THE UNQUIET SPIRIT

      IN LIFE my mistress was a dutiful wife to Penamon. She was gracious to her servants and thoughtful of her children yet even at that time there was no doubt that she had an unquiet spirit. If it had been possible to waste such wealth as Penamon's, one might have said that she was extravagant. At all events, there was no end to her jewels, her transparent dresses, and her alabaster vases of perfume. The splendor of her entertainments was the talk of the town. I have known her to have a summerhouse constructed for a single party and decorated from floor to ceiling by a famous artist, only to be pulled down again the very day it was first used. I have seen her take ladies fishing, with bent wire, for precious jewels, and heard her stake a priceless bowl on a single throw of the dice. For all her blue hair dyes, her wigs, her lip salve, and her earrings, she was never beautiful. To do her justice, she cared very little to appear so. To her, fashion or a new sensation was all.
      Few dared speak of Neferamon's childhood, though an old man once told me that it was an exceedingly happy time. She was brought up among the daughters of that accursed Pharaoh who built a new city in which to worship Aton, the one all-powerful god. Vengeance fell upon him, and ruin upon Egypt, so that it is no longer good to speak his name. Once in my mistress's jewel box, I came upon his token, a golden sun with arms for rays and many hands extended, in blessing. I was puzzling over the symbol when Neferamon saw me, and she boxed my ears so hard that the thing jerked out of my hand onto the floor. As I stooped for it, I saw that she was trembling, though she did not say a word. After that, I often wondered how much she thought of those far-off days and that strange god who shone on all.
      Whatever her past may have been, it could not be suggested that Neferamon failed in the least part of her religious duties. She had been married too young to have been made a priestess of Amon, but her daughter was early sent to the temple and dedicated to that god. Always she went with her husband when he offered sacrifice and prayed that the spirits of his parents might be granted a share of the feast. At the time of the New Year when the god in his silver shrine went up the river, her boat was resplendent among those that followed him. In the special rites which women performed, her place was second only to the queen's.
      If her heart was not in the worship of Amon, that god can have cared nothing, since he concerned himself only that his ritual was perfectly performed. Her husband was satisfied if she did her duty and never asked whether she loved him, being as he was, much older and wrapped up in his career. The little girl, as I say, had been given to the temple, while the boys were soon with their tutors or in school. Thus, though she was often gay, I never saw her happy. The strange thing is that she should have cared for life sufficiently to return after her death.
      Her illness came upon her after one of her extravagant parties, where fabulous wines and cakes made with exotic spices had been served. Dwarfish tumblers had performed, and supple Nubians had danced to the sound of flutes beneath a canopy of flowers. She had been at her most witty. In the little room where I waited for her, I could hear the shrill sound of her laughter. Afterwards, when I came to take off her wig, which was heavy with sweet-smelling ointments, she suddenly threw herself on her couch and said, "Let me alone for the moment, Nebtu. I cannot bear any more.”
      I withdrew, knowing well this mood of my mistress when she was wearied of every single thing under the sun. Later, when she had slept, I returned to find her burning with fever and in manner very strange. Once she spoke of herself as Neferaton, using her long forgotten and forbidden girlhood name.
      There was nothing to be done but call a doctor, and one might be sure that in a household such as ours he would be the wisest of all the temple priests. Immediately he saw my mistress, he recognized that a devil had seized upon her and must be driven out before she could be healed. However, though he called upon all the great gods to threaten that evil spirit, it had taken such firm hold that none of them could frighten it away. The wise man made a clay doll to be a new home for that devil, and he kneeded charms into a ball and laid them under my mistress's head. He even mixed healing draughts, but dared not give them until the demon had left her after three days' time. By then she was too weak to swallow, and it was clear that she must die.
      She was restless at the last as though she wanted something. Penamon took her hand, but she turned her head away. I moistened her lips with water, and she looked at me quite sensibly and said, "Neferaton. Aton."
      "What was that?" said Penamon, leaning across her.
      "Just muttering," said I, for I could not bring myself to pronounce the name of the accursed Pharaoh's god.
      My mistress gave a loud sigh and died. Penamon stood up He had been watching most of the night, and he looked very old. “I will send for the priests," said he, "and all things shall be well done. Do you lead the women in mourning, as the custom is."
