CHAPTER XVIII

"_A handful of meal in a barrel, and a little oil in a cruse_."

I KINGS.

Whilst Damaris was trying to soothe her wounded pride at Karnak, Ben

Kelham was suffering the tortures of the nethermost pit down Assouan

way.

His heart was not in "lion" at all, it was literally at Damaris' feet.

He had not rushed away in pique after her refusal of him on the night

of the fancy-dress ball; nor with any vague idea of causing her to

regret her decision in realising the vacuum, in her existence which his

absence might make. He had not an ounce of subtlety or vanity in his

nature. He had gone because he thought it would be the decent thing to

do as far as she was concerned, and also to hide his hurt and

disappointment, which were deep. The rumour of lion was genuine and

the excitement, extending far down the Nile, intense. In fact, with

the aid of the Oriental's prodigal imagination the one royal beast of

feminine persuasion which was reported as having been seen prowling

around Deir el-Bahari had been multiplied to two pairs ravaging the

outskirts of Assouan.

He sat drinking coffee with jolly Sybil Sidmouth and her nerve-stricken

stepmother in the lounge of the Savoy Hotel in Assouan just at the

moment when Damaris sat herself down on the broken column in the

Hypostyle Hall.

"Jolly bad luck we've had, haven't we?" said Sybil.

Kelham nodded his head. The last post had come in, with nothing for

him but a few letters from home.

"Yes, rotten!" he replied after a moment. "She _might_ have sent me a

line."

Sybil's stepmother moved restlessly in her chair.

Ridden with nerves, she was also mother of twin-daughters neurotic and

plain who, sered by nature and yellowed by time and on the wrong side

of the matrimonial hedge, had been only too glad to foist her on to the

plump shoulders of jolly, capable, pretty Sybil and to get rid of them

both for the winter.

In the last week or so a sprouting of hope had pierced the matchmaking

soil in the querulous lady's really well-intentioned heart, for, like

the proverbial half-loaf, a step-son-in-law is distinctly better than

none at all.

But Sybil only smiled at the absent-mindedness of the young man's

remark.

For weeks she had been the recipient of his confidences. He had

dragged her, suffocating, down into the mud-depths of the diffidence in

which he wallowed; had tugged her, gasping, to the Olympian heights

from which he viewed a world of love, all rosy-red; had flung her,

well-nigh senseless from exhaustion, upon the saw-teethed rocks of

despair; and had taken her paddling in the wash of his vapourings.

She was absolutely heart-whole, with a firm belief in the "lion"

rumour, and later, long after the end of this story, became the jolly,

popular wife of the great eye-specialist to whom she had rushed when,

after a soul-shaking scene with her step-sisters, she had missed the

target entirely at Bisley.

As it happened, the duchess had written, but in a moment of most

unusual aberration had put Khartoum on the envelope instead of Assouan,

so that it was months, long after the end of this story, that the

letter reached him. Strange is it how the lives of men are wrecked or

made through the most trivial happenings.

The grain of dust in the eye; the mudbank in the river; the hen in the

road! Just think of the outcome of such insignificant incidents.

The last letter he had received had been written in Heliopolis on the

eve of her grace's sudden decision; the one that had gone astray had

been mailed in Luxor, and had contained the request that, when he had

shot the lion he would take the carcase or the skin as a present to

Damaris at the Winter Palace Hotel and wait there until her return from

the Oasis of Khargegh.

There was no doubt about the fact that he was genuinely in love.

Lion or no lion in the vicinity, he would sit dreaming for hours

amongst the rock tombs at full noon or fall of evening or by the light

of the sickle-moon; a perfectly absurd proceeding where big game is

concerned. Food or sleep meant nothing to him, so that his usual

good-temper was sharpened and his undoubted good looks enchanced by a

certain romantic gauntness under the cheek-bone. People seemed as

ghosts to him, so absorbed was he in his love and his pain; so that his

act of rising when Mrs. Sidmouth took what she thought to be a

diplomatic departure was purely mechanical.

Then Sybil laughed, a jolly, ringing laugh, and laid her hand upon his

arm.

"Why don't you run up to Heliopolis?"

"By jove, Sybil, that's an idea. You come along, too. Damaris would

love to meet you; you're just her sort. Besides, there's nothing doing

in lion here, it's only a yarn. Let's pack to-night and get off

to-morrow. I'll go and see if we can get a private steamer--can't

stick a public one, stopping every other minute to look at tombs!"

Sybil laughed.

"We'll go, Ben, it will be ripping. But to-morrow! How exactly like a

man!"

Ben was contrite. He thought Sybil travelled with a kit-bag and her

guns; he had forgotten Mamma.

Mamma protested. She was an invalid, with all an invalid's

paraphernalia.

They started after the passing of a week in which Mrs. Sidmouth had a

series of nerve-storms, and in which Sybil, to pass the time, wrote a

four-page letter to Ellen Thistleton, which she duly received at

breakfast.

