“Him who goodness will not mend, evil will not mend.”—Arabic Proverb.
“Him who goodness will not mend, evil will not mend.”—Arabic Proverb.
Zarah stood at the point of the great V which cleft the outer ring of the mountains, and from which started the path leading down to the plateau.
That the dying Sheikh’s daughter was expected there was no doubt, as showed the bonfires upon the mountain’s highest peaks, streaking the purple, starlit sky with orange flames; yet, save for the Arab who stood patiently near the spear which marked the beginning of the hidden path, with the camels which had brought them safely and at full speed across the desert and the quicksands, there was neither sign of life nor shout of greeting nor firing of rifles in salutation.
She looked back across the limitless, billowing desert, showing under the stars like a great ocean of endless, unbroken waves frozen into immobility as they surged from north to south, by some magician’s hand. She laughed softly at the thought of the civilization she had dropped, as one drops an outworn cloak from about the shoulders, and had left for ever upon the outskirts of the great desert of which she was the child. She looked ahead into the future and down the narrow path dividing her from the dying man, over whose kingdom in the heart of the mountains she would so shortly rule.
Giving no thought to her father in her utter selfishness, she laughed aloud in sheer delight at the picture conjured up by her ambition, laughed until the sweet, soft notes were flung against the rocks by the hot wind from the south and carried through the cleft down to the openspace where they were thrown in echo, from this side to that side over the sparkling waters until they broke and were lost in the baying of the great dogs which, eyes red with hate and ruffs upstanding, fought to get out of the kennels so as to reach the woman they hated.
She shivered at the sound, although the hot wind from the south enfolded her like a blanket, and, suddenly overwhelmed with a desire to see some living creature in the place of death and shadows, took a quick step forward, then shrank behind a rock.
Upon a ledge, high up on the mountainside, to which it seemed that only a goat could possibly have climbed, sat blind Yussuf, singing to himself: “‘The corn passeth from hand to hand, but it cometh at last to the mill.’”
He sang the words of the proverb as he sat staring down at Zarah the Cruel as though he had eyes in the scarred face with which to see her.
“It cometh at last to the mill! It cometh at last to the mill!”
He repeated the words over and over again whilst the rosary of Mecca slipped between his sensitive fingers, and the girl, steeped in the superstition of her race, spread hers in the gesture to ward off misfortune and touched an amulet of good luck which hung about her neck.
Did he know she was there? Had he come, ironically, to welcome her and to bid her hasten to her father’s side, as had bidden the man who had awaited her at Hutah with swiftest camels? Or had he, dire figure of ill omen, been set upon her path by Fate this night, when the scorching wind blew from the south heralding the storm? There was no time to ponder the question; there was only just time enough in which to register a vow to lay some cunning trap into which the blind man should set his feet and find his death as though by dire mischance. No! there was no time, for she suddenly fathomed the meaning of the intense silence and stillness, and, gathering her draperies about her, slipped as noiselessly as some tigercat under the ledge upon which the blind man sat, and down the steep path.
She did not look up, she did not look back, else might she have seen the face of Yussuf the blind turned in her direction, with the scarred mouth twisted in a smile. She sped as quickly as the path would allow her, spurred by the thought of the men who, gathered round their dying chief, only waited for the failing heart to cease beating to acclaim one of themselves as his successor in her place.
She knew full well the man who would be chosen if she failed to reach her father in time. Even Al-Asad, half-caste, bloodthirsty, ambitious, as physically powerful as the lion after which he had been named, outcast from the Benoo-Harb tribe, but more through the fact that his father had been a Nubian slave than for the crimes he had committed in the light-heartedness of youth.
As she ran she conjured up a picture of the man who had taken blind Yussuf’s place at her father’s right hand and who had dared to look at her with something more than the respect due to the Sheikh’s daughter in his handsome eyes.
There was no sign of any man as she fled across the plateau, neither—the hour for sleep having come for the women and children—was there sound of life, but a great light shone through the barred windows of the Hall of Judgment far up on the mountainside. She raced up the steps and stood, breathless, in the doorway, unseen by the men gathered about the man whom they loved and who lay dying of the wounds received in the last great fight with the Bedouins, who had fallen upon the brigands as they peacefully returned, with much spoil, from raiding a caravan journeying towards Oman.
Knowing the effect of mystery upon her race, she wrapped herself in her great white cloak, pulled the veils about her face and a yashmak beneath her eyes, which flashed with no soft light. She cursed beneath her breath when the men rose and spoke together, looking towardsAl-Asad, who stared down at the Sheikh lying so quietly at his feet.
She had arrived too late; her father had died without blessing her and proclaiming her his successor.
She cared nothing about the blessing, but she knew that without the proclamation she stood no earthly chance against the claim Al-Asad would enforce through sheer brute force.
Superstition helped her in her need.
She believed that the soul lingered in the body for three days after the heart had ceased to beat, and she acted unhesitatingly, fearlessly, upon the belief.
She bent and picked up a lance lying upon the ground, and raised it above her head just as, without seeing her in the shadows, the men moved in a body towards Al-Asad.
She pitted her indomitable will against the mighty power of death, she flung it across the space which divided her from her father, and, for a fraction of time, pulled him back to the world he had loved exceeding well.
“Hail! father!” she shouted.
“Hail! father!” she shouted again as the men turned swiftly in her direction, then moved hastily backwards when the right hand of the man whom they supposed dead, moved.
Motionless from fear, they stared at, without recognizing, Zarah as she stood, tall and straight, in the shadows, wrapped in white from head to foot, her eyes half closed under the supreme effort she was making, her right hand raised, holding a spear ready for throwing.
