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The Veiled Lady

F >> F. Hopkinson Smith >> The Veiled Lady



THE VEILED LADY

And Other Men And Women

By

F. Hopkinson Smith





To my Readers:

This collection of stories has been labelled "The
Veiled Lady" as being the easiest way out of a
dilemma; and yet the title may be misleading. While,
beyond doubt, there is between these covers a most
charming and lovable Houri, to whom the nightingales
sing lullabies, there can also be found a surpassingly
beautiful Venetian whose love affairs upset
a Quarter, a common-sense, motherly nurse whose
heart warmed toward her companion in the adjoining
berth, a plucky New England girl with the courage
of her convictions, and a prim spinster whose only
consolation was the boarder who sat opposite.

Nor does the list by any means end here. Rough
sea-dogs, with friendly feelings toward other dogs,
crop up, as well as brave Titans who make derricks
of their arms and fender-piles of their bodies. Here,
too, are skinny, sun-dried Excellencies with a taste
for revolutions, well-groomed club swells with a taste
for adventure and cocktails, not to mention half a
dozen gay, rollicking Bohemians with a taste for
everything that came their way.

Perhaps it might have been best to enclose each
story in a separate cover, and then to dump the unassorted
lot upon the table, where those who wished
could make their choice. And yet, as I turn the leaves,
I must admit that, after all, the present form is best,
since each and every incident, situation, and bit of local
color has either passed before or was poured into the
wide-open eyes and willing ears of your most humble
and obedient servant

A Staid Old Painter.

150 East 34th Street,
New York, March 13, 1907.




THE VEILED LADY OF STAMBOUL



Joe Hornstog told me this story--the first part of
it; the last part of it came to me in a way which
proves how small the world is.

Joe belongs to that conglomerate mass of heterogeneous
nationalities found around the Golden Horn,
whose ancestry is as difficult to trace as a gypsy's.
He says he is a "Jew gentleman from Germany,"
but he can't prove it, and he knows he can't.

There is no question about his being part Jew,
and there is a strong probability of his being part
German, and, strange to say, there is not the slightest
doubt of his being part gentleman--in his own estimation;
and I must say in mine, when I look back
over an acquaintance covering many years and
remember how completely my bank account was at
his disposal and how little of its contents he appropriated.

And yet, were I required to hold up my hand in
open court, I would have to affirm that Joe, whatever
his other strains might be, was, after all, ninety-nine
per cent. Levantine--which is another way of saying
that he is part of every nationality about him.

As to his honesty and loyalty, is he not the chosen
dragoman of kings and princes when they journey
into far distant lands (he speaks seven languages
and many tribal dialects), and is he not today wearing
in his buttonhole the ribbon of the order of the
Mejidieh, bestowed upon him by his Imperial Highness
the Sultan, in reward for his ability and faithfulness?

I must admit that I myself have been his debtor--
not once, but many times. It was this same quick-
sighted, quick-witted Levantine who lifted me from
my sketching stool and stood me on my feet in the
plaza of the Hippodrome one morning just in time
to prevent my being trodden under foot by six Turks
carrying the body of their friend to the cemetery--
in time, too, to save me from the unforgivable sin
among Orientals, of want of reverence for their dead.
I had heard the tramp of the pall-bearers, and supposing
it to be that of the Turkish patrol, had kept
at work. They were prowling everywhere, day and
night, and during those days they passed every ten
minutes--nine soldiers in charge of an officer of
police--all owing to the fact that some five thousand
Armenians, anxious to establish a new form of government,
had been wiped out of existence only the
week before.

Once on my feet (Joe accomplished his purpose
with the help of my suspenders) and the situation
clear, I had sense enough left to uncover my head
and stand in an attitude of profound reverence until
the procession had passed. I can see them now--the
coffin wrapped in a camel's-hair shawl, the dead man's
fez and turban resting on top. Then I replaced my
hat and finished the last of the six minarets of the
mosque gleaming like opals in the soft light of the
morning.

This act of courtesy, due so little to my own initiative,
and so largely to Joe's, gained for me many
friends in and about the mosque--not only those of
the dead man, one of whom rowed a caique, but among
the priests who formed the funeral cortege--a fact
unknown to me until Joe imparted it. "Turk-man
say you good man, effendi," was the way he put it.
"You stoop over yourselluf humble for their dead."

On another occasion Joe again stood by my side
when, with hat off and with body in a half kotow, I
sat before the Pasha, who was acting chief of police
after that stormy Armenian week--it was over really
in five days.

