Oriental Encounters Part 8

I will not pay.'

'No matter. I pay for you,' shrugged Suleyman.

I tried to make the missionary--for such he proved to be upon acquaintance--understand that the conditions in that desert country made the spring a valued property, and gave a price to every pitcherful of water.

'What! Are you English?' was his only answer, as he scanned my semi-native garb with pity and disgust. 'And who, pray, is that person with you who was rude to me?'

'His name is Suleyman. He is a friend of mine.'

'A friend, I hardly think,' replied the Frank, fastidiously. He was a big man, with a dark complexion and light eyes. 'I am going to camp here to-night. I have a tent. Perhaps you will be good enough to come and sup with me. Then we can talk.'

'With pleasure,' I made answer, taken by surprise.

'Where is your camp?' he asked.

'We haven't got one. We put up in the guest-room if there is one, or under the stars.'

'Well, there's no accounting for tastes,' he murmured, with a sneer.

Rashid, through all this conversation, had been standing by, waiting to tell me that Suleyman had gone before into the village to the headman's house, where it had been arranged that we should pa.s.s the night. Thither we went, when I had finished speaking to the missionary; and there we found Suleyman enthroned among the village elders in a long, low room. He stood up on my entrance, as did all the others, and explained:

'We have a room near by where we can throw our saddle-bags, but it is verminous, and so we will not sleep inside it, but outside--on the roof. For supper we are the invited guests of the good sheykh, and I can tell you he is getting ready a fine feast.'

With deep regret and some degree of shame I told him of my promise to take supper with the missionary. He looked reproach at me, and told the villagers what I had said. They all cried out in disappointment.

Suleyman suggested that I should revoke the promise instantly, but that I would not do, to his annoyance; and after that, till it was time for me to go, he and Rashid were sulky and withdrew their eyes from me. I knew that they were jealous of the Frank, whom they regarded as an enemy, and feared lest he should turn my mind against them.

CHAPTER X

THE PARTING OF THE WAYS

It was dusk when I set out for the missionary's tent, and starlit night before I reached it--so fleeting is the summer twilight in that land.

Rashid went with me, as in duty bound, and insisted on remaining with the servants of the missionary by the cook's fire, although I told him to go back repeatedly, knowing how his mouth must water for the headman's feast. The dudgeon which he felt at my desertion made him determined not to let me out of sight, and called for the martyrdom of someone, even let that someone be himself.

The missionary called: 'Come in!' while I was still a good way off the tent. Entering, I found him stretched on a deck-chair, with hands behind his head. He did not rise upon my entrance, but just smiled and pointed to another chair beyond a little folding table laid for supper.

He spoke of the day's heat and the fatigues of travel and the flies; and asked me how I could endure to sleep in native hovels full of fleas and worse.

I told him that, by Suleyman's arrangement, we were to sleep upon the roof for safety. He sniffed.

I then related a discussion I had overheard between Rashid and Suleyman as to the best way of defeating those domestic pests, thinking to make him laugh. Rashid had spoken of the virtues of a certain shrub; but Suleyman declared the best specific was a new-born baby. This, if laid within a room for a short while, attracted every insect. The babe should then be carried out and dusted. The missionary did not even smile.

'The brutes!' he murmured. 'How can you, an Englishman, and apparently a man of education, bear their intimacy?'

They had their good points, I a.s.serted--though, I fear, but lamely; for the robustness of his att.i.tude impressed me, he being a man, presumably, of wide experience, and, what is more, a clergyman--the kind of man I had been taught to treat with some respect.

He said no more till we had finished supper, which consisted of sardines and corned beef and sliced pineapple, tomatoes and half-liquid b.u.t.ter out of tins, and some very stale European bread which he had brought with him. Confronted with such mummy food, I thought with longing of the good, fresh meal which I had left behind me at the headman's house. He may have guessed my thoughts, for he observed: 'I never touch their food. It is insanitary'--which I knew to be exactly what they said of his.

The man who waited on us seemed to move in fear, and was addressed by his employer very curtly.

