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Page 66
But Damaris only laughed.
How good it is that we cannot visualise beforehand the hour in which
our tears must flow and our hearts come well-nigh to breaking!
She laughed, she sang, she visited the town, and went to bed early.
She teased Jane Coop the next morning as, perilously perched on
donkey-back, she headed the little procession which wended its way
through the stretches of earth which later would give a harvest of corn
and sweet-scented flowering bean.
She urged the panting bulldog along the three good miles, and laughed
at him when, sneezing and coughing, he rubbed his great paws over his
face, covered with the cobwebs which floated on the air; but she
stopped laughing when she first caught sight of the great arch of
crumbling antiquity which is all that is left of the edifice upon the
site of which the Temple of Hathor was built; and she stood quite still
in the over-powering colonnade, whilst the Thistletons, notebooks in
hand, rushed inside in the wake of the guide. Jane Coop stopped dead
at the outer edge of the colonnade.
"I thought you said it was a Temple of Love, dearie: all white marble,
with doves and lovers'-knots and--and hearts. It's a tomb, that's what
it is, and I'm going to sit outside. I don't like it; it bodes no
good. Let's go back, dearie; I don't like the place or the hotel or
the town. If we go quickly we can catch the first boat. Let the
others stay if they want to. I'm thinking of you; my heart's telling
me that you must not stop, and that if you do, harm'll come to you, or
somebody."
Strange was the persistence of the usually placid woman, as she caught
her young mistress by the arm and quite violently shook her fist at the
sinister face of the goddess which shows on each side of the columns.
And strange it is to know that if the girl had but listened, the harm
might not have befallen.
But Damaris shook her head.
"We must be polite, Janie dear, even if we are dying to go home.
Besides, two or three days will do us good, and it will help pass the
time until Marraine comes back. Come, Well-Well."
The dog followed his mistress up to the door, but there he stopped.
"Come along, Well-Well," she repeated.
The dog sat down, with a definite air of ending further exploration as
far as ruins were concerned, on his part.
"I think you and Janie are bewitched to-day."
Damaris spoke petulantly and watched the dog waddle back and sit down
beside the maid, who, busy crocheting, sat on a stone some few yards
from the Temple, to which she had resolutely turned her back.
Damaris stood for a moment feeling as though the very wettest of wet
blankets had been wrapped round her; then turned, listened until she
heard Ellen's staccato voice coming from the direction of the
antechamber in the middle of the Temple, and tiptoed across to the east
side, where are to be found the ruined Treasury and Store Rooms in
which were stored the incense for sacrifice or offering, the vestments
and banners and other such props needful to the correct fulfilment of
the rites of an ancient worship which, as far as services go, in
display of wealth and sense-stirring accessories, did not differ so
very much from what we see in some of our churches in this present day
of grace.
She came to the stairs, up which so many years ago the mother of Hugh
Carden Ali had climbed, on the day when she had fully realised that the
crown of love had come to her.
Damaris climbed them, and stood on the roof, watching, as had watched
Jill Carden, the clouds of twittering birds as they flew in the
direction of the Libyan Hills; then she crossed to the little shrine of
Osiris, stood for a moment unconsciously passing her finger over the
carvings, turned as though someone had called her, and ran down the
stairs.
She stood and listened until she heard Ellen's voice looming from the
side chapel on the western side, then, and just as though pulled by
some invisible hand, she passed quietly through the antechamber into
the sanctuary where, in the days of Ancient Egypt, the mighty Pharaoh,
and he only, entered to commune with the gods at the birth of the new
year; and where the mother of Hugh Carden Ali, stricken with the glory
of the secret revealed, had fallen unconscious to the ground, over
twenty years ago.
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