The Mercy of the Lord Part 11

"Khesroo!" she called once more, and this time there was a faint inflection of fear in her voice; for was that figure Khesroo, the goatherd, or was it her lover? Or was it neither; but someone only of whom she had dreamt as the Son of a King?

Should she go back? The wish struck her keenly, but she ignored it, and went on. She must, she knew, have left the camp far behind her, and, if she had kept the right direction, would soon be close on the spot where that straight line of an arrow had startled her by its intrusion into her dream of love.

If she had kept it! And surely she had, for behind her the east was faintly lightening with the dawn. Yonder, therefore, in the dark of the heralding clouds which had huddled upon the western horizon must lie the domed shadows of the buried city.

"Khesroo!" she cried, instinctively, the very soul of her speaking, "show it to me! For the sake of the woman who died, as women die for a life of love, a love of life, show it to me!"

And then, behind her, she heard a voice chanting, as Khesroo, the goatherd, had chanted, the call of guidance for the wanderers in the desert. Yet the words were different; for these were they:

"Seekers for sleep, arise!

Your rest is done.

Go forth with weary eyes To find your prize In vain, in vain! To none Will slumber have begun Till from the heart of one Desire dies."

Listening, she turned to look, then realised that in her searching she must once more have circled back on her own footsteps, for behind and not before her, dark, clear, unmistakable, the domed shadow of the lost city lay against the lightening east. And on its swelling side, as Khesroo had stood before, he stood again. Was it the rising sun which turned the fillet of knotted cord about his head to gold?--which dyed the coa.r.s.e blanketing to royal purple, and transformed the wearer into the perfect kingliness of buoyant youth and beauty? She never knew. She only felt that something stronger than herself caught her, held her, clasped her, and yet drew her on, so that with hands outstretched she ran towards it, crying between smiles and tears:

"The Son of a King! The Son of a King!"

The next instant she had tripped and fallen heavily on her face over a tangled tuft of gra.s.s concealing an unusually deep descent of a desert wave. As she picked herself up, confused, somewhat dazed, and paused to free her eyes from the sand grains which clouded them, something almost at her feet brought her back to realities, and she gave a quick exclamation. For in the hollow beneath the wave, where he had evidently sought shelter deliberately, Jim Forrester lay curled up comfortably, fast asleep. At least, so it seemed, though Khesroo's quaint old bow must surely make rather an uncomfortable pillow.

She stooped over the sleeping man, and for an instant her face whitened; she bent lower to listen to his breathing. And as she listened a couple of startled sand-chaffs fled from a neighbouring thorn bush, their chuckling cry echoing over the desert like an evil laugh.

But a minute afterwards, in answer to her touch, Jim Forrester was staring at her trying to collect his sleep-scattered senses.

"Hullo!" he said, slowly. "How on earth did I--Ah! I remember. That brute of a goatherd played the garden a.s.s and I lost him, so after wandering about for hours, I turned in till daylight. But you--my dearest dear----"

He started to his feet as he realised her presence there, and held out both his hands to her.

As he did so, something dropped from them and lay glittering on the sand at his feet. It was a gold coin.

They looked at each other, amazed; then she stooped and picked it up.

"A double profile," she said slowly, holding it so as to catch the growing sunlight, "and the legend round"--she spelt it out from the Greek lettering--"'Basileus Basileon.'"

"And the date," he cried, "the date!"

"Yes, the date is there," she replied, still more slowly turning to the obverse, "the bird and the date--it is all right--but I was thinking of the other----"

"What other?"

"Basileus Basileon--'the King of Kings,'" she said softly, and looked out towards the sunrise. But the light had claimed the whole world and sent all shadows flying.

So happily, prosaically, they went home to breakfast. Yet there was one thing which she never told anyone, perhaps because it might have stood in the way of the popular explanation of the whole affair--namely, that Khesroo had happened on the coin and must have put it in Jim Forrester's hand after the latter fell asleep. So, not even when her father proudly pointed out to admirers that the double profile was that of a man and a woman, and that the latter, curiously enough, might almost be a portrait of his married daughter, did she ever say that when she found her husband asleep in the sand that morning, the looped bowstring of Khesroo the goatherd's bow was loose about his neck.

But she often wonders if it would have been drawn tighter had she not gone to seek for what she wanted.

THE BIRTH OF FIRE

The night was clear and silent.

