The Shadow of the East Part 21

It was more than twelve hours before he opened his eyes again, to find the morning sunlight streaming into the tent.

Yoshio hovered about him, deft-handed and noiseless of tread, feeding him and redressing the wounds in his side where the bullet had entered and pa.s.sed out. After which he relaxed the faintly superior tone he had adopted and condescended to consult with his patient as to which of the scanty drugs in the tiny medicine chest would be the best to administer.

He was disappointed but acquiescent in Craven's decision to trust to his own hardy const.i.tution as long as the wounds appeared healthy and leave nature to do her own work. And again recommending sleep he glided away.

But Craven had no desire or even inclination to sleep. He was tremendously wide awake, his whole being in revolt, facing once more the problem he had thought done with for ever. Again fate had intervened to thwart his determination. For the third time death, for which he longed, had been withheld, and life that was so bitter, so valueless, restored.

To what end? Why had the peace he craved for been torn from him--why had he been forced to begin again an existence of hideous struggle? Had he not repented, suffered as few men suffer, and striven to atone? What more was required of him, he wondered bitterly. A galling sense of impotence swept him and he raged at his own nothingness.

Self-determination seemed to have been taken from him and with fierce resentment he saw himself as merely a p.a.w.n in the game of life; a puppet to fulfil, not his own will, but the will of a greater power than his.

In the black despair that came over him he cursed that greater power until, shuddering, he realised his own blasphemy, and a broken prayer burst from his lips. He had come to the end of all things, he was fighting through abysmal darkness. His need was overwhelming--alone he could not go forward, and desperately, he turned to the Divine Mercy and prayed for strength and guidance.

Too weary in spirit to mark the slow pa.s.sing of the hours he fought his last fight. And gradually he grew calmer, calm enough to accept--if not to understand--the inscrutable rulings of Providence. He had arrogated to himself the disposal of his life, but it was made clear to him that a higher wisdom had decreed otherwise. He did not attempt to seek the purpose of his preservation, enough that for some unfathomable reason it was once more plainly indicated that there was to be no shirking. He had to live, and to do what was possible with the life left him. Gillian!

the thought of her was torment. He had tried to free her, and she was still bound. It would be part of his punishment that, suffering, he would have to watch her suffer too. With a groan he flung his uninjured arm across his eyes and lay very still. The day wore on. He roused himself to take the food that Yoshio brought at regular intervals but feigned a drowsiness he did not feel to secure the solitude his mood demanded. And Yoshio, enjoying to the full his state of temporary authority, sat outside the door of the tent and kept away inquirers.

Listlessly Craven watched the evening shadows deepen and darken. For hours he had thought, not of himself but of the woman he loved, until his bruised head ached intolerably. And all his deliberation had taken him no further than where he had begun. He was to take up anew the difficult life he had fled from--for that was what it amounted to. He had deserted her who had in all the world no one but him. It had an ugly sound and he flinched from the naked truth of it, but he had done with subterfuges and evasions. He had made her his wife and he had left her--nothing could alter the fact or mitigate the shame. Past experience had taught him nothing; once again he had left a woman in her need to fend for herself. She was his wife, his to shield and to protect, doubly so in her equivocal position that subjected her to much that would not affect one happily married. During the few months they had lived at Craven Towers after their marriage she had shown by every means in her power her desire to be to him the comrade he had asked her to be. And he had repelled her. He had feared himself and the strength of his resolution. Now, as he thought of it with bitter self-reproach, he realised how much more he could have done to make her life easier, to smooth the difficulties of their relationship. Instead he had added to them, and under the strain he had broken down, not she. The egoism he had thought conquered had triumphed over him again to his undoing.

Crushing shame filled him, but regrets were useless. The past was past--what of the future? He was going back to her. He was to have the torturing happiness of seeing her again--but what would his re-entry into her life mean to her? What had these two years of which he knew nothing done for her? There had been an acc.u.mulated mail waiting for him at Lagos. She had written regularly--but she had told him nothing. Her short letters had been filled with inquiries for the mission, references to Peters' occasional visits to Paris, trivialities of the weather--stilted laborious communications in which he read effort and constraint. How would she receive him--would she even receive him at all? It seemed incredible that she should. He knew her innate gentleness, the selflessness of her disposition, but he knew also that there was a limit to all things. Would she not see in his return the reappearance of a master, a jailer who would curb even that small measure of freedom that had been hers? For bound to him the freedom he had promised her was a mockery. And how was he to explain his prolonged absence? She could not have failed to see some mention of the return of the medical mission, to have wondered why he still lingered in Africa.

