THE RECEPTION
In Tewfick Pasha's harem everything was astir.
It was the morning of the marriage, almost the very hour when the
wedding cortège would bear the bride from her father's home to the
house of her husband.
The invited guests were already arrived and streaming through the
reception rooms, a bright, feminine tide in evening toilettes,
surrounding the exhibited gifts or pausing about tables of cool
syrups, and their soft, low voices, the delicious musical tones of
highbred Turkish women, rose like a murmuring of somnolent bees to
the tenser regions about, tightening the excitement of haste.
The bride was not yet ready. Still and white, she was the only image
of calm in that fluttering, confusing room. Her nearer friends were
hovering about her, and her maids of honor, two charming little
Turks in rose robes, were draping her veil while old Miriam,
resplendent in green and silver, endeavored jealously to outmaneuver
them.
On her knees, the gnome-like Mrs. Hendricks was adding an orange
blossom to the laces on the train. Then she sat back on her heels,
her head a-tilt like a curious bird's, her eyes beaming
sentimentally upon the bride.
"The prettiest h'I h'ever did see," she pronounced with
satisfaction, "H'as pretty as a wax figger now--h'only a thought
_too_ waxy."
And like a wax figure indeed, immobile, rigid, the bride was
standing before them, arrayed at last in the shimmering white of the
sweeping satin, overrich of lace and orange flowers, and shrouded in
the clouding waves of her veil. White as her robes, pale as death
and as still, the girl looked out at them, and only that sick pallor
of her face and the glitter of her dark eyes betrayed the tumult
within.
"Your diadem, my dear--you are keeping us attending," came Madame de
Coulevain's voice from the door.
The diadem, that heavy circlet of brilliants which crowned the
Eastern bride in place of the orange wreath of Western convention,
must not be touched by the bride's fingers but placed by one of her
friends, married and married but once, and exceptionally happy in
that marriage.
Ghul-al-Din, Aimée's selection from her friends, stepped hastily
forward now, a soft, dimpled, slow-smiling girl, her eyes drowsy
with domesticity. No question of Ghul-al-Din's happiness! She
extolled her husband, a young captain of cavalry, and she adored her
infant son, a prodigy among children. Life for her was a rosy,
unquestioning absorption.
A shaft of irony sped through Aimée, as she bent her head for its
crowning at this young wife's hands, and received the ceremonial
wishes for her crowning of happiness, a crowning occurring but once
in her lifetime. Irony was the only salvation for the hour; without
that outlet for her tortured spirit she felt she would grow suddenly
mad, hysterical and babbling or passionate and wild.
So many moods had stormed through her since that night when she had
found all hope of rescue gone with her lost key! So many impulses
seethed frantically now beneath her quiet, as she faced for the last
time that white-misted image in the glass. She had a furious longing
to tear off that diadem and veil and heavy robe, to scatter the
ornaments and drive out all those maddening spectators, all those
interested, eager, unknowing, uncaring spectators of her
humiliation.
Arranging her veil, draping her satins, as if gauze and silk were
all that mattered to this hour! Wishing her happiness--as if
happiness could ever be hers now for the wishing! Smiling,
fluttering, complimenting, lending to the ghastly sacrifice the
familiar acceptances of every day....
If only she could wake from this nightmare and find that it was all
a dream. If only she could brush this confusion from her senses and
from her heart its dumb terrors.... If only she had the courage for
some desperate revolt, some outburst of strength--
"I am ready," she said faintly, turning from the glass, and moved
towards the door, while a young eunuch bent for her train, that
train of three yards length, which stretched so regally behind her
in her slow descent of the stairs.
In the French drawing-room below her father was waiting for the
ceremonial farewell, in which the father received the daughter's
thanks for all his care of her.
Mechanically Aimée advanced. She stood before him, she lifted her
eyes--and there passed from them a look of such strange, breathless,
questioning intensity that it was like something palpable.... She
had not foreseen this, sudden crisping of her nerves, this defiant
passion of her spirit....
Her father? Was he her father? Was it a father who had sold her so,
careless, callous--or was it only a father's semblance, and did
there lie in the background of those petted, childish years some
darker shadow, of a tragedy that had wrecked her mother's life and
broken her heart--?
Like flashing light that look passed between them. It penetrated
Tewfick's nonchalant guard and brought the unaccustomed color to his
olive cheeks. His handsome eyes turned uneasily aside. A girl's
pique perhaps, at the situation, her last defiance of his
power,--but for all his reassurance there was something deeper in
that look, something tenable, accusing, which went into his soul.
It was a moment in which the last cord of their relationship was
severed forever.
