Chapter XIII: Instruction and Introspection

On the last evening of her stay at Hillah, Cecil became acquainted with an interesting fact concerning Azim Bey which at once touched and amused her. “A marriage had been arranged” for him long ago with Safieh Khanum, the little daughter of the Pasha of Mosul, and the wedding would take place when the bridegroom reached his eighteenth year.

“My grandmother arranged it,” said Naimeh Khanum, playing with the bits of red stuff which were sewn to her baby’s cap to keep off the evil eye. “The Pasha is a man of the old school, and a very rigid Mussulman, and the Um-ul-Pasha thinks that Safieh Khanum will keep my brother back from becoming altogether a Frangi.”

“But have they never seen one another, poor little things?” asked Cecil. “What a pity that you couldn’t have asked the little girl to stay with you while we were here. They might have taken a fancy to each other.”

“_Fi donc_, mademoiselle!” laughed Naimeh Khanum. “You don’t think that Safieh Khanum’s parents would ever have allowed such a thing? Besides, in no case would she be allowed to come near you, or under your influence. They would be afraid of your making her a Christian.”

“But Azim Bey is always with me,” objected Cecil.

“That is different,” said Azim Bey’s sister; “he is a boy. They know that there is no danger for him. But what has Islam for a woman?”

“Have you felt this, Khanum?” asked Cecil, in surprise.

“How can I help it? I have read your books, I have seen the difference between your life and ours,” said Naimeh Khanum. “Our people think justly that there is little need for fear in the case of boys like my brother. They read of Christianity, they see your laws and their results, they think it is all very good. They are also taught our religion, and they say: ‘It is destiny. I was born a Mussulman. My father and all my ancestors were good Moslems. Why should I change a religion that was good enough for them?’ In this way they agree together to dismiss the subject. They have many things to occupy their thoughts, and if in their secret hearts they know that Christianity is better, it does not trouble them themselves, and they say nothing to any one else. They have all they want, but with us it is different. All the long, long hours--what can we do but think and wish? They should not have educated us, have let us read about your beautiful life in Frangistan, if they wished us to remain contented with what satisfied our grandmothers. We are tired of our jewels, and our novels, and our embroidery; tired of making sweetmeats and eating them; we are so tired--you cannot imagine how tired--of being shut up always in the same rooms, with the same faces round us. We are not like birds or wild animals, to be kept in cages, we have minds and hearts, and we want to be able to go out in the world with our husbands, and enter into all they do.”

“But couldn’t you do that now--partially at least?” suggested Cecil, diffidently, surprised by this passionate outburst from languid-eyed, contented Naimeh Khanum.

“How can we?” she asked. “Our husbands go out into society without us. They meet the Frangi ladies, talk to them, dance with them, and then come home to us, poor ignorant creatures, who cannot talk to them of the things they care for, and don’t know how to please them when we are most anxious to do it. Our husbands are the sun to us; we are less than the moon to them.”

“But how can any one help you if you don’t help yourselves?” asked Cecil.

“What are we to do?” asked Naimeh Khanum. “They say that our rights are secured to us by law, but what we want is the sole right to our own husbands. With that we might be able to do something, but how dare a woman be anything but submissive when she may find herself divorced, or set aside for another wife, on account of the slightest effort for freedom? We need martyrs in our cause; but who will be the first? How can a woman who loves her husband, slight as her hold is on him, alienate herself from him deliberately?”

“But you cannot fear anything of the kind with Said Bey,” said Cecil, losing sight of the general question in this particular case. “He would never set you aside for another wife.”

“No, because I am the Pasha’s daughter. But he has the right. Suppose my father fell into disgrace, or anything happened to my boy,” and she made with a horrified look the sign for averting the evil eye, “who would stand up for me then? Almost every one has more than one wife; why should I expect my husband to be the exception? There is my father, he is considered a liberal-minded man, of most advanced views, and yet he has just married a fourth wife. It was all arranged when you were ill, so I suppose you did not hear much about it; but she is coming here with him to-morrow. She is Jamileh[03] Khanum, the daughter of his old friend, Tahir Pasha. Her father is also a reformer, and she has had an English governess, and been brought up entirely _alla Franca_, but she can’t refuse to become the fourth wife of a man almost old enough to be her grandfather.”

“And what can remedy this?” asked Cecil.

“Only Christianity,” said Naimeh Khanum. “They have tried culture and civilisation, but it has done no good. Our men do not care to raise us even to their own level.”

“Then why are you not a Christian?” asked Cecil.

