Some men borrow books; some men steal books; and others beg presentation copies from the author.
Ben Haround.
The courier told only the truth. Dark and dangerous times had befallen poor old Muley Mustapha in his lonely palace of Ubikwi. For days he had wandered disconsolate through the zenana, missing the presence of Kayenna, which had ever been as the cooling east wind to his fevered brow; missing Shacabac, whose words of wisdom had so often wooed him to repose; missing Al Choppah and his diverting bowstring and scimitar that had enlivened many a long hour.
He did not miss little Muley; for, of a truth, he had seldom laid eyes upon the offspring whom he unjustly blamed as the cause of all his woes. And now, when he strayed into the child’s sleeping-room, he noted with a shocked sense of the incongruous how it was decorated with the toys and the arms of virility,—ghastly relics of the futile attempt to deceive his people and the people of two greater nations!
“If she had never been born! If she had had the good taste to die any time during the past miserable eighteen years! If that villanous old Soothsayer”—
Here he was startled by a voice at his elbow,—“Your Highness was pleased to allude to me?”
It was the new Soothsayer, Badeg, looking, if possible, more impudently familiar than ever.
Muley Mustapha plucked up a spirit. “No, I was not alluding to you; though I was thinking of a villanous Soothsayer—an old one—who went to his reward long ago. But what in the name of Eblis is it to you?”
“Nothing,—oh, nothing,” was the bland reply. Then, after a pause: “Perchance your Highness was thinking of the great Astrologer Kibosh, who rose from the sorry condition of a beggarly carter to the highest favor in his master’s eyes because of a secret which he once discovered. He went to his reward many years ago, as your Highness hath said; but his secret died not with him, and it is said to be even more wondrous than that possessed by the Wise Man who could change base metal into shining gold, inasmuch as the possessor of it hath no need to buy even the base metal, for”—here the speaker paused and looked significantly at the Pasha—“he findeth it right before him and ready to his hand.”
Badeg, the Soothsayer
Muley Mustapha, trying to dissemble and not succeeding very well, answered with assumed carelessness: “Truly, that must have been a remarkable man. I do not remember having heard of him before. What didst thou say he was when he led an honest life?”
“He was a poor carter,” replied the Soothsayer, “and, though he worked hard every day, and was very thrifty in his habits, yet he found himself growing poorer day by day and year by year. For he had a large family, consisting of seven sons and six daughters, whose respective ages were 13, 12, 11, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, and 1. It was no easy task to feed those thirteen jaws, or I should say pairs of jaws, without counting those of himself and his patient wife.
“Howbeit, it happened that Kibosh, on a certain Friday morning, awoke rejoicing that it was the day of rest, yet murmuring that, such being the fact, he knew there would be for him no work that day whereby to earn food for the morrow. He sat up in his couch, yawned, sighed, arose, and put on his garments. Then, after saying his morning prayers and making his scanty toilet, he sat down to a humble meal of black bread and dates. The bread was old and hard, and the dates were dry. Kibosh groaned as he chewed the uninviting food between his two-and-thirty teeth.”
“Had he two-and-thirty teeth?” interrupted the Pasha.
“Truly, he had no more,” replied the narrator. “It is the exact number possessed by all men of ripe years, unless, indeed, they have lost one or more.”
“Then,” said the Pasha, “what was there remarkable in his having that number?”
“Nothing,” was the answer, in a tone of scarcely veiled impertinence. “Only I am telling the story; and I am trying to tell it in the only proper style, which is the Realistic. Is it your Highness’s wish that I proceed?”
“By all means,” said Muley Mustapha; “but, before going any further, how many hands had this Kibosh?”
“I was about to come to that,” returned the Soothsayer, tranquilly. “He had two hands, on each of which were one thumb and four fingers. He had likewise two feet, with five toes on each. This being a true story, I will not attempt to conceal the fact that he was furthermore blessed with two eyes, the like number of ears, one nose and mouth, and as many hairs on his head and chin as might be; for these I did not try to enumerate.
“Having finished his frugal meal and smoked his chibouk, Kibosh went to the mosque, like a good Mussulman. His wife, the faithful Zaidee, remained at home. She had many things to do, attending to the wants of her numerous offspring, preparing the mid-day meal, and arranging the thousand little details of her house for the day. Moreover, she knew that her attire was hardly meet for the eyes of strangers. Her next-door neighbor, Ayesha, the wife of Hassan, the porter, had but the day before called on her, attired in a new yashmak, which was a sore trial to the patience of Zaidee, it having cost not less than fifty piastres at the bazaar kept by Solyman, the one-eyed Hebrew, opposite the fountain adjacent to the house of Amrou, the camel-driver.”
Here the Pasha, stifling a yawn, asked wearily, “How many eyes didst thou say the Hebrew dog had?”
“One, your Highness. The other, I believe, was lost in consequence of—”
“It matters not how it was lost,” said the Pasha, hastily. “Allah be thanked, it was lost! and thy story hath some novelty. Go on.”
“For these reasons Zaidee remained at home while Kibosh went to the mosque. As it happened, he met on the way none other than his neighbor, the porter Hassan; and the two fell to talking of many things, such as the weather, the hardness of the times, and the great cost of bread and dates, and other such subjects.
“Even as they were speaking, they were accosted by a poor cripple, who beseeched alms of them in the name of Allah. ‘Alas!’ replied Kibosh. ‘I am but a poor man, with a large family, and can give thee naught save my prayers.’ But Hassan smiled a little haughtily, and, pulling out his wallet, displayed it full of shining gold and silver pieces. As he saw the eyes of Kibosh fixed upon it in wonder, he hastily closed the wallet, and said, ‘I, too, am but a poor man,’ and gave the beggar naught. But, when they had passed on, Kibosh spoke to Hassan, saying, ‘O Hassan! but now thou didst complain of thy poverty; and, lo! thou hast a purse full of gold and silver.’
“‘It is not mine,’ said Hassan, in confusion: ‘it is my wife’s.’
“‘But thy wife is as poor as thyself,’ retorted Kibosh, severely; for he knew that Ayesha was only the daughter of old Cassim, the tent-maker, who was as poor as any man in the quarter, and indeed lived partly on the bounty of his son-in-law.
“‘Nay, then,’ said Hassan. ‘I will confess that I found this purse on the Square last week, and know not who its owner may be.’
“‘The Square,’ said Kibosh, ‘has been closed for the past ten days by order of the Caliph, as thou dost forget; and neither could any man enter it to lose or to find a purse. Hassan, thou art a prevaricator; and I must denounce thee to the Cadi as a thief unless—’
“‘Unless what, good neighbor Kibosh?’ cried Hassan, in terror. ‘Surely, thou wouldst not denounce and ruin thine old friend!’
“‘Nay,’ said Kibosh; ‘but I would first know how thou camest into possession of so vast a sum of money, and next I would ask thee for a loan of, say, one-half thereof.’
“Hassan thereupon, being in terror of his life, confided to Kibosh that he had become acquainted with a State Secret to divulge which would be disastrous, while so long as it remained unspoken it was a source of liberal revenue to him.
“As soon as Kibosh heard this, he said, ‘O Hassan, it is now some seventeen years, or maybe eighteen, that I have known thee and thy good wife, Ayesha, and thy father-in-law, Cassim, not to mention thy son Karib and thy daughter—’”
“Perish Kibosh and Hassan and all their tribe!” shrieked the Pasha, leaping to his feet. “Gehenna be their portion and thine, thou babbling impostor! What hath all this to do with me?”
“What hath it to do with thee?” answered the astrologer. “Much, very much, with thee and thine, and with the people of Ubikwi, and the people of Kopaul, and the people of Nhulpar, when they learn that the secret known to the dead Hassan (for he died very suddenly that same day) and confided to Kibosh (also an unhappy victim of Azrael’s visitation) is now my secret. Dost wish to hear it? Or would your Highness prefer that I tell it in the market-place, that the child thou palmest off on the world as thy ‘son’ is really—”
Muley Mustapha was a meek man. His critics said behind his back that he was a hen-pecked man. The whole world knew that he was an old and feeble man. But the blood of Ali ran in his shrivelled veins; and it went boiling at the insolence of this red-headed beggar of a star-gazer, who dared beard him in his own harem. His hand leaped for his sword, and found only an empty scabbard; for the peaceable old Pasha had long ceased to carry the deadly scimitar, which he had once been wont to wield in the forefront of battle. His eyes fell upon the only weapon in sight, a razor (he afterward wondered what use there could have been for it in the harem); and, seizing it, he shouted in a voice of thunder, “Out of this, fortune-telling dog, liar, and humbug, ere I cut the false tongue out of thy insolent throat!”
The Soothsayer fled from the palace in terror; but, on gaining the street, he found his voice again, and began shrieking aloud that the Pasha had become mad and was threatening the lives of all his friends.
“Know ye, O people of Ubikwi,” he shouted, “that the old man’s sins have found him out; and Heaven hath punished him by striking him with madness, because he hath sinned against the truth by passing off as his son a female child born unto him eighteen years ago!”
“‘Out of this, fortune-telling dog!’”
A large crowd was speedily attracted by the cries of the Soothsayer; and they began saying one to another: “Truly, this holy man cannot be mistaken. The child Muley hath more of the woman than of the man about him, and no eyes have ever seen him engaged in any manly sport.” And the elders, prompted by insinuations previously sent out by the Soothsayer and his henchmen, began to remember that the former Soothsayer had disappeared mysteriously, together with the Physician, on the very day of little Muley’s birth.
Wherefore there arose a great clamor from the multitude assembled before the palace; and the old Pasha would have fared badly that day, had it not been for the prompt action of a veteran Mameluke and a dozen or two followers, who, riding out of the postern gate as if on patrol duty, set their horses, first at a gentle canter and then at a sharp gallop, right into the midst of the throng, speedily dispersing the unorganized crowd.
“Hark ye,” said the mustached Captain, as his Arabian charger reared on his haunches so that his fore feet almost touched the shoulders of the Soothsayer, who fell back some paces in haste. “I know nothing of your stars or your prophecies; but this is the exercise ground of my troop, and you have spoiled our manœuvres to-day by being in the way. Next time we shall not abate our speed because of any dirty carcass in our path. Halt! Form fours! Trot! Gallop!” And down the esplanade at full speed and back again went the handful of horsemen, whose simple creed was obedience to orders.
Tradition hath it that the grim Captain of the troop was a renegade Christian, whose sole redeeming qualities were that he was loyal to the flag which he followed for the time, and that he dearly loved a fight.
The mob was, like all mobs, disconcerted at first by the organized force of a disciplined soldiery; and, after a few vain attempts to carry the palace by storm, it settled down to besiege and starve out the garrison,—a decision which vastly pleased the Pasha and his Mameluke Captain, who shrewdly surmised that relief would not fail to come from some quarter if only delay could be gained. The palace was well supplied with provisions, for the Pasha loved good cheer and plenty of it. Could they but hold their own for a few weeks, the garrison might laugh at the efforts of the enemy.