“It may be fire; on the morrow it will be ashes.”—Arabic Proverb.
“It may be fire; on the morrow it will be ashes.”—Arabic Proverb.
From dawn till dusk the day of festival had been passed in brief, light-hearted excursions into the desert, sports, and those infantile amusements so dear to the complex Oriental mind, during all of which Zarah had walked amongst her men with Ralph Trenchard at her side.
Anticipating the great feast which would be spread for them an hour after sunset, the men refrained from eating more than a handful of dates, whilst drinking innumerable cups of black coffee, so that they moved about restlessly during the day, walking lightly and talking excitedly, with eyes which shone like polished stones.
They chased each other like goats over the rocks, wrestled friendly-wise like boys, inspected the cooking-pots and worried, almost to death, the patient, downtrodden womenfolk, whose only share of the entertainment would be the scraps left over from the feast.
So mercurial became the atmosphere towards sunset that the men roared with laughter when, laden with a bowl of spicy stew, of which the chief ingredients were kangaroo-rat and rice, the fourth wife of Bowlegs slipped on the steps and immersed herself in the succulent mess. They picked her up and, in all fun, threw her into the river, and stripped and dived in after her, fighting each other for the privilege of saving her, before she disappeared into the cavern through which the river raced. They fought each other light-heartedly. They looked upon Zarah the Beautiful more in the light of a trust from the dead Sheikh whom they had loved than their real leader. Superstition and animal magnetism bound themto her more than anything else, and they saw no harm in her marrying the white prisoner for a space, so long as there should be nothing permanent in the union.
Everything had been arranged for a happy ending to the day.
After the feast Zarah and her white lover would appear, followed by one of the many bands of theGhowazy-Barameke, which are formed from a certain tribe of hereditary prostitutes who wander through city, town and village and from oasis to oasis.
Following that diversion, the Patriarch would arise, clothed in new raiment, to acquaint the white man of the honour which the community intended to confer upon him, incidentally allowing him to understand that, if he liked, he could choose death in preference to tying a tiger-cat to his hearthrug.
Not that they thought he would for one moment.
They knew of the long hours the two had spent together far into the night; of the ridesà deuxthey had taken in the desert at sunrise, sunset, and in the light o’ the moon; had seen him clasping the girl to his heart after the passing of the poisonous pestilence only seven days ago, and, quite naturally, had put their own construction upon it all.
Who wouldn’t?
And knowing as much about the Western mind as their mistress, were just as completely at sea as she.
Having seen nothing of Helen since the night when Al-Asad had whipped them into fury with the tales of her ingratitude and mocking, and with other and more interesting things than her death upon their minds, they had ceased to think about her; in fact, if it had not been for the hatred of their womenfolk, which had been roused by the Nubian’s tales of her mocking of them, some of them would have quite willingly sent her back to Hutah. They were too well-fed, too secure, for hate or love to endure. They worried about nothing, yet a certain restlessness andincertitude caused them to press about Ralph Trenchard when he walked, most friendly-wise, amongst them this day of festival; to lightly finger his clothes, to brush against him and to look at him in the strange, unseeing manner of the Oriental, lost in contemplation.
So mercurial became the atmosphere after the feasting in the great Hall, where the men filled the vacuum caused by abstinence with highly spiced viands and wines forbidden by the Prophet, that it required but a spark to set their minds ablaze.
Replete, they lay upon the floor chiding and tormenting the elder and more ugly of the women, who ran amongst them with braziers and coffee or with bowls of water for the washing of hands, whilst the younger ones sped hither-thither in the task of clearing away thedébrisof the feast before the advent of the mistress they so sorely dreaded.
Al-Asad sat cross-legged upon the floor near the steps leading up to the dais. Nude, save for the loin-cloth, he looked a giant amongst the men who, barefooted or sandalled, with black or striped kerchief round the head, lounged in the long shirt, open to the waist and bound about the middle by the leather thong, universally worn by the Arab. The Patriarch, wrapped in a cloak which added much to his dignity, sat upon a pile of cushions near the first of the columns. Blind Yussuf sat upon the floor against the wall, with “His Eyes” beside him.
Following upon the blind man’s whisper of Helen’s name one whole long week ago, the subsequent and strange behaviour of “His Eyes” had given Ralph Trenchard cause to think.
The dumb youth would touch him upon the arm to attract his attention, then touch his face and point insistently at the rock wall behind which Helen lived, and, illiterate, as are most Arabs, would shake his head when offered pencil and paper.
