Drawn by W. T. Benda. 
 
 HAVE REVERENCE, 
 O COMER IN THE NIGHT, 
 FOR THE HOUSE OF THE 
 DEAD. TURN, TURN AWAY, 
 WHILE IT YET IS TIME." 
 
STAMBOUL NIGHTS 
 
 BY 
 
 H. G. DWIGHT 
 
 Author of "Constantinople Old and New 1 
 
 FRONTISPIECE BY 
 
 W. T. BENDA 
 
 GARDEN CITY NEW YORK 
 
 DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 
 
Copyright, 1916, by 
 
 Doubleday, Page & Company 
 
 All rights reserved, including that of 
 
 translation into foreign languages, 
 
 including the Scandinavian 
 
TO 
 
 PAUL REVERE REYNOLDS 
 
 WHO SPEAKS BITTER WORDS OF THE CHIVALRY OF SCRIBBLERS 
 BUT WHO CHIVALROUSLY ENTREATS THEM 
 
 331262 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Scribe to a Possible Reader . . . ix 
 
 The Leopard of the Sea 3 
 
 Mortmain 25 
 
 Mehmish . . . . . . ..... 59 
 
 The Glass House ........ 75 
 
 The House of the Giraffe 105 
 
 The Golden Javelin ....... 152 
 
 His Beatitude 176 
 
 The Place of Martyrs 202 
 
 Under the Arch 219 
 
 For the Faith 238 
 
 Mill Valley 267 
 
 The Regicide 287 
 
 The River of the Moon 311 
 
 In the Pasha s Garden . 339 
 
 Vll 
 
THE SCRIBE TO A POSSIBLE READER 
 
 "Yes" said Sir Thomas, speaking of a fashionable 
 novel, "it certainly does seem strange; but the novelist 
 was right. Such things do happen." 
 
 "But my dear sir," I burst out, in the rudest manner, 
 "think what life really is just think what happens! 
 Why people suddenly swell up, turn dark purple; hang 
 themselves on meat hooks; they are drowned in horse- 
 ponds, run over by butchers carts, burnt alive and 
 cooked like mutton chops!" 
 
 Logan Pear sail Smith: TRIVIA. 
 
 OF THE following stories five have appeared 
 in the Atlantic Monthly, three in Scribner s 
 Magazine, and one each in Appleton s Magazine, 
 the English Review, Harper s Weekly, Mc- 
 Clure s Magazine, and Putnam s Monthly. To 
 the courtesy of the editors and publishers of 
 these periodicals I am indebted for permission 
 to tell my tales a second time although I may 
 add that not one of the tales is told identically 
 as it was the first time. I am also under obli 
 gations to Messrs. Charles Scribner s Sons for 
 kindly allowing me to use again an illustration 
 and a Turkish seal already published by them. 
 The sketch entitled "Mehmish" has for excel 
 lent reasons been despised and rejected of all 
 editors. For no better reason than that it hap- 
 
THE SCRIBE TO A POSSIBLE READER 
 
 pens to be true, however, and because it is in its 
 way characteristic, I keep it in the company of 
 its more fortunate contemporaries. 
 
 The teller of the stories has inherited enough 
 Puritanism to believe in the uses of adversity, 
 while reserving judgment on the sweetness 
 thereof, and he raises no outcry against the 
 discouragements through which his somewhat 
 exotic fictions have slowly made their way into 
 print. But he would be less than human if 
 something in him did not warm toward those 
 among the arbiters of destiny who first granted 
 him a hearing. Let him, then, express particu 
 lar gratitude to Mr. E. L. Burlingame, who 
 accepted for Scribner s Magazine the earliest of 
 these stories, "For the Faith" of which others 
 had earlier reading; to Miss Willa Sibert 
 Gather, who as editor of McClure s Magazine 
 puffed up an obscure heart with pride by com 
 missioning Frank Brangwyn to paint a picture 
 for "Mill Valley"; and to Mr. Ellery Sedgwick, 
 who found room in the Atlantic Monthly for a 
 thrice-rejected "Leopard of the Sea" who even 
 found kind words for a scribe unused enough to 
 such sounds to be childishly heartened by them. 
 I cannot help feeling grateful, either, to a pub 
 lisher so venturesome as to bring out a volume 
 of short stories by an unknown writer. And I 
 wish I might acknowledge the many debts I owe 
 
THE SCRIBE TO A POSSIBLE READER 
 
 in the way of material. No good fairy, alas, 
 dropped the gift of invention into my cradle, and 
 not one of these stories could really be called 
 mine. Several of them I put on paper almost 
 exactly as they were told me. More of them 
 were pieced together out of odd bits of expe 
 rience and gossip. The seed of one was con 
 tained in a paragraph of the Matin which I 
 read one morning in Paris. And another may 
 be found, in miniature, in Stendhal s "De 
 F Amour." To that comprehending Frenchman, 
 unhappily, it was never given to peruse "When 
 Omer smote is bloomin lyre . . . ! " 
 
STAMBOUL NIGHTS 
 
STAMBOUL NIGHTS 
 
 THE LEOPARD OF THE SEA 
 
 Power over the waters hath Allah given to the un 
 believer, but over the land to the faithful. 
 
 TURKISH PROVERB. 
 
 AFTER it was quite dark, a man who 
 strolled by happened to catch sight of 
 my camera. He stopped and began to 
 examine it. I discreetly lit a cigarette in order 
 to show him that the camera had a proprietor. 
 He continued his inspection, as much as to show 
 me that he had known I was there. Then he 
 took out his tobacco box, rolled a cigarette with 
 deliberation, came up to me, saluted me politely, 
 and lighted his cigarette from mine. It is the 
 custom of the country, you know. Nobody has 
 any matches. I suppose somebody did once, but 
 since then everybody has gone on taking the 
 sacred fire from everybody else. 
 
 Having made the second salutation of usage, 
 the stranger showed no haste to be off. Indeed, 
 after standing a moment, he sat down on an- 
 
 3 
 
4 THE LEOPARD OF THE SEA 
 
 other stone near me not so near as the Greek 
 had done. From that, and from his silence, and 
 from a certain easy awkwardness about him, I 
 guessed he was a Turk. 
 
 "Do you make postcards?" he asked at last. 
 
 "No," I said, "I am just taking a picture." 
 
 "Ah, you have a whim." 
 
 "Yes," I assented, "I have a whim." And I 
 smiled to myself in the dark at the pleasant 
 idiom. 
 
 "Why do you take pictures now, when it is 
 dark?" pursued my companion. "There is a 
 very pretty view from here in the daytime, but 
 can your machine see it at night?" 
 
 I did not mind his inquisitiveness. There 
 was nothing eager or insistent about it. It was 
 simple and natural, and there was a quality in 
 it that I often feel in the Turks, of being able 
 to take the preliminaries of life for granted. 
 The man was evidently not of the higher 
 classes, but neither was he of the lowest. I 
 could make out that he wore European clothes 
 and no collar. 
 
 "I want to get the lights of Ramazan," I 
 explained to him. "I took one picture at sun 
 set, so as to get the shape of Yeni Jami and the 
 way the Golden Horn lies behind it, and after 
 ward I shall take another on the same plate, for 
 the lights." 
 
THE LEOPARD OF THE SEA 5 
 
 "Ah !" he uttered, as if. perfectly compre 
 hending my whim. And after a pause he added : 
 "They must make a great feast at Yeni Jami 
 to-night. They have not lighted one lamp 
 yet." 
 
 It was true. The minarets of St. Sophia, the 
 Siilei manieh, all the other great mosques that 
 ride the crest of Stamboul, already wore their 
 necklaces of gold beads, while mysterious pen 
 dants began to twinkle between them. We 
 watched one spark after another spell "O 
 Mohammed !" above the dome of St. Sophia, and 
 a golden flower grew out of the dark between 
 the minarets of Bai ezid. 
 
 "Do you come from far?" suddenly asked my 
 companion. 
 
 "Yes," I said, "from America." 
 
 "From America," he repeated. I could see 
 by his tone that the name did not suggest very 
 much to him. "I have been to many countries, 
 but I have not been to America. How many 
 days does it take to go ?" 
 
 "Eh," I replied, "if you pay very much and go 
 half the way by train you can do it in eight or 
 nine days. If you go all the way by steamer it 
 takes about three weeks." 
 
 "Then it is not so far as Yemen," remarked 
 my companion. 
 
 "Oh, have you been to Yemen?" I asked in 
 
6 THE LEOPARD OF THE SEA 
 
 turn. "I have been to many countries too, but 
 I have never been to Yemen." 
 
 "I never would have gone if I had known. 
 But now they go most of the way by train." 
 
 "Didn t you like the sea?" I ventured. 
 
 "Fire is for the brazier and water is for the 
 cup," returned my companion somewhat enig 
 matically. 
 
 A flicker came out against one of the dark 
 lances of Yeni Jami, and then three small lamps 
 which were glass cups of oil with a floating 
 wick dropped into place one above another. 
 Presently three more appeared beside them, 
 and three more, until the lower gallery of the 
 minaret was set off with its triple circlet of 
 light. There was an interval, during which one 
 could imagine a turbaned person picking his 
 way up a corkscrew stair of stone, and the sec 
 ond gallery put on a similar ornament. I was 
 wondering whether the turbaned person would 
 have to climb all the way down to the ground 
 and up into the other minaret, when lights be 
 gan to flicker there too. But what I really won 
 dered was what my companion meant by his 
 odd proverb. 
 
 "Have you been much on the sea?" I asked, 
 hoping to find out. 
 
 "Eh, my father was a stoker on the Leopard 
 of the Sea, and when I was thirteen or fourteen 
 
THE LEOPARD OF THE SEA 7 
 
 I went on board too. The captain took a fancy 
 to me, and when I grew up they made me a 
 lieutenant. But we only went outside once: 
 that time we went to Yemen." 
 
 "Oh !" I exclaimed, beginning to be interested 
 in my man and resolving to seize him by the 
 leg if he got up from his stone. "What sort of 
 a ship was the Leopard of the Sea?" 
 
 "Didn t you ever hear of her?" he asked in 
 surprise. I didn t answer and he went on : "She 
 was not a battleship, if that is what you mean. 
 They called her a cruiser. She was an old 
 steamer they bought in Europe. Sometimes 
 she carried soldiers to the Dardanelles, but 
 most of the time she lay in the Golden Horn." 
 
 "How did she happen to go to Yemen?" 
 
 The experience of a lengthening career has 
 taught me that information may sometimes be 
 obtained by asking for it, and this time my 
 strategy was successful. 
 
 "It was an idea of Sultan Hamid. One night, 
 late late, an aide-de-camp from the Palace 
 came on board with an officer in chains, and 
 said that he was to be taken at once to Yemen. 
 Ten minutes later another aide-de-camp came 
 to say good-bye to the officer, from the Sultan, 
 and to give him his promotion as general, and 
 to make him a present of five hundred pounds. 
 They said he was a Circassian prince and that 
 
8 THE LEOPARD OF THE SEA 
 
 he had been plotting. It was a lie. But Sultan 
 Hamid believed it. And how was he to know 
 that you cannot start for Yemen like that, in 
 ten minutes? It was not his trade. It was 
 ours ; but none of us was on board, and we had 
 no coal, and no food, and nothing, and the peo 
 ple from the Palace said we must be gone before 
 morning. So sailors came to wake us upas 
 many of us as they could find and there was 
 great calamity. And we did start before morn 
 ing. We got a tug to pull us, and we went 
 around to Kuchuk Chekmejeh, in the Marmora, 
 and there we stayed till we were ready to start. 
 It took us three or four weeks. The machine 
 was old and broken, and we had to get an En 
 glishman to mend it. And the Leopard of the 
 Sea had been lying so long in the harbour that 
 no one could find her bottom. It was all grown 
 with bushes and trees, like a garden. And what 
 mussels grew in the garden! And what pilaf 
 they made ! We picked off all we could, and we 
 ate them ourselves till we were sick of them, 
 and we sold the rest. The mussels of the 
 Leopard of the Sea were famous in Constan 
 tinople. Afterward we were sorry we had sold 
 the mussels though. When at last we started 
 for Yemen each one of us had ten. loaves of 
 bread and some olives and cheese. We didn t 
 know how long we would be on the way. At the 
 
THE LEOPARD OF THE SEA 9 
 
 end of three days we had only just passed the 
 Dardanelles and the cheese and olives were 
 gone. A day or two later the bread was gone 
 too, though we were still far from Yemen." 
 
 "How about water?" I asked. 
 
 "Water we had, thanks to God! We had a 
 machine for making the water of the sea sweet. 
 It was only food we didn t have. We had to 
 stop at an island and get some." 
 
 "What island was it ?" pursued I, in curiosity, 
 wondering how far the Leopard of the Sea got 
 on ten loaves of bread a man. 
 
 "How should I know? It was an island in 
 the White Sea." By which he meant not our 
 White Sea but the Mediterranean. "I didn t 
 ask the name. Greeks lived on it. The gov 
 ernor of course was a Turk. We were very 
 sorry when we left it. The sea began to show 
 himself after that. Until then we had not 
 known him." 
 
 "Were you sick?" 
 
 The darkness hid on my face the grin with 
 out which this question may not be asked. 
 
 "My soul! Who is not sick when the wind 
 blows on the sea unless he is accustomed ? We 
 were not accustomed. How should we be ? We 
 had nevei put our noses outside the Dar 
 danelles. It was worst for the captain and 
 me, because we had to stay on deck and steer 
 
10 THE LEOPARD OF THE SEA 
 
 whether we were sick or not. But we got ac 
 customed by and by. And the captain taught 
 me a little about the machine which points its 
 finger at the Great Bear, and about the papers 
 wherein are written all the lands and islands 
 of the earth. And after two or three weeks we 
 found Egypt. It seemed to me a miracle. 
 When I saw it lying white and flat on the edge 
 of the sea and the captain said it was Egypt, 
 I said to myself: How do we know that it is 
 Egypt ? It may be Persia. It may be England. 
 But it was Egypt, thanks to God! And if it 
 had not been for the Circassian I don t know 
 what we would have done. 
 
 "He was a very good man. The aide-de 
 camp who brought him from the Palace said 
 that he was to be kept shut up in a small room 
 and that he was to eat nothing but bread and 
 water. But we were all shut up and none of us 
 had anything but bread and water, and not 
 always that. And so the captain very soon let 
 the Circassian do what he liked. And when we 
 got to Egypt the Circassian bought food and 
 coal for us, out of the money the Sultan had 
 given him. For we had none. We had spent 
 all we had at Kuchiik Chekmejeh and at the 
 island. Then we went on, through the river 
 that goes into the Arabian Sea. We had orders 
 to take the Circassian to Jiddeh; but at Suez 
 
THE LEOPARD OF THE SEA 11 
 
 they brought us a telegram telling us to go on 
 without stopping to Hodeida, and afterward to 
 bring the Circassian back to Jiddeh. At Ho 
 deida, however, we found another telegram 
 which said that we were to go on to Basra, for 
 some soldiers." 
 
 "To Basra!" I exclaimed. 
 
 I began to feel hopelessly choked up with 
 questions. I wanted to know more about the 
 Circassian. I wanted to know more about the 
 captain. I wanted to know more about every 
 thing. The man whom chance had brought for 
 a moment to a stone beside me had an Odyssey 
 in him, if one could only get at it. 
 
 "To Basra, ya!" he said before I could stop 
 him. "And a time we had getting to Basra 
 more than two months. It was so hot we could 
 not sleep at night, and again we had nothing to 
 eat. And worst of all, the machine that made 
 the water of the sea sweet got a hole in it, we 
 used it so much, and after that the water was 
 only partly sweet. And it was so bad we tried 
 to find water on the land, and one night we went 
 too near and sat." By which the mate of the 
 Leopard of the Sea meant that they ran 
 aground. 
 
 "We sat for two weeks, trying to get away. 
 It was good that the wind did not blow in that 
 time. In the end I don t know whether more 
 
12 THE LEOPARD OF THE SEA 
 
 water came into the sea or what happened, but 
 all of a sudden we found that we could move. 
 Then another calamity came on our heads. 
 Although we had been sitting for two weeks we 
 had been burning coal most of the time, trying 
 to get away. So before we got to Basra no coal 
 was left. The Circassian had bought more than 
 we needed to get to Jiddeh or even to Hodei da, 
 but we never expected to go any farther. So 
 we spent all our time finding wood for the 
 machine. We burned up all the doors, all the 
 chairs, all the tables, all the boats. We cut 
 down walls in the ship, we tore up decks. And 
 then we only just got into the river of Basra. 
 
 "At Basra how good it was to put our feet on 
 the earth! And if you knew what a country 
 that is hot, flat, dirty! They speak Arabic 
 too, which none of us could understand but the 
 Circassian. And thieves! We had already 
 burned up most of the ship, but they would 
 have stolen the rest if we had let them. So 
 although we had come to land we still had no 
 peace. And twelve hundred soldiers were wait 
 ing for us and expected to be taken away im 
 mediately. They had been in Arabia seven 
 years, poor things, although when they went 
 the government promised that they should stay 
 only three. There had been three thousand of 
 them in the beginning. More than half of them 
 
THE LEOPARD OF THE SEA 13 
 
 had died, not from bullets but from the sun of 
 that country and its poisonous air. And not 
 one of them had been paid or had had a new 
 uniform in seven years. You would have wept 
 to see them how ragged and thin they were, 
 and how they begged us to pay them and take 
 them away. 
 
 "How could we take them away or pay them? 
 We had not been paid ourselves for four or five 
 months, and we had no food or water or coal, 
 and nobody would give us any. We went to the 
 governor, we went to the general, we went to 
 everybody; but not a para could we get. The 
 Circassian still had a little money, most of 
 which we used in telegraphing to Constanti 
 nople. And still no money came. We had to 
 sell our watches, our clothes, anything we had 
 left. One day we even sold two windows you 
 know the little round windows in the wall of a 
 ship? A fat Arab wanted them for his house. 
 What could we do? We had to live. We 
 couldn t find any others to take their places and 
 so we nailed kerosene tins over the holes one 
 inside and one outside. They looked very 
 funny, like blind eyes. They were at the bow, 
 one on each side." 
 
 My companion paused a moment, as if mus 
 ing over the blind eyes of the Leopard of the 
 Sea. Then he rolled himself another cigarette. 
 
14 THE LEOPARD OF THi^ SEA 
 
 I noticed for the first time that the minarets of 
 Yeni Jami were fully alight, and that other 
 lights were beginning to hang in the darkness 
 between them. 
 
 "In the end it was the Circassian again who 
 got us away from Basra. He gave the captain 
 the last money he had and told him to telegraph 
 to Sultan Hamid and say five hundred pounds 
 must be sent to us immediately or we would go 
 to Europe and set the Circassian free. How 
 was Sultan Hamid in his palace to know that 
 we had no coal and could not go to Europe if 
 we wanted to ? But the next day the governor 
 came to the captain with five hundred pounds 
 and a decoration, which he pinned on his coat 
 with much speech, and invited him not to let 
 the dangerous Circassian go. The dangerous 
 Circassian was there listening with the others, 
 and the governor liked to speak with him more 
 than with any of us, because he was an effendi 
 and knew all the people of the Palace. The gov 
 ernor after all, poor man, was no better than 
 an exile himself. 
 
 "So at last we started back to Jiddeh, with 
 money in our pockets and bread in the cupboard 
 and coal in the machine. The captain took care 
 to put a lot in the place where the windows 
 had been that he sold, to keep the tin tight 
 against the wall of the ship. We got along very 
 
THE LEOPARD OF THE SEA 15 
 
 well that time. We reached Jiddeh in forty-five 
 days. Before we got there the captain told the 
 Circassian that he would not give him to the 
 governor but that he would give another man, 
 one of the soldiers, and say it was the Circas 
 sian, and bring the Circassian back to Egypt 
 and let him go. But the Circassian would not 
 allow him. He said it was not just that another 
 man should be punished in his place, and that 
 they would find it out in Constantinople and 
 punish the captain and the governor and there 
 would be many calamities. Even when the cap 
 tain wept and kissed his feet, the Circassian 
 would not allow him. You see they had lived 
 together for so many months and had suffered 
 so much together that they had become friends. 
 Ah, he was a very good man. Because he was 
 a good man God rewarded him, as you will see." 
 
 I did not see at once, however, for my com 
 panion stopped again. And when he went on it 
 was not to give me any essential light on the 
 history of the mysterious Circassian. 
 
 "I told you about the soldiers we brought 
 from Basra, who had been in Arabia seven 
 years and who had never been paid. They were 
 so glad to leave Basra that they made little 
 noise about their money, and the general prom 
 ised them that they would get it in Jiddeh. But 
 when they heard the story of the Circassian, 
 
16 THE LEOPARD OF THE SEA 
 
 how he telegraphed to Sultan Hamid and got 
 money for us, they said it was a shame that he 
 didn t get money for them too: they had gone 
 seven years without a para. And when the 
 general of Jiddeh told them that they would be 
 paid in Constantinople they made much noise. 
 They would not believe that the general had no 
 money, and they brought the Circassian into it 
 again and said he must telegraph to Sultan 
 Hamid. They could not understand! It was 
 only when the general threatened to keep them 
 in Yemen and send the Leopard of the Sea home 
 without them that they were quiet. 
 
 "We were sorry to leave the Circassian in 
 Jiddeh, but we were glad to start away at last. 
 It is the country of the Prophet, but vallah! it 
 is a dirty country! We came quickly enough 
 up to Egypt. The Leopard of the Sea walked 
 more slowly than ever, because the hole in the 
 machine for making the water of the sea sweet 
 spoiled the water, and the bad water spoiled the 
 machine of the ship. Still, we went forward all 
 the time. And in Egypt, thanks to God, there 
 was no telegram. And our hearts became light 
 when we came once more into the White Sea, 
 where it seemed cold to us after Yemen. 
 
 "The captain said he would stop nowhere till 
 we got to the Dardanelles, lest he should find 
 a telegram. But our calamities were not quite 
 
THE LEOPARD OF THE SEA 17 
 
 done. It was because of the soldiers again. 
 After they smelled the air of their country once 
 more and ate bread every day, something came 
 to them. They went to the captain one morn 
 ing and said, We wish to go to Beirout/ The 
 captain told them he couldn t go to Bei rout. 
 He had orders to go to Constantinople. What 
 did they wish in Bei rout? They merely an 
 swered, We wish to go to Bei rout. And in the 
 end they went to Bei rout. What could the cap 
 tain do ? They were a thousand, with guns, and 
 we were forty or fifty; and they were very 
 angry. They said they were fools ever to have 
 left Arabia without their money and they were 
 tired of promises. 
 
 "So we went to Bei rout. The soldiers told 
 the captain that he need not mix in their busi 
 ness : they had thought of a thing to do. Only 
 let him wait till they were ready to go. And 
 half of them stayed on the steamer to see that 
 he did not go away and leave them. The other 
 half went on shore and asked where was the 
 governor s palace. Every one was much sur 
 prised to see six hundred ragged soldiers going 
 to the governor s palace, and many followed 
 them. When they reached the palace the sol 
 diers asked for the governor. A servant told 
 them that the governor was not there. Never 
 mind/ said the soldiers, we are six hundred, 
 
18 THE LEOPARD OF THE SEA 
 
 and on the ship there are six hundred more, and 
 we will find the governor/ Then they were told 
 to wait a little and the governor would come. 
 And the governor did come. For I suppose he 
 was not pleased that there should be scandal 
 in the city. Also it happened that he had very 
 few soldiers of his own, because there was 
 fighting in the Lebanon. 
 
 "He received the six hundred very politely, 
 and gave them coffee and cigarettes, and asked 
 them what he could do for them. And they told 
 him their story, and what they had suffered, 
 and how many of them had died, and that they 
 had never been paid, and they said their hearts 
 were broken and they wished their money. The 
 governor said they were right, and it was hard 
 for a man to go seven years without being paid. 
 Still, he was not their general: how could he 
 pay them? You can telegraph to Sultan 
 Hamid, they said, and he will send you the 
 money. We shall wait here till the answer 
 comes. And they waited, the six hundred of 
 them. 
 
 "They made no noise and > .gntened no one, 
 but they sat there on the floor with their rifles 
 on their knees, and smoked cigarettes with the 
 soldiers of the governor ?vho pitied them and 
 said they would never drive them away. And 
 by and by the governor came back and said he 
 
THE LEOPARD OF THE SEA 19 
 
 had heard from Sultan Hamid, who said it was 
 a sin that his children should be treated in that 
 way, and they should have their money. And 
 then he called a scribe, and they made an ac 
 count, and the soldiers took the money. It came 
 to eight or nine thousand pounds. And a mis 
 take was made by the scribe, and some soldiers 
 got too little, and the governor gave them what 
 was owed. And the soldiers said they were 
 glad they had not been paid in seven years 
 to get so much now. 
 
 "The captain was not pleased by this work, 
 for it put us back many days and he thought 
 Sultan Hamid might be angry if he got too 
 many telegrams asking for money. However, 
 the captain was pleased and we were all pleased 
 to get away from Beirout with no more trouble. 
 But of course the soldiers were the most 
 pleased, who smelled their own country again 
 after seven years, and who had their money at 
 last. They sat on the deck all day counting it, 
 and singing, and some had pipes which they 
 played, and those who were Laz or Kurds or 
 Albanians danced the dances of their country. 
 But before long the sea began to dance, and 
 then they stopped. And by and by the wind 
 blew so hard they could not stay on deck. We 
 did not mind, because we were accustomed ; and 
 the wind was from the south, which helped us. 
 
20 THE LEOPARD OF THE SEA 
 
 But they were not accustomed, and they were 
 very sick. The ship was so small and they 
 were so many that downstairs there was no 
 room to turn without stepping on a sick soldier. 
 And water poured down from above, and they 
 all got soaked as they lay on the floor. Even if 
 we had not burned up all the sofas and tables 
 and chairs in the sea of Basra there never 
 would have been beds enough for them. And at 
 last there came a night when the captain and I 
 began to think. The ship went this side, 
 the ship went the other side, waves rolled back 
 and forth in the cabin, everywhere there were 
 cracks and macks till we thought the Leopard 
 of the Sea would crack in two. By God, it was 
 a night of much fear. But what is there more 
 than kismet? It was our kismet that that also 
 should pass." 
 
 I saw it was time to open the shutter of my 
 camera, for the lights between the minarets of 
 Yeni Jami had grouped themselves into the 
 image of a ship. It seemed an odd coincidence. 
 When I sat down again on my stone, after 
 pinching the bulb, the mate of the Leopard of 
 the Sea continued to stare abstractedly at the 
 little bark of gold sailing in the dark sky. 
 
 "Who shall escape his destiny?" he uttered 
 at length. "For six months we had had no 
 peace. We had lacked bread. We had suffered 
 
THE LEOPARD OF THE SEA 21 
 
 storms. We had sat on the floor of the sea. 
 We had been burned and frozen. We had been 
 robbed. We had been worse oif than beggars. 
 We had been unjustly treated. We had eaten 
 all manner of dung. But no harm had come 
 to us, thanks to God! And the morning after 
 that night was like a morning of paradise. The 
 sun was bright and warm. The sea was blue 
 blue. There was no wind. There were hardly 
 any waves, for we were among the islands 
 again. We could see on them the flowers of 
 almond trees and peach trees. The soldiers said 
 they heard the birds. They had forgotten all 
 their calamities, the soldiers, and were sitting 
 on the deck again, counting their gold, singing, 
 playing pipes, dancing. And in front of us we 
 could see the mountains of the Dardanelles." 
 
 He sighed, telling the beads of the string he 
 carried as he went over the memory in his 
 mind. 
 
 "There was only one thing: the Leopard of 
 the Sea sat very low in the water. Why not, 
 after the rivers that came in the night before ? 
 I thought nothing of it. We pumped, but we 
 didn t mind, because we were so near home. I 
 saw, though, that the captain was thinking. I 
 asked him if he was afraid they would make 
 trouble for us about the telegrams and the 
 money. Sultan Hamid often did things for 
 
22 THE LEOPARD OF THE SEA 
 
 reasons that were not apparent, and he never 
 forgot. 
 
 " God love you ! said the captain, 1 think 
 nothing of that. But do you remember those 
 windows we sold in Basra? Those are what 
 make me think. We needed bread then, it is 
 true, and no one can blame us. Also we nailed 
 the tin on very tightly. But in the storm I kept 
 thinking of them. And you see the bow now is 
 lower than the stern. Those blind eyes are 
 under water/ 
 
 " They will still see the way to Stamboul, 
 I told him. There is plenty of coal behind the 
 tin. 
 
 " Yes/ he said, but coal is like rice. It 
 drinks up water, more and more, without your 
 knowing it. 
 
 " Eh, if we have a pilaf of coal in the ship, 
 what matter? I said. 
 
 "He laughed. 
 
 " I would not mind so much. if we had not 
 burned the boats. Just look downstairs and see 
 if there is much water about/ 
 
 "I looked, and I couldn t find any to speak of. 
 I went down to the engine room, without telling 
 them why I came, and there was very little. 
 What they were thinking of down there was the 
 machine. It had become more and more rotten, 
 from the bad water, till it would hardly work. 
 
THE LEOPARD OF THE SEA 23 
 
 The door of our house was open in front of us, 
 but when we would have run to it like boys, the 
 Leopard of the Sea could only walk, slowly 
 slowly, like an old man." 
 
 He had left out enormously, and I realized in 
 the end that I had small notion what manner of 
 man he was himself. But I am bound to say 
 that he did make vivid, as we squatted there on 
 our neighbourly stones, the final case of the 
 Leopard of the Sea. 
 
 "Why should I make much speech? The old 
 man never found the door of his house. It was 
 because of his blind eyes. But until the last 
 moment we hoped we might get to the Dar 
 danelles. The sea became more and more quiet. 
 It was more beautiful than anything I have 
 ever seen, like blue jewels with light shining 
 through them. A great purple island stood not 
 far away, and white houses were on it. And 
 sails played like children on the blue of the sea. 
 It was so beautiful and so still that the soldiers 
 were not frightened. They noticed that the 
 ship settled in the water, but the captain told 
 them it was nothing. He asked me what we 
 should do whether we should let off steam to 
 keep the machine from bursting. We finally 
 decided not to. We might reach land after all, 
 and steamers and ships were all about us. 
 While if we let off steam and signalled for help, 
 
24 THE LEOPARD OF THE SEA 
 
 there would be much confusion and the soldiers 
 might make another calamity ; for they were 
 very simple. Akh! if they only hadn t made 
 us go to Bei rout ! the captain said. We would 
 have been at home by this time. But we were 
 very sorry for them." 
 
 He stopped again for a moment. Yet I knew 
 in my perverted literary heart that it was 
 wholly without melodramatic intent. 
 
 "The sun set. Night came a warm night of 
 stars. I remember how they looked, and how 
 the soldiers sang on the deck, and then how the 
 Leopard of the Sea suddenly began to run but 
 down, pitching forward." 
 
 I wondered many things, but chiefly if he 
 would say anything more. It seemed indecent 
 to ask him with that picture in -my eyes of a 
 lighted steamer suddenly lurching, bow fore 
 most, out of sight. Presently he did say some 
 thing, though not just what I hoped. First, 
 however, he leaned over and patted the ground. 
 
 "The earth!" he said. "The earth! I like to 
 feel that under my feet !" 
 
 Then he got up, made me a courteous salaam, 
 and left me on my stone to stare at the little 
 ship of light hanging over the dark mosque. 
 
MORTMAIN 
 
 THE building of the chapel on the Hill of 
 the Arrow Makers was for Mr. Bisbee, 
 the Reverend Horatio Bisbee, who had 
 that matter in charge, an abounding means of 
 grace. At the time, to be sure, he thought it 
 the very devil although he was not the man to 
 say so. But in after years the structure stood 
 for him as a monument to many things that 
 might have remained sealed to him had he 
 stayed happily at home in Iowa. And it even 
 became his to arrive at the somewhat rare 
 realization that it is well for a man to be able 
 to say of himself: "There are more things in 
 heaven and earth, Horatio. ..." 
 
 The first of them was the Pasha to whom the 
 ground belonged. He lived in a tumbledown 
 konak with nothing but divine providence and 
 three thin props to keep him from sliding into 
 the street, and he ought to have been delighted 
 to get rid of such a draughty rambling old fire- 
 trap for nothing. Whereas he pretended that 
 
 25 
 
26 MORTMAIN 
 
 he loved every unpainted board on the place, 
 where his fathers had lived ever since the Con 
 quest and where his sons should have lived 
 after him, if That if was the measure of his 
 unreasonableness. For he also pretended that 
 everything had been spoiled for him by these 
 uncircumcised barbarians who had come and 
 planted their infernal printing presses at his 
 ear. How could you take a nap between meals, 
 how could you sip a coffee in peace, how could 
 you look after your rose-bushes janim! 
 when your light was darkened by a vast pest- 
 house in which the Christians were already 
 tasting their portion of the world to come, and 
 which resounded from noon to noon as with the 
 torments of the damned? And then they said 
 they merely wished to do good! Let them 
 therefore pay the Pasha s price. 
 
 They did, with much grumbling, being more 
 anxious for his konak than his company. Only 
 it was many days before Mr. Bisbee, being 
 fresh from his native land, learned that a 
 Pasha s price is not necessarily the one he pro 
 poses to you, or that when a Pasha says yes 
 he expresses a courteous desire of not injuring 
 your feelings, rather than any intention of 
 keeping his word. And according to the lights 
 of Iowa it was somewhat difficult to make out 
 what numberless cups of coffee Mr. Bisbee 
 
MORTMAIN 27 
 
 thought them very nasty at first, too and end 
 less disquisitions on the culture of roses had to 
 do with a matter of real estate. 
 
 Then the Pasha had a pet cheetah that some 
 body had brought him from Persia, and when 
 ever you went into the place the creature would 
 jump at you as if he meant to tear you limb 
 from limb. He was quite capable of it, too 
 although he merely wanted to rub against your 
 legs, purring affectionately, like the big cat he 
 was. But as he sometimes knocked you over, 
 and as the purr of a hunting-leopard sounds 
 unpleasantly like a buzz-saw, the Reverend Ho 
 ratio did not encourage the beast s advances. 
 Which perceiving, the Pasha seldom failed to 
 call in the cheetah at delicate points in the 
 negotiation. 
 
 It came in time to an end, as even Oriental 
 negotiations will only to plunge the unhappy 
 man of God into another, involving yet more 
 harassing delays and more fantastic processes 
 of law. This was the affair of the Arrow 
 Makers. Mr. Bisbee, born in a land where great 
 corporations tremble before small inventors 
 who take thought day and night how to ruin 
 them, made the mistake of thinking that the 
 Arrow Makers, whose prosperity might be sup 
 posed to have been affected by the not alto 
 gether recent invention of gunpowder, could 
 
28 MORTMAIN 
 
 safely be ignored even if they did happen to 
 carry on their occupation in certain black vaults 
 that yawned upon the steps of the street and 
 incidentally held up that edge of the Pasha s 
 garden. But he learned before he was through 
 with them that an ancient and honourable guild 
 enjoys powers of resistance, quite independent 
 of the transitory human inventions which may 
 happen to have assisted at its birth. For the 
 Arrow Makers delicately intimated that the 
 Pasha s title to a large part of his estate rested 
 chiefly on their own complaisance which 
 might well take on a different colour when it 
 became a question of gyaours. It was clear 
 that the Pasha had not owned the earth under 
 his garden, down to the buffalo who holds the 
 world on his back. What, therefore, was to 
 prevent the Arrow Makers, in the natural ex 
 pansion of trade, from building as many stories 
 as they pleased on their own foundations ? So, 
 for the sake of future peace, it became neces 
 sary to buy the air over the Arrow Makers 
 heads, right up to the moon ! 
 
 When these transactions were at last brought 
 to a close Mr. Bisbee breathed again. Never 
 had his energy so spent itself in vain against 
 forces as invulnerable as the shadow of the 
 minaret that swept daily across his premises. 
 But if his exasperated bewilderment gave him 
 
MORTMAIN 29 
 
 a new view of the magnitude of the missionary 
 enterprise, it also sharpened his zeal. He 
 thanked God that he was now master on his 
 own ground, and that the cry of the muezzin 
 should presently be answered by the sound of 
 Christian bells. He likewise went so far in dis 
 loyalty toward his native land as to be secretly 
 thankful that he had neither eight-hour laws 
 nor labour unions to cope with. 
 
 But it was not long before he would have 
 taken a walking delegate to his bosom as a 
 brother. For the poor young man, alas, reared 
 as he had been in Calvinistic ideas of bribery 
 and corruption, had yet to acquire the art of 
 adjusting himself to the surveillance of an alien 
 
 police. And as for his workmen ! To the 
 
 eye of their unhappy employer they appeared 
 far fitter to destroy the house of God than to 
 build it. Not only were they as unlikely a band 
 of ruffians as ever lay in ambush, but the con 
 fusion of Babel reigned amongst them. Mr. 
 Bisbee, painfully picking up what he under 
 stood to be the language of the country, dis 
 covered that there were apparently as many 
 languages of the country as there were inhabi 
 tants. He also discovered that with each lan 
 guage went a different set of habits and 
 prejudices, the most obstinate of which were of 
 a religious nature. This was to the practical 
 
30 MORTMAIN 
 
 young missionary a ridiculous and intolerable 
 state of affairs. If the benighted creatures 
 must go whoring after strange gods, why could 
 they not do it like sensible beings on the first 
 day of the week, instead of dropping inconti 
 nently to their knees at all hours of the day, 
 leaving him short-handed when he most needed 
 them? 
 
 The worst of it, though, was a mysterious 
 but inexpugnable tradition that bound down 
 each of them to one kind of work alone. There 
 was to him nothing against nature in set 
 ting an Armenian to drive a donkey or a son 
 of Iran to dig. But he began to understand 
 how inalterable were the laws of the Medes and 
 Persians when he attempted that feat. In fact 
 the sole point in which the men were at one was 
 that they were all as deliberate as oxen and as 
 wedded to the ways of their ancestors. Their 
 energetic employer would sometimes snatch a 
 tool from one of them, in order to show how the 
 thing should be done. But they were insensible 
 to the force of example. Such exhibitions were 
 for them merely examples of Western eccen 
 tricity to be gravely applauded, like the strug 
 gles of a child with the laws of gravitation, or 
 to be condoned with private tappings of the 
 brow, but not to be emulated. When searched, 
 haltingly, for reasons, they would answer: "It 
 
MORTMAIN 31 
 
 may be that Americans do so. Let them, and 
 God be with them. As for us, we do so." And 
 there was an end of the matter. 
 
 There was not altogether an end of the mat 
 ter, however, for there was always something 
 new. The men were as incalculable as children 
 they had a way, indeed, of addressing their 
 square- jawed young master, at moments of ex 
 postulation, as their mother and their father 
 and as full of superstitions as a pomegranate 
 of seeds. One day, for instance, after digging 
 had begun, they uncovered in one corner of the 
 grounds a lot of skeletons. Whereupon they 
 all ran gibbering away and everything came at 
 once to a standstill. It was only when a Jew 
 happened along and obligingly offered to re 
 move the bones that the men consented to be 
 appeased. 
 
 It was not very clear to Mr. Bisbee what the 
 Jew wanted of a lot of skulls, or how the rude 
 coins that rattled about in each one, and the 
 earthenware lamps beside them, would pay for 
 the trouble of carrying them away. He had 
 read at college, of course, that it was once the 
 fashion to put a coin into the mouth of a dead 
 man, to pay his passage to the other world; 
 but he was less interested in such heathenish 
 customs than in planting the seed of the Word. 
 And how the Word was to be planted by such 
 
32 MORTMAIN 
 
 unsanctified hands, and in such a soil, was often 
 more than he could see. It was a mystery, for 
 that matter, that the Pasha had ever succeeded 
 in raising so much as a single heathen rose. 
 The whole subsoil of the garden was one mass 
 of rubble, made up of bits of marble, of pot 
 tery, of broken glass and crusted metal, all so 
 fine and dry that it would run like sand. And 
 a faint strange odour came up from it, which 
 was very unpleasant to Mr. Bisbee and made 
 him desperately homesick for the sweet tilth 
 of his native State. 
 
 It appeared, however, that others did not 
 look upon the matter quite as he did. Which, 
 indeed, became the next source of his troubles. 
 After the Jew had carried away the bones and 
 the coins and the lamps, and even the big tiles 
 forming the curious triangular concavities in 
 which these objects had lain, a Greek turned 
 up who evinced as much curiosity in the pro 
 ceedings as if they had been any of his busi 
 ness. He was the more perplexing to deal with 
 because he was a gentlemanly sort of fellow 
 he called himself a member of the Hellenic 
 Archaeological Syllogos, whatever that might 
 be and knew English very well. The Rever 
 end Horatio had never imagined that a Greek 
 could seem so civilized. 
 
 This Greek was particularly interested to 
 
MORTMAIN 33 
 
 learn the nature of the building to be erected 
 Mr. Bisbee was a little at a loss to answer his 
 question as to its architecture for he said that 
 the place had once been the site of a Byzantine 
 monastery, and before that of a pagan temple 
 to Aphrodite. He also explained the nature 
 of the soil, as being due not only to the natural 
 effect of time but to the fact that the city had 
 been so often sacked by the Persians in the 
 fifth century before Christ, by Septimius Sev- 
 erus in the second century after, by the Vene 
 tians and Franks of the fourth crusade, and by 
 the Turks in 1453. He nevertheless declared 
 himself as certain that priceless relics of an 
 tiquity still remained to be discovered witness 
 the pre-Christian necropolis that had lain un 
 disturbed at a higher level than centuries of 
 subsequent building and rebuilding. Although 
 of the treasures for which the emperors had 
 ransacked Italy and Greece so many had been 
 carried away or destroyed, a great many must 
 have been overlooked or buried, particularly in 
 1453. For this reason, and because the oppor 
 tunity was so unusual since the government 
 did not permit excavation he begged that Mr. 
 Bisbee would give away no more archseological 
 finds to the first Jew who happened to ask for 
 them. Every spadeful of the soil of a city 
 whose walls had first been raised by Apollo and 
 
34 MORTMAIN 
 
 Poseidon, and which had kept alive the Attic 
 torch for the kindling of the Renaissance, was 
 precious as a citizen of so enlightened a coun 
 try as the one to which Mr. Bisbee belonged 
 was of course the first to appreciate. And the 
 Syllogos would be only too happy to accept the 
 custody of whatever might be found in the 
 course of digging. 
 
 It is the historian s pleasure to record that 
 Mr. Bisbee eventually became sensible, in his 
 degree, to the strange eloquence of antiquity, 
 which may speak to men more loudly than liv 
 ing tongues. But at the time of our tale he was 
 far from agreeing with his learned and some 
 what prolix friend as to the value of the soil 
 of Constantinople. It struck him, on the con 
 trary, that soil so utterly valueless he had 
 never seen. And he was less impressed by the 
 antiquity of the town than by the fact that it 
 was an extremely dirty and disagreeable place, 
 inhabited by persons primitive, godless and 
 discouraging to the last degree, whom the Most 
 High in his providence had mysteriously ap 
 pointed for the trying of happier nations. Why 
 then should he spend his valuable time, already 
 so trespassed upon, in collecting the relics of 
 a heathen past especially when his business 
 was the building of a house to the confusion of 
 the heathen? So his relations with the repre- 
 
MORTMAIN 35 
 
 sentative of the Hellenic Archaeological Syllo- 
 gos became a trifle strained. 
 
 It is true enough that certain fragments of 
 iridescent glass, certain bits of marble deco 
 rated with patterns of grape-vine, certain 
 ancient bricks stamped with the names of 
 emperors, certain battered capitals intricately 
 carved with birds and basket-work, to say noth 
 ing of a few odd coins, a little broken pottery, 
 and a miscellaneous collection of limbs in human 
 semblance, passed into the possession of that 
 erudite body. But differences of opinion as to 
 these specimens were not rare. And there was 
 in particular a matter of a marble statue, 
 almost perfectly preserved, with so indecent a 
 lack of raiment that the Reverend Horatio ac 
 cepted the judgment of heaven when the men 
 managed to smash the thing in trying to haul 
 it out. He accordingly allowed them to break 
 it up for lime, for whose uses they apparently 
 had knowledge of the value of marble. Which 
 became the cause of open rupture between him 
 self and the Greek. When this polite gentle 
 man found what had happened he quite lost his 
 head and said unpardonable things about bar 
 barians to whom the city of Apollo and Posei 
 don was nothing: even Turks were better, for 
 they at least existed in 1453, and they had some 
 colour of religion for destroying statues. 
 
36 MORTMAIN 
 
 The honest Bisbee, for his part, was free to 
 admit that Apollo and Poseidon were very little 
 to him. For the rest, having a Christian ex 
 ample to set, he refrained from exposing his 
 own views as to barbarians. But he ordered 
 the Croat at the gate to exclude, thereafter, all 
 persons unconnected with the work. 
 
 II 
 
 On the day after this incident, Mr. Bisbee 
 was not surprised to learn that speech was de 
 sired of him. He thought it probable that the 
 Greek would object to being turned away, and 
 possible that he might have a few apologies to 
 make. So, not without an inward sense of 
 magnanimity, the young man consented to an 
 interview. He accordingly did feel a certain 
 surprise when two persons waited upon him 
 the sole resemblance of either of whom to the 
 member of the Hellenic Archaeological Syllogos 
 was that the elder had been almost equally in 
 evidence from the beginning of the work. 
 
 This was an Armenian of some age, rather 
 bent and shabby, who had attracted Mr. Bis- 
 bee s attention by reason of the excessive lei 
 sure he seemed to enjoy and the excessive 
 politeness, bordering upon the obsequious, with 
 which he never failed to salute the director of 
 the works. These characteristics, and a cer- 
 
MORTMAIN 37 
 
 tain furtiveness of eye, had not particularly 
 commended him to that straightforward gen 
 tleman, who sometimes found time to wonder 
 why a man apparently in need of work didn t 
 go out and hunt for it instead of watching a 
 lot of lazy lummocks dig a hole in the ground. 
 So the missionary felt small pleasure in the 
 honour now done him. And, although the man 
 had interfered with his operations as little 
 as a silent spectator could, he made up his 
 mind to deny any request for the lifting of the 
 embargo. 
 
 The Armenian did not, however, make any 
 such request. He merely introduced his son, a 
 small dark youth with a flat head and a quan 
 tity of black fuzz about his face, and the two 
 proceeded to inform themselves with great 
 minuteness as to the state of Mr. Bisbee s 
 health and that of his entire acquaintance. The 
 missionary, who abominated roundabout ways, 
 was not mollified by this courtesy. It came to 
 him, as he recollected how many of his valuable 
 minutes had been wasted in one way and an 
 other, that to love one s neighbour as one s self 
 was more of an affair in Constantinople than it 
 used to be in Iowa. And while there was little 
 to choose between his present neighbours 
 whose mutual rivalries and pretensions often 
 amused him, since they were all poor heathen 
 
38 MORTMAIN 
 
 together it likewise came to him that his Ar 
 menian neighbour was perhaps the hardest of 
 all to love. This should not have been the case 
 with regard to a people supposed to have special 
 claims upon a lover of liberty apart from the 
 fact that among the heterogeneous driftwood 
 of the empire they furnished the timber most 
 apt for conversion. But there was something 
 about these two about their eyes, about their 
 strong Semitic noses, about the very way in 
 which they sat on the edges of their chairs with 
 hands folded and feet tucked under the rounds 
 something unctuous and exotic and incurably 
 Oriental, that aroused in their host, in spite of 
 himself, that race feeling which slumbers so 
 near the surface of civilization. Upon such a 
 mood therefore did the younger at last so far 
 approach his point as to throw out, in tolerable 
 enough English: 
 
 "Mr. Bisbee" he pronounced it Muster Bus- 
 bee, giving full value to the finel e s "my 
 father has something to tell you. He says : will 
 you give him your word?" 
 
 "Give him my word?" inquired the mission 
 ary, not a little puzzled. "What do you mean?" 
 
 "I mean," answered the youth, "that you will 
 not say what he tells." 
 
 "Why, I will of course keep any confidence 
 you may wish to make," said Mr. Bisbee rather 
 
MORTMAIN 39 
 
 stiffly. "But I must ask you," he added, "to 
 Ibe as brief as possible." 
 
 Had the young Armenian been able to read 
 his host s state of mind he might have taken 
 nore pains to suit his own action to that gentle- 
 nan s word. As it was, being absorbed by what 
 . le had to say, he first gazed steadfastly at Mr. 
 Bisbee for some moments and then uttered with 
 great deliberation: 
 
 "Mr. Bisbee, our family is very ancient." 
 After which announcement he paused again be 
 fore going on to add : "The Turks are now our 
 masters, but we have lived here longer than they. 
 They are here only from 1453. We are here 
 from the time of Leo the Fifth, the Emperor." 
 
 If this name touched no responsive chord in 
 the memory of a gentleman who happened to 
 be better acquainted with the rulers of Israel 
 than with those of the Eastern Empire, the 
 date which the young man mentioned, and the 
 air with which he mentioned it, quickened in 
 Mr. Bisbee a dormant irritation. It seemed to 
 him that these people had 1453 on the brain. 
 One would think that nothing had happened 
 since then ! Apparently for them, indeed, noth 
 ing had. They lived one and all in old, dead, 
 forgotten, exploded things. He could hardly 
 conceal a contempt which suddenly swelled up 
 in him. 
 
40 MORTMAIN 
 
 "That is very interesting," he said, "but I 
 hardly have time to hear the story of your 
 family this morning." 
 
 The youth was unperturbed. 
 
 "Mr. Bisbee," he went on, "because we art; 
 very old we know many things. We knovp 
 things about this land you have bought." 
 
 The remark was hardly the one to stem Mr. 
 Bisbee s ebbing patience. 
 
 "So did a Greek gentleman who spent some 
 days here," he observed with a touch of as 
 perity. "I heard all about it from him." 
 
 The youth smiled a little and exchanged a 
 guttural word with his father. Then he said: 
 
 "We know more than the Greek." 
 
 If this declaration was even less happily con 
 ceived than the preceding, its effect was tem 
 pered for Mr. Bisbee by the impressiveness 
 with which it was uttered. He scarcely knew 
 whether to be irritated or amused at the air of 
 mystery which his interlocutor chose to main 
 tain. 
 
 "Well," he inquired, "what do you know?" 
 
 The youth took another of his pauses before 
 answering. 
 
 "We know this" and glancing over his 
 shoulder at the door he went on in a lowered 
 voice : "When you have dug fifteen feet, twenty 
 feet, perhaps twenty-five feet, you will find an 
 
MORTMAIN 41 
 
 iron door. When you open the iron door you 
 will find steps. When you go down the steps 
 you will find a passage, leading south and 
 west." 
 
 Again there was a silence. In it Mr. Bisbee 
 looked from one to the other of his visitors, 
 whose eyes were upon him with an unpleasant 
 fixity of gaze. 
 
 "You do seem to know a good deal!" he ex 
 claimed with a smile. "Where did you happen 
 to pick up this interesting information?" 
 
 "My father told me," answered the youth 
 ingenuously. "His father told him, and his 
 father told him, and his father told him back 
 to 1453." 
 
 That was enough for the gentleman from 
 Iowa. He rose and pushed away his chair: 
 
 "You are very entertaining, young man, but 
 unfortunately I have many calls upon my time. 
 If you will kindly excuse me " 
 
 The two, who remained seated, exchanged a 
 startled look. 
 
 "Mr. Bisbee, please!" begged the younger. 
 "I do not speak well. I try to tell you. This 
 passage went underground from a monastery 
 which was once here to the Palace of the Sen 
 ate. And in it you will find many things. They 
 were put there by the Emperor Constantine, in 
 1453, to keep them from the Turks. Our an- 
 
42 MORTMAIN 
 
 cestor helped. The Emperor and the others 
 were killed." 
 
 This disconnected speech, uttered more rap 
 idly than the rest, and with a curious excite 
 ment about it, puzzled Mr. Bisbee not a little. 
 
 "Well, what of that?" he demanded. 
 
 The Armenian bent forward : 
 
 "We only ask: give us half!" 
 
 The fellow was so comical, with his black fuzz 
 and his melodramatic air and his tucked-up 
 legs, that Bisbee burst out laughing. 
 
 "Oh, you mean buried treasure ? The Arabian 
 Nights, and the Spanish Armadas, and Captain 
 Kidd, and that sort of thing ! Well, I don t know 
 what your game is, but I guess I don t go in on 
 it. Good-bye." 
 
 And he made for the door. But the older 
 Armenian, whose strange eyes looked stranger 
 than ever, silently reached out and caught him 
 by the coat, while the younger darted in front 
 of him. 
 
 "Mr. Bisbee! I beg you!" he cried, clasping 
 his hands before his face. "It is so ! We know ! 
 For four hundred years we have watched this 
 place, waiting, waiting, the father telling the 
 son, the son telling his son! It has belonged 
 always to the Turks, who did not know. And they 
 have not treated us as the emperors did. They 
 have spit upon us, they have robbed us, they 
 
MORTMAIN 43 
 
 have massacred us there is nothing they have 
 not done to us ! But we have waited ! For four 
 hundred years we have watched and waited! 
 And now at last this place has come again into 
 the hands of Christians and of the Christians 
 who have been our only friends! So we tell 
 you! You might not find it, but we tell you! 
 And because we tell you, only give us half! 
 Ah, you have no idea! There is gold gold 
 gold! There are jewels! There are treasures 
 of the church ! There are statues of the Greeks ! 
 There are things kings would give their crowns 
 to have, hidden there in the ground, where no 
 one knows. You will be rich rich ! You may 
 go home and be a prince in your own coun 
 try! But only give a half, a quarter, a tenth, 
 to us who have told you, who have waited four 
 hundred years that we may breathe again, 
 that we may be revenged upon our enemies, 
 that we may live somewhere on the earth in 
 peace !" 
 
 This outburst held the Reverend Horatio a 
 moment in sheer astonishment. Then the ab 
 surdity of it, and all the antagonisms which his 
 two visitors called into consciousness, broke 
 down his long-tried patience. 
 
 "Go to somebody else with your poppycock !" 
 he cried angrily. "I have other things to do 
 than to listen to such stuff !" 
 
44 MORTMAIN 
 
 But before he could get away they had him 
 each by a hand, kissing it and mumbling over 
 it as they dragged themselves after him on 
 their knees. It was all he could do to jerk him 
 self loose. And when he finally got through the 
 door the youth called after him in a strangling 
 voice : 
 
 "Ah our inheritance You will take 
 
 all!" 
 
 III 
 
 In such ways did the young missionary learn 
 that between the conception and the execution 
 do many mountains lie. Being square of chin 
 and spare of days he was not the man to sit 
 down before them. Neither was he subject to 
 those revulsions which are the bane of the more 
 sensitively organized. But the experience was 
 the more trying for him because he took it so 
 seriously. Where another might have found 
 beguilement in a world other than his own, he 
 could only see a world to be turned from the 
 error of its way. And this in the light of his 
 adventures seemed to consist in bondage to a 
 dark and unregenerate past. The dust of 
 crumbled empires in which he worked, with its 
 faint strange odour, seemed infected with a 
 nameless poison. Somehow it always made him 
 think of the buried statue upon which he had 
 
MORTMAIN 45 
 
 come. The very memory of its shameless white 
 ness so strangely untroubled, yet so strangely 
 troubling diffused a corruption of the grave; 
 and he thanked God with a homesick heart for 
 the openness and airiness of his native land, 
 and its good clean earth uncrusted by all these 
 old unwholesome things. 
 
