The Ancient Allan | Page 4

I have just seen at a
meeting of the Horticultural Society, a gentleman who declares that a
few days ago he sat next to you at some public dinner. Indeed I do not
think there can be any doubt for he showed me your card which he had
in his purse with a Yorkshire address upon it.
"A dispute had arisen as to whether a certain variety of Crinum lily was
first found in Africa, or Southern America. This gentleman, an
authority upon South American flora, made a speech saying that he had

never met with it there, but that an acquaintance of his, Mr. Quatermain,
to whom he had spoken on the subject, said that he had seen something
of the sort in the interior of Africa." (This was quite true for I
remembered the incident.) "At the tea which followed the meeting I
spoke to this gentleman whose name I never caught, and to my
astonishment learnt that he must have been referring to you whom I
believed to be dead, for so we were told a long time ago. This seemed
certain, for in addition to the evidence of the name, he described your
personal appearance and told me that you had come to live in England.
"My dear friend, I can assure you it is long since I heard anything
which rejoiced me so much. Oh! as I write all the past comes back,
flowing in upon me like a pent-up flood of water, but I trust that of this
I shall soon have an opportunity of talking to you. So let it be for a
while.
"Alas! my friend, since we parted on the shores of the Red Sea, tragedy
has pursued me. As you will know, for both my husband and I wrote to
you, although you did not answer the letters" (I never received them),
"we reached England safely and took up our old life again, though to
tell you the truth, after my African experiences things could never be
quite the same to me, or for the matter of that to George either. To a
great extent he changed his pursuits and certain political ambitions
which he once cherished, seemed no longer to appeal to him. He
became a student of past history and especially of Egyptology, which
under all the circumstances you may think strange, as I did. However it
suited me well enough, since I also have tastes that way. So we worked
together and I can now read hieroglyphics as well as most people. One
year he said that he would like to go to Egypt again, if I were not afraid.
I answered that it had not been a very lucky place for us, but that
personally I was not in the least afraid and longed to return there. For as
you know, I have, or think I have, ties with Egypt and indeed with all
Africa. Well, we went and had a very happy time, although I was
always expecting to see old Harût come round the corner.
"After this it became a custom with us who, since George practically
gave up shooting and attending the House of Lords, had nothing to
keep us in England, to winter in Egypt. We did this for five years in
succession, living in a bungalow which we built at a place in the desert,
not far from the banks of the Nile, about half way between Luxor

which was the ancient Thebes, and Assouan. George took a great fancy
to this spot when first he saw it, and so in truth did I, for, like Memphis,
it attracted me so much that I used to laugh and say I believed that once
I had something to do with it.
"Now near to our villa that we called 'Ragnall' after this house, are the
remains of a temple which were almost buried in the sand. This temple
George obtained permission to excavate. It proved to be a long and
costly business, but as he did not mind spending the money, that was
no obstacle. For four winters we worked at it, employing several
hundred men. As we went on we discovered that although not one of
the largest, the temple, owing to its having been buried by the sand
during, or shortly after the Roman epoch, remained much more perfect
than we had expected, because the early Christians had never got at it
with their chisels and hammers. Before long I hope to show you
pictures and photographs of the various courts, etc., so I will not
attempt to describe them now.
"It is a temple to Isis--built, or rather rebuilt over the remains of an
older temple on a site that seems to have been called Amada, at any rate
in the