Part 50 (2/2)
”And who will defend them, who will watch over them, who will pray with them while I am away?”
”Be not distressed. I will leave my own son here as a hostage while thou art away. Feriz will occupy thy dungeon, he will watch over thy children, and not let them be afraid. Hasten now and take leave of them.”
Dame Beldi rushed to the round window. Loudly sobbing, she called her children one by one, and then embraced them all as best she could. The cold iron bars stood between her breast and theirs. The tears of their weeping faces could not dissolve them.
”Give this kiss to father!--And this kiss from me!--And this from me!”
lisped the children, putting their little arms round their mother's neck through the bars.
”My child, my good Aranka!” said Dame Beldi to the girl, who being about fifteen or sixteen was the eldest of them all; ”look after thy little brothers and sisters! And you, my good little lads, comfort Aranka. G.o.d bless you! G.o.d defend you! One more kiss, Aranka! And one more for you, little David?”
”Madame, time is pa.s.sing, and Paul Beldi is waiting for thee to open his prison!” intervened Kucsuk Pasha, withdrawing Dame Beldi from the window of her children's prison, who thereupon turned her tear-stained face towards Feriz Beg, and in a pa.s.sion of grief flung herself on the youth's neck, and said to him in a voice almost indistinguishable for her sobbing:
”Thou n.o.ble heart! promise me that thou wilt love my children when I am far away!”
”By Allah, I swear it!” exclaimed the youth, pressing to his bosom the poor woman who was half-fainting for sorrow, ”I swear that I will love them for ever!”
Ah! there was one among them whom he had already loved for a long, long time.
”Hasten, lady!” urged the Pasha; ”cast this mantle over thee, and place this turban on thy head that the guards may not recognise thee in the distance. The way is long, the time is short.”
”G.o.d be with you, G.o.d be with you!” sobbed Dame Beldi, casting with tremulous hands hundreds of kisses towards her children, who waved their goodbyes to her from their window and then, violently repressing her emotion, she rushed from the dungeon.
Kucsuk Pasha pressed the hand of his son in silence, and left him in Dame Beldi's room.
The children kept on weeping behind their window.
The youth drew nearer to them.
”Weep not,” he said cheerfully, ”your mother will soon come again and bring your father with her, and then you will all rejoice together.”
”Ah, but then they'll kill father!” sobbed one of the children timidly.
”So long as Feriz Beg can use his sword none shall touch Paul Beldi,”
cried the youth, with flas.h.i.+ng eyes. ”My sword and my father's will flash around him, his enemies will be my enemies. Fear not! when I get back my sword, I will win back his liberty with it.”
”I thank you, I thank you,” whispered a gentle voice overcome by emotion.
Feriz Beg recognised the silvery voice of Aranka, and the weeping blue eyes of the seraph face which regarded him, like Heaven after rain, flashed upon him a burning ray of grat.i.tude which was to haunt him in his dreams and in his memory for ever.
Feriz felt his heart leap with a great joy. Pressing close up to the prison bars that he might get as close to the girl as possible he said to her with a tender voice:
”How happy I am now that we dwell together as neighbours in the same dungeon, but oh, how much happier shall we be when no doors are closed upon us? Let me then have a place beside thy hearth and within thy heart!”
The fair, sad girl, with a face full of foreboding, stretched through the bars of the dungeon a hand whiter than a lily, whiter than snow.
Feriz Beg solemnly raised it to his lips and falling on his knees, in an outburst of sublime devotion touched his lips and his forehead with that beloved hand.
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