'"I am but a poor corporal of foot," said I, remembering the rattan of our adjutant, which I had felt more often than the finger of the Prophet.
'"A weak mortal, assuredly—but a true Believer."
'"Bechesm! Upon thy beautiful eyes be it, that I am."
'A fire seemed to rage within me, and I strove to reach and embrace her; but in vain, for lo! there suddenly rose around her a hedge of thorns and brambles—the fuel of hell—that pricked and tore my heated flesh.
'The maiden smiled with all her alluring sweetness of lips and eyes, and almost laughed as she held up a beautiful hand to deprecate my folly; while the wound in my breast caused me almost to swoon with a sudden pang of agony.
'"What is your name?" I asked.
'"Noura."
'"Which meaneth—"
'"Light."
'"And why without garments?"
'"Because garments are a sign of the disobedience of our first parents, and in our blessed abode that disobedience is forgotten. Al Araf separates us from those by whom it is remembered with sorrow, and wailing, and gnashing of teeth. Think, O Hafiz Maustapha, think of what is before thee! Thou hast neglected alms, and scoffed at prayer; blinded by vice, thou hast forgotten all about punishment hereafter; and intoxicated by the grosser pleasures of earth, thou hast dared to doubt those which were to come, yet vaunted thyself a true Mussulman—being a liar and a hypocrite, even as Abdallah Elen Obba was a liar and a hypocrite before thee."
'At these words a deadly terror fell upon my soul, for the eyes of the maiden gleamed with a lurid light as she spoke. I wept and said—
'"What shall I do, O lovely one, to merit Paradise?"
'"Fear the Holy Prophet—keep his laws—and love me."
'"Loveyou!" I said, and stretched my arms in ecstasy towards her; but, with a cry of astonishment and despair, as her figure melted away and I saw only the cold fountain plashing in the pale moonlight. Then there descended upon me a darkness and a horror, amid which I felt a soft hand grasping mine with a touch that thrilled me, and the voice of Noura whispered in my ear—
'"Come, Moustapha, come! Ascend to Paradise, where two-and-seventy such as I await thee with smiles and with impatience."
'Now by all the devils that shaved the Queen of Saba!' shouted the irreverend Yuze Bashi; 'think of that! two-and-seventy wives all to be had for mere belief, which costs nothing, when I have paid a thousand xerifs, and not an asper less, for one Circassian, in my lifetime.'
'Peace!' exclaimed the moolah, with a brow and tone of severity; 'peace, Hussein Ebn al Ajuz; or, by the souls of the seven lawgivers, I shall cease. Allah is indeed most merciful that he does not smite thee deaf, and dumb, and blind.
'In a moment, grief, pain, and darkness passed away—and light, music, and perfume, with a myriad brilliant figures and objects, all beaming with a celestial glory, were around me. Then a holy joy filled all my soul, for I knew that I had left the earth, with its petty cares and wretched vanities, far, far away below the seven heavens and the mansions of the moon; and that now the Garden of the Blessed—the Eden of old—the Januat al Ferdaws of the Faithful—was before me.
'O Mahmoud resoul Allah! May the angels of victory sweep away the dust from beneath thy feet, and may their wings shield all who believe in thee! O strange it is that I should have seen these things, and yet live to speak of them on earth!
'I was in that wondrous Garden of Paradise from which our first parents were expelled, when Adam, was hurled downward on the Isle of Serendib,[*] where his footmark yet remains upon a mountain-top; and when Eve fell near Mecca, where the marks of her two knees, as she knelt, are yet to be seen, sixty musket-shot apart, for their stature was gigantic. After that prodigious fall, they were separated two hundred years, for the vast earth was all a silent desert then. But to resume:
[*] Ceylon.
'Had it not been promised that he who looks on Paradise becomes endued with the strength of a hundred of the strongest men, I must have sunk under the scenes of more than mortal splendour, pleasure, and delight that passed before my bewildered senses; for, as the Koran sayeth, they were such thingsas eye hath not seen, ear hath not heard, nor the heart of man conceived.
'I was in an ecstasy! A blessed ardour—a glorious joy swelled all my heart with love, religion, and purity. A brilliant halo was around me—a light without cloud—as in Khorassan, the land of the Sun, and nothing that is there has a shadow, for light is everywhere.
'After passing a lake of brilliant water, that was whiter than milk, a month's journey in compass, and surrounded by as many goblets as there are stars in the firmament—each goblet formed of a single emerald, and containing a liquid so precious that he who drinks thereof shall never thirst more, I was ushered by two shining angels through seven lofty gates, in seven walls that were built of sparkling diamonds and gleaming rubies, into the Jannat al Ferdaws, or abode of the blessed. At the seventh I was clothed in the richest robes of silk and brocade, chiefly of a green colour; and these robes, like the bracelets of gold and silver, and the crown of mighty pearls with which they encompassed my brows, were taken from the full-bursting flowers of Paradise that grew on each side of the way by which we journeyed. Before me went a long train of shadowy slaves, bearing silken carpets, litters, soft couches, downy pillows, and other furniture—each article being embroidered with more precious stones than all Asia could furnish in a thousand years.
'After a feast such as Mohammed alone could conceive, for thelobeof a single fish on that wondrous table would dine seventy thousand hungry Ingleez, I was conducted along garden-walks of musk and amber; the earth of the parterre seemed like the finest wheaten flour, and therein grew all the flowers of Paradise—each parterre being lovelier than all Suristan, the Land of Roses; for the leaves were of emeralds, the buds and petals of rubies, the stalks of burnished gold, and the slender twigs of polished silver, all gleaming and glittering under a stupendous blaze of sunlight.
'Passing kiosks of golden wire entwined with roses, wherein were youths and damsels in amorous dalliance; passing the mighty Toaba—the tree of happiness, which bears all the fruits, and meats, and food the world ever knew, with a myriad others all of tastes unknown to mortals, and every leaf of which is a melodious tongue, and the stem of which would take the swiftest Barbary steed a thousand years to compass; passing fountains of water, milk, honey, and wine, all flowing on pebbles of ruby and pearl, through beds of camphire, saffron, and amber—-I was led on—on—through shrubberies of precious stones and golden-bodied trees, on every branch of which hung a thousand little bells, and there sat a thousand singing-birds, which united with the leaves of the Toaba in filling the air with divine praises and bewildering harmony—on—on—until we reached a pavilion hollowed and fashioned of a single pearl, no less than four parasangs broad, and nearly sixty Turkish miles in length—every part of it, without and within, gleaming with sentences from the Koran, written in rubies and jacinths.
'Here stood eighty thousand slaves, all clad in shining garments, and three hundred beautiful damsels, each bearing three hundred golden and porcelain dishes, each dish containing three hundred kinds of food, awaited me on bended knees, with their charming faces bowed to the silken carpets; three hundred others bore precious vessels filled with fragrant wine; and in what language, O Frank, shall I refer to the two-and-seventy wives, the Houris, who awaited me there, each reclining in her couch, hollowed of a single pearl—the Hûr al Oyn, the black-eyed, high-bosomed girls of Paradise, who are created not of clay, like mortal women, but of the purest musk, and are without blemish—maidens on whose faces of celestial beauty none may look and live without a miracle; for I seemed to see all at a glance, though the Prophet says, these things would take the most faithful of men a thousand years' journey to behold.[*]
[*] See Sale's 'Koran.'
'Each coach whereon a maiden lay was a throne glorious as that of Solomon, the Star of the Genii; and each Houri had no other veil to her naked loveliness than the flowing tresses of her perfumed and shining hair.
'As my dazzled eyes swept round this vast apartment, they lighted on a familiar form; it was that of Noura, the nymph of the fountain; and as I recognised her, she stretched her snowy arms towards me, with her soft alluring smile, as the fire of love and conscious beauty lit up her large black eyes. Her light etherial blood coursed through her veins; I hung in rapture over her, and half faint with joy and agitation, clasped her to my breast.
'Then the curtains of the pavilion fell around us, drawn by unseen hands, and the voices of the singing-trees, the golden birds, and fairy bells without, became hushed or died away, as I sank entranced upon the tender bosom that panted under mine; and when impressing upon her warm lip the first kiss that man had ever printed there, lo! a sleep fell upon me—a deep and dreamless sleep—O Mahmoud resoul Allah! that I should ever have awakened from it!'
The moolah paused in great excitement; the perspiration stood upon his wrinkled forehead, and rolled over the glistening hairs of his snowy beard; his dark eyes glared with a hollow gleam, and his breath came thick and fast.
'Proceed, moolah,' said Hussein, quietly, amid a puff of smoke; 'and you awakened, where?'
'On the verge of the snow-covered battle-field of Koniah, and close beside the fountain where I had fallen into a swoon; the chill dews of night were upon me, the bright clear moon rode through its loftiest mansions; the pale fountain was murmuring and plashing on its pebbled bed beside me; the lotus was drooping on its stalk; I was still accoutred as a soldier—a poor corporal of Scherif Bey, and my hand rested on the cold, hard barrel of my musket.
'Paradise and all its glories had vanished with the sleep that sealed my eyes!
'Again I was a poor soldier, lying bruised on that lost and moonlit battle-field, with the dew and the cold hoar frost whitening upon me.
'Bismillah!
'Slowly I staggered up, and felt for the wound in my breast—and O, wonder of wonders! Though my blue uniform was still perforated by the passage of the ball, the blood had disappeared, and the wound had closed; it was well and whole—and of all that bloody gash, a little scar alone remained!
'I threw myself upon the earth towards the Keblah—the Holy City of Mecca; and I vowed seven times—by the seven gates of Paradise—by the souls of the seven lawgivers—and by all the lights of the faithful—to become a good, a pious, and a new man; and from that hour I ceased to be a soldier, a reveller, a dicer, and a gamester; I became a moolah, and went through all Greece and Asia Minor, preaching the faith of the Koran and of the only Prophet—Mahmoud resoul Allah—for there is no God but God, and the Camel Driver is his Prophet!'
Such was the vision of the old corporal Moustapha!
With this strange story hovering in my mind, and the Yuze Bashi asleep in the cushioned recess of his araba, I paraded and marched off my detachment from the valley at the first peep of early dawn next day. I bade farewell to the old moolah Moustapha—the ex-corporal of Scherif Bey—and gave him one of the small Turkish notes (which are printed on thin yellow paper, and are worth about ten shillings sterling) for the benefit of his mosque; and feared that if he was not slightly defective in brain, he had at least but a slight acquaintance with the goddess whose billet is popularly said to be at the bottom of a well.
Along a road bordered by rare plants and gorgeous flowers; between groves of orange, lemon, and fig trees, all growing in wild luxuriance, and among myrtle-scented fields, we continued our march by the shore of the sea of Marmora, the voices of my thirty soldiers all uniting at times in one merry chorus, as they trod the old paved causeway of the great Sultan Solymon, many of whose works are, by the ignorant, ascribed to the Genii—just as our Scottish peasantry aver their old ruins to be the work of Picts or of the fairies—and before mid-day, we saw the little town of Rodosdchig rise before us, with the blue sea washing its old grey walls; with its dark cypresses and white minarets; its harbour full of quaint caiques; and its old castle of the Greeks, on which was the red Turkish standard, with an oval centre, bearing the three crescents of the Prophet.
As we marched in, the drum beat at the guard-house, and a guard of lubberly Turkish militiamen scrambled from around a logwood fire, where they had been toasting kabobs and dough-balls; they stood to their arms, and gave us a military salute. The officer at their head still retained at his neck the ancient gilt gorget, now long disused in our service.
We were immediately beset by Greek kabob-roasters, and sherbet-venders, from the arched gates of the bazaars, and a crowd of wondering Osmanlies, whom the strange sound of the Highland warpipe brought forth from every door, where they had been squatted on carpets, dozing over opium, coffee, and chibouques; yet though louder, more martial, and more shrill, our pipe is almost similar to the instrument now used by the kilted mountaineers of Albania.
Not a woman was visible, though at times a veiled head and two brilliant eyes appeared at the wire lattices which opened to the unpaved and unlighted streets.
We marched into the old castle, of which the Yuze Bashi was commandant, governor, or suzerain, and as such was the terror of all Rodosdchig. He was the only officer there at present, though the quaint old Greek towers of the last emperor were garrisoned by his company of Bombardiers, and were mounted by ten iron twenty-four pounders and two ten-inch mortars. On the walls towards the sea were several old and useless, but enormous, brass guns, covered with Turkish letters and pious sentences, with piles of moss-grown marble shot between them. The stockades in many places had disappeared, for our thrifty commandant had sold them when his piastres became scarce, to the kabob-roasters, for firewood.
On resuming his command, the first act of Hussein was to cudgel—almost to death—the chaoush of the main-guard, for some real or imaginary fault; an act which gave us an odd idea of Turkish discipline.
'What think you of this, Callum?' said I, with smile; 'suppose an officer were to cudgel you?'
'I would drive my skene into his heart with as little remorse as I would gralloch a dead deer,' was the reply of my henchman, frowning at the idea.
My men occupied a portion of the miserable Turkish barrack, and I had rooms assigned to me in a tower, the windows of which faced the sea; and as the furniture was furnished by the government of His Majesty the Sultan, it could scarcely be expected to be much more luxurious than the birch-table, two Windsor-chairs, the iron coal-box and elegant pair of bellows usually issued from the stores of Her Brittanic Majesty to an officer in garrison.
That evening I dined—or supped—which you please (for the hour rendered the meal dubious)—with the Yuze Bashi, whose portion of the castle was magnificently fitted up. His servants were black slave girls. We had neither forks, chairs, nor a table. We sat on cushions, and ate pillaff and paties of Gallipoli oysters with our fingers, from platters placed on little stools; we tore the fragrant kabobs from their wooden skewers with our teeth—rent the fowls asunder by the simple process of inserting the finger and thumb; drank sherbet of sugar and musk dashed with French brandy; then came iced Grecian wine, and, lighting our pipes, we gave thanks to the Prophet for the good things of this land, and subsided among the silken cushions with a sigh of satisfaction.
