The Hollow Ruby

by Julian Hawthorne

 

THE HOLLOW RUBY.

By JULIAN HAWTHORNE

MERYON awoke with the issue of an interesting dream in doubt. Terah had admitted that she loved him; the Prince had seemed disposed to hear reason; but just then the purple-and-gold heraldic heron which formed the central device of his Highness's State banner detached from the surrounding embroidery, and flew viciously at Meryon's head. He heard Terah's voice raised in warning, and saw two black mountains at the verge of a desolate plain, sundered from each other by a rugged defile. The sun was setting behind the mountains—and he awoke.

He yawned and glanced at the long silver chain by which a lamp of pierced brass depended from the ceiling. A ray of sunlight from the east window rested on it, by which token he knew it was about nine o'clock.

The room in which he lay was beautiful, and, as the bedchamber of a modern young American, singular.

Lofty and of good size, it was rather narrow for its length. Polished marble of tender hues paved the floor, the central part of which was depressed several inches below the ends, and in a basin in this depression leaped and fell the slender jet of a fountain. A high dado glowed with Oriental tiles, coloured like fading sunsets, and the walls above were hung with tapestries, stained as with crushed roses and violets. Higher still was a wide border of dark-brown wood exquisitely carved, and above this the four windows, a foot high by four times that width. Silks of mellow tone draped the ceiling.

Along three sides of the south end of the chamber extended a broad divan, part of which served Meryon as a bed. Here and there about this dim, lovely room stood vases of wrought bronze and fine porcelain. Within reach of his arm was a triple gong on a carved wood stand, with a hammer hanging by a silken cord. Meryon struck thrice upon this graceful instrument, and three soft notes of an octave's interval tingled on the air. As they subsided the portière was pushed open, and a graceful figure entered bearing a tray with coffee, cakes, and cigarettes.

Had the figure been fully draped, you would have taken it for that of a girl, so refined and beautiful were the aquiline features and the shaggy cloud of soot-black, fine-spun hair which fell on the shoulders. But the supple body, naked from the waist up, was that of a boy of twelve or fourteen, tawny as fine bronze.

Girt around his loins was a skirt of dark blue gossamer stuff, with silver lines running through it and a silver fringe, and about his neck a double necklace of delicate silver links hung halfway down his breast. Black as night were the great eyes which met Meryon's blue ones, and radiant the smile of greeting which revealed his flashing teeth.

The ensuing dialogue, though carried on in an Oriental tongue, shall, for the sake of uniformity, be here given in the English equivalent.

"The top of the morning to you, Ebal, my beauty!" said the American. "You're a sight for sore eyes. Did anyone ever tell you that you look surprisingly like the divine Princess Terah—God bless her! Maybe only an artist who has painted your portrait as often as I have could see it in you in your present rig; but put on one of her dresses, and anyone would know it. The funny thing is that neither she nor you resemble the Prince. But Terah's mother, if she were asked——however, there's no fathoming the mysteries of Oriental—diplomacy."

"Honoured Lord!" murmured the boy in a half-tone of half-frightened remonstrance, but smiling still. He knelt and placed the tray upon the divan beside his master. Then taking a cigarette from the enamelled box on the tray, he put it daintily between his lips and lit it at the silver spirit-lamp. Having inhaled a single whiff of fragrant smoke, he handed it to Meryon with a charming obeisance, and he accepted it with the complacency of one who knows his East and likes it.

"I don't know whether this is most like Aladdin's Palace or a glorified Turkish bath," said he to himself, and then to Ebal, "What news have you brought me, you rascal? What of the Rose who makes cabbages of all other roses—the Star that makes a brass kettle of the sun? Have you brought me nothing from her?"

Now, Ebal thought Meryon a wonderful and worshipful being, but, as a born Oriental, he was frightened by the audacity of his passion for the young Princess. From a fold of his girdle he took a small rosebud, such as grew on the gardens of Saadi or of Omar, and presented it to the other as if it were a fragile explosive.

"I know nothing myself, mighty Lord, but Senuah said I was to give this to you and to say that the lion must beware of the pitfall which the hunter digs in his path. That means Hatipha, the head eunuch—how I hate the old beast!" he added, lowering his voice to a whisper.

Meryon laughed. "That's all right, my man," he said, taking the bud and kissing it. "Don't you be scared, I'm looking out for you, and I'm wiser than a thousand such old mules as Hatipha. I talk openly to you, because I love you, and Senuah is our confidant because she's your sister and the Princess's favourite maid, and there's no one to take her place. But I can hold my tongue when I see fit. And when the time comes"—here he bestowed upon the youth a wink of great significance—"I'll take you along with us to America and make your fortune. Well, now be off, my beauty, and leave me to drink my coffee and meditate!"

"But I may help my Lord to dress later?" asked Ebal, reluctantly retiring from the fascinating presence.

"When I'm ready I'll hit the gong. There—Allah—Il Allah Bismillah! Clear out!"

As Ebal vanished with a smile and a sigh, Meryon fell upon the bud with amorous rapture. It fared badly, as buds are apt to do in the course of love. After smelling and kissing it till it looked as if ruined by premature dissipation, the lover ended by devouring it—petals, calyx, and all—as if by incorporating it with his bodily substance mystically to bind to his own the soul of his beloved. Then he drank his coffee and took counsel with himself.

He was an American artist in search of the beautiful, whose devotion to his art was proved by his possessing a fortune that made him more than independent of the world. He had brought good letters of introduction to the Prince of this little kingdom, and had confirmed his welcome by painting a capital full-length portrait of his host. Great favour was his—a suite of rooms in the palace and servants for his exclusive behoof. The Prince was not only at all times accessible to him without ceremony, but could not get enough of his society. During his two months' sojourn he made a lot of valuable studies, in many of which Ebal in all poses and costumes, or with no costume save his own boyish beauty, was the centre of interest. This was all very well.

But alas for insatiable human nature and malicious fate! One day (owing to a concatenation of accidents which cannot here be detailed) he met, face to face and unpremeditatedly, the only daughter of the Prince, Terah the beautiful. It was all up with him in a moment, and her fresh Oriental fancy seems to have been no less captivated by the fresh complexion, handsome features, and red hair of the Occidental stranger. They loved each other at the first intention, as surgeons say, just as young people used to do in the golden prime of the good Haroun Alraschid. Ah! Romance lingers in this old world yet, as we shall see.

Meryon had the tact to cover his face with his hands, and the presence of mind to look through his fingers. The Princess replaced her veil, not so hastily as to prevent a quick artist glance from catching a rapturous impression of her dusky grace and glorious eyes. Fat old Hatipha, with pendent cheeks flapping, bustled up in fat perturbation and whipped the Princess out of the infidel's sight as fast as he could. But Senuah following, threw over her shoulder an arch glance, which in America would have passed for a wink of sympathetic intelligence. Mischief was afoot.

The Princess replaced her veil

Then followed intrigue. One afternoon the back part of the booth of Musreddin, the jewel-merchant, contained a new apprentice, with huge turban and voluminous drapery, whose blue eyes wandered from his work as Terah entered, and never left her face during the half-hour she chaffered with the jeweller over the price of a ring, which, on the other hand, she would never have looked at twice, had she not been stealing a thousand glances at the back part of the shop. Again, from a meshrebie-screened window (chartered for the purpose), who glowered invisible and impassioned, while Terah, her divine countenance not ten inches from his, debated interminably with Senuah as to whether they should turn to the right and visit the confectioner, or to the left to the silk mercer's; while Hatipha, the unsuspicious, stood in the shadow hard by with mind at ease, because, forsooth, the street was empty. Empty! And all the while Terah's soft finger-tips were being kissed ravenously through the lattice-work, and, when at last the debate with Senuah came to an end, folded themselves about a love-note, designed in the most gloriously extravagant terms. No name was signed to that note; but perhaps the Princess didn't know whom it came from, and didn't thenceforth wear it in her bosom until, paradoxical as it may seem, it got worn out, and means had to be devised to furnish her with another.

