Book the Fourth: THE PASSING (continued 4)

XV

Near where Ismailia sits amidst her flowery gardens and tasselled avenues, on the edge of the scorching Desert of el Jifar, is an arid rectangle of sand east of the Canal, above Lake Timsah, used at the time I write of as an Air Base. Beyond Essenian, there were no native officers serving at the Air Base, though the indomitable Gyppos of the Labour Corps were employed at the aërodrome in building hangars, and cleaning the machines. Here rows of 'buses, both B.C.'s and D.H.6's—used for reconnaissance on the Canal, along the shores of the Red Sea as far as Aden—and over the Front in Palestine—were ranged in readiness in front of their great hangars, and observers in double-breasted tunics of drill or serge, with shorts and forage-caps—or yet more simply and economically attired in flannel shirts, canvas shoes and sun-helmets—stood on the summits of wooden towers, combing the blue with high-powered binoculars for enemy aircraft, in watches, relieved at three-hour intervals....

Not without reason had the Pasha boasted of the beauty of his villa, a white marble palace of Arabian-Turkish architecture, standing well back from an avenue of casuarinas, embowered in trailing roses, clothed with imperial Bougainvillea and shaded with trees, rising from the green velvet lawns that carpet what was a rectangle of barrenness wrested from the Desert twenty-three years ago.

Within the palace, suites of rooms—used in the Oriental style as reception saloons or bedrooms—according to the needs of the moment—were furnished in luxury rivalling the most modern of Parisian hotels. Soft-footed, low-voiced servants, chiefly Mohammedans, dressed in speckless white, and moving like automata, waited upon the master's guests and did the master's will.

Here Nasr Ullah, the Pasha's elderly body-servant and confidential messenger, ruled with rigidity, taking it out of his subordinates when the Presence dealt hardly with him. In two rooms of the vast warren of rooms opening on a rearward court, his "house" and a small brood of sturdy boys were accommodated. A little dark Moslemah the wife of Nasr Ullah, well dressed and laden with solid silver jewellery. Plain, with projecting rabbit teeth, and shallow forehead; meek, dutiful, pious and greatly given to prayer. A grave for the secrets of her husband Nasr, who was occasionally burdened with a conscience, whose smarting called for soothing feminine balms.

He stood on the threshold of his outer room, in the mild, pale hour when the stars were flowering through the last glow of the sunset, and his tall white turban was pushed awry, and his high forehead was ridged with care.

"'Tis a tyranny to force a man of kindly heart towards God's creatures, to scatter poisoned barley for the birds," he said uneasily. "And the carrier-dove is the Bird of Nun, that went forth from the Ark and brought back the olive-leaf, and a dove was the bird that the Son of Mariam—when as yet but a babe of tender years—playing with others who knew not His holiness—wrought by the riverside of clay."

"And the boys laughed and mocked Him, because He had made one bird instead of many. And He was not angry, but said, 'Do ye then as I do!' And then He clapped His hands and the dove flew away. Did it not so, O my father?" a thready voice piped.

"Since when," asked Nasr Ullah with affected sternness, "have the babes permission to lift up voice when their elders take counsel?" His lined face softened into tenderness as the child clinging to the mother's skirts hid his head under her veil. "Remember, O woman!" he went on, "I have said the white powder is a deadly poison. If a speck, such as would lie safely hidden under the finger-nail—find a way into the child's milk-bowl, I were without a son."

"It is all in there.... I boiled the barley until soft, and drained the water away carefully—emptied the paper-packet of powder in among the barley and stirred the barley well with a little stick. Then I burned both the paper and the stick, as thou didst order. Remains for thee to break the pot to sherds when—when thou hast finished. O my misfortune! What a task! My lord, Nasr Ullah, who hath the pride of princes!—to creep about under cover of night—from the courtyard of the Commandant-Sahib to the haush where the Ifrangis keep their swallow-boats, scattering poisoned barley for pigeons with messages—"

"Hûs! ..."

She had raised her usually quiet voice somewhat indiscreetly, and the toddler, youngest save one of Fatimeh's brood of four, scared by the unusualness of this demonstration, lifted up his own voice in a lusty howl.

"Hus—sus! No one is vexed with thee, my joy!—nobody is angry! Run out and play with the little grey goat awhile before thy sleep-time comes!" And as the boy with a shrill joyful chuckle toddled over the threshold to seek his playmate, Nasr Ullah promptly clapped the door to and shot the wooden door-bolt, and not content with this, pulled the heavy leather curtains that kept out chilly winds and June and February samûms, over the doorway and the latticed window-screens.

"By the life of the Prophet—peace on him!—by thy head! speak lower. What Afrit hast thou vexed—throwing away the carrot-tops and the water that washed the dishes?" he demanded of his now hysterically-tearful wife. "Is this my house, whom I deemed discreet as Kadijah—peace be upon her! Raising the voice like a woman accustomed to go unveiled? Trumpeting secrets as it were on the very housetops! Wouldst be a widow? 'Nay?' Then shun the road to mourning! Wouldst die thyself, knowing thy four sons cast out—to whine for faddahs and broken bread at the doors of the khans and mosques.... 'Nay' again? ... Then even hold thy tongue. And, Fatimeh my beloved—" Nasr Ullah's lean, dark, muscular hand caressed the woman's small head, adorned with a smart black silk kerchief with a brightly coloured border, and a forehead-string of coins—all gold ones, though their value was but small,—"vex not thy soul overmuch about the doves and pigeons. Are not their numbers countless as the numbers of the flies? And tell me, my olive-tree, fruitful in bearing—my Garment of Comfort," his tone had become wheedling, "whether any of the veiled women serving about this house be one-eyed? Wallah! I jest not! It is a new order of the Presence that all such are to be dismissed!"

"How soon?" Another tempest seemed about to shake Nasr Ullah's fruitful olive. Her bosom under its many serried rows of solid silver necklaces began to heave again. Her heavy anklets clashed as her small, henna-stained feet shifted nervously on the whitened clay floor of the family living-room where the charcoal stove daily burned, and the cooking-pots stood against the wall. "How soon?"

"By Allah! no later than an hour after sunrise, and that delay is granted as an especial grace."

"And the mother of thy wife—the grandmother of thy children—the guardian of thy house's honour—what of her?" demanded Fatimeh; "Is she not one of the many decent ones upon whose eyes the flies have sat in childhood? Is—"

"Wallah! I had forgotten her," exclaimed the man in dismay. For the mother of Fatimeh, at that moment congenially engaged in crooning the latest new baby to sleep, in the inner room dignified by the title of the harîm, had suffered in early youth, like many other Egyptian women of the lower classes, the loss, through ophthalmia, of one of her eyes.

Now a faint grin showed on the face of her son-in-law, even in the midst of his perplexity, as he said:

"Rebuke is justly mine, wife, that I did not remember it. But by the border of thine usbêh I swear it! Thy mother sees more with her one eye than other women with two. Yet would I not part with her. She is wise in dealing with the teething-troubles of the lesser babes, and her slipper hath more sting in it than thine, for the ruling of the elder. We will send her away to thy brother at Kantara until this scare of one-eyed women is over and done. Meanwhile,—" he glanced over his shoulder at the door, and sitting on the hard-cushioned divan that ran round three sides of the whitewashed room, drew Fatimeh to sit beside him; "meanwhile I would speak to thee of Khalid thine eldest. Where is the boy to-night?"

"He is gone with his brother Amru to lay snares for fig-birds in the orchard. They must be set at moon-dark, for the birds to enter them at dawn."

"He is a born hunter. Seven years old this month of Safar, and witful as he is handsome—the praise be unto Allah Who makes them of all kinds! Wife, if I told thee that the Presence, seeing the boy so ripe for his tender years, and of goodly promise, had bidden—"

Nasr Ullah's tone had been studiously commonplace, but the ridges in his high forehead had deepened, and his eyes had an anxious stare. He winced as his wife without a word slid from the divan, and next instant lay prostrate on the white-washed floor, with her forehead on his feet.

"Nay, nay! ... My pearl, my joy! ... Take it not so hardly! ..."

"O Everlasting, spare me this! O husband, in pity, hear me. Hast thou forgotten Nasi, our joy and my firstborn? He would have been nine years old, this Nile-Rise.... Hast thou forgotten? Ay, ay, it was the old cry; 'This boy was stupid—that one showed fear. This must have known sin,—for he could see nothing at all in the ink-pools or in the Eye of Radiance.' So the Presence takes my Nasi, and gives him gifts and praises his excellence, and one day he comes home, crying 'My head, my head!' like the son of the woman who fed the Prophet El Jah, peace be upon him!—and three days later, thou, weeping bitter tears, dost hang my green-striped shawl over the shabid of his tiny bier."

"Peace, wife!"

Sweat broke forth and stood on Nasr Ullah's face. He wiped it with the sleeve of his white kaftan, repeating:

"Peace, woman! ... It was a fever the boy had caught.... Dost thou not remember what the hakim said? ..."

"Ay! But I had watched by the bed of my sick child, and shuddered at the visions he told of in his ravings. O, Husband, I have sat in the house one year, and thou hast said in thine heart, 'She is forgetting' ... Yet all the time—" She sat upright on the floor before him now, her strained eyes glued upon his worried face, and the swift words poured from her without his opposition.

"Peace! thou sayest. How can there be peace in this house where soothsayers and necromancers come and go, and the sand-tables are forever cast, and fresh boys are brought each new day to peer into the ink-pools.... Lo! I will speak my mind. Ten years I have been thy wife, and a duteous and a silent, but a mother in fear for her flesh and blood hath the courage to defy Shaitan...."

"Be not disturbed.... I will find some way. The boy shall be sent to El Kantara with thy mother."

"And when my Agib is of likely age, will not the ink-pools claim him? Will the Presence have bowels to spare a child, who in all these years hath loved no woman?"

"Nay," was the reply. "What need hath He of women, who is in love with Life? ..."

"'Tis true. Save when the Inglizi ladies come with their menfolk to see the house and gardens, and eat fruit and drink iced sherbets, and say 'charmin'—charmin'' and 'rippin'—rippin','" thus the better-half of Nasr Ullah rendered the English slang, "no woman ever comes here. What now?" for the knee on which she rested her arm had jerked slightly.

