MEA MAKES A PROPOSAL
That sight of the corpses of his tormentors hanging to the thorn trees
was the last that Rupert was destined to see for many a day. Indeed for
weeks, so far as any subsequent memory was concerned, he remained quite
unconscious. Unconscious they bore him in a litter across the desert to
the Black Pass of the further mountains where no white man had set foot,
and on through the heart of them to the hidden oasis around which they
stood like sentinels. Here placed by the waters, beneath the shade of
palms and near to the towering pylons of the ruined temple, stood the
town, Tama, over which by right of descent the lady Mea held her rule.
It was not a large town, for the tribe was small, not numbering more
than four hundred men who could bear arms for, proud of their ancient
blood and hating strangers, they would intermarry with no other folk,
and therefore the old race dwindled. But the land was very rich, and the
houses were well built and stored, since being so few in number there
was little poverty among the children of Tama.
Mea brought Rupert to her own home, which was large, comfortable and
built of stone taken from the ruined temple; surrounded also by gardens.
Here she and Bakhita nursed him as a man has seldom been nursed before.
There were doctors in the tribe who, as is sometimes the case among
African natives, had a certain rude knowledge of surgery.
These men drew the seared flesh over his severed bone so that in this
pure air, and kept clean with astringent ointment, it healed without
mortifying or other complications. They doctored his head also, but in
such matters their skill was little, nor could anything they were able
to do prevent the inflammation from spreading to the other eye. This
passed in time, but its sight was affected so much that when at length
Rupert woke up from his wanderings, he thought that it must be
night-time, for dense darkness hung before him like a veil.
For a long while he could not remember or guess where he was, but by
degrees recollection returned, only he thought it must be that left by a
nightmare.
It was Mea’s voice which in the end opened the closed doors of his
understanding. She had seen the change in Rupert’s face and trembled
with hope, believing that at last his reason had come back to him. For a
while she watched him as he groped about aimlessly with his hands until
she learnt that as they had feared, he was blind. At length, able to
bear the suspense no more, she spoke to him in her quaint English.
“You sleep very long, Rupert Bey. Now you awake, yes?”
He turned his head, listening intently, then said:
“Is that not Mea’s voice, the lady Mea who poured a libation to the gods
at Abu-Simbel?”
“Yes, yes,” she answered eagerly, “of course. No one else have voice
like Mea. All of them stupid and can’t talk English. But,” she went on,
again watching him, for she wished to know how much he remembered, “I
pour that cup over your feet, not over the god, and Bakhita say that why
everything go upside down, and you lose your poor foot.”
Her voice trembled as she spoke the words, and it was only with an
effort that she could add:
“But I think Bakhita silly old woman who talk confounded nonsense. Gods
only old stones, and which way cup tumbled nothing to do with luck.”
Even then and there Rupert laughed, and oh! how she rejoiced to hear
him. Then his poor twisted face grew grave and he said:
“Tell me, Mea, all about my foot and eyes, and what happened. Don’t be
afraid, I can bear it now.”
So she took his hand and told him everything, speaking in her rich and
native Arabic, for the resources of the English language, as she knew
it, were not equal to that tale. Yet in its essence it was short.
Bakhita and she and their attendant travelled the pass of Jebal Marru in
safety, and journeyed on at great speed, for their camels were as good
as any in the desert, pausing a little while at the wells, as the old
wanderers had said. When they drew near the Black Gate, as the gully was
called, by which they approached the oasis, to their joy they met a
hundred of their own men who, summoned by the messenger that they had
sent forward, were coming out to seek them.
At once they returned upon their tracks. Bakhita and the emirs had
wished her, Mea, to go on to her home, but this she refused to do.
Indeed she asserted her authority and took command, pushing back, almost
without rest as fast as the horses could travel, and thus arrived in
time. It seemed that they had seen the smoke of the cooking fire, and it
was this that made them approach the wells so quietly. She described to
Rupert what she felt when she perceived him sitting mutilated upon the
camel furniture with the noose about his throat.
