PLAYING HEAVY FATHER TO RACHEL
Never had the _Enchantress Isis_ looked so enchanting to my eyes as she
looked that night. I felt, as the Set trooped on board, like an anxious
hen-mother who, contrary to her fears, has safely returned a brood of
ducklings to the home chicken-coop after a swim out to sea. I valued
each duckling, even the least downy, far more than I had dreamed it
would be possible. But there was one duckling valued so much more than
all the rest (how much more I had realized only when, cackling on the
bank, I saw it on the wave)--that knowing it was safe made me
hysterical with joy. I could have kissed its napkin when it slid off
its lap and I picked it up--the napkin, not the duck--at dinner. The
drawback was that I had not saved it, as Anthony had saved Monny. It
had no reason to be grateful to me, or care more than it had always
cared, for a friend. And still another drawback presented itself when
the confusion of dressing in haste and dining, as the _Enchantress
Isis_ steamed out of Luxor, gave me time to think. The duckling was not
my duckling: and considering that it had calmly laid plans for me to
capture an heiress, considering also that it had not yet abandoned
these plans, I saw little reason to hope that, now I had come to a few
--just a few--of my senses--it would ever take the idea seriously, of
becoming mine.
To abandon once and forever the duckling simile, the first thing I did
on board the boat, after recovering from the excitement of seeing Mabel
off by train with the Bronsons, was to wonder how I could make up for
all this hideous waste of time when I might have been making love to
Biddy. But there was no chance to say anything personal to her that
night. I had to hear--and wanted to hear--the story of all that had
happened from the moment she and Monny entered Rechid Bey's gate, to
the moment they came out. Then there was Antoun's story to follow; and
after that we had to compare notes: how everybody had felt, what
everybody had thought, what everybody had done. This subject was
inexhaustible, and kept cropping up in the midst of others; but that of
Mabella Hânem, her escape from bondage and from "conversion" to Islam,
and what revenge Rechid was likely to take, was almost as engrossing.
When at last, late that evening, I managed to get Biddy alone for a
moment, she could no more be induced to talk of herself than if she had
been a ghost without visible existence, a mere voice, to speak of
others, Monny by preference. What a heroine Monny had been from first
to last! And what did I think _now_ about the foolishness of that
theory--the theory that Bedr was a spy, and had led his employers to
believe that "Mrs. Jones" was travelling with her stepdaughter
concealed under an impeccably important _nom de guerre_?
What I thought was, that we must get hold of Miss Rachel Guest, and
question her as to her whole acquaintance with the Armenian learning
how, by all that was incredible, the double mystery of mixed names had
originated. "Monny knows only that Rachel was supposed to be the
heiress, testing her personal attractions by pretending to be the poor
school teacher," said Brigit. "The child's been wildly enjoying the
situation, for she was tired of young men. Rachel wasn't! And Rachel's
been profiting by it--far more wickedly. As for Esmé, I'm sure no
thought of her name coming into this business, ever entered Monny's
head. We must try to find out what Bedr said to Rachel at the
beginning, as you advise, Duffer--and all about it. After what I told
you that I heard from Esmé about an exciting love romance, any mistake
of _this_ sort might be particularly dangerous. The Organization might
think it had more right than ever to be bitter against us. And now, I
don't mind your confiding in your friend Captain Fenton. I think I'd
like him to know my story."
What Biddy had told me about Esmé was, that the girl had confessed, in
a letter, having been made love to (during a summer holiday in the
mountains with friends) by the son of a man her father had deeply
injured. The accidental meeting had been a real romance: the girl and
the young man thought that no one, save themselves, shared their
secret. But who could tell, when Fate itself stood between them with a
drawn sword? The love of Romeo for Juliet was a safe and simple affair
compared with the merest flirtation between the daughter of Richard
O'Brien and the son of John Halloran, whom O'Brien's testimony had sent
to prison for life.
Sometimes I thought, as the days went on, that Biddy guessed--not my
change of heart, but my new understanding of it: and that she wanted
quietly and gently to show me, according to Bill Bailey's pet
expression, there was "nothing doing." Her expressed wish that Fenton
should hear her story, looked to my suddenly suspicious mind as if his
strong personality and his extremely picturesque position had made an
appeal to the romance in her, as it had in the case of Mrs. East and
perhaps Monny Gilder. Always interested in "Mrs. Jones," from first
sight, when he had laughingly said that the "little sprite of a woman"
would be almost too alluring if surrounded by an atmosphere of mystery
and intrigue, Anthony was now frankly preoccupied with her affairs. He
was not even annoyed that, unaided by me, her quick mind had grasped
the secret of his identity. "It was like her to spring on to it by
instinct," he said, smiling that thoughtful smile of his, which was
more than ever effective in his Arab get up. "And like her not to give
anybody else a hint, except you, of course--though she must have been
tempted sometimes. I suppose"--and he looked up quickly--"she _hasn't_
given any one else a hint?"
