"Let us both dance for you, so that you may judge between us" ....."Let us both dance for you, so that you may judge between us" .....
"Let us both dance for you, so that you may judge between us" ....."Let us both dance for you, so that you may judge between us" .....
However, he vetoed this neat arrangement.
"The girl has been wounded. And she's still not strong enough for much exertion."
Rayma brooded on this fact, and the more she thought about it, the less she liked it.
"Did you capture her on that foray?" she asked presently.
"She was part of my booty," he said, a lingering tenderness in his voice.
Again Rayma was silent.
Very quickly she put two and two together.
The Sultan had not been near the harem since his return from that quest for vengeance. And this new slave had been captured during that foray.
So this was the girl who had stolen the Sultan's heart! Who had kept him away from the harem all these dreary weeks. The girl sitting there by the distant doorway. The girl who would not come near him; whom he watched, yet did not go to.
Rayma scowled at Pansy's back.
Then she turned to one of the women attendants sitting near.
"Fetch that girl to me," she said, pointing to Pansy.
The woman rose, ready and anxious to do a favourite's bidding.
But the Sultan motioned her down again.
"She comes at no one's bidding, except mine," he said firmly.
Pouting, Rayma wriggled closer to him.
"MayInot even call her?" she asked softly.
"The rule applies to all here," he replied.
Somewhat impatiently he pushed Rayma aside. Then he got to his feet, and went towards Pansy.
His step behind her made the girl's heart start beating violently.
He was coming to issue some further ultimatum. Perhaps not an ultimatum even, but an order.
Pansy had wanted to see her captor, to plead for her father. Now that he was there, the words refused to pass her lips. To have asked any favour of him would have choked her.
"Well, Pansy, are you going to marry me?" he asked.
He might not have been there, for all the notice she took of him.
"Come," he went on, in an authoritative manner, "you must realise that I'm supreme, and that you must obey me."
Pansy realised this to the fullest, and the sense of her own helplessness only infuriated her. Since she had no weapon she could turn on him except her tongue, she hit at him with that. And she hit her very hardest on the spot she knew would hurt the most.
"English women don't marry niggers," she said contemptuously.
The word cut deep into his proud spirit; all the deeper for coming from her lips. Although he whitened under the insult, the knowledge of his own complete supremacy held his fiery temper in check.
"The marrying is just as you like," he replied. "Forms and ceremonies are nothing to me, but I'd an idea you preferred them."
There was a brief silence.
With her face turned away Pansy sat ignoring him entirely, leaving him only a slender white neck, a small ear and part of a rose-tinted cheek to study.
And the Sultan studied them, amused that anything so helpless should dare to defy him.
"You've not only yourself to consider when you set me at defiance in this manner," he remarked presently. "There's your father, and your English friends."
His words brought Pansy's eyes to him, fear in their velvety depths.
At her look he laughed.
"Your kind heart has given me some hostages, Pansy," he said. "But nothing will happen to them for another week. I'll give you that much time to make up your mind. Not longer. For my patience is wearing very thin. And I've had a lot where you're concerned. More than I ever dreamt I was capable of. In the meantime, my little girl, try and remember I'm not quite the hopeless villain you think me, or you wouldn't have liked me, even for a day."
But just then it seemed to Pansy there was no greater villain on earth than the Sultan Casim Ammeh.
Early the next morning when Pansy was splashing about in the great underground tank, a voice made her look up in a startled fashion. So far no one had intruded on her ablutions.
It was a soft, purring, malicious little voice that said in lisping French:
"Now I see why you always come here early. Why you don't bathe with me and the other girls."
On the broad marble steps Rayma stood, looking down at her rival spitefully.
"I come early because I'm not used to bathing before people," Pansy replied, hoping the other would take the hint and go.
But Rayma did not go. She seated herself on the steps and stayed there, her black eyes fixed on the graceful girl in the water.
"Has the Sultan seen those scars?" she asked, pointing a slim disparaging finger at the network of red marks and ridges on Pansy's thigh and side.
