of that, my friend.”
“Pshaw! You are worse than Ingram. Of all the plans I ever heard of it
is the most monstrous, the most impracticable, the most----” But here he
was interrupted by the entreaties of his wife, who had, in absolute deed
and fact, slipped from her donkey, and was now calling lustily for her
husband’s aid. Whereupon Miss Dawkins allied herself to the Frenchman,
and listened with an air of strong conviction to those arguments which
were so weak in the ears of Mr. Damer. M. Delabordeau was about to ride
across the Great Desert to Jerusalem, and it might perhaps be quite as
well to do that with him, as to go up the Nile as far as the second
cataract with the Damers.
“And so, M. Delabordeau, you intend really to start for Mount Sinai?”
“Yes, mees; ve intend to make one start on Monday week.”
“And so on to Jerusalem. You are quite right. It would be a thousand
pities to be in these countries, and to return without going over such
ground as that. I shall certainly go to Jerusalem myself by that route.”
“Vot, mees! you? Vould you not find it too much fatigante?”
“I care nothing for fatigue, if I like the party I am with,--nothing at
all, literally. You will hardly understand me, perhaps, M. Delabordeau;
but I do not see any reason why I, as a young woman, should not make any
journey that is practicable for a young man.”
“Ah! dat is great resolution for you, mees.”
“I mean as far as fatigue is concerned. You are a Frenchman, and belong
to the nation that is at the head of all human civilisation----”
M. Delabordeau took off his hat and bowed low, to the peak of his donkey
saddle. He dearly loved to hear his country praised, as Miss Dawkins was
aware.
“And I am sure you must agree with me,” continued Miss Dawkins, “that
the time is gone by for women to consider themselves helpless animals,
or to be so considered by others.”
“Mees Dawkins vould never be considered, not in any times at all, to be
one helpless animal,” said M. Delabordeau civilly.
“I do not, at any rate, intend to be so regarded,” said she. “It suits
me to travel alone; not that I am averse to society; quite the contrary;
if I meet pleasant people I am always ready to join them. But it suits
me to travel without any permanent party, and I do not see why false
shame should prevent my seeing the world as thoroughly as though I
belonged to the other sex. Why should it, M. Delabordeau?”
M. Delabordeau declared that he did not see any reason why it should.
“I am passionately anxious to stand upon Mount Sinai,” continued Miss
Dawkins; “to press with my feet the earliest spot in sacred history, of
the identity of which we are certain; to feel within me the
awe-inspiring thrill of that thrice sacred hour!”
The Frenchman looked as though he did not quite understand her, but he
said that it would be magnifique.
“You have already made up your party I suppose, M. Delabordeau?”
M. Delabordeau gave the names of two Frenchmen and one Englishman who
were going with him.
“Upon my word it is a great temptation to join you,” said Miss Dawkins,
“only for that horrid Englishman.”
“Vat, Mr. Stanley?”
“Oh, I don’t mean any disrespect to Mr. Stanley. The horridness I speak
of does not attach to him personally, but to his stiff, respectable,
ungainly, well-behaved, irrational, and uncivilised country. You see I
am not very patriotic.”
“Not quite so moch as my friend, Mr. Damer.”
“Ha! ha! ha! an excellent creature, isn’t he? And so they all are, dear
creatures. But then they are so backward. They are most anxious that I
should join them up the Nile, but----,” and then Miss Dawkins shrugged
her shoulders gracefully, and, as she flattered herself, like a
Frenchwoman. After that they rode on in silence for a few moments.
“Yes, I must see Mount Sinai,” said Miss Dawkins, and then sighed
deeply. M. Delabordeau, notwithstanding that his country does stand at
the head of all human civilisation, was not courteous enough to declare
that if Miss Dawkins would join his party across the desert, nothing
would be wanting to make his beatitude in this world perfect.
Their road from the village of the chicken-hatching ovens lay up along
the left bank of the Nile, through an immense grove of lofty palm-trees,
looking out from among which our visitors could ever and anon see the
heads of the two great Pyramids;--that is, such of them could see it as
felt any solicitude in the matter.
It is astonishing how such things lose their great charm as men find
themselves in their close neighbourhood. To one living in New York or
London, how ecstatic is the interest inspired by these huge structures.
