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 passing 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 passed 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 Meroë, 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 documents. 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 Antiquités pronounced 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 passed 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 assured 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 Début: 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. Esmé 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. Nobody 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 assure 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 title 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 nobody and nobody 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 reassure 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 yourself. Where you're going, and what the dickens 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 Cassandra 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 nobody 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-glass doesn't forbid, go back to that classic 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."
"You're the last person on earth for the part! Your fate was thrust on you. You've thrust yourself on no one. Miss Gilder 'achieved' you."
"Collected me, rather, as one of her 'specimens.' She has a noble weakness for lame ducks, and though she fails sometimes in trying to strengthen their game legs, she tries gloriously. She and her aunt have been travelling in France and Italy, guided by instinct and French maids, and already Monny has picked up two weird protégées, sure to bring her to grief. The most exciting and deadly specimen is a perfectly beautiful American girl just married to a Turkish Bey who met her in Paris, and is taking her home to Egypt. I haven't even seen the unfortunate houri, because the Turk has shut her up in their cabin and pretends she's seasick. Monny doesn't believe in the seasickness, and sends secret notes in presents of flowers and boxes of chocolate. But I have seen the Turk. He's pink and white and looks angelic, except for a gleam deep down in his eyes, if Monny inquires after his wife when any of her best young men are hanging about. Especially when there's Neill Sheridan, a young Egyptologist from Harvard, Monny met in Paris, or Willis Bailey, a fascinating sculptor who wants to study the crystal eyes of wooden statues in the Museum at Cairo. He is going to make them the fashion in America, next year. Yes, Madame Rechid Bey is a most explosive protégée for a girl to have, on her way to Egypt. I'm not sure even I am not innocuous by comparison; though I do wish you hadn't reminded me of my poor little step-daughter Esmé, in her convent-school. If any one should get the idea that Monny—but I won't put it in words! Besides me, and the brand-new bride of Rechid Bey ('Wretched Bey' is our name for him), there's one more protégée, a Miss Rachel Guest from Salem, Massachusetts, a school-teacher taking her first holiday. That sounds harmless, and it looks harmless to an amateur; but wait till you meet her and see what instinct tells you about her eyes. Oh, we shall have ructions! But that reminds me. You haven't told me where you're bound—or anything."
"Thanks for putting me among the 'specimens.' But this sample hasn't yet been collected by Miss Gilder."
"You might be her salvation, and keep her out of mischief. She's quite wild now with sheer joy because she's going to Egypt. But do be serious, and tell me all I pine to know, if you want me to do the same by you."
"Well—though it's unimportant compared to what you have to tell! I'm an insignificant second secretary to Sir Raymond Ronalds, the British Ambassador at Rome. I've got four months' leave——"
"Ah, that's what comes of duffing so skilfully, and avoiding all the things you didn't want to do, till you got exactly what you did want! I remember when we were small boy and girl, and you used to walk down to the vicarage every day, to talk Greek or Latin or something with father——"
"No, to see you!"
"Well, you used to tell me, if you couldn't be the greatest prize-fighter or the greatest opera-singer in the world, you thought you'd like to be a diplomat.
"I haven't become a diplomat yet, in spite of Foreign Office grubbing. But I've been enjoying life pretty well, fagging up Arabic and modern Greek, and playing about with pleasant people, while pretending to do my duty. Now I've got leave on account of a mild fever which turned out a blessing in disguise. I could have found no other excuse for Egypt this winter."
"You speak as if you had some special reason for going to Egypt."
"I've been wishing to go, more or less, for years, because you know—if you haven't forgotten—I was accidentally born in Cairo while my father was fighting in Alexandria. My earliest recollections are of Egypt, for we lived there till I was four—about the time I met and fell in love with you. I've always thought I'd like to polish up old memories. But my special hurry is because I'm anxious to meet a friend, a chap I admire and love beyond all others. I want to see him for his own sake, and for the sake of a plan we have, which may make a lot of difference for our future."
"How exciting! Did I ever know him?"
"I think not."
"Well? Don't you mean to tell me who he is?"
I hesitated, sorry I had let myself go: because Anthony had written that he didn't want his movements discussed at present.
"I'll tell you another time," I said. "I want to talk about you. Anybody else is irrelevant."
"Clever Duffer! Your friend is a secret."
"Not he! But if there's a secret anywhere, it's only a dull, dusty sort of secret. You wouldn't be interested."
"Women never are, in secrets. Well, I'm glad somebody else besides myself has a mystery to hide."
"You're very quick."
"I'm Irish! But I'm merciful. No more questions—till you're off your guard. You're free to ask me all you like, if there's anything you care to know which horrid newspapers haven't told you these last few years."
"There are a thousand things. You didn't answer anybody's letters, after—after——"
"After Richard died. Oh, I can talk about it, now. It was the best thing that could happen for him, poor fellow. Life in hiding was purgatory. No, I couldn't answer letters, though my old friends (you among them) wanted to be kind. There wasn't anything I could let anybody do for me. Monny Gilder's different. You'll soon see why."
I smiled indulgently. But, though I was to be introduced to Miss Gilder for the purpose of being eventually gilded by her, at the instant my thoughts were for my childhood's sweetheart.
Brigit Burne made a terrible mess of things in marrying, when she was eighteen or so, Richard O'Brien, in the height of his celebrity as a socialist leader. People still believed in him then, at the time of his famous lecturing tour and visit to his birthplace on our green island; and though he was more than twice her age, the fascination he had for Biddy surprised few who knew him.
He was eloquent, in a fiery way. He had extraordinary eyes, and it was his pride to resemble portraits of Lord Byron. After an acquaintance of a month, Biddy married O'Brien (I had just gone up to Oxford at the time, or I should have tried not to let it happen), went to America with him, and voluntarily ceased to exist for her friends.
Poor girl, she must have had an awakening! He had posed as a bachelor; but after her marriage she found out (and the world with her) that he was a widower with one child, a little girl he had practically abandoned. Biddy adopted her, though the mother had been a rather undesirable Frenchwoman; and now when I saw her smiling at the tall white girl on the Laconia, I had thought for an instant that Biddy and her stepdaughter might be in flight together. O'Brien was a drunkard, as well as a demagogue; and not long after Brigit's flitting with him there was a scandal about the accepting of bribes from politicians on the opposing side, apparently his greatest enemies; but a minor scandal compared to what came some years afterward. O'Brien's name was implicated in the blowing up of the World-Republican Building in Washington, and the wrecking of Senator Marlowe's special train after his speech against socialist interests, but the coward turned informer against his friends and associates in the secret society of which he had been a leader, and saved himself by sending them to prison. From that day until his death he lived the life of a hunted animal flying from the hounds of vengeance. Brigit stood by him in spite of threats against her life as well as his, and the life of the child. Since then, though she answered none of our letters, we had heard rumours. The girl Esmé, whom the avengers had threatened to kidnap, was supposed to be hidden in some convent-school in Europe. As for Brigit, she was said to be training for a hospital nurse: reported to have become a missionary in India, China, and one or two other countries; seen on the music-hall stage, and traced to Johannesburg, where she had married a diamond-merchant; yet here she was on board the Laconia, unchanged in looks, or nature, and the guest of a much paragraphed, much proposed to American heiress en route to Egypt.
While Brigit was telling me the real story of her last two years, as governess, companion, teacher of music, and journalist, Miss Gilder regarded us sidewise from amid her bodyguard of young men. Evidently she was dying to know who was the acquaintance her darling Biddy had picked up in mid-Mediterranean the moment her back was turned; and at last, unable to restrain herself longer, she made use of some magic trick to attach the band of youths to her aunt. Then, separating herself with almost indecent haste from the group, she marched up to us, gazing—I might say, staring—with large unfriendly eyes at the intruder.
