Shortly before two o’clock the next day the Prime Minister came for us, and conducted us directly to the Presence Chamber, instead of taking us to the small wooden building, containing a table and some chairs, where visitors usually had to wait until the Emperor’s messenger arrived with orders permitting an advance to the throne-room. Our little procession consisted of four persons,—Mr. Hemster, Miss Hemster, the Prime Minister, and myself. Hun Woe was visibly uneasy, and I was well aware that, in spite of the money paid him, he would much rather have been absent from the ceremony. In Eastern lands it is extremely dangerous for a Vizier to witness a Sultan’s humiliation, and the Prime Minister well knew that although the Emperor had permitted the deference due to him to be temporarily annulled through payment of gold, he might nevertheless consider it desirable to eliminate the onlooker, so that no record of this innovation were left on the earth.
The room into which we were conducted was but indifferently lighted. It was oblong in shape, and a low divan ran across the farther end of it. Four very ordinary wooden chairs had been placed midway between the door and the divan.
Both the Emperor and the Empress were seated, Oriental fashion, on huge cushions, and were decked out in a fashion that might be termed tawdry gorgeousness. I do not know whether the strings of colored gems that hung around the Empress were real or imitation, but they were barbaric in size and glitter and number. The Empress, whom I had never seen before, sat impassive, with eyes half closed, as if she were a statue of the feminine Buddha. During the whole of the exciting interview she never moved or showed the slightest sign of animation.
The Emperor’s ferret-like eyes glanced shiftily over the advancing party, which came forward, as I might say, in two sections, the three white people upright, and the Premier bending almost double, working his way toward the divan by zigzag courses, giving one the odd notion that he was some sort of wild beast about to spring upon the Emperor when he arrived at a proper position for the pounce.
The twinkling eyes of the Emperor, however, speedily deserted the rest of our party, and fixed themselves on Miss Hemster, who moved toward him with graceful ease and an entire absence of either fear or deference. She instantly made good the determination she had previously expressed, and, gliding directly up to him, thrust forward her hand, which the Emperor seemed at a loss what to do with. His eyes were fastened on her lovely countenance, and there broke on his lips a smile so grim and ghastly that it might well have made any one shudder who witnessed it. The bending Prime Minister uttered a few words which informed the Emperor that the lady wished to shake hands with him, and then his Majesty took his own grimy paws from out of the great bell sleeves in which they were concealed, and with his two hands grasped hers. Never did so sweet a hand disappear in so revolting a clutch, and the young woman, evidently shocked at the contact, and doubtless repelled by the repulsiveness of the face that leered up at her, drew suddenly back, but the clutch was not relaxed.
“Let me go!” she cried breathlessly, and her father took an impulsive step forward; but before he reached her the Emperor suddenly put forth his strength and drew the young woman tumbling down to the divan beside him, grimacing like a fiend from the bottomless pit. Little he recked what he was doing. With a scream Miss Hemster sprang up, flung out her right arm, and caught him a slap on the side of his face that sounded through the hall like the report of a pistol. The Prime Minister, with a shuddering cry of horror, flung himself on his face, and grovelled there in piteous pretence of not having seen this death-earning insult which the Western woman had so energetically bestowed on the Eastern potentate. Hun Woe’s open palms beat helplessly against the wooden planks, as if he were in the tremors of dissolution. The active young woman sprang back a pace or two, and, if a glance could have killed, the look with which she transfixed his Imperial Majesty would have brought extinction with it.
As for the Emperor, he sat there, bending slightly forward, the revolting grimace frozen on his face, and yet his royal head must have been ringing with the blow he had received. The Empress sat stolid, as if nothing had happened, and never moved an eyelid. Then his Majesty, casting a look of contempt at the huddled heap of clothes which represented the Prime Minister, threw back his head and gave utterance to a cackling laugh which was exceedingly chilling and unpleasant to hear. Meanwhile the young lady seated herself emphatically in one of the chairs, with a sniff of indignant remonstrance.
“There,” she said, “I flatter myself I have taught one nigger a lesson in good manners. He’ll bear the signature of my fingers on his cheeks for a few hours at least.”
“Madam,” I said solemnly, “I beg you to restrain yourself. Your signature is more likely to prove a death-warrant than a lesson in etiquette.”