By the inquiring Callum Dhu I was given to understand that my friend the Yuze Bashi had a wife; but, as it would have been discourteous to have asked for her, as he studiously avoided ever recurring to the circumstance of her existence; and, moreover, as a Turk can never introduce his wife to any man save a most intimate friend, and then only on receiving his solemn word of honour never to mention so singular a departure from the established Mohammedan custom, I had no hope of being blessed by seeing even the slipper of the commandant's earthly helpmate; and so I thought no more about it—besides, wives are most brittle and perilous ware to meddle with in Turkey.
Several weeks passed away monotonously at the castle of Rodosdchig. I soon knew every street, bazaar, mosque, bezestien, coffee-house, khan, and kabobki in the place as well as if they were my own property; the old Greek ruins in the neighbourhood; the dumpy Doric columns of what had been a temple, when beauty was worshipped in Thessaly and Thrace, lying among a wilderness of luxurious weeds and plants, with the snakes crawling over them, had all been, again and again, delineated in my sketchbook; the round towers of the old castle that overhung the sea; the sea itself, with its Greek caiques, Turkish xebeques, and quaint fisherboats, soon became as familiar to me as the murmur of its waves on the lucks below my barrack-room window.
To divert my ennui, fortunately for myself, as my after-adventures proved, I applied all my energies to the study of the monotonous and crack-jaw gibberish of the Turks; and, with the assistance of 'Madden's Grammar,' &c., was able to master the sonnets of the old Pasha, or General, Sermet Effendi; and of Partiff, whose rhymes in honour of the Sultan and of Omar Pasha are to be seen gilded above the gates of all the edifices erected by the Government; Jachiened, theGulistan, or 'Rose Garden of Sadi of Shiraz,' and the 'Pleasing Tales of Khoja (Master) Nazir-il-adeen Efendi;' and I still remember one charming old Persian story of the Garden of Paradise, which was described as beingstill extantin Asia, but concealed among remote and inaccessible mountains, and to be reached only through long caverns and by a subterranean river; and therein were ever summer bloom and floral beauty, and all the animals were tame and loving, as before the fall of our first parents—the lamb lying down beside the lion, and the panther beside the goat, as some old dervish, who—like my friend the corporal—had been there, called upon every hair in his silver beard to testify.
The morning and evening parades of my little party followed each other in unvarying succession; but the riotous, bloodthirsty, and insurrectionary Greeks, of whom the Yuze Bashi had spoken so much at our mess in Heraclea, were as quiet as the plodding denizens of the most rural district in England.
The bluff Yuze Bashi Hussein (may his shadow never be less!) was now my crowning bore, and I soon saw enough of him to make me avoid his friendship, and to inspire me with a dislike for him, still stronger than even the story of the Greek Lieutenant Vidimo had done.
Though the rent of his government, exclusive of his pay, was one hundred and twenty purses, or about 600l.per annum, Hussein had a large garden, which he forced the soldiers of the Sultan to cultivate, and the produce of which he sold to the inhabitantsat his own prices, which were always rising and never falling. By this means he nearly doubled his pay; while, by selling the powder and shot of the batteries to Levant coasters and Greek pirates, he nearly trebled it; and then, to make up the deficiency at head quarters, the returns of his garrison for 'ball-practice' were enormous.
Then he had secured a handsome sum for the head of his younger brother, which, like a good and loyal servant of the Prophet's earthly shadow, he had transmitted to the Seraglio gate in a jar of salt; for this unlucky brother, having fled from Stamboul, where he had been engaged in an intrigue with a lady of the Household, and having wounded the Kislar Aga with his handjiar, became well worth a thousand piastres, dead or alive.
Such was Hussein Ebn al Ajuz. He was a man utterly devoid of scruple or principle.
'A Greek,' said he, 'once dared to dispute with me on religion—but I soon silenced him.'
'How?' I asked.
'By running my handjiar into his heart.'
'The devil!—that was a convincing argument.'
'Asharpone, at all events,' was the cool reply.
He made his hatred of the Greeks a never-failing source of revenue. If a merchant of that humbled race gave an entertainment, and our commandant was not invited, he would send an onbashi and three soldiers, with fixed bayonets, to extinguish the lights, disperse the guests, and bring before him the master of the house, who was therefore ordered to pay down so many piastres, as a fine, for disturbing the neighbourhood—for the ponderous Turk is lord of the soil, while the lively and more intelligent Greek is but its serf and villein—being what the Englishman was to the Norman knight eight hundred years ago.
I avoided the Yuze Bashi, no difficult matter, as he spent half the day, seated on a carpet in a corner, smoking his bubbling narguillah and drinking brandy-and-water; and now having no resource but my own thoughts, or Callum Dhu, whose conversation was generally of old and regretful memories, my spirits began to sink, for I had no longer the daily good fellowship of our merry little mess, or the frank joviality of Jack Belton to bear me up. Left thus entirely to myself in that gloomy old castle of the Greeks, my mind reverted to other days and other scenes, and the face of Laura—lost to me for ever!—came frequently before me with a distinctness that made my heart ache, though I sought—but in vain—to thrust the painful thought and winning image from me.
One evening, according to my usual wont since I had become wayward and moody, alone (as Callum was on guard), but accoutred with my claymore, dirk, and loaded revolver (for in this district nobody ventures abroad unarmed), I wandered beyond the walls of Rodosdchig, to a grove of cypresses, where the wild grapes grew in luxuriance, and where I could pluck them with the dew of evening on their purple clusters. A little farther on lay one of those quiet Mohammedan cemeteries which are so poetically named by the Orientals the Cities of the Silent. There the ghost of each true Believer is supposed by the superstitious to sit invisibly at the head of its own grave.
Near this burial-place were the ruins of what had been an old Greek hermitage, in the days when poor anchorites 'sought to merit heaven' by drinking cold water and chewing dry peas.
On this evening the City of the Silent rang with the merry voices of a group of Turkish ladies. Clad in bright-coloured dresses, they were sitting on carpets, among the green resting places, drinking sherbet, eatingbon-bons, and smoking pretty little chibouques, while a few slaves and sullen eunuchs hovered near them in attendance. As I passed these veiled fair ones, I heard a few shrill exclamations of wonder, while their dark rolling eyes seemed to sparkle with peculiar lustre through the holes in their snow-white yashmacks.
On the verge of this cemetery, and apart from the group, I passed a solitary lady, who was culling a bouquet of flowers from among the turbanned headstones; and who, in pursuit of this innocent object, had wandered to some distance from her companions. Attracted by the singular grace which pervaded all her actions, I hovered near her, and affected to read the epitaphs gilded on the marble tombs; but perceiving that her bracelet—which was composed of those magnificent opals which dart fire, and by the Orientals are believed to be found only where thunder has fallen—was lying on the grass, I hastened to restore it, and to clasp it on her wrist. With a hurried bow, and a sweet smile sparkling in her eyes, she permitted me to perform this little act; and while doing so, I was charmed by the delicate beauty of her arm and gloveless hand.
The bracelet was clasped, and I was on the point of touching my cap and retiring, when, either by accident or design—from all I knew of Turkish wives, I half suspectedthe latter—her bouquet fell from her hand, and the flowers were scattered about her.
'Mashallah!' she exclaimed, and laughed.
Though I knew well that if seen near her, or with her, a dose of bamboo-canes or a bullet, perhaps, might repay my temerity, I deliberately gathered up the flowers, and tieing them with a ribbon, presented them to her, with a few Turkish compliments, and begged permission to retain a rose, as a gift from her.
