The Hawk of Egypt Part 17

A woman could keep a poultry-farm till the last trump, and even then never awake to the fact that the same brand of corn is appreciated both by the goose and the gander!

And, sure enough, something happened to decide her grace before the setting of the sun.

CHAPTER XIV

"_Oh! for a falconer's voice to lure This ta.s.sel gentle back again_."

SHAKESPEARE.

Lunch, desultory shopping and tea with friends in Cairo had been the order of the afternoon following the dawn which had found her grace at the window trying to come to a decision about her G.o.d-daughter. They were just returning from these festivities and were negotiating the last cross-roads of the Sharia Abbas when a native policeman, waving his arm like a semaph.o.r.e, stepped into the slowly-moving stream of traffic.

Resulted the usual maelstrom of motors, native vehicles, stray animals and trams, in which tossed the native pedestrian as, agile and vociferous, he slipped in and out of the block, calling loudly upon Allah in his extremity.

"A native wedding, or something," said Damaris, who was driving. "What fun!" then blushed divinely pink.

There was one gorgeous mounted figure in the laughing, happy, tumultuous crowd which came whirling across the road kept clear for it by the police.

Hugh Carden Ali had gone a-hawking in a certain part of the desert near the ancient City of On, where gazelle is sometimes seen and birds are plentiful.

Clad in orange satin a-s.h.i.+ne with jewels, with tight-fitting Eastern trousers ending in perfect riding-boots, with diamond osprey glittering in the white turban and falcon, with jesse to match the orange coat, on gauntleted wrist, he rode serenely in the cheering throng.

His falconers with their underlings walked on either side of the roan, which fretted and fidgeted at the slowness of the pace; the dogs of Billi walked sedately and by themselves; grooms of the kennels led greyhounds on the leash; behind them, almost bursting with importance, came a Persian deftly carrying the cadge, which is a kind of padded stand upon which, hooded and fastened by leashes, the favourite birds are carried to and fro.

At the rear was the birds' van, in which are carted the birds which may or may not be required, also spare parts of the paraphernalia upon which depends the success of this sport, the sport, in truth, of kings!

In the "days that are past" the favourite sport of our own monarchs, especially in the "s.p.a.cious days of great Elizabeth."

The bag was good considering the district, the poles on the servants'

shoulders bending under the weight of two gazelle and countless birds of all sizes and plumage.

A couple of _siyas_ waving the customary horsehair fly-whisk ran shouting before their master; servants surrounded the cortege, armed with sticks which they rattled with good effect upon the s.h.i.+ns of the more venturesome among the spectators as the procession moved slowly, as move all things in the East.

Shouting fiercely, the _siyas_ stopped suddenly in front of her grace's car, arms uplifted, mouths open, then turned in their tracks and sped back to the master who had called them.

The old lady and the girl beside her interchanged never a word as they watched Hugh Carden Ali urge the mare who picked a dainty path through the wondering crowds which opened a way before her. The sun caught the jewels on the man's breast and above his turban and upon the saddle-cloth of the roan mare, and struck fiercely slantwise into the proud, handsome face with the set mouth and the eyes which never once looked in the Englishwomen's direction.

For a full minute he sat immovable, whilst the mare, freed from the fret of the crowd, stood stock-still. In his bearing, in the magnificent picture he made under the flaming skies, there seemed a subtle challenge to the two Englishwomen. All his English nature rose in revolt against the barriers that rose between himself and Damaris, daughter of his mother's race; but, curbing his pa.s.sion with the self-control he had learned in British fields of sport, he remembered that he belonged primarily to his father's land, whose people had three thousand years before held the keys of civilisation in their powerful hands, whilst the people of his mother's land were just about emerging from the primitiveness of the Stone Age.

"_I am the East_!" he seemed to cry in his utter immobility.

Then he turned, beckoned, and gave a sharp order to the bewildered policeman, who salaamed almost to the ground.

Hugh Carden Ali bowed, to the saddle, as the great car shot smoothly forward. There was a smile of welcome on the face of the old woman who had loved his mother; a whole world of welcome in the outstretched hand and a little feeling of thankfulness in her heart; that at last she might get to know the man in time, and, with him, go to visit his mother, or, better still, win his confidence, heal his hurt, and so obviate the tedious journey.

But there was to be no drawing together of the man's wound with the silken threads of sympathy.

He sat like a statue, with his left hand raised in salute,[1] until the Englishwomen had pa.s.sed; then, throwing his falcon, he watched the confused bird's flight in search of the quarry which was not there.

"_Cry aloud to Ali the worker of wonders, From Him thou wilt find help from trouble_."

He quoted the first two lines from the _Ned'i Ali_, the formula used in the East when trouble threatens a falcon, and, touching the mare, pa.s.sed down the Sharia Abbas, whilst the old lady, going in the opposite direction, came to a sudden decision.

[1]In the East the falcon is carried on the right hand.

CHAPTER XV.

"_When he is best he is little worse than a man; and when he is worst, he is little better than a beast_."

SHAKESPEARE.

