CHAPTER XXI
All the following day Rayma waited for the Sultan's coming. Pansy waited, also. By now she realised more fully what she had done: struck and infuriated the man who held her father's life in his hand.
However, nothing was seen of the Sultan either that day or the next.
For Pansy the days were the longest she had ever spent in her life.
She could not doze away her time as the other girls did, with coffee and sherbet and cigarettes; their greatest exertion a bath, or making sweetmeats over a charcoal brazier, or doing intricate embroidery. She kept out of their way as much as possible, in her own room, or wandering aimlessly in the garden, looking at walls impossible for her to scale, wondering what had happened to her father and her friends, and what would happen to herself. But even the garden was barred to her except in the very early morning, and the brief space after sunset. If she tried to go at other times there were twenty women to stop her. The order was the Sultan's, she was told, lest to escape him she should wander in the tropic heat and make herself ill.
All her meals had to be taken in the harem, and for bathing there was only the harem bathroom. That was a vast underground tank, approached by marble steps, cool and still and dim, its silence only broken by the dip of water.
There the girls disported themselves several times a day. But Pansy was not used to company when she bathed.
And to avoid them, she rose very early, when she was sure of having the great marble tank to herself.
During the afternoon of the third day the Sultan came.
Pansy was not in the harem at the time, but lying on the lounge in her own room.
Sara's entrance roused her.
"My pearl, the Sultan is here," she said cajolingly. "And he desires to see you."
"I prefer to stay where I am," was the cold response.
The woman looked at her, speculating on the relations between this girl and the Sultan. They had once been so fond of one another, always together. And now the girl had been sent to the harem, and for three days the Sultan had not come near her.
"It's useless to resist, my pearl," Sara explained. "If you don't come when the Sultan commands, servants will be sent to fetch you."
Pansy had no wish to be dragged into her captor's presence.
Since she had to go, she might as well go with dignity.
However, she did not go very far. Only just beyond the door of her own quarters. Once there she sank down quickly on a pile of cushions, in her usual position, half sitting, half kneeling; a position that made the scantiness of her garment not quite so obvious.
At once she knew who the man in the white burnoose was, although she had never seen him in anything but civilised attire before. He was sitting on an ottoman near the fountain, with the girls clustered around him, fawning on him like dogs round a loved master.
Pansy turned a slender, disdainful shoulder on the scene.
But if she did not look in the direction of the group, there was one at least who kept a sharp suspicious eye on her.
By the Sultan's side Rayma sat, with her pointed chin resting upon his knee.
"Why haven't you come sooner to see that new slave of yours, Casim beloved?" she asked, pointing a slim finger at the distant girl.
"I've had other things than women to think about," he replied evasively.
A bitter reminiscent smile curved his lips as he spoke. Some words of Pansy's were in his mind.
"So long as it's 'women,' it's all right. The trouble starts when it comes to 'woman.'"
Certainly for him the trouble had started when it came to "woman"; when this slender, wayward, golden-haired girl came into his life. For she had robbed all other women of their sweetness.
With longing his gaze rested on Pansy.
What a fool he was not to take her.—To let her whim come between himself and his desires.
But there was something more than a girl's whim had he but realised it; a feeble new self that Pansy was responsible for: the man he might have been but for his profligate training.
Rayma saw where his gaze was. To get his eyes away from Pansy, she took one of his hands and pressed it on her bosom.
"When first I came here, my lord," she whispered, "there was nothing else you could think of."
His attention came back to her.
"You were very pretty, Rayma," he said a trifle absently.
"And am I not beautiful still?" she asked quickly.
"You're always a picture," he answered.
He talked as if to a spoilt child who bored him.
Rayma hitched herself closer, until her soft breast pressed against his knee. But he remained silent, without look or caress, his gaze still on the distant girl.
He was wondering whether he would take Pansy out of her present surroundings, or if a spell in the harem might not make her realise to the fullest her own helplessness and his complete supremacy.
Leonora watched her master, her dark eyes full of joy and malice.
"There are some people who never know when they're not wanted," she remarked sotto voce, and to no one in particular.
Rayma cast a venomous look at her. But Leonora only smiled at her dagger-like glances.
"Can she dance, this new slave of yours?" the Arab girl asked suddenly.
"She dances very nicely," he answered in an indifferent manner.
"As well as I do?" she asked jealously.
He thought of the snake-like writhing Rayma called "dancing."
"She dances quite differently from you."
"Let us both dance before you then, so that you may judge which is the better of us," she said quickly.
"Let us both dance for you, so that you may judge between us" .....
However, he vetoed this neat arrangement.
"The girl has been wounded. And she's still not strong enough for much exertion."
Rayma brooded on this fact, and the more she thought about it, the less she liked it.
"Did you capture her on that foray?" she asked presently.
"She was part of my booty," he said, a lingering tenderness in his voice.
Again Rayma was silent.
Very quickly she put two and two together.
The Sultan had not been near the harem since his return from that quest for vengeance. And this new slave had been captured during that foray.
So this was the girl who had stolen the Sultan's heart! Who had kept him away from the harem all these dreary weeks. The girl sitting there by the distant doorway. The girl who would not come near him; whom he watched, yet did not go to.
Rayma scowled at Pansy's back.
Then she turned to one of the women attendants sitting near.
"Fetch that girl to me," she said, pointing to Pansy.
The woman rose, ready and anxious to do a favourite's bidding.
But the Sultan motioned her down again.
"She comes at no one's bidding, except mine," he said firmly.
Pouting, Rayma wriggled closer to him.
"May I not even call her?" she asked softly.
"The rule applies to all here," he replied.
Somewhat impatiently he pushed Rayma aside. Then he got to his feet, and went towards Pansy.
His step behind her made the girl's heart start beating violently.
He was coming to issue some further ultimatum. Perhaps not an ultimatum even, but an order.
Pansy had wanted to see her captor, to plead for her father. Now that he was there, the words refused to pass her lips. To have asked any favour of him would have choked her.
"Well, Pansy, are you going to marry me?" he asked.
He might not have been there, for all the notice she took of him.
"Come," he went on, in an authoritative manner, "you must realise that I'm supreme, and that you must obey me."
Pansy realised this to the fullest, and the sense of her own helplessness only infuriated her. Since she had no weapon she could turn on him except her tongue, she hit at him with that. And she hit her very hardest on the spot she knew would hurt the most.
"English women don't marry niggers," she said contemptuously.
The word cut deep into his proud spirit; all the deeper for coming from her lips. Although he whitened under the insult, the knowledge of his own complete supremacy held his fiery temper in check.
"The marrying is just as you like," he replied. "Forms and ceremonies are nothing to me, but I'd an idea you preferred them."
There was a brief silence.
With her face turned away Pansy sat ignoring him entirely, leaving him only a slender white neck, a small ear and part of a rose-tinted cheek to study.
And the Sultan studied them, amused that anything so helpless should dare to defy him.
"You've not only yourself to consider when you set me at defiance in this manner," he remarked presently. "There's your father, and your English friends."
His words brought Pansy's eyes to him, fear in their velvety depths.
At her look he laughed.
"Your kind heart has given me some hostages, Pansy," he said. "But nothing will happen to them for another week. I'll give you that much time to make up your mind. Not longer. For my patience is wearing very thin. And I've had a lot where you're concerned. More than I ever dreamt I was capable of. In the meantime, my little girl, try and remember I'm not quite the hopeless villain you think me, or you wouldn't have liked me, even for a day."
But just then it seemed to Pansy there was no greater villain on earth than the Sultan Casim Ammeh.