The Legend Of The Weeping Chamber.
A strange story was once told me by a Levantine lady of my acquaintance, which I shall endeavor to relate—as far as I am able with the necessary abridgments—in her own words. The circumstances under which she told it were peculiar. The family had just been disturbed by the visit of a ghost—a real ghost, visible, if not palpable. She was not what may be called superstitious; and though following with more or less assiduity the practices of her religion, was afflicted now and then with a fit of perfect materialism. I was surprised, therefore, to hear her relate, with every appearance of profound faith, the following incidents:
There is an old house in Beyrout, which, for many successive years, was inhabited by a Christian family. It is of great extent, and was of yore fitted for the dwelling of a prince. The family had, indeed, in early times been very rich; and almost fabulous accounts are current of the wealth of its founder, Fadlallah Dahân. He was a merchant; the owner of ships, the fitter-out of caravans. The regions of the East and of the West had been visited by him; and, after undergoing as many dangers and adventures as Sinbad, he had returned to spend the latter days of his life in his native city. He built, accordingly, a magnificent dwelling, the courts of which he adorned with marble fountains, and the chambers with silk divans; and he was envied on account of his prosperity.
But, in the restlessness of his early years, he had omitted to marry, and now found himself near the close of his career without an heir to inherit his wealth and to perpetuate his name. This reflection often disturbed him; yet he was unwilling to take a wife because he was old. Every now and then, it is true, he saw men older than he, with fewer teeth and whiter beards, taking to their bosoms maidens that bloomed like peaches just beginning to ripen against a wall; and his friends, who knew he would give a magnificent marriage-feast, urged him to do likewise. Once he looked with pleasure on a young person of not too tender years, whose parents purposely presented her to him; but having asked her in a whisper whether she would like to marry a withered old gentleman like himself, she frankly confessed a preference for his handsome young clerk, Harma, who earned a hundred piastres a month. Fadlallah laughed philosophically, and took care that the young couple should be married under happy auspices.
One day he was proceeding along the street gravely and slowly—surrounded by a number of merchants proud to walk by his side, and followed by two or three young men, who pressed near in order to be thought of the company, and thus establish their credit—when an old woman espying him, began to cry out, “Yeh! yeh! this is the man who has no wife and no child—this is the man who is going to die and leave his fortune to be robbed by his servants, or confiscated by the governor! And yet, he has a sagacious nose”—(the Orientals have observed that there is wisdom in a nose)—“and a beard as long as my back! Yeh! yeh! what a wonderful sight to see!”
Fadlallah Dahân stopped, and retorted, smiling, “Yeh! yeh! this is the woman that blames an old man for not marrying a young wife. Yeh! yeh! what a wonderful sight to see!”
Then the woman replied, “O, my lord, every pig's tail curls not in the same direction, nor does every maiden admire the passing quality of youth. If thou wilt, I will bestow on thee a wife, who will love thee as thou lovest thyself, and serve thee as the angels serve Allah. She is more beautiful than any of the daughters of Beyrout, and her name is Selima, a name of good augury.”
The friends of Fadlallah laughed, as did the young men who followed in their wake, and urged him to go and see this peerless beauty, if it were only for a joke. Accordingly, he told the woman to lead the way. But she said he must mount his mule, for they had to go some distance into the country. He mounted and, with a single servant, went forth from the gates—the woman preceding—and rode until he reached a village in the mountains. Here, in a poor little house, he found Selima; clothed in the very commonest style, engaged in making divan cushions. She was a marvelously beautiful girl, and the heart of the merchant at once began to yearn toward her: yet he endeavored to restrain himself, and said, “This beautiful thing is not for me.” But the woman cried out, “Selima, wilt thou consent to love this old man?” The girl gazed in his face a while, and then, folding her hands across her bosom, said, “Yes; for there is goodness in his countenance.” Fadlallah wept with joy; and, returning to the city, announced his approaching marriage to his friends. According to custom, they expressed civil surprise to his face; but, when his back was turned, they whispered that he was an old fool, and had been the dupe of a she-adventurer.
The marriage took place with ceremonies of royal magnificence; and Selima, who passed unmoved from extreme poverty to abundant riches, seemed to merit the position of the greatest lady in Beyrout. Never was woman more prudent than she. No one ever knew her previous history, nor that of her mother. Some said that a life of misery, perhaps of shame, was before them, when this unexpected marriage took place. Selima's gratitude to Fadlallah was unbounded; and out of gratitude grew love. The merchant daily offered up thanks for the bright diamond which had come to shine in his house.
In due time a child was born; a boy lovely as his mother; and they named him Halil. With what joy he was received, what festivities announced the glad intelligence to the town, may easily be imagined. Selima and Fadlallah resolved to devote themselves to his education, and determined that he should be the most accomplished youth of Bar-er-Shâm. But a long succession of children followed, each more beautiful [pg 359] than the former—some boys, some girls; and every new-comer was received with additional delight and still grander ceremonies; so that the people began to say, “Is this a race of sovereigns?”
