The pathos of this appeal touched some answering chord in the merchant’s heart, for the lines of his face softened and his eyes filled with tears. At last, when Selìm had made an end of speaking, and stood gazing at him with eyes full of entreaty, Saïd started up and, going over to him, fell on his neck. Surely an evil spirit had prompted him to doubt for a minute the good faith of his more than brother. He asked forgiveness of the harsh words uttered in haste. But he had set his heart on purchasing the house of Mahmud Effendi, and the unlooked-for dissension had angered him.
Deeply moved by his patron’s tears, Selìm gave way completely; vowing to be faithful to him in all things, whatever he should require. He called Allah to witness that he had not meant to oppose Saïd’s will, but only to help him with advice, that nothing might be done rashly or without due consideration.
“What is the hour?” asked Saïd at length, with a startled glance at the tracery of light and shadow thrown from the lattice upon wall and floor.
“It is between the fourth and the fifth, O my master,” Selìm pronounced, after reference to the same dial. “With thy leave, I will call for coffee, if, indeed, thou must depart so soon.” At his shout of “Mûsa!” a sturdy boy, clad in a robe of striped cotton, close buttoned at the neck, and having for headdress an ancient and weather-beaten fez, appeared from an inner room. The shrill tones of a woman scolding and the piteous howl of an infant came through the same door with him, out of the gloom on which he stood revealed.
“O Mûsa, bring coffee and that quickly, for our master has little time!” said Selìm.
The two elders took counsel together how to dispose of shop and merchandise to the best advantage. There were debts of long standing to be collected, or, where the debtor was too great and powerful, to be forgiven with as much circumstance as possible. Selìm undertook all the more tiresome business of the settlement, leaving for his master that lighter part which could be transacted over a glass of sherbet and a narghileh. Saïd thanked him, as for a matter of course, and heartily cursed the buzzing swarm of flies which infested the room. Then, when he had swallowed a cupful of coffee, he arose and set out for the house of Mahmud Effendi.
He thought of the joy Ferideh would have in that palace, and his heart beat faster; for, after more than ten years of possession, he still doted on the daughter of Yuhanna.
II
Mahmud Effendi sat in the audience-hall of his great house, in the highest seat. Door and windows open on the court showed a vine-covered trellis, a few orange-trees grouped about a marble basin, and the opposite wall of the quadrangle in dazzling sunshine. Draughts of lukewarm air brought the pleasant sound of leaves rustling and water trickling to freshen the deep shade of the room, which would else have been gloomy and oppressive.
Mahmud Effendi was a man of thirty summers, unhealthily white and fat, with dark creases under his eyes. He wore a long morning robe of striped silk, a high fez and a finely-embroidered turban; but a pair of Frankish boots of patent leather were most obvious as he lolled in the cushioned seat of honour. As a member of the Council of Notables, and one who had spent a year at Istanbûl to complete his education, he usually donned the Turkish frock-coat and dark trousers on state occasions. It was told of him that he could sit on a chair stiffly, like a Frank, for minutes together without a symptom of uneasiness, could wield a knife and fork cunningly and speak with the tongue of unbelief. But in the freedom of his own dwelling, with his kinsfolk and servants obsequious about him, he was the true Arab grandee, scornful and unmannerly.
On the morning in question the couches of the presence-chamber were well filled. On the dais reclined a number of the great man’s relatives and cronies, grouped in order of their rank; while the body of the hall was sprinkled with the men of the household and other dependants, together with sundry persons who presented themselves every morning with praiseworthy constancy, for no other purposes than to make their names and faces familiar to one in authority.
The walls of the room were a mosaic-work of marble of different colours, the words of the Fatiha, or opening chapter of the Quran, running all round under the ceiling by way of frieze. At all points the name of Allah met the eye, cunningly obscured and twisted into puzzling monograms; and further veiled by such epithets as the Merciful, the Praiseworthy, the Powerful, and so forth. The pavement, too, was of mosaic, where it could be seen for rugs. A wide stone bench or divan, which ran along the foot of the walls, was cushioned upon the dais, bare elsewhere. Before the lord of the house, on a soft carpet from
