Chapter X

A circle of Fellah grooms and Arab camel-men, coarse-mouthed, evil-eyed, old in the ways of vice--are gathered about a little creature in the dingy blue print robe, yellow-white outer-robe of sheeting and coarse double veil of the Fellaha. To the majority of these Ummshni is known, not so to the others; who crowd round, eager to taste the joy of baiting the veiled woman who has ventured alone into the crowded court of the Khan.

"Hail, O Beauty, in search of a lover!" jests a squint-eyed Arab. "Couldst thou not pay an old woman to tout for thy customers? Has business been so bad that thou art driven forth under the eye of daylight? Nay then, show thy face for a foretaste of pleasure. _Insh'allah!_--unless thou art ugly as a daughter of the Jinniyeh, here is Abu Mulâd the Tuareg camel-man, ready and willing to take thee on!"

"The Daughters of the Jinniyeh have legs shaggy with hair, and not seldom one eye in the middle of the forehead," squeals a scullion, as Abu Mulâd, a huge and hideous Tuareg from Central Sahara, whose face, arms and legs are dyed with indigo, whose back hair is plaited in tails with straw, and whose top locks are hogged like a cob's mane under the black tribal head-cloth, is thrust into the forefront of the circle by a dozen officious hands. "While this moon's husband fell down dead for sheer joy when his bride was first unveiled to him. Is it not the sheer truth, O Bestower of Delights?"

"Verily thou dost not lie, for once, O Kasib the scullion!" says a thin but audible voice from behind the close-drawn veil. "Wilt thou risk the same fate, O Abu Mulâd the Tuareg? Then--then put forth thine hand! ... Or--shall I save thee the trouble? See then the face that killed a man upon his wedding-night!"

With a thin, shrill cackle of derisive laughter, she draws the screen of coarse towelling. Abu Mulâd stares, grimaces behind the strip of black cloth covering his mouth, curses and spits copiously.... While the little active figure, galvanised into sudden activity, revolves before him in an impish dance, chanting to a weird, unholy tune, words in a strange, unknown tongue:--

"_O, you rode the Desert and he flew the Air!--
And now he has sent me to find you;
A message from him, and a letter I bear--
From the bonny bonny Maid of Kerr's Arbour!_"

There is something so gnome-like about the little capering figure, revolving lightly as a withered leaf, or an eddy of Desert sand, upon the unclean litter of the courtyard of the Khan, that--and there is not one man of all the throng who does not believe in witchcraft--even those who know Ummshni best, quail at the possibility of falling under some evil spell, blasting in its effect upon the body as upon the soul.

Kasib the scullion claps his hand before his mouth, as do a dozen others, invoking the Protection. But Abu Mulâd is of the type of man that, ordinarily slow, dilatory and lumpish as a buffalo, is rendered tigerish by fear. He shakes in his hide sandals and bleaches under his indigo mask as he splutters through the V-shaped gap between his filed front teeth:

"Be thou accursed, thou one-eyed sorceress! abominable ghoul, conceiver by the seed of devils! _Insha'llah!_ this good blade of mine shall purge thee of thine evil blood!"

Not a man puts out his hand to save the woman, as the Tuareg leaps upon her, grasps her frail shoulder, and the curved iron knife flashes out, when a sharp clear voice, with the unmistakable ring of authority in it, arrests the lifted hand.

"_Shwai!_"

The whites of eager eyes roll, as the dark, excited faces are lifted to the balcony where stands the Emir Fadl Anga. Now his sharp, authoritative voice rings out again:

"Release the woman and bid her come up hither. Who shows her violence will reckon with me!"

The Tuareg's heavy blue fingers fall from the slender, bruised shoulder. Ummshni mutely salaams to the imperious Presence above, and moves with her customary, artificial limp to the outer staircase leading to the balcony, as the crowd of idlers, frustrated of the pleasant thrill that is born of the sight of bloodshed, disperse to their various quarters.

Imperiously beckoning the woman to make haste, the Emir moves back into the room, and presently the shadow of the little feminine figure is cast across the balcony and the three-inch high window-sill, that is grooved to receive the heavy shutter that closes the room at night....

With a strange premonitory thrill, Yaill speaks to the little creature:

"Enter without fear, O Mother of Ugliness!" He goes on as her fragile, dusky arms curve out, the hands touch the veiled brow in the Eastern salutation from an inferior, and noiselessly as a moth she flits into the room: "And without fear--for here we are in privacy--tell me who taught thee that song?"

