AT SERAPIS.
Lepsius, to the amazement of men, remained at Serapis for weeks, to the
very eve of the Exhibition, though he quickly established a system of
posts and telephones with Monsieur Schuré and other men of importance:
as to which the Hindoo, Nundcumar, remarked to Shan Healy, “It is a
piece of slackness, this; once he would not have done this: but when
a woman comes in, great minds begin to go rotten, and look a little
ahead, my sonnies, and you will see their catastrophe head-over-heels.”
It was then the turn of the Hindoo with his burned nose to drone by
the bedside of Healy; and Healy, who had conceived a fever from his
vitriol-dose, said with a moan, “Won’t she let him see her yet?”
Nundcumar wagged his head meaningly-meaninglessly, going, “Not she:
true-blue British and A1, a queen of queens! keeps him dewrithing in
the deepest depths of hell! That morning when she landed, he thought
he had her, my sonnies; but, if he is artful, she is a bit artfuller
still: peeped through the rose-curtains of her palankeen, smiling
with him like any dancing-girl, gabbing and gossiping with him about
Serapis, and how he built it; then when she was in and saw Serapis,
and what it is, her nostrils spread a bit, her breath stops a bit;
but by the time he had got her into the west ivory seraglio, and gave
her to know that that was to be her special palace, she had come to
herself again, looking as compleased as Sir Punch himself, smiling
with him, and he with her, and she with him, all very fine and large;
so she halts before one of the bashi-bazouks guarding a hall, gaping
at his get-up, his thises and his thats, his whys and his wherefores,
makes him draw his sword to show her, all marquetry of little gems and
gold, his dagger, all marquetry of little seed-gems, a real pleasure,
delight and comfort to man’s ophthalmoscoptics; and, says she, ‘How
pretty, Lepsius!’ she says, drawing the dagger out of the guard’s paws;
‘oh, I mean to keep this; may I?’ So Mr. High and Mr. Mighty he looks
at her quick, then lowers his eyes, and at last he mutters, ‘Yes,’
reluctantly. Then she begs him to go, as she has a migraine-ache, so he
hands her over to her ladies, and goes; and the moment he is gone she
squats to pen him a note: and what do you suppose was in it?”
Shan Healy tossed for ease, moaning. “Anybody can easy enough guess out
what was in it; but how the deuce do _you_ know?”
“I know and I know,” said the Hindoo with a moving head, “and what I do
not know is what man knoweth not, for that which is is shown unto me.
And in the note, word for word, she says, ‘Lepsius, I admit myself your
prisoner here in Serapis. You understand though, I think, knowing me
armed, that I instantly die if you venture to enter anew any part of my
palace; test me, I woo you, to see whether I mean it or not.—EVE.’ That
was her scribble, my sonnies, and the wording and reverbosity of her
constructing.”
Healy opened and closed anew his sick eyes to reply, “_If_ it’s true.”
“What, don’t you suppose I ever let slip something that’s true, for
form’s sake, in the hey-day and prime of life?” prated the utterly
senseless ape-tongue of the Hindoo that ambled blandly in a monotone
along, with the obscurest meanings anon, if meaning it had.
“So he ain’t seen her since?” Healy asked.
“He has seen her every day, though she little thinks it! for she is
artful, but he is artfuller still——”
“Old gas-bag,” Healy moaned, “you said just now that _he_ is artful,
but _she_ is artfuller still.”
