On one of the terraces of his palace the Sultan sat at breakfast. As
he lingered in the sweet cool air of early morning, he pondered on the
happenings of the night before.
At last he had wrung a reluctant consent from his cherished prisoner.
There was a flaw in his victory that he tried not to see. That "Yes"
would not have come except that the girl had been absolutely cornered.
The word had not come from her lips spontaneously as those three words,
"I love you," had.
He tried to forget this fact, as he thought out the best means of
bringing about a speedy wedding.
There was no minister of her faith in El-Ammeh. The nearest Christian
Mission lay at least two hundred miles distant. It would be risky work
bringing a white missionary to his city. The safest course would be to
take her down to a mission station and marry her there. No one would
know then where they had come from. And the journey back would make a
delightful honeymoon.
On the delights of that honeymoon he pondered.
From his reverie he was rudely aroused by a sound which made marriage
seem very remote, and death much more likely to be his portion.
There was a sudden shriek high above the city, followed by a deafening
roar, as a shell exploded over El-Ammeh--a command for its surrender.
The Sultan started to his feet, his face reckless and savage. The cup
was at his lips only to be dashed away.
He knew what had happened.
Somehow or other the French Government must have heard that he was
responsible for the capture of the English Governor; and an expedition
had been sent up to punish him for his marauding ways.
That same death-dealing sound startled Pansy as she stood by the sunken
pond in the rose garden, feeding the carp. Wondering what had
happened, she looked up at the smoke that lay like a little cloud
between the city and the sky.
She did not wonder for very long.
Present another shell came shrieking out of the distance.
Then she guessed what had occurred, and her face blanched.
Swiftly she went to her room; her only idea to reach the Sultan and
save him from his enemies.
But all the doors of her prison were locked, and neither knocks nor
shouts produced any answer.
She went back to the fretted gallery, to see what could be seen from
there.
A mile or so away, like a dark snake on the desert, she saw the relief
party. As she watched, a white-robed force left El-Ammeh; an array of
Arab soldiers. On recognising their leader, her soul went sick within
her.
He was there. Her lover. The man she ought to hate. Going out to
fight the men who had come to her rescue.
If the French officers heading the expeditionary force imagined the
Sultan of El-Ammeh had come out to surrender, they quickly discovered
their mistake.
He had come out to fight; and what was more, fight well and recklessly
against a force that, if inferior in numbers, was vastly superior in
arms.
Presently the shells no longer shrieked above El-Ammeh. They were
aimed at it.
From her gallery Pansy saw the two forces meet.
Then she could look no longer. Men fell in the sand and rose no more.
And any one of them might be her lover.
She went back to her room and crouched there in terror; her father and
friends all forgotten at the thought of the man who might be lying dead
in the sand.
As the morning wore on, the din of battle grew nearer. Every now and
again a shell got home. There were screams of terrified people; the
heavy fall of masonry; the moans and cries of the injured.
Once Pansy thought her end had come.
A shell struck the palace. The place rocked to its foundations. There
was the thunder of falling masonry as if the four walls of her room
were crashing down upon her.
She closed her eyes and waited.
A few moments later she opened them, and was surprised to find her
gilded prison very little damaged. It was badly cracked, and several
blocks of stone had crashed down from the ceiling, one on the
sandalwood bureau near where she crouched, smashing it to splinters and
scattering the contents about her feet.
More than once Pansy had rummaged in its scented recesses, until she
knew its contents by heart. She had found nothing but a few quills,
sheets of paper yellow with age, and quaint, cut-crystal bottles in
which the coloured inks had dried. She knew the desk had belonged to
the Sultan's mother. Just as she knew the gilded room had been the
French girl's prison.
As she gazed at the debris at her feet, it seemed she could not have
searched thoroughly. Among the splinters was something she had not
seen before. A few sheets of paper folded flat and tied with a strand
of silk, that must have been hidden behind one of the many drawers.
More to get her thoughts away from the battle raging round her than
anything else, Pansy picked up the tiny packet. Untying the silk, she
opened the faded, scented sheets and glanced at them.
After the first glance, she stayed riveted. And as she read on, she
forgot everything except what the letter said.
