Part 24

Our Lotharios had only time to throw themselves flat on the ground, when it exploded in the dark with a dreadful crash; but without hurting either of them, and they retired, somewhat crestfallen, while hearing much loud laughter and clapping of hands within the garden wall. After this rough hint, they went no more near the ladies, who proved to be the wife of a _yuse bashi_, or captain of Turkish artillery, and her female slave.

While the months we wasted so fruitlessly at Varna crept slowly away, there occurred to me a singular adventure--in fact, one so remarkable in its import, and in reference to the future, that it still makes a deep impression upon me; and this episode I shall detail in the following chapter.

*CHAPTER XXXI.*

So gaze met gaze, And heart saw heart, translucid through the rays, One same harmonious universal law, Atom to atom, star to star can draw, And heart to heart. Swift darts, as from the sun, The strong attraction, and the charm is done. THE NEW TIMON.

To the letter I wrote Louisa from Gallipoli no answer was ever returned.

Had it reached her, or been intercepted, and by whom?

I began to associate Berkeley--groundlessly, certainly--with her singular silence. All my former animosity to him returned; but, for the personal safety of the survivor, our strangely deferred meeting could not take place till we found ourselves in the vicinity of the enemy. I feared, too, that he might discover how completely she had ignored--or, to all appearance, forgotten--my existence. To me there was pure gall in the idea that he should have cause for triumph in suspecting it.

I constantly wore her engagement ring--the pearl with the blue enamel. Did she gaze on my Rangoon diamond as frequently as I did on the tiny gold hoop which once encircled her finger, and had hence become a holy thing to me? I was now beginning to fear that she did not.

The past had but one feature, one which every thought and memory seemed metaphorically to hinge; and the future but one object--the same--around which every hope was centred--Louisa. Via the Bosphorus, the mail steamers came puffing regularly into Varna Bay. They seemed to bring letters to all but me, and gradually my heart became filled by anxiety and fear.

Louisa might be ill--_dead_! I thrust aside that thought as impossible; I must have heard of so terrible a calamity from Cora, or from Wilford, who was in constant correspondence with his sister.

Her answer to my Gallipoli letter might have miscarried. Why her letter alone? Those of my uncle and of cousin Cora came at the requisite time, and in course of post. Could it actually be that Louisa was forgetting me? Her last look--her eyes so full of grief--her last kiss, so full of tremulous tenderness, forbade this fear, and yet it was passing strange that neither Cora nor Sir Nigel ever mentioned her in their correspondence with me.

I frequently prayed that her love might be as lasting in her as it proved agonizing to me.

Studhome knew my secret. To conceal from him that I was miserable was impossible, but honest Jack's advice "to take heart of grace--to remember that there were as good fish in the sea as ever came out of it, that--

"'There were maidens in Scotland more lovely by far, Who would gladly be bride to the young Lochinvar,'"

and a great deal more to the same effect and purpose, proved but sorry comfort and counsel.

On a Saturday evening I had tiffed with him in his tent. We had no second parade or anything to do. He vowed that he was tired of his studies, which generally consisted of the _Racing Calendar_, Hart's "Annual Army List," "White's Farriery," and the "Field Exercise and Evolutions for the Cavalry," varied by _Punch_ and _Bell's Life_, so we ordered our horses, and rode to Varna, the variety and unwonted bustle of which afforded the means of amusement and relief, after the quiet and monotony of our camp in the green wooded vale of Aladyn.

We put up our horses at an old rickety Turkish khan, which an enterprising French sutler had turned into a species of hotel, for over the door a gay signboard, painted in tricolour, informed us that it was "_Le restaurant de l'Armee d'Orient, pour messieurs les officiers et sous-officiers_."

There we had a bottle of excellent Greek wine, in a large whitewashed room, full of French officers, of every branch of the service and of all ranks, who received us with great politeness. They were all smoking cigarettes, chatting, laughing, playing chess or dominoes, and reading the _Moniteur_ or _Charivari_, which last caricatured the Russians as unmercifully as our good friend _Punch_ ever did.

Their gaiety and _etourdi_ fashion of quizzing the women who passed drew many a scowl of wonder and reprehension from the turbaned, shawled, and solemn Turks, for few of the believers took kindly to "the sons of perdition who had come to aid them and the Vicar of God--the refuge of the world--from the Muscovite dog," as one was heard to say; "and at the behest of a queen--a woman--_Allah razolsum!_" he added, with special reference to us.

"What a change all this is from our recent barrack life at Maidstone," said Studhome. "We see such strange scenes--a new world here."

"For our used-up guardsmen and hussars, who have been hitherto bored by the mere aimlessness and emptiness of their lives, our friend, the Emperor Nicholas, has certainly provided that which Sir Charles, in _Used Up_, would call a 'new sensation,' and a little healthy excitement."

A young sous-lieutenant of Zouaves was particularly vehement and droll in describing a certain Egyptian magician, who had shown some wonderful things to him and his friends. His words seemed to excite much laughter, and, on drawing nearer, I discovered him to be Jules Jolicoeur, the Zouave, who had now been promoted to the rank of second-lieutenant in his regiment, in the ranks of which the cholera had already made sad ravages.

"Monsieur Jolicoeur," said I; "a magician, do you say?"

"_Peste!_ you know my name," said he, smiling, while he pirouetted about and twirled his moustache.

"I have to congratulate you on your promotion. Better this than poring over Lemartiniere, Ambrose Pare, and so forth, at the Ecole de Medecin, eh?"

"_Parbleu, monsieur!_ how do you come to know all this?" he asked, with pardonable surprise.

"Perhaps I am a magician too," said I, laughing. "But this Egyptian of whom you tell us--he is a juggler, I presume?"

"_Jouer--joueuse de gobelets_, you mean? Oh, no. In a little water or ink, poured into the hollow of your hand, he will show you the face of any friend you most desire to see. It is miraculous."

"_Diable!_" exclaimed Victor Baudeuf, a well-decorated captain of a French line regiment; "then he shall show me Mogador."

The name of this well-known French dancer elicited a burst of laughter; but Jolicoeur said--

"Monsieur, you should call her Madame la Comtesse de Chabrillan!"

"And where the devil is _monsieur le Comte_?" asked Baudeuf, with a grimace.

"At the gold-fields, having spent his fortune twice on the girl."

"Well, to a wife in Paris a husband at the gold-fields is just as valuable as no husband at all. _Tres bon_! I shall see pretty Mogador, if your magician has any skill."

"And where does your magician hang out?" asked Studhome.

"Hang--hang--_il merite la corde_, you mean, monsieur?" asked the puzzled Frenchman.

"No, no; where is he to be found?"

"_Monsieur le magicien_ holds a spiritual seance to-night," observed a French hussar, whose gorgeous dolman was almost sword-proof with silver lace.

"_Tres bon!_" exclaimed another; "there are twenty girls in Paris I want to see."

"What is his time, Jules?"

"Eight o'clock."

"'Tis but twenty minutes from that now."

"We shall go too," said Studhome, "and have our fortunes told; it will be as good a lark, monsieur, as any other."

"Lark--_aloutte_--oh, yes, _tres bon!_" replied Jolicoeur, with a good-natured smile, though quite at a loss to understand why the bird was referred to.

"My fortune has often been told me, Newton, by gipsies, at Maidstone and Canterbury. By no two alike; but it was magnificent, according to the fee I gave, and always droll. We shall see what this astrologer--a real magician--has to show us."

"If he shows us Louisa Loftus, Jack, I'll forfeit a year's pay!"

"Come, messieurs, to the seance," shouted Jolicoeur, as he buckled on his sabre. "I wish to see Mademoiselle Sophie of ours, who has gone to Constantinople."

"And I Mogador," said Captain Baudeuf, "the delicious little dancer at the Mabille."

"And I Rose Pompon!" exclaimed the hussar, tying the cords of his silver dolman. "Rose, the heroine of a thousand flirtations."

"Mogador, the empress of ten thousand hearts," added the captain.

"Hearts such as thine, _mon camarade_," said the hussar, laughing.

"And Fleur d'Amour," added another heedless fellow, "the Queen of the Tourlurous!"[*]

[*] Camp phrase for the French linesmen.

"_Ah, mon capitaine_," said Jules. "_Peste!_ what a _roue_ it is. He has made as many conquests as our good friend Don Juan, in the delightful opera which bears his name."

"Beware!" said the other, with a mock frown; "I'm an ace of diamonds man with the pistol, Jules."

"Bah! Your pistol will never be levelled at me. Have a cigarette?"

