Chapter 2

With the lifting of the curtain on the third act, the scene shifts. No more Sweet Waters, no more caiques nor stolen interviews, the music of hot kisses drowned in the splash of the listening fountain. Instead, there is seen a sumptuously furnished interior the walls wainscoted in Moorish mosaics and lined by broad divans covered with silken rugs. Small tables stand about holding trays of cigarettes and sweets. Over against a window overlooking a garden lounges a group of women--some young, some old, one or two of them black as coal. It is the harem of the Pasha, the father of Mahmoud, Prince of the Rising Sun, Chosen of the Faithful, Governor of a province, and of forty other things beside--most of which Joe had forgotten.

Months had passed since that night in the arbor. Yuleima had cried her eyes out, and Mahmoud had shaken his fists and belabored his head, swearing by the beard of the Prophet that come what might Yuleima should be his.

Then came the death of the paternal potentate, and the young lover was free--free to come and go, to love, to hate; free to follow the carriage of his imperial master in his race up the hill after the ceremony of the Selamlik; free to choose any number of Yuleimas for his solace; free to do whatever pleased him--except to make the beautiful Yuleima his spouse. This the High-Mightinesses forbade. There were no personal grounds for their objection. The daughter of the rich Bagdad merchant was as gentle as a doe, beautiful as a star seen through the soft mists of the morning, and of stainless virtue. Her father had ever been a loyal subject, giving of his substance to both church and state, but there were other things to consider, among them a spouse especially selected by a council of High Pan-Jams, whose decision, having been approved by their imperial master, was not only binding, but final--so final that death awaited any one who would dare oppose it. At the feast of Ramazan the two should wed. Yuleima might take second, third, or fortieth place--but not first.

The young prince gritted his row of white teeth and flashed his slumbering eyes--and they could flash--blaze sometimes--with a fire that scorched. Yuleima would be his, unsullied in his own eyes and the world's, or she should remain in the little white house on the brown hill and continue to blur her beautiful eyes with the tears of her grief.

Then the favorite slave and the faithful caique-ji--the one who found the little cove even on the darkest night--put their heads together--two very cunning and wise heads, one black and wrinkled and the other sun-tanned and yellow--with the result that one night a new odalisque, a dark-skinned, black-haired houri, the exact opposite of the fair-skinned, fair-haired Yuleima, joined the coterie in the harem of the palace of the prince. She had been bought with a great price and smuggled into Stamboul, the story ran, a present from a distinguished friend of his father, little courtesies like this being common in Oriental countries, as one would send a bottle of old Madeira from his cellar or a choice cut of venison from his estate, such customs as is well known being purely a matter of geography.

The chief blackamoor, a shambling, knock-kneed, round-shouldered, swollen-paunched apology for a man, with blistered, cracked lips, jaundiced pig eyes, and the skin of a terrapin, looked her all over, grunted his approval, and with a side-lunge of his fat empty head, indicated the divan which was to be hers during the years of her imprisonment.

One night some words passed between the two over the division of bonbons, perhaps, or whose turn it was to take afternoon tea with the prince--it had generally been the new houri's, resulting in considerable jealousy and consequent discord--or some trifle of that sort (Joe had never been in a harem, and was therefore indefinite), when the blackamoor, to punctuate his remarks, slashed the odalisque across her thinly covered shoulders with a knout--a not uncommon mode of enforcing discipline, so Joe assured me.

Then came the great scene of the third act--always the place for it, so dramatists say.

The dark-skinned houri sprang up, rose to her full height, her eyes blazing, and facing her tormentor, cried:

"You blackguard"--a true statement--"do you know who I am?"

"Yes, perfectly; you are Yuleima, the daughter of the Bagdad merchant."

