There was a King in Egypt Part 30

"I see," Freddy said. "Then I'm not to speak about it yet, am I? Just tell me what you want and I'll do it."

"Not yet, Freddy--not while that odious woman is here, at any rate."

"All right, I'll wait. Only I'd rather like to see her face when I congratulated Mike."

"Ought you to congratulate Mike? I'm your sister--isn't it the other way on? Shouldn't you congratulate me?"

They were close to the door of the hut; Meg lingered.

"He's the luckiest man I know. I wish he had a sister just like you.

Of course he's to be congratulated! And now I must go and make myself beautiful." His eyes smiled their brightest. "I bet you I could cut Mike out with the fair Millicent if I set my mind to it."

In the sunlight Freddy looked irresistible, with his violet eyes, shaded by his thick lashes, his crisp hair, as sunny and fair as a boy's. Meg knew that he was a much better-looking man than Mike--indeed, he would have been too good-looking if his figure had not been all that it was, if there had been the slightest touch of the feminine about him. There was not. Yet in spite of his good looks and astonishing colouring, Meg was right in her consciousness that for women there was more magnetic attraction in Mike's mobile plainness, in his sensitive, irregular features. When the two men were talking together, the senses and eyes of women would be drawn to the plain man.

During lunch Millicent Mervill was very good. She was interested in hearing about the tomb and, Freddy thought, wonderfully intelligent upon the subject. She was, as he expressed it, as clever as a monkey.

What little knowledge she had she used to the utmost advantage, to its extreme limit. All her intellectual goods she displayed in her shop window. She had a telling way of saying, "I am completely ignorant upon this or that subject," suggestive of the fact that she really did know a great deal about many other things. She seldom "gave herself away."

Freddy came to the conclusion that she was so quick that it was quite impossible to discover what she really did or did not know or grasp, and, as he said to Mike afterwards, "What she did not know, she will set about knowing when she gets home. That brain won't rest still under ignorance, or let Meg know what it doesn't know."

The description of the fine effigy of the queen thrilled her; her appet.i.te for details was insatiable. There was plenty to talk about, so conversation did not flag and personal topics were avoided.

Freddy thought that she was nicer than she had ever been before and even prettier. He enjoyed his lunch; it certainly was a change to have a beautiful woman, who was not his sister, and who did her best to make herself attractive, lunching with them in their desert home. After his tremendous efforts of the last three or four days her presence was pleasing. Even the modern clothes and aggressively-manicured finger-nails gave him healthy sensations. His manhood enjoyed her super-femininity.

The little room palpitated with life, the antagonism of the two women was a thing he could feel. He felt it as surely as he had felt the hot air of the tomb. Freddy enjoyed looking at his sister; her combative mood vitalized her.

Her dark hair, so soft and abundant, looked tempting to touch, after the dragged and matted "something" which clung to the skull of the mummy.

Nothing in the room was intrinsically worth a couple of shillings. The seat on which Michael was sitting had been made out of empty boxes; they had been converted into a very presentable armchair by the ingenuity of Mohammed Ali. Yet the atmosphere of the hut was human and domesticated, the two women sweet and fragrant.

And so it was not difficult for Freddy to respond to his fair guest's pleasant chatter. She made him laugh heartily more than once, and he was ready for a good laugh. He was braced by her quick wit and humorous way of looking at things.

Meg was doing her best to appear happy; she was really getting angrier and angrier every minute with the woman who was so thoroughly enjoying herself; angry because Freddy, like all other men, was being deceived by her, because he was obviously thinking her very excellent company--which she was. He was no doubt already wondering why she, Meg, hated her so whole-heartedly. Freddy had seldom mentioned Millicent to his sister; he had kept his own counsel. The Lamptons were silent men, whose appreciation of women like Millicent never led them astray in the choosing of their wives.

Michael had given Millicent his first vivid impressions of the tomb in a very "Mik-ish" manner. He described Freddy, strikingly distinguishable in his white flannels, greedily picking up jewels and gold and bits of blue faience and stowing them away into boxes by the light of an electric torch.

"A tomb burglar if ever you saw one! I shall never forget the sight."

"There's lots of work for you, Meg, to-night," Freddy said. "There's an awful lot of things to sort and clean--beautiful things."

"How exciting!" Millicent said. "Can you keep any of the small things?

They'd stick to my fingers, I feel sure."

"No," Freddy said. "Not unless you are a thief. They aren't ours--I'm only entrusted with the finding of them."

Millicent made a face of dissatisfaction, as she felt for something which she wore fastened to the long gold chain which was hanging from her neck.

"I wonder if you will p.r.o.nounce this genuine or a fake? Do you remember, Mike, our buying it?" She ran her fingers along the chain.

