United States or Armenia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"She likin' him because him always prayin'." The last sentence seemed to throw doubt upon all that had gone before. But as Isaacson lay back, having dismissed Hassan, and strove to rest, he continually saw the beautiful Hamza before him, beautiful because wonderfully typical, shrouded and drenched in the spirit of the East, a still fanatic with fatal eyes.
Through the silent boat there went the sharp, tingling noise of an electric bell. "As he is asleep." She spoke more quickly and unevenly. "And to-morrow Doctor Hartley will be here, and I shall go by what he says. If he wishes a consultation " Again the bell sounded. She frowned. Hamza appeared at the door leading from the deck.
He had greeted her from the Nile by night when he was far away in Alexandria; he had ordered Ibrahim and Hamza to bring her into this solitary place, and now he lay beside her with his strong body at rest, and his mind, apparently, lost in some vagrant reverie, not heeding her, not making any effort to please her, not even so it seemed to her now thinking about her.
But Isaacson had learnt that in any investigation of the past, in any effort to make straight certain crooked paths, in any search after human motives, he would get no help from this mind that was full of refusal, from this soul that was full of prayer. "Doctor Isaacson!" A dress rustled. "You are out here with Hamza?" She stood in one of the doorways.
He spoke kindly, but in the authoritative voice of the young Englishman addressing a native. Without changing his expression, Hamza went softly and swiftly over the gangway to the shore, climbed the steep brown bank, and was gone a flash of white through the gold. "He's a useful fellow, that!" said Nigel. "And now, Ruby, to seek the blessing of the Egyptian Aphrodite.
And upon the top of a high brown bank, where naked brown men were bending and singing by a shadûf, she saw the long ears of a waiting donkey, and then a straight white robe, and a silhouette like a silhouette of bronze, and a wand pointing towards the sun. Hamza was waiting for her, was waiting like a Fate. Mrs. Armine rode slowly along the river-bank.
He had greeted her on that first evening with a song about Allah. Her mind, moving quickly from thought to thought, now alighted upon that remembrance, and immediately she recollected Hamza and his prayer, and she wondered how strong was the belief in Allah of the ruthless being beside her. "They sang a song about Allah," she said, slowly. "Allah was the only word I could understand."
She was conscious of a sensation of relief that was yet mingled with a faint feeling of dread. "Why why should Hamza come with us?" she asked. "To be your donkey-boy. Hamza he very good donkey-boy." "I don't know I am not sure whether I shall want Hamza in the Fayyūm." Ibrahim looked at her with a smiling face.
Hamza, "the lion of God," and a son of Abd-al-Muttalib in his old age, was accosted by a slave girl as he passed on his way through the city She told him breathlessly that she had seen "the Lord Mahomet" insulted and reviled by Abu Jahl, and being unprotected and alone, he could only suffer in silence.
In low, yet penetrating, voices the camel men sang the songs of the sands, as they ran on, treading softly with naked feet. Hamza, who accompanied the little caravan with his donkey in case Mrs. Armine grew tired of her camel, holding his hieratic wand, kept always softly and unweariedly behind them.
Word Of The Day