"I had forgotten. He hath said but now—that a woman comes here at midnight! No râziye of the Bazâr, or other of the shameless, but a lady-Sahib from the Palace of Montana at Iskanderieh.... The car brings her by the fifth hour.... The gates are to be open. When the car has passed in, the gates are to be shut and locked...."

"Ya rabbi!" The exclamation broke from the woman involuntarily. "After all these years—it may be that He changes.... How old is He, husband? Canst thou not even guess? ..."

"Perhaps He is less old than He pretends, but He is many years older than folks believe Him. Of that there is no doubt at all...."

"And it is done by devilry? Witchcraft and spells—and philtres?" The woman breathed quickly. "Say, is't not?"

"God knows! But from whomever the Presence buys his youth, He pays a heavy price for it. See how He lives! Even as one who carries in his breast a stolen jewel, and goes in fear lest it be snatched from him. The pleasures of the belly—He must shun them. The joys that are tasted on perfumed cushions—He must fly them one and all. It is tyranny. Yet He thinks He is envied. He is only wretched when Those I may not speak of, ask—too high a price for the magical drugs...."

"The drugs. The devil-brews that keep Him youthful, who else would be as dry and wrinkled as the mummies of the ancient Kings?"

"Verily. And—one thing I have seen of late—" Once launched upon the sea of Confidence, Nasr Ullah grew less fearful. "Whether Protection fails him, or the philtres lose their power, I know not—but—He grows old!"

"I too!—" Her eyes grew large with awe. "I have fancied He is somewhat changed...."

"Chut! Do not interrupt. It goes deeper than the skin—this change that I have seen in him. His moods vary like those of a pregnant woman; he frames designs and throws them aside as a monkey plucks, and bites, and casts bananas away. He does not even hate as He used to hate. Once—if an enemy rose up in the path, he removed that one with his own hand, and troubled no more about the affair. Or said to one he trusted, 'Kill!'" the tone was studiously smooth, the speaker's face expressionless—"and that man or that woman died—more quietly than the bowab's daughter who ate the nectarine. But now—since the killing of Usborn Sahib by a Turk in Palestine,—and the night he dined at Iskanderieh in the company of the big Jew Tomi—the Presence talks of nought but sprinkling poisoned grain for carrier-doves and dismissing of one-eyed females—and my heart is stricken with fear for my lord! Spells, and charms, and philtres bought from Those in the Distant Places will not avail forever against the day of Fate. Azrael will come behind my lord with a touch upon the shoulder. The Black Camel of Allah will tread upon his heel. Then—even at a breath—the House of Life will crumble!" Nasr Ullah started to his feet as a silvery sound, momentarily increasing in volume, rolled into the stuffy closed room, and hummed about their ears. "It is the gong from my lord's room. He calls, and I must go! ..."

He added, slipping the earthen pot of soaked and poisoned barley within the bosom of his embroidered vest: "Sleep well, my wife, if I see thee not ere morning. And call in the children—it is time they went to rest! ..."

XVI

This was another moonless night, with Orion glorious in the East, and the Great Bear blazing on the northern horizon, as the headlights of the high-powered Daimler car, driven by the Italian chauffeur, flashed on a high, wide porte cochère of white-painted wrought iron, and the horn sounded a well-known call.

The massive gates were opened and shut by a hand-worked windlass, over which ran an endless chain. Two white-clad negro porters worked the winch, the gate slid smoothly back in its groovings. The car rolled in, and the gate was shut as it passed up the avenue.

The Arabian-Turkish palace seemed to sleep under the starshine of the November night, wrapped in its royal mantle of roses and bougainvillea. Heavy drifts of perfume were carried on the languid air-waves that came from the south-west at intervals, swaying thick-foliaged branches and sighing amongst the leaves. Not a blue-white gleam of electric light or even the flame of a candle twinkled through the pierced lattices, as Katharine, alighting from the car, observed with some surprise.

The wide-leaved doors of the house stood open. On the steps and in the vestibule were drawn up a double row of native servants; lean, dark Mohammedans in high starched turbans, kaftans and baggy trousers of snowy muslin, displaying gorgeously gold-embroidered vests.

One elderly man stepped forward, salaaming low to the visitor, with the words:

"O lady, God give thee a happy night! His Presence awaits thee."

"Carry thy lord salutations from me," Katharine answered in her laboured Arabic. "Say that—that I have come in answer to the message. Is the Saiyid Hazel here in the house?"

The elderly man salaamed again and answered smoothly:

"Surely, O lady, the desire of thine eyes and thine heart shall be granted! With your coming a blessing hath entered these doors...."

The Italian chauffeur now appeared behind Katharine, carrying the suit-case. A servant stepped forward and took it, as Miss Forbis said to the chauffeur in French:

"I don't yet know whether I shall need that case. Leave it in the car, please, and let the car be waiting. I may return to Alexandria to-night."

"But, Mademoiselle!—" the Italian began, when a look from Nasr Ullah silenced him. He saluted, and muttering: "As Mademoiselle commands!" turned and went out and down the steps. But he left the suit-case in the servant's hands—and the hall-doors were shut and locked after him. And the fragrance of the jasmine and roses of the garden gave place to another perfume, heavy too, but sickly-sweet with sandal and henna, the fumes of burning pastilles, and all the strange suggestive odours of a shut-up Eastern house. And glancing at the now barred doors and the double row of gleaming eyes, and imperturbable dark faces, Katharine Forbis felt a little, chilly shudder creep over her and stir amongst the roots of her plentiful dark hair.

"A goose walked over my grave, then," she told herself, smiling bravely, fighting back the sinister sensation, as the elderly major-domo addressed her again:

"With permission, a message for the lady, from the Presence. The Presence took food, as is his wont, a little after sunset. It is now the fifth hour, and supper has been spread, Ifrangi-fashion, in readiness for the lady's coming. If the lady will deign to take of it, I pray her follow me...."

"Thank you, but I need nothing," Katharine answered, as the man prepared to lead the way down an interminable-appearing hall. "And—I prefer to stay where I am." She moved to a carved ebony seat, and spoke to the man again, this time in English. "Please ask Essenian Pasha and Mr. Hazel to come to me here. Unless—" She started as the thought occurred to her, and ended: "Unless they should happen to be engaged with—some one who is ill...."

"Aiyân...." The dark eyes under the much-ridged forehead were wonderfully observant. The nasal voice belonging to the eyes spoke in the English tongue: "Surely there is one here who is ill exceedingly. The Presence and the Saiyid Hazel have many fears for him," Nasr Ullah added as the colour ebbed from Katharine's cheeks and lips and her hand clenched involuntarily, "but by the Favour of Allah—he is not like to die...."

"Take me to him.... Now, please! ..."

Miss Forbis rose up, tall and impetuous, motioning to Nasr Ullah to lead the way, scattering her scruples and her fears to the winds like withered leaves. Which of her beloved Two lay in some darkened room of this strange house? Julian or Edward? Edward or Julian. Well, in another minute she would know....

It occupied several minutes. The elderly Mohammedan produced an electric torch, and by its radiance led her through a vast suite of apartments on the ground-floor, their Arabesque Ottoman elegance grotesquely overlaid with fashions imported from the West. A curious jumble of furniture of many different styles and periods was revealed by the blue-white torch-flare—overcrowding the wide and lofty rooms. French Directoire and the First Empire shouldered the Georgian Regency, Early Victorian tables and Berlin wool-work settees were reflected in splendid Venetian mirrors, and electric bulbs depended from cut-glass chandeliers. Later Rococo—overlaid with Art Nouveau and camouflaged with Futurism; Cubist pictures, Cubist draperies and cushions of Cubist designs, gibbered mockingly in Katharine's face as the electric torch led the way.... And the stuffiness bred of Eastern neglect hung heavy on the atmosphere, and dust rose in wreaths from the velvety carpets under the lightest tread.

The last door of the last suite led into a wide corridor paved with black and white marble. Midway down, the elderly servant stopped at the grille of a lift and switched on the electric light. He snapped off his torch, pushed back the sliding-door, followed Miss Forbis in, shut the grille and started the elevator—a costly thing in nickel and enamelled iron—conveying to Katharine the momentary impression that she was calling on a London friend in a Sloane Street or Mayfair flat.

The lift stopped at the top floor after traversing three storeys. The Mohammedan showed Miss Forbis out, and opened a latticed door at the end of a short passage. She drew a breath of relief as the night-air flowed about her, and the rose-scents of the dew-drenched garden rose up in delicious clouds.

She was passing over a slender bridge, connecting the roof of one of the wings of the Pasha's showy villa with that of another building, evidently much older, distant perhaps some forty feet from the ornate marble palace, and covering a considerable area of ground in its rear. Built in the old windowless Arabian way about an oblong courtyard, and crowned by an open court or pavilion of green and white marble, its outer walls were pressed upon by closely thronging trees. Casuarinas and moss-cup oaks, peppers and tamarisks and tall waving palms made coolth and greenness round it, and nightingales were singing from the trees that girt it round.

The bridge, of latticed iron, painted to dazzling whiteness, ended under a pointed trefoil arch where heavy curtains hung. The Mohammedan servant who showed the way was beckoning to Katharine—lifting a gleaming, gold-embroidered fold, signing to her to pass. She drew in a deep breath of fragrance from the garden, and the song of the bulbuls rose in a crescendo of sweetness as she glanced at the starry sky. Then the dark hand signed to her—she passed under the archway, and the curtain fell behind her with a soft, thudding sound.

She stood on the threshold of an oblong room, or rather, court, of pierced and latticed marble, covered and adorned with mosaic, running nearly the whole length of a side of the Arab house. Open to the sky overhead, and enclosed by curtains of thick gold-embroidered silk, hanging under trefoil arches between groups of slender pillars, it had a long divan of dark, rich brocade running along one side. Two silver lamps of antique design, swinging by chains from slender rods, mingled their mellow radiance with the starlight. At the farther end, closed curtains under a higher arch showed the entrance to another court—or possibly an enclosed apartment—beyond the pavilion that was canopied with the sky.

The floor was of ancient Arab tiles, wonderful in colour. Rare and beautiful prayer-rugs were laid on it here and there. A pedestal of serpentine supported a great porcelain bowl in which a little fountain played, and goldfish were swimming. Clusters of lilies of Amaryllis type, thick-stemmed, fleshy, purple and white and crimson, exhaling a heavy, languorous fragrance, stood in jars of ancient cloisonné upon inlaid ivory stools. In the centre of the room stood a broad divan, piled with great embroidered cushions. Beside the divan was a tripod of ebony, supporting something that looked like a green velvet jewel-case....

