HASSAN
HASSAN
OR
THE CHILD OF THE PYRAMID
AN EGYPTIAN TALE
WRITTEN AT BAGHDAD, WHEN H.B.M. MINISTER
TO THE COURT OF PERSIA
BY THE
HON. CHARLES A. MURRAY, C.B.
AUTHOR OF
‘THE PRAIRIE BIRD,’ ‘TRAVELS IN NORTH AMERICA,’
ETC.
WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS
EDINBURGH AND LONDON
MCMI
All Rights reserved
HASSAN;
OR,
THE CHILD OF THE PYRAMID.
More than thirty years have elapsed since, on a summer evening, the tents of an Arab encampment might have been seen dotting the plain which forms the western boundary of the Egyptian province of Bahyrah, a district bordering on the great Libyan desert, and extending northward as far as the shore of the Mediterranean.
The western portion of this province has been for many years, and probably still is, the camping-ground of the powerful and warlike tribe of the “Sons of Ali”; a branch of which tribe, acknowledging as its chief Sheik Sâleh el-Ghazy, occupied the encampment above referred to.[[1]]
The evening was calm and still, and lovely as childhood’s sleep: no sound of rolling wheel, or distant anvil, or busy mill, or of the thousand other accessories of human labour, intruded harshly on the ear. Within the encampment there was indeed the “watch-dog’s honest bark,” the voices of women and children, mingled with the deeper tones of the evening prayer uttered by many a robed figure worshipping towards the east, but beyond it nought was to be heard save the tinkling of the bells of the home-coming flocks, and the soft western breeze whispering among the branches of the graceful palms its joy at having passed the regions of dreary sand. It seemed as if Nature herself were about to slumber, and were inviting man to share her rest.
In front of his tent sat Sheik Sâleh, on a Turkish carpet, smoking his pipe in apparent forgetfulness that his left arm was bandaged and supported by a sling.
At a little distance from him were his two favourite mares, each with a foal at her side, and farther off two or three score of goats, tethered in line to a kels,[[2]] surrendering their milky stock to the expert fingers of two of the inmates of the Sheik’s harem; beyond these, several hundred sheep were taking their last nibble at the short herbs freshened by the evening dew; while in the distance might be seen a string of camels wending their slow and ungainly way homeward from the edge of the desert: the foremost ridden by an urchin not twelve years old, carolling at the utmost stretch of his lungs an ancient Arab ditty addressed by some despairing lover to the gazelle-eyes of his mistress.
The Sheik sat listlessly, allowing his eyes to wander over these familiar objects, and to rest on the golden clouds beyond, which crowned the distant sandhills of the Libyan desert. The neglected pipe was thrown across his knee, and he was insensibly yielding to the slumberous influence of the hour, when his repose was suddenly disturbed by the sound of voices in high altercation, and a few minutes afterwards his son Hassan, a lad nearly sixteen years of age, stood before him, his countenance bearing the traces of recent and still unsubdued passion, while the blood trickled down his cheek.
Although scarcely emerged from boyhood, his height, the breadth of his chest, and the muscular development of his limbs gave the impression of his being two or three years older than he really was; in dress he differed in no wise from the other Arab lads in the encampment, nor did his complexion vary much from theirs—bronzed by constant exposure to weather and sun; his eyes were not like those of the Arab race in general—rather small, piercing, and deep-set—but remarkably large, dark, and expressive, shaded by lashes of unusual length; a high forehead, a nose rather Greek than Roman in its outline, and a mouth expressive of frank mirth or settled determination, according to the mood of the hour, completed the features of a countenance which, though eminently handsome, it was difficult to assign to any particular country or race. Such was the youth who now stood before his father, his breast still heaving with indignation.
“What has happened, my son?” said the Sheik; “whence this anger, and this blood on your cheek?”
“Son!” repeated the youth, in a tone in which passion was mingled with irony.
“Whence this blood?” again demanded the Sheik, surprised at an emotion such as he had never before witnessed in the youth.
“They say it is the blood of a bastard,” replied Hassan, his dark eye gleaming with renewed indignation.
“What is that!” shrieked Khadijah, the wife of the Sheik, suddenly appearing from an inner compartment of the tent, where she had overheard what had passed.
“Peace, woman,” said the Sheik authoritatively; “and prepare a plaster for Hassan’s wound.” Then turning to the latter, he added, in a milder tone: “My son, remember the proverb, that patience is the key to contentment, while anger opens the door to repentance. Calm your spirit, and tell me plainly what has happened. Inshallah, we will find a remedy.”
Hassan, having by this time recovered his composure, related how he had been engaged in taking some horses to the water, when a dispute arose between him and a young man named Youssuf Ebn-Solyman, in the course of which the latter said to him—
“How dare you speak thus to me, you who are nothing but an Ebn-Haram?” To this insult Hassan replied by a blow; Youssuf retaliated by striking him on the temple with a stone; upon which, after a violent struggle, Hassan succeeded in inflicting on his opponent a severe beating.
“And now,” said the youth, in concluding his narrative, “I wish to know why I have been called by this hateful name—a name that disgraces both you and my mother? I will not endure it, and whoever calls me so, be he boy or man, I will have his blood.”
“Are you sure,” inquired the Sheik, “that he said Hharam and not Heram?”[[3]]
“I am sure,” replied Hassan, “for he repeated it twice with a tone of contempt.”
“Then,” said the Sheik, “you were right to beat him; but the name, among mischievous people, will occasion you many quarrels: henceforth in the tribe you shall be called Hassan el-Gizèwi.”
“Why should I be called El-Gizèwi?” said the youth. “What have we, Oulâd-Ali, to do with Gizeh and the Pyramids?”[[4]]
After some hesitation the Sheik replied, “We were passing through that district when you were born; hence the name properly belongs to you.”
“Father,” said Hassan, fixing his dark eyes earnestly on the Sheik’s countenance, “there is some secret here; I read it in your face. If I am a child of shame let me know the worst, that I may go far away from the tents of the Oulâd-Ali.”
Sheik Sâleh was more a man of deeds than of words, and this direct appeal from Hassan sorely perplexed him; thinking it better at all events to gain time for reflection, he replied—
“To-morrow you shall be told why you were called Ebn el-Heram, and why there was no shame connected with the name. Now go into the tent; tell Khadijah to dress your wound, and then to prepare my evening meal.”
Accustomed from his childhood to pay implicit obedience to parental orders, Hassan retired into the inner tent, while the Sheik resumed his pipe and his meditations. The result of them may be seen from a conversation which he held with Khadijah when the other members of the family had retired to rest.
“What is to be done in this matter?” said the Sheik to his spouse; “you heard the questions which Hassan asked?”
“I did,” she replied. “By your blessed head it is better now to tell him all the truth; the down is on his lip—he is no longer a child; his curiosity is excited; several of our tribe know the secret, and, although far away now, they may return, and he would learn it from them.”
“That is true,” replied the Sheik; “yet if he knows that he is not our child, he will not remain here—he will desire to find his real parents; and I would rather part with my two best mares than with him. I love him as if he were my son.”
Now Khadijah, who had three children still living—two girls, of whom the eldest was fourteen, and a little boy aged eight years—did not love Hassan quite as she loved her own children; although she had nurtured and brought him up, a mother’s instincts prevailed, and she was somewhat jealous of the hold which he had taken on the affections of the Sheik. Under these impressions she replied—
“The truth cannot be long kept concealed from him; is it not better to tell him at once? Every man must follow his destiny; that which is written must come to pass.”
“I like not his going away,” said Sheik Sâleh moodily; “for that boy, if he remain with us, will be an honour to our tent and to our tribe. There is not one of his age who can run, or ride, or use a lance like him. In the last expedition that I made against the tribe of Sammalous did he not prevail on me to take him, by assuring me that he only wished to follow at a distance with a spare horse in case of need; and did he not bring me that spare horse in the thickest of the fight, and strike down a Sammalous who was going to pierce me with his lance after I had received this wound?” Here the Sheik cast his eyes down upon his wounded arm, muttering, “A brave boy! a brave boy!”
Khadijah felt the truth of his observation, but she returned to the charge, saying—
“Truly you men are wise in all that concerns horses, hunting, and fighting; but in other matters, Allah knows that you have little sense. Do you not see that the youth already doubts that he is our son, and you have never adopted him according to the religious law.[[5]] He will shortly learn the truth, others will know it too: then what will the men and women of the tribe say of us, who allow this stranger in blood to dwell familiarly in our tent with Temimah our daughter, whose days of marriage should be near at hand?”
Khadijah was not wrong in believing that this last argument would touch her husband in a tender point, for he was very proud of Temimah, and looked forward to see her married into one of the highest families in the tribe; he therefore gave up the contest with a sigh of dissatisfaction, and consented that Khadijah should on the following morning inform Hassan of all that she knew of his early history.
