Two days later the force struck camp, leaving the town behind them a
shell of blackened ruins, bearing on lances before them the heads of
thirty prominent citizens as a sign that Cæsar is not lightly denied his
tribute.
They streamed northeast through the defiles, a tattered rabble, a swarm
of locusts, eating up the land as they went. The wounded were jostled
along in rough litters, at the mercy of camp barbers and renegade
quacks; the majority died on the way and were thankful to die. The
infantry straggled for miles (half rode donkeys) and drove before them
cattle, sheep, goats and a few women prisoners. What with stopping to
requisition and pillage they progressed at an average of twelve miles a
day. Only among the negroes and the cavalry was there any semblance of
march discipline, and then only because the general kept them close
about him as protection against his other troops.
Beside Ortho rode the Arab girl, her feet strapped under the mule’s
belly. Twice she tried to escape—once by a blind bolt into the
foothills, once by a surer, sharper road. She had wriggled across the
tent and pulled a knife out of its sheath with her teeth. Osman had
caught her just as she was on the point of rolling on it. Ortho had to
tie her up at night and watch her all day long. Never had he encountered
such implacable resolve. She was determined to foil him one way or the
other at no matter what cost to herself. He had always had his own way
with women and this failure irritated him. He would stick it as long as
she, he swore—and longer.
Osman Bâki was entertained. He watched the contest with twinkling china
blue eyes—his mother had been a Georgian slave and he was as fair as a
Swede.
“She will leave you—somehow,” he warned.
“For whom? For what?” Ortho exclaimed. “If she slips past me the
infantry will catch her, or some farmer who will beat her life out. Why
does she object to me? I have treated her kindly—as kindly as she will
allow.”
Osman twirled his little yellow mustache. “Truly, but these people have
no reason, only a mad pride. One cannot reason with madness, Kaid. Oh, I
know them. When I was in the service of the deys . . .”
He delivered an anecdote from his unexampled repertoire proving the
futility of arguing with a certain class of Arab with anything more
subtle than a bullet.
“Sell her in Morocco,” he advised. “She is pretty, will fetch a good
sum.”
“No, I’m going to try my hand first,” said Ortho stubbornly.
“You’ll get it bitten,” said the Turk, eying the telltale marks on
Ortho’s face with amusement. “For my part I prefer a quiet life—in the
home.”
They straggled into Morocco City ten days later to find the Sultan in
residence for the winter, building sanctuaries and schools with immense
energy.
Ortho hoped for the governorship of an outlying post where he would be
more or less his own master, get some pig-hunting and extort backsheesh
from the country folk under his protection; but it was not to be. He was
ordered to quarter his stalwarts in the kasba and join the Imperial
Guard. Having been in the Guard before at Mequinez, having influence in
the household and getting a wind-fall in the way of eight months’ back
pay, he contrived to bribe himself into possession of a small house
overlooking the Aguedal Gardens, close to the Ahmar Gate.
There he installed the Arab girl and a huge old negress to look after
her.
Then he set to and gave his unfortunate men the stiffening of their
lives.
He formed his famous black horses into one troop, graded the others by
colors and drilled the whole all day long.
Furthermore, he instituted a system of grooming and arm-cleaning
hitherto unknown in the Moroccan forces—all on the Fleischmann recipe.
Did his men show sulks, he immediately up-ended and bastinadoed them.
This did not make him popular, but Osman Bâki supported him with
bewildered loyalty and he kept the _mokadem_ and the more desperate
rascals on his side by a judicious distribution of favors and money.
Nevertheless he did not stroll abroad much after dark and then never
unattended.
They drilled in the Aguedal, on the bare ground opposite the powder
house, and acquired added precision from day to day. Ortho kept his eye
on the roof of the powder house.
For two months this continued and Ortho grew anxious. What with
household expenses and continued _douceurs_ to the _mokadem_ his money
was running out and he was sailing too close to the wind to try tricks
with his men’s rations and pay at present.
