"A curious picture! I shall certainly preserve it among my treasures."
Outside the house again, his mother punched Iskender in the back and spat at him, calling him fool and marplot, cursing all his ancestry.
"Hast thou no sense, no perspicacity? When all went well, what need to show thy picture? Why bring a picture that had angels in it? I saw them shudder and go yellow at the sight of those white, holy ones. Couldst thou not paint a picture all of devils, or else of things without religious meaning? And what possessed thee to inquire concerning the health of that bad Emîr, who spurned the love of the Sitt Hilda? Thou knewest nothing of the story? Say that again, unblushing liar!—when I myself informed thee on our way up thither. Merciful Allah! So thou heardest nothing; thy wits went wandering off, as always, to thy painting, or the pleasures of thy bride; and, for the lack of a little attention, mere politeness, the hopes of our house lie ruined. Naturally poor Hilda thought thy question was designed to taunt her. I saw how red she went, though thou didst not. But for that she would certainly have praised thy picture. Now she hates thee. Well, no doubt it is from Allah! But none the less it is hard for me to bear, with the wife of Costantîn for ever dinning in my ear her son's achievements. And why, if thou must be a painter, dost thou not go to Beyrût, that great fashionable city, superior to any in Europe, where folks have taste, and thou couldst make a fortune by thy art? Thy bride could help thee in the world of fashion, for her father is well known and has rich friends among the Orthodox. But where is the use in talking to a man like thee? Thou hast no spirit, no ambition."
Iskender did not argue. His mother's note of angry lamentation, in strange accordance with his feelings at that moment, condoned the sharpness of her words, which hardly reached him. The failure of the missionaries to see the merit in his work showed ignorance, but was their own affair; the omission to say "thank you" for his gift was downright rudeness. Their open contempt of his little masterpiece rankled hot in his mind. He vowed before Allah never again to seek to please a Frank and risk such insult. Henceforth he would cleanse his mouth whenever he so much as passed in the street near one of that accursed race.
With pride he called himself a Nazarene, a native Christian of the land, preferring the insolent domination of the Muslim, his blood-relative, to the arrogance of so-called Christian strangers.
Returning home, he told Nesîbeh of his determination to start next morning early for the Holy City. His bride was glad, for she had feared much from his visit to the missionaries, and longed to remove him far from their hellish wiles.
CHAPTER XXXII
Two years later, when Allah had given him a male child by Nesîbeh, Iskender visited his wife's father in the spring-time. He arrived on foot leading the donkey, on which his wife sat with the baby in her arms. An excited group stood out beneath the ilex-tree. They shouted "Praise to Allah!" The mother of Iskender ran and seized the baby, and rocking it in her arms, poured forth her hoard of tidings. Asad ebn Costantîn was married—had Iskender heard?—to a great lady of the English, a virgin strictly guarded, the only child of rich and honoured parents. Ah, the cunning devil! The people there at the Mission were furious, he might believe; the more so that Asad was bringing his bride to visit them as an equal—he, the son of Costantîn, who fetched the water! Ah, they were well repaid for their treatment of Iskender; and they knew it!
But Mîtri broke in, crying: