The New Crusader in Peril
NOTWITHSTANDING all the prescient care of the Duke and Duchess of Bellamont, it was destined that the stout arm of Colonel Brace should not wave by the side of their son when he was first attacked by the enemy, and now that he was afflicted by a most severe if not fatal illness, the practised skill of the Doctor Roby was also absent. Fresh exemplification of what all of us so frequently experience, that the most sagacious and matured arrangements are of little avail; that no one is present when he is wanted, and that nothing occurs as it was foreseen. Nor should we forget that the principal cause of all these mischances might perhaps be recognised in the inefficiency of the third person whom the parents of Tancred had, with so much solicitude and at so great an expense, secured to him as a companion and counsellor in his travels. It cannot be denied that if the theological attainments of the Rev. Mr. Bernard had been of a more profound and comprehensive character, it is possible that Lord Montacute might have deemed it necessary to embark upon this new crusade, and ultimately to find himself in the deserts of Mount Sinai. However this may be, one thing was certain, that Tancred had been wounded without a single sabre of the Bellamont yeomanry being brandished in his defence; was now lying dangerously ill in an Arabian tent, without the slightest medical assistance; and perhaps was destined to quit this world, not only without the consolation of a priest of his holy Church, but surrounded by heretics and infidels.
‘We have never let any of the savages come near my lord,’ said Freeman to Baroni, on his, return.
‘Except the fair young gentleman,’ added True-man, ‘and he is a Christian, or as good.’
‘He is a prince,’ said Freeman, reproachfully. ‘Have I not told you so twenty times? He is what they call in this country a Hameer, and lives in a castle, where he wanted my lord to visit him. I only wish he had gone with my lord to Mount Siny; I think it would have come to more good.’
‘He has been very attentive to my lord all the time,’ said Trueman; ‘indeed, he has never quitted my lord night or day; and only left his side when we heard the caravan had returned.’
‘I have seen him,’ said Baroni; ‘and now let us enter the tent.’
Upon the divan, his head supported by many cushions, clad in a Syrian robe of the young Emir, and partly covered with a Bedouin cloak, lay Tancred, deadly pale, his eyes open and fixed, and apparently unconscious of their presence. He was lying on his back, gazing on the roof of the tent, and was motionless. Fakredeen had raised his wounded arm, which had fallen from the couch, and had supported it with a pile made of cloaks and pillows. The countenance of Tancred was much changed since Baroni last beheld him; it was greatly attenuated, but the eyes glittered with an unearthly fire.
‘We don’t think he has ever slept,’ said Freeman, in a whisper.
‘He did nothing but talk to himself the first two days,’ said Trueman; ‘but yesterday he has been more quiet.’
Baroni advanced to the divan behind the head of Tancred, so that he might not be observed, and then, letting himself fall noiselessly on the carpet, he touched with a light finger the pulse of Lord Montacute.
‘There is not too much blood here,’ he said, shaking his head.
‘You don’t think it is hopeless?’ said Freeman, beginning to blubber.
‘And all the great doings of my lord’s coming of age to end in this!’ said Trueman. ‘They sat down only two less than a hundred at the steward’s table for more than a week!’
Baroni made a sign to them to leave the tent. ‘God of my fathers!’ he said, still seated on the ground, his arms folded, and watching Tancred earnestly with his bright black eyes; ‘this is a bad business. This is death or madness, perhaps both. What will M. de Sidonia say? He loves not men who fail. All will be visited on me. I shall be shelved. In Europe they would bleed him, and they would kill him; here they will not bleed him, and he may die. Such is medicine, and such is life! Now, if I only had as much opium as would fill the pipe of a mandarin, that would be something. God of my fathers! this is a bad business.’
He rose softly; he approached nearer to Tancred, and examined his countenance more closely; there was a slight foam upon the lip, which he gently wiped away.
‘The brain has worked too much,’ said Baroni to himself. ‘Often have I watched him pacing the deck during our voyage; never have I witnessed an abstraction so prolonged and so profound. He thinks as much as M. de Sidonia, and feels more. There is his weakness. The strength of my master is his superiority to all sentiment. No affections and a great brain; these are the men to command the world. No affections and a little brain; such is the stuff of which they make petty villains. And a great brain and a great heart, what do they make? Ah! I do not know. The last, perhaps, wears off with time; and yet I wish I could save this youth, for he ever attracts me to him.’
Thus he remained for some time seated on the carpet by the side of the divan, revolving in his mind every possible expedient that might benefit Tancred, and finally being convinced that none was in his power. What roused him from his watchful reverie was a voice that called his name very softly, and, looking round, he beheld the Emir Fakredeen on tiptoe, with his finger on his mouth. Baroni rose, and Fakredeen inviting him with a gesture to leave the tent, he found without the lady of the caravan.
‘I want the Rose of Sharon to see your lord,’ said the young Emir, very anxiously, ‘for she is a great hakeem among our people.’
‘Perhaps in the desert, where there is none to be useful, I might not be useless,’ said Eva, with some reluctance and reserve.
‘Hope has only one arrow left,’ said Baroni, mournfully.
‘Is it indeed so bad?’
‘Oh! save him, Eva, save him!’ exclaimed Fakredeen, distractedly.
She placed her finger on her lip.
‘Or I shall die,’ continued Fakredeen; ‘nor indeed have I any wish to live, if he depart from us.’
Eva conversed apart for a few minutes with Baroni, in a low voice, and then drawing aside the curtain of the tent, they entered.
There was no change in the appearance of Tancred, but as they approached him he spoke. Baroni dropped into his former position, Fakredeen fell upon his knees, Eva alone was visible when the eyes of Tancred met hers. His vision was not unconscious of her presence; he stared at her with intentness. The change in her dress, however, would, in all probability, have prevented his recognising her even under indifferent circumstances. She was habited as a Bedouin girl; a leathern girdle encircled her blue robe, a few gold coins were braided in her hair, and her head was covered with a fringed kefia.
Whatever was the impression made upon Tancred by this unusual apparition, it appeared to be only transient. His glance withdrawn, his voice again broke into incoherent but violent exclamations. Suddenly he said, with more moderation, but with firmness and distinctness, ‘I am guarded by angels.’
Fakredeen shot a glance at Eva and Baroni, as if to remind them of the tenor of the discourse for which he had prepared them.
After a pause he became somewhat violent, and seemed as if he would have waved his wounded arm; but Baroni, whose eye, though himself unobserved, never quitted his charge, laid his finger upon the arm, and Tancred did not struggle. Again he spoke of angels, but in a milder and mournful tone.
‘Methinks you look like one,’ thought Eva, as she beheld his spiritual countenance lit up by a superhuman fire.
After a few minutes, she glanced at Baroni, to signify her wish to leave the tent, and he rose and accompanied her. Fakredeen also rose, with streaming eyes, and making the sign of the cross.
‘Forgive me,’ he said to Eva, ‘but I cannot help it. Whenever I am in affliction I cannot help remembering that I am a Christian.’
‘I wish you would remember it at all times,’ said Eva, ‘and then, perhaps, none of us need have been here;’ and then not waiting for his reply, she addressed herself to Baroni. ‘I agree with you,’ she said. ‘If we cannot give him sleep, he will soon sleep for ever.’
‘Oh, give him sleep, Eva,’ said Fakredeen, wringing his hands; ‘you can do anything.’
‘I suppose,’ said Baroni, ‘it is hopeless to think of finding any opium here.’
‘Utterly,’ said Eva; ‘its practice is quite unknown among them.’
‘Send for some from El Khuds,’ said Fakredeen. ‘Idle!’ said Baroni; ‘this is an affair of hours, not of days.’
‘Oh, but I will go,’ exclaimed Fakredeen; ‘you do not know what I can do on one of my dromedaries! I will——’
Eva placed her hand on his arm without looking at him, and then continued to address Baroni.
‘Through the pass I several times observed a small white and yellow flower in patches. I lost it as we advanced, and yet I should think it must have followed the stream. If it be, as I think, but I did not observe it with much attention, the flower of the mountain arnica, I know a preparation from that shrub which has a marvellous action on the nervous system.’
‘I am sure it is the mountain arnica, and I am sure it will cure him,’ said Fakredeen.
‘Time presses,’ said Eva to Baroni. ‘Call my I maidens to our aid; and first of all let us examine the borders of the stream.’
While his friends departed to exert themselves, Fakredeen remained behind, and passed his time partly in watching Tancred, partly in weeping, and partly in calculating the amount of his debts. This latter was a frequent, and to him inexhaustible, source of interest and excitement. His creative brain was soon lost in reverie. He conjured up Tancred restored to health, a devoted friendship between them, immense plans, not inferior achievements, and inexhaustible resources. Then, when he remembered that he was himself the cause of the peril of that precious life on which all his future happiness and success were to depend, he cursed himself. Involved as were the circumstances in which he habitually found himself entangled, the present complication was certainly not inferior to any of the perplexities which he had hitherto experienced.
He was to become the bosom friend of a being whom he had successfully plotted to make a prisoner and plunder, and whose life was consequently endangered; he had to prevail on Amalek to relinquish the ransom which had induced the great Sheikh to quit his Syrian pastures, and had cost the lives of some of his most valuable followers; while, on the other hand, the new moon was rapidly approaching, when the young Emir had appointed to meet Scheriff Effendi at Gaza, to receive the arms and munitions which were to raise him to empire, and for which he had purposed to pay by a portion of his share in the great plunder which he had himself projected. His baffled brain whirled with wild and impracticable combinations, till, at length, frightened and exhausted, he called for his nargileh, and sought, as was his custom, serenity from its magic tube. In this wise more than three hours had elapsed, the young Emir was himself again, and was calculating the average of the various rates of interest in every town in Syria, from Gaza to Aleppo, when Baroni returned, bearing in his hand an Egyptian vase.
‘You have found the magic flowers?’ asked Fakredeen, eagerly.
‘The flowers of arnica, noble Emir, of which the Lady Eva spoke. I wish the potion had been made in the new moon; however, it has been blessed. Two things alone now are wanting, that my lord should drink it, and that it should cure him.’
It was not yet noon when Tancred quaffed the potion. He took it without difficulty, though apparently unconscious of the act. As the sun reached its meridian height, Tancred sank into a profound slumber. Fakredeen rushed away to tell Eva, who had now retired into the innermost apartments of the pavilion of Amalek; Baroni never quitted the tent of his lord. The sun set; the same beautiful rosy tint suffused the tombs and temples of the city as on the evening of their first forced arrival: still Tancred slept. The camels returned from the river, the lights began to sparkle in the circle of black tents: still Tancred slept. He slept during the day, and he slept during the twilight, and, when the night came, still Tancred slept. The silver lamp, fed by the oil of the palm tree, threw its delicate white light over the couch on which he rested. Mute, but ever vigilant, Fakredeen and Baroni gazed on their friend and master: still Tancred slept.
It seemed a night that would never end, and, when the first beam of the morning came, the Emir and his companion mutually recognised on their respective countenances an expression of distrust, even of terror. Still Tancred slept; in the same posture and with the same expression, unmoved and pale. Was it, indeed, sleep? Baroni touched his wrist, but could find no pulse; Fakredeen held his bright dagger over the mouth, yet its brilliancy was not for a moment clouded. But he was not cold.
The brow of Baroni was knit with deep thought, and his searching eye fixed upon the recumbent form; Fakredeen, frightened, ran away to Eva.
‘I am frightened, because you are frightened,’ said Fakredeen, ‘whom nothing ever alarms. O Rose of Sharon! why are you so pale?’
‘It is a stain upon our tents if this youth be lost,’ said Eva in a low voice, yet attempting to speak with calmness.
‘But what is it on me!’ exclaimed Fakredeen, distractedly. ‘A stain! I shall be branded like Cain. No, I will never enter Damascus again, or any of the cities of the coast. I will give up all my castles to my cousin Francis El Kazin, on condition that he does not pay my creditors. I will retire to Mar Hanna. I will look upon man no more.’
‘Be calm, my Fakredeen; there is yet hope; my responsibility at this moment is surely not lighter than yours.’
