_The New Crusader in Peril_
NOTWITHSTANDING all the prescient care of the Duke and Duchess of
Bellamont, it was destined that the stout arm of Colonel Brace should
not wave by the side of their son when he was first attacked by the
enemy, and now that he was afflicted by a most severe if not fatal
illness, the practised skill of the Doctor Roby was also absent. Fresh
exemplification of what all of us so frequently experience, that the
most sagacious and matured arrangements are of little avail; that no
one is present when he is wanted, and that nothing occurs as it was
foreseen. Nor should we forget that the principal cause of all these
mischances might perhaps be recognised in the inefficiency of the third
person whom the parents of Tancred had, with so much solicitude and at
so great an expense, secured to him as a companion and counsellor in his
travels. It cannot be denied that if the theological attainments of
the Rev. Mr. Bernard had been of a more profound and comprehensive
character, it is possible that Lord Montacute might have deemed it
necessary to embark upon this new crusade, and ultimately to find
himself in the deserts of Mount Sinai. However this may be, one thing
was certain, that Tancred had been wounded without a single sabre of
the Bellamont yeomanry being brandished in his defence; was now lying
dangerously ill in an Arabian tent, without the slightest medical
assistance; and perhaps was destined to quit this world, not only
without the consolation of a priest of his holy Church, but surrounded
by heretics and infidels.
‘We have never let any of the savages come near my lord,’ said Freeman
to Baroni, on his, return.
‘Except the fair young gentleman,’ added True-man, ‘and he is a
Christian, or as good.’
‘He is a prince,’ said Freeman, reproachfully. ‘Have I not told you so
twenty times? He is what they call in this country a Hameer, and lives
in a castle, where he wanted my lord to visit him. I only wish he had
gone with my lord to Mount Siny; I think it would have come to more
good.’
‘He has been very attentive to my lord all the time,’ said Trueman;
‘indeed, he has never quitted my lord night or day; and only left his
side when we heard the caravan had returned.’
‘I have seen him,’ said Baroni; ‘and now let us enter the tent.’
Upon the divan, his head supported by many cushions, clad in a Syrian
robe of the young Emir, and partly covered with a Bedouin cloak,
lay Tancred, deadly pale, his eyes open and fixed, and apparently
unconscious of their presence. He was lying on his back, gazing on the
roof of the tent, and was motionless. Fakredeen had raised his wounded
arm, which had fallen from the couch, and had supported it with a pile
made of cloaks and pillows. The countenance of Tancred was much changed
since Baroni last beheld him; it was greatly attenuated, but the eyes
glittered with an unearthly fire.
‘We don’t think he has ever slept,’ said Freeman, in a whisper.
‘He did nothing but talk to himself the first two days,’ said Trueman;
‘but yesterday he has been more quiet.’
Baroni advanced to the divan behind the head of Tancred, so that he
might not be observed, and then, letting himself fall noiselessly on the
carpet, he touched with a light finger the pulse of Lord Montacute.
‘There is not too much blood here,’ he said, shaking his head.
‘You don’t think it is hopeless?’ said Freeman, beginning to blubber.
‘And all the great doings of my lord’s coming of age to end in this!’
said Trueman. ‘They sat down only two less than a hundred at the
steward’s table for more than a week!’
Baroni made a sign to them to leave the tent. ‘God of my fathers!’ he
said, still seated on the ground, his arms folded, and watching Tancred
earnestly with his bright black eyes; ‘this is a bad business. This is
death or madness, perhaps both. What will M. de Sidonia say? He loves
not men who fail. All will be visited on me. I shall be shelved. In
Europe they would bleed him, and they would kill him; here they will not
bleed him, and he may die. Such is medicine, and such is life! Now, if I
only had as much opium as would fill the pipe of a mandarin, that would
be something. God of my fathers! this is a bad business.’
He rose softly; he approached nearer to Tancred, and examined his
countenance more closely; there was a slight foam upon the lip, which he
gently wiped away.
‘The brain has worked too much,’ said Baroni to himself. ‘Often have I
watched him pacing the deck during our voyage; never have I witnessed
an abstraction so prolonged and so profound. He thinks as much as M.
de Sidonia, and feels more. There is his weakness. The strength of my
master is his superiority to all sentiment. No affections and a great
brain; these are the men to command the world. No affections and a
little brain; such is the stuff of which they make petty villains. And a
great brain and a great heart, what do they make? Ah! I do not know.
The last, perhaps, wears off with time; and yet I wish I could save this
youth, for he ever attracts me to him.’
