"To Laban?" she asked, looking up.
"No, my niece. Laban would not wish as a wife one who has been the mistress of an Egyptian, but to play your part, however humble, in the fortunes of our people."
"I am glad that Laban does not wish what he never could obtain, my uncle. Tell me, I pray you, why should I hearken to this prayer, or this command?"
"For a good reason, Niece—that your life hangs on it. Heretofore you have been suffered to take your heart's desire. But if you bide in Egypt where you have no longer a mission to fulfil, having done all that was sought of you in keeping with the mind of your lover, the Prince Seti, true to the cause of Israel, you will surely die."
"You mean that our people will kill me?"
"No, not our people. Still you will die."
She took a step towards him, and looked him in the eyes.
"You are certain that I shall die, my uncle?"
"I am, or at least others are certain."
Now she laughed; it was the first time I had seen her laugh for several moons.
"Then I will stay here," she said.
Jabez stared at her.
"I thought that you loved this Egyptian, who indeed is worthy of any woman's love," he muttered into his beard.
"Perhaps it is because I love him that I wish to die. I have given him all I have to give; there is nothing left of my poor treasure except what will bring trouble and misfortune on his head. Therefore the greater the love—and it is more great than all those pyramids massed to one—the greater the need that it should be buried for a while. Do you understand?"
He shook his head.
"I understand only that you are a very strange woman, different from any other that I have known."
"My child, who was slain with the rest, was all the world to me, and I would be where he is. Do you understand now?"
"You would leave your life, in which, being young, you may have more children, to lie in a tomb with your dead son?" he asked slowly, like one astonished.
"I only care for life while it can serve him whom I love, and if a day comes when he sits upon the throne how will a daughter of the hated Israelites serve him then? Also I do not wish for more children. Living or dead, he that is gone owns all my heart; there is no room in it for others. That love at least is pure and perfect, and having been embalmed by death, can never change. Moreover, it is not in a tomb that I shall lie with him, or so I believe. The faith of these Egyptians which we despise tells of a life eternal in the heavens, and thither I would go to seek that which is lost, and to wait that which is left behind awhile."
"Ah!" said Jabez. "For my part I do not trouble myself with these problems, who find in a life temporal on the earth enough to fill my thoughts and hands. Yet, Merapi, you are a rebel, and whether in heaven or on earth, how are rebels received by the king against whom they have rebelled?"
"You say I am rebel," she said, turning on him with flashing eyes. "Why? Because I would not dishonour myself by marrying a man I hate, one also who is a murderer, and because while I live I will not desert a man whom I love to return to those who have done me naught but evil. Did God then make women to be sold like cattle of the field for the pleasure and the profit of him who can pay the highest?"
"It seems so," said Jabez, spreading out his hands.
"It seems that you think so, who fashion God as you would wish him to be, but for my part I do not believe it, and if I did, I should seek another king. My uncle, I appeal from the priest and the elder to That which made both them and me, and by Its judgment I will stand or fall."
"Always a very dangerous thing to do," reflected Jabez aloud, "since the priest is apt to take the law into his own hands before the cause can be pleaded elsewhere. Still, who am I that I should set up my reasonings against one who can grind Amon to powder in his own sanctuary, and who therefore may have warrant for all she thinks and does?"
Merapi stamped her foot.
"You know well it was you who brought me the command to dare the god Amon in his temple. It was not I——" she began.
"I do know," replied Jabez waving his hand. "I know also that is what every wizard says, whatever his nation or his gods, and what no one ever believes. Thus because, having faith, you obeyed the command and through you Amon was smitten, among both the Israelites and the Egyptians you are held to be the greatest sorceress that has looked upon the Nile, and that is a dangerous repute, my niece."
"One to which I lay no claim, and never sought."
"Just so, but which all the same has come to you. Well, knowing as without doubt you do all that will soon befall in Egypt, and having been warned, if you needed warning, of the danger with which you yourself are threatened, you still refuse to obey this second command which it is my duty to deliver to you?"
"I refuse."
"Then on your own head be it, and farewell. Oh! I would add that there is a certain property in cattle, and the fruit of lands which descends to you from your father. In the event of your death——"
"Take it all, uncle, and may it prosper you. Farewell."
"A great woman, friend Ana, and a beautiful," said the old Hebrew, after he had watched her go. "I grieve that I shall never see her again, and, indeed, that no one will see her for very long; for, remember, she is my niece of whom I am fond. Now I too must be going, having completed my errand. All good fortune to you, Ana. You are no longer a soldier, are you? No? Believe me, it is as well, as you will learn. My homage to the Prince. Think of me at times, when you grow old, and not unkindly, seeing that I have served you as best I could, and your master also, who I hope will soon find again that which he lost awhile ago."
"Her Highness, Princess Userti," I suggested.
"The Princess Userti among other things, Ana. Tell the Prince, if he should deem them costly, that those horses which I sold him are really of the finest Syrian blood, and of a strain that my family has owned for generations. If you should chance to have any friend whose welfare you desire, let him not go into the desert soldiering during the next few moons, especially if Pharaoh be in command. Nay, I know nothing, but it is a season of great storm. Farewell, friend Ana, and again farewell."
"Now what did he mean by that?" thought I to myself, as I departed to make my report to Seti. But no answer to the question rose in my mind.
Very soon I began to understand. It appeared that at length the Israelites were leaving Egypt, a vast horde of them, and with them tens of thousands of Arabs of various tribes who worshipped their god and were, some of them, descended from the people of the Hyksos, the shepherds who once ruled in Egypt. That this was true was proved to us by the tidings which reached us that all the Hebrew women who dwelt in Memphis, even those of them who were married to Egyptians, had departed from the city, leaving behind them their men and sometimes their children. Indeed, before these went, certain of them who had been friends visited Merapi, and asked her if she were not coming also. She shook her head as she replied:
"Why do you go? Are you so fond of journeyings in the desert that for the sake of them you are ready never again to look upon the men you love and the children of your bodies?"
"No, Lady," they answered, weeping. "We are happy here in white-walled Memphis and here, listening to the murmur of the Nile, we would grow old and die, rather than strive to keep house in some desert tent with a stranger or alone. Yet fear drives us hence."
"Fear of what?"
"Of the Egyptians who, when they come to understand all that they have suffered at our hands in return for the wealth and shelter which they have given us for many generations, whereby we have grown from a handful into a great people, will certainly kill any Israelite whom they find left