Uarda : a Romance of Ancient Egypt. Complete

“You have proved to me,” he said, “that the virtues of gratitude, of constancy, and of faith are practised by the Egyptians; although your merit certainly appears less to me now that I see your wife, for he who owns the fairest may easily forego any taste for the fair.”

Nefert blushed.

“Your generosity,” she answered, “does me more than justice at your daughter’s expense, and love moved my husband to the same injustice, but your beautiful daughter must forgive you and me also.”

Praxilla went towards her and expressed her thanks; then she offered her the costly coronet, the golden clasps and strings of rare pearls which her women carried; her father begged Mena to accept a coat of mail and a shield of fine silver work. The strangers were then led into the tent, and were there welcomed and entertained with all honor, and offered bread and wine. While Mena pledged her father, Praxilla related to Nefert, with the help of the interpreter, what hours of terror she had lived through after she had been taken prisoner by the Egyptians, and was brought into the camp with the other spoils of war; how an older commander had asserted his claim to her, how Mena had given her his hand, had led her to his tent, and had treated her like his own daughter. Her voice shook with emotion, and even the interpreter was moved as she concluded her story with these words: “How grateful I am to him, you will fully understand when I tell you that the man who was to have been my husband fell wounded before my eyes while defending our camp; but he has recovered, and now only awaits my return for our wedding.”

“May the Gods only grant it!” cried the king, “for Praxilla is the last child of my house. The murderous war robbed me of my four fair sons before they had taken wives, my son-in-law was slain by the Egyptians at the taking of our camp, and his wife and new-born son fell into their hands, and Praxilla is my youngest child, the only one left to me by the envious Gods.”

While he was still speaking, they heard the guards call out and a child’s loud cry, and at the same instant little Scherau rushed into the tent holding up his hand exclaiming.

“I have it! I have found it!”

Uarda, who had remained behind the curtain which screened the sleeping room of the tent—but who had listened with breathless attention to every word of the foreigners, and who had never taken her eyes off the fair Praxilla—now came forward, emboldened by her agitation, into the midst of the tent, and took the jewel from the child’s hand to show it to the Greek king; for while she stood gazing at Praxilla it seemed to her that she was looking at herself in a mirror, and the idea had rapidly grown to conviction that her mother had been a daughter of the Danaids. Her heart beat violently as she went up to the king with a modest demeanor, her head bent down, but holding her jewel up for him to see.

The bystanders all gazed in astonishment at the veteran chief, for he staggered as she came up to him, stretched out his hands as if in terror towards the girl, and drew back crying out:

“Xanthe, Xanthe! Is your spirit freed from Hades? Are you come to summon me?”

Praxilla looked at her father in alarm, but suddenly she, too, gave a piercing cry, snatched a chain from her neck, hurried towards Uarda, and seizing the jewel she held, exclaimed:

“Here is the other half of the ornament, it belonged to my poor sister Xanthe!”

The old Greek was a pathetic sight, he struggled hard to collect himself, looking with tender delight at Uarda, his sinewy hands trembled as he compared the two pieces of the necklet; they matched precisely—each represented the wing of an eagle which was attached to half an oval covered with an inscription; when they were laid together they formed the complete figure of a bird with out-spread wings, on whose breast the lines exactly matched of the following oracular verse:

“Alone each is a trifling thing, a woman’s useless toy
But with its counterpart behold! the favorite bird of Zeus.”

A glance at the inscription convinced the king that he held in his hand the very jewel which he had put with his own hands round the neck of his daughter Xanthe on her marriage-day, and of which the other half had been preserved by her mother, from whom it had descended to Praxilla. It had originally been made for his wife and her twin sister who had died young. Before he made any enquiries, or asked for any explanations, he took Uarda’s head between his hands, and turning her face close to his he gazed at her features, as if he were reading a book in which he expected to find a memorial of all the blissful hours of his youth, and the girl felt no fear; nor did she shrink when he pressed his lips to her forehead, for she felt that this man’s blood ran in her own veins. At last the king signed to the interpreter; Uarda was asked to tell all she knew of her mother, and when she said that she had come a captive to Thebes with an infant that had soon after died, that her father had bought her and had loved her in spite of her being dumb, the prince’s conviction became certainty; he acknowledged Uarda as his grandchild, and Praxilla clasped her in her arms.

