Irene the Missionary

XXIII.

A MONTH passed away, — for Irene a month of study and conversational practice in Arabic, of constitutionals about the rugged crest on which the village stood, and of little more.

The walks were usually to the spring, nearly a quarter of a mile from the village. There was some amusement in watching the sunburnt maidens, who filled their enormous water-jars and skipped away with them on their heads, or perhaps washed to resplendent whiteness the broad-tailed, corpulent sheep which was to provide the winter meat of a household. Sometimes, with Saada and Rufka in company, she pushed on to a huge precipice which overhung a neighboring wady. Or she climbed to the crown of the Bhamdun ridge, and obtained a far-away view of the Mediterranean. Mr. Payson rode once to Abeih. but Irene could not accompany him, for there was the rejected doctor.

It was still life, truly Oriental in its extreme tranquillity, and seeming to her at times wofuliy ineffective. Judge, therefore, of the joy and excitement in the Payson household when, one May afternoon, Hubertsen DeVries rode up to its door. Irene, startled out of her usual staidness, fairly ran into the street to greet him.

“ What has become of your Amalekite? ” she asked. “I want my crown and bracelet.”

“ You will have to wear a millstone,” he said. “ I found nothing more elegant than millstones.”

“ What, nothing? Nothing Philistine? ” She was nearly as disappointed as himself, and looked much more so. It is all nonsense to say that young ladies cannot sympathize with antiquarians, providing these last are not themselves antiquities.

“ I shall try Ashdod next,” he replied. “ Old Askelon was pretty certainly built of unburnt bricks. I ought to have gone to Ashdod. There must be something there, — Egyptian, at any rate. But how are you? You are looking wonderfully well.”

Here came in the other greetings and felicitations, too numerous to recapitulate. Presently, De Vries turned to Irene once more, and surveyed her with an air of approbation.

“ I never saw you looking so well,” he said. “ You remind me of a certain British drink which I have tasted and found very fortifying.”

“ A drink? ” queried the young lady, unfamiliar with potations, and unable to guess.

“Brown stout,” smiled Hubertsen.

“I am not so fat!” declared Irene, laughing and coloring. “ Of course I am sunburnt. What an outrage to find fault with me about it! ”

“I was n’t finding fault; quite the contrary,” said the young man; and the whole company could see in his eyes that he spoke the truth. Saada, a meek admirer of De Vries, and of Miss Grant also, looked from one to the other, and smiled gayly. Mrs. Payson, remembering her beloved doctor, wanted to change the conversation.

“ We must get you established in your room, ” she observed to the guest. “ Do you think that you can sleep with horses under you ? ”

The question was appropriate to the moment, for Hubertsen’s steed and Mr. Payson’s kadeesh had just met in the stable, and were squealing at each other like two locomotives.

“ I’ll put a stop to those war-whoops to morrow,” said the young man. “ Achmet is looking up a house for me in the village, and if he does n’t find one I shall pitch a tent on the hill. You won’t object, I suppose, to my spending the summer in Bhamdun.”

Everybody was delighted, excepting thoughtful Mrs. Payson, who could not help saying something about Abeih being prettier.

“ It would be, no doubt, if you were all there,” said DeVries, with a glance at Irene and Saada, which seemed to express a tranquil satisfaction in looking at them.

The lady of the house did not take a particle of this compliment to herself, and went off hastily to oversee the fitting up of a bed in the parlor, feeling the while that matters often go wrong in this life.

“ Yes, I shall stay in Bhamdun,— mostly,” Hubertsen continued; “I must have a cool retreat during the hot season. That coast climate has been a little trying. Miss Grant, what pretty things your girls said about my small presents; and how very considerate it was of you, Mr, Payson, to translate them for me! I sent that letter to my mother. ”

“Did you, indeed!” smiled the missionary, rejoicing in the young man’s dutifulness, as he rejoiced in all signs of good everywhere. “ I am glad that I wrote out the children’s prattle. It was Irene’s happy thought.”

De Vries looked at the girl in surprise, and studied her face with a curious calmness. He was obviously pleased that she should have thought in his absence of giving him a pleasure. Seeing that his gaze made her color, he turned away, and spoke of other subjects. It was a singular instance of considerateness in so young a man, and showed better than almost anything else could how graciously he had been nurtured.

“ What a view! ” he said, gazing out through one of the Saracenic arches which opened toward the west. “ It must be half a mile across this ravine. Is that the song of those muleteers on the other side? One can’t help wishing that it was better music. I hate that quavering squall.”

“ Syria is like a beautiful bird which has a bad voice,” put in Saada.

“ Well, it is beautiful,” he replied, glancing down upon the girl with manifest approval of her cleverness. “ I don’t wonder that this part of the world was first inhabited by civilized men. It deserved the honor. I am saying this partly because it is true, and partly to please you, Saada!”

“ I am much obliged to you for saying it, howaja, and also for your present, to me. You encumbered us all with your goodness, and there was too much for our hands to carry. I wish you many blessings, and repose to your fingers.”

The Arabic phrases were of course meant in part jocosely, and Hubertsen laughed as he replied, “You are very welcome. ”

“ Oh, howaja, I am frightened,” added Saada, who had something in her hand, and was blushing magnificently. “ I knit a purse of Treblons silk to give you in return for your bounty, and now I am ashamed to offer it, because it is such a poor little thing.”

De Vries rose from his chair and extended his hand, as if he were about to receive the gift of an empress.

“ May it always be full,” said Saada, laying the purse across his palm with trembling fingers, and looking up at him with gratitude for accepting it.

