Three years later Mercedes died, leaving in her stead a woman-child, upon whom the Sheikh poured out the adoration of his stricken heart. A strange, quiet woman-child, who had neither cried nor laughed as she had lain in her father’s arms, staring past him out of tawny, opalescent eyes.
And as she grew, beautiful, cruel, and as relentless as the desert to which she belonged, so did unrest and fear and passion grow in the erstwhile happy community, until women ran and seized their children so that her shadow should not fall upon them, prisoners shrank at sight or sound of her, and the men, hating her in their hearts yet hypnotized by her beauty and her great daring, whispered amongst themselves as they questioned the one, the other, as to the next whim or new punishment her ungovernable temperament would invent.
For an Arabian she was well educated. Vain as a peacock, she forced herself, loathing it the while, to take advantage of every opportunity of learning which presented itself, solely with the object of shining before the men, who, with, the exception of one nicknamed the Patriarch, were as illiterate as most Arabs are.
A learned Armenian, a Spaniard and a Frenchman, made prisoners through an injudicious display of wealth, had each had the sentence of heavy ransom commuted to that of two years’ instruction to the Sheikh’s almost ungovernable daughter.
The Jew had taught her to read and to write whilst thoroughly appreciating his robber-host’s hearty hospitality; the Spaniard had taught her his language and the dances of his country whilst enjoying the wild life he had led between lessons; the Frenchman had taught her his language and the use of the foils, and had asked for her hand in marriage, to be thoroughly surprised at a blunt refusal.
She read everything she could get hold of, lining the reconstructed walls of two cells, which had once echoed the prayers and witnessed the austerities of the holy monks, with books brought by caravan from the port of Jiddah. She could eat quite nicely with a knife and fork and manipulate a finger napkin with some dexterity, but showed a preference for her fingers—which she wiped upon the carpet or by digging them into the hot sand—and her splendid white teeth for the process of separating meat from bone.
From her father she undoubtedly came by her magnificent horsemanship and surpassing skill in the use of weapons of self-defence.
He delighted in her physical training, spending hours with her either in a room which had been fitted up as a gymnasium after the counselling of the Frenchman; or on the plateau, pitting her skill with spear, rifle and revolver against that of youths of her own age; or away in the desert riding with the magnificent horses for which he had become famous throughout the Peninsula.
Trained to a hair, with a ripple of muscle under the velvety, creamy skin which the sun barely bronzed, she could, at last, throw an unbroken horse with any of her father’s followers, or ride it bare-back out into the mystery of the terrible desert, heedless of its efforts to dismount her, driving it farther and farther with little golden spurs until, with its pride shattered and its heart almost broken, she would race it back, utterly spent, to the shade of the mountains.
She joined the enthusiastic men in the sports they got up amongst themselves to pass the monotony of leisure hours, or hunted with them for the sheer joy of killing, laughing with delight when she brought down ostrich or gazelle, firing at carrion for the sole purpose of keeping her hand in, leaving the birds to die where they fell.