Now Halil grew up to the age of twelve—still a charming lad; but the parents, always fully occupied by the last arrival, had not carried out their project of education. He was as wild and untamed as a colt, and spent more of his time in the street than in the company of his mother; who, by degrees, began to look upon him with a kind of calm friendship due to strangers. Fadlallah, as he took his accustomed walk with his merchant friends, used from time to time to encounter a ragged boy fighting in the streets with the sons of the Jew butcher; but his eyes beginning to grow dim, he often passed without recognizing him. One day, however, Halil, breathless and bleeding, ran up and took refuge beneath the skirts of his mantle from a crowd of savage urchins. Fadlallah was amazed, and said, “O, my son—for I think thou art my son—what evil hath befallen thee, and wherefore do I see thee in this state?” The boy, whose voice was choked by sobs, looked up into his face, and said, “Father, I am the son of the richest merchant of Beyrout, and behold, there is no one so little cared for as I.”
Fadlallah's conscience smote him, and he wiped the boy's bleeding face with the corner of his silk caftan, and blessed him; and, taking him by the hand, led him away. The merchants smiled benignly one to the other, and, pointing with their thumbs, said, “We have seen the model youth!”
While they laughed and sneered, Fadlallah, humbled, yet resolved, returned to his house, leading the ragged Halil, and entered his wife's chamber. Selima was playing with her seventh child, and teaching it to lisp the word “Baba”—about the amount of education which she had found time to bestow on each of her offspring. When she saw the plight of her eldest son she frowned, and was about to scold him; but Fadlallah interposed, and said, “Wife, speak no harsh words. We have not done our duty by this boy. May God forgive us; but we have looked on those children that have bloomed from thee, more as play-things than as deposits for which we are responsible. Halil has become a wild out-of-door lad, doubting with some reason of our love. It is too late to bring him back to the destiny we had dreamt of; but he must not be left to grow up thus uncared for. I have a brother established in Bassora; to him will I send the lad to learn the arts of commerce, and to exercise himself in adventure, as his father did before him. Bestow thy blessing upon him, Selima (here the good old man's voice trembled), and may God in his mercy forgive both thee and me for the neglect which has made this parting necessary. I shall know that I am forgiven if, before I go down into the tomb, my son return a wise and sober man; not unmindful that we gave him life, and forgetting that, until now, we have given him little else.”
Selima laid her seventh child in its cradle of carved wood, and drew Halil to her bosom; and Fadlallah knew that she loved him still, because she kissed his face, regardless of the blood and dirt that stained it. She then washed him and dressed him, and gave him a purse of gold, and handed him over to his father; who had resolved to send him off by the caravan that started that very afternoon. Halil, surprised and made happy by unwonted caresses, was yet delighted at the idea of beginning an adventurous life; and went away, manfully stifling his sobs, and endeavoring to assume the grave deportment of a merchant. Selima shed a few tears, and then, attracted by a crow and a chuckle from the cradle, began to tickle the infant's soft double chin, and went on with her interrupted lesson, “Baba, Baba!”
Halil started on his journey, and having passed through the Valley of Robbers, the Valley of Lions, and the Valley of Devils—this is the way in which Orientals localize the supposed dangers of traveling—arrived at the good city of Bassora; where his uncle received him well, and promised to send him as supercargo on board the next vessel he dispatched to the Indian seas. What time was spent by the caravan upon the road, the narrative does not state. Traveling is slow work in the East; but almost immediately on his arrival in Bassora, Halil was engaged in a love adventure. If traveling is slow, the approaches of manhood are rapid. The youth's curiosity was excited by the extraordinary care taken to conceal his cousin Miriam from his sight; and having introduced himself into her garden, beheld, and, struck by her wonderful beauty, loved her. With an Oriental fondness, he confessed the truth to his uncle, who listened with anger and dismay, and told him that Miriam was betrothed to the Sultan. Halil perceived the danger of indulging his passion, and promised to suppress it; but while he played a prudent part, Miriam's curiosity was also excited, and she, too, beheld and loved her cousin. Bolts and bars can not keep two such affections asunder. They met and plighted their troth, and were married secretly, and were happy. But inevitable discovery came. Miriam was thrown into a dungeon; and the unhappy Halil, loaded with chains, was put on board a vessel, not as supercargo, but as prisoner; with orders that he should be left in some distant country.
