The baying of the dogs from the kennels could be heard in the silence that fell, whilst the men tugged at each other’s sleeves and surreptitiously made bets upon his answer to the proposition.
He repeated the Patriarch’s proposal word for word, then turned to Zarah, speaking slowly, so that all should understand.
“Have I understood correctly? Yon old man, who, he says, stands to you in place of a father, proposes that I—I, an Englishman, a foreigner, should marry you, an Arabian and a Mohammedan. That I should live here with you and help you rule these fine men of yours, who could learn nothing from me. That I should give up my country, for which I fought, my people whom I love, to become one of a nation whose blood is not my blood, nor ways my ways. Is that so?”
Zarah’s hands lay still on the crystal knobs of her ivory chair as she answered, a dull crimson slowly flushing her face:
“Verily,” she replied, holding up her hand to ensure silence. “It is as you say. It is our custom in Arabia, though of a truth it is not customary for the maid to be present at the bargaining.”
She laughed suddenly, sweetly, and held out her hands, whilst her words beat like hammers upon Helen’s brain. “For me, he who stands to me as father offers you my hand in marriage, with my wealth, my people, my horses, all I possess, asking naught of you in return. I have the blood of Europe in my veins, I have learned the customs and the speech of the white races, even of my mother’s race. I am not ill-favoured, nor too much wanting in wit. I——” Her voice changed as the song of the summer breeze might change to the warning of the coming storm. “I wait for your answer before my men, who desire naught but my happiness and, with mine, their own.”
At the veiled threat in the last words Ralph Trenchard turned and looked at the men, his dominant jaw out-thrust, his mouth a line of steel.
So this was the meaning of the feasting, the watchfulness, the tension, the solicitude.
The horror of it all.