Pansy flushed at the question.
"Of course not," she cried indignantly.
"When he bought me I stood before him with only my hair for a covering. And I stood gladly, for I knew I was perfect." Rayma finished, as if the fact gave her pleasure.
Pansy had no desire to discuss the Sultan's likes and dislikes. To avoid further conversation, she swam out to the far end of the great bath and stayed there until Rayma had gone.
All that day, whenever the Arab girl's eyes met hers, there was a look of malicious triumph in them. And when the two girls came within speaking distance that purring, little voice whispered spitefully:
"Only wait until the Sultan comes. I shall find a way of taking his love from you."
Despondently Pansy wished this would come to pass. She was between the upper and nether millstones, her father on one side, her captor on the other.
Several days passed without anything being seen of the Sultan. Then, one night, he came, when the girls were gathered in the harem, drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes after dinner. Pansy, was in the group, and the sight of his big, white-clad figure brought her to her feet sharply, with a feeling of choking alarm. Then she stayed where she was, fully aware that escape was impossible.
He seated himself at her side.
She would have edged away, but his voice stopped her.
"No, Pansy, stay where you are," he said quickly. "And since I don't smoke 'bubble bubbles' like the men in 'Eastern pictures and on cigar-box lids' you once mentioned, you can give me a cigarette, and light it, if you like," he added, with a touch of teasing.
Pansy did not like. She stood slim and straight and defiant, ignoring his request, conscious that all eyes were upon them, all ears listening to what was said.
Since she refused to do the Sultan's bidding, and since he made no attempt to force obedience, there were half a dozen pairs of hands ready and eager to do the task Pansy scorned.
Rayma's gaze rested jealously on the English girl,
"Is it always what she likes, Casim, my Lord, and never what you wish?"
"She has been ill, and I humour her," he replied shortly.
"Ill or not she should be only too pleased to do your bidding. Are you not her Sultan and her master?Ihave no will except your wishes.Ihave no secrets hidden from you."
There was a world of insinuation in Rayma's voice. And it made the Sultan glance at Pansy in a quick, suspicious manner.
The only thing he suspected her of doing was trying to escape. He failed to see how she could get out of her present quarters, but the mere idea of losing her sent a chill through him.
"What are you hiding from me, Pansy?" he asked presently.
His close scrutiny brought a flush to her face, not through any sense of guilt, but because of her unaccustomed and scanty attire.
He saw the flush and his suspicions deepened. She was capable of doing herself some injury in order to get away from him.
"What do you mean, Rayma?" he asked, as Pansy refused to answer.
The Arab girl sidled up to Pansy, malice and triumph in her eyes.
"Do you really want to know, my Lord?" she asked, smiling at him softly.
He nodded.
Before Pansy realised what was happening, there was a feeling of cold steel at her breast. Totally unprepared, it seemed that Rayma was going to stab her. She moved back quickly. As she moved there was the sharp snip of scissors, a rending sound, a quick jerk, and her one garment was dragged from her. The Arab girl retreated quickly, holding the silk slip behind her, leaving Pansy nothing but her curls to cover her; a covering that reached no further than the nape of her neck.
With a heart-broken cry she sank on the floor, and crouched there, her face hidden in her hands, flushed with shame from head to foot.
Laughing triumphantly Rayma pointed a scornful finger at her rival.
"Look, Casim, look, beloved," she cried, "that is the secret she would hide from you. Those ugly scars. And she bathes early in the morning when none of us are there, so that we shall not see them and tell you. For she knows that you would not love a woman so flawed."
The other women looked at Pansy in an unconcerned manner. Clothing was of no great consequence to them. Moreover, it was just as well not to interfere when Rayma chose to play her tricks and amuse their master.
But he did not look at all amused. What was more, his gaze did not go to the slim bare girl crouched on the floor. He looked instead at Rayma.
"Give the girl back her garment," he said in an ominously quiet tone.
