It Happened in Egypt.
by C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson.
CHAPTER I
THE SECRET AND THE GIRL
The exciting part began in Cairo; but perhaps I ought to go back to what happened on the _Laconia_, between Naples and Alexandria. Luckily no one can expect a man who actually rejoices in his nickname of "Duffer" to know how or where a true story should begin.
The huge ship was pa.s.sing swiftly out of the Bay of Naples, and already we were in the strait between Capri and the mainland. I had come on deck from the smoking-room for a last look at poor Vesuvius, who lost her lovely head in the last eruption. I paced up and down, acutely conscious of my great secret, the secret inspiring my voyage to Egypt.
For months it had been the hidden romance of life; now it began to seem real. This is not the moment to tell how I got the papers that revealed the secret, before I pa.s.sed them on to Anthony Fenton at Khartum, for him to say whether or not the notes were of real importance. But the papers had been left in Rome by Ferlini, the Italian Egyptologist, seventy years ago, when he gave to the museum at Berlin the treasures he had unearthed. It was Ferlini who ransacked the pyramids all about Meroe, that so-called island in the desert, where in its days of splendour reigned the queens Candace. Fenton, stationed at Khartum, an eager dabbler in the old lore of Egypt, sent me an enthusiastic telegram the moment he read the doc.u.ments. They confirmed legends of the Sudan in which he had been interested. Putting two and two together--the legends and Ferlini"s notes--Anthony was convinced that we had the clue to fortune. At once he applied for permission to excavate under the little outlying mountain named by the desert folk "the Mountain of the Golden Pyramid." At first the spot was thought to fall within the province given up to Garstang, digging for Liverpool University. Later, however, the _Service des Antiquites_ p.r.o.nounced the place to be outside Garstang"s borders, and it seemed that luck was coming our way. No one but we two--Fenton and I--had any inkling of what might lie hidden in the Mountain of the Golden Pyramid. That was the great secret! Then Fenton had gone to the Balkans, on a flying trip in every sense of the word. It was only a fortnight ago--I being then in Rome--that I had had a wire from him in Salonica saying, "Friends at work to promote our scheme. Meet me on my return to Egypt." After that, several telegrams had been exchanged; and here I was on the _Laconia_ bound for the land of my birth, full of hope and dreams.
For some moments distant Vesuvius had beguiled my thoughts from the still more distant mountain of the secret, when suddenly a white girl in a white hood and a long white cloak pa.s.sed me on the white deck: whereupon I forgot mountains of reality and dreams. She was one of those tall, slim, long-limbed, dryad-sort of girls they are running up nowadays in England and America with much success; and besides all that, she was an amazing symphony in white and gold against an azure Italian sea and sky, the two last being breezily jumbled together at the moment for us on shipboard. She walked well in spite of the blue turmoil; and if a fair girl with golden-brown hair gets herself up in satiny white fur from head to foot she is evidently meant to be looked at. Others were looking: also they were whispering after she went by: and her serene air of being alone in a world made entirely for her caused me to wonder if she were not Some One in Particular.
Just then a sweet, soft voice said, close to my ear:
"Why, Duffer, dear, it can"t possibly be you!"
I gave a jump, for I hadn"t heard that voice for many a year, and between the ages of four and fourteen I had been in love with it.
"Brigit O"Brien!" said I. Then I grabbed her two hands and shook them as if her arms had been branches of a young cherry tree, dropping fruit.
"Why not Biddy?" she asked. "Or are ye wanting me to call ye Lord Ernest?"
"Good heavens, no! Once a Duffer, always a Duffer," I a.s.sured her. "And I"ve been thinking of you as Biddy from then till now. Only--"
""Twas as clever a thing as a boy ever did," she broke in, with one of her smiles that no man ever forgets, "to begin duffing at an early age, in order to escape all the professions and businesses your pastors and masters proposed, and go your own way. Are ye at it still?"
"Rather! But you? I want to talk to you."
