IT was from curiosity rather than from friendship that I accepted Semmeya Hanoum’s pressing invitation to spend a few days with her, shortly after Nashan’s wedding. As I said in a previous chapter, we had never looked on Semmeya as one of us. We did not trust her, and where there is no trust how can there be friendship? Still, since I was burning to know what sort of a wife she had made, I replied to her pressing invitation with alacrity.
I did not have to wait very long before I knew that Semmeya Hanoum was the same as ever—that she would rather cheat than play fair. She was the mother of a dear, little boy; and it was easy to see that Sendi Bey was the slave of his wife. At the same time it required no cleverness on my part to discover that he did not trust her, and did not believe her word.
I have always wondered, and I suppose that I shall continue to wonder till I die, and learn the explanation of many riddles, how it is that a good, upright man can remain in love with a woman whom he cannot trust. On the contrary,it often seems as if the less confidence a man has in his wife, the more in love he remains with her.
On the second morning of my arrival, nature outside was making herself beautiful as if to pose for her portrait. We had finished our breakfast, and were sitting on a couch together when her husband came in, a dark cloud on his forehead. He gave his wife a severe look, which Semmeya met with the candour of an angel.
“I am delighted to see you so early, my Bey Effendi,” she said sweetly. “I hope you have slept well,” and as he remained standing, she continued: “Won’t you sit down by us, my Effendi?”
“Beauty!” thundered the man, “why did you misbehave yesterday afternoon while you were out driving?”
An expression of utter amazement overspread her features.
“Don’t trouble yourself to deny it—you know that it is true,” the husband continued, striving to master his anger.
She shrugged her slim shoulders, and the impertinent movement was attractive. Intrinsically she was not a beautiful woman, but she had charm, and the man speaking to her was in love with her. And she knew it.
“You know you did it,” he persisted.
Impatiently she tapped the floor with her satin-cladfoot. I hate to witness marital disagreements, so I rose to go; but Semmeya caught my dress and imperiously pulled me back into my seat.
“Beauty,” the man reiterated, with rising anger, “you know you did it.”
She continued to look out of the latticed window, down on the waters of the Golden Horn. Her profile was turned to her husband. This was the prettiest view of her, and the one she always presented to him when she wished to dominate him—she told me so herself. Her wavy hair was loosely combed back on her neck, and a red rose was carelessly placed a little below her pretty ear. She was dressed in a soft green silk garment, the diaphanous sleeves displaying her well-shaped arms. Her slim but well-rounded neck was bare, and one could see that she was in a temper by the way the veins stood out on her throat.
“You did it, Beauty,” the man persisted in an even monotone that sounded like the approach of the storm.
I rose for the second time to go, but the hand, more imperious than before, pulled me down again; then the owner of the hand snapped out:
“Since you believe the word of the eunuch against mine, and you are so certain I did it, why do you wish me to verify it? Begone, man, begone!”
“But I want you to tell me why you threw the flowers at the Englishman,” her husband demanded. He turned to me and asked, “Do you think it is nice for a woman to throw flowers at a strange man?”
Before I could reply, she calmly said, “It is not true.”
“That you threw flowers at a man?”
She nodded.
“Did she or did she not?” he asked me.
“She did,” I answered.
“You wretch!” Semmeya Hanoum cried. “I only threw a rose, and a rose is singular, not plural. Besides, how do you know that I threw it at the man? I might have just thrown it away—and it might have happened to strike his face by accident.”
“I suppose you happened to kiss the rose by accident, too?” Sendi Bey inquired grimly.
“Why not? I often kiss roses.” She looked at him with laughing defiance. “And now what will you do, my lord?”
“I should like to give you a good thrashing.”
“You can’t. It is forbidden by the Koran.”
“I know it, and I am very sorry. But, Beauty, your actions are getting unbearable; and I am going to put a stop to them. For a month you are not to leave this house without my permission.” With these words he marched out of the room.
She turned to me. “I should like to find out whether he will really give orders that I am not to leave the house. Make ready to go out, and we shall see.”
She was waiting for me with a slave when I came to her room, and together we went down the hall. There stood the eunuch with his back to the door, looking determined to die at his post, if necessary.
“Silly, come with us. We are going out for a walk,” Semmeya said casually.
He salaamed to the floor, but did not stir. She spoke to him more sharply, and again he salaamed. No matter what she said, he salaamed.
Ignominiously at last she retreated to her room. She sat down and pondered over the situation earnestly. For once, I thought, she would have to acknowledge herself beaten.
At length she sprang to her feet, and I looked up expectantly, but she only told me to take off my wraps, since we should be unable to go out. She stepped out of the room, and I heard her whispering to her slave outside. Presently she re-entered the room briskly.
“When the eunuch comes up, tell him to wait a minute, if I am not here. And meanwhile make yourself as comfortable as you can.”
I took a French novel from the table, became interested in it, and had quite forgotten our state of siege when the eunuch spoke to me.
“Wait a minute.” I answered, hardly hearing what he said. “Semmeya Hanoum will be back in a minute.”
He took up his station in the doorway, commanding both the room and the hall, and waited, listening intently. After a long while he went downstairs.
Again I was absorbed in my book when the eunuch returned, panting and frightened.
“My mistress! My mistress!” he shouted.
“What is it, stupid? What has happened to your mistress?”
“She has gone!”
“Gone where?”
“Away! Out of the house!” he wailed. “She has outwitted both of us—myself and Yussuf at the gate of the garden. He was called away for a minute, and when he came back, my mistress had disappeared. Ai! ai! it was magic.”
“Well, don’t stand there wailing; run and tell your master,” I said impatiently.
