Victoria Cross

“ Stanhope moved impatiently.
"Our fate is what we make it."
"It is not wise to enquire about our fate," replied Merla, and he saw her face grow grave with resolution in the dim light. "But I can tell you, if you like, what it will be: when you are ready, you will go back to your own people, your own life, and you will be very happy."
"And you—?" asked Stanhope in a whisper.
"I shall then have lived my life. I shall die and be buried out there," and she motioned to the desert. "I shall have given my lord happiness for a time: think what delight, what honour!" ”

“ Fidelity is a thing of the mind, always at war with and striving to coerce those instincts of the senses that are ever clamouring after the new and the unknown. Nature is ever driving us on to seek new mates. The mind with its trammels of affection, gratitude, pity, consideration, is ever dragging us back and seeking to tie us to the old. Nature's rule is fresh seasons, fresh mates, new hours, new loves. And he who seeks fidelity must woo the mind, for the body cannot give it, and knows not its laws.
After a minute's silence Ahmed stretched out his hand to her and raised her to her feet. ”

“ In an hour woman, sedan chair, lantern would all be beneath a level plain of sand.
He turned back towards the bungalow. "Saidie," he murmured, and the storm-wind seemed to rave "Saidie!" "Saidie!" round him, to whirl the name upwards to the dim stars, glimmering one here and there, far off and veiled in the heavens. He went back; the wind helped him. On its wings he seemed borne back to his house, through the tortured garden, through the gaping doorway, over the shattered door he passed, and then up the stairs to their room. ”

“ Now the woman he loved as he had loved no other would be the one to bear his child. Still the thought of the suffering the mother would go through depressed his sensitive mind, and the idea of the risk to her life that came suddenly into his brain made him turn white to the lips as he rode in the hot sunlight. Such intense happiness as he had known for the last three months can turn a brave man into a coward. For a moment he faced the horrid thought that had come to him—Saidie dead! And the whole brilliant plain, laughing sky, and dancing sunlight and waving palms became black to him. ”

“ But the insidious charm of Ahmed's personality worked on all the pulses of her body; pulses that know not fidelity, though her brain kept telling her that Murad would be waiting for her in the garden. But that night Murad did not come. The garden stood cool and fragrant, full of perfume and rosy light, full of the music of birds and the tints of a thousand flowers—all the invitations to love, but love itself was absent. Dilama searched the garden from end to end, and walked in and out among the roses by the buttressed wall, but the garden was empty and silent. ”

“ Up through the heart of sleeping Omdurman, past silent huts and yellow walls that gleamed pale in the moonlight, through the village to the desert, hunted and hunter fled on, and Krino's heart rose in savage triumph.
"Fool! he cannot escape me now; by the river—yes, but not in the desert; he cannot escape."
And the desert was reached and entered, and still the two noiseless shadows fled over the sand.
Merla's strength was failing: her sight was reeling; she could run no more. Only the joy of knowing that each step led the enemy farther from her loved one had supported her till now. ”

“ Eros, the god of passion, seated with them on the camel, their only companion!
To Saidie, cradled in his arms, looking upwards to his face above her, its beauty distinct in the soft light, feeling his heart beating against her side, it seemed as if her happiness was too great for the human frame to bear, as if it must dissolve, melt into nothingness, against his breast, and her spirit pass into the great desert solitudes, dispersed, almost annihilated, in the agony and ecstasy of love. ”

“ Stanhope shuddered.
"Don't, don't, I can't bear to hear you; do you ask nothing for yourself from life?"
"Life has given me all now," returned Merla, with a proud smile on her face.
"Why should we not go home to my land together?" said Stanhope passionately, in that sudden revolt against the laws of custom that stirs all humanity at times. "Why should I not take you to live with me for always to be my wife? who would forbid me?"
Merla shook her head, and pressed hard on his hand lying beside her on the sand. ”

“ This morning she was radiant and happy as she looked through the quivering, yellow light that danced above the sand towards the river. Last night she had fed the camel and caressed it, and she had listened, half awe-struck, to the tom-toms in the distance. The music had seemed to come to her ears with a new sound. The breeze had blown from the river with a new kiss to her face. She was growing into a woman, and the sap of life was rising fast and vigorous within her, lifting her up with the boundless joy of life. ”

“ But here there was neither: the girl shrank from him instinctively, and seemed possessed by nothing but dumb, helpless fear that was distressing to him. Yet not all distressing, for even in the best of male natures there always remains some of the instinctive desire of conquest, the delight in opposition, if not too prolonged, the love of battle, the hope of victory; and to Ahmed, the invariably successful lover, the resistance of this slight, rose-leaf creature he could crush with one blow of his hand roused suddenly all the primitive joy of the chase, the excitement of pursuit. ”

“ Might not any girl love him?"
A little smile played round Silka's lips.
"Yes, indeed, any girl might love him," she answered.
"But not as I do—no, never! Oh, Silka, I cannot tell you how I love him. More than the Nile, more than the stars, more than we have ever loved each other! I have met him often when I went to draw water, and sometimes we have stayed together in the palm-grove. I was so happy till father sold me to the Sheik; and now I must part from Melun for ever! Do not make me, dear, darling Silka; do not send me to the Nile!" ”

“ And as he appealed only to her senses, and he was not there, she ceased to wish for him very much, but thought more of Ahmed and the Selamlik that were close to her. For the mind and the imagination love in absence and long after the absent one, but the senses are stirred by proximity, and turn to the one who is nearest.
One evening, when the soft sky was a clear crimson and the full moon rose a perfect disk of transparent silver, faint as yet in the blood-red glow, Dilama felt as if she could exist no longer in the still, even, unchanging peace of the women's apartments. ”

“ These only were hers; nothing that man ordinarily strives for—neither wealth nor fame, fine houses, costly garments, jewels, slaves, power; none of these were hers. Over her body hung simply a muslin tunic worth a few annas; of the garden in which she stood not a flower belonged to her, no weight of jewels lay on her happy heart. She had no name; she was only a dancing-girl from the Deccan. With the animals she shared that wonderful kingdom of joy that they possess: their food and mate secured, their vigorous health bounding in their limbs, their beauty radiant in their perfect bodies. ”

“ Hamilton now lived the enchanted life of one who is wholly absorbed in a secret passion. He was wise—more wise than men generally are—and made no effort to parade his treasure. This wonderful exotic, this flower of happiness, that bloomed so vividly in the dark, secluded recesses of his heart, how did he know that the destructive heat and light of publicity might not fade and sear its marvellous petals? He told no one of his life; took no one out into the desert with him, to the bungalow among the palms. ”

“ All there were free, gathered to enjoy themselves, each man in his own way; and the natives in their gay colours added to the beauty, without disturbing the peace of the scene, much as the bright-plumaged birds that flitted from tree to tree absorbed in their own affairs.
How Hamilton enjoyed those long, calm, golden hours—the golden hours of Asia, so full of the enchantment of rich light and colour, soft beauty before the eyes, sweet scent of the jessamine in the nostrils, the warbling of birds, and Saidie's love songs in his ears! ”

“ Silka lay on the sheepskin where her sister had left her, and turned her face to it, shaken with a storm of feeling that convulsed her slender body from head to foot. She heard none of the cheerful sounds of life stirring round the tent; she heard only Doolga's threat of the Nile, her passionate pleading for help. Her face was buried in the sheepskin, yet she saw plainly in the wall of darkness before her eyeballs the figure of the Bishâreen standing out against the pink light of the morning sky. So it was Melun that Doolga loved! ”

“ Hamilton smiled a little, looking back at her. He had indeed a singularly handsome face, with its straight, noble features and warm colour, and as he smiled the breast of the Eastern girl heaved; her heart seemed to rush out to him.
"Ah, Saidie! you do not understand English wives," he said gently, with a curious melancholy in his voice. "Love and worship such as you give me they think shameful and shocking. To love a man for himself, for his face, for his body is degrading. They are so pure, they love him only for his purse. They tell him to take his passion to dancing-girls like you. ”

“ Saidie slipped off his knee, and fastening the little gilt link at her neck more securely, drew her soft filmy garment more closely to her, and commenced to dance before him in the screened verandah, with the hot moonlight, filtered through the delicate tracery; of innumerable leaves falling on her smooth, warm-tinted body.
To please him, to please him, her lord, her owner, her king: it was the one passion in her thoughts, and it flowed through every limb and muscle, glowed in her eyes, quivered on her parted lips, and made each movement a miracle of sweet sinuous grace. ”

“ It was not a dangerous experiment, as it always is to leave a European woman alone. He knew that Saidie, the Oriental, would spend the whole time dreaming of him, longing for him, singing to the flowers of him, talking to her women-attendants of him, filling the whole garden and house with his image till the longed-for moment of his return.
And to Hamilton, full of unspoiled life and vigour, this security, this certainty of her complete fidelity was a wondrous charm. ”

“ Ahmed remained silent for a few seconds, and the girl gazed upon him with dilated, fascinated eyes. She noted in a dazed way how the dark blue robe parted on his breast and showed beneath a vest of gold silk, fastened a little to the side by a single emerald; how the column of throat towered above these, supporting the oval face and beautifully-modelled chin, and above these again, and the commanding brows, shone another solitary emerald between the folds of his turban on his forehead.
Murad began to seem like a robber depriving her of all these things. There is no fidelity in the body. ”

“ The great brown camel, fat and sleek like all Hamilton's animals, and with an enormous weight of rich hair on his supple neck, would be kneeling waiting for them below in the dewy compound, while the early tender light stole softly through the palms; and they would mount and go swinging out through the great open spaces of the desert, full of delicate white light, towards the sister-oasis of Dirampir, where masses of cocoanut palms grew round a set of springs, and waved their branches joyfully as they drew in the salt nourishment of the air from the amethystine sea not fifty miles distant. ”

“ The pomegranate trees made a fine parade of their small, exquisite scarlet flowers, and pushed them upwards into the sparkling sunlight through the veils of white starry blossoms of the jessamine that climbed over and trailed from every tree in the compound.
The girl went forward dreaming. How completely, superbly happy she was! And she had nothing but the gifts of Nature, such as she, the kindly one, gives to the gay bird swinging on the bough, the butterfly on the flower, the deer springing on the hills: health and youth, beauty and love. ”

“ The whole caravan of Druzes cannot be stopped because Ahmed has lost a wife! No, in the caravan, with all the rest, we are safe. There is no other way."
There was silence while the twilight deepened in the garden, and the stars began to show above like flashing swords in the sky. In the languor of love that knows no fear and has no cares, that opiate of the soul, Dilama lay in his arms and sought his lips and eyes, and asked no more about caravans and journeys and mountains, drugged and heavy with love. ”

“ She had a large share of the gift of her sex—intuition; and she had understood more than many women would have done, but to-night he had gone beyond the limits of her imagination.
"No man would be so intensely unkind to a woman he cared for," she argued. "For nothing, when there is no need."
She was not an unreasonable, nor selfish, nor silly girl. Had Stephen told her he loved her, but that they must suppress their passion, that she must wait, she would have obeyed him, and waited months, years, gone down to her grave waiting, in patient fidelity to him. ”

“ Not till the glorious rose of the sunset diffused itself softly in the luminous sky, and all the desert round them grew pink, and the shadows of the palms long in the oasis, and the great planets above them burst blazing into view into the still rose-hued sky, did they rise from the side of the spring and begin to think of their homeward ride. And what a delight it was that night ride home through the majestic silence of the desert, where their own hearts' beating and the soft footfall of the camel were the only sounds! ”

“ Her spirits rose as she realised the power she was exerting. She felt a little impatient at the thought of Murad. After all, she was a great lady, a lady of the harem of Ahmed Ali, the richest Turk in Damascus. She was dressed in delicate silks, and the jewels blazed on her arm. She was queen of the harem, and the beloved of its lord. He was most desirable to her and to all women, and, but for Murad, who seemed to stand like a black shadow between, she would have lain upon his breast with pure delight. ”

“ In the palace a light behind one of the mushrabeared windows was extinguished; there was the sound of the scurry of feet, and then a long wail came out from the building, rending the pink-hued twilight.
"Buldoula is dead!" remarked Dilama simply, as the lovers crouched together between the wall and the roses. It meant nothing to her, enclosed in the happy warmth of her lover's arms; death had no meaning for her yet, hardly seventeen years' journey distant from birth, and full of all the sap and great leaping fires of life. Death was something so far away, so impossible to realise. ”

“ And if, when these were bought, there was any coin left, then her real luxury was to buy food for the poor thin camel that lay at night in the mud-yard behind their hut, and to go and feed it secretly in the starlight. And she would press her hands into the soft fur of its neck as it leant towards her, feeling that delight that springs from being kind and loving, and being loved. The law of her life was love, a law springing naturally in her mind, as the beauty and health in her body. ”

“ Saidie regarded him steadfastly, with eyes ever growing wider as she listened.
"I do not understand ..." she murmured at last, clasping both soft, supple hands across her breast, as if trying to mould herself into this new belief; "it is so hard to comprehend.... Surely it must be right to love one's lord, to bear him sons, to please him, to make him happy every hour, every minute of the day and night."
"Right?" returned Hamilton passionately, getting up from his seat and coming over to her. ”