CHAPTER XX

"_I was never less alone than when by myself_."

GIBBON.

Next morning, with her chaperon's energetic daughters, Damaris found

herself one of the herd foregathered on the Nile bank preparatory to

the excursion to the Valley of the Kings, and later in the afternoon by

mountain path over the ridge to that marvel of antiquity the

Terrace-Temple of Deir el-Bahari.

"I don't want to go, Janie dear," she said, the preceding night, whilst

the devoted maid wielded strong-bristled brushes on the burnished

short-cropped hair.

"Better go, dearie. One must be polite, even if the heart breaks."

Jane Coop's literary plane swung between a three-penny weekly entitled

"Real Stories from High Life" and Ouida's novels, which latter she had

bought second-hand in the Charing Cross Road and kept sandwiched

between her Bible and "Grandmother's Herb Recipes."

"But I don't want to go. I hate crowds, and I can't take Wellington.

Every native flies from him since he got behind the Musical Colossus

and growled. You remember? They thought it was the statue speaking,

and the dear old darling was only trying to catch a lizard."

The bulldog loathed Egypt.

He was always either in disgrace or being talked to in baby language.

He had seen next to nothing of his beloved mistress, and his digestion

had been almost ruined by the amount of chocolates he had eaten out of

pure boredom.

"Take me," he said, every time his beloved went out, as plainly as

could be by means of his beautiful face and down-cast tail. But

excursions had grown rarer and rarer and his slender middle more and

more defined through grief.

"My heart isn't breaking, Janie!" Damaris declared, sitting up in bed.

"I know it isn't, dearie. There's nothing to break it over, _I'm_

sure. I was just repeating from 'Her Scarlet Sin', where the beautiful

heroine is torn between two stools as it were."

Jane Coop had no use for knights who left the field of combat; and as

for the tales which were duly carried to her of an Arabian chief who

followed her young mistress in the desert and sent her bunches of

flowers and such-like trash, well! it was all you could expect if you

left your own country for heathen parts!

To Jane Coop, rides in the desert in Egypt were just as much a part of

the day's programme as rides on donkeys at holiday-time had been in

Margate, before interfering people began to make a fuss about the

rider's weight.

"You mind your own hedges, Maria Hobson, and see that your own cattle

don't go a-straying, with their monkey tricks," she had said tartly and

not over-lucidly, to her grace's maid, who had heard from someone who

had heard from someone else that Miss Hethencourt was out at all hours

of the night, here, there and everywhere. "I know what time she comes

in and where she has been, and who with, and that's quite enough for

me. Thank you, I can shepherd my own flock!"

She was not exactly within the confines of truth in her statement, but

having learned in her youth to diagnose the hurt of dumb animals, she

felt she was fully qualified to treat her beloved child's unrest

without any verbal aid from outsiders.

Yet something, a warning from the future, maybe, had prompted her to

speak this night as she stood beside the bed, looking down upon the

beauty of the child to whom she seemed, more than anyone else, to stand

in the position of sponsor.

"Will you promise me one thing, dearie?"

She stroked the red head lovingly as it leant against the motherly

bosom upon which had so often rested errant lambs and stricken pullets.

"Yes, Janie darling. I would promise you anything!"

"I know things are going crosswise a bit with you, dearie, as they

always do in an unknown country; but I don't worry about that, because

at the crossways there is always a signpost. But now that we are in

this heathen land, I want your promise that you will always tell me

where you are going to when you go out--always. If it's out for a ride

in the desert or over amongst them mummy-tombs, or out to a

tennis-party or dance. Will you, dearie? Always?"

The insistence in the demand made the girl look up into the homely face

and she did not smile as she made a little cross above her heart in the

manner of children.

"I promise, Janie--cross heart. And I'm starting out early-early

to-morrow morning on an excursion to the Tombs of the Kings. We are

taking lunch with us--paper-bags and remnants of sandwiches amongst

Egypt's dead--tea at the Rest House and------"

She stopped for a minute, then continued slowly:

"------and if I don't come back with the rest, Janie dear, don't worry.

It's full moon, and I may stay to see the Temple by moonlight."

A moment's silence; then said practical Jane:

"And as you can't take Wellington, dearie, will you promise to take

your revolver? You know, they say lions have been seen in------"

Damaris laughed.

"They've left, Janie! They're all at Assouan, waiting to be shot by

Mr. Kelham and Miss Sidmouth."

