When remembering Laura Everingham and the pleasant days of other times, I sighed with mingled regret and bitterness. Was it the old love for her that could not be crushed, or the new love for my beautiful Oriental that I could but imperfectly comprehend, and which had so much of stirring novelty and imminent danger among its chief allurements?
Perhaps I found myself a little in that dilemma which—-I trust all fair ladies will pardon the avowal—is not uncommon among men—loving two women at once—'a way we often have in the army,' as Belton would say.
The new passion which had seized me was certainly strengthened by a sentiment of pique at Laura (oh, Laura, I could love you still!); yet this passion, improper, unwarrantable, name it as you will, friend reader, for this beautiful and too facile Moslem, filled all my heart and fired my imagination with a thousand romantic fancies. I saw all her danger and my own. One moment I lamented the evil chance which had sent me on this solitary duty, and cast me in her path; and the next, I looked at my watch, impatient of the lagging sunset.
Thus did love fire, and reason cool me by turns.
'I know,' says a recent writer, 'that five feet eight inches of female flesh and blood, when accompanied by a pale complexion, black eyes, and raven hair, is synonymous with strong passions and an unfortunate destiny.' And most unfortunate was your destiny, poor Iola!
Ah, those beautiful eyes! How sadly they put all one's wits and self-possession to flight—by their arrows routing horse, foot, and artillery.
I regarded her as a caged bird longing for freedom. I could not conceive it possible that the wife of a Turk—especially such a devilish and unmitigated Turk as the fat Yuze Bashi Hussein—should be otherwise than most unhappy; for the Mohammedan deems women the mere appendage of a household—a necessary comfort among others; a handsome wife, a cup of coffee, and a well-filled chiboque, are the mainsprings of life in the eyes of a true Believer—unless we add a hot bath and a savoury kabob.
With these reflections, an hour after sunset, I found myself in the dewy twilight, under her window, and among those richly-wooded rocks on which the sea of Marmora was rolling in ripples of violet, blue, and gold.
It was one of those brilliant nights when all the constellations are visible, and the poor Mohammedan believes that all the imps of earth are climbing to Heaven, to pry into the actions and overhear the conversation of the blessed, who occasionally pelt and slay them with the falling stars.
I waited for a little time, and then her lattice slowly—I thought reluctantly—unclosed; and two white hands were clapped gently together.
I replied to the signal; the stem of a date-tree and the tough branches of a wild vine enabled me to reach the window with ease, and in a moment I found myself within the sanctum sanctorum of a Mohammedan house—the anderun, or female apartments of the Yuze Bashi Hussein.
Iola was trembling; she drew her yashmack closely about her face, and hastened to shut the casement. Her eyes were full of tears, and that she had been seized by some unusual qualm, or terror of these proceedings, was but too apparent. This was unpleasant, as it gave me the sensation of being somewhat of a conspirator, at least.
The successful peculations of Hussein had enabled him to make the apartments of his Greek wife magnificent. The roof was all of blue velvet, painted with the figures of birds and flowers. The walls were hung with silk, in alternate broad red and white stripes, on which shone gilded sentences from the Koran. An exquisite Persian carpet covered the floor, on which were a profusion of velvet and embroidered cushions of the softest and lightest down arranged in the form of couches; and there were two little stools bearing coffee-trays and chiboques. The lower end of the apartment, which was divided in two by festooned curtains of the finest muslin, was hung with leopard-skins, and trophies of Turkish and Arabian arms of the keenest steel—sabres, handjiars, carbines, pistols, lances, matchlocks, and ancient horsetailed standards, arranged, in the form of stars, round Tartar shields of brown bull-hide, all glittering with knobs of burnished brass. The perfume of rich pastiles and wood of aloes, burning in tripods of bronze, and the fragrance of six tall candelabra full of fresh flowers, pervaded the apartment, which was lit by two large lamps of fine oil, the smoke of which was consumed by cream-coloured globes, that diffused a warm and voluptuous light.
To complete the picture of this remarkable apartment, let me remind the reader of Iola, who, shrinking a little from me, stood in the centre of it, with irresolution and timidity in her air and eyes.
