IN THE PASHA'S PALACE
Nearer sounded the footsteps on the graveled walk and in frightened
haste the girl drew out the key from the gate and slipped away into
the shrubbery, grateful for the blotting shadows.
At the foot of a rose bush she crouched to thrust the key into a
hole in the loose earth, covering the top and drawing the low
branches over it.
"Aimée," came a guarded call. "Aimée!"
Still stooping, she tried to steal through the bushes, but the
thorns held her and she stood up, pulling at her robes.
"Yes? Miriam?" she said faintly, and desperately freeing herself,
she hurried forward towards the dark, bulky figure of her old nurse,
emerging now into the moonlight.
"_Alhamdolillah_--Glory to God!" ejaculated the old woman, but
cautiously under her breath. "Come quickly--he is here--thy father!
And thou in the garden, at this hour.... But come," and urgently she
gripped the girl's wrist as if afraid that she would vanish again
into the shadows of the shrubbery.
Aimée felt her knees quake under her. "My father!" she murmured,
and her voice died in her throat.
Had he discovered? Had some one seen her slip out? Or recognized her
at the ball?
The panic-stricken conjectures surged through her in dismaying
confusion. She tried to beat down her fear, to think quickly, to
rally her force, but her swimming senses were still invaded with the
surprise of those last moments at the gate, her heart still beating
with the touch of Ryder's arms about her ... of that long, deep look
... that kiss, beyond all else, that kiss....
Little rivers of fire were running through her veins. Shame and
proud anger set up their swift reactions. Oh, what wings of wild,
incredible folly had brought her to this! To be kissed like--like a
dancing girl--by a man, an unknown, an American!
How could he, how could he! After all his kindness--to hold her so
lightly.... And yet there had been no lightness in his eyes, those
eager, shining young eyes, so gravely concerned....
But she could not stop to think of this thing. Her father was
waiting.
"He came in like a fury," the old nurse was panting, as they
scurried up the walk together, "and asked for you ... and your room
empty, your bed not touched!... Oh, Allah's ruth upon me, I went
trotting through the house, mad with fear.... Up to the roofs then
down to the garden ... sending him word that you were dressing that
he should not know the only child of his house was a shameless one,
devoid of sense."
"But there is no harm in a garden," breathed the girl, her face hot
with shame. "To-night was so hot--"
"Is there no coolth upon the roof?"
"But the roses--"
"Can roses not be brought you? Have you no maids to attend you?"
"I am tired of being attended! Can I never be alone--"
"Alone in the garden!... A pretty talk! Eh, I will tell thy father,
I will have a stop put to this--_hush_, would you have him hear?"
she admonished, in a sudden whisper, as they opened the little door
at the foot of the dark well of spiral steps.
Like conspirators they fled up the staircase, and then with fumbling
haste the old nurse dragged off the girl's mantle and veil,
muttering at the pins that secured it. She shook out the
pale-flowered chiffon of her rumpled frock and gathered back a
strand of her dark, disordered hair.
"Say that you were on the roofs," she besought her.
For a moment the girl put the warm rose of her cheek against the old
woman's dark, wrinkled one.
"But you are good, Dadi," she said softly, using the Turkish word
for familiar old servants.
With a sound of mingled vexation and affection Miriam pushed her
ahead of her into the drawing-room.
It was a long, dark room, on whose soft, buff carpet the little gilt
chairs and sofas were set about with the empty expectancy of a stage
scene in a French salon. French were the shirred, silk shades upon
the electric lamps, French the music upon the chic rosewood piano.
And then, as if some careless property man had overlooked them in
changing the act, two window balconies of closely carved old wood,
of solidly screening mashrubiyeh wood, jutted out from one
cream-tinted wall, and above a gilded sofa, upholstered in the
delicate fabric of the Rue de la Paix, hung a green satin banner
embroidered in silver with a phrase from the Koran.
Tewfick Pasha was at one side of the room, filling his match case.
He was in evening dress, a ribbon of some order across a rather
swelling shirt bosom, a red fez upon his dark head.
At his daughter's entrance he turned quickly, with so sharp a gleam
from his full, somewhat protuberant black eyes that her guilty heart
fairly turned over in her.
It made matters no more comforting to have Miriam packed from the
room.
She would deny it all, she thought desperately ... No, she would
admit it, and implore his indulgence.... She would admit nothing but
the garden.... She would admit the ball.... She would _never_ admit
the young man....
With conscious eyes and flushing cheeks, woefully aware of
dew-drenched satin slippers and an upsettingly hammering heart,
Aimée presented the young image of irresolute confusion.