She did not speak a word. She bent, not to kiss his hand as custom
dictated, but to sweep a long, slow courtesy, that salutation of a
maid of spirit to a conqueror, a bending of the pliant back, but
with the head held high and the spirit unsurrendered.
And yet there was wretchedness in those proud eyes and a blind fear
and supplication.
Useless to beg now. She knew it, and yet the eyes implored.
And then she smiled. And before that smile Tewfick faltered in his
paternal benediction and hastened the phrases.
Little murmurs flew back and forth as she turned away, and then a
hasty chatter sprang up as the guests hurried into their tcharchafs
for the journey to the bridegroom's house.
That day Aimée did not put on her veil. On either side of her, as
she went out her father's gate, huge negroes held up silken walls of
damask, and between those walls she walked into the carriage that
awaited her, followed by Madame de Coulevain and the two little
maids of honor.
It was when the carriage began to move that the panic inside of her
grew to whirlwind. The horse' hoofs, trotting, trotting, the motion
of the wheels, seemed to be the onbearing rush of fate itself. If
she could only stop it! If she could only cry out, tear open the
windows, scream to the passers by. She knew these were only the
impotent visions of hysteria, but she indulged them pitifully.
She saw herself, in those moments, helpless, and hopeless, passing
on into the slavery of this marriage--Aimée, no longer the daughter
of Tewfick Pasha, but Aimée Delcassé, child of a dead Frenchman,
inheritor of freedom, sold like any dancing girl....
And her own lips had assented. In the supreme, silly uselessness of
sacrifice she had given herself for the safety of that man who had
spent such careless indulgence upon her ... that man whom perhaps
her mother had loved and perhaps had hated....
Faster and faster the horses were trotting, leading the long file of
carriages and impatient motors that bore the relatives and guests
and trousseau, rolling on under the lebbeks and sycamores of the
wide Shubra Avenue, once the delight of fashionables before the
Gezireh Drive had drained it of its throngs and its prestige.
Now some bright-eyed urchins ran out from their games in the dust to
curious attention, and through a half open gate Aimée caught once a
glimpse of a young, unveiled girl watching eagerly from the tangled
greens and ruined statuary of an old garden. Farther on came
glimpses of farm lands, the wheat rising in bright spears, and of
well-wooded heights and in the distance the white houses of
Demerdache against the Gibel Achmar beyond.
But where were they bearing her? Aimée had a despairing sense of
distance and desolation as the carriage turned again--Abdullah, the
coachman, having traversed unnecessary miles to gratify his pride
before the house of his parents--and made a zigzag way towards the
river, where old palaces rose from the backwaters, their faces
hidden by high walls or covered with heavy vines and moss.
Deeper and deeper grew the girl's dismay. It was a different world
from that bright, modern Cairo that she knew; this was as remote
from her daily life as the old streets of Al Raschid. Her thoughts
flew forward to that unknown lord, that Hamdi Bey, whose image she
had refused to assemble to her consciousness. Now she comforted her
terror with a sudden assumption of age and dignity and kindness, of
a courtesy that would protect her and a deference that would assuage
the horror of a life together, when unknown, fearful familiarities
would alone vibrate in the empty monotonies.
Before a high wall the carriage had stopped. A huge, repellent
Ethiopian was standing before an opened doorway, through which a
rich carpet was spread.
"Ah, but he looks like an ogre, that new eunuch of yours, Aimée,"
murmured one of the little Turks. The other, more touched with
thought, gave her a disturbed glance, and laughed in nervousness.
Madame, alone serene, ignored the dismaying impression.
"The palace is of a fine, ancient beauty, I am told," she mentioned
cheerfully.
For one wild instant Aimée thought to plead with her, to implore her
to tell Abdullah to drive on, to give her the freedom of flight, if
only flight down those deserted streets. And then a mad vision of
herself in her bridal robes in flight, brought the hysterical
laughter to her throat. The time for flight had gone by ... And as
for madame's pity on her--this was not the first time that Aimée had
thought of invoking her aid, but she had always known, too well,
that thought's supreme futility.
Sympathetic as Madame de Coulevain might be in her inmost heart--and
Aimée divined in her an understanding pity for the necessities of
existence--never would that sympathy betray her to rashness. She
never would believe that in serving Aimée she would not be ruining
her; and even if assured of Aimée's safety, she could never be
brought to betray her own reputation for truthworthiness among the
harems of Cairo.... As well appeal to the rocks of the Mokattam
hills.
The carriage stopped. The negroes extended the damask walls, and one
sprang to open the carriage door and bear the bride's train. In one
moment's parting of the silken walls the girl saw a sun-flooded
cluster of staring faces, thronging for her arrival, and then the
damask intervened and through its lane, followed by her duenna and
her maids of honor, she entered the arched doorway.
She was in a garden, a great gloomy place, over-spread with ancient,
moss-encrusted trees. A broken, marble fountain flung up waters into
which no sunlight flashed, and the heavy stepping stones, leading to
it, were buried in untrodden grass. A garden in which no one
lingered.
The Ethiopian was marshaling them to the left, to an entrance in the
dark palace walls before them. Behind them the oncoming guests were
streaming out in veiled procession.
He opened a door. Ancient, beautiful arches framed a long vestibule
and against a background of profuse cut flowers a man's figure
stepped forward in the glittering uniform of the Sultan's guard.
Aimée had a confused impression of a thin, meager, dandified figure
with a waspish waist ... of a blond mustache with upstanding ends
... of sallow cheek-bones and small, light eyes smiling at her in a
strained, eager curiosity....
Through all her sinking dismay she had a flash of clear,
enlightening irony at that look's suspense. If she were not as
represented! If his cousin's fervor had misled his hope--!
But in that instant's encounter his eyes cleared to triumph and
gayety, and he smiled--a smile curiously feline, ironic, for all its
intended ingratiation--a conqueror's smile, winged to reassure and
melt.
He stepped forward. There were formal words of welcome to which she
returned a speechless bow, and then he offered his arm and conducted
her slowly up the stairs, his sword rattling in its scabbard, to the
apartment which was to be her home, and the prison for the spirit
and the body.
She knew in a moment that she hated this man and that he inspired
her with fear and horror.
Across a long expanse of drawing-room he conducted her to the
ancient marriage throne upon its platform, surmounted by a pompous
crown from which old, embroidered silks hung heavily.
Then with an unheard phrase, and another bow, he left her to the
day-long ordeal of the reception while he withdrew to his own
entertainment at her father's house. She would not see him again
until night, when he would pay her a call of ceremony.
She saw his figure hesitating a moment, as he faced the oncoming
guests, such a flood of femininity, unmantled now and unveiled,
sparkling in rainbow hues of silks and tulle and gauze that he had
never before faced and never would again. Like a bright wave the
throng closed about him and then surged on towards the bride upon
the throne.
How often, in the last years, Aimée had pitied that poor puppet of a
bride, stuck there like some impaled, winged creature, helpless for
flight, to the exhibition of the long stream of passersby! How often
she had promised herself that never would this be her fate, never
would she be given to an unknown! And now--
She was smiling as she faced them, that light, fixed smile she had
seen so often on others' lips, the smile of pride trying desperately
to hide its wounds from the penetrating glances of the curious.
Satiric, cynical, or sympathetic, that light smile defied them all,
but beneath its guard she felt she was slowly bleeding to death of
some mortal hurt.
The sympathy unconsciously betrayed, was hardest. The whispers of
her young maids of honor, "Really, Aimée, he looks so young! One
would never surmise," were more galling in their intended
consolation, more revealing in their betrayal of her friends' own
shrinking from that arrogant, dandified old man than the barbed dart
of the uncaring, inquisitive, "How do you find him, my dear? He has
the reputation for conquest!"
They were all there, her friends, young, slim, modish Turkish girls
whose time had not yet come, glancing quizzically about the ancient
drawing room, with its solid side of mashrubiyeh, its old wall
panelings of carvings and rare inlay, and then pointing their
glances back at her, as if to ask, "And is this our revoltée? Is
this her end, in this dim, old palace among the ghosts of the past?"
Some, the frankest, murmured, "But why did you not refuse?" and
others attempted consolation with a light, "As well the first as the
last--since we must all come to it."
Of the married women there were those who raised blank, bitter eyes
to her, and others, more mild, romantic, affectionate, tried to
infuse encouragement into their smiles as if they said,
"Come--courage--it's not so bad. And what would you? We are women,
after all; we do not need so much for happiness.
"Those dreams of yours for love, for a spirit to delight in your
spirit in place of a master delighting in your beauty alone, what
are they, those dreams, but the childish stuff of fancies? For other
races, perhaps--but for you, take hold of life. There are realities
yet in it to bring you joy."
It was all in their eyes, their voices, their intonations, their
pressure of her hands.
And she stood there among them all, smiling always that smile
demanded of the bride, looking unseeingly into their eyes, listening
unhearingly to the sea of voices breaking on her ears, responding in
vague monosyllables and a wider smile, while all the time her eyes
saw only that face, that smirking, cynical old face, and the tide of
terror rose higher and higher in her soul.