She at once accorded it, giving me, at the same time, a full, deep, and piercing glance through the square opening of her yashmack.
Oh, those speaking eyes! How well this woman knew their dangerous power!
I see them yet in imagination, for heaven never created aught more beautiful than the eyes of this Turkish damsel. She touched my hand slightly, and said, while casting a hurried glance about her,
'Where shall we meet again?'
The 'we' made my heart leap!
'Meet again?—at this hour to-morrow evening—among these ruins,' said I, entering recklessly into what might prove a dangerous rendezvous; and then, waving a kiss to me, my beautiful Unknown hurried through the cypress-grove and rejoined her gay companions.
It was all arranged and over in a moment!
The next day passed slowly, and I thought of my love affair—(for a love affair I had determined to consider it)—with some anxiety: the path to Cupid in the East being strewn with more daggers than roses; for a panther in its hungry wrath is a lamb when contrasted to a Turk animated by a fit of jealousy; and that my unknown was the better-half of some dreamy Osmanli I had not the least doubt. I carefully loaded my revolver—placed all my money in my purse, to be ready for any emergency, and buckled on my dirk and claymore, as if I had been about to escalade the Malakoff or make a dash at the Redan, instead of merely meeting a pretty girl. I then set forth to keep my appointment, just as the Yuze Bashi was dropping off into his usual evening doze, and just as the long shadows of the towers and cypresses were falling to the eastward; and the muezzins on the upper galleries of the minarets were watching for the first dip of the sun's flaming disc, to shout the shrill summons to evening prayer.
Had I forgotten Laura?
Alas for the weakness of the human heart! I fear that after I saw my beautiful Oriental I had no memory for aught beyond that epoch in my history—for a time at least.
Though the evening was delightful, few persons were abroad; and after leaving the town, an old, white-bearded Grecian monk, wending his way staff in hand and wallet on back, was the only person I met; as with a beating heart I sought the sequestered ruins of the ancient Christian chapel and hermitage.
Once or twice a fear that I might have been lured here for some deadly purpose, and that her rendezvous was but a wicked snare, flashed upon me.
The scene was beautiful. On one hand lay the cemetery with its grove of tall and solemn cypresses; on the other rose a marble rock surrounded by an old rampart, having ruined towers, from which the cannon of the Greeks had poured their stone-shot upon the fierce Timariots of the Sultan Mohammed the Second, the founder of the new Empire. Amid these old ramparts the antique outline of a gilt dome and the white minar of a little mosque cut the evening sky. At the base of the rock a stream flowed from a ruined arch into a marble basin, over which flourished the beautiful leaves of the acanthus, under the shade of the graceful and delicate olive-tree.
The sun was setting with gorgeous brilliance; the western sky was all a lurid red, as if the whole horizon was in flames, and the shadows of three gigantic Grecian Doric columns of white marble—ascribed to the Genii in the times of old—were thrown far across the landscape. From the shattered cornice and four triglyphs which still surmounted them, some long and pendant creeping plants swung like garlands on the evening wind, that came from the deep and blue Propontis.
The shadows began to deepen; the horizon paled. The birds had ceased to sing; but the little snakes were hissing vigorously under the broad leaves of the acanthus and the dewy lentisuculus—for in ten minutes night would be on.
There was a sound; and my unknown, in her white yashmack and flowing robes, came before me like a graceful spirit, and quite as suddenly. Her hands were placed joyously and confidingly in mine, and her eyes—the loveliest of all those dark and soul-lit oriental eyes that seem to swim in their own lustrous glory—were beaming upon me. I was bewildered—confused—dazzled!
I felt the impossibility of resisting the fascinations of two such loving eyes. The inside of the delicate lids were blackened with kohol, and the ends of her slender fingers were tinged with rosyhenna—yet she spoke with somewhat of a Greek accent.
'Tell me your name, my beautiful one?' I whispered, retaining her soft hands in mine.
'Iola,' was the half-breathed reply.
'Iola—anything more?'
'Mashallah! what more would you require me to say?'
'Do you live in Rodosdchig?'
'Yes—but why do you inquire?'
'Because all that concerns you must be full of tender interest to me.'
'So soon! You have not known me quite five minutes.'
'I have known you four and twenty hours; yet when I gaze into your beautiful eyes, Iola, I seem to have known you for a life-time.'
'You love me then?' she exclaimed, as her large eyes filled with light and merriment.
'Oh, Iola! who could see you without loving you, tenderly and passionately?'
'Inshallah!'
'You are not a Turk?
'Turk—no! I am a Greek,' she answered, in a changed voice, and drooping of the eyelid.
I attempted to remove her yashmack; but she exclaimed,—
'In the name of Allah, not yet—not yet!' and shrinking laughingly back, with pretty coquetry, prevented me from doing so.
After a little flirtation, and permitting me to kiss her hands as often as I pleased, from a few words she let fall, greatly to my alarm, I suspected that shewasa married Moselema; but I was now too much involved with her to 'hang fire,' as we say at mess; and too much attracted by her beauty—though I had seen but little of it—to relinquish the chance of enlivening my dull detachment duty by a little love affair—though death, perhaps, should hover near it. The imminent risk we ran enhanced the charm of this new acquaintance. The darkness was deepening, for in these climates there is little twilight; and alarmed by the sombre aspect of the ruins, which were haunted, of course, by a Ghoule, Iola (a charming name!); started from my side, and insisted on retiring.
'Take these three rose-buds,' said I, for flowers are the language of love among the Asiatics; 'three on one stem. Iola—they are emblematic of the three qualities of love.'
'Of love?' she reiterated, in a tremulous whisper.
'Sprightly, secret, and sincere love, as ours shall be. Will you accept of them from me?'
She trembled like one about to do a guilty thing; but took them with a blush and something like a sob of joy; yet this excitable little one would not permit me to kiss her!
'You will wear them for my sake, Iola?'
'There is danger in doing so—yet I will treasure them even when faded, like the jewel of Prince Giamschid; and what is my reward?'
'Your reward?' I faltered, while reddening in turn.
'Yes, for the danger.'
'One dear little kiss—or a thousand if you will let me give them!' I exclaimed, and threw my arm round her.
She drew down the yashmack, and I pressed my lip to hers, again and again.
Until this moment my Oriental had never perhaps known what love was. Risk, life, death, all were forgotten! I remembered only the charm and the opportunity.
'And so in Frankistan, the rose is also an emblem of love?' she whispered, as we walked slowly hand in hand towards the town, the lights of which were sparkling in the distance.
'Yes, Iola.'
'Alas!'
'Why?'
'Because the rose lives but for a day—and if it should be so with love?'
'Why that thought, and why these doubts—my love will live for ever, Iola!'
(For ever? Alas! where were a heedless passion and two bright eyes hurrying me?)
'It is indeed delightful to have one's life thus entwined with another (and you will be always in Rodosdchig, I hope?); to have a double existence and double joy, as if we lived in the Rose Garden of Sadi.'
'Ah—but I fear your existence is so entwined already: your husband, Iola?'
She uttered a faint cry of anger, and thus I found my conjectures right.