“Both are artfuller than each one, my chum Healy,” Nundcumar said:
“_he_ is artfuller than she because he is of the guiley ones and artful
dodges, the beguilers and the wilers, and _she_ is artfuller than he
because she is a woman, and the guilt of womanhood is in the juice of
her gall-bladder. But he sees her when she little believes it: his eyes
have their peep-holes and their spy-places to weigh her and dwell upon
her when she’s wantoning on the water with her poet and her ladies, or
when she is walking under the arcade of the courtyard gazing at the
gauderies and the graces of her Persian and Delhi girls dancing with
their carcanets of pearl in the moonshine: for she grows every day
more luxuriatingous, which is the curse of Serapis for everyone who
enters it, from the lord of all to the low-cast coolie who polishes
the porphyries; and in these three weeks she has grown into a regular
begum-queen, true-blue old England as she is, and if he only waits a
bit, he will get and win her, be certain—that is, if she does not flirt
off abscond and run away first with the young poet Pershorez——”
At this the sick man looked at Nundcumar to sigh, “Oh, you scandalous
tongue—if I only had the strength——”
“Why, my friend Healy,” said Nundcumar, “have your ears not heard how
she pets her little Pershorez? Cannot stir without him near her! Feeds
him with sweetmeats, conserve of roses, orange-honey of Kauzeroon, and
all delights, almond-patés, and amusements! her eyes musing on his
eyes all an afternoon in that small hall of red andem-wood, while he
recites to her from Hafez and Ferdousi, sir-poets of Persia whom she
cannot understand a word, though she can well understand the face of
Pershorez, my sonnies, which is only made of cream of gazelle-milk
and rose-leaves fading, and his little figure more perfect in grace,
symmetry, curves, and very hungriness of perfecting than Thammuz, the
love-god that Syrian girls go thin for fancy of, and sigh for very
hungriness of delight, and die of. And that other one, the lord of
all, he knows, he knows, of this, because Barova, the little Arab
slave-maid, who is thin, faint and gaunt for love of lord Lepsius,
she pushed her way one night right into his private hall in the north
palace, and told out of her mistress, how the grossness of the sap
of womanly hungriness grows wanton in the arteries of her gall for
Pershorez; and first he could not grasp what the girl wished to say to
him, but then for very anguish of jealousy he cast back his head-piece
and laughed wild——”
“Laughed for fun,” sighed Healy—“if any of it is true.”
“For fun, may be, and may be not for fun,” the Hindoo said with a
moving head: “though not much fun in Serapis going on these days. Wait,
wait: for that’s bad, Healy, when the evil eye is cast upon a man,
and the villain woman with the vitriol is not yet dead, for first it
was poor old-boy Nundcumar on his oil-factory nose, and then it was
you, poor boy, and the third time it will be—another one of the ones.
That’s bad, that’s bad. And the seeds of disease spring and spread in
Serapis; he loses hours now in peeping and dreaming and brooding about
her—loose! looser every day; and when the woman comes in greatness
goes out and out, for the race of man would be a crowd of gods, but
the presence of woman relaxes his screw and corrupts his entrails.
Peeping, dreaming, like any Pershorez poet! and his Exhibition that
is all the talk coming so near! Several times he has passed hours
hanging about her: once stood guard disguised as a Mamaluke under that
cupola of enamels of her outer hall to see her pass close; and he has
fanned her face disguised as a slave-girl, where she sat listening
among her cushions to her Persian girls singing to the vina, with the
zels clashing aloud, and the kanoon-lutes making music and all sorts
of sounds, alarms, loudness and howdedo of melody; and he has come to
embalm her musk-baths, attended her bathing, painted her nails with
henna, and she with her weapon none the wiser——”
The sick fellow whined at this, sighing, “Pity you’re quite so vile an
old liar, after all.”
“Who—me?” said the Hindoo, a finger at his breast: “why, some of it
is true, my friend Healy, as the four and fourteen gospels! And how
about the letters that go between them, have you not heard of this?
