The Hawk of Egypt Part 30

They made no movement, they simply stood and stared.

Her head-veil and mantle had gone; her under-garments were torn to shreds, leaving exposed the slender body which leaned sideways like a tree which had been struck by lightning. Her matted hair fell far below her waist; it made a frame to the horrible face, one side of which was as that of an old, old hag, and the other, grimed with dirt, flecked with foam, was yet as lovely as a jewel.

They shrank back and still further back; they made the sign to scare away the spirit of evil; thinking her possessed of Eblis, the devil, they would not have touched her for a gold piece.

They turned their heads at the sound of rus.h.i.+ng footsteps; they motioned her to move on; believing her mad, they gave her a chance, for in the East you dare not turn your hand against the mentally afflicted.

She ran.

And after her came the pack in full cry.

Across great rooms, lit by hanging lamps, scented with brasiers of perfumed wood, she fled, slipping upon chinchilla rug or glaring monstrous hearthrug of Berlin wool, in her desperate haste to quit the house.

Out into the air she must get; under the trees in the garden; under the moon; down the broad paths to the wall at the end.

There was no wall too high for her to climb in her extremity. Her face was grey; her eyes sunk in black: orbits; her nose pinched, with nostrils which blew and flattened like bellows to her laboured breathing.

A hand clutched at her streaming hair and missed it as she sped down the garden; they were upon her heels, dogs jumping at her face as she ran.

She was blind, deaf, almost dead when the great gorilla-shaped arms of Bes closed about her.

She made no sound as she hurtled through the air. Mercifully perhaps was she dead, as she crashed down into the pit at the bottom of which great shapes prowled hungrily.

They did not stay to watch, not one of them.

Shouting and laughing, men and women ran back to the house, which in one hour they had stripped bare.

Just before the dawn a great flame shot skywards, an orange ribbon across the purple robe of dying Night.

_Requiem_

"There was an awful row in the Bazaar last night," said Mr. Ephraim Perkins to his spouse facing him across the breakfast table. "They killed a woman and burned her house down."

"Really, dear?" said Mrs. Ephraim Perkins, rasping b.u.t.ter on a piece of toast. "These natives want a firm hand over them. Poor thing! They usually stab each other in the East, don't they?"

"Yes; I think so. But they threw this one into a lions' den."

"Now, that's exaggeration, Ephraim." The knife never stopped its rasping. "They would not be allowed to keep wild beasts in a populated quarter."

"Stranger things happen in the native quarter, Maria," misquoted Mr.

Perkins, "than are dreamt of by the Government official."

True words!

If we dared penetrate the labyrinths of the bazaar and stir with foolish finger the dust which lies thick upon immemorial custom, what should we not find?

But having a meed of wisdom in the full measure of our imperial insularity, we do not pry with foolish fingers; guessing, even knowing of the wild beasts in those labyrinths, we draw a glove upon the hand and walk delicately in the opposite direction, with half-closed eyes.

"I repeat, it is an exaggeration," stubbornly replied Mrs. Ephraim Perkins, as she stretched for the marmalade. "And I do hope the fire-engines arrived in time."

CHAPTER XXVII

"_A tale-bearer revealeth secrets; but a man of understanding holdeth his peace_."

PROVERBS.

It was the night of the full moon.

It was also the night of the cotillon given by a certain princelet of unp.r.o.nounceable name and great wealth, who hailed from one of those countries in Europe where quasi-royalties abound.

The cotillon-favours were to be of extraordinarily fine quality.

Rumour spoke of gold cigarette-cases and other such trifles, for both s.e.xes; the supper was to be a Baccha.n.a.lian feast; every invitation had been accepted--_ca va sans dire_. The hotel was like a disturbed wasps' nest, and the buzzing of the chatterers and the gossips well-nigh deafening.

Damaris had decided to go to the ball; in fact, since her storm of tears on her return from the unlucky visit to Denderah she had taken the broad view of the situation and had decided to give her neighbours no cause for comment and to continue the festive life, as led in the winter season on the Nile, until the return of her G.o.dmother; after which she would, as soon as possible, shake the dust of the land of the Pharaohs from off her feet.

In fact, so gay was she, so full of life and high spirits, that she appeared to have forgotten her lover completely, thereby giving the Thistleton family cause to congratulate themselves in the seclusion of their bedrooms.

"I told you so, Mamma," had said Ellen, this night of the full moon, as she had pondered before the mirror upon the effect a headache-bandeau in the shape of a royal asp would have upon a certain retired colonel who seemed inclined to find solace for his long widowhood _en secondes noces_. "She evidently did not see Mr. Kelham and Sybil on the sand-bank, and I honestly do not think she cares for him a bit."

"No," broke in Berenice, whose hair clung to her head like wet seaweed to a rock; "I am sure she does not. Do you think if Ambrose had--had courted me and then neglected me, that I could have danced and laughed and------"

"Well, I'm thankful," broke in Mamma. "Looking after any girl as beautiful and-----"

"Erratic," supplied Ellen, who had decided on the headache-bandeau.

"--erratic as Damaris, is certainly no------"

"Sinecure," supplied Berenice, who, in the fervour of her affection for her herculean cleric, gave no thought to such trifles as head-dresses, and not much to the rest of her attire.

Giving a final pat to her offsprings' toilettes, Mamma shepherded them downstairs, tapping at Damaris's door as she pa.s.sed, inviting her to join them in the Winter-Garden, where they were going to sit and look at the dresses, and watch the arrival of the guests from the less select hotels.

Damaris looked radiantly beautiful as she stood for a moment at the window of her G.o.dmother's sitting-room, into which she had gone to fetch a fan.

True, her eyes looked over-big in the violet shadows that surrounded them, and her cheek and collar-bones were unduly prominent, but then, however well you hide the fox of uncertainty which tears at the vitals of your common sense and sense of humour, you cannot completely hide the outward signs of the inner agony which tortures you.

"You're a perfect picture, dearie!" said Jane Coop as she tied the ribbons of the simple, heelless, white leather shoes in which the girl always preferred to dance. "Let me look at you just once more."

Like a slender lily Damaris stood under the electric light. The soft white satin seemed to cling like a sheath to the slender, beautiful figure; her arms were bare; the bodice cut low enough to show her gleaming shoulders. She was dazzling, virginal, remote as she stood quite still, looking down at her maid.

Her eyes looked intensely black; her red hair flamed; she wore no jewels save for a ma.s.sive jewelled brooch in the shape of a hawk which glittered in the bodice just above the waist-belt where, thinking the bodice too low, she had pinned it hastily.

"I don't like that brooch, dearie," said the maid. "It's a waste of money, I think, to buy these heathen things. But there! you and her grace know best. And don't forget your cloak, darling; it's too chilly to sit out in the grounds without one, Egypt or no Egypt. I'll be real glad when we run into Waterloo station, that I shall."