The Shaving of Shagpat, George Meredith [popular e readers TXT] 📗

to him, and grasped strongly the tuft of hair hanging forward between his ears, and traced between his fine eyes a figure of the crescent with his forenail, and the horse ceased plunging, and was gentle as a colt by its mother’s side, and suffered Shibli Bagarag to bestride him, and spurn him with his heel to speed, and bore him fleetly across the fair length of the golden meadows to where Noorna bin Noorka sat awaiting him. She uttered a cry of welcome, saying, “This is achieved with diligence and skill, O my betrothed! and on thy right wrist I mark strength like a sleeping leopard, and the children of Aklis will not resist thee.”

So she bade him alight from the horse, but he said, “Nay.” And she called to him again to alight, but he cried, “I will not alight from him! By Allah! such a bounding wave of bliss have I never yet had beneath me, and I will give him rein once again; as the poet says:

“ ‘Divinely rings the rushing air
When I am on my mettled mare:
When fast along the plains we fly,
A creature of the heavens am I.’ ”

Then she levelled her brows at him, and said gravely, “This is the temptation thou art falling into, as have thousands before thy time. Give him the rein a second time, and he will bear thee to the red pit, and halt upon the brink, and pitch thee into it among bleeding masses and skeletons of thy kind, where they lie who were men like to thee, and were borne away by the horse Garraveen.”

He gave no heed to her words, taunting her, and making the animal prance up and prove its spirit.

And she cried reproachfully, “O fool! is it thus our great aim will be defeated by thy silly conceit? Lo, now, the greatness and the happiness thou art losing for this idle vanity is to be as a dunghill cock matched with an ostrich; and think not to escape the calamities thou bringest on thyself, for as is said,

“No runner can outstrip his fate;

“and it will overtake thee, though thou part like an arrow from the bow.”

He still made a jest of her remonstrance, trying the temper of the animal, and rejoicing in its dark flushes of ireful vigour.

And she cried out furiously, “How! art thou past counsel? then will we match strength with strength ere ’tis too late, though it weaken both.”

Upon that, she turned quickly to the ass and stroked it from one extremity to the other, crying, “Karaz! Karaz!” shouting, “Come forth in thy power!” And the ass vanished, and the genie stood in his place, tall, dark, terrible as a pillar of storm to travellers ranging the desert. He exclaimed, “What is it, O woman? Charge me with thy command!”

And she said, “Wrestle with him thou seest on the horse Garraveen, and fling him from his seat.”

Then he yelled a glad yell, and stooped to Shibli Bagarag on the horse and enveloped him, and seized him, and plucked him from the horse, and whirled him round, and flung him off. The youth went circling in the air, high in it, and descended, circling, at a distance in the deep meadow-waters. When he crept up the banks he saw the genie astride the horse Garraveen, with a black flame round his head; and the genie urged him to speed and put him to the gallop, and was soon lost to sight, as he had been a thunderbeam passing over a still lake at midnight. And Shibli Bagarag was smitten with the wrong and the folly of his act, and sought to hide his sight from Noorna; but she called to him, “Look up, O youth! and face the calamity. Lo, we have now lost the service of Karaz! for though I utter ten spells and one spell in a breath, the horse Garraveen will ere that have stretched beyond the circle of my magic, and the genie will be free to do his ill deeds and plot against us. Sad is it! but profit thou by a knowledge of thy weakness.”

Then said she, “See, I have not failed to possess myself of the three hairs of Garraveen, and there is that to rejoice in.”

She displayed them, and they were sapphire hairs, and had a flickering light; and they seemed to live, wriggling their lengths, and were as snakes with sapphire skins. Then she said, “Thy right wrist, O my betrothed!”

He gave her his right wrist, and she tied round it the three hairs of Garraveen, exclaiming, “Thus do skilful carpenters make stronger what has broken and indicated disaster. Surely, I confide in thy star? I have faith in my foresight?”

And she cried, “Eyes of mine, what sayest thou to me? Lo, we must part awhile: it is written.”

Said he, “Leave me not, my betrothed: what am I without thy counsel? And go not from me, or this adventure will come to miserable issue.”

So she said, “Thou beginnest to feel my worth?”

He answered, “O Noorna! was woman like thee before in this world? Surely ’tis a mask I mark thee under; yet art thou perforce of sheer wisdom and sweet manners lovely in my sight; and I have a thirst to hear thee and look on thee.”

While he spake, a beam of struggling splendour burst from her, and she said, “O thou dear youth, yes! I must even go. But I go glad of heart, knowing thee prepared to love me. I must go to counteract the machinations of Karaz, for he’s at once busy, vindictive, and cunning, and there’s no time for us to lose; so farewell, my betrothed, and make thy wits keen to know me when we next meet.”

So he said, “And I⁠—whither go I?”

She answered, “To the City of Oolb straightway.”

Then he, “But I know not its bearing from this spot: how reach it?”

She answered, “What! thou with the phial of Paravid in thy vest, that endoweth, a