“_A greater liar than Moseylama._”—ARABIC PROVERB.
Three weeks passed, in which the Arabian nursed Ralph Trenchard until the
fever, brought on by exhaustion, thirst and terrific heat, had left him,
and left him very sane and not unduly weak, and very full of gratitude
to the beautiful girl whom he seemed to have seen at his bedside day and
night, and who seemed to have changed her dress a hundred times, if she
had changed it once.
The nerve-racking jangle of her bracelets and anklets and the
overwhelming strength of her perfume drove him wellnigh crazy at
times, but, remembering what he would learn from her upon his complete
recovery, he stuffed the ends of the silk sheets into his ears and held
his nostrils forcibly between thumb and finger under cover of the same
luxurious bed-spread.
Truly once or twice he grievously feared for his reason.
He wakened one night to see a remarkably handsome and muscular man, clad
in naught but a loin-cloth, sitting motionless in the middle of the floor
with what looked like a woman’s sandal pressed to his heart; and right
strange and idiotic did he look, too, when he placed the sandal upon the
floor and proceeded to press his forehead upon it. Then, two or three,
or maybe more, nights following—for he had completely lost all sense of
time—he wakened to see nothing less than a lion rolling blithely upon its
back not two yards from him, which, having rolled awhile, proceeded to
gambol playfully about the room, then slouched to the doorway, through
which it disappeared for good. When he turned slowly upon his bed to see
what else might be in store for him, he saw the face of the beautiful
girl looking down upon him from a spot ’twixt floor and ceiling as though
suspended in mid-air.
He laughed when, the delirium passed, these strange occurrences were
explained to him by Zarah, who, just because he felt too uncertain for
the moment about past events to question her about Helen, allowed herself
to be deluded into the belief that he had forgotten the tale Al-Asad had
told when he visited the Bedouin camp disguised as a holy man. Then this
evening he sent the youth who waited upon him to ask her to come to him.
She came quickly, Zarah the beautiful, the tender, the pitiful, Zarah
the most perfect hypocrite and liar, and sat at his feet upon the floor,
appropriately clothed in black and silver, with the lower part of her
lovely face semi-hidden by a yashmak, over which her beautiful eyes gazed
into his with an expression which would have deceived even the astutest
old Holy Father.
“Where is Helen Raynor?”
He asked the question abruptly, taking her unawares.
She had intended telling him—if he should remember the Nubian’s
story—that Helen had returned to Hutah under escort and had perished in
the locust storm, but the abrupt question took her off her guard.
“She is dead and buried in the quicksands,” she lied instantly,
uncontrollably, infinitely unwisely, without giving a thought to the
far-reaching effects of the lie.
“Dead! My God! When? How?”
Seeing the terrible mistake she had made, seeing no way out of it, she
backed the lie, planning in a flash to give a slight foundation to the
disastrous mistake by getting rid of the girl that very night. She laid
her henna-tipped, jewelled hand upon Ralph Trenchard’s and told him the
sad story of Helen Raynor’s death, and mopped her melting, dry eyes with
the corner of the silken sheet as she answered his horrified questions.
“ ... yes! I made a gr-r-reat effort to save her-r, my dear-r
schoolmate,” she said, “but, alas! _kismet_, Allah had decr-r-r-eed
other-r-wise....” Her arms showed like creamy-yellow ivory as she raised
them dutifully above her downcast head in a gesture that showed off her
alluring figure to perfection. “ ... Nay! dear-r Helena said no wor-rd,
she just _died_. Wher-r-re? Oh! in a bed. Yes! here in the mountain
dwelling. By the mercy of Mohammed the Pr-r-ophet did she die, so zat
her face should be a beautiful memor-r-y to her fr-r-ien’s, even if I,
Zarah ...” She struck her breast with a beautiful gesture of resignation,
but not hard enough to mark it, even in her intense grief. “ ... Yea!
even if I, Zarah, shall have to car-r-y the dr-r-readful picture of it,
all br-r-oken, before my eyes until ze day when death shall claim me
also.” When Ralph Trenchard shivered in absolute horror, she shivered
also, perhaps out of sympathy for him, perhaps to impress the thought of
the English girl’s face upon him—who knows? Then she got up and trailed
across the floor to a table laden with drinks of divers sweetness and
coolness.
