XV

Near where Ismailia sits amidst her flowery gardens and tasselled

avenues, on the edge of the scorching Desert of el Jifar, is an arid

rectangle of sand east of the Canal, above Lake Timsah, used at the

time I write of as an Air Base. Beyond Essenian, there were no

native officers serving at the Air Base, though the indomitable

Gyppos of the Labour Corps were employed at the aërodrome in building

hangars, and cleaning the machines. Here rows of 'buses, both B.C.'s

and D.H.6's--used for reconnaissance on the Canal, along the shores

of the Red Sea as far as Aden--and over the Front in Palestine--were

ranged in readiness in front of their great hangars, and observers in

double-breasted tunics of drill or serge, with shorts and

forage-caps--or yet more simply and economically attired in flannel

shirts, canvas shoes and sun-helmets--stood on the summits of wooden

towers, combing the blue with high-powered binoculars for enemy

aircraft, in watches, relieved at three-hour intervals....

Not without reason had the Pasha boasted of the beauty of his villa,

a white marble palace of Arabian-Turkish architecture, standing well

back from an avenue of casuarinas, embowered in trailing roses,

clothed with imperial Bougainvillea and shaded with trees, rising

from the green velvet lawns that carpet what was a rectangle of

barrenness wrested from the Desert twenty-three years ago.

Within the palace, suites of rooms--used in the Oriental style as

reception saloons or bedrooms--according to the needs of the

moment--were furnished in luxury rivalling the most modern of

Parisian hotels. Soft-footed, low-voiced servants, chiefly

Mohammedans, dressed in speckless white, and moving like automata,

waited upon the master's guests and did the master's will.

Here Nasr Ullah, the Pasha's elderly body-servant and confidential

messenger, ruled with rigidity, taking it out of his subordinates

when the Presence dealt hardly with him. In two rooms of the vast

warren of rooms opening on a rearward court, his "house" and a small

brood of sturdy boys were accommodated. A little dark Moslemah the

wife of Nasr Ullah, well dressed and laden with solid silver

jewellery. Plain, with projecting rabbit teeth, and shallow

forehead; meek, dutiful, pious and greatly given to prayer. A grave

for the secrets of her husband Nasr, who was occasionally burdened

with a conscience, whose smarting called for soothing feminine balms.

He stood on the threshold of his outer room, in the mild, pale hour

when the stars were flowering through the last glow of the sunset,

and his tall white turban was pushed awry, and his high forehead was

ridged with care.

"'Tis a tyranny to force a man of kindly heart towards God's

creatures, to scatter poisoned barley for the birds," he said

uneasily. "And the carrier-dove is the Bird of Nun, that went forth

from the Ark and brought back the olive-leaf, and a dove was the bird

that the Son of Mariam--when as yet but a babe of tender

years--playing with others who knew not His holiness--wrought by the

riverside of clay."

"And the boys laughed and mocked Him, because He had made one bird

instead of many. And He was not angry, but said, 'Do ye then as I

do!' And then He clapped His hands and the dove flew away. Did it

not so, O my father?" a thready voice piped.

"Since when," asked Nasr Ullah with affected sternness, "have the

babes permission to lift up voice when their elders take counsel?"

His lined face softened into tenderness as the child clinging to the

mother's skirts hid his head under her veil. "Remember, O woman!" he

went on, "I have said the white powder is a deadly poison. If a

speck, such as would lie safely hidden under the finger-nail--find a

way into the child's milk-bowl, I were without a son."

"It is all in there.... I boiled the barley until soft, and drained

the water away carefully--emptied the paper-packet of powder in among

the barley and stirred the barley well with a little stick. Then I

burned both the paper and the stick, as thou didst order. Remains

for thee to break the pot to sherds when--when thou hast finished. O

my misfortune! What a task! My lord, Nasr Ullah, who hath the pride

of princes!--to creep about under cover of night--from the courtyard

of the Commandant-Sahib to the _haush_ where the _Ifrangis_ keep

their swallow-boats, scattering poisoned barley for pigeons with

messages--"

"Hûs! ..."

She had raised her usually quiet voice somewhat indiscreetly, and the

toddler, youngest save one of Fatimeh's brood of four, scared by the

unusualness of this demonstration, lifted up his own voice in a lusty

howl.

"_Hus--sus!_ No one is vexed with thee, my joy!--nobody is angry!

Run out and play with the little grey goat awhile before thy

sleep-time comes!" And as the boy with a shrill joyful chuckle

toddled over the threshold to seek his playmate, Nasr Ullah promptly

clapped the door to and shot the wooden door-bolt, and not content

with this, pulled the heavy leather curtains that kept out chilly

winds and June and February _samûms_, over the doorway and the

latticed window-screens.