“Because I have too much to leave,” said Naimeh Khanum, slowly and deliberately. “I cannot give up my husband and child. As it says in one of your books which I have read, I have given hostages to fortune. Listen! there is Said Bey coming in. I must go to meet him. Adieu, mademoiselle.”

And she was gone, leaving Cecil to meditate on the unexpected revelation she had received. It was with deep sadness and remorse that she took her way to the room where Azim Bey was waiting for her, for who could say how much she might have helped this struggling soul in all these weeks if she had only known? Poor Naimeh Khanum! she was longing for the temporal blessings of Christianity without thought of the spiritual. They had no further opportunity for conversation, but Cecil did the best she could for her friend. Wrapping up carefully a little New Testament in Arabic which she had received from Dr Yehudi, she placed it where Naimeh Khanum would be sure to find it, with a prayer that the seeker might be led into the light.

The next day Ahmed Khémi Pasha arrived, accompanied by his bride, and attended by a magnificent retinue. There was only time for a formal interchange of visits between Naimeh Khanum and her new stepmother, for the Pasha was making a progress through his dominions, and it was already late in the year. It would have been equally undesirable for Azim Bey and his governess to return to Baghdad in the Pasha’s absence, and to remain at Hillah, tasking the resources of Said Bey for the maintenance of themselves and their attendants, and their cavalcade was accordingly merged in the larger one, they themselves losing their comparative importance, and becoming part of the harem procession under the lead of Jamileh Khanum, who travelled in state at its head in a highly ornamental _takhtrevan_, or mule-litter.

In honour of his marriage, the Pasha had remitted a large proportion of the obnoxious taxes which had contributed so largely to swell the distress of the province, and this had restored much of his popularity. There was also every prospect of a good corn and fruit harvest, the latter very important to the dwellers in the regions around Baghdad; and as time went on, and this promise was fulfilled, past irritation was forgotten, and the people returned to their usual condition of sleepy contentment. Azim Bey attracted no unfriendly attention, and Cecil went through the tour in safe and undistinguished obscurity. Jamileh Khanum monopolised the attention of the Pasha, and was the undisputed head of her own portion of the assemblage. She was a young lady of some shrewdness and much ambition, and had signalised the short period she had spent at Baghdad by such a violent quarrel with the Um-ul-Pasha, that her husband dared not leave her behind in the Palace. With a natural instinct to like everything that the Um-ul-Pasha disliked, she had come prepared to patronise Azim Bey and Mademoiselle Antaza, and she and Cecil got on very well together. England was their great theme of conversation, for Jamileh Khanum cherished a secret hope that she might one day prevail upon the Pasha to take her there on a visit. With this in view, she was eager to learn from Cecil all she could with regard to English customs and etiquette, although she maintained throughout a lively sense of the difference of position between the great lady and the governess. Cecil found her very amusing, but Azim Bey, who was wont to sit by and look on at the conversations with unwinking black eyes, mistrusted the “little lady mother,” as he called his father’s youngest wife.

“It is all petting and sweetmeats now, mademoiselle,” he said to his governess, “but wait until she has a son of her own.”

“But that can make no difference to you, Bey,” said Cecil. “You have his Excellency’s promise, given to your mother.”

“On whom be peace!” said Azim Bey, quickly. “But if I were dead, mademoiselle? You have seen already how greatly I am beloved in the harem.”

“Don’t be so suspicious,” said Cecil. “I thought you prided yourself on your strength of mind?”

“So be it, mademoiselle,” said the boy. “What is to happen will happen. We shall see.”

In spite of these little rubs, however, the journeying life was very pleasant to Cecil, and she even looked forward with a certain degree of dread to the time when she must exchange the blue wrapper and high boots she wore in riding for the trailing dress and white sheet of the Palace. Everything out here was so entirely new, and she was separated from the troublesome personal questions and problems which had worried her lately at Baghdad. In these the chief factor was Charlie Egerton. She had never seen him since the day of the riot, when he had so suddenly and unwarrantably kissed her hand, but this was by her own wish, for she felt that she did not know how to meet him again. Anger at his presumption, and rage against herself for the display of weakness which had emboldened him to the act, combined to embitter her against him. And yet she could not keep him out of her thoughts. Her mind dwelt on the scene at the Residency so constantly that she became alarmed. What did all this mean? She must get away from Dr Egerton’s disturbing influence, and think the matter out calmly. With this in view, she had acquiesced in hurrying on her departure from Baghdad without seeing him, and she had since taken full advantage of her opportunity for thought.

