CHAPTER XLVI.
"Peace be with thee!" said the old woman, dropping a low courtesy tothe officer, as he walked near the new buildings of the seraglio.
"Peace be unto _thee_, and the mercy of God and His blessing,[97] goodwoman!" replied the soldier; but waving his hand, added kindly, "Ihave no need of your harem trumpery."
"But see this!" said she, showing the elegant case of perfumery. "Thisholds the essence of the flowers of paradise."
"Go along, old mother! I would have no taste for it if it containedthe sweat of the houris."[98]
"But this case was made especially for you, Captain Ballaban."
"Or for any other man whose purse will buy it," replied he, movingaway.
The woman followed closely, chattering into his deaf ears.
"But, could you see her that made it, you would not decline to buy,though you gave for it half the gold you found in the coffers of therich Greeks the day your valor won the city, brave Captain; and thecost of it is but a lira;[99] and the maiden is dying of love foryou."
"Then why does she not give it to me as a present? Love asks noprice," said he, just turning his head.
"That she would, but for fear of offending your honor by slightingyour purse," said the quick-witted woman.
"Well said, mother! I warrant that the Beyler Bey, or the nobleKaikji,[100] who made love to you never got you for nothing."
"Indeed, no! He paid the Valide Sultana ten provinces, and a brassbuckle besides, to prevent her giving me to Timour; who took it sohard that he would have broken his heart, but that the grief went thewrong way and cracked his legs, and so they call him Timour-lenk. Thatwas the reason he made war on the Ottomans. It was all out of jealousyfor me," said she, making a low and mock courtesy. "But if you couldsee the beautiful odalisk who made this! Her form is as stately as thedome of St. Sophia."
"She's too big and squatty, if she's like that," laughed the officer.
"Her face glows in complexion like the mother of pearl," went on theenthusiastic saleswoman.
"Too hard of cheek!" sneered the other. "Even yours, Hanoum, is not sohard as mother of pearl."
"A neck like alabaster----"
"Cold! too cold! I would as soon think of making love to agravestone," was the officer's comment.
"And such melting lips----"
"Yes, with blisters! I tell you, old Hanoum, I'm woman proof. Goaway!"
"And her eyes shine through her long lashes like the stars through thefir trees on the Balkans."
"Tut! Woman, you never saw the stars shine on the Balkans. They doshine there, though, like the very eyes of Allah. A woman with sucheyes would frighten the Padishah himself."
Kala Hanoum took courage at this first evidence of interest on thepart of the officer, and plied her advantage.
"And her teeth are as white as the snows in the grotto of Slatiza--"
"The grotto of Slatiza? You mean some bear's cave. But the snows arewhite there, whiter and purer than anywhere else on earth, except as Ionce saw them, so red with blood, there in the Pass of Slatiza. Buthow know you of Slatiza, my good woman?"
"And altogether she is as fair as the bride of Sigismund of Hungary,"said Kala, without regarding his question.
"And who was she, Hanoum?" asked the man, with curiosity fullyaroused.
"Why, Elizabeth Morsiney, of course."
The officer turned fully toward the woman, and scanned closely herfeatures as if to discover something familiar. Was there not some hintto be picked from these words?
"Hanoum, who told you to say that?"
The woman in turn studied his face before she replied. She wouldlearn whether the allusions had excited a pleasant interest, or rousedantagonism in him. It required but a moment for her to discover thatMorsinia had given her some clue that the man would willingly follow,so she boldly replied:
"The odalisk herself has talked to me of these things."
"The odalisk! What is she like?" said he eagerly. "Describe her tome."
"Why, I have been describing her for this half-hour; but you would notlisten. So I will go off and do my next errand."
The woman turned away, but, as she intended it should be, the officerwas now in the attitude of the beggar.
"Hold, Hanoum, I will buy your perfume--But tell me what she is likein plain words. Is she of light hair?"
"Ay, as if she washed it in the sunshine and dried it in themoonlight, and as glossy as the beams of both."
"Think you she belonged to Stamboul before the siege?"
"Ay, and to the great Scanderbeg before that."
The officer was bewildered and stood thinking, until Kala interruptedhim.
"But you said you would buy it, Captain."
"Did I? Well, take your lira."
As the woman took the piece of money she added: "And don't forget thatthe odalisk said she had dreamed of you since she was a child, andthat at sunset if you looked through the phials you would see herface."
"Nonsense, woman!"
"But try it, Sire, and maybe the noble Captain would send something tothe beautiful odalisk?"