 Nor was this mood in any wise lightened by 
 the continued presence of the old Armenian. It 
 brought home to the missionary again and 
 again, with an intensity which often drove the 
 good man to his knees, his physical repulsion 
 to the people about him. Although he won 
 dered, however, what argument had availed to 
 soften the heart of the Croat at the gate, he 
 made it a point to ignore the matter. His pride 
 forbade him to yield so far to the promptings of 
 the flesh. And his spiritual victory was the 
 higher for a more impalpable reason. Little as 
 he had been affected by the rubbish of which 
 the two had made such a mystery, the imputa 
 tion thrown after him by the younger left him 
 in the other s presence an absurd and indefin 
 able embarrassment. The man was outwardly 
 the same as before. He saluted Mr. Bisbee as 
 respectfully as ever. He made no trouble. He 
 said nothing. He merely watched. And now 
 that Bisbee knew why he watched he could feel 
 a contemptuous amusement about it. But, at 
 
46 MORTMAIN 
 
 the same time, he could not help feeling a vague 
 hostility in the man. He could not help feeling 
 that he, too, was being watched. 
 
 And then, one afternoon, a workman s pick 
 clanged on iron. 
 
 The sound affected Bisbee more curiously 
 than any sound had ever affected him before. 
 There was no reason why it should have made 
 him start, should have filled him with a rush of 
 unreasoning anger that positively left him 
 trembling. The men were always hitting one 
 thing and another as they worked down 
 through the debris of centuries in search of 
 bedrock. Least of all was there any reason 
 why he should look for the Armenian. Yet so 
 he did, and he found the man s eyes upon him 
 with an expression he never forgot. But the 
 most disconcerting thing of all was that the 
 Armenian immediately turned and hurried 
 from the grounds. 
 
 Bisbee was infinitely annoyed with himself. 
 His vexations were evidently getting on his 
 nerves; he hoped they were not affecting his 
 brain as well! He started to go away, when 
 that struck him as being another sign of weak 
 ness. It would be better to prove his own idiocy 
 by finding out the trivial cause of it. The indif 
 ference of the men showed what a fool he was. 
 The only thing that attracted his eye among 
 
MORTMAIN 47 
 
 them was the minaret shadow lying long and 
 dark across the excavation. 
 
 He happened to notice one of the diggers who 
 was on his knees in the shadow, working at the 
 rubble with his hands. Bisbee strolled idly in 
 that direction. As he did so he saw the man 
 disengage something that looked like a big ring. 
 It clanged over dully against a sort of metal 
 plate to which it seemed to be fastened. The 
 recurrence of the sound brought back all of 
 Bisbee s irritation which increased when the 
 workman suddenly bent over and kissed the 
 plate, crossing himself as he did so. What pos 
 sible relation could there be between that an 
 cient bit of metal, buried no one knew since 
 when, and this ignorant digger of ditches ? Bis 
 bee felt again all the tangle of nameless things 
 against which he had to contend, and the hate 
 ful guidance in living things of hands long 
 dead. He stepped down into the excavation and 
 ordered the man, sharply, to go on with his 
 work. Then he saw what had called forth the 
 superstitious demonstration. It was the out 
 line of a cross, raised in relief upon the surface 
 of the plate. And presently a second cross and 
 a second ring came into view, divided from the 
 others by a fine seam in the metal. 
 
 So at last was laid bare a great metal door of 
 two leaves, set horizontally into heavy masonry. 
 
48 MORTMAIN 
 
 To each leaf was attached a ring, and above 
 each ring was a Greek cross. And as Bisbee 
 stood there among his outlandish tribesmen, his 
 nostrils full of the faint strange odour of the 
 excavation, with the minaret soaring above his 
 eyes, and below them this long-buried gateway 
 that bore the symbol of his own faith, an unac 
 countable rage possessed him. He knew that 
 he was making a fool of himself, but he sud 
 denly leaned over and pulled at one of the rings 
 with all his strength. He might have wrenched 
 his arm out of its socket, for all the door would 
 give. He let the ring drop. It struck out a 
 clang hollower and louder than before. 
 
 "A cistern," remarked one of the men. 
 
 Of course ! What else should it be, in a town 
 to which emperors had cunningly brought 
 water from afar? Then there were two doors, 
 not one. Moreover and Bisbee knelt to brush 
 away the dust with his hand they could not 
 possibly be of iron. Iron would have rusted 
 long ago, while this metal was merely soiled and 
 scarred by the centuries that had lain upon it. 
 
 It must be bronze. After all ! He rose, more 
 
 at his ease. But as he did so his eyes met those 
 of the two Armenians. The old man had re 
 turned with his son, whom Bisbee had not seen 
 since the day of that ridiculous interview, and 
 both were watching him with something like a 
 
MORTMAIN 49 
 
 smile. Bisbee could have killed them. And yet, 
 for the life of him, he could not help feeling a 
 vague embarrassment. 
 
 "We seem to have found a cistern," he re 
 marked to the younger with a bow. 
 
 "I see," replied the youth politely. 
 
 "I think we might as well open it before we 
 go on with the rest of the work," continued Bis 
 bee awkwardly, deferring to the two in spite 
 of himself. "What do you say?" 
 
 The youth shrugged his shoulders. 
 
 "That is for you to decide. It is not ours 1" 
 
 Bisbee felt himself going red. 
 
 "We might as well and see " 
 
 That operation, however, proved harder than 
 it looked. The men wasted an hour trying to 
 raise the upper leaf by its ring or to pry it open 
 with their crowbars. They finally had to attack 
 the surrounding masonry, in order to wrench 
 the pivots out of the stone in which they were 
 embedded. Even then it was sunset before they 
 effected the beginning of an entrance. One of 
 the men thrust a stone through the opening. 
 Almost instantly there was a dull concussion 
 within. 
 
 "There is no water," he said. "They have 
 filled it up. It will save us the trouble!" 
 
 Bisbee turned to see how the Armenians 
 would take it. A strange look passed between 
 
50 MORTMAIN 
 
 them. A moment later they gave him some 
 thing of it, with something more of an in 
 scrutable smile. This silent passage affected 
 him like the clang of the doors. The sense 
 that it was lost upon the rest deepened a feeling 
 of mystery which he tried in vain to shake off. 
 In some way or other it was as if some porten 
 tous issue hung upon the opening of those great 
 bronze gates that were so slow to give up their 
 secret. And as he stood there, waiting, face to 
 face with the two, while the men struggled with 
 the stubborn masonry, the effort of containing 
 himself became almost intolerable. 
 
 At last, however, the gates were jacked far 
 enough to one side to reveal a black aperture 
 below them. Out of it a sudden chill came 
 up into the warm twilight, and a sharp gust 
 sharper than he had known before of the 
 odour Bisbee knew so well. Then he heard some 
 one say: 
 
 "They have not filled it up, either. There are 
 steps." 
 
 IV 
 
 The solid, the comfortable earth opened 
 under Bisbee s feet into labyrinths as dark and 
 incredible as Avernus. For in the bottom of his 
 patriotic heart he had always felt that the 
 world really began in 1492. To descend, with 
 
MORTMAIN. 51 
 
 two strangers of whom he knew nothing but 
 their fantastic story, a stairway which must 
 already have been buried thirty-nine years 
 when Columbus discovered America, was to 
 enter bodily that dim Saturnine age in whose 
 existence he had never really believed. It was 
 an adventure far more moving than any mere 
 quest for buried treasure. 
 
 They waited till the workmen had gone away 
 for the night, and they posted the protesting 
 Croat on guard at the mouth of the hole. 
 Bisbee let the Armenians go first. It was his 
 acknowledgment of his earlier hastiness. The 
 steps were considerably worn, and they were 
 almost obliterated by a fine earth which had 
 somehow sifted through to them. But with 
 the aid of candles of the kind that you buy 
 like a ball of twine and unroll as you need 
 and of stout sticks, they afforded sufficient foot 
 hold. 
 
 The younger Armenian, who led the way, was 
 the first to make a discovery. 
 
 "The steps stop," he said, after they had de 
 scended fifteen or twenty feet, "and the pas 
 sage turns to the right." 
 
 At this the other halted and gave Bisbee a 
 look. If the passage went to the right it also 
 went toward the south! As it happened, how 
 ever, the youth was mistaken. The steps did 
 
52 MORTMAIN 
 
 not stop. They merely paused at a small plat 
 form from which they dropped at right angles 
 to the first flight into a great space of dark 
 ness that opened out below. It made itself felt 
 rather than seen. But a little reconnoitring 
 with sticks confirmed the fact that the left- 
 hand wall turned away from the landing and 
 disappeared. And this discovery gave the ex 
 pedition a new element of mystery. Bisbee 
 never forgot the impression of it the impene 
 trable chasm of darkness with its mortal chill 
 and its strange odour and its hollow resonances, 
 from which the three tapers reclaimed but the 
 pallor of hands and faces and a few dim lines 
 of masonry. 
 
 That the discovery was not particularly wel 
 come to the Armenians was evident from the 
 low words they exchanged and the hesitating 
 way in which they felt about with their sticks. 
 Bisbee, therefore, after a last look to the mouth 
 of the hole where the red of a cigarette glowed 
 and waned in the darkness and an ancient star 
 looked in (for the first time in how long!) 
 Bisbee took the lead in the second stage of the 
 descent. 
 
 It proved far more ticklish than the first. 
 Not only were the steps open on one side to an 
 unknown abyss, but the wall on the other grew 
 slimy to the touch and the fine detritus under- 
 
MORTMAIN 53 
 
 foot turned to a thin slippery mud. Then the 
 sepulchral reverberations to which their prog 
 ress gave rise could not but try the nerves. 
 And even the matter-of-fact Bisbee started 
 when, at a touch from the Armenian behind 
 him, he caught sight of a ghostly phantom hov 
 ering in the darkness not far away. It took him 
 a full minute of staring, while unwonted sensa 
 tions played about the roots of his hair, to 
 make out that the thing must be a marble pil 
 lar. After that, however, the descent became 
 easier. A pit with pillars in it could not be 
 bottomless. 
 
 So at last the three crawled down to a second 
 level if a floor so muddy and uneven deserved 
 the name. The moisture dripping from the 
 walls had collected into pools that gave out por 
 tentous splashes under the groping of the sticks. 
 It took but little of their blind-man s exploring, 
 however, to determine that this was much 
 larger than the platform where they had halted 
 before. Moreover it was enclosed by walls, and 
 through it ran two rows of marble columns. 
 Looming out of the darkness in which their 
 tops were lost, they had an indescribably eerie 
 effect in the deadly cold and silence. 
 
 The sense of mystery was to Bisbee so much 
 keener than any other that he wondered a little 
 at his companions. They wandered about, busy 
 
54 MORTMAIN 
 
 with stick and taper, making strange reflections 
 and rousing strange echoes in the hollow place. 
 And presently the younger bent over with an 
 exclamation to examine some scattered objects 
 at his feet. Then picking up one of them with 
 a laugh he handed it to his father, who in turn 
 showed it to Bisbee. The thing was a skull, 
 dark and glistening from the moisture in which 
 it had lain. 
 
 "He was less patient than we !" remarked the 
 old man. 
 
 Bisbee suddenly reached out and took the 
 skull into his own hands. Nothing had ever 
 given him so extraordinary a sense of the 
 actuality of the past. The eyes that once peered 
 through those hollow sockets were perhaps the 
 last, before to-night, to look upon this secret 
 place. Whose could they have been ? How did 
 he come here? Did he hear the earth fall on 
 the bronze gates that shut him in from the 
 lighted air? Had there reached him any tre 
 mor of that greater fall, when, after the fury 
 of siege and sack, the ruins of an empire oblit 
 erated his hiding place? With questions such 
 as these, which rise so easily to the surface of 
 imagination but which had never happened to 
 enter the mind of the missionary, there also 
 came a new impression of the ancient things 
 which had possessed so curious a property of 
 
MORTMAIN 55 
 
 arousing his resentment. The memory of them 
 gave him now a sense of the continuity of life 
 such as could scarcely have come to him in his 
 own land and of its immense age, and of its 
 immense waste, and of its immense endurance. 
 Never again, he felt, could this city in which he 
 had chosen to live and die seem to him merely 
 dirty and disagreeable. Nor could its people 
 seem to him merely unsympathetic or prepos 
 terous. Were there not, after all, reasons why 
 they should be as they were? There came to 
 him then and there, with his first inkling of the 
 reality of other existences, a strange vision of 
 the dead hands that move in men s lives, 
 ordering their ways in spite of them to hidden 
 ends. 
 
 When Bisbee at last put down the skull he 
 discovered that he was alone. The other two 
 tapers had disappeared, and there was nothing 
 to break the unearthly stillness of the place. 
 In the deeper darkness that had closed in 
 upon him he could see nothing but the 
 ghost of a pillar. He groped his way to the 
 nearest wall and felt along it with his stick. 
 The stick suddenly gave under his hand. Low 
 ering his candle to reconnoitre he discovered a 
 narrow archway that rose not more than three 
 feet above the ground. He crouched to look in. 
 Far away, and twinkling like stars above his 
 
56 MORTMAIN 
 
 head, two faint lights pierced the darkness. A 
 moment later he dropped into a brick tunnel, a 
 little higher than his head, that inclined gently 
 upward. And with a sudden trembling of ex 
 citement, there came to him certain old words : 
 Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, 
 where moth and rust doth corrupt and where 
 thieves break through and steal. . . . 
 
 When Bisbee came near enough to his com 
 panions to see more than their candles he ex 
 perienced an indescribable clutch at the heart. 
 They must have found those ancient things 
 that their ancestor, nearly five hundred years 
 ago, had helped to carry down out of the terror 
 of the siege. One of the two was examining 
 a large dim object in front of him, while the 
 other, the younger, was working excitedly with 
 his arm and his stick at one side of the tunnel. 
 
 Bisbee stopped. It was not for him to show 
 the eagerness they expected. Then the old man 
 turned and saw him. A strange smile crossed 
 his face. He beckoned, and pointed to the 
 object in front of him. And as Bisbee went 
 nearer he made out in the candle light a torso 
 of marble. Little as he knew of sculpture he 
 could see it bore a wonderful human resem 
 blance. It made him think of the statue he had 
 let his men break up for lime. 
 
 "Do you know what this is?" asked the old 
 
MORTMAIN 57 
 
 man. Bisbee noticed how husky was his voice. 
 "I will tell you. It is the wall of the mosque 
 behind your printing house. Digging for a 
 foundation they discovered this tunnel quite 
 by accident." He paused a minute, looking 
 from Bisbee to his son, with that extraordinary 
 smile of his. And what he said next was in 
 some intangible way the continuance of his 
 pause: "The statues they broke up to use in 
 building. This is perhaps a Greek god who 
 carries on his shoulders the house of Moham 
 med!" 
 
 But even then Bisbee hardly took it in. What 
 on earth was the man talking about? Then it 
 gradually came to him that he was face to face 
 with an obstruction in the passage. It was a 
 wall which started obliquely from one side of 
 the tunnel, turned a right angle, and disap 
 peared on the other side. After that he made 
 out, in his bewilderment, that the wall was dis 
 tinctly lighter than the ancient brick of the 
 tunnel, and ruggedly built of stone. Moreover, 
 there was no junction between the two, for the 
 edges of the brickwork were gaping and ragged. 
 The obstruction could therefore be neither the 
 natural end of the passage nor an artificial bar 
 rier. It was simply what the old man said an 
 independent structure which had happened, 
 under ground, to cut into the older one. And 
 
58 MORTMAIN 
 
 the torso built into the corner told the rest of 
 the story. 
 
 It told so much, in the uncanny silence, that 
 Bisbee grew cold. He stood there, staring at 
 the mutilated marble, waiting he knew not for 
 what. The only words he could think of were 
 those in which he had once heard the young 
 man describe what they were to find here, en 
 tangled with the ones that had come to him as 
 he entered the tunnel. Then a sudden crack of 
 wood made him start. The youth began beat 
 ing the wall insensately with his stick. 
 
 "Dogs ! Devils !" he panted through his teeth. 
 "Jackals of the desert that defile the palaces of 
 kings ! There is no God ! There is no mercy in 
 the world! How should they have found it? 
 Did they wait four hundred years? Ah 
 thieves! Thieves! They have taken all 
 
 all There is no more hope no hope 
 
 There " 
 
 He crumpled into a senseless heap on the 
 ground. 
 
MEHMISH 
 
 As a general rule, people, even the wicked, are much 
 more naive and simple-hearted than we suppose. And 
 we ourselves are, too. 
 
 Fedor Dostoevsky: THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV. 
 
 CAN you manage to make a place for a man, 
 I wonder? He has already been in our 
 service. He used to be doorkeeper fifteen 
 years ago. When I tell you why he left, and 
 where he has been for the fifteen years, I sup 
 pose you will throw up your hands. I can assure 
 you, though, that you ll never find a better man. 
 He is pure Turk, and he s worth sixty of that 
 hulking Croat of yours who is always peeping 
 into his pocket glass. Mehmish may not be so 
 ornamental. I presume he is even slower 
 witted. But within his limits he is absolutely 
 reliable absolutely. He s as honest as the 
 Bank of England, and when he says he ll do a 
 thing he does it. 
 
 We found that out not long after he first 
 came. We took him as a bekji a night watch 
 man and he did any other dirty work that was 
 going. The chief at that time was Perkin you 
 remember? He was the one who afterward 
 
 59 
 
60 MEHMISH 
 
 married that Philadelphia soap widow. Well, 
 he was fond of farming that sort of thing. 
 He made quite a garden of his Therapia place. 
 And one day he took it into his head to keep 
 bees. There was a man somewhere on the Bos- 
 phorus who had bees to sell, and Mehmish was 
 detailed to transfer them. The people gave him 
 the hive done up in a sack, which he carried 
 over his shoulder. The bees apparently didn t 
 enjoy that mode of travel. At all events they 
 managed to find a hole in the sack, or the cor 
 ner of the hive worked one; and they cleared 
 the deck of a crowded Bosphorus steamer as 
 neatly as a Maxim gun of every one, that is, 
 except Mehmish. Do you think he was going to 
 run away for a few warlike bees ? Not a bit of 
 it. He had been told to carry that hive to 
 Therapia, and he carried it. You should have 
 seen him afterward, though. There wasn t a 
 square millimetre of his face, neck, or hands 
 those brutes didn t raise a blister on. I don t 
 know how long it was before the man could look 
 out of his eyes. But the most amazing part of 
 it was that he didn t seem too sorry for himself. 
 Anybody else, conceiving that he had had the 
 nerve to stick to the hive instead of pitching it 
 overboard, would have expected to be petted for 
 the rest of his natural life. Not so Mehmish. 
 He merely said : "It was written that that also 
 
MEHMISH 61 
 
 should come upon my head." And no one could 
 have been more surprised or grateful than he 
 when we promoted him to be doorkeeper. 
 
 I presume there are dozens of men in this 
 town who would have done the same thing. It s 
 that in the Turks that carried them to Vienna 
 four hundred years ago, and it s that that s 
 going to carry them through a good many other 
 things. Perkin called it stupidity. Perhaps he 
 was right; but I must say I have a fancy for 
 that form of stupidity. Perkin himself didn t 
 happen to be stupid in that particular way. The 
 fact that Mehmish did gave me an interest in 
 him. It wasn t only that I like a man to show a 
 salient characteristic. Part of it was simply 
 because Mehmish was a Turk, and because I 
 always had a weakness for what Perkin called 
 low company. He used to be fearfully scan 
 dalized because nothing pleased me so much as 
 to put on a fez and some clothes of a local cut I 
 had made, and go knocking about coffee-houses. 
 I saw and heard a good many amusing things, 
 too. But unluckily it doesn t do to go in too 
 much for that sort of thing. Only those paint 
 ing and scribbling chaps can prowl around in 
 places where they don t belong. The rest of us 
 have our blessed dignity to maintain, or that of 
 our blessed positions. I have an idea, though, 
 that there is more genuineness in the coffee- 
 
62 MEHMISH 
 
 house kind of people: at least you find out 
 quicker whether they stand on their own feet 
 or not. We others are generally what we are 
 because our environment props us up. If we 
 were suddenly left to shift for ourselves, with 
 out a piastre or a recommendation, I wonder 
 how many of us would keep our noses above 
 water. I m afraid I wouldn t, at any rate. I 
 was born of respectable parents, I was sent to a 
 respectable school, I proceeded to a respectable 
 college, I entered a respectable career, and have 
 reached a respectable position in it, without 
 lifting a finger or encountering an obstacle. But 
 if I were to be wrecked on a desert island to 
 morrow I should die in a week, because I am 
 incapable of doing anything with my hands. I 
 therefore have great respect for those who can, 
 and I have an immense curiosity about what 
 goes on inside of them. 
 
 I can t say, though, that I ever got much idea 
 of what went on inside of Mehmish. I don t sup 
 pose he did himself, for that matter or if he 
 did, that he knew how to say so. It certainly 
 was hard enough to get anything out of him. 
 Not that his doings were likely to be very ex 
 traordinary. But the fillip of life, for me, is in 
 the small permutations and combinations of 
 incident that make up the lives of us all. And I 
 have often picked up a trait of character or a 
 
MEHMISH 63 
 
 turn of phrase from a Mehmish that has stood 
 me in good stead with a Pasha. Did you ever 
 realize, however, what an art it is to tell the 
 story of one s day ? Women sometimes have it 
 to perfection. We call it gossip, but it is the 
 raw material of literature, and it is better than 
 the glum silences that fill so many habitual 
 tete-a-tetes. The case of Mehmish rather in 
 trigued me, because I never knew how much of 
 his speechlessness was a personal and how 
 much a racial character. But given the excel 
 lence of our relations I came to regard his 
 silence as the silence of the East, unasking and 
 unresponsive. It was only by chance, and in 
 deed rather than in word, that anything came 
 out of him. I remember when he went to his 
 "country." It was somewhere up the Black Sea. 
 All that sort of people come from the provinces, 
 you know. They live here without their women, 
 in corners of the buildings where they are em 
 ployed or herded together in hans, without ever 
 really detaching themselves from the places 
 where they were born or becoming a part of 
 this one. Some of them do, of course, but the 
 great mass of them live like strangers in a 
 strange land, speaking their own dialect, wear 
 ing their own costume, following their own cus 
 toms, and going to their country, as they call it, 
 at long intervals to marry, to take money, to 
 
64 MEHMISH 
 
 die. Still, they all go. It is like a disease, and 
 when the fit comes on there is nothing for it but 
 to let them go. Can you wonder? They put a 
 friend in their place and expect you to take 
 them back when they return. 
 
 The fit came on Mehmish when he had been 
 here about four years. In the meantime, how 
 ever, there had arisen a Pharaoh who knew not 
 Joseph. When Mehmish requested me to in 
 form the chief that he was going to his country, 
 the chief took it in the wrong spirit not that it 
 really made any difference to him. Mehmish 
 was no more to him than any other outlandish 
 individual in blue and silver. What he objected 
 to was the principle of Mehmish taking the 
 matter into his own hands. You see he hap 
 pened to be a chief imbued with a sense of dis 
 cipline. But I told the story of the bees, and ex 
 plained the customs of the country, and finally 
 extorted the desired permission. So Mehmish 
 went. After he had gone the man he left in his 
 place told me he had gone to get married. Of 
 course Mehmish would never have mentioned it. 
 Under the circumstances I wondered if he 
 would really come back in six months, as he 
 said he would. While I had perfect faith in his 
 general reliability, I knew that Asia is a little 
 romantic about dates and the precise fulfilment 
 of promises. But he came back on the dot. 
 
MEHMISH 65 
 
 "Vai, Mehmish!" I exclaimed when I found 
 him at the door one morning. "Have you come 
 back?" 
 
 "Behold!" he answered, making me a low 
 salaam. 
 
 I was genuinely glad to see him again, and 
 genuinely curious, as ever, to know what he had 
 been up to. 
 
 "Well, what news?" 
 
 "Soundness, thanks to God!" he returned, 
 smiling and shrugging his shoulders. 
 
 And that would have been the sum of his con 
 tribution to my studies of Turkish peasant life, 
 if it had not been for a letter that came long 
 afterward. The letter was brought among 
 others to me. When I handed it to Mehmish he 
 surprised me by asking me to read it to him. 
 He said, apologetically, that it was the first he 
 had had since leaving his country, and that he 
 would not be free for some hours to go out and 
 get it read. I agreed with the more willingness 
 because I had always wondered what passes be 
 tween the public letter writers you see and the 
 clients who squat beside them. This missive 
 contained none of the flowers of rhetoric or the 
 page-long sentences that distinguish our official 
 correspondence with the Turks. It began by 
 stating that "I, your father, Hassan, write this 
 letter," and it continued with a catalogue of 
 
66 MEHMISH 
 
 names of compatriots to whom that gentleman 
 sent salutations. There followed another cata 
 logue of those who sent salutations to Mehmish, 
 and it briefly ended by informing Mehmish that 
 his "family" had died the day after he left. 
 This calamity was not quite of the magnitude 
 you might think, for a family in Turkish is a 
 wife. But I was none the less moved with won 
 der and distress at their not having sent news 
 before, at my having come plump on the thing, 
 like that, after the salutations. If I expected a 
 scene, however, Mehmish was not the man to 
 make it. 
 
 "God is great," he uttered gravely, to cover 
 my embarrassment. 
 
 I made a pretence of examining the bald 
 statement again, in the hope of extracting fur 
 ther particulars, and mumbled something about 
 my lack of success. 
 
 "My family was ill when I came away," he 
 gravely volunteered. 
 
 "But, Mehmish," I uttered in astonishment, 
 "why did you come away if she was so ill as 
 that? We would have excused you." 
 
 "Eh," he returned, "it was the last day I 
 could start to get back here in time. I promised 
 I would come. Also, we needed money. The 
 day I went to my country I was robbed." 
 
 "Oh, Mehmish! Of not much, I hope?" 
 
MEHMISH 67 
 
 "Of all I had, Effendim. They saw me take it 
 out of my girdle when I bought my ticket, and 
 they stole it on the steamer when I was asleep. 
 I didn t know until I had left the steamer. But 
 my parents had already found a girl for me, 
 and in order not to make shame to them we 
 had to sell fields. Now we shall buy them 
 back." 
 
 Imagine the poor chap losing all he had 
 scraped together in who knows how long, then 
 losing his wife as well, and still having to 
 scrape the money together again for her dot! 
 I am afraid I might have said or done some 
 thing very stupid if Mehmish had not left the 
 room, saying: 
 
 "It was written that that also should come 
 upon my head." 
 
 His final departure was of a piece with the 
 rest of him. One morning when I came to the 
 office he did not rise as he always did and salute 
 me. He remained on his stool, head down, mut 
 tering to himself. I caught the word "afraid." 
 The thing was so different from his ordinary 
 manner that it intrigued me. When I got in 
 side I asked another servant what the matter 
 was with Mehmish. 
 
 "Vallah, I don t know," replied the man. 
 "He has been like that only this morning. He 
 sits and talks to no one but himself." 
 
68 MEHMISH 
 
 So when I went out a little later I made a 
 point of speaking to Mehmish : 
 
 "Good morning, Mehmish," I said. "What is 
 the matter? Are you ill?" 
 
 He got up hastily and salaamed. 
 
 "No, Chelebi," he answered. "My soul is 
 squeezed." 
 
 This was more, in the case of so taciturn a 
 person, than I might have expected. 
 
 "May it have passed," I wished him after a 
 pause, and went on. 
 
 I had affairs about town that morning and 
 did not return to the office till after lunch. As 
 I did so whom should I meet on the Grande Rue 
 but Mehmish walking between two policemen 
 and handcuffed like a criminal. I was so amazed 
 that I let him pass without a word. There was 
 no one whom I would so little have expected to 
 see in such a plight. As for Mehmish, he raised 
 his arms to his breast he could not salaam be 
 cause of the handcuffs and bowed low. When 
 I came to my wits I hurried after him. 
 
 "What is this?" I demanded of the older 
 policeman. "I know this man. Let him go. If 
 you have anything to say, come to our office. I 
 will be surety for him. He has been with us 
 five years, and I would trust him like my 
 brother." 
 
 "Then, Effendim, you will learn," replied my 
 
MEHMISH 69 
 
 philosopher of the brass plaque, "that you may 
 trust no one in this world. For Mehmish has 
 just killed a man." 
 
 I laughed. 
 
 "Killed a man? Mehmish would not kill a 
 scorpion ! Let him go, I say !" 
 
 The officer shrugged his shoulders politely. 
 
 "I am sorry," he said, "but what can I do? 
 There are witnesses. Ask them." 
 
 The absurdity of the thing left me speech 
 less. I looked at Mehmish. Then I noticed for 
 the first time the disorder of his clothes, cer 
 tain sinister stains on them. Yet I was reas 
 sured by the way in which Mehmish looked 
 back at me. It did not prepare me to hear him 
 say: 
 
 "It is true. He said I was afraid." 
 
 It was true, you know. He had stabbed a man 
 in Kassim Pasha, the gully down there under 
 the Little Field of the Dead. I don t suppose 
 you ever put your aristocratic feet into it, but 
 I happen to know its coffee-houses flourishing 
 in sweet proximity to an open drain, its sub 
 sidiary aroma of mastic, its crazy wooden 
 bridges, its jingling crank pianos, and its gyp 
 sies whose get-up is rather like the Latin Quar 
 ter except that their jackets aren t cut in at the 
 waist or their trousers at the bottom and that 
 they wear an almost black fez. It was one of 
 
70 MEHMISH 
 
 them, the bully of the ravine, whom Mehmish 
 had killed; and for no other reason than that 
 the fellow had called him a coward. He told me 
 about it at the guard-house as much about 
 it as I could drag out of him. He made no story 
 of it, and no attempt at defence. He hardly 
 knew the man he had killed, whom he had first 
 met in a coffee-house a few days before who 
 had spoken boastingly of his own strength and 
 bravery and spoken slightingly of Mehmish, 
 and whom Mehmish had encountered that 
 morning on his way to the office. 
 
 "He said I was afraid," repeated Mehmish 
 for the hundredth time. 
 
 "Of what?" I asked. 
 
 "Of him, of his knife." 
 
 "What did you do?" 
 
 "I went to the office. It was my hour." 
 
 That was why his soul was squeezed ! I sup 
 pose he had gone on muttering the man s words 
 to himself all the morning. 
 
 "What happened when you went out at 
 noon?" I pursued. 
 
 "I went to look for him." And I suppose 
 Mehmish would not have uttered another word 
 if I had not demanded: 
 
 "Well, what then?" 
 
 "I found him in the coffee-house, and I said 
 to him : You said I was afraid. I also have a 
 
MEHMISH 71 
 
 knife. Let us see which of us will kill the 
 other/ " 
 
 "What did he do?" 
 
 "He laughed, and said that the men of Ana 
 tolia were afraid, except of women and boys." 
 
 "And you?" 
 
 "Eh, I showed him." 
 
 Mehmish didn t show me, however. He left 
 it there, while I stared at him. 
 
 "But is that a thing to do," I finally de 
 manded "to give a man a knife for an empty 
 word?" 
 
 "He should not have spoken it. He had time. 
 He might have killed me." 
 
 I could quite see it, in the light of Mehmish s 
 simplicity. And I ventured to ask him one 
 more question: 
 
 "What did you do afterward?" 
 
 "Afterward?" repeated Mehmish, as if 
 searching his memory. "Ah, afterward I heard 
 the muezzin in the minaret. So I pulled my 
 knife out of him and went to the mosque to 
 wash and to pray." 
 
 Yes, sir, that s what he did ! And he got fif 
 teen years for it. We had a great row over him. 
 In the good old times manslaughter was a 
 venial offence. There were plenty of ways of 
 hushing up unpleasant questions, and even if 
 you did get caught, a capital sentence, under 
 
72 MEHMISH 
 
 the tender-hearted Abd-ul-Hamid, was never 
 executed. When people had to be suppressed 
 it was done quietly and without scandal. But 
 this affair was too public to be hushed up. And 
 Mehmish made not the slightest chance for 
 himself. Although we did the best we could for 
 him, who could get around the fact that he had 
 spitted the bully of Kassim Pasha, in broad day 
 light, before dozens of witnesses, for no ether 
 reason than that the fellow had questioned his 
 courage? At least that was all anybody could 
 get out of him. 
 
 He took his sentence as he took everything 
 else. "It was written that that also should 
 come upon my head," he said. He also asked 
 me to keep his place for him ! Which is why I 
 am telling you all this. They shut him up in a 
 tower at Sinope, at first, and I used to send him 
 tobacco. Then they changed him and I lost 
 track of him. I thought he must be dead. I 
 used to wonder about him though. I had seen 
 less of blood-letting in those days, and I found 
 it harder to square with the rest of Mehmish. 
 Had he really finished that chap for the reason 
 he gave? Might it not have been some matter 
 of chivalry for him to stick so to his answer? 
 What, working darkly in that Asiatic head of 
 his, could in the last analysis have brought him 
 to that bloody conclusion? 
 
MEHMISH 73 
 
 Last night I was walking down from the 
 Taxim when I saw a knot of people blocking 
 the pavement. I stopped to see what was up. 
 I am a child, you know, for staring at what goes 
 on in the street. A hamal or peasant of some 
 sort seemed to be having an altercation with a 
 policeman in the midst of the knot. I asked a 
 small boy what it was about. The small boy 
 tapped his forehead with a grin and told me 
 that the hamal had been standing in front of 
 the house till the people inside got frightened 
 and sent for the police. The house, as it hap 
 pened, was one in which I used to live myself. 
 I started to pass on. As I did so the hamal 
 pushed his way through the crowd toward me, 
 and made a deep salaam. I salaamed in return, 
 offhand, not anxious to make myself the centre 
 of a new ring. Then the hamal said, with a 
 note in his voice that made me stop : 
 
 "Chelebi, don t you know me?" 
 
 I looked at him. He was ragged, grizzled, 
 thin. There was nothing about him of the stal 
 wart doorman we used to have. But I did know 
 him. 
 
 "Few, Mehmish!" I exclaimed, holding out 
 my hand. 
 
 He took it and did not let it go, after the way 
 they have. 
 
 "I have been waiting for you," he said. 
 
74 MEHMISH 
 
 That was why he had frightened the people 
 in the house ! As for me, I wondered what one 
 could say to a man when the best years of his 
 life had been taken from him, and he returned 
 to find himself forgotten. Through the sudden 
 sense of it all the old curiosity was the first 
 thing that came back to me, and I asked: 
 
 "Why did you do it, Mehmish?" 
 
 But Mehmish s fifteen years had not crushed 
 him, for he answered: 
 
 "What could I do? He said I was afraid." 
 
THE GLASS HOUSE 
 
 It is by folly alone that the world moves, and so it is 
 a respectable thing upon the whole. 
 
 Joseph Conrad: VICTORY. 
 
 I WAS looking for a Legation. 
 That used to be my principal pastime, you 
 know hunting Legations. Every now and 
 then they would send out a new Minister from 
 Washington, and the first thing to do was to 
 find him a Legation. He never wanted the one 
 the last man had. And who should be up on 
 Legations but the oldest living American resi 
 dent ? The secretaries, amiable and peripatetic 
 young gentlemen you know how it is. Even 
 the Dragoman, in those pre-ambassadorial days, 
 was much less of a fixture than his colleagues 
 in the service. Moreover, he was likely to be a 
 native of the country, upon whom a brand new 
 Minister would gaze with questioning eye. The 
 oldest living resident was really the only one 
 who stayed the oldest living resident and the 
 landlords. What a crew they were! I nat 
 urally came in time to know them like brothers. 
 
 75 
 
76 THE GLASS HOUSE 
 
 Of course they conceived that the good old war 
 cry of democratic simplicity had been invented 
 to make a new Minister pay four times as much 
 rent as a Legation was worth, and they hated 
 me for standing between them and the shorn 
 lamb of the moment. Nevertheless they were 
 at me the instant they heard any rumour of a 
 change, begging me for introductions to the 
 new Minister, promising me fat commissions 
 if I would land him for them, trying to work off 
 on me the same old houses they had tried for 
 years to work off on me. There was a house up 
 in Selvi Sira that no one has ever lived in with 
 out meeting a sudden and violent end. There 
 was another house that some mysterious per 
 son was always setting on fire. There was a 
 big marble house near the British Embassy 
 that stood empty for years because of a spring 
 in the cellar that nobody could stop up or pipe 
 away. Time and again they brought it to me 
 in their pocket, all nicely dried out with a bath 
 towel. I don t know what they didn t bring 
 me. It was rather amusing, too, you know. I 
 came across all sorts of things. But you are 
 forever coming across things in this extraor 
 dinary town of theirs. Did you ever see such 
 a place ? 
 
 However, I was looking, as I say, for a Lega 
 tion. And I ended by coming across something 
 
THE GLASS HOUSE 77 
 
 new. For me, at least, it was new. Just wait 
 till I give it to you in order. 
 
 II 
 
 The house stood in the middle of a huge gar 
 den, somewhere up in the Taxim. The place 
 was more Italian than most of them here. The 
 terraces had big marble balustrades, and there 
 were statues and fountains and things. The 
 best of it was that you could see everywhere 
 the lower half of the Bosphorus and the Mar 
 mora, that is. And from the top of the house, 
 where there was a kind of belvedere, you could 
 look over into the Golden Horn I don t know 
 how far up. 
 
 An old man showed me about. He had more 
 the air of a family servant than of a mere 
 custodian. I asked him to whom the place 
 belonged. 
 
 "Madame Belize," he said. Then he cor 
 rected himself. "No, I mean Missiri Bey." 
 
 I laughed. "Well, which?" 
 
 "Missiri Bey," he answered queerly. "Madame 
 Belize" he paused a moment "is dead." 
 
 I don t suppose any of you young fellows ever 
 saw Missiri. He used to come here to the club 
 a good deal, especially when there was playing. 
 But I m afraid to guess how long ago. He was 
 of the place, you know a Levantine with 
 
78 THE GLASS HOUSE 
 
 more kinds of blood in him than wines at a 
 banquet. He was in the Regie, I believe ; was 
 richish, and had been quite a dragon in his day. 
 Belize was a name new to me, though. That is, 
 for such a house. I could not think why I had 
 never known about it, nor about Madame. So I 
 asked the old man who she was. 
 
 He looked at me as if he thought it strange 
 that I should ask. And I didn t wonder after 
 ward. 
 
 "Madame Belize?" He hesitated a little. 
 "You know the Patisserie Belize ? She was the 
 wife of that Monsieur Belize." 
 
 I was rather surprised. I knew that name of 
 course, as you all do. Who has not munched 
 little cakes and sipped little liqueurs at Belize s ? 
 But I had not connected a patisserie with such a 
 place as the one I was looking at. One somehow 
 imagines patisseries to exist to and for them 
 selves, without anything behind them. But 
 Belize s has a good deal behind it. 
 
 I didn t find out just then, though. I found 
 out first that while they much preferred to sell, 
 they were willing under certain conditions to 
 let unfurnished. It was well worth consider 
 ing. The house was very decent as houses here 
 go. It was built on the good old plan of central 
 halls running through from front to back, with 
 the rooms opening out on each side. But there 
 
THE GLASS HOUSE 79 
 
 was one peculiarity. I discovered that as soon 
 as we went in. The walls of the big marble en 
 trance hall were completely lined with mirror- 
 glass. I don t mean French mirrors with those 
 impossible gilt frames. Each wall was simply 
 one gigantic looking-glass, with hardly so much 
 as a knob or a crack in it. It gave the strangest 
 illusion of space. However, I thought little of 
 it then. You see the wildest freaks in these 
 houses. Nor did I think much when the walls 
 of the grand staircase proved to be similarly 
 decorated. It had to go with the hall, more or 
 less. But the upper hall did not have to go with 
 the lower, nor did the rooms of state. They 
 did, nevertheless. Every room in the place, if 
 you please not counting the pieces de service 
 was tricked out in the same way. Every 
 room, that is, except two. These adjoined each 
 other, and were lined with a charming old green 
 damask. 
 
 When we came to that green damask I simply 
 couldn t hold in any longer. 
 
 "If you had twenty rooms in green damask 
 and two in glass, I might think about it!" I 
 cried out. "But as it is " I laughed. 
 
 The old man looked at me very solemnly. 
 "Excuse me," he said, with a kind of respectful 
 reproach ; "it is not a thing for laughter." 
 
 "Well, I suppose not," I conceded, as hand- 
 
80 THE GLASS HOUSE 
 
 somely as I could "with what it must have 
 cost and with what it would cost to put the 
 walls in order again. Will Missiri Bey do it 
 for us?" 
 
 "Ah, there is nothing that Missiri Bey will 
 not do!" he exclaimed, shrugging his shoul 
 ders. 
 
 I don t know I began to get curious. It was 
 not only that I had never in my life seen such a 
 preposterous place. The old man himself, with 
 his tones and his gestures, made all sorts of 
 questions go through my head. I was aching to 
 ask where Monsieur Belize came in or went 
 out and where Missiri. But I contented my 
 self with echoing: 
 
 "Oh, Missiri Bey!" 
 
 It was evidently my cue. I saw that by the 
 old man s look. But I wanted more than looks ! 
 We returned to the great hall of the second 
 floor the premi&re, as you have it. The place 
 was extraordinary, with its mirror walls. It 
 was enough to drive one silly. In all the huge 
 bareness of it there was nothing but an in 
 finity of reflections until one doubted even the 
 good green garden trees at the end windows. 
 It reached out on each side to interminable 
 vistas, and the two of us were merely the near 
 est of an army. 
 
 "What things these walls have seen, eh?" I 
 
THE GLASS HOUSE 81 
 
 uttered at last. "One can imagine with lights 
 and flowers and silks and jewels and uniforms 
 and all!" 
 
 The old man looked about and slowly shook 
 his head. 
 
 "They have seen things the mirrors. But 
 
 not what you think. Madame Belize " He 
 
 stopped. 
 
 "She was an invalid?" I ventured. 
 
 "Oh, no!" he answered quickly, almost as if 
 I had made an accusation. And after a moment : 
 "She was the most beautiful woman in the 
 world. She was always alone. That is, after 
 the mirrors. . . . That was why she had them. 
 She said they gave her company." 
 
 I took this in with open mouth. One could 
 imagine oneself to have company well enough, 
 seeing the crowds of old men and house hunters 
 who dwindled away on either hand. But what 
 company! I need not tell you that I let lega 
 tions go to pot after that. My old man and 
 his Madame Belize were much too interesting. 
 I don t need to tell you, either, how it was with 
 the old man. He wasn t the kind that you could 
 corrupt. It was simply that he was full of his 
 story and hadn t had a chance to tell it. So I 
 got it. It was a little queer, too, you know 
 what I got. But everything s a little queer in 
 this place. 
 
82 THE GLASS HOUSE 
 
 III 
 
 It all began with old Belize. There originally 
 had been a Belize, it seemed. He was a Levan 
 tine, too; less mixed up than Missiri, perhaps, 
 but by no means so high up even as things go 
 here. And he was a humpback into the bargain. 
 He kept a little Patisserie Frangaise down in 
 Galata somewhere, and made enough money out 
 of it to go one day to Budapest. That is what 
 these people do, you know they go to Buda 
 pest. It is the nearest outpost of civilization. 
 
 Our humpback Belize had a good time there, 
 too. He went up to Margitsziget you know, 
 that jolly island in the Danube. Only I must 
 believe that his experience was in some particu 
 lars unique. Not that it was so remarkable for 
 him to admire the first Kellnerimfc he saw in the 
 first beer garden he entered. We have all 
 admired a Kellnerin^. But with us admiration 
 operates what shall I say ? more lightly, less 
 fatefully. There are also kellnerintfs and kell- 
 nerinns. To this one, however, Belize said, as 
 if on second thought he would order another 
 beer: 
 
 "Will you go to Constantinople with me to 
 morrow ?" 
 
 Imagine! He had barely arrived, and had 
 intended to take a bit of a holiday. He must 
 have been quite a man, Belize. Not only was he 
 
THE GLASS HOUSE 83 
 
 a patisseur, you remember, but he was also a 
 humpback. While she I never saw her, of 
 course, but my old man quite lost himself de 
 scribing her. He was the confidential attache 
 of the first patisserie, and knew her from the 
 beginning. She was tall, and rather fair for a 
 Hungarian or she might have been Austrian 
 and she had an air. She had an air ! I imag 
 ine that she may have been one of those lovely 
 impassive women who frighten you so much 
 more than they deserve, simply because they 
 are so impassive and so lovely. 
 
 Well, the Kellnerinri looked at Belize a min 
 ute. She had eyes, the old man said and he, 
 too, for that matter. Then she said: 
 
 "Thank you, no. I already have a husband." 
 
 "What are you doing here, then?" inquired 
 Belize. 
 
 "I am getting my bread and onions," replied 
 the girl. 
 
 "Oh!" says Belize. "Is your husband a 
 cripple?" 
 
 "No," said she. "He is a stone-cutter." 
 
 "Does he ever try his chisel on your back, 
 perhaps ?" 
 
 "Eh ! When he is drunk." 
 
 "I see," returned Belize. "Have you chil 
 dren?" 
 
 The Kellnerinn shook her head. 
 
84 THE GLASS HOUSE 
 
 "It would not have mattered if they were 
 pretty," said Belize. "Take me to your stone 
 cutter." 
 
 Did you ever hear of such a thing ? Any other 
 man would either have given up the job or have 
 tried to make the Kellnerinn run away. Any 
 other Kellnerinn would have turned her back or 
 would have bolted on the spot. But not so these 
 two. Belize waited until his lady was free, and 
 then he went with her to the stone-cutter. 
 There they seem to have had a perfectly unim- 
 passioned business discussion. I should judge 
 that none of them were given to superfluous 
 words. As for the stone-cutter, he apparently 
 jumped at the chance. All he held out for was 
 a subsidy larger than the income which his wife 
 had been able to provide for him, which Belize 
 was ready enough to grant even to instant 
 payment of the first installment. 
 
 So off they went together, Beauty and the 
 Beast, and speedily put the Balkans between 
 themselves and their stone-cutter. Who doubt 
 less called himself a very lucky fellow, became 
 more of a stranger to his profession than ever, 
 and kicked his heels all day long on the embank 
 ments of the Danube. The Kellnerintf, is the 
 one I wonder most about, though Madame 
 Belize, as they called her. Was she really in 
 love with her humpback? Or was anybody 
 
THE GLASS HOUSE 85 
 
 better than the stone-cutter? At all events, 
 Belize had no occasion to regret his adventure. 
 Not only did Madame turn out a famous cook, 
 under the tutelage of Monsieur, but she had 
 ideas of her own from Budapest. And what 
 was more, she attracted custom better than 
 the sweetest cakes or the headiest liqueurs ever 
 invented. 
 
 Her sphere, however, soon became too nar 
 row. The Chateaubriands and Amperes so in 
 creased in number that Belize moved up the hill. 
 Then he moved again, and established branches, 
 and finally built the big place you all know. 
 That extraordinary trip to Budapest was liter 
 ally the making of him. He grew so rich that 
 he couldn t possibly use all his money in sweets. 
 He began to buy houses about here in town. He 
 also picked up estates on the Bosphorus and at 
 the islands. 
 
 And it all began with a Kellnerin$! Except 
 for the bargain with the stone-cutter there was 
 never anything questionable. And the open 
 ness of that bargain put it by itself. The thing 
 was merely that Madame s charm threw the 
 balance on the side of success. 
 
 She naturally withdrew from the shop by the 
 time they reached the top of the hill. They 
 began the house then. One could rather tell a 
 good deal from that, you know. There was 
 
86 THE GLASS HOUSE 
 
 nothing like it in Pera. But they had only just 
 moved in when Belize died. 
 He left everything to her. 
 
 IV 
 
 I imagine old Belize never did much in the 
 social line, even after he had money. He was 
 too much patisseur. And then, of course, there 
 was his deformity. But Madame, after a con 
 siderable period of widowhood, seems gradually 
 to have enlarged her borders. Indeed, she could 
 scarcely have avoided it. You can easily see 
 that by that time she was very much in the 
 nature of a grande dame. She was richer than 
 anybody else, and if she had the patisserie 
 against her she had for her the famous charm. 
 Moreover, with Belize out of the way, she nat 
 urally made a very different pair of sleeves. 
 And no one could accuse our dear Pera of being 
 too squeamish as to pedigrees! So Madame 
 seems gradually to have gone into the world. 
 It was then really that Missiri came on the 
 tapis. He was one of the original Chateau- 
 briands of Galata, as I have said, and later 
 seems to have stood sponsor for Madame Belize 
 in society. So our Kettnerimi, having begun 
 her career by an apparently unpromising mar 
 riage to a drunken stone-cutter of Budapest, 
 ended by becoming the queen of Pera. 
 
THE GLASS HOUSE 87 
 
 And then, if you please, the stone-cutter 
 turned up! It was quite too dreadful. He be 
 longed to a period so remote that they had for 
 gotten all about him. He had never given a 
 sign, and Belize had left no directions about the 
 subsidy. They therefore concluded that the 
 man was otherwise disposed of. He, however, 
 was the last man in the world to think of dying 
 with a draft coming to him once a month as 
 regularly as the moon. Accordingly, when it 
 stopped he decided to look into things. 
 
 He happened to choose a highly melodramatic 
 moment for so doing. You should have heard 
 the old man ! Madame Belize was giving a great 
 party. The old man was major-domo then, and 
 when he spied this long fellow whom anybody 
 would have known for a peasant endimanche, 
 he guessed at once. He tried to send the man 
 away, but the stone-cutter would not be sent. 
 On the contrary, he succeeded in slipping into 
 the house. There was something like a scram 
 ble up the stairs, the Hungarian first and the 
 servants after. At the top stood Madame 
 Belize, receiving her guests. Missiri stood near 
 her, as master of ceremonies, and beyond them 
 the great hall was crowded. 
 
 Well, there was the scramble up the stairs 
 and people pressed to see what it was. And then 
 the Hungarian stopped. He caught sight of 
 
88 THE GLASS HOUSE 
 
 Madame Belize, in the wonder of her silks and 
 her jewels and her beauty. He caught sight of 
 Madame Belize, whom he had known as a peas 
 ant girl on the Danube, whom more than once 
 he had beaten. And he laughed. As for 
 Madame Belize, she never stirred except to turn 
 her head upon the peasant in all her splendour 
 and to order the servants away. 
 
 "What do you want ?" she asked, very gently. 
 
 "Money !" replied the stone-cutter. "I got no 
 more, and I came to see about it. I see !" 
 
 And he laughed again. He, too, was a type 
 the stone-cutter. At this Missiri stepped for 
 ward angrily. They had been speaking in their 
 own language, of course, and no one understood 
 almost no one. 
 
 "Who is this fellow?" cried out Missiri. "Let 
 me throw him downstairs if the servants 
 won t!" 
 
 Madame Belize turned to him and smiled 
 faintly. She turned to them all. 
 
 "No," she said. "He is my husband. He 
 used to beat me. I pay him not to. Excuse me 
 a moment while I get him the money. I owe 
 him for several months." She made a deep 
 courtesy, bowing her jewelled head with that 
 faint smile of hers. Then she said something 
 to the stone-cutter. And through a lane of 
 satins and uniforms he followed her away. 
 
THE GLASS HOUSE 89 
 
 You can just imagine! Things happen in 
 Pera to make your hair stand on end. But 
 things don t happen like that, at balls. And 
 nobody had known about Madame Belize. You 
 see, the patisseur had not .taken them into his 
 confidence. So they began tumbling down those 
 stairs faster than the stone-cutter had tumbled 
 up. You should have heard the old man! He 
 shed tears of fury as he told me years after 
 ward, too. 
 
 "She !" he cried. "She who never harmed a 
 creature, who was better than an angel, who 
 did not even leave a husband that beat her until 
 he sent her away for the money it would bring 
 him! She, around whose table they had 
 crowded like a pack of hungry curs, insulted by 
 those " 
 
 It would hardly do for me to repeat the epi 
 thets which he applied to the society of which 
 you are ornaments so conspicuous ! But it was 
 too good a chance for them to prove the delicacy 
 of their sensibilities. Once the first made for 
 the door, the rest followed as if the plague were 
 in the house. 
 
 Madame Belize came back in the midst of it. 
 The stone-cutter was still with her. No one 
 ever knew just what passed between them. It 
 was something, however, which made him less 
 jaunty than before. She took her place at the 
 
90 THE GLASS HOUSE 
 
 head of the stairs and kept him beside her, 
 watching the people go. They would rather 
 have jumped from the windows than pass be 
 fore her, the old man said. For all their haugh 
 tiness, they were afraid of that strange smile 
 of hers. They pushed by without so much as a 
 look most of them. As for her, she watched 
 until they were all gone even Missiri. He lin 
 gered a moment, to be sure, with his eyes on 
 the two of them. But at last he bolted like the 
 others, leaving Madame and her stone-cutter 
 alone. 
 
 They looked at each other. 
 
 "You see !" she said. "They have gone. They 
 are afraid of you." 
 
 He laughed again. But she stopped him. 
 
 "And now you can go, too. This is my house, 
 you know." 
 
 At this he stared about again, and exclaimed : 
 
 "Ah, you are afraid of me, like the rest !" 
 
 She smiled. "Afraid? I think I know you 
 too well. Besides, what more can you do ? They 
 will never come back. It is only, you see, that 
 everything is finished. Good-bye." 
 
 They looked into each other s eyes, and that 
 which the stone-cutter saw made him start 
 slowly down the stairs. After a few steps he 
 stopped, as if he would have gone back. But 
 her eyes were still too much for him. Once 
 
THE GLASS HOUSE 91 
 
 more he turned from them and went on, out of 
 the house. She never saw him again. 
 
 The old man said that she stood there a long 
 time, alone, looking down the empty stairs 
 the servants not daring to stir. Then finally 
 she called them all before her, to the last scul 
 lion and stable-boy, there below her on the 
 steps. And she spoke to them. 
 
 "I have made a mistake," she said. "I want 
 to tell you what it was, because there is no one 
 else I can tell. My mistake was this, that I did 
 not explain. I did not think to tell people what 
 I tell you now : that I used to be a poor peasant 
 girl in Hungary, poorer than any of you; that 
 I married a handsome young stone-cutter and 
 went to Budapest; that we grew tired of each 
 other; that he, because he was tired of me, 
 began to drink; that I, because I was tired of 
 him, became a servant in a cafe; that there I 
 met Monsieur Belize, who offered to take me 
 away and make me happy; that when my hus 
 band agreed I came. Perhaps I thought they 
 knew that Monsieur Belize had told them. At 
 any rate, I did not mean to deceive them. When 
 people came to me I thought it was because 
 they liked to. I thought it was more to be, than 
 to say or to do. But it is not enough. And now 
 
92 THE GLASS HOUSE 
 
 for my mistake I must pay. I have already be 
 gun, you see, to pay. My friends have all gone. 
 They will never come back. You will want to 
 go, too, when you hear what they say. This 
 has become a house of scandal. It will be hard 
 for you to get other places if people know that 
 you come from here. You will not care to tell 
 them that you serve a woman like me. And 
 then, of course, it will be different here after 
 this. There will be no more music and danc 
 ing. You will find it very dull. So I dismiss 
 you all. I will see that none of you suffer 
 because of the suddenness of my decision. I 
 thank you all for what you have done for me. 
 Good-night." 
 
 And with that she left them staring at each 
 other on the stairs. 
 
 What do you think of that, eh ? It s the kind 
 of thing that happens only in feuilletons or in 
 Constantinople. My old man didn t make it up, 
 you know. He wasn t that kind. If he had 
 been he might have made another side of the 
 affair a little clearer. For I don t suppose 
 Madame Belize really regretted what she had 
 done in leaving Budapest, that is or that she 
 had any idea of giving such an impression. And 
 of course nobody else really cared, here of all 
 places in the world. Somebody started that 
 famous stampede and the rest lost their heads 
 
THE GLASS HOUSE 93 
 
 like sheep. What Madame Belize must have 
 minded was the stampede. At all events that 
 party, quite as Madame Belize had prophesied 
 to the stone-cutter, was the end of everything. 
 The queen of Pera was deposed in a day and 
 another reigned in her stead. But how they 
 must have ached to go back! 
 