"By the life of the Prophet--peace on him!--by thy head! speak lower.

What Afrit hast thou vexed--throwing away the carrot-tops and the

water that washed the dishes?" he demanded of his now

hysterically-tearful wife. "Is this my house, whom I deemed discreet

as Kadijah--peace be upon her! Raising the voice like a woman

accustomed to go unveiled? Trumpeting secrets as it were on the very

housetops! Wouldst be a widow? 'Nay?' Then shun the road to

mourning! Wouldst die thyself, knowing thy four sons cast out--to

whine for _faddahs_ and broken bread at the doors of the khans and

mosques.... 'Nay' again? ... Then even hold thy tongue. And,

Fatimeh my beloved--" Nasr Ullah's lean, dark, muscular hand

caressed the woman's small head, adorned with a smart black silk

kerchief with a brightly coloured border, and a forehead-string of

coins--all gold ones, though their value was but small,--"vex not thy

soul overmuch about the doves and pigeons. Are not their numbers

countless as the numbers of the flies? And tell me, my olive-tree,

fruitful in bearing--my Garment of Comfort," his tone had become

wheedling, "whether any of the veiled women serving about this house

be one-eyed? _Wallah_! I jest not! It is a new order of the

Presence that all such are to be dismissed!"

"How soon?" Another tempest seemed about to shake Nasr Ullah's

fruitful olive. Her bosom under its many serried rows of solid

silver necklaces began to heave again. Her heavy anklets clashed as

her small, henna-stained feet shifted nervously on the whitened clay

floor of the family living-room where the charcoal stove daily

burned, and the cooking-pots stood against the wall. "How soon?"

"By Allah! no later than an hour after sunrise, and that delay is

granted as an especial grace."

"And the mother of thy wife--the grandmother of thy children--the

guardian of thy house's honour--what of her?" demanded Fatimeh; "Is

she not one of the many decent ones upon whose eyes the flies have

sat in childhood? Is--"

"_Wallah_! I had forgotten her," exclaimed the man in dismay. For

the mother of Fatimeh, at that moment congenially engaged in crooning

the latest new baby to sleep, in the inner room dignified by the

title of the _harîm_, had suffered in early youth, like many other

Egyptian women of the lower classes, the loss, through ophthalmia, of

one of her eyes.

Now a faint grin showed on the face of her son-in-law, even in the

midst of his perplexity, as he said:

"Rebuke is justly mine, wife, that I did not remember it. But by the

border of thine _usbêh_ I swear it! Thy mother sees more with her

one eye than other women with two. Yet would I not part with her.

She is wise in dealing with the teething-troubles of the lesser

babes, and her slipper hath more sting in it than thine, for the

ruling of the elder. We will send her away to thy brother at Kantara

until this scare of one-eyed women is over and done. Meanwhile,--"

he glanced over his shoulder at the door, and sitting on the

hard-cushioned divan that ran round three sides of the whitewashed

room, drew Fatimeh to sit beside him; "meanwhile I would speak to

thee of Khalid thine eldest. Where is the boy to-night?"

"He is gone with his brother Amru to lay snares for fig-birds in the

orchard. They must be set at moon-dark, for the birds to enter them

at dawn."

"He is a born hunter. Seven years old this month of Safar, and

witful as he is handsome--the praise be unto Allah Who makes them of

all kinds! Wife, if I told thee that the Presence, seeing the boy so

ripe for his tender years, and of goodly promise, had bidden--"

Nasr Ullah's tone had been studiously commonplace, but the ridges in

his high forehead had deepened, and his eyes had an anxious stare.

He winced as his wife without a word slid from the divan, and next

instant lay prostrate on the white-washed floor, with her forehead on

his feet.

"Nay, nay! ... My pearl, my joy! ... Take it not so hardly! ..."

"O Everlasting, spare me this! O husband, in pity, hear me. Hast

thou forgotten Nasi, our joy and my firstborn? He would have been

nine years old, this Nile-Rise.... Hast thou forgotten? Ay, ay, it

was the old cry; 'This boy was stupid--that one showed fear. This

must have known sin,--for he could see nothing at all in the

ink-pools or in the Eye of Radiance.' So the Presence takes my Nasi,

and gives him gifts and praises his excellence, and one day he comes

home, crying '_My head, my head!_' like the son of the woman who fed

the Prophet El Jah, peace be upon him!--and three days later, thou,

weeping bitter tears, dost hang my green-striped shawl over the

shabid of his tiny bier."

"Peace, wife!"

