It Happened in Egypt — 17 - Chapter XV, part 2

But ah, what an encampment for the night!

It makes up for everything, and a sudden realization of abounding health is tingling in our veins.

We adore the desert.

We want to spend our lives in it.

Thank goodness we have two nights here, on the golden shore of the blue Birket Karun, all that's left of Lake Moeris of which Strabo and Herodotus raved.

From the dune-sheltered plateau where our white tents cluster, the glitter of water in the desert is like a mirage: a mysterious, melancholy sheet of steel and silver turning to ruby in the sunset, with dark birds skimming over the clear surface.

Suddenly the Bible seems as exciting as some wonderful novel.

Not far from here ran Joseph's river, making the desert to blossom like the rose.

In tents like ours, perhaps, Abraham rested with Sarah, planning how to save himself by giving her to the Egyptian king.

To see this lake is like seeing a bright, living eye suddenly open in the face of a mummy, dead for six thousand years!

Our best sunset; romance but slightly damaged by an Arab waiter wrapping up his head in a towel with which he had just dried our teacups and no doubt will again.

_Another Day:_ (Merely slavish to look it out in the calendar, and besides there is none.

) All I know is, we've had two on the shore of Birket Kurun (I spell it a different way now, because no books ever spell anything in Egypt twice alike), "The Lake of the Horns"; and we've been on the water in some very old boats, in order to see things which may have existed once, but don't now; and at present we're encamped near Medinet-el-Fayoum, a kind of lesser Cairo: originally named Medinet-el Fâris, City of the Horseman, because of a Roman equestrian statue found in the neighbouring mounds of "Crocodilopolis."

We have just arrived, hot and dusty, with more dust of more Fayoum than we had before Lake Moeris.

"Fayoum" means Country of the Lake it seems;

and it really is a great emerald cup sunk below the level of the Nile --as if to dip up water for its roses.

However, the Set is happy despite the state of its clothes and its hair.

None of us quite realized what the Fallahcen were really like before, or that the word Fellal meant "ploughman."

This has been market-day, and we met an endless stream of riding men, and walking women with black trailing garments.

They had bought sheep, and goats, and rabbits, and quantities of rustling, pale green sugar cane, which they carried on their shoulders.

There were wild adventures for the sandcart, and watery spaces across which Cleopatra was carried (at her own urgent request) by Anthony;

Miss Hassett-Bean by me and the strongest Arab.

There were the wonderfully picturesque squalid mud towns of Senoures and two or three others, honey-yellow in a green mist of palms, against an indigo sky with streaks of sunshine like bright bayonets of Djinns.

And then Medinet, through which our caravan had to pass _en route_ to camp, much to the ribald joy of smart, silk-robed Egyptian "undergrads" who strolled hand in hand along the broad streets near the University.

They were big, fantastic houses to suit modern Oriental taste, painted pink and green, and set in shady gardens.

And between high brick embankments we saw the river Joseph made--swiftly running, deep golden yellow like the Nile, with ancient water-wheels pouring crystal jets into enormous troughs.

This was our most fatiguing day, and we wanted our last encampment to be the best.

We found the worst: a suburban meadow inhabited by goats and buffaloes.

"Can't we move somewhere else?"

Cleopatra besought Anthony, to whom she appeals when he's within appealing distance.

"Isn't this tour for our _pleasure_, and can't we do what we _like_?"

Anthony absolved the camp-makers, explaining that we must be near the town in order to get carriages and see the sights we had come to see.

Also our water supply had given out, and we must beg some from the "government people."

He hinted that it would be well to make the best of things; but Cleopatra, with her royal memories, is not good at making the best of what she doesn't like.

She wants what she wants, especially in her own Egypt, where things ought to know that they once belonged to her.

Miss Hassett-Bean is quite as _exigeante_, in a different way, more Biblical, less pagan.

Her criticism on the encampment was that it, and all her oasis experiences, are destroying her faith in hymns.

"By cool Siloam's Shady Rill," for instance, used to be her favourite, but she doesn't believe now that Siloam ever had a rill.

_Later: 11 p. m_.

Fallahcen and Fellahah (doesn't sound female, but is) pretended to have things to do on the frontier of their field and ours, as we were settling in, and stared unblinkingly at us, whenever we stuck a nose outside a tent.

