Part 46

Not without reason had the Pasha boasted of the beauty of his villa, a white marble palace of Arabian-Turkish architecture, standing well back from an avenue of casuarinas, embowered in trailing roses, clothed with imperial Bougainvillea and shaded with trees, rising from the green velvet lawns that carpet what was a rectangle of barrenness wrested from the Desert twenty-three years ago.

Within the palace, suites of rooms--used in the Oriental style as reception saloons or bedrooms--according to the needs of the moment--were furnished in luxury rivalling the most modern of Parisian hotels. Soft-footed, low-voiced servants, chiefly Mohammedans, dressed in speckless white, and moving like automata, waited upon the master's guests and did the master's will.

Here Nasr Ullah, the Pasha's elderly body-servant and confidential messenger, ruled with rigidity, taking it out of his subordinates when the Presence dealt hardly with him. In two rooms of the vast warren of rooms opening on a rearward court, his "house" and a small brood of sturdy boys were accommodated. A little dark Moslemah the wife of Nasr Ullah, well dressed and laden with solid silver jewellery. Plain, with projecting rabbit teeth, and shallow forehead; meek, dutiful, pious and greatly given to prayer. A grave for the secrets of her husband Nasr, who was occasionally burdened with a conscience, whose smarting called for soothing feminine balms.

He stood on the threshold of his outer room, in the mild, pale hour when the stars were flowering through the last glow of the sunset, and his tall white turban was pushed awry, and his high forehead was ridged with care.

"'Tis a tyranny to force a man of kindly heart towards God's creatures, to scatter poisoned barley for the birds," he said uneasily. "And the carrier-dove is the Bird of Nun, that went forth from the Ark and brought back the olive-leaf, and a dove was the bird that the Son of Mariam--when as yet but a babe of tender years--playing with others who knew not His holiness--wrought by the riverside of clay."

"And the boys laughed and mocked Him, because He had made one bird instead of many. And He was not angry, but said, 'Do ye then as I do!' And then He clapped His hands and the dove flew away. Did it not so, O my father?" a thready voice piped.

"Since when," asked Nasr Ullah with affected sternness, "have the babes permission to lift up voice when their elders take counsel?" His lined face softened into tenderness as the child clinging to the mother's skirts hid his head under her veil. "Remember, O woman!" he went on, "I have said the white powder is a deadly poison. If a speck, such as would lie safely hidden under the finger-nail--find a way into the child's milk-bowl, I were without a son."

"It is all in there.... I boiled the barley until soft, and drained the water away carefully--emptied the paper-packet of powder in among the barley and stirred the barley well with a little stick. Then I burned both the paper and the stick, as thou didst order. Remains for thee to break the pot to sherds when--when thou hast finished. O my misfortune! What a task! My lord, Nasr Ullah, who hath the pride of princes!--to creep about under cover of night--from the courtyard of the Commandant-Sahib to the _haush_ where the _Ifrangis_ keep their swallow-boats, scattering poisoned barley for pigeons with messages--"

"Hûs! ..."

She had raised her usually quiet voice somewhat indiscreetly, and the toddler, youngest save one of Fatimeh's brood of four, scared by the unusualness of this demonstration, lifted up his own voice in a lusty howl.

"_Hus--sus!_ No one is vexed with thee, my joy!--nobody is angry! Run out and play with the little grey goat awhile before thy sleep-time comes!" And as the boy with a shrill joyful chuckle toddled over the threshold to seek his playmate, Nasr Ullah promptly clapped the door to and shot the wooden door-bolt, and not content with this, pulled the heavy leather curtains that kept out chilly winds and June and February _samûms_, over the doorway and the latticed window-screens.

"By the life of the Prophet--peace on him!--by thy head! speak lower. What Afrit hast thou vexed--throwing away the carrot-tops and the water that washed the dishes?" he demanded of his now hysterically-tearful wife. "Is this my house, whom I deemed discreet as Kadijah--peace be upon her! Raising the voice like a woman accustomed to go unveiled? Trumpeting secrets as it were on the very housetops! Wouldst be a widow? 'Nay?' Then shun the road to mourning! Wouldst die thyself, knowing thy four sons cast out--to whine for _faddahs_ and broken bread at the doors of the khans and mosques.... 'Nay' again? ... Then even hold thy tongue. And, Fatimeh my beloved--" Nasr Ullah's lean, dark, muscular hand caressed the woman's small head, adorned with a smart black silk kerchief with a brightly coloured border, and a forehead-string of coins--all gold ones, though their value was but small,--"vex not thy soul overmuch about the doves and pigeons. Are not their numbers countless as the numbers of the flies? And tell me, my olive-tree, fruitful in bearing--my Garment of Comfort," his tone had become wheedling, "whether any of the veiled women serving about this house be one-eyed? _Wallah_! I jest not! It is a new order of the Presence that all such are to be dismissed!"