Brigit promptly accounted for me, however, rolling her "r's" patriotically because I reminded her of Ireland. "Do let me introduce Lord Ernest Borrow," she said. "I must have told you about him in my stories, when you were a child, for he was me first love."
"It was the other way round," I objected. "She wouldn't look at me. I adored her."
Biddy glared a warning. Her eyes said, "Silly fellow, don't you know every girl wants to be the one and only love of a man's life?"
I had supposed that this old craze had gone out of fashion. But perhaps there are a few primitive things which will never go out of fashion with women.
Now that I had Miss Gilder's proud young face opposite mine, I saw that it wasn't quite so perfect as I'd fancied when she flashed by in her tall whiteness. Her nose, pure Greek in profile, seen in full was —well, just neat American: a straight, determined little twentieth-century nose. The full red mouth, not small, struck me as being determined also, rather than classic, despite the daintily drawn cupid's bow of the short upper lip. I realized too that the long-lashed, wide-open, and wide-apart eyes were of the usual bluish-gray possessed by half the girls one knows. And as for the thick wavy hair pushed crisply forward by the white hood, now it was out of the sun's glamour, there was more brown than gold in it. I said to myself, that the face with the firm cleft chin was only just pretty enough to give a great heiress or a youthful princess the reputation of a beauty; a combination desired and generally produced by journalists. Then, as I was thinking this, while Brigit explained me, Miss Gilder suddenly smiled. I was dazzled. No wonder Biddy loved her. It would be a wonder if I didn't love her myself before I knew what was happening.
And so I should instantly have done, perhaps, if it hadn't been for Biddy's eyes seeming to come between mine and Miss Gilder's: and the fact that at the moment I was in quest of another treasure than a woman's heart. My thoughts were running ahead of the ship to Alexandria, to find out from Anthony Fenton ("Antoun Effendi" the biggest boys used to nickname him at school) more about the true history of that treasure than he dared trust to paper and ink and the post office.
So I put off falling in love with Rosamond Gilder till I should have seen Anthony, and tidied up my distracted mind. A little later would do, I told myself, because (owing to the fact that my ancestral castle had figured in Biddy's tales of long ago) I was annexed as one of the protégés; allowed to make a fifth at the small, flowery table under a desirable porthole in the green and white restaurant; also I was invited to go about with the ladies and show them Cairo. Just how much "going about," and falling in love, I should be able to do there, depended on "Antoun Effendi." But when Biddy congratulated me on my luck, and chance of success in the "scheme," I said nothing of Anthony.
CLEOPATRA AND THE SHIP'S MYSTERY
Now, at last, I can skip over the three days at sea, and get to our arrival at Alexandria, because, as I've said, the exciting part began soon after, at Cairo.
They were delightful days, for the Laconia is a Paris hotel disguised as a liner. And no man with blood in his veins could help enjoying the society of Brigit O'Brien and Rosamond Gilder. Cleopatra, too, was not to be despised as a charmer; and then there was the human interest of the protégées, the one with the eyes and the one who had reluctantly developed into the Ship's Mystery.
Still, in spite of Biddy and Monny and the others, and not for them, my heart beat fast when, on the afternoon of the third day out from Naples, the ship brought us suddenly in sight of something strange. We were moving through a calm sea, more like liquefied marble than water, for it was creamy white rather than blue, veined with azure, and streaked, as marble is, with pink and gold. Far away across this gleaming floor blossomed a long line of high-growing lotus flowers, white and yellow against a silver sky. The effect was magical, and the wonder grew when the big flower-bed turned into domes and cupolas and spires rising out of the sea. Unimaginative people remarked that the coast looked so flat and uninteresting they didn't see why Alexander had wanted to bother with it; but they were the sort of people who ought to stop at home in London or Birmingham or Chicago and not make innocent fellow-passengers burn with unchristian feelings.
