"Yuleima," began Joe, "is one womans like no other womans in all--"
But I shall not attempt the dragoman's halting, broken jargon
interspersed with Italian and German words--it will grate on you as it
grated on me. I will assume for the moment--and Joe would be most
thankful to have me do so--that the learned Hornstog, the friend of
kings and princes, is as fluent in English as he is in Turkish, Arabic,
and Greek.
It all began in a caique--or rather in two caiques. One was on its way
to a little white house that nestles among the firs at the foot of the
bare brown hill overlooking the village of Beicos. The other was bound
for the Fountain Beautiful, where the women and their slaves take the
air in the soft summer mornings.
In the first caique, rowed by two caique-jis gorgeously dressed in
fluffy trousers and blouses embroidered in gold, sat the daughter of
the rich Bagdad merchant.
In the second caique, cigarette in hand, lounged the nephew of the
Khedive, Mahmoud Bey; scarce twenty, slight, oval face with full lips,
hair black as sealskin and as soft, and eyes that smouldered under
heavy lids. Four rowers in blue and silver attended his Highness, the
amber-colored boat skimming the waters as a tropical bird skims a
lagoon.
The two had passed each other the week before on the day of the
Selamlik (the Turkish holiday) while paddling up the Sweet Waters of
Asia--a little brook running into the Bosphorus and deep enough for
caiques to float, and every day since that blissful moment my lady had
spent the morning under the wide-spreading plane-trees shading the
Fountain Beautiful--the Chesmegazell--attended by her faithful slave
Multif, her beautiful body stretched on a Damascus rug of priceless
value, her eager eyes searching the blue waters of the Bosphorus.
On this particular morning--my lady had just stepped into her boat--the
young man was seen to raise himself on his elbow, lift his eyelids, and
a slight flush suffused his swarthy cheeks. Then came an order in a low
voice, and the caique swerved in its course and headed for the dot of
white and gold in which sat Multif and my lady. The Spanish caballero
haunts the sidewalk and watches all day beneath his Dulcinea's balcony;
or he talks to her across the opera-house or bull-ring with cigarette,
fingers, and cane, she replying with studied movements of her fan. In
the empire of Mohammed, with a hundred eyes on watch--eyes of eunuchs,
spies, and parents--love-making is reduced to a passing glance, brief
as a flash of light, and sometimes as blinding.
That was all that took place when the two caiques passed--just a
thinning of the silken veil, with only one fold of the yashmak slipped
over the eyes, softening the fire of their beauty; then a quick,
all-enfolding, all-absorbing look, as if she would drink into her very
soul the man she loved, and the two tiny boats kept each on its way.
The second act of the comedy opens in a small cove, an indent of the
Bosphorus, out of sight of passing boat-patrols--out of sight, too, of
inquisitive wayfarers passing along the highroad from Beicos to
Danikeui. Above the cove, running from the very beach, sweeps a garden,
shaded by great trees and tangles of underbrush; one bunch smothering a
summer-house. This is connected by a sheltered path with the little
white house that nestles among the firs half-way up the steep brown
hill that overlooks the village of Beicos.
The water-patrol may have been friendly, or my lady's favorite slave
resourceful, but almost every night for weeks the first caique and the
second caique had lain side by side in the boat-house in the cove, both
empty, except for one trusty man who loved Mahmoud and who did his
bidding without murmur or question, no matter what the danger. Higher
up, her loose white robes splashed with the molten silver of the moon
filtering through overhanging leaves, where even the nightingale
stopped to listen, could be heard the cooing of two voices. Then would
come a warning cry, and a figure closely veiled would speed up the
path. Next could be heard the splash of oars of the first caique
homeward bound.
Locksmiths are bunglers in the East compared to patrols and eunuchs.
Lovers may smile, but they never laugh at them. There is always a day
of reckoning. A whisper goes around; some disgruntled servant shakes
his head; and an old fellow with baggy trousers and fez, says: "My
daughter, I am surprised" or "pained" or "outraged," or whatever he
does say in polite Turkish, Arabic, or Greek, and my lady is locked up
on bread and water, or fig-paste, or Turkish Delight, and all is over.
Sometimes the young Lothario is ordered back to his regiment, or sent
to Van or Trebizond or Egypt for the good of his morals, or his health
or the community in which he lives. Sometimes everybody accepts the
situation and the banns are called and they live happy ever after.
