The Hawk of Egypt
should be snatched from them, and a sigh of satisfaction went up when,
from the shadows, there sprang an Arabian youth, beautiful as a god,
supple as a snake, quick upon his feet as any fighting stallion.
He stood for a second with arms outflung to the men and women he knew
were watching his every movement outside the radius of the light, and
then he sprang back with that marvellous leap which is the gift of some
Arabian male dancers.
Ah me! you talk in pharisaic whispers of the Nautch girl; in righteous
anger against the dainty geisha; in horror of the weaving Salomes as
known in Western cities; wait, however, before you pour the last drop
from your vials of wrath and indignation until you have seen an Arab
dance "_al-fajr_" which, being translated, means the dawn. You can put
what interpretation you like upon it: the dawn of day, or love,
anything will do, but you most certainly ought not to watch it.
If, however, you persist in so doing, you should blush to the roots of
your hair--you will not, because it will be the perfect poetry of
motion you will be witnessing; also ought you, after the third
movement, to turn your back or flee the room--you will not, again,
because of the mocking sensuality which will keep you rooted where you
stand; again, you ought to stuff your ears against the throbbing of the
drum--but that will you not do because of the words of love which fall,
seemingly reft from the dancer's lips in the rapture of his movements.
It is the last word in sensual ecstasy, and should be prohibited for
public exhibition to Europeans, yet it is quite impossible to point at
any one movement and label it as the cause of the tumult within you.
But Hugh Carden Ali, standing under a palm, turned quickly when a
little sound of distress caught his ear, and put out his hand and
pulled the girl he had recognised in the dark by her perfume towards
him, so that the back of her head rested against his arm; and sensing
her nausea at the sight from which she had been trying to fly, and
knowing the sheer impossibility of keeping the eyes shut in a theatre,
he pulled his handkerchief from his sleeve and placed it across her
eyes.
Save for the back of her head resting just below his shoulder he did
not touch her, and if he bent his head so that the perfumed riot of her
curls swept his cheek, should it count as a grievous sin against him?
The stone beside each of us is quite likely to lie untouched throughout
our span of three-score plus ten.
At the last beat of the drum and just before the lights were switched
on, Damaris was alone, with a silken handkerchief in her hand, in one
corner of which, as she discovered later, was embroidered the Hawk of
Old Egypt.
CHAPTER XII
"_. . . Hither and thither moves, and mates, and slays,
And one by one back in the Closet lays_."
OMAR KHAYYAM.
Hugh Carden Ali, with the dogs of Billi crushed in beside him, raced
back to his palace in Cairo and with the shaggy pair at his heels
passed to his side of the great house. His body-servant, as nimble as
a monkey, as devoted as a dog, and almost dumb by reason of a tongue
split in his youth for misdemeanour, fell on his knees at his feet.
He worshipped his young master, who had one time rescued him from a
savage, baiting crowd in the bazaar and taking him into his service had
made him his own particular servant; he equally loathed his master's
austere bedroom and adjoining dressing-room, with simple furniture
which had lately come from _Bilid el-Ingliz_, a dark, cold country
across the sea, where it rains without ceasing. And he helped strip
his master of the hateful, tight, hot European clothes and trotted
joyfully after him to the swimming-bath, and watched him dive in and
swim the length and climb out the other end, and disappear between
curtains into the luxurious rooms of the East.
Having robed him, agog with curiosity and at a discreet distance, he
followed the resplendent figure in his satin raiment, snow-white turban
glistening with jewels and hooded falcon on wrist, and cursed the dogs
under his breath when they turned and growled softly. But his
curiosity was turned to a great amazement when his master passed into
the court of the empty, luxuriant, perfumed harem, where once had loved
and quarrelled, idled and fought, so many beautiful women.
Under the orders of the Ethiopian eunuch, giant twin of Qatim, in the
service of Zulannah the courtesan, the harem was kept swept and
garnished, adorned with flowers, aglow at nights with a myriad soft
lights hanging from the ceiling in jewelled lamps, to which were flung
the fountain's perfumed drops, to fall and break on marble floor and
silken cushion, inlaid table and bright-hued birds in jewelled cage.
There does exist a different kind of harem--dirty, gaudy,
ill-kempt--somewhat like the inmates--over the whole of which 'tis wise
to draw a veil.
The eunuch's bankings-account--which was kept in a certain secret nook
of the harem court--had become sadly depleted on account of his
master's eccentric views as regarded women, but he still lived in hope,
and, delighting in intrigue, as every native does, had welcomed the
advent of his ebony brother primed with gossip and suggestion.
Therefore, upon the beating of the gong which had not been struck for
many weary moons, he hastened to the court and salaamed to the ground
before his master, who sat upon a pile of cushions, guarded by the two
shaggy dogs of Billi, with the amber mouthpiece of the jewel-encrusted
_nargileh_ between his lips and the falcon upon a padded perch beside
him.
"Bring me a woman--to dance," he curtly ordered, and the slave sped to
do his bidding, with visions of a big increase in the banking-account
hidden in a secret place.
And when the dancer drifted in like a flower-petal upon a breeze, Hugh
Carden Ali looked up slowly, letting escape a wisp of smoke from
between his lips.