The fourth act takes place on the outskirts of Stamboul, in a small house surrounded by a high wall which connects with the garden of a mosque. The exposure by the eunuch had resulted in an investigation by the palace clique, which extended to the Bagdad merchant and his family, who, in explanation, not only denounced her as an ungrateful child, cursing her for her opposition to her sovereign's will, but denied all knowledge of her whereabouts. They supposed, they pleaded, that she had thrown herself into the Bosphorus at the loss of her lover. Then followed the bundling up of Yuleima in the still watches of the night; her bestowal at the bottom of a caique, her transfer to Stamboul, and her incarceration in charge of an attendant in a deserted house belonging to the mosque. The rumor was then set on foot that it was unlawful to look steadily into the waters of the Bosphorus or to attempt the salvage of any derelict body floating by.

The prince made another assault on his hair and tightened his fingers, this time with a movement as if he was twisting them round somebody's throat, but he made no outcry. It is hard to kick against the pricks in some lands.

He did not believe the bow-string pillow-case and solid-shot story, but he knew that he should never look upon her face again. What he did believe was that she had been taken to some distant city and there sold.

For days he shut himself up in his palace. Then, having overheard a conversation in his garden between two eunuchs--placed there for that purpose--he got together a few belongings, took his faithful caique-ji, and travelled a-field. If what he had heard was true she was in or near Damascus. Here would he go. If, after searching every nook and cranny, he failed to find her, he would return and carry out his sovereign's commands and marry the princess--a woman he had never laid his eyes on and who might be as ugly as sin and as misshapen as Yuleima was beautiful. It was while engaged in this fruitless search that he met Joseph, to whom he had poured out his heart (so Joe assured me, with his hand on his shirt-front), hoping to enlist his sympathies and thus gain his assistance.

All this time the heartbroken girl, rudely awakened from her dream of bliss, was a prisoner in the deserted house next the mosque. As the dreary months went by her skin regained its pinkness and her beautiful hair its golden tint,--walnut shells and cosmetics not being found in the private toilet of the priests and their companions. When the summer came a greater privilege was given her. She could never speak to any one and no one could speak to her--even the priests knew this--but a gate opening into the high-walled garden was left unlocked now and then by one of the kind-hearted Mohammedans, and often she would wander as far as the end of the wall overlooking the Mosque of Suleiman, her attendant always with her--a black woman appointed by Chief-of-Police Selim, and responsible for her safety, and who would pay forfeit with her head if Yuleima escaped.

"And you think now, effendi," concluded Joe, as he drained his last cup of coffee (Hornstog's limit was twenty cups at intervals of three minutes each), "that Joe be big damn fool to put his foots in this--what you call--steel trap? No, no, we keep away. To-morrow, don't it, we take Yusuf and go Scutari? One beautiful fountain at Scutari like you never see!"

"But can't her father help?" I asked, ignoring his suggestion. His caution did not interest me. It was the imprisoned girl and her suffering that occupied my thoughts.

"Yes, perhaps, but not yet. I somethings hear one day from the gardener who live with her father, but maybe it all lie. He say Serim come and say--" Again Joe chafed his thumb and forefinger, after the manner of the paying teller. "Maybe ten thousand piastres--maybe twenty. Her father would pay, of course, only the Sultan might not like--then worse trouble--nothing will be done anyhow until the wedding is over. Then, perhaps, some time."

I did not go to Scutari the next day. I opened my easel in the patio of the Pigeon Mosque and started in to paint the plaza with Cleopatra's Needle in the distance. This would occupy the morning. In the afternoon I would finish my sketch of Suleiman. Should Joe have a fresh attack of ague he could join Yusuf at the cafe and forget it in the thimbleful that cheers but does not inebriate.

With the setting up of my tripod and umbrella and the opening of my color-box a crowd began to gather--market people, fruit-sellers, peddlers, scribes, and soldiers. Then a shrill voice rang out from one of the minarets calling the people to prayer. A group of priests now joined the throng about me watched me for a moment, consulted together, and then one of them, an old man in a silken robe of corn-yellow bound about with a broad sash of baby blue, a majestic old man, with a certain rhythmic movement about him which was enchanting, laid his hand on Joseph's shoulder and looking into his eyes, begged him to say to his master that the making of pictures of any living or dead thing, especially mosques, was contrary to their religion, and that the effendi must fold his tent.

