CHAPTER XXII
"_Antiquity! thou wondrous charm, what art thou? that being nothing art everything! . . . . The mighty future is as nothing, being everything! the past is everything, being nothing!"
LAMB.
In spite of her tongue, which was somewhat unduly inclined to gossip,
Lady Thistleton was a motherly old soul and had a great affection for
Damaris.
". . . I should not like either of my little girls," she was saying the morning after the visit to the Terrace Temple, "to visit the ruins or stay out unchaperoned after dark. I am responsible for you, you know, dear, and you are very beautiful and very young. Of course I know that you are a little unhappy, dear, but other girls have been the same. So you must not worry. Everything will come right. I expect you know all about my Ellen." Damaris nodded. "And everybody is so fond of you. Would you like to have a long day in bed to-day, dear, or go to Denderah with the girls? They are thinking of staying for a few days."
Damaris smiled the radiant smile which made her so attractive, and, rising, put her arms round the motherly old dear's neck and kissed her, which was an unusual thing for her to do, as she was, as a rule, undemonstrative to coldness.
"I'd love to go to Denderah, if I may take Janie and Wellington. And I'm truly not worrying; it's just a tremendous spirit of adventure which drives me to do these awful things."
So to Denderah she went, with her spirits at highest pitch at the thought of getting away from Luxor for a few days and of seeing the wonderful Temple of Hathor, the goddess of Joy and Youth.
She was in riotous spirits when she arrived at the Hotel Denderah in Kulla, where the lovely porous jugs come from; in fact, so blithe was she that Ellen, inclined to despondency and of a superstitious tendency, remarked:
"I should calm myself a little, my dear Damaris; such gaiety can only lead to depression, later on."
But Damaris only laughed.
How good it is that we cannot visualise beforehand the hour in which our tears must flow and our hearts come well-nigh to breaking!
She laughed, she sang, she visited the town, and went to bed early. She teased Jane Coop the next morning as, perilously perched on donkey-back, she headed the little procession which wended its way through the stretches of earth which later would give a harvest of corn and sweet-scented flowering bean.
She urged the panting bulldog along the three good miles, and laughed at him when, sneezing and coughing, he rubbed his great paws over his face, covered with the cobwebs which floated on the air; but she stopped laughing when she first caught sight of the great arch of crumbling antiquity which is all that is left of the edifice upon the site of which the Temple of Hathor was built; and she stood quite still in the over-powering colonnade, whilst the Thistletons, notebooks in hand, rushed inside in the wake of the guide. Jane Coop stopped dead at the outer edge of the colonnade.
"I thought you said it was a Temple of Love, dearie: all white marble, with doves and lovers'-knots and—and hearts. It's a tomb, that's what it is, and I'm going to sit outside. I don't like it; it bodes no good. Let's go back, dearie; I don't like the place or the hotel or the town. If we go quickly we can catch the first boat. Let the others stay if they want to. I'm thinking of you; my heart's telling me that you must not stop, and that if you do, harm'll come to you, or somebody."
Strange was the persistence of the usually placid woman, as she caught her young mistress by the arm and quite violently shook her fist at the sinister face of the goddess which shows on each side of the columns.
And strange it is to know that if the girl had but listened, the harm might not have befallen.
But Damaris shook her head.
"We must be polite, Janie dear, even if we are dying to go home. Besides, two or three days will do us good, and it will help pass the time until Marraine comes back. Come, Well-Well."
The dog followed his mistress up to the door, but there he stopped.
"Come along, Well-Well," she repeated.
The dog sat down, with a definite air of ending further exploration as far as ruins were concerned, on his part.
"I think you and Janie are bewitched to-day."
Damaris spoke petulantly and watched the dog waddle back and sit down beside the maid, who, busy crocheting, sat on a stone some few yards from the Temple, to which she had resolutely turned her back.
Damaris stood for a moment feeling as though the very wettest of wet blankets had been wrapped round her; then turned, listened until she heard Ellen's staccato voice coming from the direction of the antechamber in the middle of the Temple, and tiptoed across to the east side, where are to be found the ruined Treasury and Store Rooms in which were stored the incense for sacrifice or offering, the vestments and banners and other such props needful to the correct fulfilment of the rites of an ancient worship which, as far as services go, in display of wealth and sense-stirring accessories, did not differ so very much from what we see in some of our churches in this present day of grace.
She came to the stairs, up which so many years ago the mother of Hugh Carden Ali had climbed, on the day when she had fully realised that the crown of love had come to her.
Damaris climbed them, and stood on the roof, watching, as had watched Jill Carden, the clouds of twittering birds as they flew in the direction of the Libyan Hills; then she crossed to the little shrine of Osiris, stood for a moment unconsciously passing her finger over the carvings, turned as though someone had called her, and ran down the stairs.
She stood and listened until she heard Ellen's voice looming from the side chapel on the western side, then, and just as though pulled by some invisible hand, she passed quietly through the antechamber into the sanctuary where, in the days of Ancient Egypt, the mighty Pharaoh, and he only, entered to commune with the gods at the birth of the new year; and where the mother of Hugh Carden Ali, stricken with the glory of the secret revealed, had fallen unconscious to the ground, over twenty years ago.
She stood quite still, her heart beating to suffocation; then she raised her hand and pushed the hair from her forehead.
"I feel just as though the roof was pressing down upon me," she whispered to herself. "As though, through me, something awful was going to happen. I——"
She turned, and almost ran out of the sanctuary, her footsteps waking the echoes of the roof which once had resounded to the clash of cymbal, the roll of drum and blare of trumpets. She heard Ellen's strident voice calling to her, telling her to come and join them in the crypts; she paid no heed, she ran on and out into the sunshine and down to the maid, who was still placidly crocheting.
And as she left the ruin, the mantle of depression fell from her, and she laughed as she caught the great dog and forced him to walk upon his hind-legs.
"No, Janie," she said that night, as the maid tucked her up in bed. "Here I stay until I have visited the Temple thoroughly, and I'll take you down into the creepy crypts and lock you in them if you worry any more. We all got up too early and hadn't had enough breakfast—that is why we disliked the place so much."
They stayed some days, and then took the public steamer home, Damaris bubbling over with high infectious spirits, which had their birth in a secret hope that she might find a letter from Ben Kelham upon her return.
She was leaning over the rail, thinking about him, as the boat made its lazy way down-stream.
"So funny," she was saying to herself as they approached Luxor under a sunset sky. "I wonder if he will be at the hotel. I somehow feel him quite near."
And then her thoughts were distracted by the exclamations and laughter of the passengers as they rushed to the side, causing the boat to take a distinct list.
