The Hawk of Egypt
warily and still hand in hand in and out of various and dilapidated
chambers.
"I--I don't _want_ to go back, but I think it must be very late,
so------"
They were standing near the chapel with the granite altar as she spoke,
and had turned to retrace their way when she flashed her light upon a
flight of steps.
Strange is the fascination and desolation of steps leading to an empty
dwelling and almost as mysterious as the door ajar in an empty house.
She stood in the little room and swept the light across the walls upon
which are represented the animals and flowers brought from Syria
century upon century ago.
Then the light, which had been growing dimmer and dimmer, went out.
And it was the man this time who tackled the situation.
"I am your guide. I know the way in the dark."
He spoke in English as he swept the girl into his arms, carrying her
like a feather down the great temple where perchance he had held her
against his heart century upon century ago, even when the flowers and
animals had been brought from Syria.
"May I drive you home? I should love to," he said, as he placed her on
her feet near the car. He spoke in English, with an eagerness out of
keeping with the trivial request, and which was merely the expression
of a desire to be with her under commonplace circumstances.
"Please do. I don't think I could--I am so tired."
The _gafir_ was accustomed to the strange habits of the white people,
but, although almost drunken with slumber, he peered closely and
furtively at the driver.
"Thank you so much," said Damaris gravely, with her hand against a mark
upon her cheek caused by the pressure of an amulet made of a
scarab-shaped emerald in a dull gold setting, and which Hugh Carden Ali
wore night and day above his heart. "Is there anything else as
wonderful to see as the Temple?"
"Deir el-Bahari."
The man spoke curtly and made no further comment; not for him was it to
offer himself as guide.
"Ah! yes, of course--but people go to it in crowds, and one has to
follow behind a guide in a procession."
"One is not obliged to return with the crowd, nor to listen to the
dragoman, who knows nothing about the incense-trees of Punt which were
planted upon the terrace to perfume the air under the light of the full
moon, in the days of Queen Hatshepu."
With apparent abruptness she ended the conversation:
"I share my godmother's great faith in you. Good night."
She put out her hand as he salaamed with hands to brow and lips and
heart. Perhaps that was why he failed to see it.
Or was it, perhaps, that he still felt the softness of her against his
heart?
If you are dying of thirst, one drop of water will not assuage you!
CHAPTER XVIII
"_A handful of meal in a barrel, and a little oil in a cruse_."
I KINGS.
Whilst Damaris was trying to soothe her wounded pride at Karnak, Ben
Kelham was suffering the tortures of the nethermost pit down Assouan
way.
His heart was not in "lion" at all, it was literally at Damaris' feet.
He had not rushed away in pique after her refusal of him on the night
of the fancy-dress ball; nor with any vague idea of causing her to
regret her decision in realising the vacuum, in her existence which his
absence might make. He had not an ounce of subtlety or vanity in his
nature. He had gone because he thought it would be the decent thing to
do as far as she was concerned, and also to hide his hurt and
disappointment, which were deep. The rumour of lion was genuine and
the excitement, extending far down the Nile, intense. In fact, with
the aid of the Oriental's prodigal imagination the one royal beast of
feminine persuasion which was reported as having been seen prowling
around Deir el-Bahari had been multiplied to two pairs ravaging the
outskirts of Assouan.
He sat drinking coffee with jolly Sybil Sidmouth and her nerve-stricken
stepmother in the lounge of the Savoy Hotel in Assouan just at the
moment when Damaris sat herself down on the broken column in the
Hypostyle Hall.
"Jolly bad luck we've had, haven't we?" said Sybil.
Kelham nodded his head. The last post had come in, with nothing for
him but a few letters from home.
"Yes, rotten!" he replied after a moment. "She _might_ have sent me a
line."
Sybil's stepmother moved restlessly in her chair.
Ridden with nerves, she was also mother of twin-daughters neurotic and
plain who, sered by nature and yellowed by time and on the wrong side
of the matrimonial hedge, had been only too glad to foist her on to the
plump shoulders of jolly, capable, pretty Sybil and to get rid of them
both for the winter.
In the last week or so a sprouting of hope had pierced the matchmaking
soil in the querulous lady's really well-intentioned heart, for, like
the proverbial half-loaf, a step-son-in-law is distinctly better than
none at all.
But Sybil only smiled at the absent-mindedness of the young man's
remark.
For weeks she had been the recipient of his confidences. He had
dragged her, suffocating, down into the mud-depths of the diffidence in
which he wallowed; had tugged her, gasping, to the Olympian heights
from which he viewed a world of love, all rosy-red; had flung her,
well-nigh senseless from exhaustion, upon the saw-teethed rocks of
despair; and had taken her paddling in the wash of his vapourings.
She was absolutely heart-whole, with a firm belief in the "lion"
rumour, and later, long after the end of this story, became the jolly,
popular wife of the great eye-specialist to whom she had rushed when,
after a soul-shaking scene with her step-sisters, she had missed the
target entirely at Bisley.
As it happened, the duchess had written, but in a moment of most
unusual aberration had put Khartoum on the envelope instead of Assouan,
so that it was months, long after the end of this story, that the
letter reached him. Strange is it how the lives of men are wrecked or
made through the most trivial happenings.