Thus he remained for some time seated on the carpet by the side of the
divan, revolving in his mind every possible expedient that might benefit
Tancred, and finally being convinced that none was in his power. What
roused him from his watchful reverie was a voice that called his name
very softly, and, looking round, he beheld the Emir Fakredeen on tiptoe,
with his finger on his mouth. Baroni rose, and Fakredeen inviting him
with a gesture to leave the tent, he found without the lady of the
caravan.
‘I want the Rose of Sharon to see your lord,’ said the young Emir, very
anxiously, ‘for she is a great hakeem among our people.’
‘Perhaps in the desert, where there is none to be useful, I might not be
useless,’ said Eva, with some reluctance and reserve.
‘Hope has only one arrow left,’ said Baroni, mournfully.
‘Is it indeed so bad?’
‘Oh! save him, Eva, save him!’ exclaimed Fakredeen, distractedly.
She placed her finger on her lip.
‘Or I shall die,’ continued Fakredeen; ‘nor indeed have I any wish to
live, if he depart from us.’
Eva conversed apart for a few minutes with Baroni, in a low voice, and
then drawing aside the curtain of the tent, they entered.
There was no change in the appearance of Tancred, but as they approached
him he spoke. Baroni dropped into his former position, Fakredeen fell
upon his knees, Eva alone was visible when the eyes of Tancred met hers.
His vision was not unconscious of her presence; he stared at her with
intentness. The change in her dress, however, would, in all probability,
have prevented his recognising her even under indifferent circumstances.
She was habited as a Bedouin girl; a leathern girdle encircled her
blue robe, a few gold coins were braided in her hair, and her head was
covered with a fringed kefia.
Whatever was the impression made upon Tancred by this unusual
apparition, it appeared to be only transient. His glance withdrawn, his
voice again broke into incoherent but violent exclamations. Suddenly he
said, with more moderation, but with firmness and distinctness, ‘I am
guarded by angels.’
Fakredeen shot a glance at Eva and Baroni, as if to remind them of the
tenor of the discourse for which he had prepared them.
After a pause he became somewhat violent, and seemed as if he would have
waved his wounded arm; but Baroni, whose eye, though himself unobserved,
never quitted his charge, laid his finger upon the arm, and Tancred did
not struggle. Again he spoke of angels, but in a milder and mournful
tone.
‘Methinks you look like one,’ thought Eva, as she beheld his spiritual
countenance lit up by a superhuman fire.
After a few minutes, she glanced at Baroni, to signify her wish to leave
the tent, and he rose and accompanied her. Fakredeen also rose, with
streaming eyes, and making the sign of the cross.
‘Forgive me,’ he said to Eva, ‘but I cannot help it. Whenever I am in
affliction I cannot help remembering that I am a Christian.’
‘I wish you would remember it at all times,’ said Eva, ‘and then,
perhaps, none of us need have been here;’ and then not waiting for his
reply, she addressed herself to Baroni. ‘I agree with you,’ she said.
‘If we cannot give him sleep, he will soon sleep for ever.’
‘Oh, give him sleep, Eva,’ said Fakredeen, wringing his hands; ‘you can
do anything.’
‘I suppose,’ said Baroni, ‘it is hopeless to think of finding any opium
here.’
‘Utterly,’ said Eva; ‘its practice is quite unknown among them.’
‘Send for some from El Khuds,’ said Fakredeen. ‘Idle!’ said Baroni;
‘this is an affair of hours, not of days.’
‘Oh, but I will go,’ exclaimed Fakredeen; ‘you do not know what I can do
on one of my dromedaries! I will----’
Eva placed her hand on his arm without looking at him, and then
continued to address Baroni.
‘Through the pass I several times observed a small white and yellow
flower in patches. I lost it as we advanced, and yet I should think
it must have followed the stream. If it be, as I think, but I did not
observe it with much attention, the flower of the mountain arnica, I
know a preparation from that shrub which has a marvellous action on the
nervous system.’
‘I am sure it is the mountain arnica, and I am sure it will cure him,’
said Fakredeen.
‘Time presses,’ said Eva to Baroni. ‘Call my I maidens to our aid; and
first of all let us examine the borders of the stream.’
While his friends departed to exert themselves, Fakredeen remained
behind, and passed his time partly in watching Tancred, partly in
weeping, and partly in calculating the amount of his debts. This
latter was a frequent, and to him inexhaustible, source of interest and
excitement. His creative brain was soon lost in reverie. He conjured up
Tancred restored to health, a devoted friendship between them, immense
plans, not inferior achievements, and inexhaustible resources. Then,
when he remembered that he was himself the cause of the peril of that
precious life on which all his future happiness and success were to
depend, he cursed himself. Involved as were the circumstances in which
he habitually found himself entangled, the present complication was
certainly not inferior to any of the perplexities which he had hitherto
experienced.