"Thanks. As for Mogador, her silk tights were a study at the Mabille, and the grace with which she showed her feet and ankles----"

"_Cordieu, mon ami!_ we haven't a man in the 2nd Zouaves who has not appreciated that generous exhibition to the utmost. I hope she'll appear in Baudeuf's hand as Diana, or the chaste Lucretia!" said Jolicoeur.

These remarks elicited roars of laughter from the gay Frenchmen.

"By Jove, Newton," whispered Studhome, "our fair friends will be conjured up in odd company. These fellows are naming the most notorious _lorettes_ in Paris!"

With a prodigious clatter of swords and spurs, we all quitted the restaurant together for the residence of the magician; and Lieutenant Jolicoeur, who seemed disposed to fraternize with us, informed me that this personage, who was making so much noise in Varna, was a native of Al Kosair, on the Egyptian coast of the Red Sea, and that he was now chief hakim, or senior surgeon, of the 10th Battalion of Egyptian Infantry, which formed a portion of the Viceroy's contingent with the Turkish army. So we looked forward with some interest to the interview, as he had a high reputation among the Osmanlees for the marvels he produced, and was faithfully believed.

After an interview, this magician strongly reminded me of the Sooltan described by Lane, in his "Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians."

If in England, at this hour, so many persons believe implicitly in table-turning, spirit-rapping, mesmeric slumber, and mesmeric mediums, and many other outrageous whim-whams, it can surely be no wonder that the poor, ignorant soldiers of the Turkish and Egyptian armies should believe in the magic powers of the hakim Abd-el-Rasig, who, by the medium of another human soul, could show them whether their friends, their fathers, and mothers, at Gaza, at Cairo, or on the banks of the Nile, were still in the land of the living, as clearly as if they peeped through the magical telescope of the favoured prince in the fairy tale.

It was just about the period of which I write that the public of the modern Athens--that happy city of bibacious saints and briefless Solons--was electrified by a series of letters which appeared in one of her journals, signed by a tolerably well-known historian, occupying, however a lucrative legal position, to the effect that "he possessed a peculiar medium," of whose person and spirit he had such entire mesmeric control that he had sent the latter to the Arctic regions, in search of Sir John Franklin, whom she saw, accoutred with cocked hat and quadrant, seated sorrowfully on a heap of snow; next, that he had sent her on a visit to one of Her Majesty's ships in the West Indies, where she pryed into the savoury secrets of the midshipmen's berth; and, not content with these wonderful voyages, he actually announced that he sent her spirit to heaven to visit his friends, and a much warmer climate to visit his enemies; and this blasphemous rubbish and mid-summer madness found believers in the Scottish capital, though it excited the laughter of the masses; but one night the fair medium, "being hot with the Tuscan grape, and high in blood," or having imbibed over much alcohol, fairly unmasked the would-be Northern Balsamo as a dupe and fool, by forgetting to play her assumed character.

"_Allons, mes camarades!_" said Jules, placing his arm through mine and Studhome's; "we shall all face this Cagliostro together--one for all, and all for one, like Athos, Porthos, and Aramis, in 'Les Trois Mousquetaires.'"

It was impossible not to be pleased with the gaity and winning manner of this young Frenchman. His bearing and uniform, half Parisian and half Oriental, gave him somewhat of the aspect of a dandy brigand; but that bearing is peculiar to all the officers and men of the regiments of Zouaves.

Evening was approaching, and the shadows were falling eastward. Those of the tall minarets, and the rows of cypress-trees that guard "the City of the Dead," were cast to a great distance, over the flat ground on which Varna stands. Many "true believers" were awaiting the shrill, boyish voice of the muezzin to call them to prayer; and the tambours of the French troops were gathering at their places of arms, and bracing up their drums, preparatory to beating the evening retreat, as we passed along the strangely-crowded streets, towards the Armenian church.

At a coffee-house, the whole front of which was open, we passed several of the Colonel Hadjee Mehmet's soldiers, all drowsy with tobacco or bang, and seated like so many tailors, each on a scrap of tattered carpet. Some were idling over the chequers of a chess-board, and others were listening to the wild fairy tale of an itinerant dervish, to whom, from time to time, they tossed a quarter piastre (about a halfpenny) as it waxed more and more exciting.

