The Hawk of Egypt Part 34

He spared her not one jot as he made plain to her what might be the result of her marriage. She would not be marrying the pure-bred son of a splendid race, as his mother had done; she would be the wife of a half-caste, the mixed off-spring of two great races; her children would be half-castes, outcast from their rightful heritage of the sons of the East and the West. The women of her race would not own her, the women of his father's race would not permit her children to play with theirs.

Wealth, palaces, camels, horses, jewels would be hers; a place for her children in the seat of his fathers, or her fathers, _never_.

"I should be strong, I should be strong, for in my heart something tells me that I am thinking of my happiness and not thine."

"Your mother," whispered Damaris, so softly that he had to bend, his head lower still, so that when she moved, in the pain of his arms which crushed her, her cheek brushed his. "_She_ is happy--everyone says so."

Happy! Yes, she was happy, his beloved, most honoured mother; at least she had been, until there had come the question of her child's happiness, her half-caste child!

Then he laughed, joyfully, stretched the girl's arms wide, then crushed her hands above her heart.

"Of course! of course!" he cried. "They are at my House 'an Mahabbha, the House of Love, even now, where they have met to see if they, the dears, thy wise old G.o.dmother, my beautiful wise mother, can find an answer to this very question."

They were not. Sick with suspense, they had landed on the far side of the Nile, on their race with Time to the Gate of To-morrow.

"We will go to them to-morrow, thou and I. To the Gate of To-morrow, thou with the mare Pi-Kay, I with the stallion Sooltan, who will well-nigh kill thy mare, my woman, in jealousy. Yea!" He bent and whispered in her ear so quietly, so coldly as to cause the girl to tremble. "As I will kill anyone who looks at thee when thou art my wife."

Then he laughed like a boy as he swung her round and held her at arm's-length by both hands. "We will start to-morrow to meet them, when we will lay the question before them. And then--and then--why------?"

Damaris, with all the smart of the wound to her pride revived, had shaken her head.

"I want you--I want you--to------"

Hugh Carden Ali understood by the grace of intuition.

"We will start for Khargegh to-morrow," he continued after a little pause. "And at the same time--if it will please thee, with thy consent--I will send my swiftest runner to Luxor, where he will despatch by cable the news of--oh! my beloved!--of our engagement--Allah! what a word to describe the opening of the gates of Paradise--to all the great cities of my country and of thy country. Have I thy consent?"

Incapable of speech, Damaris nodded; having cast the die, she trembled like a leaf; and at the sight of her, white, with big, frightened eyes staring at him and teeth driven into her lip, he took her in his arms.

"Thou art mine, beloved, mine as thou hast been in all the past, as thou wilt be in all the ages to come. All mine, thy heart, thy soul, thy body. I ask to gather no pebble from the path nor flower from the tree; I will have the jewelled necklace of thy beauty to hang above my heart, and the grove of thy sweetness in which to take my rest. I love thee, and for the agony of the hours pa.s.sed in the ruined temples I will take my reward. I love thee, love thee, love thee!"

She made no sound when he bent and kissed her hair, but in the glory of the love which is that of youth, which is as a bud at dawn, the full flower at noon and a few petals at dusk, and of which the fragrance stays with you down all the ages, she raised her face so that he kissed her on the mouth.

And he kissed her closed eyes and the pillar of her throat and the whiteness of her shoulders, and her crimson mouth again and yet again, in the wonder of this, his hour of life, granted him by Allah who is G.o.d; and then raised his head and stared out across the desert.

From a great distance there came to him the drumming of a horse's hoofs upon the sand.

CHAPTER x.x.x

"_The true, strong, and sound mind is the mind that can embrace equally great things and small._"

SAMUEL JOHNSON.

The two wise women had long since left Khargegh.

By special train, by special boat, by aid of runners, telephone and telegraph, but above all by the magic of the Sheikh el-Umbar's name and his wife's unlimited distribution of gold, Olivia d.u.c.h.ess of Longacres and her maid and Jill el-Umbar and her maid arrived at the hotel on the night of the full moon.

They would have arrived before sunset if it had not been for the mistake made about the special steamer which had kept them waiting at the quay; they would not have arrived until twenty-four hours later if they had made use of the ordinary train and boat.

"Can't we go faster, ma'am? Can't we get there quicker?"