      Some had already raised a shriek and torn their garments pouring on their heads the dust of turquoise with which the floor of my mistress's chamber was strewn. I too cried aloud and we rushed out into the streets with violent clamor, arousing the neighbors, and even strangers, to honor our dead All through the best quarter of the town we lamented her howling, disheveled, and streaked with the turquoise dust and sand from the road. This was our duty, yet as I wailed, I found myself thinking, "Death is at least a new sensation for one who was weary of the sun."

      

      There were seventy days of mourning while her body was in the hands of the embalmers, since for such a one as Neferamon every possible rite mull be done. During all that time Penamon neither bathed nor shaved his beard, while none of the household women dared paint her eyes or dress her hair. Neferamon meanwhile was embalmed with the finest spices and wrapped in linen bands to the sound of whispered spells that none but the dead might hear. Blue and green rings were put on her fingers, amulets about her body, and at her neck a carved green scarab, engraved with a powerful prayer. Two coffins she had, one inside the other, each with her head upon it, showing her large dark eyes wide open and her mouth curved in an unaccustomed smile.
      In this way she came home to us for her last procession, which was almost as lovely as if a daughter of Pharaoh were going to her grave. In front went the calf for the sacrifice, and the materials for feasting, the cakes, flowers, wine, and vases of perfume. Next came her own bed of ivory and gold, carved with the potbellied figure of the little god of sleep. We gave her chests of fine linen, armchairs, stools, and her toilet table, filled with eye paint and perfume. She had her great round earrings, fillets of jeweled flowers, and collars gleaming with bright enamel and gold. There were even little green glazed figures of servants to do her work in the land of the dead. Her feasts, her musicians, her palace, and her gardens were waiting, painted on the rock walls of her tomb for her spirit to enjoy. All the treasures of her life upon earth had been given to her spirit to delight in, as though there was anything there of which she had not wearied already.
      None of the ceremonies that could honor her were wanting. There were hired mourners, repeating with parrot cries the conventional phrases. The high priest himself, girt with a leopard skin, was sprinkling the perfume. Oxen towed her shrine to the water. The beautiful death boat with its palms and lotus flowers received it there. On the shoulders of her nearest friends, it was borne into the western hills.
      At the tomb the last farewells were spoken, the sacrifice was offered, and the feast consumed in honor of the dead.
      The high priest by a spell released her from the bonds of her dead body to the strange and shadowy life which was now hers.
      "Do not wear out your hearts with sorrow," sang the harpist, turning to us, "but be happy while you live. Your own life is short, and your lamentations do not benefit those who have gone."
      We turned away and went home without my mistress. Much had been given her, but even so Penamon remembered that more might be needed in the long twilight of her eternity. Though she had feasts upon her walls, he sent her wine and meat. Though she had gardens, he gave her flowers. Though she had amulets and scrolls about her body, he offered prayers. Every new moon the priests brought these things to her chapel, that her soul might delight in them and be at peace. Surely never was a spirit granted more richness and more ease.
      The valleys of the dead are not deserted. Scattered in the hollows of the hills lie villages of workmen, of priests who give the monthly offerings, and of watchmen who protect the dead from thieves. It was from these guards that a messenger came to Penamon about three moons later and was received by him in his hall of audience after he had dismissed his crowd of petitioners for that day.
      The messenger was a priest, a little wizened man whose shaven head was leathery brown from long exposure to the sun. With many nervous bowings, he besought Penamon to inspect for himself the seals of Neferamon's tomb.
      Penamon's face grew very grim. "If the tomb has been robbed within these few weeks, you rascals all will die for it," said he. "Both priests and guards alike."
      The little man, who had raised himself to a standing posture with his hands respectfully in the air, now bobbed forward nervously again until his head was almost level with his knees. "There has been no robbery," he protested in quavering tones. "I swear that you will find every seal intact."
      "Why then inspect them?"
      The priest hesitated. "Someone was seen," admitted he. "It was only a white shape at a distance, but the tomb is well known to be exceedingly rich."
      "Take guards, then, and catch your prowler," retorted Penamon with impatience. "Why trouble me with this affair?"
      "We have tried," said the little priest, "but we cannot draw off patrols from elsewhere until we know what is the real object of these thieves. We have taken no bribes in this matter, O Penamon, but we are afraid of bearing the blame if any harm is done."
      Penamon put his chin on his hand and looked at him, considering a little. "If you were not honest, you would not have come to me," he remarked. "I will send you extra guards."
