Samir, taking a seat to the left of the Earl, was obviously already alarmed.
She must do something. Still staring at her, as if he'd never laid eyes on a woman before, Ramses took the chair on her left.
Quickly, she opened his napkin for him, whispering:
'Here, in your lap. And stop staring at me. It's a ball gown, quite proper!' She turned at once to Samir opposite. 'Samir, I'm so glad you could make this journey with us.'
'Yes, and here we are,' Elliott said immediately, filling the silence. 'All having dinner together exactly as I'd planned. Isn't mat marvelous! Seems I got my way after all.'
'So you did.' Julie laughed. She was relieved suddenly that Elliott was there. He would smooth over one awkward moment after another; he did it instinctively. In fact, he probably couldn't stop himself. It was this buoyant charm among other things which kept him perpetually in demand.
She dared not look directly at Henry, but she could see he was hopelessly uneasy. He was already drinking. His glass was half full.
The waiters brought the sherry now, and the soup. Ramses had already reached for the bread. He had torn off a very large piece from the small loaf and eaten it whole.
'And tell me, Mr. Ramsey,' Elliott continued, 'how did you enjoy your stay in London? You weren't with us very long.'
Why the hell was Ramses smiling?
'I found it an overwhelming place,' he said with immediate enthusiasm. 'A curious blending of fierce wealth and inexplicable poverty. I do not understand how so many machines can produce so much for so few, and so little for so many. . . .'
'Sir, you're questioning the entire Industrial Revolution,' Alex said, laughing nervously, which for him was most certainly a symptom of ill ease. 'Don't tell me you're a Marxist. It's rather seldom that we encounter radicals in our circle.'
'What is a Marxist! I am an Egyptian,' Ramses said.
'Of course you are, Mr. Ramsey,' said Elliott smoothly. 'And you're no Marxist. How perfectly ridiculous. You knew our Lawrence in Cairo?'
'Our Lawrence. Briefly I knew him.' Ramses was staring at Henry. Julie quickly lifted her soup spoon and, giving him a gentle nudge with her elbow, demonstrated how the soup was to be eaten. He didn't so much as glance at her. He picked up his bread, dipped it in the soup and began eating it, glaring at Henry again.
'Lawrence's death came as a shock to me, as I'm sure it did to everyone,' he said, dipping another enormous piece of bread. 'A Marxist is a type of philosopher? I do remember a Karl Marx. I discovered this person in Lawrence's library. A fool.'
Henry had not touched his soup. He drank another deep gulp of his Scotch and motioned for the waiter.
'It's unimportant,' Julie said quickly.
'Yes, Lawrence's death was a terrible shock,' Elliott said soberly. 'I was sure he had another good ten years. Maybe twenty.''
Ramses was dipping yet another enormous piece of the bread into the soup. And Henry was now staring at him with veiled horror, careful to avoid his eyes. Everyone was more or less quietly watching Ramses, who wiped up the very last of the soup now with another chunk of bread, and then downed the sherry, and wiped his lips with the napkin and sat back.
'More food,' he whispered. 'It's coming?'
'Yes, it is, but slow down,' Julie whispered.
'You were a true friend of Lawrence?' Ramses said to Elliott.
'Absolutely,' said Elliott.
'Yes, well, if he were here, he'd be talking about his beloved mummy,' said Alex with that same nervous laugh. 'As a matter of fact, why are you taking this trip, Julie? Why go back to Egypt when the mummy lies there in London waiting for examination? You know, I don't really understand. ...'
'The collection's opened several avenues of research,' Julie said. 'We want to go to Alexandria and then perhaps Cairo. . . .'
'Yes, of course,' Elliott said. He was clearly watching Ramses' reaction as the waiter set down the fish before him, a small portion in a delicate cream sauce. 'Cleopatra,' he went on, ' 'your mysterious Ramses the Second claimed to have loved and lost her. And that happened in Alexandria, did it not?'
Julie had not seen this coming. Neither had Ramses, who had laid down his bread and was staring at the Earl with a blank expression on his face. There came those dancing points of color beneath the smooth skin of his cheeks.
'Well, yes, there is that aspect of it,' Julie struggled. 'And then we're going to Luxor, and to Abu Simbel. I hope you're all in fine form for an arduous journey. Of course if you don't want to continue ...'
'Abu Simbel,' Alex said. 'Isn't that where the colossal statues are of Ramses the Second?''
Ramses broke off half the fish with his fingers and ate it. Then he ate the second half. A curious smile had broken out on Elliott's face, but Ramses didn't see it. He was staring at Henry again. Julie was going to start screaming.
'Statues of Ramses the Great are everywhere, actually,' Elliott said, watching Ramses mop up the sauce with the bread. 'Ramses left more monuments to himself than any other Pharaoh.'
'Ah, that's the one. I knew it,' said Alex. 'The egomaniac of Egyptian history. I remember now, from school.'
'Egomaniac!' Ramses said with a grimace. 'More bread!' he said to the waiter. Then to Alex: 'What is an egomaniac? If you please?'
'Aspirin, Marxism, egomania,' Elliott said. 'These are all new ideas to you, Mr. Ramsey?'
Henry was becoming positively agitated. He had drunk the second glass of Scotch and now sat plastered to the back of his chair, merely staring at Ramses' hands as he ate.
'Oh, you know,' Alex said blithely. 'The fellow was a great braggart. He built monuments to himself all over the place. He bragged endlessly about his victories, his wives and his sons! So that's the mummy, and all this time I didn't realize.'
'What in the world are you talking about!' Julie said suddenly.
'Is there any other Egyptian King in history who won so many victories,' Ramses said heatedly, 'and pleasured so many wives, and fathered so many sons? And surely you understand that in erecting so many statues, the Pharaoh was giving to his people exactly what they wanted.'
'Now, that's a novel view!' Alex said sarcastically, laying down his knife and fork. 'You don't mean the slaves enjoyed being flogged to death in the burning sun to build all those temples and colossal statues?'
'Slaves, flogged to death in the hot sun?' Ramses asked. 'What are you saying! This did not happen!' He turned to Julie.
'Alex, that's merely one theory of how the monuments were completed,' she said. 'No one really knows ...'
'Well, I know,' Ramses said.
'Everyone has his theory!' Julie said, raising her voice slightly and glaring at Ramses.
'Well, for heaven's sake,' Alex said, 'the man built enormous statues of himself from one end of Egypt to another. You can't tell me the people wouldn't have been a lot happier tending their flowerbeds. ...'
'Young man, you are most strange!' said Ramses. 'What do you know about the people of Egypt? Slaves, you speak of slaves when your slums are filled with starving children. The people wanted the monuments. They took pride in their temples. When the Nile overflowed its banks there could be no work in the fields; and the monuments became the passion of the nation. Labor wasn't forced. It didn't have to be. The Pharaoh was as a god, and he had to do what his people expected of him.'
'Surely you're sentimentalizing it a bit,' said Elliott, but he was plainly fascinated.
Henry had turned white. He was no longer moving at all. His fresh glass of Scotch stood untouched.
'Not in the least,' Ramses argued. 'The people of Egypt were proud of Ramses the Great. He drove back the enemies; he conquered the Hittites; he maintained the peace in Upper and Lower Egypt for sixty-four years of his reign! What other Pharaoh ever brought such tranquility to the land of the great river! You know what happened afterwards, don't you?'
