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 | The miscellaneous works of N.P. Willis |  |
THE WIDOW BY BREVET.
Let me introduce the courteous reader to two ladies.
Miss Picklin, a tall young lady of twenty-one, near
enough to good-looking to permit of a delusion on the
subject (of which, however, she had an entire monopoly),
with cheeks always red in a small spot, lips not
so red as the cheeks, and rather thin, sharpish nose,
and waist very slender; and last (not least important),
a very long neck, scalded on either side into a resemblance
to a scroll of shrivelled parchment, which might
or might not be considered as a mis-fortune—serving
her as a title-deed to twenty thousand dollars. The
scald was inflicted, and the fortune left in consequence,
by a maiden aunt who, in the babyhood of Miss Picklin,
attempted to cure the child's sore throat by an application
of cabbage-leaves steeped in hot vinegar.
Miss Euphemia Picklin, commonly called Phemie
—a good-humored girl, rather inclined to be fat, but
gifted with several points of beauty of which she was
not at all aware, very much a pet among her female
friends, and admitting, with perfect sincerity and submission,
her sister's exclusive right to the admiration
of the gentlemen of their acquaintance.
Captain Isaiah Picklin, the father of these ladies,
was a merchant of Salem, an importer of figs and opium,
and once master of the brig “Simple Susan,”
which still plied between his warehouse and Constantinople—nails
and codfish the cargo outward. I have
not Miss Picklin's permission to mention the precise
date of the events I am about to record, and leaving
that point alone to the imagination of the reader, I
shall set down the other particulars and impediments
in her “course of true love” with historial fidelity.
Ever since she had been of sufficient age to turn her
attention exclusively to matrimony, Miss Picklin had
nourished a presentiment that her destiny was exotic;
that the soil of Salem was too poor, and the indigenous
lovers too mean; and that, potted in her twenty thousand
dollars, she was a choice production, set aside for
flowering in a foreign clime, and destined to be transplanted
by a foreign lover. With this secret in her
bosom, she had refused one or two gentlemen of middle
age, recommended by her father, beside sundry
score of young gentlemen of slender revenues in her
own set of acquaintances, till, if there had been anything
beside poetry in Shakspere's assertion that it is—
Whose shadow the dismissed bachelor loves,”
have sold in lots at a premium. It was possibly from
the want of nightingales, to whose complaining notes
the gentleman of Verona “turned his distresses,” that
the discarded of Salem preferred the consolations of
Phemie Picklin.
News to the Picklins! Hassan Keui, the son of old
A Turk—a live Turk—a young Turk, and the son of
her father's rich correspondent in Turkey! “Ah me!”
thought Miss Picklin.
The captain himself was rather taken aback. He
had known old Abdoul for many years, had traded and
smoked with him in the cafés of Galata, had gone out
with him on Sundays to lounge on the tombstones at
Scutari, and had never thought twice about his yellow
gown and red trowsers; but what the deuce would be
thought of them in Salem? True, it was his son;
but a Turk's clothes descend from father to son
through three generations; he knew that, from remembering
this very boy all but smothered in a sort of
saffron blanket, with sleeves like pillowcases—his first
assumption of the toga virilis (not that old Picklin
knew Latin, but such was “his sentiment better expressed”).
Then he had never been asked to the
house of the Stamboul merchant, not introduced to
his wives nor his daughters (indeed, he had forgotten
that old Keui was near cutting his throat for asking
after them)—but of course it was very different in Salem.
Young Keui must be the Picklin guest, fed and
lodged, and the girls would want to give him a tea-party.
Would he sit on a chair, or want cushions on
the floor? Would he come to dinner with his breast
bare, and leave his boots outside? Would he eat rice
pudding with his fingers? Would he think it indecent
if the girls didn't wear linen cloths, Turkey fashion,
over their mouths and noses? Would he bring
his pipes? Would he fall on his face and say his
prayers four times a day, wherever he should be (with
a clean place handy)? What would the neighbors
say? The captain worked himself into a violent perspiration
with merely thinking of all this.
The Salemites have a famous museum, and know
“what manner of thing is your crocodile;” but a live
Turk consigned to Captain Picklin! It set the town
in a fever!