Passing through a street which had just been named the Rue des Portes Franchises--a corporal of sappers being in the act of nailing up that title on the rickety mansion of a wondering and indignant emir--we reached the temporary residence of the hakim Abd-el-Rasig, near which several Turkish women in long caftans, a few hawk-nosed Greeks, and squalid Jews were loitering, as if pondering whether they dared tempt his skill by unwisely seeking to probe the future.

To the street the house presented nothing but a small door, having a curved arch, like a horseshoe, and a low, whitewashed wall.

Passing through, we found ourselves in a cool, shady courtyard, surrounded, as usual, by those inexplicable Turkish sheds, a well in the centre, a few rose-trees in tubs, and a few flowers and tiny shrubs forcing their way up between the slabs of pavement.

The mansion was almost entirely built of wood, and painted saffron and blue. We were ushered in by a little tawny Egyptian servant-boy, clad in baggy blue breeches and a scarlet tarboosh, and whom, to our disgust, we discovered to be tongueless--a mute!--and found ourselves in the _divan hanee_, or principal apartment; and now the hitherto ceaseless gabble and merriment of our French friends became hushed into comparative silence, as the hakim, who had been smoking his chibouque, with its long cherry-stick, rose from a luxurious pile of silken cushions to welcome us.

He was a little man, with Arab features, and a complexion of mahogany. His bushy beard was of a great amplitude. Time had long since dyed that appendage white, but the proprietor had turned it to a rich brown. He wore a green turban, a long, flowing coat, fashioned like a dressing-gown, of bright blue cloth, elaborately braided on the breast and seams with scarlet cord; his vest and trousers were of white linen, girt by a sash of green silk. Round his neck hung a comboloio, or Mahommedan rosary, of ninety-nine sandalwood beads.

Save that his intensely black eyes had under their impending brows a keen and hawk-like expression, his appearance was neither unpleasing nor undignified. His cheekbones were somewhat prominent; he had the organs of locality largely defined, and his forehead was high, but receding.

A Turkish soldier, an onbashi, or corporal of the Hadjee Mehmet's corps, had just preferred some request as we entered; and on learning that we had come to see a trial of his power at the seance, or whatever else he was pleased to call it, he invited us all into an inner apartment which opened off the _divan hanee_.

It was lighted by four lamps, suspended from the ceiling, each with a large tassel below it. From these lamps flickered four flames, which emitted a strange mephitic odour. The chamber had been recently whitewashed; the doors and windows were all bordered by arabesques in black and red, and with elaborate sentences from the Koran, which I afterwards learned to be the following:--

"If they accuse thee of imposture, the apostles before thee have also been accounted impostors, who brought evident demonstrations, and the book which enlighteneth the understanding."

"They will ask thee concerning the spirit; answer, the spirit was created at the command of my Lord; but ye have no knowledge given unto you, except a little."

"This is light added unto light. God will direct His light unto whom He pleaseth."[*]

[*] Al Koran, chapters iii., xvii., and xxiv.

In the centre was a table covered by a crimson cloth, on which stood a species of altar, formed of brass, about two feet high, supported by four monstrous figures, the description of which is beyond the power of language, and before it lay the Koran, open, and from its leaves depended fifty-four flesh-coloured ribbons, with leaden seals attached to them, being one for every two of the chapters of that remarkable book.

Near this lay a rod of strangely-sculptured bronze, which was known to have been found in one of the six great cavern tombs that stand in the pass of Bibou-el-Melek at Thebes, by the side of a mummy, which was alleged to be that of a royal magician, for in those tombs lie the Egyptian kings of the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties.

Several bright green chameleons from Alexandria, which were perpetually crawling about this altar, and turning from their natural colour to red, blue, and white, according to the hue of anything they approached, added to the _diablerie_ of this scene, which soon became rather exciting.

My own share in this adventure was so remarkable, that I came away with but a slight recollection of the part borne in it by my companions.

Indeed, I was the second person on whom he attempted to impose, if his singular mode of summoning, or spirit rapping, could be termed an imposition.

The first to whom he addressed himself was the Turkish soldier with whom we had found him in conversation.

