LITMIR.BIZ

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a spring of silver water, and Ruark leaped from his steed, and Bhanavar from hers, and they performed their ablutions by that spring, and ate and drank, and watered their steeds. While they were there Bhanavar lifted her eyes to Ruark, and said, ‘Whither takest thou me, O my Chief?’

      His brow was stern, and he answered, ‘Surely to the dwelling of thy tribe.’

      Then she wept, and pulled her veil close, murmuring, ‘‘Tis well!’

      They spake no further, and pursued their journey toward the mountains and across the desert that was as a sea asleep in the blazing heat, and the sun till his setting threw no shade upon the sands bigger than what was broad above them. By the beams of the growing moon they entered the first gorge of the mountains. Here they relaxed the swiftness of their pace, picking their way over broken rocks and stunted shrubs, and the mesh of spotted creeping plants; all around them in shadow a freshness of noisy rivulets and cool scents of flowers, asphodel and rose blooming in plots from the crevices of the crags. These, as the troop advanced, wound and widened, gradually receding, and their summits, which were silver in the moonlight, took in the distance a robe of purple, and the sides of the mountains were rounded away in purple beyond a space of emerald pasture. Now, Ruark beheld the heaviness of Bhanavar, and that she drooped in her seat, and he halted her by a cave at the foot of the mountains, browed with white broom. Before it, over grass and cresses, ran a rill, a branch from others, larger ones, that went hurrying from the heights to feed the meadows below, and Bhanavar dipped her hand in the rill, and thought, ‘I am no more as thou, rill of the mountain, but a desert thing! Thy way is forward, thy end before thee; but I go this way and that; my end is dark to me; not a life is mine that will have its close kissing the cold cheeks of the saffron-crocus. Cold art thou, and I—flames! They that lean to thee are refreshed, they that touch me perish.’ Then she looked forth on the stars that were above the purple heights, and the blushes of inner heaven that streamed up the sky, and a fear of meeting the eyes of her kindred possessed her, and she cried out to Ruark, ‘O Chief of the Beni-Asser, must this be? and is there no help for it, but that I return among them that look on me basely?’

      Ruark stooped to her and said, ‘Tell me thy name.’

      She answered, ‘Bhanavar is my name with that people.’

      And he whispered, ‘Surely when they speak of thee they say not Bhanavar solely, but Bhanavar the Beautiful?’

      She started and sought the eye of the Chief, and it was fixed on her face in a softened light, as if his soul had said that thing. Then she sighed, and exclaimed, ‘Unhappy are the beautiful! born to misery! Allah dressed them in his grace and favour for their certain wretchedness! Lo, their countenances are as the sun, their existence as the desert; barren are they in fruits and waters, a snare to themselves and to others!’

      Now, the Chief leaned to her yet nearer, saying, ‘Show me the Jewel.’

      Bhanavar caught up her hands and clenched them, and she cried bitterly, ‘‘Tis known to thee! She told thee, and there be none that know it not!’

      Arising, she thrust her hand into her bosom, and held forth the Jewel in the palm of her white hand. When Ruark beheld the marvel of the Jewel, and the redness moving in it as of a panting heart, and the flashing eye of fire that it was, and all its glory, he cried, ‘It was indeed a Jewel for queens to covet from the Serpent, and a prize the noblest might risk all to win as a gift for thee.’

      Then she said, ‘Thy voice is friendly with me, O Ruark! and thou scornest not the creature that I am. Counsel me as to my dealing with the Jewel.’

      Surely the eyes of the Chief met the eyes of Bhanavar as when the brightest stars of midnight are doubled in a clear dark lake, and he sang in measured music:

           ‘Shall I counsel the moon in her ascending?

         Stay under that tall palm-tree through the night;

           Rest on the mountain-slope

           By the couching antelope,

         O thou enthroned supremacy of light!

          And for ever the lustre thou art lending,

         Lean on the fair long brook that leaps and leaps,—

           Silvery leaps and falls.

           Hang by the mountain walls,

         Moon! and arise no more to crown the steeps,

          For a danger and dolour is thy wending!

      And, O Bhanavar, Bhanavar the Beautiful! shall I counsel thee, moon of loveliness,—bright, full, perfect moon!—counsel thee not to ascend and be seen and worshipped of men, sitting above them in majesty, thou that art thyself the Jewel beyond price? Wah! What if thou cast it from thee?—thy beauty remaineth!’

      And Bhanavar smote her palms in the moonlight, and exclaimed, ‘How then shall I escape this in me, which is a curse to them that approach me?’

      And he replied:

           Long we the less for the pearl of the sea

           Because in its depths there ‘s the death we flee?

           Long we the less, the less, woe’s me!

           Because thou art deathly,—the less for thee?

      She sang aloud among the rocks and the caves and the illumined waters:

           Destiny! Destiny! why am I so dark?

            I that have beauty and love to be fair.

           Destiny! Destiny! am I but a spark

            Track’d under heaven in flames and despair?

           Destiny! Destiny! why am I desired

            Thus like a poisonous fruit, deadly sweet?

           Destiny! Destiny! lo, my soul is tired,

            Make me thy plaything no more, I entreat!

      Ruark laughed low, and said, ‘What is this dread of Rukrooth my mother which weigheth on thee but silliness! For she saw thee willing to do well by her; and thou with thy Jewel, O Bhanavar, do thou but well by thyself, and there will be no woman such as thou in power and excellence of endowments, as there is nowhere one such as thou in beauty.’ Then he sighed to her, ‘Dare I look up to thee, O my Queen of Serpents?’ And he breathed as one that is losing breath, and the words came from him, ‘My soul is thine!’

      When she heard him say this, great trouble was on the damsel, for his voice was not the voice of Zurvan her betrothed; and she remembered the sorrow of Rukrooth. She would have fled from him, but a dread of the displeasure of the Chief restrained her, knowing Ruark a soul of wrath. Her eyelids dropped and the Chief gazed on her eagerly, and sang in a passion of praises of her; the fires of his love had a tongue, his speech was a torrent of flame at the feet of the damsel. And Bhanavar exclaimed, ‘Oh, what am I, what am I, who have slain my love, my lover!—that one should love me and call on me for love? My life is a long weeping for him! Death is my wooer!’

      Ruark still pleaded with her, and she said in fair gentleness, ‘Speak not of it now in the freshness of my grief! Other times and seasons are there. My soul is but newly widowed!’

      Fierce was the eye of the Chief, and he sprang up, crying, ‘By the life of my head, I know thy wiles and the reading of these delays: but I’ll never leave thee, nor lose sight of thee, Bhanavar! And think not to fly from me, thou subtle, brilliant Serpent! for thy track is my track, and thy condition my condition, and thy fate my fate. By Allah! this is so.’

      Then he strode from her swiftly, and called to his Arabs. They had kindled a fire to roast the flesh of a buffalo, slaughtered by them from among a herd, and were laughing and singing beside the flames of the fire. So by the direction of their Chief the Arabs brought slices of sweet buffalo-flesh to Bhanavar, with cakes of grain: and Bhanavar ate alone, and drank from the waters before her. Then they laid for her a couch within the cave, and the aching of her spirit

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