THE DESERT DIARY TO ITS BITTER END
_Tuesday_: The principal water-cask has leaked; consequently not enough
water to go round. Chêf said it was a question of baths, or soup.
Considering the cold, most of the people voted for soup. Some washed in
Apollinaris. Others douched with soda siphons. We can get more water
to-night. Can't think why the north wind doesn't stop and warm itself
while traversing the Mediterranean or the hot sands! It seems to be in
too fierce a hurry and consequently cuts across the desert, like a
frozen scythe, the moment its rival the sun has gone to sleep. I hear
that Miss Hassett-Bean cried with cold as she dressed, and put on two
of everything; but she is luckier than the younger women. Monny and
Mrs. East, though warned that nights would be chill, have come clothed
in silk and gossamer, and have brought low-necked nightgowns of
nainsook trimmed with lace. This was confided to me soon after sunrise
by a blue-nosed Biddy, hovering over the kitchen fire and
--incidentally--ingratiating herself with the cook. It wouldn't be Biddy
if she weren't ingratiating herself with some one!
Nobody yearned to get up early (I speak for others, as _I_ passed my
night in the attitude of a suspension bridge between two folding
chairs); but in camp where sleep is concerned, men may propose, camels
dispose.
Their nights they spend in a ring of camelhood, huddled together for
warmth; and if they do not have nightmare or bite each other in their
sleep, mere humans in neighbouring tents may hope for comparative
silence in the desert, if not near a village full of pi-dogs. At
sunrise, however, a change comes o'er their spirit. They are given
food, and made as happy and contented as it is their nature to be,
which apparently is not saying much. Judging by the strange,
inarticulate oaths they constantly mutter, they are equally accursed in
their sitting down and their getting up. It is only when they are
actually "on the move," floating and swaying through the air--legs,
tail, neck, jaws--that they have nothing disagreeable to say.
Immediately after dawn this morning, our camels began to imitate every
animal they could have met since the days of the Ark, when one had to
know everybody. They mewed like cats, hissed like snakes, bleated like
sheep, roared like toy lions, grunted like pigs, barked like dogs,
squawked like geese, and bellowed like baby bulls. Also they gargled
their throats like elderly invalids. It was useless trying to sleep;
and when I had accomplished such bathing as the chêf permitted, I went
out to see what was the matter. Nothing was the matter, except that the
creatures had the sunrise in their eyes, and could see the camel-boys
preparing their loads; but I was glad I had come out, because Biddy was
there and the scene was beautiful. Shivering, we chuckled over the
morning toilet of the camels, who turned their faces disconcertingly
upon us, sneering with long yellow teeth, and bubbling as if their
mouths were full of pink soapsuds, when they realized that we were
laughing at them.
Incidentally we learned why the Baby Sphinx accompanied our caravan
uninvited. His name is Salih; and he came because there's a very
important camel (the property of his father) who refuses to eat or stir
without him. It is a most original and elaborate camel. It has a neat
way of turning its ears with their backs to the wind, in order to make
them sand-proof. If any person other than Salih touches it, an
incredible quantity of green cud is instantly let loose over their
turbans; but at the approach of Salih it emits a purring noise, preens
its head for the nose-strap ornamented with a bunch of palmlike plumes,
and playfully pretends not to want the bersím which the little black
Sphinx thrusts down its throat in handfuls. This, it seems, is good
camel table-manners. And it is to the tail of this animal that Salih
clings on the march. If he is not there, the animal looks round, stops,
or turns to charge at any Arab who jestingly misuses its idol.
Yesterday the miniature Sphinx was in a white robe. To-day he is in
black. All the Arabs have changed their clothes, although they have
brought no visible luggage except vague pieces of sacking. The dragoman
is exquisitely arrayed, galabeah and kaftan gray-blue, with a pink
petticoat, and a white one under that. I suspect that he sleeps beneath
the dining-table--and the other Arabs among the kitchen pots--yet they
are smarter than any of us Europeans, all of whom have a frayed air.
This, I suppose, would not be so in desert-fiction. Nothing would be
said about hot-water bottles leaking, or beetles beetling (one doesn't
come to Egypt to see live scarabs), or draughts raging, or camels
gobbling, or flags flapping all night. (Memo: Abolish flags, even at
expense of patriotism.)
Despite every desert drawback, however, Biddy and I agreed that the
sunrise alone was worth the journey, and the pure air of dawn which,
though cold, seemed perfumed by mysterious rose-fields. Just at sun-up
the desert was lily pale--then, as the horizon flamed, a dazzling flood
of gold poured over the dunes. The sun was a fantastic brooch of beaten
copper, caught in a veil of ruby gauze, while here and there a belated
star was a dull, flawed emerald sewn into the veil's fringe. Shadows
swept westward across the desert like blue water, showing a glitter of
drowned jewels underneath; and though last night it had seemed that we
were alone in a vast wilderness, now there were signs that a village
lay not far off. A group of children in red and blue, staring avidly at
the camp, were like a bunch of ragged poppies in the sand. Their mangy
pi-dogs had ventured nearer, to smell sadly at the meat-safes hanging
outside our kitchen-tent. A gypsy-woman with splendid eyes and a blue
tattooed chin, breakfasted on an adjacent dune with her husband. Men
like living hencoops passed in the distance. Patriarchal persons blew
by, in that graceful way in which people do blow in Egypt, driving a
flock of sheep, with a black lamb "for luck." These men were dressed as
their ancestors had dressed in the time of Abraham, and Biddy and I
envied them. How nice, said she, to wear the same clothes for a hundred
years if you happened to live, and never be out of fashion. If a few of
your things dropped off by degrees, you were still all right, and
nobody would be rude enough to notice!
Our faded family revived after breakfast, and even those who vowed they
hadn't closed an eye all night enjoyed the scene of striking camp. The
big white tents fell to the ground like pricked soap-bubbles; whereupon
their remains were deftly rolled up and tied on to the backs of
bitterly protesting camels. Beds, mattresses, tables, chairs ceased to
be what they had been and became something else. Camels made faces and
noises. Arabs tore this way and that, doing as little work as possible.
The cook fluttered about in his blanket, brandishing a saucepan. Yusef
the dragoman made noble gestures of command, and our little desert city
ceased to exist except on camels' backs. It was shaved off the surface
of the earth, and went churning and swaying along toward the next
stand; the procession rising and falling among swelling dunes, under a
sky which seemed to trail like a heavy blue curtain, where at the
horizon it met the gold.
We travelled over pebbly plateaus, scattered with jewel-like stones.
Sand-pyramids rose out of the glistening plain. Here and there were
rocks like partly hewn sphinxes pushing out of the sand to breathe;
other rocks like monstrous toads; and still others dark and dreadful in
the distance as ogres' houses. Altogether the desert gave us a truly
Libyan effect, which made the Set feel that after all they were getting
what they had paid for, with an introduction to a beauty and heiress
thrown in. But apropos of this latter boon, it is dawning upon me that
Rachel Guest is receiving more attention than Monny. This strikes me as
inexplicable. There are more men than women in our party, all young
except Sir John Biddell, General Harlow, and Mills of Manchester, a
soft, fat sort of fellow whose first name you can never remember. It
occurred to me on starting, that the desire of so many unattached young
men to spend a week in the desert and the Fayoum, might not be
unconnected with Miss Gilder's intention to join the party. Not being
jealous, I expected to see a little fun, and laugh over it with Biddy,
who is a heavenly person with whom to share a joke. But if there is a
joke, I haven't seen the point yet, nor has she. There's no disputing
the fact that Miss Guest, the poor, brave school teacher on holiday, is
the belle of the desert.
Of course, if Monny had stopped in Cairo, Rachel's success with our men
wouldn't be astonishing. As Brigit and Monny warned me in their letters
to the _Candace_, she grows better looking every day; but though she is
distinctly of Monny's type, despite those slanting eyes, she will never
be a real beauty, or a Complete Fascinator, like our Gilded Girl.
Besides, Monny has millions, and Rachel hasn't a cent. Yet there it is!
Miss Guest is having the "time of her life" in spite of leaky water
bottles and bumping camels, while Miss Gilder might be an old married
woman, for all the attention she gets from any man on this trip except
me. What can be the explanation? Even those two exaggerately
German-looking men with Bedr stared at Rachel from their respectful
distance. It turns out that they camped not far from us last night.
Yusef heard this from one of our camel-boys. But they kept to themselves,
and didn't come within a mile of us, so there's nothing to complain of.
