A DISAPPOINTMENT
Considering that I had bought a house and land exactly to my taste,
and likely, as Rashîd declared, to raise our honour in the country, I
felt that I had earned the right to take a holiday. Whenever I have
done anything decisive it is my instinct to withdraw myself a little
from the scene of action and inure myself by contemplation to the new
position of affairs. Accordingly, having surveyed the house and land
as owner, I set off with Rashîd upon a ten days' journey beyond the
reach of telegrams and letters.
At the end of the ten days we rode into Beyrout, and put up at a
little hostelry, which we frequented, built out on piers above the
sea. There I found two letters waiting for me, one from the great
Druze chief who sold to me my house and land.
'Never,' he wrote, 'have I had to endure such disrespect and
ignominy. It is not at all what I expected from your friendship. In
obedience to the Consul's order, I wrote express to the Khawâjah ----,
my creditor, informing him that there had been some error and
entreating him to send your cheque in to the British Consulate. I hope
to God you have received it safely before this. My health has suffered
from this huge indignity. I shall not long survive this cruel shame.'
The second letter was from Her Britannic Majesty's Consul-General,
enclosing my cheque written to the order of the Armenian gentleman for
the amount of the mortgage which he held upon my Druze friend's
property, and adjuring me to pay a visit to the Consulate without
delay.
I went that afternoon. The outer office was crowded with the usual set
of English and would-be English persons who went there for gossip. My
appearance called forth more or less derisive shouts. I was a nice
young man to go and buy a village--from a native, too!--without the
forethought to secure a title to the property! It was plain that they
knew more about the matter than I did myself. I felt ashamed, and
must have looked dejected, I suppose, for they changed their tone for
one more genial, crying: 'Cheer up, man! We've all been through it.
You know now what these devils really are. They'll always do you, if
they can. It's no shame to you at your age. They're so devilish
clever.'
I did not know then, nor do I know to-day, that I had ever been
defrauded seriously, or deceived, by any native of the country, but
the legend ran, and doubtless runs, to that effect.
Then I was called into the Consul's presence and strongly blamed by
him for running off just at the moment when my presence was most
needed. I had written joyously to tell him of my purchase. I now heard
that I should have waited for his reply before concluding it. A man
does not buy tracts of land like that, I was severely told. And as I
was so very young and (he implied it) idiotic, he had intervened to
stop the sale, pending inquiries and the discharge of certain
formalities which were legally required. If the seller went into the
court and had the transfer registered and a proper deed of sale made
out, then well and good; but he understood that there was some
objection on the seller's part. If not, then he advised me to give up
the whole idea. Profoundly conscious of my youth, and mindful of past
kindness on the Consul's part, I was, of course, impressed. I thought
I had indeed been foolish, even mad; and promised to do all that he
required of me. As I went through the outer office, looking more than
ever downcast, I was hailed with further adjurations to cheer up, for
they had all been through it.
Rashîd was more depressed than even I was when I told him of the
sudden downfall of our hopes. He cursed the Consul and the Druzes
indiscriminately. But on our journey up into the mountains his
reconstructive mind transfigured my misfortunes, making of them an
event well calculated to 'exalt our honour.' So great was my
consideration in my native country that the Queen herself had written
to the Consul-General to take care of me and see that I was not
defrauded when I bought my land. The Consul, who had been neglectful
of me, and knew nothing of the land I wished to buy, had been afraid
of the Queen's anger, hence his mad activity. I did not hear that
version at the time, nor from Rashîd's own lips; but it came to my
ears eventually, after its vogue was past.
We both hoped, however, that the house and land would yet be ours.
I found the Druze chief prostrate with humiliation and bewilderment.
He greeted me with monstrous sighs, and told me how ashamed he was,
how very ill. His eyes reproached me. What had he ever done to me that
I should loose upon him such a swarm of ignominies. I felt humiliated
and ashamed before him, an honourable man who had been treated like a
rogue on my account.
'I shall not survive these insults, well I know it. I shall die,' he
kept lamenting. 'All my people know the way I have been treated--like
a dog.'
I told him that there had been a misunderstanding, and that the shame
which he had suffered had been all my fault, because I had been absent
for my selfish pleasure at the moment when I might have saved him by a
simple statement of the facts.
'I shall not easily recover,' the chief groaned. 'And then that debt
which I was so delighted to pay off is once again upon my shoulders.'
I explained then that the Consul's stopping of the sale was not
conclusive, but provisional; his only stipulation being that, before I
paid, all the legal formalities necessary to the transfer should have
been fulfilled.
'He asks no more than that your Excellency will condescend to go
before the Caïmmacâm with witnesses, and have a proper title-deed made
out.'
At those words, uttered in all innocence, the great man shuddered
violently and his face went green. I feared that he would have a fit,
but he recovered gradually; and at last he said: 'It is a cruel
thought, and one which must have been suggested to him by my enemies.
Know that the Caïmmacâm at present is my rival and most deadly foe. We
have not met on terms of speech for many years; our servants fight at
chance encounters on the road. It is but five years since I held the
post of Governor which he now occupies. When, by means of calumny and
foul intrigue against me at Stamboul, he managed to supplant me, I
swore a solemn oath that I would never recognise the Government nor
seek its sanction so long as he remained its representative. And now
the Consul bids me have recourse to him. By Allah, I would sooner be
impaled alive.'
He paused a moment, swallowing his rage, then added:
'This, however, I will do. I will summon all the chiefs of all my
people--every head of every family--hither to your presence and
command them all to witness that the property is yours. I will make
them swear to defend you and your successors in possession of it with
their lives if need be, and to leave the obligation as a sacred charge
to their descendants. That, I think, would be sufficient to assure you
undisturbed possession if I die, as well I may, of this unheard-of
treatment. And if I live till happier times--that is, to see the
downfall of my enemy--then you shall have the Government certificate
which the Consul deems of such immense importance.'
I now know that the kind of treaty which he thus proposed, laying a
solemn charge on all his people--who would have been, of course, my
neighbours--to defend my right, would have been worth a good deal
more than any legal document in that wild country. The Armenian
gentleman, who was delighted that his mortgage still held good, told
me as much when next I saw him in the city. He thought me foolish not
to jump at it, particularly when the land was offered to me for a
song. But the Consul's prohibition, and the warnings of the English
colony, possessed more weight with me just then than his opinion, or,
indeed, my own, for I was very young.
I told the chieftain it was not enough.
'Then I am truly sorry,' he replied, with dignity; 'but there the
matter ends. I have told your Honour the reason why I cannot go to
court at present.'
Rashîd was sad when I informed him of my failure. Once more he cursed
the Druzes and all Consuls. And as we rode back through the mountains
he was wrapped in thought. He came at length to the conclusion that
this, too, redounded to our honour, since anybody less exalted than
ourselves would certainly have jumped at such an offer as the chief
had made to me. But everything, for us, must be performed in the most
perfect manner. We were tremendous sticklers for formality.
There was only one thing he could not get over.
'It is the triumph of our enemy, that Sheykh Huseyn,' he told me. 'I
hate to think of him in comfort in our house.'