She had never exactly formulated to herself her views of an ideal lover, but she was vaguely conscious that, allowing for the difference of standpoint, her requirements were much on a level with those of the seventeenth-century poet who sang the praises of the “not impossible she.” And here, as she could not help perceiving, was the real lover--Charlie Egerton, frivolous, unstable, unsuccessful. These were the hard epithets she applied to him, while all the while admitting to herself that she could not help liking him, and that there was something noble and quixotic about his unfortunate efforts to keep other people up to their duty. But here again the softness of her own mood alarmed her, and she proceeded to examine into her feelings with all the systematic thoroughness of a practised student of mental science. After long cogitation, and much analysis of complex emotions into their elements, she came to the conclusion that she was not in love with Charlie. She even assured herself that she despised him a little, and this was obviously an insurmountable bar to love. But the chief drawback to the introspective method of studying mental phenomena is, as the text-books tell us, the danger of the mind’s forgetting its own states, or even misinterpreting them, owing to the distracting influence of personal fears and wishes. This Cecil forgot, while assuring herself that her clear duty now was to show Charlie plainly what her feelings were. It would be unkind to allow him to labour any longer under a delusion, and she became at last almost anxious to return to Baghdad, for the sake of undeceiving him.

By the time that this desirable conclusion was reached, the steps of the travellers were really turned homewards. Jamileh Khanum was tired of wandering, and if the truth must be told, was “spoiling for a fight” with the Um-ul-Pasha. Where every one was anxious to do what she wished, there was no excuse for bad temper, and she felt that her choicest weapons were being wasted, while the enemy was doubtless making the best use of her time by entrenching herself more strongly. Accordingly, the young lady intimated to her husband that the tour had lasted long enough, and the Pasha gave orders for the return. His Excellency’s long absence had so far made the heart of the Baghdadis grow fonder that they pressed to meet him and greeted him with acclamations, which were especially pleasing to him as tending to prove that the Balio Bey had been wrong in his dismal prognostications. Even Azim Bey received a special ovation, and the official who had acted as the Pasha’s deputy in his absence reported that Sir Dugald Haigh, and the English colony generally, had quite regained their former popularity.

As for Cecil, she felt as though she were returning home, and the sight of the Residency almost brought tears to her eyes. She could scarcely wait until Sunday to get news of her friends, and they on their part gave her the warmest of welcomes when her donkey reached the great gate. Lady Haigh exclaimed on her improved appearance, Sir Dugald paid her a courtly compliment on her looks, and Captain Rossiter and the other young men who were employed at the Consulate in various capacities expressed in their faces as much pleasure and admiration as they dared. But there was something wanting even in this wealth of greeting. Charlie Egerton did not appear, nor add his voice to the chorus. Although Cecil had come back resolved to snub and repress him,--for his own good, of course,--she could not help feeling that there was undeserved unkindness in this absolute neglect. He must have known that she was coming home, and that he should have chosen this special occasion on which to visit old Isaac Azevedo, or even Dr Yehudi, showed a callousness which she had not expected in him. It was not until she was closeted with Lady Haigh for a good talk, after morning service, that she heard the reason of Charlie’s absence.

“My dear,” cried Lady Haigh, when Cecil had remarked casually that she supposed Dr Egerton was visiting some of his friends, “Charlie isn’t in Baghdad at all. Haven’t you heard? He has been sent off on an expedition into the Bakhtiari country, and may be away for months.”

“Indeed!” said Cecil. It was all that she could say.

“Yes, indeed. And you never heard about it? Well, I will tell you. You know that there has been a good deal of talk lately about a mysterious epidemic which has sprung up among the Bakhtiaris, and seemed to be spreading along the Gulf? The Indian Government were getting very nervous about it, and Sir Dugald has had a great deal of correspondence with them on the subject. At last it was suggested that a medical commission should visit the district, and try to find out the root of the disease, and see exactly what conditions caused it to spread. The idea was taken up, and it was settled that the commission should consist of a doctor sent by the Shah (the Bakhtiaris are under Persia, you know), and Charlie, representing our Government. They know his worth, you see, though they have treated him so badly. And so he started, just a fortnight ago now.”

“And of course he was glad to go? It must have been like going back to his old ways again,” said Cecil. Lady Haigh turned upon her a look of scorn.