Also they laughed.

Also they brought their dogs.

But they couldn't spoil the sunset, and Medinet was a colourful picture of the Orient, towering against the crimson west.

I took Monny and Biddy into the town to see the bridge and dilapidated Mosque of Kait Bey, with its pillars stolen from Arsinoë.

Anthony took Cleopatra, and most of the other unmarried men took Rachel Guest.

When Brigit remarked rather sharply upon the ex-school teacher's popularity, Monny laughed an odd, understanding little laugh.

"I believe you think you know _why_ they're all so mad about that girl!"

exclaimed Biddy.

"Perhaps I do," smiled Miss Gilder.

"_What_ is her fascination?"

"Bedr could have told you," Monny cryptically replied.

"He told several people."

"What do you mean, child?

I'm eating my heart out to know!"

"Don't eat it, dearest.

You can't eat your heart and have it, too.

And it's your most important possession."

"I wish you wouldn't tease me when I'm tired.

Is it part of the secret you and Rachel were always giggling over, when we first got to Cairo?"

"Yes, dear, it is, if you must know.

But I don't want to tell even you what the secret is, please!

You might think it your duty to spoil Rachel's fun, and she and I are both enjoying it _so_ much."

"Can you guess what she means, Duffer?"

Biddy appealed to me.

"You know I wrote you that Monny and Miss Guest had a secret.

I thought afterward it might have been only their plan to see the hasheesh den; but since then I've realized it was something else."

"Even if I could guess, ought I to give Miss Gilder away, when she has just told you she doesn't want you to know?"

I asked innocently.

They both turned on me in a flash.

(I expected that.

) "_Do_ you guess?"

"I don't see, if I do, why I shouldn't have _my_ little secret," I mildly replied.

I knew that, after this, Monny would give me a good deal of her society, even though she might not have forgiven me for bolting to haul down the Cook ensign, in the midst of her confidences.

But in truth I have not guessed the secret!

My wits go wheeling round it, like screaming swallows who see a crumb.

I get a glimpse of the crumb, and lose it again.

In my present mood I almost regret that Bedr and his supposed Germans have not dumped themselves down in our field.

It would have been like them to do so, judging by the aggressive checks on those mustard tweeds; but as a matter of fact the party has disappeared from view since just before Birket Karun.

They may have turned back to Cairo; they may have been swallowed up by a palsied sand dune; they may have been eaten by jackals (we saw a dead one), or they may have taken to the fleshpots of a Greek hotel in Medinet; but the fact remains that, just when he might be useful, Bedr is not to be had.

In our tent to-night, I took advantage of our friendship to try and draw Fenton out a little on the subject of his feelings.

It seemed the right hour to open the door of the soul.

The Fallaheen having taken their families home, our tent-flaps were up, and only the stars looked in--stars swarming like fireflies in the blue cup of a hanging flower;

but Anthony would speak of nothing more intimate than the Mountain of the Golden Pyramid, or his tiresome sheikh's tomb.

I yearned to tell him of the _contretemps_ about the hieroglyphic letter, but something stopped the confession on the end of my tongue, though perhaps in the circumstances, I owed it to Mrs. East.

If he had mentioned her name the story might have come out; but the one drop of Eastern blood which mingles with a hundred of the West in Anthony's veins makes him singularly reserved, aggravatingly reticent where women are concerned.

I used to think that this was because he was not interested in them.

But something--I can't explain what, unless it's instinct--tells me that this is no longer the case.

Another interest has come into his life, rivalling his soldier interest, and the secret hope buried deep in our Mountain.

I see it in his eyes.

I hear it in the _timbre_ of his voice.

It means Woman.

But what woman?

Is Monny right?

Is he falling seriously in love for the first time in his strenuous life with Biddy, whom he picked out for admiration the moment he set eyes on her?

Or is it Monny herself?

I must be a dog in the manger, because I don't like the idea of its being either.

He is asleep on the other side of the tent as I write.

Desert dogs do not disturb him.

He's great on concentrating his mind, and when he goes to sleep he concentrates on that.

I wish he'd talk in his sleep!

But even in unconsciousness, he is discreet as a statue.