It would leave an indelicate opening for a conjecture
as to Miss Picklin's present age, were I to state
whether or not the arrival of the “Simple Susan” was
reported by telegraph. She ran in with a fair wind
one Sunday morning, and was immediately boarded by
the harbor-master and Captain Picklin; and there, true
to the prophetic boding of old Isaiah, the young Turk
sat cross-legged on the quarter-deck, in a white turban
and scarlet et ceteras, smoking his father's identical
pipe—no other, the captain would have taken his oath!
Up rose Hassan, when informed who was his visiter,
and taking old Picklin's hand, put it to his forehead.
The weather-stained sea-captain had bleached in the
counting-house, and he had not, at first sight remembered
the old friend of his father. He passed the pipe
into Isaiah's hand and begged him to keep it as a memento
of Abdoul, for his father had died at the last
Ramazan. Hassan had come out to see the world,
and secure a continuance of codfish and good-will from
the house of Picklin, and the merchant got astride the
tiller of his old craft, and smoked this news through
his amber-mouthed legacy, while the youth went below
to get ready to go ashore.
The reader of course would prefer to share the first
impressions of the ladies as to the young Mussulman's
personal appearance, and I pass at once, therefore, to
their disappointment, surprise, mortification, and vexation;
when, as the bells were ringing for church, the
front door opened, their father entered, and in followed
a young gentleman in frockcoat and trowsers! Yes,
and in his hand a hat—a black hat—and on his feet no
yellow boots, but calfskin, mundane and common calfskin,
and with no shaved head, and no twisted shawl
around his waist; nothing to be seen but a very handsome
young man indeed, with teeth like a fresh slice
of cocoa-nut meat, and a very deliberate pronunciation
to his bad English.
Miss Picklin's disappointment had to be slept upon,
for she had made great outlay of imagination upon the
pomp and circumstance of wedding a white Othello in
the eyes of wondering Salem; but Phemie's surprise
took but five minutes to grow into a positive pleasure;
and never suspecting, at any time, that she was visible
to the naked eye during the eclipsing presence of her
sister, she sat with a very admiring smile upon her
lips, and her soft eyes fixed earnestly on the stranger,
till she had made out a full inventory of his features,
proportions, manners, and other stuff available in
dream-land. What might be Hassan's impression of
the young ladies, could not be gathered from his manner;
for, in the first place, there was the reserve which
belonged to him as a Turk, and, in the second place,
there was a violation of all oriental notions of modesty
in their exposing their chins to the masculine observation;
and though he could endure the exposure, it
was of course with that diffidence of gaze which accompanies
the consciousness of improper objects—
adding to his demeanor another shade of timidity.
Miss Picklin's shoulders were not invaded quite to
the limits of terra cognita by the cabbage-leaves which
had exercised such an influence on her destiny; and
as the scalds somewhat resembled two maps of South
America (with Patagonia under each ear), she usually,
in full dress, gave a clear view of the surrounding
ocean—wisely thinking it better to have the geography
of her disfigurement well understood, than, by
covering a small extremity (as it were the isthmus of
Darien), to leave an undiscovered North America to
the imagination. She appeared accordingly at dinner
in a costume not likely to diminish the modest embarrassment
of Mr. Keui (as she chose to call him)—extremely
decolleté, in a pink silk dress with short sleeves,
and in a turban with a gold fringe—the latter, of
course, out of compliment to his country. “Money
is power,” even in family circles, and it was only Miss
Picklin who exercised the privilege of full dress at
a mid-day dinner. Phemie came to table dressed as
at breakfast, and if she felt at all envious of her sister's
pink gown and elbows to match, it did not appear in
her pleasant face or sisterly attention. The captain
would allow anything, and do almost anything, for his
rich daughter; but as to dining with his coat on, in hot
weather, company or no company, he would rather—
And bowled to death with turnips”—
carré, therefore (for there was no Mrs. Picklin), was,
in the matter of costume, rather incongruous, but, as
the Turk took it for granted that it was all according
to the custom of the country, the carving was achieved
by the shirt-sleeved captain, and the pudding “helped”
by his bare-armed daughter, with no particular commotion
in the elements. Earthquakes do not invariably
follow violations of etiquette—particularly where
nobody is offended.
