The Veiled Lady | Page 4

rose skin, making pink pearls of the cheeks and chin and lending its charm to the other features; or it may have been the wonderful eyes that made me oblivious of Joe's warning, for I did look--looked with all my eyes, and kept on looking.
Men have died for just such eyes. Even now, staid old painter as I am, the very remembrance of their wondrous size--big as a young doe's and as pleading, their lids fringed by long feathery lashes that opened and shut with the movement of a tired butterfly--sends little thrills of delight scampering up and down my spine. Bulbuls, timid gazelles, perfumed narghilehs, anklets of beaten gold strung with turquoise, tinkling cymbals, tiny turned-up slippers with silk tassels on their toes--everything that told of the intoxicating life of the East were mirrored in their unfathomed depths.
Most of these qualities, I am aware, are found in many another pair of lambent, dreamy eyes half- hidden by the soft folds of a yashmak--eyes which these houris often flash on some poor devil of a giaour, knowing how safe they are and how slim his chance for further acquaintance. Strange tales are told of their seductive power and strange disappearances take place because of them. And yet I saw at a glance that there was nothing of all this in her wondering gaze. Her eyes, in fact, were fixed neither on Joseph nor on me, nor did they linger for one instant on the beautiful mosque. It was my canvas that held their gaze. Men and mosques were old stories; pictures of either as astounding as a glimpse into heaven.
Again Joe bent his head and whispered to me, his glance this time on the mosque, on the hill, on the cafe, where Yusuf sat sipping his coffee, talking to me all the time out of the corner of his mouth.
"Remember, effendi, if Yusuf come we go way chabouk. You look at your picture all time--paint-- no look at her. If Yusuf come and catch us it make trouble for her--make trouble for you--make more trouble for me. Police Pasha don't know she come to this garden--I think somebody must help her. You better stop now and go cafe. I find Yusuf. I no like this place."
With this Hornstog rose to his feet and began packing the trap, still whispering, his eyes on the ground. Never once did he look in the direction of the houri peering through the sliding panel.
The clatter of a horse's hoofs now resounded through the still air. A mounted officer was approaching. Joe looked up, turned a light pea-green, backed his body into the gate with the movement of an eel, put his cheek close to the sliding panel, and whispered some words in Turkish. The girl leaned a little forward, glanced at the officer as if in confirmation of Joseph's warning, and smothering a low cry, sprang back from the opening. The next instant my eye caught the thumb and forefinger of a black hand noiselessly closing the panel. Joe straightened up, pulled himself into the position of a sentinel on guard, saluted the officer, who passed without looking to the right or left, drew a handkerchief from his pocket, and began mopping his head.
"What the devil is it all about, Joe? Why, you look as if you had had the wind knocked out of you."
"Oh, awful close, awful close! I tell you--but not here. Come, we go 'way--we go now--not stay here any more. If that officer see the lady with us the Pasha send me to black mosque for five year and you find yourself board ship on way to Tripoli. Here come Yusuf--damn him! You tell him you no like view of mosque from here--say you find another place to-morrow--you do this quick. Hornstog never lie."
On my way across the Galata Bridge to my quarters in Pera that same afternoon Joe followed until Yusuf had made his kotow and we had made ours, the three ending in a triple flight of fingers--waited until the guard was well on his way back to the Pasha's office--it was but a short way from the Stamboul end of the Galata--and drawing me into one of the small cafes overlooking the waters of the Golden Horn, seated me at the far end near a window where we could talk without being overheard. Here Joe ordered coffee and laid a 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