Chapter II
The night was calm, and in the purple, star-filled sky the moon was rising. It was at the full. The naphtha launch was on the river, but it moved silently; current was with it, and the light airs favourable, so there was no need of the engine; one single sail carried the boat easily over the buoyant water. The stars and the rising moon gleamed in the smooth, black ripples. Stanhope sat in the boat thinking, wrapped in a cruel reverie.
He felt he had sailed the craft of his life too near the perilous shore of unconventionality, and now he saw the rocks ahead of him plainly, on which it would be torn in pieces. Yet how to turn back, or move the helm to steer away from them?
“A month ago,” he thought, as his eye caught the reflection of the rising moon in the water, “when that moon was young, I was free. Not a soul cared for me, whether I lived or died, and I cared for no one.” Now there was one, he knew, who lived upon his coming, whose feet ran to meet him, whose eyes strained their vision to see his first approach. And he, too; he was no longer free. His heart went out to that other heart, beating for him alone so truly, so faithfully, full of such unquestioning adoration and obedience, in mud-walled sun-parched Omdurman.
When the launch touched the bank, he sprang out and walked swiftly up to their usual meeting-place: the deserted mud enclosure of a deserted hut—an unlovely meeting-place enough—but filled with the sweet air of the desert night and the royal light of the stars.
“My lord looks weary to-night,” said Merla softly, after they had greeted each other, and had sat down side by side with their backs to the low wall.
“Yes, I am tired with thinking. What is to be the end of this, Merla? Where is our love drifting us to?”
“Why does my lord concern himself with that? We are in the hands of Fate.”
Stanhope moved impatiently.
“Our fate is what we make it.”
“It is not wise to enquire about our fate,” replied Merla, and he saw her face grow grave with resolution in the dim light. “But I can tell you, if you like, what it will be: when you are ready, you will go back to your own people, your own life, and you will be very happy.”
“And you—?” asked Stanhope in a whisper.
“I shall then have lived my life. I shall die and be buried out there,” and she motioned to the desert. “I shall have given my lord happiness for a time: think what delight, what honour!”
Stanhope shuddered.
“Don’t, don’t, I can’t bear to hear you; do you ask nothing for yourself from life?”
“Life has given me all now,” returned Merla, with a proud smile on her face.
“Why should we not go home to my land together?” said Stanhope passionately, in that sudden revolt against the laws of custom that stirs all humanity at times. “Why should I not take you to live with me for always to be my wife? who would forbid me?”
Merla shook her head, and pressed hard on his hand lying beside her on the sand.
“The sun cannot lift the black rock from the desert and take it to dwell in the blue spaces; neither can the sun stay with the rock. You are grieving for me; do not. I am quite happy. I accept what must be. My life ends when you go.”
For a wild moment it seemed to Stanhope that he must dare everything and take her. After all, she was intelligent: she could be educated. She was beautiful, youthful; and what a love she poured out at his feet!—different in calibre, in nature, different, from its root up, from any love he could hope to find again—a love that asked absolutely nothing for itself, not even the right to live, and yet would give its all unquestioningly, unsparingly. It is not a toy to be thrown away lightly, and Stanhope realised this.
“The blue spaces are cold and empty, Merla,” he said, suddenly catching her to his breast. “You must come with me.”
“No, lord, it is impossible; you speak only for me,” whispered Merla, though she clasped his neck tightly. “You must go and live happy, and I shall die happy; even in my grave I shall remember your kisses.”
An hour later, the moon was well up in the sky, though the light was not yet brilliant, and they parted by the wall of the cattle-byre with promises to meet on the morrow, and he turned and left her standing in the shadow; but some instinct moved him, and he returned and kissed her yet again, and said one more farewell; then he took the narrow track leading down to the river, and Merla knew that she must hasten home; for her father, who had been out in the early evening, would be returning. Before she left she turned back once more into the byre, and stood looking at the stars that she had communed with so often: a great sadness fell on her thoughts, a chill as after a final parting. As she turned to go, her eyes fell on a grey patch on the byre floor—his coat! He had left it behind. Merla gave a little laugh as she picked it up: the parting seemed less final now. She would keep it till the morrow. Would he want it? miss it? No, the night was so still and sultry; and, throwing it over her arm, she passed onwards to her hut.
