Yet, that the doctor’s emotions at the step he had twice hurriedly ventured upon produced a painful mental conflict cannot be doubted; for, in the room at Sayda where he was found, he sat with his head between his hands for some hours, weeping and sobbing, as one who considered that an injurious interpretation might be put on his flight, or as if Lady Hester’s conduct towards him had driven him to it, when he knew in his own heart, as his own letter to her proved, that she had been a benefactress to him at moments when it was not easy to find a friend.
As for consular interposition, under any circumstances, most of the consuls along the coast had found what a dangerous enemy she was: therefore, few of them, perhaps not one, would have risked a contention with her on any grounds. To have appealed to them, the legitimate protectors of Franks, would, therefore, have been fruitless.
At the time of my arrival, Lady Hester Stanhope’s establishment consisted of Mr. Chasseaud, her secretary (a nephew of Mr. Abbot’s, then the English consul at Beyrout), who, with his wife and two infant children, occupied, like ourselves, a cottage in the village—of Paolo Perini, a Roman, her maître d’hôtel, seven black slaves, (five women, a man and a boy) and a Metoûaly girl, named Fatôom, the daughter of a peasant woman in the village, who principally waited on her. There were besides a Mahometan groom, two stablemen, a porter, a cook, and a scullion, three or four men as muleteers and water-carriers, and two, whose chief employment was to carry messages, letters, &c., to distant places, and who had been in Lady Hester Stanhope’s service ten or fifteen years. In addition to all these, she gave employment to a score of workmen, who were constantly occupied in different constructions.
Independently of these, there were two persons who might be considered as her men of business in matters that particularly regarded the natives. One was what would be called a small farmer in England, and the other a tailor by trade: they both lived in the village, were sent for when they were wanted, received no regular salary, but were paid for their services from time to time in money, presents of corn, raiment, &c., as is the custom in the East. The tailor was a cringing knave, fit for a great person’s parasite. He had somehow found his way into Lady Hester’s establishment, from having married the daughter of a Syrian woman, named Mariam, or Mary, a creature of incomparable suavity of manners and considerable beauty, who had been housemaid during her ladyship’s stay at Latakia, some years before. This woman had two daughters, one of whom, on becoming the tailor’s wife at about twelve years of age, interested Lady Hester Stanhope so far as to make her extend her favours to the husband: he was named Yûsef el Tûrk. The other was a man of a different description: he was club-footed; and it was usually one of Lady Hester’s physiognomical remarks that all club-footed people had something of the Talleyrand in them—something clever in their composition: he was called Girius Gemmal. On this man’s character she would often dilate with much commendation; but she always finished by calling him a designing knave and a rogue. “He serves me well,” she would say. “At whatever hour of the night I ring my bell, he is always on his legs. If I want to be talked to sleep, he has a number of amusing stories to tell. He moves about so gently, that I hardly hear him, although he is lame and hobbles on one leg. There is sure to be hot water on the fire at any hour, and he makes the girls look about them somehow or other; but he is the greatest rascal that ever walked the face of the earth.”
As to her health, she was better perhaps than when I left her in 1820. Her pulse and her movements indicated considerable vigour of body. Although she had not stirred beyond the precincts of her residence, as far as I could learn, for nearly four years,[30] still she took the air and some exercise in her garden, and in attending to and overlooking the building and improvements that were constantly going on.
She was become more violent in her temper than formerly, and treated her servants with severity when they were negligent of their duty. Her maids and female slaves she punished summarily, if refractory; and, in conversation with her on the subject, she boasted that there was nobody could give such a slap in the face, when required, as she could.
Lady Hester Stanhope had adopted a particular mode of dress, to which she adhered without much variation, on all occasions, from the time she fixed her abode at Jôon. It was a becoming one, and, at the same time, concealed the thinness of her person, and the lines which now began slightly to mark her face. Lines, that mark the habitual contraction of the features into a frown, a smile, or a grin, she had none; and the workings of her mind were never visible in her lineaments, which wore the appearance of serene calm, when she chose to disguise her feelings. But age will, without furrowing the brow or the cheeks, bring on that soil of network which we see on the rind of some species of melons. This, however, was so very faintly traced, that it could not be detected without a little scrutiny: and, by means of a dim light in her saloon, together with a particular management of her turban, she contrived to conceal the inroads that years were now making on what her bitterest enemies could not deny was always a fine and noble face. It was this kind of pardonable deceit that made me exclaim, on meeting her again, after a long separation of several years, that I saw no alteration in her appearance.
Her turban, a coarse, woollen, cream-coloured Barbary shawl, was wound loosely round, over the red fez or tarbôosh, which covered her shaved head; a silk handkerchief, commonly worn by the Bedouin Arabs, known by the Arabic name of keffeyah, striped pale yellow and red, came between the fez and the turban, being tied under the chin, or let fall at its ends on each side of her face. A long sort of white merino cloak (meshlah, or abah in Arabic, ابه) covered her person from the neck to the ancles, looped in white silk brandenburgs over the chest; and, by its ample and majestic drapery and loose folds, gave to her figure the appearance of that fulness which it once really possessed. When her cloak happened accidentally to be thrown open in front, it disclosed beneath a crimson robe, (joobey) reaching also to her feet, and, if in winter, a pelisse under it, and under that a cream-coloured or flowered gown (kombàz), folding over in front, and girded with a shawl or scarf round the waist. Beneath the whole she wore scarlet pantaloons of cloth, with yellow low boots, called mest, having pump soles, or, in other words, a yellow leather stocking, which slipped into yellow slippers or papouches. This completed her costume; and, although it was in fact that of a Turkish gentleman, the most fastidious prude could not have found anything in it unbecoming a woman, excepting its association, as a matter of habit, with the male sex.
She never wore pearls, precious stones, trinkets, or ornaments, as some travellers have affirmed: indeed, she had none in her possession, and never had had any from the time of her shipwreck. Speaking of her own dress, she would say, “I think I look something like those sketches of Guercino’s, where you see scratches and touches of the pen round the heads and persons of his figures, so that you don’t know whether it is hair or a turban, a sleeve or an arm, a mantle or a veil, which he has given them.” And, when she was seated on the sofa, in a dim corner of the room, the similitude was very just.
It was latterly her pride to be in rags, but accompanied by an extraordinary degree of personal cleanliness. “Could the Sultan see me now,” she would say, “even in my tattered clothes, he would respect me just as much as ever. After all, what is dress? Look at my ragged doublet, it is not worth sixpence; do you suppose that affects my value? I warrant you, Mahmôod would not look at that if he saw me. When I think of the tawdry things for which people sigh, and the empty stuff which their ambition pursues, I heartily despise them all. There is nothing in their vain-glorious career worth the trouble of aspiring after. My ambition is to please God. I should be what I intrinsically am, on a dunghill. My name is greater than ever it was. In India, I am as well known as in London or Constantinople. Why, a Turk told one of my people who was at Constantinople that there is not a Turkish child twenty miles round that place who has not heard of me.”