The Hawk of Egypt
garbed in silks and satins and hung with jewels, she brazenly graced
the stage-box at a gala performance.
She looked down, and Ben Kelham, in the end seat of the first row of
stalls, looked up and looked and looked, seeing nothing, being blinded
with love of Damaris.
Zulannah drove back in her Rolls-Royce to the edge of the Arabian
quarter, where, owing to the narrowness of the lanes called by courtesy
streets, she alighted to finish what remained of the journey in a
litter swung from the shoulders of four Nubian slaves, and, arrived at
the great house, summoned her special bodyguard, Qatim the Ethiopian;
and for acquiring information down to the smallest detail about some
special individual there is, surely, no detective agency on earth to
compare to one ordinary, native servant.
He loves intrigue!
So that, twenty-four hours later, Zulannah laughed shrilly when Qatim
the Ethiopian repeated all he had learned of the white man and the
white maid he presumably loved.
"Love!" she scoffed. "He has not met _me_!"
But in the weeks that followed no plot had succeeded, no device or
subtle invitation had lured the bird to the list, so that she beat
sharply upon a silver gong this night of the stars, upon which the
Ethiopian came running hastily to cast himself upon the ground at the
jewelled, henna'd feet.
"Get up," she said, kicking him upon the side of the head; whereupon he
rose, chalking up one more mark on his own particular slate of Life,
upon one side of which was written Desire and the other Revenge.
He stood six-foot-four in his loin-cloth, as black and glistening as a
polished ebony statue. The enormous hands at the end of great,
over-long arms almost touched his knees; the chest and shoulders and
abdomen were hard as iron, rippling with muscle under the oiled skin;
the feet were huge and pink of sole, and the animality of the man was
intensified by a certain gleam of intelligence somewhere in the
impassive negroid face.
The woman, took no notice of the magnificent physique; it neither
repulsed nor attracted her--he was a slave.
"Run and give orders that no one is admitted! Hasten!"
"Mistress, a great noble waits at-----"
"Desirest thou thy tongue split, thou black dog, that thou answerest
Zulannah? Haste thee, and return!"
And far into the night they talked, those two, planning death or
destruction, anything as long as it attained the desire of the woman
who, looking into the future, took no notice of the mountain of
disaster beside her in the shape of the Ethiopian who desired and hated
her with all the bestial passion of his race.
Then, just as far down in the east the sky lightened, she sat suddenly
upright and clapped her jewelled hands.
"Know'st thou the eunuch who guards the harem empty of women in the
palace of--ah! the barbarity of the name!--E'u Car-r-den Ali? He who
perchance would give one-half, nay, all of his great wealth in return
for the coal-blackness of thy odorous skin. There is to be held a big
entertainment within the walls of the white man's hotel, and soon. An
entertainment where the whites dance foolishly in foolish raiment,
disguised as that which they are not and with covered faces. What
easier than for me to obtain entry as one of them under my veils and
have speech with the man I love? And if he is as thou sayest, besotted
with love of this white girl, then will I use the man of barbarous name
as a tool to bring about that which I desire. Know'st thou the eunuch?"
"Mistress, he is my twin-brother."
"Twin of _thee_! Behold, did not thy mother die of fright, at sight of
such monstrosities?"
"Nay, mistress, there are six sons younger than thy slave, each one of
which could break thee in one hand."
Zulannah sprang to her feet and, seizing a short whip from a table,
smote the man again and again until his face ran blood.
"Thou vile brute, darest thou so to speak! Behold, this is but a
foretaste of what will befall thy black carcase before the hour is
spent."
"Call thy slaves, mistress; split my tongue; whip the soles from off my
feet, the flesh from my body, even to the bones, and thou shalt never
meet my twin-brother, who even now prepareth the great palace for the
coming of the"--he spat--"bird of different-coloured plumage."
And Zulannah, understanding that she must not overstep the limit if she
desired to attain her end, flung the whip full into the stolid,
indifferent face, and fled, raving obscenities, into the house.
CHAPTER VIII
"_If God in His wisdom have brought close
The day when I must die,
That day by water or fire or air
My feet shall fall in the destined snare
Wherever my road may lie_."
DANTE GABRIEL ROSETTI
"May I come in? Oh, Maris, what _do_ you think? There is to be a real
native fortune-teller in the Winter Garden. They've made the corner
near the fountain like an Arab's tent, and he'll tell us our horoscopes
in the sand, and all sorts of things."
"Not forgetting the stars, let us hope?"
"Oh, there's sure to be that."
Damaris laughed as she turned in her chair and looked at the excited
little visitor in fancy-dress.
"You _do_ look sweet. A Light of the Harem, for certain."
"Yes; and what do you think? There are three dozen Lights. Isn't it a
shame? I thought I should be the only one. And there are two and a
half dozen Sheikhs, and I don't know how many dozen Bedouins. You
are--what are you? You look awfully--awfully--er--I don't quite know
what."
Damaris adjusted the _selva_, the quaint silver kind of tube between
the eyebrows which connects the yashmak and the _tarhah_ or head-veil,
took a final look in the mirror, and rose.
"I am an Egyptian woman of the humblest class."