Soon I should see Anthony and hear his news. I felt sure he would be at Alexandria to meet the ship. When "Antoun Effendi" makes up his mind to do a thing, he will crawl from under a falling sky to do it. As the Laconia swept on, I hardly saw the glittering city on its vast prayer-rug of green and gold, guarded by sea forts like sleepy crocodiles. My mind's eyes were picturing Anthony as he would look after his wild Balkan experiences: brown and lean, even haggard and bearded, perhaps, a different man from the smart young officer of everyday life, unless he'd contrived to refit in the short time since his return to Egypt—a day or two at most, according to my calculation. But all my imaginings fell short of the truth.
As I thought of Anthony, Mrs. East came and stood beside me. I knew she was there before I turned to look, because of the delicate tinkling of little Egyptian amulets, which is her accompaniment, her leit motif, and because of the scent of sandalwood with which, in obedience to the ancient custom of Egyptian queens, she perfumes her hair.
I don't think I have described Monny Gilder's aunt, according to my conception of her, though I may have hinted at Biddy's. Biddy having a habit of focussing her sense of humour on any female she doesn't wholly love, may not do Mrs. East justice. The fact is, Monny's aunt is a handsome creature, distinctly a charmer who may at most have reached the age when Cleopatra—Antony's and Caesar's Cleopatra—died in the prime of her beauty. If Mrs. East chooses to date herself at thirty-three, any man not a confirmed misanthrope must believe her. Biddy says that until Peter Gilder was safely dead, Clara East was just an ordinary, well-dressed, pleasure-loving, novel-reading, chocolate-eating, respectable widow of a New York stockbroker: superstitious perhaps; fond of consulting palmists, and possessing Billikens or other mascots: (how many women are free from superstition?) slightly oriental in her love of sumptuous colours and jewellery; but then her mother (Peter Gilder's step-mother) was a beautiful Jewish opera singer. After Peter's death, his half-sister gave up novels for Egyptian and Roman history, took to studying hieroglyphics, and learning translations of Greek poetry. She invited a clairvoyant and crystal-gazer, claiming Egyptian origin, to visit at her Madison Square flat. Sayda Sabri, banished from Bond Street years ago, took up her residence in New York, accompanied by her tame mummy. Of course, it is the mummy of a princess, and she keeps it illuminated with blue lights, in an inner sanctum, where the bored-looking thing stands upright in its brilliantly painted mummy case, facing the door. About the time of Sayda's visit, it was noticed by Mrs. East's friends (this, according to Biddy) that the colour of the lady's hair was slowly but surely changing from black to chestnut, then to auburn; she was heard to remark casually that Queen Cleopatra's hair had been red. She took to rich Eastern scents, to whitening her face as Eastern women of rank have whitened theirs since time immemorial. The shadows round her almond-shaped eyes were intensified: her full lips turned from healthful pink to carmine. The ends of her tapering fingers blushed rosily as sticks of coral. The style of her dress changed, at the moment of going into purple as "second mourning" for Peter, and became oriental, even to the turban-like shape of her hats, and the design of her jewellery. She did away with crests and monograms on handkerchiefs, stationery, luggage and so on, substituting a curious little oval containing strange devices, which Monny discovered to be the "cartouche" of Cleopatra. Then the whole truth burst forth. Sayda Sabri's crystal had shown that Clara East, née Gilder, was the reincarnation of Cleopatra the Great of Egypt. There had been another incarnation in between, but it was of no account, and, like a poor relation who has disgraced a family, the less said about it the better.
The lady did not proclaim her identity from the housetops. Rare souls possessing knowledge of Egyptian lore might draw their own conclusions from the cartouche on her note-paper and other things. Only Monny and a few intimates were told the truth at first; but afterward it leaked out, as secrets do; and Mrs. East seemed shyly pleased if discreet questions were asked concerning her amulets and the cartouche.
