Lauriston noted these traits in Rahas, and mistrusted him accordingly. But the meeting itself being an adventure, and therefore welcome to a young man in love, he beamed with perfect good humour and began to apologise for his abrupt conduct on the night of his first visit. Rahas stopped him at once, smiling and waving the subject away as if to be flung over the rail of his own staircase by such a person as his visitor were the highest honour he could wish for. He, for his part, seeing this gentleman pass, could not resist the impulse which prompted him to open the door and beg him to enter, that he might apologise for his obtuseness in not instinctively recognising the gentleman as a person of high honour and distinction, incapable of any but the noblest motives, the most lofty conduct. He bowed to Lauriston, Lauriston bowed to him; they positively overflowed with civility, though from the sly black eyes of the Asiatic, and from the frank brown ones of the Englishman, there peeped out an easily discernible mutual antagonism.
“Will this gentleman, whose name I have not the honour of knowing——”
“My name is Lauriston,” said George, who knew that this cunning-looking person could easily find it out if he were to conceal it.
“Will Mr. Lauriston,” continued the merchant with a bow, “do me the honour to smoke with me? I have narghilis, cigars, cigarettes, such as, if I may make the boast, you could not find in the palaces of your Prince of Wales.”
“Thank you,” said Lauriston, who indeed felt some temptation to stay in the house, but had no fancy for his companion; “it is very kind of you to ask me, but I must be returning to my quarters. We soldiers, you know, are very strictly looked after in England.”
The merchant smiled in a manner which implied that his ignorance of English manners and customs was not so limited as might have been inferred from his slow, pedantic speech, and his retention of the costume of his own country.
“That strictness is, however, somewhat relaxed in the case of favoured officers—at least, they say so in Smyrna,” said he ingenuously. “But perhaps the real reason of Mr. Lauriston’s reluctance to accept my humble invitation is the feeling that to do so would be an unbecoming act of condescension from an English officer to a foreign tradesman.”
“No, I assure you——”
The merchant raised his hand. “Perhaps Mr. Lauriston will allow me to explain. My uncle and I are established here at present in only a very modest manner. We live in what I suppose may be called a back street of your vast city; we have no acre-wide apartments, no gaudy shop-windows in which our treasures are arranged by cunning shopmen to catch the eye of the vulgar. We have only, as you know, a few of the cheaper and simpler products of our own rich land, placed without thought or care in these two small dusty windows, not to attract the casual passer-by, but to let our great clients know that this is where Rahas and Fanah may be found. We are merchants, not shopmen; we have for our customers the chiefs of your great bazaars, the heads of your most renowned London houses. If an English nobleman wants a carpet such as emperors might tread upon, or a millionaire of Manchester seeks a priceless cabinet of carved ivory, delicate as lace, fragile as a fairy’s fingers, it is to us that their agents come, to Rahas and Fanah, who are here merely obscure tradesmen known to a few, but in our country (and all Asia is our country, overrun by our agents, swarming with our depôts) merchant-nobles, the guests and the friends of kings.”
It was not difficult to believe him as he stood, stately and dignified, his black eyes glowing with roused pride, his graceful dress giving an air of distinction to his tall, lean figure. Under the influence of a passion which was at least genuine he appeared to so much greater advantage that George Lauriston did not hesitate to give way to his importunity; and the merchant led him from the little front-room in which they had been standing, where small objects such as those that filled the windows were scattered about on tables and shelves and piled on packing cases, into an apartment of the same size at the back, communicating with the front-room by folding-doors, but showing, as soon as they were passed, the difference between a living-room and a mere workshop or office.