CHAPTER XV
THE DESERT DIARY TO ITS BITTER END
Tuesday: The principal water-cask has leaked; consequently not enough water to go round. Chêf said it was a question of baths, or soup. Considering the cold, most of the people voted for soup. Some washed in Apollinaris. Others douched with soda siphons. We can get more water to-night. Can't think why the north wind doesn't stop and warm itself while traversing the Mediterranean or the hot sands! It seems to be in too fierce a hurry and consequently cuts across the desert, like a frozen scythe, the moment its rival the sun has gone to sleep. I hear that Miss Hassett-Bean cried with cold as she dressed, and put on two of everything; but she is luckier than the younger women. Monny and Mrs. East, though warned that nights would be chill, have come clothed in silk and gossamer, and have brought low-necked nightgowns of nainsook trimmed with lace. This was confided to me soon after sunrise by a blue-nosed Biddy, hovering over the kitchen fire and —incidentally—ingratiating herself with the cook. It wouldn't be Biddy if she weren't ingratiating herself with some one!
Nobody yearned to get up early (I speak for others, as I passed my night in the attitude of a suspension bridge between two folding chairs); but in camp where sleep is concerned, men may propose, camels dispose.
Their nights they spend in a ring of camelhood, huddled together for warmth; and if they do not have nightmare or bite each other in their sleep, mere humans in neighbouring tents may hope for comparative silence in the desert, if not near a village full of pi-dogs. At sunrise, however, a change comes o'er their spirit. They are given food, and made as happy and contented as it is their nature to be, which apparently is not saying much. Judging by the strange, inarticulate oaths they constantly mutter, they are equally accursed in their sitting down and their getting up. It is only when they are actually "on the move," floating and swaying through the air—legs, tail, neck, jaws—that they have nothing disagreeable to say. Immediately after dawn this morning, our camels began to imitate every animal they could have met since the days of the Ark, when one had to know everybody. They mewed like cats, hissed like snakes, bleated like sheep, roared like toy lions, grunted like pigs, barked like dogs, squawked like geese, and bellowed like baby bulls. Also they gargled their throats like elderly invalids. It was useless trying to sleep; and when I had accomplished such bathing as the chêf permitted, I went out to see what was the matter. Nothing was the matter, except that the creatures had the sunrise in their eyes, and could see the camel-boys preparing their loads; but I was glad I had come out, because Biddy was there and the scene was beautiful. Shivering, we chuckled over the morning toilet of the camels, who turned their faces disconcertingly upon us, sneering with long yellow teeth, and bubbling as if their mouths were full of pink soapsuds, when they realized that we were laughing at them.
Incidentally we learned why the Baby Sphinx accompanied our caravan uninvited. His name is Salih; and he came because there's a very important camel (the property of his father) who refuses to eat or stir without him. It is a most original and elaborate camel. It has a neat way of turning its ears with their backs to the wind, in order to make them sand-proof. If any person other than Salih touches it, an incredible quantity of green cud is instantly let loose over their turbans; but at the approach of Salih it emits a purring noise, preens its head for the nose-strap ornamented with a bunch of palmlike plumes, and playfully pretends not to want the bersím which the little black Sphinx thrusts down its throat in handfuls. This, it seems, is good camel table-manners. And it is to the tail of this animal that Salih clings on the march. If he is not there, the animal looks round, stops, or turns to charge at any Arab who jestingly misuses its idol.
Yesterday the miniature Sphinx was in a white robe. To-day he is in black. All the Arabs have changed their clothes, although they have brought no visible luggage except vague pieces of sacking. The dragoman is exquisitely arrayed, galabeah and kaftan gray-blue, with a pink petticoat, and a white one under that. I suspect that he sleeps beneath the dining-table—and the other Arabs among the kitchen pots—yet they are smarter than any of us Europeans, all of whom have a frayed air. This, I suppose, would not be so in desert-fiction. Nothing would be said about hot-water bottles leaking, or beetles beetling (one doesn't come to Egypt to see live scarabs), or draughts raging, or camels gobbling, or flags flapping all night. (Memo: Abolish flags, even at expense of patriotism.)
Despite every desert drawback, however, Biddy and I agreed that the sunrise alone was worth the journey, and the pure air of dawn which, though cold, seemed perfumed by mysterious rose-fields. Just at sun-up the desert was lily pale—then, as the horizon flamed, a dazzling flood of gold poured over the dunes. The sun was a fantastic brooch of beaten copper, caught in a veil of ruby gauze, while here and there a belated star was a dull, flawed emerald sewn into the veil's fringe. Shadows swept westward across the desert like blue water, showing a glitter of drowned jewels underneath; and though last night it had seemed that we were alone in a vast wilderness, now there were signs that a village lay not far off. A group of children in red and blue, staring avidly at the camp, were like a bunch of ragged poppies in the sand. Their mangy pi-dogs had ventured nearer, to smell sadly at the meat-safes hanging outside our kitchen-tent. A gypsy-woman with splendid eyes and a blue tattooed chin, breakfasted on an adjacent dune with her husband. Men like living hencoops passed in the distance. Patriarchal persons blew by, in that graceful way in which people do blow in Egypt, driving a flock of sheep, with a black lamb "for luck." These men were dressed as their ancestors had dressed in the time of Abraham, and Biddy and I envied them. How nice, said she, to wear the same clothes for a hundred years if you happened to live, and never be out of fashion. If a few of your things dropped off by degrees, you were still all right, and nobody would be rude enough to notice!
Our faded family revived after breakfast, and even those who vowed they hadn't closed an eye all night enjoyed the scene of striking camp. The big white tents fell to the ground like pricked soap-bubbles; whereupon their remains were deftly rolled up and tied on to the backs of bitterly protesting camels. Beds, mattresses, tables, chairs ceased to be what they had been and became something else. Camels made faces and noises. Arabs tore this way and that, doing as little work as possible. The cook fluttered about in his blanket, brandishing a saucepan. Yusef the dragoman made noble gestures of command, and our little desert city ceased to exist except on camels' backs. It was shaved off the surface of the earth, and went churning and swaying along toward the next stand; the procession rising and falling among swelling dunes, under a sky which seemed to trail like a heavy blue curtain, where at the horizon it met the gold.
