For Love of a Bedouin Maid

After looking St. Just up and down suspiciously, for the man had noticed that the few words the Frenchman had uttered had lacked the natural ring, the Arab took the packet, and admitted him to the courtyard, where he bade him wait.

Not a soul was there besides himself, yet memory peopled it for him with throngs of living, moving beings. In his mind's eye he could see men in the uniform of his own country, some mounted, some on foot, small in numbers, defending themselves gallantly against a horde of dark-visaged, vindictive Egyptians, mingled with half-clad slaves of even darker hue, all bent on the destruction of the little desperate band. He could see the great general, once the object of his most absolute devotion; now, alas!—he shuddered when he thought of Buonaparte; and turned his mind to pleasanter reflections; he thought of Halima.

There above him—it was the second from the right—was the window from which she had made her escape on that eventful day, the first of their acquaintance. And next to it was the one from which, in the moonlight, she had bidden him a fond farewell, the last time they had met, and flung him a rose, her parting gift. And this was ten months ago. How much had passed since then!

The fountain plashed musically into its marble basin, and St. Just seated himself beside it, and, resting his elbow on his knee, placed his hand beneath his chin, and resigned himself to thought. What an age it seemed since he had seen Halima; how would she receive him when they met? Would her eyes gladden at the sight of him, or would she treat him as a stranger? Oh! no, she could not be so cruel.

His reverie was broken by the re-appearance of "The Scowler," as St. Just had mentally nick-named him.

"My mistress would have speech with you," he said; "follow me."

St. Just arose, his heart beating wildly with mingled excitement and suspense, and, in silence, accompanied the Arab along the colonnade, through the deserted pillared hall, and up the narrow staircase, that had been the scone of the sanguinary contest from which he had emerged with his bare life and Halima's. Then they came to the well-remembered curtains, through which he had so often passed. His guide drew these aside for him to enter; then let them fall back to their place, and retraced his steps.

And there was Halima. At last they had met. She was seated on the divan she had so often shared with him. In his eyes, she was, as she had ever been, beautiful beyond compare; but it cut him to the heart to see the look of care and sadness that now overspread her former laughing features. She was noticeably thinner, too. At the moment of his entrance, her eyes were bent upon the miniature before her. Perhaps, she was regretfully comparing the joyous, rounded face she saw there, with her own altered looks. Silently and motionless he waited for her to raise her eyes. Then she gave a little sob, and a tear stole down her cheek and dropped upon the miniature, blurring the winsome face on which her gaze was bent.

Her lover could contain himself no longer. Forgetful of his changed appearance, and the character that, for the time, he was assuming, he rushed to her side and seized her hand.

"Halima! My own," he cried in fervid accents. "My darling! my betrothed! It is I, your Henri. I have come back to you. Oh! let me look in your sweet eyes and there read that you are glad to see me. Speak to me, dear one; surely you are not afraid of me," he added, for she had taken no notice of his glowing tones. Then he kissed the hand he held, almost devouring it.

At last she turned her liquid eyes upon him; but, instead of the joy he had hoped to see in them, there was a look of doubt, of bewilderment, even of fear.

"Who? What?" she stammered. She looked intently at him to assure herself that he was indeed the man he said; then, with a low cry of "Henri!" she withdrew her hand from his and, burying her face in the cushions, burst into a storm of tears.

Pained beyond measure and astonished at the violence of her grief, for she sobbed without restraint, St. Just threw himself on his knees beside her, placed one arm round her waist and, with caresses and loving words, did his best to stem her tears.

"What ails my darling? why these tears?" he asked in gentle accents. "Is it excess of joy at my return, or what? You are unnerved, my Halima. It was thoughtless of me so suddenly to come upon you. You thought no doubt, with others, that I was dead, that we should never meet again. It was so said, I know, but it was false; I am indeed your Henri. And I have seen your father; have been his guest for months; and he has sent me here to take you to him. Then we are never to be parted more. So, weep no more, my darling, but look into my eyes and say you love me."

