I have said, and my existence forgotten; but now I observed that the
eyes of the culprits were turned towards me,--the eyes, that is, of four
of them. Mrs. Jones looked at me from beneath her fan; the two girls
glanced at me furtively, and then their eyes fell to the lowest flounces
of their frocks. Miss Grogram turned her spectacles right upon me, and
I fancied that she nodded her head at me as a sort of answer to Miss
Macmanus. The five pupils opened their mouths and eyes wider; but she of
the broad back was nothing abashed. It would have been nothing to her
had there been a dozen gentlemen in the room. “We just found a pair of
black ----.” The whole truth was told in the plainest possible language.
“Oh, Aunt Sally!” “Aunt Sally, how can you?” “Hold your tongue, Aunt
Sally!”
“And then Miss Grogram just cut them up with her scissors,” continued
Aunt Sally, not a whit abashed, “and gave us each a bit, only she took
more than half for herself.” It was clear to me that there had been some
quarrel, some delicious quarrel, between Aunt Sally and Miss Grogram.
Through the whole adventure I had rather respected Aunt Sally. “She took
more than half for herself,” continued Aunt Sally. “She kept all
the----”
“Jemima,” said the elder Miss Macmanus, interrupting the speaker and
addressing her sister, “it is time, I think, for the young ladies to
retire. Will you be kind enough to see them to their rooms?” The five
pupils thereupon rose from their seats and courtesied. They then left
the room in file, the younger Miss Macmanus showing them the way.
“But we haven’t done any harm, have we?” asked Mrs. Jones, with some
tremulousness in her voice.
“Well, I don’t know,” said Miss Macmanus. “What I’m thinking of now is
this;--to whom, I wonder, did the garments properly belong? Who had been
the owner and wearer of them?”
“Why, General Chassé of course,” said Miss Grogram.
“They were the general’s,” repeated the two young ladies; blushing,
however, as they alluded to the subject.
“Well, we thought they were the general’s, certainly; and a very
excellent article they were,” said Mrs. Jones.
“Perhaps they were the butler’s?” said Aunt Sally. I certainly had not
given her credit for so much sarcasm.
“Butler’s!” exclaimed Miss Grogram, with a toss of her head.
“Oh, Aunt Sally, Aunt Sally! how can you?” shrieked the two young
ladies.
“Oh laws!” ejaculated Mrs. Jones.
“I don’t think that they could have belonged to the butler,” said Miss
Macmanus, with much authority, “seeing that domestics in this country
are never clad in garments of that description; so far my own
observation enables me to speak with certainty. But it is equally sure
that they were never the property of the general lately in command at
Antwerp. Generals, when they are in full dress, wear ornamental lace
upon their--their regimentals; and when--” So much she said, and
something more, which it may be unnecessary that I should repeat; but
such were her eloquence and logic that no doubt would have been left on
the mind of any impartial hearer. If an argumentative speaker ever
proved anything, Miss Macmanus proved that General Chassé had never been
the wearer of the article in question.
“But I know very well they were his!” said Miss Grogram, who was not an
impartial hearer. “Of course they were; whose else’s should they be?”
“I’m sure I hope they were his,” said one of the young ladies, almost
crying.
“I wish I’d never taken it,” said the other.
“Dear, dear, dear!” said Mrs. Jones.
“I’ll give you my needle-case, Miss Grogram,” said Aunt Sally.
I had sat hitherto silent during the whole scene, meditating how best I
might confound the red-nosed harpy. Now, I thought, was the time for me
to strike in.
“I really think, ladies, that there has been some mistake,” said I.
“There has been no mistake at all, sir!” said Miss Grogram.
“Perhaps not,” I answered, very mildly; “very likely not. But some
affair of a similar nature was very much talked about in Antwerp
yesterday.”
“Oh laws!” again ejaculated Mrs. Jones.
“The affair I allude to has been talked about a good deal, certainly,” I
continued. “But perhaps it may be altogether a different circumstance.”
“And what may be the circumstance to which you allude?” asked Miss
Macmanus, in the same authoritative tone.
“I dare say it has nothing to do with these ladies,” said I; “but an
article of dress, of the nature they have described, was cut up in the
Castle of Antwerp on the day before yesterday. It belonged to a
gentleman who was visiting the place; and I was given to understand that
he is determined to punish the people who have wronged him.”
