Fakredeen and the Rose of Sharon
BEFORE Tancred could recover from his surprise, the kiosk was invaded by a crowd of little grinning negro pages, dressed in white tunics, with red caps and slippers. They bore a number of diminutive trays of ebony inlaid with tortoiseshell, and the mother-o’-pearl of Joppa, and covered with a great variety of dishes. It was in vain that he would have signified to them that he had no wish to partake of the banquet, and that he attempted to rise from his mat. They understood nothing that he said, but always grinning and moving about him with wonderful quickness, they fastened a napkin of the finest linen, fringed with gold, round his neck, covered the mats and the border of the fountain with their dishes and vases of differently-coloured sherbets, and proceeded, notwithstanding all his attempts at refusal, to hand him their dainties in due order. Notwithstanding his present tone of mind, which was ill-adapted to any carnal gratification, Tancred had nevertheless been an unusual number of hours without food. He had made during the period no inconsiderable exertion, and was still some distance from the city. Though he resigned himself perforce to the care of his little attendants, their solicitude therefore was not inappropriate. He partook of some of their dishes, and when he had at length succeeded in conveying to them his resolution to taste no more, they cleared the kiosk with as marvellous a celerity as they had stored it, and then two of them advanced with a nargileh and a chibouque, to offer their choice to their guest. Tan-cred placed the latter for a moment to his mouth, and then rising, and making signs to the pages that he would now return, they danced before him in the path till he had reached the other side of the area of roses, and then, with a hundred bows, bending, they took their leave of him.
The sun had just sunk as Tancred quitted the garden: a crimson glow, shifting, as he proceeded, into rich tints of purple and of gold, suffused the stern Judæan hills, and lent an almost supernatural lustre to the landscape; lighting up the wild gorges, gilding the distant glens, and still kindling the superior elevations with its living blaze. The air, yet fervid, was freshened by a slight breeze that came over the wilderness from the Jordan, and the big round stars that were already floating in the skies were the brilliant heralds of the splendour of a Syrian night. The beauteous hour and the sacred scene were alike in unison with the heart of Tancred, softened and serious. He mused in fascinated reverie over the dazzling incident of the day. Who was this lady of Bethany, who seemed not unworthy to have followed Him who had made her abiding place so memorable? Her beauty might have baffled the most ideal painter of the fair Hebrew saints. Raffaelle himself could not have designed a brow of more delicate supremacy. Her lofty but gracious bearing, the vigour of her clear, frank mind, her earnestness, free from all ecstasy and flimsy enthusiasm, but founded in knowledge and deep thought, and ever sustained by exact expression and ready argument, her sweet witty voice, the great and all-engaging theme on which she was so content to discourse, and which seemed by right to belong to her: all these were circumstances which wonderfully affected the imagination of Tancred.
He was lost in the empyrean of high abstraction, his gaze apparently fixed on the purple mountains, and the golden skies, and the glittering orbs of coming night, which yet in truth he never saw, when a repeated shout at length roused him. It bade him stand aside on the narrow path that winds round the Mount of Olives from Jerusalem to Bethany, and let a coming horseman pass. The horseman was the young Emir who was a guest the night before in the divan of Besso. Though habited in the Mamlouk dress, as if only the attendant of some great man, huge trousers and jacket of crimson cloth, a white turban, a shawl round his waist holding his pistols and sabre, the horse he rode was a Kochlani of the highest breed., By him was a running footman, holding his nargileh, to which the Emir frequently applied his mouth as he rode along. He shot a keen glance at Tancred as he passed by, and then throwing his tube to his attendant, he bounded on.
In the meantime, we must not forget the lady of Bethany after she so suddenly disappeared from the kiosk. Proceeding up her mountain garden, which narrowed as she advanced, and attended by two female slaves, who had been in waiting without the kiosk, she was soon in that hilly chink in which she had built her nest; a long, low pavilion, with a shelving roof, and surrounded by a Saracenic arcade; the whole painted in fresco; a golden pattern of flowing fancy on a white ground. If there were door or window, they were entirely concealed by the blinds which appeared to cover the whole surface of the building. Stepping into the arcade, the lady entered the pavilion by a side portal, which opened by a secret spring, and which conducted her into a small corridor, and this again through two chambers, in both of which were many females, who mutely saluted her without rising from their employments.
Then the mistress entered a more capacious and ornate apartment. Its ceiling, which described the horseshoe arch of the Saracens, was encrusted with that honeycomb work which is peculiar to them, and which, in the present instance, was of rose colour and silver. Mirrors were inserted in the cedar panels of the walls; a divan of rose-coloured silk surrounded the chamber, and on the thick soft carpet of many colours, which nearly covered the floor, were several cushions surrounding an antique marble tripod of wreathed serpents. The lady, disembarrassing herself of her slippers, seated herself on the divan in the fashion of her country; one of her attendants brought a large silver lamp, which diffused a delicious odour as well as a brilliant light, and placed it on the tripod; the other clapped her hands, and a band of beautiful girls entered the room, bearing dishes of confectionery, plates of choice fruits, and vases of delicious sherbets. The lady, partaking of some of these, directed, after a short time, that they should be offered to her immediate attendants, who thereupon kissed their hands with a grave face, and pressed them to their hearts. Then one of the girls, leaving the apartment for a moment, returned with a nargileh of crystal, set by the most cunning artists of Damascus in a framework of golden filigree crusted with precious stones. She presented the flexible silver tube, tipped with amber, to the lady, who, waving her hand that the room should be cleared, smoked a confection of roses and rare nuts, while she listened to a volume read by one of her maidens, who was seated by the silver lamp.
