The Hawk of Egypt
country and the silly nonsense of their nasty, heathen ways!"
And she left the room with a swish of starched petticoat, when Damaris,
who had just returned from her desert ride, entered to greet her
godmother.
She knelt at the side of the chair and, encircling her in her strong
young arms, laid her cheek against the old lady's, and knelt without
movement, looking out to the desert, whilst one wrinkled old hand
stroked her head and the other turned the pages of the letter.
A piteous letter of appeal from a woman whose love had brought forth
the bitterest of bitter fruit.
". . . _Is_ there a way out, Petite _Maman_?" wrote Jill, the English
wife of Hahmed Sheikh el-Umbar. "Will you undertake the long journey
and come and see me, for who knows if together we could not find a way
to ensure my boy's happiness? I would come to you, only Hugh is near
you, and our men in the East tolerate no interference from their
women-folk. My messenger will wait for your answer. I am overwhelmed
with foreboding for Hugh my first-born. If you can, come to me.
JILL."
And as the sun rose the old lady still sat near the window, trying to
come to a decision.
Could she turn a deaf ear to the woman she had known as a girl almost
twenty-five years ago? Could she, on the other hand, go to her and
risk leaving the girl at her side exposed to the indescribable appeal
of the East? Should she send her back to England, or take her as far
as Luxor and leave her there under the social wing of Lady Thistleton?
"Have you learned any more about the Arab who follows at a distance
when you ride in the morning, dear?"
Damaris nodded.
It seemed she had overheard Lady Thistleton talking about him; his
palaces in the desert and at Cairo; his stables and falcons.
The girl stopped for a moment, then continued:
"He has an English name and seems to be a millionaire, and something
else which I could not catch, but by the sound of the
Prickly-Thistleton's voice it seemed to be something awful!"
"This"--the old lady touched the letter in her lap--"this is from his,
mother, dear, asking me to go and see her. If I do, I will tell you
the whole story when I come back. Don't ask me anything until then,
dear."
Silence fell between them as the hotel woke to another sunlit day.
"Something will happen to decide me," mused the old lady as, a little
later, she took her mail from Hobson, who moved majestically about the
room with bath-salts and towels. "From Ben," she continued, flicking a
lightning glance at the face which, went suddenly rosy pink as it
rested against her knee. "Written from the Oasis of Kurkur near the
First Cataract. He hasn't seen lion yet, but has heard a lot about the
one which is causing a panic amongst the dragomen in Luxor. Oh! how
nice for him! Do you remember fat Sybil Sidmouth, the crack shot?"
It seemed that jolly Sybil Sidmouth, well known at Bisley and who had
brought a thin stepmother devastated with nerves to winter in Luxor,
had also fallen a victim to lion gossip, and had wired a bet to Ben
Kelham that she would bring in the lion's skin.
"They are meeting at Assouan to discuss plans . . ."
"Yes?" said Damaris indifferently, and added vindictively, "Knocking
about in the desert might reduce her a bit," and gave no thought to the
moment of that very morning when, under some uncontrollable impulse,
she had turned the stallion Sooltan and taken him back at full gallop
and to within a few yards of the Arab who, in European riding-kit and
boots from Peter Yapp, had raised his right hand as she had thundered
past standing in her stirrups.
A woman could keep a poultry-farm till the last trump, and even then
never awake to the fact that the same brand of corn is appreciated both
by the goose and the gander!
And, sure enough, something happened to decide her grace before the
setting of the sun.
CHAPTER XIV
"_Oh! for a falconer's voice to lure
This tassel gentle back again_."
SHAKESPEARE.
Lunch, desultory shopping and tea with friends in Cairo had been the
order of the afternoon following the dawn which had found her grace at
the window trying to come to a decision about her god-daughter. They
were just returning from these festivities and were negotiating the
last cross-roads of the Sharia Abbas when a native policeman, waving
his arm like a semaphore, stepped into the slowly-moving stream of
traffic.
Resulted the usual maelstrom of motors, native vehicles, stray animals
and trams, in which tossed the native pedestrian as, agile and
vociferous, he slipped in and out of the block, calling loudly upon
Allah in his extremity.
"A native wedding, or something," said Damaris, who was driving. "What
fun!" then blushed divinely pink.
There was one gorgeous mounted figure in the laughing, happy,
tumultuous crowd which came whirling across the road kept clear for it
by the police.
Hugh Carden Ali had gone a-hawking in a certain part of the desert near
the ancient City of On, where gazelle is sometimes seen and birds are
plentiful.
Clad in orange satin a-shine with jewels, with tight-fitting Eastern
trousers ending in perfect riding-boots, with diamond osprey glittering
in the white turban and falcon, with jesse to match the orange coat, on
gauntleted wrist, he rode serenely in the cheering throng.
His falconers with their underlings walked on either side of the roan,
which fretted and fidgeted at the slowness of the pace; the dogs of
Billi walked sedately and by themselves; grooms of the kennels led
greyhounds on the leash; behind them, almost bursting with importance,
came a Persian deftly carrying the cadge, which is a kind of padded
stand upon which, hooded and fastened by leashes, the favourite birds
are carried to and fro.