Sweat broke forth and stood on Nasr Ullah's face. He wiped it with

the sleeve of his white _kaftan_, repeating:

"Peace, woman! ... It was a fever the boy had caught.... Dost thou

not remember what the _hakim_ said? ..."

"Ay! But I had watched by the bed of my sick child, and shuddered at

the visions he told of in his ravings. O, Husband, I have sat in the

house one year, and thou hast said in thine heart, '_She is

forgetting_' ... Yet all the time--" She sat upright on the floor

before him now, her strained eyes glued upon his worried face, and

the swift words poured from her without his opposition.

"Peace! thou sayest. How can there be peace in this house where

soothsayers and necromancers come and go, and the sand-tables are

forever cast, and fresh boys are brought each new day to peer into

the ink-pools.... Lo! I will speak my mind. Ten years I have been

thy wife, and a duteous and a silent, but a mother in fear for her

flesh and blood hath the courage to defy Shaitan...."

"Be not disturbed.... I will find some way. The boy shall be sent

to El Kantara with thy mother."

"And when my Agib is of likely age, will not the ink-pools claim him?

Will the Presence have bowels to spare a child, who in all these

years hath loved no woman?"

"Nay," was the reply. "What need hath He of women, who is in love

with Life? ..."

"'Tis true. Save when the Inglizi ladies come with their menfolk to

see the house and gardens, and eat fruit and drink iced sherbets, and

say 'charmin'--charmin'' and 'rippin'--rippin','" thus the

better-half of Nasr Ullah rendered the English slang, "no woman ever

comes here. What now?" for the knee on which she rested her arm had

jerked slightly.

"I had forgotten. He hath said but now--that a woman comes here at

midnight! No _râziye_ of the Bazâr, or other of the shameless, but a

lady-Sahib from the Palace of Montana at Iskanderieh.... The car

brings her by the fifth hour.... The gates are to be open. When the

car has passed in, the gates are to be shut and locked...."

"_Ya rabbi!_" The exclamation broke from the woman involuntarily.

"After all these years--it may be that He changes.... How old is He,

husband? Canst thou not even guess? ..."

"Perhaps He is less old than He pretends, but He is many years older

than folks believe Him. Of that there is no doubt at all...."

"And it _is_ done by devilry? Witchcraft and spells--and philtres?"

The woman breathed quickly. "Say, is't not?"

"God knows! But from whomever the Presence buys his youth, He pays a

heavy price for it. See how He lives! Even as one who carries in

his breast a stolen jewel, and goes in fear lest it be snatched from

him. The pleasures of the belly--He must shun them. The joys that

are tasted on perfumed cushions--He must fly them one and all. It is

tyranny. Yet He thinks He is envied. He is only wretched when Those

I may not speak of, ask--too high a price for the magical drugs...."

"The drugs. The devil-brews that keep Him youthful, who else would

be as dry and wrinkled as the mummies of the ancient Kings?"

"Verily. And--one thing I have seen of late--" Once launched upon

the sea of Confidence, Nasr Ullah grew less fearful. "Whether

Protection fails him, or the philtres lose their power, I know

not--but--He grows old!"

"I too!--" Her eyes grew large with awe. "I have fancied He is

somewhat changed...."

"_Chut_! Do not interrupt. It goes deeper than the skin--this

change that I have seen in him. His moods vary like those of a

pregnant woman; he frames designs and throws them aside as a monkey

plucks, and bites, and casts bananas away. He does not even hate as

He used to hate. Once--if an enemy rose up in the path, he removed

that one with his own hand, and troubled no more about the affair.

Or said to one he trusted, '_Kill!_'" the tone was studiously smooth,

the speaker's face expressionless--"and that man or that woman

died--more quietly than the _bowab's_ daughter who ate the nectarine.

But now--since the killing of Usborn Sahib by a Turk in

Palestine,--and the night he dined at Iskanderieh in the company of

the big Jew Tomi--the Presence talks of nought but sprinkling

poisoned grain for carrier-doves and dismissing of one-eyed

females--and my heart is stricken with fear for my lord! Spells, and

charms, and philtres bought from Those in the Distant Places will not

avail forever against the day of Fate. Azrael will come behind my

lord with a touch upon the shoulder. The Black Camel of Allah will

tread upon his heel. Then--even at a breath--the House of Life will

crumble!" Nasr Ullah started to his feet as a silvery sound,

momentarily increasing in volume, rolled into the stuffy closed room,

and hummed about their ears. "It is the gong from my lord's room.

He calls, and I must go! ..."

He added, slipping the earthen pot of soaked and poisoned barley

within the bosom of his embroidered vest: "Sleep well, my wife, if I

see thee not ere morning. And call in the children--it is time they

went to rest! ..."