Chapter XXVII: Practical Jokes

It seemed a very long time that the two prisoners waited alone, and it was indeed long enough for the momentary excitement to pass away, and for Cecil to realise how very little she had to support her, in spite of her valiant words, beyond her innate British pluck and a determination not to be bullied. Um Yusuf was not a comforting companion. She passed the time in giving utterance to doleful prognostications, covering most of the contingencies which could reasonably be expected to occur under the circumstances, and ending up with--

“Yes, mademoiselle, this quite fixed in my mind. Not you nor I shall eat one morsel nor drink one drop more in this house.”

“Well,” said Cecil, with a half-hearted attempt to turn the affair into a joke, “if we must choose between being starved and poisoned, Um Yusuf, I think the poisoning would be less painful in the end. It would certainly be quicker.”

Um Yusuf gave a contemptuous sniff at her mistress’s flippancy, and they waited in silence, until there was a sound of hurrying footsteps in the passage. Then the curtain was pulled aside, and Azim Bey darted in, radiant with smiles, while behind him appeared the faithful Masûd, grinning from ear to ear.

“Oh, mademoiselle, my dear mademoiselle!” cried the boy, rushing to kiss Cecil’s hand. “They have brought you back at last, then? But you have been ill--they have ill-treated you? Ah! they shall pay for it. But all is right now.”

“Not all, Bey,” said Cecil, grieved that he should so soon have forgotten the tragedy of the Kurdish hills, but he was too much excited to listen.

“Come, mademoiselle, don’t stay in this wretched place. You will trust yourself in the _kajavahs_ once more, if I ride by the side of the mule? There is a ridiculous formality to go through, and I want to get it over. My grandmother has promised you in marriage to a certain man, and he will not accept his dismissal from any lips but your own. That will not take long to do, will it, mademoiselle?”

“Certainly not,” said Cecil, astonished at this sudden development of affairs, and smiling down at her pupil as he led her out. But at the door he stopped and looked her over with a dissatisfied face.

“Mademoiselle, your clothes are so old, so dusty. Have they taken away your other dresses?”

“I really have nothing but what I have on,” said Cecil, lightly. “Our luggage seems to have gone astray. It doesn’t signify much, though, does it?”

“But it does, mademoiselle,” returned Azim Bey, with deep seriousness. “I cannot bear that this man should see you so poorly dressed. You have to speak to him, you know.”

“Well,” said Cecil, “the Um-ul-Pasha sent me a dress this morning which I refused to touch. If you like, I will put it on, though it scarcely seems fair to wear the dress she meant for a wedding to refuse the bridegroom in. What do you think?”

“Oh, mademoiselle, it is excellent. Do go and put it on at once. I will wait, only do make haste. I am dancing with excitement.”

Cecil went away smiling to the room where she had passed the night, and with Um Yusuf’s help no time was lost in putting on the rejected dress. Over all came the great white sheet in which it had been wrapped, replacing the old blue wrapper, and Cecil returned to her pupil, who, if not actually dancing, was certainly fidgeting with impatience.

“At last, mademoiselle! Oh, come, come.”

“But where are we going, Bey?” asked Cecil.

“To the Palace, of course, mademoiselle. Where else should we go?”

“But isn’t this Mosul?” she cried. Azim Bey laughed uproariously.

“But, mademoiselle, it is Baghdad--our own beautiful Baghdad.”

“But the people all talked Kurdish,” gasped Cecil.

“Because you came down from the mountains with the harem of Khalil Khan, the Kurdish chief, who is to remain here as a hostage for his tribe, mademoiselle.”

“But where are they now?”

“In the rooms at the other side of this house, mademoiselle. The Um-ul-Pasha arranged that you should be lodged quite alone this last night.”

A flood of further questions was trembling on Cecil’s lips, but the courtyard had now been reached, and the mule-litter was waiting. Cecil and Um Yusuf were helped into their accustomed seats, to carry on during the ride an incoherent conversation, marked by bursts of enlightenment as fresh confirmations of Azim Bey’s words occurred to them. Arrived at their destination, the Bey met them again, and seizing Cecil’s hand as soon as she had dismounted, hurried her through rooms and passages in breathless haste.

“Oh, by the bye, mademoiselle,” he said, as they entered the house, “it was the Um-ul-Pasha’s special wish that I should tell you that the gentleman you are going to see is the one she meant you to marry.”

“So I understood,” said Cecil, much perplexed.

“Oh, well, you can believe it or not, as you like, mademoiselle.”

