CHAPTER XIII
"Best springs from strife and dissonant chords beget Divinest harmonies."
SIR LEWIS MORRIS.
As the sky lightened way down in the east and the faithful turned to prayer, the little old lady sat at her window, taking her hour of rest—her hour of understanding—with hands clasped peacefully in her lap, a little smile at the corner of her whimsical mouth and her snow-white hair fluttered by the breeze of dawn.
Bodily, mentally, spiritually, she was resting, having filched this hour in which, before donning the garish trappings of her toilet, to sit in fine cashmere night attire, covered in camel's-hair wrap as soft as satin, with her little crimson bed-room slippers peeping from under the hem and her snow-white hair confined by priceless lace; just as she had thrown aside the thoughts and worries which are the outcome of the turmoil and unrest of civilisation, to sit awhile, quietly, with her eyes upon the dazzling peaks which show so clearly when we push aside the nightmare fog we have wrapped about ourselves.
Not for her own relief did she sit at rest, for in that way rest does not come to us; but to the relieving of others by withdrawing from the lights and noises of this tumultuous planet and so obtaining a better perspective of things as they stand spiritually, and a clearer insight into the message of the only book she considered worth studying and committing to memory.
She was no great thinker, this little old lady, neither did she store up the printed thoughts of others to repeat them aptly upon fitting occasions; she invariably mixed up the philosophers and their works; 'osophies simply bewildered her; ritual left her cold, psychology troubled her but little, save only in its practical application to the lives of those she loved. But she knew the book of life, with its tragedies and comedies, humour and crass stupidity, nettles and balm from the first chapter to the last, and could prescribe you a remedy to cure your mental hurt just as easily as she could undress your screaming baby, find the criminal pin and re-dress it for you; and every member of every Church and every disciple of every creed could have fought a pitched battle at her feet and left her unmoved, so long as the sick and sinning crept to her for help and children, rich or poor, in silks or rags, rushed at her coming to cling about her knees.
She had no fixed time for her hour of understanding. At her window in moonlight, starlight or the coming of the dawn; in her gilded armchair in the firelight or the light of the sun; in her rose-garden, in her parks, anywhere, as long as she was withdrawn from noise and strife.
Not that she did not thoroughly enjoy going out to battle upon the most mundane of material planes. A born fighter, she would plunge into the strife for the sheer love of fighting and would take the bull by the horns or the man by the scruff of his neck and lay about her right heartily with her stout ebony stick backed by verbal blows from her vitriolic tongue.
Well, if we all rested for one hour, even for one minute, out of the twenty-four during the frantic passing of modern days, what a boon we should grant our neighbours!
And as the duchess sat quietly, with Dekko the parrot fast asleep upon the back of her chair, as becomes a well-conducted bird, Fate crept up behind and dropped the black thread of hate and the purple thread of grief amongst the others she had tossed into the old lady's lap.
She suddenly sat upright with a shiver.
Qatim the Ethiopian lifted the body of a woman from out the gutter, and the messenger from the Oasis of Khargegh strode through the gateway of the hotel and kicked the somnolent ghafir or watchman, who coughed discreetly behind the sleeping night-porter's back.
And when Hobson, some time later, entered the bedroom with her grace's early cup of tea, which included an egg and fruit, she said nothing of the terrible story which had run like wildfire through the servants' quarters and had turned her cold with horror.
Hobson was an autocrat in her own domain and ruled with a cast-iron rod.
"Don't you utter one word of this disgusting tale to her grace," she had said fiercely as she had sailed through the door of the ladies-maids' room, held meekly open for her by one of the under-maids, who had been caught gossiping, "or back you go to England, both of you." She turned back into the room and rattled the tray to emphasise her orders. "I won't have my lady troubled with it, d'you hear? Common circus trash! what has it got to do with you, I should like to know, if she's been killed or not? That's what they all come to, as you'll find out, if you don't take care."
She had swept from the room leaving the plump, rosy-cheeked Devonshire lasses trembling.
Many, many years ago the duchess had taken the bright, intelligent daughter of a Devonshire farmer on the estate into her service; trained her and promoted her as her seniors in the lady's service had married or been pensioned off, until she had finally risen to the post of head maid and confidential companion.