Meanwhile a dreadful pestilence fell upon Beyrout, and among the first sufferers was an eighth little one, that had just learned to say “Baba!” Selima was almost too astonished to be grieved. It seemed to her impossible that death should come into her house, and meddle with the fruits of so much suffering and love. When they came to take away the little form which she had so often fondled, her indignation burst forth, and she smote the first old woman who stretched out her rough unsympathetic hand. But a shriek from her waiting-woman announced that another victim was singled out; and the frantic mother rushed like a tigress to defend the young that yet remained to her. But the enemy was invisible; and (so the story goes) all her [pg 360] little ones drooped one by one and died; so that on the seventh day Selima sat in her nursery gazing about with stony eyes, and counting her losses upon her fingers—Iskender, Selima, Wardy, Fadlallah, Hanna, Hennenah, Gereges—seven in all. Then she remembered Halil, and her neglect of him; and, lifting up her voice, she wept aloud; and, as the tears rushed fast and hot down her cheeks, her heart yearned for her absent boy, and she would have parted with worlds to have fallen upon his breast—would have given up her life in return for one word of pardon and of love.
Fadlallah came in to her; and he was now very old and feeble. His back was bent, and his transparent hand trembled as it clutched a cane. A white beard surrounded a still whiter face; and as he came near his wife, he held out his hand toward her with an uncertain gesture, as if the room had been dark. This world appeared to him but dimly. “Selima,” said he, “the Giver hath taken. We, too, must go in our turn. Weep, my love; but weep with moderation, for those little ones that have gone to sing in the golden cages of Paradise. There is a heavier sorrow in my heart. Since my first-born, Halil, departed for Bassora, I have only written once to learn intelligence of him. He was then well, and had been received with favor by his uncle. We have never done our duty by that boy.” His wife replied, “Do not reproach me; for I reproach myself more bitterly than thou canst do. Write, then, to thy brother to obtain tidings of the beloved one. I will make of this chamber a weeping chamber. It has resounded with merriment enough. All my children learned to laugh and to talk here. I will hang it with black, and erect a tomb in the midst; and every day I will come and spend two hours, and weep for those who are gone and for him who is absent.” Fadlallah approved her design; and they made a weeping chamber, and lamented together every day therein. But their letters to Bassora remained unanswered; and they began to believe that fate had chosen a solitary tomb for Halil.
One day a woman, dressed in the garb of the poor, came to the house of Fadlallah with a boy about twelve years old. When the merchant saw them he was struck with amazement, for he beheld in the boy the likeness of his son Halil; and he called aloud to Selima, who, when she came, shrieked with amazement. The woman told her story, and it appeared that she was Miriam. Having spent some months in prison, she had escaped and taken refuge in a forest in the house of her nurse. Here she had given birth to a son, whom she had called by his father's name. When her strength returned, she had set out as a beggar to travel over the world in search of her lost husband. Marvelous were the adventures she underwent, God protecting her throughout, until she came to the land of Persia, where she found Halil working as a slave in the garden of the Governor of Fars. After a few stolen interviews, she had again resumed her wanderings to seek for Fadlallah, that he might redeem his son with wealth; but had passed several years upon the road.
Fortune, however, now smiled upon this unhappy family, and in spite of his age, Fadlallah set out for Fars. Heaven made the desert easy, and the road short for him. On a fine calm evening he entered the gardens of the governor, and found his son gayly singing as he trimmed an orange tree. After a vain attempt to preserve an incognito, the good old man lifted up his hands, and shouting, “Halil, my first born!” fell upon the breast of the astonished slave. Sweet was the interview in the orange grove, sweet the murmured conversation between the strong young man and the trembling patriarch, until the perfumed dew of evening fell upon their heads. Halil's liberty was easily obtained, and father and son returned in safety to Beyrout. Then the Weeping Chamber was closed, and the door walled up; and Fadlallah and Selima lived happily until age gently did its work at their appointed times; and Halil and Miriam inherited the house and the wealth that had been gathered for them.
The supernatural part of the story remains to be told. The Weeping Chamber was never again opened; but every time that a death was about to occur in the family, a shower of heavy teardrops was heard to fall upon its marble floor, and low wailings came through the walled doorway. Years, centuries, passed away, and the mystery repeated itself with unvarying uniformity. The family fell into poverty, and only occupied a portion of the house, but invariably before one of its members sickened unto death, a shower of heavy drops, as from a thunder cloud, pattered on the pavement of the Weeping Chamber, and was heard distinctly at night through the whole house. At length the family quitted the country in search of better fortunes elsewhere, and the house remained for a long time uninhabited.
The lady who narrated the story went to live in the house, and passed some years without being disturbed; but one night she was lying awake, and distinctly heard the warning shower dripping heavily in the Weeping Chamber. Next day the news came of her mother's death, and she hastened to remove to another dwelling. The house has since been utterly abandoned to rats, mice, beetles, and an occasional ghost seen sometimes streaming along the rain-pierced terraces. No one has ever attempted to violate the solitude of the sanctuary where Selima wept for the seven little ones taken to the grave, and for the absent one whom she had treated with unmotherly neglect.