"Yes, when I see her in the phial I will send her myself as herslave."
The man thrust the silken case into the deep pocket of his flowingvest and went away.
Then began a struggle in Captain Ballaban. Since the capture of thefair girl by the altar of St. Sophia, he had been unable to efface theremembrance of her. She stood before him in his dreams: sometimes justfalling beneath the dagger; sometimes in the splendor which heimagined to surround her in the harem; often in mute appeal to him tosave her from the nameless horrors which her cry indicated that shedreaded. When waking, his mind was often distracted by thoughts ofher. The presence of the Sultan lost its charm, for he had come tolook upon him as her owner, and to feel himself in some way despoiled.He was losing his ambition for distant service, and found himselfoften loitering in the vicinity of the Phranza palace.
This feeling which, perhaps, is experienced by most men, at least oncein life, as the spell of a fair face is thrown over them, wasassociated with a deeper and more serious one in Captain Ballaban.
From the day of her capture until now he had felt almost confident ofher identity with his little playmate in the mountain home. She thuslinked together his earliest and later life; and, as he thought ofher, he thought of the contrast in himself then and now. The thingshe used to muse about when a child, his feelings then, his purposes,his religious faith, all came back to him, and with a strange strengthand fascination. He began to realize that, though he was an enthusiastfor both the Moslem belief and the service of the Ottoman, yet he hadbecome such, not in his own free choice, but by the overpowering willof others. At heart he rebelled, while he could not say that he hadcome to disbelieve a word of the Koran, and was not willing to harbora purpose against the sovereignty of the Padishah. Still he wascompelled to confess to himself that, if the fair woman were indeedhis old play-mate, and there was open a way by which he could releaseher from her captivity, he would risk so much of disloyalty to theSultan as the attempt should require. Indeed, he argued to himselfthat, except in the mere form of it, it would not be disloyalty; forwhat did Mahomet care for one woman more or less in his harem? And wasthis woman not, after all, more his property than she was that of thePadishah? He had captured her; perhaps twice; and had saved her lifein St. Sophia, for only his hand caught her dagger. She was his!
Then he became fond of indulging a day dream. The Sultan sometimesgave the odalisks to his favorite pashas and servants. What if thisone should be given to him?
He had gone so far as once to say in response to the Sultan, whotwitted him for being in love, that he imagined such to be the case,and only needed the choice of His Majesty to locate the passion. Buthe did not dare to be more specific, lest he might run across somecaprice of the Sultan; for he felt sure that so beautiful an odaliskas his captive would not long be without the royal attention.
Old Kala Hanoum's information regarding the fair o
dalisk allayed theturmoil in Ballaban's breast, in that it gave certainty to his formersuspicions. For her words about the stars above the Balkans, the snowsof Slatiza, and Elizabeth Morsiney, were not accidental. He had nodoubt that the Albanian odalisk was the little lady to whom he oncemade love in the bowers of blackberry bushes, and vowed to defend likea true knight, waving his wooden sword over the head of the goat herode as a steed. In the midst of such thoughts and emotions, CaptainBallaban awoke to full self-consciousness, and said to himself----
"I am in love! But I am a fool! For a man with ambition must never bein love, except with himself. Besides, this woman I love is perhapshalf in my imagination; for I never yet caught a full view of herface. As for her being my little Morsinia--Illusion! No! this is noillusion! But what if she be the same! Captain Ballaban, are you goingto be a soldier, or a lover? Take your choice; for you can't be both,at least not an Ottoman soldier and a lover of a Christian girl."
Rubbing his hand through his red hair, as if to pull out thesefantasies, he strode down to the water's edge, and, tossing a Kaikji afew piasters, was in a moment darting like an arrow across theharbor;--a customary way the captain had of getting rid of anyvexation. The cool evening breeze wooed the over-thoughtfulness fromhis brain, or he spurted it out through his muscles into the oarblades, which dropped it into the water of oblivion.
He was scarcely aware that he was becoming more tranquil, when a quickcry of a boat keeper showed that he had almost run down the old towerof white marble which rises from a rocky islet, just away from themainland on the Asiatic side of the Bosphorus.
"Kiss-Koulessi, the Maiden's Tower, this," he muttered. "Well, I havefled from the fortress of one maiden to run against that of another.Fate is against me. Perhaps I had better submit. Why not? Wasn'tCharis a valiant general of the old Greeks, who sent him here, once ona time, to help the Byzantines? Well! He had a wife, the fairBoiidion, the 'heifer-eyed maiden.' And here she lies beneath thistower. The world would have forgotten General Charis, but for his wifeDamalis, whom they have remembered these two thousand years. A wife_may_ be the making of a man's fame. If the Sultan would give me mypick of the odalisks I think I would venture."
These thoughts were not interrupted, only supplemented, by the sun'srays, now nearly horizontal, as striking the water far up the harborof Stamboul, they poured over it and made it seem indeed a GoldenHorn, the open end of which extended into the Bosphorus. The ruddyglow tipped the dome of St. Sophia as with fire; transformed the graywalls of the Genoese tower at Galata into a huge porphyry column,sparkling with a million crystals; and made the white marble of theMaiden's Tower blush like the neck of a living maiden, when kissedfor the first time by the hot lips of her lover.
So the Captain thought: and was reminded to inspect the silkentreasure he had purchased. He would look through the phials, as--whoknows--he might see the face of her who sent them. If looking at thered orb of the sun, just for an instant, made his eyes see a hundredsombre suns dancing along the sky, it would not be strange if his longmeditation upon a certain radiant maiden should enable him to see her,at least in one shadowy reproduction of his inner vision.
He drew the silken case from his pocket. It was wrought with realskill, and worth the lira, even if it had contained nothing, and meantnothing. The little phials were held up one by one, and divided thesun's beams into prismatic hues as they passed through the twistedglass. In each was a drop or two of sweet essence, like an imprisonedsoul, waiting to be released, that it might fly far and wide anddistill its perfume as a secret blessing.
"But this one is imperfect," muttered the Captain, as he held up aphial that was nearly opaque. It was larger than the others, andcontained a tightly wrapped piece of paper. "The clue!" said he, and,after a moment's hesitation, broke the phial. Unwinding the paper, heread:
"You are Michael, son of Milosch. I am Morsinia, child ofKabilovitsch. For the love of Jesu! save me from this hell. We cancommunicate by this means."
It was a long row that Captain Ballaban took that night upon theBosphorus. Yet he went not far, but back and forth around the newseraglio point, scarcely out of sight of the clear-cut outline of thePhranza Palace, as it stood out against the sky above the ordinarydwellings of the city. The dawn began to peer over the hills back ofChalcedon, and to send its scouts of ruddy light down the side of Mt.Olympus, when he landed. But the length of the night to him could notbe measured by hours. He had lived over again ten years. He had gonethrough a battle which tired his soul as it had never been tired underthe flashing of steel and the roar of culverin. Only once before,when, as a mere child he was conquered by the terrors of theJanizaries' discipline, had he suffered so intensely. Yet the battlewas an undecided one. He staggered up the hill from the landing to thebarracks with the cry of conflict ringing through his soul. "Whatshall I do?" On the one side were the habit of loyalty, his oath ofdevotion to the Padishah, all his earthly ambition which blazed withsplendors just before him--for he was the favorite of both the Sultanand the soldiers--and all that the education of his riper years hadled him to hope for in another world. On the other side were this newpassion of love which he could no longer laugh down, and the appeal ofa helpless fellow creature for rescue from what he knew was injustice,cruelty and degradation;--the first personal appeal a human being hadever made to him, and he the only human being to whom she couldappeal. To heed this cry of Morsinia he knew would be treason to hisoutward and sworn loyalty. To refuse to heed it he felt would betreason to his manhood. What could he do? Neither force waspreponderating.
The battle wavered.
What did he do? What most people do in such circumstances--hetemporized: said, "I will do nothing to-day." Like a genuine Turk hegrunted to himself, "Bacaloum!" "We shall see!"
But though he arranged and ordered an armistice between his contendingthoughts, there was no real cessation of hostilities. Argumentsbattered against arguments. Feelings of the gentler sort minedincessantly beneath those which he would have called the braver andmore manly. And the latter counter-mined: loyalty against love:ambition against pity.
But all the time the gentler ones were gaining strength. On their sidewas the advantage of a definite picture--a lovely face; of animmediate and tangible project--the rescue of an individual. Thedanger of the enterprise weighed nothing with him, or, at least, itwas counter-balanced by the inspiriting anticipation of an adventure,an exploit:--the very hazard rather fascinating than repelling. Yet hehad not decided.
FOOTNOTES:
[97] Koran, Chapter IV. "When you are saluted with a salutation,salute the person with a better salutation, or at least return thesame."
[98] According to the Koran the houris perspire musk.
[99] About an English pound sterling.
[100] Kaikji; a common boatman.
The Captain of the Janizaries Page 46
