When Shems-ud-dìn knocked that morning at the door of the Frank’s house,
it was opened to him immediately. Zeyd had not time to exchange the usual
compliments with a sherbet seller, who had his stall higher up the alley,
in the shade of a little entry which alone broke the monotony of its high
blind walls. Ismaìl, the black doorkeeper, had been on the watch for
their coming.
“Is it thou, O my lord?” he exclaimed, grinning welcome. “The hakìm would
speak with thy Grace. He is now at meat, but will soon have done. Deign
to enter here.”
Instead of conducting Shems-ud-dìn as usual through the cool scoured
passage out into the court and so up to the sick room, the black opened
the door of a chamber adjoining the entrance—a closet sparsely furnished
in the Frankish manner, where the unbeliever used to receive those who
came to make trial of his skill in medicine. Zeyd thought to pass in
with his master, but Ismaìl restrained him by a strong friendly clasp of
his shoulder. The door was closed, and Shems-ud-dìn left alone to his
meditations.
Set uneasily upon a chair, his feet tucked under him as far as the
awkwardness of the contrivance would allow, he took stock of the little
room, its cleanness, the tall, spindle-shanked furniture, the mats of
some vegetable fiber, and the buzz of flies beneath its vaulted ceiling.
Upon a table in one corner stood two wooden boxes linked together by a
slack cord. Those boxes gave a focus to his contemplation. In the inner
chamber of so great a scientist, he supposed them to possess some occult
virtue. Yet, all the while he sat gazing on them and on the room in
general, he cared not a jot for anything there, but prayed only for the
hakìm to come quickly and make known his latest judgment upon Alia.
At last the Frank looked in, coming straight from meat, as a reminiscent
munching testified.
“O sheykh!” he poured forth in that rapid, garbled speech of his, which
galloped as if to escape from its own inaccuracy. “May thy day be happy
and blessed. For thy daughter, alas! the end is very near. Stay with her
to-day, I beg of thee. My house is thy house. I go now about my business.
In thy grace!”
So saying, and before Shems-ud-dìn could touch his hand or frame an
answer, he was gone again. In his place came Mâs, who ushered his master
out through the sunny court and up the stairs to the door of the
sick room. The fragrance of that room, its cool, sweet air, refreshed
Shems-ud-dìn.
“Praise be to Allah!” cried Fatmeh, in response to his formal query. In
a posture of triumph, she waved him on toward the bed. “See her smile to
welcome her dear father. Is she not almost recovered? Never again did I
think to behold her so well, so happy! O light of my eyes! O my pretty
one! O life! O happy day!”
As he sat upon a pile of cushions arranged for him by Fatmeh beside the
bed, the reasonable speech and ready smile of the beloved came near to
persuade Shems-ud-dìn that the physician had lied to him. All day long
he sat there, happier than ever since his coming to El Cûds; and that
unowned hope which keeps the door of enjoyment locked out fears. Once
he even echoed Fatmeh when she praised Allah for the girl’s perfect
recovery. His intelligence was relaxed, off guard, a plaything for
mocking devils, it seemed to him afterwards.
At length, when it wore toward evening, Fatmeh went out for a while,
leaving Shems-ud-dìn alone at the bedside. He held the hand of his
daughter, a bird’s claw for thinness. No word passed till Alia said
earnestly:
“O my father!”
Shems-ud-dìn quickened instantly out of his half-abstraction. His brain
throbbing with intensity of interest, he answered:
“What is there, O my daughter?”
“There is this, my father: I fear much to die. I fear the great darkness
and the loneliness. Thou knowest how I always have feared to be alone in
darkness, how I feel a jinni clutch me, and I scream. O my dearest, O
Allah, what shall I do in a darkness which has no boundary, in a silence
whence no scream is ever heard?”
She clasped her father’s arm and clung to it, trembling. Shems-ud-dìn,
leaning over her, heartrent by the horror in her dilated eyes, ransacked
his brain for words to calm her.
“Take comfort, O beloved!” he whispered. “Doubtless there is a place for
thee in the garden of Allah.”
“Yes, O my father. Think not I forget all instruction. But that paradise
is a shadowy place. It seems to me, as I lie here and think, that a
doubt encircles it. It is but a shadow of that sure and glorious one
reserved for men. Hear now my prayer, O my father; it is for that I
called to thee. When thou, judged righteous, art with the blessed, deign
to remember me, thy daughter, and ask of Allah the favor of my presence
with thee. The dark-eyed maids will not hate me, for I am thy daughter;
and it is allowed thee to ask for a woman dear to thee on the earth.”
“Thou art no woman of mine, in that sense——”
“Hush, O my father! Ask only. Make petition. Is not His mercy boundless?
