Barakah was sore abashed. The Pasha’s entrance, the intervention of so dignified a person in a childish quarrel due to her misconduct, overwhelmed her. At this point in his speech she interjected:
“Pardon! I did wrong, I know! But I had no idea … I wore the habbarah and mouth-veil. You had told me that a woman dressed like that was safe from insult.”
“I spoke in too general a sense. It is my fault entirely. You sinned through ignorance, and Yûsuf should not have been angry—though, indeed, to our ideas your conduct was abominable.”
“But what wrong did I do, beyond going out without permission? Why did the people on the road beset me? Oh, I am so miserable!”
The Pasha shrugged his shoulders with a smile to Yûsuf, as who should say:
“Observe her innocence!”
“No, no, don’t cry, I beg of you!” he pleaded. “God be praised you have derived no hurt from the adventure. It is entirely owing to respect for you that I and my son are so concerned about it. Beloved daughter, women are for us so sacred—the spirit of the house, the secret fount of life—that we never even speak of them with friends for fear some light word or unseemly thought should go towards them. Nothing must be known of them, no talk made about them, outside the world of women and our own harem.
“Yesterday, by going out alone in an open carriage, you attracted notice all unconsciously. Your habbarah is of a rich material, your mouth-veil of the kind only worn by ladies of good houses. No such lady would have gone abroad thus unattended. The servants of your English friend would comment on the strange proceeding, and, knowing who you were, think shame of us.
“But that is the least part of what you did. That, by itself, would have been nothing. But you walked. Great God! What made you walk? That is for me inexplicable!”
“I felt the wish to walk. It was a lovely evening.”
“Great God!” the Pasha gasped, with eyes upturned. “Does anybody walk for pleasure here in Egypt? The natives have a proverb: ‘Better ride on beetles than walk upon rich carpets.’ Well, well, there!” He shrugged as giving up a hopeless puzzle. “You walked. A lady dressed as you were had never been seen walking in this world before. More than that, you did not walk like other people. Ghandûr informs me that the rascals who beset you were all persuaded that you were a man dressed up. You say you walked for pleasure in the dust?—and in a habbarah? Astonishing!
“So, you see now, Yûsuf was not angry altogether without cause. I trust you will not now esteem it necessary to see the Consul, and produce a scandal which I think would kill me.”
Thoroughly disgusted with her whole behaviour, Barakah began to sob again.
“I never truly meant to go,” she blurted.
“I thank you infinitely,” said the Pasha grandly, again saluting as he rose to go. “You relieve me of a terrible anxiety. Our house has never known the breath of scandal. … But pleasure!—you assure me that you walked for pleasure?” he gasped, reverting to the former wonder. “I could understand it in a garden, round and round. But when it is a case of going anywhere—Grand Dieu!”
That was a marvel which for weeks convulsed the harem world. The Pasha mentioned it at home. Within an hour the wondrous news was known to every woman. The English bride of Yûsuf Bey Muhammad had walked from such a house to such a crossways, all in thick dust, amid the crowd of wayfarers—for pleasure, so she said! Insanity, a love appointment with an Englishman, a touch of sunstroke, the insensibility to comfort of a woman of coarse origin, were solutions of the riddle freely offered and discussed. But the theory which found most favour for its probability was that the Englishwoman was the sport of some malignant wizard or afrît, who made her walk to show his power upon her.
Leylah Khânum and Gulbeyzah were the first to call and question her upon the strange performance. They asked point-blank why she had walked; and when she answered, “Just for exercise,” they eyed her in a way that showed they thought her mad. Then came the throng of mere acquaintances, not less curious, but infinitely too polite to ask a question; who watched for symptoms of derangement through the flow of compliments. The elderly princess, Amînah Khânum, alone showed understanding and some sympathy.
“My dear,” she said, “you’ve set the parrots talking. Do you know that ‘durrah,’ which means fellow-wife, means parrot too? Bear that in mind. Their tongues!—They fail to comprehend. They think you are bewitched or mad. For me, your conduct was entirely natural. But I fancy you will give up walking here in Egypt. Were not your clothes a mass of dust beneath your habbarah? Whenever you are in a difficulty, come to me. I have some jurisdiction, and I wish you happy.”
Barakah was far from happy in those days. For one thing, she had felt the bars confining her. And then a vision of the English sneering lurked ever in the background of her mind, a fount of gall. With Yûsuf she was once more upon loving terms, and any differences that arose between them came from her ill-temper. She was growing irritable. The food, too highly spiced, did not agree with her; the sanitary arrangements were disgusting; she noticed failings not observed before, particularly in the behaviour of the servants to her.
At first, on coming to that nest of love, released from the restrictions of a great harem, her slave-girls had been lazy, but obsequious. At that time the old woman had commanded them, relieving Barakah, whose little knowledge of the language would have placed her at their mercy. But now the crone had been dismissed; the servants, with respect diminished by the quarrel they had witnessed, were grown insolent and offhand in their service. The child Fatûmah,
