Part 29

The humming of the unseen bees came louder than ever, from a doorway in the wall upon Katharine's right hand.... A wall of black polished marble, decorated with an inlaid ornament in porphyry of yellow and red and pale green. The curtain of dyed and threaded reeds did not hide what lay beyond the doorway. You saw a long, high-pitched, whitewashed room, cooled by big wooden electric fans working under the ceiling, and traversed by avenues of creamy-white Chinese matting, running between rows of low native desks; before each of which squatted--on naked or cotton-sock-covered heels, or sat cross-legged upon a square native chintz cushion, a coffee-coloured, almond-eyed young Copt, in a black or blue cotton nightgown, topped with the _tarbûsh_ of black felt or a dingy-white or olive-brown muslin turban; murmuring softly to himself as he made entries, from right to left, in a huge limp-covered ledger, or deftly fingered the balls of coloured clay strung on the wires of the abacus at his side.

"Oh! ... Wonderful! I'm so glad you brought me!"

Lady Wastwood's emphatic exclamation of pleasure in her surroundings brought cessation in the humming,--caused a swivelling of capped or turbaned heads all down the length of three avenues,--evoked a simultaneous flash of black Oriental eyes, and white teeth in dusky faces lifted or turned.... Then at the upper end of the long counting-house, where three wide glassless windows looked on a sanded palm-garden (and the leather-topped knee-hole tables, roll-top desks, copying ink presses, mahogany revolving-chairs, telephone installations, willow-paper baskets, pewter inkstands and Post Office Directories suggested Cornhill and Cheapside rather than the Orient)--one of the olive-faced Jewish head-clerks in _kaftans_ and side-curls coughed,--and as though he had pulled a string controlling all the observant faces,--every tooth was hidden and every eye discreetly bent on the big limp ledgers again....

All the Coptic bees were humming sonorously in unison as Katharine went forward to a lofty doorway, framing brightness, where waited to receive her the master of the hive....

The light being behind him may have exaggerated his proportions, but he seemed to Trixie the biggest man she had ever seen, and nearly the ugliest. Close-curling coarse black hair capped his high-domed skull; and his stern, powerful, swarthy face, big-nosed and long-chinned,--with a humorous quirk at the corners of the heavy-lipped mouth that redeemed its sensuousness--was lighted by eyes of the intensest black, burning under heavy beetle-brows. His khaki uniform, though of fine material and admirable cut, was that of a common ranker, and a narrow strip of colours over the heart, and the fact of his left arm being bandaged and slung,--intimated to Lady Wastwood that Katharine's Jewish friend had already served with some degree of distinction,--and had been wounded in the War.

As he advanced to Miss Forbis, plainly unconscious of any presence save hers, Trixie's observant green eyes saw him bend his towering head, and sweep his right arm out and down, with slow Oriental stateliness, bringing back the supple hand to touch breast, lips and brow. Whether or not he had raised the hem of Katharine's skirt to his lips and kissed it, Lady Wastwood could not definitely determine. She was left with the impression that he had done this thing. And--as he rose up from the deep obeisance, there sounded in her ears these words of salutation spoken in English by a deep voice, with the timbre and volume of an Arab war-drum:

"_Hail! Lady of the noble house of Philoremus Fabius. Be welcome to this dwelling, the cradle of your race. Mine to-day as my forefathers' through bygone centuries, since your footstep crossed the threshold, we are stewards, and you are Queen!_"

VIII

He might have been quoting from some classical play, it occurred to Trixie,--perhaps he was an actor, this colossal khaki man.... Though Katharine had certainly said that he had offices and warehouses in the city. That was his counting-house, that populous hall, where rows and rows of Coptic clerks did sums in huge ledgers. And Katharine was presenting him as "Mr. John Hazel." And he was saying to Lady Wastwood, the usual civil nothings, in the voice that had the resonance of a Somali war-gong, the deep vibration of a Dervish battle-drum--and the clipped accent of the ordinary middle-class Londoner.

"Frightfully glad to meet you.... Miss Forbis said she'd bring you.... Won't you come inside? This is my room!"

"What a room!"

The exclamation came from Lady Wastwood, but the room's owner looked at Katharine. The stamp of her approval was evidently required.

"_You_ like it? ..."

Katharine answered, with a long-drawn breath, in utter sincerity:

"--Much more than like it! It is--perfectly wonderful!"