We travelled over pebbly plateaus, scattered with jewel-like stones. Sand-pyramids rose out of the glistening plain. Here and there were rocks like partly hewn sphinxes pushing out of the sand to breathe; other rocks like monstrous toads; and still others dark and dreadful in the distance as ogres' houses. Altogether the desert gave us a truly Libyan effect, which made the Set feel that after all they were getting what they had paid for, with an introduction to a beauty and heiress thrown in. But apropos of this latter boon, it is dawning upon me that Rachel Guest is receiving more attention than Monny. This strikes me as inexplicable. There are more men than women in our party, all young except Sir John Biddell, General Harlow, and Mills of Manchester, a soft, fat sort of fellow whose first name you can never remember. It occurred to me on starting, that the desire of so many unattached young men to spend a week in the desert and the Fayoum, might not be unconnected with Miss Gilder's intention to join the party. Not being jealous, I expected to see a little fun, and laugh over it with Biddy, who is a heavenly person with whom to share a joke. But if there is a joke, I haven't seen the point yet, nor has she. There's no disputing the fact that Miss Guest, the poor, brave school teacher on holiday, is the belle of the desert.
Of course, if Monny had stopped in Cairo, Rachel's success with our men wouldn't be astonishing. As Brigit and Monny warned me in their letters to the Candace, she grows better looking every day; but though she is distinctly of Monny's type, despite those slanting eyes, she will never be a real beauty, or a Complete Fascinator, like our Gilded Girl. Besides, Monny has millions, and Rachel hasn't a cent. Yet there it is! Miss Guest is having the "time of her life" in spite of leaky water bottles and bumping camels, while Miss Gilder might be an old married woman, for all the attention she gets from any man on this trip except me. What can be the explanation? Even those two exaggerately German-looking men with Bedr stared at Rachel from their respectful distance. It turns out that they camped not far from us last night. Yusef heard this from one of our camel-boys. But they kept to themselves, and didn't come within a mile of us, so there's nothing to complain of. Every one except Sir John delighted with to-day's desert. He can't see anything beautiful in yellow lumps that keep you sawing up and down, though he has no doubt the desert is full of other fools doing what we're doing; and we could all see each other doing it if it weren't for those darn dunes.
Later: Adventure for sandcart on one of the biggest plateaus. Looked all right from the top; but a shriek from Mrs. East put me to the dire necessity of sliding off Farag and running to the rescue. The plateau was broken off in front and became a precipice which, Cleopatra seemed to think, would not have existed had "Antoun" arrived in tune to arrange it.
Great wind came roaring up again about noon. Feared to learn that it had been impossible to get luncheon-tent in position. But when the time came to find it, there it was with its back to the blast, and its shady open front, of tile-patterned appliqué, offering the hoped-for picture of white table and smiling brown waiters.
While we lunched, the fierce gusts striking the back canvas wall were like the frightened flappings of giant wings, and the beating of a great bird's heart. Otherwise we might have forgotten the elements as we ate, save for a slight powdering of sand on our food. But even that wasn't bad, if we selected only the port side of our bread and chicken, leaving windward bits to the Arabs.
Our night camp was in shelter of the two vast dunes which hide the ancient city of Bacchias, now called Um-el-Atl, where we found "Antoun" awaiting us. He had started from Cairo in the morning on a coastguard camel, coming quickly along the camel route between Bedrashen and Tomieh, and the extra few miles to our encampment. Before we arrived he had sent the camel back with the mounted Arab who accompanied him; and somehow the camp seemed all the smarter and more ship-shape for the presence of the handsome Hadji, in his green turban. The Set are all extremely interested in him; and on hearing my version of his history, sketchily told, have taken to calling him "the prince." Enid and Elaine almost fawn upon him, in their admiration of so romantic and splendid an addition to our party: a real, live Egyptian gentleman, with enough European blood in his veins to justify nice-minded maidens in cherishing a hopeless love for him, when he has safely vanished out of their lives.
Mrs. East made Anthony pick up pre-historic oyster shells in the desert, between flaming sunset and twilight, when the sky became a vast blue tent hung with a million lamps. And at dinner she was not nice to Enid and Elaine who admired her hero too frankly. She has developed an embarrassing clearness of vision as to other people's former incarnations, especially their disagreeable or shocking ones. "Ah, it has just come to me!" she exclaimed, her elbows on the table, looking dreamily into Elaine Biddell's face. "You were Xantippe. I knew I'd seen you somewhere."
As for Enid, it seems that she was Charmian or Iris, Cleopatra can't be sure which; but the girl has come to me saying that, if Mrs. East doesn't stop calling her "My dear handmaiden," one or the other of them will have to give up starting on the Nile trip next week.
Wednesday: We had lobster á la Newburgh for dinner, in mid-Libyan desert, and drank the chêf's health in champagne. I don't know which was to blame, or whether it was the combination; but in the windy middle of the night when tent flaps stirred like a nestful of young birds, there were demands for ginger and for peppermint. Now, ginger and peppermint happened to be the only two medicaments in the whole pharmacopoeia left out of the medicine chest. But nothing else would do. The more the things weren't there, the more they were wanted; and all the people who had made notes to remember me in their wills, scratched me out again. Then, to pile Ossa on Pelion, the dogs of Tomieh arrived to pay a visit. They barked, of course; but they barked so much that the noise was like a silence, and nobody minded after the first half hour. The worst was, that they did not confine their demonstrations to barking. In order to signify their disapproval of our stingy ways, they took the boots we had confided to the sand in front of our tents to be cleaned, and worried them at a considerable distance. Some of the boots were past wearing when found, and some were not found. Judging from cold glances directed at me by those obliged to resort to pumps or bedroom slippers, one would imagine me the trainer of this canine menagerie. It has been hinted, too, that a conductor worth his salt would have filled up interstices of the medicine chest with toothbrushes. Several members of the party forgot to pack theirs in moving camp and they are now the property of jackals. A stock of toothbrushes is the one other thing besides peppermint and ginger and hot-water bottles that Slaney and I left out of our calculations; still, I do think bygones ought to be bygones. Anthony is the hero now, because it occurred to him to buy in Cairo flannelette nightwear, male and female, of the thickest and most hideously pink description. Had these horrors been suggested at the start, they would have been rejected with fury, in favour of lace and nainsook; but the contribution has made a success fou, at a crisis when vanity has been forgotten, and the girls are employing their prettiest frocks as bed covering.
