It Happened in Egypt Part 22

"Do I like what?" she inquired, that quiver of impatience in her tone which she kept for her unfortunate adorer.

"The--those flowers," he stammered. "I--"

"They're _awful_!" she exclaimed. "The rooms are lovely, but these dreadful artificial things some _silly_ person has stuck all over the place spoil the whole effect. I want to find an Arab to take them away.

Or do you think I might throw them overboard? No one _could_ like them, I'm sure."

"Of course, chuck 'em overboard--or hand 'em to me, and I'll do it,"

said Sir Marcus, looking ready to cry. "But--they're _lotuses_, I suppose you know? I heard you say you'd give anything to have some."

"Not artificial ones," explained Cleopatra, _belle dame sans merci_. "I can't stand artificial flowers even on hats, much less in rooms. Who could have put such horrors all over my _salon_?"

"I don't know," Sir Marcus lied stoutly; "but it shan't happen again.

There ain't any real lotuses to be got, so maybe the--er--the decorator--" his meanderings died into silence, as he took the bunch of flowers from Mrs. East, and viciously flung them as tribute to the Nile.

"After all, we oughtn't to do that," said Cleopatra. "In the beautiful old days real lotuses were given to the Nile. These are an insult."

"They aren't meant as such," the big man apologized, all joy in his fine boat and the compliments he had received crushed out of him. I knew now that he had hovered at Cleopatra's door hoping for a cry of pleasure. Probably he had ransacked Cairo for the lotuses, or telegraphed to Paris, before his cruel lady went from him into the desert. I was sorry for the "boss," though a snub or two would be good for him, no doubt, and perhaps were being specially provided by a wise Providence. But I had other things to think of than Sir Marcus Lark's love-troubles: Monny, for instance, who at last had found a letter from "Madame Wretched" in Cairo, and had wonderful schemes in her head. On board the _Laconia_ I should have thought such schemes obstinate and headstrong, the wish of a spoiled child to do something dangerous, to meddle in matters which did not concern her, and to have "an adventure." But I understood the Gilded Rose a little better now. I began to see the real Monny as Biddy saw her, bright with the flame of courage and enthusiasm and pa.s.sionate generosity, behind the pa.s.sing cloud of superficial faults. She wanted everybody to be as fortunate and happy as she, and was prepared to be exceedingly trying and disagreeable in the effort to make them so.

We had not been on board ten minutes when Biddy told me about the exciting letter, and escorted me to find it and Monny. Miss Gilder was in the act of insisting that General and Mrs. Harlow should accept her suite, and that she should take their cabin. The matter had to be argued out before she could spare attention for anything else; but as she made it clear that the Harlows were not to pay extra, their scruples were soon conquered. "The baggage hasn't been put into the cabins yet," she explained breathlessly to me, "so that's all right!"

In my astonishment, I forgot Madame Wretched. "But why," I adjured Monny in my professional tone, as conductor, "why on earth should you sacrifice yourself to these people? What have they done for you? I thought you didn't like them?"

"I don't," she replied, calmly, while Biddy listened, smiling. "That's why I gave them my suite--at least, it's partly why."

"I should think the other part of the 'partly' is more convincing," I remarked; and Monny blushed.

"Perhaps you know that your friend Antoun Effendi thinks me the most selfish as well as the most obstinate girl he ever saw," she said. "And I don't intend to have foreigners like him go on doing American girls an injustice. Besides, maybe he's right about me--and I want him to be wrong. I hate having all the best things there are everywhere, just because I'm rich. The Harlows wanted a suite, and they couldn't afford to take one. They were looking sadly through the door at my rooms and envying me, so I thought I would change. I was _determined_ to change, whether they would let me or not. They are old; I'm young, and I shall enjoy thinking I've done something nice for people I thoroughly dislike, as much as _they_ will enjoy having their own bathroom."

"If Mrs. Harlow could hear you calling her old!" gurgled Biddy.

"Well, she _is_ old. And she's perfectly horrid, much more horrid even than Miss Ha.s.sett-Bean; so I'd rather give my suite to her and her husband than any one else. Biddy and Rachel are together, and Aunt Clara is alone. I'm robbing no one but myself."

"How do you know Antoun Effendi thinks you selfish and obstinate?" I inquired. "Surely he wasn't rude enough to say so?"

"He was indeed, the day I _would_ have the coastguard camel, and he came after me when it ran away," she confessed. "And you're not to tell him about the suite. I didn't give it up to please him."

"I thought you did," I ventured, "in order that Egyptian princes shouldn't do injustice to American girls?"