Love and marriage had passed Maria Hobson by, but she adored her mistress and constituted herself as dragon, sheep-dog and buffer, so as to save her from unpleasantness or pain; at the same time issuing orders as to health and hours which her grace usually meekly obeyed—though you would not have taken a bet upon it with any feeling of security.
It is curious, the ascendancy which such a type of maid can obtain over a strong-willed mistress. Think of Abigail Hill and the influence she had over Queen Anne, which finally ousted the great Sarah Jennings, Duchess of Marlborough, brought disturbance into English politics and ruin to the fortune of the Jacobites.
But at times there was a look in her mistress' eyes and a certain atmosphere radiating from the frail little person before which Hobson quailed, so that she said quite gently, "Tea and one letter, your grace," when she found her sitting at the open window, looking out at the morning sky.
But although she spoke gently and tucked an extra shawl about the bent shoulders with a tender hand, she was thinking viciously all the same over her mistresses leniency towards her god-daughter.
"I wish the young lady could be safely married to that proper English gentleman. One can see he wants her, but she doesn't seem to know her own mind. Too pleased by half she is, to my thinking, with this country and the silly nonsense of their nasty, heathen ways!"
And she left the room with a swish of starched petticoat, when Damaris, who had just returned from her desert ride, entered to greet her godmother.
She knelt at the side of the chair and, encircling her in her strong young arms, laid her cheek against the old lady's, and knelt without movement, looking out to the desert, whilst one wrinkled old hand stroked her head and the other turned the pages of the letter.
A piteous letter of appeal from a woman whose love had brought forth the bitterest of bitter fruit.
". . . Is there a way out, Petite Maman?" wrote Jill, the English wife of Hahmed Sheikh el-Umbar. "Will you undertake the long journey and come and see me, for who knows if together we could not find a way to ensure my boy's happiness? I would come to you, only Hugh is near you, and our men in the East tolerate no interference from their women-folk. My messenger will wait for your answer. I am overwhelmed with foreboding for Hugh my first-born. If you can, come to me. JILL."
And as the sun rose the old lady still sat near the window, trying to come to a decision.
Could she turn a deaf ear to the woman she had known as a girl almost twenty-five years ago? Could she, on the other hand, go to her and risk leaving the girl at her side exposed to the indescribable appeal of the East? Should she send her back to England, or take her as far as Luxor and leave her there under the social wing of Lady Thistleton?
"Have you learned any more about the Arab who follows at a distance when you ride in the morning, dear?"
Damaris nodded.
It seemed she had overheard Lady Thistleton talking about him; his palaces in the desert and at Cairo; his stables and falcons.
The girl stopped for a moment, then continued:
"He has an English name and seems to be a millionaire, and something else which I could not catch, but by the sound of the Prickly-Thistleton's voice it seemed to be something awful!"
"This"—the old lady touched the letter in her lap—"this is from his, mother, dear, asking me to go and see her. If I do, I will tell you the whole story when I come back. Don't ask me anything until then, dear."
Silence fell between them as the hotel woke to another sunlit day.
"Something will happen to decide me," mused the old lady as, a little later, she took her mail from Hobson, who moved majestically about the room with bath-salts and towels. "From Ben," she continued, flicking a lightning glance at the face which, went suddenly rosy pink as it rested against her knee. "Written from the Oasis of Kurkur near the First Cataract. He hasn't seen lion yet, but has heard a lot about the one which is causing a panic amongst the dragomen in Luxor. Oh! how nice for him! Do you remember fat Sybil Sidmouth, the crack shot?"
It seemed that jolly Sybil Sidmouth, well known at Bisley and who had brought a thin stepmother devastated with nerves to winter in Luxor, had also fallen a victim to lion gossip, and had wired a bet to Ben Kelham that she would bring in the lion's skin.
"They are meeting at Assouan to discuss plans . . ."
"Yes?" said Damaris indifferently, and added vindictively, "Knocking about in the desert might reduce her a bit," and gave no thought to the moment of that very morning when, under some uncontrollable impulse, she had turned the stallion Sooltan and taken him back at full gallop and to within a few yards of the Arab who, in European riding-kit and boots from Peter Yapp, had raised his right hand as she had thundered past standing in her stirrups.
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.