The Weavers Part 23

"Know thy punishment, son of a dog with a dog's heart, and prepare for a daily death," said Kaid. "This woman thou didst so foully wrong, even when thou didst wrong her, she was a leper."

A low cry broke from Achmet, for now when death came he must go unclean to the after-world, forbidden Allah's presence. Broken and abject he listened.

"She knew not, till thou wert gone," continued Kaid. "She is innocent before the law. But thou--beast of the slime--hear thy sentence. There is in the far desert a place where lepers live. There, once a year, one caravan comes, and, at the outskirts of the place unclean, leaves food and needful things for another year, and returns again to Egypt after many days. From that place there is no escape--the desert is as the sea, and upon that sea there is no ghia.s.sa to sail to a farther sh.o.r.e. It is the leper land. Thither thou shalt go to wait upon this woman thou hast savagely wronged, and upon her kind, till thou diest. It shall be so."

"Mercy! Mercy!" Achmet cried, horror-stricken, and turned to David.

"Thou art merciful. Speak for me, Saadat."

"When didst thou have mercy?" asked David. "Thy crimes are against humanity."

Kaid made a motion, and, with dragging feet, Achmet pa.s.sed from the haunts of familiar faces.

For a moment Kaid stood and looked at Zaida, rigid and stricken in that awful isolation which is the leper's doom. Her eyes were closed, but her head was high. "Wilt thou not die?" Kaid asked her gently.

She shook her head slowly, and her hands folded on her breast. "My sister is there," she said at last. There was an instant's stillness, then Kaid added with a voice of grief: "Peace be upon thee, Zaida.

Life is but a spark. If death comes not to-day, it will tomorrow, for thee--for me. Inshallah, peace be upon thee!"

She opened her eyes and looked at him. Seeing what was in his face, they lighted with a great light for a moment.

"And upon thee peace, O my lord, for ever and for ever!" she said softly, and, turning, left the court-yard, followed at a distance by Mahommed Ha.s.san.

Kaid remained motionless looking after her.

David broke in on his abstraction. "The army at sunrise--thou wilt speak to it, Effendina?"

Kaid roused himself. "What shall I say?" he asked anxiously.

"Tell them they shall be clothed and fed, and to every man or his family three hundred piastres at the end."

"Who will do this?" asked Kaid incredulously. "Thou, Effendina--Egypt and thou and I."

"So be it," answered Kaid.

As they left the court-yard, he said suddenly to an officer behind him:

"The caravan to the Place of Lepers--add to the stores fifty camel-loads this year, and each year hereafter. Have heed to it. Ere it starts, come to me. I would see all with mine own eyes."

CHAPTER XV. SOOLSBY'S HAND UPON THE CURTAIN

Faith raised her eyes from the paper before her and poised her head meditatively.

"How long is it, friend, since--"

"Since he went to Egypt?"

"Nay, since thee--"

"Since I went to Ma.s.s?" he grumbled humorously.

She laughed whimsically. "Nay, then, since thee made the promise--"

"That I would drink no more till his return--ay, that was my bargain; till then and no longer! I am not to be held back then, unless I change my mind when I see him. Well, 'tis three years since--"

"Three years! Time hasn't flown. Is it not like an old memory, his living here in this house, Soolsby, and all that happened then?"

Soolsby looked at her over his gla.s.ses, resting his chin on the back of the chair he was caning, and his lips worked in and out with a suppressed smile.

"Time's got naught to do with you. He's afeard of you," he continued.

"He lets you be."

"Friend, thee knows I am almost an old woman now." She made marks abstractedly upon the corner of a piece of paper. "Unless my hair turns grey presently I must bleach it, for 'twill seem improper it should remain so brown."

She smoothed it back with her hand. Try as she would to keep it trim after the manner of her people, it still waved loosely on her forehead and over her ears. And the grey bonnet she wore but added piquancy to its luxuriance, gave a sweet gravity to the demure beauty of the face it sheltered.

"I am thirty now," she murmured, with a sigh, and went on writing.

The old man's fingers moved quickly among the strips of cane, and, after a silence, without raising his head, he said: "Thirty, it means naught."

"To those without understanding," she rejoined drily.

"'Tis tough understanding why there's no wedding-ring on yonder finger.

There's been many a man that's wanted it, that's true--the Squire's son from Bridgley, the lord of Axwood Manor, the long soldier from s.h.i.+pley Wood, and doctors, and such folk aplenty. There's where understanding fails."

Faith's face flushed, then it became pale, and her eyes, suffused, dropped upon the paper before her. At first it seemed as though she must resent his boldness; but she had made a friend of him these years past, and she knew he meant no rudeness. In the past they had talked of things deeper and more intimate still. Yet there was that in his words which touched a sensitive corner of her nature.

"Why should I be marrying?" she asked presently. "There was my sister's son all those years. I had to care for him."

"Ay, older than him by a thimbleful!" he rejoined.

"Nay, till he came to live in this hut alone older by many a year. Since then he is older than me by fifty. I had not thought of marriage before he went away. Squire's son, soldier, or pillman, what were they to me!

He needed me. They came, did they? Well, and if they came?"

"And since the Egyptian went?"

A sort of sob came into her throat. "He does not need me, but he may--he will one day; and then I shall be ready. But now--"

Old Soolsby's face turned away. His house overlooked every house in the valley beneath: he could see nearly every garden; he could even recognise many in the far streets. Besides, there hung along two nails on the wall a telescope, relic of days when he sailed the main. The grounds of the Cloistered House and the fruit-decked garden-wall of the Red Mansion were ever within his vision. Once, twice, thrice, he had seen what he had seen, and dark feelings, harsh emotions, had been roused in him.

"He will need us both--the Egyptian will need us both one day," he answered now; "you more than any, me because I can help him, too--ay, I can help him. But married or single you could help him; so why waste your days here?"

"Is it wasting my days to stay with my father? He is lonely, most lonely since our Davy went away; and troubled, too, for the dangers of that life yonder. His voice used to shake when he prayed, in those days when Davy was away in the desert, down at Darfur and elsewhere among the rebel tribes. He frightened me then, he was so stern and still. Ah, but that day when we knew he was safe, I was eighteen, and no more!" she added, smiling. "But, think you, I could marry while my life is so tied to him and to our Egyptian?"

No one looking at her limpid, s.h.i.+ning blue eyes but would have set her down for twenty-three or twenty-four, for not a line showed on her smooth face; she was exquisite of limb and feature, and had the lissomeness of a girl of fifteen. There was in her eyes, however, an unquiet sadness; she had abstracted moments when her mind seemed fixed on some vexing problem. Such a mood suddenly came upon her now. The pen lay by the paper untouched, her hands folded in her lap, and a long silence fell upon them, broken only by the tw.a.n.ging of the strips of cane in Soolsby's hands. At last, however, even this sound ceased; and the two scarce moved as the sun drew towards the middle afternoon. At last they were roused by the sound of a horn, and, looking down, they saw a four-in-hand drawing smartly down the road to the village over the gorse-spread common, till it stopped at the Cloistered House. As Faith looked, her face slightly flushed. She bent forward till she saw one figure get down and, waving a hand to the party on the coach as it moved on, disappear into the gateway of the Cloistered House.

"What is the office they have given him?" asked Soolsby, disapproval in his tone, his eyes fixed on the disappearing figure.