Part 43

"O Ummshni, there is a hole indeed, cleverly made for eavesdropping, but the man who keeps guard above it is a follower of mine. Stay--thou shalt prove it so!" Fadl Anga whistles, shrill and sharp, the call of the pigeon-master; and there is a rap on the roof above, and an answering, echoing call. "Now take a message for thy man. Tell him from me, that since by Fate he is doomed to be out of the adventure--"

"Give me a message worded in some other way. I will not wound him so!" There is sensitive pride in the thin, whispering voice. "And first let me discharge mine errand. Here are the letters I spoke of in the song."

"Give, then," says the Emir briefly....

She draws from beneath her coarse white outer robe John's square of sewn parchment-paper, inked with the signs of the Zodiac, touches with it her veiled forehead, and offers it in both her outstretched palms.

"The letters are stitched within, I was to tell thee. And that one of them comes from the hand of her--who is dearest to thee of all!"

A great wave of emotion goes through Yaill, as he takes the inky double square of soiled parchment-paper. His hand trembles for a moment, and there is a dimness before his eyes.

"Thank--"

"Do not thank me, sir," the little creature quietly says in her Paris-learned English, "I acted in obedience. Shall I not carry out the orders of him who is Head of my House? Now give me the message to carry to John Hazaël in the Mountain, for at dark I have business that brings me back to this town."

"Shall I write, Miss Hazel, or shall you remember?"

"It will be safest not to write, and I shall not forget. Tell me in English, time and all.... It will be clearer for John Hazaël, I being commanded to repeat your very words."

"Then tell John Hazel from Edward Yaill that I have received the packet, and that as earnestly as ever man thanked man, I thank him for what he has done! To-night, between twelve-thirty and two o'clock--European time--we break into the Wired Enclosure. We have learned of an easy way to get in; and except for one man, who cannot be dealt with, I think we can dispose of the guards."

"To-night between half-past twelve--no! ... Twelve-thirty and two o'clock you break into the Wired Enclosure, having learned of an easy way to get in...." The tone is studiously calm, but the throbbing of her heart shakes her. "Is that all, or is there more to tell? ..."

"There is a tunnel running from the wooden hut that was used as a mess-room by the English officers. Do you follow? It begins under the bed that is in the hut, and running eastward, passes under the broken cart that stands near the side of the road. Five paces from the sentry-box of the man we cannot deal with--the Darweesh who neither drinks wine nor smokes."

"Nay. But it may be--" The talk has swung back to Arabic, and the voice that is thin and soft as a trickling rivulet of hill-water, sounds as though Ummshni's hidden mouth were smiling behind her veil. "It may be that Ishak Baba the Darweesh, who drinks no wine nor tobacco, and cannot be drugged into blindness--hath no strength to refrain his lips from the offered goblet of love?"

"Ah! So there is a weak place in his priestly garment, that," Yaill remembers something the Shaykh Gôhar has said, "that the little fingers of a woman might widen to a hole?"

"Verily, O Emir! To-night when the Dark comes, Ishak Baba going on guard at sunset--it is a pact twixt him and me, that I, Ummshni, may feed the--the English prisoner, if--if a shameless woman of the Bazâr, a gipsy whom Ishak Baba loves--visits the Baba in his sentry-box. I, Ummshni, keeping watch the while."

"_Isht_! (Bravo!) O woman of a thousand! Hast thou carried the assignation to the gipsy courtesan?"

"Nay, not yet."

"Then, do not carry it!" The Emir's grey eyes gleam, under the green silk _kuffiyeh_ that drapes his _tarbûsh_, and the thin lips under the henna-dyed beard curve into a smile that shows his white, rather irregular teeth. "One of my men will keep the love-tryst, walking with a mincing, womanly carriage--and swathed in the white _izar_. Was the gipsy not to pass the Baba on his beat, dropping an almond or a flower, and before he wheeled about, slip into the sentry-box? Dost thou nod? Ay, I well thought thou didst, it is an ancient game!"

The Emir's white teeth gleam in his red-dyed beard, and Ummshni gives her little mirthless titter.

