FOXY DUFFING

"I'll show you your place," Corkran volunteered, lying in wait for me inside the saloon door, with a cocktail in his hand. "Sorry you wouldn't have one. You'll need it. But no time to change your mind. I've put you at the head of the table that would be the captain's, if he ate with us, which he doesn't—happy man! Place of honour. 'Twas mine, 'tis yours. But I can't go on with the quotation unless I turn it into 'You're slave to thousands.' Sixty odd can be as formidable as thousands."

"Are there sixty odd?" I asked.

"Yes, very 'odd.' The Egypt lot will be about twenty-five. But the whole gang's yours for the present. I give them to you, with the seat of honour."

"Please don't put me in your place," I protested. "I prefer———"

"My poor boy, it isn't a question of what you prefer, as you'll learn if you stick this out. Of course if you funk it—but that's a joke! This table's the only one where you can be heard. Do you see?"

I did see; and accepted the situation, because the dinner bugle began to sound, and I could not be scampering round the saloon like a frightened rabbit as the Set and the Flock began dropping in to dinner. As it happened, they did not drop—they poured into the room in a steady stream, which phenomenon, whispered Corkran, was caused by curiosity for a first sight of me. My heart counted each new arrival, with a bump.

If Corkran had not represented "Lark's Party" as being a menagerie for which I had inadvertently engaged as tamer, I should have thought they looked a harmless crowd. But then, of course, I was not obliged to tame anybody on the Laconia, which makes a difference in one's point of view. Miss Gilder needed taming, no doubt, but I hadn't tackled the task. My thoughts flew to Cairo, as I stood struggling to look pleasant; and I wished myself back where Anthony Fenton was now in the taming business. I envied him, for there was only one Monny, whereas in this terrible, bright dining saloon, the air was pink and white with girls, dozens of girls, with eyes fixed on me, glittering eyes, which appeared like the headlights of motor cars. I didn't suppose there could be so many eyes in the world as these people of all ages and every possible sex seemed to own. Sixty odd they were, according to Corkran, but they looked like six hundred; a human miracle of loaves and fishes.

Yes, the creatures might have appeared harmless enough had there been no retired colonel. But there was a retired colonel, and so deftly had he undermined my courage that almost any shock might cause it to explode in a blue flame of funk. His speech of introduction was now to come, and if I survived that, I might hope to live through my own fireworks.

"They've put on their best bibs and tuckers," Corkran mumbled in a stage whisper, as the eight dwellers at our table began to sort themselves for places. Then, in portentous silence he paused till everybody everywhere was seated. Waiting still, until satisfied that eyes and ears were focussed upon us, he rapped on the table with the handle of a knife.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he roared, "I have the pleasure of introducing to you Sir Marcus Lark's Great Surprise, entitled Lord Ernest Borrow, younger brother of the Marquis of Killeena, a peer, as Sir Marcus has reminded us, of the oldest lineage in Ireland. Let me reassure you all by saying that Lord Ernest's last name is as unsuited to his nature as the first is true to it. If you'll pardon the pun it is Sir Marcus who 'Borrows' for your benefit, and he hasn't Borrowed Trouble, but a Blessing—in disguise. I am now left free, as suits my superior age and experience, to devote my attention to the serious minded ones among you, who are to proceed with the Reverend Mr. Watts and myself to Palestine. This young and gallant neophyte will 'lord' it over the fleshpots of Egypt and those about to seek them. I hope you'll help him as loyally as you have helped me: and later we'll drink to his health and success, in any beverage we happen to have signed for!"

