Hassan spoke these words in a tone so sad that to cheer him his friend replied, “Inshallah! this knot will one day be untied by the Revealer of Secrets,[[93]] whatever be the secret. I will swear by my life that your father was a brave man and your mother a good woman; for you know the proverb, ‘Grapes are not borne by the thistle-bush.’ Meanwhile, you must comfort yourself by remembering the saying of the Persian sheik and poet [Sâdi], ‘On the Day of Judgment Allah will not ask you who was your father, but who are you, and what deeds have you done.’”
Conversing on this and other topics, the friends concluded their journey, and were just re-entering Boulak about sunset, when, in passing a narrow by-street at right angles to that in which they were riding, Hassan saw at a little distance a figure in which, by the dress and gait, he at once recognised the old woman who had inveigled him into the house of the Khanum. Springing off his horse and giving it over to the sàis, he requested Ahmed Aga to continue his way homeward with the servants, promising to rejoin him shortly. Following the old woman until she reached a part of the street where not a passenger was to be seen, he quickened his step, and overtaking her, seized her by the arm and said to her in a stern voice—
“Mother of evil, tell me at once who urged you to take me to that house?”
The crone, trusting to the concealment of her thick veil, endeavoured at first to persuade him that he was mistaken in the person whom he addressed, but her voice only made him more sure than he had been before: then she tried sundry kinds of subterfuges and falsehoods, until his patience being exhausted, he exclaimed—
“Wallah! unless you tell me the truth, and that instantly, I will drag you straight to the Kiahia Pasha, and tell your story to him: you well know that in a few hours you will find yourself at the bottom of the Nile.”
Under the terror of this threat she confessed that it was by Ferraj, the servant of Osman Bey, that she had been induced to address him and to introduce him to the house in question.
“Osman Bey!” said Hassan bitterly. “Well, I am his debtor; meanwhile do you, if you value your life, hold your peace and begone. I owe you no illwill. Wretched instrument of malice,” he muttered to himself as he strode homeward, “thou art beneath my notice. What says our proverb, ‘The anger of the arrow-stricken man is kindled not against the bow but against the archer.’ Osman Bey, we shall meet again, and, Inshallah! with some weapon in our hands better than a jereed.”
Little did Hassan know, when he breathed this wish, how soon it would be realised, and what an influence that meeting would have on his after-destinies. When we see in life how often the blessings that we pray for become, when granted, sources of misfortune, and the events which we dread and deprecate result in our happiness, it seems an act of folly, if not of impiety, to pray for earthly goods in any other form than that of “Not my will, but thine be done.”
Most of our dramatis personæ are now to be separated for a season. The Thorpe family having finished their examination of the Pyramids, had re-embarked on the Nile for Upper Egypt, and Delì Pasha’s preparations for the journey to Siout were just completed. He himself, with his official secretary, pipe-bearers, and the greater part of his household, were embarked on board of a large dahabiah; a second of similar dimensions, the cabin-windows of which were provided with damask curtains within and venetian blinds without, was allotted to his harem, with their eunuch attendants, and was ordered to remain always immediately in the wake of the first; while Hassan and Ahmed, with a score of armed followers, were to perform the journey along the banks of the river on horseback, and to bivouac as a guard every night at whatever place the boats might be made fast at sunset.[[94]]