The Hawk of Egypt Part 15

Under the orders of the Ethiopian eunuch, giant twin of Qatim, in the service of Zulannah the courtesan, the harem was kept swept and garnished, adorned with flowers, aglow at nights with a myriad soft lights hanging from the ceiling in jewelled lamps, to which were flung the fountain's perfumed drops, to fall and break on marble floor and silken cus.h.i.+on, inlaid table and bright-hued birds in jewelled cage.

There does exist a different kind of harem--dirty, gaudy, ill-kempt--somewhat like the inmates--over the whole of which 'tis wise to draw a veil.

The eunuch's bankings-account--which was kept in a certain secret nook of the harem court--had become sadly depleted on account of his master's eccentric views as regarded women, but he still lived in hope, and, delighting in intrigue, as every native does, had welcomed the advent of his ebony brother primed with gossip and suggestion.

Therefore, upon the beating of the gong which had not been struck for many weary moons, he hastened to the court and salaamed to the ground before his master, who sat upon a pile of cus.h.i.+ons, guarded by the two s.h.a.ggy dogs of Billi, with the amber mouthpiece of the jewel-encrusted _nargileh_ between his lips and the falcon upon a padded perch beside him.

"Bring me a woman--to dance," he curtly ordered, and the slave sped to do his bidding, with visions of a big increase in the banking-account hidden in a secret place.

And when the dancer drifted in like a flower-petal upon a breeze, Hugh Carden Ali looked up slowly, letting escape a wisp of smoke from between his lips.

The dancer wore one single garment of transparent black, hung from the shoulders by diamond bands and through which her perfectly nude body shone like an ivory pillar; her slender feet with crimsoned toes and heels were bare; the tiny hands ablaze with jewels; a huge bunch of orange-tinted diamond-sprinkled osprey was fastened in her jet-black hair; across her face there hung a short, almost transparent veil, one corner of which she held between her teeth, leaving to view the wonderful eyes, a heaven or h.e.l.l of invitation--as you will.

She danced as had danced her Biblical sister to the pleasing of a king for the attainment of her desire; and she danced humming a little tune behind the veil until the movement of her beautiful body and the knowledge of a man's eyes upon her went to her head like wine, so that in the end, by force of habit maybe, she danced to conquer where she had only intended to interest.

As already mentioned, she had the morals of a jackal.

She drifted down the court towards Hugh Carden Ali and, standing before him, bowed her beautiful head to the level of her dimpled knees, laughed gently, and was gone like a bird to a far corner of the court.

She seemed to swing in the air like a lime flower caught on the end of a spider's thread, as she came slowly down once more; to be blown hither and thither like a leaf before the gale as she ran here, sprang there, to the rhythm of the little tune she hummed behind the wisp of veil; to undulate, like a field of ripe wheat beneath the summer sun as she stood quite near the man who watched her with a fraction of the interest he would have shown in the purchase of a dog or falcon in the open mart.

Her henna'd toes pressed firmly on the centre of a Persian rug of such antiquity as to render the pattern indecipherable; she moved her body from the slender waist downward not at all; the muscles of her arms and shoulders rippled, and her head moved, slightly but unceasingly from side to side.

How often one hears of the European's boredom whilst watching the Nautch Dance in which the Indian Nautch girl, fully clothed, indeed in high tight bodice and ankle-length, voluminous skirt, will drive her native audience clean crazy with the tapping of her feet and slight, undulating movements of the slender body and rod-like arms. It is indeed the dullest thing on earth to watch if you are unable to follow and _interpret_ every little movement. But if you can--well! the unexpurgated version of the Arabian Nights will be as milk-and-water compared to the heady brew offered for your consumption. And the old Harrovian sitting cross-legged, upon a heap of cus.h.i.+ons, with the smoke of the _nargileh_, drifting from between his lips, smiled as he picked up the thread of the same old story which had been spun for him when, an arrogant youth of twelve summers, he had ruled his house with no gentle hand.

Otherwise he showed little interest and felt no desire to lift the tantalising veil; neither did he turn his head, else might he have seen the ebony face of the Ethiopian eunuch peering from between a ma.s.s of flowers, from which point of vantage he watched the scene with intent to report thereon to his black twin-brother.

At last, and very slowly, and with a growing feeling of resentment in the place where her heart by rights should have been, Zulannah sped down the court upon her toes and fell at the edge of the piled cus.h.i.+ons, causing the dogs to growl softly at her daring.

"Thou art a beautiful dancer, woman," said Hugh Carden Ali, making no movement to lift the veil. "Behold, I have pa.s.sed a pleasant hour and would reward thee. What thou wilt. Money--jewels?--speak."

From behind the wisp of veil which fluttered in the dancer's quick breathing came the barely whispered answer.

"I hear thee not, woman; raise thy voice and be not afraid. I will give thee what thou desirest."