"How soon?" Another tempest seemed about to shake Nasr Ullah's fruitful olive. Her bosom under its many serried rows of solid silver necklaces began to heave again. Her heavy anklets clashed as her small, henna-stained feet shifted nervously on the whitened clay floor of the family living-room where the charcoal stove daily burned, and the cooking-pots stood against the wall. "How soon?"

"By Allah! no later than an hour after sunrise, and that delay is granted as an especial grace."

"And the mother of thy wife--the grandmother of thy children--the guardian of thy house's honour--what of her?" demanded Fatimeh; "Is she not one of the many decent ones upon whose eyes the flies have sat in childhood? Is--"

"_Wallah_! I had forgotten her," exclaimed the man in dismay. For the mother of Fatimeh, at that moment congenially engaged in crooning the latest new baby to sleep, in the inner room dignified by the title of the _harîm_, had suffered in early youth, like many other Egyptian women of the lower classes, the loss, through ophthalmia, of one of her eyes.

Now a faint grin showed on the face of her son-in-law, even in the midst of his perplexity, as he said:

"Rebuke is justly mine, wife, that I did not remember it. But by the border of thine _usbêh_ I swear it! Thy mother sees more with her one eye than other women with two. Yet would I not part with her. She is wise in dealing with the teething-troubles of the lesser babes, and her slipper hath more sting in it than thine, for the ruling of the elder. We will send her away to thy brother at Kantara until this scare of one-eyed women is over and done. Meanwhile,--" he glanced over his shoulder at the door, and sitting on the hard-cushioned divan that ran round three sides of the whitewashed room, drew Fatimeh to sit beside him; "meanwhile I would speak to thee of Khalid thine eldest. Where is the boy to-night?"

"He is gone with his brother Amru to lay snares for fig-birds in the orchard. They must be set at moon-dark, for the birds to enter them at dawn."

"He is a born hunter. Seven years old this month of Safar, and witful as he is handsome--the praise be unto Allah Who makes them of all kinds! Wife, if I told thee that the Presence, seeing the boy so ripe for his tender years, and of goodly promise, had bidden--"

Nasr Ullah's tone had been studiously commonplace, but the ridges in his high forehead had deepened, and his eyes had an anxious stare. He winced as his wife without a word slid from the divan, and next instant lay prostrate on the white-washed floor, with her forehead on his feet.

"Nay, nay! ... My pearl, my joy! ... Take it not so hardly! ..."

"O Everlasting, spare me this! O husband, in pity, hear me. Hast thou forgotten Nasi, our joy and my firstborn? He would have been nine years old, this Nile-Rise.... Hast thou forgotten? Ay, ay, it was the old cry; 'This boy was stupid--that one showed fear. This must have known sin,--for he could see nothing at all in the ink-pools or in the Eye of Radiance.' So the Presence takes my Nasi, and gives him gifts and praises his excellence, and one day he comes home, crying '_My head, my head!_' like the son of the woman who fed the Prophet El Jah, peace be upon him!--and three days later, thou, weeping bitter tears, dost hang my green-striped shawl over the shabid of his tiny bier."

"Peace, wife!"

Sweat broke forth and stood on Nasr Ullah's face. He wiped it with the sleeve of his white _kaftan_, repeating:

"Peace, woman! ... It was a fever the boy had caught.... Dost thou not remember what the _hakim_ said? ..."

"Ay! But I had watched by the bed of my sick child, and shuddered at the visions he told of in his ravings. O, Husband, I have sat in the house one year, and thou hast said in thine heart, '_She is forgetting_' ... Yet all the time--" She sat upright on the floor before him now, her strained eyes glued upon his worried face, and the swift words poured from her without his opposition.

