“_Him who goodness will not mend, evil will not mend._”—ARABIC
PROVERB.
Zarah stood at the point of the great V which cleft the outer ring of the
mountains, and from which started the path leading down to the plateau.
That the dying Sheikh’s daughter was expected there was no doubt, as
showed the bonfires upon the mountain’s highest peaks, streaking the
purple, starlit sky with orange flames; yet, save for the Arab who stood
patiently near the spear which marked the beginning of the hidden path,
with the camels which had brought them safely and at full speed across
the desert and the quicksands, there was neither sign of life nor shout
of greeting nor firing of rifles in salutation.
She looked back across the limitless, billowing desert, showing under
the stars like a great ocean of endless, unbroken waves frozen into
immobility as they surged from north to south, by some magician’s hand.
She laughed softly at the thought of the civilization she had dropped,
as one drops an outworn cloak from about the shoulders, and had left for
ever upon the outskirts of the great desert of which she was the child.
She looked ahead into the future and down the narrow path dividing her
from the dying man, over whose kingdom in the heart of the mountains she
would so shortly rule.
Giving no thought to her father in her utter selfishness, she laughed
aloud in sheer delight at the picture conjured up by her ambition,
laughed until the sweet, soft notes were flung against the rocks by the
hot wind from the south and carried through the cleft down to the open
space where they were thrown in echo, from this side to that side over
the sparkling waters until they broke and were lost in the baying of the
great dogs which, eyes red with hate and ruffs upstanding, fought to get
out of the kennels so as to reach the woman they hated.
She shivered at the sound, although the hot wind from the south enfolded
her like a blanket, and, suddenly overwhelmed with a desire to see some
living creature in the place of death and shadows, took a quick step
forward, then shrank behind a rock.
Upon a ledge, high up on the mountainside, to which it seemed that only a
goat could possibly have climbed, sat blind Yussuf, singing to himself:
“‘The corn passeth from hand to hand, but it cometh at last to the mill.’”
He sang the words of the proverb as he sat staring down at Zarah the
Cruel as though he had eyes in the scarred face with which to see her.
“It cometh at last to the mill! It cometh at last to the mill!”
He repeated the words over and over again whilst the rosary of Mecca
slipped between his sensitive fingers, and the girl, steeped in the
superstition of her race, spread hers in the gesture to ward off
misfortune and touched an amulet of good luck which hung about her neck.
Did he know she was there? Had he come, ironically, to welcome her and
to bid her hasten to her father’s side, as had bidden the man who had
awaited her at Hutah with swiftest camels? Or had he, dire figure of ill
omen, been set upon her path by Fate this night, when the scorching wind
blew from the south heralding the storm? There was no time to ponder the
question; there was only just time enough in which to register a vow to
lay some cunning trap into which the blind man should set his feet and
find his death as though by dire mischance. No! there was no time, for
she suddenly fathomed the meaning of the intense silence and stillness,
and, gathering her draperies about her, slipped as noiselessly as some
tiger cat under the ledge upon which the blind man sat, and down the
steep path.
She did not look up, she did not look back, else might she have seen the
face of Yussuf the blind turned in her direction, with the scarred mouth
twisted in a smile. She sped as quickly as the path would allow her,
spurred by the thought of the men who, gathered round their dying chief,
only waited for the failing heart to cease beating to acclaim one of
themselves as his successor in her place.
She knew full well the man who would be chosen if she failed to reach her
father in time. Even Al-Asad, half-caste, bloodthirsty, ambitious, as
physically powerful as the lion after which he had been named, outcast
from the Benoo-Harb tribe, but more through the fact that his father
had been a Nubian slave than for the crimes he had committed in the
light-heartedness of youth.
As she ran she conjured up a picture of the man who had taken blind
Yussuf’s place at her father’s right hand and who had dared to look at
her with something more than the respect due to the Sheikh’s daughter in
his handsome eyes.
There was no sign of any man as she fled across the plateau, neither—the
hour for sleep having come for the women and children—was there sound of
life, but a great light shone through the barred windows of the Hall of
Judgment far up on the mountainside. She raced up the steps and stood,
breathless, in the doorway, unseen by the men gathered about the man
whom they loved and who lay dying of the wounds received in the last
great fight with the Bedouins, who had fallen upon the brigands as they
peacefully returned, with much spoil, from raiding a caravan journeying
towards Oman.