He looked at the exquisite picture she made, and, longing to hear more
about the girl he loved, stretched out his hand; and she looked at him
with the love of all women in her glorious eyes, and walked back to him
swiftly and with all the grace of her Spanish mother, carrying a tray
with glasses of frothing sherbet, which he did not want or touch.
“Thou art indeed a man,” she said softly in Arabic, as she placed the
tray on a stool, ensconced herself cross-legged upon the divan, and leant
towards him as she lit her cigarette, so that he was almost suffocated
with the pungency of her perfume. “Yea! verily amongst my subjects, who
are of a truth somewhat misshapen about the legs from overmuch bestriding
of the Nejdee, thou art indeed a man!”
She sat and looked at him with all her love in her eyes, whilst he sat
and wished that in some way he could express his gratitude for all she
had done for Helen. But when, after much searching in those portions of
her raiment which looked as though they might be large enough to conceal
a minute pocket, she showed him Helen’s wrist-watch upon her palm, then
he moved close to her and crushed her hand in both of his until he almost
broke her fingers, as she told him how Helen had given it to her in
memory of old times.
“ ... I give it to you,” she said at last.
It was a sacrifice.
Smothered in jewels as she was, yet, with the delight some Orientals have
in the purloined object, she coveted that looted watch more than all her
rubies, emeralds, pearls and diamonds put together in a heap.
He sat for a long time with the tragic, lying, little token in his hand,
then turned and looked into the doe-like eyes, which looked fearlessly
back into his.
“And this is all? You have nothing else, no little thing, a handkerchief,
a hair-pin, anything, no matter how trivial, that belonged to your old
school friend?”
Zarah shook her beautiful head and sighed as she lied once more with the
ease of long-established custom, and the certainty of being able before
long to give some foundation to the lie.
“Nozing! No little zing! We bur-r-ried her-r, as I have told you, in
her-r cloze. She was not beautiful to look upon. _Aï, aï_, she was not
pr-r-etty in ze gr-r-eat sleep, so we bur-r-ied her-r-r deep, deep in ze
comfor-r-ting sands, which tell no tales.”
She rose once more as she spoke and trailed across the marble floor to
the door.
Perchance she wished to study astronomy or, perchance, to draw a
comparison between the beauty of those who live in luxury and the
disfigurement of those who die in battle. Whatever her intent, she
certainly made a striking picture as she leaned against the lintel,
wrapped in a sheath of black and silver.
Ralph Trenchard stared at her, his eyes wandering from the red curls to
the small feet in silver sandals.
She knew his eyes to be upon her, and turned slowly sideways and sighed
as she raised her bare arms above her head so that their creamy whiteness
shone against the purple background of the sky; she sighed again and
pressed her hands upon the spot where by rights her heart should have
been, whilst her melting eyes showed fine specimens of the tears of the
crocodile as she inwardly asked herself if, in the whole world, there was
to be found anything quite so slow as an Englishman.
And he sat and gazed and gazed at the exquisite figure, in which he
saw the golden head and the broad shoulders, the slender waist and the
polished riding-boots, of the girl to whom he had given the gold watch he
held in his hand.
He sat quite still for a long time, stunned with horror, then, quite
unconscious of what he did, caused the beautiful Arabian to totally lose
her bearings, so that fear, jealousy and love linked hands in her heart
and drove her down the road of tragedy which had been marked out for her
through the ages.
Saying nothing, he smiled at her and held out his hand, so that,
completely on the wrong tack, she ran to him, the silver embroidery
glittering in response to her fast-beating heart; then he kissed her hand
in gratitude, which was just about the most idiotic thing he could have
done, and, considering all things, spoke words of equal idiocy into her
willing ear.
“You will come and talk to me to-morrow, will you not?” By talk he meant
talk of Helen, but how on earth was the Arabian to know that? “You will?
Thank you so much, so very much!” He stopped; then, in his craving to
regain his strength so as to get away from the horror of the place where
Helen lay dead, hidden from him for ever in the ghastly sands, misled
the Arabian entirely. “Can I walk about the camp? Can I have a horse or a
camel or something to ride in the desert so as to get really strong?”
“Ride with me?”
She barely whispered the words.
