“Superbly, silkily red-bearded. And hook-nosed. And armed to the teeth. . . .”
“And with an evil glint in his eyes?”
“Most evil!”
*****
THE Persian went on to relate that here he was, prone on the ground, grievously wounded. And there was the other, with the Heaven-born in a faint and slung across his shoulders as if she were a bag of turnips; and the man’s parting words had been:
“Take a message to Omar the Black. Tell him to come quickly, and alone, and with a queen’s ransom in his breeches. Let him take the Darb-i-Sultani, the King’s Highway, straight north into High Tartary. And, presently, at a place of my own choosing, I shall have word with him.”
Such was the lackey’s story; and Omar the Black did not doubt it, since he knew his brother.
What puzzled him later on — and what, indeed, he cannot understand to this day, though frequently he has asked his wife about it — was what she did or, rather, what she did not do.
Why — he wondered — did she not resist? Why did she neither struggle nor cry out?
“How could I?” she would explain. “At first I thought he had come to rescue me. I was grateful.”
“Still — after you discovered that he . . ?”
“I was helpless. I am a weak woman — and there was the point of his dagger pressed against my spine.”
“Even so — when you passed, on the saddle in front of him, through the gate — a word to the sentinel . . .”
“It would have been my last. The dagger . . .”
“Omar the Red would not have carried out his threat.”
“How was I to know? Such a scoundrel, this brother of yours — you yourself used to tell me — and not at all to be trusted.”
*****
SO, afterwards, was Fathouma’s explanation; and we repeat that Omar the Black — and small blame to him — was puzzled.
But, at the time of the kidnaping, the only emotion he felt was worry. Dreadful worry. Why, he loved his wife — and ho, life without her, like a house without a light, a tree without a leaf . . .
As soon as Hossayn told him the news, he took all his money, all his jewels and whatever of Fathouma’s he could find. As an afterthought, he went to the shop of Baruch ben Isaac ben Ezechiel, the rich Jew.
Better too much treasure — he reflected — than too little. He told himself — since, after all, in spite of his worry, he was still the same Omar the Black — that loot was loot and would always come in handy. Therefore, courteously, he asked for credit; was courteously granted it — for was he not the husband of a Tartar Princess and a captain in the Khan’s palace guard?
The merchant salaamed.
“Do not worry about credit, lord. Take whatever you wish.”
Omar wished a lot, took a lot; and, within the hour, followed his wife and his twin brother up the Darb-i-Sultani, into the north.
All night he rode and all the following morning.
At first, near Gulabad, the land was fertile, with tight little villages and checkerboard fields folded compactly into valleys where small rivers ran. But, toward noon, the steppe came to him.
The heart of the steppe.
The heart of High Tartary.
*****
IT came with orange and purple and heliotrope; with the sands spawning their monotonous, brittle eternities toward a vague horizon. It came with an insolent, lifeless nakedness; and when, occasionally, there was a sign of life — a vulture poised high on stiff, quivering wings, a jackal loping along like an obscene, gray thought, or a nomad astride his dromedary, his jaws and brows bound up in mummy-fashion against the whirling sand grains, passing with never a word of cheerful greeting — it seemed a rank intrusion, a weak, puerile challenge to the infinite wilderness.
A lonely land.
A harsh and arid land. No silken luxury here. No ease and comfort.
The heat was brutish, brassy. His rheumatic leg ached.
Yet, gradually, he became conscious of a queer elation.
It had been long years — he told himself — since he had left High Tartary. Nor had he ever wished to return. Still — why — it was his own land, his dear land. . . . “Yes, yes!” he cried; and, almost, he forgot what had taken him here, almost forgot Fathouma. “Here — rain or shine, cloudy sky or brazen sun — is my own land, my dear land! Here is freedom! And here, ever, the stout, happy heart!”