Yes; here in the heart of the guarded Orient, and under the shadow, as it were, of the bow-string was this love-affair carried on, until this very morning of the rose-bud. How was it to end? Ah, how indeed!

"No doubt," Meryon said to himself, "eloping with an Oriental Princess, under the nose of her father and the head eunuch, isn't the easiest thing in the world. I never said it was; but a bonanza like that is worth the risk. The boldest way is the best: bribe Musreddin again; wait with horses at the back door in the alley; she comes in to buy a new ring; frightful row in the street at the front between two camel-drivers; Hatipha mounts guard at the front door; Terah slips into rear room and a suit of boy's clothes, and so out at the back, mounts, and we're off. Give us ten minutes' start, and '"They'll have fleet steeds that follow," quoth Young Lochinvar!' That's the programme. Sorry to play such a game on the poor old Prince; but that is the fault of the Oriental system, and oh, my soul, what an armful of Heaven she is!"

He caught up a pillow and vicariously pressed Terah to his heart. Like other lovers, he was sometimes constrained to wreak himself on his imagination.

"I quite pity Hatipha, too," he said, when he came to himself; "but in the bright lexicon of my youth there's no such word as getting bested by any tumble-down, earringed, dew-lapped, pot-bellied, old nondescript like that, I guess not! I'll go down and interview Musreddin as quick as I can get my clothes on."

He reached for the gong, but ere he could strike it the curtains parted, and in sprang Ebal, evidently in fright.

---

II.

"Hallo, my son, just ready for you," said Meryon.

"Honoured Lord, the Prince commands your presence," quavered the boy, agitatedly twisting together his slender fingers.

Seeing something was wrong, Meryon recognised the need of restoring Ebal's confidence by preserving a bold front.

"Commands it, does he? Isn't the old man overstraining himself a little? But, of course, you meant to say that he begs to supplicate the privilege of my company. Well, tell him to keep his caftan on, and I'll be around in the course of a day or two."

"Do not speak so, beloved Lord! Hatipha has found us out and told his Highness. Oh, if they kill you, I will kill myself!" cried the child, bursting into tears.

Meryon, greatly touched, expressed it in his American way by a loud laugh.

"Don't you fret, Ebal my jewel! neither of us is going to quit this sinful and hollow life for sixty or seventy years to come, at least. You don't half know me yet. I have but to clap my hands and say 'Galah' and the President of the United States would march into the Palace at the head of the Army, Navy, and New York Police department, and snatch up the whole court by the scruff of the neck and dump it down hard on Blackwell's Island. Yes, they would! Hand me that stocking. And talk about Palaces! wait till you see the White House. Ebal, you don't know luxury, gorgeousness, extravagance, intrigue, and corruption until you've been naturalised in the States as a Jeffersonian Democrat or a Lincoln Republican. This is a poor, simple, innocent sort of place. Why, if Hatipha were to get among some ward politicians that I know, they'd mistake him for a newborn babe, yes, Sir."

"I wish we were there, mighty Lord," sighed Ebal, whose black eyes had slowly expanded while he swallowed this information. "How happy we should be!"

"Well, pack your grip, for we shall be starting before long, all three of us. Hand me that necktie, will you—no, the red one. I'm out for blood this morning! Now I seem to be about ready, don't I? I'll be back in an hour; stay here till I come, and be a good boy, do you hear?"

Thus did the young American go forth to battle. In one way the fight was an unequal one, and no one knew it better than he. But in the East (and perhaps in other places) nothing is to be gained by a timorous or apologetic attitude. And Meryon was conscious, moreover, of possessing certain resources which, if not immediately substantial, might yet serve him in good stead. With wit, knowledge, insight, and courage even a single man may make headway against a multitude.

