Khaled F. Marion Crawford (best romance novels of all time .TXT) 📖

Zehowah turned suddenly when he laughed, and ceased from playing.

“I am glad that you are merry,” she said. “I like laughter better than reproaches and prefer it to gloomy forebodings of evil when none is at hand.”

Khaled’s face grew dark, and he looked again towards the door.

“If you will stay with me, you shall see that evil is not far off,” he answered, for she had reminded him of what he was expecting, and he knew that it was no jesting matter. “But you shall please yourself in this as in all other matters, though it were better for you to go now and shut yourself up in an inner room and wait for the end. The night is advancing, and all will soon be over.”

“Hear me, Khaled,” said Zehowah, speaking earnestly. “If you bid me go, I will go, or if you desire me to stay, I will remain with you. But if you are indeed in danger, as you say, let us call up the guards and the watchmen who sleep in the palace, that they may stand by you with their swords and help you to fight if there is to be strife.”

“I will have no treacherous fellows about me,” Khaled answered, “and there are none here whom I can trust. My hour is coming and I will fight this fight alone. But if you were such as I once hoped, I would say: ‘Remain with me, so long as you are safe.’ Now, since Allah has willed it thus, I say to you: ‘Go and seek safety where you can find it.’ Go, therefore, Zehowah, and leave me alone, for I need no one beside me, and you least of all.”

He turned away his head, lest she should see his face, and with his hand made a gesture bidding her to leave him. She rose from her seat softly and hung the barbat upon the wall with the other musical instruments, looking over her shoulder to see whether he would call her back. But he neither moved nor spoke, being resolved to venture all upon this trial, for he knew that if she loved him even but a little, she would not leave him alone in the extremity of danger.

Then she went towards the door of the room, turning her head to look at him as she passed near him.

“Farewell,” she said. But he did not answer nor show that he heard her voice.

As she lifted the curtain to go out, she lingered and gazed at him. He sat motionless upon the carpet, upright against the wall, his sword lying across his feet, his hands hidden under his sleeves, looking towards her indeed but not seeming to see her.

“There can be no real danger,” she thought. “Could any man sit thus, expecting death, and refusing to let anyone stand by him to fight with him? Surely, he is playing with me, and setting a trap for me. But he shall not catch me.”

She turned to go and the curtain was falling behind her when the night wind from the open passage brought a sound to her ears from a far distance. She started and listened, as camels do when they hear the first moving of the hot wind. There were no voices in the noise, which was low and dull, like the breathing of a great multitude and the soft moving of feet, and altogether it was as the slow rising and falling back of the sea upon the shores of Oman, when the great summer storm is coming from the southwest.

Zehowah stood still a moment and drank in every murmur that reached her from without. Then her face grew white and her lips trembled when she thought of Khaled sitting alone on the other side of the curtain, with his sword upon his feet, waiting for the end. She lifted the hanging a little and looked at him again. He saw her, but made no sign. Even as she looked, the distant murmur grew louder and she fancied that he moved his head as though he heard it. Then she entered the room and came and stood before him.

“There is a great multitude in the square before the palace,” she said.

“I know it,” he answered, calmly looking up to her face. “It needed not that you should tell me.”

“Will you not let me stay with you now?” asked Zehowah.

“Why should you stay here?” he asked with a pretence of indifference. “Of what use are you to me? Take this sword. Can you strike with it? Your wrist is feeble. Or take a bow from the weapons on the wall. Can you draw the string? Your strength is sufficient for the lute, and your skill for scratching the strings of the barbat. Go and save yourself. I am alone and every man’s hand is against me.”

Zehowah stood still in the room and hesitated, looking into his eyes for something which she all at once desired with a hot thirst. At last she spoke in an uncertain voice.

“Yet you said not long since that if I were such as you once hoped, you would bid me remain.”

“I do not care,” he answered. “Yet for your own sake, I advise you to go away.”

“For my own sake!” she repeated, trying to speak scornfully, and turning to go a second time.

But she did not reach the door. She stood still before the weapons which hung upon the wall, and paused a moment and then took a sword from its place. Khaled watched her. She grasped the hilt as well as she could and swung the weapon in the air once with all her might. Then she uttered a little cry of pain, for she had twisted her wrist. The sword fell to the floor.

“He is right,” she said in a low tone, speaking aloud to herself. “I am weak and can be of no use to him.”

She went on once