For every day he writes her three-four times, and every morning that
dawns she writes him a line, though for two weeks she would not, but
when he raged, prayed, raved, consought and implored her with so much
squalling, pain, despair and foaming, she said at last that she would
write him one line every morning, giving him a puzzle-problem to solve,
since he is so witty, wise and witful in all wiles and witticisms, and
if ever once he failed wittily to answer her, he must agree to let her
go from her prison in Serapis to her parent, who is sick to death for
lack of her, though Sir Lepsius sends her daily the report that her
parent is in health and roarious spirits. So every morning that dawns
her note goes as regular as the milk-carts and the market-gardeners
all the way through from the west to the north of Serapis, wrapt in
satin in her poet’s hand; and one day the lady has written, ‘Lepsius,
tell me to-day if the spirits of men live ever and ever.—EVE’; and
one day she has written ‘Lepsius, write me to-day (with a why) which
wild-rose is sweeter and wilder: those all white on the weald, or those
which are washed as with shame.—EVE’; and one day she has written,
‘Lepsius, tell me to-day how the heavens and star-dust were formed
out of nothing.—EVE’; and he to her writes the most fantasticalest,
whimsiest, witticismest answers, replies and respondencies, as she has
shown them to her old Nundcumar when she sits listening with delight to
my tales, faries, frivols, and other lip-froth; and as to that of the
forming of the heavens and star-dust, he wrote her that, once upon a
time of the times, One Who Is, wishing to compose an oratorio of music,
brewed oceans of ink in a bowl of gold, and, holding in hand a pen of
gold, began to compose and throw off the notes of his oratorio; but
soon, when the beauty of the music stressed and throed in his soul,
so that he pressed well upon the pen, the pen splintered, and the ink
spattered, blotching with spots and splashes all the blackness of the
vault: so One Who Is roamed more remotely into the womb of gloom to
compose some more glorious oratorio. So they toy and coy, and bill and
coo together, my sonnies; but wait—let him go on: the seeds of disease
spring and spread in Serapis, say I; he gets slacker and laxer with
his idol-lady; wantonness and riot is growing among some of the scum
of the domestics; many of the men, and their commanders, too, are
grumbling with discontent because of regulatings and strictness; that
villain woman——”
Here, however, the entrance of a sister-of-mercy, Healy’s nurse, whose
frown the Hindoo knew, interrupted and drove him out; immediately
whereupon Healy begged to be permitted to pen a note, and on gaining
the battle, wrote as follows: “Master Hanni, I beg to be forgiven for
writing to you, but as I do not much fancy now that I shall ever be
getting up out of this again, that’s why I take this liberty, which is
to say that I wish to God, Master Hanni, you would get that dog of a
Hindoo Nundcumar from being near about you, for he means you no good,
I doubt, and under the ridiculousness of a parrot this man hides ten
times the craftiness of a fox. Dear Master Hanni, you may not be aware
that thirteen years since Nundcumar was two years in Wormwood Scrubbs
Prison, near by London, for stealing two bicycles. And, Master Hanni,
that you may never cease to remember with any breath you breathe that
Jeanne Auvache remains alive is the dying prayer of yours till death,
Shan Healy. I’d give fifteen years, if I had fifteen days, to lay my
eyes on your face once again for one moment on this side, but that may
be a bit more than I can expect of you: and, if not, good-bye to you.”
A little slave of Healy’s was at once sent out with this letter, which
two hours later reached the hand of Lepsius in the north-east regions
of Serapis, where he lay in a diwan-i-am, or hall of audience; and
his glance having lassoed in one swoop the significance of the note,
he threw it among other notes into an alcove of the throne in which
he lay, saying to a gentleman (a commissaire) who sat with him, “No,
Monsieur Hugonnet, you have my assurance: she is not in Serapis; she
perished in the collapse of Egmond.”
“Not so, monsieur, I think,” said Monsieur Hugonnet, a big bureaucrat,
who ever struck the wind with his eye-glass in his fingers: “that
theory is no longer tenable, for it is now established that some shreds
of her body must have been found. Moreover, you do not forget the crew
of the brig’s boat who saw a lady carried into your boat?”
“It was another lady,” replied Lepsius, smiling, “as ten days ago I
gave myself the pains to prove to Monsieur Leflô and Lord Rawlinson.”