All this time another priest, an old patriarch with a fez and green turban and Nile-green robe overlaid with another of rose-pink, was scrutinizing my face. Then the corn-yellow fellow and the rose-pink patriarch put their heads together, consulted for a moment, made me a low bow, performed the flying-fingers act, and floated off toward the mosque.

"You no go 'way, effendi," explained Joe. "The priest in green turban say he remember you; he say you holy man who bow yourselluf humble when dead man go by. No stop paint."

The protests of the priests, followed by their consultation and quiet withdrawal, packed the crowd the closer. One young man in citizen's dress and fez stood on the edge of the throng trying to understand the cause of the excitement.

Joe, who was sitting by me assisting with the water-cup, gazed into the intruder's face a moment, then closed upon my arm with a grip as if he'd break it.

"Allah! Mahmoud Bey!" he whispered. "Yuleima's prince. That's him with the smooth face."

The next instant the young man stood by my side.

"The people are only curious, monsieur," he said in French. "If they disturb you I will have them sent away. So few painters come--you are the first I have seen in many years. If it will not annoy you, I'd like to watch you a while."

"Annoy me, my dear sir!" I was on my feet now, hat in hand. (If he had been my long-lost brother, stolen by the Indians or left on a desert island to starve--or any or all of those picturesque and dramatic things--I could not have been more glad to see him. I fairly hugged myself--it seemed too good to be true.) "I will be more than delighted if you will take my dragoman's stool. Get up, Joe, and give--"

The request had already been forestalled. Joe was not only up, but was bowing with the regularity and precision of the arms of a windmill, his fingers, with every rise, fluttering between his shirt-stud and his eyebrows. On his second upsweep the young prince got a view of his face--then his hand went out.

"Why, it is Hornstog! We know each other. We met in Damascus. You could not, monsieur, find a better dragoman in all Constantinople."

Only three pairs of eyes now followed the movements of my brush, the crowd having fallen back out of respect for the young man's rank, Yusuf having communicated that fact to those who had not recognized him.

When the light changed--and it changed unusually early that morning, about two hours ahead of time (I helped)--I said to the prince:

"It may interest you to see me finish a sketch in color. Come with me as far as Suleiman. We can sit quite out of the sun up a little back street under a wall, and away from everybody. I began the drawing yesterday. See!" and I uncovered the canvas.

"Ah, Suleimanyeh! The most beautiful of all our mosques. Yes, certainly I'll go."

Joe dug his knuckles into my thigh, under pretence of steadying himself--he was squatting beside me like a frog, helping with the water-cups--and gasped: "No; don't take him--please, effendi! No--no--"

I brushed Joe aside and continued: "We can send for coffee and spend the afternoon. I'll have some chairs brought from the cafe. Pick up everything, Joe, and come along."

On the way to the crooked, break-neck street my thoughts went racing through my head. On one side, perhaps, a tap on the shoulder in the middle of the night; half a yard of catgut in the hands of a Bashi-Bazouk; an appeal to our consul, with the consciousness of having meddled with something that did not concern me. On the other a pair of tear-stained, pleading eyes. Not my eyes--not the eyes of anybody that I knew--but the kind that raise the devil even in the heart of a staid old painter like myself.

Joe followed, with downcast gaze. He, too, was scheming. He could not protest before the prince, nor before Yusuf. That would imply previous knowledge of the danger lurking in the vicinity of the old wall. His was the devil and the deep sea. Not to tell the prince of Yuleima's whereabouts, after their combined search for her, and the fees the prince had paid him, would be as cruel as it was disloyal. To assist in Mahmoud's finding her would bring down upon his own head--if it was still on his shoulders--the wrath of the chief of police, as well as the power behind him.

Once under the shadow of the wall, the trap unpacked, easel and umbrella up, and water-bottle filled, Joe started his windmill, paused at the third kotow, looked me straight in the eye, and, with a tone in his voice, as if he had at last come to some conclusion, made this request:

"I have no eat breakfast, effendi--very hungry--you please permit Joe go cafe with Yusuf--we stay ONE hour, no more. Then I bring coffee. You see me when I come--I bring the coffee myselluf."