'My husband!' she exclaimed; 'talk not of him! He bought me as he did his horse, in the common market-place. He never asked me to love him. O that were a condescension too much for a proud Turk! I am a Mohammedan now; but I was a Christian born, and am by blood a Greek, and my dead ancestors, who lie at Smyrna and at Scio, would raise their fleshless hands against me, could they know me as I know myself to-day. My husband bought me from a ruffian, reckless as himself. I was bathed, perfumed, and led to his arms. Bismillah! speak no more of my husband!'
These words removed every vestige of scruple in my heart. A purchased slave! could I ever view her as a wedded wife? But now she drew her feradjee close about her, and fled from my side without a word of to-morrow, or of meeting again; for we had unconsciously approached too near one of the town-gates, where, as she had previously mentioned, adumbslave awaited her. Here I lost sight of her, having pledged my word of honour neither to follow nor to make inquiries after her.
My heart sank as she left me; and the idea of this delicate and beautiful woman being bought and sold in a market-place, and being now the wedded slave of a sensual Moslem, made me writhe and ponder deeply, as I walked along the dark and muddy streets of Rodosdchig. The town was now sunk in silence, and not a sound was heard, save the occasional howling of wild and wandering dogs—the faithful but 'unclean beasts,' of the ungrateful Koran.
'Love begetteth love,' so my heart was sorely troubled. I could no longer doubt that this beautiful Oriental loved me. Her dark but brilliant eyes were full of it.
Her sighs but half suppressed as she had hung upon my shoulder; her cheek alternately pale and flushed, were also full of it.
Her tremulous voice—her conversation and manner—her very silence spoke of it—this deep fount of passion opened up within her ardent heart for thefirsttime, and yet—pardon me for the chilling close to my sentence—she had been some yearsmarried.
For two evenings I went to the ruins, but she did not come again. I was well nigh my wit's end, and more than once narrowly escaped a stab from a handjiar, or a shot from a pistol, as I rambled about the bazaars and bezestiens, running after every woman whose figure resembled Iola's, and poking my nose closer to their yashmacks than Oriental propriety permits; so close, indeed, that I was once nearly having my heels turned up by the ferashes of a mufti, despite my red coat and claymore.
Restless, thoughtful, anxious and abstracted—haunted by a pair of beautiful eyes that were the object of my waking thoughts in the morning, the last at night, and the source of many a lonely hour of reverie between, I was deeply in love with her before I knew the whole truth, or saw the full danger of our position; and even when cold reason displayed both, I was more charmed than startled by the novelty of this new passion.
And she loved me, the possessor of those beautiful eyes!
Oh, there was something delicious in the thought that this attractive woman, so bright, so brilliant, so happy in spirit—she who unconsciously attracted me to her, as in a better sphere she would have attracted all—even as the sun in his glory is said to absorb the atoms in the air—should love me!
Who was she? Where was she?
Oh, for Aladdin's lamp, or the ring of the Genii!
A thousand dazzling and daring schemes of elopement suggested themselves to me, for Laura's loss and desertion had made me reckless of consequences; but first I had to discover Iola among the closely-veiled hundreds of Kodosdchig; a task about as vain as the proverbial one, of attempting to find a needle in a haystack.
Returning one evening, dispirited and provoked after a second unsuccessful visit to the Ruined Hermitage, on entering the castle of Rodosdchig, I was informed by Callum that the Yuze Bashi had been inquiring for me everywhere, urgently and angrily. Surprised to hear this, I repaired at once to his quarters, and was introduced without ceremony; for the unfortunate captain of Bombardiers was considerably perturbed, and in great tribulation.
I found him seated on a carpet, in a corner of an apartment, the walls of which were, as usual, covered with pious sentences from the Koran. He was smoking a narguillah, through a crystal vase of rose-water, and the window, through which he usually watched the sun dip behind the hills, was open, to admit the sea-breeze, for he was flushed and feverish. An urgent despatch had come from the Seraskier and Kiaja Kiatibi, summoning him to appear without a moment's delay at Constantinople, on peril alike of his military button and his head.
'Beard of Ali!' he exclaimed, 'is not this alarming?'
'Rather,' said I, remembering that the first-named official was generalissimo of the Sultan's forces, and that the second was minister for the Home Department; and now the memory of a thousand peculations, local oppressions, extortions, and tyrannies came appallingly before Hussein, who, in his administration at Rodosdchig, had been about as tenderhearted as a Madras collector. Besides, he knew that he had ever been savagely severe with his men; for that obedience which is simple subordination in the European soldier, degenerates into mere slavery in the Turk.
Poor Hadjee Hussein Ebn al Ajuz felt his respected head wag somewhat loosely on his shoulders; but while he prepared to depart at once for Stamboul, in his selfish alarm for himself, the actual interest of his wife and household were nearly forgotten.
His wife; here was a devil of a dilemma! What was to be done? The question would have puzzled the seven wiseacres of the East, had they been with us.
'And now,' said Hussein, relinquishing his narguillah with a sigh, and belting his sabre about his portly person; 'I look toyoufor a great service.'
'If I can serve you in anything, command me.'
'I shall not be gone many days.'
'Take care, Hussein; I would bet a month's pay, or a quarter's field allowance, against the chances of your ever coming back again.'
'Bismillah! don't say so, pray—Ishallcome back!'
'And this service?' said I.
'Is to take charge of my wife in my absence.'
'I beg pardon—did I hear you aright? to take charge of——'
'My wife,' continued Hussein, grinding his teeth; 'there is none other here to whom I can apply. The Moolah Moustapha, curses on him! is—I know not where; and there is no Turkish officer in the castle, save myself. You are a beyzadeh (gentleman's son) as well as a soldier. I can trust you.'
'But your wife, Yuze Bashi—'tis a perilous trust, especially in Turkey.'
'I have no resource,' said he, stamping his feet with rage; 'none—I must leave this in ten minutes, and cannot apply to my soldiers, and still less to yours, to act for me in this delicate matter.'
'Excuse my plainness—but I do not like the duty.'
'I like you the better for this sincerity, and trust you the more.'
'But——'
'But me no buts! You are like Sadd Ebn Kais, who said to the Prophet on his march to Tabuc, "Give me leave to stay behind, and expose me not unto temptation;" because, as the Koran hints, he dared not trust himself among the black-eyed girls of Greece. Your scruples are just; but remember, they who do good shall obtain good, even in this world.'
'I have never seen the lady,' said I, doubtfully; 'is she beautiful?'
The Yuze Bashi knit his brows, for this was approaching forbidden ground; but he answered,
'Beautiful as a Houri, and young—so young that I might be her father; so you must watch over her and guard her as if she was concealed by the seven blessed doors of the Prophet Zacharias.'
'So I am to be the guardian of a Turkish harem—what next?' thought I.
'You have still doubts,' said Hussein, with increasing irritation. 'Listen to me; when I was in the castle of Selyvria, my subaltern, afterwards the Cole-agassi Mohammed Saïd, was suddenly ordered to join the train of artillery then embarking for the Crimea, and it was on peril of his head that he loitered for a moment, after receiving the summons of the Seraskier. Here was just such a dilemma as mine; but he came to me, saying,
'Hussein, you must be unto me asmy brother; my purse, my wife, and my household, I leave in your safe keeping.'
