The House of the Falcon/Chapter 13
CHAPTER XIII
A LAMP GOES OUT
There was complete stillness in the room as Edith stood beside the form of the white man who was called Donovan, and Khan.
She scanned the unconscious face again attentively, noting the finely shaped head, the handsome mouth and brow. The man was young, and very much wasted by sickness. The lean cheeks still bore the brown hue of exposure to the weather.
Edith turned to the Arab, forcing herself to speak. "Is he—dead?"
Before answering he bent over the sick body, his eyes gleaming intently. He touched a finger to his lips and held it over Donovan's mouth. Then he turned to exchange a swift question and answer with the withered watcher on the floor.
"If any can tell, he is the one." Iskander indicated the seated man of the aged face and beadlike eyes. "He is the master of healing substances, who can count the sands of life."
"What does he say?" Edith framed the question gently. She sensed the anxiety of Iskander, the patience of the silent watchers—the vital importance to them of the life of the white man.
"The sands of life have not run out. And the wine vessel that held the wine is not broken." Iskander spoke slowly, with a kind of thoughtful exultation. "He who knows the sickness of the spirit has tended Dono-van Khan skillfully. We have come in time."
Edith glanced swiftly at the Mohammedan physician. He was regarding her steadily, his dried lips framing soundless words. The other two, heavier men, bearing the stamp of authority, waited patiently. Edith's keen wit told her that they expected something of her, particularly the physician.
"Mahmoud el Dar," Iskander spoke her thought, "the hakim. He is wise, very wise. There is no wisdom like to his."
A breath of air passed through the stone chamber. The candles in the lamps flickered. And the shrouded light by the couch went out. It left the face of Donovan dark.
"Hai!" muttered Iskander and two of the three watchers echoed his exclamation. The fatalism inbred in all followers of the Prophet had taken fire at the darkening of the lamp. Edith was alert, sensitive to all that passed in the chamber. She understood that her own life, to these men, was a slight thing beside the life of John Donovan.
In the stone room of the garden house, isolated in the impenetrable hills, Mahmoud and those with him had treasured the life in the sick man, guarding it against her coming. Why?
Mahmoud spoke.
"He says," interpreted Iskander, "that the lamp was truly an omen. Yet not, of itself, an omen of death. Mahmoud is very wise. He says that a new lamp must be lit by your hand. Obey."
As if she had been a child obedient to an older person, Edith took the bronze lamp the Arab gave her, and with a wisp of cotton ignited it from another candle. Then she removed of her own accord the shrouding cloth. Holding the bronze lantern, she turned to Iskander.
"Tell me what you want done," she observed.
By way of answer, the Arab gave a command and Aravang appeared carrying a burden which he set down beside Edith. It was the familiar medicine pail, still covered with its black cloth.
"That is yours," Iskander pointed to it, "and you alone—among us four—understand its use. I have seen you tend the wounds of your servant, Aravang, when he was hurt at the inn."
He nodded thoughtfully to himself, choosing his words with care and speaking the precise English that he had learned—as he had once admitted—when attached to a native regiment of the British army during the Persian campaigns of the Great War.
"Of his own accord, Mees Rand, did Dono-van Khan come to Yakka Arik. No other ever came willingly into the barriers—no other multani, foreigner, at least. Because of certain things unknown to you it is necessary to kill those who spy upon Yakka Arik. Yet we had heard of Dono-van Khan, and once before then he had aided us. So we bargained with him, or he did with us, and we Sayaks helped him to fulfill his mission in the Hills. Now, he must fulfill his half of the bargain. He has given his word. We are waiting. And he is very ill. He must be made well."
Edith was silent, looking at him questioningly. She wondered why Iskander called the sick man "khan" and why there was a barrier about Yakka Arik. The casual manner in which the Arab mentioned death as a penalty rather took her breath away. What manner of men were these who called themselves Sayaks? And what was Donovan?
"In the time before the first of last winter," continued her interpreter, "Dono-van Khan again was brought here by one of the caravans to this house which is his home. But this time there was a heavy fever in him. An enemy of the Sayaks who knew that he meant to aid us poisoned him in the Kashgar bazaar. Because of the sickness, Mahmoud kept him here and we sent Aravang for his belongings that were left with a servant at Kashgar. The servant was faithless and it came to pass before long that Aravang tracked him down and punished him fittingly."
Edith thought of Major Fraser-Carnie's narrative and sighed. She was gaining a first insight into the new world of Yakka Arik. It was hard for her to understand.
"When the winter was passing, the fever grew and he was very weak. Mahmoud's remedies no longer availed because of a strange thing. The sickness was of spirit as well as body. Dono-van Khan had received word that the doors of his home in England were closed to him. He was very lonely and this weakened his spirit."
Iskander stroked his beard thoughtfully, glancing at her to make sure that she understood.
"Mees Rand, what do physics—even the substances of Avicenna—avail when the mind itself is ailing? Mahmoud desired above all things to save Dono-van Khan, and I also—who am his friend—desired it. But to the white man this house was not like his home. Then out of the wisdom of the ancient Mahmoud came a thought. It was that the spirit itself of Dono-van Khan must be healed."
Iskander Khan Edith regarded as a pagan, with blood on his hands. Aravang, she thought, was no better than a murderer. What made them so anxious to aid the sick man? She looked from Mahmoud, now heating something in a bronze bowl over the brazier, to the still face of Donovan.
"It was the wisdom of Mahmoud," the mild voice of Iskander went on, "that sent me to Kashmir—to heal the loneliness of the white man. I went to find a spur for his spirit—a spur that would drive away the dark angel of death. The spur would be a woman of his own race and rank. The sight of her would make him wish to live. Aye—she would nurse him and make this place a home."
"And so"
"You are here." Iskander folded his arms, a brief hiss of satisfied personal pride escaping his lips. "Zalla 'llahir alaihi wa sallam! The will of Allah is all-in-all. Behold, the sickness is of the spirit and so also is the spur. Hai—you are beautiful as a keen, bright sword. I have watched you, and I know—I know."
Mechanically Edith placed the lamp by the couch and faced the Arab. She had been hurried hundreds of miles over mountain paths to serve Donovan—the man they called Dono-van Khan. At this thought she flushed and bit her lip.
"Why did you choose—me?"
"Hai! Does the falcon pause when a thrush is in sight? I chose the first white woman, strong, and fair of face. Likewise, it was said in Srinagar that you were skilled in tending the sick mem-sahib."
Edith smiled bitterly, reflecting how it would astonish her worthy aunt to learn that her fancied ills coupled with the exaggerated respect paid the medicine chest had helped to carry off her niece. Iskander had seized her—daughter of Arthur Rand and an American citizen—as lightly as he would have pinioned a struggling bird, as callously as he had slain the two men in the Kashgar bazaar.
She looked into the faces of the three. Iskander and the stout chieftain were conversing, utterly oblivious of her. Only Mahmoud regarded her intently, much in the manner of a surgeon surveying the subject of an experimental operation. A surge of rebellion swept through her.
Another woman, less proud, might have congratulated herself on the temporary respite offered. But it was not in Edith's nature to be grateful for immunity or to forget a wrong done her. She was the daughter, young in years, of an aristocratic family, and her pride was still to be reckoned with.
The pride of the Rands was not easily dealt with.
"The skill of Mahmoud guarded the life of Dono-van Khan for the space that I was gone," Iskander was saying, "and now that my task is finished, yours is to begin."
The hands of the girl clenched at her side; her body quivered, and her flushed face became all at once quite pale.
"Do you think that I shall obey—you?"
Mahmoud looked up from his task, struck by the change in her voice. Iskander rose from the stone flags and took a silent stride toward her, snatching from her the yashmak and cloak, baring her set face and torn traveling dress. In front of her eyes he lifted the whip that he still retained.
"Aye, you will obey."
His burning glance probed her, angrily. Her rebellion had stirred his hot temper.
"You think I will be a—slave, Iskander?"
The Arab was surprised that she smiled at him so coldly. Women of his race did not defy their masters. A lash of the whip, he thought, would wipe out the smile. And Edith read his thought easily.
"If you strike me, Iskander, I shall kill you."
She had not meant to say just that A month ago she could not have said it. But she knew that it was true. Every fiber in her body was strung to revolt. Every instinct of nature was up in arms against the man who had said he was her master. She heard Mahmoud speak quickly and saw the Arab bend his head to listen.
Edith felt all at once very unhappy and friendless. Bodily weariness beset her; even the aspect of the unconscious sick man appeared to her threatening—as the aspect of the other shrouded forms of the mountain side that had once entered her dreams. And, as in the dream, she wanted to cry out, to waken. The room, with the cloaked figures of the men, seemed at that instant as unreal as her dream of a month ago. Iskander addressed her quietly.
"The master of wisdom has spoken anew. He says that if you are unwilling to aid Dono-van Khan, you will not avail to heal his spirit. Of what use is a blunted spur? Mahmoud asks that you look carefully into the face of the sick Dono-van Khan and consider that, if you do not heal him, he may die."
Still angered, she would make no response.
Iskander motioned to the bed and withdrew slightly, eying the girl curiously—trying to understand the mood of the white woman that brooked no mastery. After a space his scowl lightened and he grunted to himself.
"By Allah, the steel of my choosing is good."
By the bright glow of the lantern she appeared as an image of sheer beauty, her wide eyes fixed on the sick man from the tangle of gleaming hair, her splendid body swaying with swift, troubled breathing.
As Edith studied the unconscious face, reading the shadows under the closed eyes of Donovan and the message of the set mouth through which breath barely stirred, her mood changed. After all, the woman was very much like a child.
And the instinct of womanhood—compassion at the sight of pain—was strong. She saw the head of the sick man move uneasily and his hand twitch on the blanket. Hesitantly, she took the hand in her own. Color flooded her cheeks and her eyes brightened.
"Tell me what I can do for him," she said to Iskander.
Under his mustache the Arab smiled. Verily, he reflected, Mahmoud was the master of wisdom: he had read with a single glance the heart of the woman.
But under the compassion that had come to Edith Rand was another feeling. Donovan Khan seemed to be a leader of these men—Sayaks, or whatever they chose to call themselves. He had been the cause of her seizure. On his account Iskander had made of her what was little better than a tool, a slave.
If he lived, Donovan Khan must atone for the wrong done her.