Now that she had gained the victory, Khadijah, like many other conquerors, was at a loss how to improve it. She was essentially a good-hearted woman, and although while Hassan’s interests came into collision with those of her own offspring, Nature pleaded irresistibly for the latter, still she called to mind how good and affectionate Hassan had always been to herself, how he had protected and taken care of her little son, and tears came into her eyes when she reflected that the disclosure of the morrow must not only give him pain, but probably cause a final separation.
The hours of night passed slowly away, but anxiety and excitement kept unclosed the eyes of Hassan and Khadijah: the one hoping, yet fearing to penetrate the mystery of his birth, the other unwilling to banish from her sight one whom, now that she was about to lose him, she felt that she loved more than she had been aware of.
The hours of night! Brief words that should indicate a short space of universal tranquillity and repose, yet what a countless multitude of human joys, sorrows, and vicissitudes do they embrace! In the forest and in the wilderness they look upon the prowling wolf and the tiger stealing towards their unconscious prey, upon the lurking assassin, the noiseless ambush, and the stealthy band about to fall with war-shout and lance on the slumbering caravan. In the densely peopled city they look not on the sweet and refreshing rest which the God of nature meant them to distil from their balmy wings, but on gorgeous rooms blazing with light, in which love and hate, jealousy and envy, joy and sorrow, all clothed with silk, with jewels, and with smiles, are busy as the minstrel’s hand and the dancer’s feet; on halls where the circling cup, and laugh, and song proclaim a more boisterous revelry; on the riotous chambers of drunkenness; on those yet lower dens of vice into which a ray of God’s blessed sun is never permitted to shine, where the frenzied gambler stakes on the cast of a die the last hopes of his neglected family; on the squalid haunts of misery, to whose wretched occupants the gnawing pangs of hunger deny even the temporary forgetfulness of sleep. Yes, on these and a thousand varieties of scenes like these, do the hours of night look down from their starry height, wondering and weeping to see how their peaceful influence is marred by the folly and depravity of man.
Agreeably to Arab custom, Khadijah rose with the early dawn, and having seen that her daughters and her two slave-girls were busied in their respective morning tasks, she called Hassan into the inner tent in order to give him the information which he had been awaiting through a sleepless night of anxiety; but as the good woman accompanied her tale with many irrelevant digressions, it will be more brief and intelligible if we relate its substance in a narrative form.
A little more than fifteen years previous to the opening of our tale, Khadijah, with her husband and a score of his followers, had been paying a visit to a friendly tribe camped in the neighbourhood of Sakkarah.[[6]]
On returning northward, through the district of Ghizeh, near the Great Pyramid, her child was born, who only survived a few days. It was buried in the desert, and as her health had suffered from the shock, Sheik Sâleh remained a short time in the neighbourhood, to allow her to recruit her strength.
One evening she had strolled from his tent, and after wailing and weeping a while over the grave of her little one, she went on and sat down on the projecting base-stone of the Great Pyramid. While gazing on the domes and minarets of the “Mother of the world,”[[7]] gilded by the rays of a setting sun, her ears caught the sound of a horseman approaching at full speed. So rapid was his progress that ere she had time to move he was at her side.
“Bedouin woman,” he said to her, in a hurried and agitated voice, “are you a mother?”
“I am,” she replied. “At least, I have been.”
“El-hamdu-lillah, praise be to God,” said the horseman. Dismounting, he drew from under his cloak a parcel wrapped in a shawl and placed it gently beside her at the base of the pyramid, then vaulting on his horse, dashed his spurs into its flank, and disappeared with the same reckless speed that had marked his approach.
The astonished Khadijah was still following with her eye his retreating figure when a faint cry caught her ear. What mother’s ear was ever deaf to that sound? Hastily withdrawing the shawl, she found beneath it an infant whose features and dress indicated a parentage of the higher class. Around his neck was an amulet of a strange and antique fashion; round his body was a sash, in the folds of which was secured a purse containing forty Venetian sequins, and attached to the purse was a strip of parchment, on which was written the following sentence from the traditions of the Prophet, “Blessed be he that gives protection to the foundling.”
Hassan, who had been listening with “bated breath” to Khadijah’s narrative, and who had discovered as easily as the reader that he was himself the “Child of the Pyramid,” suddenly asked her—
“Was that horseman my father?”
“I know not,” she replied, “for we have never seen or heard of him since that day. Nevertheless, I think it must have been your father, for I could see that, just before springing on his horse to depart, he turned and gave such a look on the shawl-wrapper that——”
“What kind of look was it?” said Hassan hastily, interrupting her.
“I cannot describe it,” said Khadijah. “It might be love, it might be sorrow; but my heart told me it was the look of a father.”
“What was the horseman like?” said Hassan.
“I had not time nor opportunity to examine closely either his features or his dress,” replied Khadijah; “and were he to come into the tent now I should not know him again. But he seemed a tall, large man, and I guessed him to be a Mameluke.”
Khadijah’s narrative had deeply interested and agitated Hassan’s feelings. As he left the tent and emerged into the open air, he mentally exclaimed, “Sheik Sâleh is not my father; but Allah be praised that I am not the son of a fellah.[[8]] Unknown father, if thou art still on earth, I will find and embrace thee.”
During the whole of that day he continued silent and thoughtful. He cared not to touch food, and towards evening he strolled beyond the borders of the encampment, lost in conjecture on his mysterious birth and parentage. Ambition began to stir in his breast, and visions of horsetails[[9]] and diamond-hilted swords floated before his eyes. While engaged in these day-dreams of fancy, he had unconsciously seated himself on a small mound near where Temimah, the eldest daughter of the Sheik, was tending some goats, which she was about to drive back to the tents. With the noiseless step and playful movement of a kitten, she stole gently behind him, and covering his eyes with her hands, said, “Whose prisoner are you now?”
“Temimah’s,” replied the youth; “what does she desire of her captive?”
“Tell me,” said the girl, seating herself beside him, “why is my brother sad and silent to-day; has anything happened?”
“Much has happened,” replied Hassan, with a grave and abstracted air.
“Come now, my brother,” said Temimah, “this is unkind; what is this secret that you keep from your sister?”
“One which will cause me to leave you,” answered Hassan, still in the same musing tone.
“Leave us!” she exclaimed. “Where to go, and when to return? Do not speak these unkind words. You know how our father loves you—how we all love you. Brother, why do you talk of leaving us?” While thus speaking, Temimah threw her arms round his neck and kissed his eyes, while tears stood in her own.
Touched by her affection and her sorrow, Hassan replied in a gentler tone—
“Temimah, I have no father, no mother, no sister here.” He then told her the story of his infancy, as related by her mother, showing that he could claim no relationship in blood to the Sheik Sâleh and his family. As he continued his narrative, poor Temimah’s heart swelled with contending emotions. She learned that the playmate and companion of her childhood, the brother of whom she was so proud, and to whom she looked for support in all her trials, and whom she loved she knew not how much, was a stranger to her in blood. A new and painful consciousness awoke within her. Under the influence of this undefined sensation, her arm dropped from Hassan’s neck, but her hand remained clasped in his, and on it fell her tears hot and fast, while she sobbed violently.
Temimah was more than a year younger than Hassan, yet her heart whispered to her secret things, arising from the late disclosure, which were unknown to his. Although the idea of parting from her gave him pain, he could still caress her, call her sister, and bid her not to grieve for a separation which might be temporary, while she felt that henceforth she was divided by an impassable gulf from the brother of her childhood.
Slowly they returned to the encampment, and Temimah took the earliest opportunity of retiring into her tent to talk with her own sad heart in solitude.
Did she love him less since she learnt that he was not her brother? Did she love him more? These were the questions which the poor girl asked herself with trembling and with tears; her fluttering heart gave her no reply.
After these events it is not to be wondered at if Hassan permitted but a few days to elapse ere he presented himself before Sheik Sâleh, and expressed his wish to leave the tents of the Oulâd-Ali, in order to seek for his unknown parents: the Sheik being prepared for this request, and having made up his mind to acquiesce in it, offered but a faint opposition, notwithstanding his unwillingness to part with one whom he had so long considered and loved as a son.
“By Allah!” said he to the youth, “if destiny has written it, so it must be. My advice is, then, that you go to Alexandria, where I have a friend who, although a merchant and living in a town, has a good heart, and will be kind to you for my sake. I will write to him, and he will find you some employment. While you are with him you can make inquiry about the history and the families of the residents, Beys, Mamelukes, &c., and learn if any of them were at Cairo sixteen years ago. If your search there is without success, you will find means to go to Cairo and other parts of Egypt, and, Inshallah! the wish of your heart will be fulfilled.”
Hassan thanked his foster-father, who forthwith desired a scribe to be called to write from his dictation the required letter, which bore the address, “To my esteemed and honoured friend, Hadji Ismael, merchant in Alexandria.”