She bent a little forward as she made one last bid for power, and at the sonorousness of her voice, which sounded like the calling of the evil one in the mountains, the men touched the amulets around their necks.
“Hail! father!” she shouted once again, until her words seemed to beat like wings against the walls, which had been built by holy hands. “Speak, father, ere thou passeth on. Speak! Speak! Speak!”
Al-Asad, the lion-hearted, backed against the wall as the Sheikh, his feet upon the edge of the world to come, slowly turned his head towards his daughter; the others flung the end of their cloaks across their eyes, touching their amulets. The girl stood quite still, her face dead white, her nostrils pinched, her breath whistling between her closed teeth.
“Farewell, daughter. Rule wisely in my stead. Take only from those who have more than is necessary for life. Lift up the fallen, help the needy, spare not in charity towards my brother Yussuf, with whose safekeeping I charge thee lest evil befall thee. Throw thou the spear ere I close my eyes, as a sign that thou steppest into my shoes, O my daughter.”
The Sheikh’s words rang clear as a bell but as though from a long distance; his eyes did not waver as the spear, thrown with unerring aim, flashed across the room; he whispered “Mercedes,” and closed them for ever as it buried itself in the cushions at his feet.
Zarah the Cruel had triumphed for a moment over death, but she had caught the look of dismay on Al-Asad’s face and the stealthy movement of the men’s hands towards their cummerbunds. Without hesitating, with no intention of allowing a second to elapse before driving her victory home, she passed slowly up the room towards the dais, unarmed, fearless in the strength of her tremendous personality.
She took no notice of the men as, wrapped in her cloak and veils, she slowly ascended the steps of the dais and knelt to kiss her father; she looked down upon him for a moment, then taking a massive gold ring from the first finger of his right hand, slipped it on her own, and rose to her feet.
“’Tis she,” whispered Bowlegs. “’Tis Zarah the Cruel!”
“Nay, brother, it cannot be; she was a child bordering upon womanhood. This is a woman grown, who is as thegazelle in her walk and as the jasmine in her perfume. Maybe ’tis the spirit of her mother, who has come to meet her lord, or perchance——”
They stopped speaking, and took a step nearer the centre of the dais as Zarah played her trump card.
She dropped the veils from her head, the yashmak from before her face, and the cloak from her shoulders, standing revealed in the garments she had donned at Hutah in the oasis of Hareek.
She was ravenous from hunger and almost dead with fatigue, but she stood without a tremor, glittering from head to foot in the jewels which embroidered the voluminous orange-satin trousers, the golden, travel-stained sandals, and the bolero, which allowed the satin skin to show at the waist. Her face was white, her crimson mouth parted in a slight smile; her yellow eyes passed slowly from one face to the other and on to the next of those fierce, unscrupulous men, who watched her for a while and then, with all the inconstancy of the Arab, reverted, with the exception of Al-Asad, to their former allegiance as they succumbed to the call of her beauty.
A sudden, tremendous shout of reception and of welcome went up:
“Ahlan wasahlan! Ahlan wasahlan!”
They shouted the words over and over again, until the women and children wakened on the far side of the mountains and the birds, which inhabited the secluded spot, rose twittering and screaming in clouds, to be whirled this way and that way by the wind from the south, which seemed, in its suffocating heat, to have swept across the open mouth of hell.
Slowly Zarah the beautiful, the relentless, raised her right hand, upon which shone her father’s ring, above her head to quell the tumult, and, as a great silence fell, stretched it out to the men, who, with the exception of Al-Asad, rushed forward and, kneeling, touched her sandalled foot, acknowledging her as chief.
She had won.
There was no tenderness, no love, in her eyes as she looked down upon them, neither was there softness in her heart as she looked into the future. She would rule the men with an iron hand and drive them with a whip of steel, favouring those who did her bidding, treading beneath her heel those who rebelled until she ground them in the dust. She would be theirhadeeyah, the woman to lead them into battle, even as had led Ayesha, the wife of Mohammed, the Prophet of Allah, the one and only God; she would make the mountain home a corner of paradise and her dwelling a place of gold and precious stones, as a frame to her beauty.
“I stand in my father’s place, O men!” she cried. “I have taken the reigns of government from the Sheikh’s fingers, which are locked in those of death. Obey me and I will raise you to heights you—nay, not one of you—have dreamed of; rebel, and I will set your bodies upon the highest peak as food for vultures. I will go forth with you, lead you—nay, give ear until I have come to the end of my words, for I will not speak again. Yea! I will lead you forth and bring you back with gold and cattle and fair women, until the fame of these rocks is spread from the north to the south and from the east to the west. I will have none but the beautiful, none but the brave, about me to do my bidding. I——”
She stopped short at a sound from the far end of the hall and raised her head. Yussuf, blind, scarred, terrible to behold, stared back at her from the shadows of the door, challenging her proud statement with his empty orbits, repudiating her words without a sound or movement.
“ ... save for Yussuf the Blind,” she concluded slowly, as she raged inwardly at the man’s temerity, “whom I must needs take to my heart in obedience to my father’s dying wish.”
She gave no outward sign of the rage which swept heras she finished speaking, but she looked round for someone upon whom to vent her wrath and found him in Al-Asad, who leant against the wall, watching her from out the corner of his eyes.
“Thou!” she said, her voice cutting across the silence like a whip. “Whyfore standest thou when others kneel?”
“The lion does not flee before the gazelle!” replied Al-Asad, who had loved her from the first moment he had seen her.
Zarah made a little motion of her hand which brought the men to their feet, then beckoned Al-Asad, who walked slowly towards her and into the trap she had set for him. She had more than one weapon in her armoury and more than one form of punishment in her mind.
