Arethusa

by F. Marion Crawford

'And good-day to you, friend,' returned the sacristan.

The clerk went away, devoutly hoping that no unknown person would suddenly accost him and demand of him his cloak in the name of four toes and five toes, and he wondered what in the world he should do if such a thing happened to him. He was quite sure that he should be unable to hide the fact that he knew the magic formula, for he had never been very good at deception; and if the words could procure such instant obedience from such a disagreeable person as the sacristan had at first seemed to be, some dreadful penalty was probably the portion of those who disobeyed the mandate.

Thus reflecting, and by no means easy in his mind, the clerk crossed the square and entered the lane. He had supposed that it led to a continuation of the Bokharian quarter, but he at once saw his mistake. Even now a man may live for years in Constantinople and yet be far from knowing every corner of it, and Omobono found himself in a part of the city which he had never seen. It was in ruins, and yet it was inhabited. Few of the houses had doors, hardly any window had a shutter, and as he passed, he saw that in many lower rooms the light fell from above, through a fallen floor and a broken roof above it.

Yet in every ruined dwelling, and almost at every door, there was some one, and all were frightful to see; all were in rags that hardly clung together, and some could scarcely cover themselves modestly; one was blind, another had no arms or no legs, another was devoured by hideous disease—many were mere bundles of bones in scanty rags, and stretched out filthy skeleton hands for alms as the decently dressed clerk came near. Omobono stood still for a moment when he realised that he was in the beggars' quarter, where more than half the dying paupers of the great city took refuge amidst houses ruined and burnt long ago when the Crusaders had sacked Constantinople, and never more than half repaired since then.

The clerk stood still, for the sight of so much misery hurt him, and it hurt him still more to think that he had but very few small coins in his wallet. The poor creatures should have them all, one by one, but there would be few indeed for so many.

He was talking with an old beggar woman.

And then, as he took out a little piece of bronze money, he heard sounds like nothing he had heard before; like many hundred sighs of suffering all breathed out together; and again, like many dying persons praying in low, exhausted voices; and again, like a gentle, hopeless wail; and through it all there was a pitiful tremor of weakness and pain that went to the clerk's heart. He could do very little, and he was obliged to go on, for his errand was pressing, and the people were as wretched at one door as they would be at the next, so that it was better not to give all his coins at once. He dropped one here, one there, into the wasted hands, and went on quickly, scarcely daring to glance at the faces that appeared at the low doors and ruined windows. Yet here and there he looked in, almost against his will, and he saw sights that sent a cold chill down his back, sights I have seen, too, but need not tell of. And so he went on, turning as the sacristan had instructed him, till he saw a tall, thin man in a brown cloth gown edged with cheap fox's fur, and having a tight fur cap on his head. He was talking with an old beggar woman, and his back was turned so that Omobono could only see that he had a long black beard, but he recognised Rustan, the Bokharian dealer. The house before which the two were standing seemed a trifle better than the rest in the street; there were crazy shutters to the large lower windows, which were open, however; there was a door which was ajar, and an attempt had been made to scrape the mud from the threshold. For the street was damp and muddy after the spring rains, but not otherwise very dirty. There was no garbage, not so much as a cabbage-stalk or a bleaching bone; for bones can be ground to dust between stones and eaten with water, and a cabbage-stalk is half a dinner to a starving man.

In spite of the prayer he had recently offered up against his besetting fault of curiosity, Omobono could not help treading very lightly as he came up behind the Bokharian, and as the mud was in a pasty state, neither hard nor slimy, his heavy boots made hardly any more noise in treading on it than a beggar's bare feet. In this way he advanced till he could see through an open window of the house, and he stood still and looked in, but he made as if he were politely waiting for Rustan to turn round. Either the old beggar woman was blind, or she thought fit not to call the Bokharian's attention to the fact that a well-dressed stranger was standing within a few feet of him. The two talked volubly in low tones and in the Bokharian language, which Omobono did not understand at all, and when he was quite sure that he could not follow the conversation he occupied his curiosity in watching what was going on inside the house. The window was low, having apparently once served as a shop in which the shopkeeper had sat, in Eastern fashion, half inside and half out, to wait upon his customers. During half a minute, which elapsed before Rustan turned round, the clerk saw a good deal.