The Hawk of Egypt
their mouths and wash out all the remains of whatever they had been
chewing or chasing with a long-handled ivory finger-nail brush.
Of course He would not do all this to-night because this was a special
occasion, and they knew exactly how to make Him come out of the tent
and send a certain call ringing across so that their friend the
stallion Sooltan would come racing, with native pad and halter,
riderless towards them.
This is how they worked it. First Touaa, because ladies always come
first, would pull his coat and then go out and point in the direction
of the find, growling softly, then give a short yelp and give up her
place to Iouaa, who had just pulled the coat, to come and point and
yelp, whilst she returned, to pull the coat.
It sounds complicated, but it's really as simple as simple and had
never been known to fail.
Of course He would throw something at them and tell them He was coming
because He was sick to death of them and their silly ways; but they
knew better. He was really just as keen as themselves--besides, He
belonged to the desert.
And tonight they would take Him first along the path where they had
chased their own shadows and show Him the very spot where they had
stopped and crouched, belly to ground, as the wind had brought a most
unusual scent to their keen noses; then they would take Him further
along the path and show Him how fast they had gone by the marks of
their pads in the sand; and then--and then! they would show Him the
scene of the great and glorious fight. Why, the field of battle
stretched for yards and yards and yards. And they could show Him the
marks where the wounded lioness had lashed with her tail in rage, and
the very place where they had taken off as they leapt upon her. And He
would really have to take care where He walked, because the place was
in a really terrible state, and He would have to keep his hand on the
halter because horses, even stallions, were most foolishly upset at the
scent of lion.
There was the spot where Touaa had rolled after her side had been
ripped, and the place from which Iouaa had leapt to fasten his fangs in
the lioness's muzzle from which she had dislodged him by rolling on her
back and ripping his chest and throat with the claws of her back paws,
which somehow had savoured of hitting below the belt.
Then they would show him the place where the great tawny beast lay
dead--she was quite dead; you could go and touch her, they had seen to
that--and you could see by the churned-up state of the sand how she had
beaten off attack after attack. And they had leapt again and again to
pull her down, until the great fangs had met in the side of her neck
and worried and gripped until the end.
Whose fangs?--Oh! well, of course ladies have to come first.
And they raced across the desert as the dawn broke, to tell Him of the
great victory they had won for Him; and then, within twenty yards of
the tent they stopped dead, threw up their fine heads, eyes red and
glaring, ruffs standing, and sniffed the mingled scents which came to
them on the wind.
They sniffed the ground at their feet and growled and, belly to the
ground, crept a few yards to their right. The lioness had passed that
way! Would their great victory he not such a big surprise for Him
after all? Had He seen the beast already? And that other scent--a
mixed scent of humans, the humans that were not of the desert! Humans
meant noise. Where were they? Why was there such a strange feeling,
such a strange quietness about the place? Did He sleep so soundly that
He did not hear and whistle them?
They stood quite still, still as though carved, out of stone, looking
at the light which showed dim in the coming dawn, and which, when they
hunted across the desert, had always been to them as a beacon of
happiness.
Then they growled, the deep, unforgiving growl of hate. Somebody was
standing looking at them from inside the tent, and that somebody was
not Him, nor in any way like Him.
Their great faithful hearts, leapt in a strange fear for their master,
and the hair on their backs rose stiff and straight as they moved
slowly forward, side by side.
Up to the entrance they went, growling softly all the while; then with
barks and yelps of joy they leapt inside.
They had seen Him asleep; their hearts were at rest. How could He hear
or whistle them if He lay asleep?
One on each side, tails wagging, eyes gleaming, they stood with
fore-feet upon the couch and bent to sniff Him who was so dear to them.
So they stood for just one uncomprehending moment; then dropped, to the
ground, shivering, as Touaa gave a little whine. Then they walked
slowly round the couch, whining and sniffing as they went, and Touaa
stayed a moment to lick the hand which had so often pulled her silky
ears, and Iouaa rose for an instant upon his hind-legs, and scratched
at his master's boot, as he had so often done when impatient to be up
and away across the desert.
Then, side by side, they crossed to where the man stood watching, with
nails driven into the palms of his hands and tears in his sorrowing
eyes.
Touaa wagged her tail once, Iouaa drove his head fiercely against the
clenched hand, it was their only way of asking what had happened to
make Him sleep so very soundly.
And Ben Kelham bent down and, putting his hand under their mighty jaws,
lifted their heads so that their sorrowful eyes looked into his, and
slowly shook his head. And they turned and walked close against each
other to the outside of the tent, and there they sat upon their
haunches and lifted their heads and howled.
Three times the despairing cry, the Last Post of the faithful friends,
rang out across the plain; then they turned and walked slowly back,
close together, and, separating at the foot, went up to the head of the
couch and sat down upon their haunches one on each side of Him;
immovable; as though carved by grief out of stone.
