CHAPTER XXII.EDITH AND MEAEdith had heard it all. Not one bitter taunt, not one rough word had that merciless interpreter glossed over. She had heard herself called “a woman who should be scourged with rods” and “a daughter of Satan.” She had heard herself, while Dick sniggered behind her, and Tabitha strove to repress a smile that she felt to be unholy, compared to mire in which, if a man rolled, he could never be clean again, and to a sower of poisonous weeds, and this by that other hateful woman who had bewitched her husband with her beauty. She could bear no more; for once her bitter anger made her almost heroic. She would face them there and then. She would demand an answer to the question urged in such forcible language by that blind and sardonic Arab, whose pleasure it was to pick the holiness of other men to pieces. She hid herself in the shawl. She pushed herself through the crowd; she stood in front of the platform, then suddenly unveiled.Mea saw her first; some instinct of intense antipathy caused her to look round and find her rival’s eyes. Suddenly she stiffened, falling into that attitude which she assumed when, as judge, she passed sentence on a criminal. Then she spoke in English, asking, although already her heart knew the answer to the question, she who remembered well the picture in the locket that Rupert used to wear:“Stranger, who are you who creep into my house not asked? And what seek you?”Hearing her voice, Rupert looked round also. Next instant he was clinging to the arms of his chair to prevent himself from falling out of it, while over his face there spread a look of woe and terror, such as a man might wear who suddenly thinks he sees a hated ghost come to summon him to hell. His heart stopped, his sight grew dim, a cold sweat burst out upon his forehead.“I am the Lady Devene,” Edith answered, “and I am here to seek my husband, Lord Devene, who sits at your side.”By now Mea had recovered herself, for she felt the crisis of her life had come, and her bold spirit rose to meet it. She grew quiet, quick, resourceful.“Is it so?” she said. “Then that old teacher, he must be, what you call him, a prophet—or perhaps he hear you come. You want seek Lord Devene, him whom you spit on when he was Rupert Ullershaw Bey? Yes? Well, Zahed no look as though he wish to go away with you, his face all change,” and she pointed to Rupert’s agonised countenance.“I am speaking to my husband, not to you, woman,” said Edith.Mea shook her beautiful head and smiled.“Woman wrong word. I great lady here; lady whom he love but no marry—till you die, alas!”Rupert still seemed unable to speak, and Edith positively choked with wrath, so, perhaps to prevent any awkward pause, Mea continued the conversation.“Who those?” she asked, pointing with her finger at Tabitha and Dick, who, with the interpreter, were making their way towards the platform. “Your mama come to look after you? And him? Oh! I know. That gentleman you love. Him for who you turn Zahed into the street. Oh! I know, I know. Old woman down there with white head,” and she pointed to Bakhita, who was watching all this scene with the grimmest interest, “she have magic; she show me his ugly face in water. He swim about in water with the tail of a snake, head—man, heart—snake, you understand, yes? Bakhita show you some magic, too, if you like.”Now at last Rupert shook himself free from his faintness.“Edith,” he said, “why have you come here?”“Really I begin to wonder,” she answered, while she gathered herself together, “for I don’t seem very welcome, do I? Also this place isn’t pleasant, its inhabitants are too fond of personal remarks.”Then she paused and presently flung her words at him, few and swift and straight.“I come, Rupert, to ask you to answer the riddle which that blind old dervish has been amusing himself by putting to you at such length. Will you return to your duty and your deserted wife? Or will you stop here, as the—the friend of that shameless person and head-priest of her barbarians?”“Please, Edith,” said Rupert, “be a little milder in your language. These people are peculiar, and my power here is limited; if you apply such names to Tama, and they come to understand them, I cannot answer for the consequences.”“I did not ask you to answer for the consequences, I asked you to answer my question,” replied Edith, biting her white lips.“It seems to require some thought,” said Rupert sadly.Then he lifted his hand and addressed the audience, who were watching what passed with wondering eyes.“Brothers and sisters,” he said, “a wonderful thing has happened. In speaking to you to-day about the crimes that have been done in Tama, I told you my own story for an example. Then the teacher yonder showed me how weak and evil I really was, and put a question to me as to whether, should she appear and ask it, I would take back the wife of that story, she that had wrought me evil in the past. Now this wife stands before me, and demands the decision which I said I would give when the time came. It has come—that evil day has dawned upon me who never thought to see it, forgetting that things have changed in the matter of my fortunes across the sea. Yet, my brethren, shall I be wrong if I ask for a while to think? If, for instance, I say that when we meet again as is our custom on this same day of the next month, I then decide, and not before?”