What little things serve to amuse us!
The bluebottle at the Cathedral service; the stray dog which rushes athwart the regal procession; the straw hat blown through the traffic!
The steamer was churning up the waters of the river down which Cleopatra had passed in all her power and beauty; on each side were the ruins of temples and tombs built to the glory of great god or mighty emperor; yet the tourists flung down guide-books and left their tea to shout encouragement and wave their handkerchiefs to Ben Kelham and Sybil Sidmouth, who were also having tea on the slanting deck of their private steamer, which had run aground on the pestiferous sand-bank.
Mrs. Sidmouth, in the seclusion of the saloon, was summoning all her strength for a real nerve-storm.
Damaris looked hard for a moment, then became deadly-white, and backed her way out through the crowd. She flashed a quick glance round in search of the Thistletons, and saw them leaning dangerously far over the rail, trying to attract the attention of Sybil Sidmouth, who was smiling so contentedly as she handed her companion his tea; then she turned to run to the saloon to hide herself, and ran, instead, right into Jane Coop's arms.
There was a grim set to the maid's mouth and a steely glitter in her eyes.
"I was just coming to ask you, dearie, if you'd like a cup of tea. One gets fair sick of the ruins and things one sees on this river. The young ladies can come and find you at tea if they want to."
How often had the motherly woman gone out to bring in the lamb from the storm, or hunted the fields and hedgerows for her straying chick!
Later, she sat on the edge of her darling's bed and patted the curly head resting on her faithful heart, to the accompaniment of little clucking sounds.
"There now, dearie—there now—there now! It isn't worth crying over; every river is as full of good fish as ever sailed on it in a boat that couldn't run straight. Let old Nannie dry her baby's tears. There how—there now!"
She dried the tear-stained little face with a big handkerchief, and rocked her child to the rhythm of the music which drifted from the hall, borne by the night breeze, through the open window, until the sobs had ceased.
And in the ball-room the Thistleton family nodded their heads sagely to the rhythm of the same music.
"I am sure she didn't see Mr. Kelham and Sybil, Mamma," Ellen was saying. "She was having tea when we went to find her, and looked quite all right."
"I was thankful when I saw her," broke in Berenice, patting a thick envelope with the Edinburgh post-mark. "On the Nile, together, it really did not seem comme il faut at all, and wherever Mrs. Sidmouth was, she might have countenanced the—er—the courtship by her presence on deck."
"Well, all's well that ends well," said Mamma placidly, as she secretly returned thanks that her daughters were not as others.
* * * * * *
But later, far into the night, Damaris stood at her window, with her arms round the bulldog's neck.
"You're the only one who really loves me, Well-Well. Everybody else run away and leaves me. I'm—I'm, so unhappy!"
Tears stood in the big eyes as she flung out her arms and cried in a sudden passionate intensity, "Marraine! Marraine! I want you—I want you! If you loved me, you would come to me, because I want you so!"
CHAPTER XXIII
"The thorns which I have reap'd are of the tree
I planted; they have torn me, and I bleed.
I should have known what fruit would spring
from such a seed."
BYRON.
Olivia Duchess of Longacres stood on the balcony of the hotel, looking down at the cortege which had escorted the wife of the Sheik el-Umbar from the House 'an Mahabbah some way out in the desert and which was making its way as best it could through the tortuous, narrow, unpaved streets of Khargegh town.
The white and only wife of the great Arab travelled en reine; two outriders with modern rifles slung across the shoulder and brandishing throwing-spears, caused consternation amongst the spectators as at a word or touch of the unspurred foot they made their magnificent horses rear and back and plunge.
One trick or feat had caused the heavens to be rent with screams of pure joy and shouts of "Wallahi-el-azim," "Ma sha-Allah" and other references to the might and glory of the Almighty.
You do not often see this feat of strength and dexterity, and when you do, it brings your heart almost out of your body and has an exhibition of tent-pegging simply beaten to a frazzle.
A spectator of the tender age of three, clothed—as it was a day of festival—in tarbusch and voluminous robe girt about him with a cummerbund—on ordinary days he would have been clothed in nature and girt in dirt—toddled straight into the middle of a square, just as the outriders charged across it. There was no room for them to turn, so packed were the places where the sidewalks should have been, neither was there time in which to rein in their horses. Women shrieked and beat their breasts, men looked on at the inevitable tragedy with the composure of the sterner sex.
The babe stood stock-still.
And Yussuf the outrider, bending low on his saddle, drove straight down upon it, gathered the back part of the cummerbund and some folds of the voluminous skirt upon the point of his spear, and, lifting the mite, amidst yells and shouts and wild clamour, carried him at spear-length and top speed safely across the square.
Where the real danger comes in is in judging the exact amount of stuff to gather on the spear-head; an inch or so too much and you may get a part of the kiddie's little back; an inch or so too little and, when you have him high in air, you may cut through the cloth and cause said kiddie to make a hasty descent to terra firma.
Anyway, the child was safely restored to its fond mother, who simultaneously smacked it and stuffed its mouth with fly-blown sweetmeats, and became the hero for the latter part of the day.
The real cortège was headed by camels bearing gifts from the House el-Umbar to the great white woman who stood, on the balcony in a grey silk taffeta dress, a shawl of priceless lace on her head and a grey parrot upon her shoulder. Silks, jewels, sweetmeats, bibelots in ivory and precious metal, dates, coffee in berries, a monkey and a bushel of wheat were amongst the gifts carried by the camels who grumbled and rumbled as they stalked with swaying gait and contemptuous half-closed eyes.
Next came the armed escort, mounted on horses, with modern rifles slung and cummerbunds stuck full of the most atrocious-looking knives. They scowled at everyone, but as they passed under the balcony each one drew his knife and rattled it against that of his neighbour so that the weapons made a glittering arch in the light of the setting sun, as salutation to the old white woman who was of their mistress's race.
Came Mustapha, the Ethiopian, into whose care the Sheikh had given his wife all those years ago, when they had ridden out of the desert up to his dwelling amongst the talik palms of the Flat Oasis.
He was on foot—not that he had done the entire journey in like manner—and held the golden chain of the magnificent camel upon which his mistress rode.
She rode in a palanquin of ivory with curtains of rose satin embroidered in precious stones; on either side, also on camels, rode two slaves who waved huge circular fans on long staffs to cool the air about this woman who was so beloved throughout the land for her good deeds and loving, helping hand.