The simple preparations requisite for Hassan’s departure were soon made, and all the articles found upon him when he had been left at the foot of the pyramid, and which had been carefully preserved by Khadijah, were made over to him, and secured within the folds of his girdle and his turban; a horse of the Sheik’s was placed at his disposal, and he was to be accompanied by two of the tribe, charged with the purchase of coffee, sugar, and sundry articles of dress.
When the day fixed for his departure arrived, his foster-parents embraced him tenderly, and the Sheik said to him, “Remember, Hassan, if ever you wish to return, my tent is your home, and you will find in me a father.”
Temimah, foolish girl, did not appear; she said she was not well; but she sent him her farewell and her prayers for his safety through her little sister, who kissed him, crying bitterly. Thus did Hassan take leave of the tents of the Oulâd-Ali, and enter on the wide world in search of a father who had apparently little claim on his affection; but youth is hopeful against hope, so Hassan journeyed onward without accident, until he reached Alexandria, where his two companions went about their respective commissions, and he proceeded to deliver his letter to Hadji Ismael, the merchant.
Hassan had no difficulty in finding the house of Hadji Ismael, the wealthy Arab merchant, situated in a quarter which was then near the centre of the town, though only a few hundred yards distant from the head of the harbour, known as the Old Port.
Alexandria being now as familiar to the world of travellers and readers as Genoa or Marseilles, a description of its site and appearance is evidently superfluous; only it must be remembered that at this time it wore something of an oriental aspect, which has since been obliterated by the multitude of European houses which have been constructed, and the multitude of European dresses which crowd its bazaars.
The great square, which is now almost exclusively occupied by the residences of European consuls and merchants, was then an open area in which soldiery and horses were exercised; and in place of the scores of saucy donkey-boys who now crowd around the doors of every inn, dinning into the ear of steamboat and railroad travellers their unvarying cry of “Very good donkey, sir,” and fighting for customers with energy equal to that of Liverpool porters, there were then to be seen long strings of way-worn camels wending their solemn way through the narrow streets, whilst others of their brethren were crouched before some merchant’s door, uttering, as their loads were removed, that wonderful stomachic groan which no one who has heard it can ever forget, and which is said to have inspired and taught to the sons of Ishmael the pronunciation of one of the letters of their alphabet—a sound which I never heard perfectly imitated by any European.[[10]]
Harsh and dissonant as may be the voice of the camel to our Frankish ears, it was infinitely less so to those of Hassan than were the mingled cries of the Turks, Italians, and Greeks assembled in the courtyard of Hadji Ismael’s house, busily employed in opening, binding, and marking bales and packages of every size and class. Pushing his way through them as best he might, he addressed an elderly man whom he saw standing at the door of an inner court, and whom he knew by his dress to be a Moslem, and after giving him the customary greeting, he asked if he could have speech of Hadji Ismael. Upon being informed that the youth had a letter which he was charged to deliver to the merchant in person, the head clerk (for such he proved to be) desired Hassan to follow him to the counting-house.
On reaching that sanctum, Hassan found himself in a dimly lighted room of moderate dimensions, the sides of which were lined with a goodly array of boxes; at the farther end of the room was seated a venerable man with a snow-white beard, who was so busily employed in dictating a letter to a scribe that he did not at first notice the entrance of his chief clerk, who remained silently standing near the door with his young companion; but when the letter was terminated the merchant looked up, and motioned to them to advance. Mohammed, so was the chief clerk named, told him that the youth was bearer of a letter addressed to him by one of his friends among the Arabs. On a signal from Hadji Ismael, Hassan, with that respect for advanced age which is one of the best and most universal characteristics of Bedouin education, came forward, and having kissed the hem of his robe, delivered the letter, and retiring from the carpet on which the old man was sitting, stood in silence with his arms folded on his breast.[[11]]
The Hadji having read the letter slowly and carefully through, fixed his keen grey eyes upon Hassan, and continued his scrutiny for some seconds, as if, before addressing him, he would scan every feature of his character. The survey did not seem to give him dissatisfaction, for assuredly he had never looked upon a countenance on which ingenuous modesty, intelligence, and fearlessness were more harmoniously combined.
“You are welcome,” said the old man, breaking silence; “you bring me news of the health and welfare of an old friend—may his days be prolonged.”
“And those of the wisher,” replied the youth.[[12]]
“Your name is Hassan, I see,” continued the Hadji. “How old are you?”
“Just sixteen years,” he replied.
“Sixteen years!” exclaimed the Hadji, running his eye over the commanding figure and muscular limbs of the Arab youth. “It is impossible! Why, Antar himself at sixteen years had not a body and limbs like that. Young man,” he continued, bending his shaggy grey brows till they met, “you are deceiving me.”
“I never deceived any one,” said the youth haughtily; but his countenance instantly resumed its habitual frank expression, and he added, “If I wished to learn to deceive, it is not likely that I should begin with the most sagacious and experienced of all the white-beards in Alexandria.”
“True,” said the old man, smiling; “I did you wrong. But, Mashallah, you have made haste in your growth. If your brain has advanced as rapidly as your stature, you might pass for twenty summers. What can you do?”
“Little,” replied Hassan. “Almost nothing.”
“Nay, tell me that little,” said the merchant good-humouredly; “with a willing heart ’twill soon be more.”
“I can ride on camel or on horse, I can run, I can swim and dive, I can shoot and——” here he paused, and the merchant added—
“And I doubt not, from what my friend the Sheik writes, your hand is no stranger to the sword or lance; but, my son, all these acquirements, though useful in the desert, will not avail you much here—nevertheless, we will see. Inshallah, your lot shall be fortunate; you have a forehead of good omen. God is great—He makes the prince and the beggar—we are all dust.”
To this long speech of the worthy merchant Hassan only replied by repeating after him, “God is great.”
Hadji Ismael then turned to his chief clerk, and told him that, as the youth was a stranger in the town and intrusted to him by an old friend, he was to be lodged in the house, and arrangement to be made for his board.
It would seem that Hassan’s forehead of good omen had already exercised its influence over the chief clerk, for he offered without hesitation to take the youth under his own special charge, and to let him share his meals; an arrangement which was very agreeable to Hassan, who had begun to fear that he would be like a fish out of water—he, a stranger in that confused mass of bricks and bales, ships and levantines.
On a signal from the merchant, Mohammed Aga retired with his young companion, and while showing him the storerooms and courts of the house, drew him to speak of his life in the desert, and listened to his untutored yet graphic description with deepening interest.
Although born in Alexandria, the old clerk was of Turkish parentage, and had followed his professional duties with such assiduity and steadiness that he had never visited the interior of Egypt. He had frequent transactions with Arabs from the neighbourhood on the part of his master, but he usually found that, however wild and uncivilised they might appear, they were sharp and clever enough in obtaining a high price for the articles which they brought on sale; but a wild young Bedouin, full of natural poetry and enthusiasm, was an animal so totally new to the worthy clerk, that his curiosity, and ere long his interest, was awakened to a degree at which he was himself surprised. Hassan, notwithstanding his extreme youth, was gifted with the intuitive sagacity of a race accustomed to read, not books, but men; his eye, bright and keen as that of a hawk, was quick at detecting anything approaching to roguery or falsehood in a countenance on which he fixed it, and that of Mohammed Aga inspired him with a sympathetic confidence which was not misplaced.
On the following morning the merchant had no sooner concluded his prayers and ablutions than he sent for Mohammed Aga, and asked his opinion of the newly arrived addition to their household.
“By Allah!” replied the clerk, “he seems a brave and honest youth, and were you Sheik of the Wâled-Ali[[13]] instead of Hadji Ismael the merchant, I doubt not he would have been a gain to your tent; but to what use you can put him in Alexandria I know not.”
“You say truly,” replied his master; “he is not a youth to sit on a mat in the corner of a counting-house, or to go with messages from house to house, where knowledge of the Frank languages is required. But Allah has provided a livelihood for all His creatures: destiny sent the youth hither, and his fate is written.”
“Praise be to God!” said the clerk; “my master’s words are words of wisdom and truth. A visit to the holy cities (blessed be their names!) has opened the eyes of his understanding: doubtless he will discover the road which fate has marked out for this youth to travel; for it is written by the hand of the Causer of Causes.”[[14]]
“True,” replied the merchant, “there is no power or might but in Him; nevertheless, a wise writer has said, ‘When the shades of doubt are on thy mind, seek counsel of thy bed: morning will bring thee light.’ I did so the past night, and see, I have found that Allah has sent me this Arab youth in a happy hour. Inshallah! his fortune and mine will be good. Do you not remember that I have an order to collect twenty of the finest Arab horses, to be sent as a present from Mohammed Ali to the Sultan? Neither you nor I have much skill in this matter, and those whom I consult in the town give me opinions according to the amount of the bribe they may have received from the dealer. We will make trial of Hassan, and, Inshallah! our faces will be white in the presence of our Prince.”[[15]]
“Inshallah!” said the clerk joyfully, “my master’s patience will not be put to a long trial, for there are in the town three horses just arrived from Bahirah, which have been sent on purpose that you might purchase them on this commission. Does it please you that after the morning meal we should go to the Meidàn and see them?”
