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Page 110
And if her whole being shook with anguish as part of her question was
answered; and if her heart was stabbed with sudden pain at the thought
that strangers had plucked her crown of glory from her and trampled
upon it; and if she suddenly threw out her arms and questioned the
Almighty upon the wisdom of His ways, can we blame her?
She passed through the lifted flap of the Room of Prayer, and mounted
her camel, and rode out to the west; and at the sight of the woman with
the light throwing-spear in her hand the servants, who had been
watching the tents, rushed out to meet her and, at the sign she made,
bowed their heads to the sands.
And their dirge swept across the desert as they answered as she called:
"Thy Master, O my people, has started upon a long journey. Allah
receive him at his journey's end into His safe keeping!"
"Our Master," they answered, "is absent upon a long journey. Allah
guide his feet into eternal joy."
They brought her two camels and watched her depart, then turned to make
all things ready to lead their Master's horses, and dogs, and birds
down to the river.
She rode her camel some distance from the Tents of Purple and of Gold
and of Death, and hobbled them, and returned on foot across the sands,
which were gold with the beams of the risen sun.
She lifted the lamp in the Tent of Purple and spilled the oil upon the
floor, and let drop the wick upon the oil; and she crossed to the Tent
of Gold and did likewise, and as the flames shot up on each side, she
crossed to the Tent of Death, and entered.
She bent down over her son and kissed him, on the forehead and laid her
cheek just for the last time against his, and stood for one moment at
the foot of the couch, with arms outstretched in stricken motherhood,
looking down.
Then she turned and went out, and called softly to the dogs, who
growled, not angrily, but just to let her know that they could not come.
And she looked at her son Hugh Carden Ali, with his two friends like
images of grief carved out of stone to guard him, then, dropping the
curtain, went out as the door closed.
And just as the _shahin_ flew straight to the sun in answer, perhaps,
to his master's voice, she raised the spear and drove it through the
corner of the tent into the sand, so as to let those who passed know
that the owner was absent upon a long journey.
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.
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