CHAPTER I.
He that repenteth too late may some time worry too soon.—The Kâtâmarana.
The Pasha Muley Mustapha was unhappy. He was a peaceloving, easy-tempered man, as Pashas go, and, when allowed to have his own way, was never inclined to ask for more. But now, after seven years of wedded life, he found his wishes thwarted, not for the first time, by the caprice of a woman, and that woman his only wife, Kayenna, well surnamed the Eloquent. The misunderstanding had arisen, innocently enough, in this way:—
“I think, my dear,” said Muley Mustapha, as he sat smoking his nargileh one day at the beginning of this history, while his wife reclined on a divan,—“I think, my dear, that my parents (may their memory be blessed!) made a great mistake in their treatment of me in my youth. I was brought up too strictly. They gave me no opportunity of seeing life in all its phases. Consequently, I find myself, in middle age, almost a stranger among my own subjects. I mean to adopt an entirely different system with little Muley.”
“In what way?” asked his wife, rising on her elbow, and casting a suspicious look at her lord.
“Well, in this way,” replied Muley Mustapha, deliberately,—“in this way. I intend to let him go out into the world, mingle with the youth of his own age, share in their sports, and, as the Giaours say, ‘sow his wild oats.’”
“‘In what way?’ asked his wife”
“Muley Mustapha,” said his wife, sitting bolt upright, “you shall do nothing of the sort. ‘Sow his wild oats,’ indeed! He shall never leave my sight, not for a single moment, until he is a grown man and I have provided him with a wife to take my place as guardian of his morals. It ill becomes the trusted vassal of my noble father, the Sultan of Kopaul, to talk thus of corrupting the child who is to be one day ruler of that mighty empire. You forget that fact, Muley Mustapha.”
“On the contrary,” retorted the Pasha, a little tartly, “I am not likely to forget it, so long as the daughter of the Sultan of Kopaul condescends to remain the wife of the Pasha of Ubikwi.”
For Muley Mustapha had married above his station, and the circumstance had not been permitted to escape his memory. He never complained of his lot; but, when his faithful Vizier once hinted that the Koran allowed each true believer the blessing of four wives, he answered with a sigh, “I find one enough for this world: the rest I will take in houris.”
Some subtle reflection of that sentiment must have made itself visible on the face of the Pasha at this moment; for his worthy spouse, with apparent irrelevance, suddenly exclaimed,—
“Muley Mustapha, if you are going to cast your vagabond Vizier in my face, I will leave the room—until I have time to go home to my father, who will protect me from insult.”
“Great Allah!” cried the Pasha. “Who is casting anybody in your face? And who has mentioned the name of the Vizier?”
But the virtuous Kayenna had risen to her feet, and in low, intense tones began:—
“Sir, there is a limit to what even a wife may endure. When I think that a son of mine is threatened with contamination at the hands of a low, disreputable, adventurous vagabond, like your worthless underling”—
Here the good lady was so overcome by her feelings that she burst into a flood of tears, and had to be borne, shrieking, to her apartments.
“I foresee that I shall have trouble in bringing up that boy,” mused Muley Mustapha, as he relighted his nargileh, and stroked his flowing beard.
Braver man there was not in all Islam than the dauntless young Pasha of Ubikwi, whose valor on many a hard-fought field finally won him the favor of the Sultan of Kopaul, and the fair hand of that Sultan’s only child. Once, some years after his marriage, he propounded to Shacabac the Wayfarer, then a sage whose merits had not been appreciated by a dull generation, the old paradox of the Frankish schoolmen: “When an irresistible force meets with an immovable object, what happeneth?” And the wise man answered, “In case of matrimony, the Force retireth from business.” Struck by the aptness of the reply, Muley Mustapha made the sage his Vizier on the spot.
From that day forth the Pasha had peace in his household. There is much virtue in self-abnegation; but, like most unconditional surrenders, it does not always evoke the admiration of the victors. Yet was Muley Mustapha not without his reward. Kayenna knew just how far she might venture in dictating to him, and, by judiciously yielding that for which she cared naught, managed ever to obtain that which she desired. Thus doth the wise spouse gain new raiment by denying to her lord the society of an unbeloved mother-in-law.