The Mutesalim was to accompany his Excellency into the field, to see how a little war of this kind ought to be conducted, with the prospect of almost certain disgrace and probable death if any disaster occurred to the Pasha’s arms, or any mishap ruffled the Pasha’s temper. Although in the course of his eventful life Ahmed Khémi had been under fire more than once, he was not a soldier, and the Mutesalim thought the outlook sufficiently dreary to send on a message to his household telling them to leave Sardiyeh and go into hiding before the Pasha’s arrival, that they might not be exposed to his vengeance. When the arrival of the caravan at the fort disclosed the fact that the ladies’ apartments were untenanted, the Mutesalim explained that he had sent away his family in order that there might be more room for his Excellency’s household, and the Pasha was graciously pleased to accept the excuse. The rooms vacated proved, however, insufficient to meet the needs of the party, and for Cecil and her pupil, with their attendants, accommodation was found in the best house in the little town by the simple process of turning the inhabitants out to make room for them. Whether the rightful owners quartered themselves in turn upon their neighbours, or whether they retired to the stables or the kitchen, Cecil could not discover, but she was inexpressibly thankful to have once more a little domain which she could call her own.
CHAPTER XXIII.
THE END OF EVERYTHING.
The journey through the upland country had not been at all a pleasant one to Cecil, quite irrespective of the continual alarms due to the attacks of the insurgents. From the very day on which they left Hillah, Jamileh Khanum’s behaviour had become markedly and inexplicably disagreeable. She seized every opportunity of heaping slights on Azim Bey and his governess, and her servants followed her example. Travelling, as they did, humbly in the rear of the harem procession, which was headed by the gorgeous takhtrevan, with its velvet cushions and curtains of cloth-of-gold, in which reposed the Khanum Effendi and her boy, the little band who formed the household of Azim Bey were exposed to many unpleasantnesses. It became almost a matter of course that Cecil should find, on reaching the village where the night was to be spent, that the Khanum Effendi and her household had appropriated all the accommodation, leaving her and her party no choice but to camp in the courtyard. She herself would have been willing to sacrifice much for the sake of peace, but Azim Bey was by no means like-minded, and the difficulty was generally settled by a tremendous quarrel between the respective servants, in the course of which Masûd, armed with a whip and his young master’s authority, turned out the intruders in sufficient numbers to secure Cecil and the other women a resting-place where they would be tolerably free from the attacks of the mosquitoes and other pests of the region.
Disagreeable as these nightly experiences were, they did not at all exhaust Jamileh Khanum’s opportunities of making herself unpleasant. It seemed to Cecil that she was doing her best, with a purposeless malignity, to lower both Azim Bey and his governess in the eyes of the servants. Not feeling inclined to assist in this process, Cecil did her best to keep her followers separate from the rest; but Jamileh Khanum could never pass the group without an insulting word to her, or an expression of hatred directed against Azim Bey, who was stigmatised twenty times a day as the supplanter of his little brother. Cecil’s patience was sorely tasked, for it was a difficult business to maintain her own dignity without infringing the respect due to the Khanum Effendi, and there was no redress. Once on the journey, the Pasha was scarcely ever to be seen, even by Azim Bey; for custom required that the gentlemen should all ride at a considerable distance in front of the harem procession, and for Cecil to have left her companions to lay her grievances before her employer would have been a breach of etiquette amounting to a crime. One of the most disagreeable features of the case was that Jamileh Khanum’s servants imitated their mistress’s behaviour, and even improved upon it. Azim Bey could always take care of himself, and Cecil had spirit enough to secure tolerable respect towards her in her presence, but the treatment which their household received from that of Jamileh Khanum was galling in the extreme. Headed by the Levantine Mdlle. Katrina, who had been lent to her daughter-in-law by the Um-ul-Pasha in view of this journey, the harem attendants did everything in their power to insult and injure the servants of the Bey.
What reason there could be for this state of affairs Cecil could not conceive, until it struck her one day, from various signs which she observed, that her slighted admirer, M. Karalampi, was in communication with Jamileh Khanum. As had been the case at Baghdad, the go-between was Mdlle. Katrina. It was of course impossible for her to have any actual intercourse with M. Karalampi, who was in front with the Pasha; but Mdlle. Katrina had a nephew, an ill-conditioned youth of mixed parentage and doubtful nationality, who was continually to be seen hanging about in the neighbourhood of the harem tents. Once or twice Cecil came upon this individual talking to his aunt in secluded corners, a thing which could not have happened if the agas had not diplomatically turned their backs; but it seemed ridiculous to suppose that M. Karalampi’s schemes could be in any way forwarded by the petty persecution which had been set on foot, and she thought little of the matter. It was Um Yusuf who first let her into the secret of the mortifications she had endured, but this was not until Sardiyeh was reached, and they were safe in their own house, and as free from insult as in their courtyard at Baghdad.
“Come down the hill with me, Um Yusuf,—I want to make a sketch,” Cecil said to her maid the morning after their arrival, entranced by the effects of light and shade produced by the sunrise upon the dark mountains.
“You not go beyond the gate, mademoiselle?” asked Um Yusuf, anxiously.
“Why not?” asked Cecil, in astonishment. “There is a place just outside the town-wall which has a splendid view. We will take little Ishak to carry the paint-box, and we shall be in sight of the guard at the gate. Besides, the Kurds would not venture so near to the town.”
“Mademoiselle,” said Um Yusuf, slowly and impressively, “you not go one step outside gate without Masûd. Suppose guard looking the other way; Kurds or any bad men come up quickly, kill you, kill me, run away. What good guard do?”
“But why should the Kurds be lying in wait for us?” asked Cecil, laughing.