Just when things were beginning to look desperate a party appeared on
the roof of the powder house, which served the parade ground as a
grand-stand.
Ortho, ever watchful, saw them the moment they arrived, brought his
command into squadron column, black troop to the fore, and marched past
underneath.
They made a gallant show and Ortho knew it. Thanks to the grooming, his
horses were looking fifty per cent better than any other animals in the
Shereefian Army; the uniformity added another fifty. The men knew as
well as he did who was looking down on them, and went by, sitting stiff,
every eye fixed ahead.
The lusty sun set the polished hides aglow, the burnished lance-heads
a-glitter. The horses, fretted by sharp stirrups, tossed their silky
manes, whisked their streaming tails. The wind got into the burnooses
and set them flapping and billowing in creamy clouds; everything was in
his favor. Ortho wheeled the head of his column left about, formed
squadron line on the right and thundered past the Magazine, his
shop-window troop nearest the spectators, shouting the imperial salute,
“_Allah y barek Amer Sidi!_” A good line too, he congratulated himself,
as good as any Makhzen cavalry would achieve in this world. If that
didn’t work nothing would. It worked.
A slave came panting across the parade ground summoning him to the
powder house at once.
The Sultan was leaning against the parapet, sucking a pomegranate and
spitting the pips at his Grand Vizier, who pretended to enjoy it. The
fringes of the royal jellab were rusty with brick dust from the ruins of
Bel Abbas, which Mahomet was restoring. Ortho did obeisance and got a
playful kick in the face; His Sublimity was in good humor.
He recognized Ortho immediately. “Ha! The lancer who alone defied the
Bou Khari, still alive! Young man, you must indeed be of Allah beloved!”
He looked the soldier up and down with eyes humorous and restless. “What
is your rank?”
“Kaid Mia, Sidi.”
“Hum!—thou art Kaid Rahal now, then.” He turned on the Vizier. “Tell El
Mechouar to let him take what horses he chooses; he knows how to keep
them. Go!”
He flung the fruit rind at Ortho by way of dismissal.
Ortho gave his long-suffering men a feast that night with the last ready
money in his possession. They voted him a right good fellow—soldiers
have short memories.
He was on his feet now. As Kaid Rahal, with nominally a thousand
cut-throats at his beck and nod, he would be a fool indeed if he
couldn’t blackmail the civilians to some order. Also there was a
handsome sum to be made by crafty manipulation of his men’s pay and
rations. El Mechouar would expect his commission out of this, naturally,
and sundry humbler folk—“big fleas have little fleas . . .”—but there
would be plenty left. He was clear of the financial thicket. He went
prancing home to his little house, laid aside his arms and burnoose,
took the key from the negress, ran upstairs and unlocked the room in
which the Arab girl, Ourida, was imprisoned. It was a pleasant prison
with a window overlooking the Aguedal, its miles of pomegranate, orange,
and olive trees. It was the best room in the house and he had furnished
it as well as his thin purse would afford, but to the desert girl it
might have been a tomb.
She sat all day staring out of the barred window, looking beyond the
wide Haouz plain to where the snow peaks of the High Atlas rose, a sheer
wall of sun-lit silver—and beyond them even. She never smiled, she
never spoke, she hardly touched her food. Ortho in all his experience
had encountered nothing like her. He did his utmost to win her over,
brought sweetmeats, laughed, joked, retailed the gossip of the palace
and the souks, told her stories of romance and adventure which would
have kept any other harem toy in shivers of bliss, took his gounibri and
sang Romany songs, Moorish songs, English ballads, flowery Ottoman
_kasidas_, _ghazels_ and _gûlistâns_, learned from Osman Bâki, cursed
her, adored her.
All to no avail; he might have been dumb, she deaf. Driven desperate, he
seized her in his arms; he had as well embraced so much ice. It was
maddening. Osman Bâki, who watched him in the lines of a morning, raving
at the men over trifles, twisted his yellow mustache and smiled. This
evening, however, Ortho was too full of elation to be easily repulsed.
He had worked hard and intrigued steadily for this promotion. Three
years before he had landed in Morocco a chained slave, now he was the
youngest of his rank in the first arm of the service. Another few years
at this pace and what might he not achieve? He bounded upstairs like a
lad home with a coveted prize, told the girl of his triumph, striding up
and down the room, flushed, laughing, smacking his hands together,
boyish to a degree. He looked his handsomest, a tall, picturesque figure
in the plum-colored breeches, soft riding boots, blue kaftan and scarlet
tarboosh tilted rakishly on his black curls. The girl stole a glance at
him from under her long lashes, but when he looked at her she was
staring out of the window at the snow wall of the Atlas rose-flushed
with sunset, and when he spoke to her she made no answer; he might as
well have been talking to himself. But he was too full of his success to
notice, and he rattled on and on, pacing the little room up and down,
four strides each way. He dropped beside her, put his arm about her
shoulders, drew her cold cheek to his flushed one.
“Listen, my pearl,” he rhapsodized. “I have money now and you shall have
dresses like rainbows, a gold tiara and slave girls to wait on you, and
when we move garrison you shall ride a white ambling mule with red
trappings and lodge in a striped tent like the royal women. I am a Kaid
Rahal now, do you hear? The youngest of any, and in the Sultan’s favor.
I will contrive and scheme, and in a few years . . . the
Standard!—_eschkoun-i-araf_? And then, my honey-sweet, you shall have a
palace with a garden and fountains. Hey, look!”
He scooped in his voluminous breeches’ pockets, brought out a handful of
trinkets and tossed them into her lap. The girl stared at him, then at
the treasures, and drew a sharp breath. They were her own, the jewelry
he had wrenched from her on that wild night of carnage three months
before.
“You thought I had sold them—eh?” he laughed. “No, no, my dear; it very
nearly came to it, but not quite. They are safe now and yours
again—see?”
He seized her wrists and worked the bangles on, snapped the crude black
necklace round her neck and hung the elaborate gold one over it, kissed
her full on the quivering mouth. “Yours again, for always.”
She ran the plump black beads through her fingers, her breathing
quickened. She glanced at him sideways, shyly; there was an odd light in
her eyes. She swayed a little towards him, then the corners of her mouth
twitched and curved upwards in an adorable bow; she was smiling,
smiling! He held out his arms to her and she toppled into them, burying
her face in his bosom.
“My lord!” said she.
The proud lady had surrendered at last!
“Osman, Osman Bâki, what now?” thought Ortho and crushed her to him.
The girl made a faint, pained exclamation and put her hand to her
throat.
“Did I hurt you, my own?” said Ortho, contrite.
“No, my lord, but you have snapped my necklace,” she laughed. “It is
nothing.”
He picked up the black beads, wondering how he could have done it, and
she put them down on the rug beside her.
“It is a poor thing, but a great saint has blessed it. My king, take me
in your arms again.”
They sat close together while the rosy peaks faded out and the swift
winter dusk filled the room, and he told her of the great things he
would do. Elation swept him up. Everything seemed possible now with this
slim, clinging beauty to solace and inspire him. He would trample on and
on, scattering opposition like straw, carving his own road, a captain of
destiny. She believed in his bravest boasts. Her lord had but to will a
thing and it was done. Who could withstand her lord? “Not I, not I,”
said she. “Hearken, tall one. I said to my heart night and day, ‘Hate
this Roumi askar, hate him, hate him!’—but my heart would not listen,
it was wiser than I.”
She nestled luxuriously in his arms, crooning endearments, melting and
passionate, sweeter than honey in the honey-comb. It grew dark and cold.
He went to the door and called for the brazier.
“And tea,” Ourida added. “I would serve you with tea, my heart’s joy.”
The negress brought both.
Ourida rubbed her head against his shoulder. “Sweetmeats?” she cooed.
He jerked his last blanquils to the slave with the order.
Ourida squatted cross-legged on a pile of cushions and poured out the
sweet mint tea, handed him his cup with a mock salaam. He did obeisance
as before a Sultana, and she rippled with delight. They made long
complimentary speeches to each other after the manner of the court,
played with each other’s hands, were very childish and merry.
Ourida pressed a second cup of tea on him. He drank it off at a gulp and
lay down at her side.
“Rest here and be comfortable,” said she, drawing his head to her.
“Tell me again about that battle with the Bou Khari.”
He told her in detail, omitting the salient fact that his horse had
bolted with him, though, in truth, he had almost forgotten it himself by
now.
“All alone you faced them! Small wonder Sidi Mahomet holds thee in high
honor, my hero. And the fight in the Rif?”
He told her all about the guerrilla campaign among the rock fastnesses
of the Djebel Tiziren, of a single mountaineer with a knife crawling
through the troop-lines at night and sixty ham-strung horses in the
morning.
Ourida was entranced. “Go on, my lord, go on.”
Ortho went on. He didn’t want to talk. He was most comfortable lying out
on the cushions, his head on the girl’s soft lap. Moreover, his heavy
day in the sun and wind had made him extraordinarily drowsy—but he went
on. He told her of massacres and burnt villages, of ambushes and
escapes, of three hundred rebels rising out of a patch of cactus no
bigger than a sheep pen and rushing in among the astonished lancers,
screaming and slashing. The survivors of that affair had fled up the
opposite hillside flat on their horses’ necks and himself among the
foremost, but he did not put it that way; he said he “organized the
retreat.”
“More,” breathed Ourida.
He began to tell her of five fanatics with several muskets and
quantities of ammunition shut up in a saint’s shrine and defying the
entire Shereefian forces for two days, but before he had got halfway his
voice tailed off into silence.
“You do not speak, light of my life?”
“I am sleepy—and comfortable, dearest.”
Ourida smoothed his cheek. “Sleep then with thy slave for pillow.”
He felt her lips touch his forehead, her slim fingers running through
his curls, through and through . . . through . . . and . . . through
. . .
“My lord sleeps?” came Ourida’s voice from miles away, thrilling
strangely.
“Um . . . ah! . . . almost,” Ortho mumbled. “Where . . . you . . .
going?” She had slipped from under him; he had an impulse to grasp her
hand, then felt it was too much trouble.
“Listen, Saïd el Ingliz,” said Ourida in his ear, enunciating with great
clarity. “You are going to sleep for_ever_, you swine!”
He forced his weighted lids apart. She was bending right over him. He
could see her face by the glow of the brazier, transformed, exultant;
her teeth were locked together and showing; her eyes glittered.
“For_ever_,” she hissed. “Do you hear me?”
“Drugged, by God!” thought Ortho. “Drugged, poisoned, fooled like a fat
palace eunuch!”
Fury came upon him. He fought the drowse with all the power that was in
him, sat up, fell back again.
The girl laughed shrilly.
He tried to shout for help, for the negress, achieved a whisper.
“She has gone for sweetmeats and will loiter hours,” mocked the girl.
“Call louder; call up your thousand fine lancers. Oh, great Kaid Rahal,
Standard Bearer to be!”
“Osman—they will crush you . . . between . . . stones . . . for this,”
he mumbled.
She shook her head. “No, great one, they will not catch me. I have three
more poisoned beads.” She held up the remnant of her black necklace.
So that was how it was done. In the tea. By restoring her the trinkets
he had compassed his own end. His eyelids drooped, he was away, adrift
again in that old dream he had had, rocking in the smuggler’s boat under
Black Carn, floating through star-trembling space, among somber
continents of cloud, a wraith borne onwards, downwards on streaming
air-ways into everlasting darkness.
“Great Lord of lances,” came a whisper out of nowhere. “When thou art in
Gehenna thou wilt remember me, thy slave.”
He fought back to consciousness, battled with smothering wraps of
swansdown, through fogs of choking gray and yellow, through pouring
waters of oblivion, came out sweating into the light, saw through a haze
a shadow girl bending over him, the red glimmer of the brazier.
With an immense effort he lifted his foot into the coals, bit hard into
his under-lip. “Not yet, not yet!”
The girl displayed amusement. “Wouldst burn before thy time? Burn on.
Thou wilt take no more women of my race against their wish, Kaid—or any
other women—though methinks thy lesson is learned overlate.
“Why fight the sleep, _Roumi_? It will come, it will come. The Rif herb
never fails.” On she went with her bitter raillery, on and on.
But Ortho was holding his own. He was his mother’s son and had inherited
all her marvelous vitality. The pain in his burnt foot was counteracting
the drowse, sweat was pouring out of him. The crisis was past. Could he
but crawl to the door? Not yet; in a minute or two. That negress must be
back soon. He bit into his bleeding lip again, closed his eyes. The girl
bent forward eagerly.
“It is death, Kaid. Thou art dying, dying!”
“No, nor shall I,” he muttered, and instantly realized his mistake.
She drew back, startled, and swooped at him again.
“Open your eyes!” She forced his lids up.
“Failed!”
“Failed!” Ortho repeated.
“Bah! there are other means,” she snarled, jumped up, flitted round the
room, stood transfixed in thought in the center, both hands to her
cheeks, laughed, tore off her orange scarf and dropped on her knees
beside him.
“Other means, Kaid.” She slipped the silk loop round his neck, knotted
it and twisted.
She was going to strangle him, the time-hallowed practice of the East.
He tried to stop her, lifted his heavy hands, but they were powerless,
like so much dead wood. He swelled his neck muscles, but it was useless;
the silk was cutting in all round, a red-hot wire. He had a flash
picture of Osman Bâki standing over his body, wagging his head
regretfully and saying, “I said so,” Osman Bâki with the Owls’ House for
background. It was all over; the girl had waited and got him in the end.
Even at that moment he admired her for it. She had spirit; never had he
seen such spirit. Came a pang of intolerable pain, his eyeballs were
starting out, his head was bursting open—and then the tension at his
throat inexplicably relaxed.
Ortho rolled over, panting and retching, and as he did so heard
footsteps on the stairs.
A fist thumped on the door, a voice cried, “Kaid! Kaid!” and there was
Osman Bâki.
He peered into the room, holding a lantern before him. “Kaid, are you
there? Where are you? There is a riot of Draouia in the Djeema El Fna;
two troops to go out. Oh, there you are—_Bismillah_! What is this?”
He sprang across to where Ortho lay and bent over him.
“What is the matter? Are you ill? What is it?”
“Nothing,” Ortho croaked. “Trying hasheesh . . . took too much . . .
nothing at all. See to troops yourself . . . go now.” He coughed and
coughed.
“Hasheesh!” The Turk sniffed, stared at him suspiciously, glanced round
the room, caught sight of the girl and held up the lantern.
“Ha-ha!”
The two stood rigid eye to eye, the soldier with chin stuck forward,
every hair bristling, like a mastiff about to spring, the girl
unflinching, three beads of her black necklace in her teeth.
“Ha-ha!” Osman put the lantern deliberately on the ground beside him and
stepped forward, crouched double, his hands outstretched like claws.
“You snake,” he muttered. “You Arab viper, I’ll . . . I’ll . . .”
Ortho hoisted himself on his elbow. The girl was superb! So slight and
yet so defiant. “Osman,” he rasped, “Osman, friend, go! The riot! Go, it
is an order!”
The Turk stopped, stood up, relaxed, turned slowly about and picked up
the lantern. He looked at Ortho, walked to the door, hesitated, shot a
blazing glance at the girl, gave his mustache a vicious tug and went
out.
Silence but for the sputter of the brazier and the squeak of a mouse in
the wall.
Then Ortho heard the soft plud-plud of bare feet crossing the room and
he knew the girl was standing over him.
“Well, sweet,” he sighed, “come to complete your work? I am still in
your hands.”
She tumbled on her knees beside him, clasped his head to her breast and
sobbed, sobbed, sobbed as though she would never stop.