MY LADY OF THE FOUNTAIN
The following year I was sent to Paris for my studies, where I was
to remain three whole years, without returning home; yet on my first
summer holidays my mother changed her mind and sent for me. That
summer, too, we were not to spend at our home on the island, but in
Pantich, an adorable, sleepy, little Turkish village, on the Asiatic
shore of the Marmora.
Pantich is as far behind the rest of Turkey as the rest of Turkey
is behind Europe. Its traditions are those of the Byzantine period,
when Constantinople was the capital of the Greek Empire. The Turkish
quarters cluster around the _Tzami_, which is built in a square of
plantain trees, with a fountain in the middle. The Greek houses make a
belt around their little Orthodox Church, with a school on its right
and a cemetery on its left.
And though the Turks and the Greeks are divided like the goats and the
sheep, all men wear the fez, and all women veil their faces.
Only one event ever happened in Pantich: the coming of the railroad
through it. Small wonder that, when the trains began to run, the
inhabitants brought their luncheons and sat all day long close to the
rails, waiting to see the wonderful thing pass, which ran of its own
accord, with a speed beyond the dreams of the fastest horse. Small
wonder, too, that the rents of the houses near the track began to go up
like speculative stocks in a Wall Street boom.
The house we took belonged to a Turkish lady, who became at once the
great interest of my life, although she was never to be seen. We heard
that she was the former wife of dashing young Nouri Pasha, whom we
knew on the island of Prinkipo, and who was famous for his looks, his
riches, and his many beautiful wives. We transacted our business with
her through one of her slaves. The lady herself had never been seen
since the day she left her husband, eight years before, and came to
bury herself in her maternal property here.
Our house was surrounded by a very large garden and an orchard, the
trees of which were so old and so patched that I was never surprised on
climbing a cherry tree to find plums growing there, or at the top of
a plum tree to discover _dzidzifa_. It became a game with me to
climb the highest trees, to see what would grow on the top branches.
These trees were grafted with the greatest ingenuity, not for the
fruit, but for the colour scheme in blossom time.
At the end of our orchard there was a drop of about eight feet, and
there began the garden surrounding the house where our proprietess
lived. It must have comprised a hundred acres, and ended at the sea. It
was not cultivated, like the other properties, but was mostly woodland,
with flowers in the clearings. What I could see of it fascinated and
attracted me. I had an idea that if I could penetrate into that garden
I should surprise the spirits of the flowers and trees, who, thinking
themselves protected from human intrusion, must come forth from their
earthly shells to parade under their own shadow.
We had been in our new, old house for two weeks, and when I was neither
reading nor climbing the trees I was scheming how to get into the
garden. In all my reconnoitring I had never seen or heard a human being
in that garden below, and if I had not known that people lived there I
should have thought the property abandoned.
My mother went away for the week-end. It was early afternoon, and
the entire universe was at siesta. I chose that hour to make a still
closer search for a means of getting down those eight feet, to roam the
beckoning garden. If discovered, of course, I should have to pretend
that I had fallen in accidentally.
I came as near to the edge as I could, and before I knew it, down went
the stones under my feet, and down went I, followed by more stones. In
falling my teeth cut my lip, and made it bleed.
I lay partially stunned, but certain I was not badly hurt; for all my
limbs had answered to the call of my little brain. Then I heard the
pit-pat of running feet, and waited to see what would happen.
A young woman came and bent over me.
“_Yavroum_, are you hurt?” she asked.
“No,” I answered.
“But you are bleeding!” she exclaimed in a horrified tone.
She was joined by another woman, somewhat older, who was out of breath
from running.
“Is she dead?” she cried.
“It will take more than this to kill me,” I declared, and moved to get
up.
“No! no! Be still. We will carry you to our mistress,” they commanded.
Willingly I obeyed. One took hold of my shoulders, and the other of
my feet, and they carried me to a small summer-house, in a grove of
cypresses. A tall slender woman dressed in the green of the grass half
rose from a couch.