"As my lord says, the game is old, but while Earth spins between the Poles it will not lack for players. One thing there is to ask...." The voice falters and the little figure trembles. "Thy man ... He will not kill the _posta_?"

"Nay. Do not tremble. He will only gag him well, and bind."

She gives a small sigh of relief.

"There will be the green rods for him, the luckless one! when the prisoner's escape is discovered."

The Emir's thin eyebrows mount in his bronzed forehead. He says in his languid, high-bred tones:

"So there be an escape to find out, I am even content that he should taste the _asayisi_. I do not love Turks."

"Nor I, Saiyid! But--" and another wave of shuddering goes over the little shrouded figure: "since the ninefold curse of War fell upon this my unhappy country, I have seen such rivers of blood flow--"

"O lady, the whole world bleeds; nor shall its wounds know stanching until the enemies of Peace are brought low. They are the Turk and the German, and yet another who wears the skin of many races, and plots evil in many tongues. He works underground, and flies by night, and does not show his face in sunshine; but when his hour comes, he will be revealed! Russia has the disease of him--and Ireland is rotten with him!--and in India and the Far East the papers that bear his teachings are cast abroad, and carried on the winds, and shower down like the falling leaves."

"And here. Even in this town--"

The black eye sparkles between the folds of coarse towelling, and the grey eyes lighten in an answering look.

"So! ... Thou couldst tell a tale--"

"Saiyid." The eye-gleam is hidden in the folds, the tone is humbly deprecating. "I am only Ummshni. Who looks over his shoulder when a thing so despicable limps by with her basket or _sharbi_?"

"I understand. Now, attend. Tell your John Hazel that we four men--I with my two Bedwân and Father Forbis, ride out of Shechem before dawn, having the password and making the pretext, that a carrier-pigeon being to fly for Mecca at daybreak, we mean to launch her from the Mount. There is a good chance that--Shechem being full of strangers--the fourth mounted man of us shall pass unobserved. But, in any event, for us there is no turning. Dost thou understand?"

The lean sunburned hand touches the butt of one of the Emir's silver and ivory-mounted revolvers.

"O Saiyid, I understand!"

"Good. Tell John Hazel to wait for us a mile west of Shechem, where the Road of the Wady Azzun--going to Jaffa, turns southward through a deep defile among the hills. Is that clearly understood, or shall I repeat it?"

"It is understood, and John Hazaël will meet thee, where the road of the Wady Azzun, going to Jaffa, turns southward through the defile among the hills."

"Can he, being so lame? ..."

"He can if _I_ say he can. I will see to it!"

"Then we will leave it so. Near the mouth of the defile, is a Turkish Army Service motor-lorry. It broke down there yesterday and it is there to-day. Let Hazel wait in the shadow of it, for the sound of our horses. If we can get a spare horse we will bring it. If not, one of those we ride will have to carry two men. For Hazel is our partner in the adventure. We are not going to leave him in a hole!"

"I hear, O Saiyid! and I shall not forget. By the broken Turkish lorry where the road turns south, running between the walls of the defile.... It is for Jaffa that you ride?"

"For Jaffa, where the British are.... Naturally."

Nationality unconsciously asserts itself in the tone. She answers in her whispering accents.

"There are British, five miles nearer here than Jaffa, striking north from the Cross-Roads of Gilgal--over the levels, and again west at Nebi Karen.... For there is the Tower of Kir Saba, and Kir Saba is the Headquarters of--what you call--a Mounted Brigade.... Not of soldiers from England--but British of the Dominions--and yet not Australians, though looking like them.... Dark, stern-faced men with crimson bands and little green tufts on their soft brown hats--riding little, thick-necked, active horses, sitting not loosely as does the Arab, but close, as though horse and rider were one."

"They are New Zealand Mounted Rifles. You have certainly a gift for detail, Miss Hazel."