“Be it so,” said the Hadji. And Mohammed Aga, retiring to his own quarters, informed Hassan of the service on which it was proposed to employ him. The eyes of the youth brightened when he learnt that his vague apprehensions of a life of listless confinement were groundless, and that he was about to be employed on a duty for the discharge of which he was fitted by his early training and habits.
Mohammed observed the change in his countenance, and thought it prudent to warn him against the wiles and tricks to which he would be exposed among the Alexandrian dealers, kindly advising him to be cautious in giving an opinion, as his future prospects might depend much upon his first success. Hassan smiled, and thanked his new friend; he then added—
“Mohammed, I have eaten the Hadji’s bread, and he is a friend of my father’s” (the latter word he pronounced with a faltering voice). “I will serve him in this matter faithfully. Until asked I shall say nothing, and when asked I shall say nothing beyond what I know to be true.”
The morning meal despatched, Hadji Ismael proceeded to the Meidàn (then an open space, and now the great square of Alexandria) accompanied by Mohammed Aga, the sàis or groom, and Hassan. They found the horse-dealing party awaiting their arrival. It consisted of a dellâl or dealer, and two or three of his servants, and an Arab from the neighbourhood of Damanhouri. They had two grey horses to dispose of, and at a distance of some fifty yards were two sàises holding by a strong halter a bay horse, which was pawing the ground, neighing, and apparently well disposed to wage war with any biped or quadruped that might come within reach of its heels.
“Peace be upon you,” said the dellâl, addressing the merchant. “Inshallah! I have brought you here two grey horses that are worthy to bear the Sultan of the two worlds—pure Arab blood—this dark grey is of the Kohèil race, and the light grey a true Saklàwi.”[[16]]
“Are they young?” inquired the merchant.
“One is four and the other five,” was the ready reply.
The merchant then desired his sàis to inspect them and examine their mouths. They were both gentle and fine-looking animals, with splendid manes and tails, and their appearance prepossessed the merchant in their favour. They stood close by the assembled group, and allowed their teeth to be examined with the most patient docility.
“The marks are as the dellâl has said,” reported the sàis, after having finished his inspection.
The animals were then mounted by one of the dellâl’s men, who walked and galloped them past the merchant, who seemed as well pleased with their paces as with their appearance.
“What is their price?” he inquired.
“Their price,” replied the dellâl, “should be very high, for they are pearls not to be found in every market; but to you, excellent Hadji, whom I wish to oblige, and whom I always serve with fidelity, they can be sold for sixty purses the pair” (about £300).
During all this time Hassan had never spoken a word, neither had a single mark or movement of the horses escaped him; the merchant now turned towards him, saying—
“My son, tell me your opinion of these horses; are they not very fine?”
“They are not very bad,” replied the youth drily; “but they have many faults, and are much too dear.”
“And pray what are their faults, master busybody?” said the horse-dealer in a rage.
“I am not a busybody,” answered Hassan, looking him steadfastly in the face; “I merely replied to a question put to me by our master the Hadji. As for their faults, if you do not know them better than I, you are not fit to be a dellâl; and if you do know them, you must be a rogue to bring them here and endeavour to pass them on the Hadji at such a price!”
Words cannot paint the fury of the dellâl at being thus addressed by a stripling whom he supposed to be as ignorant of his craft as the other attendants on Hadji Ismael; the heavy courbatch[[17]] vibrated in his hand, and he was about to utter some violent or abusive retort, when the merchant, interposing between them, said to the dellâl—
“Do not give way to anger, and remember if the words of the youth are not true they can do no harm either to you or to the sale of your horses.”
The worthy merchant forgot at the moment that it was probably the truth of the words which gave them their sting; but fate seemed resolved that the horse-dealing transaction should not proceed amicably, for scarcely had the merchant concluded his pacific address to the dellâl when he heard behind him a sharp cry of pain, mingled with a sound resembling a blow, accompanied by the rattling of metal.
It seems that the Damanhouri Arab entertained a shrewd suspicion that Hassan was not a greenhorn in the matter of horse-flesh, and while the merchant was making his pacific speech to the dellâl, he had crept to the side of the youth and whispered to him—
“Brother, say nothing about the faults of the horses; say that they are very good: here is your bakshish” (present), and so saying he slipped five Spanish dollars into Hassan’s hand.
The reply of the latter was to throw them with some force in the face of the speaker. Maddened by the pain and the insult, the Damanhouri drew a knife from his girdle and sprang upon the youth; but Hassan, whose activity was equal to his strength, caught the uplifted hand, wrenched the knife from its grasp, and placing one of his legs behind his assailant’s knee, threw him heavily to the ground. His blood was up, and the anger that shot from his eye and dilated his nostril produced such a change in his countenance that he was scarcely to be recognized; but the change lasted only a moment. Placing the knife in the hands of the astonished merchant, he briefly related to him the provocation which he had received, and the dollars still lying on the ground confirmed the tale. Attracted by the broil, several idlers and soldiers who were accidentally passing had now joined the party, and one whispered to another—
“Mashallah, the youth must have a greedy stomach. A bakshish of five dollars is dirt to him,” for it never entered into the head of any of these worthy Alexandrians to suppose that Hassan’s indignation could arise from any other cause than dissatisfaction at the amount of the bribe offered to him.
Peace was at length restored, the Damanhouri having picked up his dollars and slunk away, muttering curses and threats against Hassan. The merchant then asked him to state distinctly the faults that he found in the two grey horses.
“The dark one,” replied Hassan, “is not of pure race; he is a half-breed, and is not worth more than ten purses. The light one is better bred, but he is old, and therefore not worth much more.”
“Old!” ejaculated the dellâl, his anger again rising; “by your head, Hadji, your own sàis, who examined his teeth, said that he was only five.”
The eyes of the merchant and the dealer were now turned upon Hassan, whose only reply was a smile, and passing the forefinger of his right hand over that of his left, imitating the action of one using a file. This was a hint beyond the comprehension of the merchant, who asked him to explain his meaning.
“I mean,” he said, “that his teeth have been filed, and the marks in them artificially made;[[18]] but his eyes, and head, and legs tell his age to any one that knows a horse from a camel.”
The dellâl was obliged to contain his rage, for not only was he restrained by the presence of the merchant and the bystanders, but the rough treatment lately inflicted on the Damanhouri did not encourage him to have recourse to personal violence. He contented himself, therefore, with saying in a sneering tone—
“If the wise and enlightened merchant, Hadji Ismael, is to be led by the advice of a boy whose chin never felt a beard, Mashallah! it were time that the fishes swam about in the heaven.”
“Allah be praised!” replied the merchant gravely, “truth is truth, even if it be spoken by a child. Friend dellâl, I will not dispute with you on this matter, but I will make a bargain with you, to which you will agree if you know that you have spoken truth. I will write to old Abou-Obeyed, whose tent is now among the Wâled-Ali. All men know that he is most skilled in Arab horses, and he is himself bred in the Nejd. He shall come here, and his bakshish shall be five purses. If he decides that all which you have stated of the race and age of these two horses is true, I will give you the full price that you have asked, and will pay him the bakshish. If his words agree with those spoken by this youth, I do not take the horses, and you pay the Sheik’s bakshish.”
As the dellâl knew that the old Sheik Abou-Obeyed valued his reputation too highly to allow himself to be bribed to a deception so liable to detection, he replied—
“It is not worth the trouble. Allah be praised, there are horses enough in Egypt and the desert; but if our master purchases none without the consent of that strange youth, methinks it will not be this year that he will send twenty to Stamboul. Doubtless he will now tell you that yonder bay is a vicious, useless brute, not worth the halter that holds him.”
“If he is not a vicious brute,” said Hassan, looking the dellâl full in the face and smiling, “mount him, and let our master see his paces.”
The dellâl bit his lip at finding himself thwarted at every turn by the natural shrewdness of a mere stripling, for nothing was farther from his intention than to mount an animal whose uncontrollable violence and temper were the sole cause of its being sent for sale by its present owner. It had not been backed for months, and the two sàises who held it by the head were scarcely able to resist the furious bounds which it made in its endeavour to free itself from thraldom. While the dellâl went towards them to assist them in leading it up for the inspection of the merchant, the latter turned to Hassan, saying—
“My son, assuredly that is a vicious and dangerous beast. It can be no use my thinking of purchasing that for the great lords at Stamboul.”
“Let us see it nearer,” replied the youth, “perhaps we may learn whether it be play or vice. Mashallah!” he muttered to himself as it drew nearer, snorting, and bounding, and lashing out its heels, “that is a horse—what a pity that it is cooped up in this town! Would that I had it on the desert, with my greyhound beside, and the antelope before me!” His eyes glistened as he spoke, and the merchant, tapping him on the shoulder, said—
“My son, you seem to like that horse better than the others. Is it not a vicious, dangerous brute?”
