Kitabı oku: «In the Track of the Troops», sayfa 7

Chapter Ten.
Involves Lancey in Great Perplexities, which Culminate in a Vast Surprise

No sooner did the dark and unpretending door of Sanda Pasha’s konak or palace open than Lancey’s eyes were dazzled by the blaze of light and splendour within, and when he had entered, accustomed though he was to “good society” in England, he was struck dumb with astonishment. Perhaps the powerful contrast between the outside and the interior of this Eastern abode had something to do with the influence on his mind.

Unbridled luxury met his eyes in whatever direction he turned. There was a double staircase of marble; a court paved with mosaic-work of brilliant little stones; splendid rooms, the walls of which were covered with velvet paper of rich pattern and colour. Gilding glittered everywhere—on cornices, furniture, and ceilings, from which the eyes turned with double zest to the soft light of marble sculpture judiciously disposed on staircase and in chambers. There were soft sofas that appeared to embrace you as you sank into them; pictures that charmed the senses; here a bath of snow-white marble, there gushing fountains and jets of limpid water that appeared to play hide-and-seek among green leaves and lovely flowers, and disappeared mysteriously,—in short, everything tasteful and beautiful that man could desire. Of course Lancey did not take all this in at once. Neither did he realise the fact that the numerous soft-moving and picturesque attendants, black and white, whom he saw, were a mere portion of an army of servants, numbering upwards of a thousand souls, whom this Pasha retained. These did not include the members of his harem. He had upwards of a hundred cooks and two hundred grooms and coachmen. This household, it is said, consumed, among other things, nearly 7000 pounds of vegetables a day, and in winter there were 900 fires kindled throughout the establishment.¹

But of all this, and a great deal more, Lancey had but a faint glimmering as he was led through the various corridors and rooms towards a central part of the building.

Here he was shown into a small but comfortable apartment, very Eastern in its character, with a mother-of-pearl table in one corner bearing some slight refreshment, and a low couch at the further end.

“Eat,” said the black slave who conducted him. He spoke in English, and pointed to the table; “an’ sleep,” he added, pointing to the couch. “Sanda Pasha sees you de morrow.”

With that he left Lancey staring in a bewildered manner at the door through which he had passed.

“Sanda Pasha,” repeated the puzzled man slowly, “will see me ‘de morrow,’ will he? Well, if ‘de morrow’ ever comes, w’ich I doubt, Sanda Pasha will find ’e ’as made a most hegragious mistake of some sort. ’Owever that’s ’is business, not mine.”

Having comforted himself with this final reflection on the culminating event of the day, he sat down to the mother-of-pearl table and did full justice to the Pasha’s hospitality by consuming the greater part of the viands thereon, consisting largely of fruits, and drinking the wine with critical satisfaction.

Next morning he was awakened by his black friend of the previous night, who spread on the mother-of-pearl table a breakfast which in its elegance appeared to be light, but which on close examination turned out, like many light things in this world, to be sufficiently substantial for an ordinary man.

Lancey now expected to be introduced to the Pasha, but he was mistaken. No one came near him again till the afternoon, when the black slave reappeared with a substantial dinner. The Pasha was busy, he said, and would see him in the evening. The time might have hung heavily on the poor man’s hands, but, close to the apartment in which he was confined there was a small marble court, open to the sky, in which were richly-scented flowers and rare plants and fountains which leaped or trickled into tanks filled with gold-fish. In the midst of these things he sat or sauntered dreamily until the shades of evening fell. Then the black slave returned and beckoned him to follow.

He did so and was ushered into a delicious little boudoir, whose windows, not larger than a foot square, were filled with pink, blue, and yellow glass. Here, the door being softly shut behind him, Lancey found himself in the presence of the red-bearded officer whom he had met on board the Turkish monitor.

Redbeard, as Lancey called him, mentally, reclined on a couch and smoked a chibouk.

“Come here,” he said gravely, in broken English. Lancey advanced into the middle of the apartment. “It vas you what blew’d up de monitor,” he said sternly, sending a thick cloud of smoke from his lips.

“No, your—.” Lancey paused. He knew not how to address his questioner, but, feeling that some term of respect was necessary, he coined a word for the occasion—

“No, your Pashaship, I did nothink of the sort. I’m as hinnocent of that ewent as a new-born babe.”

“Vat is your name?”

“Lancey.”

“Ha! your oder name.”