What complicated this situation was that the girl, although as
beautiful as a dream--any number of dreams, for that matter, and all of
paradise--was a plebeian and the young man of royal blood. Furthermore,
any number of parents, her own two and twice as many uncles and aunts,
might get together and give, not only their blessing, but lands and
palaces--two on the Bosphorus, one in Bagdad and another at Smyrna, and
nothing would avail unless his Imperial Highness the Sultan gave his
consent. Fruthermore, again, should it come to the ears of his August
Presence that any such scandalous alliance was in contemplation,
several yards of additional bow-strings would be purchased and the
whole coterie experience a choking sensation which would last them the
balance of their lives.
Thus it was that, after that most blissful night in the arbor--their
last--in which she had clung to him as if knowing he was about to slip
forever from her arms, both caiques were laid up for the season; the
first tight locked and guarded in the palace of the young man's father,
five miles along the blue Bosphorus as the bird flies, and the second
in the little boat-house in the small indent of a cove under the garden
holding the beloved arbor, the little white house, and My Lady of the
diaphanous veil and the all-absorbing eyes.
With the lifting of the curtain on the third act, the scene shifts. No
more Sweet Waters, no more caiques nor stolen interviews, the music of
hot kisses drowned in the splash of the listening fountain. Instead,
there is seen a sumptuously furnished interior the walls wainscoted in
Moorish mosaics and lined by broad divans covered with silken rugs.
Small tables stand about holding trays of cigarettes and sweets. Over
against a window overlooking a garden lounges a group of women--some
young, some old, one or two of them black as coal. It is the harem of
the Pasha, the father of Mahmoud, Prince of the Rising Sun, Chosen of
the Faithful, Governor of a province, and of forty other things
beside--most of which Joe had forgotten.
Months had passed since that night in the arbor. Yuleima had cried her
eyes out, and Mahmoud had shaken his fists and belabored his head,
swearing by the beard of the Prophet that come what might Yuleima
should be his.
Then came the death of the paternal potentate, and the young lover was
free--free to come and go, to love, to hate; free to follow the
carriage of his imperial master in his race up the hill after the
ceremony of the Selamlik; free to choose any number of Yuleimas for his
solace; free to do whatever pleased him--except to make the beautiful
Yuleima his spouse. This the High-Mightinesses forbade. There were no
personal grounds for their objection. The daughter of the rich Bagdad
merchant was as gentle as a doe, beautiful as a star seen through the
soft mists of the morning, and of stainless virtue. Her father had ever
been a loyal subject, giving of his substance to both church and state,
but there were other things to consider, among them a spouse especially
selected by a council of High Pan-Jams, whose decision, having been
approved by their imperial master, was not only binding, but final--so
final that death awaited any one who would dare oppose it. At the feast
of Ramazan the two should wed. Yuleima might take second, third, or
fortieth place--but not first.
The young prince gritted his row of white teeth and flashed his
slumbering eyes--and they could flash--blaze sometimes--with a fire
that scorched. Yuleima would be his, unsullied in his own eyes and the
world's, or she should remain in the little white house on the brown
hill and continue to blur her beautiful eyes with the tears of her
grief.
Then the favorite slave and the faithful caique-ji--the one who found
the little cove even on the darkest night--put their heads
together--two very cunning and wise heads, one black and wrinkled and
the other sun-tanned and yellow--with the result that one night a new
odalisque, a dark-skinned, black-haired houri, the exact opposite of
the fair-skinned, fair-haired Yuleima, joined the coterie in the harem
of the palace of the prince. She had been bought with a great price and
smuggled into Stamboul, the story ran, a present from a distinguished
friend of his father, little courtesies like this being common in
Oriental countries, as one would send a bottle of old Madeira from his
cellar or a choice cut of venison from his estate, such customs as is
well known being purely a matter of geography.
The chief blackamoor, a shambling, knock-kneed, round-shouldered,
swollen-paunched apology for a man, with blistered, cracked lips,
jaundiced pig eyes, and the skin of a terrapin, looked her all over,
grunted his approval, and with a side-lunge of his fat empty head,
indicated the divan which was to be hers during the years of her
imprisonment.
One night some words passed between the two over the division of
bonbons, perhaps, or whose turn it was to take afternoon tea with the
prince--it had generally been the new houri's, resulting in
considerable jealousy and consequent discord--or some trifle of that
sort (Joe had never been in a harem, and was therefore indefinite),
when the blackamoor, to punctuate his remarks, slashed the odalisque
across her thinly covered shoulders with a knout--a not uncommon mode
of enforcing discipline, so Joe assured me.