“Rather! If you have the time to spare. It would be awfully kind of you.
Then we could talk about the school you were at and everything.”
By which he meant Helen’s schooldays and Helen’s illness and Helen’s
death; but how was the Arabian, blinded by love and vanity, to know that,
especially as out of sheer gratitude he held her hand in both of his
whilst he talked.
He took her to the steps and watched her descend, then turned and flung
himself upon the divan with the watch against his lips, whilst Zarah the
Cruel, wide awake to the danger of his walking amongst her men whilst
Helen remained in the camp, climbed the narrow path to the building where
dwelt the girl he thought to be dead.
* * * * *
“_May her envier stumble over her hair._”—ARABIC PROVERB.
She had told Ralph Trenchard that the girl was dead, when not only was
she alive, but a person of some consequence in the camp through the
thrice cursed episode of the black mare.
Knowing nothing about constancy and honour and about as much about the
question of nationality in marriage, she was firmly convinced that in
time the white man, forgetting Helen, would succumb to her beauty and
marry her.
But before that thrice blessed day, even before he left his dwelling
to walk with her in the camp as he had just suggested, the girl must
disappear so that the unlucky lie should have a slight foundation of
truth, as have so many falsehoods in the East when sifted to the bottom.
Once the girl was dead she would rely upon her own power over her own
people to prevent the real facts of the case from reaching his ears.
The first thing was to find a way of ridding herself of the girl who
stood as an obstacle in that path of peace and love which ended in the
white man’s heart, but, above all, a way which would cause no comment
amongst the men. The way was shown her, startlingly clear and simple,
within the hour.
She cursed herself, the lie, fate and the black mare as she climbed the
steep steps to Helen’s prison.
If only she had not saved the girl in the first place, if only, in the
second, she had not so foolishly allowed Helen to win the men’s hearts
by her magnificent horsemanship, if only she had not lied. If it had not
been for that thrice cursed episode with Lulah, the mare, she would not
have hesitated an hour ridding herself of the girl, either by sending her
back to civilization under escort or by some more drastic method.
Up till then the white girl had meant nothing more than a prisoner to the
men, and the disappearance of a prisoner, even one of the white race,
would have been no subject of comment amongst them. As it was she could
do nothing.
The Nubian reported that the men constantly talked about Helen; exercised
their best horses in the hope that she would one day ride out in the
desert with them, either to hunt ostrich with cheetahs or to lead them
to the attack on some caravan or company of Bedouins. They had taken to
standing at the foot of the steep steps to gamble upon the chance of
seeing her come out upon the platform, whilst gossip ran high as to the
relationship between her and the white man whom the half-caste had saved
from the sands of death.
So that she cursed herself over and over again for the lie she had told
Ralph.
She lied by nature and by habit; in fact, she found it easier and a good
deal more enjoyable to lie than to tell the truth, but she had lied
without giving herself time to look at the result of this particular lie
from every point of view.
The surly negress, with the gait of a lame hen, rose from her squatting
position as her dire mistress passed up the steps, and retired still
farther into the shadows, where she occupied herself in the pleasant and
stimulating, if not too elegant, task of chewing _Kaat_ as a relaxation
from the dull work of spying upon the gentle white girl.
Zarah stood for a moment and looked through the doorway at Helen. She sat
upon a pile of cushions, reading by the light of a silver lamp hanging
from the ceiling.
Certain that the negress had replaced Namlah for the purpose of carrying
reports about her, she had made up her mind that nothing but reports of
normal behaviour should be carried.
She woefully missed the peace and austerity of the other dwelling, also
the view of the desert through the cleft, and of the plateau with the
rushing, sparkling river; but she made no sign, neither did she complain
about the heat, which was so much greater, nor about the clutter of
Persian rugs, cushions and tables, which only served to intensify it. She
had been told that her old dwelling-place had been required for certain
prisoners, and that on their account she had been forbidden to walk
outside. Not a word of which she believed.
Certain that eyes continually watched her, she forced herself to read;
constantly on the lookout for danger, she smiled upon and spoke gently
to the surly negress, who would not open her lips or respond in any way
to her friendly advances. She was putting up a plucky fight against
loneliness and anxiety. But it was not likely that Zarah should
understand the moral strength which sustained the English girl in the
long, weary days of silence and confinement. It would have suited the
Arabian better to have seen her crying her eyes out, or pacing the floor
in agitation; anything, in fact, rather than sitting quietly reading; so
that she made a quick gesture of impatience, upon which Helen looked up,
shut her book with a snap, and sprang to her feet.
