THE NIGHT OF THE FULL MOON
"It seems too good to be true that it should end like this," said
Monny.
She said it on the roof of Mena House, in the kiosk-room made of
mushrbiyeh work, which I had engaged for a little private dinner-party
that night. You see, it was the night of the full moon, the magic night
of the Sphinx-spell, which must not be wasted, no matter how tired you
may be or how many excitements you may have lived through.
Anthony and I had had our explanations. He had told me that one night
in a café, where he was spreading the news of his dream, he had heard
two men talking in low voices about the House of the Crocodile. The
word "hasheesh" had not been mentioned, but Anthony had imbibed a vague
impression of something secret, and had wondered, and been interested.
Then the matter had slipped his mind; but, summoned in the night from
the writing of letters, to advise Mrs. Jones, he had recalled Monny's
wish to visit a hasheesh den. He knew of none, but suspected the
existence of one or two. How to find out in a hurry? he had asked
himself. And with that, the remembrance of those few whispered words in
the café had come echoing back to his brain. He acted upon the
suggestion; went to the door of the swinging crocodile, knocked, and
knocked again; had the door opened to him as if in surprise by an
apparently sleepy man. Announced the motive of his coming as if it were
a foregone conclusion that hasheesh could be smoked in that house by
the initiated. His disguise was not suspected. It never was, when he
played the Egyptian; and when asked who had sent him, he had the
inspiration to utter the name of that Bey who had been Mansoor's
master. This gave him entrance. He was taken upstairs, passed through
the door "Forbidden to the Public"; and the first person he saw in the
long room as he entered, was Bedr smoking a gozeh, one of those
cocoanut, cane-stemmed pipes in which hasheesh is mingled with the
Persian tobacco called tumbák.
Bedr was accused of treachery, and defended himself. The ladies had
insisted. It was his place to obey. He had done no wrong in engaging a
carriage to wait outside the Ghezireh Palace gardens, and bringing his
employers to the best place in Cairo for the hasheesh smoking. The
ladies were safe and happy, in a private room where they had tried
their little experiment, and now they were sleeping. As soon as they
waked and felt like going home, he was ready to take them. It was for
Miss Gilder, not for Bedr, to beg pardon of her friends if they were
frightened. And all the time, it had seemed to Anthony, that the man
was expecting some one to arrive. He watched the doorway half eagerly,
half anxiously; when a servant came or went, he started, and betrayed
emotion which might have been disappointment or relief. But when
Anthony questioned him, he said, "I expect no one, Effendi. It is only
that I shall not be easy till we get the ladies home, now you tell me
their people are alarmed."
Just then, and before Anthony saw the girls, a servant had come running
in to say that there was an alarm. Something had happened in the
street, and the police were there. Mansoor feared that it was a ruse,
and that the house was being watched, back and front. Where the
forbidden thing is, no precaution can be too great. For their own
sakes, and Mansoor's sake, no one must go out, perhaps not till the
next night; but luckily a saint's day would give peace for the morrow,
and all doors could be shut without causing remark. The news that there
was no escape for many hours to come distressed no one apparently,
except "Antoun." He had gone to the door, and tried to open it, but
found that already it was locked on the other side. Then he knew that
it was useless to struggle, for he was unarmed, the door was thick, and
no one outside could hear if he shouted. He must use his wits; but
first he must make sure that the two girls were safe. He forced, rather
than induced Bedr to show him the room they had engaged--a small one,
closed only with a portière, and looking over the court, down into the
open-fronted recess where Mansoor's family-life went on, like a watch
dog's in his kennel.