Then came the great scene of the third act--always the place for it, so
dramatists say.
The dark-skinned houri sprang up, rose to her full height, her eyes
blazing, and facing her tormentor, cried:
"You blackguard"--a true statement--"do you know who I am?"
"Yes, perfectly; you are Yuleima, the daughter of the Bagdad merchant."
The fourth act takes place on the outskirts of Stamboul, in a small
house surrounded by a high wall which connects with the garden of a
mosque. The exposure by the eunuch had resulted in an investigation by
the palace clique, which extended to the Bagdad merchant and his
family, who, in explanation, not only denounced her as an ungrateful
child, cursing her for her opposition to her sovereign's will, but
denied all knowledge of her whereabouts. They supposed, they pleaded,
that she had thrown herself into the Bosphorus at the loss of her
lover. Then followed the bundling up of Yuleima in the still watches of
the night; her bestowal at the bottom of a caique, her transfer to
Stamboul, and her incarceration in charge of an attendant in a deserted
house belonging to the mosque. The rumor was then set on foot that it
was unlawful to look steadily into the waters of the Bosphorus or to
attempt the salvage of any derelict body floating by.
The prince made another assault on his hair and tightened his fingers,
this time with a movement as if he was twisting them round somebody's
throat, but he made no outcry. It is hard to kick against the pricks in
some lands.
He did not believe the bow-string pillow-case and solid-shot story, but
he knew that he should never look upon her face again. What he did
believe was that she had been taken to some distant city and there sold.
For days he shut himself up in his palace. Then, having overheard a
conversation in his garden between two eunuchs--placed there for that
purpose--he got together a few belongings, took his faithful caique-ji,
and travelled a-field. If what he had heard was true she was in or near
Damascus. Here would he go. If, after searching every nook and cranny,
he failed to find her, he would return and carry out his sovereign's
commands and marry the princess--a woman he had never laid his eyes on
and who might be as ugly as sin and as misshapen as Yuleima was
beautiful. It was while engaged in this fruitless search that he met
Joseph, to whom he had poured out his heart (so Joe assured me, with
his hand on his shirt-front), hoping to enlist his sympathies and thus
gain his assistance.
All this time the heartbroken girl, rudely awakened from her dream of
bliss, was a prisoner in the deserted house next the mosque. As the
dreary months went by her skin regained its pinkness and her beautiful
hair its golden tint,--walnut shells and cosmetics not being found in
the private toilet of the priests and their companions. When the summer
came a greater privilege was given her. She could never speak to any
one and no one could speak to her--even the priests knew this--but a
gate opening into the high-walled garden was left unlocked now and then
by one of the kind-hearted Mohammedans, and often she would wander as
far as the end of the wall overlooking the Mosque of Suleiman, her
attendant always with her--a black woman appointed by Chief-of-Police
Selim, and responsible for her safety, and who would pay forfeit with
her head if Yuleima escaped.
"And you think now, effendi," concluded Joe, as he drained his last cup
of coffee (Hornstog's limit was twenty cups at intervals of three
minutes each), "that Joe be big damn fool to put his foots in
this--what you call--steel trap? No, no, we keep away. To-morrow, don't
it, we take Yusuf and go Scutari? One beautiful fountain at Scutari
like you never see!"
"But can't her father help?" I asked, ignoring his suggestion. His
caution did not interest me. It was the imprisoned girl and her
suffering that occupied my thoughts.
"Yes, perhaps, but not yet. I somethings hear one day from the gardener
who live with her father, but maybe it all lie. He say Serim come and
say--" Again Joe chafed his thumb and forefinger, after the manner of
the paying teller. "Maybe ten thousand piastres--maybe twenty. Her
father would pay, of course, only the Sultan might not like--then worse
trouble--nothing will be done anyhow until the wedding is over. Then,
perhaps, some time."
I did not go to Scutari the next day. I opened my easel in the patio of
the Pigeon Mosque and started in to paint the plaza with Cleopatra's
Needle in the distance. This would occupy the morning. In the afternoon
I would finish my sketch of Suleiman. Should Joe have a fresh attack of
ague he could join Yusuf at the cafe and forget it in the thimbleful
that cheers but does not inebriate.