To her surprise there was no outburst. Her father was suddenly gay
and smiling, with a flow of pleasant phrases that invited her
affection. In his good humor--and Tewfick Pasha liked always to be
kept in good humor--he had touches of that boyish charm that had
made him the _enfant gâté_ of Paris and Vienna as well as Cairo and
Constantinople. An _enfant_ no more, in the robustly rotund forties,
his cheerful self-indulgence demanded still of his environment that
smiling acquiescence that kept life soft and comfortable.
And now it suddenly struck Aimée, through her tense alarm, that his
smile was not a spontaneous smile, but was silently, uneasily asking
his daughter not to make something too unpleasant for him ... that
something that had brought him here, at an unprecedented midnight
... that had kept him waiting until she, supposedly, should rise and
dress....
If it were not then a knowledge of her escapade--?
The relief from that fear made everything else bearable. She was
even able to entertain, with a certain welcome, the alternative
alarm that he had decided to marry again--that nightmare from whose
realization the unknown gods (or more truly, the unknown goddesses
of the Cairene demi-monde!) had assisted to save her.
There was a furtive excitement about him that fanned the
supposition.
Then, quite suddenly, the illuminating lightning cut the clouds.
"My dear child, I have news, really important news for you. If I
have not been discussing your future," said Tewfick Pasha, staring
with stern nonchalance ahead and determinedly unaware of her instant
stiffening of attention, "I have by no means been neglectful of
it.... To-day--indeed to-night--there has been a consummation of my
plans.... It is not to every daughter that a father may hurry with
such an announcement."
Her first feeling was a merciful relief. He knew nothing then of the
ball! She could breathe again.... It was her marriage that had
brought him.
No new danger, that, but the eternal menace that she had always to
dread.... But how many times had he promised that she should have no
unknown husband, imposed by tradition! How many times had she
indulged dreams of Europe, of bright, free romance!
And now he was off on some tangent from which it would need all her
coaxing wit to divert him. With wide eyes painfully intent, her
little, jeweled fingers very still in their locked grip in her lap,
the color draining from her cheeks, she sat waiting for the
revelation.
What was it all? Had he really decided upon something? Upon some
one?
Tewfick Pasha appeared in no hurry to inform her. He wandered
rather confusedly into a rambling speech about her age and her
position and the responsibilities of life and his inabilities to
prevent their reaching her, and about his very tender affection for
her and his understanding of all those girlish reticences and
reluctances which made innocent youth so exquisite, while silently
his daughter hung her head and wondered what he would be saying if
he knew that she had broken every canon of seclusion and convention,
had talked and danced with a man....
His astonishment would be so horrific that she flinched even from
the thought.
And if he knew, moreover, that this man had caught her and kissed
her--!
She told herself that she was disgraced for life. She had a dreamy
desire to close her eyes and lean back and dream on about that
disgrace....
But she must listen to her father. He was talking now about the
powers of wealth, not merely the nominal riches of his somewhat
precarious political affiliations, but solid, sustaining, invested
and invulnerable wealth.
Unexpectedly Aimée laughed. "He must be very plain," she declared,
her face brightening with mockery, "if you take so long to tell me
his name!"
Not, she added to herself under her breath, that any name would
weigh a feather's difference!
"On the contrary," and the pasha's eyes met hers frankly for the
first time and he seemed delighted to indulge a laugh, "he has the
reputation of good looks. He is much _à la mode_."
"Beautiful and golden--did you meet him just to-night, my father?"
Aimée went on, in that light audacity which he had loved to indulge.
Now he smiled, but his glance went uneasily away from her.
"Not at all. This is a serious affair, you understand--the devil of
a serious affair!" and for the first time she felt she heard the
accents of his candor.
But again he was back to voluble protestation. This man was really
an old friend. He boggled over the word, then got it out resonantly.
A man he knew well. Not a young man, perhaps--certainly he was not
going to hand his only daughter to any boy, a mere novice in
life!--but a man who could give her the position she deserved. Not
only a rich man, but an influential one.
His name, he brought out at last, was Hamdi Bey. He was a general in
the armies of the sultan.
It was a long moment before she could piece any shreds of
recollection together.
Hamdi Bey ... A general.... Why, that was a man her father had
disliked ... more than once he had dropped resentful phrases of his
airs, his arrogance ... had recounted certain clashes with malicious
joy.
And now he was planning--no, seriously announcing--
A general ... He must be terribly old....
Not that it made any difference. Old or young, black or white,
general or ghikar, would mean nothing in her life. She would have
none of him ... none of him.... Never would she endure the
humiliation of being handed over like a toy, an odalisque, a
slave....
