“Peace, _delikànloo_,”[118] and he fixed on the young man one of those
piercing glances in which anger and humour were so strangely blended
that it was difficult to know which was predominant. “Is there already
so much wind of prosperity in your head that you despise the alliance of
the daughter of Delì Pasha?”
At the sound of that name the blood rushed to Hassan’s temples. He dared
not testify his rapturous delight before so many witnesses. Mohammed Ali
read it in his eyes, while the lips only said—
“Your Highness has loaded me with benefits that the gratitude and
service of a life cannot repay.”
“How obedient he became at once as soon as he heard the name,” said
Mohammed Ali in an undertone to Delì Pasha, who stood near him.
“Your Highness knew their attachment,” said the old soldier gratefully;
“to see them united under the shadow of your protection was my fondest
wish.”
The Viceroy now retired into the palace, and on entering his private
apartment said to his Hakim-bashi—
“There is one thing yet I forgot to learn from Hassan; send him here
immediately, and send my seal-bearer into Ali Bey’s house with a guard,
and tell him to seal every door, box, and cupboard till Hassan goes in
to take possession, otherwise the thoughtless boy will find nothing but
empty walls.”
Our hero was just receiving the congratulations of his father and Delì
Pasha when he was directed to reappear immediately in Mohammed Ali’s
presence. On entering the room the Viceroy said to him—
“When you captured the conspirators, did you learn anything certain of
their numbers or associates without? Wallah! I forgot myself, or I would
have ordered the scoundrels to be tortured to make them tell before
their heads were cut off.”
“Men under torture,” said Hassan, “often tell falsehoods to gratify
spite and revenge; but I took from Ali Bey’s vest a paper supposed to
contain the seals of all those who had joined his plot. I have not shown
it either to the Kiahia or to my own father, for I thought it might
contain names which, for various reasons, had better be known to none
but yourself.”
“Mashallah!” said Mohammed Ali, “though you are sometimes a
_delikànloo_, you have a head fitted for older shoulders than yours; but
I have long known that you could keep a secret. Do you remember the
night that you passed in a certain palace near the Nile?”
“Did your Highness know of that?” said Hassan in surprise.
“Everything that passed,” replied Mohammed Ali. “One of the blacks in
the service of that lady was a spy in my pay: her conduct compelled me
to have recourse to these measures, but I have taken that house away
from her. The old woman who plotted with Ferraj to entice you into the
house is at the bottom of the Nile. You behaved nobly, and you have
nobly kept secret events which, if known, would have brought disgrace on
my family. Go on as you have begun, and, Inshallah! so long as Mohammed
Ali lives you shall not want a friend. Now you may retire.”
Hassan kissed the hand extended to him and left the presence with an
exulting heart, repeating as he went out the Arabic proverb, “The
husbandman prayed for a shower, and, lo! an abundant rain,” which
answers to our proverb, “It never rains but it pours”—_i.e._, that
blessings, like misfortunes, seldom “come single” in life.[119]
A month has passed, and Hassan’s mother has wept tears of joy on the
breast of her long-lost son, and they have reiterated to each other the
mysterious attraction which had linked them in sympathy from the first
moment that they had met in Delì Pasha’s house, and Zeinab Khanum (whom
we have so long known as Fatimeh) has refused to leave Amina, now doubly
dear to her, until her marriage.
And Amina—who can paint her happiness?—a happiness such as not once in a
century can fall to the lot of a daughter of Islam: to be united to one
whom her virgin heart has so long worshipped as an idol—one whose
courage and devotion she has so surely proved—one whom her pure and
trusting heart tells her, and tells her truly, will love her alone.
What an intensity of joy is mingled with the blushes on her cheek as she
tries on the diamond ornaments with which the munificence of Mohammed
Ali had decked the bride of Hassan. For his sake she is content to allow
the busy tirewomen to exhaust their efforts in enhancing the brilliancy
of her beauty: they stain her delicate fingers with henna, they draw a
shaded line of kohl along the lids of her large and lustrous eyes, and
they anoint her redundant tresses with the most sweet-scented unguents
of Araby.