A slight man in Eastern dress, his black tarbûsh turbaned with snowy muslin folds, his long-sleeved kaftan of orange-red opening to reveal a longer-sleeved garment of white, a jewelled pen-case glittering in the folds of his green silk girdle, rose up from the divan as the curtain fell—and advanced to Katharine....

"Dear lady, my poor house is highly honoured—" he began:

"Is Mr. Hazel here, Major Essenian?"

In her surprise at finding the Pasha alone, Katharine's hurried query broke in upon the Pasha's formal welcome, scattering his elaborate sentences to the winds.

"Mr. Hazel—" He affected for a moment to search his memory. "Dear lady, I am sorry, but—" His shrug said "No! ..."

"Then why did your chauffeur bring me the letter from him?" Katharine demanded, looking down from her superb height upon the suave and smiling face.

"From Mr. Hazel?" Essenian asked with maddening blandness. "Did he bring you a letter? ..."

"You know he did! ..."

"Ah yes, of course, I know!" admitted Essenian, his long eyes narrowing as they encountered Katharine's. She mastered her anger, knowing its display incautious, and said with rather a poor attempt to smile:

"You must make allowances, Pasha, if I seem excited and nervy. But—I have been on tenterhooks since the day we met. The 15th—and—isn't this the 18th of November? ..."

"Certainly, going by your Western calendar. But in this house that lies hidden behind another that is full of barbarous Western inventions—Western customs do not prevail, and Western fashions are abhorred. You are in Egypt when you are here...."

"The room is perfectly beautiful. But I can't spare time to enjoy it. I can think of nothing but the matter that brought me here to-night. Last night, rather"—Katherine glanced at her wrist-watch—"because it is getting perilously near one o'clock in the morning. Once for all, I ask you where you got the letter that your servant brought me at the Hospital, nearly five hours back? ..."

"It was placed in my hands by Hazel, to be delivered in case of emergency."

Katharine's clear eyes questioned the dark face. Its narrow eyes met hers, glittering imperturbably. She resumed, with a little sickening thrill of hatred of the man:

"Then—the emergency has occurred? Be good enough to answer another question. Did you take Mr. Hazel to Shechem, as he told me you had arranged to do?"

"Certainly. We made the trip in record time." The long beryl eyes shone green in the mingling of lamplight and starlight, the smooth dark lips curved as Essenian smiled. "Following the old Pilgrim's Route at first. Doing the journey—about 195 miles, as the crow flies—in something under three-and-a-half-hours, and reaching Shechem just before dawn."

"And—when you got there—what went wrong? For something has gone wrong," Katharine said breathlessly—"I feel it in the air about me, though your face tells no tales."

"'The face that tells tales is a man's worst enemy. The face that hides secrets is a man's best friend.'" Essenian quoted the stale truism gently and suavely. "But will you not remove your outer wrap and take a seat on the divan?"

He added, as Katharine unfastened a cloak she wore, an ample double cape of Navy blue serge, lined with dark crimson silk, and dropped it from her shoulders, and moving with her supple grace to the divan, sat down:

"I returned here yesterday, arriving before sunrise. To remain in Palestine would have been useless. To be candid—"

"Oh, my God!" said Katharine in her anguished soul. "Does this man ever speak candidly?" But she looked at him and waited—summoning up all her reserves of self-command and patience, seeming a calm-eyed, superbly-moulded goddess, attired in a well-cut uniform of white cotton-drill.

"I had arranged to return to Shechem," he went on, "before sunrise on the 18th. There is still time to reach there while the day is yet young. But something unfortunate happened just before the landing. In fact, Mr. Hazel has had an accident—"

"An accident. Of what nature? ..."

Katharine's brows contracted and her colour faded. Essenian pursued in his suavest tones:

"Let me explain. To repose a confidence in you, which I feel will not be misplaced." Would the man never get to the point? "I employed at Shechem, a device of my own invention—which has been approved at Headquarters by my Chief. By a simple mechanical appliance—merely a spring-switch and lock-clip—I can change the number and colour-plates on the main-planes and tail of my machine. You understand? The Red, White and Blue is replaced by the Red Crescent. Imagine the advantage to the aviator of a simple device like this!"

"But the type of your machine. You can't change that!" Katharine spoke wearily.

"I cannot, naturally. But our captured 'planes are generally brought into use. And—I do not remain sufficiently long over an enemy stronghold to give time—" the speaker shrugged and ended—"for exhaustive scrutiny. Let me be brief—"

"I beg that you will! ..."

He recognised in her voice an accent of entreaty. It was what he had waited for.

"I dropped—in my strictly temporary role of Turkish aviator—a dummy despatch-bag into Shechem. Then I flew north, to a patch of level ground between Mount Ebal and Samata—where I had planned to drop my man. As I passed south of Mount Ebal, I saw"—he was telling the story plainly at last "there were enemy batteries upon it. Mountain Artillery of the Mustahfiz—machine-guns—a howitzer—the Mount had been converted into a fortress of defence! And, in my surprise at the discovery, I acted without due caution—or rather, I acted as I had arranged to act—without deviation from the first plan. I climbed, dived, and came down west of the Mountain—giving Hazel the agreed-on-word to jump, when I should touch the ground. But—as a result of the surprise, I suppose—I gave it prematurely—"

"And Mr. Hazel jumped—before you touched the ground!" Her voice was very stern and deep. Her wide gaze held him. "Answer my question plainly. Has he been killed? ..."

"No. But he has sustained some hurt. I do not know its nature. My military duty forbade me to remain."

"I—understand. You flew away, leaving your passenger in difficulties! ..."

The deadly contempt of the tone bit like frost at 15,000 feet, the splendid wrath of her cairngorm eyes told him that he, Essenian, was a creature infinitely mean....

"I flew away. As you remark." The glittering eyes met hers at last, and the lips smiled cruelly.... "What would you have?" He folded his slender, dark hands within the shelter of his sleeves. "Can men fight against Destiny?"

"Men can fight against the temptation to do base things, and sometimes fight and conquer. And now—" Anger and grief were in her tone, "what will become of him? ..."

"Of your friend? ..." He stood imperturbably facing her, his dark hands hidden in the sleeves of his orange-crimson kaftan, and the delicate mingling of golden lamplight and silvery starlight threw his shadow over the rich, pale carpets, and the exquisite Arabesque mosaics, of green and blue, and amber, that covered with their tracery the exposed spaces of the floor. "How can I say what has or will become of him! ... If you choose, it is for you to tell me...."

An almost insupportable sense of the speaker's insincerity went through Katharine's being like flame, and the agony of suspense long drawn-out, spurred her—as Essenian had calculated it would—to reckless utterance....

"How can I tell you? You play with me, Major Essenian, knowing as you must, that if I could find out what has happened to my—to my friend and my brother I would do so at any sacrifice! ..."

"Then," said the Egyptian, gently and mellifluously, "place yourself before the case that is on that tripod, open the case and look in the spherical beryl it contains. I will not touch it lest you should suspect me of some trickery. Indeed, I will remain at a distance while you look.... All I ask is—that you will tell me truthfully what you see—if Sight be vouchsafed to you! Judging by what I have witnessed I believe you will be favoured. No sacrifice is needed.... You have only to look! ..."

He lowered his voice almost to a whisper, yet every word came to Katharine's hearing with a distinctness that oppressed.

"After our meeting in Mr. Hazel's house at Alexandria, where I had witnessed such a striking manifestation of his clairvoyant powers, he dined with me at my Club, and after dinner—in my eagerness to pursue further the investigations that absorb me—I persuaded Hazel to look in the beryl that case contains. He passed with ease into the condition inseparable from Vision—but to my questions I received no satisfactory replies. Now that you are here," the voice was hurried, "the hour and the conditions alike being favourable, stretch out your hand, open the case and—look in the crystal ball!"

"Do you really think that I should see—things? Find out what is happening to—friends at Shechem?"

Essenian's orange-red draperies rustled as he moved nearer, saying:

"I do not 'think.' ... I know that you would! ..."

Holding his breath, he saw her white figure shift its position on the divan. Now her white hands hovered like wistful doves about the velvet case on the tripod—now the moony brightness of the great spherical beryl shone forth as though some lesser star of the innumerable hosts of heaven had fallen upon the tripod in the Arabian room.... Now he heard her say—speaking to herself rather than to him—with a fluttered laugh of nervousness:

"You know, I won't have anything to do with this if it's dabbling in magic. But—just to look in the beryl can't be much harm...."

"No, no! What harm could there be? But wonderful things are seen—sometimes—by gifted people. And you—I would stake half that I own on the certainty that you have the gift! ..."

He moved softly here and there in the background as Katharine, absorbed, bent over the beryl. Now he loosened a silken cord, and shades descended, covering the silver lamps. He moved his dark, supple hands among little brazen vases of Benares-work ranged upon a stand resembling a Hindu altar, and a slender column of incense, heavy and fragrant, rose up and climbed, spiralling and twisting, towards the great stars that looked down from Heaven's violet dome. Presently he heard Katharine whisper to herself as a woman speaks in dreaming:

"The Church forbids dabbling in spiritism and magic. But just—once to look—can't be so very wrong! ..."

And now Essenian spoke, seizing the appropriate moment, almost as he had spoken to Hazel at the Club:

"Wrong.... How should it be wrong? Do not touch the beryl—that is imperative. Neither bend so close above it that your breathing dims its light. Sit comfortably, rest your hands lightly on either side of the tripod. You are not afraid? Why should you be? There is absolutely no reason.... Only look steadily in the beryl, do not remove your eyes...."

If Katharine had seen Essenian's, as they narrowly observed her, she might have recalled a speech of Lady Wastwood's, made a few days previously. For they indubitably resembled the eyes of a cobra, and his soft noiseless movements were horribly tigerish. But she knew nothing but the cold, gleaming sphere upon its little cup-shaped metal pedestal—and the smooth twists and coiling folds, suggesting veil upon veil of mystery—that were beginning to reveal themselves beneath the pale-green, shining surface that at first had seemed opaque. There was a singing in her ears, and she heard her heart throbbing, but as though it were the heart of some one else beating a long way off. Edward's? ... Julian's? ... Neither of these, she thought.... The heart that called so far away was John Hazel's.... What was he doing? Where was he? What had happened to him? Summoning all her strength, she willed herself to see....

