The Hawk of Egypt Part 31

Damaris laughed as she took the satin cloak with broad sable collar, then kissed her Nannie and walked down the corridor to her G.o.dmother's sitting-room, followed by the bulldog.

"I don't want to dance, Well-Well; I'd much rather stay up here with you and read."

"Humff!" said the dog, as he followed his beloved onto the small balcony, where he stood as close as he could to her as she leant on the rail, and looked up at the moon and out to the other side of the river, where ruined temple and ruined tomb shone white.

"I'll come up and see you both," she said, looking down into the hideously-beautiful face, with its honest eyes and beaming expression.

"But I can't take you down with me, you know. You might hurl yourself into the middle of a fox-trot to find me. I'll bring you up a cake or a chocolate, if you'll stay in here and not go after Jane to worry her with my night-slippers. Good boy; stay here and wait for Missie."

"Take me with you," said Wellington, as plainly as he could with eyes and tail. "Take me with you."

"Can't, old boy. Look"--she reached inside for a book she had been reading, and laid it on the ground. "Keep that for Missie until she comes back."

She smiled down at the great brute as it placed both forefeet upon the volume, but she sighed as she leant for a moment on the rail, then suddenly drew back as she heard her name mentioned by someone who, hankering after a cigarette, had wandered out to the canvas rocking seat directly beneath the balcony.

". . . Well!" said the masculine voice, "I think it's d.a.m.ned hard lines on Miss Hethencourt, that's all; and a man wants a d.a.m.ned good hiding for being a knave as well as a fool."

"Of course it's not gospel-truth," replied the voice of the hotel's biggest-gossip-bar-none, who, on account of her abnormal interest in other people's affairs, had earned the sobriquet of Paulina Pry, "but some people I know who were at Heliopolis and have just come from a.s.souan told me that Mr. Kelham is engaged to Miss Sidmouth--you know, she is the crack lady-shot--and that they are on their way home now.

The engagement, I should think, will be announced shortly."

"Well, all I can say is that I'm infernally sorry that Miss Hethencourt has been made the b.u.t.t of gossip and scandal through a cad's behaviour, and I think that you and I ought to be shot for discussing her and her very intimate affairs. If------"

Damaris waited to hear no more.

White as chalk, she stumbled back into the room and crouched down upon the floor beside a chair, burying her face in her arms. For five of the longest minutes of her life she knelt, burning with shame, trembling with rage; then she sat hack on her heels.

"Is there n.o.body to help me in all the wide world? n.o.body I can go to?"

And clearly, as though it was in the room, she heard the echo of the words spoken in the Shrine of Anubis, the G.o.d of Death: "Allah! how I love you, and if I may not be your master, I can at least serve you.

If you are in distress, will you send me a messenger to my Tents of Purple and Gold? . . . My boat from sunset to sunrise waits at the landing-stage . . . the mare Pi-Kay waits from the setting until the rising of the sun at the Gate of To-morrow."

She acted on the impulse of her outraged pride; she gave not one thought to the mad thing she was about to do; she stayed not one instant to question the trustworthiness of the man who had so strangely shadowed her since their meeting in the bazaar; she decided in the flick of an eyelid.

She would go to him; she would tell him everything, and if he were then willing to make her his wife, she would go to his English mother, and from the shelter of her arms proclaim her engagement to the world.

Yes! she would run away.

In a flash she thought of her beloved old G.o.dmother and the loving arms always held out to her, and the loving sympathy and counsel which never failed.

But she shook her head.

To silence the scandalmongers her engagement must be made known before that of the man who had treated her so shamefully; who, if only she had known, was racing towards her at that very moment as fast as train could take him.

"Wait for Missie; you shall come to her," she whispered as she knelt and kissed the dog; "you and Janie."

She sprang to her feet.

What about her promise to her old Nannie? Had she not crossed her heart and given her word that she would always let her know where she had gone?

She moved swiftly to the writing-table, took a sheet of paper and hastily wrote a line; then looked round for some place to leave the message.

Wellington whimpered as he stood with his fore-feet on the book.

She ran to him and twisted the folded paper into the steel ring of his collar, hugged him closely, and turned away.

With a lace veil over her head, concealing her face, with the sable-trimmed cloak wrapped close about her, she slipped from the hotel without being recognised, and down to the quay.