"Peace! thou sayest. How can there be peace in this house where soothsayers and necromancers come and go, and the sand-tables are forever cast, and fresh boys are brought each new day to peer into the ink-pools.... Lo! I will speak my mind. Ten years I have been thy wife, and a duteous and a silent, but a mother in fear for her flesh and blood hath the courage to defy Shaitan...."

"Be not disturbed.... I will find some way. The boy shall be sent to El Kantara with thy mother."

"And when my Agib is of likely age, will not the ink-pools claim him? Will the Presence have bowels to spare a child, who in all these years hath loved no woman?"

"Nay," was the reply. "What need hath He of women, who is in love with Life? ..."

"'Tis true. Save when the Inglizi ladies come with their menfolk to see the house and gardens, and eat fruit and drink iced sherbets, and say 'charmin'--charmin'' and 'rippin'--rippin','" thus the better-half of Nasr Ullah rendered the English slang, "no woman ever comes here. What now?" for the knee on which she rested her arm had jerked slightly.

"I had forgotten. He hath said but now--that a woman comes here at midnight! No _râziye_ of the Bazâr, or other of the shameless, but a lady-Sahib from the Palace of Montana at Iskanderieh.... The car brings her by the fifth hour.... The gates are to be open. When the car has passed in, the gates are to be shut and locked...."

"_Ya rabbi!_" The exclamation broke from the woman involuntarily. "After all these years--it may be that He changes.... How old is He, husband? Canst thou not even guess? ..."

"Perhaps He is less old than He pretends, but He is many years older than folks believe Him. Of that there is no doubt at all...."

"And it _is_ done by devilry? Witchcraft and spells--and philtres?" The woman breathed quickly. "Say, is't not?"

"God knows! But from whomever the Presence buys his youth, He pays a heavy price for it. See how He lives! Even as one who carries in his breast a stolen jewel, and goes in fear lest it be snatched from him. The pleasures of the belly--He must shun them. The joys that are tasted on perfumed cushions--He must fly them one and all. It is tyranny. Yet He thinks He is envied. He is only wretched when Those I may not speak of, ask--too high a price for the magical drugs...."

"The drugs. The devil-brews that keep Him youthful, who else would be as dry and wrinkled as the mummies of the ancient Kings?"

"Verily. And--one thing I have seen of late--" Once launched upon the sea of Confidence, Nasr Ullah grew less fearful. "Whether Protection fails him, or the philtres lose their power, I know not--but--He grows old!"

"I too!--" Her eyes grew large with awe. "I have fancied He is somewhat changed...."

"_Chut_! Do not interrupt. It goes deeper than the skin--this change that I have seen in him. His moods vary like those of a pregnant woman; he frames designs and throws them aside as a monkey plucks, and bites, and casts bananas away. He does not even hate as He used to hate. Once--if an enemy rose up in the path, he removed that one with his own hand, and troubled no more about the affair. Or said to one he trusted, '_Kill!_'" the tone was studiously smooth, the speaker's face expressionless--"and that man or that woman died--more quietly than the _bowab's_ daughter who ate the nectarine. But now--since the killing of Usborn Sahib by a Turk in Palestine,--and the night he dined at Iskanderieh in the company of the big Jew Tomi--the Presence talks of nought but sprinkling poisoned grain for carrier-doves and dismissing of one-eyed females--and my heart is stricken with fear for my lord! Spells, and charms, and philtres bought from Those in the Distant Places will not avail forever against the day of Fate. Azrael will come behind my lord with a touch upon the shoulder. The Black Camel of Allah will tread upon his heel. Then--even at a breath--the House of Life will crumble!" Nasr Ullah started to his feet as a silvery sound, momentarily increasing in volume, rolled into the stuffy closed room, and hummed about their ears. "It is the gong from my lord's room. He calls, and I must go! ..."

He added, slipping the earthen pot of soaked and poisoned barley within the bosom of his embroidered vest: "Sleep well, my wife, if I see thee not ere morning. And call in the children--it is time they went to rest! ..."

XVI

This was another moonless night, with Orion glorious in the East, and the Great Bear blazing on the northern horizon, as the headlights of the high-powered Daimler car, driven by the Italian chauffeur, flashed on a high, wide _porte cochère_ of white-painted wrought iron, and the horn sounded a well-known call.

The massive gates were opened and shut by a hand-worked windlass, over which ran an endless chain. Two white-clad negro porters worked the winch, the gate slid smoothly back in its groovings. The car rolled in, and the gate was shut as it passed up the avenue.

The Arabian-Turkish palace seemed to sleep under the starshine of the November night, wrapped in its royal mantle of roses and bougainvillea. Heavy drifts of perfume were carried on the languid air-waves that came from the south-west at intervals, swaying thick-foliaged branches and sighing amongst the leaves. Not a blue-white gleam of electric light or even the flame of a candle twinkled through the pierced lattices, as Katharine, alighting from the car, observed with some surprise.

The wide-leaved doors of the house stood open. On the steps and in the vestibule were drawn up a double row of native servants; lean, dark Mohammedans in high starched turbans, _kaftans_ and baggy trousers of snowy muslin, displaying gorgeously gold-embroidered vests.

One elderly man stepped forward, salaaming low to the visitor, with the words:

"O lady, God give thee a happy night! His Presence awaits thee."

"Carry thy lord salutations from me," Katharine answered in her laboured Arabic. "Say that--that I have come in answer to the message. Is the Saiyid Hazel here in the house?"

The elderly man salaamed again and answered smoothly:

"Surely, O lady, the desire of thine eyes and thine heart shall be granted! With your coming a blessing hath entered these doors...."

The Italian chauffeur now appeared behind Katharine, carrying the suit-case. A servant stepped forward and took it, as Miss Forbis said to the chauffeur in French:

"I don't yet know whether I shall need that case. Leave it in the car, please, and let the car be waiting. I may return to Alexandria to-night."

"But, Mademoiselle!--" the Italian began, when a look from Nasr Ullah silenced him. He saluted, and muttering: "As Mademoiselle commands!" turned and went out and down the steps. But he left the suit-case in the servant's hands--and the hall-doors were shut and locked after him. And the fragrance of the jasmine and roses of the garden gave place to another perfume, heavy too, but sickly-sweet with sandal and henna, the fumes of burning pastilles, and all the strange suggestive odours of a shut-up Eastern house. And glancing at the now barred doors and the double row of gleaming eyes, and imperturbable dark faces, Katharine Forbis felt a little, chilly shudder creep over her and stir amongst the roots of her plentiful dark hair.

"A goose walked over my grave, then," she told herself, smiling bravely, fighting back the sinister sensation, as the elderly major-domo addressed her again:

"With permission, a message for the lady, from the Presence. The Presence took food, as is his wont, a little after sunset. It is now the fifth hour, and supper has been spread, Ifrangi-fashion, in readiness for the lady's coming. If the lady will deign to take of it, I pray her follow me...."

"Thank you, but I need nothing," Katharine answered, as the man prepared to lead the way down an interminable-appearing hall. "And--I prefer to stay where I am." She moved to a carved ebony seat, and spoke to the man again, this time in English. "Please ask Essenian Pasha and Mr. Hazel to come to me here. Unless--" She started as the thought occurred to her, and ended: "Unless they should happen to be engaged with--some one who is ill...."

"_Aiyân_...." The dark eyes under the much-ridged forehead were wonderfully observant. The nasal voice belonging to the eyes spoke in the English tongue: "Surely there is one here who is ill exceedingly. The Presence and the Saiyid Hazel have many fears for him," Nasr Ullah added as the colour ebbed from Katharine's cheeks and lips and her hand clenched involuntarily, "but by the Favour of Allah--he is not like to die...."

"Take me to him.... Now, please! ..."

Miss Forbis rose up, tall and impetuous, motioning to Nasr Ullah to lead the way, scattering her scruples and her fears to the winds like withered leaves. Which of her beloved Two lay in some darkened room of this strange house? Julian or Edward? Edward or Julian. Well, in another minute she would know....

It occupied several minutes. The elderly Mohammedan produced an electric torch, and by its radiance led her through a vast suite of apartments on the ground-floor, their Arabesque Ottoman elegance grotesquely overlaid with fashions imported from the West. A curious jumble of furniture of many different styles and periods was revealed by the blue-white torch-flare--overcrowding the wide and lofty rooms. French Directoire and the First Empire shouldered the Georgian Regency, Early Victorian tables and Berlin wool-work settees were reflected in splendid Venetian mirrors, and electric bulbs depended from cut-glass chandeliers. Later Rococo--overlaid with Art Nouveau and camouflaged with Futurism; Cubist pictures, Cubist draperies and cushions of Cubist designs, gibbered mockingly in Katharine's face as the electric torch led the way.... And the stuffiness bred of Eastern neglect hung heavy on the atmosphere, and dust rose in wreaths from the velvety carpets under the lightest tread.