"I'd swear she hasn't."
"Miss Gilder--you're sure she hasn't the slightest suspicion?"
"As sure as a man can be of anything about a woman."
"You aren't trying to evade the question, Duffer?"
"On my word, I'm not. I feel morally certain Miss Gilder labours under
the impression that you're as brown as you're painted. That somehow or
other you can't be Moslem because she's seen you without a turban, and
you've got the hair of a Christian. Maybe she thinks you're a Copt. I
heard her learnedly arguing the other day that the Copts are the only
_real_ Egyptians. She has the air of studying you, sometimes: but with
all her study, she sees you only as an Egyptian of high birth and
attainments, with a few drops of European blood in your veins, perhaps
just enough to make things aggravating, and a vague right to a princely
position if you chose to overlook something or other, and claim it.
There you have her conception of you, in a nutshell."
There would still have been room in that nutshell for Cleopatra's ideas
concerning her niece's feelings. But if she were right, it was
Anthony's business to discover those feelings for himself, provided he
cared to do so. And of this I was not sure. There was the doubt that it
might be Biddy, even though he appeared to attach some unexplained
importance to Miss Gilder's continued ignorance about himself.
The day after leaving Luxor, there was no time for the heart to heart
talk I planned with Rachel Guest. Each hour, each minute almost, was
taken up with my duties as Conductor, which I was obliged to regard
seriously, whether I liked them or not. If I did not, the Set growled,
snapped or clamoured; which gave me even more trouble than doing my
duty.
For some reason best known to herself (but suspected by me) Mrs. East
kept to her suite, nursing a grievance and the Siberian lap-dog from
Asiut. This saved me a certain amount of brain strain, for among other
places of interest we had to pass near was ancient Hermonthis, where in
her Cleopatra incarnation she had built a temple with a portrait of
herself adoring the patron Bull of the city. If she had known how easy
it would be to visit the ruins, she would have been capable of desiring
the boat to stop, or telegraphing complaints to Sir Marcus if it
hadn't.
The two excitements of the day were passing through a huge lock (with
sides like those of a canyon, and scarlet doors such as might adorn the
house of an ogre) in which we nearly stuck, and were saved by Antoun
seizing the pole from the inferior hands of a Nubian boatman; also a
visit to Esneh, a very Coptic town, starred with convents built by the
ever-present Saint Helena, sacred once to the Latos fish, now sacred to
gorgeous baskets of every size and colour, also somewhat over-beaded,
and over-scarabed. A ruined quay jutted into the wine-brown water,
where Roman inscriptions could have been spied out, if any one had had
eyes to spare from the basket sellers, the sellers of grape-fruit, and
all the other shouting merchants who flocked to head us off on our way
to the temple, despite a flurry of rain that freckled the deep sand of
the landing hill. But nobody did have eyes for anything Roman, now that
Cleopatra sulked in her throne-room, and our only archeologist was as
absent-minded as if he had been his own astral body. He had seen the
wisdom of "sticking to the trip," and not turning back by train with
the Bronsons and Somebody Else, as he may have yearned to do (if Monny
were right): but History had suddenly become as dry husks to Sheridan.
His soul was no longer with us, journeying up the Nile; and I suspected
his body of packing to join it, as soon as things had been arranged to
un-Hânem Mabel, and send her, freed from a marriage which was not
marriage, freed from this fear or forcible conversion, home to the
United States.
It was just on the cards, Anthony and I thought, that there might be
another "demonstration" at Esneh, that unruly town where Mohammed Ali
banished the superfluous dancing girls of Cairo in the eighteen
forties. If Rechid Bey had not discovered the truth about that hurried
departure from Luxor for Asiut (as a matter of fact, Mabel and her
guardians were almost thrown on board as the train began to move) he
might have sent emissaries, or come himself to Esneh, where he must
have known the _Enchantress Isis_ would land. As for Bedr and his
employers, Anthony (who now knew Biddy's suspicions) was inclined to
think that, even if she were right, we had seen the last of them. After
such a setback as that in the Temple of Mût, he thought they would not
only be discouraged but frightened. They had run away from us, in the
temple; and despite the proverb concerning those who fight and run, to
fight another day, it was probable that men of their calibre would see
the wisdom of abandoning the chase. They had shown themselves cowards,
Anthony thought, whatever their object had been in attacking Miss
O'Brien and Miss Gilder: and though we must be on the watch during the
rest of the trip, his idea was that the men had retreated in fear of
arrest.
