As the evening grew cooler after sundown Paula had got better. She did

not, indeed, know what to think of Orion’s refusal to start. First she

was grieved, then she rejoiced; for it certainly preserved him from

great perils. In the early days after his return from Constantinople she

had heard his praise of the senator’s kindness and hospitality, in which

the Mukaukas, who had pleasant memories of the capital, heartily joined.

He must, of course, be glad to be able to assist those friends, of all

others; and Nilus, who was respectfully devoted to her, had greeted her

from Orion with peculiar warmth. He would come to-morrow, no doubt;

and the oftener she repeated to herself his assertion that he had never

betrayed affectionate trust, the more earnestly she felt prompted, in

spite of the abbess’ counsel, to abandon all hesitancy, to follow

the impulse of her heart, and to be his at once in full and happy

confidence.

The waning moon had not yet risen, and the night was very dark when the

nuns set forth. The boat was too large to come close to the shore in

the present low state of the river, and the sisters, disguised as

peasant-women, had to be carried on board one by one from the convent

garden. Last of all the abbess was to be lifted over the shallow water,

and the old ship-builder held himself in readiness to perform this

service. Joanna, Pulcheria, Perpetua, and Eudoxia, who was also

zealously orthodox, were standing round as she gave Paula a parting kiss

and whispered: “God bless thee, child!--All now depends on you, and you

must be doubly careful to abide by your promise.”

“I owe him, in the first place, friendly trust,” was Paula’s whispered

reply, and the abbess answered: “But you owe yourself firmness and

caution.” Rufinus was the last; his wife and daughter clung around him

still.

“Take example from that poor girl,” cried the old man, clasping his wife

in his arms. “As sure as man is the standard of all things, all must go

well with me this time if everlasting Love is not napping. Till we meet

again, best of good women!--And, if ill befalls your stupid old husband,

always remember that he brought it upon himself in trying to save a

quarter of a hundred innocent women from the worst misfortunes. At

any rate I shall fall on the road I myself have chosen.--But why has

Philippus not come to take leave of me?”

Dame Joanna burst into tears: “That-that is so hard too! What has

come over him that he has deserted us, and just now of all times? Ah,

husband! If you love me, take Gibbus with you on the voyage.”

“Yes, master, take me,” the hunchbacked gardener interposed. “The Nile

will be rising again by the time we come back, and till then the flowers

can die without my help. I dreamt last night that you picked a rose from

the middle of my Bump. It stuck up there like the knob on the lid of a

pot. There is some meaning in it and, if you leave me at home, what is

the good of the rose--that is to say what good will you get out of me?”

“Well then, carry your strange flower-bed on board,” said the old man

laughing. “Now, are you satisfied Joanna?”

Once more he embraced her and Pulcheria and, as a tear from his wife’s

eyes dropped on his hand, he whispered in her ear: “You have been the

rose of my life; and without you Eden--Paradise itself can have no

joys.”

The boat pushed out into the middle of the stream and was soon hidden by

the darkness from the eyes of the women on the bank.

The convent bells were soon heard tolling after the fugitives: Paula and

Pulcheria were pulling them. There was not a breath of air; not enough

even to fill the small sail of the seaward-bound boat; but the rowers

pulled with all their might and the vessel glided northward. The captain

stood at the prow with his pole; sounding the current: his brother,

no less skilled, took the helm.--The shallowness of the water made

navigation very difficult, and those who knew the river best might

easily run aground on unexpected shoals or newly-formed mud-drifts. The

moon had scarcely risen when the boat was stranded at a short distance

below Fostat, and the men had to go overboard to push it off to an

accompaniment of loud singing which, as it were, welded their individual

wills and efforts into one. Thus it was floated off again; but such

delays were not unfrequent till they reached Letopolis, where the Nile

forks, and where they hoped to steal past the toll-takers unobserved.

Almost against their expectation, the large boat slipped through under

the heavy mist which rises from the waters before sunrise, and the

captain and crew, steering down the Phatmetic branch of the river with

renewed spirit, ascribed their success to the intercession of the pious

sisters.

By daylight it was easier to avoid the sand-banks; but how narrow was

the water-way-at this season usually overflowing! The beds of papyrus on

the banks now grew partly on dry land, and their rank green had faded to

straw-color. The shifting ooze of the shore had hardened to stone, and

the light west wind, which now rose and allowed of their hoisting the

sail, swept clouds of white dust before it. In many cases the soil was

deeply fissured and wide cracks ran across the black surface, yawning to

heaven for water like thirsty throats. The water-wheels stood idle, far

away from the stream, and the fields they were wont to irrigate looked

like the threshing floors on which the crops they bore should be

threshed out. The villages and palm-groves were shrouded in shimmering

mist, quivering heat, and dazzling yellow light; and the passer-by on

the raised dykes of the shore bent his head as he dragged his weary feet

through the deep dust.

The sun blazed pitilessly in the cloudless sky, down on land and river,

and on the fugitive nuns who had spread their white head-cloths above

them for an awning and sat in dull lethargy, awaiting what might he

before them.

The water-jar passed from hand to band; but the more they drank the

more acute was their discomfort, and their longing for some other

refreshment. At meal time the dishes were returned to the tiny cabin

almost untouched. The abbess and Rufinus tried to speak comfort to them;

but in the afternoon the superior herself was overpowered by the heat,

and the air in the little cabin, to which she retired, was even less

tolerable stuffy than on deck.

Thus passed a long day of torment, the hottest that even the men could

remember; and they on the whole suffered least from it, though they

toiled at the oar without ceasing and with wonderful endurance.

At length evening fell after those fearful midday hours; and as a cool

breeze rose shortly before sunset to fan their moist brows, the hapless

victims awoke to new energies. Their immediate torment had so crushed

them that, incapable of anticipating the future, they had ceased either

to fear or to hope; but now they could rejoice in thinking of the start

they had gained over their pursuers. They were hungry and enjoyed their

evening meal; the abbess made friends with the worthy ship-wright, and

began an eager conversation with Rufinus as to Paula and Orion: Her

wish that the young man should spend a time of probation did not at all

please Rufinus; with such a wife as Paula, he could not fail to be at

all times the noble fellow which his old friend held him to be in spite

of his having remained at home.

The hump-backed gardener made the younger nuns merry with his jests, and

after supper they all united in prayer.

Even the oarsmen had found new vigor and new life; and it was well that

few of the Greek sisters understood Egyptian, for the more jovial of

them started a song in praise of the charms of the maids they loved,

which was not composed for women’s ears.

The nuns chatted of those they had left behind, and many a one spoke

of a happy meeting at home once more; but an elderly nun put a stop to

this, saying that it was a sin to anticipate the ways of God’s mercy,

or, when His help was still so sorely needed, to speak as though He had

already bestowed it. They could only tremble and pray, for they knew

from experience that a threatening disaster never turned to a good end

unless it had been expected with real dread.

Another one then began to speculate as to whether their pursuers

could overtake them on foot or on horseback, and as it seemed only too

probable that they could, their hearts sank again with anxiety. Ere

long, however, the moon rose; the objects that loomed on the banks and

were mirrored in the stream, were again clearly visible and lost their

terrors.

The lower down they sailed, the denser were the thickets of papyrus on

the shore. Thousands of birds were roosting there, but they were all

asleep; a “dark ness that might be felt” brooded over the silent land

scape. The image of the moon floated on the dark water, like a gigantic

lotos-flower below the smaller, fragrant lotos-blossoms that it out-did

in sheeny whiteness; the boat left a bright wake in its track, and every

stroke of the oar broke the blackness of the water, which reflected the

light in every drop. The moonlight played on the delicate tufts that

crowned the slender papyrus-stems, filmy mist, like diaphanous brocade

of violet and silver, veiled the trees; and owls that shun the day, flew

from one branch to another on noiseless, rhythmic wings.

The magic of the night fell on the souls of the nuns; they ceased

prattling; but when Sister Martha, the nightingale of the sisterhood,

began to sing a hymn the others followed her example. The sailors’

songs were hushed, and the psalms of the virgin sisters, imploring the

protection of the Almighty, seemed to float round the gliding boat as

softly as the light of the circling moon. For hours--and with increased

zeal as the comet rose in the sky--they gave themselves up to the

soothing and encouraging pleasure of singing; but one by one the voices

died away and their peaceful hymn was borne down the river to the sea,

by degrees more low, more weary, more dreamlike.

They sat looking in their laps, gazing in rapture up to heaven, or

at the dazzling ripples and the lotos flowers on the surface. No one

thought of the shore, not even the men, who had been lulled to sleep

or daydreams by the nuns’ singing. The pilot’s eyes were riveted on the

channel--and yet, as morning drew near, from time to time there was a

twinkle, a flash behind the reed-beds on the eastern bank, and now and

then there was a rustling and clatter there. Was it a jackal that had

plunged into the dense growth to surprise a brood of water-fowl; was it

a hyena trampling through the thicket?

The flashing, the rustling, the dull footfall on parched earth followed

the barge all through the night like a sinister, lurid, and muttering

shadow.

Suddenly the captain started and gazed eastwards.--What was that?

There was a herd of cattle feeding in a field beyond the reeds-two bulls

perhaps were sharpening their horns. The river was so low, and the

banks rose so high, that it was impossible to see over them. But at this

moment a shrill voice spoke his name, and then the hunchback whispered

in his ear:

“There--over there--it is glittering again.--I will bite off my own

nose if that is not--there, again. Merciful God! I am not mistaken.

Harness--and there, that is the neighing of a horse; I know the sound.

The east is growing grey. By all the saints, we are pursued!”

The captain looked eastwards with every sense alert, and after a few

minutes silence he said decidedly “Yes.”

“Like a flight of quail for whom the fowler spreads his net,” sighed

the gardener; but the boatman impatiently signed to him to be quiet, and

gazed cautiously on every side. Then he desired Gibbus to wake Rufinus

and the shipwrights, and to hide all the nuns in the cabin.

“They will be packed as close as the dates sent to Rome in boxes,”

muttered the gardener, as he went to call Rufinus. “Poor souls, their

saints may save them from suffocation; and as for me, on my faith, if it

were not that Dame Joanna was the very best creature on two legs, and

if I had not promised her to stick to the master, I would jump into the

water and try the hospitality of the flamingoes and storks in the reeds!

We must learn to condescend!”

While he was fulfilling his errand, the captain was exchanging a few

words with his brother at the helm. There was no bridge near, and that

was well. If the horsemen were indeed in pursuit of them, they must ride

through the water to reach them; and scarcely three stadia lower down,

the river grew wider and ran through a marshy tract of country; the only

channel was near the western bank, and horsemen attempting to get to it

ran the risk of foundering in the mud. If the boat could but get as far

as that reach, much would be gained.

The captain urged the men to put forth all their strength, and very soon

the boat was flying along under the western shore, and divided by an

oozy flat from the eastern bank. Day was breaking, and the sky was

tinged red as with blood--a sinister omen that this morning was destined

to witness bitter strife and gaping wounds.