It was in French, in a woman's hand, and the date was now more than
twenty years old; a statement written by Annette Le Breton before she
died, proclaiming her son's real identity, and left by her in the
bureau. Some servant rummaging in the desk for trinkets, after her
mistress's death, must have let it slip behind one of the numerous
drawers.
Pansy read of Colonel Raoul Le Breton's ill-fated expedition to the
north-east; how he and his little force had been murdered by the Sultan
Casim Ammeh. She learnt of Annette Le Breton's fate at the hands of
her savage captor. Of the son who had come nearly nine months after
her husband's death--the son the Sultan Casim Ammeh imagined to be his.
"Raoul is not the son of the Sultan Casim Ammeh," the faint handwriting
declared. "He is the son of my murdered husband, Colonel Raoul Le
Breton. I know, for every day he grows more like his dear, dead
father. Yet he imagines the Sultan to be his father. And I dare not
tell him the truth. For if the Sultan learnt the boy was not his, he
would kill him. For Raoul's sake I must let the deception go on. For
the sake of my son who is all I have to live for. And my heart breaks,
for daily my boy grows more and more to love that savage chief who
murdered his real father."
Pansy read of Annette's dreary years in the harem of her captor.
"Years that have no light in them, save my son. Years that I should
not have endured except for my child, my boy, the son of my brave
Raoul."
It was a heart-breaking story of love and sacrifice, of a mother
tortured to save her child from the fate that had befallen his father.
"The Sultan will make my boy like himself," the letter went on. "For
there is no one at hand to stop him. Daily my influence grows less,
and his stronger. The boy admires and copies the man he deems his
father. He is too young to know the Sultan for what he really is. He
sees only a man, bold and picturesque. And the Sultan spoils him
utterly, he encourages him to be cruel and arrogant, he fosters all
that is bad in the boy. It is useless for me to try and check him, for
my own son laughs at me now."
The writing grew more feeble as the letter went on; the wild entreaty
of a mother who had no life outside of her son, and who saw him being
ruined by his own father's murderer.
"Whoever finds this be kind to my boy, my Raoul, for the sake of a
woman who has suffered much, for the sake of his martyred father,
Colonel Raoul Le Breton. Do not judge my son by what he is, but by
what he might have been. In the Sultan Casim he has a bad example, a
savage teacher, a wild, profligate, cruel man, who would make the boy
as barbarous as he is himself."
The writing grew even more feeble, a faint scrawl on the yellow paper.
"I am dying, and my son is far away. I shall not live until my boy
returns. And he will be left with no influence but the Sultan's. O
Fate, deal kindly with my boy, my Raoul, left alone with savages in
this barbaric city. I have only endured these dreadful years for the
sake of my son. In the name of pity be kind to him. He will have no
chance in the hands of his present teacher. Have mercy for the sake of
his tortured mother, and his father, that brave soldier who gave his
life for France.
ANNETTE LE BRETON."
Pansy read the sheets through without once raising her eyes. She was
ravenous for the contents.
At that moment it seemed as if the dim, gilded room were full of tears
and sorrows; the faint, sweet fragrance of the girl who had lived there
long years ago, suffering and enduring for the sake of her boy.
It was not in Pansy's kind heart to refuse that tragic mother pleading
for her son.
Then she remembered that Colonel Le Breton's son was out there fighting
against his own people. If, indeed, he were still left alive to fight.
Her lips moved in silent prayer.
She kissed the faded, scented sheets and tucked them against her heart.
She was not going to fail Annette. All she wanted now was to be at the
side of the dead girl's son, to help him to build up a new character
according to the best white codes and standards.
Then she sat on, listening to the battle that raged around the desert
city.
If Raoul Le Breton were spared, there was another battle before her--a
battle with two governments for his life. But she had not many qualms
about the result, with Annette's letter, her own wealth, and her father
on her side; as he would be, once she had explained the situation.
Morning dragged on into afternoon, and the sound of the conflict died
down somewhat.
All at once, as if muffled by distance, she heard her lover's voice
calling hoarsely:
"Pansy."
She started to her feet.
Before she could answer, there was a sound of fighting just beyond her
quarters.
Then she heard her father's voice, strained and anxious:
"Pansy, are you in there?"
"Oh, father," she called back frantically. "Don't let them kill the
Sultan."
There came more muffled voices. Then the sound of masonry being
shifted, as the men outside her prison started clearing away the debris
that blocked the door.