Deprived of the counsel of Shems-ud-dìn, demoralized by confinement
within walls, the little band of Circassians loitered in the markets with
a sense of grievance. The sight of so many heathen—Franks and Nazarenes
and unclean Jews—disgusted them in the city; and when they rode out
to exercise their horses, the need to return went with them, killing
pleasure, like the clank of a heavy chain.
At the end of ten days squandered in El Cûds, Hassan Agha was further
from obtaining his rifles than he had been at first passing the gate. The
soldiers avoided him; it seemed they had their orders. Abd-ur-Rahman,
though smiling when they met in the street, steadfastly refused him
audience. On the fourteenth day he faced the stern necessity, if they
were to stay much longer in that money-eating place, of selling one of
the lovely steeds which were their glory.
In a certain tavern he cast lots with his men, whose horse should go; and
the lot fell upon Nesìb the Thief, who straightway lifted up his voice
and wept. Yet even he preferred the sacrifice to a shameful retreat, as
though worsted by the boy Abd-ur-Rahman, while their beloved saint and
his daughter, sole pretext of their coming, still abode in the city.
They had taken it for granted beforehand that the cure of Alia by the
wizard would be instantaneous, a mere wave of the hand, and resented its
slowness as a deceit of the heathen dog.
Yet they were restrained from ventilating this grievance, and so easing
their minds, by a captious whim of Hassan’s to uphold the Frankish pig.
“He is an English physician. If Allah permits, he will perform his part,”
was the answer to their grumblings.
“What change is this, O lord Hassan!” cried one, thus repressed. “Is an
Englishman other than a Frank, a vile infidel? Did they not deliver our
land to the Muscovite, even while they touched our hands in friendship?
How often hast thou denounced the whole brood of them?”
“Be silent!” Hassan commanded. “Taken separately they are good
people—none better—brave and the slingstone of their word, but put
together in the nation, they are treacherous as loose stones. Individuals
of that race strove bravely with us against the Muscovite, while their
nation betrayed them and us. It was commonly known in those days that
this kind have neither honor nor nobility except when cut off. A strange
people. Now this hakìm is cut off; he stands alone. Let be then, he will
perform his covenant.”
“In sh’ Allah!” the band murmured, but this stopper on expression of
their just annoyance only caused it to ferment.
In the temper to quarrel with their own shadows and kill whoever brushed
against them, it was only by the courtesy or the cowardice of other
wayfarers that they escaped embroilment. Even as it was, on two occasions
their conduct called for the interference of the street watch.
In the wide open space before the tower, where fellahìn from Beyt-Laham
and the surrounding villages stand to sell the produce of their fields,
they one morning encountered Ismaìl, the doorkeeper of the Frank
physician, going marketing, a basket on his arm.
Instantly Nesìb the Thief went mad, or so it seemed to his companions.
Like a fierce dog, he flew snarling at the throat of the old negro.
“Pig! Whence hast thou that garment?”
“It is the gift of my master.” The tall black grinned as with a sweep of
his long gnarled arm he flung off his assailant.
At that the fury of Nesìb passed all bounds. He drew the dagger from his
waistband and sprang again, this time foaming at the mouth.
Again the strength of the negro felled him easily. But, seeing the old
man’s wrist bled from a scratch of the knife, Hassan Agha intervened. He
dealt the Thief a cuff under the ear which sent him staggering up against
a wall near by; and did the like for Ali, the bosom friend of the Thief,
who had the rashness to cry shame on the blow.
By that time many people gathered toward them; and, spying soldiers,
Shibli took to his heels.
“Cut his life! Burn his house! O Allah! O Lord!” raved Nesìb. “Is it not
enough to lose my horse? The black pig wears my honor—O defilement! that
princely garment. May his father perish! An heirloom in my family! Woe on
us! I gave it to the Frank hakìm, and the black pig wears it. Oo—oo!”
The watch came and demanded to know the meaning of the disturbance.
Hassan simply shrugged his shoulders and directed their gaze upon the
maniac scrabbling at the wall. He said:
“It is a poor friend of mine who has had so many and great misfortunes
in a short time that, see, his mind is broken.”
“The poor one. May Allah relieve him!” said the soldiers piously, and
went their way. On their departure, Hassan gripped the Thief by the
shoulders, and shook him till his tongue lolled out.
“Allah grant thy parents a shameful death! Be silent! What is this
garment to lament—some mohair—a little braid?”
“It is an ancient garment—a most reverend garment—all my inheritance!”
gasped the sufferer.
At that, past patience, Hassan seized his ears as they had been two
handles, and, heedless of the shrieks of Ali, beat his head against the
wall, saying:
“Speak no more of it! It was given from thee, not so? So the hakìm cure
the daughter of Shems-ud-dìn, what matter who wears it? It has served its
turn.”
And Nesìb, dreading further punishment, fell silent, weeping upon Ali’s
breast.
Their second brawl was of a more public nature. It chanced, on an
afternoon when the Nazarenes had a great ceremony in their church called
the Resurrection, that Hassan and his men, attended as usual by Shibli,
passed by the mouth of the bazaar leading down to the church, at an hour
when the throng of worshipers poured forth. They were shouldering their
way through that herd of infidels, when some men made resistance, pushing
hard against them. Peering about him angrily, Hassan saw shawled heads
and swarthy faces with eyes of smoldering fire.
“O happy day! May Allah destroy every Bedawi!” He spat in the face of the
nearest.