She was in silk robes of rose covered in a satin cloak of deeper shade; she was closely veiled as becomes the wife of a Mohammedan, and wore no jewels save a rope of pearls; and her steady, wonderful blue eyes, which were just twin heavens of happiness, shone with delight as she looked up at the old woman who had known her as a girl, with her hair hanging in two great plaits.
She put both hands to her forehead and spread them out in the beautiful
Eastern gesture of welcome, then bowed to her knees, as she passed.
Then, turning, she pulled her yashmak a little to one side. "Petite Maman!" she cried. "Welcome, Petite Maman!" and blew her a kiss from the tips of her rosy fingers.
Arrived at the entrance, the armed escort made a circle round her with drawn knives; her camel knelt; a Persian carpet was laid across the quasi-clean stones; then Mustapha the Ethiopian made a sign, upon which Ameena, the little hunchback woman who loved her mistress more than her life and who had been transported with joy when she had laid the first-born, the son, in the mother's arms, came running swiftly.
Mustapha and Ameena lived one long life of secret feud; they fought like cat and dog as to who could do the most in their mistress's service; they stood shoulder to shoulder and fought everybody else in the same good cause; and the huge man scowled fiercely as the deformed little woman arranged the flowing robes and walked up the Persian carpet behind the wife of the great Sheikh.
"Well, I never!" was Hobson's comment as she peeked from behind a door. "Her grace must have made a mistake. You take that downstairs," she added, coming boldly out onto the landing to intercept the slave with the monkey. "Downstairs," and she pointed down to the entrance, surging with people, "unless you want the place to be full of feathers and fur!"
Jill stood in the doorway; looked across at her godmother, and made the beautiful gesture of salutation, then removed her veil, picked up her robes and ran across the room right into the outstretched arms.
Tears were very close as they laughed and held each other by the hand, but the laughter died away altogether as they sat in the falling shadows, the younger one with her head on the older one's lap.
Two wise women, they were fighting for the happiness of the young, as the shadows fell and the stars came out and faded before the light of the moon as she trailed her silver garments across the heavens.
Jill had risen once to her feet, in a moment of anger, and had gone out onto the balcony and stood looking down, smiling upon the crowd, composed chiefly of women, who had raised their hands and called down the blessings of Allah upon her.
The steps were strewn with gifts, ranging from live goats to masses of sticky sweetmeats and glass beads. Mothers had brought their sickly babies and laid them down amongst the goats and beads, hoping that if even the shadow of the blessed woman were to fall upon them they might be healed.
Mustapha kept guard, hurling abuse at those who tarried, helping their departure by the aid of his foot. Hobson stood like a grim sentinel outside the sitting-room door. She had made tea under the greatest difficulty—the kettle of tepid water had been flung at the salaaming offender who had brought it—and had taken it in blushing brick-red when Jill had risen and kissed her on both cheeks. Dinner had been served, hardly tasted, and been sent away, and a whole tray of cups full of burnt milk showed the perturbation of the maid's mind as she waited, and waited for the sound of the little bell which summoned her to her grace's presence.
"You are a noble-looking woman, my child," said the duchess, as she keenly scrutinised the fair face with great blue eyes and broad humourous mouth, which, but for an added serenity and dignity, was so very like the face of the girl who had been left behind at Ismailiah over twenty years ago, and who had journeyed into the desert with the Arabian Sheikh and had married him. "I'm not surprised your husband adores you. Could he not have come with you? I have always longed to see him."
It seemed that the Sheikh Hahmed had been invited to Bagdad, to some conference concerning the big Arabian question, but hoped to be able to greet her grace before her departure. In the meanwhile his dwellings, his servants, his horses and everything he was possessed of were hers.
"And he means it, Petite Maman; he loves making people happy. I—I love him." She paused for a moment; then looked straight into the stern old eyes. "My love for my son is as great as my love for his father, and I would lay down my life for their happiness."
There was no tenderness in the sad old eyes and no lines of yielding in the stern old mouth; for although her heart was aching to say yes to the mother's insistent demands for her son's happiness, her common sense had turned her into a very rock of resistance.
"I am happy, radiantly happy." Jill, who was sitting on a stool at the old woman's feet, slipped to her knees and caught the wrinkled old hands in her own. "So why should the little girl not be happy with my son, who is the finest man and dearest son ever born to woman? Tell me what difference is there? Why should my son be made unhappy? Tell me!"
She knew perfectly well. Her son's words on the roof of his dwelling under the stars were ringing in her ears; but she was hanging on to a very forlorn hope with both hands, tricking herself with the thought that, out of her love for her, the wise old woman might see things in a different light and give her consent to the marriage just because the man was her son.
But the old woman caught the mother to her breast and stroked the golden head and kissed it with a world of pain in her sad old eyes.
"Because, dear," and the words were very gentle and the voice was very soft, "just because, when we love, we think of ourselves only, and not of those to come."
The old woman sighed as Jill raised her head sharply: "Try to understand, little one. You, my dear, a white woman, married a pure-bred Arab. Ah! my, dear, my dear, forgive me, your son is———"
Jill sprang to her feet, and as she sprang caught the rope of pearls upon the arm of the chair, breaking it and scattering the jewels to the four corners of the room.
She flung out her hands, making the Eastern sign to scare away evil spirits. "The omen!" she whispered. "The omen! A broken string of pearls means—means—death."
"Come, come, child," said the old lady sharply, and to allay the unsightly terror in the other's face, and also because she believed in using an axe in felling a tree, repeated her last remark. "You are suffering now through the selfishness of love. Women who marry without giving a thought to the result of the marriage, to the good or the harm it might bring to the children of that marriage, deserve to suffer. Marry the man, if you really love him and can help him by being his wife; but let there be no children if there is anything in the union that might hurt them." She rose and crossed to the girl who was standing staring into a corner of the room, with a world of horror in her eyes. She moved back as the old woman, came towards her, holding out her hands as though to ward off some evil thing she saw in the shadows.
"I can't bear it," she whispered; "I can't bear it. I don't believe that anyone, could think that of Hugh. Remember how loved he was at Harrow———"
"Ah! my dear, my dear, there was your great mistake . . ."
"You're wrong," interrupted Jill harshly. "You're hopelessly, cruelly wrong. He was idolised in England; he is loved out here. It was sheer spite on the part of the—woman who told him that he was—was——" She pressed her hands over her mouth as she backed to the wall, then flung her arms out wide; her face was dead-white, her eyes blazing; she reminded the old woman of a tigress fighting for her cubs; she was beautiful beyond words in the tragedy of her motherhood. "I don't believe you—I don't believe you—I—you———"
"Listen, Jill." The old woman's voice was as cold as ice as she watched the agony in the fair face. Dear heavens! she did not want to hurt; she wanted to give in and gather the child up in her arms, but she knew what was best. "Your boy knows it, dear; he knows he is out of the running. Come over to me and listen whilst I tell you something." She sat down and pulled the suffering child down beside her, who lay across the silken knees like the stricken mother across the knees of the wise Madonna and made no sound or movement whilst she listened to the bitter words of the fortune-teller in the hotel garden at Cairo.