Now, I never feel inclined to laugh at a pretty woman. It is more agreeable, as well as gallant, to laugh with her; but the trouble is, Cleopatra doesn't go in for laughter. She takes life seriously. Not only has she no sense of humour, but she does not know the difference between it and a sense of fun, which she can understand if a joke (about somebody else) is explained. She is grateful to me because I look her straight in the eyes when the subject of Egypt is mentioned. Sheridan from Harvard has been in her bad books since he put Ptolemaic rulers outside of the pale of Egyptian history, called their art ornate and bad, mentioned that each of their queens was named Cleopatra and classified the lot as modern, almost suburban.
Mrs. East, leaning beside me on the rail, was burning with thoughts inspired by Alexandria. She had "Plutarch's Lives" under her arm, and "Hypatia" in her hand. Of course, she dropped them both, one after the other, and I picked them up.
"Do you know, Lord Ernest," she said, in the low, rich voice she is cultivating, "I don't mind telling you that I felt as if I were coming home, after a long absence. Monny wanted to see Egypt; I was dying to. That's the difference between us."
"It's natural," I answered, sympathetically.
"Yes—considering everything. Yet we're both afraid. She in one way, I in another. I haven't told her. She hasn't told me. But I know. She has the same impression I have, that something's going to happen —something very great, to change the whole of life—in Egypt: 'Khem,' it seems to me I can remember calling it. You know it was Khem, until the Arabs came and named it Misr. Do you believe in impressions like that?"
"I don't disbelieve," I said. "Some people are more sensitive than others."
"Yes. Or else they're older souls. But it may be the same thing. I can't fancy Monny an old soul, can you?—yet she may be, for she's very intelligent, although so self-willed. I think what she's afraid of is getting interested in some wonderful man with Turkish or Egyptian blood, a magnificent creature like you read of in books, you know; then you have to give them up in the last chapter, and send them away broken-hearted. I suppose there are such men in real life?"
"I doubt if there are such romantic figures as the books make out," I tried to reassure her. "There might be a prince or two, handsome and cultivated, educated in England, perhaps, for some of the 'swells' are sent from Egypt to Oxford and Cambridge, just as they are in India. But even if Miss Gilder should meet a man of that sort, I should say she was too sensible and clear-headed—"
"Oh, she is, almost too much so for a young girl, and she has a detestation for any one with a drop of dark blood, in America. She doesn't even like Jews; and that makes friction between us, if we ever happen to argue, for—maybe you don't know?—my mother was a Jewess. I'm proud of her memory. But that's just why, if you can understand, Monny's afraid in Egypt. Some girls would like to have a tiny flirtation with a gorgeous Eastern creature (of course, he must be a bey, or prince or something, otherwise it would be infra dig), but Monny would hate herself for being attracted. Yet I know she dreads it happening, because of the way I've heard her rave against the heroines of novels, saying she has no patience with them; they ought to have more strength of mind, even if it broke their hearts."
I wondered if Biddy, too, suspected some such fear in the mind of her adored girl, and if that were one reason why she had turned matchmaker for my benefit. Since the first day out she had used strategems to throw us together: and it seemed that, years ago, when she used to teach the little girl French, Monny's favourite stories had been of Castle Killeena, and my boyish exploits birds'-nesting on the crags. (Biddy said that this was a splendid beginning, if I had the sense to follow it up.)
"And you?" I went on to Mrs. East. "What do you feel is going to happen to you in the land of Khem?"
"Oh, I don't know," she sighed. "I wish I did! And 'afraid' isn't exactly the word. I just know that something will happen. I wonder if history does repeat itself? I should hate to be bitten by an asp——"
"Asps are out of fashion," I comforted her. "I doubt if you could find one in all of Egypt, though I remember my Egyptian nurse used to say there were cobras in the desert in summer. Anyhow, we'll be away before summer."
"I suppose so," she agreed. "Yet—who knows what will become of any of us? Madame Rechid Bey will be staying, of course. I don't know whether to be sorry for her or not. The Bey's good-looking. He has brown eyes, and is as white as you or I. Probably it's true that she's been too seasick to leave her room for the last ten days, though Monny and Mrs. O'Bri—I mean, Mrs. Jones—think she's shut up because men stared, and because Mr. Sheridan talked to her. As for me, there's always that question asking itself in my mind: 'What is going to happen?' And I hear it twice as loud as before, in sight of Alexandria. Rakoti, we Lagidae used to call the city." As she spoke, the long, oriental eyes glanced at me sidewise, but my trustworthy Celtic features showed a grave, intelligent interest in her statements.