He had tried vainly by sign to acquaint the white manof the white woman’s presence in the camp, a piece of self-constituted diplomacy which would have much displeased Yussuf.
The mercurial atmosphere had affected Ralph Trenchard.
True, he had not subsisted upon a handful of dates and unlimited cups of strong coffee throughout the day, but Yussuf’s whispered word, the youth’s strange pantomime, a certain watchfulness he noticed amongst the men, and an extraordinary solicitude for his comfort and welfare on the part of Zarah, had wellnigh brought him to the limit of endurance during the past week. The novelty had worn off, the salt had lost its savour, and he had determined, poor, unsuspecting soul, as he waited to make his way to the great Hall to witness the dancing, to start for Hutah within the next ten days.
In one word, everyone was on tenter-hooks this festive eve, and as ready to fly at each other’s throat as any two wild beasts of the desert. The rock-pigeons, sparrows, hoopoes and other birds which abounded in this watered sanctuary in a desert waste rose in clouds at the ringing shouts of laughter and ribald jokes with which the men greeted Zarah’s herald, the camp jester, in the misshapen form of a dwarf holding a veritable tangle of black and white monkeys. Following him came four handsome youths carrying gigantic circular fans of peacock feathers, and after them fifteen little maids—who ought to have been abed—with bowls of perfumed water, which they sprinkled on the floor.
Then the men sprang to their feet and shouted, until Helen, alone, desperate from the solitude of the last terrible week, ran to her door, only to be pushed back, and none too gently, by the surly negress, who longed inordinately to be with her sisters as they devoured the remains of the great feast.
Zarah entered alone, her immense jewel-encrusted train sweeping like a flood over Yussuf’s feet as he creptstealthily along the wall and slipped through the door into the night.
For an instant she stopped so that the men should fully take in the beautiful picture she made against the flaring orange lining of her train.
Her limbs showed snow-white through the transparent voluminous trousers, her body, bare save for the glittering breast-plates and jewelled bands which held it, shone like ivory, whilst she seemed to tower, even amongst her men, owing to the mass of black and orange osprey which sprang from the centre of her jewelled head-dress.
Fifteen little boys—who too ought to have been abed—spread wide her train as she walked slowly over the wonderful mosaic floor, with all the grace of her Andalusian mother, between the rows of shouting men. She stayed for one moment as she drew level with the Nubian standing like a giant, and, under the impulse of her innate cruelty, looked at him sweetly from half-closed eyes.
He raised his hands to his forehead, so that a mark made by pearly teeth showed upon his arm, and looked at her from head to foot and smiled as the crimson swept her face. Then he gathered the full burden of her train into his arms and followed her up the seven steps and spread it wide as she sat down in the ivory chair, then knelt and kissed her knees and her golden-sandalled feet.
She leant back and watched the thirty children climb on to the stone stools, upon which had sat the thirty Holy Fathers centuries ago, and looked down at the hawklike, eager men who watched her, and up to the star-strewn, vaulted ceiling, from which hung silver lamps which drew lustre from her jewels and her eyes and the precious stones glittering in the columns.
Against the golden background of the Byzantine wall, with the great fans moving slowly above her head, she was barbaric in her beauty, and not for one moment did she or the men doubt that the white man had fallen a victim to her enchantment.
She rose when Ralph Trenchard stood in the doorway looking across the hall in bewilderment, and, holding out her hands, descended the steps, her great glittering train spread out behind her like an enormous fan. She walked slowly, whilst the men whispered remarks, which were better left unprinted, the one to the other, and the fifteen mites leapt from the stools, upon which had stood the prisoners from Damascus, and ran to lift her train as she turned with her hand in Ralph Trenchard’s.
He looked at her from head to foot. He gazed at the superb figure, the jewels, the beautiful face, the crimson-tipped fingers, and, with all the perversity of the human, was suddenly overwhelmed with a longing for just one glimpse of the girl he had loved, in her riding kit, with her sweet, laughing, fair face turned up to the light of the stars.
“Thank God,” he said to himself as he walked up the steps by the side of the beautiful Arabian. “Thank heaven this is the end of this awful time, and I shall soon be riding back along the road I came with her, my Helen.”
He looked down at the men, to find their eyes fixed upon him, and wondered vaguely at the feeling of tension that pervaded the place; then forgot all about it at the sound of a drum outside the great door.
With great shouting and to the shrilling of reed pipes and the throbbing of drums the dancers burst through the doorway. They had been enticed across the desert by the biggest fee they had ever been offered in the whole of their vagrant life, and had thoroughly enjoyed the blindfolding and their mysterious entry into the strange camp where they had been so lavishly entertained.
Men and women, youths and girls, virile, joyous, burned deep brown by the sun and the storm, with the knowledge of life in their flashing eyes, the love of adventure in their hearts and the call of great spaces in their vagabond blood, they stood quite still for a moment and then moved.
They danced to the sound of the drum, the shrillingof reed pipes, the clapping of hands, the beating of bare feet. They danced in groups, in pairs; one, thin as a lath, supple as a snake, danced by herself, driving the men wellnigh mad, so that the silver lamps swung to their shouting until she dropped in a heap at the foot of the dais. They sang as they danced, until the echoes of the wild Arabian love songs and battle songs beat against the star-strewn, vaulted ceiling; they laughed and clapped their hands in joy, and swayed and rocked to a great moaning; they advanced to the foot of the dais, caring little, in the power of their ancestry, which stretches back beyond the days of the Pharaohs, for the imperious woman who sprang from Allah knew where, or the man who, handsome as he was, came from a foreign land.
They danced for two hours. Danced to earn their huge fee, to amuse, to entertain, to end in dancing for the sheer love of it.
In and out of the columns and amongst the men went their slender bare feet to the flashing of knives, the clash of cymbals and the call of the Arabian love songs. They met, they parted, they met again; whilst the girl as thin as a lath, as supple as a snake, sprang up and stood upon one spot, moving only from her waist upwards.
And as suddenly as they had come, as suddenly they departed, to the rolling of the drums and the reed pipes’ sweet shrilling, whilst some of the men crossed to the door to watch them descend the steps, and others got up and moved about, restless under the excitation of the nerves invariably caused by theGhowazy-Barameke.
Followed a certain time set apart for the drinking of wines forbidden by the Prophet, the eating of the sweetmeats and the lighting of hubble-bubbles and cigarettes.
“You like it?” said Zarah, so softly, as Ralph Trenchard lit her cigarette. He bent to catch her words, then drew his great ivory chair nearer still and leaned towards her as he talked, upon which actions the men who watched put their own construction.
“As gentle as the new-born tiger cub,” quoted Bowlegs as he helped himself in right lordly fashion from the heaped-up tray offered him by his third wife, who, being childless, filled the post of drudge to the entire Bowleg family.
“As placid as the surface of the sands of death,” replied his neighbour as he looked at Zarah and winked at Bowlegs. “Allah grant we split not our sides with laughter when the claws of the tiger cub draw blood.”
“Or when he slips up to his neck in the sands of her displeasure.”
“What of the white woman? Has aught been prepared for her passing to Paradise orJohannam?”
By spitting with vigour Bowlegs managed to interrupt the speaker.
“My heart is loth to send so fair a maid upon so long a journey. All women are cats, longing to sharpen their claws upon each other. Let us send her upon the road to Hutah, and so trick the gentle Zarah.”
“Nay....”
“Yea....”
Followed a heatedsotto vocediscussion, with interludes of gambling instigated by the Patriarch, who had grown a-weary of his new raiment, in which he found it difficult to find the dice and counters. The gambling spread right through the hall; the men were quiet, watching Zarah as she played every note in the scale of woman’s charm to enthral the man at her side, whilst he, thinking of Helen, replied mechanically to her questions.
And Helen, pale, with great shadows round her eyes, sat on her couch with her hands clasped in a desperate effort to keep herself well under control. For a week she had not been allowed outside the front of her building, nor had she seen Zarah or caught a sign of Yussuf amongst the rocks which towered around the little clearing behind.
When she had moved to the door or the windows she had met the negress, who had pushed her back, and none toogently, whilst making sounds of anger in her throat. Her food had become scanty and badly cooked; her books had been taken one by one; she had been made to understand that to bathe in the river, ride, or visit the dogs, which had learned to love her, was forbidden.
When the shouts of laughter which greeted the dwarf with his tangle of monkeys rang through the night air, she jumped from the couch and ran out into the clearing at the back, whereupon, to her everlasting undoing, the negress shifted her ungainly person into the direct centre of the doorway in the front of the building and lost herself in a great disgruntlement, whilst chewing the fragrant “kaat.”
Helen stopped dead in the middle of the clearing and pressed her hands upon her mouth.
Swinging hand over hand, dropping noiselessly from rock to rock, came Yussuf down the mountainside, with “His Eyes” upon his shoulders.
Fifteen feet above her they stood, side by side, upon a narrow ledge, then, after a few whispered words, leapt like panthers and landed like great cats upon the sand of the clearing. Noiselessly they crossed to Helen, who stood, speechless, against the wall. In the merest whisper Yussuf asked her a question and repeated the answer to “His Eyes.”
There was no sound as the youth crept to the door and peered in, nor when, with his back to the wall and his dagger between his teeth, he stole round the room, his eyes fixed on the surly negress lost in her great disgruntlement. Neither did she make other sound than a little sigh when, struck by Fate from behind, she fell forward into Eternity with her mouth full ofkaat.
“Quick, Excellency!” said Yussuf, when Helen cried out at the terrible scene. “There is no time to lose upon sympathy. That stroke of the dagger did but remove one who was but a little better than a beast and a little less evil than she who blinded me. Spill not thy heart’sblood for such, but hasten, in the name of Allah, hasten to the white man, who even now is in the hands of the she-devil and my brethren, who know not what they do.”
“White man! What white man?”
Helen walked close to Yussuf and stared up into his sightless face.
“White man!” she whispered, her face ashen through the tumult of her heart. “What white man? In God’s name, in the name of Allah, tell me! Is it—is it——”
Yussuf caught her and shook her as she reeled up against him.
“Thou art brave, white woman; be not a cowardnow, when thy man waits for thee, surrounded by those who, inflamed with forbidden wine, will strike him down for a misplaced word. It is this wise. In the few words time and Fate allow me——”
Helen turned to “His Eyes,” who stood beside her, smiling and nodding his head, whilst the blind man talked. Then she placed her hand in Yussuf’s.
“ ... rush not in, Excellency,” finished Yussuf as they moved towards the door. “Listen to the words of the old man with the white hair and venerable beard. Wait until the thoughts of my brethren are fixed upon the white man, then—thendo as Allah the Merciful bids thee, and may His blessing rest upon thee and thine throughout all time. I shall be within the Hall, likewise ‘Mine Eyes,’ when he has well hid the body of yon slave and has finished the task I have set him.”
Yussuf’s sandalled feet made no sound, the noise of Helen’s boots upon the rocks was deadened by the shouting from above as they sped like deer up the steep, deserted steps to the doorway of the Hall of Judgment. With finger upon lips Yussuf slipped in unnoticed, leaving Helen in the shadows, staring across the great chamber to the dais, where sat Zarah, in all her barbaric loveliness, with Ralph Trenchard beside her.
“Upon every misfortune another misfortune.”—Arabic Proverb.
“Upon every misfortune another misfortune.”—Arabic Proverb.
A straight, clear path stretched from her to the man she loved.
The end of the room near the door was empty, the men having pressed forward towards the dais so as to watch the white man’s face when the proposition, which would amount to an order, backed by a threat, should be made to him. They stood on each side, close together, leaving a path the width of the dais, their eyes over-bright and their fingers straying towards the dagger—which the Arab ever carries—in their cummerbunds.
Zarah sat leaning slightly forward, her face white under the tension of the moment, her jewelled fingers playing with the crystal knobs of the ivory chair. She sat in a sea of flaming orange, jewel-encrusted satin, the fans blowing the ospreys of her head-dress, as they swung the silver lamps above her head.
Ralph Trenchard, sensing that something out of the ordinary was afoot, sat right forward, alert, watchful, his eyes following the movements of the men as they walked restlessly to and fro, or stood talking with overmuch gesture.
He turned once and looked at Zarah, who sat divided from him by the glistening folds of her train. He looked at her steadily, trying to find the answer to the riddle of the hour, and caught his breath when she stretched out her hand and laid it on his and whispered, “I love you.” He sat staring at her, stunned by the sudden realization of his blindness and his crass stupidity, then looked down at the Nubian, who, arms folded, stood looking up at him, a world of hate and mockery in his face.
The hate in the man’s eyes, the love in the woman’s voice, the sense of pending danger, the unaccountable expectation in his heart.
Love, hate? Turmoil, peace? Life, death?
Which?
He lifted his head and looked straight across to the doorway. It showed black, with a background of purple, strewn with stars, and he sighed, unaccountably disappointed, and watched the benign Patriarch move slowly forward until he stood in front of the dais.
As he moved Helen moved forward and hid behind the velvet curtain hanging to one side of the door, and made another quick movement when the man she loved unknowingly looked straight at her, then stood quite still when Yussuf, without turning, raised his hand.
The Patriarch had begun to speak.
He bowed himself to the ground before Zarah, then stood upright, reminding Ralph Trenchard of a picture of Elijah he had loved to look at in the family Bible on account of the ravens with loaves of bread in their beaks, little recking in his baby understanding that the word raven stood for a certain village, or tribe of people, in the holy one’s environs.
The Patriarch’s fine voice and sonorous words rang through the building, causing the men to press closer still, and the Nubian to look up at Zarah. She looked down at him with a mocking smile, and then at the venerable old man, and lastly at Ralph Trenchard, who sat in amazement, looking from one to the other.
Happily Helen’s sharp cry was drowned in the Patriarch’s sonorous words as he offered the Arabian girl’s hand in marriage, with her wealth in cash, jewels, horses, camel and cattle, to the Englishman; happily everyone was too enthralled at the sight of the Englishman’s amazed face to look back to the doorway where she stood, her eyes flashing in a great anger, her heart beating heavily with fear.
Ralph Trenchard held up his hand.
The baying of the dogs from the kennels could be heard in the silence that fell, whilst the men tugged at each other’s sleeves and surreptitiously made bets upon his answer to the proposition.
He repeated the Patriarch’s proposal word for word, then turned to Zarah, speaking slowly, so that all should understand.
“Have I understood correctly? Yon old man, who, he says, stands to you in place of a father, proposes that I—I, an Englishman, a foreigner, should marry you, an Arabian and a Mohammedan. That I should live here with you and help you rule these fine men of yours, who could learn nothing from me. That I should give up my country, for which I fought, my people whom I love, to become one of a nation whose blood is not my blood, nor ways my ways. Is that so?”
Zarah’s hands lay still on the crystal knobs of her ivory chair as she answered, a dull crimson slowly flushing her face:
“Verily,” she replied, holding up her hand to ensure silence. “It is as you say. It is our custom in Arabia, though of a truth it is not customary for the maid to be present at the bargaining.”
She laughed suddenly, sweetly, and held out her hands, whilst her words beat like hammers upon Helen’s brain. “For me, he who stands to me as father offers you my hand in marriage, with my wealth, my people, my horses, all I possess, asking naught of you in return. I have the blood of Europe in my veins, I have learned the customs and the speech of the white races, even of my mother’s race. I am not ill-favoured, nor too much wanting in wit. I——” Her voice changed as the song of the summer breeze might change to the warning of the coming storm. “I wait for your answer before my men, who desire naught but my happiness and, with mine, their own.”
At the veiled threat in the last words Ralph Trenchard turned and looked at the men, his dominant jaw out-thrust, his mouth a line of steel.
So this was the meaning of the feasting, the watchfulness, the tension, the solicitude.
The horror of it all.
Love in the place of friendliness, the love of a despotic woman who had never in her life been denied or thwarted; a veiled threat as lining to the mantle of hospitality which had been thrown about him; a life-long captivity, or even death, for his freedom if he stood true to his love for Helen.
Captivity!
He shuddered involuntarily at the thought of some of the prisoners he had seen working under the lash of the overseer’s whip.
Death!
He smiled.
A few steps across the no man’s land stretching between the now and the hereafter and he would see Helen waiting for him, her lovely, fair face alight with the love of all eternity.
A great silence fell as he rose, followed by a sound like the wind as the men whispered amongst themselves.
“A fitting mate for the tiger-cat, a fitting sire for the whelps, if it were not for his blood.”
“Yea, verily,” answered Bowlegs. “’Tis a rare beauty in a man and the stature of a giant.”
“He and the Lion would be well matched in a fight.”
Bowlegs would have spat in derision if he had dared.
“A mouse in the Lion’s maw, brother. I lay thee my shirt of silk to thy sandals that the Lion would break him in——”
The whispering stopped when Ralph Trenchard raised his hand, whilst the Patriarch, by force of habit, searched for the counters in the folds of his new raiment.
“The honour you do me is very great, very great. I cannot find words to thank you. But——” Ralph Trenchard looked down at Zarah, who rose slowly, a lovely glittering thing full of apprehension and a rising anger. She looked him straight in the eyes without a word, andat the relentlessness which shone in hers he subconsciously wondered what kind of death by torture she would mete out to him in return for his loyalty to Helen.
“But——?”
The word dropped from her lips like the first thunder drop heralding the coming storm, and Helen, a great light blazing in her eyes, stepped forward and stopped as Yussuf held her back by a movement of his hand.
“But,” continued Ralph Trenchard slowly, very slowly, so that every word could be clearly heard throughout the hall, “the honour, the great honour I must refuse, because——”
“Because——?”
Under the impulse of a great excitement the men moved forward in a body, then stopped.
There was not a sound to break the terrible silence, not a movement except for the jewels which flashed as they rose and fell above the Arabian girl’s heart and the fans which swung the silver lamps and stirred the black and orange osprey of her head-dress.
She stood like a statue of terrible wrath, outraged in her pride before her men. Like a cobra about to strike she waited motionless to pay back that insult a hundredfold.
“Because——?” she repeated.
“Because,” Ralph Trenchard said slowly, clearly, “because I love the memory of the white woman who died amongst you, too much to give a thought of love elsewhere.”
Helen’s ringing, joyous cry was lost in the men’s shouting and the sharp sound of their daggers as they whipped them from the sheath, and her scream of rage was lost in their shouts of laughter when Zarah, lifting her hand, smote the white man across the mouth.
Then she ran, oblivious of the roar of amazement, up the clear path which stretched between her and her lover.
“Ra!” she cried as she ran, with arms outstretched. “Ra! I’m here! I’m coming to you, Ra! Come to me!”
She ran to him as he leapt from the dais; she wasin his arms and he had folded her close and kissed her before Zarah had time to give an order to the men, who stood motionless with astonishment.
A moment of utter silence, then the storm broke.
“Separate them!”
The order, given to the Nubian, cracked like a whip as Zarah, white with passion, sank slowly into the ivory chair.
“Seize the white man!”
She flung her order to a young Arab whilst the Nubian struggled to wrench Ralph Trenchard’s arms from about Helen.
“Drive them in!”
The young Arab turned the dagger he held in each hand and drove the blunt handle hard down on to the ribs just above Ralph Trenchard’s waist, and jerked him roughly back when his arms slackened under the shock and agonizing pain.
There was a moment’s breathless silence.
Helen stood perfectly still, her elbows held from behind by Al-Asad, her face, radiant with love, turned towards Ralph Trenchard, who sickened at the sight of the Nubian’s glistening skin so near the girl he adored. He knew that they were in a desperate plight, the tightest corner any two could have got into, but he was not giving the Arabian the satisfaction of seeing a sign of his dismay in his face, and he worshipped Helen for her outward calm, though his whole being revolted at the Nubian’s close proximity to her.
He knew he had only to make a certain movement to fling off the man who held his elbows from behind, but before he made it he wanted to find a way to make the half-caste loosen his hold of Helen.
And the way came to him as he looked at Al-Asad, who stood staring down at Helen’s golden hair with an indescribable look on his face.
“You, Al-Asad,” he said slowly, pronouncing each word so that it sounded clearly in the hall, “you nigger, letgo of the white woman. In our country we do not allow the black——”
He rid himself with a lightning movement from the hands which held him and sprang and caught the Nubian, who, hurling Helen back against the dais, leapt at the man who had so direly insulted him.
There came one tremendous yell as the men rushed to form a ring, then a very babel of voices as they laid their lastqamisand their lastpiastreupon the outcome of the struggle between the two men who stood locked in a mighty grip.
“My shirt of silk to thy sandals,” yelled Bowlegs, “that the foreigner is crushed like a mouse in the Lion’s maw.”
“Taken, O thou little one with legs like the full moon,” yelled his neighbour, who had learnt a thing or two in the fine art of wrestling when he had fought so magnificently for the whites. “The white man will use our brother as a cloth with which to wipe the marks of thy misshapen feet from the ground. Bulk counts not against knowledge.”
Bowlegs spat as he glanced at Ralph Trenchard, who, trained to a hair, stood well over six feet, yet looked like a stripling beside the gigantic Nubian, who overtopped him by inches.
The men’s attention was diverted for one moment when Helen ran up the steps of the dais, and they held their breath in sheer delight when the Arabian rose from her chair to confront her.
The two girls were about the same height, both of an amazing beauty, and they both loved the same man, who was likely to have his neck broken within the next few minutes.
What more could they desire as an evening’s entertainment?
“Will you take a bet, Zarah?”
The lamps seemed likely to spill their oil as they swung to the men’s shouting.
“Take it! Take it!” they yelled. “Take it, Zarah the Beautiful. Let it not be said that an infidel could show thee a path.”
“The stakes?”
“Ralph Trenchard’s life against my locket, which hangs around your neck!”
“They are both mine!”
“The locket ismine, his life isGod’s, in your keeping for a little while.”
“You, Helen R-r-aynor, you sign his death warrant? He cannot win against my slave!”
“Will you take the bet?”
The Arabian unfastened the chain and, laughing, flung the locket at Helen’s feet as the two men moved.