 I have no idea, either, that in that business of 
 the servants Madame Belize intended a coup 
 de theatre. It was merely, so far as I could 
 make out, that she was the most direct creature 
 in the world. But of course she could have done 
 nothing cleverer to keep them. They had 
 adored her before; what could they do after? 
 A few of them naturally did leave in time, for 
 one reason or another. At the moment, though, 
 or rather the next day, they waited on her in a 
 deputation, with the old man at their head, and 
 vowed eternal fidelity in a way that seems to 
 have affected her very much. So she kept them 
 all on, in spite of the fact that there was noth 
 ing left for three quarters of them to do. It was 
 to give them occupation, really, that she began 
 some of the strange things she did. 
 
 For myself, I rather wondered why she didn t 
 go away. You can easily imagine that to have 
 your visiting list wiped clean, from one day to 
 the other, might lend attractions to a voyage of 
 discovery. She might have moved to Paris or 
 
94 THE GLASS HOUSE 
 
 Rome, and who would have cared what these 
 twopenny half-breeds said in Constantinople? 
 But that was one of the things I couldn t get, 
 directly, from the old man. It may have been 
 her pride, or perhaps she didn t know that 
 Rome and Paris existed! Or what? How 
 ever, she had affairs to attend to, and that gave 
 her something to do. She made no bones about 
 going out for business, or to drive. I had that 
 from others too. They used to meet her on the 
 Grande Rue or along the quays, ignoring the 
 world as completely as the world ignored her. 
 She even kept on with her modistes, and went 
 about in the most wonderful gowns with no 
 one but servants to see them. 
 
 But as time went on she kept more and more 
 to her own little world, and gradually came to 
 confine her excursions to her own grounds. 
 The old man said she would drive solemnly 
 round and round them in her smartest vic 
 toria, with footman and everything, bowing 
 to the gardeners as if they had been grand 
 viziers. She liked, too, to go to the belvedere at 
 the top of the house. You could simply see 
 everything from there. When she came down 
 she would say that she had been seeing the 
 world ! For the rest, she never made any fuss. 
 Except for the solitude, no one would have 
 guessed that anything had happened. She kept 
 
THE GLASS HOUSE 95 
 
 the place up just the same as ever. And that 
 must have been quite a job, you know. You 
 have no idea what can be made out of cakes and 
 liqueurs. The house was somewhat on the scale 
 of Beylerbey Palace. And every night, the old 
 man said, as if she expected the diplomatic 
 corps and a prince of the blood, she filled it with 
 candles and flowers. 
 
 What that solitude must have been it is diffi 
 cult to imagine. You see, she hadn t so much 
 as a poor relation, and if Belize had any they 
 dropped her like everybody else. I gathered 
 that they were all rather put to it, sometimes, 
 to make the thing go. As, for instance, when 
 Madame Belize elected to give great parties to 
 herself with an orchestra playing waltzes in 
 the empty ballroom. There must have been 
 clearnesses of vision in her, and delicacies of 
 imagination, which from the very beginning 
 had made her do the unexpected thing. So 
 when it comes to the matter of the mirrors, 
 how are you to say whether it was the conceit 
 of a mind sadly whimsical, or of one already 
 touched by its tragedy? She began with the 
 grand stairway. It was where she had last 
 seen people in the house, you remember. Then 
 she did the halls, and finally the rooms. She 
 said it gave her company! 
 
 I asked the old man about the two chambers 
 
96 THE GLASS HOUSE 
 
 in green damask. He looked at me as if I had 
 made an indelicate allusion. 
 
 "Ah !" he exclaimed. "Those were her own." 
 He set it forth, on the whole, very well. You 
 could quite see it all the empty house, the 
 lonely woman, the multiplying mirrors. I don t 
 see how she stood such a wraith of a life. For 
 that matter, I don t see how the servants stood 
 it. But they simply worshipped her I don t 
 know like what. The only thing she required 
 of them was to be gentle. If she ever knew of 
 their quarrelling or misnaming each other 
 which even servants will do she would have 
 them up and tell them they lived in a glass 
 house: they must not throw stones. . . . 
 
 Just fancy it all! From that world outside 
 where she had played such a part, where she 
 had played so many parts, not a creature but 
 the dressmaker now came near her. And there 
 in her great house of glass she lived alone, with 
 her shadows and her memories. And every 
 night, in all her jewels, with the liveried foot 
 men all in line, she would dine by herself, be 
 tween the million repetitions of her that faded 
 away in the candlelight; and she would rustle 
 away through those strange silent rooms, look 
 ing about into the mirrors for the faces that 
 were not there. 
 
THE GLASS HOUSE 97 
 
 VI 
 
 But it is time I mentioned Missiri. If I 
 haven t done so before it is because the part he 
 plays is almost as detached from the Madame 
 Belize of Pera as was Belize himself from the 
 Kellnerinn of Budapest. I told you that after 
 that famous party no one ever went back. It is 
 virtually true, and for a long time it was act 
 ually true. At last, however, one of them did 
 go back. For Missiri Bey, as the old man very 
 truly remarked, would do anything. He had 
 been of the stampede, you know; but he had 
 been the last, and he had hesitated before posi 
 tively going out of the door. He could bank on 
 that, you see! So after a while he began by 
 sending flowers. He continued by carrying 
 them. He ended by taking them in. And 
 Madame Belize, of whom no one could ever pre 
 dict what she would do, received him as if they 
 had parted the day before. She didn t fall on 
 his neck, but neither did she slam the door in 
 his face. 
 
 The upshot of it all seemed to be that Missiri 
 became a regular visitor and was occasionally 
 asked to dine. That, however, was as far as he 
 got. If he hoped to marry his hostess, as he 
 doubtless did, I can inform you here and now 
 that he never realized the hope. And if he 
 thought that he could make her forget the 
 
98 THE GLASS HOUSE 
 
 stampede and be grateful for a friend, he mis 
 judged alike the quality of her memory and of 
 her friendship. I don t know whether she ever 
 guessed what the servants knew from their fel 
 low menials in Pera that he took no pains to 
 conceal from the public his assiduity at her 
 door, and that by means of the stories which he 
 allowed to circulate unchallenged his vanity 
 made good outside her house the losses it sus 
 tained within. The gossips had capital to begin 
 with, and they naturally found it the easiest 
 thing in the world to put it at interest. But in 
 spite of the flowers and the dinners and every 
 thing else, Missiri never got a step farther than 
 he did in the old patisserie of Galata. Which 
 made what happened in the end all the more 
 extraordinary. 
 
 It may not strike you that way, but what I 
 could make out of the slenderness of the rela 
 tion between Madame Belize and Missiri seemed 
 to me one of the most characteristic touches of 
 the story. He wasn t clever enough to see, when 
 she let him come back, how little he counted. 
 He simply made no difference one way or the 
 other. He could not change anything. He could 
 only help her out with the mirrors. It was all 
 very well to fix up herself and her house for 
 parties, but where were the uniforms ? Whereas 
 with Missiri ! At any rate, the old man 
 
THE GLASS HOUSE 99 
 
 told me some rather queer things. They used 
 to hear her talking to herself, and sometimes 
 they saw her, through the doors, courtesying 
 and making signs to the mirrors. It rather 
 gave them the creeps. When they were in the 
 room with her, though, she was always per 
 fectly straight in her head. At least the old 
 man wouldn t admit anything else. And all this 
 went on for years. Madame Belize had been 
 young when she came to Constantinople. She 
 must have been nearer forty than thirty when 
 Belize died. She grew old alone in her house of 
 
 glass. And then ! The end was quite of a 
 
 piece with the beginning. 
 
 One night Madame Belize was at dinner, 
 decolletee and jewelled as always, with her peo 
 ple waiting on her. Suddenly she began to 
 stare at the wall in front of her. "Who is that ?" 
 she demanded in a queer tone. 
 
 "It is only one of the men, Madame, passing 
 the door behind you," answered the old man. 
 
 She insisted, nevertheless, on going over to 
 the mirror. 
 
 "There is no one, Madame," the old man as 
 sured her again, a little uneasy. But she called 
 for candles, and had a couple of footmen hold 
 them up behind her while she peered into the 
 glass. The business began to get on their 
 nerves. They didn t know what she would do 
 
100 THE GLASS HOUSE 
 
 next. As for Madame, what she did next was 
 to say : 
 
 "Ah no; there is no one. Only I I 
 
 Bring me more candles so that I can see." 
 
 She made them do it, if you please, while she 
 looked at herself, turning this way and that. 
 She looked at her faded hair, at the wrinkles 
 about her eyes and mouth, at her shoulders 
 shrunken beneath their jewels, at her thin fin 
 gers with their heavy rings. Then she began 
 to laugh, while the footmen grew white behind 
 her with the candles. 
 
 "Don t be afraid !" she exclaimed. "There is 
 no one ! It is only I ! There is never any one ! 
 Always I, I, I!" And she laughed again. 
 
 It must have been rather horrid, you know 
 in the big, dim, twinkling house. They were 
 all scared out of their boots. 
 
 "Are you faint, Madame?" asked the old 
 man. "Will you have some wine?" 
 
 "No," she said. "I am only old. We have 
 played a long time. Call my maid. I am going 
 upstairs." 
 
 They took her upstairs, and she never came 
 down again. She didn t seem particularly ill 
 at first. She was merely feeble. Nothing, how 
 ever, could induce her to leave her own rooms. 
 She suddenly had a horror of the mirrors. She 
 said there were too many people in them. ... . >< 
 
THE GLASS HOUSE 101 
 
 When Missiri heard about it, as he very soon 
 did, he of course waxed doubly attentive. He 
 sent a message and a flower every minute. She 
 wouldn t see him, though not even while she 
 was able to be about and in her boudoir. It was 
 the one part of the house to which she had 
 never admitted him. But there came a day! 
 It was not long after she had taken to her bed. 
 It was the day when the doctor let them send 
 for the priest. The doctor was Missiri s. I 
 suppose the priest was too. The servants were 
 afraid of them all, but they were off their heads 
 with consternation, and there was not a single 
 friend to come near the woman. Not one ! The 
 doctor had done what he could. The priest had 
 performed his part. Then Missiri s turn came. 
 And I remember now the old man s exclama 
 tion : 
 
 "Ah, if he had had an onion for a heart he 
 could not have done it !" 
 
 For the first time, for the very first time, 
 when there was no one to keep him out, Missiri 
 went into the green boudoir. He passed on into 
 the darkened bedroom. Madame Belize had 
 been, they thought, unconscious. But at his ap 
 proach she opened her eyes. And she gave him 
 a look! 
 
 "Missiri Bey," she asked in her dying voice, 
 "what are you doing here ?" 
 
102 THE GLASS HOUSE 
 
 He stopped a minute, the old man said, took a 
 paper from his pocket, and went nearer. 
 
 "I come for your affairs, dear Madame," he 
 answered. "You have been indisposed for some 
 time, you know, and matters press. If you 
 
 could give me a moment Then I will go at 
 
 once." 
 
 He advanced a step. She kept her eyes on 
 him terrible eyes, the old man said and he 
 had the courage to face it out. At last she 
 uttered strangely: "Ah, it is the receipt, I 
 suppose." 
 
 "Yes, dear Madame," said Missiri, approach 
 ing her with the paper. "It is the receipt. If 
 you would be so good as to sign " 
 
 "Sign?" she demanded. "Do I pay and sign 
 too?" 
 
 "Yes," he had the assurance to reply with 
 out any idea, of course, what she meant. "Let 
 me assist you." He was at the bedside now, 
 and he made as if to support her. 
 
 "Stop !" she cried. "Do not dare to touch me ! 
 Give them to me!" Waving him imperiously 
 away, she raised herself in the bed and took the 
 pen which he dipped for her. But before 
 writing at the place he indicated she looked at 
 him again. And that time, the old man said, 
 he began to look green. However, she signed. 
 Then she pointed to the door. "Go!" she 
 
THE GLASS HOUSE 103 
 
 gasped. "Go back to them! They gave, and 
 they made me pay! And I have paid all! 
 There is no more they can ask ! Now let me die 
 in peace!" 
 
 She watched Missiri out of the room. Then 
 she fell back. She never spoke again. 
 
 VII 
 
 The old man s story made an extraordinary 
 impression upon me. It wasn t so much the 
 way he told it, you know, or that it had any 
 particular sequence in itself. I don t know it 
 may have been the empty hall with its receding 
 reflections. One thought of what the mirrors 
 had seen. One caught faint shadows of it, far 
 away, at the end of the vista. It was uncanny. 
 And one had such a sense of the queerness, 
 here, of everything that that peasant girl, 
 without lifting a finger, could have had all those 
 things piled into her lap, and in the end could 
 have been robbed of them all. 
 
 "He wants to sell it, eh ?" I asked after a long 
 pause. 
 
 "Yes," said the old man. "Do you wonder?" 
 Then: "The furniture, you see, he has taken 
 away." 
 
 I waited a moment. 
 
 "Did he get everything ?" I asked. "Even the 
 patisserie ?" 
 
104 THE GLASS HOUSE 
 
 "Even the patisserie! Why not? Who was 
 there to say no? He wears mourning, and the 
 ladies condole with him! Wait; you will see. 
 Here he is. He knew of your appointment." 
 
 As we stood there a sound of steps came 
 slowly up the stair. We waited, our eyes upon 
 the landing. But the figure that mounted into 
 sight was not the one we expected, He was per 
 haps more white-haired than Missiri, yet taller 
 and better-looking. What particularly attracted 
 my attention, however, was the oddity of his 
 dress his peaked hat and his tasselled top- 
 boots. He returned my regard with equal 
 curiosity. 
 
 As for my companion, he made at first not 
 the slightest sign of recognition. Then he sud 
 denly clutched my arm, and a strange light 
 broke upon his face. 
 
 "The stone-cutter!" he cried. 
 
THE HOUSE OF THE GIRAFFE 
 
 Here, forsooth, is the home of all the paintpots, said I. 
 F. Nietzsche: THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA. 
 
 ON ALMOST any day of the year you may 
 look south from Constantinople, across 
 the Sea of Marmora, at a broken line of 
 blue hills that remind you a little of the moun 
 tains bounding the Venetian lagoon. Those blue 
 hills, or the clearest and easternmost of them, 
 belong to a high wooded promontory that 
 divides the Asiatic end of the Marmora into 
 two unequal gulfs. Along the north shore of 
 the upper and longer gulf runs the Bagdad 
 railway by which, no doubt, you will one day 
 travel in your international sleeping car from 
 London to Delhi. And, having passed the hill 
 top grave of Hannibal, you will see your last of 
 blue water at Nicomedia, which Diocletian 
 made for a moment the capital of the Roman 
 Empire. Not far from the south shore of the 
 lower gulf lies, at the foot of the Bithynian 
 Olympus, the old city of Broussa, the first capi 
 tal of the Turks and the Pantheon of the found- 
 
 105 
 
106 THE HOUSE OF THE GIRAFFE 
 
 ers of their power. But no imperial tradition 
 and no modern highway links to the rest of the 
 world the intermediate promontory. It is true 
 that emperors did resort of old to certain hot 
 springs in a fold of the blue hills which turn 
 green as you approach them. A persevering 
 company even tries to-day, without too flatter 
 ing success, to rehabilitate that fallen Asiatic 
 Carlsbad. There is no reason why the com 
 pany should not in the end succeed. The blue- 
 green hills are in themselves a romantic enough 
 piece of nature, pointing into their bright east- 
 Mediterranean lagoon. Above the Gulf of Nico- 
 media they rise the more abruptly, the hills, 
 and are more thickly wooded. The other side, 
 protected from Black Sea winds and open to all 
 the sun of the south, is a little Riviera of olive, 
 cypress, and vine. But people do not forget that 
 brigands have been known to amuse themselves 
 by carrying off the clients of the baths. And 
 other resorts are more modern in their appoint 
 ments. So the blue-green hills, although in 
 sight of the world, remain out of it. Not quite 
 wild and not yet civilized, they make a strange 
 little world of their own where fragments of 
 wandering races, stubbornly immiscible, lodge 
 scattered and uneasy among the old Greek 
 ghosts of the land. 
 
 On the south shore of this peninsula, not far 
 
THE HOUSE OF THE GIRAFFE 107 
 
 from a Turkish village that is half lost among 
 immense cypresses and plane trees, a deserted 
 garden looks across the Gulf of Moudania at the 
 Asiatic Olympus. You would hardly know that 
 a garden had ever been there, were it not for a 
 tumble-down little kiosque of two or three 
 rooms, overlooking the beach, such as the Turks 
 always like to build in their country places. 
 There are also poppy-grown fragments of wall 
 and, in the central jungle of green, the ruins of 
 a house or of the foundations of a house. But 
 what most visibly marks the spot as an old 
 pleasure ground is a great bronze giraffe that 
 lifts its awkward neck among the trees. To a 
 foreigner, indeed, a life-sized image of a giraffe 
 might not suggest a garden. The Turks, how 
 ever, regard statuary somewhat as the Anglo- 
 Saxons do. They are afraid of it. When they 
 become acquainted with European gardens, 
 therefore, and set about imitating them, they 
 not uncommonly replace the classic garden god 
 by a statue of an animal. So it is that that 
 ungainly bronze giraffe, made in Germany, 
 stands in a tangle of Turkish green on an old 
 Greek shore, staring strangely across its little 
 blue sea toward the country of Antinous. 
 
 The villagers say, now, that the House of the 
 Giraffe would still be standing, and that 
 Nousret Pasha would not have been killed, if he 
 
108 THE HOUSE OF THE GIRAFFE 
 
 had listened to a gypsy. She prophesied to 
 him that if he finished the house it would burn 
 to the ground and he would die. But he was not 
 the man, Nousret Pasha, to be frightened out of 
 a thing he had set his heart upon even by a 
 gypsy fortune teller. For he was incredibly 
 ignorant. He said the gypsy would have made 
 a different prophecy if he had given her what 
 she asked. Moreover, he knew well enough that 
 nobody wanted him to live there although he 
 loved the place, if he loved anything. He was 
 born there, and passed his youth there, and 
 made a reputation there as a pehlivan a 
 wrestler and had been one of those who 
 amused themselves by carrying off the clients 
 of the baths on the other side of the mountain. 
 That he found profitable as well as amusing. 
 
 In the course of time, however, he found even 
 more profitable and considerably safer game in 
 Constantinople, where he became a notorious 
 figure during the last years of the old regime. 
 He was a huge man with a big jaw and no neck, 
 and beady little eyes set close together. He 
 had always been a dandy. In his second period 
 his taste ran to shrill waistcoats, lumpy jew 
 ellery, and unquenchable perfumes. He used 
 to spend a good part of his time driving about 
 Pera in a gaudy yellow satin victoria that was 
 better suited to a comic opera queen than to a 
 
THE HOUSE OF THE GIRAFFE 109 
 
 dirty ruffian like himself. He would sit up very 
 straight in the middle of the yellow satin seat, 
 turning his beady eyes this way and that with 
 out moving his head. Very little escaped those 
 beady eyes. And if they happened to light on 
 anything that pleased Nousret Pasha, why 
 Nousret Pasha generally ended by having it. 
 For he was the Sultan s milk-brother. His 
 mother, that is, had been the Sultan s nurse. 
 Many of us, no doubt, have foster brothers, of 
 whose existence we are less rather than more 
 definitely aware. Sultan Hamid, however, was 
 not of so neglectful a disposition. And so, 
 although born of a humble family of peasants 
 in an obscure village of the Marmora, Nousret 
 ended by becoming a Pasha, and the pattern of 
 a scoundrel all through a pretty piece of Ori 
 ental sentiment. 
 
 I suppose it might be easy to become the pat 
 tern of a scoundrel if one were free to do abso 
 lutely anything that came into one s head. The 
 whole trend of our modern world has been 
 against the enjoyment of such freedom. Few 
 people, nowadays, ever have a chance to commit 
 themselves. A great artist does, in his way, 
 and perhaps a great financier. Certainly the 
 latter has a greater power of publishing his own 
 bad taste or of tampering with other lives than 
 a modern king. Asia, however, despite inev- 
 
110 THE HOUSE OF THE GIRAFFE 
 
 liable tendencies, is not yet the modern world. 
 There it is still possible for a man to do just 
 what he likes the corollary being, of course, 
 that other men must do nothing they like. At 
 least it was so in Turkey under Sultan Abd-iil- 
 Hamid II, whose reign was a legend of Boc- 
 cacio and of the Arabian Nights woven into 
 one. Under the shadow of so great a tyrant 
 little tyrants had room to grow. And one of 
 them was he who built the House of the Giraffe. 
 It was incredible how many people Nousret 
 Pasha ruined or did away with, how he robbed 
 right and left, and went into every imaginable 
 form of rascality that promised an instant s 
 amusement or a para s worth of gain. Not that 
 his requirements were as a usual thing so 
 modest. He made a tremendous income simply 
 out of blackmail, threatening to send the Sultan 
 such and such reports unless such and such 
 sums were forthcoming. For he was one of the 
 Sultan s most indefatigable spies. The Sultan 
 liked him for that ; also because he was a first- 
 rate shot. He was uneasy, Sultan Hamid, un 
 less he had such a man near him when he went 
 out in public. He often called Nousret up to 
 the Palace to give exhibitions of his prowess. 
 Nousret could shoot a five piastre piece from 
 between a man s fingers at fifty yards, or flick 
 the ashes oif his cigarette. And sometimes the 
 
THE HOUSE OF THE GIRAFFE 111 
 
 Sultan hinted that if the shot went a little wild 
 no one would hold Nousret Pasha responsible. 
 Nousret Pasha had learned to shoot in his 
 native mountains. He had always been pas 
 sionately fond of hunting. That was one reason 
 why he built the House of the Giraffe. He kept 
 any number of horses and dogs down there. 
 The villagers say he often kept bears as well, 
 which he caught as cubs in the mountains. 
 When they got too big he would set the dogs 
 on them. He liked to watch the poor brutes 
 being torn to pieces. Bears and dogs, though, 
 were not his only company on the peninsula. 
 He often took visitors down to stay with him. 
 One of them afterward starred in the cafes- 
 chantant of Hungary as the Princess Nousret 
 Pasha. In fact it was rather dangerous to de 
 cline an invitation to the House of the Giraffe. 
 One young woman was shot because she did 
 she and her mother and her servant and her 
 dog. Nousret Pasha walked into the house one 
 night when they were at dinner and coolly 
 potted the four of them. And no one dared to 
 raise a finger simply because he was Nousret 
 Pasha, and Nousret Pasha was the Sultan s 
 milk-brother. 
 
 II 
 
 On a certain summer day in 1908 Nousret 
 Pasha was driving, not in his yellow satin vie- 
 
112 THE HOUSE OF THE GIRAFFE 
 
 toria but in a smart trap, over the hills on the 
 European shore of the Bosphorus. He was be 
 ing driven, that is to say, by his coachman Ali. 
 This dark, slight, good-looking wearer of a 
 braided black livery was, although the Pasha 
 never put it to himself in so many words, the 
 Pasha s best friend. They had been boys to 
 gether in the Marmora, they had hunted, 
 wrestled, and kidnapped together, and Nousret 
 had done very little since in which Ali had not 
 had a part. Yet, from Ali s face, you would not 
 have thought so. He had the simple, honest, 
 serious look of so many of his people. And cer 
 tainly he was by nature one who would have 
 done the Sultan more honour as a milk-brother. 
 But because Nousret was the older and had 
 always been the leader, and because Ali had 
 eaten his bread for so many years, Ali remained 
 faithful to his infamous master with a faith 
 fulness which only a Turk or an Albanian can 
 show. 
 
 As they jolted down the stony road that leads 
 from the top of the hill to Stenia Bay, they 
 passed two ladies walking. In town it would 
 not have been easy to get a definite impression 
 of two promenading Turkish ladies; but being 
 in the country these two wore veils only over 
 their hair, and no enveloping charshaf. Nousret 
 Pasha accordingly perceived, being a connois- 
 
THE HOUSE OF THE GIRAFFE 113 
 
 seur in such matters, that one of the ladies was 
 extremely handsome. She had long and rather 
 narrow dark eyes, over which eyebrows arched 
 so delicately on a fair skin that he knew they 
 were not painted; and from beneath the white 
 veil escaped a strand or two of wavy hair that 
 had in it a reddish glint. The second prom- 
 enader was apparently the servant of the first, 
 and Nousret Pasha wasted no glances on her. 
 Not that Nousret Pasha disdained to stoop so 
 low, if a servant were worth looking at. He 
 immediately nudged Ali, and Ali immediately 
 turned his horses around. The two walkers 
 betrayed a certain surprise at seeing the trap a 
 second time. Nousret Pasha kept his beady 
 eyes on them, or one of them, as he went by, 
 and for some distance beyond. He then sig 
 nalled Ali to turn again. But before this grace 
 ful manoeuvre was completed the two objectives 
 of it disappeared into a gateway. 
 
 Nousret Pasha had an instant of surprise. 
 Having reached the same gateway, however, he 
 directed Ali to stop. An Albanian porter came 
 out, thinking a visitor had arrived. 
 
 "Pardon me," said Nousret Pasha politely, 
 "but I am not quite sure where I am. Can you 
 tell me whose house this is?" 
 
 The porter took in the shining trap, the trim 
 coachman, the conspicuously dressed and per- 
 
114 THE HOUSE OF THE GIRAFFE 
 
 fumed gentleman who accosted him, and replied 
 with his hands respectfully crossed on his 
 girdle : 
 
 "This, Effendim, is the house of Ahmed Bey. 
 But he is not at home." 
 
 "Ah!" uttered Nousret Pasha, fixing his 
 beady eyes on an underling who did not at first 
 sight call him Pasha. He then drew out with 
 his most important air a silk pocketbook, dif 
 fusing a cloud of musk as he did so, and handed 
 to the porter a large printed card. "Give the 
 Bey this." He lifted his chin, to ease it of an 
 uncomfortable collar, and glanced down side 
 ways at the porter. "Those ladies who just 
 went in They are ?" 
 
 "It is the family of the Bey," replied the Al 
 banian, a shade more gravely. For the visitor 
 had transcended the limits of good form. 
 
 "H m. Just tell the Bey I came." And drop 
 ping a gold piece into the porter s hand Nousret 
 Pasha ordered Ali to drive on. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Ahmed Bey, as a matter of fact, was one of 
 the last people in Constantinople upon whom 
 Nousret Pasha would have taken the trouble to 
 call. He was too honest to be in favour at court 
 and too poor to be worth pillaging. But even 
 such a man might have his possibilities, it 
 
THE HOUSE OF THE GIRAFFE 115 
 
 seemed. Accordingly when Nousret Pasha got 
 home that night he announced to his wife that 
 she was to go to Emirgyan the next day and call 
 on Madam Ahmed Bey. For there had been 
 something in those long eyes under their arched 
 eyebrows that made him think this a case to go 
 about with circumspection. 
 
 As for Madam Nousret Pasha, she was by no 
 means unused to such commands from her 
 formidable spouse. She had led a somewhat 
 varied career herself, and had thereby picked 
 up a philosophy. There was no love lost be 
 tween her and Nousret Pasha, who would long 
 ago have divorced her had she not been a 
 present from the Sultan. She was one of 
 those who, wasting their sweetness on the 
 desert air of the imperial harem, were some 
 times given away in compliment or punishment. 
 So she lived where she could in the crannies of 
 her husband s whims. And she duly went to 
 call on Madam Ahmed Bey, in a closed 
 brougham, with a black eunuch sitting on the 
 box as if to guard the dearest treasure of the 
 Pasha s heart. 
 
 Madam Ahmed Bey received her caller po 
 litely, at first not knowing who she was. But 
 Madam Ahmed Bey failed to return the call. 
 Turkish ladies of the old school are not quite so 
 meticulous on such points as European ladies, 
 
116 THE HOUSE OF THE GIRAFFE 
 
 however. Nousret Pasha, furthermore, could 
 not consider himself slighted by a nobody like 
 Ahmed Bey. Madam Nousret Pasha accord 
 ingly gave a party at her own country house in 
 Bebek, and the first person she invited was 
 Madam Ahmed Bey. Madam Ahmed Bey, as it 
 happened, was otherwise engaged for that day. 
 And asked, later, to set her own day for coming 
 to Bebek, she replied that she suffered from ill 
 health and never went into the world. 
 
 This course of events was a little longer 
 drawn out than Nousret Pasha expected. He 
 had grown used, among his own people at least, 
 to have every one come when he whistled. Who 
 was a Madam Ahmed Bey that she should 
 refuse the advances of a Madam Nousret 
 Pasha ? Yet she was, her course of action only 
 made him remember the more vividly, the pos 
 sessor of divinely white skin, and waving hair 
 of red glints, and eyebrows inimitably arched, 
 and long dark eyes that he meant to look into 
 again. And he was a hunter, adept in all cours- 
 ings and doublings. So at last he sent word to 
 Ahmed Bey, who had only returned his own 
 card, that he would dine at Emirgyan on such 
 and such an evening. In the East one may do 
 that and best of all a man like Nousret Pasha. 
 Nor may a man like Ahmed Bey refuse such an 
 invitation. He therefore prepared accordingly. 
 
THE HOUSE OF THE GIRAFFE 117 
 
 He engaged extra cooks, he hired dancing girls 
 and dancing boys from the Jews who deal in 
 such commodities, and he caused inquiry to be 
 made of his prospective guest as to what other 
 guests should be invited. 
 
 Nousret Pasha flatteringly made answer that 
 he desired to dine in intimacy, and that no com 
 pany could be preferred to that of his friend 
 Ahmed Bey. 
 
 IV 
 
 With his friend Ahmed Bey he consequently 
 dined, and the affair went better than he ex 
 pected. Ahmed Bey seemed to wish to make up 
 for his wife s coolness toward Madam Nousret 
 Pasha. He showed Nousret Pasha his garden, 
 which, having been inherited from grand 
 fathers and great-grandfathers, was not ill to 
 look upon, albeit somewhat wild and overgrown. 
 He then took Nousret Pasha into a wide old 
 wooden house, and served him, with appro 
 priate Oriental apologies, to such a dinner as 
 Nousret Pasha knew how to appreciate. For 
 although it was becoming increasingly the 
 fashion to dine alia franca, what Nousret Pasha 
 really liked was to dine alia turca. He had sat 
 too long on the floor to be quite comfortable in 
 a chair. The steel and silver of a European 
 table seemed to him so many impediments be- 
 
118 THE HOUSE OF THE GIRAFFE 
 
 tween good things and his enjoyment thereof. 
 And he infinitely preferred a succulent dish of 
 "The Imam Fainted" or "It Pleased The Man- 
 Slayer" (i. e. the Sultan) to all their juiceless 
 roasts and pastries. He had not lost his neck 
 for nothing! 
 
 One feature of the dinner, it is true, was not 
 altogether Turkish. Although a good Mussel- 
 man, Nousret Pasha, to the knowledge of many, 
 had acquired a taste for alcohol. Ahmed Bey, 
 therefore, having discreetly hinted that there 
 was wine in the house for medicinal purposes, 
 and having received intimation that it was 
 always well to forestall the disease by the 
 remedy, produced bottles to which his guest 
 did due honour. The host afterward asked him 
 self if he had made a mistake. At all events, 
 when the low table had been removed, and fin 
 gers and lips had been rinsed in a trickle of per 
 fumed water that a servant poured from a slim 
 silver jug into a silver basin with a perforated 
 cover, Nousret Pasha had so little forgotten 
 what he came for that he turned to his host and 
 said: 
 
 "Ahmed Bey, we are becoming more and 
 more modern as we grow old. Why should not 
 your wife bring in the coffee ?" 
 
 Ahmed Bey knew that the Sultan s milk- 
 brother could go far. But he had not believed 
 
THE HOUSE OF THE GIRAFFE 119 
 
 the man would really go as far as this, in the 
 house of one whose bread he had eaten. 
 
 "My Pasha," he replied gravely, "I am very 
 sorry, but my wife is ill." 
 
 "Ahmed Bey," retorted Nousret Pasha, "it is 
 not necessary to lie to me. Your wife is not ill. 
 My wife has seen her and so have I!" 
 
 Ahmed Bey swallowed the insult. 
 
 "My Pasha," he persisted, "it is some days 
 since my wife had the honour to receive Madam 
 Nousret Pasha. I swear to you that she is un 
 able to come into this room." 
 
 The two eyed each other. Nousret Pasha felt 
 it unnecessary to give too black a look, for the 
 man was too much in his power. Still, the look 
 of the beady eyes was not pleasant, nor the 
 words that followed : 
 
 "Ahmed Bey, go and find your wife. And 
 tell her to bring her lute. It is good to have a 
 little music after dinner and dancing." 
 
 To a European that might sound simple 
 enough, for a European is proud to have his 
 wife make music for other men, or even to 
 dance for them. With the Turks, however, a 
 woman may sing and dance for one man only. 
 If she does it for others she belongs to the half 
 world. Nousret Pasha had therefore made of 
 Ahmed Bey the demand that a man may least 
 accept with honour. Yet Ahmed Bey knew with 
 
120 THE HOUSE OF THE GIRAFFE 
 
 whom he had to deal, and how much depended 
 on what passed between them. He knew, too, 
 that Nousret Pasha had had wine. And, after 
 all, Nousret Pasha was his guest. 
 
 "I have thought of music, my Pasha. There 
 are girls and boys waiting. I will call them." 
 He clapped his hands. 
 
 A servant entered. But before Ahmed Bey 
 could give the order Nousret Pasha got up and 
 thundered : 
 
 "Will you do what I said, or shall I go 
 myself?" 
 
 For a second Ahmed Bey would have thrown 
 himself on the man. But he was unarmed, and 
 he knew that Nousret Pasha always carried a 
 revolver and could use it better than any one. 
 He probably would like nothing better than to 
 use it now. And then what would be gained? 
 Ahmed Bey signed for the servant to leave. 
 
 "I go, my Pasha," he replied at length. 
 "Kindly have patience for a few moments." 
 And, with a low salaam, he went out of the 
 room. 
 
 For a time Nousret Pasha was sufficiently 
 amused. It always amused him to make other 
 people do what he wanted, especially when they 
 did not want to. The dancers amused him, too. 
 The boys amused him more than the girls, for 
 they were more shameless in their dancing and 
 
THE HOUSE OF THE GIRAFFE 121 
 
 less like bad imitations of what he was pres 
 ently to see. He already knew most of the 
 troupe. They sang long melancholy songs, ac 
 companying themselves with tambourines, 
 while one boy played a pipe and another beat 
 two little drums made out of earthen jars with 
 skins stretched over their mouths. They 
 danced long dances, the slow sensuous dances 
 of the East, snapping their fingers over their 
 heads and weaving their arms to and fro. The 
 air, meanwhile, began to grow heavy with the 
 perfume that burned in a brazier. When 
 Nousret Pasha was pleased with the performers 
 he gave them a gold piece in a glass of mastic. 
 But he began to be impatient to see Madam 
 Ahmed Bey dance, with that reddish hair fall 
 ing around her white shoulders and her long 
 eyes half shut. 
 
 He clapped his hands for a servant, who told 
 him that Ahmed Bey was almost ready. Let 
 the Pasha have a moment s more patience and 
 in the meantime take wine. The Pasha took 
 wine. But it only increased his impatience, for 
 he called the servant again and angrily sent 
 word to Ahmed Bey to come whether he were 
 ready or not. 
 
 It took Nousret Pasha some time to realize 
 that he had been tricked. He was naturally 
 slow of wit, and he was too used to tricking 
 
122 THE HOUSE OF THE GIRAFFE 
 
 other people to believe that they would dare to 
 trick him. Only when he called his troop of 
 dancers after him and explored the house did 
 he take in what Ahmed Bey had done. The 
 door of the harem was locked. Nousret Pasha 
 battered it in, finding the rooms lighted and 
 full of signs of recent occupation. But no one 
 was there not even a servant. He rushed 
 down through the empty house to find Ali. The 
 doors leading into the garden were all locked. 
 And they were harder to batter through than 
 the one upstairs. But Ali, roused by the noise, 
 came out of the porter s lodge to help. He had 
 seen no one leave, he said. He had been sitting 
 with the doorkeeper and the Jew who brought 
 the dancers, until a servant came to call the 
 Albanian who had not come back. 
 
 When the way was open the Pasha ran out 
 into the garden, revolver in hand. A summer 
 moon helped him in his search among the 
 shrubbery and the dancers who followed him. 
 They looked like a troop of bacchantes, with 
 their loose hair and gauzy costumes, as they 
 played their motley hide-and-seek in the moon 
 light. Ali in the meantime bethought him of 
 his horses. He found them in the stable, safely 
 munching hay. There at least were creatures 
 he could understand! From this and cognate 
 reflections he was roused by further battering, 
 
THE HOUSE OF THE GIRAFFE 123 
 
 and the sound of his own name shouted from 
 the bottom of the garden. He found the Pasha 
 trying to break through a back gate, also locked. 
 
 "Help me, Ali !" he shouted. "We must catch 
 them!" 
 
 "It will take us less time if we go around by 
 the other door," pointed out Ali gravely. "And 
 if there is any one to catch, are not the police 
 more than we?" 
 
 Until then Nousret Pasha had been too furi 
 ous to remember that he had at his command 
 an elaborate secret machinery for catching peo 
 ple and keeping them as long as he chose. 
 But he would not leave the place till he had 
 gone through the house once more. He rushed 
 upstairs like a madman, opening doors, bursting 
 into cupboards, tearing aside curtains. He be 
 gan tearing them down, and shooting at win 
 dows and chandeliers. When his cartridges 
 were gone he used the butt end of his re 
 volver. 
 
 "Break! Break!" he shouted. "Leave 
 nothing !" 
 
 His band of revellers needed no second invi 
 tation. They filled the house with the crash of 
 glass and the splinter of wood, stopping only 
 to posture indecently in front of a mirror be 
 fore smashing it, to save some trophy from the 
 general sack, and to empty Ahmed Bey s bot- 
 
124 THE HOUSE OF THE GIRAFFE 
 
 ties. And they ended by setting the place on 
 fire. Those old Turkish houses only wait for a 
 chance to burn and too many lighted lamps 
 were thrown on the floor of this one. 
 
 When the firemen came, hooting half -naked 
 from the neighbouring villages, they found lit 
 tle of the house save a column of lurid smoke 
 towering into the moonlight. Nousret Pasha 
 brandished his revolver at them from the gar 
 den. His fantastic company sang and danced 
 around him in the glare, their faces streaked 
 and streaming, their clothes torn, their arms 
 full of loot from the blazing house. The Jew 
 who had brought them cringed in the arch of 
 the gateway, half terrified at the uproar, half 
 reassured by the all-powerful presence of 
 Nousret Pasha. In the road outside, his face 
 strangely lighted, stood Ali at the heads of his 
 plunging horses, patting their quivering necks 
 and talking to them as gently as he could amid 
 the crackle and the screeching. 
 
 V 
 
 Under ordinary circumstances the story would 
 have had quite a different end. Ahmed Bey did 
 not have much the start of Nousret Pasha, and 
 Nousret Pasha had eyes and ears and hands 
 everywhere. But it happened that the night 
 which proved so eventful for Ahmed Bey and 
 
THE HOUSE OF THE GIRAFFE 125 
 
 Nousret Pasha proved no less eventful for their 
 imperial master, Sultan Hamid. There was 
 much galloping of horses through the usually 
 quiet streets of Beshiktash under that summer 
 moon. Ministers remained in anxious consulta 
 tion long after midnight at Yildiz Palace. Tele 
 grams flashed back and forth between that 
 guarded hilltop and distant Salonica tele 
 grams fateful for the destiny of the House of 
 Osman. When the reigning representative of 
 it went at last to bed, it was half consciously, 
 borne in the arms of his attendants, worn out 
 as he was by rage and fatigue. And in the 
 morning three lines of print appeared at the top 
 of all the papers, announcing that the Constitu 
 tion of 1876 had been reestablished. 
 
 There were three excellent reasons why 
 Nousret Pasha did not chance to see those three 
 lines. In the first place he went to bed about the 
 time the three lines came out, and he got up too 
 late to think about morning papers. In the 
 second place he believed himself to know much 
 more than all the papers put together, who 
 found out very little anyway and were allowed 
 to publish less. In the third place, having spent 
 his youth in the more interesting occupations of 
 hunter, wrestler, and highwayman, he had 
 never found time to acquire the black art of the 
 pen. Or, if I must put it more plainly, this 
 
126 THE HOUSE OF THE GIRAFFE 
 
 great personage of a proud court could neither 
 read nor write so much as his own name. 
 
 But even if the Sultan s milk-brother had 
 been able to read those three lines, he would 
 not have understood what they meant. He did 
 not when he heard about them, as even he was 
 not slow to do. He never did, in fact. Never 
 theless it became apparent that something had 
 unaccountably happened which he, the Sultan s 
 chief spy, knew nothing about, and which spoiled 
 the world, as he put it to Ali. The police, who 
 had been so deferent when he first gave his 
 orders with regard to Ahmed Bey, presently 
 dropped the case. They even had the courage to 
 intimate that Nousret Pasha himself might 
 have something to answer for in the matter of 
 Ahmed Bey. Other people, too, treated with as 
 little respect, or actually cut, him whom they 
 had been wont to salute with earth-sweeping 
 salaams and kissings of the hand. It was the 
 more puzzling because the Sultan still spoke 
 kindly to him. He could not conceive why, if 
 the Sultan continued to be his friend, others 
 dared to show themselves less. The Sultan 
 tried, not too successfully, to explain that it was 
 because he, the Caliph of Islam and the Shadow 
 of God upon Earth, could no longer do as he 
 pleased. And he made Nousret Pasha a hand- 
 
THE HOUSE OF THE GIRAFFE 127 
 
 some present and advised him to get out of the 
 country while he could. 
 
 In the end it was Ali who got Nousret Pasha 
 away. When two such counsellors advised the 
 same thing, how could he refuse? Moreover, 
 crowds of rotten-heads marched around the 
 streets day and night with flags and music and 
 speeches, unprevented by anybody, to prove 
 that the world was upside down. And one night 
 a company of them threw stones at his win 
 dows, shouting "Brigand!" and "Spy!" and 
 "Blood-drinker!" It had been much more 
 amusing to hear Ahmed Bey s windows smash 
 than his own, and those shouts were not pleas 
 ant to listen to at night. It was only when Ali 
 went out and told them that Nousret Pasha 
 had gone to Europe and that Madam Nousret 
 Pasha was alone in the house, that they went 
 away. 
 
 VI 
 
 Going to Europe, however, proved not to be 
 so easy as it sounded. Not that Nousret Pasha 
 had the slightest desire to go to Europe. He 
 despised Europe as heartily as he admired 
 European clothes and European cafe-chantant 
 performers. But Ali told him up and down that 
 he must go, lest worse should happen than the 
 stone throwing. Moreover, it seemed he could 
 
128 THE HOUSE OF THE GIRAFFE 
 
 not go as he was, or all his money would not 
 be enough to buy him a ticket. It was almost 
 more than Ali and Madam Nousret could do to 
 persuade him to leave the house that very night, 
 taking only money and papers and a little jew 
 ellery, and going out by the stable door to the 
 house of a friend of Ali s. Ali in the meantime 
 helped Madam Nousret Pasha to pack, and early 
 in the morning drove her down to the Moudania 
 boat in the yellow satin victoria, which he put 
 on board with his mistress and her boxes and 
 her black man. For she was going to retire for 
 a time to the House of the Giraffe. Then Ali 
 went back to his friend s house and dressed his 
 master, to his master s vast disgust, in the cos 
 tume of a wrestler, with baggy fawn-coloured 
 breeches, and a short embroidered jacket of the 
 same colour, and a huge silk girdle, and a red 
 and yellow silk turban with the fringe hanging 
 over one ear. It was in truth a costume which 
 became Nousret Pasha much better than any 
 other, and time had been when he wore it with 
 pride. But it was with very little pride that he 
 went out in it now, accompanied by Ali, who no 
 longer wore his trim black livery, and two of 
 Ali s friends. They all crowded into a common 
 open carriage of the street, and they bought red 
 badges of the Constitution, which they pinned 
 on their sleeves, and they drove down to the 
 
THE HOUSE OF THE GIRAFFE 129 
 
 Bridge and right through Stamboul as if they 
 were going to some wrestling match. 
 
 Nousret Pasha did not like it at first. He felt 
 foolish and annoyed, and he thought every one 
 was looking at him. No one seemed really to 
 recognize him, though, which also piqued him 
 a little. And the others said so many funny 
 things and made him laugh so much that he 
 finally quite enjoyed himself. Having driven 
 through Stamboul, they drove on through Kazli 
 and Makri-kyoi and San Stefano to Floria, 
 where is that grove of big trees on the edge of 
 the sea. There they got out and ordered the 
 coffee-house man to bring them matting to sit 
 on, and water and coffee to drink, and all man 
 ner of things to eat, and they spent the pleas- 
 antest day imaginable under the trees, looking 
 at the blue Marmora. 
 
 When night came and everybody began to 
 go away, they went too. But instead of driving 
 back to town they drove on, toward Kuchiik 
 Chekmejeh, where Ali said they were to take 
 the train that night for Europe. People always 
 speak, in Constantinople, as if they lived on an 
 other continent. It was already dark when 
 they came to the brow of a hill and saw the 
 lights of Kuchtik Chekmejeh below them, and 
 the reflection of a big star in the bay. Ali said 
 that there was not much time to the train, and 
 
130 THE HOUSE OF THE GIRAFFE 
 
 he told the Pasha that if any one asked him 
 who he was he was to say he was Mehmed, a 
 wrestler, and that he was going to Adrianople 
 for his trade. It was just as well, for after they 
 got to the station and sat down in a coif ee-house 
 to wait for the train, two soldiers came up and 
 looked at them, and asked who they were and 
 where they came from and where they were 
 going. Ali answered most of the questions, and 
 the soldiers finally crossed over to the station. 
 But Nousret Pasha didn t like it. He wasn t 
 used to having people ask questions about him 
 and watch him. It made him think, somehow 
 or other, of Ahmed Bey and of Madam Ahmed 
 Bey. He wondered where they were, and how 
 he was to find them now. 
 
 It was a clear still night, so still he could 
 hear the crickets in the dark plains, and the 
 lapping of the water on a little beach near by. 
 Fishermen were there, busy over their boats, 
 laughing in the darkness. He envied the fisher 
 men. No one asked them who they were and 
 where they were going. 
 
 "Kalolimnos! Kalolimnos!" one of them 
 shouted. "Who is going to Kalolimnos? The 
 steamer is starting !" Nousret Pasha heard the 
 grating of a keel over shingle, splashings in the 
 water. He got up. For Kalolimnos is an island 
 off the cape where he was born. 
 
THE HOUSE OF THE GIRAFFE 131 
 
 "Come, All," he said, turning toward the 
 beach, "I am not going to Adrianople. I am 
 going to Kalolimnos. From there it is only two 
 hours to our country." 
 
 In the station a bell of two notes struck, and 
 somewhere in the darkness a whistle faintly 
 shrilled. Ali hurried after his master. 
 
 "Come !" he whispered, catching hold of the 
 Pasha s arm. "The train is here. After all 
 this, how can we miss it ?" 
 
 "If you like, take it," answered the Pasha, 
 breaking away. "I will not. What shall I do in 
 Europe among the unbelievers ? I am going to 
 my country." And he jumped aboard the fishing 
 boat. "I am going to Kalolimnos," he said to 
 the fishermen. "How much do you want ?" 
 
 "Ali!" called one of their companions from 
 the coffee-house. "Where are you? The train 
 is coming." 
 
 Ali, on the beach, heard it coming. It sud 
 denly burst out of the cut beyond the village 
 and bore down upon them, a long curve of inter 
 mittent lights. It stopped. In the sudden quiet 
 Ali heard the water lapping the shingle, the 
 quick crunch of gravel under feet, a musical 
 tapping of metal, sharp questions and answers. 
 The inquisitive soldiers were suddenly made 
 visible by the light that came from an open 
 window. A bell rang, ending in two strokes. 
 
132 THE HOUSE OF THE GIRAFFE 
 
 "Eh?" queried All, looking up at the Pasha. 
 
 The Pasha was watching, too. 
 
 "Eh !" he answered. "Good-bye !" 
 
 Ali held out his hand to the Pasha, who 
 caught it. 
 
 "Quick ! Come !" said Ali in a low voice, pull 
 ing toward the beach. 
 
 "No, you come!" laughed the Pasha, pulling 
 with all his might toward the boat. 
 
 Another bell rang, ending in three strokes. 
 A whistle blew shrilly. Some one shouted and 
 some one else replied. The intermittent lights 
 began to move slowly forward. 
 
 "Are you coming, too ?" asked one of the fish 
 ermen. 
 
 "Yes," answered Ali shortly. 
 
 He watched the chain of lights touch face 
 and tree and water, quicken into a yellow blur, 
 and- dwindle into the darkness. There seemed 
 to him something derisive in the last scream of 
 the whistle. He said nothing, however except 
 to make arrangements with the fishermen. 
 They were not too curious about their unex 
 pected passengers. There is a good deal of 
 such travel in the Marmora, and they took 
 Nousret Pasha for what he seemed. When they 
 heard that the wrestler was really bound for 
 the peninsula beyond Kalolimnos they sug 
 gested landing him there for a small extra 
 
THE HOUSE OF THE GIRAFFE 133 
 
 consideration. AH agreed readily enough. That 
 would attract less attention. 
 
 As for the Pasha, he felt more himself than 
 he had done for days. He found it very com 
 fortable on the little stern deck of the boat, 
 with the matting and sheepskins of the fisher 
 men. He slept soundly there, oblivious to the 
 splash of the oars, the rising of the moon, and 
 his heavy-hearted companion. When he woke 
 up the sun was already high and they were 
 skimming merrily along under a patched bal 
 loon sail. The low white hills of Kalolimnos 
 were behind them, to the south. Beyond the 
 sail he saw the steep green of his country. 
 
 They landed on the north side of Boz Bou- 
 roun, the weathered gray nose that was sacred 
 of old to Poseidon. From it they made their 
 way without difficulty over the rocks and 
 through the woods they knew so well, toward a 
 certain colony of great black cypresses. And 
 Nousret Pasha s heart grew lighter with every 
 step. But when he came to the last turn of the 
 road and looked eagerly for his house, no house 
 was there. Only the trees and the head of the 
 giraffe showed above the wall. 
 
 VII 
 
 Nousret Pasha and Ali looked at each other. 
 The same thing flashed into the mind of each 
 
134 THE HOUSE OF THE GIRAFFE 
 
 that the house had burned down, as the gypsy 
 had prophesied. And that was not all the gypsy 
 had prophesied. 
 
 As a matter of fact, the house had burned 
 down. It had so recently burned down that the 
 garden was full of the acrid odour of charred 
 wood, and the air still quivered hot above the 
 ruins. Among them old Moustafa was poking 
 with a stick the Pasha s gardener and care 
 taker. At the sound of steps he turned. At 
 first he did not recognize the strangers. Then 
 he came humbly forward, salaamed, and kissed 
 his master s hand, touching it to his forehead. 
 
 "What is this ?" demanded the Pasha, with a 
 return of his old air. 
 
 "They burned it," replied Moustafa, his 
 hands folded in front of him. 
 
 "They burned it ! Who burned it ? And why 
 did you let them burn it ?" 
 
 "What could I do?" stammered the old man. 
 "They were many. They came from the vil 
 lage There was much talk The world 
 
 is upside down since every one speaks of 
 constitution, monstitution, what do I know? 
 But it was written, my Pasha," he added, as if 
 there were nothing more to be said. 
 
 Yes, it was written, the Pasha told himself. 
 And why had he let that train leave him last 
 night? By this time he would have been in 
 
THE HOUSE OF THE GIRAFFE 135 
 
 Europe, and safe. The consciousness of it was 
 stronger than his anger. 
 
 "And the things?" he asked, less roughly. 
 "What became of them?" The smell and ruin 
 of the place made him think of Emirgyan. 
 
 The old man waved his hand : 
 
 "Gone! They took them all furniture, 
 horses, dogs. Only that is left" pointing to 
 the giraffe that lifted its neck among the 
 scorched trees. "They even took the silk car 
 riage that the hanim brought last night. The 
 Kaimakam has it." 
 
 "And the hanim?" inquired the Pasha, only 
 then reminded of his unfortunate wife. He 
 wondered a little that he listened to it all so 
 quietly. 
 
 "She went back to Moudania, they said. I 
 didn t see her. Some thought she was going to 
 Broussa, and others to Stamboul." 
 
 Nousret Pasha s heart grew heavy within 
 him. His country, indeed ! He had never imag 
 ined that the sudden madness of the world 
 would reach even here. And his countrymen 
 had done this to him, whom they had always 
 known, who had chosen to return to them when 
 he might have gone to Europe ! After all, what 
 had he done to them? If he had taken a few 
 presents and kissed a few girls, wasn t it what 
 they all did when they got a chance ? And had 
 
136 THE HOUSE OF THE GIRAFFE 
 
 they had enough, or was it written that they 
 must require something more of him? His 
 beady eyes brooded dully on the giraffe. 
 
 As for Ali, if he as well felt heavy of heart, 
 he did not betray it. 
 
 "Is the kiosque left," he asked, "or did they 
 burn that, too?" 
 
 "No," answered Moustafa. "They left that 
 for me." 
 
 "Eh, what more do we want !" exclaimed Ali. 
 "Let us go and sit down there, and Moustafa 
 will make us a coffee, and we will see what we 
 will do." 
 
 They went, and they sat down on a little 
 divan overlooking the blue Gulf, and they saw 
 what they would do. At least Ali did. He told 
 the Pasha that he must stay quietly in the 
 kiosque for a day or two, without so much as 
 showing his nose outside the garden. Moustafa 
 would look after him and see that no one 
 troubled him, while he, Ali, would go away and 
 arrange something. Only the Pasha must let 
 him have money, much money. For without 
 money it would be impossible to arrange any 
 thing, now. 
 
 The Pasha made haste to produce the money. 
 He only wished Ali did not have to go away. 
 When Ali had gone away he fell into a state of 
 something nearer a confused introspection than 
 
THE HOUSE OF THE GIRAFFE 137 
 
 he had ever experienced before. In this kiosque, 
 where he had passed so many pleasant hours, 
 it was strange to find himself again, a fugitive. 
 How had it all come about, and why had every 
 body turned against him ? It made him angry. 
 It seemed to him that Ahmed Bey must have 
 brought it about that .Ahmed Bey who was 
 nothing. Where was Ahmed Bey ? he wondered. 
 Where had they run to that night in the moon 
 light? What were those long eyes looking at 
 now? He would see them again, those long 
 eyes! Just let them wait! Yet, for the first 
 time in his life, he felt afraid. No one knew 
 better than he how easy it was to watch people, 
 and catch them. The world had suddenly gone 
 upside down: what if people really wanted to 
 catch him? What would they do to him? 
 There were so many things to do ! He could not 
 forget that gypsy woman. He could not bear 
 to see the ruins of the house. They reminded 
 him of her. And it seemed to him an eternity 
 before Ali came back. With cigarettes and cof 
 fee, however, and gossip with old Moustafa, and 
 a good deal of sleep, the time passed. 
 
 VIII 
 
 It was less than three days, after all, when 
 Ali came back. He had been to town, it seemed, 
 and he brought strange news. All their old 
 
138 THE HOUSE OF THE GIRAFFE 
 
 friends at the Palace were gone and the Sultan 
 was left alone among strangers. Selim Pasha 
 and Izzet Pasha that clever Izzet had run 
 away to Europe. The others, or those who could 
 be found, were being shut up in the War Office ; 
 and these new people, whoever they were, were 
 taking their money and houses. They had even 
 taken what they could find of Nousret Pasha s ! 
 
 By the time Nousret Pasha heard this, he 
 was quite ready to hear what Ali had arranged. 
 Ali was still for Europe, it seemed. By the help 
 of a friend or two, and much money, he had 
 arranged that a German steamer, bound from 
 the Black Sea to the Mediterranean, should 
 stop for a little while, that very night, off the 
 island of Marmora. In the meantime a tug, by 
 which in fact Ali had run down from Stamboul, 
 was to come at nightfall as far as the House of 
 the Giraffe and take off Nousret Pasha, in order 
 to put him on the German steamer. The tug 
 was to be trailing a tender, with men in it all 
 ready to row. They would begin to row as soon 
 as they saw certain lights in the window of the 
 kiosque, and the passenger would only have to 
 run down across the beach to be in safety. But 
 until then they must continue to stay quietly in 
 the kiosque. And he, Ali, would try to make 
 up a little sleep. 
 
