The Hawk of Egypt Part 38

There was no sound.

She sat back and pushed the hair from her forehead; then rose and tiptoed to the curtain. She put out her hand, and drew back; then, urged by a desire which clamoured for definite knowledge, parted the curtain and looked in. She looked for just one second, then staggered back and back as far as the crystal basin filled with the clear water which was used in prayer; and she stood with her arms outstretched, and fingers spread between her eyes, and the picture she herself had painted in the thoughtlessness of youth, and then swung round, with her back to the Tent of Death and looked down into the water, and, as though a veil had been lifted from before her eyes, looked back along the past, and forward into the future.

As in a flash she saw the wreck she had made of her life by throwing away the substance of a good man's love for the fantastic conviction that, as she was not as other girls, she must therefore go a-venturing through the world's mazy high-ways and by-ways until she had found her own particular niche.

She saw the picture of herself proclaiming it to her life by throwing away the substance of a good man's G.o.dmother's letter of invitation to Egypt. She saw the girl's lips moving. What was she saying?

"I want to find my own nail and hang for one hour by myself, if it's on a barn door or the wall of a mosque--as long as I am by myself."

Then the picture faded, to give place to another in which she saw herself sitting in the moonlight beside Ben Kelham; the honest, slow, lovable man standing at that very moment a grim picture of despair, divided only by a curtain from her, through whom, indirectly, he had killed his friend.

What was she saying to him in this dream-picture?

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

What was he saying in reply?

". . . You will learn your lesson all right, dear, and suffer a bit, dear, but you will come to me in the end."

She suddenly knelt and plunged her hand down into the water, breaking the smooth surface into a thousand miniature waves which turned, as she stared, into the mocking smiles of her acquaintances and friends; and she knelt quite still until the surface was once more smooth, out of which, as she stared, looked the tragic face of the dead man's mother and the grief-stricken, shamed face of her beloved G.o.dmother.

The gossip, the scandal, with her name linked as lover to that dead man; the chuckles, the sly lifting of eyebrow and pursing of lips when it should be known that the other man, the dead man's greatest friend, had come upon them unawares, alone in the tent at night?

The story of this struggle, the shooting of the treacherous friend--for who would believe the story, told by the princ.i.p.als in the drama, of a wounded lion which had turned and disappeared into the night?

There would be the inquest, the inquiry, the arrest for murder and the trial, in which she and all those she loved would be pilloried, through her fault, in the eyes of the world.

She stared down at the water, which seemed to hold her hands in the icy grip of death--her hands--look! what was that?--what had happened to them?

They were spotted with red!

She tore at her handkerchief and rubbed them; under the water, rubbed hard, rubbed frantically, but the red spots were there on her hands, on her handkerchief, on the water--the red she had seen when she had looked . . .

She flung the handkerchief from her and rose to her feet, shaking convulsively from head to foot.

Poor child! Half-crazed from horror, light-headed from fatigue and want of food, she had mistaken the reflection of the jewelled Hawk she wore at her breast, thrown by the lamp upon the water, for the stain she had seen and which had looked like a crimson rose above the heart of Hugh Carden Ali, as he lay asleep, with his feet turned towards Mecca.

"G.o.d!" she prayed. "You Who alone can save me and--everyone--from shame; You Who can hide me from--Ben--show me a way out--show me a way out!" And as she repeated the words, the answer came.

"Of course," she whispered. "Right out in the desert, out on the sands, alone with my shame, where, when this has been forgotten, perhaps all that will be left of me will be found by some wandering Bedouin, who will bury me deep in the sand."

She was genuinely remorseful and horrified at what she had done, but also was she, as are so many of us who do not really feel deeply, pleasurably thrilled at the thought of the dramatic picture in which she should be the centre figure.

If only men knew it, that is why so many women create such terrific scenes over nothing at all--it gives them a chance of donning their most effective gown and pulling their hair--if their own--down about their shoulders.

Not even then did she grasp the full meaning of love!