While they were thus employed, an opposite curtain to that by which they had entered was drawn aside, and a woman advanced, and whispered some words to the lady, who seemed to signify her assent. Immediately, a tall negro of Dongola, richly habited in a flowing crimson vest, and with a large silver collar round his neck, entered the hall, and, after the usual salutations of reverence to the lady, spoke earnestly in a low voice. The lady listened with great attention, and then, taking out her tablets from her girdle, she wrote a few words and gave a leaf to the tall negro, who bowed and retired. Then she waved her hand, and the maiden who was reading closed her book, rose, and, pressing her hand to her heart, retired.
It seemed that the young Emir had arrived at the pavilion, and prayed that, without a moment’s delay, he might speak with the Lady of Bethany.
The curtain was again withdrawn, a light step was heard, the young man who had recently passed Tancred on the road to Jerusalem bounded into the room.
‘How is the Rose of Sharon?’ he exclaimed. He threw himself at her feet, and pressed the hem of her garment to his lips with an ecstasy which it would have been difficult for a bystander to decide whether it were mockery or enthusiasm, or genuine feeling, which took a sportive air to veil a devotion which it could not conceal, and which it cared not too gravely to intimate.
‘Ah, Fakredeen!’ said the lady, ‘and when did you leave the Mountain?’
‘I arrived at Jerusalem yesterday by sunset; never did I want to see you so much. The foreign consuls have stopped my civil war, which cost me a hundred thousand piastres. We went down to Beiroot and signed articles of peace; I thought it best to attend to escape suspicion. However, there is more stirring than you can conceive: never had I such combinations! First, let me shortly tell you what I have done, then what I wish you to do. I have made immense hits, but I am also in a scrape.’
‘That I think you always are,’ said the lady.
‘But you will get me out of it, Rose of Sharon! You always do, brightest and sweetest of friends! What an alliance is ours! My invention, your judgment; my combinations, your criticism. It must carry everything before it.’
‘I do not see that it has effected much hitherto,’ said the lady.’ However, give me your mountain news. What have you done?’
‘In the first place,’ said Fakredeen, ‘until this accursed peace intrigue of the foreign consuls, which will not last as long as the carnival, the Mountain was more troubled than ever, and the Porte, backed up by Sir Canning, is obstinate against any prince of our house exercising the rule.’
‘Do you call that good news?’
‘It serves. In the first place it keeps my good uncle, the Emir Bescheer and his sons, prisoners at the Seven Towers. Now, I will tell you what I have done. I have sent to my uncle and offered him two hundred thousand piastres a year for his life and that of his sons, if they will represent to the Porte that none but a prince of the house of Shehaab can possibly pacify and administer Lebanon, and that, to obtain this necessary end, they are ready to resign their rights in favour of any other member of the family.’
‘What then?’ said the Lady of Bethany, taking her nargileh from her mouth.
‘Why, then,’ said Fakredeen, ‘I am by another agent working upon Riza Pasha to this effect, that of all the princes of the great house of Shehaab, there is none so well adapted to support the interests of the Porte as the Emir Fakredeen, and for these three principal reasons: in the first place, because he is a prince of great qualities——’
‘Your proof of them to the vizir would be better than your assertion.’
‘Exactly,’ said Fakredeen. ‘I prove them by my second reason, which is a guaranty to his excellency of the whole revenue of the first year of my princedom, provided I receive the berat.’
‘I can tell you something,’ said the lady, ‘Riza shakes a little. He is too fond of first-fruits. His nomination will not be popular.’
‘Yes it will, when the divan takes into consideration the third reason for my appointment,’ said the prince. ‘Namely, that the Emir Fakredeen is the only prince of the great house of Shehaab who is a good Mussulman.’
‘You a good Mussulman! Why, I thought you had sent two months ago Archbishop Murad to Paris, urging King Louis to support you, because, amongst other reasons, being a Christian prince, you would defend the faith and privileges of the Maronites.’
‘And devote myself to France,’ said Fakredeen. ‘It is very true, and an excellent combination it is, if we could only bring it to bear, which I do not despair of, though affairs, which looked promising at Paris, have taken an unfortunate turn of late.’
‘I am sorry for that,’ said the lady, ‘for really, Fakredeen, of all your innumerable combinations, that did seem to me to be the most practical. I think it might have been worked. The Maronites are powerful; the French nation is interested in them; they are the link between France and Syria; and you, being a Christian prince as well as an emir of the most illustrious house, with your intelligence and such aid as we might give you, I think your prospects were, to say the least, fair.’
‘Why, as to being a Christian prince, Eva, you must remember I aspire to a dominion where I have to govern the Maronites who are Christians, the Metoualis who are Mahometans, the Ansareys who are Pagans, and the Druses who are nothing. As for-myself, my house, as you well know, is more ancient even than that of Othman. We are literally descended from the standard-bearer of the Prophet, and my own estates, as well as those of the Emir Bes-cheer, have been in our registered possession for nearly eight hundred years. Our ancestors became Christians to conciliate the Maronites. Now tell me: in Europe, an English or French prince who wants a throne never hesitates to change his religion, why should I be more nice? I am of that religion which gives me a sceptre; and if a Frank prince adopts a new creed when he quits London or Paris, I cannot understand why mine may not change according to the part of the mountain through which I am passing. What is the use of belonging to an old family unless to have the authority of an ancestor ready for any prejudice, religious or political, which your combinations may require?’
