The Hawk of Egypt
was faithful and as dumb as a dog. Besides--the Oriental had shrugged
his shoulders--if he should prove to be otherwise, what easier than to
silence him for all eternity?
And if a life barren of love stretched as bleak and limitless as the
desert before him, what then? Life was short, and if children of mixed
races were to suffer the hell he must suffer through honour, well,
surely praise should be offered to Allah in that he would never see his
man-child upon the breast of woman.
"Kismet!"
He whispered the Oriental's supreme submission to the inevitable and
caught his breath, then lit another cigarette.
Ben Kelham placed his hand upon the chequered curtain, which swung back
at his touch.
"Is this where you sleep, Carden? I never thought you had another room
behind."
"It is the room in which I make my ablutions prescribed by Mohammed the
Prophet of Allah who is God, at the hour of prayer."
The words, which were in truth a prayer for the safe keeping of the
woman be loved and had renounced, rang sonorously through the tent,
causing Ben Kelham to turn and look at the Oriental, who had risen to
his feet as he prayed.
The two fine men stood looking at each other across the tent; then the
Englishman moved forward and sat down on the end of the wooden couch as
the other moved back and leant against the wall, with his fingers upon
the little amulet above his heart.
"Have you ever been in love, Carden?" Kelham asked abruptly, unable to
control the question.
"There is no have-been in love. You either love or you do not love.
Do you?"
Ben Kelham nodded his head.
"Then, if you do, why, in the name of Allah who is your God as well as
mine, are you here? Why are you not at the feet of this woman,
stricken with wonder and humility before the gifts the great God has
given you? Why do you leave her exposed to the temptations of the
East, where has been wrecked the soul of many a white woman? What is
the killing of wild beasts compared to the look of the woman's eyes?
Where are your eyes, the eyes of your soul? What is this love you
speak of which lets you drop the jewel from between your fingers as you
would drop the half-consumed cigarette upon the ground?"
It was the prisoner's last despairing cry as the prison-door swings to,
shutting out the sun, the song of birds, the voice of children; it was
the beggar hungering for a crust, crying against the wasted abundance
of the rich man's table.
"What is this love you speak of, this love which lets you pass your
days in the shadow of another woman, a woman brown as a burned cake, as
comely as a stuffed pillow, who lies in wait to kill the king of
beasts? Yes! I know; in the East all things are known. I know whom
it is you love, and it is for her that I dare speak as men should not
speak of woman. Go to her; tarry not; go and heal the wound to her
pride, her heart, her love, lest in her pain she should fly to the
first hand for succour."
Ben Kelham sprang to his feet.
"Do you think, if my love was returned, Carden, that I should be here?"
"Love!" The man's voice was not raised one tone, but the tent vibrated
with the passionate words. "Are you such a coward that you run away at
the first hurt? When the ball struck you in the face at Lords, did you
retire--hurt? No; you stuck it, and scored a century! Are you such a
dullard that you cannot read beneath a woman's yes and no? Love! Do
you know what love means? What would you do for love? Could you
forgive in love?"
Kelham stared at the man who, word for word, repeated, the question
Damaris had asked on the night he had proposed to her.
"If you heard tongues gossiping out of jealousy of the woman, you
loved; if you found her in a situation which could not easily be
explained; if she, hurt, wounded, had run like a little child to
another to beg for balm for her wound,--tell me, would you forgive her?
Tell me!"
There was a strange insistency in the repeated question and a deep
anxiety in his eyes, which passed as Kelham laughed.
It was the genuine, honest laugh of the man who loves and is willing to
shoulder the burdens, great and small, which love brings in her train.
"You say there is no 'have-been' in love, Carden. I say there is no
question of forgiveness in love. You love, and there is no room
anywhere for anything else but love."
A great silence fell; the silence of two strong men who for one moment
had broken through the barbed-wire of convention, to be their natural
selves; the silence heralding the birth of a new day.
There was no sound, as the hands of Fate pointed to the full hour.
It all happened and was over even as the hour struck.
There was a shout from both men as the tawny shape leapt out of the
night through the opening of the tent; the crashing report of Ben
Kelham's revolver as he fired; the coughing of the wounded lioness as,
spitting blood, she recoiled to spring; a ringing shout from Hugh
Carden Ali as he flung himself in front of his friend just as he fired,
and the great brute, with a mighty roar, turned and disappeared into
the night whence she had come.
There was a look of great wonder on the face of Hugh Carden Ali as he
stood looking beyond his friend; then he suddenly turned in the
direction of Mecca.
Slowly he raised his hand to his turban, whilst a look of ineffable
peace swept across his face and stayed, as a little red stain like a
crimson rose showed just above his heart.
"_Here, Sir_!"
The answer to the roll-call rang out across the desert he had loved so
well, and was carried by the breeze of dawn up through the stars to the
Head Master whose justice and mercy take no account of race.
Then the old Harrovian crashed face downward, dead.
