But Saïd was more eager than ever to be off. Glancing fearfully in the direction of the bed he had seen Hasneh open her eyes and stare vacantly about her.
“Take all care of her, and may Allah prosper thee!” he muttered hurriedly, crossing the threshold and dodging behind the doorpost. “After a week I shall send to thee. Allah requite thee, O father of kindness!”
He set off at a great pace, spurred by the thought that Hasneh might discover the trick played on her and come running after him.
VII
At the village where he passed the night, a village halfway down a mountain side, terraced and fledged with olive-trees, which looked over a wide stretch of flat country, Saïd gleaned tidings of the missionary of whom he hoped so much. The man in black had ridden through the place before noon and was gone to his house in the plain, an hour’s journey beyond. His heart was light when he set out in the morning. Far away across the plain, mountains—the hugest he had ever seen—were dreamy in the mists of early dawn. A white gleam of snow among their summits was new to him, and would have held his eyes but for the nearer charms of a red-roofed house in the plain below, where a blessed fool dwelt and a man could have money for the asking. Thanks to the hospitality of the villagers, the Turkish pound was still untouched in the linen bag upon his chest. With what he hoped to obtain from the preacher he would enter the great city in triumph instead of beggary.
The sun was already hot upon the plain when he reached the house of the Frank. A tall negro, clad in a flowing robe of yellow and white, finely striped, with a clean white turban, bound about his scarlet fez, was sweeping the doorstep with a broom. Saïd wished him a happy day, and sitting down upon his heels—for the ground was dewy—disposed himself for a chat. But the negro was gruff. All Saïd’s compliments were returned as curtly as the barest politeness would allow, and his leading questions answered by an “Allah knows!” and a shrug of the shoulders far from satisfying.
Finding that there was nothing to be gained by flattering the surly doorkeeper, the fisherman changed his tone. Rising to his feet, he cried, in a loud voice, meant to sound like thunder, “Go, tell thy master that I wish to speak with him!”
The negro paused in his sweeping to look at him and laughed, showing two rows of dazzingly white teeth.
“My master sleeps,” he said. “Thou knowest little of the ways of a Frank if thou thoughtest to speak with him at this hour.”
“At what hour will he awake?” asked Saïd in the same lofty tone.
“Allah knows!” replied the negro, with a shrug, going on with his sweeping.
Saïd squatted down once more upon his heels.
“I wait here till he is ready!”
The negro grinned angrily and indicated the vastness of the horizon by a flourish of his broom.
“Walk!” he said grimly.
Saïd seemed not to understand.
“Walk!” repeated the negro, fiercely, rushing upon him with broom upraised.
With a scared curse Saïd scrambled to his feet and bounded away, swift as a gazelle in fear of the hunter. The negro stood looking after him, his bosom still threatening, until the flutter of a blue robe and the twinkle of brown legs were lost to sight among the knotted trunks of an olive grove.
As soon as he thought himself safe Saïd flung himself upon the ground, panting for breath. A pair of doves fluttered somewhere among the branches, cooing sadly over a lost paradise. The sunlight made its way here and there through the leafage in bars of golden haze. A sound, made up of the barking of a dog, the cries of children and the musical clink of a hammer on iron, told him that there was a village somewhere in the depths of the wood. The grating song of the cicadas, that waxed and waned in his throbbing ears, seemed the live spirits of the sunlight stirring in the shade. Warm breaths, the sweet steam from dew-drenched plants and moistened earth, rustled the leaves and silvered them faintly.
“May his father perish!” muttered Saïd between his clenched teeth—a sign that his breath was returning.
A little later, when he had ceased panting, he crept to the edge of the sunshine. Keeping his body hid behind the widespread trunk of an ancient olive he peeped forth.
At a stone’s throw the house of the missionary rose sheer amid a waste of rank grass and thistles traversed by a bridle-path. Beyond rose the mountain side, filmy in a bluish heat-mist. Halfway up Saïd descried the place where he had slept, a cluster of low buildings of the same hue as the neighbouring rocks, seeming as natural a growth as they.
The negro had left the doorway ere this, and was gone out of sight to some other place where was need of his broom. But Saïd dared not yet step forth into the open, an impression of the black man’s strength of limb and the broom’s menace being fresh upon him. He watched and waited.
Soon there were signs of a stirring to life within the house. The shutters of an upper window were closed against the sun by an arm thrust out for the purpose. At the same time a man’s head was seen for a moment. Then a little boy with thin brown legs came out of the olive wood, passing close to Saïd but without seeing him. He must have come from the village near at hand for he carried a big pitcher of milk easily and without fatigue. He passed round a corner of the house, and shortly returned swinging the empty pitcher. Windows were opened. A