‘Ah! you did not know him, Eva!’ exclaimed Fakredeen, passionately; ‘you never listened to him! He cannot be to you what he is to me. I loved him!’
She pressed her finger to her lips, for they had arrived at the tent of Tancred. The young Emir, drying his streaming eyes, entered first, and then came back and ushered in Eva. They stood together by the couch of Tancred. The expression of distress, of suffering, of extreme tension, which had not marred, but which, at least, had mingled with the spiritual character of his countenance the previous day, had disappeared. If it were death, it was at least beautiful. Softness and repose suffused his features, and his brow looked as if it had been the temple of an immortal spirit.
Eva gazed upon the form with a fond, deep melancholy; Fakredeen and Baroni exchanged glances. Suddenly Tancred moved, heaved a deep sigh, and opened his dark eyes. The unnatural fire which had yesterday lit them up had fled. Calmly and thoughtfully he surveyed those around him, and then he said, ‘The Lady of Bethany!’
The Angel’s Message
BETWEEN the Egyptian and the Arabian deserts, formed by two gulfs of the Erythraean Sea, is a peninsula of granite mountains. It seems as if an ocean of lava, when its waves were literally running mountains high, had been suddenly commanded to stand still. These successive summits, with their peaks and pinnacles, enclose a series of valleys, in general stern and savage, yet some of which are not devoid of pastoral beauty. There may be found brooks of silver brightness, and occasionally groves of palms and gardens of dates, while the neighbouring heights command sublime landscapes, the opposing mountains of Asia and Afric, and the blue bosom of two seas. On one of these elevations, more than five thousand feet above the ocean, is a convent; again, nearly three thousand feet above this convent, is a towering peak, and this is Mount Sinai.
On the top of Mount Sinai are two ruins, a Christian church and a Mahometan mosque. In this, the sublimest scene of Arabian glory, Israel and Ishmael alike raised their altars to the great God of Abraham.
Why are they in ruins? Is it that human structures are not to be endured amid the awful temples of nature and revelation; and that the column and the cupola crumble into nothingness in sight of the hallowed Horeb and on the soil of the eternal Sinai?
Ascending the mountain, about half way between the convent and the utmost height of the towering peak, is a small plain surrounded by rocks. In its centre are a cypress tree and a fountain. This is the traditional scene of the greatest event of time.
Tis night; a solitary pilgrim, long kneeling on the sacred soil, slowly raises his agitated glance to the starry vault of Araby, and, clasping his hands in the anguish of devotion, thus prays:—
‘O Lord God of Israel, Creator of the Universe, ineffable Jehovah! a child of Christendom, I come to thine ancient Arabian altars to pour forth the heart of tortured Europe. Why art thou silent? Why no longer do the messages of thy renovating will descend on earth? Faith fades and duty dies. A profound melancholy has fallen on the spirit of man. The priest doubts, the monarch cannot rule, the multitude moans and toils, and calls in its frenzy upon unknown gods. If this transfigured mount may not again behold Thee; if not again, upon thy sacred Syrian plains, Divinity may teach and solace men; if prophets may not rise again to herald hope; at least, of all the starry messengers that guard thy throne, let one appear, to save thy creatures from a terrible despair!’
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A dimness suffused the stars of Arabia; the surrounding heights, that had risen sharp and black in the clear purple air, blended in shadowy and fleeting masses, the huge branches of the cypress tree seemed to stir, and the kneeling pilgrim sank upon the earth senseless and in a trance.
And there appeared to him a form; a shape that should be human, but vast as the surrounding hills. Yet such was the symmetry of the vision that the visionary felt his littleness rather than the colossal proportions of the apparition. It was the semblance of one who, though not young, was still untouched by time; a countenance like an oriental night, dark yet lustrous, mystical yet clear. Thought, rather than melancholy, spoke from the pensive passion of his eyes, while on his lofty forehead glittered a star that threw a solemn radiance on the repose of his majestic features.
‘Child of Christendom,’ said the mighty form, as he seemed slowly to wave a sceptre fashioned like a palm tree, ‘I am the angel of Arabia, the guardian spirit of that land which governs the world; for power is neither the sword nor the shield, for these pass away, but ideas, which are divine. The thoughts of all lands come from a higher source than man, but the intellect of Arabia comes from the Most High. Therefore it is that from this spot issue the principles which regulate the human destiny.
‘That Christendom which thou hast quitted, and over whose expiring attributes thou art a mourner, was a savage forest while the cedars of Lebanon, for countless ages, had built the palaces of mighty kings. Yet in that forest brooded infinite races that were to spread over the globe, and give a new impulse to its ancient life. It was decreed that, when they burst from their wild woods, the Arabian principles should meet them on the threshold of the old world to guide and to civilise them. All had been prepared. The Cæsars had conquered the world to place the Laws of Sinai on the throne of the Capitol, and a Galilean Arab advanced and traced on the front of the rude conquerors of the Caesars the subduing symbol of the last development of Arabian principles.
‘Yet again, and Europe is in the throes of a great birth. The multitudes again are brooding; but they are not now in the forest; they are in the cities and in the fertile plains. Since the first sun of this century rose, the intellectual colony of Arabia, once called Christendom, has been in a state of partial and blind revolt. Discontented, they attributed their suffering to the principles to which they owed all their happiness, and in receding from which they had become proportionately miserable. They have hankered after other gods than the God of Sinai and of Calvary, and they have achieved only desolation. Now they despair. But the eternal principles that controlled barbarian vigour can alone cope with morbid civilisation. The equality of man can only be accomplished by the sovereignty of God. The longing for fraternity can never be satisfied but under the sway of a common father. The relations between Jehovah and his creatures can be neither too numerous nor too near. In the increased distance between God and man have grown up all those developments that have made life mournful. Cease, then, to seek in a vain philosophy the solution of the social problem that perplexes you. Announce the sublime and solacing doctrine of theocratic equality. Fear not, faint not, falter not. Obey the impulse of thine own spirit, and find a ready instrument in every human being.’
A sound, as of thunder, roused Tancred from his trance. He looked around and above. There rose the mountains sharp and black in the clear purple air; there shone, with undimmed lustre, the Arabian stars; but the voice of the angel still lingered in his ear. He descended the mountain: at its base, near the convent, were his slumbering guards, some steeds, and crouching camels.
Fakredeen is Curious
THE beautiful daughter of Besso, pensive and abstracted, played with her beads in the pavilion of her grandfather. Two of her maidens, who had attended her, in a corner of this inner compartment, accompanied the wild murmur of their voices on a stringed instrument, which might in the old days have been a psaltery. They sang the loves of Antar and of Ibla, of Leila and of Mejnoun; the romance of the desert, tales of passion and of plunder, of the rescue of women and the capture of camels, of heroes with a lion heart, and heroines brighter and softer than the moon.
The beautiful daughter of Besso, pensive and abstracted, played with her beads in the pavilion of her grandfather. Why is the beautiful daughter of Besso pensive and abstracted? What thoughts are flitting over her mind, silent and soft, like the shadows of birds over the sunshiny earth?
Something that was neither silent nor soft disturbed the lady from her reverie; the voice of the great Sheikh, in a tone of altitude and harshness, with him most usual. He was in an adjacent apartment, vowing that he would sooner eat the mother of some third person, who was attempting to influence him, than adopt the suggestion offered. Then there were softer and more persuasive tones from his companion, but evidently ineffectual. Then the voices of both rose together in emulous clamour—one roaring like a bull, the other shrieking like some wild bird; one full of menace, and the other taunting and impertinent. All this was followed by a dead silence, which continuing, Eva assumed that the Sheikh and his companion had quitted his tent. While her mind was recurring to those thoughts which occupied them previously to this outbreak, the voice of Fakredeen was heard outside her tent, saying, ‘Rose of Sharon, let me come into the harem;’ and, scarcely waiting for permission, the young Emir, flushed and excited, entered, and almost breathless threw himself on the divan.
‘Who says I am a coward?’ he exclaimed, with a glance of devilish mockery. ‘I may run away sometimes, but what of that? I have got moral courage, the only thing worth having since the invention of gunpowder. The beast is not killed, but I have looked into the den; ‘tis something. Courage, my fragrant Rose, have faith in me at last. I may make an imbroglio sometimes, but, for getting out of a scrape, I would back myself against any picaroon in the Levant; and that is saying a good deal.’
‘Another imbroglio?’
‘Oh, no! the same; part of the great blunder. You must have heard us raging like a thousand Afrites. I never knew the great Sheikh so wild.’
‘And why?’
‘He should take a lesson from Mehemet Ali,’ continued the Emir. ‘Giving up Syria, after the conquest, was a much greater sacrifice than giving up plunder which he has not yet touched. And the great Pasha did it as quietly as if he were marching into Stamboul instead, which he might have done if he had been an Arab instead of a Turk. Everything comes from Arabia, my dear Eva, at least everything that is worth anything. We two ought to thank our stars every day that we were born Arabs.’
‘And the great Sheikh still harps upon this ransom?’ inquired Eva.
‘He does, and most unreasonably. For, after all, what do we ask him to give up? a bagatelle.’
‘Hardly that,’ said Eva; ‘two millions of piastres can scarcely be called a bagatelle.’
‘It is not two millions of piastres,’ said Fakre-deen; ‘there is your fallacy, ‘tis the same as your grandfather’s. In the first place, he would have taken one million; then half belonged to me, which reduces his share to five hundred thousand; then I meant to have borrowed his share of him.’
‘Borrowed his share!’ said Eva.
‘Of course I should have allowed him interest, good interest. What could the great Sheikh want five hundred thousand piastres for? He has camels enough; he has so many horses that he wants to change some with me for arms at this moment. Is he to dig a hole in the sand by a well-side to put his treasure in, like the treasure of Solomon; or to sew up his bills of exchange in his turban? The thing is ridiculous, I never contemplated, for a moment, that the great Sheikh should take any hard piastres out of circulation, to lock them up in the wilderness. It might disturb the currency of all Syria, upset the exchanges, and very much injure your family, Eva, of whose interests I am never unmindful. I meant the great Sheikh to invest his capital; he might have made a good thing of it. I could have afforded to pay him thirty per cent, for his share, and made as much by the transaction myself; for you see, as I am paying sixty per cent, at Beiroot, Tripoli, Latakia, and every accursed town of the coast at this moment. The thing is clear; and I wish you would only get your father to view it in the same light, and we might do immense things! Think of this, my Rose of Sharon, dear, dear Eva, think of this; your father might make his fortune and mine too, if he would only lend me money at thirty per cent.’
‘You frighten me always, Fakredeen, by these allusions to your affairs. Can it be possible that they are so very bad!’
‘Good, Eva, you mean good. I should be incapable of anything, if it were not for my debts. I am naturally so indolent, that if I did not remember in the morning that I was ruined, I should never be able to distinguish myself.’
‘You never will distinguish yourself,’ said Eva; ‘you never can, with these dreadful embarrassments.’
‘Shall I not?’ said Fakredeen, triumphantly. ‘What are my debts to my resources? That is the point. You cannot judge of a man by only knowing what his debts are; you must be acquainted with his resources.’
‘But your estates are mortgaged, your crops sold, at least you tell me so,’ said Eva, mournfully.
‘Estates! crops! A man may have an idea worth twenty estates, a principle of action that will bring him in a greater harvest than all Lebanon.’
‘A principle of action is indeed precious,’ said Eva; ‘but although you certainly have ideas, and very ingenious ones, a principle of action is exactly the thing which I have always thought you wanted.’
‘Well, I have got it at last,’ said Fakredeen; ‘everything comes if a man will only wait.’
‘And what is your principle of action?’
‘Faith.’
‘In yourself? Surely in that respect you have not hitherto been sceptical?’
‘No; in Mount Sinai.’
‘In Mount Sinai!’
‘You may well be astonished; but so it is. The English prince has been to Mount Sinai, and he has seen an angel. What passed between them I do not yet know; but one thing is certain, he is quite changed by the interview. He is all for action: so far as I can form an opinion in the present crude state of affairs, it is not at all impossible that he may put himself at the head of the Asian movement. If you have faith, there is nothing you may not do. One thing is quite settled, that he will not at present return to Jerusalem, but, for change of air and other reasons, make a visit with me to Canobia.’