‘Ah! Fakredeen,’ said the lady, shaking her head, ‘you have no self-respect.’
‘No Syrian has; it won’t do for us. You are an Arabian; it will do for the desert. Self-respect, too, is a superstition of past centuries, an affair of the Crusades. It is not suited to these times; it is much too arrogant, too self-conceited, too egotistical. No one is important enough to have self-respect. Don’t you see?’
‘You boast of being a prince inferior to none in the antiquity of your lineage, and, as far as the mere fact is concerned, you are justified in your boast. I cannot comprehend how one who feels this pride should deign to do anything that is not princely.’
‘A prince!’ exclaimed Fakredeen. ‘Princes go for nothing now, without a loan. Get me a loan, and then you turn the prince into a government. That’s the thing.’
‘You will never get a loan till you are Emir of Lebanon,’ said the lady. ‘And you have shown me to-day that the only chance you have is failing you, for, after all, Paris was your hope. What has crossed you?’
‘In the first place,’ said Fakredeen, ‘what can the French do? After having let the Egyptians be driven out, fortunately for me, for their expulsion ruined my uncle, the French will never take the initiative in Syria. All that I wanted of them was, that they should not oppose Riza Pasha in his nomination of me. But to secure his success a finer move was necessary. So I instructed Archbishop Murad, whom they received very well at Paris, to open secret communications over the water with the English. He did so, and offered to cross and explain in detail to their ministers. I wished to assure them in London that I was devoted to their interests; and I meant to offer to let the Protestant missionaries establish themselves in the mountain, so that Sir Canning should have received instructions to support my nomination by Riza. Then you see, I should have had the Porte, England, and France. The game was won. Can you believe it? Lord Aberdeen enclosed my agent’s letter to Guizot. I was crushed.’
‘And disgraced. You deserved it. You never will succeed. Intrigue will be your ruin, Fakredeen.’
‘Intrigue!’ exclaimed the prince, starting from the cushion near the tripod, on which he sat, speaking with great animation and using, as was his custom, a superfluity of expression, both of voice and hands and eyes, ‘intrigue! It is life! It is the only thing! How do you think Guizot and Aberdeen got to be ministers without intrigue? Or Riza Pasha himself? How do you think Mehemet Ali got on? Do you believe Sir Canning never intrigues? He would be recalled in a week if he did not. Why, I have got one of his spies in my castle at this moment, and I make him write home for the English all that I wish them not to believe. Intrigue! Why, England won India by intrigue. Do you think they are not intriguing in the Punjaub at this moment? Intrigue has gained half the thrones of Europe: Greece, France, Belgium, Portugal, Spain, Russia. If you wish to produce a result, you must make combinations; and you call combinations, Eva, intrigue!’
‘And this is the scrape that you are in,’ said the lady. ‘I do not see how I can help you out of it.’
‘Pardon; this is not the scrape: and here comes the point on which I need your aid, daughter of a thousand sheikhs! I can extricate myself from the Paris disaster, even turn it to account. I have made an alliance with the patriarch of the Lebanon, who manages affairs for the Emir Bescheer. The patriarch hates Murad, whom you see I was to have made patriarch. I am to declare the Archbishop an unauthorised agent, an adventurer, and my letter to be a forgery. The patriarch is to go to Stamboul, with his long white beard, and put me right with France, through De Bourqueney, with whom he has relations in favour of the Emir Bescheer; my uncle is to be thrown over; all the Maronite chiefs are to sign a declaration supplicating the Porte to institute me; nay, the declaration is signed——’
‘And the Druses? Will not this Maronite manifestation put you wrong with the Druses?’
‘I live among the Druses, you see,’ said Fakredeen, shaking his head, and looking with his glittering eye a thousand meanings. ‘The Druses love me. They know that I am one of themselves. They will only think that I have made the Maronites eat sand.’
‘And what have you really done for the Maronites to gain all this?’ asked the lady, quietly.
‘There it is,’ said Fakredeen, speaking in an affected whisper, ‘the greatest stroke of state that ever entered the mind of a king without a kingdom, for I am resolved that the mountain shall be a royalty I You remember when Ibrahim Pasha laid his plans for disarming the Lebanon, the Maronites, urged by their priests, fell into the snare, while the Druses wisely went with their muskets and scimitars, and lived awhile with the eagle and the antelope. This has been sand to the Maronites ever since. The Druses put their tongues in their cheek whenever they meet, and treat them as so many women. The Porte, of course, will do nothing for the Maronites; they even take back the muskets which they lent them for the insurrection. Well, as the Porte will not arm them, I have agreed to do it.’
‘You!’
‘’Tis done; at least the caravan is laden; we only want a guide. And this is why I am at Jerusalem. Scheriff Effendi, who met me here yesterday, has got me five thousand English muskets, and I have arranged with the Bedouin of Zoalia to carry them to the mountain.’
‘You have indeed Solomon’s signet, my dear Fakredeen.’
‘Would that I had; for then I could pay two hundred thousand piastres to that Egyptian camel, Scheriff Effendi, and he would give me up my muskets, which now, like a true son of Eblis, he obstinately retains.’
‘And this is your scrape, Fakredeen. And how much have you towards the sum?’
