5. V.
We struck our tents at sunrise, and were soon dashing
on through the oleanders upon the broad plain of
the Hermus, the dew lying upon their bright vermeil
flowers like the pellucid gum on the petals of the ice-plant,
and nature, and my five companions, in their
gayest humor. I was not. My thoughts were of
moonlight and the Pactolus, and two round feet
ankle-deep in running water. Job rode up to my
side.
“My dear Phil! take notice that you are nearing
Mount Sypilus, in which the magnetic ore was first
discovered.”
“It acts negatively on me, my dear chum! for I
drag a lengthening chain from the other direction.”
Silence once more, and the bright red flowers still
fled backward in our career. Job rode up again.
“You must excuse my interrupting your revery, but
I thought you would like to know that the town where
we sleep to-night is the residence of the `beys of Oglou,'
mentioned in the `Bride of Abydos.”'
No answer, and the bright red blossoms still flew
scattered in our path as our steeds flew through the
coppice, and the shovel-like blades of the Turkish stirrups
cut into them right and left in the irregular gallop.
Job rode again to my side.
“My dear Philip, did you know that this town of
Magnesia was once the capital of the Turkish empire—
the city of Timour the Tartar?”
“Well!”
“And did you know that when Themistocles was
in exile, and Artaxerxes presented him with the tribute
of three cities to provide the necessaries of life, Magnesia
[8]
found him in bread?”
“And Lampascus in wine. Don't bore me, Job!'
We sped on. As we neared Casabar toward noon,
and (spite of romance) I was beginning to think with
complacency upon the melons, for which the town is
famous, a rattling of hoofs behind put our horses upon
their mettle, and in another moment a boy dashed into
the midst of our troop, and reining up with a fine display
of horsemanship, put the promised token into
my hand. He was mounted on a small Arabian mare,
remarkable for nothing but a thin and fiery nostril,
and a most lavish action, and his jacket and turban
were fitted to a shape and head that could not well
be disguised. The beauty of the gipsy camp was
beside me!
It was as well for my self-command, that I had
sworn Job to secrecy in case of the boy's joining us,
and that I had given the elder gipsy, as a token, a very
voluminous and closely-written letter of my mother's.
In the twenty minutes which the reading of so apparently
“lengthy” a document would occupy, I had
leisure to resume my self-control, and resolve on my
own course of conduct toward the fair masquerader.
My travelling companions were not a little astonished
to see me receive a letter by courier in the heart of
Asia, but that was for their own digestion. All the
information I condescended to give, was that the boy
was sent to my charge on his road to Constantinople;
and as Job displayed no astonishment, and entered
simply into my arrangements, and I was the only person
in the company who could communicate with the
suridji (I had picked up a little modern Greek in the
Morea), they were compelled (the Dutchman, John
Bull, and the fig-merchant) to content themselves
with such theories on the subject as Heaven might
supply them withal.
How Job and I speculated apart on what could be
the errand of this fair creature to Constantinople—
how beautifully she rode and sustained her character
as a boy—how I requested her, though she spoke
Italian like her mother, never to open her lips in any
Christian language to my companions—how she slept
at my feet at the khans, and rode at my side on the
journey, and, at the end of seven days, arriving at
Scutari, and beholding across the Bosphorus the golden
spires of Stamboul, how she looked at me with tears
in her unfathomable eyes, and spurred her fleet Arab
to his speed to conceal her emotion, and how I felt
that I could bury myself with her in the vizier's
tomb we were passing at the moment, and be fed on
rice with a goule's bodkin, if so alone we might not
be parted—all these are matters which would make
sundry respectable chapters in a novel, but of which
you are spared the particulars in a true story. There
was a convenience both to the dramatist and the audience
in the “cetera intus agentur” of the Romans.