Another Day: Have now forgotten which, or how many we've had. This is Anthony's hour—but he may take such advantage of it as he chooses—I'm indifferent. On top of my troubles I've contracted Desert Snivels. Whether the habit of using sand for snuff has produced the malady, or whether I've caught something (despite the tonic air) from nomads or oasis-dwellers, all of whom emit a storm of coughs and sneezes, I do not know. All desire to use this grand opportunity of taking Cleopatra's advice and winning Monny's love while for once she's neglected by others, has died within me. My one wish is to keep away from her and the rest, except perhaps Biddy, and suffer alone, like a cat. Biddy has got Desert Snivels, too. It makes another link between us, like the memories of our childhood. We swop stories of symptoms. Both feel that sense of terrible resignation which desert babies have when their eyes are full of flies and no one takes them out.
The sky lowers. Big black birds flap over our heads like pirate flags that have blown away. They are the vultures which used to be sacred to Egyptians, and seem to labour under the delusion that they are sacred still. The sand blows into our back hair, and the Arabs make scarves and veils of their turbans. Apparently these Moslems never say any prayers, and the Candace people feel they've been cheated of a promised sensation of desert life. The only religious thing the men do is to bawl "Allah!" when they lift the heavy, rolled up tents onto the camels.
People are beginning to grumble about their meals, which at first seemed to them miracles of culinary art. "Same old desert things we've been eating ever since Moses," I heard Harry Snell mutter. And Sir John Biddell is sick of h. b. eggs. I suppose he means hard-boiled. I should like to feed him on soft-shell scarabs!
Tea is the only incident in the desert which has palled on no one yet. Very jolly, having finished the day's exertion, and sitting on folding chairs inside tent door, teacup in hand, watching the winged shadows sweep across the dunes! One feels like Jacob or Rebecca or some one. There may be a fine saint's tomb standing up, marble-white, against the rose-garden of a sunset sky, but one doesn't bother to walk out and examine it at close quarters. There's nothing like sitting still after a windy day on camel back.
We lack interest in history ancient and modern, although Egypt is the country which ought to make one want to know all other history. There may be a European war or an earthquake. We don't care what happens to any one but ourselves. It is all we can do to keep track of our own affairs. As for ancient history, we content ourselves with wondering if Anthony and Cleopatra, when picnicking in the desert, dropped orange peel and cake to feed the living scarabs of their day.
We seem to be lost to the world, yet now and then we're reminded that we have neighbours in the desert. We've had glimpses of a distant caravan which must be Bedr's; and when we came in sight of our own camp last evening, we were just in time to catch a party of Germans being photographed in front of it, with our things for an unpaid background. Ever beauteous picture, by the by, your own encampment! White tents blossoming like snowy flowers in a wilderness; a dense black cloud, massed near by on the golden sand, which might in the distance be a plantation of young palms, but is in reality a congested mass of camels. You sing at the top of your voice "From the desert I come to thee, on a stallion shod with fire!" hoping to thrill the girls. But they are thinking about their tea. Girls in the desert, I find, are always thinking about their tea, or their dinner, or their beds. You would like (when your Desert Snivels improve) to walk with a maiden under the stars; but no, she is sleepy! She wants to get to bed early. Even the camels are most particular about their bed hours. It would be irritating, if you didn't secretly feel the same yourself. But what a waste of stars!
Some old Day or Other: Interesting but dusty dyke road into the Fayoum oasis. Every one enraged with Robert Hichens because "Bella Donna's" Nigel recommended The Fayoum. "No wonder she poisoned him!" snarled Mrs. Harlow. Our Arabs riding ahead look magnificent, seeming to wade through a flood of gold, the feet and legs of their camels floating in a rose-pink mist. But alas, the flood of gold and the rose-pink mist are composed of dust—that reddish dust in which presumably the boasted Fayoum roses grow; and it blows into our noses. This upsets our tempers, and prevents our enjoying the pictures we see in the sudden transition from desert to oasis. Biblical patriarchs on white asses, disputing the high, narrow "gisr" or dyke road; women with huge gold nose rings; running processions of girls, in blowing coral and copper robes, large ornamental jars on their veiled heads, thin trailing black scarves and slim figures dark against a sky of gold. Blue-eyed water-buffaloes—gamoushas—and exaggerated brown-gray calves, with wide-open, boxlike ears in which you feel you ought to post something. Canals stretching away through emerald fields to distant palm groves; here and there a miniature cataract; children playing in the water, imps whose red and amber rags ring out high notes of colour like the clash of cymbals; now and then a jerboa or a mongoose waddling across the path; travelling families on trotting donkeys or swinging camels who pass us with difficulty. Camels everywhere, indeed, on dyke or in meadow; even the clouds are shaped like camels who have gone to heaven and turned to mother o' pearl. There are horses, too; not little sand stallions like ours, but ordinary, plodding animals whose hoofs know only Fayoum dust or mud. Our desert creature, however, does not spurn them. On the contrary, though he pretends not to notice camels, cows, or buffaloes, he whinnies and prances with delight when he meets anything of his own shape, and assumes hobby-horse attitudes, much to the alarm of Cleopatra and Miss Hassett-Bean. Also, just to remind everybody that sand is his element, he shies at water, and almost swoons at sight of the Fayoum light railway.
Much wind again. But thank goodness out of Fayoum dust, and in desert sand for lunch! Prop up tent with our backs, leaning against the blast. However, we have now a special clothes-brush for the bread, and a moderately clean bandanna for the fruit. Plates, we blow upon without a qualm. Scarabei gambolling in the sand around our feet we pass unnoticed. This is the simple desert life!