"Oh, oh! Take it away! ... Hide it from me! ..."

Katharine was moaning, and begging not to see. And the Egyptian, ashen of hue, dabbled with sweat, vibrating like a wind-blown reed—was bending towards her, greedily drinking in the disconnected utterances that broke from her—when she sighed deeply, lifted her head, and fixed her eyes on him.

"Go on! Go on! Look back to the beryl!" He lifted his slender clenched hand as though he would have struck her. "Do you want to ruin all? Why do you stop? ..."

"Because it makes my eyes and my head ache so...." She opened and shut her eyes once or twice, and rubbed her forehead with her handkerchief. "And because what I saw was horrible—that was why I stopped!"

"What did you see? ..."

"The inside of a wooden hut. Dirty and sordid—with no furniture in it except a native bed. All seen as by daylight, through high-powered binoculars. And—on the bed—chained to it—" She shuddered—"Something shapeless—something bloody—something terrible—that once may have been a man—"

"Was it your brother?"

"No, thank—"

"Hush! ..." He stopped her with an imperative gesture. "How do you know that it was not Father Forbis? ..."

"Because Julian is very fair, with reddish hair and beard. The monks of his Order wear the beard like the Franciscans."

"Was it John Hazel? Answer! ..."

"I dare not say! ..."

"You know it was!" He almost spat the words at her.

"Perhaps. Oh! what have they done to him? ..." Katharine's nerves were thrilling—little intermittent shudders passed over her, cold damps stood upon her skin, and her heart shook her as she sat. She fought for composure, steadying her lips, drying her dewy temples with her handkerchief, "I have seen things in War," she panted, "but nothing worse than that! Pray order the car!—I must go back to Alexandria." She repeated, thinking he did not hear her. "Have the kindness to order the car! ..."

He had moved round in front of her, and stood regarding her with his arms crossed upon his breast. Now he said in his velvet tones: "Not until you have looked again in the beryl, Miss Forbis. And for me—for me, this time!"

"You threaten to detain me here against my will? I should not advise your trying it!" She rose up, dwarfing him by her superb stature, adding as she lifted her mantle from the divan: "You do not suppose that my friends at Montana are ignorant of my whereabouts? Besides, your car was challenged at all the guarded barriers, and more than once stopped upon the road here by patrols of Military Police. The chauffeur supplied your number and name, and I naturally took care to give my own, 'Sergeant-Motor-driver, K. Forbis, Number 61, —th Unit, V.A. Department, Red Cross....' This is the Twentieth Century, Major Essenian...."

"I threaten nothing. I suggest nothing," the supple hands were extended towards her, palms uppermost, "I have no designs against your honour. I am of those who see the grinning skull behind the Face of Loveliness and the asp that conceals itself beneath the blossom of the rose." He spoke rapidly, illustrating his sentences with swift, expressive gestures: "I merely entreat of you, at this juncture in my fortunes—a man beset with dangers from sources all unknown!—look in the beryl! Ask of me what you choose—I am wealthy enough to give it you!—but first look in the beryl, and will to see my Fate."

"Very well." The womanliness inherent in Katharine stirred her, in spite of her dislike, to pity the desperate anxiety patent in the Egyptian's twitching face, and nervous, appealing hands. "But your attempt at coercion was as misplaced as your suggestion of bribery. You will not repeat either, if you are wise. Since you entreat it, I consent to look once more in the beryl. But first—order the car...."

"I am your slave, and all I possess is at your service!" He took a silver rod from a stand, and struck a small gong. It had a wonderful resonance, and the sonorous note evoked, spread in waves increasing in volume, until, the limit of its power reached, the sound ebbed away.

"That was to summon the car. Now, look—" Essenian threw fresh incense on the burning embers in the censer on the altar, muttering an invocation in his own tongue: "O ye Influences, be propitious! O Tarshun, O Taryushun! Come down! Come down! Remove the veil from the woman's sight. Show her my Fate in the Eye of Radiance. Hear, O Arhmân! Great Prince—thy servant calls! ..."

Bending over the beryl, resting her hands on the tripod, turning a deaf ear to the inward voice that warned her not to look, Katharine saw in the body of the stone, framed in silky, shining skeins of semi-opaque lustre, a little oval vignette of her own face, crowned by the slouched felt uniform hat, with its badge and ribbon banding, backed by the purple splendour of the jewelled Eastern sky. She put up a hand and removed her hat, and tossed it aside carelessly, without removing her gaze from the sinister, gleaming sphere.... Then the pale face with the intent eyes faded from vision, a wider space began to clear between the silky folds....

"Essenian Pasha—I will to see the Fate of Essenian!" she repeated mentally, concentrating her powers. The will to see became intense. She forgot her loathing of the man, muttering incoherent things, shivering with suspense behind her: "I will to see! ... I will to see!" she told herself over and over. And Seeing came as Katharine framed the words, with dazzling, illuminating clearness. As previously, she might have been looking through high-powered binoculars.

She saw a whitewashed brick courtyard, clean and bare and sanded, in early daylight, with blank brick walls on three sides, and plain brick buildings on the fourth side, where two sentries with fixed bayonets guarded a door. Drawn up in the courtyard in two lines, a company of R.F.C. officers, N.C.O.'s and men, stood at attention. The door opened, the sentries presented arms, and a Sergeant-Major and party of Military Police, with fixed bayonets, led by an officer wearing a Staff brassard, and followed by four other Police, carrying a plain, wooden coffin—marched into the courtyard, escorting a prisoner.

The prisoner was Essenian—in khaki as she had first seen him—save that his multi-coloured rows of ribbons, and the badges on his uniform, had been ruthlessly slashed away. The man himself was altered, shrunken, aged beyond believing. His grey face with its glittering eyes staring from caves that had been dug about them, lifted as the Sergeant-Major touched his shoulder—took off his cork helmet—bandaged his eyes carefully—opened his khaki tunic and hung a white-painted metal disc immediately above his heart....

Now they were putting down the coffin before a blank wall. Now the little shrunken figure stood against the wall in tragic solitude—the Sergeant-Major was placing seven men in line confronting it, taking their rifles from them, and showing them, one at a time to the officer with the Staff brassard....

"Ready...! Present....!"

The rifles had been given back, and seven muzzles steadily pointed at the white disc hanging on the doomed man's breast. In another second—sharp stabs of greenish flame leaped beyond the shining bayonets, light puffs of brownish smoke rose against the dazzling blue sky seen above the wall....

The shrunken body lay huddled up, in an odd unnatural attitude, in a dark red puddle that soaked away in the sand. The officer with the Staff brassard approached it, drawing his revolver.... He stooped down, straightened himself, glanced back at the Sergeant, and slipping the revolver back into its holster, gave an order, wheeled sharply and walked away. And as he did this the whole scene blurred and vanished. With a slight, sharp sound like the snapping of a crystal rod, a jagged fracture showed down the middle of the Eye of Radiance. The Beryl had become opaque as a lump of volcanic glass.

VII

"What have you seen? ..." A fierce breath beat on Katharine's cheek, and a steel-strong grip was on her arm, as Essenian's swift whisper assailed her ear: "Deny not that you saw!—the stone splits—that is enough!—it means the end for me! I am deceived—" the shrill voice cracked despairingly—"I to whom They promised Life—Life prolonged beyond the age of elephants—Youth that should keep its freshness like the flower in the block of ice. Speak, woman, say what you have seen, or by Eblis! I will make you! I am strong yet, and if Azrael's hand be at my throat, you shall feel mine at yours!"

Even as he leaped, Katharine swung out a long arm, striking him across the body, breaking the force of his leap, as she remembered to have once done when a savage cat, crossed with the wild breed, had crept up behind, unnoticed, and sprung upon her to bite.

"You native cad!" rang her clear disdainful voice. "Are you out for murder?"

"I am out to make you tell me—" Breathing unevenly, he stood back from the divan, his supple body tense for a second spring, his glittering eyes watching her: "What have you seen in the beryl? Answer!—it is my right to hear!"

"But not your right to lay hands upon an Englishwoman," Katharine retorted, tingling with insulted pride. "Do not attempt it again, because I carry a revolver, and like most women who have served in this War, I have learned to use it well!"

Brave words, yet her head was swimming as she spoke, and her heart throbbed suffocatingly, and the hand that gripped the butt of the little Colt's revolver, shook with the rigor of fear. The strange and terrible experiences of the night—horror of Essenian's vicinity and touch, the strain of long anxiety and protracted fasting—were beginning to tell upon Katharine. She despised women who fainted at dreadful sights or in perilous situations, and yet—she realised herself not far from fainting now....

Air—she was famishing for want of air! though the room was open to the stars and the night-winds—though the curtains behind that tigerish orange-red figure were bellying and parting, blown inwards under their pointed triple arches by a gale she could not feel. She could see the branches of the thronging trees—the lateral limb of a towering moss-cup oak swaying strangely under the weight of a climbing brown figure. She caught the flash of eyes and teeth in a shadowy face topped by a white sun-helmet—and ran towards the archway as a man leaped into the room....

Others followed, dropping from the great elbowed tree-limb to the wall, and jumping through the archway.... Men in the well-known khaki drill, with sun-browned or pale European faces under their sun-helmets—and the red brassard of the Military Police....

"Sorry, but I have to arrest you, Major Essenian, in the name of the King...."

A young Lieutenant of M.P. with a tooth-brush moustache of undeniable ginger was pressing a folded paper on Essenian and mopping his own dripping face....

"Warm work, shinning up trees in this muggy Egyptian climate. But I fancy we've dropped in just at the right time... Certainly for the lady. Sergeant Whitmore, look to the lady. Handcuff the prisoner, Corporal Rose. And, Major, remember that anything you say will be used against you in evidence."

"There will be—there will be a formal Court Martial?" He raised his face, the grey face, pinched and sweat-dabbled, that Katharine had seen in the vision of the Stone: "I demand it!—I demand it! Whatever the charges on this warrant which I have not read, remember!—I can disprove them—I can confute them—establish my honour in the face of the world."

