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Page 43
* * * * * *
The Ethiopian slave Qatim gathered up the broken body of the woman from
the filth of the gutter and carried her to his hovel and flung her upon
the filthy straw under which he hid the jewels he stripped from her.
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.
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