With the setting up of my tripod and umbrella and the opening of my
color-box a crowd began to gather--market people, fruit-sellers,
peddlers, scribes, and soldiers. Then a shrill voice rang out from one
of the minarets calling the people to prayer. A group of priests now
joined the throng about me watched me for a moment, consulted together,
and then one of them, an old man in a silken robe of corn-yellow bound
about with a broad sash of baby blue, a majestic old man, with a
certain rhythmic movement about him which was enchanting, laid his hand
on Joseph's shoulder and looking into his eyes, begged him to say to
his master that the making of pictures of any living or dead thing,
especially mosques, was contrary to their religion, and that the
effendi must fold his tent.
All this time another priest, an old patriarch with a fez and green
turban and Nile-green robe overlaid with another of rose-pink, was
scrutinizing my face. Then the corn-yellow fellow and the rose-pink
patriarch put their heads together, consulted for a moment, made me a
low bow, performed the flying-fingers act, and floated off toward the
mosque.
"You no go 'way, effendi," explained Joe. "The priest in green turban
say he remember you; he say you holy man who bow yourselluf humble when
dead man go by. No stop paint."
The protests of the priests, followed by their consultation and quiet
withdrawal, packed the crowd the closer. One young man in citizen's
dress and fez stood on the edge of the throng trying to understand the
cause of the excitement.
Joe, who was sitting by me assisting with the water-cup, gazed into the
intruder's face a moment, then closed upon my arm with a grip as if
he'd break it.
"Allah! Mahmoud Bey!" he whispered. "Yuleima's prince. That's him with
the smooth face."
The next instant the young man stood by my side.
"The people are only curious, monsieur," he said in French. "If they
disturb you I will have them sent away. So few painters come--you are
the first I have seen in many years. If it will not annoy you, I'd like
to watch you a while."
"Annoy me, my dear sir!" I was on my feet now, hat in hand. (If he had
been my long-lost brother, stolen by the Indians or left on a desert
island to starve--or any or all of those picturesque and dramatic
things--I could not have been more glad to see him. I fairly hugged
myself--it seemed too good to be true.) "I will be more than delighted
if you will take my dragoman's stool. Get up, Joe, and give--"
The request had already been forestalled. Joe was not only up, but was
bowing with the regularity and precision of the arms of a windmill, his
fingers, with every rise, fluttering between his shirt-stud and his
eyebrows. On his second upsweep the young prince got a view of his
face--then his hand went out.
"Why, it is Hornstog! We know each other. We met in Damascus. You could
not, monsieur, find a better dragoman in all Constantinople."
Only three pairs of eyes now followed the movements of my brush, the
crowd having fallen back out of respect for the young man's rank, Yusuf
having communicated that fact to those who had not recognized him.
When the light changed--and it changed unusually early that morning,
about two hours ahead of time (I helped)--I said to the prince:
"It may interest you to see me finish a sketch in color. Come with me
as far as Suleiman. We can sit quite out of the sun up a little back
street under a wall, and away from everybody. I began the drawing
yesterday. See!" and I uncovered the canvas.
"Ah, Suleimanyeh! The most beautiful of all our mosques. Yes, certainly
I'll go."
Joe dug his knuckles into my thigh, under pretence of steadying
himself--he was squatting beside me like a frog, helping with the
water-cups--and gasped: "No; don't take him--please, effendi! No--no--"
I brushed Joe aside and continued: "We can send for coffee and spend
the afternoon. I'll have some chairs brought from the cafe. Pick up
everything, Joe, and come along."
On the way to the crooked, break-neck street my thoughts went racing
through my head. On one side, perhaps, a tap on the shoulder in the
middle of the night; half a yard of catgut in the hands of a
Bashi-Bazouk; an appeal to our consul, with the consciousness of having
meddled with something that did not concern me. On the other a pair of
tear-stained, pleading eyes. Not my eyes--not the eyes of anybody that
I knew--but the kind that raise the devil even in the heart of a staid
old painter like myself.
Joe followed, with downcast gaze. He, too, was scheming. He could not
protest before the prince, nor before Yusuf. That would imply previous
knowledge of the danger lurking in the vicinity of the old wall. His
was the devil and the deep sea. Not to tell the prince of Yuleima's
whereabouts, after their combined search for her, and the fees the
prince had paid him, would be as cruel as it was disloyal. To assist in
Mahmoud's finding her would bring down upon his own head--if it was
still on his shoulders--the wrath of the chief of police, as well as
the power behind him.
