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THE CHILD OF THE PYRAMID

BY THE

HON. CHARLES A. MURRAY, C.B.

WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS EDINBURGH AND LONDON MCMI

OR,

THE CHILD OF THE PYRAMID.

More than thirty years have elapsed since, on a summer evening, the tents of an Arab encampment might have been seen dotting the plain which forms the western boundary of the Egyptian province of Bahyrah, a district bordering on the great Libyan desert, and extending northward as far as the shore of the Mediterranean.

The western portion of this province has been for many years, and probably still is, the camping-ground of the powerful and warlike tribe of the "Sons of Ali"; a branch of which tribe, acknowledging as its chief Sheik S?leh el-Ghazy, occupied the encampment above referred to.

The evening was calm and still, and lovely as childhood's sleep: no sound of rolling wheel, or distant anvil, or busy mill, or of the thousand other accessories of human labour, intruded harshly on the ear. Within the encampment there was indeed the "watch-dog's honest bark," the voices of women and children, mingled with the deeper tones of the evening prayer uttered by many a robed figure worshipping towards the east, but beyond it nought was to be heard save the tinkling of the bells of the home-coming flocks, and the soft western breeze whispering among the branches of the graceful palms its joy at having passed the regions of dreary sand. It seemed as if Nature herself were about to slumber, and were inviting man to share her rest.

In front of his tent sat Sheik S?leh, on a Turkish carpet, smoking his pipe in apparent forgetfulness that his left arm was bandaged and supported by a sling.

The Sheik sat listlessly, allowing his eyes to wander over these familiar objects, and to rest on the golden clouds beyond, which crowned the distant sandhills of the Libyan desert. The neglected pipe was thrown across his knee, and he was insensibly yielding to the slumberous influence of the hour, when his repose was suddenly disturbed by the sound of voices in high altercation, and a few minutes afterwards his son Hassan, a lad nearly sixteen years of age, stood before him, his countenance bearing the traces of recent and still unsubdued passion, while the blood trickled down his cheek.

Although scarcely emerged from boyhood, his height, the breadth of his chest, and the muscular development of his limbs gave the impression of his being two or three years older than he really was; in dress he differed in no wise from the other Arab lads in the encampment, nor did his complexion vary much from theirs--bronzed by constant exposure to weather and sun; his eyes were not like those of the Arab race in general--rather small, piercing, and deep-set--but remarkably large, dark, and expressive, shaded by lashes of unusual length; a high forehead, a nose rather Greek than Roman in its outline, and a mouth expressive of frank mirth or settled determination, according to the mood of the hour, completed the features of a countenance which, though eminently handsome, it was difficult to assign to any particular country or race. Such was the youth who now stood before his father, his breast still heaving with indignation.

"What has happened, my son?" said the Sheik; "whence this anger, and this blood on your cheek?"

"Son!" repeated the youth, in a tone in which passion was mingled with irony.

"Whence this blood?" again demanded the Sheik, surprised at an emotion such as he had never before witnessed in the youth.

"They say it is the blood of a bastard," replied Hassan, his dark eye gleaming with renewed indignation.

"What is that!" shrieked Khadijah, the wife of the Sheik, suddenly appearing from an inner compartment of the tent, where she had overheard what had passed.

"Peace, woman," said the Sheik authoritatively; "and prepare a plaster for Hassan's wound." Then turning to the latter, he added, in a milder tone: "My son, remember the proverb, that patience is the key to contentment, while anger opens the door to repentance. Calm your spirit, and tell me plainly what has happened. Inshallah, we will find a remedy."

Hassan, having by this time recovered his composure, related how he had been engaged in taking some horses to the water, when a dispute arose between him and a young man named Youssuf Ebn-Solyman, in the course of which the latter said to him--

"How dare you speak thus to me, you who are nothing but an Ebn-Haram?" To this insult Hassan replied by a blow; Youssuf retaliated by striking him on the temple with a stone; upon which, after a violent struggle, Hassan succeeded in inflicting on his opponent a severe beating.

"And now," said the youth, in concluding his narrative, "I wish to know why I have been called by this hateful name--a name that disgraces both you and my mother? I will not endure it, and whoever calls me so, be he boy or man, I will have his blood."

"I am sure," replied Hassan, "for he repeated it twice with a tone of contempt."

"Then," said the Sheik, "you were right to beat him; but the name, among mischievous people, will occasion you many quarrels: henceforth in the tribe you shall be called Hassan el-Giz?wi."

"Why should I be called El-Giz?wi?" said the youth. "What have we, Oul?d-Ali, to do with Gizeh and the Pyramids?"

After some hesitation the Sheik replied, "We were passing through that district when you were born; hence the name properly belongs to you."

"Father," said Hassan, fixing his dark eyes earnestly on the Sheik's countenance, "there is some secret here; I read it in your face. If I am a child of shame let me know the worst, that I may go far away from the tents of the Oul?d-Ali."

Sheik S?leh was more a man of deeds than of words, and this direct appeal from Hassan sorely perplexed him; thinking it better at all events to gain time for reflection, he replied--

"To-morrow you shall be told why you were called Ebn el-Heram, and why there was no shame connected with the name. Now go into the tent; tell Khadijah to dress your wound, and then to prepare my evening meal."

Accustomed from his childhood to pay implicit obedience to parental orders, Hassan retired into the inner tent, while the Sheik resumed his pipe and his meditations. The result of them may be seen from a conversation which he held with Khadijah when the other members of the family had retired to rest.

"What is to be done in this matter?" said the Sheik to his spouse; "you heard the questions which Hassan asked?"

"That is true," replied the Sheik; "yet if he knows that he is not our child, he will not remain here--he will desire to find his real parents; and I would rather part with my two best mares than with him. I love him as if he were my son."

Now Khadijah, who had three children still living--two girls, of whom the eldest was fourteen, and a little boy aged eight years--did not love Hassan quite as she loved her own children; although she had nurtured and brought him up, a mother's instincts prevailed, and she was somewhat jealous of the hold which he had taken on the affections of the Sheik. Under these impressions she replied--

"The truth cannot be long kept concealed from him; is it not better to tell him at once? Every man must follow his destiny; that which is written must come to pass."

"I like not his going away," said Sheik S?leh moodily; "for that boy, if he remain with us, will be an honour to our tent and to our tribe. There is not one of his age who can run, or ride, or use a lance like him. In the last expedition that I made against the tribe of Sammalous did he not prevail on me to take him, by assuring me that he only wished to follow at a distance with a spare horse in case of need; and did he not bring me that spare horse in the thickest of the fight, and strike down a Sammalous who was going to pierce me with his lance after I had received this wound?" Here the Sheik cast his eyes down upon his wounded arm, muttering, "A brave boy! a brave boy!"

Khadijah felt the truth of his observation, but she returned to the charge, saying--

"Truly you men are wise in all that concerns horses, hunting, and fighting; but in other matters, Allah knows that you have little sense. Do you not see that the youth already doubts that he is our son, and you have never adopted him according to the religious law. He will shortly learn the truth, others will know it too: then what will the men and women of the tribe say of us, who allow this stranger in blood to dwell familiarly in our tent with Temimah our daughter, whose days of marriage should be near at hand?"

Khadijah was not wrong in believing that this last argument would touch her husband in a tender point, for he was very proud of Temimah, and looked forward to see her married into one of the highest families in the tribe; he therefore gave up the contest with a sigh of dissatisfaction, and consented that Khadijah should on the following morning inform Hassan of all that she knew of his early history.

Now that she had gained the victory, Khadijah, like many other conquerors, was at a loss how to improve it. She was essentially a good-hearted woman, and although while Hassan's interests came into collision with those of her own offspring, Nature pleaded irresistibly for the latter, still she called to mind how good and affectionate Hassan had always been to herself, how he had protected and taken care of her little son, and tears came into her eyes when she reflected that the disclosure of the morrow must not only give him pain, but probably cause a final separation.