_The Last Day.

Evening:_ I am in disgrace, and am left alone to bear it, so I may as well finish my Desert Diary.

It's all an account of a lamb, just an ordinary, modern lamb you might meet anywhere.

But I mustn't begin with that, though it haunts me.

In spirit it's here in the tent, sitting at my feet, staring up into my face.

Avaunt, lamb!

Thy blood is not on _my_ head.

Go to those who deserve thee.

I wish to write of Crocodilopolis.

Shetet, the city was called in the beginning of things; Shetet, or the "Reclaimed," for the Egyptians stole land from the water, and made it the capital of their great Lake Province, which Ptolemy Philadelphus renamed to please his adored wife.

Queen Arsinoë was charming, no doubt; and the Greek ruins and papyri of her day are interesting, but it is the city sacred to the crocodile god Sebek which can alone distract my thoughts now from the tragedy of the black lamb.

If his Ka refuses to go I shall set crocodiles at it --ghosts of crocodiles mummied somewhere under the desert hills which separate the Fayoum from the Nile Valley.

We drove out to the ruins in a string of hired carriages, at an incredibly early hour this morning.

As the night was one long dog-howl, and the dawn one overwhelming cockcrow, people were thankful to get up.

But what a waste of hardly obtained baths before the start!

Between Medinet and Crocodilopolis rose a solid wall of red dust.

We had to break through it, as firemen dash through the smoke of a burning house;

and when our arabeahs stopped at the foot of a mountainous mound, about a mile out of Medinet, the dust had come too.

Scrambling up, with the wind on our backs, we began to breathe; but it was not until we had ascended to the old guard house on top of the pottery strewn height, that we could draw a clean breath.

Then the reward was worth the pains.

Down below us, seen as from a bird's-eye view, lay a vast, unroofed honeycomb.

It's size was incredible.

The thing could not really be there.

It was a startling dream, that endless gold-brown city of regular streets, and mud brick buildings, big and small, shops and houses, theatres and libraries, lacking only their roofs, deserted save by ghosts for thousands of years, yet looking as though it had been destroyed by a cyclone yesterday.

Down there in the devastated beehive myriads of bees still worked frantically, human bees, which Cleopatra said were reincarnations of those who had owned slaves and killed them with forced labour, when Shetet was among the richest cities of the "Two Lands."

These bees of to-day worked to destroy, not to recreate, for the crumbling brick is the best of fertilizers--and fertilizing their land is the one great interest in life for the Fellaheen of the Fayoum.

Furiously they tore at the remaining walls; furiously they packed away their treasure of dried mud in sacks; furiously they piled it on backs of donkeys and rushed away to make room for others.

Each instant hundreds of wild figures in dusty black or blue scampered off, beating loaded donkeys, only to be replaced by hundreds more doing the same thing in the same manner.

Yet always a few forms remained stationary.

They were police guardians of the ruins, men armed with staves, whose business was to oversee each worker's sack, lest some rare roll of papyri, some rich jewel which once adorned a pampered crocodile of the lake, should be found and stolen.

Glimpsed through the red flame of blowing, ruby dust, the scene was a vision of Inferno; we on our mount looking down on it were in company of Dante and Virgil.

The rest of the day we gave to a light-railway excursion to Illahun and the brick Pyramid of Hawara.

There was much laughing and shrieking among the girls of the Set (I don't count Monny, who shrieks for nothing less terrible than the largest spiders) as Arabs pushed our trolley cars along the line; and we were frivolous even on the site of the labyrinth which was, perhaps, copied from the Labyrinth of Crete.

The Set were frankly disappointed in the few remains of granite columns and carvings; but vague memories of jewels seen at the Egyptian Museum waked an interest in the brick pyramid tomb at Hawara where King Amenemhat and his daughter Ptah-nefru lay for a few thousand years.

All of us were eager for the "last camp tea," when we got "home" from our expedition, and it was then that the tragedy happened: the tragedy of the black lamb.

How could I guess, when Yusef said the camel-boys wanted money to buy meat as a feast for the last day, that they meant to buy it alive?

When we arrived in camp, an idyllic scene was being enacted.