To have killed Corkran might have been butchery; no jury could have brought in a verdict of murder or even manslaughter, had I stabbed him with the knife he used to pound upon the table. I smiled the smile of a skull in a doctor's waiting-room, and in a sickly voice bleated my pleasure in meeting these new acquaintances. I hoped we might be—er —friends as well as shipmates. Then like a mass of jelly out of its mould I plopped onto my chair. The colonel had sneaked off to his own table and I was left to recover myself as best I might among eight of his enemies. They proved (in whispers) to be the most active of these, and tacitly offered me allegiance which I accepted in the same manner. There was a Sir John Biddell, who informed me in the first five minutes that he had been Lord Mayor of London. He promised to show me a speech he had made in the presence of King Edward which, in the form of a newspaper cutting, he never travelled without. This, however, was his first trip farther than Paris, and he had brought with him, not only the speech, but his wife and twin daughters. The distinguished family occupied one side of my table: the other was given up to a General Harlow, his wife (both with high profiles and opinions of themselves), a youngish newspaper proprietor from Manchester, evidently rich and a "catch," and a maiden lady doubtless of importance equal to her proportions, as she was allowed to bring to the table a melancholy marmoset. These people did their best to raise my spirits. The girls, who copied royalties in their hair-dressing, looked alike, dressed alike, talked and laughed alike, and entertained me with chat about high society in London. They had red cheeks, black eyes, white teeth, and an almost indecent familiarity with the private lives of the aristocracy. The Misses Biddell and fat Miss Hassett-Bean (the lady of the marmoset) hinted that the cream of the yacht's social life had risen to our table, and told me, not only what to lecture about, but how to treat the rival cliques. My brain felt more and more like a blotting-pad. I answered at random and longed for the meal to end —until I remembered my lecture. Then I wished that dinner might go on indefinitely like the tea party of the Mad Hatter. All too soon the glory of a French menu flickered down to a dying spark of nuts and raisins, and hardly had I cracked my first almond (was it an ill omen that there should be a worm in it?) when a steward handed me a twisted note from the executioner. "The rule for conductor's dinner speech is, rise with the raisins! Hope you won't find your lecture too hard a nut to crack. Yours sympathetically, Corkran. Bang on the table to make them stop gabbling. Or shall I do it for you? If you haven't by the time I count ten, I will."

He did. I trust it wasn't my courage that failed. But having a raisin in my mouth I could not on the instant respond to the lash. And as Corkran would have said, it takes more than one swallow to make a speech. Ruthlessly he rapped, seizing what I wished might be his dying chance to indulge a mania for puns and thumping wood.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he bawled from his comparatively obscure corner. "Lord Ernest Borrow will render your last moments the most enjoyable of the meal, by washing down your nuts and raisins with the wine of his eloquence. Take your desserts now. We conscientious conductors hope for ours in heaven."

How ardently I desired that these might indeed be the "last moments" not only of my audience but of Colonel Corkran. If the next second had brought a tidal wave or a collision I should have blessed Providence. But I got to my feet—and nothing happened. I seemed to be in a dream, of having shot up to a gigantic height, and having put on the wrong clothes, or none. My hands weighed two pounds each, and ought to have been at the butcher's. My mouth was the size of a negro minstrel's, and so full of large bones which once had been teeth that I could not utter a syllable. I clacked my jaws, and emitted a hacking cough which fortunately so much resembled that of a professional lecturer that I kept my senses. Not only did I keep them, but they seemed suddenly to become my servants. The thought of a certain fable jumped into my head, and I began thereupon to speak; although I had forgotten everything I had ever read of Egyptian history.

"It happens," said I, in a phonographic voice, "that I was born in Egypt. I played with clay gods and goddesses instead of tin soldiers. I preferred stories of Egypt's past and present to tales of adventure. I confess to you what I fear I didn't confess to Sir Marcus Lark. The trouble is, I'm stuffed too full of facts about Egypt. I want you to help me get them out, and not duplicate yours. No doubt all of you, in travelling to the East, have packed your brains with knowledge as well as your boxes with guide books. Why should I bore you by telling you things that you were born knowing? A plan has occurred to me by which your knowledge can be turned into account. As I said, I beg your help. And permission to drink a cup of coffee would be first aid."