After the first day, things took their natural course
—as near as they were able. Hassan was not very
quick at conversation, always taking at least five minutes
to put together for delivery a sentence of English,
but his laugh did not hang fire, nor did his nods
and smiles; and where ladies are voluble (as ladies
sometimes are), this paucity of ammunition on the
gentleman's part is no prelude to discomfiture. Then
Phemie had a very fair smattering of Italian, and that
being the business language of the Levant, Hassan
took refuge in it whenever brought to a stand-still in
English—a refuge, by the way, of which he seemed
inclined to avail himself oftener than was consistent
with Miss Picklin's exclusive property in his attention.
Rebellious though Hassan might secretly have
been to this authority over himself, Phemie was no accomplice,
natural modesty combining with the long
exactious of the heiress; and so Miss Picklin had
“Mr. Keui” principally to herself, promenading him
through the streets of Salem, and bestowing her
sweetness upon him from his morning entrance to his
evening exit; Phemie relieving guard very cheerfully,
while her sister dressed for dinner. It was possibly
from being permitted to converse in Italian during this
half hour, that Hassan made it the only part of the
day in which he talked of himself and his house on
the Bosphorus, but that will not account also for Phemie's
sighing while she listened—never having sighed
before in her life, not even while the same voice was
talking English to her sister.
Without going into a description of the Picklin tea-party,
at which Hassan was induced to figure in his
oriental costume, while Miss Picklin sat by him on a
cushion, turbaned and (probably) cross-legged, à la
Sultana, and without recording other signs satisfactory
to the Salemites, that the young Turk had fallen
to the scalded heiress—
By sovereignty of nature” -
following (one week after his arrival), Hassan left Salem,
unaccompanied by Miss Picklin. As he had
asked for no private interview in the best parlor, and
had made his final business arrangements with the
captain, so that he could take passage from New York
without returning, some people were inclined to fancy
that Miss Picklin's demonstrations with regard to him
had been a little premature. And “some people”
chose to smile. But it was reserved for Miss Picklin
to look round in church, in about one year from this
event, and have her triumph over “some people;”
for she was about to sail for Constantinople—“sent
for,” as the captain rudely expressed it. But I must
explain.
The “Simple Susan” came in, heavily freighted
with a consignment from the house of Keui to Picklin
& Co., and a letter from the American consul at Constantinople
wrapped in the invoice. With the careful
and ornate wording of an official epistle, it stated that
Effendi Hassan Keui had called on the consul, and
partly from the mistrust of his ability to express himself
in English on so delicate a subject, but more particularly
for the sake of approaching the object of his
affections with proper deference and ceremony, he had
requested that officer to prepare a document conveying
a proposal of marriage to the daughter of Captain
Picklin. The incomplete state of his mercantile arrangements,
while at Salem the previous year, would
account for his silence on the subject at that time, but
he trusted that his preference had been sufficiently
manifest to the lady of his heart; and as his prosperity
in business depended on his remaining at Constantinople,
enriching himself only for her sake, he was
sure that the singular request appended to his offer
would be taken as a mark of his prudence rather than
as a presumption. The cabin of the “Simple Susan,”
as Captain Picklin knew, was engaged on her next passage
to Constantinople by a party of missionaries, male
and female, and the request was to the intent that, in
case of an acceptance of his offer, the fair daughter of
the owner would come out, under their sufficient protection,
to be wedded, if she should so please, on the
day of her arrival in the “Golden Horn.”
As Miss Picklin had preserved a mysterious silence
on the subject of “Mr. Keui's” attentions since his
departure, and as a lady with twenty thousand dollars
in her own right is, of course, quite independent of
parental control, the captain, after running his eye
hastily through the document, called to the boy who
was weighing out a quintal of codfish, and bid him
wrap the letter in a brown paper and run with it to
Miss Picklin—taking it for granted that she knew
more about the matter than he did, and would explain
it all, when he came home to dinner.
In thinking the matter over, on his way home, it
occurred to old Picklin that it was worded as if he had
but one daughter. At any rate, he was quite sure
that neither of his daughters was particularly specified,
either by name or age. No doubt it was all right,
however. The girls understood it.
“So, it's you, miss!” he said, as Miss Picklin looked
round from the turban she was trying on before
the glass.
“Certainly, pa! who else should it be?”
