“At the close of night the cries are heard.”—Arabic Proverb. Yussuf, with his back against the door of Ralph Trenchard’s hut, lifted his face to the star-bestrewn sky.
He waited.
He waited for the striking of his hour of revenge, which had been fixed by Fate in the beginning of Time; he waited imperturbably for Allah, in His compassion and wisdom, to remove the Nubian, who sat cross-legged and contemplative and to all appearances absolutely unmovable by his side.
Al-Asad sat leaning slightly forward, looking into the shadows with dreamy, half-shut eyes, then turned his head and listened as though, above the distant noise of the men’s shouting and laughter, some sound had reached his ears.
“Camels!” he said softly. “Camels going out. Methought our brothers were having their fill of wrestling?”
Yussuf also had heard the sound of a dromedary grunting its disapproval as it made the steep ascent, but no sign of his inner perturbation showed on his placid, mutilated face.
“Zarah the Merciless makes ready for the white man’s journey into the desert to-morrow. Our brethren of the stables even now revile her shadow, for instead of loading the dromedaries with water skins and provender, they would try their strength against Bowlegs, who, in his vanity, swears by the wind that no man can excel him in the games taught by the white man.”
[274]
Al-Asad laughed scornfully as he rose to his feet, swallowing the bait which hung from the line Fate dangled in front of him for his removal.
“Bowlegs!” He spoke in infinite scorn as he pulled himself up to his full height, and laughed again as he caused the muscle to ripple up and down his arms. “’Twere well to show the little man with legs even as round as thy turban that there is one who can spike him upon his finger. Thinkest thou, Yussuf, that the white maid will lose her golden covering at the rising of the sun? ’Twere a pity to my mind to mutilate such beauty in a woman, even if she be sent to the slave market to ease the tiger-cat’s jealousy.”
Yussuf pulled at his hubble-bubble, making no sign of his longing to accelerate his companion’s departure.
“Methinks the beautiful Zarah spoke in haste and in anger. Perchance she is tired of her white playthings and yearns for a master.”
“Thinkest thou, who hast learned much wisdom in thy blindness, that she will come to love me?” Al-Asad asked eagerly.
“Yea! she loves thee even now. Thou art her real mate. The great tiger-cats mate with one another, my son, and were it not wise to stay here, for fear that thou art bested by Bowlegs, and that the news of thy defeat is carried to her.”
He showed no sign of his intense satisfaction when the Nubian, primed with a desire to reduce Bowlegs to shreds, ran, laughing, down the path.
Strong in the fatalism of the East, Yussuf sat on, pulling calmly at his hubble-bubble, waiting for the striking of his hour, and made no answer to a slight hissing sound which came from behind the rocks. Instead, he rose slowly and pushed open the door of the hut, and, with the Oriental’s love of elaborate detail where intrigue is concerned, shouted at Ralph Trenchard:
“Thou infidel, thou white dog, sleepest thou? Hast[275] thou no bowels of compassion for the white woman? Dost thou leave her here to work as a slave, without an ache in thy heart of stone?”
Ralph Trenchard sprang up and crossed the hut quickly at the blind man’s beckoning finger.
“‘Mine Eyes’ waits without to lead you by the hidden path to where the dromedaries stand,” Yussuf whispered. “Nay, speak not, tarry not, there is little time to spare. The dromedaries must be but specks upon the horizon when the men cease their games to seek their slumber.”
Trenchard wrapped himself in the burnous Yussuf offered him and followed him to the door, where they stood for a moment in the shadows, listening to the shouts of the men, which came startlingly clear on the night air.
“Bowlegs fights with the Lion,” whispered Yussuf. “Now is the moment chosen by Allah for the escape. ‘Mine Eyes’ will lead you to the dromedaries, and I will go to fetch her Excellency, to carry her over the dangerous places and down the steep path to where love and happiness will await her.”
“But if the Arabian does not sleep? How then?”
“Then must you go to her and break her neck to save your own woman. What is she, this daughter of two races? We tire of her. If she dies he who will govern in her stead will be chosen by the casting of lots. Hasten, Excellency, for we know not at what hour the medicine of sleep was administered unto the tiger-cat. Also do the women, who hate the white woman and who are the yeast wherewith this trouble has been fermented, rise early to be about the business of the new day.”
Trenchard, wrapped in the burnous, followed Yussuf as he made his way without hesitation to the spot where “His Eyes” sat in the shadows.