“It is violent now,” replied Hassan, “probably because it has been in hands that knew not how to use it; but I do not see any signs of vice on its head. It is evidently quite young—three or four at most—and it has blood: more I cannot pretend to say.”
The noble colt had now cleared a respectable circle with his heels, as none of the bystanders chose to risk a near inspection, when the merchant, turning to the dellâl, said—
“That seems a violent, intractable animal; what is its lowest price?”
“When it is taught and a year older,” replied the dealer, “it will be worth fifty purses. As it is, I can sell it to you for thirty.”
“Tell him,” whispered Hassan to the merchant, “to desire one of the sàises to ride it past you, that you may see its action.”
The Hadji did so, but the endeavour of the dealer and his sàises to comply with the request proved utterly fruitless. No sooner did one of them approach with the object of mounting than he reared, backed, struck out with his forelegs, and played such a variety of rough antics that they could not come near him. Perhaps none of them were over-anxious to mount an animal in such a state of violent excitement, without a saddle, and with no bridle but the halter passed round the head, and with one turn round the lower jaw. The merchant stroked his beard, and looked at the colt in dismay. Hassan drew near and whispered to him—
“Tell the dellâl that it is a violent, unruly brute, and offer him twenty purses.”
The Hadji had by this time acquired so much confidence in the opinion of his young protégé that he did so without hesitation. Then ensued a long bargaining conference between the merchant and the dellâl, which ended in the latter saying that he would take twenty-five purses and no less. The merchant looked at his young adviser, who said—
“Close with him at that price.”
The merchant having done so, the dellâl said to him—
“Hadji, the horse is yours: may the bargain be blessed.” As he uttered the latter words there was a sardonic grin on his countenance which, if rightly interpreted, meant, “Much good may it do you.”
The bargain being thus concluded, the dellâl thought it would be a good opportunity to vent the spite which he entertained against Hassan on the subject of the two grey horses, so he said to the merchant—
“Perhaps this youth, who has been so ready to offer his advice, and who wished that I or the sàises should mount the bay horse to show his paces, perhaps he will now do so himself.”
“And why not?” replied Hassan. “It is true that fools have made the horse foolish and unruly, but Allah made him to carry a rider. If the Hadji will give me leave, Inshallah! I will ride him now.”
“You have my leave,” said the merchant, “but run no risk of your life and limbs, my son.”
Hassan smiled, and going quietly forward, took the end of the halter from the nearest sàis, desiring the other at the same time to let go and leave him alone. He then approached the colt, looking steadfastly into its eye, and muttering some of the low guttural sounds with which the Bedouin Arabs coax and caress a refractory horse.
They seemed, however, to have no effect in this instance, for the colt continued to back, occasionally striking at Hassan with its forefeet. Never losing his temper, nor for an instant taking his eye off that of the colt, he followed its retrograde movement, gradually shortening the halter, and narrowly escaped, once or twice, the blows aimed at him by its forefeet.
At length the opportunity for which he had long been watching occurred. As the horse tried to turn its flanks and lash at him with its hind-feet, in a second, and with a single bound, he was on its back. It was in vain that the infuriated animal reared, plunged, and threw itself into every contortion to unhorse its rider. The more it bounded and snorted under him, the more proudly did his eye and his breast dilate. In the midst of all these bricks and houses he was again at home.
Shaking his right hand on high, as if he held a lance, and shouting aloud to give utterance to the boisterous joy within him, he dashed his heels into the ribs of the horse, and having taken it at full speed twice round the Meidàn, brought it back trembling in every joint from fear, surprise, and excitement. “Mashallah!” “Aferin!” (Bravo! bravo!) burst from every lip in the group. “A Rustum,” cried old Mohammed Aga, delighted at his young friend’s triumph.
Hassan seemed, however, of opinion that the lesson was not complete—the horse was mastered, but not yet quieted. So he turned it round, and once more took it at full speed to the farthest end of the Meidàn; then leaning forward, patted its neck, played with its ears, and spoke to it kind and gentle words, as if it could understand him. The subdued animal appeared indeed to do so, for its violence had disappeared as if by magic, and when he took it back to the side of the merchant, it stood there seemingly as pleased as any one of the party.
“I would give that imp of Satan twenty purses a-year to be my partner,” muttered the dellâl inaudibly to himself, as he turned away and withdrew with the two rejected greys.
The merchant returned to his house in high spirits, and willingly acceded to Hassan’s request that he should have sole charge of the new purchase. Hassan led the horse into the stable, fed and groomed it with his own hands, and in the course of a few days they were the best friends imaginable.
These events created no little sensation in Alexandria, and Hassan’s skill, courage, and his remarkable beauty of form and feature were the general subject of conversation among those who had witnessed the merchant’s purchase of the restive horse. All manner of speculations were afloat as to who or whence he was, for those who had most nearly observed him declared that, although his dress and language proclaimed the Bedouin Arab, his features seemed to be those of a Georgian or some northern race.
Many questions were addressed to Hadji Ismael on the subject by his friends, but he was either unable or unwilling to satisfy their curiosity. All that they could learn was that the youth had been sent to the merchant with a letter of recommendation from his old acquaintance Sheik Sâleh, and that he was to be employed in the purchase of the collection of horses to be sent to Constantinople.
Meanwhile Hassan passed his time more agreeably than he had expected, for he had abundance of liberty and exercise in his new vocation, and was treated with the greatest kindness and confidence both by the merchant and by the chief clerk. One remarkable feature they found in his character, that under no circumstances whatever did he deviate in the slightest degree from the truth. Whether money was concerned, or the relation of an event, they always found his statements confirmed, even in the most minute particular. He seemed, also, to have no care or thought of the acquisition of money, and these two features of character were so rare in Alexandria that some of the merchant’s friends, when speaking of his young protégé, were in the habit of shaking their heads and touching their foreheads significantly with the index-finger, thereby indicating that probably he was somewhat deranged.
These vague suggestions were confirmed by other traits of his character very different from other Alexandrian youths of his own age. He was never seen to enter a drinking-shop, nor to idle and lounge about the bazaars. When not employed in exercising his horses, one of his favourite amusements was to go down to the beach for a swim in the sea. The boundless expanse of salt water was new to him: the more angry the surf, the more it seemed to please and excite him.
His companion on these bathing excursions was Ahmed, the chief clerk’s son, a lad of some twenty years of age, to whom, notwithstanding the difference in their characters, Hassan became much attached. He was short and slight in figure, with a pale but intelligent countenance, and remarkable for his studious and industrious habits. Having been for some time employed as a junior clerk of an English mercantile house (there were only two at that time in Alexandria), he had not only become a very good English scholar, but had acquired a fair knowledge of Greek and Italian. He was a bold and practised swimmer; but on one or two occasions when he had followed Hassan to enjoy his favourite pastime in the surf, he had received contusions which stunned him for the moment, and might have cost him dear, had not the powerful arm of his athletic comrade been always near and ready to assist him.
This companionship, which soon ripened into friendship, was not without its corresponding advantage to Hassan. His eager imagination had already drunk in with avidity the feats of Antar, Sindebad, and other heroes of Arab story; but his new friend could tell him yet stranger tales of the regions beyond the sea—regions where from cold the waters grew as hard as stone, and bore the passage of loaded waggons; where ships, by the aid of fire, sailed against the wind and stream, and where the inhabitants of one small island possessed and ruled at a distance of many thousand miles possessions five times larger and more populous than those of the great Sultan of Islam.
These narrations, and especially the last, excited so forcibly the ardent imagination of Hassan, that he was never weary of listening, and he prevailed upon his new friend one day to take him to the counting-house where he was employed, that he might see some of these wonderful islanders. Probably he expected to find in them marvellous beings, like the giants or jinns of Arab fiction; but after accompanying his friend to the house of Mr ——, whom he saw through an open door at the extremity of the counting-house, seated at a table writing letters and tying up papers, he went out again, with disappointment evidently written upon his countenance.
“What tales are these which you have been telling me, Ahmed?” said he to his companion; “by Allah, that is no man at all! He is smaller than I am; he has not the beard of Hadji, and he has not even a scribe to write his letters!”
“Hassan,” replied his friend, smiling, “the habits of these islanders are different from those of Turks and Arabs. The pen is their sword in commerce, and they like to wield it themselves. Our chief writes on matters of importance with his own hand; it is good, for no scribe can betray him; but in the adjoining room he has two or three clerks who write on his affairs from morning till night.”
Hassan shook his head, thought of the swift horse and the open desert, and said, “Allah be praised, I am not a merchant of these islanders.” Nevertheless there was something mysterious about their history which continued to excite his fancy, and as weeks and months passed on, they found him, during the leisure hours of evening, employed in learning English from his friend.
As Turkish was the language habitually spoken in the family of Mohammed Aga and in other places which Hassan’s avocations led him to frequent, he soon acquired a sufficient knowledge of it to enable him to understand and converse in it with tolerable fluency.
