Even at this noon hour when the world should have been eating lotuses or luncheon, the interminable arbour was crowded with strings of camels, forever going both ways, into Cairo and out, one wondered why —and there were flocks of woolly brown sheep, and donkeys drawing sideless carts in which whole families of veiled women and half-naked children were seated tailor fashion. On we spun, past the Zoo, past scattered villas of Frenchified, Oriental fashion which might have been designed by a confectioner: past azure lakes left by the ebbing Nile, and so into sudden dazzling sight of three geometric mountains in a tawny desert—two, monsters in size, and one a baby trying to catch up with them.
"Oh!" everybody breathed. For these things were beyond words.
Then in a moment more the Great Pyramid had grown so big that it loomed over us, and ate up half the sky—a pyre of yellow flame against a flame of blue.
We were at the end of the shadowy road that leads like a causeway to the desert, and on the verge of the golden, billowing sea which flows round the Pyramids and engulfs the distant Sphinx. Oriental life encircled us, in the foreground of the picture—a long row of waiting camels gaily saddled and tasselled, delicately nibbling bersím green as heaped emeralds—donkeys white and gray, beribboned and beaded—small yellow sandcarts; little white, desert horses and tall brown, desert men; camels snarling, donkeys braying, horses whinnying, and men touting. "Very nice sandcarts—very nice camels! Take ladies and gentlemen quick to Pyramids and Sphinx or Petrified Forest!" Farther on, the big, modern hotel, rather like an overgrown Swiss chalet built by Arabs—a vast, confused building the colour of sand or brown heather honey, with carved mushrbiyeh work lending an Eastern charm to windows, balconies, and loggias, and enough green, flowery garden to give a sensational effect of contrast with the tidal wave of desert poised ready, it would seem, to overwhelm palms and roses. Clustered near, the tiny mushroom village which huddles under the shelter of Cheops' Pyramid. Beyond, the immense upward sweep of golden dunes, culminating in the Great Pyramid itself.
I stayed in the picture only long enough to settle my big children into their quarters, and to see most of them making for the dining-room, agreeably Oriental with its white and red walls, its dome and windows of mushrbiyeh work. Then I darted back to Cairo, in a taxi driven by a Nubian youth, so black that he was almost blue, like a whortleberry. He wore a scarlet tarboosh, a livery of violet, and the holes for silver rings in the tops of his ears were so large that the light shining through gave the effect of inserted diamonds. Unconsciously he made a nice contrast with his modern motor.
He drove with such reckless speed that camels "rubber-necked" to look at us—and whirled me past the fat black gate-keeper into the Ghezireh Palace garden of scarlet paths, moonlike lamps, Khedivial statues, and spreading banyans where each tree continued itself in its own "next number," like an endless serial romance.
I nearly asked for Mrs. O'Brien, but turned her into Jones at the danger point. The face of the concierge, as he said that she was at home, conveyed nothing, yet I could not resist adding, "Are the ladies well?"
"Mrs. East is not very well to-day," he replied. "We have had the doctor; but the young ladies have been out spending the night with friends, I believe. They have not yet returned."
It was a long five minutes before Biddy and I were wildly shaking hands in a huge private sitting-room all red-and-gold brocade and crystal chandeliers, as it had been in the days of Ismaïl. I knew I should be delighted to see her, but I didn't realize that it was going to be quite as good as it was.
"Anyhow, you're all right and safe," I heard myself blurt out.