But all these feelings become strangely dim, their acute edges wonderfully worn, as the subjects which inspired them are brought near to us. "Ah! so those are the Pyramids, are they?" says the traveller, when the first glimpse of them is shown to him from the window of a railway carriage. "Dear me; they don't look so very high, do they?
For Heaven's sake put the blind down, or we shall be destroyed by the dust." And then the ecstasy and keen delight of the Pyramids has vanished for ever.
Our friends, therefore, who for weeks past had seen from a distance, though they had not yet visited them, did not seem to have any strong feeling on the subject as they trotted through the grove of palm-trees.
Mr. Damer had not yet escaped from his wife, who was still fretful from the result of her little accident.
"It was all the chattering of that Miss Dawkins," said Mrs. Damer.
"She would not let me attend to what I was doing.""Miss Dawkins is an ass," said her husband.
"It is a pity she has no one to look after her," said Mrs. Damer. M.
Delabordeau was still listening to Miss Dawkins's raptures about Mount Sinai. "I wonder whether she has got any money," said M. Delabordeau to himself. "It can't be much," he went on thinking, "or she would not be left in this way by herself." And the result of his thoughts was that Miss Dawkins, if undertaken, might probably become more plague than profit. As to Miss Dawkins herself, though she was ecstatic about Mount Sinai--which was not present--she seemed to have forgotten the poor Pyramids, which were then before her nose.
The two lads were riding races along the dusty path, much to the disgust of their donkey-boys. Their time for enjoyment was to come.
There were hampers to be opened; and then the absolute climbing of the Pyramids would actually be a delight to them.
As for Miss Damer and Mr. Ingram, it was clear that they had forgotten palm-trees, Pyramids, the Nile, and all Egypt. They had escaped to a much fairer paradise.
"Could I bear to live among Republicans?" said Fanny, repeating the last words of her American lover, and looking down from her donkey to the ground as she did so. "I hardly know what Republicans are, Mr.
Ingram."
"Let me teach you," said he.
"You do talk such nonsense. I declare there is that Miss Dawkins looking at us as though she had twenty eyes. Could you not teach her, Mr. Ingram?"And so they emerged from the palm-tree grove, through a village crowded with dirty, straggling Arab children, on to the cultivated plain, beyond which the Pyramids stood, now full before them; the two large Pyramids, a smaller one, and the huge sphynx's head all in a group together.
"Fanny," said Bob Damer, riding up to her, "mamma wants you; so toddle back.""Mamma wants me! What can she want me for now?" said Fanny, with a look of anything but filial duty in her face.
"To protect her from Miss Dawkins, I think. She wants you to ride at her side, so that Dawkins mayn't get at her. Now, Mr. Ingram, I'll bet you hall-a-crown I'm at the top of the big Pyramid before you."Poor Fanny! She obeyed, however; doubtless feeling that it would not do as yet to show too plainly that she preferred Mr. Ingram to her mother. She arrested her donkey, therefore, till Mrs. Damer overtook her; and Mr. Ingram, as he paused for a moment with her while she did so, fell into the hands of Miss Dawkins.
"I cannot think, Fanny, how you get on so quick," said Mrs. Damer.
"I'm always last; but then my donkey is such a very nasty one. Look there, now; he's always trying to get me off.""We shall soon be at the Pyramids now, mamma.""How on earth I am ever to get back again I cannot think. I am so tired now that I can hardly sit.""You'll be better, mamma, when you get your luncheon and a glass of wine.""How on earth we are to eat and drink with those nasty Arab people around us, I can't conceive. They tell me we shall be eaten up by them. But, Fanny, what has Mr. Ingram been saying to you all the day?""What has he been saying, mamma? Oh! I don't know;--a hundred things, I dare say. But he has not been talking to me all the time.""I think he has, Fanny, nearly, since we crossed the river. Oh, dear!
oh, dear! this animal does hurt me so! Every time he moves he flings his head about, and that gives me such a bump." And then Fanny commiserated her mother's sufferings, and in her commiseration contrived to elude any further questionings as to Mr. Ingram's conversation.
"Majestic piles, are they not?" said Miss Dawkins, who, having changed her companion, allowed her mind to revert from Mount Sinai to the Pyramids. They were now riding through cultivated ground, with the vast extent of the sands of Libya before them. The two Pyramids were standing on the margin of the sand, with the head of the recumbent sphynx plainly visible between them. But no idea can be formed of the size of this immense figure till it is visited much more closely. The body is covered with sand, and the head and neck alone stand above the surface of the ground. They were still two miles distant, and the sphynx as yet was but an obscure mount between the two vast Pyramids.
"Immense piles!" said Miss Dawkins, repeating her own words.
"Yes, they are large," said Mr. Ingram, who did not choose to indulge in enthusiasm in the presence of Miss Dawkins.
"Enormous! What a grand idea!--eh, Mr. Ingram? The human race does not create such things as those nowadays!""No, indeed," he answered; "but perhaps we create better things.""Better! You do not mean to say, Mr. Ingram, that you are an utilitarian. I do, in truth, hope better things of you than that.
Yes! steam mills are better, no doubt, and mechanics' institutes and penny newspapers. But is nothing to be valued but what is useful?"And Miss Dawkins, in the height of her enthusiasm, switched her donkey severely over the shoulder.
"I might, perhaps, have said also that we create more beautiful things," said Mr. Ingram.
"But we cannot create older things."
"No, certainly; we cannot do that."