"Most High Potentate," Joe began, translating
my plain Anglo-Saxon "Please, sir," into Eastern
hyperbolics, "I again seek your Excellency's presence
to make my obeisance and to crave your permission
to transfer to cheap paper some of the glories of this
City of Turquoise and Ivory. This, if your Highness
will deign to remember, is not the first time I have
trespassed. Twice before have I prostrated myself,
and twice has your Sublimity granted my request."

"These be troublous times," puffed his Swarthiness
through his mustache, his tobacco-stained fingers
meanwhile rolling a cigarette; a dark-skinned,
heavily-bearded Oriental, this Pasha, with an eye
that burned holes in you. "You should await a
more peaceful season, effendi, for your art."

"On account of the Armenians, your Excellency?"
I ventured to inquire with a smile.

"Yes." This, in translation by Joe, came with
a whistling sound, like the escaping steam of a
radiator.

"But why should I fear these disturbers of the
peace, your Supreme Highness? The Turk is my
friend, and has been for years. They know me and my
pure and unblemished life. They also know by this
time that I have been one of the chosen few among
nations who have enjoyed your Highness's confidence,
and to whom you have given protection."
Here my spine took the form of a horseshoe curve--
Moorish pattern. "As to these dogs of Armenians"
(this last was Joe's, given with a growl to show his
deep detestation of the race--part of his own, if he
would but acknowledge it), "your Excellency will
look out for them." He WAS looking out for them
at the rate of one hundred a day and no questions
asked or answered so far as the poor fellows were
concerned.

At this the distinguished Oriental finished rolling
his cigarette, looked at me blandly--it is astonishing
how sweet a smile can overspread the face of a Turk
when he is granting you a favor or signing the death
warrant of an infidel--clapped his hands, summoning
an attendant who came in on all fours, and whispered
an order in the left ear of the almost prostrate
man. This done, the Pasha rose from his seat,
straightened his shoulders (no handsomer men the
world over than these high-class Turks), shook my
hand warmly, gave me the Turkish salute--heart,
mouth, and forehead touched with the tips of flying
fingers--and bowed me out.

Once through the flat leather curtain that hid the
exit door of the Pasha's office, and into the bare
corridor, I led Joe to a corner out of the hearing
of the ever-present spy, and, nailing him to the wall,
propounded this query:

"What did the High-Pan-Jam say, Joe?"

Hornstog raised his shoulders level with his ears,
fanned out his fingers, crooked his elbows, and in his
best conglomerate answered:

"He say, effendi, that a guard of ein men, Yusuf,
his name--I know him--he is in the Secret Service--
oh, we will have no trouble with him--" Here
Joe chafed his thumb and forefinger with the movement
of a paying teller counting a roll. "He come
every morning to Galata Bridge for you me. He
say, too, if any trouble while you paint I go him--
ah, effendi, it is only Joe Hornstog can do these
things. The Pasha, he know me--all good Turk-men
know me. Where we paint now, subito? In the
plaza, or in the patio of the Valedee, like last year?"

"Neither. We go first to the Mosque of Suleiman.
I want the view through the gate of the court-yard,
with the mosque in the background. Best place is
below the cafe. Pick up those traps and come along."

Thus it was that on this particular summer afternoon
Joe and I found ourselves on the shadow side
of a wall up a crooked, break-neck street paved with
rocks, each as big as a dress-suit case, from which I
got a full view of the wonderful mosque tossing its
splendors into the still air, its cresting of minarets
so much frozen spray against the blue.

The little comedy--or shall I say tragedy?--began
a few minutes after I had opened my easel--I sitting
crouched in the shadow, my elbow touching the
plastered wall. Only Joe and I were present.
Yusuf, the guard, a skinny, half-fed Turk in fez
and European dress, had as usual betaken himself
to the cafe fronting the same sidewalk on which I
sat, but half a block away; far enough to be out of
hearing, but near enough to miss my presence should
I decamp suddenly without notifying him. There
he drank some fifty cups of coffee, each one the size
of a thimble, and smoked as many cigarettes, their
burned stubs locating his seat under the cafe awning
as clearly as peanut-shells mark a boy's at the circus.
I, of course, paid for both.

So absorbed was I in my work--the mosque never
was so beautiful as on that day--I gave no thought
to the fact that in my eagerness to hide my canvas
from the prying sun I had really backed myself into
a small wooden gate, its lintel level with the sidewalk
--a dry, dusty, sun-blistered gate, without lock or
hasp on the outside, and evidently long closed. Even
then I would not have noticed it, had not my ears
caught the sound of a voice--two voices, in fact--low,
gurgling voices--as if a fountain had just been
turned on, spattering the leaves about it. Then my
eye lighted, not only on the gate, but upon a seam or
split in the wood, half-way up its height, showing
where a panel was sometimes pushed back, perhaps
for surer identification, before the inside wooden
beam would be loosened.

