"I can't and won't have the creature with me!" she murmured, as I helped her to mount when she had pushed the boy aside. "Thank you, Lord Ernest. You're very kind. But Antoun ought to have been here. Fancy seeing this temple, of all others, without an Anthony of any sort on the horizon! A pity it isn't your middle name! If you could spare time to ride with me, that would be better than nothing!"
"I'll be delighted," I said hypocritically, for I had been dying to talk with Brigit about the Monny and Rachel imbroglio which, as a hard-worked Conductor, I had not since Abydos found a chance to discuss. Besides, Biddy had whispered in passing that a letter just delivered at Denderah, had brought exciting news of Esmé O'Brien: But I was sorry for Cleopatra, and wondered whether I could manage after all to hint an explanation of the hieroglyphic love-letter—that fatal letter of mine which had stealthily made mischief between Mrs. East and Anthony. I didn't quite see how the subject was to be broached: still, some way might open. "I'm sorry about the middle name," I said. "But if I assumed it—like a virtue which I have not—I should be the third person connected with this trip, labelled the same fashion."
"Who is the second person?" she asked abruptly, as all the animals of the party started to trot vivaciously through the blowing yellow sand.
"Sir Marcus. Surely you've heard that his 'A' stands for Antonius?"
"Good heavens!" she gasped: and I hardly knew whether it was the shock of my news, or a jolt of the donkey which forced the exclamation. Whatever it was, the emotion she felt bound her to silence after that one outburst. She said not a word, and did not even groan or threaten to fall off when both our beasts broke into a thumping gallop. In silence we swept round that great bulk of rubbish heap, Roman and early Christian, under which lies An, the town of the Column. Cleopatra did not cry out when suddenly we came in sight of Hathor's temple, honey-gold against the turquoise sky, and vast as some Wagnerian palace of the gods. The tasselled donkey (or I) had given her cause to think. Or perhaps she did not consider me worth talking to, as we approached the temple toward which all her previous travelling had been a mere pilgrimage. Still silently, when we had left our donkeys and were following the crowd up the dromos (Harry Snell actually with Enid, thanks to me and the wisdom of second thoughts), Cleopatra's eyes wandered over the Hathor-headed columns with their clinging colour; and over the portal with its brilliant mass of yellow, of dark Pompeian red, and the green-blue sacred to Hathor, whom Horus loved —Venus-Hathor, whose priestesses danced within these walls in Cleopatra's day. "Oh, this red and this green-blue were my colours, I remember," she murmured, and then hardly spoke when I walked with her in the gloom of the temple itself—the rich gloom under heavily ornamented ceilings. She wanted to save the portrait till the last, she announced, until after she had seen everything else: and she didn't care what Mr. Sheridan said about her temple; it was wonderful. I tried to interest her in the crocodiles, which had been detested and persecuted at Denderah in the late Cleopatra's time as ardently as they were worshipped at Crocodilopolis and other places. I joked about Old Egypt having consisted of "crocs and non crocs," just as the inhabitants of Florence had to be Guelphs or Ghibellines. I explained carefully the geography of the place, or rather, "reminded" Cleopatra of it, adding details of the canal which once led to Koptos, where the magic book of the Wisdom of Thoth lay hidden under the Nile. I could not waken Mrs. East from reverie to interest, as Antoun would have had the power to do; but my vanity was not hurt. It was only my curiosity which suffered, for I wanted desperately to know whether the donkey had seriously jolted the lady's spine, or whether the news that Sir M. A. Lark was Marcus Antonius, not a more obvious Marcus Aurelius, had fired her imagination.
In any case I devoted myself to her while Monny and Brigit frolicked with others; and I had a reward of a kind. When we had seen all the halls and chambers, and the crypt with its carvings all fresh as if made yesterday; when we had been on the roof where chanting priests had once awaited the rising of Sirius; when I had taken her outside the temple, where blowing columns of dusty sand rose like incense from hidden altars of Hathor, we stood at last alone together, gazing up at the figures of Cleopatra and her son. The wall on which they were carved rose behind the Holy of Holies, where the golden statue of the Goddess had been kept; but alas, the figures themselves! Alas! I knew how Cleopatra must be feeling; and I dared not speak. Perhaps she was even blushing: but I did not look. Instead, I gazed helplessly up at that exposed, misshapen form, that flaccid chin.
"Thank heaven it's only you who are with me!" breathed Mrs. East.
That was my reward. Or should I call it a punishment? Anyhow, it made it easier for the insignificant person in question to unburden his conscience about the hieroglyphic letter. I stammered it all out, on the way back, apropos of the rubbish-heap which had been Tentyra. I let it remind me of Fustât and our digging expedition. I had meant to follow Mrs. East's advice and propose to Miss Gilder, I explained, but Monny had not found my buried love-letter. What had become of it I—er —had never been told. All I knew was that it hadn't come into Miss Gilder's hands; and I should never have as much courage again.
"Oh!" Cleopatra exclaimed, with a curious light in her eyes, more like relief than disappointment. "You really do want to marry my niece? You delayed so, that I wondered. I wasn't sure, sometimes, if it were Monny or—but I am on your side, Lord Ernest. It isn't too late yet for any of us, perhaps. Trust in me. I'm going to help you."
I could have bitten my tongue out, though I had blundered with the best intentions. "Mrs. East," I protested almost ferociously, "you mustn't do anything. I said before I began, that I was going to tell you a secret."
"I won't betray your confidence. But I will help. I want to. It would be a good thing for Monny to accept you, Lord Ernest, a very good thing in more ways than one. Mrs. Jones wants it too, or did. I promise you, I'll be discreet."
With that, we arrived in sight of the boat. Once more, necklaces and scarabs and baskets were thrust under our noses. Anthony had returned from his mysterious whisperings in cafés or mosques in the new town, and was waiting for us. Cleopatra called him, with a note of gayety in her voice, to help her off "the elephant." He came. I felt she was going to hint to him that I was in love with Monny—hint to Brigit also.
Virtue may be its own reward, but it makes you very lonely!
I hadn't another easy moment for dreaming the Nile-dream. And we all woke out of it when, with the pink dawn of a certain morning, we saw a vast temple, repeated column for column, in the clear river, as in a mirror of glass.
We were at Luxor; and somewhere not far off, Mabella Hânem was praying for release.
CHAPTER XX
THE ZONE OF FIRE
Just at the first moment of waking, when I was moved by my subconscious self to roll out of my berth and bound to the cabin window, I forgot that we had anything more active to do at Luxor than worship the glory of sky and river and temples. I had room in my mind only for the dream-beauty of that astounding picture, into the foreground of which I seemed to have been thrust, so close upon my eyes loomed the line of lotus columns. It was as if the ancient gods had poured a libation of ruby wine from their zenith-dwelling into the translucent depths of the Nile. Even the long colonnade of broken pillars was deep rose-red against a pale rose sky, repeated again in deeper rose down in a magic world beneath the pink crystal roof of shining water. Then, suddenly, bright windows of sky behind the dark rose-columns flamed to the colour of primroses, were shot with pansy purple, and cleared to the transparent green of unflawed emerald. The thought came as I gazed at the carved wonder (reflected flower for flower and line for line in the still river) that here was illustrated in unearthly beauty the chief religious legend of ancient Egypt. As each human soul was believed to be a part of the World-Soul, Osiris, reunited with him beyond the western desert, after death, so did these columns made by human hands unite themselves at sunrise with the soul of the Nile, the life of Egypt. I caught a glimpse as if in an illuminated parable, of the Egyptian Cosmos, the Heavens, the Earth, the Depths, three separate entities, yet forever one as is the Christian's Trinity. Almost I expected to see the sun-boat of the gods steered slowly across the river from the city of Kings, westward to the tombs of Kings; and the little white-breasted birds, which promenaded the deck of our boat as though it belonged to them, might have been Heart-birds from the world of mummies across the Nile, escaped for a glimpse of Rameses' gayly painted, mosaiced white palace with its carved brass balconies, its climbing roses, its lake of lotuses and its river gardens. I was sure that, if I told these tiny creatures that the Pharaohs and all their glories had vanished off the earth except for a few bits in museums, they would not believe the tale. I wasn't even sure I believed it myself; and deliberately blotting out of sight the big modern hotels and the low white line of shops away to the right of the temple, I tried to see with the Ba-birds, eastern Thebes as it must have been in the days of Rameses II. I pictured the temple before Cambyses the Persian, and the great earthquake felled arches and pillars, obelisks and kingly statues. I built up again the five-story houses of the priests and nobles, glistening white, and fantastically painted in many colours: I laid out lawns and flower beds, and set fountains playing. Then, with a rumbling shock, a chasm many thousand years deep yawned between me and ancient No, the City of Palaces:
It was the voice of Sir John Biddell which opened the ravine of time, and let the Nile pour through it. He was on deck, in pyjamas and overcoat, with General Harlow, holding forth on his favourite topic of mummies—an appropriate subject for this neighbourhood of all others; yet, I should have preferred silence.
Poor Sir John! He had been disappointed in Cairo because a villain had not lurked behind each of the trees in the Esbekîya Gardens, and notes tied with silken black hairs had not tumbled on his respectable bald head from the mystery of latticed windows; but he was thoroughly enjoying his Nile trip, and learning something every day to tell at home. Lady Biddell had humiliated him twice, once by asking me if "those old hieroglyphics were written in Arabic?" again by inquiring whether the stone-barred temple windows had been "filled in once with pretty stained glass?" But he had forgiven her because yesterday had been their silver-wedding day, and he meant to buy her a present at some curiosity-shop at Luxor. "A pity it isn't the wooden wedding," I heard him say to General Harlow, "for I might give a handsome mummy-case. I suppose silver will have to be Persian or Indian, unless I can get hold of one of those old bracelets or discs the Egyptians used for money: but that's too good to hope for."
It certainly was: though no doubt some industrious manufacturer of antiques would cheerfully have made and dug up any amount on the site of Rameses' palace, could he have known in time.
