"Peace be with thee!" said the old woman, dropping a low courtesy to
the officer, as he walked near the new buildings of the seraglio.
"Peace be unto _thee_, and the mercy of God and His blessing,[97] good
woman!" replied the soldier; but waving his hand, added kindly, "I
have no need of your harem trumpery."
"But see this!" said she, showing the elegant case of perfumery. "This
holds the essence of the flowers of paradise."
"Go along, old mother! I would have no taste for it if it contained
the sweat of the houris."[98]
"But this case was made especially for you, Captain Ballaban."
"Or for any other man whose purse will buy it," replied he, moving
away.
The woman followed closely, chattering into his deaf ears.
"But, could you see her that made it, you would not decline to buy,
though you gave for it half the gold you found in the coffers of the
rich Greeks the day your valor won the city, brave Captain; and the
cost of it is but a lira;[99] and the maiden is dying of love for
you."
"Then why does she not give it to me as a present? Love asks no
price," said he, just turning his head.
"That she would, but for fear of offending your honor by slighting
your purse," said the quick-witted woman.
"Well said, mother! I warrant that the Beyler Bey, or the noble
Kaikji,[100] who made love to you never got you for nothing."
"Indeed, no! He paid the Validé Sultana ten provinces, and a brass
buckle besides, to prevent her giving me to Timour; who took it so
hard that he would have broken his heart, but that the grief went the
wrong way and cracked his legs, and so they call him Timour-lenk. That
was the reason he made war on the Ottomans. It was all out of jealousy
for me," said she, making a low and mock courtesy. "But if you could
see the beautiful odalisk who made this! Her form is as stately as the
dome of St. Sophia."
"She's too big and squatty, if she's like that," laughed the officer.
"Her face glows in complexion like the mother of pearl," went on the
enthusiastic saleswoman.
"Too hard of cheek!" sneered the other. "Even yours, Hanoum, is not so
hard as mother of pearl."
"A neck like alabaster----"
"Cold! too cold! I would as soon think of making love to a
gravestone," was the officer's comment.
"And such melting lips----"
"Yes, with blisters! I tell you, old Hanoum, I'm woman proof. Go
away!"
"And her eyes shine through her long lashes like the stars through the
fir trees on the Balkans."
"Tut! Woman, you never saw the stars shine on the Balkans. They do
shine there, though, like the very eyes of Allah. A woman with such
eyes would frighten the Padishah himself."
Kala Hanoum took courage at this first evidence of interest on the
part of the officer, and plied her advantage.
"And her teeth are as white as the snows in the grotto of Slatiza--"
"The grotto of Slatiza? You mean some bear's cave. But the snows are
white there, whiter and purer than anywhere else on earth, except as I
once saw them, so red with blood, there in the Pass of Slatiza. But
how know you of Slatiza, my good woman?"
"And altogether she is as fair as the bride of Sigismund of Hungary,"
said Kala, without regarding his question.
"And who was she, Hanoum?" asked the man, with curiosity fully
aroused.
"Why, Elizabeth Morsiney, of course."
The officer turned fully toward the woman, and scanned closely her
features as if to discover something familiar. Was there not some hint
to be picked from these words?
"Hanoum, who told you to say that?"
The woman in turn studied his face before she replied. She would
learn whether the allusions had excited a pleasant interest, or roused
antagonism in him. It required but a moment for her to discover that
Morsinia had given her some clue that the man would willingly follow,
so she boldly replied:
"The odalisk herself has talked to me of these things."
"The odalisk! What is she like?" said he eagerly. "Describe her to
me."
"Why, I have been describing her for this half-hour; but you would not
listen. So I will go off and do my next errand."
The woman turned away, but, as she intended it should be, the officer
was now in the attitude of the beggar.
"Hold, Hanoum, I will buy your perfume--But tell me what she is like
in plain words. Is she of light hair?"
"Ay, as if she washed it in the sunshine and dried it in the
moonlight, and as glossy as the beams of both."
"Think you she belonged to Stamboul before the siege?"
"Ay, and to the great Scanderbeg before that."
The officer was bewildered and stood thinking, until Kala interrupted
him.
"But you said you would buy it, Captain."
"Did I? Well, take your lira."
As the woman took the piece of money she added: "And don't forget that
the odalisk said she had dreamed of you since she was a child, and
that at sunset if you looked through the phials you would see her
face."
"Nonsense, woman!"
"But try it, Sire, and maybe the noble Captain would send something to
the beautiful odalisk?"
"Yes, when I see her in the phial I will send her myself as her
slave."
