On the day of the sale I could not bear to stay near the house, so I went up to Arba'in, or "the Forty Martyrs," above our house, on Jebel Kaysún, about fifteen hundred feet high, and I gazed on my dear Salahíyyeh below, in its sea of green, and my pearl-like Damascus, and the desert sand, and watched the sunset on the mountains for the last time. I also met some Mogháribehs, who came up to pray there, and who prognosticated all sorts of good fortune to me.
In one sense I was glad, because I was a kind of hostage, giving the lie to his enemies. If there had been anything wrong, I should assuredly have paid the forfeit. I had no anxiety, for though I had magnificent offers—two from Moslems to shoot certain official enemies, as they passed in their carriage, from behind a rock, and another from a Jew to put some poison in their coffee—I slept in perfect security, amongst my Moslem and Kurdish friends, with my windows and doors open, in that Kurdish village, Salahíyyeh. Between us and the City was a quarter of an hour's ride through orchards that were wild and lawless—at least, in my time, no one would come there from sunset to sunrise, and timid people, not even in the day, without a guard. We had the house on a three years' lease, and my bedroom window and the Muezzin's Minaret were on a level, and almost joined, so that we could talk to each other. I used to join him in the "call to prayer," and he used to try not to laugh. I never missed a pin; I never had anything but blessings. All my work took me some time, but I resolved, whatever the wrench would cost me, I would set out the moment it was finished. My husband being gone, I had no business, no place there; I knew it would be better taste to leave.
We all began to perceive that the demonstrations were beginning to be of an excitable nature; the Moslems assembling in cliques at night, a hundred here and a hundred there, to discuss the strange matter. They were having prayers in the mosques for Richard, and making promises of each giving so much to the poor if they obtained their wish. They continually poured up to Salahíyyeh with tears and letters, begging him to return, and I felt that my presence and distress only excited them the more. I left more quickly because I was informed that my presence was exciting the people, who lived in hopes of his return, and his non-appearance was causing an irritability that might break out into open mutiny and cause another massacre. They were beginning with the usual signs of meeting in clusters in the streets, in discussing the affair in the mosques, in the bazaars, in the cafés, and putting up public prayers for his return.
As half the City wanted to accompany me on the road, and I was afraid that a demonstration might result, I thought I should be wise to slip away quietly. My two best friends, Abd el Kadir and the Hon. Jane Digby el Mezrab (Lady Ellenborough), were with me till the last, and, accompanied by Charley Drake and our two most faithful dragomans, who had never deserted me and put themselves and all they possessed at my disposal, Hanna Asar and Mr. Awadys, I left Damascus an hour before dawn, sending word to all my friends that parting was too painful to me.
"Linger not out the hours of separation's day
Till for sheer grief my soul to ruin fall a prey."[7]
I felt life's interest die out of me as I jogged along for weary miles, wishing mental good-byes to every stick and stone. I had been sickening for some days with fever. I had determined not to be ill at Damascus, and so detained. Pluck kept me up, but having braved the fatal 13th, and set out upon it, I was not destined to reach Beyrout.
When I reached that part of the Lebanon looking down upon the sea, near Khan el Karáyyeh, my fever had increased to such an extent that I became delirious, and had to be set down on the roadside, where I moaned with pain and could not proceed. Half an hour from the road was the village of my little Syrian maid. I was carried to her father's house, and lay there for ten days very ill, and was nursed by her and by my English maid. Many kind friends, English and native, came to see me from Beyrout and from the villages round about.
Mr. Tyrwhitt-Drake took our house, part of the furniture, the faithful Habíb, and the sais, my two horses, which I could not bear to sell into stranger hands, the dogs, and the Persian cat, "Tuss," who, however, ran away the day after I left, and has never been seen or heard of since. All the other servants and animals were well provided for in other ways. I was offered £15 for my white donkey, but I could not bear to sell him, so I left him also with Mr. Tyrwhitt-Drake, and he eventually found a good home with our successor, Mr. Green (afterwards Sir W. Kirby Green), and died. The bull-terriers also died natural deaths with Mr. Drake. It was a great relief to know that the former would never become a market donkey, nor the latter pariahs, nor be beaten, stoned, and ill-used. I was obliged to sell Richard's rahwán, and I sent it to the purchaser, the Vice-Consul who succeeded, from the village where I was ill. He came to pay me a visit. Although the poor horse had only been there one night, this gentleman told me he had no trouble in finding the house, for as soon as the rahwán got near the turn leading off the diligence road, he started off at full gallop, and never stopped till he reached the door, nor would he go anywhere else.
I went down to Beyrout as soon as I was well enough to move, and, assisted by Mr. Watkins of the Imperial Ottoman Bank, Mr. Drake, and Mr. Zal Zal, embarked in the Russian ship Ceres, the same that had brought me formerly from Alexandria to Beyrout. As we were about to steam out, an English Vice-Consul in the Levant gaily waved his hand to me, and said laughingly, "Good-bye, Mrs. Burton. I have been sixteen years in the service, and I know twenty scoundrels in it who are never molested; but I never saw a Consul 'recalled' except for something disgraceful, and certainly never for an Eastern Pasha. You'll find it's all right; they would hardly do such a thing to such a man as Burton." We were a fortnight at sea, detained by fogs and two collisions.