People laughed, whether at me, or with me, I was not sure; yet I felt that I had tickled their curiosity. Coffee was going round. Corkran was unctuously sipping his, and had not expected me to receive mine till after the battle. But I got it in spite of him, and mapped out a programme as I drank. Then I ceased to tremble before the confused assemblage or bird-headed gods, cat-faced goddesses, and sacred vultures that danced or flapped in my brain.

I no longer felt inclined to commit suicide because I could remember nothing about Egypt except that the Delta was shaped like a lily, with the Fayum for a bud, and the Nile for its stem: that Alexander the Macedonian defeated Darius the Persian B. C. three hundred and something; that ancient Egyptians loved beer, but were forbidden to eat beans.

"My proposal is," I went on, "that before I unload any of my knowledge upon you, I gleam some idea of what you know already. Thus I can spare you repetitions. Any one who has anything particularly interesting to say about Egypt, let him—or her—hold up a hand."

Now was the crucial moment. If no hand went up, I was lost. But hardly were the words out of my mouth when there was a waving as if in a wind-swept wheatfield Place aux dames! I called upon Miss Hassett-Bean to begin. She rustled silkily up, bowing to me, then directing an acetylene glare upon Colonel Corkran's end of the room. She was, I foresaw, about to kill two birds with one stone, to say nothing of the marmoset, who fell off her arm into General Harlow's coffee and created a brief diversion. As soon, however, as the monkey was rescued and before General Harlow's shirt front was dried, the lady began to speak.

"We all thank Lord Ernest," she said, looking from the colonel to the Reverend Wyman Watts, and back again, "for sparing us one of those commonplace inflictions from which we've nightly suffered on board this yacht. If we didn't know already, such school-book facts as Christianity being introduced to Egypt by St. Mark in Nero's time, and Moses and Plato both studying philosophy at Heliopolis, and things like that, we wouldn't be spending our money with Sir Marcus A. Lark to see Egypt. Never before have we been encouraged to air our views. Those of us with political opinions have been snubbed; and we who are interested in Woman Suffrage have been assured that we'll find nothing to please us in the land of Veiled Women. At last I am given a chance to state without being interrupted that Egypt was once the most enlightened country in her treatment of women. Long before the time of the Greeks, and even before the Shepherd Kings Mr. Watts has told us so much about, using his Old Testament as if it were a Baedeker, the women of Ancient Egypt had rights according to their class. Queens and princesses were considered equal with their husbands. Women were great musicians, playing on many instruments, especially the sistrum, sacred to the goddess Hathor. And weren't all the best gods goddesses, when you come to think of it? Women used to drive their own chariots, as we do our motors, and hold salons, like the French ladies. There was Rhodopis, for instance, who married the brother of Sappho. I wonder if Colonel Corkran could have told you that the story of Cinderella comes from an anecdote of Rhodopis? I hardly think that he's been able to spare enough time from bridge to study Strabo, who was the Baedeker of Egypt for tourists six hundred years before Christ. An eagle saw Rhodopis bathing, and stealing one of her sandals flew with it to Memphis, where he dropped it into the king's lap. It was so small and dainty that King Hophra scoured Egypt for the owner, and when he found her at last, according to Strabo, made her his queen."

"If Strabo was right, she lived long before Sappho's day!" interpolated the colonel's voice.

"Of course, Strabo was right. There were two of Rhodopis. Everybody knows that. The Third Pyramid was built for the tomb of the first one, not for King Mycineris, I believe. Why shouldn't a woman have a Pyramid to herself? The Sphinx is a woman, as I will insist to my dying day, if it were my last word! I hope Lord Ernest won't ram down our throats any nonsense about that noble and graceful tribute to the Mystery of Womanhood being a stupid King Harmachis, or Horemkhu. I wouldn't believe it if I found a hundred nasty stone beards lying buried in the sand under her chin, instead of one, which could easily have been put there to deceive people. Probably King Harmachis had the Sphinx altered to look like him. No wonder she shuddered at such profanation, and shed her false beard. There you have my theory. And as for Egypt being now the land of Veiled Women, where Suffragettes find no sympathy, I've heard that the prophet's order for veiling has been purposely misconstrued by tyrannical men, with their usual jealousy. Even Mohammed himself was jealous."