‘Not a piastre; nor do I suppose I shall ever see, until I make a great financial stroke, so much of the sultan’s gold as is on one of the gilt balls of roses in your nargileh. My crops are sold for next year, my jewels are gone, my studs are to be broken up. There is not a cur in the streets of Beiroot of whom I have not borrowed money. Riza Pasha is a sponge that would dry the sea of Galilee.’
‘It is a great thing to have gained the Patriarch of Lebanon,’ said the lady; ‘I always felt that, as long as that man was against you, the Maronites never could be depended on. And yet these arms; after all, they are of no use, for you would not think of insurrection!’
‘No; but they can quarrel with the Druses, and cut each other’s throats, and this will make the mountain more unmanageable than ever, and the English will have no customers for their calicoes, don’t you see? Lord Palmerston will arraign the minister in the council. I shall pay off Aberdeen for enclosing the Archbishop’s letter to Guizot. Combination upon combination! The calico merchants will call out for a prince of the house of Shehaab! Riza will propose me; Bourqueney will not murmur, and Sir Canning, finding he is in a mess, will sign a fine note of words about the peace of Europe and the prosperity of Lebanon, and ‘tis finished.’
‘And my father, you have seen him?’
‘I have seen him,’ said the young Emir, and he cast his eyes on the ground.
‘He has done so much,’ said Eva.
‘Ask him to do more, Rose of Sharon,’ said Fakredeen, like a child about to cry for a toy, and he threw himself on his knees before Eva, and kept kissing her robe. ‘Ask him to do more,’ he repeated, in a suppressed tone of heart-rending cajolery; ‘he can refuse you nothing. Ask him, ask him, Eva! I have no friend in the world but you; I am so desolate. You have always been my friend, my counsellor, my darling, my ruby, my pearl, my rose of Rocnabad! Ask him, Eva; never mind my faults; you know me by heart; only ask him!’
She shook her head.
‘Tell him that you are my sister, that I am his son, that I love you so, that I love him so; tell him anything. Say that he ought to do it because I am a Hebrew.’
‘A what?’ said Eva.
‘A Hebrew; yes, a Hebrew. I am a Hebrew by blood, and we all are by faith.’
‘Thou son of a slave!’ exclaimed the lady, ‘thou masquerade of humanity! Christian or Mussulman, Pagan or Druse, thou mayest figure as; but spare my race, Fakredeen, they are fallen——’
‘But not so base as I am. It may be true, but I love you, Eva, and you love me; and if I had as many virtues as yourself, you could not love me more; perhaps less. Women like to feel their superiority; you are as clever as I am, and have more judgment; you are generous, and I am selfish; honourable, and I am a villain; brave, and I am a coward; rich, and I am poor. Let that satisfy you, and do not trample on the fallen;’ and Fakredeen took her hand and bedewed it with his tears.
‘Dear Fakredeen,’ said Eva, ‘I thought you spoke in jest, as I did.’
‘How can a man jest, who has to go through what I endure!’ said the young Emir, in a desponding tone, and still lying at her feet. ‘O, my more than sister, ‘tis hell! The object I propose to myself would, with the greatest resources, be difficult; and now I have none.’
‘Relinquish it.’
‘When I am young and ruined! When I have the two greatest stimulants in the world to action, Youth and Debt! No; such a combination is never to be thrown away. Any young prince ought to win the Lebanon, but a young prince in debt ought to conquer the world!’ and the Emir sprang from the floor, and began walking about the apartment.
‘I think, Eva,’ he said, after a moment’s pause, and speaking in his usual tone, ‘I think you really might do something with your father; I look upon myself as his son; he saved my life. And I am a Hebrew; I was nourished by your mother’s breast, her being flows in my veins; and independent of all that, my ancestor was the standard-bearer of the Prophet, and the Prophet was the descendant of Ishmael, and Ishmael and Israel were brothers. I really think, between my undoubted Arabian origin and being your foster-brother, that I may be looked upon as a Jew, and that your father might do something for me.’
‘Whatever my father will do, you and he must decide together,’ said Eva; ‘after the result of my last interference, I promised my father that I never would speak to him on your affairs again; and you know, therefore, that I cannot. You ought not to urge me, Fakredeen.’
‘Ah! you are angry with me,’ he exclaimed, and again seated himself at her feet. ‘You were saying in your heart, he is the most selfish of beings. It is true, I am. But I have glorious aspirations at least. I am not content to live like my fathers in a beautiful palace, amid my woods and mountains, with Kochlani steeds, falcons that would pull down an eagle, and nargilehs of rubies and emeralds. I want something more than troops of beautiful slaves, music and dances. I want Europe to talk of me. I am wearied of hearing nothing but Ibrahim Pasha, Louis Philippe, and Palmerston. I, too, can make combinations; and I am of a better family than all three, for Ibrahim is a child of mud, a Bourbon is not equal to a Shehaab, and Lord Palmerston only sits in the Queen’s second chamber of council, as I well know from an Englishman who was at Beiroot, and with whom I have formed some political relations, of which perhaps some day you will hear.’
‘Well, we have arrived at a stage of your career, Fakredeen, in which no combination presents itself; I am powerless to assist you; my resources, never very great, are quite exhausted.’
‘No,’ said the Emir, ‘the game is yet to be won. Listen, Rose of Sharon, for this is really the point on which I came to hold counsel. A young English lord has arrived at Jerusalem this week or ten days past; he is of the highest dignity, and rich enough to buy the grand bazaar of Damascus; he has letters of credit on your father’s house without any limit. No one can discover the object of his mission. I have some suspicions; there is also a French officer here who never speaks; I watch them both. The Englishman, I learnt this morning, is going to Mount Sinai. It is not a pilgrimage, because the English are really neither Jews nor Christians, but follow a sort of religion of their own, which is made every year by their bishops, one of whom they have sent to Jerusalem, in what they call a parliament, a college of muftis; you understand. Now lend me that ear that is like an almond of Aleppo! I propose that one of the tribes that obey your grandfather shall make this Englishman prisoner as he traverses the desert. You see? Ah! Rose of Sharon, I am not yet beat; your Fakredeen is not the baffled boy that, a few minutes ago, you looked as if you thought him. I defy Ibrahim, or the King of France, or Palmerston himself, to make a combination superior to this. What a ransom! The English lord will pay Scheriff Effendi for his five thousand muskets, and for their conveyance to the mountain besides.’
Besso, the Banker
IN ONE of those civil broils at Damascus which preceded the fall of the Janissaries, an Emir of the house of Shehaab, who lost his life in the fray, had, in the midst of the convulsion, placed his infant son in the charge of the merchant Besso, a child most dear to him, not only because the babe was his heir, but because his wife, whom he passionately loved, a beautiful lady of Antioch and of one of the old families of the country, had just sacrificed her life in giving birth to their son.
The wife of Besso placed the orphan infant at her own breast, and the young Fakredeen was brought up in every respect as a child of the house; so that, for some time, he looked upon the little Eva, who was three years younger than himself, as his sister. When Fakredeen had attained an age of sufficient intelligence for the occasion and the circumstances, his real position was explained to him; but he was still too young for the communication to effect any change in his feelings, and the idea that Eva was not his sister only occasioned him sorrow, until his grief was forgotten when he found that the change made no difference in their lives or their love.
Soon after the violent death of the father of Fakredeen, affairs had become more tranquil, and Besso had not neglected the interests of his charge. The infant was heir to a large estate in the Lebanon; a fine castle, an illimitable forest, and cultivated lands, whose produce, chiefly silk, afforded a revenue sufficient to maintain the not inconsiderable state of a mountain prince.
When Fakredeen was about ten years of age, his relative the Emir Bescheer, who then exercised a sovereign and acknowledged sway over all the tribes of the Lebanon, whatever their religion or race, signified his pleasure that his kinsman should be educated at his court, in the company of his sons. So Fakredeen, with many tears, quitted his happy home at Damascus, and proceeded to Beteddeen, the beautiful palace of his uncle, situate among the mountains in the neighbourhood of Beiroot. This was about the time that the Egyptians were effecting the conquest of Syria, and both the Emir Bescheer, the head of the house of Shehaab as well as Prince of the Mountain, and the great commercial confederation of the brothers Besso, had declared in favour of the invader, and were mainly instrumental to the success of Mehemet Ali. Political sympathy, and the feelings of mutual dependence which united the Emir Bescheer and the merchant of Damascus, rendered the communications between the families so frequent that it was not difficult for the family of Besso to cherish those sentiments of affection which were strong and lively in the heart of the young Fakredeen, but which, under any circumstances, depend so much on sustained personal intercourse. Eva saw a great deal of her former brother, and there subsisted between them a romantic friendship. He was their frequent guest at Damascus and was proud to show her how he excelled in his martial exercises, how skilful he was with his falcon, and what horses of pure race he proudly rode.
In the year ‘39, Fakredeen being then fifteen years of age, the country entirely tranquil, even if discontented, occupied by a disciplined army of 80,000 men, commanded by captains equal it was supposed to any conjuncture, the Egyptians openly encouraged by the greatest military nation of Europe, the Turks powerless, and only secretly sustained by the countenance of the ambassador of the weakest government that ever tottered in England, a government that had publicly acknowledged that it had forfeited the confidence of the Parliament which yet it did not dissolve; everything being thus in a state of flush and affluent prosperity, and both the house of Shehaab and the house of Besso feeling, each day more strongly, how discreet and how lucky they had been in the course which they had adopted, came the great Syrian crash!
Whatever difference of opinion may exist as to the policy pursued by the foreign minister of England, with respect to the settlement of the Turkish Empire in 1840-41, none can be permitted, by those, at least, competent to decide upon such questions, as to the ability with which that policy was accomplished. When we consider the position of the minister at home, not only deserted by Parliament, but abandoned by his party and even forsaken by his colleagues; the military occupation of Syria by the Egyptians; the rabid demonstration of France; that an accident of time or space, the delay of a month or the gathering of a storm, might alone have baffled all his combinations, it is difficult to fix upon a page in the history of this country which records a superior instance of moral intrepidity. The bold conception and the brilliant performance were worthy of Chatham; but the domestic difficulties with which Lord Palmerston had to struggle place the exploit beyond the happiest achievement of the elder Pitt. Throughout the memorable conjuncture, Lord Palmerston, however, had one great advantage, which was invisible to the millions; he was served by a most vigilant and able diplomacy. The superiority of his information concerning the state of Syria to that furnished to the French minister was the real means by which he baffled the menaced legions of our neighbours. A timid Secretary of State in the position of Lord Palmerston, even with such advantages, might have faltered; but the weapon was placed in the hands of one who did not shrink from its exercise, and the expulsion of the Egyptians from Turkey remains a great historic monument alike of diplomatic skill and administrative energy.
The rout of the Egyptians was fatal to the Emir Bescheer, and it seemed also, for a time, to the Damascus branch of the family of Besso. But in these days a great capitalist has deeper roots than a sovereign prince, unless he is very legitimate. The Prince of the Mountain and his sons were summoned from their luxurious and splendid Beteddeen to Constantinople, where they have ever since remained prisoners. Young Fakredeen, the moment he heard of the fall of Acre, rode out with his falcon, as if for the pastime of a morning, and the moment he was out of sight made for the desert, and never rested until he reached the tents of the children of Rechab, where he placed himself under the protection of the grandfather of Eva.
As for the merchant himself, having ships at his command, he contrived to escape with his wife and his young daughter to Trieste, and he remained in the Austrian dominions between three and four years. At length the influence of Prince Metternich, animated by Sidonia, propitiated the Porte. Adarfi Besso, after making his submission at Stamboul, and satisfactorily explaining his conduct to Riza Pasha, returned to his country, not substantially injured in fortune, though the northern clime had robbed him of his Arabian wife; for his brothers, who, as far as politics were concerned, had ever kept in the shade, had managed affairs in the absence of the more prominent member of their house, and, in truth, the family of Besso were too rich to be long under a cloud. The Pasha of Damascus found his revenue fall very short without their interference; and as for the Divan, the Bessoes could always find a friend there if they chose. The awkwardness of the Syrian catastrophe was, that it was so sudden and so unexpected that there was then no time for those satisfactory explanations which afterwards took place between Adam Besso and Riza.
Though the situation of Besso remained, therefore, unchanged after the subsidence of the Syrian agitation, the same circumstance could not be predicated of the position of his foster-child. Fakredeen possessed all the qualities of the genuine Syrian character in excess; vain, susceptible, endowed with a brilliant though frothy imagination, and a love of action so unrestrained that restlessness deprived it of energy, with so fine a taste that he was always capricious, and so ingenious that he seemed ever inconsistent. His ambition was as high as his apprehension was quick. He saw everything and understood everybody in a flash; and believed that everything that was said or done ought to be made to contribute to his fortunes. Educated in the sweet order, and amid the decorous virtues of the roof of Besso, Fakredeen, who, from his susceptibility, took the colour of his companions, even when he thought they were his tools, had figured for ten years as a soft-hearted and somewhat timid child, dependent on kind words, and returning kindness with a passionate affection.
His change to the palace of his uncle developed his native qualities, which, under any accidents, could not perhaps have been long restrained, but which the circumstances of the times brought to light, and matured with a celerity peculiar to the East. The character of Fakredeen was formed amid the excitement of the Syrian invasion and its stirring consequences. At ten years of age he was initiated in all the mysteries of political intrigue. His startling vivacity and the keen relish of his infant intelligence for all the passionate interests of men amused and sometimes delighted his uncle. Everything was spoken before him; he lived in the centre of intrigues which were to shake thrones, and perhaps to form them. He became habituated to the idea that everything could be achieved by dexterity, and that there was no test of conduct except success. To dissemble and to simulate; to conduct confidential negotiations with contending powers and parties at the same time; to be ready to adopt any opinion and to possess none; to fall into the public humour of the moment, and to evade the impending catastrophe; to look upon every man as a tool, and never do anything which had not a definite though circuitous purpose; these were his political accomplishments; and, while he recognised them as the best means of success, he found in their exercise excitement and delight. To be the centre of a maze of manoeuvres was his empyrean. He was never without a resource.
Stratagems came to him as naturally as fruit comes to a tree. He lived in a labyrinth of plans, and he rejoiced to involve some one in the perplexities which his magic touch could alone unravel. Fakredeen had no principle of any kind; he had not a prejudice; a little superstition, perhaps, like his postponing his journey because a hare crossed his path. But, as for life and conduct in general, forming his opinions from the great men of whom he had experience, princes, pashas, and some others, and from the great transactions with which he was connected, he was convinced that all was a matter of force or fraud. Fakredeen preferred the latter, because it was more ingenious, and because he was of a kind and passionate temperament, loving beauty and the beautiful, apt to idealise everything, and of too exquisite a taste not to shrink with horror from an unnecessary massacre.
Though it was his profession and his pride to simulate and to dissemble, he had a native ingenuousness which was extremely awkward and very surprising, for, the moment he was intimate with you, he told you everything. Though he intended to make a person his tool, and often succeeded, such was his susceptibility, and so strong were his sympathetic qualities, that he was perpetually, without being aware of it, showing his cards. The victim thought himself safe, but the teeming resources of Fakredeen were never wanting, and some fresh and brilliant combination, as he styled it, often secured the prey which so heedlessly he had nearly forfeited. Recklessness with him was a principle of action. He trusted always to his fertile expedients if he failed, and ran the risk in the meanwhile of paramount success, the fortune of those who are entitled to be rash. With all his audacity, which was nearly equal to his craft, he had no moral courage; and, if affairs went wrong, and, from some accident, exhaustion of the nervous system, the weather, or some of those slight causes which occasionally paralyse the creative mind, he felt without a combination, he would begin to cry like a child, and was capable of any action, however base and humiliating, to extricate himself from the impending disaster.
Fakredeen had been too young to have fatally committed himself during the Egyptian occupation. The moment he found that the Emir Bescheer and his sons were prisoners at Constantinople, he returned to Syria, lived quietly at his own castle, affected popularity among the neighbouring chieftains, who were pleased to see a Shehaab among them, and showed himself on every occasion a most loyal subject of the Porte. At seventeen years of age, Fakredeen was at the head of a powerful party, and had opened relations with the Divan. The Porte looked upon him with confidence, and although they intended, if possible, to govern Lebanon in future themselves, a young prince of a great house, and a young prince so perfectly free from all disagreeable antecedents, was not to be treated lightly. All the leaders of all the parties of the mountain frequented the castle of Fakredeen, and each secretly believed that the prince was his pupil and his tool. There was not one of these men, grey though some of them were in years and craft, whom the innocent and ingenuous Fakredeen did not bend as a nose of wax, and, when Adam Besso returned to Syria in ‘43, he found his foster-child by far the most considerable person in the country, and all parties amid their doubts and distractions looking up to him with hope and confidence. He was then nineteen years of age, and Eva was sixteen. Fakredeen came instantly to Damascus to welcome them, hugged Besso, wept like a child over his sister, sat up the whole night on the terrace of their house smoking his nargileh, and telling them all his secrets without the slightest reserve: the most shameful actions of his career as well as the most brilliant; and finally proposed to Besso to raise a loan for the Lebanon, ostensibly to promote the cultivation of mulberries, really to supply arms to the discontented population who were to make Fakredeen and Eva sovereigns of the mountain. It will have been observed, that to supply the partially disarmed tribes of the mountain with weapons was still, though at intervals, the great project of Fakredeen, and to obtain the result in his present destitution of resources involved him in endless stratagems. His success would at the same time bind the tribes, already well affected to him, with unalterable devotion to a chief capable of such an undeniable act of sovereignty, and of course render them proportionately more efficient instruments in accomplishing his purpose. It was the interest of Fakredeen that the Lebanon should be powerful and disturbed.
Besso, who had often befriended him, and who had frequently rescued him from the usurers of Beiroot and Sidon, lent a cold ear to these suggestions. The great merchant was not inclined again to embark in a political career, or pass another three or four years away from his Syrian palaces and gardens. He had seen the most powerful head that the East had produced for a century, backed by vast means, and after having apparently accomplished his purpose, ultimately recoil before the superstitious fears of Christendom, lest any change in Syria should precipitate the solution of the great Eastern problem. He could not believe that it was reserved for Fakredeen to succeed in that which had baffled Mehemet Ali.
Eva took the more sanguine view that becomes youth and woman. She had faith in Fakredeen. Though his position was not as powerful as that of the great viceroy, it was, in her opinion, more legitimate. He seemed indicated as the natural ruler of the mountain. She had faith, too, in his Arabian origin. With Eva, what is called society assumed the character of a continual struggle between Asia and the North. She dreaded the idea that, after having escaped the crusaders, Syria should fall first under the protection, and then the colonisation of some European power. A link was wanted in the chain of resistance which connected the ranges of Caucasus with the Atlas. She idealised her foster-brother into a hero, and saw his standard on Mount Lebanon, the beacon of the oriental races, like the spear of Shami, or the pavilion of Abd-el-Kader. Eva had often influenced her father for the advantage of Fakredeen, but at last even Eva felt that she should sue in vain.
A year before, involved in difficulties which it seemed no combination could control, and having nearly occasioned the occupation of Syria by a united French and English force, Fakredeen burst out a-cry-ing like a little boy, and came whimpering to Eva, as if somebody had broken his toy or given him a beating. Then it was that Eva had obtained for him a final assistance from her father, the condition being, that this application should be the last.
Eva had given him jewels, had interested other members of her family in his behalf, and effected for him a thousand services, which only a kind-hearted and quick-witted woman could devise. While Fakredeen plundered her without scruple and used her without remorse, he doted on her; he held her intellect in absolute reverence; a word from her guided him; a look of displeasure, and his heart ached. As long as he was under the influence of her presence, he really had no will, scarcely an idea of his own. He spoke only to elicit her feelings and opinions. He had a superstition that she was born under a fortunate star, and that it was fatal to go counter to her. But the moment he was away, he would disobey, deceive, and, if necessary, betray her, loving her the same all the time. But what was to be expected from one whose impressions were equally quick and vivid, who felt so much for himself, and so much for others, that his life seemed a perpetual re-action between intense selfishness and morbid sensibility?
Had Fakredeen married Eva, the union might have given him some steadiness of character, or at least its semblance. The young Emir had greatly desired this alliance, not for the moral purpose that we have intimated, not even from love of Eva, for he was totally insensible to domestic joys, but because he wished to connect himself with great capitalists, and hoped to gain the Lebanon loan for a dower. But this alliance was quite out of the question. The hand of Eva was destined, according to the custom of the family, for her cousin, the eldest son of Besso of Aleppo. The engagement had been entered into while she was at Vienna, and it was then agreed that the marriage should take place soon after she had completed her eighteenth year. The ceremony was therefore at hand; it was to occur within a few months.
Accustomed from an early period of life to the contemplation of this union, it assumed in the eyes of Eva a character as natural as that of birth or death. It never entered her head to ask herself whether she liked or disliked it. It was one of those inevitable things of which we are always conscious, yet of which we never think, like the years of our life or the colour of our hair. Had her destiny been in her own hands, it is probable that she would not have shared it with Fakredeen, for she had never for an instant entertained the wish that there should be any change in the relations which subsisted between them. According to the custom of the country, it was to Besso that Fakredeen had expressed his wishes and his hopes. The young Emir made liberal offers: his wife and children might follow any religion they pleased; nay, he was even ready to conform himself to any which they fixed upon. He attempted to dazzle Besso with the prospect of a Hebrew Prince of the Mountains. ‘My daughter,’ said the merchant, ‘would certainly, under any circumstances, marry one of her own faith; but we need not say another word about it; she is betrothed, and has been engaged for some years, to her cousin.’
When Fakredeen, during his recent visit to Bethany, found that Eva, notwithstanding her Bedouin blood, received his proposition for kidnapping a young English nobleman with the utmost alarm and even horror, he immediately relinquished it, diverted her mind from the contemplation of a project on her disapproval of which, notwithstanding his efforts at distraction, she seemed strangely to dwell, and finally presented her with a new and more innocent scheme in which he required her assistance. According to Fakredeen, his new English acquaintance at Beiroot, whom he had before quoted, was ready to assist him in the fulfilment of his contract, provided he could obtain sufficient time from Scheriff Effendi; and what he wished Eva to do was personally to request the Egyptian merchant to grant time for this indulgence. This did not seem to Eva an unreasonable favour for her foster-brother to obtain, though she could easily comprehend why his previous irregularities might render him an unsuccessful suitor to his creditor. Glad that it was still in her power in some degree to assist him, and that his present project was at least a harmless one, Eva offered the next day to repair to the city and see Scheriff Effendi on his business. Pressing her hand to his heart, and saluting her with a thousand endearing names, the Emir quitted the Rose of Sharon with the tears in his grateful eyes.
Now the exact position of Fakredeen was this: he had induced the Egyptian merchant to execute the contract for him by an assurance that Besso would be his security for the venture, although the peculiar nature of the transaction rendered it impossible for Besso, in his present delicate position, personally to interfere in it. To keep up appearances, Fakredeen, with his usual audacious craft, had appointed Scheriff Effendi to meet him at Jerusalem, at the house of Besso, for the completion of the contract; and accordingly, on the afternoon of the day preceding his visit to Bethany, Fakredeen had arrived at Jerusalem without money, and without credit, in order to purchase arms for a province.
The greatness of the conjuncture, the delightful climate, his sanguine temperament, combined, however, to sustain him. As he traversed his delicious mountains, with their terraces of mulberries, and olives, and vines, lounged occasionally for a short time at the towns on the coast, and looked in at some of his creditors to chatter charming delusions, or feel his way for a new combination most necessary at this moment, his blood was quick and his brain creative; and although he had ridden nearly two hundred miles when he arrived at the ‘Holy City,’ he was fresh and full of faith that ‘something would turn up.’ His Egyptian friend, awfully punctual, was the first figure that welcomed him as he entered the divan of Besso, where the young Emir remained in the position which we have described, smoking interminable nargilehs while he revolved his affairs, until the conversation respecting the arrival of Tancred roused him from his brooding meditation.
It was not difficult to avoid Scheriff Effendi for a while. The following morning, Fakredeen passed half a dozen hours at the bath, and then made his visit to Eva with the plot which had occurred to him the night before at the divan, and which had been matured this day while they were shampooing him. The moment that, baffled, he again arrived at Jerusalem, he sought his Egyptian merchant, and thus addressed him: ‘You see, Effendi, that you must not talk on this business to Besso, nor can Besso talk to you about it.’
‘Good!’ said the Effendi.
‘But, if it be managed by another person to your satisfaction, it will be as well.’
‘One grain is like another.’
‘It will be managed by another person to your satisfaction.’
‘Good!’
‘The Rose of Sharon is the same in this business as her father?’
‘He is a ruby and she is a pearl.’
‘The Rose of Sharon will see you to-morrow about this business.’
‘Good!’
‘The Rose of Sharon may ask you for time to settle everything; she has to communicate with other places. You have heard of such a city as Aleppo?’
‘If Damascus be an eye, Aleppo is an ear.’
‘Don’t trouble the Rose of Sharon, Effendi, with any details if she speaks to you; but be content with all she proposes. She will ask, perhaps, for three months; women are nervous; they think robbers may seize the money on its way, or the key of the chest may not be found when it is wanted; you understand? Agree to what she proposes; but, between ourselves, I will meet you at Gaza on the day of the new moon, and it is finished.’
‘Good.’
Faithful to her promise, at an early hour of the morrow, Eva, wrapped in a huge and hooded Arab cloak, so that her form could not in the slightest degree be traced, her face covered with a black Arab mask, mounted her horse; her two female attendants, habited in the same manner, followed their mistress; before whom marched her janissary armed to the teeth, while four Arab grooms walked on each side of the cavalcade. In this way, they entered Jerusalem by the gate of Sion, and proceeded to the house of Besso. Fakredeen watched her arrival. He was in due time summoned to her presence, where he learned the success of her mission.
‘Scheriff Effendi,’ she said, ‘has agreed to keep the arms for three months, you paying the usual rate of interest on the money. This is but just. May your new friend at Beiroot be more powerful than I am, and as faithful!’
‘Beautiful Rose of Sharon! who can be like you! You inspire me; you always do. I feel persuaded that I shall get the money long before the time has elapsed.’ And, so saying, he bade her farewell, to return, as he said, without loss of time to Beiroot.