With such words and more of the same nature did the young men seek to allay her anguish, whose intensity was beginning to alarm him. Then he gently strove to raise her head from the cushions in which she still kept it buried.

She made but a faint resistance, and turned her tear-stained face on his. He tried to kiss her, but she shrank back from him, with a hunted look upon her face. He had never seen such a look on it before, and it made him tremble; still more so did her words.

"Oh, no! no! you must not. Do not touch me. And go, go away, if you would save both further misery. You cannot guess what shame and suffering your presence causes me. If you would spare me more, I entreat you, leave me."

St. Just, not having an inkling of the truth, supposed that it was his own conduct in having, as she supposed, so long neglected her, that had caused this outburst. Still her face expressed neither injured pride nor anger.

"Tell me, my Halima," he implored in piteous accents, "in what have I offended. Indeed it was not my fault that I came not to you sooner. I have been ill for many months—at death's door twice. I–"

With an effort she choked back her tears, and, turning her lovely head, her hair all disordered and her eyes red with weeping, towards him, she looked at him, oh so sadly in the face; then she said softly:

"I blame you not, Henri; it is I alone who am to blame. And I am your Halima no longer. I am not worthy of you. Forget me, forget that the unhappy woman you knew as Halima ever lived, and, if you can, forgive her. But go, I pray you."

Still mystified, but with an awful suspicion growing in his mind, St. Just replied, "Nay, Halima, I cannot leave you thus. If, as you say, you blame me not, I have a right to an explanation of your strange words—words that have stirred me more than any I have ever heard. After you have told me all that they portend, it will be time for my decision."

"You will not spare me, then," she said, "the shame of my disclosure? Oh! you are cruel, Henri." Then, after a momentary pause and with a sigh of resignation, she went on, "But, perhaps, 'tis better so; for, when you have heard the confession I have to make, you will no longer seek to stay."

Gradually, while she had been speaking, he had withdrawn himself from her side, and now, with a look of expectant horror in his face, he took a seat that faced her.

"Then listen," she resumed. "Some months after you had gone, they told me you were dead. It was General Buonaparte who first brought the news to me. I had seen him many times since your departure, and he had professed to love me; but, despite all his pressing, I remained true to you. I told him that my heart whispered to me that you still lived, and that nothing but the evidence of eye-witnesses would make me think otherwise. A month later he brought two men of my father's tribe, who said that they had seen you slain, shot by my father's orders. My grief was terrible, but how could I decline such evidence? And you must remember that, all this time, I had received no single word from you. Then–"

"It was impossible for me to send to you," he interjected; "I was stretched upon a bed of sickness, where I lay for months. I had like to have died, but for your father's help."

"I know; I understand all now; Oh! that I had known before. How cruel has been Fate to me."

She paused again, and the frightened look she wore became intensified.

"And then?" asked St. Just sternly.

"And then," she panted in a tone so low that he had to strain his ears to catch her words, "believing that you still lived, I had allowed General Buonaparte to think—in order that I might stave off his importunities—that, were I assured that you were dead, I would assent to his wishes, and become his. My love had died with you, and I resolved to live for ambition, and thought I saw the way through him to its gratification. Then, at the moment when I was almost distraught with grief, he reminded me of my promise, offered me his love as consolation for my loss of you. He promised to take me with him to Paris, a city he knew I longed to see, and drew such glowing pictures of my life there, that he lulled my scruples. Then, taking advantage of my weakness, he—and—and—I—became—his mistress!"

The last word was uttered in a whisper, but it penetrated to her hearer's ear. The blood rushed to her neck and face, with the shame of her confession, and she hung her head, not daring to raise her eyes to his.

St. Just sprang to his feet, and put his hands before his face.

"His mistress!" he exclaimed. "'Twas this I feared. Oh, infamy!" And his voice sounded like a despairing wail. "And he knew that you were mine. Twice I have saved his life, and he robs me of my mistress."

There was silence for a space, she bending forward with her eyes still fixed upon the floor, her expression that of abject hopelessness. He took his hands from before his eyes, and his face was piteous to behold, so changed it was. He spoke again.

"And for this woman I would have freely sacrificed my life. For her I have sacrificed—and uselessly—what is dearer far, my honor as a soldier, my whole career."

And, without a word of farewell to the broken woman, he turned his face from her and passed through the curtains; then scarcely seeing which way he was going, he stumbled down the staircase and, somehow, gained the courtyard, where he staggered to a seat.

All this time, she had not dared to raise her eyes, but she knew that he was gone, for she heard his gradually retreating footsteps on the stairs. When they were no longer audible, she looked up and gazed around the room despairingly. Then, with a piercing cry of "Henri!" she fell forward fainting to the floor.

He heard the cry, but for the time was too full of his own grief to heed it; instead he kept repeating to himself the words that seemed to have stamped themselves upon his brain, "Buonaparte's mistress!" and then these others, "A dishonored soldier, a deserter!"

In his agony, he laid his face within his hands and burst into tears.

The tears of a woman in mortal agony are piteous to behold, but a strong man so affected is a sight over which one would fain draw the veil.

But grief so violent, as was St. Just's, cannot be long continued without one of two things occurring—either the sufferer overcomes it, or it overcomes the sufferer. In this case the latter happened; St. Just fell forward to the ground, unconscious.

Of the two, Halima was the first to awake to consciousness and, with it, to the memory of her love for St. Just and of all she had lost in losing him. Buonaparte she had never loved; his apparent devotion to her had but flattered her woman's pride and love of power; and now, even he had deserted her; for months she had not seen him. She could have survived this, but for St. Just's return; but the sight of him had fanned into a glowing flame the smoldering ashes of her love, that had never quite died out. And now he, too, had left her. Life was no longer possible to her, and she would end it.

Imbued with this resolve, she sprang from her seat and rushed to a table close at hand, on which lay a sharp-pointed, narrow-bladed little dagger, with jeweled haft, a mere toy, it looked, but it had the potentiality of dealing death. Distraught with the agony of a hopeless love, she seized the glittering weapon, and raised her arm, intent on plunging the dagger to the hilt into her palpitating bosom. Then, with a longing to take one last look on the place in which so many heart-stirring incidents had occurred, she moved across the room and threw open the latticed window.

She gazed on the well-remembered scene, noticing each familiar shrub, each well-known object, a pigeon circling overhead in the blue expanse, a tall pinnacle of the citadel, just visible above the wall. Then her eye fell upon the fountain—what was that lying motionless beside it? A man! In an instant she had recognized the well-loved form; it was St. Just!

She swayed and felt as if about to faint again; then clutched at the window for support.

"Dead!" she moaned; "killed by me. By his side I will breathe out my life; my dying lips shall be pressed to his in one last fond kiss, and I will whisper in his ears—though he will hear me not—that I never loved but him, for all I was so weak as to yield myself to the embraces of another."

Still grasping the dagger, she rushed, like one demented, from the room, down the staircase and into the courtyard. Then, with a low cry, she flew to her lover's side and, throwing herself upon her knees, she wound one arm around his neck and kissed him passionately.

"Oh, my darling," she wailed, "I loved you so—ah, more than you ever guessed—and I have lost you! But though in life I cannot be yours, in death I will not be parted from you. At least, we can lie together in one grave. Sleep on in peace, my loved one, your Halima is coming to you. One last kiss on those dear lips, and then—!"

She pressed her face to his in one long devouring kiss—a kiss that typified her whole being's passion; a kiss in which she seemed to breathe out her very soul.

Then she bared her heaving bosom and raised her arm to strike.

And he? Whether it was that, even in unconsciousness, the impassioned outpouring of her soul struck a responsive chord in his; or that the pressure of her soft arm round his neck and the hot kisses she showered upon his face put warmth into his body and quickened the sluggish action of his heart; or that both these causes combined to bring about what happened; certain it is that, at the moment when the despairing girl was about to end her life, he sighed profoundly and woke up from his swoon; then turned his eyes on her. In a moment he had grasped what she was about to do, had seized her uplifted arm, wrenched the knife from her and flung it into the basin of the fountain.

"Oh! Halima!" he cried. "What were you about to do? A moment more and I should have been too late. Thank God that I came to in time. Ah! my love, what prompted this rash resolve?"

"I thought you dead; that I had killed you, and I could not live without you."

"Live with me, my darling; live for vengeance; for vengeance on your betrayer, as I mean to do."

"It shall be so," she cried fiercely. "To punish him we will devote our lives." Then, the stern expression softening into a look of such adoring love that the last shred of the man's resentment vanished, "Oh, Henri, Henri, my love, my life," she murmured; then sank sobbing on his breast.

He pillowed her lovely head upon his shoulder and caressed her fondly. For the moment, he forgot that another had possessed her. Then presently, when she had grown somewhat calmer, "Buonaparte has sailed for France," he said "and you are free. Forget the past, as I will strive to do, and find renewed happiness with me. Your father looks to see us man and wife. What say you, sweet?"

She raised her face suffused with tears, but smiling through them, to his, and in the lovelight in her eyes he read her answer.

He pressed her to his breast and kissed her again and again.

"Sweetheart," he said presently, "I have turned my back upon the army; henceforth I live for you alone."

"And revenge," she added sternly.

Then, hand in hand, they went into the house.

CHAPTER XVII

When the reunited lovers had somewhat calmed down after the exciting scene in which they had been the actors, St. Just handed Halima her father's letter, and showed her those the old man had given for friendly Sheiks in Cairo.

Satisfied, after reading his letter, that her father favored her marriage with St. Just, and the arrangement so entirely coinciding with her most ardent desire, Halima quickly became all smiles, and entered with avidity into his plans for giving it effect, and for making their escape together from Cairo at the earliest practical opportunity, to rejoin the Sheik. Both were aware that Halima was being watched, by Buonaparte's orders, to prevent the very thing they meditated; so the greatest circumspection would be needed. They were in hopes, however, that, now that Buonaparte was no longer in the country, the watch would be less strictly kept, if even it were not wholly discontinued.

And St. Just, on his part, had to be very careful in his movements and always to go about disguised. At the same time, he thought he ran little risk from the military authorities; for it was known to them, that he had been sent on a mission by the General-in-chief and had, for all they knew, either returned with him to France, or remained in Alexandria. As an alternative, his absence might be accounted for, either by his death or capture by hostile Arabs; for, from one or other of these causes, couriers were constantly disappearing. The desert swarmed with murderous nomads.

Captain Tremeau, who would have been the most likely person to see through his disguise, had accompanied Buonaparte to France, and most people thought that St. Just had done the same. Accordingly, he felt comparatively safe. For all that, he thought it unwise to be seen too frequently at Halima's house; so that his visits there were few and secret. He had taken up his abode with Mahmoud and Abdallah in a retired quarter of the city, where their presence was not likely to excite suspicion.

He lost no time in presenting his letters of introduction to the sheiks, who were all leading Mussulmans and hostile to the French. His introducer, the Sheik Ibrahim, was a man of weight and influence, so that any one he recommended was sure to be favorably received. Consequently, St. Just found these sheiks very friendly and ready to help him all they could. And they proved their good-will most effectively by supplying him with ample funds for his ride across the desert. Further to gain their confidence, St. Just professed to have renounced the Christian faith, and his desire to become a follower of the Prophet; and, soon afterwards, his so-called conversion was effected, and he talked of "Allah" with the best of them. Additionally, he had been influenced in this course by the discovery that Halima's friends, the sheiks in Cairo, regarded with aversion the thought of her marriage with a Christian, and were doing their utmost to dissuade her from it, at any rate, until she had joined her father. But, now that St. Just had become one of them in faith, all opposition was removed; and, soon afterwards, he and Halima were made man and wife with Islam rites.

Meanwhile, Halima had kept her eyes about to see how far she was being followed in her movements. In the result she felt satisfied that the watch on her was not so close as formerly, and this she told her husband, on his next visit. She said she was confident that she could now get away unnoticed, and urged him to arrange to leave the city at once. Now that she had become his wife, it fretted her to see so little of him; the hours seemed to pass so slowly in his absence, and she lived in a fever of unrest until he returned; she yearned for a renewal of his fond caresses and the ardent expression of his passion. So that she was prepared to run even great risks in order to be with him always; now, however, she thought they would run none.