"One hour!"

The man bent forward to catch the words, and when their full import struck him, leapt to his feet and catching the woman's wrist jerked her upright, ripping the veil from before her face.

"_Zulannah_!" he cried, and sprang back, having heard of the lady's deft handling of her dagger when in the tantrums. Then he caught both wrists and held her pinioned, looking with loathing into the exquisite, furious face, whilst the great dogs, fangs bared, ruffs upstanding, sniffed suspiciously at the knees and waist, even rising on their hind-legs to snuff the slender neck of this woman who had angered their master.

For a second he held her with arms stretched to breaking-point and henna'd toes barely touching the ground, then threw her across the cus.h.i.+ons, whilst the dogs growled softly as they prowled, belly to ground, about the prostrate figure and the ebony-hued eunuch tore at his woolly hirsute covering amongst the flowers.

But courtesans have tears as well as other kinds of women, and they use them every whit as effectively, perhaps a bit better, on account of the stoutness of their hearts.

So that when the man ordered the woman to sit up, she sat up, wiped real tears from the innocent-looking eyes, re-arranged her garments, and prepared for battle.

Tough might describe the rose-hued, satin-textured epidermis of the scarlet enchantress.

"Thou hast a great daring, woman."

The courtesan knew not the meaning of the word hesitation, and was off with the still-born desire and on with her original business between the tossing and falling of a drop from the perfumed fountain and ready with an explanation even before the man spoke.

"Thou hast misheard my words, lord. Knowing by hearsay of thy hatred of women, I entered thy house as dancer before thee, to gain as my reward one hour of speech with thee."

"Speech? Wherefore?

"Because I would help thee, and in helping thee help myself." Clasping her slender jewelled hands, across her bosom, she looked up to the gilded ceiling, and sighing softly, whispered:

"I love!"

"_Thou_!"

"Yea, lord. I love--and--thou lovest--and--nay, hear me, it is for thy advancement--and mine--and he, the man for whom my soul has turned to water, for whom I yearn--yea, if it be but for one single hour of his love--a memory of rose-time in the ash-pit of my years--he------" She stopped.

'Tis wise to approach a wounded tiger warily, especially if you are not certain as to the extent of the hurt or the power of the weapon of defence in your hand.

"Sit--and speak quickly, for I would have thee gone."

The man spoke curtly as he sank upon a pile of cus.h.i.+ons and pointed to one on the far side of the Persian rug, upon which the most courted woman in Egypt knelt, with her eyes full of gentleness and her heart pounding in a torment of rage and fear.

"Yea, I understand."

Hugh Carden Ali spoke wearily, being stricken with love. For ten solid minutes the woman had talked round her subject. Intuitive, she scented danger; usually fearless, her whole being was sick with apprehension; desperate, she dug her nails into her flesh and essayed to reach her goal by a roundabout way.

Then she stopped, sighed, and cast down her eyes; then raised them beseechingly when the man spoke.

"Fearing to use force against the--the woman who thou sayest is loved by the man thou lovest--and may the prophet bear witness that thy tale is as full of turnings and twistings as the paths in the bazaar in which thou spinn'st thy web--thou would'st tear her from him by craft.

Explain thy seemingly futile words, and hasten thy lying tongue, for behold the hour of dawn approacheth."

And the wrath in the voice was such as to hurl the woman pell-mell over the cliff of discretion down into the depths of her own undoing.

"She, the white woman, walks in the bazaar, yea, even at noon and at sunset. Perchance one evening, lured by the tale of the riches of the house of Zulannah, might not her feet stray within the portals at the setting of the sun. And behold, the key of the great door is within these hands, and--and------"

The man's hands lay quietly on his knees as he leant forward, and the shadow thrown by the flowering plants hid the twin pools of murder in the depths of his eyes.

"And------?" he whispered.

"And------" she whispered back, "would the white man, thinkest thou, take to wife her who had pa.s.sed a night in the house of the courtesan?

Would he not, without waiting for explanation, throw her into the filth of the bazaar, leaving her for the first comer to pick up, and turn himself to------"

She leapt to her feet, screaming, as his fingers closed round her wrist in a grip of steel; mad with fury, she tore her raiment and hair, raving obscenities in the vilest language of the lowest reaches of the bazaar, oblivious of the dogs which reared and fell and reared unceasingly behind her.

"The white woman who trapeses the bazaar unveiled," she screamed. "The white virgin who flung herself into thy arms, in the market-place, thou trafficker in foreign harlots, the------"

Hugh Carden Ali, the son of his father to the inner-most part of his being in the horrible scene, had made one little sign, and the dogs were upon her.

With a sickening scrunch one caught the side of her head in the steel jaws which stretched from the nape of the neck to the corner of the mouth; with a sharp snap the other drove its fangs into the muscle behind the dimpled knee.