On a divan of silken cushions in the guest chamber of a house in the
city of Adrianople, a woman lay, still and straight. Midnight was long
past. Outside, the hot wind could be heard every now and then,
listlessly flapping the carved wooden lattice-work shutters of an
overhanging balcony built out on timber props over the river Maritza,
whose turbid waters surged beneath with steady plash. Inside, the
striped silken curtains were closely drawn. The atmosphere was stuffy
and airless, filled with languorous aromatic spices.
Mary Fisher could not sleep: she lay motionless as the slow hours
passed; gazing into the darkness with wide, unseeing eyes, while she
thought of all that the coming day would bring. The end of her
incredible journey was at hand. The Grand Vizier's word was pledged.
The Grand Turk himself would grant her an audience before the hour of
noon, to receive her Message from the Great King.
Her Message. Through all the difficulties and dangers of her journey,
that Message had sustained her. As she had tramped over steep mountain
ranges, or won a perilous footing in the water-courses of dry hillside
torrents, more like staircases than roads, thoughts and words had
often rushed unbidden to her mind and even to her lips. No
difficulties could daunt her with that Message still undelivered. Many
an evening as she lay down beneath the gnarled trees of an olive
grove, or cooled her aching feet in the waters of some clear stream,
far beyond any bodily refreshment the intense peace of the Message she
was sent to deliver had quieted the heart of the weary messenger. Only
now that her goal was almost reached, all power of speech or thought
seemed to be taken from her. But, though a candle may burn low, may
even for a time be extinguished, it still carries securely within it
the possibility of flame. Even so the Messenger of the Great King lay,
hour after hour, in the hot night silence; not sleeping, yet smiling:
physically exhausted, yet spiritually unafraid.
The heat within the chamber became at length unbearably oppressive to
one accustomed, as Mary Fisher had been for weeks past, to sleeping
under the open sky. Stretching up a thin white arm through the scented
darkness, she managed to unfasten the silken cords and buttons of the
curtain above her, and to let in a rush of warm night air. It was
still too early for the reviving breeze to spring up that would herald
the approach of dawn: too early for even the earliest of the orange
hawks, that haunted the city in the daytime, to be awake. Cuddled
close in cosy nests under the wide eaves, their slumbers were
disturbed for a moment as Mary, half sitting up, shook the pierced
lattice-work of the shutters that formed the sides of her apartment.
Peering through the interstices of fragrant wood, she caught sight of
a wan crescent moon, just appearing behind a group of chestnut-trees
on the opposite hill above the river.
The crescent moon! Her guide over sea and land! Had she not come half
round the world to proclaim to the followers of that same Crescent, a
people truly sitting in gross darkness, the message of the One true
Light?
However long the midnight hours, dawn surely must be nigh at hand.
Before long, that waning Crescent must set and disappear, and the Sun
of Righteousness arise with healing in His wings.
There lay the slumbering flame of her wondrous Message. The right
words wherewith to kindle that flame in the hearts of others would
surely be given when the right hour came, however unworthy the
Messenger.
'As far as the East is from the West,' the weary woman thought to
herself, while the scenes of her wondrous journey across two
hemispheres rushed back unbidden to her mind--'even so far hath He
removed our transgressions from us.'
At that moment, the eagerly awaited breeze of dawn passed over her hot
temples, soothing her like a friend. Refreshed and strengthened, she
lay down once more, still and straight; her smooth hair braided round
her head; her hands crossed calmly on her breast; in a repose as quiet
and austere, even upon those yielding Oriental cushions, as when she
lay upon her hard, narrow pallet bed at home.
Before the first apricot flush of dawn crept up the eastern sky, Mary
Fisher had sunk into a tranquil sleep.