A little silence fell; then, very gently, very tenderly the old woman spoke:
"So you see, dear, until she is of age it will be only my duty to see that Damaris does not marry your son."
And Jill sprang to her feet and beat her hands together.
"And I," she said, "I will give my heart's blood to bring happiness to my son. Death alone shall———"
She stopped and shivered as she glanced over her shoulder out into the night, then drew herself up with a surpassing dignity and threw out her hands in the Eastern gesture of resignation.
"You say 'I will not,' I say 'I will,' but it is God who decides." With a little sobbing sigh she relinquished the unequal struggle, just as Hobson walked boldly into the room and stood inside the door, like a graven image of intense displeasure, when her mistress, unable to withstand the unspoken disapproval, consented, after a promise to Jill to have another long talk on the morrow, to go to bed.
But there was to be no long talk anyway in the town of Khargegh on the morrow.
She lay in bed, propped by pillows against which, divested of its mask of red and white and blue, the dear little old face shone brown. A priceless bit of lace hid her own white locks, free for the night of the outrageous perruque which covered them by day and which lay at the moment hidden in its box.
A pair of crimson bed-slippers peeped from under the bed, another pair, absurdly small, outrageously high-heeled, buckled and crimson, made a splash of colour near the dressing-table. Her little hands were gently folded under the ruffles of priceless lace of her cashmere night-attire as she lay quite still, trying to find a way out through the jungle of pain and grief which seemed to spread round and about so many she loved; whilst Dekko, puffed out with sleepiness, sat on the back of a chair, muttering incoherently to some fanciful image of his weird brain.
Hobson lay fast asleep in the next room, which had a communicating door with that of her mistress. Knowing nothing of nerves or of temperament, she had dropped asleep as soon as her head, with scanty locks tortured into a chevaux-de-frise of steel pins, had touched the pillow; her strong hands were clenched on the frill of her stout calico nightdress; her powerful face looked grim in the dim light of the moon, which, high in the heavens, flung a silver shaft through the open window straight across the bed. There was absolutely no sound when, just as, so many miles away, Damaris made her passionate appeal, as she stood by the window, Hobson, dour, stolid, unimaginative, yet with a streak of Scotch blood in her veins, sat straight up in bed. Her eyes were wide open as she stared in front of her, then she passed her powerful hand over her grim face and flung the bedclothes to one side.
"She's in trouble." She spoke very clearly, sat for a moment thinking, then reached for a puce dressing-gown trimmed mulberry. "I'll go and tell her," and the infinite love in the pronoun was good to hear. "She'll understand."
The duchess turned: her head as the door opened slowly, but made no movement, although her heart suddenly quickened its beat.
"Yes?" she said quietly.
Hobson walked up to the bed and took one of the little old hands between her own powerful ones.
"Miss Damaris wants you, ma'am." She spoke with certain conviction; then added, "I've had a dream, ma'am. I saw nothing, but I heard Miss Damaris calling you. It woke me up. 'Marraine,' she said, 'I want you.' That was all. And she does, ma'am."
She stood patting the hand of her mistress, who lay for a moment quite still; then the faithful creature put a Shetland shawl round the bent shoulders as the old lady sat straight up in bed.
"Would you please find Miss Jill's maid," (she used the term of the past, when Jill Carden had stayed at the Castle and had teased Hobson to death) "and ask her to tell her mistress that I should be pleased if she could find it convenient to come to my room for a moment."
Hobson found the aged body-servant lying asleep outside her mistress's door.
Ameena had learned a few words of the English language in the last twenty years, but not enough to allow her to understand the terrifying person who stood over her; so that she shook her head whilst Hobson repeated her request over and over again, and ever more distinctly, until it ended at last in a veritable shout which brought Jill, who had not slept for the ache in her mother-heart, to the door.
For a moment she stood, a beautiful picture, with big questioning eyes and two great plaits of auburn hair hanging down over her satin wrap; then she ran down the corridor and into her godmother's bedroom.
In an hour those two forceful women had made their plans, acting without hesitation upon what might so easily have been the outcome of digestive trouble on Maria Hobson's part.
Fully clothed, the two maids entered her grace's bedroom, the one carrying the tea-tray and the other a plate of biscuits.
"Ameena," said Jill, who was sitting on the end of the bed, "please go and find Mustapha. Tell him to go to the station, find the station-master and give him this letter. We want a special train as soon as possible. Mustapha is to bring me a written reply from the station-master."
She spoke with the authority of the Eastern potentate and took no notice of the maid when she knelt and kissed the hem of her satin wrap.
"Give me a cigarette, Hobson," said her grace, in the depths of whose eyes twinkled the star of humour. "We shall be starting as soon as possible, maybe directly after breakfast, for Luxor."
"Yes, your grace. I will begin the packing," said the imperturbable Hobson, placing the tray on the table beside the bed. "And when you have had your tea, ma'am, will you try and get a little sleep? You can leave everything safely to me."
But special trains do not grow like blackberries upon a side line in the East, so that many weary hours passed before they set out upon the return journey, which was rendered infinitely tedious by the never-ending mistakes which got them shunted into sidings to allow the ordinary trains to pass.
CHAPTER XXIV
"The watchmen that went about the city found me; they smote me, they wounded me; the keepers of the wall took away my veil from me."
SONG OF SOLOMON.
The night before Ben Kelham's return to Cairo, Zulannah sat on a pile of cushions, with her back to the crumbling plaster wall, in the filthy, smoke-filled hovel.
She had completely recovered, and save for the excruciating pain caused by the shrunken muscles when she moved, was as sound as a bell, and likely to live to a ripe old age, slave to her whilom servant, who sat on his heels, inhaling the fumes of the jewel-encrusted nargileh which his heart had always coveted.
It is useless writing about the hell through which the woman had lived from the moment she had returned to consciousness. Besides, there are some things which words cannot describe, and which in any case are best left alone, not even to the imagination.
She was absolutely in the power of the negroid brute. With the destruction of her beauty she had lost everything save what she had in the bank, and from the ever-growing heaps of little canvas bags in a corner and little piles of banknotes under the straw, she knew that some day that, too, must come to an end.