That the man loved her, in his savage way, she had always known; that he had worked to succeed the dead Sheikh and thereby to force her into becoming his own woman if she wished to rule, she had guessed intuitively, and in a second of time had thought out a plan in which, through his humiliation, she could revenge herself for the insult.
She was well above medium height, but seemed small beside Al-Asad as he towered above her, mighty arms folded across his breast, looking down upon her beauty.
He was a magnificent animal, with all an animal’s instincts and a dog’s fidelity, but she feared him not a bit. She looked up at the handsome face with the almost negroid lips and into the flashing eyes and down into the heart, as childish as it was vain, and smiled and raised her hand when he made a quick step forward.
“I am footsore,” she said softly. “I have cut my sandals upon the rocky path.”
She may have heard the sharp intake of breath, but she took no notice when the men turned, the one to the other, as Al-Asad knelt. His fingers trembled in thetumult of his love for the beautiful woman as he unfastened the knotted ribbons of her sandals, his heart leapt as he bent and kissed the little foot, leaving his manhood in the dust beneath it. He sprang to his feet, holding the golden sandal against his breast, shrinking back against the wall at the men’s laughter, in which the woman he loved joined.
“Neither does the gazelle fear the dead lion,” she mocked as he fled from the hall out into the night and up to his dwelling upon the mountainside, where he flung himself full length upon the ground with the golden sandal against his lips.
“I love thee, love thee, love thee!” he whispered, “and will serve thee to my last hour and with all my strength. If I cannot be thy king, thy master, I will be thy slave. One day perchance, thou too wilt waken to love and learn what suffering means.”
If he had but known, love had come to her, love for the white man, causing her to suffer through the chafe of the chains which bound her.
Zarah watched the great figure as he fled past blind Yussuf and through the doorway out into the night, then smiled, and stooping, lifted her cloak and spread it across the dead Sheikh.
“I will sleep in the bed of my fathers,” she said curtly. “Bring me meat and wine to my bedchamber. To-morrow I will commit my dead father to the sands and will then make choice, amongst the slaves, for those who will attend me both night and day. Obey me, and it will be well with all of you; resist me, and your lives will be even darker than this night of storm.”
The men, so long held upon the leash by the dead Sheikh, so long baffled in their fierce desires, shouted their praises as they made a way for her. She passed them without looking at them, glittering with jewels, superb in her strength.
She climbed the steps leading to the dwelling whereinher father had slept, and up to the roof, and, leaning on the balustrade, raised her face to the sky which showed sullen and starless.
Great sandstorms do not sweep the deserts of Arabia bringing devastation in their path, but the hot wind from the south will lift the topmost layer of sand hundreds of feet into the air, where it hangs like a pall across the heavens, causing men to hide their faces and cattle to flee for shelter from the terrific heat which descends from it, scorching the earth.
She walked to the corner of the roof from which, through the cleft in the rocks, the red sands of the desert could be seen stretching in great waves away to the south. She stared down and drew her hands across her eyes, and stared again; drew back with a half-uttered cry of fear, then moved forward, leaning far over the coping, looking down.
At the very edge of the quicksands and as far out across the great waste as eye could see, white shapes danced, and whirled, and bowed, retreating, advancing, whirling hand in hand, flinging their white raiment up to the sky, which hung, like a dun-coloured ceiling, low down above their caperings.
The scorching, sand-laden wind blew against her lips and through her hair and seemed to press like a great bar of red-hot iron against the satin skin which showed beneath her bodice, and yet she stood looking down, watching the light flicker this way and that way over the quicksands, and the ghostly forms running up in pairs, in ones, in twos, in files up and down and over the sand-waves until they melted into the far distance.
She had heard the tale of the half-starved, half-witted, degenerate races which are supposed to inhabit the mysterious, unexplored depths of the great desert; living like lizards, worshipping the elements, inter-marrying until brain and body are sapped of strength, and for the first time she felt grateful for the ring of quaking sand whichkept her safe from robbers, beasts, and such foul creatures as those which danced so merrily under the lowering sky.
She loved beauty, she loved strength, and watched with a shudder until the last white figure, leaping and bounding, had followed its fellows back to the unexplored regions of the desert, then knelt and bowed her beautiful head almost to the ground.
But she knelt before the scorching flames of the love which had sprung up in her heart for Ralph Trenchard as she had lain in his arms. Not for a day, nor for an hour of a day, had he been out of her thoughts since the morning of the accident. She lay awake at night thinking of the handsome face bent down to hers; she thrilled at the thought of his arms about her; she had thought of him unceasingly as she raced death to reach her father; she had sworn by the beard of the Prophet, which being a soulless woman she had no right to do, to bring him some day to her mountain home and for ever to her feet.
She stretched out her arms and called him by name, scorched by the hot wind which had twisted the sand into dancing shapes, sending them capering and leaping this way and that way, in the cross-eddies from the east, a ghostly phenomenon seen once in a lifetime, if that.
She ran to the side and looked out across the desert, which lay silent, foreboding, empty, and shivered under a sudden premonition of evil.
“Where are you?” she cried, beating her hands upon the burning stones. “Where are you? I love you, love you, love you, and I am calling you.”
There was no answer.
At that very moment Ralph Trenchard rode into the holiday camp pitched by Helen Raynor and her grandfather—Egypt’s Water Finder. They had pitched it some fifty miles west of Ismailiah whilst they waited tostart upon an expedition into Arabia, which had for its object the discovery of water hidden in the heart of a range of mountains, as described upon vellum inscribed by the Holy Palladius.
“A rose issues from thorns.”—Arabic Proverb.
“A rose issues from thorns.”—Arabic Proverb.