During the next three years of our hero’s life he remained in the employment of Hadji Ismael, who never repented having trusted him implicitly in every commission with which he had been charged, and had procured for him a teacher under whose instructions he had learnt to read Arabic and to write a legible hand; but Hassan, though ready and quick of apprehension, did not evince any fondness for the study of books; his pleasures were a ride on the back of a fiery horse or a crested wave, and listening after sunset to the popular Arab romances of old, recited by some wandering ràwi.[[19]]
Of these last he was so fond that he knew many of them by heart. Stories of princes and princesses in disguise, mingled with the mystery hanging over his own birth, floated in his imaginative brain, but the mystery remained unravelled. He had kept the secret confined to his own breast, never even communicating it to his friend Ahmed; nevertheless from him, from his father, and from all his acquaintance, he had diligently inquired into the early history of all the Turkish pashas, beys, and officers in Alexandria, but no known episode of their lives threw any light upon the object of his search. His passions were strong and turbulent, but he generally kept them under the control of a determined will, and the secret conviction that he was the son of “somebody” imparted to his character a certain pride and reserve which assorted better with his form and features than with his outward condition of life.
Connected with the mystery of his birth and with the events related in the wild tales with which he had fed his youthful imagination, was the image of a lovely princess whom he had clothed with all the attributes of beauty ascribed by Arab poetry to such damsels; waking or dreaming, she was constantly before his eyes: he had given her a name, and he loved this creature of his imagination with all the ardent fondness of a young and passionate heart.
If it be true that such visionary dreams of youth are necessarily followed by disappointment on awaking to the rude realities of life, it is also true that in some cases, as in his, they preserve those who are under their influence from the temptations to which that age is exposed. It is one of the evils of modern education in what we are pleased to call highly civilised countries to cultivate the understanding at the expense of the heart. The simplicity, the trusting confidence, the warm imagination, the love of all that is pure and high and holy, which are the proper attributes of youth, are sacrificed to what is termed a practical knowledge of the world, and the result is, that there is now many a young gentleman at Eton and Oxford who would listen with a sneer of contempt to a sentiment or a trait of character which would have drawn a tear of sympathy and admiration from the eye of a Burke or a Fox, a Pascal or a Newton.
To return from this digression. Hassan loved his imaginary princess; nevertheless, like a true lover, he put her in the deepest corner of his heart, and never spoke of her.
A short time afterwards Hassan was sent by the Hadji, in company with Mohammed Aga, to collect a debt of considerable amount due to him in Damanhour, a large village distant a day’s journey from the city.
This affair occupied some little time, and might not, perhaps, have been settled at all had not Mohammed Aga been provided with a handsome Cashmere shawl and a pretty Damascus handkerchief, in one corner of which a few gold pieces were secured by a silken cord. The former of these presents found its way to the Governor, and the latter to his chief scribe, after which the justice of the claim became as clear as day, and the debtor was ordered to pay up without delay.
While this affair was in progress, and Mohammed Aga was busy in the Governor’s divan, Hassan was one day strolling near the village to pass the time when his ear was arrested by the sound of female cries and lamentations. Turning his head to the quarter whence the sounds proceeded, he saw a man with his hands chained together walking between two soldiers, who occasionally hastened his steps by blows from the butt-ends of their muskets. Behind them were two women and two children screaming at the top of their voices—
“Oh! mercy, mercy! Oh! my brother! Oh! my husband! Oh! my father! Mercy, mercy!”
In front of this lamenting group, and by the side of one of the soldiers, walked an individual with a paper in his hand, who seemed to be the man under whose authority the prisoner had been seized, and who bore the appearance of being one of the kawàsses of the Governor.[[20]]
“May your day be fortunate, O Aga,” said Hassan, addressing him in the Turkish language.[[21]] “What is the fault of this man, and whither are you taking him?”
“Happily met, Aga,” said the kawàss, impressed by the commanding figure of the young stranger. “This vagabond is now nearly two years in arrears of his taxes due to the Government; his tents are near the edge of the desert, and we never could find him. Praise be to Allah, I have got him now, and to-morrow we shall see whether five hundred good blows on the soles of his feet will help him to find the two thousand piastres that he owes.”[[22]]
The prisoner maintained a dogged silence, never even raising his eyes to look at the kawàss while speaking; but his wife now rushed forward, and, throwing herself at Hassan’s feet, cried out—
“Mercy, mercy, young Aga! I and my children—our sister—we are all ruined. We have none to depend on but him. The sluices of the canal were not opened; our lands were dried up. We had no crop; we sold our animals; everything is gone. Speak to the Governor, young Aga; let him give us time and we will pay all.”
Hassan turned aside his head to hide his emotion, for to misery, and to woman’s misery above all, his heart was soft as a child’s. Recovering himself, however, in a moment, he turned to the kawàss, saying—
“Would the Governor not excuse or delay the payment of this sum?”
“Surely not,” said the other decidedly. “His Excellency is very angry with him for the trouble he has already given: the amount is entered in the accounts, and it must be paid. You are young, sir, and a stranger here; you do not know the marvellous power of the sticks in bringing to light hidden money; they are more powerful than the rods of the Cairo magicians.”
“By Allah!—by the life of your mother!” screamed the poor woman, still at Hassan’s feet, “we have nothing; they may kill us, but we have no money to give. For weeks past we have seen no bread, and eaten nothing but a few dates. We are miserable, O Aga!—look at us—mercy, mercy!” The emaciated appearance of the whole family bore witness to this part of the woman’s statement.
“My friend,” said Hassan, turning to the kawàss, “I know a merchant in Damanhour who will perhaps advance this money, and take a bond for repayment in one or two years. Promise me that you will not report this man’s seizure till to-morrow at noon: the Governor will be better pleased with your zeal if you are then able to present him with the money required than if you beat the man to death without perhaps obtaining a third of it. Promise, then, that you will wait till to-morrow at noon.”
“I will wait as you desire,” replied the kawàss; “and if you come to the guard-house where this fellow will be confined, ask for Ibrahim the kawàss.”
During all this time the eyes of the unhappy wife were fixed upon Hassan’s countenance with an expression of intense anxiety. She had not understood a syllable of the conversation that had passed between him and the kawàss, but instinct taught her that in some way he was befriending her husband’s cause; and as the latter moved on with his guards, she continued to overwhelm him with blessings and prayers mingled with tears.
“Be of good cheer,” he said to her, now speaking in his own language. “Inshallah! all will yet go well. Meanwhile take this, and buy some bread this evening for your children and yourselves;” and as he spoke he slipped a piece of silver into her hand and turned hastily away.
When the poor woman heard herself addressed in the deep and not-to-be-mistaken tones of a Bedouin Arab, and felt the money, surprise and gratitude deprived her for a moment of the powers of speech; and Hassan was already at some distance when she recovered them, and throwing herself into her sister’s arms, she exclaimed—
“He will save us!—he will save us!—he is not a Turk!—why did I call him Aga?—he is of the Sons of the Tent[[23]]—surely my husband and he have met before in the desert and been friends—he will save us—the blessing of Allah be on his head!”
That same evening, at sunset, Mohammed Aga and Hassan were smoking their pipes and drinking their coffee in front of their lodging, when the former said to his companion—
“Inshallah! we will return in a day or two to Alexandria. Our affair is proceeding well: I have collected half the money, and the remainder is to be paid to-morrow.”
Hassan made no direct reply to this address, but after a pause of a few minutes he abruptly asked the chief clerk—
“Do you remember how much of my salary is still due to me, in your hands?”
“Assuredly I do, my son,” said the methodical clerk. “At the beginning of the year the arrears of salary, added to what the Hadji allowed of percentage on purchases, amounted to four thousand piastres (£40); then at the feast you sent a present of a bale of tobacco and a Persian dagger to your father the Sheik, two pieces of Syrian silk and some embroidered napkins to your mother, two pieces—”
“Enough, enough!” interrupted Hassan, distressed at this enumeration of the mementoes which he had sent to his foster-parents; “how much remained after these presents were paid for?”
“They cost fifteen hundred piastres; so you still have two thousand five hundred left.”
“That is well,” said Hassan. “I want that money here. Will you give it me, Mohammed, and repay yourself from the chest in Alexandria?”
“The boy is mad,” said the old clerk, opening his eyes wide with astonishment. “By the head of your father, tell me for what purpose can you require all that money at once, here at Damanhour? Are you going to buy beans and wheat for the market?”
“No,” replied Hassan, with some confusion, “it is not my trade to purchase grain; but indeed I require that money, and hope you will let me have it.”
“Allah-Allah!” said the old clerk, as a sudden suspicion shot across his mind, “you have seen some Damanhour girl who has set your heart on fire! The songs tell us that the girls are famed for their beauty here: you have seen a moon-faced one behind a curtain, and you are going to be married! Wallah-Billah! brimstone and tinder are like wet clay when compared to the heart of a youth.”