For a moment the young American gazed down into the dark, brilliant Oriental eyes with an expression of fascination. It is barely possible that, if Payson and Miss Grant had not been standing by, he might have done something injudicious. Even as matters were, he expressed his thanks very warmly, and promised to keep the purse forever. Saada smiled shyly, and then quietly withdrew into the background, brimful of throbbings and blushes. I doubt whether Irene, good and magnanimous as she was, enjoyed the scene one half as much as the other two. For a minute or two Hubertsen was absent-minded ; he looked over his shoulder after the young Oriental; he seemed hardly aware of his pretty countrywoman. There is a magic at times in a little bit of personal attention from an unexpected quarter.

“ What is to become of your Syrian girls? ” he presently asked of Mr. Payson. “ I would like to send that one home to my mother.”

“ She had better remain here, and be of service to her own people. In America, how little she would amount to! But here a fairly educated woman may be of inestimable value. What Syria most wants is a benefaction of intelligent, conscientious wives and mothers.”

“ Still, I should like to send her home,” insisted DeVries. “ My mother would make a perfect plaything of a Syrian Protestant with such eyes.”

Irene listened with a feeling of depression which she could not rule. Her friend, who once had such kindly wishes for her, and whose return she had looked forward to with such eagerness, seemed to care less for her than for Saada. Under this neglect, she became humbly anxious to please him, and pondered how she could do it. Should she learn the Deir el Kamr embroidery, and work him a pair of crimson and gold slippers? Would he care for them when they were done? She feared not. Her eyes were not as brilliant as Saada’s, and she Was not, like Saada, a Syrian and a curiosity ; she was only a poor American minister’s daughter, and not suitable for a pet and plaything. Right as it all was, of course, it was considerably saddening, and had a tendency to turn one’s thoughts toward the path of duty.

“ I wish Saada might go to America,” she said magnanimously, and thinking that the girl would go with DeVries. “ Don’t you think, Mr. Payson, that she would interest people in Syria? ”

“ The idea had not occurred to me,” he returned. “ It may be as you say. And yet I can't quite desire to interest people in that way, — by sending home comely damsels.”

“ She would draw a full house,” smiled Hubertsen.

“ I do not like it,” said Parson, really hurt by the light-minded way of viewing mission affairs.

“ Mr. DeVries was n’t thinking of exhibiting her,” observed Irene, anxious to exculpate her friend, though he seemed so careless of herself.

“ I was n’t thinking much about it,” he replied languidly; and the tone of indifference brought her some satisfaction.

“ I don’t think very hard about anything, just now,” he went on. “ I am jaded and out of sorts, and want utter idleness. It was a smart pull of work, that digging in the hot flats of Askelon; and I feel a little fagged by it, and very glad to get here. And glad to see you both! ” he added emphatically. “ How have you passed your time, Miss Grant? Have you studied like a German doctor, as usual ? ”

“Irene has done exceedingly well,” affirmed Mr. Payson. “ She has made really surprising progress in Arabic. The great gift of tongues was a part of her portion.”

DeVries gave the young lady a smile of approbation, which filled her with content.

“ E l'italiano? ” he queried. “ Ha continuato a studiare l'italiano? ”

She answered him fluently enough in that language to surprise and please him,

“ Very good,” he said warmly. “ Do keep up the Italian. There is a vast deal of culture — to speak the language of Canaan, I mean Boston — in knowing and using a tongue which possesses a great literature.”

Irene made a resolution that she would talk Italian at every opportunity, and would read it aloud to herself at least half an hour every day.

“We’ll practice it together,” added DeVries, as though he had divined her thoughts. “ We will write themes in it, and get Mr. Payson to correct them,”

By this time Irene had forgotten her late moment of depression, and was quite light-hearted again. It is to be feared that her happiness was increased to an almost perilous extent by the fact that during the remainder of the interview the young man’s gaze frequently sought her own, or dwelt contentedly upon her face. A terrible amount of talking can be done by two youthful persons with their eyes, even when they do not purpose it. This interchange of views, once begun, is as irresistible as wine to a drunkard. Over and over discretion says, “ I will not look again,” and presently breaks her resolution. Before she is quite aware of her risk, she has a feeling that she has laid herself open to an outspoken tenderness, and is bound by the honor of womanhood to receive it graciously. How can she ever get back to where she was before they two commenced floating toward each other on the wings of those glances? Something seems to be already settled, and quite beyond her feeble undoing.

As for DeVries, he had stumbled by surprise into this voiceless amity, and found himself liking it before he had reflected upon it. It must be understood that he had come up to Lebanon in a frame of mind to fall in love with somebody, if opportunity favored. He was jaded in body and disappointed in soul, and sorely needed a comrade who would nurse and pet him. For months he had been deprived of the converse and sight of women, excepting the wild and haggard daughters of poverty-stricken Philistia. It was a bewitching experience to meet a girl who was clean and civilized and really handsome. His first impulse had been to seize upon Saada; then came a still stronger desire to appropriate, Irene.

Why not? She was poor, but he had wealth for both, and that was better. She was certainly pretty enough, and lady-like and clever enough. As for accomplishments, what young lady of his home acquaintance could speak better Italian, or could speak any Arabic at all ? With her gift for tongues, she could develop into an accomplished linguist, and receive the learned company which he loved in a way to gratify his pride. And then Arabic! Why, Arabic was an immense thing! He foresaw that he should have to learn that language himself, if he meant to go to the bottom of Philistine mysteries; and how helpful it would be to him to have a Semitic scholar in the family! All these judicious and commendable thoughts flitted through his mind while he sat talking in the clayfloored hall, now gazing down among the vines and mulberries of Wady Bhamdun, and now exchanging glances with our young missionary.

