CHAPTER XVI
"My faint spirit was sitting in the light
Of thy looks, my love;
It panted for thee like the hind at noon
For the brooks, my love."
SHELLEY.
For some inexplicable reason, the little old lady's trust in Jill's son was unshakable. Why, she could not have well explained. It might have been because of his ability to hide his hurt or the memory of his words spoken as the fortune-teller on the night of the ball, or perhaps through his self-denial in refraining from using his mother's erstwhile friendship with the old aristocrat, as a key to the door which was locked fast between himself and the girl he loved.
After all, such marriages had taken place, thousands of them, so why should not his with the beautiful girl be added to the list, the outcome thereof proving the proverbial exception to the inevitable disastrous ending of all such unions?
Why did he deny himself?
Just because he loved the girl with the same all-sacrificing love his white mother had given his Arabian father.
If it had been otherwise, with never a second thought he would have lifted the girl, as doubtlessly his ancestors had oft-times lifted women in their gazus or raids, and left the consequences in the hands of that old beldame Fate.
So it had been decided to start the day after the morrow by private and swiftest steam-boat to Luxor, where Damaris, shepherded by Jane Coop and under the social wing of Lady Thistleton, would sojourn at the Winter Palace Hotel until such time as her godmother should see fit to return from her errand of mercy to the House 'an Mahabbha in the Oasis of Khargegh.
Thus, whilst Jane Coop slept placidly and Maria Hobson wrestled under the bed-covering in the last throes of a nightmare in which, as a camel, she packed parcels of sand wrapped in tissue-paper, in trunks which stretched across an endless desert, Damaris drove out to the Obelisk for her last ride on the stallion Sooltan.
She rode out into the shadows, the dawn having barely lifted the hem of night's purple raiment from the edge of the world; out into the desert stretching silver-grey, soundless, half-waking; just stirred by the light touch of the breeze, which, heralding the dawn, sends little spirals of sand dancing away to the east and away to the west and blows out the stars one by one.
And she rode listlessly, knowing that no desert would ever be as this desert, or dawn as this passing of the night, or liberty as this hour of freedom in the wastes of sand.
And then, when perhaps ten, perhaps more or less, miles out, she pulled the stallion sharply and sat forward, staring, whilst her heart thrilled in a most unwarrantable manner beneath her coat.
Upon a hummock of sand, with tattered robes of saffron, purple and of gold about his feet, there sat a youth.
Sideways he sat, with tips of slender feet to ground as though preparatory to flight. One fine brown hand pushed back a misty veil before the face, which shone wanly in the half-light. A strange, dreamy, cruel face, with crimson laughing mouth, hawk-nose, pointed chin, and eyes of grey-blue-green: eyes in which the pupils never close and which under the shadow of the coarse black hair a-grit with sand shone like twin pools of loneliness hidden in the rocks of Time. The other hand, outstretched, palm uppermost, held between the curling beckoning fingers tatters of the veil which, blown by the wind, twined about the slender limbs and outlined the ribbed ridges of the body thin to gauntness.
And even as she looked, the hummock showed empty, whilst, half-turned, upon tips of slender feet, with beckoning hand, he stood a mile off, perchance more, this youth of crimson, laughing mouth and haunting eyes.
One with the silver-grey and purple of the night, one with the gold and crimson of the coming day, he drew her, whilst the breeze laughed over her head and, soughed faintly in her ears, so that she strove to ride him down, only to find that he was not there; and urged the great beast further still and at his greatest speed, to see the figure ever out of reach, with beckoning hand; and little mocking laugh.
And then, with hoofs clattering in the shining bones of some long-dead fugitive who had failed to reach the oasis, the stallion reared and wheeled, and, caring naught for the hand upon the reins and with the bit between his teeth, raced back upon his tracks, leaving the Spirit of the Desert wrapped to the eyes in tattered misty veil.
Take heed!
So matter at what hour of the day you meet him; be it at the hour of noon, when the scorpion basks blissfully in the scorching sun; be it at night, when the white fingers of the moon essay to close your eyes in the sleep that perchance may have no waking; or at dawn, when heart or soul, or whatever it be, is like unto running water in its strength, beware of that gaunt figure with crimson laughing mouth.
Men bewitched as with woman have followed; women bewitched as with man have followed. You will find their bones if you go far enough or dig deep enough; and leave yours to bleach with theirs if you have not strength to resist.
Beasts see it not at all.
So that through a certain unromantic yearning for oats under his loosening girth, the stallion Sooltan raced Damaris back to the sayis and safety.
She had not understood the import of the apparition in the desert any more than she perceived the figure of a man standing amongst the ruins, watching her.
Hugh Carden Ali knew that it was her last ride; the last time she would feed the stallion with sugar; her last day amongst the ruins of the City of On.
The blood of his fathers, even that of the men who had swept the desert for their women, warred with the blood of his mother of a gentler breed; so that, fearing the strength of the one or the weakness of the other, he had sacrificed the last ride to the love in his heart.
CHAPTER XVII
"The hundred-gated Thebes, where twice ten-score in martial state
Of valiant men with steeds and cars march through each massy gate."
There was no moon to break the shadows in the Great Hypostyle Hall of the Temple of Amnon; neither was there sound or sign of life, the winter residents and bird-of-passage tourists being duly occupied in the festivities which are the order of the night in hotel life on the Nile.
It is not actually dangerous, nor is it actually wise, to visit the stupendous ruins of Egypt alone at night. The native has far too good an eye to business to lurk behind obelisk or column with intent to spring out and demand the purse of any stray unit of the cosmopolitan hordes which bring such wealth in the winter months to the land of the Pharaohs.
Rather not! Far greater joy for him at full noon is palming off upon your guileless self the spurious scarab at a price 300% above its intrinsic worth.
Incidents of that kind do not occur in the great tourist centres—though worse, far worse happens to the foolhardy or featherheaded in the by-paths and hidden corners of this mysterious land—but if you have the vision, the terrible silence of the Past, the supreme indifference of the great ruins to the passage of Time, the wonderful repose of the mighty blocks of stone piled in the days of the great Pharaohs, are apt to give a thrill to your heart and an impression to your mind which may last a lifetime.
If you have not the vision you need not worry, for you will not want to wander from the hotel lounge after your coffee to traverse these ancient wastes.
Damaris had spent the last fortnight in helping her godmother prepare for her tedious journey.