"Look, Casim. Look, my Lord. A girl so blemished is not worthy ofyou. Often you have said no woman has a form as perfect as mine. But look and compare. Then say which of us is more deserving of your favour."
She snatched off her own light garment, and stood before him, slim and perfect, a golden statue, a model for an artist.
The Sultan's eyes were fixed on her still. But there was no appreciation in them, only anger.
"Give the girl back her garment," he said again.
"When you have looked at her, and not before," Rayma cried, defiant in the surety of her own perfections.
"Give it back when I tell you," he said in a savage voice.
A tense silence followed.
The girls and women glanced at one another, and waited for what they had seen happen from time to time—the fall of a favourite.
Rayma's "coup" had fallen surprisingly, ominously flat. The Sultan refused to look at the girl whose blemishes had been unveiled for his inspection.
Rayma knew it too. And as she gazed at the cold, angry face of her master, she saw her star had set. She threw the silk slip at Pansy who still crouched on the floor, paralysed with shame. Beside herself with jealous rage the Arab girl then stooped and picking up a heavy silver goblet hurled it at her rival. Fortunately it missed its aim and went skimming and crashing along the marble floor.
This attempted assault was the last straw. A savage, merciless expression came to her master's face. At this look Rayma fell prostrate at his feet.
"Casim, love me a little, and I ask for nothing else," she wailed.
A gong stood at his side. Ignoring her, he struck it angrily. Its musical notes echoed through the room. A moment later a couple of negroes appeared in the doorway of the harem.
The Sultan gave a sharp order in Arabic.
What it was Pansy did not know. She was now the centre of a group of women who, with brooch and jewelled pin, were adjusting her silk slip. They were all anxious to gain her good graces, since there was no doubt now who was the Sultan's favourite.
In her ear Leonora was whispering:
"There's no need to be ashamed, my sister. Our Lord Casim never once glanced at you. His eyes and his anger were all for Rayma. Thanks to you, she now feels what I once felt. And her heart is breaking."
But if Pansy did not know what the Sultan said, the crowd around her did. They whispered affrightedly among themselves, and edged further away from their master. For the Sultan in a temper was a person to be avoided.
And Rayma knew what was going to happen. She started up with dilated eyes and screaming, then clung piteously to his feet.
"Casim, my Lord, beloved, not that," she cried, her little face frantic. "Not that, I entreat you, for the sake of the nights that have been."
There was no pity on his face, only savagery. All mercy had been swept out of him by her attempt to shame and injure Pansy.
The guards returned, bringing whips.
On seeing them Rayma's screams broke out afresh. Piteous little pleas for mercy, wild promises never to offend again, that he ignored completely. Then she fell a sobbing, golden statue at the Sultan's feet.
Rayma's cries, terror-stricken and helpless, reached Pansy in the midst of her own dazed shame, making her glance in the direction of the man she hoped never to have to face again.
She saw the huge negroes with their whips, awaiting the Sultan's order. The sobbing, helpless girl at his feet, and on his face a look she had never seen before—the look of an angered and pitiless despot.
For a moment she stood aghast, not able to credit the scene before her. As she looked the Sultan nodded.
The guards raised their whips. And they fell with cruel, stinging force.
But they did not fall on Rayma.
There was one in the harem who dared come between the Sultan and his wrath.
The whips fell on white shoulders, not golden ones, bringing the blood oozing to satin-smooth skin.
The weight and pain brought Pansy to her knees before her captor.
"Raoul," she gasped, "I can't let you do this dreadful thing."
The whips fell from the negroes' hands. Aghast, they stared at the girl before them. It was not their fault the lashes had fallen on the new favourite and not on the culprit. But they would be held responsible, and doubtless beaten nevertheless. The women and girls started to scream and wail. Their master might turn on them for letting the new slave get within reach of the whips. But who was to know she would dare come between the Sultan and a girl he thought well to punish.