"O Saiyid!" How faint and whispering a voice is hers.... "I learned the song from a big man---a soldier of the Army of Ingiltarra--who sat on a sack of biscuits after Sheria, and hummed while the Sons of the Desert made the Prayer of Afternoon."

"Where is the man to be found?"

"Saiyid, he lies in hiding in a tomb upon Mount Ebal, having been lamed in leaping from a landing aëroplane. His liver is charred with anger at so untoward an accident. Strong is his brain to help thee plan, and strong as iron are his hands--that could choke the life out of an enemy's throat--even as a child twists a rotten cucumber. But he is lame!" Yaill marks the falling note of anguished pity in the voice. "He can but limp upon a stick, he cannot leap or run...."

"Tell him from me.... Stay! ... Tell me first how thou didst encounter him?"

"Sir," Ah, the woman knows too much, she is actually speaking English, "Sir, to me, a woman of many sorrows, secretly dwelling in that desolate place of which I speak, he came as a stranger seeking succour. Then, by the Will of the Most High, was discovered between us kinship: the bond of religion, the call of race, and the unbreakable tie of blood."

"Madam--"

"Give me not that title. I am no man's wife!"

"Then, Miss Hazel--"

"_Chut_! Call me only Ummshni." A black eye sparkles at Yaill from between her veils and a little finger, slender and supple as a lizard's tail, signs to him to beware. "I heard a footstep overhead, but now!" the thin voice whispers, reverting to Arabic, "And it did not pass on, and see there--that hole!"

With an upward gesture of her supple hand she barely indicates the whitewashed ceiling, in which there is certainly a hole, rat-gnawed, or made by human hands for spying purposes--and reaching to the surface of the flat mud roof above.

"O Ummshni, there is a hole indeed, cleverly made for eavesdropping, but the man who keeps guard above it is a follower of mine. Stay--thou shalt prove it so!" Fadl Anga whistles, shrill and sharp, the call of the pigeon-master; and there is a rap on the roof above, and an answering, echoing call. "Now take a message for thy man. Tell him from me, that since by Fate he is doomed to be out of the adventure--"

"Give me a message worded in some other way. I will not wound him so!" There is sensitive pride in the thin, whispering voice. "And first let me discharge mine errand. Here are the letters I spoke of in the song."

"Give, then," says the Emir briefly....

She draws from beneath her coarse white outer robe John's square of sewn parchment-paper, inked with the signs of the Zodiac, touches with it her veiled forehead, and offers it in both her outstretched palms.

"The letters are stitched within, I was to tell thee. And that one of them comes from the hand of her--who is dearest to thee of all!"

A great wave of emotion goes through Yaill, as he takes the inky double square of soiled parchment-paper. His hand trembles for a moment, and there is a dimness before his eyes.

"Thank--"

"Do not thank me, sir," the little creature quietly says in her Paris-learned English, "I acted in obedience. Shall I not carry out the orders of him who is Head of my House? Now give me the message to carry to John Hazaël in the Mountain, for at dark I have business that brings me back to this town."

"Shall I write, Miss Hazel, or shall you remember?"

"It will be safest not to write, and I shall not forget. Tell me in English, time and all.... It will be clearer for John Hazaël, I being commanded to repeat your very words."

"Then tell John Hazel from Edward Yaill that I have received the packet, and that as earnestly as ever man thanked man, I thank him for what he has done! To-night, between twelve-thirty and two o'clock--European time--we break into the Wired Enclosure. We have learned of an easy way to get in; and except for one man, who cannot be dealt with, I think we can dispose of the guards."

"To-night between half-past twelve--no! ... Twelve-thirty and two o'clock you break into the Wired Enclosure, having learned of an easy way to get in...." The tone is studiously calm, but the throbbing of her heart shakes her. "Is that all, or is there more to tell? ..."

"There is a tunnel running from the wooden hut that was used as a mess-room by the English officers. Do you follow? It begins under the bed that is in the hut, and running eastward, passes under the broken cart that stands near the side of the road. Five paces from the sentry-box of the man we cannot deal with--the Darweesh who neither drinks wine nor smokes."

"Nay. But it may be--" The talk has swung back to Arabic, and the voice that is thin and soft as a trickling rivulet of hill-water, sounds as though Ummshni's hidden mouth were smiling behind her veil. "It may be that Ishak Baba the Darweesh, who drinks no wine nor tobacco, and cannot be drugged into blindness--hath no strength to refrain his lips from the offered goblet of love?"

