She nestled to him and dinted his bare arm with the pearls of her mouth
for a reply.
So that morning their contract of marriage was written, and witnessed by
the legal number of witnesses in the presence of the Cadi, with his
license on it endorsed; and Bhanavar was the bride of Almeryl, he her
husband. Never was youth blessed in a bride like that youth!
Now, the twain lived together the circle of a full year of delightful
marriage, and love lessened not in them, but was as the love of the first
day. Little cared they, having each other, for the loneliness of their
dwelling in that city, where they knew none save the porter Ukleet, who
went about their commissions. Sometimes to amuse themselves with his
drolleries, they sent for him, and were bountiful with him, and made him
drink with them on the lawn of their garden leaning to an inlet of the
sea; and then he would entertain them with all the scandal and gossip of
the city, and its little folk and great. When he was outrageously
extravagant in these stories of his, Bhanavar exclaimed, 'Are such
things, now? can it be true?'
And he nodded in his conceit, and replied loftily, ''Tis certain, O my
Prince and Princess! ye be from the mountains, unused to the follies and
dissipations of men where they herd; and ye know them not, men!'
The lamps being lit in the garden to the edges of the water, where they
lay one evening, Ukleet, who had been in his briskest mood, became grave,
and put his forefinger to the side of his nose and began, 'Hear ye aught
of the great tidings? Wullahy! no other than the departure of the wife of
Boolp, the broker, into darkness. 'Tis of Boolp ye hire this house, and
had ye a hundred houses in this city ye might have had them from Boolp
the broker, he that's rich; and glory to them whom Allah prospereth, say
I! And I mention this matter, for 'tis certain now Boolp will take
another wife to him to comfort him, for there be two things beloved of
Boolp, and therein manifesteth he taste and the discernment of
excellence, and what is approved; and of these two things let the love of
his hoards of the yellow-skinned treasure go first, and after that
attachment to the silver-skinned of creation, the fair, the rapturous;
even to them! So by this see ye not Boolp will yearn in his soul for
another spouse? Now, O ye well-matched pair! what a chance were this,
knew ye but a damsel of the mountains, exquisite in symmetry, a moon to
enrapture the imagination of Boolp, and in the nature of things herit his
possessions! for Boolp is an old man, even very old.'
They laughed, and cried, 'We know not of such a damsel, and the broker
must go unmarried for us.'
When next Ukleet sat before them, Almeryl took occasion to speak of Boolp
again, and said, 'This broker, O Ukleet, is he also a lender of money?'
Ukleet replied, 'O my Prince, he is or he is not: 'tis of the maybes. I
wot truly Boolp is one that baiteth the hook of an emergency.'
The brows of the Prince were downcast, and he said no more; but on the
following morning he left Bhanavar early under a pretext, and sallied
forth from the house of their abode alone.
Since their union in that city they had not been once apart, and Bhanavar
grieved and thought, 'Waneth his love for me?' and she called her women
to her, and dressed in this dress and that dress, and was satisfied with
none. The dews of the bath stood cold upon her, and she trembled, and
fled from mirror to mirror, and in each she was the same surpassing
vision of loveliness. Then her women held a glass to her, and she
examined herself closely, if there might be a fleck upon her anywhere,
and all was as the snow of the mountains on her round limbs sloping in
the curves of harmony, and the faint rose of the dawn on slants of snow
was their hue. Twining her fingers and sighing, she thought, 'It is not
that! he cannot but think me beautiful.' She smiled a melancholy smile at
her image in the glass, exclaiming, 'What availeth it, thy beauty? for he
is away and looketh not on thee, thou vain thing! And what of thy
loveliness if the light illumine it not, for he is the light to thee, and
it is darkness when he's away.'
Suddenly she thought, 'What's that which needeth to light it no other
light? I had well-nigh forgotten it in my bliss, the Jewel!' Then she
went to a case of ebony-wood, where she kept the Jewel, and drew it
forth, and shone in the beam of a pleasant imagination, thinking, ''Twill
surprise him!' And she robed herself in a robe of saffron, and set lesser
gems of the diamond and the emerald in the braid of her hair, and knotted
the Serpent Jewel firmly in a band of gold-threaded tissue, and had it
woven in her hair among the braids. In this array she awaited his coming,
and pleased her mind with picturing his astonishment and the joy that
would be his. Mute were the women who waited on her, for in their lives
they had seen no such sight as Bhanavar beneath the beams of the Jewel,
and the whole chamber was aglow with her.
Now, in her anxiety she sent them one and one repeatedly to look forth at
the window for the coming of the Prince. So, when he came not she went
herself to look forth, and stretched her white neck beyond the casement.
While her head was exposed, she heard a cry of some one from the house in
the street opposite, and Bhanavar beheld in the house of the broker an
old wrinkled fellow that gesticulated to her in a frenzy. She snatched
her veil down and drew in her head in anger at him, calling to her maids,
'What is yonder hideous old dotard?'
And they answered, laughing, ''Tis indeed Boolp the broker, O fair
mistress and mighty!'
To divert herself she made them tell her of Boolp, and they told her a
thousand anecdotes of the broker, and verses of him, and the constancy of
his amorous condition, and his greediness. And Bhanavar was beguiled of
her impatience till it was evening, and the Prince returned to her. So
they embraced, and she greeted him as usual, waiting what he would say,
searching his countenance for a token of wonderment; but the youth knew
not that aught was added to her beauty, for he looked nowhere save in her
eyes. Bhanavar was nigh weeping with vexation, and pushed him from her,
and chid him with lack of love and weariness of her; and the eye of the
Prince rose to her brow to read it, and he saw the Jewel. Almeryl clapped
his hands, crying, 'Wondrous! And this thy surprise for me, my fond one?
beloved of mine!' Then he gazed on her a space, and said, 'Knowest thou,
thou art terrible in thy beauty, Bhanavar, and hast the face of lightning
under that Jewel of the Serpent?'
She kissed him, whispering, 'Not lightning to thee! Yet lovest thou
Bhanavar?'
He replied, 'Surely so; and all save Bhanavar in this world is the
darkness of oblivion to me.'
When it was the next morning, Almeryl rose to go forth again. Ere he had
passed the curtain of the chamber Bhanavar caught him by the arm, and she
was trembling violently. Her visage was a wild inquiry: 'Thou goest?--and
again? There is something hidden from me!'
Almeryl took her to his heart, and caressed her with fond flatteries,
saying, 'Ask but what is beating under these two pomegranates, and thou
learnest all of me.'
But she stamped her foot, crying, 'No! no! I will hear it! There's a
mystery.'
So he said, 'Well, then, it is this only; small matter enough. I have a
business with the captain of the vessel that brought us hither, and I
must see him ere he setteth sail; no other than that, thou jealous,
watchful star! Pierce me with thine eyes; it is no other than that.'
She levelled her lids at him till her lustrous black eyelashes were as
arrows, and mimicked him softly, 'No other than that?'