The seed sown by Katharina was beginning to grow. At the bishop’s

request the Vekeel had despatched a troop of horse in pursuit of the

nuns, with orders to bring the fugitives back to Memphis and take their

escort prisoners. As the boat had slipped by the toll watch unperceived,

the Arabs had been obliged to divide, so as to follow down each arm

of the Nile. Twelve horsemen had been told off to pursue the Phasmetic

branch; for by every calculation these must suffice for the capture of

a score or so of nuns, and a handful of sailors would scarcely dare

to attempt to defend themselves. The Vekeel had heard nothing of the

addition to the party of the ship-master and his sons.

The pursuers had set out at noon of the previous day, and had overtaken

the vessel about two hours before daylight. But their leader thought

it well to postpone the attack till after sunrise, lest any of the

fugitives should escape. He and his men were all Arabs, and though well

acquainted with the course of that branch of the river which they were

to follow, they were not familiar with its peculiarities.

As soon as the morning star was invisible, the Moslems performed their

devotions, and then rushed out of the papyrus-beds. Their leader, making

a speaking trumpet of his hand, shouted to the boat his orders to stop.

He was commissioned by the governor to bring it back to Fostat. And the

fugitives seemed disposed to obey, for the boat lay to. The captain

had recognized the speaker as the captain of the watch from Fostat, an

inexorable man; and now, for the first time, he clearly understood the

deadly peril of the enterprise. He was accustomed, no doubt, to evade

the commands of his superiors, but would no more have defied them

than have confronted Fate; and he at once declared that resistance

was madness, and that there was no alternative but to yield. Rufinus,

however, vehemently denied this; he pointed out to him that the same

punishment awaited him, whether he laid down his arms or defended

himself, and the old ship-wright eagerly exclaimed:

“We built this boat, and I know you of old, Setnau; You will not turn

Judas--and, if you do, you know that Christian blood will be shed on

this deck before we can show our teeth to those Infidels.”

The captain, with all the extravagant excitability of his southern

blood, beat his forehead and his breast, bemoaned himself as a betrayed

and ruined man, and bewailed his wife and children. Rufinus, however,

put an end to his ravings. He had consulted with the abbess, and he put

it strongly to the unhappy man that he could, in any case, hope for no

mercy from the unbelievers; while, on Christian ground, he would easily

find a safe and comfortable refuge for himself and his family. The

abbess would undertake to give them all a passage on board the ship that

was awaiting her, and to set them on shore wherever he might choose.

Setnau thought of a brother living in Cyprus; still, for him it meant

sacrificing his house and garden at Doomiat, where, at this very hour,

fifty date-palms were ripening their fruit; it meant leaving the fine

new Nile-boat by which he and his family got their living; and as he

represented this to the old man, bitter tears rolled down his brown

cheeks. Rufinus explained to him that, if he should succeed in saving

the sisters, he might certainly claim some indemnification. He might

even calculate the value of his property, and not only would he have

the equivalent paid to him out of the convent treasure, now on board in

heavy coffers, but a handsome gift into the bargain.

Setnau exchanged a meaning glance with his brother, who was a single

man, and when it was also agreed that he, too, might embark on the

sea-voyage he shook hands with Rufinus on the bargain. Then, giving

himself a shake, as if he had thrown off something that cramped him, and

sticking his leather cap knowingly on one side of his shaven head, he

drew himself up to his full height and scornfully shouted back to the

Arab--who had before now treated him and other Egyptian natives with

insolent haughtiness--that if he wanted anything of him he might come

and fetch it.

The Moslem’s patience was long since exhausted, and at this challenge

he signed to his followers and sprang first into the river; but the

foremost horses soon sank so deep in the ooze that further advance was

evidently impossible, and the signal to return was perforce given. In

this manoeuvre a refractory horse lost his footing, and his rider was

choked in the mud.

On this, the men in the boat could see the foe holding council with

lively gesticulations, and the captain expressed his fears lest they

should give up all hope of capturing the boat, and ride forward to

Doomiat to combine with the Arab garrison to cut off their further

flight. But he had not reckoned on the warlike spirit of these men, who

had overcome far greater difficulties in twenty fights ere this. They

were determined to seize the boat, to take its freight prisoners, and

have them duly punished.

Six horsemen, among them the leader of the party, were now seen to

dismount; they tied their horses up, and then proceeded to fell three

tall palms with their battle-axes; the other five went off southwards.

These, no doubt, were to ride round the morass, and ford the river at

a favorable spot so as to attack the vessel from the west, while the

others tried to reach it from the east with the aid of the palm-trunks.

On the right, or eastern shore, where the Arabs were constructing the

raft, spread solid ground-fields through which lay the road to Doomiat;

on the other shore, near which the boat was lying, the bog extended for

a long way. An interminable jungle of papyrus, sedge, and reeds, burnt

yellow by the heat of the sun and the extraordinary drought, covered

almost the whole of this parched and baked wilderness; and, when a stiff

morning breeze rose from the northeast, the captain was inspired with a

happy thought. The five men who had ridden forward would have to force

their way through the mass of scorched and dried up vegetation. If the

Christians could but set fire to it, on the further side of a canal

which must hinder their making a wide sweep to the north, the wind would

carry it towards the enemy; and, they would be fortunate if it did

not stifle them or compel them to jump into the river, where, when the

flames reached the morass, they must inevitably perish.

As soon as the helmsman’s keen eyes had made sure, from the mast-head,

that the Arabs had forded the river at a point to the south, they set

fire to several places and it roared and flared up immediately. The wind

swept it southwards, and with it clouds of pale grey smoke through which

the rising sun shot shafts of light. The flames writhed and darted over

the baked earth like gigantic yellow and orange lizards, here shooting

upwards, there creeping low. Almost colorless in the ardent daylight,

they greedily consumed everything they approached, and white ashes

marked their track. Their breath added to the heat of the advancing day;

and though the smoke was borne southwards by the wind, a few cloudlets

came over to the boat, choking the sisters and their deliverers.

A large vessel now came towards them from Doomiat and found the narrow

channel barred by the other one. The captain was related to Setnau, and

when Setnau shouted to him that they were engaged in a struggle with

Arab robbers, his friend followed his advice, turned the boat’s head

with considerable difficulty, and cast anchor at the nearest village to

warn other vessels southward bound not to get themselves involved in so

perilous an adventure. Any that were coming north would be checked by

the fire and smoke.

The six horsemen left on the eastern shore beheld the spreading

blaze with rage and dismay; however, they had by this time bound the

palm-trunks together, and were preparing by their aid to inflict condign

punishment on the refractory Christians. These, meanwhile, had not been

idle. Every man on board was armed, and one of the ship-wrights was sent

on shore with a sailor, to steal through the reeds, ford the river at

a point lower down and, as soon as the Arabs put out to the attack, to

slaughter their horses, or--if one of them should be left to go forward

on the road to Doomiat--to drag him from his steed.

The six men now laid hold of the slightly-constructed float, on which

they placed their bows and quivers; they pushed it before them, and

it supported them above the shallow water, while their feet only just

touched the oozy bottom. They were all thorough soldiers, true sons of

the desert and of their race--men whom nature seemed to have conceived

as a counterpart to the eagle, the master-piece of the winged creation.

Keen-eyed, strongly-knit though small-boned, bereft of every fibre

of superfluous flesh on their sinewy limbs, with bold brown faces and

sharply-cut features, suggesting the king of birds not merely by the

aquiline nose, they had also the eagle’s courage, thirst for blood, and

greed of victory.

Each held on to the raft by one lean, wiry arm, carrying on the other

the round bucklers on which the arrows that came whistling from the

boat, fell and stuck as soon as they were within shot. They ground their

white teeth with fury and nothing within ken escaped their bright hawk’s

eyes. They had come to fight, even if the boat had been defended by

fifty Egyptian soldiers instead of carrying a score or so of sailors and

artisans. Their brave hearts felt safe under their shirts of mail, and

their ready, fertile brains under their brazen helmets; and they marked

the dull rattle of the arrows against their metal shields with elation

and contempt. To deal death was the wish of their souls; to meet it

caused them no dread; for their glowing fancy painted an open Paradise

where beautiful women awaited them open-armed, and brimming goblets

promised to satisfy every desire.

Their keen ears heard their captain’s whispered commands; when they

reached the ship’s side, one caught hold of the sill of the cabin

window, their leader, as quick as thought, sprang on to his shoulders,

and from thence on to the deck, thrusting his lance through the body of

a sailor who tried to stop him with his axe. A second Arab was close

at his heels; two gleaming scimitars flashed in the sun, the shrill,

guttural, savage war-cry of the Moslems rent the air, and the captain

fell, the first victim to their blood-thirsty fury, with a deep cut

across the face and forehead; in a moment, however, a heavy spar sang

through the air down on the head of the Moslem leader and laid him low.

The helmsman, the brother of the fallen pilot, had wielded it with the

might of the avenger.

A fearful din, increased by the shrieks and wailing of the nuns, now

filled the vessel. The second Arab dealt death on all sides with the

courage and strength of desperation, and three of his fellows managed

to climb up the boat’s side; but the last man was pushed back into the

water. By this time two of the shipwrights and five sailors had fallen.

Rufinus was kneeling by the captain, who was crying feebly for help,

bleeding profusely, though not mortally wounded. Setnau had spoken with

much anxiety of his wife and children, and Rufinus, hoping to save his

life for their sakes, was binding up the wounds, which were wide and

deep, when suddenly a sabre stroke came down on the back of his head

and neck, and a dark stream of blood rushed forth. But he, too, was soon

avenged: the old shipwright hewed down his foe with his heavy axe. On

the eastern shore, meanwhile, the men charged to kill the Arabs’ horses

were doing their work, so as to prevent any who might escape from

returning to Fostat, or riding forward to Doormat and reporting what had

occurred.

On board silence now prevailed. All five Arabs were stretched on the

deck, and the insatiate boatmen were dealing a finishing stroke to those

who were only wounded. A sailor, who had taken refuge up a mast, could

see how the other five horsemen had plunged into the bog to avoid the

fire and had disappeared beneath the waters; so that none of the Moslems

had escaped alive--not even that one which Fate and romance love to save

as a bearer of the disastrous tidings.

By degrees the nuns ventured out on deck again.

Those who were skilled in tending the wounded gathered round them, and

opened their medicine cases; as they proceeded on their voyage, under

the guidance of the steersman, they had their hands full of work and the

zeal they gave to it mitigated the torment of the heat.

The bodies of the five Moslems and eight Christians--among these, two of

the Greek ship-wrights--were laid on the shore in groups apart, in the

neighborhood of a village; in the hand of one of them the abbess placed

a tablet with this inscription:

“These eight Christians met their death bravely fighting to defend a

party of pious and persecuted believers. Pray for them and bury them as

well as those who, in obedience to their duty and their commander, took

their lives.”

Rufinus, lying with his head on the gardener’s knee, and sheltered from

the sun under the abbess’ umbrella, presently recovered his senses;

looking about him he said to himself in a low voice, as he saw the

captain lying by his side:

“I, too, had a wife and a dear child at home, and yet--Ah! how this

aches! We may well do all we can to soothe such pain. The only reality

here below is not pleasure, it is pain, vulgar, physical pain; and

though my head burns and aches more than enough.--Water, a drink of

water.--How comfortable I could be at this moment with my Joanna, in

our shady house.--But yet, but yet--we must heal or save, it is all the

same, any who need it.--A drink--wine and water, if it is to be had,

worthy Mother!”

The abbess had it at hand; as she put the cup to his lips she spoke her

warm and effusive thanks, and many words of comfort; then she asked him

what she could do for him and his, when they should be in safety.

“Love them truly,” he said gently. “Pul will certainly never be quite

happy till she is in a convent. But she must not leave her mother--she

must stay with her; Joanna-Joanna....”

He repeated the name several times as if the sound pleased his ear

and heart. Then he shuddered again and again, and muttered to himself:

“Brrr!--a cold shiver runs all over me--it is of no use!--The cut in my

shoulder.--It is my head that hurts worst, but the other--it is bad luck

that it should have fallen on the left side. And yet, no; it is best so;

for if he--if it had damaged my right shoulder I could not write, and I

must--I must-before it is too late. A tablet and stylus; quick,

quick! And when I have written, good mother, close the tablet and seal

it--close and tight. Promise! Only one person may read it, he to whom it

must go.--Gibbus, do you hear, Gibbus?--It is for Philippus the leech.

Take it to him.--Your dream about a rose on your hump, if I read

rightly, means that peace and joy in Heaven blossom from our misery on

earth.--Yes, to Philippus. And listen my old school friend Christodorus,

a leech too, lives at Doomiat. Take my body to him--mind me now? He is

to pack it with sand which will preserve it, and have it buried by the

side of my mother at Alexandria. Joanna and the child--they can come and

visit me there. I have not much to leave; whatever that may cost....”

“That is my affair, or the convent’s,” cried the abbess.

“Matters are not so bad as that,” said the old man smiling. “I can pay

for my own share of the business; your revenue belongs to the poor,

noble Mother.--You will find more than enough in this wallet, good

Gibbus. But now, quick, make haste--the tablets.”

When he had one in his hand, and a stylus for writing with, he thought

for some time, and then wrote with trembling fingers, though exerting

all his strength. How acutely he was suffering could be seen in

his drawn mouth and sad eyes, but he would not allow himself to be

interrupted, often as the abbess and the gardener entreated him to lay

aside the stylus. At last, with a deep sigh of relief, he closed the

tablets, handed them to the abbess, and said:

“There! Close it fast.--To Philippus the physician; into his own hand:

You hear, Gibbus?”

Here he fainted; but after they had bathed his forehead and wounds he

came to himself, and softly murmured: “I was dreaming of Joanna and the

poor child. They brought me a comic mask. What can that mean? That I

have been a fool all my life for thinking of other folks’ troubles and

forgetting myself and my own family? No, no, no! As surely as man is the

standard of all things--if it were so, then, then folly would be truth

and right.--I, I--my desire--the aim to which my life was devoted....”

He paused; then he suddenly raised himself, looked up with a bright

light in his eyes, and cried aloud with joy: “O Thou, most merciful

Saviour! Yes, yes--I see it all now. I thank thee--All that I strove for

and lived for, Thou, my Redeemer who art Love itself--Ah how good, how

comforting to think of that!--It is for this that Thou grantest me to

die!”

Again he lost consciousness; his head grew very hot, his breath came

hoarsely and his parched lips, though frequently moistened by careful

hands, could only murmur the names of those he loved best, and among

them that of Paula.

At about five hours after noon he fell back on the hunchback’s knees;

he had ceased to suffer. A happy smile lighted up his features, and in

death the old man’s calm face looked like that of a child.

The gardener felt as though he had lost his own father, and his lively

tongue remained speechless till he entered Doormat with the rescued

sisters, and proceeded to carry out his master’s last orders. The

abbess’ ship took the wounded captain Setnau on board, with his wife,

his children, his brother the steersman, and the surviving ship-wrights.

At the very hour when Rufinus closed his eyes, the town-watch of

Memphis, led by Bishop Plotinus, appeared to claim the Melchite convent

of St. Cecilia, and all the possessions of the sisterhood, in the name

of the patriarch and the Jacobite church. Next morning the bishop set

out for Upper Egypt to make his report to the prelate.

CHAPTER IX.

Philippus started up from the divan on which he had been reclining at

breakfast with his old friend. Before Horapollo was a half-empty plate;

he had swallowed his meal less rapidly than his companion, and looked

disapprovingly at the leech, who drank off his wine and water as he

stood, whereas he generally would sit and enjoy it as he talked to the

old man of matters light or grave. To the elder this was always the

pleasantest hour of the day; but now Philippus would hardly allow

himself more than just time enough to eat, even at their principal

evening meal.

Indeed, not he alone, but every physician in the city, had as much as he

could do with the utmost exertion. Nearly three weeks had elapsed

since the attack on the nuns, and the fearful heat had still gone on

in creasing. The river, instead of rising had sunk lower and lower;

the carrier-pigeons from Ethiopia, looked for day by day with growing

anxiety and excitement, brought no news of a rising stream even in the

upper Nile, and the shallow, stagnant and evil-smelling waters by the

banks began to be injurious, nay, fatal, to the health of the whole

population.

Close to the shore, especially, the water had a reddish tinge, and the

usually sweet, pure fluid in the canals was full of strange vegetable

growths and other foreign bodies putrid and undrinkable. The common

people usually shirked the trouble of filtering it, and it was among

them that the greater number died of a mortal and infectious pestilence,

till then unknown. The number of victims swelled daily, and the approach

of the comet kept pace with the growing misery of the town. Every one

connected it with the intense heat of the season, with the delay in the

inundation, and the appearance of the sickness; and the leech and his

friend often argued about these matters, for Philippus would not admit

that the meteor had any influence on human affairs, while Horapollo

believed that it had, and supported his view by a long series of

examples.

His antagonist would not accept them and asked for arguments; at the

same time he, like every one else, felt the influence of a vague dread

of some imminent and terrible disaster hanging over the earth and

humanity at large.

And, just as every heart in Memphis felt oppressed by such forebodings,

and by the weight of a calamity, which indeed no longer threatened them

but had actually come upon them, so the roads, the gardens, the palms

and sycamores by the way-side were covered by thick layers of dingy,

choking dust. The hedges of tamarisk and shrubs looked like decaying

walls of colorless, unburnt mud-bricks; even in the high-roads the

wayfarer walked in the midst of dense white clouds raised by his feet,

and if a chariot, or a horseman galloped down the scorching street,

fine, grey sand at once filled the air, compelling the foot-passengers

to shut their eyes and lips.

The town was so silent, so empty, so deserted! No one came out of doors

unless under pressure of business or piety. Every house was a furnace,

and even a bath brought no refreshment, for the water had long since

ceased to be cold. A disease had also attacked the ripening dates as

they hung; they dropped off in thousands from the heavy clusters under

the beautiful bending crown of leaves; and now for two days hundreds

of dead fish had been left on the banks. Even the scaly natives of the

river were plague-stricken; and the physician explained to his friend

that this brought the inhabitants a fresh danger; for who could clear

the shores of the dead fish?--And, in such heat, how soon they would

become putrid!

The old man did not conceal from himself that it was hard, cruelly hard,

for the physician to follow his calling conscientiously at such a time;

but he knew his friend; he had seen him during months of pestilence two

years since--always brisk, decisive and gay, indeed inspired to greater

effort by the greater demands on him. What had so completely altered

him, had poisoned and vexed his soul as with a malignant spell? It was

not the almost superhuman sacrifices required by his duties;--it came

of the unfortunate infatuation of his heart, of which he could not rid

himself.

Philippus had kept his promise. He went every day to the house of

Rufinus, and every day he saw Paula; but, as a murdered body bleeds

afresh in the presence of the assassin, so every day the old pain

revived when he was forced to meet her and speak with her. The only cure

for this particular sufferer was to remove the cause of his pain: that

is to say, to take Paula away out of his path; and this the old man made

his care and duty.

Little Mary and the other patients under Rufinus’ roof were on the way

to recovery; still there was much to cast gloomy shadows over this happy

termination. Joanna and Pulcheria were very anxious as to the fate

of Rufinus. No news had been received of him or of the sisters, and

Philippus was the vessel into which the forsaken wife and Pulcheria--who

looked up to him as to a kind, faithful, and all-powerful protecting

spirit-poured all their sorrows, cares, and fears. Their forebodings

were aggravated by the fact that three times Arab officials had come

to the house to enquire about the master and his continued absence. All

that the women told them was written down, and Dame Joanna, whose lips

had never yet uttered a lie, had found herself forced to give a false

clue by saying that her husband had gone to Alexandria on business,

and might perhaps have to proceed to Syria.--What could these enquiries

forebode? Did they not indicate that Rufinus’ complicity in the rescue

of the nuns was known at Fostat?

The authorities there were, in fact, better informed than the women

could suspect. But they kept their knowledge a secret, for it would

never do to let the oppressed people know that a handful of Egyptians

had succeeded in defeating a party of Arab soldiers; so the Memphites

heard no more than a dark rumor of what had occurred.

Philippus had known nothing of the old man’s purpose till he had gone

too far to be dissuaded; and it was misery to him now to reflect that

his dear old friend, and his whole household, might come to ruin for

the sake of the sisterhood who were nothing to them; for he had received

private information that there had been a skirmish between the Moslems

and the deliverers of the nuns, which had cost the lives of several

combatants on both sides.

And Paula! If only he could have seen her happy--But she was pale;

and that which robbed the young girl--healthy as she was in mind and

body--of her proud, frank, independent bearing was not the heat, which

tormented all creation, but a secret, devouring sorrow; and this sorrow

was the work of one alone--of him on whom she had set her heart, and who

made, ah! what a return, for the royal gift of her love.

Philippus had frequent business at the governor’s residence, and a

fortnight since he had plainly perceived what it was that had brought

Neforis into this strange state. She was taking the opium that her

husband had had, taking it in excessive quantities; and she could easily

procure more through some other physician. However, her piteous prayer

that Philippus would not abandon her to her fate had prevailed to induce

him to continue to see her, in the hope of possibly restricting her use

of the drug.

The senator’s wife, Martina, also required his visits to the palace. She

was not actually ill, but she suffered cruelly from the heat, and she

had always been wont to see her worthy old house-physician every day,

to hear all the latest gossip, and complain of her little ailments when

anything went wrong with her usually sound health. Philippus was indeed

too much overburdened to chatter, but his professional advice was good

and helped her to endure the fires of this pitiless sky. She liked this

incisive, shrewd, plain-spoken man--often indeed sharp and abrupt in

his freedom--and he appreciated her bright, natural ways. Now and then

Martina even succeeded in winning a smile from “Hermes Trismegistus,”

who was “generally as solemn as though there was no such thing on earth

as a jest,” and in spurring him to a rejoinder which showed that this

dolorous being had a particularly keen and ready wit.

Heliodora attracted him but little. There was, to be sure, an

unmistakable likeness in her “imploring eyes” to those of Pulcheria; but

the girl’s spoke fervent yearning for the grace and love of God, while

the widow’s expressed an eager desire for the admiration of the men she

preferred. She was a graceful creature beyond all question, but such

softness, which never even attempted to assert a purpose or an opinion,

did not commend itself to his determined nature; it annoyed him, when he

had contradicted her, to hear her repeat his last statement and take his

side, as if she were ashamed of her own silliness. Her society, indeed,

did not seem to satisfy the clever older woman, who at home, was

accustomed to a succession of visitors, and to whom the word “evening”

was synonymous with lively conversation and a large gathering. She spoke

of the leech’s visits as the oasis in the Egyptian desert, and little

Katharina even she regarded as a Godsend.