He put spurs to his horse and galloped on, grudging each hour of rest. And afternoon died; and evening brought a gloomy iridescence, a twilight of pastel shades, a distant mountain chain with blues and ochres of every hue gleaming on the slopes; and a few days’ ride beyond the range — he knew — was Nadirabad nestling in the shadows of the old, ancestral castle; and he dismounted and made a small campfire; and night dropped, suddenly, like a shutter, the way it does on the steppe; and out of the night came a mocking call:
“Welcome, brother!”
Omar the Red stepped from behind a rock; and Omar the Black jumped up, sword in hand.
“Dog with a dog’s heart!” he yelled.
“I shall fight you for Fathouma!”
“Fight? No, no! You shall pay me for her — and, by the same token, live up to our agreement.”
So, since curses and threats did not help matters, there was, presently, a deal of money thrown on the ground and a wealth of glittering jewels — some come by honestly, and some less so.
“Enough,” remarked Omar the Red “to pay back the debts to the Nadirabad merchants — and to lift the mortgage on the castle — and for Ayesha and me to live on comfortably for a number of years.”
“For more than a number of years,” announced Fathouma, stepping into the flickering light of the campfire. “Indeed until the end of your days — if you are ready to do your share of proper toil.”
She turned to her husband.
“The soil up yonder, your brother tells me, is fat,” she continued, “and the grass is green and sappy and the water pure. A fine chance, in your own country, for a man’s hard, decent work — even a man of your years — and there we shall live, the four of us, and thrive — God willing!”
“You,” stammered Omar the Black “you said — the four of us?”
“Ayesha and your brother — and you and I. Can you not add two and two?”
Now this — to live once more at home — had been the very thing which, deep in his soul, he had dreamed of and longed for, ever since he had come to the steppe. But it would not do for a man to give in too quickly to his wife.
“Nothing of the sort!” he replied. “We shall ride back to Gulabad and —”
“Listen!” she interrupted.
“Yes?”
She stepped up close to him.
“Would you want,” she demanded, lowering her voice, “your child to be born in an alien land?”
He gave a start.
“My — my child?”
“Mine too.” She smiled. “Our child, before the end of many months. Oh yes — my hair is gray. But,” — blushing a little — “I am not as old as all that.”
Then he took her tenderly into his arms. “By the Prophet the Adored!” he cried triumphantly. “Let it be a man-child, a little son, to you and me! A strong little son! The strongest in all High Tartary — ‘’
“Except,” cut in Omar the Red, “for the son whom Ayesha shall bear to me.”
“Liar!”
“Liar yourself!”
“Drunkard!”
“Unclean pimple!”
Almost, they came to blows.
*****
AND the end of the tale?
The end of the tale is not yet.
But, up there in the ancient castle in High Tartary, live two white-haired men. White-haired, too, their wives. And the latter exchanging winks when, occasionally, their husbands comment naggingly, querulously, about the morals of Islam’s younger gen
eration, including their grandsons. . . .
THE PEARLS OF PARUKI
by J. Allan Dunn
FLEMING strolled contentedly along the main street of Levuka between the flamboyant trees that strewed the white road of coral grit with scarlet blossoms and the lace-edge of the lagoon surf. There are two towns in the Fijis: Levuka, on the island of Ovelau, the capital that was, and Suva, on the isle of Viti Levu — Great Fiji — the capital, that is. To these two comes all the commerce of the group, and Fleming, whose tiny leasehold islet was nearer to Levuka, was well satisfied to have placed his vanilla crop at an average of three dollars a pound. They called it twelve shillings and sixpence in Levuka, for the government and coinage are British.
Fleming had worked like a dog with that vanilla plantation since he quit trading in copra, pearl, and turtle-shell and in trepang. The big Australian firms with their capital and steamers had, as Fleming phrased it, “knocked the tar out of the small trader.’’ So Fleming had leased an island, sold his schooner, bought a sloop, and set out vanilla. Now he had a pound of dried beans for every cutting of Mexican vanilla that he had planted three years before. He was twenty-seven thousand dollars to the good, and his plantation was established.
