The pleasure-house was a two-storeyed building, much dilapidated,
having been unoccupied by the proprietor for many years. The garden,
originally made for pleasure by the Pasha’s father, had since been used
exclusively for growing vegetables. It was now like several fields
with palm trees set at intervals, the whole surrounded by a high mud
wall. The Pasha in one day had had the rooms cleaned out, the snakes
extracted from their walls by a professional charmer; the next he sent
down servants with the furniture, and the same evening Barakah arrived.
The house resembled a gigantic lantern in the blue of night with light
exuding from its many lattices. Descending from the harîm carriage
which had brought her, together with two women and the girl Fatûmah,
her own slaves, she was met by Yûsuf, whom she had not seen all day. He
introduced to her two men--a new experience, which seemed an earnest
of less strict seclusion. One, who bore a torch, bowed low with eyes
downcast. He was the gardener. The other--a most honest-looking
youth--gazed awestruck at her shrouded form, his large brown eyes
dilated to the very utmost, while a vast ecstatic smile bared all his
teeth--a smile which told of infinite fidelity.
“His name,” said Yûsuf, “is Ghandûr--my faithful friend. He is your
water-carrier, and will be always within call in case you have some
errand out of doors.”
Yûsuf then walked apart with the two men, while Sawwâb, the eunuch,
showed the lady her apartments. Sawwâb had come as escort to the
carriage and returned with it as soon as he had seen her settled
comfortably. A leering crone was left to guard propriety, a task which
she performed extremely ill on that first evening; for instead of
checking the high spirits of the slave-girls, who romped for joy at
their release from stricter discipline, she smiled upon their antics,
and herself performed a most improper dance before the bride.
For several days Yûsuf remained contented in the house and garden;
while Barakah, half-dazed but happy too, beheld him as incarnate
passion, not as man. She was the first to tire of loves and doves, and
try to talk of something sensible. Yûsuf appeared to think the speech
of every day a waste of time between them.
Then came the period of tiffs, the fretful wakening. Yûsuf began to
deal in sentiment about his mother, proclaiming it a hardship that his
wife should still distrust her.
“She is kind and tender--O, how dear to me! Go to her, Barakah! Kneel
at her feet, embrace her hands, and she will surely pardon.”
“Pardon? What, pray?” exclaimed the bride indignantly. “It is for her
to ask pardon of me whom, kindly recollect, she tried to poison.”
“She is older than you; she is my mother. It behoves you to be modest
and submissive towards her. I have forgiven all, and so should you. She
is my mother.”
It was a relief one morning when the Pasha came and bore the young
man off, declaring jokingly that he would die of too much sweet if he
remained immured there longer. Of Barakah he said the same, informing
her that Leylah Khânum and Gulbeyzah would call that afternoon to take
her out upon a round of visits.
Then Yûsuf took to being absent all day long, but came home gladly in
the evenings, full of love. He volunteered no tidings of his day’s
amusements, and when she questioned him about them seemed to think it
odd.
“All that is not your business,” he informed her kindly.
She hinted at the pleasures of companionship, the bond of common
interests. He laughed, inquiring:
“Are we not companions? Have we not interests in common? You teach me
English, and I teach you Arabic; we compare the customs of the races.
And we love! Are not these interests much greater than to hear what
Fulân said to Zeyd, what Zeyd replied, and whether Hâfiz or Mahmûd
obtained the Government appointment? That is the life of men, a passing
of the hours till night, when they return to the beloved. If anything
of weight befell I should inform you. What pleasure could it give to
you to hear repeated the gabble of a lot of people you will never know?”
Perceiving much in Yûsuf’s tastes and conversation which pious English
people would have thought ungodly, she gasped a little on discovering
he was religious. Attracted by a faith which showed some tolerance
of human failings, she was studying the rudiments of El Islâm by
Yûsuf’s guidance; acquiring prayers and all the rules for saying them,
including washings and the proper time and place. Nothing seemed left
to the believer’s judgment, it was all laid down. When, at a lesson
in prostration, she was moved to laughter, he became quite terrible,
and warned her threateningly that in this country any man or woman was
likely to be torn in pieces for a hint of blasphemy. The awe she felt
was oddly mixed with fascination.
There were details she would not have chosen in her cloistered life,
but on the whole it was the happiest that she had ever known. She was
waited on hand and foot who had known drudgery; her husband used her
as a reigning beauty who, but a few weeks since, had been esteemed
uninteresting. Then there were pleasures of society. The Pasha’s
carriage often came, with one or other of the ladies and Gulbeyzah, to
take her round to call on grand harîms. She was received with favour by
great ladies. One, a princess, by name Amînah Khânum, insisted on her
spending a whole day alone with her.
This dame, though elderly, still dressed to charm. Her rooms were full
of European furniture, but she herself sat always on a sofa, smoking a
long, old-fashioned pipe with coral mouthpiece.
“You are not of the first rank in your own country,” she told Barakah
to start with, bluntly; “or you would not be where you are. You do not
know the people I have met in France and England, so don’t pretend
you do. I value frankness.” It seemed she knew the English pretty
thoroughly.
She spoke good French and talked of Western Europe with intelligence,
seeming in general to approve its customs. One little speech of hers
amazed the visitor, intruding as it did abruptly upon lighter talk:
“The Europeans have degraded love and made life banal. They spread
life’s agitation over a vast surface and account it progress; we value
depth and stillness. Enlarging each life’s pool, they make it shallow.
