The Sheik

Saint Hubert paused a moment and nodded towards the Sheik. "Even after the child's birth she refused to give any account of herself. In that she was as firm as a rock; in everything else she was the frailest, gentlest little creature imaginable. She was very small and slender, with quantities of soft dark hair and beautiful great dark eyes that looked like a frightened fawn's. I have heard my father describe her many times, and I have seen the water-colour sketch he made of her—he was quite an amateur. Ahmed has it locked away somewhere. She nearly died when the baby was born, and she never recovered her strength. She made no complaint and never spoke of herself, and seemed quite content as long as the child was with her. She was a child herself in a great number of ways. It never seemed to occur to her that there was anything odd in her continued residence in the Sheik's camp. She had a tent and servants of her own, and the headman's wife was devoted to her. So were the rest of the camp for that matter. There was an element of the mysterious in her advent that had taken hold of the superstitious Arabs, and the baby was looked upon as something more than human and was adored by all the tribe. The Sheik himself, who had never looked twice at a woman before in his life, became passionately attached to her. My father says that he has never seen a man so madly in love as Ahmed Ben Hassan was with the strange white girl who had come so oddly into his life. He repeatedly implored her to marry him, and even my father, who has a horror of mixed marriages, was impelled to admit that any woman might have been happy with Ahmed Ben Hassan. She would not consent, though she would give no reason for her refusal, and the mystery that surrounded her remained as insolvable during the two years that she lived after the baby's birth as it had been on the day of her arrival. And her refusal made no difference with the Sheik. His devotion was wonderful. When she died my father was again visiting the camp. She knew that she was dying, and a few days before the end she told them her pitiful little history. She was the only daughter of one of the oldest noble houses in Spain, as poor as they were noble, and she had been married when she was seventeen to Lord Glencaryll, who had seen her with her parents in Nice. She had been married without any regard to her own wishes, and though she grew to love her husband she was always afraid of him. He had a terrible temper that was very easily roused, and, in those days, he also periodically drank a great deal more than was good for him, and when under the influence of drink behaved more like a devil than a man. She was very young and gauche, failing often to do what was required of her from mere nervousness. He was exigent and made no allowance for her youth and inexperience, and her life was one long torture. And yet in spite of it all she loved him. Even in speaking of it she insisted that the fault was hers, that the trouble was due to her stupidity, glossing over his brutality; in fact, it was not from her, but from inquiries that he made after her death, that my father learned most of what her life had been. It seems that Lord Glencaryll had taken her to Algiers and had wished to make a trip into the desert. He had been drinking heavily, and she did not dare to upset his plans by refusing to go with him or even by telling him how soon her child was going to be born. So she went with him, and one night something happened—what she would not say, but my father says he has never seen such a look of terror on any woman's face as she hurried over that part of her story. Whatever it was she waited until the camp was asleep and then slipped out into the desert, mad with fear, with no thought beyond a blind instinct of flight that drove her panic-stricken to face any danger rather than remain and undergo the misery she was flying from. She remembered hurrying onward, terrified by every sound and every shadow, frightened even by the blazing stars that seemed to be watching her and pointing out the way she had taken, until her mind was numb from utter weariness and she remembered nothing more until she awoke in the headman's tent. She had been afraid to say who she was lest she should be sent back to her husband. And with the birth of the child she became more than ever determined to preserve her secret. The boy should be spared the suffering she had herself endured, he should not be allowed to fall into the hands of his father to be at his mercy when the periodical drinking fits made him a very fiend of cruelty. She made my father and the Sheik swear that not until the boy grew to manhood should Lord Glencaryll be told of his existence. She wrote a letter for her husband which she gave into my father's keeping, together with her wedding ring, which had an inscription inside of it, and a miniature of Glencaryll which she had worn always hidden away from sight. She was very contrite with the Sheik, begging his forgiveness for the sorrow she had caused him and for keeping from his knowledge the fact that she was not free. She loved her husband loyally to the end, but the last few days that she lived the Sheik's devotion seemed to wake an answering tenderness in her heart. She was happiest when he was with her, and she died in his arms with his kisses on her lips. She left her boy in his keeping, and Ahmed Ben Hassan adopted him formally and made him his heir, giving him his own name—the hereditary name that the Sheik of the tribe has borne for generations. His word was law amongst his people, and there was no thought of any opposition to his wishes; further, the child was considered lucky, and his choice of successor was received with unanimous delight. All the passionate love that the Sheik had for the mother was transferred to the son. He idolised him, and the boy grew up believing that Ahmed Ben Hassan was his own father. With the traits he had inherited from his mother's people and with his desert upbringing he looked, as he does now, pure Arab. When he was fifteen my father induced the Sheik to send him to Paris to be educated. With his own European tendencies the Sheik had wished it also, but he could not bring himself to part with the boy before, and it was a tremendous wrench to let him go when he did. It was then that I first saw him. I was eighteen at the time, and had just begun my military training, but as my regiment was stationed in Paris I was able to be at home a good deal. He was such a handsome, high-spirited lad. Men mature very young in the desert and in many ways he was a great deal older than I was, in spite of my three years' seniority. But, of course, in other ways he was a perfect child. He had a fiendish temper and resented any check on his natural lawless inclinations. He loathed the restrictions that had to be put upon him and he hated the restraint of town life. He had been accustomed to having his own way in nearly everything, and to the constant adulation of the tribesmen, and he was not prepared to give to anybody else the obedience that he gave willingly to the Sheik. There were some very stormy times, and I never admired my father in anything so much as his handling of that young savage. His escapades were nerve-racking and his beaux yeux led him into endless scrapes. The only threat that reduced him to order was that of sending him home to the Sheik in disgrace. He would promise amendment and take himself off to the Bois to work off his superfluous energy on my father's horses—until he broke out again. But in spite of his temper and his diableries he was very lovable and everybody liked him.