“No, no, you will be right, Zahed,” they murmured, the blind old mystic leading them with his shrill voice. “We will have it so.” More, great men among them stood up here and there and shouted that he should not go, that they would gather their servants and guard the pass, and if need be, keep him prisoner, or—and they looked viciously at Dick and his companions.Achmet translated their remarks, adding, on his own account: “This people in damned nasty temper—very private people and very fierce who love Zahed. You must not make them angry, or perhaps they kill us all. I came here to interpret, not to have throat cut.”Dick also seizing the situation with remarkable swiftness, was equally urgent and out-spoken.“Don’t show off any of your airs and graces here, Edith, please,” he said, “I am not anxious to follow the example of our friend, the god upon the platform, and renounce the world in a wider fashion. That little tartar of a woman would jump at a chance of murdering us, and she can do it if she likes.”Only Tabitha, weary with standing, sank down on to a block of stone, and incidentally into the lap of a native who already occupied it, and scarcely heeding his wild struggles to be free, fanned herself with a broad-brimmed hat and remarked:“Ach! do not trouble. If they kill us, they kill us. It is very interesting to hear them say their minds so well. I am most glad that we came.”“You hear their answer, Edith,” said Rupert, “and you must understand my position. Have you any objection to make?”“I understand your position perfectly, Rupert, and I am quite aware that a man may find it difficult—most difficult, to escape from certain kinds of entanglements,” and she glanced at Mea and paused.“Wrong word again,” murmured that lady, with a sweet smile; “no what you call it, no tangles, only one great rope of love, too thick to cut, too strong to break—much!”“As for objections,” went on Edith, without heeding this melodious and poetic interruption, “I could make scores, but since we don’t wish to be butchered by your amiableprotégés,perhaps I had better hold my tongue and give you a month in which to come to your right mind. Only I am by no means sure that I shall stop here all that time.”“Don’t stop if you no like,” broke in Mea again. “Please not—the road it always open, give you camel, give you soldiers, give you food, and write you letter afterwards to tell you how Zahed make up his mind. I can write very nice letter all in English, learn that at Luxor, or if you rather, write in Arabic.”At this sally Dick grinned, for it pleased his wounded soul to see Edith getting the worst of it for once in her life, and Tabitha burst out laughing. The general effect was to induce Edith to change her mind rapidly.“Yes, I shall stop,” she went on, as though she had never suggested anything else, “because I suppose it is my duty to give him every chance.”“Glad you stop,” said Mea, “my humble people much honoured. Give you nice house, high up there on the mountain since in this month you catch great fever down here and perhaps stop too long,” and turning, she issued a sharp and sudden order whereat men sprang up, bowed and ran to do her bidding.“What’s that?” asked Dick nervously.“Nothing,” said Mea, “only tell them make ready house on the mountain and take your things there and set guard about it so you no be hurt. Now I go. Good-night!” whereon she rose, bowed to her people, bowed to her guests, and then, making a deep obeisance to Rupert, lifted his hand and with it touched her brow. After this she descended from the platform, and at its foot was instantly surrounded by an armed guard, in the midst of which, preceded by old Bakhita, Mea marched down the passage between the central columns of the great hall, while to right and left, as was their custom on these days of ceremony, her people prostrated themselves as she passed, shouting: “Tama! Tama!”“Himmel,” said Tabitha. “Himmel, she is charming! No wonder Rupert do love her, like all her folks. Look how they bow. Achmet, where is my photograph thing? I wish to take them quick.”“Mustn’t take photograph here,” answered Achmet gloomily; “they think that bad magic, great big evil eye. No photograph, please.”But Tabitha had already forgotten her intention and was advancing towards Rupert.“My dear Rupert,” she said, as climbing the platform she dropped into the throne-like chair vacated by Mea, and then bending forward, solemnly kissed him upon the brow. “My dear Rupert, oh! I am glad to see you, I cannot say how glad.”“I am glad to see you also, Tabitha,” he answered, “though I wish we could have met under more pleasant circumstances.”“Ach! you are in a deep hole,” she said, “down at the bottom of a well, but there is light above, and who knows, you may come out again.”“I don’t see how,” he answered sadly.“No; but God sees. Perhaps He will pull you out. I am sorry for you, dear. I have no patience with Edith, and that Dick, I hate him now and always.”“Tell me a little about things,” he said; “we may not have another chance.”So she told him all she knew. Dick and Edith had vanished back through the side door; the audience for the most part had melted away, only a few of them remaining at the far end of the hall. As she spoke rapidly, mixing German and English words together, although his intelligence followed her, Rupert’s mind wandered, as was its ancient fashion. He recalled, for instance, how Tabitha and he had once sat together upon another dais in a very different hall far away in England.