Veiled Women. Marmaduke William Pickthall

noise came from the selamlik. A eunuch rushed to say that the procession of the bridegroom to the mosque had just returned. At once, a heavy veil, precluding sight, was flung on Barakah. The bride’s train formed. With tapers and with garlands, amid joy-cries, she was led to her own gilded salon, and there left alone. In the same instant, so it seemed to her, the bridegroom came. Her veil was lifted. She felt like to die. She dared not raise her eyes for fear of weeping. The ritual words she had been schooled to say escaped her memory. But, as luck befell, they were unneeded.

      “Grand Dieu!” cried Yûsuf Bey. “The fools—the miscreants have made you look like one of them. Your face—your hair! Ah, mon amour! Ma colombe!”

      She was obliged to laugh, and the nice-looking, eager youth laughed with her. Fatigue and headache fell off from her like a garment.

      On the next afternoon, when Barakah, at peace with all the world, was sitting in her gilded parlour, on the cushioned window-sill, peeping through the lattice at red masts and flags, the decorations for her wedding not yet taken down, it happened that she called for water. That cry resounded through the whole haramlik in the hours of heat, and slaves with pitchers waited always ready to obey it. The girl who answered brought a vase of amber fluid, which she proclaimed the most delicious sherbet known to woman. The lady Fitnah had herself prepared it for the bride’s delight. Barakah took one sip, disliked the taste, and, only waiting for politeness till the maid had gone, poured out the rest upon a plant of jasmine in a flower-pot which stood upon a shelf within the lattice. A little later she was very sick, and went and lay down on her bed. She was feeling better when her husband was announced.

      “Yûsuf!” she cried, as he came in, “it is so curious. Madame your mother sent me up some special sherbet. I tasted it, and found it disagreeable, so I emptied all the rest upon the plant there. Then I felt so ill——”

      She got no further. Yûsuf, following the direction of her gesture, had fixed his eyes upon the flower-pot. They were riveted. The plant was dead, a shrivelled, blackened object. With one despairing cry he clutched his forehead and rushed headlong from the room.