The dancer wore one single garment of transparent black, hung from the
shoulders by diamond bands and through which her perfectly nude body
shone like an ivory pillar; her slender feet with crimsoned toes and
heels were bare; the tiny hands ablaze with jewels; a huge bunch of
orange-tinted diamond-sprinkled osprey was fastened in her jet-black
hair; across her face there hung a short, almost transparent veil, one
corner of which she held between her teeth, leaving to view the
wonderful eyes, a heaven or hell of invitation--as you will.
She danced as had danced her Biblical sister to the pleasing of a king
for the attainment of her desire; and she danced humming a little tune
behind the veil until the movement of her beautiful body and the
knowledge of a man's eyes upon her went to her head like wine, so that
in the end, by force of habit maybe, she danced to conquer where she
had only intended to interest.
As already mentioned, she had the morals of a jackal.
She drifted down the court towards Hugh Carden Ali and, standing before
him, bowed her beautiful head to the level of her dimpled knees,
laughed gently, and was gone like a bird to a far corner of the court.
She seemed to swing in the air like a lime flower caught on the end of
a spider's thread, as she came slowly down once more; to be blown
hither and thither like a leaf before the gale as she ran here, sprang
there, to the rhythm of the little tune she hummed behind the wisp of
veil; to undulate, like a field of ripe wheat beneath the summer sun as
she stood quite near the man who watched her with a fraction of the
interest he would have shown in the purchase of a dog or falcon in the
open mart.
Her henna'd toes pressed firmly on the centre of a Persian rug of such
antiquity as to render the pattern indecipherable; she moved her body
from the slender waist downward not at all; the muscles of her arms and
shoulders rippled, and her head moved, slightly but unceasingly from
side to side.
How often one hears of the European's boredom whilst watching the
Nautch Dance in which the Indian Nautch girl, fully clothed, indeed in
high tight bodice and ankle-length, voluminous skirt, will drive her
native audience clean crazy with the tapping of her feet and slight,
undulating movements of the slender body and rod-like arms. It is
indeed the dullest thing on earth to watch if you are unable to follow
and _interpret_ every little movement. But if you can--well! the
unexpurgated version of the Arabian Nights will be as milk-and-water
compared to the heady brew offered for your consumption. And the old
Harrovian sitting cross-legged, upon a heap of cushions, with the smoke
of the _nargileh_, drifting from between his lips, smiled as he picked
up the thread of the same old story which had been spun for him when,
an arrogant youth of twelve summers, he had ruled his house with no
gentle hand.
Otherwise he showed little interest and felt no desire to lift the
tantalising veil; neither did he turn his head, else might he have seen
the ebony face of the Ethiopian eunuch peering from between a mass of
flowers, from which point of vantage he watched the scene with intent
to report thereon to his black twin-brother.
At last, and very slowly, and with a growing feeling of resentment in
the place where her heart by rights should have been, Zulannah sped
down the court upon her toes and fell at the edge of the piled
cushions, causing the dogs to growl softly at her daring.
"Thou art a beautiful dancer, woman," said Hugh Carden Ali, making no
movement to lift the veil. "Behold, I have passed a pleasant hour and
would reward thee. What thou wilt. Money--jewels?--speak."
From behind the wisp of veil which fluttered in the dancer's quick
breathing came the barely whispered answer.
"I hear thee not, woman; raise thy voice and be not afraid. I will
give thee what thou desirest."
"One hour!"
The man bent forward to catch the words, and when their full import
struck him, leapt to his feet and catching the woman's wrist jerked her
upright, ripping the veil from before her face.
"_Zulannah_!" he cried, and sprang back, having heard of the lady's
deft handling of her dagger when in the tantrums. Then he caught both
wrists and held her pinioned, looking with loathing into the exquisite,
furious face, whilst the great dogs, fangs bared, ruffs upstanding,
sniffed suspiciously at the knees and waist, even rising on their
hind-legs to snuff the slender neck of this woman who had angered their
master.
For a second he held her with arms stretched to breaking-point and
henna'd toes barely touching the ground, then threw her across the
cushions, whilst the dogs growled softly as they prowled, belly to
ground, about the prostrate figure and the ebony-hued eunuch tore at
his woolly hirsute covering amongst the flowers.
But courtesans have tears as well as other kinds of women, and they use
them every whit as effectively, perhaps a bit better, on account of the
stoutness of their hearts.
So that when the man ordered the woman to sit up, she sat up, wiped
real tears from the innocent-looking eyes, re-arranged her garments,
and prepared for battle.
Tough might describe the rose-hued, satin-textured epidermis of the
scarlet enchantress.
"Thou hast a great daring, woman."
The courtesan knew not the meaning of the word hesitation, and was off
with the still-born desire and on with her original business between
the tossing and falling of a drop from the perfumed fountain and ready
with an explanation even before the man spoke.
"Thou hast misheard my words, lord. Knowing by hearsay of thy hatred
of women, I entered thy house as dancer before thee, to gain as my
reward one hour of speech with thee."
"Speech? Wherefore?
"Because I would help thee, and in helping thee help myself." Clasping