“It can’t be the same,” said Miss Grogram; but I could see that she was
trembling.
“Oh laws! what will become of us?” said Mrs. Jones.
“You can all prove that I didn’t touch them, and that I warned her not,”
said Aunt Sally. In the mean time the two young ladies had almost
fainted behind their fans.
“But how had it come to pass,” asked Miss Macmanus, “that the gentleman
had--”
“I know nothing more about it, cousin,” said I; “only it does seem that
there is an odd coincidence.”
Immediately after this I took my leave. I saw that I had avenged my
friend, and spread dismay in the hearts of those who had injured him. I
had learned in the course of the evening at what hotel the five ladies
were staying; and in the course of the next morning I sauntered into the
hall, and finding one of the porters alone, asked if they were still
there. The man told me that they had started by the earliest diligence.
“And,” said he, “if you are a friend of theirs, perhaps you will take
charge of these things, which they have left behind them?” So saying, he
pointed to a table at the back of the hall, on which were lying the
black bag, the black needle-case, the black pincushion, and the black
pen-wiper. There was also a heap of fragments of cloth which I well knew
had been intended by Miss Grogram for the comfort of her feet and
ancles.
I declined the commission, however. “They were no special friends of
mine,” I said; and I left all the relics still lying on the little table
in the back hall.
“Upon the whole, I am satisfied!” said the Rev. Augustus Horne, when I
told him the finale of the story.
AN UNPROTECTED FEMALE AT THE PYRAMIDS.
In the happy days when we were young, no description conveyed to us so
complete an idea of mysterious reality as that of an Oriental city. We
knew it was actually there, but had such vague notions of its ways and
looks! Let any one remember his early impressions as to Bagdad or Grand
Cairo, and then say if this was not so. It was probably taken from the
“Arabian Nights,” and the picture produced was one of strange,
fantastic, luxurious houses; of women who were either very young and
very beautiful, or else very old and very cunning; but in either state
exercising much more influence in life than women in the East do now; of
good-natured, capricious, though sometimes tyrannical monarchs; and of
life full of quaint mysteries, quite unintelligible in every phasis, and
on that account the more picturesque.
And perhaps Grand Cairo has thus filled us with more wonder even than
Bagdad. We have been in a certain manner at home at Bagdad, but have
only visited Grand Cairo occasionally. I know no place which was to me,
in early years, so delightfully mysterious as Grand Cairo.
But the route to India and Australia has changed all this. Men from all
countries going to the East, now pass through Cairo, and its streets and
costumes are no longer strange to us. It has become also a resort for
invalids, or rather for those who fear that they may become invalids if
they remain in a cold climate during the winter months. And thus at
Cairo there is always to be found a considerable population of French,
Americans, and of English. Oriental life is brought home to us,
dreadfully diluted by western customs, and the delights of the “Arabian
Nights” are shorn of half their value. When we have seen a thing it is
never so magnificent to us as when it was half unknown.
It is not much that we deign to learn from these Orientals,--we who
glory in our civilisation. We do not copy their silence or their
abstemiousness, nor that invariable mindfulness of his own personal
dignity which always adheres to a Turk or to an Arab. We chatter as much
at Cairo as elsewhere, and eat as much and drink as much, and dress
ourselves generally in the same old, ugly costume. But we do usually
take upon ourselves to wear red caps, and we do ride on donkeys.
Nor are the visitors from the West to Cairo by any means confined to the
male sex. Ladies are to be seen in the streets, quite regardless of the
Mahommedan custom which presumes a veil to be necessary for an
appearance in public; and, to tell the truth, the Mahommedans in general
do not appear to be much shocked by their effrontery.
A quarter of the town, has in this way become inhabited by men wearing
coats and waistcoats, and by women who are without veils; but the
English tongue in Egypt finds its centre at Shepheard’s Hotel. It is
here that people congregate who are looking out for parties to visit
with them the Upper Nile, and who are generally all smiles and courtesy;
and here also are to be found they who have just returned from this
journey, and who are often in a frame of mind towards their companions
that is much less amiable. From hence, during the winter, a cortége
proceeds almost daily to the Pyramids, or to Memphis, or to the
petrified forest, or to the City of the Sun. And then, again, four or
five times a month the house is filled with young aspirants going out to
India, male and female, full of valour and bloom; or with others coming
home, no longer young, no longer aspiring, but laden with children and
grievances.