“A flame burnt up within me, the air turned red, the sand of the desert
smelt of blood, and I swore to avenge you or die. Aye, and Rupert Bey, I
did avenge. Not one of them escaped, and with my own hand I drove my
spear through the heart of that dog, Ibrahim. Yes, I left him his eyes
that he might see the stroke. Oh, they never wrung a word from you, he
confessed it; but _he_ cried to me for mercy, and that was the best of
all. He cried to me for mercy, and I gave him the spear.”
Rupert shook her hand loose from his.
“You did wrong,” he answered, “you should have shown mercy. It is
written: ‘Love your enemies’; but I forget, you have never learned.”
“I have learned,” she answered, “but how could I pardon him who would
have forced me, Tama—(she pronounced it Támá as though the word were
spelt with two r’s)—me, born of the ancient blood, into his vile harem?
Nay, that perhaps I might have forgiven, but when I saw you, Rupert Bey,
with that rope about your neck, blinded and with your foot struck off,
all for me—all for me, a stranger to you, not of your family, not of
your house—oh! then I could not forgive. Nay, I wished that he had a
hundred lives that I might take them all, and—be not angry with me—I
wish it still. I am not unkind. Ask my people here if I have ever slain,
or even beaten one of them without a cause, but that sight, it made me
like a leopard whose cubs have been killed before her eyes. Think not
the worse of me. I will repent, I will learn better, but oh! I am glad
that I drove the spear through the heart of Ibrahim and watched him die.
And Bakhita is worse than I am, remember that, she wished to kill him
slowly.”
“What is done, is done,” answered Rupert. “This desert is a cruel place,
and God forgive us all for many things.”
Then he paused, nor did he resist her when timidly she took his hand
again, he who guessed that she had sinned for him.
“Tell me, Mea,” he said, “shall I always be blind as well as maimed?”
“I do not know,” she answered, with a sob. “Our doctors do not know. I
pray not. Oh, I wish that Ibrahim were alive again that he might go
blind for all his days. Nay, pardon me, pardon, but that deed of his was
evil, because you would not worship his accursed prophet, or so he said,
who hated you for other reasons. Now rest you, Bey, rest you; you must
not talk so much. I will sit at your side and keep the flies from off
your face. Rest, and I will sing you to sleep,” and she began to croon
over him some ancient song that may have come down from the days of the
Pharaohs, as a mother croons above a fevered babe.
This was the beginning of Rupert’s life at Tama. By degrees his strength
came back to him, but for three months he remained stone-blind, and
during all that time Mea’s hand was seldom out of his. With the help of
a little dog that he held by a string, she led him to and fro; she
nursed and doctored him; she watched his sleep. He remonstrated, he grew
angry even, and then for a while old Bakhita came, and he was left with
her and the little dog, but next morning it was always Mea’s soft hand
that he felt in his, and not Bakhita’s bony fingers. For a long while he
thought little of all this. Even in health and strength, Rupert was the
least vain of men, but broken, mutilated, scarred, blinded as he was, a
horror such as those that sit the streets of Cairo to beg for alms, it
never even occurred to him that a woman, lovely, and in her own world
high-placed as he knew Mea to be, would think of him as more than a
friend to whom she was grateful for service rendered. Yet at last he did
begin to have misgivings. He could not see her, but there was a note in
her voice when she spoke to him, there was something in her touch when
she took his hand, a kind of caress, which alarmed him.
He took occasion to talk to her about his wife in England, and even gave
her to look at the miniature of Edith, painted upon ivory which he had
in a gold locket. She studied it carefully, said that the lady was
pretty, but cold as the hour before a winter dawn, and then asked if she
were really his wife, or only called so, and she used a phrase that can
best be translated by the words, “for political reasons.”
“Of course,” answered Rupert. “Why do you ask such a question?”
“Because if she is your wife, why is she in England, not in Egypt? She
is not ill and she has no children to tend, is it so?”
Rupert was forced to answer that so far as he was aware, Edith’s health
was good, and of course there were no children. In order to explain her
absence, he added that she did not like heat.
