Love, hate? Turmoil, peace? Life, death?
Which?
He lifted his head and looked straight across to the doorway. It showed black, with a background of purple, strewn with stars, and he sighed, unaccountably disappointed, and watched the benign Patriarch move slowly forward until he stood in front of the dais.
As he moved Helen moved forward and hid behind the velvet curtain hanging to one side of the door, and made another quick movement when the man she loved unknowingly looked straight at her, then stood quite still when Yussuf, without turning, raised his hand.
The Patriarch had begun to speak.
He bowed himself to the ground before Zarah, then stood upright, reminding Ralph Trenchard of a picture of Elijah he had loved to look at in the family Bible on account of the ravens with loaves of bread in their beaks, little recking in his baby understanding that the word raven stood for a certain village, or tribe of people, in the holy one’s environs.
The Patriarch’s fine voice and sonorous words rang through the building, causing the men to press closer still, and the Nubian to look up at Zarah. She looked down at him with a mocking smile, and then at the venerable old man, and lastly at Ralph Trenchard, who sat in amazement, looking from one to the other.
Happily Helen’s sharp cry was drowned in the Patriarch’s sonorous words as he offered the Arabian girl’s hand in marriage, with her wealth in cash, jewels, horses, camel and cattle, to the Englishman; happily everyone was too enthralled at the sight of the Englishman’s amazed face to look back to the doorway where she stood, her eyes flashing in a great anger, her heart beating heavily with fear.
Ralph Trenchard held up his hand.