Every one except Sir John delighted with to-day's desert. He can't see
anything beautiful in yellow lumps that keep you sawing up and down,
though he has no doubt the desert is full of other fools doing what
we're doing; and we could all see each other doing it if it weren't for
those darn dunes.
_Later_: Adventure for sandcart on one of the biggest plateaus. Looked
all right from the top; but a shriek from Mrs. East put me to the dire
necessity of sliding off Farag and running to the rescue. The plateau
was broken off in front and became a precipice which, Cleopatra seemed
to think, would not have existed had "Antoun" arrived in tune to
arrange it.
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 appliqué, 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 ship-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
cherishing a hopeless love for him, when he has safely vanished out of
their lives.
Mrs. East made Anthony pick up pre-historic oyster shells 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
embarrassing 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 á la Newburgh for dinner, in mid-Libyan
desert, and drank the chêf'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 nobody 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-shell 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,
massed near by on the golden sand, which might in the distance be a
plantation of young palms, but is in reality a congested mass 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 dyke 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
asses, disputing the high, narrow "gisr" or dyke 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. Canals 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 pass us with difficulty. Camels
everywhere, indeed, on dyke 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 assumes hobby-horse attitudes, much to the alarm of
Cleopatra and Miss Hassett-Bean. Also, just to remind everybody that
sand is his element, he shies 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 pass
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 shore 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 cluster, 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 shore 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 Fâris, 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 quantities of rustling, pale green sugar cane, which
they carried on their shoulders.
There were wild adventures for the sandcart, and watery spaces across
which Cleopatra was carried (at her own urgent request) by Anthony;
Miss Hassett-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 sunshine like bright bayonets of Djinns. And then
Medinet, through which our caravan had to pass _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 Hassett-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 Arsinoë. 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 friendship 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
circumstances, 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
Arsinoë was charming, no doubt; and the Greek ruins and papyri of her
day are interesting, but it is the city sacred to the crocodile god
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 cockcrow, 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.
Down below us, seen as from a bird's-eye view, lay a vast, unroofed
honeycomb. It's size was incredible. The thing could not really be
there. It was a startling dream, that endless gold-brown city of
regular streets, and mud brick buildings, big and small, shops and
houses, theatres and libraries, lacking only their roofs, deserted save
by ghosts for thousands of years, yet looking as though it had been
destroyed by a cyclone yesterday. Down there in the devastated beehive
myriads of bees still worked frantically, human bees, which Cleopatra
said were reincarnations of those who had owned slaves and killed them
with forced labour, when Shetet was among the richest cities of the
"Two Lands." These bees of to-day worked to destroy, not to recreate,
for the crumbling brick is the best of fertilizers--and fertilizing
their land is the one great interest in life for the Fellaheen of the
Fayoum. Furiously they tore at the remaining walls; furiously they
packed away their treasure of dried mud in sacks; furiously they piled
it on backs of donkeys and rushed away to make room for others. Each
instant hundreds of wild figures in dusty black or blue scampered off,
beating loaded donkeys, only to be replaced by hundreds more doing the
same thing in the same manner. Yet always a few forms remained
stationary. They were police guardians of the ruins, men armed with
staves, whose business was to oversee each worker's sack, lest some
rare roll of papyri, some rich jewel which once adorned a pampered
crocodile of the lake, should be found and stolen. Glimpsed through the
red flame of blowing, ruby dust, the scene was a vision of Inferno; we
on our mount looking down on it were in company of Dante and Virgil.
The rest of the day we gave to a light-railway excursion to Illahun and
the brick Pyramid of Hawara. There was much laughing and shrieking
among the girls of the Set (I don't count Monny, who shrieks for
nothing less terrible than the largest spiders) as Arabs pushed our
trolley cars along the line; and we were frivolous even on the site of
the labyrinth which was, perhaps, copied from the Labyrinth of Crete.
The Set were frankly disappointed in the few remains of granite columns
and carvings; but vague memories of jewels seen at the Egyptian Museum
waked an interest in the brick pyramid tomb at Hawara where King
Amenemhat and his daughter Ptah-nefru lay for a few thousand years. All
of us were eager for the "last camp tea," when we got "home" from our
expedition, and it was then that the tragedy happened: the tragedy of
the black lamb.
How could I guess, when Yusef said the camel-boys wanted money to buy
meat as a feast for the last day, that they meant to buy it alive?