Jane Coop sniffed as she tucked in the bed-clothes and kissed her child

good-night.

She had got to the door when Damaris spoke.

"Janie, you know all about birds, don't you?"

"Hens, dearie."

"Well!" The girl's voice came muffled, as though she had drawn the

sheet about her face. "Supposing a hawk------"

"Hawks aren't hens, dearie."

"Well--hens! Supposing you had a breed of hens that were all--all--oh!

any colour------"

"White Leghorns," said Jane Coop, who was beginning to get interested

in this subject so near her heart.

"Yes. Well, supposing you found that one, when it had all its

feathers, had some speckled ones under its wings----"

"But it couldn't, dearie, if it was pure-bred!"

"Yes, but just supposing it had, what would be the meaning of it?"

Jane Coop hesitated, and re-tied her apron-strings. Descriptive

analysis was not her strong forte.

"Well, dearie, I should say that the male bird was a--a--oh! a Plymouth

Rock, or something like that. The speckled bird would be a good one,

but if it was mixed it would have to be turned out of the run if you

had a fancy for showing and prizes. I remember a black---- But there

now! what made you start your old Nannie talking about hens? Just you

turn over and go to sleep, dearie. You have to be up and away early

to-morrow, you know!"

She closed the door gently and left the girl alone.

"I don't understand," she said softly, and slipped out of bed to stand

at the open window, with all the glory of an Egyptian night before her.

"I _don't_ understand the meaning of the story," she repeated, as she

watched the figure of a _fellah_ wrapped in a big cloak which shone

snow-white under the moon, trudging patiently across the grounds to the

servants' quarters. Then, as the huge dog flung himself against her,

she struck her hands together. The sudden impact sent her mind flying

back to the first time she had seen Hugh Carden Ali, in English

riding-kit and Mohammedan _tarbusch_ in the bazaar; then in her memory

she saw him dining as an Englishman; saw him riding with falcon upon

fist--a very Eastern, saw him as an Arab of Arabia in the desert; again

as an Englishman, save for the Mohammedan _tarbusch_, holding in the

bay mare as she thundered past him on the stallion Sooltan.

In a flash she understood the tragic story of the Hawk of Egypt.

"The pity of it!" she whispered. "Oh! the cruel pity of it!" and crept

back to bed.

* * * * * *

Wide-eyed and quiet, she stood very early next morning with the

jostling, laughing crowd, waiting to be ferried across the Nile on the

excursion to the Tombs of the Kings, which to most of the crowd ranked

on a level with Madame Tussaud's Waxworks, with the difference that in

the valley of desolation you could leave the remnants of your lunch

anywhere, which is a habit strictly forbidden in the Marylebone Road.

Mounting the diminutive donkeys caused peals of laughter; the hamlets

of Naza'er-Rizkeh and Naza'el Ba'irait rang with the cries of the

cavalcade, and Damaris blindly followed Lady Thistleton's energetic

offspring, as with note-book and pencil they followed the guide in and

out of the regulation tombs of Biban el-Muluk, the history of which he

repeated with parrot-like monotony.

Lucy Jones, lighthearted tourist, thought the lunch awfully jolly in

the shade of the tomb, in fact, she made it a riotous feast, with the

help of others as young and non-temperamental as herself.

After all, what did it matter?

As Lucy said, "The dead had been such a jolly long time dead," and the

desolation of the valley made such a splendid contrast to the golden

sunshine and violent blue of the sky.

The zig-zag path down to Deir el-Bahari occasioned more laughter and

little screams and offers of help from the sterner male, who, under an

extreme insouciance, tried to hide the insecurity of his perch on the

back of the humble, scrambling quadruped.

When the laughing, jostling and somewhat dishevelled crowd streamed

back down the second incline and across the Central Terrace, en route

for the donkeys, it left Damaris standing with dancing eyes, and

laughing mouth under the blue and star-strewn ceiling of the Shrine.

And when the last sound of laughter, and clattering stone under nimble

hoof had melted away; when the sky had turned the marble temple mauve

and pink and deepest red, and back to pink, to mauve, to softest white;

when the first star had fastened the robe of day to the cloak of night,

and silence had fallen like balm upon the wound caused by raucous

voices, Damaris tip-toed down the steps and out into the Colonnade of

Punt.

She was quite alone.