He strolled with an insouciant air towards that part of the Palace buildings in which the Prince's apartments lay. As he passed through the various courts, halls, and corridors, he was the object of a good deal of curious scrutiny from those who saw him, as if some hint had got abroad of his being in difficulties. He noticed, for his part, that there were signs of bustle and uneasiness, which could hardly have reference to himself. They had a military smack to them. War was in the air apparently. But Meryon limited his interest for the moment to the war in which his concern was a personal one.

In the Prince's anteroom was a knot of courtiers and attendants, Hatipha among them. His unseemly visage wore a grimace of evil mockery as he caught Meryon's eye, and as the latter drew near, he ostentatiously ignored his greeting and turned his amorphous back upon him. Meryon, with a pleasant smile, put forth his right hand and caught the eunuch by the lobe of one of his huge ears, upon which as a pivot he swung him forcibly round. The creature squealed with pain, rage, and astonishment.

"Well, how is the old pudding this morning?" the American inquired sweetly. "It mustn't forget its superiors or its manners! Waddle in and tell his Highness I desire to see him at once on particular business."

The boldness of the rebuke startled all present, but all except Hatipha himself were manifestly pleased. The head eunuch is seldom a popular personage in any place, and he had in this instance fewer friends than the average. But Meryon's blood was getting up, and he would have chastised the Grand Vizier himself had that functionary bit his thumb at him.

He entered the royal presence close upon Hatipha's footsteps, thus depriving the latter of the opportunity of relieving his heart of the venom which the ear-incident had set boiling there. He salaamed with easy courtesy, and quietly elbowed the eunuch aside as he wished his Highness "Good morning!"

Meryon had, as has been intimated, been permitted great freedom in the palace, and was accustomed to observe little ceremony in approaching the Prince; but the difference at a Court between a man in favour and out of it is as great as between a musk-rose and a skunk-cabbage. Meryon was well aware of this, even before he met the potentate's haughty stare; but a desperate game must be dauntlessly played, and dangers met half-way.

The Prince, a stout, autocratic, but self-indulgent-looking gentleman of fifty, sat cross-legged amidst a pile of cushions on a low divan, with the snaky stem of a nargileh in his right hand. He was alone save for a couple of Nubian mutes, one of whom kept imaginary flies off him with a long-stemmed fan of ostrich-feathers, while the other squatted at the bowl of the pipe, ready to refill it as occasion demanded.

"Sir!" exclaimed the Prince, erecting himself indignantly on his royal haunches: "do you venture into my presence before I have signified my pleasure to receive you? Your lack of ceremony and respect amazes me."

"Prince," replied Meryon, with imperturbable politeness, "I have a communication for your private ear—your private ear, Prince," he repeated, with a slight gesture of the head towards Hatipha, who was fairly dancing up and down in the agony of his bloodthirsty impatience to recount his grievances.

His Highness hesitated for a moment, bending the full force of his glance upon the young artist, who encountered it with one full as steadfast and significant. "Retire!" he then said to the eunuch, waving his hand in dismissal.

"But, most illustrious Son of Heaven," began the inflamed functionary, "you understand not."

"What!" roared the Prince in a sudden fury. "Am I to be told by the filth that oozes beneath my feet that I understand not? Retire instantly, or that foul hide of thine shall be stripped from thy carrion carcase and serve as a mat for dogs to sleep on!"

This explosion fairly blew the unwieldy eunuch out of the room, turning green as he went with mingled terror and unglutted malignity. The American and the Oriental were left face to face.

"Now, Sir," the latter set out, with the modified sternness of a monarch who has just enjoyed the satisfaction of scaring a subject half to death; but Meryon interposed with cool suavity.

"Since your Highness desires ceremony, let me remind you that I have not been asked to take a seat. May I inquire if you expect me to conduct this interview standing?"

