The Last Egyptian. Baum Lyman Frank
have heard of her?”
“No; I was thinking only of an Egyptian Princess Hatatcha who set fashionable London crazy in my father’s time.”
Kāra leaned forward eagerly, and then cast a half fearful glance around, at the mountains, the desert, and the Nile.
“Tell me about her!” he said, sinking his voice to a whisper.
“About the Princess?” asked Winston, surprised. “Really, I know little of her history. She came in a flash of wonderful oriental magnificence, I have heard, and soon had the nobility of England suing for her favors. Lord Roane especially divorced his wife that he might marry the beautiful Egyptian; and then she refused to wed with him. There were scandals in plenty before Hatatcha disappeared from London, which she did as mysteriously as she had come, and without a day’s warning. I remember that certain infatuated admirers spent fortunes in search of her, overrunning all Egypt, but without avail. No one has ever heard of her since.”
Kāra drew a deep breath, sighing softly.
“It was like my grandmother,” he murmured. “She was always a daughter of Set.”
Winston stared at him.
“Do you mean to say – ” he began.
“Yes,” whispered Kāra, casting another frightened look around; “it was my grandmother, Hatatcha, who did that. You must not tell, my brother, for she is still in league with the devils and would destroy us both if she came to hate us. Her daughter, who was my mother, was the child of that same Lord Roane you have mentioned; but she never knew her father nor England. I myself have never been a day’s journey from the Nile, for Hatatcha makes me her slave.”
“She must be very old, if she still lives,” said Winston, musingly.
“She was seventeen when she went to London,” replied Kāra, “and she returned here in three years, with my mother in her arms. Her daughter was thirty-five when I was born, and that is twenty-three years ago. Fifty-eight is not an advanced age, yet Hatatcha was a withered hag when first I remember her, and she is the same to-day. By the head of Osiris, my brother, she is likely to live until I am stiff in my tomb.”
“It was she who taught you to speak English?”
“Yes. I knew it when I was a baby, for in our private converse she has always used the English tongue. Also I speak the ancient Egyptian language, which you call the Coptic, and I read correctly the hieroglyphics and picture-writings of my ancestors. The Arabic, of course, I know. Hatatcha has been a careful teacher.”
“What of your mother?” asked Winston.
“Why, she ran away when I was a child, to enter the harem of an Arab in Cairo, so that she passed out of our lives, and I have lived with my grandmother always.”
“I am impressed by the fact,” said the Englishman, with a sneer, “that your royal blood is not so pure after all.”
“And why not?” returned Kāra, composedly. “Is it not from the mother we descend? Who my grandfather may have been matters little, provided Hatatcha, the royal one, is my granddame. Perhaps my mother never considered who my father might be; it was unimportant. From her I drew the blood of the great Ahtka-Rā, who lives again in me. Robbed of your hollow ceremonial of marriage, you people of Europe can boast no true descent save through your mothers – no purer blood than I, ignoring my fathers, am sure now courses in my veins; for the father, giving so little to his progeny, can scarcely contaminate it, whatever he may chance to be.”
The other, paying little heed to this discourse, the platitudes of which were all too familiar to his ears, reflected deeply on the strange discovery he had made through this unconventional Egyptian.
“Then,” said he, pursuing his train of thought, “your knowledge of your ancestry and the life and works of Ahtka-Rā was obtained through your grandmother?”
“Yes.”
“And she has not disclosed to you how it is that she knows all this?”
“No. She says it is true, and I believe it. Hatatcha is a wonderful woman.”
“I agree with you. Where did she get the money that enabled her to amaze all England with her magnificence and splendor?”
“I do not know.”
“Is she wealthy now?”
Kāra laughed.
“Did I not say we were half starved, and live like foxes in a hole? For raiment we have each one ragged garment. But the outside of man matters little, save to those who have nothing within. Treasures may be kept in a rotten chest.”
“But personally you would prefer a handsome casket?”
“Of course. It is Hatatcha who teaches me philosophy to make me forget my rags.”
The Englishman reflected.
“Do you labor in the fields?” he asked.
“She will not let me,” said Kāra. “If my wrongs were righted, she holds, I would even now be king of Egypt. The certainty that they will never be righted does not alter the morale of the case.”
“Does Hatatcha earn money herself?”
“She sits in her hut morning and night, muttering curses upon her enemies.”
“Then how do you live at all?”
Kāra seemed surprised by the question, and considered carefully his reply.
“At times,” said he, “when our needs are greatest, my grandmother will produce an ancient coin of the reign of Hystaspes, which the sheik at Al-Kusiyeh readily changes into piasters, because they will give him a good premium on it at the museum in Cairo. Once, years ago, the sheik threatened Hatatcha unless she confessed where she had found these coins; but my grandmother called Set to her aid, and cast a spell upon the sheik, so that his camels died of rot and his children became blind. After that he let Hatatcha alone, but he was still glad to get her coins.”
“Where does she keep them?”
“It is her secret. When she was ill, a month ago, and lay like one dead, I searched everywhere for treasure and found it not. Perhaps she has exhausted her store.”
“Had she anything besides the coins?”
“Once a jewel, which she sent by Tadros, the dragoman, to exchange for English books in Cairo.”
“What became of the books?”
“After we had both read them they disappeared. I do not know what became of them.”
They had shifted their seats twice, because the shadow cast by the palms moved as the sun drew nearer to the horizon. Now the patches were long and narrow, and there was a cooler breath in the air.
The Englishman sat long silent, thinking intently. Kāra was placidly smoking his third cigarette.
The rivalry among excavators and Egyptologists generally is intense. All are eager to be recognized as discoverers. Since the lucky find of the plucky American, Davis, the explorers among the ancient ruins of Egypt had been on the qui vive to unearth some farther record of antiquity to startle and interest the scholars of the world. Much of value has been found along the Nile banks, it is true; but it is generally believed that much more remains to be discovered.
Gerald Winston, with a fortune at his command and a passion for Egyptology, was an indefatigable prospector in this fascinating field, and it was because of a rumor that ancient coins and jewels had come from the Sheik of Al-Kusiyeh that he had resolved to visit that village in person and endeavor to learn the secret source of this wealth before someone else forestalled him.
The story that he had just heard from the lips of the voluble Kāra rendered his visit to Al-Kusiyeh unnecessary; but that he was now on the trail of an important discovery was quite clear to him. How best to master the delicate conditions confronting him must be a subject of careful consideration, for any mistake on his part would ruin all his hopes.
“If