One feels that no price would be too high to pay for seeing them as long
as time and distance, and the world’s inexorable task-work, forbid such
a visit. How intense would be the delight of climbing over the wondrous
handiwork of those wondrous architects so long since dead; how thrilling
the awe with which one would penetrate down into their interior
caves--those caves in which lay buried the bones of ancient kings, whose
very names seem to have come to us almost from another world!
But all these feelings become strangely dim, their acute edges
wonderfully worn, as the subjects which inspired them are brought near
to us. “Ah! so those are the Pyramids, are they?” says the traveller,
when the first glimpse of them is shown to him from the window of a
railway carriage. “Dear me; they don’t look so very high, do they? For
Heaven’s sake put the blind down, or we shall be destroyed by the dust.”
And then the ecstasy and keen delight of the Pyramids has vanished for
ever.
Our friends, therefore, who for weeks past had seen from a distance,
though they had not yet visited them, did not seem to have any strong
feeling on the subject as they trotted through the grove of palm-trees.
Mr. Damer had not yet escaped from his wife, who was still fretful from
the result of her little accident.
“It was all the chattering of that Miss Dawkins,” said Mrs. Damer. “She
would not let me attend to what I was doing.”
“Miss Dawkins is an ass,” said her husband.
“It is a pity she has no one to look after her,” said Mrs. Damer.
M. Delabordeau was still listening to Miss Dawkins’s raptures about
Mount Sinai. “I wonder whether she has got any money,” said M.
Delabordeau to himself. “It can’t be much,” he went on thinking, “or she
would not be left in this way by herself.” And the result of his
thoughts was that Miss Dawkins, if undertaken, might probably become
more plague than profit. As to Miss Dawkins herself, though she was
ecstatic about Mount Sinai--which was not present--she seemed to have
forgotten the poor Pyramids, which were then before her nose.
The two lads were riding races along the dusty path, much to the disgust
of their donkey-boys. Their time for enjoyment was to come. There were
hampers to be opened; and then the absolute climbing of the Pyramids
would actually be a delight to them.
As for Miss Damer and Mr. Ingram, it was clear that they had forgotten
palm-trees, Pyramids, the Nile, and all Egypt. They had escaped to a
much fairer paradise.
“Could I bear to live among Republicans?” said Fanny, repeating the last
words of her American lover, and looking down from her donkey to the
ground as she did so. “I hardly know what Republicans are, Mr. Ingram.”
“Let me teach you,” said he.
“You do talk such nonsense. I declare there is that Miss Dawkins looking
at us as though she had twenty eyes. Could you not teach her, Mr.
Ingram?”
And so they emerged from the palm-tree grove, through a village crowded
with dirty, straggling Arab children, on to the cultivated plain,
beyond which the Pyramids stood, now full before them; the two large
Pyramids, a smaller one, and the huge sphynx’s head all in a group
together.
“Fanny,” said Bob Damer, riding up to her, “mamma wants you; so toddle
back.”
“Mamma wants me! What can she want me for now?” said Fanny, with a look
of anything but filial duty in her face.
“To protect her from Miss Dawkins, I think. She wants you to ride at her
side, so that Dawkins mayn’t get at her. Now, Mr. Ingram, I’ll bet you
half-a-crown I’m at the top of the big Pyramid before you.”
Poor Fanny! She obeyed, however; doubtless feeling that it would not do
as yet to show too plainly that she preferred Mr. Ingram to her mother.
She arrested her donkey, therefore, till Mrs. Damer overtook her; and
Mr. Ingram, as he paused for a moment with her while she did so, fell
into the hands of Miss Dawkins.
“I cannot think, Fanny, how you get on so quick,” said Mrs. Damer. “I’m
always last; but then my donkey is such a very nasty one. Look there,
now; he’s always trying to get me off.”
“We shall soon be at the Pyramids now, mamma.”
“How on earth I am ever to get back again I cannot think. I am so tired
now that I can hardly sit.”
“You’ll be better, mamma, when you get your luncheon and a glass of
wine.”
“How on earth we are to eat and drink with those nasty Arab people
around us, I can’t conceive. They tell me we shall be eaten up by them.
But, Fanny, what has Mr. Ingram been saying to you all the day?”
“What has he been saying, mamma? Oh! I don’t know;--a hundred things, I
dare say. But he has not been talking to me all the time.”
“I think he has, Fanny, nearly, since we crossed the river. Oh, dear!
oh, dear! this animal does hurt me so! Every time he moves he flings his
head about, and that gives me such a bump.” And then Fanny commiserated
her mother’s sufferings, and in her commiseration contrived to elude any
further questionings as to Mr. Ingram’s conversation.