“Ah!” replied Mea enigmatically, and in English, “in cold country, cold
wife; in warm country, kind wife; _that_ all right.”
Then finding further explanation difficult, Rupert called the little
dog, asked her to take him for a walk, and was tenderly led round the
garden.
As soon as his general health was a little re-established, as he could
not see to write, Rupert had dictated a letter to Mea addressed to the
Government in Cairo, and giving an account of the miserable end of his
mission. This letter was sent off by a messenger to Wady-Halfa, together
with another to Edith, also written by Mea. When in after days he saw
the postscript which she added, but had not thought necessary to read to
him, he was somewhat astonished. It ran:
To the white wife of Rupert Bey from Mea, lady of Tama.
Do not trouble for your lord; I look after him well, and love him with
all my heart. Why not? He massacred for me. I hope we not quarrel when
we meet. In England, you head. In Soudan, I head. That good plan; no
trouble at all. I give greetings, and make bow.—Your sister,
Mea.
As it happened, these epistles never reached their destinations, since
within a week the messenger returned saying that the whole country on
the other side of the Jebal Marru was in a ferment. It seemed that
Abdullah, Rupert’s sergeant, had escaped safely, and reported that
Rupert and all his people were killed. Thereon the Government had sent
an expedition against the remnant of the tribe of Ibrahim, sheik of the
Sweet Wells. These people, being warned of their fate, had appealed to
the Khalifa, with the result that several thousand of his adherents,
under a powerful emir, were despatched to their assistance, though
whether from the neighbourhood of Suakim or from the north, Rupert could
not discover. At any rate, they were too many to be attacked by the
little Government expedition, and for the while remained in possession
of the territory between the Jebal Marru and the Nile.
At first Rupert was inclined to believe that Mea had concocted this
story for her own purposes, but Bakhita assured him that it was not so.
She said, moreover, that the Black Pass by which alone the oasis could
be approached was watched day and night to guard against sudden attack
by those who wished to avenge the death of Ibrahim, and every possible
preparation made to fight to the last. No attack came, however, for the
oasis was looked upon as a haunted place among the neighbouring tribes,
who feared its inhabitants also as infidel wizards favoured by the
devil. Their treatment of the band of Ibrahim who had been found hanging
to the trees, and especially of that unlucky sheik himself, had not, it
seemed, lessened this impression.
Subsequently the letters were again despatched in the charge of two
messengers. In due course one of these brought them back for the second
time. He had fallen in with an outpost of the Mahdists and barely
escaped with his life, his companion being overtaken and speared.
After this Rupert abandoned his attempts to communicate with
civilisation. Plunged as he was in utter darkness of mind and body, his
days were sad enough. He had failed in his mission, and the very chiefs
whom he hoped to win over were, he learned, now firm adherents of the
Khalifa. His career was at an end, for he had lost his leg and his
sight, and worst of all, his wife must believe that he was dead. It tore
his heart to think of her and his mother’s distress and agony; but what
could he do except bow his head in patience before the Power that had
decreed these things, and pray that some of the burden might be lifted
from his back?
For he was not dead, nor like to die. Mea, who innocently enough had
brought all this trouble upon him, had saved his life by her sweet care,
as by her swift decision and fierce courage she saved him from the
noose. Rupert believed that he owed his reason to her also, for at times
in the beginning, when all the weight of his terrible misfortunes
pressed upon his brain and crushed him, it seemed like to fail. Then she
who watched him always would see and understand. And, since the customs
of the East are always the same, as “when the evil spirit from God was
upon Saul, David took an harp and played with his hand; so Saul was
refreshed and was well, and the evil spirit departed from him,” so did
Mea take her harp and play before Rupert and sing over him in that full,
sweet voice of hers, the old, old songs of Egypt, some of which she no
longer understood, till at length for a little while he forgot his
sorrows and was refreshed. Moreover, there came to him one happiness,
his sight returned.
