O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 Part 62

"And I, I shall ride at Moulay Saa's right hand, please G.o.d, and I shall cut the necks of _Roumi_ with my sword, like barley straw!"

Habib advanced in the spotlight of the candles. Under the burnoose his face, half shadowed, looked green and white, as if he were sick to his death. Or, perhaps, as if he were being born again.

The minutes pa.s.sed, and they were hours. The music went on, interminable.

"_Boom-boom-boom-boom_ ----" But now Habib himself was the instrument, and now the old song of his race played its will on him.

Pinkness began to creep over the green-white cheeks. The cadence of the chanting had changed. It grew ardent, melting, voluptuous.

_... And conquests I have made among the fair ones, perfume inundated, Beauties ravishing; that sway in an air of musk and saffron, Bearing still on their white necks the traces of kisses...._

It hung under the pepper trees, drunk with the beauty of flesh, fainting with pa.s.sion. Above the trees mute lightning played in the cloud. Habib ben Habib was born again. Again, after exile, he came back into the heritage. He saw the heaven of the men of his race. He saw Paradise in a walking dream. He saw women forever young and forever lovely in a land of streams, women forever changing, forever virgin, forever new; strangers intimate and tender. The angels of a creed of love--or of l.u.s.t!

"l.u.s.t is the thing you find where you don't find trust."

A thin echo of the Frenchman's diatribe flickered through his memory, and he smiled. He smiled because his eyes were open now. He seemed to see this Christian fellow sitting on his bed, bare-footed, rumple-haired, talking dogmatically of perfumes and vials and stoppers thrown away, talking of faith in women. And that was the jest. For he seemed to see the women, over there in Paris, that the brothers of that naive fellow trusted--trusted alone with a handsome young university student from Tunisia. Ha-ha-ha! Now he remembered. He wanted to laugh out loud at a race of men that could be as simple as that. He wanted to laugh at the bursting of the iridescent bubble of faith in the virtue of beautiful women. The Arab knew!

A colour of health was on his face; his step had grown confident. Of a sudden, and very quietly, all the mixed past was blotted out. He heard only the chanting voices and the beating drums.

_Once I came into the tent of a young beauty on a day of rain....

Beauty blinding.... Charms that ravished and made drunkards of the eyes...._

His blood ran with the song, pulse and pulse. The mute lightning came down through the trees and bathed his soul. And, shivering a little, he let his thoughts go for the first time to the strange and virgin creature that awaited his coming there, somewhere, behind some blind house wall, so near.

"Thou hast suffered exile. Now is thy reward prepared."

What a fool! What a fool he had been!

He wanted to run now. The la.s.situde of months was gone from his limbs.

He wanted to fling aside that clogging crowd, run, leap, arrive. How long was this hour? Where was he? He tried to see the housetops to know, but the glow was in his eyes. He felt the hands of his comrades on his arms.

But now there was another sound in the air. His ears, strained to the alert, caught it above the drums and voices--a thin, high ululation.

It came from behind high walls and hung among the leaves of the trees, a phantom yodeling, the welcoming "_you-you-you-you_" of the women of Islam.

Before him he saw that the crowd had vanished. Even the candles went away. There was a door, and the door was open.

He entered, and no one followed. He penetrated alone into an empty house of silence, and all around him the emptiness moved and the silence rustled.

He traversed a court and came into a chamber where there was a light.

He saw a negress, a Sudanese duenna, crouching in a corner and staring at him with white eyes. He turned toward the other side of the room.

She sat on a high divan, like a throne, her hands palms together, her legs crossed. In the completeness of her immobility she might have been a doll or a corpse. After the strict fashion of brides, her eyebrows were painted in thick black arches, her lips drawn in scarlet, her cheeks splashed with rose. Her face was a mask, and jewels in a crust hid the flame of her hair. Under the stiff kohl of their lids her eyes turned neither to the left nor to the right. She seemed not to breathe. It is a dishonour for a maid to look or to breathe in the moment when her naked face suffers for the first time the gaze of the lord whom she has never seen.

A minute pa.s.sed away.