We were to have three days at Luxor—three days, when three months would have been too little!—and the second attempt at abducting an ill-used lady from the harem of her treacherous lord would take place as soon as we could learn that our auxiliaries, the Bronsons, had arrived. Until they were on the spot, even a success might prove an anti-climax. Meanwhile I had plenty to do in playing my more obvious part of Conductor, and arranging the last details of our excursion programme. Every one had bundled out early to see the sunrise. Consequently most members of the Set were cross or hungry, or both. Nothing could be less suitable than to clamour for porridge on the Nile, but they did it, and called for bacon, too, in a land where the pig is an unclean animal. They were the same people who played "coon can" and bridge on the deck at twilight, when moving figures on shore were etched in black on silver, or against flaming wings of sunset, and in gathering darkness the blue-robed shadoof-men who bent and rose against gold-brown dykes, were like Persian enamels done on copper.
"Hundred gated" Thebes, the dwelling of Amen-Rã whom Greece adopted as Jupiter-Amon, used to lie on both banks of the Nile; the east for the living, the west for the dead and those who lived by catering for mummyhood.
I had arranged to take our people first round Luxor, making them acquainted with the temple which had already introduced its reflection to us. As for the town, they were capable of making themselves acquainted with that, its hotels and curiosity-shops, when there was nothing more important on hand. Next was to come Karnak, the "father of temples," once connected with the younger temple at Luxor as if by a long jewelled necklace of ram-headed sphinxes. And for those whose brains and legs were intact, by evening I thought of a visit to the thrilling temple of Mût. This last would be an adventure; for Mût, goddess of matter, the Mother goddess, has apparently not taken kindly to Moslem rule. Any disagreeable trick she, and her attendant black statues of passion, fierce Sekhet, can play on a devout Mohammedan, are meat and drink to her: but she can work her spells only after dusk, therefore none save the bravest Arab will venture his head inside her domain, past sunset. I was sure we could get no dragoman to go with us, and equally sure that the adventure would be more popular for its spice of horror.
The second and third days I allotted to western Thebes, the city of the dead: the tombs of the Kings, the tombs of the Queens and the Nobles; then the Ramesseum, the "Musical Memnon" with his companion Colossus, and the great temples wrapped in the ruddy fire of the western desert, where Hathor receives the setting sun in outstretched arms.
As I was about to unfold these projects at breakfast, a telegram was handed to me. I read it; and while bacon plates were being exchanged for dishes of marmalade, I cudgelled my brain like a slave to make it rearrange the whole programme without a hitch.
The American Consul wired from Asiut that he was detained by an Important Personage, who wanted to know things about Egyptian Cotton and its enemy the boll worm. But Mr. and Mrs. Bronson would arrive at the Villa Sirius, Luxor, day after to-morrow, "ready for emergencies."
Of course, being Conductor of a tour, and next a man, I ought to have put the interests of Sir Marcus and his "Lark Pie" (as we were called by rival firms) ahead of personal concerns. I ought to have immolated myself in the western Mummyland with the consciousness of duty done, while on the eastern side of the Nile, Anthony Fenton and Monny Gilder and Biddy played the live, modern game of kidnapping a lady. But I determined to do nothing of the sort. I gazed at the telegram with the air of committing to heart instructions from my superior officer; and without sign of inward tremour, announced that we would explore the wonders of the west before visiting those nearer at hand. The weather being cool and the wind not too high (I said), it would be well to seize this opportunity for the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings, an expedition trying in heat or sand storms. To-morrow also would be devoted to the west, and our third day would belong to Luxor and Karnak. As a bonne bouche, I dangled the adventure of the Temple of Mût, to sweeten the temper of grumblers: but there were no grumblers. The Set listened calmly to my honeyed plausibilities; and the alarmed stewards dared not betray their consternation at the lightning change.
No doubt they thought me mad, or worse, because a day in western Thebes meant a picnic: magical apparition at the right moment, in a convenient tomb, of smiling Arabs and Nubian men with baskets of food and iced drinks.
Somehow the trick had to be managed, however; for I must be in eastern Thebes, alias Luxor, on the day when the Bronsons' presence would render our second attempt at rescue feasible. I had to interview the chêf—a formidable person—hypnotizing him and the stewards to work my will, and above all, I had to make sure of boats and donkeys for the party at short notice. Only by a miracle could all go well; but I set my heart upon that miracle. "Antoun," hurriedly taken into my confidence, volunteered to arrange about the boats, and the donkeys for the other side. Fortunately there was no rival ahead of us; and with juggling of plans and jingle of silver, Anthony's part was done. Just at the moment when, by dint of bribes and adjurations I had induced chêf and stewards to smile, Fenton dashed on board to cry "Victory!" Somehow, less than an hour later than we should have started, we got off in two big boats with white sails and brown rowers. The canvas did its work in silent, bulging dignity; but the rowers exhausted themselves by breathlessly imploring Allah to grant them strength, and shouting extra prayers to some sailor-saint whose name was calculated to pump dry the strongest lungs.