"I meant," she explained hastily, "that I like to know they're _wrong_ about us. And now what was it that Biddy and you wanted to say? Oh, poor Mabel's letter! How thankful I am to get it! I've been wondering if I dared write, and thinking of all sorts of desperate plans. But, Biddy thought we must wait till Wretched was off his guard. You see, we shall have to rescue her when we get to Asiut."

I would have answered, but a look from Biddy enjoined silence. And so we were in touch with the "s.h.i.+p's Mystery" again! I took the envelope, which was addressed to Miss Gilder in a distinctively American handwriting, strange to see coming from an Egyptian harem.

The letter began abruptly, and showed signs of haste:

"You were so good, I know I can appeal to you, but I'm not sure if there's any way to help me. I began to be frightened on the s.h.i.+p, when _he_ behaved so queerly, just because I talked about the most ordinary things to one or two men. He made me stay in my cabin--but you'll remember that. Already it's like ages ago! I tell myself now that I was almost happy then. At least, I believed I was his _wife_, and that it was better than being poor, and a governess to hateful French children in Paris. He was kind, too--he seemed to love me; and I thought it was like living in a romance to marry a Turk. He swore he'd never loved any one except me, that he'd never been married, and that he wouldn't try to convert me or shut me up like Turkish women. But everything was untrue and different from what he said. I hardly know how to tell you, for you will think it horrible, yet I must tell. When I came here, I found he _had a wife already_, and a perfectly fiendish little girl. It is legal in this dreadful country to have four wives, but I don't care about the law. I want to get away. I've been cheated. This isn't marriage! I don't know what will become of me, for I haven't any money, but I'd rather starve than stay. I heard Mr. Sheridan say on board s.h.i.+p that it was easy to get a divorce in Egypt or Turkey. Maybe he meant me to hear, thinking some day I might be glad to know. But I can't get a divorce while I'm shut up in this house and watched. Now, _he_ suspects I want to leave him (since a scene we had about the wife), and he won't let me go out, even into the garden. You are my only hope. You'll wonder why I don't try appealing to the American Consul here, instead of to you. I suppose there must be a consul--Asiut seems a big, important town. I'll tell you why I don't. For one thing, there mayn't be a consul. For another thing, the woman who has promised to post this wouldn't do so if she guessed I was writing against my husband, who is her brother-in-law, and she would guess if she saw an envelope addressed to a consul, although she knows scarcely any English. I have to talk to her in French. He thinks she is devoted to him, and that she's explaining the Mussulman religion and ideas of a woman's life to me, or he wouldn't let her come. It's true, she is loyal to him, in a way. She wouldn't help me to escape. But I think women in the harems like to have secrets with each other, which they hide from their men.

I've told her about you, how pretty you are, and a great heiress and she's so interested, she's dying to see you. She hopes, if she posts this letter, that you will call on me on your way up the Nile. She can perhaps find out what day your boat is to arrive, through her husband, and then she'll try to come to our house on the chance of meeting you.

I'm almost sure she'll keep her promise and post this letter. If not --if he sees it, maybe he will kill me. I believe now he would do anything. But I must run the risk. Do come. Do think of some way to help.

"MABEL.

"I don't feel I have the right to any other name, for surely as he has a wife I'm not truly married."

"Well?" asked Monny, as she saw me finish and fold up the letter. "You were horrid about her at first, but just at the last minute on the s.h.i.+p, you were good, and kept Wretched Bey talking, so I might have my chance with Mabel. If you hadn't, I shouldn't like you as much as I do.

And I'm sure even you'll be anxious to do something now."

"Yet we don't wish Ernest or Antoun Effendi to run into danger, do we, dear?" Biddy suggested, coaxingly. "When you wanted to show the letter, I said yes, but--"

Monny listened no longer. Her eyes were sparkling, as they looked straight into mine. "Antoun Effendi!" she repeated. "Tell me first --because, you know, you are his friend--what would he think about a case like this? Whatever he is, he's not a Mussulman, I'm sure. Still, he's not one of us--"

"You're sure he's not a Mussulman?" I echoed. "What makes you sure, when you know he's been to Mecca, unless somebody has put the idea into your head?" "His own head put it there," she answered. "I saw it without his turban, the night of the alarm in camp. It wasn't shaved, as I've read the heads of Moslem men are. It was a head like--like the head of every Christian man I know, except that it was a better shape than most! So, as he isn't Mussulman, he might not mind our trying to help this poor deceived girl?"

"Shall I ask his advice?" I inquired, rather drily perhaps.

She hesitated for an instant, then said "Yes!"

"You seem certain that whatever he thinks, he won't betray your plan."

