Like his a.s.sociates, Demedes was in armor _cap-a-pie_. He also carried an unshod lance, a shield on arm, and a bow and quiver at his back; but helmet, breastplate, shield, lance and bow were masked in flowers, and only now and then a glint betrayed the underdress of polished steel. The steed he bestrode was housed in cloth which dragged the ground; but of the color of the cloth or its material not a word can be said, so entirely was it covered with floral embroidery of diverse hues and figures.
The decoration contributed little of grace to man or beast; nevertheless its richness was undeniable. To the spendthrifts in the galleries the effect was indescribably attractive. They studied its elaboration, conjecturing how many gardens along the Bosphorus, and out in the Isles of the Princes, had been laid under contribution for the accomplishment of the splendor. Thus in the saddle, Demedes could not have been accused of diminutiveness; he appeared tall, even burly; indeed, Sergius would never have recognized him had he not been going with raised visor, and at the instant of pa.s.sing turned his face up, permitting it to be distinctly seen.
The exclamation wrung from the monk was not merely because of his finding the man; in sober truth, it was an unconventional expression provoked by finding him in the place he occupied, and a quick jump to the logical conclusion that the foremost person in the march was also the chief priest--if such were the t.i.tle--in the Academy.
Thenceforward Sergius beheld little else of the show than Demedes. He forgot the impiety of the honors to the bronze serpent. There is no enigma to us like him who is broadly our antipodes in moral being, and whether ours is the good or the bad nature does not affect the saying.
His feelings the while were strangely diverse. The election of the evil genius to the first place in the insidious movement was well done for the Academy; there would be no failure with him in control; but the poor Hegumen!
And now, the last circuit completed, the head of the bright array approached the Gate of the Greens. There the hors.e.m.e.n drew out and formed line on the right hand to permit the brethren to march past them.
The afternoon was going rapidly. The shadow of the building on the west crept more noticeably across the carefully kept field. Still Sergius retained his seat watchful of Demedes. He saw him signal the riders to turn out--he saw the line form, and the sections begin to march past it--then an incident occurred of no appreciable importance at the moment, but replete with significancy a little later.
A man appeared on the cornice above the Gate--the Grate on the interior having a face resembling a very tall but shallow portico resting on slender pillars--and commenced lowering himself as if he meant to descend. The danger of the attempt drew all eyes to him. Demedes looked up, and hastily rode through the column toward the spot where the adventurer must alight. The spectators credited the young chief with a generous intent to be of a.s.sistance; but agile as a cat, and master of every nerve and muscle, the man gained one of the pillars and slid to the ground. The galleries of the Hippodrome found voice immediately.
While the acrobat hung from the cornice striving to get hold of the pillar with his feet and legs, Sergius was wrestling with the question, what could impel a fellow being to tempt Providence so rashly? If a messenger with intelligence for some one in the procession, why not wait for him outside? In short, the monk was a trifle vexed; but doubly observant now, he saw the man hasten to Demedes, and Demedes bend low in the saddle to receive a communication from him. The courier then hurried away through the Gate, while the chief returned to his place; but, instructed probably by some power of divination proceeding from sympathy and often from suspicion, one of the many psychological mysteries about which we keep promising ourselves a day of enlightenment, Sergius observed a change in the latter. He was restless, impatient, and somewhat too imperative in hastening the retirement of the brethren. The message had obviously excited him.
Now Sergius would have freely given the best of his earthly possessions to have known at that moment the subject of the communication delivered by a route so extraordinary; but leaving him to his conjectures, there is no reason why the reader should not be more confidentially treated.
"Sir," the messenger had whispered to Demedes, "she has left her father"s, and is coming this way."
"How is she coming?"
"In her sedan."
"Who is with her?"
"She is alone."
"And her porters?"
"The Bulgarians."
"Thank you. Go now--out by the Gate--to the keeper of the Imperial Cistern. Tell him to await me under the wall in the Bucoleon garden with my chair. He will understand. Come to the Temple tomorrow for your salary."
CHAPTER XIX
THE PRINCE BUILDS CASTLES FOR HIS GUL BAHAR
The words between Demedes and his courier may have the effect of additionally exciting the reader"s curiosity; for better understanding, therefore, we will take the liberty of carrying him from the Hippodrome to the house of Uel the merchant.
Much has been said about the Prince of India"s affection for Lael; so much indeed that there is danger of its being thought one sided. A greater mistake could scarcely be. She returned his love as became a daughter attentive, tender and obedient. Without knowing anything of his past life except as it was indistinctly connected with her family, she regarded him a hero and a sage whose devotion to her, multiform and unwearied, was both a delight and an honor. She was very sympathetic, and in everything of interest to him responded with interest. His word in request or direction was law to her. Such in brief was the charming mutuality between them.
The night before he started for Plati, Lael sat with him on the roof. He was happy of his resolution to stay with her. The moonlight was ample for them. Looking up into his face, her chin in a palm, an elbow on his knee, she listened while he talked of his plans, and was the more interested because he made her understand she was the inspiration of them all.
"The time for my return home is up," he said, forgetting to specify where the home was, "and I should have been off before this but for my little girl--my Gul Bahar"--and he patted her head fondly. "I cannot go and leave her; neither can I take her with me, for what would then become of father Uel? When she was a child it might not have been so hard for me to lose sight of her, but now--ah, have I not seen you grow day by day taller, stronger, wiser, fairer of person, sweeter of soul, until you are all I fancied you would be--until you are my ideal of a young woman of our dear old Israel, the loveliness of Judah in your eyes and on your cheek, and of a spirit to sit in the presence of the Lord like one invited and welcome? Oh, I am very happy!"
He kept silence awhile, indulging in retrospect. If she could have followed him! Better probably that she could not.
"It is a day of ease to me, dear, and I cannot see any unlawfulness in extending the day into months, or a year, or years indefinitely, and in making the most of it. Can you?" he asked, smiling at her.
"I am but a handmaiden, and my master"s eyes are mine," she replied.
"That was well said--ever so well said," he returned. "The words would have become Ruth speaking to her lord who was of the kindred of Elimelech... Yes, I will stay with my Gul Bahar, my most precious one. I am resolved. She loves me now, but can I not make her love me still more--Oh, doubt not, doubt not! Her happiness shall be the measure of her love for me. That is the right way, is it not?"
"My father is never wrong," Lael answered, laughing.
"Flatterer!" he exclaimed, pressing her cheeks between his hands....
"Oh, I have it marked out already! In the dry lands of my country, I have seen a farmer, wanting to lead water to a perishing field, go digging along the ground, while the stream bubbled and leaped behind him, tame and glad as a petted lamb. My heart is the field to be watered--your love, O my pretty, pretty Gul Bahar, is the refreshing stream, and I will lead it after me--never fear!... Listen, and I will tell you how I will lead it. I will make you a Princess. These Greeks are a proud race, but they shall bow to you; for we will live amongst them, and you shall have things richer than their richest--trinkets of gold and jewels, a palace, and a train of women equal to that of the Queen who went visiting Solomon. They praise themselves when they look at their buildings, but I tell you they know nothing of the art which turns dreams into stones. The crags and stones have helped them to their models. I will teach them better--to look higher--to find vastness with grace and color in the sky. The dome of Sancta Sophia--what is it in comparison with the Hindoo masterpieces copied from the domes of G.o.d on the low-lying clouds in the distance opposite the sun?"
Then he told her of his palace in detail--of the fronts, no two of them alike--the pillars, those of red granite, those of porphyry, and the others of marble--windows which could not be glutted with light--arches such as the Western Kaliphs transplanted from Damascus and Bagdad, in form first seen in a print of the hoof of Borak. Then he described the interior, courts, halls; pa.s.sages, fountains: and when he had thus set the structure before her, he said, softly smoothing her hair:
"There now--you have it all--and verily, as Hiram, King of Tyre, helped Solomon in his building, he shall help me also."
"How can he help you?" she asked, shaking her finger at him. "He has been dead this thousand years, and more."
"Yes, dear, to everybody but me," he answered, lightly, and asked in turn: "How do you like the palace?"
"It will be wonderful!"
"I have named it. Would you like to hear the name?"
"It is something pretty, I know."
"The Palace of Lael."
Her cry of delighted surprise, given with clasped hands and wide-open eyes, would have been tenfold payment were he putting her in possession of the finished house.
The sensation over, he told her of his design for a galley.
"We know how tiresome the town becomes. In winter, it is cheerless and damp; in summer, it is hot, dusty and in every way trying. Weariness will invade our palace--yes, dear, though we hide from it in the shady heart of our Hall of Fountains. We can provide against everything but the craving for change. Not being birds to fly, and unable to compel the eagles to lend us their wings, the best resort is a galley; then the sea is ours--the sea, wide, mysterious, crowded with marvels. I am never so near the stars as there. When a wave is bearing me up, they seem descending to meet me. Times have been when I thought the Pleiades were about to drop into my palm.... Here is my galley. You see, child, the palace is to be yours, the galley mine."
Thereupon he described a trireme of a hundred and twenty oars, sixty on a side, and ended, saying: "Yes, the peerless ship will be mine, but every morning it shall be yours to say Take it here or there, until we have seen every city by the sea; and there are enough of them, I promise, to keep us going and going forever were it not that the weariness which drove us from our palace will afterwhile drive us back to it. How think you I have named my galley?"
"Lael," she answered.
"No, try again."
"The world is too full of names for me. Tell me."
"Gul Bahar," he returned.
Again she clasped her hands, and gave the little cry in his ears so pleasant.
Certainly the Prince was pleading with effect, and laying up happiness in great store to cheer him through unnumbered sterile years inevitably before him after time had resolved this Lael into a faint and fading memory, like the other Lael gone to dust under the stone at Jerusalem.