As she neared the enclosure, her heart beat rapidly. A light was burning within the hut, and by the moonlight she saw the great camel moving restlessly in the narrow space outside. Angry voices reached her in sharp discussion—her father’s and another. Just inside the enclosure she paused and listened, trembling, uncertain what this unusual clamour and strange voice might mean.
“I gave you my camel, my knife, and my carpet. Where is the Pearl I was promised? Is not the moon at the full?”
Merla heard these words with a thrill passing through every fibre. She knew her father had no pearl in his possession, but was not her name “Pearl of the Desert”? Next there came some confused murmur—seemingly words of apology—in her father’s voice that she could not catch, but the stranger interrupted angrily:
“Unhappy man! tricked seller, tricked buyer, would you know where the Pearl is? would you know where your daughter hides? I have heard that she has been seen with a stranger, a white-faced stranger—I know not if he be a leper or an Englishman—” with a bitter laugh, “but in either case I want her not. Come, give me my knife, and I lead off my camel.”
Merla’s heart failed, for her father gave a shriek as he heard the accusation, and a shower of oaths and imprecations came to her shrinking ears. Nothing was clear any more; there was only clamour and raving in the hut. But once she caught the words, “to the river—does he go to the river?” and above all the storm of words there was the awful sound of the sharpening of a knife.
Like a shadow, noiseless and silent, Merla crept swiftly, under the shade of the camel’s body, across the enclosure to the mud partition behind which her youngest brother slept, and roused him. “Nungoon!” she said breathlessly, gripping his shoulder, “take the track to the river, and run for your life. You will overtake the Englishman. Tell him this. ‘Merla says: Run to the launch and get off the land quickly, and never come back to Omdurman, or come with a guard. They seek to kill you here.’ Go, brother; run!”
The boy, startled from his sleep, gathered himself together and rose. His sister, leaning over him with ashy face and fixed eyes, seemed like Fate itself directing him. Moreover, Oriental youth is accustomed to obey unquestioningly. Without a word, simply with a sign of assent, he fled out of the enclosure, down the track to the river.
Merla stepped back and out of the yard, and stood waiting, silent as before; she had formed her resolution, and all fear was past. The mats in front of the door were suddenly pushed aside, and a streak of light fell across the yard, but it could not touch her, sheltered by the wall. She saw her father rush out, wild-eyed, and the long blade of the knife gleamed blue in the moonlight.
Then, as he dashed through the enclosure entrance, she moved her feet suddenly, scraping the sand, and then fled, wrapped in Stanhope’s long light overcoat, up towards the desert, away from the river. Krino, blinded, maddened by passion, glanced at the wall whence came the scraping sound, and then, catching sight of a flying form in English dress, plunged with a cry of triumph after it. Merla fled like the wind along in the shadow of the wall, keeping in the darkness, with her head down, fearing lest her bare head or bare feet might betray her. But Krino’s eyes were fixed on the silvery grey of the English overcoat, and, blind to all else, he raced on in the uncertain light with his eyes intent on the shoulders between which he would plunge his knife. Up through the heart of sleeping Omdurman, past silent huts and yellow walls that gleamed pale in the moonlight, through the village to the desert, hunted and hunter fled on, and Krino’s heart rose in savage triumph.
“Fool! he cannot escape me now; by the river—yes, but not in the desert; he cannot escape.”
And the desert was reached and entered, and still the two noiseless shadows fled over the sand.
Merla’s strength was failing: her sight was reeling; she could run no more. Only the joy of knowing that each step led the enemy farther from her loved one had supported her till now. Now he was safe, he must be away on the friendly river. There had been ample time. Not now would it be possible for Krino to reach the river before her lover had embarked. It was well. All was well! And the black sand spun round her in the moonlight, as she heard the hiss of her father’s breath behind her. She wavered. With a bound the man threw himself forward. One stab, and the keen blade sank through the flesh below the shoulder, driving her forward, and she fell face downwards on the sand.
Blind still with fury, the Soudanese bent down, tore at the head to drag it back that he might slash it from the body, and turned up the face to the moonlight. Fixed in agony and triumph, it looked back at him—the dead face of his daughter, the PEARL OF THE Desert.