The desert looked like an immense mosque with vast purple dome inlaid with silvery stars, spread with a carpet of many colours—grey, amethyst, saffron, fawn—stretching to Eternity for the feet of worshippers to tread. It held the peace of great spaces and the prayer of the everlasting, and changed, in the twinkling of the stars, to the likeness of a fairy meadow, in which flowers of every shape nodded and curtsied and bowed to each other, as far as eye could see; flowers formed by the light breeze which twisted and turned the sand into little spirals, until the desert seemed covered with dancing, silvery poppies across which love came as silently, as unexpectedly as it comes in country lanes or the city’s crowded thoroughfares.
Helen Raynor looked over her shoulder towards the camp, pitched under the isolated palms which formed the so-called oasis, and smiled at the sound of her “boy’s” voice raised in what he termed a love song, but which had all the monotonous ring of a long-drawn-out litany of personal woes.
She sat on a hummock of sand, dazzlingly fair in the starlight, with a smile of content on her broad, humorous mouth, and the expectancy of youth in her great, blue eyes, whilst the golden sand trickled between her fingers as she counted the seconds of the hour in which love and adventure were to come to her.
She thought lazily of the hot-weather months just passed, spent quite happily in the big, old palace in Ismailiah bought by her grandfather who, in his wanderingsin the desert, had acquired some of the attributes of the salamander and an unconscious thoughtlessness towards the well-being of his neighbour.
Unattracted by the little she knew of the world, she had been intensely grateful at the unconventional turn life had taken three years ago, inaugurating a new mode of existence with vista of unknown lands and good promise of great adventure. She had proved herself of the greatest assistance to her irascible grandfather. There was no doubt about it, that, although he seldom bit, he certainly barked furiously, or rather, yapped without ceasing, driving others almost frantic through the methodical working of a mind which teased the most infinitesimal detail to shreds, wore him to fiddle-strings, led him from success to success and caused his secretaries one after the other to fold their tents and to steal away to less nerve-wracking fields of labour.
Since leaving school, Helen had firmly established herself as his secretary and had accompanied him wherever he had been sent by the Irrigation Department. She had made herself responsible for his creature comforts, which almost amounted to nil, and the good conduct of the staff which learned to adore her, with the exception of Pierre Lefort.
Half French, half native, he was of the worst type of Oriental. Eaten up with the vanity of the superficially educated, but with a genuine, great knowledge of the Arabian horse and the obstreperous camel, the young man had managed to make himself seemingly indispensable to Sir Richard on his expeditions. Helen became accustomed to great distances and solitude, and her eyes gained the steadfast look of those who look upon the sky as the roof of their dwelling, whilst her unfailing sense of humour invariably brought her safely through the most trying ordeals.
Diplomatically feeling her way through the barbed wire entanglement of her grandfather’s testiness, shegained a great influence over the brilliant man and, knowing how he chafed against the authoritative methods and manner of the government official, had dropped the suggestion in his all-willing ear of taking a busman’s holiday—a holiday expedition with the object of trying to find out the whereabouts of the legendary water in the great Red Desert, the discovery of which had become almost an obsession with him, since the day he had read the vellum inscribed by the Holy Palladius.
They had spent the hot-weather months in getting ready for the expedition, helped enthusiastically by every member of the staff excepting Pierre Lefort who, loving the dregs of the European society he frequented in the cities and the corners of the Bazaar to which he rightly belonged, had made use of every means in his power to frustrate their endeavours.
He had sworn to an epidemic amongst the camels and dromedaries in Arabia proper, which was causing them to die by hundreds; to an absolute dearth of camel drivers, owing to the terror the men had of the animals’ disease; to the truth of the terrible tales that had lately come to hand of the activities of a notorious robber gang, led by a woman, which swooped down from nowhere upon unwary travellers; that, in consequence of this band of brigands, neither guide nor servant could be procured for love or money on the other side, and that last, but not least, no man had ever been known to penetrate, even a little way, into the empty desert and to return alive.
Each of his objections had been met; the expedition, down to the smallest detail, carefully mapped out; the date for the start fixed and the camp pitched some fifty miles out of Ismailiah. Pierre Lefort would doubtlessly, if sullenly, have accompanied the party for the sake of the monetary gain, if he had not fallen a victim to the wiles of a dancer in the Bazaar.
Had ensued a heated scene between him and Sir Richard which had ended by the latter taking him by the collar ofthe coat and impelling him, none too gently, back upon the road towards Ismailiah.
Since then a week had passed, which Sir Richard had spent in racing, as fast as swiftest camel could take him, into Ismailiah, there to interview men with a knowledge of camels and horses, and racing back to tell his granddaughter of the blanks he had drawn.
There remained another fortnight in which to find someone endowed with camel and horse sense, and Helen had just fled the camp after a trying scene with her distracted and pessimistic relative.
“Grandads,” she had said, after the recital of the latest failure, “I have an idea, although it’s only a faint-hope kind of idea.”
“Well!” had snapped Grandads, who was ready to take his ships of the desert into almost any kind of a port to protect himself from the storm of failure which threatened to burst.
“I think you are making a great mountain out of your mole-hill.”
“Meaning?”
“Lefort. Thereareothers who understand as much about horses as he does. I do—for one—almost—and so does Abdul, who did all the spadework under him. Let me be vet, with Abdul for head groom and——”
“Wh-a-a-t?” Sir Richard had sprung from his canvas chair with a bound which would have done credit to ajerboa, or kangaroo rat. “You!In charge of the horses—you—and what do you know of camels, may I ask?”
“As much, dearest, as anybody, which amounts to nothing. If it’s sick, it usually makes up its obstinate mind to die, so there’s no use worrying aboutthat; if you want to get an extra hour of work out of it, you give it a most noisome lump of barley-meal and water, and add a cupful of whisky if you want to make it waltz; if you want it to go to the right, touch it on the left, andvice versa, and if it’s out on a non-stop run, hang your coatover its head to pull it up. It will go for six days in the summer and, I believe, ten in the winter without a drink, and is warranted to eat everything it comes across; in fact, I saw Mahli making breakfast off your oldest pair of night slippers this very morning.”
All that she had said was true. She was a magnificent horsewoman, and there was mighty little she did not know about horses; in fact, up to her fifteenth birthday she had unequally divided her time between her lessons and her horses, to the decided detriment of the former; then, upon the death of her mother, had entreated to be allowed to accompany her grandfather to Egypt. He, unpractical in everything that did not concern the finding of water in desert places, had consented, and, acting upon some motherly soul’s advice, offered directly they had arrived in Cairo, had pushed her promptly under the sheltering wings of the Misses Cruikshanks.
But she might as well have pleaded with the Great Pyramid this night of stars as she had sat, just outside the tent, with her beautiful head against the canvas whilst her distracted kinsman had figuratively rent his raiment in wrath.
“You!” he had cried. “What authority wouldyouhave over the pack of rapscallions who look after the shameless beasts called camels, any one of which, in the eyes of the average Mohammedan, is of a hundred times more value than a woman? I know all about woman’s rights in England, but let me tell you that that means nothing, absolutely less than nothing out here, where she is not even allowed to possess a soul of her own, much less a vote. No! if I can’t find a man to fill the post, I will resign myself to having failed, throw up my position in the Irrigation Department, and take to bee-keeping in England.”
And Helen Raynor, who firmly believed that if a thing is to happen it happens, and that nothing can prevent it from happening, alsovice versa, had ridden some milesout into the silence, where she had hobbled her mare and sat down upon the hummock to think things over. She sat facing the direction in which Ismailiah lay, sat quite still, until the peacefulness of the desert seemed to enfold her and to wipe out the memory of the past weeks, which had gone far to disturb the tranquillity she so loved to bring into the daily life of the camp. She looked all round in utter content and lifted her face to the stars and listened to the great silence, unbroken now, even by the love song, then sat forward and stared in the direction of Ismailiah.
Great is the solitude of the desert, with no sign of life in it at all; haunting is its solitude when, in the far distance, a solitary figure moves slowly across the limitless sands.
It is the most perfect illustration of the little span of life granted each of us upon this earth.
Out of seeming nothing, remote, alone, the figure approaches, growing clearer and clearer to the watching eye; maybe for a space he stops and raises his head to the star-strewn sky, or maybe he passes on, heedless of God’s thoughts about him; even if he stays it will be but for a brief second before he continues his journey, growing dimmer and dimmer until he passes out of sight, alone, into apparent nothingness.
Helen Raynor sat watching a solitary figure as it came slowly towards her from a far distance, and pressed her hand upon her heart, troubled by the biblical picture, the silence, the unknown.
So might Abraham have looked in his youth, or Job before affliction fell upon him, or Boaz, or David, for the desert has not changed since their days, nor has the camel learned to hasten its pace or to alter the insolence of its gait. The night breeze died away suddenly and the flowers born of it faded, leaving a path, marked in grey and silver as though the tide had but just receded from it, for the passage of the camel’s feet, which were suddenlyurged to a swift trot by its rider, who rode bare-headed and wrapped in a burnous.
When about a mile off Ralph Trenchard raised his hand above his head in salutation to the figure he could see sitting on the hummock, and urged his camel quicker still, then pulled it to a halt and sat and stared at the girl, who looked like some silver statue under the light of the stars; then slipped to the ground instead of bringing the beast to its knees, hobbled it, dropped the white cloak, and followed the beckoning finger of Love, whom he could not see for the beauty of the girl, along the path which had been marked for him to tread even before the days of Abraham.
And Helen Raynor rose and walked towards him, holding out her hand, so that they neared each other and met yet again, as those who truly love do meet down the ages, and will meet, until in perfect understanding they become one perfect spirit which will not be divided even by the short-lived dream of death.
“I seem to know you so well,” said Ralph Trenchard quietly.
“And I you. I have seen you—I recognize the scar across your temple.” Helen Raynor pressed her hand against her forehead in an effort to capture the elusive memory which had suddenly flitted through her mind. “I cannot remember. I——”
“My name is Ralph Trenchard, and my business in Egypt one of pleasure. I was riding out into the desert to be alone at sunrise.”
She shook her head and looked about her and up to the stars and into the eyes of the man who had come to her out of the night, and yet not as a stranger; and she looked frankly at the lean, handsome face with the powerful jaw and humorous mouth, and smiled into the quiet grey eyes, and made a movement with her hand towards the oasis.
“I cannot remember where I have seen you, but will you not come to our camp and have some coffee? I wouldnot keep you from your ride, but my grandfather will, I am sure, be delighted to meet you. I am——”
“Of course!” broke in Ralph Trenchard, as he stooped to remove the hobble from the mare, who danced sideways at the smell of camel which permeated the new-comer. “You must be Miss Raynor. Everybody is talking about the danger of the expedition you are starting out on; they don’t seem to see the other side, the privilege of searching for something which has been lost for centuries, the joy of adventuring into a new country.”
They walked across to the camel, which stretched its neck and made a vicious snap at the mare, who immediately retaliated by lashing out at the contemptuous face.
“Quiet, you brute!” said Ralph Trenchard, as he removed the hobble, whereupon the said brute turned its hideous head and winked at him in hearty friendliness. “There is one thing I really do pride myself upon, Miss Raynor, though perhaps I ought not to, as it may only be the result of a certain brotherhood in sheer mule-headed obstinacy which I share with the quadruped.”