 In truth he looked as if he needed it. He had 
 
THE HOUSE OF THE GIRAFFE 139 
 
 grown visibly thin and there were black hollows 
 under his eyes. Yet the Pasha noted with envy 
 that he had had a shave. The Pasha himself 
 had had none since the afternoon before his 
 windows had been smashed. Nevertheless the 
 return of AH dissipated the Pasha s vapours. 
 At this time to-morrow he would be on board 
 the German steamer ! No fear of his refusing, 
 this time, to do what Ali said. It might be 
 rather amusing, after all, to go to Europe. He 
 wondered if he would meet any of his old 
 friends there. If not there were sure to be new 
 ones. There might even be some one on the 
 boat. . . . But this absurd costume of his! 
 And his four days beard ! What would he not 
 give to be able to go to the bath in the village ! 
 Who would know him? Certainly none of the 
 bath boys: they changed so often. For a mo 
 ment he almost thought he would go. Then he 
 decided that he would send Moustafa to call a 
 barber. Moustafa could say that he had a 
 friend who had hurt his foot, and they would 
 give the man a good tip, and by the time he 
 got back to the village it would be too late to do 
 any harm, even if he did talk. 
 
 Old Moustafa could not deny the cogency of 
 this reasoning, nor the fact that the Pasha was 
 Ali s master as well as his own which the 
 Pasha did not fail to point out when Moustafa 
 
140 THE HOUSE OF THE GIRAFFE 
 
 objected that All had told him not to leave the 
 place. Moustafa wished AH were not asleep. 
 Yet it seemed a pity to wake him up, when he 
 looked so tired. To the village accordingly old 
 Moustafa trudged, and got the nearest barber, 
 who happened to be a Greek and who took pains 
 to leave word where he had gone. So Nousret 
 Pasha was made in a manner presentable to the 
 daughters of Europe, despite the unworthy 
 wrestler s costume. And so was the gypsy 
 woman justified of her dark words. 
 
 It may be, indeed, that Nousret Pasha s 
 vanity might not have been his end, even when 
 word was taken to the Kaimakam that the 
 Greek barber, having been called to the House 
 of the Giraffe or what was left of it was un 
 able to attend His Excellency. For His Excel 
 lency also patronized the Greek barber, as being 
 one quicker to adopt innovations in the ton- 
 sorial art, not to say one who might more 
 readily be left unpaid, than one of the faith. 
 But the mention of the House of the Giraffe 
 reminded His Excellency of a certain yellow 
 satin victoria he had lately confiscated on be 
 half of the Constitution. He desired to be well 
 with the Constitution, this Kaimakam, and had 
 made no unpleasantness about the burning of 
 the House of the Giraffe. Accordingly, un 
 shaven as he was, he took a drive in the yellow 
 
THE HOUSE OF THE GIRAFFE 141 
 
 satin victoria to the no small discomfort of 
 his provisional coachman, who knew well 
 enough how to whip a pony of the country but 
 who had never seen a spirited Hungarian horse 
 before in his life, much less a pair of them. 
 Nevertheless the spirited Hungarians drew the 
 yellow satin victoria without mishap, in the cool 
 of the day, to the end of the peninsula, where 
 the Kaimakam, to his no small surprise, beheld 
 a small tug anchored in a cove of rocks. The 
 spectacle of that small tug, swimming like a toy 
 in the blue cove, with a toy dinghey behind her, 
 caused the Kaimakam considerably to think. 
 The times were uncertain, he knew. Certain of 
 those in great place were being removed there 
 from and others were removing themselves, ex- 
 peditiously and secretly. How could a Kaima 
 kam of an obscure peninsula better appease 
 that mysterious being, the Constitution, than 
 by making, under due military escort, a per 
 sonal examination of the country place of a 
 notorious spy of the old regime? 
 
 He caught Nousret Pasha without the slight 
 est trouble. He took the precaution to post his 
 men out of sight, and they drew up as twilight 
 fell. The thing was not done, of course, with 
 out a few shots. The shots frightened the tug 
 away, however, and nobody was hurt. As for 
 Nousret Pasha, who had such a terrible repu- 
 
142 THE HOUSE OF THE GIRAFFE 
 
 tation, he did nothing. He merely said, "It was 
 written," and got into the yellow satin victoria 
 like a lamb. The Kaimakam got in too, and a 
 couple of soldiers. The Kaimakam would have 
 let the servants go after all, they were not to 
 blame for what their master did but Ali chose 
 to consider himself under arrest as well. He 
 jumped on to the box, and the yellow satin vic 
 toria rolled back to the village in the summer 
 dusk. 
 
 IX 
 
 The Ka imakam drove straight to the tele 
 graph office. He wished to report his prize to 
 Constantinople, and incidentally to ask instruc 
 tions. For he had no authority to shut up 
 Nousret Pasha, who might very well have com 
 mitted all the crimes in the code but against 
 whom no one had produced a warrant of arrest. 
 To the telegraph office, then, the Ka imakam 
 drove, and left Nousret Pasha under guard in 
 the victoria while he composed his telegram. 
 
 A crowd began to collect in the little square. 
 A crowd collected around the carriage, that is, 
 for people had already been sitting where the 
 coffee-house lights twinkled under the huge 
 plane trees. The Kaimakam s new carriage and 
 horses were things to look at by themselves. 
 When it became known who was sitting in the 
 carriage, dressed like a wrestler as of old, the 
 
THE HOUSE OF THE GIRAFFE 143 
 
 crowd trebled. Among them were not a few 
 who had helped to loot and burn the House of 
 the Giraffe. They were a little silent at first, 
 when they so unexpectedly saw in their midst 
 the redoubtable Nousret Pasha himself, sitting 
 in his famous yellow satin victoria. But as the 
 story of his capture went around there began 
 to be more talk and more freedom. People asked 
 questions of the soldiers and the coachman 
 of Ali too, whom several of his old acquaint 
 ances gravely greeted. 
 
 The coachman nudged one of the soldiers and 
 asked him to hold the reins for a minute. The 
 soldier willingly enough agreed. He was 
 cramped from sitting on that little front seat, 
 and there was no lack of people to watch 
 Nousret Pasha. So the coachman got down. 
 His arms ached from holding those big Hun 
 garians. And the soldier got up. Ali scanned 
 him in the dark. He seemed to be a big, mild, 
 elderly Anatolian, such as used to serve Sultan 
 Hamid by the thousand, in ragged blue uni 
 forms piped with red, and seldom got paid 
 for it. 
 
 "Brother, have you any tobacco?" asked 
 Ali. 
 
 "A little," answered the soldier, producing 
 one of those capacious metal boxes that some 
 body in Turkey must make a fortune out of. 
 
144 THE HOUSE OF THE GIRAFFE 
 
 AH rolled himself a cigarette with delibera 
 tion. When he handed back the box the soldier 
 nearly dropped it, the thing was so heavy. He 
 looked at Ali and Ali looked at him. 
 
 "That will get you some more tobacco," said 
 Ali in a low voice. "Give me the reins and 
 jump down." 
 
 The soldier hesitated. He felt cautiously 
 under the cover of the box. It was full of coins 
 five piastre pieces, by the size. Or could they 
 be gold liras? He let Ali take the reins. Ali 
 touched the other soldier, behind him, on the 
 arm. 
 
 "Will you change places with your comrade ?" 
 he asked. "He is not used to horses like these." 
 
 The big Hungarians reared and began to 
 back. The soldier on the box jumped down. 
 The other looked around doubtfully. The horses 
 still pranced. The crowd parted a little. 
 
 "They might make a calamity," said the first 
 soldier. 
 
 The one in the carriage got out, none too 
 briskly, in order to mount the box. 
 
 "Hold on!" shouted Ali, to whomever had 
 ears to hear, letting out the reins and cracking 
 his whip. The big horses bounded forward, 
 scattering the crowd in front of them like 
 sheep. 
 
 "Stop them ! Stop them !" yelled the Raima- 
 
THE HOUSE OF THE GIRAFFE 145 
 
 kam from the steps of the telegraph office. He 
 had just composed a telegram that satisfied him 
 not a little. 
 
 But it was too late to stop them unless the 
 shots that banged in the little square had 
 taken effect. None of them did. It was not for 
 nothing that Ali had been born and brought up 
 in that village. He knew every stone and tree 
 and turn of it in the dark, and in three minutes 
 he was past every possible mishap, on a long 
 flat road where nothing could stop them, in 
 that railless and motorless country except the 
 telegraph. And they need not go where the 
 telegraph did. 
 
 Where were they going, though? At first 
 Ali hardly knew what direction he took, save 
 the one that was nearest for safety. Now he 
 realized that they were galloping east, for the 
 mainland, for Anatolia. That was better than 
 the tip of the peninsula, where they would have 
 been caught like rats in a trap unless they 
 found a boat. But the telegraph, in the end, 
 could gallop faster than the big Hungarians. 
 And it would never do to gallop through Asia 
 Minor in that notorious yellow satin victoria. 
 
 Nousret Pasha had resigned himself, when 
 the soldiers first surprised him, to the inevita 
 ble. But spirit came back to him as he found 
 himself rolling safely away through the dark 
 
146 THE HOUSE OF THE GIRAFFE 
 
 though there was still something cold at the 
 bottom of his heart, and he wished the horses 
 hoofs did not thunder so. He reached forward, 
 now and then, and pinched or patted Ali. What 
 a boy, after all, was this Ali ! When Ali pulled 
 in the horses to a trot, however, the Pasha pro 
 tested. Ali had to point out that the horses 
 could not gallop forever. They would get far 
 ther, now that there was no immediate danger, 
 by going a little slower. 
 
 So the fugitives sped all night through the 
 dim country of their boyhood. On one side of 
 them the sea made soft noises against rocks 
 and shingle. On the other side a mountain rose 
 black to the stars. Dogs barked from invisible 
 farms. After a time the moon rose the same 
 moon by which they had made their voyage in 
 the fishing boat, by which they had danced in 
 Ahmed Bey s garden, by which Ahmed Bey had 
 run away: the same moon, but shrunk and 
 eaten. Nousret Pasha wondered how reddish 
 hair would look by it, and if, somewhere, those 
 strange long eyes were seeing it too. And now 
 it made the road into Asia a little lighter for 
 the big Hungarians, and for the faithful coach 
 man who drove them, and for the fat man sit 
 ting behind them in the coquettish satin 
 carriage, half grotesque, half tragic, trying to 
 outrun his destiny. 
 
THE HOUSE OF THE GIRAFFE 147 
 
 The cocks were almost past crowing, and 
 Olympus, on the other side of the Gulf, was 
 already touched by a fairy light, when they 
 came to a village in the hills where Ali knew 
 there was no telegraph. There they could be 
 safe for a little while, at least, and they must 
 rest and feed the horses. Then they would 
 make one more stage inland, and get rid of that 
 tell-tale turnout as they could. After that 
 
 They drove to the khan, in order to stir up 
 less suspicion, and roused a hostler. The pro 
 prietor whom Ali knew had gone ; but his suc 
 cessor was willing to accept a handsome tip, to 
 stable the horses, to put the carriage under 
 cover, to believe that his clients were driving 
 from Yalova to Broussa, and to give them a 
 room where they might rest. 
 
 Nousret Pasha, having eaten something, 
 rested very well. Ali could not. He could not 
 think, even. After a while he got up from his 
 mattress and sat at the window. It looked into 
 the street and into part of the opposite garden, 
 beyond which a wide green country dropped 
 into the blue of the Gulf. How cool and like a 
 paradise it seemed in the early sun ! And where 
 in all that paradise could he find a place to hide 
 this foolish master who snored behind him? 
 
148 THE HOUSE OF THE GIRAFFE 
 
 How could they help being caught, in the end? 
 Why, after all, should they try to escape? 
 What was written was written. But his heart 
 grew heavy to think he must yet accomplish 
 what was written. 
 
 It was written that he should not have to 
 wait very long. As he sat pondering his ways 
 and watching the sun mount higher over the 
 green and blue below him, he became aware of 
 some one moving in the garden across the 
 street. It was a woman, and evidently no peas 
 ant, in a loose gray dress with a white veil over 
 her hair. She was walking down a path trel- 
 lised with grapevines. Then she turned into an 
 open space of grass where pomegranate trees 
 stood in blossom. She suddenly looked up at 
 the window, as if conscious that some one saw 
 her. And Ali became aware that she was 
 Madam Ahmed Bey. She at once drew her veil 
 across her face and stepped out of sight below 
 the wall. 
 
 Did she recognize him too ? How should she ? 
 Yet if she did Ali hesitated but a moment. 
 Glancing at his prostrate master, he went out 
 softly and asked whether he could hire any 
 horses. The khanji said none were to be had at 
 that hour : they were all out for the day, and he 
 doubted whether any could be found elsewhere 
 in the village. Ali ordered, accordingly, that 
 
THE HOUSE OF THE GIRAFFE 149 
 
 his own be harnessed at once. If the khanji 
 thought anything, he said nothing. Wrestlers 
 did not usually travel all night, as this one had 
 done, in silk carriages, and then rest barely two 
 hours before travelling again. But since this 
 affair of the Constitution everything was up 
 side down. 
 
 The carriage was presently ready, with 
 fodder for beast and man, and AH roused his 
 master. Nousret Pasha came very unwillingly 
 to consciousness. But AH looked so grave he 
 asked no question and made no remonstrance. 
 They went downstairs, they paid their bill, they 
 took their respective places in the victoria. 
 The hostler threw open the doors of the court 
 to let them out. 
 
 As the horses clattered through the archway 
 Nousret Pasha saw Ahmed Bey on the other 
 side of the street. For an instant a commotion 
 seized him and he looked beyond Ahmed Bey, 
 searching the lattices of the house. But the 
 commotion subsided, and it turned into the cold 
 ness of last night when Ahmed Bey caught hold 
 of a bridle. 
 
 "Nousret Pasha, are you running away ?" de 
 manded Ahmed Bey loudly. 
 
 Nousret Pasha s coldness began to be warmed 
 by anger. 
 
 "AH, whip him!" he commanded. 
 
150 THE HOUSE OF THE GIRAFFE 
 
 All, however, did not whip him. He whipped 
 the horses instead. And this time there was 
 no crowd, as yet, in front of them. But they 
 did not break away. Doors and windows began 
 to open. People came out of the khan. Peas 
 ants stopped in the street. 
 
 "Nousret Pasha " 
 
 Ali lashed the tired horses. The whole vil 
 lage would know in an instant, if Ahmed Bey 
 went on bawling that name. As a matter of 
 fact the name began to be repeated in the 
 street. It was a name the village knew for a 
 name of rumour and of terror. But Ali could 
 not turn the horses into the straightaway 
 stretch, because of Ahmed Bey who turned 
 them back. And though Ahmed Bey was his 
 master s enemy, Ali did not wish to hurt him. 
 Between the two of them the horses began to 
 plunge. 
 
 Then Nousret Pasha stood up, reached across 
 the box, snatched the whip out of Ali s hand, 
 and lunged at Ahmed Bey. Ahmed Bey drew 
 back. The horses leaped forward. 
 
 Suddenly a woman s voice sounded strangely 
 from behind a lattice. 
 
 "Musselmans !" cried the voice. "This is 
 Nousret Pasha, the spy of Sultan Hamid, the 
 drinker of blood, the destroyer of souls! Will 
 you let him go?" 
 
THE HOUSE OF THE GIRAFFE 151 
 
 They did not let him go. 
 
 How do such things happen? Some thrill in 
 that invisible woman s voice, some buried fury 
 against wrongs too long endured, some spark of 
 those that flash from man to man when many 
 are together, set on fire in those gathered peas 
 ants a wildness that lies dormant in us all. Ali, 
 sitting on his box above it, trying to manage his 
 terrified horses, heard the whistle of the whip 
 that had been wrested from him, and fierce 
 shouts, and a crash of stones, and sickening 
 thuds, and gasps of quick breath, and his own 
 name cried in mad fear, and other sounds in 
 human and unnameable. 
 
 The tumult sprang up and quieted like a blast 
 of tropic wind. In that utter quiet was some 
 thing that made Ali cold. It made him think, 
 too, of the gypsy woman. When at last he 
 could look around he turned pale. The satin of 
 the carriage was more red than yellow, and 
 what remained in it was very little of a man. 
 To that man had happened what happened of 
 old to the bears he caught in the mountains, 
 when he set dogs on them, at his House of the 
 Giraffe. And so was fulfilled the destiny of 
 that house, and of its master. 
 
THE GOLDEN JAVELIN 
 
 For my part, in the presence of a young girl I always 
 
 become convinced that the dreams of sentiment like 
 
 the consoling mysteries of Faith are invincible; that 
 
 it is never, never reason which governs men and women. 
 
 Joseph Conrad: CHANCE. 
 
 I DON T wonder you want to steal it. Did 
 you ever see anything so perfect as that 
 little spiral relief of bay leaves ? And you 
 would be still more rapacious if you knew where 
 it came from. But I shall hold on to it as long 
 as I hold on to anything, and then it s going to 
 the Seraglio Museum. I suppose our trotting 
 over there this morning, and our gossip about 
 old times, must have been too much for me, be 
 cause I really have no business to tell you. At 
 any rate, you may pick up some crumbs for 
 your monograph. That isn t the real interest, 
 though for me, at least. I m not scientific 
 enough to be an archaeologist, much as that 
 sort of thing takes my imagination. What 
 catches me is the human in it all. And in this 
 
 case the two 
 
 However, do you remember my cousin Per- 
 
 152 
 
THE GOLDEN JAVELIN 153 
 
 sis? Yes, she always was a rather uncommon 
 girl from the time she began to fill a large and 
 respectable circle of relatives with anguish by 
 the quality of her promise to end in a circus. 
 She rode like a jockey, you know, and she would 
 as soon have executed the tourbillon de la mort 
 as a figure in the german. So when she went 
 out to Sidon as a missionary we had only 
 breath enough left to gasp "I told you so." 
 Being the last thing in the world that any one 
 expected, it was the most natural for her to 
 do. You are not to suppose, however, that the 
 outcries we made were simply owing to the fact 
 that we objected to having virtue break out in 
 our midst. That was bad enough, of course. 
 Few skeletons in a family closet are so trying 
 to confess to as a missionary. But you may 
 recollect that, among other things, she was the 
 best company in the world. She even had a 
 trick of making plain domestic life more amus 
 ing than most week-ends. 
 
 You must make your own allowances, though, 
 because I am free to confess that when Persis 
 announced to what use she intended to put her 
 youth and looks and general rarity, no outcries 
 were louder or more lamentable than mine. She 
 was, to be sure, my cousin, but even a cousin 
 may be worth cultivating. At least I found it 
 so the first time I went home on leave. And I 
 
154 THE GOLDEN JAVELIN 
 
 always admire the banality of the occasions of 
 things in this world when I recall that of my 
 discovery. It was at an entertainment given 
 I believe in my own honour by Aunt Jo, who, 
 in common with other hostesses I have known, 
 persisted in regarding my preference of silence 
 to conversation in company as evidence of bash- 
 fulness. She therefore tore Persis from a circle 
 of cavaliers in the hope of drawing me into 
 sociability, and the first remark of this reluc 
 tant young person somehow put her for me in 
 a light. 
 
 "Mother says I must come over and talk 
 to you," she sighed ; "but I can t think of any 
 thing to say. Can you?" 
 
 It happened that I could. Indeed, as time 
 went on I thought of more than Persis was 
 willing to listen to. She would then cheerfully 
 assure me that one adult idiot was insufferable 
 enough, without a whole tribe of little ones. 
 Or, when I went about exploding the supersti 
 tion that consanguinity was a bar to wedlock, 
 she would complain that she needed a little 
 room for the imagination, whereas I allowed her 
 none : she always knew what I was going to say 
 before I opened my mouth. This shot was the 
 more telling because just what made my case 
 so desperate was that when Persis opened her 
 mouth no one knew what she would say. 
 
THE GOLDEN JAVELIN 155 
 
 Of course there are swarms of breezy girls 
 about, and once in a while they have a touch of 
 naivete that isn t mere pose. But you don t 
 often come across one with anything at once so 
 simple and so remote under her outer liveliness. 
 I suppose that is partly why Persists final rea 
 son for her hardness of heart sounds so silly. 
 She always declared that she should fall in love 
 with some one quite different from anybody she 
 or I had ever seen. She couldn t describe him, 
 but she would know him the instant he ap 
 peared. And the amusing part of it was that 
 although I made immense fun of Prince Dia 
 dem, as I nicknamed him, and did my best to 
 convince her that I was that mysterious being 
 in disguise, I somehow knew my labour lost. 
 
 We had, nevertheless, for a certain time, an 
 extremely agreeable relation. For a good deal 
 of what Persis took away with one hand she 
 gave back with the other. It pleased her to say 
 that while other members of her extensive 
 entourage were far more companionable, none 
 were so adept to quote her own elegant phrase 
 at getting out what bothered her inside. Be 
 that as it may, it was given me more than once 
 to be edified to the limit of edification, as they 
 say in the Arabian Nights, by my vivacious 
 cousin s histories. 
 
 None, however, was so moving I might even 
 
156 THE GOLDEN JAVELIN 
 
 give it a quicker adjective as the last of all. 
 It came to me after her death, in a small sealed 
 parcel, by the hand of the elderly missionary 
 whom Persis had married in Syria. I naturally 
 regarded this gentleman with extreme curi 
 osity. He was a grave and grizzled individual, 
 by no means an Apollo to look upon, with a 
 thick round beard and an odd accent. I pre 
 sume the habit of another language had af 
 fected his pronunciation of his own. What 
 struck me most about him was his fresh, his 
 almost infantile, complexion. He had the colour 
 that monks occasionally have. I wondered if it 
 denoted in him what had attracted Persis, be 
 cause he didn t strike me otherwise as being in 
 the least extraordinary. On the contrary, there 
 was something I didn t like at all in his refer 
 ences to her. I won t pretend, though, that the 
 fact didn t give me a certain evil satisfaction. 
 While Persis never was much of a hand with 
 her pen isn t it curious how often the vividest 
 personalities lack that power of expressing 
 themselves? I was quite unprepared for the 
 silence that fell between us after her arrival in 
 this part of the world. Out of it came to me 
 only the news of her marriage and death, and 
 the knowledge that she left no children. And 
 I took it, bitterly enough, for the measure of 
 the completeness with which she had fulfilled 
 
THE GOLDEN JAVELIN 157 
 
 her high destiny. But the sharer of it curiously 
 disappointed me. Persis had been, for me, so 
 rare a type that it hurt me to prove her fine 
 anticipations no more than those of any school 
 girl. I even asked myself perhaps there, too, 
 my vanity was touched whether I had been 
 mistaken in her. 
 
 I found an unexpected answer in the parcel 
 which Mr. Hoyt delivered to me. He said that 
 Persis had asked him, shortly before she died, 
 to give it into my own hands. That, and the 
 fact that I became conscious of his eyeing me as 
 curiously as I did him, made me refuse him the 
 satisfaction of opening the parcel in his pres 
 ence. From it, after he had gone away, I un 
 wrapped a small sandalwood box, not more than 
 ten or twelve inches long. The box, which I 
 was at some pains to get into, contained a tight 
 roll of paper. As I began to loosen it there fell 
 out from between the leaves they were cov 
 ered, to my surprise, with Persists crooked 
 writing a smaller roll of purple silk. A human 
 enough curiosity made me look at that first; 
 and I found, folded in the silk, this miniature 
 spear. The sight of its soft antique gold and 
 the perfume of the sandalwood affected me with 
 the strangest sense of remote things. They did 
 not affect me so strangely, however, as Persia s 
 letter. And it was not merely the special com- 
 
158 THE GOLDEN JAVELIN 
 
 bination of circumstances. Otherwise I could 
 hardly bring myself to communicate, even to 
 you, what was so purely personal. As it is, I 
 shall ask you not to say anything till I get 
 through reading. 
 
 "... You must have wondered why I have 
 never written to you all this time. You couldn t 
 know, of course, how often I have written. Only 
 I have always been too proud to send the letters, 
 or I had no right to, or I couldn t make them say 
 what I wanted. But there are reasons why I 
 want you to get this sometime. 
 
 "There would be the one that I owe it to you, 
 if there were no others. You have been more 
 to me than you know. I didn t know it myself 
 till I began to find out how much depends for 
 our own development on the people we happen 
 to be thrown with. It was just because you 
 were so much to me that you were not every 
 thing. I mean that what in you was different 
 from the other people I knew called out what in 
 me made it impossible for me to marry you. 
 So, in a funny little ironical way, you are bound 
 up with all that has happened to me. Will you 
 understand it, I wonder? You used to under 
 stand so many things that the rest of them 
 didn t. And somehow I never could get them 
 out the things, not the people! unless you 
 
THE GOLDEN JAVELIN 159 
 
 were there. That s another reason why I m 
 writing to you now. I ve lived so long by my 
 self, sometimes not knowing what was happen 
 ing to me, and then not being able to tell it, that 
 I must get this out if I can. But how I wish I 
 had you solidly here, instead of the ghost of 
 you! It would make me feel less as if I lived 
 altogether in a world of ghosts. And you re 
 member that I could never do anything with a 
 pen but bite it. 
 
 "I hardly know where to begin with all I want 
 to tell you. It s so long since I ve told you any 
 thing, and things have such a way of beginning 
 before one knows it. Were you aware that you 
 first put the idea of Sidon into my head? Of 
 course there were other ideas there for it to 
 work with. One of them was a revolt against 
 the theory that a girl should sit at home and 
 spin. I was bored, and I could see nothing but 
 cotillons for myself to the end of the chapter. 
 As a career it didn t seem to lead to anything, 
 except favouring one of the dancers with my 
 hand. And you know the reason, the real rea 
 son, I used to give you for not marrying you. 
 Well, I wanted to give myself a better chance. 
 And I thought sincerer people could be found 
 outside ballrooms than in them. So I came 
 here. 
 
 "I smile to this day when I think how beau- 
 
160 THE GOLDEN JAVELIN 
 
 tifully simple it was. I knew no more about the 
 religion I came to teach than I did about the one 
 I came to supplant. I hadn t even a shadow of 
 what people call religious conviction. I had 
 always taken everything of that sort for 
 granted. I imagined that all you had to do was 
 to speak reasonably to the heathen for him 
 quickly to renounce the error of his way. I was 
 quite as ignorant in other directions. I didn t 
 learn until I was six thousand miles from home 
 that il mondo e paese, as the Italians say ; that 
 there are insincere and foolish missionaries as 
 there are honest and human cotillon leaders, 
 and that there are Mohammedans a good deal 
 less in need of conversion than many who con 
 tribute to have them converted. But when I 
 
 began to find these things out I wouldn t 
 
 want to go through that time again. I never 
 needed you so much. I was too proud to tell 
 you, though. That was why I stopped writing. 
 And that was all that kept me from going back 
 home. I was too proud to confess that I had 
 made a mistake. But now it is all over I regret 
 nothing. I probably could never have learned 
 my lesson in any other way. If I haven t been 
 a missionary with conviction I have at least 
 found that so long as pain and misunderstand 
 ing are in the world there will be enough for me 
 to do without raising questions of creed. And 
 
THE GOLDEN JAVELIN 161 
 
 then if I hadn t come But that is what I m 
 
 trying to tell you. 
 
 "I say I do not regret. The one thing I regret 
 is the unhappiness I have caused to one who 
 had a right to expect happiness of me. Will you 
 understand if I tell you quite simply what I 
 have often been on the edge of telling you, that 
 Mr. Hoyt was the last man in the world I ever 
 would have dreamed of marrying? You know 
 the idea I used to have. I don t know whether 
 all girls have it so distinctly. At any rate, the 
 face I was always trying to picture to myself, 
 that I more or less unblushingly came to look 
 for I found it among these good people as lit 
 tle as any of the other things I expected. So I 
 put that illusion away with the rest of them. 
 I concluded that it might be something of an 
 art to take life as it came, to build what one 
 could out of one s mistakes. I accordingly 
 agreed to marry Mr. Hoyt. He was as good and 
 as honest a man as I was likely to come across, 
 and he knew perfectly well that I had no pas 
 sion for him. That was to be my reparation for 
 thinking that girls should not sit at home and 
 spin. And I had a real curiosity, after all my 
 high-flown ideas, to play out the game to the 
 end and fulfil the common lot of womankind. 
 I thought that must be the supreme relation, 
 with life itself, in all its variety and indiffer- 
 
162 THE GOLDEN JAVELIN 
 
 ence, instead of with one person. But let me 
 try to tell you. 
 
 "We were married very soon, without any 
 fuss. That is one of the things I most like out 
 here the freedom from fuss. We did make a 
 journey afterward, but that, too, was different 
 from what it would have been at home. We 
 took our ordinary touring paraphernalia you 
 can hardly have lived so long over here without 
 learning that we tour and started on horse 
 back down the coast. We planned to avoid 
 out-stations as much as possible, and to do 
 some of the sightseeing that we had never had 
 time for. This desolate old Phoenician country 
 gave me a dreadful sinking of the heart when I 
 first saw it. And it came to seem to me, with 
 all its flatness and its ruins of other times, 
 merely a dismal counterpart of my own life. 
 But in the end it began to tell me a different 
 story. 
 
 "Our first camp was at a place where some 
 tombs had been found a few months before. 
 This is such an out-of-the-way part of the world 
 that no proper attention had been paid to them, 
 and there were rumours of things that had been 
 stolen or destroyed. Our tents were ready for 
 us when we arrived, in a charming sheltered 
 hollow near the sea. And our man had a piece 
 of news for us. It seemed that the owner of 
 
THE GOLDEN JAVELIN 163 
 
 the adjoining vineyard, while starting to dig a 
 reservoir, had discovered a mysterious door in 
 the rock. It might be the entrance to another 
 tomb, but no one could open it. The proprietor 
 had tried, and the soldiers had tried, and they 
 were all on the point of cutting each other s 
 throats about it. You know how little love is 
 lost between Arabs and Turks. 
 
 "I don t know whether you are interested 
 enough in that sort of thing to have heard 
 about the affair. You and I never talked archae 
 ology in the old days! But the archaeological 
 world never had the truth of the matter, or 
 more than a part of it. Of course Mr. Hoyt 
 himself is not an archaeologist, and the reports 
 were so contradictory that the real archaeolo 
 gists never could straighten them out. Besides 
 which they were too much occupied with ques 
 tions of identity to trouble themselves about 
 anything else. So I can only tell you everything 
 as it happened, without minding how much you 
 may or may not have heard before. 
 
 "The place was finally opened, you know, with 
 blasting powder. We heard them at it while 
 we were eating supper. And we didn t wonder 
 when we saw the door. It was a kind of im 
 mense wheel of stone, fitting into grooves at the 
 base of a rocky ledge and offering no kind of 
 hold. We couldn t imagine how it was ever put 
 
164 THE GOLDEN JAVELIN 
 
 there. There were other things to speculate 
 about, however, for the door opened upon a sort 
 of chamber or passage, cut out of the solid rock. 
 We found it full of Bedouins and soldiers and 
 smoky lights, crowded excitedly toward the 
 inner end, where there was another door. This 
 was a doorway rather, filled in with masonry 
 and surrounded by a highly polished egg-and- 
 arrow border. And above it, cut also in the 
 rock, was an inscription which the owner told 
 us was in some strange language no one could 
 read. But when he had the men stand back and 
 held up a torch for us to see it Mr. Hoyt recog 
 nized some Greek writing which he afterward 
 translated like this: 
 
 " Have reverence, comer in the night, for 
 the house of the dead. Turn, turn away, while 
 it yet is time. It is not for such as thou to 
 break the sleep of kings. For so shall the peace 
 that remembers neither pain nor woe cease to 
 scatter its shadow on thine own eyes. Thou 
 shalt behold no more the sweet light of thy 
 country. The voices of men thou shalt not 
 hear, but only the beasts of the desert whose 
 mouths are avid with vengeance, or the cruel 
 lashing of the sea upon the rocks. And thou 
 who mightest choose a happier lot, thou 
 shalt prefer the enmity of the all-seeing gods. 
 Turn, then, turn away, while it yet is time. It 
 
THE GOLDEN JAVELIN 165 
 
 is not for such as thou to break the sleep of 
 kings/ 
 
 "I didn t wonder that the men were visibly 
 moved as Mr. Hoyt spelled it out to them. In 
 that dark rock chamber, above the Tyrian sea, 
 with its flaring lights and its ancient inscrip 
 tion and its mysterious walled door, one could 
 believe anything ghostly or incredible. But the 
 feeling between the two parties soon rose again 
 in them more strongly than any other. So it 
 was not long before they picked a hole in the 
 masonry. When it was about wide enough for 
 a cat to squeeze through they sent a boy, a most 
 unwilling one, in to scout. He squeezed back 
 almost immediately, reporting nothing very 
 definite except that it was wet inside. But his 
 bare feet were flaked with gold-leaf. 
 
 "You can imagine how much that did to quiet 
 the excitement. The proprietor insisted more 
 than ever upon his right to his own property, 
 while the officer in command of the soldiers 
 declared he was there to prevent the govern 
 ment from being robbed. I don t know what 
 might not have happened if we hadn t been 
 there. As it was, they took our advice to wait 
 till the next day before doing anything else. It 
 seemed they thought we had the more right to 
 be heard because there must be some relation 
 ship between infidels who could read the strange 
 
166 THE GOLDEN JAVELIN 
 
 inscription and the infidels who had put it 
 there ! But seeing that each side was still dis 
 trustful of the other, we said we would keep 
 watch with them. Which we accordingly did. 
 We established ourselves with rugs and cush 
 ions at the entrance to the tomb, with Turk 
 ish and Arab sentinels picketed on each side 
 of us. 
 
 There was no moon, but there was that star 
 light which is only of the south a light of great 
 mild liquid summer stars, hanging so near us, 
 so near, in a sky that velvet is too stuffy a word 
 to describe. Not far away the sea was, at the 
 foot of the grassy plateau of olives, facing the 
 ledge. We could make it out dimly between the 
 trees by the rippling reflections of the stars, 
 and the darkness was full of its lapping. The 
 only other sound we could hear was the far 
 away bark of a jackal, or once in a while the 
 soft whirr of a bat. I remember, too, how 
 strange the olive-trees looked, ancient and 
 twisted beyond any I ever saw. The phantoms 
 moving vaguely between them only made them 
 more so. They were Bedouins and soldiers, I 
 suppose, hoping that we would fall asleep or go 
 to our tent. But I never felt less like it. I 
 never had so realized before that night is the 
 true time of this country, when everything that 
 is forbidding about it disappears. I had never 
 
THE GOLDEN JAVELIN 167 
 
 so realized the country itself. The purple of 
 Tyre, the light of Greece, the gold of Rome, the 
 strange work of the nomads I had found them 
 here as little as most people find the beauty of 
 faded tapestry or a Byzantine mosaic. Its deso 
 lation spoke to me at last, however a desola 
 tion as different from the wildness of America 
 as that is from the order of Europe. All the 
 passion and tragedy of centuries seem to have 
 gone into it. There is something old and wise 
 and sad about it, after which other countries 
 look as pretty and empty as children. But to 
 whom do I write! 
 
 "I suppose the time and the place had a good 
 deal to do with making that night so memorable 
 to me. But you remember, too, what night it 
 was. Have you ever felt a kind of mortified 
 surprise to find how humdrum life is in the 
 making? It always makes me think of when I 
 broke through the ice once, ages ago, and how I 
 thought as I went down that something had 
 really happened to me at last, and how aston 
 ished I was to find it so prosaic, and to be chiefly 
 conscious of how I might have prevented it. 
 Well, my wedding affected me in just the same 
 way. After all I had gone through to make up 
 my mind to it, I wondered how it could possibly 
 leave me just the same as before. That night, 
 however, something really did happen to me. 
 
168 THE GOLDEN JAVELIN 
 
 Sitting there in the starlight under those old 
 olive-trees, listening to the ancient voice of the 
 sea, I saw the role I had chosen in cold blood with 
 a sudden intensity of feeling that amounted 
 almost to passion. I saw life dissolve and 
 reform under my fingers in a way that made me 
 believe that my husband might be, after all, the 
 veiled image of my dream. 
 
 "Before we knew it the sea began to whiten 
 under our eyes. After that it wasn t long before 
 the owner of the vineyard appeared with his 
 workmen, followed by the Turkish officer and 
 some more soldiers. They lost no time in set 
 ting to work with their picks at the inner door 
 of the tomb. We sat watching them in a 
 silence, or I did, which I suppose was a part of 
 my mood of exaltation. But the sound of the 
 picks was portentous. One could not help think 
 ing of the inscription over the door. Yet the 
 very fact that we should desecrate the place, 
 parvenus from the newest of countries as we 
 were, gave me such a strange dream-like pic 
 ture of the world as I saw the dawn brighten 
 between the olive-trees, rare and exquisite as it 
 had been hundreds and hundreds of years be 
 fore, when this place was first hewn out and 
 
 And what? That question as to what we were 
 to find grew into a suspense that overpowered 
 everything else. Even the men stood still a 
 
THE GOLDEN JAVELIN 169 
 
 moment when they had widened the hole 
 enough to get through. 
 
 "The first thing I saw was a great carved 
 sarcophagus, extraordinarily huge and white in 
 the gloom. Then as our candles caught one 
 point and another it came over me that the 
 gloom was of gold. Did you ever really see gold 
 enough of it, I mean ? The tomb was completely 
 sheathed in plates of gold floor, walls, ceiling 
 that gave out the strangest warm lustre as 
 the men moved about with their lights. And 
 in the middle of it all, behind the sarcophagus 
 nearest the door, stood seven others, all 
 shadowy white and all set about with gleaming 
 gold things, just as they had been left centuries 
 before except that water had worked its way 
 into the vault and had loosened the leaf from 
 some of the plates. You have probably seen 
 them yourself, the sarcophagi, in the Stamboul 
 Museum. But you will never see them as we 
 did. Least of all the great one we saw first. 
 They say it is of a decadent period, and stolen 
 into the bargain. However that may be, there 
 was something frightening about its beauty 
 when we first broke in upon it, with its reliefs 
 representing a combat between Greeks and bar 
 barians, and all its exquisite decorative details. 
 And then each uplifted hand held a little gold 
 javelin, and each chlamys, faintly painted with 
 
170 THE GOLDEN JAVELIN 
 
 red or purple or green, was fastened at the 
 shoulder with a tiny jewelled buckle. You 
 should have seen them glitter in the candle 
 light, against the polished marble ! 
 
 "I can t begin to give you an idea of the mag 
 nificence of that mortuary chamber. It affected 
 me to a degree that I can neither describe nor 
 account for. Without knowing anything about 
 them, I have always loved beautiful things. And 
 here were beautiful things come upon under cir 
 cumstances that made their beauty something 
 unearthly. The jagged hole through which we 
 had come, where I could see a bent olive and 
 the far-away morning shine of the sea, only 
 emphasized it. When Mr. Hoyt pointed out to 
 me a figure of the principal sarcophagus, a 
 young man on horseback, holding a spear longer 
 than the others, decorated with a design of bay 
 leaves, I couldn t bear it any longer. The only 
 thing I wanted was to be alone. I burst out 
 crying and ran away to my tent. 
 
 "What with sitting up all night and the vari 
 ous excitements I had gone through, I suppose 
 I must have been tired out. At any rate, I slept 
 for ten hours without stirring. When I woke 
 up, late in the afternoon, I hardly knew where 
 I was. I couldn t imagine, either, why Mr. Hoyt 
 should be sitting familiarly by my bed, reading 
 the Missionary Herald. Then I remembered. 
 
THE GOLDEN JAVELIN 171 
 
 And I felt once more as I did that time I went 
 through the ice. I wondered how, after having 
 been so wrought up, I could be so indifferent, 
 and find it so characteristic of Mr. Hoyt that 
 although he had slept much less than I he 
 should not have gone back to the tomb. He was 
 perfectly willing to go when I proposed it, how 
 ever on condition we should first have tea. 
 
 "We hardly recognized the tomb when we got 
 there. It had been stripped of its gold sheath 
 ing, all the vases and other portable things in it 
 had been carried away, and the little spears and 
 buckles had been picked off the great sarcoph 
 agus. They had even pried up its cover, in the 
 hope of finding further booty, and in doing so 
 had contrived to break off some of the rams 
 heads of its cornice. The Turkish officer 
 politely explained that the governor had 
 ordered the things to be removed to his house 
 for safekeeping until some one should come 
 down from Constantinople to take them in, 
 charge. But I never heard that any of them 
 ever turned up at the Seraglio, and it struck me 
 that there was something suspicious in the 
 amicable terms at which the rival parties had 
 apparently arrived. They made haste to cover 
 their confusion, however, if they felt any, and 
 our own manifest horror, by telling us of a 
 further discovery they had just made. 
 
172 THE GOLDEN JAVELIN 
 
 "I had noticed an aromatic perfume that I 
 didn t remember as being there before. And 
 when the officer pointed to the open sarcoph 
 agus and placed a stool where I could look into 
 it, I was conscious at first only of that aromatic 
 odour, which was stranger than anything of the 
 kind I had ever known. Then I began to make 
 out in the darkness below me the figure of a 
 young man. At the moment I didn t notice 
 what the reflection of my candle showed me 
 later, that his body was immersed in a clear 
 pale-amber liquid. I merely saw him lying 
 there in the shadow of the marble, so beautiful 
 and so life-like that he might have been 
 Endymion asleep. 
 
 "The thing was incredible enough in itself. 
 I needn t tell you how incredible it was to look 
 bodily into a face that had seen so different a 
 world from ours. But I was scarcely conscious 
 of that still less of any wonder as to the iden 
 tity of the young prince who had been buried 
 there with such splendour. On the contrary, I 
 had the most amazing shock of recognition. I 
 thought at first it was because of his resem 
 blance to the figure carved outside the sarcoph 
 agus so slowly do our thoughts travel behind 
 the darker parts of consciousness. But then I 
 knew, with an intensity of conviction that left 
 me faint, that Oh, I don t know how to 
 
THE GOLDEN JAVELIN 173 
 
 put it. Every-day words don t seem to do for 
 things that were so far from every day. How 
 can I tell you, as I would tell you about the 
 weather, that that the face of the sarcoph 
 agus was the face I had always been looking 
 for, that until a few months before I had 
 always been sure I should find? But it was so 
 it was so. Every drop of blood in me told me 
 it was so. And when in the first tremor of my 
 knowledge I looked up and saw on the other 
 side of the sarcophagus the face of the man who 
 was my husband, I knew only more hopelessly 
 it was so. 
 
 "Perhaps I am mad, as poor Mr. Hoyt thinks. 
 I don t know. I only know that I never could 
 look at him again as other than a stranger. Of 
 course I have ways of putting it to myself 
 that illusions are not illusions unless you believe 
 them so that I never really saw my husband 
 or myself until I looked into that sarcophagus. 
 But I often wonder if it isn t true that strange 
 dark things move inside of us, that urge us, in 
 spite of ourselves, to ends we don t know. I 
 have sensations sometimes of belonging to 
 another world, of communicating in inexplicable 
 ways. I often look at the good simple normal 
 people about me and wonder what they would 
 think if they knew, if they really knew. Some 
 times I envy them, too; but I m afraid I ve 
 
174 THE GOLDEN JAVELIN 
 
 oftener had a sort of contempt for their poor 
 muffled lives. The whole affair has given me 
 such a sense of the irony of things that if I 
 hadn t also gained a growing sense of the pity 
 and the passing of things I don t quite know 
 what would have become of me here. But I 
 have been happy, too if there is such a thing. 
 It so invariably seems to involve unhappiness, 
 and it is so little the end of life. I have had an 
 almost fierce happiness in my secret, and I have 
 had the bitter happiness which is to know. Per 
 haps, after all, I have proved that the supreme 
 relation is with life itself. 
 
 "Oh well, words what have they ever told in 
 the world? But you can see how all my cur 
 rents have necessarily turned in, and how I need 
 some one to know and understand. And then I 
 want to send you this little javelin. It was 
 brought to me long afterward by a jeweller in 
 Bei rout, who said he had bought it from a sol 
 dier. Can you understand my dishonesty in 
 not sending it to the Museum? I couldn t I 
 couldn t. It was my only link My hus 
 band has never seen it, and I don t want him to 
 after I am dead. He you know. So I wish you 
 would take it to the Museum and put it back 
 into the hand of the figure you will find. I 
 would like him to have it again. And it will be 
 another link. 
 
THE GOLDEN JAVELIN 175 
 
 "You know he saved himself the young 
 prince. I don t know whether it was the con 
 tact of the air or the evaporation of the liquor 
 or what, but he saved himself. He stayed only 
 long enough for me to find him, after they had 
 broken into his golden room. When they came 
 to take him away he was gone. And I shall go, 
 and you will go, and only the sarcophagus will 
 remain, and the one little javelin that I have 
 had so long, and no one will know. Dreams 
 dreams " 
 
HIS BEATITUDE 
 
 It takes three Jews to cheat a Greek, and three 
 Greeks to cheat an Armenian. 
 
 LEVANTINE PROVERB. 
 
 WERE mine a high and moving tale, I 
 might announce my hero by saying 
 that on a certain August morning a 
 man of striking appearance was seen to make 
 his way down that crowded street of Galata 
 which opens to the Bridge. As it is, I can only 
 point out that such an announcement would 
 apply with equal exactness to several thousand 
 individuals, and that while one of them did hap 
 pen to be concerned with the present narrative, 
 he would have been the last to catch a curious 
 eye. He was merely a well-dressed, well-made 
 and not ill-looking young Armenian, with less of 
 the Semite in his face than his people often 
 show. That he was a person of the better sort 
 was evident from his gold-tipped cigarette 
 holder, from the portentous length of his little 
 finger nail, and from the modish cane which he 
 
 176 
 
HIS BEATITUDE 177 
 
 swung in palpable ease of heart. But for the 
 frivolity of the word I might say that he 
 tripped along, so light-footed was the gait with 
 which he passed the white-smocked toll-keeper 
 and started to cross the Bridge. Presently, 
 however, he stayed his steps, to approach one 
 of the peddlers who stood along the railing. 
 And in the extremely unattractive assortment 
 of pins, needles, hooks, eyes, buttons and bod 
 kins displayed upon a tray by this individual he 
 proceeded to rummage. 
 
 "Have you seen the paper this morning?" 
 inquired the pedler in Armenian, as if conver 
 sation with this fine young man were more to 
 him than commerce. 
 
 "I have seen the paper, Minas," replied the 
 fine young man. His own name, I might inform 
 you, was Arakel and you are to accent it, like 
 those of his friends, on the last syllable. 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 "Well ! It says what it says every day that 
 he is dying." 
 
 "Holy saints !" exclaimed the pedler. "If " 
 
 At that moment a second customer arrived 
 and began to fumble in company with Arakel. 
 The young man thereupon withdrew from the 
 field. 
 
 "I don t find anything," he said, fixing Minas 
 with his eye ; "I am going over to the other side." 
 
178 HIS BEATITUDE 
 
 The pedler, a powerful fellow with the flat 
 head, the narrow brow, and the hooked nose of 
 his race, kept him in disappointed view until 
 he was lost in the crowd. As for Arakel, he 
 lost nothing of his careless pace. Threading 
 his way through the motley multitude he passed 
 in turn the landings of the various steamer 
 companies which have termini at the Bridge. 
 Before reaching the Stamboul end, however, he 
 found occasion to approach another pedler. 
 
 "How is business, Levon?" he asked, finger 
 ing the shoestrings which hung in a great sheaf 
 from the man s arm. 
 
 "Would I be here if there were business?" 
 demanded the pedler. "I watch until I am blind, 
 and never a soul do I see. I don t believe he 
 exists." 
 
 "He must exist!" laughed Arakel. "He shall 
 exist! And you will see him better if you 
 stand a little farther over there, where the 
 people spread out more after leaving the 
 steamers." 
 
 "Well, perhaps he does exist," grumbled 
 Levon as he changed his post. "But that does 
 us no good if he hasn t the sense to come in 
 time." 
 
 "He must have the sense ! He shall have the 
 sense!" laughed Arakel again, patting the 
 other s shoulder. "And if he hasn t, why we 
 
HIS BEATITUDE 179 
 
 have enough to manage it in spite of him. 
 Good-bye. I ll see you to-night if not before." 
 With which our fine young man moved away. 
 He did not move, however, in the direction one 
 would have expected him to take. Instead of 
 proceeding to Stamboul he retraced his steps 
 toward Galata. And then again he performed 
 the unexpected. He went down the first stair 
 way leading to the landing of the Mahsousseh 
 boats, walked to the cafe commanding the view 
 of both approaches, and established himself at 
 a table whose waiter greeted him as a habitue. 
 Although he was promptly provided with coffee 
 and paper, neither seemed much to occupy him. 
 Indeed, neither could have occupied him for so 
 long as he stayed. What seemed to interest 
 him was watching the people as they passed 
 people going to and coming from the steamers. 
 What was a little curious about it, though, was 
 that he did not watch like a mere spectator. He 
 did not allow his eye to be caught, to follow a 
 figure until it disappeared, and then to wander 
 idly back. He seemed to watch with an idea. 
 He let no face escape him. Sometimes he leaned 
 out of his chair for a better view of one that 
 was partly hidden. But he did not scrutinize. 
 He did not hesitate. There was no uncertainty 
 about it. It was like one who turns over a pack 
 of cards looking for the joker. 
 
180 HIS BEATITUDE 
 
 II 
 
 Why it was that Arakel chose as his coign of 
 observation that particular cafe of that par 
 ticular landing could scarcely have been told by 
 an outsider to his idea. Those asthmatic steam 
 ers, wreckage of prouder days upon the Danube 
 and the Thames, which ply on broken wing be 
 tween the city, the Princes Islands, and the 
 sunny Gulf of Nicomedia why were they more 
 to his purpose than the swift ferries of the Bos- 
 phorus ? But that there was matter to his idea 
 was proven at the end of the morning on which 
 we make his acquaintance. For suddenly leav 
 ing his seat he made after some one in the 
 stream of passengers issuing from the Prinkipo 
 boat. 
 
 This was an old man the most wonderful, 
 the most beautiful old man whom one could pos 
 sibly imagine. From his dress it would have 
 been difficult to make him out which indeed 
 Arakel found. It was not exactly clerical, yet 
 it was not quite secular; though it was wholly 
 plain and worn. The old man might have been 
 a priest somehow sunken to the care of his 
 family, or he might have been the gardener of 
 a monastery. But the white hair covering his 
 shoulders, the white beard falling to his waist, 
 gave him an air of the patriarchal which was 
 
HIS BEATITUDE 181 
 
 indescribably sweetened by a gentleness of eye 
 and smile. If it was possible for him to be more 
 perfect, his great height made him so. In short, 
 as I have said, he was the most wonderful old 
 man imaginable. 
 
 Arakel followed him a moment, ascertained 
 that he was alone, saw him hesitate between the 
 two exits to the Bridge. Then he stepped for 
 ward and made a profound salute. 
 
 "Good morning, father," he said. "Give me 
 God s blessing." 
 
 The old man offered no reply, but he made a 
 gesture half of appeal and half of deprecation. 
 
 Arakel increased at once the amenity of his 
 regard and the keenness of his observation. 
 The eyes, the nose, the hands everything was 
 right. It is only your dilettante, however, who 
 sticks unquailing to his generalizations. Your 
 expert will never be dumbfounded to find his 
 Armenian turn out a Jew or even a Greek. Still, 
 our young man ventured: 
 
 "Have you far to go ?" 
 
 The old man sighed. 
 
 "I do not know," he answered in Armenian. 
 
 "Ah it is a hot morning. Do me the honour 
 to come into this cafe and take a coffee with 
 me." The amenity of Arakel became unction. 
 
 Again saying nothing, the old man allowed 
 himself to be led to one of the little tables. 
 
182 HIS BEATITUDE 
 
 There he sat, alike inscrutable in his silence and 
 in his benignity. The fragrance of the smoking 
 zarfs, however, when the waiter set them down, 
 seemed to touch him to expression. 
 
 "Son," he said, "you are good. There there 
 they were not good." He made a vague mo 
 tion with his hand. 
 
 "On the island?" suggested Arakel. 
 
 "Yes," replied the old man. "On the island." 
 
 So far, so good. But Arakel wondered. 
 
 "Where was the house?" he asked. 
 
 "Oh far," said the old man. "Far. And up 
 there were the pines, and down there was 
 the sea. Far, yes. And they were not good. 
 There was only the little Marie. But she went 
 away. And then I went, too far." 
 
 To which Arakel quickly made answer: 
 
 "Father, come to-night to me. I am alone in 
 the world. I have nothing but an empty house, 
 a solitary garden. Let us share them together !" 
 
 An ordinary old man would have betrayed 
 some excess of emotion, of curiosity, of repug 
 nance. This old man had none. He merely 
 smiled and said : 
 
 "Son, you are good." 
 
 And then he gave himself as in a dream to 
 contemplation of the spectacle which his com 
 panion had hitherto found so engrossing. The 
 latter, however, had now other ideas in mind. 
 
HIS BEATITUDE 183 
 
 After a certain interval he said "Come," and 
 taking the old man s arm he led the way to 
 the main level of the Bridge. They made a 
 curious couple as they walked toward the Stam- 
 boul side the shabby old man and the smart 
 young one. But they were not more curious 
 than many another pair that stumbled across 
 that hot highway; nor, perhaps, was their 
 errand so strange as that of the first man to 
 whom they might have spoken. 
 
 Yet they did speak to a man or Arakel did. 
 It was indeed to Levon, the vendor of shoe 
 strings, whom we have already seen. This per 
 sonage was apparently more interested in the 
 companion than in the patronage of Arakel. 
 For it was the latter who, after fingering at his 
 leisure in the sheaf of laces, spoke first. 
 
 "So I have found," he said, "exactly what I 
 wanted. They told me it didn t exist, but I told 
 them it did!" 
 
 "Oh, yes!" exclaimed Levon, coming back 
 with a start : "These !" and he pulled out a pair 
 of laces. He could not, however, keep his eyes 
 off the old man. 
 
 That gentle person, unmoved by the flow of 
 the bizarre world about him, smiled without 
 eagerness and without ennui. Levon shifted 
 under it, and Arakel, with his superior knowl 
 edge, smiled as well. 
 
184 HIS BEATITUDE 
 
 "Yes," he said, "those. And now I am going 
 home. When you have found what you want, 
 why stay out longer ? And then, too, it is better 
 not to let too many people see. You might 
 lose it." 
 
 With which he led the way to the landing of 
 the Bosphorus boats. 
 
 Ill 
 
 If the solitary garden to which Arakel had 
 referred was made less solitary by the arrival 
 of an inmate, it must be said that, on the other 
 hand, the number of habitues at the Bridge was 
 diminished by three. But it is likely enough that 
 the addition made more difference in the one 
 than did the decrease to the other. Since the 
 days of the Pasha who had loved his narrow 
 strip of hillside enough to flatten his house into 
 a long corridor against the rising slope, I think 
 no one had so appreciated that terrace of many 
 trees as our old man. He continued to have no 
 words. He merely smiled, as if his heart were 
 full of patience and peace. So Arakel, while 
 treating him with unfailing deference, soon left 
 him to wander by himself under the tragic 
 cedars of Lebanon and the cheerful copper 
 beeches which the Pasha had taught to live in 
 strange conjunction before the rambling house. 
 