“Majestic piles, are they not?” said Miss Dawkins, who, having changed
her companion, allowed her mind to revert from Mount Sinai to the
Pyramids. They were now riding through cultivated ground, with the vast
extent of the sands of Libya before them. The two Pyramids were standing
on the margin of the sand, with the head of the recumbent sphynx
plainly visible between them. But no idea can be formed of the size of
this immense figure till it is visited much more closely. The body is
covered with sand, and the head and neck alone stand above the surface
of the ground. They were still two miles distant, and the sphynx as yet
was but an obscure mount between the two vast Pyramids.
“Immense piles!” said Miss Dawkins, repeating her own words.
“Yes, they are large,” said Mr. Ingram, who did not choose to indulge in
enthusiasm in the presence of Miss Dawkins.
“Enormous! What a grand idea!--eh, Mr. Ingram? The human race does not
create such things as those nowadays!”
“No, indeed,” he answered; “but perhaps we create better things.”
“Better! You do not mean to say, Mr. Ingram, that you are an
utilitarian. I do, in truth, hope better things of you than that. Yes!
steam mills are better, no doubt, and mechanics’ institutes and penny
newspapers. But is nothing to be valued but what is useful?” And Miss
Dawkins, in the height of her enthusiasm, switched her donkey severely
over the shoulder.
“I might, perhaps, have said also that we create more beautiful things,”
said Mr. Ingram.
“But we cannot create older things.”
“No, certainly; we cannot do that.”
“Nor can we imbue what we do create with the grand associations which
environ those piles with so intense an interest. Think of the mighty
dead, Mr. Ingram, and of their great homes when living. Think of the
hands which it took to raise those huge blocks--”
“And of the lives which it cost.”
“Doubtless. The tyranny and invincible power of the royal architects add
to the grandeur of the idea. One would not wish to have back the kings
of Egypt.”
“Well, no; they would be neither useful nor beautiful.”
“Perhaps not; and I do not wish to be picturesque at the expense of my
fellow-creatures.”
“I doubt, even, whether they would be picturesque.”
“You know what I mean, Mr. Ingram. But the associations of such names,
and the presence of the stupendous works with which they are connected,
fill the soul with awe. Such, at least, is the effect with mine.”
“I fear that my tendencies, Miss Dawkins, are more realistic than your
own.”
“You belong to a young country, Mr. Ingram, and are naturally prone to
think of material life. The necessity of living looms large before you.”
“Very large, indeed, Miss Dawkins.”
“Whereas with us, with some of us at least, the material aspect has
given place to one in which poetry and enthusiasm prevail. To such among
us the associations of past times are very dear. Cheops, to me, is more
than Napoleon Bonaparte.”
“That is more than most of your countrymen can say, at any rate, just at
present.”
“I am a woman,” continued Miss Dawkins.
Mr. Ingram took off his hat in acknowledgment both of the announcement
and of the fact.
“And to us it is not given--not given as yet--to share in the great
deeds of the present. The envy of your sex has driven us from the paths
which lead to honour. But the deeds of the past are as much ours as
yours.”
“Oh, quite as much.”
“‘Tis to your country that we look for enfranchisement from this
thraldom. Yes, Mr. Ingram, the women of America have that strength of
mind which has been wanting to those of Europe. In the United States
woman will at last learn to exercise her proper mission.”
Mr. Ingram expressed a sincere wish that such might be the case; and
then wondering at the ingenuity with which Miss Dawkins had travelled
round from Cheops and his Pyramid to the rights of women in America, he
contrived to fall back, under the pretence of asking after the ailments
of Mrs. Damer.
And now at last they were on the sand, in the absolute desert, making
their way up to the very foot of the most northern of the two Pyramids.
They were by this time surrounded by a crowd of Arab guides, or Arabs
professing to be guides, who had already ascertained that Mr. Damer was
the chief of the party, and were accordingly driving him almost to
madness by the offers of their services, and their assurance that he
could not possibly see the outside or the inside of either structure, or
even remain alive upon the ground, unless he at once accepted their
offers made at their own prices.
“Get away, will you?” said he. “I don’t want any of you, and I won’t
have you! If you take hold of me I’ll shoot you!” This was said to one
specially energetic Arab, who, in his efforts to secure his prey, had
caught hold of Mr. Damer by the leg.