Better than that to Fleming, who was as fond of money and what money would bring as the next man, he had turned the laugh on the scoffers who had predicted failure. He had raised more than a third of the previous year’s export of the bean, had put Fiji on the map as a factor in the vanilla market, and had discovered, with a quiet but thorough sense of pride, that John Fleming, successful vanilla planter, was a man of vastly more importance than John Fleming, South Sea trader.
Serene in white linen and white shoes, in white silk shirt, white hose, and white sombrero of bleached hala, he turned up a lane shady with coco-palm and breadfruit, making his way up-hill to the home of the Widow Starkey. When Phil Starkey, a little more drunk, a little more reckless than usual, had gone fishing with dynamite in the tiny bay of his tiny isle of Paruki and, just to show that the devil took care of his own, insisted on crimping the primer cap with his teeth, not many people had lamented his death. Not his native boys, whom he cursed and drove to the limit. They, with all Levuka and its neighborhood, were glad for Helen Starkey, even while they mourned in Fiji style with proper appreciation of the occasion if not of the departed. If the widow shared their feelings she gave no sign but had left the island for Levuka and decorously observed the conventions.
She had been a beauty, with her blond complexion and her slim figure, when she had come out from the States at the summons of handsome Phil Starkey. She was a beauty still, though older and quieter, living on a slender income, too proud, perhaps, to go back home after her matrimonial disaster. That was two years old; and it was time, some said and others thought, that she wiped out the bitterness of failure by a second and happier marriage. Fleming was one of those who thought much along such lines but said little, save as his actions may have spoken.
He was a suitor, though whether he was favored none might say. Whatever the widow thought about a second venture she kept to herself. It looked as if she had determined upon being especially careful, particularly sure of the man. Fleming, feeling that he had proven himself, set up by his reception as a successful planter, had nerved himself to find out where he stood in the lists, for he knew that he was not the only one to aspire to possess the widow’s charms.
Nervousness, coupled with a desire to appear unwilted despite the tropical heat, made him walk leisurely. But his pulses quickened as he came in sight of the gaily-variegated crotons that hedged the widow’s home. Her dwelling was rather cabin than house, a bungalow of four rooms winged with wide verandas, set in a garden that was a riot of perfume, color, and verdure. The leaves of the crotons and of the climbing vines aped the flowers in their hues; the odor of ihlang-ihlang, plumaria, tuberose, and stephanotis was almost overpowering. But Fleming thought the setting just right for the widow’s slender person, sure to be dressed in cool white. He figured her in the shade of the veranda, dainty, feminine, serving him citronade, listening to the tale of his victory. Her place was a little Eden, he fancied. And then he saw the snake.
Harper was a good-looking snake. Fleming did not deny that. But he knew more about Harper than a great many people, a good deal more than Fleming ever mentioned. Harper was tall and dark; and his black hair was waving, close-trimmed to his well-shaped head. He was a good conversationalist and a clever flatterer. He had a blended suggestion of laziness and deviltry that a great many women found fascinating, and at heart he was a cold-blooded blackguard. Fleming knew the sort of things that went on aboard Harper’s schooner between port and port, and he had a strong belief that Harper had one woman in Sydney who believed herself to be his wife, and another in Honolulu, not to mention more elastic alliances in Tahiti and elsewhere. To see Harper lounging on the widow’s veranda, very much at home, inhaling his cigarette and sipping at citronade, destroyed all of Fleming’s hardly acquired equanimity. He wanted to kick the man out of the garden and read the widow a lecture on how to avoid snakes.
“And Harper’s the kind that doesn’t pack rattles,’’ thought Fleming as he grimly advanced up the steps, Harper lying at ease in the long rattan chair and smiling up at him mockingly.
The widow looked a bit uncertainly from one to the other.
“You men know each other, don’t you?’’ she asked.
“Yes,’’ said Fleming.
“Beyond a doubt,’’ said Harper. “A bit different from the last place we met, eh, Fleming?’’
