CHAPTER XVIII.

DISCLOSURES.

IT might be the last time that Ali and young Hartley would be alone in that tent together. They were resting through the heat of the day, fur the last stage of the journey to Djauf was to be performed at night, that the city might be entered at sunrise. What lay in the future who could tell? Ali felt intuitively that if Harold were found, the elder brother's society and influence would quite supersede his own. The Persian experienced a pang of jealousy in regard to this rival whom he never had seen, and secretly wished that the search for him might be made in vain.

Robin's spirit was buoyant with hope; he was too eager, too impatient to own himself weak. If Robin rested, it was but that with more untiring energy he might on the morrow pursue his search for his brother. Nor were poor Miss Petty and Shelah forgotten by the Knight of St. John. Their helplessness was quite sufficient to make him their champion. Robin's thoughts and hopes took the form of fervent though unuttered prayer, and this made him much more silent than usual.

Ali, on the contrary, felt inclined to be more than usually communicative to his companion. The Amir had for years been supporting a secret burden, all the heavier because he shared its weight with no one. There are times when, even with proud natures, sorrow longs to find a vent, when pain seeks relief in some outward expression; it was such a time now with the reserved and haughty Amir. Perhaps he was even moved by some desire, unacknowledged even to himself, to know whether another would think his case as desperate as he himself thought it. Thus Ali felt impelled to impart his dark secret to a stranger of a different race and religion; the Amir could hardly have done so to one of his own.

"You look more than usually joyous to-day, Feringhee!" remarked the Persian, after he had been for some minutes watching the expression on the face of his English companion.

"Yes; I am rejoicing in hope," was the cheerful reply.

"It seems to be your nature to hope and rejoice," observed Ali. "I have been comparing you in my mind to a stream that goes sparkling in sunshine, through whose waters one can see every pebble that lies on its bed."

"Because it is so shallow?" asked Robin gaily.

"No; because it was so clear," was the grave reply.

Ali paused, and then went on, not as if addressing himself to Robin, but as if soliloquising to himself, "I have seen a pool, and a deep one, which returns no sparkle to the sun though he shine with noonday brightness upon it. There is a thick mantle of dank vegetation over it, and if it give out anything it is an exhalation which makes men sicken and die."

"I have seen many such pools," observed Robin; "they ought to be cleared out at once."

Ali went on, without taking apparent notice of the interruption: "And if the mantle which covers the pool could be drawn aside—if human eye could pierce its dark depths, it would see a ghastly skeleton below."

Robin looked surprised at this unexpected conclusion to the description. He suspected that it had some horrible meaning, and determined to ask no questions. But his very reticence made Ali less reluctant to speak.

"Did you ever hear anything of my earlier days?" asked the Amir.

"No; hardly any of your party could speak English but yourself," replied Robin, "and I am but beginning to pick up a little Persian. What information I glean must be through my eyes."

"What do they tell you concerning me?" asked Ali.

"That you are not happy," was the reply.

"Happy!" repeated Ali bitterly, as if mockery were in the word. "Listen to the story of my life, and then judge as to my right to be happy. I was the child of very wealthy parents, and as their first-born, and for more than four years their only child, was indulged in every luxury. I was splendidly dressed and richly fed; my very toys were of silver and gold. I knew no law but my will, and amongst our numerous servants none ever dared to oppose it. I could not cross the room without my movements being watched with admiration, nor prattle nonsense without its being repeated by a dozen mouths, as if every word that fell from my lips were a gem."

"That was bad for you," said practical Robin. "When I was a naughty little chap, I used to be put in a corner or sent early to bed."

"I was my mother's idol," continued Ali, "and if I ever loved any one but myself, I truly loved her. She never denied me anything; I was her one darling, her little Shazada (prince) until—until Faiz ul Din was born."

"I am afraid that you did not welcome your little brother," said Robin.

"I regarded the babe as a dethroned monarch might regard a usurper. I could no longer engross my mother's attention; she seemed to me to lavish it all on a troublesome child who did nothing but cry. Faiz ul Din for some months was sickly, and the restoration of his health seemed to be the first—the one object of my mother's desire. Night and day my mother had no thought but for him. If he fancied my toys, he must have them; if he struck me, I must never strike again. As he grew older, the evil grew worse. When we quarrelled, Faiz ul Din's part was always taken. Once when he kicked me, I hit him, and for the first time in my life, I was overwhelmed with reproaches, my indignant mother even struck me on the face with her slipper! A sense of injustice rankled in my mind; jealousy and dislike towards my brother grew with my years. Faiz ul Din was to me as a rival; and if a rival, a foe!"

Robin silently thanked Heaven that he had been brought up in a Christian home, and by one whose justice and good sense equalled her tenderness and her love.

"The mashale may be filled gradually," continued Ali, "but filled till at last it burst. What followed was but the sudden overflow of what had been gathering long. Faiz ul Din was talented; my education had at first been retarded by my dislike to learning anything which cost me trouble; but I was intensely mortified when my younger brother passed me in the race in which I had had more than four years the start. My father was fond of manly exercises, and his sons inherited his taste. After our parent's death, Faiz ul Din and I continued to pursue the sports of hunting and shooting.