The Nubian put forth all the strength of his mighty muscle. Ralph Trenchard, one of the finest exponents of jiu-jitsu to be found anywhere, took advantage of the movement to slip his hand an inch or two, and to move his foot an inch or so. For a second he stood quite still, then, as the Nubian moved, with a movement too quick and too fine to be described, lifted the gigantic man and flung him so that he struck his head against the dais and lay still at his mistress’s feet.
In the uproar which followed Helen was down the steps like a bird, and, laughing happily in her complete misunderstanding of the Oriental mind, was in her lover’s arms.
“His life!” she cried, looking over her shoulder towards Zarah. “His life! I’ve won! I’ve won!” then flung her arms round him and held him close at sight of the fury in the Arabian’s face, whilst the men pressed upon them, their hands outstretched, waiting for the order which they knew must come.
“Separate them!”
Helen’s hair came down about her like a mantle as hands, only too willing, dragged her away from the man she loved, and Ralph’s silk shirt ripped to the waist as he fought desperately for her until overpowered by numbers.
Zarah stood half-way down the steps, looking like somegreat bird with her train spread out behind her, the ospreys blowing this way and that above her death white face with its half-shut tawny eyes and crimson mouth. She stood looking from the one to the other evilly as she planned a torture for the two which might, in some little way, ease the torture of her own heart.
She had given her word to spare the white man’s life, and as it had been given before some hundred witnesses, her word she had to keep, but she would make of that life such a hell that the white girl would wish, before she had finished with both of them, that death had overtaken her and her lover in the battle.
In the intense excitement of the moment no notice was taken of Yussuf as he crept quietly through the doorway from behind the curtain where he had been sitting, nor of the clamour from the kennels, which a few moments later rent the peace of the night.
“Bring them here, both of them, to my feet. Hold them apart! Thou dog! Who told thee to strike the white man?” Zarah pointed at a pock-marked youth who had pushed Ralph Trenchard forward by the shoulder in an exuberance engendered by the uproar so dear to the Arab’s heart. “’Tis well for thee that it is a day of festival, else would ten strokes of the whip have been paid thee for thy presumption.”
The youth shrank back behind a pillar, whilst Zarah looked from one to another of the men, dominating them all by her unconquerable will and her magnetic beauty.
She had but to smile and to speak to them as her beloved children and the prisoners would be free to go where they pleased; to say one word for the hall to be emptied; to raise her hand for the prisoners to die on the spot.
She was supreme in her command, superb in her beauty, but as she looked at the English girl she knew she was beaten.
She could see the love in Ralph Trenchard’s eyes as he looked across at Helen, who stood smiling, dishevelled,with her golden hair in a cloud around her over-thin, death-white face; and she knew that in his love for Helen, the love she herself craved for and had failed to inspire, he would fight to the death to save her from harm.
Death!
Even as the word flashed into her mind, the youth whom Al-Asad had whirled like a club and shaken like a sack ofdurrafor mimicking his mistress sprang forward.
In the Arab’s supreme callousness towards his brother’s feelings he used the Nubian’s limp body as the first step as he ran up the steps of the dais and knelt at Zarah’s feet.
“Her death, mistress!” he shouted, his eyes blazing at the thought of the white girl’s insult towards his womenfolk. “Behold, she mocks thee and the women who tend and serve her. She mocks them this wise.”
He sprang back, landing, with the Arab’s supreme callousness towards his brother’s feelings, full upon the Nubian’s back, so that, the last ounce of breath being expelled forcibly from his lungs, he lay limper than ever. Followed a mimicry of Helen’s supposed mimicry of Namlah the busy and the surly negress, until the men shouted with laughter and yelled with appreciation, whilst Zarah looked down without a smile and Helen looked on in amazement.
She understood at last, and tried in her indignation to free herself, and failing, shouted her denial of the untruth.
“It is a lie! It is a lie! I could not, would not——”
As the youth spat in her direction, and the men, their pride once more ablaze at the thought of the insult offered their own women, cursed and yelled, Ralph Trenchard, with an effort beyond all telling, broke from his captors and sprang straight at the youth who had spat.
“You swine! You filthy swine!” he cried, and with a fist like a flail caught the spitter full on the point, smashing his jaw, whereupon the men yelled “Wah! Wah!” andat a sign from their mistress, shouting with joy, flung themselves upon Ralph Trenchard and held him fast.
“Pass not the sentence of death upon him this night, mistress,” suddenly cried Bowlegs, waddling forward. “He has grievously insulted thee, as has the white woman, but let him live for a space and under the eyes of Al-Asad teach us his cunning tricks, for, behold! if ’twere but a question of muscle even could I pinch his life out ’twixt thumb and finger. After we have learned the tricks, then——”
A shout of appreciation followed hot upon his words of wisdom. Helen in despair fought to free herself so as to protect her lover, whereupon Zarah looked slowly in her direction.
