“Indeed, indeed, I am an Englishwoman,” she persisted, with a kind of whimper. “I want to get away from here and lead a Christian life.”
But while she spoke the words her hands were busy readjusting the white muslin mouth-veil as a step towards going.
The great official shrugged his shoulders “Is that all you have to say?”
“Perhaps—I mean, I know that I did wrong to come here.” She was quivering from head to foot with shame. The act of sitting on a chair embarrassed her. She was completely out of touch with English ways.
“Well, I don’t quite see what I can do for you,” said her appraiser, in a tone of bland reproach. “You see we are here as guardians of the laws and customs of the country. We could hardly, therefore, interfere in a case such as yours—a harem quarrel. As for the religious controversy, I can tell you we avoid it like hot coals. Our one desire is to uphold the institutions of the country. Really, my dear lady, I think the only thing for you to do is to go straight home and make the best of it.”
At that she rose. He passed before her to the door and held it open. She thought of offering her hand, but his grand bow forbade it; and she went out in profound humiliation.
“Well, art thou happy?” chuckled Umm ed-Dahak, still believing that she was the servant of a criminal intrigue. She prattled merrily till they regained the carriage and were driving homeward, when she noticed that her lady trembled and looked sad.
“Alas!” she cried. “My dove, my poor one, is it so? Woe, woe for womankind! There comes a time to all of us when love escapes.”
But Barakah surveyed a wider disillusion.
Until just now she had been strong in the conceit that she was different from Eastern women, recognizably of higher race. From her dreams with Umm ed-Dahak, built on memories of Mrs. Cameron’s entreaties and the Consul’s arguments, she had derived the notion that she was of value to the English, who would fain reclaim her. Now that mirage, born of the sleepy harem atmosphere, was swept away; and she was nothing. With English people, she would always long for Orientals; with Orientals, feel a yearning for the life of Europe.
And in religion, likewise, she was nothing. A Christian by conviction after years of scoffing, she was doomed to play the part of a Muhammadan, to lose her soul. And she was glad to be returning to the life so lately dreaded, the vision of herself in English eyes had so appalled her. Well, she was nothing, and her soul of small account. The harem was her natural home; the teaching of the wise and kindly Prophet her protection. She now beheld the vanity of all her struggles, the vulgarity of much concern about the future. God was merciful! In self-annihilation there was peace. Thus through her striving after Christianity she reached at last the living heart of El Islam.
XL
It was strange how, with her broken spirit, she regained a kindly interest in all around her. She had found the keynote of harem existence—resignation; not merely passive, but exultant as an act of worship. The gross, full-blooded speech, the something cruel in these women, which in the day of sentimental pride had seemed intolerable, was but the natural outcome of relentless vision. In the first fervour of her self-abasement she stood beside the deathbed of Murjânah Khânum, watched her last struggle, and endured the death-room orgies without flinching. Thenceforth she took up the old Muslim standpoint, denouncing all the fallacies of Europe. Having won from Yûsuf the confession that he kept three other women, she had them brought to the old Pasha’s palace, where she lived thenceforward, to rid his dealings of the surreptitiousness which smacks of vice. She received them sometimes in her rooms, and took benignant notice of their children, but remained aloof. They called her “the great lady,” and deferred to her.
When the festivals of visitation of the dead came round, she would withdraw into the tomb for days together, but showed no mournfulness at other seasons. When Englishwomen called on her (as sometimes happened, for Yûsuf held a high position in the Government), she spoke in stilted French, and never hinted that she knew their language, or was other than the thing she seemed—a Turkish lady. She felt assured that, had she carried out her plan and fled to Europe after her son’s death, she would have gone mad in that sentimental atmosphere with all her memories. More than the English, she disliked some French and German ladies who, without renouncing their religion or their nationality, had married Muslims. These, in their visits, showed a curiosity, and used a tone of patronage, which was offensive. Of races less exclusive than the English, they kept their European friends, maintained their liberty. They had no real conception of the harem life.
She was angry with her daughter when the latter told her:
“At marriage I shall make my husband promise to have me alone before I yield to him. It is become the fashion in the noblest houses. Of course, if I should fail to bear a son, I should release him.”
“Endeavour to retain him by thy charms,” the mother scolded. “O foolish one, to make him promise is to make him sin.
