast said, O Prince?" Kenkenes asked.

"Mine exorcism of the Hebrew sorcerer, Mesu, will be harsher than formulas. I shall not beseech the Israelites and it will avail them naught to beseech me."

"Thou art ominous, Light of Egypt," Kenkenes commented quietly. "Wilt thou open thy heart further and give us thy meaning?"

"Hast lived out of the world, O Son of Mentu? The exorcism will begin ere long. In this I give thee the history of Israel for the next few years and close it. I shall not fall heir to the Hebrews when I come to wear the crown of Egypt."

"Are they to be sent forth?" Kenkenes asked in a low tone.

Rameses laughed shortly.