“You remember,” he said suddenly, “that New Year’s Eve at Devene, the night I got engaged, and what you told me then?”She nodded.“You said she would breed trouble,” he went on; “you said she was very dangerous. Well, it is so, and now—what am I to do?”“Nothing at all, just wait,” she answered. “You have a month, and during that time you need only see her in public. In a month many things may happen. Indeed, I do think that things will happen,” and once again that fateful look crept over the strong, solid face and into the quiet eyes, the same look that he had noted years ago when she sat with him on the dais in the hall at Devene. “God He does not desert men like you, Rupert, who have suffered so cruelly and behaved so well,” she murmured, gently pressing his hand. “Look! Dick has come back and is calling me. When shall we meet again?”“To-morrow,” he said, “I cannot see her to-night. I will not see her privately at all till the month is up. You must make her understand.”“Oh! she understands well enough, and so does Dick, and so do I. But are they safe here?”“Safer than in London, only they must not speak ill of the lady Tama. Good-night!”“Good-night, dear Rupert,” she said, and went away, leaving him seated there alone upon the platform.That night Tabitha and Edith slept in the house which Mea had assigned to them. It was situated upon a mountain-crest over two miles from the town of which it formed part of the fortifications, was cool, and commanded a beautiful view. To Dick Learmer was given a similar but somewhat smaller house belonging to the same chain of defences, but about five hundred yards away. Both of these houses were provisioned, and both of them guarded day and night, that no harm might come to the guests of the tribe.So angry was Edith that for a long while she would scarcely speak to Tabitha, who, their meal finished, sat upon a kind of verandah or outlook place, a shut Bible upon her knees, looking at the moonlit desert upon the one hand, and the misty oasis on the other. At this game of silence her patient, untroubled mind was far stronger than that of Edith. At length the latter could bear it no longer; the deep peace of the place, which should have soothed, only exasperated her raw temper. She broke out into a flood of words. She abused Tabitha for bringing her here and exposing her to such insults. She named Mea by ill names. She declared that she would go away at once.“Ah!” asked Tabitha at last, “and will you take Dick with you?”“No,” she answered; “I never want to see Dick or any of you again.”“That is unlucky for me,” said Tabitha; “but since I have reached this nice place, I shall stay here the month and talk with Rupert. Perhaps if he and that pretty lady will have me, I shall stay longer. But I, too, do not want the company of Dick. As for you, dear Edith, if you wish to go, they told you, the road is open. It will save much trouble to everybody.”“I shall not go,” exclaimed Edith. “Why should I leave my husband with that woman who has no right to him?”“I am not so sure,” answered Tabitha thoughtfully. “If my little dog is caught in a trap and is ill, and I kick it into the street, and leave it there to starve, and some kind lady comes and takes my little dog and gives it a good home for years, can I say that she has no right to it just because I find out, after all, that it is a valuable little dog, and that I am—oh! so fond of it?”“Please stop talking nonsense about little dogs, Tabitha. Rupert is not a dog.”“No; but then why should he have been treated as one? If such a dog would have learned to love its new mistress, is it wonderful that he should do the same? But have you learnt to care for him at last, that you should want him back so much, he who lives here good and happy?”“I don’t know,” snapped Edith; “but I won’t leave him with that other woman if I can help it; I don’t trust all that Platonic nonsense. I am going to bed;” and she went.But Tabitha still sat for a long time and gazed at the moonlit desert, there making her accustomed prayers.“Oh! God in heaven,” she ended them, “help those two poor people whom Thou hast tried so sorely,” and as she spoke the words a conviction came into her mind that they would be heard. Then, feeling comforted, she too went to her bed.In the morning Edith received a note from Rupert; it was the first time that she had seen his handwriting for many a year. It ran:Dear Edith,—I will not debate the strange circumstances in which we find ourselves, and I write to ask that during the ensuing month you will avoid all allusion to them. The facts are known to us both, to discuss them further can only lead to unnecessary bitterness, and perhaps prevent a peaceful solution of the trouble. If you agree to this, I write on behalf of the lady Tama and myself to say that we are ready to enter into a like undertaking, and that we shall be happy to see you here whenever you wish.If, on the other hand, you do not agree, then I think that we had best keep apart until the day when I have promised to give an answer to your question. A messenger will bring me your written reply.Rupert.Edith thought a while, then she took a piece of paper and wrote upon it with a pencil:I agree.EDITH.P.S.—I enclose a letter which I have for you. He wrote it shortly before he died. Also, there are some from the lawyers.