It was true, as Bedr had said; the girls slept on a cushioned mattress,
wrapped in black habberahs, their faces turned to the wall. As they
could not be taken out, Anthony did not wake them, but let them get, in
peace, their money's worth of dreaming. His next thought was to try and
bribe the Arab attendant to smuggle out a letter; but acceptable as a
bribe would have been, the man explained his helplessness to earn it,
at least for the time being. He could do nothing till one of his
fellow-servants came up from below, to pass the food for the imprisoned
smokers through a hole in the door, made purposely in case of just such
an emergency. Probably no one would appear till morning, for who would
be hungry before then? Even with the morning, it might be Mansoor
himself who would bring the food, and inquire again at the door if all
were well within. But if the noble Hadji wrote the letter, it should be
sent when opportunity arose. One of the servants below stairs, said the
man, was his father, who might during the next day be able to slip out
as if on some errand. Then he would perhaps take a letter, if he could
be sure of good pay, and that he would not be delivered up to the
police. So Anthony had written on a sheet torn from his notebook, and
made an envelope of another sheet. The address of the Ghezireh Palace
had helped the man to believe that no evil would reach his father; and
a "sweetener" in the shape of all Anthony's ready money had done the
rest. But evidently the old man had not succeeded in finding an excuse
for an errand until after the noon hour, and meanwhile time had seemed
long in the House of the Crocodile. When the girls waked, wanting to go
home, they were ill. They found the game not worth the candle--but
Anthony's presence had given them comfort. They were humble, and
remorseful; and Bedr was so conspicuously a worm that Monny consented
to his discharge. "It would take more time than we've got to make him
worth converting," she said to Rachel when the Armenian had carefully
laid all the blame of the expedition upon her shoulders.
Never were two runaway children more glad to be found and restored to
their anxious relatives than Monny Gilder and Rachel Guest. As for
Bedr, he took his dismissal, with a week's wages, submissively; but the
gravest question concerning him still lacked an answer. Had he merely
been officious and indiscreet in guiding the girls secretly to the
House of the Crocodile, and there procuring hasheesh to buy them
dreams, or had he wanted something to happen, in that house, which had
not happened? A certain amount of browbeating from "Antoun," and
bullying from me, dragged nothing out of him. And perhaps there was
nothing to be dragged. Perhaps it was through oversensitiveness that
Brigit and I dwelt suspiciously upon Bedr's motives, and asked each
other who it was he had expected at the House of the Crocodile. Even
Anthony did not accuse the Armenian of anything worse than slyness and
cowardice, according to him the two worst vices of a man; but he
volunteered to find out what mysterious night-disturbance in the street
had caused the sudden closing of the doors. It was Biddy's thought that
the person Bedr wished to meet might fortunately have been prevented by
this very disturbance from keeping his appointment, and Monny saved a
serious ending to her adventure. It began to seem rather a worry,
travelling with so important a young woman as Miss Gilder: and a vague
dread of the future hung over me, as it hung over Brigit, who loved the
girl. We felt, dimly, as if we had had a "warning," and did not yet
know how to profit by it. The atmosphere was charged with electricity,
as before an earthquake; and we felt that the affair of the hasheesh
den might be but a preface to some chapter yet unwritten. Still, it was
impossible not to forgive Monny her indiscretion. Indeed, she became so
honey-sweet and childlike in her desire to "make up" for what we had
suffered, that the difficulty was not to like her better.
She besought us to forget the episode. If we only _knew_ how sick she
and Rachel had been, we'd see why they never wanted to think of those
hours again! And when I chanced to mention that to-night would be full
moon--the night of nights when the Sphinx and the Ghizeh Pyramids held
their court--Monny begged to have the bad taste of her naughtiness
taken out of her mouth by a dinner at Mena House. We might dine early,
and plunge into the desert later, when the moon was high. Of course, I
proposed that all should be my guests--all except "Antoun" who, though
recognized as a gentleman of Egypt, was considered by Miss Gilder an
alien, not exactly on "dining terms." He was supposed to go home, "to
his own address." At eight-thirty he was to take a taxi to Mena House,
where he would arrive before nine, in time to help me organize my
expedition.
I explained to Monny that, though we should dine privately, it would be
my duty to see that the _Candace_ people paid their respects to the
Sphinx, and gazed upon her as she ate moon-honey. If they missed this
sight, or if anything went wrong with their way of seeing it, I should
never be forgiven. But the much chastened Monny graciously "did not
mind." She thought it would be fun to watch the sheep-dog rounding up
his flock. Useless to explain to her the subtle social distinction
between a "Flock" and a "Set" (both with capitals)! To her, the blaze
of the Set's smartness was but the flicker of a penny dip. We could
drive the crowd on ahead, and look at _our_ moon when they were out of
its light.
So there's the explanation of Monny's presence in the mushrbiyeh kiosk
on the roof of Mena House, on the night following the great adventure,
which would have put most girls to bed with nervous prostration!
Part of our programme, to be sure, had failed; but it was not a part
which could interfere with my selfish enjoyment. Mrs. East had changed
her mind at the last moment, and had decided not to dine, although I
had invited Sir Marcus on purpose for her. According to Biddy,
Cleopatra had "something up her sleeve," something her excuse of
"seediness" was meant to cover. Maybe it was only a flirtatious wish to
disappoint Sir Marcus--maybe it was something more subtle. But it did
not matter much to anybody except Lark, who was obliged to put up with
Mrs. Jones in place of Mrs. East; for Rachel Guest and the sculptor,
whom we nicknamed "Bill Bailey" were to be paired off: and, urged by
Biddy, I intended to monopolize Monny.
I suppose there could scarcely be a more ideal room for an intimate
dinner-party on a moonlight night than that kiosk on the flat roof of
Mena House. Through the wide open doors, and the openwork walls like a
canopy of black lace lined with silver, the moonlight filtered,
sketching exquisite designs upon the white floor and bringing out
jewelled flecks of colour on the covering and cushions of the divans.
There was no electricity in this kiosk, and we aided the moonlight only
with red-shaded candles, and ruby domed "fairy lamps," the exact shade
of the crimson ramblers which decorated the table. For the corners by
the open doors, I had ordered pots of Madonna lilies, which gave up
their perfume to the moon, and looked, in the mingling radiance of rose
and silver, like hovering doves.
"Oh, I could hug and _kiss_ that moon!" sighed Monny, tall and fair in
her white dress as the lilies I had chosen for her.
I was relieved that the Man in the Moon has now been superseded by a
Gibson Girl; for Monny was beautiful at that moment as a vision met in
the secret garden which lies on the other side of sleep.
"And the stars," Monny said, as I watched her uplifted face, wondering
just how much I was in love with it, "the little stars high up at the
zenith twinkle like silver bees. Those that sit on the edge of the
horizon are huge and golden, like desert watch-fires. Oh, do you know,
Lord Ernest, if quite a dull, uninteresting man, or--or one that it
would be madness even to _think_ of--proposed to me on such a night, I
should _have_ to say yes. It would seem so prosaic and such a waste, of
moonlight, not to. Wouldn't you feel like that if you were a girl?"
"I'm sure I should," I replied with extraordinary sympathy. "I _do_
feel like it, even as a man. I warn you not to propose, or I shall snap
at you."
She laughed; but I was wondering if I were dull and uninteresting
enough to stand a chance. It seemed as if Providence were actually
_handing_ it to me. But just then Biddy and Sir Marcus came to the
doorway which so becomingly framed Monny's form and mine. Naturally
that put the idea out of my head; and two such opportunities don't come
to a man in a single night.