 It was not long before the old man found 
 
HIS BEATITUDE 05 
 
 what the Pasha had known when he created 
 this little paradise that the most wonderful 
 thing about it was the view. There was a cer 
 tain rose arbour on the edge of the terrace 
 where he would spend the long hot days, looking 
 down as from a box at the play, upon the most 
 romantic scene in the world. This was a bit of 
 the Bosphorus, framed between a round crenel 
 lated tower and a steep stairway of red roofs. 
 From the lane at the bottom of the terrace wall 
 the hill fell ^way so suddenly that the won 
 derful swe^p of blue lay almost under the old 
 man s eyes. The- colour of it alone was better 
 than breakfast. But it was constantly overshot 
 by thip^0f passage : by great steamers hurry 
 ing rip/the business of the JBlack Sea; by the 
 side^wheelers of the Bosphopds, with their 
 pf^oaigies of smoke and foa5^xb^sailing ships 
 of the strangest build/^i^might have come 
 from Colchis and lQ]m^4nd probably did; by 
 the light Caiques slipping merrily down the 
 Devil s H^rent #r laboriously making their way 
 against it. Aria the Lost Souls ! I do not know 
 how they / #gm*je in the Debretts of Science, 
 those fleet s^Swallows ; but they forever 
 skimmed up and down like clouds on the surface 
 of the water, as if they filled the darker part in 
 the purpose of the play. 
 
 All these things made a ceaseless web of cir- 
 
186 HIS BEATITUDE 
 
 cumstance on the shining blue floor between 
 the ivied tower and the stair of climbing roofs, 
 and the old man spent his days in watching. 
 Smiling alone in his arbour on the hill, as if 
 everything were wonderful to him, one could not 
 have told whether he ever thought of his island, 
 and of the people who were not good, and of the 
 pines that were up and the sea that was down. 
 One could not even have told which of the 
 changing panoramas of the day he found most 
 wonderful. It might have been the early morn 
 ing piece, when everything was so limpid that 
 the water-side palace in the green background 
 of Asian hills was cut of pearl. It might have 
 been the late afternoon piece, when in the magic 
 of a hidden sun the same palace burned with 
 opaline fire. It might have been the night 
 piece, when there was nothing to hear in the 
 silence but the rush of the Devil s Current 
 and when, out of the vague shadow beyond, 
 a faint carcanet of lights glimmered like 
 gold beads in the dusk. To him it was all won 
 derful. 
 
 There did come a day, however, when some 
 thing was more wonderful than anything else. 
 I have spoken of a lane that skirted the retain 
 ing wall of the garden. There street vendors 
 would pass on their way from one village to 
 another, prodding their donkeys through the 
 
HIS BEATITUDE 187 
 
 sun and crying picturesque cries. Or sheep 
 would tumble by, panting between a small boy 
 and a large dog. Or sometimes people of more 
 leisurely sort would stroll past and would raise 
 their eyes upon the hanging masonry to where 
 the white old man sat in his arbour above the 
 world. And he would smile at them, so that 
 the blackest of them could not help smiling 
 back. At best, though, it was no better than a 
 deserted by-way. So that when one morning 
 at the end of the summer a child capered up in 
 her white dress and white bonnet, followed by a 
 somewhat breathless nurse, it was something 
 new to look at and smile at. And even before 
 the old man s train of association could rise to 
 consciousness she piped : 
 
 "AY ! A i ! Ai ! When did you come ?" 
 
 The old man gave a start. 
 
 "The little Marie!" he cried. "Come!" 
 
 "You come !" she shrilled. "You come ! The 
 wall is too high ! Jump !" 
 
 She stood on tiptoe below him, with her little 
 arms in the air. 
 
 The old man rose as if he intended to do what 
 the child said. Then, after standing at the 
 edge of the parapet, looking down, he walked 
 back and forth in his trouble. 
 
 "The little Marie ! The little Marie !" he kept 
 repeating. 
 
188 HIS BEATITUDE 
 
 Just then Arakel appeared on the walk lead 
 ing from the house. 
 
 "Have you lost something, father?" he asked. 
 "Can I help you?" 
 
 "Yes," said the old man. "The little Marie !" 
 And he pointed down to the lane. 
 
 "Come ! Come !" screamed the child below the 
 wall, in her eagerness. 
 
 Hearing her, Arakel remained where he stood. 
 
 "Who is that?" he inquired, with more of 
 sharpness than he had ever shown before. 
 
 "The little Marie," answered the old man. 
 "She calls." 
 
 "Ah!" And Arakel remembered the island. 
 Then he said firmly: "Come into the house, 
 please, father." 
 
 "But the little Marie !" faltered the old man. 
 
 "Yes, I know," smiled Arakel. "Come!" 
 
 The old man turned and waved his hand. 
 
 "I am coming !" he said. "Wait, little Marie !" 
 
 But the little Marie waited in vain. 
 
 IV 
 
 That night there came at the door a great 
 ring which raised slow-dying echoes in the 
 sleeping house. Arakel sent back to bed the 
 cowering servant who fumbled at an upper case 
 ment, and went down himself. Apparently, 
 however, he was not without expectation of 
 
HIS BEATITUDE 189 
 
 some such visit. For to the man whom he let 
 in he uttered merely: 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 "He is dead at last!" announced the other. 
 "I saw him myself an hour ago, lying high 
 among his vestments and candles, like a rag on 
 a rose-bush." 
 
 "It was time!" commented Arakel. "When 
 will they bury him ?" 
 
 "Soon," replied Minas. "It is summer, you 
 know." 
 
 "Then the appointment will be soon," said 
 Arakel. "I began to think we had picked a plum 
 for a peach. If this old " 
 
 A look from Minas made him turn around. 
 There in a doorway stood the old man, white 
 and strange in his disordered array. He stared 
 confusedly, blinking a little at the candle held 
 by Arakel. 
 
 "What are you doing here?" demanded that 
 personage with considerable sternness. 
 
 "I heard the bell I don t sleep, you know 
 I am old I have seen many things. They come 
 and go before my eyes so." He waved his 
 
 hand before his face. "I heard the bell I 
 
 thought The little Marie " 
 
 Arakel met this silently. Then he went to 
 the old man, took his hand, knelt, and said 
 slowly, looking up into his faded eyes: 
 
190 HIS BEATITUDE 
 
 "No. It is not the little Marie. It is this gen 
 tleman, Baron Minas. He is come to tell us that 
 His Beatitude the Patriarch Hampartsoun is 
 dead, and that you have been chosen to take his 
 place." 
 
 "Dead?" uttered the old man, looking about 
 uncertainly. "I Dead ?" 
 
 "No, father," replied Arakel, solemnly kiss 
 ing the hand he held. "It is you who are now 
 Patriarch of Constantinople." 
 
 Upon which he rose and made a sign to Minas. 
 The latter knelt in turn before the old man, 
 kissed his unwilling hand, and said : 
 
 "Your Beatitude, give me the blessing of 
 God." 
 
 The old man blinked again in the candle-light. 
 
 "I I think I will go to bed," he stammered. 
 
 At this Minas rose hastily and turned away. 
 Arakel, however, immediately spoke: 
 
 "That is right, your Beatitude. You must 
 rest while you can, for weary days await us." 
 
 V 
 
 There was truth in what Arakel had said. He 
 announced that they would have now to move 
 into town, and a change came upon the house on 
 the hill. The long rooms, bare as they were, 
 were quickly made barer still; the halls were 
 made impassable by boxes ; the very garden was 
 
HIS BEATITUDE 191 
 
 despoiled. The old man saw his little world dis 
 mantled under his eyes its peace shattered by 
 the fury of hammers and porters, its comfort 
 buried in the depths of packing-cases. But the 
 days were not many before Arakel decreed that 
 it was time to go. 
 
 If the old man was bewildered by the fa 
 tiguing strangeness of these events, he still 
 found it possible to smile albeit somewhat 
 wanly. And when the last moment came, the 
 sharpness of it was turned by the novelty of 
 what happened. For he was dressed in a long 
 black robe with flowing sleeves, upon his head 
 was set the brimless pointed cylinder of the 
 Armenian Church, about his neck was hung a 
 chain of gold, and over his shrunken finger was 
 slipped a great ring. Then a sedan chair was 
 brought, and four sturdy porters carried him 
 lightly away. He made a wonderful figure as 
 they went down the breakneck cobblestones to 
 the water the stately old man in his black and 
 white and gold. And perhaps a certain childish 
 consciousness of it, an excitement of new im 
 pressions, made it easier for him to leave the 
 garden and the arbour. At all events it was a 
 great thing to get into the three-oared caique 
 that waited at the bottom of the hill, to be at 
 last a part of the busy play which he had 
 watched so long from afar. The presence of a 
 
192 HIS BEATITUDE 
 
 stranger in the boat, whom Arakel called Levon, 
 awed him a little at first. But he soon forgot 
 everything in the pleasure of slipping down the 
 Bosphorus on mid-current, with the gardened 
 hills on each side runnning by like pictures in a 
 dream. 
 
 The dream came to an end at Top Haneh, 
 where they swung inshore. There two victorias 
 were waiting on the quay, and a brilliant red- 
 and-gold kavass came ceremoniously forward to 
 help them from the boat. Perhaps it was be 
 cause he recognized the visitant of some nights 
 before that the old man made less of having his 
 hand kissed. But he was accustomed now to 
 marvels, so that when he was put alone in the 
 first carriage, with Minas on the box, he merely 
 wore his patient smile as of old. Then the little 
 cortege climbed the long hill to the Grande Rue 
 de Pera, and clattered splendidly to the door of 
 an establishment not far from Galata Serai. 
 
 The old man and the door-boy had each a 
 moment for admiration. The old man had 
 never seen anything so magnificent as the em 
 blazonments to him perfectly unintelligible 
 that covered the great windows: "Christaki 
 Freres, Orfevrerie et Joaillerie, Fournisseurs de 
 S.M.I, le Sultan." As for the door-boy, he was 
 accustomed to equipages as smart, and he had 
 a particular salaam for certain diaphanous bun- 
 
HIS BEATITUDE 193 
 
 dies of beauty that came in behind the Palace 
 eunuchs; but he now decided that here was a 
 new occasion for that salaam. So when the 
 kavass held the carriage door and Arakel offered 
 the old man his arm, the boy threw open his 
 domain with an unction never to be surpassed. 
 And perhaps his respect was only deepened by 
 Minas s cold refusal, after Levon had humbly 
 followed the others, to entertain any relation 
 whatsoever. 
 
 It must not be supposed that the Christaki 
 Freres were oblivious to what was going on at 
 their door. Indeed, one of them who happened 
 at that moment to be there, glided forward to 
 meet these correct personages, and immediately 
 conducted them into his small private cabi 
 net. It had the air of a large jewel box, be 
 ing completely lined with red velvet. Arakel, 
 after the old man had been solemnly seated 
 in a big armchair and Levon had assumed 
 the post of inferiority near the door, confi 
 dentially approached Monsieur Christaki and 
 bestowed upon him a visiting card of portentous 
 size. 
 
 "I have the honour," he said, "to accompany 
 His Beatitude Innocent I, the new Armenian 
 Patriarch." 
 
 Monsieur Christaki bowed so low as almost to 
 sweep the carpet with his forelock, and insisted 
 
194 HIS BEATITUDE 
 
 upon kissing the Patriarchal hand. Which in a 
 Greek was indeed significant of an admirable 
 tolerance, for he could not be supposed to enter 
 tain the deepest respect for the head of a schis 
 matic faith. Arakel then drew him apart and 
 laid before him the object of their call. 
 
 "Before giving an order," he said, "I must 
 particularly request that you maintain perfect 
 silence about anything which we may ask you 
 to do. I should let you know that we have 
 selected your house simply because we judged 
 that your discretion would be quite equal to 
 your resources, taste, and skill." 
 
 Monsieur Christaki intimated that he was 
 profoundly sensible of the honour conferred 
 upon his house, and that he would rather suf 
 fer bankruptcy a thousand times than give 
 occasion for shaking such confidence. Arakel 
 then went on : 
 
 "In assuming the affairs of the Patriarchate 
 His Beatitude has made a painful discovery. 
 He has found that the treasury has been ran 
 sacked, that certain objects are missing, and 
 that from the most valuable of our antique 
 regalia the stones are" Arakel lowered his 
 voice "gone ! Whether it happened during the 
 lifetime of the late Patriarch, or during the 
 interregnum ensuing upon his death, there has 
 been no time, it may never be possible, to deter- 
 
HIS BEATITUDE 195 
 
 mine. But His Beatitude is to be installed 
 within the month, and, naturally, he is gravely 
 concerned for the honour of the church should 
 these losses become known." At this they both 
 glanced toward the old man, who was diffusing 
 in the small bright place the benediction of his 
 smile. "Accordingly he proposes," continued 
 Arakel, "to make good the loss as best he can 
 out of his private means. Fortunately they are 
 adequate." 
 
 Again Monsieur Christaki glanced at the old 
 man, this time in greater admiration than 
 before. 4 
 
 "What noble self-sacrifice!" he exclaimed. 
 
 "Eh, these men of the church!" smiled 
 Arakel. "They, unlike ourselves, think only of 
 laying up treasures in heaven!" 
 
 "You may count upon our discretion!" de 
 clared Monsieur Christaki feelingly. "Will it be 
 a goldsmith s work that you will require, or 
 jewellery?" 
 
 "Chiefly jewellery," replied Arakel. "A con 
 siderable number of unset gems. And the work, 
 you understand, will have to be done in His 
 Beatitude s apartments, under his own super 
 vision. With despatch also. We shall wish to 
 begin to-morrow morning. What we will do 
 now will be to select the stones from which the 
 losses may be repaired. Of course you will have 
 
196 HIS BEATITUDE 
 
 ample security to cover their value until the 
 work is done and the price paid." 
 
 " Par exemple!" burst out Monsieur Christaki. 
 "Do not mention security before that face!" 
 He waved his hand toward the wonderful old 
 man. "What is it you wish to see ? Diamonds ? 
 Rubies? Emeralds? Everything?" And in 
 the assenting smile of Arakel he approached 
 one of the red velvet walls, which proved to con 
 ceal the door of a safe. After opening this he 
 drew up before His Beatitude a small table, 
 upon which were laid in succession many trays 
 and cases of glittering things. 
 
 It was Arakel who made most of the selec 
 tion, describing as he did so the priceless relics 
 of Byzantine and even of earlier times which 
 had been so ruthlessly abstracted or defaced. 
 His Beatitude, however, was frequently ap 
 pealed to, and was skilfully made to exercise 
 his choice among the shining treasure scattered 
 before him. The decision, it must be said, 
 usually rested upon the more visible of the 
 precious objects displayed, and never failed to 
 elicit from Monsieur Christaki the warmest 
 eulogies upon His Beatitude s taste. So at last 
 a prodigious number of little boxes were set 
 aside. 
 
 "Now," said Arakel, "to show how business 
 like we can be in the church !" But after start- 
 
HIS BEATITUDE 197 
 
 ing to unbutton his frock coat he suddenly put 
 his hand to his hair, looking first at His Beati 
 tude and then at the jeweller. "I meant to stop 
 at the bank first, but I forgot it. We have just 
 come, you know, from our audience at the 
 Sublime Porte." 
 
 "My dear sir!" cried the jeweller, "do you 
 insult me? Here! Take your jewels ! Go!" 
 
 He was quite purple with protest. 
 
 Arakel laughed. 
 
 "Be careful !" he said. "We might take you 
 at your word. But I have it. I would ask you 
 to send some one with us, but I am afraid His 
 Beatitude is a little fatigued after his hard day. 
 So if he will excuse me a moment and if you will 
 permit him to rest here until I return, I think I 
 will step around to the bank. Levon, call the 
 kavass" Turning back to the jeweller he 
 added : A priceless servant ! It may save you 
 a little uneasiness if we take them now." 
 
 Monsieur Christaki scorned to consider His 
 Beatitude in the light of security. 
 
 "The bank will be there another day!" he 
 said. "If His Beatitude wishes to return home 
 at once " 
 
 "On the contrary," put in Arakel at once, "I 
 am sure His Beatitude would prefer a moment 
 of repose. If you could let him lie down here 
 until " 
 
198 HIS BEATITUDE 
 
 "Certainly! Certainly!" cried the jeweller. 
 "If he will deign to endure our meagre accom 
 modations !" 
 
 And he pulled forward the billowy red velvet 
 couch. Upon this His Beatitude, divested of 
 the uncomfortable head-dress, was laid unmur 
 muring. As a matter of fact he was fatigued 
 after his hard day, and his eyes closed a mo 
 ment in the contentment of relaxation. The 
 four for Levon had come back with Minas 
 regarded in silence the extraordinary picture he 
 made. Then Arakel turned to the jeweller: 
 
 "I commend him to you, Monsieur Christaki. 
 You will find him of a tractability !" 
 
 At this the old man opened his eyes. 
 
 "Son," he asked, "do you go?" 
 
 "Yes, father," answered Arakel, "I go. But 
 sleep until I come. Good-bye." 
 
 The old man smiled, a little wearily. They 
 looked at him for another moment of silence. 
 Then they left him alone. 
 
 VI 
 
 His Beatitude came slowly to consciousness 
 with the impression of being under alien eyes. 
 He had been dreaming, and the little red room 
 was as strange to him as the countenance of 
 Monsieur Christaki. 
 
 "I beg His Beatitude s pardon if I have dis- 
 
HIS BEATITUDE 199 
 
 turbed him !" uttered that worthy with an anx 
 ious smile. "The coachman wishes to know 
 
 He is still waiting The other coachman 
 
 has brought a message which I do not quite 
 
 understand May I accompany you to the 
 
 Patriarchate?" 
 
 "The Patriarchate?" asked the old man 
 vaguely. 
 
 "Yes. The coachman doesn t seem to be sure 
 where he was to take you. You have taken pos 
 session, have you not?" 
 
 The old man held a brief inner examination. 
 Then he announced judicially: 
 
 "Son, I do not know." 
 
 "You don t know !" cried the uneasy jeweller. 
 "Why, where did you start from this after 
 noon?" 
 
 His Beatitude considered a moment. 
 
 "With Baron Arakel," he replied, and he 
 looked around him as if to discover the where 
 abouts of that personage. 
 
 "No, he is not here !" exclaimed the jeweller. 
 "He said he would be back in twenty minutes, 
 and he has been gone three hours. But where 
 did he bring you from this afternoon ?" 
 
 Again His Beatitude considered. 
 
 "It was up," he answered, lifting his hand. 
 "Up on the hill. Below was water. And I saw 
 the little Marie !" he added triumphantly. 
 
200 HIS BEATITUDE 
 
 "The little Marie!" burst out the distracted 
 jeweller. "I thought it was the Grand Vizier. 
 Excuse me a moment while I speak to the coach 
 man." 
 
 Bowing himself out he hurried to the door. 
 It was as he said. The other coachman had 
 returned and seemed to be having some discus 
 sion with the one who had waited. 
 
 "Look at me!" called the jeweller imperi 
 ously. 
 
 Both men turned. 
 
 "Where did you bring these effendis from 
 this afternoon ?" 
 
 "From Top Haneh, Effendim" they answered 
 in concert. 
 
 "Top Haneh, eh? And what street?" 
 
 "From the quay," they chorused again. "They 
 came in a boat." 
 
 "In a boat!" The jeweller s heart became as 
 lead within him. But he looked at the new 
 comer. "And where did you drive the three 
 young ones from here? The two and the 
 kavass ?" 
 
 "First they said the Ottoman Bank," replied 
 the man, "but then they changed their minds 
 and told me to drive down to the Galata 
 Quay " 
 
 "The quay!" cried Monsieur Christaki, turn 
 ing pale. 
 
HIS BEATITUDE 201 
 
 "Yes. They said they had to catch a steamer." 
 
 "A steamer!" almost shrieked the jeweller. 
 "What steamer?" 
 
 The man shrugged his shoulders. 
 
 "Who knows? There are a thousand. They 
 went out in a sandal. They told the boatman to 
 row for his soul. But they threw me back a 
 lira!" Rising a moment he reached into his 
 pocket and held up the glittering gold piece with 
 a grin. "I just happened to pass, and Mahmoud 
 here told me that he hasn t got his yet." 
 
 "A-a-ah!" uttered the jeweller slowly, be 
 tween his teeth. Then he wheeled in a flash. "If 
 I don t tear out by the root every hair of that 
 goat s beard of his !" he cried. And he ran back 
 like a tiger into the little red cabinet where lay 
 His Beatitude. 
 
THE PLACE OF MARTYRS 
 
 The secret of the stars, gravitation. 
 The secret of the earth, layers of rock. 
 The secret of the soil, to receive seed. 
 The secret of the seed, the germ. 
 The secret of man, the sower. 
 The secret of woman, the soil. 
 
 My secret : Under a mound that you shall never find. 
 Edgar Lee Masters: SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY. 
 
 SENTIMENTAL, sentimental, my dear lady! 
 It s grossly sentimental, and it isn t much 
 of a story anyhow. Mine never are, you 
 know. They re only notes for other people to 
 make stories out of. And you mustn t think 
 that it has anything to do, except by accident, 
 with the name of the place. 
 
 The place was named for the first Turkish 
 skirmishers who fell in the conquest. It s quite 
 a place, though, isn t it? Of course there are 
 plenty of higher hilltops, looking down on 
 broader lands and bluer seas. But there are 
 not many so picturesquely furnished with 
 ragged cypresses and grey old turbaned stones, 
 from which you may behold two continents 
 202 
 
THE PLACE OF MARTYRS 203 
 
 staring at each other so melodramatically. And 
 I, for one, am acquainted with no hilltop that 
 gives out quite so intricate a sense of life of 
 all the different kinds of people that have lived 
 in the world, of all the fatalities and transfor 
 mations that have befallen them, of the strange 
 singleness in their destinies, and the strange 
 impossibility that they should ever quite die 
 out. Up there is Giant s Mountain, where 
 Jason had such a bad time with King Amycus, 
 and which the Turks have turned into the grave 
 of no less a personage than Joshua the son of 
 Nun. Down there are the hills where Hannibal 
 was buried. I wonder whether it would be any 
 thing to him to know that the castle under our 
 feet was built by a terrible young man who bat 
 tered down what was left of the Roman Empire. 
 A Greek temple of Hermes stood there once. 
 
 Then that bare brown country behind us 
 
 They talk about the Roman campagna. I re 
 member two young men in a compartment talk 
 ing about it one afternoon as we rumbled out of 
 the valley of Umbria. "E magnified, ma me- 
 lanconica" observed the one. "Also the sea 
 renders melancholy," declared the other : "It is 
 the infinite, the unattainable." Yet I don t 
 know why I should laugh at them for being so 
 much more eloquent than two young Americans 
 would have been except that the Roman cam- 
 
204 THE PLACE OF MARTYRS 
 
 pagna, after this one, always seems to me so 
 small and mild, a sort of happy hunting ground 
 for painters and paper-chasers. It was meant 
 to put in a gold frame and hang in a drawing- 
 room. You can t put this campagna into a gold 
 frame. It s too big and too melancholy. Too 
 many horsemen have trampled its fields, cut 
 down its woods, burned its houses, left it each 
 more desolate than the last. But all the horse 
 men of Europe and Asia never quite trampled 
 out some stubborn virtue that persists in it 
 still, that proves itself in chosen lights, at 
 changes of the year. And there are lost slopes 
 and hollows where, among remnants of races 
 and struggling patches of green, the old drama 
 of the earth goes obscurely on. There ! Didn t 
 I tell you I was going to be sentimental ? 
 
 The day I discovered the place, though, I 
 didn t trouble myself much about remnants of 
 races or melancholy campagnas. I had ridden 
 up here on one of those mornings we get oftener 
 with a south wind than otherwise when the 
 sky and the Bosphorus have the light in them 
 they ought to have if the Black Sea were not at 
 our backs. You know that clear, soft, coloured, 
 swimming light. I can t describe it, but it s the 
 light in which Greece and Italy grew up. 
 There s something irresistibly pagan about it. 
 It always makes me forget that anybody but 
 
THE PLACE OF MARTYRS 205 
 
 Jason and Byzas and Xenophon ever had any 
 business here. So when I started to look for a 
 road into that ravine behind us, and stumbled 
 on those white stones you see at the edge of the 
 slope, beyond the threshing floor, I had a 
 momentary impression of what shall I say 
 without being sentimental or callous? Those 
 stones are the Armenian cemetery of the village 
 down by the castle, and they made an incon 
 gruous note in a pagan morning. The Armen 
 ians have always been for me the least sympa 
 thetic of the races here. They have neither the 
 history nor the physical appearance that attract 
 one to some disinherited peoples, and their cen 
 turies of servitude have left not the happiest 
 traces in their character. Then those neglected 
 graves scattered on that burnt slope, unguarded 
 by wall or rail, unshaded by so much as a scrub 
 oak, cut off from sight of house or sea they 
 were like a sudden chill in that lighted summer 
 sunshine. 
 
 However, I left it behind me, leading my 
 horse down a sort of rocky trough that was evi 
 dently a watercourse in time of rain. The high 
 banks on either side were overgrown with scrub 
 oak and bay and those ragged blue flowers with 
 jointed stems, whose name I never remember. 
 Chicory, is it? The trail dropped into a wider 
 one at the bottom of the ravine, where there was 
 
206 THE PLACE OF MARTYRS 
 
 a trickle of water. There were also blackberry 
 bushes in a tangle of honeysuckle and wild rose, 
 and trees of some size. It was a pleasant place 
 on a warm June morning. But I found a pleas- 
 anter one in the hollow just beyond, where three 
 ravines met. A big oak tree stood there, shad 
 ing one bank of the brook. The other bank was 
 the steep side of a hill, out of which from 
 a small brick archway bubbled a spring. 
 Branches of bay and linden hung above it, ferns 
 grew in their shadow, sage-roses dotted the 
 green. You would never have expected so de 
 lightful a spot in so burnt up a country. I tied 
 my horse and sat down under the big oak. This 
 time there was nothing to jar on my mood. 
 There wasn t a house to see or a voice to hear. 
 There were only the trickle of the water, the 
 talk of the birds, the movement of the leaves, 
 the shimmer of the steep slopes in the pagan 
 light. On top of one of them a cypress tapered 
 darkly into the luminous sky. 
 
 As I sat there, the only piece of incongruity, 
 smoking cigarettes and taking in with the 
 sweetness and coolness of the place the sense of 
 that old Greek earth, I became aware of some 
 one looking at me through the leaves of the 
 opposite bank. It might have been a faun, 
 tutelary to the pool or in search of its guardian 
 nymph. At all events, he was a remarkably 
 
THE PLACE OF MARTYRS 207 
 
 good-looking faun. He reminded me of a cer 
 tain little Renaissance bronze, with low-growing 
 curls and a pleasure-loving nose, that beats his 
 cymbals in the Bargello at Florence. If it were 
 a nymph he was looking for, I knew she was as 
 good as lost, because his eyes were the most 
 faun-like part of him of a brown in which 
 warmth and wildness were most perilously 
 mixed. For myself, I was more occupied with 
 his ears, trying to make out in the shadow if 
 they were properly pointed. He obligingly as 
 sisted my investigations by jumping down the 
 bank and asking me in Greek if I had a cigar 
 ette. That might have broken the spell, for 
 who ever heard of fauns smoking to whatever 
 other forms of enjoyment they may have been 
 addicted ? Moreover, sculpture does not present 
 them in ragged blue shirts and nondescript 
 trousers tied in at the waist by an apology for a 
 white girdle. But the faun had so engaging a 
 smile, he displayed such white teeth, his car 
 riage was at once so lithe and so proud, that I 
 could only find him more faun-like than ever. 
 We accordingly entered into relations of some 
 shakiness, my Greek being none too strong. 
 The faun turned out to know Turkish, though, 
 and much better than Greeks usually do. He 
 told me that he worked in the strawberry fields 
 near by. He also informed me that the spring 
 
208 THE PLACE OF MARTYRS 
 
 in the archway was an ayazma, one of the holy 
 wells in which the Levant abounds, dedicated to 
 A i Yanni St. John. I asked him if he were 
 A i Yanni in person. He, smiling, replied that 
 as a matter of fact his name was Yanni, but 
 that for the rest he was no saint. I fear he 
 spoke the truth. Yet how should he have been ? 
 He said that on the day of the saint, later in the 
 summer, people came from everywhere about 
 with candles, with music, with beer, and made 
 merry in the hollow. While there were elements 
 of incongruity in this picture, it only estab 
 lished me in my view of the faun. The custom 
 he described was older, after all, than Chris 
 tianity. I had discovered a Sacred Fount and 
 its tutelary divinity. 
 
 II 
 
 Well, we chatted a while, and then I rode 
 away. But I went back. I took a great fancy 
 to that Sacred Fount and to that faun. There 
 was a pleasant magic about them their having 
 survived, in their secret hollow, so many 
 changes of those barren downs. The fountain 
 must surely be of perpetual youth. It happened 
 that I always returned to it on the same sort of 
 day. When I got up in the morning and saw a 
 Mediterranean light, I thought of the Sacred 
 Fount. I doubted whether I should find any- 
 
THE PLACE OF MARTYRS 209 
 
 thing there on an ordinary day. As it was, I 
 rarely failed to find the faun perhaps through 
 his willingness to receive human offerings of 
 tobacco. There were times, however, when I 
 wondered what he was up to. He seemed to 
 spend his days in an elegant leisure, unperturbed 
 by the passing of the season and the work of 
 the fields in which he had claimed a share. I 
 asked myself if some hamadryad were hidden 
 among the trees, who fled at my approach and 
 reappeared when I was gone. 
 
 It was finally given me to have light on the 
 hamadryad. Yanni inquired of me one day if I 
 could read. Upon my confessing that I could, 
 he produced a scrap of crumpled paper, which 
 he handed to me with some solemnity. I could 
 scarcely make out the scrawling on it. I finally 
 announced that the words were in Greek, and 
 therefore to me unintelligible. "But if you can 
 
 read " objected Yanni. He evidently 
 
 doubted my possession of the accomplishment I 
 had boasted. I presume he thought that the 
 language of writing was one, whatever the dia 
 lect written. I only wish it were so. However, 
 we eventually succeeded in picking out between 
 us the contents of the letter for such it was 
 I pronouncing such vocables as I seemed to see 
 on the paper, and Yanni correcting me out of 
 his superior knowledge. 
 
210 THE PLACE OF MARTYRS 
 
 The letter, I concluded, was from a hama 
 dryad, and one in distress. "My heart," it ran, 
 "come once more. No one will hurt you. I am 
 in Koum Kapou." I didn t quite like that of her 
 being in Koum Kapou. Koum Kapou is a 
 fishy quarter on the south side of Stamboul, 
 where the Armenian Patriarch lives. What 
 should a hamadryad be doing there of all 
 places ? I looked at the faun, by way of finding 
 out. As for him, he exclaimed with a sigh : 
 
 "These are the things a man must suffer!" 
 
 I was inclined to smile. Yanni looked as if he 
 might, at a stretch, be nineteen. 
 
 "Well, are you going?" I threw out. 
 
 I remember he glanced behind him, in the 
 quick way he had, before he spoke : 
 
 "It may be a trick." 
 
 "At least go and see," I said. "Let the fault 
 be on the other side, if there is one." I always 
 abound in specious sentiments at moments of 
 indecision. 
 
 He considered it doubtfully. "Vallah! I don t 
 know what to do," he finally uttered. 
 
 "But what if she should really need you?" I 
 asked. "What if she should be ill ?" 
 
 The hamadryad would have forgiven him 
 anything in the world if she had seen his eyes 
 when he answered me : 
 
 "She is. And the fault is mine." 
 
THE PLACE OF MARTYRS 211 
 
 He took his tobacco-box out of his girdle and 
 began rolling a cigarette. There was an ex 
 treme pliability about his crouching figure that 
 gave him more than ever the look of a wood 
 creature, ready to spring away at a sound. He 
 might have been surprised to know that the 
 stare I bestowed upon him was not without 
 envy. He was evidently one of the favoured 
 people to whom things happen. I have never 
 made up my mind just how they differ from the 
 rest of us. It isn t altogether a matter of looks. 
 There are pimply ladies, there are hatchet-faced 
 young gentlemen, who only have to put their 
 nose out of the door to enter into a crucial rela 
 tion with the first person they see. They are 
 the people to whom the world belongs. They 
 are on the inside, so to speak. We others are on 
 the outside. We sit by and watch the hares 
 that they have started. I, for example, might 
 go to and fro a hundred years without entering 
 into a crucial relation with a cat. All I know is 
 that there is a wireless telegraphy going on 
 about me, of which I haven t the code. Perhaps 
 that is why I have such an inordinate curiosity 
 about people s stories. They are never very ex 
 traordinary, to be sure. When you have heard 
 one or when you have heard three : how many 
 possible stories did that Frenchman say there 
 are? you have heard the rest. But I don t 
 
212 THE PLACE OF MARTYRS 
 
 know there are always variations, of charac 
 ter, of circumstance, that make each a little 
 different from the last. 
 
 If I hoped to hear the story of my faun, how 
 ever, I was disappointed. Just at the wrong 
 moment there appeared an old man who evi 
 dently desired speech of him. Without being 
 exactly a humpback, the old man s shoulders 
 looked as if he had never tried to stand up 
 straight till that moment ; and he had a cataract 
 in one eye. He also carried a bundle done up in 
 a painted handkerchief. Although he saluted 
 me with no lack of respect, I felt myself de trop. 
 I therefore took my leave. 
 
 Ill 
 
 I meant to go back the next day. I was rather 
 curious about my mysterious young man, with 
 his old gentlemen and young ladies. But the 
 sun wasn t right, and affairs kept me busy. In 
 fact, ten days or a fortnight passed before I had 
 another pagan day. What a day it was, too! 
 The crickets had come by that time. Do you 
 like crickets ? Some people don t, but they make 
 me rather dotty. All the drowsiness and an 
 tiquity of summer is in them. They were like 
 the sound of the clear warm light as I rode over 
 the hills. But I found no faun. I concluded 
 that he must have gone to Koum Kapou. So, 
 
THE PLACE OF MARTYRS 213 
 
 after drinking from the Sacred Fount and leav 
 ing a votive box of tobacco beside it, I rode on 
 up here. 
 
 I came by another way I had discovered, 
 a paved lane arched with bay-trees, through 
 which you look down into the valley below. It 
 comes out there, to the right of the Armenian 
 cemetery. As I got near the top I heard a 
 curious sound. It was a kind of chanting that 
 rose and fell in the distance. When I was clear 
 of the trees I made out a procession winding up 
 the hill from the village. My first impression 
 of moving white and colour made me think of 
 the faun. Should he not be watching among 
 the trees while youths and maidens, chanting, 
 white-robed and chaplet-crowned, led some sac 
 rificial creature through the pagan morning to 
 some sacred height? But I soon saw how dif 
 ferent a procession was this. A boy, in a sort 
 of buff surplice with a red cape, led it, carrying 
 a tall silver cross. Two other boys, a little be 
 hind him, carried what might have been silver 
 pyxes at the end of long staves. They were fol 
 lowed by others still in white, singing, with 
 censers and lighted candles. You don t know 
 how strange that candle-light looked on such a 
 morning. Then, among a crowd of bearers in 
 different coloured capes, I saw a bier covered 
 with a red pall. The bier was partly covered, 
 
214 THE PLACE OF MARTYRS 
 
 that is. You know how they do. At one end 
 was an uncovered pillow, and on the pillow an 
 uncovered head jarred with the steps of the 
 bearers, while two dreadfully white hands were 
 clasped outside of the red pall. The head was 
 that of a young girl, with a great mass of black 
 hair, who should never have been carried up the 
 hill like that, while crickets sang under such a 
 summer sun. I wondered what could have 
 brought her to the Place of Martyrs. After her 
 came priests in black robes and white em 
 broidered chasubles. I recognized them for 
 Armenians by their brimless pointed hats of 
 black or purple. One of them, with a long white 
 beard, wore a black veil over his hat and carried 
 a silver crosier. They were all chanting and 
 swinging censers. 
 
 They came on up the hill, chanting, chanting, 
 passed me so close that my horse jumped, and 
 climbed the last bit of slope to the Armenian 
 cemetery. There I saw them stop, put down 
 the bier, take off the pall, lift the body, and drop 
 it out of sight like that, without any covering. 
 It was horrible that young girl, on such a 
 
 summer morning I turned away and came 
 
 up here. 
 
 It was of the nature of the faun that I sud 
 denly found him beside me. By that time the 
 people were gone. He squatted on his heels, as 
 
THE PLACE OF MARTYRS 215 
 
 usual, and as usual I handed him my cigarette- 
 case. But I realized that my paganism had 
 somewhat cooled. 
 
 "Well, did you go to Koum Kapou?" I asked, 
 glad to escape from the oppression of what I 
 had just seen. 
 
 "No," he replied gravely, after a pause. "How 
 did I know what they would do ?" 
 
 "Why, what could they have done ?" 
 
 "They might have made me an Armenian," 
 answered Yanni. 
 
 The word, and the hint of a smile drawn by 
 my look, made me conscious of something that 
 had happened inside of me. I remembered the 
 first time I came here, how those gravestones 
 and their Armenian letters jarred on my pagan 
 morning. This time I don t know ; I pre 
 sume it had never occurred to me before that 
 one may have inglorious ancestors and a bul 
 bous nose, and yet be subject to this queer 
 adventure of life. The pitifulness of what I 
 had seen somehow included the rest of those 
 abandoned graves. These old boys around us 
 here had as much to compensate them as any 
 body could for being bundled out of a warm and 
 coloured world. They belonged to a great race. 
 They died in a conquering cause. They laid 
 up for themselves crowns of martyrdom for 
 falling in holy war against the infidel. And 
 
216 THE PLACE OF MARTYRS 
 
 they lie here now in their promised land, in 
 sight of the continent that gave them birth, on 
 one of the most romantic hilltops in Europe. 
 But those other Asiatics, to whom no land ever 
 was or ever may be promised, lie there in the 
 face of that desolate campagna, in soil un 
 friendly whether Greek, Roman, or Turkish, in 
 all the ignominy and defeat of death. They 
 made me think of a phrase in the Koran : "He 
 who dies in a strange land dies the death of the 
 martyrs." 
 
 "How could they make you an Armenian?" 
 I asked at last. I suppose he meant that they 
 wanted him to change the Orthodox for the 
 Gregorian creed. 
 
 "They were very angry. They went to my 
 father, they took me to the Armenian priest, I 
 don t know what they didn t do. That was why 
 I went to A i Yanni. I have been there four 
 months, hiding. My father brought me food 
 sometimes that old man you saw. I have 
 never been away except at night. They might 
 have killed me." 
 
 "But why?" I persisted, beginning to be in 
 terested in my faun again. 
 
 "Because because of that girl you saw them 
 take there," he replied, pointing to the Ar 
 menian cemetery. "I was apprentice to her 
 father. He is a shoemaker in the village. The 
 
THE PLACE OF MARTYRS 217 
 
 shop is downstairs, upstairs they live. I lived 
 there too. And she she became my friend." 
 He drew meditatively at his cigarette. I could 
 see that it would be easy for him and that 
 young girl with the black hair to become 
 "friends," and why they had left her at the 
 Place of Martyrs. "How does one know that 
 things will end like that?" he went on. "I 
 would have married her, but they said I must 
 first become an Armenian." 
 
 I must have stared ridiculously at that young 
 man to whom things happened. I realized that 
 he was telling me a story. It was the oldest and 
 commonest of stories; and yet, in this place, 
 among these people, it had a colour of its own. 
 One of those chaps who scribble might have 
 made quite a thing out of it, with all the frills 
 and stuff they put in. He didn t put in enough 
 to suit me. I had to put them in for myself, 
 while he sat smoking and staring down into the 
 village where he hadn t dared to go for four 
 months. There was such a look in his eyes, too. 
 It made me forgive him for being so abomin 
 able, see him only as a piece of life, of blindness 
 and fatality. It even made me feel a queer 
 respect for him, a cobbler s apprentice quel- 
 conque the respect of the spectator for the 
 actor. 
 
 Then I saw the shadow fade out of his look. 
 He snapped away the stub of his cigarette, 
 
218 THE PLACE OF MARTYRS 
 
 stood up, and stretched himself like an animal 
 let out of a cage. He was all faun again as he 
 smiled down at me, with his hands behind his 
 head young, wild, handsome, irresponsible. 
 "That also has passed !" he exclaimed. 
 
UNDER THE ARCH 
 
 It was ridiculous, and yet Well, it is a rat trap, and 
 you, madam and sir and all of us, are in it. 
 
 0. Henry: THE VOICE OF THE CITY. 
 
 EVERY now and then a big warm drop 
 would splash down on me from the dome. 
 It was right over me, the dome, irregu 
 larly pierced by translucent bull s-eyes. From 
 them a greenish light wavered through the haze 
 of steam. It gave one a curious sensation of 
 being out of the world, under the sea. A little 
 imagination made mermen out of the figures 
 about me, with their nude torsos tailing off 
 into striped red towels. It amused me to won 
 der what my Puritan forbears would have made 
 of such an underworld, and whether I owed it 
 to their hard New England winters that the 
 heat of the marble crept so deliciously through 
 my nomad skin. That reminded me of some 
 one in the Thousand Nights and One Night 
 not as we read them in our school days, but as 
 Dr. J. C. Mardrus has translated them in six 
 teen big French volumes who made a poem of 
 
 219 
 
220 UNDER THE ARCH 
 
 that world, and keeps breaking out into an 
 ecstatic "0 hammam!" It struck me that a 
 Debussy could find an Apres Midi d un Bai- 
 gneur in the hollow echoes, just this side of 
 music, that rippled and rumbled through the 
 place -the different-keyed splashings of water, 
 the ring of metal bath bowls, the duller click- 
 clack of wooden clogs on marble, the rise and 
 fall of voices, punctuated occasionally by the 
 muffled slam of a door. 
 
 In an alcove near me a young man was sing 
 ing. Every other phrase of his song began with 
 "Aman! Aman!" which you must understand 
 as meaning something between Alas ! and Have 
 mercy ! I could see no more of him than a dark 
 poll and a muscular brown shoulder, by reason 
 of a panel of Byzantine sculpture that closed 
 the end of the low marble dais on which he sat. 
 The floor of his alcove, too, was inlaid with 
 coloured marble in a Byzantine pattern of in 
 terlaced garlands. Who knew out of what 
 Greek church they came, long ago? And 
 there a Turkish peasant or so it pleased me 
 to fancy him sat singing one of those end 
 less old unhappy love songs of Asia, know 
 ing no more of Byzantines and their carvings 
 than if his fathers had never knocked over 
 a Byzantine empire. "Aman! Aman!" he 
 sang, sending the strangest reverberations 
 
UNDER THE ARCH 221 
 
 quivering up into the misty green twilight of 
 the dome. 
 
 Presently another young man, wrapped from 
 his waist to his heels in the red towel of rigour, 
 click-clacked across the marble floor, stepped 
 out of his clogs on to the central platform where 
 I lay, knelt beside me, and began to knead my 
 wrists. He was rather a striking-looking young 
 man, not so much because he was tall and well 
 made, as because of two strangely sombre eyes 
 he had, under heavy black brows and a low- 
 growing thatch of black hair. There was some 
 thing vaguely familiar about him, withal. And 
 I noticed that his left arm was tattooed. But 
 what I chiefly noticed was what he began to do 
 to me. Turkish massage is very much like any 
 other massage, except that it goes into refine 
 ments of torture which I have not suffered in 
 Christendom. Starting as mildly as you please, 
 it culminates by removing your vertebrae, one 
 after another, turning them inside out, and 
 replacing them with more or less care. When 
 it is done with more care you feel as if you had 
 just broken the bank at Monte Carlo and were 
 about to take Cleopatra to wife. When it is 
 done with less care you feel as if you had 
 broken your neck and sometimes you have. 
 This particular bathman showed that he hap 
 pened to be an expert in his art. So I let him 
 
222 UNDER THE ARCH 
 
 do his worst, while I closed my eyes and drifted 
 into a state of beatific semi-consciousness. 
 
 When this part of the complicated rite of the 
 bath was at an end, my tellak clapped his hands 
 as a signal thereof, and led the way into one of 
 the alcoves. There, sitting me down on the hot 
 marble step that ran around the three sides and 
 squatting on his heels in front of me, he pro 
 ceeded to put me through the humiliation of 
 peeling. Heavens ! Such rolls of grime as come 
 off one under a bathman s horsehair mitten! 
 And we imagine that we are a cleanly race! 
 The Turks do not share our good opinion of our 
 selves in that regard. They never wash so 
 much as their own little finger in standing 
 water. Consequently in a real Turkish bath 
 there is no such thing as a tub or a pool. There 
 are merely small marble basins set about the 
 walls. Out of the one beside which I sat my 
 bathman dipped a little water now and then with 
 a brass bowl and sluiced away such portions of 
 my anatomy as he had separated from me. 
 
 Up to this time no word had passed between 
 us. But at last he made an overture. 
 
 "Eh, say," he invited me. 
 
 Now that we were forced to sit nose to nose, 
 it seemed to me again that I knew him. Yet if 
 it had been in a bath that I had seen him I 
 surely would have remembered the tattoo on 
 
UNDER THE ARCH 223 
 
 his arm. It was not an anchor or a heart or a 
 butterfly or any other of the devices dearest 
 to the artist in India ink. It looked like writing. 
 
 "What shall I say?" I answered. "What do 
 you want to know ?" 
 
 He stared at me for a moment with an in 
 tensity that my fatuous question did not de 
 serve. Then : 
 
 "Are you from Austria?" he asked. 
 
 It was a query, I must confess, that left me a 
 little cold. I had expected something more in 
 keeping with those melodramatic eyes. I won 
 dered, too, why Turks so often take me for a 
 German, and why I so distinctly fail to be 
 flattered. 
 
 "No," I promptly replied. "I come from much 
 farther away from America." 
 
 "Ah," uttered he, as if disappointed. 
 
 I am always seeing myself act the Fat Young 
 Man to other people s Will o the Mill, and am 
 almost always saddened by their failure to play 
 up to my cue. I can, however, play up to theirs. 
 
 "Where is your country?" I inquired, know 
 ing perfectly well beforehand what he would 
 answer. 
 
 "I come from the Black Sea," he said "from 
 Kastambol." 
 
 "From Kastambol !" I exclaimed, beginning to 
 cheer up again. I hadn t known beforehand 
 
224 UNDER THE ARCH 
 
 what he would answer, after all; for I had 
 known that he would answer Sivas, All bath- 
 men do, with such tiresome unanimity that I 
 have about given up that line of conversation. 
 "I have heard that there is an old castle there," 
 I went on. "Is it true ?" 
 
 "Yes. It is from the time of the Genoese." 
 The Turks, despising their Greek subjects, at 
 tribute everything that antedates their own era 
 to Genoa the Superb. "But I have never seen 
 it. I am not from the city. I am from a village 
 outside." 
 
 So far so good. But what next? There was 
 something about this black-browed young man 
 that made me curious concerning that vague 
 village of his. What surgery or magic, how 
 ever, could get anything out of him ? I am not, 
 alas, of those gifted personalities who turn in 
 side out at will their most casual acquaintances. 
 On the contrary, people I have known all my life 
 daily become for me darker mysteries. Yet I 
 thought I could tell things about my village, and 
 its houses that it would take you a day to walk 
 to the top of, and its machines for shooting you 
 there, and its little black contrivances for talk 
 ing to people you can t see, and its endless 
 underground rabbit holes, that would sound 
 more Arabian than any night those sombre eyes 
 ever stared at. 
 
UNDER THE ARCH 225 
 
 "In my country," he suddenly volunteered out 
 of a clear sky, "there is a lake. And in the lake 
 there is an island. And on the island there is a 
 tree. And under the tree there is a hole. And 
 down the hole stairs go, to a palace under the 
 lake. And there a girl sits, a Christian girl 
 with yellow hair, combing her hair with a 
 golden comb. And she has a golden ball in her 
 lap, and all around her are pearls and emeralds 
 and I don t know what." 
 
 "Oh!" exclaimed I with ravishment. This 
 truly was a bathman among bathmen. I had 
 heard of lakes and islands and subterranean 
 princesses before, but never from a serious- 
 looking person rather taller than I. After all, 
 we were getting on ! "Have you ever been down 
 the stairs?" I inquired. 
 
 "No. We are afraid. A man went once and 
 he did not come back." 
 
 "Well, perhaps you would not have wanted to 
 go back," I suggested. 
 
 But he only shrugged his shoulders. And 
 there was the end of that ! He should, of course, 
 have gone on and told me a long and compli 
 cated story, which I would quickly have run 
 home and written down and sent to America 
 and got an enormous price for. Instead of 
 which he began to scrape the under side of my 
 upper arm so ferociously as to make me bawl 
 
226 UNDER THE ARCH 
 
 out that I wasn t made of shoe leather. But I 
 presently added, borrowing a leaf from his 
 book: 
 
 "Eh, say." 
 
 "What is there to say?" he replied. "It is 
 you who have things to say. You go, you come, 
 you hear, you see, while we are always shut up. 
 It is as if we were under the lake in my country. 
 See how little light comes through the water!" 
 
 He pointed to the greeny bulPs-eyes in our 
 own little dome. That rather pleased me, you 
 know. 
 
 "Then you didn t go back! Only where is 
 the yellow-haired girl?" 
 
 "Where?" he assented. 
 
 And silence fell heavily again between us. 
 Nothing is more tantalizing, thought I, than the 
 way people walk about the world stuffed with 
 the most interesting information, and without 
 any reason for keeping it in the dark, yet totally 
 unable to impart it to any human being. 
 
 "What is that on your arm ?" I asked at last, 
 thinking to try a new tack. 
 
 "What should it be? It is nothing." 
 
 "Let me see," I insisted, taking hold of his 
 arm to keep him from moving it. 
 
 The tattooing was in writing, but in writing 
 I couldn t make out till I suddenly realized 
 that although it was on a Turkish bathman s 
 
UNDER THE ARCH 227 
 
 arm it was in German script. Then I managed 
 to read it. And what I read was "Ach Lisa, 
 ach!" 
 
 "Ach Lisa, ach!" I repeated aloud, smiling at 
 him in the knowing way of men with regard 
 to women. 
 
 As for him, he pulled his arm away. It oc 
 curred to me to wonder if one took one s bath- 
 man seriously, and I began to see where Austria 
 came in. Still, I continued to smile my knowing 
 smile. And I asked: 
 
 "Have you ever been Under the Arch ?" 
 
 "I went once," he replied gravely. "But that 
 is finished." 
 
 But it seemed to me, from the way he looked, 
 that something was not altogether finished. 
 For me at least it was not, for I suddenly began 
 to remember. What I remembered, primarily, 
 was what I am always forgetting that the 
 world doesn t stand still, particularly in one s 
 teens. 
 
 "It is well you tell no lies," I said, "for I have 
 seen you Under the Arch." 
 
 "Then it was a long time ago." 
 
 "It was a long time ago. It was five or six 
 years ago, when you were still a boy." 
 
 He looked at me more strangely than he had 
 looked at me yet. In his eyes it was as if some 
 thing began to smoulder. 
 
228 UNDER THE ARCH 
 
 II 
 
 It is curious, is it not, what things will stick 
 in the memory of a refined, cultured, and lib 
 erally educated gentleman to borrow a con 
 secrated phrase from the club women who 
 cultivates a taste for letters, and who would 
 have liked to see himself a creator of mem 
 orable houses and gardens. It is curious what 
 things will stick, on some dark shelf, and what 
 things will knock them down. 
 
 Spurting lights, slippery cobblestones, over 
 hanging grapevines, a pervasive odour of mastic, 
 a no less pervasive jingle of crank pianos, and 
 scraps of every language under heaven, and 
 vivid ladies picking their way on high heels 
 between house-fronts that climb through the 
 dark to some quiet star or lounging, much 
 touched up as to complexion and much cut down 
 as to toilette, in open windows of the ground 
 floor, not unready to pluck the cap off the head, 
 the purse from the pocket, or even the heart out 
 of the body, of the men of every land and every 
 sea who find their way Under the Arch in 
 Galata. . . . That is what suddenly came back 
 to me that and the picture of a Turkish peas 
 ant boy, with a gay handkerchief knotted about 
 his fez and coloured tassels bobbing below the 
 knees of his loose blue knickerbockers, who 
 
UNDER THE ARCH 229 
 
 strolled down a certain garish lane of that quar 
 ter with his hands in his pockets. 
 
 He attracted my attention because Turks are 
 comparatively few Under the Arch, being the 
 only true Puritans left in the world; and be 
 cause the eyes with which he stared at this and 
 that, from under heavy black eyebrows, made 
 such an intensity of darkness in the colour of 
 his handsome face; and because he was evi 
 dently so young. It was also evident that every 
 thing he saw was perfectly strange to him as 
 if he had wandered Under the Arch by chance. 
 
 As I watched him he stopped and looked into 
 a lighted window. The window belonged to a 
 wineshop of a kind not uncommon Under the 
 Arch. The clients were served by gaudy girls, 
 whom it was not too difficult to induce to sit 
 down and share a glass. In one corner a gypsy 
 turned the handle of a lanterna the crank 
 piano of the country. Near the window were 
 sitting two women and a man also a Turk, ap 
 parently. One of the women, catching sight of 
 the boy outside, got up, went to the door, smiled 
 at him, and beckoned. She was a creature in 
 scarlet satin, with a mop of hair trailing over 
 one eye. The boy blushed, half smiled in return, 
 shifted his feet uneasily, but did not move. 
 Then the creature, still smiling, went up to him, 
 took his hand, pulled him after her into the 
 
230 UNDER THE ARCH 
 
 wine-shop, and sat him down beside her at an 
 empty table. 
 
 I, who stood in the street and watched, found 
 myself strangely affected. I am not much of a 
 missionary. Otherwise I would hardly have 
 been standing in that street. It was such a 
 street as refined, cultured, and liberally edu 
 cated gentlemen do not care to be caught in at 
 least by others of their ilk. If you, reader, are 
 displeased at catching me there, turn the page 
 or shut the book. Don t expect me to argue 
 about it. My business is to tell a story or 
 rather to give you the materials for telling 
 yourself a story. I may say, though, that life 
 interests me more than theories of life, that I 
 have never found that curious exhibition to con 
 fine itself to broad and seemly avenues, and that 
 in a grubby byway I have discovered simplici 
 ties and honesties which sometimes fail in your 
 guarded drawing-room. For the rest my tem 
 perament inclines me to believe with the 
 Frenchman that to understand is to pardon. I 
 also believe that there is too much meddling 
 with other people s affairs, and I am for letting 
 a man hang himself with his own rope. Yet 
 
 when it comes to a boy ! Of one s own 
 
 youth one fancies that if one had known this or 
 that, or if at a certain moment one set of acci 
 dents had turned up instead of another 
 
UNDER THE ARCH 231 
 
 Youth is so priceless a thing, it lasts so little 
 time, such endless consequences hang on its 
 ignorant decisions But what, I asked my 
 self, watching youth s encounter through the 
 lighted window, is one to do? One can t put 
 youth in a padlock. It is no use to snatch it by 
 the hair of the head from experience. The bit 
 terest experience is better than none. Is it, 
 though? Still, if I marched in and pulled the 
 boy out, what would prevent his marching back 
 as soon as I disappeared? 
 
 His encounter, I could see, was too embar 
 rassing to be pleasant. His cheeks became the 
 colour of his companion s dress and he didn t 
 know where to look or what to say. The 
 creature continued to smile, patted his hand, 
 ordered him a glass of mastic. He hesitated 
 before taking a sip. Then he set down the glass 
 so hurriedly that he tipped it over, coughing 
 and wiping his eyes. At that everybody 
 laughed. The creature laughed too. In a mo 
 ment, however, she put her arm about him and 
 whispered in his ear. She got up, and he got up. 
 
 But all of a sudden he bolted out of the door. 
 
 Ill 
 
 I looked at my bathman, then, in whose 
 sombre eyes something began to smoulder. Yes, 
 those must be the same eyes, and the same eye- 
 
232 UNDER THE ARCH 
 
 brows. He had grown tall, though, and his 
 young country colour was gone. Had the bath 
 boiled it out of him, or what? 
 
 "Then you have seen her?" he demanded. 
 