He was proposing a family trip to the mysterious ruined temples on the slopes of Jebel Sunneen, when Mrs. Payson took charge of him, and led him away to the improvised guest-chamber.

“ I like the lad much,” said Mr. Payson. “ His hands are always full of work. Very few children of the rich are thus incessantly busy with matters which do not pertain to mere pleasure. May the Guide of his mother be his guide also!”

Mrs. Payson, who had returned to the hall, threw an anxious glance at Irene, and wished that Mr. Payson would not praise the “ lad ” so openly.

“ He never thinks of such matters,” she sighed to herself, almost bemoaning her saint’s excessive spirituality. ” I shall really have to tell him that he must. What if Irene should take a fancy, and Mr. DeVries should n’t offer? ”

XXIV.

The next morning Hubertsen’s mind was a good deal less occupied with marrying than with malaria.

The change from the hot air of the coast to the comparative coolness of Bhamdun, four thousand feet above the sea, had brought upon him his first attack of ague. There were two hours of shaking, and then several hours of fever and malaise, all miserably depressing to the mind of a novice in the malady, and calculated to make him think chiefly, though meanly enough, of himself.

Scarcely was he about again, with somewhat of the vivacity of youth in his face and soul, when a subject of the bomb-shell order exploded in the family, and engaged its entire attention. A letter from Mr. Kirkwood announced that it seemed best to the mission that some American should join the native preacher in Damascus, and suggested reasons why none of the “brethren” in Abeih could meetly undertake the enterprise.

“ We remember the heat of the summer on the plains,” the epistle concluded. “ But, on the other hand, there will probably be no fighting there, and in the mountain there may be. Do not understand, dear brother, that this work is urged upon you, or commended to you as a duty. Whoever shall adventure it will do so voluntarily. Our doctor is very anxious to go, but he is not fit in health, and he is not a clergyman. Let us know your judgment and desires in this matter, and believe that we shall surely approve of them, whatever they may be.”

“ Yes, they shall approve of them,” said Mr. Payson. “ I shall go to Damascus.”

“ Oh, dear! ” groaned Mrs. Payson.

“ My child, shall I be less ready to offer my labor than the consul is to offer his money?” he returned, very gently. “ Why, it was I who suggested the enterprise. As for the heat, there are English missionaries there, and the houses of Damascus are suited to the climate. I will not ask you to go.”

“ I am going,”returned the wife almost indignantly; and the satisfied husband smiled on her very kindly.

“ Our children here must be watched over,” be continued. " No doubt some one will be spared from Abeih for that purpose.”

“ I hope it will be the doctor,” said Mrs. Payson. “ He needs the Bhamdun air, if any one does.”

Irene looked up with a startled glance, and then fell into deep meditation. Meantime DeVries said nothing, understanding perfectly that he could not volunteer to take charge of a family of young ladies, though he was thinking that there would be a chance for a pleasant sort of protectorate, or at least an entente cordiale.

“ The doctor would be a very proper person,” observed Mr. Payson, who knew nothing of the emotional entanglements between Macklin and Miss Grant, and who, in his guilelessness, was not accustomed to consider the possibility of such things.

“ I should like to go with you to Damascus,” said Irene, raising her eyes from her broodings. “ Mrs. Payson may be taken sick. There ought to be a third person; and why not I? ”

Mrs. Payson did not look as grateful as her husband thought she ought to. The excellent lady’s instant suspicion was that Irene wanted to evade the doctor, and that she would only too easily allure the doctor’s rival after her to the new station. There was a certain amount of truth in this truly feminine divination. Irene undoubtedly did want to escape the daily companionship of a respected friend who would persist in trying to be a lover. But as to DeVries, she had no hope of being pursued by him to the hot plain of Damascus, and what trouble there was in her face arose largely from the thought that she might see him no more.

“Really, I don’t admire that plan,” the young man himself broke in. “ Miss Grant is n’t acclimated. Of course, I don’t want to interfere in mission affairs.”

“ I think Irene has judged well,” said Mr. Payson, quite unsuspicious of the little asides of feeling in the other three, and speaking solely from the mission point of view. “ The new-comers bear Syria better than the old hands. She is in good health, I believe.”

“You called me brown stout yourself,” Irene laughed, or tried to laugh.

“It was ironical,” said DeVries. “I was struck by your pallor and feebleness.”

“ Why, it ’s impossible! ” replied the young lady, who often failed to understand humor. “ I was a little ailing in Beirut, but I have been very well since I came to the mountain.”

Then Saada changed the conversation by asking anxiously if she and Rufka were to go.

“ No,” decided the head of the family. “ You younglings will abide in the fold.”

Saada glanced sidelong at DeVries, with such a sparkling of joy in her wonderful eyes that Irene, who observed the tell-tale radiance, felt a momentary pang. Hubertsen, who also caught this glimpse of a Syrian soul, wavered between a noble desire to go to Damascus and a temptation to remain in Bhamdun.

“ She is a pretty plaything,” he thought, or something like it, as he studied the deepening color in Saada’s cheeks. “ I wonder if I shall ever be really taken with anything but a plaything. I wonder if she could develop into anything more than a plaything.”

“ How would Damascus suit my case? ” he judiciously asked, at the close of these reflections.

Payson replied that it would not do; that the young man needed an entire summer of Lebanon air; that he must break up his ague, if he wanted to resume his excavations with comfort and safety.

“ Then I shall travel a good deal about the mountains,” said Hubertsen, with the lofty air of one who paves a certain torrid locality.