Dinner was not ready yet, and we sauntered about on the flat roof,
white as marble in the moonlight. The sky was milk--the desert, honey
--far off Cairo with its crowned citadel, pale opal veined with light,
and faintly streaked with misty greens and purples; the cultivated land
a deep indigo sea. The fantastically built hotel (in its ancient
beginnings the palace of a Pasha) was like a closely huddled group of
châlets, looked down on from its central roof. On the fringe of the
oasis-garden the cafés and curiosity-shops buzzed with life, and
glittered like lighted beehives. Outside the gateway, donkey-boys and
camel-men and drivers of sandcarts chattered. To-night, and on a few
moonlight nights to come they would reap their monthly harvest. They
were all ready to start off anywhere at a moment's notice; but apart
from them and their clamour, reposed a row of camels previously
engaged, free, therefore, to enjoy themselves until after dinner. As we
gazed down as if from a captive balloon, at the line of sitting forms,
they looked immense, like giant, newborn birds, with their huge
egg-shaped bodies and thin necks. Along the arboured road from Cairo,
flashed motor-car after motor-car, their lights winking in and out
between the dark trees, now blazing, now invisible, their occupants all
intent on doing the right thing: dining at Mena House, and seeing the
full moon feed honey to the Sphinx. Some, wishing to save time, or to
dine later in town, or to take a train, for somewhere, later, did not
turn in at the hotel gate, but swept past with siren shrieks, and tore
on, hoping to "rush" the steep hill to the Pyramid platform at top
speed. Only a few of the strongest succeeded, and, with a dash instead
of an ignominious crawl, triumphantly fanned their lights along the
base of that vast monument in which King Cheops vainly sought eternal
privacy. What would he say, we wondered, could he see the crowds of
tourists tearing out to pay him a call, on their way to the Sphinx?
Would he blight them with a curse, or would he remember pearly nights
of old, when his subjects assembled in multitudes for the feast of the
Goddess Neith when the moon was full, and all the white, brightly
painted houses along the Nile reflected their flowerlike illuminations
in the water? Anyhow (as Sir John Biddell would have said), this was
helping to keep his name before the public; and nothing could succeed
in vulgarizing his mountain of gold in its gleaming waves of desert,
under pulsing stars and creamy floods of moonlight.
Anthony had told me that the great "tip" was to go out while the less
instructed sightseers ate their dinner. Then, the desert was
comparatively empty; and, more important still, instead of having the
moon on her head, and her face in shadow, the Sphinx received its full
blaze in her farseeing eyes. Of this advice I meant to avail myself,
feeling vaguely guilty as I thought of the giver, who was absent from
the feast: Anthony Fenton, one of the finest young soldiers in Egypt,
who could be lionized in drawing-rooms at home if he would "stand for
it"! Anthony who, would he but accept the repentant overtures of that
tyrannical old prince, his maternal grandfather, might inherit a
fortune and a palace at Constantinople! Yet as Ahmed Antoun in his
green turban, he was "taboo" at our little party.
He was due later, however, and I rather expected to find him waiting
below, when I excused myself to descend to the Set. But I had not left
the roof when a note for Monny was brought up by an ebony person in
livery. I watched her as she read, one side of her face turned to
marble by the moon, the other stained rose by the red-shaded candles. I
thought that the rosy side grew more rosy as she finished the letter.
"There's a--message for you, Lord Ernest," she said. "Aunt Clara wants
me to tell you that 'Antoun' can't meet you at the hotel, because she
--changed her mind about not coming out, and sent for him. She felt
better, it seems, and got thinking what a pity it would be to miss the
full moon, so she suddenly remembered that 'Antoun' wasn't with us, and
decided to invite him. She writes in a hurry and didn't know where they
would dine, but says anyhow they'll meet us by the Sphinx between nine
and ten."
"Where '_they'd_' dine!" echoed Sir Marcus, pricked to interest. "Was
she going to let Fe--I mean 'Antoun,' take her out to dinner?"
"Apparently she was," replied Monny, rather dryly.
"Why not?" asked Brigit. "He's perfectly splendid. And Mrs. East--not
that she isn't a young woman, of course--is old enough to go about
without a chaperon."
"If we're to meet them between nine and ten at the Sphinx," said Monny
briskly, "don't you think, Lord Ernest, you'd better hurry and get your
people off, so we can set out ourselves?"
"I'm going," I assured her. "But I thought we planned to give them a
long start, in hopes that they might be ready to come back by the time
we arrived?"
"Oh, well," she said, "that will make it very late, won't it, and we
may miss Aunt Clara? Anyhow, lots of other creatures just as bad as
yours will be there, for we can't engage the desert like a private
sitting-room."