With the knowledge that she would have a fortnight, perhaps more, in which there would be little else to do than to visit the ruins, she had rushed through the principal objects of interest in the wake of a verbose dragoman, and then given every moment of her time to her beloved godmother, to whom she had said good-bye that very morning.
Restless and irritated by the trivial conversation of girls of her own age and the amorous tendencies of the stronger sex of the same age and also a good bit older, she had spent the afternoon in the hotel grounds, waiting for the evening, when she could slip away by herself; having realised that the best time of all in Thebes of the Hundred Gates is at fall of night, when the shadows cast a seemly cloak over the vulgarity of the modern buildings, and give an air of romance even to the glittering lights of the appalling esplanade, which flaunts its tawdry modernity cheek by jowl with the quay, built by one of the Ptolemies, and in use even to the present day.
When the call of the Muezzin from the Mosque of Abou'l-Hâggag came to her an hour before sunset she went in, bathed and dressed, and dined in her own room. Later, she stole out, ordered her car and drove herself along the broad tree-lined road and up the avenue of ram-headed Sphinxes to the first pylon of the great Temple.
There she switched off the lights, hid the starting-handle under the cushions and, tip-toeing, passed through the first pylon and up to the broken kiosk of the Ethiopian Tahraka.
She walked quietly, though assuredly her footsteps would have been deadened by Egypt's sands even if she had walked upon her heels, and stole through the vestibule to the second pylon, occasionally switching on her electric torch for fear of being tripped by fallen stone.
She had not heard of the great catastrophe which had brought the columns hurtling to the ground, due perhaps to the merciless greed of Ptolemy Lathyrus, or earthquake, or the well-known fact that temples, houses or plans built upon sand are bound to crumble; nor did she wot of the precariousness of the walls around her or the shifting propensities of the foundations.
She walked quietly because the spirit of the place was upon her, the spirit which puts a hand upon your mouth so that words shall not disturb the ghosts of the past, and which blinds your eyes so that you look back upon that hour as on a dream.
Yet, as she passed through pylon, vestibule and the Great Court, she stopped and turned, went on, and stopped again to listen.
There was no sound.
Flashing her light upon part of a fallen column, she sat down upon it, with the purple sky studded with stars as roof above her head and the sands of ages as carpet to her feet.
And as she sat, so still, her thoughts turned to the man who had said he loved her and who yet seemed so content to leave her quite alone.
A woman may refuse a man's honest proposal of marriage and have no intention whatever of marrying him, even later on, but that does not mean he need necessarily take her at her word to the extent of retiring altogether from the horizon of her life.
As for the rest, the flowers upon her breakfast-table, her rides at dawn—about that she instinctively kept her thoughts in check. It was like the cut-glass bottle of perfume which you are not allowed to use, on account of your youth; the first few lines of the first novel you filched from your mother's book-stand that afternoon she was out; the first time you put on a real evening dress and wound a fichu about your neck before you opened your bedroom door.
And as she sat there fell a little sound.
Bits of masonry as big as a bowl or as small as a marble are quite likely to fall upon your pate in colossal ruins, but, remembering the vague uneasiness which had caused her to stop and listen, further back, she sat forward and switched on her light.
Against the wall opposite her, entirely robed in black, with a glittering jewel clasping a corner of the great black mantle swinging from the shoulders, there stood a man.
There was no sign of the paralysing terror which swept the girl; her face, which had gone dead-white, was in shadow, her hands under control.
For a moment she sat breathless, then flashed the light full into the face of the man who had stalked her through the temple, then flashed it back to the jewel, then sighed—an unutterable sigh of relief.
The jewel was in the shape of a hawk, the symbol of Ancient Egypt.
Just for a moment they stayed in utter silence, those two who for all we know may have met and parted in this very spot in the days of the XII dynasty, to meet and part and meet again.
Then she tackled the untoward situation in the only possible way.
"Will you, as you promised, if the hour is come, tell me the tale of the Hawk of Egypt?"
She spoke sweetly, softly, switching out the light.
And Hugh Carden Ali crossed the intervening square of sand, which, however, being one-half his heritage, stretched an impregnable barrier between them, and sank to the ground beside her.
The perfume of her raiment was about him, the sound of her breathing in his ears; all the love and worship of his heart was hers. Yet he merely lifted the hem of her cloak to his lips.
The shadows pressed down upon them as he spoke, quietly, his voice echoing strangely in the Temple of the Gods.
"Behold, the Hawk of Egypt looked forth from the shadows of the mountain fastness, and nothing stirred in the earth or upon the face of the waters.
"Wrong had been wrought and the anger of the gods was as clouds loosened from their hands.
"And behold, as the first sun-ray pierced the fury of the storm, the mighty bird spread wide its wings, which were as of ruby and of emerald and of onyx and of gold as they glistened in the sun, and sailed upon the wind of the morning down towards the plains.
"And as he passed, glittering like a jewel in the crown of Osiris, those of his kind, screaming defiance, spread their wings and hastened west and east.
"They would have none of him, for beneath the mighty pinions showed the white plumage of another race.
"And in the radiant light of day there came from the southern plains a white bird, crossing the hawk's path as a snowflake driven by Destiny across the desert wastes; and he encircled her, lifting her upon the wind of his great pinions higher, higher yet towards the eyrie in the solitary mountain peak.
"And as they mounted, those of his kind and those of her kind, who had followed, battled with him, for he was outcast from the one and the other. And the mist, which was the anger of the gods, closed down . . ."
The shadows seemed to deepen as the quiet voice stopped.
"And—" said Damaris gently, "—the end?"
"That is on the lap of the gods."
"I do not understand!"
She had not caught the end of Lady Thistleton's chatter, else would she have been able to interpret the little story, and the man, who had thought that his parents' mixed marriage was a common subject for gossip in the hotel—which it was—sprang to his feet, The future still held the moment when someone would enlighten her as to the lowliness of his caste.
"It is late," he said gravely in English. "Perhaps if you were to ask at the hotel, someone would interpret the little tale. And now will you not return, for fear they come in search of you? It is not wise to wander alone, at night, without a companion. Your dog———?"
Damaris laughed, the echoes binding the silvery sound like a soft wrapping about the wounds and bruises Time had left upon the ruins.
"Wellington? Oh, he cut his foot badly this morning. And I—I want to go to the hall built like a tent."
