The Hawk of Egypt Part 11

"I love you so, dear! I'm a clumsy fool at speaking, but I could show you how I love you. I want to marry you and take you right away home.

Do you know, I--I don't know how to explain it, but I--somehow feel you are in danger out here. I--will you------?"

Damaris looked to the right and looked to the left, hesitated and chose the middle path.

"I can't answer you now, Ben. I'm--I'm not sure about loving you, and, of course, one can't marry without that on both sides, can one?"

Oh, the blessed little ignoramus!

"Besides," she added as an afterthought, "I'm so young, and so are you."

"Oh, Damaris! Surely you don't want to wait until you find someone who's had lots of experience, which only means that he hasn't been playing the game as far as his future wife is concerned and will come to you like a ready-made suit returned from the cleaner's. The Kelhams always marry young, and our brides are always very young. That's why, I think, we're so strong and long-lived." He veered suddenly from the mazy subject of eugenics and pleaded hard, persuasively, stubbornly.

But Damaris, just as stubbornly, shook her head.

"Besides, Ben, this is unexpected. I haven't seen anything of you since I have been out; surely, if you love me so, you would have come over more often to--to--prepare the way."

She unashamedly exposed her hurt, whilst the man inwardly called himself every kind of a fool for having listened to another's voice upon a subject as vital and tricky as love.

Still he urged and pleaded, being of those who, refusing to take No as an answer, usually succeed in attaining their desire.

A wearisome process, but well worth while once in a lifetime, whatever kind of a clutter those first cousins, obstinacy, stubbornness and strong will cause you to acc.u.mulate about your feet at other times.

"I don't know enough to marry," persisted the girl. "I want to know what love really is, first."

"Oh! but, dear, I can teach you all you want to know," replied the man, in the customary all-sweeping manner of the male.

"But I want to know all about the different kinds."

"There are no different kinds, Damaris. There is only one sort."

"Then explain this to me."

It seemed that two months before the girl had left England, she had found the tweeny, Lizzie St.i.tch by name, sobbing over the cinders in her sitting-room grate. The besmirched little face, like a sodden little pudding, had been covered with grimy hands, and the thin little chest had heaved under the scanty cotton blouse and the stress of the tale of betrayal and desertion.

"I didn't know, miss. I didn't do it purposelike for a lark. I did think it was love, _real_ love what--what is h'always pardinned. Well, miss, if you think it wise to force 'im, I'll do what you say, though it's not about meself as I'm worrying; it's 'cause I must have a father for the kid. I couldn't put it out, an' lose it, not h'ever so."

Then had come about a strange scene of transformation. Confronted by Damaris with a riding-whip in one hand, a special license in the other, and Wellington at her heels, the fox-faced young man had professed a desire to marry the tweeny on the spot.

Then had been granted a seventh-heaven glimpse of what love, real love, can be, to the tweeny maid, changing her into a veritable spitfire, who had turned and rent the fox-faced youth.

"I wouldn't 'ave you, nohow, no, not if yer were the larst man on earth, not 'alf I wouldn't. I'll get through my trouble, miss, all right, an' by meself, thanking you kindly for troubling, an' I'll wait until Mister Right comes along; that's what I'll do, Mister Runaway."

And when Mr. Runaway had hinted that Mr. Right might kick at being called upon to shoulder the enc.u.mbrances of others, she had s.n.a.t.c.hed the special license from her young mistress, torn it into bits, flung it into the foxy face and blazed into a big-hearted, big-minded, all-understanding little tweeny maid of a woman.

"I said Mr. Right, didn't I, yer bloomin' chuckhead? 'E'll unnerstand that it was all done in mistake, an' not by preference, so to speak.

An' unnerstandin', he'll forgive. Lots of them mistakes are made by girls like me"--thumping of washed but still grimy hand above gallant little heart--"through swipes like you. Life's full of 'em down our way. But life's love, and love's life, and you can't get away from that, that yer can't. And I'd raver die wiv my love shut up 'ere"--more thumps above gallant little heart--"than throw it away on a louse like you, _that_ I would, not 'arf!"

Ben Kelham said nothing, and there fell a silence between the two, though the Egyptian night was as full of noise as it ever is in the big cities of the East.

"What did she mean, Ben," said Damaris at last, "by that love which understanding can forgive even--even _her_ trouble?"

And to Ben Kelham came the tweeny's seventh-heaven glimpse of the understanding of real love.

He rose and swept Damaris, a-thrill at the mastery, into his arms, where he held her as he might have held a child.

"That, dear,"--and he spoke choosing the simplest words, just because he knew no others, "that means that if you said you loved me, and I--if I ever found you in a--how shall I put it?--in--no matter how compromising a situation--that I should love you just the same, because I should know that, although to all appearances you--you might have sinned, yet the real you, the pure, honourable, perfect woman in you, could not show the smallest stain. Do you understand?"

"Almost," whispered the girl, as she lay still in the arms that held her as a child.

"You've _got_ to understand. Listen! It may sound brutal, but you've got to understand my love for you. Supposing you disappeared, as Englishwomen do sometimes in the East. Supposing I searched, and found you, and you--you were--you were like the little tweeny girl. What should I do? Why, Damaris, unless you came to me and confessed to sin, I'd marry you, loving you, understanding you, without asking any questions."

"Without asking any explanation?"

"Yes, dear. Yes. Because I love you----"

"And you would forgive me?"

"But, dear, there wouldn't be any need for forgiveness; the real, pure you would not have done anything wrong."

Then he blundered.

Like most big men, he was diffident; he underestimated the attraction of his strength allied to a very gentle courtesy; in fact, bound up in his love for Damaris, he had never given it a thought excepting to curse the awkwardness of his body and the slowness of his speech. He knew nothing of the honesty which looked out of the eyes; the quiet strength of his movements and speech; the feeling of confidence he inspired.

He was not given to self-a.n.a.lysis; he loved the sun in the heavens, the gra.s.s under foot and the traditions of his house too much to waste time on that kind of thing.

So that, fearing to have hurt the girl or bored the girl, he plumped her on her feet, when he could have won her and saved her and others, including himself, a mint of pain if he had only just crushed her up to his heart and kissed her.

She stood quite still, with that dazed little feeling which falls upon one who has entered the wrong room.

"I'm not going to bother you any more, dear," he said, watching for the flash of relief which did not cross the beautiful face.

"What are you going to do?"

"There has come a report of lion somewhere near Karnak. I think I shall run down and have a look round. I thought of going on to Nairobi once I was really fit, so have got all my shooting gear with me. But, remember, you have only to send for me, and I will come. And don't try to run away, Damaris." And his voice was stern as he took her by the shoulders and drew her towards him. "You are mine! I'm letting you go now because you want to learn about life, and that you can't do if you have a man always on your heels. You will learn all right, dear, and suffer a bit, dear, but you will come to me in the end.

"I can't offer you the witchery and colouring and poetry of the East, but I do offer you the biggest love there has ever been in a man's heart for a woman and------"

A troupe of riotous guests came streaming down the path.

"One o'clock!" they shouted. "One o'clock. Masks off; masks off!"

The two walked slowly towards them.

"You _would_ like a lion's skin, wouldn't you?" he asked eagerly, and stared amazed at the reproachful, hurt eyes which looked back at him just as the dancers swooped upon her.

A lion's skin! When she was craving for the strength of his arms about her, and the tower of his love behind her, from the top of which she could safely make monkey-faces of derision at Life, standing with lesson-books in one hand and a cane in the other.

She turned her back on him and entered the ballroom, and he went back to the seat in the garden, unconscious of the woman who watched.