A woman’s life is of the feelings which are dulled, not quickened,
by extensive interests. Their men too suffer, growing superficial,
flippant, without depth of character.”
When Barakah retailed this saying to Gulbeyzah, the Circassian sighed:
“She knows!” and told a curious story.
It was that years ago a European officer in the Egyptian service had
wooed Amînah Khânum secretly; and she had been entirely captivated by
his charms. But endeavouring to sound his character, she found him
shallow. She made him islam, but his carelessness informed her that
conversion meant no more for him than access to her. In the same way
she perceived that what he felt for her was nothing more profound than
the desire to add a Muslim lady to his list of conquests. The blow was
dire, for she was then extremely lovely, and a great examiner of men,
having divorced or killed ten husbands. She would not have him tell a
tale among his kind, yet could not conquer her intense desire of him.
What could she do? She satisfied her heart, and the next morning gave
him death in easy form, being well versed in poisons.
Barakah cried out in horror; but Gulbeyzah shrugged.
“What else could woman, not a harlot, do? He was an infidel, and would
have bragged of her. Ever since then Amînah Khânum has a kindness for
the Franks, though she deplores their levity.”
“And would you do the same?”
“One cannot tell beforehand. I am not a princess. Either that or kill
myself. May God preserve us from unsanctioned love of all kinds!”
Barakah felt overwhelmed by the intenseness, the tragic vigour of
these women, who seemed mild and playful.
Mrs. Cameron called at the garden-house one afternoon, and Barakah was
proud to give her a real English tea. Except for the costume, which
was much richer, and an added glow of happiness, the visitor, she felt
convinced, could not detect the slightest change in her. One thing at
least was certain, she had not deteriorated, as Mrs. Cameron before
the marriage had foretold she would. The visitor was amiable, and made
no allusion to the past. Before departing she made Barakah an offer of
some knitting wool and needles she had just received from England. The
wife of Yûsuf Bey accepted gladly, for she began to feel the weight of
idle hands.
The wools arriving an hour later, she debated what to make with them;
and, being at the time in English mood, decided on a pair of slippers
for her husband. But when she told him of her purpose, he frowned
wonderingly, and asked:
“Are you a shoemaker?”
Utterly disconcerted by so apt a question, she tried to paint the
beauty of the project, but he could not see it.
“If you want slippers, buy them in the market. It is not your trade.
When one like you employs the needle, it is not for use. Ask my mother;
she will show you the right work to do.”
He had his own ideas. The coloured wools were given to Fatûmah, who
made anklets of them, and other personal adornments, which amused her
for a week.
Deducing from her wish to make him slippers that she found the hours
long in his absence, Yûsuf procured her books in French and English.
He also brought her a fine musical box, which played dance-music in
stentorian tones to the rapture of the slaves, who kept it going all
day long. The Pasha came and begged her not to imagine that she was
debarred from every pleasure. It would be cruel to confine a damsel of
her breeding as strictly as a native of the country. Let her but name
her wishes; they should be deferred to. He even threw out hints that
she and Yûsuf might possibly see Paris in the coming summer.
Thus exhorted, and encouraged by the sight of women like Amînah
Khânum, who seemed to order every one their way, she forsook the timid
attitude which had been hers since marriage, and viewed existence with
commanding eyes. The old woman who had been engaged to play propriety,
was horrified one day to see her talking barefaced at a window to
Ghandûr, the water-carrier. The crone expostulated, coaxed, entreated,
and at length, when all proved vain, informed the husband, who, to her
utter consternation, laughed.
“Ghandûr?” he cried; “Ghandûr is my right foot,” and immediately
applied that member to the beldame’s person.
The old woman did not dare to speak again to Barakah, though the latter
plagued her mercilessly, crying “Ghandûr!” here and “Ghandûr!” there,
for the treat of seeing her curvet and wring her hands.
One morning, after Yûsuf had departed, she grew conscious of a great
oppression due to lack of outlet. The feeling had been with her vaguely
for some days. Now she knew it for a craving; she must see an English
person to revive her fading interest in the strange things around her.
“Ghandûr!” she cried.--He answered “Hâdir!”--“Fetch me a carriage for
the fifth hour after noon.”
“Hâdir!” he said again; and from her lattice she saw him speed off on
his errand like the wind. There were few carriages for hire in Cairo in
those days, and it was necessary to bespeak one early.
“The lady wishes to go out? Shall I accompany her?” cooed the old
woman, who was hovering near.
“No. I go alone!”
“I had better accompany the lady.”
“No, I tell thee!”
The lady stamped her foot, when the duenna shuffled off, wagging her
head forebodingly and mumbling.
“How absurd!” thought Barakah. “Haven’t Yûsuf and the Pasha told me
twenty times that women, in the kind of shroud they make us wear, can
go anywhere alone without attracting notice?”
When the carriage came--a hooded one--she sallied forth, correctly
veiled, escorted by Ghandûr, who, seeing no one with her, asked leave
to mount the box beside the driver. She gave it, feeling sure that
the old woman was watching the departure through some upper lattice.
Ghandûr sprang up with a delighted grin, quite rigid with the pride of
high preferment.