In the twinkling of an eye there was a fray. Knives flashed, blood was
drawn. Piercing screams of Frankish women came from the crowd around.
The breath of each combatant was hot in the face of his antagonist, at
such close quarters was the strife. One fell and was trampled under foot;
another shrieked and threw up his hands, but was caught by a comrade.
All at once rang out a voice of command. The guard returning from the
church had surrounded them in the nick of time. The struggle ceased
magically. The soldiers, inured to such work, separated the two factions
neatly without partiality or insult.
“It is a vengeance for blood,” cried Hassan. “These dogs slew my two
sons. They have paid no indemnity. My cause is just!”
“He is a liar; hear him not, O my lord! We know not him nor his sons.”
“It is a blood feud; let them alone, O my children,” said the officer
in command of the detachment, a man advanced in years. “Drive the one
party back toward the church, the other on toward the tower, that they
be fairly sundered.... When thou, O old wolf, next requirest the price
of blood, see thou choose some spot more seemly than the heart of the
city. Is there not land enough open in all the world that thou must needs
choose this place?”
“Art hurt, my son?” asked Hassan of Shibli, as they were driven toward
the tower.
“Aye, and that sorely,” replied the young man, nursing his two hands. “I
had slain him who smote me, but that he escaped in the crowd.”
“I smote thee, O valorous youth,” laughed one at his side. “Thou didst
clasp me so tight from behind that I was hampered, so I pricked thy two
hands.”
At that there was loud laughter, and Shibli hung his head.
“That soldier spoke sense,” observed Hassan later, when, freed from
surveillance, they were returning to the khan. “Outside the walls is best
for battle as for everything else. Thy horse is preserved to thee, O
Thief. To-morrow, or the day after, we retire from the city. It is good
at least to know that those Bedû are not favored above us. They have not
procured rifles, or would they still be here among the jumpers of walls?
By Allah’s leave, we may chance on their camping ground and make an end.
At least, if Allah will, we can glean a little, out of sight of the
garrison.”
“We shall have all the wealth of the land, I swear it, so only that I
keep my horse,” cried the Thief in rapture.
It was with enthusiasm that all to whom Hassan spoke on the morrow heard
of his decision to quit the city. His open abuse of a government which
could refuse a few rifles to men worn out in its service, had alarmed the
timorous and supple townsmen. He had inveighed against Abd-ur-Rahman Bey,
a young man of the first influence, in terms almost treasonable, calling
him selfish and impious, a dog who pushed back the gift of an old friend,
and was above speaking to his own father. Sober men frown on such talk,
and a certain rich merchant, overhearing some of it, had observed:
“These men are possessed with blind devils. Is it to be supposed that
Abd-ur-Rahman will show them kindness when they defame him in the
markets? And can he now let them take the rifles? I will give you my
neighbor’s hoard privately, as between ourselves; but blab the matter
beforehand, and I avert my face, I draw my robe away, I have no
knowledge of you. As for what the old braggart says about Abd-ur-Rahman’s
father, it is a lie. Abd-ur-Rahman is an orphan, both of father and
mother. I have the assurance of it from his own mouth.”
That merchant, with the other tavern haunters, was aware how often men
who hear sedition and rebuke not its prophet, are themselves made guilty
of it in the eve of Power. And Hassan, in the midst of his adherents,
looked ill to rebuke. The coffee sellers, therefore, joined with their
customers in extolling the wisdom of his plan to depart. They praised his
intelligence, and that of his honorable companions. The city was no place
for them. It was a malicious place, a backbiting and slanderous place,
the home of all injustice. No wonder their Excellencies preferred the
open land; and so on.
Hassan, the dupe of these plaudits, was returning in great satisfaction
from his morning round, when he saw from a distance a man beckoning to
him beside the doorway of the khan. Drawing near, he recognized the
Bimbashi Muhammed. “Ma sh’ Allah!” he exclaimed in his soul; for he had
thought never again to behold that particular rascal.
“Deign to step apart with me,” said the soldier, with lowly reverence;
and, when Hassan had complied, he touched his uniform piteously, calling
attention to a change in it. “See, I have been degraded. I have suffered
much for thy sake. Thou wilt not give up the undertaking, surely—thou, a
great one—for the fee is like owing to me for all I have endured. I come
to tell thee that vigilance is relaxed, that all is now favorable to our
business—but to learn from the lord of the khan that your honors depart
in the morning. Go not far away, O my dear! Return by night to the city.
I will warn the guards at the city gate; I myself will admit thee to
the tower. I cannot bring you the things because of a sacred oath which
was wrung from me. But I can open the door of the armory. Fear not, O
my master. There is no danger, Allah witness. At the fourth hour of the
night. And the fee—we agreed upon that. Forget not the fee, O my eyes,
for I have suffered much.”
Once more he touched his mutilated uniform in the manner of a beggar
showing sores. Hassan pulled his white mustache, and eyed the man grimly
askance.
“It is not good to deceive Hassan Agha.”
The poor soldier flung up his hands. “Allah witness,” he cried, in tones
of real horror. “O my great lord, trust Muhammed. I am a poor honest man
whose one aim is to serve thee and obtain the reward.”
“Agreed then,” said Hassan, well content. “To-morrow, at the fourth hour
of the night, be ready. With my peace, go.”
Muhammed blessed him and went. His tone throughout, though cringing, had
been straightforward, without a trace of that conscious subtlety which
had disfigured his behavior upon former occasions. It was the manner of
a merchant who, seeing his customer in act to depart, through fear of
losing him, speaks truth for the first time.