‘He seems to have great purpose in him,’ said Eva, with an air of some constraint.
‘By-the-bye,’ said Fakredeen, ‘how came you, Eva, never to tell me that you were acquainted with him?’
‘Acquainted with him?’ said Eva.
‘Yes; he recognised you immediately when he recovered himself, and he has admitted to me since that he has seen you before, though I could not get much out of him about it. He will talk for ever about Arabia, faith, war, and angels; but, if you touch on anything personal, I observe he is always very shy. He has not my fatal frankness. Did you know him at Jerusalem?’
‘I met him by hazard for a moment at Bethany. I neither asked then, nor did he impart to me, his name. How then could I tell you we were acquainted? or be aware that the stranger of my casual interview was this young Englishman whom you have made a captive?’
‘Hush!’ said Fakredeen, with an air of real or affected alarm. ‘He is going to be my guest at my principal castle. What do you mean by captive? You mean whom I have saved from captivity, or am about to save?
‘Well, that would appear to be the real question to which you ought to address yourself at this moment,’ said Eva. ‘Were I you, I should postpone the great Asian movement until you had disembarrassed yourself from your present position, rather an equivocal one both for a patriot and a friend.’
‘Oh! I’ll manage the great Sheikh,’ said Fakredeen, carelessly. ‘There is too much plunder in the future for Amalek to quarrel with me. When he scents the possibility of the Bedouin cavalry being poured into Syria and Asia Minor, we shall find him more manageable. The only thing now is to heal the present disappointment by extenuating circumstances. If I could screw up a few thousand piastres for backsheesh,’ and he looked Eva in the face, ‘or could put anything in his way! What do you think, Eva?’
Eva shook her head.
‘What an obstinate Jew dog he is!’ said Fakre-deen. ‘His rapacity is revolting!’
‘An obstinate Jew dog!’ exclaimed Eva, rising, her eyes flashing, her nostrils dilating with contemptuous rage. The manner of Fakredeen had not pleased her this morning. His temper, was very uncertain, and, when crossed, he was deficient in delicacy. Indeed, he was too selfish, with all his sensibility and refined breeding, to be ever sufficiently considerate of the feelings of others. He was piqued also that he had not been informed of the previous acquaintance of Eva and Tancred. Her reason for not apprising him of their interview at Bethany, though not easily impugnable, was not as satisfactory to his understanding as to his ear. Again, his mind and heart were so absorbed at this moment by the image of Tancred, and he was so entirely under the influence of his own idealised conceptions of his new and latest friend, that, according to his custom, no other being could interest him. Although he was himself the sole cause of all the difficult and annoying circumstances in which he found himself involved, the moment that his passions and his interests alike required that Tancred should be free and uninjured, he acted, and indeed felt, as if Amalek alone were responsible for the capture and the detention of Lord Montacute.
The young Emir indeed was, at this moment, in one of those moods which had often marred his popularity, but in which he had never indulged towards Eva before. She had, throughout his life, been the commanding influence of his being. He adored and feared her, and knew that she loved, and rather despised him. But Eva had ceased to be the commanding influence over Fakredeen. At this moment Fakredeen would have sacrificed the whole family of Besso to secure the devotion of Tancred; and the coarse and rude exclamation to which he had given vent, indicated the current of his feelings and the general tenor of his mind.
Eva knew him by heart. Her clear sagacious intellect, acting upon an individual whom sympathy and circumstances had combined to make her comprehend, analysed with marvellous facility his complicated motives, and in general successfully penetrated his sovereign design.
‘An obstinate Jew dog!’ she exclaimed; ‘and who art thou, thou jackal of this lion! who should dare to speak thus? Is it not enough that you have involved us all in unspeakable difficulty and possible disgrace, that we are to receive words of contumely from lips like yours? One would think that you were the English Consul arrived here to make a representation in favour of his countryman, instead of being the individual who planned his plunder, occasioned his captivity, and endangered his life! It is a pity that this young noble is not acquainted with your claims to his confidence.’
The possibility that in a moment of irritation Eva might reveal his secret, some rising remorse at what he had said, and the superstitious reverence with which he still clung to her, all acting upon Fakredeen at the same time, he felt that he had gone too far, and thereupon he sprang from the divan, on which he had been insolently lolling, and threw himself at the feet of his foster-sister, whimpering and kissing her slippers, and calling her, between his sobs, a thousand fond names.
‘I am a villain,’ he said, ‘but you know it; you have always known it. For God’s sake, stand by me now; ‘tis my only chance. You are the only being I love in the world, except your family. You know how I respect them. Is not Besso my father? And the great Sheikh, I honour the great Sheikh. He is one of my allies. Even this accursed business proves it. Besides, what do you mean, by words of contumely from my lips? Am I not a Jew myself, or as good? Why should I insult them? I only wish we were in the Land’ of Promise, instead of this infernal wilderness.’
‘Well, well, let us consult together,’ said Eva, ‘reproaches are barren.’
‘Ah! Eva,’ said Fakredeen, ‘I am not reproaching you; but if, the evening I was at Bethany, you had only told me that you had just parted with this Englishman, all this would not have occurred.’
‘How do you know that I had then just parted with this Englishman?’ said Eva, colouring and confused.
‘Because I marked him on the road. I little thought then that he had been in your retreat. I took him for some Frank, looking after the tomb of Lazarus.’
‘I found him in my garden,’ said Eva, not entirely at her ease, ‘and sent my attendants to him.’
Fakredeen was walking up and down the tent, and seemed lost in thought. Suddenly he stopped and said, ‘I see it all; I have a combination that will put all right.’
‘Put all right?’
‘See, the day after to-morrow I have appointed to meet a friend of mine at Gaza, who has a caravan that wants convoy through the desert to the mountain. The Sheikh of Sheikhs shall have it. It will be as good as ten thousand piastres. That will be honey in his mouth. He will forget the past, and our English friend can return with you and me to El Khuds.’
‘I shall not return to El Khuds,’ said Eva. ‘The great Sheikh will convoy me to Damascus, where I shall remain till I go to Aleppo.’
‘May you never reach Aleppo!’ said Fakredeen, with a clouded countenance, for Eva in fact alluded to her approaching marriage with her cousin.
‘But after all,’ resumed Eva, wishing to change the current of his thoughts, ‘all these arrangements, so far as I am interested, depend upon the success of my mission to the great Sheikh. If he will not release my father’s charge, the spears of his people will never guard me again. And I see little prospect of my success; nor do I think ten thousand piastres, however honestly gained, will be more tempting than the inclination to oblige our house.’
‘Ten thousand piastres is not much,’ said Fakredeen. ‘I give it every three months for interest to a little Copt at Beiroot, whose property I will confiscate the moment I have the government of the country in my hands. But then I only add my ten thousand piastres to the amount of my debt. Ten thousand piastres in coin are a very different affair. They will jingle in the great Sheikh’s purse. His people will think he has got the treasure of Solomon. It will do; he will give them all a gold kaireen apiece, and they will braid them in their girls’ hair.’
‘It will scarcely buy camels for Sheikh Salem’s widow,’ said Eva.
‘I will manage that,’ said Fakredeen. ‘The great Sheikh has camels enough, and I will give him arms in exchange.’
‘Arms at Canobia will not reach the stony wilderness.’
‘No; but I have got arms nearer at hand; that is, my friend, my friend whom I am going to meet at Gaza, has some; enough, and to spare. By the Holy Sepulchre, I see it!’ said Fakredeen. ‘I tell you how I will manage the whole business. The great Sheikh wants arms; well, I will give him five hundred muskets for the ransom, and he shall have the convoy besides. He’ll take it. I know him. He thinks now all is lost, and, when he finds that he is to have a jingling purse and English muskets enough to conquer Tadmor, he will close.’
‘But how are we to get these arms?’ said Eva.
‘Why, Scheriff Effendi, to be sure. You know I am to meet him at Gaza the day after to-morrow, and receive his five thousand muskets. Well, five hundred for the great Sheikh will make them four thousand five hundred; no great difference.’
‘Scheriff Effendi!’ said Eva, with some surprise. ‘I thought I had obtained three months’ indulgence for you with Scheriff Effendi.’
‘Ah! yes—no,’ said Fakredeen, blushing. ‘The fact is, Eva, darling, beloved Eva, it is no use telling any more lies. I only asked you to speak to Scheriff Effendi to obtain time for me about payment to throw you off the scent, as you so strongly disapproved of my buccaneering project. But Scheriff Effendi is a camel. I was obliged to agree to meet him at Gaza on the new moon, pay him his two hundred thousand piastres, and receive the cargo. Well, I turn circumstances to account. The great Sheikh will convey the muskets to the mountains.’
‘But who is to pay for them?’ inquired Eva.
‘Why, if men want to head the Asian movement, they must have muskets,’ said Fakredeen; ‘and, after all, as we are going to save the English prince two millions of piastres, I do not think he can object to paying Scheriff Effendi for his goods; particularly as he will have the muskets for his money.’
Tancred’s Recovery
TANCRED rapidly recovered. On the second day after his recognition of Eva, he had held that conversation with Fakredeen which had determined the young Emir not to lose a moment in making the effort to induce Amalek to forego his ransom, the result of which he had communicated to Eva on their subsequent interview. On the third day, Tancred rose from his couch, and would even have quitted the tent, had not Baroni dissuaded him. He was the more induced to do so, for on this day he missed his amusing companion, the Emir. It appeared from the account of Baroni, that his highness had departed at dawn, on his dromedary, and without an attendant. According to Baroni, nothing was yet settled either as to the ransom or the release of Tancred. It seemed that the great Sheikh had been impatient to return to his chief encampment, and nothing but the illness of Tancred would probably have induced him to remain in the Stony Arabia as long as he had done. The Lady Eva had not, since her arrival at the ruined city, encouraged Baroni in any communication on the subject which heretofore during their journey had entirely occupied her consideration, from which he inferred that she had nothing very satisfactory to relate; yet he was not without hope, as he felt assured that Eva would not have remained a day were she convinced that there was no chance of effecting her original purpose. The comparative contentment of the great Sheikh at this moment, her silence, and the sudden departure of Fakredeen, induced Baroni to believe that there was yet something on the cards, and, being of a sanguine disposition, he sincerely encouraged his master, who, however, did not appear to be very desponding.
‘The Emir told me yesterday that he was certain to arrange everything,’ said Tancred, ‘without in any way compromising us. We cannot expect such an adventure to end like a day of hunting. Some camels must be given, and, perhaps, something else. I am sure the Emir will manage it all, especially with the aid and counsel of that beauteous Lady of Bethany, in whose wisdom and goodness I have implicit faith.’
‘I have more faith in her than in the Emir,’ said Baroni. ‘I never know what these Shehaabs are after. Now, he has not gone to El Khuds this morning; of that I am sure.’
‘I am under the greatest obligations to the Emir Fakredeen,’ said Tancred, ‘and independently of such circumstances, I very much like him.’
‘I know nothing against the noble Emir,’ said Baroni, ‘and I am sure he has been extremely polite and attentive to your lordship; but still those Shehaabs, they are such a set, always after something!’
‘He is ardent and ambitious,’ said Tancred, ‘and he is young. Are these faults? Besides, he has not had the advantage of our stricter training. He has been without guides; and is somewhat undisciplined, and self-formed. But he has a great and interesting position, and is brilliant and energetic. Providence may have appointed him to fulfil great ends.’
‘A Shehaab will look after the main chance,’ said Baroni.
‘But his main chance may be the salvation of his country,’ said Tancred.
‘Nothing can save his country,’ said Baroni. ‘The Syrians were ever slaves.’
‘I do not call them slaves now,’ said Tancred; ‘why, they are armed and are warlike! All that they want is a cause.’
‘And that they never will have,’ said Baroni.
‘Why?’
‘The East is used up.’
‘It is not more used up than when Mahomet arose,’ said Tancred. ‘Weak and withering as may be the government of the Turks, it is not more feeble and enervated than that of the Greek empire and the Chosroes.’