The water-wagtail was her daily visitant, and the girl’s gay and

often spiteful gossip helped to beguile her during this terrific heat.

Katharina’s mother made no difficulties; for Heliodora had gone to

see her in all her magnificence, and had offered her and her daughter

hospitality, some day, at Constantinople. They were very likely going

thither; at any rate they would not remain in Memphis, and then it

would be a piece of good fortune to be introduced to the society of the

capital by such people as their new acquaintances.

Martina thus heard a great deal about Paula; and though it was all

adverse and colored to her prejudice she would have liked to see the

daughter of the great and famous Thomas whom she had known; besides,

after all she had heard, she could fear nothing from Paula for her

niece: uncommonly handsome, but haughty, repellent, unamiable, and--like

Heliodora herself--of the orthodox sect.--What could tempt “great

Sesostris” to give her the preference?

Katharina herself proposed to Martina to make them acquainted; but

nothing would have induced Dame Martina to go out of her rooms,

protected to the utmost from the torrid sunshine, so she left it to

Heliodora to pay the visit and give her a report of the hero’s daughter.

Heliodora had devoted herself heart and soul to the little heiress, and

humored her on many points.

This was carried out. Katharina actually had the audacity to bring the

rivals together, even after she had reported to each all she knew of

Orion’s position with regard to the other. It was exquisite sport;

still, in one respect it did not fulfil her intentions, for Paula gave

no sign of suffering the agonies of jealousy which Katharina had hoped

to excite in her. Heliodora, on the other hand, came home depressed and

uneasy; Paula had received her coldly and with polite formality, and the

young widow had remained fully aware that so remarkable a woman might

well cast her own image in Orion’s heart into the shade, or supplant it

altogether.

Like a wounded man who, in spite of the anguish, cannot resist touching

the wound to assure himself of its state, Heliodora went constantly to

see Katharina in order to watch her rival from the garden or to be taken

to call on her, though she was always very coldly received.

At first Katharina had pitied the young woman whose superior in

intelligence she knew herself to be; but a certain incident had

extinguished this feeling; she now simply hated her, and pricked

her with needle-thrusts whenever she had a chance. Paula seemed

invulnerable; but there was not a pang which Katharina would not gladly

have given her to whom she owed the deepest humiliation her young life

had ever known. How was it that Paula failed to regard Heliodora as a

rival? She had reflected that, if Orion had really returned the widow’s

passion, he could not have borne so long a separation. It was on purpose

to avoid Heliodora, and to remain faithful to what he was and must

always be to Paula, that he had gone with the senator, far from Memphis.

Heliodora--her instinct assured her--was the poor, forsaken woman with

whom he had trifled at Byzantium, and for whom he had committed that

fatal theft of the emerald. If Fate would but bring him home to her, and

if she then yielded all he asked--all her own soul urged her to grant,

then she would be the sole mistress and queen of his heart--she must be,

she was sure of it! And though, even as she thought of it, she bowed

her head in care, it was not from fear of losing him; it was only her

anxiety about her father, her good old friend, Rufinus, and his family,

whom she had made so entirely her own.

This was the state of affairs this morning, when to his old friend’s

vexation, Philippus had so hastily and silently drunk off his

after-breakfast draught; just as he set down the cup, the black

door-keeper announced that a hump-backed man wished to see his master at

once on important business.

“Important business!” repeated the leech. “Give me four more legs in

addition to my own two, or a machine to make time longer than it is, and

then I will take new patients-otherwise no! Tell the fellow....”

“No, not sick....” interrupted the negro. “Come long way. Gardener to

Greek man Rufinus.”

Philippus started: he could guess what this messenger had to say, and

his heart sank with dread as he desired that he might be shown in.

A glance at Gibbus told him what he had rightly feared. The poor fellow

was hardly recognizable. He was coated with dust from head to foot, and

this made him look like a grey-haired old man; his sandals hung to his

feet in strips; the sweat, pouring down his cheeks, had made gutters as

it were in the dust on his face, and his tears, as the physician held

out his hand to him, washed out other channels.

In reply to the leech’s anxious, long drawn “Dead?” he nodded silently;

and when Philippus, clasping his hands to his temples, cried out: “Dead!

My poor old Rufinus dead! But how, in Heaven’s name, did it happen?

Speak, man, speak!”--Gibbus pointed to the old philosopher and said:

“Come out then, with me, Master. No third person....”

Philippus, however, gave him to understand that Horapollo was his second

self; and the hunch-back went on to tell him what he had seen, and

how his beloved master had met his end. Horapollo sat listening in

astonishment, shaking his head disapprovingly, while the physician

muttered curses. But the bearer of evil tidings was not interrupted, and

it was not till he had ended that Philippus, with bowed head and tearful

eyes, said:

“Poor, faithful old man; to think that he should die thus--he who leaves

behind him all that is best in life, while I--I....” And he groaned

aloud. The old man glanced at him with reproachful displeasure.

While the leech broke the seals of the tablets, which the abbess had

carefully closed, and began to read the contents, Horapollo asked the

gardener: “And the nuns? Did they all escape?”

“Yes, Master! on the morning after we reached Doomiat, a trireme took

them all out to sea.”

And the old man grumbled to himself: “The working bees killed and the

Drones saved!”

Gibbus, however, contradicted him, praising the laborious and useful

life of the sisters, in whose care he himself had once been.

Meanwhile Philippus had read his friend’s last letter. Greatly disturbed

by it he turned hither and thither, paced the room with long steps, and

finally paused in front of the gardener, exclaiming: “And what next? Who

is to tell them the news?”

“You,” replied Gibbus, raising his hands in entreaty.

“I-oh, of course, I!” growled the physician. “Whatever is difficult,

painful, intolerable, falls on my shoulders as a matter of course! But

I cannot--ought not--I will not do it. Had I any part or lot in devising

this mad expedition? You observe, Father?--What he, the simpleton,

brewed, I--I again am to drink. Fate has settled that!”

“It is hard, it is hard, child!” replied the old man. “Still, it is your

duty. Only consider--if that man, as he stands before us now, were to

appear before the women....”

But Philippus broke in: “No, no, that would not do! And you,

Gibbus--this very day there has been an Arab again to see Joanna; and

if they were to suspect that you had been with your master--for you look

strangely.--No, man; your devotion merits a better reward. They shall

not catch you. I release you from your service to the widow, and

we--what do you say, Father?--we will keep him here.”

“Right, very right,” said Horapollo. “The Nile must some day rise

again. Stay with us; I have long had a fancy to eat vegetables of my own

growing.”

But Gibbus firmly declined the offer, saying he wished to return to his

old mistress. When the physician again pointed out to him how great a

danger he was running into, and the old man desired to know his reasons,

the hunch-back exclaimed:

“I promised my master to stay with the women; and now, while in all

the household I am the only free man, shall I leave them unprotected

to secure my own miserable life? Sooner would I see a scimitar at my

throat. When my head is off the rascals are welcome to all that is

left.”

The words came hollow and broken from his parched tongue, and as he

spoke the faithful fellow’s face changed. Even under the dust he turned

pale, and Philippus had to support him, for his feet refused their

office. His long tramp through the torrid heat had exhausted his

strength; but a draught of wine soon brought him to himself again and

Horapollo ordered the slave to lead him to the kitchen and desire the

cook to take the best care of him.

As soon as the friends were alone, the elder observed:

“That worthy, foolhardy, old child who is now dead, seems to have left

you some strange request. I could see that as you were reading.”

“There--take it!” replied Philippus; and again he walked up and down the

room, while Horapollo took the letter. Both faces of the tablets were

covered with irregular, up-and-down lines of writing to the following

effect:

“Rufinus, in view of death, to his beloved Philippus:

“One shivering fit after another comes over me; I shall certainly

die to-day. I must make haste. Writing is difficult. If only I

can say what is most pressing.--First: Joanna and the poor child.

Be everything you can be to them. Protect them as their guardian,

Kyrios, and friend. They have enough to live on and something still

to spare for others. My brother Leonax manages the property, and he

is honest. Joanna knows all about it.--Tell her and the poor child

that I send them ten thousand blessings--and to Joanna endless

thanks for all her goodness.--And to you, my friend: heed the old

man’s words. Rid your heart of Paula. She is not for you: you

know, young Orion. But as to yourself: Those who were born in high

places rarely suit us, who have dragged ourselves up from below to a

better position. Be her friend; that she deserves--but let that be

all. Do not live alone, a wife brings all that is best into a man’s

life; it is she who weaves sweet dreams into his dull sleep. You

know nothing of all this as yet; and your worthy old friend--to whom

my greetings--has held aloof from it all his life....

“For your private eye: it is a dying man who speaks thus. You must

know that my poor child, our Pul, regards you as the most perfect of

men and esteems you above all others. You know her and Joanna.

Bear witness to your friend that no evil word ever passed the lips

of either of them. Far be it from me to advise you, who bear the

image of another woman in your heart,--to say: marry the child, she

is the wife for you. But this much to you both--Father and son--I

do advise you to live with the mother and daughter as true and

friendly house-mates. You will none of you repent doing so. This

is a dying man’s word. I can write no more. You are the women’s

guardian, Philip, a faithful one I know. A common aim makes men

grow alike. You and I, for many a year.--Take good care of them for

me; I entreat you--good care.”

The last words were separated and written all astray; the old man could

hardly make them out. He now sat looking, as Phillipus had done before,

sorely puzzled and undecided over this strange document.

“Well?” asked the leech at last.

“Aye-well?” repeated the other with a shrug. Then both again were

silent; till Horapollo rose, and taking his staff, also paced the room

while he murmured, half to himself and half to his younger friend “They

are two quiet, reasonable women. There are not many of that sort, I

fancy. How the little one helped me up from the low seat in the garden!”

It was a reminiscence that made him chuckle to himself; he stopped

Philippus, who was pacing at his side, by lightly patting his arm,

exclaiming with unwonted vivacity: “A man should be ready to try

everything--the care of women even, before he steps into the grave. And

is it a fact that neither of them is a scold or a chatter-box?”

“It is indeed.”

“And what ‘if’ or ‘but’ remains behind?” asked the old man. “Let us

be reckless for once, brother! If the whole business were not so

diabolically serious, it would be quite laughable. The young one for

me and the old one for you in our leisure hours, my son; better washed

linen; clothes without holes in them; no dust on our books; a pleasant

‘Rejoice’ every morning, or at meal-times;--only look at the fruit on

that dish! No better than the oats they strew before horses. At the old

man’s everything was as nice as it used to be in my own home at

Philae: Supper a little work of art, a feast for the eye as well as the

appetite! Pulcheria seems to understand all that as well as my poor dead

sister did. And then, when I want to rise, such a kind, pretty little

hand to help one up! I have long hated this dwelling. Lime and dust

fall from the ceiling in my bedroom, and here there are wide gaps in the

flooring-I stumbled over one yesterday--and our niggardly landlords, the

officials, say that if we want anything repaired we may do it ourselves,

that they have no money left for such things. Now, under that worthy old

man’s roof everything was in the best order.” The philosopher chuckled

aloud and rubbed his hands as he went on: “Supposing we kick over the

traces for once, Philip. Supposing we were to carry out our friend’s

dying wish? Merciful Isis! It would certainly be a good action, and

I have not many to boast of. But cautiously--what do you say? We can

always throw it up at a month’s notice.”

