CHAPTER XXXV

"_But in the night of Death Hope sees a star

and listening Love can hear the rustling of a

wing_."

ROBERT G. INGERSOLL.

The south wind shouted with joy at the glory of the new day; the sky

hung like a canopy of radiant colours, with little clouds of pink

dropping like rose-leaves towards the sands which stretched, as a

golden carpet, from east to west and north to south.

The south wind shouted far above Ben Kelham's head, it chuckled like a

laughing child at his elbow, and buffeted his sad face gently until it

saw a ray of light spring up in the steady eyes; then it ran laughing

away--you could hear it distinctly on all sides of you--like water

singing in a barren place.

The sun is the lamp of the world, and night is its cloak; but the wind

is the voice of its heart and you have only to listen to catch its

message, and to watch even in the beat and burden of the day, to see

the leaves move as its sweet breath touches them.

Take your burdens to the rock in the storm; take them to the depths of

the pine forest, and open your heart to the wind.

You will learn many things before you reach home, and amongst them how

to loosen the straps which gall your shoulders.

Big Ben Kelham walked slowly, with his eyes upon the faint track of

little feet which had moved in a circle, and not once did he look

behind, else would he have seen the smoke of the burning tents. He

moved slowly, not because he feared or because he did not want to run,

but because he knew, and wanted time in which to reason with himself,

to decide if he had the right to take the joy which was waiting for him.

He stood for a moment with his hands in his pockets, the strong,

silent, lovable man that he was, and shook himself just as a spaniel

does when it comes out of the water. He had been nigh to drowning in

the depths, and out of his pocket, to be lost for ever, had fallen the

jewel of youth; but somehow he had managed to scramble to the bank and

to pull himself out, and he made a step forward and swept the horizon

to see if his journey was at an end; then hesitated--remembering.

He stood quite still and looked at a slender figure wrapt about in a

mantle of gold which stood some distance off, with hands outstretched

toward him and with beckoning finger. And the wind, with a laugh,

lifted the veil from her face, and dropped it, and lifted it again, and

swept the mantle so that it clung to the slender, supple figure, then

spread it out behind like gleaming wings.

She put one finger to her mouth, and opened wide her eyes of knowledge

shaded with the fringe of tears, which come from pain, and just as much

from joy.

"Follow me," she whispered, and the south wind seized upon the golden

tones, and flung them to the west wind, and to the east, and to the

north wind, so that the message was carried right across the world:

"Follow me--I am Hope."

And he plunged his hands still further into his pockets and scrunched

up some keys and small change and a most cherished pipe, just out of

gratitude, and walked on.

He found her; in fact, he would have seen her ever so much sooner if

she had not been lying face down on the sands, with her head buried in

her arms. He did not hasten, knowing that the whole of his life

stretched before him in which to heal her hurt. She did not hear him

because he walked lightly, as those delightfully big men do; and he

stood over her, wondering how to rouse her without frightening her, and

frowned when a little sob shook her.

Then he smiled.

Strange is it how, in the very middle of the most dramatic situation, a

little thought will push open the lid of its own little brain-cell and

creep out to touch our risible nerve. It really ought to know better,

because empires and marriages and business contracts have been upset,

if not lost, on account of its freaky humour; and it twisted the

corners of the man's mouth into a distinct smile as he involuntarily

thought of the drizzling November afternoon when Damaris, in brogues,

tweed skirt and mackintosh, had announced her intention of going out to

join in some demonstration which had to do with the upholding of the

rights of her fellow-sisters, and had only been dissuaded therefrom by

the opportune arrival of tea and muffins.

Little Damaris! Just one of those women who creep right into the

hearts of men on account of their gentleness and apparent helplessness;

who are born to be put into a glass cupboard before which those who

love them spread themselves like door-mats; who rule with a rod pickled

in their apparent helplessness, which is stronger than a whip of steel,

and who are quite closely related to the barnacle and mollusc to which

the tide regularly brings tit-bits out of the ocean, whilst the more

mercurial eel has to go out and thresh about in the mud for what it

requires to keep it going in its fight for life.