 Ach Lisa, ach! For the moment a smile 
 almost flickered out of me. I remembered how 
 moved I had been, watching through the lighted 
 window so long ago, and how relieved when he 
 ran away. It had confirmed me anew in my 
 policy of non-intervention. And he had gone 
 back, naturally enough. And the scarlet crea 
 ture had gobbled him up after all. The Scarlet 
 Creature, or The Bathman s Romance ! I could 
 see it all. Life will be life, even Under the 
 Arch. That was what had become of the golden 
 hour of his youth. And all he had to show for 
 it was the label on his arm and the smoulder 
 ing in his eyes. Ach Lisa, ach! 
 
 "Yes," I answered. "I saw her come to the 
 door, beckon to you, pull you in, give you some 
 thing to drink, whisper to you, and then I saw 
 you run away. But you went back, eh ?" 
 
 And I reproduced a remnant of my knowing 
 smile. He, however, looked at me rather oddly. 
 
 "That was not the one !" he exclaimed at last 
 with abrupt contempt. 
 
 He turned away and began to prepare for the 
 next stage in operations by making soapsuds 
 with a tuft of raffia in a big copper bowl. I 
 
UNDER THE ARCH 233 
 
 watched him with an access of curiosity which 
 would make it appear that one may, after all, 
 take one s bathman seriously. Perhaps he felt 
 the intensity of my silent questioning. Perhaps 
 the accident of my having seen him before, of 
 my having been a witness of that moment in his 
 life, made a sort of bond between us. Perhaps 
 the smouldering in him had never found vent. 
 At all events he suddenly dropped his raffia and 
 turned back to me. 
 
 "You know, my Effendi, what it is to be 
 young. After I ran away that night I was 
 ashamed. I heard men talk, they told me 
 things, they laughed, they would not let me for 
 get. How should I know anything ? I was only 
 sixteen. I had always lived in my village, in 
 Anatolia. I had never seen women or thought 
 of them. And suddenly to see them like that, 
 with bare faces, bare arms, in clothes made to 
 fit them, of silk and velvet not such bags as 
 our women wear! And the lights, and the 
 music ! I didn t know there were such things in 
 the world. It was like the palace under the lake 
 in my country. 
 
 "So I went back. I went back to the same 
 place to show them I was not afraid. I sat 
 down at a table and I ordered raki. The girl 
 who had spoken to me before was there, sitting 
 in a corner with a sailor. She remembered me 
 
234 UNDER THE ARCH 
 
 and she laughed. There is my little Anatolian ! 
 she said. Come here, little Anatolian ! " 
 
 He stopped again and pulled up the copper 
 bowl, as if uncertain whether to go on with his 
 story or to shampoo my head. I waited for his 
 decision with a curious suspense. 
 
 "Just then another girl came and sat down 
 beside me," he finally said. "Effendim, she was 
 the princess under the lake in my country. Her 
 hair was like gold, as I had never seen hair 
 before, and her eyes were so blue they fright 
 ened me. We say, you know, that people like 
 that have the Evil Eye. I was frightened and 
 my heart began to beat as if I had run from St. 
 Sophia to the Taxim. At first she only looked 
 at me and smiled, in such a way that I was both 
 less frightened and more frightened. Then she 
 began to talk to me. Why did you order that 
 raki? she asked. It is bad. Don t drink it. 
 When she spoke I began to tremble. I always 
 trembled when I heard her voice to the last 
 time." He paused an instant. "I could not say 
 anything. I did not know what to say. She 
 saw it and she went on talking to me. As my 
 mother never spoke to me, Effendim, she spoke 
 to me. She told me I mustn t go again to such 
 places. She asked me where I lived, what work 
 I did, when I was going to my country. And at 
 last she sent me away." 
 
UNDER THE ARCH 235 
 
 I almost smiled again, remembering my own 
 attitude on a certain occasion. But I could tell 
 myself that I had no Evil Eye, and that in me 
 the voice of intervention would never have 
 made him tremble! It was curious, though, 
 what a power he had, with so little of a story, 
 to move me so much a second time. It was 
 partly the intensity of his tone and of his 
 sombre look. It was also the curiosities within 
 curiosities he set alight about the world he 
 lived in, about his strange lost princess. I 
 must say he did very little to satisfy them. 
 
 "Vallah" he exclaimed after a moment, "I 
 understand nothing of your Europe. Some 
 times I want to go, to look. Sometimes I am 
 afraid. Are you devils there, or men who 
 make all these machines that walk on the land 
 and swim in the sea and fly in the air ? And the 
 women of them I understand least. Are they 
 all like that one? Are they all bad? Can you 
 call such a woman bad ?" 
 
 I shook my head vaguely. But I doubted if 
 he noticed me. 
 
 "When she sent me away that night," he 
 went on, "she thought it was finished. But it 
 only began. Every night I went back and 
 watched in the street until I found her again. 
 And after that, for three years, I saw her nearly 
 every day; but not as you think. She never 
 
236 UNDER THE ARCH 
 
 would let me come to her house. I always saw 
 her in wineshops, in coffee-houses, in the street. 
 She made me go to school, too, and she paid for 
 it. I can read, Effendim, because of her. She 
 could read too, and she could write, and she 
 could sing, and she could play your piano, our 
 lute. She knew everything. But she didn t 
 know how to keep me from becoming mad. I 
 thought of nothing else but her. I wanted to 
 take her away from Galata. In the three years, 
 you see, I became a man. But she would not 
 listen. She said she was too old, she said she 
 was too bad, she said she loved me too much, 
 she said she could never live in Anatolia or I in 
 Europe. How do I know what she said," he 
 broke off, "or where she is now? Akh Lisa! 
 Akh!" 
 
 It became more and more evident that the 
 story, such as it was, was one which you have 
 to tell yourself. There was enough obvious in 
 terplay in it of East and West, of blue eyes and 
 black, of innocence and must I say corruption ? 
 the eternal lure of the contrary. And one 
 could more or less make out the case of the 
 dark-browed young peasant lover. But what of 
 the obscure courtesan, cast out from her own 
 land into that place of all vulgarity and dis 
 aster, who had become for him a princess of 
 fairy lore? 
 
UNDER THE ARCH 237 
 
 "What is it, Effendim," he broke out, "that a 
 woman does to a man? The world is full of 
 them. Why will not one do as well as another ? 
 
 Why " He threw up his hand, as they do. 
 
 But presently his eye followed mine to the in 
 scription pricked on his arm. "She wrote it 
 there," he said. "She always told me I didn t 
 know how to say anything else ! She wrote it 
 there the last time I saw her the first time I 
 went to her house. At last I made her open the 
 door to me. And I begged her as I had never 
 begged her to go away with me. Akh Lisa! I 
 said. Akh, I can t go on like this. I can t work 
 in the day. I can t sleep at night. All the time 
 I see your eyes. They make a fire in my heart. 
 She smiled a little, as she knew how to smile, 
 and then she wrote this on my arm with a 
 needle. And then " 
 
 Another bathman came into the alcove, fol 
 lowed by an old gentleman who sat down oppo 
 site me. My bathman stirred his copper bowl 
 again and then put me past all power of sight or 
 speech by pouring soapsuds over my head. 
 Across the vaulted room the bather in the By 
 zantine alcove was still singing his melancholy 
 old love song of Asia. "Aman! Aman!" he sang, 
 making strange reverberations quiver up into 
 the dome. 
 
FOR THE FAITH 
 
 HALF way up the steps of the Cup Sellers, 
 which climb from the vine-hung exit of 
 the Spice Bazaar to the Street of the 
 Brass Beaters, there stands a certain building of 
 light stone. There is nothing to distinguish it 
 from a hundred other modern buildings in the 
 ancient city of Stamboul. The black marble 
 pillars flanking the entrance are as easily 
 matched as the big red-and-gold Croats watch 
 ing between them. But a passer is more than 
 likely to cast a curious glance into the doorway. 
 And the carpet-workers on the opposite side of 
 the street, as they spread the brilliant crudities 
 of the new Anatolian looms to the chastening 
 of sun and rain, or give the last toning of pol 
 ished flint and experienced palm they ask 
 themselves : "Who are these gyaours who come 
 from strange lands and build great khans, while 
 we dwell in sheds?" But they do not answer 
 the question. Nor do the lancers, on their way 
 to guard the Sultan at mosque of a Friday 
 morning, when they fill the steep incline be- 
 
 238 
 
FOR THE FAITH 239 
 
 tween the stair-sidewalks with a cataract of 
 plunging horses and scarlet banderoles. A mo 
 ment they turn their dark faces upward in half 
 defiance, but the next they have other to think 
 about. Not so however the ministers of state 
 who sometimes drive by with galloping out 
 riders. Not seldom do they carry the question 
 to their desks, wondering what secret is behind 
 those light stone walls, that busies so many and 
 reaches so far and keeps an embassy in such 
 irritating activity. 
 
 In a high corner room of this very building 
 there sat one day the Reverend Thomas Redding. 
 There was little in the aspect of the Reverend 
 Thomas Redding to suggest mystery or subver 
 sion. On the contrary, as he leaned at his desk 
 with his fingers buried in his round gray beard, 
 his appearance was distinctly conciliating. The 
 kindly blue eye with which he looked forth upon 
 the world, the temperate ruddiness of the coun 
 tenance which it illumined, the comely contour 
 of his figure which seemed somewhat under 
 the middle height and which was as far from 
 the Silenus as from the ascetic all these 
 pointed out a person of a gentle and comfortable 
 middle life. 
 
 If the furnishings of his apartment bespoke 
 the garniture of his mind, one would conclude 
 that his thoughts were far from worldly things. 
 
240 FOR THE FAITH 
 
 The chief recommendation of the room was its 
 view, which looked across the huge umbrella 
 pine of the carpet-workers aforementioned to 
 the Golden Horn and the lower Bosphorus. For 
 the rest, one gained an impression of nudity. 
 In the middle of the oilcloth floor rose a desk, 
 at which Mr. Redding sat as one cast away upon 
 a reef. The other furniture might have been 
 riveted to the walls. Of these, two were almost 
 concealed by the glass-doored bookcases of our 
 grandfathers. The volumes thus protected 
 against the ravages of the elements included 
 such works as "Barnes Notes," Paley s "Evi 
 dences of Christianity/ and "Edwards on the 
 Will"; or lighter literature like "The Romance 
 of Missions" by the lamented Maria West, "The 
 Devil in Turkey," and "Light on a Dark River" ; 
 together with numerous other publications con 
 cerning more or less directly the evangelical 
 enterprise. After the bookcases, the most con 
 spicuous object in the room was a large map. 
 This might have been found unique by some, in 
 that its colouring indicated religious distinc 
 tions rather than political. The upper half of 
 the western hemisphere was of a virgin white, 
 the lower was shaded with red in reminis 
 cence, perhaps, of the Scarlet Woman. The 
 same roseate hue tinted considerable portions of 
 the European continent, which faded to white 
 
FOR THE FAITH 241 
 
 in the northwest and changed easterly to a bot 
 tle green. The very eastern rim, however, as 
 the greater part of Asia and Africa, was dyed 
 with black. A relief to this uncompromising 
 darkness was afforded by sporadic islands of 
 white and radiating shoals of gray, which, with 
 similar archipelagoes in red and green, were 
 intended to designate centres and spheres of 
 missionary influence. 
 
 Upon this decorative object were fixed the 
 eyes of Mr. Redding at the moment of our in 
 troduction to him. He had a secret fibre of the 
 adventurous, which had always thrilled to the 
 sight of a map or the tale of a traveller. This 
 time, however, another chord was touched, as 
 he considered that sable fringe of Europe. He 
 looked sadly away from it, across the red roofs, 
 the bubbly domes, the marble and cypress min 
 arets, to the blue of the Bosphorus. It had 
 grown wondrously familiar to him this scene 
 which had once been the tissue of his airiest 
 dreams. He recalled with what emotion he had 
 first realized the whiteness of the field for the 
 harvest; with what exaltation he had received 
 his acceptance to the cause; with what a 
 strangely mingled feeling of triumph he had 
 entered this ancient city, intoxicated with the 
 novelty of his sensations and proud to have 
 come while there was yet to do. But thirty 
 
242 FOR THE FAITH 
 
 years had passed, and what had he accom 
 plished? His enthusiasm had availed nothing 
 against the dishonour of that darkness. He had 
 never so much as turned one Moslem from the 
 error of his way. 
 
 It was of the man s humility that he did not, 
 as some might have done, lay the blame upon 
 the Moslem. And he had just begun to search 
 anew the sources of his own inadequacy when 
 a knock at the door interrupted him. 
 
 "Come in!" he cried, looking over his 
 shoulder. 
 
 Two persons entered. The moment of their 
 advent was occupied by such profound salaams 
 that their faces were invisible. Then Mr. Red 
 ding perceived, with feet together and hands 
 clasped humbly before him, a personage of some 
 forty years short, thick-set, dark-skinned; 
 black-eyed, black-haired, and black-bearded; 
 with the hooked nose of the East, the red fez of 
 Turkey, and the frock coat of Europe ; and col- 
 larless withal. Beside this sharp-eyed and smil 
 ing individual stood, in a similar attitude, a boy 
 of nine or ten, whose small countenance was 
 as black and as brilliant as a bit of cut onyx. 
 His appearance was rendered the more striking 
 by the complete accoutrement of a Turkish 
 field-marshal. 
 
 Upon these two the Reverend Mr. Redding 
 
FOR THE FAITH 243 
 
 cast an eye of no little astonishment. Not so 
 much that he was unused to such spectacles, as 
 that there comes a time in the life of man when 
 transitions are difficult to follow. But he 
 speedily recovered himself, smiled, bowed, 
 waved his hand, and rose to detach two chairs 
 from the military row under the map. It would 
 not have occurred to him that his salute was 
 less sweeping and less honourable than those 
 which he had received, for he had never quite 
 yielded to the customs of the East ; nor could he 
 look upon a "native" as other than an inferior. 
 
 The conversation opened in a general way, 
 the visitors demonstrating how strange may be 
 rendered the use of a chair by the custom of the 
 divan. After those extended and searching in 
 quiries which are the corner-stone of Eastern 
 courtesy, the elder of the two at length bent 
 forward, glanced inquiringly toward the inner 
 room, and asked in a confidential tone : 
 
 "Are you alone?" 
 
 "We are," assured the missionary. 
 
 "I have something for you," continued the 
 
 stranger, "if " He looked again toward the 
 
 inner room. 
 
 "Let us go in there, then," suggested his host, 
 with gratifying perspicacity. 
 
 Once inside, the stranger cast a quick eye 
 about him, proceeded to fumble in the inner re- 
 
244 FOR THE FAITH 
 
 cesses of his being, and finally produced a green 
 silk bag which depended by a cord from his 
 neck. Undoing the somewhat complicated fas 
 tenings of this object, he took from it a letter 
 which he handed to the missionary. 
 
 That gentleman accepted the document and 
 regarded it, as also its bearer, in no little amaze. 
 
 "He is in Fezzan!" whispered the stranger 
 behind his hand. 
 
 "In Fezzan !" exclaimed the Reverend 
 Thomas, in deeper mystification than before. 
 
 "Yes," replied the stranger. "He is selling 
 dates in the Oasis of Sebkha. It is written as 
 I say." 
 
 Mr. Redding continued to question the mys 
 terious communication with his eye. At last, 
 however, it occurred to him that the missive 
 itself might contain light to illumine his dark 
 ness. Accordingly he broke the seal and de 
 ciphered its brief contents. Then he looked up 
 and uttered cordially : 
 
 "I am glad to make your acquaintance, You- 
 souf Bey. You are welcome to our house. But 
 Fezzan!" he exclaimed again. "What is he 
 doing in Fezzan ?" 
 
 "He is selling dates," repeated the stranger, 
 with his curious smile. 
 
 "But why?" protested the missionary. 
 
 The stranger shrugged his shoulders : 
 
FOR THE FAITH 245 
 
 "Eh ! His superiors suspected that he learned 
 too much in England. They also found one of 
 your holy books. Therefore Fezzan!" 
 
 "Fezzan!" iterated the Reverend Thomas 
 once again. The name seemed to have a fas 
 cination for him. "Where is this Fezzan?" 
 
 "You go to Tripoli," answered Yousouf Bey. 
 "From there you take camel southward, toward 
 Kanem and Bornu." 
 
 The little blackamoor, who had been staring 
 solemnly about at the tall book-cases, suddenly 
 looked toward his companion. 
 
 "Bornu!" repeated Mr. Redding, turning to 
 consult his map in the outer room. 
 
 At the second pronunciation of the name the 
 little blackamoor began to whimper, and a big 
 tear splashed the gold of his cuff. Yousouf Bey 
 thereupon shot him a look which speedily dried 
 the child s tears. He repressed another whim 
 per, dug his fists into his eyes, and resumed his 
 inspection of the cheerless apartment. 
 
 The Reverend Thomas, in the meantime, stood 
 intent before his map. The region which he 
 sought was covered with so dense a black that 
 the names were indicated perforce by white 
 letters. "What an opportunity!" he thought 
 to himself, the old habit of mind triumphant 
 above the ruling of experience. Then he said 
 aloud : 
 
246 FOR THE FAITH 
 
 "So he was exiled ! I never knew. I supposed 
 he had lost interest." 
 
 "Oh, no ! His Christian teaching is what sup 
 ports him in his exile. You must see that being 
 a date pedler in an oasis of Fezzan is quite dif 
 ferent from being a colonel of artillery at Con 
 stantinople. But he is very cheerful. And" 
 Yousouf Bey lowered his voice "he does much 
 for your faith. I, too, have become interested. 
 My home is really there, you know. I have only 
 one wife here. The others are in Tripoli and 
 Fezzan. I greatly admire your Prophet. His 
 followers seem to have something which those 
 of Mohammed have not. I would like to know 
 more about him." 
 
 Mr. Redding was strangely moved by the 
 words of this emissary from afar. The mystery 
 of strange places hung about him, and the 
 romance of unknown deeds. The incongruous- 
 ness of his declarations seemed not grotesque, 
 but almost pathetic. And it was providential 
 that this encounter should have occurred at the 
 very nadir of his own discouragement. He had 
 then been partly instrumental, after all, in 
 planting the seed of the Word in dark and dis 
 tant regions. Who knew what might yet come 
 forth? 
 
 "I am very glad indeed that you came to see 
 me!" he uttered feelingly. "We must have a 
 
FOR THE FAITH 247 
 
 great many talks together. But to-morrow is 
 our holy day, and we have meetings that will 
 tell you more than I can. Come and bring your 
 little companion. We have classes for boys as 
 well as for men." He bent over and took the 
 child s small black hand: "And do you come 
 from Fezzan too?" he asked. 
 
 The boy looked up with round frightened 
 eyes. At a word from his companion, he cere 
 moniously kissed the missionary s hand. Then 
 Yousouf Bey explained that Arabic was all they 
 understood in those regions. 
 
 "Ah, well, bring him too !" returned Mr. Red 
 ding. "He will have the other children to play 
 with at least." He patted the cheek of tKe little 
 blackamoor, whose wide eyes were intent upon 
 the unintelligible colloquy. 
 
 "Now that I have done my errand I must not 
 take your time," said the stranger, rising. 
 
 "Not at all!" protested the other. "May I 
 look for you to-morrow?" 
 
 "I will come," replied Yousouf Bey, salaaming 
 as profoundly as before. 
 
 II 
 
 He went. He went not once, but several times 
 and in several places. He even arose one Sun 
 day before a polyglot Sunday-school and deliv 
 ered himself of a harangue, in which he eulo- 
 
248 FOR THE FAITH 
 
 gized the holy book there taught in so many 
 tongues, and announced his intention of intro 
 ducing it to the natives of Central Africa. 
 
 It can be imagined with what emotions Mr. 
 Redding observed these developments. Upon 
 each appearance of Yousouf Bey at some service 
 of worship the good man would hover about 
 him, anxious to advance any favourable impres 
 sion, yet fearful of interrupting by importunate 
 question any work of grace which might be 
 going on in the Mohammedan s heart. So it 
 was that their later meetings had been in a way 
 public. But after two or three weeks Yousouf 
 Bey called again at the missionary s office. And 
 Mr. Redding, in expressing his cordiality, at 
 last ventured to utter his hope that these ex 
 periences had been the means of affording a 
 clearer vision, a more definite intent. 
 
 The Tripolitan gave assurance that he had 
 received the greatest benefit: 
 
 "I can understand," he said, "the enthu 
 siasm of Christians for your Prophet. He was 
 a noble man. The Jews did wrong to murder 
 him." 
 
 The missionary was disappointed. The senti 
 ment expressed could not be condemned; yet it 
 seemed too catholic. 
 
 "I hoped we might see your little boy," he 
 said, vaguely hoping to bring about more 
 
FOR THE FAITH 249 
 
 pointed declarations "the little black boy who 
 was with you." 
 
 "He ? Oh, no ! I sold him the very day after 
 I met you to Tahir Pasha. He will make a 
 good eunuch. They are the best from Bornu." 
 
 "Sold him! That little boy!" exclaimed the 
 horrified missionary. 
 
 "Yes. What else should I do with him?" in 
 quired the Tripolitan, with an amused smile. 
 "That is part of my business." 
 
 "To sell slaves?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 Mr. Redding stared blankly at the man. He 
 had expected a confession of faith, and what 
 sort of confession was this ? Yet in the depths 
 of his disillusionment he found courage to 
 realize that the Word could not take lodgment 
 in such a heart; that here was one whose er 
 rors first needed reproof ; that the reproof must 
 not be so severe as to discourage further in 
 terest. 
 
 "You say you admire Christ," at length he 
 began gently ; "but you have wives in different 
 cities and you sell slaves. Christ would not 
 have done such things." 
 
 "Eh, Effendim!" protested the slave-dealer 
 with a deprecating shrug, a suave wave of the 
 hand. "Your Prophet was a holy man, of those 
 hermits who do not take wives, who do not do 
 
250 FOR THE FAITH 
 
 many things that other men do. We have all 
 seen them. But I am not a holy man." He 
 smiled. "Moreover, I travel. I am a merchant. 
 And it is much less expensive to keep three 
 wives in three places than to take one with you 
 wherever you go. There are also other ad 
 vantages. I am sure you would find it so." He 
 smiled and bowed, as if in deference to his inter 
 locutor s intelligence. Before the scandalized 
 missionary could summon protest he went on: 
 "As for the slaves, they are the only money we 
 have in many parts of Africa. I sell cotton 
 there, I sell silk, I sell iron, I sell whatever I 
 sell; and what have they to pay me? Nothing 
 but shells or blacks. The shells are useless to 
 me. I must take the blacks. But it is much 
 better for them, too. As you see, I am a 
 kind-hearted man. I do not maltreat them. 
 And they are much happier up here in Con 
 stantinople than to run naked there in the 
 desert!" 
 
 There was something in the conviction with 
 which these remarks were uttered, as in the 
 courtesy of their expression, which Mr. Redding 
 found indefinably disconcerting. He felt that 
 his part would have been easier had the inter 
 view taken a more polemic turn. But again, 
 before he could gather his words, the other fore 
 stalled him. 
 
FOR THE FAITH 251 
 
 "There is a matter," continued the slave- 
 dealer, looking about and drawing confidentially 
 nearer, "of which I wish to speak to you. I 
 travel, as you know. My business takes me far. 
 I have been to Timbuktu and the ocean. I have 
 seen rivers which even the English have not 
 seen. And I am interested, as you also know, in 
 your holy man. I am interested in your work. 
 We have nothing like this." The dramatic wave 
 of his hand visibly included the entire building. 
 "Now" he lowered his voice still further and 
 looked keenly into Mr. Redding s eyes "I 
 would be very much pleased if you would let me 
 have a case of Bibles to take back with me. I 
 am going in a few days. I could spread them all 
 over the Sahara." 
 
 The kindly blue eyes were fixed upon the 
 black and glittering ones in speechless wonder. 
 There were elements of contrast in this suave 
 slave-dealer, with his frock coat and his lack 
 of collar, his guilty experience of dark por 
 tions of the earth and his interest in Chris 
 tianity, which the Reverend Thomas had never 
 encountered. 
 
 Yousouf Bey did not quite read the uncer 
 tainty which he saw in the blue eyes. 
 
 "But if you do not wish " he began 
 
 tentatively. 
 
 "Why, of course I wish!" broke in the mis- 
 
252 FOR THE FAITH 
 
 sionary with vehemence, homing from his rev- 
 ery. Of course you shall have them !" 
 
 Ill 
 
 The case of Bibles was duly prepared. As for 
 Yousouf Bey, however, he failed to call for it. 
 Day after day Mr. Redding waited, expecting 
 that every knock would be succeeded by the en 
 trance of his African friend. But the box lay 
 under everybody s feet till its fresh planks took 
 on the dishonour of grime. And finally Mr. Red 
 ding, sad, but abounding in faith, caused it to 
 be stored in his inner room. 
 
 The incident touched him more nearly than 
 might have appeared. His evangelical zeal, his 
 interest in strange places, and that human 
 quality which makes a new or a distant enter 
 prise more engrossing than an old or a present 
 one, had all been deeply concerned in this mat 
 ter. At those moments when one looks for the 
 tangible result of the day s work, his casting up 
 of the thirty years filled him with deeper dejec 
 tion than ever. He felt, in his humility, that 
 the occasion had come and that he had been 
 found wanting. 
 
 Accordingly it was not without pleasure that 
 he suddenly looked up from his papers, one day 
 in the latter part of the thirty-first year, and 
 met the eyes of his old friend Yousouf Bey. 
 
FOR THE FAITH 253 
 
 This worthy was frock-coated, smiling, and col- 
 larless as ever. There was also more familiarity 
 in his greeting. 
 
 "You must have wondered why I never took 
 my Bibles," he began affably, going straight to 
 the point. "It was a great disappointment to 
 me. I travelled farther than ever this time. 
 But" he drew his chair close to the desk, 
 looked carefully around as if to descry legs 
 under the book-cases, and whispered dramati 
 cally "the police! You know what they are. 
 I was on my way here when they stopped me. 
 They took me to the Ministry. There they told 
 me all I had done how many times I had been 
 here, how many times I had gone to the other 
 places, what I had said, what I had thought! 
 Then they threatened that if I came here again 
 they would lock me up, and they sent me under 
 guard to my steamer. What could I do ?" 
 
 Had Mr. Redding been inclined to reproach he 
 would have softened under this recital. But at 
 such evidence of the power of faith, his mood 
 was far from aggressive. He was even a little 
 fluttered. He supremely desired to say the 
 right thing. In Yousouf Bey, however, there 
 was a troubling element of the uncertain which 
 required diplomatic procedure. 
 
 "I have kept your books for you," he said. 
 "Was my friend in Fezzan disappointed?" 
 
254 FOR THE FAITH 
 
 Yousouf Bey smiled. 
 
 "I did not get to Fezzan this time," he replied. 
 "It is a long story. I took three Circassian girls 
 from here, and when I reached Alexandria I was 
 arrested for stealing them. But I said they 
 were my wives, and nobody could prove they 
 were not, so I got away. Ah they made my 
 fortune, those girls. May their shadow never 
 grow less! From Egypt I went down to Zan 
 zibar, and there I sold one to the Sultan. He 
 would have taken the three, but he hadn t the 
 money. He gave me a thousand pounds. And 
 she was worth it. They are all black down 
 there." He paused a moment, his eye clouded 
 with reminiscence. 
 
 The Reverend Thomas seized that opportunity 
 to raise his voice. The issue was fair and 
 square : 
 
 "You told me that you only took the blacks 
 because you had to. We do not have to take 
 Circassians for money, here. And will they 
 be much happier down there among naked 
 savages ?" 
 
 The Tripolitan smiled as if he knew how to 
 enjoy a laugh at his own expense, nodded in 
 dulgently, and laid a soothing hand on the 
 other s arm. 
 
 "You do not un der stand!" he said. 
 "Do not try to understand. We smoke out of 
 
FOR THE FAITH 255 
 
 different nargilehs, but my soul ! we can still be 
 friends! Now hear what I did with the other 
 two. There in Zanzibar, I met the agent of an 
 Indian Rajah. They are on the lookout, you 
 know, these great people." He spoke in the 
 dramatic sing-song which is the charm of East 
 ern inflection, aiding his story with a play of 
 hands and eyes which gave it inimitable 
 vivacity. "So I went to India. And the Rajah 
 bought both of them. If I had only known! 
 He would have bought the third, too. But it is 
 all kismet, this business. You never know. He 
 paid me though, the Rajah. I cleared nearly 
 three thousand pounds on the whole business. 
 Cleared, you understand. It costs, an adventure 
 like that. I had to take them like sultanas." 
 He leaned back smiling in his chair, as if await 
 ing the congratulations of his auditor. That 
 gentleman, however, maintained a deep silence. 
 The bewildered disappointment in him amounted 
 almost to a physical hurt. And if it was not 
 manifest in his countenance, at least his disap 
 proval seemed to be. For Yousouf Bey leaned 
 forward again. 
 
 "I suppose you think," he uttered with dig 
 nity, "that I might have given them Bibles in 
 stead of selling them. It would have been no 
 use, however. They are only women. But I did 
 what I could for them. Here what would they 
 
256 FOR THE FAITH 
 
 have been? Circassians are as common as 
 leaves. Any army captain might have bought 
 them. As it is, they are sultanas. Their bread 
 is honey. They sleep in rose-leaves. They walk 
 on gold. It is I who have done this for them. 
 Is it not just that I should clear three thousand 
 pounds ?" 
 
 "No!" declared Mr. Redding vehemently. 
 "They were human beings and you sold them 
 like beasts !" 
 
 The other allowed a shade of surprise to 
 escape him. Then he shrugged his shoulders 
 and smiled again. 
 
 "Eh !" he exclaimed. "We do not smoke the 
 same nargileh, as I said. But we are brothers. 
 And do you know? I admired your Prophet be 
 fore ; but since I have been to India, since I have 
 seen what his followers are able to do there, I 
 reverence him still more. I have not learned 
 enough about him yet. And I still wish my 
 Bibles. But I am afraid to take them here. The 
 police, you know! You have people in Egypt, 
 though, have you not?" 
 
 "Yes," assented the missionary. 
 
 "Of course! You have them everywhere!" 
 The slave-dealer winked knowingly. "Well, let 
 me have a letter to them. It will be safer to 
 get my books there. These Turks are so sus 
 picious." 
 
FOR THE FAITH 257 
 
 Mr. Redding did not like the wink. But he 
 wrote the letter. 
 
 IV 
 
 It was more than two years before the man 
 turned up the third time. He came in as if he 
 had been absent but a day, looked into the other 
 room to make sure no one was there, and sat 
 down close to the desk. He was evidently in a 
 hurry. 
 
 "I tried to see you before," he said in a low 
 voice. "But the police!" Then, wiping his 
 face with a huge red handkerchief, he went on : 
 "I am leaving for Tripoli, and I want you to 
 come with me!" 
 
 Mr. Redding smiled. Time had mellowed the 
 earlier shrewdness of his feeling. To him now 
 Yousouf Bey was not so much a seeker after 
 Truth as a property of the picturesque, a foun 
 tain of the unexpected. He had wondered what 
 new surprise might be in store, and here it was ! 
 Still, there was always room for the miracle of 
 grace. 
 
 "Did you see our friends in Egypt ?" he asked, 
 a little curious as to what success another 
 might have had. 
 
 "Hoo-oo!" exclaimed the Tripolitan, in his 
 high sing-song. "Did I see them? I showed 
 your letter. At sight of it they embraced me. 
 
258 FOR THE FAITH 
 
 There was no door which your name would not 
 open for me. We became as brothers. And I 
 carried away I don t know how many great 
 cases of Bibles." 
 
 "Ah ! Then you took Bibles into the Sahara 
 this time ?" inquired the Reverend Thomas, with 
 warming interest. 
 
 Yousouf Bey extended his arms as if to em 
 brace the universe. 
 
 "Fezzan, Tibesti, Kanem, Bornu, Bagirmi, 
 Wadai, Darfur, Kordofan they are full of 
 them!" 
 
 "And so you saw our friend?" pursued the 
 missionary. 
 
 "Yes, I saw him. He is still selling dates. He 
 has done very well. He helped me with the 
 Bibles, too. He knows more about them than I, 
 of course." 
 
 Mr. Redding smiled encouragingly. 
 
 "Well, you made better use of your time on 
 this journey than on your last. Was it not more 
 satisfactory ?" 
 
 "Yes, much!" Yousouf Bey smiled broadly. 
 "And now I shall do things on a larger scale. I 
 want many more Bibles many many. And" 
 he drew his chair still nearer "I want you to 
 come with me, as I said. We will go to Tripoli. 
 From there we will ride south. We will visit the 
 Sheikh of the Senussi Arabs on the way. He 
 
FOR THE FAITH 259 
 
 is a religious man like yourself. It will be a 
 profit to him, it will be a profit to you. Then we 
 will go on and see our friend at Sebkha." 
 
 Mr. Redding shook his head, smiling. 
 
 "How can I, a poor missionary, make such 
 journeys as that ?" 
 
 The Tripolitan regarded him a moment with 
 half-shut eyes. 
 
 "Poor! You who fill the world with your 
 people and build khans like this! You say so 
 because you do not wish to come." 
 
 Mr. Redding stopped smiling. 
 
 "I say so because it is true." 
 
 Yousouf Bey clasped his hands before his face 
 and drew back reproachfully. 
 
 "My soul! Do you insult me? Are we not 
 brothers? Where one goes cannot two go?" 
 
 The missionary shook his head again: 
 
 "But, even then, how could I leave my work? 
 If I go, there is no one to do it." 
 
 The slave-dealer laid his hand on the other s 
 sleeve : 
 
 "Listen. You speak of your work. Think of 
 the good you would do there. No one has ever 
 gone to those people as you would go. Thou 
 sands would receive benefit from seeing you, 
 from taking your books. You would also incur 
 the gratitude of your own people. And I swear 
 on the head of your Prophet and of mine that 
 
260 FOR THE FAITH 
 
 you would be back here in three or four 
 months." 
 
 Although the idea was too fantastic to be 
 seriously entertained, it was one which appealed 
 to the imagination of Mr. Redding. And he was 
 somewhat at a loss to express his unwilling 
 ness to embark upon such an adventure, in 
 terms which should not wound his would-be 
 host. 
 
 That personage, perceiving the mission 
 ary s uncertainty, tightened his fingers a little 
 on the latter s arm and looked close into his 
 face. 
 
 "You and I understand each other," he 
 uttered slowly. "We are not children. And 
 you of the West do not bargain when you 
 talk. Tell me: will you come with me or will 
 you not?" 
 
 A curious sensation possessed Mr. Redding. 
 He had no more idea of going to Tripoli with 
 this slave-dealer than of going to the moon. He 
 wondered what the man meant by it, and his 
 peculiar insistence was irritating. But for a 
 moment, under the glitter of those motionless 
 eyes, a strange confusion unsteadied him. It 
 was against himself, as it were, and with an 
 unaccustomed weakness of inflection, that he 
 answered : 
 
 "I am sorry, but I cannot come." 
 
FOR THE FAITH 261 
 
 For a moment Yousouf Bey did not stir, eye 
 or hand. Then he made a gesture of impatience, 
 rose, and began to walk about the room. 
 
 "Eh you know!" he said at length. "But I 
 shall have to go without my Bibles. I would be 
 stopped. You could take as many as you 
 wanted, though. You have lost a great oppor 
 tunity." He looked across his shoulder at the 
 other, who remained silent. Then he walked 
 up and down once more, examining the various 
 objects in the room. Finally he stopped in front 
 of the desk. "What is this great khan for?" he 
 asked abruptly. "And your schools, and your 
 hospitals, and your men, and your women ? You 
 are everywhere." 
 
 The blue eyes of the Reverend Mr. Redding 
 looked quietly into the black ones confronting 
 them. 
 
 "To spread the Christian religion," he an 
 swered simply. 
 
 The slave-dealer made no attempt to repress a 
 smile. 
 
 "Excuse my laugh," he said, resuming his 
 tour of the floor. "But if that is true you throw 
 a great deal of money into the sea. If that is 
 true! Do those carpet men across the street 
 know anything about the Christian religion, for 
 all this khan of yours in front of them ? If that 
 is true! I could count on my fingers all the 
 
262 FOR THE FAITH 
 
 Mohammedans that have ever become Chris 
 tians. If that is true !" 
 
 "We do not preach by the sword," returned 
 the missionary mildly. 
 
 The other wheeled and stared at him. Then 
 he shrugged his shoulders. 
 
 "Eh I don t understand!" he exclaimed. 
 "People are as God made them, and who can 
 change them? You have a long arm and a 
 strong arm. But either it is broken or you do 
 not know how to use it. I thought well, never 
 mind what I thought. But I did not think you 
 were children." He suddenly stopped and 
 looked at his watch. "I must be going," he con 
 tinued hastily. "I am sorry you will not come ! 
 We might have done great things, I don t know 
 whether we shall meet again. But you will hear 
 of me. When they speak of Haji Hassan, you 
 will know it is I. May your nights be pleasant !" 
 
 And so, with a rapid salaam, he went away. 
 
 v 
 
 No later than the next winter the Reverend 
 Thomas Redding sat one afternoon at his desk, 
 engaged in editorial labours. It was his weekly 
 office to issue a paper for the benefit of native 
 Protestants and those interested in them. This 
 periodical, appearing in several languages, did 
 not contain intelligence inaccessible to the secu- 
 
FOR THE FAITH 263 
 
 lar press. Its facts were selected and set forth 
 with a view to the edification rather than to the 
 mere information of its readers. But to a cer 
 tain degree, in consequence of a lack of re 
 sources, Mr. Redding was even dependent upon 
 the secular press. Accordingly he found in the 
 London Times a strong tower, as it reached him 
 no more than three or four days after publica 
 tion and not infrequently afforded views of the 
 political situation which the censorship ex 
 cluded from the local papers. 
 
 On the present occasion, he had just un 
 wrapped the journal which I have mentioned. 
 Glancing over the staid and respectable head 
 lines which distinguish that weighty sheet, his 
 eye was arrested by these words : 
 
 REVOLT IN TRIPOLI CRUSHED 
 
 Haji Hassan Himself Killed in the Front 
 
 of Battle 
 
 "Haji Hassan!" repeated Mr. Redding to him 
 self. Involuntarily he looked toward the door. 
 And, turning back to his paper, he wondered 
 indistinctly whether revolters wore frock coats. 
 
 "Our special correspondent in Tripoli," he 
 read, "telegraphs that the insurrection which 
 has for the past few months disturbed the 
 hinterland of Libia has we hope once and for all 
 been stamped out. The famous rebel Haji 
 
264 FOR THE FAITH 
 
 Hassan, inspired by his successes among the 
 southern tribes to imagine that he could try 
 conclusions with Italian troops, was encoun 
 tered on the 23d inst. at Sidi-Bu-Agoll, on the 
 caravan route to Fezzan, by a force under com 
 mand of Lieutenant-General Count Mario Mar- 
 tinengo, and was completely routed. By a 
 particular piece of good fortune Haji Hassan 
 himself was shot in the engagement, which he 
 led in person with fanatical bravery. 
 
 "From the numerous prisoners something 
 was learned of the character and antecedents of 
 the late Arab leader. As the march of civiliza 
 tion has made it increasingly difficult for an 
 adventurer of imperial ambitions to achieve a 
 throne, our readers may find a certain romantic 
 interest in the history of the dead man. He 
 was a Tripolitan by birth, of mixed Arab and 
 Turkish blood. During many years, while 
 ostensibly carrying on, under various names, a 
 mercantile and slave trade throughout central 
 Africa, he was employed as a spy by the Turkish 
 and Egyptian governments. Possessed, how 
 ever, of remarkable powers of command, and 
 initiated by his calling into the secrets of 
 affairs, his influence among the Saharan tribes 
 at last tempted him to strike for a throne. Suc 
 cessfully usurping the powers of the Sheikh of 
 the Senussi, whose son-in-law he was, he ex- 
 
FOR THE FAITH 265 
 
 tended by degrees his authority over the entire 
 region north and east of Lake Chad. He then 
 proclaimed himself Sultan and prepared, as he 
 hoped, to sweep the Italians into the sea. The 
 main objection to his acceptance by the Arabs 
 had been his taint of Turkish blood. Accord 
 ingly he designed, by striking a sudden and 
 successful blow at Tripoli, to win the uncertain 
 to his banner and thus to secure the foundation 
 of a new Arab empire in North Africa. There is 
 reason to believe that the disaffection had 
 already begun to spread to Tunis and the Sudan. 
 
 "The plan was the more promising as no 
 other revolutionary in North Africa had pos 
 sessed such knowledge of the world or had been 
 so well prepared to encounter European troops. 
 Haji Hassan s followers were found to be well 
 armed, rifles and ammunition having long been 
 smuggled to them through Fezzan in cases of 
 merchandise and even we are told of Bibles. 
 And not only were these followers well armed. 
 They had also been excellently drilled by the 
 late Sultan s confederate, an ex-artillery officer 
 from the War College at Constantinople, who 
 was educated at Woolwich. 
 
 "These circumstances made the uprising far 
 more dangerous than any which have preceded 
 it. Only the excessive confidence of the rebel 
 chieftain, which led him to strike too soon, made 
 
266 FOR THE FAITH 
 
 possible the crushing of his forces. His Majesty 
 King Victor Emanuel is to be congratulated on 
 having at his command so able an offiper as 
 General Martinengo, and on having succeeded 
 in disposing of the person of the insurgent at 
 the very outset of the campaign. 
 
 "A detailed account of the action will be 
 found in our news columns." 
 
MILL VALLEY 
 
 Look around you at the world. Everywhere you will 
 see blood flowing in streams, and as merrily as cham 
 pagne. . . . Civilization develops in man nothing but an 
 added capacity for receiving impressions. That is all. 
 Fedor Dostoevsky: LETTERS FROM THE UNDERWORLD. 
 
 I SHALL never forget the night I got there. 
 The train went no farther than Nicomedia 
 in those days, and it took so long that you 
 nearly died of old age on the way. But when the 
 three red lights on the tail of it dwindled into 
 the dark, I had the queerest sense of having 
 been dropped into another world. It was the 
 more so because one couldn t see an earthly thing 
 not a star, not even the Gulf which we were to 
 cross. I only heard the lapping of it, close by, 
 when the rumble of the train died out of the 
 stillness. That and the crunch of steps on the 
 sand were all there was to hear, and an occa 
 sional word I didn t catch. The men could 
 hardly have been more silent if our lives had 
 depended on it. I had no idea how many of 
 them there were, or what they looked like 
 
 267 
 
268 MILL VALLEY 
 
 much less where they were taking me. They 
 simply hoisted a sail and put off into the night. 
 I would have sworn, too, that there was no 
 wind. The sail filled, however: I could see the 
 swaying pallor of it, and hear the ripple under 
 the bow. And as my eyes got used to the dark 
 ness, I discovered an irregular silhouette in 
 front of us, and a floating will-o -the-wisp of a 
 light. The silhouette grew taller and blacker 
 till the boat grounded under it. Then, by the 
 light of the will-o -the-wisp, which was a sput 
 tering oil lantern on shore, I made out some 
 immense cypresses. 
 
 You have no idea how eerie that landing was, 
 in a waterside cemetery that was for all the 
 world like Bocklin s Island of Death. The men 
 moved like shadows about their Flying Dutch 
 man of a boat, and their lantern just brought 
 out the ghostliness of gravestones leaning be 
 tween the columns of the cypresses. And I 
 suddenly became aware of the strangest sound. 
 I had no idea what it was or where it came 
 from, but it was a sort of low moaning that 
 fairly went into your bones. It grew louder 
 when we started on again. We climbed an in 
 visible trail where branches slashed at us in the 
 dark, and all kinds of sharp and sweet and queer 
 smells came out of it in waves. And nightin 
 gales began to sing like mad around us, and off 
 
MILL VALLEY 269 
 
 in the distance somewhere jackals were bark 
 ing, and under it all that low moaning went on 
 and on and on. And at last we came out into 
 an open space on top of the hill, where a bonfire 
 made a hole in the black, and a couple of naked 
 figures stood redly out in the penumbra of it, 
 with a ring of faces flickering around them. 
 
 II 
 
 The bonfire business, I afterward found out, 
 was nothing but a wrestling match they had 
 them almost every night on the me idan and 
 the moaning came from the mill-wheels in the 
 valley. They were picturesque old wooden 
 affairs, the mills, all green with moss and 
 maidenhair fern, that went grinding and groan 
 ing on forever and making you wonder what on 
 earth it was all about. They kept me from get 
 ting over that first impression, that sense of 
 walking through all kinds of things without see 
 ing them. The mills belonged to a village, or 
 rather a snarl of muddy lanes, at the top of a 
 filbert valley, where water tumbled down to the 
 Gulf. It was only fifty miles away, but it 
 might have been five hundred and fifty. There 
 was none of the contrast with Europe that 
 always strikes you here. It was Asia pure and 
 simple simple, at least, if not pure ! Not that 
 there was any lack of contrast, transposed as it 
 
270 MILL VALLEY 
 
 were to a different key. Most of the villagers 
 made attar of rose, and they had heavenly rose 
 gardens, separated by ruinous mud walls and 
 by alleys of such filth and such smells as you 
 can t conceive. No one ever dreamed, appar 
 ently, of cleaning a street or repairing a house 
 unless to plaster it afresh with cow dung. Yet 
 the houses were wonderfully neat inside. And I 
 caught glimpses in them of rugs and tiles and 
 brasses that made my fingers itch. I had one of 
 the few wooden houses in the place, a huge 
 tumble-down old konak belonging to an absentee 
 rose-growing Pasha. It stood a little apart 
 from the others, in a big garden. And it leaked 
 so villainously that I had to sit under an um 
 brella every time there was a shower. But the 
 garden and the view made up for that. 
 
 What struck me most, though, was a some 
 thing in it all which I could never lay my finger 
 on. That s the wildest part of the Marmora, 
 you know, for all their railroad on the north 
 shore. Some day, I suppose, when international 
 expresses go thundering through to the Per 
 sian Gulf, it ll be all factory chimneys and sum 
 mer hotels, like the rest of the world. But now 
 there s nothing worse than vineyards and to 
 bacco plantations. On our side there were not 
 many of those. The hills stood up pretty 
 straight out of the water, and most of them 
 
MILL VALLEY 271 
 
 were wooded down to the beach. You might 
 think it virgin forest, if you didn t know that 
 Roman emperors used to build villas there. It 
 seemed incredible that a country inhabited so 
 long should show so few signs of it. The people 
 might have camped in a clearing overnight, 
 and the woods were just waiting to cover up 
 their tracks. But the wildness was not the good 
 blank unconscious wildness we have at home. 
 There was a melancholy about it. The silence 
 that hung over the place was really a little 
 uncanny. The mills only cried out, in that 
 monotonous minor of theirs. 
 
 It was lucky for me that the wireless teleg 
 raphy I sometimes felt about me allowed the 
 inhabitants to smoke water-pipes of peace with 
 me, in a little vine-shaded coffee-house on the 
 me idan. And I couldn t imagine where in the 
 world they had all picked up their manners. Of 
 course I was asked a good many questions, and 
 some of them were pretty personal. That is a 
 part of the Oriental code. It was amazing, 
 though, what a savoir faire they had, what a 
 sense of life and a few other things. I couldn t 
 make them out taken with their vile village 
 and their utter ignorance of the world at large. 
 The Miidir, to be sure as it were the mayor 
 was something of an exception. He was a grave, 
 plump, suave personage who might have made 
 
272 MILL VALLEY 
 
 an excellent Cadi of tradition if he had never 
 heard of Paris. As it was, I m afraid he took 
 less thought for his peasants troubles than of 
 the extent to which they could be made to repay 
 him for his own. I quickly found out, not alto 
 gether to my joy, that he wanted to practise his 
 French as much as I wanted to practise my 
 Turkish. On such occasions as I had the honour 
 of squatting at his little round board, his knowl 
 edge of the Occident would manifest itself in an 
 incredible profusion of spoons. The first time 
 I returned his hospitality I discovered that he 
 was not averse to sampling my modest cellar. 
 I also discovered that he didn t care to be found 
 out. These people, you know, are tremendous 
 prohibitionists. 
 
 Then there was the Naib, who was some kind 
 of country justice, and a Chaoush, an officer of 
 police, all done up in yellow braid and brass 
 whistles. But the one I liked best, and who 
 interested me most, was the Imam. You might 
 not have been inclined to take him seriously, if 
 you saw his green turban and his rose-coloured 
 robe. A more kindly, honest, simple, delightful 
 old gentleman, however, it has seldom been my 
 fortune to meet. He was a Turk of the old 
 school, without an atom of Europe in his com 
 position. I wish they were not getting so con 
 foundedly rare. They are worth a dozen of 
 
MILL VALLEY 273 
 
 these new people who pick up the Roman alpha 
 bet and a few half-baked ideas of what we are 
 pleased to call progress. The Imam consented 
 to give me Turkish lessons. And I fancy he 
 taught me rather more than was in the bond. 
 I thought all I had to do was to sit down and 
 look pleasant and turn him inside out at my 
 leisure. Whereas more than once I had a feel 
 ing, after it was over, of having been turned 
 inside out myself. It makes me grin, now, 
 when I remember what a confident young 
 ostrich I was. I ve been out here quite a while, 
 now, and to this day I m never sure of my man 
 how that Asiatic head of his will work in any 
 given case. My sole consolation is that I m not 
 the only one. In this generation I presume 
 there must have been as many as five Euro 
 peans and four of those, Englishmen who 
 didn t more or less make jackasses of them 
 selves when they ran up against Asia. And I 
 imagine it took them rather more than a year 
 to arrive even at that negative degree of 
 comprehension. 
 
 For that matter, I don t suppose I was pre 
 cisely an open book myself. In this part of the 
 world they haven t got our passion for poking 
 around where we don t belong. Perhaps they ve 
 had more time to find out how little there is in 
 it. And for a mysteroious individual from lands 
 
274 MILL VALLEY 
 
 beyond the sea, whose servant can t be pre 
 vented from bragging of the splendour in which 
 he lives at Constantinople, to bury himself in a 
 remote village of the Marmora, must mean 
 something queer. Does one give up a yali on 
 the Bosphorus for a leaky konak in Mill Valley ? 
 And are there no teachers of Turkish in Stam- 
 boul? They never would understand anything 
 so simple as my wanting to soak in their air and 
 their language. I believe it didn t take long for 
 the Mutessarif of Nicomedia to find out I was 
 there, and for him to ascertain in ways best 
 known to himself what I was up to. I often won 
 dered what his version of it was. But he let 
 me prowl about the country in peace though I 
 never got rid of a feeling that unknown eyes 
 were on the watch. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Everything, then, was still strange to me 
 the faces, the costumes, the curious implements, 
 the hairy black buffaloes, the fat-tailed sheep 
 with their dabs of red dye, the solid-wheeled 
 carts that lamented more loudly, if less con 
 tinuously, than the water wheels, the piratish 
 looking caravels beating up and down the Gulf 
 under a balloon of a mainsail. Once in a while 
 I chartered one of them, to go fishing or explor 
 ing. All of which must have been highly in- 
 
MILL VALLEY 275 
 
 comprehensible to my astonished neighbours. 
 I believe my man had to invent some legend of 
 a doctor and a cure to account for so eccentric a 
 master. It was only when I came more and 
 more to spend my days among the cypresses on 
 the edge of the water that I became less an ob 
 ject of suspicion. For while a Turk is little of a 
 sportsman and less of a mere aimless sightseer, 
 he likes nothing better than sitting philosoph 
 ically under the greenwood tree. 
 
 My greenwood was, as I have said, a ceme 
 tery the one where I landed the night I 
 arrived. Heaven knows how long it had been 
 there. The cypresses were immensely tall and 
 thick and dark. And the stones under them, 
 with their carved turbans and arabesques, and 
 their holes and rain-hollows for restless or 
 thirsty ghosts, were all gray and lichened with 
 time, and pitched every which way between the 
 coiling roots. You may think it a queer kind of 
 place to sit around in; but the villagers didn t, 
 and it took my fancy enormously. I don t know 
 there was something so still and old about it, 
 and the spring had such a look between the 
 black trees. It wasn t quite still, either, for 
 that strange low minor of the water wheels 
 was always in your ears. It ran on and on, 
 like the sound of the quiet and the sunshine 
 and the cypresses and the ancient stones. 
 
276 MILL VALLEY 
 
 And it made all sorts of things go through your 
 head. I presume that first impression had 
 something to do with it. You wondered whether 
 the trees would have lived so long if so many 
 dead people had not lain among their roots. 
 You wondered I don t know what you didn t 
 wonder. 
 
 As the weather grew warm I used to pack a 
 hammock and reading and writing and cooking 
 things on a donkey, nearly every day, and drop 
 down through the filberts to my cypresses. I 
 used to swim there, too and cut myself out 
 rageously on the stones and sea-urchins of the 
 beach. What I did most, though, was simply to 
 loll in the shade and watch the world go by. 
 Not that much of it does go by the Gulf of 
 Nicomedia. If it hadn t been for a sail every 
 now and then you would have supposed that 
 people had forgotten all about that little blue 
 pocket of a firth, leading nowhere between its 
 antique hills. Then there were two or three 
 trains a d^y, whose black you could just make 
 out, crawling through the green of the opposite 
 shore. And there was a steamer a day, each 
 way, that it was as much as your life was worth 
 to set foot ^n. You wouldn t think so, though, 
 to see the people who packed the decks. It was 
 a miracle where so many of them came from 
 and went to, I often used to go down to the 
 
MILL VALLEY 277 
 
 landing to look at them, with all their different 
 colours and types and languages. They gave 
 one such an idea of the extraordinary wreckage 
 that has been left on the shores of that old 
 Greek sea. Only you don t get it as you do 
 here, where races and creeds march past you 
 and you stand by and admire. There was some 
 thing more secret and ancient about it more 
 like Homer and the Bible and the Arabian 
 Nights. 
 
 One afternoon as I sat under the cypresses 
 what should go by but a caravan ! I had never 
 seen one before. First came a man on a donkey, 
 with a couple of saddle bags to make your 
 mouth water, and then a long string of camels 
 roped together in groups like barges in a tow. 
 What an air they had the fantastic tawny line 
 of them swinging against the blue of the Gulf ! 
 And how softly they padded along the shingle, 
 with their mysterious bales and the picturesque 
 ruffians in charge of them ! They passed with 
 out so much as a turn of the eye, my Wise Men 
 of the East, and disappeared behind the point 
 as silently as they came. It gave me the 
 strangest sensation. I had felt something of 
 the same before. I could scarcely help it, look 
 ing out between those tragic trees at the white 
 strip of beach and the blue strip of sea and the 
 green strip of hills that were so much like other 
 
278 MILL VALLEY 
 
 hills and seas and beaches and yet so different. 
 But there had never come to me before quite 
 such a sense of the strangeness of this world 
 where so many things had been buried from the 
 time of Jason and the Argo of this world of 
 which I knew nothing and to which I was 
 nothing. 
 
 IV 
 
 You may believe that I was delighted when I 
 went back to the village that night and found it 
 full of camels. The air was sizzling with bon 
 fires and kebabs you know those bits of lamb 
 they broil on a long wooden spit ? and strange 
 faces were at every corner. They filled the 
 coffee-house, too, when I finally got there. By 
 that time it was too dark to stare as hard as I 
 would have liked. But perhaps the scene was 
 all the more picturesque for the shadowy figures 
 scattered under the vine in the dusk, and the 
 bubble of nargilehs filling the intervals of talk. 
 A feature would come saliently out here and 
 there in the red of a cigarette a shining eye, 
 a hawk nose, a bronzed cheek-bone. And out 
 on the me idan were groups around fires, with 
 their little pipes that have all the trouble of the 
 East in them, and their little tomtoms of such 
 inimitable rhythms. 
 