"It must be," she went on, encouraged, "that I'm the reincarnation of Cleopatra, otherwise how could I have the sensation of remembering everything? There's no other way to account for it! And you know my modern name, Clara, does begin with 'C.' Sayda must be right. She's told lots of women the most extraordinary things. You really ought to consult her, Lord Ernest, if you ever go to New York."
I did not say, as Neill Sheridan might, that a frothy course of Egyptian historical novels would account for anything. I simply looked as diplomatic training can teach any one to look.
Evidently it was the right look in the right place, for Cleopatra continued more courageously, recalling the great Pharos of white marble which used to be one of the world's wonders in her day; the Museum, and the marvellous Library which took fire while Julius Caesar burned the fleet, nearby in the harbour.
"Think of the philosophers who deserted the College of Heliopolis for Alexandria!" she said. "Antony was more of a soldier than a student, but even he grieved for the Library. You know he tried to console Cleopatra by making her a present of two hundred thousand MSS. from the library of the King of Pergamus. It was a generous thought—like Antony!"
"Does the harbour looked changed?" I hastened to inquire.
"Not from a distance, though landing may be a shock: they tell me it's all so Italian now. It was Greek in old days. I've read that there isn't a stone left of my—of the lovely place on Lochias Point, except the foundations they found in the seventies. But I must go to see what's left of the Baths, even though there's only a bit of mosaic and the remains of a room. Monny's anxious to get on to Cairo, but we shall come back to Alexandria later. Lord Ernest, when I shut my eyes, I really do seem to picture the Mareotic Lake, and the buildings that made Alexandria the glory of the world. Do you remember what Strabo said about Deinchares, the architect who laid out the plan of the city in the shape of a Macedonian mantle, to please Alexander?"
"I'm not as well up in history as you are," I said, "though I've studied a bit, because I was born in Egypt. Poor Alexander didn't live long in his fine city, did he? I wonder what he'd think of it now? And I wonder if his palace was handsomer than the Khedive's? That huge white building with the pillars and domes. I seem to remember——"
"What, you remember, too? You ought to consult Sayda!"
"I didn't mean exactly what you mean," I explained, humbly. "Still, why shouldn't I have lived in Egypt long ago? The learned ones say you're always drawn back where you've been in other states of existence——"
"That's true, I'm sure!"
"Well, then, why shouldn't I have the same sort of right to Egypt you have, if you were Cleopatra?—I believe you must have been, because you look as she ought to have looked, you know. Why shouldn't I have been a friend of Marc Antony, coming from Rome to give him good advice and trying to persuade——"
"Oh, not that he ought to give me up!"
"No, indeed: to urge him to leave the island where he hid even from you (didn't they call it Timoneum?). Why couldn't Antony play his cards so as to keep Cleopatra and the world, too? She'd have liked him better, wouldn't she? My friend Antoun Effendi—I mean Anthony Fenton,"—I stopped short: for the less said about Fenton the better, at present. But Cleopatra caught me up.
"What—have you really a friend Antony? Where does he live? and what's he like?"
I hesitated; and glancing round for inspiration (in other words for some harmless, necessary fib) I saw that Brigit and Monny had arrived on the scene. They had been pacing the deck, arm in arm; and now, arrested by Mrs. East's question, they hovered near, awaiting my answer with vague curiosity. A twinkle in Biddy's eyes, which I caught, rattled me completely. I missed all the easiest fibs and could catch hold of nothing but the bare truth. There are moments like that, when, do what you will, you must be truthful or silent; and silence fires suspicion.
