Читать книгу Zarah the Cruel - Joan Conquest - Страница 6

“If thou wert to see my luck, thou wouldst trample it underfoot.”—Arabic Proverb.

Insolently indifferent Zarah stood, some hours later, in the Hall of Judgment waiting for the verdict to be passed.

In outraging her father’s hospitality by killing the dog accepted as a gift by the guest beneath his roof, she had committed the one sin unforgivable to the Arab.

The hospitality of the Arab to-day is as great and as genuine as in the days of Ishmael and Joktan—of either the one or the other he is supposed to be the direct descendant.

Three days is the prescribed limit to the Arab’s bounteousness on behalf of the stranger within the gates, though, if the guest’s company prove agreeable it will doubtlessly be offered for a period extending over weeks, or months, or even years. In any case, however, the three days’ limit is never strictly adhered to, even if there be but little sympathy between host and guest, and once the latter has eaten an Arab’s salt he can count himself as absolutely safe for roof and sustenance, until courtesy or necessity bids him to move on. The Arab may hate the very sight of his guest and loathe his habits and disagree entirely with his views on life, but, whilst aching to see his back, will patiently bear with him and offer him of his best; he may be longing to know whence his guest came and whither he goes, but not a question will he ask if the stranger should not see fit to enlighten him as to his movements; and a traveller can most assuredly feel at ease about his precious life and belongings as long as he is under an Arab’s roof—as guest.

An Arab will give his life for you if you have broken bread with him, and under the same conditions he will not touch a button or a biscuit belonging to you, even though he may be wellnigh starving and dressed in rags himself.

The Emeer, or ruler, of one of the Wahhabee provinces had come in person, though secretly, to ask for the hand of the girl, the fame of whose beauty had been spread throughout the Peninsula by prisoners who had worked or paid their way back to freedom. He had not come straightforwardly, because, even in Arabia, the powers that be, however insignificant, do not openly deal with outlaws. His offer to include Zarah amongst his wives and to give her all that she might wish for—within reason—had been refused, not because he already had three wives and various lesser lights of the harem, who were known to fight between themselves like cats, or because he was of middle age and inclined to rotundity, but just because Zarah already had everything she could wish for, within reason and without, and had no intention of marrying without love.

He had proffered his gifts and had accepted his host’s in return, and his eyes had glistened at the sight of the slender beauty of the greyhound which, within an hour of his departure, had been killed by his host’s daughter.

The Sheikh had many greyhounds; in fact, a pair had been substituted for the one killed, but that was not the point; the dead dog having been accepted had become the guest’s property, therefore it had also become sacred in the eyes of the host and the host’s family and servants.

The severest sentence, ofttimes that of death, is passed upon those who break the Arab’s law of hospitality, so that Zarah stood, beautiful, insolent, alone, in the Hall of Judgment waiting to hear what punishment the two, so deeply wounded in their pride, would mete out to her.

And as she stood, knowing the power of her beauty, therefore fearing naught, she looked indolently round the room, once a monk’s refectory, and thought in her greedy heart of how it would be decorated to enhance her power when once she reigned supreme.

The Sheikh’s taste was rather primitive and inclined more to the useful than to the ornamental. Prisoners had worked upon the rock floor until the surface had been made smooth, and upon it had been thrown skins of the small, ferocious tiger, the panther, the Nejd wolf, and other wild beasts of the Peninsula, with rugs woven from camel’s hair, patterned in different colours.

Great brass bowls, full of water, stood upon the thirty stools of stone, once used by the holy men as seats, now ranged against the walls upon which hung weapons of every sort, calibre and age, either honestly bought in towns or lifted in a raid. Lances or throwing spears, heavy and light, swords, knives, daggers ornamented with every conceivable device, and firearms of most genuine antiquity, even match-lock or flint-guns, which, however, should not be treated with contempt when in the hands of the Bedouin. He is a splendid marksman, no matter what the age of the weapon he may handle.

The Sheikh and his men were magnificently armed, wealth and craft having procured them their hearts’ delight in the shape of the most up-to-date rifles and revolvers, which they loved a good deal more than their wives and almost as much as their sons.

The two men sat on cushions upon a dais at the end of the hall, the guest, in the place of honour upon the Sheikh’s left hand, looking down, perplexed, uneasy, at the beautiful girl who stood so superbly indifferent just below them.

She had dressed for the occasion.

A Banian or Indian merchant, taken prisoner one time, had introduced and taught the men’s wives and daughters how to manipulate the sari. Zarah had learned from them and had acquired a knack of winding yards upon yards of stuff about her slender person, as far down as her ankles and back again to her lissom waist, where she stuffed the ends in. She had wrapped yards of some glittering, yellow material around her this day, tightly enough to outline her superb figure but not to impede her movements as she walked upon her toes and from her hips in a manner insolent beyond words. Her beautiful arms and neck were bare, her small feet shod in golden sandals; she wore no jewels and looked young and innocent and altogether harmless until she looked up and sideways into the guest’s eyes.

She sighed a little and clasped her hands just above her heart of flint and looked down again, well content, believing that the love-stricken man would be on her side whatever punishment her outraged father should feel inclined to pass upon her in his terrible wrath.

“My heart is broken, my pride shattered, the law of my fathers’ fathers set at naught by thee, O my daughter!” said the Sheikh quietly, as he sat, torn between a desire to pass the sentence of death upon the offender and a longing to spare the daughter he loved so much. “Know’st thou that if my men were to sit in judgment upon thee that they would drive thee out into the desert to die of hunger and thirst for what thou hast done to this my guest?”

Zarah bent her head and stood with hands clasped upon her breast, a figure of contrition; and it was as well the deluded men were unable to see the look in her eyes or the twitching of the fingers which were aching to steal to a very small but very workmanlike automatic she invariably carried in her girdle.

“I am at a loss, my daughter. I would not humiliate thee before my men, who will one day serve under thy ruling because, as the proverb says, ‘Him who makes chaff of himself the cows will eat.’”

He paused as the guest murmured, “El hamdoo l’illahy,” which is the correct response to the proverb and is translated, “Thanks be to God, that is not my weakness.”

There was not a sound as Zarah stood watching the men, nor movement as the men watched her from under half-closed lids, the guest with thoughts of her beauty, the father with fear as to which way his tiger-daughter would spring.

“Never has a father been so outraged in his honour as I by thee, O Zarah; never has a guest been so outraged as mine in all the history of the race.” The Sheikh plucked at his beard as he spoke, a sure sign of anger, though his soft voice was not raised one tone by the wrath which surged within him. “I know not how my guest will look upon that which I am about to propose, nay! nor if I dare to darken the honour of his house by my proposition.”

He looked towards the Emeer, who looked back at him, then sat silent, watching the girl who swayed a little upon her feet like some golden lily in the wind.

“Wilt thou O my guest of whom I crave pardon for the insult put upon thee by my child,” said the Sheikh at last, “wilt thou take her now, bereft of all dignity, as wife, to serve their Excellencies thy wives as handmaiden until the stain upon her honour and my honour be wiped out?”

There was no doubt as in what direction the tiger-daughter would literally spring.

She sprang straight forward, eyes blazing, face distorted with rage, looking from one man to the other and back as, without waiting to see how the Emeer would take the suggestion, she flung a proverb of protest at him.

“Nay! Nay! Nay!” she screamed. “‘My meat and his meat cannot be cooked in the same pot!’”

“Peace, daughter!” said the Sheikh sharply, “lest I drive thee myself out into the desert to die. All that is mine is my guest’s, my bread, my horses, my wealth and thou, if he will deign to look upon thee.”

He spoke with the Oriental’s habitual extravagance of speech, but, under the agony of the blow dealt his pride by his daughter, with the firm intention of giving all he possessed to the insulted man if by so doing he could obliterate the stain upon his own name. “Wilt have her, with jewels and horses and cattle and slaves, O my guest?”

The Emeer slowly shook his shaven turbaned head.

The offer was tempting indeed, but the brief insight into the girl’s character, allied to the memory of the warring factions already established in his house, had decided him.

He was getting on in years, with a liking for peace, good food and long hours of sleep; his line was firmly established, his fortune big enough to buy or hire maidens for the song or the dance.

Why run the risk, he had argued to himself during the altercation between his host and the girl, of keeping a caged tiger which, in all probability, would maul the household if let loose, when tame cats, using their claws only upon each other, could be kept safely at large?

“‘More just than a balance’ art thou, O my brother” he quoted, stroking his beard, “but not for one thousand woebe filled with gold pieces and precious stones would I of her.”

