CHAPTER XXXII

"_Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth

Unseen, both when we wake and when we sleep_."

"_Spirits that live throughout

Vital in every part. . . ._"

MILTON.

The light from the silver lamp shone down upon the water in the crystal

basin and upon the girl's red head as she crouched upon her knees

against the leather curtain.

Well might she crouch, well might she have put dust upon her head as do

the Easterns in their grief and shame; well might her voice have wailed

out across the desert in sorrow for the young life broken by the

careless fingers of her heedless youth.

But she knelt without movement, with her face in her hands, the hands

which had so lightly played pitch-and-toss with a man's heart and a

man's life, and prayed desperately, silently, for forgiveness.

Let it be granted her on account of her years, for youth is ever blind,

and the young are ever selfish, giving never a thought to the years

they must spend, when, grey-haired and wise, they will try to repair

with their shaking old hands, the tatters and rents they had made in

their thoughtless, grasping youth.

Strange it is that the old in years, in sorrow and knowledge, will sit

darning the rents and patching the bad places with their trembling

hands, as their wise old heads nod and their dear old mouths murmur a

prayer, and yet be unable to teach the young how to keep the fabric of

life whole, or safeguard it with the lavender of love and good-will

pressed between its folds.

Until the drumming of the sands had sounded like distant thunder and

the shape of the horse and its rider had become distinct to the

desert-trained eye of her desert lover, Damaris remained apprehensive

and silent in the safe refuge of his arms, which crushed her to his

heart; then he lifted her and carried her swiftly to the little room of

prayer lit by the silver lamp and, wresting a promise from her to keep

her presence hidden, no matter what she might hear through the curtain,

kissed her hands one and twice and yet again and left her, drawing the

curtain close.

Horrified, she heard the voice of Ben Kelham; like a statue of fear she

stood, with her ear close to the curtain, for the half of an hour, the

thirty short minutes in which she came to understand at last, clearly,

definitely, that there was only one man in the world for her, and that

was the Englishman who sat with clenched hands under the lash of his

friend's words; and her hand trembled so that the curtain shook as

though blown by the night-wind as she held it back just wide enough to

look through without being seen; and her eyes were soft with gratitude

when she understood the greatness of the sacrifice the man of the East

had laid on the altar of his honour and his friendship and his love.

But her youth had gone from her forever and her heart had been stamped

with the seal of an everlasting regret; her eyes had been filled with a

great questioning which was never to be answered on this earth, when

her scream had been drowned in the crash of the report as the man she

loved had fired, and killed his friend.

Had Hugh Carden Ali really feared for the safety of his friend and

flung himself between him and the wounded beast, or, understanding that

in that way only could peace be obtained for all three, had he

deliberately sought death?

Allah, who is God of all, alone knows the answer, so let us leave it

with Him.

And then, being untried and very young, she slipped to her knees and

fell unconscious, with her face upon her outstretched arms. And there

she lay whilst the silence of the coming dawn fell upon the earth, and

wrapped itself in a soft winding-sheet about him who lay asleep upon

his couch of death, at the foot of which stood his friend, looking down

upon the peaceful face.

Only a few moments had slipped into eternity when Damaris shivered and,

bewildered, not knowing if an hour or a second had passed whilst she

had lain senseless, rose to her knees.

There was no sound.

She sat back and pushed the hair from her forehead; then rose and

tiptoed to the curtain. She put out her hand, and drew back; then,

urged by a desire which clamoured for definite knowledge, parted the

curtain and looked in. She looked for just one second, then staggered

back and back as far as the crystal basin filled with the clear water

which was used in prayer; and she stood with her arms outstretched, and

fingers spread between her eyes, and the picture she herself had

painted in the thoughtlessness of youth, and then swung round, with her

back to the Tent of Death and looked down into the water, and, as

though a veil had been lifted from before her eyes, looked back along

the past, and forward into the future.

As in a flash she saw the wreck she had made of her life by throwing

away the substance of a good man's love for the fantastic conviction

that, as she was not as other girls, she must therefore go a-venturing

through the world's mazy high-ways and by-ways until she had found her

own particular niche.

She saw the picture of herself proclaiming it to her life by throwing

away the substance of a good man's godmother's letter of invitation to

Egypt. She saw the girl's lips moving. What was she saying?

"I want to find my own nail and hang for one hour by myself, if it's on

a barn door or the wall of a mosque--as long as I am by myself."

Then the picture faded, to give place to another in which she saw

herself sitting in the moonlight beside Ben Kelham; the honest, slow,

lovable man standing at that very moment a grim picture of despair,

divided only by a curtain from her, through whom, indirectly, he had

killed his friend.

What was she saying to him in this dream-picture?

"I don't know enough to marry; I want to know what love really is,

first . . ."

What was he saying in reply?

". . . You will learn your lesson all right, dear, and suffer a bit,

dear, but you will come to me in the end."

She suddenly knelt and plunged her hand down into the water, breaking

the smooth surface into a thousand miniature waves which turned, as she

stared, into the mocking smiles of her acquaintances and friends; and

she knelt quite still until the surface was once more smooth, out of

which, as she stared, looked the tragic face of the dead man's mother

and the grief-stricken, shamed face of her beloved godmother.

The gossip, the scandal, with her name linked as lover to that dead

man; the chuckles, the sly lifting of eyebrow and pursing of lips when

it should be known that the other man, the dead man's greatest friend,

had come upon them unawares, alone in the tent at night?

The story of this struggle, the shooting of the treacherous friend--for

who would believe the story, told by the principals in the drama, of a

wounded lion which had turned and disappeared into the night?

There would be the inquest, the inquiry, the arrest for murder and the

trial, in which she and all those she loved would be pilloried, through

her fault, in the eyes of the world.