The grey eyes of the Emir lighten appreciatively under the Hajj's green turban. The little veiled creature, as unmoved by his praise as she was by the Tuareg's insult, goes on with what she has to say:

"'Anzacs,' that is their name. And since yesterday their Headquarters is Kir Saba, whose Tower stands north from the Cross-Roads two miles upon the slope of the hills. The Turks and Germans drove their trenches through the vineyards and gardens, but, though they emptied the vaults, and wine-cellars, and broke the refrigerating plant, they did not cut down the orchards and olive-groves that stretch for miles over the Hills. They were wire-fenced and gated in the time of Eli Hazaël. Lest the wire should not have been cut, or the locks of the gates broken,--I will place in thy charge this key that I have here."

She is holding out to Yaill a clumsy metal spatula, evidently the work of an Eastern hand.

"There are other keys upon the ring," she shows the slip-ring of copper wire on which some smaller metal spatulas are strung. "They are the keys of the habitable rooms that are on the Tower ground-floor. We lived there part of every year, during the Spring and vintage. Turks having been there--" the slight inflection given to the word conveys a contempt that is boundless; "the rooms may contain nothing that is fit for usage; yet were it otherwise, all is at the service of my lord."

"You are very kind!" Yaill says, more than a little awkwardly, for one to whom the sonorous speech and stately bearing of the Bedwân are second nature by now.

"By the Saiyid's leave," again Yaill has the impression that the hidden mouth smiles coldly, "I speak of another--to whom the Tower belongs."

"Ah, yes, of course."

Yaill is suddenly switched on to a fact he has forgotten:

"Of course, the Tower of Kir Saba and the land about it, have been for many generations the property of the Forbis family. And Father Julian is the only living male heir. But how do you know?"

There is pride in the low voice that answers:

"Saiyid, though but a woman, I am of the race of Hazaël. For sixteen hundred years and more our men have been Keepers of the Tower and Guardians of the Shrine. Thou wilt deliver the keys to my lord? It is a promise?"

"It is a sacred promise. Pardon that I forgot!"

"Now I go back to carry thy words to John Hazaël on Mount Ebal. Then I return to Shechem. At sunset Abu Ishak goes on guard, at the end of the Wired Enclosure where the wooden hut is, and when it is dark, I feed the prisoner."

"Is it wise to risk so much for that?"

"Being a man," the little voice is very cold, "the Saiyid speaks man-fashion. Being a woman, descended from Her who is the Mother of all men save Adam, I speak after the manner of my sex. How shall the lord of Kir Saba ride for life--and over the hill-roads--if he be fainting? Will he not sit the saddle better if he be strengthened with broth and wine?"

"O daughter of our Mother Eve, wise art thou, and full of forethought! One thing before we part. What time shall the gipsy-woman come to the sentry? It shall be for thee to say!"

She thinks an instant, then says:

"When the _boruzan_ of the guard sounds his bugle, and the lights of the camp are darkened, let her come, stepping softly, and pass the Darweesh on his beat--dropping a white flower, or a piece of white paper--and then slip swiftly as a snake, or a lizard, into the sentry-box. When the Baba returns--"

"In the hope of finding waiting--the only one of the Forbidden Things he hath not power to forego--he will kiss a gag of oiled camel-hide, smooth and tight-fitting and greasy, instead of his gipsy's hot, painted mouth. She will come when they sound 'Lights Out' at the camp of the Wired Enclosure.... And so, good-bye, Miss Hazel," says the Emir Fadl Anga, and his sorrowful grey eyes are kindly as they rest on the little shape. "Forgive me for asking the question, but under the circumstances--seeing that we clear out of here to-night--what is to become of you? ..."

"Of me? ..."

She gives her queer, rustling laugh, and by the sound of it he knows himself in the presence of a despair that is greater, because more hopeless than his own.

"What becomes of the Dust when the puff of wind hath passed over? Does it not settle down again--to be trodden underfoot by men?"

"But," Yaill feels something like awe of her, so small, so desolate, so set apart, enfolded in her tragic sorrow, "at least, in case of trouble at the gates to-night, you had better let me give you the pass."

