MY DEAR GOOD DUFFER!
For any sake hurry back. Make an excuse to leave your pilgrims the minute you get this, and take the first train to Cairo. Surely the late conductor can be your understudy, and trot the people round Alexandria for a day? We need you more than they do. I picture you reading this early in the morning, with Alexandria still in the distance; for you said you'd arrange to have letters come out to the yacht by the pilot. I shall expect a telegram saying by what train you'll arrive here in the afternoon. You'll understand when I've told you everything, why it's necessary for you to hurry.
We have done and seen so many things, it seems years instead of days since you left us in care of that handsome Hadji of yours. I wonder if really you didn't suspect that I guessed who he was; or did you suspect; and didn't care? I caught the look in your eyes, when you first saw him standing under the terrace at Shepheard's, and then, when the name "Antoun Effendi" came up in the conversation, I put two and two together. Mrs. East guesses, also. I don't know if she did from the first, but she does now. It isn't a question of "guessing" with either of us, really. It's a certainty. Not that she's said anything to me or I to her. That is the malady of us all since you went. We are boiling with secret thoughts, and keeping them to ourselves, which is bad for us and for each other in the long run. I haven't told Monny that the "Egyptian Prince," as Rachel Guest has nicknamed him, is your friend Captain Anthony Fenton playing some deep game, partly connected with us, partly connected with a secret of his and yours; the secret you said was a "dusty" one in which women would not be interested. I haven't told her, because I don't want her to know. She is always talking and thinking about him, and is vexed with herself for doing so. She tries to stop, but can't. If she knew who he was, she wouldn't try to stop. She'd let herself go, and feel she was living in a beautiful romance. So she is living in a romance, but I want you to be the hero of it, not your Anthony Fenton. That's why I don't open her eyes to the game that's going on. The man is a perfect devil. Not a bad devil, but a wild devil.
Mrs. East doesn't tell Monny that Antoun is "Anthony with an h" because she is enjoying the thought that she alone knows the wonderful truth. She imagines that she is in love with him. She believes Fate has brought them together—that he is a "reincarnation," as she is, and that they ought to belong to each other. Well, let them! She isn't more than six or seven years older than he, and she's rich (though poor compared to Monny, of course), and every day she grows handsomer. So does Monny. As for Rachel Guest—but she is in another part of my story. Yet no, come to think of it, I'll bring her in now, because if it weren't for developments concerning that young woman, I might be able to wait one more day without begging you to come to us. She is taking Monny away from me; and something odd is going on, I can't make out what. Anyhow, that horrid Bedr el Gemály is in it. And there's to be a climax, I'm sure, to-morrow night. You'll get this letter to-morrow morning, for I'm writing it early, with my hair down my back, and my coffee not ordered, though I'm starving. We've left Shepheard's because Monny wanted to live for a few days in a hotel close to the Nile; and we were all pleased with the plan, for this was once a palace of Khedive Ismael, and his furniture's still in it, the wildest mixture of Orientalized French taste. There's a garden, with paths of vermilion sand brought from somewhere in the desert. But the most convulsive things live along the Nile Valley and spend their nights braying, hooting, cooing, whining, bellowing, and barking. If only the donkeys and dogs and birds and a few other sacred animals of Egypt would be a little more reticent, especially after dark, the country would be faultless. But what with worrying myself, and listening to furred and feathered creatures worrying themselves, I couldn't sleep last night, and I want you to help me! You'll be here to-morrow afternoon, and I shall stay in to receive you instead of going to the bazaars with the others, chaperoned by that dark-eyed devil of yours, "Antoun." I was there all yesterday, watching crowds of tourists buy beautiful expensive things for themselves, and horrid inexpensive things to take to their friends. Cleopatra purchased some disgracefully cheap pearls no self-respecting mummy would be seen in; and my prophetic soul tells me that she's going to try and dissolve them in wine.
There's to be a fancy dress ball at this hotel to-morrow night—or rather in the adjacent Casino, which is one reason we migrated here; and praise the saints you'll be in time for it because if anything's going to happen, you'll be able to stop whatever it is. If I were supposed to know that Antoun was Anthony Fenton, I might take him into my counsels. As it is, I can't. And anyhow, it wouldn't do much good, at present, because a silent duel is going on between him and Monny. He is bent on compelling her to acknowledge his authority. She is bent on resisting it—which is a great compliment to his power—but he doesn't know that, for he doesn't know Monny yet. It would be fun to watch them together, if I hadn't your interests to think of.
He hasn't got rid of Bedr el Gemály; but he would have done so, I'm sure, if it hadn't been for an unexpected turn of the wheel, by the hand of Fate in the person of Rachel Guest. Her hand is never off the wheel just now! The few days since you have been away have brought out the true inwardness of her. Felis Domestica with very little Domestica! Perhaps it's the air of Egypt which is having a really extraordinary effect on all of us; perhaps it's the fact that Monny has given Rachel a lot of lovely clothes which have rejuvenated and apparently revitalized her. But you will see for yourself, and talk things over with Your old friend, Biddy.
This was a nice letter to read, heaven knew how many hours too late!
My fatigue had slipped off like the skin off a grape. I felt energetic enough to start out and walk to Cairo. What could be in Biddy's mind? And what must she have thought when afternoon and evening passed without even a telegram? The evening paper, if she had happened to look, would have told her that the Candace had reached Alexandria in the morning, as she expected; and she could neither have guessed nor believed that the whole day would pass without my having a chance to read her letter. I ransacked the writing-table drawers for a telegraph form; and finding one had begun to address it, when I stopped. The message could not go out until morning. Meanwhile there were Monny's and Anthony's letters to read. One or both might give me some clue to the "climax" Biddy feared for to-night at the ball. I cut open Monny's envelope, which had on it an alluring sunset picture of the Pyramids and the name of the hotel. Hastily I ran through the pages. Not a hint of anything disquieting! If I had read her letter instead of Brigit's I might have gone to my well-earned rest without a qualm.
"Dear Lord Ernest," Miss Gilder addressed me, in a handwriting which to any "expert" would reveal some originality, more pride, still more conscientiousness, any amount of self-will, and singularly little conceit. An odd combination! But the Gilded Rose is that. She went on:
You asked me to write to you while you were away, and tell you the news, and what I thought about things. But I'm thinking so much and so fast that I can't sort out my thoughts. I suppose it must be so with every one who comes to Egypt for the first time. Everything fascinates and absorbs me, even more than I had hoped it would—almost too much, I feel sometimes. Your Antoun Effendi is a very good guide, and I am not sorry that we have him—except once in a while. And now and then I'm glad. We're proud of his looks when we go about, for every one stares at him and envies us for having him to take us about, instead of being condemned to a mere dragoman. Oh, talking of dragomen (you see I will call them that!), we still have Bedr, though I know you thought we ought to give him up, and I don't see how we are ever to discharge him now, for he has attached himself to Rachel G. in the most wonderful way. It is pathetic. It began with a talk they had the day you left, about his having been in America, and about religion. She found him half inclined to be converted, and of course, her goodness and unselfishness made her long to snatch him like a brand from the burning. He thinks no one ever talked so wonderfully about religion as she does, which she, dear thing, attributes to the fact that she taught Sunday-school in Salem. She says, if she can have him to work upon even for a few weeks, she is sure to make him a convert.