Ainslee's Magazine/The Tinder and the Spark

by Edgar Jepson

The Tinder and
the Spark

By Edgar Jepson

Author of “Ann,”
“The Professional Prince,” etc.

HALFORD’S suggestion that I should come and encamp alongside his camp near Ain-Raian and watch him excavating the Fayum necropolis would not have appealed to me for a moment had I not wanted to get Sheila away from Cairo. I liked Halford well enough, and his enthusiastic talk about Egyptology had given me quite an interest in it, though not to the point of camping uncomfortably in the desert. But a man really cannot have his wife talked about as people were talking about Sheila and Colonel Wilding, however well he may know that the affair is harmless. It was no use remonstrating with Sheila, and I have not found any form of compulsion that will compel her to do anything she does not wish. The only thing to do was to get her away. It generally is.

This idea of camping in the desert for a week or two was new, and when I put her to it, pretending to be much keener on excavation than I really was, she rather jumped at it. I was not surprised; she always does jump at anything new. I lost no time making preparations, and less than a week later, after a perfectly beastly journey, we arrived at Halford’s camp and set about having our tents pitched alongside of it.

Sheila bore the journey without complaining. She seemed to be enjoying the novelty of the business. I took it that that novelty would be from a week to ten days wearing off. By that time, Wilding would probably have worn off, too—with Sheila, it is pretty much out of sight, out of mind—and we could return to Cairo. I might reckon that it would be another fortnight before tongues were wagging about her and some one else.

While our tents were being pitched, we dined, or rather supped, with Halford. Sheila, who had taken very little notice of him at the hotel, was civil to him to the point of appearing quite interested in his talk about the art of the ancient Egyptians. I must say that he did talk very well, in an uncommonly musical voice and with an enthusiasm rather catching. But I was doubtful whether such a very modern butterfly as Sheila was a quarter as much interested in it as she appeared to be. However, there is never any saying about Sheila. At any rate, the evening was not dull. We were much that to the good.

As we walked across to our tents, after bidding Halford good night, she said in an approving tone:

“Your Egyptian can talk.”

“Halford isn’t an Egyptian, my dear girl, He’s an Englishman,” I said.

“What he is is one of those old Pharaohs he talked about,” she said firmly.

Instantly I saw that she was right. With his black beard cut square in the ancient Egyptian fashion, his full lips, widish nostrils, straight nose, and level eyebrows, Halford was uncommonly like a Pharaoh, a good-looking one, too.

“You're right,” I said. “I wonder if that voice of his is ancient Egyptian, too.”

“Very likely. It’s a ripping voice,” she said.

She went into her tent, leaving the door flap open so that she could talk. I dropped into a chair at the entrance and lit a cigarette. In the middle of making her toilet, she said:

“It’s a pity your Egyptian is a cripple.”

“I suppose it is,” I “All the same, any man who goes over the top in the first line of a big push may consider himself lucky to come out of it with nothing worse than a bad limp.”

“Oh, that’s how he got it, is it?” she said with much more interest in her tone.

I was pleased to hear it. If she took an interest in Halford, she would be longer growing bored by the desert. I thought I might as well stiffen it a bit.

“That’s how he got it.” I said. “And I heard a queer story about his getting it, too. Apparently he went berserk, if you know what that is.”

“Part of the Viking stunt, isn’t it?” she said, coming to the door of the tent and looking out across the desert.

“Yes,” I said, looking at her. “He got into a trench full of Huns with only three of his men, went berserk, and practically cleared it with the butt of a German rifle. The man who told me said that he accounted for more than twenty Huns with that rifle butt and had six wounds before the bullet in his ankle stopped him.”

“And all he looks like is a large black lamb,” said Sheila. “Still, I suppose we must be careful not to do anything to make him butt us.”

“Rather!” I said

She stood looking over the desert, and I looked at her. She was a dull white shadow, all but her eyes, and they seemed to have gathered up the star-light and were glimmering.

Presently I felt, or, 1 suppose, I heard, her shiver, though the night was hot enough, and she said:

“I thought this desert was supposed to be restful. I think it’s queer—and rather horrid.”

I dare say she was right. But I had been attending to her, not to the desert.

We were up very early to watch the digging. At first I thought it was going to be dull, but presently it grew interesting, almost exciting. They began to find things—pottery and bits of pottery and bits of statuettes. Halford told us about each thing as they unearthed it, and that made it more interesting. Sheila seemed to want to understand all about it and asked a lot of questions. It was the kind of passing whim she would have. When a whole statuette was unearthed, she seemed more excited about it than Halford.

When the sun was well up, we went back to the camp and had déjeuner together; and during the heat of the day, we stayed in our tents. About four, we went out to the digging again. I noticed that the gang did not need Hal ford to tell them anything twice; they just got to it hard.

He dined with us that night, and after dinner we went to the big tent in which he stored his chief finds, and he talked to us about them. Since he was quite sure that everybody's one aim in life was to become an expert Egyptologist, he talked well, illustrating his points from books and photographs he had with him. Sheila humored him, showing quite a keen interest in his ideas. That was quite all right—as long as she was not bored.

All the same, he could make you see a thing, though he also talked a lot about beauty, which had nothing what ever to do, as far as I could see, with Egyptology. Sheila seemed to be interested in that, too.

That was our program for the first three days. On the third day, she started to argue with him about two of the things they unearthed. He seemed rather taken aback at first. Then he seemed pleased to have some one to argue with, and argued with her quite seriously.

That night, as we were drinking our coffee after dinner, he said:

“I’m going to show you my first great find to-morrow—my Hathor.”

“Hathor? A goddess, wasn’t she?” said Sheila.

“Ruler of the West, Lady of Heaven, and Queen of the Dead,” he said—almost chanted, in fact—in a devout tone.

“I found her myself,” he went on, “in the temple against the side of that little hill—it isn’t much more than a hillock—to the south of the camp. We’d dug down to the face of the temple from the top, and it was a job, for the sand drift was fifteen hundred years old or more. Here and there, we uncovered a crack or a breach as we bared the wall; and after ten days of it, just as twilight was falling, we came down to the top of the actual doorway. The gang always hurried away from the temple in the twilight, so as not to be in such a haunt of demons in the dark, and they went off that evening. But I couldn’t wait till the morning. I had to see what was in the temple that very night—if, of course, there was anything. I had some biscuits with me fortunately, and I set to work to dig myself. The moon was nearly full, so I had plenty of light. I don’t know how long I dug, for I got excited. But I must have dug for a good while, for when I came to look at the place next morning, I’d done as much digging as the whole gang does in half a day. Excitetnent, real excitement, is sometimes very stimulating. It makes you do things you'd never dream of ordinarily.”

I thought of the Huns and the rifle butt and said:

“I can well believe it.”

“Well, I got it clear and crawled through. The moonlight was shining in through the cracks and smaller breaches in the wall, and I saw the face and shoulders of Hathor rising out of the drifted sand that filled the chamber.” He paused, then said slowly in a queer voice: “God! She’s the most beautiful creature in the world! Often, on moonlit nights, I go to the temple to see her.”

His tone was so queer that it gave me rather a thrill. Then I felt that it was rather indecent; a man has no business to bare his feelings like that. I looked at Sheila. She was staring at him.

We were silent for a good minute; then he shook himself and said in a rather apologetic tone:

“Odd—isn’t it?—to be affected like that by a statue. Sometimes I have a really amazing craving to see her. I have to stop whatever I’m doing and go—especially at the full moon.”

“It is odd,” I said. “But it will——”

Then Sheila broke in.

“I said this desert was queer,” she said. “It’s a bit too much on the elemental side.”

“It does affect you,” he said quietly.

I had not noticed it.

That night, as I smoked my cigarette at the door of Sheila’s tent, I began to talk about Halford and the statue, but the subject did not seem to interest her. Neither would she explain her words about the desert, beyond saying carelessly:

“Oh, you get rather close to nature in it, don’t you think ?”

Next morning I was rather keen to see the statue, but Sheila seemed bored by the idea of the expedition. However, she came. It was not much of an expedition. The temple was less than two miles from the camp, and our donkeys soon carried us there in the cool of the morning.

I was prepared to be disappointed by the statue, for it seemed more than likely that Halford’s moonstruck fancy had exaggerated its beauty. What I did get was a real surprise. The statue was the very image of Sheila—her face; her shoulders, her arms, her very hands and feet. Only it was Sheila without her warm beauty of life and color.

She saw the likeness before I did. I heard her gasp, and then I saw it. We stood staring at the statue; and the longer I stared, the stronger the likeness grew. The amazing thing was that Halford did not see it at all. He had not kept it as a surprise for us. He was absolutely blind to it. He even looked from the statue to Sheila and did not see it. The fact was he had no eyes for anything but the statue.

We talked about it, looking at it from different angles; and I expressed an admiration of it almost great enough to satisfy him. Sheila could not very well express her admiration of it, and he seemed a little hurt that she did not agree more warmly with his praise of it.

“I was quite sure—quite—that you’d see it,” he kept saying to her in a tone of disappointment.

I could have laughed.

We looked at the statue for some time; then, with lighted candles, we explored the galleries, which ran into the hill. It was a perfect warren, or rather it was a maze, with here and there a small chamber, all carpeted thickly with sand. I wondered how on earth Halford found his way about it as he did, without getting lost. He said that it came from practice in such warrens—that he had acquired a sense of orientation under the earth as well as above it, and that he could find his way about this particular maze in the dark. He certainly was on the queer side, the primitive side, in some ways; a savage might have had just such a sense.

When we came back into the temple he lingered to take a last look at the statue; and as we came out of the door, I said to Sheila:

“It’s extraordinary, the likeness—absolutely extraordinary! But, damn it, it’s far more extraordinary that he hasn’t seen it and doesn’t see it! Why, he can’t have seen you—really seen you—ever!”

“Don’t say anything to him about it,” she said quickly.

“Of course I shan’t,” I said. “It'll be such fun to see him make the discovery.”

“If he hasn’t made it already, he’s hardly likely to make it now,” she said.

“Oh, he will,” I said confidently.

“I wonder,” she said indifferently.

I started discussing how I could get hold of the statue. I was determined to have it, if it cost me twenty thousand pounds. She did not seem interested in the question.

Halford, now that he had shown us the statue, was always talking about it. He would break off suddenly from any subject to talk about it. The next night he gave Sheila a photograph he had taken of it.

As we walked to our tents, I said:

“I’ll be hanged if he isn’t in love—really in love—with that statue! It’s as plain as a pikestaff.”

“Oh, yes,” said Sheila, as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world.

She did not seem to lose interest at all in the excavating. She talked to Halford about the finds and asked him questions and argued with him as keenly as ever. I rotted her once or twice about taking such an interest in a man who could not even see her. She said that it was in his work, not in Halford, that she took an interest. But once I saw her look at him very queerly—a regular danger-signal look. Then I noticed that she was rather restless and inclined to be short with me about nothing at all. I might have thought that she was out of sorts, but the desert seemed agree with her perfectly. I have never seen her look fitter or prettier.

I was getting rather fed up with Egyptology, and one morning I was talking about getting some quail shooting when she interrupted me to ask when the moon would be at the full. I told her in about ten days.

She thought for a little while; then she said:

“I shall have to send Selim to Cairo. I want something from Madame Constant’s.”

That sounded cheerful. If she was getting things from her dressmaker’s, I was in for a longer spell of Egyptology and the desert than I had bargained for. However, there was no getting out of it. Selim went; and I set about getting that quail shooting. I got it, and began to cut the evening excavating. Sheila seemed to have got over her restlessness; they had some good finds; and things were going pleasantly enough.

Then the moon grew larger in the sky, and twice Halford cut short our usual after-dinner talk and left us to jog over to the temple and gaze at his statue. Sheila did not seem to mind at all.

But on the third evening, he was talking about beauty and the necessity and stimulation of it in a rather intricate way—quite above my head, in fact, though, from the questions she kept asking, Sheila seemed to be following his talk fairly well. Then quite suddenly he rose, looked toward the temple, said good night, and went off.

It was on the abrupt side, but I was rather surprised at the way she took it, As he walked away, she looked at the temple with a positively black scowl on her face. I had seen her angry, but never in a fury like that before, especially so suddenly.

I said nothing till the scowl went and she was merely looking puzzled and injured. Then I said:

“He’s not spotted that likeness yet. I don’t believe he ever will now.”

“Oh, yes, he will,” she said confidently, and she scowled a little at Halford, who was jogging off in the moonlight.

I did not believe it, but I did not say so. I only said:

“I shouldn’t wonder if it was a jolly sight better for him to go on not seeing it.”

Sheila gave a little start, looked at me queerly, and said:

“Sometimes, Bertie, you have a flash of insight—real insight.”

Then she laughed gently, a queer laugh, a bit on the wicked side, and I knew that Halford had better stay blind to that likeness. She was evidently a good deal more annoyed by his denseness than she had let on, and once she had the pull, he would get beans till further orders.

Then it struck me as odd that she should attach so much importance to it. It was not like her. Halford was nothing to bother about—the kind of man you meet in a hotel, but nowhere else. And really, after what he had said about the statue, it would be rather cheek on his part to let on that he had spotted the likeness, if ever he did spot it. I told her so.

She only said:

“Oh, he’s much too simple not to let on, if he does spot it”

Selim came back on the day before the full moon, bringing a largish dressmaker’s box. That evening Halford did not go off to the temple, and Sheila asked him why he was deserting his goddess. He said that he was reserving it for the next night because Hathor was always more beautiful than ever on the night of the full moon. Then they discussed, quite seriously, whether they were mad at some full moons, and they decided that they were madder at the full moon in Egypt than in England. You might have thought that they really believed it. She asked him whether he would be mad on the next night.

