He Shall Thunder in the Sky - Elizabeth Peters [183]
Ramses had seen that voice galvanize an entire crew of Egyptian workers. It had a similar effect on the child. She snatched up her hat, gloves, and bag, and Ramses stepped hastily out of the way as she ran past him and out the door.
His mother looked him over, from head to foot and back. She shook her head and pursed her lips. “No. There is nothing that can be done about it,” she said cryptically. “You had better stay here, I can deal with her more effectively if you are not present.”
After he had bathed and put on clean clothes, Ramses skulked in his room for an additional quarter of an hour before he summoned courage enough to go downstairs. Weeping women unnerved him, and this one wasn’t even a woman, she was only a little girl. (But remarkably mature for her age, jeered a small nasty voice in the back of his mind. He buried it under a pile of guilt.) What else could he have done, though? “I must be cruel, only to be kind.”
What a smug, self-righteous thing to say to someone whose heart you had cleft in twain. Hamlet had always struck him as something of a prig.
:
I did not have to deal with the young person after all. She had actually ventured to disobey me! When I came down into the courtyard I saw that the front door stood open and that Ali and Katherine were looking out. Katherine turned as I approached.
“What was that all about?” she demanded.
“What was what all about?”
“The frantic flight of little Miss Hamilton. I was crossing the courtyard when she came pelting down the stairs; she almost knocked me over in her wild rush for the door. I didn’t know she was here. Should we go after her?”
From where I stood I could see along the road in both directions. There was no sign of a flying pink figure, only the usual pedestrian and vehicular traffic. I considered Katherine’s question. The girl had got here by herself. So far as I was concerned, she could get herself away without my assistance. It was not the decision of a kind Christian woman, but at that moment I did not feel very kindly toward Miss Molly.
“I think not,” I replied. “She is out of sight now; we have no way of knowing whether she went to the train station, or hired a conveyance.”
“She ran out into the road and stopped a carriage, Sitt Hakim,” Ali volunteered. “She had money; she showed it to the driver.”
That news relieved my conscience, which had been struggling to make itself heard over my justifiable annoyance. I promised myself that I would telephone her uncle later, on some pretext, to make sure she had got home safely.
Katherine was frowning slightly. As we returned to the courtyard she said, “Something must have happened to upset her. What was she doing here?”
The others had come down for tea. I heard voices in the sitting room, and Cyrus’s deep chuckle. I saw no need to discuss the affair with the men, so I stopped and gave Katherine an explanation which was the truth, if not the whole truth.
“Her uncle is sending her home. She doesn’t want to go. You know how unreasonable children can be; she had some nonsensical notion of staying with us.”
“She’s old enough to know better,” Katherine said.
“But badly spoiled. There is no need to mention this to the others, Katherine.”
“As you like, Amelia dear.”
Ramses was slow in making an appearance. After a quick involuntary glance at me, to which I responded with a nod and a smile, he avoided my eyes. I trust I may not be accused of maternal prejudice when I say that I did not wonder at the child—or at any of the other women who had made nuisances of themselves about him. He was a fine-looking young man, with his father’s handsome features and the easy grace of an athlete, but there was something more: the indefinable glow cast upon a countenance by the beauty of a noble character, of kindness and modesty and courage. . . .
“What are you smiling at, Mother?” He had seen my fond look. It made him extremely nervous. He adjusted his tie and passed his hand over his hair, trying to flatten