“Monsieur, I admit it,” the commissary replied: “you have conclusively
proved that Miss Vickery is made of air; this, nevertheless, seems a
matter in which frankness, reasonableness and right feeling might well
be invoked on both sides. Think, monsieur—the lady’s father lies half
dead of it; and the English Government, I give you my word, monsieur,
grows every day more earnest, more urgent——” at which Lepsius, jumping
up with a rather reddened brow, went walking about a hall all pillars
of marble, between which stretched screens of perforated marble and
filigrees of gold, screens low enough for one to overgaze, away below,
the crags of the Brittany coast, and, away beyond these, a streak of
sea, indigo corruscated with snow-glints under the sun’s glare.
“_Let_ the English Government grow urgent,” Lepsius, returning to
Monsieur Hugonnet, suddenly said: “what then? What would you and it
have? Have I not allowed your troops to enter and ransack every crack
of Serapis? Have you found Miss Vickery? No. So, then, she is not
here? Nor is she made of air, monsieur, believe me, but of flesh and
blood, and her palms, if you palpate them, will be warmer to you than
the bark of the maple. So, why have you not found her? And how much
more of my time shall I have to lavish on this matter?”
“Serapis is not so much a palace as a town——” the commissary commenced
to say.
“Still, you have searched it throughout!”
“Let us search it again, monsieur, for certainty’s sake!”
“Again? And when?”
“Say to-morrow, will you?”
“Well, it is ridiculous; still——”
“Scribble me a pass, monsieur!”
Lepsius scribbled a pass for the following day, and the commissary went
away.
As for Lepsius, he had no fear of the legal visit, since his reason
for giving Miss Eve her (west) palace was that in it were rooms so
curiously and astutely concealed, that no keenest wit could suspect
them; and on the previous visit of the police Miss Eve was easily
induced on some excuse to step, unsuspecting, into one of these. So
Lepsius smiled, as he once more stepped up to recline in his kind of
throne, little thinking that that commissary was more cunning than he
looked.
He was about to sound for the following interview, but instead put out
his hand to Healy’s letter: did not, however, lift it; but, his hand on
it, reflected a little; then sprang up, and ran out, down the length of
three corridors, across a hanging gallery, guards making him salaam,
down a stair, along a lake, southwestward always, knowing his way
without fail, slaves and dignitaries, going on their various duties,
standing agape, saluting his tunic’s glare, his turban’s egrette of
heron’s feathers aburn with seed-pearl, and up a curved stairway to
a certain curtain: and Healy’s Ursuline nurse stood up amazed to see
him peer in, and wished to wake Healy, who lay breathing strangely in
sleep; but Lepsius restrained her.
Lepsius stood about two minutes, looking down at that rash on the sick
brow, the bandages on the breached cheek; took up, looked at, smelled
two of the medicine bottles; took up and held the sick hand; and,
holding it, gazed out with a brow of trouble through a great window
which was hollowed out in Moorish ogives, out into a court where
the whiteness of a minaret in the midst of a lake was reflected far
down in the water, with zephyrs flirting along the water’s surface:
an afternoon in July in which all that Brittany country slumbrously
basked, and bumblebees, as air-boats trading, tromboned a moment, as
through steamboat throttles, their boom of music across the ear-drum
dreamily, and cruised to some other ear. Somehow Lepsius sighed. And
whispering the sister, “Tell him that I came,” he went away in haste.
But he had hardly passed beyond the door’s hanging, when a French
functionary with a wild and white face, wringing his hands together,
raced to him with the hiss, “My God, monsieur, all is lost! Monsieur
Hugonnet has gained admission with a squad of gendarmes, and is now
searching Miss Vickery’s house!”
Quickly Lepsius’ eyes stirred from side to side. What had happened
he saw: Hugonnet, aiming to take Lepsius by surprise (as he did!)
had adventured to present to the guards at the great gates the pass
intended for the morrow, and they had not noticed the date; nor was
there any possibility of inducing Miss Eve at a moment’s notice to
move into one of the secret rooms, nor any possibility of checking the
officers in their search, nor any possibility of keeping her a prisoner
in Serapis, if she was once seen, nor any possibility of living without
keeping her....
