XI

Ra'hel, who from the threshold of the hut was watching Poeri go away,

thought she heard a faint sigh. She listened; some dogs were baying to

the moon, an owl uttered its doleful hoot, and the crocodiles moaned

between the reeds of the river, imitating the cry of a child in

distress. The young Israelite was about to re-enter the hut when a more

distinct moan, which could not be attributed to the vague sounds of

night, and which certainly came from a human breast, again struck her

ear. Fearing some ambush, she drew cautiously near the place whence came

the sound, and close to the wall of the hut she perceived in the blue

transparent darkness the shape of a body fallen to the ground. The wet

drapery outlined the limbs of the false Hora and betrayed her sex.

Ra'hel, seeing that she had to do with a fainting woman only, lost all

fear and knelt by her, questioning the breathing of her lips and the

beating of her heart; the one was just expiring on the pale lips, the

other scarce beat under the cold breasts.

Feeling the water which had soaked the stranger's dress, Ra'hel thought

at first that it was blood, and imagined that the woman must be the

victim of a murder. In order to help her to better purpose, she called

Thamar, her servant, and the two women carried Tahoser into the hut.

They laid her upon the couch. Thamar held up a lamp, while Ra'hel,

bending over the girl, looked for the wound; but no red streak showed

upon the pallor of Tahoser, and her dress had no crimson stain.

They stripped off her wet garment, and cast over her a piece of striped

wool, the gentle warmth of which soon restored her suspended

circulation. Tahoser slowly opened her eyes and cast around her a

terrified glance like that of a captured gazelle. It took her some time

to regain control of her thoughts. She could not understand how she

happened to be in that room, on the bed, where but a moment ago she had

seen Poeri and the young Israelite seated side by side with clasped

hands, speaking of love, while she, breathless, amazed, watched through

the crack of the wall; but soon memory returned, and with it the feeling

of her situation.

The light fell full on Ra'hel's face. Tahoser studied it silently,

grieved to find her so perfectly beautiful. In vain, with all the

fierceness of feminine jealousy, she tried to note defects in her; she

felt herself not vanquished, but equalled; Ra'hel was the Hebrew ideal,

as Tahoser was the Egyptian. Hard though it was to her loving heart, she

was compelled to admit that Poeri's love was justified and well

bestowed. The eyes with their full black eyelashes, the beautiful nose,

the red mouth with its dazzling smile, the long, elegant oval face, the

arms, full near the shoulders and ending in childish hands, the round,

plump neck which, as it turned, formed folds more beautiful than

necklaces of gems,--all this, set off by a quaint, exotic dress, was

sure to please.

"I made a great mistake," said Tahoser to herself, "when I presented

myself to Poeri in the humble attitude of a suppliant, trusting to my

charms overpraised by flatterers. Fool that I was! I acted as a soldier

who should go to war without breastplate or weapons. If I had appeared

in all my splendour, covered with jewels and enamels, standing on my

golden car followed by my numerous slaves, I might perhaps have touched

his fancy, if not his heart."

"How do you feel now?" said Ra'hel in Egyptian to Tahoser; for by the

outline of the face and the dressing of the hair, she had perceived that

the maiden did not belong to the Israelitish race. The sound of her

voice was sympathetic and sweet, and the foreign accent added greater

grace to it.

Tahoser was touched in spite of herself, and replied, "I feel better.

Your kind care will soon have restored me."

"Do not tire yourself with speaking," answered the Israelite, placing

her hand on Tahoser's lips. "Try to sleep, to regain your strength.

Thamar and I will watch over you."

Her agitation, the swim across the Nile, the long walk through the poor

quarters of Thebes, had wearied out Petamounoph's daughter; her delicate

frame was exhausted, and soon her long lashes closed, forming a dark

semicircle upon her cheeks flushed with fever. Sleep came to her, but

broken, restless, distorted by strange dreams, troubled by threatening

hallucinations; nervous shivers made the sleeper start, and broken

words, replying to the dream dialogue, were spoken by the half-opened

lips.

Seated at the bed head, Ra'hel followed the changes in the features of

Tahoser; troubled when she saw them contract and fill with grief,

quieted again when the girl calmed down. Thamar, crouching beside her

mistress, was also watching the priest's daughter, but her face

expressed less kindliness. Coarse instincts showed in the wrinkles of

her brow, pressed down by the broad band of the Hebrew head-dress; her

eyes, still bright in spite of her age, sparkled with curious

questionings in their brown and wrinkled orbits; her bony nose, shining

and curved like a vulture's beak, seemed to scent out secrets; and her

lips, slightly moving, appeared to be framing interrogations.

She was very much concerned about this stranger picked up at the door of

the hut. Whence came she? How did she happen to be there? What was her

purpose? Who could she be? Such were the questions which Thamar asked

herself, and to which, very regretfully, she could find no satisfactory

replies. Besides, Thamar, like all old women, was prejudiced against

beauty, and in this respect Tahoser proved very unpleasant to her. The

faithful servant forgave beauty in her mistress only; for her good looks

she considered as her property, and she was proud and jealous of them.

Seeing that Ra'hel kept silence, the old woman rose and sat down near

her, and winking her eyes, the brown lids of which rose and fell like a

bat's wing, she whispered in the Hebrew tongue, "Mistress, nothing good

will come of this woman."

"Why do you think so, Thamar?" answered Ra'hel, in the same low tone and

using the same language.

"It is strange," went on the suspicious Thamar, "that she should have

fainted there, and not elsewhere."

"She fell at the spot where weakness came upon her."

The old woman shook her head doubtfully.

"Do you suppose," said Poeri's beloved, "that her faint was simulated?

The dissector might have cut her side with his sharp stone, so like a

dead body did she seem. Her dull eyes, her pale lips, her pallid cheeks,

her limp limbs, her skin as cold as that of the dead,--these things

cannot be counterfeited."

"No, doubtless," replied Thamar, "although there are women clever enough

to feign all these symptoms, for some reason or another, so skilfully as

to deceive the most clear-sighted. I believe that the maiden had

swooned, as a matter of fact."

"Then what are you suspicious of?"

"How did she happen to be there in the middle of the night; in this

distant quarter inhabited only by the poor captives of our tribe whom

the cruel Pharaoh employs in making brick, and to whom he refuses the

straw necessary to burn the bricks? What motive brought that Egyptian

woman to our wretched huts? Why was her garment soaking wet, as if she

had just emerged from a pool or from the river?"

"I know no more than you do," replied Ra'hel.

"Suppose she were a spy of our masters'," said the old woman, whose

fierce eyes were lighted up with hatred. "Great events are

preparing,--who knows whether the alarm has not been given?"

"How could that young girl, ill as she is, hurt us? She is in our hands,

weak, alone, ill. Besides, we can, at the least suspicious sign, keep

her prisoner until the day of deliverance."

"In any case, she is not to be trusted. See how delicate and soft are

her hands!"

And old Thamar raised one of the arms of the sleeping Tahoser.

"In what respect can the fineness of her skin endanger us?"

"Oh, imprudent youth!" said Thamar; "oh, mad youth! which cannot see

anything, which walks through life trustfully, without believing in

ambushes, in brambles under the grass, in hot coals under the ashes, and

which would gladly caress a viper, believing it to be only a snake. Open

your eyes! That woman does not belong to the class of which she seems to

be; her thumb has never been flattened on the thread of the spindle, and

that little hand, softened by essences and pomades, has never worked.

Her poverty is a disguise."

Thamar's words appeared to impress Ra'hel; she examined Tahoser more

attentively. The lamp shed upon her its trembling rays, and the delicate

form of the priest's daughter showed in the yellow light relaxed in

sleep. The arm which Thamar had raised still rested upon the mantle of

striped wool, showing whiter by contrast with the dark stuff; the wrist

was circled with a bracelet of sandal wood, the commonplace adornment of

the coquetry of poverty; but if the ornament was rude and roughly

chased, the flesh it covered seemed to have been washed in the perfumed

bath of riches. Then Ra'hel saw how beautiful was Tahoser, but the

discovery excited no evil feeling in her heart; Tahoser's beauty

softened, instead of irritating her as it did Thamar; she could not

believe that such perfection concealed a vile and perfidious soul; and

in this respect her youthful candour judged more correctly than the long

experience of her maid.

Day at last dawned, and Tahoser's fever grew worse. She was delirious at

times, and then would fall into a prolonged slumber.

"If she were to die here," said Thamar, "we should be accused of having

killed her."

"She will not die," replied Ra'hel, putting a cup of cool water to the

lips of the sick girl.

"If she does, I shall throw her body by night into the Nile," continued

the obstinate Thamar, "and the crocodiles will undertake to make it

disappear."

The day passed, the night came, and at the accustomed hour Poeri, having

given the usual signal, appeared as he had done the night before on the

threshold of the hut.

Ra'hel came to meet him, her finger on her lips, and signed to him to

keep silence and to speak low, for Tahoser was sleeping. Poeri, whom

Ra'hel led by the hand to the bed on which Tahoser rested, at once

recognised the sham Hora, whose disappearance had preoccupied him a

good deal, especially since the visit of Timopht, who was looking for

her in his master's name.