Irene could not help feeling grateful, or, more accurately speaking, gratified. She was shamefaced about it, however, and did not glance at him with the child-like simplicity, the Oriental fervor, of Saada. Perhaps it would have been no worse for all concerned if she had had less of Occidental staidness and self-command.

“ When shall you go? ” was DeVries’s next query. “ I don’t see that you need hurry. Damascus has been there quite a while, and will be there next week.”

“ The King’s business requires haste,” said Payson. “ To-morrow is the best of all days, except to-day. Perhaps I am wrong,” he added with a grave smile. “ I sometimes think that yesterday is the best, because that we have had, and in that we have finished some labor, if indeed we are of the laboring sort.”

“ It’s like the money a man has spent,” was the youth’s answer. “ I don’t set much store by yesterday. I have n’t yet been happy enough for that.”

“If you are not satisfyingly happy, how futile this world must be!” said Payson. “Well, it agrees with my opinion of it. Life has granted me none of its shining prizes, and I have not greatly desired them, thanks be to the chief source of content! ”

“ And you might have had them, I think,” observed DeVries. “ And here you are going to Damascus to preach to half a dozen Arabs! Well, all I have to say about it now is that you make people want to help you. What can I do for you? Don’t you want one of my horses ? ”

“ Thank you, but Mahjoub will answer my purpose, and I think Mrs. Payson will abide surest upon a mule.”

“ Then, suppose you take a lot of my pots and pans. I have cooking utensils enough for a tribe of Bedoween.”

This offer was gratefully accepted, in order that the Bhamdun kitchen might not he left too bare.

It was now late in the afternoon, and there could be no packing at present, for the camp-bedsteads, bedding, etc., were in constant use. Irene therefore took her usual stroll to the fountain, and Hubertsen walked by her side, with Saada and Rufka following. The narrow and rough footway, strewn with limestone scales and splinters, led along one of the many artificial terraces of the spur, with the low walls of other terraces rising in a gentle acclivity on the right, and the grain and mulberries of a vast slope streaming downward on the left into the wady. Many of the yellow slabs under their feet were chased all over with petrifactions,—the sarcophagi, so to speak, of an innumerable multitude of spiral sea-shells, all minute, and most of them microscopic. Petrified clams, oysters, and ammonites lay about, sometimes singly, but often in surprising numbers. The Mediterranean was not visible. The red sun was descending behind the bare ridge which faced Bhamdun on the western side of its deep ravine. To the north rose huge rounded crests and mounds, portions of the great backbone of Lebanon. It was a noble prospect., and yet they could not see the loftiest peaks, and could only think of the long drifts of eternal snow.

“I hate to bid the mountain goodby,” murmured Irene, after a long gaze in all directions.

“ And I hate to have you,” said Hubertsen, in the same low tone.

She felt a slight tremor within her, and did not look at him for a moment. It must be distinctly understood that she did not expect a word of love from this wealthy young gentleman, nor even desire one. It would have been a great perplexity to her to get such a word from one who in her eyes was a “ worldling,” and at the same time a valued and charming companion. When they did glance at each other, she forced a pitiful smile, and he gravely answered it. by saying, “I wish you would go home. ”

“ Oh, that I can’t do!” she gasped “How can I abandon these dear friends ? It would be so unfeeling and dishonorable! And how can I turn my back on my work ? I wish — oh, you mean to be kind — but I wish you wouldn’t talk of that.”

It sounded to him like a repulse. She would not speak of going to America, although that might mean going with him, and perhaps remaining with him always. Of course she should have divined thus much, and probably had divined it, he vaguely said to himself, and had willfully rejected the amiable possibility.

“ Well, it is no use to argue,” he replied, coldly. “ Oh, of course, I don’t blame you. You want to do your duty, and you don’t want to accept my kindness.”

“You mustn’t think that I am nilgrateful,” she pleaded, deeply hurt by the change in his voice. “ I know you mean to be good to me, and I thank you with all my heart.”

“ Ah, well ! that repays me,” he smiled. “ I value your thanks. Well, if we are to part company, we can still remember each other. What can I do in your absence that will be a pleasure to you ? ”

“ I wish you would write a book about Syria, and send me a copy. I want to see your writing in print, and your name to it.”

“ You shall see it before it goes into print,” declared Hubertsen. “You shall see the manuscript. Look here: I will make the book; but I must make it in my way. I will make it out of letters which are to be written to you. I shall be the more sure to do it, and I shall do it the better. I will write about my expeditions, my daily life and small observations, everything that interests me. You shall keep the letters. Oh, of course you may lose them, and small blame to you; but, if they are not lost, I will take them and put them together for my book. What do you say to my plan ? Do you like it ? ”

Of course Irene liked it, and so declared frankly. It was surely a very artful way of opening a correspondence with a clever young lady, who loved literature, and thought it a great thing to write a book, or to aid in any humble manner toward the writing of one.

“ And could n’t you help? ” the young man went on. “ Why not send me some material? — any queer or funny incident; scraps of dialogues which you overhear; compliments, proverbs, superstitions; every odd and end that you come across. It will be the most curious part of the book, and the most valuable in the opinion of the critics. I shall be ashamed to rob you of it.”

“ I shall be proud to have you,” said Irene, smiling with satisfaction over the thought of being useful to him, and of doing something a little bit memorable. “ And where shall I send my notes?” she asked. “ And when? ”

“ Send them here,” he smiled. “ Send them whenever there is a chance. It is the only way to be sure to do it,” he added, seeing that she looked up at him doubtfully. “ If you don’t write and send me something every fortnight, say, you will soon forget to do it at all. You think that I am trapping you into a correspondence,” he smiled again. “ Well, so I am; and what of it? It won’t do you a bit of harm, and we shall make a very curious book.”