The light-pulse of the stars as they wheeled with slow certainty to meet the dawn was the only visible movement in the whole expanse of shadowed earth and sky.

And the only sound audible was my own life breath as I sate beside the glowing embers of the camp fire.

Strictly speaking, however, there was no camp, for I, and the two coolies who carried my breakfast, had missed our way in our detour through the eternal sameness of faint curve and level in the wide uplands, and finally, in despair of rejoining our tents, had bivouacked as best we could on the sh.o.r.e of a small frozen lake; one of those obstinate, rock-bound pools which, even when spring has set seal of conquest on the world, refuse to melt, and so yield up their treasure of sweet water to its renewed thirst for Life.

My servants had forced this particular lakelet to philanthropy with rude blows; wantonly rude it had seemed to me, as I watched the swift shiver with which the stable unity of surface had split into forlorn fragments of ice, each adrift at the mercy of that which they had held prisoner for so long.

The other necessary element, fire, my men had also commandeered by a raid on the low juniper which crept like moss below the taller gra.s.ses of the plain.

The result had not been altogether satisfactory, for the pungent smoke of the aromatic wood had--at least, so the sufferers averred, though, at the time, I suspected a recourse for comfort to my whisky-flask--produced unmistakable symptoms of intoxication in the amateur cooks, who, after valiantly serving me up a rechauffe of breakfast had succ.u.mbed to sleep. The mattress of creeping juniper on which they lay like logs was springy enough to have hidden them from sight even if the shadowed earth had not been so dark; for it was dark, formless, void, as only an unbroken expanse of featureless plain can be when the very sky grows velvet black because of the infinitely distant brilliance of the stars. Indeed, the uniformity of indefinable shadow was almost oppressive, although I knew right well the scene that lay around me; for who that has once seen it can fail of seeing again with the mind's eye the marvellous mosaic as of white marble and precious jewels which covers the high upland stretches of the World's Roof, when the winter snow retreats reluctantly, as if loth to leave the carpeting of spring flowers which follow on its fleeing footsteps.

I even remembered as I watched the embers that just behind them, finding faint shelter from a solitary boulder, there grew a tiny azalea I had never seen before; a fragile, leafless thing set spa.r.s.ely with sweet-scented flowers that were flecked rose on saffron like a sunset sky.

And the silence was oppressive also. I caught myself listening--listening almost breathlessly--for a sound--for some sound!

But there was not even a whisper among the tall gra.s.ses.

In sudden impulse I threw a fresh juniper branch upon the embers, and the silence, the stillness ended as if by magic; for the green spines spat and sputtered as they shrivelled, and sent out a dense cloud of smoke to circle up endlessly into the darkness.

A pungent smoke indeed! Involuntarily I drew back from it and covered my eyes with my hand waiting until the smouldering should lighten into flame.

The waiting, however, prolonged itself strangely. No flicker of light reached me, and I began to wonder dreamily what had happened; so dreamily, indeed, that when at last I looked up, I did so reluctantly, and with a curious sense of confusion.

It was this, no doubt, which prevented surprise at finding that I was no longer the solitary watcher of those dull embers.

Opposite me, nearly hidden in the endless curlings of the juniper smoke was a man crouching towards the fire as if he felt the cold of the high uplands. Only his face, and the hands he held towards the heat, showed clearly; the rest was lost in billowy clouds which, drifting upwards behind him, obscured the very stars.

I sate silent for a while, disinclined even for curiosity, and then, rather to my own surprise, I spoke as I might have spoken to a familiar friend.

"You are cold, I'm afraid."

To this day, I do not know in what language he replied--if, indeed! he spoke at all. My only recollection is of the eloquence of liquid, l.u.s.trous eyes, the confident certainty of comprehension which is the child's ere it can speak articulately.

"I am a Star-gazer; so the Fire draws me."

"Why?"

"Why? Surely all know it is the Star Fire which fell when She first came to me--Hai-me! Hai-me! When She first came and laid her hand in mine."

The drifting billows parted, showing the stars above his head, then closed again, blotting them out; blotting out all things, it seemed to me, even my own self as I sate listening to the faint wail which rose vaguely, filling the wide shadows.

"Io! Io! Disturber of dreams, why didst thou come? Io! Io! Bringer of dreams, why didst go? Lo! the Star fire was not thine though thou earnest with the Fire of the Star."