“I hope so,” he said. “Won't you?”

“No such luck,” she said. “I’ve nothing to be mad about.”

“I expect you could,” he said, and looked at her harder than usual.

Suddenly he frowned; there was a flicker in his eyes, and for half a jiffy I thought he had spotted the likeness. But he had not.

The next evening I went off to shoot quail behind the hill of the temple of Hathor. As I came back past the hill about seven, to my surprise, I found Sheila waiting for me by a small fire, with Selim, the dressmaker’s box, and a picnic basket. She told me that she had a little game on, that we were going to picnic there, and she set Selim to pluck and clean some quail. As soon as he had done it, he insisted on making a bolt for the camp, because there were more demons in this hill than in all the rest of the Fayum. We let him go.

We cooked the quail ourselves and had a jolly meal by the light of the fire during the dark time after sunset. Sheila would not tell me what her little game was, saying that I should see presently. It was a heavy, oppressive night and very still. We were too far from the camp to hear any sound from it.

When the moon rose, large and orange, over the edge of the plain, Sheila asked to carry the dressmaker’s box into the temple; and when I set it down, she told me to clear out till she called me.

I sat down against the temple wall and lighted a cigarette. I found the dead stillness queer and rather trying; I had an odd feeling that it might be broken any moment by a tremendous crash. After a while, Sheila called me, and I went into the temple with a pretty fair inkling of what I was going to see. But I did not see it—quite. She had covered up the statue and stood in front of it in the horned headdress and embroidered, transparent robe of the goddess. I had expected that. But also I had expected Sheila to be the statue, She was not; she was the blessed goddess herself—Hathor, Ruler of the West, Lady of Heaven, and Queen of the Dead—absolutely the whole thing in all the freshness of the living beauty that the sculptor had seen or dreamed of six thousand years ago.

I just stared at her with my mouth open; then I said:

“My hat, but you are it, Sheila!”

“Aren't I?” she said, laughing gently,

“And a bit over,” I said.

We went to the door of the temple; and in the full light of the moon, she was more beautiful still and uncommonly troubling.

“But it’s colossal! Halford is simply going to get the surprise of a lifetime! It’ll make him sit up!” I said and laughed.

She laughed, too. She was certainly going to get her own back.

We watched for Halford’s coming; and when we saw him in the distance, I cleared off into the shadow about fifty yards away and chuckled. He came very slowly. It was not a night to move fast on. Then the stillness and oppressiveness got on my nerves again, and I began to think that he was hardly the kind of man for Sheila to take all that trouble about. She ought not to have cared whether an outsider like that missed the likeness or not. Then he jogged up to the door of the in.

There was quite a pause; I took it that he was struck dumb by the sight of Sheila. Then he gave a regular shout. He must have been surprised!

I rose to my feet and walked toward the door of the temple, laughing, though I was feeling annoyed. That shout did sound funny.

Suddenly Sheila screamed, loud and high, and then again.

It was a bit of a shock, and I started to run. I pulled up at the end of ten yards; it occurred to me that it would not do her any harm to get a lesson. It would teach her to remember that an outsider is an outsider. I walked slowly to the temple and came into it pretty stiff and upright, ready to give Halford beans.

It was empty.

I stared round, flabbergasted. Then I ran across it into the first gallery in the hill and shouted. There came back a faint murmur from deep in. It might have been Sheila, or it might have been an echo. Then I rather lost my head and rushed down the gallery, shouting to her, till I bumped into a wall, cursed, started off again, and shouted. How many galleries I went along and how many walls I bumped into before I remembered my matches, and cursed myself for an idiot for not using them, I don’t know.

I struck a match, and it cleared my wits. I stood still and listened hard. Talk about the silence of the tomb! Then there came from ever so far away a kind of whispered groan. I started off toward it. But it was impossible to keep any direction in that maze of galleries. Once or twice I shouted; not a sound came back. Later—ten minutes later, I should think—I came round a corner and heard the whisper of a laugh. I shouted, but no answer came.

At the next turning, I sat down and rested for a bit and felt the bumps on my forehead and the bruises. I was rather blown and sore. I was no longer anxious; I was just furious. When I went on again, I was just bent on getting out and nothing else. It must have been a quarter of an hour later that I saw a glimmer of light, and in two minutes I came out into the temple.

Sheila and Halford were standing in the doorway. He had given her a fright, plainly enough, for she was quite pale still and looking a jolly sight more like a woman than a goddess. But I'll be hanged if she wasn’t smiling up at him with her hand on his arm!

Then she heard me and turned:

“You are a duffer at hide and seek, Bertie! You nearly ran into us twice.”