The letter he had written and entrusted to Yoshio could never now be delivered. She must not learn what he had meant her to know only after his death. He could not explain, he must leave her to put whatever interpretation she would upon it. And what but the most obvious could she put? He writhed in sudden agony of mind, and the physical pain the abrupt movement caused was easier to bear than the thought of her scorn.

It was all so hopeless, so complicated. He turned from it with a weary sigh and fell to dreaming of the woman herself.

The tent had grown quite dark. Outside the camp noises were dying away.

The sound of subdued voices reached him occasionally, and once or twice he heard Yoshio speak to some pa.s.ser by.

Then, not far away, the mournful chant of a singer rose clearly out of the evening stillness, penetrating and yet curiously soft--a plaintive little desert air of haunting melancholy, vibrant with pa.s.sion. It stopped abruptly as it had begun and Craven was glad when it ended. It chimed too intimately with his own sad thoughts and longings. He was relieved when Yoshio came presently to light the lamp and attend to his wants. The j.a.p chatted with unusual animation as he went about his duties and Craven let him talk uninterrupted. The functions of nurse and valet were quickly carried through and in a short time preparations for the night were finished and Yoshio, wrapped in a blanket, asleep at the foot of Craven's bed. He had scarcely closed his eyes since the day before the punitive force set out, but tonight, conscious that his vigilance might be relaxed, he slept heavily.

Craven himself could not sleep. He lay listening to his servant's even breathing, looking at the tiny flame of the little lamp, which was small enough not to add to the heat of the tent and too weak to illuminate it more than partially, thinking deeply. He strove to stem the current of his thoughts, to keep his mind a blank, or to concentrate on trivialities--he followed with exaggerated interest the swift erratic course of a bat that had flown in through the open door flap, counted the familiar objects around him showing dimly in the flickering light, counted innumerable sheep pa.s.sing through the traditional gate, counted the seconds represented in the periodical silences that punctuated a cicada's monotonous shrilling. But always he found himself harking back to the problem of the future that he could not banish from his mind.

His mental distress reacted on his body. He grew restless, but every movement was still attended by pain and he compelled himself to lie still, though his limbs twitched almost uncontrollably. He was infinitely weary of the forced posture that was not habitual with him, infinitely weary of himself.

The moon rose late, but when it came its clear white light filled the tent with a cold brilliance that killed the feeble efforts of the little lamp and intensified the shadows where its rays did not penetrate.

Craven looked at the silvery beam streaming across the room, and quite suddenly he thought of the moonlight in j.a.pan--the moonlight filtering through the tall dark fir trees in the garden of enchantment; he heard the night wind sighing softly round the tiny screen-built house; the air became heavy with the cloying smell of pines and languorous scented flowers, redolent with the well-remembered dreaded fragrance of the perfume she had used. Bathed in perspiration, shuddering with terrible prescience, he stared wild-eyed at the moonlit strip where a nebulous form was rising and gathering into definite shape. An icy chill ran through him. Suffocated with the rapid pounding of his heart, sick with horror at the impending vision he knew to be inevitable, he watched the shadowy figure slowly substantiate into the semblance of a living, breathing body. Not intangible as she had always appeared before, but material as she had been in life, she stood erect in the brilliant pathway of light, facing him. He could see the outline of her slender limbs, solid against the shimmering background; he could mark the rise and fall of the bosom on which her delicate hands lay clasped; he recognised the very obi that she wore--his last gift, sent from Tokio during his three weeks' absence. The little oval face was placid and serene, but he waited, with fearful apprehension, for the fast closed eyes to open and reveal the agony he knew that he would see in them. He prayed that they might open soon, that his torture might be brief, but the terrible reality of her presence seemed to paralyse him. He could not turn his eyes away, could not move a muscle of his throbbing, shivering body. She seemed to sway, gently, almost imperceptibly, from side to side--as though she waited for some sign or impellent force to guide her. Then with horrible dread he became aware that she was coming slowly, glidingly, toward him and the spell that had kept him motionless broke and he shrank back among the pillows, his sound hand clenched upon the covering over him, his parched lips moving in dumb supplication.