That settled it. I dashed downstairs and sorted out my charges. They
had got themselves up in all kinds of costumes, for this "act." One man
had on a folding opera-hat, which he had thought just the right thing
for Egypt, as it was so easy to pack! Girls in evening dress; men young
and old in helmets and straw hats, ancient maidens, and fat married
ladies, in dust cloaks or ball gowns, climbed or leaped or scrambled
onto camels, with shrieks of joy or moans of horror: or else they
tumbled onto donkeys which bounded away before the riders were well on
their backs. And men, women, and animals were shouting, giggling,
groaning, gabbling, snarling, and squeaking; an extraordinary
procession to pay honour to the Pyramids and the lonely Sphinx.
We of the roof-party considered ourselves, figuratively speaking, above
camels, far above donkeys, and scornful of motor-cars, in which it was
irreverent to charge up to the Great Pyramid as if to the door of a
café. We walked, and Monny still lent herself to me; but she no longer
bubbled over with delight at everything. A subdued mood was upon her,
and her eyes looked sad, even anxious, in the translucent light which
was not so much like earthly moonlight as the beginning of sunrise in
some far, magic dreamland. She had the pathetic air of a spoiled child
who begins suddenly, if only vaguely, to realize that it cannot have
everything it wants in the world. And she merely smiled when I told her
how, to insure the peace of the desert, I had offered a prize of a
large blue scarab as big as a paperweight, for that member of the Set
who did not even say "Oh!" to the Sphinx. "Antoun" had "vetted" the
alleged scarab and pronounced it a modern forgery; but nobody else knew
that, and as a prize it was popular.
The sky had that clear pale blue of dawn, when day first realizes that,
though born of night, it is no longer night. Casseopeia's Chair and
Orion were being tossed about the burning heavens like golden furniture
out of a house on fire; and one great star-jewel had fallen on the apex
of cruel Khufu's Pyramid. I should have liked to believe it was Sirius,
the "lucky" star sacred to Isis and Hathor; but Monny's schoolgirl
knowledge of astronomy bereft me of that innocent pleasure. No wonder
that the ancient Egyptians, with such jewels in their blue treasure-house,
were famous astrologers and astronomers before the days when
Rameses' daughter found Moses in the bulrushes of Roda Island!
The stars spoke to us as we walked, soft-footed, through the sand; and
the pure wind of the desert spoke other words of the same language, the
language of the Universe and of Nature. Here and there yellow lights in
a distant camp flashed out like fireflies; far away across the
billowing sands, rocks bleached like bone gave an effect of surf on an
unseen shore; now and then a silent, swift-moving Arab stealing out of
shadow, might have been the White Woman who haunts the Sphinx, hurrying
to a fatal tryst: and the Great Pyramid seemed to float between desert
sand and cloudless sky like the golden palace of Aladdin being
transported through air by the Geni of the Lamp. There never was such
gold as this gold of sand and pyramids, under the moon! We said that it
was like condensed sun rays, so vivid, so bright, that the moon could
not steal its colour. Cloudlike white figures were running up Khufu's
geometric mountain; Arabs expecting money when they should come leaping
down, whole or in pieces. And the khaki uniforms of British soldiers
mounting or descending for their own stolid amusement, made the Pyramid
itself seem to be writhing, so like was the colour of the cloth to that
of the stone. No use being angry because the monument was crawling with
Tommies! The Pyramids were as much theirs as ours. And probably
Napoleon's soldiers spent their moonlit evenings in the same way; a
thought which somehow made the thing seem less intolerable.
We climbed to the vast platform of the Ghizeh Pyramids, and then
plunged into the billows of the desert, in quest of the Sphinx. Sir
Marcus was entitled to call himself the pioneer, but we needed no one
to show us the way. It was but too clearly indicated by the bands of
pilgrims, going or returning. And among the latter were those whom
Monny callously referred to as "poor Lord Ernest's crowd." Miss
Hassett-Bean and the Biddell girls made us linger, with sand trickling
over the tops of our shoes, while they poured into our ears their
impressions of the Sphinx. Miss H. B. thought that She (with a capital
S) was a combination of Goddess, Prophetess, and Mystery. Enid thought
she was like an Irish washerwoman making a face; and Elaine said she
was the image of their bulldog at home. Monny (after a sandy
introduction) listened to these verbal vandalisms in horrified silence.
