CHAPTER XXIII.

AN ENGLISH LESSON

The sound of a distant shot came--from the direction of the Nile. Professor Blackwell looked up with a start. He was inclined to nervousness in these days. Breakfast was temporarily suspended.

“Mr. Tawwab has called for the rent!” said Danbazzar grimly. He raised his great voice, looking over his shoulder. “Mahmoud!” he boomed.

The grinning face of Mahmoud appeared in the opening of the tent. Danbazzar spoke rapidly in Arabic. Mahmoud saluted and departed.

“I’ve told him,” Danbazzar explained, “to warn Safîyeh that they must keep under cover and then to go up and tell the guards, in case they missed the signal.”

It was now Zalithea’s custom to take exercise, veiled like a Moslem woman, early each morning and again in the evening. In a manner reminiscent of that adopted (by request) during the historic ride of Lady Godiva, not a soul was visible about the camp on these occasions.

Hassan es-Sugra, at a respectful distance, acted as escort. And he had his instructions touching prohibited areas. After a time, Zalithea had seemed to recognize where she was. At the first coming of this recognition--realizing that she was in the Valley of the Dead--she had been seized with terror. Danbazzar’s linguistic resources had been taxed to the utmost to pacify her.

Ultimately he succeeded in making her understand that she had slept, magically, for a very long time; that Thebes (which she knew apparently as Amen) had altered beyond recognition; and that they wanted her to become accustomed to strange changes before taking her there.

Once having conquered her first natural terror, the girl accepted her situation with astonishing philosophy. A reaction came. Perhaps she had grasped the fact that a new lease of life had been granted to her--and that life was sweet. At any rate, she developed a strain of childish mischief at once delightful and disturbing. For Danbazzar’s orders she had little respect, apparently; but that diplomat was quick to learn that for Barry she would do anything.

“I trust,” said the Professor, nervously glancing at his watch, “that the young lady from Unu will subdue her high spirits while Mr. Tawwab is in camp.”

“I’m going to send Barry along to keep her quiet,” replied Danbazzar.

Whereupon Barry felt a hot flush rising to his cheeks and hastily stooped to load a pipe.

“A duty by no means irksome,” the Professor murmured. “I confess that a woman of more than sixty is no longer attractive in the amorous sense. I had never imagined that one over three thousand could be. But I was mistaken. Indeed, all my life has been lived in error.”

“In another three days,” said Danbazzar, flashing a triumphant glance around the table, “we’ll be through! All the stuff is where Mr. Tawwab will never see it. The photographs are finished. My drawings I can complete when I like. It’s just a matter of building up the opening, now, and striking the screen.”

“My notes are fairly up to date, also,” John Cumberland added. “I have material for a book that publishers would fight to get.”

“Quite, quite,” remarked the Professor. “But except as a work of fiction you cannot publish it.”

“I shall write it, nevertheless,” the other assured him. “It will be in three volumes. The first volume will deal, exhaustively, with the history of the papyrus and the formula. It will bring the account up to the time of our arrival here. The second volume will be compiled from notes made on the spot. It will deal with the excavation and end with the discovery of Zalithea. The third volume will contain the story of her life during the reign of Seti.”

“Admirable,” the Professor agreed. “I shall be obligated, however, if you will refer to me in your _magnum opus_ as Doctor X.”

And now, a slender, mysterious, black-robed figure, Hassan es-Sugra bowed in the tent opening.

“Your pardon, sirs,” he said in his gentle way, “but Mr. Tawwab comes. He will shortly be here.”

“I vote we _all_ see him!” cried Barry. “Why should we study his feelings? He’s just a common grafter.”

“In studying the sensibilities of Mr. Tawwab,” remarked Professor Blackwell, “one would be studying the non-existent; a paradox. But our own position is not too secure.”

“We don’t have to jolt him,” Danbazzar agreed. “We’re not out of the wood. But Mr. Cumberland and I can talk business. It’s just as well that he should show his hand with a witness here. I guess, Professor, you’d rather not stay. And I’m taking Barry along to the Princess.”

“Why?” Barry demanded, laughing to hide his embarrassment.

“Because you may be able to keep her in order. Nobody else can.”

“But I can’t talk to her!”

“You’ve got to learn. Give her some elementary lessons in English.”

The masterful Danbazzar had his way; and Barry found himself, a few minutes later, in the little lobby of Zalithea’s tent. Danbazzar went in to announce him, and almost immediately Safîyeh appeared, holding the tent cloth aside and intimating that he should enter.

He found this wonder girl who was so distractingly human, this charming survival of a mystic past, stretched on the cushioned mattress, her head buried in her creamy arms rebelliously. Danbazzar stood looking down at her in an unfamiliar attitude of defeat.