Then he grew grave again, shook his head, and said meditatively: “No,

no; such plans only disturb one’s peace of mind. A pleasant vision! But

scarcely feasible.”

“Not for the present, at any rate,” replied the leech.

“So long as Paula’s fate remains undecided, I beg you to let the matter

rest.”

The old man muttered a curse on her; then he said with a vicious, sharp

flash in his eyes: “That patrician viper! Every where in everything--she

spoils it all! But wait a while! I fancy she will soon be removed from

our path, and then.... No, even now, at the present time, I will not

allow that we should be deprived of what would embellish life, of doing

a thing which may turn the scale in my favor in the day of judgment. The

wishes of a dying man are sacred: So our fathers held it; and they were

right. The old man’s will must be done! Yes, yes, yes. It is settled.

As soon as that hindrance is removed, we will keep house with the two

women. I have said; and I mean it.”

At this point the gardener came in again, and the old man called out to

him:

“Listen, man. We shall live together after all; you shall hear more of

this later. Stay with my people till sundown, but you must keep your own

counsel, for they are all listeners and blabs. The physician here will

now take the melancholy tidings to the unfortunate widow, and then you

can talk it all over with her at night. Nothing startling must take

place at the house there; and with regard to your master, even his death

must remain a secret from every one but us and his family.”

The gardener knew full well how much depended on his silence; Philippus

tacitly agreed to the old man’s arrangement, but for the present he

avoided discussing the matter with the women. When, at length he set off

on his painful errand to the widow, Horapollo dismissed him saying:

“Courage, courage, my Son.--And as you pass by, just glance at our

little garden;--we grieved to see the fine old palm-tree perish; but now

a young and vigorous shoot is growing from the root.”

“It has been drooping since yesterday and will die away,” replied

Philippus shrugging his shoulders.

But the old man exclaimed: “Water it, Gibbus! the palm-tree must be

watered at once.”

“Aye, you have water at hand for that!” retorted the leech, but he added

bitterly as he reached the stairs, “If it were so in all cases!”

“Patience and good purpose will always win,” murmured the old man; and

when he was alone he growled on angrily: “Only be rid of that dry old

palm-tree--his past life in all its relations to that patrician hussy

Away with it, into the fire!--But how am I to get her? How can I manage

it?”

He threw himself back in his arm-chair, rubbing his forehead with the

tips of his fingers. He had come to no result when the negro requested

an audience for some visitors. These were the heads of the senate of

Memphis, who had come as a deputation to ask counsel of the old sage.

He, if any one, would find some means of averting or, at any rate,

mitigating the fearful calamity impending over the town and country, and

against which prayer, sacrifice, processions, and pilgrimages had proved

abortive. They were quite resolved to leave no means untried, not even

if heathen magic should be the last resource.

CHAPTER X.

All Katharina’s sympathy with Heliodora had died finally in the course

of the past, moonless night. She had secretly accompanied her, with her

maid and an old deaf and dumb stable-slave, to a soothsayer--for there

still were many in Memphis, as well as magicians and alchemists; and

this woman had told the young widow that her line of life led to the

greatest happiness, and that even the wildest wishes of her heart would

find fulfilment. What those wishes were Katharina knew only too well;

the probability of their accomplishment had roused her fierce jealousy

and made her hate Heliodora.

Heliodora had gone to consult the sorceress in a simple but rich dress.

Her peplos was fastened on the shoulder, not by an ordinary gold

pin, but by a button which betrayed her taste for fine jewels, as it

consisted of a sapphire of remarkable size; this had at once caught the

eye of the witch, showing her that she had to deal with a woman of rank

and wealth. She had taken Katharina, who had come very plainly dressed,

for her companion or poor friend, so she had promised her no more than

the removal of certain hindrances, and a happy life at last, with a

husband no longer young and a large family of children.

The woman’s business was evidently a paying one; the interior of her

house was conspicuously superior to the wretched hovels which surrounded

it, in the poorest and most squalid part of the town. Outside, indeed,

it differed little from its neighbors; in fact; it was intentionally

neglected, to mislead the authorities, for witchcraft and the practice

of magic arts were under the penalty of death. But the fittings of

the roofless centre-chamber in which she was wont to perform her

incantations and divinations argued no small outlay. On the walls were

hangings with occult figures; the pillars were painted with weird

and grewsome pictures; crucibles and cauldrons of various sizes were

simmering over braziers on little altars; on the shelves and tables

stood cups, phials, and vases, a wheel on which a wryneck hopped up

and down, wax images of men and women--some with needles through their

hearts, a cage full of bats, and glass jars containing spiders, frogs,

leeches, beetles, scorpions, centipedes and other foul creatures; and

lengthways down the room was stretched a short rope walk, used in a

Thracian form of magic. Perfumes and pungent vapors filled the air, and

from behind a curtain which hid the performers came a monotonous music

of children’s voices, bells, and dull drumming.

Medea, so the wise woman was called, though scarcely past five and

forty, harmonized in appearance with this strange habitation, full as it

was of objects calculated to rouse repulsion, dread, and amazement. Her

face was pale, and her extraordinary height was increased by a mass of

coal-black hair, curled high over a comb at the very top of her head.

At the end of the first visit paid her by the two young women, who had

taken her by surprise, so that several things were lacking which on the

second occasion proved to be very effective in the exercise of her art,

she had made Heliodora promise to return in three days’ time. The young

widow had kept her word, and had made her appearance punctually with

Katharina.

To be in Egypt, the land of sorcery and the magic arts, without putting

them to the test, was impossible. Even Martina allowed this, though she

did not care for such things for herself. She was content with her lot;

and if any change for the worse were in prospect she would rather not be

tormented beforehand by a wise prophet; nor was it better to be deluded

by a foolish one. Happiness as of Heaven itself she no longer craved;

it would only have disturbed her peace. But she was the last person to

think ill of the young, whose life still lay before them, if they longed

to look into futurity.

The fair widow and her companion crossed the sorceress’ threshold in

some trepidation, and Katharina was the more agitated of the two; for

this afternoon she had seen Philippus leave the house of Rufinus, and

not long after some Arab officials had called there. Paula had come into

the garden shortly before sundown, her eyes red with weeping; and when,

soon after, Pulcheria and her mother had joined her there, Paula had

thrown herself on Joanna’s neck, sobbing so bitterly that the mother

and daughter--“whose tears were near her eyes”--had both followed her

example. Something serious had occurred; but when she had gone to the

house to pick up further information, old Betta, who was particularly

snappish with her, had refused her admission quite rudely.

Then, on their way hither, she and Heliodora had had a painful

adventure; the chariot, lent by Neforis to convey them as far as the

edge of the necropolis, was stopped on the way by a troop of Arab horse,

and they were subjected to a catechism by the leader.

So they entered the house of “Medea of the curls,” as the common people

called the witch, with uneasy and throbbing hearts; they were received,

however, with such servile politeness that they soon recovered

themselves, and even the timid Heliodora began to breathe freely again.

The sorceress knew this time who Katharina was, and paid more respectful

attention to the daughter of the wealthy widow.

The young crescent moon had risen, a circumstance which Medea declared

enabled her to see more clearly into the future than she could do at

the time of the Luna-negers as she called the moonless night. Her inward

vision had been held in typhornian darkness at the time of their first

visit, by the influence of some hostile power. She had felt this as soon

as they had quitted her, but to-day she saw clearer. Her mind’s eye was

as clear as a silver mirror, she had purified it by three days’ fasting

and not a mote could escape her sight.--“Help, ye children of Horapollo!

Help, Hapi and Ye three holy ones!”

“Oh, my beauties, my beauties!” she went on enthusiastically. “Hundreds

of great dames have proved my art, but such splendid fortunes I never

before saw crowding round any two heads as round yours. Do you hear

how the cauldrons of fortune are seething? The very lids lift! Amazing,

amazing.”

She stretched out her hand towards the vessels as though conjuring them

and said solemnly: “Abundance of happiness; brimming over, brimming

over! Bursting storehouses! Zefa-oo Metramao. Return, return, to the

right levels, the right heights, the right depth, the right measure!

Your Elle Mei-Measurer, Leveller, require them, Techuti, require them,

double Ibis!”

She made them both sit down on elegant seats in front of the boiling

pots, tied the “thread of Anubis” round the ring-finger of each, asked

in a low whisper between muttered words of incantation for a hair of

each, and after placing the hairs both in one cauldron she cried out

with wild vehemence, as though the weal or woe of her two visitors were

involved in the smallest omission:

“Press the finger with the thread of Anubis on your heart; fix your

eyes on the cauldron and the steam which rises to the spirits above, the

spirits of light, the great One on high!”

The two women obeyed the sorceress’ directions with beating hearts,

while she began spinning round on her toes with dizzy rapidity; her

curls flew out, and the magic wand in her extended hand described a

large and beautiful curve. Suddenly, and as if stricken by terror, she

stopped her whirl, and at the same instant the lamps went out and

the only light was from the stars and the twinkling coals under the

cauldrons. The low music died away, and a fresh strong perfume welled

out from behind the curtain.

Medea fell on her knees, lifted up her hands to Heaven, threw her head

so far back that her whole face was turned up to the sky and her eyes

gazed straight up at the stars-an attitude only possible to so supple a

spine. In this torturing attitude she sang one invocation after another,

to the zenith of the blue vault over their heads, in a clear voice of

fervent appeal. Her body was thrown forward, her mass of hair no longer

stood up but was turned towards the two young women, who every moment

expected that the supplicant would be suffocated by the blood mounting

to her head, and fall backwards; but she sang and sang, while her white

teeth glittered in the starlight that fell straight upon her face.

Presently, in the midst of the torrent of demoniacal names and magic

formulas that she sang and warbled out, a piteous and terrifying sound

came from behind the curtain as of two persons gasping, sighing,

and moaning: one voice seemed to be that of a man oppressed by great

anguish; the other was the half-suffocated wailing of a suffering child.

This soon became louder, and at length a voice said in Egyptian: “Water,

a drink of water.”

The woman started to her feet, exclaiming: “It is the cry of the poor

and oppressed who have been robbed to enrich those who have too much

already; the lament of those whom Fate has plundered to heap you with

wealth enough for hundreds.” As she spoke these words, in Greek and

with much unction, she turned to the curtain and added solemnly, but in

Egyptian: “Give drink to the thirsty; the happy ones will spare him

a drop from their overflow. Give the white drink to the wailing

child-spirit, that he may be soothed and quenched.--Play, music, and

drown the lamentations of the spirits in sorrow.”

Then, turning to Heliodora’s kettle she said sternly, as if in obedience

to some higher power:

“Seven gold pieces to complete the work,”--and while the young widow

drew out her purse the sorceress lighted the lamps, singing as she did

so and as she dropped the coin into the boiling fluid: “Pure, bright

gold! Sunlight buried in a mine! Holy Seven. Shashef, Shashef! Holy

Seven, marry and mingle--melt together!”

