Adventure stories; Fantasy fiction, English; Quatermain, Allan (Fictitious character) -- Fiction
“I did everything I could. She was seen by three of the greatest
brain-doctors in England, but none of them was able to help. The only
hope they gave was that the fit might pass off as suddenly as it had
come. They said too that a thorough change of scene would perhaps be
beneficial, and suggested Egypt; that was in October. I did not take
much to the idea, I don’t know why, and personally should not have
acceded to it had it not been for a curious circumstance. The last
consultation took place in the big drawing-room at Ragnall. When it was
over my wife remained with her mother at one end of the room while I
and the doctors talked together at the other, as I thought quite out of
her earshot. Presently, however, she called to me, saying in a
perfectly clear and natural voice:
“‘Yes, George, I will go to Egypt. I should like to go to Egypt.’ Then
she went on playing with the necklace and talking to the imaginary
child.
“Again on the following morning as I came into her room to kiss her,
she exclaimed,
“‘When do we start for Egypt? Let it be soon.’
“With these sayings the doctors were very pleased, declaring that they
showed signs of a returning interest in life and begging me not to
thwart her wish.
“So I gave way and in the end we went to Egypt together with Lady
Longden, who insisted upon accompanying us although she is a wretched
sailor. At Cairo a large dahabeeyah that I had hired in advance, manned
by an excellent crew and a guard of four soldiers, was awaiting us. In
it we started up the Nile. For a month or more all went well; also to
my delight my wife seemed now and again to show signs of returning
intelligence. Thus she took some interest in the sculptures on the
walls of the temples, about which she had been very fond of reading
when in health. I remember that only a few days before the—the
catastrophe, she pointed out one of them to me, it was of Isis and the
infant Horus, saying, ‘Look, George, the holy Mother and the holy
Child,’ and then bowed to it reverently as she might have done to an
altar. At length after passing the First Cataract and the Island of
Philæ we came to the temple of Abu Simbel, opposite to which our boat
was moored. On the following morning we explored the temple at daybreak
and saw the sun strike upon the four statues which sit at its farther
end, spending the rest of that day studying the colossal figures of
Rameses that are carved upon its face and watching some cavalcades of
Arabs mounted upon camels travelling along the banks of the Nile.
“My wife was unusually quiet that afternoon. For hour after hour she
sat still upon the deck, gazing first at the mouth of the rock-hewn
temple and the mighty figures which guard it and then at the
surrounding desert. Only once did I hear her speak and then she said,
‘Beautiful, beautiful! Now I am at home.’ We dined and as there was no
moon, went to bed rather early after listening to the Sudanese singers
as they sang one of their weird chanties.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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