Donovan Pasha, and Some People of Egypt Part 5

It would have been well for Wa.s.sef the camel-driver if he had not taken the turban from his head, for before he could reach Yusef with his dagger, he went down, his skull cracking like the top of an egg under a spoon.

III

Thus it was that Soada was left to fight her battle alone. She did not weep or wail when Wa.s.sef's body was brought home and the mogha.s.sil and hanouti came to do their offices. She did not smear her hair with mud, nor was she moved by the wailing of the mourning women nor the chanters of the Koran. She only said to Fatima when all was over: "It is well; he is gone from my woe to the mercy of G.o.d! Praise be to G.o.d!" And she held her head high in the village still, though her heart was in the dust.

She would have borne her trouble alone to the end, but that she was bitten on the arm by one of her father's camels the day they were sold in the marketplace. Then, helpless and suffering and fevered, she yielded to the thrice-repeated request of d.i.c.ky Donovan, and was taken to the hospital at a.s.siout, which Fielding Bey, d.i.c.ky's friend, had helped to found.

But Soada, as her time drew near and the terror of it stirred her heart, cast restless eyes upon the whitewashed walls and rough floors of the hospital. She longed for the mud hut at Beni Souef, and the smell of the river and the little field of onions she planted every year. Day by day she grew harder of heart against those who held her in the hospital--for to her it was but a prison. She would not look when the doctor came, and she would not answer, but kept her eyes closed; and she did not shrink when they dressed the arm so cruelly wounded by the camel's teeth, but lay still and dumb.

Now, a strange thing happened, for her hair which had been so black turned brown, and grew browner and browner till it was like the hair of her mother, who, so the Niline folk said, was descended from the English soldier-slave with red hair.

Fielding Bey and d.i.c.ky came to see her in hospital once before they returned to Cairo; but Soada would not even speak to them, though she smiled when they spoke to her; and no one else ever saw her smile during the days she spent in that hospital with the red floor and white walls and the lazy watchman walking up and down before the door. She kept her eyes closed in the daytime; but at night they were always open--always.

Pictures of all she had lived and seen came back to her then--pictures of days long before Mahommed Selim came into her life. Mahommed Selim!

She never spoke the words now, but whenever she thought them her heart shrank in pain. Mahommed Selim had gone like a coward into the desert, leaving her alone.

Her mind dwelt on the little mud hut and the onion field, and she saw down by the foresh.o.r.e of the river the great khia.s.sas from a.s.souan and Luxor laden with cotton or dourha or sugar-cane, their bent prows hooked in the Nile mud. She saw again the little fires built along the sh.o.r.e and atop of the piles of grain, round which sat the white, the black, and the yellow-robed riverine folk in the crimson glare; while from the banks came the cry: "Alla-haly, 'm alla-haly!" as stalwart young Arabs drew in from the current to the bank some stubborn, overloaded khia.s.sa.

She heard the snarl of the camels as they knelt down before her father's but to rest before the journey into the yellow plains of sand beyond.

She saw the seller of sweetmeats go by calling--calling. She heard the droning of the children in the village school behind the hut, the dull clatter of Arabic consonants galloping through the Koran. She saw the moon--the full moon-upon the Nile, the wide acreage of silver water before the golden-yellow and yellow-purple of the Libyan hills behind.

She saw through her tears the sweet mirage of home, and her heart rebelled against the prison where she lay. What should she know of hospitals--she whose medicaments had been herbs got from the Nile valley and the cool Nile mud? Was it not the will of G.o.d if we lived or the will of G.o.d if we died? Did we not all lie in the great mantle of the mercy of G.o.d, ready to be lifted up or to be set down as He willed?

They had prisoned her here; there were bars upon the windows, there were watchmen at the door.

At last she could bear it no longer; the end of it all came. She stole out over the bodies of the sleeping watchmen, out into the dusty road under the palms, down to the waterside, to the Nile--the path leading homewards. She must go down the Nile, hiding by day, travelling by night--the homing bird with a broken wing-back to the but where she had lived so long with Wa.s.sef the camel-driver; back where she could lie in the dusk of her windowless home, shutting out the world from her solitude. There she could bear the agony of her hour.

Drinking the water of the Nile, eating the crumbs of dourha bread she had brought from the hospital, getting an onion from a field, chewing shreds of sugarcane, hiding by day and trudging on by night, hourly growing weaker, she struggled towards Beni Souef.

Fifty--forty--thirty--ten--five miles! Oh! the last two days, her head so hot and her brain bursting, and a thousand fancies swimming before her eyes, her heart fluttering, fluttering--stopping, going on--stopping, going on.

It was only the sound of the river--the Nile, Mother of Egypt, crooning to her disordered spirit, which kept her on her feet. Five miles, four miles, three miles, two, and then--she never quite remembered how she came to the hut where she was born. Two miles--two hours of incredible agony, now running, now leaning against a palm tree, now dropping to her knees, now fighting on and on, she came at last to the one spot in the world where she could die in peace.

As she staggered, stumbled, through the village, Yusef, the drunken ghaffir, saw her. He did not dare speak to her, for had he not killed her father, and had he not bought himself free of punishment from the Mudir? So he ran to old Fatima and knocked upon her door with his naboot, crying: "In the name of Allah get thee to the hut of Wa.s.sef the camel-driver!"

Thus it was that Soada, in her agony, heard a voice say out of the infinite distance: "All praise to Allah, he hath even now the strength of a year-old child!"

IV

That night at sunset, as Soada lay upon the sheepskin spread for her, with the child nestled between her arm and her breast, a figure darkened the doorway, and old Fatima cried out:

"Mahommed Selim!"

With a gasping sound Soada gathered the child quickly to her breast, and shrank back to the wall. This surely was the ghost of Mahommed Selim--this gaunt, stooping figure covered with dust.

"Soada, in the name of Allah the Compa.s.sionate, the Merciful, Soada, beautiful one!"

Mahommed Selim, once the lithe, the straight, the graceful, now bent, awkward, fevered, all the old daring gone from him, stood still in the middle of the room, humbled before the motherhood in his sight.

"Brother of jackals," cried old Fatima, "what dost thou here? What dost thou here, dog of dogs!" She spat at him.

He took no notice. "Soada," he said eagerly, prayerfully, and his voice, though hoa.r.s.e, was softer than she had ever heard it. "Soada, I have come through death to thee--Listen, Soada! At night, when sleep was upon the barrack-house, I stole out to come to thee. My heart had been hard.

I had not known how much I loved thee--"

Soada interrupted him. "What dost thou know of love, Mahommed Selim? The blood of the dead cries from the ground."

He came a step nearer. "The blood of Wa.s.sef the camel-driver is upon my head," he said. "In the desert there came news of it. In the desert, even while we fought the wild tribes, one to ten, a voice kept crying in my ear, even as thou hast cried, 'What didst thou know of love, Mahommed Selim!' One by one the men of Beni Souef fell round me; one by one they spoke of their village and of their women, and begged for a drop of water, and died. And my heart grew hot within me, and a spirit kept whispering in my ear: 'Mahommed Selim, think of the village thou hast shamed, of Soada thou hast wronged! No drop of water shall cheer thy soul in dying!'"

Fatima and Soada listened now with bated breath, for this was the voice of one who had drunk the vinegar and gall of life.

"When the day was done, and sleep was upon the barrack-house, my heart waked up and I knew that I loved Soada as I had never loved her. I ran into the desert, and the jackals flew before me--outcasts of the desert, they and I. Coming to the tomb of Amshar the sheikh, by which was a well, there I found a train of camels. One of these I stole, and again I ran into the desert, and left the jackals behind. Hour after hour, day and night, I rode on. But faintness was upon me, and dreams came.

