The Sheik: A Novel

by E. M. Hull

But the happiness of ministering to him passed very swiftly. As he grew stronger he managed so that she was rarely alone with him, and he insisted on her riding twice every day, sometimes with Saint Hubert, sometimes with Henri, coolly avowing a preference for his own society or that of Gaston, who was beginning to get about again. Later, too, he was much occupied with headmen who came in from the different camps, and as the days passed she found herself more and more excluded from the intimacy that had been so precious. She was thrown much into the society of Raoul de Saint Hubert. All that they had gone through together had drawn them very closely to each other, and Diana often wondered what her girlhood would have been like if it had been spent under his guardianship instead of that of Sir Aubrey Mayo. The sisterly affection she had never given her own brother she gave to him, and, with the firm hold over himself that he had never again slackened, the Vicomte accepted the role of elder brother which she unconsciously imposed on him.

It was hard work sometimes, and there were days when he dreaded the daily rides, when the strain seemed almost more than he could bear, and he began to make tentative suggestions about resuming his wanderings, but always the Sheik pressed him to stay.

Ahmed Ben Hassan's final recovery was quick, and the camp soon settled down into normal conditions. The reinforcements were gone back to the different camps from which they had been drawn. There was no further need of them. Ibraheim Omair's tribe, with their leader dead, had broken up and scattered far to the south; there was no chief to keep them together and no headman strong enough to draw them round a new chieftain, for Ibraheim had allowed no member of his tribe to attain any degree of wealth or power that might prove him a rival; so they had split up into numerous small bands lacking cohesion. In fulfilling the vow made to his predecessor Ahmed Ben Hassan had cleared the desert of a menace that had hung over it for many years.

The relations between the Sheik and Saint Hubert had gone back to what they had been the night of Raoul's arrival, before his candid criticism had roused the Sheik's temper and fired his jealousy. The recollection of the miserable week that had preceded the raid had been wiped out in all that had followed it. No shadow could ever come between them again since Raoul had voluntarily stood on one side and sacrificed his own chance of happiness for his friend's.

And with the Sheik's complete recovery his attitude towards Diana had reverted to the cold reserve that had chilled her before—a reserve that was as courteous as it was indifferent. He had avoided her as much as had been possible, and the continual presence of Saint Hubert had been a barrier between them. Unostensibly but effectually he had contrived that Raoul should never leave them alone. Though he included her in the general conversation he rarely spoke to her directly, and often she found him looking at her with his fierce eyes filled with an expression that baffled her, and as each time the quick blood rushed into her face his forehead drew together in the heavy frown that was so characteristic. During meals it was Raoul that kept the conversation from lapsing with ready tact and an eloquent flow of words, ranging over many subjects. In the evening the men became immersed in the projection of Saint Hubert's new book, for details of which he was drawing on the Sheik's knowledge, and long after Diana left them she could hear the two voices, both deep and musical, but Raoul's quicker and more emphatic, continuously rising and falling, till at last Raoul would go to his own tent and Gaston would come—noiseless and soft-toned as his master. Ordinarily the Sheik dispensed with him at night, but since his wound, the valet, as soon as he had himself recovered, had always been in attendance. Some nights he lingered talking, and others the Sheik dismissed him in a few minutes with only a curt word or two, and then there would be silence, and Diana would bury her face in her pillow and writhe in her desperate loneliness, sick with longing for the strong arms she had once dreaded and the kisses she had once loathed. He had slept in the outer room since his illness, and tossing feverishly on the soft cushions of the big empty bed in which she lay alone Diana had suffered the greatest humiliation she had yet experienced. He had never loved her, but now he did not even want her. She was useless to him. She was less than nothing to him. He had no need of her. She would lie awake listening wearily to the tiny chimes of the little clock with the bitter sense of her needlessness crushing her. She was humbled to the very dust by his indifference. The hours of loneliness in the room that was redolent with associations of him were filled with memories that tortured her. In her fitful sleep her dreams were agonies from which she awakened with shaking limbs and shuddering breath, and waking, her hand would stretch out groping to him till remembrance came with cruel vividness.

In the daytime, too, she had been much alone, for as soon as the Sheik was strong enough to sit in the saddle the two men had ridden far afield every day, visiting the outlying camps and drawing into Ahmed Ben Hassan's own hands again the affairs that had had to be relegated to the headmen.

At last Raoul had announced that his visit could be protracted no longer and that he must resume his journey to Morocco. He was going up to Oran and from there to Tangier by coasting steamer, collecting at Tangier a caravan for his expedition through Morocco. His decision once made he had speeded every means of getting away with a despatch that had almost suggested flight.

To Diana his going meant the hastening of a crisis that could not be put off much longer. The situation was becoming impossible. She had said good-bye to him the night before. She had never guessed the love she had inspired in him, and she wondered at the sadness in his eyes and his unaccustomed lack of words. He had wanted to say so much and he had said so little. She must never guess and Ahmed must never guess, so he played the game to the end. Only that night after she had left them the voices sounded in the adjoining room for a very short time. And this morning he and Ahmed Ben Hassan had ridden away at daybreak. She had not been asleep; she had heard them go, and almost she wished Raoul back, for with his presence the vague fear that assailed her seemed further away. The camp had seemed very lonely and the day very long.

She had ridden with Gaston, and hurried over her solitary dinner, and since then she had been waiting for the Sheik to come back. In what mood would he come? Since Raoul's announcement of his departure he had been more than usually taciturn and reserved. The book she held slipped at length on to the floor, and she let it he unheeded. The usual stillness of the desert seemed to-night unusually still-sinister even—and the silence was so intense that the sudden squeal of a stallion a little distance away made her start with madly racing heart Earlier in the evening a tom-tom had been going persistently in the men's lines, and later a native pipe had shrilled thinly in monotonous cadence; but she had grown accustomed to these sounds; they were of nightly occurrence and they soothed rather than irritated her, and when they stopped the quiet had become intensified to such a degree that she would have welcomed any sound. To-night her nerves were on edge. She was restless and excited, and her thoughts were chaos.

She was alone again at his mercy. What would his attitude be? Her hands clenched on her knees. At times she lay almost without breathing, straining to hear the faintest sound that would mean his return, and then again lest she should hear what she listened for. She longed for him passionately, and at the same time she was afraid, He had changed so much that there were moments when she had the curious feeling that it was a stranger who was coming back to her, and she both dreaded his coming and yearned for it with a singular combination of emotions. She looked round the room where she had at once suffered so much and been so happy with troubled eyes. She had never been nervous before, but to-night her imagination ran riot. There was electricity in the air which acted on her overstrung nerves. The little shaded lamp threw a circle of light round the bed, but left the rest of the room dim, and the dusky corners seemed full of odd new shadows that came and went illusively. Hangings and objects that were commonly familiar to her took on fantastic shapes that she watched nervously, till at last she brushed her hand across her eyes with a laugh of angry impatience. Was the love that had changed her so completely also making her a coward? Had even her common-sense been lost in the one great emotion that held her? She understood perfectly the change that had taken place in her. She had never had any illusions about herself, and had never attempted to curb the obstinate self-will and haughty pride that had characterized her. She thought of it curiously, her mind going back over the last few months that had changed her whole life. The last mad freak for which she had paid so dearly had been the outcome of an arrogant determination to have her own way in the face of all protests and advice. And with a greater arrogance and a determination stronger than her own Ahmed Ben Hassan had tamed her as he tamed the magnificent horses that he rode. He had been brutal and merciless, using no half measures, forcing her to obedience by sheer strength of will and compelling a complete submission. She thought of how she had feared and hated him with passionate intensity, until the hatred had been swamped by love as passionate and as intense. She did not know why she loved him, she had never been able to analyse the passion that held her so strongly, but she knew deep down in her heart that it went now far past his mere physical beauty and superb animal strength. She loved him blindly with a love that had killed her pride and brought her to his feet humbly obedient. All the love that had lain dormant in her heart for years was given to him. Body and soul she belonged to him. And the change within her was patent in her face, the haughty expression in her eyes had turned to a tender wistfulness, with a curious gleam of expectancy that flickered in them perpetually; the little mutinous mouth had lost the scornful curve. And with the complete change in her expression she was far more beautiful now than she had ever been. But with her love was the fear of him that she had learned during the first hours of her captivity, the physical fear that she had never lost, even during the happy weeks that had preceded the coming of Saint Hubert, and the greater fear that was with her always, and that at times drove her, with wide-stricken eyes, wildly to pace the tent as if to escape the shadow that hung over her—the fear of the time when he should tire of her. The thought racked her, and now, as always, she tried to put it from her, but it continued, persistently haunting her like a grim spectre. Always the same thought tortured her—he had not taken her for love. No higher motive than a passing fancy had stirred him. He had seen her, had wished for her and had taken her, and once in his power it had amused him to break her to his hand. She realised all that. And he had been honest, he had never pretended to love her. Often when the humour took him he could be gentle, as in those last few weeks, but gentleness was not love, and she had never seen the light that she longed for kindle in his eyes. His caresses had been passionate or careless with his mood. She did not know that he loved her. She had not been with him during the long hours of his delirium and she had not heard what Raoul de Saint Hubert had heard. And since his recovery his attitude of aloofness had augmented her fear. There seemed only one construction to put on his silence, and his studied and obvious avoidance of her. The passing fancy had passed. It was as if the fleeting passion he had had for her had been drained from him with the blood that flowed from the terrible wound he had received. He was tired of her and seeking for a means to disembarrass himself of her. Vaguely she felt that she had known this for weeks, but to-night was the first time that she had had courage to be frank with herself. It must be so. Everything pointed to it; the curious expression she had seen in his eyes and his constant heavy frown all confirmed it. She flung her arm across her eyes with a little moan. He was tired of her and the bottom had fallen out of her world. The instinct to fight for his love that had been so strong in her the day that Ibraheim Omair had captured her had died with the death of all her hopes. Her spirit was broken. She knew that her will was helpless against his, and with a fatalism that she had learned in the desert she accepted the inevitable with a crushed feeling of hopelessness.