What had happened? She could only suppose that her father had been
overcome by that wealth of the general's on which he had made her
such a speech. Or perhaps his dislike of Hamdi had been founded on
nothing but resentment of Hamdi's airs of superiority, and now that
the bey was condescending to ask for her hand her father's flattered
appeasement was rushing into genial acceptance.
Anything might be possible to Tewfick Pasha's eternally youthful
enthusiasms.
She told her frightened heart that she was not afraid.... Her father
would never really fail her.... And she would never surrender to
this degradation; for all her fright and all her flinching from
defiance she divined in herself some hidden stuff of resistance,
tenacious to endure ... some strain of daring which had made her
brave that wild escapade to-night.
Was it still the same night? Were the violins still playing, the
people still dancing in their fairy land of freedom?... Was that
young man in the Highland dress, that unknown American, was he back
there dancing with some other girl?
What was it he had said? To-morrow night, and another night, he
would be there in the lane.... If she would come! As if she would
demean herself, after his rude affront, to steal again to the gate,
like a gardener's daughter--!
Her thoughts were so full of him. And now she had this new horror to
face, this marriage to Hamdi Bey. Did her father dream that she
would not resist? It was against such a danger that she had long ago
stolen a garden key, a key to the outer world in which she had
neither a friend nor a piaster to save her....
"My dear father," she said entreatingly, "please do not tell me that
you really mean--that you really think you would like to--that you
would consider--this man--"
He turned on her a suddenly direct, confessing look.
"Aimée, I have _arranged_ this matter."
He added heavily, "To-night. That is what I came to tell you."
In the silence that settled upon them he finally ceased his effort
to ignore her shocked dismay. He abandoned his airy pretense that
the affair could possibly evoke her enthusiasm. He sucked at his
cigarette like a rather sullen little boy.
"I have always indulged you, Aimée," he said at last, without
looking round at her. "I hope you are not going to make me
infernally sorry."
"I think you are m-making me inf-fernally sorry," said an unsteady
little voice.
He looked about. His daughter was sitting very still upon the
gilded sofa beneath the banner of Mahomet; as he regarded her two
great tears formed in her dark eyes and ran slowly down her cheeks.
With a sound of impatience he jumped to his feet and began to pace
up and down the room.
This, he pointed out heatedly, to her, was what a man got who
indulged his daughter. This is what came of French and English
governesses and modern ideas.... After all he had done--more than
any other father! To sit and weep! Weep--at such a marriage! What
did she expect of life? Was she not as other women? Did she never
look ahead? Had she no pride, no ambition--no hopes? Did she wish
never to marry, then, to become an _old mees_ like her English
companion?
"I am but eighteen," she said quiveringly. "Oh, my father, do not
give me to this unknown--"
"Unknown--unknown! Do I not know him?"
"But you promised--"
Angrily he gestured with his cigarette. "Do I know what is good for
you or do I not? Have I your interest at heart--tell me! Am I a
savage, a dolt--"
"But you do not know what it is to be unhappy. I beg of you, my
father,--I should die with such a life before me, with such a man
for my husband. I am too French, too like my mother--"
"Ah, your mother!... Too French, are you?... But what would you have
in France?" he demanded with the bursting appearance of a man
making every effort to restrain himself within unreasonable bounds.
"Would not your parents there arrange your marriage? You might see
the fiancé," he caught the words out of her mouth, "but only for a
time or two--after the arrangements--and what is that? What more
would you know than what your father knows? Are you a thing to be
exhibited--given to a man to gaze at and appraise? I tell you,
no.... You are my daughter. You bear my name. And when you marry you
marry in the sanctity of the custom of your father--and you go to
your husband's house as his mother went to his father."
Timidly she protested, "But my mother--and you--"
"Do not speak of your mother! If she were here she would counsel
gratitude and obedience." He turned his back on her. "This is what
comes," he muttered, "of this modernity, this education...."
He pitched away his stub as if he were casting all that he hated
away with it.
She had never seen him so angry. Helplessly she felt that his vanity
and his word were engaged with the general more than she had
dreamed. She felt a surge of panic at the immensity of the trouble
before her.
"But, my father, if you love me--"
"No, my little one, if _you_ love _me_!"
With a sudden assumption of good humor over the angry red mottling
his olive cheeks, he came and sat beside her, putting his arm about
her silently shrinking figure.
"I am a weak fool to stay and drink a woman's tears, as the saying
goes," he told her, "but this is what a man gets for being good
natured.... But, tears or not, I know what is best.... Come, Aimée,
have I not ever been fond of you--?"