The party with whom we are at present concerned is not about to proceed
further than the Pyramids, and we shall be able to go with them and
return in one and the same day.
It consisted chiefly of an English family, Mr. and Mrs. Damer, their
daughter, and two young sons;--of these chiefly, because they were the
nucleus to which the others had attached themselves as adherents; they
had originated the journey, and in the whole management of it Mr. Damer
regarded himself as the master.
The adherents were, firstly, M. Delabordeau, a Frenchman, now resident
in Cairo, who had given out that he was in some way concerned in the
canal about to be made between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea. In
discussion on this subject he had become acquainted with Mr. Damer; and
although the latter gentleman, true to English interests, perpetually
declared that the canal would never be made, and thus irritated M.
Delabordeau not a little--nevertheless, some measure of friendship had
grown up between them.
There was also an American gentleman, Mr. Jefferson Ingram, who was
comprising all countries and all nations in one grand tour, as American
gentlemen so often do. He was young and good-looking, and had made
himself especially agreeable to Mr. Damer, who had declared, more than
once, that Mr. Ingram was by far the most rational American he had ever
met. Mr. Ingram would listen to Mr. Damer by the half-hour as to the
virtue of the British Constitution, and had even sat by almost with
patience when Mr. Damer had expressed a doubt as to the good working of
the United States’ scheme of policy,--which, in an American, was most
wonderful. But some of the sojourners at Shepheard’s had observed that
Mr. Ingram was in the habit of talking with Miss Damer almost as much as
with her father, and argued from that, that fond as the young man was of
politics, he did sometimes turn his mind to other things also.
And then there was Miss Dawkins. Now Miss Dawkins was an important
person, both as to herself and as to her line of life, and she must be
described. She was, in the first place, an unprotected female of about
thirty years of age. As this is becoming an established profession,
setting itself up as it were in opposition to the old world idea that
women, like green peas, cannot come to perfection without
supporting-sticks, it will be understood at once what were Miss
Dawkins’s sentiments. She considered--or at any rate so expressed
herself--that peas could grow very well without sticks, and could not
only grow thus unsupported, but could also make their way about the
world without any incumbrance of sticks whatsoever. She did not intend,
she said, to rival Ida Pfeiffer, seeing that she was attached in a
moderate way to bed and board, and was attached to society in a manner
almost more than moderate; but she had no idea of being prevented from
seeing anything she wished to see because she had neither father, nor
husband, nor brother available for the purpose of escort. She was a
human creature, with arms and legs, she said; and she intended to use
them. And this was all very well; but nevertheless she had a strong
inclination to use the arms and legs of other people when she could make
them serviceable.
In person Miss Dawkins was not without attraction. I should exaggerate
if I were to say that she was beautiful and elegant; but she was good
looking, and not usually ill mannered. She was tall, and gifted with
features rather sharp and with eyes very bright. Her hair was of the
darkest shade of brown, and was always worn in bandeaux, very neatly.
She appeared generally in black, though other circumstances did not lead
one to suppose that she was in mourning; and then, no other travelling
costume is so convenient! She always wore a dark broad-brimmed straw
hat, as to the ribbons on which she was rather particular. She was very
neat about her gloves and boots; and though it cannot be said that her
dress was got up without reference to expense, there can be no doubt
that it was not effected without considerable outlay,--and more
considerable thought.
Miss Dawkins--Sabrina Dawkins was her name, but she seldom had friends
about her intimate enough to use the word Sabrina--was certainly a
clever young woman. She could talk on most subjects, if not well, at
least well enough to amuse. If she had not read much, she never showed
any lamentable deficiency; she was good-humoured, as a rule, and could
on occasions be very soft and winning. People who had known her long
would sometimes say that she was selfish; but with new acquaintance she
was forbearing and self-denying.
With what income Miss Dawkins was blessed no one seemed to know. She
lived like a gentlewoman, as far as outward appearance went, and never
seemed to be in want; but some people would say that she knew very well
how many sides there were to a shilling, and some enemy had once
declared that she was an “old soldier.” Such was Miss Dawkins.
She also, as well as Mr. Ingram and M. Delabordeau, had laid herself out
to find the weak side of Mr. Damer. Mr. Damer, with all his family, was
going up the Nile, and it was known that he had room for two in his boat
over and above his own family. Miss Dawkins had told him that she had
not quite made up her mind to undergo so great a fatigue, but that,
nevertheless, she had a longing of the soul to see something of Nubia.