"You'll be lucky if you do! No, you can't change into uniform. One of your servants can pack a kit-case, and leave it for you at the Military Clink. That's your address—while you require one. Hit that tin gong, will you, Corporal? It'll fetch some of these Gyppo fellows to show the way to the hall-door."

"I can guide you, Mr. Martyn!"

"Holy Smoke, it's Miss Forbis from Montana! How in the wide— I beg your pardon!"

The Lieutenant—not so long ago a convalescent patient at the Hospital, broke off the end of the question, reddening, but Katharine answered with her broad, sweet smile, looking in the boyish face with candid cairngorm eyes:

"How in the wide did I come here? Well, I'll tell you strictly in confidence—in return for a lift back to Alexandria. Can do? ..."

"Can do! Off duty—as soon as I've delivered the goods at the M.P." His glance at the goods was highly expressive: "'Hê intē! Ya rajîl!" This to an elderly Mohammedan servant with a much-ridged forehead of anxiety—Nasr Ullah, summoned in haste to the Pavilion by an alien stroke upon the Presence's gong. "Oh, you! Show us the way downstairs!"

"I will go, I will go! Do not handle me roughly.... Remember that I am an old—a very old man! Miss Forbis, I knew your father once! Speak for me! Use your influence! Remember," the quavering voice broke in a fit of senile coughing, the manacled hands extended to Katharine in supplication, looked like those of a mummy, so discoloured and shrunken were they: "You do not answer? You triumph in my downfall?" The narrow eyes glimmered hatred out of their deep-dug caves. "Do not forget your brother, and your friend, Mr. Hazel—whose fate is practically in my hands!"

"Their fate is in the Hands of God," Katharine answered gently, moving beyond the reach of the withered, trembling clutch. "Like yours and mine, and that of every other creature. Good-bye, Major Essenian...."

He made no reply. He was muttering to himself, and looked, indeed, an old man. His head fell on his breast as the word to move was given—and the party of policemen, with the orange-robed figure tottering in their midst—tramped over the white bridge in the bluish-pale light of the small hours, and followed by Katharine and the Lieutenant, went down through the airless house....

When the tail-light of the last of the string of the four Military Police cars had winked past the turn in the avenue, and the porte cochère was closed, Nasr Ullah went back to his "house" and found her waking. She hastened out of the inner apartment and ran to him in alarm.

"Oh, my eyes! Oh, my husband! Alhamdolillah thou hast returned to us! Little sleep have we had this night. Strange scrapings at the back of the house, and whistles as of Afrits talking.... The children woke and wept, and I scarce had wits to lie to them—thinking the Servants of Eblis were carrying the Presence away! ..."

"The Presence hath gone, sure enough, but Inglizi soldiers took him. Always I have known," said Nasr Ullah, "that some day the soldiers would come. They followed the woman secretly, climbing the trees like monkeys, and leaped in upon the Presence when she cried out.... Perhaps she was a spy—God knows! ..."

"Praise be to Him the soldiers took thee not also! Tell me—in this matter of the pigeons.... Didst thou—"

Nasr Ullah shook his head:

"My heart was straitened when I left thee,—but Allah enlightening me—I dealt wisely. For at the compound of the Commandant—at the Headquarters of Intelligence and at Garrison Headquarters—one grain of barley threw I at each place,—and picked it up again! Then, burying the pot and the grain in a place where none will find them—I returned at the fourth hour, and said to the Presence—'Lo! I have done thy bidding, in the casting of poisoned barley.' And in this I spake the very truth, yet Nûh's birds are safe for me!"

"It is well. The Compassionate shielded thee. Think you, my husband, the Presence will return?"

"I think not, but if he does, he will not find Nasr Ullah. The Eye of Radiance is broken, so even did he look in it he could not find me. The Englishmen have opened his maktabs and taken all his papers. Come, let us take the children, and thy jewels, and our money and the best of the clothing and go away from here!"

"When the fleas leave the cat, he is dead!" said Fatimeh acutely.

"No flea am I!" denied Nasr Ullah stoutly. "Forty-two years have I served The Presence, and by Allah! I have served him well and faithfully. Now, I shall serve Allah, Who is the better Master, and my sons shall grow up without knowledge of ink-pools and wizardry...."

"And the bag that is buried under the bed hath enough in it to buy thee a homestead. Verily the Beneficent hath hearkened to my prayers. Go we by day, or now?"

"Now. Make haste and dress the children—hide thy jewels about thee." He looked round for something to dig with, and picked up a big brass ladle. "Strange, how a man may feel like a thief in digging up his own hoard!"

"Will there—is there likely to be a Court Martial?" Katharine asked the Lieutenant, as some hours later, a Police Ford Car, diverted from official use for the purposes of chivalry, ran between green fields of fodder on the road by the Canal, and the Lieutenant—having fed his charge with sandwiches of cold chicken, hard eggs, ripe figs and bananas, and hot coffee out of a thermos—was pressing Turkish cigarettes on her and offering a light.

"Something in the nature of one, possibly. But precious short, and to the point. I'm not broaching official secrets!—but the evidence is solid. We've had quite a cloud of witnesses to prove that the Pasha has been playing the kind of trick with the British Government that he tried to play on you. There were two of our Secret Intelligence men, in Shechem, one of 'em a prisoner in the Barracks and the other in disguise. And he was twice seen by these chaps to shed despatches into the town-square...."

"But weren't the despatches dummies?" Katharine asked.

"That was the tale he fed 'em with at H.Q., but it won't wash!"—the owner of the ginger toothbrush shook his head: "We've got hold of the last lot and they're genuine enough. Seditious propaganda—from centres in the Far East—that's the sort of stuff he's been dropping in Palestine.... What's more—it has just come out that he murdered his observer—the S.I. man who was shut up with the other War Prisoners in the Barracks saw the thing done—in mid-air over Shechem—just as he'd focussed his binnics on Essenian's machine. 'The Two-Faced Nightingale,' the War Prisoners used to call her—because of her transferable number and colour-plates—a clever invention of the Pasha's, you see...."

"But I thought they'd approved of the invention at Headquarters? ..."

Said the Lieutenant, with a shrewdness that went curiously with his youthful face:

"Oh, right enough, the Brass Hats approved of the invention! But they didn't approve of its being approved of," he twinkled at the alliteration—"by the fellows on the other side. The man's a dud! And he's jolly well earned what's he's going"—he looked at his wrist-watch—"what he's bound to get—half-an-hour after morning gun."

"Boom!"

Even as the Lieutenant spoke, the radiant air vibrated, and flocks of swallows, newly arrived, scared by the detonation, rose and wheeled shrieking over the Fortress of Alexander's Town....

The Hospital was already astir as Katharine passed in. She did not go at once to the sleeping-tent she shared with Lady Wastwood, but passed the white rows of canvas dwellings, and turned into the dewy, deserted gardens, where odours of Eden breathed from the newly opened roses, and all the thrushes and blackbirds and bulbuls were singing in chorus to greet the birth of another day.

Her glance sought the table where she had left the card and the letter. They were not there. Lady Wastwood must have taken them. One could always count on Trixie for such kind, considerate acts.

She threw down her hat and the serge uniform-cape on the table and stepped out upon the terrace to drink in the sweet coolness, resting her hands on the balustrade as she looked out over the gardens, and the Khedive's boasted tennis-lawns of rafia—beyond the belt of palms, evergreen oaks, tamarisks and stone pines and rustling casuarinas, that clothe the slopes of Montana, to the changing blues and beryls of the classic Western Sea.

Among the cistus-blossoms at her feet, the early bees were humming; orioles were busy weaving their nest in the overhead vine. A light step sounded on the mosaic floor behind her. Trixie had come out to look for her. No—not Trixie! A sudden shock passed through her. Her heart leaped and seemed to stop, then went on beating furiously. She felt, without knowledge, that Edward Yaill was near....

Waves of carnation swamped her creamy fairness. Great waves of joy surged in her heart. She held her breath and looked down at the white hands folded before her on the creamy stone of the balcony....

The hand that lay uppermost wore the ancient gem of Hercules. Now a breath fanned upon her neck, the subtle scents of the Desert surrounded and enveloped her, an arm in a khaki sleeve gently stole round her, and a familiar hand covered the onyx ring.... Yaill's hand. Beautiful and strong, masculine and soldierly even in its slimness, scorched to the colour of lion-hide by savage Asian suns.

"O! Edward.... O my man of men! God gives you back to me! ...."

"Sweetheart! Dear woman! I had not hoped for this! ..."

Wonderful, unexpected boon. Heaven's manna to the starving. His Katharine's heart upon his own, her lips as freely yielded as though the hateful barrier had never risen between.... Soon he would wake, Yaill told himself—to aching desolation. But for a little he would take what Katharine granted him.

"Julian? ..." She started in his arms.

"Julian is safe, my sweetheart, but not yet fit to travel. I left him in the best of care, at G.H.Q. at Lydd. The General got me a passage down by one of their coasting sea-planes. A Sopwith from the 'Raquin'—and she did it in splendid time, too! Another kiss! ... For a fellow who has lived on memories of kisses—since that day we parted at Kerr's Arbour, Katharine! How your letter brought the whole thing back, when it came to me at the Khan at Shechem...."

"By John Hazel? ..."

"A woman brought it, certainly—but Hazel sent it me...."

"Dear Edward, where is he? You do not answer! ..." She drew away from Yaill, looking in his troubled face. "Where is John Hazel? ..."

"I would give much to tell you! ..."

"You mean that he is dead? ..."

"Frankly, we fear the worst. When we escaped from Shechem, Hazel was lame through an accident. He would not hamper us—he stayed behind to keep the road. The road to Kir Saba.... It runs through a defile among the mountains—just where a Turkish ammunition-lorry had broken down...."

"Go on! ..."

"For long after we had passed we heard bombs bursting. There seemed to be any amount of fighting going on at that point on the road. Then there was an explosion—the lorry had blown up sky-high. We learned that the day after, when a British scouting-'plane came back from reconnaissance in the neighbourhood. There were—human débris upon the road—and several dead horses. If Hazel is dead—and I fear he is—he died as a man should die...."

"But if he is not dead?" Her great eyes held his: "If he were imprisoned in—a wooden hut, chained down upon a native bed—"

"What do you mean?" Yaill started. "Have you dreamed you saw him so? There was a wooden hut in the War Prisoners' Wired Enclosure at Shechem. Julian was there when we found him—chained as you describe!"