But ah, what an encampment for the night! It makes up for everything, and a sudden realization of abounding health is tingling in our veins. We adore the desert. We want to spend our lives in it. Thank goodness we have two nights here, on the golden shore of the blue Birket Karun, all that's left of Lake Moeris of which Strabo and Herodotus raved. From the dune-sheltered plateau where our white tents cluster, the glitter of water in the desert is like a mirage: a mysterious, melancholy sheet of steel and silver turning to ruby in the sunset, with dark birds skimming over the clear surface.
Suddenly the Bible seems as exciting as some wonderful novel. Not far from here ran Joseph's river, making the desert to blossom like the rose. In tents like ours, perhaps, Abraham rested with Sarah, planning how to save himself by giving her to the Egyptian king. To see this lake is like seeing a bright, living eye suddenly open in the face of a mummy, dead for six thousand years!
Our best sunset; romance but slightly damaged by an Arab waiter wrapping up his head in a towel with which he had just dried our teacups and no doubt will again.
Another Day: (Merely slavish to look it out in the calendar, and besides there is none.) All I know is, we've had two on the shore of Birket Kurun (I spell it a different way now, because no books ever spell anything in Egypt twice alike), "The Lake of the Horns"; and we've been on the water in some very old boats, in order to see things which may have existed once, but don't now; and at present we're encamped near Medinet-el-Fayoum, a kind of lesser Cairo: originally named Medinet-el Fâris, City of the Horseman, because of a Roman equestrian statue found in the neighbouring mounds of "Crocodilopolis." We have just arrived, hot and dusty, with more dust of more Fayoum than we had before Lake Moeris. "Fayoum" means Country of the Lake it seems; and it really is a great emerald cup sunk below the level of the Nile —as if to dip up water for its roses.
However, the Set is happy despite the state of its clothes and its hair. None of us quite realized what the Fallahcen were really like before, or that the word Fellal meant "ploughman." This has been market-day, and we met an endless stream of riding men, and walking women with black trailing garments. They had bought sheep, and goats, and rabbits, and quantities of rustling, pale green sugar cane, which they carried on their shoulders.
There were wild adventures for the sandcart, and watery spaces across which Cleopatra was carried (at her own urgent request) by Anthony; Miss Hassett-Bean by me and the strongest Arab. There were the wonderfully picturesque squalid mud towns of Senoures and two or three others, honey-yellow in a green mist of palms, against an indigo sky with streaks of sunshine like bright bayonets of Djinns. And then Medinet, through which our caravan had to pass en route to camp, much to the ribald joy of smart, silk-robed Egyptian "undergrads" who strolled hand in hand along the broad streets near the University. They were big, fantastic houses to suit modern Oriental taste, painted pink and green, and set in shady gardens. And between high brick embankments we saw the river Joseph made—swiftly running, deep golden yellow like the Nile, with ancient water-wheels pouring crystal jets into enormous troughs.
This was our most fatiguing day, and we wanted our last encampment to be the best. We found the worst: a suburban meadow inhabited by goats and buffaloes. "Can't we move somewhere else?" Cleopatra besought Anthony, to whom she appeals when he's within appealing distance. "Isn't this tour for our pleasure, and can't we do what we like?"
Anthony absolved the camp-makers, explaining that we must be near the town in order to get carriages and see the sights we had come to see. Also our water supply had given out, and we must beg some from the "government people." He hinted that it would be well to make the best of things; but Cleopatra, with her royal memories, is not good at making the best of what she doesn't like. She wants what she wants, especially in her own Egypt, where things ought to know that they once belonged to her. Miss Hassett-Bean is quite as exigeante, in a different way, more Biblical, less pagan. Her criticism on the encampment was that it, and all her oasis experiences, are destroying her faith in hymns. "By cool Siloam's Shady Rill," for instance, used to be her favourite, but she doesn't believe now that Siloam ever had a rill.
Later: 11 p. m. Fallahcen and Fellahah (doesn't sound female, but is) pretended to have things to do on the frontier of their field and ours, as we were settling in, and stared unblinkingly at us, whenever we stuck a nose outside a tent. Also they laughed. Also they brought their dogs. But they couldn't spoil the sunset, and Medinet was a colourful picture of the Orient, towering against the crimson west. I took Monny and Biddy into the town to see the bridge and dilapidated Mosque of Kait Bey, with its pillars stolen from Arsinoë. Anthony took Cleopatra, and most of the other unmarried men took Rachel Guest. When Brigit remarked rather sharply upon the ex-school teacher's popularity, Monny laughed an odd, understanding little laugh. "I believe you think you know why they're all so mad about that girl!" exclaimed Biddy.
"Perhaps I do," smiled Miss Gilder.
"What is her fascination?"
"Bedr could have told you," Monny cryptically replied. "He told several people."
"What do you mean, child? I'm eating my heart out to know!"
"Don't eat it, dearest. You can't eat your heart and have it, too. And it's your most important possession."
"I wish you wouldn't tease me when I'm tired. Is it part of the secret you and Rachel were always giggling over, when we first got to Cairo?"
"Yes, dear, it is, if you must know. But I don't want to tell even you what the secret is, please! You might think it your duty to spoil Rachel's fun, and she and I are both enjoying it so much."
"Can you guess what she means, Duffer?" Biddy appealed to me. "You know I wrote you that Monny and Miss Guest had a secret. I thought afterward it might have been only their plan to see the hasheesh den; but since then I've realized it was something else."
"Even if I could guess, ought I to give Miss Gilder away, when she has just told you she doesn't want you to know?" I asked innocently.
They both turned on me in a flash. (I expected that.) "Do you guess?"
"I don't see, if I do, why I shouldn't have my little secret," I mildly replied. I knew that, after this, Monny would give me a good deal of her society, even though she might not have forgiven me for bolting to haul down the Cook ensign, in the midst of her confidences. But in truth I have not guessed the secret! My wits go wheeling round it, like screaming swallows who see a crumb. I get a glimpse of the crumb, and lose it again. In my present mood I almost regret that Bedr and his supposed Germans have not dumped themselves down in our field. It would have been like them to do so, judging by the aggressive checks on those mustard tweeds; but as a matter of fact the party has disappeared from view since just before Birket Karun. They may have turned back to Cairo; they may have been swallowed up by a palsied sand dune; they may have been eaten by jackals (we saw a dead one), or they may have taken to the fleshpots of a Greek hotel in Medinet; but the fact remains that, just when he might be useful, Bedr is not to be had.