Lepsius flew....
Not toward the west palace, but back toward his own north, and not the
way he had come, but as the bird flies, one eye on the watch on his
palm, one on the way he went, once swinging over a wall, once swimming
an oval of water, trampling flower-beds, routing men, making one bound
of stairs, while the fowls of the air cried out their affright at his
flight; and now like whirlwind his fingers were scattering among masses
of trinkets and things in a certain mahogany, he groaning in his soul;
got what he wanted; and now was gone again, going straight as the bird
goes, west and south, swinging, swimming, bounding, and now at last was
in the south-west house.
Standing within a doorway under a dome, he heard above-stairs the sound
of the troop; and stealing in a tick up sixty steps on the belly, his
wet streaming on the alabaster, he spied the troop, who, he saw with
spite, were just moving from one of his secret rooms, proving treachery
in Serapis. And on they went, Monsieur Hugonnet and ten gallants in
gaudy garments with swords, walking with a swagger between two white
walls with lines of doorways in them that seemed without any end, he
hiding behind, wriggling with eagerness as a tigress wriggles about to
spring, hearing now a sound as of the harp far off (which, however, the
gendarmes seemed not to hear), and aware now where Miss Eve was. So the
moment that the commissaire, examining a plan in his hand, went into a
doorway with his men, Lepsius sped on to slip ahead of them, but before
he could get to the door heard the sound of the searchers coming out
again, a glance having shown them that no one was in there: and he had
to shy into a side-corridor on the right. And now on a sudden the sound
of the strings of an instrument struck to the ears of the seekers,
too; they looked alive; “Come on!” cried the commissaire, and on they
stepped. Now Lepsius sped ten-footed to the right down the length of
his side-corridor, turned at its end down a second corridor, turned
left down a third, and in this last spurted through door-curtains
into a room, before ever the troop had attained the bottom of their
corridor—a room of monstrous circumference, domed with moresque-work in
gold, and, though looking a ghost of marble, cool, too, and balmy, its
circle of rose-curtains being all closed, embarring a grotto of umbrage
within, which was pregnant with fragrances of frankincense burning in
urns and cassolets. Two fountains wheeled about its centre, between
these in the wilderness of floor being one flush of colour and odour of
woman, cushions, stuffs, rugs, for snugly grouped there lay an oasis
of ladies making music, Miss Eve seated in their midst, cuddling a
gazelle which lay chewing the sugar of its cud with lids of indolence.
All at once she was up, tall! a weapon started out of her breast, yes,
and was brought down, and would have been driven to her heart, if the
feet of Lepsius had been by one whisp less fleet, or his eye less wise.
He had her in his arms, the ataghan-dagger cast far, she struggling
against a handkerchief which he held on her face, with stifled cries
of “Let me go! Lepsius, let me go!” He, however, clearly hearing now
the near-coming of the steps in the corridor, pressed heavily, had
her senseless, laid her down on the yatag (ground-bed) where she had
been sitting, and drew to her chin a coverlet over her. At that moment
the troop stood at the door, and, had the music not ceased on his
entrance, Lepsius, however speedy-handed, could not have succeeded; he
had counted, however, upon the music ceasing: and during the seconds
that the troop remained out there in a state of hesitation as to which
was the chamber of the music, his raging hands had her face brown with
some ulmin or umber-stain, had his turban bound about her brows, her
mouth, cheeks, submerged beneath a snow of beard. “Say ‘_sh-h-h_’ if
one enters,” he whispered, “fan her,” and he vanished.
Some seconds later Monsieur Hugonnet and his troop rapped, came in,
inspected the group of Oriental maids, the poet (lone male among women)
with his lute, the gazelle, and the old Ulema, Imam or Cadi taking
siesta on the yatag in his turban, softly fanned by his girls. The
gendarmes cast glances at the group of girls—could hardly be got to
move on; but presently searched through the hall, and spent the rest of
the day in searching Serapis in vain.