It was Maria Hobson, stolid, solid, dour, big-hearted woman with a streak of Scotch blood in her veins, who worried outwardly. If you had watched her out of the corner of your eye you would have seen her shake her fist at the desert; if you had walked behind her on the quay you would have heard her say, with a world of entreaty in her voice, to some terrified, non-understanding _fellah_ who quaked at the knee: "Can't you get a move on, somehow? You're only a heathen, to be sure, but if you'd heard the tone in the young lady's voice you'd do something instead of sal-aaming."

She said very little to her beloved mistress, but to Jill she poured out her heart, and Jill who with the intuition of a mother's love had connected the dream with her son let her repeat her tale over and over again.

". . . Just as though she was standing on a precipice and frightened of falling over was her voice like, Mum, Miss Jill--may I call you Miss Jill? It's more familiar-like and--homely, and I know you will excuse me, Miss Jill, if I say that I can't get used to you in those clothes, pretty as they are and becoming to you. It seems to me like fancy-dress, you with a veil over your face, if you will excuse me saying so. You are just the same to me and my lady as when you came to stay with her grace; and glad I for one shall be when I see the barouche waiting for her at Victoria, with Whippup and his powdered head on the box. I don't mind that young chauffeur with one leg lost in the war, but I don't like that wicked-looking red vermilion motor-car of her grace's, though the slum-folks do, and you should hear them cheer, Miss Jill, when it goes down Shadwell way."

This conversation took place on the quay whilst her grace was absent, trying to still the unaccountable fear with which her heart had been filled by her maid's dream, by talking to the little brown urchins who swarmed about her the better to view the bird.

"What do you think of them, Dekko old fellow?" She took him on her wrist, at which he spread his tail, rattled his wings, and puffed his ruff, whereupon the children fled, yelling. "Come now, say something nice to the poor little things. You've frightened them. Ask them if the boat is ready."

Dekko gave a sudden piercing screech:

"You d.a.m.ned, dirty lot!" he yelled. "You----"

And some doubted the bird's sojourn on a sailing-vessel in the full-rigged, full-mouthed days of 1840!

Her grace rapped the razor-edged beak sharply and returned to the other two just in time to hear her maid's answer to some question:

"Sergeant O'Rafferty of the Irish Guards, Miss Jill. He demeaned himself by marrying a _bar_maid, miss."

As already mentioned, love and marriage had pa.s.sed Maria Hobson by.

Arrived at the hotel, their spirits went up with a bound.

What had come to them out there in the desert town? Had they all been stricken with some dreadful depression? Of course the child was safe in this laughing, dancing, happy throng, and at the sight of her G.o.d-mother she would leave her partner and run to her; would throw her arms about her, and hug her in her loving way.

Owing to the crowds of people and the crush of cars, little if any notice had been taken of their arrival; the luggage was coming up later.

"Wait a minute here, Hobson," had said her grace. "Jill, come and see if you can recognise Damaris by the picture you saw of her--the prettiest girl in Egypt!"

They stood at the side door of the ballroom and scanned the laughing couples sitting in rows in the throes of the cotillon. Ellen Thistleton, with the royal asp of ancient Egypt with a slight list to starboard above her heated countenance, stood alone in the middle of the room, with a gla.s.s of champagne in one hand.

Before her stood Mr. Lumlough and the colonel for whom the gilded asp was being worn at such a rakish angle.

She stood for quite some seconds in her conspicuous position, as though debating within herself upon the choice. As Mr. Lumlough subsequently remarked to his panting partner, in his customary slang, "She had a nerve!"

Then, with head on one side, she coyly handed the Veuve Clicquot to the thankful young man, and allowed herself to be gathered to the heart of the portly, jubilant colonel, who, loving her, saw the jaunty gilded asp as a nimbus around her head.

Of Damaris there was no sign, and the old lady's heart, through some unaccountable terror, seemed as if it would sink into her small crimson shoes, though outwardly she showed no sign of the fear that gripped her.

"I expect she has gone upstairs, or out into the grounds to give Wellington a run--I don't see him anywhere. Come, Hobson; give me your arm to the lift."

A deep growl welcomed them as the maid opened the sitting-room door and switched on the light as the ladies entered. Wellington lay near the balcony window, head on paws, with the book his mistress had given him between his teeth. He rose slowly, very slowly, eyes red, ruff bristling round the spiked collar, growling menacingly.