'You have my word of honour,' said I.
'It is unnecessary,' said he, 'for I believe in you.' And so he sailed for the Euxine.
'For three months I had charge of his young and pretty wife. I never saw her; but my servants by turns watched the house, allowing none to enter—none at least but Ali Pasha, who paid me a hundred piastres for every visit; so you see I was very strict, and daily sent my grandfather, who was a decrepit old man, to ask if she required anything.'
'And the subaltern Mohammed Saïd?'
'Came back no more.'
'How?'
'He died a major at the passage of the Alma.'
'And his wife?'
'When her jewels were sold, married Hussein Aga (the steward of Ali Pasha), who paid me fifty piastres each time he left his slippers at the door. But you are an Ingleez—I can trust you to guard my wife better than I guarded the wife of Saïd—so watch her well, though she is pure as the daughter of Imraun, and gentle as the west wind, or the memory of a love we have lost when young.'
In ten minutes afterwards this coolest, queerest, and most cunning of all Yuze Bashis, had poised his huge bulk on the saddle of a fleet horse. With many sore misgivings, and terrors of the Seraskier and the Kiaja Kiatibi, he took his departure for Stamboul, leaving me in full possession of the fortress, and, more than all, of his wife, about whom, although I had not seen her, I felt some curiosity as he had acknowledged her to be young and beautiful as a Houri.
The plot of my Greek adventures was thickening!
'In love with the wife of one Turk, and solemnly requested, in a fatherly way of course, to look after the rib ofanother!' says Jack Belton, in one of his letters, which I received about this time by the hand of a mounted Koord. 'An arduous duty for a subaltern, Allan, but beware of meddling with such matters in Turkey! If the Horse Guards make light of dangers risked in the field of Mars, they will make lighter still of those encountered in the field of Venus. Allons, my boy! on the llth February, Fort Alexander at Sebastopol was blown up and entirely destroyed. There is no word of our moving in that direction yet, though it is said that a costermonger's ass would not exchange duties with our poor fellows in the trenches. I send you a box of prime cheroots; the last month's "Army List," the last Scotch newspaper, "Punch," and the corkscrew you required so much, and wishing you safe back again with your pins under the mess mahogany, remain, ever yours,
'J. BELTON
'Heraclea, March 1856.'
If Hussein imagined that Callum Dhu and I were to watch his premises, and to guard the bower of his lady-love, even in the slender way that he watched those of the Cole-agassi Mohammed Saïd, he was very much mistaken; for, beyond an extra injunction to the sentinel at the gate to admit no man into the little fortress without my express permission I troubled myself no more about the matter; but this order would have proved no bar to an enterprising Turkish lover, or an intriguing Turkish wife, as the apartments of the Yuze Bashi had windows and a private door, which opened into a beautiful rose-garden without the walls; and the stockades, which once formed a barrier in that direction had all been sold long since by the avaricious Hussein for firewood.
The evening of the day after his departure was drawing near when I bethought me of my Unknown Beauty at the Ruined Hermitage, and before bending my steps in that direction, I lingered on the beach for a time, below the castle-wall, in the hope that she might pass that way.
The town was hidden by the weather-beaten masses of the old castle, the round towers of which had for ages formed a landmark to the sea. Reddened under the western sun, the ocean seemed on fire towards its verge, and the clouds were piled over each other, like mountains of burnished brass, or gold and flame, but ever crumbling, changing, and forming anew, as they rolled along the horizon, in all the splendour of an oriental sunset. A gorgeous orange tint was spreading over everything; the distant capes and headlands, isles, and rocks, were all tinged with amber and violet hue or fiery red; and mirrored in that shining sea which blended into yellow and crimson as its waves rolled away towards the marble island of Marmora.
Among the rocks on which this strong old castle of the Grecians stood, the dwarf oak, the flowering arbutus, the broad-leaved bay, the fragrant myrtle, thespini Christiof the gallant Crusaders, the fig, the olive, the golden orange, and the luscious pomegranate, with its brown and husky bulbs, were all growing in luxuriance; while over all some giant plane-trees—which, by a marvel, had escaped the cupidity of Hussein, though their stems were seven feet thick—spread their shady branches. The castled promontory was a place of groves, of flowers, and of perfume.
Lingering there, and thinking, almost with a sigh, that such a land was worthy of a better race, there fell something at my feet.
It was three rose-buds—the faded three I had given to my veiled fair one a few nights ago! I started and looked up, just as the white hand that had dropped them was withdrawn from a casement in the old castle-wall close by, and not ten feet from where I was sitting, and where I had been musing for an hour past with Strabo and Herodotus and their old memories, conflicting in my mind, with the recollection of her magnificent eyes, when I found them beaming upon me!
She was still muffled in her yashmack and feradjee, yet I knew her in a moment.
'Iola!' I exclaimed; 'you here?'
'Here, where I first saw you,' said she, smiling, and waving a kiss towards me in the prettiest little flirting way imaginable.
'What—are you then—'
'The lady of whom you have such solemn charge.'
'The wife of the Yuze Bashi?'
'The wife of Hussein Ebn al Ajuz,' she added, with a gleam in her black eyes.
'His prisoner, rather, poor Iola! what have you to live for?'
'Those who love me—for them I live, and for them only. I amyourprisoner at present, for Hussein has gone to Stamboul with terror in every hair of his beard.
'Ah, Iola, you are worthy of a brighter and a better sphere than your husband can ever assign you. There are some things I wish you could understand; but the Mohammedan can form no conception of the position assigned to your sex among the Franks of the western world, where the influence of Christianity and of chivalry have served to exalt and purify the character of woman.'
'Idoknow all this,' she answered, impetuously, 'for I am come of Albanian blood, and love the Christians, though they bow their heads and bend their knees before gilded idols and painted pictures; for among our mountains the Mussulmen cling to the memory of their Christian fathers, and, on certain days, say a prayer at the old stone crosses that mark where they lie. Moreover, I have been taught that it was the place assigned to Mary, the first Christian woman, that gave a nobility and purity to the women of Frangistan. I know this, for I am a Greek by birth, though a Mohammedan by faith; and, oh, blessed be the Moolah Moustapha, he who revealed unto me the divine teachings of the Koran. Yet,' she added, with tears, and in a tremulous voice, 'I can remember my dear, dear mother, teaching me to kiss the little cross of the Christian's triple God!'
I winced a little at this peculiar phrase.
'Your mother—you remember her, then?'
'Oh, yes—yes! tall, beautiful, pale, and sad!' she added, throwing her white hands and dark eyes upwards; 'her blood—her hot blood—came over me as she died!'
'Iola! her blood—then she was killed?'
'Murdered—she was barbarously murdered before my eyes—for she was a Greek, and the wife of the gallant Demetrius Vidimo.'
'Good heavens—what is this you tell me?'
'The truth,' she added, weeping; 'the terrible truth—you have heard of my father, then?'
'And you are—'
'Iola Vidimo.'
'The sister of Constantine—'
'Oh, Mohammed! how know you that? I had a brother—a dear little brother, so named. Can you tell me aught of him? Speak—speak—have you lost your tongue?'
I had much to tell her, but how was I to fashion the tidings that her brother had been shot in the presence of her husband; and that he—Hussein—was one of those brutal soldiers who, after a vain contention for the person of her mother, had so barbarously pistolled her!