She parted the curtain at the back of the room of prayer, and looked out across the desert and behold! standing upon the tips of slender feet, wrapped about in binding cloths of grey and white, there stood a figure.

And the wind of dawn, upon whose wings are wafted the liberated souls into the safe keeping of Allah, who is G.o.d, lifted for one instant the veil from before the face.

Just for a moment she looked upon the eyes alight with no earthly happiness and the tender mouth smiling in farewell, and then the wind lifted the soft cloth of grey and white and bound it across the hawklike face.

Half-turned, the figure stood with beckoning hand outstretched. And to the girl was granted the Vision of the Legions at Dawn.

There was no sound in all the limitless desert, yet the air was filled as with the tramp of feet, the thunder of horses, the rumble of wheels.

They came from nowhere, those countless legions, from out of the shadows of the spent night. They walked in phalanxes, the uncountable spirits of dead kingdoms, with eyes uplifted to the dawn; spears raised, mouths open, with their shouts of welcome to the break of day, they rode their horses thundering down the path of Time; they drove their four-horsed chariots straight towards the cup of gold which rested on the rim of the world.

They come from nowhere, those countless legions, from out the shadows of the spent night; they journey over the ordained path which they have trod since the beginning of time, which has no beginning, and which they will tread unto the end of all time which shall have no end.

And, laughing or sobbing, hoping, despairing, we shall fall in as our line pa.s.ses and go marching along with them, marching along, until we came to the place where "_the shadow of the G.o.d is like a ram set with lapis lazuli, adorned with gold and with precious stones_."

"Wait for me."

The whisper was just a part of the shadows, as the girl turned her face to the East.

Wrapped in her satin cloak, she walked wearily on and on. Her eyes were wide open, staring in a terrible fatigue; she saw nothing; her heelless slippers were torn to shreds, her feet were bleeding; she felt nothing. Not once did she look up or back or round. Had she done so, she might have noticed that her footprints in the sand were describing a circle, as our footprints do when we are lost in the bush or the desert.

The shadows had gone, and the sands stretched a carpet of rose and grey and gold before her; the sky a canopy of blue and grey and purple above.

Like a lighthouse of Hope, Day was flas.h.i.+ng his golden beams across the sky, a message to the weary who have toiled through the night.

And then, with one great leap he sprang clear of the horizon, just as Damaris stopped.

She looked back in the direction in which she thought she had come.

There was no sign of the tents; there could not be; they were not out of sight, but merely wrapped in the mist which, sometimes rises as a fog in the desert at dawn.

"Let me die soon! let me die soon!"

A great sob shook her as she prayed the prayer of the weak. How much easier is it to stand at the window, with the police battering at the door, and, stimulated by its morbid interest, blow out our brains before the gaping crowd--which will, by the way, take exactly the same morbid interest in the shooting of a horse in the street--than to retire into the silence of the prison-cell or seclusion of the tideless backwater, and there work out our salvation amongst those who do not know if our name is Smith or Jones or Brown--and much less care!

In the intensity of her prayer she clasped her hands upon the jewelled symbol upon her breast and looked up.

From out of the west, cleaving the air like a thrown spear, flying straight towards the sun in greeting, there came a hawk. Up, up it sped, as though to pierce the very heavens; then hovered, wheeled and swooped downwards above the girl. She flung out her arms as its symbol struck through her clouded senses, and unconsciously called the "Luring Call" she had heard but once, when she had first seen the man, who lay asleep in the tent, in the market-place of the Arabian quarter in Cairo.

Sweet and clear her voice rose through the morning air, rising until the bird caught the sound and, just as she swayed and fell, swooped.

Down it came, straighter than a shaft of rain; swept across her like the wind; rose; and sailed away.

There was no call to bring it back now. The falconer who had thrown it, as was the custom, at sunrise, was upon his knees with his forehead upon the ground, in sign of a great grief, taking no notice of his master's favourite _shahin_ which he had petted and trained. It flew towards the rising sun; it flew away; it was never seen again.

Perhaps, after all, had it heard its master's call?

CHAPTER x.x.xIII