On the mystic western side, where once landed with pomp and pageant the sun-boat of the gods, and the mourning boats of the dead, we scrambled on shore with that ribald mirth which always made the Set feel it was getting its money's worth of enjoyment. Many donkeys and a few carriages awaited us: the whole equipment previously engaged for to-morrow! and in opaline sunshine which stained with pale rose the Theban hills and piled the shadows full of dark, dulled rubies, we started across an emerald plain, kept ever verdant by Nile water. The touch of comedy in the dream of beauty was the queer, mud-brick village of Kurna, with its tomb dwellings of the poor, and immense mud vases shaped like mushrooms, standing straight up on thick brown stems before the crowded hovels. In each vase reposed sleeping babies, brooding hens, dogs, rabbits, or any other live stock, mixed with such rubbish as the family possessed: and the most ambitious mushrooms were decorated with barbaric crenellations.
Almost as far as the Temple of Seti I flowed the green wave like a lake in the desert, but beyond, to join the Sahara, rolled and billowed a waste of rose-pink sand, shot with topaz light, and walled with fantastic rocks, yellow and crimson, streaked with purple. In the heart of each shadow, fire burned like dying coals in a mass of rosy ashes: and the light over all was luminous as light on southern seas at moonrise and sunset. Before our eyes seemed to float a diaphanous veil of gilded gauze; and white robes and red sashes of donkey-boys, animals' bead necklaces, and blue or green scarfs on girls' hats, were like magical flowers blowing over the gold of the desert.
Everything blew: above all, sand blew. We found that out to our sorrow, after we had seen the Temple of Kurna, with its noble columns, and its fine fragment of roof, where squares of sky were let in like blocks of lapis lazuli. I rushed here and there on donkey-back assuring people that this was not wind we felt: it was only a breeze. We could not have a more favourable day for our excursion into this world of the dead. Why, if we'd waited till to-morrow we might have met a real wind, perhaps even Khamsin, alias Simoom, the terror of the desert. To make Miss Hassett-Bean and Cleopatra forget the smarting of their eyes, I told them what a true-sand-storm was like, and how its names in Arabic, Turkish, and Persian all came from the fiend "Samiel," who destroyed caravans, just as "devil" came from the Persian "div." Our little breeze was from the east, which at Thebes in old days was considered lucky. The west wind used to bear across the river evil spirits disguised as sand-clouds. And these wicked ones had not far to travel, because the Tuat, or Underworld, was a long narrow valley parallel to Egypt, beginning on the west bank of the Nile. Red-haired Set was ruler there, the god who had to be propitiated by having kings named after him. But Rä, greater than he, could safely pass down the dim river running through that world: could pass in his golden sun-boat, guided by magic words of Thoth instead of oars or sails; and the guardian hippopotamus (whom Greeks turned into the dog Cerberus) dared not put out a paw.
Mrs. East remembered that Thebes was Tape in "her day," at which Miss Hassett-Bean snorted: and when out came that familiar story about Cleopatra making red hair fashionable, Miss Hassett-Bean stared coldly at the lady's auburn waves. "I wonder if the queen got the colour at her hairdresser's, as people do now?" she murmured. "I've read that they had beauty-doctors in those days, and used arsenic for their complexion, and all sorts of mixtures. Besides, I can't imagine anything natural about Cleopatra, except the asp wanting to bite her!" Upon this, Mrs. East retaliated by calling her companion Miss Bean without the Hassett.
I shall always think of the Valley of the Tombs as a place of terror and splendour, meant to be hidden from mortals by the spells of Thoth, who circled the rock-houses of the dead with a zone of fire, as Wotan hid Brunhilda, and decreed that they should be lost forever in the blazing desert. Despite Thoth and his magic, men have burst through the blazing belt and found in the gold-rose heart of the rocks, sacred shrines the wise old god would have protected. They have found many but not all: for in the breast of some one among Thoth's sleeping lions which masquerade as rocks, may yet be discovered a tomb, better than all those we know with their buried store of jewels, and their painted walls like drapings of strange tapestry.
We broke through the zone of fire, and it pursued us with burning smoke of sand, pink as powdered rubies. Always it was beautiful and terrible as we rode in the blowing pink mist: and still it was beautiful and terrible, when half dazed we slipped off donkeys or slid out of carriages, to enter the tombs which the desert had vainly striven to hide. It was hot and breathless in those underground chambers, scooped out of solid rock thousands of years ago, that great kings and their queens and families and friends might rest with their kas in eternal privacy. Enid Biddell waited until Harry Snell happened to be exactly behind her, and then fainted, with dexterity beyond praise. Cleopatra, however, was in her element. She felt at home, and did not turn one of those auburn hairs scorned by "Miss Bean," at sight of the royal mummies lit up by electricity in their coffins. These gave the rest of us a shock, our nerves being already in the condition of Aladdin's on his way down to the Cave of Jewels. When the guardian of the Tomb of Amenhetep (the king had several other names, which annoyed Sir John Biddell) darkened the painted, royal chamber of death, and suddenly lit up several white, sleeping faces, the ghostly dusk was alive with little gasps. There lay Amenhetep himself, in a disproportionately large sarcophagus of rose-red granite from Suan; and in companion coffins were a woman and a girl, all three brilliantly illuminated. They had the look of the light hurting their poor eyes, and being outraged because, against their will, they were treated as if they had been paintings by old masters.