     From that time three men were deputed to watch nightly by the tomb of Neferamon, while the regular patrols went up and down the valley as before. Until the time of the full moon, nothing happened. Then, however, the little priest appeared once more in Penamon's hall of audience, pushing before him a gigantic Nubian, who cast himself face down on the floor before my master, quivering with fright in every limb.
     Penamon signed to his fanbearers, for the day was hot. "Well?" said he.
     The priest seemed nervous also. "I have –“ He licked his lips. "I have brought this guard whose accent is less barbarous than that of the others, in order that you may hear from his own lips what he has seen."
      He poked the Nubian sharply with his foot until the latter lifted his face an inch or two above the ground and cried, "It was a woman, haggard and no longer young. She stood in the moonlight by the tomb, clad in white and wearing a fillet set with a great green stone!"
      There was an instant's total silence. Even the fanbearers paused in their work for a moment until Penamon signed to them hastily. He turned to the Nubian. "How came this woman to the tomb?" demanded he.
      "She was there, and then she was not there. She stood before the entrance, and we all saw her clearly in the light of the moon."
      "It is well. You may go." The Nubian raised himself hastily to a crouching position and backed out from Penamon’s presence, his eyes always on the floor. When he had left, Penamon turned to the priest. "What devil possesses Nefaramon that she cannot even rest among the dead?" said he.
      "No one who lives in those valleys," said the priest, regarding him seriously, "can find strange sights or sounds unnatural amid so many dead. Sometimes when the spirit tires of its twilight life, it will wander abroad, but it seldom ventures very far."
      "When the spirit tires!" repeated Penamon bitterly. "What can satisfy such a woman? Will she never be still?"
      "She has palaces and gardens in her tomb," the priest reminded him, "which are far more delightful than the desolate valley outside. She will soon be wearied of that."
      "She wearied of everything," said Penamon. ''I would give half my wealth if she would only burden me no more." He sighed again and sat thinking, unaware no doubt that the tidings were already abroad in his household that the mistress walked again. By nightfall, every slave but myself had heard the story, and the girls were tittering in corners, vowing they would not walk across the courts alone.

         It was one of the slave boys who made the first commotion as he was bringing in a jar of scented water for my master’s bath. Suddenly he gave a loud scream and dropped the pitcher, so that the whole household came running to discover the source of the noise. "I saw her!" he yelled, "I saw her with the green stone in her hair!"

      There was naturally an immense sensation. Every would-be heroine claimed to have seen a white garment whisk around a corner, to have heard a strange noise, or to have felt a sensation that had raised the very hair erect on her head. Even the cooks and stableboys, who had no business in the master's quarters, were crowding in to increase the tumult until I made the surly old porter take a stick and disperse them. "The boy is hysterical," I declared to sober them, and he deserves a good beating to teach him that spirits do not venture so far away from their tombs."
      So I honestly thought until, the disturbance over, I made my way to the little recess where I slept in my mistress's room. Right inside the doorway I came upon her, close enough for me to have touched her if I had dared put out my hand. I looked full at her, and she at me. There was an awful silence in which I could hear the painful thudding of my heart. The room was dark, yet to all appearances she stood in moonlight, dressed in a brief, white robe such as poor women wear. I could see she had bracelets and rings, while about her head was a golden fillet set with a great green jewel. Well I knew this adornment, since I myself had taken it out and given it into the hands of those who had prepared Neferamon for death. Her lips moved, and on her face was such a weary expression of despair that my very heart was wrung.
      It was as the Nubian had said. She was there, and then she was not there. She did not return, though I lay awake to watch for her until dawn.
      Penamon was so angry when I told him of this visitation that he utterly refused to share my compassion for her. He was a hard man who worshiped justice and could feel no pity where he had condemned. Having done much more than his duty by my mistress, he blamed her ingratitude and would not willingly see or speak with her again. Instead, he went to the high priest and had a letter written which was left with the proper incantations in her tomb. "You have forgotten your duty,” he reproved her, “though I have remembered mine. Leave me alone, lest I accuse you before the judgment seat of Osiris, god of the dead. Reflect what punishment will be yours when the god condemns you, as he must when he hears how fully your needs were satisfied."
      Many a ghost would have been frightened away by such a letter, since there could be no doubt that Penamon's complaint was just. My mistress, however, braved his anger to come again nightly, appearing most often in her own chamber, yet frequently also in the corridor outside. No punishment would induce the slaves to render the simplest service to Penamon, or to appear on any pretext in the master's quarters after dark. I alone continued to meet her out of pity, for it seemed to me that she turned to us not in spite, but in despair.
