“Oh, that I have thought of, and I have it all arranged. You know Sourpouy, the Armenian girl, the lace-vendor of the village? She is tall like me, with brown hair and brown eyes. I shall ask her to go to Athens for me, to buy me some laces there. I shall pay her expenses, and a good commission. She must, of course, have a teskeré—yes?”
“Naturally.”
“Well, she will get it. She will bring it here. I will examine it, and so will Leila. While she examines it, she smokes; but Leila is very awkward—the paper comes near her match, and it burns. You see?”
“I see, only——”
“Only what burns is not the passport. I am very angry. I scold Leila, and then Leila says: ‘It is an omen for you not to send poor Sourpouy, because it means that Sourpouy is going to drown.’ And that makes Sourpouy very superstitious. She will not get another passport, even when I promise more commission—and in this manner, you see, I am left with my passport.”
We laughed happily over her plans, and she astonished me with her common sense and practical knowledge. And she, who had done no studying since she was a little girl, applied herself to learning French like a poor but ambitious student.
She arranged the twenty-four letters of the French alphabet in three rows, on a large sheet of paper, and learned them all in two days. Then she cut a hole in another sheet of paper just large enough to permit a single letter to show through, and slipped this about over the alphabet at random, in order to make sure she knew the different letters without regard to their relative positions. In two weeks she was reading fluently in a child’s book of stories I had brought her. Of course she did not understand all she was reading, but her progress, nevertheless, was marvellous. Since then I have taught many persons French, but never one who learned it so quickly, and her melodious Turkish accent made the French very sweet to hear.
A dressmaker was engaged to make her some European clothes. This would arouse no suspicion, since Turkish women often amused themselves by having a European dress or two made for indoor use. And I was to buy her a hat and a veil. “If it is not becoming to me, I can buy another in Athens when the boat stops there,” she said.
Our plan was for her to stay all the winter in Paris, and return with me in the spring; or, if she got tired of Paris, to return with me at Christmas. Her slaves were devoted to her. Leila was her foster-sister, and a childless widow, and knew of no other happiness than to serve her mistress; and Mihri, who was the elder sister of Leila, knew of no other happiness than to serve the two younger women. The two sisters were to stay at home and pretend that their mistress was ailing, and since she hardly ever went out of the house, or received anyone, it would be an easy matter to hide from the world that the former wife of Nouri Pasha was away from home.
Our talks now were entirely about our journey. Yet there were times when, with her fingers clasped, and watching the ships on the far horizon, she would lose herself in reverie. Then she seemed to be suddenly inexplicably sad. Once when I was spending a week-end with her, she passed the entire afternoon gazing at the sea, her face immobile and lifeless.