Knowing the effect of mystery upon her race, she wrapped herself in her
great white cloak, pulled the veils about her face and a yashmak beneath
her eyes, which flashed with no soft light. She cursed beneath her breath
when the men rose and spoke together, looking towards Al-Asad, who
stared down at the Sheikh lying so quietly at his feet.
She had arrived too late; her father had died without blessing her and
proclaiming her his successor.
She cared nothing about the blessing, but she knew that without the
proclamation she stood no earthly chance against the claim Al-Asad would
enforce through sheer brute force.
Superstition helped her in her need.
She believed that the soul lingered in the body for three days after the
heart had ceased to beat, and she acted unhesitatingly, fearlessly, upon
the belief.
She bent and picked up a lance lying upon the ground, and raised it above
her head just as, without seeing her in the shadows, the men moved in a
body towards Al-Asad.
She pitted her indomitable will against the mighty power of death, she
flung it across the space which divided her from her father, and, for a
fraction of time, pulled him back to the world he had loved exceeding
well.
“Hail! father!” she shouted.
“Hail! father!” she shouted again as the men turned swiftly in her
direction, then moved hastily backwards when the right hand of the man
whom they supposed dead, moved.
Motionless from fear, they stared at, without recognizing, Zarah as she
stood, tall and straight, in the shadows, wrapped in white from head to
foot, her eyes half closed under the supreme effort she was making, her
right hand raised, holding a spear ready for throwing.
She bent a little forward as she made one last bid for power, and at the
sonorousness of her voice, which sounded like the calling of the evil one
in the mountains, the men touched the amulets around their necks.
“Hail! father!” she shouted once again, until her words seemed to beat
like wings against the walls, which had been built by holy hands. “Speak,
father, ere thou passeth on. Speak! Speak! Speak!”
Al-Asad, the lion-hearted, backed against the wall as the Sheikh, his
feet upon the edge of the world to come, slowly turned his head towards
his daughter; the others flung the end of their cloaks across their eyes,
touching their amulets. The girl stood quite still, her face dead white,
her nostrils pinched, her breath whistling between her closed teeth.
“Farewell, daughter. Rule wisely in my stead. Take only from those who
have more than is necessary for life. Lift up the fallen, help the needy,
spare not in charity towards my brother Yussuf, with whose safekeeping I
charge thee lest evil befall thee. Throw thou the spear ere I close my
eyes, as a sign that thou steppest into my shoes, O my daughter.”
The Sheikh’s words rang clear as a bell but as though from a long
distance; his eyes did not waver as the spear, thrown with unerring aim,
flashed across the room; he whispered “Mercedes,” and closed them for
ever as it buried itself in the cushions at his feet.
Zarah the Cruel had triumphed for a moment over death, but she had
caught the look of dismay on Al-Asad’s face and the stealthy movement of
the men’s hands towards their cummerbunds. Without hesitating, with no
intention of allowing a second to elapse before driving her victory home,
she passed slowly up the room towards the dais, unarmed, fearless in the
strength of her tremendous personality.
She took no notice of the men as, wrapped in her cloak and veils, she
slowly ascended the steps of the dais and knelt to kiss her father; she
looked down upon him for a moment, then taking a massive gold ring from
the first finger of his right hand, slipped it on her own, and rose to
her feet.
“’Tis she,” whispered Bowlegs. “’Tis Zarah the Cruel!”
“Nay, brother, it cannot be; she was a child bordering upon womanhood.
This is a woman grown, who is as the gazelle in her walk and as the
jasmine in her perfume. Maybe ’tis the spirit of her mother, who has come
to meet her lord, or perchance——”
They stopped speaking, and took a step nearer the centre of the dais as
Zarah played her trump card.
She dropped the veils from her head, the yashmak from before her face,
and the cloak from her shoulders, standing revealed in the garments she
had donned at Hutah in the oasis of Hareek.
She was ravenous from hunger and almost dead with fatigue, but she
stood without a tremor, glittering from head to foot in the jewels
which embroidered the voluminous orange-satin trousers, the golden,
travel-stained sandals, and the bolero, which allowed the satin skin to
show at the waist. Her face was white, her crimson mouth parted in a
slight smile; her yellow eyes passed slowly from one face to the other
and on to the next of those fierce, unscrupulous men, who watched her for
a while and then, with all the inconstancy of the Arab, reverted, with
the exception of Al-Asad, to their former allegiance as they succumbed to
the call of her beauty.
