CHAPTER XVI
“It is an hour’s poison.”—Arabic Proverb.
If Ralph Trenchard had been a guest instead of a prisoner, if he had been the men’s blood-brother in crime instead of an intruder likely, for a space, to become their leader by marriage through the love-madness of the Sheikh’s daughter, more solicitude could not have been shown for his amusement and welfare in the days which preceded the great feast at which he was to be tricked or publicly coerced into a betrothal with Zarah.
As a rider and a shot, he had won the men’s hearts; as a foreigner who menaced the peace of the community, he stood in hourly danger of his life, if he had but known it.
He did not know.
With his thoughts given entirely to the memory of the girl he loved, lacking, through her death, the spur necessary to send him hot-foot back upon the road to civilization, he had unquestioningly accepted the explanation Zarah had given him of the mistake her men had made, and which had ended in the disastrous battle, and had set himself to live but for the passing day. He had longed for adventure, he had found adventure, and when the novelty passed off and the salt of hunting with cheetahs, racing across the moonlit desert, pitting his skill with rifle and horse against the finest riders and shots in the world, lost its savour, then he would make tracks for his own land, where the fare, if somewhat lacking in spice, is figuratively and literally less calculated to upset the digestion.
Having forgotten the European half of Zarah’s parentage, and lacking woman’s intuition and keener psychological perception, he put her almost extravagant hospitality down to friendliness arising out of her friendship with Helen and her meeting with him in the past, just as he put the men’s apparent friendliness down to the perfect and world-famed hospitality of the Arab. He failed to grasp the fact that their intense interest in the sports arose from an almost savage determination to beat him, or to notice the ring of triumph in their shouting, or the bitterness in their eyes when either they triumphed or failed against him.
He came to look forward to his daily meeting with the men in the company of their mistress, well content, in his British detestation of all outward show of feeling, to hide his grievous hurt under a cloak of seeming indifference.
It was an adventure, and would end, as all adventure must, if a taste of salt is to be left on Life’s palate.