It Happened in Egypt

								

But Cleopatra caught me up.
"What--have you really a friend Antony? Where does he live? and what's
he like?"
I hesitated; and glancing round for inspiration (in other words for
some harmless, necessary fib) I saw that Brigit and Monny had arrived
on the scene. They had been pacing the deck, arm in arm; and now,
arrested by Mrs. East's question, they hovered near, awaiting my answer
with vague curiosity. A twinkle in Biddy's eyes, which I caught,
rattled me completely. I missed all the easiest fibs and could catch
hold of nothing but the bare truth. There are moments like that, when,
do what you will, you must be truthful or silent; and silence fires
suspicion.
"What is he?" I echoed feebly. "Oh, Captain Fenton. He's in the Gyppy
Army stationed up at Khartum, hundreds of miles beyond where Cook's
boats go. You wouldn't be interested in Anthony, because he spells his
name with an 'H', and he's dark and thin, not a bit like your Antony,
who was a big, stout fellow, I've always heard, and fair." "Big, but
not stout," Cleopatra corrected me. "And--and if he's incarnated
again, he may be dark for a change. As for the 'H', that's not
important. I wonder if we shall meet your Anthony? We think of going to
Khartum, don't we, Monny?"
"Yes," said the girl, shortly. She was always rather short in her
manner at that time when in her opinion her aunt was being "silly."
I gathered from a vexed flash in the gray eyes that there had never
been any hint of an impending Antony.
"Is your friend in Khartum now?" Biddy ventured, in her creamiest
voice. The twinkle was carefully turned off like the light of a dark
lantern, but I knew well that "Mrs. Jones" was recalling a certain
conversation, in which I had refused to satisfy her curiosity. Brigit's
quick, Irish mind has a way of matching mental jigsaw puzzles, even
when vital bits appear to be missing; and if she could make a cat's paw
of Cleopatra, the witch would not be above doing it. I bore her no
grudge--who could bear soft-eyed, laughing, yet tragic Biddy a grudge?
--but I wished that she and Monny were at the other end of the deck.
"I--er--really, I don't know where my friend is just now," I answered,
with more or less foundation of truth.
"I wonder if I didn't read in the papers about a Captain Fenton who
took advantage of leave he'd got, to make a rush for the Balkans, and
see the fighting from the lines of the Allies?" Biddy murmured with
dreadful intelligence. "Can he be your Captain Fenton? I fancy he'd
been stationed in the Sudan; and he was officially supposed to have
gone home to spend his leave in England. Anyhow, there was a row of
some sort after he and another man dropped down on to the Turks out of
a Greek aeroplane. Or was it a Servian one? Anyhow, I know he oughtn't
to have been in it; and 'Paterfamilias' and 'Patriot' wrote letters to
the Times about British officers who didn't mind their own business.