Bhanavar caught up her hands and clenched them, and she cried bitterly,
''Tis known to thee! She told thee, and there be none that know it not!'
Arising, she thrust her hand into her bosom, and held forth the Jewel in
the palm of her white hand. When Ruark beheld the marvel of the Jewel,
and the redness moving in it as of a panting heart, and the flashing eye
of fire that it was, and all its glory, he cried, 'It was indeed a Jewel
for queens to covet from the Serpent, and a prize the noblest might risk
all to win as a gift for thee.'
Then she said, 'Thy voice is friendly with me, O Ruark! and thou scornest
not the creature that I am. Counsel me as to my dealing with the Jewel.'
Surely the eyes of the Chief met the eyes of Bhanavar as when the
brightest stars of midnight are doubled in a clear dark lake, and he sang
in measured music:
'Shall I counsel the moon in her ascending?
Stay under that tall palm-tree through the night;
Rest on the mountain-slope
By the couching antelope,
O thou enthroned supremacy of light!
And for ever the lustre thou art lending,
Lean on the fair long brook that leaps and leaps,--
Silvery leaps and falls.
Hang by the mountain walls,
Moon! and arise no more to crown the steeps,
For a danger and dolour is thy wending!
And, O Bhanavar, Bhanavar the Beautiful! shall I counsel thee, moon of
loveliness,--bright, full, perfect moon!--counsel thee not to ascend and
be seen and worshipped of men, sitting above them in majesty, thou that
art thyself the Jewel beyond price? Wah! What if thou cast it from
thee?--thy beauty remaineth!'
And Bhanavar smote her palms in the moonlight, and exclaimed, 'How then
shall I escape this in me, which is a curse to them that approach me?'
And he replied:
Long we the less for the pearl of the sea
Because in its depths there 's the death we flee?
Long we the less, the less, woe's me!
Because thou art deathly,--the less for thee?
She sang aloud among the rocks and the caves and the illumined waters:
Destiny! Destiny! why am I so dark?
I that have beauty and love to be fair.
Destiny! Destiny! am I but a spark
Track'd under heaven in flames and despair?
Destiny! Destiny! why am I desired
Thus like a poisonous fruit, deadly sweet?
Destiny! Destiny! lo, my soul is tired,
Make me thy plaything no more, I entreat!
Ruark laughed low, and said, 'What is this dread of Rukrooth my mother
which weigheth on thee but silliness! For she saw thee willing to do well
by her; and thou with thy Jewel, O Bhanavar, do thou but well by thyself,
and there will be no woman such as thou in power and excellence of
endowments, as there is nowhere one such as thou in beauty.' Then he
sighed to her, 'Dare I look up to thee, O my Queen of Serpents?' And he
breathed as one that is losing breath, and the words came from him, 'My
soul is thine!'
When she heard him say this, great trouble was on the damsel, for his
voice was not the voice of Zurvan her betrothed; and she remembered the
sorrow of Rukrooth. She would have fled from him, but a dread of the
displeasure of the Chief restrained her, knowing Ruark a soul of wrath.
Her eyelids dropped and the Chief gazed on her eagerly, and sang in a
passion of praises of her; the fires of his love had a tongue, his speech
was a torrent of flame at the feet of the damsel. And Bhanavar exclaimed,
'Oh, what am I, what am I, who have slain my love, my lover!--that one
should love me and call on me for love? My life is a long weeping for
him! Death is my wooer!'
Ruark still pleaded with her, and she said in fair gentleness, 'Speak not
of it now in the freshness of my grief! Other times and seasons are
there. My soul is but newly widowed!'
Fierce was the eye of the Chief, and he sprang up, crying, 'By the life
of my head, I know thy wiles and the reading of these delays: but I'll
never leave thee, nor lose sight of thee, Bhanavar! And think not to fly
from me, thou subtle, brilliant Serpent! for thy track is my track, and
thy condition my condition, and thy fate my fate. By Allah! this is so.'
Then he strode from her swiftly, and called to his Arabs. They had
kindled a fire to roast the flesh of a buffalo, slaughtered by them from
among a herd, and were laughing and singing beside the flames of the
fire. So by the direction of their Chief the Arabs brought slices of
sweet buffalo-flesh to Bhanavar, with cakes of grain: and Bhanavar ate
alone, and drank from the waters before her. Then they laid for her a
couch within the cave, and the aching of her spirit was lulled, and she
slept there a dreamless sleep till morning.
By the morning light Bhanavar looked abroad for the Chief, and he was
nowhere by. A pang of violent hope struck through her, and she pressed
her bosom, praying he might have left her, and climbed the clefts and
ledges of the mountain to search over the fair expanse of pasture beyond,
for a trace of him departing. The sun was on the heads of the heavy
flowers, and a flood of gold down the gorges, and a delicate rose hue on
the distant peaks and upper dells of snow, which were as a crown to the
scene she surveyed; but no sight of Ruark had she. And now she was
beginning to rejoice, but on a sudden her eye caught far to east a
glimpse of something in motion across an even slope of the lower hills
leaning to the valley; and it was a herd that rushed forward, like a
black torrent of the mountains flinging foam this way and that, and after
the herd and at the sides of the herd she distinguished the white cloaks
and scarfs and glittering steel of the Arabs of Ruark. Presently she saw
a horseman break from the rest, and race in a line toward her. She knew
this one for Ruark, and sighed and descended slowly to meet him. The
greeting of the Chief was sharp, his manner wild, and he said little ere
he said, 'I will see thee under the light of the Jewel, so tie it in a
band and set it on thy brow, Bhanavar!'