CHAPTER XXXII
"_Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth
Unseen, both when we wake and when we sleep_."
"_Spirits that live throughout
Vital in every part. . . ._"
MILTON.
The light from the silver lamp shone down upon the water in the crystal
basin and upon the girl's red head as she crouched upon her knees
against the leather curtain.
Well might she crouch, well might she have put dust upon her head as do
the Easterns in their grief and shame; well might her voice have wailed
out across the desert in sorrow for the young life broken by the
careless fingers of her heedless youth.
But she knelt without movement, with her face in her hands, the hands
which had so lightly played pitch-and-toss with a man's heart and a
man's life, and prayed desperately, silently, for forgiveness.
Let it be granted her on account of her years, for youth is ever blind,
and the young are ever selfish, giving never a thought to the years
they must spend, when, grey-haired and wise, they will try to repair
with their shaking old hands, the tatters and rents they had made in
their thoughtless, grasping youth.
Strange it is that the old in years, in sorrow and knowledge, will sit
darning the rents and patching the bad places with their trembling
hands, as their wise old heads nod and their dear old mouths murmur a
prayer, and yet be unable to teach the young how to keep the fabric of
life whole, or safeguard it with the lavender of love and good-will
pressed between its folds.
Until the drumming of the sands had sounded like distant thunder and
the shape of the horse and its rider had become distinct to the
desert-trained eye of her desert lover, Damaris remained apprehensive
and silent in the safe refuge of his arms, which crushed her to his
heart; then he lifted her and carried her swiftly to the little room of
prayer lit by the silver lamp and, wresting a promise from her to keep
her presence hidden, no matter what she might hear through the curtain,
kissed her hands one and twice and yet again and left her, drawing the
curtain close.
Horrified, she heard the voice of Ben Kelham; like a statue of fear she
stood, with her ear close to the curtain, for the half of an hour, the
thirty short minutes in which she came to understand at last, clearly,
definitely, that there was only one man in the world for her, and that
was the Englishman who sat with clenched hands under the lash of his
friend's words; and her hand trembled so that the curtain shook as
though blown by the night-wind as she held it back just wide enough to
look through without being seen; and her eyes were soft with gratitude
when she understood the greatness of the sacrifice the man of the East
had laid on the altar of his honour and his friendship and his love.
But her youth had gone from her forever and her heart had been stamped
with the seal of an everlasting regret; her eyes had been filled with a
great questioning which was never to be answered on this earth, when
her scream had been drowned in the crash of the report as the man she
loved had fired, and killed his friend.
Had Hugh Carden Ali really feared for the safety of his friend and
flung himself between him and the wounded beast, or, understanding that
in that way only could peace be obtained for all three, had he
deliberately sought death?
Allah, who is God of all, alone knows the answer, so let us leave it
with Him.
And then, being untried and very young, she slipped to her knees and
fell unconscious, with her face upon her outstretched arms. And there
she lay whilst the silence of the coming dawn fell upon the earth, and
wrapped itself in a soft winding-sheet about him who lay asleep upon
his couch of death, at the foot of which stood his friend, looking down
upon the peaceful face.
Only a few moments had slipped into eternity when Damaris shivered and,
bewildered, not knowing if an hour or a second had passed whilst she
had lain senseless, rose to her knees.
There was no sound.
She sat back and pushed the hair from her forehead; then rose and
tiptoed to the curtain. She put out her hand, and drew back; then,
urged by a desire which clamoured for definite knowledge, parted the
curtain and looked in. She looked for just one second, then staggered
back and back as far as the crystal basin filled with the clear water
which was used in prayer; and she stood with her arms outstretched, and
fingers spread between her eyes, and the picture she herself had
painted in the thoughtlessness of youth, and then swung round, with her
back to the Tent of Death and looked down into the water, and, as
though a veil had been lifted from before her eyes, looked back along
the past, and forward into the future.
As in a flash she saw the wreck she had made of her life by throwing
away the substance of a good man's love for the fantastic conviction
that, as she was not as other girls, she must therefore go a-venturing
through the world's mazy high-ways and by-ways until she had found her
own particular niche.
She saw the picture of herself proclaiming it to her life by throwing
away the substance of a good man's godmother's letter of invitation to
Egypt. She saw the girl's lips moving. What was she saying?
"I want to find my own nail and hang for one hour by myself, if it's on
a barn door or the wall of a mosque--as long as I am by myself."
Then the picture faded, to give place to another in which she saw
herself sitting in the moonlight beside Ben Kelham; the honest, slow,
lovable man standing at that very moment a grim picture of despair,
divided only by a curtain from her, through whom, indirectly, he had
killed his friend.
What was she saying to him in this dream-picture?
"I don't know enough to marry; I want to know what love really is,
first . . ."
What was he saying in reply?
". . . You will learn your lesson all right, dear, and suffer a bit,
dear, but you will come to me in the end."
She suddenly knelt and plunged her hand down into the water, breaking