“Who are they?” I asked Sennia.
“They are Americans. Can I have an ice?”
“May I have an ice. Yes, you may.”
“Is the lady his wife?” Nefret asked. “Goodness, look at that frock, and the diamonds, and the rubies.”
“Vulgarly large,” I said with a sniff.
“I think they are very beautiful,” said Miss Sennia. “She let me look at them one day – it was in the saloon – but only because Mr. Albion told her to. She is not as nice as he is, and their son is not nice at all.” She took firm hold of the bowl and dug her spoon into the pink mound. “Mr. Albion wanted to meet you, but I told him you did not meet people.”
“Good girl,” said Emerson approvingly.
Between bites Sennia told us about the gray-haired gentleman, who was going out to join a firm in Alexandria, and about several of the other passengers. The storm began to subside, the howls of the wind were not so loud, the motion not quite so violent; but I believe we were all relieved when the attendants came round with champagne and the captain rose to propose a toast. It was somewhat long-winded. I remember only the end.
“To the health of His gracious Majesty and to victory in 1917!”
Somehow I was not surprised to hear a familiar voice amend the statement. “To peace,” said Ramses. We drank to that.
As it turned out, we reached Alexandria without being torpedoed, and were met by Selim and Daoud. Selim had replaced his father Abdullah as our reis, or foreman; he and his Uncle Daoud, like Abdullah’s other relations, were as close as family, and valued assistants in all our endeavors. They assisted us in resuscitating poor Basima and Gargery, our butler, who had suffered horribly from seasickness the entire time, and Sennia’s cat, who had not been seasick but whose normally bad temper was even more strained by long confinement in a room that was in constant motion. It would have been impossible to leave the nasty beast behind because Sennia, and, to a lesser degree, Nefret, were the only persons who could control him. Horus was the only cat with us that year. Seshat, Ramses’s erstwhile companion and guardian, had given up a professional career for domesticity. Perhaps she felt she could now trust Nefret to look after him.
Basima brightened as soon as she set foot on dry land, and Gargery, though still unsteady, went off with Daoud to see about the luggage. We had a great deal more than usual this time, for we had reached a momentous decision. Ordinarily we left for Egypt in the autumn and ended our excavation season before the summer heat set in; but this time we had come for an indefinite stay. Emerson, who does not fear man nor beast nor demon of the night on his own account, had declared his nerves were unequal to having the rest of us travel back and forth as long as the submarine menace remained.
“It will get worse before it gets better, mark my words,” he had declared. “I don’t mind people shooting at us or shutting us up in pyramids or trying to brain us with heavy objects – that is to say, I don’t much like it, but I have become accustomed to it. Having a bloody ship sunk under us by a bloody U-boat is something else again. Call me a coward if you will…”
None of us did; as Ramses remarked, there was not a man alive who would have dared. I knew how Emerson felt, for I have the same fear of air raids. We had, all of us, been in deadly peril on more than one occasion, and felt quite comfortable about our ability to deal with ordinary human adversaries. To be sure, there were human beings at the control of aeroplanes and submarines, but since one never saw them, one was inclined to think of the machine itself as the enemy – a remote mechanical menace.
Nor for worlds would I have questioned Emerson’s motives in proposing the scheme, but he had always yearned to work year-round in Egypt instead of having to close down the dig in March or April, sometimes when the excavation was at its most interesting. For the past several seasons our archaeological activities had been even more constrained by family matters and by Ramses’s undercover work for the War Office. This season Emerson had been awarded the firman for a site in Luxor. It was of all places in Egypt the one we loved best – the scene of several of our greatest discoveries, our home for many happy years, and the home as well of our dear friends the Vandergelts, who were even then settling in for a long season of excavation.
There was only one objection I could think of to such a splendid prospect. I do not refer to the blistering heat of Luxor in summer – an objection that would never have occurred to Emerson, who has the constitution of a camel – but to the fact that we would leave behind for Heaven knew how long our beloved family. The Reader will be cognizant, after my earlier remarks on the subject, that I was not thinking of the members of my side of the family.
“Nonsense,” said Emerson, when I mentioned this. “You are hopelessly given to melodrama, Peabody. We are not bidding anyone a final farewell, only prolonging the separation a trifle. Circumstances may change; we will not be completely cut off.”
He had readily agreed that we must spend Christmas with our loved ones and we did our best to make a merry time of it, for the sake of the children – Sennia, and Lia and David’s little Dolly, who was just old enough to toddle about. All our surviving nieces and nephews were there: Raddie and his new wife, the widow of a friend who had died in France; Margaret, newly engaged to a young officer; even Willie, on leave from France, who tried, dear lad, to make twice as many jokes to compensate for the absence of his twin brother, Johnny, who had been killed in action the year before. There were tears as well as laughter; the war was too much with us; but we carried it off, I think, and there was one moment of genuine hilarity when Emerson asked David if he had considered coming out later in the season.
“Up to you, of course,” he added hastily. “But little Dolly is fit and healthy, and Lia -”
“She is doing very well,” said Nefret. “All things considered.”
She smiled at David, whose candid countenance betrayed his relief at her intervention. He had difficulty in refusing Emerson anything, and he had not known how to break the news.
I, of course, had known the moment I set eyes on Lia.
Emerson’s jaw dropped. “Oh, good Gad!” he shouted. “Not again! Just like her mother! It must be a hereditary -”
“Emerson!” I exclaimed.
The reminder was sufficient, for Emerson is really the kindest of men. He managed to choke out a few words of congratulatory import, but everyone had heard his bellow and most of them knew what had occasioned it. Even Evelyn, who had not laughed a great deal since Johnny’s death, had to retreat behind the Christmas tree to conceal her mirth. She was well aware that Emerson had never entirely forgiven her for abandoning a promising career as a copier of Egyptian scenes in favor of motherhood.
We would miss David and Lia, and not only for their affectionate companionship; David was one of the best artists and epigraphers in the field and Lia had learned enough about Egyptology to have become a valued assistant. Their absence would leave us somewhat shorthanded that season. I did not allow that to worry me. We would manage somehow. As I stood on the dock at Alexandria, the old joy of being back in Egypt pervaded every atom of my being. We got ourselves and our baggage onto the train for Cairo with only the usual confusion, which was compounded by the presence of the cat. Horus had to sit between Sennia and Nefret, since he refused to tolerate anyone else.