“Zarah!” she cried. “It’s ages since I’ve seen you. You haven’t been
near me since I was moved from my old place. Have you got rid of the bad
prisoners? I am so tired of being cooped up in here!”
Zarah sat down on a pile of cushions and lit a cigarette, as an answer to
her difficulties flashed across her mind at Helen’s words.
“You want to walk? You do not like being a pr-r-isoner-r your-r-self. You
ar-r-e no pr-r-isoner. You must not go acr-r-oss ze plateau, but ozerwise
ze place is all your-r-s.”
As one could not move out of the place without crossing the plateau, the
all-ness seemed to be limited to the building and a small space behind,
surrounded by towering rocks at which even the goats looked askance.
Helen knew it, and suddenly changed the subject. She wanted to get leave
to wander about the place as she used to do; she wanted to find the
secret path and to speak to Namlah; she wanted desperately to escape, but
she knew Zarah’s astuteness and had a faint conception of her intense
hatred for herself; so went warily in her demand for a little more
liberty and changed the subject.
“I wonder what this building was used for?” she said, slowly passing her
finger over a roughly carved stone panel, tracing the outline of a fish,
some kind of a waterfowl and a cross, carved in the centre of a disc in
the fifth century by the Holy Fathers. “The age almost makes me creep,
and I often wonder if the dead fathers come back at night to walk about
their old home.”
Zarah sprang to her feet in a positive whirlwind of gestures against
spirits.
“You br-ring ze bad luck upon your-r-self and ze place, Helena. Nozing
comes her-re or-r leaves her-r-e without my per-r-mission.”
Helen seized the opportunity and crossed quickly to where Zarah stood,
marvelling at her beauty.
“Zarah,” she said sweetly, “_when_ are you going to find the time to
take me to Hutah. I do so want to get back. Do you know what I’ve been
thinking?” Zarah shook her head as she looked at Helen, raging inwardly
at the English girl’s beauty, especially the golden hair, which, for
coolness sake, hung in two great plaits to her knees. “You come with me
and stay with me on a return visit, and together we will try and find
out what has become of Ralph Trenchard, because I am sure he is alive. I
should know if he wasn’t, I am sure I should.”
Zarah turned abruptly away, swinging her cloak about her so that her
mouth was hidden. She wanted to laugh, and she wanted to strike the
English girl for the possessive way in which she always spoke of the sick
man, whom she, Zarah, had nursed so assiduously for days and nights;
also could she willingly have killed her on the spot for the almost
irreparable mistake she had caused her to make by lying about her death.
Helen saw nothing of the girl’s fury; she had bent to pick up a box of
chocolates, whilst the surly negress watched her through the doorway and
inelegantly wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.
“Have a sweet, Zarah,” Helen said gently, offering the box, “and then be
really nice and take me for a walk. I shall die if I don’t get a scramble
amongst the rocks.”
“Wher-r-e do you want to go?” Zarah asked, as she zealously filled her
mouth with the sweetmeats the surly negress coveted.
“I do so want to see the spear which was flung at your father, and
then”—Helen laughed so that her request should not be taken too
seriously—“then couldn’t we walk across the wonderful hidden path to the
desert, then walk back? I’ll pin your train up if you’ve got a safety
pin. You _are_ beautiful, Zarah; I can’t think why you haven’t been
married years ago.”
Zarah whirled round on her like a tiger-cat. In her violent jealousy she
thought the other sneered at her; in her littleness of mind she failed to
catch the ring of honest admiration in the girl’s voice.
“Mar-r-ried!” she shrilled. “I am going to be mar-r-ried soon, and you
won’t be her-r-e to see the cer-r-emony. Oh, do go away!” She pushed
Helen roughly on one side when she put out her hand in congratulation.
“We Ar-r-rabians do not expand over-r ze idea of mar-r-riage as you
English do.” She walked to the door as she added insolently, “We have no
old maids, and I am younger zan you,” then clapped her hands and called
the surly negress shrilly, angrily.