"What is he?" I echoed feebly. "Oh, Captain Fenton. He's in the Gyppy Army stationed up at Khartum, hundreds of miles beyond where Cook's boats go. You wouldn't be interested in Anthony, because he spells his name with an 'H', and he's dark and thin, not a bit like your Antony, who was a big, stout fellow, I've always heard, and fair." "Big, but not stout," Cleopatra corrected me. "And—and if he's incarnated again, he may be dark for a change. As for the 'H', that's not important. I wonder if we shall meet your Anthony? We think of going to Khartum, don't we, Monny?"
"Yes," said the girl, shortly. She was always rather short in her manner at that time when in her opinion her aunt was being "silly."
I gathered from a vexed flash in the gray eyes that there had never been any hint of an impending Antony.
"Is your friend in Khartum now?" Biddy ventured, in her creamiest voice. The twinkle was carefully turned off like the light of a dark lantern, but I knew well that "Mrs. Jones" was recalling a certain conversation, in which I had refused to satisfy her curiosity. Brigit's quick, Irish mind has a way of matching mental jigsaw puzzles, even when vital bits appear to be missing; and if she could make a cat's paw of Cleopatra, the witch would not be above doing it. I bore her no grudge—who could bear soft-eyed, laughing, yet tragic Biddy a grudge? —but I wished that she and Monny were at the other end of the deck.
"I—er—really, I don't know where my friend is just now," I answered, with more or less foundation of truth.
"I wonder if I didn't read in the papers about a Captain Fenton who took advantage of leave he'd got, to make a rush for the Balkans, and see the fighting from the lines of the Allies?" Biddy murmured with dreadful intelligence. "Can he be your Captain Fenton? I fancy he'd been stationed in the Sudan; and he was officially supposed to have gone home to spend his leave in England. Anyhow, there was a row of some sort after he and another man dropped down on to the Turks out of a Greek aeroplane. Or was it a Servian one? Anyhow, I know he oughtn't to have been in it; and 'Paterfamilias' and 'Patriot' wrote letters to the Times about British officers who didn't mind their own business. Why, I saw the papers on board this ship! They were old ones. Papers on ships always are. But I think they came on at Algiers or somewhere."
"Probably 'somewhere,'" I witheringly replied. "I didn't come on at Algiers, so I don't know anything about it."
"Diplomatists never do know anything official, do they, Duffer dear?" smiled Biddy. "I'll wager your friend is interesting, even if he does spell himself with an 'H', and weighs two stone less than his namesake from Rome. Mrs. East believes in reincarnation, and I'm not sure I don't, though Monny's so young she doesn't believe in anything. Just suppose your friend is a reincarnation of Antony without an 'H'? And suppose, too, by some strange trick of fate he should meet you in Alexandria or Cairo? You'd introduce him to us, wouldn't you?"
"It's the most unlikely thing in the world. And he'd be no good to you. He's a man's man. He thinks he doesn't like women."
"Doesn't like women!" echoed Monny Gilder. "He must be a curmudgeon. Or has he been jilted?"
"Rather not!" Too impulsively I defended the absent. "Girls go mad about him. He has to keep them off with a stick. He's got other things to think of than girls, things he believes are more important—though, of course, he's mistaken. He'll find that out some day, when he has more time. So far, he's been hunting other game, often in wild places. A book might be written on his adventures."
"What kind of adventures? Tell us about them," said Biddy, "up to the Balkan one, which you deny having heard of."
"You wouldn't care about his sort of adventures. There aren't any women in them," said I. "Women want love stories. It's only the heroines they care for, not the heroes, and I don't somehow see the right heroine for Fenton's story."
I noticed an expression dawning on Cleopatra's face, as I thus bereft her of a possible Antony (with an "H"). There was a softening of the long eyes, and the glimmer of a smile which said "Am I Cleopatra for nothing?"
