The Weavers: Chapter 32

Chapter 32

FORTY STRIPES SAVE ONE

The bells that rang were not the bells of Hamley; they were part of no
vision or hallucination, and they drew David out of his chamber into the
night. A little group of three stood sharply silhouetted against the
moonlight, and towering above them was the spare, commanding form of Ebn
Ezra Bey. Three camels crouched near, and beside them stood a Nubian lad
singing to himself the song of the camel-driver:

     "Fleet is thy foot: thou shalt rest by the Etl tree;
     Water shalt thou drink from the blue-deep well;
     Allah send His gard'ner with the green bersim,
     For thy comfort, fleet one, by the Etl tree.
     As the stars fly, have thy footsteps flown
     Deep is the well, drink, and be still once more;
     Till the pursuing winds panting have found thee
     And, defeated, sink still beside thee--
     By the well and the Etl tree."

For a moment David stood in the doorway listening to the low song of the
camel-driver. Then he came forward. As he did so, one of the two who
stood with Ebn Ezra moved towards the monastery door slowly. It was a
monk with a face which, even in this dim light, showed a deathly
weariness. The eyes looked straight before him, as though they saw
nothing of the world, only a goal to make, an object to be accomplished.
The look of the face went to David's heart--the kinship of pain was
theirs.

"Peace be to thee," David said gently, as the other passed him.

There was an instant's pause, and then the monk faced him with fingers
uplifted. "The grace of God be upon thee, David," he said, and his eyes,
drawn back from the world where they had been exploring, met the other's
keenly. Then he wheeled and entered the monastery.

"The grace of God be upon thee, David!" How strange it sounded, this
Christian blessing in response to his own Oriental greeting, out in this
Eastern waste. His own name, too. It was as though he had been
transported to the ancient world where "Brethren" were so few that they
called each other by their "Christian" names--even as they did in Hamley
to-day. In Hamley to-day! He closed his eyes, a tremor running through
his body; and then, with an effort which stilled him to peace again, he
moved forward, and was greeted by Ebn Ezra, from whom the third member of
the little group had now drawn apart nearer to the acacia-tree, and was
seated on a rock that jutted from the sand. "What is it?" David asked.

"Wouldst thou not sleep, Saadat? Sleep is more to thee now than aught
thou mayst hear from any man. To all thou art kind save thyself."

"I have rested," David answered, with a measured calmness, revealing to
his friend the change which had come since they parted an hour before.
They seated themselves under the palm-tree, and were silent for a moment,
then Ebn Ezra said:

"These come from the Place of Lepers."

David started slightly. "Zaida?" he asked, with a sigh of pity.

"The monk who passed thee but now goes every year to the Place of Lepers
with the caravan, for a brother of this order stays yonder with the
afflicted, seeing no more the faces of this world which he has left
behind. Afar off from each other they stand--as far as eye can see--and
after the manner of their faith they pray to Allah, and he who has just
left us finds a paper fastened with a stone upon the sand at a certain
place where he waits. He touches it not, but reads it as it lies, and,
having read, heaps sand upon it. And the message which the paper gives is
for me."

"For thee? Hast thou there one who--"

"There was one, my father's son, though we were of different mothers; and
in other days, so many years ago, he did great wrong to me, and not to me
alone,"--the grey head bowed in sorrow--"but to one dearer to me than
life. I hated him, and would have slain him, but the mind of Allah is not
the mind of man; and he escaped me. Then he was stricken with leprosy,
and was carried to the place from whence no leper returns. At first my
heart rejoiced; then, at last, I forgave him, Saadat--was he not my
father's son, and was the woman not gone to the bosom of Allah, where is
peace? So I forgave and sorrowed for him--who shall say what miseries are
those which, minute to minute, day after day, and year upon year, repeat
themselves, till it is an endless flaying of the body and burning of the
soul! Every year I send a message to him, and every year now this
Christian monk--there is no Sheikh-el-Islam yonder--brings back the
written message which he finds in the sand."

"And thee has had a message to-night?"

"The last that may come--God be praised, he goeth to his long home. It
was written in his last hour. There was no hope; he is gone. And so, one
more reason showeth why I should go where thou goest, Saadat."

Casting his eyes toward the figure by the acacia-tree, his face clouded
and he pondered anxiously, looking at David the while. Twice he essayed
to speak, but paused.

David's eyes followed his look. "What is it? Who is he--yonder?"

The other rose to his feet. "Come and see, Saadat," he replied. "Seeing,
thou wilt know what to do."

"Zaida--is it of Zaida?" David asked.

"The man will answer for himself, Saadat." Coming within a few feet of
the figure crouched upon the rock, Ebn Ezra paused and stretched out a
hand. "A moment, Saadat. Dost thou not see, dost thou not recognise him?"

David intently studied the figure, which seemed unconscious of their
presence. The shoulders were stooping and relaxed as though from great
fatigue, but David could see that the figure was that of a tall man. The
head was averted, but a rough beard covered the face, and, in the light
of the fire, one hand that clutched it showed long and skinny and yellow
and cruel. The hand fascinated David's eyes. Where had he seen it? It
flashed upon him--a hand clutching a robe, in a frenzy of fear, in the
court-yard of the blue tiles, in Kaid's Palace--Achmet the Ropemaker! He
drew back a step.

"Achmet," he said in a low voice. The figure stirred, the hand dropped
from the beard and clutched the knee; but the head was not raised, and
the body remained crouching and listless.

"He escaped?" David said, turning to Ebn Ezra Bey.

"I know not by what means--a camel-driver bribed, perhaps, and a camel
left behind for him. After the caravan had travelled a day's journey he
joined it. None knew what to do. He was not a leper, and he was armed."

"Leave him with me," said David.

Ebn Ezra hesitated. "He is armed; he was thy foe--"

"I am armed also," David answered enigmatically, and indicated by a
gesture that he wished to be left alone. Ebn Ezra drew away towards the
palm-tree, and stood at this distance watching anxiously, for he knew
what dark passions seize upon the Oriental--and Achmet had many things
for which to take vengeance.

David stood for a moment, pondering, his eyes upon the deserter. "God
greet thee as thou goest, and His goodness befriend thee," he said
evenly. There was silence, and no movement. "Rise and speak," he added
sternly. "Dost thou not hear? Rise, Achmet Pasha!"

Achmet Pasha! The head of the desolate wretch lifted, the eyes glared at
David for an instant, as though to see whether he was being mocked, and
then the spare figure stretched itself, and the outcast stood up. The old
lank straightness was gone, the shoulders were bent, the head was thrust
forward, as though the long habit of looking into dark places had bowed
it out of all manhood.

"May grass spring under thy footstep, Saadat," he said, in a thick voice,
and salaamed awkwardly--he had been so long absent from life's
formularies.

"What dost thou here, pasha?" asked David formally. "Thy sentence had no
limit."

"I could not die there," said the hollow voice, and the head sank farther
forward. "Year after year I lived there, but I could not die among them.
I was no leper; I am no leper. My penalty was my penalty, and I paid it
to the full, piastre by piastre of my body and my mind. It was not one
death, it was death every hour, every day I stayed. I had no mind. I
could not think. Mummy-cloths were round my brain; but the fire burned
underneath and would not die. There was the desert, but my limbs were
like rushes. I had no will, and I could not flee. I was chained to the
evil place. If I stayed it was death, if I went it was death."

"Thou art armed now," said David suggestively. Achmet laid a hand
fiercely upon a dagger under his robe. "I hid it. I was afraid. I could
not die--my hand was like a withered leaf; it could not strike; my heart
poured out like water. Once I struck a leper, that he might strike and
kill me; but he lay upon the ground and wept, for all his anger, which
had been great, died in him at last. There was none other given to anger
there. The leper has neither anger, nor mirth, nor violence, nor peace.
It is all the black silent shame--and I was no leper."

"Why didst thou come? What is there but death for thee here, or anywhere
thou goest! Kaid's arm will find thee; a thousand hands wait to strike
thee."

"I could not die there--Dost thou think that I repent?" he added with
sudden fierceness. "Is it that which would make me repent? Was I worse
than thousands of others? I have come out to die--to fight and die. Aiwa,
I have come to thee, whom I hated, because thou canst give me death as I
desire it. My mother was an Arab slave from Senaar, and she was got by
war, and all her people. War and fighting were their portion--as they
ate, as they drank and slept. In the black years behind me among the
Unclean, there was naught to fight--could one fight the dead, and the
agony of death, and the poison of the agony! Life, it is done for me--am
I not accursed? But to die fighting--ay, fighting for Egypt, since it
must be, and fighting for thee, since it must be; to strike, and strike,
and strike, and earn death! Must the dog, because he is a dog, die in the
slime? Shall he not be driven from the village to die in the clean sand?
Saadat, who will see in me Achmet Pasha, who did with Egypt what he
willed, and was swept away by the besom in thy hand? Is there in me aught
of that Achmet that any should know?"

"None would know thee for that Achmet," answered David.

"I know, it matters not how--at last a letter found me, and the way of
escape--that thou goest again to the Soudan. There will be fighting
there--"

"Not by my will," interrupted David.

"Then by the will of Sheitan the accursed; but there will be fighting--am
I not an Arab, do I not know? Thou hast not conquered yet. Bid me go
where thou wilt, do what thou wilt, so that I may be among the fighters,
and in the battle forget what I have seen. Since I am unclean, and am
denied the bosom of Allah, shall I not go as a warrior to Hell, where men
will fear me? Speak, Saadat, canst thou deny me this?"

Nothing of repentance, so far as he knew, moved the dark soul; but, like
some evil spirit, he would choose the way to his own doom, the place and
the manner of it: a sullen, cruel, evil being, unyielding in his evil,
unmoved by remorse--so far as he knew. Yet he would die fighting, and for
Egypt "and for thee, if it must be so. To strike, to strike, to strike,
and earn death!" What Achmet did not see, David saw, the glimmer of light
breaking through the cloud of shame and evil and doom. Yonder in the
Soudan more problems than one would be solved, more lives than one be put
to the extreme test. He did not answer Achmet's question yet. "Zaida--?"
he said in a low voice. The pathos of her doom had been a dark memory.

Achmet's voice dropped lower as he answered. "She lived till the day her
sister died. I never saw her face; but I was sent to bear each day to her
door the food she ate and a balass of water; and I did according to my
sentence. Yet I heard her voice. And once, at last, the day she died, she
spoke to me, and said from inside the hut: 'Thy work is done, Achmet. Go
in peace.' And that night she lay down on her sister's grave, and in the
morning she was found dead upon it."

David's eyes were blinded with tears. "It was too long," he said at last,
as though to himself.

"That day," continued Achmet, "there fell ill with leprosy the Christian
priest from this place who had served in that black service so long; and
then a fire leapt up in me. Zaida was gone--I had brought food and a
balass of water to her door those many times; there was naught to do,
since she was gone--"

Suddenly David took a step nearer to him and looked into the sullen and
drooping eyes. "Thou shalt go with me, Achmet. I will do this unlawful
act for thee. At daybreak I will give thee orders. Thou shalt join me far
from here--if I go to the Soudan," he added, with a sudden remembrance of
his position; and he turned away slowly.

After a moment, with muttered words, Achmet sank down upon the stone
again, drew a cake of dourha from his inner robe, and began to eat.

The camel-boy had lighted a fire, and he sat beside it warming his hands
at the blaze and still singing to himself:

  "The bed of my love I will sprinkle with attar of roses,
   The face of my love I will touch with the balm
   With the balm of the tree from the farthermost wood,
   From the wood without end, in the world without end.
   My love holds the cup to my lips, and I drink of the cup,
   And the attar of roses I sprinkle will soothe like the evening dew,
   And the balm will be healing and sleep, and the cup I will drink,
   I will drink of the cup my love holds to my lips--"

David stood listening. What power was there in desert life that could
make this poor camel-driver, at the end of a long day of weariness and
toil and little food and drink, sing a song of content and cheerfulness?
The little needed, the little granted, and no thought beyond--save the
vision of one who waited in the hut by the onion-field. He gathered
himself together and tuned his mind to the scene through which he had
just passed, and then to the interview he would have with Kaid on the
morrow. A few hours ago he had seen no way out of it all--he had had no
real hope that Kaid would turn to him again; but the last two hours had
changed all that. Hope was alive in him. He had fought a desperate fight
with himself, and he had conquered. Then had come Achmet, unrepentant,
degraded still, but with the spirit of Something glowing--Achmet to die
for a cause, driven by that Something deep beneath the degradation and
the crime. He had hope, and, as the camel-driver's voice died away, and
he lay down with a sheep-skin over him and went instantly to sleep, David
drew to the fire and sat down beside it. Presently Ebn Ezra came to urge
him to go to bed, but he would not. He had slept, he said; he had slept
and rested, and the night was good--he would wait. Then the other brought
rugs and blankets, and gave David some, and lay down beside the fire, and
watched and waited for he knew not what. Ever and ever his eyes were on
David, and far back under the acacia-tree Achmet slept as he had not
slept since his doom fell on him.

At last Ebn Ezra Bey also slept; but David was awake with the night and
the benevolent moon and the marching stars. The spirit of the desert was
on him, filling him with its voiceless music. From the infinite stretches
of sand to the south came the irresistible call of life, as soft as the
leaves in a garden of roses, as deep as the sea. This world was still,
yet there seemed a low, delicate humming, as of multitudinous looms at a
distance so great that the ear but faintly caught it--the sound of the
weavers of life and destiny and eternal love, the hands of the toilers of
all the ages spinning and spinning on; and he was part of it, not abashed
or dismayed because he was but one of the illimitable throng.

The hours wore on, but still he sat there, peace in all his heart, energy
tingling softly through every vein, the wings of hope fluttering at his
ear.

At length the morning came, and, from the west, with the rising sun, came
a traveller swiftly, making for where he was. The sleepers stirred around
him and waked and rose. The little camp became alive. As the traveller
neared the fresh-made fire, David saw that it was Lacey. He went eagerly
to meet him.

"Thee has news," he said. "I see it is so." He held Lacey's hand in his.

"Say, you are going on that expedition, Saadat. You wanted money. Will a
quarter of a million do?" David's eyes caught fire.

From the monastery there came the voices of the monks:

   "O be joyful in the Lord, all ye lands. Serve the Lord with
   gladness, and come before His presence with a song."

Back to chapter list of: The Weavers