CHAPTER XXIV

"_The watchmen that went about the city found

me; they smote me, they wounded me; the keepers

of the wall took away my veil from me_."

SONG OF SOLOMON.

The night before Ben Kelham's return to Cairo, Zulannah sat on a pile

of cushions, with her back to the crumbling plaster wall, in the

filthy, smoke-filled hovel.

She had completely recovered, and save for the excruciating pain caused

by the shrunken muscles when she moved, was as sound as a bell, and

likely to live to a ripe old age, slave to her whilom servant, who sat

on his heels, inhaling the fumes of the jewel-encrusted _nargileh_

which his heart had always coveted.

It is useless writing about the hell through which the woman had lived

from the moment she had returned to consciousness. Besides, there are

some things which words cannot describe, and which in any case are best

left alone, not even to the imagination.

She was absolutely in the power of the negroid brute. With the

destruction of her beauty she had lost everything save what she had in

the bank, and from the ever-growing heaps of little canvas bags in a

corner and little piles of banknotes under the straw, she knew that

some day that, too, must come to an end.

She had loved her jewels, loved the shimmering pearls and sparkling

diamonds, and had found her greatest joy in dipping her hand into a

leather bag filled with unset stones. How often had she sat in the

luxury of her bedroom, revelling in the trickle of the rubies,

sapphires and emeralds from between her fingers into her lap.

Even those she had lost.

The Milner safe stood open, showing empty shelves, and she shuddered

yet at the memory of the frightful scene which had followed her refusal

to open it.

She loved jewels; wanted them for their beauty; had fought the negro

for them; but there was one thing she clung to even more, and that was

life, so that when the huge hands had slowly, so very slowly pressed

upon her neck, she had given in and setting the combination, had swung

the door slowly back.

And Qatim, grey-green with fright, thinking that it had been worked by

the power of a _djinn_ or devil, had flung her out into the night, and

having scraped a hole in the foetid earth under the straw, with fervent

prayers to whatever he worshipped, had withdrawn the jewels, hidden

them, and called the woman back.

Yes! she clung to life. Strange is it how we do, even when youth and

beauty and health have passed from us. How, crippled and unlovely,

twisted of temper or limb, with failing senses, in bath-chair, or

propped on sticks, we hang on to the last thread, when surely we ought

to be so thankful to snap it and be away to whatever our lives here

have prepared for us over the border.

"Were't not a shame, were't not a loss for him

In this clay carcase, crippled, to abide?"

Well might old Omar ponder upon this.

But Zulannah had a good reason for clinging to life, in spite of the

greatness of her debacle.

The metal of which had been wrought the one love that had come to her

in her short life had not been able to withstand the crucible of

physical pain. For hours and days she had writhed in the agony of her

physical injury, with no one to care if she suffered or starved, except

the Ethiopian, who, when her senses had come back to her, had twitted

her upon her failure in her love-affairs; had tormented and mocked and

laughed, until a great wish for revenge had taken the place of her

former love for the Englishman. Revenge, above all things, on the girl

who had been capable of inspiring love in two such men; revenge on the

white man who had really been the primary cause of her downfall, but a

lingering, hellish revenge, if she could only think of one, for the man

who had given the order to the dogs just because she had reviled the

white girl, Damaris.

So she sat on the pile of cushions, smoking the cheapest cigarette of

the bazaar, whilst her cunning brain wove plots around the astounding

news Qatim had just imparted.

They were perfectly free from interruption. The door was barred and

the small aperture which served as window was too highly placed in the

wall to allow of eyes to peep; but it was superstition that really kept

them safe and proved far more potent as a barrier against their

neighbours' curiosity than any spike-crowned wall.

Qatim had given out that the woman was bewitched, and that death,

instantaneous and horrible, would be the fate awaiting anyone but

himself who should speak to her or look upon her unveiled face before

the setting of the sun--some of us Christians refuse to walk under

ladders--and, although it entailed much fetching and carrying and

marketing on his part, still, it ensured them solitude.

"And you saw him?"

She spoke with a sibilant intaking of breath, caused by the twist to

her mouth.

"Yes; with a beautiful white woman--another. They have come from

Assouan by the boat."

"Not the girl who rode in the desert with------"

She touched the purple angry marks on her cheek.

"Nay, woman; I have told thee, _she_ walks in the blackness of the

ruins, with the man who caused thee thy hurt. She drives with him," he

spat, "she should take thy place in the bazaar, O Zulannah of the

thousand lovers."

The woman paid no heed to the jibe.

"Who told thee?"

"Behold, the night-watchman of the big hotel upon the edge of the water

sent me word."

"Why?"

"That is no business of thine. Tell me what scheme thou hast in thy

head. Dost desire the death of the three?"

Zulannah shook her head and turning it so that the wounds and

distortion were hidden, leant against the wall.

"Not yet!" she said, loosening with filthy hand the uncombed masses of

jet-black hair, which still retained something of the perfume of better

days. "Not _yet_! Let me think awhile."

And she paid no heed to the man, who sat staring at her, breathing

heavily.

The right side of her face, untouched and perfect, showed in all its

beauty against the dirty whiteness of the wall; her hair served as a

mantle to the perfect figure in the soiled satin wrap; her crippled

limbs showed not at all in the foul room lit by a wick floating in a

saucer of oil.

The light went out suddenly.

Oh, Zulannah! surely your cap of misery was full to the brim!