He looked at me in abject terror. “My master! I dare not. He would kill me.”
“Then send for him, and I will tell him.”
“And you will tell him that I faithfully obeyed his orders,” he implored, “and that she did not escape through any negligence on my part?”
Even after I had reassured him on these points he departed trembling, and I went down to theparlour to await Sendi Bey. In a few minutes he came, and I told him what had happened. He cross-examined me, became convinced that I knew nothing of his wife’s movements, and sent for the unhappy man at the gate, Yussuf.
“Why did you not run after your mistress?” he demanded sternly.
“I did, your Excellency, but she was nowhere to be seen. There was not a house where she could have entered, or a place where she could have hidden; but she was not in sight. I do not see how she could have run so fast. It is magic!”
Sendi Bey dismissed the man, then called the slaves and the eunuch, and ordered them to search the house, which they did without result. Then he gave orders that no one was to enter or leave the house without his permission, and that when the mistress returned she was to wait at the gate till he had spoken to her.
After we were alone together again, he exclaimed gleefully: “For once she has put herself in my power. On her return I shall go to the gate and make my conditions, and if she does not agree to them, she cannot come in.”
“But suppose she does not agree to them, and prefers not to come in?” I asked.
He laughed. “For once,” he repeated, “she has put herself in my power. If she does not agree, she will lose all her rights over her boy,since she left the house against my orders. She loves the boy, and she will agree. Now is the time to put an end to her coquettishness.”
Whatever satisfaction Sendi Bey and the absent, rebellious Semmeya Hanoum might find in the situation, for me it was rather uncomfortable. I was not able to go even into the garden, and ate a solitary luncheon and then dinner, all the slaves being at their posts to prevent any entry or egress. After finishing my novel, I was just preparing to go to bed when a slave came to me.
“My master would like to see you downstairs if you will be so good,” she said.
There was no one in the parlour when I arrived there, but presently the master came in from theselamlik.
“What can I do for you?” he asked.
“Why, nothing,” I replied. “I am perfectly comfortable, although the situation is not.”
He looked at me with a puzzled air.
“Why did you send for me?”
“I didn’t. I was told that you wished to see me.”
“There must be some mistake,” he said, and pulled the velvet rope of the bell. As if in answer to the ring, in sauntered Semmeya Hanoum, as cool as a cucumber, cigarette in hand, and apparently just back from her expedition, since she was still in outdoor dress.
We both stared at her in amazement.
“Hullo, Blossom,” she said to me. “Sorry to have left you alone all day.”
She elaborately ignored her husband. After an instant’s stupefaction he strode across the room, took her chin in his hand, and lifted her face.
“Where have you been?” he demanded.
She snatched her head away from his hand, and dropped him an extravagant French curtsy. “Where I pleased, my master.”
The man was shaking with anger.
“How did you get in?”
She waved her gloved hand towards the hall. “Ring the bell—call in your servants—find out.”
“To make a bigger fool of myself?”
“Why not, since you were willing to belittle me before them, by your silly orders this morning? You told the eunuch not to let me go out, and when I returned, I had to use a ruse to enter my own home, where my baby boy is. You are a brute and a jealous fiend, and I am the most unhappy of wives,” and thereupon she burst into the most pathetic sobbing, and threw herself upon me, holding me fast to her.
“Why, Beauty,” he expostulated in tender tones, “you know I have never been unkind to you, and this is the first time I have even thought of punishing you.”
She continued to sob without abatement. Hecame near us, and timidly tried to take her in his arms. To my surprise she went to him like a lamb, kissing him and crying, and I slipped out of the room, once more convinced that men were mere babes in the hands of designing women.
That night I waited in vain for her to come and tell me where she had been, and while waiting I fell asleep. After breakfast the next morning she came to my room, beaming, and looking prettier than ever.
“Siege is raised,” she cried, sitting down cross-legged on the rug. “Blossom of the almond-tree, we can go for a picnic to any cemetery we like, and I am to have a pair of horses all my own, and the loveliest low victoria that France can manufacture.” She put her finger-tips together, and looked up at me enjoying the effect of her words, and continued: “I am also going to have a bigger allowance, and when I have a little girl, I may give her a French name. In exchange, I shall not throw kissed roses to anyone, and I am not going to fib for a long, long time.”
She swayed forward till her forehead touched the floor, and giggled so delightedly that I had to join her.
“The poor dear!” she went on, after her laughter had subsided. “If I told him the truth for a week, he would cease to find me interesting. I should be a tame creature—not the woman he is in love with. Oh, dear! all men are alike.”
“You don’t know so very many men.” I suggested.
“Not actually, Blossom mine, not actually; but a woman retains the knowledge of her previous existences far better than a man. That is what her intuition is. I have been a wife for thousands of years. Think of the husbands I have had! I know all about men. Why, sometimes I can write down Sendi’s words before they leave his lips; and, as for his actions, I know them before he even conceives them.”
“But what I want to know is how you got out of the house yesterday, and then how you got in again.”
She looked at me with amused pity.
“Blossom, you are just about as stupid as a man—just about. I never left the house; I couldn’t.”
I stared. “But they searched high and low——”
“Not very low, my dear, not very low; for if they had, they would have found us down in the cistern, in the baskets we keep the things cool in. We almost touched the water—and we were cool, I can tell you.” And she went into peals of infectious laughter that carried me along with her.
“Did you tell him?” I asked when our amusement had subsided.
“Oh, what a goose you are, dear! Of courseI did not. He will have that riddle in the depths of his heart to torment him—until I give him a fresh one.”
I attempted to lecture her, but she closed my lips with a kiss and adjured me not to be a simpleton until nature turned me into a man.