As Mohammed Ali had undertaken to dower the bride, all the city seemed
disposed to take a share in the marriage festivities. For a week
Hassan’s house had been illuminated every evening, and had been open to
all visitors. Lambs, fowls, pilaws, and sweetmeats were demolished
wholesale, and thousands of the poor were daily fed in the courts below.
The last day of these ceremonials had now arrived, and Amina was
conducted in state to her bridegroom’s house. The procession, of immense
length, was preceded by a band of tumblers or buffoons, who amused the
public by their antics and somersaults; while in front of them walked a
_sakkah_, or water-carrier, staggering under the weight of an enormous
goat-skin sack filled with sand and water, which entitled him (if he
could carry it to the bridegroom’s house without setting it down) to a
liberal present. Some malicious urchin contrived, unperceived, to cut a
large hole in the bottom of the skin, and escaped in the crowd. The
_sakkah_, feeling the water trickling down his legs and the lightened
load on his back, soon became aware of the trick that had been played
him, and attributing it to the tumblers and jugglers behind him, turned
round and began to belabour them with his half-empty sack, covering them
from head to foot with sand and water, to the infinite amusement of the
spectators.
Behind these buffoons there followed several open cars, one containing a
_kahweji_, or maker of coffee, with the implements of his profession;
another a _helwaji_, or sweetmeat-maker; a third a _faterji_, or
pancake-maker,—all of whom dispensed their good things to the bystanders
as they passed.
After these came a band of musicians, who were followed by a dozen
married ladies of rank mounted on white donkeys, their saddles adorned
with crimson silk and gold embroidery: to these succeeded a troop of
unmarried girls on donkeys similarly accoutred.
Then came the bride, veiled from head to foot, a cashmere shawl over the
veil concealing completely her face and figure from the envious eyes of
the spectators.
It is usual for brides of rank to ride on donkeys, but on this occasion
Amina was mounted on Nebleh, splendidly caparisoned by the Viceroy’s
order, the beautiful Arab’s embroidered reins being held by eunuchs who
walked on each side of her head. The procession was closed by a party of
Mamelukes richly accoutred and a band of Turkish music.
On reaching Hassan’s house the bride and her attendants sat down to a
repast prepared for them, the bridegroom being, according to etiquette,
absent at the bath. After a certain time he returned with his party and
a _cortége_ scarcely less numerous than that of the bride.
On entering the house he left his friends to refresh themselves below,
while he went to an upper apartment where Amina was seated, still
completely veiled, between Zeinab Khanum and one of Delì Pasha’s wives.
Agreeably to custom, Hassan went through the form of giving to each a
piece of money, called the “unveiling fee” (for up to that moment the
bridegroom is supposed not to have seen the face of the bride); the two
elder ladies retired, and Hassan was left alone with Amina. According to
the prescribed rules of their faith, he gently lifted the veil from her
face, saying as he did so, “In the name of Allah, the compassionate, the
merciful.”
But not strange to each other were those eyes that now exchanged their
glances of unutterable love. Not the blush of a timid virgin on first
seeing the stranger who is hereafter to be her tyrant was the rosy hue
that tinged the neck of Amina as she listened in breathless silence to
the prayer which, according to Mohammedan rite, he uttered before he
ventured to embrace his wedded bride. Placing his right hand on her
head, he said with a deep-toned earnestness which thrilled to her heart—
“Oh, Allah, bless me in my wife, and bless my wife in me. Unite us, as
thou hast united us, for our good, and separate us when thou hast
decreed to do so, likewise for our good.”
Here let us take the veil which Hassan had removed from Amina’s head and
hang it over the portal of the room where their love is crowned with
that “sober certainty of waking bliss,” which heretofore they had only
seen in the visions of hope and in the land of dreams.