Once under the shadow of the wall, the trap unpacked, easel and
umbrella up, and water-bottle filled, Joe started his windmill, paused
at the third kotow, looked me straight in the eye, and, with a tone in
his voice, as if he had at last come to some conclusion, made this
request:
"I have no eat breakfast, effendi--very hungry--you please permit Joe
go cafe with Yusuf--we stay ONE hour, no more. Then I bring coffee. You
see me when I come--I bring the coffee myselluf."
He could not have pleased me more. How to get rid of them both was what
had been bothering me.
I painted on, both of us backed into the low gate with the sliding
panel, my eyes on the mosque, my ears open for the slightest sound. We
talked of the wonderful architecture of the East, of the taper of the
minarets, of the grace and dignity of the priests, of the social life
of the people, I leading and he following, until I had brought the
conversation down to the question:
"And when you young men decide to marry are you free to choose, as we
Europeans are?" I was feeling about, wondering how much of his
confidence he would give me.
"No; that's why, sometimes, I wish I was like one of the white gulls
that fly over the water."
"I don't understand."
"I would be out at sea with my mate--that's what I mean."
"Have you a mate?"
"I had. She is lost."
"Dead?"
"Worse."
I kept at work. White clouds sailed over the mosque; a flurry of
pigeons swept by; the air blew fresh. With the exception of my
companion and myself the street was deserted. I dared not go any
further in my inquiries. If I betrayed any more interest or previous
knowledge he might think I was in league against him.
"The girl, then, suffers equally with the man?" I said, tightening one
of the legs of my easel.
"More. He can keep his body clean; she must often barter hers in
exchange for her life. A woman doesn't count much in Turkey. This is
one of the things we young men who have seen something of the outside
world--I lived a year in Paris--will improve when we get the power,"
and his eyes flashed.
"And yet it is dangerous to help one of them to escape, is it not?"
"Yes."
The hour was nearly up. Joe, I knew, had fixed it, consulting his watch
and comparing it with mine so that I might know the coast was clear
during that brief period should anything happen.
"I was tempted to help one yesterday," I answered. "I saw a woman's
face that has haunted me ever since. She may not have been in trouble,
but she looked so." Then quietly, and as if it was only one of the many
incidents that cross a painter's path, I described in minute detail the
gate, the sliding panel, the veiled face and wondrous eyes, the
approach of the officer, the smothered cry of terror, the black finger
and thumb that reached out, and the noiseless closing of the panel.
What I omitted was all reference to Joe or his knowledge of the girl.
Mahmoud was staring into my eyes now.
"Where was this?"
"Just behind you. Lift your head--that seam marks the sliding panel.
She may come again when she sees the top of my umbrella over the wall.
Listen! That's her step. She has some one with her--crouch down close.
There's only room for her head. You may see her then without her
attendant knowing you are here. Quick! she is sliding the panel!"
Outside of Paris, overlooking the Seine, high up on a hill, stands the
Bellevue--a restaurant known to half the world. Sweeping down from the
perfectly appointed tables lining the rail of the broad piazza;
skimming the tree-tops, the plain below, the twisting river, rose-gold
in the twilight, the dots of parks and villas, the eye is lost in the
distant city and the haze beyond--the whole a-twinkle with myriads of
electric lights.
There, one night, from my seat against the opposite wall (I was dining
alone), I was amusing myself watching a table being set with more than
usual care; some rich American, perhaps, with the world in a sling, or
some young Russian running the gauntlet of the dressing-rooms. Staid
old painters like myself take an interest in these things. They serve
to fill his note-book, and sometimes help to keep him young.
When I looked again the waiter was drawing out a chair for a woman with
her back to me. In the half-light, her figure, in silhouette against
the cluster of candles lighting the table, I could see that she was
young and, from the way she took her seat, wonderfully graceful.
Opposite her, drawing out his own chair, stood a young man in evening
dress, his head outlined against the low, twilight sky. It was Mahmoud!
I sprang from my seat and walked straight toward them. There came a low
cry of joy, and then four outstretched arms--two of them tight-locked
about my neck.
"Tell me," I asked, when we had seated ourselves, Yuleima's hands still
clinging to mine. "After I left you that last night in the garden, was
the boat where we hid it?"
"Yes."
"Who rowed you to the steamer?"
"My old caique-ji."
"And who got the tickets and passports?"
"Hornstog."