The instant dinner is finished, and coffee served, cigars are lit. It is a signal for the ladies to retire, and our handsome countrywomen sail out of the room, with that stately walk that none but an English lady ever succeeds in effecting. Many a glance follows them as they disappear; many a stout heart tightens under its scarlet covering, to think of the ideal at home--her gloves, her dress, her fragrant hair, her graceful gestures, and the gentle smile that may never gladden him again. Men are strange mixtures! the roughest and the coldest exteriors sometimes hide the most sensitive feelings; and when I hear a man professing audacious libertinism, and a supreme contempt for women, I always mistrust the bravado that is but a covering for his weakness, and set him down at once as a puppet, that a pair of white hands--if one only knew where to find them--can turn and twist and set aside at will.
Ropsley was much softer in his manner than he used to be. Had he, too, experienced the common fate? Was the dandy Guardsman no longer impervious, nulli penetrabilis astro? Painful as was the subject, he talked much of the De Rohans. He had seen Constance married; he had heard repeatedly from Victor during the past year; and though he evidently knew my hopes and their disappointment, by the tenderness with which he handled the subject, he could not resist enlarging on the topic, and talking to me of that family, in which I could never cease to take the warmest interest. I winced, and yet I listened, for I longed to know and hear of her even now. I would have lain quietly on the rack only to be told of her welfare. It was painful too. Perhaps there is no moment at which the heart feels so empty--at which the hopelessness of a loss is so completely realised, as when we hear the idol of our lives talked of in a matter-of-course way, as being totally unconnected with, and independent of, ourselves.
I remarked that, of his own accord, Ropsley never mentioned Valèrie. To an inquiry of mine as to the welfare of my kind and handsome nurse, he gave, I thought, rather an abrupt reply; and, turning suddenly round to Manners, asked him "if there was nothing to be done in the evening in this stupid place?" To which our gallant Bashi-Bazouk, who considered himself responsible for our amusement, answered delightedly, "No opera yet, Ropsley, though we shall have one in six weeks; no evening parties either, except a few amongst the French inhabitants--delightful people, you know, and very select. I am invited to-night to a little music, not far from here. I could take you both, if you like, with me. As friends of mine you would be most welcome. You speak French, Ropsley, if I remember right?"
"A little," replied the latter, much amused, "but not with your accent;" which, indeed, was true enough; for he had lived a good deal at Paris, and knew Chantilly as well as Newmarket. "Am I well enough dressed, though, for your fastidious friends?" he added, glancing, not without a gleam of inward satisfaction, from his own war-worn, threadbare uniform, to Manners's brilliant and somewhat startling costume.
"Couldn't be better!" replied the latter; "looks workmanlike, and all that. This time next year I only hope mine will be half as good. Meanwhile, come along, you and Egerton; never mind your cigars, they all smoke here."
"What! ladies and all, at these select parties?" laughed Ropsley. "I thought we were going amongst a lot of duchesses: but I hope they don't drink as well?"
"Custom of the country, my dear sir," replied Manners, gravely--"only cigarettes, of course. If a young lady offers to roll you one, don't refuse it. These little things are matters of etiquette, and it is as well to know beforehand." So, drilling us on the proper behaviour to be observed at a Pera party, our cicerone swaggered out into the night air, clanking his spurs, and rattling his sabre, with a degree of jingling vigour which seemed to afford him unlimited satisfaction. It was rather good to see Ropsley of the Guards--the man who had the entrée to all the best houses in London, the arbiter of White's, the quoted of diners-out, the favourite of fine ladies--listening with an air of the greatest attention to our former usher's lectures on the proper deportment to be assumed in the company to which he was taking us, and thanking him with the utmost gravity for his judicious hints and kind introduction to the élite of Pera society.
"Go home, Bold, go home." The old dog would accompany me out of the hotel, would persist in following close at my heel along the narrow street. Not a soul but our three selves seemed to be wandering about this beautiful starlight night. The Turkish sentry was sound asleep on his post; a dark figure, probably some houseless hamaul, crouched near the sentry-box. Savage Bold wanted to fly at it as he passed.
"How cantankerous the old dog grows," remarked Ropsley, as Bold stalked behind us, ears erect, and bristling all over with defiance. Ere we were fifty yards from the hotel he stopped short and barked loudly; a footstep was rapidly approaching up the street. Murders and robberies were at this time so frequent in Constantinople, that every passenger was an object of mistrust in the dark. We, however, were three strong men, all armed, and had nothing to fear. Bold, too, seemed to recognise the step. In another moment the Beloochee overtakes us, and with even a more imperturbable air than usual salutes me gravely, and whispers a few words in my ear. On my reply, he places my hand against his forehead, and says, "The brothers of the sword are brothers indeed. Effendi, you know Ali Mesrour, the son of Abdul. From henceforth my life is at the disposal of my Frankish brother."
A hurried consultation between the three Englishmen succeeds. Manners makes a great virtue of sacrificing sundry waltzes on which he seems to have set his heart, and is pathetic about the disappointment his absence will too surely inflict on Josephine, and Philippine, and Seraphine, but is amazingly keen and full of spirits notwithstanding. Ropsley, no longer the unimpressionable, apathetic dandy, whom nothing can excite or amuse, enters with zest into our project, and betrays a depth of feeling,--nay, a touch of romance--of which I had believed him incapable. Bold is ordered peremptorily to "go home," and obeys, though most unwillingly, stopping some twenty paces off, and growling furiously in the darkness. Two and two we thread the narrow streets that lead down to the water's edge. The Beloochee is very silent, as is his wont, but ever and anon draws his shawl tighter round his waist, and loosens his dagger in its sheath. It is evident that he means real business. Manners and Ropsley chat and laugh like boys out of school. The latter never seemed half so boyish as now; the former will be a boy all his life--so much the better for him. At the bridge Ali gives a low shrill whistle. It reminds me of the night we escaped from the Cossacks in Wallachia; but the good mare this time is safe in her stable, and little thinks of the errand on which her master is bound. The whistle is answered from the water, and a double-oared caïque, with its white-robed watermen, looms through the darkness to take us on board. As we glide silently up the Bosphorus, listening to the unearthly chorus of the baying wild-dogs answering each other from Pera to Stamboul, Manners produces a revolver from his breast-pocket, and passing his finger along the barrel shining in the starlight, observes, "Four of us, and five here, make nine. If the gate is only unlocked, we can carry the place by storm."