To this Mr. Damer had answered nothing but “Oh!” which Miss Dawkins had
not found to be encouraging.
But she had not on that account despaired. To a married man there are
always two sides, and in this instance there was Mrs. Damer as well as
Mr. Damer. When Mr. Damer said “Oh!” Miss Dawkins sighed, and said,
“Yes, indeed!” then smiled, and betook herself to Mrs. Damer.
Now Mrs. Damer was soft-hearted, and also somewhat old-fashioned. She
did not conceive any violent affection for Miss Dawkins, but she told
her daughter that “the single lady by herself was a very nice young
woman, and that it was a thousand pities she should have to go about so
much alone like.”
Miss Damer had turned up her pretty nose, thinking, perhaps, how small
was the chance that it ever should be her own lot to be an unprotected
female. But Miss Dawkins carried her point at any rate as regarded the
expedition to the Pyramids.
Miss Damer, I have said, had a pretty nose. I may also say that she had
pretty eyes, mouth, and chin, with other necessary appendages, all
pretty. As to the two Master Damers, who were respectively of the ages
of fifteen and sixteen, it may be sufficient to say that they were
conspicuous for red caps and for the constancy with which they raced
their donkeys.
And now the donkeys, and the donkey boys, and the dragomans were all
standing at the steps of Shepheard’s Hotel. To each donkey there was a
donkey-boy, and to each gentleman there was a dragoman, so that a goodly
cortége was assembled, and a goodly noise was made. It may here be
remarked, perhaps with some little pride, that not half the noise is
given in Egypt to persons speaking any other language that is bestowed
on those whose vocabulary is English.
This lasted for half an hour. Had the party been French the donkeys
would have arrived only fifteen minutes before the appointed time. And
then out came Damer père and Damer mère, Damer fille, and Damer fils.
Damer mère was leaning on her husband, as was her wont. She was not an
unprotected female, and had no desire to make any attempts in that line.
Damer fille was attended sedulously by Mr. Ingram, for whose
demolishment, however, Mr. Damer still brought up, in a loud voice, the
fag ends of certain political arguments which he would fain have poured
direct into the ears of his opponent, had not his wife been so
persistent in claiming her privileges. M. Delabordeau should have
followed with Miss Dawkins, but his French politeness, or else his fear
of the unprotected female, taught him to walk on the other side of the
mistress of the party.
Miss Dawkins left the house with an eager young Damer yelling on each
side of her; but nevertheless, though thus neglected by the gentlemen of
the party, she was all smiles and prettiness, and looked so sweetly on
Mr. Ingram when that gentleman stayed a moment to help her on to her
donkey, that his heart almost misgave him for leaving her as soon as she
was in her seat.
And then they were off. In going from the hotel to the Pyramids our
party had not to pass through any of the queer old narrow streets of the
true Cairo--Cairo the Oriental. They all lay behind them as they went
down by the back of the hotel, by the barracks of the Pasha and the
College of the Dervishes, to the village of old Cairo and the banks of
the Nile.
Here they were kept half an hour while their dragomans made a bargain
with the ferryman, a stately reis, or captain of a boat, who declared
with much dignity that he could not carry them over for a sum less than
six times the amount to which he was justly entitled; while the
dragomans, with great energy on behalf of their masters, offered him
only five times that sum. As far as the reis was concerned, the contest
might soon have been at an end, for the man was not without a
conscience; and would have been content with five times and a half; but
then the three dragomans quarrelled among themselves as to which should
have the paying of the money, and the affair became very tedious.
“What horrid, odious men!” said Miss Dawkins, appealing to Mr. Damer.
“Do you think they will let us go over at all?”
“Well, I suppose they will; people do get over generally, I believe.
Abdallah! Abdallah! why don’t you pay the man? That fellow is always
striving to save half a piastre for me.”
“I wish he wasn’t quite so particular,” said Mrs. Damer, who was already
becoming rather tired; “but I’m sure he’s a very honest man in trying to
protect us from being robbed.”
“That he is,” said Miss Dawkins. “What a delightful trait of national
character it is to see these men so faithful to their employers.” And
then at last they got over the ferry, Mr. Ingram having descended among
the combatants, and settled the matter in dispute by threats and shouts,
and an uplifted stick.