‘I don’t know anything about them,’ replied Baroni; ‘but I know there is nothing to be done with the people here. I have seen something of them,’ said Baroni. ‘M. de Sidonia tried to do something in ‘39, and, if there had been a spark of spirit or of sense in Syria, that was the time, but——’ and here Baroni shrugged his shoulders.
‘But what was your principle of action in ‘39?’ inquired Tancred, evidently interested.
‘The only principle of action in this world,’ said Baroni; ‘we had plenty of money; we might have had three millions.’
‘And if you had had six, or sixteen, your efforts would have been equally fruitless. I do not believe in national regeneration in the shape of a foreign loan. Look at Greece! And yet a man might climb Mount Carmel, and utter three words which would bring the Arabs again to Grenada, and perhaps further.’
‘They have no artillery,’ said Baroni.
‘And the Turks have artillery and cannot use it,’ said Lord Montacute. ‘Why, the most favoured part of the globe at this moment is entirely defenceless; there is not a soldier worth firing at in Asia except the Sepoys. The Persian, Assyrian, and Babylonian monarchies might be gained in a morning with faith and the flourish of a sabre.’
‘You would have the Great Powers interfering,’ said Baroni.
‘What should I care for the Great Powers, if the Lord of Hosts were on my side!’
‘Why, to be sure they could not do much at Bagdad or Ispahan.’
‘Work out a great religious truth on the Persian and Mesopotamian plains, the most exuberant soils in the world with the scantiest population,—it would revivify Asia. It must spread. The peninsula of Arabia, when in action, must always command the peninsula of the Lesser Asia. Asia revivified would act upon Europe. The European comfort, which they call civilisation, is, after all, confined to a very small space: the island of Great Britain, France, and the course of a single river, the Rhine. The greater part of Europe is as dead as Asia, without the consolation of climate and the influence of immortal traditions.’
‘I just found time, my lord, when I was at Jerusalem, to call in at the Consulate, and see the Colonel,’ said Baroni; ‘I thought it as well to explain the affair a little to him. I found that even the rumour of our mischance had not reached him; so I said enough to prevent any alarm when it arrived; he will believe that we furnished him with the priority of intelligence, and he expects your daily return.’
‘You did well to call; we know not what may happen. I doubt, however, whether I shall return to Jerusalem. If affairs are pleasantly arranged here, I think of visiting the Emir, at his castle of Canobia. A change of air must be the best thing for me, and Lebanon, by his account, is delicious at this season. Indeed, I want air, and I must go out now, Baroni; I cannot stay in this close tent any longer; the sun has set, and there is no longer any fear of those fatal heats of which you are in such dread for me.’
It was the first night of the new moon, and the white beams of the young crescent were just beginning to steal over the lately flushed and empurpled scene. The air was still glowing, and the evening breeze, which sometimes wandered through the ravines from the gulf of Akabah, had not yet arrived. Tancred, shrouded in his Bedouin cloak, and accompanied by Baroni, visited the circle of black tents, which they found almost empty, the whole band, with the exception of the scouts, who are always on duty in an Arab encampment, being assembled in the ruins of the amphitheatre, in whose arena, opposite to the pavilion of the great Sheikh, a celebrated poet was reciting the visit of Antar to the temple of the fire-worshippers, and the adventures of that greatest of Arabian heroes among the effeminate and astonished courtiers of the generous and magnificent Nushirvan.
The audience was not a scanty one, for this chosen detachment of the children of Rechab had been two hundred strong, and the great majority of them were now assembled; some seated as the ancient Idumæans, on the still entire seats of the amphitheatre; most squatted in groups upon the ground, though at a respectful distance from the poet; others standing amid the crumbling pile and leaning against the tall dark fragments just beginning to be silvered by the moonbeam; but in all their countenances, their quivering features, their flashing eyes, the mouth open with absorbing suspense, were expressed a wild and vivid excitement, the heat of sympathy, and a ravishing delight.
When Antar, in the tournament, overthrew the famous Greek knight, who had travelled from Constantinople to beard the court of Persia; when he caught in his hand the assassin spear of the Persian satrap, envious of his Arabian chivalry, and returned it to his adversary’s heart; when he shouted from his saddle that he was the lover of Ibla and the horseman of the age, the audience exclaimed with rapturous earnestness, ‘It is true, it is true!’ although they were guaranteeing the assertions of a hero who lived, and loved, and fought more than fourteen hundred years before. Antar is the Iliad of the desert; the hero is the passion of the Bedouins. They will listen for ever to his forays, when he raised the triumphant cry of his tribe, ‘Oh! by Abs; oh! by Adnan,’ to the narratives of the camels he captured, the men he slew, and the maidens to whose charms he was indifferent, for he was ‘ever the lover of Ibla.’ What makes this great Arabian invention still more interesting is, that it was composed at a period antecedent to the Prophet; it describes the desert before the Koran; and it teaches us how little the dwellers in it were changed by the introduction and adoption of Islamism.
As Tancred and his companion reached the amphitheatre, a ringing laugh resounded.
‘Antar is dining with the King of Persia after his victory,’ said Baroni; ‘this is a favourite scene with the Arabs. Antar asks the courtiers the name of every dish, and whether the king dines so every day. He bares his arms, and chucks the food into his mouth without ever moving his jaws. They have heard this all their lives, but always laugh at it with the same heartiness. Why, Shedad, son of Amroo,’ continued Baroni to an Arab near him, ‘you have listened to this ever since you first tasted liban, and it still pleases you!’
‘I am never wearied with listening to fine language,’ said the Bedouin; ‘perfumes are always sweet, though you may have smelt them a thousand times.’
Except when there was some expression of feeling elicited by the performance, a shout or a laugh, the silence was absolute. Not a whisper could be heard; and it was in a muffled tone that Baroni intimated to Tancred that the great Sheikh was present, and that, as this was his first appearance since his illness, he must pay his respects to Amalek. So saying, and preceding Tancred, in order that he might announce his arrival, Baroni approached the pavilion. The great Sheikh welcomed Tancred with a benignant smile, motioned to him to sit upon his carpet; rejoiced that he was recovered; hoped that he should live a thousand years; gave him his pipe, and then, turning again to the poet, was instantly lost in the interest of his narrative. Baroni, standing as near Tancred as the carpet would permit him, occasionally leant over and gave his lord an intimation of what was occurring.