I could see that she was exerting herself, for my sake, to be civil to
my charges (who were more interested in her than they had been in the
Sphinx), and that, if she could have done so without hurting their
feelings, she would have struck them dead. But my fears that their
mental suggestions might obsess her were baseless. She did not speak
when the golden billows parted to give us a first vision of the great
Mystery of the Desert. I had led Monny by a roundabout way, and instead
of seeing the Sphinx from the back, we came upon her face to face, as
she gazed with her wonderful, all-knowing eyes, straight into that
world beyond knowledge which lies somewhere east of the moon. Veiled by
the night in silver and blue, with a proud lift of the head, she faced
past and future, which were one for her, and the present, nothing. The
moon gave back for a few hours all her lost loveliness, of which men
had robbed her, seeming miraculously to restore the broken features,
whole and beautiful as they had been in her youth before history began.
It was as if in the moon's rays were silver hands, mending the marred
majesty, giving life to the eyes and to the haunting, secret smile. I
thought of the story of King Harmachis: how he dreamed that the Sphinx
came to him, saying that the sand pressed upon her, and she could not
breathe. Nobody since his day had for long left her buried!
"What does it mean to you?" I broke the silence to ask.
"I don't know," Monny said. "All I know is that she's more wonderful
than I expected, and as beautiful as the loveliest marble Venus of
Italy, though a thousand times greater--if one perfect thing can be
greater than another. She's so great that I don't think she can be
meant to be a woman--or even a man. She is like a _soul_ carved in
stone."
"All in a moment you have guessed the riddle!" I exclaimed, liking and
understanding the girl better than I had liked or understood her yet.
"I believe that's the secret of the Sphinx. The king who had this
stupendous idea, and caused it to be carried out, said to some inspired
sculptor, 'Make for me from the rock of the desert, a portrait, not of
me as I am seen by men, in my mortal part or Khat, for that can be
placed elsewhere; but an image of my real self, my soul or Ka, looking
past the small things of this world into eternity, which lies beyond
this desert and all deserts.' Then the sculptor made the Sphinx, and
gave it such grandeur, such mystery of countenance that instinctively
the souls of people recognized the _soul look_. You have a soul, and it
told you the secret. Only those who have no souls find the Sphinx heavy
or hideous, or utterly beyond their comprehension."
"Have I a soul?" Monny asked, dreamily. "Men I've known have told me I
haven't. Yet sometimes I've thought I felt it fluttering. And if I have
a soul, I shall find it in Egypt. Oh, I shall! Something--yes, the
Sphinx herself!--tells me that."
I was tempted to ask "What about a heart?" And then--in a violent
hurry, before anybody came--to mention my own, into which the moon
seemed pouring a little of the honey it had brought for the Sphinx. I
did feel that some one owed a moonlight proposal under the Sphinx's
nose (or the place where its nose had been) to such a girl as Monny.
Her Egyptian experience could never be perfect and complete unless she
were proposed to on the night of the full moon, with the Sphinx's
blessing; and as no better man was here to do it, I could not be
thought conceited if I took the duty upon myself. Besides, Brigit would
so thoroughly approve!
"Look here, Biddy, I mean Monny," I began hastily, "there's something I
want to tell you, something very important you ought to know, because
matters can't go on much longer as they are--"
"Is it something about 'Antoun'?" she broke in, with a little gasp, as
I paused for breath and courage. "If it is, maybe I know it already!"
Extraordinary, the relief I felt! I ought to have suffered a shock of
disappointment, because I couldn't possibly finish a proposal after
such an interruption. But instead, my spirits went up with a bound.