In our tent to-night, I took advantage of our friendship to try and draw Fenton out a little on the subject of his feelings. It seemed the right hour to open the door of the soul. The Fallaheen having taken their families home, our tent-flaps were up, and only the stars looked in—stars swarming like fireflies in the blue cup of a hanging flower; but Anthony would speak of nothing more intimate than the Mountain of the Golden Pyramid, or his tiresome sheikh's tomb. I yearned to tell him of the contretemps about the hieroglyphic letter, but something stopped the confession on the end of my tongue, though perhaps in the circumstances, I owed it to Mrs. East. If he had mentioned her name the story might have come out; but the one drop of Eastern blood which mingles with a hundred of the West in Anthony's veins makes him singularly reserved, aggravatingly reticent where women are concerned. I used to think that this was because he was not interested in them. But something—I can't explain what, unless it's instinct—tells me that this is no longer the case. Another interest has come into his life, rivalling his soldier interest, and the secret hope buried deep in our Mountain. I see it in his eyes. I hear it in the timbre of his voice. It means Woman. But what woman? Is Monny right? Is he falling seriously in love for the first time in his strenuous life with Biddy, whom he picked out for admiration the moment he set eyes on her? Or is it Monny herself? I must be a dog in the manger, because I don't like the idea of its being either.
He is asleep on the other side of the tent as I write. Desert dogs do not disturb him. He's great on concentrating his mind, and when he goes to sleep he concentrates on that.
I wish he'd talk in his sleep! But even in unconsciousness, he is discreet as a statue.
The Last Day. Evening: I am in disgrace, and am left alone to bear it, so I may as well finish my Desert Diary. It's all an account of a lamb, just an ordinary, modern lamb you might meet anywhere. But I mustn't begin with that, though it haunts me. In spirit it's here in the tent, sitting at my feet, staring up into my face. Avaunt, lamb! Thy blood is not on my head. Go to those who deserve thee. I wish to write of Crocodilopolis. Shetet, the city was called in the beginning of things; Shetet, or the "Reclaimed," for the Egyptians stole land from the water, and made it the capital of their great Lake Province, which Ptolemy Philadelphus renamed to please his adored wife. Queen Arsinoë was charming, no doubt; and the Greek ruins and papyri of her day are interesting, but it is the city sacred to the crocodile god Sebek which can alone distract my thoughts now from the tragedy of the black lamb. If his Ka refuses to go I shall set crocodiles at it —ghosts of crocodiles mummied somewhere under the desert hills which separate the Fayoum from the Nile Valley.
We drove out to the ruins in a string of hired carriages, at an incredibly early hour this morning. As the night was one long dog-howl, and the dawn one overwhelming cockcrow, people were thankful to get up. But what a waste of hardly obtained baths before the start! Between Medinet and Crocodilopolis rose a solid wall of red dust. We had to break through it, as firemen dash through the smoke of a burning house; and when our arabeahs stopped at the foot of a mountainous mound, about a mile out of Medinet, the dust had come too. Scrambling up, with the wind on our backs, we began to breathe; but it was not until we had ascended to the old guard house on top of the pottery strewn height, that we could draw a clean breath. Then the reward was worth the pains.
Down below us, seen as from a bird's-eye view, lay a vast, unroofed honeycomb. It's size was incredible. The thing could not really be there. It was a startling dream, that endless gold-brown city of regular streets, and mud brick buildings, big and small, shops and houses, theatres and libraries, lacking only their roofs, deserted save by ghosts for thousands of years, yet looking as though it had been destroyed by a cyclone yesterday. Down there in the devastated beehive myriads of bees still worked frantically, human bees, which Cleopatra said were reincarnations of those who had owned slaves and killed them with forced labour, when Shetet was among the richest cities of the "Two Lands." These bees of to-day worked to destroy, not to recreate, for the crumbling brick is the best of fertilizers—and fertilizing their land is the one great interest in life for the Fellaheen of the Fayoum. Furiously they tore at the remaining walls; furiously they packed away their treasure of dried mud in sacks; furiously they piled it on backs of donkeys and rushed away to make room for others. Each instant hundreds of wild figures in dusty black or blue scampered off, beating loaded donkeys, only to be replaced by hundreds more doing the same thing in the same manner. Yet always a few forms remained stationary. They were police guardians of the ruins, men armed with staves, whose business was to oversee each worker's sack, lest some rare roll of papyri, some rich jewel which once adorned a pampered crocodile of the lake, should be found and stolen. Glimpsed through the red flame of blowing, ruby dust, the scene was a vision of Inferno; we on our mount looking down on it were in company of Dante and Virgil.
The rest of the day we gave to a light-railway excursion to Illahun and the brick Pyramid of Hawara. There was much laughing and shrieking among the girls of the Set (I don't count Monny, who shrieks for nothing less terrible than the largest spiders) as Arabs pushed our trolley cars along the line; and we were frivolous even on the site of the labyrinth which was, perhaps, copied from the Labyrinth of Crete.
The Set were frankly disappointed in the few remains of granite columns and carvings; but vague memories of jewels seen at the Egyptian Museum waked an interest in the brick pyramid tomb at Hawara where King Amenemhat and his daughter Ptah-nefru lay for a few thousand years. All of us were eager for the "last camp tea," when we got "home" from our expedition, and it was then that the tragedy happened: the tragedy of the black lamb.
How could I guess, when Yusef said the camel-boys wanted money to buy meat as a feast for the last day, that they meant to buy it alive?
When we arrived in camp, an idyllic scene was being enacted. A woolly black lamb with a particularly engaging facial expression was being hospitably entertained by all our men with the exception of the chêf. They formed an admiring ring round it, taking turns in feeding it with bersim, and patting its delightfully innocent head. It was difficult to say which was happier, the charming guest or its kind hosts.