The dreadful rumour ran that the woman was none other than the great Queen Hatasu (never mind her more scientific names), her mummy never having been found, or, at any rate, identified: and it was pitiful seeing her so small and female, when in life she had wished to be represented with a beard and the clothing of a man. Our dragoman, who read English newspapers and whose idea of entertaining his crowd was to make cheap jokes (just as his family doubtless manufactured cheap scarabs), announced that Hatasu was the "first suffragette." But even those who thought her downtrodden nephew, Thothmes III, justified in erasing every trace of her existence wherever possible, did not smile at this jest. In fact, having Antoun and me to refer to, the Set as a whole sat upon the unfortunate dragoman, trying to talk him down in tombs and temples, or ostentatiously reading Weigall, Maspero, Petrie, Sladen, and Lorimer when he attempted to give them information. A few with kinder intentions, however, interrupted his flow of historical narrative by exclaiming, "Why, yes, of course!" "I thought so!" and "Now I remember!" He revenged himself by advising everybody to buy antiques from an extraordinary old gentleman, extremely like a galvanized mummy. The antiques were extraordinary, too, so everybody took the dragoman's advice, neglecting the other curiosity merchants of the squatting row near the luncheon-tomb and the glorious three-tier temple, in that vast copper cup of desert and cliff which is called Der el-Bahari. The sale in mummied hawks, gilded rams' horns, broken tiles with beetles flying out of the sun, boats of the gods, and gods themselves, was brisk round this ancient gentleman, who advertised a blue mummy-cap by wearing it on his bald pate, and seemed to possess as many royal scarabs as a dressmaker has pins. Afterward I learned that he was our dragoman's father; but I was loyal and did not tell.
It was a wonderful day, all the more wonderful perhaps because it left in the mind a colourful confusion; pictures of painted tombs hidden deep under red rock and drifted sand, tombs which we should perhaps never reach again through their guarding zone of fire—tombs of kings and queens and nobles forgotten through thousands of centuries save by their kas and has, their friends and servants, painted or sculptured on the walls with the sole purpose of caring for or entertaining them eternally.
Already we had ceased to remember which was which. And back on the boat, in the hour of sunset, when dazzling tinsel and pale pink cloud-flowers sailed over a lake of clear green sky, the Set argued whether the King with the Horses, or the Queen with the Retroussé Nose was in this or that tomb. Sir John Biddell recalled the fact that Egyptian horses had been celebrated, and that it was "as swell a thing to be a charioteer then as it was now to be a Vanderbilt with a coach and four." As for a retroussé nose, it didn't matter where it was, on a tomb-wall or on a girl's face.
Monny thought differently. She and Biddy were glad that the sand and rocks would still hide many secret treasures, while the world lasted. It would be dreadful to think that everything was dug up, for tourists to pry into, or to cart away to museums, and no mysteries left. As for Mrs. East, she was doubtful whether to rejoice or grieve that Cleopatra's mummy had not been found. If, however, it were like the incised wall portrait at Denderah, it would be well that it should share the fate of Alexander's body and remain lost forever.
The next day gave us another trip to the west of the Nile: not again in the burning desert, but only as far as the Ramesseum, and then to see the Colossi, seated side by side on their green carpet of meadow, looking out past the centuries toward eternity.
We had a dance on board that night; and next morning it came out that Rachel Guest, who had disappeared during a "turkey trot" and a "castle walk," had got herself engaged to Bailey. I was not as pleased about this event as was Enid Biddell, who now saw her "title clear" to Harry Snell; for I had "bagged" Willis Bailey and Neill Sheridan for Sir Marcus in order to gain Kudos for myself: but Biddy, appealed to, consoled me by saying it served Bailey right if he were mercenary: and that both men would have come in any case.
The third day was to be the Great Day for us, the day big with fate for Mabella Hânem; and the first thing that happened was a letter sent by hand from the Bronsons at the Villa Sirius. They had arrived. The fireworks could begin.
CHAPTER XXI
THE OPENING DOOR
Not half an hour after the first word from Bronson, came another hurried note. An unexpected obstacle had cropped up. So confident had he and Mrs. Bronson been of their friends' cooperation, that rather than put such important matters on paper, they had waited to explain by word of mouth. The owner of the villa was a rich Syrian with a French-American wife. He was a Copt in religion, hating Mohammedanism in general and the father of Rechid Bey in particular. This had seemed to the American Consul a providential combination: but to his disgust he found that there had been a reconciliation between the families. Dimitrius Nekean would not betray the Bransons' confidence, but he could not allow his roof to be used as a shelter for Rechid's runaway wife—no, not even if Rechid had three other wives in his harem.