The hours of night passed slowly away, but anxiety and excitement kept unclosed the eyes of Hassan and Khadijah: the one hoping, yet fearing to penetrate the mystery of his birth, the other unwilling to banish from her sight one whom, now that she was about to lose him, she felt that she loved more than she had been aware of.

The hours of night! Brief words that should indicate a short space of universal tranquillity and repose, yet what a countless multitude of human joys, sorrows, and vicissitudes do they embrace! In the forest and in the wilderness they look upon the prowling wolf and the tiger stealing towards their unconscious prey, upon the lurking assassin, the noiseless ambush, and the stealthy band about to fall with war-shout and lance on the slumbering caravan. In the densely peopled city they look not on the sweet and refreshing rest which the God of nature meant them to distil from their balmy wings, but on gorgeous rooms blazing with light, in which love and hate, jealousy and envy, joy and sorrow, all clothed with silk, with jewels, and with smiles, are busy as the minstrel's hand and the dancer's feet; on halls where the circling cup, and laugh, and song proclaim a more boisterous revelry; on the riotous chambers of drunkenness; on those yet lower dens of vice into which a ray of God's blessed sun is never permitted to shine, where the frenzied gambler stakes on the cast of a die the last hopes of his neglected family; on the squalid haunts of misery, to whose wretched occupants the gnawing pangs of hunger deny even the temporary forgetfulness of sleep. Yes, on these and a thousand varieties of scenes like these, do the hours of night look down from their starry height, wondering and weeping to see how their peaceful influence is marred by the folly and depravity of man.

Agreeably to Arab custom, Khadijah rose with the early dawn, and having seen that her daughters and her two slave-girls were busied in their respective morning tasks, she called Hassan into the inner tent in order to give him the information which he had been awaiting through a sleepless night of anxiety; but as the good woman accompanied her tale with many irrelevant digressions, it will be more brief and intelligible if we relate its substance in a narrative form.

A little more than fifteen years previous to the opening of our tale, Khadijah, with her husband and a score of his followers, had been paying a visit to a friendly tribe camped in the neighbourhood of Sakkarah.

On returning northward, through the district of Ghizeh, near the Great Pyramid, her child was born, who only survived a few days. It was buried in the desert, and as her health had suffered from the shock, Sheik S?leh remained a short time in the neighbourhood, to allow her to recruit her strength.

One evening she had strolled from his tent, and after wailing and weeping a while over the grave of her little one, she went on and sat down on the projecting base-stone of the Great Pyramid. While gazing on the domes and minarets of the "Mother of the world," gilded by the rays of a setting sun, her ears caught the sound of a horseman approaching at full speed. So rapid was his progress that ere she had time to move he was at her side.

"Bedouin woman," he said to her, in a hurried and agitated voice, "are you a mother?"

"I am," she replied. "At least, I have been."

"El-hamdu-lillah, praise be to God," said the horseman. Dismounting, he drew from under his cloak a parcel wrapped in a shawl and placed it gently beside her at the base of the pyramid, then vaulting on his horse, dashed his spurs into its flank, and disappeared with the same reckless speed that had marked his approach.

The astonished Khadijah was still following with her eye his retreating figure when a faint cry caught her ear. What mother's ear was ever deaf to that sound? Hastily withdrawing the shawl, she found beneath it an infant whose features and dress indicated a parentage of the higher class. Around his neck was an amulet of a strange and antique fashion; round his body was a sash, in the folds of which was secured a purse containing forty Venetian sequins, and attached to the purse was a strip of parchment, on which was written the following sentence from the traditions of the Prophet, "Blessed be he that gives protection to the foundling."

Hassan, who had been listening with "bated breath" to Khadijah's narrative, and who had discovered as easily as the reader that he was himself the "Child of the Pyramid," suddenly asked her--

"Was that horseman my father?"

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