"This is the thing that is mine!" A blinding exultation ran through his brain and flesh. "Better this than the 'trust' of fools and infidels! No question here of 'faith.' _Here I know_! I know that this thing that is mine has not been bandied about by the eyes of all the men in the world. I know that this perfume has never been breathed by the pa.s.sers in the street. I know that it has been treasured from the beginning in a secret place--against this moment--for me. This bud has come to its opening in a hidden garden; no man has ever looked upon it; no man will ever look upon it. None but I."

He roused himself. He moved nearer, consumed with the craving and exquisite curiosity of the new. He stood before the dais and gazed into the unwavering eyes. As he gazed, as his sight forgot the grotesque doll painting of the face around those eyes, something queer began to come over him. A confusion. Something bothering. A kind of fright.

"Thou!" he breathed.

Her icy stillness endured. Not once did her dilated pupils waver from the straight line. Not once did her bosom lift with breath.

"_Thou_! It is _thou_, then, O runner on the housetops by night!"

The fright of his soul grew deeper, and suddenly it went out. And in its place there came a black calm. The eyes before him remained transfixed in the s.p.a.ce beyond his shoulder. But by and by the painted lips stirred once.

"_Nekaf_!... I am afraid!"

Habib turned away and went out of the house.

In the house of bel-Kalfate the Jewess danced, still, even in voluptuous motion, a white drift of disdain. The music eddied under the rayed awning. Raillery and laughter were magnified. More than a little _bokha_, the forbidden liquor distilled of figs, had been consumed in secret. Eyes gleamed; lips hung.... Alone in the thronged court on the dais, the host and the notary, the _caid_, the _cadi_, and the cousin from the south continued to converse in measured tones, holding their coffee cups in their palms.

"It comes to me, on thought," p.r.o.nounced bel-Kalfate, inclining his head toward the notary with an air of courtly deprecation--"it comes to me that thou hast been defrauded. For what is a trifle of ten thousand _douros_ of silver as against the rarest jewel (I am certain, _sidi_) that has ever crowned the s.e.x which thou mayest perhaps forgive me for mentioning?"

And in the same tone, with the same gesture, Hadji Daoud replied: "Nay, master and friend, by the Beard of the Prophet, but I should repay thee the half. For that is a treasure for a sultan's daughter, and this _fillette_ of mine (forgive me) is of no great beauty or worth ----"

"In saying that, Sidi Hadji, thou sayest a thing which is at odds with half the truth."

They were startled at the voice of Habib coming from behind their backs.

"For thy daughter, Sidi Hadji, thy Zina, is surely as lovely as the full moon sinking in the west in the hour before the dawn."

The words were fair. But bel-Kalfate was looking at his son's face.

"Where are thy comrades?" he asked, in a low voice. "How hast thou come?" Then, with a hint of haste: "The dance is admirable. It would be well that we should remain quiet, Habib, my son."

But the notary continued to face the young man. He set his cup down and clasped his hands about his knee. The knuckles were a little white.

"May I beg thee, Habib ben Habib, that thou shouldst speak the thing which is in thy mind?"

"There is only this, _sidi_, a little thing: When thou hast another bird to vend in the market of hearts, it would perhaps be well to examine with care the cage in which thou hast kept that bird.

"Thy daughter," he added, after a moment of silence--"thy daughter, Sidi Hadji, is with child."

That was all that was said. Hadji Daoud lifted his cup and drained it, sucking politely at the dregs. The _cadi_ coughed. The _cadi_ raised his eyes to the awning and appeared to listen. Then he observed, "To-night, _in-cha-'llah_, it will rain." The notary pulled his burnoose over his shoulders, groped down with his toes for his slippers, and got to his feet.

"Rest in well-being!" he said. Then, without haste, he went out.

Habib followed him tardily as far as the outer door. In the darkness of the empty street he saw the loom of the man's figure moving off toward his own house, still without any haste.

"And in the night of thy marriage thy husband, or thy father, if thou hast a father ----"

Habib did not finish with the memory. He turned and walked a few steps along the street. He could still hear the music and the clank of the Jewess's silver in his father's court....

"_In-cha-'llah_!" she had said, that night.

And after all, it _had_ been the will of G.o.d....