by Grant Allen
‘I wish I could think so, dear,’ Elsie answered. ‘But your confidence staggers me.’
That evening at our table-d’hôte, however, it was amply justified. A smooth-faced young man of ample girth and most prosperous exterior happened to sit next us. He had his wife with him, so I judged it safe to launch on conversation. We soon found out he was the millionaire editor-proprietor of a great London daily, with many more strings to his journalistic bow; his honoured name was Elworthy. I mentioned casually that we thought of going for the winter to Egypt. He pricked his ears up. But at the time he said nothing. After dinner, we adjourned to the cosy salon. I talked to him and his wife; and somehow, that evening, the devil entered into me. I am subject to devils. I hasten to add, they are mild ones. I had one of my reckless moods just then, however, and I reeled off rattling stories of our various adventures. Mr. Elworthy believed in youth and audacity; I could see I interested him. The more he was amused, the more reckless I became. ‘That’s bright,’ he said at last, when I told him the tale of our amateur exploits in the sale of Manitous. ‘That would make a good article!’
‘Yes,’ I answered, with bravado, determined to strike while the iron was hot. ‘What the Daily Telephone lacks is just one enlivening touch of feminine brightness.’
He smiled. ‘What is your forte?’ he inquired.
‘My forte,’ I answered, ’is — to go where I choose, and write what I like about it.’
He smiled again. ‘And a very good new departure in journalism, too! A roving commission! Have you ever tried your hand at writing?’
Had I ever tried! It was the ambition of my life to see myself in print; though, hitherto, it had been ineffectual. ‘I have written a few sketches,’ I answered, with becoming modesty. As a matter of fact, our office bulged with my unpublished manuscripts.
‘Could you let me see them?’ he asked.
I assented, with inner joy, but outer reluctance. ‘If you wish it,’ I murmured; ‘but — you must be very lenient!’
HE READ THEM, CRUEL MAN, BEFORE MY VERY EYES.
Though I had not told Elsie, the truth of the matter was, I had just then conceived an idea for a novel — my magnum opus — the setting of which compelled Egyptian local colour; and I was therefore dying to get to Egypt, if chance so willed it. I submitted a few of my picked manuscripts accordingly to Mr. Elworthy, in fear and trembling. He read them, cruel man, before my very eyes; I sat and waited, twiddling my thumbs, demure but apprehensive.
When he had finished, he laid them down.
‘Racy!’ he said. ‘Racy! You’re quite right, Miss Cayley. That’s just what we want on the Daily Telephone. I should like to print these three,’ selecting them out, ‘at our usual rate of pay per thousand.’
‘You are very kind.’ But the room reeled with me.
‘Not at all. I am a man of business. And these are good copy. Now, about this Egypt. I will put the matter in the shape of a business proposition. Will you undertake, if I pay your passage, and your friend’s, with all travelling expenses, to let me have three descriptive articles a week, on Cairo, the Nile, Syria, and India, running to about two thousand words apiece, at three guineas a thousand?’
My breath came and went. It was positive opulence. The super with the goose couldn’t approach it for patness. My editor had brought me the apple sauce as well, without even giving me the trouble of cooking it.
The very next day everything was arranged. Elsie tried to protest, on the foolish ground that she had no money: but the faculty had ordered the apex of her right lung to go to Egypt, and I couldn’t let her fly in the face of the faculty. We secured our berths in a P. and O. steamer from Brindisi; and within a week we were tossing upon the bosom of the blue Mediterranean.
People who haven’t crossed the blue Mediterranean cherish an absurd idea that it is always calm and warm and sunny. I am sorry to take away any sea’s character; but I speak of it as I find it (to borrow a phrase from my old gyp at Girton); and I am bound to admit that the Mediterranean did not treat me as a lady expects to be treated. It behaved disgracefully. People may rhapsodize as long as they choose about a life on the ocean wave; for my own part, I wouldn’t give a pin for sea-sickness. We glided down the Adriatic from Brindisi to Corfu with a reckless profusion of lateral motion which suggested the idea that the ship must have been drinking.
I tried to rouse Elsie when we came abreast of the Ionian Islands, and to remind her that ‘Here was the home of Nausicaa in the Odyssey.’ Elsie failed to respond; she was otherwise occupied. At last, I succumbed and gave it up. I remember nothing further till a day and a half later, when we got under lee of Crete, and the ship showed a tendency to resume the perpendicular. Then I began once more to take a languid interest in the dinner question.
I may add parenthetically that the Mediterranean is a mere bit of a sea, when you look at it on the map — a pocket sea, to be regarded with mingled contempt and affection; but you learn to respect it when you find that it takes four clear days and nights of abject misery merely to run across its eastern basin from Brindisi to Alexandria. I respected the Mediterranean immensely while we lay off the Peloponnesus in the trough of the waves with a north wind blowing; I only began to temper my respect with a distant liking when we passed under the welcome shelter of Crete on a calm, star-lit evening.
It was deadly cold. We had not counted upon such weather in the sunny south. I recollected now that the Greeks were wont to represent Boreas as a chilly deity, and spoke of the Thracian breeze with the same deferentially deprecating adjectives which we ourselves apply to the east wind of our fatherland; but that apt classical memory somehow failed to console or warm me. A good-natured male passenger, however, volunteered to ask us, ‘Will I get ye a rug, ladies?’ The form of his courteous question suggested the probability of his Irish origin.
‘You are very kind,’ I answered. ‘If you don’t want it for yourself, I’m sure my friend would be glad to have the use of it.’
‘Is it meself? Sure I’ve got me big ulsther, and I’m as warrum as a toast in it. But ye’re not provided for this weather. Ye’ve thrusted too much to those rascals the po-uts. ‘Where breaks the blue Sicilian say,’ the rogues write. I’d like to set them down in it, wid a nor’-easter blowing!’
He fetched up his rug. It was ample and soft, a smooth brown camel-hair. He wrapped us both up in it. We sat late on deck that night, as warm as a toast ourselves, thanks to our genial Irishman.
‘TIS DOCTOR MACLOGHLEN, HE ANSWERED.
We asked his name. ‘’Tis Dr. Macloghlen,’ he answered. ‘I’m from County Clare, ye see; and I’m on me way to Egypt for thravel and exploration. Me fader whisht me to see the worruld a bit before I’d settle down to practise me profession at Liscannor. Have ye ever been in County Clare? Sure, ’tis the pick of Oireland.’
‘We have that pleasure still in store,’ I answered, smiling. ‘It spreads gold-leaf over the future, as George Meredith puts it.’
‘Is it Meredith? Ah, there’s the foine writer! ’Tis jaynius the man has: I can’t undtherstand a word of him. But he’s half Oirish, ye know. What proof have I got of it? An’ would he write like that if there wasn’t a dhrop of the blood of the Celt in him?’
Next day and next night, Mr. Macloghlen was our devoted slave. I had won his heart by admitting frankly that his countrywomen had the finest and liveliest eyes in Europe — eyes with a deep twinkle, half fun, half passion. He took to us at once, and talked to us incessantly. He was a red-haired, raw-boned Munster-man, but a real good fellow. We forgot the aggressive inequalities of the Mediterranean while he talked to us of ‘the pizzantry.’ Late the second evening he propounded a confidence. It was a lovely night; Orion overhead, and the plashing phosphorescence on the water below conspired with the hour to make him specially confidential. ‘Now, Miss Cayley,’ he said, leaning forward on his deck chair, and gazing earnestly into my eyes, ‘there’s wan question I’d like to ask ye. The ambition of me life is to get into Parlimint
. And I want to know from ye, as a frind — if I accomplish me heart’s wish — is there annything, in me apparence, ar in me voice, ar in me accent, ar in me manner, that would lade annybody to suppose I was an Oirishman?’
I succeeded, by good luck, in avoiding Elsie’s eye. What on earth could I answer? Then a happy thought struck me. ‘Dr. Macloghlen,’ I said, ‘it would not be the slightest use your trying to conceal it; for even if nobody ever detected a faint Irish intonation in your words or phrases — how could your eloquence fail to betray you for a countryman of Sheridan and Burke and Grattan?’
He seized my hand with such warmth that I thought it best to hurry down to my state-room at once, under cover of my compliment.
At Alexandria and Cairo we found him invaluable. He looked after our luggage, which he gallantly rescued from the lean hands of fifteen Arab porters, all eagerly struggling to gain possession of our effects; he saw us safe into the train; and he never quitted us till he had safely ensconced us in our rooms at Shepheard’s. For himself, he said, with subdued melancholy, ’twas to some cheaper hotel he must go; Shepheard’s wasn’t for the likes of him; though if land in County Clare was wort’ what it ought to be, there wasn’t a finer estate in all Oireland than his fader’s.
Our Mr. Elworthy was a modern proprietor, who knew how to do things on the lordly scale. Having commissioned me to write this series of articles, he intended them to be written in the first style of art, and he had instructed me accordingly to hire one of Cook’s little steam dahabeeahs, where I could work at leisure. Dr. Macloghlen was in his element arranging for the trip. ‘Sure the only thing I mind,’ he said, ’is — that I’ll not be going wid ye.’ I think he was half inclined to invite himself; but there again I drew a line. I will not sell salt fish; and I will not go up the Nile, unchaperoned, with a casual man acquaintance.
He did the next best thing, however: he took a place in a sailing dahabeeah; and as we steamed up slowly, stopping often on the way, to give me time to write my articles, he managed to arrive almost always at every town or ruin exactly when we did.
I will not describe the voyage. The Nile is the Nile. Just at first, before we got used to it, we conscientiously looked up the name of every village we passed on the bank in our Murray and our Baedeker. After a couple of days’ Niling, however, we found that formality quite unnecessary. They were all the same village, under a number of aliases. They did not even take the trouble to disguise themselves anew, like Dr. Fortescue-Langley, on each fresh appearance. They had every one of them a small whitewashed mosque, with a couple of tall minarets; and around it spread a number of mud-built cottages, looking more like bee-hives than human habitations. They had also every one of them a group of date-palms, overhanging a cluster of mean bare houses; and they all alike had a picturesque and even imposing air from a distance, but faded away into indescribable squalor as one got abreast of them. Our progress was monotonous. At twelve, noon, we would pass Aboo-Teeg, with its mosque, its palms, its mud-huts, and its camels; then for a couple of hours we would go on through the midst of a green field on either side, studded by more mud-huts, and backed up by a range of gray desert mountains; only to come at 2 p.m., twenty miles higher up, upon Aboo-Teeg once more, with the same mosque, the same mud-huts, and the same haughty camels, placidly chewing the same aristocratic cud, but under the alias of Koos-kam. After a wild hubbub at the quay, we would leave Koos-kam behind, with its camels still serenely munching day-before-yesterday’s dinner; and twenty miles further on, again, having passed through the same green plain, backed by the same gray mountains, we would stop once more at the identical Koos-kam, which this time absurdly described itself as Tahtah. But whether it was Aboo-Teeg or Koos-kam or Tahtah or anything else, only the name differed: it was always the same town, and had always the same camels at precisely the same stage of the digestive process. It seemed to us immaterial whether you saw all the Nile or only five miles of it. It was just like wall-paper. A sample sufficed; the whole was the sample infinitely repeated.
However, I had my letters to write, and I wrote them valiantly. I described the various episodes of the complicated digestive process in the camel in the minutest detail. I gloated over the date-palms, which I knew in three days as if I had been brought up upon dates. I gave word-pictures of every individual child, veiled woman, Arab sheikh, and Coptic priest whom we encountered on the voyage. And I am open to reprint those conscientious studies of mud-huts and minarets with any enterprising publisher who will make me an offer.
TOO MUCH NILE.
Another disillusion weighed upon my soul. Before I went up the Nile, I had a fancy of my own that the bank was studded with endless ruined temples, whose vast red colonnades were reflected in the water at every turn. I think Macaulay’s Lays were primarily answerable for that particular misapprehension. As a matter of fact, it surprised me to find that we often went for two whole days’ hard steaming without ever a temple breaking the monotony of those eternal date-palms, those calm and superciliously irresponsive camels. In my humble opinion, Egypt is a fraud; there is too much Nile — very dirty Nile at that — and not nearly enough temple. Besides, the temples, when you do come up with them, are just like the villages; they are the same temple over again, under a different name each time, and they have the same gods, the same kings, the same wearisome bas-reliefs, except that the gentleman in a chariot, ten feet high, who is mowing down enemies a quarter his own size, with unsportsmanslike recklessness, is called Rameses in this place, and Sethi in that, and Amen-hotep in the other. With this trifling variation, when you have seen one temple, one obelisk, one hieroglyphic table, you have seen the whole of Ancient Egypt.
At last, after many days’ voyage through the same scenery daily — rising in the morning off a village with a mosque, ten palms, and two minarets, and retiring late at night off the same village once more, with mosque, palms, and minarets, as before, da capo — we arrived one evening at a place called Geergeh. In itself, I believe, Geergeh did not differ materially from all the other places we had passed on our voyage: it had its mosque, its ten palms, and its two minarets as usual. But I remember its name, because something mysterious went wrong there with our machinery; and the engineer informed us we must wait at least three days to mend it. Dr. Macloghlen’s dahabeeah happened opportunely to arrive at the same spot on the same day; and he declared with fervour he would ‘see us through our throubles.’ But what on earth were we to do with ourselves through three long days and nights at Geergeh? There were the ruins of Abydus close at hand, to be sure; though I defy anybody not a professed Egyptologist to give more than one day to the ruins of Abydus. In this emergency, Dr. Macloghlen came gallantly to our aid. He discovered by inquiring from an English-speaking guide that there was an unobtrusive oasis, never visited by Europeans, one long day’s journey off, across the desert. As a rule, it takes at least three days to get camels and guides together for such an expedition: for Egypt is not a land to hurry in. But the indefatigable Doctor further unearthed the fact that a sheikh had just come in, who (for a consideration) would lend us camels for a two days’ trip; and we seized the chance to do our duty by Mr. Elworthy and the world-wide circulation. An unvisited oasis — and two Christian ladies to be the first to explore it: there’s journalistic enterprise for you! If we happened to be killed, so much the better for the Daily Telephone. I pictured the excitement at Piccadilly Circus. ‘Extra Special, Our Own Correspondent brutally murdered!’ I rejoiced at the opportunity.
I cannot honestly say that Elsie rejoiced with me. She cherished a prejudice against camels, massacres, and the new journalism. She didn’t like being murdered: though this was premature, for she had never tried it. She objected that the fanatical Mohammedans of the Senoosi sect, who were said to inhabit the oasis in question, might cut our throats for dogs of infidels. I pointed out to her at some length that it was just that chance which added zest to our expedition as a journalistic venture: fancy the glory of being the first lady journalists martyre
d in the cause! But she failed to grasp this aspect of the question. However, if I went, she would go too, she said, like a dear girl that she is: she would not desert me when I was getting my throat cut.
EMPHASIS.
Dr. Macloghlen made the bargain for us, and insisted on accompanying us across the desert. He told us his method of negotiation with the Arabs with extreme gusto. ‘“Is it pay in advance ye want?” says I to the dirty beggars: “divvil a penny will ye get till ye bring these ladies safe back to Geergeh. And remimber, Mr. Sheikh,” says I, fingering me pistol, so, by way of emphasis, “we take no money wid us; so if yer friends at Wadi Bou choose to cut our throats, ’tis for the pleasure of it they’ll be cutting them, not for anything they’ll gain by it.” “Provisions, effendi?” says he, salaaming. “Provisions, is it?” says I. “Take everything ye’ll want wid you; I suppose ye can buy food fit for a Crischun in the bazaar in Geergeh; and never wan penny do ye touch for it all till ye’ve landed us on the bank again, as safe as ye took us. So if the religious sintiments of the faithful at Wadi Bou should lade them to hack us to pieces,” says I, just waving me revolver, “thin ’tis yerself that will be out of pocket by it.” And the ould divvil cringed as if he took me for the Prince of Wales. Faix, ’tis the purse that’s the best argumint to catch these haythen Arabs upon.’
When we set out for the desert in the early dawn next day, it looked as if we were starting for a few months’ voyage. We had a company of camels that might have befitted a caravan. We had two large tents, one for ourselves, and one for Dr. Macloghlen, with a third to dine in. We had bedding, and cushions, and drinking water tied up in swollen pig-skins, which were really goat-skins, looking far from tempting. We had bread and meat, and a supply of presents to soften the hearts and weaken the religious scruples of the sheikhs at Wadi Bou. ‘We thravel en prince,’ said the Doctor. When all was ready we got under way solemnly, our camels rising and sniffing the breeze with a superior air, as who should say, ‘I happen to be going where you happen to be going; but don’t for a moment suppose I do it to please you. It is mere coincidence. You are bound for Wadi Bou: I have business of my own which chances to take me there.’