The last door of the last suite led into a wide corridor paved with black and white marble. Midway down, the elderly servant stopped at the grille of a lift and switched on the electric light. He snapped off his torch, pushed back the sliding-door, followed Miss Forbis in, shut the grille and started the elevator--a costly thing in nickel and enamelled iron--conveying to Katharine the momentary impression that she was calling on a London friend in a Sloane Street or Mayfair flat.

The lift stopped at the top floor after traversing three storeys. The Mohammedan showed Miss Forbis out, and opened a latticed door at the end of a short passage. She drew a breath of relief as the night-air flowed about her, and the rose-scents of the dew-drenched garden rose up in delicious clouds.

She was passing over a slender bridge, connecting the roof of one of the wings of the Pasha's showy villa with that of another building, evidently much older, distant perhaps some forty feet from the ornate marble palace, and covering a considerable area of ground in its rear. Built in the old windowless Arabian way about an oblong courtyard, and crowned by an open court or pavilion of green and white marble, its outer walls were pressed upon by closely thronging trees. Casuarinas and moss-cup oaks, peppers and tamarisks and tall waving palms made coolth and greenness round it, and nightingales were singing from the trees that girt it round.

The bridge, of latticed iron, painted to dazzling whiteness, ended under a pointed trefoil arch where heavy curtains hung. The Mohammedan servant who showed the way was beckoning to Katharine--lifting a gleaming, gold-embroidered fold, signing to her to pass. She drew in a deep breath of fragrance from the garden, and the song of the bulbuls rose in a crescendo of sweetness as she glanced at the starry sky. Then the dark hand signed to her--she passed under the archway, and the curtain fell behind her with a soft, thudding sound.

She stood on the threshold of an oblong room, or rather, court, of pierced and latticed marble, covered and adorned with mosaic, running nearly the whole length of a side of the Arab house. Open to the sky overhead, and enclosed by curtains of thick gold-embroidered silk, hanging under trefoil arches between groups of slender pillars, it had a long divan of dark, rich brocade running along one side. Two silver lamps of antique design, swinging by chains from slender rods, mingled their mellow radiance with the starlight. At the farther end, closed curtains under a higher arch showed the entrance to another court--or possibly an enclosed apartment--beyond the pavilion that was canopied with the sky.

The floor was of ancient Arab tiles, wonderful in colour. Rare and beautiful prayer-rugs were laid on it here and there. A pedestal of serpentine supported a great porcelain bowl in which a little fountain played, and goldfish were swimming. Clusters of lilies of Amaryllis type, thick-stemmed, fleshy, purple and white and crimson, exhaling a heavy, languorous fragrance, stood in jars of ancient _cloisonné_ upon inlaid ivory stools. In the centre of the room stood a broad divan, piled with great embroidered cushions. Beside the divan was a tripod of ebony, supporting something that looked like a green velvet jewel-case....

A slight man in Eastern dress, his black _tarbûsh_ turbaned with snowy muslin folds, his long-sleeved _kaftan_ of orange-red opening to reveal a longer-sleeved garment of white, a jewelled pen-case glittering in the folds of his green silk girdle, rose up from the divan as the curtain fell--and advanced to Katharine....

"Dear lady, my poor house is highly honoured--" he began:

"Is Mr. Hazel here, Major Essenian?"

In her surprise at finding the Pasha alone, Katharine's hurried query broke in upon the Pasha's formal welcome, scattering his elaborate sentences to the winds.

"Mr. Hazel--" He affected for a moment to search his memory. "Dear lady, I am sorry, but--" His shrug said "No! ..."

"Then why did your chauffeur bring me the letter from him?" Katharine demanded, looking down from her superb height upon the suave and smiling face.

"From Mr. Hazel?" Essenian asked with maddening blandness. "Did he bring you a letter? ..."

"You know he did! ..."

"Ah yes, of course, I know!" admitted Essenian, his long eyes narrowing as they encountered Katharine's. She mastered her anger, knowing its display incautious, and said with rather a poor attempt to smile: