A Son of the Sahara Part 68

On the delights of that honeymoon he pondered.

From his reverie he was rudely aroused by a sound which made marriage seem very remote, and death much more likely to be his portion.

There was a sudden shriek high above the city, followed by a deafening roar, as a sh.e.l.l exploded over El-Ammeh--a command for its surrender.

The Sultan started to his feet, his face reckless and savage. The cup was at his lips only to be dashed away.

He knew what had happened.

Somehow or other the French Government must have heard that he was responsible for the capture of the English Governor; and an expedition had been sent up to punish him for his marauding ways.

That same death-dealing sound startled Pansy as she stood by the sunken pond in the rose garden, feeding the carp. Wondering what had happened, she looked up at the smoke that lay like a little cloud between the city and the sky.

She did not wonder for very long.

Present another sh.e.l.l came shrieking out of the distance.

Then she guessed what had occurred, and her face blanched.

Swiftly she went to her room; her only idea to reach the Sultan and save him from his enemies.

But all the doors of her prison were locked, and neither knocks nor shouts produced any answer.

She went back to the fretted gallery, to see what could be seen from there.

A mile or so away, like a dark snake on the desert, she saw the relief party. As she watched, a white-robed force left El-Ammeh; an array of Arab soldiers. On recognising their leader, her soul went sick within her.

He was there. Her lover. The man she ought to hate. Going out to fight the men who had come to her rescue.

If the French officers heading the expeditionary force imagined the Sultan of El-Ammeh had come out to surrender, they quickly discovered their mistake.

He had come out to fight; and what was more, fight well and recklessly against a force that, if inferior in numbers, was vastly superior in arms.

Presently the sh.e.l.ls no longer shrieked above El-Ammeh. They were aimed at it.

From her gallery Pansy saw the two forces meet.

Then she could look no longer. Men fell in the sand and rose no more.

And any one of them might be her lover.

She went back to her room and crouched there in terror; her father and friends all forgotten at the thought of the man who might be lying dead in the sand.

As the morning wore on, the din of battle grew nearer. Every now and again a sh.e.l.l got home. There were screams of terrified people; the heavy fall of masonry; the moans and cries of the injured.

Once Pansy thought her end had come.

A sh.e.l.l struck the palace. The place rocked to its foundations. There was the thunder of falling masonry as if the four walls of her room were cras.h.i.+ng down upon her.

She closed her eyes and waited.

A few moments later she opened them, and was surprised to find her gilded prison very little damaged. It was badly cracked, and several blocks of stone had crashed down from the ceiling, one on the sandalwood bureau near where she crouched, smas.h.i.+ng it to splinters and scattering the contents about her feet.

More than once Pansy had rummaged in its scented recesses, until she knew its contents by heart. She had found nothing but a few quills, sheets of paper yellow with age, and quaint, cut-crystal bottles in which the coloured inks had dried. She knew the desk had belonged to the Sultan's mother. Just as she knew the gilded room had been the French girl's prison.

As she gazed at the debris at her feet, it seemed she could not have searched thoroughly. Among the splinters was something she had not seen before. A few sheets of paper folded flat and tied with a strand of silk, that must have been hidden behind one of the many drawers.

More to get her thoughts away from the battle raging round her than anything else, Pansy picked up the tiny packet. Untying the silk, she opened the faded, scented sheets and glanced at them.

After the first glance, she stayed riveted. And as she read on, she forgot everything except what the letter said.

It was in French, in a woman's hand, and the date was now more than twenty years old; a statement written by Annette Le Breton before she died, proclaiming her son's real ident.i.ty, and left by her in the bureau. Some servant rummaging in the desk for trinkets, after her mistress's death, must have let it slip behind one of the numerous drawers.

Pansy read of Colonel Raoul Le Breton's ill-fated expedition to the north-east; how he and his little force had been murdered by the Sultan Casim Ammeh. She learnt of Annette Le Breton's fate at the hands of her savage captor. Of the son who had come nearly nine months after her husband's death--the son the Sultan Casim Ammeh imagined to be his.

"Raoul is not the son of the Sultan Casim Ammeh," the faint handwriting declared. "He is the son of my murdered husband, Colonel Raoul Le Breton. I know, for every day he grows more like his dear, dead father. Yet he imagines the Sultan to be his father. And I dare not tell him the truth. For if the Sultan learnt the boy was not his, he would kill him. For Raoul's sake I must let the deception go on. For the sake of my son who is all I have to live for. And my heart breaks, for daily my boy grows more and more to love that savage chief who murdered his real father."

Pansy read of Annette's dreary years in the harem of her captor.

"Years that have no light in them, save my son. Years that I should not have endured except for my child, my boy, the son of my brave Raoul."

It was a heart-breaking story of love and sacrifice, of a mother tortured to save her child from the fate that had befallen his father.

"The Sultan will make my boy like himself," the letter went on. "For there is no one at hand to stop him. Daily my influence grows less, and his stronger. The boy admires and copies the man he deems his father. He is too young to know the Sultan for what he really is. He sees only a man, bold and picturesque. And the Sultan spoils him utterly, he encourages him to be cruel and arrogant, he fosters all that is bad in the boy. It is useless for me to try and check him, for my own son laughs at me now."

The writing grew more feeble as the letter went on; the wild entreaty of a mother who had no life outside of her son, and who saw him being ruined by his own father's murderer.

"Whoever finds this be kind to my boy, my Raoul, for the sake of a woman who has suffered much, for the sake of his martyred father, Colonel Raoul Le Breton. Do not judge my son by what he is, but by what he might have been. In the Sultan Casim he has a bad example, a savage teacher, a wild, profligate, cruel man, who would make the boy as barbarous as he is himself."

The writing grew even more feeble, a faint scrawl on the yellow paper.

"I am dying, and my son is far away. I shall not live until my boy returns. And he will be left with no influence but the Sultan's. O Fate, deal kindly with my boy, my Raoul, left alone with savages in this barbaric city. I have only endured these dreadful years for the sake of my son. In the name of pity be kind to him. He will have no chance in the hands of his present teacher. Have mercy for the sake of his tortured mother, and his father, that brave soldier who gave his life for France.

ANNETTE LE BRETON."

Pansy read the sheets through without once raising her eyes. She was ravenous for the contents.

At that moment it seemed as if the dim, gilded room were full of tears and sorrows; the faint, sweet fragrance of the girl who had lived there long years ago, suffering and enduring for the sake of her boy.