Nearer she came and nearer till at last she stood beside him and he wondered, in the freezing coldness that settled round his heart, did her coming presage death--had her soul been sent to claim his that had brought upon her such fearful destruction? A m.u.f.fled cry that was scarcely human broke from him, his eyes dilated and the clammy sweat poured down his face as she bent toward him and he saw the dusky lashes tremble on her dead white cheek and knew that in a second the anguished eyes would open to him in all their accusing awfulness. The bed shook with the spasm that pa.s.sed through him. Slowly the heavy lids were raised and Craven looked once more into the misty depths of the great grey eyes that were the facsimile of his own. Then a tearing sob of wonderful and almost unbelievable relief escaped him, for the agony he dreaded was not visible--the face so close to his was the face of the happy girl who had loved him before the knowledge of despair had touched her, the tender luminous eyes fixed on him were alight with trust and adoration. Lower and lower she bent and he saw the parted lips curve in a smile of exquisite welcome--or was it fare-well? For as he waited, scarcely breathing and tense with a new wild hope, the definite outline of her figure seemed to fade and tremble; a cold breath like the impress of a ghostly kiss lay for an instant on his forehead, he seemed to hear the faint thin echo of a whispered word--and she was gone. Had she ever been at all? Exhausted, he had no strength to probe what had pa.s.sed, he was only conscious of a firm conviction that he would never see again the dreaded vision that had haunted him. His rigid limbs relaxed, and with a gasping prayer of unutterable thankfulness he turned his face to the darkness and broke down completely, crying like a child, burying his head in the pillow lest Yoshio should be awakened by the sound of his terrible sobs. And, presently, worn out, he fell asleep.

It was nearly mid-day when he woke again, in less pain and feeling stronger than the day before.

The vision of the previous night was vivid in his recollection, but he would not let himself ponder it. It was to him a message from the dead, an almost sacred sign that the spirit of the woman he had wronged was at rest and had vouchsafed the forgiveness for which he had never hoped. He would rather have it so. He shrank from brutally dissecting impressions that might after all be only the result of remorse working on a fevered imagination. The peace that had come to him was too precious to be lightly let go. She had forgiven him though he could never forgive himself.

But despite the tranquillizing sense of pardon he felt he knew that the penalty of his fault was not yet paid, that it would never be paid. The tragic memory of little O Kara San still rose between him and happiness.

He was still bound, still trapped in the pit he had himself dug. He was unclean, unfit, debarred by his sin from following the dictates of his heart. A deep sadness and an overwhelming sense of loss filled him as he thought of the woman he had married. She was his wife, he loved her pa.s.sionately, longed for her with all the strength of his ardent nature, but, sin-stained, he dared not claim her. In her spotless purity she was beyond his desire. And because of him she must go through life robbed of her woman's heritage. In marrying her he had wronged her irreparably.

He had always known it, but at the time there had seemed no other course open to him. Yet surely there must have been some alternative if he had set himself seriously to find it. But had he? Doggedly he argued that he had--that personal consideration had not swayed him in his decision. But even as he persisted in his a.s.sertion accusing conscience rose up and stripped from him the last shred of personal deception that had blinded him, and he acknowledged to himself that he had married her that she might not become the wife of any other man. He had been the meanest kind of dog in the manger. At the time he had not realised it--he had thought himself influenced solely by her need, not his. But his selfishness seemed very patent to him now. And what was to be the end of it? How was he ever to compensate for the wrong done her?

Yoshio's entry put a stop to introspection that was both bitter and painful. And when he left him an hour later Craven was in no mood to resume speculation that was futile and led nowhere. He had touched bedrock--he could not think worse of himself than he did. The less he thought of himself the better. His immediate business seemed to be to get well as quickly as possible and return to England--beyond that he could not see. The sound of Sad's voice outside was a welcome relief.