 I found my friends established as usual in the 
 
MILL VALLEY 279 
 
 seat of honour an old sofa in the corner of the 
 cafe and as usual they made place for me 
 amongst them. When the ceremony of their 
 welcome subsided, the Mudir took occasion to 
 whisper to me that the leader of the caravan, 
 an excellent fellow who had stopped there be 
 fore, was telling stories. I then recognized, in 
 the light of a lamp, the man I had seen that 
 afternoon. He sat on a stool in front of the 
 divan of honour, and behind him were crowded 
 all the other stools and mats in the place. 
 Although he had not deigned, before, to turn 
 his head toward me, he now testified by the 
 depth of his salaam to the honour he felt in 
 such an addition to his circle. He was a 
 curiously handsome chap, burnt and bearded, 
 with the high-hung jaw of his people, the 
 arched brow, the almost Roman nose. And 
 shaky as I still was in the language, he didn t 
 leave me long to wonder why he was the centre 
 of the circle. He was a born raconteur one of 
 those story-tellers who in the East still carry 
 on the tradition of the troubadours. Not that 
 he sang to us, or recited poetry although the 
 Imam told me with pride that the man was a 
 dictionary of the Persian poets. But he went 
 on with a story he had begun before my en 
 trance. It was one of those endless old Eastern 
 tales that are such a charming mixture of ser- 
 
280 MILL VALLEY 
 
 pent wisdom and childish naivete. And he told 
 it with a vividness of gesture and inflection that 
 you never get from print. 
 
 Well, you can imagine ! I always had a fancy 
 for that sort of thing, but it s so deuced hard to 
 get at at least, for people like us. And after 
 that queer turn the first sight of the caravan 
 gave me, down by the water, it made me feel 
 as if I were really beginning to lay my hand on 
 things at last. So I was disappointed enough 
 when at the end of the story the party began to 
 break up. Upon my signifying as much to my 
 neighbour the Miidir, however, he said that 
 nothing would be easier than to summon the 
 man to a private session. If I would do him the 
 
 honour to come to the konak I was tickled 
 
 enough to take up with the idea, provided the 
 meeting should take place at my house instead. 
 I knew there would be bakshish, which I didn t 
 like to put the Mudir in for, after all he had 
 done. Moreover, I had a whim to get the camel- 
 driver under my own roof by way of nailing 
 the East, so to speak! 
 
 V 
 
 So the upshot of the business was that we 
 made a night of it. Oh, I don t mean any of 
 your wild and woolly ones. To be sure, we did 
 wet things down a trifle more than is the cus- 
 
MILL VALLEY 281 
 
 torn of the country. There happened to be a 
 decanter on the table, which the camel-driver 
 looked at as if he wouldn t mind knowing what 
 it contained; and being a bit awkward at first, 
 I knew no better than to trot it out. The 
 Mudir, to whom of course I offered it first, 
 wouldn t have any. I suppose he had his repu 
 tation to keep up before an inferior. I was 
 rather surprised, all the same, for it was plain 
 enough that the camel-driver was by no means 
 the kind of man the name implies, and a little 
 Greek wine wouldn t hurt a baby. Moreover, 
 I had heard of this raki of theirs, which is so 
 much fire-water, and I didn t take their tem 
 perance very seriously. As for the camel-driver, 
 he was rather amusing. 
 
 "You tempt me to my death!" he laughed, 
 taking the glass I poured out for him. "Do 
 you know that my men would kill me if they 
 saw me now? These country people have not 
 the ideas of the effendi and myself. They follow 
 blindly the Prophet, not realizing how many 
 rooms there are in the house of a wise man. 
 They found out that I had been affording oppor 
 tunity for the forgiveness of God, and they 
 took it quite seriously. They threatened to kill 
 me if I did not make a public confession. And 
 I had to do it, to please them. On the next 
 Friday I made a solemn confession of my sins 
 
282 MILL VALLEY 
 
 in mosque, and swore never to smell another 
 drop." 
 
 At this I didn t know just what to do. I 
 looked at the Miidir , and the Miidir looked at 
 the camel-driver. The latter, however, waved 
 his hand with a smile of goodfellowship. 
 
 "There is no harm now," he said. "We break 
 caravan to-morrow at Nicomedia. Moreover, I 
 do not drink saying it is right. I should blas 
 pheme God, who has commanded me not to 
 drink. But I acknowledge that I sin. Great be 
 the name of God !" With which he tipped the 
 glass into his mouth. "My soul!" he exclaimed. 
 "That is better than a cucumber in August !" 
 
 These people are democratic, you know, to a 
 degree of which we haven t an idea for all 
 our declaration of independence. Yet there 
 are certain invisible lines which are sure to trip 
 a foreigner up and which made me mighty un 
 certain what to do with the governor of a 
 mudirlik and the leader of a caravan. But the 
 latter proceeded to look out for that. Such a 
 jolly good fellow you never saw in your life, 
 with his stories, and the way he had with him, 
 and the things he had been up to. It turned 
 out that he knew western Asia a good deal 
 better than I know western Europe. Tabriz, 
 Tashkend, Samarkand, Cabul, to say nothing 
 of Mecca and Cairo and Tripoli such names 
 
MILL VALLEY 283 
 
 dropped from him as Liverpool and Marseilles 
 might from me. Where camel goes he had 
 been, and for him Asia Minor was no more than 
 a sort of ironic tongue stuck out at Europe by 
 the huge continent behind. It gave me my 
 first inkling of how this empire is tied up. It 
 seems to hang so loosely together, without the 
 rails and wires that put Sitka and St. Augustine 
 in easier reach of each other than Constantinople 
 and Bagdad. I began to learn then that wires 
 and rails are not everything that there are 
 stronger nets than those. Altogether it was a 
 momentous occasion. To sit there in that queer 
 old house, in a wild hill village of the Marmora, 
 and speak familiarly with that camel-driver 
 who carried the secrets of Asia in his pocket 
 it brought me nearer than I had ever dreamed 
 to that life which was always so tantalizing me 
 by my inability to get at it. 
 
 VI 
 
 When the man finally withdrew, and the 
 Mudir after him, I was in no mood to go to bed. 
 They had opened to me their ancient world, 
 with all its poetry and mystery, and I did not 
 want to lose it again. I could see it stretching 
 dimly beyond the windows where the water 
 wheels went moaning under the moon. I went 
 out into it. The night was you have no idea 
 
284 MILL VALLEY 
 
 what those nights could be. They had such a 
 way of swallowing up the squalidness of things, 
 and bringing out all their melancholy magic. 
 The rose season was at its height, and the air 
 was one perfume from the hidden gardens. 
 Then the nightingales were at that heart 
 breaking music of theirs. And the moon! It 
 wasn t one of those glaring round things, like a 
 coachman s button or a butcher s boy with the 
 mumps, by which young ladies are commonly 
 put into spasms; but it was an old wasted one, 
 with such a light ! 
 
 It was all the more extraordinary because not 
 a creature was about except a man who lay 
 asleep on the ground, not far from the door. 
 Apparently they dropped off wherever they 
 happened to be, down there, and I used to envy 
 them for it. I stood still for a while, in the 
 shadow of the house, taking it all in. Don t 
 you know, it happens once in a while that you 
 have a mood, and that your surroundings come 
 up to it? It doesn t happen very often, either 
 at least, to workaday people like us. So I 
 stood there, looking and listening and breathing. 
 And when I saw the edge of the shadow of the 
 house crumple up at one place, without any 
 visible cause, and creep out into the moonlight, 
 I I only looked at it. Nothing had any visible 
 cause in that strange world of mine, and I 
 
MILL VALLEY 285 
 
 watched the slowly lengthening finger of 
 shadow with the passivity of a man who has 
 seen too many wonders to wonder any more. 
 But then I made out a darker darkness winding 
 back toward the house. And I don t know 
 I thought of the man on the ground. I 
 looked at him. 
 
 It was my camel-driver, dead as Darius, with 
 the blood running out of a hole in his back like 
 water out of a spout. For the moment I was 
 still too far away from every day to be startled, 
 or even very much surprised. It was only a 
 part of that mysterious world, with its mys 
 terious people and mysterious ways that I never 
 could understand. What was he doing there 
 dead, who had been so full of life a little while 
 before? Was it one of his jokes? The night 
 was the most enchanting you could imagine, the 
 air was heady with the breath of rose-gardens, 
 the nightingales were singing in the trees 
 (down in the valley I heard, low, low, the weary 
 water-wheels), and here was the prince of 
 story-tellers with his tongue stopped forever, 
 and the blood of him making a snaky black trail 
 across the moonlight. . . . 
 
 VII 
 
 What happened next? My dear fellow, you 
 remind me of these kids who will never let you 
 
286 MILL VALLEY 
 
 finish their story! Nothing happened next. 
 That was the beauty of it. I guess I got one 
 pretty good case of the jim-jams after a while, 
 and when I got through wondering whether I 
 was going to be elected next, I began to wonder 
 whether they wouldn t think I d done it. Of 
 course, I had done it, as a matter of fact, and 
 that didn t tend to composure of mind. Neither 
 did my speculation as to what the Mudir might 
 or might not have noticed when he left me that 
 evening. But, if you will believe it, nobody ever 
 lifted a finger. The next morning the caravan 
 was gone and apparently everything was the 
 same as before. If anything, they were more 
 decent than before. That was the worst of it. 
 I don t believe I d have minded so much if they d 
 stoned me and ridden me out on a rail and set 
 the Government after me and raised the devil 
 generally. I should at least have felt less at sea. 
 
 As it was Hello, there s Carmignani ! Let s 
 
 take him over to Tokatlian s. 
 
THE REGICIDE 
 
 Thus it appears that the sole reward of a shining life 
 is ofttimes bitterness. 
 
 Richard Matthews Hallett: THE LADY AFT. 
 
 THE Atlantic, after all, is nothing but an 
 American lake, and one passage is like 
 another. You could almost make up the 
 sailing list before going on board. There will 
 be the person on his first trip, who speaks of 
 London and the Alps as if they were Lhasa and 
 the Himalayas. There will be the person on his 
 sixty-ninth trip that kind of a person on his 
 sixty-ninth trip who finds occasion to apprise 
 you of that fact when you give your name to the 
 bath steward. There will be the lady who sings. 
 There will be the gentleman who plays. There 
 will be the individual who organizes the concert. 
 There will be the college professor leading six 
 teen young ladies by the nose. There will be 
 the distracting widow, accompanied oftener 
 than not by an infant ruffian whom she confides 
 to you to be the image of his poor father. 
 There will be the mysterious personage who 
 speaks to no one and who is variously referred 
 
 87 
 
288 THE REGICIDE 
 
 to as Hall Caine, Harry Lauder, or J. P. Morgan. 
 And after that, to make up the chorus of the 
 piece, there will be job lots of priests, drum 
 mers, students, card sharps, detached ladies, in 
 valids, bridal couples, and nice-looking people 
 you don t get a chance to meet. 
 
 And yet, after all, one passage never is like 
 another. Consider, for instance, the difference 
 between the voyages east and west. The card 
 sharps, the distracting widow, and the person 
 on his sixty-ninth trip, are the only members of 
 the cast who do not outwardly and visibly 
 undergo, between the two, some manner of 
 change. Then you can never exhaust the com 
 binations and permutations possible between 
 the various groups. And with the strange con 
 trasts that meet your eye, the strange tales that 
 sooner or later reach your ear, the strange sense 
 of the sea s power to put men into immediate 
 relation with one another, it always comes to 
 you with a fresh shock at least it always 
 comes to me that the most unpromising peo 
 ple are often the ones who have the most sur 
 prising adventures. For life has a trick of 
 being true to itself even in the little rocking 
 world of a ship. 
 
 All of which is a more or less inconsequent 
 preamble to my acquaintance with Mr. and Mrs. 
 Alonzo Blakemore. I first saw them at dinner 
 
THE REGICIDE 289 
 
 the night we left Naples. I must confess, how 
 ever, that I paid but a mediocre degree of atten 
 tion to the severe and gloomy dame upon my 
 right. I have skimmed about a bit in my day 
 and I have my generalizations. They are not so 
 narrow as they might be, thank goodness; but 
 neither are they so wide as to claim that every 
 human being is interesting. I have known too 
 many who were not. I therefore took as much 
 credit to myself as if I had calculated the 
 transit of Venus when Mrs. Blakemore under 
 took to convince a scandalized steward that she 
 required tea with her fish. It went with her 
 perennial black dress and its to call them 
 polka dots would connote more liveliness than 
 their wearer diffused. Singularly destitute even 
 of the maturer airs and graces of femininity, 
 she kept a watch upon her lips that would have 
 discouraged a more pertinacious companion 
 than myself. Moreover nature had found means 
 to enhance a certain martial deportment which 
 was hers. You could not affirm that she was 
 bearded like the pard, but you wouldn t be will- 
 ling to answer for her in ten years. Neverthe 
 less I might as well say here and now that as 
 custom facilitated our intercourse, she rather 
 came to remind me of Lamb s Gentle Giantess 
 except, of course, that she was neither a 
 giantess nor gentle. 
 
290 THE REGICIDE 
 
 A curious little passage with her husband 
 gave me the first hint of the sort. I happened 
 one noon to see her examining with that gentle 
 man the chart of our daily run, when all of a 
 sudden she executed the most extraordinary 
 little caper and gave vent to the most extraor 
 dinary little squeal. It was over so quickly that 
 I could not be quite sure of my senses. I would 
 as soon have expected such a manoeuvre from 
 the Statue of Liberty. But it made me think, 
 for some absurd reason, of a sea monster I had 
 watched a few days before in the Aquarium at 
 Naples. This was a fearsome-looking creature 
 with frazzles waving from it and a general air 
 of intending to make mincemeat out of you. 
 And then a cavity opened somewhere in its 
 grisly person and revealed an interior of a most 
 innocent baby pink. Well, I did not arrive 
 at any great intimacy with Mrs. Blakemore, 
 and I am unable to account for the distinctness 
 of an impression which she did so little to con 
 firm; but I never could quite rid myself of an 
 idea that this singular woman was lined with 
 pink. 
 
 It may be that I saw Mrs. Blakemore s case 
 as a reflection of her husband. He was a rosy 
 and genial little gentleman who affected a red 
 necktie. He also used don t in the third per 
 son singular and looked askance upon the 
 
THE REGICIDE 291 
 
 "I-talians" crowding the forward deck. But 
 that didn t prevent him from being full of kind 
 offices and a certain dry humour. Indeed he 
 only lacked a degree of flamboyancy to become 
 what is known as the life of the ship. As it 
 was, the nicest thing about him was the way he 
 treated his wife. He carried her off as if she d 
 been the Queen of Sheba although I enter 
 tained my suspicions as to who had done the 
 carrying off. I will not say, however, that I 
 would have appreciated the subtleties of the 
 case to such a degree if Blakemore had not been 
 so polite about my stories. I was on my way 
 home from Constantinople, which few people on 
 board had seen at all, much less looked at for 
 five years, and I had that particular onion patch 
 to myself. But Blakemore seemed to take more 
 than a mere polite interest in my reminiscences. 
 Even Mrs. Blakemore appeared to take a cue 
 from him in our somewhat onesided councils. 
 About Europe in general it was plain enough 
 that she knew or cared no more than about 
 Patagonia. She had apparently gone there for 
 the pure pleasure of going home. But she 
 would occasionally ask me, a propos de bottes, 
 or perhaps by way of steering the conver 
 sation into fields where she knew me to be 
 most eloquent, how hot it was on the Bos- 
 phorus, and what the people wore, and whether 
 
292 THE REGICIDE 
 
 there was a king, and if I saw many Ameri 
 cans. 
 
 For my own part, I dispensed with questions. 
 In the first place, asking for information has 
 always seemed to me a crude and unreliable 
 way of getting it. Then, with regard to the 
 Blakemores, I felt that after the small affair of 
 the chart there was no information worth get 
 ting. I had met them a hundred times in New 
 England villages. I had seen them a hundred 
 times hurrying through foreign streets with 
 grave unseeing eyes. A hundred times I had 
 discoursed with them in hotel drawing-rooms, 
 at compartment windows, on steamer decks, 
 concerning the superlative beauty of American 
 as compared to all other human institutions. 
 There was nothing about them I didn t know 
 beforehand. So, but for an accident of the 
 dinner table, my smugness might never have 
 been rebuked. I might never have heard, that 
 is, one of the drollest little stories I ever picked 
 up at sea. 
 
 It came out through the agency of the col 
 lege professor, a gentleman for whom life was 
 a large and unruly classroom and the sole 
 method of establishing relations therewith the 
 Socratic. Having doubtless learned the story of 
 everybody else s life, he set about obtaining 
 that of Mrs. Blakemore, to which end he in- 
 
THE REGICIDE 293 
 
 quired how long she had been over. I didn t 
 exactly prick up my ears when she said eight 
 months. It only made her more typical to have 
 spent eight months in Europe without any of it 
 rubbing off on her. I did prick up my ears 
 though when it came out that the eight months 
 had been spent not in Europe at all, but in Meso 
 potamia. In fact I felt a little irritated about it 
 as you do when you get very chummy with a 
 man on the way over and then see him drive 
 away from the pier in a Black Maria. What on 
 earth had these good people been doing in 
 Mesopotamia, of all places, where Fve always 
 been dying to go and at a season when every 
 body who can gets out of it ? The question evi 
 dently agitated other minds, for the professor 
 began speaking of Egypt and the Holy Land. 
 It appeared that he sometimes varied the mo 
 notony of taking young ladies abroad in the 
 summer by escorting old ones in the winter. 
 
 "Well, we did pass Egypt on our way south," 
 I heard Blakemore say, "but we spent most of 
 our time in Basra." 
 
 Everybody looked blankly at everybody else, 
 wondering where in the world Basra might be 
 everybody, that is, except the narrator of this 
 tale, who had not lived in Constantinople for 
 five years for nothing. 
 
 "Why, that s the place at the head of the Per- 
 
294 THE REGICIDE 
 
 sian Gulf, isn t it?" I asked, wondering as I 
 stirred my coffee whether missionaries and red 
 neckties went together. "Did you happen to 
 run across the consul of ours who s been kicking 
 up such a row down there ?" 
 
 "Oh, I believe I saw something about it in the 
 Paris Herald" said a lady across the table. 
 "Didn t he kill a king, or something ?" 
 
 "There s no telling what he did," I answered. 
 "The people who sit in consulates, under our 
 admirable system, are about as queer as those 
 who visit them especially at those out-of-the- 
 way posts, that are generally filled by gentle 
 men into whose antecedents the Department 
 does not feel it necessary to inquire very deeply. 
 The Turkish papers were quite amusing about 
 this particular ornament of our public service 
 the White Peril, and so on but they didn t 
 make it very clear what he was up to when he 
 tried to pot some local royalty. Perhaps he was 
 on the order of the capitalists we hear so much 
 about nowadays, who hunt in pairs and con 
 trive to wring concessions out of dusky poten 
 tates with the help of a dazzling pair of shoul 
 ders! Anyway it raised all kinds of a fuss. 
 Washington has had to apologize to everybody 
 from the Sultan to King Edward, and gunboats 
 have been skipping about like spring lambs, and 
 our worthy consul has gone home very much 
 
THE REGICIDE 295 
 
 persona non grata. You probably know more 
 about it than I do, Blakemore." 
 
 The minute I turned to him I saw that he did. 
 He was looking down at Mrs. Blakemore, who 
 had swung her chair about in order to get up. 
 Then he said to me with a smile: 
 
 "Well, I don t know as I d have put it just 
 that way. But I m the man." And the two of 
 them walked out of the saloon. 
 
 I haven t blazed on every occasion of my 
 career with the brilliancy of an eight-million 
 candle-power arc light, but on this one I felt 
 uncommonly like a wax match in a waterspout. 
 And it wasn t altogether on my own account 
 either. I would have given anything not to 
 have thrown Blakemore to the lions like that, 
 for a liner is a worse place for tattle than a vil 
 lage Dorcas society. So as soon as I got myself 
 together a bit, I went up on deck, where I found 
 the two of them sitting silently in their chairs. 
 It didn t make me feel any more comfortable. I 
 pulled up another chair beside Blakemore a 
 vile trick, too ; nothing makes me more furious 
 than to have other people snatch my chair 
 and began rather lamely : 
 
 "I say, old chap, I m awfully sorry to have 
 made such an infernal donkey of myself. The 
 thing positively never entered my head. You 
 see I modestly took it for granted that I was the 
 
296 THE REGICIDE 
 
 only one on board who had ever been anywhere. 
 And then no human being would ever take you 
 for a regicide, as the papers had it. But they 
 always distort things so. If you if there was 
 some trouble, I know there must have been good 
 reason for it." 
 
 I knew the man was a brick, but I didn t know 
 what a brick he was till I heard him chuckle 
 there in the dark. 
 
 "The reason was the funny part of it!" he 
 exclaimed. 
 
 I had no doubt of that. The reason is the 
 funny part of most human achievements. For 
 the moment, however, I could only be conscious 
 of gratitude to Blakemore for letting me down 
 so softly, and of admiration for the way he 
 did it. 
 
 "It s a wonder you didn t die of plague in such 
 a deadly place," I said, trying to take his cue 
 and incidentally to disclaim some of my asper 
 sions in the saloon, "or get eaten up by Bagdad 
 boils. How on earth did you ever happen to 
 go there?" 
 
 "Well," answered Blakemore, "I ve rather 
 wondered myself. I guess our senataor had 
 as much to do with it as anybody. He s a 
 neighbour of ours, you know. And I d never 
 been about very much, and always had an 
 idea I d like to see the world. And then 
 
THE REGICIDE 297 
 
 Louisa here, she was sort of set on Afric s coral 
 strand " 
 
 A voice suddenly came out of the darkness 
 beyond him: 
 
 "Golden sand, Alonzo." 
 
 "That s so, Louisa," he returned good 
 humouredly. And to me : "I suppose you know 
 Greenland s Icy Mountains/ sir the mission 
 ary hymn. I never can remember whether 
 Afric s or India s sunny fountains roll down 
 their golden sand, but it s Louisa s strong point. 
 She s vice-president of the Woman s Auxiliary 
 at home, and I guess she d a been a missionary 
 herself if I hadn t persuaded her to undertake a 
 tougher job." 
 
 I confess I had rather forgotten Louisa until 
 she made her amendment. But the nature of 
 the words she uttered reminded me, inconse- 
 quently enough, of the incident which I have 
 recorded and of my somewhat ill-substantiated 
 theory with regard to her inner composition. 
 Which, with what Alonzo had been saying, gave 
 me a new sense of the situation. I hardly know 
 how to express the curious little complication 
 of interest it suddenly presented to me. I be 
 gan to see so much, indeed, that I m afraid I 
 forgot my contrition in my curiosity. Blake- 
 more saved me, however, from the embarrass 
 ment of betraying it. 
 
298 THE REGICIDE 
 
 "Well, there didn t seem to be an openin for 
 us on Afric s golden sand or India s coral strand, 
 so the folks in Washington split the difference 
 and sent us to Basra. That comforted Louisa 
 
 some, because of How does the hymn go ?" 
 
 he broke off, turning to his wife. 
 
 " Trom many an ancient river, from many a 
 palmy plain, they call us to deliver their land 
 from error s chain/ " quoted Louisa from the 
 shades. 
 
 "That s it," said Alonzo, resuming the thread 
 of his discourse. "You see the Tigris and 
 Euphrates flow through those parts, and it s 
 palmy enough and plain enough to suit any 
 body. In fact it was so plain that the first time 
 we see it we pretty near turned around and 
 come home ! And I shouldn t wonder if it would 
 have been better for us if we had." 
 
 "Dear me !" I made haste to exclaim. "I ve 
 been waiting for years for a chance to get to 
 Bagdad and the Gulf. What sort of a place is 
 Basra?" 
 
 "What sort of a place is Basra?" he repeated. 
 "I ain t very much up on these foreign towns, 
 you know. Gibraltar and Naples and Port Said 
 are about the only other ones I ve seen, of any 
 account, and those I saw mostly from the boat. 
 But if they re all like Basra, little old Benning- 
 ton is good enough for your Uncle Alonzo. I 
 
THE REGICIDE 299 
 
 shouldn t wonder if it isn t something like that 
 place Venice you hear about. It s all little 
 creeks and canals from the Shat that big inlet 
 where Louisa s ancient rivers run together. 
 And Lord how it stinks when the tide goes out ! 
 And the houses are nothin but mud shanties, 
 most of em, and the streets are more like cow 
 paths than anythin else. The best thing about 
 it is the palms. They re real tall and hand 
 some, sort of like skyscraper umbrellas stuck 
 around in the mud. I won t say, though, but 
 what an elm would have looked pretty good to 
 me. We found it a little lonesome, first and last 
 specially at night, with nothin much goin 
 on but dogs barkin and water creepin through 
 the creeks and the palm trees slashin around. 
 They re a remarkable restless kind of trees." 
 
 The picture grew under my eyes, curiously, as 
 Blakemore paused. The sounds about us, weav 
 ing a sort of melodic figure above the deep 
 rhythm of the engines and the wash of the 
 water against the side, made it all the more 
 vivid the coming and going of footsteps in 
 the dark, the broken play of voices and laugh 
 ter, the strumming of Italian guitars in the 
 steerage. I thought of old summer nights on 
 the Bosphorus. 
 
 "But I had my work," Blakemore went on. 
 "We had quite a lot of invoices to attend to. 
 
300 THE REGICIDE 
 
 They send out tons of dates from there, you 
 know, besides licorice and all sorts of gums, and 
 some few of them A-rab horses. Somehow I 
 took to them quicker n I did to those other 
 A-rabs. That s what most of the people are, 
 down there. We didn t just get on to their 
 curves, Louisa and I. Not that some of em 
 didn t afford us a pretty copious exhibition of 
 curves !" he laughed. "Of course it was hardest 
 on Louisa, because the help wa n t used to our 
 ways and didn t understand more n a quarter 
 of what we were drivin at. We like to have 
 forgotten our own language. I certified a signa 
 ture once for a sailor whose aunt had died in 
 Portland and left him $10 and a mournin ring, 
 and he was about the only American who ever 
 came into my office. You can believe I didn t 
 charge him any fee, I was that glad to see him. 
 But it wouldn t be fair to make out that we 
 were the only white people in the place. There 
 was the English consul and his folks, and a few 
 English traders, and the captains of the steam 
 ers that went down the Gulf and up the Tigris 
 and the Karun, and Louisa s friends the mis 
 sionaries, besides quite a number of other con 
 suls and people who spoke English." 
 
 "What kind did you have for vice-consuls and 
 clerks and all that ?" I craftily inquired, by way 
 of keeping the ball rolling. "White or black?" 
 
THE REGICIDE 301 
 
 "Neither. He was half and half, as most of 
 em looked to be. He was a Persian, who never 
 took off a stovepipe hat he wore, with no brim 
 to it. His name was so long I called him Vice, 
 for short. It fitted him pretty well, I reckon. 
 He knew some English, and he claimed to be 
 some blue-blood. It was through him that we 
 came to know his nibs the Sultan." 
 
 "Oh !" ejaculated I. And I m afraid my thirst 
 for knowledge wasn t altogether ingenuous 
 when I pursued : "How does there happen to be 
 one, by the way? I thought the Sultan of 
 Turkey ruled that neck of palm trees." 
 
 "Well, he thinks he does. But the King of 
 England has something to say about that, not 
 to mention the Shah of Persia. And between 
 the three of them there s a little ten-acre lot of 
 a country at the head of the Gulf that has a sort 
 of Sultan of its own. He gets most of his state 
 revenues selling vegetables. It was along o 
 him and his folks that Louisa and I got into 
 trouble." Blakemore chuckled again. "He used 
 to come up to Basra quite a lot. I guess there 
 wasn t much doin down his way and he liked to 
 keep up with the news. He talked English quite 
 well. He d been a clerk in the English con 
 sulate in Bagdad before he succeeded to the 
 throne. You d never guess it, though, to see 
 him. He was a dark-complected party in a 
 
302 THE REGICIDE 
 
 green bathrobe, with about ten yards of muslin 
 wrapped around his head for a crown. And 
 under his bathrobe he had on a white night 
 shirt. They all wear em down there. I don t 
 much wonder at em, either. You feel like goin 
 to bed most of the time." 
 
 "It must be good and hot," I threw out. 
 
 "Hot! I ain t afraid of the next world any 
 more ! The only way we could get any kind of 
 comfort was to sleep all day in the cellar and 
 sleep all night on the roof. The houses were 
 built so you could. It come rather hard to us, 
 though, not bein used to that sort of thing. 
 Then there were all sorts of critters crawlin 
 and flyin about that made us mighty uneasy. 
 And the victuals was kind o queer and didn t 
 just agree with us. And then we both got spells 
 of fever. Most people do, there, and they seem 
 to take it as a matter of course. But we 
 couldn t, somehow. So when Vice suggested 
 that we go down to the Sultan s place and rent a 
 cottage he had on an island there, we jumped at 
 the idea." 
 
 He stopped again, and I trembled lest some 
 thing break his flow of reminiscence. 
 
 "Vice took charge of the consulate, and 
 Louisa and I and two or three of the help 
 everybody has a raft of em there went down 
 the inlet. It was quite a journey, what with the 
 
THE REGICIDE 303 
 
 outlandish boat we travelled in, and the miles 
 of date palms along the shore, and the bright 
 green rice fields, and the swamps and the reeds 
 and all. It took us about all day to do the fifty 
 or sixty miles down to the Gulf, and then we 
 had to sail a bit, out to the Sultan s island. It 
 was night long before we got there. But I can 
 tell you it seemed good at last to sit on some 
 thing that was almost like a reaj piazza, with 
 the sea in front of it, and stars shinin overhead 
 ten times brighter n these, and a clump of palm 
 trees at the side makin a little company like. 
 
 "The island looked nicer at night than it did 
 in the daytime. Most of it was red-hot rocks 
 and white-hot sand. I never seen such a sun. 
 The glare was enough to put your eyes out. But 
 at least it was a change, and it didn t smell like 
 the wrath to come. One end of it, too, where we 
 lived, was quite pleasant and shady with palm 
 trees. We had some neighbours who weren t 
 quite so pleasant, though I wouldn t answer for 
 the shady part. They were coloured folks. 
 
 "We didn t know till afterward that the 
 island was the Sultan s summer home. He was 
 stayin in his winter palace, on the mainland. 
 We sailed over there to see him once or twice. 
 He had quite a neat little capitol, as things go 
 down there, all white and more or less fixed up. 
 He showed us around himself, most polite. I 
 
304 THE REGICIDE 
 
 never supposed royalties would put themselves 
 out so much for common folks. It was because 
 he was our landlord, I guess, and maybe he 
 calculated to sell us some vegetables. 
 
 "His mother wasn t so accommodatin . It 
 seemed the old lady was the whole thing in that 
 country, and there was nothin for it but we 
 must have an audience with her. We were 
 taken into her part of the house and into a big 
 room where there wasn t much of anything but 
 an iron bed with a sort of thick mosquito net 
 over it. I thought we d made a mistake, 
 specially when I saw something move behind 
 the net, and I started to back out. So I stood in 
 the door and asked her how she felt. She didn t 
 know English, but the Sultan interpreted for us. 
 She said she felt warm. I told her I didn t 
 wonder under that canopy ; she d better come 
 out where it was cooler. I don t believe she 
 was much pleased at that, or at some of the 
 other things I said, and we didn t stay long. It 
 turned out that she was mortally offended by 
 my coolness, and the shortness of our visit. She 
 was that mad she wouldn t have Louisa in alone 
 to set with her, the way they do. Vice said I 
 ought to have made a dive for the bed, tearin 
 my hair and hollerin that I must see the beau 
 teous being behind those curtains if it took a 
 leg. The Sultan would have made to drag me 
 
THE REGICIDE 305 
 
 back, and then when the old lady got through 
 gigglin we ought to have sat and visited for 
 three hours." Blakemore chuckled again. "Now 
 did you ever have such doin s as that up to your 
 place?" 
 
 I certainly never did though I once had the 
 honour of taking afternoon tea in the bedroom 
 of a Turkish poetess (honi soit qui mal y 
 pensel), the poetess being in the bed, wonder 
 fully got up in pink ribbons and an ondulation 
 Marcel. I inwardly blessed myself for the mar 
 vellous ass I was in so nearly missing the 
 strange adventures of Alonzo and Louisa. 
 
 "Yes, they were funny folks," mused Blake- 
 more "easy goin and good natured and all, 
 but you never could tell which way they d jump. 
 The ladies now: they were all just about as 
 modest as the Sultana. When you met em on 
 the street they looked like one of those shower 
 baths with a rubber screen around it, out for a 
 walk, they were so scared you d see anything 
 of em ; and some of em never travelled without 
 a regular tent that it took two or three servants 
 to hold over em. But they didn t seem to have 
 no kind of moderation in their ideas. They were 
 all one way or all the other, and you never could 
 tell which it d be. At least the bunch of them 
 that lived near us on the island were like that. 
 There was plenty of room, heaven knows. Yet 
 
306 THE REGICIDE 
 
 for some reason or other they used to come to 
 
 bathe on our beach. And they The fact 
 
 is they didn t " 
 
 Alonzo s delicacy left me to gather wherein 
 consisted the immoderation of the coloured 
 ladies of the island. 
 
 "I have always understood/ I observed as 
 gravely as I might, "that they are somewhat 
 free in those warm countries." 
 
 "Free!" exclaimed a voice beyond Alonzo s 
 chair. "The last part of the time Alonzo couldn t 
 go out of the house." 
 
 Mrs. Blakemore spoke so seldom that her 
 words weighed more than those of other peo 
 ple, and these affected me so powerfully that I 
 was grateful to the darkness for hiding my 
 face. Nevertheless I was increasingly able to 
 appreciate what a brick Alonzo was. For in 
 what he went on to communicate he somehow 
 contrived to impart his own sense of the situa 
 tion without being in the least nasty to his wife. 
 
 "That was just Louisa s meat, though," he 
 continued. "We d been a little disappointed 
 about the golden sand and all, you know, but 
 here was a clear call to deliver their land from 
 error s chain. When it came to the point, how 
 ever, they weren t much for it. I presume it 
 might have been different if they d had an idea 
 what Louisa was talkin about when she took 
 
THE REGICIDE 307 
 
 her knittin and went and set with em. Any 
 how they went right on sun-burnin themselves 
 all over. So Louisa and I did what we could. 
 We sent up to Bagdad by one of the English 
 captains for a lot of bathin suits. I wasn t sure 
 how much they d do toward turnin the heathen 
 from the error of her way, but I thought there 
 might be room for quite a trade if once it got 
 started. And sure enough it got started all 
 right. There ain t a lady of wealth and fashion 
 in the Persian Gulf this summer who don t go 
 to parties in a red-and-white-striped bathin 
 suit! But Louisa didn t come out so well, for 
 the same doin s kept on as before. And when 
 she had a session with the Sultan on the sub 
 ject, she found they thought the clothes were 
 for land, not for water, and that they wouldn t 
 dream of wettin such pretty things." 
 
 Blakemore laughed with me that time. He 
 was not the man to miss the humour of his 
 wife s difficulties with the daughters of the sun. 
 I am quite incapable, however, of reproducing 
 the tone of his amusement. There was not a 
 trace of sharpness in it. All the same an old 
 line of Virgil popped into my head, repeating 
 itself to the rhythm of the engines: Dux 
 femina facti. I had no idea how this mission 
 ary consulship ended in a regicidal attempt ; but 
 I knew perfectly well that however Blakemore 
 
308 THE REGICIDE 
 
 might ascribe it to himself, Mrs. Blakemore was 
 the head and front of it. 
 
 "We had quite a time about it first and last," 
 Blakemore went on. "When we found that the 
 slumberin susceptibilities of our lady friends 
 were not likely to be aroused by ordinary 
 means, we tried more powerful ones. We sent 
 the help to order em off. We invoked the 
 authority of our country and went out with 
 Louisa holding up the flag and I behind it prom- 
 isin all kinds of destruction. We appealed to 
 the Sultan. But it didn t do any good. So at 
 last, you know, we kind o got our blood up 
 about it. I can t explain it very well, and I 
 shouldn t wonder if it would be harder still 
 when I get to Washington. I don t know- 
 things look sort of different with the thermom 
 eter two or three hundred in the shade and 
 nothin particular to do. Anyhow it riled us 
 that those women should go on like that in spite 
 of everything and we the representatives of 
 the greatest country in the world. So I con 
 cluded there was nothing for it but to take to 
 gunpowder. I knew a little birdshot wouldn t 
 hurt em." 
 
 "Gracious!" I exclaimed. "Did it?" 
 "I don t believe so," he answered. "But one 
 of em didn t fancy it. You should have heard 
 her yell! She went to our friend the Sultan 
 
THE REGICIDE 309 
 
 about it. It turned out that she was his wife." 
 For the third time during this interview the 
 voice of Mrs. Blakemore issued from the night. 
 
 "They all were !" she uttered sepulchrally. 
 
 "Yes," corroborated Blakemore. "He told us 
 afterward. He hadn t thought fit to mention 
 it before. I couldn t blame em for bein an 
 noyed. It s a rude thing to do to fire birdshot 
 at ladies." 
 
 He settled back in his chair. It was the only 
 sign he gave. As for me, I hardly knew what 
 sign to give. I watched the rail heave slowly 
 up and down across the stars. I heard the 
 water wash against the side. I listened to the 
 interwoven sound of voices and laughter and 
 singing about us in the summer night, per 
 vaded by the deep rhythm of the engines. And 
 it seemed to me, through my repressed snickers, 
 that this preposterous little story was prepos 
 terously like life. It was nothing but a farce. 
 It would make its fortune if it fell into the right 
 hands. But told as Blakemore told it, jerkily, 
 without half bringing it out, betraying its real 
 values in spite of himself, it did not solely 
 incline me to mirth. It inclined me to several 
 other things. Incidentally it inclined me to 
 think that if you put a good God-fearing New 
 England woman down on a blazing Arabic 
 island, with too little to think about, there s no 
 
310 THE REGICIDE 
 
 telling what will happen. Something must, and 
 it needn t necessarily make copy for Robert 
 Hichens. The sense of it, and of us all on that 
 lighted ship in the dark sea, sailing together for 
 a few days, heaven only knew where and why, 
 made me lapse off into a reverie of this queer 
 improper world of ours, that is really no place 
 for a lady, but that after all is something for 
 to admire and for to see where some of us are 
 whited sepulchres, and some of us are lined with 
 pink, and few of us can help it, and the best 
 souls get put down as persona non grata, and 
 funny stories lie behind cold official facts, and 
 people may be as absurd as hippopotamuses and 
 yet 
 
 "Wouldn t you have done it yourself?" sud 
 denly demanded Mrs. Blakemore. 
 
 I turned in surprise and saw the profile of this 
 formidable woman against the light of a port 
 hole a little way down the deck. I knew it 
 wasn t her fault if a dozen dusky queens were 
 not at that minute lying cold in their graves. 
 But I don t know it came over me that the 
 variations on the theme of what a man will do 
 for a woman are sometimes extremely strange. 
 And I couldn t help wondering how this woman 
 would look if she were turned inside out. 
 
 "Why, yes," I heard myself answer. "I pre 
 sume I would." 
 
THE RIVER OF THE MOON 
 
 YES, it s a very decent old gun. The chas 
 ing of silver on the stock couldn t be 
 much better. And look at the line of 
 that preposterous old bell mouth. It s a Cesarini 
 from Milan, you know; sixteenth century. 
 More than one collector has tried to get it from 
 me. But no one ever will while I m alive. I 
 can t bear to sell my things, however much peo 
 ple offer for them. One has so much fun in get 
 ting them, and they become a part of the place 
 of one s self. I would as soon think of selling 
 my children! And one likes them for all the 
 things that must have happened to them. 
 Whom do you suppose Cesarini made that chap 
 for ? And what wars did he fight in ? And how 
 did he ever happen to end in the Bazaar of 
 Broussa? Not that he has ended yet. He has 
 had one adventure since he came to live with 
 me. And it was quite worthy of him. 
 
 Shall I really tell you? Beware! I have no 
 mercy, once I get started on my yarns. How 
 ever the thing happened during the Balkan 
 
 311 
 
312 THE RIVER OF THE MOON 
 
 war. It had nothing to do with the war, and 
 yet it could not have happened if the town had 
 been less upset. What a strange time that 
 was! At the outset everybody was perfectly 
 sure that the business could end only in one 
 way. Then, when the bottom was knocked out 
 of everything, we didn t know where we were or 
 what would happen next. 
 1 For us foreigners, of course, there were alle 
 viations of the general gloom. Different kinds 
 of people came together a great deal more than 
 they had before, in the common excitement and 
 in their common sympathy for the sick and 
 wounded. And while none of the usual big par 
 ties took place, there was a good deal going on 
 unofficially by reason of the presence of the 
 international squadron in the harbour. Half 
 the girls in Pera ended by getting engaged to 
 naval officers. There wasn t much fun for the 
 natives, though, whether Christian or Turk. 
 They were all in a tremendous funk, each side 
 expecting to be cut up by the other, and waiting 
 for the Bulgarians with different kinds of sus 
 pense. It must have been rather a new sensa 
 tion for the Turks. I don t know how many of 
 them I heard of who begged Europeans to take 
 care of their families or their valuables. As for 
 the Palace people, steam was kept up night and 
 day on the imperial yacht, and it was only some 
 
THE RIVER OF THE MOON 313 
 
 very plain speaking in high quarters that kept 
 them from running away to Broussa. But they 
 were all packed and ready. And it was a long 
 time before the treasures of the Seraglio were 
 put in order again, after that hasty boxing up. 
 
 Well, the state of affairs was such that I 
 thought nothing when a man came to me one 
 afternoon with a small parcel, and asked me if 
 I would keep it for him till the "troubles" were 
 over. It was a funny little parcel, wrapped up 
 in the Turkish way in a bit of stuff a figured 
 silk shot with gold thread. As a matter of fact 
 there it is! A pretty bit, isn t it? The man 
 told me the parcel contained his savings and a 
 few trinkets that belonged to his "family" 
 otherwise his wife. These people never trust a 
 bank, you know. He was a Turk of thirty or 
 thirty-five, with nothing very distinguishable 
 about him except that he was plainly not an 
 aristocrat. He seemed to be the sort of man 
 who writes in his hand in the anterooms of 
 ministries. He had a pleasant dark face, on the 
 whole, and of course he was very polite. 
 
 I warned him that my house would be no 
 safer than his own if anything really happened. 
 He smilingly disagreed. I therefore consented 
 to take his parcel. But I told him that I would 
 accept no responsibility for it. If there was a 
 general bust-up, or if the house was bombarded 
 
314 THE RIVER OF THE MOON 
 
 or broken into, I couldn t be held for the value 
 of what his parcel might contain. He was per 
 fectly willing to let it be so. He said that God 
 was great : if any house was spared, mine would 
 be. He merely asked me to put the parcel in 
 some safe place, and to give it to no one except 
 himself. And when I proposed a receipt he 
 wouldn t have one. He said I didn t know him 
 but he knew me, and he needed no paper. 
 
 I was just beginning to expostulate with him, 
 pointing out that things might happen to one 
 or the other of us, when some one came in to see 
 me. My man took leave at once, and for the 
 moment I put his parcel in a drawer of my desk. 
 My visitor brought me a new and rather star 
 tling rumour, and we talked over plans for the 
 
 safety of the Anglo-American colony, if 
 
 There was a question of a boat to take refuge 
 on, you know, and patrols to be landed from the 
 men-of-war, and I don t know what. There were 
 a good many details to arrange and sensibilities 
 to consider. We finally walked over to the 
 embassy, and then we went on to the English 
 embassy, and the long and the short of it was 
 that I didn t go back to my study that night. 
 
 The first thing they told me the next morning 
 was that my old gun was gone from its place on 
 the wall. The servants had missed it when they 
 cleaned the room. I was much put about, and 
 
THE RIVER OF THE MOON 315 
 
 called everybody up to investigate. Nobody had 
 seen or heard anything. No lock had been 
 forced either, though there seemed to be a little 
 haziness as to whether all the windows had been 
 fastened. As for the servants themselves, I 
 felt sure that none of them would take the gun. 
 They had all been a long time in the place, like 
 the gun itself. Why should they suddenly walk 
 off with it? Then I thought of my man of the 
 day before. Might he, by any chance, have 
 hung about till he saw me go away and then 
 have managed to get the gun without any one 
 noticing him? Having remembered the man, I 
 bethought me of his parcel, which I had in 
 tended to stow in the safe, but which I had put 
 in my desk and completely forgotten. 
 
 I then discovered that the parcel was gone 
 too or the contents of it. The silk cover was 
 still there in the drawer, neatly folded up. I 
 was disgusted enough with myself for having 
 been so careless. And I couldn t even let the 
 man know. I had no idea what his name was, 
 or his address, or anything about him. The only 
 possible clue to him was that he had said he 
 knew me, and that he looked like a government 
 clerk. He might be an employee of one of the 
 ministries where I was in the habit of going. 
 His valuables were not likely to be very valuable, 
 it was true, but he would probably be just as 
 
316 THE RIVER OF THE MOON 
 
 sorry to lose them as I was to lose my Cesarini. 
 It was rather funny, though, that the thief 
 should have taken those two things and nothing 
 else. 
 
 II 
 
 I was inclined to make a fuss about my Ces 
 arini. The police, when they came, inquired 
 very particularly as to my age, and my father s 
 name, and very carefully wrote down on a large 
 piece of paper my answers to these and other 
 pregnant questions. They also offered to arrest 
 any or all of the servants several of whom 
 were Montenegrins, and therefore persons non 
 gratse. But they were too much preoccupied 
 with the more immediate questions of the day 
 to take very much interest in an old gun stolen 
 out of the house of a foreigner. 
 
 In the afternoon I had occasion to go over to 
 the Sublime Porte. And incidentally I looked 
 over all the clerks I saw, in the hope of finding 
 my man of the parcel. But there was no sign 
 of him. When I was through with my business 
 I drove on to the Bazaars. A good many of the 
 things stolen in Constantinople end there, in the 
 Bezesten. You know that murky old centre of 
 the Bazaar, which opens later and closes earlier 
 than the rest. I always like to go there be 
 cause of the way the light strikes dustily down 
 
THE RIVER OF THE MOON 317 
 
 from the high windows, and the way silks and 
 rugs and brasses and porcelain and old arms and 
 every imaginable kind of junk are piled pellmell 
 in raised stalls, and the way old gentlemen in 
 gown and turban sit among them as if they 
 didn t care whether you bought or not, but 
 rather preferred to be saved the trouble of bar 
 gaining with you. One of them happened to be 
 quite a friend of mine, and is to this day. He 
 makes a specialty of mediaeval arms. I told 
 him, over a cup of coffee which I drank sitting 
 cross-legged with him on a rug, that a valuable 
 old Italian gun had been stolen from me and 
 that if he happened to see or hear of any such 
 thing he was to let me know. I also bought an 
 Albanian yataghan from him, which I didn t 
 pay for, just to keep on good terms. 
 
 After taking leave of Hassan Effendi I told 
 my coachman to drive down to the Bridge and 
 wait for me there. I thought I would walk 
 down, to see how Stamboafwa* taking the war. 
 I began my walk, as I am somewhat prone to do, 
 by sitting down in the mosque-yard of Mahmoud 
 Pasha. The time for that mosque-yard is sum 
 mer rather than winter. But there was still 
 sun in the air, there were a few leaves on the 
 trees, and people as usual were lounging on rug- 
 covered benches and smoking hubble-bubbles. 
 I ordered one too. It is an old vice of mine. 
 
318 THE RIVER OF THE MOON 
 
 As I sat there under the trees, adding the 
 bubble of my water-pipe to the bubble that 
 went on around me, listening to the scraps of 
 talk that one hears in such a place, two soldiers 
 came out of the mosque. They stopped a 
 moment in the high old portico to pull on their 
 boots, and then picked their way between the 
 benches to one farther than mine from the main 
 thoroughfare through the yard. One of them 
 was a tall, thin, sullen-looking fellow with a 
 frowzy red moustache and funny eyes. They 
 looked as if they might be yellow. The other, I 
 presently made out, was none other than my 
 friend of the parcel. I watched them give their 
 order and sit down my man with his back 
 toward me, the red-haired one facing me. He 
 caught me looking. What is more, as soon as 
 I got up and went toward them he slipped away 
 through the nearest of the arched gates of the 
 yard. I don t know how surprised my friend 
 may have looked as he stared at the arch, but 
 he certainly looked not a little surprised when 
 he saw me. It did not strike me that he looked 
 too pleased, either; nor was I delighted at the 
 prospect of what I had to tell him. But I was 
 also rather curious about his friend. And, nat 
 urally, I did not forget my gun. However, we 
 exchanged the necessary greetings and I was 
 invited to have a coffee. 
 
THE RIVER OF THE MOON 319 
 
 "You will not wish to drink a coffee with me," 
 I told him, "when you hear that I have lost 
 your parcel." 
 
 I was right. His face changed instantly. 
 
 "Lost! How lost?" he asked. "Was it not in 
 your house ?" 
 
 "I am very sorry," I said, "but I was called 
 away yesterday, as you saw. I did not go back 
 to that room till this morning, and then I found 
 the parcel was gone. Some one must have got 
 in during the night." 
 
 I looked at him and he looked at me, each try 
 ing to get what he could from the other s face. 
 
 "Have have you looked everywhere?" he 
 stammered at last. "The servants do you 
 know them?" 
 
 "Better than I know you," I permitted myself 
 to answer. 
 
 "And have you told the police ?" 
 
 "Yes. They came, and asked questions, and 
 made a journal, and " 
 
 Before I had time to say anything else or tell 
 the man about my own loss and see how he 
 would take it he was off in turn through the 
 arch by which his friend had vanished. What 
 is more, he neglected to pay his bill, as the 
 coffee-house man reminded me when I started 
 after him. I paid it, and my own too, and felt 
 rather a fool for being so slow. But by that 
 
320 THE RIVER OF THE MOON 
 
 time there was no telling what had become of 
 them, in that tangle of little streets. Besides, 
 I have lived here so long that I have become 
 rather a fatalist myself. If my Cesarini was 
 destined to change hands once more in its long 
 career, I told myself, I could not stop it. And if 
 it was written that the Cesarini should come 
 back, why come back it would as you see it 
 did! And after all it was rather pleasant to 
 have something to think about besides the 
 eternal politics of the hour. 
 
 I don t know whether my friend found his 
 friend. But I did, no later than that night. 
 There was a dinner on board the Angry Cat as 
 the English sailors amusingly called the French 
 cruiser Henri Quatre. We had a first-rate din 
 ner of course, and chit-chat afterward, and it 
 was quite late when the Angry Kitten other 
 wise the motor launch of the Angry Cat 
 started to put us ashore. We had still a good 
 bit to go when shots cracked not far away, in 
 the direction of the Bridge. We veered around 
 to see what was up. When we arrived on the 
 scene we were hailed rather sternly by a police 
 boat; but they softened down when they saw 
 the French sailors. I spoke to them in Turkish, 
 too, and told them who we were, and asked if we 
 could do anything. The spokesman of the police 
 boat thanked me politely and said no, there was 
 
THE RIVER OF THE MOON 321 
 
 nothing; he would not trouble us to stop. By 
 which he meant he would trouble us to retire as 
 promptly as we might. We accordingly did so. 
 But we had had time to take in a curious scene. 
 
 The patrol boat lay to under the big black 
 stern of a steamer. There was a buoy near by, 
 and a covey of lighters, and the current slapped 
 past them in the stillness. Beside the police 
 boat was another rowboat, one of the sandals 
 that ferry you back and forth across the har 
 bour. In the light of an electric spark we saw 
 a patrolman handcuffing the boatman of the 
 sandal a big black Laz who evidently did not 
 like it and the sprawling legs of a passenger 
 at the stern. Then the light travelled up him 
 and we saw he was lying flat back across the 
 stern thwart, dead. And I recognized him with 
 a jump as the frowzy red soldier I had seen that 
 afternoon at Mahmoud Pasha. It gave me 
 something more to think about. I looked for 
 the man of the parcel, but I didn t see him. 
 What I did see was another parcel, a big one, 
 which the patrolman turned his attention to 
 when he had handed the Laz over to his com 
 panions. The bundle was done up in canvas, 
 which the patrolman ripped open with his knife. 
 In the gash appeared something green. 
 
 "Smuggling?" I asked, as we started back. 
 
 "Eh," answered the man who had spoken be- 
 
322 THE RIVER OF THE MOON 
 
 fore, "smuggling, deserting. It is nothing." 
 And he turned to the man in the sandal. "Never 
 mind now what is in the bundle. We can attend 
 to that when we get back." 
 
 "If you find an old gun," I shouted, "let me 
 know. Thieves broke into my place last night." 
 
 The Angry Kitten sputtered away toward 
 Top Haneh. There was talk and speculation of 
 course, and one Turkish soldier more or less 
 made no essential difference to us. But I 
 couldn t get the scene out of my head the 
 stern of the steamer half visible in the dark, 
 the huddled lighters, the two boats, the stoop 
 ing figures, and the ghastly soldier with the 
 frowzy red moustache. 
 
 Ill 
 
 The next morning a messenger came to me 
 from the Prefect of the Port and asked if I 
 would be good enough to go to his headquarters. 
 Under ordinary circumstances, of course, the 
 Prefect would give himself the pleasure of com 
 ing to me ; but the circumstances were not quite 
 ordinary, and if I could find it in me to waive 
 ceremony and so on. I was only too willing to 
 go if the expedition would result, as I felt sure 
 it would, in the recovery of my Cesarini. More 
 over, I wanted to find out more about the affair, 
 and I thought I might be able to contribute a 
 
THE RIVER OF THE MOON 323 
 
 thread or two. I went down at once to the Pre 
 fecture of the Port, where I was received with 
 extreme courtesy, taken into an inner sanctum, 
 put into an uncomfortable red arm-chair, and 
 treated to coffee and a catechism on the latest 
 and most fantastic rumours of the war. You 
 may be sure it was with some impatience that I 
 submitted to it. But I have discovered that out 
 here it pays to be a little diplomatic. By con 
 forming to the customs of the country, espe 
 cially in small matters of etiquette, you arrive 
 at matters more essential sooner than by any 
 Anglo-Saxon brusqueness. 
 
 Well, when coffee and politics were disposed 
 of at last and cigarettes were well going, the 
 Prefect excused himself a moment and retired 
 to a small inner cupboard of a room. From it he 
 brought back, not my Cesarini, as I expected, 
 but an old dagger of which the gold haft was 
 tipped with a stupendous emerald. It was so 
 huge that it looked like green glass; but why 
 should anybody take the trouble to set green 
 glass on such a dagger? The gold of the sheath 
 was beautifully wrought with little arabesques 
 and flowers, and in the curved steel of the blade 
 was a gold marquetry inscription a Persian 
 distich, as I presently made out. 
 
 "Is that yours ?" inquired the Prefect, politely 
 handing me the dagger. 
 
324 THE RIVER OF THE MOON 
 
 "Good heavens, no !" I replied. "I only wish 
 it were! It was a gun I lost. Didn t you 
 find it?" 
 
 "Ah !" he said, apparently disappointed. "Un 
 fortunately not." And he added : "We heard it 
 was a weapon. We thought, possibly " 
 
 Tableau ! It seemed to me delightfully char 
 acteristic of police in general and of Turkish 
 police in particular. What they thought, heaven 
 knows. Did they think that any American had 
 such treasures to lose as that dagger? I have 
 always thought, at any rate, that I was an ass 
 not to claim it. But after the first instant of 
 surprise I knew what the thing was and where 
 it came from. It stupefied me that they should 
 not know too. 
 
 "It belongs much more to you than to me," I 
 said. "It came from the Treasury of the 
 Seraglio." 
 
 "The Treasury!" he smiled. "Impossible!" 
 
 "Everything is possible in this world, my 
 dear sir," I retorted "even that a Turk should 
 not know the dagger of Sultan Selim the Grim 
 when he sees it. But if you don t believe me, 
 send for Said Bey." 
 
 Said Bey is the curator of the Seraglio, and a 
 charming old boy. My heart warmed to him 
 from the day I saw him superintending the cut 
 ting down of a dead cypress near the library of 
 
THE RIVER OF THE MOON 325 
 
 the palace, in such a way that it should not 
 injure the marble of the kiosque or the smallest 
 twig of neighbouring cypresses. And he in 
 stantly planted another one in exactly the same 
 place. 
 