In any case, we had no trouble at Esneh, and saw no sinister faces
peering out of low doorways in the bazaars, or over the heads of the
pretty (sometimes fair and blue-eyed) dancing girls' descendants.
Buried in the heart of the village we came upon the temple. Only the
portico was visible under piled houses and a triumphant mosque; but
once we were down in the entombed temple itself, it gave a sense of
secrecy, and mystic rites, to look up from under the dark roof of heavy
stone with its painted zodiac, out from hidden halls of carving and
colour, to the clustered houses of dried brick built before the temple
was uncovered. There was a sense of tragedy and failure, too, toiling
up the steep slope to the town level, and passing, on the half-buried
walls, gigantic carved figures making thwarted gestures, in
commemoration of kingly triumphs forgotten hundreds upon hundreds of
years ago.
At night there was _fantasia_ on board, with our boatmen dancing each
other down, like Highlanders, and the next day brought us to Edfu,
which all the women were wild to see because Robert Hichens had called
its green-blue the "true colour of love": an adorable temple sacred to
Horus, as there he conquered and killed Set.
It was only after we had passed Sir Ernest Cassell's red house, with
the smoky irrigation works where fourteen hundred Arabs have chased the
desert into the background, and after we had visited the splendid twin
temples of Light and Darkness at Kom Ombo, towering majestically above
the Nile bank, that I found time to catechize and lecture Miss Guest. I
contrived to separate her from her sculptor, and lure her to a part of
the deck unfrequented because it was windy. Rachel was looking happy,
young and prosperous, in one of Monny's most becoming (and expensive)
dresses.
At first, I think she felt inclined to be flattered by my desire for
her society, for I had never yet wished her joy, or formally
congratulated Bailey. One look into my eyes, with those clever,
slanting green orbs of hers, however, and instinct must have told her
that my intention was different. She glanced round for an excuse to
escape, but found none, for I hedged her in from all her friends. Then
she quickly decided to shunt me off on an emergency track laid by
herself.
"What a wonderful day it's been!" she remarked. And Kom Ombo is one of
the best temples. The only thing I didn't like was those mummied
crocodiles. Their smiles look so hypocritical, and to think they've
been smiling them for thousands of years--"
"It must be unpleasant to smile the smile of a hypocrite, even for a
few weeks," I seized the chance to work up to business.
"Yes, indeed," agreed Miss Guest a slight colour staining her cheeks.
"And didn't you notice several new sorts of wall-inscriptions?"
"Yes," I admitted. "But if you don't mind, I'd like to skip sixteen or
seventeen centuries and come down to you. I've been wanting a chat--"
"Why, I'm delighted!" she exclaimed, frightened, but all the more
ingratiating. "Oh, isn't the Nile beautiful as we come toward Nubia?
And aren't the sakkiyehs more interesting than the shadoofs, which they
use mostly when the river is low? Willis said quite a lovely thing,
about the sakkiyehs: that their chains of great water cups, going up
and down, look like enormous strings of red and green prayer-beads,
being 'told' by unseen hands. He ought to be a poet, he's so romantic."
"No doubt everything about you, Miss Guest, must make an appeal to his
romantic side," I cut in, while she was forced to pause for breath.
"I hope I do appeal to him," she said, meekly, "I never thought to be
so happy." This was a direct appeal to _me_; and it hit the mark. I
didn't care a rap about Willis Bailey, or his sketches or the wooden
statues with crystal eyes which he was going to make the fashion. If
Miss Guest chose to hook her shining fish with a false fly it wasn't my
business. It was hers and his, and perhaps Monny's, for Monny had
backed Rachel up in creating a wrong impression, as if they two had
been playing together, like children, to trick the grown-ups. But I had
to find out what had started the ball rolling, because it looked as if
that ball had come out of the pocket of Bedr.
"I'm glad you're happy," I said, "and my hope is that you'll remain so.
I wish you so well, that perhaps you'll give me the right to ask a few
questions. You see, I'm one of your oldest friends in Egypt, after Miss
Gilder and her aunt--and Mrs. Jones. You met Miss Gilder and Mrs. East
travelling in France, they've told me--"
"Yes, in a dining-car. We were put at the same table, and got talking.
I just loved Monny at first sight, and she's been heavenly to me. What
fun we've had! I never had _any_ fun before. I hardly knew the meaning
of the word."