“Yes, yes, I say! Englishmen always take me;--me--me, and then no break
him leg. Yes--yes--yes;--I go. Master, say yes. Only one leetle ten
shillings!”
“Abdallah!” shouted Mr. Damer, “why don’t you take this man away? Why
don’t you make him understand that if all the Pyramids depended on it, I
would not give him sixpence!”
And then Abdallah, thus invoked, came up, and explained to the man in
Arabic that he would gain his object more surely if he would behave
himself a little more quietly; a hint which the man took for one minute,
and for one minute only.
And then poor Mrs. Damer replied to an application for backsheish by the
gift of a sixpence. Unfortunate woman! The word backsheish means, I
believe, a gift; but it has come in Egypt to signify money, and is
eternally dinned into the ears of strangers by Arab suppliants. Mrs.
Damer ought to have known better, as, during the last six weeks she had
never shown her face out of Shepheard’s Hotel without being pestered for
backsheish; but she was tired and weak, and foolishly thought to rid
herself of the man who was annoying her.
No sooner had the coin dropped from her hand into that of the Arab, than
she was surrounded by a cluster of beggars, who loudly made their
petitions as though they would, each of them, individually be injured if
treated with less liberality than that first comer. They took hold of
her donkey, her bridle, her saddle, her legs, and at last her arms and
hands, screaming for backsheish in voices that were neither sweet nor
mild.
In her dismay she did give away sundry small coins--all, probably, that
she had about her; but this only made the matter worse. Money was going,
and each man, by sufficient energy, might hope to get some of it. They
were very energetic, and so frightened the poor lady that she would
certainly have fallen, had she not been kept on her seat by the pressure
around her.
“Oh, dear! oh, dear! get away,” she cried. “I haven’t got any more;
indeed I haven’t. Go away, I tell you! Mr. Damer! oh, Mr. Damer!” and
then, in the excess of her agony, she uttered one loud, long, and
continuous shriek.
Up came Mr. Damer; up came Abdallah; up came M. Delabordeau; up came Mr.
Ingram, and at last she was rescued. “You shouldn’t go away and leave me
to the mercy of these nasty people. As to that Abdallah, he is of no use
to anybody.”
“Why you bodder de good lady, you dem blackguard?” said Abdallah,
raising his stick, as though he were, going to lay them all low with a
blow. “Now you get noting, you tief!”
The Arabs for a moment retired to a little distance, like flies driven
from a sugar-bowl; but it was easy to see that, like the flies, they
would return at the first vacant moment.
And now they had reached the very foot of the Pyramids and proceeded to
dismount from their donkeys. Their intention was first to ascend to the
top, then to come down to their banquet, and after that to penetrate
into the interior. And all this would seem to be easy of performance.
The Pyramid is undoubtedly high, but it is so constructed as to admit of
climbing without difficulty. A lady mounting it would undoubtedly need
some assistance, but any man possessed of moderate activity would
require no aid at all.
But our friends were at once imbued with the tremendous nature of the
task before them. A sheikh of the Arabs came forth, who communicated
with them through Abdallah. The work could be done, no doubt, he said;
but a great many men would be wanted to assist. Each lady must have four
Arabs, and each gentlemen three; and then, seeing that the work would be
peculiarly severe on this special day, each of these numerous Arabs must
be remunerated by some very large number of piastres.
Mr. Damer, who was by no means a close man in his money dealings, opened
his eyes with surprise, and mildly expostulated; M. Delabordeau, who was
rather a close man in his reckonings, immediately buttoned up his
breeches pocket and declared that he should decline to mount the Pyramid
at all at that price; and then Mr. Ingram descended to the combat.
The protestations of the men were fearful. They declared, with loud
voices, eager actions, and manifold English oaths, that an attempt was
being made to rob them. They had a right to demand the sums which they
were charging, and it was a shame that English gentlemen should come and
take the bread out of their mouths. And so they screeched, gesticulated,
and swore, and frightened poor Mrs. Damer almost into fits.
But at last it was settled and away they started, the sheikh declaring
that the bargain had been made at so low a rate as to leave him not one
piastre for himself. Each man had an Arab on each side of him, and Miss
Dawkins and Miss Damer had each, in addition, one behind. Mrs. Damer was
so frightened as altogether to have lost all ambition to ascend. She sat
below on a fragment of stone, with the three dragomans standing around
her as guards; but even with the three dragomans the attacks on her were
so frequent, and as she declared afterwards she was so bewildered, that
she never had time to remember that she had come there from England to
see the Pyramids, and that she was now immediately under them.