Even as the frail little old lady sat quietly looking out at the coming of the dawn, Qatim the Ethiopian sat looking with pride round his transformed hovel in the back reaches of the bazaar. Having gathered Zulannah from the gutter where she had been thrown after the dogs had pulled her down, he carried her to his hovel and, believing her to be dead, flung her body on the heap of filthy straw which served him as couch, and then stole back--in fact, six times he made the journey--to the courtesan's great house. He did not argue with himself, he had no theories and most certainly no moral standards: the woman was dead; there were certain things, beautiful, gaudy, glittering things in her house which his heart had always coveted, which had made his fingers to itch and his mouth to water; brute instinct told him to seize the bones before the other dogs fell upon them; and he obeyed the brutish impulse.

Hundreds of soft silken gowns; cus.h.i.+ons of every hue; the great crimson cover from off the divan--all of these he made into a huge bundle which he carried to his den. The gold and jewelled toilet accessories, the silver basin and ewer, just because they glittered, he tied in a pair of emerald green satin curtains; various strange knives and things with p.r.o.ngs, with which on certain occasions the courtesan had conveyed food to her mouth--she used her fingers in private--with a jewel-encrusted _nargileh_ of marvellous workmans.h.i.+p, he rolled up in a bright yellow and green Kidderminster carpet.

On his fifth journey he carried a small Milner safe upon his back, letting it drop gently upon the hovel floor without the slightest acceleration in his breathing. For five minutes he played with the k.n.o.b, like a huge monkey, then grinned, rubbed his chest and bull-neck with straw, and padded off again down the circuitous streets at a gentle trot.

He looked at the sky and at the closed doors and windows of the packed houses, and grinned again. He could not tell the hour by a clock, but he knew to a second when the first of the seething ma.s.s of humans asleep on the beds and floors and stairs of the packed houses would yawn, rub the sleep from their eyes and stumble, s.h.i.+vering, into the street. He had still his greatest treasure to bring, and had no wish to be caught with it on his back; not because of the criminality of his proceedings--that never once entered his thick skull--but because he was scared of having the mirror reft from him. He was almost devoid of brain, but had a certain animal instinct which served him in good stead and which, in this instance, urged him to keep his part in the history of the past evening to himself. He picked up the full-length mirror as though it had been a small picture, and stood for an instant grinning cheerfully, looking round the room in which his mistress had so often kicked and threatened him.

Then he gave a little click at the back of his throat, placed the mirror on the floor and stole across the Persian carpet of an unknown antiquity and value to a painted deal writing desk which had once reposed in a shop window in Westbourne Grove; and which, on account of its little drawers and little cupboards with painted doors, had given intense joy to the woman whose wealth in hard cash in the bank and jewels in the safe was almost incredible. He lifted the slanting lid, moved a bundle of papers fastened by an elastic band, and pulled out a drawer out of which be took a cheque-book.

He had no idea of the real use of the book with the buff cover and pale pink leaves, but he knew that you had only to make certain black marks on one of the pink leaves and take it to the big house in the Sharia Clot Bey with its fierce man standing in front of the door and money would be given in exchange.

On account of his cunning, his stolidity, his mighty muscle and ferocious appearance Qatim had been made bank-messenger in chief to the House of Zulannah, and had often stood at his mistress's side when she had taken the cheque-book from the drawer and made strange black marks on one of the pink leaves. True, he had rolled his eyes and shown his teeth fiercely many a time at the interpreter who had had to be called to explain that, although he had handed a pink leaf through the bars, there was no money forthcoming; but as his mistress had not struck him for returning empty-handed he had resigned himself at last to the strangeness of the proceedings. The book meant money, that was all he knew; so he slipped it into his loin-cloth as had been his rather distressing habit when handed a bundle of notes by the bank-clerk who, with his co-workers, had never tired of gazing at the gigantic creature in white shorts, crimson tunic, huge turban and rattling scimitar.

He gave no thought to the dead body on the filthy straw; that he knew he could carry under his arm and drop into the Nile when the bazaar slept; but he pulled hard at his curly hair as a plan germinated in the sluggish convolutions of his brain.

It was a very vague and a very childlike plan, but too much could not be expected from one who had been conceived, born and bred on the animal plane.

After an hour's pondering it, however, took a fairly definite outline.

When the sun had warmed the cool wind of night he would hide the body under the straw and visit his eunuch twin, who had really been the cause of the disaster. His silence would have to be bought. Of course it would have been better to have broken his neck at once, but it was too late now, so there was no use in worrying! Then he would go terrorise the servants, giving them to understand that he had been left in charge in his mistress's absence; he would remain in charge until he had acquired enough money to buy the coal-black little Venus who worked in the Shoemakers Bazaar; after that he would creep away with her and return to his own village further down the Nile.

And because, perhaps, of the childishness of the plan it succeeded up to a certain point.

He found his eunuch brother, who was the only one besides his master and himself to know that the dancer had been Zulannah, in the grip of such terror and physical pain as to be almost imbecile, though a look of cunning had shone for a moment in his bloodshot eyes when Qatim had inadvertently let drop a hint as to the acc.u.mulated riches in his hovel.

Anyway, they came to an understanding which ensured the eunuch's silence at the price of so much good money, paid in instalments.

Qatim had no intention of holding to his side of the agreement, nor his brother to his--as is the way of such breed of Oriental.