She had loved her jewels, loved the shimmering pearls and sparkling diamonds, and had found her greatest joy in dipping her hand into a leather bag filled with unset stones. How often had she sat in the luxury of her bedroom, revelling in the trickle of the rubies, sapphires and emeralds from between her fingers into her lap.
Even those she had lost.
The Milner safe stood open, showing empty shelves, and she shuddered yet at the memory of the frightful scene which had followed her refusal to open it.
She loved jewels; wanted them for their beauty; had fought the negro for them; but there was one thing she clung to even more, and that was life, so that when the huge hands had slowly, so very slowly pressed upon her neck, she had given in and setting the combination, had swung the door slowly back.
And Qatim, grey-green with fright, thinking that it had been worked by the power of a djinn or devil, had flung her out into the night, and having scraped a hole in the foetid earth under the straw, with fervent prayers to whatever he worshipped, had withdrawn the jewels, hidden them, and called the woman back.
Yes! she clung to life. Strange is it how we do, even when youth and beauty and health have passed from us. How, crippled and unlovely, twisted of temper or limb, with failing senses, in bath-chair, or propped on sticks, we hang on to the last thread, when surely we ought to be so thankful to snap it and be away to whatever our lives here have prepared for us over the border.
"Were't not a shame, were't not a loss for him
In this clay carcase, crippled, to abide?"
Well might old Omar ponder upon this.
But Zulannah had a good reason for clinging to life, in spite of the greatness of her debacle.
The metal of which had been wrought the one love that had come to her in her short life had not been able to withstand the crucible of physical pain. For hours and days she had writhed in the agony of her physical injury, with no one to care if she suffered or starved, except the Ethiopian, who, when her senses had come back to her, had twitted her upon her failure in her love-affairs; had tormented and mocked and laughed, until a great wish for revenge had taken the place of her former love for the Englishman. Revenge, above all things, on the girl who had been capable of inspiring love in two such men; revenge on the white man who had really been the primary cause of her downfall, but a lingering, hellish revenge, if she could only think of one, for the man who had given the order to the dogs just because she had reviled the white girl, Damaris.
So she sat on the pile of cushions, smoking the cheapest cigarette of the bazaar, whilst her cunning brain wove plots around the astounding news Qatim had just imparted.
They were perfectly free from interruption. The door was barred and the small aperture which served as window was too highly placed in the wall to allow of eyes to peep; but it was superstition that really kept them safe and proved far more potent as a barrier against their neighbours' curiosity than any spike-crowned wall.
Qatim had given out that the woman was bewitched, and that death, instantaneous and horrible, would be the fate awaiting anyone but himself who should speak to her or look upon her unveiled face before the setting of the sun—some of us Christians refuse to walk under ladders—and, although it entailed much fetching and carrying and marketing on his part, still, it ensured them solitude.
"And you saw him?"
She spoke with a sibilant intaking of breath, caused by the twist to her mouth.
"Yes; with a beautiful white woman—another. They have come from
Assouan by the boat."
"Not the girl who rode in the desert with———"
She touched the purple angry marks on her cheek.
"Nay, woman; I have told thee, she walks in the blackness of the ruins, with the man who caused thee thy hurt. She drives with him," he spat, "she should take thy place in the bazaar, O Zulannah of the thousand lovers."
The woman paid no heed to the jibe.
"Who told thee?"
"Behold, the night-watchman of the big hotel upon the edge of the water sent me word."
"Why?"
"That is no business of thine. Tell me what scheme thou hast in thy head. Dost desire the death of the three?"
Zulannah shook her head and turning it so that the wounds and distortion were hidden, leant against the wall.
"Not yet!" she said, loosening with filthy hand the uncombed masses of jet-black hair, which still retained something of the perfume of better days. "Not yet! Let me think awhile."
And she paid no heed to the man, who sat staring at her, breathing heavily.
The right side of her face, untouched and perfect, showed in all its beauty against the dirty whiteness of the wall; her hair served as a mantle to the perfect figure in the soiled satin wrap; her crippled limbs showed not at all in the foul room lit by a wick floating in a saucer of oil.
The light went out suddenly.
Oh, Zulannah! surely your cap of misery was full to the brim!
CHAPTER XXV
"He that has patience may compass anything."
RABELAIS.
Ben Kelham sat near the balustrade on the verandah of Shepheard's Hotel just after breakfast, pretending to read the morning paper, whilst trying to make up his mind.
Sybil Sidmouth and her mother, owing to lack of accommodation, brought about by the crush of visitors in the huge caravanserai, had gone to the Savoy; for which the man was secretly thankful.
He wanted to eat out his heart all by himself in the appalling loneliness which had overwhelmed him when, on ringing up Heliopolis the night before, he had learned that Damaris and the duchess had transferred themselves to Luxor.
And you simply cannot indulge in your particular brand of malaise or dolour with an extreme optimist sitting opposite you at meals, or adjacent to your elbow at most other times.
He anathematised the postal system of Egypt; his own haste in accepting the girl's refusal; the oriental imagination which magnified cats into lions; but, above all, the wash of that steamer (upon which Damaris had returned from Denderah) which had re-floated his own craft and sent him racing full steam ahead for Cairo.
Another hour of the infernal wait on the sandbank, and he would have transferred himself to one of the scores of small boats and been ferried across to Luxor, where he would have dined at the Winter Palace Hotel, whilst waiting to catch the express to Cairo, and perhaps have seen his beloved in the dining-room, or have heard that she was staying there.
He was thoroughly irritated as he pondered in his deliberate way as to the best thing to do.
Should he take the first train back to Luxor, or, as the duchess had not seen fit to acquaint him as to her movements, should he stay where he was, write her a letter, or send a telegram and wait for an answer? Anyway, he was irritated enough to scowl at the commissionaire who was rating a woman whom he had seen hanging about the street, doubtless with intent of soliciting a nickel coin from one of the great white race as he—or she—descended the steps to stroll along the street.
She made a few choice remarks upon the undoubted inclusion of a pig in the commissionaire's parentage, in a curiously sibilant voice, then limped away with a distressing swing of her body from the hips.
"Can't you keep those people quiet?" Kelham demanded angrily, as he moved a chair further back, and lit a cigarette.
An hour had passed, in which he had come to no decision, when Fate, in the shape of a page-boy, offered him the just-arrived, local morning paper, which he took and read, with only half a mind upon the gossipy contents.
