CHAPTER XXIV
The next morning Pansy awoke to find herself back in her gilded prison, and Alice beside her with the customary morning tea, a dish of fruit and a basket of flowers, all as if the last ten days had never been. She knew now the flowers were from the Sultan. But she did not tell Alice to take them away. Instead, as she drank her tea and ate some fruit, she looked at them in a meditating manner.
And Alice looked at her mistress in an inquisitive way, wondering what had happened to her during the last few days.
"De Sultan, he no sell you den, Miss Pansy?"
"No," Pansy replied in an absent manner.
"Since you go I lib wid de oder servants in anoder part ob de palace. Dere be hundreds ob dem," the girl continued, her eyes round with awe at her captor's wealth and power.
She spoke, too, as if anxious for an exchange of confidences.
However, Pansy said nothing. She stayed with her gaze on the flowers, despising herself for having been so upset at the thought of the Sultan's demise.
That morning Alice dressed her in her usual civilised attire. In spite of this, Pansy found she was still a prisoner, still within the precincts of the harem. The rose garden was hers to wander in at will. But the guards were still stationed outside one of the sandalwood doors, as they had been on the day of her arrival at the palace. However, one of the two other doors was unlocked.
Pansy opened it, hoping some way of escape might lay beyond. A dim flight of stairs led downwards. She descended, only to find herself in the harem.
The girls and women greeted her with an awed and servile air. To them now she was the Sultan's first wife; the most envied and most honoured woman in the province of El-Ammeh.
Curious glances were cast at her attire. Leonora appeared most at her ease. For she fingered Pansy's garments with soft, slow, indolent hands.
"It's quite ten years since I've seen a woman dressed as you are," she remarked. "Not since I lived in Tangier, before my uncle sold me to an Arab merchant."
Pansy knew Leonora's history. It did not sound a pretty one to civilised ears.
Sold at the age of fourteen, she had been handed from one desert chief to another, until finally she had appeared in the slave market of El-Ammeh and had taken the Sultan's fancy.
"What an awful life you've had," Pansy said, pity in her voice.
Leonora's languid eyes opened with surprise.
"Me! Oh, no. I'm beautiful, and most of my masters have been kind. But none so kind and generous as the Sultan Casim. Besides, now my travels are at an end. When the Sultan tires of a slave, he does not sell her. She is given in marriage to one of his officers, with a good dowry. And she is then a woman with an established position. He is always generous to a woman who has pleased him. How lucky for you to be picked for his first wife! You'll find him almost always kind. I've been here more than a year and I know. He is never harsh without a reason. He is never hard and unjust like some of the masters I've known."
As Pansy listened to this eulogy on her captor, she was surprised and ashamed of herself for having a scrap of liking left for him. All her instincts revolted at his doings, but much as she tried she could not make them revolt at the man himself.
"He was hard enough last night," she remarked.
"But he had a reason. Rayma would have shamed and injured you. She could not see what I saw—that the Sultan has eyes and thoughts and heart for no one but you now. She is a stupid girl, that Rayma. Because he loved her for a month or two, she thought he would love her for ever. He was her first master. He bought her but a few weeks before he last went to Paris. And he is so angry now that he will sell her again, not give her in marriage to one of his officers, making her a woman of importance."
Leonora's remarks made Pansy glance sharply round the big hall, suddenly aware that Rayma was not present. Already she saw the Arab girl having to face that dreadful sea of eyes, as she, herself, had faced it.
"Where is Rayma?" she asked quickly.
"The guards took her away last night," Leonora answered indifferently. "She'll trouble you no more."
Hastily Pansy got to her feet, and went to the big door leading out of the harem. She knew what lay beyond; a large vestibule where, day and night, half a dozen eunuchs lounged.
Seeing Pansy on the threshold, brought them to their feet, barring her exit.
"I must see the Sultan," she said.
Although she made the request, she hardly expected to have it granted, for the Sultan came when he felt disposed.
"Lady, I'll inform the Sultan of your desires," one of the guards replied.
With that he left the vestibule.
Pansy waited, conscious of the servility and overwhelming desire to please that oozed from these menials.
Before long the messenger returned.
It appeared that the girl's wish was to be granted. With a negro on either side of her Pansy was taken through an intricate maze of corridors, past closed doors, open arches and Arabesque windows, to a further door that her escort opened.
Pansy found herself in a room that looked more like a sumptuous office than anything else, with a balcony that jutted over the lake.
At a large desk a man was seated in a white drill suit with a black cummerbund, who rose at her entry and smiled at her, as if the last week had never been; as if he were still Raoul Le Breton and there had been no unveiling.
"Well, Pansy, it's flattering to think you want to see me," he remarked.
Pansy did not waste any time before stating the reason of her visit.
"Is it true you're going to sell Rayma?" she asked in a horror-stricken tone.
The mere mention of her name made a savage expression flit across his face.
"What I'm going to do with her is my own concern."
"How can you be such a brute, such a savage, so abominably cruel?" she cried, distress in her voice.
"Do you know, my little slave, that you're the only person in the place who dare take me to task about my doings?" he remarked.
Pansy did not know, or care; her only desire was to save him from himself.
"I shall stay here until you premise not to sell her," she said tensely.
"If you stay until Doomsday, it won't worry me," he replied. "You must find some other threat."
Pansy could have shaken him for daring to poke fun at her, when her only desire was to keep him from slave-dealing.
"How can you even contemplate such a ghastly thing," she gasped.
"As what?" he asked in an unconcerned manner.
"Don't you know that slave-dealing is an abomination?"
"It may be in your country, but it isn't in mine."
"I can't bear to think of you doing anything so dreadful," she said in a strained voice.
He glanced at her, a soft, mocking light in his eyes.
"Should you like me any better if I didn't sell Rayma?"
"I should hate you if you did."
"I couldn't run such a risk a second time," he replied. "I'll send her back to the harem, and keep her there until I can find a suitable husband, if that'll please you better."
Pansy experienced a feeling of relief. The victory was easier than she had expected.
There was a brief pause. Then he said:
"So you're still returning good for evil, Pansy. Your power of forgiveness is astonishing. Rayma deserved punishment for her treatment of you."
"If anyone deserves punishment it's you," Pansy retorted.
"How do you make that out?"
"For trifling with her."
For a moment he was too astonished to speak.
"If you call that trifling, then I must have trifled with at least a hundred women in my day," he remarked at length.
"How can you stand there and say such dreadful things?" she gasped.
"There's nothing dreadful about it from my point of view."
Pansy said nothing. She just stared at him, as if at some fascinating horror.
Under her gaze he began to find excuses and explanations for himself and his behaviour.
"Don't you remember telling me in that letter of yours that you were not quite the same as other girls, putting that forward as a sufficient reason for breaking faith with me? Well, Pansy, I'm not quite the same as the other men you've known. To begin with, my religion is different. In my own small way I'm a king. I rule absolutely within a radius of more than a hundred miles round here. Then, I'm a millionaire, and my trading extends far beyond my kingdom, as far as St. Louis, in fact. And millionaires, more especially if they're men and unmarried, are fêted and welcomed everywhere. And, like kings, millionaires can do no wrong. Then I'm half-Arab, half-French, which you must agree is a wild combination. Such a mixture doesn't tend to make a man exactly virtuous. I've done exactly what I liked, practically ever since I was born. Everybody, except my mother, did their best to spoil me. She was the only one who ever tried to keep me in order in any way, but she died when I was ten years old. At fourteen I was Sultan here in my own right. And no one ever dared, or troubled, to criticise my doings until you came along. And now you're expecting me to be a better man than ever Fate or nature intended me to be."
Pansy said nothing; she still looked at him, trying now to see his point of view.
"I call 'trifling' what you've done with me. Promising to marry me and then drawing back. I've never trifled with you. And if you can believe such a thing, and if you'll try and see it in my light, I've been faithful to you. I never had a thought for another woman since the night you came into my life, until I learnt you were Barclay's daughter. Then I tried to hate you, and went back to my old life. But when you were brought to me, dead, as I thought, I knew I didn't hate you. And since that day, Pansy, there's been no other woman but you. And you'll satisfy me for the rest of my life."
Pansy listened to him, trying to see things as he saw them, knowing she ought to be disgusted with him. Instead, she was intensely sorry because there had never been anyone at hand to check or train him, except a mother who had died twenty years ago.
But his speech brought her father's plight before her again. It seemed hardly feasible that the Sultan would have sent her letter to the man he desired to punish.
"Did you give that note of mine to my father?" she asked.
A trifle askance, he glanced at her.
"No, I didn't," he confessed.
Pansy was past being angry with him; she was just sorely wounded in soul and mind at his doings.
This must have showed on her face, for he went on quickly:
"You can send another and I promise it'll be delivered. Not only that, but that your father and friends will be well treated. Among other things, Pansy, you've taken the edge off my vengeance."
He paused, leaning over her he said:
"I'm granting you all these favours, but what are you going to do for me?"
Pansy wanted nothing now but to get away from him, right away, beyond his reach, but not because she hated him.
"Just for a moment, my little English flower, will you rest upon my heart?" he asked in a soft, caressing voice. "There's no savagery left in me when you're there of your own accord."
He held out his arms, waiting to complete the bargain. But she moved away quickly.
"Oh, no," she said, alarm in her voice.
He laughed.
"You've never been afraid of me before, why are you now, Pansy? Are you afraid you might love me?"
"How could I love anyone so depraved?" she asked.
But her voice was quavering, not scornful as she intended it to be.
"Depraved! So that's what I am now, is it? Well, it's all point of view, I suppose. And it's one degree better than saying you hate me."
He turned towards the desk, and drew out paper and envelopes.
"Write your letter, my little girl," he finished.
Pansy sat down.
As she wrote to her father, in her heart was a wish that she had been left undisturbed in her fool's paradise, that she had married Raoul Le Breton at the end of a month, knowing nothing about him except that she loved him.
Once he was her husband, if she had learnt the truth, she would not have had to fight against herself and him. There would have been only one course left open to her—to do her utmost to make a better man of him. And circumstances had shown her that in her hands the task would have been an easy one.