They crossed the broad Nile exactly at the spot where the nilometer, or
river guage, measures from day to day, and from year to year, the
increasing or decreasing treasures of the stream, and landed at a
village where thousands of eggs are made into chickens by the process of
artificial incubation.
Mrs. Damer thought that it was very hard upon the maternal hens--the
hens which should have been maternal--that they should be thus robbed of
the delights of motherhood.
“So unnatural, you know,” said Miss Dawkins; “so opposed to the
fostering principles of creation. Don’t you think so, Mr. Ingram?”
Mr. Ingram said he didn’t know. He was again seating Miss Damer on her
donkey, and it must be presumed that he performed this feat clumsily;
for Fanny Damer could jump on and off the animal with hardly a finger to
help her, when her brother or her father was her escort; but now, under
the hands of Mr. Ingram, this work of mounting was one which required
considerable time and care. All which Miss Dawkins observed with
precision.
“It’s all very well talking,” said Mr. Damer, bringing up his donkey
nearly alongside that of Mr. Ingram, and ignoring his daughter’s
presence, just as he would have done that of his dog; “but you must
admit that political power is more equally distributed in England than
it is in America.”
“Perhaps it is,” said Mr. Ingram; “equally distributed among, we will
say, three dozen families,” and he made a feint as though to hold in his
impetuous donkey, using the spur, however, at the same time on the side
that was unseen by Mr. Damer. As he did so, Fanny’s donkey became
equally impetuous, and the two cantered on in advance of the whole
party. It was quite in vain that Mr. Damer, at the top of his voice,
shouted out something about “three dozen corruptible demagogues.” Mr.
Ingram found it quite impossible to restrain his donkey so as to listen
to the sarcasm.
“I do believe papa would talk politics,” said Fanny, “if he were at the
top of Mont Blanc, or under the Falls of Niagara. I do hate politics,
Mr. Ingram.”
“I am sorry for that, very,” said Mr. Ingram, almost sadly.
“Sorry, why? You don’t want me to talk politics, do you?”
“In America we are all politicians, more or less; and, therefore, I
suppose you will hate us all.”
“Well, I rather think I should,” said Fanny; “you would be such bores.”
But there was something in her eye, as she spoke, which atoned for the
harshness of her words.
“A very nice young man is Mr. Ingram; don’t you think so?” said Miss
Dawkins to Mrs. Damer. Mrs. Damer was going along upon her donkey, not
altogether comfortably. She much wished to have her lord and legitimate
protector by her side, but he had left her to the care of a dragoman
whose English was not intelligible to her, and she was rather cross.
“Indeed, Miss Dawkins, I don’t know who are nice and who are not. This
nasty donkey stumbles at ever step. There! I know I shall be down
directly.”
“You need not be at all afraid of that; they are perfectly safe, I
believe, always,” said Miss Dawkins, rising in her stirrup, and handling
her reins quite triumphantly. “A very little practice will make you
quite at home.”
“I don’t know what you mean by a very little practice. I have been here
six weeks. Why did you put me on such a bad donkey as this?” and she
turned to Abdallah, the dragoman.
“Him berry good donkey, my lady; berry good,--best of all. Call him Jack
in Cairo. Him go to Pyramid and back, and mind noting.”
“What does he say, Miss Dawkins?”
“He says that that donkey is one called Jack. If so I’ve had him myself
many times, and Jack is a very good donkey.”
“I wish you had him now with all my heart,” said Mrs. Damer. Upon which
Miss Dawkins offered to change; but those perils of mounting and
dismounting were to Mrs. Damer a great deal too severe to admit of this.
“Seven miles of canal to be carried out into the sea, at a minimum depth
of twenty-three feet, and the stone to be fetched from Heaven knows
where! All the money in France wouldn’t do it.” This was addressed by
Mr. Damer to M. Delabordeau, whom he had caught after the abrupt flight
of Mr. Ingram.
“Den we will borrow a leetle from England,” said M. Delabordeau.
“Precious little, I can tell you. Such stock would not hold its price in
our markets for twenty-four hours. If it were made, the freights would
be too heavy to allow of merchandise passing through. The heavy goods
would all go round; and as for passengers and mails, you don’t expect to
get them, I suppose, while there is a railroad ready made to their
hand?”