"Then don"t do it in a loud voice, if you please, because, as you must have realized, if you"ve taken time to think, I"m Mrs. Jones at present."
"Why Jones?"
"Because Smith is engaged beforehand by too many people. Honestly, without joking, I"m in danger here and everywhere, and it"s a wicked, selfish thing for me to come the way I have; but Rosamond Gilder is the hardest girl to resist you ever saw, so I"m with her; and it"s a long history."
"Rosamond Gilder? What--the Cannon Princess, the Bertha Krupp of America?"
"Yes, the "Gilded Babe" that used to be wheeled about in a caged perambulator guarded by detectives: the "Gilded Bud" whose coming out in society was called the Million Dollar Debut: now she"s just had her twenty-first birthday, and the Sunday Supplements have promoted her to be the Golden Girl, alternating with the Gilded Rose, although she"s the simplest creature, really, with a tremendous sense of the responsibility of her riches. Poor child! There she is, walking toward us now, with those two young men. Of course, young men! Droves of young men! She can"t get away from them any more than she can from her money.
No, she"s stopped to talk to Cleopatra."
"That tall, white girl Rosamond Gilder! Just before you came, I was wondering who she was; and when you smiled at each other across the deck it sprang into my mind that--that--"
"That what?"
"Oh, it seems stupid now."
"Give me a chance to judge, dear Duffer."
"Well, seeing you, and knowing--that is, it occurred to me you might be travelling with--the daughter of--your late--"
"Good heavens, don"t say any more! I"ve been frightened to death somebody would get that brilliant notion in his head, especially as Monny and her aunt came on board the _Laconia_ only at Monaco. Esme O"Brien is in a convent school not thirty miles from there. But that"s the _deepest_ secret. Poor Peter Gilder"s fears for his millionaire girl would be child"s play to what might happen, before such a mistake was found out if once it was made. That"s just one of the hundred reasons why it would be as safe for Monny Gilder to travel with a bomb in her dressing-bag as to have me in her train of dependants. She telegraphed to New York for me, because of a stupid thing I said in a letter, about being lonely: though she pretends it would be too dull journeying to such a romantic country alone with a mere aunt. And she thinks I "attract adventures." It"s only too true. But I couldn"t resist her. n.o.body can. Why, the first time I ever saw Monny she"d cast herself down in a mud-puddle, and was screaming and kicking because she wanted to walk while one adoring father, one sycophantic governess and two trained nurses wanted her to get into an automobile. That was on my honeymoon--heaven save the mark--! and Monny was nine. She has other ways now of getting what she wants, but they"re even more effective. I laughed at her that first time, and she was so surprised at my impudence she took a violent fancy to me. But I don"t always laugh at her now. Oh, she"s a perfect terror, I a.s.sure you--and a still more perfect darling! Such an angel of charity to the poor, such a demon of obstinacy with the rich! I worship her. So does Cleopatra. So does everybody who doesn"t hate her. So will you the minute you"ve been introduced. And by the way, why not? Why shouldn"t I make myself useful for once by arranging a match between Rosamond Gilder, the prettiest heiress in America, and Lord Ernest Borrow, of the oldest family in Ireland?"
"And the poorest."
"All the more reason why. Don"t you _see?_"
"She mightn"t."
"Well, what"s the good of her having all that money if she doesn"t get hold of a really grand t.i.tle to hang it on? I shall tell her that Borrow comes down from Boru, Brian Boru the rightful King of Ireland: and when your brother dies you"ll be Marquis of Killeena."
"He"ll not die for thirty or forty years, let"s hope."
"Why hope it, when he likes n.o.body and n.o.body likes him, and everybody likes you? He can"t be happy. And anyhow, isn"t it worth a few millions to be Lady Ernest Borrow, and have the privilege of restoring the most beautiful old castle in Ireland? I"m sure Killeena would let her."
"He would, out of sheer, weak kindness of heart! But she"s far too thickly gilded an heiress for me to aspire to. A few thousands a year is my most ambitious figure for a wife. Look at the men collecting around her and the wonderful lady you call Cleopatra. Why Cleopatra?