"It was not Julian whom I saw—somewhere between midnight and two o'clock this morning—but John Hazel...." She shuddered, "John Hazel, so brutally ill-used—so frightfully disfigured, that the thing chained to the anghareb was like anything but a man.... Yet I knew him. You cannot mistake his eyes, once you have seen them. He is alive—and a prisoner. O Edward, it was no dream!—I tell you that I saw!—"

"Since you feel like that," Yaill caught fire at the flame of her intense conviction, "I'll go back—in another skin—and fine-comb the Front for him."

"Dear, dear Edward! That would be great of you!"

"Not it. I am the man's debtor. He brought me word of you at Sheria, and afterwards at Shechem. Shall I ever forget the thrill it gave—the sight of that envelope with your handwriting!"

"Ah, but there were two letters...." Remembrance flooded her. "Didn't you read the other? I don't believe you have!"

"Frankly, there was no time. But I have it here upon me."

He felt in a baggy side-pocket of his khaki Service jacket, pulled out a crumpled buff envelope, and held it out to her.

"Read it now, Edward! O Edward, read it! ..."

He looked at her whimsically, and opened Nurse Pidge's letter. When he began to read, Katharine was standing. When he looked round, she was seated in a chair. He crossed the floor and knelt by her, and her yearning arms went out to him, and drew him home from exile, to the shelter of her breast.

XVIII

Towards dawn, following the bomb-fight on the Jaffa Road, those masses of sulphurous cumulo-nimbus, piled over the Hills of Gilead, move without the push of a wind behind towards the damp rain-clouds rolling inland from the Mediterranean, and there is a great thunderstorm over Shechem. Forked lightning strikes and splits the rocks, the echoes of Nebo and Gerizim bellow in answer to the rattling volleys of cloud-artillery. Wadis and passes became foaming cataracts, field-bivouacs are flooded—men and guns are bogged in the foot-deep mud of the hill-roads—and supply-columns of British A.S.C. hopelessly held up in the vast cotton-soil morass that was yesterday the Maritime Plain.

By noon of the next day the sun regains sway, and the smells of Shechem their wonted potency. Save for one Turkish sentry at the gate, the guard has been removed from the Wired Enclosure. In its littered desolation an offence to the eye—in its neglected filth an outrage to the adjacent organ, it lies and steams and festers under the baking rays; and all the winged legions of Baal Zebub seem there to be holding revel—especially in the neighbourhood of the wooden hut.

A couple of hours after noon the Enclosure is visited by the Bey. The posta at the gate stiffens to the salute as Hamid passes in with the gauze-spectacled Medical Officer and his bilious-looking secretary, his nondescript Greek interpreter, and his usual following of big-bearded, red-fezzed zabtiehs, armed with German Service revolvers, and repeating Winchesters.

The fog of flies about the wooden hut thins a little as the visitors approach its entrance. The heavy door—broken now—stands as wide as though no prisoner were within worth keeping. The odour of corruption fills the place. The Bey spits, the Turkish Medical Officer in the black gauze spectacles furtively sucks a formamint lozenge, and conveys one to the interpreter—the Secretary holds his nose....

The wooden bed has been dragged aside from the patch of ground it covered, where shows the mouth of the tunnel, which has been hastily filled up with brickbats, sand, and gravel. Flies rise in a roaring cloud from the bedstead as the visitors enter, and the Bey, with a pale twinkle in his oblique sandy eyes—the inevitable cigarette poised between his thick gloved fingers—perpetrates one of his inimitable jests:

"Come, see a greedy dog we have in here—a Yahudi of the Yahud, who has eaten stick till his belly burst, and now can eat no more! ..."

At which display of wit the fat, goggled surgeon squirms with laughter, the secretary and the interpreter, faint with mirth, retire to the threshold, and even the flies buzz as though they too appreciated the jest....

The Thing that lies upon the bed looks as though it, too, joined in the merriment, for its teeth are set, and the swollen lips drawn back—the Medical Officer learnedly explains—in the rigor of the early stages of tetanus, so that it grins from ear to ear. A mountainous bulk of bloody flesh, clothed in a garment of feasting flies, and bound about with an iron chain that is padlocked under the anghareb—he is no more than the caricature of what was once a man.

A man who has suffered the extremest punishment of the falagy. Who has been beaten by the lithe green rods on the feet and legs, on the belly and breast, on the loins and thighs and face.... Beaten to kill by relays of men, skilled in the use of the asayisi, and yet, for a wonder, is not dead....

Labouring breaths issue from the bloated lips, and puff from the split nostrils. In the glazed eyes staring from their bleeding orbits, black fire smoulders still.... He is even capable of a croaking sound, which he reiterates at intervals, with his bleeding eyes begging at the faces of those beside his bed....

"So' ûk sû! ... So' ûk sû! ..."

All the Turkish the sufferer knows: "Cold Water!—cold water! ..."

"O Jew! you will get no cold water between here and Hell. But stick—plenty more stick, if you are noisy." Thus the Bey, illustrating the humour of the words with eloquent pantomime.

"Do not beat me any more!" the wretched being on the bed stutters in broken Arabic: "Do not call the soldiers—beg the Bey to be merciful!" Bright red blood jets between the clenched teeth—his cracked tongue being moistened with this, his utterance becomes clearer: "Tell Hamid Bey if he will let me go, I can pay—I can pay him well! ..."

"Thou canst pay? That is speaking Osmanli sense." A flat pasty face with oblique, pale, lashless eyes, and sandy eyebrows, replaces the spectacled surgeon's. "How canst thou pay?"

"By—telling—but I will tell no one but the Bey—where the money has been hidden away! ..."

"Hidden money—and where!" Sharp greed wakens in the pale eyes. They dig in the smouldering black ones as if treasure lay behind them: "I who speak am Hamid Bey. Now, Jew—out with it!—where is the money?"

"I will tell—I will tell, but only to the Bey," moans the voice between the clenched teeth. "Send away thy people.... Fasten the door lest they creep back and overhear. There was a whole bag of English gold! I brought it to buy the freedom of the Nazrâni priest—and coveting the money, buried it—where I will tell thee...."

"Peki! Very good,—all right!" The Bey turns upon his men, and dismisses them with an injunction to keep well out of earshot, then kicks-to the broken door and returns to the side of the anghareb.

The fear of desire thwarted grips him now, for the face is contorted in a ghastly grin, and the black eyes are rolling in their bloody sockets. He stoops over and shouts in the bloated ear, "Wake, dog! Tell now—or I call back the soldiers. Tell of the hidden gold! ..."

"I will tell! ..." The mountainous body heaves, the flayed muscles stand out on the huge arms like thick blue cordage.... "Stoop lower! Bend thine ear close! I buried—I buried it—"

"Where? ..." The thick yellow-pale ear approaches the grinning teeth. "Where didst thou bury it? Ai—y! ..."

The beginning of a shriek of pain is choked in the Turk's fat throat, even as the big, white teeth sink into a bulging fold of it—between the ear and the collar. Their owner growls as a savage dog might do—and with an effort that rends the tattered flesh, drags an arm from under the chain that binds him down—and with a second wrench, releases the other....

Now both big hands are gripped round the Bey's throat, and his pale eyes bulge, and his pasty face is blackening. No sound escapes his gaping mouth, from which the saliva streams. And the blood from the great artery, bitten through; like a torrent of warm and sticky rain deluges the face and breast of his enemy.

"I buried the gold," the voice croaks in the now discoloured ear, "in Esther's tomb. Dost thou hear me well, O Hamid? But I have brought thee a gift instead—the gift that many have had of thee. Even Death at these hands of mine—murderer, fornicator, lecher! Another twist yet for thy fat neck. For Jacob! ... This for Esther!—this for Julian Forbis! ... And this last of all for John Hazaël—who takes the head of the dog! ..."

The strength is ebbing from the great hands.... The fingers relax their hold upon the throat of the dead body.... Now with the head bent under it at a suggestive, ugly angle, it drops with a dull, heavy thud, upon the blood-slimed floor.

XIX

The sun of a day in the second week of December, 1917, rose on the last day of Ottoman dominion in the City that, since fifteen hundred years before the Birth of the Saviour at Bethlehem, has been, at regular intervals, the storm-centre of the world.

Panic followed on the arrival of some disintegrated units of a Turkish transport-column with the news that the British occupied Hebron; that their Advance held the Railway, and would soon be within sight. "No lie," as ancient Fuller says, for the London Division was at Lifta.

Hence general stampede ensued, and Turkish postas of infantry, indifferent alike to the loaded whips and the curses of their officers, shed packs, bandoliers and rifles, and fled incontinent. There was a running to and fro of Jewish and native Syrian citizens. Wives and daughters called to husbands and sons, and brothers—long hidden in underground vaults, or unsuspected attics, "The Turks are running! Deliverance has come! ..."

By two o'clock noon Turkish troops, mounted and afoot, muddy, weary and thoroughly disgruntled,—Field batteries, machine-gun companies, baggage-lorries and ambulances of the Red Crescent—poured through the Jaffa Gate from the west and south-west.

"Gitmeya mejburûz—we have to go!" the postas called to wounded comrades leaning from the Hospital windows, and the muddy torrent rolled through the streets of the Holy City, and out at St. Stephen's Gate upon the eastern side.

Towards dark, the Governor Izzet Bey went to the telegraph-office, discharged the staff of trembling Turks, smashed the Morse instruments with a hammer, and leaving in charge of the nervous Mayor a letter of surrender—borrowed the Cape cart and team of an American resident, and left for Jericho.... And by seven a.m. on the anniversary of the day of the recapture of the Temple from Pagan Seleucids by Judas Maccabæus in 165 B.C. the Ottoman inundation had drained away into the sombre depths of the Valley of Jehoshaphat, over the ancient Roman bridges of the Jordan—and cowed and bullied citizens who had been beaten, dragooned and plundered—were mustering courage to plunder in their turn.

The eagles of the R.F.C. wheeled in the azure overhead, but no pageantry of any kind marred the entry of the Conqueror.