"Ah! So there is a weak place in his priestly garment, that," Yaill remembers something the Shaykh Gôhar has said, "that the little fingers of a woman might widen to a hole?"

"Verily, O Emir! To-night when the Dark comes, Ishak Baba going on guard at sunset--it is a pact twixt him and me, that I, Ummshni, may feed the--the English prisoner, if--if a shameless woman of the Bazâr, a gipsy whom Ishak Baba loves--visits the Baba in his sentry-box. I, Ummshni, keeping watch the while."

"_Isht_! (Bravo!) O woman of a thousand! Hast thou carried the assignation to the gipsy courtesan?"

"Nay, not yet."

"Then, do not carry it!" The Emir's grey eyes gleam, under the green silk _kuffiyeh_ that drapes his _tarbûsh_, and the thin lips under the henna-dyed beard curve into a smile that shows his white, rather irregular teeth. "One of my men will keep the love-tryst, walking with a mincing, womanly carriage--and swathed in the white _izar_. Was the gipsy not to pass the Baba on his beat, dropping an almond or a flower, and before he wheeled about, slip into the sentry-box? Dost thou nod? Ay, I well thought thou didst, it is an ancient game!"

The Emir's white teeth gleam in his red-dyed beard, and Ummshni gives her little mirthless titter.

"As my lord says, the game is old, but while Earth spins between the Poles it will not lack for players. One thing there is to ask...." The voice falters and the little figure trembles. "Thy man ... He will not kill the _posta_?"

"Nay. Do not tremble. He will only gag him well, and bind."

She gives a small sigh of relief.

"There will be the green rods for him, the luckless one! when the prisoner's escape is discovered."

The Emir's thin eyebrows mount in his bronzed forehead. He says in his languid, high-bred tones:

"So there be an escape to find out, I am even content that he should taste the _asayisi_. I do not love Turks."

"Nor I, Saiyid! But--" and another wave of shuddering goes over the little shrouded figure: "since the ninefold curse of War fell upon this my unhappy country, I have seen such rivers of blood flow--"

"O lady, the whole world bleeds; nor shall its wounds know stanching until the enemies of Peace are brought low. They are the Turk and the German, and yet another who wears the skin of many races, and plots evil in many tongues. He works underground, and flies by night, and does not show his face in sunshine; but when his hour comes, he will be revealed! Russia has the disease of him--and Ireland is rotten with him!--and in India and the Far East the papers that bear his teachings are cast abroad, and carried on the winds, and shower down like the falling leaves."

"And here. Even in this town--"

The black eye sparkles between the folds of coarse towelling, and the grey eyes lighten in an answering look.

"So! ... Thou couldst tell a tale--"

"Saiyid." The eye-gleam is hidden in the folds, the tone is humbly deprecating. "I am only Ummshni. Who looks over his shoulder when a thing so despicable limps by with her basket or _sharbi_?"

"I understand. Now, attend. Tell your John Hazel that we four men--I with my two Bedwân and Father Forbis, ride out of Shechem before dawn, having the password and making the pretext, that a carrier-pigeon being to fly for Mecca at daybreak, we mean to launch her from the Mount. There is a good chance that--Shechem being full of strangers--the fourth mounted man of us shall pass unobserved. But, in any event, for us there is no turning. Dost thou understand?"

The lean sunburned hand touches the butt of one of the Emir's silver and ivory-mounted revolvers.

"O Saiyid, I understand!"

"Good. Tell John Hazel to wait for us a mile west of Shechem, where the Road of the Wady Azzun--going to Jaffa, turns southward through a deep defile among the hills. Is that clearly understood, or shall I repeat it?"

"It is understood, and John Hazaël will meet thee, where the road of the Wady Azzun, going to Jaffa, turns southward through the defile among the hills."

"Can he, being so lame? ..."

"He can if _I_ say he can. I will see to it!"

"Then we will leave it so. Near the mouth of the defile, is a Turkish Army Service motor-lorry. It broke down there yesterday and it is there to-day. Let Hazel wait in the shadow of it, for the sound of our horses. If we can get a spare horse we will bring it. If not, one of those we ride will have to carry two men. For Hazel is our partner in the adventure. We are not going to leave him in a hole!"

"I hear, O Saiyid! and I shall not forget. By the broken Turkish lorry where the road turns south, running between the walls of the defile.... It is for Jaffa that you ride?"

"For Jaffa, where the British are.... Naturally."

Nationality unconsciously asserts itself in the tone. She answers in her whispering accents.