He managed to suggest an innuendo in the statement, and Fleming felt himself flush as the widow looked at him. The last time he had met Harper Fleming had yanked out of a waterside dump a young cub of a planter’s son whom Harper had been trimming at poker with the help of some unsavory friends. And now, by some damnable trick of look and tone, Harper had put the shoe on Fleming’s foot.
“Doing fine with your vanilla, they tell me, Fleming,’’ drawled Harper condescendingly. “They can’t say you don’t know beans now, old man.’’
He grinned as he noticed Fleming’s handshake when he took the glass the widow handed him. It was fun to bait Fleming, Harper thought, a bit dangerous but a lot of fun. He reacted beautifully.
Then the widow interfered. The evidently bad blood between her two guests she attributed partly to jealousy, and therefore it was not entirely unacceptable; but she liked Fleming and did not propose to have any of her callers made uncomfortable.
She liked Harper, too. He both attracted and repulsed her. She figured that any man who did attract her must have some good in him and vaguely wondered who was responsible for the bad, and whether the right sort of woman might not have kept it from materializing or could not now eliminate it. And Harper was decidedly good-looking. Fleming was well-featured enough, and physically he was not very far from perfect; but he was, to use the average feminine vocabulary, not so distinguished looking or so graceful or well-mannered as Billy Harper.
She’s had one good-looking scamp, thought Fleming bitterly. “Don’t she know enough now to sheer off when she sees another?’’
Fifteen minutes Fleming endured while Harper discussed pearls and the latest fashions he had seen at Suva when the tourists came off the steamer, describing them well enough to draw compliments from the interested widow. Fleming was entirely out of it, sipping a drink that seemed too sour, though it came out of the same jug as that of the others, and resolving to have a private conversation with Harper and tell him to keep clear of the Starkey bungalow — and then realizing that a man in love can not do many things without giving rise to suspicion, slander, and surveillance.
From time to time Harper glanced at him with deliberate malice; and every time the muscles in Fleming’s body tautened and his jaws clamped down, all of which seemed to cause Harper exquisite amusement. At last the
latter got up.
“I have got to go,’’ he said in a voice that suggested he was literally tearing himself away. “Got to catch the ebb. I’m sailing this afternoon. I shall hope to see you again soon, Mrs. Starkey. Now I’ll leave you and Fleming to talk of less frivolous matters.’’
“You have been a godsend,’’ said the widow with a light laugh as she got up and went with her visitor as far as the gate, whence he departed with a spray of stephanotis in his buttonhole and the air of an accepted gallant.
*****
THE WIDOW came back to the veranda, and Fleming stood to meet her with a slightly conscious air and a heightened color. The knowledge that Fleming was in love with her gave the lady a proprietary feeling and manner, which she used in anticipating any remarks that he might make.
“Captain Harper has been here on business,’’ she said. “I feel that I have done quite a good stroke.’’
Fleming, who had been choking down many emotions for many minutes, made an ass of himself.
“Then you’d better tell me what it is,’’ he growled, “for I’ll bet it’s just as crooked as a dog’s hind leg.’’
“My end of it, or Captain Harper’s?’’ she asked with an acid sweetness that should have warned Fleming.
“His.’’
“I thought men didn’t knock each other,’’ she went on.
Fleming got crimson under his tan.
“I’m warning, not knocking,’’ he blurted.
“Have you any proofs that Captain Harper is crooked?’’ she asked.
Fleming pondered for a minute or two.
“None that I could offer,’’ he said finally.
“Ah!’’
She didn’t say “I thought so,’’ but the “Ah!’’ was more illuminating, scorching indeed. Fleming got up to go. It was getting altogether too hot for him. The scent from the garden choked him; the blossoms were too vivid. He itched all over with a pricking sensation.
“Have you got to catch the ebb too?’’ she asked.
“I have business to attend to,’’ he said.
“Don’t let me detain you.’’
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