Читать книгу There was a King in Egypt - Norma Lorimer - Страница 7

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At five o'clock Michael Amory, true to his word, was down at the ferry, awaiting the arrival of Margaret Lampton. The ferry-boat was pulling across the Nile; he would soon be able to distinguish her. In all probability no other Englishwoman would be crossing to the western bank of the river at so late an hour. Tourists who came to visit the Colossi of Memnon, whose song to the dawn never dies, or to "do" the ruins of the Hundred-Gated city of Thebes, came much earlier in the day.

While the boat was drifting slowly across, Michael's eyes rested lovingly on his surroundings. If the girl was appreciative of Nile scenery, how greatly it must be impressing her!

Boats, like white birds with big crossed wings, flew past him on the pale blue river. Heavy, flat-bottomed barges, coming up from the pottery factories, laden with jars which were to be used for the building of native houses, drifted past, with their well-stacked, squarely-built cargoes piled high like stacks of grain. One barge, with a wide brown sail, was full of fresh green melons. Across the river, on the opposite bank, bands of women, enveloped in black and walking in Indian file on the yellow sands, carrying water-jars on their heads, were wending their way to their mud villages. The gleam of their metal anklets caught the sunlight.

But the ferry-boat was drawing close to the bank; the next minute he would be able to distinguish Freddy's sister, with Abdul in attendance. The other passengers, with native politeness, were already making way for the English Sitt and her servant to go ashore.

Michael hurried forward to greet her. Margaret's blue veil hid her features until he was quite close to her.

"I'm Michael Amory, I live with your brother," Michael said. "I have come to bring you to his camp. He was too busy, or he would have been here himself—he asked me to apologize to you."

Margaret's long firm fingers gave Michael's outstretched hand a grateful grasp. Michael, whose sensibilities were very near the surface, lost nothing of the girl's meaning. A feeling of relief soothed his anxiety.

"How awfully kind of you to come!" she said. "I knew Freddy would be busy, digging up something that was once somebody, four thousand years ago."

"That's about it," Michael said. "As I could be spared and he couldn't, he asked me to look to your arrival and bring you to the camp."

Abdul had hurried on to see that the donkeys were properly harnessed and all in good order for the long ride across the plain and through the immortal valley.

"Are you excavating too?" Margaret asked.

"I'm allowed to do a little 'picking' under your brother's eyes, but my real job is painting. I'm only dabbling in archaeology as yet."

"Painting in connection with his School of Excavation?"

"Yes. Sometimes it is necessary to make almost instant copies of the excavated paintings, while the colours are fresh and the text legible."

"Isn't it all awfully interesting?" the girl asked. "I feel almost

afraid to come in amongst you, for I know literally nothing about

Egyptology. I've only once been in the Egyptian section of the British

Museum, and that's the sum total of my knowledge."

"You will have to learn. Your brother put a huge tome of Maspero's The Dawn of Civilization in your room this morning; he means you to start right away."

"Good old Freddy!" Margaret said, and as she smiled, Michael for the first time saw her likeness to her brother; it had escaped him before, because Freddy was very fair and Margaret was duskily dark. He could see that even through her blue veil. When she smiled and showed the same sharp-looking, well-formed teeth, as white as porcelain, Michael knew that if the girl had only been fair instead of dark, she would be almost the exact duplicate of her brother. But the expression of her grey-brown eyes was different; they were steadfast, calm eyes, which moved more slowly; they were softer than her brother's.

This Michael could scarcely see, screened as she was by her veil. But her firm handshake and the long unflinching gaze of her "How do you do?" told him why Freddy always spoke of his sister in tones which implied that she was as reliable as a man and a "topping pal."