She wore the hideous feradjee of the Turkish women, which enveloped her whole form, permitting little of its oriental symmetry to be seen; yet from amid its ample folds I could discern her hands, which were gloveless, and her little feet, which had embroidered slippers, and the faultless form and delicacy of which there were no stockings to conceal.
Her black and brilliant eyes, expressive, languishing, and inquiring, arch and smiling by turns, were now bent on me, timidly and imploringly, under their long lashes and dark eyebrows, which were well arched, defined, and full of character—a charming thing in every girl. Through the thin yashmack, or veil of fine muslin, which concealed the lower part of her face, after that abominable fashion which the restless jealousy of their male tyrants imposes on the women of the East, I could discern that her features were beautiful. Her turban was of muslin, sprigged with gold; she had an ivory pomander ball of attar-gul in one hand; a finely-embroidered handkerchief and a sandal-wood rosary from Mecca in the other.
The respect with which she was treated was puzzling and confusing to her, as a Turkish woman; for in her country the fair sex are kept in a state of subjugation so strict, that a sister dare not sit in her younger brother's presence without first obtaining permission.
I attempted to take her hands, but she withdrew them, and crossed them on her bosom.
'Iola,' said I, tenderly; 'have you ceased to love me?'
'I know not,' she replied, sadly; 'for, as the Koran says, it belongeth to Allah alone to fathom the human heart—and I cannot fathom mine.'
'You are doubtful of your own emotions.'
'I am sad—very sad—having much reason to be so.'
'Allow me to remove this veil, for Heaven's sake, dear Iola!' I continued, trembling with the earnestness of my own sentiments; 'do not repel me.'
She was passive, and I hastened to remove both the feradjee and the horrid yashmack; and then her fine figure appeared in a close velvet jacket, sleeved only to the elbow, cut low at the neck and open at the bosom; and her hair was gathered about her beautiful head in massive braids, like perfumed and sable silk. She trembled and blushed excessively, for, by the Mohammedan law, aged women who are past the time of marriage alone may lay this veil aside.
Her white neck and arms were encircled by strings of Turkish rose pearls, made from the leaves of freshly-culled roses, bruised to a paste, and dried and rolled in oil of roses and musk, and which, being thus beautifully polished and pleasantly perfumed, are favourite ornaments in the East.
She had all that combination of spiritual and voluptuous loveliness which her Grecian sires of old worshipped in the olive-groves of Paphos, and in the temples of Cyprus and Cytheria, when the power of Juno's rival was supreme.
I drew her gently towards me, but still she averted her timid and downcast face.
'Iola—why this change?' I asked, in a pettish tone; 'have you ceased to love me now?'
'I have not ceased to love you,' she answered, while trembling painfully; 'at first you merely struck my fancy, when passing daily in the castle-yard, where you seemed so different in air, so free in step and bearing, from the slow, heavy-headed, and crook-legged soldiers of Hussein; but now you—you—'
'What?'
'Have keenly touched my heart. Alas!' she continued, weeping; 'now I am more a slave than ever the piastres of Hussein, or the promise I gave him, before the Kadi, made me!'
'Be wary, Iola—remember that your servants may hear us, and our position is full of danger.'
'There is no danger,' she replied, bitterly; 'they are all dumb—voiceless as marble statues.'
'Dumb?'
'Mutes—tongueless—and two are deaf, or rendered so.'
'Horrible! For what reason?'
'To prevent their being indiscreet.'
'A wise precaution.'
'So my husband thinks—but a cruel one.'
After a pause, she added, 'Would to Allah that he had left me in the care of his friend, the Moolah Moustapha!'
'Why?'
'Can you ask me? The Moolah is said to know—like Solymon Ebn Daood—the language of the birds; and every kind of secret knowledge; and thus he had watched over the wanderings of my heart.'
'Nay, dearest Iola, these scruples and coquettish regrets come somewhat late—and one kiss—'
'Bismillah! In the name of the most Merciful, touch me not!' she exclaimed, with a coy alarm that was rather chilling; but she was too late: my kiss was on her pouting lip, and she did not repulse me—for she felt assured, by the night and the silence around us, that no ear was there to overhear us, and no mortal eye but mine to see her unveiled beauty.
Here endeth the first lesson.