Zahara had overheard the latter part of the conversation from her own
apartment. Once she had even crept across to the carven screen in order
that she might peep through into the big, softly lighted room. She
had interrupted her toilet to do so, and having satisfied herself that
Grantham was one of the speakers (although she had really known this
already), she had returned and stared at herself critically in the
mirror.
Zahara, whose father had been a Frenchman, possessed skin of a subtle
cream colour very far removed from the warm brown of her Egyptian
mother, but yet not white. At night it appeared dazzling, for she
enhanced its smooth, creamy pallor with a wonderful liquid solution
which came from Paris. It was hard, Zahara had learned, to avoid a
certain streaky appearance, but much practice had made her an adept.
This portion of her toilet she had already completed and studying her
own reflection she wondered, as she had always wondered, what Agapoulos
could see in Safiyeh. Safiyeh was as brown as a berry; quite pretty for
an Egyptian girl, as Zahara admitted scornfully, but brown--brown. It
was a great puzzle to Zahara. The mystery of life indeed had puzzled
little Zahara very much from the moment when she had first begun to
notice things with those big, surprising blue eyes of hers, right up to
the present twenty-fourth year of her life. She had an uneasy feeling
that Safiyeh, who was only sixteen, knew more of this mystery than she
did. Once, shortly after the Egyptian girl had come to the house of
Agapoulos, Zahara had playfully placed her round white arm against that
of the more dusky beauty, and:
“Look!” she had exclaimed. “I am cream and you are coffee.”
“It is true,” the other had admitted in her practical, serious way, “but
some men do not like cream. All men like coffee.”
Zahara rested her elbows upon the table and surveyed the reflection
of her perfect shoulders with disapproval. She had been taught at her
mother's knee that men did not understand women, and she, who had been
born and reared in that quarter of Cairo where there is no day but one
long night, had lived to learn the truth of the lesson. Yet she was not
surprised that this was so; for Zahara did not understand herself. Her
desires were so simple and so seemingly natural, yet it would appear
that they were contrary to the established order of things.
She was proud to think that she was French, although someone had told
her that the French, though brave, were mercenary. Zahara admired the
French for being brave, and thought it very sensible that they should
be mercenary. For there was nothing that Zahara wanted of the world
that money could not obtain (or so she believed), and she knew no higher
philosophy than the quest of happiness. Because others did not seem to
share this philosophy she often wondered if she could be unusual. She
had come to the conclusion that she was ignorant. If only Harry Grantham
would talk to her she felt sure he could teach her so much.
There were so many things that puzzled her. She knew that at twenty-four
she was young for a French girl, although as an Egyptian she would
have been considered old. She had been taught that gold was the key to
happiness and that man was the ogre from whom this key must be wheedled.
A ready pupil, Zahara had early acquired the art of attracting, and now
at twenty-four she was a past mistress of the Great Craft, and as her
mirror told her, more beautiful than she had ever been.
Therefore, what did Agapoulos see in Safiyeh?
It was a problem which made Zahara's head ache. She could not understand
why as her power of winning men increased her power to hold them
diminished. Safiyeh was a mere inexperienced child--yet Agapoulos
had brought her to the house, and Zahara, wise in woman's lore, had
recognized the familiar change of manner.
It was a great problem, the age-old problem which doubtless set the
first silver thread among Phryne's red-gold locks and which now brought
a little perplexed wrinkle between Zahara's delicately pencilled brows.
It had not always been so. In those early days in Cairo there had been
an American boy. Zahara had never forgotten. Her beauty had bewildered
him. He had wanted to take her to New York; and oh! how she had wanted
to go. But her mother, who was then alive, had held other views, and he
had gone alone. Heavens! How old she felt. How many had come and gone
since that Egyptian winter, but now, although admiration was fatally
easy to win how few were so sincere as that fresh-faced boy from beyond
the Atlantic.
Zahara, staring into the mirror, observed that there was not a wrinkle
upon her face, not a flaw upon her perfect skin. Nor in this was she
blinded by vanity. Nature, indeed, had cast her in a rare mould, and
from her unusual hair, which was like dull gold, to her slender ankles
and tiny feet, she was one of the most perfectly fashioned human beings
who ever added to the beauty of the world.
Yet Agapoulos preferred Safiyeh. Zahara could hear him coming to her
room even as she sat there, chin in hands, staring at her own bewitching
reflection. Presently she would slip out and speak to Harry Grantham.
Twice she had read in his eyes that sort of interest which she knew so
well how to detect. She liked him very much, but because of a sense of
loyalty to Agapoulos (a sentiment purely Egyptian which she longed to
crush) Zahara had never so much as glanced at Grantham in the Right Way.
She was glad, though, that he had not gone, and she hoped that Agapoulos
would not detain her long.
As a matter of fact, the Greek's manner was even more cold than usual.
He rested his hand upon her shoulder for a moment, and meeting her
glance reflected in the mirror:
“There will be a lot of money here to-night,” he said. “Make the best
of your opportunities. Chinatown is foggy, yes--but it pays better than
Port Said.”
He ran fat fingers carelessly through her hair, the big diamond
glittering effectively in the wavy gold, then turned and went out.
Sitting listening intently, Zahara could hear him talking in a subdued
voice to Safiyeh, and could detect the Egyptian's low-spoken replies.
*****
Grantham looked up with a start. A new and subtle perfume had added
itself to that with which the air of the room was already laden. He
found Zahara standing beside him.
His glance travelled upward from a pair of absurdly tiny brocaded
shoes past slender white ankles to the embroidered edge of a wonderful
mandarin robe decorated with the figures of peacocks; upward again to
a little bejewelled hand which held the robe confined about the slender
figure of Zahara, and upward to where, sideways upon a bare shoulder
peeping impudently out from Chinese embroidery, rested the half-mocking
and half-serious face of the girl.
“Hallo!” he said, smiling, “I didn't hear you come in.”
“I walk very soft,” explained Zahara, “because I am not supposed to be
here.”
She looked at him quizzically. “I don't see you for a long time,” she
added, and in the tone of her voice there was a caress. “I saw you more
often in Port Said than here.”
“No,” replied Grantham, “I have been giving Agapoulos a rest. Besides,
there has been nobody worth while at any of the hotels or clubs during
the last fortnight.”
“Somebody worth while coming to-night?” asked Zahara with professional
interest.
At the very moment that she uttered the words she recognized her error,
for she saw Grantham's expression change. Yet to her strange soul there
was a challenge in his coldness and the joy of contest in the task of
melting the ice of this English reserve.
“Lots of money,” he said bitterly; “we shall all do well to-night.”
Zahara did not reply for a moment. She wished to close this line of
conversation which inadvertently she had opened up. So that, presently:
“You look very lonely and bored,” she said softly.
As a matter of fact, it was she who was bored of the life she led in
Limehouse--in chilly, misty Limehouse--and who had grown so very lonely
since Safiyeh had come. In the dark gray eyes looking up at her she read
recognition of her secret. Here was a man possessing that rare masculine
attribute, intuition. Zahara knew a fear that was half delightful. Fear
because she might fail in either of two ways and delight because the
contest was equal.
“Yes,” he replied slowly, “my looks tell the truth. How did you know?”
Zahara observed that his curiosity had not yet become actual interest.
She toyed with the silken tassel on her robe, tying and untying it with
quick nervous fingers and resting the while against the side of the
carved chair.
“Perhaps because I am so lonely myself,” she said. “I matter to no one.
What I do, where I go, if I live or die. It is all----”
She spread her small hands eloquently and shrugged so that another white
shoulder escaped from the Chinese wrapping. Thereupon Zahara demurely
drew her robe about her with a naive air of modesty which nine out of
ten beholding must have supposed to be affected.
In reality it was a perfectly natural, instinctive movement. To Zahara
her own beauty was a commonplace to be displayed or concealed as
circumstances might dictate. In a certain sense, which few could
appreciate, this half-caste dancing girl and daughter of El Wasr was
as innocent as a baby. It was one of the things which men did not
understand. She thought that if Harry Grantham asked her to go away
with him it would be nice to go. Suddenly she realized how deep was her
loathing of this Limehouse and of the people she met there, who were all
alike.
He sat looking at her for some time, and then: “Perhaps you are wrong,”
he said. “There may be some who could understand.”
And because he had answered her thoughts rather than her words, the fear
within Zahara grew greater than the joy of the contest.
Awhile longer she stayed, seeking for a chink in the armour. But she
failed to kindle the light in his eyes which--unless she had deluded
herself--she had seen there in the past; and because she failed and
could detect no note of tenderness in his impersonal curiosity:
“You are lonely because you are so English, so cold,” she exclaimed,
drawing her robe about her and glancing sideways toward the door by
which Agapoulos might be expected to enter. “You are bored, yes. Of
course. You look on at life. It is not exciting, that game--except for
the players.”
