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Page 28
"They knew both power and beauty," he declared, "like the Medici of
Florence. There are no leaders like that in the modern world. To-day
beauty is beggared, and power is lusterless.... And taste? Taste is
a hundred-headed Hydra, roaring with a hundred tongues!"
"While in the old days in Cairo it only roared with the tongues of
Mamelukes?" Arlee suggested, a glint of mischief in her smile.
He nodded. "It should be the concern of nobles--not of the rabble.
That is why I should hate your America--where the rabble prevail."
"It's not nice of you to call me a rabble," said Arlee, busy with
her plate of chicken. "But I want to hear more about your old
Mamelukes. Is the story true about the Sultan's being so afraid of
them that he had them taken by surprise and killed?"
"He did well to fear them," said Kerissen. "And he, too, was a
strong man who had the power to clear his own path. Those nobles
were in the path of Mohammed Ali. They were too strong for him, he
knew it--and they knew it and were not afraid. On one day they were
all assembled at the Citadel, at the ceremony which Mohammed Ali was
giving in honor of his son, Toussoum. It was the first of March, in
1811, and my ancestor, the father of my father's father, rode out
from this palace, through the gate by the court, which is the old
gate, in his most splendid attire to greet his sovereign's son. The
emerald upon his turban was as large as a man's eye, and his sword
hilt was studded with turquoise and pearls and the hilt was a blazon
of gold. His robes were of silk, gold threaded, and his horse was
trapped with gold and silver and a diamond hung between her eyes....
The Mamelukes were f�ted and courted, and then, as they were leaving
the Citadel--you have been up there?" he broke off to question, and
Arlee nodded, her eyes wide and intent like a listening child's,
"and you recall that deep, crooked way between the high walls,
between the fortified doors? Imagine to yourself that deep way
filled with men on horseback, quitting the Citadel, having taken
leave of their Sultan--they were a picture of such pride and pomp as
Egypt has never seen again. And then the treachery--the great gates
closed before them and behind them, the terrible fire upon them from
all sides, the bullets of the hidden Albanians pouring down like the
hosts of death--the uproar, the cries of horses, the shouts of the
trapped men, and then all the tumult dying, dying, down to the last
moan and hiccough of blood."
"But one escaped?" questioned the girl, breaking the silence which
had followed the cessation of his voice. "Is it true that one really
escaped?"
"Anym-bey--yes, he was the only one that escaped that massacre. He
had a fierce horse which gave him pain to mount, and he was still in
the courtyard of the palace when he heard the outburst of shots and
then the cries. He comprehended. Stripping his turban from his head
he bound it over the eyes of his stallion and, spurring to a gallop,
he dashed out over the parapet of the Citadel and down--down--down!
Magnificent! He did not die of it, but alas! he did not escape.
Wounded as he was he managed to reach the house of a relative, but
the soldiers of the Sultan tracked him there and seized him.... He
was killed."
"Oh, the pity--after that splendid dash!" Arlee stopped and looked
around her, at the strange shadowy room hung with its old
embroideries and latticed with its ancient screening. "This room
makes it all so real, somehow," she murmured. "I didn't believe it
all when the dragoman told me--probably because he showed me the
mark of the horse's hoof in the stone of the parapet! I thought it
was all a legend--like the mark."
"Did he show you, too, the bulrush where Moses was found and the
indentures in the stones in the crypt of the Coptic Church where
Saint Joseph and Mary sat to rest after the flight into Egypt?"
laughed the Captain. And, with a teasing smile, "Ah, what imbeciles
they think you tourists!"
But Arlee merely laughed with him, while the old woman changed the
plates for dessert. Her spirits had brightened mercurially. This was
really interesting.... Uneasiness had vanished.
"Is that an old Mameluke throne?" she asked, pointing to the raised
chair upon the dais, with its heavy, dusty draperies.
The Captain glanced at it and shook his head, smiling faintly. "No,
that is the throne of marriage." He pushed away his sweet and
lighted a cigarette. "That is where sits the bride when she has been
brought to the home of her husband--there she holds her reception.
Those are the f�tes to which the English ladies come in such
curiosity." His smile was not quite pleasant.
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