“Methinks a whip upon the soles would hasten thy feet,” she cried
furiously, as the woman ran forward and flung herself face downwards.
“Thou three-footed jackal, get up!” She struck the woman in the face
when she opened her mouth, from which no coherent sound came, owing to
her tongue having been split in her youth for misdemeanour, and struck
again, until Helen caught her by the shoulder and flung her on one side,
whereupon the negress fell on her knees, bowed her head to the ground and
kissed the Arabian’s feet.
“You stop that, Zarah!”
The words sounded like the crack of a whip as the two beautiful girls
faced each other over the crouching woman.
“She’s dumb, and I never knew it! It’s awful!”
“You fool!” replied the Arabian. “Her husband beats her after every meal,
and sometimes between. Get up!” She kicked the woman, who leapt to her
feet and stood shivering with bent head.
“The white woman has a desire for exercise after her long confinement
owing to the unruliness of the prisoners. Dost hear, thou fool? She
wishes to walk across the path of peril even to the far side. It is
dangerous, and I have tried to prevail against her. One step too far, as
thou knowest, and she passes into the keeping of Allah, the one and only
God. Watch thou and pray to Allah for her safe return.”
The negress watched them walk slowly along the narrow path until they
were out of sight; then, with all the cunning of her race in her rolling
eyes, and all a child’s glee at its naughtiness, crept back to the room,
and, sidling along the wall, grabbed a handful of French chocolates. If
she had waited one instant longer she might have seen a hidden figure
crawl away between the rocks as silently as a snake.
Blind Yussuf went quickly amongst the rocks, as at home and as sure of
his footing in his blindness as any goat. He crept through incredibly
small places, swinging himself hand over hand at a height where no person
with vision would have dared to have even moved, arrived at the cleft,
thanks to the short cut, ahead of the girls, dropped like a cat from rock
to rock, then, slipping like a shadow between the boulders, sat down in
the shadow near the thrown spear.
He listened to the girls’ voices as they made their way down the steep
incline. “‘A mouth that prays, a hand that kills.’” He drew a finger down
the scars upon his face as he quoted the proverb and sat like an image of
Fate as the girls stopped quite close to him at the beginning of the path.
“It is quite hard, you see,” said Zarah, as she bent and drove her
fingers through a few inches of the wet sand. “It is not quite three of
your yards wide.”
“But how wonderful!” Helen bent and dug her fingers in, then moved them
along sideways until her whole hand disappeared into soft, wet, warm sand
which pulled it gently. “How dreadful!” Then she laughed. She had found
her way to the secret path and learned its secret. “I tell you what! You
lead the way out, Zarah, then we’ll turn and I’ll tread in our footsteps
and lead you back.”
Zarah laughed also, suddenly, shrilly.
The way showed clear. The end was in sight! Upon the return journey she
had but to push Helen gently and all the difficulties arising out of the
accursed lie would be over.
She made a step and put her sandalled foot upon the path, then turned her
head and stood quite still, her face convulsed with fury.
Like some great guardian spirit Blind Yussuf stood just behind Helen.
“It is not wise, O mistress,” he said gently, “to venture upon the
perilous path this night of strong wind. It bloweth from the west unto
the east, so that the wayfarer is like to be blown into the sands of
death. It is not wise, O mistress, and thanks be to Allah that I heard
voices as I passed and followed with great swiftness. Nay, verily it is
not wise.”
He spoke gently, his great cloak hanging motionless in the still night,
and salaamed to the ground when the Arabian, without a word, beckoned to
the bewildered Helen and swiftly retraced her steps.
Back in her prison, Helen walked out to the space behind the dwelling to
think over matters as the moon rose over the edge of the mountains. She
looked up when a stone rattled down the side to her feet.
Upon a ledge to which a goat would have hardly dared to climb sat Yussuf.
He put his fingers to his lips as he looked down at the girl he could
not see but whom he had recognized by her footstep. “_A ti balak_,” he
whispered, then rose and swung himself from rock to rock by the way he
had come, whilst Helen stood looking up until he disappeared, frozen
with fear for his safety; then, more determined than ever, through his
warning, to try and find a means of escape, turned and entered her
dwelling, just as Zarah entered hers and summoned Al-Asad.