Ten o'clock!--half-past!--eleven!
The usual noises of a night in an Egyptian town were at their height.
The distant and never-ceasing shuffling of slippered or naked feet on
stone, or sand, made a dull accompaniment to the sharper notes of men's
voices crying their wares of sticky sweetmeat or fruit, and the barking
and growling of innumerable dogs.
Muffled ejaculations could be heard, little gurgles of laughter, which
in Egypt, thanks be to Allah, do not degenerate into giggles, the swish
of a whip in the shadow, followed by a woman's cry, and through all,
above all, unfinished catches of music.
All kinds of humans, including tourists, writers, European officials
and desert dilettanti, have affixed every kind of adjective to Egypt's
music.
Ethereal, melancholy, wailing, plaintive, nebulous, and pathetic are
but a few. Why--why try to tie a label to something which slips from
the fingers even as they close about it? Why _try_ to describe that
which cannot be described? There is, or was, a certain line which in
the heat of an Egyptian noon, or the stillness of an Egyptian night,
when the first notes of a human voice, or stringed instrument, or
rudely cut pipe-reed reach the ears, would creep out of some memory
cell.
One loved the vagueness of those words:
"Out of the nowhere, into here!"
Loved the infinite space they opened up with their aloofness and
indefiniteness, until, alas! they took concrete shape when chosen as
title to the picture of a robust, Royal Academy, Fed-on-Virol looking
babe, which doubtless, when trying to grab some passing Olympian
butterfly, fell off the lap of the Gods into a sitting position upon
Mother Earth.
Also, one thinks of that mist wraith which on a cloudless day stretched
across some mountain's breast, lies lightly upon the air, with
diaphanous ends coming out of and going into nothingness; for in just
such manner does the music fall across an Egyptian day or night.
These catches of music have no end, and no beginning; they rise, linger
a moment, and are gone, leaving behind them an indescribable loneliness
of soul, and a longing to stretch one's hand back down the centuries to
pluck their meaning from the past.
Under the sand, the granite, the marble, buried deep in the pyramids or
merely covered by the earth of shallow graves, there must surely be
many instruments of music wrought in gold or silver, studded in jewels,
or cut out of humble wood; many strings still unbroken, and near them
many whitened bones of dusky hands which, for all we know, at odd
moments of day or night set those strings a-thrumming, or lift the reed
pipes to ghostly lips.
Who knows but that the British Museum at night, rid at last of those
who gape at Egypt's dishonoured dead, may not be filled with snatches
of music from throat or hand of those unfortunates, priest, priestess,
fair woman and honoured man, dug out and laid upon a slab of grass for
the education of the revellers of a wet Bank Holiday, or those others
from Northern climes, who bid their snuffling, sticky progeny to "coom
oop, lad, an' look at t' stuffed un!"
And on this night of which I write, music was caught up, and carried
hither and hither upon the breeze which clittered the leaves of the
palms, and softly moved the flowing robes of Hahmed the Arab, who,
perfectly motionless, stood in the ink-black shadow cast by the
bougainvillaea, which trailed its purple masses over the walls of the
house, shining faintly pink under the silver moon.
At the man's feet lay three camels, superb beasts. One red brown and
one-humped, packed with a seemingly huge load which in reality it
hardly felt, and two Bactrian or two-humped, pacing dromedaries of
Dhalul, one of deepest black and therefore most rare, with black saddle
cloth embroidered in silver, the third of a light golden colour, decked
out in cloth of softest silk patterned with glistening jewels, and
shimmering crystal specks, cushions padding the saddle-seat, to which
hung stirrups of silver.
About this beast's neck, outstretched upon the sand, lay a garland of
flowers, upon the ground by its side lay an Eastern rug of purple
shade, covered inches deep in flowers of every kind.
There was no grumbling or snarling, they knew their master and lay
still, until, with a slight grunt, one raised its head and looked
towards the East, as the man with a muttered "Allah" slowly moved
towards the gate.
Putting his hands to his lips and forehead and murmuring, "Peace be
upon you!" he took Jill's dressing-case from her.
* * * * * *
"I'm sorry to be so late," she said in a voice devoid of anything in
the way of tone or inflection, "and I had to bring my dressing-case, it
would be so tiresome to be stranded in the desert with no looking-glass
or face cream, wouldn't it?"
"It would be terrible!" was the answer, as though a dearth in dates was
in discussion.
And then Jill sat down upon a convenient block of marble, and searching
in her cheap bag for one of those Russian cigarette cases of wood,
which had the advantage of being inexpensive and distinctive compared
to those of gold, silver, or silver gilt, which jingle so irritatingly
against the universal gold, silver, or silver gilt bag, took out a
cigarette, lit it, and began to make conversation.
It is very difficult to describe the girl's frame of mind at this
moment when she stood upon the verge of great happenings, or in fact of
any moment when danger, possible or certain, confronted her.
She was perfectly calm, in fact a little dull, with a heart which
physically neither slowed nor hastened.
Yet it was not the fearlessness of blissful ignorance, or the
aggravating recklessness of the foolhardy.
Three times she had been in actual danger of death: once when her horse
bolted, making straight for the cliffs a short way ahead; another time
when the receding tide had caught her, pulling her slowly out to sea,
and never a boat in sight; and again when taking a pre-breakfast stroll
on the Col di Tenda, she had encountered a fugitive of the law
desperately making for the frontier, who, half crazed with fear,
sleeplessness, and hunger, literally at the point of an exceedingly
sharp knife had demanded money, or bracelet, in fact anything which
could be transformed into a mattress, and coffee, polenta, cigarette or
succulent frittata.
After each of the preceding incidents she had tried to analyse her
utter want of feeling, her inability to recognise danger, her almost
placid confidence in an ultimate happy ending.
"It doesn't seem to be me, Dads," she had once explained, or tried to
explain, to her father, who, in the depths of an armchair and the
_Sporting News_, had no more idea of what she was talking about than
the man in the moon. "I seem to be standing outside myself looking at
myself. A sort of something seems to come right down, shutting the
danger right away from me. I know I'm in it and have to get out of it,
but though I pulled Arabia for all I knew, and swam for all I was worth
to reach Rock Point, and bluffed that poor devil out of taking Mumsie's
bracelet, I kind of did it mechanically, not with any intention of
putting things right, for I knew I was not going to die that time,
because I'm sure that I shall _know_ when I've got to die . . .
understand, Dads?"
To which Dads had replied:
"Quite so, my dear, quite so! Personally I don't see how it could be
otherwise. I agree with every word you say!" patting his red setter's
head, which in the firelight he fondly believed to be his daughter's.