A wife out of Egypt

Front matter

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V S'

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Preface

Egypt, like Tunis, is still inhabited by a race, neither numerous nor powerful now, which has seen all the dynasties of history come and go. The Copts — an Arab way of saying Egyptians: Egypt is the land of Gypts or Copts — are the descendants of the men who hewed wood and drew water for the Pharaohs, for conquerors like Darius the Persian, the Macedonian Ptolemies, the Romans, and the Arabs, and are the intellectual hewers and drawers of modern Egypt. Like the Berbers of Tunis, they were mightily oppressed by Roman and Byzantine masters for not coming into the orthodox religion ; like the Berbers, they thought that their lot could not be worse under the Arab conqueror, and stood by sullenly while their masters were conquered, though their help would have made the Arab conquest impossible.

The Arabs persecuted them in their turn, to make them abandon the feeble and impure stream of Christianity which had trickled down to them direct from St. Mark the Evangelist. But by living like rats in holes, the Copts have defeated their purpose, and remain the professors of the most ancient and debased form of Christianity, but the spiritual descendants, in their own eyes, of the Church of Egypt, immortal as the offspring of St. Mark, and the mother of Athanasius and Cyril and Origen.

Until the Nationalist movement began in the revolt of Arabi Pasha, the Copts or Egyptians and the Arabs kept distinct, but they now all call themselves Egyptians, to 1

PREFACE prosecute the claim for Egyptian Independence, which is in reality a Pan-Islamic movement into which the Copts have been betrayed. Girgis Boutros, who is one of the chief characters in the story, a very wealthy leader of the Copts, has been entrapped in this way, owing to his hatred of the English.

Side by side with the Copts there is another Arab-speaking Christian community in Egypt, a much fairer and handsomer race, who might often be taken for Europeans — ^the Syrians. Unlike the Copts, who rarely rise above the position of clerks and book-keepers, they are important in the mercantile community and many of them are very wealthy ; and unlike the Copts, they are firm supporters of the British rule, though they are galled by the unwillingness of the English to receive them on terms of social equality.

Hadassah Lekejian, the heroine, and her father and brother are typical Syrians of Egypt.

The plot of this book deals with a subject which previous writers of novels about Egypt have left in the background — the struggle between love and snobbery in the breast of a British officer, who has fallen in love with the beautiful Syrian when he met her, without realizing what her nationality meant in England, and, as he meets her again in Cairo in the position of her fiance, discovers that she is a member of the ostracized race.

This ostracism is described by Miss Lorimer most convincingly and pitifully. While the reader's feelings are stirred by the beautiful Hadassah's struggle between love of her people and her love for the proud Englishman who insists that she shall give her people up, his interest is riveted on the forces which are working in Egypt — the revengeful Copt's hereditary tendency to betray his fellow-Christians to Islam, and the heartburnings of the Arab-speaking loyalists of Egypt at their social exclusion by the rulers they serve so faithfully.

PREFACE

Miss Lorimer has long been a student of both Coptic and Mohammedan questions. Her knowledge and intuition with regard to the latter was amply shown in her masterly book “ By the Waters of Carthage.""

I have no hesitation in pronouncing this a far finer book, immeasurably more interesting as a love story, and full of the psychology which Miss Lorimer has taught us to expect in her books.

In “ A Wife out of Egypt,"" Miss Lorimer has introduced to fiction a singularly beautiful and gifted nation, the Syrians, brought up as Europeans, who are white people in everything but race.

Douglas Sladen.

Chapter I

A TAXI-CAB drew up sharply at No. 123, Princes Avenue, South Kensington. It had come down the long, straight road at a speed which certainly did not come within the city limit of twelve miles an hour. Out of it jumped a slim girl in rich furs and a young man in faultless afternoon dress.

They were a good-looking couple, with the pride of life so strong in them that more than one pair of eyes looked enviously at them as they passed.

The girl held out her hand to say good-bye: it was perfectly gloved in pale yellow su^de. The perfection of her feet was noticeable, too, for they were encased in patent-leather walking-slippers, whose costly buckles flashed in the electric light. These two points, her light hands and shining feet, stood out in the half-lit street. AU the rest of her was lost in the rich darkness of her furs. It was only when she lifted her head that you could see the clear paUor of her skin and the youthful freshness of her scarlet lips, for her closely fltting hat almost hid her face.

‘‘I must really go, dear," she said; “and don't wait for me . . . no, please don't."

“ Why mayn't I ? " he said pleadingly.

“ Because I should feel I had to hurry."

“ Can't you ? " His eyes besought her.