A sudden, tremendous shout of reception and of welcome went up:
“_Ahlan wasahlan! Ahlan wasahlan!_”
They shouted the words over and over again, until the women and children
wakened on the far side of the mountains and the birds, which inhabited
the secluded spot, rose twittering and screaming in clouds, to be whirled
this way and that way by the wind from the south, which seemed, in its
suffocating heat, to have swept across the open mouth of hell.
Slowly Zarah the beautiful, the relentless, raised her right hand, upon
which shone her father’s ring, above her head to quell the tumult, and,
as a great silence fell, stretched it out to the men, who, with the
exception of Al-Asad, rushed forward and, kneeling, touched her sandalled
foot, acknowledging her as chief.
She had won.
There was no tenderness, no love, in her eyes as she looked down upon
them, neither was there softness in her heart as she looked into the
future. She would rule the men with an iron hand and drive them with a
whip of steel, favouring those who did her bidding, treading beneath her
heel those who rebelled until she ground them in the dust. She would be
their _hadeeyah_, the woman to lead them into battle, even as had led
Ayesha, the wife of Mohammed, the Prophet of Allah, the one and only God;
she would make the mountain home a corner of paradise and her dwelling a
place of gold and precious stones, as a frame to her beauty.
“I stand in my father’s place, O men!” she cried. “I have taken the
reigns of government from the Sheikh’s fingers, which are locked in those
of death. Obey me and I will raise you to heights you—nay, not one of
you—have dreamed of; rebel, and I will set your bodies upon the highest
peak as food for vultures. I will go forth with you, lead you—nay, give
ear until I have come to the end of my words, for I will not speak again.
Yea! I will lead you forth and bring you back with gold and cattle and
fair women, until the fame of these rocks is spread from the north to the
south and from the east to the west. I will have none but the beautiful,
none but the brave, about me to do my bidding. I——”
She stopped short at a sound from the far end of the hall and raised her
head. Yussuf, blind, scarred, terrible to behold, stared back at her from
the shadows of the door, challenging her proud statement with his empty
orbits, repudiating her words without a sound or movement.
“ ... save for Yussuf the Blind,” she concluded slowly, as she raged
inwardly at the man’s temerity, “whom I must needs take to my heart in
obedience to my father’s dying wish.”
She gave no outward sign of the rage which swept her as she finished
speaking, but she looked round for someone upon whom to vent her wrath
and found him in Al-Asad, who leant against the wall, watching her from
out the corner of his eyes.
“Thou!” she said, her voice cutting across the silence like a whip.
“Whyfore standest thou when others kneel?”
“The lion does not flee before the gazelle!” replied Al-Asad, who had
loved her from the first moment he had seen her.
Zarah made a little motion of her hand which brought the men to their
feet, then beckoned Al-Asad, who walked slowly towards her and into the
trap she had set for him. She had more than one weapon in her armoury and
more than one form of punishment in her mind.
That the man loved her, in his savage way, she had always known; that
he had worked to succeed the dead Sheikh and thereby to force her
into becoming his own woman if she wished to rule, she had guessed
intuitively, and in a second of time had thought out a plan in which,
through his humiliation, she could revenge herself for the insult.
She was well above medium height, but seemed small beside Al-Asad as he
towered above her, mighty arms folded across his breast, looking down
upon her beauty.
He was a magnificent animal, with all an animal’s instincts and a dog’s
fidelity, but she feared him not a bit. She looked up at the handsome
face with the almost negroid lips and into the flashing eyes and down
into the heart, as childish as it was vain, and smiled and raised her
hand when he made a quick step forward.
“I am footsore,” she said softly. “I have cut my sandals upon the rocky
path.”
She may have heard the sharp intake of breath, but she took no notice
when the men turned, the one to the other, as Al-Asad knelt. His fingers
trembled in the tumult of his love for the beautiful woman as he
unfastened the knotted ribbons of her sandals, his heart leapt as he
bent and kissed the little foot, leaving his manhood in the dust beneath
it. He sprang to his feet, holding the golden sandal against his breast,
shrinking back against the wall at the men’s laughter, in which the woman
he loved joined.
“Neither does the gazelle fear the dead lion,” she mocked as he fled from
the hall out into the night and up to his dwelling upon the mountainside,
where he flung himself full length upon the ground with the golden sandal
against his lips.