"How sweet of them!" said Miss Hassett-Bean. "I must write a few verses about this, for our home paper!"
Everybody joined with her in thinking the Arabs sweet, and Enid Biddell went round and took up a collection. The men arranged a football match for our benefit, to show their gratitude, and played so well and were so picturesque that Sir John and other ardent sportsmen pressed more money upon them. It was altogether a red-letter day for the camel-boys, quite apart from the fact that they would get rid of their noble benefactors to-morrow; and by way of a climax they had what we supposed to be a bonfire at dark.
"Aren't all those white figures wonderful, grouped round the blaze?" asked Monny, who appeared on the whole satisfied with the way in which the desert had taken her. "And look, the flames are reflected on the clouds. I do believe it's going to rain, if such a thing can happen here! I hope it won't spoil the poor darlings' celebration. Why, they seem to have something big and black hanging over the fire. What can it be? Oh, it looks awful!"
"It is not awful, mees," Yusef, standing near, good naturedly reassured her. "It very naice. It is the lamb, they cook for their supper. The genelman, milord, he give them money to buy it."
"Lamb?" shrieked Monny, in a wild voice which brought a crowd round us. "Lamb! Not—oh, not—"
"Yes, mees, you all see it feeded when you come home, when you say it so sweet. Camel-boys find sweeter now!"
"Oh!" the girl exclaimed. "Fiends! They invited that lamb here, and brought it in their arms and played with it and did everything they could to make it think it was having a pleasant afternoon, and then —they killed it!"
"Of course, yes, mees," said Yusef, puzzled. "Why else for milord tell they can buy it? They kill and pound it up to make it good, and soon they eat in honour of the genelmen and ladies who have been so kind this naice trip."
"I should like to kill them!" gasped Monny, preparing to cry, and flinging herself into Biddy's arms. "Oh—somebody give me a hanky —quick!"
We all felt mechanically in our pockets; but I, being nearest, was first in the field. It was a shock to see Monny wave my handkerchief away with a gesture of horror, and bury her face in a far inferior one tendered by Anthony.
"No wonder!" exclaimed Miss Hassett-Bean, who is not, as a rule, a Monny-ite. "You're quite right, Miss Gilder. Lord Ernest Borrow, I don't see much difference between you and a murderer!"
For a minute, I did not know what she meant. Then it broke upon me that the Arabs' monstrous breach of hospitality to the lamb was laid at my door. I jabbered explanations, but no one listened; and just then the rain, which nobody had believed in, seized the opportunity of coming down in floods. The camels roared with rage and surprise; the camel-boys swore Arab oaths; the fire sputtered, and what became of the half-cooked lamb I shall never know. We rushed for the dining-tent, all soaked in an instant, with the exception of Brigit and Monny, whom "Antoun" protected with a long cloak.
Dinner was a gloomy feast, which might have been composed of funeral baked meats, though the chêf himself came to the door and vowed by all his saints that the lamb cutlets were not from that lamb. So well did he exonerate himself, so eloquently did he protest that he had nothing to do with the camel-boys' orgy, that another special collection was taken up for him.
"Poor, dear old gentleman!" sighed Miss Hassett-Bean. "I shall never be able to forget him. When I'm out of this awful country of cannibals, and safe in my own home, he will simply haunt me, passing his respectable old age, black though he is, chasing across deserts on camels, wrapped in a blanket and covered with chicken coops, at the mercy of any queer Christian who can afford to pay for him. It's a tragedy!"
Perhaps she wrote her poem about the cook instead of the camel-boys. Luckily, however, at the last moment I remembered a superstition of the Ancient Egyptians. They were in the habit of sacrificing a black lamb to propitiate Set, the sender of storms. Our lamb was black: and at the hour of his untimely death a storm was coming up. The dreadful deed, therefore, was turned into a Rite.
CHAPTER XVI
AN OILED HAND
That is where my diary of the desert stopped; for the adventure that ended our trip was not of the sort that mixes well with tragedies of lambs.
Before dinner Monny had apologized for refusing my handkerchief, I really believe because she was sorry she had misunderstood, not because the rain had leaked through her tent, and she wanted me to give her mine. In fact, she and Biddy refused pointblank at first when Anthony and I suggested the change. They would not have told us that the water had come in on their beds if they had thought we would suggest such a thing. All they wished for was to have the tent-roof somehow mended before matters got worse. But we insisted, especially Fenton; and he is difficult to disobey. A look from him, and a drawing together of the black eyebrows has the same effect on the mind of a rebellious woman as an "Off with her head!" from an Arabian Nights Sultan, while I might vainly exert my ingenuity to achieve the result he gets by sheer mysterious magnetism.
It was bedtime when the leak showed itself, but the change of quarters was accomplished with military quickness and precision, as Fenton's undertakings generally are; and almost before they knew what had happened, Monny and Brigit, who had been tent-mates during the tour, found themselves transferred bag and baggage to our tent, with the last clean sheets in the bedroom-Arab's possession.
Transferred, we set ourselves to making repairs, and soon patched up the leaks. Rain at this season comes so rarely, it was not surprising that a stitch or two had been neglected.
Only the pillows and upper blankets had had time to get wet, and we had but to remove the coverings and turn the pillows. We both did this simultaneously, and simultaneously exclaimed "Hullo!"
"They've left their treasures" said Anthony, not with quite the masculine scorn of feminine weaknesses I was used to noticing in him. Indeed, he spoke almost tenderly, as a father might speak at finding the forgotten doll of an absent child.
Each of us stood with a wet pillow in his hand, gazing at his borrowed bunk. In the one I had selected, lay a small chamois-skin bag, attached to a narrow pink ribbon. In the bed chosen by Fenton, was a tiny white enamelled watch, on a platinum chain. Both these things had been covered by their respective owners' pillows, and forgotten in the hasty change of quarters. The watch was Monny's. She wore it round her neck every day—therefore the chamois-skin bag on the other bed must be Brigit's. I told myself that in it she probably kept her pathetic store of money, hidden under her bodice by day, her pillow by night; and beholding this intimate souvenir of my childhood's friend, my heart yearned over her.
"Too late to rouse them up now," said Anthony.