Her mouth was open to intercede with his desire, but his forehead became
black as night, and he shouted in the thunder of his lion-voice, 'Do
this!'
She took the Jewel from its warm bed in her bosom, and held it, and got
together a band of green weeds, and set it in the middle of the band, and
tied the band on her brow, and lifted her countenance to the Chief. Ruark
stood back from her and gazed on her; and he would have veiled his sight
from her, but his hand fell. Then the might of her loveliness seized
Bhanavar likewise, and the full orbs of her eyes glowed on the Chief as
on a mirror, and she moved her serpent figure scornfully, and smiled,
saying, 'Is it well?'
And he, when he could speak, replied, ''Tis well! I have seen thee! for
now can I die this day, if it be that I am to die. And well it is! for
now know I there is truly no place but the tomb can hold me from thee!'
Bhanavar put the Jewel from her brow into her bosom, and questioned him,
'What is thy dread this day, O my Chief?'
He answered her gravely, 'I have seen Rukrooth my mother while I slept;
and she was weeping, weeping by a stream, yea, a stream of blood; and it
was a stream that flowed in a hundred gushes from her own veins. The sun
of this dawn now, seest thou not? 'tis overcrimson; the vulture hangeth
low down yonder valley.' And he cried to her, 'Haste! mount with me; for
I have told Rukrooth a thing; and I know that woman crafty in the
thwarting of schemes; such a fox is she where aught accordeth not with
her forecastings, and the judgment of her love for me! By Allah! 'twere
well we clash not; for that I will do I do, and that she will do doth
she.'
So the twain mounted their steeds, and Ruark gathered his Arabs and
placed them, some in advance, some on either side of Bhanavar; and they
rode forward to the head of the valley, and across the meadows, through
the blushing crowds of flowers, baths of freshest scents, cool breezes
that awoke in the nostrils of the mares neighings of delight; and these
pranced and curvetted and swung their tails, and gave expression to their
joy in many graceful fashions; but a gloom was on Ruark, and a quick fire
in his falcon-eye, and he rode with heels alert on the flanks of his
mare, dashing onward to right and left, as do they that beat the jungle
for the crouching tiger. Once, when he was well-nigh half a league in
front, he wheeled his mare, and raced back full on Bhanavar, grasping her
bridle, and hissing between his teeth, 'Not a soul shall have thee save
I: by the tomb of my fathers, never, while life is with us!'
And he taunted her with bitter names, and was as one in the madness of
intoxication, drunken with the aspect of her matchless beauty and with
exceeding love for her. And Bhanavar knew that the dread of a mishap was
on the mind of the Chief.
Now, the space of pasture was behind them a broad lake of gold and
jasper, and they entered a region of hills, heights, and fastnesses,
robed in forests that rose in rounded swells of leafage, each over
each--above all points of snow that were as flickering silver flames in
the farthest blue. This was the country of Bhanavar, and she gazed
mournfully on the glades of golden green and the glens of iron blackness,
and the wild flowers, wild blossoms, and weeds well known to her that
would not let her memory rest, and were wistful of what had been. And she
thought, 'My sisters tend the flocks, my mother spinneth with the maidens
of the tribe, my father hunteth; how shall I come among them but strange?
Coldly will they regard me; I shall feel them shudder when they take me
to their bosoms.'
She looked on Ruark to speak with him, but the mouth of the Chief was set
and white; and even while she looked, cries of treason and battle arose
from the Arabs that were ahead, hidden by a branching wind of the way
round a mountain slant. Then the eyes of the Chief reddened, his nostrils
grew wide, and the darkness of his face was as flame mixed with smoke,
and he seized Bhanavar and hastened onward, and lo! yonder were his men
overmatched, and warriors of the mountains bursting on them from an
ambush on all sides. Ruark leapt in his seat, and the light of combat was
on him, and he dug his knees into his mare, and shouted the war-cry of
his tribe, lifting his hands as it were to draw down wrath from the very
heavens, and rushed to the encounter. Says the poet:
Hast thou seen the wild herd by the jungle galloping close?
With a thunder of hooves they trample what heads may oppose:
Terribly, crushingly, tempest-like, onward they sweep:
But a spring from the reeds, and the panther is sprawling in air,
And with muzzle to dust and black beards foam-lash'd, here and there,
Scatter'd they fly, crimson-eyed, track'd with blood to the deep.
Such was the onset of Ruark, his stroke the stroke of death; and ere the
echoes had ceased rolling from that cry of his, the mountain-warriors
were scattered before him on the narrow way, hurled down the scrub of the
mountain, even as dead leaves and loosened stones; so like an arm of
lightning was the Chief!
Now Ruark pursued them, and was lost to Bhanavar round a slope of the
mountain. She quickened her pace to mark him in the glory of the battle,
and behold! a sudden darkness enveloped her, and she felt herself in the
swathe of tightened folds, clasped in an arm, and borne rapidly she knew
not whither, for she could hear and see nothing. It was to her as were
she speeding constantly downward in darkness to the lower realms of the
Genii of the Caucasus, and every sense, and even that of fear, was
stunned in her. How long an interval had elapsed she knew not, when the
folds were unwound; but it was light of day, and the faces of men, and
they were warriors that were about her, warriors of the mountain; but of
Ruark and his Arabs no voice. So she said to them, 'What do ye with me?'
And one among them, that was a youth of dignity and grace, and a
countenance like morning on the mountains, answered, 'The will of
Rukrooth, O lady! and it is the plight of him we bow to with Rukrooth,
mother of the Desert-Chief.'