“Jacob.”

“Ho! My name is Sanda Pasha. You have hear of me before?”

“Yes, on board the Turkish monitor.”

“Just so; but before zat, I mean,” said the Pasha, with a keen glance.

Lancey was a bold and an honest man. He would not condescend to prevaricate.

“I’m wery sorry, your—your Pashaship, but, to tell the plain truth, I never did ’ear of you before that.”

“Well, zat matters not’ing. I do go now to sup vid von friend, Hamed Pasha he is called. You go vid me. Go, get ready.”

Poor Lancey opened his eyes in amazement, and began to stammer something about having nothing to get ready with, and a mistake being made, but the Pasha cut him short with another “Go!” so imperative that he was fain to obey promptly.

Having no change of raiment, the perplexed man did his best by washing his face and hands, and giving his hair and clothes an extra brush, to make himself more fit for refined society. On being called to rejoin the Pasha, he began to apologise for the style of his dress, but the peremptory despot cut him short by leading the way to his carriage, in which they were driven to the konak or palace of Hamed Pasha.

They were shown into a richly-furnished apartment where Hamed was seated on a divan, with several friends, smoking and sipping brandy and water, for many of these eminent followers of the Prophet pay about as little regard to the Prophet’s rules as they do to the laws of European society.

Hamed rose to receive his brother Pasha, and Lancey was amazed to find that he was a Nubian, with thick lips, flat nose, and a visage as black as coal. He was also of gigantic frame, insomuch that he dwarfed the rest of the company, including Lancey himself.

Hamed had raised himself from a low rank in society to his present high position by dint of military ability, great physical strength, superior intelligence, reckless courage, and overflowing animal spirits. When Sanda Pasha entered he was rolling his huge muscular frame on the divan, and almost weeping with laughter at something that had been whispered in his ear by a dervish who sat beside him.

Sanda introduced Lancey as an Englishman, on hearing which the black Pasha seized and wrung his hands, amid roars of delight, and torrents of remarks in Turkish, while he slapped him heartily on the shoulder. Then, to the amazement of Lancey, he seized him by the collar of his coat, unbuttoned it, and began to pull it off. This act was speedily explained by the entrance of an attendant with a pale blue loose dressing-gown lined with fur, which the Pasha made his English guest put on, and sit down beside him.

Having now thoroughly resigned himself to the guidance of what his Turkish friends styled “fate,” Lancey did his best to make himself agreeable, and gave himself up to the enjoyment of the hour.

There were present in the room, besides those already mentioned, a Turkish colonel of cavalry and a German doctor who spoke Turkish fluently. The party sat down to supper on cushions round a very low table. The dervish, Hadji Abderhaman, turned out to be a gourmand, as well as a witty fellow and a buffoon. The Pasha always gave the signal to begin to each dish, and between courses the dervish told stories from the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments, or uttered witticisms which kept the Nubian Pasha in roars of laughter. They were all very merry, for the host was fond of boisterous fun and practical jokes, while his guests were sympathetic. Lancey laughed as much as any of them, for although he could not, despite his previous studies, follow the conversation, he could understand the pantomime, and appreciated the viands highly. His red-bearded friend also came to his aid now and then with a few explanatory remarks in broken English.

At such times the host sat with a beaming smile on his black face, and his huge mouth half-expanded, looking from one to another, as if attempting to understand, and ready at a moment’s notice to explode in laughter, or admiration, or enthusiasm, according to circumstances.

“Hamed Pasha wants to know if you is in do army,” said Sanda Pasha.

“Not in the regulars,” replied Lancey, “but I ’ave bin, in the militia.”

The Nubian gave another roar of delight when this was translated, and extended his great hand to one whom he thenceforth regarded as a brother-in-arms. Lancey grasped and shook it warmly.

“Let the Englishman see your sword,” said Sanda in Turkish to Hamed.

Sanda knew his friend’s weak point. The sword was at once ordered in for inspection.

Truly it was a formidable weapon, which might have suited the fist of Goliath, and was well fitted for the brawny arm that had waved it aloft many a time in the smoke and din of battle. It was blunt and hacked on both edges with frequent use, but its owner would not have it sharpened on any account, asserting that a stout arm did not require a keen weapon.

While the attention of the company was taken up with this instrument of death, the dervish availed himself of the opportunity to secure the remains of a dish of rich cream, to which he had already applied himself more than once.

