All these things combined to rouse the feelings of the choleric old soldier to the highest pitch of excitement. He was angry with Hassan, angry with his daughter, angry with Osman Bey, and angry with Destiny, which had brought all these troubles on his old age. His attendants saw the cloud settled on his brow, and waited in silent apprehension to see when and how the storm would burst.
At last it fell, as is too often the case in this world of injustice, on the feeblest and most innocent head. Amina alone, of all the objects of his wrath, was under his roof and entirely in his power; she had heard from Fatimeh Khanum and the eunuchs the indications of her father’s gloomy state of mind, and as on arriving he had neither come to see her nor sent her any message of affection, she dreaded the first interview. When, after the lapse of some days, he visited her apartment and ordered all the attendants to retire, she advanced to meet him, and observing no welcome sign of parental embrace, she kissed the hem of his robe and sat down in silence at his feet.
Notwithstanding all his stoic and stern resolves, the feelings that struggled for the mastery in his breast betrayed themselves; and as he contemplated her surpassing loveliness, and the touching and subdued melancholy by which it was shaded, he could not forbear the reflection that, had it not been for the courageous devotion of Hassan, that face and form, which he had so often caressed with all a father’s love, would now be sleeping cold and lifeless in the muddy bed of the Nile.
“Better so than disgraced and dishonoured,” said he to himself, rousing his own angrier passions, and giving them vent in a volume of reproaches directed against herself and her lover. For a long time she bore them in silence and in tears; but when at length he reproached her with giving her affection to a nameless adventurer, and said that he would rather see her dead than united to one who had ungratefully brought dishonour on his house, she started to her feet, and while the eyes so lately bathed in tears now flashed with the fire of indignation, she said—
“Father, you shall have your wish. Death has no terror for me, and I would meet it in any hour and in any shape rather than renounce a faith that I have plighted in the sight of Allah. Cruel and unjust father, how dare you tax with ingratitude one who risked his own life to save that of your child? Father, neither your anger nor your power can arrest the decrees of destiny. Was it Hassan’s fault or was it mine that on that dark and stormy night I was cast into the waves of the Nile? He heard a faint cry, and though he knew not who uttered it, he plunged into those troubled waters and reached me just as I was about to sink from cold and exhaustion. Cheering and sustaining me, he brought me to the shore. In the very jaws of death I vowed to devote to him the life that he had saved; he stripped off his own cloak to shield me from the cold; he bore me to the friendly Arab tents, and his heart beat against my heart as I rested in his arms. He had seen my face uncovered, and we mutually swore to love each other faithfully until separated by that death from which we had just escaped. Cruel father, do you think that after this any other man would wish or dare to wed your daughter? In the sight of Allah, Hassan is my husband. The cruelty of man or Fate may doom me never to see him again; but I warn you, father, that I am Delì Pasha’s own daughter, and if you compel me to become the bride of another, the bridal bed shall be the grave of one or both.”
The Pasha gazed with mingled awe and astonishment on the flashing eyes and dilated figure of his transformed Amina as she uttered these words; while one of her hands rested on her girdle, as if seeking the hilt of that dagger to which her closing sentence had so plainly alluded.
“Amina,” he said in a voice rendered tremulous by emotion, “you are right; it has been the work of destiny. I meant not to be cruel to you or unjust to Hassan. Come to my arms.”
Who has not experienced the pleasure of seeing a dusky summer cloud, which lately obscured the sun and sent forth the lightning’s flash and the thunder’s growl, suddenly dissolve and pass away in gentle rain, while the sun resumes its empire over the sky, and the shower-spangled leaves and herbs and flowers exhale the grateful incense of their odorous breath?
Such, only so much more lovely as moral is superior to natural beauty, was the change wrought in Amina by a word of parental love. Throwing herself into his arms with a wild cry of irrepressible joy, she looked up in his face, and pressing his hand fondly to her lips, said—
“Father, dear father, I fear that my words have pained you; tell me that you forgive me. I can bear anything but to hear him ill-spoken of; then my heart jumps to my mouth, and my tongue knows no restraint; but now I am your own little Amina again. Kiss me, and love me, dear father, and, Inshallah! I will never do anything to offend you.”