He appeared to be arguing with Yoshio, who was obstinately refusing him entrance. Craven cut short the discussion.

"Let the Sheik come in, Yoshio!" he called, and laughed at the weakness of his own voice. But it was strong enough to carry as far as the tent door, and, with a flutter of draperies, the Arab Chief strode in. He grasped Craven's outstretched hand and stood looking down on him for a moment with a broad smile on his handsome face. "_Enfin, mon brave_, I thought I should never see you! Always you were asleep, or so it was reported to me," he said with a laugh, dropping to his heels on the mat and lighting a cigarette. Then he gave a quick searching glance at the bandaged figure on the bed and laughed again.

"You ought to be dead, you know, would have been dead if it hadn't been for that man of yours," with a backward jerk of his head toward the door. "You owe him your life, my friend. You know he came with us that night, borrowed a horse and the burnous you wouldn't wear, and kept out of sight till the last minute. He was close behind you when we charged, lost you in the melee, and found you again just in the nick of time. I was cut off from you myself for the moment, but I saw you wounded, saw him break a way through to you and then saw you both go down. I thought you were done for. It was just then the tide turned in our favour and I managed to reach you, with no hope of finding you alive. I was never more astonished in my life than when I saw that little devil of a j.a.panese crawl out from under a heap of men and horses dragging you after him. He was bruised and dazed, he didn't know friend from foe, bu he had enough sense left to know that you were alive and he meant to keep you so. He laid you out on the sand and he sat on you--you can laugh, but it's true--and blazed away with his revolver at everybody who came near, howling his national war cry till I wept with laughter. And after it was all over he snarled like a panther when I tried to touch you, and, refusing any a.s.sistance, carried you back here on the saddle in front of him--and you were no light weight. A man, by _Allah_!"

he concluded enthusiastically. Craven smiled at the Arab's graphic description, but he found it in his heart to wish that Yoshio's zeal had not been so forward and so successful. But there were other lives than his that had been involved.

"Omar?" he asked anxiously. The laughter died abruptly from Sad's eyes and his face grew grave.

"Dead," he said briefly; "he did not try to live. Life held nothing for him without Safiya," he added, with an expressive shrug that was eloquent of his inability to understand such an att.i.tude.

"And she--?"

"Killed herself the night she was taken. Her abductor got no pleasure of her and Omar's honour was unsmirched--though he never knew it, poor devil. He killed his man," added Sad, with a smile of grim satisfaction. "It made no difference, he was renegade, a traitor, ripe for death. The Chief fell to my lot. It was from him I learned about Safiya--he talked before he died." The short hard laugh that followed the meaning words was pure Arab. He lit another cigarette and for some time sat smoking silently, while Craven lay looking into s.p.a.ce trying not to envy the dead man who had found the rest that he himself had been denied.

To curb the trend of his thoughts he turned again to Sad. Animation had vanished from the Arab's face, and he was staring gloomily at the strip of carpet on which he squatted. His dejected bearing did not betoken the conqueror he undoubtedly was. That his brother's death was a deep grief to him Craven knew without telling, but he guessed that something more than regret for Omar was at the bottom of his depression.

"It was decisive, I suppose," he said, rather vaguely, thinking of the action of four days ago. Sad nodded. "It was a rout," he said with a hint of contempt in his voice. "Dogs who could plunder and kill when no resistance was offered, but when it came to a fight they had no stomach for it. Yet they were men once, and, like fools, we thought they were men still. They had talked enough, bragged enough, by _Allah_! and it is true there were a few who rallied round their Chief. But the rank and file--bah!" He spat his cigarette on to the floor with an air of scorn.

"It promised well enough at first," he grumbled. "I thought we were going to have an opportunity of seeing what stuff my men were made of.

But they had no organisation. After the first half hour we did what we liked with them. It was a walk over," he added in English, about the only words he knew.

Craven laughed at his disgusted tone.

"And you, who were spoiling for a fight! No luck, Sheik."