Here was a situation! And as Monny remarked, in neat American slang, we were "right up against it." She thought that, if Antoun and I "put our heads together," maybe we could think of "some way out." So we did, almost literally put our heads together across a table no bigger than a handkerchief, in my cabin: and decided that the visit to Rechid Bey's harem must be made by Brigit and Monny in the late afternoon. They must time their departure from the house at about the hour when the Set would arrive at the Temple of Mût. "Antoun" would be waiting for them, and they would drive in a closed arabeah to the temple, where Mr. and Mrs. Bronson would happen to be "sightseeing." If Mabella Hânem had been rescued, she would then be put in charge of the American Consul, whose very footprints created American soil around him as far as his shoes could reach. Rechid would be unlikely to search at the Temple of Mût, nor could he induce any Arab servant to accompany him there after sundown. We would escort Mabel and her two protectors to the town, and to the train for Cairo, Mr. Bronson promising to take the girl to Alexandria, whence she could sail for "home."
It was the best plan we could think of in the circumstances, and Monny approved it, though her patience was tried by having to wait through nearly all of another day. Mabel must have begun to believe that we had ignored her prayer and meant to do nothing. I argued that the girl would believe we were working for her in our own way. I said, too, that if Rechid were spying, his suspicions would be disarmed by seeing us go the ordinary round of tourists. Every one came to Luxor. We had come, leisurely, by river, and were sightseeing every moment. Even Bedr, if he were on the spot, intending to finish his revenge as neatly as it had been begun, could have noticed nothing suspicious in our actions. The mention of Bedr in this connection seemed to startle Biddy, and I was sorry I had let his name slip. But, as I had said, every one came to Luxor. Bedr had with apparent frankness explained that he was travelling up the Nile by rail with his two clients: and if that were true, he would arrive at all our destinations in advance of us. Probably it would depend on "the clients" whether they lingered at Luxor long enough for us to run across them again.
"What are you afraid of," I asked Biddy when I had a chance with her alone, "even if Bedr is a spy? Surely you kept your promise and left that chamois-skin bag in a Cairo bank?"
"It wasn't a promise," she reminded me. "I only said I'd think about it. Well, I did think about it, and I couldn't put it in a bank. I told you it was the sort of thing one doesn't put in banks."
"You didn't tell me what it was—I mean, what was in it besides money."
"No, I couldn't."
"Will you now?"
"Oh, no!"
"Well, then, will you give it to me to keep till we get back to Cairo?"
"No, indeed! But Duffer dear, honestly and truly it isn't for myself I'm afraid. You know that, don't you?"
"Of course. Yet if people are believing that Monny Gilder is Rachel Guest, a poor little school teacher, then no one who heard the gossip would bother to risk kidnapping her for ransom. And, also, there'll be no further danger of those you fear mistaking her for—"
"Oh, don't speak the name!"
"I wasn't going to. I was merely about to use the word 'another.'"
"Good Duffer! Yours is a consoling argument. Still, I never liked Bedr or wanted him with us. And even now, there seems something mysterious about Rachel thinking so much of him. As if there were a secret arrangement between them, you know! I've never got over that, or understood it a bit."
"He flattered Miss Guest, perhaps. She loves flattery. But she's made her market now, and all through Monny's charity. She couldn't want to do her benefactress harm."
"No-o, I suppose not. Unless it were to do herself good. Don't those eyes of hers say to you that she'd sacrifice any one for herself?"
"I've been thinking more about a different pair of eyes. And there were such a lot of men crowding round Rachel's—for some reason or other."
"Now we know what the reason was—as she and Monny must have known all along, since their joke together began. Oughtn't you to tell Bill Bailey the truth?"
"No, my dear girl, I must draw the line somewhere! I've gone about at people's beck and call, telling other people disagreeable truths, till I'm a physical and mental wreck. Bill Bailey knows all about statues, with and without glass eyes. Let him find out for himself about a mere girl—"
"With cat's eyes." Biddy snapped.
If one triumph leads to another, Anthony could afford to be hopeful for the ending of our stay at Luxor. He had not done as much sightseeing as the rest of us, but when we had been asleep in our beds or berths, dreaming of temples—or of each other—he had been out whispering and listening, in places where his green turban opened doors and hearts. He had traced the mysterious "trouble" to its source, and learned the inner history of that regrettable incident which, like a dropped match, had lit a fire hard to extinguish. A party of young men travelling with a "bear leader" had laughed at some Arabs prostrating themselves to pray, at that sacred moment, just after sunset, ordained by Mohammed lest his people should appear to worship the orb itself. One of these youths, fancying himself a mimic, had imitated the Moslems. They were old men, unable to resent with violence what they thought an insult to their religion; but they had told their sons, and the story had spread. Later that night the joyous tourists with their near-sighted "bear leader," had been attacked apparently without reason, on coming out of a native café. Having forgotten the sunset prayer, they honestly believed that they had been set upon by men to whom they had given no provocation. They had uttered statements and complaints; and disgusted with the "beastly natives" had pursued their journey up Nile, visiting their grievances on the innocent, and making more mischief at each stopping place. Murmured threats, with dark looks, insulting words and jostlings of strangers by the inhabitants of Upper Nile villages, had occasioned anxiety at the British Agency. It had proved impossible to get at the truth, and the influence of the Young Nationalists had been suggested. Our Hadji had now turned the green light of his sacred turban upon obscurity, and those in power at Cairo would know how to set about repairing damages. In spite of private anxieties, those which I shared and others which I didn't share but suspected, I think Anthony was happy on that third morning at Luxor. He must have been tired, for much of his work had been night work, but he showed no fatigue. The true soldier-look was in his eyes, the look I knew far better than the new and strange expression which had said to me lately, "A woman has come to be of importance in Anthony Fenton's life."