When this was done she poured out of the cauldron a steaming fluid as

black as ink, into a shallow saucer, called Heliodora to her side, and

told her what she could see in the mirror of its surface.

It was all fair, and gave none but delightful replies to the widow’s

questioning. And all the sorceress said tended to confirm the young

woman’s confidence in her magic art; she described Orion as exactly as

though she saw him indeed in the surface of the ink, and said he was

travelling with an older man. And lo! he was returning already; in the

bright mirror she could see Heliodora clasped in her lover’s arms; and

now--it was like a picture: A stranger--not the bishop of Memphis--laid

her hand in his and blessed their union before the altar in a vast and

magnificent cathedral.

Katharina, who had been chilled with apprehensions and a thrill of awe,

as she listened to Medea’s song, listened to every word with anxious

attention; what Medea said--how she described Orion--that was more

wonderful than anything else, beyond all she had believed possible. And

the cathedral in which the lovers were to be united was the church of

St. Sophia at Constantinople, of which she had heard so much.

A tight grip seemed to clutch her heart; still, eagerly as she

listened to Medea’s words, her sharp ears heard the doleful gasping and

whimpering behind the hanging; and this distressed and dismayed her; her

breath came short, and a deep, torturing sense of misfortune possessed

her wholly. The wailing child-spirit within, a portion of whose joys

Medea said had been allotted to her--nay, she had not robbed him,

certainly not--for who could be more wretched than she? It was only that

beautiful, languishing young creature who was so lavishly endowed by

Fortune with gifts enough and to spare for others without number. Oh!

if she could but have snatched them from her one after another, from the

splendid ruby she was wearing to-day, to Orion’s love!

She was pale and tremulous as she rose at the call of the sorceress,

after she also had offered seven gold pieces. She would gladly have

purchased annihilating curses to destroy her happier rival.

The black liquid in the saucer began to stir, and a sharply smelling

vapor rose from it; the witch blew this aside, and as soon as the murky

fluid was a little cool, and the surface was smooth and mirror-like,

she asked Katharina what she most desired to know. But the answer was

checked on her lips; a fearful thundering and roaring suddenly made

the house shake; Medea dropped the saucer with a piercing shriek, the

contents splashed up, and warm, sticky drops fell on the girl’s arms and

dress. She was quite overcome with the startling horror, and Heliodora,

who could herself scarcely stand, had to support her, for she tottered

and would have fallen.

The sorceress had vanished; a half-grown lad, a young man, and a very

tall Egyptian girl in scanty attire were rushing about the room. They

flew hither and thither, throwing all the vessels they could lay hands

on into an opening in the floor from which they had lifted a trap-door;

pouring water on the braziers and extinguishing the lights, while they

drove the two strangers into a corner of the hall, rating and abusing

them. Then the lads clambered like cats up to the opening in the roof,

and sprang off and away.

A shrill whistle rang through the house, and in moment Medea burst into

the room again, clutched the two trembling women by the shoulders, and

exclaimed: “For Christ’s sake, be merciful! My life is at stake Sorcery

is punishable by death. I have done my best for you. You came here--that

is what you must say--out of charity to nurse the sick.” She pushed them

both behind the hanging whence they still heard feeble groans, into a

low, stuffy room, and the over-grown girl slipped in behind them.

Here, on miserable couches, lay an old man shivering, and showing dark

spots on his bare breast and face: and a child of five, whose crimson

cheeks were burning with fever.

Heliodora felt as if she must suffocate in the plague stricken, heavy

atmosphere, and Katharina clung to her helplessly; but the soothsayer

pulled her away, saying: “Each to one bed: you to the child, and

you--the old man.”

Involuntarily they obeyed the woman who was panting with fright. The

water-wagtail, who never in her life thought of a sick person, turned

very sick and looked away from the sufferer; but the your widow, who had

spent many and many a night by the death-bed of a man she had loved, and

who, tender-hearted, had often tended her sick slaves with her own hand,

looked compassionately into the pretty, pain-stricken face of the child,

and wiped the dews from his clammy brow.

Katharina shuddered; but her attention was presently attracted to

something fresh; from the other side of the house came a clatter of

weapons, the door was pushed open, and the physician Philippus walked

into the room. He desired the night-watch, who were with him, to wait

outside. He had come by the command of the police authorities, to whose

ears information had been brought that there were persons sick of the

plague in the house of Medea, and that she, nevertheless, continued to

receive visitors. It had long been decided that she must be taken in the

act of sorcery, and warning had that day been given that she expected

illustrious company in the evening. The watch were to find her

red-handed, so to speak; the leech was to prove whether her house was

indeed plague-stricken; and in either case the senate wished to have the

sorceress safe in prison and at their mercy, though even Philippus had

not been taken into their confidence.

The visitors he had come upon were the last he had expected to

find here. He looked at them with a disapproving shake of the head,

interrupted the woman’s voluble asseverations that these noble ladies

had come, out of Christian charity, to comfort and help the sick, with

a rough exclamation: “A pack of lies!” and at once led the coerced sick

nurses out of the house. He then represented to them the fearful risk

to which their folly had exposed them, and insisted very positively

on their returning home and, notwithstanding the lateness of the hour,

taking a bath and putting on fresh garments.

With trembling knees they found their way back to the chariot; but

even before it could start Heliodora had broken down in tears, while

Katharina, throwing herself back on the cushions, thought, as she

glanced at her weeping companion: “This is the beginning of the

wonderful happiness she was promised! It is to be hoped it may

continue!”

It seemed indeed as though Katharina’s guardian spirit had overheard

this amiable wish; for, as the chariot drove past the guard-house into

the court-yard of the governor’s house, it was stopped by armed men with

brown, warlike faces, and they had to wait some minutes till an Arab

officer appeared to enquire who they were, and what they wanted. This

they explained in fear and trembling, and they then learnt that the

Arab government had that very evening taken possession of the residence.

Orion was accused of serious crimes, and his guests were to depart on

the following day.

Katharina, who was known to the interpreter, was allowed to go with

Heliodora to the senator’s wife; she might also use the chariot to

return home in, and if she pleased, take the Byzantines with her, for

the palace would be in the hands of the soldiery for the next few days.

The two young women held council. Katharina pressed her friend to come

at once to her mother’s house, for she felt certain that they were

plague-stricken, and how could they procure a bath in a house full of

soldiers? Heliodora could not and must not remain with Martina in this

condition, and the senator’s wife could follow her next day. Her mother,

she added, would be delighted to welcome so dear a guest.

The widow was passive, and when Martina had gladly consented to accept

the invitation of her “delivering angel,” the chariot carried them to

Susannah’s house. The widow had long been in bed, firmly convinced that

her daughter was asleep and dreaming in her own pretty room.

Katharina would not have her disturbed, and the bath-room was so far

from Susannah’s apartment that she slept on quietly while Katharina and

her guest purified themselves.

CHAPTER XI.

The inhabitants of the governor’s residence passed a fearful night.

Martina asked herself what sin she had committed that she, of all

people, should be picked out to witness such a disaster.

And where were her schemes of marriage now? Any movement in such heat

was indeed scarcely endurable; but she would have moved from one part

of the house to another a dozen times, and allowed herself to be tossed

hither and thither like a ball, if it could have enabled her to save her

dear “great Sesostris” from such hideous peril. And at the bottom of all

this was, no doubt, this wild, senseless business of the nuns.

And these Arabs! They simply helped themselves to whatever they fancied,

and were, of course, in a position to strip the son of the great

Mukaukas of all he possessed and reduce him to beggary. A pretty

business this!

Heliodora, to be sure, had enough for both, and she and her husband

would not forget them in their will; but there was more than this in the

balance now: it was a matter of life and death.

A cold shudder ran through her at the thought; and her fears were only

too well founded: the black Arab who had come to parley with her, and

had finally allowed her to remain under this roof till next day, had

told her as much through the interpreter. A fearful, horrible, nameless

catastrophe! And that she should be in the midst of it and have to see

it all!

Then her husband, her poor Justinus! How hard this would fall on him!

She could not cease weeping; and before she fell asleep she prayed

fervently indeed, to the saints and the dear Mother of God, that they

would bring all to a happy issue. She closed her eyes on the thought:

“What a misfortune!” and she woke to it again early in the morning.

She, however, had known nothing of the worst horrors of that fatal

night.

A troop of Arab soldiers had crossed the Nile at nightfall, some on

foot or on horseback and some in boats, led by Obada the Vekeel, and

had invested the governor’s residence. When they had fully assured

themselves that Orion was indeed absent they took Nilus prisoner. It

was then Obada’s business to inform the Mukaukas’ widow of what had

happened, and to tell her that she must quit the house next day. This

must be done, because he had views of his own as to what was to become

of the venerable house of the oldest family in the country.

Neforis was still up, and when the interpreter was announced as Obada’s

forerunner, she was in the fountain-room. He found her a good deal

excited; for, although she was incapable of any consecutive train of

thought and, when her mind was required to exert itself, her ideas only

came like lightning-flashes through her brain, she had observed that

something unusual was going on. Sebek and her maid had evaded her

enquiries, and would say no more than that Amru’s representative

had come to speak with the young master. It seemed to be something

important, perhaps some false accusation.

The interpreter now explained that Orion himself was accused of having

planned and aided an enterprise which had cost the lives of twelve Arab

soldiers; and, as she knew, any injury inflicted even on a single Moslem

by an Egyptian was punished by death and the confiscation of his goods.

Besides this, her son was accused of a robbery.

At the close of this communication, to which Neforis listened with a

vacant stare, horrified and at last almost crushed, the interpreter

begged that she would grant the Vekeel an audience.

“Not just yet--give me a few minutes,” said the widow, bringing out

the words with difficulty: first she must have recourse to her secret

specific. When she had done so, she expressed her readiness to

see Obada. Her son’s swarthy foe was anxious to appear a mild and

magnanimous man in her eyes, so it was with flattering servility and

many smirking grins that he communicated to her the necessity for her

quitting the house in which she had passed the longest and happiest half

of her life, and no later than next day.

To his announcement that her private fortune would remain untouched, and

that she would be at liberty to reside in Memphis or to go to her own

house in Alexandria, she indifferently replied that “she should see.”

She then enquired whether the Arabs had yet succeeded in capturing her

son.

“Not actually,” replied the Vekeel. “But we know where he is hiding,

and by to-morrow or the next day we shall lay hands on the unhappy young

man.”

But, as he spoke, the widow detected a malicious gleam in his eyes to

which, so far, he had tried to give a sympathetic expression, and she

went on with a slight shake of the bead: “Then it is a case of life and

death?”

“Compose yourself, noble lady,” was the reply. “Of death alone.”

Neforis looked up to heaven and for some minutes did not speak; then she

asked:

“And who has accused him of robbery?” “The head of his own Church....”

“Benjamin?” she murmured with a peculiar smile. Only yesterday she had

made her will in favor of the patriarch and the Church. “If Benjamin

could see that,” said she to herself, “he would change his views of you

and your people, and have prayers constantly said for us.”

As she spoke no more the Vekeel sat looking at her inquisitively and

somewhat at a loss, till at length she rose, and with no little dignity

dismissed him, remarking that now their business was at an end and she

had nothing further to say to him.