They had reached the spot where the donkeys were waiting for them. Margaret's was a fine, well-bred animal, called Sappho, with a skin as smooth as a white suede glove; it stood almost as high as a mule. Her saddle, too, was a new one, and well-fitting—Freddy had seen to that. The old Sheikh, who was turbanned and robed after the manner of Moses or Aaron, was presented to her. His pale grey camel was waiting for him at a little distance from the donkeys. It looked very dignified, with its white sheepskin flung over the saddle and its fine assortment of charms. Little tufts of thick hair had been left on its thighs and at its knees and neck; the artist who had clipped it had evidently admired the fancy shaving of some resplendent French poodle.

Margaret felt oddly important and very shy. Such a cavalcade seemed to have come to meet her. Her attempt at polite rejoinders to the old Sheikh's graceful and flattering speeches of welcome had all to be passed through Abdul, and probably delivered them in a more gracious form than Margaret was capable of expressing them. Abdul was quite accustomed to the abrupt and mannerless ways of the foreigners and to their crude speech; he knew that it meant no offence nor indicated any lack of gratitude or graciousness.

The Sheikh expressed his willingness to put his camel at Margaret's disposal, but as her brother had told him that the honourable Sitt would probably prefer to ride a donkey, all he could do was to again assure her that it would bestow honour on him if she would ride it, or in the future make use of it whenever she felt disposed. That is what Margaret made out of the endless, elaborate speeches which were translated to her.

At last they were all mounted and on their way. Margaret found it very difficult to keep up any sort of conversation with her companions, for her boy, anxious to do honour to his mistress's donkey, kept Sappho well ahead of Michael Amory's mule. She had only been one week in Egypt, so everything which she passed was still an object of interest and curiosity, but fortunately almost everything explained itself to her, like the illustrations of a book of the Old Testament.

They had turned their backs on the river, with its boats and birds and beasts and drum-beating and yelling fellahin, and were now in the silence of the green plain, where the blue-shirted fellahin were working knee-deep in the new crops. The inundation was just over, and the banks of the Nile were as bright as two long velvet ribbons of emerald green.

And now they were off the plain and had passed the Temple of Kurneh and the little Coptic village, which was the last link with civilization until their long ride up the valley terminated in the Excavation Camp.

In the valley they rode side by side, for the donkey-boy's enthusiasm had distinctly abated. Margaret did not know anything about the valley, beyond the fact that it was called the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings. She had not yet "done" any tombs, as she had not come up the Nile by boat—it was cheaper and quicker for her to do the journey from Cairo to Luxor by train. So far she had not been in the hands of Cook. Freddy had told her that the money she would have to spend on the steamer she could spend better later on, and she would be more able to appreciate the tombs and temples, which most tourists see when they know too little about things Egyptian to appreciate them.

Knowing nothing of the story of the great valley, it was interesting to Michael to watch the effect it had on the girl—an extraordinary silence and its atmosphere of profound mystery. Their attempt to talk to each other soon failed, for Margaret was no good at either banter or small talk.

For the time being the valley, with its barren cliffs rising higher and higher on each side of her, and its world of soft pink light, held her. The wide cliff-bound road, which wound its way like a white thread through a maze of light and sun-pink hills, seemed to be leading her further and further into the heart of Egypt, to the very bosom of her children's ancient kingdom.

Margaret was totally ignorant of the fact that the tombs which give the valley its modern name lay in all their desolate splendour in the bowels of the earth, under the cliffs on either side of her. Her sense of the valley was not mental, it was not derived from books or a knowledge of Egypt's history.

Why it so affected her she could not imagine. It did not depress her so much as it awed her. The light on the hills was the light of happiness, and the blueness of the clear sky banished all idea of sadness which a valley called the Valley of Tombs might have suggested. Yet it did affect her so profoundly that she accepted the idea that in entering this valley of desolation she was entering on a new phase of her existence. She felt suddenly older and wiser and strangely apprehensive.

The Sheikh, on his swaying camel, riding on ahead, the donkey-boys, with their fleet limbs and blue shirts clinging to them as they ran, were becoming immortal in her memory. Years would never efface the picture. Only Michael Amory and herself, in their European clothes, had no place in it. They were intruders.

