A band of mourners reached their goal. Their arrival was the signal for the already assembled women of the village to wax yet more demonstrative in their display of anguish. The long shuddering moans, the shrill piercing cries, grew louder and more insistent, while dozens of lean brown arms were raised in despairing appeal to heaven, then descended with force upon head or face, and others of the mourners tore frantically at the garments over their breasts.
"It's just as it is drawn on the ancient monuments, the very same; they haven't changed a bit in all these thousands of years," cried Evarne. She was far more thrilled by this illustration of the realism of Egyptian art and of this justification for that romantic term—The Unchanging East—than moved to sorrow by the conventional mourning of the many wailers.
Evidently the news had spread widely. From all directions black figures bore down upon the village, sometimes in groups of six or eight, sometimes in bodies of thirty or more. Each one on her arrival passed into the low hut wherein the corpse lay, then came out after a minute or so to add her quota to the increasing lamentation for the dead. This business of mourning was clearly still the prerogative of the female sex. No men took any share in it—indeed, the only two existing in the whole place, as far as could be seen, were squatting calmly in a neighbouring yard, unconcernedly holding and milking a buffalo.
Evarne looked round for Morris. He stood just at the top of the slope, Lucinda still clinging to his arm.
"Come along to where I am, Morris," the girl called out to him. "You can see everything much better from here."
He made a movement as if to follow her suggestion, but Lucinda said something in a low voice, whereupon he replied—
"Mrs. Belmont feels too giddy either to walk or to be left alone; but don't you bother about us, my dear. We can really witness all the fun of the fair quite nicely."
"That chap may have died of fever or smallpox, or goodness knows what," remarked Tony's voice by her ear. "With all these women trotting in to have a last stare at the old boy—why, it's enough to infect the neighbourhood, isn't it?"
To Evarne the Jealous the health of the whole countryside was as nothing at that moment compared to the fact that when she had directly called upon her lover to join her, Lucinda should have had the assurance to promptly whisper a suggestion that he should remain where he was, and that the wish of her rival should have sufficed to keep Morris from her side.
She turned to Tony.