“My hotel!” Mr. Lomax commented. “I reckon you’re all right.”
So Mohammedan and Christian strode off together across the Sultana Bridge, of which the uneven timbers were creaking with each undulation of its ever-plashing pontoons. Except themselves, no living thing was on it other than gaunt dogs, which flashed snarling tusks at them as they groped through the gathering twilight. Near the shore Hosein whistled. Forthwith his negro bond-servant, Nakir, met them and bore a torch before them to the Theatre Osmaniyeh, where actresses from Paris were already in their final pirouettes. An infinite sadness possessed Page Lomax, as he beheld these daughters of Europe dancing before the sons of Asia, but his dragoman muttered:
“I brought you not hither to witness the antics of those painted harlots. My slave, Zaidee, will follow them.”
While Hosein was speaking, Nakir set on the stage a wicker basket, whence a brown and yellow cobra de capello wriggled forth. Hissing with wrath, it sat up on its tail and spread its hood, embroidered with the spectacles of Buddha. On its slender girth each false scale was gleaming, as the creature coiled and, opening its savage mouth, bared those bent fangs of which a mere scratch bestows that rest where no dreams lift the tent-flap. Then Zaidee appeared. Timing her pace to the weird tune throbbing from the reed between her lips, she neared the viper, which launched itself viciously at her. But an invisible force halted the snake. Falling in with the rhythm of her flute, it wavered to and fro—a flame flickering in the wind—until the damsel stilled her strains, when it lay quiet, so tamed that she wound it as a girdle round her waist.
“Her term of hire expires tonight,” quoth Hosein, “And I am about convoying her to my villa. Would you spend some time in the home of a Turk? Nakir, saddle Al Borak for Mr. Lomax.”
Enveloped in a cloak but with no veiling yashmak, Zaidee was on her palfry when they joined her. As Hosein turned to his own stirrup, the girl shook her raven tresses at the newcomer and pointed at the gate, with a gesture, which said: “Leave us!” He might have done so, had he not intercepted the look which Nakir was bending on the maiden, as, with a devilish grin, which distorted his sooty visage, he tapped the whip at his belt. That was enough for Page Lomax. With generous folly, he bestrode his horse for the adventure. On their arrival at the house, Zaidee disappeared behind that ebony door, through which no male other than Hosein might pass even in his thoughts. Again the bold young man was foolhardy, for he gazed after her as one in a dream, from which, however, he was roused by Nakir, who was striding toward him with an executioner’s bow-string in his hand. But here Hosein interposed.
“Put up your cord,” said he. “Mr. Lomax meant no offense. He is unfamiliar with our Eastern etiquette, that’s all. The Ethiop,” he continued, this time speaking to his guest, “shall guide you to your bed.”
The young man had fallen into a fitful doze, when he heard the pipe of Zaidee, followed by the rattle of small pebbles against his casement. An instant later, Nakir growled out hoarse words, which the listener could not understand. But the sound of heavy blows, under which Zaidee’s voice leapt into shrieks, then fell to sobs, needed no knowledge of a foreign tongue to be understood. Page Lomax rushed to the window. Jerking it open, he leaned out, but he could discern no one and the unbroken stillness seemed deathly to his overwrought nerves.
To his great relief, Hosein’s maid floated in before them at breakfast the next morning. She came to dance, while they ate, as the raiment which she wore showed but too plainly to even the inexperienced eye of the American. From beneath a veil of fleecy gauze, which floated back freely instead of hiding her face (as is the custom with Moslem women), her loose locks rolled their midnight over her shoulders. Her bell-shaped sleeves had wrinkled back from bare uplifted arms, on which silver chains were throbbing in unison with the rising and falling of her white bust, caught in the snare of the ample V in her tight scarlet jacket. Below that, a third of her supple figure’s living satin blushed in full sight above the dark-green band, which clasped in place her divided skirt of pearly transparent stuff shimmering down thence to her naked round ankles. For a brief space the girl drooped her head and Page Lomax saw red shame feeding on her white cheek, while up from the dark depths of her mysterious eyes bitter tears were welling. But now hidden music swelled into a loud insistent fugue. With a faint sigh, almost a sob, Zaidee drifted forward as slowly and as softly as a summer cloud thro’ picture after picture of that old, old pantomime of the Orient, which illustrates the one text, true in every creed, “Male and female created He them.” With all his heart uncovered in his gaze, the young man hung on her every motion until, with a brusque finale, she snapped in twain the thread of wedded harmony and movement with the whirling gesture of one hand pointed toward the threshold. Her agonized glance searched his very brain. Her writhing lips syllabled the word, “Depart!” Then she vanished.
To Hosein, this posturing to music was nothing new. With a strange and baffling smile, he had been scrutinizing Page Lomax, instead of Zaidee. Now he leaned toward him.