While listening to this old Arabian legend, which fell so prettily from the lisping tongue of Iola, I never thought of Hussein, who, having transacted with the Seraskier his business, which merely concerned the shipment of certain guns and shot for Varna, was then galloping along the paved road to Rodosdchig.
Intent upon the dark and tender eyes, the white neck, and soft tresses of Iola, I did not hear the ruffle beaten on the brass drum of the Main-guard as he cantered into the court; nor did I hear the tramp of his horse or his heavy foot-fall on the old Greek marble stair, or in the anteroom; nor did I remember in any way that a being so ungainly and so decidedly unwelcome existed in the world, until the muslin hangings were fiercely rent asunder, and he stood before us, his countenance livid with just rage, his dark eyes gleaming like two live coals, and his long brass-barrelled Turkish pistols levelled at us, one in each hand.
I had no weapon but my sword, which I immediately unsheathed, while instinctively placing myself between him and the mute and terror-stricken Iola, who sank grovelling before him, bowing her beautiful head to the carpet, and murmuring only—
'Mercy! mercy! vai! vai! woe—woe!'
Alarm for her, and shame for myself, deprived me of utterance. I could only interpose the long, glittering blade of the Highland claymore between us, and gaze on Hussein's angry front, debating whether or not I should slash him across the fingers, lest he might shoot one or both of us; and I remembered poor Callum Dhu and his thirty comrades, who would be at the mercy of Hussein's hundred Bombardiers, and might, moreover, be exposed to the fury of the populace, from whom not even the Greek Archbishop of Rodosdchig could protect them.
'Oh, face of brass and heart of steel! what do I see?' he exclaimed. Then uttering that expression of grief which is so frequently in the mouths of Mohammedans, he rent his white beard, and cried, 'We are God's, and unto Him we shall return! You have darkened the light of my eyes, oh Frank! but may the fiends have me if I take not a sure and terrible vengeance for this!'
'Hear me?' I implored, without knowing what to say.
'Nay—stir not a step, or these balls shall whistle through your brain!'
'Yuze Bashi, hear me, I beg of you, and you shall know all.'
'All!' he reiterated, stamping with rage; 'ye shall wish yourselves like the brutal Greeks, from whom this woman sprang—deaf and dumb and without understanding—before the measure of my vengeance is full. Her fate she knows; but for thee, accursed Frank—thou who hast reft me of her, who was to be unto me a garment and a comfort, as the blessed Koran saith—by the seven heavens and the seven earths, and by the hand that hung and cleft the moon in the firmament, I will have your heart to tread beneath my heel; but first the ferashes shall apply the bastinado until every toe you have has dropped from your feet in blood! Hallo, Chaoush! Hallo, Onbashi!'
'Do with me as you please, Effendi, but spare her.'
'As for her, the hand of a profligate Christian has touched her—a hand which defiles all it touches—yea, even the food of a dog; so, from this hour, she is alike divorced—thrice, I say it, divorced, divorced and accursed by Hussein!'
With these words, he pulled both triggers at once; but the pistols, having old flint locks, by the mercy of heaven, flashed in the pan and hung fire. Then, finding the necessity of immediate action, just as he was about to draw his sabre, I grasped him by the gilded waist-belt, and hurling him, with all my force, back upon the cushions which lay piled upon the floor behind him, I locked Iola into an inner apartment—kissed her cold hands, and rushed by a back door to the foot of the staircase. Then crossing the castle-yard, I regained my quarters, where I was immediately joined by Callum Dhu, who, ever kind and watchful, had been awaiting my return.
Alarmed, on seeing me spring in with my sword drawn, and excitement in my eye,
'In the name of the devil, co-dhalta,' said he, 'what is the matter?'
I told him that I had been visiting the wife of the commandant; that he had returned suddenly, and finding us at coffee, had been seized by a fit of jealousy, and nearly pistolled me; but that I had knocked him down, and made my escape.
This explanation was all truth, and yet was but a compromise between it and falsehood; and so I thought Callum suspected, for his keen dark Highland eye loured; his face flushed for a moment, and he gave me a glance of scrutiny such as he had never ventured to do as my fosterer in Glen Ora, and still less since we had joined the regiment. Beside all this, Callum Dhu was sufficiently well read in the writings of Morier, Frazer, Slade, and Franklin to know that the domestic privacy of an oriental household cannot be trifled with, and, after a moment's reflection—
'Glen Ora,' said he—for he never forgot my old Highland patronymic—'evil will come of all this, for you have been unwary; and there will be the life of one—it may be three—lost. Have you thought of that?'
'I have thought of it,' said I, irritated on finding a Mentor in him; 'and I tell you, Callum, that I care not whose life is lost, if the poor innocent Greek girl I have compromised is saved from the ferocity of this Turkish officer.'
'True—but how?' was the calm query.
'How—I care not how; but saved she must be, Callum. As for that true type of an Eastern tyrant—the ignorant, sensual, and avaricious Hussein—what care I for him?'
'Yet he trusted to your honour, Allan Mac Innon!'
I felt the quiet reproach, and dared not follow up my own thoughts, for I felt how weak is the human heart, and vain the resolves of human reason, when opposed to the wiles of beauty. Lest some outrage should be attempted upon me, as we knew not what lengths the Yuze Bashi's wrath might carry him, Callum suggested that one of our men should be posted, with his bayonet fixed and musket loaded, at the foot of the stair which ascended to the tower wherein we had our quarters; and, to watch over the safety of Iola, my faithful fellow proposed that he and Donald Roy, who was a sharp-witted, active, and hardy West-Highlander, should guard by turns the residence of the exasperated governor of Rodosdchig; and after these arrangements, I sat down to write to Jack Belton for his advice, and composed the letter, and my own mind, over a devilled bone, a bottle of Kirkissa wine, and cigar.
During my conference with Callum we heard various noises and cries of alarm proceeding from the quarters of the Yuze Bashi; and each of these sounds had a terrible echo in my heart, for, when believing that they proceeded from the apartment of Iola, the main strength of my fosterer scarcely sufficed to restrain me from rushing out, sword in hand, to her assistance.
All became quiet after a time. Then we heard the clatter of horse's hoofs, as a mounted messenger galloped from the fort, which made me suspect that our Yuze Bashi had sent some awkward instructions to the Bostandgi Bashi of the police; or worse still, to some of the lawless Bashi-Bozouks, an orta or regiment of whom, were cantoned at Carga, not far from us; but ere long, we learned that it was only a slave, dispatched by Iola for a certain learned Jewish Hakim, who arrived in due time, and reported, that after imprecating a torrent of maledictions on 'the chief of the bare-legged Yenitcheries,' as he termed the brave steady lads of her Britannic Majesty's — Highlanders, the Yuze Bashi had suddenly become speechless and black in the face; that his eyes had started in their sockets, and he became senseless, as if ghoules or ghinns were strangling him; that he was recovered only by bleeding and having his temples bound with a fillet, on which were traced the signs of the Zodiac. After this, he was able to make known that he wished to see the Moolah Mustapha, who had accordingly been sent for.
The plain English of all this I supposed to be, simply, that Hussein, being very short in stature, stout, pursy, and thick-necked, in his phrenzy had brought on a fit of apoplexy, the effects of which—if they had no better cure than the signs of the Zodiac—I believed would at least keep him quiet until I was recalled to Heraclea by Major Catanagh, an event for which I now devoutly prayed.