"The great Festal Hall of Totmes III?"
The man made no other comment; it was not for him to offer himself as dragoman.
"Will you—take me there, if you know the way?"
"Verily would I be thy guide," came the passionate reply, "to guard thy feet against the stones which will surely be spread upon thy path."
Playing with fire! Yes, indeed!
Side by side they walked, the torch throwing a pool of radiance just ahead, until Damaris walked blindly into a column and cried aloud from the hurt of the stone against her shoulder.
It was then that she stretched out her hand for support, and tingled to her feet when sudden flames seemed to singe her finger-tips as they rested on the man's arm.
Through the Central Court and the Pylons and into the Hall of Records they went, until she tripped and crashed to her knees, and, rising, slipped her hand into the man's and stood for a moment with thudding heart when, closing fiercely round hers, it seemed to burn her whole being.
Hand in hand they stood, seeing, by reason of the gloom, vastly little of the columns which have the strange shape of tent-poles; then walked warily and still hand in hand in and out of various and dilapidated chambers.
"I—I don't want to go back, but I think it must be very late, so———"
They were standing near the chapel with the granite altar as she spoke, and had turned to retrace their way when she flashed her light upon a flight of steps.
Strange is the fascination and desolation of steps leading to an empty dwelling and almost as mysterious as the door ajar in an empty house.
She stood in the little room and swept the light across the walls upon which are represented the animals and flowers brought from Syria century upon century ago.
Then the light, which had been growing dimmer and dimmer, went out.
And it was the man this time who tackled the situation.
"I am your guide. I know the way in the dark."
He spoke in English as he swept the girl into his arms, carrying her like a feather down the great temple where perchance he had held her against his heart century upon century ago, even when the flowers and animals had been brought from Syria.
"May I drive you home? I should love to," he said, as he placed her on her feet near the car. He spoke in English, with an eagerness out of keeping with the trivial request, and which was merely the expression of a desire to be with her under commonplace circumstances.
"Please do. I don't think I could—I am so tired."
The gafir was accustomed to the strange habits of the white people, but, although almost drunken with slumber, he peered closely and furtively at the driver.
"Thank you so much," said Damaris gravely, with her hand against a mark upon her cheek caused by the pressure of an amulet made of a scarab-shaped emerald in a dull gold setting, and which Hugh Carden Ali wore night and day above his heart. "Is there anything else as wonderful to see as the Temple?"
"Deir el-Bahari."
The man spoke curtly and made no further comment; not for him was it to offer himself as guide.
"Ah! yes, of course—but people go to it in crowds, and one has to follow behind a guide in a procession."
"One is not obliged to return with the crowd, nor to listen to the dragoman, who knows nothing about the incense-trees of Punt which were planted upon the terrace to perfume the air under the light of the full moon, in the days of Queen Hatshepu."
With apparent abruptness she ended the conversation:
"I share my godmother's great faith in you. Good night."
She put out her hand as he salaamed with hands to brow and lips and heart. Perhaps that was why he failed to see it.
Or was it, perhaps, that he still felt the softness of her against his heart?
If you are dying of thirst, one drop of water will not assuage you!
CHAPTER XVIII
"A handful of meal in a barrel, and a little oil in a cruse."
I KINGS.
Whilst Damaris was trying to soothe her wounded pride at Karnak, Ben Kelham was suffering the tortures of the nethermost pit down Assouan way.
His heart was not in "lion" at all, it was literally at Damaris' feet.
He had not rushed away in pique after her refusal of him on the night of the fancy-dress ball; nor with any vague idea of causing her to regret her decision in realising the vacuum, in her existence which his absence might make. He had not an ounce of subtlety or vanity in his nature. He had gone because he thought it would be the decent thing to do as far as she was concerned, and also to hide his hurt and disappointment, which were deep. The rumour of lion was genuine and the excitement, extending far down the Nile, intense. In fact, with the aid of the Oriental's prodigal imagination the one royal beast of feminine persuasion which was reported as having been seen prowling around Deir el-Bahari had been multiplied to two pairs ravaging the outskirts of Assouan.
He sat drinking coffee with jolly Sybil Sidmouth and her nerve-stricken stepmother in the lounge of the Savoy Hotel in Assouan just at the moment when Damaris sat herself down on the broken column in the Hypostyle Hall.
"Jolly bad luck we've had, haven't we?" said Sybil.
Kelham nodded his head. The last post had come in, with nothing for him but a few letters from home.
"Yes, rotten!" he replied after a moment. "She might have sent me a line."
Sybil's stepmother moved restlessly in her chair.
Ridden with nerves, she was also mother of twin-daughters neurotic and plain who, sered by nature and yellowed by time and on the wrong side of the matrimonial hedge, had been only too glad to foist her on to the plump shoulders of jolly, capable, pretty Sybil and to get rid of them both for the winter.
In the last week or so a sprouting of hope had pierced the matchmaking soil in the querulous lady's really well-intentioned heart, for, like the proverbial half-loaf, a step-son-in-law is distinctly better than none at all.
But Sybil only smiled at the absent-mindedness of the young man's remark.
For weeks she had been the recipient of his confidences. He had dragged her, suffocating, down into the mud-depths of the diffidence in which he wallowed; had tugged her, gasping, to the Olympian heights from which he viewed a world of love, all rosy-red; had flung her, well-nigh senseless from exhaustion, upon the saw-teethed rocks of despair; and had taken her paddling in the wash of his vapourings.
She was absolutely heart-whole, with a firm belief in the "lion" rumour, and later, long after the end of this story, became the jolly, popular wife of the great eye-specialist to whom she had rushed when, after a soul-shaking scene with her step-sisters, she had missed the target entirely at Bisley.
As it happened, the duchess had written, but in a moment of most unusual aberration had put Khartoum on the envelope instead of Assouan, so that it was months, long after the end of this story, that the letter reached him. Strange is it how the lives of men are wrecked or made through the most trivial happenings.
The grain of dust in the eye; the mudbank in the river; the hen in the road! Just think of the outcome of such insignificant incidents.
The last letter he had received had been written in Heliopolis on the eve of her grace's sudden decision; the one that had gone astray had been mailed in Luxor, and had contained the request that, when he had shot the lion he would take the carcase or the skin as a present to Damaris at the Winter Palace Hotel and wait there until her return from the Oasis of Khargegh.
There was no doubt about the fact that he was genuinely in love.
Lion or no lion in the vicinity, he would sit dreaming for hours amongst the rock tombs at full noon or fall of evening or by the light of the sickle-moon; a perfectly absurd proceeding where big game is concerned. Food or sleep meant nothing to him, so that his usual good-temper was sharpened and his undoubted good looks enchanced by a certain romantic gauntness under the cheek-bone. People seemed as ghosts to him, so absorbed was he in his love and his pain; so that his act of rising when Mrs. Sidmouth took what she thought to be a diplomatic departure was purely mechanical.
Then Sybil laughed, a jolly, ringing laugh, and laid her hand upon his arm.
"Why don't you run up to Heliopolis?"
"By jove, Sybil, that's an idea. You come along, too. Damaris would love to meet you; you're just her sort. Besides, there's nothing doing in lion here, it's only a yarn. Let's pack to-night and get off to-morrow. I'll go and see if we can get a private steamer—can't stick a public one, stopping every other minute to look at tombs!"
Sybil laughed.
"We'll go, Ben, it will be ripping. But to-morrow! How exactly like a man!"
Ben was contrite. He thought Sybil travelled with a kit-bag and her guns; he had forgotten Mamma.
Mamma protested. She was an invalid, with all an invalid's paraphernalia.
They started after the passing of a week in which Mrs. Sidmouth had a series of nerve-storms, and in which Sybil, to pass the time, wrote a four-page letter to Ellen Thistleton, which she duly received at breakfast.
They certainly did not stop en route to look at temples or tombs, but they made quite a long halt on the sandbank just above Luxor, onto which boats of all sizes and shapes so often run. The loss of time is irritating enough, goodness knows, in ordinary travelling and occurs quite frequently, but when one is love-driven and this maddening delay happens, then you have to make as big an exercise of self-control as when you rush onto the platform only to see the guard's van of your train disappearing into the tunnel.
And surely the gods laughed long and loud when Damaris chose that very day to return by public steamer from Denderah where she had been to visit the Temple of Hathor the Egyptian Aphrodite.
CHAPTER SIX
"But still his tongue ran on, the less Of weight it bore, with greater ease."
BUTLER.
Lady Thistleton's daughters were exhaustively energetic. It belied their colouring, which was dun and which, though of the same family, is distinct from mousey. It has infinitely more vim and a vast endurance and a great patience; also is it sullen and boring, but reliable.
Ellen, the elder, had been engaged to a younger son of The Inverness of Inverness. His colouring, except of course for the eyes, which were of a snapping blue, reminded one of a tomato salad dressed with chilis and smothered in mustard-sauce. His temper corresponded. They had fought over everything until they had smashed their engagement.
Berenice was engaged to a parson in Edinburgh, one of the Smythe-Smythes of London. She made a doormat of herself, loving the herculean minister, and, though longing to stay at home and get married, had, at her lover's earnest request, consented to accompany her mother and sister to Egypt instead.
To his fervent mind the loss of a few months of married life would be compensated for by the biblical discourses upon the Land of Moses with which, later on, as his wife, she would be able to enliven Mother's Meetings.
They admired Damaris a lot, though her independence and colouring shocked them not a little. In the seclusion of the double bedroom, as they brushed or twisted their lanky locks in Hindes', they whispered about her love-affair, which had presumably gone agley, and thrilled with a distinct feeling of wrong-doing over the gossip anent the mythical Sheikh.
If they had asked Damaris about the myth, she would have told them everything quite simply and truthfully. This would have cleared up the mist but spoilt the feeling of wrong-doing.
Lady Thistleton was large and recumbent and averse to sight-seeing, but after a heart-to-heart talk with her daughters had seen to it that Damaris had no time for moping.
Damaris went here, there and everywhere; played tennis; paid duty-calls, as you must when somebody extends her wing-feathers as shelter; acted in charades; attended concerts; and was thoroughly miserable.
Jane Coop was miserable too; so was the bulldog, and, through a certain unconfessed and indefinable vigilance they both felt called upon to exercise in behalf of their beloved mistress, were distinctly nervy.
"Drat the men!" had said the maid, giving pithy verbal expression to the ragged state of her nerves as she cut the stalks of the beautiful flowers which came daily without name or message. The dog's method of expressing himself was somewhat more violent; it consisted of the sudden seizure between his great teeth of the posterior portion of the nether garments of low-caste males, white or coloured.
You could almost tell the status of the male bipeds by casting a discreet eye upon their raiment, and as there was not a muzzle in Egypt big enough to fit the dog, it had ended in him being led or chained in polite society.
Damaris's table was next that of the Thistletons, who, with a vague memory maybe of their duty towards their neighbour as instilled on Sundays into their rebellious infantile heads, chatted brightly to right and to left of them at meals.
Full of the milk of human kindness, they allowed it to overflow into their writhing neighbours' jugs.
They broke through the glacial atmosphere which surrounds the Britisher's breakfast-table; newspaper propped against jam-pot was no barrier; their gladsome invitations or suggestions, dammed for the moment, would rise at last level with the paper's edge to trickle down the other side and mingle with the eggs and bacon, porridge, kidneys, or whatever trifle the plate might contain.
They read out scraps of news from the morning paper; they read out bits of home news from their stacks of correspondence, written for the most part on eight pages and in the sprawling, uncontrolled script of the woman who has nothing but trivialities with which to fill her day.
Their blood was blue, their upbringing beyond suspicion; they simply erred through a too-generous supply of the above-mentioned philanthropic fluid.
They had come home dead-beat the night before, but were first down to breakfast, as happy as could be at the thought of the strenuous day before them, and were ostentatiously comparing their books of notes or jottings when Damaris came in. They went everywhere with note-books in their hands, and made entries at the most inconvenient moments during their journey. To you or me they would have seemed but jottings, but Berenice could have read you a blank-verse love-poem in the thick markings of her fountain-pen; and Ellen a De Profundis from the hieroglyphics and inscriptions copied by her scratchy stylo and under which she essayed to bury the memory of the tomato-hued Inverness.
Damaris slid into her seat with an inward prayer that she might be allowed time to read her mail, which consisted of a fat letter from her godmother and a bulky one from home. "Perhaps Marraine will be back soon," she thought, opening the other letter first, as is a way with us perverse humans. Enclosed was an atrociously-written letter to her mother from her plain-as-a-pikestaff brother, written from Harrow.
". . . it's awfully jolly," wrote the enthusiastic youngster, "being in Ben Kelham's house. They still talk about his last house-match against Bumbles. Don't you remember I'd just got over mumps and we went down for it? Bumbles had six to win and ten minutes to do it in when Howard was bowled, and Carden, their captain, went in and drove right over the Pav. He won the match by one, don't you remember? And then Kelham caught him magnificently in the slips just as time was up."
Damaris looked at a bunch of jasmine lying beside her plate, and sighed as she opened her godmother's letter; then sighed again, more profoundly.
The duchess had arrived at Khargegh without mishap. She described the journey, gradually ascending through the desert, then down through the narrow valley of rocks—the wastes of rock and gravel—the beautiful valley—the great plain to Mahariq-Khargegh with its date-palms, its filthy lanes, its mosques, with the limestone hills almost surrounding it.
"And we can't get any further, my dear. A report has come of the appearance near here of a notorious robber gang which has infested the desert farther south for years. I don't believe it myself—Hobson is furious, as the hotel we are in is not totally devoid of—shall I call them mosquitoes?—but the authorities refuse to allow us to proceed. I have sent a runner through to the friend I was going to see."—Damaris touched the jasmine at her side and sighed. "I will tell you the whole history when I return. So sad, my child; so very tragic. She may come to see me, as the authorities have no power over her. She is staying at her eldest son's house until his return. I will let you know my movements as soon as I can. Enjoy yourself. Dekko is very quiet; he is either apprehensive or going to moult."
Damaris smiled spasmodically when, as she put the letter down under the jasmine, her neighbours let off a broadside.
The head dragoman wanted to get up a party for Deir el-Bahari on the morrow. He had twenty pairs of donkeys, all of which were so accustomed, it seemed, to going about in a bunch that they refused to move a step if one pair was missing. Nineteen pairs had been filled from the different hotels, one pair was still minus riders. Would Damaris make a couple with Mr. Lumlough?
Mr. Lumlough, who was of the raw age of nineteen and who worshipped in secret at the girl's shrine, blushed divinely salmon-pink and coughed.
Damaris shook her head.
She longed to see the Temple, as she longed to go to Denderah, but not in a crowd; also, she longed to confide all her secrets (of which her visit to the Temple of Amnon was not one of the least) to her godmother. She was just the slightest bit scared, and, being very young, felt incapable of prescribing for her burnt finger-tips.
She had only to keep away from the fire, but, as I have already said, she was very young.
"Do, Damaris! We are taking our lunch on donkeys, as well."
"But why not let the empty pair go without riders? Or let Mr. Lumlough go on one and let the other trot by its side without anyone? I'm sure it would love a holiday."
No! These twenty pairs of donkeys belonged to an asinine Trades Union. The twenty pairs went together or not at all; they went up the steep hill with a human being on their backs or not at all; if one solitary moke out of the forty trades-unionists should be asked to climb a hill with nothing on its back, it would not move one step—no, not if the most luscious carrot feast awaited it at the top; and if it refused to budge, the thirty-nine others would support it by also refusing to budge! Yes! even if they held up the whole of the tourist season for eternity and never again tasted luscious carrot in all the years allotted to the asinine race. What is the good of customs if you don't stick to them? The donkeys' parents had always climbed that hill heavily-laden, and what was good enough for them was also good enough for their descendants!
"I think it's horrid of you, Damaris. Besides, what are you going to do all by yourself?" said Ellen, opening a letter bits of which she proceeded to read out. "Here's a letter from Sybil Sidmouth. She and Mr. Kelham are having a very poor time sitting about in the rocks and tombs all day and half the night."
"How romantic!" sighed Berenice. "All alone with Nature in an Egyptian desert! It reminds me of Omar's Jug and Loaf verse. How does it go?" She flipped through her notebook. "Ah! here it is." And she proceeded to read, with appropriate punctuation with her tea-spoon on the edge of her saucer:
"A book of verses underneath the bough
A jug of wine, a loaf of bread, and Thou
Beside me, singing in the wilderness;
O, wilderness were Paradise enow!"
She looked up, suddenly, surprised and indignant, at Ellen, who had kicked her violently under the table; then she tried to cover up her confusion at her unfortunate faux pas.
"Mrs. Sidmouth, of course, is far from well," she continued. But Ellen broke in, in her high staccato and appalling French:
"Revenons à nos moutons—or at least, our donkeys." She looked at Damaris, who, with over-bright eyes, laughed whole-heartedly at the feeble joke. "Do change your mind, Damaris. The guide is Yussuf, the very best, you know. Besides, we might see the lion."
"All right," said Damaris, tucking the jasmine into the belt of her white dress, which she had never done before. "I'll come. Twenty pairs of donkeys climbing up a hill will be an awfully funny sight,—don't you think so, Mr. Lumlough?"
She smiled across at Mr. Lumlough, who was thereupon transported to the portals of the seventh heaven with a piece of toast and marmalade in his right hand.
CHAPTER XX
"I was never less alone than when by myself."
GIBBON.
Next morning, with her chaperon's energetic daughters, Damaris found herself one of the herd foregathered on the Nile bank preparatory to the excursion to the Valley of the Kings, and later in the afternoon by mountain path over the ridge to that marvel of antiquity the Terrace-Temple of Deir el-Bahari.
"I don't want to go, Janie dear," she said, the preceding night, whilst the devoted maid wielded strong-bristled brushes on the burnished short-cropped hair.
"Better go, dearie. One must be polite, even if the heart breaks."
Jane Coop's literary plane swung between a three-penny weekly entitled "Real Stories from High Life" and Ouida's novels, which latter she had bought second-hand in the Charing Cross Road and kept sandwiched between her Bible and "Grandmother's Herb Recipes."
"But I don't want to go. I hate crowds, and I can't take Wellington. Every native flies from him since he got behind the Musical Colossus and growled. You remember? They thought it was the statue speaking, and the dear old darling was only trying to catch a lizard."
The bulldog loathed Egypt.
He was always either in disgrace or being talked to in baby language. He had seen next to nothing of his beloved mistress, and his digestion had been almost ruined by the amount of chocolates he had eaten out of pure boredom.
"Take me," he said, every time his beloved went out, as plainly as could be by means of his beautiful face and down-cast tail. But excursions had grown rarer and rarer and his slender middle more and more defined through grief.
"My heart isn't breaking, Janie!" Damaris declared, sitting up in bed.
"I know it isn't, dearie. There's nothing to break it over, I'm sure. I was just repeating from 'Her Scarlet Sin', where the beautiful heroine is torn between two stools as it were."
Jane Coop had no use for knights who left the field of combat; and as for the tales which were duly carried to her of an Arabian chief who followed her young mistress in the desert and sent her bunches of flowers and such-like trash, well! it was all you could expect if you left your own country for heathen parts!
To Jane Coop, rides in the desert in Egypt were just as much a part of the day's programme as rides on donkeys at holiday-time had been in Margate, before interfering people began to make a fuss about the rider's weight.
"You mind your own hedges, Maria Hobson, and see that your own cattle don't go a-straying, with their monkey tricks," she had said tartly and not over-lucidly, to her grace's maid, who had heard from someone who had heard from someone else that Miss Hethencourt was out at all hours of the night, here, there and everywhere. "I know what time she comes in and where she has been, and who with, and that's quite enough for me. Thank you, I can shepherd my own flock!"
She was not exactly within the confines of truth in her statement, but having learned in her youth to diagnose the hurt of dumb animals, she felt she was fully qualified to treat her beloved child's unrest without any verbal aid from outsiders.
Yet something, a warning from the future, maybe, had prompted her to speak this night as she stood beside the bed, looking down upon the beauty of the child to whom she seemed, more than anyone else, to stand in the position of sponsor.
"Will you promise me one thing, dearie?"
She stroked the red head lovingly as it leant against the motherly bosom upon which had so often rested errant lambs and stricken pullets.
"Yes, Janie darling. I would promise you anything!"
"I know things are going crosswise a bit with you, dearie, as they always do in an unknown country; but I don't worry about that, because at the crossways there is always a signpost. But now that we are in this heathen land, I want your promise that you will always tell me where you are going to when you go out—always. If it's out for a ride in the desert or over amongst them mummy-tombs, or out to a tennis-party or dance. Will you, dearie? Always?"
The insistence in the demand made the girl look up into the homely face and she did not smile as she made a little cross above her heart in the manner of children.
"I promise, Janie—cross heart. And I'm starting out early-early to-morrow morning on an excursion to the Tombs of the Kings. We are taking lunch with us—paper-bags and remnants of sandwiches amongst Egypt's dead—tea at the Rest House and———"
She stopped for a minute, then continued slowly:
"———and if I don't come back with the rest, Janie dear, don't worry. It's full moon, and I may stay to see the Temple by moonlight."
A moment's silence; then said practical Jane:
"And as you can't take Wellington, dearie, will you promise to take your revolver? You know, they say lions have been seen in———"
Damaris laughed.
"They've left, Janie! They're all at Assouan, waiting to be shot by
Mr. Kelham and Miss Sidmouth."
Jane Coop sniffed as she tucked in the bed-clothes and kissed her child good-night.
She had got to the door when Damaris spoke.
"Janie, you know all about birds, don't you?"
"Hens, dearie."
"Well!" The girl's voice came muffled, as though she had drawn the sheet about her face. "Supposing a hawk———"
"Hawks aren't hens, dearie."
"Well—hens! Supposing you had a breed of hens that were all—all—oh! any colour———"
"White Leghorns," said Jane Coop, who was beginning to get interested in this subject so near her heart.
"Yes. Well, supposing you found that one, when it had all its feathers, had some speckled ones under its wings——"
"But it couldn't, dearie, if it was pure-bred!"
"Yes, but just supposing it had, what would be the meaning of it?"
Jane Coop hesitated, and re-tied her apron-strings. Descriptive analysis was not her strong forte.
"Well, dearie, I should say that the male bird was a—a—oh! a Plymouth Rock, or something like that. The speckled bird would be a good one, but if it was mixed it would have to be turned out of the run if you had a fancy for showing and prizes. I remember a black—— But there now! what made you start your old Nannie talking about hens? Just you turn over and go to sleep, dearie. You have to be up and away early to-morrow, you know!"
She closed the door gently and left the girl alone.
"I don't understand," she said softly, and slipped out of bed to stand at the open window, with all the glory of an Egyptian night before her.
"I don't understand the meaning of the story," she repeated, as she watched the figure of a fellah wrapped in a big cloak which shone snow-white under the moon, trudging patiently across the grounds to the servants' quarters. Then, as the huge dog flung himself against her, she struck her hands together. The sudden impact sent her mind flying back to the first time she had seen Hugh Carden Ali, in English riding-kit and Mohammedan tarbusch in the bazaar; then in her memory she saw him dining as an Englishman; saw him riding with falcon upon fist—a very Eastern, saw him as an Arab of Arabia in the desert; again as an Englishman, save for the Mohammedan tarbusch, holding in the bay mare as she thundered past him on the stallion Sooltan.
In a flash she understood the tragic story of the Hawk of Egypt.
"The pity of it!" she whispered. "Oh! the cruel pity of it!" and crept back to bed.
* * * * * *
Wide-eyed and quiet, she stood very early next morning with the jostling, laughing crowd, waiting to be ferried across the Nile on the excursion to the Tombs of the Kings, which to most of the crowd ranked on a level with Madame Tussaud's Waxworks, with the difference that in the valley of desolation you could leave the remnants of your lunch anywhere, which is a habit strictly forbidden in the Marylebone Road.
Mounting the diminutive donkeys caused peals of laughter; the hamlets of Naza'er-Rizkeh and Naza'el Ba'irait rang with the cries of the cavalcade, and Damaris blindly followed Lady Thistleton's energetic offspring, as with note-book and pencil they followed the guide in and out of the regulation tombs of Biban el-Muluk, the history of which he repeated with parrot-like monotony.
Lucy Jones, lighthearted tourist, thought the lunch awfully jolly in the shade of the tomb, in fact, she made it a riotous feast, with the help of others as young and non-temperamental as herself.
After all, what did it matter?
As Lucy said, "The dead had been such a jolly long time dead," and the desolation of the valley made such a splendid contrast to the golden sunshine and violent blue of the sky.
The zig-zag path down to Deir el-Bahari occasioned more laughter and little screams and offers of help from the sterner male, who, under an extreme insouciance, tried to hide the insecurity of his perch on the back of the humble, scrambling quadruped.
When the laughing, jostling and somewhat dishevelled crowd streamed back down the second incline and across the Central Terrace, en route for the donkeys, it left Damaris standing with dancing eyes, and laughing mouth under the blue and star-strewn ceiling of the Shrine.
And when the last sound of laughter, and clattering stone under nimble hoof had melted away; when the sky had turned the marble temple mauve and pink and deepest red, and back to pink, to mauve, to softest white; when the first star had fastened the robe of day to the cloak of night, and silence had fallen like balm upon the wound caused by raucous voices, Damaris tip-toed down the steps and out into the Colonnade of Punt.
She was quite alone.
CHAPTER XXI
"No time so dark but through its woof there run Some blessed threads of gold."
C. P. CRANACH.
It is difficult—no, it is impossible to describe the wonder of Deir el-Bahari under the moon, just as it is impossible to describe "the light that never was, on land or sea," or the Taj Mahal, or a mother's love.
To our eyes it is the picture of desolation. Just as it must have been a picture of grandeur to those of the woman who built it, Queen Hatshepu, sister, wife and queen of Totmes III.
It is built in terraces to which you climb by gentle incline; it is surrounded and crossed by colonnades; there are ruined chapels and vestibules and recesses; an altar upon which offerings had once been made to the great gods; broken steps and closed and open doors, behind which the ghosts of dead kings and queens, priests, priestesses and nobles sit in ghostly council; through which they beckon you—if you belong.
There has surely come to each of us, in this short span we term life, the moment when, just introduced, we look into another's face and say or think, "We have met before."
May it not have been that we once met to burn incense together before the dread god Anubis, or to make offerings upon the altar erected to the great god Ra Hamarkhis; or was it perchance that you, if you are a woman, once waited at the temple gates to see him pass upon his return from the great expedition to the land of Punt, which we call Somaliland to-day?
Had the man with hawk-face who offers you a muffin or cup of tea to-day once brought you gifts of ivory, or incense, or skin of panther from the wonderland? Did he sweep the seething crowd with piercing eye to find the face beloved, and pass on to the rolling of drums, the crash of cymbals, the blaring of trumpets, to make obeisance to his monarch and return thanks to the mighty gods?
Perchance!
But Damaris had no thought of the past as she stood amongst the pillars of the colonnade which commemorate the great expedition; she was enthralled with the hour, the solitude, the silence, as she hesitated, wondering which way to go. Then, even as she hesitated, the silence was broken by the distant throbbing of a drum.
It came from one of the villages far down the hill and, caught by the evening breeze, was carried to the temple, to be multiplied a hundredfold in the echoing roof.
All other sounds may cease way out in the East; birds may nest and humans sleep; but the sound of the drum faileth never.
It is a message, a love-song, a lament, a prayer, and you hear it in the desert as in the jungle, in the temple as in the courtyard behind the hovel.
It is not a wise thing to listen to its call, for it can lead you off the beaten track, or over the precipice or out into the desert to die.
It caught the girl's feet in the witchery of its rhythm and set them moving upon the sand-covered floor of the Temple. Yet there was no smile on her lips as, moved by whatever it is that causes us to do strange things in the East, she danced like a wraith or a sylph, or a leaf in the wind, in and out of the columns and out into the light of the moon, and through the granite door onto the terrace where once had been planted the incense trees which had come with the spoil from Punt to perfume the air to the glory of Ra Hamarkhis.
The rolling of the drum stopped short, and Damaris came to herself with a start as she stood under the moon, then clasped her hands upon her thudding heart as she watched a man with two great shaggy dogs walk across the terrace towards her.
Save for the Mohammedan head-covering he was an Englishman, and he spoke in his mother's tongue to the girl he loved and whom he had watched since her arrival with the jostling, laughing crowd.
"The gods of the temple are good to me," he said simply. "I prayed that I might watch you dance upon the incense terrace of their house; they have answered my prayer. Come."
As they passed across the terrace to the hall of columns which is the vestibule of the chapel of the god of Death, he told her how he had watched and waited, meaning no discourtesy, until she should visit the temple amongst the limestone hills.
"Where are we going?"
Damaris spoke more to break the spell which seemed to hold her than to know the end of the walk across the sand. Bewitched by the moon and the terrific power of old Egypt, she would have followed the man blindly, fearing no hurt, even into the inner-most sanctuary which, hewn out of the rock itself, lies at the extreme end of the temple.
"To the Shrine of Anubis the god of Death, where I would show you the
Hawk of Northern Egypt upon the wall."
They passed between the great columns and up the flight of steps to the doorway beyond which lie the chambers of the Shrine, and there Hugh Carden Ali took the girl's hand as he called her name aloud, until the walls or the spirits of the gods thundered back the echo.
"The gods introduced the kings of Egypt to the sanctuary. Anubis god of Death, as you will see by the painting upon the wall, led the great queen to the door," he said in reply to a whispered question from Damaris. "I would not that the shadow of death touched the hem of your raiment. I called your name aloud so that the gods might hear. . . . Do I believe in such strange things? How can one say, I believe, or do not believe, in this land which is in the grip of a dead past which is not dead?"
And they passed in through the door and stood looking up at the Hawk of
Horus painted in the XVIII dynasty upon the wall.
Brilliant in colouring, green and white, with red-tipped wings, it spreads them above the place where once was seen the painted picture of the queen who reigned and suffered and died, thousands of years ago.
"Ah!" said Damaris, as she looked up to the corner. "It is your—your crest—your———"
"It is a fantasy of mine. We trace my father's house right back without a break to the days of the Pharaohs—so, I believe, does Mohammed Ali, vendor of slippers in the bazaar." He paused, then added abruptly, with a frown and a movement of the shoulders as though he were trying to shift a burden, "If you will come with me to the inner chamber, if you are not afraid, I will interpret the Story of the Hawk to you in the shadows where it belongs."
Damaris put out her hand as though to speak, then passed into the inner room, across the threshold of which the dogs of Billi laid themselves down.
"Death is around us," said Hugh Carden Ali. "Do you believe in omens?—No? Nor I. I wish there was a seat, so that you could rest whilst I tell you———"
Damaris laid her hand gently upon his arm, and he looked down into the face shining dead-white in the reflection of the moon which had silted in through a hole in the roof.
