A shrill whistle warned her that this court de congé must draw to an end, and she began shaking hands with them all.
"You've all made my stay in Cairo uncommonly pleasant," she said, "and I thank you all with all my heart. You're dear nice boys, all of you, and I'm really broken-hearted to say goodbye to you. Goodbye all of you."
And this charming old lady, with real tears in her eyes, put up all her veils, and kissed away handfuls of her delicious little white fingers, as the boat began to churn the green Nile water into foam. Then she went to her cabin, had a good blow-out of chocolate, and slept the greater part of the three days' voyage up to Luxor with intervals for food, and a few expeditions to temples on donkey-back. She had bought ropes and ropes of ancient Egyptian beads in the bazaars, with which she adorned herself, and when a professor of antiquities (otherwise promising) hinted that they were modern and came from Manchester, she told him he knew nothing about it, and was dead cuts with him ever afterwards.
Craddock, now that he was committed not to separate himself from the party, was in no hurry to put his fortune to the test. In spite of Philip's assurance, he still fancied he had been right regarding Joyce's avoidance of him, and until their stay was beginning to draw to an end and Philip had begun to fuss about having a sufficiency of warmer underclothing put in his steamer trunk, so that even when the weather grew colder as they sailed northwards again across the Mediterranean, he should be able to sit out on deck without risk of chill, devoted himself to restoring Joyce's confidence in and ease of intercourse with him. Many times, it so happened, he was alone with her, going on some expedition that Philip declared himself not equal to, while Lady Crowborough's appetite for antiquities had proved speedily satiated. Indeed, she announced when she had been at Luxor a week that the sight of any more temples would make her sick. Thus he was often Joyce's only companion and, while waiting his time, made himself an admirable guide and comrade. He had studied the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties before, and with the air of a friendly tutor interested her in the history and monuments. He soon saw how apt she was to learn and appreciate, and by degrees re-established unembarrassing relations with her, winning her back to frank intercourse with him. With his knowledge and his power of vividly and lightly presenting it, he succeeded in weaving their true antique charm about the temples and silent tombs, and Joyce found herself taking the keenest enjoyment in their long sunny days together. To her immense relief, he seemed to have banished altogether his yearning for another relationship, and she told herself she must have been quite wrong in imagining that he would approach her again, and this time with fire. Yet she had been so convinced of it, and here he was with day-long opportunities at his disposal, plunging her to her infinite satisfaction in the heresies of Amenhotep, and the Elizabethan rule of Hatasoo. He unfolded the stories of the carven walls for her, with their hawk-faced gods or adoring kings. He traced for her the merchandise that the queen's expedition to the Land of Plenty brought back with it, ivory and apes, as in the days of Solomon, and gold weighed in the balances by overseers. He told her of Sen-mut the architect of Deir-el-Bahari, to whom the queen showed all her heart, and entrusted with the secrets of her will, and how Thothmes, on his mother's death, erased from the inscriptions all mention of the low-born fellow.... Then day by golden day went on, and Joyce's confidence increased, and her debt of pleasant hours to him grew heavier and was less felt by her. But never did she quite get out of her mind that it was he who had said, she knew not quite what, to her father, speaking evil of the boy who painted beside the weir. Could she have been wrong about that, too? If so, she had indeed wronged this large kindly man, who was never weary of his pleasant efforts to interest her. Her manner to him changed as her confidence returned, and with the changing of her manner, he drew nearer to confidence in himself.
But it must not be imagined that all life's inner workings, with regard to Craddock, were centred in this successful charming of Joyce to comradeship with him, nor in restraining himself from attempting to pluck the fruit while clearly unripe. Week by week there came to him the most satisfactory accounts from the box-office with regard to the reaped and ever-ripening harvest, so to speak, of "Easter Eggs." But against that solid asset he had to set, not indeed a positive loss, but a sacrifice of what might have been a tremendous gain. For "The Long Lane that had Five Turnings"—was there ever so insolently careless a title?—had appeared early in January, and all London rocked with it. Akroyd had clearly made the biggest hit of his industrious career, and the author had leaped at this second spring over the heads of all other dramatists. Critics, even the most cautious of them, seemed to have lost their heads, and "Sheridan redivivus" was among their less extravagant expressions. His informant as to all this was Frank Armstrong himself, who very thoughtfully sent him a stout packet of these joyful cries, as supplied to him by a press-agency, and with it a letter that seemed to touch the pinnacles of impertinence.
