It wanted but an hour of sunset when Iskender parted from the Frank.
His very brain was laughing, and he trod on air as he strode off,
hugging the great umbrella. At noonday he had had his meal at the
hotel (no matter though it was flung to him in the entry as to a dog)
and afterwards had walked again with the Emîr, showing his Honour the
chief buildings of the town. Not a few of his acquaintance had beheld
his glory, among them Elias the great talker. No doubt but that the
fame of it was noised abroad. In no hurry to go home, for his mother
had already heard the tidings, he bent his steps towards a tavern where
the dragomans were wont to assemble at that hour.
Leaving the road of red-roofed foreign houses in which was the hotel,
he crossed a stable-yard, and then a rubbish-heap, and passed through
tunnels to the main street of the town, a narrow, shaded way leading
down to the shore. Here, what with spanning arches and the merchants'
awnings, it was dark already; the business of the shops appeared
belated; the sunlit sea beyond was like a vision. Dodging his way
through the crowd, avoiding bales and groaning camels, he traversed
half the street, then turned in at a gateway worthy of the noblest
mosque.
Within was a kind of cloister, three parts ruined, which had once, it
was said, appertained to a Christian church. On one side the outer
wall had fallen, allowing a view through shadowy arches of the sunset
on the sea; on the other, just within the colonnade, an enterprising
cook had placed his brazier and all else that is required to make a
tavern. Wherever the ground was clear of débris stools were set, and
men sat talking, smoking slow narghîlehs. The fragrance of coffee
stewing filled the place, mixed with the peculiar odour of a charcoal
fire.
Here the English-speaking dragomans used to meet together at the cool
of the day, to practise the tongue of their profession and discuss the
news. Clad in the gayest Oriental clothing to attract the foreigner,
their talk was all of Europe and its social splendours. At the moment
of Iskender's entrance, a man named Khalîl was gravely playing English
music-hall airs on a concertina, having acquired the art by instruction
from an English sailor at Port Said.
Iskender advanced self-consciously, knowing himself the hero of the
hour. And in the twinkling of an eye the music ceased; he was
surrounded. Elias, a saffron sash at his waist, a scarlet dust-cloak
streaming from his shoulders, flung an arm around his dear friend's
neck, and cried:
"I saw thee! Thou art in luck, my dear; for thy man is of the noblest.
I know him well by sight, for he is of the intimate friends of my lady."
This had reference to an illusion of Elias, who always maintained that
he was the lover of an English princess, and had spent a whole year as
her guest among the nobles of that distant land.
"Thou shalt present me to him, O my soul," cried a man in yet more
gorgeous raiment, "that I may judge of his character, and teach thee
how to work him to the best advantage."
"Aye, it behoves thee to present thy friends," rejoined another. "He
is a generous man, it is known; they say he gave a sovereign to our
father Mîtri."
Iskender promised freely. He saw his uncle beckoning to him, and
obeyed the gesture, breaking loose from the throng of courtiers.
Abdullah removed his stool to a distant spot among the ruins, whither
the servant of the tavern carried two narghîlehs. He made his nephew
sit and smoke with him, then asked:
"What news?"
"The best--thanks to Allah," replied Iskender. "The Emîr has shown
great love for me, and is having a grand new paint-box sent from the
land of the English."
"Pshaw!" said Abdullah, a shade of annoyance on his brow. "Put away
such playthings, which lead nowhere. Let thy whole study be to please
his Honour. In dealing with all travellers the first thing is to keep
them interested; for if their mind is dull a single moment they blame
the dragoman and give him a bad report. Thou art conversant with the
Sacred Book. Quote from it freely in connection with common sights;
as, for instance, if thou seest people ploughing, refer straightway to
Mâr Elias who ploughed with twelve yoke of oxen before him; if a woman
fetching water from the spring, mention her with whom Our Saviour
talked beside Samaria. Things common among us are strange to them.
To-morrow take thy patron to the bath, and conduct him through all its
stages. Thence bring him to my house, where thou shalt find a meal
which will not fail to please him. To sit on the floor as we do, and
eat with fingers from one dish, affords delight to foreigners. Above
all things, keep him for thine own. I say nought against thy taking
him this day to Mîtri, though the visit has made a noise. Our father
Mîtri is an upright man. But these----"
He jerked his thumb in the direction of the other dragomans, now
howling in chorus to the strains of the concertina.
"----These are all rivals--enemies. In the season thy Emîr would seem
as nothing to them; but now he is the only game in sight. Avoid them;
lead thy lord away from them. Thy coming here this evening was a
fault. Go now and quietly, lest they trap thee somehow. I expect thee
at my house at noon to-morrow."