'Do you know this coral cross, Iola?'
She uttered a cry.
'It was my beloved mother's, and on that awful day at Acre, sixteen years ago, she tied it round the neck of my boy-brother, when we were separated. Tell me about Constantine—does he live?'
'It is a long story, Iola, and one that cannot be related here; but you forget yourself—you are excited—your voice may be overheard, and I may be seen. Where can we meet—at—the Hermitage?'
'No.'
'Where?'
'Here.'
'Here?'
'In these apartments.'
'If I am discovered?' I urged, with a heart that vibrated with strange emotions.
'Where so safe as within a pistol-shot of your own soldiers?'
'True—but your honour, Iola?'
'Is in my own keeping—do you hesitate?' she added, with a flash in her magnificent eyes.
'Dearest Iola, I will be here in an hour after sunset—but how to reach the window?'
'Leave that to me.'
'Hush!'
'Some one comes,' she exclaimed, and shut the latticed-window, as I hurried away in a tumult of thought.
The interruption proceeded only from a wandering Arab, who was drunk with raki, and chaunted aloud the glories of the starlight, which, in his hot and sultry clime, is loved better than the sunshine.
'Leili—Leili! O night—night!' was the burden of his monotonous and intrusive ditty, for which I felt a decided inclination to punch his head.
I was aware that in forming this appointment with Iola I was making a sad breach in the trust Hussein had been compelled to repose in me; but what the deuce was I to do? An oriental woman is not to be trifled with; for love and hate are strong and sudden passions under an eastern sun; and while heartily despising and wholly disliking Hussein on one hand, I felt myself dazzled and fascinated by his imprisoned odalisque on the other. Then I remembered his cool admissions of the hundred piastres of Ali Pasha, and the fifty piastres of Hussein Aga, the steward, and my scruples melted away.
I lighted one of Jack Belton's 'prime cheroots,' and sat down to think over the matter, and viewed it through the mellowing medium of a glass of brandy-and-water. I resolved to finish my flirtation with all propriety and speed; looked at my watch, and longed exceedingly for the dark hour, which, in that climate, follows the sinking of the sun.
Alas! how weak are the best resolutions of the human heart, when opposed to the magic influence oftwo charming eyes!
When remembering Laura Everingham and the pleasant days of other times, I sighed with mingled regret and bitterness. Was it the old love for her that could not be crushed, or the new love for my beautiful Oriental that I could but imperfectly comprehend, and which had so much of stirring novelty and imminent danger among its chief allurements?
Perhaps I found myself a little in that dilemma which—-I trust all fair ladies will pardon the avowal—is not uncommon among men—loving two women at once—'a way we often have in the army,' as Belton would say.
The new passion which had seized me was certainly strengthened by a sentiment of pique at Laura (oh, Laura, I could love you still!); yet this passion, improper, unwarrantable, name it as you will, friend reader, for this beautiful and too facile Moslem, filled all my heart and fired my imagination with a thousand romantic fancies. I saw all her danger and my own. One moment I lamented the evil chance which had sent me on this solitary duty, and cast me in her path; and the next, I looked at my watch, impatient of the lagging sunset.
Thus did love fire, and reason cool me by turns.
'I know,' says a recent writer, 'that five feet eight inches of female flesh and blood, when accompanied by a pale complexion, black eyes, and raven hair, is synonymous with strong passions and an unfortunate destiny.' And most unfortunate was your destiny, poor Iola!
Ah, those beautiful eyes! How sadly they put all one's wits and self-possession to flight—by their arrows routing horse, foot, and artillery.
I regarded her as a caged bird longing for freedom. I could not conceive it possible that the wife of a Turk—especially such a devilish and unmitigated Turk as the fat Yuze Bashi Hussein—should be otherwise than most unhappy; for the Mohammedan deems women the mere appendage of a household—a necessary comfort among others; a handsome wife, a cup of coffee, and a well-filled chiboque, are the mainsprings of life in the eyes of a true Believer—unless we add a hot bath and a savoury kabob.
With these reflections, an hour after sunset, I found myself in the dewy twilight, under her window, and among those richly-wooded rocks on which the sea of Marmora was rolling in ripples of violet, blue, and gold.
It was one of those brilliant nights when all the constellations are visible, and the poor Mohammedan believes that all the imps of earth are climbing to Heaven, to pry into the actions and overhear the conversation of the blessed, who occasionally pelt and slay them with the falling stars.
I waited for a little time, and then her lattice slowly—I thought reluctantly—unclosed; and two white hands were clapped gently together.
I replied to the signal; the stem of a date-tree and the tough branches of a wild vine enabled me to reach the window with ease, and in a moment I found myself within the sanctum sanctorum of a Mohammedan house—the anderun, or female apartments of the Yuze Bashi Hussein.
Iola was trembling; she drew her yashmack closely about her face, and hastened to shut the casement. Her eyes were full of tears, and that she had been seized by some unusual qualm, or terror of these proceedings, was but too apparent. This was unpleasant, as it gave me the sensation of being somewhat of a conspirator, at least.
The successful peculations of Hussein had enabled him to make the apartments of his Greek wife magnificent. The roof was all of blue velvet, painted with the figures of birds and flowers. The walls were hung with silk, in alternate broad red and white stripes, on which shone gilded sentences from the Koran. An exquisite Persian carpet covered the floor, on which were a profusion of velvet and embroidered cushions of the softest and lightest down arranged in the form of couches; and there were two little stools bearing coffee-trays and chiboques. The lower end of the apartment, which was divided in two by festooned curtains of the finest muslin, was hung with leopard-skins, and trophies of Turkish and Arabian arms of the keenest steel—sabres, handjiars, carbines, pistols, lances, matchlocks, and ancient horsetailed standards, arranged, in the form of stars, round Tartar shields of brown bull-hide, all glittering with knobs of burnished brass. The perfume of rich pastiles and wood of aloes, burning in tripods of bronze, and the fragrance of six tall candelabra full of fresh flowers, pervaded the apartment, which was lit by two large lamps of fine oil, the smoke of which was consumed by cream-coloured globes, that diffused a warm and voluptuous light.
To complete the picture of this remarkable apartment, let me remind the reader of Iola, who, shrinking a little from me, stood in the centre of it, with irresolution and timidity in her air and eyes.
She wore the hideous feradjee of the Turkish women, which enveloped her whole form, permitting little of its oriental symmetry to be seen; yet from amid its ample folds I could discern her hands, which were gloveless, and her little feet, which had embroidered slippers, and the faultless form and delicacy of which there were no stockings to conceal.
Her black and brilliant eyes, expressive, languishing, and inquiring, arch and smiling by turns, were now bent on me, timidly and imploringly, under their long lashes and dark eyebrows, which were well arched, defined, and full of character—a charming thing in every girl. Through the thin yashmack, or veil of fine muslin, which concealed the lower part of her face, after that abominable fashion which the restless jealousy of their male tyrants imposes on the women of the East, I could discern that her features were beautiful. Her turban was of muslin, sprigged with gold; she had an ivory pomander ball of attar-gul in one hand; a finely-embroidered handkerchief and a sandal-wood rosary from Mecca in the other.