“Indeed,” said Hassan, laughing, “I have seen no moon-faced houri here, and I have no thoughts of marriage.” He added more gravely, “I want the money for a purpose which I cannot tell you, though if I did you could not disapprove it.”
Mohammed Aga, seeing that opposition was useless, and feeling that he had in truth no right to keep back from Hassan what was his own, counted out the money to him the same evening, and took his receipt, to be presented to Hadji Ismael.
The following morning, about three hours after sunrise, when Hassan had made sure that the chief clerk was busily employed in the Governor’s divan, he bent his steps to the guard-house, and on asking for Ibrahim the kawàss, was at once admitted to the presence of that important official.
After the customary salutations, Hassan informed him that the merchant to whom he had yesterday alluded had agreed to advance the money, and that he was now prepared to pay the two thousand piastres due by the Arab, on receiving a discharge in full for the debt, sealed by the proper officer in the divan.
“That is easily done,” said the kawàss; “take a pipe and a cup of coffee, and in five minutes the paper will be here.”
Having given the requisite instructions to one of his subordinates, he resumed the conversation with Hassan upon general topics, it being indifferent to him to know what merchant in Damanhour could be so foolish as to advance money of which he would never be repaid a farthing.
In a few minutes the messenger returned, bringing a paper bearing the seals of the treasurer and chief scribe of the Governor’s divan, and setting forth that Abou-Hamedi, of the Gemeâl tribe, having discharged all the taxes and charges due by him up to date, was free to return to his place of abode.
Hassan having paid the money and placed the document in his girdle, inquired of the kawàss where the prisoner was confined, and whether he could see him alone.
“He is in the room at the back of that small yard,” replied the kawàss, “where you see the sentry walking before the door. I will tell him to open it and come away, as his service is no longer required. You will not find the Arab alone, because, as you had taken an interest in him, I allowed his family to remain with him.”
“May your honour increase and your days be long,” said Hassan, saluting him, and going towards the door of the cell, which the sentry, by desire of the kawàss, opened, and then came away.
On entering the chamber, Hassan found that it was more spacious than he had expected, and was partially lighted by two apertures near the roof, secured by cross-bars of iron. The place being considered sufficiently secure, the manacles had been removed from the hands of the Arab, and he was seated on the floor, his sister and wife beside him, and his children at his feet.
No sooner did Hassan enter the room than the wife sprang from her sitting posture, crying aloud—
“It is he! it is he! we shall be saved yet.”
Abou-Hamedi also arose, and all the rest of the family came crowding towards Hassan. The Arab, who had been informed the preceding evening by his wife of our hero’s generous intentions, as well as of his having provided them with the bread on which they had supped, now expressed to him with much emotion the gratitude which he felt for the sympathy he had shown him.
“You are of the desert blood,” he said; “and whether Allah give success to your endeavours or not, you have our thanks.”
“Brother, you are free,” said Hassan; “free as the winds of the desert. Here is the Government receipt for your debt, and as you have been stripped of all, and must have something wherewith to recommence your toil for a livelihood, here are five hundred piastres; put them in your girdle. Fate is uncertain, Allah only is enduring; I am now rich, some day I may be poor and you rich, then you may repay me.”
Words cannot paint the tumultuous joy of the poor women as they crowded to kiss the hands and feet of Hassan, calling every blessing of heaven on his head. The wife, however, on looking at her husband’s countenance as he almost mechanically took the document and the money which Hassan placed in his hand, was frightened at its strange and wild expression; no word of satisfaction or gratitude escaped from his lips as, seizing Hassan by the arm, he drew him to a part of the cell where a stray sunbeam forced its way through the barred aperture; when it fell on Hassan’s face, the Arab, scanning his features with eyes almost starting from their sockets, said—
“Years have passed; the youth has become a man; the eye, the voice, the form are only his! Speak,” he continued, almost savagely; “do you remember one who strove to stab you in the Meidàn of Alexandria, and whom you threw to the ground by a wrestling trick? ’Twas I! and had you known me yesterday, instead of giving me money and freedom, you would have gone to that cursed Turk’s divan to feast your eyes with a sight of my mangled feet.” So saying, he dashed the paper and the money furiously on the ground.
“Brother,” replied Hassan gravely, “I knew you yesterday at the first glance as well as you know me now. You were in misfortune and misery, and all that had passed before was forgotten.”
The evil passions struggled for the mastery in that wild breast: it was but for a moment; the sight of his children and of the paper which secured his freedom called up the better feelings of his rude nature, and casting himself into Hassan’s arms, he wept like a child.
Without having read or heard of the Scriptures, the generous impulse of Hassan’s heart had taught him how to “heap coals of fire on the head of an enemy”; and the deadly hatred which Abou-Hamedi had entertained against him since the day of their first meeting was melted in a moment.
It was difficult for Hassan to tear himself away from the overflowing gratitude of the Arab’s family. One only, the unmarried sister, had preserved a continuous silence, as became her condition; but she looked upon her brother’s preserver with eyes swimming in tears, and when he bade them farewell and left the room, she felt as if life and sunshine had departed with him.
Little did Abou-Hamedi know when he thrust into his girdle the five hundred piastres given him by Hassan, that the latter had not even a dollar left. He had said, “I am rich,” and in truth rich he was—rich in youth, and strength, and hope—rich in the esteem and affection of his employer—above all, rich in the possession of a heart which felt in giving his all to relieve distress a pleasure unknown to the miser who has found a treasure.
Hassan remained outside the guard-house talking to the kawàss on various subjects until he had seen Abou-Hamedi and his family clear of its precincts, and retiring in the direction of the desert. The Arab, looking back once at the figure of his preserver, muttered to himself: “Allah preserve you, brave youth. If ever you meet Abou-Hamedi again when you are in need, you shall find that he remembers good as well as evil; but we will leave this cursed district, where sorrow and tyranny pursue us; we will go to our cousins who have their tents near Fayoom.”[[24]]
When Mohammed Aga met his young friend in the evening, he asked whether he had commenced that wonderful speculation which he kept so secret.
“It is all laid out already,” replied Hassan, smiling.
“Hasty bargains lead to repentance,” said the old clerk, shaking his head; “pray, what makseb [profit] do you expect to make?”
“It has paid me a good interest already, and I am quite satisfied. Do not ask me any more about it,” said Hassan, looking rather confused, for concealment was foreign to his nature.
Mohammed Aga refrained from asking any more questions; but, partly from curiosity and partly from the interest which he felt in Hassan’s welfare, he was determined before leaving Damanhour to learn how he had disposed of his little property. Nor was the task by any means difficult; for in small towns in the East as well as in the West everybody knows and talks about everything. The chief clerk, therefore, had no difficulty on the following day in tracing Hassan to the guard-house, where he had been seen talking to Ibrahim the kawàss. To find that well-known individual was the work of a few minutes, and a few more spent with him over a cup of coffee and a pipe drew from him all that he knew of the transaction, including the release of the Arab family on Hassan’s paying their debt of two thousand piastres. “You see, Aga,” added the kawàss, concluding his narrative, “it was my duty to release them when the money was paid, and not to inquire whence it came; but if you are the merchant whom the young man mentioned as willing to advance it on any security offered by the Arab, why, I fear——” Here he looked very significantly at Mohammed, and threw out a long puff of smoke from his chibouque.
“Then you think the Arab cannot pay back the money?” inquired Mohammed.
“Not a dollar of it,” answered the kawàss. “The Governor would have ordered him the bastinado as an example to others, but two bad seasons have left the poor devil’s purse as empty as my pipe.” So saying, he shook out its ashes, and left Mohammed to his own meditations.
“That boy will never have a farthing to bless his grey hairs with! Money in his hand is like water in a sieve, and yet, and yet,”—here the old clerk passed the back of his hand across his eyes,—“Allah bless him an hundredfold.” He walked slowly home, and without saying a word to Hassan of his meeting with the kawàss, he told him that, as the affairs for which they had come to Damanhour were now settled, they might return to Alexandria, which they did on the following day.
The morning after their return Mohammed Aga went to the private room of the merchant to deliver the money which he had collected, and give a general account of his mission, in doing which he placed in the Hadji’s hands Hassan’s receipt for two thousand five hundred piastres.
“By your head,” said the merchant to his clerk, “tell me what has the youth done with that money at Damanhour?”
Mohammed then told him the whole story from beginning to end, as related by the kawàss.
“And what has he left in your hands?” inquired the merchant, walking up and down the room in evident emotion.
“Nothing,” replied the clerk. “Two thousand five hundred piastres were due to him; two thousand he paid for the liberation of the Arab, and I doubt not that he gave him the remainder.”
“Mohammed,” said the merchant, “as he wished to keep this secret, do not mention it to any one, nor let him know that you have told it to me. If it were spoken about, it would take from the youth the pleasure he now derives from it, and what say the traditions of the Prophet (on whose name be glory and peace!), ‘The good deeds done by the faithful in secret, He shall reward them openly on the day of judgment.’”
