The Hawk of Egypt
the queen who reigned and suffered and died, thousands of years ago.
"Ah!" said Damaris, as she looked up to the corner. "It is your--your
crest--your------"
"It is a fantasy of mine. We trace my father's house right back
without a break to the days of the Pharaohs--so, I believe, does
Mohammed Ali, vendor of slippers in the bazaar." He paused, then added
abruptly, with a frown and a movement of the shoulders as though he
were trying to shift a burden, "If you will come with me to the inner
chamber, if you are not afraid, I will interpret the Story of the Hawk
to you in the shadows where it belongs."
Damaris put out her hand as though to speak, then passed into the inner
room, across the threshold of which the dogs of Billi laid themselves
down.
"Death is around us," said Hugh Carden Ali. "Do you believe in
omens?--No? Nor I. I wish there was a seat, so that you could rest
whilst I tell you------"
Damaris laid her hand gently upon his arm, and he looked down into the
face shining dead-white in the reflection of the moon which had silted
in through a hole in the roof.
"You know?"
Damaris looked up and smiled.
"Yes! I know. And, being the son of such splendid people, I cannot
understand why------"
The gates of pain and love and sacrifice were opened and the girl
shrank back against the wall as the tide of pent-up bitterness swept
around her in the ruined shrine. The man's face was white, his eyes
blazed in the agony of his hurt, whilst the dogs lifted their heads and
growled.
". . . You do not understand! You do not understand that I love you!
And, loving you, I stand a prisoner behind the bars wrought for me by
the love of my parents. That I love you as surely you never have been,
never will be loved, and that I dare not, can not ask you to be my
wife,--even if you loved me--which you do not. . . What? You do not
see why I should not marry into my mother's race even as my father did?
I will tell you why." He gripped her wrists and pulled her to him.
"Because I am the outcome of their union. My father is an Arab, my
mother an Englishwoman. I--I am a half-caste. I am nearer white,
truly, than my father, but--but my son, although he might be white or
dark,--a--a native, as you say in England--would only be a half-caste
lying on your white breast, if you were my wife."
The moonbeams lengthened as the man talked on, whilst Damaris learned
of one of love's bitterest mistakes.
"Oh, forgive me!" he ended. "Why did I bring you here to hurt you, to
make you cry for a pain which is not yours? Why are you left alone?
It is so dangerous in this land of my fathers. Your godmother deserts
you whilst she goes to my mother, who is afraid for me--ah! did you not
know? The man who loves you has left you to the wind of chance: my
friend, Big Ben Kelham--O gods of ancient Egypt, how you must
laugh!--my _friend_! Shall we meet again, I wonder?----"
Surely Anubis the god of death, Anubis the jackal-headed--who leads the
soul of the departed through the underworld into the presence of the
great Osiris--surely he moved upon the wall and turned to look after
those two as they passed out of the inner chamber to stand beneath the
Hawk upon the wall.
Or was it the shifting of the moon amongst the shadows?
"Will you"--there was no trace of the man's anguish in his voice: the
Mohammedan's resignation to the inevitable may seem a weak way out to
one who will kick and worry until he drops from exhaustion, but it
saves a great deal of pain to others--"will you--you must surely marry
some day, so beautiful, so sweet you are--will you let me give you this
as a wedding-present, and will you think of me, a prisoner, when you
fasten it in your wedding-gown?" He held out a jewel in the shape of
the Hawk which spread its wings upon the wall above them. "It was
found here, in this sanctuary--a priestly ornament? a pilgrim's
offering? Who knows? Will you?--_I_ have no right to it, for beneath
my wings is the plumage of another race. I am not a pure-bred son of
Northern Egypt."
"Will you pin it in?"
The girl's voice shook as she tilted back her chin so that her mouth
was on a level with the man's as he bent to fasten the jewel in the
silk.
"Will you promise me one thing? Yes!--you are good to the prisoner.
Allah! how I love you, and surely, if I may not be your master I may
serve you. If you should be in trouble--ever--in this land of Egypt,
the very soil of which is drenched with the blood of those who have
fought, and loved, and won, and lost thousands of years before the
coming of the gentle prophet who said that in the sight of the great
God, anyway, we are brethren--yes, if trouble should come to you, will
you send me a messenger--to the Tents of Purple and of Gold? I am
doing you a great wrong in lingering where I can catch glimpses of you.
I love you--love you--but that is no excuse for causing you harm
through the wagging of evil tongues."
Tears dropped one by one upon the jewel which glittered on her breast.
"And if I were in trouble--great trouble--if I were to come to you
myself, how----?"
"My boat waits at the landing-stage from sundown to sunrise, the
swiftest mare in all Egypt, as the fortune-teller foretold you, the
snow-white mare Pi-Kay waits from the setting until the rising of the
sun at the Gate of To-morrow, which is a ruined portal on the road of
the Colossi. From there the way lies west. And fear not." He pointed
to an inscription on the wall and translated it in the Egyptian tongue.
"'_I have come full of joy because of my love to thee; my hands are
full of all life and purity. I am protecting thee among all gods_.'"
