“Everyman—and his own care!”—Arabic Proverb. Zarah stretched her arms above her head, yawned, listened for a moment to the barking of the dogs, then, struck with a premonition of impending disaster, awoke to her surroundings, struggled to a sitting position, and stared up at the unlit lamps and round the room in amazement.
Save for the faint light of the coming dawn, the place was in darkness and strangely still.
Who had blown out the lights? Where was Helen? What was the meaning of the dogs’ unrest at this hour, when they usually slept? Why was she weighed down with such an oppressive drowsiness?
She roused herself, swaying to her feet, stood for a moment bemused, then staggered forward and crashed into a great brass bowl filled with many fruits. It fell with a clatter, arousing her from the strange lethargy which seemed to cause the room to spin about her and to dull her active brain.
She stood watching the oranges and pomegranates, figs, apricots and peaches roll this way and that across the marble floor, then called for Helen.
Helen!
She shouted the name savagely, under the whip of her premonition, shouted it until the vaulted roof rang with her cries, shouted it until the echoes gave back the call.
Helen! Helen! Helen! a mocking voice seemed to shout back from the shadows.
In a flash enlightenment came to her, and with it the blindest rage that ever entered woman’s heart.
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There could be but one reason for the dark desertion of the room and for the unanswered call. In some way the girl she hated, the man she desired, had communicated with each other, had outwitted her. How? When? Where? Oh, of what avail to lose time in asking useless questions when, even at that moment, they might be on their way to freedom and love? She stood in the centre of the faintly lighted room, then laughed until the ugly sound beat against the walls. She laughed with sheer rage at the thought of how she, Zarah the Cruel, the most beautiful woman in Asia, the woman who had never been thwarted or foiled, had at last been circumvented by Helen. Helen Raynor, the fool English girl, the slow-witted, the dense, the hopelessly dull, as she had described her when holding her up to ridicule to her women slaves.
Her slaves!
In a moment her trend of thought changed, and with it, replacing even her rage, came a violent desire to revenge herself on everyone who had connived at or participated in the prisoners’ escape.
Yussuf! Namlah!
She seized the metal rod and smote the huge brass gong as the two names leapt to her mind. Her men were gathered together on the plateau, with Yussuf and the dumb boy whom he loved in their midst. She would summon the two who had been thorns in her flesh since the death of the Sheikh and wring a confession from them.
Left by her father in her care!
In the name of Allah what mattered a promise more or less when it had to do with those who had put humiliation after humiliation upon her? She would see to it that they and the white people were rendered dumb and blind in death by the time she had wiped out all the insults they had heaped her with.
Her women!
They slept peacefully in their quarters with Namlah in their midst. She would summon them all and wring a[292] confession from her. She had treated the body-woman, who had shown such strong affection for the white girl, with a strange leniency, merely replacing her, upon the spies’ report, by the surly negress who had so unaccountably disappeared upon the night when the dogs had rushed the hall. She should learn what awaited a slave and a prisoner who dared plot against the master.
She smote the gong to awaken the entire camp and to summon her attendants, smote it without ceasing.
Lost to all sense of reasoning through her overpowering rage, she flung herself upon the divan and sat looking out to the desert through the cleft in the mountains, planning her revenge upon them all.
The Red Desert, the Empty Desert, the forcing-ground of hate, revenge, despair, the burial place of love and hope and life.
The great waste places of the Arabian Peninsula, swept by the tribes of Ad, Tasim and Jadis, devastated by the hordes which inundated it in the early days when the Holy Fathers, in penance, built the very building in which the desert-born girl sat; ruled by African kings, allied to the Roman and Byzantine Empires, coveted, conquered, beaten, yet as ready to-day to rise in revolt against oppression and to hurl itself against the enemy as it was ready to fling itself victoriously against the mighty Roman generals.