After the supper there was tea, which, I confess, was welcome, and then the missionary put me through a kind of catechism. Finding out who I was, and that we had some friends in common, he frowned deeply.

He had heard of my existence in the land, it seemed.

'What are you doing here at all?' he asked severely. 'At your age you should be at college or in training for some useful work.'

'I'm learning things,' I told him rather feebly.

His point of view, the point of view of all my countrymen, imposed itself on me as I sat there before him, deeply conscious of my youth and inexperience.

'What things?' he asked. And then his tongue was loosed. He gave me his opinion of the people of the country, and particularly of my two companions. He had summed them up at sight. They were two cunning rogues, whose only object was to fleece me. He told me stories about Englishmen who had been ruined in that very way through making friends with natives whom they thought devoted to them. One story ended in a horrid murder. He wanted me to have no more to do with them, and when he saw I was attached to them, begged me earnestly to treat them always as inferiors, to 'keep them in their place'; and this I promised, coward-like, to do, although I knew that, in the way he meant, it was not in me.

It seemed that he himself was travelling in these wild places in search of an old Greek inscription, mention of which he had discovered in some book. He half-persuaded me to bear him company.

'You are doing no good here, alone with such companions,' he said, as I at last departed. 'Think over my advice to you. Go back to England.

Come with me for the next few days, and share my tents. Then come and stay with me in Jerusalem, and we can talk things over.' There was no doubt of the kindliness of his intention.

I thanked him, and strolled back toward the village in the starlight, Rashid, who, at my first appearance, had detached himself from a small group which sat around the missionary's kitchen fire, stalking on before me with a lantern.

It seemed a wonder that the village dogs, which had made so great a noise on our arrival in the place so short a while before, now took no notice, seeming to recognise our steps as those of lawful inmates.

At the headman's house Suleyman still sat up talking with the village elders. He expressed a hope that I had much enjoyed myself, but with a hint of grievance which I noticed as a thing expected. Looking round upon those eager, friendly faces, I compared them with the cold face of the missionary, who suddenly appeared to me as a great bird of prey. I hated him instinctively, for he was like a schoolmaster; and yet his words had weight, for I was young to judge, and schoolmasters, though hateful, have a knack of being in the right.

At last we three went up on to the roof to sleep. We had lain down and said 'good night' to one another, when Suleyman remarked, as if soliloquising:

'Things will never be the same.'

'What do you mean?' I questioned crossly.

'That missionary has spoilt everything. He told you not to trust us, not to be so friendly with persons who are natives of this land, and therefore born inferior.'

I made no answer, and Suleyman went on:

'A man who journeys in the desert finds a guide among the desert people, and he who journeys on the sea trusts seamen. What allegations did he make? I pray you tell us!'

'He told me stories of his own experience.'

'His experience is not, never will be, yours. He is the enemy. A tiger, if one asked him to describe mankind, would doubtless say that they are masters of the guile which brings destruction, deserving only to be clawed to death. Question the pigeons of some mosque, upon the other hand, and they will swear by Allah men are lords of all benevolence.'

Rashid broke in: 'His boys, with whom I talked, inform me that he is devoid of all humanity. He never thanks them for their work, however perfect, nor has a word of blessing ever pa.s.sed his lips. He frowns continually. How can he be the same as one like thee who laughs and talks?'

We had all three sat up, unconsciously. And we continued sitting up, debating miserably under the great stars, hearing the jackals' voices answer one another from hill to hill both near and far, all through that night, drawing ever closer one to another as we approached an understanding.

'An Englishman such as that missionary,' said Suleyman, 'treats good and bad alike as enemies if they are not of his nation. He gives bare justice; which, in human life, is cruelty. He keeps a strict account with every man. We, when we love a man, keep no account. We never think of what is due to us or our position. And when we hate--may G.o.d forgive us!--it is just the same--save with the very best and coolest heads among us.'

'But you are cunning, and have not our code of honour,' I objected, with satirical intention, though the statement sounded brutal.