And there ended the captain's doubts, for he never
again got sight of the letter, and the turmoil of preparation
for Miss Picklin's voyage, made the house
anything but a place for getting answers to impertinent
questions. Phemie, whom the news had made silent
and thoughtful, let drop a hint or two that she would
like to see the letter; but a mysterious air, and “La!
child, you wouldn't understand it,” was check enough
for her timid curiosity, and she plied her needle upon
her sister's wedding dress with patient submission.
The preparations for the voyage went on swimmingly.
The missionaries were written to, and willingly
consented to chaperon Miss Picklin over the seas,
provided her union with a pagan was to be sanctified
with a Christian ceremonial. Miss Picklin replied
with virtuous promptitude that the cake for the wedding
was already soldered up in a tin case, and that
she was to be married immediately on her arrival,
under an awning on the brig's deck, and she hoped
that four of the missionaries' wives would oblige her
by standing up as her bridesmaids. Many square
feet of codfish were unladen from the “Simple Susan”
to make room for boxes and bags, and one large case
was finally shipped, the contents of which had been
shopped for by ladies with families—no book of oriental
travels making any allusion to the sale of such
articles in Constantinople, though, in the natural
course of things, they must be wanted as much in
Turkey as in Salem.
The brig was finally cleared and lay off in the stream,
and on the evening before the embarkation the missionaries
arrived and were invited to a tea-party at the
Picklins. Miss Picklin had got up a little surprise
for her friends with which to close the party—a
“walking tableau,” as she termed it, in which she
should suddenly make her apparition at one door,
pass through the room, and go out at the other,
dressed as a sultana, with a muslin kirtle and satin
trowsers. She disappeared accordingly half an hour
before the breaking up; and, conversation rather
languishing in her absence, the eldest of the missionaries
rose to conclude the evening with a prayer, in
the midst of which Miss Picklin passed through the
room unperceived—the faces of the company being
turned to the wall.
The next morning at daylight the “Simple Susan”
put to sea with a fair wind, and at the usual hour for
opening the store of Picklin and Co., she had dropped
below the horizon. Phemie sat upon the end of
the wharf and watched her till she was out of sight,
and the captain walked up and down between two
puncheons of rum which stood at the distance of a
quarter-deck's length from each other, and both father
and daughter were silent. The captain had a confused
thought or two besides the grief of parting, and Phemie
had feelings quite as confused, which were not all
made up of sorrow for the loss of her sister. Perhaps
the reader will be at the trouble of spelling out their
riddles while I try to let him down softly to the catastrophe
of my story.
Without confessing to any ailment whatever, the
plump Phemie paled and thinned from the day of her
sister's departure. Her spirits, too, seemed to keep
month the captain was told by one of the good dames
of Salem that he had better ask a physician what
ailed her. The doctor could make nothing out of it
except that she might be fretting for the loss of her
sister, and he recommended a change of scene and
climate. That day Captain Brown, an old mare of
Isaiah's, dropped in to eat a family dinner and say
good-by, as he was about sailing in the new schooner
Nancy for the Black sea—his wife for his only passenger.
Of course he would be obliged to drop anchor
at Constantinople to wait for a fair wind up the
Bosphorus, and part of his errand was to offer to take
letters and nicknackeries to Mrs. Keui. Old Picklin
put the two things together, and over their glass of
wine he proposed to Brown to take Phemie with Mrs.
Brown to Constantinople, leave them both there on a
visit to Mrs. Keui, till the return of the Nancy from
the Black sea, and then re-embark them for Salem.
Phemie came into the room just as they were touching
glasses on the agreement, and when the trip was
proposed to her she first colored violently, then grew
pale and burst into tears; but consented to go. And,
with such preparations as she could make that evening,
she was quite ready at the appointed hour, and
was off with the land-breeze the next morning, taking
leave of nobody but her father. And this time the
old man wiped his eyes very often before the departing
vessel was “hull down,” and was heartily sorry he
had let Phemie go without a great many presents and
a great many more kisses.
A fine, breezy morning at Constantinople!
Rapidly down the Bosphorus shot the caique of
Hassan Keui, bearing its master from his country-house
at Dolma-batchi to his warehouses at Galata.