Then he told Mena that it was now twenty years since his son-in-law had been killed, and his daughter Xanthe, whom Uarda exactly resembled, had been carried into captivity. Praxilla was then only just born, and his wife died of the shock of such terrible news. All his enquiries for Xanthe and her child had been fruitless, but he now remembered that once, when he had offered a large ransom for his daughter if she could be found, the Egyptians had enquired whether she were dumb, and that he had answered “no.” No doubt Xanthe had lost the power of speech through grief, terror, and suffering.

The joy of the king was unspeakable, and Uarda was never tired of gazing at his daughter and holding her hand.

Then she turned to the interpreter.

“Tell me,” she said. “How do I say ‘I am so very happy?’”

He told her, and she smilingly repeated his words. “Now ‘Uarda will love you with all her heart?’” and she said it after him in broken accents that sounded so sweet and so heart-felt, that the old man clasped her to his breast.

Tears of emotion stood in Nefert’s eyes, and when Uarda flung herself into her arms she said:

“The forlorn swan has found its kindred, the floating leaf has reached the shore, and must be happy now!” Thus passed an hour of the purest happiness; at last the Greek king prepared to leave, and the wished to take Uarda with him; but Mena begged his permission to communicate all that had occurred to the Pharaoh and Bent-Anat, for Uarda was attached to the princess’s train, and had been left in his charge, and he dared not trust her in any other hands without Bent-Anat’s permission. Without waiting for the king’s reply he left the tent, hastened to the banqueting tent, and, as we know, Rameses and the princess had at once attended to his summons.

On the way Mena gave them a vivid description of the exciting events that had taken place, and Rameses, with a side glance at Bent-Anat, asked Rameri:

“Would you be prepared to repair your errors, and to win the friendship of the Greek king by being betrothed to his granddaughter?”

The prince could not answer a word, but he clasped his father’s hand, and kissed it so warmly that Rameses, as he drew it away, said:

“I really believe that you have stolen a march on me, and have been studying diplomacy behind my back!”

Rameses met his noble opponent outside Mena’s tent, and was about to offer him his hand, but the Danaid chief had sunk on his knees before him as the other princes had done.

“Regard me not as a king and a warrior,” he exclaimed, “only as a suppliant father; let us conclude a peace, and permit me to take this maiden, my grandchild, home with me to my own country.”

Rameses raised the old man from the ground, gave him his hand, and said kindly:

“I can only grant the half of what you ask. I, as king of Egypt, am most willing to grant you a faithful compact for a sound and lasting peace; as regards this maiden, you must treat with my children, first with my daughter Bent-Anat, one of whose ladies she is, and then with your released prisoner there, who wishes to make Uarda his wife.”

“I will resign my share in the matter to my brother,” said Bent-Anat, “and I only ask you, maiden, whether you are inclined to acknowledge him as your lord and master?”

Uarda bowed assent, and looked at her grandfather with an expression which he understood without any interpreter.

“I know you well,” he said, turning to Rameri. “We stood face to face in the fight, and I took you prisoner as you fell stunned by a blow from my sword. You are still too rash, but that is a fault which time will amend in a youth of your heroic temper. Listen to me now, and you too, noble Pharaoh, permit me these few words; let us betroth these two, and may their union be the bond of ours, but first grant me for a year to take my long-lost child home with me that she may rejoice my old heart, and that I may hear from her lips the accents of her mother, whom you took from me. They are both young; according to the usages of our country, where both men and women ripen later than in your country, they are almost too young for the solemn tie of marriage. But one thing above all will determine you to favor my wishes; this daughter of a royal house has grown up amid the humblest surroundings; here she has no home, no family-ties. The prince has wooed her, so to speak, on the highway, but if she now comes with me he can enter the palace of kings as suitor to a princess, and the marriage feast I will provide shall be a right royal one.”