It had probably once served as the triclinium of this ancient Roman house. Of spacious width, it might have been some sixty feet in length, and twenty feet from the mosaic floor to the frescoed ceiling, representing a sky of intense blue, with stars of rusty gold. Framed, the blue starry sky, in a square of trellised roses, their hues faded and dimmed by the passage of centuries, the yellowish marble showing in patches through the gesso groundwork--as through that of the deep frieze below the Attic cornice,--painted by some ancient master in the noon of Alexandria's heyday,--and representing in hues still fresh and brilliant the Battles of the Greeks and Amazons.

Below the frieze an ebony shelf supported a collection of Oriental pottery and porcelain, interspersed with antique vases and statuettes in ivory and bronze. Down one side of the long room were glass-doored book-cases, built in recesses,--and cabinets stored with objects of beauty and rarity. A wide divan strewn with silken cushions and covered with brocade of Damascus, ran along the opposite side and under the window at the upper end,--where the floor--raised some eight inches, made a kind of daïs, upon which Persian carpets of beauty and evident value were laid....

The window, glassless, and closed at need, with delicately-carved wooden lattices, ran across the upper end of the room, nearly from wall to wall. Where the window ended, a door between twisted pillars of red and green serpentine--such as were set between the frames of the window-lattices--led to an open loggia, supported by slender columns. From the window and through the door--across the cool blue belt of shadow made by the fluted tiled roof of the loggia--were the green lawns and springing fountains, the groves and alleys and shrubberies of a well-kept and spacious garden; over whose fruit-burdened vines and fig-trees hosts of finches and orioles and fig-birds kept up a perpetual chirping and twittering.

It was restful and cool in the wide, lofty room,--would have been so had no wooden fans, driven by electric power--kept the air in continual movement underneath the frescoed ceiling. The heavy door at the hall-end being shut, the hum of the busy Coptic bees of Hazaël & Co.'s counting-house could not penetrate, where after months of keen anticipation John Hazel welcomed his liege lady, with outward stolidity and grave, rather clumsy politeness--masking the shy rapture--say, of an Eton Fourth Form boy doing the honours of his study to the prettiest sister of his chum.

"Now, where'll you perch?" he said to Lady Wastwood, after carefully installing Miss Forbis in the divan's right-hand window-corner. He was hospitable in the extreme, Trixie decided, and any thing but well-bred. How odd that such a man should possess sufficient insight and discrimination to admire Katharine as profoundly as John Hazel evidently did....

"By the way, Mr. Hazel," Katharine's fresh voice called to him, as he found a suitable resting-place for Lady Wastwood--and Trixie's observant green eyes saw him jump, and flush under his mahogany hide; "I've seen your name starred in to-day's paper. 'Commander-in-Chief's Despatches retelegraphed from Whitehall. Recommended for the Military Medal, Acting Company Sergeant John Benn Hazel--448th City of London (Fenchurch Street) Royal Fusiliers. Extraordinary valour displayed at Sheria.... Twelve Turks bayonetted, one after another....' Congratulations with all my heart!"

Her long arm swept out to John, and he took the hand, reddening, and promptly returned it, stammering: "Awfully obliged for what you say!--but as regards the M.M. there's no accounting for the way they have of ladling out these tin-and-gilt things. Mean well and one's obliged, but the men who earn 'em never get 'em!" He smote his giant palms together, evoking a terrific detonation. "Sorry if I made you jump." Nervous Trixie had done so. "But this is how we do in the East when we want 'em to bring tea!"

Two blue-shirted, white-gowned Egyptian boys and a bulky middle-aged negress, black as coal; with a high silk turban of rainbow hues, a skirted yellow over-robe, full striped trousers of orange and green, and clashing rows of bangles, responded to the summons, setting heavy silver trays, laden with good things, many and various, on inlaid ebony stool-tables before their master's guests.... The arrival of the trays heralded the entrance of an elderly lady, sad-faced, olive-skinned, black-eyed and white-haired, attired in an old-fashioned grey silk gown. As "My Aunt Esther," their big host referred to this lady, presenting her--against all the rules of precedence, first to Miss Forbis and inversely introducing Lady Wastwood.... With whom the sad-faced elderly lady shook hands cordially, though she had curtseyed ceremoniously and profoundly as she had taken the hand held out by to her by Katharine....