A woolly black lamb with a particularly engaging facial expression was being hospitably entertained by all our men with the exception of the chêf. They formed an admiring ring round it, taking turns in feeding it with bersim, and patting its delightfully innocent head.

It was difficult to say which was happier, the charming guest or its kind hosts.

"How _sweet_ of them!"

said Miss Hassett-Bean.

"I must write a few verses about this, for our home paper!"

Everybody joined with her in thinking the Arabs sweet, and Enid Biddell went round and took up a collection.

The men arranged a football match for our benefit, to show their gratitude, and played so well and were so picturesque that Sir John and other ardent sportsmen pressed more money upon them.

It was altogether a red-letter day for the camel-boys, quite apart from the fact that they would get rid of their noble benefactors to-morrow; and by way of a climax they had what we supposed to be a bonfire at dark.

"Aren't all those white figures wonderful, grouped round the blaze?"

asked Monny, who appeared on the whole satisfied with the way in which the desert had taken her.

"And look, the flames are reflected on the clouds.

I do believe it's going to _rain_, if such a thing can happen here!

I hope it won't spoil the poor darlings' celebration.

Why, they seem to have something big and black hanging over the fire.

What _can_ it be?

Oh, it looks awful!"

"It is not awful, mees," Yusef, standing near, good naturedly reassured her.

"It very naice.

It is the lamb, they cook for their supper.

The genelman, milord, he give them money to buy it."

"Lamb?"

shrieked Monny, in a wild voice which brought a crowd round us.

"_Lamb_!

Not--oh, not--" "Yes, mees, you all see it feeded when you come home, when you say it so sweet.

Camel-boys find sweeter now!"

"Oh!"

the girl exclaimed.

"Fiends!

They invited that lamb here, and brought it in their arms and played with it and did everything they could to make it think it was having a pleasant afternoon, and then --they _killed_ it!"

"Of course, yes, mees," said Yusef, puzzled.

"Why else for milord tell they can buy it?

They kill and pound it up to make it good, and soon they eat in honour of the genelmen and ladies who have been so kind this naice trip."

"I should like to kill _them_!"

gasped Monny, preparing to cry, and flinging herself into Biddy's arms.

"Oh--_somebody_ give me a hanky --quick!"

We all felt mechanically in our pockets; but I, being nearest, was first in the field.

It was a shock to see Monny wave my handkerchief away with a gesture of horror, and bury her face in a far inferior one tendered by Anthony.

"No _wonder_!"

exclaimed Miss Hassett-Bean, who is not, as a rule, a Monny-ite.

"You're _quite_ right, Miss Gilder.

Lord Ernest Borrow, I don't see _much_ difference between you and a murderer!"

For a minute, I did not know what she meant.

Then it broke upon me that the Arabs' monstrous breach of hospitality to the lamb was laid at my door.

I jabbered explanations, but no one listened; and just then the rain, which nobody had believed in, seized the opportunity of coming down in floods.

The camels roared with rage and surprise; the camel-boys swore Arab oaths; the fire sputtered, and what became of the half-cooked lamb I shall never know.

We rushed for the dining-tent, all soaked in an instant, with the exception of Brigit and Monny, whom "Antoun" protected with a long cloak.

Dinner was a gloomy feast, which might have been composed of funeral baked meats, though the chêf himself came to the door and vowed by all his saints that the lamb cutlets were not from _that_ lamb.

So well did he exonerate himself, so eloquently did he protest that he had nothing to do with the camel-boys' orgy, that another special collection was taken up for him.

"Poor, dear old gentleman!"

sighed Miss Hassett-Bean.

"I shall never be able to forget him.

When I'm out of this awful country of _cannibals_, and safe in my own home, he will simply haunt me, passing his respectable old age, black though he is, chasing across deserts on camels, wrapped in a blanket and covered with chicken coops, at the mercy of any queer Christian who can afford to pay for him.

It's a _tragedy_!"

Perhaps she wrote her poem about the cook instead of the camel-boys.

Luckily, however, at the last moment I remembered a superstition of the Ancient Egyptians.

They were in the habit of sacrificing a black lamb to propitiate Set, the sender of storms.

Our lamb _was_ black: and at the hour of his untimely death a storm was coming up.

The dreadful deed, therefore, was turned into a Rite.