The Hawk of Egypt
it is, and I'm going to sit outside. I don't like it; it bodes no
good. Let's go back, dearie; I don't like the place or the hotel or
the town. If we go quickly we can catch the first boat. Let the
others stay if they want to. I'm thinking of you; my heart's telling
me that you must not stop, and that if you do, harm'll come to you, or
somebody."
Strange was the persistence of the usually placid woman, as she caught
her young mistress by the arm and quite violently shook her fist at the
sinister face of the goddess which shows on each side of the columns.
And strange it is to know that if the girl had but listened, the harm
might not have befallen.
But Damaris shook her head.
"We must be polite, Janie dear, even if we are dying to go home.
Besides, two or three days will do us good, and it will help pass the
time until Marraine comes back. Come, Well-Well."
The dog followed his mistress up to the door, but there he stopped.
"Come along, Well-Well," she repeated.
The dog sat down, with a definite air of ending further exploration as
far as ruins were concerned, on his part.
"I think you and Janie are bewitched to-day."
Damaris spoke petulantly and watched the dog waddle back and sit down
beside the maid, who, busy crocheting, sat on a stone some few yards
from the Temple, to which she had resolutely turned her back.
Damaris stood for a moment feeling as though the very wettest of wet
blankets had been wrapped round her; then turned, listened until she
heard Ellen's staccato voice coming from the direction of the
antechamber in the middle of the Temple, and tiptoed across to the east
side, where are to be found the ruined Treasury and Store Rooms in
which were stored the incense for sacrifice or offering, the vestments
and banners and other such props needful to the correct fulfilment of
the rites of an ancient worship which, as far as services go, in
display of wealth and sense-stirring accessories, did not differ so
very much from what we see in some of our churches in this present day
of grace.
She came to the stairs, up which so many years ago the mother of Hugh
Carden Ali had climbed, on the day when she had fully realised that the
crown of love had come to her.
Damaris climbed them, and stood on the roof, watching, as had watched
Jill Carden, the clouds of twittering birds as they flew in the
direction of the Libyan Hills; then she crossed to the little shrine of
Osiris, stood for a moment unconsciously passing her finger over the
carvings, turned as though someone had called her, and ran down the
stairs.
She stood and listened until she heard Ellen's voice looming from the
side chapel on the western side, then, and just as though pulled by
some invisible hand, she passed quietly through the antechamber into
the sanctuary where, in the days of Ancient Egypt, the mighty Pharaoh,
and he only, entered to commune with the gods at the birth of the new
year; and where the mother of Hugh Carden Ali, stricken with the glory
of the secret revealed, had fallen unconscious to the ground, over
twenty years ago.
She stood quite still, her heart beating to suffocation; then she
raised her hand and pushed the hair from her forehead.
"I feel just as though the roof was pressing down upon me," she
whispered to herself. "As though, through me, something awful was
going to happen. I----"
She turned, and almost ran out of the sanctuary, her footsteps waking
the echoes of the roof which once had resounded to the clash of cymbal,
the roll of drum and blare of trumpets. She heard Ellen's strident
voice calling to her, telling her to come and join them in the crypts;
she paid no heed, she ran on and out into the sunshine and down to the
maid, who was still placidly crocheting.
And as she left the ruin, the mantle of depression fell from her, and
she laughed as she caught the great dog and forced him to walk upon his
hind-legs.
"No, Janie," she said that night, as the maid tucked her up in bed.
"Here I stay until I have visited the Temple thoroughly, and I'll take
you down into the creepy crypts and lock you in them if you worry any
more. We all got up too early and hadn't had enough breakfast--that is
why we disliked the place so much."
They stayed some days, and then took the public steamer home, Damaris
bubbling over with high infectious spirits, which had their birth in a
secret hope that she might find a letter from Ben Kelham upon her
return.
She was leaning over the rail, thinking about him, as the boat made its
lazy way down-stream.
"So funny," she was saying to herself as they approached Luxor under a
sunset sky. "I wonder if he will be at the hotel. I somehow feel him
quite near."
And then her thoughts were distracted by the exclamations and laughter
of the passengers as they rushed to the side, causing the boat to take
a distinct list.
What little things serve to amuse us!
The bluebottle at the Cathedral service; the stray dog which rushes
athwart the regal procession; the straw hat blown through the traffic!
The steamer was churning up the waters of the river down which
Cleopatra had passed in all her power and beauty; on each side were the
ruins of temples and tombs built to the glory of great god or mighty
emperor; yet the tourists flung down guide-books and left their tea to
shout encouragement and wave their handkerchiefs to Ben Kelham and
Sybil Sidmouth, who were also having tea on the slanting deck of their
private steamer, which had run aground on the pestiferous sand-bank.
Mrs. Sidmouth, in the seclusion of the saloon, was summoning all her
strength for a real nerve-storm.
Damaris looked hard for a moment, then became deadly-white, and backed
her way out through the crowd. She flashed a quick glance round in
search of the Thistletons, and saw them leaning dangerously far over
the rail, trying to attract the attention of Sybil Sidmouth, who was
smiling so contentedly as she handed her companion his tea; then she
turned to run to the saloon to hide herself, and ran, instead, right
into Jane Coop's arms.