So potent was the spell of the mosque's witchery
that the next instant I should have forgotten both
door and panel had not Joe touched the toe of my boot
with his own--he was sitting close to me--and in
explanation lifted his eyebrow a hair's breadth, his
eyes fixed on the slowly sliding panel--sliding noiselessly,
an inch at a time. Only then did my mind act.

What I saw was first a glow of yellow green, then
a mass of blossoms, then a throat, chin and face,
one after another, all veiled in a gossamer thin as a
spider's web, and last--and these I shall never forget
--a pair of eyes shining clear below and above the
veil, and which gazed into mine with the same steady,
full, unfrightened look one sometimes sees on the
face of a summer moon when it bursts through a
rift in the clouds.

"Don't move and don't look," whispered Joe in
my ear, a tone in his voice of one who had just seen
a ghost. "Allah! Ekber! Yuleima!"

"Who is she?" I answered, craning my neck to
see the closer.

"No speak now--keep still," he mumbled under
his breath.

It may have been the gossamer veil shading a
rose skin, making pink pearls of the cheeks and chin
and lending its charm to the other features; or it
may have been the wonderful eyes that made me
oblivious of Joe's warning, for I did look--looked
with all my eyes, and kept on looking.

Men have died for just such eyes. Even now,
staid old painter as I am, the very remembrance
of their wondrous size--big as a young doe's and as
pleading, their lids fringed by long feathery lashes
that opened and shut with the movement of a tired
butterfly--sends little thrills of delight scampering
up and down my spine. Bulbuls, timid gazelles, perfumed
narghilehs, anklets of beaten gold strung with
turquoise, tinkling cymbals, tiny turned-up slippers
with silk tassels on their toes--everything that told
of the intoxicating life of the East were mirrored in
their unfathomed depths.

Most of these qualities, I am aware, are found in
many another pair of lambent, dreamy eyes half-
hidden by the soft folds of a yashmak--eyes which
these houris often flash on some poor devil of a
giaour, knowing how safe they are and how slim his
chance for further acquaintance. Strange tales are
told of their seductive power and strange disappearances
take place because of them. And yet I saw
at a glance that there was nothing of all this in her
wondering gaze. Her eyes, in fact, were fixed neither
on Joseph nor on me, nor did they linger for one
instant on the beautiful mosque. It was my canvas
that held their gaze. Men and mosques were old
stories; pictures of either as astounding as a glimpse
into heaven.

Again Joe bent his head and whispered to me, his
glance this time on the mosque, on the hill, on the
cafe, where Yusuf sat sipping his coffee, talking to
me all the time out of the corner of his mouth.

"Remember, effendi, if Yusuf come we go way
chabouk. You look at your picture all time--paint--
no look at her. If Yusuf come and catch us it make
trouble for her--make trouble for you--make more
trouble for me. Police Pasha don't know she come to
this garden--I think somebody must help her. You
better stop now and go cafe. I find Yusuf. I no
like this place."

With this Hornstog rose to his feet and began packing
the trap, still whispering, his eyes on the ground.
Never once did he look in the direction of the houri
peering through the sliding panel.

The clatter of a horse's hoofs now resounded
through the still air. A mounted officer was approaching.
Joe looked up, turned a light pea-green,
backed his body into the gate with the movement
of an eel, put his cheek close to the sliding panel,
and whispered some words in Turkish. The girl
leaned a little forward, glanced at the officer as if
in confirmation of Joseph's warning, and smothering
a low cry, sprang back from the opening. The next
instant my eye caught the thumb and forefinger of
a black hand noiselessly closing the panel. Joe
straightened up, pulled himself into the position of
a sentinel on guard, saluted the officer, who passed
without looking to the right or left, drew a handkerchief
from his pocket, and began mopping his head.

"What the devil is it all about, Joe? Why, you
look as if you had had the wind knocked out of you."

"Oh, awful close, awful close! I tell you--but
not here. Come, we go 'way--we go now--not stay
here any more. If that officer see the lady with us
the Pasha send me to black mosque for five year and
you find yourself board ship on way to Tripoli. Here
come Yusuf--damn him! You tell him you no like
view of mosque from here--say you find another
place to-morrow--you do this quick. Hornstog
never lie."

