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Page 85
There was no backing, no rearing, or vagary of any sort now; the mare
started on her journey; broke into a canter; broke into a gallop; then,
silken mane and tail flying, thundered back at a terrific speed along
the path marked out by her own dainty hoofs, and the relentless feet of
that hound, Fate.
Damaris turned in the saddle and looked behind, and then to her right
and then to her left.
She was alone in the desert.
The sands, stretched like a silver carpet in front of her and like a
silver carpet with the black ribbon woven across it by the mare's feet
behind; to the east and west the sandy waste seemed to undulate in
great fawn and amethyst and grey-blue waves, so tremendous was the
beast's pace; the horizon looked as though draped in curtains
gossamer-light and opalescent; the heavens stretched, silvery and cold,
as merciless as a woman who has ceased to love.
And then, just as on the far horizon there showed a mound which might
have been a hillock of sand or a verdant patch, outcome of precious
water, or a slowly-moving caravan of heavily-laden camel, the mare
Pi-Kay increased her pace. You would not have noticed it, for it would
have seemed to you that she was already all out; but you would--as did
Damaris--if you knew anything about horses, have _felt_ it, had you
been riding her. It was that last grain of the last ounce by which
races are won; the supreme effort of the great sporting instinct, which
lies in all thoroughbreds, human or animal; and Damaris, thrilled to
the innermost part of her being as she sensed rather than felt the
quiver which passed through the mare, leant forward and touched the
satin neck.
That which distance had given the appearance of a mound grew more and
more distinct. It was no mound nor hillock, verdant patch nor
slowly-moving caravan of camel.
Three tents showed at last distinctly, and the following is the short
explanation of their origin.
As it is not good for the Oriental youth to stay under the same roof as
his mother, once he has come to man's estate--which is at any age after
eleven in the lands of intense sun--the building of the House 'an
Mahabbha near the Oasis of Khargegh had been begun within the first
year of the birth of Hugh Carden Ali.
Owing to the entreaties of his English mother, the boy had not been
affianced in extreme youth to a little maid of two or three or four
summers, upon whom he would not have set eyes until the night of the
marriage.
His mother had idolised him and he had worshipped her; he obeyed her,
he would willingly have died for her; later, at her request, he even
left his country of sunshine and vivid colouring for hers, so cold and
bleak; but before that and at the age when other high-caste youths of
Arabia settle down in their own house to contemplate seriously the
taking of the reins into their own despotic hands, he had absolutely
refused to go to the House 'an Mahabbha, built for him as his father's
first-born.
Perhaps also it was the English blood in his veins which at that age
filled him with the spirit of adventure.
A desire for solitude, a desire for something sterner than the everyday
existence of his luxurious life had driven him out into the desert,
where, bewitched, as it were of woman, he had followed the Spirit which
ever held out her long fine hand with beckoning finger.
A mere boy? Absurd! Ridiculous!
Not at all; for the high-caste boy of twelve in the Orient is oft-times
as much developed physically and mentally as the Occidental of over
twenty.
He had followed the Spirit where she had beckoned, and, an Arab through
the blood of his father, had caught her and crushed the body, slender
to gauntness, in his arms; had twined his fingers in the coarse, black
hair and pulled it back from the different-coloured eyes; had sought
the crimson mouth until his lips had rasped with the kisses a-grit with
sand; slept with his hands clutching her tattered robes of saffron,
purple and of gold; torn the misty veil from before her face and
dreamed with her cool breath, which is the wind of dawn, upon his face.
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