He paid no heed to the frightened stares of the guards, the wails of the scared women, to Rayma still sobbing, with fright, not pain. He had thoughts and eyes for nothing but the girl on her knees before him, with the red weals on her shoulders, horror and entreaty in her eyes—Pansy calling him once again by name.
With a fierce, possessive movement, he stooped and gathered her into his arms, crushing her against him, until she was almost lost in his voluminous robes.
"My little English flower, you can't quite hate me," he whispered passionately. "Or you wouldn't try to keep me what you once thought me. You wouldn't try to come between me and the man I am."
With the girl in his arms, he rose.
Scared eyes watched him as he crossed the big hall, and disappeared behind the silken curtains.
Then the girls started to whisper among themselves. For the Sultan had taken this new slave to the gilded chamber of their desires.
Through the open arches of the gilded chamber the moonlight dripped, making silver ponds on the golden floor, filling the place with a vague shimmering glow.
One bar of moonlight fell on a couch where Pansy lay, her face buried in the cushions. By her side the Sultan knelt, one arm across her, watching her with glowing, passionate eyes.
The last few minutes had been a haze to the girl; a blur of great negroes with whips; of Rayma, sobbing and helpless; of Raoul Le Breton, cruel, as she had always felt he might be.
He had come back into her life suddenly, that lover with the strong arms and the deep, caressing voice, the big, half-tamed, arrogant man, whom from the first she had liked and had never been afraid of.
"What dare I hope? What dare I think?" his voice was saying. "Dare I think that you don't quite hate me? Look at me, my little slave, and let me see what is in your eyes."
But Pansy did not look at him. She was too full of shame and confusion, despite Leonora's assurance; a shame and confusion that the Sultan guessed at, for he stayed caressing her golden curls with a soothing touch.
For a time there was silence.
Through the room the wind strayed, its soft, rose-ladened breath mingling with the subtle scent of sandalwood. Somewhere in the garden an owl hooted. A peevish wail in the night, came the cry of jackals prowling around the city walls.
Under that firm, strong, soothing hand, Pansy's shame subsided a little. For the girl there was always magic in his touch, except when anger raged within her. There was no anger now, only a sense of her own helplessness, and the knowledge of the lives he held in his power.
Under the silence and his soothing hand, a question trembled to her lips, born of her own helplessness and the dire straits of her father and friends.
"If ... if I marry you, will you send my father and friends safely back to Gambia?" she asked, in a low voice.
He laughed tenderly.
"If I were as big a villain as you think me, I'd say 'yes,' and then break faith with you, Pansy—as you broke faith with me. If I sent them back, my little flower, do you know what would happen? Your English friends would complain to the French Government. An expedition would be sent up here, and they would dole out to me the fate your father doled out to mine."
His words made Pansy realise for the first time that his summary abduction of his father's party had brought him foul of two Governments.
Horrified, she gazed at him; her father and friends all forgotten at the thought of the fate awaiting her captor.
They would shoot him, this big, fierce man. All fire would die out of those flashing eyes. That handsome face would be stiff and stark in death. Never again would that hard mouth curve into lines of tenderness when he smiled at her. There would be no strength left in his arms. No deep, passionate, caressing voice. No untamed, masterful man, using all his power to bend her to his will.
It was one thing for Pansy to want to kill him herself, but quite another for other people to set about it.
At that moment she realised that, in spite of everything, she did not hate the Sultan Casim Ammeh.
And what was more he knew it too. For he bent over her, laughing softly.
"So, Heart's Ease, you don't quite hate me," he said. "That fact will keep me patient for quite a little time. And you will be whispering 'yes' in my ear, as I would have you whisper it—of your own free will, as you whispered 'I love you,' on that sweet night six months ago."
He bent still lower, and kissed the little face that watched him with such strained anxiety.
"Good night, my darling," he said fondly.
Long after he had gone Pansy lay trying to crush the truth back into its hiding-place in her heart. And his voice, tender and triumphant, seemed to echo back mockingly from the jewelled ceiling.
For surely she could not love a man so cruel, so barbaric, so profligate as the Sultan Casim Ammeh.