He was lying on an angarib, or native bedstead, during the heat of the
afternoon in the large, cool room that had been given to him, since if
he sat up for long his mutilated leg still pained him, whilst over
against him, Mea sat upon a stool. She had been playing to him, singing
as she played; but now her harp-like instrument lay at her side and she
watched him in silence, her chin resting upon her hand. He knew that she
was looking at him, for he could feel her gaze, and was amusing himself
by trying to recollect the exact fashion of her beauty, which he had
really seen but thrice—in the temple at Abu-Simbel; when she bade
farewell to him in the pass; and lastly, when she appeared again at the
head of her charging regiment and decreed the doom of Ibrahim and his
brigands.
This last time did not count, however, for then she was quite changed, a
valkyrie, an animated Vengeance, not a woman. Now he amused himself by
attempting to reconcile these two countenances that both were hers, and
in wondering what sort of face she wore to-day. Useless as it was, from
old habit, he looked towards her through the pitchy, maddening darkness
that hemmed him in like a wall.
He looked, and lo! he saw. On that darkness there appeared something
soft and cloudy, and he knew that it was a woman’s outspread hair. Then
within the frame of hay arose a ghost-like face, and in it shining eyes,
from which tears ran down, and on it such a look of utter tenderness as
he never, never had beheld. Oh! it was beautiful, that face; always it
would have been beautiful, but to this man who, after those weeks of
utter blindness, beheld it first of anything, it was like a vision out
of heaven. And the look upon it! Surely that, too, had been borrowed
from some pitying angel in heaven. Rupert turned his head, then looked
again, thinking that it would be gone; but no, it still was there, and
now he could even see the hand beneath the chin and the quivering of the
lips which strove to stifle back a sob.
“Mea,” he said, in English, “why do you cry?”
She sprang up, dashing the tears from her eyes with the back of her
hand.
“I no cry,” she answered, in a merry voice. “Bey, you not hear me cry.”
“No, Mea; but I saw you. Your cheek was all wet, and you sat with your
chin upon your hand.”
She uttered some Arabic exclamation of joy, then snatched the linen veil
or wimple from her head and threw it over his face.
“Look no more,” she said, “not good for your eye to look too much or you
go blind again. Also,” she added, with a happy laugh, “great shame of
you to spy upon a lady when she no think you see. You should tell her
first you going look, then she put on proper face.”
“I don’t want to see any other,” answered Rupert gently. “At first I
thought that I dreamt, and that it was an angel, only angels don’t cry.”
“I think that angels cry always if they see down here—such a lot to cry
over, Rupert Bey.”
Then she tried to control herself for a moment, and failed miserably,
for she began to weep and sob outright. She threw herself upon her knees
beside him and said:
“You ask me why I cry, I _(sob)_ tell you _(sob)_ all the truth. Because
you made like that for me, and—I no can bear it, it break my heart, for
my heart love you very much, you want to die for me; I—I want to live
for you.”
Rupert sat up on the angarib, throwing the white veil from his head,
whereon, at once forgetting herself in the danger to his new-born sight,
she placed her little hand across his eyes, and held it there. The
crisis had come, and he knew it; but how to deal with it, he did not
know.
“Don’t do that, dear Mea,” he said, in a troubled voice. “If you think
the light will harm me, tie the veil over my eyes. Then we will talk.”
She came behind him and obeyed, while Rupert felt her hot tears falling
on his hair. It was an awful moment, but he sat still, holding the
bedstead with his hand and uttering no tender word of the many that
rushed unbidden to his lips.
“Now, Mea,” he said, “sit down; no, not on the angarib—there on the
stool.”
“I sit,” she answered humbly. “Talk on.”
“Mea,” he continued, with a desperate effort, “all this won’t do. You
are sorry for me, and it upsets you and makes you say things you must
not. Mea, I am married.”
He stopped, but she made no answer. He began to wonder what she was
doing, or if she had gone away and left him, as he devoutly hoped.
Unable to bear it any more he pushed the bandage from his forehead. No;
there she sat silent and pained.
“I am married,” he remarked again, not knowing what else to say.
Then she looked up and asked: “You hate me, Rupert Bey?”