The Nubian observed the sly and somewhat greedy act with a twinkling eye. When the dervish had drained the dish, the host filled a glass full to the brim with vinegar, and, with fierce joviality, bade him drink it. The poor man hesitated, and said something about wine and a mistake, but the Pasha repeated “Drink!” with such a roar, and threw his sword down at the same time with such a clang on the marble floor, that the dervish swallowed the draught with almost choking celerity.

The result was immediately obvious on his visage; nevertheless he bore up bravely, and even cut a sorry joke at his own expense, while the black giant rolled on his divan, and the tears ran down his swarthy cheeks.

The dervish was an adventurer who had wandered about the country as an idle vagabond until the war broke out, when he took to army-contracting with considerable success. It was in his capacity of contractor that he became acquainted with the boisterous black Pasha, who greatly appreciated his low but ready wit, and delighted in tormenting him. On discovering that the dervish was a voracious eater, he pressed—I might say forced—him with savage hospitality to eat largely of every dish, so that, when pipes were brought after supper, the poor dervish was more than satisfied.

“Now, you are in a fit condition to sing,” cried Hamed, slapping the over-fed man on the shoulder; “come, give us a song: the Englishman would like to hear one of your Arabian melodies.”

Redbeard translated this to Lancey, who protested that, “nothink would afford ’im greater delight.”

The dervish was not easily overcome. Despite his condition, he sang, well and heartily, a ditty in Arabic, about love and war, which the Nubian Pasha translated into Turkish for the benefit of the German doctor, and Sanda Pasha rendered into broken English for Lancey.

But the great event of the evening came, when the English guest, in obedience to a call, if not a command, from his host, sang an English ballad. Lancey had a sweet and tuneful voice, and was prone to indulge in slow pathetic melodies. The black Pasha turned out to be intensely fond of music, and its effect on his emotional spirit was very powerful. At the first bar of his guest’s flowing melody his boisterous humour vanished: his mouth and eyes partly opened with a look of pleased surprise; he evidently forgot himself and his company, and when, although unintelligible to him, the song proceeded in more touching strains, his capacious chest began to heave and his eyes filled with tears. The applause, not only of the host, but the company, was loud and emphatic, and Lancey was constrained to sing again. After that the colonel sang a Turkish war-song. The colonel’s voice was a tremendous bass, and he sang with such enthusiasm that the hearers were effectively stirred. Hamed, in particular, became wild with excitement. He half-suited his motions, while beating time, to the action of each verse, and when, as a climax in the last verse, the colonel gave the order to “charge!” Hamed uttered a roar, sprang up, seized his great sabre, and caused it to whistle over his friends with a sweep that might have severed the head of an elephant!

At this point, one of the attendants, who appeared to be newly appointed to his duties, and who had, more than once during the feast, attracted attention by his stupidity, shrank in some alarm from the side of his wild master and tumbled over a cushion.

Hamed glared at him for a moment, with a frown that was obviously not put on, and half-raised the sabre as if about to cut him down. Instantly the frown changed to a look of contempt, and almost as quickly was replaced by a gleam of fun.

“Stand forth,” said Hamed, dropping the sabre and sitting down.

The man obeyed with prompt anxiety.

“Your name?”

“Mustapha.”

“Mustapha,” repeated the Pasha, “I observe that you are a capable young fellow. You are a man of weight, as the marble floor can testify. I appoint you to the office of head steward. Go, stand up by the door.”

The man made a low obeisance and went.

“Let the household servants and slaves pass before their new superior and do him honour.”

With promptitude, and with a gravity that was intensely ludicrous—for none dared to smile in the presence of Hamed Pasha—the servants of the establishment, having been summoned, filed before the new steward and bowed to him. This ceremony over, Mustapha was ordered to go and make a list of the poultry. The poor man was here obliged to confess that he could not write.

“You can draw?” demanded the Pasha fiercely.

With some hesitation the steward admitted that he could—“a little.”

“Go then, draw the poultry, every cock and hen and chicken,” said the Pasha, with a wave of his hand which dismissed the household servants and sent the luckless steward to his task.

After this pipes were refilled, fresh stories were told, and more songs were sung. After a considerable time Mustapha returned with a large sheet of paper covered with hieroglyphics. The man looked timid as he approached and presented it to his master.

The Pasha seized the sheet. “What have we here?” he demanded sternly.

The man said it was portraits of the cocks and hens.