“Is she hurt, Leila?” she asked, and it was as if I were a little
bird fallen from its nest, so remote and impersonal was the interest
manifested in her voice. If at the time I had been familiar with
Maeterlinck, I should have thought that I was a minor actor in one of
his unreal plays, and the lady in green the leading character.
“She’s bleeding, mistress.”
“Then you had better carry her into the house.”
She rose and preceded us. Her walk, like her speech, seemed remote from
common earth, and to my half-closed eyes she seemed to float along, not
to proceed step by step, as do common mortals.
They carried me into the vast hall of her house, paved with cement,
and ending in a balcony overhanging the sea of Marmora, and laid me
on a couch. The mistress of the house sat by me, and touched my cheek
lightly with one of her fingers.
“Get some fresh water, Leila,” she commanded.
The younger of the two slaves lifted an iron cover in the middle of the
hall, and dropped down an old black iron bucket, which, after a long
minute, touched water in the depths of the earth. The water she brought
me was icy cold. They bathed my mouth, and put a wet towel on my head.
Inwardly I was laughing at all this attention; but I was quite content.
When the bleeding stopped, the lady ordered a sherbet. It was made of
fresh cherries, cool and sweet, and I ate it with great relish. Then
the lady in her soft, remote voice crooned:
“You are the baby of my new tenants, are you not?”
“I am not a baby,” I answered, insulted. “I’m quite grown up, only I’m
undersized--and all my frocks are three years old. But because they
are in good condition, and I can’t outgrow them enough, I must keep on
wearing them.”
She laughed. “I have been watching you since you came here, and it
seems to me wonderful that you haven’t been killed several times. Why
do you keep on climbing those trees?”
“To get my afternoon tea up there,” I answered. “Besides which it keeps
me thin.”
The light of amusement danced in her eyes, but she did not laugh again.
“I can see what you think in your eyes,” I said. “You think that what
I need is fattening. My family takes care of that; for I am made to
swallow everything from _vin de quinquina_ to any other drug they
may see advertised, with or without the consent of the doctor. And if I
were to get fat they would then start on the opposite drugs.”
At this she burst forth into peals of laughter, and in the midst of her
laughing she said: “I do believe you are older than you look.”
I gave a jump and sat upright. The two slaves, who were standing over
me with their arms crossed, exclaimed in unison: “She must not move,
mistress, she must not move!”
“Now lie down, like a little dear, and tell me how old you are.”
“To show you how old I am,” I said proudly and priggishly, “I may tell
you that I have finished my Greek studies, and have been a year in
Paris. I return there again in September.”
“In Paris! You have been in Paris?” she asked reverently, losing some
of the remoteness in her voice.
I was pleased to notice the interest I was arousing in her.
“Oh, I have been there several times before, only now I am there as a
student.”
“I am going to send word to your mother that you fell into my garden,
that you are a little hurt, and that I shall keep you all the
afternoon.”
“You needn’t trouble yourself,” I said, “for there’s nobody at home but
the maids. I shall be all alone for two days now.”
“Indeed!” Her eyes shone with pleasure. “Then perhaps you would like to
spend those two days with me?”
“I should love to,” I cried, “but I must first make a little
confession.”
She leaned over me and forced me to lie down. She was still quite
Maeterlinckian.
“What is your confession?”
“The reason I fell into your garden,” I proceeded very quickly, “was
because I was reconnoitring how to manage to fall into it. I wanted
very much to see your garden--and you.”
“Why?”
“For many reasons,” I answered diplomatically.
“Give them to me.”
“W-e-l-l, you have lived here for years now, without ever leaving the
place.”
“I don’t know of anyone in Pantich who ever does leave it.”
“Y-e-s, I know; but you are different.”
She leaned over me with the look of a severe fairy in her large dark
eyes.
“You just tell me why you wished to see me.”
“All the truth?” I asked.
“All the truth.”
“Well, for the romance which surrounds you. You left Nouri Pasha and
his beautiful houses to come and live here, in this very old house, in
a place where nothing ever happens. Besides I imagined you to be very
beautiful.”
“And do you find me as beautiful as you thought me?”
