The Hawk of Egypt | Page 8

inwardly, as he patted his daughter's arm;
then, aloud. "As it happens, Golliwog darling, I had a letter from

Marraine yesterday, asking me to let you go out to her in Cairo for the
winter and see as much as possible of the ordinary sights. We'll talk it
over with Mother to-morrow."
"Oh, Dads--how wonderful! And can't you and Mother come? And oh!
can I take Wellington?"
"I think so, dear, if he hasn't hydrophobia," and the man bent to pat the
head of the great dog which had crept from under the bed at the sound
of his name.
And later Dads stood at his window, smoking two last pipes, whilst a
glimpse into the future was allowed him.
"Can it be--can it possibly be," he said, puffing clouds of smoke into
the creeper, to the annoyance of many insects, "Big Ben Kelham?--and
the estates run alongside. Wonder if Teresa has noticed anything.
And--by Jove!--of course!--he's at Heliopolis, getting over his hunting
accident. I wonder------"
And Damaris sat at her window, with her arms round the dog, who
longed inordinately for his mat.
"The desert," she whispered. "The pyramids--the
bazaar--life--adventure. How wonderful!" There came a long, long
pause, and then she added, as she turned towards a coloured picture of
the Sphinx upon the wall, "And who cares if the nail is a tin-tack or a
screw?"
As it happened, it was destined to be the jewel-hilted, double-edged,
unsheathed dagger of love.
And Fate, having mislaid her glasses, worked her shuttle at hazard in
and out of that picture of intricate pattern called Life, and having
tangled and knotted together the crimson thread of passion, the golden
thread of youth and the honest brown of a deep, undemonstrative love,
she left the disentanglement of the muddle in the hands of Olivia,
Duchess of Longacres.

Her Grace was over eighty.
Of a line of yeomen ancestors ranging back down the centuries to the
William Carew who had fought for Harold, she had been, about
sixty-five years ago, the belle of Devon. Against the warnings of her
heart and to the delight of her friends and family, she had married the
Duke of Longacres, whose roving eye had been arrested by her beauty
at a meet of the Devon and Somerset, and his equally roving heart
temporarily captured by the indifference of her demeanour towards his
autocratic self.
She had lost him, to all intents and purposes, two years after the
marriage, but blinding her eyes and stuffing her ears, had held high her
beautiful head and high her honour, filling her empty heart with the
love of her son and the esteem of her legion of real friends; showing the
bravest of beautiful faces to the world, until a happy widowhood had
set her free.
Some years of absolute happiness of the simplest kind had followed;
the marriage of her son and birth of her grandson, who had cost his
mother her life. Then the following year had come the Boer War, and
the heroic tragedy of Spion Kop, which left her childless; after that,
many years of utter devotion, to her grandson, who adored her; then the
Great War and the Battle of the Falkland Islands, which left her
absolutely bereft, with the care of the boy's greatest treasure, even the
grey parrot, Quarter-Deck, Dekko for short.
Methuselah of birds, it was possessed of an uncanny gift of human
speech and understanding, and had been promoted through generation
to generation, from sailing-vessel via Merchant Service to British
Navy.
As time and tragedy worked hard together to silver her hair and line her
face, so did a veritable imp of mischief, bred of her desolation, seem to
possess the old darling. She cared not a brass farthing for the opinion of
her neighbours, so that after the death of the great Queen, who had been
her staunchest friend, she had instructed Maria Hobson, her maid and
also staunchest friend, to revive the faded roses of her cheeks with the

aid of cosmetics. Things had gone from bad to worse in that respect,
until her pretty snow-white hair had been covered by a flagrant golden
perruque and the dear old face with a mask of pink and white enamel.
Her eyes were blue, and keen as a hawk's, undimmed by the tears shed
in secret during her tumultuous and tragic life; her teeth, each one in a
perfect and pearly state of preservation, were her own, for which asset
she was never given the benefit of the doubt; her tongue was vitriolic;
her heart of pure gold, and she owned a right hand which said nothing
to the left of the spaces between its fingers through which, daily ran
deeds of kindness and streams of love towards the unfortunate ones of
the earth.
Her