We spent our morning and a good part of the afternoon at Karnak, lunching irreverently but agreeably in the shade of fallen pillars Cambyses or the great earthquake had thrown down. Neill Sheridan, who had been to California, likened the ruddy columns of the Great Hall to the giant redwoods. He was enjoying Karnak because there was practically nothing "modern and Ptolemaic about it," but I thought how quickly he would lose this calmness of the student if some one blurted out a word about our plan for that evening. According to Monny, he had been "taken" with poor Mabella Hânem on board the Laconia—admiring her so frankly that Rechid had banished his bride to her cabin. If Sheridan regretted her, as a man regrets a woman vainly loved, he had confided in no one, not even Monny, who had risked seeming to seek his society in order to reach the secret of his heart. He had, however, been graver in manner than at first, so said the girl, who had been much with him before my appearance on the scene. Whether it was intuition, or sheer love of romance which inclined her to the opinion, she believed that Sheridan was unhappy. It would make things worse for Mabel (if our scheme failed) were Neill Sheridan mixed up in the plot; therefore, even impulsive Monny admitted the wisdom of keeping him out of it. But I could see by the way she looked at him—almost pityingly—when he discoursed of lotus and papyrus columns, how she was saying to herself: "You poor fellow, if only you knew!"
The "thing" being to see the Temple of Luxor at sunset, we gave it the afternoon, as if condescending to do it a favour. When I remembered how I had meant to linger here week after week, I felt that I was paying a big price for my share of the Mountain of the Golden Pyramid, making a knock-about comedian of myself, rushing through halls of history followed by a procession of tourists, as a comet tears past the best worth seeing stars, obediently followed by its tail. Still, I had Brigit and Monny as bright spots in the tail; and my old dreams of Luxor had been empty of them.
These ideas were in my mind, while on donkeys and in arabeahs we dashed as if our lives depended on speed, from the Temple of Karnak to the Temple of Luxor, along the dusty white road trimmed with sphinxes. This description was Enid Biddell's, she being happy and therefore frivolous. She rode with Harry Snell, as queens may have ridden along that way, guarding a captive prince who had been subdued forever.
Sunset illumined the world, as for a New Year's festival of Amen-Rã in his ruby-studded boat of gold, when we were ready to leave the glorious temple, and turn to the region of little bazaars and big hotels, fair gardens, and girls with tennis rackets whose shape reminded our Egypt-steeped minds of the key of life. Monny and Brigit had slipped away. Their real day was just beginning.
My heart was with them; Anthony's, too, and his work permitted him to conduct his heart along the way that they must take, while I had to conduct the Set to the Winter Palace Hotel, and give them tea on the terrace.
When everybody was rested and had had enough strawberry tarts, view and flirtation, we were to make for the Temple of Mût: and, having returned at last to the Enchantress Isis, were to steam away just as tourist boats and dahabeahs were lighting up along the shore. We were to dine late, after starting, and anchor in some dark solitude, so as to enjoy a peaceful, dogless night on the Nile. But—what would have happened to Brigit and Monny before the sounding of that dinner gong?
What did happen at the beginning I must tell as best I can, because I was not there, and can speak for myself only from the Temple of Mût.
When they stole almost secretly away from Karnak, they took an arabeah which was waiting and drove to the sugar-plantation of Rechid Bey. This place of his is not prepared for a lengthy or luxurious residence; but as I have said, there is a house. There is also a small gatehouse, in a somewhat neglected condition; but a gatekeeper was there: the usual stout negro. Monny and Biddy were quivering with fear lest they should be refused admission, as at Asiut: but this time their coachman was Ahmed Antoun, carefully disguised as a common driver of an arabeah, a rather exaggeratedly common driver perhaps, for his face and turban were not as clean as the face and turban of a self-respecting Moslem ought to be. He had been helped to play this trick by one of the secret friends he had made in some café or other, the cousin of an uncle of a brother of him who should have sat on the box seat. But the motive he had alleged was not the real one. The two beating hearts in the arabeah had confidence in him. If the gatekeeper tried to send them away, Antoun would bribe him, or threaten him with black magic, or say some strange word which would be for them as an "Open Sesame."
The fat creature at the gate had no French, but the driver of the arabeah addressed him in Arabic, and translated his answers. Yes, the great lady had come hither with her husband the Bey. Word should go to her. It should be ascertained whether it was her pleasure to receive these friends who had journeyed from a far country to pay her a visit.