The next morning Pansy awoke to find herself back in her gilded prison, and Alice beside her with the customary morning tea, a dish of fruit and a basket of flowers, all as if the last ten days had never been. She knew now the flowers were from the Sultan. But she did not tell Alice to take them away. Instead, as she drank her tea and ate some fruit, she looked at them in a meditating manner.
And Alice looked at her mistress in an inquisitive way, wondering what had happened to her during the last few days.
"De Sultan, he no sell you den, Miss Pansy?"
"No," Pansy replied in an absent manner.
"Since you go I lib wid de oder servants in anoder part ob de palace. Dere be hundreds ob dem," the girl continued, her eyes round with awe at her captor's wealth and power.
She spoke, too, as if anxious for an exchange of confidences.
However, Pansy said nothing. She stayed with her gaze on the flowers, despising herself for having been so upset at the thought of the Sultan's demise.
That morning Alice dressed her in her usual civilised attire. In spite of this, Pansy found she was still a prisoner, still within the precincts of the harem. The rose garden was hers to wander in at will. But the guards were still stationed outside one of the sandalwood doors, as they had been on the day of her arrival at the palace. However, one of the two other doors was unlocked.
Pansy opened it, hoping some way of escape might lay beyond. A dim flight of stairs led downwards. She descended, only to find herself in the harem.
The girls and women greeted her with an awed and servile air. To them now she was the Sultan's first wife; the most envied and most honoured woman in the province of El-Ammeh.
Curious glances were cast at her attire. Leonora appeared most at her ease. For she fingered Pansy's garments with soft, slow, indolent hands.
"It's quite ten years since I've seen a woman dressed as you are," she remarked. "Not since I lived in Tangier, before my uncle sold me to an Arab merchant."
Pansy knew Leonora's history. It did not sound a pretty one to civilised ears.
Sold at the age of fourteen, she had been handed from one desert chief to another, until finally she had appeared in the slave market of El-Ammeh and had taken the Sultan's fancy.
"What an awful life you've had," Pansy said, pity in her voice.
Leonora's languid eyes opened with surprise.
"Me! Oh, no. I'm beautiful, and most of my masters have been kind. But none so kind and generous as the Sultan Casim. Besides, now my travels are at an end. When the Sultan tires of a slave, he does not sell her. She is given in marriage to one of his officers, with a good dowry. And she is then a woman with an established position. He is always generous to a woman who has pleased him. How lucky for you to be picked for his first wife! You'll find him almost always kind. I've been here more than a year and I know. He is never harsh without a reason. He is never hard and unjust like some of the masters I've known."
As Pansy listened to this eulogy on her captor, she was surprised and ashamed of herself for having a scrap of liking left for him. All her instincts revolted at his doings, but much as she tried she could not make them revolt at the man himself.
"He was hard enough last night," she remarked.
"But he had a reason. Rayma would have shamed and injured you. She could not see what I saw—that the Sultan has eyes and thoughts and heart for no one but you now. She is a stupid girl, that Rayma. Because he loved her for a month or two, she thought he would love her for ever. He was her first master. He bought her but a few weeks before he last went to Paris. And he is so angry now that he will sell her again, not give her in marriage to one of his officers, making her a woman of importance."
Leonora's remarks made Pansy glance sharply round the big hall, suddenly aware that Rayma was not present. Already she saw the Arab girl having to face that dreadful sea of eyes, as she, herself, had faced it.
"Where is Rayma?" she asked quickly.
"The guards took her away last night," Leonora answered indifferently. "She'll trouble you no more."
Hastily Pansy got to her feet, and went to the big door leading out of the harem. She knew what lay beyond; a large vestibule where, day and night, half a dozen eunuchs lounged.
Seeing Pansy on the threshold, brought them to their feet, barring her exit.
"I must see the Sultan," she said.
Although she made the request, she hardly expected to have it granted, for the Sultan came when he felt disposed.
