The Bride of the Nile (Historical Novel). Georg Ebers

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СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      “Courage, courage!” he said to himself. “Only preserve your presence of mind. What profit is life with loss of honor? Keep your eyes open; everything depends on that, Orion!”

      He succeeded in hastily collecting his thoughts, and exclaimed in a voice which lacked little of its usual eager cheerfulness:

      “How dismal you all look! It is indeed a terrible disaster that the dog should have handled the poor girl so roughly, and that our people should have behaved so outrageously; but, as I told you this morning, worthy Merchant, the guilty parties shall pay for it with their lives. My father, I am sure, will agree that you should deal with them according to your pleasure, and our leech Philippus, in spite of his youth, is a perfect Hippocrates I can assure you! He will patch up the fine fellow—your head-man I mean, and as to any question of compensation, my father—well, you know he is no haggler.”

      “I beg you not to add insult to the injury that I have suffered under your roof,” interrupted Haschim. “No amount of money can buy off my wrath over the spilt blood of a friend—and Rustem was my friend—a free and valiant youth. As to the punishment of the guilty: on that I insist. Blood cries for blood. That is our creed; and though yours, to be sure, enjoins the contrary, so far as I know you act by the same rule as we. All honor to your physician; but it goes to my heart, and raises my gall to see such things take place in the house of the man to whom the Khaliff has confided the weal or woe of Egyptian Christians. Your boasted tolerance has led to the death of an honest though humble man in a time of perfect peace—or at least maimed him for life. As to your honesty, it would seem …”

      “Who dares impugn it?” cried Orion.

      “I, young man,” replied the merchant with the calm dignity of age. “I, who sold this piece of work last evening, and find it this morning robbed of its most precious ornament.”

      “The great emerald has been cut from the hanging during the night.” Dame Neforis explained. “You yourself went with the man who carried it to the tablinum and saw it laid there.”

      “And in the very cloth in which your people had wrapped it,” added Orion. “Our good old Sebek there was with me. Who fetched away the bale this morning; who brought it here and opened it?”

      “Happily for us,” said the Arab, “it was your lady mother herself, with that man—your steward if I mistake not—and your own slaves.”

      “Why was it not left where it was?” asked Orion, giving vent to the annoyance which at this moment he really felt.

      “Because I had assured your father, and with good reason, that the beauty of this splendid work and of the gems that decorate it show to much greater advantage by daylight and in the sunshine than under the lamps and torches.”

      “And besides, your father wished to see his new purchase once more,” Neforis broke in, “and to ask the merchant how the gems might be removed without injury to the work itself. So I went to the tablinum myself with Sebek.”

      “But I had the key!” cried Orion putting his hand into the breast of his robe.

      “That I had forgotten,” replied his mother. “But unfortunately we did not need it. The tablinum was open.”

      “I locked it yesterday; you saw me do it, Sebek …”

      “So I told the mistress,” replied the steward. “I perfectly recollect hearing the snap of the strong lock.”

      Orion shrugged his shoulders, and his mother went on:

      “But the bronze doors must have been opened during the night with a false key, or by some other means; for part of the hanging had been pulled out of the wrapper, and when we looked closely we saw that the large emerald had been wrenched out of the setting.”

      “Shameful!” exclaimed Orion.

      “Disgraceful!” added the governor, vehemently starting up. He had fallen a prey to fearful unrest and horror: he thought that his Lord and Saviour, to whom he had dedicated the precious jewel, regarded him as so sinful and worthless that He would not accept the gift at his hands. But perhaps it was only Satan striving to hinder him from approaching the Most High with so noble an offering. At any rate, human cunning had been at work, so he said with stern resolution:

      “The matter shall be enquired into, and in the name of Jesus Christ, to whom the stone already belongs, I will never rest nor cease till the criminal is in my hands.”

      “And in the name of Allah and the Prophet,” added the Arab, “I will aid thee, if I have to appeal for help to the great chief Amru, the Khaliff’s representative in this country.—A word was spoken here just now that I cannot and will not forget. And the tone you have chosen to adopt, young man, seems to spring from the same fount: the old fox, you think, put a false gem of impossible size into the hanging, and has had it stolen that his fraud may not be detected when a jeweller examines the work by daylight. This is too much! I am an honest man, Sirs, and I am fain to add a rich one; and the man who tries to cast a stain on the character I have borne through a long life shall learn, to his ruing, that old Haschim has greater and more powerful friends to back him than you may care to meet!”

      As he uttered this threat the merchant’s eyes glistened through tears; it grieved him to be unjustly suspected and to be forced to express himself so hardly to the Mukaukas for whom he felt both reverence and pity. It was clear from the tone of his speech that he was in fact a determined and a powerful personage, and Orion interrupted him with the eager enquiry: “Who has dared to think so basely of you?”

      “Your own mother, I regret to say,” replied the Moslem sadly, with an oriental shrug of distress and annoyance—his shoulders up to his ears.

      “Forget it, I beg of you,” said the governor. “God knows women have softer hearts than men, and yet they more readily incline to think evil of their fellow-creatures, and particularly of the enemies of their faith. On the other hand they are more sensitive to kindness. A woman’s hair is long and her wits short, says the saw.”

      “You have plenty to say against us women!” retorted Neforis. “But scold away—scold if it is a comfort to you!” But she added, while she affectionately turned her husband’s pillows and gave him another of his white pillules: “I will submit to the worst to-day for I am in the wrong. I have already asked your pardon, worthy Haschim, and I do so again, with all my heart.”

      As she spoke, she went up to the Arab and held out her hand; he took it, but lightly, however, and quickly released it, saying:

      “I do not find it hard to forgive. But I find it impossible, here or anywhere, to let so much as a grain of dust rest on my bright good name. I shall follow up this affair, turning neither to the right hand nor to the left.—And now, one question: Is the dog that guarded the tablinum a watchful, savage beast?”

      “How savage he is he unfortunately proved on the person of the poor Persian slave; and his watchfulness is known to all the household,” cried Orion.

      “But I would beg you, worthy merchant,” said Neforis, “and in the name of all present, to give us the help of your experience. I myself—wait a little wait: in spite of her long hair and her short wits a woman often has a happy idea. I, probably, was the first to come on the robber’s track. It is clear that he must belong to the household since the dog did not attack him. Paula, who was so wonderfully quick in coming to the rescue of the Persian, is of course not to be thought of …”

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