He was to become the bosom friend of a being whom he had successfully
plotted to make a prisoner and plunder, and whose life was consequently
endangered; he had to prevail on Amalek to relinquish the ransom which
had induced the great Sheikh to quit his Syrian pastures, and had cost
the lives of some of his most valuable followers; while, on the other
hand, the new moon was rapidly approaching, when the young Emir had
appointed to meet Scheriff Effendi at Gaza, to receive the arms and
munitions which were to raise him to empire, and for which he had
purposed to pay by a portion of his share in the great plunder which
he had himself projected. His baffled brain whirled with wild and
impracticable combinations, till, at length, frightened and exhausted,
he called for his nargileh, and sought, as was his custom, serenity
from its magic tube. In this wise more than three hours had elapsed,
the young Emir was himself again, and was calculating the average of the
various rates of interest in every town in Syria, from Gaza to Aleppo,
when Baroni returned, bearing in his hand an Egyptian vase.
‘You have found the magic flowers?’ asked Fakredeen, eagerly.
‘The flowers of arnica, noble Emir, of which the Lady Eva spoke. I wish
the potion had been made in the new moon; however, it has been blessed.
Two things alone now are wanting, that my lord should drink it, and that
it should cure him.’
It was not yet noon when Tancred quaffed the potion. He took it without
difficulty, though apparently unconscious of the act. As the sun reached
its meridian height, Tancred sank into a profound slumber. Fakredeen
rushed away to tell Eva, who had now retired into the innermost
apartments of the pavilion of Amalek; Baroni never quitted the tent of
his lord. The sun set; the same beautiful rosy tint suffused the tombs
and temples of the city as on the evening of their first forced arrival:
still Tancred slept. The camels returned from the river, the lights
began to sparkle in the circle of black tents: still Tancred slept. He
slept during the day, and he slept during the twilight, and, when the
night came, still Tancred slept. The silver lamp, fed by the oil of the
palm tree, threw its delicate white light over the couch on which he
rested. Mute, but ever vigilant, Fakredeen and Baroni gazed on their
friend and master: still Tancred slept.
It seemed a night that would never end, and, when the first beam of the
morning came, the Emir and his companion mutually recognised on their
respective countenances an expression of distrust, even of terror. Still
Tancred slept; in the same posture and with the same expression, unmoved
and pale. Was it, indeed, sleep? Baroni touched his wrist, but could
find no pulse; Fakredeen held his bright dagger over the mouth, yet its
brilliancy was not for a moment clouded. But he was not cold.
The brow of Baroni was knit with deep thought, and his searching eye
fixed upon the recumbent form; Fakredeen, frightened, ran away to Eva.
‘I am frightened, because you are frightened,’ said Fakredeen, ‘whom
nothing ever alarms. O Rose of Sharon! why are you so pale?’
‘It is a stain upon our tents if this youth be lost,’ said Eva in a low
voice, yet attempting to speak with calmness.
‘But what is it on me!’ exclaimed Fakredeen, distractedly. ‘A stain! I
shall be branded like Cain. No, I will never enter Damascus again, or
any of the cities of the coast. I will give up all my castles to my
cousin Francis El Kazin, on condition that he does not pay my creditors.
I will retire to Mar Hanna. I will look upon man no more.’
‘Be calm, my Fakredeen; there is yet hope; my responsibility at this
moment is surely not lighter than yours.’
‘Ah! you did not know him, Eva!’ exclaimed Fakredeen, passionately; ‘you
never listened to him! He cannot be to you what he is to me. I loved
him!’
She pressed her finger to her lips, for they had arrived at the tent of
Tancred. The young Emir, drying his streaming eyes, entered first, and
then came back and ushered in Eva. They stood together by the couch of
Tancred. The expression of distress, of suffering, of extreme tension,
which had not marred, but which, at least, had mingled with the
spiritual character of his countenance the previous day, had
disappeared. If it were death, it was at least beautiful. Softness and
repose suffused his features, and his brow looked as if it had been the
temple of an immortal spirit.
Eva gazed upon the form with a fond, deep melancholy; Fakredeen and
Baroni exchanged glances. Suddenly Tancred moved, heaved a deep sigh,
and opened his dark eyes. The unnatural fire which had yesterday lit
them up had fled. Calmly and thoughtfully he surveyed those around him,
and then he said, ‘The Lady of Bethany!’