Did sponsors in baptism--"
"No, they didn"t. _Why_ she"s Cleopatra is as weird a history as why I"m Mrs. Jones. But she"s Monny"s aunt--at least, she"s a half-sister of Peter Gilder, and as his only living relative his will makes her Monny"s guardian till the girl marries or reaches twenty-five. A strange guardian! But he didn"t know she was going to turn into Cleopatra. She wisely waited to do that until he was dead; so it came on only a year ago. It was a Bond Street crystal-gazer transplanted to Fifth Avenue told her who she really was: you know Sayda Sabri, the woman who has the illuminated mummy? It"s Cleopatra"s idea that Monny"s second mourning for Peter should be white, nothing but white."
"Her idea! But I thought Miss Monny, as you call her, adopted only her own ideas. How can a mere half-aunt, labouring under the name of Cleopatra, force her--"
"Well, you see, white"s very becoming; and as for the Cleopatra part, it pleases our princess to tolerate that. It"s part of the queer history that"s mixing me up with the family. We"ve come to spend the season in Egypt because Cleopatra thinks she"s Cleopatra; also because Monny (that"s what she"s chosen to call herself since she tried to lisp "Resamond" and couldn"t) because Monny has read "The Garden of Allah,"
and wants the "desert to take her." That book had nothing to do with Egyptian deserts; but any desert will do for Monny. What she expects it to do with her exactly when it has taken her, on the strength of a Cook ticket, I don"t quite know; but I may later, because she vows she"ll keep me at her side with hooks of steel all through the tour--unless something worse happens to me, or to some of us _because_ of me."
"Biddy, dear, don"t be morbid. Nothing bad will happen," I tried to rea.s.sure her.
"Thank you for saying so. It cheers me up. We women folk are so in the habit of believing anything you men folk tell us. It"s really quaint!"
"Stop rotting, and tell me about yourself; and a truce to heiresses and Cleopatras. You know I"m dying to hear."
"Not a syllable, until you"ve told me about _your_self. Where you"re going, and what the d.i.c.kens for!"
We laughed into each other"s eyes. To do so, I had to look a long way down, and she a long way up. This in itself is a pleasantly Victorian thing for a man to do in these days of Jerrybuilt girls, on the same level or a story or two higher than himself. I"m not a tall man: just the dull average five foot ten or eleven that appears taller, while it keeps lean--so naturally I have a hopeless yearning for nymph-like creatures who pretend to be engaged when I ask them to dance. Still, there"s consolation and homely comfort in talking with a little woman who makes you feel the next best thing to a giant. Biddy is an old-fashioned five foot four in her highest heels; and as she smiled up at me I saw that she hadn"t changed a jot in the last ten years, despite the tragedy that had involved her. Not a silver thread in the black hair, not a line on the creamy round face.
"You"re just yourself," I said.
"I oughtn"t to be. I know that very well. I ought to be a Dido and Niobe and Ca.s.sandra rolled into one. I"m a brute not to be dead or look a hag. I"ve gone through horrors, and the secrets I know could put dozens of people in prison, if not electrocute them. But you see I"m not the right type of person for the kind of life I"ve had, as I should be if I were in a story book, and the author had created me to suit my background. I can"t help flapping up out of my own ashes before they"re cold. I can"t help laughing in the face of fate."
"And looking a girl of twenty-three, at most, while you do it!"
"If I look a girl, I must be a phenomenon as well as a phoenix, for n.o.body knows better than you that my Bible age is thirty-one if it"s a day. And I think Burke and Debrett have got the same tale to tell about you, eh?"
"They have. I was always delighted to share something with you."
"You can have the whole share of my age over twenty-six. There"s one advantage "Mrs. Jones" has. She can, if her looking-gla.s.s doesn"t forbid, go back to that cla.s.sic age dear to all sensible adventuresses.
I"m afraid I come under the head of adventuress, with my alias, and travelling as companion to the rich Miss Gilder."