LITERATURE AND POLITICS.
“I have made the acquaintance of your old friend,” Charlie said to
Cecil a few Sundays after this conversation.
“Oh, you mean Dr Yehudi,” said she. “How do you like him?”
“My Western mind admires him extremely, because he is so tremendously
in earnest, but my Eastern mind is disgusted by his restlessness. Why
can’t he let people alone? He must always be attacking some one’s
cherished beliefs or pet foibles. If I was really an Eastern, I
suppose I should regard him as a prophet, and become a disciple. But I
really do believe there is something in it.”
“Something in what?” asked Cecil.
“Well--in the conversion of Jews, in spite of the thousand pounds. Old
Yehudi is such a splendid fellow--with his power and talents he might
have done almost anything if he had remained a Jew, but he has given
it all up, and the way the Jews here hate him for it! He has a
fascination for them, though; they go and argue with him by the hour,
and then leave the house tearing their clothes and calling down curses
upon him. But he’s awfully good to them, and the Moslems respect him
tremendously. He seems to do a great deal of good in one way and
another, but I can’t help thinking he would do better as a medical
man. It must be a hopeless kind of work preaching to a set of poor
wretches so horribly afflicted as some of them are.”
“Why don’t you offer to go and help him?” asked Cecil.
Charlie looked confused.
“How did you know?” he said. “Of course I can’t give up my time to
anything of the kind now, but I did say something to him one day about
throwing up this place and working under him. What do you think he
said to me? He looked me over very slowly, and said, ‘My goot yong
friend, you are what we call a rolling stone, never staying long in
one place. In the Missions this is as bad as in the worldly affairs.
Let me see you staying where you are for five years, working
faithfully under the goot Balio Bey, and then come to me again.’ That
was rather rough on me, wasn’t it? I wonder how he knew that Sir
Dugald and I didn’t exactly hit it?”
“He knows Sir Dugald, and he is beginning to know you,” said Cecil;
“and by his putting it in that way, he meant to show that it was not
Sir Dugald’s fault.”
“I am doomed to be snubbed to-day,” said Charlie, and went off
laughing to visit his hospital. Cecil felt more light-hearted than
usual about him that night. Generally his erratic ways and strange
acquaintances weighed upon her mind a good deal, but she felt more at
ease now that he had learnt to know the versatile and friendly Dr
Yehudi. He would be better employed in discussing Talmudical theology
or Syriac roots with him, even if no higher themes were touched upon,
than in gathering scandal about Sir Dugald and the foreign consuls
generally from old Isaac Azevedo. Cecil had taken a rather hastily
founded dislike to this old man, of whom she knew only by hearsay. It
even made her doubtful of the correctness of her own estimate of M.
Karalampi, to find it confirmed by reports from such a quarter. But a
corroboration of Charlie’s opinion of Azim Bey’s former teacher was
speedily to be provided from an independent source.
Cecil’s relations with her pupil continued to be of the happiest
character. In the seclusion of their own courtyard he was almost
always with her. He was perfectly content to be silent if she was
busy, and possessed the happy faculty of being able to do nothing and
yet not get into mischief. But stories were what he delighted in, and
all the pranks of Fitz, Terry, Patsy, and Loey were recounted over and
over again, until he knew the boys as well as their sister did. It was
a remarkable and gratifying thing about him that he never seemed
inclined to imitate any of these tricks. He was too much grown up,
indeed, to do anything of the kind, and it was from this very fact
that Cecil’s first great difficulty in dealing with him arose.
It so happened that she was not called upon to face this difficulty
until one day in the height of summer, when she was feeling unusually
weak and exhausted. She was only just recovering from an attack of
fever, and the heat seemed stifling, even in the semi-darkness of the
cellar schoolroom, with its carefully shaded windows close to the
ceiling. She had succeeded in getting through the morning’s lessons
somehow, but she found it impossible to provide Azim Bey with his
daily instalment of story. Upon this he volunteered to tell her a
story instead, while one of the negresses sat by and fanned her, and
she prepared herself to listen with considerable interest. Whatever
the story was, Azim Bey seemed to be quite excited about it, and she
wondered whether he had inherited the Arab gift of improvisation. He
sat thinking for a few minutes, and then, with very little preface,
began to pour into her horrified ears such a tale as made her hair
almost stand on end. At first she could only gaze at him in speechless
horror as he spoke, accompanying his words with much vigorous
descriptive action, but at last she found her voice, and burst forth
with crimson face--
“Bey, be silent! How dare you repeat such things? Where did you learn
that?”
“In a book, mademoiselle, a delightful book. Ah, magnificent!” he
added, slowly, smacking his lips as if he enjoyed the recollection.
“Who gave it you?” gasped Cecil.
“M. Karalampi: he has given and lent me many, for two--three years.
Ah, the dear pink and yellow books, how I love them!”
“And you have been reading these books ever since I came, and you
never told me!” said Cecil, in deep reproach. Her pupil became
penitent at once.
“Ah, mademoiselle,” he cried, flinging himself down beside her, and
seizing her hand, “he told me not to tell you. He said the English
hated French books, and could not understand them, and he used to send
them into my apartments at night. But at last I thought I would see
whether you did understand. O mademoiselle, my dear mademoiselle, why
are you weeping?”
“Because I am not fit to have the charge of you,” said Cecil, sadly,
dashing away the gathering tears. “I never thought of this. Oh, Bey, I
trusted you!”
“Don’t weep, mademoiselle, you are good; it is I that am wicked, vile,
a beast! I will give them up--I will read no more. We will burn them
all. I will never speak to M. Karalampi again. I promise,
mademoiselle.”
“How did you first learn to know M. Karalampi?” asked Cecil.
“My father wished me to take lessons in French, mademoiselle, and M.
Karalampi offered to teach me, and then he said that I should learn
best in reading by myself, and he would borrow some books for me from
the French Consul.”
“So he lent you these dreadful books?”
“Yes, mademoiselle. What do you think of him?”
“I am not going to say what I think. His behaviour is infamous.”
“Ah, he is a wicked man then, mademoiselle?”
“Wicked is no word for it. Bey, you will keep your promise--you will
burn these books?”
“I will, mademoiselle, I have given you my word; but it is like
burning a piece of myself. What shall I do with nothing to read and
all my pocket-money gone? for I have just sent to M. Karalampi what I
owed him.”
“You shall have English books,” said Cecil, with sudden resolution.
“You have no idea of the delightful books English boys read--books
that will do you good instead of harm. We will read them together
first, and when you know more English you shall read them by yourself.
I can borrow one or two from the Residency until we can write home for
more.”
“Very well, mademoiselle. We will burn the bad books--we will not
retain one. O women, bring wood into the courtyard, and fire.”
The negresses obeyed in some surprise, which was only natural,
considering the character of the weather; but Cecil and her pupil were
both too much in earnest to care for the heat, and mounted the stairs
at once to the courtyard, where the servants arranged a goodly pile.
It was not in Azim Bey’s nature to conduct such a ceremony as this
without all the pomp possible, and having installed Cecil in an
arm-chair in the verandah, he headed a small procession of slave-women
to his own rooms and superintended their return with their arms full
of pink and yellow volumes. Under his direction the leaves were torn
out in handfuls and piled on the wood, and he himself heroically set
fire to the pile. Cecil sat with a thankful heart watching the printed
pages curl and blacken. She remembered now Um Yusuf’s remark about
Azim Bey’s reading bad books, and the way Lady Haigh had laughed at
it, but the possibility of such a constant inflow of corrupt
literature as M. Karalampi had brought about had never occurred to
her. On the principle of striking while the iron was hot, she
proceeded next to cut off the supply. When Azim Bey had satisfied
himself that not a scrap of the obnoxious books remained unburnt, he
was summoned to write to M. Karalampi. Under Cecil’s superintendence,
but in his own phraseology, the boy expressed his thanks for M.
Karalampi’s kindness in the past, while remarking politely that he
would not trouble him for any further specimens of French literature.
When this letter had been despatched by a special messenger, Cecil
breathed more freely, and wrote a little note to the Residency, asking
Lady Haigh to send her any boys’ books she might happen to have.
Without Cecil’s intending it in the slightest, her hasty scribble
produced an extraordinary effect at the Residency. As has already been
said, she had been suffering from fever, and had not, in consequence,
been able to avail herself of her Sunday liberty for a fortnight. She
had been attended by the Pasha’s own physician, who had gone in person
to the Residency to report to Lady Haigh on the condition of his
patient, but Lady Haigh was not satisfied. She herself had hurt her
foot and could not get to the Palace to see Cecil, and she was nervous
and low-spirited about her, and feared that she was not properly taken
care of. The hurried pencil note, with its uneven writing, seemed to
her to confirm her fears, and she was hobbling to Sir Dugald’s office
to look for him and insist upon his doing something, when she
remembered that he had gone to see the Pasha. Happily she came across
Charlie instead, and he sympathised fully with her apprehensions.
“Yes, Cousin Elma, it does look bad. It seems to me very much as if
they were keeping her shut up and she couldn’t write without exciting
suspicion. She gets hold of a scrap of paper and scribbles as plain a
message as she dares without actually asking for help. You see from
the writing that she must have been agitated and excited. I certainly
think that this note ought to be answered in person.”
“And my wretched foot!” groaned poor Lady Haigh.
“Oh, I’ll go for you, Cousin Elma,” said Charlie, hastily. “It might
not do to wait until Sir Dugald comes back. I don’t feel at all sure
about that illness of Miss Anstruther’s. It may be all a fraud on the
part of the _hakim bashi_ (doctor). At any rate, if you will write a
note saying that I am the surgeon of the Residency come to see
Mademoiselle Antaza professionally, they must let me in. Of course, if
you have the books, I may as well take them with me, in case it’s all
right.”
About an hour afterwards, in consequence of this colloquy, Cecil and
her pupil, who had begun their evening lessons, were disturbed by
hearing Masûd’s warning cry of “_Dastûr! Dastûr!_” Much surprised
that the Pasha should pay his son a visit at this unwonted hour, Cecil
and the other women hurriedly assumed their veils, presenting thereby
an extremely grotesque aspect to Charlie as he approached, preceded by
the much-perturbed Masûd. He could not help laughing to see the women
instantaneously transforming themselves into closely swathed bundles
at his appearance, and Azim Bey marked his levity with displeasure.
“This gentleman is an acquaintance of yours, mademoiselle?” he
inquired frigidly, noticing that Cecil started.
“How do you do, Dr Egerton?” she asked, in some confusion. “May I
present to you Dr Egerton from the English Consulate, Bey?”
Charlie composed his features and bowed with due solemnity, and then
delivered his burden of books with a polite message from Lady Haigh.
Having done this, he seemed to intend his visit to be considered as a
friendly call, for he made several vain attempts to thaw the cool
reserve of Azim Bey, who sat regarding him with disapproving eyes.
Cecil was on thorns, fearing that her pupil would proceed to say
something rude, and it was scarcely a matter of surprise to her when
he remarked in his clearest tones--
“At this period of the day, monsieur, mademoiselle and I are engaged
with our studies. As I am certain that mademoiselle has no desire that
these should be interrupted by the visits of her acquaintances, I may
remark that if Milady Haigh has any message to send after this, it
will be unnecessary for M. le docteur to put himself to the pain of
bringing it.”
Cecil turned crimson, and even Charlie looked confused for a moment.
But his presence of mind did not forsake him, and he bowed politely,
regretted that he had trespassed on the patience of mademoiselle and
of the Bey, and took his departure.
“I do believe that little beggar’s inclined to be jealous,” he said to
himself as he left the Palace and went back to the Residency,
satisfied about Cecil, and thinking no more about Azim Bey and his
ways.
Cecil dared not say anything to her pupil about his rudeness, fearing
lest he should think she had some personal feeling in the matter.