"I am Ummshni.... I need no pass! ... Again I am like the Dust in this--that when men tread me underfoot I am carried on their sandals, wherever I would go. Farewell, O Saiyid! May the Most High preserve you and your companions--and grant my lord deliverance by your brave hands, to-night!"

And she is gone, and Edward Yaill takes a dagger from his girdle, and rips open the inky, stitched-up double square of tough parchment note.

Two letters tumble out of it into his eager fingers. One is in the familiar, beloved script of Katharine Forbis, the other--the buff envelope, blurred with postmarks, patched with stamps and scrawled with re-addresses he thrusts carelessly into a pocket within his silk _kaftan_.

One shivers, contemplating the loss of that wonderful buff envelope, and the consequent slip between the cup and the lip. But Yaill has no thought but this! To him, on the eve of the Great Adventure, has come a God-speed message from his love....

"My Man of all the Men that walk this world!" she cries to him. "My full heart lies between your darling hands to-night. And your dear, dear letter--O Edward! I have it close to me. It lies where my own love's head rested when we said 'Good-bye.' You remember that sweet, sad parting in the chapel at Kerr's Arbour? ... I shall never smell violets again, or put on my mother's black lace veil to wear to Communion, without going back in memory to that day ..."

It is a long letter, written all over eight pages, and running along the edges of the filled sheets. Love and solicitude and anxious wistful yearning, overflow into the smallest corners, curling and flourishing like tendrils of the vine. It is not a high-browed letter, nor even a passionate one, though pure womanly passion throbs through it from beginning to end. It is Katharine in her fullest expression--and than Katharine, Edward Yaill, her lover,--asks nothing better for this world and for the next.

"Dearest," it ends, "John Hazel has promised to get this letter through to you, and the other that I have written for Julian,--and yet another that was sent to Kerr's Arbour for you. How strange that at the parting of our ways, so true a friend should have risen up to help us. With you I feel--more strongly than I can say here--that this man is linked with my Fate! With 'our' fate, I would once have said--but must not now, Edward. Ah, though I do not speak or write thus, I always think in the plural, dear! ...

"My own, though you make so little of it, you are in danger. An accent misplaced, an unguarded gesture--a twitch of a muscle--might bring you Death. If it add to your peril to give you this--John Hazel has my authority to destroy it, this letter that I have kissed where your dear, dear hands should touch! Julian's Rosary and your bit of asphodel I keep where I can feel them, as I go about my business of driving cars in Egypt for our Red Cross. Thank God, I have lots to do! And I do it, as well as I can, with both of you tugging at my heartstrings,--lie down to sleep with a prayer for you on my lips--wake in the night, crying for joy, because I have dreamed that you are safe, and we are happy as we used to be. And rise to another day of anxiety and loneliness....

Oh, well! it can't go on for ever! Even suspense like this must come to an end. God keep you both, my Precious Ones! and bring you back safely to--

"Your loving, faithful, anxious, "KATHARINE."

Yaill reads the letter three times and kisses it lingeringly. Then he puts it carefully away. With certain other documents, maps and diagrams of fortified places, tracings on silk tissue-paper, and two or three other letters in Sanscrit and Arabic, in a small flat case of tough glass, double, and metal-jointed; covered with green gazelle-leather, stamped with an Eastern design. The flat paper-case closes hermetically; and a twirl of a stop-screw liberates the acid contained in a reservoir at the top. Thus, its contents may be destroyed,--or rendered completely illegible, at the will of the agent who carries the case....

At the last moment Yaill remembers the buff envelope, brings it out, turns it over and sniffs at it.... It exhales no cheap and violent perfume, displays no gaudy monogram.... The handwriting, large, flourishing and square, is quite unknown to him, and yet--as it lies under his incurious eyes, the image of his wife, Lucy Yaill--once Burtonshaw--is flashed upon his brain.

He will not open the buff envelope just now.... The thing with its English superscription, being dangerous to carry, he puts it away with the other papers in the glass-lined case, one twirl of whose lever-screw can blot out words, penned in the sprawling hand, that mean Hope renewed, Happiness restored, Union with the woman so faithfully loved, a blessed possibility--granted that Katharine's tender prayers for her beloved's protection and safety are heard, and answered soon....