"Yes," said I. "We must have been twenty minutes or half an hour getting the roof to rights. They may be asleep, and if not, they won't worry anyhow. They'll know that their things are safe till to-morrow morning."
Fenton agreed with this verdict, and each keeping charge of his own treasure trove, we went to bed and to sleep.
I am a champion dreamer. So much so, that I often find the life of dreamland rivalling in interest the life this side of sleep. I look forward to my dreams, as some people look forward to an interesting dinner-party; but that night I was too tired to inspect the dream-menu, before lying down to it. The first thing I knew, a handsome Egyptian god with crystal eyes, like those which Bill Bailey means to make the fashion, stood by my bedside. I asked him politely whether he were Rã or Osiris, deliberately picking the two best gods of the bunch in order to flatter him; but without answering, he pointed a bronze hand to the mat on which he stood. It was a white mat, and on it I read a word which evidently he meant me to take as his name: TAM HTAB. For an instant it seemed to me a fine name for an Egyptian god, though I hadn't met it before. Then I burst out laughing disrespectfully. "Why, you're only a Bath Mat wrong side out!" I heard myself sneering; and the god disappeared as a flash of lightning comes and is gone. In going, however, he stumbled slightly against the bed. It was a mere touch; but that, or my own voice, half waked me up.
"TAM HTAB," I mumbled dreamily; and was just reminding myself before dropping off to sleep again that I must tell Biddy about the new bath god, when I realized that he had not quite gone. No, not quite gone! It must be he who still lingered by the bed, for it could be nobody else. Anthony would not come and hover silently at my bedside in the middle of the night. Besides, I was almost awake now, and I could hear the gentle, regular breathing of a man asleep: Anthony's breathing.
"Go away, TAM HTAB," I tried to say, but I was not awake enough to speak. He was bending over the bed. His face was near to mine. I felt rather than saw it. "How could I see in the dark?" sleepily, even fretfully, I asked myself. And yet, was the tent dark?...It had been, I remembered that. I remembered that Anthony had got to bed first, and I had extinguished the two candles on the washhand-stand. Afterward, I had had to grope my way to the bed. Now, however, there was a light...a very faint, rather curious light. There seemed to be only a square of it, a square sloped off at the top. It was opposite my eyes, which really were open now, I felt sure. I couldn't be dreaming this. It was like a queer-shaped window in the blackness, a window full of starlight, but close to the floor. Then the rain must have stopped. The stars must be out. Yes, but how could I see that? There was no window in the tent.
This thought dragged the last film of sleep off my tired brain, like a veil snatched away by impatient fingers on an unseen hand.
Odd! Those very words said over themselves in my head: "Fingers on an unseen hand." And that was because a hand was being slipped cautiously, inch by inch, under my pillow. It was the Egyptian god's hand. But I knew suddenly that the dream-god had turned into a thief: that the silver-glimmering square of light was one of the tent flaps unbuttoned and turned back. That the man must stealthily have pulled up a peg or two while we slept our heavy sleep, must have crept into the tent, soft-footed over the thick rugs, and now here he was, trying to steal.
After that, I did not go on with the thought. My dull reasoning snapped off as short as a dry stick. I made a grab for the hand under my pillow, seized a wrist, held it for an instant in a grip which must have hurt, then had the shame and disappointment of feeling it slip out of my grasp, like a greased snake. There was a stifled exclamation of pain or surprise, scarcely louder than a sigh, and I was out of bed and after a shadow that ran for the low square of starlight. Something caught and tripped me as I reached the opening. What it was I did not know then and don't know now, but I had a vague impression that it was warm. If I had stumbled against a bare leg thrust out to stop me, it would have felt like that. Yet it could not have been the leg of the man running away. He was using both his, and must have used them well, for I was up and out from under the lifted tent flap which had fallen on top of me as I tumbled, before I could have counted five. Very wide awake now, I stood in the rough, sandy grass, under a sky encrusted with stars, and could see no one. Barefooted, I pattered this way and that, searching every shadow, but the whole camp seemed an abode of peace. There was not a sound or movement even in the black ring of sleeping camels. Rain had driven to shelter the roving dogs which had troubled us last night. The camp lanterns burned clear and strong, yellow and crude in the silver flood of starlight which dulled their radiance. The smell of earth and grass after the heavy shower was like the fragrance of tea roses. Could it be that an evil, stealthy presence had but just broken this sweet serenity with its vile intention, or had the whole incident been after all a singularly vivid dream? I should have believed so, if my hand which had clutched that other hand, had not been slippery with oil.
No, I had not dreamed. And suddenly a troubling thought leaped into my mind. "Biddy!" The name sprang to my lips and spoke itself aloud.
If this were for her! I had laughed at her forebodings. Sensational revenges such as she feared seemed so incongruous, so utterly unsuited to those laughing, long-lashed eyes of hers! Yet she had in her past life lived side by side with fear and tragedy for more years than I liked to count. And as she said, men such as those whom Richard O'Brien had betrayed had been known to reach out very far to take revenge. Biddy had done nothing. Surely they owed her no grudge. But she had known things. Perhaps they thought that she knew even more than she did know. Their organization was rich as well as powerful. It had many branches. Yet why should men use its power to hurt the widow of a dead enemy, now that they—or fate—had put him underground?
In a flash I remembered the chamois-skin bag, which she had forgotten under the pillow: and lifting the loosened canvas flap with its dangling pegs, I stooped to go back into the tent. Inside, I expected to find darkness, but instead I found light; Anthony up, setting a match to a candle wick, and looking a tall, dark silhouette in his pyjamas.
"What's the row?" he calmly wanted to know—too calmly to suit my ruffled mood.
"A thief, that's all," I answered, hastily searching under the pillow where the unseen hand had been. Sheet and pillow-case were slimy with oil, yet the chamois-skin bag was safe. "But he didn't get what he wanted!" I finished.
"Good," said Anthony, who had lighted both candles. "Let's go look for him."
"I've been, and couldn't see anything."
"I know. I heard a sound. I sang out, and you didn't answer, so I thought something must be up. Let's have another try. I've got Miss Gilder's watch."