This closed the interview; and as the Vekeel quitted the fountain-room

he muttered to himself: “What a woman! Either she is possessed and her

brain is crazed, or she is of a rarely heroic pattern.”

Neforis was supported to her own room; when she was in bed she desired

her maid to bring a small box out of her chest and place it on the

little table containing medicines by the bead of the couch.

As soon as she was alone she took out two letters which George had

written to her before their marriage, and a poem which Orion had once

addressed to her; she tried to read them, but the words danced before

her eyes, and she was forced to lay them aside. She took up a little

packet containing hair cut from the heads of her sons after death, and

a lock of her husband’s. She gazed on these dear memorials with rapt

tenderness, and now the poppy juice began to take effect: the images of

those departed ones rose clear in her mind, and she was as near to them

as though they were standing in living actuality by her side.

Still holding the curls in her hand, she looked up into vacancy, trying

to apprehend clearly what had occurred within the last few hours and

what lay before her: She must leave this room, this ample couch, this

house--all, in short, that was bound up with the dearest memories of

those she had loved. She was to be forced to this--but did it beseem

her to submit to this Negro, this stranger in the house where she was

mistress? She shook her head with a scornful smile; then opening a glass

phial, which was still half-full of opium pillules, she placed a few on

her tongue and again gazed sky-wards.--Another face now looked down on

her; she saw the husband from whom not even death could divide her, and

at his feet their two murdered sons. Presently Orion seemed to rise

out of the clouds, as a diver comes up from the water, and make for

the shore of the island on which George and the other two seemed to be

standing. His father opened his arms to receive him and clasped him to

his heart, while she herself--or was it only her wraith--went to the

others, who hurried forward to greet her tenderly; and then her husband,

too, met her, and she found rest on his bosom.

For hours, and long before the incursion of the Arabs, she had been

feeling half stunned and her mind clouded; but now a delicious,

slumberous lethargy came over her, to which her whole being urged her

to yield. But every time her eyes closed, the thought of the morrow shot

through her brain, and finally, with a great effort, she sat up, took

some water--which was always close at hand--shook into it the remaining

pillules in the bottle, and drank it off to the very last drop.

Her hand was steady; the happy smile on her lips, and the eager

expression of her eyes, might have led a spectator to believe that she

was thirsty and had mixed herself a refreshing draught. She had no look

of a desperate creature laying violent hands on her own life; she

felt no hesitancy, no fear of death, no burthen of the guilt she was

incurring--nothing but ecstatic weariness and hope; blissful hope of a

life without end, united to those she loved.

Hardly had she swallowed the deadly draught when she shivered with a

sudden chill. Raising herself a little she called her maid, who was

sitting up in the adjoining room; and as the woman looked alarmed at

her mistress’s fixed stare, she stammered out: “A priest--quick--I am

dying.”

The woman flew off to the viridarium to call Sebek, who was standing in

front of the tablinum with the Vekeel; she told him what had happened,

and the Negro gave him leave to obey his dying mistress, escorting him

as far as the gate. Just outside, the steward met a deacon who had

been giving the blessing of the Church to a poor creature dying of the

pestilence, and in a few minutes they were standing by the widow’s bed.

The locks of her sons’ hair lay by her side; her hands were folded over

a crucifix; but her eyes, which had been fixed on the features of the

Saviour, had wandered from it and again gazed up to Heaven.

The priest spoke her name, but she mistook him for her son and murmured

in loving accents:

“Orion, poor, poor child! And you, Mary, my darling, my sweet little

pet! Your father--yes, dear boy, only come with me.--Your father is

kind again and forgives you. All those I loved are together now, and no

one--Who can part us? Husband--George, listen...”

The priest performed his office, but she paid no heed, still staring

upwards; her smiling lips continued to move, but no articulate sound

came from them. At last they were still, her eyelids fell, her hands

dropped the crucifix, a slight shiver ran through her limbs, which then

relaxed, and she opened her mouth as though to draw a deeper breath.

But it closed no more, and when the faithful steward pressed her lips

together her face was rigid and her heart had ceased to beat.

The honest man sobbed aloud; when he carried the melancholy news to the

Vekeel, Obada growled out a curse, and said to a subaltern officer who

was super-intending the loading of his camels with the treasures from

the tablinum:

“I meant to have treated that cursed old woman with conspicuous

generosity, and now she has played me this trick; and in Medina they

will lay her death at my door, unless...”

But here he broke off; and as he once more watched the loading of the

camels, he only thought to himself: “In playing for such high stake’s,

a few gold pieces more or less do not count. A few more heads must fall

yet--the handsome Egyptian first and foremost.--If the conspirators at

Medina only play their part! The fall of Omar means that of Amru, and

that will set everything right.”

CHAPTER XII.

Katharina slept little and rose very early, as was her habit, while

Heliodora was glad to sleep away the morning hours. In this scorching

season they were, to be sure, the pleasantest of the twenty-four, and

the water-wagtail usually found them so; but to-day, though a splendid

Indian flower had bloomed for the first time, and the head gardener

pointed it out to her with just pride, she could not enjoy it and be

glad. It might perish for aught she cared, and the whole world with it!

There was no one stirring yet in the next garden, but the tall leech

Philippus might be seen coming along the road to pay a visit to the

women.

A few swift steps carried her to the gate, whence she called him. She

must entreat him to say nothing of her last night’s expedition; but

before she had time to prefer her request he had paused to tell her that

the widow of the Mukaukas, overcome by alarm and horror, had followed

her husband to the next world.

There had been a time when Katharina had been devoted to Neforis,

regarding her as a second mother; when the governor’s residence

had seemed to her the epitome of all that was great, venerable, and

illustrious; and when she had been proud and happy to be allowed to run

in and out, and to be loved like a child of the family. The tears that

started to her eyes were sincere, and it was a relief to her, too, to

lay aside the gay and defiantly happy mien which she wore as a mask,

while all in her soul was dark, wild, and desperate.

The physician understood her grief; he readily promised not to betray

her to any one, and did not blame her, though he again pointed out the

danger she had incurred and earnestly insisted that every article of

clothing, which she or Heliodora had worn, must be destroyed. The subtle

germ of the malady, he said, clung to everything; every fragment of

stuff which had been touched by the plague-stricken was especially

fitted to carry the infection and disseminate the disease. She

listened to him in deep alarm, but she could satisfy him on this point;

everything she or her companion had worn had been burnt in the bath-room

furnace.

The physician went on; and she, heedless of the growing heat, wandered

restlessly about the grounds. Her heart beat with short, quick, painful

jerks; an invisible burthen weighed upon her and prevented her breathing

freely. A host of torturing thoughts haunted her unbidden; they were not

to be exorcised, and added to her misery: Neforis dead; the residence in

the hands of the Arabs; Orion bereft of his possessions and held guilty

of a capital crime.

And the peaceful house beyond the hedge--what trouble was hanging over

its white-haired master and his guileless wife and daughter? A storm

was gathering, she could see it approaching--and beyond it, like another

murky, death-dealing thunder-cloud, was the pestilence, the fearful

pestilence.

And it was she, a fragile, feeble girl--a volatile water-wagtail--who

had brought all these terrors down on them, who had opened the

sluice-gates through which ruin was now beginning to pour in on all

around her. She could see the flood surging, swelling--saw it lapping

round her own house, her own feet; drops of sweat bedewed her forehead

and hands from terror at the mere thought. And yet, and yet!--If she had

really had the power to bind calamity in the clouds, to turn the tide

back into its channel, she would not have done so! The uttermost that

she longed for, as the fruit of the seed she had sown and which she

longed to see ripen, had not yet come to pass--and to see that she would

endure anything, even death and parting from this deceitful, burning,

unlovely world.

Death awaited Orion; and before it overtook him he should know who had

sharpened the sword. Perhaps he might escape with his life; but the

Arab would not disgorge what he once had seized, and if that young

and splendid Croesus should come out of prison alive, but a beggar,

then--then.... And as for Paula! As for Heliodora! For once her little

hand had wrenched the thunderbolts from Zeus’ eagle, and she would find

one for them!

The sense of her terrible power, to which more than one victim had

already fallen, intoxicated her. She would drive Orion--Orion who had

betrayed her--into utter ruin and misery; she would see him a beggar at

her feet!--And this it was that gave her courage to do her worst; this,

and this alone. What she would do then, she herself knew not; that lay

as yet in the womb of the Future. She might take a fancy to do something

kind, compassionate, and tender.

By the time she went into the house again her fears and depression had

vanished; revived energy possessed her soul, and the little eavesdropper

and tale-bearer had become in this short hour a purposeful and terrible

woman, ready for any crime.

“Poor little lamb!” thought Philippus, as he went into Rufinus’ garden.

“That miserable man may have brought pangs enough to her little heart!”

His old friend’s garden-plot was deserted. Under the sycamore, however,

he perceived the figures of a very tall young man and a pretty woman,

delicate, fair-haired, and rather pale. The big young fellow was holding

a skein of wool on his huge, outstretched hands; the girl was winding

it on to a ball. These were Rustem the Masdakite and Mandane, both now

recovered from their injuries; the girl, indeed, had been restored to

the new life of a calm and understanding mind. Philippus had watched

over this wonderful resuscitation with intense interest and care. He

ascribed it, in the first instance, to the great loss of blood from the

wound in her head; and secondly, to the fresh air and perfect nursing

she had had. All that was now needful was to protect her against

agitation and violent emotions. In the Masdakite she had found a friend

and a submissive adorer; and Philippus could rejoice as he looked at the

couple, for his skill had indeed brought him nothing but credit.

His greeting to them was cheery and hearty, and in answer to his

enquiry: “How are you getting on?” Rustem replied, “As lively as a fish

in water,” adding, as he pointed to Mandane, “and I can say the same for

my fellow-countrywoman.”

“You are agreed then?” said the leech, and she nodded eager assent.

At this Philippus shook his finger at the man, exclaiming: “Do not get

too tightly entangled here, my friend. Who knows how soon Haschim may

call you away.”

Then, turning his back on the convalescents, he murmured to himself:

“Here again is something to cheer us in the midst of all this

trouble-these two, and little Mary.”

Rufinus, before starting on his journey, had sent back all the crippled

children he had had in his care to their various parents; thus the

anteroom was empty.

The women apparently were at breakfast in the dining-room. No, he was

mistaken; it was yet too early, and Pulcheria was still busy laying the

table. She did not notice him as he went in, for she was busy arranging

grapes, figs, pomegranates and sycamore-figs, a fruit resembling

mulberries in flavor which grow in clusters from the trunk of the

tree-between leaves, which the drought and heat of the past weeks had

turned almost yellow. The tempting heap was fast rising in an elegant

many-hued hemisphere; but her thoughts were not in her occupation, for

tears were coursing each other down her cheeks.

“Those tears are for her father,” thought the leech as he watched her

from the threshold. “Poor child!”--How often he had heard his old friend

call her so!

And till now he had never thought of her but as a child; but to-day he

must look at her with different eyes--her own father had enjoined it.

And in fact he gazed at her as though he beheld a miracle.

What had come over little Pulcheria?--How was it that he had never

noticed it before?--It was a well-grown maiden that he saw, moving

round, snowwhite arms; and he could have sworn that she had only thin,

childish arms, for she had thrown them round his neck many a time when

she had ridden up and down the garden on his back, calling him her fine

horse.