“Charlie has quite given up his old wandering ways,” she said, “and no one ought to know that better than you, Cecil. He has settled down into steady work, and gets on splendidly with Sir Dugald. Of course he was glad to get the medical experience involved in this journey--I won’t pretend he wasn’t. But he was most unwilling to go just when you were coming home; in fact,” added Lady Haigh, forgetting her previous laudation of Charlie’s steady work, “it was all I could do to keep him from throwing up the whole thing, and he is determined to be back by Christmas.”

Lady Haigh might have told much more if she had wished to do so, but she was a discreet woman, and was rarely tempted into obscuring a general effect by excess of detail. Charlie had not accepted the fact of his temporary exile by any means in a spirit of resignation, and his long-suffering cousin had had to endure a good deal before he finally departed. His chief objection to leaving his post had been the possibility that some epidemic might break out in his absence, and sweep away the whole European population of Baghdad; but Lady Haigh pooh-poohed his anxiety, and assured him that the surgeon of the _Nausicaa_ was fully competent to fill his place.

“And you know, Charlie,” she said, “this appointment will bring you before the public, and may do you a great deal of good. It is a thing after your own heart, and you ought to be grateful for it.”

“What I am thinking of, Cousin Elma,” he replied, solemnly, “is that if I am away at Christmas, I may lose everything that would make all this any good to me.”

“My dear boy, what can you mean?” asked Lady Haigh, revolving various possibilities in her mind. “Oh, I know!” she cried at last. “You mean that Cecil’s first two years at Baghdad will be over a day or two before Christmas, and that she can’t go on without signing a new agreement?”

“And that before she signs it I am to have my chance,” added Charlie.

“Yes, of course,” said Lady Haigh, hastily. “You have been a very good boy, Charlie, and obeyed me splendidly, but lately I have noticed a sort of I-bide-my-time air about you, which didn’t look well. You shall have your chance, certainly, but I wouldn’t advise you to be too sure about it.”

“I am not,” said Charlie, “but I mean to have it.”

“Well, my dear boy,” went on his cousin, soothingly, “travelling as lightly as you do, you will be well able to be back before Christmas, you see. The new agreement need not be signed until Christmas Eve, and if you are not back then it will be your own fault.”

“But something might prevent me,” he said, dolefully; “and only think if I came back and found that she had bound herself for another three years of slavery to that child!”

“You think that you could prevent it if you were here?” asked Lady Haigh, in the tone that she had used once before when casting a doubt on the likelihood of Charlie’s success.

“I don’t know,” he said, humbly enough, “but I almost think, if I had her alone, and could make her listen to me, that I could.”

“Well, that you must settle for yourself, of course. I will do my best for you, Charlie. Supposing (but I don’t in the least anticipate it) that you are not back by Christmas Eve, I will tell Cecil the state of things before she signs the agreement. It may be that she is more homesick and tired of her work than she seems, and that she will be willing to listen to the proposal, but I can’t promise you success. I only say I will do what I can, for you have been very obedient, and behaved very well. That’s all I can promise.”

“Thank you awfully, Cousin Elma. It’s very good of you. Only wouldn’t it save you the trouble if I wrote to her now, before I went?”

“What! you haven’t had enough of Azim Bey and his suspicions yet?” asked Lady Haigh; and as Charlie shrugged his shoulders in silence, she went on with much animation, “Charlie, I really must have it out with you, though I know it’s no good, but I will never refer to it again. Has it ever struck you how very foolish you are? Either by misfortune or by your own fault you have lost most of your chances, and come to be regarded either as a cranky clever fellow or as a pleasant good sort of man, but a most unlucky one. You ought to be thankful if you could get the most commonplace, unsophisticated girl that was ever brought up in a remote country village at home to take you, but no--you must fly high. You fall in love with a girl who is clever herself and can’t help knowing it, who has had unusual advantages in the way of education, and whose talents command a fair market value. It is to her interest not to marry you, and you will probably get into trouble even if you are merely engaged, and she laughs at you continually. Why don’t you give her up?”

“I don’t know,” said Charlie, meditatively. “Because I love her, I suppose, Cousin Elma. I had rather she laughed at me than forgot me, at any rate.”

“My dear boy!” said Lady Haigh, and kissed him, impulsively. “If only Cecil knew you as you really are!”

But Cecil did not know, and yet she cried herself to sleep when she went back to the Palace that night. It could not have been on account of Charlie’s absence, for she had satisfied herself that she did not love him, and it could scarcely have been because he had missed his snubbing, and therefore it must have been, as she said to herself the next morning, that she was tired and excited from seeing so many old friends again.