Probably, however, that was because her hint was a whip to my
curiosity. "_What_ do you know about 'Antoun'?" I asked.
Perhaps I forgot to lower my voice; or perhaps voices carry far across
desert-spaces, as across water. Anyhow the clear tones of Cleopatra
answered like an echo. "Antoun--Antoun! I hear Lord Ernest calling."
Biddy--dear little matchmaking Biddy--had managed Sir Marcus, Bill
Bailey and Rachel, as a circus rider manages three spirited white
horses at one time. The desert was her ring, and she had reined her
steeds to her will, keeping them out of my way and Monny's at all
costs, no matter whether they saw the Sphinx in back view or noseless
profile. But Mrs. East's principal occupation in life was not to get me
engaged to the Gilded Rose. And either she lost her presence of mind,
or else she was not so much enjoying her moonlight tête-à-tête with
Fenton, that it was worth while to hide from us behind a sand dune.
The two emerged from a gulf of shadow, Anthony very splendid under the
moon, a true man of the desert. I thought I heard Monny draw in a
little sharp breath as she saw that noble incarnation of Egypt (so he
must have seemed, unless she knew the British reality of him) walking
beside Cleopatra.
Then up came the others, Sir Marcus impossible to restrain; and we all
talked together as people are expected to talk when they have come
thousands of miles to see these monuments of Egypt. Yes, yes!
Wonderful--incredible! Which do you find more impressive, the Sphinx or
the Pyramids? Isn't it a pity they let the temple between the paws
remain buried? And aren't the Pyramids just like Titanic, golden
beehives? And can't you simply _see_ the swarming builders, like bees
themselves, working for twenty years?
Thus we jabbered; and others, many others, appeared to dispute the
scene with us, to break the magic of the moonlight, and to puncture the
vast silence of the desert with their cooings and gurglings and
chatterings in German, English, Arabic, and every other language known
since the Tower of Babel. Arab guides lit up the Sphinx with flaring
magnesium, an impertinence that should have made hideous with hate the
insulted features, but instead turned them for a thrilling instant of
suspense into marble. Indeed, none of our petty vulgarities could jar
or even fret the majestic calm of the desert and the stone Mystery
among its billows. The Sphinx gazed above and past us all. She was like
some royal captive surrounded by a rabble mob, yet as undisturbed in
soul as though her puny, hooting tormentors had no existence. It was
not so much that she scorned us, as that she did not know we were
there.
When we sorted ourselves out, to escape Sir Marcus, Cleopatra deigned
to make use of me, having first observed (with burning interest) that
Monny and Rachel were with Bailey, and that "Antoun" was pointing
things out to Brigit O'Brien, as it is Man's métier (in pictures and
advertisements) to point things out to Woman.
"It's been a wonderful evening," Mrs. East said. "It has made up for
everything I suffered last night. We brought dinner out into the
desert, in that smallest tea-basket, you know, and ate it together, he
and I--Antony and I. There! I may as well confess that's what I call
him to myself, for I've guessed your secret--and his. But don't be
afraid. I won't tell a soul. It's too romantic and fascinating for
words--or to put into words. He let me have my fortune told by an Arab
sand diviner, who came while we were at dinner. I can't repeat to you
what the fortune-teller said. But I feel as if I were living in a book.
Oh, if only I were writing it myself and could make everything happen
just as I want it to happen! Do you know one thing I would put into the
story?"
"No, I can't think," I said, rather anxiously.
"I would have _you_ propose to Monny."
"Oh--by Jove, Mrs. East!"
"Why--don't you admire her?"
"But of course. She's irresistible. Only she's so horribly rich. And
besides, she doesn't think of me in that way."
"You can't be sure. Now, Lord Ernest, I'm going to whisper you a
secret. I believe--I really do--that Monny would be _glad_ if you'd
propose. If I were in your place, if I _liked_ her, I would do so as
soon as possible. It might save her from humiliation--from a great
trouble."
Being a duffer, I could only say once again, "By Jove!"