At the rear was the birds' van, in which are carted the birds which may
or may not be required, also spare parts of the paraphernalia upon
which depends the success of this sport, the sport, in truth, of kings!
In the "days that are past" the favourite sport of our own monarchs,
especially in the "spacious days of great Elizabeth."
The bag was good considering the district, the poles on the servants'
shoulders bending under the weight of two gazelle and countless birds
of all sizes and plumage.
A couple of _siyas_ waving the customary horsehair fly-whisk ran
shouting before their master; servants surrounded the cortege, armed
with sticks which they rattled with good effect upon the shins of the
more venturesome among the spectators as the procession moved slowly,
as move all things in the East.
Shouting fiercely, the _siyas_ stopped suddenly in front of her grace's
car, arms uplifted, mouths open, then turned in their tracks and sped
back to the master who had called them.
The old lady and the girl beside her interchanged never a word as they
watched Hugh Carden Ali urge the mare who picked a dainty path through
the wondering crowds which opened a way before her. The sun caught the
jewels on the man's breast and above his turban and upon the
saddle-cloth of the roan mare, and struck fiercely slantwise into the
proud, handsome face with the set mouth and the eyes which never once
looked in the Englishwomen's direction.
For a full minute he sat immovable, whilst the mare, freed from the
fret of the crowd, stood stock-still. In his bearing, in the
magnificent picture he made under the flaming skies, there seemed a
subtle challenge to the two Englishwomen. All his English nature rose
in revolt against the barriers that rose between himself and Damaris,
daughter of his mother's race; but, curbing his passion with the
self-control he had learned in British fields of sport, he remembered
that he belonged primarily to his father's land, whose people had three
thousand years before held the keys of civilisation in their powerful
hands, whilst the people of his mother's land were just about emerging
from the primitiveness of the Stone Age.
"_I am the East_!" he seemed to cry in his utter immobility.
Then he turned, beckoned, and gave a sharp order to the bewildered
policeman, who salaamed almost to the ground.
Hugh Carden Ali bowed, to the saddle, as the great car shot smoothly
forward. There was a smile of welcome on the face of the old woman who
had loved his mother; a whole world of welcome in the outstretched hand
and a little feeling of thankfulness in her heart; that at last she
might get to know the man in time, and, with him, go to visit his
mother, or, better still, win his confidence, heal his hurt, and so
obviate the tedious journey.
But there was to be no drawing together of the man's wound with the
silken threads of sympathy.
He sat like a statue, with his left hand raised in salute,[1] until the
Englishwomen had passed; then, throwing his falcon, he watched the
confused bird's flight in search of the quarry which was not there.
"_Cry aloud to Ali the worker of wonders,
From Him thou wilt find help from trouble_."
He quoted the first two lines from the _Ned'i Ali_, the formula used in
the East when trouble threatens a falcon, and, touching the mare,
passed down the Sharia Abbas, whilst the old lady, going in the
opposite direction, came to a sudden decision.
[1]In the East the falcon is carried on the right hand.
CHAPTER XV.
"_When he is best he is little worse than a man;
and when he is worst, he is little better than a beast_."
SHAKESPEARE.
Even as the frail little old lady sat quietly looking out at the coming
of the dawn, Qatim the Ethiopian sat looking with pride round his
transformed hovel in the back reaches of the bazaar. Having gathered
Zulannah from the gutter where she had been thrown after the dogs had
pulled her down, he carried her to his hovel and, believing her to be
dead, flung her body on the heap of filthy straw which served him as
couch, and then stole back--in fact, six times he made the journey--to
the courtesan's great house. He did not argue with himself, he had no
theories and most certainly no moral standards: the woman was dead;
there were certain things, beautiful, gaudy, glittering things in her
house which his heart had always coveted, which had made his fingers to
itch and his mouth to water; brute instinct told him to seize the bones
before the other dogs fell upon them; and he obeyed the brutish impulse.
Hundreds of soft silken gowns; cushions of every hue; the great crimson
cover from off the divan--all of these he made into a huge bundle which
he carried to his den. The gold and jewelled toilet accessories, the
silver basin and ewer, just because they glittered, he tied in a pair
of emerald green satin curtains; various strange knives and things with
prongs, with which on certain occasions the courtesan had conveyed food
to her mouth--she used her fingers in private--with a jewel-encrusted
_nargileh_ of marvellous workmanship, he rolled up in a bright yellow
and green Kidderminster carpet.
On his fifth journey he carried a small Milner safe upon his back,
letting it drop gently upon the hovel floor without the slightest
acceleration in his breathing. For five minutes he played with the
knob, like a huge monkey, then grinned, rubbed his chest and bull-neck
with straw, and padded off again down the circuitous streets at a
gentle trot.
He looked at the sky and at the closed doors and windows of the packed
houses, and grinned again. He could not tell the hour by a clock, but
he knew to a second when the first of the seething mass of humans
asleep on the beds and floors and stairs of the packed houses would
yawn, rub the sleep from their eyes and stumble, shivering, into the
street. He had still his greatest treasure to bring, and had no wish