The Egyptologist - Arthur Phillips [149]
CABLE. LUXOR TO MARGARET FINNERAN, BOSTON,
4 APR. 1922, 4.13 P.M. PLSACKLVRMT.
Margaret: You are killing me with your barbed silence. Today I cabled you simply asking that you please acknowledge my love. Will there come a day when you and I compare our contemporaneous journals and I read aloud to you that on the 4th of December I was fearing that I had lost you forever, and you will laugh at my silliness because on the 4th you were simply asleep? Or heading by train to warmer climates? Or there was a concerted effort at heartrending chaos by the love-hating telegraph boys of Boston, all riled up by Communist agitators, viciously delivering my cable to an elderly lady while you received orders for a million pounds of chocolate?
But if you are not waiting for me, there is nothing for me in Boston.
(UNSENT, FOUND IN MARGARET FINNERAN MACY’S PRIVATE PAPERS AFTER HER DEATH)
Dec. 4
Dear Ralph,
There are things I should tell you. Daddy told me things about you, and he made me write you to break our engagement, and so I did. And then I slept. And then Ferrell came into my room, and he was so happy he had done all this, had split us apart. And he said the most horrible things about you, said you killed this boy Paul and your friend Marlowe, all of this horrible nonsense that I knew wasn’t true, and that’s when I knew that none of it had been true, you stealing Daddy’s money and lying about Oxford. Oh, Ralph, Ferrell had been lying to Daddy and me all along and caused all this trouble between you and me and Daddy, and I didn’t know how to make it right again, all the damage he had done, and I screamed at him and told him what I thought of him. I was still sleepy, you see, from what Inge had given me to calm me down after Daddy told me that you only pretended to love me for his money. I should have laughed at them both, but I believed them, at first. I am so sorry.
I should have told you what makes me ill, but I haven’t. It’s not me, it’s only stronger than me right now, but I am afraid that if you knew
Dear Ralph,
Would you love me less because there are things that are stronger than me?
Ferrell was very angry with me, at the end, when he came into my room and shook me awake. I enjoyed making him angry, letting myself do what I am good at, which is making people angry and then making them laugh about it, I can do that when I want to. Everyone always says so. I could always make it OK again.
Ferrell has ruined everything, hasn’t he? And I don’t know how to repair any of it, especially now that he did what he did to me. What he did to me, Ralph. What will you think about it? I tried to make him stop, I swear. We were alone in the house. Daddy was gone, and Inge, too. He sent Inge away, Ralph, and then came upstairs.
I cannot find all your letters to me. I think he took some.
It is my fault, I made him angry and could not make him stop. It is my fault. You will not want me now.
I was wrong and I am so sorry. I am sorry I ever believed them about you. If I hadn’t believed even a little, this wouldn’t have happened. I am so sorry. He said such terrible things about you, and I only wanted to tell him he was wrong. Antony and Cleopatra just sat there the whole time, they didn’t bark or try to help me, they just watched, and then, when he left, they just looked at me, like they knew it was my fault.
Dear Ralph, I am writing to you bec
Dear Ralph, please forgive me for
Tuesday, 5 December, 1922
Silence at post and bank. The cats are fine and fond in our new feeding place out of view of the villa. I am sure they no longer bother visiting the villa at all, now that I meet them here instead.
Take mint tea in an ahwa where the waiters do not recognise me, though I have been there two dozen times before. Back to my labours.
WALL PANEL G: “THE ANNUNCIATION OF THE THIRD BIRTH OF ATUM-HADU”
Note: The text here seems closely related to, perhaps an intentional expansion on, Quatrain 56 (Fragments A & B only):
A feast and dancing and pleasures abound.
Can they