Never had she looked handsomer. Never before had I thought of her as really dangerous. I'd been inclined to poke fun at the lady for her superstition and her cartouche, and Cleopatra-hood in general. But suddenly I realized that her make-up was no more exaggerated than that of many a beauty of the stage and of society: and that nowadays, women who are—well, forty-ish—can be formidable rivals for younger and simpler sisters. Not that I feared much for Anthony from Cleopatra or any other female thing, for I'd come to consider him practically woman-proof; still, I saw danger that the lady might make a dead set at him, if she got the chance, and all through my stupidity in giving away his name. "Antony" was a thrilling password to that mysterious "something" which she expected to happen in Egypt: and already she regarded my friend as a ram caught in the bushes, for a sacrifice on her altar. Instead of screening him I had dragged him in front of the footlights. But fortunately there was still time to jerk down the curtain.
I threw a glance at Brigit and Monny, and was relieved to find that their attention was distracted by a new arrival: Miss Rachel Guest from Salem, Massachusetts: a pale, thin, lanky copy of our Rose, with the beauty and bloom left out; but a pair of eyes to redeem the colourless face—oh, yes, a pair of eyes! Strange, hungry, waiting eyes.
When I am alone, I fear Monny's favourite protégée, who started out to "see the world" on a legacy of two thousand dollars, and won Miss Gilder's admiration (and hospitality) through her unassuming pluck. To my mind she is the ideal adventuress of a new, unknown, and therefore deadly type; but for once I rejoiced at sight of the pallid, fragile woman, so cheerful in spite of frail health, so frank about her twenty-eight years. She had news to tell of a nature so exciting that, after a whisper or two, Cleopatra forgot Anthony in her desire to know the latest development in the Ship's Mystery.
"My stewardess says he won't let his wife land till we're all off," murmured the ex-schoolmistress, in her colourless voice. "She heard the end of a conversation, when she carried the poor girl's lunch to the door—just a word or two. So we shan't see her again, I suppose."
"Oh, yes, we shall," said Monny. "If Wretched Bey can get a private boat, so can I. I'll not desert her, if I have to stay on board the Laconia the whole night."
All four began talking together eagerly, and blessing Miss Guest I sneaked away. Presently I saw that clever Neill Sheridan and handsome, actor-like Willis Bailey, the two bêtes noires of Wretched Bey, had joined the group.
By this time the roofs and domes and minarets of Alexandria sparkled in clearly sketched outlines between sunset-sky and sea; sunset of Egypt, which divided ruby-flame of cloud, emerald dhurra, gold of desert, and sapphire waters into separate bands of colour, vivid as the stripes of a rainbow.
There was a new buzz of excitement on the decks and in the ivy draped veranda café. Those who had been studying Baedeker gabbled history, ancient and modern, until the conquest of Alexander and the bombardment of '82 became a hopeless jumble in the ears of the ignorant. Bores who had travelled inflicted advice on victims who had not. People told each other pointless anecdotes of "the last time I was in Egypt," while those forced to listen did so with the air of panthers waiting to pounce. A pause for breath on the part of the enemy gave the wished-for opportunity to spring into the breach with an adventure of their own.
We took an Arab pilot on board—the first Arab ever seen by the ladies of my party—and before the red torch of sunset had burned down to dusky purple, tenders like big, black turtles were swimming out to the Laconia. We slaves of the Rose, however, had surrendered all personal interest in these objects. The word of Miss Gilder had gone forth, and, unless Rechid Bey changed his mind at the last minute, we were all to lurk in ambush until he appeared with his wife. Then, somehow, Monny was to snatch her chance for a word with the Ship's Mystery; and whatever happened, none of us were to stir until it had been snatched.
Arguments, even from Biddy, were of no avail, and mine were silenced by cold permission to go away by myself if I chose. It was terrible, it was wicked to talk of people making their own beds and then lying in them. It was nonsense to say that, even if the wife of Rechid Bey asked for help, we could do nothing. Of course, we would do something! If the girl wanted to be saved, she should be saved, if Monny had to act alone. Whatever happened, Mr. Sheridan and Mr. Bailey must remain in the background, as the very sight of them would drive "Wretched Bey" wild!