Just before the sharp prow rounded away toward the
Golden Horn, the merchant motioned to the caikjis
to rest upon their oars, and, standing erect in the
slender craft, he strained his gaze long and with anxious
earnestness toward the sea of Marmora. Not a
sail was to be seen coming from the west, except a
man-of-war with a crescent flag at the peak, lying off
toward Scutari from Seraglio point, and with a sigh
that carried the cloud off his brow, Hassan gayly
squatted once more to his cushions, and the caique
sped merrily on. In and out, among the vessels at
anchor, the airy bark threaded her way with the dexterous
swiftness of a bird, when suddenly a cable rose
beneath her and lifted her half out of the water. A
vessel newly-arrived was hauling in to a close anchorage,
and they had crossed her hawser as it rose to the
surface. Pitched headlong into the lap of the nearest
caikji, the Turk's snowy turban fell into the water and
was carried by the eddy under the stern of the vessel
rounding to, and as the caique was driven backward
to regain it, the bareheaded owner sank back aghast—
Simple Susan of Salem staring him in the face in
golden capitals.
“Oh! Mr. Keui! how do you do!” cried a well-remembered
voice, as he raised himself to fend off
by the rudder of the brig. And there she stood
within two feet of his lips—Miss Picklin in her bridal
veil, waiting below in expectant modesty, and though
surprised by his peep into the cabin windows, excusing
it as a natural impatience in a bridegroom coming to
his bride.
The captain of the Susan, meantime, had looked
over the tafferel and recognised his old passenger, and
Hassan, who would have given a cargo of opium for
an hour to compose himself, mounted the ladder
which was thrown out to him, and stepped from the
gangway into Miss Picklin's arms! She had rushed
up to receive him, dressed in her muslin kirtle and
satin trousers, though, with her dramatic sense of
propriety, she had intended to remain below till summoned
to the bridal. The captain, of course, kept
back from delicacy, but the missionaries stood in a
cluster gazing on the happy meeting, and the sailors
looked over their shoulders as they heaved at the
windlass. As Miss Picklin afterward remarked, “it
would have been a tableau vivant if the deck had not
been so very dirty!”
Hassan wiped his eyes, for he had replaced his wet
turban on his head, but what with his escape from
drowning, and what with his surprise and embarrassment
(for he had a difficult part to play, as the reader
will presently understand), he had lost all memory
of his little stock of English. Miss Picklin drew him
gently by the hand to the quarter-deck, where, under
an awning fringed with curtains partly drawn, stood a
table with a loaf of wedding-cake upon it, and a bottle
of wine and a bible. She nodded to the Rev. Mr.
Griffin, who took hold of a chair and turned it round,
and placing it against his legs with the back toward
him, looked steadfastly at the happy couple.
“Good morning—good night—your sister—aspetta!
per amor' di Dio!” cried the bewildered Hassan,
giving utterance to all the English he could remember,
and seizing the bride by the arm.
“These ladies are my bridesmaids,” said Miss
Picklin, pointing to the missionaries' wives who stood
by in their bonnets and shawls. “I dare say he expected
my sister would come as my bridesmaid!”
she added, turning to Mr. Griffin to explain the outbreak
as she understood it.
Hassan beat his hand upon his forehead, walked
twice up and down the quarterdeck, looked around
over the Golden Horn as if in search of an interpreter
to his feelings, and finally walked up to Miss Picklin
with a look of calm resignation, and addressed to her
and to the Rev. Mr. Griffin a speech of three minutes,
in Italian. At the close of it he made a very ceremonious
salaam, and offered his hand to the bride;
and, as no one present understood a syllable of what
he had intended to convey in his address, it was received
as probably a welcome to Turkey, or perhaps
a formal repetition of his offer of heart and hand. At
any rate, Miss Picklin took it to be high time to blush
and take off her glove, and the Rev. Mr. Griffin then
bent across the back of the chair, joined their hands
and went through the ceremony, ring and all. The
ladies came up, one after another, and kissed the
bride, and the gentlemen shook hands with Hassan,
who received their good wishes with a curious look
of unhappy resignation, and after cutting the cake and
permitting the bride to retire for a moment to calm
her feelings and put on her bonnet, the bridegroom
made rather a peremptory movement of departure,
and the happy couple went off in the caique toward
Dolma-batchi amid much waving of handkerchiefs
from the missionaries, and hurrahs from the Salem
hands of the Simple Susan.
And now, before giving the reader a translation of
the speech of Hassan before the wedding, we must
go back to some little events which had taken place
one month previously at Constantinople.