Not a bird crossed their path, not a falcon circled over the tops of the cliffs. On the Nile thousands of birds had looked black against the sunlight as they came to the great river to drink.

"Why does this valley, with its pink sunlight, make talking out of the question?" Margaret at last said. "Please forgive me if I am a very poor companion."

Michael, who had been glad that she had not spoken—he would not have liked her so well if she had—said, "Please don't feel compelled to talk. I came to help you if you needed help, not to bother you or spoil your enjoyment."

"Thank you," she said. "I simply couldn't talk. Does one enjoy

Egypt?" she asked the question pertinently.

They rode on in silence again and Michael was pleased that temperamentally she seemed to "feel" Egypt. There had been no suggestion of psychic influence in her very evident acceptance of the power of Egypt—just a simple awe, which was to Michael absolutely natural.

Presently she said, "Does my brother live all alone in this valley?"

"Practically alone, for some months in each year. I am with him just now, and in the daytime there are the workmen. At night he is alone with his two Sudanese house-servants; but he is well protected—his watch-dogs sit round his hut and nothing human would dare venture near them after dark."

Margaret tried to laugh. "Dogs!" she said. "Dogs couldn't keep off this"—she indicated the valley.

Michael knew what she meant. Not a green blade of grass, not the smallest patch of herb was visible. To Margaret they seemed to be floating rather than riding through the pink light of another world.

"No, not this," Michael said. "But your brother's a marvel. I couldn't do it. Yet even he has to leave it now and then; sometimes he spends a night in frivolling in Luxor or Assuan."

As the vision of Luxor hotels, with their company of fashionably-clothed and overfed tourists, rose up before the girl, she laughed more naturally. But in the valley her laughter sounded wrong; she quickly hushed it.

"Fancy Luxor hotels after this! It certainly is going to extremes—personally, their society would bore me, but I should think that it was good for Freddy."

"Quite necessary," Michael said. "And he's awfully popular at the dances. I often wonder what some of his partners would say if they could see him as I do, pick in hand, down in the bowels of the earth or under the blazing sun of the desert, for days and days on end! Your brother's quite wonderful."

"I'm longing to see him at work," Margaret said. "I think his life sounds most exciting and interesting."

"Don't expect too much—it is amazingly interesting, but we don't open a tomb of Queen Thi every day."

"What tomb was that? Something very special?"

"Yes, very." Michael said the words very simply, but it struck him as odd that Freddy's sister should never have even heard of the tomb of Queen Thi. "At the present time he has just unearthed a small staircase in the sand and a bit of a brick wall, which may lead to the tomb he is looking for, or they may end in nothing, for sometimes the ancient tomb-builders began to dig and work upon a tomb and eventually abandoned the site as hopeless—the sand was too soft, which meant the constant falling of sand before they struck a foundation of rock, or for some other reason—so after days and days of excavating we find that the whole thing is a fraud, just the mere beginning of a tomb which was never finished. Then other times he finds a tomb and after endless work at it—you can't imagine how much work it entails—he discovers that it was robbed of every single thing of value, probably by the sexton who was in charge of it when it was first built—all the jewels and scarabs and things had been looted; probably they were stolen only a few weeks after the mummy was laid in it."

Margaret remained silent. She was thinking and thinking, new and bewildering thoughts were rushing through her mind Before she could in the least appreciate this new life what a lot she had to learn!

"An excavator's life isn't a bed of roses—it doesn't consist picking up jewels and mummy-beads and beautiful amulets and rare scarabs and valuable parchments in every tomb which is opened. It's hard, hard work, with any amount of boring, minute detail and scientific work attached to it."

Margaret thought for a moment. To speak at all upon a subject of which she knew absolutely nothing was not in her nature.

"Shall we pass any tombs? Where are they?" She had expected to see some ruins of fallen buildings, or monuments which resembled the tombs in "The Street of Tombs" at Athens—these were familiar to her from photographs. Here there was absolutely nothing, nothing to suggest that great tombs had ever been there.

