The child was quiet, and a soft smile of delight and hope sparkled in his pretty eyes. His little hand caught the dress of the old woman, and with the sweetest coaxing tone, which God bestows on the innocent voices of children, he said:
“I will be as still as a mouse, and no one shall know that I am here; but if you give me the honeycake you will untie me for a little, and let me go to Uarda.”
“She is ill!—what do you want there?”
“I would take her the cake,” said the child, and his eyes glistened with tears.
The old woman touched the child’s chin with her finger, and some mysterious power prompted her to bend over him to kiss him. But before her lips had touched his face she turned away, and said, in a hard tone:
“Lie still! by and bye we will see.” Then she stooped, and threw a brown sack over the child. She went back into the open air, greeted Nemu, entertained him with milk, bread and honey, gave him news of the girl who had been run over, for he seemed to take her misfortune very much to heart, and finally asked:
“What brings you here? The Nile was still narrow when you last found your way to me, and now it has been falling some time.63
Are you sent by your mistress, or do you want my help? All the world is alike. No one goes to see any one else unless he wants to make use of him. What shall I give you?”
“I want nothing,” said the dwarf, “but—”
“You are commissioned by a third person,” said the witch, laughing. “It is the same thing. Whoever wants a thing for some one else only thinks of his own interest.”
“May be,” said Nemu. “At any rate your words show that you have not grown less wise since I saw you last—and I am glad of it, for I want your advice.”
“Advice is cheap. What is going on out there?” Nemu related to his mother shortly, clearly, and without reserve, what was plotting in his mistress’s house, and the frightful disgrace with which she was threatened through her son.
The old woman shook her grey head thoughtfully several times: but she let the little man go on to the end of his story without interrupting him. Then she asked, and her eyes flashed as she spoke:
“And you really believe that you will succeed in putting the sparrow on the eagle’s perch—Ani on the throne of Rameses?”
“The troops fighting in Ethiopia are for us,” cried Nemu. “The priests declare themselves against the king, and recognize in Ani the genuine blood of Ra.”
“That is much,” said the old woman.
“And many dogs are the death of the gazelle,” said Nemu laughing.
“But Rameses is not a gazelle to run, but a lion,” said the old woman gravely. “You are playing a high game.”
“We know it,” answered Nemu. “But it is for high stakes—there is much to win.”
“And all to lose,” muttered the old woman, passing her fingers round her scraggy neck. “Well, do as you please—it is all the same to me who it is sends the young to be killed, and drives the old folks’ cattle from the field. What do they want with me?”
“No one has sent me,” answered the dwarf. “I come of my own free fancy to ask you what Katuti must do to save her son and her house from dishonor.”
“Hm!” hummed the witch, looking at Nemu while she raised herself on her stick. “What has come to you that you take the fate of these great people to heart as if it were your own?”
The dwarf reddened, and answered hesitatingly, “Katuti is a good mistress, and, if things go well with her, there may be windfalls for you and me.”
Hekt shook her head doubtfully.
“A loaf for you perhaps, and a crumb for me!” she said. “There is more than that in your mind, and I can read your heart as if you were a ripped up raven. You are one of those who can never keep their fingers at rest, and must knead everybody’s dough; must push, and drive and stir something. Every jacket is too tight for you. If you were three feet taller, and the son of a priest, you might have gone far. High you will go, and high you will end; as the friend of a king—or on the gallows.”
The old woman laughed; but Nemu bit his lips, and said:
“If you had sent me to school, and if I were not the son of a witch, and a dwarf, I would play with men as they have played with me; for I am cleverer than all of them, and none of their plans are hidden from me. A hundred roads lie before me, when they don’t know whether to go out or in; and where they rush heedlessly forwards I see the abyss that they are running to.”
“And nevertheless you come to me?” said the old woman sarcastically.
“I want your advice,” said Nemu seriously. “Four eyes see more than one, and the impartial looker-on sees clearer than the player; besides you are bound to help me.”
The old woman laughed loud in astonishment. “Bound!” she said, “I? and to what if you please?”
“To help me,” replied the dwarf, half in entreaty, and half in reproach. “You deprived me of my growth, and reduced me to a cripple.”
“Because no one is better off than you dwarfs,” interrupted the witch.
Nemu shook his head, and answered sadly—
“You have often said so—and perhaps for many others, who are born in misery like me—perhaps-you are right; but for me—you have spoilt my life; you have crippled not my body only but my soul, and have condemned me to sufferings that are nameless and unutterable.”
The dwarf’s big head sank on his breast, and with his left hand he pressed his heart.
The old woman went up to him kindly.
“What ails you?” she asked, “I thought it was well with you in Mena’s house.”
“You thought so?” cried the dwarf. “You who show me as in a mirror what I am, and how mysterious powers throng and stir in me? You made me what I am by your arts; you sold me to the treasurer of Rameses, and he gave me to the father of Mena, his brother-in-law. Fifteen years ago! I was a young man then, a youth like any other, only more passionate, more restless, and fiery than they. I was given as a plaything to the young Mena, and he harnessed me to his little chariot, and dressed me out with ribbons and feathers, and flogged me when I did not go fast enough. How the girl—for whom I would have given my life—the porter’s daughter, laughed when I, dressed up in motley, hopped panting in front of the chariot and the young lord’s whip whistled in my ears wringing the sweat from my brow, and the blood from my broken heart. Then Mena’s father died, the boy, went to school, and I waited on the wife of his steward, whom Katuti banished to Hermonthis. That was a time! The little daughter of the house made a doll of me,64 laid me in the cradle, and made me shut my eyes and pretend to sleep, while love and hatred, and great projects were strong within me. If I tried to resist they beat me with rods; and when once, in a rage, I forgot myself, and hit little Mertitefs hard, Mena, who came in, hung me up in the store-room to a nail by my girdle, and left me to swing there; he said he had forgotten to take me down again. The rats fell upon me; here are the scars, these little white spots here—look! They perhaps will some day wear out, but the wounds that my spirit received in those hours have not yet ceased to bleed. Then Mena married Nefert, and, with her, his mother-in-law, Katuti, came into the house. She took me from the steward, I became indispensable to her; she treats me like a man, she values my intelligence and listens to my advice—therefore I will make her great, and with her, and through her, I will wax mighty. If Ani mounts the throne, we wilt guide him—you, and I, and she! Rameses must fall, and with him Mena, the boy who degraded my body and poisoned my soul!”
During this speech the old woman had stood in silence opposite the dwarf. Now she sat down on her rough wooden seat, and said, while she proceeded to pluck a lapwing:
“Now