Part 39 (1/2)

”It shall be so. Patience for a few days, and our hearts shall be made glad.”

How strangely Fate had planned for him! It must have been Fate; for only powers supernal could have made the gift of the Padishah so fitting to his heart. No chance this! His secret pa.s.sion, unbreathed to any ear on earth, had been a prayer heard in heaven!

Ballaban was now an undoubting Moslem that he found Kismet on the side of his inclinations. He belonged to Islam, the Holy Resignation; resigned to the will of Providence, since Providence seemed just now to have resigned itself to his will. He was surprised at the ecstatic character his piety was taking on. He could have become a dervish: indeed his head was already whirling with the intoxication of his prospects.

Captain Ballaban, like a good Moslem, went to the Mosque. He made his prayer toward the Mihrab; but his eyes and thoughts wandered to the spot at the side of it, where he had saved the life of Morsinia; and he thanked Allah with full soul that he had been allowed to save her for himself.

The Padishah, the following day, bade Ballaban repair to a house in the city, and be in readiness to receive the gift of heaven and of his own imperial grace. On reaching the place an elderly woman--the Koulavous, an inevitable attendant upon marriages--conducted him through the selamlik and mabeyn to the haremlik of the house. The bride or slave, as he pleased to take her, rose from the divan to meet him. Though her thick veil completely enveloped her person, it could not conceal her superb form and marvellous grace. His hand trembled with the agitation of his delight as he exercised the authority of a husband or master, and reverently raised the veil.

He stood as one paralyzed in amazement. She was not Morsinia. She was Elissa!

He dropped the veil.

Strange spirits seemed to breathe themselves in succession through his frame.

First came the demon of disappointment, checking his blood, stifling him. Not that any other mortal knew of his shattered hopes; but it was enough that he knew them. And with the consciousness of defeat, a horrible chagrin bit and tore his heart, as if it had been some dragon with teeth and claws.

Then came the demon of rage; wild rage; wanting to howl out its fury.

He might have smitten the veiled form, had not the latter, overcome by her bewilderment and the scorn of him she supposed to have been a lover, already fallen fainting at his feet.

Then rose in Ballaban's breast the demon of vengeance against the Sultan. Had Mahomet been present he surely had felt the steel of the outraged man. Only the habit of self-control and quiet review of his own pa.s.sions prevented his seeking the Padishah, and taking instant vengeance in his blood.

Then there came into him a great demon of impiety, and breathed a curse against Allah himself through his lips.

But finally a new spirit hissed into his ears. It was Nemesis. He felt that this was the moment when a just retribution had returned upon himself. For he well knew the face that lay weeping beneath the heap of bejewelled lace and silk. It was that of the Dodola, whom he had flung into the arms of the Albanian Voivode Amesa when he was awaiting the embrace of some more princely maiden. And now the sarcasm of fate had thrown her into his arms.

”Allah! Thou wast even with me this time,” he confessed back of his clenched teeth.

”But doubtless,” he thought, ”it was through the information I gave to the Aga that this girl has been stolen away from Amesa.”

”Would that heaven rid me of her so easily!” he muttered. ”Yet that is easy; thanks to our Moslem law, which says, 'Thou mayest either retain thy wife with humanity or dismiss her with kindness.'[101] Yet I cannot dismiss her with kindness. She can not go back to the royal harem. If I dismiss her I harm her, and Allah's curse will be fatal if I wrong this creature again--to say nothing of the Padishah's if I throw away his gift. I must keep her. Well! Bacaloum! Bacaloum! It is not so bad a thing after all to have a woman like that for one's slave; for a wife without one's heart is but a slave. Well!” He raised the veil again from the now sitting woman.

The mutually stupid gaze carried them both through several years which had pa.s.sed since they had parted at Amesa's castle.

Elissa was easily induced to tell her story. a.s.suming that it might be already known to her new lord, she gave it correctly; and therefore it differed substantially from that she had told to Morsinia. She had been but a few days in Amesa's home when he discovered that she was not the person he had presumed her to be. In an outburst of rage he would have taken her life, but was led by an old priest to adopt a more merciful method of ridding himself of her. To have returned her to the village above the Skadar would have filled the country with the scandal, and made Amesa the laughing stock of all. She was therefore sent within the Turkish lines, with the certainty of finding her way to some far-distant country. Her beauty saved her from a common fate, and she was sent as a gift to the young Padishah by an old general, into whose hands she had fallen.

Ballaban a.s.sured the woman of his protection, and also that the time would come when he would compensate her for any grief she had endured through his fault. In the meantime she was retained in the luxurious comfort of her new abode.

FOOTNOTE:

[101] Koran, Chap. II.

CHAPTER XLVIII.

Captain Ballaban was almost constantly engaged at the new seraglio. It was being constructed not only with an eye to its imposing appearance from without and its beauty within, such as befitted both its splendid site between the waters and the splendor of the monarch whose palace it was to be; but also with a view to its easy defence in case of a.s.sault. Upon the young officer devolved the duty of scrutinizing every line and layer that went into the various structures.

He was especially interested in the side entrances, and communications between the various departments of the seraglio. He gave orders for a change to be made in the line of a part.i.tion and corridor, and also for a slight variation in the position of a gateway in the walls dividing the mabeyn[102] court from that of the haremlik. Just why these changes were made, perhaps the architects themselves could not have told; nor were they interested to enquire, supposing that they were made at the royal will. Ballaban was disposed to indulge a little his own fancy. If there was to be a broad entrance for public display, and then a narrow pa.s.sage for the Sultan only, why not have a way through which he could imagine a fair odalisk fleeing from insult and torture into the arms of--himself? But Ballaban's face grew pale as he watched the completion of a sluice way leading from a little chamber, down through the sea wall, to meet the rapid current of the Bosphorus.

He remembered the declaration of the Padishah, that, if ever an odalisk were unfaithful to him, she should be sewn into a bag, together with a cat and a snake, and drowned in Marmora.[103]