The Hawk of Egypt Part 25

"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 pa.s.s 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 wors.h.i.+p 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 pa.s.sing 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 pa.s.sed 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 G.o.ds 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 suns.h.i.+ne 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 pa.s.sengers 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 pa.s.sed in all her power and beauty; on each side were the ruins of temples and tombs built to the glory of great G.o.d 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 courts.h.i.+p 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 pa.s.sionate 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 d.u.c.h.ess 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 brandis.h.i.+ng 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 c.u.mmerbund--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 b.r.e.a.s.t.s, men looked on at the inevitable tragedy with the composure of the sterner s.e.x.