The Veiled Lady | Page 6

of
inquisitive wayfarers passing along the highroad from Beicos to
Danikeui. Above the cove, running from the very beach, sweeps a
garden, shaded by great trees and tangles of underbrush; one bunch
smothering a summer-house. This is connected by a sheltered path with
the little white house that nestles among the firs half-way up the steep
brown hill that overlooks the village of Beicos.
The water-patrol may have been friendly, or my lady's favorite slave
resourceful, but almost every night for weeks the first caique and the
second caique had lain side by side in the boat-house in the cove, both
empty, except for one trusty man who loved Mahmoud and who did his
bidding without murmur or question, no matter what the danger. Higher
up, her loose white robes splashed with the molten silver of the moon
filtering through overhanging leaves, where even the nightingale
stopped to listen, could be heard the cooing of two voices. Then would
come a warning cry, and a figure closely veiled would speed up the
path. Next could be heard the splash of oars of the first caique
homeward bound.
Locksmiths are bunglers in the East compared to patrols and eunuchs.
Lovers may smile, but they never laugh at them. There is always a day
of reckoning. A whisper goes around; some disgruntled servant shakes
his head; and an old fellow with baggy trousers and fez, says: "My
daughter, I am surprised" or "pained" or "outraged," or whatever he
does say in polite Turkish, Arabic, or Greek, and my lady is locked up
on bread and water, or fig-paste, or Turkish Delight, and all is over.
Sometimes the young Lothario is ordered back to his regiment, or sent
to Van or Trebizond or Egypt for the good of his morals, or his health
or the community in which he lives. Sometimes everybody accepts the

situation and the banns are called and they live happy ever after.
What complicated this situation was that the girl, although as beautiful
as a dream--any number of dreams, for that matter, and all of
paradise--was a plebeian and the young man of royal blood.
Furthermore, any number of parents, her own two and twice as many
uncles and aunts, might get together and give, not only their blessing,
but lands and palaces-- two on the Bosphorus, one in Bagdad and
another at Smyrna, and nothing would avail unless his Imperial
Highness the Sultan gave his consent. Futhermore, again, should it
come to the ears of his August Presence that any such scandalous
alliance was in contemplation, several yards of additional bow-strings
would be purchased and the whole coterie experience a choking
sensation which would last them the balance of their lives.
Thus it was that, after that most blissful night in the arbor--their last--in
which she had clung to him as if knowing he was about to slip forever
from her arms, both caiques were laid up for the season; the first tight
locked and guarded in the palace of the young man's father, five miles
along the blue Bosphorus as the bird flies, and the second in the little
boat-house in the small indent of a cove under the garden holding the
beloved arbor, the little white house, and My Lady of the diaphanous
veil and the all-absorbing eyes.
With the lifting of the curtain on the third act, the scene shifts. No more
Sweet Waters, no more caiques nor stolen interviews, the music of hot
kisses drowned in the splash of the listening fountain. Instead, there is
seen a sumptuously furnished interior the walls wainscoted in Moorish
mosaics and lined by broad divans covered with silken rugs. Small
tables stand about holding trays of cigarettes and sweets. Over against a
window overlooking a garden lounges a group of women--some young,
some old, one or two of them black as coal. It is the harem of the Pasha,
the father of Mahmoud, Prince of the Rising Sun, Chosen of the
Faithful, Governor of a province, and of forty other things beside--most
of which Joe had forgotten.
Months had passed since that night in the arbor. Yuleima had cried her
eyes out, and Mahmoud had shaken his fists and belabored his head,
swearing by the beard of the Prophet that come what might Yuleima
should be his.
Then came the death of the paternal potentate, and the young lover was

free--free to come and go, to love, to hate; free to follow the carriage of
his imperial master in his race up the hill after the ceremony of the
Selamlik; free to choose any number of Yuleimas for his solace; free to
do whatever pleased him--except to make the beautiful Yuleima his
spouse. This the High-Mightinesses forbade. There were no personal
grounds for their objection. The daughter of the rich