The boys, utterly ignoring their guides, scrambled up quicker than the
Arabs could follow them. Mr. Damer started off at a pace which soon
brought him to the end of his tether, and from, that point was dragged
up by the sheer strength of his assistants; thereby accomplishing the
wishes of the men, who induce their victims to start as rapidly as
possible, in order that they may soon find themselves helpless from want
of wind. Mr. Ingram endeavoured to attach himself to Fanny, and she
would have been nothing loth to have him at her right hand instead of
the hideous brown, shrieking, one-eyed Arab who took hold of her. But it
was soon found that any such arrangement was impossible. Each guide felt
that if he lost his own peculiar hold he would lose his prey, and held
on, therefore, with invincible tenacity. Miss Dawkins looked, too, as
though she had thought to be attended to by some Christian cavalier, but
no Christian cavalier was forthcoming. M. Delabordeau was the wisest,
for he took the matter quietly, did as he was bid, and allowed the
guides nearly to carry him to the top of the edifice.
“Ha! so this is the top of the Pyramid, is it?” said Mr. Damer, bringing
out his words one by one, being terribly out of breath. “Very wonderful,
very wonderful, indeed!”
“It is wonderful,” said Miss Dawkins, whose breath had not failed her in
the least, “very wonderful, indeed! Only think, Mr. Damer, you might
travel on for days and days, till days became months, through those
interminable sands, and yet you would never come to the end of them. Is
it not quite stupendous?”
“Ah, yes, quite,--puff, puff”--said Mr. Damer striving to regain his
breath.
Mr. Damer was now at her disposal; weak and worn with toil and travel,
out of breath, and with half his manhood gone; if ever she might prevail
over him so as to procure from his mouth an assent to that Nile
proposition, it would be now. And after all, that Nile proposition was
the best one now before her. She did not quite like the idea of starting
off across the Great Desert without any lady, and was not sure that she
was prepared to be fallen in love with by M. Delabordeau, even if there
should ultimately be any readiness on the part of that gentleman to
perform the rôle of lover. With Mr. Ingram the matter was different, nor
was she so diffident of her own charms as to think it altogether
impossible that she might succeed, in the teeth of that little chit,
Fanny Damer. That Mr. Ingram would join the party up the Nile she had
very little doubt; and then, there would be one place left for her. She
would thus, at any rate, become commingled with a most respectable
family, who might be of material service to her.
Thus actuated she commenced an earnest attack upon Mr. Damer.
“Stupendous!” she said again, for she was fond of repeating favourite
words. “What a wondrous race must have been those Egyptian kings of
old!”
“I dare say they were,” said Mr. Damer, wiping his brow as he sat upon a
large loose stone, a fragment lying on the flat top of the Pyramid, one
of those stones with which the complete apex was once made, or was once
about to be made.
“A magnificent race! so gigantic in their conceptions! Their ideas
altogether overwhelm us poor, insignificant, latter-day mortals. They
built these vast Pyramids; but for us, it is task enough to climb to
their top.”
“Quite enough,” ejaculated Mr. Damer.
But Mr. Damer would not always remain weak and out of breath, and it was
absolutely necessary for Miss Dawkins to hurry away from Cheops and his
tomb, to Thebes and Karnac.
“After seeing this it is impossible for any one with a spark of
imagination to leave Egypt without going farther a-field.”
Mr. Damer merely wiped his brow and grunted. This Miss Dawkins took as a
signal of weakness, and went on with her task perseveringly.
“For myself, I have resolved to go up, at any rate, as far as Asouan and
the first cataract. I had thought of acceding to the wishes of a party
who are going across the Great Desert by Mount Sinai to Jerusalem; but
the kindness of yourself and Mrs. Damer is so great, and the prospect of
joining in your boat is so pleasurable, that I have made up my mind to
accept your very kind offer.”
This, it will be acknowledged, was bold on the part of Miss Dawkins; but
what will not audacity effect? To use the slang of modern language,
cheek carries everything nowadays. And whatever may have been Miss
Dawkins’s deficiencies, in this virtue she was not deficient.
“I have made up my mind to accept your very kind offer,” she said,
shining on Mr. Damer with her blandest smile.