This dame, though elderly, still dressed to charm. Her rooms were full of European furniture, but she herself sat always on a sofa, smoking a long, old-fashioned pipe with coral mouthpiece.
“You are not of the first rank in your own country,” she told Barakah to start with, bluntly; “or you would not be where you are. You do not know the people I have met in France and England, so don’t pretend you do. I value frankness.” It seemed she knew the English pretty thoroughly.
She spoke good French and talked of Western Europe with intelligence, seeming in general to approve its customs. One little speech of hers amazed the visitor, intruding as it did abruptly upon lighter talk:
“The Europeans have degraded love and made life banal. They spread life’s agitation over a vast surface and account it progress; we value depth and stillness. Enlarging each life’s pool, they make it shallow. A woman’s life is of the feelings which are dulled, not quickened, by extensive interests. Their men too suffer, growing superficial, flippant, without depth of character.”
When Barakah retailed this saying to Gulbeyzah, the Circassian sighed: “She knows!” and told a curious story.
It was that years ago a European officer in the Egyptian service had wooed Amînah Khânum secretly; and she had been entirely captivated by his charms. But endeavouring to sound his character, she found him shallow. She made him islam, but his carelessness informed her that conversion meant no more for him than access to her. In the same way she perceived that what he felt for her was nothing more profound than the desire to add a Muslim lady to his list of conquests. The blow was dire, for she was then extremely lovely, and a great examiner of men, having divorced or killed ten husbands. She would not have him tell a tale among his kind, yet could not conquer her intense desire of him. What could she do? She satisfied her heart, and the next morning gave him death in easy form, being well versed in poisons.
Barakah cried out in horror; but Gulbeyzah shrugged.
“What else could woman, not a harlot, do? He was an infidel, and would have bragged of her. Ever since then Amînah Khânum has a kindness for the Franks, though she deplores their levity.”
“And would you do the same?”
“One cannot tell beforehand. I am not a princess. Either that or kill myself. May God preserve us from unsanctioned love of all kinds!”
Barakah felt overwhelmed by the intenseness, the tragic vigour of these women, who seemed mild and playful.
Mrs. Cameron called at the garden-house one afternoon, and Barakah was proud to give her a real English tea. Except for the costume, which was much richer, and an added glow of happiness, the visitor, she felt convinced, could not detect the slightest change in her. One thing at least was certain, she had not deteriorated, as Mrs. Cameron before the marriage had foretold she would. The visitor was amiable, and made no allusion to the past. Before departing she made Barakah an offer of some knitting wool and needles she had just received from England. The wife of Yûsuf Bey accepted gladly, for she began to feel the weight of idle hands.
The wools arriving an hour later, she debated what to make with them; and, being at the time in English mood, decided on a pair of slippers for her husband. But when she told him of her purpose, he frowned wonderingly, and asked:
“Are you a shoemaker?”
Utterly disconcerted by so apt a question, she tried to paint the beauty of the project, but he could not see it.
“If you want slippers, buy them in the market. It is not your trade. When one like you employs the needle, it is not for use. Ask my mother; she will show you the right work to do.”
He had his own ideas. The coloured wools were given to Fatûmah, who made anklets of them, and other personal adornments, which amused her for a week.
Deducing from her wish to make him slippers that she found the hours long in his absence, Yûsuf procured her books in French and English. He also brought her a fine musical box, which played dance-music in stentorian tones to the rapture of the slaves, who kept it going all day long. The Pasha came and begged her not to imagine that she was debarred from every pleasure. It would be cruel to confine a damsel of her breeding as strictly as a native of the country. Let her but name her wishes; they should be deferred to. He even threw out hints that she and Yûsuf might possibly see Paris in the coming summer.
Thus exhorted, and encouraged by the sight of women like Amînah Khânum, who seemed to order everyone their way, she forsook the timid attitude which had been hers since marriage, and viewed existence with commanding eyes. The old woman who had been engaged to play propriety, was horrified one day to see her talking barefaced at a window to Ghandûr, the water-carrier. The crone expostulated, coaxed, entreated, and at length, when all proved vain, informed the husband, who, to her utter consternation, laughed.
“Ghandûr?” he cried; “Ghandûr is my right foot,” and immediately applied that member to the beldame’s person.
The old woman did not dare to speak again to Barakah, though the latter plagued her mercilessly, crying “Ghandûr!” here and “Ghandûr!” there, for the treat of seeing her curvet and wring her hands.
One morning, after Yûsuf had departed, she grew conscious of a great oppression due to