The grain of dust in the eye; the mudbank in the river; the hen in the
road! Just think of the outcome of such insignificant incidents.
The last letter he had received had been written in Heliopolis on the
eve of her grace's sudden decision; the one that had gone astray had
been mailed in Luxor, and had contained the request that, when he had
shot the lion he would take the carcase or the skin as a present to
Damaris at the Winter Palace Hotel and wait there until her return from
the Oasis of Khargegh.
There was no doubt about the fact that he was genuinely in love.
Lion or no lion in the vicinity, he would sit dreaming for hours
amongst the rock tombs at full noon or fall of evening or by the light
of the sickle-moon; a perfectly absurd proceeding where big game is
concerned. Food or sleep meant nothing to him, so that his usual
good-temper was sharpened and his undoubted good looks enchanced by a
certain romantic gauntness under the cheek-bone. People seemed as
ghosts to him, so absorbed was he in his love and his pain; so that his
act of rising when Mrs. Sidmouth took what she thought to be a
diplomatic departure was purely mechanical.
Then Sybil laughed, a jolly, ringing laugh, and laid her hand upon his
arm.
"Why don't you run up to Heliopolis?"
"By jove, Sybil, that's an idea. You come along, too. Damaris would
love to meet you; you're just her sort. Besides, there's nothing doing
in lion here, it's only a yarn. Let's pack to-night and get off
to-morrow. I'll go and see if we can get a private steamer--can't
stick a public one, stopping every other minute to look at tombs!"
Sybil laughed.
"We'll go, Ben, it will be ripping. But to-morrow! How exactly like a
man!"
Ben was contrite. He thought Sybil travelled with a kit-bag and her
guns; he had forgotten Mamma.
Mamma protested. She was an invalid, with all an invalid's
paraphernalia.
They started after the passing of a week in which Mrs. Sidmouth had a
series of nerve-storms, and in which Sybil, to pass the time, wrote a
four-page letter to Ellen Thistleton, which she duly received at
breakfast.
They certainly did not stop en route to look at temples or tombs, but
they made quite a long halt on the sandbank just above Luxor, onto
which boats of all sizes and shapes so often run. The loss of time is
irritating enough, goodness knows, in ordinary travelling and occurs
quite frequently, but when one is love-driven and this maddening delay
happens, then you have to make as big an exercise of self-control as
when you rush onto the platform only to see the guard's van of your
train disappearing into the tunnel.
And surely the gods laughed long and loud when Damaris chose that very
day to return by public steamer from Denderah where she had been to
visit the Temple of Hathor the Egyptian Aphrodite.
CHAPTER SIX
"_But still his tongue ran on, the less
Of weight it bore, with greater ease_."
BUTLER.
Lady Thistleton's daughters were exhaustively energetic. It belied
their colouring, which was dun and which, though of the same family, is
distinct from mousey. It has infinitely more vim and a vast endurance
and a great patience; also is it sullen and boring, but reliable.
Ellen, the elder, had been engaged to a younger son of The Inverness of
Inverness. His colouring, except of course for the eyes, which were of
a snapping blue, reminded one of a tomato salad dressed with chilis and
smothered in mustard-sauce. His temper corresponded. They had fought
over everything until they had smashed their engagement.
Berenice was engaged to a parson in Edinburgh, one of the
Smythe-Smythes of London. She made a doormat of herself, loving the
herculean minister, and, though longing to stay at home and get
married, had, at her lover's earnest request, consented to accompany
her mother and sister to Egypt instead.
To his fervent mind the loss of a few months of married life would be
compensated for by the biblical discourses upon the Land of Moses with
which, later on, as his wife, she would be able to enliven Mother's
Meetings.
They admired Damaris a lot, though her independence and colouring
shocked them not a little. In the seclusion of the double bedroom, as
they brushed or twisted their lanky locks in Hindes', they whispered
about her love-affair, which had presumably gone agley, and thrilled
with a distinct feeling of wrong-doing over the gossip anent the
mythical Sheikh.
If they had asked Damaris about the myth, she would have told them
everything quite simply and truthfully. This would have cleared up the
mist but spoilt the feeling of wrong-doing.
Lady Thistleton was large and recumbent and averse to sight-seeing, but
after a heart-to-heart talk with her daughters had seen to it that
Damaris had no time for moping.
Damaris went here, there and everywhere; played tennis; paid
duty-calls, as you must when somebody extends her wing-feathers as
shelter; acted in charades; attended concerts; and was thoroughly
miserable.
Jane Coop was miserable too; so was the bulldog, and, through a certain
unconfessed and indefinable vigilance they both felt called upon to
exercise in behalf of their beloved mistress, were distinctly nervy.
"Drat the men!" had said the maid, giving pithy verbal expression to
the ragged state of her nerves as she cut the stalks of the beautiful
flowers which came daily without name or message. The dog's method of
expressing himself was somewhat more violent; it consisted of the
sudden seizure between his great teeth of the posterior portion of the
nether garments of low-caste males, white or coloured.
You could almost tell the status of the male bipeds by casting a
discreet eye upon their raiment, and as there was not a muzzle in Egypt