The tea poured out by the sad little grey lady, was Persian, and far superior to Groppi's, in Trixie's opinion,--as were the cream-tarts and pistachio-nut, and date-cakes,--the delicate Egyptian rolls and creamy curls of butter, the pink-melon ices and sherbet of fresh limes, and newly-gathered grapes, figs and oranges.... Indifferent to the possible result of an attack of Gippy Tummy, Trixie enjoyed herself, listening with amused interest to Mrs. Hazaël's gentle chatter, as the little lady's thin hands, loaded with magnificent rubies and emeralds, darted about amongst the cups....

In fluent English, spoken with a strong French accent,--both languages having been acquired in her girlhood, she explained--at a Maltese Convent boarding-school, where she had spent eight years,--she entertained her guest with arid recollections of the Early Eighties, mingled with more welcome details of the cost of housekeeping in the East.

It appeared that the negress,--whose name was Fatmeh, and who came from Upper Nubia,--was responsible for the making of the cream-tarts and the date-and-pistachio cakes.... But the crowning culinary achievement of Fatmeh was _kunaféh_, which could not be properly offered with tea, being a dinner-dish; made of sesame-flour, clarified butter and honey, with eggs and raisins, and fried in a pan.... If Miladi would honour the house by coming to dinner, the hostess added, the _kunaféh_ should be forthcoming, made and fried in Fatmeh's finest style....

"You are quite too infinitely kind, Madame," Trixie responded, and as she abominated pancakes, the description of _kunaféh_ left her chilly. "But though to dine with you would give me the greatest pleasure,--my acceptance of the invitation must naturally depend on the engagements of Her Majesty over there...."

And the Commandant's smiling nod indicated Miss Forbis, seated in the divan's opposite corner, drinking Persian tea out of exquisite porcelain, and revelling in the beauty of the gardens,--where palms tasselled with golden fruit, and laden fig-trees on spreading trellises, and sycamores draped with grapevines heavy with purple clusters, made islands of shadow and fruitful luxuriance,--while shrubberies of myrtle and rose and oleander invited the footsteps of stranger and _habitué_ to explore the winding pathways that threaded them--under the hot blue sky of the November noon....

"You call her Queen? ..." The lustrous dark eyes of the white-haired lady studied the fine face, and dwelt on the superb lines of the gracious womanly figure for an instant before she said: "And you are right! _C'est une physionomie très noble!_ I have seen Queens and Empresses in Europe--and here in Asia, who would have looked like peasants beside her! ... As for the arrangement of the date--that is not for me to make--or for my nephew. It is she who gives orders--in this house!"

"But I thought that like myself, Miss Forbis was a stranger! I understood from her," said Trixie munching her third cream-cake, "that though Mr. Hazel is a great friend and pal of hers in England, she has never visited this house before."

The reply was given with Eastern dignity:

"When I, who am fifty-eight, was a child, her father came to Alexandria. My grandfather, who was then living--entertained him as a King.... His daughter has never entered the house before,--and the house is the house of Hazaël. But the stones of it would call to her 'Mistress!' if the lips of Hazaël were dumb...."

The sudden fire that had lightened in the soft dark Eastern eyes died out of them, and the olive face resumed its sad tranquillity. But not before Lady Wastwood had realised a piquant, baffling strangeness, in the relations between Kathy Forbis and these Alexandrian Jews....

"One has one's own secrets wild horses wouldn't drag from one," was her quaint mental comment, "and so, of course, have others. But mysteries and Kathy Forbis don't seem to go together. Why--"

Trixie broke off, for at that particular juncture the huge left hand of the little Syrian lady's big black nephew was coolly drawn from its supporting sling, and stretched towards a dish of fruit upon a tray that stood near. And there came to the Commandant's ears the full, warm voice of Katharine:

"No, thanks! I learned to distrust green figs the first week I spent in Egypt. And--I think you were told yesterday at the Hospital not to use that wounded arm! ..."

"You see, I forget," said the big man, very humbly and apologetically. "It's only a flesh-cut, and doesn't hurt, as I told the Assassin-in-charge. And I'm left-handed--like the Hun who slashed me with his sword as he tried to pot me with his revolver. Has it been dressed since yesterday? ... Oh, yes, I had to report at the General Hospital this morning, and they looked to it all right. And I kiboshed the C.M.O. about my living at home. They're fearfully crowded for space at the General--and don't want well men blocking the wards--luckily for me...."