They certainly did not stop en route to look at temples or tombs, but

they made quite a long halt on the sandbank just above Luxor, onto

which boats of all sizes and shapes so often run. The loss of time is

irritating enough, goodness knows, in ordinary travelling and occurs

quite frequently, but when one is love-driven and this maddening delay

happens, then you have to make as big an exercise of self-control as

when you rush onto the platform only to see the guard's van of your

train disappearing into the tunnel.

And surely the gods laughed long and loud when Damaris chose that very

day to return by public steamer from Denderah where she had been to

visit the Temple of Hathor the Egyptian Aphrodite.

CHAPTER SIX

"_But still his tongue ran on, the less

Of weight it bore, with greater ease_."

BUTLER.

Lady Thistleton's daughters were exhaustively energetic. It belied

their colouring, which was dun and which, though of the same family, is

distinct from mousey. It has infinitely more vim and a vast endurance

and a great patience; also is it sullen and boring, but reliable.

Ellen, the elder, had been engaged to a younger son of The Inverness of

Inverness. His colouring, except of course for the eyes, which were of

a snapping blue, reminded one of a tomato salad dressed with chilis and

smothered in mustard-sauce. His temper corresponded. They had fought

over everything until they had smashed their engagement.

Berenice was engaged to a parson in Edinburgh, one of the

Smythe-Smythes of London. She made a doormat of herself, loving the

herculean minister, and, though longing to stay at home and get

married, had, at her lover's earnest request, consented to accompany

her mother and sister to Egypt instead.

To his fervent mind the loss of a few months of married life would be

compensated for by the biblical discourses upon the Land of Moses with

which, later on, as his wife, she would be able to enliven Mother's

Meetings.

They admired Damaris a lot, though her independence and colouring

shocked them not a little. In the seclusion of the double bedroom, as

they brushed or twisted their lanky locks in Hindes', they whispered

about her love-affair, which had presumably gone agley, and thrilled

with a distinct feeling of wrong-doing over the gossip anent the

mythical Sheikh.

If they had asked Damaris about the myth, she would have told them

everything quite simply and truthfully. This would have cleared up the

mist but spoilt the feeling of wrong-doing.

Lady Thistleton was large and recumbent and averse to sight-seeing, but

after a heart-to-heart talk with her daughters had seen to it that

Damaris had no time for moping.

Damaris went here, there and everywhere; played tennis; paid

duty-calls, as you must when somebody extends her wing-feathers as

shelter; acted in charades; attended concerts; and was thoroughly

miserable.

Jane Coop was miserable too; so was the bulldog, and, through a certain

unconfessed and indefinable vigilance they both felt called upon to

exercise in behalf of their beloved mistress, were distinctly nervy.

"Drat the men!" had said the maid, giving pithy verbal expression to

the ragged state of her nerves as she cut the stalks of the beautiful

flowers which came daily without name or message. The dog's method of

expressing himself was somewhat more violent; it consisted of the

sudden seizure between his great teeth of the posterior portion of the

nether garments of low-caste males, white or coloured.

You could almost tell the status of the male bipeds by casting a

discreet eye upon their raiment, and as there was not a muzzle in Egypt

big enough to fit the dog, it had ended in him being led or chained in

polite society.

Damaris's table was next that of the Thistletons, who, with a vague

memory maybe of their duty towards their neighbour as instilled on

Sundays into their rebellious infantile heads, chatted brightly to

right and to left of them at meals.

Full of the milk of human kindness, they allowed it to overflow into

their writhing neighbours' jugs.

They broke through the glacial atmosphere which surrounds the

Britisher's breakfast-table; newspaper propped against jam-pot was no

barrier; their gladsome invitations or suggestions, dammed for the

moment, would rise at last level with the paper's edge to trickle down

the other side and mingle with the eggs and bacon, porridge, kidneys,

or whatever trifle the plate might contain.

They read out scraps of news from the morning paper; they read out bits

of home news from their stacks of correspondence, written for the most

part on eight pages and in the sprawling, uncontrolled script of the

woman who has nothing but trivialities with which to fill her day.

Their blood was blue, their upbringing beyond suspicion; they simply

erred through a too-generous supply of the above-mentioned

philanthropic fluid.

They had come home dead-beat the night before, but were first down to

breakfast, as happy as could be at the thought of the strenuous day

before them, and were ostentatiously comparing their books of notes or

jottings when Damaris came in. They went everywhere with note-books in

their hands, and made entries at the most inconvenient moments during

their journey. To you or me they would have seemed but jottings, but

Berenice could have read you a blank-verse love-poem in the thick

markings of her fountain-pen; and Ellen a _De Profundis_ from the

hieroglyphics and inscriptions copied by her scratchy stylo and under

which she essayed to bury the memory of the tomato-hued Inverness.

Damaris slid into her seat with an inward prayer that she might be

allowed time to read her mail, which consisted of a fat letter from her

godmother and a bulky one from home. "Perhaps _Marraine_ will be back

soon," she thought, opening the other letter first, as is a way with us

perverse humans. Enclosed was an atrociously-written letter to her

mother from her plain-as-a-pikestaff brother, written from Harrow.

". . . it's awfully jolly," wrote the enthusiastic youngster, "being in

Ben Kelham's house. They still talk about his last house-match against

Bumbles. Don't you remember I'd just got over mumps and we went down

for it? Bumbles had six to win and ten minutes to do it in when Howard

was bowled, and Carden, their captain, went in and drove right over the

Pav. He won the match by one, don't you remember? And then Kelham

caught him magnificently in the slips just as time was up."

Damaris looked at a bunch of jasmine lying beside her plate, and sighed

as she opened her godmother's letter; then sighed again, more

profoundly.

The duchess had arrived at Khargegh without mishap. She described the

journey, gradually ascending through the desert, then down through the

narrow valley of rocks--the wastes of rock and gravel--the beautiful

valley--the great plain to Mahariq-Khargegh with its date-palms, its

filthy lanes, its mosques, with the limestone hills almost surrounding

it.

"And we can't get any further, my dear. A report has come of the

appearance near here of a notorious robber gang which has infested the

desert farther south for years. I don't believe it myself--Hobson is

furious, as the hotel we are in is not totally devoid of--shall I call

them mosquitoes?--but the authorities refuse to allow us to proceed. I

have sent a runner through to the friend I was going to see."--Damaris

touched the jasmine at her side and sighed. "I will tell you the whole

history when I return. So sad, my child; so very tragic. She may come

to see me, as the authorities have no power over her. She is staying

at her eldest son's house until his return. I will let you know my

movements as soon as I can. Enjoy yourself. Dekko is very quiet; he

is either apprehensive or going to moult."

Damaris smiled spasmodically when, as she put the letter down under the

jasmine, her neighbours let off a broadside.

The head dragoman wanted to get up a party for Deir el-Bahari on the

morrow. He had twenty pairs of donkeys, all of which were so

accustomed, it seemed, to going about in a bunch that they refused to

move a step if one pair was missing. Nineteen pairs had been filled

from the different hotels, one pair was still minus riders. Would

Damaris make a couple with Mr. Lumlough?

Mr. Lumlough, who was of the raw age of nineteen and who worshipped in

secret at the girl's shrine, blushed divinely salmon-pink and coughed.

Damaris shook her head.

She longed to see the Temple, as she longed to go to Denderah, but not

in a crowd; also, she longed to confide all her secrets (of which her

visit to the Temple of Amnon was not one of the least) to her

godmother. She was just the slightest bit scared, and, being very

young, felt incapable of prescribing for her burnt finger-tips.

She had only to keep away from the fire, but, as I have already said,

she was very young.

"Do, Damaris! We are taking our lunch on donkeys, as well."

"But why not let the empty pair go without riders? Or let Mr. Lumlough

go on one and let the other trot by its side without anyone? I'm sure

it would love a holiday."

No! These twenty pairs of donkeys belonged to an asinine Trades Union.

The twenty pairs went together or not at all; they went up the steep

hill with a human being on their backs or not at all; if one solitary

moke out of the forty trades-unionists should be asked to climb a hill

with nothing on its back, it would not move one step--no, not if the

most luscious carrot feast awaited it at the top; and if it refused to

budge, the thirty-nine others would support it by also refusing to

budge! Yes! even if they held up the whole of the tourist season for

eternity and never again tasted luscious carrot in all the years

allotted to the asinine race. What _is_ the good of customs if you

don't stick to them? The donkeys' parents had always climbed that hill

heavily-laden, and what was good enough for them was also good enough

for their descendants!

"I think it's horrid of you, Damaris. Besides, what are you going to

do all by yourself?" said Ellen, opening a letter bits of which she

proceeded to read out. "Here's a letter from Sybil Sidmouth. She and

Mr. Kelham are having a very poor time sitting about in the rocks and

tombs all day and half the night."

"How romantic!" sighed Berenice. "All alone with Nature in an Egyptian

desert! It reminds me of Omar's Jug and Loaf verse. How does it go?"

She flipped through her notebook. "Ah! here it is." And she proceeded

to read, with appropriate punctuation with her tea-spoon on the edge of

her saucer:

"A book of verses underneath the bough

A jug of wine, a loaf of bread, and Thou

Beside me, singing in the wilderness;

O, wilderness were Paradise enow!"

She looked up, suddenly, surprised and indignant, at Ellen, who had

kicked her violently under the table; then she tried to cover up her

confusion at her unfortunate _faux pas_.

"Mrs. Sidmouth, of course, is far from well," she continued. But Ellen

broke in, in her high staccato and appalling French:

"_Revenons à nos moutons_--or at least, our donkeys." She looked at

Damaris, who, with over-bright eyes, laughed whole-heartedly at the

feeble joke. "Do change your mind, Damaris. The guide is Yussuf, the

very best, you know. Besides, we _might_ see the lion."

"All right," said Damaris, tucking the jasmine into the belt of her

white dress, which she had never done before. "I'll come. Twenty

pairs of donkeys climbing up a hill will be an awfully funny

sight,--don't you think so, Mr. Lumlough?"

She smiled across at Mr. Lumlough, who was thereupon transported to the

portals of the seventh heaven with a piece of toast and marmalade in

his right hand.