      Eight nights had passed since the writing of this letter before I could persuade Penamon to speak with her himself. I lighted the little lamp which I now always set by me, while he waited by the wall in his armchair, chin on hand. Nothing that I could say had softened him toward her. In the flickering lamplight, he might have been an image carved in the hardest, coldest stone.
      She came about midnight, suddenly visible in that strange, moonlit radiance of her own. Of the two, it was the ghost who caught her breath with a little shudder, while Penamon stared at her coldly, showing not a trace of fear. "Leave us alone, Neferamon," he said to her with haughty command. "Have you not burdened us  long enough with your restless ways?"
      Tears gathered in her dark eyes at that, but they did not fall. We both could see that she sighed heavily. With a tremendous effort, she turned her head toward me and spoke.
      "What do you want, my mistress?" cried I in desperation. "I cannot hear!"
      "Your place is in the tomb," said Penamon brutally. "No one cares whether your spirit is happy there or not."
      He spoke to empty air and darkness. Where my mistress had been, she was not any more. "If you did not encourage her, Nebtu," said Penamon harshly, "I do not think that she would want to return."
      His severity angered me. "You are wrong!" cried I. "She will come back and back because her unhappiness is more than she can bear."
      "She never bore it," retorted Penamon with bitterness. "Did I complain because she did not care for me?"
      He spoke with more feeling than he was used to show, and I perceived for the first time that my master had been no happier than my mistress. He, however, had eaten out his heart in silence, while she had burdened us and him with her complaints. Perhaps it was natural that he resented being loaded with her sorrows as well as his own. He was a hard man to pity, but I felt a certain sympathy with him, though I dared not utter it. Instead, I looked away into the darkness and said quietly, "Did no one ever really care for her?"
      "How should I know?" asked Penamon helplessly. "She was never happy with me."
      "But her girlhood?" I persisted. "Was not that a happy time? "
      Penamon's face grew very dark. "It was a good time for children because that accursed Pharaoh himself had a childlike heart. He lived in a fool's paradise where God was kind and everyone was loving, and he did not care that men starved in the rest of Egypt, and provinces were lost to vigorous enemies. The happiness of that time was like a poisoned flower."
      Perhaps the darkness helped him to ease his bitterness with speech. We sat with the little light flickering between us, each turning away from the other into the shadows, as though we were speaking to ourselves. I questioned him gently. "What became of that lovely city where Pharaoh worshiped his kindly, foolish god?"
      "It is deserted," he answered quietly. "Blown sand has choked the fountains, the gardens have withered, and even the palace that was so beautiful is returning to the dust. Egypt was crumbling when that Pharaoh died, and in their panic, men could not return to the old ways too fast. So hastily was the place abandoned that even the dogs were forgotten in their kennels, I have heard say. Only the palace children, who had been loved there and had seen no evil, wept when they left and hankered always after the past. None of them lived long, except Neferamon, and not one of them ever awakened from that enchanted dream."
      I rose and felt my way across the room to the corner where the carved box of my mistress's jewelry was lying, empty of all but a few broken trinkets which had not been worth while placing in her tomb. There at the bottom I found the strange sign of the blessing sun and brought it to him. "Let her go back to her dream," said I, "since she is dead, and those times cannot harm Egypt any more."
      "She kept it, then," said Penamon almost gently.
      "She kept it," I agreed, "and I think she needs it now. If the dead are not content, a way lies open by which through strange perils they may journey toward the Islands of the Blessed. Each must have his talisman to protect him. This, I think, is hers."
      "It cannot be!" said Penamon sharply. "Never can we let her go under the sign of such a god!"
      "Let her depart," I answered him. "Have you not kept her long enough? All her life she has been waiting to go back into this dream. She may reach her goal, or she may perish. In any case, why should she linger here?"
      Penamon took the golden sign and rose. "You are right, Nebtu," he said. "I will give her the talisman and let her set out whither she will. Is it not strange that so much sorrow should be so simply satisfied?"
      He sighed as he went away. I sighed also, not for my mistress who went through strange ways after happiness, but for my master. In his conventional world there were no such expedients. He made the right gestures and said the correct words over the sacrifice. His god asked no more. Instead of happiness, he could only teach himself to have a heart of stone.