“I love thee, love thee, love thee!” he whispered, “and will serve thee
to my last hour and with all my strength. If I cannot be thy king, thy
master, I will be thy slave. One day perchance, thou too wilt waken to
love and learn what suffering means.”
If he had but known, love had come to her, love for the white man,
causing her to suffer through the chafe of the chains which bound her.
Zarah watched the great figure as he fled past blind Yussuf and through
the doorway out into the night, then smiled, and stooping, lifted her
cloak and spread it across the dead Sheikh.
“I will sleep in the bed of my fathers,” she said curtly. “Bring me meat
and wine to my bedchamber. To-morrow I will commit my dead father to the
sands and will then make choice, amongst the slaves, for those who will
attend me both night and day. Obey me, and it will be well with all of
you; resist me, and your lives will be even darker than this night of
storm.”
The men, so long held upon the leash by the dead Sheikh, so long baffled
in their fierce desires, shouted their praises as they made a way for
her. She passed them without looking at them, glittering with jewels,
superb in her strength.
She climbed the steps leading to the dwelling wherein her father had
slept, and up to the roof, and, leaning on the balustrade, raised her
face to the sky which showed sullen and starless.
Great sandstorms do not sweep the deserts of Arabia bringing devastation
in their path, but the hot wind from the south will lift the topmost
layer of sand hundreds of feet into the air, where it hangs like a pall
across the heavens, causing men to hide their faces and cattle to flee
for shelter from the terrific heat which descends from it, scorching the
earth.
She walked to the corner of the roof from which, through the cleft in
the rocks, the red sands of the desert could be seen stretching in great
waves away to the south. She stared down and drew her hands across her
eyes, and stared again; drew back with a half-uttered cry of fear, then
moved forward, leaning far over the coping, looking down.
At the very edge of the quicksands and as far out across the great
waste as eye could see, white shapes danced, and whirled, and bowed,
retreating, advancing, whirling hand in hand, flinging their white
raiment up to the sky, which hung, like a dun-coloured ceiling, low down
above their caperings.
The scorching, sand-laden wind blew against her lips and through her hair
and seemed to press like a great bar of red-hot iron against the satin
skin which showed beneath her bodice, and yet she stood looking down,
watching the light flicker this way and that way over the quicksands, and
the ghostly forms running up in pairs, in ones, in twos, in files up and
down and over the sand-waves until they melted into the far distance.
She had heard the tale of the half-starved, half-witted, degenerate
races which are supposed to inhabit the mysterious, unexplored depths
of the great desert; living like lizards, worshipping the elements,
inter-marrying until brain and body are sapped of strength, and for the
first time she felt grateful for the ring of quaking sand which kept her
safe from robbers, beasts, and such foul creatures as those which danced
so merrily under the lowering sky.
She loved beauty, she loved strength, and watched with a shudder until
the last white figure, leaping and bounding, had followed its fellows
back to the unexplored regions of the desert, then knelt and bowed her
beautiful head almost to the ground.
But she knelt before the scorching flames of the love which had sprung up
in her heart for Ralph Trenchard as she had lain in his arms. Not for a
day, nor for an hour of a day, had he been out of her thoughts since the
morning of the accident. She lay awake at night thinking of the handsome
face bent down to hers; she thrilled at the thought of his arms about
her; she had thought of him unceasingly as she raced death to reach her
father; she had sworn by the beard of the Prophet, which being a soulless
woman she had no right to do, to bring him some day to her mountain home
and for ever to her feet.
She stretched out her arms and called him by name, scorched by the
hot wind which had twisted the sand into dancing shapes, sending them
capering and leaping this way and that way, in the cross-eddies from the
east, a ghostly phenomenon seen once in a lifetime, if that.
She ran to the side and looked out across the desert, which lay silent,
foreboding, empty, and shivered under a sudden premonition of evil.
“Where are you?” she cried, beating her hands upon the burning stones.
“Where are you? I love you, love you, love you, and I am calling you.”
There was no answer.
* * * * *
At that very moment Ralph Trenchard rode into the holiday camp pitched by
Helen Raynor and her grandfather—Egypt’s Water Finder. They had pitched
it some fifty miles west of Ismailiah whilst they waited to start upon
an expedition into Arabia, which had for its object the discovery of
water hidden in the heart of a range of mountains, as described upon
vellum inscribed by the Holy Palladius.