Sad looked up with a grin, but it pa.s.sed quickly, leaving his face melancholy as before. Craven made a guess at the trouble.

"It will make a difference to you--Omar's death, I mean," he suggested.

Sad gave a little harsh laugh.

"Difference!" he echoed bitterly. "It is the end of everything," and he made a violent gesture with his hands. "I must give up my regiment," he went on drearily, "my comrades, my racing stable in France--all I care for and that makes life pleasant to me. For what? To rule a tribe who have become too powerful to have enemies; to listen to interminable tales of theft and disputed inheritances and administer justice to people who swear by the Koran and then lie in your face; to marry a wife and beget sons that the tribe of Mukair Ibn Zarrarah may not die out.

_Grand Dieu_, what a life!" The tragic misery of his voice left no doubt as to his sincerity. And Craven, who knew him, was not inclined to doubt. The expedient that had been adopted in Sad's case was justifiable while he remained a younger son with no immediate prospect of succeeding to the leadership of the tribe--there had always been the hope that Omar's wife would eventually provide an heir--but as events had turned out it had been a mistake, totally unfitting him for the part he was now called upon to play. His innate European tendencies, inexplicable both to himself and to his family, had been developed and strengthened by a.s.sociation with the French officers among whom he had been thrown, and who had welcomed him primarily as the representative of a powerful desert tribe and then, very shortly afterwards, for himself.

His personal charm had won their affections and he had very easily become the most popular native officer in the regiment. Courted and feted, shown off, and extolled for his liberality of mind and purse, his own good sense had alone prevented him from becoming completely spoiled.

To the impecunious Frenchmen his wealth was a distinct a.s.set in his favour, for racing was the ruling pa.s.sion in the regiment, and the fine horses he was able to provide insured to them the preservation of the inter-regimental trophy that had for some years past graced their mess table. He had thrown himself into the life whole-heartedly, becoming more and more influenced by western thought and culture, but without losing his own individuality. He had a.s.similated the best of civilization without acquiring its vices. But the experience was not likely to conduce to his future happiness. Craven thought of the life led by the Spahi in Algiers, and during periods of leave in Paris, and contrasted it with the life that was lying before him, a changed and very different existence. He foresaw the difficulties that would have to be met, the problems that would arise, and above all he understood Sad's chief objection--the marriage from which his misogynous soul recoiled. Like himself the Arab was facing a crisis that was momentous.

Two widely different cases but a.n.a.logous nevertheless. While he was working out his salvation in England Sad would be doing the same in his desert fastness. The thought strengthened his friendship for the despondent young Arab. He would have given much to be able to help him but his natural reserve kept him silent. He had made a sufficient failure of his own life. He did not feel himself competent to offer advice to another.

"It's a funny world," he said with a half sigh, "though I suppose it isn't the world that's at fault but the people who live in it," and in his abstraction he spoke in his own language.

"_Plait-il?_" Sad's puzzled face recalled him to himself and he translated, adding: "It's rotten luck for you, Sheik, but it's kismet.

All things are ordained," he concluded almost shyly, feeling himself the worst kind of Job's comforter. The Arab shrugged. "To those who believe," he repeated gloomily, "and I, my friend, have no beliefs. What would you? All my life I have doubted, I have never been an orthodox Mohammedan--though I have had to keep my ideas to myself _bien entendu_!

And the last few years I have lived among men who have no faith, no G.o.d, no thought beyond the world and its pleasures. Islam is nothing to me.

'The will of _Allah_--the peace of _Allah_,' what are they but words, empty meaningless words! What peace did _Allah_ give to Omar, who was a strict believer? What peace has _Allah_ given to my father, who sits all day in his tent mourning for his first-born? I swear myself by _Allah_ and by the Prophet, but it is from custom, not from any feeling I attach to the terms. I have read a French translation of a life of Mohammed written by an American. I was not impressed. It did not tend to make me look with any more favour on his doctrine. I have my own religion--I do not lie, I do not steal, I do not break my word. Does the devout follower of the Prophet invariably do as much? You know, and I know, that he does not. Wherein then is he a better man than I? And if there be a future life, which I am quite open to admit, I am inclined to think that my qualifications will be as good as any true son of the faith," he laughed unmirthfully, and swung to his feet.

"There are--other religions," said Craven awkwardly. He had no desire to proselytise and avoided religious discussions as much as possible, but Sad's confidence had touched him. He was aware that to no one else would the Arab have spoken so frankly. But Sad shook his head.

"I will keep my own religion. It will serve," he said shortly. Then he shrugged again as if throwing aside the troubles that perplexed him and looked down on Craven with a quick laugh. "And you, my poor friend, who had so much better have taken the burnous I offered you, you will stay and watch the metamorphosis of the Spahi, _hein_?"

"I wish I could," said Craven with an answering smile, "but I have my own work waiting for me in England. I'll have to go as soon as I'm sufficiently patched up."

Sad nodded gravely. He was perfectly well aware of the fact that Craven had deliberately sought death when he had ridden with the tribe against their enemies. That a change had come over him since the night of the raid was plainly visible even to one less astute than the sharp-eyed Arab, and his expressed intention of returning to England confirmed the fact. What had caused the change did not seem to matter, enough that, to Sad, it marked a return to sanity. For it had been a fit of madness, of course--in no other light could he regard it. But since it had pa.s.sed and his English friend was once more in full possession of his senses he could only acquiesce in a decision that personally he regretted. He would like to have kept him with him indefinitely. Craven stood for the past, he was a link with the life the Francophile Arab was reluctantly surrendering. But it was not the moment to argue. Craven looked suddenly exhausted, and Yoshio who had stolen in noiselessly, was standing at the head of the bed beyond the range of his master's eyes making urgent signals to the visitor to go.

With a jest and a cheery word Sad obediently removed his picturesque person.

CHAPTER X

It was nearly four months before Craven left the camp of Mukair Ibn Zarrarah. His injuries had healed quickly and he had rapidly regained his former strength. He was anxious to return to England without delay, but he had yielded to Sad's pressing entreaties to wait until they could ride to Algiers together. There had been much for the young Sheik to do. He was already virtual leader of the tribe. Mukair Ibn Zarrarah, elderly when his sons had been born, had aged with startling suddenness since the death of Omar. He had all at once become an old man, unable to rally from the shock of his bereavement, bewailing the fate of his elder and favourite son, and trembling for the future of his beloved tribe left to the tender mercies of a man he now recognised to be more Frenchman than Arab. He exaggerated every Francophile tendency he saw in Sad and cursed the French as heartily as ever Omar had done, forgetting that he himself was largely responsible for the inclinations he objected to. And his terrors were mainly imaginary. A few innovations Sad certainly inst.i.tuted but he was too astute to make any material changes in the management of his people. They were loyal and attached to the ruling house and he was clever enough to leave well alone; broad-minded enough to know that he could not run a large and scattered tribe on the same plan as a regiment of Spahis; philosophical enough to realise that he had turned down a page in his life's history and must be content to follow, more or less, in the footsteps of his forebears. The fighting men were with him solidly, even those who had been inclined to object to his European tactics had, in view of his brilliant generalship, been obliged to concede him the honour that was his due. For his victory had not been altogether the walkover he had airily described to Craven. The older men--the headmen in particular--more prejudiced still, who, like Mukair Ibn Zarrarah, had centred all their hopes on Omar, were beginning to comprehend that their fears of Sad's rule were unfounded and that his long sojourn among the hated dominant race had neither impaired his courage nor fostered practices abhorrent to them. Craven watched with interest the gradual establishment of mutual goodwill between the young Sheik and his petty Chiefs. Since his recovery he had attended several of the councils called in consequence of the old Sheik's retirement from active leadership of the tribe, and he had been struck by Sad's restrained and conciliatory att.i.tude toward his headmen. He had met them half-way, sinking his own inclinations and disarming their suspicions of him. At the same time he had let it be clearly understood that he meant to be absolute as his father had been. In spite of the civilisation that had bitten so deeply he was still too much an Arab, too much the son of Mukair Ibn Zarrarah, to be anything but an autocrat at heart. And his a.s.sumption of power had been favourably looked upon by the minor Chiefs.