The Veiled Lady | Page 5

package of cigarettes on
the table.
"My! but that was like the razor at the throat-- not for all the hairs on
my head would I had her look out the small hole in the door when
Serim come along. Somebody must be take care of you, you Joe
Hornstog, that you don't make damn big fool of yourselluf. Ha! but it
make me creep like a spider crawl."
I had pulled up a chair by this time and was facing him.
"Now what is it? Who is the girl? Who was the chap on horseback?"
"That man on the horse is Serim Pasha, chief of the palace police. He
has eyes around twice; one in the forehead, one in each ear, one in the
behind of his head. He did not see her--if he did--well, we would not be
talk now together--sure not after to-morrow night."
"But what has he got to do with it? What did you say her name was?
Yuleima?"
"Yes, Yuleima. What has Serim to do with her? Well, I tell you. If she
get away off go Serim's head. Listen! I speak something you never hear
anywhere 'cept in Turk-man's land. I know it all-- everything. I know
her prince--he knows me. I meet him Damascus once--he told me some
things then--the tears run his cheeks down like a baby's when he
talk--and Serim know I know somethings! Ah! that's why he not
believe me if he catch me talk to her. Afterward I find more out from
my friend in Yuleima's house--he is the gardener. Put your head close,
effendi."
I drew my chair nearer and listened.

"Yuleima," began Joe, "is one womans like no other womans in all--"
But I shall not attempt the dragoman's halting, broken jargon
interspersed with Italian and German words--it will grate on you as it
grated on me. I will assume for the moment--and Joe would be most
thankful to have me do so--that the learned Hornstog, the friend of
kings and princes, is as fluent in English as he is in Turkish, Arabic,
and Greek.
It all began in a caique--or rather in two caiques. One was on its way to
a little white house that nestles among the firs at the foot of the bare
brown hill overlooking the village of Beicos. The other was bound for
the Fountain Beautiful, where the women and their slaves take the air
in the soft summer mornings.
In the first caique, rowed by two caique-jis gorgeously dressed in fluffy
trousers and blouses embroidered in gold, sat the daughter of the rich
Bagdad merchant.
In the second caique, cigarette in hand, lounged the nephew of the
Khedive, Mahmoud Bey; scarce twenty, slight, oval face with full lips,
hair black as sealskin and as soft, and eyes that smouldered under
heavy lids. Four rowers in blue and silver attended his Highness, the
amber-colored boat skimming the waters as a tropical bird skims a
lagoon.
The two had passed each other the week before on the day of the
Selamlik (the Turkish holiday) while paddling up the Sweet Waters of
Asia--a little brook running into the Bosphorus and deep enough for
caiques to float, and every day since that blissful moment my lady had
spent the morning under the wide-spreading plane-trees shading the
Fountain Beautiful--the Chesmegazell--attended by her faithful slave
Multif, her beautiful body stretched on a Damascus rug of priceless
value, her eager eyes searching the blue waters of the Bosphorus.
On this particular morning--my lady had just stepped into her boat--the
young man was seen to raise himself on his elbow, lift his eyelids, and
a slight flush suffused his swarthy cheeks. Then came an order in a low
voice, and the caique swerved in its course and headed for the dot of
white and gold in which sat Multif and my lady. The Spanish caballero
haunts the sidewalk and watches all day beneath his Dulcinea's balcony;
or he talks to her across the opera-house or bull-ring with cigarette,
fingers, and cane, she replying with studied movements of her fan. In

the empire of Mohammed, with a hundred eyes on watch--eyes of
eunuchs, spies, and parents-- love-making is reduced to a passing
glance, brief as a flash of light, and sometimes as blinding.
That was all that took place when the two caiques passed--just a
thinning of the silken veil, with only one fold of the yashmak slipped
over the eyes, softening the fire of their beauty; then a quick,
all-enfolding, all-absorbing look, as if she would drink into her very
soul the man she loved, and the two tiny boats kept each on its way.
The second act of the comedy opens in a small cove, an indent of the
Bosphorus, out of sight of passing boat-patrols--out of sight, too,