"You have often told me," wrote this amiable young man, "of the great interest you take in my work, and so I am certain you will be pleased to hear of the success of the play. I have to thank you also for the hint you so kindly gave me about screwing Akroyd up to favourable terms, and I made a bargain for myself about the scale of royalties that really was stupendous. About the play itself—it is not being a very good theatrical season generally, and even Peter, I hear, isn't panning out very well, but you should see the queues at the Pall-Mall. Golly! It's the same in the stalls and boxes. Mrs. Fortescue has taken a box every night next week, and I think I have persuaded Akroyd to raise prices. He says it is illegitimate, but I rather think he will do it. After all the rule of supply and demand must affect prices. I'm afraid 'Easter Eggs' is bound to suffer; indeed, it was distressingly empty the other night, but the box office says it will recover again ... I see there is a flat vacant just below yours in Berkeley Square. I am thinking of taking it. It will be nice to be near you. I can never forget what you did for me over my first play.... Also, after an unpropitious beginning, I have struck up a friendship with Charles Lathom. He has told me, in confidence, how you played Providence to him. I hope you will do well over him. I should think you would, people are talking about him, and he has several sitters. I tried to tell him all you have done for me, but the recollection was too much. The words wouldn't come, so I pretended to burn my finger over a pipe I was lighting, and said 'Damn!' Was not that clever and dramatic?
"I enclose quantities of press-notices, and I wish I could see your delight over them. It was very vexing that you were not here for the first night, for I should have liked to have seen what you said. But perhaps when I saw it, I shouldn't have liked it, as I remember you didn't think very much of the play when I read it to you. Perhaps I shall take a long holiday now, not write again at all for a year or two. I am besieged with repeats, of course."
That threat did not much alarm Craddock. He felt as convinced, as he felt with regard to the rising of the sun, that the young man could not keep off it. But there was the very scorpion of a sting in the sentence immediately preceding, in which he was reminded of his own rejection of the play. His wits must have been wandering that night; his flair for anticipating public taste had never betrayed him with so desperate a lapse of perception. And somehow it gave him unease to think that an assured enemy of his, sharper than a serpent's tooth, should have thus leaped into affluence as well as prominence. Nor did he like this growing friendship between Charles and the other—he did not like any of the letter, nor any of the press notices. His evening was completely spoiled and Mr. Wroughton beat him at bézique. But next morning, with that power which was not the least of his gifts, he switched his mind off these disturbances and fixed himself heart and soul on that which lay before him here and now.
Thus passed for them at Luxor a complete moon, which among other celestial offices had magically illumined for them an hour of night among the ruins of Karnak. Then, too, they had gone about, and there up till then had come the hardest struggle in restraint for him. All the spell of the starry-kirtled night was woven round them while the huge monoliths and spent glory of the columned hall reminded him, urgently, insistently, how short life was, how soon for the generations of men nothing but the hard granite of their work remains, no joy, no rapture any more, for eyes are closed and mouths dumb, and the soft swift limbs laid to rest, where at the most they can but feel the grasses that wave over their graves, or, more horribly, injected and wrapped in cero-cloth and bitumen to be preserved as a parody and mocking of what they once were. And this—these few years—was his time, his innings before the silence that preceded closed in on him again. All he wanted stood in front of him now, as Joyce leaned on a fragment of wall white and tall in the moonlight, and let her great eyes wander over the outlined columns, with young fresh mouth a little parted, and hand almost resting on his.