In her fury at the man’s indifference and the insult to her beauty, Zarah brought her punishment upon herself.

“Thou wouldst not of me!” she stormed, as she stepped back and threw out her arms. “Of me! Thou, with thy beard thinning upon thy ageing face and thy person rounded as a mosque beneath thy belt.” She laughed shrilly, looking like some trapped, wild beast, with her flashing yellow eyes and perfect teeth. “Look to thy black slaves for thy cooking, to thy withered wives for dance and song. I have the blood of the whites in me, I——”

“’Tis a pity,” said the Emeer, making a gesture of resignation before the verbal storm which hurtled about his head. “Yea! ’tis a pity that thou dost not go to thy mother’s people and so rid our race of one who does it no honour!”

“Ah!” softly exclaimed Sheikh Mohammed-Abd, as he let slip the rosary of Mecca between his fingers. “Well said, O my guest! Thou showest the way, thou hold’st a torch to lighten my feet in the darkness; through thy words of wisdom shall peace fall upon my dwelling for a space and the whip upon the shoulders of she who has disgraced me.”

The men sat silent, the amber mouthpieces of the nagilehs between their lips, whilst Zarah, utterly undaunted, filled in the time by smoking innumerable cigarettes with her back turned to the dais, which childish and uncontrolled action caused the Emeer to smile in his thinning beard.

The Arab delights in deliberation and procrastination, and it is wise to let him talk round and round his subject or, if it please him better, to sit for long moments, even to the length of an hour, communing with his thoughts.

“Yea,” gently said the Sheikh at the end of twenty minutes’ hard thinking, “it is ordained. Thou, Zarah, O my daughter, shalt go to the big school in Cairo where attend the daughters of the whites who sojourn for a while in Egypt, and there shalt thou learn the manners and customs of thy mother’s people.”

If he had proposed strangling the girl on the spot she could not have shown more horror.

“Thou wilt send me to Cairo,” she cried, flinging round, “me, who must one day, even at thy death, rule in thy stead. Nay! Make not the sign against the evil day, for die thou must. Thou art mad, O my father, nearing thy dotage or distraught or sick of a fever. What can they do, these white folk, to make me more than I am? Can they enhance my beauty by their ugly raiment? Or teach me anything that I do not know about horses or the dance, or soften my voice by teaching me their language, which sounds like the hissing of snakes caught in a basket; can they?”

“Nay! they cannot!” indifferently replied the Sheikh, who was as easy to move as a pyramid once his mind was set upon a project. “But they can teach thee to eat even as did thy mother and less like a dog with a bone between its teeth; also can they drive home the duty of a daughter towards her father’s guests. For two years shalt thou sojourn amongst the stranger, then will I marry thee to whomsoever I will, if perchance there be a man who will look with favour upon one who has so dishonoured the name of her father.”

The Emeer, who was thoroughly enjoying the taming of the beautiful shrew, nodded his head in approval, whereupon the girl’s hand slipped to her girdle. She was mad with rage, ripe for direst mischief, ready to kill through the workings of her untutored mind, but she reckoned without the Sheikh, who had not ruled a band of outlaws for nothing.

As her hand slipped to her girdle he sprang, and, catching her by the wrist, flung her to the floor, wrenching the pistol from her fingers, whilst the Emeer sat unmoved, nodding his turbaned head.

She was on her feet in an instant, breathless, undaunted, magnificent in her fury.

“O thou,” she cried, “who thinkest that a woman can be quelled by threats. Thou canst not even keep me by thy side. I leave this place for ever to-night, taking with me the men who, in their youth and strength, love me, leaving thee the grey-beards and women and children. O! thou fool, thou fool!”

She turned and ran swiftly across the hall as the Sheikh clapped his hands; she stopped dead as two gigantic Abyssinian slaves suddenly appeared in the doorway to inquire their master’s bidding.

“Let loose the greyhounds for the night!” curtly commanded the Sheikh.

The slaves pressed the pink palms of their dusky hands against their foreheads and turned to go.

With a mighty effort Zarah played for her position as future ruler of the two servants, and won.

“Bring me first my body-women—here—at once!”

The two slaves stood like graven images for an infinitesimal fraction of a second, whilst she looked them full in the eyes, then they bowed to the very ground before her and departed—to do her bidding.