"Is this a Mohammedan feast day? I didn't know it."
"No, but it was once a feast day among my mother's followers." "What was the occasion?" She was waiting for me to ask this. "Oh, just my birthday."
It would be a base slave indeed who, looking at her and hearing her announcement, would not feel a glowing of heart.
"It was just as proper for the Tuareg to celebrate it as for the Spartans to celebrate the birthday of Helen of Troy."
"You think I've not heard of her, but I have. The Tuaregs are pure Berbers"—this was no longer quite true—"and long ago we had much to do with the Greeks and the Romans, and their stories are written down in Tamashek and many maidens know them. That isn't what I started to say. I wonder how the Tuareg—those who came with my mother—keep my birthday now."
I could not answer lightly. I remembered too well a girl of thirteen cast away on the merciless desert.
"I think many tears will fall, Isabel Gazelle. But they will be dried when you return, the bride of a chief's son."
"It comes to me, Omar, that until then we are both exiles from our native lands, you from Frankistan, I from Tuaregstan." "Now that is so."
"While among the Beni Kabir, we will do even as they, in their sight, but when we are away from their kraals, or alone together, can't we do as we see fit?"
"There's no harm in that—perhaps." "You've not asked me, Omar, how old I am today." "I don't need to ask. You're sixteen."
"More than once, you've spoken of me as a child. Dare you do so any more?"
"Nay, lilla Kabeira (great lady)."
"Yet I'm in no haste to marry. The women of the Tuareg are not given in marriage by their fathers when they are little children! We choose our husbands after wooing—being wooed by many young warriors, and often a maiden is eighteen before she setties to the loom. Is it the same in Frankistan?"
"It is something the same. Some of our maidens have many wooers, and take a good while to make their choice."
"Now sometimes we woo for the pleasure of wooing, knowing that the youth is too lowly or hasn't enough camels and goats and donkeys to make a good match." Isabel's voice trembled slightly.
"Does a princess of the Tuareg ever woo—or let herself be wooed—by a slave?" I asked.
"I could tell you a story of a young slave, most good to look upon, who fell in love with his master's daughter—"
"Would that I were young and good to look upon!"
"It's true you're not a callow youth. I know you're old enough to be my father. Also your shoulders are too broad for your gaunt legs and arms—to judge from what I can see of them—and no doubt your whole form is ungainly. But didn't the sheik's beautiful mare, Farishti, yield to the great raw-boned El Shermoot?"
I could not resist one wondering glance into Isabel's face. It was grave, and her eyes were wide and bright. I had named her Gazelle because of her litheness and lightness and long clean limbs and melting eyes, but it did not begin to do her justice, for there is no such beauty within human imagination as the beauty of woman, and if I should take the wings of morning to all countries and climes, I would find thousands upon thousands who equaled her in this, but few who surpassed her. At present she squatted on her heels by a dying fire of thorn-wood in the hollow heart of ultimate desolation.
But a change had come over her since she had first come up beside me. She was no longer flirtatious, and some very real emotion wrought in her was struggling for outlet.
"Farishti did so yield," I answered, quietly waiting.
"Omar, in spite of your years, in spite of you being so gaunt and gangling, I wouldn't be angry if you made love to me."
Then as I was catching my breath to answer, she gave a little wail.
"Liar that I am! The truth is not in me, Omar, and you should take a stick and beat me, but do not, for then I must kill you, and go down to hell. It's not always in spite of those things. Sometimes it's because of those things. Your form is like an old lean Hon's—nay, like a griffin's with a lion's chest and head and eagle's legs, and your face carved of rock. Often I can't stand to look at you, yet not once but many times you come to me in my sleep and give me lustful dreams. Omar, I'll save my maidenhead for an elder's son, as is meet. He'll be young and tall and shapely, and laughter and song will be in his mouth, and his face will shine in the sun. With him I may return, his kinsmen riding with us, to the encampments of the Kel Innek, and take my mother's followers and my flocks and herds, and cast my father's lie into his teeth. You will go from me some day, and I can't cook meat for a shadow and sleep beside a ghost. But you said the maids in Frankistan are often wooed by many youths before they make their choice. I can't choose you, Omar, but can't you treat me as though I might? Is there any harm in playing I'm a maiden of Frankistan you want for your wife? Play like my other wooers are richer in camels and sheep, and garments of gold and silver cloth, and many are youths of my own age, and some are as good to look upon as Ishmael ibn Abdul, the singer, but you were born the equal of any—haven't you told me so?—and what you lack in riches and youth and handsomeness you can make up in ardor!"
I took both of her long, dusky hands, their pointed fingers more shapely than hardly any under palace lamps.
"Isabel Gazelle, wouldn't you rather have Ishmael ibn Abdul woo you? He'll sing songs to you that the Beni Kabir will remember a thousand and one years."
"He makes songs in my ears, but you make them in my heart. My heart beats in song when you are near. Don't turn from me any more, as though I was a child, or ugly. If you do, I can't go with you and the old hostler any more, or eat from your bowl, or sleep beside your fire, and I must stay in a kraal of thorn-bush, out of your sight, until the sheik sends me a husband who'll take me away."
"Isabel, let me speak."
"Speak, then."
"You're not in the tents of the Tuareg, whose daughters make free before marriage, but a ward of the Bedouin. You know what store a Bedouin bridegroom sets upon the virginity of his bride."
"I told you I would save—"
"Fire set in the thorn may spread to the kraals. That is a saying of the desert, and here's a stanza from a desert song you know well. 'If you teach me to love the warm wild honey of Bornu, how will I fare on the hungry hills of Borku?'"
"We Tuareg women aren't afraid of fire. The women of Bornu tattoo their faces and are most ugly, and the hills of Borku grow camel thorn and good grass. You are a farengi and a Frank." Then, hanging her head in contrition, "Nay, you found me on the desert and I rode behind you, but you make too much of a few kisses, Omar."
"Do I? We shall see."
Instead I had made too little of them, as I found out when I took them. For Isabel looked wildly into my face and fled, white and weeping.
My next few days were days of waiting—but not for Kismet to move. I was not a Bedouin in heart and soul—I could never embrace Islam—Omar the slave was still the Yankee Homer Whitman. Fatalism is a comforting philosophy, but I was suckled in a more stern creed. Nor was I waiting for any sign or sending to light my way.
It was much simpler than any of these. I waited for Isabel to chart a course. That charting would be by instinct. She knew the desert and its people like her own hand. She had a great capacity to survive—the impulse to conquer and live. She would take risks, but not the kind taken by a fool—of great cost if lost, if won, of trifling gain.
In about a fortnight we came on good grass out from the Wells of El Gamar and drove the herds there. The name meant the Rising Moon, a term of endearment, implying great beauty, among the Arabs, and I wondered idly how it came to be applied to some unreliable wells until I saw tonight's moon coming up above basalt outcroppings eastward of the encampment. One night's sail from full, she shone with an intensity that amazed and charmed me. Perhaps the evening air was unusually dry and free from dust in this area, causing the round lamp of burnished silver to hang so near.