Monny and Brigit sat in the arabeah to wait, but they dared not talk to the dirty-faced driver, lest some spy should be on the watch, where every group of flowering plants might have ears and eyes. Even if the big gatekeeper came back with an excuse, as seemed too probable, there was hope from Antoun's diplomacy; but the chances were two to one against success. Rechid Bey had almost certainly been put upon his guard by the revengeful Bedr who had shown himself all grinning friendliness to us. Rechid might have tired of playing dragon, as Antoun prophesied; yet it would be strange if he had not given instructions that no European ladies were to visit his wife. Mabella Hânem had been snatched in haste from Asiut, but if she were still in Luxor with her husband, she and her women in the harem would be guarded by eunuchs, as in the more ambitious villa which Rechid called his home.
I suppose Anthony, slouching on the box seat in his unattractive disguise, must have been as much astonished as Monny and Brigit when the gatekeeper returned with another big negro to say that the ladies would be welcomed by Mabella Hânem. The two girls were wildly delighted. Fenton's emotions were mixed. He wanted to save the American bride from the consequences of her tragic mistake, but he cared more for his friends' safety than for hers.
He knew that Monny and Brigit were brave, and that Monny had his Browning, but the thought that she might need to use it could not have made him comfortable on the box seat of his borrowed arabeah, outside Rechid's gate. It was arranged that he should give Mabel's visitors one hour, thus allowing for delays and emergencies; but if they did not appear at the end of that time, he would dash off to tell the Luxor police that two ladies were detained against their will in the house of Rechid Bey.
Once in charge of the chief eunuch, who had come to take them to the harem, Brigit and Monny might almost as well have been deaf and dumb. Brigit knew practically nothing of Arabic; and Monny, though she had been vaguely studying since her arrival, had been too passionately occupied with other things to give much time or attention to the language of Egypt's invaders. Her blood was beating in her veins now, and she could think of no words except "Imshi!" "Malish!" and "Ma'salama!" These buzzed in her head, like persistent flies, as she and Biddy followed their silent, white-robed and turbaned conductor along a narrow pink path, toward a modern villa almost shrouded with bougainvillia. And they were the last words she needed. She didn't want to tell the ponderous negro to "get out." On the contrary, she wished to be polite. So far from saying "no matter," everything mattered intensely. And, unfortunately, it was not time yet to bid the creature "farewell."
Behind the white house with its crimson embroidery of flowers, rose a thick growth of tall sugar-cane, the shimmering green pale as beryl, in the dreaming light which precedes sunset. The dark red of the bougainvillia looked like streaming blood against such a background.
Though the villa appeared to be comparatively new, it was built according to Turkish, not European ideas, as it might have been were the owner a Copt instead of a Mohammedan. The building was in two parts, entirely separating the selamlik from the haremlik. The latter was small and insignificant compared with the former, for this was not a place prepared for family life: it was but a temporary dwelling, where the master would more often come alone than with the ladies of his harem.
The eunuch opened a door leading into the women's building, and Brigit and Monny entered the same secretive sort of vestibule they must have remembered in the House of the Crocodile. A screen-wall prevented them from seeing what was beyond; and the dead silence frightened them a little, so easy was it to make of this place a trap.
In the vestibule was a long, cheaply cushioned bench, the resting-place of the women's custodian; and upon it lay spread open the eunuch's well-used koran, which he had deserted to meet the visitors. Who had given him the order to go, and why it had been given, the guests began to ask themselves.
Beyond the screen-wall they entered an anteroom. Through a big window-door they could look into a small, grassy court that served as a garden: and opening from the anteroom was a second room much larger, which also gave upon the garden court. At the door of this, the eunuch bowed himself away; but an involuntary glance which Monny threw at him over her shoulder showed that he was grinning. The grin died quickly as a white flash of heat-lightning fades from a black night-sky: but though the heavy face composed itself respectfully, there remained a disquieting twinkle in the full-lidded eyes. It struck Monny that the negro was amusing himself at the expense of the visitors, because of something he knew which they did not know.
"We're not going to be allowed to see Mabel!" she thought, with a jump of her pulses; and even when a negress, smiling invitingly, beckoned her and Biddy into the large room whose three windows looked on the garden, she still believed that they had been deceived. She did not, however, speak out her conviction to Brigit. Nothing could be done yet. They must wait and see what would happen.
The room was furnished in abominable taste, with cheap Trench furniture, upholstered with blue brocade that clashed hideously with the scarlet carpet. There were several sofas and chairs stiffly arranged round the walls; but no tables, save low maidahs of carved wood inlaid with pearl, such as they had seen in Cairo bazaars and hotels. The windows were closed, and the air heavy, as in a room seldom used. The two seated themselves close together, on one of the ugly sofas facing a door through which the beckoning negress had gone out. There was no sound except the harsh ticking of a huge, bulbous clock, all gilding and flowers, which stood in a corner. Monny's and Brigit's eyes met, with a question.
Who would open the door just closed? Would it be Mabel, or would Rechid Bey stride in, to reproach or insult them?
"Are you sure it's loaded?" Biddy whispered.
No need for Monny to ask what she meant.
"Sure," she answered.
The handle of the door turned.