Almost uncanny is the intuitive power of the native.

Without hesitation, a boatman stepped forward and salaamed to the ground before her.

"By the sign of the Hawk-headed Harakat."

He repeated the phrase his master had taught him, and which he had repeated over and over again for many days.

And Damaris never once looked back as the boat crossed the blue-green Nile, which, for all she knew, would stretch forever, an impa.s.sable barrier, between herself and those she loved.

Acting as in a dream, she could never clearly recall what happened until she stood at the Gate of To-morrow. She had a vague recollection of crossing the great river, and of being helped out of the boat, and of four gigantic Nubians who stood near a litter and salaamed as she approached; she remembered, too, that the litter was lined and hung with satin curtains and piled with satin cushions, and that she had been carried some distance at a gentle trot which had in no wise disturbed her.

Then it had been gently placed upon the ground, and she had been handed out, to find the _sayis_ of the stallion Sooltan standing salaaming before her, with his hand on the bridle of the snow-white mare, Pi-Kay, the glory of Egypt.

CHAPTER XXVIII

"_He made the pillars thereof of silver, the bottom thereof of gold, the covering of it of purple, the midst thereof being paved with love . . ._"

SONG OF SOLOMON.

Accustomed to the flowing robes of the Arab, it is not as difficult as it might be imagined to break a desert-trained horse to side-saddle; but the mare, Pi-Kay, spoilt and sensitive, behaved like a very demon whilst the _sayis_ exchanged the _ma'araka_, which is the native pad without stirrups, for the lady's saddle. She was not really bad, not she! She was simply a spoilt beauty and inclined to show off, so that every time her big, beautiful eye caught the sheen of the girl's satin cloak, she backed and reared and plunged, but more out of mischief than wickedness. For many days she had been ridden alternately astride and side by the _sayis_, who loved her better than his wife and almost as much as his son; ridden from the Tents of Purple and Gold--and not over-willingly did she go--to the Gate of To-morrow at sunset, to be taken back at a tearing gallop to the Tents, without restraining or guiding hand upon the reins, at sunrise.

It was not sunrise now, and she did not like the person in the shimmering satin who had, in some miraculous way, swung to her back and stayed there; but she was headed in the direction of home, and the moonlight was having just as much effect upon her temperament as it has on that of humans.

A moon-struck horse or a moon-struck camel in the desert is a weird picture and it were wise, as they are for the moment absolutely fey, to give them an extremely wide pa.s.sage.

"Guide her not, lady," shouted the _sayis_ to Damaris, who answered to the movement of the mare like a reed in the wind, but otherwise seemed to take no notice of horse, or man, or moon, or untoward circ.u.mstance; he hung on for a moment to the silken mane and stared up into the girl's unseeing eyes; then, with a ringing shout, let go and jumped nimbly to one side.

There was no backing, no rearing, or vagary of any sort now; the mare started on her journey; broke into a canter; broke into a gallop; then, silken mane and tail flying, thundered back at a terrific speed along the path marked out by her own dainty hoofs, and the relentless feet of that hound, Fate.

Damaris turned in the saddle and looked behind, and then to her right and then to her left.

She was alone in the desert.

The sands, stretched like a silver carpet in front of her and like a silver carpet with the black ribbon woven across it by the mare's feet behind; to the east and west the sandy waste seemed to undulate in great fawn and amethyst and grey-blue waves, so tremendous was the beast's pace; the horizon looked as though draped in curtains gossamer-light and opalescent; the heavens stretched, silvery and cold, as merciless as a woman who has ceased to love.

And then, just as on the far horizon there showed a mound which might have been a hillock of sand or a verdant patch, outcome of precious water, or a slowly-moving caravan of heavily-laden camel, the mare Pi-Kay increased her pace. You would not have noticed it, for it would have seemed to you that she was already all out; but you would--as did Damaris--if you knew anything about horses, have _felt_ it, had you been riding her. It was that last grain of the last ounce by which races are won; the supreme effort of the great sporting instinct, which lies in all thoroughbreds, human or animal; and Damaris, thrilled to the innermost part of her being as she sensed rather than felt the quiver which pa.s.sed through the mare, leant forward and touched the satin neck.