“After all,” she reflected to herself, as she saw the runner depart swiftly, carrying her packet on the top of a cleft stick, “it will give me a little time to look round in peace. Rupert is right, it is no use wrangling. Moreover, he and that woman are masters here, and I must obey.”Within an hour the runner returned again, bearing another note from Mea, which, in very queer English, asked them both to honour them with their company at the midday meal. They went, and on the way met Dick, who had received a similar invitation. On arriving at the town, they found Rupert seated beneath the verandah of his house, and squatted upon the ground around him a considerable number of people, all of them suffering from various complaints, together with some women who held sick children in their arms. He bowed to them, and called out in a cheerful voice:“Forgive me for a little while. I have nearly finished my morning’s doctoring, and perhaps you had better stand back, for some of these ailments are infectious.”Edith and Dick took the hint at once, riding their animals into the shade of a tree a little way off. Not so Tabitha. Descending from her donkey with a bump, she marched straight to Rupert and shook his hand. Two minutes later they perceived that she was helping him to bandage wounds and dispense medicines.“How she can!” exclaimed Edith, “and the worst of it is she is sure to bring some filthy disease back with her. Just think of Rupert taking to doctoring all those horrid people!”“They say he is uncommonly clever at it,” answered Dick, “and will ride for miles to see a sick person. Perhaps that is why they are so fond of him.”“Why don’t you go to help him?” asked Edith. “You studied medicine for two years before you went to the Bar.”“Thanks,” he answered, “I think it is pleasanter sitting under this tree with you. At present I am not a candidate for popular affection, so I don’t see why I should take any risks.”“Rupert doesn’t mind risks,” said Edith.“No,” he said, “one of his characteristics always was to like what is disagreeable and dangerous. In that fact lies your best chance, Edith. He may even make up his mind to abandon an existence which seems to suit him exactly and return to the joys of civilisation.”“You are even ruder than usual, Dick,” she said. “Why did you come here at all? We never asked you.”“You cannot pretend, Edith, that gentleness has been your prevailing note of late. For the rest, considering that on the results of this inquiry depended whether I should be one of the richest men in England or a beggar, it is not strange that I came to look after my own interests,” he added bitterly.“Well, you know now,” she answered, “so why don’t you go away? Rupert is alive, therefore the property is his, not yours.”“Quite so; but even Rupert is not immortal. He might contract one of those sicknesses, for instance.”“No such luck for you, Dick,” she said, with a laugh, “he is too much accustomed to them, you won’t get rid of him like that.”“I admit it is improbable, for he looks singularly healthy, does he not? But who knows? At any rate, he is a good-natured fellow; I may be able to come to some terms with him. Also,” he added, in another voice, “please understand once and for all that I am going to see this play out, whatever you or anybody else may say or do. I was in at the beginning, and I mean to be in at the death.”Edith shrugged her shoulders, turning away, for there was a very unpleasant look upon Dick’s face, and just at that moment they saw Rupert, who had washed his hands and changed his robe, riding towards them upon a white mule by the side of which walked Tabitha. He could not take off his hat because he wore a keffieh, but he saluted Edith by placing his fingers upon his forehead; and then stretched out his hand to her and to Dick.“Forgive my dismounting, Edith,” he said, in a pleasant voice, “but you remember what a dreadful cripple I am, and I haven’t been able to grow a new foot, or even to get an artificial one here. I did send for the article, but it must have been made for a lady; at any rate, it was three sizes too small, and now adorns a black old beggar woman.”Edith laughed; somehow the thought of Rupert’s mutilated state no longer filled her with horror.“Mea is expecting you all to luncheon,” he said, “if I may so call our unconventional meal. Will you come?”She nodded, making a funny little face, and rode away towards Mea’s house at Rupert’s side.“Did you get my note,” she said suddenly, “and the enclosures?”“Yes,” he answered, “his letter is very painful—very painful indeed, and the others are interesting. But we have agreed not to talk about those things, haven’t we, until the month is up?”“Certainly, Rupert,” she answered, in a gentle voice. “So far as I am concerned, the past is all gone. I am here now, not to consider myself, but to do what you desire. I only wish to say that I am sorry if I spoke as I should not yesterday—and for many other things also, Rupert, but really it was hard to have to listen to all those bitter words, even if I deserved them.”“I understand—very hard,” he said, flushing, “and now for the next month it is settled that we are going to be just friends, is it not?”“Yes, Rupert, as you have ordered it,” she whispered, and glancing at her, he saw that there were tears standing in her blue eyes.“This business is going to be even harder than I thought,” reflected Rupert to himself, and in another moment Mea, clad in her spotless white, was receiving them with gracious smiles and Oriental courtesy.