“I will do it, if you say so,” promised Irene, with a confidingness and obedience which pleased him greatly.

Just then they reached the fountain, and were overtaken by Saada and Rufka, and the tête-à-tête ended.

XXV.

Two days later, the Rev. Samuel Pelton and Mrs. Pel ton, a pair of missionaries who have not yet appeared in our story, arrived, in Bhamdun to take charge of Mr. Payson’s household and duties during his absence.

Mr. Pulton was a tall, meagre, silvergray, leather-complexioned man of fiftyfive, apparently much worn by his thirty years of exposure to Oriental climates and his many victorious struggles with the complicated wilderness of Semitic tongues. A little petulance of nervousness appeared in his manner, and a good deal of austerity in his deep-set, irongray eyes.

Mrs. Pelton, who was a second wife, and some twenty years younger than her lord (as second wives are apt to be), was a slender, sallow, pleasant-faced, lively lady, with large, eager eyes, excitable action, a ready laugh, and a great fondness for conversation. DeVries, who was chiefly interested just now in Miss Grant, and occupied, moreover, with getting into his own house, noted only thus much concerning this couple.

The day following the Pelton advent, the Paysons and Irene were up at. daybreak, and on the way to Damascus. Payson rode his Mahjoub, the two ladies had each a mule, and two more mules carried the small luggage. The pace was a walk, as it always is in Eastern travel, and must be on Mount Lebanon roads. The stumbling mule-path rambled with untutored freedom through a desert of stony ridges and Stony wadys. DeVries accompanied the party for miles, until it reached a famous point which reveals the tender verdure, the variegated carpet of flowers, the supernatural, deep, dim beauty of the great valley of Hollow Syria, lying like an Eden between Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon. There he pressed all their hands fervently, and halted while they wound slowly out of sight. Then he drew a long sigh, turned back upon the mountain desert, and rode pensively homeward.

His first business on reaching Bhamdun was to make a call of courtesy on the Pultons. He found Pelton a prodigiously learned Orientalist, but disposed to handle his erudition for purposes of combat and chastisement, questioning a fellow-talker with dreadful thoroughness, and mercilessly laying bare his ignorance. On moral subjects, also, as indeed on all sorts of subjects, he was equally critical and austere. DeVries spoke of the sweetness of Payson’s ways, of the alluring gentleness of his religious belief and feeling. Mr. Pelton shook his silver-gray head with an air of doubt approaching to disapprobation.

“Brother Payson is a lovely man,” he said. “ But I question if he treats men just as they need to be treated, He is, in my opinion, too tender with the human heart. He preaches nothing but love and forgiveness. Now that is all very well in its place and at the proper time; but first should come the terrors of the law, — the lightnings and thunders of Sinai. My plan is to bring the sinner fairly on his knees, and roll him in the dust of humiliation and despair, before I let him see the first glimpse of possible mercy.”

DeVries was reminded of medical practitioners, men of the heroic method of treatment, whom he had heard describe their manner of treating disease. He bowed courteously, and glided away to other subjects. It was evident to him that he had stumbled upon a man with whom he could keep the peace only through discreet silences.

Mrs. Pelton, who perhaps discerned this speechless disagreement, now joined in the dialogue with great vivacity and gusto. She was one of those many women who are determined to please every one, and who are pleased easily, She Criticised nobody, and bristled not with views. She exhibited great interest in the Philistine explorations, and in everything else that the young man seemed to care for. He found it facile work to talk with her, and just a little unsatisfactory. But then he was thinking much of Irene, and so Mrs. Pelton was at a disadvantage.

About noon, the next day, as he was writing the first letter of that promised book about Syria, he was startled by a nasal call from the street, and, looking through his open door, beheld Mr. Porter Brassey on horseback.

“ Hullo, DeVries! ” repeated the consul. “ Is this Payson’s house? I want to see Payson. He hain’t gone, has he?”

“ Come in,” answered Hubertsen. “But you are too late to find Payson. He must be near Damascus by this time.”

“Thunder!” growled Mr. Brasscy; and then quickly added, “ Gone alone? ” “ Wife and Miss Grant with him.”

“ Good thunder!” repeated the consul, in a tone of enhanced disgust. “ That man did n’t take Miss Grant along, did he? I thought he had more sconce. By George! I’m amazed at Payson. I thought he had more humanity. Can I catch ’em? How far is it to Damascus? Two days’ journey! And here I ’ve got to be back in Beirut to-morrow! Confound the whole stupid business! Confound the church in Damascus!”

In fact, Mr. Brasscy used some very bad language, — so bad that it will not be reported on these pages. Then he suffered himself to be brought into the house and spread out at ease on a mukaad, while dinner was prepared for him.

“Did n’t know you were here,” he said. “ Why could n’t you stop and see a fellow as you came along? ”

DeVries explained that the Philistine heat had worried him a little, and that he had come to Lebanon by the upland route, through Judea, Samaria, and Galilee.

“ Got a mountain house of your own, hey?” continued the consul. “Only two rooms, I see. Well, that’s enough for a bachelor and his man. I 'd come up and take one along-side of you, only I expect a rush of business this summer. A tearing old rush of business!” he repeated, with disgust. “ By George! what a mess this is of Payson’s going to Damascus, and taking Miss Grant with him! It ain 't my fault. I allow that I was pushing a little to get that church well started. I s’pose you know about my church ? ”

DeVries smiled and nodded.

“ You think I 'm a rum customer to endow a church,” grinned Mr. Brassey. “ Well, I had my reasons. But I did n’t expect Payson to be harnessed into it. My plan was that Dr. Macklin should be the man to start it; and here they harness in Payson, and he harnesses in Miss Grant! By George! I’ve a great mind to take my contribution out of the box. and smash the whole arrangement. You see there’s going to be a war — a Druze and Maronite war—in the mountain. I’ve just had positive news to that effect. A war right away, — within a fortnight, — within a week, may be.”

“ But Damascus is some distance from the Druze region. It may be safer for them than the mountain.”

“Yes, but Damascus is a long way from me. If there should be trouble there, how can I lend a hand? Damascus, probably, don’t know much about the American eagle. It’s a pretty fierce old Mahometan town, ain’t it?”

“ Very bigoted, I believe, and has a bad rabble.”

Beth men remained silent and gravely thoughtful for a few moments.

“ You see, I’m fond of that girl,” resumed the consul, unable to keep his pathetic secret any longer, so keenly did he need sympathy.

DeVries did not speak, but his stare expressed immense astonishment, and his face flushed deeply.

“ That, ’s it,” continued Mr. Brassey, with a profound sigh. “ A man who’s in this kind of trouble wants to tell somebody, and I reckon always does tell somebody. The complete fact of the case is that I’ve proposed to her, and she, as I understand it, has the thing in consideration. Of course, I ’m all the more interested because it ain’t quite settled. I ’ll be square about it; it ain't quite settled.”

The veteran politician — a sanguine man, remember, and accustomed to triumph over difficulties — really felt that he had told the whole truth, or what was sufficiently near it. He talked of his love-suit exactly as he would have talked of a suit for an office, which had been refused him, to be sure, but which he still expected to obtain by dint of pertinacity. It was his nature and his custom, not only in politics, but in all other matters, to discourse with confidence of his prospects. The policy had a comfortable effect on his own mind, and it seemed to exert what he called a “ good influence.” I think that he was at least worldly wise in this last opinion. If a man positively claims a certain boon, nine fellow-creatures out of ten assent instinctively to his demand, and feel that to interfere with it would he assailing the rights of property. It is only with the tenth fellow-creature that the claimant has to struggle.

In the present case DeVries was disposed to be that tenth fellow-creature. He was stunned by the consul’s tone of security, but he was also exceedingly disgusted thereat, and that helped him to be incredulous. His first, feeling was that he must put a veto on all possibility of such a sacrifice of this lovely girl by galloping after her to Damascus, and engaging her to himself. His next idea was that there could be no danger, and that nothing decisive need be done yet awhile.

“Now you understand why I feel so anxious about her,” continued Mr. Brassey. “ By George! I feel as uneasy as a fellow with a bumble-bee up his sleeve. I could mourn like a pelican of the wilderness.”

DeVries could hardly help laughing at the situation. Here was a possible rival making a confidant of him, and casting himself on his bosom for sympathy. Should he tell the consul that he too was fond of Miss Grant, and had thoughts of making her an offer? Well, on reflection, was it really so? He could not positively say yes, and therefore he must say nothing at all.

“ She is a very lovely girl,” he did make out to mutter. “ And a very noble-hearted and intelligent one,” he added, warming with his subject. “ She has a real talent for languages, and already speaks Arabic pretty well.”

“ Just the person for a consul’s lady, ain’t she ? ” said Mr. Brassey, with pathetic enthusiasm.

“ It was her own choice to go to Damascus,” continued DeVries, not caring to answer that query. “ She would n’t leave her good friend Payson, and would n’t shirk her work.”

“ I knew she was a trump! ” declared the consul, ready to weep with admiration. “ The finest girl at this end of the Mediterranean! ”

“ She is easily that,” said DeVries, who had forgotten the humor of the sit uation, and was much in earnest. The two men were eulogizing to each other the girl whom they were both fond of. It was a scene which has been many, many times repeated in this queer planet. I wonder if even our shy and guileless heroine would not have laughed, could she have overheard the whimsical dialogue !

After a while the two actors in this pleasant comedy had dinner. A circular table, eight inches high, was placed before them, and they sat up to it, crosslegged, on cushions and Turkish rugs. DeVries opened a flask of Mount Lebanon wine, a bright, and golden liquor resembling sherry, and very nearly as potent.

“ This ain’t bad, except for the knees,” grinned the consul, much comforted by the Syrian vintage, “ Sometimes I feel a heap like settling in this blasted country. A man gets all there is for a very little filthy lucre. If I had a wife, and she took to the diggings, I would settle here. DeVries, I want you to join me in a toast to Miss Grant.”

Hubertsen smiled with a mysterious expression, but they drank a bumper to the lovely missionary.

“ And here ’s to the Philistine diggings,” continued Brassey. ” May they pan out no end of giants.”

Then DeVries proposed the church in Damascus, which he irreverently called the church of draw-poker, much to the consul’s entertainment.

“ I want to drink that standing,” said Brassey, rubbing his knees, and then slowly getting up and stamping his feet. “I tell you that kind of table was n’t made for six-foot Americans. I don’t believe Goliath ever sat at such a table. Well, here’s to the church in Damascus; long may it stay there!”

Once on his legs, and having stamped the stinging out of his slumbering feet, the consul said he must be traveling. He would not stay over night; he must be back in Beirut for the morning. There was going to be business,—too much business.

“ As for our friends at Damascus,” he observed, “I don’t see that anything can be done. Probably, old Payson would n't come back unless he was hauled back. But if there is trouble there, — if you hear of the least threatening of trouble, — let me know before you ’re a day older. I ’ll get them out of it.”

“ And I ’ll help you,” said DeVries.

“ That ’s right. You ’re a trump; I always said so. Come and see me whenever you tumble down the mountain. Good-by.”

As Mr. Brassey reached the door-way, a small, feminine figure entered it, and he looked curiously down upon the blushing face and superb eyes of Saada.

“ I wanted to see Mr. DeVries,” she stammered, much startled by coming upon a stranger. “ I had a message for him.”

The consul pointed within, turned a knowing glance upon the young gentleman, put his tongue into his leathery cheek, strode swiftly to his charger, and rode away.

XXVI.

Saada raised her dark eyes to DeVries with an expression of admiration which it was impossible not to note and understand.

The blonde young fellow, it must be remembered, was six feet high and unusually pleasing of countenance, and all the more radiant just now through the flushing of that Lebanon wine. The girl was so agitated by the proximity of what seemed to her an almost supernatural beauty as to be hardly able to explain to him audibly that she had been sent to invite him to tea with the Peltons.

“ I will come,” said Hubertsen, taking her by the hand, though his gentlemanly conscience told him that he ought not. “Is it possible that you walk out alone, Saada? I thought that was not shickel Araby ” (Arabic custom).

“I am not alone,” murmured Saada, blushing crimson, though not withdrawing her hand. “ A servant-girl is with me; but she is of Abeih, and did not know your house, and so I was sent to show her.”

Her color and the sparkling of her eyes gave her dark, regular face something like splendor. What youthful Frank would not have longed to touch his lips to such a brimming vase of Oriental beauty ! But Hubertsen had only lately held converse with the high-minded Irene, and, moreover, he cultivated lofty notions of what was honorable and becoming. “ It can’t end in anything,” he said to himself; and then he thanked her for bringing the message, and nobly let her escape.

Saada lingered an instant, as if paralyzed, and slowly rejoined her comrade at the corner. Had DeVries followed her, he might have seen her look wistfully at the hand which he had taken, and then, under pretext of adjusting her veil, press it passionately to her lips. Meantime, he was saying to himself that he was a fool; that he wished that girl would n’t look at him as she did; that it would be well if he were married to Miss Grant, and out of temptation.

And yet, that very afternoon, in the solemn Pelton parlor, there being only they two present, something worse happened than a pressure of fingers. Hubertsen’s excuse to himself was that Saada accidentally stumbled against him. As if that were a sufficient reason for bending over a confiding, helpless little Oriental, and placing the kiss of a gentleman and a scholar on her quivering cheek!

It was the only notable event that signalized that tea. Mr. Pelton catechised his guest sharply as to the Philistine excavations, and had the air of asking him if he knew in the least what he was about. Mrs. Pelton poured forth such a continuous deluge of universal prattle that her listener thought of the rain which fell forty days and forty nights, and prevailed exceedingly upon the earth. Saada, all the while, was so flushed, and her eyes were so preternaturally bright, that Mr. Pelton charged her with having a fever, and would not take no for an answer. DeVries was so disturbed by her emotion and the talk about her color that he became conspicuously rosy, also, and was questioned sharply as to his own ague. In short, his peccadillo had found him out, and he had cause to wish that he had behaved himself.

Next morning he saw Saada pass his house, and observed that she was pitifully pale. The fact was that this child (only fourteen, but that is eighteen in Syria) had so thought of him during the night that she had scarcely closed her eyes. But he could not imagine that, and so inferred that the positive Pelton was right, and that Saada had had a turn of fever. Accordingly, he joined her, and walked with her to the hill-top, there being no harm in it, he said to himself, for Rufka was of the party. The result was that in five minutes the Syrian cheeks were all aflame again, and the Syrian eyes marvelously bright with gladness.

“ There was no fever about it,” the young man said to himself. “ It was all because I flurried her. Of course she is n’t used to it.”

But all the same he took her by the arm to help her up a terrace. One of her little yellow slippers lost its hold on a smooth stone, and she fell back against his shoulder with an Arabic exclamation, followed by a burst of girlish laughter. With her filmy white veil rolling back on either side of her rosy brunette face, and the variegated darkness of her eyes sparkling up into his, she was a lovely picture of excitement, merriment, and happiness.

“ The little witch! ” thought Hubertsen. “ She is irresistible.”

All the rest of the way, wondering by times if she made that slip purposely, he talked with her alone. It amused him, meanwhile, to notice that Rufka seemed to concede that he belonged to Saada, and kept at a little distance from them, occasionally stopping to gather wild flowers, just as he had seen young ladies do in America. It struck him as inexpressibly odd to find such feminine intelligence and magnanimity and management in Mount Lebanon.

On the night following this walk it was our young gentleman’s turn to lie awake and do much pondering. The result of his vigils and meditations was that he decided on an immediate trip to Northern Lebanon, and made things ready for a start in the afternoon. Of course, however, he must leave his goodby at the Pelton house; and there, by accident, he came first upon Saada, sewing alone in the comandaloon.

“ Oh, howaja! ” she said, with a suddenly pallid face, when he announced his departure. “ Why are you going? I thought you would be here many days. ”

“I shall come back,” he promised. His idea was to break off his flirtation gently; to have various absences, each longer than the last; and so, finally, to separate without pain. “ I shall only be gone a few days,” he added, trying not to look at her. “ Then I shall be here a few days. We shall meet frequently, Saada.”

“ Oh, howaja! ” she repeated, and the tone was a very sad one, expressive of dark forebodings. She was already looking, woman-like, toward the final parting.

He had a terrible temptation to say something comfortable, but just then Mrs. Pelton came out of her bedroom and saved our weak hero, much as Venus used to deliver Æneas when the Greeks were too much for him. The good-bys were uttered, and Saada’s hand was squeezed unintentionally; and then the flower of chivalry went his unengaged way, feeling a good deal as if he were no gentleman. Yet, on the whole, was he not more delicate than most men, and, for his age, rather surprisingly severe with himself?