The respect with which she was treated was puzzling and confusing to her, as a Turkish woman; for in her country the fair sex are kept in a state of subjugation so strict, that a sister dare not sit in her younger brother's presence without first obtaining permission.
I attempted to take her hands, but she withdrew them, and crossed them on her bosom.
'Iola,' said I, tenderly; 'have you ceased to love me?'
'I know not,' she replied, sadly; 'for, as the Koran says, it belongeth to Allah alone to fathom the human heart—and I cannot fathom mine.'
'You are doubtful of your own emotions.'
'I am sad—very sad—having much reason to be so.'
'Allow me to remove this veil, for Heaven's sake, dear Iola!' I continued, trembling with the earnestness of my own sentiments; 'do not repel me.'
She was passive, and I hastened to remove both the feradjee and the horrid yashmack; and then her fine figure appeared in a close velvet jacket, sleeved only to the elbow, cut low at the neck and open at the bosom; and her hair was gathered about her beautiful head in massive braids, like perfumed and sable silk. She trembled and blushed excessively, for, by the Mohammedan law, aged women who are past the time of marriagealonemay lay this veil aside.
Her white neck and arms were encircled by strings of Turkish rose pearls, made from the leaves of freshly-culled roses, bruised to a paste, and dried and rolled in oil of roses and musk, and which, being thus beautifully polished and pleasantly perfumed, are favourite ornaments in the East.
She had all that combination of spiritual and voluptuous loveliness which her Grecian sires of old worshipped in the olive-groves of Paphos, and in the temples of Cyprus and Cytheria, when the power of Juno's rival was supreme.
I drew her gently towards me, but still she averted her timid and downcast face.
'Iola—why this change?' I asked, in a pettish tone; 'have you ceased to love me now?'
'I have not ceased to love you,' she answered, while trembling painfully; 'at first you merely struck my fancy, when passing daily in the castle-yard, where you seemed so different in air, so free in step and bearing, from the slow, heavy-headed, and crook-legged soldiers of Hussein; but now you—you—'
'What?'
'Have keenly touched my heart. Alas!' she continued, weeping; 'nowI am more a slave than ever the piastres of Hussein, or the promise I gave him, before the Kadi, made me!'
'Be wary, Iola—remember that your servants may hear us, and our position is full of danger.'
'There is no danger,' she replied, bitterly; 'they are all dumb—voiceless as marble statues.'
'Dumb?'
'Mutes—tongueless—and two are deaf, or rendered so.'
'Horrible! For what reason?'
'To prevent their being indiscreet.'
'A wise precaution.'
'So my husband thinks—but a cruel one.'
After a pause, she added, 'Would to Allah that he had left me in the care of his friend, the Moolah Moustapha!'
'Why?'
'Can you ask me? The Moolah is said to know—like Solymon Ebn Daood—the language of the birds; and every kind of secret knowledge; and thus he had watched over the wanderings of my heart.'
'Nay, dearest Iola, these scruples and coquettish regrets come somewhat late—and one kiss—'
'Bismillah! In the name of the most Merciful, touch me not!' she exclaimed, with a coy alarm that was rather chilling; but she was too late: my kiss was on her pouting lip, and she did not repulse me—for she felt assured, by the night and the silence around us, that no ear was there to overhear us, and no mortal eye but mine to see her unveiled beauty.
Here endeth the first lesson.
Never while life remains shall I forget the hours of delight I passed with Iola.
I know that it was wrong—exceedingly wrong—and blamable in me to have yielded to the tempting peril of engaging in this flirtation—to give my regard for Iola its mildest term—but what could I do? And having once yielded to the allurement, and encouraged her in it, how could I fly or avoid her?
I met her no more at the Ruined Hermitage, or at the green City of the Silent, for such interviews were full of peril; but I met her again and again, in the seclusion of her own apartments, into which not even the tongueless and mutilated slaves of Hussein could penetrate without a signal being given and permission accorded from within. Thus we had an interview every evening, and had much delightful conversation, and many an hour of mute reverie.
How strange and alluring were those long, deep, and dangerous reveries, which were full of beatings of the heart, and tender meanings which the pen cannot depict, and no written language can convey!
My word plighted to the absent Hussein—my honour, and more than all, her honour—yea, her very life, were in peril, yet I trifled with both, like the heedless, reckless, and it may be, selfish boy I was!
Poor Iola!
I related the story of her brother's desertion, recapture, trial, and the death he suffered so courageously in our presence at Heraclea. I mentioned the two little incidents which brought me in personal contact with him; first in the public khan, and secondly at the last terrible scene in the valley of the mosque, where from his dead hand I took the little coral cross, which by a strange course of events I was now enabled to suspend upon the bosom of his sister; and as I did so, I thought of all that high-spirited and noble Albanian soldier would have felt had he seen that sister, now a Mahommedan, (the wife of one of those barbarous Osmanli who pistolled his stately mother at Acre,) and hanging in all her loveliness, dissolved in tears and grief upon the bosom of a stranger—a soldier of Frangistan!
I deemed it well for Hussein, well for Iola, and particularly fortunate for myself, that the fiery young lieutenant of Albanians was sleeping in his quiet grave, where the slaves of the Mir Alai Saïd had laid him.
Tempered by politeness, and by that respect and deference to a female which have come down to us from the days of the Crusaders and the Cavaliers, the manner of a European lover is so different from the bearing of an Oriental one, that there can be little wonder if the heart of a Mahommedan woman is easily won by the stiff-hatted, tight-coated, and long-trousered denizen of that ample and mysterious district known to her only as Frangistan. In the matter of love and wedlock, the Turkish woman has as little idea of freedom as the Turk has of the arguments advanced by S. Bufford, gent.—a certain learned pundit, who, in the reign of King William III., wrote an Essay 'against persons marryingwithout their own consent.'
'Oh, that I had the right to love you, as I have the right to hate the Yuze Bashi Hussein!' said Iola, after one of her long silences. 'Oh the odious! May the heel of my slipper be ever on his mouth—and yet—and yet he is my husband!'
'I wince always at that word in your pretty mouth, Iola!'
'In loving you, I cease to love him—-if indeed I ever loved him. Allah did not create woman with two hearts—with one under each breast, as the Moolah Moustapha affirms.'
'But our love is full of sadness as well as peril, Iola—for a day is coming when I must leave you.'
'Oh, leave me not!' she exclaimed, passionately. 'Must my love be sacrificed to this coarse and untutored Osmanli? The day after you leave me I shall have ceased to live.'
'Leave you I must, Iola.'
'Why?—when?'
'When ordered—for I, too, have Yuze Bashis and Mir Alais and Pashas who command me.'
'By the love with which you have inspired me!' she said in a piercing whisper, with her black eyes flashing in brilliance through their tears; 'I conjure you to take me with you, for I cannot live without you, and without you I must die!'
With these words she threw herself upon my breast, heedless of everything.
'I will take you with me, Iola, if I can—'
'Nay you must—you shall!'
'Yes—yes, at all hazards.'
'Why should I die so young?'
'You will go with me—I promise you,' I replied, heedless of the future; and then she gave me a smile of confiding fondness that would have melted the heart of our old friend Bluebeard.
'My husband will be here anon, and his jealousy—'