Nor did Monsieur Hugonnet go out as he came in. In passing down a stair
in the north palace, he and several of his men slipped down it, three
spraining their legs; in one place he got an electric stroke; and in
his going out of Serapis a grate gave way under him—a grate that had
sustained all his men—nor was it without difficulty that he was raised
up, half-drowned in filth, out of a drain.
Thus ended the final attempt of the two Governments to find the
prisoner in Serapis. But no sooner did the Governments begin to give
up than her sister, Miss Ruth, said, “_I_ will find her”: and two
days after that failure of the police, late in the evening, Lepsius
received a request to admit Miss Vickery, for no one was admitted into
Serapis unless permitted; and he at once sent for her.
“Alone?” said he, with his elbows laid on a table to stare at her paled
face upon which a lamp shone, she seated with her luggage (a hand-bag)
at her feet, a pretty sprig in her hat, for she liked little fineries
and vanities, provided they were very cheap.
“Yes,” she replied to him, “quite alone.”
“You have come to see—Serapis?”
“Why, what a question—for Eve!”
“If I had Eve, do you imagine that I should give her to you?”
“I am even sure that you will, if I beg you.”
“Beg me, and see.”
“You admit, then, that you have her.... Tell me whether she is well!”
“No, she is not in Serapis. I fancy I know where she might be traced,
but she is not in Serapis.”
“Oh, fie, you tell lies; why, I have seen her here.”
“You?”
“Yes, three afternoons ago, in a dream. I hardly ever go to sleep in
the day-time, but somehow that afternoon about two sleep overpowered
me, and Eve lay before my feet. She lay asleep, and she was an old man
with a beard somehow, and yet she was Eve, and a goat with its forelegs
doubled underneath it fed by her feet, and it was here in Serapis, I
knew very well, in a room with a dome over it.”
Lepsius, staring at her, remained dumb.
“So you see,” she remarked with an underlook, “there are more kingdoms
than you have visited.”
“Myriads more,” he mumbled.
Now all of a sudden she brought down her fist masterfully upon the
table, bending forward. “Let me take her back to her poor papa!”
whereat he laughed with a sort of wrath, crying, “_I!_ I have her for
ever and ever!”
“Have you married her, may I ask?”
He, his gaze on the table, mumbled, “If I even go near her, she raises
a dagger to pierce her bosom.”
“Good old Eve,” breathed Miss Ruth, staring in surprise; but added
immediately with veiled eyes, to soothe the agonies which she guessed,
“that is not because she loves anyone less, but because she loves God
more.”
“You are an unintelligible family,” he remarked with half a shrug.
“Oh, but well-meaning, I think, well-wishing,” she said. “Anyway,
if—since—she may not come with me, I will stay with her.”
“No; if you stay, you stay a captive; and, if I allow you to, I thereby
avow that Eve is here.”
“No one will know but my papa, who promises you, if you will let me be
with her, never to tell anyone.”
“So, then,” asked Lepsius, “you imagine me sufficiently childish to
rely upon your father’s promise?”
“You do not? Really? How curious! Well, _I_ undertake, then——”
“Your undertaking is without weight. Moreover, you once before broke a
promise that you made me.”
“When?”
“At The Towers, as to betraying my presence to Dr. Lepsius....”
“Oh, but if one meant well! Look, now, into one’s eyes....”
She looked into his, and he into hers, which had water and all her
heart in them—ten seconds, twenty, thirty—until his dropped at her
purity, with a murmur of the word “sweet” on his lips.
Then he said, “But you are all against me; you would be speaking
against me to Eve.”
“Well, then, I will undertake never again to do that.”
“That is not enough; I say no, unless you will undertake to woo her in
my favour.”
“Now, how can I? Is she not affianced to——?”
