“Continue, Excellency!” said the Consul grimly. He got up from his chair and paced the room. The Pasha kept the corner of an eye upon him, as he proceeded:
“What can I do? The demoiselle has been secluded from my household, as I promised you. But youth leaps boundaries; love can speak through walls. My son has seen her in the passages—their eyes have met—What know I? Youth is fatal.”
Here the Pasha wiped his eyes.
“Monsieur le Consul, when I heard of this two days ago, I put my son in prison; I went myself and reasoned with the demoiselle. I have reasoned with them both, entreated, threatened; but without result. I fear my son will die if he may not espouse her. The demoiselle implores me not to cast her forth. She says—it is so touching!—that we are her only friends, that she never met with kindness till she came to us.”
“Beg her to come this afternoon and see me,” pronounced the Englishman, whose face had darkened by perceptible gradations as he listened.
“That is precisely what I come to ask: that you will scold her. God knows how the responsibility has weighed upon me. She is not the match I should myself have chosen for my son; but still I should be glad of the alliance, because of the esteem I have for all the English. I stand impartial in the case and greatly worried.”
“Thank you, Excellency. Send her to me this afternoon. Is there anything else?”
The Pasha had already risen to depart.
“One thing.” He dropped his voice to a stage whisper. “In the frenzy of her love she asks to be of our religion. She has made an oath of her conversion before witnesses. (The Consul swore.) But have no care. We will forget it, if”—the Pasha laid great stress on the condition, and for once looked boldly in the other’s eyes—“if, after consultation with you, she should wish to recant.”
“But you say that there are witnesses to her conversion,” cried the Frank, with bitterness. “I fail to see how it can be forgotten. There would be a riot.”
“The witnesses are of my house,” rejoined the Pasha suavely. “My command is guarantee of their discretion.”
“Send her to me!” The final words were uttered from tight lips beneath a formidable frown, as the Consul flung the door wide open for the Turk’s departure.
“Sont-ils fanatiques, ces brutes-là? Peuh!” respired the Pasha, shaking the dust from off his boots as he regained his carriage. “The girl will have a cruel hour, poor floweret! That dog would like to kill her. But, God be praised, the law of El Islam is still sufficient to protect a convert in a Muslim land!”
His thoughts of the lone foreign girl were full of kindness. She was his daughter. He would care for her true happiness. And then the thought of Fitnah’s rage, recurring, caused him to frown, and swear, and gnaw his underlip.
III
Immediately on his return to his own house, Muhammad Pasha sent a eunuch to announce his coming to the lady Fitnah. He found her lying on a couch in her stateroom. Two slaves, who had been busy fanning her, retired before him. Seeing she lay still with eyes closed as if quite exhausted, he drew near and whispered:
“Now, inshallah, O beloved, thou wilt hear my reasons.”
She opened great brown eyes, bloodshot with wrath, and glared at him a moment.
“Well, what news?” she asked, with studied coldness.
The Pasha then embarked upon his story; but, at mention of the Consul, she sprang up with rage renewed, expectorating:
“Curse thy father! ‘She will see the Consul,’ sayest thou? The Consul! May the Consul and his whole race rot with agony! It is simply to evade a duty which is thine and thine alone. Eject her from the house at once, thou paltry coward! She will kill our son. I know thy guile, by Allah! Thou wilt say, ‘The Consul orders her to marry Yûsuf. We must obey the Consul,’—O salvation!—when all the while thyself art father of the mischief. Oh, let her not come here, or, by my fruitfulness! these hands shall cling to her and not leave hold till they have made her so that no man could desire her.”
Expostulation proving vain, her lord retired in great annoyance. He had to fear a scandal in his house, an inquisition by the Consul, ignominy, if Yûsuf’s mother came in contact with the English lady.
In this dilemma, as in every other which concerned the household, he went for counsel to his only love and first of wives. He sent a herald of his coming to Murjânah Khânum, and after a decent interval repaired to her apartments. She received him in a large room, with no other solid furniture than a low desk on which a manuscript of the Koran lay open; but exquisitely clean and sweet, a contrast to those quarters of the house where Fitnah reigned. The windows were constructed of the finest latticework, which made the light within seem rare and delicate. Murjânah, old but stately, fondled her lord’s hand.
“Thy face is careworn,” she exclaimed, perusing it. “Inshallah, all the news is good.”
“Inshallah,” he replied mechanically. “But Allah knows that I am greatly troubled. I know not what to do.” And he proceeded to describe the madness of the lady Fitnah. At the tale’s conclusion, a light laugh surprised him.
“Thou askest what to do,” exclaimed Murjânah, “when there is danger that a foolish woman, mad with jealousy, may harm a guest of ours! Hear the word of Allah: ‘When ye have cause to fear their disobedience, ye shall reprimand them, ye shall banish them to beds apart, and ye shall beat them.’ Is not that plain? Beat her! It is thy sacred duty. No, no, she will not cry against thee to the