After a little while, the poet ceased. Then there was a general hum and great praise, and many men said to each other, ‘All this is true, for my father told it to me before.’ The great Sheikh, who was highly pleased, ordered his slaves to give the poet a cup of coffee, and, taking from his own vest an immense purse, more than a foot in length, he extracted from it, after a vast deal of research, one of the smallest of conceivable coins, which the poet pressed to his lips, and, notwithstanding the exiguity of the donation, declared that God was great.
‘O Sheikh of Sheikhs,’ said the poet, ‘what I have recited, though it is by the gift of God, is in fact written, and has been ever since the days of the giants; but I have also dipped my pen into my own brain, and now I would recite a poem which I hope some day may be suspended in the temple of Mecca. It is in honour of one who, were she to rise to our sight, would be as the full moon when it rises over the desert. Yes, I sing of Eva, the daughter of Amalek (the Bedouins always omitted Besso in her genealogy), Eva, the daughter of a thousand chiefs. May she never quit the tents of her race! May she always ride upon Nejid steeds and dromedaries, with harness of silver! May she live among us for ever! May she show herself to the people like a free Arabian maiden!’
‘They are the thoughts of truth,’ said the delighted Bedouins to one another; ‘every word is a pearl.’
And the great Sheikh sent a slave to express his Wish that Eva and her maidens should appear. So she came to listen to the ode which the poet had composed in her honour. He had seen palm trees, but they were not as tall and graceful as Eva; he had beheld the eyes of doves and antelopes, but they were not as bright and soft as hers; he had tasted the fresh springs in the wilderness, but they were not more welcome than she; and the soft splendour of the desert moon was not equal to her brow. She was the daughter of Amalek, the daughter of a thousand chiefs. Might she live for ever in their tents; ever ride on Nejid steeds and on dromedaries with silver harness; ever show herself to the people like a free Arabian maiden!
The poet, after many variations on this theme, ceased amid great plaudits.
‘He is a true poet,’ said an Arab, who was, like most of his brethren, a critic; ‘he is in truth a second Antar.’
‘If he had recited these verses before the King of Persia, he would have given him a thousand camels,’ replied his neighbour, gravely.
‘They ought to be suspended in the temple of Mecca,’ said a third.
‘What I most admire is his image of the full moon; that cannot be-too often introduced,’ said a fourth.
‘Truly the moon should ever shine,’ said a fifth. ‘Also in all truly fine verses there should be palm trees and fresh springs.’
Tancred, to whom Baroni had conveyed the meaning of the verses, was also pleased; having observed that, on a previous occasion, the great Sheikh had rewarded the bard, Tancred ventured to take a chain, which he fortunately chanced to wear, from, his neck, and sent it to the poet of Eva. This made a great sensation, and highly delighted the Arabs.
‘Truly this is the brother of queens,’ they whispered to each other.
Now the audience was breaking up and dispersing, and Tancred, rising, begged permission of his host to approach Eva, who was seated at the entrance of the pavilion, somewhat withdrawn from them.
‘If I were a poet,’ said Tancred, bending before her, ‘I would attempt to express my gratitude to the Lady of Bethany. I hope,’ he added, after a moment’s pause, ‘that Baroni laid my message at your feet. When I begged your permission to thank you in person to-morrow, I had not imagined that I should have been so wilful as to quit the tent tonight.’
‘It will not harm you,’ said Eva; ‘our Arabian nights bear balm.’
‘I feel it,’ said Tancred; ‘this evening will complete the cure you so benignantly commenced.’
‘Mine were slender knowledge and simple means,’ said Eva; ‘but I rejoice that they were of use, more especially as I learn that we are all interested in your pilgrimage.
‘The Emir Fakredeen has spoken to you?’ said Tancred, inquiringly, and with a countenance a little agitated.
‘He has spoken to me of some things for which our previous conversation had not entirely unprepared me.’
‘Ah!’ said Tancred, musingly, ‘our previous conversation. It is not very long ago since I slumbered by the side of your fountain, and yet it seems to me an age, an age of thought and events.’
‘Yet even then your heart was turned towards our unhappy Asia,’ said the Lady of Bethany.
‘Unhappy Asia! Do you call it unhappy Asia! This land of divine deeds and divine thoughts! Its slumber is more vital than the waking life of the rest of the globe, as the dream of genius is more precious than the vigils of ordinary men. Unhappy Asia, do you call it? It is the unhappiness of Europe over which I mourn.’
‘Europe, that has conquered Hindustan, protects Persia and Asia Minor, affects to have saved Syria,’ said Eva, with some bitterness. ‘Oh! what can we do against Europe?’
‘Save it,’ said Tancred.
‘We cannot save ourselves; what means have we to save others?’
‘The same you have ever exercised, Divine Truth. Send forth a great thought, as you have done before, from Mount Sinai, from the villages of Galilee, from the deserts of Arabia, and you may again remodel all their institutions, change their principles of action, and breathe a new spirit into the whole scope of their existence.’
‘I have sometimes dreamed such dreams,’ murmured Eva, looking down. ‘No, no,’ she exclaimed, raising her head, after a moment’s pause, ‘it is impossible. Europe is too proud, with its new command over nature, to listen even to prophets. Levelling mountains, riding without horses, sailing without winds, how can these men believe that there is any power, human or divine, superior to themselves?’
‘As for their command over nature,’ said Tancred, ‘let us see how it will operate in a second deluge. Command over nature! Why, the humblest root that serves for the food of man has mysteriously withered throughout Europe, and they are already pale at the possible consequences. This slight eccentricity of that nature which they boast they can command has already shaken empires, and may decide the fate of nations. No, gentle lady, Europe is not happy. Amid its false excitement, its bustling invention, and its endless toil, a profound melancholy broods over its spirit and gnaws at its heart. In vain they baptise their tumult by the name of progress; the whisper of a demon is ever asking them, “Progress, from whence and to what?” Excepting those who still cling to your Arabian creeds, Europe, that quarter of the globe to which God has never spoken, Europe is without consolation.’