Yussuf whispered the dumb youth’s name and questioned him, and nodded his head in satisfaction when the youth, in the code they had invented, tapped the answers to the questions upon his friend’s arm.
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“All is ready, Excellency.” Yussuf spoke as calmly as if he discussed a pleasure trip to the nearest oasis. “Namlah waits at the edge of the sands of death. The camels are well laden with water and bread for many days. They are the swiftest in Arabia, renowned from Hadramut to Oman. Bred in Oman, they will need no drink for ten days if there is none to spare. Namlah accompanies you, and——”
“And you, Yussuf? You’re coming with us; we can’t leave you behind to face the racket. You have got to come. ‘Your Eyes’ can’t let his mother go without him.”
Yussuf smiled and shook his head and laid his hand upon the dumb youth’s shoulder, who also smiled and shook his head.
“Excellency, not for ten thousand golden lira would I be away from the camp when the tiger-cat learns of the flight. A piece of news for you, white man, who comprehends not the guile of this woman of mixed blood. Did you think she had tired of you? Nay! by the beard she loves you even a hundred times more for your refusal of her love. She sends you to Hareek after the rising of the sun, only to follow you and to beguile you in the solitude of the Red Desert. There is no leech that clings so close to its victim as a woman to the one she loves but who does not return that love. There is no trick she will not descend to, no lie she will not utter, no promise she will not make, with no intent to keep, to gain her end. This is the commencement of my revenge—the end, Excellency, will be the death of her who blinded me. I have waited for this revenge these many years, even from the moment when the sun faded from my sight. I and ‘Mine Eyes’ will follow you, and if we do not overtake you by the noon, then place yourself in Namlah’s keeping. She is of the desert born.” He raised his right hand and turned his sightless face to the skies. “May Allah guide you, and keep you, and bring you to everlasting peace.”
Trenchard stood for a moment to watch the blind man[277] make his almost miraculous way through the rocks which skirted the west end of the plateau, then turned and followed the dumb youth, who smiled and nodded his head in his delight at the trick which was being played upon the Arabian. And Namlah rose from where she sat in the shadows thrown by three dromedaries hobbled at the commencement of the hidden path across the quicksands, and pressed her hand against her forehead in humble salutation and smiled up at her son, and laughed softly in the delight she also felt at the way the beautiful Zarah was being duped. Within the hour she might have to give her life in her fight for the liberty she had lost some many years back when captured in the desert, or she might lose it in saving that of the white woman she had grown to love; but with all the Oriental’s fatalism, she had resigned herself to liberty or to recapture, to life or death. Allah had decided the result in the womb of Time.
Kismet!
Yussuf’s Eyes pressed the back of his hand against his forehead, then bent and touched Ralph Trenchard’s foot as a sign that he was willing to serve the white man to the end, whilst Namlah, smiling all over her homely face, translated the gestures the dumb boy made as he tried to make Trenchard understand.
“He says, Excellency, that before the sun is above our heads at noon he will have guided the Blind One to you upon the path we shall have made across the desert. He loves you for your gentleness and strength, O man of the great white race, and prays you to succour Yussuf if aught should befall him before he reaches the great City of Damascus, which is his home and my home.”
Trenchard raised his right hand and made his oath after the manner of the Arabs.
“Before my God, who is thy God, I swear to make myself responsible for the comfort, welfare and happiness of the three who have so befriended me and mine. I swear[278] that my descendants, unto the farthest generation, shall befriend thy descendants, so that in some small way I shall pay my debt of gratitude.” He smiled down at the enraptured little woman. “Let us sit awhile whilst we wait. Come, Namlah, tell me of the life thou wilt lead in Damascus with thy people.”
The stillness of the night was broken by the grumbling of the dromedaries, the distant shouts of the men, and the body-woman’s whispered words as she told him of the house she would buy or rent in the Bazaar, with rugs upon the floor and many brass pots and pans of her own, filled with milk and butter from her own kine.
“ ... and when her Excellency returns to Arabia, then will Namlah wait upon her,” she said, smiling at the thought, being sure, with the fatalist’s conviction, of a happy ending to the flight. “Then will her golden hair once more glisten like the silk in the sun which makes of the Bazaar a paradise.” She paused for a moment as she drew out a packet wrapped in a cloth. “We have gifts which perchance his Excellency in his goodness will allow his humble servants to present to the Sit upon her marriage as a token of the gratitude the servants have in their hearts for the gentleness of the white people.”