"They are below us," Michael said, "and all around us, under these pink rocks, buried like coal-mines. Where your brother is digging just now the site is rather different—it is flatter and less beautiful; it is in a small side valley. They were terribly anxious to hide themselves, poor things, to get away from robbers."

"Oh, I'm so glad I came!" Margaret said, irrelevantly, and the deep sigh she gave terminated their conversation.

Michael knew quite well the nature of her thoughts and the turbulent fight for expression which they must be causing her. No creature as sensitively attuned as he judged her to be could journey for the first time unmoved through the valley which to him summed up the word Egypt. He allowed her to ride a few paces ahead, just behind the Sheikh. The camel's arrogant head, with its supercilious gaze, towered above them. To Margaret, Michael Amory and herself were still an offence in the valley. The camel, with the high-seated, turbaned Sheikh, seemed a part of the whole. The animal, with its prehistoric loneliness of expression, the Sheikh, with his splendid deportment and benign loftiness of manner, suited the dignity of their surroundings. The camel's gaze, as its head reached up higher and higher to view some object which interested its supercilious mind, made Margaret feel very small and vulgarly modern. She was glad that she was riding a humble ass. The way the Sheikh rode his haughty animal provoked her admiration; it was to her after the manner in which the British aristocracy treat their powdered and silk-stockinged menservants.

Margaret felt more at ease on her white donkey, just as she felt more at ease with pleasant English maidservants than with pompous powdered footmen. It was a ridiculous simile, but it is the ridiculous which invades the mind in sublime moments.

While Margaret was finding pleasure in watching the camel and the Sheikh, or rather, while they were taking their place in her mind with the air and the sky and the hills and the valley, Michael was certainly enjoying himself in a more definite criticism of Freddy's sister. He remembered his friend's remark, "Oh, Meg's all right," and he knew what he meant.

Her long limbs and boyish figure delighted his artistic eye, while the white topee hat, with the long blue veil, failed to hide the attractive carriage of her head. He felt impatient to see her unhatted and unveiled. Certainly she was not dowdy, nor had she any aggressive cleverness about her. Indeed, there was something which suggested a man's directness of mind and a simplicity which was quite unusual and fascinating. He could almost have laughed aloud when he thought of the picture which he had conjured up to himself of the Meg who could "tackle pretty stiff stuff and suck the guts out of a book like a weasel sucking the blood out of a rabbit."

The dowdy "blue stocking" had vanished, and in her place was a girl as attractive in her darkness as Freddy was in his fairness.

And so they rode on and on through the Theban hills, bathed in pink sunlight. The donkey-boys had fallen behind. Their first enthusiastic effort to show off before the honourable Sitt had quite subsided. They were discussing her now, in none too delicate a fashion. The elder of the two boys, who was the son of a dragoman, and hoped one day to develop into as resplendent a being as his father, was in his way a great reader. He had just finished an Arabic translation of a French novel and he was picturing to his friends Margaret as the heroine of the obscene romance. Poor Margaret!

In Egypt the Arabic translations of low-class French romances, rendered even more unclean by their translation, have a poisonous effect upon the minds of the youths who devour them. Margaret, who had admired the boy's brilliant smiles and beautiful features and teeth, which were even whiter and more attractive than her brother's, little dreamed, as they tell behind and talked together, of the nature of their conversation.

Their blue shirts looked like turquoise in the sunlight, and their little white crochet skull-caps showed to advantage the fine outline of their dark heads. They were certainly handsome young rascals, with an inherited grace of manner.

How her clean, healthy mind would have abhorred and hated them if she had understood their ceaseless chatter! It was like the noise of starlings on a spring morning. In Egypt, where ignorance is bliss, it is certainly folly to be wise. In the East, the inquiring mind, especially in domestic matters, is often its own enemy.

To Margaret, Egypt held for the time being nothing which was unclean or unlovely, nothing which was bettered by ignorance. She was lost in its light and mystery. In the Theban valley it seemed as if she would live on light, that it would supply food for both soul and body. In Egypt God is made manifest in the sun.