Never while life remains shall I forget the hours of delight I passed with Iola.
I know that it was wrong—exceedingly wrong—and blamable in me to have yielded to the tempting peril of engaging in this flirtation—to give my regard for Iola its mildest term—but what could I do? And having once yielded to the allurement, and encouraged her in it, how could I fly or avoid her?
I met her no more at the Ruined Hermitage, or at the green City of the Silent, for such interviews were full of peril; but I met her again and again, in the seclusion of her own apartments, into which not even the tongueless and mutilated slaves of Hussein could penetrate without a signal being given and permission accorded from within. Thus we had an interview every evening, and had much delightful conversation, and many an hour of mute reverie.
How strange and alluring were those long, deep, and dangerous reveries, which were full of beatings of the heart, and tender meanings which the pen cannot depict, and no written language can convey!
My word plighted to the absent Hussein—my honour, and more than all, her honour—yea, her very life, were in peril, yet I trifled with both, like the heedless, reckless, and it may be, selfish boy I was!
Poor Iola!
I related the story of her brother's desertion, recapture, trial, and the death he suffered so courageously in our presence at Heraclea. I mentioned the two little incidents which brought me in personal contact with him; first in the public khan, and secondly at the last terrible scene in the valley of the mosque, where from his dead hand I took the little coral cross, which by a strange course of events I was now enabled to suspend upon the bosom of his sister; and as I did so, I thought of all that high-spirited and noble Albanian soldier would have felt had he seen that sister, now a Mahommedan, (the wife of one of those barbarous Osmanli who pistolled his stately mother at Acre,) and hanging in all her loveliness, dissolved in tears and grief upon the bosom of a stranger—a soldier of Frangistan!
I deemed it well for Hussein, well for Iola, and particularly fortunate for myself, that the fiery young lieutenant of Albanians was sleeping in his quiet grave, where the slaves of the Mir Alai Saïd had laid him.
Tempered by politeness, and by that respect and deference to a female which have come down to us from the days of the Crusaders and the Cavaliers, the manner of a European lover is so different from the bearing of an Oriental one, that there can be little wonder if the heart of a Mahommedan woman is easily won by the stiff-hatted, tight-coated, and long-trousered denizen of that ample and mysterious district known to her only as Frangistan. In the matter of love and wedlock, the Turkish woman has as little idea of freedom as the Turk has of the arguments advanced by S. Bufford, gent.—a certain learned pundit, who, in the reign of King William III., wrote an Essay 'against persons marrying without their own consent.'
'Oh, that I had the right to love you, as I have the right to hate the Yuze Bashi Hussein!' said Iola, after one of her long silences. 'Oh the odious! May the heel of my slipper be ever on his mouth—and yet—and yet he is my husband!'
'I wince always at that word in your pretty mouth, Iola!'
'In loving you, I cease to love him—-if indeed I ever loved him. Allah did not create woman with two hearts—with one under each breast, as the Moolah Moustapha affirms.'
'But our love is full of sadness as well as peril, Iola—for a day is coming when I must leave you.'
'Oh, leave me not!' she exclaimed, passionately. 'Must my love be sacrificed to this coarse and untutored Osmanli? The day after you leave me I shall have ceased to live.'
'Leave you I must, Iola.'
'Why?—when?'
'When ordered—for I, too, have Yuze Bashis and Mir Alais and Pashas who command me.'
'By the love with which you have inspired me!' she said in a piercing whisper, with her black eyes flashing in brilliance through their tears; 'I conjure you to take me with you, for I cannot live without you, and without you I must die!'
With these words she threw herself upon my breast, heedless of everything.
'I will take you with me, Iola, if I can—'
'Nay you must—you shall!'
'Yes—yes, at all hazards.'
'Why should I die so young?'
'You will go with me—I promise you,' I replied, heedless of the future; and then she gave me a smile of confiding fondness that would have melted the heart of our old friend Bluebeard.
'My husband will be here anon, and his jealousy—'
'Well—fear him not, Iola; jealousy gives a relish to love—just as musk does to sherbet, or pepper to a kabob,' said I, gaily.
'But alas,' said she, with a shudder, 'the jealousy of a Turk is terrible! Could I teach Hussein that love and respect—or love and affection are two distinct sentiments?'
'Give me but the love, Iola, and bestow the affection on whom you please.'
'Allah!' she exclaimed, with a shudder, and a gleam of terror in her expressive eyes, as she shrunk from my arm; 'what if you should be Hussein?'
'I Hussein—I the Yuze Bashi?' I asked, in astonishment.
'Yes—O Mahmoud! there is a strange sparkle in your eye.'
'How could such a thing be?' I asked, smiling at her simplicity.
'Genii give men the power to assume the forms, faces, and voices of others for a time,' she replied, a little reassured; 'have you never heard so?'
'Never.'
'How strange! Have you not heard of the wise Sultan Solymon, and his magic ring—of the evil Geni Sakhur, and how they changed forms and faces for forty days?'
'Never, on my honour.'
'Listen, and I will tell you,' said she, clasping her white hands upon my left shoulder, and reclining her brow upon my cheek, while her speaking eyes were lifted up to mine, as we reclined among the soft and silky cushions; 'listen, and I will tell you a story—oh, a very wonderful story—of things that happened long long ago,' she continued, while her fine eyes diluted and filled with light; 'long before Othmon the Bonebreaker sat on the Sultan's throne, and long before Palæologus perished beneath the cimitars of the Janissaries—but kiss me once again before I begin.'
The request was soon granted, and in her pretty little prattling way, Lola told me the following tale of wonder and magic.