“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.
[228]
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.
[229]
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.
[230]
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, and[231] at 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 was[232] in 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, let[233] go 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 last qamis and their last piastre upon 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.
[234]
“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 is mine, his life is God’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 some[235] great 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,[236] 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 of durra for 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!” and[237] at 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,&rdq............