Another minute and dead silence fell. All watched the screen. Up leapt an eerie note, sustained till it became a terror to the ear, when all at once it broke into a shower of trills like impish laughter. This was repeated thrice, and then the singer struck a solemn and majestic measure—a religious strain, which his strange voice embroidered with all human passions in their natural tones. Barakah forgot her weariness. This singing was like nothing she had ever heard. It seemed to dignify all life with a tremendous meaning. All unawares she joined the gusty sigh which swept the whole assembly when the last note died. There followed a quick panting melody of lover’s sighs, more like a bird’s song than the effort of a human voice; then came a wail of more than human anguish, and then the singing ceased quite unexpectedly. There was a storm of moans and prayers for more, but Tâhir, the great singer, had already gone.
Barakah became once more aware of stiffness, headache, and a burning mouth. She called to Hamdi, Yûsuf’s little brother, one of her former pupils, to bring water to her. He ran off at once, but brought, instead of water, cloying sherbet which increased her thirst. Her eyelids were so stiffened they would hardly close; her eyeballs ached; the stiffness of the paint upon her cheeks became an iron mask. She felt pilloried, derided, miserably alone, when lo! a small soft hand touched hers confidingly. It was the singer’s little daughter, who, grown tired of sweets and petting, had come to the one lonely person in the room, the quiet place. She looked up in the face of Barakah and smiled. Her brother, a still smaller child, had followed her. They both sat down without the slightest ceremony, and with their heads against her knees, their hands in hers, fell fast asleep. This little group, when it was noticed, caused much laughter and a shout: “Mabrûkah!” (lucky). The bride, a statue of endurance, paid no heed.
At last a great noise came from the selamlik. A eunuch rushed to say that the procession of the bridegroom to the mosque had just returned. At once, a heavy veil, precluding sight, was flung on Barakah. The bride’s train formed. With tapers and with garlands, amid joy-cries, she was led to her own gilded salon, and there left alone. In the same instant, so it seemed to her, the bridegroom came. Her veil was lifted. She felt like to die. She dared not raise her eyes for fear of weeping. The ritual words she had been schooled to say escaped her memory. But, as luck befell, they were unneeded.
“Grand Dieu!” cried Yûsuf Bey. “The fools—the miscreants have made you look like one of them. Your face—your hair! Ah, mon amour! Ma colombe!”
She was obliged to laugh, and the nice-looking, eager youth laughed with her. Fatigue and headache fell off from her like a garment.
On the next afternoon, when Barakah, at peace with all the world, was sitting in her gilded parlour, on the cushioned windowsill, peeping through the lattice at red masts and flags, the decorations for her wedding not yet taken down, it happened that she called for water. That cry resounded through the whole haremlik in the hours of heat, and slaves with pitchers waited always ready to obey it. The girl who answered brought a vase of amber fluid, which she proclaimed the most delicious sherbet known to woman. The lady Fitnah had herself prepared it for the bride’s delight. Barakah took one sip, disliked the taste, and, only waiting for politeness till the maid had gone, poured out the rest upon a plant of jasmine in a flowerpot which stood upon a shelf within the lattice. A little later she was very sick, and went and lay down on her bed. She was feeling better when her husband was announced.
“Yûsuf!” she cried, as he came in, “it is so curious. Madame your mother sent me up some special sherbet. I tasted it, and found it disagreeable, so I emptied all the rest upon the plant there. Then I felt so ill—”
She got no further. Yûsuf, following the direction of her gesture, had fixed his eyes upon the flowerpot. They were riveted. The plant was dead, a shrivelled, blackened object. With one despairing cry he clutched his forehead and rushed headlong from the room.
X
“O wretched day! O death of honour! O calamity! Didst thou not swear to guard my love from danger, O my father? Yet death has reached her—poison! This house is now gehennum. Woe to all of us! O Allah, ease the sorrow of my heart! O Lord, behold me rent in twain—My wife! My mother!”
Yûsuf had burst into the room of the selamlik where his father was transacting business with the steward of his property. Regardless of the stranger’s presence, he gave way to grief and rage, falling prostrate on the pavement, tearing at it with his hands, and biting at it with his teeth convulsively. The steward, a person of discretion, rose at once and asked permission to retire. The Pasha nodded, and, when he was gone, bent over his demented child, inquiring of his cause of grief with heart near broken, for he feared the worst had happened. By dint of patience he elicited the simple facts, which, when he knew them, eased his mind so greatly that he smiled and rendered fervent thanks to the Most High. The Englishwoman was not dead; the poisonous attempt had failed; the vision of an angry Consul, void of decency, transgressing with investigations every man’s