For though only the sands were before me, I seemed to watch the Nile running--running, and thou beside it, hastening with it, hastening, hastening towards thy home. And Allah put a thorn into my heart, that a sharp pain went through my body--and at last I fell."

Soada's eyes were on him now with a strange, swimming brilliancy.

"Mahommed--Mahommed Selim, Allah touched thine eyes that thou didst see truly," she said eagerly. "Speak not till I have done," he answered.

"When I waked again I was alone in the desert, no food, no water, and the dead camel beside me. But I had no fear. 'If it be G.o.d's will,' said I, 'then I shall come unto Soada. If it be not G.o.d's will, so be it: for are we not on the cushion of His mercy, to sleep or to wake, to live or to die?'"

He paused, tottering, and presently sank upon the ground, his hands drooped before him, his head bent down. Old Fatima touched him on the shoulder.

"Brother of vultures didst thou go forth; brother of eagles dost thou return," she said. "Eat, drink, in the house of thy child and its mother."

"Shall the unforgiven eat or drink?" he asked, and he rocked his body to and fro, like one who chants the Koran in a corner of El Azhar, forgetting and forgotten.

Soada's eyes were on him now as though they might never leave him again; and she dragged herself little by little towards him, herself and the child--little by little, until at last she touched his feet, and the child's face was turned towards him from its mother's breast.

"Thou art my love, Mahommed Selim," she said. He raised his head from his hands, a hunger of desire in his face.

"Thou art my lord," she added: "art thou not forgiven? The little one is thine and mine," she whispered. "Wilt thou not speak to him?"

"Lest Allah should strike me with blindness and dry up the juice of my veins, I will not touch thee or the child until all be righted. Food will I not eat, nor water drink until thou art mine--by the law of the Prophet, mine."

Laying down the water-jar, and the plate of dourha bread, old Fatima gathered her robe about her, and cried as she ran from the house: "Marriage and fantasia thou shalt have this hour."

The stiffness seemed to pa.s.s from her bones as she ran through the village to the house of the Omdah. Her voice, lifting shrilly, sang the Song of Haleel, the song of the newly married, till it met the chant of the Muezzin on the tower of the mosque El Ha.s.san, and mingled with it, dying away over the fields of bersim and the swift-flowing Nile.

That night Mahommed Selim and Soada the daughter of Wa.s.sef the camel-driver were married, but the only fantasia they held was their own low laughter over the child. In the village, however, people were little moved to smile, for they knew that Mahommed Selim was a deserter from the army of the Khedive at Dongola, and that meant death. But no one told Soada this, and she did not think; she was content to rest in the fleeting dream.

"Give them twenty-four hours," said the black-visaged fat sergeant of cavalry come to arrest Mahommed Selim for desertion.

The father of Mahommed Selim again offered the Mamour a feddan of land if the young man might go free, and to the sergeant he offered a she-camel and a buffalo. To no purpose. It was Mahommed Selim himself who saved his father's goods to him. He sent this word to the sergeant by Yusef the drunken ghaffir: "Give me to another sunset and sunrise, and what I have is thine--three black donkeys of a.s.siout rented to old Abdullah the sarraf."

Because with this offer he should not only have backsheesh but the man also, the fat sergeant gave him leave. When the time was up, and Mahommed Selim drew Soada's face to his breast, he knew that it was the last look and last embrace.

"I am going back," he said; "my place is empty at Dongola."

"No, no, thou shalt not go," she cried. "See how the little one loves thee," she urged, and, sobbing, she held the child up to him.

But he spoke softly to her, and at last she said: "Kiss me, Mahommed Selim. Behold now thy discharge shall be bought from the palace of the Khedive, and soon thou wilt return," she cried.

"If it be the will of G.o.d," he answered; "but the look of thine eyes I will take with me, and the face of the child here." He thrust a finger into the palm of the child, and the little dark hand closed round it.