There was a grim set to the maid's mouth and a steely glitter in her
eyes.
"I was just coming to ask you, dearie, if you'd like a cup of tea. One
gets fair sick of the ruins and things one sees on this river. The
young ladies can come and find you at tea if they want to."
How often had the motherly woman gone out to bring in the lamb from the
storm, or hunted the fields and hedgerows for her straying chick!
Later, she sat on the edge of her darling's bed and patted the curly
head resting on her faithful heart, to the accompaniment of little
clucking sounds.
"There now, dearie--there now--there now! It isn't worth crying over;
every river is as full of good fish as ever sailed on it in a boat that
couldn't run straight. Let old Nannie dry her baby's tears. There
how--there now!"
She dried the tear-stained little face with a big handkerchief, and
rocked her child to the rhythm of the music which drifted from the
hall, borne by the night breeze, through the open window, until the
sobs had ceased.
And in the ball-room the Thistleton family nodded their heads sagely to
the rhythm of the same music.
"I am sure she didn't see Mr. Kelham and Sybil, Mamma," Ellen was
saying. "She was having tea when we went to find her, and looked quite
all right."
"I was thankful when I saw her," broke in Berenice, patting a thick
envelope with the Edinburgh post-mark. "On the _Nile_, together, it
really did not seem _comme il faut_ at all, and wherever Mrs. Sidmouth
was, she might have countenanced the--er--the courtship by her presence
on deck."
"Well, all's well that ends well," said Mamma placidly, as she secretly
returned thanks that her daughters were not as others.
* * * * * *
But later, far into the night, Damaris stood at her window, with her
arms round the bulldog's neck.
"You're the only one who _really_ loves me, Well-Well. Everybody else
run away and leaves me. I'm--I'm, so unhappy!"
Tears stood in the big eyes as she flung out her arms and cried in a
sudden passionate intensity, "_Marraine_! _Marraine_! I want you--I
want you! If you loved me, you would come to me, because I want you
so!"
CHAPTER XXIII
"_The thorns which I have reap'd are of the tree
I planted; they have torn me, and I bleed.
I should have known what fruit would spring
from such a seed_."
BYRON.
Olivia Duchess of Longacres stood on the balcony of the hotel, looking
down at the cortege which had escorted the wife of the Sheik el-Umbar
from the House 'an Mahabbah some way out in the desert and which was
making its way as best it could through the tortuous, narrow, unpaved
streets of Khargegh town.
The white and only wife of the great Arab travelled _en reine_; two
outriders with modern rifles slung across the shoulder and brandishing
throwing-spears, caused consternation amongst the spectators as at a
word or touch of the unspurred foot they made their magnificent horses
rear and back and plunge.
One trick or feat had caused the heavens to be rent with screams of
pure joy and shouts of "_Wallahi-el-azim_," "_Ma sha-Allah_" and other
references to the might and glory of the Almighty.
You do not often see this feat of strength and dexterity, and when you
do, it brings your heart almost out of your body and has an exhibition
of tent-pegging simply beaten to a frazzle.
A spectator of the tender age of three, clothed--as it was a day of
festival--in _tarbusch_ and voluminous robe girt about him with a
cummerbund--on ordinary days he would have been clothed in nature and
girt in dirt--toddled straight into the middle of a square, just as the
outriders charged across it. There was no room for them to turn, so
packed were the places where the sidewalks should have been, neither
was there time in which to rein in their horses. Women shrieked and
beat their breasts, men looked on at the inevitable tragedy with the
composure of the sterner sex.
The babe stood stock-still.
And Yussuf the outrider, bending low on his saddle, drove straight down
upon it, gathered the back part of the cummerbund and some folds of the
voluminous skirt upon the point of his spear, and, lifting the mite,
amidst yells and shouts and wild clamour, carried him at spear-length
and top speed safely across the square.
Where the real danger comes in is in judging the exact amount of stuff
to gather on the spear-head; an inch or so too much and you may get a
part of the kiddie's little back; an inch or so too little and, when
you have him high in air, you may cut through the cloth and cause said
kiddie to make a hasty descent to _terra firma_.
Anyway, the child was safely restored to its fond mother, who
simultaneously smacked it and stuffed its mouth with fly-blown
sweetmeats, and became the hero for the latter part of the day.
The real cortege was headed by camels bearing gifts from the House
el-Umbar to the great white woman who stood, on the balcony in a grey
silk taffeta dress, a shawl of priceless lace on her head and a grey
parrot upon her shoulder. Silks, jewels, sweetmeats, _bibelots_ in
ivory and precious metal, dates, coffee in berries, a monkey and a
bushel of wheat were amongst the gifts carried by the camels who
grumbled and rumbled as they stalked with swaying gait and contemptuous
half-closed eyes.
Next came the armed escort, mounted on horses, with modern rifles slung
and cummerbunds stuck full of the most atrocious-looking knives. They
scowled at everyone, but as they passed under the balcony each one drew
his knife and rattled it against that of his neighbour so that the
weapons made a glittering arch in the light of the setting sun, as