After all, she was not sorry that Dr Egerton should have received his
_congé_ so decisively, for it would never have done if he had taken
it into his head to call again, and she was only thankful that the
incident of the books should have ended so happily.
But she was reckoning without her host, for the incident was not yet
terminated. Two or three days after the destruction of the French
novels, Azim Bey came in from a ride with his father in a state of
high self-satisfaction.
“It is not good to speak kindly to a wicked man--to treat him with
distinction--is it, mademoiselle?”
“To treat him with distinction? Certainly not,” said Cecil.
“Well, mademoiselle, I have treated the wicked man rightly; for M.
Karalampi is a wicked man, is he not? You said so yourself.”
“I know I did; but I didn’t mean you to be rude to him, Bey,” answered
Cecil, in some alarm. “What have you done?”
“We passed him to-day, mademoiselle, walking with the French Consul,
and I refused to take the slightest notice of either of them; for the
Consul must also be wicked, since he lent M. Karalampi the books at
first. Well, presently, when we halted, M. Karalampi approached me
with an air of familiarity, and inquired with sorrow how he had
offended me. I told him that I did not desire any further association
with him, and that I no longer considered him as one of my intimates.”
The boy was so well pleased with himself for this that none of Cecil’s
lectures on rudeness could produce any effect on him, and she dropped
the subject in despair. But the French Consul and M. Karalampi did not
see the matter in the same light, and they did their best, happily
with only partial success, to found a diplomatic complication upon the
incident. A note to the French Government complained of the pernicious
influence exercised by England in the household of Ahmed Khémi Pasha,
and in ornate and highly complimentary language deprecated the
interference of ladies in politics. Cecil was gallantly described as a
young woman profoundly learned, with manners the most distinguished, a
countenance charming and altogether spiritual, and a bearing at once
modest and intrepid, _Anglaise des Anglaises_. The sting of this
description was intended to be in its tail, and the writer went on to
say that this young girl, so innocent, so unsuspicious, was only the
tool of unscrupulous persons behind the scenes. Here followed a highly
coloured portrait of Sir Dugald Haigh, who was described as “this
inscrutable automaton of a man,” “this impassive murderer of poor
Hindus” (it is scarcely necessary to remark that the latter was a
purely fancy touch, probably borrowed from the colonial methods of the
writer’s own nation), as a crafty schemer and a Machiavellian plotter.
The note produced a good deal of effect, and there was a debate upon
the subject in the French Chamber, while at Westminster certain
M.P.’s, whose tender consciences were wounded by the thought of
England’s exercising influence anywhere, questioned the Government
upon it, and Cecil received through Sir Dugald a vague and formal
caution which might have meant anything or nothing, and the matter
dropped.
The English books which Cecil procured to replace the vanished novels
proved extremely successful in accomplishing her object. Azim Bey
devoured them eagerly, and held long conversations upon them with his
governess afterwards. To her great amusement, the characters he
discussed with most appreciation were those of the villain and of the
capable person who acted as _deus ex machinâ_, and cleared up
everything at the end of the story. He pursued the history of the
villain’s machinations with breathless interest, and generally carped
at his ignominious downfall when virtue triumphed, declaring that such
a man would never have let himself be conquered by such feeble means.
On the other hand, the character of the wealthy old gentleman who
adopts deserving orphan boys and starts them in life, takes
necessitous heroes into partnership, and bestows timely fortunes on
penniless heroines, suited the vein of rather eccentric benevolence
which was noticeable in him. Further reading brought him to wish to do
something for the poor--and this not only in the way of giving alms to
beggars in the street, which he did carefully as a religious duty. He
wished to go amongst them and help them to raise themselves; and when
his father absolutely refused to allow him to do anything of the kind,
he demanded that his governess should find him some substitute for
this employment. After some cogitation, Cecil suggested that he should
take an interest in Dr Yehudi’s Mission-schools, the best managed
institution of their kind in Baghdad; and Azim Bey set to work at
once, and gave the Pasha no peace until he had granted him leave to
visit them.