During Hassan’s short absence from Alexandria an English family of the name of Thorpe had arrived there—Mr Thorpe being an elderly gentleman of good fortune and education, whose passion for antiquarian pursuit had induced him to visit the land of the Pyramids, together with his wife and their delicate daughter. Mr Thorpe had brought a letter of introduction to the British merchant, who undertook to procure for him a dragoman to accompany the family on their excursion up the Nile. A Greek was recommended, by name Demetri, who possessed a fair smattering of all the languages spoken in the Levant.
Foyster, Mr Thorpe’s valet and confidential servant, having approved of Demetri, he was forthwith engaged. After a short search a dahabiah was found, which belonged to a pasha absent on service, and who had left with his wakeel (agent) a discretionary power to let his boat, which was large and well decorated. The wakeel, being a Greek, was an acquaintance of Demetri, which rendered the bargaining easy and satisfactory to both parties. It was agreed that Mr Thorpe was to pay £250 for the six winter months, the wakeel refunding from that amount £15 to Demetri, and £15 to Foyster. Mr Thorpe was informed by the English merchant that the charge was unusually high; but as in those days there was much difficulty in finding so large and comfortable a boat, the bargain was concluded and the ratification duly exchanged.
A few days after, Foyster and Demetri were walking homeward from the bazaar, where they had been making some purchases for the boat, when they fell in with Hassan, who was returning towards the house of Hadji Ismael.
Hassan was well acquainted with Demetri, who had frequently amused his leisure hours with tales of the countries he had visited, and the wonderful feats he had performed, in which latter branch the Greek had drawn more liberally on his invention than on his memory. The youth had also seen Foyster at the British merchant’s house, and knew him to be an attendant on the rich English family, whose approaching excursion up the Nile was already the theme of general conversation. The place where they met happening to be immediately in front of a coffee-shop, Demetri proposed that they should rest for a few minutes and take a cup of coffee. While they were thus occupied—Demetri’s two companions listening to his flowery description of the wonders of Upper Egypt—a Moghrebi,[[25]] of gigantic and herculean proportions, who had probably been indulging in a forbidden drink more stimulating than coffee, came up, and his fanaticism being roused at the sight of Foyster’s dress, he cried out to him, in an angry voice—
“Get up, Christian dog, and give me your seat.”
The valet, not understanding a word, looked at Demetri for an explanation. The latter, much alarmed, and evidently not desirous of exhibiting any feat of valour similar to those of which he had often boasted, said to the Moghrebi—
“He is a stranger, and does not understand your speech.”
“Does he not?” replied the other; “then perhaps he will understand this,” and so saying he kicked the seat from under Foyster with such force that the latter fell backwards on the ground.
While this was being enacted, Demetri whispered to Hassan—
“Let us make haste to get away from this place. That is the noted pehlivan.[[26]] He carries four men on his shoulders; he is an elephant.”
“Why do you insult the stranger, and kick his seat from him?” said Hassan to the Moghrebi. “He offered you no offence.”
“Offence!” replied the Moghrebi scornfully; “his presence is an offence. Is he not a dog of an infidel?”
“There is no God but Allah, and Mahomet is his prophet,” said Hassan. “Those who are ignorant of the truth are to be pitied; but our lord (Mohammed Ali) has made friends with these Franks. They buy and sell here in peace, and it is not right to strike or insult them without cause in our streets.”
“And who are you, youngster, who dare to preach to me?” said the athlete contemptuously. “Are you perhaps a sheik, or a mollah, or a kâdi?”
“I am a man, and I fear not a wise one, for wasting my words upon an ox without understanding,” replied Hassan, his eyes kindling with anger.
“You are a bastard (Ebn-Haram),” shouted the athlete; “and if you had half a beard I would spit upon it.”
Hearing this abusive epithet now applied to him before a score of spectators, Hassan’s fury was no longer to be controlled. Springing upon the Moghrebi with the bound of a tiger, he seized him by the throat, and a fearful struggle ensued.
Although the athlete was the heavier and more bulky man, it soon appeared that Hassan was his equal in strength, and far his superior in activity. After a contest of some minutes, in which each displayed a complete mastery of all the sleights of wrestling, Hassan succeeded in passing his hand under the leg of his gigantic opponent, and lifting him fairly in his arms, dashed him with terrific force on the ground. Hassan stood for a moment looking on his fallen opponent, from whose mouth and nostrils flowed a stream of blood. The people from the coffee-shop now crowded round him: some threw water on his face, and in a short time he recovered sufficiently to raise himself up; but he was in no condition to renew the struggle, and Hassan walked away with his two companions, followed by the ejaculations of the bystanders—“Mashallah! wonderful!”—the greater part of them being rejoiced at the discomfiture of the athlete, who was indeed a notorious brawler and bully.
The preparations of the dahabiah were now nearly completed. It had been found, however, that after all she was too small to accommodate all the party with comfort, so a second of a smaller size had been hired.
It was about this time that, after receiving a letter from Cairo, Hadji Ismael sent one morning for Hassan and told him that a new commission had arrived, in the execution of which his assistance would be requisite.
“Upon my head and eyes be it,” said the youth.
“I have received a letter from my friend Ali Pasha, commonly called Delì Pasha;[[27]] he tells me that our lord, Ibrahim Pasha, saw the horses which I sent to Constantinople two or three years ago, and was so much pleased with them that he gave great praise to his servant (me), saying that no horse commission had been so well executed as this. Our lord Ibrahim Pasha has now desired Delì Pasha to write to me and find out who purchased these horses for me, and if possible to send the person up to Cairo, where his services are much required. Now, Hassan, as you had the chief trouble and merit of that purchase, I propose to send you to Delì Pasha on this matter. It may open you a way to fortune.”
“You are my uncle,”[[28]] replied Hassan; “and I am ready to go where you wish, and my fortune is in the hand of Allah.”
“Nay, my son,” said the good merchant; “it is bitter to my heart to part with you, but you know that it is not consistent with the circumstances of your birth and early youth that you should remain always in this town: you do not wish to go to Cairo? Perhaps, by the blessing of Allah, you may learn things there which concern your happiness?”
Hassan saw at once that his foster-father had communicated to the Hadji some of the mysterious circumstances attending his early childhood, so he replied—
“It is true that I have a weight on my heart, and if I could remove it by a journey to Cairo, it would be a blessed journey indeed.”
“You would seek for a father; is it not so?” said the Hadji.
“It is so,” replied Hassan. “I have made search and inquiry in Alexandria without success; but I am sure I shall find him, for I have taken a fal in the Koran,[[29]] and the words that I found were, ‘The faithful who seek shall not be disappointed in their hope.’”
“Inshallah! your hope will be fulfilled!” replied the merchant. “Have you anything with you by which a parent, if found, could recognise you?”
Hassan undid his long girdle, and from its inmost folds produced the relics given him by his foster-mother. The merchant examined them attentively.
“These would be sufficient,” he said, “to identify you; but, Hassan, if you go to Cairo, remember that there are many accidents by water and by land; you might be robbed, and could never replace them. You had better leave some of them with me; I will keep them for you in my iron chest; whenever you require them, you can send for them.”
Hassan acquiesced in the proposal of his kind patron, and reserving only the quaintly devised amulet, he gave up the remainder, receiving from the merchant a paper describing them accurately and bearing the merchant’s seal.
The worthy Hadji was grieved to part with his protégé, for whom he entertained an affection almost paternal; but having resolved to do so for the youth’s own advantage, his chief anxiety now was to furnish him well for the journey. For this purpose he desired Mohammed Aga to procure a pair of stout saddlebags, into which he put two complete suits of clothes, and also two small Cashmere shawls; with respect to these last the Hadji whispered, “You need not wear these unless you find a father in some great man, but they may be useful to you as presents.” He gave him also a sword of excellent temper, a slight but beautifully worked Persian dagger, and a pair of English pistols: to these he added a well-filled purse; but observing some hesitation in Hassan’s countenance, the kind-hearted Hadji added with a smile, “Nay, it is almost all due to you for past services; but I shall write to Delì Pasha and inform him that your salary is prepaid for three months from this date.” Hassan kissed the hand of his benefactor, his heart was too full for speech, and he could only utter—
“If I find a father, may he be like Hadji Ismael.”
Of personal vanity Hassan was as free as from the foibles which usually attend it; but it cannot be denied that when he walked out in the full dress and equipment proper to a young Bedouin Sheik, it was with a prouder step, and the day-dreams concerning his future destiny took a firmer hold of his imagination.
“Whither bound, my brother?” called out to him Demetri, on meeting him near the door of the merchant’s house. “Mashallah! you have the air and costume of a bridegroom! Who is the moon-faced one whom you have chosen? By our head, Hassan, it is not well to keep these things secret from your friends. When is the wedding to take place?”
“Nay, there is no wedding in the case,” said Hassan, laughing. “The Hadji is going to send me on a commission to Cairo, and he has given me this dress and these arms.”