He buried his face in his hands, while a hubbub of concern arose behind the screen.
“O poor darling floweret! O despair!” wailed Yûsuf’s mother, all her feelings turned right round. “What is her illness? Quick, describe! May Allah heal her!”
“Fever—the worst sort!”
“I go at once to her.”
A sick-nurse of experience in charms and nostrums, the lady Fitnah always quickened to the scent of illness and adored the sufferer. From a creature hardly to be named by modest lips, the wife of Yûsuf was become the apple of her eye Having sent an order for the carriage, she went through her store of medicines, discoursing wisely to the other ladies; while Ghandûr, retiring, heard from the attendant eunuch:
“Thou hast done it! We had word of this; Sawwâb was summoned. But the command was, not to tell the ladies.”
He could only shrug.
Illness, like death and birth, was woman’s great occasion, when, guarding the traditions, she stood forth as priestess. The whole harem was in a flutter of excitement.
“Gulbeyzah must come with us,” pronounced Fitnah Khânum, “because our poor sick darling always loved her.”
The ladies Fitnah and Murjânah, the Pasha’s widowed sister and two nieces, goodly persons, together with the well-grown, plump Gulbeyzah, and a bundle of medicaments, including a whole plant of garlic and a donkey’s thighbone, were all packed somehow into one close carriage. The sun was setting when they reached the pleasure-house. The eunuch went to herald their arrival; and all the ladies, nothing doubting of their glad reception, freed themselves from the crushed mass they formed together. They were shaking out and smoothing crumpled raiment when the messenger returned to say they were refused admittance by the doctor’s orders. The ladies stood stone-still and looked at one another. Fitnah Khânum broke the silence.
“This is our son’s house! May Allah slay the doctor! Come, my sisters!”
Just then Sawwâb, chief eunuch of the guard, appeared, and barred the entrance with the word “Forbidden!”
“Whose order, say?”
“The order of our lord.”
“Praise to Allah! That is better than the doctor. To hear is to obey, though Allah knows that the command is wicked and against religion. Tell thy master we shall lay a case before the Qadi.”
With this menace, which afforded her some satisfaction, Fitnah Khânum turned back towards the carriage; and the work of packing those redundant bodies was performed anew.
“Heard one ever the like? To hide our dearest from us at the point of death! To keep a mother from a daughter’s sickbed—a woman from a woman! O Protector!”
The incident, when known, incensed the harem world. The sickroom had been woman’s temple from of old. To be forbidden access to the bedside of a near relation appeared an outrage, even to the calm Murjânah. The indignation of the slaves was riotous. The injured ladies received many visits of condolence, when Fitnah Khânum’s lamentations were applauded as the voice of right.
“O cruelty,” she sobbed. “To keep us from our darling, when she has most need of us! The Frankish doctors are all monsters, hearts of stone. It is known that they snatch dying people from their friends, to practise on them, omitting even to return the bodies afterwards. They may have skill, but many things they know not, being infidels. The pain I suffer when I think of that sweet girl—the very liver of my darling Yûsuf—lying senseless, an empty house for any demon to inhabit, and not a charm put up for her protection, is excruciating!”
It is characteristic of the harem life that, though the ladies were thus irritated, near rebellion, no clear word of their grievance reached the Pasha’s ear. There is a wall between the women and the man more real than the mabeyn screen which man erected. The women raise it to secure their privileges; the man, if he perceives it, cannot throw it down. His anger meets with a subservience which foils its aim as surely as loose sheets will stop a bullet. Even Murjânah, who adored the Pasha, kept the harem secret.
Fitnah Khânum had foretold that Barakah would die, thanks to the ministrations of the Frankish doctor. When she heard that she was fast recovering, she gave praise to Allah, who had saved her life in spite of them. From wishing well to the sick woman, she had grown to love her with all the strength of her impulsive, loyal nature.
The love she bore to Yûsuf was eclipsed. His neglect of her for weeks was scarcely noticed. When at last he did appear, haggard but joyful, her “Praise to Allah” was upon his wife’s account. She made him tell her every detail of the doctor’s treatment, and vowed it was a miracle the girl survived it. From him she learnt the reason of the Pasha’s deference to every edict of that ignoramus. The English Consul had his eye upon the house, watching to note that all was done correctly.
“Consume the Consul!” she exclaimed peremptorily.
“Our Lord consume him utterly!” said Yûsuf. “Yet for one boon I have to thank him. My father, to propitiate him, gives command that I shall visit Paris in the summer with my bride.”
“Allah forbid!” his mother screamed in horror. “Our pearl of pearls to be exposed to vulgar handling, to be cast back into the mire from which she was with pains extracted! Thou wilt not suffer her to go unveiled? For shame, O Yûsuf! To let foul infidels survey thy secret joy.”
“Nay, she will veil her face as the Frenchwomen use.”
“Those veils are nothing, for the mouth is visible.”
“Our ladies wear them in that country to avoid publicity. Be reassured, my mother; we shall guard the decencies. My father grumbles greatly at the cost, but vows that he will show the Consul we are not fanatical. We go to see the dog tomorrow, to tell him all that we have done