She stared down at the water, which seemed to hold her hands in the icy

grip of death--her hands--look! what was that?--what had happened to

them?

They were spotted with red!

She tore at her handkerchief and rubbed them; under the water, rubbed

hard, rubbed frantically, but the red spots were there on her hands, on

her handkerchief, on the water--the red she had seen when she had

looked . . .

She flung the handkerchief from her and rose to her feet, shaking

convulsively from head to foot.

Poor child! Half-crazed from horror, light-headed from fatigue and

want of food, she had mistaken the reflection of the jewelled Hawk she

wore at her breast, thrown by the lamp upon the water, for the stain

she had seen and which had looked like a crimson rose above the heart

of Hugh Carden Ali, as he lay asleep, with his feet turned towards

Mecca.

"God!" she prayed. "You Who alone can save me and--everyone--from

shame; You Who can hide me from--Ben--show me a way out--show me a way

out!" And as she repeated the words, the answer came.

"Of course," she whispered. "Right out in the desert, out on the

sands, alone with my shame, where, when this has been forgotten,

perhaps all that will be left of me will be found by some wandering

Bedouin, who will bury me deep in the sand."

She was genuinely remorseful and horrified at what she had done, but

also was she, as are so many of us who do not really feel deeply,

pleasurably thrilled at the thought of the dramatic picture in which

she should be the centre figure.

If only men knew it, that is why so many women create such terrific

scenes over nothing at all--it gives them a chance of donning their

most effective gown and pulling their hair--if their own--down about

their shoulders.

Not even then did she grasp the full meaning of love!

She parted the curtain at the back of the room of prayer, and looked

out across the desert and behold! standing upon the tips of slender

feet, wrapped about in binding cloths of grey and white, there stood a

figure.

And the wind of dawn, upon whose wings are wafted the liberated souls

into the safe keeping of Allah, who is God, lifted for one instant the

veil from before the face.

Just for a moment she looked upon the eyes alight with no earthly

happiness and the tender mouth smiling in farewell, and then the wind

lifted the soft cloth of grey and white and bound it across the

hawklike face.

Half-turned, the figure stood with beckoning hand outstretched. And to

the girl was granted the Vision of the Legions at Dawn.

There was no sound in all the limitless desert, yet the air was filled

as with the tramp of feet, the thunder of horses, the rumble of wheels.

They came from nowhere, those countless legions, from out of the

shadows of the spent night. They walked in phalanxes, the uncountable

spirits of dead kingdoms, with eyes uplifted to the dawn; spears

raised, mouths open, with their shouts of welcome to the break of day,

they rode their horses thundering down the path of Time; they drove

their four-horsed chariots straight towards the cup of gold which

rested on the rim of the world.

They come from nowhere, those countless legions, from out the shadows

of the spent night; they journey over the ordained path which they have

trod since the beginning of time, which has no beginning, and which

they will tread unto the end of all time which shall have no end.

And, laughing or sobbing, hoping, despairing, we shall fall in as our

line passes and go marching along with them, marching along, until we

came to the place where "_the shadow of the God is like a ram set with

lapis lazuli, adorned with gold and with precious stones_."

"Wait for me."

The whisper was just a part of the shadows, as the girl turned her face

to the East.

Wrapped in her satin cloak, she walked wearily on and on. Her eyes

were wide open, staring in a terrible fatigue; she saw nothing; her

heelless slippers were torn to shreds, her feet were bleeding; she felt

nothing. Not once did she look up or back or round. Had she done so,

she might have noticed that her footprints in the sand were describing

a circle, as our footprints do when we are lost in the bush or the

desert.

The shadows had gone, and the sands stretched a carpet of rose and grey

and gold before her; the sky a canopy of blue and grey and purple above.

Like a lighthouse of Hope, Day was flashing his golden beams across the

sky, a message to the weary who have toiled through the night.

And then, with one great leap he sprang clear of the horizon, just as

Damaris stopped.

She looked back in the direction in which she thought she had come.

There was no sign of the tents; there could not be; they were not out

of sight, but merely wrapped in the mist which, sometimes rises as a

fog in the desert at dawn.

"Let me die soon! let me die soon!"

A great sob shook her as she prayed the prayer of the weak. How much

easier is it to stand at the window, with the police battering at the

door, and, stimulated by its morbid interest, blow out our brains

before the gaping crowd--which will, by the way, take exactly the same

morbid interest in the shooting of a horse in the street--than to

retire into the silence of the prison-cell or seclusion of the tideless

backwater, and there work out our salvation amongst those who do not

know if our name is Smith or Jones or Brown--and much less care!

In the intensity of her prayer she clasped her hands upon the jewelled

symbol upon her breast and looked up.

From out of the west, cleaving the air like a thrown spear, flying

straight towards the sun in greeting, there came a hawk. Up, up it

sped, as though to pierce the very heavens; then hovered, wheeled and

swooped downwards above the girl. She flung out her arms as its symbol

struck through her clouded senses, and unconsciously called the "Luring

Call" she had heard but once, when she had first seen the man, who lay

asleep in the tent, in the market-place of the Arabian quarter in Cairo.

Sweet and clear her voice rose through the morning air, rising until

the bird caught the sound and, just as she swayed and fell, swooped.

Down it came, straighter than a shaft of rain; swept across her like

the wind; rose; and sailed away.

There was no call to bring it back now. The falconer who had thrown

it, as was the custom, at sunrise, was upon his knees with his forehead

upon the ground, in sign of a great grief, taking no notice of his

master's favourite _shahin_ which he had petted and trained. It flew

towards the rising sun; it flew away; it was never seen again.

Perhaps, after all, had it heard its master's call?