Immense tracts of sand across which, pursuing or pursued, passed those countless legions, leaving, save for the footprints of Solomon’s mighty Yeminite Queen and Mohammed, the greatest Prophet the world has known since the advent of the gentle Nazarene, but little mark upon the path of time; desolate plains under which those who, through the centuries, have laid its fair cities waste, sleep in death amongst the ruins and treasures and secrets of cities, kingdoms and dynasties of which the names alone remain; silent, mysterious oceans of sand above which, wheeling, calling, sailing on outstretched[293] wing at dawn, at noon, at dusk, drift the vultures from north to south, from east to west, as they have drifted and called since the day every grain of the sands was numbered.
Revengeful, relentless, restless, the Great Desert knows no peace nor rest nor shade. It sweeps flat that which it piled high but yesterday, and upon its surface, stretching like an Eastern carpet, blows its sands to the height of hills, to sweep them flat again. It kills with thirst, it slays with hunger and exhaustion; it leaves but little trace of those who dare to pass its desolate boundaries. Bones of fugitives, of the hapless, the luckless, bones of birds and beasts, covered feet deep with sand at dawn, uncovered by the dread shelook to dance to the blowing of its scorching breath at noon, mark out a path across its desolation under the star-strewn, peaceful sky. High-born and low-caste, criminal and holy man, friend and enemy, there is nothing to tell who they were in life nor in what manner death came to them. Vultures follow jackal and hyena; settle for a while and rise again to drift from north to south, from east to west; the wind of chance wafts the tattered, blood-stained kerchief across the desert to the feet of the holy man who has watched it, the only thing to move, dancing this way and that across the plain towards him; he ties it as a pennant to his staff and continues, with a prayer for the soul of the dead, upon his pilgrimage; the Bedouin, starving upon a handful of stringy sihanee dates and a cup of brackish water, searches amongst the bones and offers the desert victim’s purse and amulets and weapons in exchange or sale to those he may encounter upon his journey to the nearest oasis.
A fitting place indeed in which to hide all trace of the Arabian’s vengeance upon the white people. Let them fly for their lives, they would but leave their bodies to the vultures and the wind and the starving Bedouin, when her men had done with them.
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Her men!
Since the sinking of the last moon her spies had brought reports of discontent amongst them. They had become restless and rebellious under the inactivity she imposed upon them during her fleeting but violent obsession for the white man.
Within the hour she would once more lead them across the sands under the light of the dying night and the coming dawn. With her they should hunt the fugitives down, and with spear or rifle wipe out the cause of their unrest and anger.
Born of the desert, bred in its scorching heat, Zarah made one with it in her relentless cruelty. In it she had found her joy and, what counted more to her than all, her greatest triumphs with her men. Through it love, the love which is passion, the only love of which she was capable, had come to her; in it, in years to come, death would find her.
Death!
She laughed aloud as she listened to the sound of her people calling to each other as they hastened from their quarters to obey her summons.
Death would come, as it must come to all, but not until she had repaired the mistake she had made in endeavouring to place the white man at the head of her small but turbulent kingdom; not until she had ruled for many years; not until she had wiped the memory of the white people who had tricked her from the minds of her subjects, whom she would link closer still by her union with one of themselves.
With all the instability and inconstancy of the Arab blood in her veins her passion for the white man passed, burned out in the fire of the wrath that consumed her.
Let the white people die. Let the slight ripple they had made upon the sea of her exuberant, triumphant life be wiped out, so that peace might once more reign in the Sanctuary.
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Death!
With her plan of revenge in her mind she looked across at her throwing spears hanging upon the wall, then laughed as she caught sight of herself in one of the many long mirrors her intense vanity had caused her to place about the room.
As she crossed the floor she made the gesture with her fingers, used by the superstitious all the world over, against the thought of death which filled her mind, then took her favourite spear from the wall. Damascus steel, inlaid with gold, with razor edges to the slender, needle-pointed blade. She smiled as the thought of the day, those years ago, when with it she had transfixed the greyhound accepted as a gift by her father’s guest.
“Death!” she cried, as she stood, a magnificent figure of youth, with the spear raised and poised for throwing. “Nay, revenge upon those who try to humiliate me. I will gather my men together and will promise gold, horses, women, what they will, to those who overtake and bring back to me, alive or dead, the prisoners who have escaped. Love! I in love with any man, be he white or black or of mixed blood! Nay, by the beard of the Prophet I love naught but power. Let them flee into the desert, even until the sun is risen, so that Helen R-raynor-r’s countenance be blistered and as roundly swelled as yon knob of wood, the which, to see if my hand hath not lost its cunning, I will pierce with the spear.”
She ran back a space, caught her foot in a rug, staggered, and, in an effort to recover her balance, involuntarily flung the spear.
She stood for a moment petrified with horror, then screamed and screamed until the place rang.
Thrown off her balance, she had flung the spear straight at the mirror. As she stood it transfixed her reflection through the heart.
Hundreds of torches flared below, where her men stood looking up, watching the women as, with exclamations[296] of fear, they ran to answer the dreaded summons of the gong.
“By the beard,” said Bowlegs to Yussuf’s Eyes, “something is amiss.”
A shout went up as Zarah appeared, wrapped in her great riding cloak, spear in hand. “She leads us to battle, little brother who cannot speak.” Bowlegs turned, laughing as he spoke, and stared in amazement. The dumb youth was not there, but in his place towered the gigantic Nubian.
“Verily to battle or the hunt, brother,” said Al-Asad. “Battle methinks, for of a truth the woman I love seems in no patient mood. Ha! canst hear? She calleth for Namlah! Ha! she smites the Abyssinian across the mouth. The tiger-cat! Yet do I love her the more for her cruelty. Her small hand is like a flower petal blown against the rock when, in her childlike wrath, she smites me. I could pinch the breath from her throat, which is like unto the jewelled column in yon hall, ’twixt thumb and finger, yet love I to anger her so that her little hand shall smite me. Ha! Harken! She calleth for the blind one, for Yussuf. Look, brother! Is she not as the wind from the south in her wrath?”
Zarah faced her terrified women slaves, amongst whom Namlah was not to be found.
“Search for the white woman, you black dogs!” She smote the Abyssinian across the face as she spoke. “Find her and bring her to me. Namlah will you find with her. Search, all of you, and hasten, lest I drive you down to the sands of death.” The women turned and fled down the steps, touching their amulets, praying to Allah, whispering the one to the other.
“Whither, my heart’s delight? Whither in such haste, with thy beautiful countenance distraught with fear?”
Bowlegs’ second wife tore herself from his detaining grasp and ran as fast as her weight would allow her, and literally for her life. “We run in search of the white[297] woman, who is not to be found, and Namlah, who——” The rest of her words were lost as she disappeared in the throng of her panting sisters.
“Oh! ho!” said Bowlegs. “Now find we the kernel in the nut. The beautiful Zarah calleth for Yussuf.” He turned and scanned the band of laughing, interested men. “Behold are the blind and the dumb ones not to be seen. Let me hide in thy shadow, O Lion, lest thy mate-to-be scratches out mine eyes as she passes.”
Al-Asad took no notice. He stood watching the beautiful Arabian as she ran down the steps. The men made a passage for her, and closed in behind and around her as she passed between them, wrapped in her riding cloak.
“Yussuf!” she said sharply. “Where is he? Thou who standeth above thy fellows, seeth thou him?” She laid her hand on Al-Asad’s arm as she spoke and looked up into his eyes, which were alight with love. “Is he here?”
The wind blew her cloak against him. Starving for love, he caught it and held it crushed in his hand, and stood looking down at her, his eyes full of worship, whilst the men, intuitive as are all Orientals, watched the little scene, pressing close upon each other.
“Her veritable mate,” whispered one. “Seeth thou that his right hand holds her cloak?”
“Yea! I bear no malice towards the white man, but ’twere well to send him with the white woman back to the country where the white race is bred,” answered the Patriarch.
“Seest thou Yussuf?”
“Yussuf guards the white man, O Zarah!” said Al-Asad slowly.
“Bring him and the white man. Hasten, thou——” She pointed with her spear at a youngster, who, terrified, turned and ran towards the men’s quarters.
“My amulet for a death in battle, against thine for many sons amongst thy children,” whispered the[298] Patriarch, “that the lad finds neither the blind one, nor the dumb one, nor the ............