“I don’t know. All I can think of when I look at you is--a fountain----”
“To call _me_ a fountain is almost like a wicked jest,” she
interrupted. “A fountain gives constantly forth the riches of its
waters.”
“But the fountain you remind me of had no waters. It was a big
fountain, in the middle of which sat a bronze lady looking exactly like
you. The waters were to pour forth from her two extended hands--but
none came. The gardener told me they had lost the key, and they had
never been able to unlock it. And, as there were many more fountains in
the place, they did not bother.”
A cloud passed over her face.
“Then I _am_ like your fountain.”
She sat drooping, her hands clasped in her lap, gazing before her with
that gaze which sees not the seen world. At length she shook off this
mood and turned to the slave:
“Leila, go to the little bird’s home, and say she is with us, and that
I shall keep her till her mother returns. And you, Mihri, can go and
make the room next to mine ready for this little child.”
“Please don’t call me ‘little child,’” I exclaimed. “I am fourteen
years old, and at my age my great-grandmother was married and had a
son.”
She paid no heed to my words, seeming to be lost in her own thoughts.
“When you go to Paris somebody accompanies you, of course.”
“Not always. I know all the captains of the Fabre Line, and all the
officers. I am placed in their care, and at Marseilles I take the
train, and reach Paris the same day, where I am met. Anyway, I could go
to the end of the world by myself.”
The word Paris seemed to possess the power to give her whatever
semblance to life she could acquire.
“But sometimes somebody may go with you as a companion--yes?”
“Yes,” I assented.
She rose, and crossing the vast hall, stood on the balcony overhanging
the sea. When she came back to me her eyes seemed changed. They were
larger, deeper, and full of mystery. She was more than ever like the
Lady of the Locked Fountain.
“I am very glad you fell to-day into my garden. I think--I--shall like
you.” She sat down comfortably by me, cross-legged, her long string of
amber beads held in her clasped hands. “Tell me, what do you do with
the books you are so interested in when you are not trying to dig your
grave by climbing the trees?”
“I read them,” I answered puzzled.
“Read? Read what?”
“Just read,” I answered again. “Don’t you read?”
She shook her head.
“Don’t you ever read anything?” I exclaimed, for my own life was made
up of books. Then the suspicion came to me that perhaps she did not
know how. “Can’t you read?” I asked.
“I learned when I was a child; and I can still read the Koran, where I
know it pretty well, and some poetry.”
“Then you do read poetry?”
“Not now; for I know my poems by heart.”
I stared at her in amazement. “You don’t know by heart all the poems in
the world, do you?”
“No, unless all the poems in the world are ten,” she answered smiling.
I pondered a minute over her state of mind. “I think I should go mad
unless I had books to read,” I observed.
“What is in them?” she asked, more simply than I had ever asked about
anything in my life. At that moment she was a pure Asiatic, descended
from a thousand Asiatic ancestors, from whom the books have kept their
secrets. “What is in them?” she repeated. “Aren’t they all alike?”
“Each book is the history of a human being, or of a whole race; and
sometimes it takes books and books to tell you about the one or the
other.”
“How many have you read in all?”
“Thousands,” I answered vaingloriously.
“And do you love them all?”
I shook my head. “No, there are horrid books, as there are horrid
people; but most of them are beautiful, full of the lives and stories
of people who have lived and dreamed and done things in the world.”
“Tell me some of them.”
She bent her head and listened, while I told her some of my favourite
tales; and as I talked she became excited, and laughed when the stories
were funny, and cried if they were sad.
During the two days I spent with her, I related many of the books I had
read; and at the end of my stay we were close friends, for if I was a
child in years she was one in experience. And she was so delightfully
simple, with a simplicity which must have made God glad to have created
human beings.