“Ha!” exclaimed the Pasha, “a portrait-gallery of poultry—eh!”

He held the sheet at arm’s-length, and regarded it with a fierce frown; but his lips twitched, and suddenly relaxed into a broad grin, causing a tremendous display of white teeth and red gums.

“Poultry! ha! just so. What is this?”

He pointed to an object with a curling tail, which Mustapha assured him was a cock.

“What! a cock? where is the comb? Who ever heard of a cock without a comb, eh? And that, what is that?”

Mustapha ventured to assert that it was a chicken.

“A chicken,” cried the Pasha fiercely; “more like a dromedary. You rascal! did you not say that you could draw? Go! deceiver, you are deposed. Have him out and set him to cleanse the hen-house, and woe betide you if it is not as clean as your own conscience before to-morrow morning—away!”

The Pasha shouted the last word, and then fell back in fits of laughter; while the terrified man fled to the hen-house, and drove its occupants frantic in his wild attempts to cleanse their Augean stable.

It was not until midnight that Sanda Pasha and Lancey, taking leave of Hamed and his guests, returned home.

“Come, follow me,” said the Pasha, on entering the palace.

He led Lancey to the room in which they had first met, and, seating himself on a divan, lighted his chibouk.

“Sit down,” he said, pointing to a cushion that lay near him on the marble floor.

Lancey, although unaccustomed to such a low seat, obeyed.

“Smoke,” said the Pasha, handing a cigarette to his guest.

Lancey took the cigarette, but at this point his honest soul recoiled from the part he seemed to be playing. He rose, and, laying the cigarette respectfully on the ground, said—

“Sanda Pasha, it’s not for the likes o’ me to be sittin’ ’ere smokin’ with the likes o’ you, sir. There’s some mistake ’ere, hobviously. I’ve been treated with the consideration doo to a prince since I fell into the ’ands of the Turks, and it is right that I should at once correct this mistake, w’ich I’d ’ave done long ago if I could ’ave got the Turks who’ve ’ad charge of me to understand Hinglish. I’m bound to tell you, sir, that I’m on’y a groom in a Hinglish family, and makes no pretence to be hanythink else, though circumstances ’as putt me in a false position since I come ’ere. I ’ope your Pashaship won’t think me ungracious, sir, but I can’t a-bear to sail under false colours.”

To this speech Sanda Pasha listened with profound gravity, and puffed an enormous cloud from his lips at its conclusion.

“Sit down,” he said sternly.

Lancey obeyed.

“Light your cigarette.”

There was a tone of authority in the Pasha’s voice which Lancey did not dare to resist. He lighted the cigarette.

“Look me in the face,” said the Pasha suddenly, turning his piercing grey eyes full on him guest.

Supposing that this was a prelude to an expression of doubt as to his honesty, Lancey did look the Pasha full in the face, and returned his stare with interest.

“Do you see this cut over the bridge of my nose?” demanded the Pasha.

Lancey saw it, and admitted that it must have been a bad one.

“And do you see the light that is blazing in these two eyes?” he added, pointing to his own glowing orbs with a touch of excitement.

Lancey admitted that he saw the light, and began to suspect that the Pasha was mad. At the same time he was struck by the sudden and very great improvement in his friend’s English.

“But for you,” continued the Pasha, partly raising himself, “that cut had never been, and the light of those eyes would now be quenched in death!”

The Pasha looked at his guest more fixedly than ever, and Lancey, now feeling convinced of his entertainer’s madness, began to think uneasily of the best way to humour him.

“Twenty years ago,” continued the Pasha slowly and with a touch of pathos in his tone, “I received this cut from a boy in a fight at school,” (Lancey thought that the boy must have been a bold fellow), “and only the other day I was rescued by a man from the waters of the Danube.” (Lancey thought that, on the whole, it would have been well if the man had left him to drown.) “The name of the boy and the name of the man was the same. It was Jacob Lancey!”

Lancey’s eyes opened and his lower jaw dropped. He sat on his cushion aghast.

“Jacob Lancey,” continued the Pasha in a familiar tone that sent a thrill to the heart of his visitor, “hae ye forgotten your auld Scotch freen’ and school-mate Sandy? In Sanda Pasha you behold Sandy Black!”

Lancey sprang to his knees—the low couch rendering that attitude natural—grasped the Pasha’s extended hand, and gazed wistfully into his eyes.

“Oh Sandy, Sandy!” he said, in a voice of forced calmness, while he shook his head reproachfully, “many and many a time ’ave I prophesied that you would become a great man, but little did I think that you’d come to this—a May’omedan and a Turk.”

Unable to say more, Lancey sat down on his cushion, clasped his hands over his knees, and gazed fixedly at his old friend and former idol.

“Lancey, my boy—it is quite refreshing to use these old familiar words again,—I am no more a Mohammedan than you are.”

“Then you’re a ’ypocrite,” replied the other promptly.

“By no means,—at least I hope not,” said the Pasha, with a smile and a slightly troubled look. “Surely there is a wide space between a thoroughly honest man and an out-and-out hypocrite. I came here with no religion at all. They took me by the hand and treated me kindly. Knowing nothing, I took to anything they chose to teach me. What could a youth do? Now I am what I am, and I cannot change it.”

Lancey knew not what to reply to this. Laying his hand on the rich sleeve of the Pasha he began in the old tone and in the fulness of his heart.

“Sandy, my old friend, as I used to all but worship, nominal May’omedan though you be, it’s right glad I am to—” words failed him here.

“Well, well,” said the Pasha, smiling, and drawing a great cloud from his chibouk, “I’m as glad as yourself, and not the less so that I’ve been able to do you some small service in the way of preventing your neck from being stretched; and that brings me to the chief point for which I have brought you to my palace, namely, to talk about matters which concern yourself, for it is obvious that you cannot remain in this country in time of war with safety unless you have some fixed position. Tell me, now, where you have been and what doing since we last met in Scotland, and I will tell you what can be done for you in Turkey.”

Hereupon Lancey began a long-winded and particular account of his life during the last twenty years. The Pasha smoked and listened with grave interest. When the recital was finished he rose.

“Now, Lancey,” said he, “it is time that you and I were asleep. In the morning I have business to attend to. When it is done we will continue our talk. Meanwhile let me say that I see many little ways in which you can serve the Turks, if you are so minded.”

“Sandy Black,” said Lancey, rising with a look of dignity, “you are very kind—just what I would ’ave expected of you—but you must clearly understand that I will serve only in works of ’umanity. In a milingtary capacity I will serve neither the Turks nor the Roossians.”

“Quite right, my old friend, I will not ask military service of you, so good-night. By the way, it may be as well to remind you that, except between ourselves, I am not Sandy Black but Sanda Pasha,—you understand?”

With an arch smile the Pasha laid down his chibouk and left the room, and the black attendant conducted Lancey to his bedroom. The same attendant took him, the following morning after breakfast, to the Pasha’s “Selamlik” or “Place of Salutations,” in order that he might see how business matters were transacted in Turkey.

The Selamlik was a large handsome room filled with men, both with and without turbans, who had come either to solicit a favour or a post, or to press on some private business. On the entrance of the Pasha every one rose. When he was seated, there began a curious scene of bowing to the ground and touching, by each person present, of the mouth and head with the hand. This lasted full five minutes.

Sanda Pasha then received a number of business papers from an officer of the household, to which he applied himself with great apparent earnestness, paying no attention whatever to his visitors. Lancey observed, however, that his absorbed condition did not prevent a few of these visitors, apparently of superior rank, from approaching and whispering in his ear. To some of them he was gracious, to others cool, as they severally stated the nature of their business. No one else dared to approach until the reading of the papers was finished. Suddenly the Pasha appeared to get weary of his papers. He tossed them aside, ordered his carriage, rose hastily, and left the room. But this uncourteous behaviour did not appear to disconcert those who awaited his pleasure. Probably, like eels, they had got used to rough treatment. Some of them ran after the Pasha and tried to urge their suits in a few rapid sentences, others went off with a sigh or a growl, resolving to repeat the visit another day, while Sanda himself was whirled along at full speed to the Sublime Porte, to hold council with the Ministers of State on the arrangements for the war that had by that time begun to rage along the whole line of the Lower Danube—the Russians having effected a crossing in several places.

After enjoying himself for several days in the palace of his old school-mate, my worthy servant, being resolved not to quit the country until he had done his utmost to discover whether I was alive or drowned, accepted the offer of a situation as cook to one of the Turkish Ambulance Corps. Having received a suitable change of garments, with a private pass, and recommendations from the Pasha, he was despatched with a large body of recruits and supplies to the front.