Trenchard took the packet, removed the cloth, and looked at the exquisite golden kerchief.
“By Jove! what a beautiful thing,” he exclaimed.
Namlah smiled and nodded her sleek head at his genuine admiration.
“It is woven of her Excellency’s hair!”
“Helen’s hair!” He turned to Yussuf’s Eyes as the youth pressed something hard and heavy into his hands, speaking by gesture, which his mother translated.
His fine teeth gleamed and his beautiful eyes flashed as he watched Trenchard remove the wrapping from the heavy object.
“However did you get this?” Trenchard cried, as he[279] delightedly turned his own automatic over in his hand and released the full clip.
“The mistress, and may Allah guide a bullet to her black heart, commanded the Patriarch, who is the oldest amongst us and possessed of a very devil of gaming, to guard the weapon of death for your departure, Excellency. The old one, bereft of his last piastre and of the very qamis from about his shrunken old body, did lose the weapon in a bet to my son when you did wrestle with and overthrow the Nubian.”
Trenchard tried to express his delight at the gifts, upon which, with all the Arab’s genuine and world-famed hospitality, the two natives offered him all they possessed.
“My son,” whispered Namlah, “will live with me in the Bazaar, yea! and with us will sojourn Yussuf, his friend. The blind one will sit peacefully in the sun until he find a wife to take pity upon him, whilst ‘His Eyes,’ even my son, will sell the steel of Damascus inlaid with gold to the faithful and to the infidel. Our home will be humble, O white man, but our food and our drink, our raiment and our couch, will be for you and her Excellency if your Excellencies should see fit to honour our humble dwelling and I——” She stopped suddenly and held up her hand as she listened to the sound of a dog barking.
It barked angrily, at which sound the little woman shook her head.
“Verily, ’tis a dog!” she whispered. “When the blind one shall have carried her Excellency safely by the steep and dangerous path, which is midway between here and where Zarah the Merciless sleeps, then will he bark thrice, and in all the kennels there is not one who can say if it be a dog which barks or Yussuf. Methinks, he is over long upon the road.” She clasped her hands together upon her faithful heart. “Has mischance befallen them? Does your Excellency think that mischance causeth him to tarry thus?”
[280]
Mischance did not cause Yussuf to tarry. Seated in the shadows beneath the window through which Namlah had spied upon the Arabian and Al-Asad, he waited calmly for the moment of his revenge.
There was utter silence and stillness inside the building. No sound of voice or movement gave Yussuf any indication as to what had taken place in the last hour, neither in his blindness had he any means by which to find out if the Arabian slept or if she lay awake upon the divan watching the stars through the doorway.
He sat as immovable as the Fate to which, as an Arab, he was resigned, and he made no movement when Zarah’s mocking laugh suddenly broke the silence.
Helen sat on the floor with her back against the wall, the light from the lamp shining on the golden curls which were to be shaven on the morrow.
A shaven crown!
The Hindoo widow! The vision of bald pate seen in the Mirror ’twixt the curtains of the hair-dresser’s cubicle! The asvogel sitting disconsolately on its perch in the Zoological Gardens.
She shivered as the pictures flashed across her mind.
Zarah, lying like a tiger behind the golden bars of her elevated bed, laughed when Helen suddenly clasped her head in uncontrollable horror, twisting her fingers in her curls, and she laughed again when the white girl sprang to her feet and stood looking up with the world of rebellion in her eyes.
“Do you remember my vision, Helen, dear school-friend?” she said mockingly in Arabic, “when I saw you in the dust at my feet and the white man coming towards me? Verily will you be in the dust to-morrow, and so covered therewith that my children will walk upon you and cleanse their feet and sandals upon your raiment. You fool!” She slid her feet over the edge and stood[281] upright upon the fourth step, straight, slender and very beautiful; then, balancing herself upon her precarious foothold with outstretched arms, descended slowly and walked to where Helen stood against the wall. She laughed as she looked at Helen’s golden curls.
“I hate you, Helen R-r-aynor-r. I hated you the first time I say you in Cairo, when you tried to show your superior breeding to the contemptible half-caste.”
“I did not.”
“You, whose grandfather was of a caste of water carriers, whilst my father’s fathers dwelt in the shadow of the Great Pharaohs and my mother at the Court of Spain. The white man shall see you with your shaven crown; then, when the picture of your bald head is set for eternity in his mind, so that, waking or sleeping, he will ............