With this Miss Hassett-Bean sat down, amid fitful applause; and at my earnest request, Miss Enid Biddell, the prettier twin, stood bravely up. She wished, before the subject was changed, to tell some little things she had read about the girls of Ancient Egypt, how like they were to girls of to-day, in all their ways, especially in—in things concerning love. It was they who first questioned the petals of flowers for their lovers' loyalty. How much they thought about their clothes, too, getting their best things from foreign countries, as women did now, from Paris! It was so funny to read how the girls of Old Egypt had consulted palmists and fortune tellers and astrologers just as girls did in Bond Street now; and that what 'Billikens' and 'Swasticas' and birth-stones were to us, images of gods were to the girls of Egypt who lived before the days of Moses! They had scarab rings with magic inscriptions, and sacred apes for the symbol of Intelligence, and lucky eyes of Horus, wounded by the wicked god Set, and cured by the love of Isis. On their bracelets and necklaces they hung charms, and their dressing-tables were covered with images of favourite gods and goddesses. Hathor, the goddess of Love and Joy, was supposed to give her choicest gifts to girls who wore her special colour (that green-blue in the Temple of Edfu which Robert Hichens calls "the colour of love") and to those who had her pet stones, emeralds, or turquoises. Nowadays, in Egypt, the jewels of the women Were only lent to them by their men, and could be taken away as a punishment, or be pawned or sold in case of need; but in old days Egyptian women had all their most beautiful possessions buried with them.

When her sister had finished I urged the other twin to speak, and timidly Miss Elaine repeated to us what a friend of hers, a clergyman (here a blush) had told her. That the Red Sea was not red but a brighter blue than any sea in the world, and called red only because it washed the Red Lands. Her friend had written down for her in verse such a sweet legend about the Nile rising every spring from a single tear shed by Isis, a much more powerful goddess than Hathor, because she was the goddess of goodness as well as love. And the Nile used to be named Sihor by the Egyptians; and the year separated into three seasons, Flood time, Seed time, and Harvest. Miss Biddell's friend was writing a book about Egypt and was going to divide it in three parts like that. It was to be dedicated to her.

Bless the dear creatures, how they kept the ball rolling to please themselves, and—indirectly—to sort out my stock of ideas!