“And the woman?”
“Kill her! Sink her in the sands of death! Give her to the dogs! Drive her out into the Empty Desert!”
Zarah shook her head at the suggestions shouted by men who are taught in their religion that woman is devoid of soul, and therefore to be looked upon either as a plaything or a drudge, or the potential bearer of sons, and, in any case, far below the level of the horse at her very best.
“Death is but a closing of the eyes in sleep.” Zarah translated the line she had learned at school. “And I would keep her wide-eyed in life, working as work the women she has mocked.” She caught the horror in Ralph Trenchard’s eyes as he looked from her to Helen, who stood mute, her heart aglow at the thought of her lover’s safety for the moment. Lost to all thought of self, she but half understood Zarah’s words, and looked questioningly from the men to her and back.
“Yea! Ralph Tr-r-enchar-r-d!” said Zarah slowly, pouring the balm of revenge into her smarting wounds. “To work as my servant, to wait upon me, to serve me, even as thou shalt work under the ruling of that fool, who would even now be dead if it were not for the thickness of his skull.” She held up her hand as the men shouted.“Has the white man aught to say, the man who changes his coat to the wind? The white woman at dawn, the Arabian at noon, the white woman at dusk, and Allah knows which in the watches of the night!”
“You liar! You despicable coward! There isn’t a word of truth in what you say, youliar!”
Helen’s words, forcible, if somewhat lacking in diplomacy considering her position, rang through the room, and Yussuf, standing hidden just outside the door, raised the electric torch he held as a sign to “His Eyes” standing outside the kennels deserted by the grooms, who, against orders, had crept to the feasten bloc, instead of in shifts. Yussuf, who knew his brethren backward and looked upon them as children, had planned the death of the Arabian and the escape of the whites as agrand finaleto the day’s festivities.
For the last half-hour the dogs, headed by Rādi the bitch, had been driven to the point of madness by “His Eyes,” who had drawn one of Zarah’s sandals across the bars of the kennels, inciting them to a very lust to kill.
Yussuf had planned everything, but had forgotten to take into consideration the extraordinary trait in the character of the white races which urges them to give their life for their brother at the slightest provocation. He raised his hand to flash the signal, then dropped it to listen to Ralph Trenchard speaking.
“There is a proverb in England,” he was saying slowly, so that everyone should understand, “which says, ‘One man can take a horse to the water, but ten cannot make him drink.’ You will never make the girl, who will one day be my wife, wait upon you as a servant, neither will you make me work under your half-caste lover.”
Which words were also lacking in diplomacy, taking everything into consideration.
A great silence fell. The men thought that Zarah had been rather badly cornered; she waited out of sheer dramatic instinct. Then she laughed, laughed until thehall was full of the sweet sound, as she turned and sank into her chair.
She had the prisoners in the hollow of her hand, and not one whit of their punishment would she spare them.
She put her exquisite, golden-sandalled foot upon the ivory footstool, and looked at Helen.
“Loosen the white woman!”
She spoke curtly, and the men holding Helen sprang back.
“I would remove my sandals, Helen R-r-aynor-r! Come and loosen them!”
Helen smiled and shook her head. Torture would not force her to save her life by humiliating the white races.
“You will not? Remember you are a prisoner, my prisoner, and that the power of life and death and punishment is in my hands!” Zarah leant right forward and looked into the steady blue eyes, whilst the men, knowing their mistress’s cunning, pressed forward. “You will not, you say?”
“No! I will not!”
Zarah sat up, her hand pointing at Ralph Trenchard, her eyes half closed in the strength of her terrible cruelty.
“I will make you, and I will make him in like manner if he refuses to obey.” She paused for a moment, and then spoke sharply. “Take the white man out, and whip him till he drops. Stop!”
She had won.
Yet as she leant back slowly she felt no triumph as she watched Helen swing round to the man who fought to get free.
Helen laughed, laughed good humouredly, splendidly, with all the pluck of her race, as she spoke to the man she was fighting for.
“Why should I not unfasten the very pretty sandal, Ra? Why should you be made to suffer, if my very capable fingers can undo the gold laces of my lady’s footwear? Don’t get angry, Ra, it’s a great waste of energy; besides, you know I always do exactly as I please.”
Yussuf listened to the men’s exclamations and laughter, to the sound of Helen’s feet mounting the steps, then flashed his torch three times.