“Bey, what do you mean?” demanded Cecil, pausing to look back and see whether Um Yusuf was following. “Why shouldn’t I believe it when you told me so yourself?”

“Oh, never mind, mademoiselle, only come. It is all right now--all right,” he repeated. “My heart is almost bursting, I am so happy.”

“But why?” asked Cecil.

“I can’t help it, mademoiselle, I scarcely know what to do. Now draw your veil close, we are coming to the _selamlik_. Dear mademoiselle,” and he stopped suddenly, “you have quite forgiven me--you are sure--for _his_ death?”

“Dear boy, why do you remind me of this just now?” asked Cecil, the tears rising to her eyes once more. “I have forgiven you, long ago.”

“I knew it, mademoiselle, but I wanted to hear you say it again. Go into that room,” and Azim Bey dashed off with something like a sob.

Sorely puzzled, Cecil advanced in the direction he indicated, and drew aside the curtain over the doorway. Through the mist of her tears she saw a gaunt, dark-bearded man, wearing the regulation frock-coat and fez, standing with his back to her and looking out of the window.

“An Armenian!” she said to herself, perceiving at once the unwelcome suitor whom she was to put out of his misery. “Monsieur----”

The man turned round, and Cecil stood awestruck and speechless. Had that rocky grave in the mountains of Kurdistan given up its dead? She dropped the curtain, and staggered blindly across the floor with outstretched hands.

“_Charlie?_” she gasped, tremblingly.

The room was reeling with her, but strong arms caught her as she nearly fell, and the voice she had thought never to hear again was in her ears.

“Cecil, my own darling, look at me. Don’t cry so dreadfully--it breaks my heart. Have I frightened you so much?”

“They told me you were dead,” she murmured, when she could still the long-drawn sobs which broke from her in the stress of that first recognition.

“And they told me you were going to marry another fellow,” he retorted, quickly, “but I never believed it. Still, I never thought I should see you again, my dearest girl.”

“But Hanna saw you killed--at least he saw you dead.”

“I don’t know how he managed it,” said Charlie, in his driest tones.

“Nor do I,” cried Cecil, with a burst of hysterical laughter. “But you must have been wounded, Charlie. You could never have been thrown down that cliff without being hurt. Besides, he saw you.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” said Charlie. “Have you and Hanna been concocting horrors between you? Don’t you believe now that I am alive?”

“But I have seen it,” persisted Cecil, “over and over again.”

“Oh, this is hopeless,” said Charlie. “Leave it alone for the present, my darling, and let us puzzle it out afterwards. Taking it for granted that I am alive, are you glad to see me?”

“Glad? Oh, Charlie!” Cecil’s tone was answer enough.

“Let me look at you, dear,” she said, after a blissful pause, and raising her head from his shoulder she scanned his face. Very thin, very bright-eyed, very weather-beaten, it was the face of the old Charlie still, but there seemed to her to be in it a strength and a purpose which it had lacked in former days.

“And you, Cecil? You have been ill, I’m certain. Been crying over me, thinking I was dead, poor little girl?” and he kissed her tenderly.

“Oh, what do I signify?” she cried. “Tell me about yourself, Charlie. Where have you been?”

“In the hills, slave to an old brute of a Kurd named Ismail Khan Beg. They didn’t treat me badly at first, except that they took away my own clothes and gave me some of their old ones to wear. When a Kurd has done with his things, Cecil, I can tell you they are rags and something more--ugh! Well, they got rather fond of me, because I doctored them a little, and so on; but it didn’t do me much good after all, for old Ismail took it into his head to offer to adopt me as his heir, if I would become a Mohammedan and join the tribe. There was a giddy pinnacle of success for you, Cecil! but I didn’t mount it, and they all turned rusty. The less said about the last few months the better----”

“My dear brave boy,” murmured Cecil.

“Well, one day a messenger came from the Pasha demanding that I should be given up to him. It sounded rather like a death-sentence, remembering the circumstances under which I left Baghdad, but anything was better than the life I was leading, so I came away in durance vile. I was brought down here under a very strong guard, with that fiend Karalampi at the head of it. It was he who told me that lie about you, and of course I didn’t believe it, but when you cried so on seeing me I couldn’t tell what to think. Then I was put in prison here, but this morning they fetched me out and gave me fresh clothes and let me have a bath. I know now just how Joseph felt when he was taken out of prison and brought before the king, though Ahmed Khémi in an awful funk isn’t exactly regal.”

“Take care. There’s some one coming,” said Cecil, moving hastily to the window, away from Charlie.

“Who cares?” he asked, following her immediately, just as the curtain at the doorway was drawn aside, and M. Karalampi appeared, escorting Lady Haigh.

“I have the happiness of bringing about a family reunion, M. le docteur,” observed the Greek to Charlie, as Cecil and her friend rushed into each other’s arms. Charlie shrugged his shoulders. In this moment of happiness he could afford to disregard even M. Karalampi, provided he did not make himself too objectionable.

“And now, Cecil darling,” pursued Lady Haigh, when she had bestowed a sounding embrace and a burst of tears on Charlie, “come back with me.”

“But am I not to stay here?” asked Cecil in amazement.

“Not unless you wish to become an inmate of the harem for the space of your natural life,” said Lady Haigh. “Why, my dear child, Christmas is over, and your engagement here is terminated. I suppose you will soon be homeward bound, but I must have you for a little while at the Residency first.”

“Allow me to have the felicity of escorting Mdlle. Antaza,” said M. Karalampi, as Lady Haigh turned to descend to the courtyard. He offered his arm to Cecil, but Charlie was before him.

“Thank you, but you shall not come between us again,” he said, and M. Karalampi was fain to practise his chivalry on Lady Haigh.

* * * * * * *

Cecil’s stay at the Residency proved to be an eventful one. Lady Haigh and Charlie put their heads together, and the results of their consultation presented themselves in the form of two incompatible propositions--namely, that it was absolutely necessary that an escort should be found for Cecil throughout her long journey back to England, but that there was no prospect that any member of the English colony would be returning home just at present. The net conclusion of these contradictory premisses was a self-evident truth, which, as Cecil said, gave the crown to the bad logic of the whole proceeding. The only thing to be done was that she and Charlie should be married at Baghdad, and consider the voyage home in the light of a honeymoon trip. To every one else this seemed a most fitting solution of the difficulty, and Cecil acquiesced in it with a submissiveness which would have astonished herself a year or two before.

“It is not fair of you to take me by surprise in this way now, Charlie, after all that has happened,” she said. “My pride is broken, and I don’t mind confessing that I couldn’t part with you again.”

This accommodating spirit was hailed as altogether satisfactory by Lady Haigh, although she took occasion in private to admonish Cecil not to make Charlie proud by letting him think that she could not do without him. This advice was supported by many apposite illustrations, but Cecil laughed in her sleeve, and contrasted Lady Haigh’s preaching with her practice, for when she and Sir Dugald were separated, she could think and speak of little beside him. But having done her duty and relieved her conscience, the elder lady turned with a glad heart to the making of preparations for the wedding. Of course the ceremony was to be performed by Dr Yehudi, and Sir Dugald consented, under protest, to give away the bride.

“I disapprove of the whole affair,” he said to Charlie, “and I cannot see why I should be obliged to seem to give my sanction to it. If Miss Anstruther did me the honour to ask my advice even now, I should feel bound to advise her to throw you over, but she hasn’t. At any rate, since she is foolish enough to take you, I have had to give up the opinion I once held of her good sense.”

“Your bark was always worse than your bite, Sir Dugald,” laughed Charlie, who had had time to arrive at this conclusion now that he was no longer on an official footing with the Balio Bey. And indeed Sir Dugald gave himself infinite trouble in disentangling and setting right the complicated affairs of the pair, although when he was at home he entreated his wife to keep those two out of his sight, for they looked so absurdly happy he could not stand it.

“You will be pleased to know,” he said, coming into the Residency verandah one day after a lengthy interview with the Pasha at the Palace, “that all you have gone through is nothing but a series of practical jokes.”

“Very practical jokes indeed!” said Charlie, growing rather red, while Cecil, glancing up into Sir Dugald’s impenetrable eyes, saw his eyebrows twitching at the corners.

“Oh, Sir Dugald, you are joking!” she cried.

“Not at all,” said Sir Dugald, sitting down in a long wicker chair and stretching himself luxuriously; “the joke is all on the side of the Pasha’s household, I assure you. Egerton’s leaving Baghdad was a joke of Azim Bey’s; so was his capture by the Kurds. His pretended death, your imprisonment, Miss Anstruther, and the attempt to marry you off to some native, were little jokes of the Kitchuk Khanum Effendi’s, got up in pure lightness of heart, just to relieve the monotony of harem existence. The Um-ul-Pasha shares in the family tastes, so she co-operated with her Excellency, and Karalampi acted as a kind of master of the revels, humouring the rest by lending his experience to make their play more real.”

“I can’t make out that business about the native,” said Charlie, meditatively. “We are evidently meant to understand that he was a myth, and that the Um-ul-Pasha intended all along to play the part of a fairy godmother, and bring us together again. Is it so?”

“Not a bit,” said Sir Dugald. “The fellow was a flesh-and-blood reality. I believe he is some relation to the Levantine woman who has done all the Um-ul-Pasha’s dirty work in this business.”

“Mdlle. Katrina’s nephew!” cried Cecil, in mingled astonishment and disgust.

“Yes, the plan was very complete,” said Sir Dugald. “And it was splendidly managed!” he cried, with the admiration of an accomplished artist for the masterpiece of a fellow-craftsman. “The way all the parts dovetail into one another is so good. Why, if it had not been for that utterly unexpected letter from Mrs Howard White, we might never have been the wiser! Just think of it, Miss Anstruther. There was Egerton up in the mountains, unable to escape or to communicate with me. There were you at Sardiyeh, miles away from Egerton in reality, and practically much more, since your gaolers were Turks and his Kurds. Still, you would have been pretty sure to have made inquiries and discovered where he was, and to have found some way of communicating with him, as long as you thought he was alive, so you had to believe him dead. That, again, was excellently done. To dress up some dead body in Egerton’s clothes, pitch it over the cliff, and show it to Hanna as his master’s, was very good, but it was still better to let him escape and tell his tale, and best of all to secure him and put him in safe keeping as soon as it was done. That disposed of both of you, besides working off Karalampi’s little grudges. He felt quite safe, for he had Azim Bey’s authority for a good deal, and he knew that he would not dare to say anything about it.”

“But what was the good of it all?” said Charlie. “It seems rather aimless--so much trouble without any very important result.”

“Ah, you forget the part of the plot which failed,” said Sir Dugald, quickly. “It may be rather lowering to your self-esteem, but you must remember that you two Europeans were not the chief persons aimed at. The Um-ul-Pasha and the Kitchuk Khanum Effendi had their end in view, and that was to get rid of Azim Bey; to get rid of you and Miss Anstruther was only a means of attaining that end. Everything went well as far as that. You were out of the way, and that gave them the opportunity of keeping Miss Anstruther out of the way too. Azim Bey was left unprotected. Then came the unlooked-for blow which spoiled the scheme--the Pasha’s leaving Karalampi behind with the Mutesalim. The Kitchuk Khanum Effendi completed the ruin of the plot, and when once we had had Mrs White’s letter, and begun to make inquiries, they had to patch things up as best they could. Miss Anstruther was to be married off and taken out of the way; and as for you, Egerton, I think you would have disappeared mysteriously as soon as you set foot outside the Palace, which would have saved them a good deal of trouble.”

“And you are really going to let them carry it all off as a joke?” asked Cecil, indignantly.

“Well,” said Sir Dugald, “I have pointed out to the Pasha the fact that the peculiar sense of humour inherent in his family is inconveniently strong and must be checked, and he has promised to see to it.”

“But what does it all mean?” inquired Cecil, in bewilderment.

“It simply means that the Pasha is bound to hush the matter up at any cost, and that this is the only way in which he can make a show of accounting for the circumstances. Of course he has to pay for it, but he prefers that to embroiling himself with Tahir Pasha, the Khanum Effendi’s father, or with the Hajar, and creating a fearful scandal in the city. I have made sure, Miss Anstruther, that your salary is not to be docked on account of your alleged illness, and you are to receive the _bakhshish_ agreed upon from the beginning. Your maid, and Egerton and his servant, are all to receive compensation, of course on the understood condition that they hold their tongues about what has taken place.”

“But is the Pasha to pay it all?” asked Cecil. “Surely that isn’t fair?”

“It is not poetical justice, I grant you, especially since Karalampi retires to his native Smyrna with a handsome sum of hush-money in his pocket. But it puts it in a better light when you consider that if the Pasha had never employed Karalampi, he would never have had to pay. Or, to go back to first principles, it would have been the same if he had been content with one wife, or even with having had three, and had not married the Khanum Effendi, or if, having married her, he had kept her in better order. As for her, she has done for her son’s chance of inheriting any but a very small share of his father’s property, and brought herself very near a divorce, and that ought to keep her quiet for the future. Then she and her mother-in-law have quarrelled violently, and the Um-ul-Pasha has cursed Najib Bey, and taken Azim Bey into favour, which is also satisfactory. By the bye, that pupil of yours is a queer little specimen, Miss Anstruther.”

“He is very happy just now in having realised an old ambition,” said Cecil, laughing. “He has been both the villain and the _deus ex machinâ_ of the story.”

“Well, there’s no accounting for tastes,” said Sir Dugald, sententiously. “Ambitions are queer things. Egerton’s is to set things right generally, I believe. I hope you realise, Miss Anstruther, that you are in for a hornets’ nest at home? Egerton will go about hunting up abuses and attacking vested interests until you are universally hated, and even think with envy of us sweltering out here. Still, better at home than in Baghdad. There may be a niche for faddists in England, but in the East we want men who can pull together.”

“And in your view that covers a multitude of sins?” said Cecil. “No, Sir Dugald, I am not going to begin an argument. I know that when you and I argue it only leads to our each being more firmly convinced of the truth of our respective opinions than before. But I am sorry, for one thing, that we are going to live at home. I used to like to think that we might settle down here, and Charlie could start a medical mission to help Dr Yehudi’s work.”

“Poor old Yehudi! I think I should have been obliged to interfere to protect him,” said Sir Dugald. “He would have had the mob pulling the Mission-house about his ears in a week. No; for the sake of the Mission, and of the unoffending missionaries, I am sure we may be thankful that Egerton’s past record effectually prevents his settling in Baghdad.”

“Well,” said Cecil, with a little sigh, “I think I am learning not to try and plan my life beforehand, but to take it as it comes. Nothing has ever happened yet as I have expected it.”

“I should not have suspected you of being a disenchanted cynic,” said Sir Dugald, as he rose, but Cecil looked up at him in surprise.

“But I am not complaining,” she said. “What I meant was that I thought I was beginning to see how much better it was that it should be so, because we can’t tell what is before us. Why, when we left Sardiyeh, I felt so miserable that I told Um Yusuf that I should like to stay there always. She said that was only foolishness, but it was what I really felt, and just think what I should have missed if I had been able to do as I liked! And at the very beginning, too, before I came out here at all, if my life had been as I planned it, I should have been teaching the children at home still, and I should never have left England--nor met Charlie.”

“And that would have been a loss?” asked Sir Dugald.

Cecil gave him a glance of pity and reproach.

“A very great loss,” she said.

THE END.

FOOTNOTES.

[01] Emineh this name, the feminine form of Emin or Amin, is the Amina of the earlier translations of the ‘Arabian Nights.’ Khanum means lady.

[02] Baghdad is not now a station of the London Society for Promoting Christianity among the Jews. The Church Missionary Society has a medical mission there.

[03] Jamileh this name is also spelt Gemila, Djamilé, and Jameelie. The last form gives the pronunciation.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES.

Sydney C. Grier was the pseudonym of Hilda Caroline Gregg.

This book is part of the author’s “Modern East” series. The full series, in order, being:

The Flag of the Adventurer
Two Strong Men
The Advanced-Guard
His Excellency’s English Governess
Peace With Honour
The Warden of the Marches

The last line on page 308 is missing, leaving the sentence “If the Pasha were here, I would go straight to” unfinished. I have marked this lacuna in the text. This flaw (as well as those below) is also present in the 1896 and 1902 Blackwood (UK) editions. If you can provide the missing text from an authoritative source please contact Project Gutenberg support.

Alterations to the text:

A few minor punctuation corrections--mostly involving the pairing of quotation marks.

Note: minor spelling and hyphenization inconsistencies have been left as is.

[Title Page]

Add brief note indicating this novel’s position in the series. See above.

[Footnotes]

Relabel footnote markers, collect footnotes at end of text, and add an entry to the TOC.

[Chapter III]

Change “mingled Turkish, Circassian, and _Egyptain_ blood” to _Egyptian_.

[Chapter VII]

“they were conducted to a _minature_ courtyard” to _miniature_.

[Chapter IX]

“Much _suprised_ that the Pasha should pay” to _surprised_.

[Chapter XVI]

“he was at first _ininclined_ to admire” to _inclined_.

[Chapter XVII]

“observation of Sir Dugald and Captain _Rossitter_” to _Rossiter_.

[Chapter XXII]

“while a brisk _fusilade_ from the summit” to _fusillade_.

[Chapter XXVI]

“Um Yusuf shook her head but Cecil, knowing the...” add comma after _head_.

[Chapter XXVII]

“the _ceremomy_ was to be performed by Dr Yehudi” to _ceremony_.

[End of Text]