Anyway, the eel has the advantage of getting about a bit!

Then the smiled faded, and he knelt, because he could not stand the

sound of that little sob any longer, and he put out his hand and

stroked her hair.

"Damaris, darling, it's I--Ben!"

She stiffened under the shock of the words, and flung her hands over

her head.

The terrible hour had come!

She would have, out of very decency, to tell him everything: why she

lay where he had so miraculously found her; how she had promised

herself to his friend; how she had . . .

She clutched her bonny curls in both hands and pressed herself hard to

the ground, longing that it should open and swallow her up. She could

not get up, she could not turn round to meet the eyes of the man she

loved with all the strength of the love of which she was capable; she

could not watch the love in his eyes change to a look of disgust; she

simply could not do it.

And then she felt his hands on hers, and his fingers unfastening hers

one by one from her grasp upon her curls; and she lay quite still; with

a lovely warm feeling creeping over and through her, because she knew

by the gentleness of the touch and the firmness of it that she would be

gathered up safely into his arms, and carried away to happiness.

And, just as she had thought he would, he put his arms around her and

lifted her like a feather and crushed her up against his heart and got

to his feet and lifted his head to the glory of the sky.

But she would not look up; she could not, because she had taken the

jewel of her youth and flung it carelessly far from her, so that she

lay as a woman in his arms, and a woman who had looked deep in the

passing of a few hours into the heart of those things which have to do

with love.

The wind whispered in her ear as it carelessly touched her face, and it

whispered in a voice out of the past.

And this is what it whispered:

". . . for love will have come to her, maybe for a day, maybe for a

second of time, but a love which will mingle her soul with the soul of

her desert lover . . . yet it is the love of the soul that endureth for

ever, yea, even if the body of the woman passeth into another's

keeping."

And Ben Kelham, feeling her shiver and thinking, in the simplicity of

his heart, that she was cold and hungry, tucked the satin cloak with

sable collar still closer round her, then looked across to the east,

where lay a pall of smoke upon the air.

"I am taking you back, Damaris my little love." He spoke slowly, with

his eyes on the burning tents, the significance of which had sunk deep

into his heart. "Won't you look up? Won't you just say that you will

marry me, so that I can tell everyone directly we get back?"

He put her on her feet when she suddenly struggled and pushed against

him, and stared aghast when she bowed her face in her hands and sobbed.

"Damaris--dear--what is it? Don't you want to marry me?"

Damaris nodded, her lovely head which glistened like a hall of silk in

the blaze of the sun.

"You do? You will?--Then what are you crying for? Oh! Damaris------"

The words came muffled as she shook with sobs.

"Because of the scandal, Ben. Because of what people will say about

me--I mean about me when they know I am engaged to--to you--they

will--laugh at you behind your back--they will--they will know

about--about----"

He pulled her to him quite roughly and pressed her head against his

shoulder, which it barely reached.

"Laugh!" he said. "Laugh--at me--or you! I should just like to hear

them, darling. There is a way out of all this, sweetheart, somewhere,

and I am going to find it, and all that has happened, beloved, rests on

my shoulders, and heaven knows they are broad enough to bear it. And

if we have hurt others, darling,"--and he looked over his shoulder to

the tents,--"it has been through my carelessness, and we shall be shown

a way in which to try and make amends. Laugh, dear? Let them laugh,

dear heart, when they see how we love each other."

But, for all that, he frowned above her curly head, because he had all

the Englishman's horror of scandal in connection with any of his

women-folk; but he set his teeth and crushed her up closer, then let

her go suddenly and swung her round, pointing across to the west.

"Look, darling; look!"

And the tears streamed down the girl's face as she flung out her arms.

"_Irja Sooltan_!" she called. "_Irja Sooltan_!"