Accordingly, it was resolved that the attempt to escape from Cairo should be made on the following day. It was now the middle of September, nearly a month since St. Just had fled from Alexandria.

At about four o'clock on the afternoon of the following day the passer-by might have seen three beggars loitering in a street not far from Halima's house. The oldest of the three was a villainous-looking old rascal, whose stomach swelled out enormously, as though he were suffering from dropsy. It may be at once stated, however, that its abnormal size was due not to a liquid, but a solid cause—hay stuffed in between his body and his clothing. This man was the Arab Abdallah. The two men with him were Mahmoud and St. Just, the former limping along with one leg bent at right angles and supported on a stump; the latter suffering, apparently, from some fearful face disease—paint artistically applied.

Beggars suffering from various diseases are common in the East, where they make a market of their disfigurements, which are profitable in proportion to their loathsomeness. As a matter of course, there are numbers of impostors among the tribe, and these are generally the most importunate in appealing to the charity of the sympathetic portion of the community. In fact, it is in the East, as with us in the West, those who make the greatest noise about their troubles are the least deserving.

Beggars being seen at almost every corner, the presence of these three sunning themselves on the steps of a house in a quiet street excited no suspicion.

"This begging seems to be a fairly profitable calling," said Abdallah, who had just made a successful appeal to a charitable passer-by. "No wonder there are so many halt and maimed about." And he chuckled grimly at the thought of the kindly dupes.

"No doubt it pays well," rejoined St. Just; "though 'tis a despicable life, at best. But come, it is time for us to be moving towards the house. 'Tis close upon the hour of prayer, when the Lady Halima is to join us. Are the camels in readiness, Mahmoud?"

"I have seen to that, Sir," replied the lad; "there will be no delay with them."

"Good," resumed St. Just. "We will be going."

And they moved on slowly, with the slouching gait that seems to go with beggars, towards Halima's street, passing on their way a mosque, from which they could hear the sound of voices raised in prayer.

Then they took up their station near the house and waited. Presently a small door in the wall—not the main entrance—was opened, and a young Arab boy stepped out and looked cautiously around. No one, but the three beggars, was in sight. He locked the door; then flung the key into the kennel, where it buried itself in a heap of garbage.

The boy stopped for a moment and seemed to be listening to the voices of the devotees in the neighboring mosque; then came swiftly towards the three watchers. Then something occurred that made St. Just's heart leap high. The boy drew from his breast something that St. Just instantly recognized as the amulet Madame Buonaparte had given him in Paris, and whose loss he had so much regretted, believing he should never see it again.

Convinced by this act that the youth was a messenger from Halima, St. Just remarked to Mahmoud in his natural voice, to satisfy the newcomer of his identity, "Mahmoud, this boy is surely a servant of the Lady Halima."

Before Mahmoud could reply, the young Arab had sprung forward with the cry of "Henri! My husband."

"Halima?" exclaimed St. Just, amazed. "No wonder I did not recognize you. What means this strange costume?"

"I thought I should, dressed thus, the better escape notice. But tell me how you like me in this garb? Think you I make a comely boy?"

And she laughed a merry laugh.

"A charming one, indeed," he answered, with a smile; "and 'twas a happy thought of yours. But we must not waste the time in pretty speeches. We will go on in advance, and you follow at a little distance, keeping us well in sight. You are far too pretty and well clad to form one of our ragged party."

And as he said, they did, making their way quickly to the three men's lodgings, which they all entered. Soon three men came out dressed like honest traders, the characters they intended to assume. They were accompanied by an Arab boy—so those who might meet the party would suppose.

Then they made their way down another street and halted at some gates that gave on to a large yard. Through these St. Just passed with Mahmoud, leaving Halima in Abdallah's charge outside. They were not long absent and, when they returned, they brought with them three camels, St. Just handing Abdallah a piece of paper.