"Lady, I'll inform the Sultan of your desires," one of the guards replied.
With that he left the vestibule.
Pansy waited, conscious of the servility and overwhelming desire to please that oozed from these menials.
Before long the messenger returned.
It appeared that the girl's wish was to be granted. With a negro on either side of her Pansy was taken through an intricate maze of corridors, past closed doors, open arches and Arabesque windows, to a further door that her escort opened.
Pansy found herself in a room that looked more like a sumptuous office than anything else, with a balcony that jutted over the lake.
At a large desk a man was seated in a white drill suit with a black cummerbund, who rose at her entry and smiled at her, as if the last week had never been; as if he were still Raoul Le Breton and there had been no unveiling.
"Well, Pansy, it's flattering to think you want to see me," he remarked.
Pansy did not waste any time before stating the reason of her visit.
"Is it true you're going to sell Rayma?" she asked in a horror-stricken tone.
The mere mention of her name made a savage expression flit across his face.
"What I'm going to do with her is my own concern."
"How can you be such a brute, such a savage, so abominably cruel?" she cried, distress in her voice.
"Do you know, my little slave, that you're the only person in the place who dare take me to task about my doings?" he remarked.
Pansy did not know, or care; her only desire was to save him from himself.
"I shall stay here until you premise not to sell her," she said tensely.
"If you stay until Doomsday, it won't worry me," he replied. "You must find some other threat."
Pansy could have shaken him for daring to poke fun at her, when her only desire was to keep him from slave-dealing.
"How can you even contemplate such a ghastly thing," she gasped.
"As what?" he asked in an unconcerned manner.
"Don't you know that slave-dealing is an abomination?"
"It may be in your country, but it isn't in mine."
"I can't bear to think of you doing anything so dreadful," she said in a strained voice.
He glanced at her, a soft, mocking light in his eyes.
"Should you like me any better if I didn't sell Rayma?"
"I should hate you if you did."
"I couldn't run such a risk a second time," he replied. "I'll send her back to the harem, and keep her there until I can find a suitable husband, if that'll please you better."
Pansy experienced a feeling of relief. The victory was easier than she had expected.
There was a brief pause. Then he said:
"So you're still returning good for evil, Pansy. Your power of forgiveness is astonishing. Rayma deserved punishment for her treatment of you."
"If anyone deserves punishment it's you," Pansy retorted.
"How do you make that out?"
"For trifling with her."
For a moment he was too astonished to speak.
"If you call that trifling, then I must have trifled with at least a hundred women in my day," he remarked at length.
"How can you stand there and say such dreadful things?" she gasped.
"There's nothing dreadful about it from my point of view."
Pansy said nothing. She just stared at him, as if at some fascinating horror.
Under her gaze he began to find excuses and explanations for himself and his behaviour.
"Don't you remember telling me in that letter of yours that you were not quite the same as other girls, putting that forward as a sufficient reason for breaking faith with me? Well, Pansy, I'm not quite the same as the other men you've known. To begin with, my religion is different. In my own small way I'm a king. I rule absolutely within a radius of more than a hundred miles round here. Then, I'm a millionaire, and my trading extends far beyond my kingdom, as far as St. Louis, in fact. And millionaires, more especially if they're men and unmarried, are fêted and welcomed everywhere. And, like kings, millionaires can do no wrong. Then I'm half-Arab, half-French, which you must agree is a wild combination. Such a mixture doesn't tend to make a man exactly virtuous. I've done exactly what I liked, practically ever since I was born. Everybody, except my mother, did their best to spoil me. She was the only one who ever tried to keep me in order in any way, but she died when I was ten years old. At fourteen I was Sultan here in my own right. And no one ever dared, or troubled, to criticise my doings until you came along. And now you're expecting me to be a better man than ever Fate or nature intended me to be."
Pansy said nothing; she still looked at him, trying now to see his point of view.
