The Hawk of Egypt
to be caught with it on his back; not because of the criminality of his
proceedings--that never once entered his thick skull--but because he
was scared of having the mirror reft from him. He was almost devoid of
brain, but had a certain animal instinct which served him in good stead
and which, in this instance, urged him to keep his part in the history
of the past evening to himself. He picked up the full-length mirror as
though it had been a small picture, and stood for an instant grinning
cheerfully, looking round the room in which his mistress had so often
kicked and threatened him.
Then he gave a little click at the back of his throat, placed the
mirror on the floor and stole across the Persian carpet of an unknown
antiquity and value to a painted deal writing desk which had once
reposed in a shop window in Westbourne Grove; and which, on account of
its little drawers and little cupboards with painted doors, had given
intense joy to the woman whose wealth in hard cash in the bank and
jewels in the safe was almost incredible. He lifted the slanting lid,
moved a bundle of papers fastened by an elastic band, and pulled out a
drawer out of which be took a cheque-book.
He had no idea of the real use of the book with the buff cover and pale
pink leaves, but he knew that you had only to make certain black marks
on one of the pink leaves and take it to the big house in the Sharia
Clot Bey with its fierce man standing in front of the door and money
would be given in exchange.
On account of his cunning, his stolidity, his mighty muscle and
ferocious appearance Qatim had been made bank-messenger in chief to the
House of Zulannah, and had often stood at his mistress's side when she
had taken the cheque-book from the drawer and made strange black marks
on one of the pink leaves. True, he had rolled his eyes and shown his
teeth fiercely many a time at the interpreter who had had to be called
to explain that, although he had handed a pink leaf through the bars,
there was no money forthcoming; but as his mistress had not struck him
for returning empty-handed he had resigned himself at last to the
strangeness of the proceedings. The book meant money, that was all he
knew; so he slipped it into his loin-cloth as had been his rather
distressing habit when handed a bundle of notes by the bank-clerk who,
with his co-workers, had never tired of gazing at the gigantic creature
in white shorts, crimson tunic, huge turban and rattling scimitar.
He gave no thought to the dead body on the filthy straw; that he knew
he could carry under his arm and drop into the Nile when the bazaar
slept; but he pulled hard at his curly hair as a plan germinated in the
sluggish convolutions of his brain.
It was a very vague and a very childlike plan, but too much could not
be expected from one who had been conceived, born and bred on the
animal plane.
After an hour's pondering it, however, took a fairly definite outline.
When the sun had warmed the cool wind of night he would hide the body
under the straw and visit his eunuch twin, who had really been the
cause of the disaster. His silence would have to be bought. Of course
it would have been better to have broken his neck at once, but it was
too late now, so there was no use in worrying! Then he would go
terrorise the servants, giving them to understand that he had been left
in charge in his mistress's absence; he would remain in charge until he
had acquired enough money to buy the coal-black little Venus who worked
in the Shoemakers Bazaar; after that he would creep away with her and
return to his own village further down the Nile.
And because, perhaps, of the childishness of the plan it succeeded up
to a certain point.
He found his eunuch brother, who was the only one besides his master
and himself to know that the dancer had been Zulannah, in the grip of
such terror and physical pain as to be almost imbecile, though a look
of cunning had shone for a moment in his bloodshot eyes when Qatim had
inadvertently let drop a hint as to the accumulated riches in his hovel.
Anyway, they came to an understanding which ensured the eunuch's
silence at the price of so much good money, paid in instalments.
Qatim had no intention of holding to his side of the agreement, nor his
brother to his--as is the way of such breed of Oriental.
Then, just as he was, clad only in loin-cloth and with whip in hand,
the gigantic brute strode to the House of Zulannah. Ensued a turbulent
hour, at the end of which he remained acknowledged master of the house
and inmates until the return of the mistress, whilst those who had
mocked him went in search of cool leaves to place upon the bruised
portion of their backs and those two whose heads he had cracked
together for having resisted him lay quite still.
Returned to the hovel as the sun was sinking, and in high fettle, he
donned red tunic, huge turban and rattling scimitar and strutted with
all the negro's delight in fine feathers in front of the mirror which
rested against the crumbling plaster walls.
And then he suddenly stopped and stared into the glass.
The filthy straw in the corner of the room had moved. His face went
grey; great beads of sweat showed upon his chest, his knees shook, then
he fell on his face and covered his head with a corner of the
green-yellow Kidderminster carpet, when a voice feebly craved for water
and a small blood-stained hand weakly pulled at the straw.
Zulannah was not dead.
He lay terror-stricken for some long time, then slowly got to his
knees, tore off the fine feathers and flung the scimitar into a far
corner; then, naked save for the loin-cloth, sat down with his back to
the straw and pulled at his curly oiled hair, a sure sign in him of
deep thought.
Then he grinned and, rising, walked across the floor, and, sitting down
again, pulled the woman from under the straw.
No! Zulannah was not dead, nor even fatally hurt, but she was horrible
to look upon when the Ethiopian had washed her clean by means of a
handful of straw dipped in a broken pitcher of water.
The dog's great fangs had driven behind the ear, severing the mastoid
nerve so that the mouth was pulled right up the left side of the face;
it had also injured the muscle controlling the eyelid, causing it to
droop and giving a diabolical leer to the once beautiful doe-like eye;
it had also injured the muscle of the neck so that the head was
slightly twisted; but, worst of all, the other dog had driven its
terrible fangs into the muscle above the knees, injuring it so that she
would never walk straight again.
And Qatim sat back on his haunches, and laughed, clapping his enormous
hands.
She was not dead, and her hands were not injured, but she was too
hideous to show herself unveiled and too twisted to be recognised in
the street.
So all that was left to him to do was to cure her injuries--which he
did, and quickly, under the advice of an old herbalist in the Silk
Market,--and then sit down for the rest of his life whilst she drew
strange little marks on those pale pink leaves.
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