How long ago was that? Ten years! She was now seventeen!

And how slender, and delicate, and white her hands were--those hands for

which her mother had often scolded her when, after building castles of

sand, she had sat down to table unwashed.

Now she was laying the grapes round the pomegranates, and he remembered

how Horapollo, only yesterday, had praised her dainty skill.

The windows were well screened, but a few sunbeams forced their way into

the room and fell on her red-gold hair. Even the fair Boeotians, whom he

had admired in his student-days at Athens, had no such glorious crown of

hair. That she had a sweet and pretty face he had always known; but now,

as she raised her eyes and first observed him, meeting his gaze with

maidenly embarrassment and sweet surprise, and yet with perfect welcome,

he felt himself color and he had to pause a moment to collect himself

before he could respond with something more than an ordinary greeting to

hers. The dialogue that flashed through his mind in that instant began

with sentences full of meaning. But all he said was:

“Yes, here I am,” which really did not deserve the hearty reply:

“Thank God for that!” nor the bewitching embarrassment of the

explanation that ensued: “on my mother’s account.”

Again he blushed; he, the man who had long since forgotten his youthful

shyness. He asked after Dame Joanna, and how she was bearing her

trouble, and then he said gravely: “I was the bearer of bad news

yesterday, and to-day again I have come like a bird of ill-omen.”

“You?” she said with a smile, and the simple word conveyed so sweet a

doubt of his capacity for bringing evil that he could not help saying to

himself that his friend, in leaving this child, this girl, to his

care, had bequeathed to him the best gift that one mortal can devise

to another: a dear, trustful, innocent daughter--or no, a younger

sister--as pure, as engaging, and as lovable as only the child of such

parents could be.

While he stood telling her of what had happened at the governor’s house,

he noted how deeply, for Paula’s and Mary’s sake, she took to heart the

widow’s death, though Neforis had been nothing to her; and he decided

that he would at once make Pulcheria’s mother acquainted with her dead

husband’s wishes.

All this did not supplant his old passion for Paula; far from it--that

tortured him still as deeply and hotly as ever. But at the same time he

was conscious of its evil influence; he knew that by cherishing it he

was doing himself harm--nay a real injury since it was not returned.

He knew that within reach of Paula, and condemned to live with her, he

could never recover his peace, but must suffer constant pangs. It was

only away from her, and yet under the same roof with Joanna and her

daughter, that he could ever hope to be a contented and happy man; but

he dared not put this thought into words.

Pulcheria detected that he had something in reserve, and feared lest he

should know of some new impending woe; however, on this head he could

reassure her, telling her that, on the contrary, he had something in

his mind which, so far at least as he was concerned, was a source of

pleasure. Her grieved and anxious spirit could indeed hardly believe

him; and he begged her not to lose all hope in better days, asking her

if she had true and entire trust in him.

She warmly replied that he must surely feel that she did; and now, as

the others came into the room, she nodded to her mother, whom she had

already seen quite early, and offering him her hand shook his heartily.

This had been a restful interval; but the sight of Paula, and the news

he had to give her, threw him back into his old depressed and miserable

mood.

Little Mary, whose cheeks had recovered their roses and who looked quite

well again, threw her arms round Paula’s neck as she heard the evil

tidings; but Paula herself was calmer than he had expected. She turned

very pale at the first shock, but soon she could listen to him with

composure, and presently quite recovered her usual demeanor. Philippus,

as he watched her, had to control himself sternly, and as soon as

possible he took his leave.

It was as though he had been fated once more to see with agonizing

clearness what he had lost in her; she walked through life as though

borne up by lofty feeling, and a thoughtful radiance lent her noble

features a bewitching charm which grieved while it enchanted him.

Orion a prisoner, and all his possessions confiscated! The thought had

horrified her for a little while; but then it had come to her that this

was just as it should be--that what had at first looked like a dreadful

disaster had been sent to enable her love to cast off its husks, to

appear in all its loftiness and purity, and to give it, by the help of

the All-merciful, its true consecration.

She did not fear for his life, for he had told her and written to her

that Amru had been paternal in his kindness; and all that had occurred

was, she was sure, the work of the Vekeel, of whose odious and cruel

character he had given her a horrible picture that day when Rufinus had

gone to warn the abbess.

When Philippus had left his friends, he sighed deeply. How different

he had found these women from what he had expected. Yes, his old friend

knew men well!

From trifling details he had succeeded in forming a more accurate idea

of Pulcheria than the leech himself had gained in years of intimacy.

Horapollo had foreseen, too, that the danger which threatened the

Mukaukas’ son would fan Paula’s passions like a fresh breeze; and

Joanna, frail, ailing Joanna! she had behaved heroically under the loss

of the companion with whom she had lived for so many years in faithful

love. He could not help comparing her with the wretched Neforis; what

was it that enabled one to bear the equal loss with so much more

dignity than the other? Nothing but the presence of the tender-hearted

Pulcheria, who shared her sorrow with such beautiful resignation,

such ready and complete sympathy. This the governor’s widow had wholly

lacked; and how happy were they who could call such a heart their own!

He walked through the garden with his head bent, and looking neither to

the right hand nor the left.

The Masdakite, who was still sitting with Mandane under the sycamore,

as indifferent to the torrid heat as she was, looked after him, and said

with a sigh as he pointed to him:

“There he goes. This is the first time he ever said a rude word to you

or to me: or did you not understand?”

“Oh yes,” said she in a low voice, looking down at her needlework.

They talked in Persian, for she had not forgotten the language which her

mother had spoken till her dying day.

Life is sometimes as strange as a fairy-tale; and the accident was

indeed wonderful which had brought these two beings, of all others, at

the same time to the sick room. His distant home was also hers, and he

even knew her uncle--her father’s brother--and her father’s sad history.

When the Greek army had taken possession of the province where they

had lived, the men had fled into the woods with their flocks and herds,

while the women and children took refuge in the fortress which defended

the main road. This had not long held out against the Byzantines, and

the women, among them Mandane with her mother, had been handed over to

the soldiers as precious booty. Her father had then joined the troops to

rescue the women, but he and his comrades had only lost their lives in

the attempt. To this day the valiant man’s end was a tale told in his

native place, and his property and valuable rose gardens now belonged to

his younger brother. So the two convalescents had plenty to talk about.

It was curious to note how clearly the memories of her childhood were

stamped on Mandane’s mind.

She had laid her wounded head on the pillow of sickness with a darkened

brain, and the new pain had lifted the veil from her mind as a storm

clears the oppressive atmosphere of a sultry summer’s day. She loved to

linger now among the scenes of her childhood--the time when she had

a mother.--Or she would talk of the present; all between was like a

night-sky black, and only lighted up by an awful comet and shining

stars. That comet was Orion. All she had enjoyed with him and suffered

through him she consigned to the period of her craziness; she had taught

herself to regard it all as part of the madness to which she had been

a victim. Her nature was not capable of cherishing hatred and she could

feel no animosity towards the Mukaukas’ son. She thought of him as of

one who, without evil intent, had done her great wrong; one whom she

might not even remember without running into peril.

“Then you mean to say,” the Masdakite began once more, “that you would

really miss me if Haschim sent for me?”

“Yes indeed, Rustem; I should be very sorry.”

“Oh!” said the other, passing his hand over his big head, on which

the dense mane of hair which had been shaved off was beginning to grow

again. “Well then, Mandane, in that case--I wanted to say it yesterday,

but I could not get it out.--Tell me: why would you be sorry if I were

to leave you?”

“Because--well, no one can have all their reasons ready; because you

have always been kind to me; and because you came from my country, and

talk Persian with me as my mother used.”

“Is that all?” said the man slowly, and he rubbed his forehead.

“No, no. Because--if once you go away, you will not be here.”

“Aye that is it; that is just the thing. And if you would be sorry for

that, then you must have liked being here--with me.”

“And why not? It has been very nice,” said the girl blushing and trying

not to meet his eyes.

“That it has--and that it is!” cried Rustem, striking his palm with the

other huge fist. “And that is why I must have it out; that is why, if we

have any sense, we two need never part.”

“But your master is sure to want you,” said she with growing confusion,

“and we cannot always remain a burthen on the kind folks here. I shall

not work at the loom again; but as I am now free, and have the scroll

that proves it, I must soon look about for some employment. And a

strong, healthy fellow like you cannot always be nursing yourself.”

“Nursing myself!” and he laughed gaily. “I will earn money, and enough

for three!”

“By your camels always, up and down the country?”

“I have done with that,” said he with a grin. “We will go back to our

own country; there I will buy a good piece of pasture land, for my

eldest brother has our little estate, and you may ask Haschim whether I

understand camel-breeding.”

“But Rustem, consider.”

“Consider! Think this, and think that! Where there’s a will there’s a

way. That is the upshot of it all. And if you mean to say that before

you buy you must have money, and that the best may come to grief, all

I can tell you is.... Can you read? No? nor I; but here in my pocket

I have my accounts in the master’s own hand. Eleven thousand, three

hundred and sixty drachmae were due to me for wages the last time we

reckoned: all the profit the master had set down to my credit since

I led his caravan. He has kept almost all of it for me; for food was

allowed, and there was almost always a bit of stuff for a garment to

be found among the bales, and I never was a sot. Eleven thousand, three

hundred and sixty drachmae! Hey, little one, that is the figure. And now

what do you say? Can we buy something with that? Yes or no?”

He looked at her triumphantly, and she eagerly replied: “Yes, yes

indeed; and in our country I think something worth having.”

“And we--you and I--we will begin a quite new life. I was seventeen when

I first set out with my master, and I was twenty-six last midsummer. How

many years wandering does that make?”

They both thought this over for some time; then Mandane said doubtfully

“If I am not mistaken it is eight.”

“I believe it is nine,” he exclaimed. “Let us see. Here, give me your

little paw! There, I begin with seventeen, that is where I started.

First your little-finger--what a mite of a thing, and then the rest.” He

took her right hand and counted off her fingers till he ended with the

last finger of the left. The result puzzled him; he shook his head,

saying: “There are ten fingers on both hands, sure enough, and yet it

cannot be ten years; it is nine at most I know.”

He began the counting, which he liked uncommonly, all over again; but

with the same result. Mandane said it was but nine, she had counted it

up herself; and he agreed, and declared that her little fingers must be

bewitched. And this game would have gone on still longer but that she

remembered that the seventeen must not be included at all, and that he

ought to begin with eighteen. Rustem could not immediately take this in,

and even when he admitted it he did not release her hand, but went on

with gay resolution:

“And you see, my girl, I mean to keep this little hand--you may pull it

away if you choose--but it is mine, and the pretty little maid, and all

that belongs to it. And I will take you and both your hands, bewitched

fingers and all, home with me. There they may weave and stitch as much

as you like; but as man and wife no one shall part us, and we will lead

a life such a life! The joys of Paradise shall be no better than a rap

on the skull with an olive-wood log in comparison!”

He tried to take her hand again, but she drew it away, saying in deep

confusion and without looking up: “No, Rustem. I was afraid yesterday

that it would come to this; but it can never, never be. I am

grateful--oh! so grateful; but no, it cannot be, and that must be the

end of it. I can never be your wife. Rustem.”