If she was ignorant of books, she was curiously full of ideas
concerning things she had observed. Because she lived in solitude and
watched the sky, she knew all the stars--not by their scientific names,
but by ones she invented for herself. As we sat on the balcony over the
water she told me that at certain seasons of the year a large luminous
star kept watch over the opposite side of the Marmora. She called it
the Heavenly Lily, and knew the exact hour it appeared every night, and
how long it would stay. She told me that the coming of certain stars
had to do with the growth of certain flowers and crops. She spoke of
them not as stars, but as heavenly watchers, whose earthly worshippers
were the flowers. The water she referred to as the earth’s milk. She
disliked the winds, but she loved the storms, “because they proved
that Allah could lose his temper. It is nice,” she added in a very
low tone, as if afraid that he might hear her, “it’s nice to feel that
Allah himself has failings.”
But if she were ready to talk of her thoughts, there was a certain
aloofness about her which exempted her personal affairs from
discussion. Indeed I still had the impression of talking with the
bronze lady of the fountain. This attitude of hers several times
arrested on the tip of my tongue the sentence: “Why did you leave
handsome Nouri Pasha?”
Just before I went away, she asked, _à propos_ of nothing, “When
do you leave for Paris?”
“At the end of September, or may be the first week in October.”
“It is a very long way off,” she murmured, half to herself.
“It will pass quickly enough.”
She remained silent, in that silence which is full of whispers. One
felt the talking of her thoughts.
After this first visit it became a habit of hers to send for me often
to spend entire afternoons with her. She let me climb her trees and
gather fruit for our afternoon meal, while the slaves drew cool water
from the well.
When our friendship was a few weeks old I asked her: “Do you like
living here all alone in this old house? Nouri Pasha has so many other
houses, both on the island and on the Bosphorus, which are ever so
much nicer than this old one. Why don’t you take one of those?”
“This is not Nouri Pasha’s house,” she corrected me. “This is my
own house. I was born here, and I love it. You mustn’t call it old,
otherwise it will be offended, and its shadow will grow dark when you
come into it.”
I did not say anything for a while, and it was she who spoke again.
“You know Nouri Pasha then?”
“Oh, yes. He lives near us on the island, and I love the horses he
rides. They are so large and shiny; and I can tell it is his carriage
from very far off, because he has so many unnecessary chains on the
harness, which dangle and make a fuss.”
She laughed like a child at this description, and I, encouraged by the
laugh, asked boldly:
“Did you love him very much?”
“I think so,” she replied simply.
“Frightfully?”
The girlish adverb amused her.
“Perhaps--even so.”
As she said the last words her voice became remote, her eyes took on
their unhuman expression, and she turned again into the Lady of the
Fountain. Yet her lips opened, and she said:
“Tell me a story, fairy child, a story about Paris.”
And because Alexander Dumas _père_ has lived and written, I could
tell her of France in dazzling colours, and in dazzling deeds. In the
midst of my story she broke in:
“Have you ever seen--” She stopped abruptly. “Go on, go on, dear.
Forgive me for interrupting.”
“Have I ever seen what?” I insisted.
A forbidding look made me continue my story.
She became a regular part of my life. I even was obedient at home, for
fear that as a punishment I might be kept from her. As soon as luncheon
was over, I would lie down for my hour of rest, then dress quickly and
go to the place where I had first fallen into her garden. There we now
had two ropes fastened, for me to slide down. Sometimes she would even
be there, ready to catch me before I touched the ground.
We were fast friends, yet our friendship partook of the unreal, since
she never gave me anything except her impersonal thoughts. Of her past
life she never spoke, and her heart was as withheld from me as the
waters of the fountain to which I had compared her.
Again one day she began: “Have you ever seen--” and again broke off,
and insisted that she had meant to say nothing, and apologized for not
knowing what she wanted to say.
I pondered a good deal over the unfinished phrase, and finally thought
I had found the end of it. So one afternoon when she began for the
third time, “Have you ever seen--” and stopped, I added--“Nouri Pasha’s
other three wives? Yes, I have seen them, and if I were a man I’d
gladly give all three of them to get you.”
She turned squarely upon me, a look of amazement in her deep brown
eyes, which at the moment were full of the light of the sun and
appeared golden. Then she exploded into laughter. Peal followed peal,
and I was cross at her for making me appear stupid when I had thought
myself so clever.
“Just what made you think this?”
Out of my anger, I answered brutally: “Well, it is quite natural that
you should want to know about the women who have supplanted you.”