"Icall 'trifling' what you've done with me. Promising to marry me and then drawing back. I've never trifled with you. And if you can believe such a thing, and if you'll try and see it in my light, I've been faithful to you. I never had a thought for another woman since the night you came into my life, until I learnt you were Barclay's daughter. Then I tried to hate you, and went back to my old life. But when you were brought to me, dead, as I thought, I knew I didn't hate you. And since that day, Pansy, there's been no other woman but you. And you'll satisfy me for the rest of my life."
Pansy listened to him, trying to see things as he saw them, knowing she ought to be disgusted with him. Instead, she was intensely sorry because there had never been anyone at hand to check or train him, except a mother who had died twenty years ago.
But his speech brought her father's plight before her again. It seemed hardly feasible that the Sultan would have sent her letter to the man he desired to punish.
"Did you give that note of mine to my father?" she asked.
A trifle askance, he glanced at her.
"No, I didn't," he confessed.
Pansy was past being angry with him; she was just sorely wounded in soul and mind at his doings.
This must have showed on her face, for he went on quickly:
"You can send another and I promise it'll be delivered. Not only that, but that your father and friends will be well treated. Among other things, Pansy, you've taken the edge off my vengeance."
He paused, leaning over her he said:
"I'm granting you all these favours, but what are you going to do for me?"
Pansy wanted nothing now but to get away from him, right away, beyond his reach, but not because she hated him.
"Just for a moment, my little English flower, will you rest upon my heart?" he asked in a soft, caressing voice. "There's no savagery left in me when you're there of your own accord."
He held out his arms, waiting to complete the bargain. But she moved away quickly.
"Oh, no," she said, alarm in her voice.
He laughed.
"You've never been afraid of me before, why are you now, Pansy? Are you afraid you might love me?"
"How could I love anyone so depraved?" she asked.
But her voice was quavering, not scornful as she intended it to be.
"Depraved! So that's what I am now, is it? Well, it's all point of view, I suppose. And it's one degree better than saying you hate me."
He turned towards the desk, and drew out paper and envelopes.
"Write your letter, my little girl," he finished.
Pansy sat down.
As she wrote to her father, in her heart was a wish that she had been left undisturbed in her fool's paradise, that she had married Raoul Le Breton at the end of a month, knowing nothing about him except that she loved him.
Once he was her husband, if she had learnt the truth, she would not have had to fight against herself and him. There would have been only one course left open to her—to do her utmost to make a better man of him. And circumstances had shown her that in her hands the task would have been an easy one.
When Sir George Barclay returned to prison, he was a broken man. His officers were surprised to see him back alive, and anxious to hear what had occurred. But a day or two passed before he was able to talk about what had happened. And always before him was the bestial figure of the miser feather merchant, into whose hands he imagined his daughter had fallen.
When he told the story of her sale a strained silence fell on his officers. A silence that Cameron broke.
"The damned brute," he said in a wild, heart-broken way, "and he knew her in Grand Canary."
The fact of Pansy's acquaintance with the Sultan Casim Ammeh, Barclay had learnt from Cameron in the early days of their capture. The younger man immediately had recognised the Sultan as the Raoul Le Breton, who when out of Africa posed as a French millionaire.
"He's worse than a savage," one of the other officers put in, "since he knows better."
Sir George had nothing to say, once the story was told. Pansy's fate was always before him; an agony that chased him into dreams, compared with which his own death would have been as nothing.
One morning about ten days after the sale of slaves, one of the Arab guards brought him a letter.
To his amazement, he saw his daughter's writing on the envelope.
With trembling fingers he opened it, wondering how she had managed to get a message through to him, with a prayer in his heart that by some miracle she might have escaped her horrible fate.
"No one knows better than I how you must have suffered on my account. I tried to get a letter through to you before, but I have just heard it never reached you, so I am sending another.
I was not sold that day in the slave-market. The Sultan never intended to sell me. He only sent me there and made a pretence of selling me in order to hurt you.
I am in the palace here, and no one could be better treated than I am. I asked the Sultan to let you all go back to Gambia, but he will not consent to that. But he has promised that you all will be well treated.
