CHAPTER X
“O wretched day! O death of honour! O calamity! Didst thou not swear to guard my love from danger, O my father? Yet death has reached her—poison! This house is now gehennum. Woe to all of us! O Allah, ease the sorrow of my heart! O Lord, behold me rent in twain—My wife! My mother!”
Yûsuf had burst into the room of the selamlik where his father was transacting business with the steward of his property. Regardless of the stranger’s presence, he gave way to grief and rage, falling prostrate on the pavement, tearing at it with his hands, and biting at it with his teeth convulsively. The steward, a person of discretion, rose at once and asked permission to retire. The Pasha nodded, and, when he was gone, bent over his demented child, inquiring of his cause of grief with heart near broken, for he feared the worst had happened. By dint of patience he elicited the simple facts, which, when he knew them, eased his mind so greatly that he smiled and rendered fervent thanks to the Most High. The Englishwoman was not dead; the poisonous attempt had failed; the vision of an angry Consul, void of decency, transgressing with investigations every man’s intrinsic right to sole and secret jurisdiction in his own harîm, raising a scandal far more dreadful than the sad event, receded suddenly.
“Be not distressed, my son!” he urged benignly. “Praise God, as I do, that the matter is no worse. Think! a mere plant of jasmine dead in place of her thou lovest. The call is for rejoicing, not for grief. Have patience, O my soul! Control thy spirits!”
“Have patience, sayest thou?” sobbed Yûsuf. “My anguish is more terrible than flesh can bear. My mother, she who bore me, whom I love by nature, has turned my enemy, to poison her by whom alone I live. I hate the murderess of my delight, and would destroy her; but lo! she is my mother, and I can but weep. My soul is torn asunder. All the world is blackened. O Allah, take my life! O Lord, protect me!”
Muhammad Pasha was profoundly moved by this lament. He thanked God for vouchsafing him a son who, in the moment of extreme affliction, could still preserve such justice in his sentiments.
“Take comfort, O my son! Be thankful that no harm has happened,” he insisted tenderly.
But Yûsuf would not be consoled. The soothing tone enraged him, seeming to make a trifle of his agony. He leapt upon his feet and cried:
“No harm! O Allah! Is it nought then, what I tell thee? Then thou hast no love for me. Thou art my father; thou didst promise to preserve her from my mother’s malice. Thou seest my despair, and yet thou smilest. O Allah, kill me now, for I am orphaned cruelly. Both my parents hate me, and deride my sufferings. I go to my mother Murjânah, who is kind and gracious. She will weep with me.”