Oh, how I have longed to know that place, the talking fruit, the tree,
the wondrous birds, and the voice melodious, and the joy in God’s
presence. Promise to ask for me, and my fear will be much less.”
“If Allah will, if at the last day I be judged fit for salvation, then be
sure I will fulfill thy petition, O light of my eyes!”
With a sigh of relief, she loosed hold of him and sank back upon the
pillows, closing her eyes. It was some time ere she again opened them.
Then, meeting her father’s troubled gaze, she smiled languidly, almost
voluptuously.
“Be not too sorrowful, O my dear! May Allah reward that kind thought of
thine which brought me hither. Here is like paradise. It is part of my
fear to die that I must leave this pleasant room—of a light subdued, yet
how cheerful!—and the pure sweet odors, and the loving tendance. But what
matter! All is allotted.” She paused before adding in a more detached
strain, as though trying to view herself through strange eyes: “Knowest
thou, O my father, that, did it please Allah to preserve me in life, I
think I should pray thee to give me to this good hakìm and not to Shibli.
When I suffer pain, the hakìm needs but to look on me and it is gone. His
touch is gentle, and his eyes are not as the eyes of Shibli, but rather
resemble thine, O my father——”
She broke off suddenly, for just then the door of the room opened and the
hakìm himself entered, followed by Fatmeh and an unveiled woman who also
waited upon Alia.
Shems-ud-dìn withdrew. He knew now that the hakìm had told truth when he
said that the end was very near. He saw his late torpor of enjoyment, and
the still evident delight of Fatmeh, in their true colors, the colors of
the sunset hour, the fairest of the day, the gate of night. The sun of a
blinding love drew near his setting.
Going down into the court, he spoke with Zeyd and the two old negroes
till the hakìm came forth from Alia, when he ran and clutched his raiment.
“Let me talk with thee, O lord of bounty!”
“Willingly. We will go to the housetop; it is pleasant at this hour.”
On the housetop, moving in the blaze of the sinking sun, the Frank
explained to Shems-ud-dìn, as well as his knowledge of the Arabic would
permit, the nature and peculiar symptoms of Alia’s malady. It was
incurable, he had said so from the first. He had done what man could
to relieve the pain of it, and increase by a little the number of her
days. There was nothing more on earth that he could do. Even supposing
she might live, which was impossible, the mere life deprived of certain
organs would be ghastly torture, no blessing, but a very curse.
Shems-ud-dìn, hearing him theorize thus, and mistaking the tenor of his
jumbled words, on a sudden wave of longing forgot even Allah Most High.
From his sinful heart he cried:
“Save but the life of her, the life alone! She dead, what have I left on
earth to care for?”
Almost fiercely, he gripped the wrist of the Frank, repeating:
“Save but the life, O best of physicians, and may Allah bless thee ever!”
But the name of Allah, glaring in that connection, showed him in a flash
the vanity, the gross impiety, of his behavior. Heart-humbled, he let go
the arm of the Frank. His head drooped, tears filled his eyes.
The Frank beheld his frenzy and the consequent collapse with more of pity
than surprise. He said:
“Thou understandest not. I can do nothing more than is done already.
Stay here awhile. Let the air refresh thee. I descend once more into the
house.”
He then embarked upon some statement beyond his command of language to
express. Shems-ud-dìn gathered from a word caught here and there that
this Frank was censured of other Nazarenes for receiving the girl in his
house, even as he himself had earned the reproach of other Muslims by
allowing her to lie there. The sheykh could only thank him with tears in
his eyes.
The sun’s chin touched the outer roofs to westward. On that side, the
city seemed of hewn shadow up against a fire; on the other, ruddy light
held all the terraces, with shadow only in their crannies which were
streets. Shems-ud-dìn, seated on a high roof, was aware vaguely of a
conflagration of all heaven. He thought on the last day, when the sun
shall drop so near that the brains of the wicked shall boil like water.
He remained unconscious of the attendance of Zeyd, the son of Abbâs, who,
seeing the Frank descend, had crept up stealthily, not to be defrauded of
a moment of that blest companionship which fed his soul.
Not until the sun had long set, and Shems-ud-dìn had said his prayers,
did Zeyd venture to assert his presence by a sigh and a rustling movement.
“Is it thou, O father of kindness?” asked the sheykh dreamily.
And Zeyd, proud to answer to so sweet a name, said:
“It is none other, O my master.”
“Do a kindness, O my friend. Go down, I pray thee, and inquire in the
house if my daughter wakes and would see me.”
“On my head,” answered Zeyd, at once rising. It seemed but a second to
Shems-ud-dìn ere the same voice said, “Thy daughter sleeps. The Frank has
given her a soothing potion.”
“Blest are thy tidings. Then I wait here till Mâs shall call me.”