For years the gathering of more than three persons together in one place had been punished by the Turkish police with fines, imprisonment and beatings. Now the Turk had been thrust out, but Fear lingered still. For, as the British Commander-in-Chief—preceded by his aides and Staff, and accompanied by distinguished representatives of the Allied Nations,—passed through the Jaffa Gate on foot, the huge concourse of pale and hollow-eyed residents and townsfolk mustered on the roofs and gathered in the streets—witnessed the thing almost in silence. Dumb, for the most part, pallid, immobile, like people carved of stone. Only, when from the Gateway before the Tower whose foundations were laid by David—and whose walls were reared by Suleiman the Magnificent—the Proclamation of Religious Freedom was read in the Four Languages, a sob like the breaking of a great wave broke from innumerable breasts, and eyes that had been dry for years were wet with tears at last....

The work was done. By strategical pressure, without the graze of a bullet on her sacred walls, the Holy City had surrendered. He did not linger after the reading of the Proclamation. He received in the square behind the Citadel the civil and religious notables of the City—the Mayor of Jerusalem, the Shaykhs in charge of the Mosque of Omar and Aksa, the Rabbis of the Spanish, German and Syrian Synagogues, the Fathers Representative of the Syrian, Greek, Abyssinian, Armenian and Latin Catholic Churches (their Patriarchs having by the Turks been forcibly deported)—the Anglican Bishop, the American Episcopalian—and Dissenting Ministers....

The brief ceremony over, he passed away as he had come, with his following, through the Gate of Jaffa; his soldierly tread sounding over the deep-buried threshold crossed in past ages by the war-horses of David, the chariot-wheels of Solomon and Nebuchadnezzar—the slave-borne litters of the Pharaohs, the tyrant-Kings of old Assyria—as by the golden-studded white bull's hide sandals of Alexander of Macedon, and from thenceonward how many conquerors more....

Freedom and Peace came to the War-ridden City of the Prince of Peace with the Wire Road and the Pipe-Line. To a mixed and breathlessly-waiting queue of strangely-variegated nationalities, (per medium of a standpipe, an A.S.C Sergeant and a turn-tap) the Nile waters—cool and pure, if strongly flavoured with chlorine, were dispensed, and sent flowing through Jerusalem.... Fulfilling the ancient Egyptian prophecy, that when the waters of the Nile should flow into Palestine—there should arise in the West a prophet, one Al-Nebi, who should capture the Holy City that sits on three limestone hilltops of old Judæa—and deliver the land from the loathed dominion of the Turk.

This having yet to be done, he went away to do it! perhaps with a passing smile at the breach in the City Wall made for the theatrical entry of the German No-Emperor in 1898. His was the motive power behind the long lines of moving men toiling northward under their packs through the mud of Judæa, the long trains of groaning baggage- and water-camels, the processions of waggons drawn by complaining mules, the caterpillar-wheeled lorries, carrying tons upon tons of food and ammunition, the Staff cars carrying red-tabbed officers swiftly from point to point....

He was consolidating his positions on the Jerusalem-Shechem Road, and thrusting his cavalry over the Jordan, while a Sergeant and file of Military Police combed Alexandria for a defaulting London Territorial, Acting Sergeant John Hazel, of the Fenchurch Street Regiment,—who had failed to return to the Front at the end of the fortnight's leave. He was moving on Bethlehem, while the defaulter lay delirious on a string-bed, swathed in sheets of wet boracic wadding—in the house of a Jew of Shechem. One Benjamin Sebastia, a small dealer in precious stones, and a loyal friend to Esther Hazaël—otherwise known to readers of this tale as the Mother of Ugliness.

The cellar in Benjamin Sebastia's house had often served as a hiding-place, being clean and dry and fairly free from stinks. Through its thick stone walls no curious ear could catch the sick man's ravings—when he called on certain Big Old Men to come to the rescue—or poured mad love-words in the imaginary ear of a woman named Katharine....

It seemed, he thought, poor crazed and suffering wretch! that he had kept back from a man named Yaill a certain letter and, carrying out a rescue by his own unaided hand, had claimed reward of this service from the aforesaid Katharine. Through the long days and the longer nights, when the scourge of self-reproach for this imaginary baseness bit deep into the tortured soul housed in the tortured body, the woman who sat beside him never once failed to answer:

"But, John Hazaël, my cousin, thou didst not do the thing!"

"Did I not? ... Is that true?" he would ask her over and over. "But I wished to, I desired to...."

"And desiring, thou didst resist."

"That is good—if it be true...."

"It is true. Does Esther ever lie to thee?"

"No!" he would groan, lying there in his helplessness. "Now tell me again how I was found, and brought to this place?"

"When—" (she would lay fresh pieces of soaked lint on the huge, swollen body, or ease the perpetual, torturing thirst with some cool, refreshing drink.) "When I ran away from Kir Saba, back to Shechem, I found—"

"That I," there is a smile on the shapeless mouth—"that I had kept my word to thee, and taken the head of the dog! I think the people did not weep? ..."

"Nay. It was as the passing of a plague—the lifting of a shadow—and the soldiers who had guarded the Wired Place openly rejoiced. Many being set down for beating, and fines, and so forth—because of neglect in the matter of keeping watch, on the night of the Sidi's escape...."

"They got good rest that night, I think? ..."

"So good," she gives her little rustling laugh, "that all of them swear they were bewitched, or that some friend of the Sidi's drugged the rations sent from the Barracks—so that they slept like the Seven, and waked to find him gone. So they were glad the Bey was dead.... Especially the sabtiehs of his command were glad, for their old bimbashi is now Commandant—and his name hath favour among them—he being a merciful man."

"A merciful Turk is a rare bird," the formless mouth says grimly. "And so—no suspicion attaching to her name—or thine—the Dervish remaining silent—thou didst bribe the Gipsy woman of the Bazâr to go with thee to the hut in the Wired Place, and take my body away...."

"Paying a price to the soldiers in the name of certain Jewish townsfolk, who—it being known among them that thou wert a Jew!—would have buried thee decently. And when—thinking thee a corpse—I leaned over thee to cut away the knotted rag that hid the Signet of Hazaël, from the cord by which thou hadst hung it round thy neck—I saw, by the Mercy of the Most High!—that thou wert still breathing. And even as I myself was brought into this place of hiding, I and Inaini the Gipsy, carried thee here that night.... Some help I gave in the sickness of her child, she hath never forgotten. May the Most High reward her! ... What had we done without her strong arms to lift thee, and her poultices of healing herbs.... Now sleep, for thou hast talked enough! See how thy poor heart shakes thee! ..."

"One question more...." The puffy lips are blue, and he labours in his breathing: "When shall I be able to stand again on these elephant's feet of mine? ..."

She swallows her tears and answers:

"Soon, it may be.... Only be content, only wait a little longer!"

And propped on high-piled pillows, he promises obediently, looking down his long misshapen bulk at his huge distorted feet.

"Very well! I will wait a little longer. Thou hast money to meet the charges?"

"Plenty as yet, my cousin—without touching the sum that was in the belt thou gavest me to keep. Tell me one thing.... If thou couldst be moved—whither wouldst thou be carried, we escaping under cover of night from this unhappy place? ..."

"To somewhere near Jerusalem," says the thick voice, feebly.

"To Jerusalem? ..."

She starts and looks at him, but the black eyes under their calloused lids are fixed upon the opposite wall.

"I said to somewhere near there. I may not go to the City until I get a message from One who is my Friend...."

"He has come there with the British since the Turks were driven out of the City? ..."

The black eyes slowly move to meet hers. He shakes his scarred head:

"Nay. He has been waiting there for long—a very long time.... But when I get a Sign from Him, then I must go up...."

"There is some great reason compelling thee?"

"There is something waiting for me at Jerusalem. I was told it that night in the wooden hut. Tell me"—the voice is like a child's—"if I cannot move, how shall I obey the Sign when it comes to me? ..."

She soothes him, thinking that his pain and weakness make him wander.

"Leave all to me. To-morrow may find thee strong. Only rest and sleep now! ..."

And he sleeps, with heavy broken breaths of utter exhaustion and weariness.

XX

He is kept concealed—for though Turkish vigilance is somewhat relaxed in Shechem—there would be short shrift for the slayer of Hamid, were he known to be living still. Perhaps it may be because of this, that though his wounds slowly heal, John grows no stronger. A Jewish surgeon, related to Benjamin Sebastia, who is brought by stealth to see the patient, examines him, and goes away, shaking his head.

"Too late! It would always have been too late, however soon you had called me," he says to Sebastia as he takes his leave. "The man must have had a giant's strength to live through such an ordeal. My brother was a powerful man, yet he died under the rods.... Heart a wreck! ... Lungs.... Pff! ... May die at any moment! ... Shalôm! To the Downfall of the Ottoman Power, and the Restoration of Jewry!" and he drains his glass of Palestine Tokay and refuses his fee, and goes. And his verdict is cautiously broken to John Hazel, who comforts weeping Esther, declaring the opinion of a Hebrew in a kaftan and fur hat and side-curls, with a Paris Diploma—not worth a British damn! He is even a shade better next day, as though in sheer defiance of the owner of the Paris Diploma and the side-curls and kaftan....

He has known how the months change by the flowers that Esther brings him, and others that Inaini, smiling, produces from the folds of her veil. Great clusters of crimson anemones, crocuses, purple and white; grape hyacinths, tulips and daffodils—and it is March. More anemones of varied, jewel-bright colours, purple, pink, and crimson; jonquils, and white and yellow Marguerites. Yellow, blue and lilac lupins—narcissus and violets, iris and cyclamen—and wealthy April's here.... He likes the anemones and looks at them for hours, drowsily turning them in his well-nigh helpless hands.... For the creamy ones are like Katherine's skin, and the rose-red are her blushes, and the brown-gold are—or so he thinks—the colour of her eyes.... The rows of velvety hairs that fringe the centre of the corolla are black as her eye-lashes—black as her hair.... But the scent of violets brings her back, complete in her sweet womanliness, with the Chapel and Kerr's Arbour for a background to it all....

Now come great sheaves of lilies, phlox and gladioli, and it is May, the Month of the Rose. Masses of perfume, colour and fragrance are brought to the cellar in the jeweller's back-yard. And John plays with them, or stares at the whitewashed wall, or listens as Esther reads to him from a copy of the Jewish Scriptures, a volume belonging to their host, printed in Hebrew and Arabic. The Messianic Prophecies are what he hears most gladly, and oftenest asks for. One day as she closes the Book at the end of a passage from Isaiah:

"And He was wounded for our transgressions, and bruised for our iniquities, and the chastisement of our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed."

"That—that is why it was said to me that night!—" she hears the slow voice whisper: "'Thou hast suffered for obedience to thy father's fathers, and for the keeping of the Oath, and for the love of one woman. But I, that I might do the Will of My Father—and thy Father—and for the love of all mankind.'"

"O my Cousin!" Habitually now, the soft Arabic speech flows to and fro between them, "Who was it said those words to thee? ..."

"It was on the night—" the scarred head turns on the high-propped pillow—"the night after the beating. My hands and feet were torture, and I had a great thirst. And there came a light on the wall of the hut, and Somebody spoke to me, and the blood cleared from my eyes, and I saw Him then...."

"Who—who was He?" She draws an awed breath.

"He said He was my Friend—and I believed Him. You could not see Him as I did—and doubt any more. Dost thou recall the fresco in the tomb on Ebal? It is not like—how could it be His likeness? But the man who made it had seen Him in a Vision, and caught the faintest shadow of His look."

"I—do not understand...."

"It does not matter. But that is why I was so sure I should not die just then.... I cannot yet enter Jerusalem, for there is blood upon my hands that has been shed in vengeance—but, I am to wait near the City until I get the Sign...."

"Dearest, art thou quite sure—"

"I doubt not, being certain. Now, having breath enough—I would speak of other things. When I am dead, thou wilt write and tell the things to my mother—and go to thine own mother at Alexandria. She is wealthy and so art thou, thou dost need no provision, so the Fortune of Eli Hazaël, our grandfather, will go to build and endow the Hebrew University."

"But thy brother, Maurice, what of him?"

"It is borne in on me," the black eyes are momentarily dimmed, "that Maurice is dead. I have felt it for a long time. My mother must be sorely grieved. He was her dearest son."

"Art thou not dear to her also?" Esther asks sadly.

"She will sorrow for me too—but not as she does for Maurice. And she has a good friend, an old flame,—a Dutchman in the City, Herman Van Ost his name is—and she will marry him now. She would have married him years ago, but Maurice did not wish it. There is another task for thee yet, my Sweet. Dost thou shrink from it, Little One?"

"Nay. For thou art Hazaël, and the Head of our House. Surely I will obey thee. Have thou no doubt of me! ..."

"Kind One! ... Brave One! Little Judith in Israel!— Surely thou wilt be rewarded for thy courage and thy faith. Listen now! ... When I who am the littlest and least of all the Hazaëls shall be gathered to our fathers—thou shalt seek out Katharine Forbis—wherever thou shalt hear of her—and carry word from me." The voice deepens and grows strong: "Say—there is no longer an Hazaël left of the male line, to guard the Ashes. The Oath is fulfilled—the Debt is paid! Katharine and her children—and theirs following them—must take upon them to be Guardians of the Shrine."

"What Oath was it?"

"The Oath made sixteen hundred years ago and more, by Hazaël Aben Hazaël. Remember!—she is to take the Urn back to Kerr's Arbour, and house it under the altar in the Chapel there.... And her children will reverence it—knowing its sacredness. Perhaps," the black eyes are shining now with a light that is soft and gentle, "perhaps there will be a little boy—with eyes like his mother's—who will ask for the story oftener and love it more than the others—because—because—his name will be John ..."

"Ah, dearest!—dearest! ..."

"Do not cry. All this when I have departed.... Till then I would be forgotten by all I used to know."

"Then thou wilt say I have done right when I tell thee that some two months back—when thou wert very feeble—diligent search was made for thee. Even under the eyes of the Turks and Germans—a man whom thou knowest ventured into this place."

"One whom I know! ..." The black eyes flash, the scarred head turns towards her on the pillow: "Is his name Yaill?"

"His name is Colonel Edward Yaill, though sometimes he calls himself the Emir Fadl Anga. He was garbed as a Moghrabi sugar-merchant—but I knew his eyes again. So I sought him out, and guessing at thy pleasure in the matter, I told him thou couldst not be moved—and he went away from here."

"It is well. Now I talk no more, sweetheart, for breath is hard to come by. Do one thing that I ask before the daylight goes. Take off thy veil, little Judith, and let me see thee plainly. For once! I will not ask again, if my asking hurt thee so!"

She falters a refusal, then yields at his entreaty.

"Shut thine eyes for a little moment, and open when I call...."

He shuts his eyes and opens them, to see Esther sitting at the bed-foot.... A figure girlish in its youth fulness, pathetic in its slender fragility, and veilless, save for the tresses of her rich black silken hair. She parts the hair with two little brown hands, then throws it back on either side, revealing the face it has covered—and a sob catches in the man's throat, and his eyes are wet with tears....

For that side of Esther's face that is never shown is beautiful, strangely beautiful. The great dark eye under the arched black eyebrow, the little aquiline nose, with proud curved nostrils, the delicate mouth, the rounded chin, are of purest Hebrew type. She bears his scrutiny awhile, then lifts the discarded covering, adjusts it with quick, slender hands—and is Ummshni once again.

"Will that do? Hast thou looked enough?" she asks with a touch of sharp regret for her lost heritage of Beauty.

"I have looked.... And I have seen—as I knew I should!" says John placidly, "that thy face, my little Esther—is lovely as thy soul. Now I will rest, for I am done. Perhaps I shall walk to-morrow...."

Comes the month of June, with ardent suns, and July with skies of fire. Esther reads to John in another Book—a copy of the Syriac Gospels picked up on a stall in the Bazâr—of One Whose teachings she has been reared to hold as rank blasphemy. But her Hazaël has commanded it, and she obeys Hazaël, and reads of Him Who raised the dead to life, and opened the eyes of those born blind, and made the lame to walk. Here in this land of Palestine nearly two thousand years ago. But time goes on and this lame man does not walk yet....

It is October, the month of Asphodel, and Shechem is swept clean of Germans and Turks, as the brown line moves up north. The great Commander-in-Chief of the E.E.F. has carried out his leopard-pounce on Nazareth,—whence Von Sanders and his Headquarters Staff have fled—Tiberias and Amman have been occupied by British Forces, and the stronghold of Turkish Power at Damascus has fallen, before the colossal, tottering bulk can balance on its feet.

No available garments of European make can be adapted to John's hugeness. Esther and the jewel-dealer's wife are in despair, then hit upon a brilliant idea. A vast pair of Turkish drawers of yellow and white striped-cotton are tucked into the baggy tops of immense soft yellow boots. Over an Arab jubba of white cotton material goes a loose-sleeved Arab over-robe of brown camel-hair. They cover him with a black felt tarbûsh, and a white silk kuffiyeh bound with a scarlet head-rope, and swathe him in the voluminous folds of a primrose-coloured jerd. Now, with the beard that he has grown in captivity at Shechem, the mother at home in London would not know her son again.

The German Commander with his merry men departed in haste for Aleppo when the huge khaki torrent rolled upon Samaria from the South.... The Turks of the garrison escaped over Jordan, the batteries on the flank of Ebal were taken by the British, and the Patriarchs and other notables deported from the Holy City are chartering vehicles to take them back again.

Some of these are quaint enough. To witness, the ancient travelling-landau, piled with luggage of a heterogeneous description, packed with Armenian Fathers, and drawn by a tall camel and a small, rebellious mule. But the hooded bath-pony-chair of largest size, a venerable derelict of British make left by some wealthy traveller years ago to moulder in the courtyard of a Shechem hotel, to which a diminutive red-tasselled donkey has been harnessed, and in which is seated a prodigiously obese and bushy-bearded Arab, possibly takes the palm....

Three women run beside the chair, drawn by the small donkey driven by an Arab urchin with a sharpened palm-wood stick. As the chair rolls through the east gate, and moves in the rolling dust-cloud with a column of other vehicles, past the Wired Place and the Mohammedan Tombs, the little donkey stops.

"Shalôm, Sidi! Health and recovery be thine—and Happiness with the Blessing!" says the wife of the jewel-dealer, bidding John Hazel farewell.

"Farewell, O woman of gentle heart.... Remember me to thy husband. And farewell, kind Inaini.... Sometimes remember us! ..."

"Farewell, my lord.... My lord will not soon forget Shechem!" says Inaini, with a flash of brilliant eyes and teeth from between her flowered veils....

"Nor thee. May the Most High reward thee for all thy charity! ..."

"It was nothing!" says the woman, almost sullenly, but John can hear her sob....

"O my friend! O my sister! Farewell, good-bye! Little Mother of Ugliness, my heart is sore to part! ..."

The jewel-dealer's wife hugs the little white-robed figure. Esther embraces her, and then Inaini—and the honest woman and the courtesan go away together, both red-eyed with weeping behind their shrouding veils. And the big bath chair drawn by the little donkey—with the huge Arab in it and the little woman and the native boy running beside it—is lost in the stream of traffic on the Jerusalem-Shechem Road.

It is a day of dust and sun, and the big man in the bath chair drawn by the little donkey is as feeble as he is heavy, and unfitted to bear fatigue. It is night by the time they have left the plain, and the road climbs amongst the hills, that are ridged and furrowed with the traces of War, as the face that is shaded by the white jerd, and the body that the sick heart's throbbing shakes, and the man's misshapen hands and feet are scarred by the Turkish asayisi....

Sunset flames over the Western Sea and all the land is rosy-dyed when at last he looks on the ancient City, the bourne of his desires. Set between east and west upon three hills, of which the lesser, Ophel, has vanished—the limestone spurs of Sion and Moriah upholding her, she turns her back upon the ocean plain and the mild damp airs that blow from it, to fill her lungs with the burning winds and dust-storms of the Wilderness—where the Son of God and Saviour of mankind was tempted of Satan, and Jordan's yellow waters flow towards the abyss of the Dead Sea.

They go no farther that night, for the sick man cannot bear it, but hire two rooms, almost clean, and newly whitewashed, at the Khân of a little mud-built Mohammedan village that sits on a hill beside the road.

The left wing of the London Division were entrenched here before the Occupation, and the Advance that moved them north.... The whitewash of the Khân of Shafât has familiar names scribbled upon it, attached to caustic comments on the price of native eggs, dates, cheese, oranges and olives, as compared with their quality and their size.