Harry Snell, the newspaper man, was not hard to persuade to his feet. He was studying the resemblance between Arabic and English words. He had found out, among other things, that Tallyho was "Tallyhoon," brought home by the Crusaders. He even had a theory that some of our words came from the early Egyptian. "Amen," for instance, he believed to be derived from "Amon," the name of the great god, father of all the other gods of Egypt, which was cried aloud, he understood, in the temples, during religious services. The parson jumped eagerly up to dispute this theory, and happily forgetful of me, seized the opportunity to spring upon us a few facts from his own store. When, however, Mr. Watts' discourse got him as far as Joseph's Well in the Citadel, General Harlow could bear no more, but sprang up to inform us that the Joseph of the Well in the Citadel was quite another Joseph, some Yusef of the Arab conquerors. The general knew all about that, because his son was stationed in the Citadel. And he proceeded to meander on historically, over a period between the first Arab conqueror Amru, to Haroun-al-Raschid, assuring us that old Cairo was the city of the Arabian Nights. He would, to my joy, have gone on indefinitely from Saladin to Napoleon if Sir John Biddell, as the only baronet on board, had not cut the only general short. He is a square man whose portrait could be properly done only by a Cubist. "Too much history, my friend!" he shouted, getting up with the manner of one accustomed to making dinner-table speeches. "What most of us are coming to Egypt for is mummies. Egyptian history is too troublesome, anyhow, for a normal man to grasp. Give me mummies! There's something in them. Why, even if you get a king or queen fixed in your head, somebody who's paid to make you know things you don't know" (an eye-shot for Corkran) "comes along and swears they didn't exist. Now, there's Mena. I'd pinned him like a stuck butterfly. I could remember that he was the first known king, and founded Memphis and lived six thousand years before Christ, all because we're going to stay at Mena House, which is named after him. I don't know why I remembered him that way, but I did. Just as I could recall the queen with a name like a sneeze by thinking of her as Queen Hat-and-Shoes. Now Colonel Corkran informs us that we must pronounce her, in a different way. And what's the consequence to me? I've ceased to try and keep track of her. King Mena, too, is lost to me forever, through the over-conscientiousness of our late conductor, who says there never was a Mena, only several kings they've mixed into one. I seem to be the one who's most mixed up! To whet my appetite for Egypt now, I have to have something tasty. Where's the good of stuffing my mind with a string of names which I couldn't mention to any one at home, because I can't pronounce them? The word Dynasty (he pronounced it Die-nasty) makes me sick! Luckily I feel that nobody else will know any more than I do. I'm coming to Egypt for a rest-cure, because I don't have to learn its history. But some lecturers won't let me have a minute's peace. A king named Sneferu couldn't expect to appeal to a man like me, even if he did build the oldest Pyramid, and even if you could show me his mummy, which you can't. But I draw the line at kings without mummies. I don't want to know them. Now, my wife is against mummies on show. She's heard that the malignance of mummies, especially in museums, is incredible. And she thinks it a judgment that some of the most distinguished ones are going bad. She says it's spite. I say its management. But I'm not ready to sit down yet! My wife means to start a society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Mummies, with the object of sending them back to their tombs where they can rest in that state of death it pleased their gods to call them to. Their object was eternal privacy, and they spent more on their tombs than their houses, because they expected to be dead a long tune, and wanted all the comforts of home. But I judge mummies by myself. It wouldn't have taken me these thousands of years to realize how narrow and un-christian my notions had been. I should see that I owed some duty to the world; and as so much posterity had rolled by since my day, I'd feel that lying in a museum at some large place like Cairo, was, after all, the only way to keep my name before the public. Now, that brings me to my tip for Lord Ernest. He asks what there is we don't know, and want to know. I'll answer for us all, being used to feel the pulse of crowds. We want to know what the deuce Ancient Egyptians really believed about death and religion. Had they any sense, or were they just plain fools?"

On the tide of applause which congratulated the boat's only baronet, I rose. I felt that I was on the crest of the wave; for the ancient religion of Egypt appeals to me; and as I now had reason to hope that others were comfortably ignorant of my subject I could spread myself as much as I pleased.

"The Ancient Egyptians were far from being fools," I answered Sir John with the air of being in their confidence. "We who are tempted to think so, don't take the trouble to try the key of their Faith in its door. I might say that its door was the door of the Tomb. If we go through that door into the Kingdom of Osiris, Amenti, which the Greeks renamed Hades, the mysteries which appear tangled sort themselves graciously out. The story of Isis the Great Enchantress, and her search for the body of her husband Osiris, murdered by Set, his wicked and jealous brother, Spirit of Evil, is perhaps the most lovable legend of the world. But in hearing that Horus, the son of Isis, was really the same god as Osiris, modern ideas begin to get mixed, and confuse themselves over Isis, goddess of love and goodness, cow-headed Hathor, mistress of love and joy, cat-headed Pasht and lioness-headed Sekhet, goddesses of love and passion. There's hawk-headed Horus, the youth, too; and Horus the child, represented in statues with his thumb in his mouth. How is one to make sense of them all? But once you have the key, it is easy and even beautiful. The esoteric or secret religion known to the high priests and the instructed ones was different from the animal-worship and adoration of bird-headed deities, which gave the common people such interest in daily life. They would have been lost without their monsters; and the priests would have been lost without the temples necessary for the worship of such a menagerie. For Egypt was a priest-ridden country in old days. The explanation of the many gods and goddesses was this: each was a different phase of the one God, RÃ, the Sun, by whom and through whom only the world could exist. Animals and birds were chosen to express the different phases, because animals were considered to be nearer nature, therefore nearer God than human beings; besides, to give a god the head of a man would not set him apart from humanity, as it would to make him appear with the body of a man and the head of some bird or beast. Horus, finished off with the head of a hawk (that sacred bird who could look the sun in the face), became to the uneducated eye a supernatural being, which he would not have been with the face of a smiling youth. The child Horus, or Harpocrates, was not respected as was Horus of the Hawk Head. He was merely petted and loved. Even Set, god of evil, wasn't all bad. He was the Spirit of Storm and Strife in Nature, and had to be propitiated by the ignorant. Typhon, or Typhoon, and he were one. Red was his colour, and red-haired people were his children. There were a hundred phases of the one god, each made incarnate, given his own mission, and worshipped in a different place. It's an ill wind (of Set) that blows nobody good, and animals had a gorgeous time in those days. Very few weren't sacred for some reason or other. It was death and destruction to kill a cat. And I don't think that cats have forgotten to this day the importance they had in Egypt. It's made them the most supercilious of animals.