Never once had she looked at him in the Right Way; for to have done so
and to have evoked only that amused yet compassionate smile would have
meant hatred, and Zahara had been taught that such hatred was fatal
because it was a confession of defeat.
“I shall see you again to-night, shall I not?” he said as she turned
away.
“Oh, yes, I shall be--on show. I hope you will approve.”
She tossed her head like a petulant child, turned, and with never
another glance in his direction, walked from the room. She was very
graceful, he thought.
Yet it was not entirely of this strange half-caste, whose beauty was
provoking, although he resolutely repelled her tentative advances, that
Grantham was thinking. In that last gesture when she had scornfully
tossed her head in turning aside, had lain a bitter memory. Grantham
stood for a moment watching the swaying draperies. Then, dropping the
end of his cigarette into a little brass ash-tray, he took up his hat,
gloves, and cane from the floor, and walked toward the doorway through
which he had entered.
A bell rang somewhere, and Grantham paused. A close observer might have
been puzzled by his expression. Evidently changing his mind, he crossed
the room, opened the door and went out, leaving the house of Agapoulos
by a side entrance. Crossing the little courtyard below he hurried in
the direction of the main street, seeming to doubt the shadows which
dusk was painting in the narrow ways.
Many men who know Chinatown distrust its shadows, but the furtive fear
of which Grantham had become aware was due not to anticipation but to
memory--to a memory conjured up by that gesture of Zahara's.
There were few people in London or elsewhere who knew the history of
this scallywag Englishman. That he had held the King's commission at
some time was generally assumed to be the fact, but that his real
name was not Grantham equally was taken for granted. His continuing,
nevertheless, to style himself “Major” was sufficient evidence to those
interested that Grantham lived by his wits; and from the fact that he
lived well and dressed well one might have deduced that his wits were
bright if his morals were turbid.
Now, the gesture of a woman piqued had called up the deathless past.
Hurrying through nearly empty squalid streets, he found himself longing
to pronounce a name, to hear it spoken that he might linger over its
bitter sweetness. To this longing he presently succumbed, and:
“Inez,” he whispered, and again more loudly, “Inez.”
Such a wave of lonely wretchedness and remorse swept up about his heart
that he was almost overwhelmed by it, yet he resigned himself to
its ruthless cruelty with a sort of savage joy. The shadowed ways of
Limehouse ceased to exist for him, and in spirit he stood once more in
a queer, climbing, sunbathed street of Gibraltar looking out across that
blue ribbon of the Straits to where the African coast lay hidden in the
haze.
“I never knew,” he said aloud. And one meeting this man who hurried
along and muttered to himself must have supposed him to be mad. “I never
knew. Oh, God! if I had only known.”
But he was one of those to whom knowledge comes as a bitter aftermath.
When his regiment had received orders to move from the Rock, and he had
informed Inez of his departure, she had turned aside, just as Zahara had
done; scornfully and in silence. Because of his disbelief in her he
had guarded his heart against this beautiful Spanish girl who (as he
realized too late) had brought him the only real happiness he had ever
known. Often she had told him of her brother, Miguel, who would kill
her--would kill them both--if he so much as suspected their meetings; of
her affianced husband, absent in Tunis, whose jealousy knew no bounds.
He had pretended to believe, had even wanted to believe; but the
witchery of the girl's presence removed, he had laughed--at himself and
at Inez. She was playing the Great Game, skilfully, exquisitely. When
he was gone--there would soon be someone else. Yet he had never told her
that he doubted. He had promised many things--and had left her.
She died by her own hand on the night of his departure.
Now, as a wandering taxi came into view: “Inez!” he moaned--“I never
knew.”
That brother whom he had counted a myth had succeeded in getting on
board the transport. Before Grantham's inner vision the whole dreadful
scene now was reenacted: the struggle in the stateroom; he even seemed
to hear the sound of the shot, to see the Spaniard, drenched with blood
from a wound in his forehead, to hear his cry:
“I cannot see! I cannot see! Mother of Mercy! I have lost my sight!”
It had broken Grantham. The scandal was hushed up, but retirement was
inevitable. He knew, too, that the light had gone out of the world for
him as it had gone for Miguel da Mura.
It is sometimes thus that a scallywag is made.