"By Jove!" he suddenly exclaimed. "If that isn't a bit of luck! Here's the very excuse for getting down there without kind of thrusting myself upon them." He flattened out the paper and again read through the paragraph which gave a most extraordinarily detailed account of the immensely wealthy Hugh Carden Ali, his career at Harrow; his travels; his stables in the desert; his birds and a hundred and one other details calculated to interest those who like reading about other people's most intimate affairs. It ended: ". . . Being a great sportsman, the strange story of lion which is causing such uneasiness and is likely to do harm to the Luxor season, has taken him to his Tents of Purple and Gold, one of the wonders of modern Egypt and which lie in the desert a little distance from the well-known Colossi."
He did not frown this time as he folded the paper and turned to watch the commissionaire in conclave with a coal-black Ethiopian who, clad in crimson tunic, enormous turban and with scimitar rattling at his side, tendered an envelope.
"Yes, yes," said the hotel servant. "I will see that it is delivered into the gentleman's own hands. And, tell me"—he lowered his voice as he winked his eye—"has she returned from Alexandria?"
Qatim was caught in a quandary, and he cursed the vanity which had urged him to don his most resplendent garments upon his errand to the great hotel, to which he had come after a violent argument with Zulannah.
With a heart full of hatred, and agony in her twisted limbs the woman had hung about the streets in front of the hotel until she had seen the man for whom she had felt such a sudden and fleeting love, and who was the primary cause of her disfigurement.
Hurt him she must, if only as a balm to her own physical and mental agony; and in what better way than by destroying his faith in the white girl he loved?
Hence the letter, written hastily in the hovel and consigned to the care of the Ethiopian, who, in return for his assistance, had demanded backshisch in the shape of a pink leaf covered with strange black marks.
The woman's presence in the great city in her deplorable state was the last thing he wanted to be known; so he lied—clumsily.
"Nay; she is in Alexandria," he blurted out.
The commissionaire slowly winked an eye.
"Perhaps," he said; "perhaps not," and chuckled as the negro turned hastily and strode away in the direction of the bank.
And thus came it to be known in the bazaar that Zulannah the courtesan had returned to the great city.
And a little later, Ben Kelham felt no tweak at the string with which Fate had hobbled him to his destiny, when, on hearing his number called, he took the letter from the page-boy, turned it over, and looked at it on each side, as we do when curious, but not over-interested; then he opened it idly, read it and crushed it in both hands.
It was written in the execrable English Zulannah had picked up in her few years of cosmopolitan intercourse with different nationalities; it was in vile hand-writing and was as despicable a method of revenge as an anonymous letter usually is.
It ran after this fashion:
"If you want to find your white woman go and look for her in the ruins of Karnak, at night, in the arms of her half-caste lover, Hugh Carden Ali."
And the woman who had limped back to the street, sniggered behind her veil as she watched the man tear the letter into shreds, while he sat and thought out an answer to this second problem.
"It's a damnable lie. My Damaris and good old Carden! I expect they've met, but who———" He sniffed at his hands suddenly. "Pah! Now, where have I smelt that scent before?—filth!" He sat with his hands to his nose, then frowned as, under the suggestion of the perfume, the picture of a lovely woman clad in silks and satins and wearing rich jewels rose before him.
"My God!" he said slowly, as the full significance of it all dawned slowly upon him. "Of course! She—she invited me to—to visit her—and I refused. By all that's clean and decent, if I don't make her pay for this! And it's Carden, too, who can tell me the best way to set about it. The harlot! I wonder if I shall have to wait until evening for a train." He clenched his hands until the knuckles showed white, as he unseeingly watched a woman limp down the street. "I'll make her sorry she was ever born."
He need not have worried on that point. Fate was dogging those unsteady feet back to the hovel.
The spreading of a prairie fire is slow compared to the speed with which news runs through the bazaar. The servants in the big house in the big garden went sullenly about their various tasks of tidying and clearing up the courtesan's home, whilst little knots of people, composed principally of women, stood about in the vicinity of the gate.
It was the first time the tyrannical woman had been absent upon a long journey, and the relatives and friends even unto a most distant generation of her servants had taken advantage of it to visit the house and examine its, to them, surpassing luxury.
The Ethiopian, with his mind fixed only upon the bank, had taken but little interest in the house itself, and had visited it but rarely, and then only for the sake of appearances; so that the visitors had become more and more brazen, as the days passed, fingering the satins, sitting upon the cushions, feasting on the floor.
Bes, the monstrous keeper of the lions, had become prime favourite with the men, and the neighbourhood had resounded with the roars of the brutes at night as they fought for their food.
Also was there something savage in the way the women visitors had fingered and touched everything, and had visited every corner of the building. They were fat or thin, plain or passably good-looking; they were all hideously poor, and in their heads they had the echo of the gibes their menfolk had cast at them, when, returning with empty pockets, they had boasted of great conquests.
Which boasting the sillies had believed, thinking, as all women think, that their own particular male has been specially favoured of the gods and is therefore an Adonis in the eyes of every other woman.
There was an indefinite air of trouble in that quarter of the bazaar which increased with the heat of the day. Household matters were neglected, whilst the women foregathered to talk; words were few, but gestures were quick and expressive; the servants, wondering at the absence of the Ethiopian, grumbled as they worked; they had been paid no wages in their mistress's absence, and were on the verge of mutiny.
Brave words! When they knew that they would fall flat upon their faces at the first swish of her satin robes.
They waited all the day, and no definite word came of the woman's return. They waited until the stars twinkled and they still waited with the terrible patience of the East. Why they waited they could not have told you. They dared not set upon her if she passed in her litter; she wielded too great a power through her beauty and wealth for that; but as the hours passed, they moved softly to and fro, as moves the wretched beast in his cage at feeding-time, whilst a look of cunning allied to cruelty shone in the soft brown eyes.
It only required a spark to start the conflagration.
CHAPTER XXVI
"And the dogs shall eat Jezebel . . . and there shall be none to bury her."
II KINGS.
The station was bathed blood-red in the after-glow of the wonderful sunset, which, being a daily occurrence, is hardly ever noticed by the winter visitors in Cairo; a star or two twinkled in the pale grey hem of the coat of many colours which Day was offering to Night, as the evening breeze lifted the edges of the veils and blew refreshingly around a woman who descended awkwardly from a native cart and limped her way across the station yard. The porter trundling Ben Kelham's luggage caught her by the shoulder and likening her to the cross-eyed offspring of a clumsy she-camel, flung her to one side. Rage incarnate glared from her eyes, bitter vituperation flowed from behind the yashmak, until, noticing that a swashbuckling member of the native police was making his menacing way towards her, she quieted down and limped to where she saw, standing, the station porter of Shepheard's Hotel.
Strange is that power which has led so many a criminal to the gallows by dragging him irresistibly back to the scene of the crime.