“And what is it?”
“The way I can manage camels. They seem absolutely to love me before my face, whatever they feel behind my back. I can do almost anything I like with them.”
Helen Raynor walked close up to him and laid her hand upon his sleeve.
“Tell me,” she said eagerly, “where are you going to after you leave Egypt?”
“Well, I have been trying to make up my mind. I’m just down from Oxford, and am having a look round the old places before settling down to manage the estate which came to me when the dear old governor died a few months ago. I was born out here, lived here until I was ten. My people were stationed out here all over the place. Mother is buried in Khartoum. I love the country, and speak the language like a native. I don’t mind muchwhere I go, but I do wish I could have one jolly good adventure when I get there.”
“Come,” said Helen, her beautiful teeth flashing in a delighted smile, “I’m more convinced than ever that my grandfather will be delighted to meet you.”
“Neither with thine eyes hast thou seen, nor with thine heart hast thou loved.”—Arabic Proverb.
“Neither with thine eyes hast thou seen, nor with thine heart hast thou loved.”—Arabic Proverb.
Zarah the Cruel leaned back in her ivory chair, staring unseeingly at the men she ruled. She frowned and stretched her arms and played with the crystal knobs until her jewelled fingers looked like the claws of some great cat, whilst the men glanced at each other as they watched the movement which, they knew, heralded the conception of some new idea or plan in the girl’s masterly, unscrupulous brain.
She had reigned for a year in her father’s stead, and the tales of her cruelty, her infamy and treachery had spread from Damascus to Hadramut, from Oman to the Red Sea. In the days of her father the wealthy only had been in danger of the gang’s predatory attacks; the humbler caravan had been certain of a safe journey and a sure arrival at its destination; the needy, just as sure of help in money or in kind from the man who quietened his conscience by robbing the one to assist the other, whilst keeping the best part of the spoil for himself and his men.
His daughter attacked all and sundry, and as much for the love of the fight as in the hope of gain, meting out dire punishment to those who fought to the last, and, if taken prisoner, lacked deep enough purse or strong enough sinew to pay or work their way back to freedom.
With the exception of Yussuf the men obeyed her and literally fought for the place of honour at her right hand when she led them to the attack.
The whole Peninsula rang with the tales of the mysterious, beautiful woman of the desert. Women used her name as a bogy with which to frighten their children, men lookedat each other before they spoke of their affairs and then said but little. Her spies were everywhere, from Damascus to Cairo, from Jiddah to Bagdad, watching the movements and learning the whereabouts of wealthy people. The cities made great effort to discover the channels through which the almost legendary woman gained her information, sending out spy to counter spy, with the result that some were found in the holes and corners of the Bazaars at dawn, knifed through the back, and others, who had been sent to find out the lay of the land round and about the Sanctuary, buried up to their necks in the sands, dead, with the letter Z cut upon their foreheads.
With a view to spreading reports of her beauty, her riches, and her power, she allowed some of the prisoners to return to their homes without payment of ransom; others disappeared leaving no trace, whilst many, wholeheartedly, threw in their lot with the band, working as grooms to the horses and dogs, as tenders to the cattle, as servants or labourers, marrying the women who looked after the comforts of the strange community; all of them happy in a freedom they could not have realized elsewhere, yet terror-stricken by their mistress, who ordered the severest punishments for the most trifling mistake.
Built in terraces as had been the ancient monastery, the servants’ quarters stretched up the eastern side of the mountains, hidden by the jutting wall of rock from the western side where Zarah lived, alone. The walls of the monastery remained, but the interior of the buildings had been changed out of all recognition. Where once her father had lived, with his friend Yussuf, in all the simplicity of those who belong to the desert, the girl lived in barbaric luxury, the presence of Yussuf the only cloud upon what seemed otherwise to be a clear horizon.
Of love she would have none.
Those who had succumbed to the tales of her beauty,her wealth and her power, and who were willing to risk much through greed, sent emissaries, laden with many gifts, to negotiate for her hand in marriage. They would be met far out in the desert, and, blindfolded, led across the quicksands and into the presence of the mysterious woman. She received them right royally, fêted them, laughed at them in secret, and sent them back to their masters, with her own gifts added to those she had rejected.
She did not attempt to conquer her love for Ralph Trenchard; she did not want to; she hugged close the pain it caused her pride, and had sent spies to Egypt in an endeavour to trace him. A report came that he had landed at Port Said. After that, silence.
She was thinking of him as she lay back in the chair watching the men, gathered at her command, in the Hall of Judgment. Upon the first of every three months she called a council, with the object of making plans for the months succeeding. Those of the men who could, hurried from every part of the Peninsula to the gathering. A week of festival invariably followed the great day, during which sports were held and much wine drunk, in direct disobedience to the law laid down by Mohammed, the Prophet of Allah the one and only God. Those of the men who could not attend, and who were mostly those who had failed in the task set them, sent in reports of their work by safe messenger.
The spy who had reported the arrival of Ralph Trenchard at Port Said had not appeared in person, nor sent in further report, so that Zarah sat a prey to a great anger, which increased every moment under the goad of suspense and uncertainty, and craved for a victim upon which to vent herself.
The business of the hour, with its reports and reprimands, suggestions, punishments and rewards, had been concluded, and the men waited, eager to draw out a programme for the week of festival; they looked at theirdespotic ruler, raised above them on a dais, as she lay back in her chair sullenly regarding them out of half-closed eyes; they murmured amongst themselves but, under the spell of her beauty, murmured only.
She made an arresting Eastern picture outlined against an enormous fan of peacocks’ feathers, which spread on each side and above her. It glowed vividly against the south wall of the hall, which had been covered in Byzantine gold leaf, outlined by an arabesque design carved out in rough lumps of turquoise matrix, agate, jasper, onyx, and different coloured marble.