The instant the words were uttered I repented of them, and I should
have tried to gain her pardon, except that she did not even seem to
have noticed my brutality.
“I know how they look,” she said calmly: “and men would not agree
with you about the exchange. Besides they are all younger than I, the
youngest is only three years older than you--only as old as I was when
I was married.”
Her voice had been growing colder and colder, and the chill of November
frost was on the last word. Fortunately Leila came in with her zither
to sing and play. When the time came for me to go away, my friend
kissed and patted me for a long time, and said:
“When the _hanoum_, your mother, goes away again, will she not let
you come and stay with me, if I send word I will be responsible for
your neck?”
Thus it came about that whenever my mother went off for a week-end, I
found myself the guest of my Lady of the Fountain, and slept in the
little room off hers. During one of these visits, she came in at night,
and sat down near my bed.
“When you go to Paris this time, some one will accompany you,” she said.
“No, I am going alone.”
She shook her head. “No, no, you will have some one with you, for I am
going with you.”
I was amazed to the point of speechlessness. When I regained my tongue
I exclaimed:
“You know perfectly well that the government will never permit it.”
“Yes. That is why I shall not ask the government. I have always wanted
to see the world, and especially Paris. I never saw how I could do it
till you fell into my garden--and I know that I can trust you.”
“But how will you manage it?”
“I shall be your companion.”
“You can’t, you speak neither Greek nor French. Every one will guess
you are Turkish.”
“I can be an Armenian, and as for French I am going to learn it. We
have time. You can teach me.”
Nothing delighted me more than an adventure--and such an uncommon one.
Until late into the night we talked about her trip, studying it in its
various aspects. We decided that I should first write to the convent
where I stayed in Paris to ask if they would take an Armenian lady.
Later I was to write to the Compagnie Fabre and engage her stateroom.
“But the passport,” I cried suddenly. “You must have a passport, you
know, to leave Turkey.”
“Oh, that I have thought of, and I have it all arranged. You know
Sourpouy, the Armenian girl, the lace-vendor of the village? She is
tall like me, with brown hair and brown eyes. I shall ask her to go to
Athens for me, to buy me some laces there. I shall pay her expenses,
and a good commission. She must, of course, have a _teskeré_--yes?”
“Naturally.”
“Well, she will get it. She will bring it here. I will examine it, and
so will Leila. While she examines it, she smokes; but Leila is very
awkward--the paper comes near her match, and it burns. You see?”
“I see, only----”
“Only what burns is not the passport. I am very angry. I scold Leila,
and then Leila says: ‘It is an omen for you not to send poor Sourpouy,
because it means that Sourpouy is going to drown.’ And that makes
Sourpouy very superstitious. She will not get another passport, even
when I promise more commission--and in this manner, you see, I am left
with my passport.”
We laughed happily over her plans, and she astonished me with her
common sense and practical knowledge. And she, who had done no studying
since she was a little girl, applied herself to learning French like a
poor but ambitious student.
She arranged the twenty-four letters of the French alphabet in three
rows, on a large sheet of paper, and learned them all in two days. Then
she cut a hole in another sheet of paper just large enough to permit a
single letter to show through, and slipped this about over the alphabet
at random, in order to make sure she knew the different letters without
regard to their relative positions. In two weeks she was reading
fluently in a child’s book of stories I had brought her. Of course she
did not understand all she was reading, but her progress, nevertheless,
was marvellous. Since then I have taught many persons French, but never
one who learned it so quickly, and her melodious Turkish accent made
the French very sweet to hear.
A dressmaker was engaged to make her some European clothes. This would
arouse no suspicion, since Turkish women often amused themselves by
having a European dress or two made for indoor use. And I was to buy
her a hat and a veil. “If it is not becoming to me, I can buy another
in Athens when the boat stops there,” she said.
