The Hawk of Egypt
"I know things are going crosswise a bit with you, dearie, as they
always do in an unknown country; but I don't worry about that, because
at the crossways there is always a signpost. But now that we are in
this heathen land, I want your promise that you will always tell me
where you are going to when you go out--always. If it's out for a ride
in the desert or over amongst them mummy-tombs, or out to a
tennis-party or dance. Will you, dearie? Always?"
The insistence in the demand made the girl look up into the homely face
and she did not smile as she made a little cross above her heart in the
manner of children.
"I promise, Janie--cross heart. And I'm starting out early-early
to-morrow morning on an excursion to the Tombs of the Kings. We are
taking lunch with us--paper-bags and remnants of sandwiches amongst
Egypt's dead--tea at the Rest House and------"
She stopped for a minute, then continued slowly:
"------and if I don't come back with the rest, Janie dear, don't worry.
It's full moon, and I may stay to see the Temple by moonlight."
A moment's silence; then said practical Jane:
"And as you can't take Wellington, dearie, will you promise to take
your revolver? You know, they say lions have been seen in------"
Damaris laughed.
"They've left, Janie! They're all at Assouan, waiting to be shot by
Mr. Kelham and Miss Sidmouth."
Jane Coop sniffed as she tucked in the bed-clothes and kissed her child
good-night.
She had got to the door when Damaris spoke.
"Janie, you know all about birds, don't you?"
"Hens, dearie."
"Well!" The girl's voice came muffled, as though she had drawn the
sheet about her face. "Supposing a hawk------"
"Hawks aren't hens, dearie."
"Well--hens! Supposing you had a breed of hens that were all--all--oh!
any colour------"
"White Leghorns," said Jane Coop, who was beginning to get interested
in this subject so near her heart.
"Yes. Well, supposing you found that one, when it had all its
feathers, had some speckled ones under its wings----"
"But it couldn't, dearie, if it was pure-bred!"
"Yes, but just supposing it had, what would be the meaning of it?"
Jane Coop hesitated, and re-tied her apron-strings. Descriptive
analysis was not her strong forte.
"Well, dearie, I should say that the male bird was a--a--oh! a Plymouth
Rock, or something like that. The speckled bird would be a good one,
but if it was mixed it would have to be turned out of the run if you
had a fancy for showing and prizes. I remember a black---- But there
now! what made you start your old Nannie talking about hens? Just you
turn over and go to sleep, dearie. You have to be up and away early
to-morrow, you know!"
She closed the door gently and left the girl alone.
"I don't understand," she said softly, and slipped out of bed to stand
at the open window, with all the glory of an Egyptian night before her.
"I _don't_ understand the meaning of the story," she repeated, as she
watched the figure of a _fellah_ wrapped in a big cloak which shone
snow-white under the moon, trudging patiently across the grounds to the
servants' quarters. Then, as the huge dog flung himself against her,
she struck her hands together. The sudden impact sent her mind flying
back to the first time she had seen Hugh Carden Ali, in English
riding-kit and Mohammedan _tarbusch_ in the bazaar; then in her memory
she saw him dining as an Englishman; saw him riding with falcon upon
fist--a very Eastern, saw him as an Arab of Arabia in the desert; again
as an Englishman, save for the Mohammedan _tarbusch_, holding in the
bay mare as she thundered past him on the stallion Sooltan.
In a flash she understood the tragic story of the Hawk of Egypt.
"The pity of it!" she whispered. "Oh! the cruel pity of it!" and crept
back to bed.
* * * * * *
Wide-eyed and quiet, she stood very early next morning with the
jostling, laughing crowd, waiting to be ferried across the Nile on the
excursion to the Tombs of the Kings, which to most of the crowd ranked
on a level with Madame Tussaud's Waxworks, with the difference that in
the valley of desolation you could leave the remnants of your lunch
anywhere, which is a habit strictly forbidden in the Marylebone Road.
Mounting the diminutive donkeys caused peals of laughter; the hamlets
of Naza'er-Rizkeh and Naza'el Ba'irait rang with the cries of the
cavalcade, and Damaris blindly followed Lady Thistleton's energetic
offspring, as with note-book and pencil they followed the guide in and
out of the regulation tombs of Biban el-Muluk, the history of which he
repeated with parrot-like monotony.
Lucy Jones, lighthearted tourist, thought the lunch awfully jolly in
the shade of the tomb, in fact, she made it a riotous feast, with the
help of others as young and non-temperamental as herself.
After all, what did it matter?
As Lucy said, "The dead had been such a jolly long time dead," and the
desolation of the valley made such a splendid contrast to the golden
sunshine and violent blue of the sky.
The zig-zag path down to Deir el-Bahari occasioned more laughter and
little screams and offers of help from the sterner male, who, under an
extreme insouciance, tried to hide the insecurity of his perch on the
back of the humble, scrambling quadruped.
When the laughing, jostling and somewhat dishevelled crowd streamed
back down the second incline and across the Central Terrace, en route
for the donkeys, it left Damaris standing with dancing eyes, and
laughing mouth under the blue and star-strewn ceiling of the Shrine.