"There are British, five miles nearer here than Jaffa, striking north from the Cross-Roads of Gilgal--over the levels, and again west at Nebi Karen.... For there is the Tower of Kir Saba, and Kir Saba is the Headquarters of--what you call--a Mounted Brigade.... Not of soldiers from England--but British of the Dominions--and yet not Australians, though looking like them.... Dark, stern-faced men with crimson bands and little green tufts on their soft brown hats--riding little, thick-necked, active horses, sitting not loosely as does the Arab, but close, as though horse and rider were one."

"They are New Zealand Mounted Rifles. You have certainly a gift for detail, Miss Hazel."

The grey eyes of the Emir lighten appreciatively under the Hajj's green turban. The little veiled creature, as unmoved by his praise as she was by the Tuareg's insult, goes on with what she has to say:

"'Anzacs,' that is their name. And since yesterday their Headquarters is Kir Saba, whose Tower stands north from the Cross-Roads two miles upon the slope of the hills. The Turks and Germans drove their trenches through the vineyards and gardens, but, though they emptied the vaults, and wine-cellars, and broke the refrigerating plant, they did not cut down the orchards and olive-groves that stretch for miles over the Hills. They were wire-fenced and gated in the time of Eli Hazaël. Lest the wire should not have been cut, or the locks of the gates broken,--I will place in thy charge this key that I have here."

She is holding out to Yaill a clumsy metal spatula, evidently the work of an Eastern hand.

"There are other keys upon the ring," she shows the slip-ring of copper wire on which some smaller metal spatulas are strung. "They are the keys of the habitable rooms that are on the Tower ground-floor. We lived there part of every year, during the Spring and vintage. Turks having been there--" the slight inflection given to the word conveys a contempt that is boundless; "the rooms may contain nothing that is fit for usage; yet were it otherwise, all is at the service of my lord."

"You are very kind!" Yaill says, more than a little awkwardly, for one to whom the sonorous speech and stately bearing of the Bedwân are second nature by now.

"By the Saiyid's leave," again Yaill has the impression that the hidden mouth smiles coldly, "I speak of another--to whom the Tower belongs."

"Ah, yes, of course."

Yaill is suddenly switched on to a fact he has forgotten:

"Of course, the Tower of Kir Saba and the land about it, have been for many generations the property of the Forbis family. And Father Julian is the only living male heir. But how do you know?"

There is pride in the low voice that answers:

"Saiyid, though but a woman, I am of the race of Hazaël. For sixteen hundred years and more our men have been Keepers of the Tower and Guardians of the Shrine. Thou wilt deliver the keys to my lord? It is a promise?"

"It is a sacred promise. Pardon that I forgot!"

"Now I go back to carry thy words to John Hazaël on Mount Ebal. Then I return to Shechem. At sunset Abu Ishak goes on guard, at the end of the Wired Enclosure where the wooden hut is, and when it is dark, I feed the prisoner."

"Is it wise to risk so much for that?"

"Being a man," the little voice is very cold, "the Saiyid speaks man-fashion. Being a woman, descended from Her who is the Mother of all men save Adam, I speak after the manner of my sex. How shall the lord of Kir Saba ride for life--and over the hill-roads--if he be fainting? Will he not sit the saddle better if he be strengthened with broth and wine?"

"O daughter of our Mother Eve, wise art thou, and full of forethought! One thing before we part. What time shall the gipsy-woman come to the sentry? It shall be for thee to say!"

She thinks an instant, then says:

"When the _boruzan_ of the guard sounds his bugle, and the lights of the camp are darkened, let her come, stepping softly, and pass the Darweesh on his beat--dropping a white flower, or a piece of white paper--and then slip swiftly as a snake, or a lizard, into the sentry-box. When the Baba returns--"

"In the hope of finding waiting--the only one of the Forbidden Things he hath not power to forego--he will kiss a gag of oiled camel-hide, smooth and tight-fitting and greasy, instead of his gipsy's hot, painted mouth. She will come when they sound 'Lights Out' at the camp of the Wired Enclosure.... And so, good-bye, Miss Hazel," says the Emir Fadl Anga, and his sorrowful grey eyes are kindly as they rest on the little shape. "Forgive me for asking the question, but under the circumstances--seeing that we clear out of here to-night--what is to become of you? ..."

"Of me? ..."

She gives her queer, rustling laugh, and by the sound of it he knows himself in the presence of a despair that is greater, because more hopeless than his own.