To the north of Bhamdun there is a strange mountain region, lofty and rocky, yet bursting with great, crystalline fountains; a region where spring-time sees the oleander blooming in vast thickets, side by side with decaying snow-drifts; a region now as uninhabited as the bare slope of Sunneen which towers above it, and nevertheless teeming once with population ; a region where, amid masses of stony débris and forests of limestone needles, stand ruined temples, whereof no man knoweth the builders. Thither went our youthful antiquarian, purposing to ponder over these vestiges of the unknown by-gone, and to unravel what he might of their mysteries.

In sight of one of these temples, and by the side of a fountain which flung up a little river of ice-cold water, he sat down to finish his first letter to Irene. The task was commenced in the laggard spirit of a conscious criminal. He felt much as men do who pray to a divinity whom they have offended, and who, they fear, will not hearken to them. Already it seemed to him that Miss Grant had an ownership in him, and could rightfully rebuke him for his infidelities of sentiment and deed. But a man is magnanimous with himself, and easily forgives his own peccadilloes. The letter, once begun, rapidly became fluent, and erelong Hubertsen wrote eloquently of his day’s exploration; and by the time that he laid down the pen he had nearly forgotten Saada.

We must not copy his clever epistle its matter has not sufficient connection with our story; the only important fact about it is that he wrote it, and liked to write it.

It is more essential that we should follow the trio who journeyed to Damascus. Of course they traversed the luxuriant verdure and variegated bloom of the Bukaa, and camped for the night amid the venerable sublimities of Baalbec. There Mr. Payson talked of Phœnicians and their unknown predecessors, while Irene stared at the monstrous masonry, and wished that DeVries were with her. Next day, onward through Anti-Lebanon, a widespread and rugged and arid upland, with one winding valley of moderate fertility and one thread of crystal river. At last they stood on the bare, rounded knoll where one looks down from the desert of mountain upon the desert of the great ashy plain of Damascus, with its stripe of startling green marking the course of the Barida, and, half hidden therein, the gray city of Hazael. By night-fall they were housed in a mansion which looked to Irene’s wondering eyes as if it had been taken out of the Arabian Nights.

“ I think that Aladdin must have built it,” she wrote in her first letter to DeVries. “ Outside it is nothing but shapeless, unburnt brick, daubed with gray slime; but inside it is all marble, fountains, wood-carving, stained glass, fresco, and painting. The great court (for it is a hollow square) is paved with white and black marble, and has a marble fountain of bubbling water in the centre. There is another fountain in an alcove, and a third in the principal saloon. This saloon consists of four rooms, each over twenty feet square, and opening into each other by Saracenic arches, twenty-five feet high. The arches and the walls are decorated with an infinity of kaleidoscope figures, in the richest of colors. The beams and cross-slats of the ceiling are richly carved, gayly painted, and lavishly gilded. The ceiling of the centre room (around which the other three are clustered) cannot be less than forty feet above the marble pavement.

“ The floors of the outer rooms are slightly elevated, and have each their mukaad running along the wall, covered with broad mattresses and cushions. The very simplicity and scantiness of furniture make the great fourfold apartment seem the larger and more magnificent. I never in my life saw or imagined anything so deserving of the word palatial. Do you wonder what right a missionary has to such a mansion of glory? Well, in the first place, the saloon will serve for a chapel; in the second place, the rent is only one hundred and thirty dollars a year. Mr. Payson shakes his good head over our native helper for having taken such a palace; but we women believe that it was a wise step, and have so told the poor man in my poor Arabic.

“ Of course you will see Damascus; no book about the East would be complete without a Damascene chapter; you must be sure not to miss it. Perhaps you might find a Philistine skeleton here; the bones of a giant, perhaps, who was caught for exhibition; or the honored remains of an ambassador from King Achish. Of course you would know it at a glance from the skeletons of all inferior races. There would be the classic profile of the. Hellenic countenance. By the way, I am neglecting, you see, your distinction between Philistines and Anakims.

“But I must stop this feeble joking; it is n’t what you wanted of me. Meantime, what you do want — scraps of Syrian talk and thinking — is very hard to get. I see far less of the natives than in Beirut, and very far less than in the mountain. The Moslems we shall of course never meet at all, and the Christian Damascenes still know nothing of us, or dislike and avoid us. Mr. Payson says that it may be months before we shall make the familiar acquaintance of one respectable family, unless we are assisted by a hakeem. It seems that doctors can get a foot-hold where doctrines can’t. I asked him if he did not think that an apothecary’s shop, with big red and green vases in the windows, would do more for us than a chapel. It made him laugh, but I believe he has had compunctions since, and I am sorry I said it.

“I am really afraid that Dr. Macklin will be sent on here. He ought not to come; the heat will kill him. I wish with all my heart that it need not be. [DeVries did not understand this passage at all, and supposed that she was tenderly anxious for Macklin’s health, and was just a little annoyed about it.] But Mr. Payson is constantly mourning because he cannot reach the people, and has already written the mission that he can do almost nothing without a hakeem.

“ I am ashamed of this short and empty document,” was the concluding passage of the letter. “ It won’t help you one bit toward your book. But it must go just as it is, for a muleteer is about to start for Bhamdun, and such chances are rare. Please accept it as an acknowledgment that yours was gladly received, and as an earnest that I mean to fulfill my promise. In my next I will surely send you some Syrian scraps and items, if I have to pump them out of my busy and anxious friend, — your friend as well as mine, Mr. Payson, Yours very truly, IRENE GRANT.”