Our plan was for her to stay all the winter in Paris, and return with
me in the spring; or, if she got tired of Paris, to return with me at
Christmas. Her slaves were devoted to her. Leila was her foster-sister,
and a childless widow, and knew of no other happiness than to serve
her mistress; and Mihri, who was the elder sister of Leila, knew of no
other happiness than to serve the two younger women. The two sisters
were to stay at home and pretend that their mistress was ailing, and
since she hardly ever went out of the house, or received anyone, it
would be an easy matter to hide from the world that the former wife of
Nouri Pasha was away from home.
Our talks now were entirely about our journey. Yet there were times
when, with her fingers clasped, and watching the ships on the far
horizon, she would lose herself in reverie. Then she seemed to be
suddenly inexplicably sad. Once when I was spending a week-end with
her, she passed the entire afternoon gazing at the sea, her face
immobile and lifeless.
After I had gone to bed that night, she came to me as was her custom,
and kneeled by me to kiss me good night. Of a sudden she put her arms
around me, and said quickly, as if she were afraid of her own words:
“_Yavroum_, have you ever seen Nouri Pasha’s children?”
“Yes,” I answered, “I have seen them all: the three little girls, and
the tiny little boy.”
“Tell me about them.”
I told her all I knew, and especially of the little man who was less
than a year old. I had seen him just before we came to spend the summer
in Pantich. His mother had been ill ever since his birth and could not
nurse him, and thus he had a French _nounou_, who wore yards and
yards of ribbon on her bonnet.
That night was the first time that my Lady of the Fountain was
pathetically human. She thirsted for every scrap of news I was able to
give her about these children who were not hers, but the man’s who had
put her aside. When she left me she did not go to her own room, but
downstairs, and I heard her opening the door leading out on the terrace
below. Thinking about her I fell asleep, and when, several hours later,
I awoke again, the pathos of her life was magnified to me by the
darkness and stillness of the night. I rose from my bed, and went to
her room, to tell her how much _I_ at least loved her.
She was not there, and her bed was undisturbed.
Where could she be? I crept cautiously downstairs, and through the open
doorway out on the terrace.
She sat huddled in a corner, watching the sea, in the same attitude
which had been hers all that day. Quietly I sat down beside her, my
arms stealing around her. She did not speak to me at once, and when she
did her voice was unsteady, and shaking with unshed tears.
“Everything has a purpose in life--even the stars so high and
remote--and I alone am purposeless. Just because I lost my husband’s
savage love, I left him, without a word, without an explanation, as if
the brutal side of life were all that existed between man and woman.
If I had stayed, in spite of the second wife, I might have been of use
to him, for I had a good influence over him--and Allah might then have
given me a child.” She buried her face in her hands. “Allah! I am so
useless--so useless!” she moaned.
The silence of the night alone answered her, and I, having no words to
comfort her grief, took one of her jasmine-scented hands and kissed it.
Next morning my Lady of the Fountain had quite recovered her composure,
and even talked of her coming Paris escapade, but she was pale and worn
out, like a battered ship which has met with a storm.
A few days later I came to bid her good-bye, for this time I was going
with my mother on a visit to the island. She put her arms around me as
if she did not wish to let me go. Wistfully she said:
“When you are on the island, could you go to Nouri Pasha’s house?”
“Yes.”
“Then go and see the little boy. Kiss him, and bring me a kiss from
him. Will you?”
On the day after my arrival on the island I went to the pines, where
all the children are taken, but the little fellow was not there. The
nurses of his sisters told me that his mother was worse, and wished him
kept in the garden so that she could see him from the window.
Thereupon I went to Nouri Pasha’s house. The Bréton nurse in all her
finery was seated under an awning, the baby on her lap. I talked with
her awhile, and begged her to let me hold the baby, which she did. It
was a sweet baby, and strong.
“Is his mother better?” I asked.
“She will never be better, I fear.”
Just then a bell rang out of a window above us, and the nurse got up
and took the baby from me, saying:
“That is for me to bring him to his mother.”
After she had gone I picked up a rattle the baby had dropped to give it
to some one. I could find no one about, and the idea came to me to keep
it and take it to my Lady of the Fountain.
Two days later when I entered her apartment and presented it to her,
saying it was a present I had brought her from the island, she took it
and examined it with a puzzled expression. Being a European rattle she
did not know what it was.
