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Page 95
"Yes, _drat_ 'em!" replied Maria Hobson, even more emphatically, as her
memory leapt clear across the gulf of years to the time when she had
walked out with a certain Sergeant of the Irish Guards.
Jane Coop dropped a curtsey to the gentry and stood just inside the
door, up in arms, ready to fight anyone at the first word of
condemnation of her young mistress.
"Come over here, Coop, please, and tell me everything you can about
Miss Damaris. I have an idea--mind you, I am not sure--that she has
gone out alone, and we must be as quick as we can in finding her,
because Egypt is no place for a white girl to be running about in by
herself."
Jane Coop took up a corner of the big white apron she insisted upon
wearing, and pleated it between her fingers as she told her grace
everything with a surprising lucidity.
". . . She came in here to fetch her fan, your grace, and in here
somewhere she will have left me a message. I've never known my baby to
break her word, and I'll look for it, if I may. She'll have written it
on a bit of this block and with this pencil. It's been thrown down in
a hurry. Miss Damaris is that tidy, she can put her hand on anything
she wants in the dark, which is more than most of the slipshod,
take-off-your-dress-and-leave-it-there young ladies of the present day
could do."
The anxious maid hid her fear in a never-ending, _sotto voce_ invective
against the Pharaohs and their descendants down to the present
generation, as they all hunted vainly for the bit of paper; then she
stood helplessly in the middle of the room and apostrophised the dog:
"_You_ know where your missie's gone to. Why don't you help us,
instead of lying there growling?" She stood scowling at him, then
suddenly walked across to where he lay. "I wonder if she put it inside
that book," she muttered; then gave a little cry as she caught sight of
the paper twisted in the steel ring of the spiked collar. "I've got
it!" she cried. "I've got it!"
The duchess, who was quite near her, put her hand on her arm.
"Take care, Coop. The dog is really angry. Let me get it."
"Not you, your grace. No, not ever so, bless you."
Wellington was standing on the book, great tusks gleaming, eyes
glaring, a hideous picture of rage; but love casts out fear, even the
just fear of a dog who would never let go until you or he were dead,
once he got his teeth into any part of yon.
There was no haste about Jane Coop as she knelt beside him. "Missie
wants you," she said. "D'you hear?" The rose-leaf ears pricked at the
sound of the beloved name, but the whole tremendous body shook with his
growling response. "You don't love her, you brute, else you'd have
picked up the book and been ready to start at the sound of her name.
I'll teach you to be so slow." With a sudden lightning movement she
caught hold of the loose skin just under the jaw, firmly, grimly, with
her left hand, holding him amazed and for a moment helpless as she
pulled the paper out of the ring; then she let go, and pointed to the
book, just as the dog was about to spring.
"Missie told you to keep it for her."
The room vibrated with the thunder of his fury as he placed both feet
on the book and glared about him.
"I know," said Jill as she read the message over the old woman's
shoulder. "She has gone to my son. To his tents in the desert." She
spoke quietly and with a certain dignity and authority which checked
all questions. "He will take her straight to me. Shall we go back to
Khargegh, or shall I go to them, to his tents?" There was no sign of
the triumph in the mother-heart at the thought of the happiness which
was to come to her first-born; neither had she a single thought for the
others.
A mother's love is the most surpassing of all loves; it is the eighth
wonder of the world; it is a mystery before which that of the Sphinx
shrinks to insignificance; it is the one love which asks for so very
little in return for all it gives.
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