“She’s a bit up-stage this morning,” he announced. “It’s so darned hard to remember that she’s a princess and probably used to a lot of ceremony. I thought I had her set about the robes. I tried to tell her that we only wore them on religious occasions, and that other times we dressed as we’re dressed now. I had to tell her something, because she caught me on Monday, you remember, coming back from the tomb?”

“I do remember,” said Barry. “But when I saw her, later, she seemed to be used to our queer costumes.”

Danbazzar looked down at his white breeches and speckless tan riding boots.

“It isn’t that,” he explained. “She’s got the idea that the robes are ceremonious and that we’re slighting her by not wearing them when we come to see her.”

Zalithea half raised her oval face, so that one dark eye peeped out over the rampart of her arm. A quick, disdainful glance she flashed over Barry, from his bare head to his dusty shoes; and hid her face again.

“That’s that,” sighed Danbazzar. “There’s no time to go back. But wait outside and I’ll have your robes brought down by Hassan.”

They turned to go, when:

“Dan-bazz-ah!” said a clear, imperious voice.

Barry and Danbazzar turned, together.

Princess Zalithea was sitting upright, her arms outstretched, her hands resting upon the cushions on either side of her. From her pale, beautiful features all expression had been effaced. They were like an exquisite ivory mask into which a magician has blown the breath of life.

She spoke a sentence rapidly, her long, half-closed eyes turned sideways upon Danbazzar. He bowed in his graceful manner and replied very hesitantly. No expression stirred the girl’s lovely face.

“I was right,” he explained. “She considers that we’ve insulted her! I took all the blame and told her you had just come back from a journey and asked to see her right away.”

Barry frowned, and:

“Is it necessary to tell her so many lies?” he asked.

“You bet it is!” Danbazzar assured him. “Look at her!”

Barry glanced, guiltily, toward the divan. He started. Zalithea was watching them with a stare of such murderous anger that his heart seemed to turn cold! He would never have conceived it possible that her youthful features could assume a look of such utter malignancy.

Watching her, fascinated against his will, he experienced again that awful tingling of the spine which he had known during his vigil in the valley on the night he had heard the strange voice. Definitely, he knew in this moment that it had been _her_ voice… although she had lain buried deep in the heart of the rock! Yes, this girl-woman, this child-witch who had first seen the light in an island unknown to modern geography, was uncanny!

Danbazzar’s deep tones broke in upon the silence; he addressed Zalithea in the musical, oddly monotonous language which Barry was beginning to recognize as that which the Pharaohs spoke. Then:

“Come on!” he said abruptly. “I can hear Tawwab.”

He raised the tent cloth. Barry was about to follow him out, when:

“Bahree!” came softly.

He turned. Danbazzar had gone, dropping the curtain. He was alone with Zalithea!

Half fearfully, he looked at her.…

She was resting on her elbow, watching him, and her sweet lips were arched in a smile which revealed little gleaming teeth! Her eyes, widely opened now, were deep pools of contrition; her delicate nostrils quivered. She was on the verge of tears!

Barry experienced a dramatic revulsion of feeling. In his hard, modern, Western self-sufficiency, he had wounded the tender susceptibilities of this sheltered flower of the East. What did _he_, or Danbazzar, for that matter, know of courts and palaces? Much less they knew of the splendid ceremony of those old, dead days when Seti, from Thebes of the Hundred Gates, ruled a mighty empire!

He hated himself and hated Danbazzar. They had a princess among them, and they treated her like a chambermaid! They discussed her as though she were a marketable relic, to be bought and sold--this living, lovely revelation of the wonder that was Egypt!

Some remote ancestor who had known the meaning of homage came to life in Barry; seized him by the scruff of the neck and forced him onto his knees. Very near to Zalithea he knelt, his head bowed, waiting for pardon.

Instantly it was granted.

A little hesitant hand touched his hair; and he looked up. The girl’s long, curling lashes, the most perfect he had ever seen, were wet with tears.

“Forgive me!” he burst out, forgetting that she could not understand. “I--he--neither of us--meant to hurt you!”

She smiled through her tears and touched his hair again.

“Bahree,” she said, and made a quaint gesture which conveyed dismissal of the subject.

And then, very close together, in silence, these two remained for long moments, watching one another; the girl reclining on her cushions and the man kneeling beside her. In that odd hush, the suave tones of Mr. Tawwab were clearly audible as he entered the upper end of the _wâdi_ in conversation with Danbazzar. A subdued booming was all that could be distinguished of the latter’s responses. Both voices presently ceased. The party had met in the tent above.

Barry suddenly grew self-conscious. He was kneeling beside Zalithea and studying her raptly. It had occurred to him that this was the height of rudeness. True, she had suffered his scrutiny without complaint, but this did not excuse his bad form.

In a nervous endeavour to break the tension, and recalling Danbazzar’s instructions, he touched a symbol embroidered upon one of the tent cloths draped beside the divan. It was the _crux ansata_, symbol of life; and:

“This,” he said, “means Life.”

Zalithea looked at it, then turned to him. She seemed to be trying hard to grasp what he had in mind; and finally:

“_Ankh_,” she said.

“You call it _ankh_?” he asked eagerly; for he knew this to be the Ancient Egyptian term for the figure.

Zalithea, listening and watching, smiled.

“_Ankh_,” she repeated.

“Life,” said Barry.

“Lie-ef,” Zalithea whispered doubtfully.

“Life!”

She shook her head. And Barry realized how, tempted by the fact that he chanced to know its Egyptian name, he had chosen an object impossible to explain in pantomime. Zalithea, laughing now, stretched out a finger and laid it gently upon his eyelid.

“Eye,” he said eagerly.

“Eye,” she repeated.

She touched his ear.

“Ear.”

“Ee-ah!”

So the first lesson began--a lesson in a science that was old even in Seti’s days. Master and pupil forgot the passing of the hours in that enthralling study. Old Safîyeh, squatting patiently on her mat beyond the curtain, nodded as the sun climbed a blue highway toward the dome of noon. Innumerable cups of coffee had been drunk by Danbazzar, John Cumberland, and Mr. Tawwab, and entire boxes of cigarettes consumed. But still Barry said, touching Zalithea:

“Arm!”

And Zalithea, watching him, replied:

“Aah-em!”

When, at last, a substantial check having changed hands, Mr. Tawwab rose to take his departure, he showed a marked preference for a route through the lower end of the _wâdi_. Mr. Tawwab was an observant man.

Suddenly, raised voices disturbed the English lesson. Zalithea sat very upright, listening.

“If you don’t mind, yes!” Mr. Tawwab was saying. “Your camp is so interesting. I should love to see your kitchen.”

Placing a finger on her lips, Zalithea stood up. In her simple native dress Barry thought she was the sweetest thing he had ever looked upon.

“Zalithea,” he murmured, “you are adorable!”

She paused, glancing down at him.

“Zal’ith-_eeah_!” she corrected; then: “You-ah-addorahble!” she added.

Before he realized what she intended to do, she had glided to the tent cloth, raised it, and gone out. He jumped up and followed her. He had recalled, tardily, the real purpose of the interview. His duty was to see that Zalithea did not make her presence known to Mr. Tawwab!

In the tiny lobby, old Safîyeh had scrambled hastily to her feet. Beside her mat was a bowl in which were some peaches which Zalithea had evidently rejected as overripe. Some of them, presumably, Safîyeh had consumed. The less desirable remained.

Mr. Tawwab’s voice came from immediately outside. He had paused on his way down the _wâdi_.

“Surely a new tent?” he inquired smoothly.

“Sure!” boomed Danbazzar. “An English Bell tent, sir!”

“You have guests?”

“No, sir! We’re hoping for guests--distinguished guests--and we’re all ready. If ever you feel like spending a night with the boys, say the word!”

“I am deeply indebted,” Mr. Tawwab assured him. “It would be delightful. But my duties do not allow.”

“That’s a pity,” said Danbazzar.

They moved on, slowly--and Zalithea, ignoring Barry’s restraining hand, pulled the flap aside and peered out. Over her shoulder, he could see Danbazzar, a great, towering figure, moving down the _wâdi_ beside the slight, red-capped form of Mr. Tawwab.

Then, in a moment, it had happened.

Displaying a deadly aim, Zalithea hurled an imperfect peach at the retreating Mr. Tawwab!

It struck him on the back of the head, squashed liberally, and dislodged his _tarbûsh!_ With a cry of mingled fear and anger, he turned. Barry dropped the flap and sank back, aghast.…

Zalithea, both hands held over her mouth, fled beyond the tent cloth. Safîyeh, horror-stricken, followed.

“Hell’s bells!” roared Danbazzar. “Mr. Tawwab, I can’t say what I think! It’s that half-wit Said! Wait here, sir! Take my handkerchief! By God! I’ll----”

He ran back and burst into the tent in an apparent fury. Barry faced him.

“Zalithea?” Danbazzar whispered.

Barry nodded.

“Howl like fury!” Danbazzar directed--“not in English!”

Thereupon he broke into a flood of Arabic, and clapped his hands, simulating smacks. Barry yelled obediently.

“You son of a mange!” Danbazzar concluded--and went out. “He’s crazy, Mr. Tawwab,” he called. “Don’t blame me. Blame the people that hired him to me.…”