The Weavers Part 50

Now, as he sat as still as the stone in the walls around him, he was conscious of a vision forming itself before his eyes. At first it was indefinite, vague, without clear form, but at last it became a room dimly outlined, delicately veiled, as it were. Then it seemed, not that the mist cleared, but that his eyes became stronger, and saw through the delicate haze; and now the room became wholly, concretely visible.

It was the room in which he had said good-bye to Hylda. As he gazed like one entranced, he saw a figure rise from a couch, pale, agitated, and beautiful, and come forward, as it were, towards him. But suddenly the mist closed in again upon the scene, a depth of darkness pa.s.sed his eyes, and he heard a voice say: "Speak--speak to me!"

He heard her voice as distinctly as though she were beside him--as, indeed, she had stood before him but an instant ago.

Getting slowly to his feet, into the night he sent an answer to the call.

Would she hear? She had said long ago that she would speak to him so.

Perhaps she had tried before. But now at last he had heard and answered.

Had she heard? Time might tell--if ever they met again. But how good, and quiet, and serene was the night!

He composed himself to sleep, but, as he lay waiting for that coverlet of forgetfulness to be drawn over him, he heard the sound of bells soft and clear. Just such bells he had heard upon the common at Hamley. Was it, then, the outcome of his vision--a sweet hallucination? He leaned upon his elbow and listened.

CHAPTER x.x.xII. FORTY STRIPES SAVE ONE

The bells that rang were not the bells of Hamley; they were part of no vision or hallucination, and they drew David out of his chamber into the night. A little group of three stood sharply silhouetted against the moonlight, and towering above them was the spare, commanding form of Ebn Ezra Bey. Three camels crouched near, and beside them stood a Nubian lad singing to himself the song of the camel-driver:

"Fleet is thy foot: thou shalt rest by the Etl tree; Water shalt thou drink from the blue-deep well; Allah send His gard'ner with the green bersim, For thy comfort, fleet one, by the Etl tree.

As the stars fly, have thy footsteps flown Deep is the well, drink, and be still once more; Till the pursuing winds panting have found thee And, defeated, sink still beside thee-- By the well and the Etl tree."

For a moment David stood in the doorway listening to the low song of the camel-driver. Then he came forward. As he did so, one of the two who stood with Ebn Ezra moved towards the monastery door slowly. It was a monk with a face which, even in this dim light, showed a deathly weariness. The eyes looked straight before him, as though they saw nothing of the world, only a goal to make, an object to be accomplished.

The look of the face went to David's heart--the kins.h.i.+p of pain was theirs.

"Peace be to thee," David said gently, as the other pa.s.sed him.

There was an instant's pause, and then the monk faced him with fingers uplifted. "The grace of G.o.d be upon thee, David," he said, and his eyes, drawn back from the world where they had been exploring, met the other's keenly. Then he wheeled and entered the monastery.

"The grace of G.o.d be upon thee, David!" How strange it sounded, this Christian blessing in response to his own Oriental greeting, out in this Eastern waste. His own name, too. It was as though he had been transported to the ancient world where "Brethren" were so few that they called each other by their "Christian" names--even as they did in Hamley to-day. In Hamley to-day! He closed his eyes, a tremor running through his body; and then, with an effort which stilled him to peace again, he moved forward, and was greeted by Ebn Ezra, from whom the third member of the little group had now drawn apart nearer to the acacia-tree, and was seated on a rock that jutted from the sand. "What is it?" David asked.

"Wouldst thou not sleep, Saadat? Sleep is more to thee now than aught thou mayst hear from any man. To all thou art kind save thyself."

"I have rested," David answered, with a measured calmness, revealing to his friend the change which had come since they parted an hour before.

They seated themselves under the palm-tree, and were silent for a moment, then Ebn Ezra said:

"These come from the Place of Lepers."

David started slightly. "Zaida?" he asked, with a sigh of pity.

"The monk who pa.s.sed thee but now goes every year to the Place of Lepers with the caravan, for a brother of this order stays yonder with the afflicted, seeing no more the faces of this world which he has left behind. Afar off from each other they stand--as far as eye can see--and after the manner of their faith they pray to Allah, and he who has just left us finds a paper fastened with a stone upon the sand at a certain place where he waits. He touches it not, but reads it as it lies, and, having read, heaps sand upon it. And the message which the paper gives is for me."

"For thee? Hast thou there one who--"

"There was one, my father's son, though we were of different mothers; and in other days, so many years ago, he did great wrong to me, and not to me alone,"--the grey head bowed in sorrow--"but to one dearer to me than life. I hated him, and would have slain him, but the mind of Allah is not the mind of man; and he escaped me. Then he was stricken with leprosy, and was carried to the place from whence no leper returns. At first my heart rejoiced; then, at last, I forgave him, Saadat--was he not my father's son, and was the woman not gone to the bosom of Allah, where is peace? So I forgave and sorrowed for him--who shall say what miseries are those which, minute to minute, day after day, and year upon year, repeat themselves, till it is an endless flaying of the body and burning of the soul! Every year I send a message to him, and every year now this Christian monk--there is no Sheikh-el-Islam yonder--brings back the written message which he finds in the sand."

"And thee has had a message to-night?"

"The last that may come--G.o.d be praised, he goeth to his long home. It was written in his last hour. There was no hope; he is gone. And so, one more reason showeth why I should go where thou goest, Saadat."

Casting his eyes toward the figure by the acacia-tree, his face clouded and he pondered anxiously, looking at David the while. Twice he essayed to speak, but paused.

David's eyes followed his look. "What is it? Who is he--yonder?"

The other rose to his feet. "Come and see, Saadat," he replied. "Seeing, thou wilt know what to do."

"Zaida--is it of Zaida?" David asked.

"The man will answer for himself, Saadat." Coming within a few feet of the figure crouched upon the rock, Ebn Ezra paused and stretched out a hand. "A moment, Saadat. Dost thou not see, dost thou not recognise him?"

David intently studied the figure, which seemed unconscious of their presence. The shoulders were stooping and relaxed as though from great fatigue, but David could see that the figure was that of a tall man. The head was averted, but a rough beard covered the face, and, in the light of the fire, one hand that clutched it showed long and skinny and yellow and cruel. The hand fascinated David's eyes. Where had he seen it? It flashed upon him--a hand clutching a robe, in a frenzy of fear, in the court-yard of the blue tiles, in Kaid's Palace--Achmet the Ropemaker! He drew back a step.

"Achmet," he said in a low voice. The figure stirred, the hand dropped from the beard and clutched the knee; but the head was not raised, and the body remained crouching and listless.

"He escaped?" David said, turning to Ebn Ezra Bey.

"I know not by what means--a camel-driver bribed, perhaps, and a camel left behind for him. After the caravan had travelled a day's journey he joined it. None knew what to do. He was not a leper, and he was armed."

"Leave him with me," said David.

Ebn Ezra hesitated. "He is armed; he was thy foe--"

"I am armed also," David answered enigmatically, and indicated by a gesture that he wished to be left alone. Ebn Ezra drew away towards the palm-tree, and stood at this distance watching anxiously, for he knew what dark pa.s.sions seize upon the Oriental--and Achmet had many things for which to take vengeance.

David stood for a moment, pondering, his eyes upon the deserter. "G.o.d greet thee as thou goest, and His goodness befriend thee," he said evenly. There was silence, and no movement. "Rise and speak," he added sternly. "Dost thou not hear? Rise, Achmet Pasha!"

Achmet Pasha! The head of the desolate wretch lifted, the eyes glared at David for an instant, as though to see whether he was being mocked, and then the spare figure stretched itself, and the outcast stood up. The old lank straightness was gone, the shoulders were bent, the head was thrust forward, as though the long habit of looking into dark places had bowed it out of all manhood.

"May gra.s.s spring under thy footstep, Saadat," he said, in a thick voice, and salaamed awkwardly--he had been so long absent from life's formularies.

"What dost thou here, pasha?" asked David formally. "Thy sentence had no limit."

"I could not die there," said the hollow voice, and the head sank farther forward. "Year after year I lived there, but I could not die among them. I was no leper; I am no leper. My penalty was my penalty, and I paid it to the full, piastre by piastre of my body and my mind. It was not one death, it was death every hour, every day I stayed. I had no mind. I could not think. Mummy-cloths were round my brain; but the fire burned underneath and would not die. There was the desert, but my limbs were like rushes. I had no will, and I could not flee. I was chained to the evil place. If I stayed it was death, if I went it was death."

"Thou art armed now," said David suggestively. Achmet laid a hand fiercely upon a dagger under his robe. "I hid it. I was afraid. I could not die--my hand was like a withered leaf; it could not strike; my heart poured out like water. Once I struck a leper, that he might strike and kill me; but he lay upon the ground and wept, for all his anger, which had been great, died in him at last. There was none other given to anger there. The leper has neither anger, nor mirth, nor violence, nor peace.

It is all the black silent shame--and I was no leper."

"Why didst thou come? What is there but death for thee here, or anywhere thou goest! Kaid's arm will find thee; a thousand hands wait to strike thee."

"I could not die there--Dost thou think that I repent?" he added with sudden fierceness. "Is it that which would make me repent? Was I worse than thousands of others? I have come out to die--to fight and die.

Aiwa, I have come to thee, whom I hated, because thou canst give me death as I desire it. My mother was an Arab slave from Senaar, and she was got by war, and all her people. War and fighting were their portion--as they ate, as they drank and slept. In the black years behind me among the Unclean, there was naught to fight--could one fight the dead, and the agony of death, and the poison of the agony! Life, it is done for me--am I not accursed? But to die fighting--ay, fighting for Egypt, since it must be, and fighting for thee, since it must be; to strike, and strike, and strike, and earn death! Must the dog, because he is a dog, die in the slime? Shall he not be driven from the village to die in the clean sand? Saadat, who will see in me Achmet Pasha, who did with Egypt what he willed, and was swept away by the besom in thy hand?

Is there in me aught of that Achmet that any should know?"

"None would know thee for that Achmet," answered David.

"I know, it matters not how--at last a letter found me, and the way of escape--that thou goest again to the Soudan. There will be fighting there--"