The girl blushed happily. “ No, it's Miss MacNaughtan, and I haven't seen her for almost two years. Every minute she can give me I'll want to be with her."

And what about me ? ... In a week's time I won't see you for almost a year."

“ But, dear, I've been with you for hours and hours every day for the last month."

“ I know," he said ; “ you've been awfully good, but I'm jealous of every one you want to see very much. . . ." He laughed. “ I am a duffer, I know : you'll soon grow tired of me."

“ You're the nicest thing in the world," she said, “ and I love you for being jealous."

‘‘ I'm jealous of that fur," he said, ‘‘ the little beast's mouth's quite close to your ear." He was looking at the tiny head of the sable which decorated her necklet of fur. “ I wish I had taken just one more before we left the taxi, you look so soft and adorable in that coat."

The girl's proud laugh showed her gleaming teeth : their beauty made her lover wish to kiss her all the more.

He had been holding her hand caressingly in his. Suddenly he felt for the ring on her third finger. “ I like to feel it," he said, “ and think about it, and remember that it's there, as a sign and a token that you are mine ; when any other Johnny looks at your hand he knows it's ‘ no use,' he knows he's too late. I feel quite sorry for them, poor beggars ! I guess they'll hover about you, but you're mine” he said quickly. “ Sometimes I keep saying to myself, ‘ Stella's mine,' ‘ Stella's mine,' ‘ Stella's mine,' until I burst out laughing at my own silliness."

“ And Stella's not yours yet” she said tauntingly, but with so much love in her voice that he did not mind.

Yet it made him say : “ Why can't we get married before you go back to Egypt, Stella? You could return with your parents, and I would follow later on : no one need know but ourselves."

“ What would be the good of that, dear ? "

“ To make sure of you."

“ Don't you trust me ? "

“ Yes, darling, and yet not quite, for I'm always afraid you'll find out what a brainless chap I am compared to yourself. You'll discover how horribly few ideas I've got, and how ordinary I am. You may meet the sort you imagine I am."

“ And throw you over ? "

She drew her hand out of his, determining at last to ring the bell.

‘‘ I didn't say you would do that.''

“ I wonder which of us will be the most changed when we meet." Her finger was on the electric bell as she said the challenging words, ‘‘ Which of us will be the truest ? "

“ I won't change," he said, ‘‘ no jolly fear. Good-bye. Remember I'm coming for you the very first thing in the morning : you've got to take me with you wherever you go, shopping or no shopping."

She blew a kiss to him as the door closed.

Chapter II

Miss MacNaughtan was sitting in an indulgently comfortable chair in her long drawing-room awaiting the arrival of her ex-pupil Esther Lekejian, or Stella Adair, as she was more familiarly called.

Miss MacNaughtan, who was American by birth, Scotch by ancestry, and English by adoption, kept a boardingschool for girls in one of the most central districts of residential South Kensington. Her school was modern in theory and luxurious in its appointments. Any girl who lived under her guardianship for even a couple of years could not go away ignorant of the duties which would be expected of her both socially and intellectually as a woman of the world.

Her school was expensive — ^you had only to take into consideration its charming situation (close to Kensington Gardens, and within a quarter of an hour's walk of one of the most fashionable London churches), and the air of luxury which pervaded the establishment, to gauge that the cost of a single pupil seldom came out at less than three hundred a year. But these hundreds did not matter — and Miss MacNaughtan was aware of it — to the class for whom she ran the school : money was of little consideration. Wealthy Canadians and wealthier Americans were willing to pay twice the sum she demanded to have their daughters in her establishment. Miss Mac- Naughtan knew quite well that if a man could afford to give his daughter £300 worth of furs for a Christmas present, which often happened, it was not likely he would object to paying almost the same amount for her year's education.

Yet in spite of the luxury, and freedom, and extreme modernity of the school, the girls were not spoilt. If a girl was nice when she came to Miss MacNaughtan, she was much nicer when she left her ; if she was horrid when she arrived she was far less horrid when she went away.

There was a saying that Miss MacNaughtan never took ugly girls ; that, as she could pick and choose, she always chose in favour of good looks. This was not the case ; but as she had a genius for discovering the good points in even her worst pupils, she had also a genius for teaching them how to make the best of their looks. She could not bear stupidity ; she declared that no woman who used her wits need ever look plain. No woman can make herself beautiful, but every woman can make herself attractive.

Miss MacNaughtan surrounded her girls with beauty, and she demanded of them their utmost to add to it. If she charged their parents highly, she never grudged her pupils anything which appealed to her imaginative nature as likely to produce the best results in their talents.

Her school was ‘‘ a very garden of girls,'" a garden full of healthy, beautiful flowers. It was her hobby. She loved watching their mental development and increasing physical beauty, as a gardener loves watching the results of his lavish toil.

When the drawing-room door opened, and the old butler announced “ Miss Lekejian," Miss MacNaughtan rose from her deep-seated chair with the alacrity of a girl in her teens. She held out her arms, and Stella flew into them. For a moment neither of them spoke, for the girl was in tears — tears of sheer joy at flnding herself once more in the dear old room, surrounded by the dear familiar objects, and in the arms of her darling ‘‘ Naughtie."

With tears very near her own eyes Miss MacNaughtan loosened her embrace and held the girl back from her. She looked at her carefully, and then pulled her face towards her own again and kissed it. ‘‘ Just what I expected, dear."

The girl gave a slight start. Had she guessed her secret, did she know that she had dared to love some one whom ‘‘ Naughtie " had never seen, after the thousands of times she had said that she must find her a lover, because she always discovered the best and nicest sort of people in the world ? A little nervously she said : What did you expect ? Am I not a credit to you ? "

Miss MacNaughtan laughed at her rather anxious face.

“ I expected beauty and tenderness and passion, and I have found it."" She led the girl to a sofa whose cushioned seat was so deep and ample that they sank into it as though it were a feather mattress.

With a motherly laugh Miss MacNaughtan wiped the tears from her ex-pupihs face.

Oh ! Naughtie, I knew I"d do nothing but cry when I saw you, and now that everything is just the same — this heavenly sofa, the bowls of red roses, and the beloved pictures, and the cool walls, and oh ! just everything, I want to go on crying more than ever.""

“ But, Stella, you"ve had a lovely time, you"ve been presented to four queens and seen almost aU the world, and . . .""

She stopped, for the girl said : ‘‘ Nearly all the world, but not my own country ; I w"ouldn"t go there. I wouldn"t go to it as a globe-trotter or as a tourist — I"ve kept it.""

Miss MacNaughtan dropped her eyes as the girl went on.

‘‘ And, after all, you"ve been there without me. It was too bad : you promised to keep Egypt until I could receive you there in my own home, until I could teach you all that I knew.""

Miss MacNaughtan stroked the absurdly slender hand in the yellow suede glove and said : “ The opportunity came, and I took it — ^you know Vm very extravagant, I put little away, and a trip up the Nile costs money.""

The girl smiled. “ It certainly does as you would do it.""

Miss MacNaughtan laughed. “ Has my very extravagant pupil come back to teach me economy ? "" As she spoke, she let her eyes fall on the soft little muff, a mere handful of sables which an experienced eye could tell represented a very large sum of money, and at the exquisite gown of subtle colouring and delicate handicraft.

The girl stopped her. “ You"re not really extravagant, but you do love beauty and comfort. I"ve been in places and eaten food that you would shudder to think of. To-day I put on all my newest rags for your benefit. I8ii"t this a ridiculous muff ? "" She held out her hand, and over it hung at least a dozen sables. ‘‘ They make quite a good mat if you lay them out flat : the real muff"s here.""

She turned it over : a little pouch just large enough for her two hands was under the sables.

“ One of the parents paid for everything. I took his two daughters up the Nile as far as Abu Simbel."^

The girFs eyes shone. ‘‘ Was it glorious ? IVe seen Abu Simbel in my dreams a thousand times ; did you love it ? Did you enjoy Cairo ? I'm burning to go there." Her face flushed, for her mind flew to the fact that her secret was still unconfessed, and that he was to be quartered in Cairo next winter. ‘‘ Did you meet any of my people — my cousin Girgis ? His mother has a hig house in Cairo ; I can just remember its lovely Arab hall."

She was looking at her old schoolmistress eagerly, and as she looked a little note of anxiety crept into her voice. “ Why do you look like that, Naughtie ? Were you not happy in Egypt ? Did it overpower you ?— you always said it would. Were you disappointed ? "

Miss MacNaughtan laughed as though it was a relief to And something that would relax the expression of her face which the girl had noticed. ‘‘ No, dear, I was not disappointed. ... I can't imagine the mind that could be disappointed with the Nile, and the Nile means Egypt. You can as well imagine the mind that would be disappointed with God. Egypt is omnipotent, Egypt is the beginning and the end of all things."

“ Then why do you evade my eyes ? " The girl pulled her teacher's face towards her. Their eyes met.

‘‘ Did I, dear ? Then I'll look into yours and tell you what I And in them."

‘‘ No, no," she said, ‘‘ not yet . . . not yet. . . . Tell me first why you didn't like Egypt."

But I did like Egypt."

“ Then tell me what you wish to hide about Egypt ? "

Miss MacNaughtan laughed her kind, warm, natural laugh. “ How my pupil has learned to dictate ! " she said . . . I have nothing to hide, only I think you are expecting too much . . . too much, I mean, of Cairo. You can't expect too much of the Nile, but remember your home is in Cairo, which is a very different thing."

The girl's radiant face clouded. “ But wasn't it wonderful in a different way ? Are all the books untrue ? Why am I expecting too much ? Isn't it what Lane says — the most mediaeval city in the world ? I have quite forgotten it, and I don^t suppose I was ever allowed to go into the native parts, but I have read and read about it until I could draw a map of the city. And then the things one doesn't read about — the gaiety and the pleasureloving life which the people lead . . she gave a little sigh . . . ‘‘I love dancing ; I've become awfully frivolous, Naughtie."

“ I'm so glad. Baby " : the old name slipped out from habit, for Stella had been given over to Miss MacNaughtan's care when she was only seven years old. Miss MacNaughtan had been urged and persuaded to take the child by a tie of friendship which went very deep. As a rule her youngest pupils were thirteen, and so, when the little star-eyed Stella came, she was called ‘‘ Baby," and from that day onwards she had been the pet and the pride of the school.

Her father was a wealthy Syrian living in Cairo. Her mother, who was Irish by birth, determined that her child should be educated in Europe, and so, through the influence of an old friend who had helped Miss MacNaughtan in her younger days, Stella was received into Miss Mac- Naughtan's school. Every summer her father and mother had come to England and had taken their only daughter for her holidays either to Scotland, or to the high hilltowns of Italy, or to France — ^it was generally to whatever spot in the Western world the girl had set her heart upon seeing. The rest of her holidays she had spent with Miss MacNaughtan, or with some friend of Miss MacNaughtan's if Miss MacNaughtan could not have her, and, when she was old enough, with chosen school-friends. The girl who was lucky enough to carry off Stella Adair as holiday visitor wore a sort of halo in the school for the next term. And it was indeed a distinction to secure Stella, for in her later years at school she could always have remained with Miss MacNaughtan, whom one and all of the school adored. The lucky recipient of Stella's favour felt that to have enjoyed her society for six long weeks when she could have been alone with their adored “ Naughtie " was placing her own merits on a very high level.

Stella was all that a school demands of its leader. She was beautiful, or so they thought ; she was high-spirited, she was clever and imaginative. But it was her extraordinary gift of languages (a gift which they did not know belonged to her as a birthright from her race) which placed her on the altar of genius. While the most ambitious girls worked and toiled and took every opportunity of conversing with the various governesses in French, German, and Italian, in all of which languages Miss MacNaughtan endeavoured to make her pupils perfectly at home before they left her establishment, Stella spoke them as if by instinct. Her parents talked Italian to her during her holidays in Italy, though they spoke Arabic in their home life, and she had spent long summers with them in Germany. At school her nurse was French. Her weekly letters from home were always in Arabic. During her tour round the world, which she had just accomplished with her parents, she had insisted upon speaking Arabic, for she was distressed to find that she had become almost a stranger to the spoken language. The classic language which is used in writing is scarcely understood by the uneducated classes or by any class who have only heard the spoken language. Of Syria she rarely thought. Egypt had been the land of her people for many generations, yet of modern and social Egypt she knew nothing. She could study its mysteries and its cults in museums or in books. She was no mean archaeologist. For years she had attended classes at the London College, and she had paid generous fees to the best lady guides who conduct strangers round the Egyptian portion of the British Museum.

Miss MacNaughtan knew nothing or very little about ancient Egypt. In her brief tour up the Nile she had felt its spell and reverenced its omnipotence, but her fortnight's residence in Cairo had taught her many things which hurt her big nature when she thought of her charming pupil and how bitterly her years of waiting for the land of her adoption were to be repaid — things which now seemed to her the most evil sarcasm when she looked at the beautiful woman by her side.

She had learned that in Cairo, Stella, the pride of her school, the baby of her motherless heart, the child whom she had reared to such splendid womanhood, would be to aU intents and purposes a social outcast. She had learned that a horrible deception had been practised on the girl who had been reared in the belief that for her life would be a splendid thing, that the lavish expenditure of money, affection, and social training which had been bestowed upon her was to fit her for a life which would make great demands upon her intellectually as well as socially. During her life at school she had grown accustomed to a well-merited adoration. All this now struck the woman who had mothered her and guarded her as an act of cruelty ; she had been educated and cultivated for no reason on earth than to cause her suffering.

Miss MacNaughtan said nothing of all that was passing in her own mind. The girl but repeated the words “ Half of my nature's awfully frivolous."

‘‘ I am so glad, dear ; it's a great gift. A frivolous woman with an intellectual mind is a delightful thing. When girls can't be frivolous I'm always afraid ; they generally do foolish things. They become cranks or marry undesirables."

“ Naughtie, how like you ! What principles you teach ! "

They both laughed.

All I know is, dear," the older woman said, “ that amongst all my pupils it's not the very serious ones who have turned out best, or made the happiest wives and mothers. I always think twice before I allow a serious girl any liberty, or let her drive home from a party alone with a man in a taxi."

“ Had you ever any trouble with me ? "

‘‘ Not in that way, dear," Miss NacNaughtan laughed. “ I'd be sorry for the man who tried."

The girl hugged her lovingly. “ It was because you trusted me so completely : you can't think how awful it was to feel what cads we were when we did deceive you."

The girl rose from her deep-bedded seat on the sofa.

I love your black cushions. They're new, aren't they ? And the black carpet — how clever you are about colour ! This room's like a cool garden with roses and green lawns." She pulled Miss MacNaughtan out of her seat. ‘‘ You're so modernly-ancient, with all the old furniture and the classic statues and these touches of modern purples and blacks ! "

The girl gazed round the room. ‘‘ It's delightful, but . . she sighed, I hate to see anything new in it since I was here. These purple cushions are divine — they're like petunias, but . . . but . . she paused, it shows how long IVe been away. It was all rose du Barri and grey when I left . . . the scheme of colour I mean . . . these, of course, never change. . . She swept her hand towards

the water-colours, and photographs and prints of the bestknown ancient masters. “ What a dear room for girls to live in, Naughtie ; and I took it all for granted . . . but now that I've stayed for weeks and weeks in vulgar hotels and poor inns and pensions, I can realize all that you gave us. But do come and let me go over every inch of the house. ... I must pay a visit to the kitchens. Are they all here stiU ? I spoke to ‘ Clarkie ' " (Clarkson was the name the butler had been compelled to adopt because he wore a wig : Stella had labelled him Clarkson," and Clarkson he had had to remain). “ And Bridget and Mina ? "

‘‘ Yes, they're all here, and all very excited about your return. My servants never seem to want a change, they stay on and on."

The girl laughed. “ I shouldn't think they did want a change : you over-feed them, and over-pay them, and over-consider them."

“ But they do their work."

They would be fools if they didn't, they have so little to do ; and they know that even though you spoil people, Naughtie, you mean them to do their duties."

“ Have I spoilt you ? Are my girls spoilt ? "

The girl turned swiftly round and impulsively hugged her. “No, they're not; and I hope I'm not. But oh, Naughtie, how I've wanted to meet some one as vital and alive and keen as you are ! Mother's a darling, but," the girl sighed, “you've spoilt all other women for me."

Miss MacNaughtan laughed. “ But not other men ; and after all, I've some claim to the biggest portion of the affection you've got in your nature for women."

Over the girl's face a warmer tint dyed the pale, pure skin. “ Come and let's look at my bedroom," she said, “ and the blue drawing-room — is it stiU blue ? " Miss MacNaughtan nodded in the affirmative — “ and the concert-hall ! Oh, how lovely ! " she said, as she followed Miss MacNaughtan into the blue drawing-room. It was still blue certainly, but glorious touches of colour had been added to it since Stella's day, and a frieze of old Japanese prints, whose predominating note was orange, ran all round the room at a level with the girl's eyes.

With a look of almost reproach she turned to her former instructress, who felt compelled to excuse herself.

“ My dear," she said, “ they didn't cost nearly as much as you are supposing. I took a collection from some one who owed me a bad debt. I should never have got the money, so I thought I might as well have the prints. We have had such a delightful series of lectures on Japanese art and literature, both this winter and last. I became acquainted with a Japanese professor, who is Just ekeing out enough money to keep himself in London while he is making a special study of a particular period in English history. I pay him a ridiculously small fee for lecturing to my girls once a week ... he says it helps him, and I've set the fashion, for he's given several lectures in private drawing-rooms."

The girl put her arm again through Miss MacNaughtan's. “ Naughtie, why did I ever grow up ? I do so want to come back. ... I want the wonderful mixture of intellectual food and humanity that you put into life. I shall hate the girls who are getting all these things I've passed away from."

But, dear, you're coming into so much, you can do and see anything you care about."

‘‘ But it's your mind and vitality that suggests and invests these things with such interest. Other people let things slip past, other people live in grooves ; I know I'll do the same."