The genuine antique or fake was not on it; it was missing. She felt again. No; there was nothing on the chain.

"Oh, I've lost it!" she said. "My precious eye of Horus, Mike. I wouldn't have lost it for the world!" Her tone conveyed his understanding of the personal value which she attached to the amulet.

"What was it?" Freddy said. "Can't we get another? If you bought it, it was probably a fake."

"A new one would never be the same--Mike gave me the one I've lost"--she purposely used Michael's intimate name--"while we were staying at Luxor. It has been my 'heaven-sent gift'"--(the ancients'

name for the amulet, which represented the right eye of Horus).

They all looked to see if the amulet had been dropped in the room, if it was under the table. But it was nowhere to be found; the eye of Horus was concealing itself.

"It was probably only a fake," Freddy said, "if you bought it in Luxor.

I'll try and get a genuine one for you--for ages and ages they were the commonest of all amulets, judging by the number we find. Almost every ancient Egyptian must have worn one. It was the all-seeing eye, the protecting light."

"The moon was the left eye of Horus and the sun was the right--isn't that so?" Millicent asked.

"Roughly speaking, but the eye of Horus is a complicated subject. It's not just the evil or good eye of Italy, by any means. The eye of Horus is the eye of Heaven, Shakespeare's 'Heaven's eye,' but it's when it gets identified with Ra that the complication comes in. The _sacred_ eye is the eye of Heaven, or Ra. Poets, ancient and modern, have sung of it, from the time of Job to the days of Shakespeare. But there was also the evil eye, the one we hear so much about in Southern Italy."

"Tell me about that. I always like the naughty stories. I've never grown up in that respect. The evil eye is more interesting to me than the eye of Heaven. I knew a woman in Italy who was selling lace; she let a friend of mine buy all she wanted from her at the most absurdly cheap prices you can imagine. When the lady of the house we were staying in, who had allowed the woman to call and bring her lace, asked her why she had sold the lace to a stranger at a price for which she had refused to part with it to her, she simply threw up her eyes and said, '_Ma_, Signora, what could I do? She had the evil eye--if I had not given it to her, what terrible misfortunes she could have brought to me!'"

"I remember seeing a crowded tramcar in Rome empty itself in a moment when a well-known Prince, who was supposed to have the evil eye, got into it," Michael said.

"A common expression for a woman in ancient Egypt was _stav-ar-ban_, which meant 'she who turns away the evil eye,'" Freddy said.

"Then the Egyptians believed in the evil eye, as apart from the sacred eye of Ra?" Millicent said. "What a universal belief it seems to have been! One meets with it all over the world."

"Wasn't there a book found in the ancient library of the temple of Dendereh which told all about the turning away of the evil eye?" Mike asked.

"I believe so," Freddy said. "But I've never seen it."

Millicent was still fingering her empty chain. "I feel lost without my eye," she said to Mike, who had answered her persistent gaze. "You bought it for me after that long, long day we spent together in the desert behind Karnak. Do you remember that Coptic convent"--she made a face of disgust--"and the amus.e.m.e.nt of the nuns at my blue eyes, and all the dreadful dogs? You bought the eye from the old man who looked as if he had lived inside a pyramid all his life." She turned to Margaret. "It was a wonderful day, and we behaved like children in the desert, didn't we, Mike?"

Meg managed to hide her annoyance, but something hurt inside her--probably her bowels of wrath.

"It was a lovely day, I remember. The Coptic convent looked like a collection of beehives huddled together in the desert. You wouldn't go inside it because you were afraid of the fleas, and I wasn't allowed to go in because I was a man."

"I'd had enough of Coptic churches. Have you ever been in the early Christian churches in Cairo?" she asked Margaret.

"No, but I've heard about them."

"Well, I have, and all I can say is that if the early Christians in Rome were as dirty as the survivors of the Church of St. Mark are in Cairo, I don't wonder at the pagans. I wasn't going to risk the monastery after the appalling filth of their churches, dirty pigs!"

At that precise moment Mohammed Ali brought in the coffee. It was served in the native fashion, in small enamelled bra.s.s bowls, on a bra.s.s tray. When he handed the tray to Mrs. Mervill he pointed to a small object lying beside her cup.

"Lady, I find _antika_ all safe."

Millicent's heart beat more quickly; a little deeper rose warmed her cheeks. She picked up the eye of blue faience from the bra.s.s tray with well-a.s.sumed delight. Margaret's dark eyes were resting on her. She felt them.

"Thank you," she said to Mohammed Ali. "I'm so glad." Her hand shook a little as she lifted her cup. "Heaven's eye is not withdrawn," she said gaily to Michael.

"Where did you find it, Mohammed?" Michael asked the question innocently.