Marked astonishment showed in his face as he rose, after having bent

over the bed to make quite certain that the young girl who lay there was

the one whom he had welcomed, for he could not understand how she

happened to be in this place. His look of surprise smote Ra'hel to the

heart. She stood in front of Poeri to read the truth in his eyes, placed

her hands upon his shoulders, and fixing her glance upon him, said, in a

dry, sharp voice which contrasted with her speech, usually as gentle as

the cooing of a dove,--

"So you know her?"

Thamar grinned with satisfaction; she was proud of her perspicacity, and

almost glad to see her suspicions as regarded the stranger partially

justified.

"Yes," replied Poeri, quietly.

The bright eyes of the old woman sparkled with malicious curiosity.

Ra'hel's face resumed its expression of trustfulness; she no longer

doubted her lover.

Poeri told her that a girl calling herself Hora had presented herself at

his home as a suppliant; that he had received her as any guest should

be received; that the next day she had disappeared from among the maids,

and that he could not understand how she happened to be there. He also

added that the emissaries of the Pharaoh were everywhere looking for

Tahoser, the daughter of the high-priest Petamounoph, who had

disappeared from her palace.

"You see that I was right, mistress," said Thamar, triumphantly. "Hora

and Tahoser are one and the same person."

"That may be," replied Poeri, "but there are a number of difficulties

which my reason does not explain. First, why should Tahoser, if it is

she, don this disguise? Next, by what miracle do I meet here the maiden

whom I left last night on the other bank of the Nile, and who certainly

could not know whither I was going?"

"No doubt she followed you," said Ra'hel.

"I am quite sure that at that time there was no other boat on the river

but mine."

"That is the reason her hair was so dripping-wet and her garments

soaked. She must have swum across the Nile."

"That may well be,--I thought for a moment that I had caught sight in

the darkness of a human head above the waters."

"It was she, poor child!" said Ra'hel; "her fatigue and her fainting

corroborate it, for after your departure I picked her up stretched

senseless outside the hut."

"No doubt that is the way things occurred," said the young man. "I can

see the acts, but I cannot understand the motive."

"Let me explain it," said Ra'hel, smiling, "although I am but a poor,

ignorant woman, and you are compared, as regards your vast knowledge, to

the priests of Egypt who study night and day within sanctuaries covered

with mystic hieroglyphs, the hidden meaning of which they alone can

penetrate. But sometimes men, who are so busy with astronomy, music, and

numbers, do not guess what goes on in a maiden's heart. They can see a

distant star in the heavens; they do not notice a love close to them.

Hora--or rather, Tahoser, for it is she--took this disguise to penetrate

into your house and to live near you; jealous, she glided in the shadow

behind you; at the risk of being devoured by the crocodiles in the river

she swam across the Nile. On arriving here she watched us through some

crack in the wall, and was unable to bear the sight of our happiness.

She loves you because you are very handsome, very strong, and very

gentle. But I do not care, since you do not love her. Now do you

understand?"

A faint blush coloured Poeri's cheeks; he feared lest Ra'hel were angry

and spoke thus to entrap him, but her clear, pure glance betrayed no

hidden thought. She was not angry with Tahoser for loving the man whom

she loved herself.

In her dreams Tahoser saw Poeri standing by her; ecstatic joy lighted up

her features, and half raising herself, she seized the hand of the young

man to bear it to her lips.

"Her lips are burning," said Poeri, withdrawing his hand.

"With love as much as with fever," replied Ra'hel, "but she is really

ill. Suppose Thamar were to fetch Mosche. He is wiser than the wise men

and the wizards of Pharaoh, every one of whose wonders he imitates. He

knows the secret properties of plants, and makes drinks of them which

would bring the dead to life. He shall cure Tahoser, for I am not cruel

enough to wish her to lose her life."

Thamar went off grumbling, and soon returned, followed by a very tall

old man, whose majestic aspect inspired reverence. A long white beard

fell down over his breast, and on either side of his brow two huge

protuberances caught and retained the light. They looked like two horns

or two beams. Under his thick eyebrows his eyes shone like fire. He

looked, in spite of his simple dress, like a prophet or a god.

Acquainted with the state of things by Poeri, he sat down by Tahoser's

couch, and said, as he stretched his hand over her: "In the name of the

Mighty One beside whom all other gods are idols and demons,--though you

do not belong to the elect of the Lord,--maiden, be cured!"