And when the last sound of laughter, and clattering stone under nimble
hoof had melted away; when the sky had turned the marble temple mauve
and pink and deepest red, and back to pink, to mauve, to softest white;
when the first star had fastened the robe of day to the cloak of night,
and silence had fallen like balm upon the wound caused by raucous
voices, Damaris tip-toed down the steps and out into the Colonnade of
Punt.
She was quite alone.
CHAPTER XXI
"_No time so dark but through its woof there run
Some blessed threads of gold_."
C. P. CRANACH.
It is difficult--no, it is impossible to describe the wonder of Deir
el-Bahari under the moon, just as it is impossible to describe "the
light that never was, on land or sea," or the Taj Mahal, or a mother's
love.
To our eyes it is the picture of desolation. Just as it must have been
a picture of grandeur to those of the woman who built it, Queen
Hatshepu, sister, wife and queen of Totmes III.
It is built in terraces to which you climb by gentle incline; it is
surrounded and crossed by colonnades; there are ruined chapels and
vestibules and recesses; an altar upon which offerings had once been
made to the great gods; broken steps and closed and open doors, behind
which the ghosts of dead kings and queens, priests, priestesses and
nobles sit in ghostly council; through which they beckon you--_if you
belong_.
There has surely come to each of us, in this short span we term life,
the moment when, just introduced, we look into another's face and say
or think, "We have met before."
May it not have been that we once met to burn incense together before
the dread god Anubis, or to make offerings upon the altar erected to
the great god Ra Hamarkhis; or was it perchance that you, if you are a
woman, once waited at the temple gates to see him pass upon his return
from the great expedition to the land of Punt, which we call Somaliland
to-day?
Had the man with hawk-face who offers you a muffin or cup of tea to-day
once brought you gifts of ivory, or incense, or skin of panther from
the wonderland? Did he sweep the seething crowd with piercing eye to
find the face beloved, and pass on to the rolling of drums, the crash
of cymbals, the blaring of trumpets, to make obeisance to his monarch
and return thanks to the mighty gods?
Perchance!
But Damaris had no thought of the past as she stood amongst the pillars
of the colonnade which commemorate the great expedition; she was
enthralled with the hour, the solitude, the silence, as she hesitated,
wondering which way to go. Then, even as she hesitated, the silence
was broken by the distant throbbing of a drum.
It came from one of the villages far down the hill and, caught by the
evening breeze, was carried to the temple, to be multiplied a
hundredfold in the echoing roof.
All other sounds may cease way out in the East; birds may nest and
humans sleep; but the sound of the drum faileth never.
It is a message, a love-song, a lament, a prayer, and you hear it in
the desert as in the jungle, in the temple as in the courtyard behind
the hovel.
It is not a wise thing to listen to its call, for it can lead you off
the beaten track, or over the precipice or out into the desert to die.
It caught the girl's feet in the witchery of its rhythm and set them
moving upon the sand-covered floor of the Temple. Yet there was no
smile on her lips as, moved by whatever it is that causes us to do
strange things in the East, she danced like a wraith or a sylph, or a
leaf in the wind, in and out of the columns and out into the light of
the moon, and through the granite door onto the terrace where once had
been planted the incense trees which had come with the spoil from Punt
to perfume the air to the glory of Ra Hamarkhis.
The rolling of the drum stopped short, and Damaris came to herself with
a start as she stood under the moon, then clasped her hands upon her
thudding heart as she watched a man with two great shaggy dogs walk
across the terrace towards her.
Save for the Mohammedan head-covering he was an Englishman, and he
spoke in his mother's tongue to the girl he loved and whom he had
watched since her arrival with the jostling, laughing crowd.
"The gods of the temple are good to me," he said simply. "I prayed
that I might watch you dance upon the incense terrace of their house;
they have answered my prayer. Come."
As they passed across the terrace to the hall of columns which is the
vestibule of the chapel of the god of Death, he told her how he had
watched and waited, meaning no discourtesy, until she should visit the
temple amongst the limestone hills.
"Where are we going?"
Damaris spoke more to break the spell which seemed to hold her than to
know the end of the walk across the sand. Bewitched by the moon and
the terrific power of old Egypt, she would have followed the man
blindly, fearing no hurt, even into the inner-most sanctuary which,
hewn out of the rock itself, lies at the extreme end of the temple.
"To the Shrine of Anubis the god of Death, where I would show you the
Hawk of Northern Egypt upon the wall."
They passed between the great columns and up the flight of steps to the
doorway beyond which lie the chambers of the Shrine, and there Hugh
Carden Ali took the girl's hand as he called her name aloud, until the
walls or the spirits of the gods thundered back the echo.
"The gods introduced the kings of Egypt to the sanctuary. Anubis god
of Death, as you will see by the painting upon the wall, led the great
queen to the door," he said in reply to a whispered question from
Damaris. "I would not that the shadow of death touched the hem of your
raiment. I called your name aloud so that the gods might hear. . . .
Do I believe in such strange things? How can one say, I believe, or do
not believe, in this land which is in the grip of a dead past which is
not dead?"
And they passed in through the door and stood looking up at the Hawk of
Horus painted in the XVIII dynasty upon the wall.
Brilliant in colouring, green and white, with red-tipped wings, it
spreads them above the place where once was seen the painted picture of