Edith had heard it all. Not one bitter taunt, not one rough word had that merciless interpreter glossed over. She had heard herself called “a woman who should be scourged with rods” and “a daughter of Satan.” She had heard herself, while Dick sniggered behind her, and Tabitha strove to repress a smile that she felt to be unholy, compared to mire in which, if a man rolled, he could never be clean again, and to a sower of poisonous weeds, and this by that other hateful woman who had bewitched her husband with her beauty. She could bear no more; for once her bitter anger made her almost heroic. She would face them there and then. She would demand an answer to the question urged in such forcible language by that blind and sardonic Arab, whose pleasure it was to pick the holiness of other men to pieces. She hid herself in the shawl. She pushed herself through the crowd; she stood in front of the platform, then suddenly unveiled.
Mea saw her first; some instinct of intense antipathy caused her to look round and find her rival’s eyes. Suddenly she stiffened, falling into that attitude which she assumed when, as judge, she passed sentence on a criminal. Then she spoke in English, asking, although already her heart knew the answer to the question, she who remembered well the picture in the locket that Rupert used to wear:
“Stranger, who are you who creep into my house not asked? And what seek you?”
Hearing her voice, Rupert looked round also. Next instant he was clinging to the arms of his chair to prevent himself from falling out of it, while over his face there spread a look of woe and terror, such as a man might wear who suddenly thinks he sees a hated ghost come to summon him to hell. His heart stopped, his sight grew dim, a cold sweat burst out upon his forehead.
“I am the Lady Devene,” Edith answered, “and I am here to seek my husband, Lord Devene, who sits at your side.”
By now Mea had recovered herself, for she felt the crisis of her life had come, and her bold spirit rose to meet it. She grew quiet, quick, resourceful.
“Is it so?” she said. “Then that old teacher, he must be, what you call him, a prophet—or perhaps he hear you come. You want seek Lord Devene, him whom you spit on when he was Rupert Ullershaw Bey? Yes? Well, Zahed no look as though he wish to go away with you, his face all change,” and she pointed to Rupert’s agonised countenance.
“I am speaking to my husband, not to you, woman,” said Edith.
Mea shook her beautiful head and smiled.
“Woman wrong word. I great lady here; lady whom he love but no marry—till you die, alas!”
Rupert still seemed unable to speak, and Edith positively choked with wrath, so, perhaps to prevent any awkward pause, Mea continued the conversation.
“Who those?” she asked, pointing with her finger at Tabitha and Dick, who, with the interpreter, were making their way towards the platform. “Your mama come to look after you? And him? Oh! I know. That gentleman you love. Him for who you turn Zahed into the street. Oh! I know, I know. Old woman down there with white head,” and she pointed to Bakhita, who was watching all this scene with the grimmest interest, “she have magic; she show me his ugly face in water. He swim about in water with the tail of a snake, head—man, heart—snake, you understand, yes? Bakhita show you some magic, too, if you like.”
Now at last Rupert shook himself free from his faintness.
“Edith,” he said, “why have you come here?”
“Really I begin to wonder,” she answered, while she gathered herself together, “for I don’t seem very welcome, do I? Also this place isn’t pleasant, its inhabitants are too fond of personal remarks.”
Then she paused and presently flung her words at him, few and swift and straight.
“I come, Rupert, to ask you to answer the riddle which that blind old dervish has been amusing himself by putting to you at such length. Will you return to your duty and your deserted wife? Or will you stop here, as the—the friend of that shameless person and head-priest of her barbarians?”
“Please, Edith,” said Rupert, “be a little milder in your language. These people are peculiar, and my power here is limited; if you apply such names to Tama, and they come to understand them, I cannot answer for the consequences.”
“I did not ask you to answer for the consequences, I asked you to answer my question,” replied Edith, biting her white lips.
“It seems to require some thought,” said Rupert sadly.
Then he lifted his hand and addressed the audience, who were watching what passed with wondering eyes.
“Brothers and sisters,” he said, “a wonderful thing has happened. In speaking to you to-day about the crimes that have been done in Tama, I told you my own story for an example. Then the teacher yonder showed me how weak and evil I really was, and put a question to me as to whether, should she appear and ask it, I would take back the wife of that story, she that had wrought me evil in the past. Now this wife stands before me, and demands the decision which I said I would give when the time came. It has come—that evil day has dawned upon me who never thought to see it, forgetting that things have changed in the matter of my fortunes across the sea. Yet, my brethren, shall I be wrong if I ask for a while to think? If, for instance, I say that when we meet again as is our custom on this same day of the next month, I then decide, and not before?”
“No, no, you will be right, Zahed,” they murmured, the blind old mystic leading them with his shrill voice. “We will have it so.” More, great men among them stood up here and there and shouted that he should not go, that they would gather their servants and guard the pass, and if need be, keep him prisoner, or—and they looked viciously at Dick and his companions.
Achmet translated their remarks, adding, on his own account: “This people in damned nasty temper—very private people and very fierce who love Zahed. You must not make them angry, or perhaps they kill us all. I came here to interpret, not to have throat cut.”
Dick also seizing the situation with remarkable swiftness, was equally urgent and out-spoken.
“Don’t show off any of your airs and graces here, Edith, please,” he said, “I am not anxious to follow the example of our friend, the god upon the platform, and renounce the world in a wider fashion. That little tartar of a woman would jump at a chance of murdering us, and she can do it if she likes.”
Only Tabitha, weary with standing, sank down on to a block of stone, and incidentally into the lap of a native who already occupied it, and scarcely heeding his wild struggles to be free, fanned herself with a broad-brimmed hat and remarked:
“Ach! do not trouble. If they kill us, they kill us. It is very interesting to hear them say their minds so well. I am most glad that we came.”
“You hear their answer, Edith,” said Rupert, “and you must understand my position. Have you any objection to make?”
“I understand your position perfectly, Rupert, and I am quite aware that a man may find it difficult—most difficult, to escape from certain kinds of entanglements,” and she glanced at Mea and paused.
“Wrong word again,” murmured that lady, with a sweet smile; “no what you call it, no tangles, only one great rope of love, too thick to cut, too strong to break—much!”
“As for objections,” went on Edith, without heeding this melodious and poetic interruption, “I could make scores, but since we don’t wish to be butchered by your amiableprotégés,perhaps I had better hold my tongue and give you a month in which to come to your right mind. Only I am by no means sure that I shall stop here all that time.”
“Don’t stop if you no like,” broke in Mea again. “Please not—the road it always open, give you camel, give you soldiers, give you food, and write you letter afterwards to tell you how Zahed make up his mind. I can write very nice letter all in English, learn that at Luxor, or if you rather, write in Arabic.”
At this sally Dick grinned, for it pleased his wounded soul to see Edith getting the worst of it for once in her life, and Tabitha burst out laughing. The general effect was to induce Edith to change her mind rapidly.
“Yes, I shall stop,” she went on, as though she had never suggested anything else, “because I suppose it is my duty to give him every chance.”
“Glad you stop,” said Mea, “my humble people much honoured. Give you nice house, high up there on the mountain since in this month you catch great fever down here and perhaps stop too long,” and turning, she issued a sharp and sudden order whereat men sprang up, bowed and ran to do her bidding.
“What’s that?” asked Dick nervously.
“Nothing,” said Mea, “only tell them make ready house on the mountain and take your things there and set guard about it so you no be hurt. Now I go. Good-night!” whereon she rose, bowed to her people, bowed to her guests, and then, making a deep obeisance to Rupert, lifted his hand and with it touched her brow. After this she descended from the platform, and at its foot was instantly surrounded by an armed guard, in the midst of which, preceded by old Bakhita, Mea marched down the passage between the central columns of the great hall, while to right and left, as was their custom on these days of ceremony, her people prostrated themselves as she passed, shouting: “Tama! Tama!”
“Himmel,” said Tabitha. “Himmel, she is charming! No wonder Rupert do love her, like all her folks. Look how they bow. Achmet, where is my photograph thing? I wish to take them quick.”
“Mustn’t take photograph here,” answered Achmet gloomily; “they think that bad magic, great big evil eye. No photograph, please.”
But Tabitha had already forgotten her intention and was advancing towards Rupert.
“My dear Rupert,” she said, as climbing the platform she dropped into the throne-like chair vacated by Mea, and then bending forward, solemnly kissed him upon the brow. “My dear Rupert, oh! I am glad to see you, I cannot say how glad.”
“I am glad to see you also, Tabitha,” he answered, “though I wish we could have met under more pleasant circumstances.”
“Ach! you are in a deep hole,” she said, “down at the bottom of a well, but there is light above, and who knows, you may come out again.”
“I don’t see how,” he answered sadly.
“No; but God sees. Perhaps He will pull you out. I am sorry for you, dear. I have no patience with Edith, and that Dick, I hate him now and always.”
“Tell me a little about things,” he said; “we may not have another chance.”
So she told him all she knew. Dick and Edith had vanished back through the side door; the audience for the most part had melted away, only a few of them remaining at the far end of the hall. As she spoke rapidly, mixing German and English words together, although his intelligence followed her, Rupert’s mind wandered, as was its ancient fashion. He recalled, for instance, how Tabitha and he had once sat together upon another dais in a very different hall far away in England.
“You remember,” he said suddenly, “that New Year’s Eve at Devene, the night I got engaged, and what you told me then?”
She nodded.
“You said she would breed trouble,” he went on; “you said she was very dangerous. Well, it is so, and now—what am I to do?”
“Nothing at all, just wait,” she answered. “You have a month, and during that time you need only see her in public. In a month many things may happen. Indeed, I do think that things will happen,” and once again that fateful look crept over the strong, solid face and into the quiet eyes, the same look that he had noted years ago when she sat with him on the dais in the hall at Devene. “God He does not desert men like you, Rupert, who have suffered so cruelly and behaved so well,” she murmured, gently pressing his hand. “Look! Dick has come back and is calling me. When shall we meet again?”
“To-morrow,” he said, “I cannot see her to-night. I will not see her privately at all till the month is up. You must make her understand.”
“Oh! she understands well enough, and so does Dick, and so do I. But are they safe here?”
“Safer than in London, only they must not speak ill of the lady Tama. Good-night!”
“Good-night, dear Rupert,” she said, and went away, leaving him seated there alone upon the platform.
That night Tabitha and Edith slept in the house which Mea had assigned to them. It was situated upon a mountain-crest over two miles from the town of which it formed part of the fortifications, was cool, and commanded a beautiful view. To Dick Learmer was given a similar but somewhat smaller house belonging to the same chain of defences, but about five hundred yards away. Both of these houses were provisioned, and both of them guarded day and night, that no harm might come to the guests of the tribe.
So angry was Edith that for a long while she would scarcely speak to Tabitha, who, their meal finished, sat upon a kind of verandah or outlook place, a shut Bible upon her knees, looking at the moonlit desert upon the one hand, and the misty oasis on the other. At this game of silence her patient, untroubled mind was far stronger than that of Edith. At length the latter could bear it no longer; the deep peace of the place, which should have soothed, only exasperated her raw temper. She broke out into a flood of words. She abused Tabitha for bringing her here and exposing her to such insults. She named Mea by ill names. She declared that she would go away at once.
“Ah!” asked Tabitha at last, “and will you take Dick with you?”
“No,” she answered; “I never want to see Dick or any of you again.”
“That is unlucky for me,” said Tabitha; “but since I have reached this nice place, I shall stay here the month and talk with Rupert. Perhaps if he and that pretty lady will have me, I shall stay longer. But I, too, do not want the company of Dick. As for you, dear Edith, if you wish to go, they told you, the road is open. It will save much trouble to everybody.”
“I shall not go,” exclaimed Edith. “Why should I leave my husband with that woman who has no right to him?”
“I am not so sure,” answered Tabitha thoughtfully. “If my little dog is caught in a trap and is ill, and I kick it into the street, and leave it there to starve, and some kind lady comes and takes my little dog and gives it a good home for years, can I say that she has no right to it just because I find out, after all, that it is a valuable little dog, and that I am—oh! so fond of it?”
“Please stop talking nonsense about little dogs, Tabitha. Rupert is not a dog.”
“No; but then why should he have been treated as one? If such a dog would have learned to love its new mistress, is it wonderful that he should do the same? But have you learnt to care for him at last, that you should want him back so much, he who lives here good and happy?”
“I don’t know,” snapped Edith; “but I won’t leave him with that other woman if I can help it; I don’t trust all that Platonic nonsense. I am going to bed;” and she went.
But Tabitha still sat for a long time and gazed at the moonlit desert, there making her accustomed prayers.
“Oh! God in heaven,” she ended them, “help those two poor people whom Thou hast tried so sorely,” and as she spoke the words a conviction came into her mind that they would be heard. Then, feeling comforted, she too went to her bed.
In the morning Edith received a note from Rupert; it was the first time that she had seen his handwriting for many a year. It ran:
Dear Edith,—I will not debate the strange circumstances in which we find ourselves, and I write to ask that during the ensuing month you will avoid all allusion to them. The facts are known to us both, to discuss them further can only lead to unnecessary bitterness, and perhaps prevent a peaceful solution of the trouble. If you agree to this, I write on behalf of the lady Tama and myself to say that we are ready to enter into a like undertaking, and that we shall be happy to see you here whenever you wish.
If, on the other hand, you do not agree, then I think that we had best keep apart until the day when I have promised to give an answer to your question. A messenger will bring me your written reply.
Rupert.
Edith thought a while, then she took a piece of paper and wrote upon it with a pencil:
I agree.
EDITH.
P.S.—I enclose a letter which I have for you. He wrote it shortly before he died. Also, there are some from the lawyers.
“After all,” she reflected to herself, as she saw the runner depart swiftly, carrying her packet on the top of a cleft stick, “it will give me a little time to look round in peace. Rupert is right, it is no use wrangling. Moreover, he and that woman are masters here, and I must obey.”
Within an hour the runner returned again, bearing another note from Mea, which, in very queer English, asked them both to honour them with their company at the midday meal. They went, and on the way met Dick, who had received a similar invitation. On arriving at the town, they found Rupert seated beneath the verandah of his house, and squatted upon the ground around him a considerable number of people, all of them suffering from various complaints, together with some women who held sick children in their arms. He bowed to them, and called out in a cheerful voice:
“Forgive me for a little while. I have nearly finished my morning’s doctoring, and perhaps you had better stand back, for some of these ailments are infectious.”
Edith and Dick took the hint at once, riding their animals into the shade of a tree a little way off. Not so Tabitha. Descending from her donkey with a bump, she marched straight to Rupert and shook his hand. Two minutes later they perceived that she was helping him to bandage wounds and dispense medicines.
“How she can!” exclaimed Edith, “and the worst of it is she is sure to bring some filthy disease back with her. Just think of Rupert taking to doctoring all those horrid people!”
“They say he is uncommonly clever at it,” answered Dick, “and will ride for miles to see a sick person. Perhaps that is why they are so fond of him.”
“Why don’t you go to help him?” asked Edith. “You studied medicine for two years before you went to the Bar.”
“Thanks,” he answered, “I think it is pleasanter sitting under this tree with you. At present I am not a candidate for popular affection, so I don’t see why I should take any risks.”
“Rupert doesn’t mind risks,” said Edith.
“No,” he said, “one of his characteristics always was to like what is disagreeable and dangerous. In that fact lies your best chance, Edith. He may even make up his mind to abandon an existence which seems to suit him exactly and return to the joys of civilisation.”
“You are even ruder than usual, Dick,” she said. “Why did you come here at all? We never asked you.”
“You cannot pretend, Edith, that gentleness has been your prevailing note of late. For the rest, considering that on the results of this inquiry depended whether I should be one of the richest men in England or a beggar, it is not strange that I came to look after my own interests,” he added bitterly.
“Well, you know now,” she answered, “so why don’t you go away? Rupert is alive, therefore the property is his, not yours.”
“Quite so; but even Rupert is not immortal. He might contract one of those sicknesses, for instance.”
“No such luck for you, Dick,” she said, with a laugh, “he is too much accustomed to them, you won’t get rid of him like that.”
“I admit it is improbable, for he looks singularly healthy, does he not? But who knows? At any rate, he is a good-natured fellow; I may be able to come to some terms with him. Also,” he added, in another voice, “please understand once and for all that I am going to see this play out, whatever you or anybody else may say or do. I was in at the beginning, and I mean to be in at the death.”
Edith shrugged her shoulders, turning away, for there was a very unpleasant look upon Dick’s face, and just at that moment they saw Rupert, who had washed his hands and changed his robe, riding towards them upon a white mule by the side of which walked Tabitha. He could not take off his hat because he wore a keffieh, but he saluted Edith by placing his fingers upon his forehead; and then stretched out his hand to her and to Dick.
“Forgive my dismounting, Edith,” he said, in a pleasant voice, “but you remember what a dreadful cripple I am, and I haven’t been able to grow a new foot, or even to get an artificial one here. I did send for the article, but it must have been made for a lady; at any rate, it was three sizes too small, and now adorns a black old beggar woman.”
Edith laughed; somehow the thought of Rupert’s mutilated state no longer filled her with horror.
“Mea is expecting you all to luncheon,” he said, “if I may so call our unconventional meal. Will you come?”
She nodded, making a funny little face, and rode away towards Mea’s house at Rupert’s side.
“Did you get my note,” she said suddenly, “and the enclosures?”
“Yes,” he answered, “his letter is very painful—very painful indeed, and the others are interesting. But we have agreed not to talk about those things, haven’t we, until the month is up?”
“Certainly, Rupert,” she answered, in a gentle voice. “So far as I am concerned, the past is all gone. I am here now, not to consider myself, but to do what you desire. I only wish to say that I am sorry if I spoke as I should not yesterday—and for many other things also, Rupert, but really it was hard to have to listen to all those bitter words, even if I deserved them.”
“I understand—very hard,” he said, flushing, “and now for the next month it is settled that we are going to be just friends, is it not?”
“Yes, Rupert, as you have ordered it,” she whispered, and glancing at her, he saw that there were tears standing in her blue eyes.
“This business is going to be even harder than I thought,” reflected Rupert to himself, and in another moment Mea, clad in her spotless white, was receiving them with gracious smiles and Oriental courtesy.