"I suppose it must have amused you and Miss Gilder," I planted my arrow
at last, though not remorselessly, "this quaint idea that's got round,
about your having changed places."
Rachel's face crimsoned. "Oh, Lord Ernest!" she sighed in an explosive
whisper, with a glance round to see if any one were near. But we were
alone with the beginnings of a sunset, that flushed the dun hills as
unripe peaches are flushed on a garden wall. "I've promised Monny not
to say a word and spoil her fun, as long as the trip lasts. She's
finding out, you see, which people are really attracted to her, for
herself. She says it's a wonderful experience--and it's given her such
a rest from men: the silly ones, you know. It isn't _my_ fault. I'd
tell in a _minute_ if she'd let me."
"Was it she who began the game?" I dared to inquire. "Or was it Bedr?
Now, this is a question I really _have_ a right to ask. I'll tell you
why afterward, if you don't know already from Monny."
"No, I don't think Monny's said anything to make me understand that,"
Rachel answered, stammering a little, and trying pathetically not to
look anxious. "But I'll answer you, of course. There's nothing to hide
from _you_--now--that I can see. It _was_ Bedr who began. He was the
most intelligent, extraordinary person! I don't believe any one fully
realized it, except me. But from that first night at Alexandria, he
seemed to feel that I saw something of value behind his poor face. He
was _very_ sensitive. And he attached himself to me in the most
beautiful, faithful way. Really and truly, if there hadn't come that
trouble about the hasheesh place (which _wasn't_ his fault, because
Monny wanted to go, and when she wants things she wants them very much)
I believe I could have made a Christian of him. He would have been a
wonderful convert! We talked more about religion than anything else,
but he used to like to chat about America, because he'd been there, and
hoped to go again. _That_ was the way the joke about Monny and me
started. He _did_ ask me not to speak of it, but it can't matter now.
He told me when he was in New York, with a family who took him from
Egypt, one day the great Mr. Gilder's daughter was pointed out to him
in the street. She was with her father, in an automobile, but there was
a block in the traffic: a policeman was keeping it back, so he saw her
distinctly for several minutes, and he was interested, because his
employers told him how important the Gilders were, and how Mr. Gilder
used to have his daughter guarded every minute for fear she might be
kidnapped for ransom, as several rich people's children had been. Monny
couldn't have been more than fourteen then, as it's seven years ago;
and Bedr said that the little girl he saw in the automobile was exactly
like _me_--hardly at all like what Monny is now. He wanted me to tell
him, for a reason which he vowed and swore was _very_ important,
whether I wasn't really Miss Gilder, and _she_ Miss Guest."
"Well?"
"Well, I thought the idea so funny, so thoroughly _quaint_, you know,
and like something in a book, that just for fun I answered that I
couldn't tell him anything until I'd consulted my friend. Monny nearly
went wild about it. She said she'd come to Egypt to have adventures and
she was going to _have_ them, no matter whether 'school kept or not'.
That's just a little slang expression, people use at home, sometimes. I
daresay you've heard her say much the same thing. She said this idea of
Bedr's was too good to miss, and we'd get bushels of fun out of it. So
we have--in different ways. And she's been lovely, about giving me
dresses and things. When she and I talked the matter over, she
understood why Bedr should have thought she was more like me, at the
age of fourteen, than like her present self. She'd had typhoid fever
just before the time she must have been pointed out to him, and it had
left her thin as a rail, and as pale as a ghost. Her hair was short,
too, and some of the colour had been burnt out of it by the fever. Now,
you know, she has a brilliant complexion, and her face is much rounder
than mine, as well as more pink and white. Compared to her, I am
_sallow_, I'm afraid, and lanky: and when she and I stand together, her
hair looks bright gold, and mine light brown in comparison.
"Monny wouldn't let me tell Bedr right out that he was mistaken about
us. She said we wouldn't fib, but we'd act self-conscious, as if we had
a secret, and he'd stumbled on it. He must have started the story--oh,
if you could call it a story! I don't believe anything has ever been
put into words. It was in the air. People got the idea. But Bedr must
have put it into their heads. Neither Monny nor I did more than smile
and look away, and change the subject if any one hinted. We said, 'You
mustn't breathe such things to Mrs. East or Mrs. Jones, or they'll be
angry.' Apparently nobody ever did dare to breathe it to them. And I
think Monny mentioned you, too, Lord Ernest. She didn't want you to
know. She was afraid you'd say that the whole thing was nonsense. I
suppose it was Enid Biddell who came to you? She was afraid Mr. Snell
--but it isn't worth talking about, now. Only she is a cat."