Ben Kelham, with the one thought of shutting the tragic picture, if
only for a moment, from his eyes; of hiding his grief if only from the
great dogs, blindly pulled back the curtain and stumbled into the
silent room of prayer lit by a silver lamp.
He stood staring down at the water with which his friend had so lately
prepared himself for the hour of prayer; he stooped to pick up the
white handkerchief he had evidently dropped.
And he stood and stared and stared as he turned the little lace-trimmed
square over and over in his hand. It was wringing wet, it smelt
faintly of the perfume the girl he loved had always used; it had her
initials woven in one corner.
"My God!" he whispered, as he looked round the little room; then
crossed to the spot near the curtain where the sand had been disturbed,
and then followed the prints of small feet across the floor to the
further side.
"My God!" he repeated. "I understand." He turned his head and looked
back at the curtain which divided him from his friend. "Carden, old
fellow, I understand what you gave your life to make me understand."
And his heart beat with a great love and a greater gratitude as he
parted the curtain and went out into the desert. He did not once turn
to look back, else might he have seen a speck on the horizon, moving at
the incredible speed with which a camel can race as it slithers across
the sands.
CHAPTER XXXIV
"In Rama was there a voice heard . . .
Rachel weeping for her children, and would not
be comforted, because they were not."
ST. MATTHEW, II.
"Hugh!"
As she called to her son from her high seat upon the camel the woman
was the only living thing to be seen in the desert. In her simplicity,
her colouring, her solitude, she was biblical; she might have been a
woman of the Old Testament asking for succour or sanctuary at the tent
of Abraham pitched between Beth-el and Hai; she might have been a woman
fleeing from the wrath of Moses, who gave unto sin its strength when,
out of sheer solicitude for the soul-welfare of the masses, he made
laws about things to which in the innocence of their hearts they had,
up till then, never given two thoughts.
Leave that corner piece of pasture unhedged, and it's odds on that not
a single soul will tramp or want to tramp over it, from one year's end
to another; hedge it, close it with padlocked gate, prop up the warning
_re_ trespassers and see if you don't find a wide track of footprints
across it in the morning.
Yes; the picture was biblical.
Rebecca must have worn exactly the same fashioned clothes as this
woman, and doubtless Leah had become pink-eyed through the tears of
vexation she had shed over the ancestral humped quadruped she had
ridden; and most certainly Lot's wife, Ruth, Solomon's wives and
appendages, Jezebel, and every other woman mentioned in the Bible once
watched just such a dawn rise across just such a desert.
We change our fashions, our fixed opinions, the colour of our hair and
the pattern of our socks when the fancy seizes us, but neither time nor
man has changed the desert--so far. Thank heaven for it, there is
still one place left in which we can go to die or be re-born--in seemly
solitude.
The grief of Rachel was shadowed upon the face of Jill, the wife of the
Arab, as she sat quite still, looking down at the pool of orange light
flung from the tent out onto the sand; then she sighed, the little sigh
of the anxious heart which, like the wind that springs up and sweeps
over your dwelling, and is gone, heralding the storm, is the forerunner
of the grief which will ere long overwhelm you.
She knew!
The lover, the wife, the brother, the friend, can temporarily blind
themselves with the blinkers of false hope and can blunt the stabbing
spear of hideous fear with sharp-edged reasoning, but the
_mother_--never.
You cannot deceive her with a smile, nor can distance hide your
distress from her; you cannot, if you could be so minded, conceal your
joy from her, nor can you hurt her with a wound that will not heal.
Go to her with your hands swelling from the sting of the wasp you found
in the stolen fruit, or stained with crime; or your shoes wet through
with the mire of the by-ways in which you have been straying, and what
will she do? She will sit you down in front of the glowing fire of her
love, warm your straying feet, wash away the stain in the bitter waters
of her tears, and then dry them with her smile.
And you can go on straying--if you could be so minded--until seven
million seventy-times-seven, and you will find her just the same.
It is not forgiveness; it is Love.
And it was Love which, when there came no answer to her call, urged
Jill to get her camel to its knees.
Over twenty years had passed since Jill Carden, the English girl, had
first tried her 'prentice hand upon the obstreperous camel. She had
ridden out into the desert under the stars with her desert lover; she
had, strong in a great love, fearlessly climbed the high wall of racial
distinction crowned with the spikes of custom and convention; she had
watched the seed of happiness burst and blossom until it had grown into
a great tree; but she had forgotten that no tree, however deep its
roots, however strong its branches, is safe, so long as Fate, in senile
jealousy, can tear the heavens into ribbons with her hellish lightning.
The camel, lurching and groaning, staggering and heaving, got to its
knees in just the same way as Taffadaln had done over twenty years ago;
just as the camel will do twenty centuries hence, if it has not become
extinct through some button, or wire, or wave, or ray which will have
turned the desert into a kind of international piazza into the middle
of which, for our post-prandial coffee and cigarette, we shall be