The Nancy arrived off Seraglio Point after a very
remarkable passage, having still on her quarter the
northwest breeze which had stuck to her like a bloodhound
ever since leaving the harbor of Salem. She
had brought it with her to Constantinople indeed, for
twenty or thirty vessels which had been long waiting
a favorable wind to encounter the adverse current of
the Bosphorus, were loosing sail and getting under
way, and the pilot, knowing that the destination of the
Nancy was also to the Black sea, strongly dissuaded
Captain Brown from dropping anchor in the horn,
with a chance of losing the good luck, and lying, perhaps
a month, wind-bound in harbor. Understanding
that the captain's only object in stopping was to leave
the two ladies with Keui the opium-merchant, the
pilot, who knew his residence at Dolma-batchi, made
Arriving opposite the little village of which Hassan's
house was one of the chief ornaments, the ladies
were lowered into the caique and sent ashore—
expecting of course to be received with open arms
by Mrs. Keui—and then, spreading all her canvass,
the swift little schooner sped on her way to Trebisond.
Hassan sat in the little pavilion of his house which
looked out on the Bosphorus, eating his pillau, for it
was the noon of a holyday, and he had not been that
morning to Galata. Recognising at once the sweet
face of Phemie as the caique came near the shore,
he flew to meet her, supposing that the “Simple
Susan” had arrived, and that the lady of his love
had chosen to come and seek him. The reader
will understand of course that there was no “Mrs.
Keui.”
And now to shorten my story.
Mrs. Brown and Phemie were in Hassan's own house,
with no other acquaintance or protector on that side
of the world, and there was no possibility of escaping
a true explanation. The mistake was explained, and
explained to Brown's satisfaction. Phemie was the
“daughter” of Captain Picklin, to whom the offer was
transmitted, and as, by blessed luck, the Nancy had
outsailed the Simple Susan, Providence seemed to
have chosen to set right for once, the traverse of true
love. The English embassy was at Burgurlu, only
six miles above, on the Bosphorus, and Hassan and
his mother and sisters, and Mrs. Brown and Phemie
were soon on their way thither in swift caiques, and
the happy couple were wedded by the English chaplain.
The arrival of the Simple Susan was of course looked
for, by both Hassan and his bride, with no little dismay.
She had met with contrary winds on the
Atlantic, and had been caught in the Archipelago by
a Levanter, and from the damage of the last she had
been obliged to come to anchor off the little island of
Paros and repair. This had been a job of six weeks,
and meantime the Nancy had given them the go-by,
and reached Constantinople.
Hassan was daily on the look-out for the brig in his
trips to town, and on the morning of her arrival, his
mind being put at ease for the day by his glance
toward the sea of Marmora, the stumbling so suddenly
and so unprepared on the object of his dread, completely
bewildered and unnerved him. Through all
his confusion, however, and all the awkwardness of
his situation, there ran a feeling of self-condemnation,
as well as pity for Miss Picklin; and this had driven
him to the catastrophe described above. He felt that
he owed her some reparation, and as the religion
which he was educated did not forbid a plurality of
wives, and there was no knowing but possibly she
might be inclined to “do in Turkey as Turkeys do,”
he felt it incumbent on himself to state the fact of
his previous marriage, and then offer her the privilege
of becoming Mrs. Keui No. 2, if she chose to accept.
As he had no English at his command, he stated his
dilemma and made his offer in the best language he
had—Italian—and with the results the reader has been
made acquainted.
Of the return passage of Miss Picklin, formerly
Mrs. Keui, under the charge of Captain and Mrs.
Brown, in the schooner Nancy, I have never learned
the particulars. She arrived at Salem in very good
health, however, and has since been distinguished
principally by her sympathy for widows—based on
what, I can not very positively say. She resides at
present in Salem with her father, Captain Picklin,
who is still the consignee of the house of Keui, having
made one voyage out to see the children of his
daughter Phemie and strengthen the mercantile connexion.
His old age is creeping on him, undistinguished
by anything except the little monomania of reading
the letters from his son-in-law at least a hundred
times, and then wafering them up over the fireplace
of his counting-room—in doubt, apparently, whether
he rightly understands the contents.
| The miscellaneous works of N.P. Willis | |