Her voice carried on the still air like the note of a bell over water.

And the stallion, who had broken from his _sayis_ as he was being led

from the stable in readiness for the sad procession to the river, and

who, terrified at the sight of the burning tents, had rushed on in

search of his master, stopped dead, with his head up and tail and mane

streaming in the wind.

He had not found his master, but he knew the voice that called.

"_Irja Sooltan_!" it came again. "_Irja_! _Irja_!"

And he reared and wheeled in the direction from whence it came, then

raced to where he saw the girl standing.

He stamped, and whinnied, and nuzzled her hand and her shoulder as she

stood in her lover's arms.

"Tell me you will marry me, sweetheart," Ben Kelham was saying, with

one hand on the stallion's bridle. "Say it, Damaris."

She shook her head and looked up piteously, with tears in her wonderful

eyes, as she made a great sacrifice to her honour.

"I can't, Ben," she whispered. "I--I--Oh! I can't tell you--I

haven't--the courage--Oh! Ben, you would never understand------"

He gave a great shout as he leapt to the saddle and took the stallion

back a hundred yards, then wheeled him and raced him back along his

tracks.

"Understand, beloved?" he cried, as he bent as he rushed past her at

full speed and lifted her to the saddle. "There is nothing to

understand." And he turned the stallion as he spoke and headed him

towards the tents. "We will just go back, dear; we will just pass to

say goodbye--together."

And they swept across the desert.

Then he reined in the stallion and sat staring, then whispered, as he

bent and kissed the bonny curls:

"The way out, dear; the way out. Someone is waiting for us."

Stubbornly, heavily, across the desert, with occasional pauses for rest

and investigation of the track of small footprints, and the horizon,

came Wellington.

He was very hot and very thirsty, and it seemed to him that he had been

walking for many days through many, many endless deserts, but he

intended to criss-cross the Sahara, or any other desert, through all

eternity, until he could deliver the book he held between his

formidable teeth to his beloved mistress.

And she slid from the saddle, and knelt, and put her arms around him,

and took the somewhat moist keepsake from him.

She swung up like a bird into her lover's arms and took the reins

whilst he leant right down to lift the dog. But Wellington's great

heart was troubled. He looked up at his mistress and said as plainly

as could be with reproachful eyes. "Two's company," and turned to walk

stubbornly and heavily, back across those many, many deserts to the

tents.

Ben Kelham cheered him on as they thundered past him. "We'll wait for

you, old fellow," he cried, then looked down on the woman he loved.

Her hands were clasped upon the silken bodice where she had pinned the

brooch which had been fashioned in the shape of the Hawk of Egypt.

It was not there.

It had come unfastened as she lay in her grief; she had left it to be

buried so deep just a few days later, when the greatest storm which had

ever been known to sweep the desert piled the sand, the desert's own

cloak, to the height of hills, under which slumbered all those who had

sought peace at her breast; under which, guarded throughout all ages by

his dogs, peacefully slept her son.

"Ben," she cried, opening wide her eyes in which shone love and tears,

"Ben, can you ever--ever forgive me?"

And he bent and kissed her as he replied:

"There is nothing to forgive, beloved of my heart--I love you!"

THE END

Transcriber's note:

A number of words in this book are Arabic, using characters that

require Unicode to render properly.

I opted to use standard ASCII characters throughout the book, then to

list those words here, indicating which characters require Unicode.

Words are listed in the order in which they appear in each chapter. If

a word appears more than once in a chapter, it is listed only once. If

it appears in multiple chapters, it is listed only in the first chapter

in which it appeared.

Words are case-sensitive, i.e. if a word uses the same upper and lower

case character in a chapter, both forms are listed, because of the

differences in the Unicode values.

This table lists the Unicode character name and its Unicode value.

Character Value Displayed as

a-macron U+0101 [a]

e-macron U+0113 [e]

i-macron U+012B [i]

u-macron U+016B [u]

U-macron U+016A [U]