You must not worry because of me. It is not as if the Sultan and I were strangers. I met him in Grand Canary, but I did not know who he really was then—he was passing under a French name.
It is very difficult to know what to say to cheer you up. I know you will worry whatever I say. I am quite safe here, and no harm will happen to me. I cannot bear to think of you worrying, and you must try not to do so for my sake.
Your loving daughter,PANSY."
As George Barclay read through the letter, it seemed to him that he knew what had happened. The girl had bartered herself in exchange for his life and the lives of her friends.
He tried to gather what cold comfort he could by keeping the picture of the Sultan before him as he had last seen him, big and handsome, in his khaki riding suit, looking thoroughly European. At least the man who had his daughter was a king, if a barbaric one, and civilised to a certain extent. She had not fallen into the clutches of that grimy, naked, foaming wretch, as he had imagined. And the knowledge eased his tortured spirit considerably.
After that interview with her captor Pansy's life rapidly developed into one long struggle between inclination and upbringing.
She knew she loved the Sultan, but all her standards revolted against marrying him. She could not bear to think about the wild past that was his, but she equally could not bear to think that he might fall into sin again when hers was the power to prevent him.
What was more, she knew he had guessed her love for him, and was doing his best to make her succumb to his attractions.
After that one interview she was not allowed out of the sensual, scented precincts of the harem. She had no occupation, no amusements, no books even. Nothing to do all day except just think about her lover and fight her battle.
And he made the battle all the harder. Never a day passed but what he was there, big and handsome and fascinating. He would come upon her in the little walled garden, and linger with her among the roses. By the hour he would sit with her in the wide gallery overlooking the desert. Very often he dined with her in the gilded chamber, and stayed on afterwards in the dim light of the shaded lamps, watching her with soft, mocking eyes.
And very often he would say:
"Well, Pansy, have you made up your mind whether you are going to marry me or not?"
It seemed to the girl that the whole world was combining to drive her into the arms of a man she ought to turn from with contempt and disgust.
At the end of a fortnight he said:
"Pansy, you're the first woman who has ever fought against her love for me. It's an amusing sight, but I'm beginning to wish you weren't such a determined fighter."
At the end of a month some of the mockery had gone out of his eyes, giving place to a hungry gleam. For the girl had not succumbed to his fascinations, although her face was growing white and weary with close confinement and the ceaseless battle that went on within herself.
And the man who acknowledged no law except his own appetites, and who, up till now, had lived for nothing else, loved the girl all the more deeply because she did not succumb to his attractions, because she had a soul above her senses, and tried to live up to her own ideals, refusing to come down to his level. At times he felt he must try and grope his way up to the heights, and unconsciously he was rising from the depths.
"Water can always reach the level it rises from," Pansy had once said.
Although a wild craving for his girl-prisoner often kept him wakeful, although there was none to stop him, and only a short length of passage and a locked door, to which he alone had the key, lay between him and his desire, the passage was never crossed, the door never unlocked.
To escape his presence as much as possible, Pansy spent a lot of her time in the big hall of the harem with the other girls. But one by one they disappeared, to become the wives of various men of importance in the place, until only Rayma was left. A quiet, subdued Rayma who watched Pansy and the Sultan with longing, envious gaze.
"How happy you must be now you are his wife, and you know that he can't thrust you from him should another woman take his fancy," the Arab girl sighed one day to her rival.
Pansy was not his wife, and she had no intention of being. In her desire to escape from temptation she grew absolutely reckless.
"I should be much happier if I could get right away from him," she said in response to Rayma's remark.
"Don't you love him?" Rayma exclaimed.
"I hate him," Pansy said, lying to her heart. "I never want to see him again," she went on in a hysterical way. "I only want to escape from him and this place, once and for ever."
Astonished, Rayma gazed at her supplanter. Then a look of hope darted into her dark eyes.
If only this strange girl were out of the way, the Sultan's heart might return to her.