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Page 62
It is built in terraces to which you climb by gentle incline; it is
surrounded and crossed by colonnades; there are ruined chapels and
vestibules and recesses; an altar upon which offerings had once been
made to the great gods; broken steps and closed and open doors, behind
which the ghosts of dead kings and queens, priests, priestesses and
nobles sit in ghostly council; through which they beckon you--_if you
belong_.
There has surely come to each of us, in this short span we term life,
the moment when, just introduced, we look into another's face and say
or think, "We have met before."
May it not have been that we once met to burn incense together before
the dread god Anubis, or to make offerings upon the altar erected to
the great god Ra Hamarkhis; or was it perchance that you, if you are a
woman, once waited at the temple gates to see him pass upon his return
from the great expedition to the land of Punt, which we call Somaliland
to-day?
Had the man with hawk-face who offers you a muffin or cup of tea to-day
once brought you gifts of ivory, or incense, or skin of panther from
the wonderland? Did he sweep the seething crowd with piercing eye to
find the face beloved, and pass on to the rolling of drums, the crash
of cymbals, the blaring of trumpets, to make obeisance to his monarch
and return thanks to the mighty gods?
Perchance!
But Damaris had no thought of the past as she stood amongst the pillars
of the colonnade which commemorate the great expedition; she was
enthralled with the hour, the solitude, the silence, as she hesitated,
wondering which way to go. Then, even as she hesitated, the silence
was broken by the distant throbbing of a drum.
It came from one of the villages far down the hill and, caught by the
evening breeze, was carried to the temple, to be multiplied a
hundredfold in the echoing roof.
All other sounds may cease way out in the East; birds may nest and
humans sleep; but the sound of the drum faileth never.
It is a message, a love-song, a lament, a prayer, and you hear it in
the desert as in the jungle, in the temple as in the courtyard behind
the hovel.
It is not a wise thing to listen to its call, for it can lead you off
the beaten track, or over the precipice or out into the desert to die.
It caught the girl's feet in the witchery of its rhythm and set them
moving upon the sand-covered floor of the Temple. Yet there was no
smile on her lips as, moved by whatever it is that causes us to do
strange things in the East, she danced like a wraith or a sylph, or a
leaf in the wind, in and out of the columns and out into the light of
the moon, and through the granite door onto the terrace where once had
been planted the incense trees which had come with the spoil from Punt
to perfume the air to the glory of Ra Hamarkhis.
The rolling of the drum stopped short, and Damaris came to herself with
a start as she stood under the moon, then clasped her hands upon her
thudding heart as she watched a man with two great shaggy dogs walk
across the terrace towards her.
Save for the Mohammedan head-covering he was an Englishman, and he
spoke in his mother's tongue to the girl he loved and whom he had
watched since her arrival with the jostling, laughing crowd.
"The gods of the temple are good to me," he said simply. "I prayed
that I might watch you dance upon the incense terrace of their house;
they have answered my prayer. Come."
As they passed across the terrace to the hall of columns which is the
vestibule of the chapel of the god of Death, he told her how he had
watched and waited, meaning no discourtesy, until she should visit the
temple amongst the limestone hills.
"Where are we going?"
Damaris spoke more to break the spell which seemed to hold her than to
know the end of the walk across the sand. Bewitched by the moon and
the terrific power of old Egypt, she would have followed the man
blindly, fearing no hurt, even into the inner-most sanctuary which,
hewn out of the rock itself, lies at the extreme end of the temple.
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