Seven jewelled lamps, hanging above her head by golden chains, were reflected in the polished surface of the huge dais hewn out of one great block of black granite, up which she ascended by seven steps carved to represent seven crouching lions.
Skins of wild beasts were thrown upon a mosaic floor which replaced the rough stones laid down by the Holy Fathers. It had been set by skilled Italian workmen, taken prisoners as they returned from Bagdad, where they had been sent to set the famous mosaic floor in the house of the Eastern potentate, who is almost as famous as his flooring.
The Italians had won back their freedom by promising to outrival the beauty of this floor in Bagdad, and, having fulfilled the promise, had returned, laden with gifts and well content, to their own country. The pillars of palm trees had been removed and replaced by others of stone, inlaid roughly with uncut turquoise matrix, jasper and agate, which reflected the light of the jewelled lamps hanging from the roof. The flat roof, which the dead Sheikh had considered good enough as a covering, had been removed and replaced by another, vaulted, painted the colour of the night sky and powdered with silvery stars. It showed misty, this night, above the smoke of torches held above their heads by thirty prisoners who stood upon the stools once used as seats by the HolyFathers, pushed back against the walls hung with curtains of purple velvet.
Informed that one movement meant instant death, prisoners awaiting sentence would be ordered to hold lighted torches above their heads whilst the Arabian girl sat discussing the events of the day or merely idling away time watching the men wrestling or gambling, in which last pastime she frequently joined.
Men meant nothing to her, but her overwhelming vanity caused her to change her raiment many times a day and to smother herself in jewels.
This night her slender limbs showed through voluminous trousers made of some semi-transparent material, woven by her women slaves, and caught at the ankles by bands of gold inlaid with precious stones; her body, save for breast-plates blazing in jewels, was bare, and showed like white satin in the light of the torches and the lamps above her head; her hands glittered with precious stones, her arms were bare, and a broad gold band set in diamonds bound her head, confining the thick, red curls.
She sat alone, furious, tortured, her sandalled feet upon an ivory footstool, her strange eyes flashing from one side of the hall to the other in an endeavour to find an outlet for her wrath.
She scrutinized the twenty men and ten women of Damascus who had been captured on their way to Bagdad with a precious load of steel weapons, and smiled as she glanced from their leader, a fine old man with white hair and beard and flowing robes, to the girl, his granddaughter, at his side, and on to the young men and women who had gained a world-wide reputation through their work of inlaying steel with gold.
With the fear of death, the one for the other, they had stood throughout the whole evening, motionless, save when slaves replaced the burnt-out torches; but a shiver swept them, and a smile of satisfaction lit the faces of the menin the body of the hall when the old man swayed, then crashed to the ground with a cry.
Zarah sat upright, her eyes gleaming, her jewels flashing, whilst the men looked from her to the prostrate man and back.
“Get up!” she cried, too intent upon her enjoyment of the moment to notice that her enemy Yussuf had entered the hall, standing, a menacing figure, against the wall. “Get up!” she repeated, “lest I give orders to have thee thrown from the rocks so that thou standest for eternity upon thy head in the quicksands.”
A shout of laughter rang out at the words, and ceased as Zarah sprang up, white with rage.
The old man’s granddaughter, flinging her torch to the far end of the hall, where it fell at Yussuf’s feet, sprang to the floor and, kneeling, gathered the old man into her arms.
“He shall not be touched! He shall not be touched!” she cried, looking fearlessly up at Zarah, who stood at the edge of the dais, looking down. “Shameless art thou, woman, in thy cruelty! Shameless in thy nakedness! Shameless in all thy ways! If this old man, my father’s father, be thrown from the rocks, then thou must throw me also, for naught but death shall unclasp my arms from about him. Nay! thou shalt not touch him, thou shaltnot, I say.”
She bent down over the old man as Zarah ran down the steps and caught her by the shoulder. The men gathered in a circle round the two women, watching the one who shook with rage and the other who looked up fearlessly, strong in her protecting love.
“Seize them, all of them!” commanded Zarah, “and——” She stopped dead and looked towards the door, through which a man came, running at full speed. Zarah turned and, mounting the steps, sat down in the ivory chair, holding up her hand until silence reigned.
“Hither,” she said curtly, and watched the spy, whohad reported upon Ralph Trenchard’s doings, with no gentle look in her eyes as he hastened across the floor.
“’Tis well indeed, O my brother, that thou hasteneth thy feet at last. Perchance the delights of the great city prevented thee from keeping the hour of council to which thou wast summoned.”
The man flung himself upon his knees before the dais, then sprang to his feet.
“Thy servant tarried so as to bring good news.”
“Good news! ’Tis indeed well for thee that the news is good. Speak!”
“The white man with a scar upon his forehead is even now upon his way—here!”
“Here!”
“Yea! Here! He crosses the water in the company of another man, white, but of great age. They travel, O my mistress, they travel, O my brethren, in search of the miraculous water which, so ’tis said, is hidden in the heart of certain mountains in the Red Desert.”
Laughter rang out, in which Zarah joined, the sweet sound mingling with the men’s deep voices as they shouted grim suggestions and coarse pleasantries the one to the other.
Zarah leant forward, her eyes gleaming.
“They come alone, the two white men, in search of this miraculous water?”
“Nay, O mistress! They travel in a good company of men and camels, led by a woman——”
“Led by awoman! O my brethren, is there one of thee in need of a wife or yet another wife?”
Ribald laughter and obscene jest followed close upon her question.
“What is she like? this woman who dares lead men and camels across the empty desert.”
“She is as the heavens at sunrise when the light wraps the world in softest colouring. Her eyes are the blue of the night in which shines the morning star, her mouthas the sun-kissed pomegranate, her teeth as shimmering pearls. Her hair! The houris which wait in paradise to reward the faithful have not such hair as she. It is as the web of the spider gilded by the sunlight, as the corn glowing in the noonday sun, and, in its waywardness, twineth about the heart of men as a child’s fingers about the mother’s breast.”
The men secretly touched each other as they watched the effect of the man’s words upon the woman who ruled them with no gentle hand. Thrones built upon a foundation of consideration towards others are rocky enough at any time, but there is absolutely no security for the monarch who uses his sceptre as a stick with which to drive his subjects.
Zarah sat back in her chair, too primitive in her love to try to hide the jealousy which consumed her.
“Who is she and what position does she hold in the expedition?”
“She rules men, O mistress, and is the granddaughter of the aged one.”
“His name?”
“It taketh a twisted tongue, O mistress, to pronounce it. I have essayed and failed. He is a great Sheikh fromInglistan, the land where, ’tis said, the heavens drop water without ceasing. His men are well armed; his camels, over which devil-possessed animal the white man with a scar has a strange control, are of the best; his men content, and averse to speech with strangers. They have started; a great caravan awaits them at the port of Jiddah; I hastened by swiftest camel to bring thee the news.”
Zarah sat silent for a moment, then called the names of six of her most trusted and unscrupulous followers, and sharply ordered the hall to be cleared for the space of one hour.
“And the Damascenes, mistress?” asked Al-Asad, who had mounted the dais at his mistress’s call and stood,gigantic, powerful, behind her, ready to do her bidding.
Zarah frowned.
Jealousy might torture, but hope and an abnormal vanity lay as balm upon the wounds. She had no time for the trivial occupation of finding a punishment befitting the crime of the prisoners. She had called her six most trusted servants with a view to making plans for the capture of the entire party, headed by the beautiful woman with the unpronounceable name.
Time pressed.
Let her but make a prisoner of the white man who had held her in his arms, subject him to her wiles, her beauty, and surround him with all the evidence of her great wealth, then what would she have to fear of any woman where love was concerned!
“Al-Asad!”
He knelt and touched her foot.
“They beg their freedom, those thirty fools. Their freedom they shall have! Lead them safely over the path, then whip them out into the desert to find their way back across the road by which they came. The desert is free to all—to man as well as to beasts of prey and carrion birds. They have asked for liberty and naught else; bid them begone with empty hands.”
But there was no fear in the heart of the girl who had leapt to aid the old man when he fell; she ran forward to the very foot of the dais and called down curses upon the woman above her, cursed her until the hall rang with the terrible words and the superstitious men drew back in fear.
“ ... and thou shalt be driven into the desert, O woman without heart,” she ended, “and death shall find thee bereft of power and love. Thou shalt leave thy beauty to the jackals and the scorpions shall nest in thine eyes and thy hair.” A speck of foam appeared at the corners of her mouth as she prophesied with the vision of the East. “I see thee pursuing, I see thee pursued, I see dogs uponthy track, and one, whose light cometh from within to lighten his darkness, hard upon thy heels, hunting thee. I——”
She laughed shrilly, pointing at Zarah, who made a quick movement of the hand. Al-Asad sprang down and, seizing the girl by the throat, hurled her backwards, whilst the rest of the prisoners, with hope eternal to spur them, ran from one to the other, until at last, with the girl and the old man in the centre, they marched boldly from the hall, with the gigantic half-caste harrying them in the rear.
Whispered words fell upon the ears of Almana, the gentle Damascene, as she paused to allow those in front to pass through the door out into the night. She turned for a moment and looked up into Yussuf’s blinded face as he stood near her in the shadows.
“Put thy trust in Allah and hasten not. Journey westward and stop and wait. He will save thee and thine.”
He had caught the sound of the girl’s voice as she passed, encouraging the old man, and risked his life to tell her of the help that awaits those who put their trust in a higher power.
She whispered her thanks as she passed on, and in such wise did love come to Yussuf, the blind, and Almana, the Damascene.
Zarah sat in council with all her men; the women and children and servants slept, so that there were no eyes to watch, nor ears to hear Yussuf as he passed silently amongst the rocks to the paddock where the camels were herded at night, hobbled or tied to posts to prevent them from fighting, as is the custom of the brutes when together in great numbers.
He passed his hands over the animals, choosing three, then crossed to a shed in which were piled the “ghakeet” and “shedad” the saddles used for riding or baggagecamels, with water skins and sacks of dates, the emergency rations required by an Arab for a sudden journey.
Surely Allah, the one and only God, watched over him and listened to his prayers when, later, he walked unhesitatingly across the narrow path of rock, leading the first of three beasts, which followed, grumbling and snarling, but obediently, from fear, and guided them by the sound of voices to the Damascenes.
Almana ran to meet him when he rode towards them out of the night, and led him to her grandfather, who rose and blessed him.
“Come with us, my son, for surely yon place in the mountains is the dwelling-place of devils. Come with us to Damascus.”
“I will come one day when my task is accomplished, and that will be in the time appointed, O father,” replied Yussuf, raising his head and turning towards the East as the wind of dawn swept his face.
The Damascenes lifted their voices in prayer, calling down blessings upon him as he mounted his camel and rode away into the glory of the sunrise.
“How sad,” Almana whispered to her grandfather as they watched him moving swiftly towards the mountains, and “His Eyes” who rode to meet him. “How sad that he should be blind.”
“He is not blind, my daughter,” replied the old man, as he laid his hand upon her head. “There are those who see by the light of the soul, and, verily, our protector is numbered among them.”