“How laughable!” shouted Lepsius: “she shrieks with laughter at the
mere thought of such a farce! De Courcy is a gnat, a limpet in a hag of
peat-water! And since you, meaning well, could break your promise made
to me, why may not Eve, meaning well, break her promise made to this
ape-man?”
“Oh, I,” Miss Ruth replied with her touch of flippancy, “I’d crash
through a promise like piecrust any day, if I saw fit, for I think
that a Christian is set free from rules, and in the pure every crime
is pure. My sister, however, regards herself as more bound by laws and
modes, and as to departing from a promise once given, it has always
been her way, I know, to regard that as rather a ghastly business. But
suppose that somehow the fact of her espousal could be overcome, how
can I ever possibly cry back to your cause, knowing that you are not a
Christian?”
Lepsius smiled. “If that be all, regard the knot of Gordium as cut: I
become a Christian this night.”
“How will you—‘this night’?”
“Isn’t there something about being plunged into holy water?”
“To be plunged into holy water is hardly to be a Christian, I think.”
“What, then, is?”
“To wish well to the world, I think; to live to serve it; to stand
piously alert to suffer and die for it”—with down-turned lids she
uttered this, and, as he heard it, his brow twitched once; then
bringing his mouth down to the table, he mumbled, as it seemed, to
nobody, “A lady here to be led away west,” and as a guard in gauds
appeared, he remarked to Miss Ruth, “You will hardly be able to
persuade me that you are a thinker, you know; but I am persuaded that
you are in some way the sweetest of sisters and girls, and a prisoner
whom Serapis will not readily let go.”
“Have I won, then? Am I about to see her?”—Miss Ruth bounded
upright—“oh, but you are pretty good, after all, and I shall never,
never forget you whenever I lift my eyes to the hills of God.... How is
she? How far is it? May I go now?” ... Lepsius was whispering to the
guard, who soon afterwards turned to Miss Ruth, and it was in quite
a gush of girlish flutter and flightiness of glee that she went with
her guide’s steps, inclined to prattle, crying anon, “Why, Serapis is
all like a white metropolis swimming on water!”—for all the lights of
Serapis had by this time been lit, and beamed star-wise far and near in
myriads, as it seemed—white, crimson, green—streaming on negro waters
that gleamed like steel, so that it all seemed of the drama of some
teeming dream. But when at last they came to the west-end, it was only
to be told that the lady of the place was away on the west lake with
her playmates; and making their way to this with haste and impatience
through alleys and courts, an increasing roar now sounding in their
ears, the pair of seekers stood on the lake’s shore and shouted. During
some moments, however, Miss Ruth screamed “Eve!” without result,
inasmuch as the gondola of gold-moresque in which Miss Eve rowed was
close under the gross roar of a cataract that rolled with a hoary
angriness, Niagara-like, over crags near a hundred feet deep at one
end of the parallelogram of water that made the lake—a lake surrounded
with towering house-walls and crags. But soon Miss Ruth was seen from
the boat, Miss Eve screamed, and before many moments the sisters were
breast to breast, uttering breathless syllables, broken with kisses.
“But—let one look at you!”—and when Miss Eve exhibited herself, “Is
this Eve?” the other asked, for Miss Eve was in a garb all of flimsies
of the Orient as gaudy as rainbows—silk-muslins, gauzes—her ears gross
with ear-rings of coral-rock and gold, a kefie-cloth draping her face,
with her gazelle, her maids, her boy-poet wearing his embroidered
sandals and strings of little pearls....
“Well, this is Eve,” breathed Miss Ruth, musing upon the other with her
bambino eyes, a smile of happiness chronic on her lips; “and whatever
can that be on your nails?”
“Henna.”
“Eve!”
Miss Eve snapped her thumb and finger gaily up in the air saying, “Oh,
well, never say die, and in Rome let’s row with the Romans; once I was
queen of the Greeks, hundreds of eras ago. Come, sweet, to see the
seraglio,” and thither they hurried.