"What becomes of the Dust when the puff of wind hath passed over? Does it not settle down again--to be trodden underfoot by men?"

"But," Yaill feels something like awe of her, so small, so desolate, so set apart, enfolded in her tragic sorrow, "at least, in case of trouble at the gates to-night, you had better let me give you the pass."

"I am Ummshni.... I need no pass! ... Again I am like the Dust in this--that when men tread me underfoot I am carried on their sandals, wherever I would go. Farewell, O Saiyid! May the Most High preserve you and your companions--and grant my lord deliverance by your brave hands, to-night!"

And she is gone, and Edward Yaill takes a dagger from his girdle, and rips open the inky, stitched-up double square of tough parchment note.

Two letters tumble out of it into his eager fingers. One is in the familiar, beloved script of Katharine Forbis, the other--the buff envelope, blurred with postmarks, patched with stamps and scrawled with re-addresses he thrusts carelessly into a pocket within his silk _kaftan_.

One shivers, contemplating the loss of that wonderful buff envelope, and the consequent slip between the cup and the lip. But Yaill has no thought but this! To him, on the eve of the Great Adventure, has come a God-speed message from his love....

"My Man of all the Men that walk this world!" she cries to him. "My full heart lies between your darling hands to-night. And your dear, dear letter--O Edward! I have it close to me. It lies where my own love's head rested when we said 'Good-bye.' You remember that sweet, sad parting in the chapel at Kerr's Arbour? ... I shall never smell violets again, or put on my mother's black lace veil to wear to Communion, without going back in memory to that day ..."

It is a long letter, written all over eight pages, and running along the edges of the filled sheets. Love and solicitude and anxious wistful yearning, overflow into the smallest corners, curling and flourishing like tendrils of the vine. It is not a high-browed letter, nor even a passionate one, though pure womanly passion throbs through it from beginning to end. It is Katharine in her fullest expression--and than Katharine, Edward Yaill, her lover,--asks nothing better for this world and for the next.

"Dearest," it ends, "John Hazel has promised to get this letter through to you, and the other that I have written for Julian,--and yet another that was sent to Kerr's Arbour for you. How strange that at the parting of our ways, so true a friend should have risen up to help us. With you I feel--more strongly than I can say here--that this man is linked with my Fate! With 'our' fate, I would once have said--but must not now, Edward. Ah, though I do not speak or write thus, I always think in the plural, dear! ...

"My own, though you make so little of it, you are in danger. An accent misplaced, an unguarded gesture--a twitch of a muscle--might bring you Death. If it add to your peril to give you this--John Hazel has my authority to destroy it, this letter that I have kissed where your dear, dear hands should touch! Julian's Rosary and your bit of asphodel I keep where I can feel them, as I go about my business of driving cars in Egypt for our Red Cross. Thank God, I have lots to do! And I do it, as well as I can, with both of you tugging at my heartstrings,--lie down to sleep with a prayer for you on my lips--wake in the night, crying for joy, because I have dreamed that you are safe, and we are happy as we used to be. And rise to another day of anxiety and loneliness....

Oh, well! it can't go on for ever! Even suspense like this must come to an end. God keep you both, my Precious Ones! and bring you back safely to--

"Your loving, faithful, anxious,
"KATHARINE."

Yaill reads the letter three times and kisses it lingeringly. Then he puts it carefully away. With certain other documents, maps and diagrams of fortified places, tracings on silk tissue-paper, and two or three other letters in Sanscrit and Arabic, in a small flat case of tough glass, double, and metal-jointed; covered with green gazelle-leather, stamped with an Eastern design. The flat paper-case closes hermetically; and a twirl of a stop-screw liberates the acid contained in a reservoir at the top. Thus, its contents may be destroyed,--or rendered completely illegible, at the will of the agent who carries the case....

At the last moment Yaill remembers the buff envelope, brings it out, turns it over and sniffs at it.... It exhales no cheap and violent perfume, displays no gaudy monogram.... The handwriting, large, flourishing and square, is quite unknown to him, and yet--as it lies under his incurious eyes, the image of his wife, Lucy Yaill--once Burtonshaw--is flashed upon his brain.

He will not open the buff envelope just now.... The thing with its English superscription, being dangerous to carry, he puts it away with the other papers in the glass-lined case, one twirl of whose lever-screw can blot out words, penned in the sprawling hand, that mean Hope renewed, Happiness restored, Union with the woman so faithfully loved, a blessed possibility--granted that Katharine's tender prayers for her beloved's protection and safety are heard, and answered soon....