It would be difficult to say whether the Bey or his entertainers felt
the honour of this visit more acutely, but the programme was gone
through in a thoroughly successful way. Azim Bey inspected all the
buildings, listened to the children’s lessons, asked them a few
questions himself, and finally sent out one of his servants to buy
sweetmeats to distribute among them--all with a stately and paternal
air modelled on that which the Pasha wore on similar occasions. He was
so supremely well satisfied with himself that, when the ceremony was
over, he accepted the Yehudis’ invitation to afternoon tea, and
handled his cup and saucer as though to the manner born, or as if he
had rehearsed the scene carefully beforehand, as he generally did when
he was to meet Europeans. They were a very pleasant little party in
the cellar of the Mission-house,--Mrs Yehudi pouring out her woes to
Cecil in a corner on the subject of her husband’s irrepressible
activity, and her conviction that he would kill himself with work;
while Dr Yehudi, genial, rotund, and erudite, conversed with Azim Bey
in the purest Arabic, when the harmony of the occasion was marred by
the entrance of a visitor. Unfortunately, it was not one of the Jewish
rabbis who were wont to come and argue with Dr Yehudi, nor even one of
the Turkish gentlemen who sometimes honoured him with a visit for the
sake of his many talents, but Charlie Egerton. As he advanced
cautiously towards his hostess in the dim light, Azim Bey’s brow grew
black, and Cecil turned first red and then white, as she realised that
her pupil’s suspicious mind had instantly concluded that the meeting
here was prearranged. Ever since Charlie’s visit to their courtyard,
Azim Bey had maintained a violent dislike of him, and refused to hear
his name mentioned, alleging that he had forced his way into the
Palace with the express design of insulting him and of thrusting
himself upon Mdlle. Antaza.
A prejudice of this kind could not be dealt with by argument, and
Cecil had refrained from attempting it, but now she wished that she
had not done so, for even the Yehudis perceived at once that something
was wrong. The only unconcerned person was the intruder himself, who
complimented Mrs Yehudi on her tea, chaffed the Bey on the subject of
his gloomy countenance, and otherwise did his best to make things
comfortable. But his efforts were in vain. No sooner had Cecil set
down her tea-cup than her pupil rose.
“I am sorry to hasten you, mademoiselle, but it is time that we
return. M. le pasteur, may I entreat you to command my servants to be
summoned? Accept, madame, the assurance of my most distinguished
consideration, and of my eternal gratitude for your hospitality. Allow
me to enjoy the hope of one day partaking of it again.”
“May I ride with you as far as the Palace?” said Charlie to Cecil in a
low voice, but Azim Bey heard him.
“No, monsieur, pray do not trouble yourself to move. Your attendance
is not required. You understand me?”
“Perfectly, Bey,” responded Charlie, and Azim Bey and his attendants
mounted and rode off, the Bey keeping a sharp eye upon Cecil, with the
view of preventing any lingering farewells. When they were well on
their way, he demanded--
“Is this Dr Egerton always at the Mission-house when you go there,
mademoiselle?”
“Certainly not,” said Cecil.
“That means every time but once, I suppose?” he asked, rudely.
“You forget yourself, Bey,” said Cecil, in grave reproof. “I am not
accountable for Dr Egerton’s movements, but I can tell you that I have
never met him at the Mission-house before, and that I had no idea
whatever that he would be there to-day.”
Azim Bey grunted and changed the subject, absolutely refusing to refer
to it again. He refused also to attend the prize-giving at the school,
to which he had been looking forward, and gave Cecil as few chances as
possible of going to the Mission-house. Nor did his precautions end
here. Dr Yehudi received a confidential hint from Denarien Bey,
warning him not to entertain persons from the British Consulate so
frequently at his house, as the fact of the constant presence there of
such individuals was creating a suspicion in high quarters that the
work was being carried on for political ends. The old missionary had
no alternative but to lay the case before Charlie, who perceived that
he was out-manœuvred, and was obliged to accept the situation. Lady
Haigh laughed at him, but he felt himself an innocent and much injured
individual.