Part 18

"What did she go to Poëri's for?" said the Pharaoh to himself. "If Hora is really Tahoser, she loves Poëri. And yet, no! for she would not have fled thus, after having been received under his roof. I shall find her again, even if I have to upset the whole of Egypt from the Cataracts to the Delta."

Ra'hel, who from the threshold of the hut was watching Poëri go away, thought she heard a faint sigh. She listened; some dogs were baying to the moon, an owl uttered its doleful hoot, and the crocodiles moaned between the reeds of the river, imitating the cry of a child in distress. The young Israelite was about to re-enter the hut when a more distinct moan, which could not be attributed to the vague sounds of night, and which certainly came from a human breast, again struck her ear. Fearing some ambush, she drew cautiously near the place whence came the sound, and close to the wall of the hut she perceived in the blue transparent darkness the shape of a body fallen to the ground. The wet drapery outlined the limbs of the false Hora and betrayed her sex.

Ra'hel, seeing that she had to do with a fainting woman only, lost all fear and knelt by her, questioning the breathing of her lips and the beating of her heart; the one was just expiring on the pale lips, the other scarce beat under the cold breasts.

Feeling the water which had soaked the stranger's dress, Ra'hel thought at first that it was blood, and imagined that the woman must be the victim of a murder. In order to help her to better purpose, she called Thamar, her servant, and the two women carried Tahoser into the hut. They laid her upon the couch. Thamar held up a lamp, while Ra'hel, bending over the girl, looked for the wound; but no red streak showed upon the pallor of Tahoser, and her dress had no crimson stain.

They stripped off her wet garment, and cast over her a piece of striped wool, the gentle warmth of which soon restored her suspended circulation. Tahoser slowly opened her eyes and cast around her a terrified glance like that of a captured gazelle. It took her some time to regain control of her thoughts. She could not understand how she happened to be in that room, on the bed, where but a moment ago she had seen Poëri and the young Israelite seated side by side with clasped hands, speaking of love, while she, breathless, amazed, watched through the crack of the wall; but soon memory returned, and with it the feeling of her situation.

The light fell full on Ra'hel's face. Tahoser studied it silently, grieved to find her so perfectly beautiful. In vain, with all the fierceness of feminine jealousy, she tried to note defects in her; she felt herself not vanquished, but equalled; Ra'hel was the Hebrew ideal, as Tahoser was the Egyptian. Hard though it was to her loving heart, she was compelled to admit that Poëri's love was justified and well bestowed. The eyes with their full black eyelashes, the beautiful nose, the red mouth with its dazzling smile, the long, elegant oval face, the arms, full near the shoulders and ending in childish hands, the round, plump neck which, as it turned, formed folds more beautiful than necklaces of gems,--all this, set off by a quaint, exotic dress, was sure to please.

"I made a great mistake," said Tahoser to herself, "when I presented myself to Poëri in the humble attitude of a suppliant, trusting to my charms overpraised by flatterers. Fool that I was! I acted as a soldier who should go to war without breastplate or weapons. If I had appeared in all my splendour, covered with jewels and enamels, standing on my golden car followed by my numerous slaves, I might perhaps have touched his fancy, if not his heart."

"How do you feel now?" said Ra'hel in Egyptian to Tahoser; for by the outline of the face and the dressing of the hair, she had perceived that the maiden did not belong to the Israelitish race. The sound of her voice was sympathetic and sweet, and the foreign accent added greater grace to it.

Tahoser was touched in spite of herself, and replied, "I feel better. Your kind care will soon have restored me."

"Do not tire yourself with speaking," answered the Israelite, placing her hand on Tahoser's lips. "Try to sleep, to regain your strength. Thamar and I will watch over you."

Her agitation, the swim across the Nile, the long walk through the poor quarters of Thebes, had wearied out Petamounoph's daughter; her delicate frame was exhausted, and soon her long lashes closed, forming a dark semicircle upon her cheeks flushed with fever. Sleep came to her, but broken, restless, distorted by strange dreams, troubled by threatening hallucinations; nervous shivers made the sleeper start, and broken words, replying to the dream dialogue, were spoken by the half-opened lips.

Seated at the bed head, Ra'hel followed the changes in the features of Tahoser; troubled when she saw them contract and fill with grief, quieted again when the girl calmed down. Thamar, crouching beside her mistress, was also watching the priest's daughter, but her face expressed less kindliness. Coarse instincts showed in the wrinkles of her brow, pressed down by the broad band of the Hebrew head-dress; her eyes, still bright in spite of her age, sparkled with curious questionings in their brown and wrinkled orbits; her bony nose, shining and curved like a vulture's beak, seemed to scent out secrets; and her lips, slightly moving, appeared to be framing interrogations.

She was very much concerned about this stranger picked up at the door of the hut. Whence came she? How did she happen to be there? What was her purpose? Who could she be? Such were the questions which Thamar asked herself, and to which, very regretfully, she could find no satisfactory replies. Besides, Thamar, like all old women, was prejudiced against beauty, and in this respect Tahoser proved very unpleasant to her. The faithful servant forgave beauty in her mistress only; for her good looks she considered as her property, and she was proud and jealous of them.

Seeing that Ra'hel kept silence, the old woman rose and sat down near her, and winking her eyes, the brown lids of which rose and fell like a bat's wing, she whispered in the Hebrew tongue, "Mistress, nothing good will come of this woman."

"Why do you think so, Thamar?" answered Ra'hel, in the same low tone and using the same language.

"It is strange," went on the suspicious Thamar, "that she should have fainted there, and not elsewhere."

"She fell at the spot where weakness came upon her."

The old woman shook her head doubtfully.

"Do you suppose," said Poëri's beloved, "that her faint was simulated? The dissector might have cut her side with his sharp stone, so like a dead body did she seem. Her dull eyes, her pale lips, her pallid cheeks, her limp limbs, her skin as cold as that of the dead,--these things cannot be counterfeited."

"No, doubtless," replied Thamar, "although there are women clever enough to feign all these symptoms, for some reason or another, so skilfully as to deceive the most clear-sighted. I believe that the maiden had swooned, as a matter of fact."

"Then what are you suspicious of?"

"How did she happen to be there in the middle of the night; in this distant quarter inhabited only by the poor captives of our tribe whom the cruel Pharaoh employs in making brick, and to whom he refuses the straw necessary to burn the bricks? What motive brought that Egyptian woman to our wretched huts? Why was her garment soaking wet, as if she had just emerged from a pool or from the river?"

"I know no more than you do," replied Ra'hel.

"Suppose she were a spy of our masters'," said the old woman, whose fierce eyes were lighted up with hatred. "Great events are preparing,--who knows whether the alarm has not been given?"

"How could that young girl, ill as she is, hurt us? She is in our hands, weak, alone, ill. Besides, we can, at the least suspicious sign, keep her prisoner until the day of deliverance."

"In any case, she is not to be trusted. See how delicate and soft are her hands!"

And old Thamar raised one of the arms of the sleeping Tahoser.

"In what respect can the fineness of her skin endanger us?"