An Unprotected Female at the Pyramids | Page 6

then sighed
deeply. M. Delabordeau, notwithstanding that his country does stand at
the head of all human civilisation, was not courteous enough to declare
that if Miss Dawkins would join his party across the desert, nothing
would be wanting to make his beatitude in this world perfect.
Their road from the village of the chicken-batching ovens lay up along
the left bank of the Nile, through an immense grove of lofty palm- trees,
looking out from among which our visitors could ever and anon see the
heads of the two great Pyramids;--that is, such of them could see it as
felt any solicitude in the matter.
It is astonishing how such things lose their great charm as men find
themselves in their close neighbourhood. To one living in New York or
London, how ecstatic is the interest inspired by these huge structures.
One feels that no price would be too high to pay for seeing them as
long as time and distance, and the world's inexorable task-work, forbid

such a visit. How intense would be the delight of climbing over the
wondrous handiwork of those wondrous architects so long since dead;
how thrilling the awe with which one would penetrate down into their
interior caves--those caves in which lay buried the bones of ancient
kings, whose very names seem to have come to us almost from another
world!
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