The Prince of India; Or, Why Constantinople Fell Volume I Part 15

"Then I will be your Lael too."

He clasped her close to his breast, and kissed her, crying:

"My Lael has come back to me! G.o.d of my fathers, I thank thee!"

She respected his emotion, but at length, with her hand upon his shoulder, said:

"You and my father are friends, and thinking he came here, I came too."

"Is he at home?"

"I think so."

"Then we will go to him. You cannot be my Lael without his consent."

Presently, hand in hand, they descended the stairs, crossed the street, and were in the shopkeeper's presence.

The room was plainly but comfortably furnished as became the proprietor's fortune and occupation. Closer acquaintance, it is to be said, had dissipated the latent dread, which, as has been seen, marked Uel's first thought of intimacy between the stranger and the child. Seeing him old, and rich, and given to study, not to say careless of ordinary things, the father was beginning to entertain the idea that it might in some way be of advantage to the child could she become an object of interest to him.

Wherefore, as they entered now, he received them with a smile.

Traces of the emotion he had undergone were in the Prince's face, and when he spoke his voice was tremulous.

"Son of Jahdai," he said, standing, "I had once a wife and child. They perished-how and when, I cannot trust myself to tell. I have been faithful to their memory. From the day I lost them, I have gone up and down the world hunting for many things which I imagined might renew the happiness I had from them. I have been prodigal of grat.i.tude, admiration, friends.h.i.+p, and goodwill, and bestowed them singly and together, and often; but never have I been without consciousness of something else demanding to be given. Happiness is not all in receiving.

I pa.s.sed on a long time before it came to me that we are rich in affections not intended for h.o.a.rding, and that no one can be truly content without at least one object on which to lavish them. Here"--and he laid his hand on the child's head--"here is mine, found at last."

"Lael is a good girl," Uel said with pride.

"Yes, and as thou lovest her let me love her," the Prince responded.

Then, seeing Uel become serious, he added, "To help thee to my meaning, Lael was my child's name, and she was the image of this one; and as she died when fourteen, thy Lael's age, it is to me as if the tomb had miraculously rendered its victim back to me."

"Prince," said Uel, "had I thought she would not be agreeable to you, I should have been sorry."

"Understand, son of Jahdai," the other interposed, "I seek more of thee than thy permission to love her. I want to do by her as though she were mine naturally."

"You would not take her from me?"

"No. That would leave thee bereft as I have been. Like me, thou wouldst then go up and down looking for some one to take her place in thy heart.

Be thou her father still; only let me help thee fas.h.i.+on her future."

"Her birthrights are humble," the shopkeeper answered, doubtfully; for while in his secret heart he was flattered, his paternal feeling started a scruple hard to distinguish from fear.

A light shone brightly in the eyes of the elder Jew, and his head arose.

"Humble!" he said. "She is a daughter of Israel, an inheritor of the favor of the Lord G.o.d, to whom all things are possible. He keeps the destinies of his people. He--not thou or I--knows to what this little one may come. As we love her, let us hope the happiest and the highest, and prepare her for it. To this end it were best you allow her to come to me as to another father. I who teach the deaf and dumb to speak--Syama and Nilo the elder--will make her a scholar such as does not often grace a palace. She shall speak the Mediterranean tongues. There shall be no mysteries of India unknown to her. Mathematics shall bring the heavens to her feet. Especially shall she become wise in the Chronicles of G.o.d. At the same time, lest she be educated into unfitness for the present conditions of life, and be uns.e.xed, thou shalt find a woman familiar with society, and instal her in thy house as governess and example. If the woman be also of Israel, so much the better; for then we may expect faithfulness without jealousy. And further, son of Jahdai, be n.i.g.g.ardly in nothing concerning our Lael. Clothe her as she were the King's daughter. At going abroad, which she shall do with me in the street and on the water, I would have her sparkle with jewels, the observed of everybody, even the Emperor. And ask not doubtingly, 'Whence the money for all this?' I will find it. What sayest thou now?"

Uel did not hesitate.

"O Prince, as thou dost these things for her--so far beyond the best I can dream of--take her for thine, not less than mine."

With a beaming countenance, the elder raised the child, and kissed her on the forehead.

"Dost hear?" he said to her. "Now art thou my daughter."

She put her arms about his neck, then held them out to Uel, who took her, and kissed her, saying:

"Oh my Gul Bahar!"

"Good!" cried the Prince. "I accept the name. To distinguish the living from the dead, I too will call her my Gul Bahar."

Thereupon the men sat, and arranged the new relation, omitting nothing possible of antic.i.p.ation.

Next day the Prince's house was opened with every privilege to the child. A little later on a woman of courtly accomplishment was found and established under Uel's roof as governess. Thereupon the Mystic entered upon a season during which he forgot the judgment upon him, and all else save Gul Bahar, and the scheme he brought from c.i.p.ango. He was for the time as other men. In the lavishment of his love, richer of its long acc.u.mulation, he was faithful to his duty of teacher, and was amply rewarded by her progress in study.