It was some such force which had held Zulannah throughout the day. She had nothing further to gain by looking upon the man who had unconsciously been the cause of her ruin; she had done her best to retaliate by blighting the love she had herself tried to gain; but she had been mastered by a morbid desire to look just once more upon Ben Kelham, hoping to be able to trace in his face some sign of his mental hurt.
The suffering of innocent people and animals had always given her intense pleasure. How much greater, therefore, her satisfaction if she could bring, and gloat over, bodily or mental pain to someone who had made her suffer?
She hung about until she saw Ben Kelham arrive, and stood quite close to him, chuckling inwardly at the tale told by the grim set of his mouth.
Zulannah was dirty; her hands were ill-kempt; her fine muslin veils filthy and torn; but there still hung about her the faint odour of the perfume she had always used in the hey-day of her success. The passing of a barrow piled high with luggage disturbed her veils, and as the rush of some excited natives disturbed the air Ben Kelham swung around.
He had suddenly scented the perfume of Zulannah the courtesan.
He looked to right, to left and all about him, eyed with disfavour the dirty woman so close to him, who stood crookedly, with an evil leer to one eye; frowned and walked away to the platform from which the train starts for Luxor. All stations in the East are invariably and most uncomfortably crowded with natives who either stray hopelessly after the manner of lost sheep, or stand stock-still, as hopelessly incapable of movement, or rush pell-mell hither-thither at the sound of clanging bell, or shriek from locomotive; but the station was unduly crowded this evening, owing to the return of hundreds of pilgrims from a visit to a certain shrine in the countryside and an influx of their friends and relations from the bazaar to greet them.
The strong electric lights were blazing, intensifying the vivid colours and modifying the dirt upon what was intended to be the white portions of the natives' picturesque raiment; they shone down also upon the disfigured woman who, with a certain amount of satisfaction in her heart, brought about by the grim look on Ben Kelham's face, was limping towards the exit. She had just reached it when her veil was caught on the rough wicker of a basket containing hens which was being carried on the back of a man whose mean hovel—which yet had been his home—had been razed to the ground to allow of the building of the courtesan's house.
He had stood the best part of the day, with heart full of vengeance, amongst the little knots of people loitering outside the courtesan's gate, and had only been induced to leave the spot to go and claim the poultry waiting for him at the station.
Just as the veil caught in the wicker he moved a little to one side to escape a group of laughing, joyous pilgrims; swung right round to shout them a greeting and in so doing pulled the struggling woman in front of him, tearing off her veil and exposing the right side of her face which, having escaped injury, was still wonderfully beautiful, in spite of the dirt. The basket of hens crashed, to the ground and, bursting, liberated the birds, as, with a yell of "Zulannah!" the man leapt straight at the woman, who dived under a porter's arm and disappeared through the exit.
There was a sudden mad rush to the exit by the inhabitants of the bazaar, who, jamming together in a shouting, yelling pack, gave the woman a few moments' grace.
"Stand on one side, sir. Come back, miss!" ordered the station-master, seizing the arm of an indignant Britisher. "It's no use trying to stop them; they go like this sometimes, quite mad, generally when they've sighted a thief or somebody against whom they have some grudge. Let them pass, sir; let them pass."
The station-yard was packed with vehicles, motors, omnibuses, and scores of rattling, racketing native carts.
Straight into the middle of them fled the woman, terror lending her an incredible speed which agonising physical pain augmented. She dived under horses, she squeezed through vehicles, she twisted and turned, caring naught for the native drivers, who, indifferent to the daily sufferings of their wretched little horses, lashed at her with their whips, with shouts of "Shima-lak!" "U'a-u'a!" "Riglak, riglak!" "U'a-u'a!" and peals of derisive laughter.
Headed by the man who had carried the hens, their eyes blazing, helpless victims of the indescribable blood-lust which sometimes seizes the mob, the inhabitants of the bazaar, with those who, understanding nothing of the cause of the tumult, had joined in merely for the sport, were after the woman like a pack of hounds.
If it had not been for the limp caused by the shortening of one leg, and which became more noticeable the more she ran, she might have escaped in the crowd in the Place Rameses and been alive to-day. But the pack, as they ran, shouted, "A lame dog, a lame dog! Who has seen a lame dog?" and those who had rushed to door or window to watch the fun pointed her out with yells of laughter. She found a few moments' respite when she tripped and fell over the neck of a recumbent camel indistinguishable in the gloom of the side street into which she had turned as she headed for her own house.
She had no distinct plan in her head; she was too exhausted to think; she only knew, as know all wounded animals, that home is the place to get to when stricken unto death. If she had just sat quite still on the kerb, pulled a bit of stuff across her face and pointed way down the street, with peals of laughter, the mob would have swept past her and she would have been safe; but she blindly ran for home. If she had stayed where she had fallen, behind the camel which lurched to its feet as the pack ran by, she would even then have been safe, but she lay, face down in the filth, only long enough to regain her breath, which sounded like a whistle as it shrilled through the twisted mouth. With breath regained she was up and away, with the secret door in the wall—which had been discovered in her absence—as her goal, just as the human hounds, doubling on their tracks, tore into the street, to see the fluttering end of her dress disappear round a corner.
She ran with a twisting, shuffling lope horrible to see; she looked like some wounded animal as, bent double, she paused again for breath, just for one moment, with face to the wall. She ran on; she stumbled and regained her footing; she fell on her crippled knees; then onto her face in the dust, where she remained, breathing like a far-spent horse, with bloodstained foam flecking the corners of her mouth. A great shivering shook her as she listened to the shouting, yelling mob questing this way and that for the lost quarry. She did not pray; poor Zulannah! she knew nothing of a God of Love or Pity to pray to; she lay still, burying her fingers in the sand, clinging desperately to what remained to her of life.
They swept round the corner, those men and women, screaming vengeance on her who lived in luxury whilst they starved; who hung herself with jewels and neglected to pay the trifling debts of the bazaar; who lived in a house built on the site of their demolished homes. They rushed past and over her lying begrimed and foul, one with the dust of the ill-lighted street They drove her face into the dust; they marked her beautiful body with the shape of their feet; but they did not kill her.
She wanted to live.
The pack passed on to the bazaar, carrying with it the definite news of the return of the woman Zulannah; and if you had looked close you would have seen the cunning in the eyes of the man who had carried the hens; if you had listened to his whispered words you would have shivered at the ferocity of his counsel.