I slipped Biddy's bag into the pocket of my pyjamas, and pulling on our boots we went out into the night.
"It's their tent I'm thinking of," I said, though I'd never talked of Brigit O'Brien's affairs to Fenton. "If some one had planned to rob them, not knowing of the change we made at the last minute—"
"All our Arabs did know—"
"I'm not talking of them. We've been here two days. Any one could have spied on us enough to find out which tent was Mrs. Jones' and Miss Gilder's."
"You're thinking of Bedr?"
"Well, yes, I suppose I am. Biddy never believed they were Germans."
"Who, those chaps in checked clothes he had in tow? By Jove! yes—I heard her speak of a scar on the forehead of one."
"She thought he might have been Burke, the fellow in the street row, that night at the House of the Crocodile."
"These things happen to heiresses in old-fashioned story books," said Anthony. "But there's nothing that happens in a story which can't happen in real life, I suppose—especially to such a girl. She—"
"Oh, but I wasn't thinking of her!" I began, then stopped, shocked because it was true, and also because I was unwilling to tell why my thoughts had turned to "Mrs. Jones."
"We must find out if they're safe," I went on. "The thieves seem to have got clear away and we're not likely to find them, unless they've gone to our old tent—"
"Come along," said Anthony. "We'll slip on something, and call the ladies as softly as we can, not to disturb the others and have the whole camp buzzing like a beehive. When we're sure they're all right, we can attend to such details as searching for tracks."
He seemed as eager as I was, to know that the two women were safe; but there was no sign to tell me about which one he chiefly concerned himself.
A minute transformed him from a pyjamaed Englishman into a robed Egyptian of that old-fashioned order which despises things European. Only, he forgot to put on his turban. I didn't think of the omission myself at the time, but I recalled it later.
Going to the tent which had been ours, I scratched on the tight drawn canvas near the spot where I knew one of the folding iron bedsteads was placed. "Biddy—Biddy!" I called gently, and after a few repetitions I heard her voice, rather sleepy, a little anxious, cry, "Is that you, Duffer?"
"Yes," I whispered, seeing the tent quiver in the region of some big cushiony buttons. "'Antoun' and I are both here. But don't be scared. Could you come and peep out from under the door flap a minute?"
"Yes," said she. "Go round there, and I'll come."
There was not much delay, for Biddy's crinkled black hair needs no night disfigurements by way of patent curlers. In a few seconds the door flap waved, and Biddy looked out into the starlight, the yellow glimmer of a candle flame within the tent silhouetting the Japanesey little figure wrapped in a kimono. Behind her dark head and above it, floated a mist of bronzy gold, which I took to be Miss Gilder's hair. There seemed to be quantities of it, and I should have been feverishly interested in wondering how long it was, if I had had time to think of anything but my thankfulness that Biddy and Monny were both safe.
"Are either of you ill?" asked the creamy Irish voice which had never sounded half so sweet as now, in the starlight and fragrance of this strange night. "Because if you are, I've some lovely medicine—"
"I wouldn't frighten them any more than I could help, if I were you," I heard Fenton mumbling advice in muffled tones at my back.
For obvious reasons I made no audible answer; but I had just been resolving not to tell Biddy my suspicions unless it were necessary to do so.
"No, we're not ill," I assured her. "But there's been a silly sort of scare about a sneak thief: may have been a false alarm, and we won't say anything about it to-morrow, if others don't. We're horribly sorry to disturb you and Miss Gilder, but we couldn't rest without making sure you hadn't been worried."
"You heard nothing, did you, Monny?" Brigit threw a question over her shoulder to the floating mist of gold.
"No, and I wasn't asleep either," Miss Gilder's voice answered. "I was lying awake thinking about its being our last night—and lots of things."
"I was lying half awake, too, thinking of 'lots of things,'" Biddy mimicked her friend, "or I shouldn't have heard you so easily when you scratched on the canvas. Oh, by the way, Duffer, did you or Antoun Effendi find a little chamois-skin bag under the pillow?"
"I found it," said I, and this gave me a chance I had been wanting but hadn't quite known how to snatch. "I was rather worried over the responsibility. Of course you knew that we'd take care of your treasures."
"It's all my money, and—and just one other thing!" Biddy answered, with an odd little hesitation in her manner and a catch in her voice. "I should hate to have anybody open that bag. I'm thankful it's safe. With you, I know it's sacred. All the same, I'd like to have it, if you don't mind the bother."
"You oughtn't to carry the thing about with you, if it's so important," I scolded her. "Why not leave your secret treasure, whatever it is, and most of your money, in Cairo, when you come off on an expedition like this?"
"I don't know," she mumbled evasively. "I'm used to having this thing with me. I can't think how I forgot it under my pillow. I never have before. It isn't the sort of—of valuable one keeps in a bank. Monny embroidered the bag when she was a little girl. It was her first work. I taught her how to do it, and she gave it to me for a birthday present. I wouldn't lose it for the world."
"You shan't," I said soothingly. I had heard what I had been afraid to hear; but why should Biddy's trip be spoiled by another worry if I could shield her? We could not know that the oiled hand had been groping for that bag; and I resolved not to distress Brigit by putting the idea into her head at present. "Go to sleep again in peace, both of you," I went on. "All's well, since you are well. Probably some prowler has been sneaking round the kitchen-tent."
"Yes. The news of the lamb has gone forth!" said Biddy. "Good night!"
"Good night!" I answered.
Down went the tent flap, and hid the sparkle of eyes in starsheen, and mist of gold in wavering candle-light. We trusted that the two had crept back into their beds; but we did not return to ours. We took one of the camp lanterns and searched for footprints—those which were freshest after the rain. The rough grass growing sparsely out of the sandy earth was not favourable to such attempts, however; and even at dawn, when we looked again before the camp was stirring, we made no notable discoveries such as amateur detectives make, in books.
Our next expedition, as soon as light came, was to the town, where we inquired at the few hotels, and put questions to the police. Nobody answering the description of Bedr and his two companions had been seen in Medinet, and we had to go back to camp baffled.
There was our adventure; and when we reached Cairo by train, the mystery of the oiled hand was still unsolved.