Who wouldn’t?
And knowing as much about the Western mind as their mistress, were just as completely at sea as she.
Having seen nothing of Helen since the night when Al-Asad had whipped them into fury with the tales of her ingratitude and mocking, and with other and more interesting things than her death upon their minds, they had ceased to think about her; in fact, if it had not been for the hatred of their womenfolk, which had been roused by the Nubian’s tales of her mocking of them, some of them would have quite willingly sent her back to Hutah. They were too well-fed, too secure, for hate or love to endure. They worried about nothing, yet a certain restlessness and incertitude caused them to press about Ralph Trenchard when he walked, most friendly-wise, amongst them this day of festival; to lightly finger his clothes, to brush against him and to look at him in the strange, unseeing manner of the Oriental, lost in contemplation.
So mercurial became the atmosphere after the feasting in the great Hall, where the men filled the vacuum caused by abstinence with highly spiced viands and wines forbidden by the Prophet, that it required but a spark to set their minds ablaze.
Replete, they lay upon the floor chiding and tormenting the elder and more ugly of the women, who ran amongst them with braziers and coffee or with bowls of water for the washing of hands, whilst the younger ones sped hither-thither in the task of clearing away the débris of the feast before the advent of the mistress they so sorely dreaded.
Al-Asad sat cross-legged upon the floor near the steps leading up to the dais. Nude, save for the loin-cloth, he looked a giant amongst the men who, barefooted or sandalled, with black or striped kerchief round the head, lounged in the long shirt, open to the waist and bound about the middle by the leather thong, universally worn by the Arab. The Patriarch, wrapped in a cloak which added much to his dignity, sat upon a pile of cushions near the first of the columns. Blind Yussuf sat upon the floor against the wall, with “His Eyes” beside him.
Following upon the blind man’s whisper of Helen’s name one whole long week ago, the subsequent and strange behaviour of “His Eyes” had given Ralph Trenchard cause to think.
The dumb youth would touch him upon the arm to attract his attention, then touch his face and point insistently at the rock wall behind which Helen lived, and, illiterate, as are most Arabs, would shake his head when offered pencil and paper.
He had tried vainly by sign to acquaint the white man of the white woman’s presence in the camp, a piece of self-constituted diplomacy which would have much displeased Yussuf.
The mercurial atmosphere had affected Ralph Trenchard.