“Of course not,” he answered indignantly; “very much the reverse.”
“I thank you. Then you think me not nice, ugly?”
“Indeed, no. You are one of the most beautiful women I ever saw.”
“I thank you,” she said again, “I like hear you say that though you no
mean it. Then you angry with me because you lose your foot and eye and
get your people killed, though that old Bakhita’s fault, not mine.”
“Please don’t think so, Mea. It was not you or Bakhita, it was what you
call Kismet.”
“Yes, I think it Kismet too. Kismet all round, Kismet here,” and she
laid her hand upon her bosom. “Well, then, you not hate, you not think
ugly, you not angry, and I—oh! I _love,_” and she put such tender
passion into the word that the room seemed full of it—“and I great lady
too in my own place, I, Tama, not dirt-born. Why you no take me? See
now!” and she stood up before him and turned slowly round, “I not
beautiful as you say, too small, too thin, but I not so bad! I make you
good wife, I give you children, I love you always till I die. My people
hate strangers, still they very glad you take me, they love you too,
they praise you much, they think you bravest man in world; my emirs ask
me this morning if I married to you yet as they want make feast.”
Rupert pulled down the bandage over his eyes again; he thought it best,
muttering something about the light hurting him.
“Mea,” he said, in despair, “don’t you understand that I am already
married?”
“What that matter?” she asked. “Man can have two wives, four if he
like.”
“He can’t,” answered Rupert. “I beg you—don’t go on. It is not right; it
is more than I can bear. By our English law, he can only have one wife,
no one else—no one at all. You must have heard it.”
“Oh, yes, I hear, there at Luxor, but I think that all silly missionary
talk. White people do many things they say they should not do—I see them
and make note. Who know how many wives you have? But if you no want me,
_mafeesh_—all done with. I not trouble you any more; I go and die, that
all.”
“Unless you stop soon, you will make me go and die,” he said faintly.
“Mea, it is cruel of you to talk like that. Listen now, and do not be
angry, do not think that I am treating you ill. Oh, my dearest friend,
sit there and listen!”
Then giving up English, in which she would have found it difficult to
understand his arguments, he addressed her in Arabic, expounding our
Western doctrines and showing her that what she thought right and
proper, in the West was held a crime; that he had passed his word, and
it could not be broken, that he would rather die than break it, that his
honour was on it, and that if he violated his honour, his soul would be
as scarred and mutilated as his body was that day.
Mea listened intently, and at last began to understand.
“Now are you angry with me?” he ended. “And do you still wish me to stay
here when I tell you that if I do there must be no more of this
love-talk between us which, in the end, might bring me to ruin? If that
is too much to ask, then to-morrow I go hence into the desert to—” and
he stopped.
“Nay,” she replied, in Arabic, “I am not angry with you, Rupert Bey. I
am angry with myself who tempted you to break your own law. Oh! you are
good, the best of men that I have known, and I will learn to be good
like you—only tell me not that I must cease to love you, for that I
cannot do; and oh! speak no more of going hence into the desert to die,
for then I should die also. Nay, bide here and be my friend and brother
since you may not be my husband. Stay and forgive me who am ignorant,
who have other customs, and was not taught thus. Say that you will
stay.”
“Yes,” he answered, in a hoarse voice, for he was more affected than he
dared to show, “I will stay till I can find an opportunity of going
home; and oh! Mea, do not suppose that I think the worse of you. I
honour you, Mea; next to my wife and mother, you are the dearest to me
of any in the world. While I live, I will remain your friend. See, this
is the token of it;” and leaning forward, he searched for her hand and
found it, then lifted it to his forehead and touched it with his lips.
Next instant he heard the rustle of her robes as she left the room.
Thus did Rupert keep the oath that he had sworn to his mother years
before and come out safely from the fires of a very fierce dilemma, and
thus did a star arise upon the twilight of Mea’s soul—a far, cold star,
that yet was destined to lead her on to wondrous heights, whence the way
of the flesh seemed very distant, and that of the spirit very near.