He laughed, and as he stuffed his bandaged arm back into the sling, the gleam of a ring on the third finger of his left hand,--a great antique ring in a pale greenish gold setting, attracted Trixie's eye. The eye gleamed,--for a similar signet was always worn by Katharine. Could it be,--Oh, really!--it couldn't--Couldn't be possible!--that Edward Yaill's successor would be this colossal Jew....

"Of course, being a woman myself," Trixie reflected, "I ought to be used to women having--even before the War came to effect a fusion between the classes--such astonishing, Extraordinary, INCOMPREHENSIBLE tastes in men! And naturally, after being engaged to Yaill all those years--an officer of the old Conservative type,--thoroughbred to the backbone, conversant with Society, high-tempered, rather irritable, affectionate, gentle, tinged with Celtic melancholy; this man--what is he?--must be a complete change. Dressed as a Territorial Tommy, living as an Alexandrian Jew merchant, talking in the shibboleth and with the accent of the modern City Nut,--the young man of the Theatrical Syndicate and the West End Supper Club--dashed with something out of the Book of Kings! Dear me! I'd like to shriek with laughter--if I didn't feel nearer shedding tears of vexation at the idea of my splendid Kathy caring for the kind of person who says to a woman 'Where'll you perch?' when he wants her to sit down."

Preoccupied with the absorbing theme, Trixie returned but absent replies to Mrs. Hazaël's mild observations; and conversation languished between the pair. Until the Commandant's languid attention was prodded to wakeful keenness by a chance observation on the part of her host's aunt....

"I do not know, Miladi...." This in reply to some reference to the wearer of the ring similar to Katharine's. "My nephew John Hazaël was educated in England. He has been in business in the City of London--he never was in Egypt until he came here with the English soldiers, to fight the Turk who has driven us from our homes in Palestine!" The sad dark eyes lightened fiercely, the drooping figure straightened, the toneless voice vibrated with passion as Mrs. Hazaël went on: "Before then I had not seen my brother's son. Indeed, knowing him to be _Epikouros_,--I had thought of him but little! Imagine what for me it meant to find John Ben Hazaël the image of his grandfather! ... For they are alike, Miladi--as citron resembles citron,--though the years of one were a hundred, and the other is but thirty-five. True, he has not learnt to observe our ancient customs, nor has he been reared according to the Law. He is blind to the beauty and splendour of the glorious Hebrew religion. But even as a myrtle in the midst of the Desert remains a myrtle,--John Hazaël, the eldest son of John, the son of Eli Ben Hazaël,--will live the life and die the death of a good, believing Jew!"

"To know that," Trixie returned, conscious of feeling her way amidst unseen pitfalls, "must be a great pleasure to you, Madame...."

"I do not look for pleasure," came the sad-toned answer. "And comfort there is none for me, whom the Turk has stripped of all. When this terrible War broke out in Palestine, Miladi, I had a husband,--and two sons,--and a daughter!"--A convulsion rippled under the olive skin of the withered face as the waters of a lonely forest-pool will stir on a windless day.... "My son Jacob they took first,--to labour with the road-gangs between Sailed and Tiberias.... My daughter--my Esther, my darling and my treasure--the golden joy of her father's heart--"

"Pray, pray, do not tell me!" Lady Wastwood whispered entreatingly, for the speaker's dark eyes were bloodshot and her mouth had twisted in the involuntary grimace of weeping with difficulty restrained, "I can guess something terrible.... Please believe that I deeply feel for you!--I who have lost husband and children too! ..."

"'Husband and children! ...' _Achi nebbich!_ ..."

The little grey woman bowed her lace-draped head, and folded her jewelled hands in her grey silk lap as she continued:

"But such deaths were those of my loved ones, Miladi, that nothing that you could imagine could approach the terror of the truth! Yet it might have been worse--oh, infinitely!--had not Jacob possessed the courage of a lion. He shot his sister, Miladi, in the room of her destroyer,--and turned the pistol on himself and died also! ..." There was a clang of pride in the dull tear-soaked voice. "Then Reuben Ben Ephraim--who was with Jacob in the den of the hyena--Hamid Bey Effendi--Commander of the Turkish soldiers at Nazareth"--there followed some rapid guttural words in a tongue unknown to Trixie, probably a bitter Hebrew curse upon the hated name.... "then Reuben, seeing both dead, escaped by the Mercy, and sent word to us, me and my husband--in our house near Jaffa--of what had befallen the children of our love! ... And hearing that the vengeance of Hamid was to be wreaked upon us, my husband Isaac, the uncle of John Hazaël! ... may Peace be upon him! as it is our custom to say--Isaac escaped to Beirut with our last child, Benjamin. Miladi--the fierce wolves seized them. They both died in prison at Beirut--under the Turkish rods! ... The young child first, Miladi--under the eyes of his father.... Then the father!--Peace be upon them both! ... And the shock of the news killed Eli Ben Hazaël, for he was close upon a hundred.... Thus am I widow, and childless, and fatherless in this house that has sheltered my people for more than sixteen centuries. Ah, Miladi!--I have made you weep! ... I have no tears--they were all shed long ago!" She rose, a little tragic figure in her old-fashioned silk gown, and held out to Trixie a withered, jewelled hand. "My nephew is looking at me.... He wishes me to show you the garden, while he speaks of business with Mademoiselle Forbis...." A slight cry escaped her as her eyes went to the window, and a faint gleam of pleasure lightened in their hopelessness as she lifted the wasted, glittering hand: "See! O see! Look, Miladi! ... Look, my children! ... Once again, the swallows have come! ..."

There had been no swallows a moment previously. Summer in the North, warmer that year of 1917 than in the three preceding, had delayed their autumn journey overseas. Now the deep blue sky above the tamarisk and acacia Nilotica,--the vine-draped sycamore figs, the tall imperial palm-trees, the orange and lemon groves, and the myrtle and rose-thickets behind the house in the Rue el Farad, were crossed and recrossed by innumerable downy black-and-white bodies, borne upon darting, quivering pinions, and the continuous twitterings of the fig-birds were drowned by their shrill squeaks....

From the eaves of the round-tiled roof of the loggia, where some old nests were yet remaining, a rope of swallows swayed and dangled; clinging one to the tail of another--the weight of the whole rope sustained by the first usurper of the disputed nest.... A moment more and the feathered rope resolved into its original atoms. They rose in a cloud,--squealing, wheeling, hovering and poising, and launched themselves in joyous chase of the flies and mosquitoes, whose deadliest enemies they are....

And then one of the darting things--possibly a new-fledged stranger--keen on the capture of some gauze-winged morsel, flew in at the window, and hawked about the room....

The blue sky frescoed on the ceiling by the ancient artist, framed in its trellis of dimmed and faded roses, must have deceived the eager bird. Its upward flight ended in the tiniest thud possible.... Vitality quitted its infinitesimal being.... It dropped, a mere puff of black and white feathers, at Katharine Forbis's feet....

"Again.... Each year, the same thing happens! A bird is killed--just in this way. It is sad, but there's no help for it...." sighed Mrs. Hazaël. "Throw it away, dear Mademoiselle, it is only a dead bird! ..."

But Mademoiselle, who had picked up the tiny body to cherish and croon over, did not follow her hostess's advice. To sense the divine quality of maternity inherent in Katharine's beauty, you had to see her petting an invalid, or a child. Or as now, with some helpless, injured creature,--looking at it under drooped eyelids of soft solicitude, cherishing it with compassionate touches of deft, womanly hands....

Those kind hands had touched John Hazel, yesterday, in helping the Hospital surgeon and Sister with the dressing of his wounded arm.... It was not until their contact had sent shocks of keen, scarce bearable delight thrilling through nerve and tissue, that John Hazel had discovered--what you have guessed ere now....

All the night through he had lain awake, living those moments over, and over!--cursing himself for a fool thrice soaked in folly, a bally idiot, and a presumptuous cad.... But daylight had found him no whit more wise, nor one iota less besotted; even more gnawed with desperate hunger to feel her cool breath fanning his bared shoulder, and know the rapture of her touch again....

Now the soft, compassionate eyes, the tender touch and the sweet solicitude were given to a bird, while the man hungered. John Hazel, one is compelled to own--was keenly jealous of the stunned swallow--as the thorn-like beak opened and shut, and the sealed eyelids quivered apart--and Katharine's cry of womanly joy greeted these signs of life....

"It isn't dead, dear Madame!" she cried gaily to the Syrian lady, as she dipped a finger-tip in a flower-vase that stood near, dropped some water in the open beak, and wetted the velvety head.... The swallow quivered in her palm, gasped convulsively and swallowed the water; swallowed another drop given in the same way, and regaining strength, struggled to free itself from the protecting hand....