When we arrived in camp, an idyllic scene was being enacted. A woolly
black lamb with a particularly engaging facial expression was being
hospitably entertained by all our men with the exception of the chêf.
They formed an admiring ring round it, taking turns in feeding it with
bersim, and patting its delightfully innocent head. It was difficult to
say which was happier, the charming guest or its kind hosts.
"How _sweet_ of them!" said Miss Hassett-Bean. "I must write a few
verses about this, for our home paper!"
Everybody joined with her in thinking the Arabs sweet, and Enid Biddell
went round and took up a collection. The men arranged a football match
for our benefit, to show their gratitude, and played so well and were
so picturesque that Sir John and other ardent sportsmen pressed more
money upon them. It was altogether a red-letter day for the camel-boys,
quite apart from the fact that they would get rid of their noble
benefactors to-morrow; and by way of a climax they had what we supposed
to be a bonfire at dark.
"Aren't all those white figures wonderful, grouped round the blaze?"
asked Monny, who appeared on the whole satisfied with the way in which
the desert had taken her. "And look, the flames are reflected on the
clouds. I do believe it's going to _rain_, if such a thing can happen
here! I hope it won't spoil the poor darlings' celebration. Why, they
seem to have something big and black hanging over the fire. What _can_
it be? Oh, it looks awful!"
"It is not awful, mees," Yusef, standing near, good naturedly reassured
her. "It very naice. It is the lamb, they cook for their supper. The
genelman, milord, he give them money to buy it."
"Lamb?" shrieked Monny, in a wild voice which brought a crowd round us.
"_Lamb_! Not--oh, not--"
"Yes, mees, you all see it feeded when you come home, when you say it
so sweet. Camel-boys find sweeter now!"
"Oh!" the girl exclaimed. "Fiends! They invited that lamb here, and
brought it in their arms and played with it and did everything they
could to make it think it was having a pleasant afternoon, and then
--they _killed_ it!"
"Of course, yes, mees," said Yusef, puzzled. "Why else for milord tell
they can buy it? They kill and pound it up to make it good, and soon
they eat in honour of the genelmen and ladies who have been so kind
this naice trip."
"I should like to kill _them_!" gasped Monny, preparing to cry, and
flinging herself into Biddy's arms. "Oh--_somebody_ give me a hanky
--quick!"
We all felt mechanically in our pockets; but I, being nearest, was
first in the field. It was a shock to see Monny wave my handkerchief
away with a gesture of horror, and bury her face in a far inferior one
tendered by Anthony.
"No _wonder_!" exclaimed Miss Hassett-Bean, who is not, as a rule, a
Monny-ite. "You're _quite_ right, Miss Gilder. Lord Ernest Borrow, I
don't see _much_ difference between you and a murderer!"
For a minute, I did not know what she meant. Then it broke upon me that
the Arabs' monstrous breach of hospitality to the lamb was laid at my
door. I jabbered explanations, but no one listened; and just then the
rain, which nobody had believed in, seized the opportunity of coming
down in floods. The camels roared with rage and surprise; the camel-boys
swore Arab oaths; the fire sputtered, and what became of the half-cooked
lamb I shall never know. We rushed for the dining-tent, all
soaked in an instant, with the exception of Brigit and Monny, whom
"Antoun" protected with a long cloak.
Dinner was a gloomy feast, which might have been composed of funeral
baked meats, though the chêf himself came to the door and vowed by all
his saints that the lamb cutlets were not from _that_ lamb. So well did
he exonerate himself, so eloquently did he protest that he had nothing
to do with the camel-boys' orgy, that another special collection was
taken up for him.
"Poor, dear old gentleman!" sighed Miss Hassett-Bean. "I shall never be
able to forget him. When I'm out of this awful country of _cannibals_,
and safe in my own home, he will simply haunt me, passing his
respectable old age, black though he is, chasing across deserts on
camels, wrapped in a blanket and covered with chicken coops, at the
mercy of any queer Christian who can afford to pay for him. It's a
_tragedy_!"
Perhaps she wrote her poem about the cook instead of the camel-boys.
Luckily, however, at the last moment I remembered a superstition of the
Ancient Egyptians. They were in the habit of sacrificing a black lamb
to propitiate Set, the sender of storms. Our lamb _was_ black: and at
the hour of his untimely death a storm was coming up. The dreadful
deed, therefore, was turned into a Rite.