"If Amon-RÃ were angry he could become Menthu, the war god. If he were inclined to be gentle, he could shrink to the dimensions of Horus, child-god of the Rising Sun. If he were weary, he could rest as the old god Tum, of the Setting Sun. Probably gods and goddesses never enjoyed themselves so much as in Ancient Egypt; and though it does seem a drawback from our artistic point of view for Hathor to have the head or ears of a cow, for wise Thoth to have the long beak of an ibis, and so on, it was for them only an amusing kind of masquerade or 'tÊte' party, on the walls of the temples and tombs. At home, they could be what they liked. Think how interesting for the Egyptians to have all these queer gods, and what variety it gave to their lives. Perhaps the priests really meant well in keeping the secret of the One God for themselves and the kings, as the people weren't fitted to bear its solemnity. Fancy how amusing it was for the children to be told, on silver-bright nights, about Khonsu, god of the moon, always young, wearing the curled lock of youth on his brow—who staked five nights of his light playing draughts with Thoth, father of Magic. But he had a more serious phase, for when he was not a gambler he was an Expeller of Demons, a most popular accomplishment. Indeed, almost every god had several thriving businesses, conducted under different aliases. Khnum the Creator, dweller at the Cataracts, is my favourite, and is still busy, as he looks after the rise and fall of the river. Hekt, goddess of birth, was a pal of his, in spite of her appalling ugliness; and she used to kneel by his potter's wheel. While he fashioned the clay she would hold the Sign of Life, so that spirit might enter into the formed body when Khnum got it to the right state. For very important babies, royal ones or geniuses, she held a Sign of Life in each hand, which made them extraordinarily vital. When you arrive in Egypt, the first thing you'll be asked to buy will be the Sign, or Key of Life, in the shape of paper knives or brooches or what not, and it will be pointed out to you in tombs till you're tired and sick of it. You can buy Hekt, too, and funny old Bes, nurse-goddess of children, quite the golliwog of her day; and all the other gods and goddesses will be offered to you, to say nothing of the kings who were entitled to worship themselves as gods if they wanted to.

"It's easy, you see, to make fun of the ancient religion, and other nations did make fun of it. But to be serious, the priests were nearer right than it would seem; for they believed that God was All: that there was nothing in this or any Universe which was not part of God."

That note was my highest, and I stopped on it. Besides, I could think of nothing more to say. I ventured to sit down; and because the people were glad to hear the last of me, or because I had helped them finish their almonds and raisins, they applauded. Secretly I shook hands with myself, as the monkey must have done, when, with the catspaw, he had pulled the hot chestnuts out of the fire. I had carefully selected my chestnuts—and waited till they were cool. Also, I had disappointed Colonel Corkran.