Miss Biddell had said exactly the same of Miss Guest. Naturally,
however, I did not mention the coincidence.
"Now I've told you everything you wanted to know, haven't I?" Rachel
went on. "Or were there any more questions you'd like to ask--I mean,
about Bedr?"
"Only one more, I think. Did it ever strike you that he was curious
about you--or rather, about Miss Gilder who, you both let him suppose,
was really Miss Guest? Anything about your name?"
"Why, yes, he was curious. They say Arabs always are, if you let them
be. Not that he is exactly an Arab. But I suppose Armenians are the
same. He seemed to want to know things about me--what I'd done, where
I'd lived, and--oh, lots of little questions he would ask. Monny and I
made up our minds from the first, as I told you, that there mustn't be
any fibs. I simply put him off. He never got anything out of me at
all."
"I see," I said; and let myself drift away from her into
thoughtfulness.
"Is that all, then?"
"Yes, that is all, thank you."
Her tone sounded as if she were relieved of a mental weight, and would
like to go. I expected her to make some excuse: it would soon be time
to dress for dinner: or she had a letter to write. But no, she
lingered. She was trying to bring herself to say something. I waited,
in silence, my eyes on the shining river, looking back at the golden
trail of the sun that was like a rich mantle draping a gondola on a
fête day in Venice.
"I suppose you think," she forced the words out at last, "that Willis
Bailey wouldn't have--fallen in love--or proposed--if he hadn't thought
like the rest, that I--I--" "I don't see why he shouldn't, Miss
Guest."
"He--really does seem to care for me--as I _am_, you know. And I've
never told him a single untruth. I've _nothing_ to blame myself for."
"I'm sure of that."
"Yet you don't approve of me--one bit. You think I'm a--kind of
adventuress. So does Mrs. Jones. _Me_! Why, what would the people at
home in Salem say if any one suggested such a thing? You don't know the
life I've led, Lord Ernest."
"I can imagine. You don't want to go back to it again, do you?"
"It does seem as if I _couldn't_, now. It's seemed so, even before
Willis--oh, I'm sure you think I _never_ meant to go back, once I'd
broken free from the dull grind."
"No harm in that!"
"I'm glad you say so. I took all my legacy to see the world a little
--well, nearly all, not quite, perhaps, to tell the truth. And being
brave has brought me this reward: the love of a man who can give me
everything worth having. I shan't be _outside_ life any more. And
Willis won't have any reason to blame me when he--when he--"
"No reason, of course," I fitted into her long pause. "But men as well
as women are unreasonable, sometimes, you know. And if he should be so
--er--wrong-headed as to think you'd deceived him about yourself--"
"Then he ought to blame Monny, not me!"
"He ought, perhaps. But the question is, what he will do. And you can't
like having a sword hanging over your head? Supposing he should be
unjust, and refuse to carry out--"
"Oh, Lord Ernest, you don't think he will, after he's sworn that I'm
the only woman in the world he could ever have loved? He thinks me
_much_ better looking than Monny. He says she hasn't got a _soul_, yet.
He doubts if she ever will have one."
I didn't doubt it. I thought I had heard it stirring in the throes of
birth, a soul such as would blind the eyes of a Rachel Guest, with its
white shining. Monny had said that she would "find her soul in Egypt."
But the mention of this was not indicated just then.
"I haven't the courage to tell him, even if there were really anything
definite enough to tell," Rachel went on. "It would be insulting a man
like Willis to suggest that he'd been influenced--you know what I mean.
But--now we're talking of it--oh, do advise me! We're planning to be
married in Egypt, at the end of this trip, and then settle down in
Cairo, for Mr. Bailey's studies at the museum. He came up the Nile only
for me, you see! And he says I shall be his first model for the new
style--my eyes are _just_ right, as if they'd been made on purpose to
help him. I lie awake nights wondering what if, before the wedding,
when he finds out for certain that my name is really only Rachel Guest,
and that I'm I--oh, I daren't _think_ of it!"
"Then, if you want me to advise, why don't you in some tactful, perhaps
joking way, speak of the story Bedr started, and--"
"I can't--I simply can't."
"Yet you feel it would be better?"
"Yes--sometimes I feel it. _You_ help me, Lord Ernest. _You_ tell him.
And then, if you see any signs--you'll make him understand how dreadful
it would be to throw me over because I'm poor and have been a nobody
till now?"
"I'll do my best," I heard myself weakly promising.
No wonder I have earned the nickname of Duffer!