On my way across the Galata Bridge to my quarters
in Pera that same afternoon Joe followed until
Yusuf had made his kotow and we had made ours, the
three ending in a triple flight of fingers--waited until
the guard was well on his way back to the Pasha's
office--it was but a short way from the Stamboul end
of the Galata--and drawing me into one of the small
cafes overlooking the waters of the Golden Horn,
seated me at the far end near a window where we
could talk without being overheard. Here Joe ordered
coffee and laid a package of cigarettes on the table.

"My! but that was like the razor at the throat--
not for all the hairs on my head would I had her
look out the small hole in the door when Serim come
along. Somebody must be take care of you, you Joe
Hornstog, that you don't make damn big fool of
yourselluf. Ha! but it make me creep like a spider
crawl."

I had pulled up a chair by this time and was facing
him.

"Now what is it? Who is the girl? Who was
the chap on horseback?"

"That man on the horse is Serim Pasha, chief
of the palace police. He has eyes around twice; one
in the forehead, one in each ear, one in the behind
of his head. He did not see her--if he did--well,
we would not be talk now together--sure not after
to-morrow night."

"But what has he got to do with it? What did you
say her name was? Yuleima?"

"Yes, Yuleima. What has Serim to do with her?
Well, I tell you. If she get away off go Serim's
head. Listen! I speak something you never hear
anywhere 'cept in Turk-man's land. I know it all--
everything. I know her prince--he knows me. I
meet him Damascus once--he told me some things
then--the tears run his cheeks down like a baby's
when he talk--and Serim know I know somethings!
Ah! that's why he not believe me if he catch me talk
to her. Afterward I find more out from my friend
in Yuleima's house--he is the gardener. Put your
head close, effendi."

I drew my chair nearer and listened.

"Yuleima," began Joe, "is one womans like no
other womans in all--"

But I shall not attempt the dragoman's halting,
broken jargon interspersed with Italian and German
words--it will grate on you as it grated on me. I
will assume for the moment--and Joe would be most
thankful to have me do so--that the learned Hornstog,
the friend of kings and princes, is as fluent in
English as he is in Turkish, Arabic, and Greek.

It all began in a caique--or rather in two caiques.
One was on its way to a little white house that nestles
among the firs at the foot of the bare brown hill overlooking
the village of Beicos. The other was bound
for the Fountain Beautiful, where the women and
their slaves take the air in the soft summer mornings.

In the first caique, rowed by two caique-jis gorgeously
dressed in fluffy trousers and blouses embroidered
in gold, sat the daughter of the rich Bagdad
merchant.

In the second caique, cigarette in hand, lounged
the nephew of the Khedive, Mahmoud Bey; scarce
twenty, slight, oval face with full lips, hair black as
sealskin and as soft, and eyes that smouldered under
heavy lids. Four rowers in blue and silver attended
his Highness, the amber-colored boat skimming the
waters as a tropical bird skims a lagoon.

The two had passed each other the week before
on the day of the Selamlik (the Turkish holiday)
while paddling up the Sweet Waters of Asia--a little
brook running into the Bosphorus and deep
enough for caiques to float, and every day since that
blissful moment my lady had spent the morning
under the wide-spreading plane-trees shading the
Fountain Beautiful--the Chesmegazell--attended by
her faithful slave Multif, her beautiful body stretched
on a Damascus rug of priceless value, her eager eyes
searching the blue waters of the Bosphorus.

On this particular morning--my lady had just
stepped into her boat--the young man was seen to
raise himself on his elbow, lift his eyelids, and a
slight flush suffused his swarthy cheeks. Then came
an order in a low voice, and the caique swerved in its
course and headed for the dot of white and gold in
which sat Multif and my lady. The Spanish caballero
haunts the sidewalk and watches all day beneath
his Dulcinea's balcony; or he talks to her across the
opera-house or bull-ring with cigarette, fingers, and
cane, she replying with studied movements of her
fan. In the empire of Mohammed, with a hundred
eyes on watch--eyes of eunuchs, spies, and parents--
love-making is reduced to a passing glance, brief as
a flash of light, and sometimes as blinding.

That was all that took place when the two caiques
passed--just a thinning of the silken veil, with only
one fold of the yashmak slipped over the eyes, softening
the fire of their beauty; then a quick, all-enfolding,
all-absorbing look, as if she would drink into her
very soul the man she loved, and the two tiny boats
kept each on its way.