He patted her hand with his own plump one where bright rings were
sparkling deep in the encroaching flesh. Aimée looked down with a
sudden wild dislike.... That soft, ingratiating hand, with its
dimples and polished nails, which thought it could pat her so easily
into submission....
It was nothing to him, she thought, chokingly, whether she was happy
or unhappy. He had decided on the match--perhaps he had foreseen her
protests and plunged into it, so as to be committed against her
entreaties!--and he was not stopped by any thought of her feelings.
After all her hopes! After all he had promised!
But she told herself that she had never been secure. Beneath all her
trust there had always been the silent fear, slipping through the
shadows like a serpent.... Some instinct for character, more
precocious than her years, had whispered through her fond blindness,
and initiated her into foreboding.
"Come now, my dear," he said heartily, "this is a surprise, of
course, but after all you will find it is for the best--much for the
best--"
His voice died away. After a long pause, "You may make the
arrangements," she told him in a still, tenacious little voice, "but
you cannot make me marry him.... I will never put on the marriage
dress.... Never wear the diadem.... Never stir one step within his
house."
A complete silence succeeded this declaration. He got up violently
from beside her. She did not dare look at him. He was going away,
she thought.
It would be the beginning of war. She did not know what he would do
but she knew that she would endure it.
And the gossip of the harems would be her protection. Her
opposition, bruited through those feminine channels, would not be
long in reaching Hamdi Bey.... And no man could to-day be so callous
of his pride or the world's opinion that he would be willing to
receive such a revolting bride.
Did her father think of that, that poor, pale power of hers? He
stood irresolute, as if meditating a last exhortation, and then
suddenly turned on her the haggard face of a violent despair.
"Would you see me ruined?" he said passionately.
Sharply he glanced about the room, at the far, closed doors where it
was not inconceivable that old Miriam was lurking, and strode over
to her and began talking very jerkily and huskily, over her bent
head.
"I tell you that Hamdi is making this a condition--it is the price
of silence, of those papers back.... He came to me to-night. I knew
that hound of Satan had been smelling about, but I could not
imagine--as if, between gentlemen--"
At that, she lifted her stupefied head.... Her father, with the face
of a cornered fox!... She caught her breath with the shock of it.
Her lips parted, but only her mute eyes asked their startled
questions.
Hurriedly, shamefacedly, with angry resentments and
self-justifications, he was pouring a flood of broken phrases at
her. She caught unintelligible references to narrow laws and the
imbecile English, to impositions binding only upon the fools.... And
then the word _hasheesh_.
Sharply then the truth took its outlines. Her father had been
smuggling in hasheesh. Hamdi Bey had discovered this, and Hamdi Bey,
unless silenced, had threatened betrayal.
The danger was real. English laws were stringent. Vaguely the
horrors loomed--arrest, trial.... Even if he escaped the scandal was
ruin....
Small wonder that her father had come flying upon the wings of his
danger and its deliverance, small wonder that his brow was wet and
his lips dry and his eyes hard with terror.
Thrown to the winds now his pretense of affection for Hamdi Bey! He
hated and feared him. The old fox had done this, he declared, to get
a hold upon him, for always there had been bad blood.
And the bey had heard, of course, of the beauty of the pasha's
daughter. Some cousin had babbled.... And undoubtedly the rumor of
that beauty--Tewfick Pasha received his inspiration upon the moment,
but that was not gainsaying its truth--had determined the bey to
find some vulnerable hold.
He was like that, a soft-voiced, sardonic devil! And this accursed
business of the hasheesh had served his ends. To-night, he had come
with his proofs....
"So you see," muttered Tewfick Pasha, "what the devil of a serious
business this is. And how any talk of--of unreadiness--if you were
not amiable, for example, to his cousin when she calls upon
you--might serve to anger him.... And so--"
Significantly his glance met hers. Her eyes fell, stricken. The
color flooded her trembling face. She quivered with confused pain,
with shame for his shame, with terror and fright ... with a hot,
protective compassion that tore at her pride....
She struggled against her dismay, trying for reassuring little words
that would not come. Her heart seemed beating thickly in her throat.
She never knew just what she said, what little broken words of pity,
of understanding, of promise, she achieved. But her father suddenly
dropped beside her, with an abandon reminiscent of the _enfant gâté_
of his Paris days, and drew her hands to his lips, kissing their
soft, quiescent palms.... She drew one away and placed it upon his
dark head from which the fez had tumbled.
For the moment she was sorry, as one is sorry for a hurt child. And
her sorriness held her heart warm, in the glow of giving comfort.
She had need of that warmth. For a cold tide was rising in her, a
tide of chill, irresistible foreboding....
For all the years of her life.... For all the years....