 The Prefect of the Port sent, not for Said Bey 
 but for a colleague, with whom he gravely 
 deliberated. Then they produced for my in 
 spection an enormous piece of embroidery 
 flowers in colours and gold on white satin. It 
 was the sort of thing you see on good Bulgarian 
 towels, but better than anything I ever saw or 
 dreamed of. It was lined, I noticed, with a thick 
 green silk. 
 
 "Ah !" I said. "Is that what the things were 
 wrapped up in?" 
 
 "Yes. Is it from the Treasury, too?" 
 
 That particular piece I didn t remember, 
 although I had seen other things like it. But I 
 did remember a certain gold Greek coin that I 
 had often envied, with a galloping quadriga on 
 the reverse. There were a dozen or so fine coins. 
 They also trotted out an aigrette set in rubies 
 and diamonds, such as the sultans used to wear 
 on the front of their turbans, and a robe or two 
 of magnificent old stuff, and some gold filigree 
 zarfs coffee-cup holders studded with pre 
 cious stones, and pieces of porcelain similarly 
 decorated, to say nothing of handfuls of loose 
 
326 THE RIVER OF THE MOON 
 
 jewels. Even if I had not been perfectly sure 
 about the dagger and the coin, the other things 
 would have left me with not the slightest doubt. 
 They could have come only from the Seraglio 
 though the merest fraction of a fraction of what 
 is lost in that amazing place. 
 
 How they got into a sandal in the harbour, 
 however, remained obscure even when the Pre 
 fect of the Port and I compared our respective 
 notes on the red-haired man and his dark friend. 
 I only learned that the former had been shot by 
 accident, after the police hailed him and he 
 refused to stop. Nor did the Treasury people, 
 when they appeared on the scene, throw much 
 more light on the subject. The red-haired man, 
 whose body they were taken to look at, they 
 knew nothing about. My man sounded like any 
 one of several of their employees who had at 
 different times enlisted or been drafted for the 
 war. They asked me to see if I could identify 
 him among those who remained ; but he was not 
 there. The only possible explanation of the 
 robbery was that it had been committed during 
 the hasty packing up of the treasures, against 
 the arrival of General Savoff. 
 
 Said Bey s astonishment and chagrin were 
 unbounded when he identified the loot at the 
 Prefecture of the Port. But it was nearly the 
 end of him when he eventually found out that 
 
THE RIVER OF THE MOON 327 
 
 the loss was much greater than could be cov 
 ered by the bundle of the sandal. And, worst 
 of all, one of the missing objects was one of the 
 glories of the Treasury the matchless, the 
 priceless pearl necklace of the Seraglio, the one 
 picturesquely known as the River of the Moon. 
 The like of it, I suppose, does not exist any 
 where else in the world. Modern millionaires 
 may have as much money as ancient emperors, 
 but they have, after all, more conscience and 
 less imagination. And certainly few necklaces 
 have had such a history. The River of the Moon 
 first came to light in Ispahan, where Shah 
 Abbas the Great collected its seventy-seven 
 enormous pearls and hung them around the 
 neck of one of his queens. A hundred years 
 later Sultan Mourad IV brought it in triumph to 
 Constantinople among the spoil of his Persian 
 wars. Sultanas wore it and sighed for it in the 
 Seraglio. In our own time Abd-ul-Hamid, that 
 great lover and connoisseur of jewels, took it to 
 Yildiz with a good many other things he had 
 no personal right to. When his jewels were sent 
 to Paris to be sold, the River of the Moon went 
 with them, by mistake, and a special embassy 
 was sent to bring it back to the no small dis 
 gust of the people in Paris. And now it was 
 gone no one knew where. 
 
 I believe that Said Bey would have preferred 
 
328 THE RIVER OF THE MOON 
 
 that the empire had gone. He begged me to say 
 nothing till the fullest possible investigation 
 could be made. Of course I told him, too, my 
 part of the story, and showed him my bit of 
 figured silk. He said that it was very good, but 
 didn t come from the Treasury. I could not 
 help wondering, however, if I had been a re 
 ceiver of stolen goods, and if I had not held in 
 my hand, without knowing it, the River of the 
 Moon. 
 
 IV 
 
 So I didn t get my Cesarini back that time. 
 That, to me, was the more important loss, 
 though for the rest of them it was of course for 
 gotten in the greater loss of the Treasury. But 
 I did get it in the end, as you see. It was a long 
 time afterward, when the war was over, and the 
 international squadron had gone, and the young 
 ladies in Pera were married to their officers, and 
 the rest of us settled down to the humdrum 
 treadmill of life. I used to go over to the 
 Bezesten every now and then and interview my 
 friend Hassan Effendi. He never got wind of 
 my gun. He was indefatigable, however, in try 
 ing to console me with other antiques, of one 
 kind or another. And I can t say that I was 
 always strong-minded enough to resist him. 
 
 He told me one day about an "occasion" he 
 had heard of. There was a refugee woman over 
 
THE RIVER OF THE MOON 329 
 
 in Scutari somewhere who had a few things to 
 sell. They were quite good, he heard if any 
 of them were left. The lady s husband had 
 been a great man in his country, in Macedonia, 
 and they had been ruined by the war. If I liked 
 to go with him and see what there was to see, a 
 man he knew would take us. 
 
 I jumped at the chance. Some of my friends 
 who did relief work among the refugees picked 
 up very decent things embroideries chiefly 
 at ridiculous prices. It was a charity to the 
 poor creatures to take them off their hands! 
 Accordingly I arranged with Hassan Effendi to 
 call his man and take me over on the next Fri 
 day, when the Bezesten would be closed. 
 
 We had quite a time. The house was at the 
 top of the town, near the big cemetery. Our 
 guide made us leave the carriage before we got 
 to it, saying that the street was too narrow and 
 too badly paved to drive through. When we 
 reached the door we knocked an age before any 
 one answered, and then there was discreet call 
 ing to know who we were and what we wanted, 
 and much flipflapping of slippers; and finally 
 the door opened six inches and we squeezed 
 into a little court with a well and half a dozen 
 chrysanthemum pots. We took off our shoes 
 and walked up a clean little pair of stairs into a 
 clean little room where there was a divan and a 
 
330 THE RIVER OF THE MOON 
 
 charcoal brazier and a cat not an angry one. 
 We sat down on the divan and played with the 
 cat, and presently the door opened far enough to 
 admit a tray and three cups of coffee. In the 
 course of time the tray was passed back and 
 parley exchanged with a preternaturally high 
 voice. Old-fashioned Turkish ladies affect that 
 tone. And after hesitations, and assurances 
 that there was nothing in the house worth look 
 ing at, what should I see poked through the 
 crack of the door but my Cesarini ! 
 
 Hassan Effendi, being nearest the door, took 
 it. As for me, I was so surprised that I had 
 time to remember to hold my tongue. When 
 Hassan Effendi put the gun into my hands I 
 saw that it had been badly used. It was rusty 
 and battered, and there seemed something un 
 familiar about it. But there could be no doubt 
 of its being my Cesarini. Before I had finished 
 looking it over, our invisible hostess sidled into 
 the room. She went to the brazier and poked it 
 a bit with those funny little iron tongs they 
 have, and then she flopped down on the floor. 
 If there was to be a bargain I suppose she 
 wanted to have a hand in it. All we saw of her 
 was a pair of rather fine black eyes and a hand 
 with henna ed nails that held her shabby black 
 charshaf in front of her mouth. 
 
 "This is rather an interesting old piece of 
 
THE RIVER OF THE MOON 331 
 
 yours, Hanim" I remarked. "May I ask where 
 you got it?" 
 
 "It belonged to my husband," she answered in 
 her strange high voice. "He went to the war." 
 And she jerked her charshaf up to her fine eyes, 
 which filled with tears. 
 
 They did not soften me too much. 
 
 "This does not seem to be Turkish work," I 
 went on. 
 
 "I am a refugee," came from behind the char 
 shaf. "We lived in Uskiib. The work there is 
 different. There are many Albanians." 
 
 "Oh !" I exclaimed. I knew the thing to do 
 was to buy back the gun and go quietly away 
 and call the police, but an irresistible tempta 
 tion came to me. I got up as if to examine the 
 gun in a better light. I stayed up, in front of 
 the door. "Excuse me, Hamm," I began, "but 
 did your husband have red hair? I think I 
 knew him a little." 
 
 The charshaf descended far enough to reveal 
 one of the fine eyes. 
 
 "No !" the owner of it, after a moment, very 
 decidedly replied. 
 
 "Ah ! Then it was your husband who took the 
 parcel to a house in Pera. He did not say he 
 came from Uskub." 
 
 The fine eye regarded me very fixedly, and I 
 regarded the fine eye. 
 
332 THE RIVER OF THE MOON 
 
 "Perhaps you did not know," I hazarded, 
 "that this gun came from the same house, and 
 was taken from it on the same night as the par 
 cel. Perhaps you thought it came from the 
 place where the other things came from." 
 
 It seemed to me that the fine eye measured 
 the relative distances of itself and myself from 
 the door. At all events it presently disap 
 peared behind the charshaf for inward consid 
 eration. 
 
 "But there are one or two things I don t 
 understand," I pursued "such as how your 
 husband got the gun. For he was not in the 
 boat when the red-haired man died, and 
 neither was the gun." 
 
 Hassan Effendi and the other man began to 
 show such signs of interest in this somewhat 
 one-sided dialogue that I regretted having 
 started it. As for the fine eye, it still remained 
 in seclusion. But the high voice finally vouch 
 safed, in defense : 
 
 "That was not the work of my husband. The 
 other man threw it into a lighter just be 
 fore " 
 
 "Ah !" I exclaimed, a light breaking upon me. 
 "Then there were two bundles ! And that was 
 what happened to the necklace!" 
 
 Both eyes emerged from the charshaf. 
 
 "No, they got that." 
 
THE RIVER OF THE MOON 333 
 
 "No, they didn t get that," I contradicted. 
 "They are still looking for it." 
 
 The fine eyes stared so indubitably that I 
 wondered if my light had been a false one. 
 Then another light came into them. 
 
 "So he would have lost it after all, the dog- 
 born dog! It was all his work. My husband 
 never would have thought of it without him. 
 And afterward he watched my husband go to 
 Pera, and he stole that thing too. And then he 
 tried to run away " 
 
 The light in the fine eyes darkened to sud 
 den tears, and this time sobs shook the charshaf 
 that covered them. I could see well enough now 
 what had happened though the woman had 
 not told me all that it might be interesting to 
 know about her husband and the red-haired 
 man, and there were details of the history of the 
 gun during its journey from the lighter to my 
 hands that might be filled out in several ways. 
 But I was an idiot to try the third degree myself 
 and bungle it ; for it would be harder now to 
 get the police, or for them to find out just who 
 our guide might be. He sat there quietly 
 enough while the woman cried on the floor and 
 I stood in front of the door and wondered if the 
 River of the Moon were around her neck all the 
 time, or whether the red-haired man had got rid 
 of it, and what I ought to do. 
 
334 THE RIVER OF THE MOON 
 
 I fingered the gun as I wondered, trying not 
 to look as much of a fool as I felt. Incidentally 
 I found out why the gun had seemed unfamiliar. 
 It was heavier than I remembered it. And then 
 I discovered that it was loaded. At least, some 
 kind of wadding had been rammed into the bar 
 rel. I started picking at it, as well as I could 
 from the bell mouth. In the end, you know, it 
 wasn t pure nervousness. It was pure inspira 
 tion. When I couldn t get my hand in any 
 farther I took the tongs from the brazier. The 
 last of the stuff was jammed in pretty hard. 
 But those blessed little tongs were just the 
 thing for it. And finally out rolled a prodigious 
 pearl, and after it rolled a whole river of them 
 the River of the Moon ! 
 
 The sudden patter of the pearls on the floor 
 made the woman look up. And what a look it 
 was, as the poor wretch realized what had been 
 in her hands and what she had lost ! To be sure 
 she began grabbing up the pearls as fast as she 
 could. And so did Hassan Eff endi and the other 
 man. You should have seen the scramble. Even 
 the cat went for them, and thought it great 
 fun. I stopped the patter as soon as I could, 
 and emptied the rest of the pearls into my 
 handkerchief. Hassan Effendi put his there 
 too. 
 
 "And you?" I said, turning to our guide. 
 
THE RIVER OF THE MOON 335 
 
 "Excuse me, Effendim" he began, "you 
 bought the gun, not the pearls." 
 
 I gave him a look and an answer. 
 
 "I have bought nothing yet. This is my own 
 gun, which was stolen from my house. And 
 these pearls were stolen too from the Sultan. 
 And the Sultan s arm is long. And if you say 
 one word, or refuse to give back one pearl, Has 
 san Eff endi has only to clap his hands and fifty 
 men will break into the house." 
 
 I don t know whether he believed me or not. 
 But he saw that I knew more than he had 
 thought, and Hassan Eff endi had the grace not 
 to look astonished. The man put down his 
 pearls. The woman did likewise. 
 
 "Now tell me," I said to her, "have you any 
 thing else?" 
 
 "No," she answered. 
 
 "I suppose you have sold the rest, eh?" 
 
 "No, vallah!". she insisted. "If there was 
 anything, the lightermen took it. We heard 
 there was talk among them and we went to 
 
 them. We knew And then my husband 
 
 went away," she continued hastily, "and they 
 brought me only this gun." 
 
 She covered her face again and began to cry. 
 
 There was something queer about it. But I 
 had found my Cesarini, and the River of the 
 Moon, and it seemed to me that the woman was 
 
336 THE RIVER OF THE MOON 
 
 punished enough and for what very likely was 
 not her fault. Neither she nor her husband, at 
 all events, had stolen my gun. Accordingly I 
 offered her a tip, which she wouldn t take. So I 
 put it down on the sofa, and patted the cat, and 
 gave our guide a bit of a scare by making him 
 come away with Hassan Effendi and me. 
 
 But, really, you know ! Of course it is a 
 notorious thing that collectors have no con 
 sciences, and will rob the fatherless and the 
 widow without turning a hair, if so be they can 
 cheat them over the price of an old print. I 
 did it myself no later than last week, when I 
 came across some Piranesis at the sale of the 
 goods of a deceased Italian barber, whose family 
 were going home. They were real ones, too, and 
 not the reprints the Italian government has 
 made from Piranesi s plates. Not many other 
 people thought it worth while to go to a barber s 
 sale, and the ones that did thought nothing of 
 some black old pictures of an unfamiliar Rome. 
 Our good Perotes, you know, are not very much 
 up on that sort of thing. So I had the courage 
 to march away with the ten of them at five 
 piasters apiece. But until I looked at those 
 pearls by myself at home I never realized how 
 shallow-rooted a virtue honesty may be. If I 
 hadn t taken such a high moral tone about 
 them, and, especially, if three people and a cat 
 
THE RIVER OF THE MOON 337 
 
 didn t know I had them, I don t believe I could 
 have given them back. 
 
 They were perfectly lovely in themselves, like 
 great drops of crystallized moonlight. And it 
 was so strange to hold them in one s hand, and 
 wonder what divers first brought them out of 
 the Persian Gulf or the Indian Ocean, and by 
 what extraordinary roads they had come to 
 gether in Ispahan, and on what soft breasts 
 they had lain, and what splendour and blood and 
 mystery they had seen. Each one of them must 
 have been fatal to some hand that had held it. 
 And each one of them was the equivalent of so 
 much release from struggle and anxiety, the 
 equivalent of so much leisure, so much beauty, 
 so much joy, so much of everything that people 
 really want in this world each one! While 
 
 the whole lot of them It made one s head 
 
 turn. 
 
 When I came to count them I discovered there 
 was one missing. I couldn t find it in my pocket, 
 I couldn t find it in my gun, I couldn t find it 
 anywhere. I finally concluded that it must have 
 rolled under the sofa in Scutari, and I nearly 
 rushed back to get it. But then I remembered 
 how the woman had looked when she saw the 
 pearls dropping out of the gun. I had a fellow 
 feeling for her. I knew in my heart that it was 
 only an accident if I was any better than she. 
 
338 THE RIVER OF THE MOON 
 
 I decided to give her and the cat the chance of 
 finding it. 
 
 The first thing the next morning, I took the 
 River of the Moon back to Said Bey. It was not 
 safe with me an instant longer. The old boy 
 nearly went silly when he saw the pearls. He 
 knew every one by its size and weight and some 
 invisible individuality. He was so delighted to 
 get the seventy-six that he made no bones about 
 the seventy-seventh, or my cock-and-bull story 
 of having promised on his behalf that no ques 
 tions should be asked. I did drop a discreet 
 hint, though, about the guild of the lightermen. 
 
 They made quite an international incident of 
 it not the lightermen, but the Palace people. 
 They gave me a decoration. But I thought the 
 woman in Scutari had the best of the bargain. 
 
IN THE PASHA S GARDEN 
 
 At the old gentleman s side sat a young lady more 
 beautiful than pomegranate blossoms, more exquisite 
 than the first quarter moon viewed at twilight through 
 the tops of oleanders. 
 
 O. Henry: THE TRIMMED LAMP. 
 
 AS THE caique glided up to the garden 
 gate the three boatmen rose from their 
 sheepskins and caught hold of iron 
 clamps set into the marble of the quay. Shaban, 
 the grizzled gatekeeper, who was standing at 
 the top of the water-steps with his hands folded 
 respectfully in front of him, came salaaming 
 down to help his master out. 
 
 "Shall we wait, my Pasha?" asked the head 
 kaikji. 
 
 The Pasha turned to Shaban, as if to put a 
 question. And as if to answer it Shaban said : 
 
 "The Madama is up in the wood, in the 
 kiosque. She sent down word to ask if you 
 would go up too." 
 
 "Then don t wait." Returning the boatmen s 
 salaam, the Pasha stepped into his garden. "Is 
 
 339 
 
340 IN THE PASHA S GARDEN 
 
 there company in the kiosque or is Madama 
 alone ?" he inquired. 
 
 "I think no one is there except Ziimbul 
 Agha," replied Shaban, following his master 
 up the long central path of black and white 
 pebbles. 
 
 "Ziimbul Agha !" exclaimed the Pasha. But 
 if it had been in his mind to say anything else 
 he stooped instead to sniff at a rosebud. And 
 then he asked: "Are we dining up there, do 
 you know?" 
 
 "I don t know, my Pasha, but I will find 
 out." 
 
 "Tell them to send up dinner anyway, Sha 
 ban. It is such an evening! And just ask 
 Moustafa to bring me a coffee at the fountain, 
 will you? I will rest a little before climbing 
 that hill." 
 
 "On my head !" said the Albanian, turning off 
 to the house. 
 
 The Pasha kept on to the end of the walk. 
 Two big horse-chestnut trees, their candles just 
 starting alight in the April air, stood there at 
 the foot of a terrace, guarding a fountain that 
 dripped in the ivied wall. A thread of water 
 started mysteriously out of the top of a tall 
 marble niche into a little marble basin, from 
 which it overflowed by two flat bronze spouts 
 into two smaller basins below. From them the 
 
IN THE PASHA S GARDEN 341 
 
 water dripped back into a single basin still lower 
 down, and so tinkled its broken way, past grace 
 ful arabesques and reliefs of fruit and flowers, 
 into a crescent-shaped pool at the foot of the 
 niche. 
 
 The Pasha sank down into one of the wicker 
 chairs scattered hospitably beneath the horse- 
 chestnut trees, and thought how happy a man 
 he was to have a fountain of the period of 
 Sultan Ahmed III, and a garden so full of April 
 freshness, and a view of the bright Bosphorus 
 and the opposite hills of Europe and the firing 
 West. How definitely he thought it I cannot 
 say, for the Pasha was not greatly given to 
 thought. Why should he be, since he possessed 
 without that trouble a goodly share of what 
 men acquire by taking thought ? If he had been 
 lapped in ease and security all his days, they 
 numbered many more, did those days, than the 
 Pasha would have chosen. Still, they had 
 touched him but lightly, merely increasing the 
 dignity of his handsome presence and taking 
 away nothing of his power to enjoy his little 
 walled world. 
 
 So he sat there, breathing in the air of the 
 place and the hour, while gardeners came and 
 went with their watering-pots, and birds twit 
 tered among the branches, and the fountain 
 plashed beside him, until Shaban reappeared 
 
342 IN THE PASHA S GARDEN 
 
 carrying a glass of water and a cup of coffee in 
 a swinging tray. 
 
 "Eh, Shaban ! It is not your business to carry 
 coffee!" protested the Pasha, reaching for a 
 stand that stood near him. 
 
 "What is your business is my business, 
 Pasha m. Have I not eaten your bread and 
 your father s for thirty years?" 
 
 "No ! Is it as long as that ? We are getting 
 old, Shaban." 
 
 "We are getting old," assented the Albanian 
 simply. 
 
 The Pasha thought, as he took out his silver 
 cigarette-case, of another Pasha who had com 
 plimented him that afternoon on his youthful- 
 ness. And, choosing a cigarette, he handed the 
 case to his gatekeeper. Shaban accepted the 
 cigarette and produced matches from his gay 
 girdle. 
 
 "How long is it since you have been to your 
 country, Shaban?" 
 
 The Pasha, lifting his little cup by its silver 
 zarf, realized that he would not have sipped his 
 coffee quite so noisily had his French wife been 
 sitting with him under the horse-chestnut trees. 
 But with his old Shaban he could still be a 
 Turk. 
 
 "Eighteen months, my Pasha." 
 
 "And when are you going again?" 
 
 
IN THE PASHA S GARDEN 343 
 
 "In Ramazan, if God wills. Or perhaps next 
 Ramazan. We shall see." 
 
 "Allah Allah! How many times have I told 
 you to bring your people here, Shaban? We 
 have plenty of room to build you a house some 
 where, and you could see your wife and children 
 every day instead of once in two or three years." 
 
 "Wives, mives a man will not die if he does 
 not see them every day ! Besides, it would not 
 be good for the children. In Constantinople 
 they become rascals. There are too many Chris 
 tians." And he added hastily : "It is better for 
 a boy to grow up in the mountains." 
 
 "But we have a mountain here, behind the 
 house," laughed the Pasha. 
 
 "Your mountain is not like our mountains," 
 objected Shaban gravely, hunting in his mind 
 for the difference he felt but could not express. 
 
 "And that new wife of yours," went on the 
 Pasha. "Is it good to leave a young woman like 
 that? Are you not afraid?" 
 
 "No, my Pasha. I am not afraid. We all live 
 together, you know. My brothers watch, and 
 the other women. She is safer than yours. 
 Besides, in my country it is not as it is here." 
 
 "I don t know why I have never been to see 
 this wonderful country of yours, Shaban. I 
 have so long intended to, and I never have been. 
 But I must climb my mountain or they will 
 
344 IN THE PASHA S GARDEN 
 
 think I have become a rascal too." And, rising 
 from his chair, he gave the Albanian a friendly 
 pat. 
 
 "Shall I come too, my Pasha? Ziimbiil Agha 
 sent word " 
 
 "Ziimbul Agha !" interrupted the Pasha irri 
 tably. "No, you needn t come. I will explain 
 to Zumbiil Agha." 
 
 With which he left Shaban to pick up the 
 empty coffee cup. 
 
 II 
 
 From the upper terrace a bridge led across 
 the public road to the wood. If it was not a 
 wood it was at all events a good-sized grove, 
 climbing the steep hillside very much as it 
 chose. Every sort and size of tree was there, 
 but the greater number of them were of a kind 
 to be sparsely trimmed in April with a delicate 
 green, and among them were so many twisted 
 Judas trees as to tinge whole patches of the 
 slope with their deep rose bloom. The road that 
 the Pasha slowly climbed, swinging his amber 
 beads behind him as he walked, zigzagged so 
 leisurely back and forth among the trees that a 
 carriage could have driven up it. In that way, 
 indeed, the Pasha had more than once mounted 
 to the kiosque, in the days when his mother 
 used to spend a good part of her summer up 
 
IN THE PASHA S GARDEN 345 
 
 there, and when he was married to his first 
 wife. The memory of the two, and of their old- 
 fashioned ways, entered not too bitterly into his 
 general feeling of well-being, ministered to by 
 the budding trees and the spring air and the 
 sunset view. Every now and then an enormous 
 plane tree invited him to stop and look at it, or 
 a semi-circle of cypresses. 
 
 So at last he came to the top of the hill, 
 where in a grassy clearing a small house looked 
 down on the valley of the Bosphorus through a 
 row of great stone pines. The door of the 
 kiosque was open, but his wife was not visible. 
 The Pasha stopped a moment, as he had done a 
 thousand times before, and looked back. He 
 was not the man to be insensible to what he saw 
 between the columnar trunks of the pines, 
 where European hills traced a dark curve 
 against the fading sky, and where the sinuous 
 waterway far below still reflected a last glamour 
 of the day. The beauty of it, and the sharp 
 sweetness of the April air, and the infinitesimal 
 sounds of the wood, and the half-conscious 
 memories involved with it all, made him sigh. 
 He turned and mounted the steps of the porch. 
 
 The kiosque looked very dark and unfamiliar 
 as the Pasha entered it. He wondered what had 
 become of Helene if by any chance he had 
 passed her on the way. He wanted her. She 
 
346 IN THE PASHA S GARDEN 
 
 was the expression of what the evening roused 
 in him. He heard nothing, however, but the 
 splash of water from a half -invisible fountain. 
 It reminded him for an instant of the other 
 fountain, below, and of Shaban. His steps re 
 sounded hollowly on the marble pavement as he 
 walked into the dim old saloon, shaped like a T, 
 with the crossbar longer than the leg. It was 
 still light enough for him to make out the glim 
 mer of windows on three sides and the square 
 of the fountain in the centre, but the painted 
 domes above were lost in shadow. 
 
 The spaces on either side of the bay by which 
 he entered, completing the rectangle of the 
 kiosque, were filled by two little rooms opening 
 into the cross of the T. He went into the left- 
 hand one, where Helene usually sat because 
 there were no lattices. The room was empty. 
 The place seemed so strange and still in the twi 
 light that a sort of apprehension began to grow 
 in him, and he half wished he had brought up 
 Shaban. He turned back to the second, the lat 
 ticed room the harem, as they called it. Curi 
 ously enough it was Helene who would never let 
 him Europeanize it, in spite of the lattices. 
 Every now and then he found out that she liked 
 some Turkish things better than he did. As 
 soon as he opened the door he saw her sitting 
 on the divan opposite. He knew her profile 
 
IN THE PASHA S GARDEN 347 
 
 against the checkered pallor of the lattice. But 
 she neither moved nor greeted him. It was 
 Zumbul Agha who did so, startling him by sud 
 denly rising beside the door and saying in his 
 high voice: 
 
 "Pleasant be your coming, my Pasha." 
 
 The Pasha had forgotten about Zumbul 
 Agha; and it seemed strange to him that 
 Helene continued to sit silent and motionless on 
 her sofa. 
 
 "Good evening," he said at last. "You are 
 sitting very quietly here in the dark. Are there 
 no lights in this place ?" 
 
 It was again Zumbul Agha who spoke, turn 
 ing one question by another: 
 
 "Did Shaban come with you?" 
 
 "No," replied the Pasha shortly. "He said he 
 had a message, but I told him not to come." 
 
 "A-ah!" ejaculated the eunuch in his high 
 drawl. "But it does not matter with the two 
 of us." 
 
 The Pasha grew more and more puzzled, for 
 this was not the scene he had imagined to him 
 self as he came up through the park in response 
 to his wife s message. Nor did he grow less 
 puzzled when the eunuch turned to her and said 
 in another tone : 
 
 "Now will you give me that key?" 
 
 The French woman took no more notice of 
 
348 IN THE PASHA S GARDEN 
 
 this question than she had of the Pasha s 
 entrance. 
 
 "What do you mean, Ziimbiil Agha?" de 
 manded the Pasha sharply. "That is not the 
 way to speak to your mistress." 
 
 "I mean this, my Pasha," retorted the eunuch 
 "that some one is hiding in this chest and 
 that Madama keeps the key." 
 
 That was what the Pasha heard, in the absurd 
 treble of the black man, in the darkening room. 
 He looked down and made out, beside the tall 
 figure of the eunuch, the chest on which he had 
 been sitting. Then he looked across at Helene, 
 who still sat silent in front of the lattice. 
 
 "What are you talking about?" he asked at 
 last, more stupefied than anything else. "Who 
 
 is it? A thief? Has any one -?" He left 
 
 the vague question unformulated, even in his 
 mind. 
 
 "Ah, that I don t know. You must ask 
 Madama. Probably it is one of her Christian 
 friends. But at least if it were a woman she 
 would not be so unwilling to unlock her chest 
 for us!" 
 
 The silence that followed, while the Pasha 
 looked dumbly at the chest, and at Zumbiil 
 Agha, and at his wife, was filled for him with a 
 stranger confusion of feelings than he had ever 
 experienced before. Nevertheless he was sur- 
 
IN THE PASHA S GARDEN 349 
 
 prisingly cool, he found. His pulse quickened 
 very little. He told himself that it wasn t true 
 and that he really must get rid of old Zumbul 
 after all, if he went on making such preposter 
 ous gaffes and setting them all by the ears. 
 How could anything so baroque happen to him, 
 the Pasha, who owed what he was to honour 
 able fathers and who had passed his life hon 
 ourably and peaceably until this moment? Yet 
 he had had an impression, walking into the dark 
 old kiosque and finding nobody until he found 
 these two sitting here in this extraordinary 
 way as if he had walked out of his familiar 
 garden, that he knew like his hand, into a coun 
 try he knew nothing about, where anything 
 might be true. And he wished, he almost 
 passionately wished, that Helene would say 
 something, would cry out against Zumbul 
 Agha, would lie even, rather than sit there so 
 still and removed and different from other 
 women. 
 
 Then he began to be aware that if it were 
 true if! he ought to do something. He ought 
 to make a noise. He ought to kill somebody. 
 That was what they always did. That was 
 what his father would have done, or certainly 
 his grandfather. But he also told himself that 
 it was no longer possible for him to do what his 
 father and grandfather had done. He had been 
 
350 IN THE PASHA S GARDEN 
 
 unlearning their ways too long. Besides, he 
 was too old. 
 
 A sudden sting pierced him at the thought of 
 how old he was, and how young Helene. Even 
 if he lived to be seventy or eighty she would 
 still have a life left when he died. Yes, it was 
 as Shaban said. They were getting old. He 
 had never really felt the humiliation of it 
 before. And Shaban had said, strangely, some 
 thing else that his own wife was safer than 
 the Pasha s. Still he felt an odd compassion 
 for Helene, too because she was young, and it 
 was Judas-tree time, and she was married to 
 gray hairs. And although he was a Pasha, 
 descended from great Pashas, and she was only 
 a little French girl quelconque, he felt more 
 afraid than ever of making a fool of himself 
 before her when he had promised her that she 
 should be as free as any other European woman, 
 that she should live her life. Besides, what had 
 the black man to do with their private affairs ? 
 
 "Zumbul Agha," he suddenly heard himself 
 harshly saying, "is this your house or mine ? I 
 have told you a hundred times that you are not 
 to trouble the Madama, or follow her about, or 
 so much as guess where she is and what she is 
 doing. I have kept you in the house because 
 my father brought you into it; but if I ever 
 hear of you speaking to Madama again, or spy- 
 
IN THE PASHA S GARDEN 351 
 
 ing on her, I will send you into the street. Do 
 you hear? Now get out!" 
 
 "Aman, my Pasha! I beg you!" entreated 
 the eunuch. There was something ludicrous in 
 his voice, coming as it did from his height. 
 
 The Pasha wondered if he had been too long a 
 person of importance in the family to realize the 
 change in his position, or whether he really 
 
 All of a sudden a checkering of lamplight 
 flickered through the dark window, touched the 
 Negro s black face for a moment, travelled up 
 the wall. Silence fell again in the little room 
 a silence into which the fountain dropped its 
 silver patter. Then steps mounted the porch 
 and echoed in the other room, which lighted in 
 turn, and a man came in sight, peering this way 
 and that, with a big white accordeon lantern in 
 his hand. Behind the man two other servants 
 appeared, carrying on their heads round wooden 
 trays covered by figured silks, and a boy tug 
 ging a huge basket. When they discovered the 
 three in the little room they salaamed respect 
 fully. 
 
 "Where shall we set the table?" asked the 
 man with the lantern. 
 
 For the Pasha the lantern seemed to make 
 the world more like the place he had always 
 known. He turned to his wife, apologetically. 
 
 "I told them to send dinner up here. It has 
 
352 IN THE PASHA S GARDEN 
 
 been such a long time since we came. But I for 
 got about the table. I don t believe there is one 
 here." 
 
 "No," uttered Helene from her sofa, sitting 
 with her head on her hand. 
 
 It was the first word she had spoken. But, 
 little as it was, it reassured him, like the lantern. 
 
 "There is the chest," hazarded Ziimbul Agha. 
 
 The interruption of the servants had for the 
 moment distracted them all. But the Pasha 
 now turned on him so vehemently that the 
 eunuch salaamed in haste and went away. 
 
 "Why not ?" asked Helene, when he was gone. 
 "We can sit on the cushions." 
 
 "Why not?" echoed the Pasha. Grateful as 
 he was for the interruption, he found himself 
 wishing, secretly, that Helene had discouraged 
 his idea of a picnic dinner. And he could not 
 help feeling a certain constraint as he gave the 
 necessary orders and watched the servants put 
 down their paraphernalia and pull the chest 
 into the middle of the room. There was some 
 thing unreal and stage-like about the scene, in 
 the uncertain light of the lantern. Obviously 
 the chest was not light. It was an pld cypress- 
 wood chest that they had always used in the 
 summer, to keep things in, polished a bright 
 brown, with a little inlaid pattern of dark brown 
 and cream colour running around the edge of 
 
IN THE PASHA S GARDEN 353 
 
 each surface, and a more complicated design 
 ornamenting the centre of the cover. He 
 vaguely associated his mother with it. He felt 
 a distinct relief when the men spread the cloth. 
 He felt as if they had covered up more things 
 than he could name. And when they produced 
 candlesticks and candles, and set them on the 
 improvised table and in the niches beside the 
 door, he seemed to come back again into the 
 comfortable light of common sense. 
 
 "This is the way we used to do when I was a 
 boy," he said with a smile, when he and Helene 
 established themselves on sofa cushions on 
 opposite sides of the chest. "Only then we had 
 little tables six inches high, instead of big ones 
 like this." 
 
 "It is rather a pity that we have spoiled all 
 that," she said. "Are we any happier for perch 
 ing on chairs around great scaffoldings, and 
 piling the scaffoldings with so many kinds of 
 porcelain and metal ? After all, they knew how 
 to live the people who were capable of imagin 
 ing a place like this. And they had the good 
 taste not to fill a room with things. Your 
 grandfather, was it?" 
 
 He had had a dread that she would not say 
 anything, that she would remain silent and 
 impenetrable as she had been before Zumbtil 
 Agha, as if the chest between them were a bar- 
 
354 IN THE PASHA S GARDEN 
 
 rier that nothing could surmount. His heart 
 lightened when he heard her speak. Was it not 
 quite her natural voice ? 
 
 "It was my great-grandfather, the Grand 
 Vizier. They say he did know how to live in 
 his way. He built the kiosque for a beautiful 
 slave of his, a Greek, whom he called Pome 
 granate." 
 
 "Madame Pomegranate! What a charming 
 name! And that is why her cipher is every 
 where. See?" She pointed to the series of 
 cupboards and niches on either side of the door, 
 dimly painted with pomegranate blossoms, and 
 to the plaster reliefs around the hooded fire 
 place, and to the cluster of pomegranates that 
 made a centre to the gilt and painted lattice 
 work of the ceiling. "One could be very happy 
 in such a little house. It has an air of being 
 meant for moments. And you feel as if they 
 had something to do with the wonderful way it 
 has faded." She looked as if she had meant to 
 say something else, which she did not. But 
 after a moment she added : "Will you ask them 
 to turn off the water in the fountain? It is a 
 little chilly, now that the sun has gone, and it 
 sounds like rain or tears." 
 
 The dinner went, on the whole, not so badly. 
 There were dishes to be passed back and forth. 
 There were questions to be asked or comments 
 
IN THE PASHA S GARDEN 355 
 
 to be made. There were the servants to be 
 spoken to. Yet, more and more, the Pasha could 
 not help wondering. When a silence fell, too, he 
 could not help listening. And least of all could 
 he help looking at Helene. He looked at her, 
 trying not to look at her, with an intense curi 
 osity, as if he had never seen her before, ask 
 ing himself if there were anything new in her 
 
 face, and how she would look if Would she 
 
 be like this ? She made no attempt to keep up a 
 flow of words, as if to distract his attention. 
 She was not soft either; she was not trying to 
 seduce him. And she made no show of grati 
 tude toward him for having sent Zumbiil Agha 
 away. Neither did she by so much as an inflec 
 tion try to insinuate or excuse or explain. She 
 was what she always was, perfect and evi 
 dently a little tired. She was indeed more than 
 perfect, she was prodigious, when he asked her 
 once what she was thinking about and she said 
 Pandora, tapping the chest between them. He 
 had never heard the story of that other Greek 
 girl and her box, and she told him gravely about 
 all the calamities that came out of it, and the 
 one gift of hope that remained behind. 
 
 "But I cannot be a Turkish woman long !" she 
 added inconsequently with a smile. "My legs 
 are asleep. I really must walk about a little." 
 
 When he had helped her to her feet she led 
 
356 IN THE PASHA S GARDEN 
 
 the way into the other room. They had their 
 coffee and cigarettes there. Helene walked 
 slowly up and down the length of the room, 
 stopping every now and then to look into the 
 square pool of the fountain and to pat her 
 hair. 
 
 The Pasha sat down on the long low divan 
 that ran under the windows. He could watch 
 her more easily now. And the detachment with 
 which he had begun to look at her grew in spite 
 of him into the feeling that he was looking at a 
 stranger. After all, what did he know about 
 her? Who was she? What had happened to 
 her, during all the years that he had not known 
 her, in that strange free European life which he 
 had tried to imitate, and which at heart he 
 secretly distrusted ? What had she ever really 
 told him, and what had he ever really divined 
 of her? For perhaps the first time in his life 
 he realized how little one person may know of 
 another, and particularly a man of a woman. 
 And he remembered Shaban again, and that 
 phrase about his wife being safer than Helene. 
 Had Shaban really meant anything? Was 
 Helene "safe" ? He acknowledged to himself at 
 last that the question was there in his mind, 
 waiting to be answered. 
 
 Helene did not help him. She had been stand 
 ing for some time at an odd angle to the pool, 
 
IN THE PASHA S GARDEN 357 
 
 looking into it. He could see her face there, 
 with the eyes turned away from him. 
 
 "How mysterious a reflection is!" she said. 
 "It is so real that you can t believe it disappears 
 for good. How often Madame Pomegranate 
 must have looked into this pool, and yet I can t 
 find her in it. But I feel she is really there, all 
 the same and who knows who else." 
 
 "They say mirrors do not flatter," the Pasha 
 did not keep himself from rejoining, "but they 
 are very discreet. They tell no tales !" 
 
 Helene raised her eyes. In the little room the 
 servants had cleared the improvised table and 
 had packed up everything again except the 
 candles. 
 
 "I have been up here a long time," she said, 
 "and I am rather tired. It is a little cold, too. 
 If you do not mind I think I will go down to the 
 house now, with the servants. You will hardly 
 care to go so soon, for Ziimbul Agha has not 
 finished what he has to say to you." 
 
 "Ziimbul Agha!" exclaimed the Pasha. "I 
 sent him away." 
 
 "Ah, but you must know him well enough to 
 be sure he would not go. Let us see." She 
 clapped her hands. The servant of the lantern 
 immediately came out to her. "Will you ask 
 Ziimbul Agha to come here?" she said. "He is 
 on the porch." 
 
358 IN THE PASHA S GARDEN 
 
 The man went to the door, looked out, and 
 said a word. Then he stood aside with a re 
 spectful salaam, and the eunuch entered. He 
 negligently returned the salute and walked for 
 ward until his air of importance changed to one 
 of humility at sight of the Pasha. Salaaming 
 in turn, he stood with his hands folded in front 
 of him. 
 
 "I will go down with you," said the Pasha to 
 his wife, rising. "It is too late for you to go 
 through the woods in the dark." 
 
 "Nonsense!" She gave him a look that had 
 more in it than the tone in which she added: 
 "Please do not. I shall be perfectly safe with 
 four servants. You can tell them not to let me 
 run away." Coming nearer, she put her hand 
 into the bosom of her dress, then stretched out 
 the hand toward him. "Here is the key the 
 key of which Zumbiil Agha spoke the key of 
 Pandora s box. Will you keep it for me please ? 
 Au revoir." 
 
 And making a sign to the servants she walked 
 out of the kiosque. 
 
 Ill 
 
 The Pasha was too surprised, at first, to move 
 and too conscious of the eyes of servants, too 
 uncertain of what he should do, too fearful of 
 doing the wrong, the un-European, thing. And 
 
IN THE PASHA S GARDEN 359 
 
 afterward it was too late. He stood watching 
 until the flicker of the lantern disappeared among 
 the dark trees. Then his eyes met the eunuch s. 
 
 "Why don t you go down too?" suggested 
 Ziimbul Agha. The variable climate of a great 
 house had made him too perfect an opportunist 
 not to take the line of being in favour again. 
 "It might be better. Give me the key and I will 
 do what there is to do. But you might send up 
 Shaban." 
 
 Why not, the Pasha secretly asked himself? 
 Might it not be the best way out ? At the same 
 time he experienced a certain revulsion of feel 
 ing, now that Helene was gone, in the way she 
 had gone. She really was prodigious ! And with 
 the vanishing of the lantern that had brought 
 him a measure of reassurance he felt the weight 
 of an uncleared situation, fantastic but crucial, 
 heavy upon him. And the Negro annoyed him 
 intensely. 
 
 "Thank you, Ziimbul Agha," he replied, "but 
 I am not the nurse of Madama, and I will not 
 give you the key." 
 
 If he only might, though, he thought to him 
 self again ! 
 
 "You believe her, this Frank woman whom 
 you had never seen five years ago, and you do 
 not believe me who have lived in your house 
 longer than you can remember!" 
 
360 IN THE PASHA S GARDEN 
 
 The eunuch said it so bitterly that the Pasha 
 was touched in spite of himself. He had never 
 been one to think very much about minor per 
 sonal relations, but even at such a moment he 
 could see was it partly because he wanted 
 more time to make up his mind? that he had 
 never liked Ziimbiil Agha as he liked Shaban, 
 for instance. Yet more honour had been due, in 
 the old family tradition, to the former. And he 
 had been associated even longer with the his 
 tory of the house. 
 
 "My poor Ztimbul," he uttered musingly, 
 "you have never forgiven me for marrying her." 
 
 "My Pasha, you are not the first to marry an 
 unbeliever, nor the last. But such a marriage 
 should be to the glory of Islam, and not to its 
 discredit. Who can trust her? She is still a 
 Christian. And she is too young. She has 
 turned the world upside down. What would 
 your father have said to a daughter-in-law who 
 goes shamelessly into the street without a veil, 
 alone, and who receives in your house men who 
 are no relation to you or to her ? It is not right. 
 Women understand only one thing to make 
 fools of men. And they are never content to 
 fool one." 
 
 The Pasha, still waiting to make up his mind, 
 let his fancy linger about Ztimbul Agha. It was 
 really rather absurd, after all, what a part 
 
IN THE PASHA S GARDEN 361 
 
 women played in the world, and how little it all 
 came to in the end ! Did the black man, he won 
 dered, walk in a clearer cooler world, free of the 
 clouds, the iridescences, the languors, the per 
 fumes, the strange obsessions, that made others 
 walk so often like madmen? Or might some 
 tatter of preposterous humanity still work ob 
 scurely in him? Or a bitterness of not being 
 like other men? That perhaps was why the 
 Pasha felt friendlier toward Shaban. They 
 were more alike. 
 
 "You are right, Zumbul Agha," he said. "The 
 world is upside down. But neither the Madama 
 nor any of us made it so. All we can do is to 
 try and keep our heads as it turns. Now, will 
 you please tell me how you happened to be up 
 here? The Madama never told you to come. 
 You know perfectly well that the customs of 
 Europe are different from ours, and that she 
 does not like to have you follow her about." 
 
 "What woman likes to be followed about?" 
 retorted the eunuch with a sly smile. "I know 
 you have told me to leave her alone. But why 
 was I brought into this house ? Am I to stand 
 by and watch dishonour brought upon it sim 
 ply because you have eaten the poison of a 
 woman ?" 
 
 "Zumbul Agha," replied the Pasha sharply, 
 "I am not discussing old and new or this and 
 
362 IN THE PASHA S GARDEN 
 
 that, but I am asking you to tell me what all this 
 speech is about." 
 
 "Give me that key and I will show you what 
 it is about," said the eunuch, stepping forward. 
 
 But the Pasha found he was not ready to go 
 so directly to the point. 
 
 "Can t you answer a simple question?" he 
 demanded irritably, retreating to the farther 
 side of the fountain. 
 
 The reflection of the painted ceiling in the 
 pool made him think of Helene and Madame 
 Pomegranate. He stared into the still water as 
 if to find Helene s face there. Was any other 
 face hidden beside it, mocking him? 
 
 But Ziimbul Agha had begun again, doggedly : 
 
 "I came here because it is my business to be 
 here. I went to town this morning. When I got 
 back they told me that you were away and that 
 the Madama was up here, alone. So I came. Is 
 this a place for a woman to be alone in a young 
 woman, with men working all about and I don t 
 know who, and a thousand ways of getting in 
 and out from the hills, and ten thousand hiding 
 places in the woods ?" 
 
 The Pasha made a gesture of impatience, and 
 turned away. But after all, what could one do 
 with old Ziimbul? He had been brought up in 
 his tradition. The Pasha lighted another ciga 
 rette to help himself think. 
 
IN THE PASHA S GARDEN 363 
 
 "Well, I came up here," continued the eunuch, 
 "and as I came I heard Madama singing. You 
 know how she sings the songs of the Franks." 
 
 The Pasha knew. But he did not say any 
 thing. As he walked up and down, smoking and 
 thinking, his eye caught in the pool a reflection 
 from the other side of the room, where the 
 door of the latticed room was and where the 
 cypress-wood chest stood as the servants had 
 left it in the middle of the floor. Was that what 
 Helene had stood looking at so long, he asked 
 himself? He wondered that he could have sat 
 beside it so quietly. It seemed now like some 
 thing dark and dangerous crouching there in 
 the shadow of the little room. 
 
 "I sat down, under the terrace," he heard the 
 eunuch go on, where no one could see me, 
 and I listened. And after she had stopped I 
 heard " 
 
 "Never mind what you heard," broke in the 
 Pasha. "I have heard enough." 
 
 He was ashamed ashamed and resolved. He 
 felt as if he had been playing the spy with 
 Zumbiil Agha. And after all there was a very 
 simple way to answer his question for himself. 
 He threw away his cigarette, went forward into 
 the little room, bent over the chest, and fitted 
 the key into the lock. 
 
 Just then a nightingale burst out singing, but 
 
364 IN THE PASHA S GARDEN 
 
 so near and so loud that he started and looked 
 over his shoulder. In an instant he collected 
 himself, feeling the black man s eyes upon him. 
 Yet he could not suppress the train of associa 
 tion started by the impassioned trilling of the 
 bird, even as he began to turn the key of the 
 chest where his mother used to keep her quaint 
 old silks and embroideries. The irony of the 
 contrast paralyzed his hand for a strange mo 
 ment, and of the difference between this spring 
 night and other spring nights when nightin 
 gales had sung. And what if, after all, only 
 calamity were to come out of the chest, and he 
 were to lose his last gift of hope! Ah! He 
 knew at last what he would do! He quickly 
 withdrew the key from the lock, stood up 
 straight again, and looked at Zumbiil Agha. 
 
 "Go down and get Shaban," he ordered, "and 
 don t come back." 
 
 The eunuch stared. But if he had anything 
 to say he thought better of uttering it. He 
 saluted silently and went away. 
 
 IV 
 
 The Pasha sat down on the divan and lighted 
 a cigarette. Almost immediately the nightin 
 gale stopped singing. For a few moments 
 Zumbiil Agha s steps could be heard outside. 
 Then it became very still. The Pasha did not 
 
IN THE PASHA S GARDEN 365 
 
 like it. Look which way he would he could not 
 help seeing the chest or listening. He got up 
 and went into the big room, where he turned 
 on the water of the fountain. The falling drops 
 made company for him, and kept him from look 
 ing for lost reflections. But they presently 
 made him think of what Helene had said about 
 them. He went out to the porch and sat down 
 on the steps. In front of him the pines lifted 
 their great dark canopies against the stars. 
 Other stars twinkled between the trunks, far 
 below, where the shore lights of the Bosphorus 
 were. It was so still that water sounds came 
 faintly up to him, and every now and then he 
 could even hear nightingales on the European 
 side. Another nightingale began singing in 
 his own woods the nightingale that had told 
 him what to do, he said to himself. What 
 other things the nightingales had sung to 
 him, years ago ! And how long the pines had 
 listened there, still strong and green and rugged 
 and alive, while he, and how many before him, 
 sat under them for a little while and then went 
 away! 
 
 Presently he heard steps on the drive and 
 Shaban came, carrying something dark in his 
 hand. 
 
 "What is that?" asked the Pasha, as Shaban 
 held it out. 
 
366 IN THE PASHA S GARDEN 
 
 "A pistol, my Pasha. Zumbiil Agha told me 
 you wanted it." 
 
 The Pasha laughed curtly. 
 
 "Ziinibiil made a mistake. What I want is a 
 shovel, or a couple of them. Can you find such 
 a thing without asking any one ?" 
 
 "Yes, my Pasha," replied the Albanian 
 promptly, laying the revolver on the steps and 
 disappearing again. And it was not long before 
 he was back with the desired implements. 
 
 "We must dig a hole, somewhere, Shaban," 
 said his master in a low voice. "It must be in a 
 place where people are not likely to go, but not 
 too far from the kiosque." 
 
 Shaban immediately started toward the trees 
 at the back of the house. The Pasha followed 
 him silently into a path that w r ound through the 
 wood. A nightingale began to sing again, very 
 near them the nightingale, thought the Pasha. 
 
 "He is telling us where to go," he said. 
 
 Shaban permitted himself a low laugh. 
 
 "I think he is telling his mistress where to go. 
 However, we will go too." And they did, bear 
 ing away to one side of the path till they came 
 to the foot of a tall cypress. 
 
 "This will do," said the Pasha, "if the roots 
 are not in the way." 
 
 Without a word Shaban began to dig. The 
 Pasha took the other spade. To the simple 
 
IN THE PASHA S GARDEN 367 
 
 Albanian it was nothing out of the ordinary. 
 What was extraordinary was that his master 
 was able to keep it up, soft as the loam was 
 under the trees. The most difficult thing about 
 it was that they could not see what they were 
 doing, except by the light of an occasional 
 match. But at last the Pasha judged the ragged 
 excavation of sufficient depth. Then he led the 
 way back to the kiosque. 
 
 They found Zumbul Agha in the little room, 
 sitting on the sofa with a pistol in either hand. 
 
 "I thought I told you not to come back!" 
 exclaimed the Pasha sternly. 
 
 "Yes," faltered the old eunuch, "but I was 
 afraid something might happen to you. So I 
 waited below the pines. And when you went 
 away into the woods with Shaban, I came here 
 to watch." He lifted a revolver significantly. 
 "I found the other one on the steps." 
 
 "Very well," said the Pasha at length, more 
 kindly. He even found it in him at that moment 
 to be amused at the picture the black man made, 
 in his sedate frock coat, with his two weapons. 
 And Zumbul Agha found no less to look at, in 
 the appearance of his master s clothes. "But 
 now there is no need for you to watch any 
 longer," added the latter. "If you want to 
 watch, do it at the bottom of the hill. Don t let 
 any one come up here." 
 
368 IN THE PASHA S GARDEN 
 
 "On my head," said the eunuch. He saw that 
 Shaban, as usual, was trusted more than he. 
 But it was not for him to protest against the 
 ingratitude of masters. He salaamed and backed 
 out of the room. 
 
 When he was gone the Pasha turned to 
 Shaban : 
 
 "This box, Shaban you see this box ? It has 
 become a trouble to us, and I am going to take 
 it out there." 
 
 The Albanian nodded gravely. He took hold 
 of one of the handles, to judge the weight of 
 the chest. He lifted his eyebrows. 
 
 "Can you help me put it on my back?" he 
 asked. 
 
 "Don t try to do that, Shaban. We will carry 
 it together." The Pasha took hold of the other 
 handle. When they got as far as the outer door 
 he let down his end. It was not light. "Wait a 
 minute, Shaban. Let us shut up the kiosque, so 
 that no one will notice anything." He went back 
 to blow out the candles. Then he thought of the 
 fountain. He caught a play of broken images in 
 the pool as he turned off the water. When he 
 had put out the lights and had groped his way 
 to the door he found that Shaban was already 
 gone with the chest. A last drop of water 
 made a strange echo behind him in the dark 
 kiosque. He locked the door and hurried after 
 
IN THE PASHA S GARDEN 369 
 
 Shaban, who had succeeded in getting the chest 
 on his back. Nor would Shaban let the Pasha 
 help him till they came to the edge of the wood. 
 There, carrying the chest between them, they 
 stumbled through the trees to the place that 
 was ready. 
 
 "Now we must be careful," said the Pasha. 
 "It might slip or get stuck." 
 
 "But are you going to bury the box too?" 
 demanded Shaban, for the first time showing 
 surprise. 
 
 "Yes," answered the Pasha. And he added: 
 "It is the box I want to get rid of." 
 
 "It is a pity," remarked Shaban regretfully. 
 "It is a very good box. However, you know. 
 Now then!" 
 
 There was a scraping and a muffled thud, fol 
 lowed by a fall of earth and small stones on 
 wood. The Pasha wondered if he would hear 
 anything else. But first one and then another 
 nightingale began to fill the night air with their 
 April madness. 
 
 "Ah, there are two of them," remarked Sha 
 ban. "She will take the one that says the 
 sweetest things to her." 
 
 The Pasha s reply was to throw a spadeful 
 of earth on the chest. Shaban joined him with 
 such vigour that the hole was very soon full. 
 
 "We are old, my Pasha, but we are good for 
 
370 IN THE PASHA S GARDEN 
 
 something yet," said Shaban. "I will hide the 
 shovels here in the bushes," he added, "and 
 early in the morning I will come again, before 
 any of those lazy gardeners are up, and fix it so 
 that no one will ever know." 
 
 There at least was a person of whom one 
 could be sure! The Pasha realized that grate 
 fully, as they walked back through the park. 
 He did not feel like talking, but at least he felt 
 the satisfaction of having done what he had 
 decided to do. He remembered Ziimbul Agha 
 as they neared the bottom of the hill. The 
 eunuch had not taken his commission more 
 seriously than it had been given, however, or he 
 preferred not to be seen. Perhaps he wanted to 
 reconnoitre again on top of the hill. 
 
 "I don t think I will go in just yet," said the 
 Pasha, as they crossed the bridge into the lower 
 garden. "I am rather dirty. And I v/ould like 
 to rest a little under the chestnut trees. Would 
 you get me an overcoat please, Shaban, and a 
 brush of some kind ? And you might bring me 
 a coffee, too." 
 
 How tired he was ! And what a short time it 
 was, yet what an eternity, since he last droppod 
 into one of those wicker chairs ! He felt for h;s 
 cigarettes. As he did so he discovered some 
 thing else in his pocket, something small and 
 hard that at first he did not recognize. Then 
 
IN THE PASHA S GARDEN 371 
 
 he remembered the key the key. . . . He 
 suddenly tossed it into the pool beside him. It 
 made a sharp little splash, which was reechoed 
 by the dripping basins. He got up and felt in 
 the ivy for the handle that shut off the water. 
 At the end of the garden the Bosphorus lapped 
 softly in the dark. Far away, up in the wood, 
 the nightingales were singing. 
 
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