"I am certain," she replied, looking rapt. "He's not the kind of man who betrays."

"You're right," I said. "He's not the kind of man who betrays. He's the kind that helps. Though in such a case as this--you know, the very meaning of the word "harem" is "sacred" or "forbidden." Still--we shall see!"

We could not "see" at once, however, because Anthony had not come on board. Even when the hour for starting arrived, there was no Anthony, no message from Anthony. "Your friend isn't going to leave us in the lurch, is he?" asked Sir Marcus, watch in hand. He had meant to travel with us as far as Beni Hasan, our first stop, and return to Cairo by donkey and train, but had changed his intention and was going off at once--I thought I could guess why. "The _Enchantress Isis_ ought to be under way this minute, but Antoun and you are our chief attractions. We can't leave him behind."

I agreed. We could not leave Anthony behind, but I was not worrying. If he had to drop down out of an aeroplane, I felt sure that having said he would come, he would keep his word. So, while Sir Marcus stared at his watch and fumed, I rushed usefully about among the ladies who clamoured for their luggage, or complained that their cabins were too small for innovation trunks. I showed them how these travelling wardrobes could be opened wide and flattened against the walls, taking up next to no room; I a.s.sured each woman in confidence that she had been given the best cabin on the boat; I dealt out little ill.u.s.trated books about the trip; I advised people which tables to choose in the dining-saloon, and consoled them when the places they wanted were gone.

Still, the _Enchantress Isis_ had not stirred, and a rumour was beginning to go round that something had happened, when suddenly I saw Antoun Effendi's green turban.

"Thank goodness!" muttered Sir Marcus, putting his watch into his pocket. And then Mrs. East came swiftly across the deck from the door of her own suite, where she must have stood watching, hidden behind the portiere. "Oh, Antoun Effendi!" she cried, and though her face was turned toward us, she did not seem to know that we existed. How Anthony looked at her we could not judge, for we saw only his back; but her eyes must have told Sir Marcus a piece of news. He glanced from her to Fenton, and from Fenton to her, with the expression of a school-boy who has been punished for something he hasn't done. Then he turned to me as though to ask a question; but shut his mouth tightly, as if gulping down a large pill, wheeled, and left me without a good-bye. I wondered, Cleopatra-fas.h.i.+on, what he had done in his last incarnation to deserve these heavy blows in the hour which should have seen his triumph. "What if he changes his mind and doesn't want Fenton and me after all?" I asked myself. To my surprise, I realized that it would be a genuine disappointment not to be wanted by Sir Marcus Lark. The Mountain of the Golden Pyramid had nothing to do with this. It was borne in upon me that I had begun to enjoy the role of conductor; and certainly I was learning lessons in high diplomacy which might be useful in my career.

Anthony, who was free as an eagle from questions of innovation trunks and how to give everybody the best cabins, and places at table, looked as if he were bound for the Island of Hesperides, on a voyage of pure romance. The air of gravity and responsibility he had worn in Cairo and in the desert was gone with the starting of the boat. I knew suddenly, without asking him, that his mission had been of a far more serious nature than the transplanting of a sheikh's tomb; that there had been something else, and that it had finished at the last moment in success.

"Sir Marcus was worrying about you," I said, when the importance of unpacking left the deck empty save for Anthony and me.

"You weren't, were you?" He was smiling at me in a friendly, confidential way that showed a happy mood.

"Not I! I knew you'd turn up, as you'd said you would."

"Thanks, my good Duffer. But now it's over, I don't mind telling you that it was a toss up."

"You mean there was a chance of your failing us--in spite of the Mountain?"

"Well, I meant to bring this off somehow. But my first duty was to finish up the Cairo business. I simply had to finish it, and I did. It was a--rather bigger job than the sheikh's tomb racket, though of course that was on the cards, too. Everything's all right now; but I spent last night in getting the full details of an Arab plot to blow up the house of a rich Copt, who's been of great service to the Government. Some of the young Nationalists think that the Christian Copts are put ahead of Moslems by the British, and there are jealousies. The whole set of men concerned in this affair were arrested an hour ago, so all's well with the world! I'm free to turn my face toward the Mountain of the Golden Pyramid--free to enjoy myself, although I must stick to my turban still."

"Are you getting tired of it?" I asked.

"I've been tired of it since the first day I put it on. I don't like play-acting for long. But it was necessary. And it has had its advantages as well as disadvantages for me."

I should have liked to ask another question then, but dared not, so instead I told him about the letter from Bechid Bey's beautiful American bride, Mabella Hanem, the "s.h.i.+p's Mystery" of the _Laconia_.