BOOK III

THE PRINCESS IRENE

CHAPTER I

MORNING ON THE BOSPHORUS

Our narrative proceeds now from a day in the third year after Lael, the daughter of the son of Jahdai, dropped into the life of the Prince of India--a day in the vernal freshness of June.

From a low perch above the mountain behind Becos, the sun is delivering the opposite European sh.o.r.e of the Bosphorus from the lingering shades of night. Out on the bosom of the cla.s.sic channel vessels are swinging lazily at their anchorages. The masthead of each displays a flag bespeaking the nationality of the owner; here a Venetian, there a Genoese, yonder a Byzantine. Tremulous flares of mist, rising around the dark hulls, become entangled in the cordage, and as if there were no other escape, resolve themselves into air. Fisher boats are bringing their owners home from night-work over in the shallows of Indjerkeui.

Gulls and cormorants in contentious flocks, drive hither and thither, turning and tacking as the schools of small fish they are following turn and tack down in the warm blue-green depths to which they are native.

The many wings, in quick eccentric motion, give sparkling life to the empurpled distance.

The bay of Therapia, on the same European sh.o.r.e over against Becos, was not omitted from rescue by the sun. Within its lines this morning the s.h.i.+ps were in greater number than out in the channel--s.h.i.+ps of all grades, from the sea going commercial galley to the pleasure shallop which, if not the modern _caique_, was at least its ante-type in lightness and grace.

And as to the town, one had but to look at it to be sure it had undergone no recent change--that in the day of Constantine Dragases it was the same summer resort it had been in the day of Medea the sorceress--the same it yet is under sway of the benignant Abdul-Hamid.

From the lower point northwardly jutting finger-like into the current of the channel, the beach swept in a graceful curve around to the base of the promontory on the south. Then as now children amused themselves gathering the white and black pebbles with which it was strewn, and danced in and out with the friendly foam-capped waves. Then as now the houses seemed tied to the face of the hill one above another in streetless disarrangement; insomuch that the stranger viewing them from his boat below shuddered thinking of the wild play which would ensue did an earthquake shake the hill ever so lightly.

And then as now the promontory south served the bay as a partial land-lock. Then as now it arose boldly a half mountain densely verdurous, leaving barely s.p.a.ce enough for a roadway around its base.

Then as now a descending terrace of easy grade and lined with rock pine trees of broadest umbrella tops, slashed its whole townward front.

Sometime in the post-Medean period a sharp-eyed Greek discerned the advantages it offered for aesthetic purposes, and availed himself of them; so that in the age of our story its summit was tastefully embellished with water basins, white-roofed pavilions, and tessellated pavements Roman style. Alas, for the perishability of things human! And twice alas, that the beautiful should ever be the most perishable!

But it is now to be said we have spoken thus of the Bosphorus, and the bay and town of Therapia, and the high promontory, as accessories merely to a plot of ground under the promontory and linked to it by the descending terrace. There is no word fitly descriptive of the place.

Ravine implies narrowness; gorge signifies depth; valley means width; dell is too toylike. A summer retreat more delicious could not be imagined. Except at noon the sun did but barely glance into it. Extending hundreds of yards back from the bay toward the highlands west of the town, it was a perfected garden of roses and flowering vines and shrubs, with avenues of boxwood and acacias leading up to ample reservoirs hidden away in a grove of beeches. The water flowing thence became brooks or was diverted to enliven fountains. One pipe carried it in generous flow to the summit of the promontory. In this leafy Eden the birds of the climate made their home the year round. There the migratory nightingale came earliest and lingered longest, singing in the day as well as in the night. There one went regaled with the breath of roses commingled with that of the jasmine. There the bloom of the pomegranate flashed through the ordered thicket like red stars; there the luscious fig, ripening in its "beggar's jacket," offered itself for the plucking; there the murmur of the brooks was always in the listening ear.

Along the whole front of the garden, so perfectly a poet's ideal, stretched a landing defended from the incessant swash of the bay by a stone revetment. There was then a pavement of smoothly laid flags, and then a higher wall of dark rubble-work, coped with bevelled slabs. An open pavilion, with a bell-fas.h.i.+oned dome on slender pillars, all of wood red painted, gave admission to the garden. Then a roadway of gray pebbles and flesh-tinted sh.e.l.ls invited a visitor, whether afoot or on horseback, through clumps of acacias undergrown with carefully tended rosebushes, to a palace, which was to the garden what the central jewel is to the cl.u.s.ter of stones on "my lady's" ring.

Standing on a tumulus, a little removed from the foot of the promontory, the palace could be seen from cornice to base by voyagers on the bay, a quadrangular pile of dressed marble one story in height, its front relieved by a portico of many pillars finished in the purest Corinthian style. A stranger needed only to look at it once, glittering in the sun, creamy white in the shade, to decide that its owner was of high rank--possibly a n.o.ble--possibly the Emperor himself.