The second act of the comedy opens in a small
cove, an indent of the Bosphorus, out of sight of
passing boat-patrols--out of sight, too, of inquisitive
wayfarers passing along the highroad from
Beicos to Danikeui. Above the cove, running from
the very beach, sweeps a garden, shaded by great
trees and tangles of underbrush; one bunch smothering
a summer-house. This is connected by a sheltered
path with the little white house that nestles among
the firs half-way up the steep brown hill that overlooks
the village of Beicos.

The water-patrol may have been friendly, or my
lady's favorite slave resourceful, but almost every
night for weeks the first caique and the second
caique had lain side by side in the boat-house in the
cove, both empty, except for one trusty man who
loved Mahmoud and who did his bidding without
murmur or question, no matter what the danger.
Higher up, her loose white robes splashed with the
molten silver of the moon filtering through overhanging
leaves, where even the nightingale stopped to
listen, could be heard the cooing of two voices. Then
would come a warning cry, and a figure closely
veiled would speed up the path. Next could be heard
the splash of oars of the first caique homeward bound.

Locksmiths are bunglers in the East compared to
patrols and eunuchs. Lovers may smile, but they
never laugh at them. There is always a day of
reckoning. A whisper goes around; some disgruntled
servant shakes his head; and an old fellow
with baggy trousers and fez, says: "My daughter,
I am surprised" or "pained" or "outraged," or
whatever he does say in polite Turkish, Arabic, or
Greek, and my lady is locked up on bread and water,
or fig-paste, or Turkish Delight, and all is over.
Sometimes the young Lothario is ordered back to his
regiment, or sent to Van or Trebizond or Egypt for
the good of his morals, or his health or the community
in which he lives. Sometimes everybody accepts the
situation and the banns are called and they live happy
ever after.

What complicated this situation was that the girl,
although as beautiful as a dream--any number of
dreams, for that matter, and all of paradise--was
a plebeian and the young man of royal blood. Furthermore,
any number of parents, her own two and twice
as many uncles and aunts, might get together and
give, not only their blessing, but lands and palaces--
two on the Bosphorus, one in Bagdad and another at
Smyrna, and nothing would avail unless his Imperial
Highness the Sultan gave his consent. Futhermore,
again, should it come to the ears of his August Presence
that any such scandalous alliance was in contemplation,
several yards of additional bow-strings
would be purchased and the whole coterie experience
a choking sensation which would last them the balance
of their lives.

Thus it was that, after that most blissful night
in the arbor--their last--in which she had clung to
him as if knowing he was about to slip forever from
her arms, both caiques were laid up for the season;
the first tight locked and guarded in the palace of
the young man's father, five miles along the blue
Bosphorus as the bird flies, and the second in the
little boat-house in the small indent of a cove under
the garden holding the beloved arbor, the little white
house, and My Lady of the diaphanous veil and the
all-absorbing eyes.

With the lifting of the curtain on the third act,
the scene shifts. No more Sweet Waters, no more
caiques nor stolen interviews, the music of hot kisses
drowned in the splash of the listening fountain. Instead,
there is seen a sumptuously furnished interior
the walls wainscoted in Moorish mosaics and lined
by broad divans covered with silken rugs. Small
tables stand about holding trays of cigarettes and
sweets. Over against a window overlooking a garden
lounges a group of women--some young, some old,
one or two of them black as coal. It is the harem
of the Pasha, the father of Mahmoud, Prince of the
Rising Sun, Chosen of the Faithful, Governor of a
province, and of forty other things beside--most
of which Joe had forgotten.

Months had passed since that night in the arbor.
Yuleima had cried her eyes out, and Mahmoud had
shaken his fists and belabored his head, swearing
by the beard of the Prophet that come what might
Yuleima should be his.

Then came the death of the paternal potentate,
and the young lover was free--free to come and go,
to love, to hate; free to follow the carriage of his
imperial master in his race up the hill after the ceremony
of the Selamlik; free to choose any number of
Yuleimas for his solace; free to do whatever pleased
him--except to make the beautiful Yuleima his
spouse. This the High-Mightinesses forbade. There
were no personal grounds for their objection. The
daughter of the rich Bagdad merchant was as gentle
as a doe, beautiful as a star seen through the soft
mists of the morning, and of stainless virtue. Her
father had ever been a loyal subject, giving of his
substance to both church and state, but there were
other things to consider, among them a spouse especially
selected by a council of High Pan-Jams, whose
decision, having been approved by their imperial master,
was not only binding, but final--so final that
death awaited any one who would dare oppose it. At
the feast of Ramazan the two should wed. Yuleima
might take second, third, or fortieth place--but not
first.

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