The man thrust the silken case into the deep pocket of his flowing
vest and went away.
Then began a struggle in Captain Ballaban. Since the capture of the
fair girl by the altar of St. Sophia, he had been unable to efface the
remembrance of her. She stood before him in his dreams: sometimes just
falling beneath the dagger; sometimes in the splendor which he
imagined to surround her in the harem; often in mute appeal to him to
save her from the nameless horrors which her cry indicated that she
dreaded. When waking, his mind was often distracted by thoughts of
her. The presence of the Sultan lost its charm, for he had come to
look upon him as her owner, and to feel himself in some way despoiled.
He was losing his ambition for distant service, and found himself
often loitering in the vicinity of the Phranza palace.
This feeling which, perhaps, is experienced by most men, at least once
in life, as the spell of a fair face is thrown over them, was
associated with a deeper and more serious one in Captain Ballaban.
From the day of her capture until now he had felt almost confident of
her identity with his little playmate in the mountain home. She thus
linked together his earliest and later life; and, as he thought of
her, he thought of the contrast in himself then and now. The things
he used to muse about when a child, his feelings then, his purposes,
his religious faith, all came back to him, and with a strange strength
and fascination. He began to realize that, though he was an enthusiast
for both the Moslem belief and the service of the Ottoman, yet he had
become such, not in his own free choice, but by the overpowering will
of others. At heart he rebelled, while he could not say that he had
come to disbelieve a word of the Koran, and was not willing to harbor
a purpose against the sovereignty of the Padishah. Still he was
compelled to confess to himself that, if the fair woman were indeed
his old play-mate, and there was open a way by which he could release
her from her captivity, he would risk so much of disloyalty to the
Sultan as the attempt should require. Indeed, he argued to himself
that, except in the mere form of it, it would not be disloyalty; for
what did Mahomet care for one woman more or less in his harem? And was
this woman not, after all, more his property than she was that of the
Padishah? He had captured her; perhaps twice; and had saved her life
in St. Sophia, for only his hand caught her dagger. She was his!
Then he became fond of indulging a day dream. The Sultan sometimes
gave the odalisks to his favorite pashas and servants. What if this
one should be given to him?
He had gone so far as once to say in response to the Sultan, who
twitted him for being in love, that he imagined such to be the case,
and only needed the choice of His Majesty to locate the passion. But
he did not dare to be more specific, lest he might run across some
caprice of the Sultan; for he felt sure that so beautiful an odalisk
as his captive would not long be without the royal attention.
Old Kala Hanoum's information regarding the fair odalisk allayed the
turmoil in Ballaban's breast, in that it gave certainty to his former
suspicions. For her words about the stars above the Balkans, the snows
of Slatiza, and Elizabeth Morsiney, were not accidental. He had no
doubt that the Albanian odalisk was the little lady to whom he once
made love in the bowers of blackberry bushes, and vowed to defend like
a true knight, waving his wooden sword over the head of the goat he
rode as a steed. In the midst of such thoughts and emotions, Captain
Ballaban awoke to full self-consciousness, and said to himself----
"I am in love! But I am a fool! For a man with ambition must never be
in love, except with himself. Besides, this woman I love is perhaps
half in my imagination; for I never yet caught a full view of her
face. As for her being my little Morsinia--Illusion! No! this is no
illusion! But what if she be the same! Captain Ballaban, are you going
to be a soldier, or a lover? Take your choice; for you can't be both,
at least not an Ottoman soldier and a lover of a Christian girl."
Rubbing his hand through his red hair, as if to pull out these
fantasies, he strode down to the water's edge, and, tossing a Kaikji a
few piasters, was in a moment darting like an arrow across the
harbor;--a customary way the captain had of getting rid of any
vexation. The cool evening breeze wooed the over-thoughtfulness from
his brain, or he spurted it out through his muscles into the oar
blades, which dropped it into the water of oblivion.
He was scarcely aware that he was becoming more tranquil, when a quick
cry of a boat keeper showed that he had almost run down the old tower
of white marble which rises from a rocky islet, just away from the
mainland on the Asiatic side of the Bosphorus.
"Kiss-Koulessi, the Maiden's Tower, this," he muttered. "Well, I have
fled from the fortress of one maiden to run against that of another.
Fate is against me. Perhaps I had better submit. Why not? Wasn't
Charis a valiant general of the old Greeks, who sent him here, once on
a time, to help the Byzantines? Well! He had a wife, the fair
Boiidion, the 'heifer-eyed maiden.' And here she lies beneath this
tower. The world would have forgotten General Charis, but for his wife
Damalis, whom they have remembered these two thousand years. A wife
_may_ be the making of a man's fame. If the Sultan would give me my
pick of the odalisks I think I would venture."
These thoughts were not interrupted, only supplemented, by the sun's
rays, now nearly horizontal, as striking the water far up the harbor
of Stamboul, they poured over it and made it seem indeed a Golden
Horn, the open end of which extended into the Bosphorus. The ruddy
glow tipped the dome of St. Sophia as with fire; transformed the gray
walls of the Genoese tower at Galata into a huge porphyry column,
sparkling with a million crystals; and made the white marble of the
Maiden's Tower blush like the neck of a living maiden, when kissed
for the first time by the hot lips of her lover.
So the Captain thought: and was reminded to inspect the silken
treasure he had purchased. He would look through the phials, as--who
knows--he might see the face of her who sent them. If looking at the
red orb of the sun, just for an instant, made his eyes see a hundred
sombre suns dancing along the sky, it would not be strange if his long
meditation upon a certain radiant maiden should enable him to see her,
at least in one shadowy reproduction of his inner vision.
He drew the silken case from his pocket. It was wrought with real
skill, and worth the lira, even if it had contained nothing, and meant
nothing. The little phials were held up one by one, and divided the
sun's beams into prismatic hues as they passed through the twisted
glass. In each was a drop or two of sweet essence, like an imprisoned
soul, waiting to be released, that it might fly far and wide and
distill its perfume as a secret blessing.
"But this one is imperfect," muttered the Captain, as he held up a
phial that was nearly opaque. It was larger than the others, and
contained a tightly wrapped piece of paper. "The clue!" said he, and,
after a moment's hesitation, broke the phial. Unwinding the paper, he
read:
"You are Michael, son of Milosch. I am Morsinia, child of
Kabilovitsch. For the love of Jesu! save me from this hell. We can
communicate by this means."
It was a long row that Captain Ballaban took that night upon the
Bosphorus. Yet he went not far, but back and forth around the new
seraglio point, scarcely out of sight of the clear-cut outline of the
Phranza Palace, as it stood out against the sky above the ordinary
dwellings of the city. The dawn began to peer over the hills back of
Chalcedon, and to send its scouts of ruddy light down the side of Mt.
Olympus, when he landed. But the length of the night to him could not
be measured by hours. He had lived over again ten years. He had gone
through a battle which tired his soul as it had never been tired under
the flashing of steel and the roar of culverin. Only once before,
when, as a mere child he was conquered by the terrors of the
Janizaries' discipline, had he suffered so intensely. Yet the battle
was an undecided one. He staggered up the hill from the landing to the
barracks with the cry of conflict ringing through his soul. "What
shall I do?" On the one side were the habit of loyalty, his oath of
devotion to the Padishah, all his earthly ambition which blazed with
splendors just before him--for he was the favorite of both the Sultan
and the soldiers--and all that the education of his riper years had
led him to hope for in another world. On the other side were this new
passion of love which he could no longer laugh down, and the appeal of
a helpless fellow creature for rescue from what he knew was injustice,
cruelty and degradation;--the first personal appeal a human being had
ever made to him, and he the only human being to whom she could
appeal. To heed this cry of Morsinia he knew would be treason to his
outward and sworn loyalty. To refuse to heed it he felt would be
treason to his manhood. What could he do? Neither force was
preponderating.
The battle wavered.
What did he do? What most people do in such circumstances--he
temporized: said, "I will do nothing to-day." Like a genuine Turk he
grunted to himself, "Bacaloum!" "We shall see!"
But though he arranged and ordered an armistice between his contending
thoughts, there was no real cessation of hostilities. Arguments
battered against arguments. Feelings of the gentler sort mined
incessantly beneath those which he would have called the braver and
more manly. And the latter counter-mined: loyalty against love:
ambition against pity.
But all the time the gentler ones were gaining strength. On their side
was the advantage of a definite picture--a lovely face; of an
immediate and tangible project--the rescue of an individual. The
danger of the enterprise weighed nothing with him, or, at least, it
was counter-balanced by the inspiriting anticipation of an adventure,
an exploit:--the very hazard rather fascinating than repelling. Yet he
had not decided.
FOOTNOTES:
[97] Koran, Chapter IV. "When you are saluted with a salutation,
salute the person with a better salutation, or at least return the
same."
[98] According to the Koran the houris perspire musk.
[99] About an English pound sterling.
[100] Kaikji; a common boatman.