Iskender saw the wisdom in these words. He shot a glance over his
shoulder at the other dragomans. They were still busy singing to the
concertina. Touching his uncle's hand, he stepped out through the open
arches and scrambled down over rocks and fallen masonry to the
sea-beach, whence he made his way home through the twilight. His
mother had heard of his introducing his Emîr to the priest Mîtri, and
blamed the folly of it, till she learnt how thereby he had redeemed the
great umbrella. Even then she still declared it was a pity. It would
put the missionaries in a perfect fury, since an Orthodox priest was
the devil in their eyes; and was certain to rouse the cupidity of other
people. Allah had blessed Iskender with the friendship of a mighty
prince. She bade him keep the blessing to himself, not let it waste
away in gifts to strangers.
Her words confirmed the counsel of the wise Abdullah. Iskender
resolved to follow it to the letter. But when, presenting himself
before his lord next morning, he announced the programme for the day,
the Frank raised unforeseen objections. He would in no case visit the
bath, he said, having heard that they used dirty water there. It was
with difficulty that Iskender won him to view Abdullah's invitation
with some favour.
Abdullah's house was in the town itself, hard by the shore. It stank
in the approach, as the Frank was not slow to remark; but within all
was swept and perfumed for the occasion. Borrowed mats strewed the
floor. Two candles burned upon a little shelf, before a picture of the
Blessed Virgin placed there in remembrance of the famous vision. And
the host omitted no formula of politeness that had ever been used by a
son of the Arabs to felicitate and set at ease an honoured guest. The
Emîr, completely reassured, smiled graciously. The food, when it
appeared, was tasty and abundant, and his Honour seemed to like it.
But Iskender knew that it was of the cheapest: the whole feast had not
cost his uncle ten piasters. When the Emîr, at taking leave, put two
mejidis in Abdullah's hand, he bit his lip and cursed the old man's
guile.
Thenceforth he determined to keep all English-speaking persons at a
distance, since their whole endeavour seemed to be to cheat his loved
Emîr. But it was not so easy to discard his old acquaintance.
That same evening, after parting from his patron, he ran right into the
arms of a pair of merry fellows, who announced their playful purpose to
detain him. Both wore their fezzes at a rakish angle, both had a
rosary dangling fashionably from the left hand, both talked and laughed
uproariously--secure in their employment by a foreign tourist agency
from the disgust of the Muslim population, whose scowls shadowed them.
Elias Abdul Messîh was one of them. The other, who boasted a very
large hooked nose, like a parrot's beak, which reduced the rest of his
face to insignificance, was Yuhanna Mahbûb, a famous bully.
"Now we have thee!" cried Elias, laughing loudly. "By Allah, it is
rude in thee to shun thy friends."
"Is it true that the Emîr gives thee an English pound every day?"
inquired Yuhanna.
"He is good enough to treat me as a brother, and has sworn, of his
benevolence, to make my fortune," Iskender modestly admitted.
"Pshaw! Promises--I know them!" sneered Yuhanna. "Coined money is the
only thing I put my faith in."
"We crave a boon of thee," pursued Elias coaxingly. "Bring the
khawâjah to the house of Karlsberger to-morrow afternoon. We will make
a feast in his honour and thine. Say yes, O my soul!"
"Aye, promise," snarled Yuhanna, "or we shall know thou hast a mind to
slight us, and take steps accordingly."
Iskender promised, with intent to fail them, for the Emîr's protection
made their threat quite harmless. He pursued his way down a sandy road
through the orange-gardens, which looked black beneath the sunset--of
unusual splendour owing to the presence in the sky of ragged clouds. A
fellah who passed remarked that rain was coming.
"Art on the way to visit me?" A hand fell suddenly upon Iskender's
shoulder. A tall black-clad form had overtaken him, unheard by reason
of the muffling sand. It was the priest Mîtri. "Or dost thou fear to
incur the anger of the English missionaries? By Allah, thou art wrong
to fear them. Their religion is of man's devising; its aim is worldly
comfort, which will fail them at the Last Day; whereas ours is the
faith of Christ and the Holy Apostles, the same for which thy fathers
suffered ages before the invention of the Brûtestânt heresy. It is the
faith of the true Romans who reigned in the city of Costantîn, when
Rome had reaped the reward of her heathen iniquity and lay in ruins, a
haunt of brigands and wild beasts. Is it not a sin that, after the
lapse of so many ages, people calling themselves Christians, people who
have never suffered hardship for their faith as we do, come hither and
wage war upon the Church in her bound and crippled state, seducing the
feeble and the avaricious by the spectacle of their wealth and the
prospect of foreign protection? These heretics--and the Muscovites,
our co-religionists, alas! with them--conspire against the Sultan, who
is our sole defender. With the Muslimin we have in common language,
country, and the intercourse of daily life. Therefore, I say, a Muslim
is less abominable before Allah than a Latin or a Brûtestânt."
The priest stopped speaking suddenly and embraced Iskender, kissing him
repeatedly on both cheeks. At the same moment a little cavalcade went
ambling by, which solved the riddle of his strange behaviour. Iskender
caught a scowl of disapproval from the Sitt Carûlîn, a glance of
agonised appeal from the Sitt Hilda, and then a malicious grin from old
Costantîn, as he ran by on foot, prodding with his staff the hindmost
jackass, on which the Sitt Jane sat up with face averted. The three
ladies were clad in white with mushroom hats and fluttering face-veils.
Their bodies bulged now here, now there, like sacks of grain, obedient
to the motion of the trotting donkeys.
"There they go, mothers of all contention, shameless meddlers!" said
Mîtri, peering after them in the twilight. "Ha, ha! I angered them,
the praise to Allah. I made them tremble for their nursling!"
Iskender made no answer, feeling angry with the priest. At that
reproachful glance of the Sitt Hilda, all his childhood had risen up
and testified against him. His heart was stricken with profound
compunction. He broke away from Mîtri as soon as possible, refusing an
invitation to enter his house and argue with him, and sped on across
the sandhills to his own home. There, in the little house, a lamp was
lighted; his mother stood at the doorway looking out for him.
Breathless, he informed her of his encounter with the Mission ladies,
and the priest's vile trick to shame him.
"Aha," she laughed, "a famous joker is our father Mîtri. I would give
much to have seen the faces of those harridans! Nevertheless, may his
house be destroyed, for he has done me an ill-turn with his foolery.
The ladies are certain to come here tomorrow, deafening me with the
outcry of their poisonous spite. For thee, it recks not, thou hast thy
Emîr. In sh' Allah thou wilt soon get money from him. Then thou canst
laugh at the malevolence of these hypocrites!"
But Iskender was not to be so easily consoled. He lay awake that
night, a prey to poignant self-disgust, remembering in turn his happy
childhood at the Mission, his love for the Sitt Hilda, and his recent
frowardness, each with a vividness that hurt his brain. Even the
patronage of a great Emîr seemed nothing worth as compared with the
affection of those who had brought him up. The Emîr spoke lightly of
religion; he despised the missionaries; it might well be he was wicked,
a servant of the Evil One, a creature of that outer darkness into which
he (Iskender) had fallen through his own fault. Then he thought of the
priest Mîtri, and of the beautiful child who for a moment had ensnared
his fancy; and was overwhelmed with pity for himself. He belonged to
nobody. The missionaries loved him so little that they were content to
cast him off for small offences; while for the Orthodox he remained a
Protestant, a filthy thing. In his thirst for comfort he was driven
back on dreams of greatness, of buried treasure some day to be found,
which would cause the English and the natives of the land alike to
grovel in the dirt before him. Warmed by such thoughts he fell asleep
at last.
When he awoke in the morning his mind was healed. He viewed the
Mission with the old resentment, and placed his every hope in the Emîr.
On his way to the hotel he saw the daughter of Mîtri throwing crumbs to
the church pigeons, and blew a kiss to her with words of love, only to
laugh loud when, picking up a stone, she cursed his father. At the
entering-in of the town he was accosted by Elias, who sprang suddenly
from the shade of a cactus-hedge. Yuhanna followed, yawning. It was
clear that they had been lying in wait.
"This afternoon, at the house of Karlsberger; forget not," Elias cried.
"We have ordered a fine feast in thy friend's honour."
"Fail us not, or it shall be the worse for thee," put in Yuhanna.
Iskender swore obedience to their will and hurried on, mentally
resolved to hire horses and take his Emîr for a ride until the evening.
It would be easy to say the Frank had willed it so, in which case none
could blame him. With this in mind he entered the hotel. But again
his Emîr proved refractory. The air that morning oppressed him, he
declared, and the sons of Mûsa said that it was going to rain. He
proposed a stroll to some near spot among the gardens, where he could
read while his companion sketched.
Iskender still had hope to foil the dragomans. He led his patron in a
direction opposite to that where he had left Elias. But, looking back,
he saw two figures shadowing them, and knew the game was up.
In fact, no sooner had they found a cool retreat than Elias and Yuhanna
sauntered up, hailing Iskender with delight as loving comrades. He was
obliged to present them to his Emîr, and from the moment of
introduction they had words for no one else, inquiring how his Honour
liked the place, and asking if he knew this and that great lord of the
English with whom they, by their own accounts, stood high in favour.
They presented their invitation with every circumstance of respect, and
the Emîr accepted it; and then, by the veriest accident, the eyes of
Yuhanna happened to light upon the ousted youth.
"Ah," he exclaimed, "you like this little one, our dear Iskender! A
good boy, sir, only don't know much yet. Baints fery nicely, for a
young 'un. He show you, sir, the way this afternoon."
A tear fell splash upon Iskender's drawing-book.