"On one too memorable occasion, we made a hunting expedition into a wild part of the country. After a very difficult and prolonged chase, I succeeded in killing a small deer; Faiz ul Din, more fortunate, brought back in triumph the skin of a tiger, slain by his own hand. We both presented the spoils of the chase to our mother. The deer skin was thrown aside; but my mother had the tiger's skin made into a handsome rug, with the head stuffed and jewels put in the place of eyes! In a jealous fit, I struck out these eyes with my dagger, and contemptuously kicked the rug into the verandah. Faiz ul Din came in at the moment, and flew at me as if possessed by the tiger's spirit. There was a struggle between us; though the younger, he was the stronger. Enough—I slew him with the dagger, which was still in my hand."

Robin uttered an exclamation of horror, and intuitively drew himself a little farther away from the murderer of a brother. There had been a ghastly skeleton indeed, at the bottom of the dark pool.

A painful, oppressive silence followed; broken at last by Robin's inquiry, "Did you ever see your poor mother again?"

"No," was Ali's reply; "I fled from the palace as soon as I had secured about me a large sum in gold, and some of my more portable treasures. Hassan, who followed me a day or two afterwards, brought me many more things of value. I made it worth his while to keep silent, and began a series of journeys in various parts of the world, partly to carry on trade in horses and jewels, partly—as I once said to you before—to flee from myself."

Robin could understand the latter reason better than the first. It was to him inexplicable that a man with such a burden of guilt on his soul should care to make money by trading. But Robin was not an Oriental.

"Did your mother know who did the terrible deed?" asked the lad.

"She knew all; the dagger which I left behind, and my sudden flight, were sufficient evidence against me," replied Ali. "My mother cursed me in the presence of her servants! I can never, never meet her again; she is now childless indeed."

"And you can never return to Persia?"

"I do not think that I should incur personal risk by going," replied Ali, in a more indifferent tone; "these things are not looked upon in our land as they are in yours. My countrymen think little of blood being shed in a hasty quarrel, and I have that which would make my peace. But I should hate to return to Persia, bearing with me the weight of a brothers blood and a mother's curse."

Young Hartley felt sickened with horror. He could hardly endure to remain in the presence of one who had committed so terrible a crime. Robin was not sufficiently well read in Oriental history to know how fearfully common fratricide has been amongst Asiatics of the highest rank; nor did he make sufficient allowance for the lowering of the moral standard caused by following a religion that in some cases not only palliates murder, but raises it into a merit. Robin was more given to feel acutely than to calculate deeply. He had not acquired the callousness in regard to sin which often follows familiarity with its loathsome details, like the insensibility to vitiated air which comes from perpetually breathing it. The emotion in the breast of our young Knight of St. John after hearing Ali's story might be well expressed by one most forcible line from Shakespeare—

"Oh! I am sickened with this smell of sin!"

Ali saw the impression made by his words, he had noticed the slight shrinking back from his person, he felt that the only human being whom he had sought to make his friend was lost to him for ever. Tenfold bitterness returned to his spirit. With the haughty air of one who is offended, rather than conscious of having given offence, the Persian rose from his reclining position, and, standing erect, said to young Hartley, who had covered his eyes with his hand, "Enough—you have my secret; can I trust to your honour not to betray it?"

"I will never divulge it; but would that I had never heard it!" was Robin's reply.

The Amir strode out of the tent, heedless of the heat and the glare. His attendants, after taking their noonday repast of fruit, under what shelter the camels and piled luggage afforded, were indulging in a siesta. Ali was the only being awake.

"So it is gone, and never to return, that glimpse of brightness which beguiled me into idle hope!" muttered the Amir to himself. "The very boy who owes his life to me, whom I have watched over, nursed, almost loved, regards me with unconcealed loathing! Well, I will soon liberate him from the presence which he hates; I will keep my promise to take him to Djauf, and then we part, to see each other no more in this world—or the next!"

Ali was not far from the tent, and in the midst of his gloomy reflections, his ear caught low sounds of distress issuing from it. He went nearer and listened. The Persian heard Robin pouring out the anguish of his young loving heart in tones that Ali had never before heard bursting from human lips. The words were uttered between broken sobs, for Robin was too weak to restrain his emotions, and he thought himself quite alone. Ali could distinguish such sentences as these:

"O Lord! Remember Thine own Word; is it not written that, if any man see his brother sin a sin which is not unto death, he shall ask, and Thou wilt give him life, for them that sin not unto death. I know not whether this sin is such, but, oh most pitying, most loving Saviour! Have mercy—have mercy on my poor guilty brother! Save him, for Thou only canst save. Thou dost hate sin, but, oh Thou dust love the sinner! Let not my brother perish; give Ali eternal life. Didst Thou not die for him as well as for me?"

Robin's tears were falling fast; his were not the only tears that fell. Ali's eyes, that had never wept since the days of his childhood, were moistened now; the knee that had never been bent in real supplication for mercy was now on the earth, the hard heart was throbbing, and what had been but stern remorse was softening into repentance.

"The Feringhee is pleading for me, God will hear him! The boy calls me brother, the name which he denied to me before, he gives me now! If the disciple think me yet within reach of mercy, will the Master cast me out?"