“What am I to do with it?” she asked.
“To play with it,” and seeing her more puzzled still I explained to her
what it was, and how I had got it.
She patted it affectionately. “Pretty little toy!” she murmured;
“pretty little toy! I believe it is warm yet from the baby touch.”
* * * * *
Our French lessons made great progress, and her preparations for Paris
were completed. The scheme for obtaining a passport worked without
a hitch, and word had come from the convent that the lady could be
accommodated.
At last September was with us, and its coming that year was cold and
dreary. The tramontana blew daily, the flowers lost their colour and
perfume, and the grass turned pale. Already under the eaves one could
hear the bustling swallows, and on a particularly cold day news came,
somehow, that Nouri Pasha’s youngest wife was dead.
My Lady of the Fountain wept as if the girl had been her only child;
and between her tears and sobs she kept saying:
“She was only seventeen--and beloved--and the mother of a boy. And now
she is dead, leaving the little one motherless. How cruel! How cruel!
And yet Allah must be just.”
After this event a great change came over her. She was not sad, since
it is forbidden Turkish women to continue their sadness for more than a
day or two; yet she was not herself. She was constantly thinking, and
her thoughts were not restful. I felt that she did not wish me, and
stayed away.
Then she sent for me. I found her in her own room, writing, the floor
littered with torn paper.
“Oh, _yavroum_!” she exclaimed, “I am trying to compose a letter,
but it does not come. I have never composed one before. How do you do
it?”
“You simply say what you have to say.”
“And if what you have to say is that for which your heart cries, how do
you say it?”
“You say it in the words your heart uses.”
She pondered my advice.
“Yes, yes, you are right. Make no phrases. Just sit down,
_yavroum_.” She wrote feverishly, and in a few minutes gave a
sigh. “It is done!”
She folded the paper and put it in her bosom. She was very nice to me,
but said nothing further of the letter, and refused to read any French.
Leila came and played to her, and I went home without learning anything
more about it. As it was now the middle of September, and we were to
go in ten days, I had my own preparations to make, and did not see my
friend for a few days.
It was again she who sent for me. I found her flushed and excited. She
took me in her arms and kissed me with unwonted tenderness.
“You have not been here for so long, _yavroum_, and I have news
to tell you. Nouri Pasha will give me the little boy. The French woman
will be dismissed, and I shall bring him up like an Osmanli boy.”
“Aren’t you going to Paris with me?” I cried.
“Oh, no! no! I am going to stay here. Come into the house. Come and see
how ready we have made the rooms--ready for the young lion, who will be
here soon.”
We went all over the house. It had been scrubbed and cleaned as if for
a bridegroom. Her own rooms had new curtains, new chintz covers, and
was beautifully scented.
“He will live right here with me--see!” She pointed to a cradle placed
beside her bed. Her face flushed. With one hand she touched the cradle
timidly, with the other she pressed her heart, as if to keep it from
beating too fast.
On the boy’s arrival, the house was wreathed and decorated. All the
flowers of the garden were made into garlands, and festooned outside
the house from window to window. The two slaves wore new gowns.
Leila received me. “_Evvet, evvet, hanoum effendi_, the young
lion has come. He’s upstairs with his mother--and she is good to look
at.”
I climbed the much beribboned stairs; for all the old brocades and rare
Anatolian shawls were draped over the banisters; and went to my Lady’s
room. I found her seated on a couch, all clad in white satin, holding
Nouri Pasha’s son fast in her arms.
“Come! come! _yavroum_, come to see him. Isn’t he wonderful, and
isn’t Allah good to me?”
“He is a nice baby; but because you have him you will not go to Paris
with me, and you will never, never see the world.”
She gazed up at me as if we had never talked of Paris. “Oh, yes,
Paris,” she murmured dreamily. “That was for my selfish pleasure.
But now,” she continued with a thrill in her voice, “now I am doing
something for the world.”
Her face shone with the light which must be lighted from the divine
spark within us, when the self is effaced. She looked more than ever
like the Lady of the Fountain--but a fountain unlocked, and giving to
the world from its abundant waters.