Followed by the dogs, they walked slowly down the incline to a mound of
rubbish flung up and left by an excavating party many years back;
behind it they found the stallion Sooltan in the care of his _sayis_,
also the one donkey which had wandered off in search of grass and got
lost, and whose absence in the cavalcade had not been noticed on
account of the disorder of the descent.
"Kismet!" had said Jobad the guide when he had made the discovery at
the water's edge.
If the white folk could not keep count of themselves he was not going
to draw their attention to the fact that one of the party was missing;
he had not the slightest intention of providing an evening meal for the
lion by offering to go in search of the pair. "Kismet!--Allah would
watch over them!"
Hugh Carden Ali leapt to the saddle without touching the stirrups, then
swung the girl as lightly as a leaf up into his arms.
Heedless of the extra burden of the slip of a girl who had mastered him
in the desert and who lay so quietly against his master's heart, the
magnificent black beast stood stock-still, then suddenly shivered
violently, just as the dogs of Billi, belly to ground, eyes blazing,
ruffs on end, growled softly.
Hugh Carden pressed Damaris back against his shoulder and turned and
looked in the direction whence had come that sound, paralysing if you
do not happen to be armed.
From somewhere amongst the rocky wilderness of the hills, carried by
the night-breeze, had come the hoarse coughing of a lion.
"Listen," he said.
And as it came again, with shrieks of "Sabe! sabe!" the pea-green
_sayis_ leapt on the back of the terrified donkey, which, spurred by
fear, disappeared like a streak down the hill just as the stallion,
sweating with pure terror, reared and wheeled, then backed, with great
eyes rolling and hoofs striking sparks from the stones.
Up he reared, until it seemed impossible that he should not fall
backwards, crushing to death or hideously maiming the man who,
encumbered with the girl upon his arm, could do little to calm the
frightened beast, And well for them was it that Hugh Carden Ali, with
his love and understanding of horses, knew that only to the sagacity of
the animal could the safe negotiation of the dangerous descent down the
hillside be left. He gave Sooltan his head.
There is no danger in it, goodness knows, when you bestride a
diminutive donkey whose dainty little feet know every pebble on the
route, but there is danger when an animal like Sooltan takes the Avenue
of Sphinxes at a mad rush and slips and slithers and slides, under the
impetus of his own weight, pace and terror, the rest of the way, even
if he is as sure-footed as a goat.
* * * * * *
Later, when her beloved child wakened the night-porter, Jane Coop, blue
with anxiety and cold, most unhygienically closed the window and
thankfully padded off to her comfortable bed.
CHAPTER XXII
"_Antiquity! thou wondrous charm, what art
thou? that being nothing art everything! . . . .
The mighty future is as nothing, being
everything! the past is everything, being nothing!"
LAMB.
In spite of her tongue, which was somewhat unduly inclined to gossip,
Lady Thistleton was a motherly old soul and had a great affection for
Damaris.
". . . I should not like either of my little girls," she was saying the
morning after the visit to the Terrace Temple, "to visit the ruins or
stay out unchaperoned after dark. I am responsible for you, you know,
dear, and you are very beautiful and very young. Of course I know that
you are a little unhappy, dear, but other girls have been the same. So
you must not worry. Everything will come right. I expect you know all
about my Ellen." Damaris nodded. "And everybody is so fond of you.
Would you like to have a long day in bed to-day, dear, or go to
Denderah with the girls? They are thinking of staying for a few days."
Damaris smiled the radiant smile which made her so attractive, and,
rising, put her arms round the motherly old dear's neck and kissed her,
which was an unusual thing for her to do, as she was, as a rule,
undemonstrative to coldness.
"I'd love to go to Denderah, if I may take Janie and Wellington. And
I'm truly not worrying; it's just a tremendous spirit of adventure
which drives me to do these awful things."
So to Denderah she went, with her spirits at highest pitch at the
thought of getting away from Luxor for a few days and of seeing the
wonderful Temple of Hathor, the goddess of Joy and Youth.
She was in riotous spirits when she arrived at the Hotel Denderah in
Kulla, where the lovely porous jugs come from; in fact, so blithe was
she that Ellen, inclined to despondency and of a superstitious
tendency, remarked:
"I should calm myself a little, my dear Damaris; such gaiety can only
lead to depression, later on."
But Damaris only laughed.
How good it is that we cannot visualise beforehand the hour in which
our tears must flow and our hearts come well-nigh to breaking!
She laughed, she sang, she visited the town, and went to bed early.
She teased Jane Coop the next morning as, perilously perched on
donkey-back, she headed the little procession which wended its way
through the stretches of earth which later would give a harvest of corn
and sweet-scented flowering bean.
She urged the panting bulldog along the three good miles, and laughed
at him when, sneezing and coughing, he rubbed his great paws over his
face, covered with the cobwebs which floated on the air; but she
stopped laughing when she first caught sight of the great arch of
crumbling antiquity which is all that is left of the edifice upon the
site of which the Temple of Hathor was built; and she stood quite still
in the over-powering colonnade, whilst the Thistletons, notebooks in
hand, rushed inside in the wake of the guide. Jane Coop stopped dead
at the outer edge of the colonnade.
"I thought you said it was a Temple of Love, dearie: all white marble,
with doves and lovers'-knots and--and hearts. It's a tomb, that's what