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Page 20
"I want to marry, Mother of mine." He spoke in the Arabian tongue,
which, is so atune to love, "for behold love in the space of an hour
has grown within me. The floods of love drown me, the full-blossomed
trees of passion throw their shade upon the surging waters, and,
behold, the shade is that of tenderness. From the midst of the flood
where I am like to drown, I stretch my arms towards the rocky shore
where stands, looking towards me, the desire of my soul. Behold, my
eyes have seen her, and, behold, she is white, with hair like the
desert at sunset, and eyes even as the pools of Lebanon. She is as a
rod to be bent, and as a vase of perfume to be broken upon a night of
love. And I love her--her--out of all women--a doe to be hunted at
dawn, a mare to be spurred through the watches of the night------"
"Hugh!"
"I love her as my father loved you--my father, of whom I am the eldest
son--son of a highborn father, son of a highborn
mother--outcast--outcast!"
"For pity's sake, Hugh, stop!"
But the storm swept on, tearing the veil from the woman's eyes.
"Behold, I care not for the plucking of garden blossoms, therefore are
the beautiful, docile women of the East not for me, and the thorns upon
the hedge of convention defied, the barbed wires of racial distinction
keep me from the hedgerow flower, born of the wind and the sky and the
summer heat, which I covet.
"Among men I am nothing; I may not claim equality with the scavenger of
the Western streets; or with the donkey-boys of the Eastern bazaar.
Here I am served with fear and servility, being a man of riches; across
the waters, I may sun myself in the smiles of women as long as I have
no desire to wed." He suddenly seized the woman, holding her in a grip
of iron which left great bruises on her arms. "Do you know what she
called me, Mother?--that harlot of a line of noblemen--what she flung
in my teeth because, seeing in her a woman of the streets hidden under
the cloak of marriage, I refused to be tempted?"
There fell a terrible silence, and then a few whispered words.
"She called me a half-caste, Mother!--me--a half-caste!"
And the mother fell at her son's feet and bowed her head to the ground,
and he swept her up into his arms, raining kisses upon the piteous face.
"I don't blame you, sweetheart-mother," he said in English, whilst she
sobbed on his heart. "Am I not the fruit of a brave woman's great
love? Could there be anything finer than that? But my father in me
made my whole body clamour for the desert when I was in England; my
mother in me makes my heart throb in the desert for just one hour of
her cool, misty country, one hour on a hill-top in which to watch the
pearl-gray dawn. Dearest, dearest, don't sob so. It is a case of two
affirmatives making a negative; two great nationalities decried,
derided, rendered null and void in their offspring through the dictates
of those who, in religion, prate that we are all brothers. I have just
got to stick it, my mother, and life is not very long. But I shall
never marry." And as he spoke, Fate flicked a page of an illustrated
paper, which was but the volume of the Book of Life, and perhaps only a
mother's eyes would have noticed the sudden tightening of the hand upon
the marble of the balustrade as the man looked down into the pictured
beauty of the woman he loved.
And, having read what had been written, he knelt to receive his
mother's blessing.
"To the Tents of Purple and Gold, my darling?" she asked, smiling so
bravely to hide her breaking heart.
"Not just yet, dear; a bit further North first, I think."
"For long?"
"I do not know, dear. Bless me, O my mother."
She blessed him and called to him as he stood at the head of the marble
stairway:
"Come back to me, my son!"
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