In the passing of ten minutes you would, if you had walked that way, have walked through empty streets in the vicinity of the courtesan's house, and there would have been nothing or nobody to whisper to you of the men, women, children, and dogs standing packed in the rooms and passages and courtyards, waiting for a given signal.
The moon looked down on a peaceful scene as Zulannah, wrapped in filthy garments, crept stealthily from shadow to shadow.
Had she been more observant, she would have wondered at the intense stillness of the bazaar, which, no matter at what hour of the night, is full of little sounds; the song of a woman, or her laugh, or her cry; the crack of a whip; the baying of dogs.
If she had looked back she would have seen the stealthy opening of doors, the craning of a furtive head as quickly withdrawn.
She paid no heed.
She was so near, so very near the place in the wall hidden in the shadow of the talik palms and in which was the secret door which opened on the pressing of a certain brick in the third row from the top. And once in the house, with a veil across her face, a whip or dagger in her hand, she would show them who was master, cripple or no cripple, fool that she had been to have submitted to the black Qatim, but thrice fool he, who knew nothing of that other bank in which one-half her fortune and one-half her jewels were kept in safe custody against such a rainy day as this.
She cursed herself for the blundering, feeble way she had set about revenge; she cursed the moon; the agony of her limbs; the stretch which lay between one shadow and another; but she laughed, though no sound issued from the gaping mouth, as she stood in the last patch of shadow which was separated by some few yards of silvery path from the black blot upon the wall which covered the secret door.
They had hunted and harried her, and walked upon her body lying in the dust, but they had lost her and had gone back to their hovels to eat and sleep, and maybe once more cast up the reckoning of the money she owed them, the which—she swore the most horrible oath—she would never pay.
She gathered up her dust-ridden garments and stole swiftly across the moonlit space; she had just touched the edge of the shadow, she was almost home, when, with a mighty shout, they were upon her. Out of the houses, out of the courtyards, down the streets they swarmed, children and women falling, to be jerked to their feet by the men who ran silently, urged on by the fanatic who for years had hugged the idea of some such moment of most horrible revenge.
And then to the sinister sound of the rushing feet there was added the baying of many pariah dogs which, from every conceivable corner and from miles away, raced like a pack of wolves upon the Steppes, to join the hunt.
Blind with terror, shaking in agony, Zulannah fumbled helplessly for the special brick; it lay, she knew, in the third row and had as mark a jutting piece of mortar in the middle.
She passed her hand wildly up and down, too mad with fear to count; every brick, to right, to left, and as far as she could reach above, below, had the jutting piece of mortar; the wall was as high as the heavens; the third row was here, beneath her hand—no! high above her head—no! one, two, yes, here—her fingers touched it—it was gone.
It takes a long time to write or read in inky words, but it was really only a few seconds before the door swung open.
She gave a scream of terrible relief and rushed into the blackness and as she rushed a dog leapt straight at her shoulders.
She screamed again and swung-to the door with all her strength; it shut upon the dog, breaking its back; it remained ajar to her pursuers.
There still was hope. She knew the way; they did not. Could she but get to her bedroom behind the massive doors, could she but reach the telephone, the instrument she had regarded as her finest toy, she would soon have the police running to the rescue. She fled down the narrow passage which led to a jumble of small rooms; she even paused for a moment to listen to the cursing of those who ran behind her, stumbling in the narrow way.
She fled through the farthest door; she was free; there but remained the shallow flight of marble stairs to the suite wherein her bedroom lay.
Then she stopped, and, shrieking, flung out her arms.
To right, to left and upon the flight of stairs, there stood her servants.
The men and the women she had flogged and kicked, thinking to heal their wounds and bruises and dim their memories by throwing gold amongst them on the morrow.
They made no movement, they simply stood and stared.
Her head-veil and mantle had gone; her under-garments were torn to shreds, leaving exposed the slender body which leaned sideways like a tree which had been struck by lightning. Her matted hair fell far below her waist; it made a frame to the horrible face, one side of which was as that of an old, old hag, and the other, grimed with dirt, flecked with foam, was yet as lovely as a jewel.
They shrank back and still further back; they made the sign to scare away the spirit of evil; thinking her possessed of Eblis, the devil, they would not have touched her for a gold piece.
They turned their heads at the sound of rushing footsteps; they motioned her to move on; believing her mad, they gave her a chance, for in the East you dare not turn your hand against the mentally afflicted.
She ran.
And after her came the pack in full cry.
Across great rooms, lit by hanging lamps, scented with brasiers of perfumed wood, she fled, slipping upon chinchilla rug or glaring monstrous hearthrug of Berlin wool, in her desperate haste to quit the house.
Out into the air she must get; under the trees in the garden; under the moon; down the broad paths to the wall at the end.
There was no wall too high for her to climb in her extremity. Her face was grey; her eyes sunk in black: orbits; her nose pinched, with nostrils which blew and flattened like bellows to her laboured breathing.
A hand clutched at her streaming hair and missed it as she sped down the garden; they were upon her heels, dogs jumping at her face as she ran.
She was blind, deaf, almost dead when the great gorilla-shaped arms of
Bes closed about her.
She made no sound as she hurtled through the air. Mercifully perhaps was she dead, as she crashed down into the pit at the bottom of which great shapes prowled hungrily.
They did not stay to watch, not one of them.
Shouting and laughing, men and women ran back to the house, which in one hour they had stripped bare.
Just before the dawn a great flame shot skywards, an orange ribbon across the purple robe of dying Night.
* * * * * *
Requiem
"There was an awful row in the Bazaar last night," said Mr. Ephraim Perkins to his spouse facing him across the breakfast table. "They killed a woman and burned her house down."
"Really, dear?" said Mrs. Ephraim Perkins, rasping butter on a piece of toast. "These natives want a firm hand over them. Poor thing! They usually stab each other in the East, don't they?"
"Yes; I think so. But they threw this one into a lions' den."
"Now, that's exaggeration, Ephraim." The knife never stopped its rasping. "They would not be allowed to keep wild beasts in a populated quarter."
"Stranger things happen in the native quarter, Maria," misquoted Mr.
Perkins, "than are dreamt of by the Government official."
True words!
If we dared penetrate the labyrinths of the bazaar and stir with foolish finger the dust which lies thick upon immemorial custom, what should we not find?
But having a meed of wisdom in the full measure of our imperial insularity, we do not pry with foolish fingers; guessing, even knowing of the wild beasts in those labyrinths, we draw a glove upon the hand and walk delicately in the opposite direction, with half-closed eyes.
"I repeat, it is an exaggeration," stubbornly replied Mrs. Ephraim Perkins, as she stretched for the marmalade. "And I do hope the fire-engines arrived in time."