Saïd waved him off impatiently.
“Enough,” he said. “I perceive clearly that the right is with thee, Ferideh. Now leave off fighting with that woman and come with me into the house. It is a sin that thou shouldst be so unveiled in the sight of men.”
Ferideh gave her enemy a final push, so that she fell heavily on her side. Exultant, with bright eyes and face aglow, she followed her lord into the gloom and coolness of the house. A reaction shook her from head to foot, inwardly, as the seeds of grass are shaken. As she crossed the threshold of an inner door, the voice of Hasneh was lifted shrill to denounce her. The words were of hatred unmeasured for bitterness. They let her know all that she had escaped. Looking soft-eyed into her lord’s face, with hand caressing his arm—
“Said I not that she had a grudge against me?” she murmured. “Hear now the words of her mouth, how evil they are. Hadst thou listened to the voice of her spite, thou hadst believed her tale, perhaps, and then, alas! I had lost thy love, O prince of my soul! Did I not well to silence her in time?”
“Thou didst well,” whispered Saïd, fervently, drawing near and circling her with an arm. “But Allah have pity! thy hand bleeds. The palm of it is bitten through. Behold the blood is on my robe—and thine likewise! Thou hast great courage, O my beloved. By the Quran, I, who am a man, and reputed no coward, had screamed for a wound like this.”
Smiling tenderly, “I felt it not,” she murmured, seeking his eyes. “I care not what befalls me so that I be still mistress of thy fancy, O stream of my life!”
He tore a strip of his own clothing and swathed her hand in it. Full of care for her, he did not quit her chamber until the evening.
After a frantic attempt to pursue her rival, which was easily frustrated by the two serving-men, Hasneh returned to the storehouse. She found it empty, for the work of grinding was done and the maid was flown to join her fellow in another place, to chat over the scene and debate its meaning. For a great while she sat there heartbroken. Once Suleyman ran in upon her out of the sunlight, to kick her, spit upon her, and slap her repeatedly with his tiny hands; cursing her religion, her parentage, and calling down all evil upon her for the hurt done to his mother. But, as she seemed not to heed, the child soon wearied, and, with a last kick, trotted out again into the court. She could hear him pestering the doorkeeper, telling the tale of her misdeeds with a child’s exaggeration of detail. Then he went back to his mother or to join the maids, and there was quiet once more.
At length, when the day was far spent, she drew her veil, and, gliding unobserved by the drowsy negro, bent her steps towards the cellar of Nûr.
IV
“O my loved one, I tell thee there is no end to her hate of me; and Nûr is as her mouthpiece in this matter. Thou wouldst know the reason? That I cannot tell thee, for I myself have not ascertained it. But one thing is sure: she would fain destroy me and mine. For my life I fear her, and for the life of Suleyman, the hope of thy father’s house. It may be that she cannot bear to see me preferred to her in the secret of thy love, to know that I shall rule a part of this great mansion thou art minded to buy. She would kill me, thinking to make thee all her own once more. Laugh with me, O my soul!—she thinks she yet has charms to tempt and hold thee. … She will say all things to turn the favour I have found in thy sight to loathing; and, if speech avail not, she will certainly compass my death and the death of Suleyman, thy darling. This day she has tried one way and failed. It is likely she will next bring Nûr hither, as it were to confirm her report, to tell thee lies of her teaching. Thou wilt not hearken to her, O my lord? Swear to give no heed to the words of her mouth—the words of my enemy, whose creature she is! O Saïd, swear this to me by the spirit of thy religion! For the sake of the son I have borne to thee, set my mind at rest! My heart grows sick for fear I should lose thy favour by which alone I live. Swear that thy understanding shall lend no weight to their calumnies, that I may know I have yet a little grace in thy sight! And ah! swear to put away this wicked woman—to cast her forth as an evildoer from thy house. Does she not daily, hourly, plot my death and the death of thy son? Is she not therefore guilty of blood? O Saïd, O my beloved, O spring of life to me, scorn not my prayer or I shall know that thy desire is clean gone from me!”
Saïd fondled Ferideh’s head as she lay in the crook of his arm upon the couch. He swore eagerly, as a lover swears, that he was deaf thenceforth to all that might be said against her. But with regard to Hasneh, he would ponder the matter at length and decide what was best to be done.
At that she cried out that he loved