The onbashi wished to know if his mother, Ayesha, widow of Abdallah Ebn Said, who dwelt at Adramyt, was well, and gave the hakim his fee--ten piastres--a large sum, no doubt, for the poor Osmanli warrior, who gazed about with considerable uneasiness, though the unabashed bearing of the Frenchmen might have reassured him; and I heard Jolicoeur whispering to Baudeuf that he had a dozen times seen just such a magical tableau at the Mabille and Porte St. Martin--_diable--oui!_--and had hissed it off, that he might have Mogador or Fleur d'Amour on with their dances.

"Ayesha, widow of Abdallah Ebn Said," muttered the hakim. "A lucky name--it was borne by one of the four perfect women who are now in Paradise."

Opening a gilt door in his little cabinet or altar, the hakim brought forth a large clam-shell and two phials of a dark liquid.

He wrote that verse of the Koran which I have quoted from chapter xvii., concerning the spirit, on a strip of parchment; then, pouring pure water over it, he washed it into the hollow of the shell; thus its sentiment and spirit were supposed to become a component part of the charm about to be wrought.

He then desired the onbashi to turn to the east, and pray (for religion evidently bore a great part in all his mummery), and next he summoned me to look into the shell, which he held in his left hand, while waving over it his bronze rod seven times--the mystical number.

I steadily gazed into the liquid, which a few drops from the phial had turned to a pale purple tint, but saw--nothing.

She did not appear. Thrice she was summoned, but in vain.

The hakim tugged his beard, frowned, and reddened with vexation, and emptied his shell, pouring the liquid carefully through a hole in the floor.

"My poor mother, then, is dead?" said the corporal, sadly, crossing his hands on his breast.

"Stafferillah! nay, do not think so," said the hakim, kindly.

"Why, effendi?"

"Because, in that case, the liquid would become as black as the holy Kaaba."

"But she did not appear?"

"This is an unlucky day, my son."

"Why so for me, if not for others? I never omit to wash and pray; and yesterday, O hakim, you showed strange things to the Franks, filling all their khans and coffee-houses with wonder."

"True; but go. Thou art one of the faithful. To the infidels all days are alike," replied the hakim, with a very unmistakable scowl at Jolicoeur and Baudeuf. "Doth not the Prophet say, 'Their works are like unto vapour in a plain, which the traveller thinketh to be water, until when he cometh thereto he findeth it to be nothing?'"

"Allah kerim!" said the onbashi, putting his right hand to his forehead, his mouth, and his heart, and stalking solemnly away.

Jolicoeur was pressing forward to summon his friend Sophie, no doubt, or perhaps some other gay damsel, when the hakim, who evidently disliked his scoffing smile and general bearing, ignored his presence, and said to me--

"Effendi, in what can I serve you?"

I felt the blood rush to my head, and in a whisper I mentioned to him Louisa Loftus. I was loth that my fast companions should hear her name, and make, perhaps, a jest of it. The hakim's fee was, I have said, ten piastres; but as I gave him above a hundred--or equal to a guinea sterling--there were no words to express his thanks in Egyptian or Turkish; he could only mutter, again and again--

"Shookier Allah! May God reward you!"

Again he produced his clam-shell, the surface of which I carefully surveyed, while with great alacrity he wrote a verse from the Koran. The shell was clear and pure; no picture, line, or drawing could be detected on its pearly surface. Again he went through his mummery with the phials, and washed off the ink into the shell; again, as before, the liquid grew purple, and again he waved his rod of bronze.

"You wish to see her you love?" he whispered, with something of a licentious leer in his keen black eyes; "she who is to be your hanoum (wife or lady)?"

"Yes, effendi," said I, blushing like a great schoolboy, in spite of myself, all the more that I saw Jack Studhome's handkerchief at his mouth.

Fixing his keen eyes with something of sternness upon Jules Jolicoeur, whom he had suddenly detected in the act of mimicking him, the bearded hakim summoned him forward, and desired him to look into the shell, and tell us what he saw.

Abd-el-Rasig then turned to the east, and proceeded to pray and invoke in an inaudible voice.

I was four paces from the Zouave lieutenant, whose eyes, as he gazed into the shell, became dilated and fixed with astonishment, while his whole features, which were handsome, expressed something akin to fear.

"_Merveilleuse! mon Dieu! merveilleuse!_" he exclaimed.

"Do you see anything, monsieur?" I asked, with growing excitement.

"Yes--yes--_oui, peste_!"

"In heaven's name what do you see?"

"A lady!"

"A lady?"