“What you demand is just and wise,” replied Rameses. “Take your grand-child with you as my son’s betrothed bride—my future daughter. Give me your hands, my children. The delay will teach you patience, for Rameri must remain a full year from to-day in Egypt, and it will be to your profit, sweet child, for the obedience which he will learn through his training in the army will temper the nature of your future husband. You, Rameri, shall in a year from to-day—and I think you will not forget the date—find at your service a ship in the harbor of Pelusium, fitted and manned with Phoenicians, to convey you to your wedding.”

“So be it!” exclaimed the old man. “And by Zeus who hears me swear—I will not withhold Xanthe’s daughter from your son when he comes to claim her!”

When Rameri returned to the princes’ tent he threw himself on their necks in turn, and when he found himself alone with their surly old house-steward, he snatched his wig from his head, flung it in the air, and then coaxingly stroked the worthy officer’s cheeks as he set it on his head again.

CHAPTER XLVI

Uarda accompanied her grandfather and Praxilla to their tent on the farther side of the Nile, but she was to return next morning to the Egyptian camp to take leave of all her friends, and to provide for her father’s internment. Nor did she delay attending to the last wishes of old Hekt, and Bent-Anat easily persuaded her father, when he learnt how greatly he had been indebted to her, to have her embalmed like a lady of rank.

Before Uarda left the Egyptian camp, Pentaur came to entreat her to afford her dying preserver Nebsecht the last happiness of seeing her once more; Uarda acceded with a blush, and the poet, who had watched all night by his friend, went forward to prepare him for her visit.

Nebsecht’s burns and a severe wound on his head caused him great suffering; his cheeks glowed with fever, and the physicians told Pentaur that he probably could not live more than a few hours.

The poet laid his cool hand on his friend’s brow, and spoke to him encouragingly; but Nebsecht smiled at his words with the peculiar expression of a man who knows that his end is near, and said in a low voice and with a visible effort:

“A few breaths more and here, and here, will be peace.” He laid his hand on his head and on his heart.

“We all attain to peace,” said Pentaur. “But perhaps only to labor more earnestly and unweariedly in the land beyond the grave. If the Gods reward any thing it is the honest struggle, the earnest seeking after truth; if any spirit can be made one with the great Soul of the world it will be yours, and if any eye may see the Godhead through the veil which here shrouds the mystery of His existence yours will have earned the privilege.”

“I have pushed and pulled,” sighed Nebsecht, “with all my might, and now when I thought I had caught a glimpse of the truth the heavy fist of death comes down upon me and shuts my eyes. What good will it do me to see with the eye of the Divinity or to share in his omniscience? It is not seeing, it is seeking that is delightful—so delightful that I would willingly set my life there against another life here for the sake of it.” He was silent, for his strength failed, and Pentaur begged him to keep quiet, and to occupy his mind in recalling all the hours of joy which life had given him.

“They have been few,” said the leech. “When my mother kissed me and gave me dates, when I could work and observe in peace, when you opened my eyes to the beautiful world of poetry—that was good!”

And you have soothed the sufferings of many men, added Pentaur, “and never caused pain to any one.”

Nebsecht shook his head.

“I drove the old paraschites,” he muttered, “to madness and to death.”

He was silent for a long time, then he looked up eagerly and said: “But not intentionally—and not in vain! In Syria, at Megiddo I could work undisturbed; now I know what the organ is that thinks. The heart! What is the heart? A ram’s heart or a man’s heart, they serve the same end; they turn the wheel of animal life, they both beat quicker in terror or in joy, for we feel fear or pleasure just as animals do. But Thought, the divine power that flies to the infinite, and enables us to form and prove our opinions, has its seat here—Here in the brain, behind the brow.”

He paused exhausted and overcome with pain. Pentaur thought he was wandering in his fever, and offered him a cooling drink while two physicians walked round his bed singing litanies; then, as Nebsecht raised himself in bed with renewed energy, the poet said to him: