Suspense
‘I WOULD not mention it to your lordship last night,’ said Baroni; ‘I thought enough had happened for one day.’
‘But now you think I am sufficiently fresh for new troubles.’ ‘He spoke it in Hebrew, that myself and Sheikh Hassan should not understand him, but I know something of that dialect.’
‘In Hebrew! And why in Hebrew?’ ‘They follow the laws of Moses, this tribe.’ ‘Do you mean that they are Jews?’ ‘The Arabs are only Jews upon horseback,’ said Baroni. ‘This tribe, I find, call themselves Rechabites.’
‘Ah!’ exclaimed Tancred, and he began to muse. ‘I have heard of that name before. Is it possible,’ thought he, ‘that my visit to Bethany should have led to this captivity?’
‘This affair must have been planned at Jerusalem,’ said Baroni; ‘I saw from the first it was not a common foray. These people know everything. They will send immediately to Besso; they know he is your banker, and that if you want to build the Temple, he must pay for it, and unless a most immoderate ransom is given, they will carry us all into the interior of the desert.’
‘And what do you counsel?’
‘In this, as in all things, to gain time; and principally because I am without resource, but with time expedients develop themselves. Naturally, what is wanted will come; expediency is a law of nature. The camel is a wonderful animal, but the desert made the camel. I have already impressed upon the great Sheikh that you are not a prince of the blood; that your father is ruined, that there has been a murrain for three years among his herds and flocks; and that, though you appear to be travelling for amusement, you are, in fact, a political exile. All these are grounds for a reduced ransom. At present he believes nothing that I say, because his mind has been previously impressed with contrary and more cogent representations, but what I say will begin to work when he has experienced some disappointment, and the period of re-action arrives. Re-action is the law of society; it is inevitable. All success depends upon seizing it.’
‘It appears to me that you are a great philosopher, Baroni,’ said Tancred.
‘I travelled five years with M. de Sidonia,’ said Baroni. ‘We were in perpetual scrapes, often worse than this, and my master moralised upon every one of them. I shared his adventures, and I imbibed some of his wisdom; and the consequence is, that I always ought to know what to say, and generally what to do.’
‘Well, here at least is some theatre for your practice; though, as far as I can form an opinion, our course is simple, though ignominious. We must redeem ourselves from captivity. If it were only the end of my crusade, one might submit to it, like Coeur de Lion, after due suffering; but occurring at the commencement, the catastrophe is mortifying, and I doubt whether I shall have heart enough to pursue my way. Were I alone, I certainly would not submit to ransom. I would look upon captivity as one of those trials that await me, and I would endeavour to extricate myself from it by courage and address, relying ever on Divine aid; but I am not alone. I have involved you in this mischance, and these poor Englishmen, and, it would seem, the brave Hassan and his tribe. I can hardly ask you to make the sacrifice which I would cheerfully endure; and therefore it seems to me that we have only one course—to march under the forks.’
‘With submission,’ said Baroni, ‘I cannot agree with any of your lordship’s propositions. You take an extreme view of our case. Extreme views are never just; something always turns up which disturbs the calculations formed upon their decided data. This something is circumstance. Circumstance has decided every crisis which I have experienced, and not the primitive facts on which we have consulted. Rest assured that circumstance will clear us now.’
‘I see no room, in our situation, for the accidents on which you rely,’ said Tancred. ‘Circumstance, as you call it, is the creature of cities, where the action of a multitude, influenced by different motives, produces innumerable and ever-changing combinations; but we are in the desert. The great Sheikh will never change his mind any more than his habits of life, which are the same as his ancestors pursued thousands of years ago; and, for an identical reason, he is isolated and superior to all influences.’
‘Something always turns up,’ said Baroni.
‘It seems to me that we are in acul-de-sac,’ said Tancred.
‘There is always an outlet; one can escape from acul-de-sacby a window.’
‘Do you think it would be advisable to consult the master of this tent?’ said Tancred, in a lower tone. ‘He is very friendly.’
‘The Emir Fakredeen,’ said Baroni.
‘Is that his name?’
‘So I learnt last night. He is a prince of the house of Shehaab; a great house, but fallen.’
‘He is a Christian,’ said Tancred, earnestly.
‘Is he?’ said Baroni carelessly; ‘I have known a good many Shehaabs, and if you will tell me their company, I will tell you their creed.’
‘He might give us some advice.’
‘No doubt of it, my lord; if advice could break our chains, we should soon be free; but in these countries my only confidant is my camel. Assuming that this affair is to end in a ransom, what we want now is to change the impressions of the great Sheikh respecting your wealth. This can only be done from the same spot where the original ideas emanated. I must induce him to permit me to accompany his messenger to Besso. This mission will take time, and he who gains time gains everything, as M. de Sidonia said to me when the savages were going to burn us alive, and there came on a thunder-storm which extinguished their fagots.’
‘You must really tell me your history some day, Baroni,’ said Tancred.
‘When my mission has failed. It will perhaps relieve your imprisonment; at present, I repeat, we must work for a moderate ransom, instead of the millions of which they talk, and during the negotiation take the chance of some incident which will more agreeably free us.’
‘Ah! I despair of that.’
‘I do not, for it is presumptuous to believe that man can foresee the future, which will be your lordship’s case, if you owe your freedom only to your piastres.’
‘But they say that everything is calculation, Baroni.’
‘No,’ said Baroni, with energy, ‘everything is adventure.’
In the meantime the Emir Fakredeen was the prey of contending emotions. Tancred had from the first, and in an instant, exercised over his susceptible temperament that magnetic influence to which he was so strangely subject. In the heart of the wilderness and in the person of his victim, the young Emir suddenly recognised the heroic character which he had himself so vaguely and, as it now seemed to him, so vainly attempted to realise. The appearance and the courage of Tancred, the thoughtful repose of his manner, his high bearing amid the distressful circumstances in which he was involved, and the large views which the few words that had escaped from him on the preceding evening would intimate that he took of public transactions, completely captivated Fakredeen, who seemed at length to have found the friend for whom he had often sighed; the steadfast and commanding spirit, whose control, he felt conscious, was often required by his quick but whimsical temperament. And in what relation did he stand to this being whom he longed to press to his heart, and then go forth with him and conquer the world? It would not bear contemplation. The arming of the Maronites became quite a secondary object in comparison with obtaining the friendship of Tancred. Would that he had not involved himself in this conspiracy! and yet, but for this conspiracy, Tancred and himself might never have met. It was impossible to grapple with the question; circumstances must be watched, and some new combination formed to extricate both of them from their present perplexed position.
Fakredeen sent one of his attendants in the morning to offer Tancred horses, should his guest, as is the custom of Englishmen, care to explore the neighbouring ruins which were celebrated; but Tancred’s wound kept him confined to his tent. Then the Emir begged permission to pay him a visit, which was to have lasted only a quarter of an hour; but when Fakredeen had once established himself in the divan with his nargileh, he never quitted it. It would have been difficult for Tancred to have found a more interesting companion; impossible to have made an acquaintance more singularly unreserved. His frankness was startling. Tancred had no experience of such self-revelations; such a jumble of sublime aspirations and equivocal conduct; such a total disregard of means, such complicated plots, such a fertility of perplexed and tenebrous intrigue! The animated manner and the picturesque phrase, too, in which all this was communicated, heightened the interest and effect. Fakredeen sketched a character in a sentence, and you knew instantly the individual whom he described without any personal knowledge. Unlike the Orientals in general, his gestures were as vivid as his words. He acted the interviews, he achieved the adventures before you. His voice could take every tone and his countenance every form. In the midst of all this, bursts of plaintive melancholy; sometimes the anguish of a sensibility too exquisite, alternating with a devilish mockery and a fatal absence of all self-respect.
‘It appears to me,’ said Tancred, when the young Emir had declared his star accursed, since, after the ceaseless exertions of years, he was still as distant as ever from the accomplishment of his purpose, ‘it appears to me that your system is essentially erroneous. I do not believe that anything great is ever effected by management. All this intrigue, in which you seem such an adept, might be of some service in a court or in an exclusive senate; but to free a nation you require something more vigorous and more simple. This system of intrigue in Europe is quite old-fashioned. It is one of the superstitions left us by the wretched eighteenth century, a period when aristocracy was rampant throughout Christendom; and what were the consequences? All faith in God or man, all grandeur of purpose, all nobility of thought, and all beauty of sentiment, withered and shrivelled up. Then the dexterous management of a few individuals, base or dull, was the only means of success. But we live in a different age: there are popular sympathies, however imperfect, to appeal to; we must recur to the high primeval practice, and address nations now as the heroes, and prophets, and legislators of antiquity. If you wish to free your country, and make the Syrians a nation, it is not to be done by sending secret envoys to Paris or London, cities themselves which are perhaps both doomed to fall; you must act like Moses and Mahomet.’
‘But you forget the religions,’ said Fakredeen. ‘I have so many religions to deal with. If my fellows were all Christians, or all Moslemin, or all Jews, or all Pagans, I grant you, something might be effected: the cross, the crescent, the ark, or an old stone, anything would do: I would plant it on the highest range in the centre of the country, and I would carry Damascus and Aleppo both in one campaign; but I am debarred from this immense support; I could only preach nationality, and, as they all hate each other worse almost than they do the Turks, that would not be very inviting; nationality, without race as a plea, is like the smoke of this nargileh, a fragrant puff. Well, then, there remains only personal influence: ancient family, vast possessions, and traditionary power: mere personal influence can only be maintained by management, by what you stigmatise as intrigue; and the most dexterous member of the Shehaab family will be, in the long run, Prince of Lebanon.’
‘And if you wish only to be Prince of Lebanon, I dare say you may succeed,’ said Tancred, ‘and perhaps with much less pains than you at present give yourself. But what becomes of all your great plans of an hour ago, when you were to conquer the East, and establish the independence of the Oriental races?’
‘Ah!’ exclaimed Fakredeen with a sigh, ‘these are the only ideas for which it is worth while to live.’
‘The world was never conquered by intrigue: it was conquered by faith. Now, I do not see that you have faith in anything.’
‘Faith,’ said Fakredeen, musingly, as if his ear had caught the word for the first time, ‘faith! that is a grand idea. If one could only have faith in something and conquer the world!’
‘See now,’ said Tancred, with unusual animation, ‘I find no charm in conquering the world to establish a dynasty: a dynasty, like everything else, wears out; indeed, it does not last as long as most things; it has a precipitate tendency to decay. There are reasons; we will not now dwell on them. One should conquer the world not to enthrone a man, but an idea, for ideas exist for ever. But what idea? There is the touchstone of all philosophy! Amid the wreck of creeds, the crash of empires, French revolutions, English reforms, Catholicism in agony, and Protestantism in convulsions, discordant Europe demands the keynote, which none can sound. If Asia be in decay, Europe is in confusion. Your repose may be death, but our life is anarchy.’
‘I am thinking,’ said Fakredeen, thoughtfully, ‘how we in Syria could possibly manage to have faith in anything; I had faith in Mehemet Ali, but he is a Turk, and that upset him. If, instead of being merely a rebellious Pasha, he had placed himself at the head of the Arabs, and revived the Caliphate, you would have seen something. Head the desert and you may do anything. But it is so difficult. If you can once get the tribes out of it, they will go anywhere. See what they did when they last came forth. It is a simoom, a kamsin, fatal, irresistible. They are as fresh, too, as ever. The Arabs are always young; it is the only race that never withers. I am an Arab myself; from my ancestor who was the standard-bearer of the Prophet, the consciousness of race is the only circumstance that sometimes keeps up my spirit.’
‘I am an Arab only in religion,’ said Tancred, ‘but the consciousness of creed sustains me. I know well, though born in a distant and northern isle, that the Creator of the world speaks with man only in this land; and that is why I am here.’
The young Emir threw an earnest glance at his companion, whose countenance, though grave, was calm. ‘Then you have faith?’ said Fakredeen, inquiringly.
‘I have passive faith,’ said Tancred. ‘I know that there is a Deity who has revealed his will at intervals during different ages; but of his present purpose I feel ignorant, and therefore I have not active faith; I know not what to do, and should be reduced to a mere spiritual slothfulness, had I not resolved to struggle with this fearful necessity, and so embarked in this great pilgrimage which has so strangely brought us together.’
‘But you have your sacred books to consult?’ said Fakredeen.
‘There were sacred books when Jehovah conferred with Solomon; there was a still greater number of sacred books when Jehovah inspired the prophets; the sacred writings were yet more voluminous when the Creator ordained that there should be for human edification a completely new series of inspired literature. Nearly two thousand years have passed since the last of those works appeared. It is a greater interval than elapsed between the writings of Malachi and the writings of Matthew.’
‘The prior of the Maronite convent, at Mar Hanna, has often urged on me, as conclusive evidence of the falseness of Mahomet’s mission, that our Lord Jesus declared that after him “many false prophets should arise,” and warned his followers.’
‘There spoke the Prince of Israel,’ said Tancred, ‘not the universal Redeemer. He warned his tribe against the advent of false Messiahs, no more. Far from terminating by his coming the direct communication between God and man, his appearance was only the herald of a relation between the Creator and his creatures more fine, more permanent, and more express. The inspiring and consoling influence of the Paraclete only commenced with the ascension of the Divine Son. In this fact, perhaps, may be found a sufficient reason why no written expression of the celestial will has subsequently appeared. But, instead of foreclosing my desire for express communication, it would, on the contrary, be a circumstance to authorise it.’
‘Then how do you know that Mahomet was not inspired?’ said Fakredeen.
‘Far be it from me to impugn the divine commission of any of the seed of Abraham,’ replied Tancred. ‘There are doctors of our church who recognise the sacred office of Mahomet, though they hold it to be, what divine commissions, with the great exception, have ever been, limited and local.’
‘God has never spoken to a European?’ said Fakredeen, inquiringly.
‘Never.’
‘But you are a European?’
‘And your inference is just,’ said Tancred, in an agitated voice, and with a changing countenance. ‘It is one that has for some time haunted my soul. In England, when I prayed in vain for enlightenment, I at last induced myself to believe that the Supreme Being would not deign to reveal His will unless in the land which his presence had rendered holy; but since I have been a dweller within its borders, and poured forth my passionate prayers at all its holy places, and received no sign, the desolating thought has sometimes come over my spirit, that there is a qualification of blood as well as of locality necessary for this communion, and that the favoured votary must not only kneel in the Holy Land but be of the holy race.’
‘I am an Arab,’ said Fakredeen. ‘It is something.’
‘If I were an Arab in race as well as in religion,’ said Tancred, ‘I would not pass my life in schemes to govern some mountain tribes.’
‘I’ll tell you,’ said the Emir, springing from his divan, and flinging the tube of his nargileh to the other end of the tent: ‘the game is in our hands, if we have energy. There is a combination which would entirely change the whole ‘face of the world, and bring back empire to the East. Though you are not the brother of the Queen of the English, you are nevertheless a great English prince, and the Queen will listen to what you say; especially if you talk to her as you talk to me, and say such fine things in such a beautiful voice. Nobody ever opened my mind like you. You will magnetise the Queen as you have magnetised me. Go back to England and arrange this. You see, gloze it over as they may, one thing is clear, it is finished with England. There are three things which alone must destroy it. Primo, O’Connell appropriating to himself the revenues of half of Her Majesty’s dominions. Secondo, the cottons; the world begins to get a little disgusted with those cottons; naturally everybody prefers silk; I am sure that the Lebanon in time could supply the whole world with silk, if it were properly administered. Thirdly, steam; with this steam your great ships have become a respectable Noah’s ark. The game is up; Louis Philippe can take Windsor Castle whenever he pleases, as you took Acre, with the wind in his teeth. It is all over, then. Now, see acoup d‘étatthat saves all. You must perform the Portuguese scheme on a great scale; quit a petty and exhausted position for a vast and prolific empire. Let the Queen of the English collect a great fleet, let her stow away all her treasure, bullion, gold plate, and precious arms; be accompanied by all her court and chief people, and transfer the seat of her empire from London to Delhi. There she will find an immense empire ready made, a firstrate army, and a large revenue. In the meantime I will arrange with Mehemet Ali.
He shall have Bagdad and Mesopotamia, and pour the Bedouin cavalry into Persia. I will take care of Syria and Asia Minor. The only way to manage the Afghans is by Persia and by the Arabs. We will acknowledge the Empress of India as our suzerain, and secure for her the Levantine coast. If she like, she shall have Alexandria as she now has Malta: it could be arranged. Your Queen is young; she has anavenir. Aberdeen and Sir Peel will never give her this advice; their habits are formed. They are too old, toorusés. But, you see! the greatest empire that ever existed; besides which she gets rid of the embarrassment of her Chambers! And quite practicable; for the only difficult part, the conquest of India, which baffled Alexander, is all done!’
A Pilgrim to Mount Sinai
IT WAS not so much a conviction as a suspicion that Tancred had conveyed to the young Emir, when the pilgrim had confessed that the depressing thought sometimes came over him, that he was deficient in that qualification of race which was necessary for the high communion to which he aspired. Four-and-twenty hours before he was not thus dejected. Almost within sight of Sinai, he was still full of faith. But his vexatious captivity, and the enfeebling consequences of this wound, dulled his spirit. Alone, among strangers and foes, in pain and in peril, and without that energy which finds excitement in difficulty, and can mock at danger, which requires no counsellor but our own quick brain, and no champion but our own right arm, the high spirit of Tancred for the first time flagged. As the twilight descended over the rocky city, its sculptured tombs and excavated temples, and its strewn remains of palaces and theatres, his heart recurred with tenderness to the halls and towers of Montacute and Bellamont, and the beautiful affections beneath those stately roofs, that, urged on, as he had once thought, by a divine influence, now, as he was half tempted to credit, by a fantastic impulse, he had dared to desert. Brooding in dejection, his eyes were suffused with tears.
It was one of those moments of amiable weakness which make us all akin, when sublime ambition, the mystical predispositions of genius, the solemn sense of duty, all the heaped-up lore of ages, and the dogmas of a high philosophy alike desert us, or sink into nothingness. The voice of his mother sounded in his ear, and he was haunted by his father’s anxious glance. Why was he there? Why was he, the child of a northern isle, in the heart of the Stony Arabia, far from the scene of his birth and of his duties? A disheartening, an awful question, which, if it could not be satisfactorily answered by Tancred of Montacute, it seemed to him that his future, wherever or however passed, must be one of intolerable bale.
Was he, then, a stranger there? uncalled, unexpected, intrusive, unwelcome? Was it a morbid curiosity, or the proverbial restlessness of a satiated aristocrat, that had drawn him to these wilds? What wilds? Had he no connection with them? Had he not from his infancy repeated, in the congregation of his people, the laws which, from the awful summit of these surrounding mountains, the Father of all had Himself delivered for the government of mankind? These Arabian laws regulated his life. And the wanderings of an Arabian tribe in this ‘great and terrible wilderness,’ under the immediate direction of the Creator, sanctified by His miracles, governed by His counsels, illumined by His presence, had been the first and guiding history that had been entrusted to his young intelligence, from which it had drawn its first pregnant examples of human conduct and divine interposition, and formed its first dim conceptions of the relations between man and God. Why, then, he had a right to be here! He had a connection with these regions; they had a hold upon him. He was not here like an Indian Brahmin, who visits Europe from a principle of curiosity, however rational or however refined. The land which the Hindoo visits is not his land, nor his father’s land; the laws which regulate it are not his laws, and the faith which fills its temples is not the revelation that floats upon his sacred Ganges. But for this English youth, words had been uttered and things done, more than thirty centuries ago, in this stony wilderness, which influenced his opinions and regulated his conduct every day of his life, in that distant and seagirt home, which, at the time of their occurrence, was not as advanced in civilisation as the Polynesian groups or the islands of New Zealand. The life and property of England are protected by the laws of Sinai. The hard-working people of England are secured in every seven days a day of rest by the laws of Sinai. And yet they persecute the Jews, and hold up to odium the race to whom they are indebted for the sublime legislation which alleviates the inevitable lot of the labouring multitude!
And when that labouring multitude cease for a while from a toil which equals almost Egyptian bondage, and demands that exponent of the mysteries of the heart, that soother of the troubled spirit, which poetry can alone afford, to whose harp do the people of England fly for sympathy and solace? Who is the most popular poet in this country? Is he to be found among the Mr. Wordsworths and the Lord Byrons, amid sauntering reveries or monologues of sublime satiety? Shall we seek him among the wits of Queen Anne? Even to the myriad-minded Shakespeare can we award the palm? No; the most popular poet in England is the sweet singer of Israel. Since the days of the heritage, when every man dwelt safely under his vine and under his fig tree, there never was a race who sang so often the odes of David as the people of Great Britain.
Vast as the obligations of the whole human family are to the Hebrew race, there is no portion of the modern population so much indebted to them as the British people. It was ‘the sword of the Lord and of Gideon’ that won the boasted liberties of England; chanting the same canticles that cheered the heart of Judah amid their glens, the Scotch, upon their hillsides, achieved their religious freedom.
Then why do these Saxon and Celtic societies persecute an Arabian race, from whom they have adopted laws of sublime benevolence, and in the pages of whose literature they have found perpetual delight, instruction, and consolation? That is a great question, which, in an enlightened age, may be fairly asked, but to which even the self-complacent nineteenth century would find some difficulty in contributing a reply. Does it stand thus? Independently of their admirable laws which have elevated our condition, and of their exquisite poetry which has charmed it; independently of their heroic history which has animated us to the pursuit of public liberty, we are indebted to the Hebrew people for our knowledge of the true God and for the redemption from our sins.
‘Then I have a right to be here,’ said Tancred of Montacute, as his eyes were fixed in abstraction on the stars of Arabia; ‘I am not a travelling dilettante, mourning over a ruin, or in ecstasies at a deciphered inscription. I come to the land whose laws I obey, whose religion I profess, and I seek, upon its sacred soil, those sanctions which for ages were abundantly accorded. The angels who visited the Patriarchs, and announced the advent of the Judges, who guided the pens of Prophets and bore tidings to the Apostles, spoke also to the Shepherds in the field. I look upon the host of heaven; do they no longer stand before the Lord? Where are the Cherubim, where the Seraphs? Where is Michael the Destroyer? Gabriel of a thousand missions?’
At this moment, the sound of horsemen recalled Tancred from his reverie, and, looking up, he observed a group of Arabs approaching him, three of whom were mounted. Soon he recognised the great Sheikh Amalek, and Hassan, the late commander of his escort. The young Syrian Emir was their companion. This was a visit of hospitable ceremony from the great Sheikh to his distinguished prisoner. Amalek, pressing his hand to his heart, gave Tancred the salute of peace, and then, followed by Hassan, who had lost nothing of his calm self-respect, but who conducted himself as if he were still free, the great Sheikh seated himself on the carpet that was spread before the tent, and took the pipe, which was immediately offered him by Freeman and Trueman, following the instructions of an attendant of the Emir Fakredeen.
After the usual compliments and some customary observations about horses and pistols, Fakredeen, who had seated himself close to Tancred, with a kind of shrinking cajolery, as if he were seeking the protection of some superior being, addressing Amalek in a tone of easy assurance, which remarkably contrasted with the sentimental deference he displayed towards his prisoner, said:
‘Sheikh of Sheikhs, there is but one God: now is it Allah, or Jehovah?’
‘The palm tree is sometimes called a date tree,’ replied Amalek, ‘but there is only one tree.’
‘Good,’ said Fakredeen, ‘but you do not pray to Allah?’
‘I pray as my fathers prayed,’ said Amalek.
‘And you pray to Jehovah?’
‘It is said.’
‘Sheikh Hassan,’ said the Emir, ‘there is but one God, and his name is Jehovah. Why do you not pray to Jehovah?’
‘Truly there is but one God,’ said Sheikh Hassan, ‘and Mahomet is his Prophet. He told my fathers to pray to Allah, and to Allah I pray.’
‘Is Mahomet the prophet of God, Sheikh of Sheikhs?’
‘It may be,’ replied Amalek, with a nod of assent.
‘Then why do you not pray as Sheikh Hassan?’
‘Because Moses, without doubt the prophet of God,—for all believe in him, Sheikh Hassan, and Emir Fakredeen, and you too, Prince, brother of queens,—married into our family and taught us to pray to Jehovah. There may be other prophets, but the children of Jethro would indeed ride on asses were they not content with Moses.’
‘And you have his five books?’ inquired Tancred.
‘We had them from the beginning, and we shall keep them to the end.’
‘And you learnt in them that Moses married the daughter of Jethro?’
‘Did I learn in them that I have wells and camels? We want no books to tell us who married our daughters.’
‘And yet it is not yesterday that Moses fled from Egypt into Midian?’
‘It is not yesterday for those who live in cities, where they say at one gate that it is morning, and at another it is night. Where men tell lies, the deed of the dawn is the secret of sunset. But in the desert nothing changes; neither the acts of a man’s life, nor the words of a man’s lips. We drink at the same well where Moses helped Zipporah, we tend the same flocks, we live under the same tents; our words have changed as little as our waters, our habits, or our dwellings. What my father learnt from those before him, he delivered to me, and I have told it to my son. What is time and what is truth, that I should forget that a prophet of Jehovah married into my house?’
‘Where little is done, little is said,’ observed Sheikh Hassan, ‘and silence is the mother of truth.
Since the Hegira, nothing has happened in Arabia, and before that was Moses, and before him the giants.’
‘Let truth always be spoken,’ said Amalek; ‘your words are a flowing stream, and the children of Rechab and the tribes of the Senites never joined him of Mecca, for they had the five books, and they said, “Is not that enough?” They withdrew to the Syrian wilderness, and they multiplied. But the sons of Koreidha, who also had the five books, but who were not children of Rechab, but who came into the desert near Medina after Nebuchadnezzar had destroyed El Khuds, they first joined him of Mecca, and then they made war on him, and he broke their bows and led them into captivity; and they are to be found in the cities of Yemen to this day; the children of Israel who live in the cities of Yemen are the tribe of Koreidha.’
‘Unhappy sons of Koreidha, who made war upon the Prophet, and who live in cities!’ said Sheikh Hassan, taking a fresh pipe.
‘And perhaps,’ said the young Emir, ‘if you had not been children of Jethro, you might have acknowledged him of Mecca, Sheikh of Sheikhs.’
‘There is but one God,’ said Amalek; ‘but there may be many prophets. It becomes not a son of jethro to seek other than Moses. But I will not say that the Koran comes not from God, since it was written by one who was of the tribe of Koreish, and the tribe of Koreish are the lineal descendants of Ibrahim.’
‘And you believe that the Word of God could come only to the seed of Abraham?’ asked Tancred, eagerly.
‘I and my fathers have watered our flocks in the wilderness since time was,’ replied Amalek; ‘we have seen the Pharaohs, and Nebuchadnezzar, and Iskander, and the Romans, and the Sultan of the French: they conquered everything except us; and where are they? They are sand. Let men doubt of unicorns: but of one thing there can be no doubt, that God never spoke except to an Arab.’
Tancred covered his face with his hands. Then, after a few moments’ pause, looking up, he said, ‘Sheikh of Sheikhs, I am your prisoner; and was, when you captured me, a pilgrim to Mount Sinai, a spot which, in your belief, is not less sacred than in mine. We are, as I have learned, only two days’ journey from that holy place. Grant me this boon, that I may at once proceed thither, guarded as you will. I pledge you the word of a Christian noble, that I will not attempt to escape. Long before you have received a reply from Jerusalem, I shall have returned; and whatever may be the result of the visit of Baroni, I shall, at least, have fulfilled my pilgrimage.’
‘Prince, brother of queens,’ replied Amalek, with that politeness which is the characteristic of the Arabian chieftains; ‘under my tents you have only to command; go where you like, return when you please. My children shall attend you as your guardians, not as your guards.’ And the great Sheikh rose and retired.
Tancred re-entered his tent, and, reclining, fell into a reverie of distracting thoughts. The history of his life and mind seemed with a whirling power to pass before him; his birth, in clime unknown to the Patriarchs; his education, unconsciously to himself, in an Arabian literature; his imbibing, from his tender infancy, oriental ideas and oriental creeds; the contrast that the occidental society in which he had been reared presented to them; his dissatisfaction with that social system; his conviction of the growing melancholy of enlightened Europe, veiled, as it may be, with sometimes a conceited bustle, sometimes a desperate shipwreck gaiety, sometimes with all the exciting empiricism of science; his perplexity that, between the Asian revelation and the European practice there should be so little conformity, and why the relations between them should be so limited and imperfect; above all, his passionate desire to penetrate the mystery of the elder world, and share its celestial privileges and divine prerogative. Tancred sighed.
He looked round; some one had gently drawn his hand. It was the young Emir kneeling, his beautiful blue eyes bedewed with tears.
‘You are unhappy, said Fakredeen, in a tone of plaintiveness.
‘It is the doom of man,’ replied Tancred; ‘and in my position sadness should not seem strange.’
‘The curse of ten thousand mothers on those who made you a prisoner; the curse of twenty thousand mothers on him who inflicted on you a wound!’
‘’Tis the fortune of life,’ said Tancred, more cheerfully; ‘and in truth I was perhaps thinking of other things.’
‘Do you know why I trouble you when your heart is dark?’ said the young Emir. ‘See now, if you will it, you are free. The great Sheikh has consented that you should go to Sinai. I have two dromedaries here, fleeter than the Kamsin. At the well of Mokatteb, where we encamp for the night, I will serve raki to the Bedouins; I have some with me, strong enough to melt the snow of Lebanon; if it will not do, they shall smoke some timbak, that will make them sleep like pashas. I know this desert as a man knows his father’s house; we shall be at Hebron before they untie their eyelids. Tell me, is it good?’
‘Were I alone,’ said Tancred, ‘without a single guard, I must return.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I have pledged the word of a Christian noble.’
‘To a man who does not believe in Christ. Faugh! Is it not itself a sin to keep faith with heretics?’
‘But is he one?’ said Tancred. ‘He believes in Moses; he disbelieves in none of the seed of Abraham. He is of that seed himself! Would I were such a heretic as Sheikh Amalek!’
‘If you will only pay me a visit in the Lebanon, I would introduce you to our patriarch, and he would talk as much theology with you as you like. For my own part it is not a kind of knowledge that I have much cultivated; you know I am peculiarly situated, we have so many religions on the mountain; but time presses; tell me, my prince, shall Hebron be our point?’
‘If Amalek believed in Baal, I must return,’ said Tancred; ‘even if it were to certain death. Besides, I could not desert my men; and Baroni, what would become of him?’
‘We could easily make some plan that would extricate them. Dismiss them from your mind, and trust yourself to me. I know nothing that would delight me more than to baulk these robbers of their prey.’
‘I should not talk of such things,’ said Tancred; ‘I must remain here, or I must return.’
‘What can you want to do on Mount Sinai?’ murmured the prince rather pettishly. ‘Now if it were Mount Lebanon, and you had a wish to employ yourself, there is an immense field! We might improve the condition of the people; we might establish manufactures, stimulate agriculture extend commerce get an appalto of the silk, buy it all up at sixty piastres per oke, and sell it at Marseilles at two hundred and at the same time advance the interests of true religion as much as you please.’
In the Valley of the Shadow
THEN days had elapsed since the capture of Tancred; Amalek and his Arabs were still encamped in the rocky city; the beams of the early sun were just rising over the crest of the amphitheatre, when four horsemen, who were recognised as the children of Rechab, issued from the ravine. They galloped over the plain, shouted, and threw their lances in the air. From the crescent of black tents came forth the warriors, some mounted their horses and met their returning brethren, others prepared their welcome. The horses neighed, the camels stirred their long necks. All living things seemed conscious that an event had occurred.
The four horsemen were surrounded by their brethren; but one of them, giving and returning blessings, darted forward to the pavilion of the great Sheikh.
‘Have you brought camels, Shedad, son of Amroo?’ inquired one of the welcomers to the welcomed.
‘We have been to El Khuds,’ was the reply. ‘What we have brought back is a seal of Solomon.
‘From Mount Seir to the City of the Friend, what have you seen in the joyful land?’
‘We found the sons of Hamar by the well-side of Jumda; we found the marks of many camels in the pass of Gharendel, and the marks in the pass of Gharendel were not the marks of the camels of the Beni-Hamar.’
‘I had a dream, and the children of Tora said to me, “Who art thou in the hands of our father’s flocks? Are none but the sons of Rechab to drink the sweet waters of Edom?” Methinks the marks in the pass of Gharendel were the marks of the camels of the children of Tora.’
‘There is a feud between the Beni-Tora and the Beni-Hamar,’ replied the other Arab, shaking his head. ‘The Beni-Tora are in the wilderness of Akiba, and the Beni-Hamar have burnt their tents and captured their camels and their women. This is why the sons of Hamar are watering their flocks by the well of Jumda.’
In the meantime, the caravan, of which the four horsemen were the advanced guard, issued from the pass into the plain.
‘Shedad, son of Amroo,’ exclaimed one of the Bedouins, ‘what! have you captured an harem?’ For he beheld dromedaries and veiled women.
The great Sheikh came forth from his pavilion and sniffed the morning air; a dignified smile played over his benignant features, and once he smoothed his venerable beard.
‘My son-in-law is a true son of Israel,’ he murmured complacently to himself. ‘He will trust his gold only to his own blood.’
The caravan wound about the plain, then crossed the stream at the accustomed ford, and approached the amphitheatre.
The horsemen halted, some dismounted, the dromedaries knelt down, Baroni assisted one of the riders from her seat; the great Sheikh advanced and said, ‘Welcome in the name of God! welcome with a thousand blessings!’
‘I come in the name of God; I come with a thousand blessings,’ replied the lady.
‘And with a thousand something else,’ thought Amalek to himself; but the Arabs are so polished that they never make unnecessary allusions to business.
‘Had I thought the Queen of Sheba was going to pay me a visit,’ said the great Sheikh, ‘I would have brought the pavilion of Miriam. How is the Rose of Sharon?’ he continued, as he ushered Eva into his tent. ‘How is the son of my heart; how is Besso, more generous than a thousand kings?’
‘Speak not of the son of thy heart,’ said Eva, seating herself on the divan. ‘Speak not of Besso, the generous and the good, for his head is strewn with ashes, and his mouth is full of sand.’
‘What is this?’ thought Amalek. ‘Besso is not ill, or his daughter would not be here. This arrow flies not straight. Does he want to scrape my piastres? These sons of Israel that dwell in cities will mix their pens with our spears. I will be obstinate as an Azafeer camel.’
Slaves now entered, bringing coffee and bread, the Sheikh asking questions as they ate, as to the time Eva quitted Jerusalem, her halting-places in the desert, whether she had met with any tribes; then he offered to his granddaughter his own chibouque, which she took with ceremony, and instantly returned, while they brought her aromatic nargileh.
Eva scanned the imperturbable countenance of her grandfather: calm, polite, benignant, she knew the great Sheikh too well to suppose for a moment that its superficial expression was any indication of his innermost purpose. Suddenly she said, in a somewhat careless tone, ‘And why is the Lord of the Syrian pastures in this wilderness, that has been so long accursed?’
The great Sheikh took his pipe from his mouth, and then slowly sent forth its smoke through his nostrils, a feat of which he was proud. Then he placidly replied: ‘For the same reason that the man named Baroni made a visit to El Khuds.’
‘The man named Baroni came to demand succour for his lord, who is your prisoner.’
‘And also to obtain two millions of piastres,’ added Amalek.
‘Two millions of piastres! Why not at once ask for the throne of Solomon?’
‘Which would be given, if required,’ rejoined Amalek. ‘Was it not said in the divan of Besso, that if this Prince of Franguestan wished to rebuild the Temple, the treasure would not be wanting?’
‘Said by some city gossip,’ said Eva, scornfully.
‘Said by your father, daughter of Besso, who, though he lives in cities, is not a man who will say that almonds are pearls.’
Eva controlled her countenance, though it was difficult to conceal her mortification as she perceived how well informed her grandfather was of all that passed under their roof, and of the resources of his prisoner. It was necessary, after the last remark of the great Sheikh, to take new ground, and, instead of dwelling, as she was about to do, on the exaggeration of public report, and attempting to ridicule the vast expectations of her host, she said, in a soft tone, ‘You did not ask me why Besso was in such affliction, father of my mother?’
‘There are many sorrows: has he lost ships? If a man is in sound health, all the rest are dreams. And Besso needs no hakeem, or you would not be here, my Rose of Sharon.’
‘The light may have become darkness in our eyes, though we may still eat and drink,’ said Eva. ‘And that has happened to Besso which might have turned a child’s hair grey in its cradle.’
‘Who has poisoned his well? Has he quarrelled with the Porte?’ said the Sheikh, without looking at her.
‘It is not his enemies who have pierced him in the back.’
‘Humph,’ said the great Sheikh.
‘And that makes his heart more heavy,’ said Eva.
‘He dwells too much in walls,’ said the great Sheikh. ‘He should have ridden into the desert, instead of you, my child. He should have brought the ransom himself; ‘and the great Sheikh sent two curling streams out of his nostrils.
‘Whoever be the bearer, he is the payer,’ said Eva. ‘It is he who is the prisoner, not this son of Franguestan, who, you think, is your captive.’
‘Your father wishes to scrape my piastres,’ said the great Sheikh, in a stern voice, and looking his granddaughter full in the face.
‘If he wanted to scrape piastres from the desert,’ said Eva, in a sweet but mournful voice, ‘would Besso have given you the convoy of the Hadj without condition or abatement?’
The great Sheikh drew a long breath from his chibouque. After a momentary pause, he said, ‘In a family there should ever be unity and concord; above all things, words should not be dark. How much will the Queen of the English give for her brother?
‘He is not the brother of the Queen of the English,’ said Eva.
‘Not when he is my spoil, in my tent,’ said Amalek, with a cunning smile; ‘but put him on a round hat in a walled city, and then he is the brother of the Queen of the English.’
‘Whatever his rank, he is the charge of Besso, my father and your son,’ said Eva; ‘and Besso has pledged his heart, his life, and his honour, that this young prince shall not be hurt. For him he feels, for him he speaks, for him he thinks. Is it to be told in the bazaars of Franguestan that his first office of devotion was to send this youth into the desert to be spoiled by the father of his wife?’
‘Why did my daughters marry men who live in cities?’ exclaimed the old Sheikh.
‘Why did they marry men who made your peace with the Egyptian, when not even the desert could screen you? Why did they marry men who gained you the convoy of the Hadj, and gave you the milk of ten thousand camels?’
‘Truly, there is but one God in the desert and in the city,’ said Amalek. ‘Now, tell me, Rose of Sharon, how many piastres have you brought me?’
‘If you be in trouble, Besso will aid you as he has done; if you wish to buy camels, Besso will assist you as before; but if you expect ransom for his charge, whom you ought to have placed on your best mare of Nedgid, then I have not brought a para.’
‘It is clearly the end of the world,’ said Amalek, with a savage sigh.
‘Why I am here,’ said Eva, ‘I am only the child of your child, a woman without spears; why do you not seize me and send to Besso? He must ransom me, for I am the only offspring of his loins. Ask for four millions of piastres I He can raise them. Let him send round to all the cities of Syria, and tell his brethren that a Bedouin Sheikh has made his daughter and her maidens captive, and, trust me, the treasure will be forthcoming. He need not say it is one on whom he has lavished a thousand favours, whose visage was darker than the simoom when he made the great Pasha smile on him; who, however he may talk of living in cities now, could come cringing to El Sham to ask for the contract of the Hadj, by which he had gained ten thousand camels; he need say nothing of all this, and, least of all, need he say that the spoiler is his father!’
‘What is this Prince of Franguestan to thee and thine?’ said Amalek. ‘He comes to our land like his brethren, to see the sun and seek for treasure in our ruins, and he bears, like all of them, some written words to your father, saying, “Give to this man what he asks, and we will give to your people what they ask.” I understand all this: they all come to your father because he deals in money, and is the only man in Syria who has money. What he pays, he is again paid. Is it not so, Eva? Daughter of my blood, let there not be strife between us; give me a million piastres, and a hundred camels to the widow of Sheikh Salem, and take the brother of the Queen.’
‘Camels shall be given to the widow of Sheikh Salem,’ said Eva, in a conciliatory voice; ‘but for this ransom of which you speak, my father, it is not a question as to the number of piastres. If you want a million of piastres, shall it be said that Besso would not lend, perhaps give, them to the great Sheikh he loves? But, you see, my father of fathers, piastres and this Frank stranger are not of the same leaven. Name them not together, I pray you; mix not their waters. It concerns the honour, and welfare, and safety, and glory of Besso that you should cover this youth with a robe of power, and place him upon your best dromedary, and send him back to El Khuds.’ The great Sheikh groaned.
‘Have I opened a gate that I am unable to close?’ he at length said. ‘What is begun shall be finished. Have the children of Rechab been brought from the sweet wells of Costal to this wilderness ever accursed to fill their purses with stones? Will they not return and say that my beard is too white? Yet do I wish that this day was finished. Name then at once, my daughter, the piastres that you will give; for the prince, the brother of queens, may to-morrow be dust.’ ‘How so?’ eagerly inquired Eva. ‘He is a Mejnoun,’ replied Amalek. ‘After the man named Baroni departed for El Khuds, the Prince of Franguestan would not rest until he visited Gibel Mousa, and I said “Yes” to all his wishes. Whether it were his wound inflamed by his journey, or grief at his captivity, for these Franks are the slaves of useless sorrow, he returned as wild as Kais, and now lies in his tent, fancying he is still on Mount Sinai. ‘Tis the fifth day of the fever, and Shedad, the son of Amroo, tells me that the sixth will be fatal unless we can give him the gall of a phoenix, and such a bird is not to be found in this part of Arabia.
Now, you are a great hakeem, my child of children; go then to the young prince, and see what can be done: for if he die, we can scarcely ransom him, and I shall lose the piastres, and your father the backsheesh which I meant to have given him on the transaction.’
‘This is very woful,’ murmured Eva to herself, and not listening to the latter observations of her grandfather.
At this moment the curtain of the pavilion was withdrawn, and there stood before them Fakredeen. The moment his eyes met those of Eva, he covered his face with both his hands.
‘How is the Prince of Franguestan?’ inquired Amalek.
The young Emir advanced, and threw himself at the feet of Eva. ‘We must entreat the Rose of Sharon to visit him,’ he said, ‘for there is no hakeem in Arabia equal to her. Yes, I came to welcome you, and to entreat you to do this kind office for the most gifted and the most interesting of beings;’ and he looked up in her face with a supplicating glance.
‘And you too, are you fearful,’ said Eva, in atone of tender reproach, ‘that by his death you may lose your portion of the spoil?’
The Emir gave a deprecating glance of anguish, and then, bending his head, pressed his lips to the Bedouin robes which she wore. ‘’Tis the most unfortunate of coincidences, but believe me, dearest of friends, ‘tis only a coincidence. I am here merely by accident; I was hunting, I was——’
‘You will make me doubt your intelligence as well as your good faith,’ said Eva, ‘if you persist in such assurances.’
‘Ah! if you but knew him,’ exclaimed Fakredeen, ‘you would believe me when I tell you that I am ready to sacrifice even my life for his. Far from sharing the spoil,’ he added, in a rapid and earnest whisper, ‘I had already proposed, and could have insured, his escape; when he went to Sinai, to that unfortunate Sinai. I had two dromedaries here, thoroughbred; we might have reached Hebron before——’
‘You went with him to Sinai?’
‘He would not suffer it; he desired, he said, to be silent and to be alone. One of the Bedouins, who accompanied him, told me that they halted in the valley, and that he went up alone into the mountain, where he remained a day and night. When he returned hither, I perceived a great change in him. His words were quick, his eye glittered like fire; he told me that he had seen an angel, and in the morning he was as he is now. I have wept, I have prayed for him in the prayers of every religion, I have bathed his temples with liban, and hung his tent with charms. O Rose of Sharon! Eva, beloved, darling Eva, I have faith in no one but in you. See him, I beseech you, see him! If you but knew him, if you had but listened to his voice, and felt the greatness of his thoughts and spirit, it would not need that I should make this entreaty. But, alas! you know him not; you have never listened to him; you have never seen him; or neither he, nor I, nor any of us, would have been here, and have been thus.’