She was all in black, as befits a member of that class. The simple
bodice, cut in a yoke, of the black muslin dress fitted her like a
glove; the skirt fell in wide folds from the waist and swung about her
ankles encircled by big brass rings, which clashed as she moved. She
wore the black yashmak and _tarhah_; upon her arms were many brass
bracelets which tinkled; on one hand she wore a ring and there were
flesh-coloured silken hose and sandals upon her feet. She had made a
mistake and henna'd her finger-tips, which members of the humblest
class have not time to do--besides, their patient hands matter so
little--and her great eyes looked as black as the yashmak over which
they shone.
Her beautiful face was hidden, yet was she infinitely alluring,
tantilising, mysterious, under her veils.
Heavens! if only women knew how easy it is to enhance the looks by the
simple method of touching up the eyes with _kohl_ and covering the rest
of the face!
"All of us in veils and masks will have to take them off at one."
"Yes, there'll be the rub," said Damaris, as she knelt down beside the
perplexed, growling bulldog.
"Don't know Missie? Don't love her?"
"Woomph!" replied Wellington, hurling his great weight into her lap.
"How he loves you, Maris!"
"Yes, miss, he does," broke in Jane Coop. "And I firmly believe he's
my mistress's guardian angel."
"After you, Janie dear," said the girl, smiling fondly up at the plump
maid and tying a huge crimson bow round the neck of the long-suffering
animal.
"What is he going as, Maris?"
"A gargle, miss," broke in the maid. "I think it's just fun on the
part of Miss Damaris, because nothing as solid as him,"--pointing of
comb to shamed dog--"could go as anything watery."
Damaris got to her feet.
"Let's go in to _Marraine_," she choked. "Gargoyle, my dear," she
whispered, "is what she meant--gargoyle. Do come along!"
The girls' happy laughter rang down the corridor as they knocked at her
grace's door.
She stood at her dressing-table in a beautiful dress of grey brocade.
Diamonds sparkled in the laces of her corsage, on her fingers and in
the buckles of her lovely shoes; a big bunch of pink carnations was
tied on the top of her ebony stick; a priceless lace veil fastened over
her head by a fragile wreath of diamond leaves fell almost to the hem
of her dress behind. She had discarded the terrifying perruque, and
her own hair, snowy-white, was puffed and curled about the little face,
which was finely powdered and slightly rouged. She was a dream of
beautiful old age, with Dekko just visible under a huge pink bow upon
her shoulder.
"May I present a very old woman to youth?" she said simply.
"Darling," cried Damaris as she ran forward and, pushing the yashmak to
one side, kissed the jewelled hand. "You are too beautiful--too
beautiful! Promise me never, never, never to wear it again."
"I'm too old to get rid of bad habits, cherie," said her godmother.
"And we had better go down. By the way, what is Ben coming as?"
"I really don't know," came the muffled reply from behind the yashmak,
"if he comes at all."
As Cairo entire had accepted the invitation, the place was packed, but
nowhere was the crowd so suffocating as round the entrance to the
Winter Garden.
"Per-fect-ly wonderful," gasped a rotund Ouled Nail to a masked dancer
of the same sex and size. "He told me about that terrible time when I
lost so much at bridge--you remember, dear, when I had to--er--to raise
money on my diamonds. How could he have seen it in my hand?"
He hadn't; he had been a guest at Hurdley Castle with her.
"What's he like?"
"Oh, I couldn't see his face, on account of the handkerchief thing, but
I think he's quite common; his clothes are quite poor. I believe he is
one of the waiters dressed up. I seem to recognise his voice. Have
you long to wait?"
"I'm twenty-fifth down the list. Who's in now?"
"Some woman in black. There are four of them, and I can't tell t'other
from which."
The hand of the woman who was twenty-fifth down the list was never told.
Damaris lifted the curtain, and walked into the corner of the Winter
Garden, which had been temporarily given the appearance of an Arab's
tent.
"_Salaam aley_," she said gently, giving the word of peace.
The fortune-teller salaamed with hands to forehead, mouth and heart, in
the beautiful Eastern gesture.
"_Aleykoum es-Salaam_!" he replied as gently, which is the sacrament of
lips.
There was the fortune-teller's regulation small table, with a chart of
the stars and a silver tray covered in sand upon it; on either side was
a chair; but it was upon a cushion on the floor that Damaris seated
herself, with her back against the canvas drapery of the wall,
motioning the Arab to a cushion near her, whilst her eyes swept the
loose cotton tunic, the _kaleelyah_ or head-kerchief, which almost
completely hid the face, the great white mantle and the sandals upon
the naked feet.
Oh! the game of make-believe they played, those two with the
jewel-hilted, razor-edged dagger of love between them.
There fell a silence.
And then the fortune-teller spoke in his own tongue, and too absorbed
were they in the game of make-believe to notice that he made use of
neither sand nor stars nor the lines upon her hands, which were clasped
above her heart, as he read her future in her eyes.
"Two paths lie before thee, O woman, and both stretch, through the
kingdom of love.
"The one to thy right hand has been marked out upon the Field of
Content by feet bound in the sandals of custom and convention. There
is shade upon this path, for, behold, the scorching sun of passion may
not penetrate the leaves of the trees of tranquillity; the storm breaks
not, neither do the biting winds of fear, nor the drenching torrents of
desire, encompass those who walk thereon.
"The river, the slow, full-blossomed river of patience, flows ever
beside it, on its way to the Ocean of Life in which all waters must
mingle in eternity."