"You know?"
Damaris looked up and smiled.
"Yes! I know. And, being the son of such splendid people, I cannot understand why———"
The gates of pain and love and sacrifice were opened and the girl shrank back against the wall as the tide of pent-up bitterness swept around her in the ruined shrine. The man's face was white, his eyes blazed in the agony of his hurt, whilst the dogs lifted their heads and growled.
". . . You do not understand! You do not understand that I love you! And, loving you, I stand a prisoner behind the bars wrought for me by the love of my parents. That I love you as surely you never have been, never will be loved, and that I dare not, can not ask you to be my wife,—even if you loved me—which you do not. . . What? You do not see why I should not marry into my mother's race even as my father did? I will tell you why." He gripped her wrists and pulled her to him. "Because I am the outcome of their union. My father is an Arab, my mother an Englishwoman. I—I am a half-caste. I am nearer white, truly, than my father, but—but my son, although he might be white or dark,—a—a native, as you say in England—would only be a half-caste lying on your white breast, if you were my wife."
The moonbeams lengthened as the man talked on, whilst Damaris learned of one of love's bitterest mistakes.
"Oh, forgive me!" he ended. "Why did I bring you here to hurt you, to make you cry for a pain which is not yours? Why are you left alone? It is so dangerous in this land of my fathers. Your godmother deserts you whilst she goes to my mother, who is afraid for me—ah! did you not know? The man who loves you has left you to the wind of chance: my friend, Big Ben Kelham—O gods of ancient Egypt, how you must laugh!—my friend! Shall we meet again, I wonder?——"
Surely Anubis the god of death, Anubis the jackal-headed—who leads the soul of the departed through the underworld into the presence of the great Osiris—surely he moved upon the wall and turned to look after those two as they passed out of the inner chamber to stand beneath the Hawk upon the wall.
Or was it the shifting of the moon amongst the shadows?
"Will you"—there was no trace of the man's anguish in his voice: the Mohammedan's resignation to the inevitable may seem a weak way out to one who will kick and worry until he drops from exhaustion, but it saves a great deal of pain to others—"will you—you must surely marry some day, so beautiful, so sweet you are—will you let me give you this as a wedding-present, and will you think of me, a prisoner, when you fasten it in your wedding-gown?" He held out a jewel in the shape of the Hawk which spread its wings upon the wall above them. "It was found here, in this sanctuary—a priestly ornament? a pilgrim's offering? Who knows? Will you?—I have no right to it, for beneath my wings is the plumage of another race. I am not a pure-bred son of Northern Egypt."
"Will you pin it in?"
The girl's voice shook as she tilted back her chin so that her mouth was on a level with the man's as he bent to fasten the jewel in the silk.
"Will you promise me one thing? Yes!—you are good to the prisoner. Allah! how I love you, and surely, if I may not be your master I may serve you. If you should be in trouble—ever—in this land of Egypt, the very soil of which is drenched with the blood of those who have fought, and loved, and won, and lost thousands of years before the coming of the gentle prophet who said that in the sight of the great God, anyway, we are brethren—yes, if trouble should come to you, will you send me a messenger—to the Tents of Purple and of Gold? I am doing you a great wrong in lingering where I can catch glimpses of you. I love you—love you—but that is no excuse for causing you harm through the wagging of evil tongues."
Tears dropped one by one upon the jewel which glittered on her breast.
"And if I were in trouble—great trouble—if I were to come to you myself, how——?"
"My boat waits at the landing-stage from sundown to sunrise, the swiftest mare in all Egypt, as the fortune-teller foretold you, the snow-white mare Pi-Kay waits from the setting until the rising of the sun at the Gate of To-morrow, which is a ruined portal on the road of the Colossi. From there the way lies west. And fear not." He pointed to an inscription on the wall and translated it in the Egyptian tongue. "'I have come full of joy because of my love to thee; my hands are full of all life and purity. I am protecting thee among all gods.'"
Followed by the dogs, they walked slowly down the incline to a mound of rubbish flung up and left by an excavating party many years back; behind it they found the stallion Sooltan in the care of his sayis, also the one donkey which had wandered off in search of grass and got lost, and whose absence in the cavalcade had not been noticed on account of the disorder of the descent.
"Kismet!" had said Jobad the guide when he had made the discovery at the water's edge.
If the white folk could not keep count of themselves he was not going to draw their attention to the fact that one of the party was missing; he had not the slightest intention of providing an evening meal for the lion by offering to go in search of the pair. "Kismet!—Allah would watch over them!"
Hugh Carden Ali leapt to the saddle without touching the stirrups, then swung the girl as lightly as a leaf up into his arms.
Heedless of the extra burden of the slip of a girl who had mastered him in the desert and who lay so quietly against his master's heart, the magnificent black beast stood stock-still, then suddenly shivered violently, just as the dogs of Billi, belly to ground, eyes blazing, ruffs on end, growled softly.
Hugh Carden pressed Damaris back against his shoulder and turned and looked in the direction whence had come that sound, paralysing if you do not happen to be armed.
From somewhere amongst the rocky wilderness of the hills, carried by the night-breeze, had come the hoarse coughing of a lion.
"Listen," he said.
And as it came again, with shrieks of "Sabé! sabé!" the pea-green sayis leapt on the back of the terrified donkey, which, spurred by fear, disappeared like a streak down the hill just as the stallion, sweating with pure terror, reared and wheeled, then backed, with great eyes rolling and hoofs striking sparks from the stones.
Up he reared, until it seemed impossible that he should not fall backwards, crushing to death or hideously maiming the man who, encumbered with the girl upon his arm, could do little to calm the frightened beast, And well for them was it that Hugh Carden Ali, with his love and understanding of horses, knew that only to the sagacity of the animal could the safe negotiation of the dangerous descent down the hillside be left. He gave Sooltan his head.
There is no danger in it, goodness knows, when you bestride a diminutive donkey whose dainty little feet know every pebble on the route, but there is danger when an animal like Sooltan takes the Avenue of Sphinxes at a mad rush and slips and slithers and slides, under the impetus of his own weight, pace and terror, the rest of the way, even if he is as sure-footed as a goat.
* * * * * *
Later, when her beloved child wakened the night-porter, Jane Coop, blue with anxiety and cold, most unhygienically closed the window and thankfully padded off to her comfortable bed.