Never had she given way to her fear, never since the black night
when she found the key was gone.
Then, after frenzied searching in impossible places she had stolen
back to her room and buried her face in her pillow to stifle the
breaking sobs of rebellion and despair--and of a longing so deep and
so terrible that it seemed to rend her with a physical anguish, a
pain so fiery that her heart would forever bear the scar.
Never again would she see him now.... Never would she know--never
would she know all. She had refused his aid. And he might believe
her still aloof, incredulous.... It was finished--forever and ever.
She had told herself that before. But always there had been the key.
And now there was no key and no escape and her heart broke itself
against the iron of necessity.
She had cried the night through. Morning had brought her exhaustion,
not peace but a despairing submission. Why struggle when the prison
gate is shut? And if there was never to be freedom for her ... never
again the sight of that too-remembered face and the sound of that
voice--why, then, as well one fate as another. And it was too late
now to recede.
So she had called upon her pride and summoned her spirit to play its
part to protect her from whispers, and surmise and half-contemptuous
pity. She would surrender to this man because she must, and she
would win his respect by her dignity and worth, but her soul she
would keep its own, in its unsullied dreams ... and in its
memories.... Life would be nothing but a hardship, nobly borne.
But now she had seen the man. Now this wild dislike, this sickening
terror.
To be alone with him, to have only the few days grace of courtship
which the Mohammadan custom imposes upon the bridegroom, to be
forever at his mercy in this solitary palace, with its echoing
corridors, its blackened walla, its damp breath of age....
She thought wildly of death.
And all the time she was smiling, bending her cheek to the kiss of a
friend, feeling the fingers of some well-wisher press upon her,
listening to praises of her beauty....
For she was beautiful. No image of wax now. The scarlet of her
frightened blood was staining her cheeks, her eyes were bright as
the jewels in her diadem, and beneath the thrown-back veil her dark
hair revealed its lovely wealth.
"Is she not a rose--will he not adore her, our Hamdi?" she heard
that stout cousin of Hamdi's say to a companion, and the two stared
on appraisingly at the young girl, in her freshness and virginal
youth, as if at some toy to invite the jaded appetite of a satiated
master.
And still the throng filed by, a strange throng beneath the
flickering light and shadow of the mashrubiyeh, slender young Turks
or blonde Circassians in their Paris frocks, their eyes tormented or
malicious, and here and there, like a green island of calm, some
rotund matron grave and serene, her head encircled with an old
fashioned turban of gauze, her stout flesh encased in heavy silks,
bought at Damask so as not to enrich the Unbelievers at Lyons.
* * * * *
And then the spectacle changed, the black street mantles appeared,
yashmaks and tcharchafs, for now the doors were opened to all the
feminine world, and there came strange, unknown women, slipping out
from their grills for this pleasuring in a palace, old-timers often,
draped and turbaned in the fashion of some far province of their
youth; women, incredibly fat, in rich stuffs of Asia, their bright,
deep-sunken eyes spying delightedly upon the scene, or furtive, poor
women, keeping courage in twos and threes.
Now, too, at four, came the women from the Embassies, a Russian girl
with whom Aimée had played tennis in ages past, rosy now with
yesterday's sun and sleepy with last night's dance, who touched the
bride's hand as if it were the hand of one half-dead, already
consigned to the tomb; other girls she did not know, who stared at
her with the avid eyes of their young curiosities; older women,
experienced, unstirred, drinking their tea and smoking cigarettes
and gossiping of their own affairs, and occasionally among them a
tourist agog with wonder and exultation, storing away details for a
lifetime of talk, asking amiably the most incredible questions....
"And is it true you have never met your husband? Listen, Jane--she
says she has never met him--"
A girl in a creamy white silk came forward a little uncertainly. She
was a pretty girl, with a curve of ruddy hair visible under her
smart straw, and very bright eyes, where shyness was at variance
with a friendly smile.
Indeed Jinny Jeffries was extraordinarily intimidated by the
occasion. She had a distinct sense of intrusion mingling with her
delight at having intruded, and she murmured her good wishes in an
almost inaudible tone.
"It is very good of you to let us come ... I wish you every
happiness," she said.
Beside her a tall slender figure, in black tcharchaf and yashmak,
made its appearance.
Aimée's eyes slipped past the pretty American; the mechanical smile
was frozen on her lips. Over the black veil she saw the hazel eyes,
bright with excitement, vivid as speech; the eyes of the masquerader
in the Scotch costume, the eyes of the man at the garden gate--Jack
Ryder's eyes ... the eyes of her dreams.