XI

A huge Arab, mounted on a very little ass, ambling along the stony roads while a woman trudges in the dust behind him, is so common a spectacle in Palestine as to occasion no remark. Were the positions reversed,--did the woman ride the donkey and the man tramp after, then by so unprecedented a breach of etiquette, popular comment would naturally be provoked.

After the fashion indicated above, Ummshni, conjuring the little beast from some source unknown, has conveyed her man to Fadl Anga's appointed meeting-place, a mile west of Shechem, where the road of the Wady Azzun, switchbacking down to Jaffa--or more properly Gilgal--turns southward, running down a steep-sided defile among the hills. There, where the broken-down Turkish motor-lorry stands by the roadside, she has left him, taking with her a cherished asset he has carried hidden about him, in the shape of a pair of insulated wire-cutters. Her parting words still sound in his ears:

"Thou art the Head of our House, my cousin. Bless me before I go! ..."

Now John tingles with a scalding sense of her worth, and his own unworthiness, as he remembers how he put his heavy hand on the small veiled head, and muttered some incoherent words. Then she turned, and went from him so quietly that he has barely realised the risk that she is taking. Now that she has gone, it comes sharply home to him, and salt stinging moisture gathers under his eyelids, and a lump is in his throat.

The little donkey, hobbled by Ummshni before she went, to prevent its straying, grazes contentedly by the roadside, where rich green weeds, and grass and brake, and clumps of late-flowering asphodel betray the presence of moisture in the soil....

The sides of the hill-pass opening here, are chocolate-brown where the soil shows bare, as those of any cliff at home in Devon or Somerset, and trickling with little streams, thick-fringed with maidenhair.... Snapdragons of many hues, cyclamen white, and violet, and pink, spring in the crannies of the rocks, with the purple amaryllis, and a smell suggesting violets is sweet upon the air.

It is close upon the hour of sunset now. There is a great view here, from the top of the stiff up-gradient that climbs up from Shechem to plunge in a long series of downward curves, westward towards Jaffa, until, Gilgal reached--it turns at an acute southward angle and leaps the Cana Road. Nobody comes, though Turkish cavalry patrol the wadys at irregular intervals, and there are outposts with machine guns among the hills. Save for the thudding of those restless guns south-west and east, it would be even sweet and peaceful. For the air is divinely spiced with that rare perfume that is so like the smell of violets; the orange-winged Syrian blackbird pipes out his good-night song; and every thorn, or wild-olive, or mulberry-tree of all that mantle the sides of the defile, seems to accommodate its pair of bulbuls, warbling and jug-jugging in the very rage of ecstasy--sometimes breaking off to mew--after the provoking habit of nightingales. And John Hazel lights another strong Arab cigarette, swings himself to the driver's seat of the broken-down Turkish motor-lorry, and for a brief space, listens and smokes, and thinks....

He recalls the great experiences of War, forgetting War's miseries and discomforts. The social joys of the camp-fire, the long, confidential talks of the bivouac, the short, hard hand-grip pals exchange before going into action; the parting kiss that a soldier may set on the lips of a dead or dying friend. Men have seen men's souls face to face in the midst of hideous slaughter--in the pauses between horrible explosions--and until the heavens are rolled up as a scroll, and the sea is dry from shore to shore--and the Earth stops spinning between her poles, they will not forget these things.... Perhaps not even then....

And then John's thought goes back, as it has not done for long, to the thriving Firm of Dannahill, Lee-Levyson and Hazel, Insurance Brokers, of London City; and Beryl Lee-Levyson, John's former love--Muriel, Beryl's sister, and his brother Maurice--now piloting a Handley-Page bombing 'plane on the Western Front, Old Mendel, and Miss Birdie Bright, pass in imagined rotation over a stage, oddly backed by a composite drop, in part representing the Underwriting Room at Lloyds, the Office in Cornhill, and John's bedroom at Campden Hill....