It Happened in Egypt Part 19

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 applique, 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 s.h.i.+p-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 cheris.h.i.+ng a hopeless love for him, when he has safely vanished out of their lives.

Mrs. East made Anthony pick up pre-historic oyster sh.e.l.ls 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 embarra.s.sing 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 a la Newburgh for dinner, in mid-Libyan desert, and drank the chef'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 n.o.body 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-sh.e.l.l 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, ma.s.sed near by on the golden sand, which might in the distance be a plantation of young palms, but is in reality a congested ma.s.s 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 d.y.k.e 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 a.s.ses, disputing the high, narrow "gisr" or d.y.k.e 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. Ca.n.a.ls 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 pa.s.s us with difficulty. Camels everywhere, indeed, on d.y.k.e 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 a.s.sumes hobby-horse att.i.tudes, much to the alarm of Cleopatra and Miss Ha.s.sett-Bean. Also, just to remind everybody that sand is his element, he s.h.i.+es 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 pa.s.s 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 sh.o.r.e 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 cl.u.s.ter, 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 sh.o.r.e 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 Faris, 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 quant.i.ties of rustling, pale green sugar cane, which they carried on their shoulders.

There were wild adventures for the sandcart, and watery s.p.a.ces across which Cleopatra was carried (at her own urgent request) by Anthony; Miss Ha.s.sett-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 suns.h.i.+ne like bright bayonets of Djinns. And then Medinet, through which our caravan had to pa.s.s _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 Ha.s.sett-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 Arsinoe. 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 friends.h.i.+p 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 circ.u.mstances, 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 Arsinoe was charming, no doubt; and the Greek ruins and papyri of her day are interesting, but it is the city sacred to the crocodile G.o.d 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 c.o.c.kcrow, 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.