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Page 3
Zulannah the courtesan peered down upon her from between the silken
curtains of her balcony, and clapped her hands twice so that her
woman-slaves ran quickly to watch and whisper about this white woman
who stood unattended in the open market. They giggled in the
insufferable Eastern way, and pointed across the Square, where the
whole of the male population surged about two men. But Zulannah, the
recognised beauty of the North of Egypt, shrugged her dimpled shoulders
as she stuffed over-large portions of sweetmeats between her dazzling
teeth and stretched herself upon a divan to watch the scene over the
way.
Abdul, falconer of Shammar, bearded and middle-aged, stood with a
_shahin_ of Jaraza upon his fist and a hooded eyess--which means a
young hawk or nestling taken from the nest--of the same species upon a
padded and spiked perch beside him, whilst hooded or with seeled eyes,
upon perch or bough, were other yellow or dark-eyed birds of prey;
short-winged hawks, a bearded vulture, a hobby, a passage Saker.
But it was not upon Abdul or his stock that the girl's eyes rested,
nor, peradventure, the eyes behind the silken curtains.
The central figure of the glowing picture was that of Hugh Carden Ali,
the eldest and best-beloved son of Hahmed the Sheikh el-Umbar and Jill,
his beautiful, English and one and only wife; the son conceived in a
surpassing love and born upon the desert sands.
"An Englishman," said Damaris softly as she withdrew yet further into
the sheltering doorway and unleashed the dog; and still further back,
when the man suddenly turned and looked across the Square as though in
search of someone. "No! a native," she added, as she noticed the
crimson _tarbusch_. "And yet . . ."
She was by no means the first to wonder as to the nationality of the
man.
In riding-kit, with boots from Peter Yapp, he looked, except for the
headcovering, exactly like an Englishman.
Certainly the shape of the face was slightly more oval than is common
to the sons of a northern race, but nothing really out of the ordinary,
just as the eyes were an ordinary kind of brown, with a disconcerting
way of looking suddenly into your face, sweeping it in an
all-comprehensive lightning glance and looking indifferently away.
The nose was good and quite straight; the hair thick, brown and
controllable; the mouth covering the perfect teeth was deceptive, or
maybe it was the strength of the jaw which belied the gentleness, just
as the slimness of the six-foot of body, trained to a hair from
babyhood, gave no clue to the steel muscles underlying a skin as white
as and a good deal whiter than that of some Europeans.
He moved with the quickness and quietness of those accustomed to the
far horizon as a background; he was slow in speech; and dead-slow in
anger until aroused by opposition.
For the physically weak-born, he had the gentle sympathy of the very
strong; for the physically undeveloped and the morally weak he had no
use whatever--_none_. In the West, his reserve with men had been
labelled taciturnity or swollen-headeduess, which did not fit the case
at all; whilst, in spite of his perfect manner towards them, his
indifference to woman _en masse_ or in the individual was supreme and
sincere.
He was the direct descendant of the founder of Nineveh where horses
were concerned, and his stables in the Oasis of Khargegh would have
been one of the sights of Egypt, had he permitted sightseers.
Educated at Harrow, where he had excelled in sport and captained the
Eleven at Lord's for two succeeding years; respected by the upper Forms
and worshipped by the lower, he had developed the English side of his
dual nationality until masters and schoolfellows had come to look upon
him as one of themselves.
From Harrow he had gone to Brazenose; then had quite suddenly thrown up
the 'Varsity and returned to Egypt.
Love?
Not at all, for was not his indifference to woman supreme and sincere?
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