“Did your Highness know of that?” said Hassan in surprise.
“Everything that passed,” replied Mohammed Ali. “One of the blacks in the service of that lady was a spy in my pay: her conduct compelled me to have recourse to these measures, but I have taken that house away from her. The old woman who plotted with Ferraj to entice you into the house is at the bottom of the Nile. You behaved nobly, and you have nobly kept secret events which, if known, would have brought disgrace on my family. Go on as you have begun, and, Inshallah! so long as Mohammed Ali lives you shall not want a friend. Now you may retire.”
Hassan kissed the hand extended to him and left the presence with an exulting heart, repeating as he went out the Arabic proverb, “The husbandman prayed for a shower, and, lo! an abundant rain,” which answers to our proverb, “It never rains but it pours”—i.e., that blessings, like misfortunes, seldom “come single” in life.[[119]]
A month has passed, and Hassan’s mother has wept tears of joy on the breast of her long-lost son, and they have reiterated to each other the mysterious attraction which had linked them in sympathy from the first moment that they had met in Delì Pasha’s house, and Zeinab Khanum (whom we have so long known as Fatimeh) has refused to leave Amina, now doubly dear to her, until her marriage.
And Amina—who can paint her happiness?—a happiness such as not once in a century can fall to the lot of a daughter of Islam: to be united to one whom her virgin heart has so long worshipped as an idol—one whose courage and devotion she has so surely proved—one whom her pure and trusting heart tells her, and tells her truly, will love her alone.
What an intensity of joy is mingled with the blushes on her cheek as she tries on the diamond ornaments with which the munificence of Mohammed Ali had decked the bride of Hassan. For his sake she is content to allow the busy tirewomen to exhaust their efforts in enhancing the brilliancy of her beauty: they stain her delicate fingers with henna, they draw a shaded line of kohl along the lids of her large and lustrous eyes, and they anoint her redundant tresses with the most sweet-scented unguents of Araby.
As Mohammed Ali had undertaken to dower the bride, all the city seemed disposed to take a share in the marriage festivities. For a week Hassan’s house had been illuminated every evening, and had been open to all visitors. Lambs, fowls, pilaws, and sweetmeats were demolished wholesale, and thousands of the poor were daily fed in the courts below.
The last day of these ceremonials had now arrived, and Amina was conducted in state to her bridegroom’s house. The procession, of immense length, was preceded by a band of tumblers or buffoons, who amused the public by their antics and somersaults; while in front of them walked a sakkah, or water-carrier, staggering under the weight of an enormous goat-skin sack filled with sand and water, which entitled him (if he could carry it to the bridegroom’s house without setting it down) to a liberal present. Some malicious urchin contrived, unperceived, to cut a large hole in the bottom of the skin, and escaped in the crowd. The sakkah, feeling the water trickling down his legs and the lightened load on his back, soon became aware of the trick that had been played him, and attributing it to the tumblers and jugglers behind him, turned round and began to belabour them with his half-empty sack, covering them from head to foot with sand and water, to the infinite amusement of the spectators.
Behind these buffoons there followed several open cars, one containing a kahweji, or maker of coffee, with the implements of his profession; another a helwaji, or sweetmeat-maker; a third a faterji, or pancake-maker,—all of whom dispensed their good things to the bystanders as they passed.
After these came a band of musicians, who were followed by a dozen married ladies of rank mounted on white donkeys, their saddles adorned with crimson silk and gold embroidery: to these succeeded a troop of unmarried girls on donkeys similarly accoutred.