He could not have pleased me more. How to get rid of them both was what had been bothering me.

I painted on, both of us backed into the low gate with the sliding panel, my eyes on the mosque, my ears open for the slightest sound. We talked of the wonderful architecture of the East, of the taper of the minarets, of the grace and dignity of the priests, of the social life of the people, I leading and he following, until I had brought the conversation down to the question:

"And when you young men decide to marry are you free to choose, as we Europeans are?" I was feeling about, wondering how much of his confidence he would give me.

"No; that's why, sometimes, I wish I was like one of the white gulls that fly over the water."

"I don't understand."

"I would be out at sea with my mate--that's what I mean."

"Have you a mate?"

"I had. She is lost."

"Dead?"

"Worse."

I kept at work. White clouds sailed over the mosque; a flurry of pigeons swept by; the air blew fresh. With the exception of my companion and myself the street was deserted. I dared not go any further in my inquiries. If I betrayed any more interest or previous knowledge he might think I was in league against him.

"The girl, then, suffers equally with the man?" I said, tightening one of the legs of my easel.

"More. He can keep his body clean; she must often barter hers in exchange for her life. A woman doesn't count much in Turkey. This is one of the things we young men who have seen something of the outside world--I lived a year in Paris--will improve when we get the power," and his eyes flashed.

"And yet it is dangerous to help one of them to escape, is it not?"

"Yes."

The hour was nearly up. Joe, I knew, had fixed it, consulting his watch and comparing it with mine so that I might know the coast was clear during that brief period should anything happen.

"I was tempted to help one yesterday," I answered. "I saw a woman's face that has haunted me ever since. She may not have been in trouble, but she looked so." Then quietly, and as if it was only one of the many incidents that cross a painter's path, I described in minute detail the gate, the sliding panel, the veiled face and wondrous eyes, the approach of the officer, the smothered cry of terror, the black finger and thumb that reached out, and the noiseless closing of the panel. What I omitted was all reference to Joe or his knowledge of the girl.

Mahmoud was staring into my eyes now.

"Where was this?"

"Just behind you. Lift your head--that seam marks the sliding panel. She may come again when she sees the top of my umbrella over the wall. Listen! That's her step. She has some one with her--crouch down close. There's only room for her head. You may see her then without her attendant knowing you are here. Quick! she is sliding the panel!"

Outside of Paris, overlooking the Seine, high up on a hill, stands the Bellevue--a restaurant known to half the world. Sweeping down from the perfectly appointed tables lining the rail of the broad piazza; skimming the tree-tops, the plain below, the twisting river, rose-gold in the twilight, the dots of parks and villas, the eye is lost in the distant city and the haze beyond--the whole a-twinkle with myriads of electric lights.

There, one night, from my seat against the opposite wall (I was dining alone), I was amusing myself watching a table being set with more than usual care; some rich American, perhaps, with the world in a sling, or some young Russian running the gauntlet of the dressing-rooms. Staid old painters like myself take an interest in these things. They serve to fill his note-book, and sometimes help to keep him young.

When I looked again the waiter was drawing out a chair for a woman with her back to me. In the half-light, her figure, in silhouette against the cluster of candles lighting the table, I could see that she was young and, from the way she took her seat, wonderfully graceful. Opposite her, drawing out his own chair, stood a young man in evening dress, his head outlined against the low, twilight sky. It was Mahmoud!

I sprang from my seat and walked straight toward them. There came a low cry of joy, and then four outstretched arms--two of them tight-locked about my neck.

"Tell me," I asked, when we had seated ourselves, Yuleima's hands still clinging to mine. "After I left you that last night in the garden, was the boat where we hid it?"

"Yes."

"Who rowed you to the steamer?"

"My old caique-ji."

"And who got the tickets and passports?"

"Hornstog."

LORETTA OF THE SHIPYARDS

I

For centuries the painters of Venice have seized and made their own the objects they loved most in this wondrous City by the Sea. Canaletto, ignoring every other beautiful thing, laid hold of quays backed by lines of palaces bordering the Grand Canal, dotted with queer gondolas rowed by gondoliers, in queerer hoods of red or black, depending on the guild to which they belonged. Turner stamped his ownership on sunset skies, silver dawns, illuminations, fetes, and once in a while on a sweep down the canal past the Salute, its dome a huge incandescent pearl. Ziem tied up to the long wall and water steps of the Public Garden, aflame with sails of red and gold: he is still there--was the last I heard of him, octogenarian as he is. Rico tacks his card to garden walls splashed with the cool shadows of rose-pink oleanders dropping their blossoms into white and green ripples, melting into blue. As for me--I have laid hands on a canal--the Rio Giuseppe--all of it--from the beginning of the red wall where the sailors land, along its crookednesses to the side entrance of the Public Garden, and so past the rookeries to the lagoon, where the tower of Castello is ready to topple into the sea.

Not much of a canal--not much of a painting ground really, to the masters who have gone before and are still at work, but a truly lovable, lovely, and most enchanting possession to me their humble disciple. Once you get into it you never want to get out, and, once out, you are miserable until you get back again. On one side stretches a row of rookeries--a maze of hanging clothes, fish-nets, balconies hooded by awnings and topped by nondescript chimneys of all sizes and patterns, with here and there a dab of vermilion and light red, the whole brilliant against a china-blue sky. On the other runs the long brick wall of the garden,--soggy, begrimed; streaked with moss and lichen in bands of black-green and yellow ochre, over which mass and sway the great sycamores that Ziem loves, their lower branches interwoven with zinnober cedars gleaming in spots where the prying sun drips gold.

Only wide enough for a barca and two gondolas to pass--this canal of mine. Only deep enough to let a wine barge through; so narrow you must go all the way back to the lagoon if you would turn your gondola; so short you can row through it in five minutes; every inch of its water surface part of everything about it, so clear are the reflections; full of moods, whims, and fancies, this wave space--one moment in a broad laugh coquetting with a bit of blue sky peeping from behind a cloud, its cheeks dimpled with sly undercurrents, the next swept by flurries of little winds, soft as the breath of a child on a mirror; then, when aroused by a passing boat, breaking out into ribbons of color--swirls of twisted doorways, flags, awnings, flower-laden balconies, black-shawled Venetian beauties all upside down, interwoven with strips of turquoise sky and green waters--a bewildering, intoxicating jumble of tatters and tangles, maddening in detail, brilliant in color, harmonious in tone: the whole scintillating with a picturesqueness beyond the ken or brush of any painter living or dead.

On summer days--none other for me in Venice (the other fellow can have it in winter)--everybody living in the rookeries camps out on the quay, the women sitting in groups stringing beads, the men flat on the pavement mending their nets. On its edge, hanging over the water, reaching down, holding on by a foot or an arm to the iron rail, are massed the children--millions of children--I never counted them, but still I say millions of children. This has gone on since I first staked out my claim--was a part of the inducement, in fact, that decided me to move in and take possession--boats, children, still water, and rookeries being the ingredients from which I concoct color combinations that some misguided people take home and say they feel better for.

If you ask me for how many years I have been sole owner of this stretch of water I must refer you to Loretta, who had lived just five summers when my big gondolier, Luigi, pulled her dripping wet from the canal, and who had lived eleven more--sixteen, in all--when what I have to tell you happened.

And yet, Loretta's little mishap, now I come to think of it, does not go back far enough. My claim was really staked out before she was born (I am still in possession--that is--I was last year, and hope to be this), and her becoming part of its record is but the sticking of two pins along a chart,--the first marking her entrance at five and the second her exit at sixteen. All the other years of my occupation--those before her coming and since her going--were, of course, full of the kind of joy that comes to a painter, but these eleven years--well, these had all of this joy and then, too, they had--Loretta.