The Prince's breath temporarily forsook him. Meanwhile he and Meryon eyed each other intently. Meryon was by this time roused to the pitch of being capable of anything. But his anger had the useful effect of collecting instead of scattering his faculties, and he was outwardly cold as sherbet and calm as a June morning. He was very different from the genial, careless young fellow who during the past six or eight weeks had amused and interested the potentate. After a few pregnant seconds the Prince, reflecting that they were alone (the mutes didn't count) and inwardly sensible of the impress of a spirit he had not calculated on, intimated that a place beside him was at the other's disposal. Meryon leisurely sat down and pursued his advantage.

"Let us clearly understand each other, Prince," he said. "I have hitherto met you with an informal confidence which a friend naturally observes towards his friend; but I must tell you that any attempt to impose on my good nature will be promptly checked. Is that plain, or shall I more fully explain myself?"

Some real curiosity blended with the outraged dignity of his Highness as he asked: "What do you mean by talking to me like that? Don't you know that by a nod of the head I can cause you to be bastinadoed, boiled in oil, and bowstrung?"

Meryon smiled; the smile broadened into a chuckle, and the chuckle expanded into a loud and hearty peal of laughter.

MERYON LEISURELY SAT DOWN AND PURSUED HIS ADVANTAGE

The Prince frowned, clutched his beard, kicked off a slipper, put his hand towards the gong and withdrew it, and then, abruptly overcome by the mysterious absurdity of the situation, burst into roars of merriment as resonant as his guest's. Hatipha, hearing from without this combined uproar of mirth, uttered a scream of despair and waddled frantically away to his the harem, where he rent his robes and boxed the ears of whomsoever was not active enough to get out of his reach.

Ceasing at length and wiping the tears from his cheeks with the gold-embroidered satin cuff of his caftan, his Highness panted out: "And now, what have we been laughing at?"

Meryon did not at once reply. He took cigarette-case from his pocket, selected a cigarette, and said to the Nubian of the nargileh: "Boy! a light." After obtaining it, he drew in a whiff or two with a thoughtful air, and then turned gravely to his host.

"Prince," he said in a tone of icy distinctness, "it is fortunate for you that I did not take your bravado in earnest. If I thought," he continued, with a stern and keen look, "that you actually meditated violence to me and thereby to the all-powerful nation which I represent; if I believed that, within three months your kingdom would have been wiped from the map, and you and your subjects would be on your way to New York to become waiters in the public restaurants."

There was a silence. Both smoked; Meryon with long, serene inhalations, his Highness with short sharp puffs. At last he said: "Your statement, Meryon Pasha, seems improbable. I have indeed heard that your nation is great, and I know that the ways of Allah are unfathomable. Injustice dwells not within my heart. You will admit that you have been hospitably entertained?"—Meryon stiffly inclined his head, at the same time slightly lifting one eyebrow and shrugging the opposite shoulder—"but it has come to my ears that you have ventured to look upon and even address communications to the Princess my daughter, apparently presuming her capable of deigning——"

Once more Meryon interrupted. "Prince, you employ words which I won't take from you. 'Deigning!' Does the tomtit condescend to the eagle? It was my whim to lay aside the cares of sovereignty (which I must resume on my return home) and masquerade in this out-of-the-way little corner for a while as a mere travelling artist. But in birth, station, and power you're simply not in sight beside me, not to mention your interesting family."

The Prince, by a nervous jerk of the elbow, upset the nargileh, which the Nubian deftly caught and replaced.

"I've been studying your little principality," resumed the other, "with a friendly disposition to do something to improve it. I heard you had a daughter, and it struck me she might be the means of my helping you. I'm unmarried, and though I could get a wife worth a dozen of her in New York or Chicago, to say nothing of Boston, yet I believe in occasionally crossing the higher strains with humbler blood, and I have had thoughts of honouring you and exalting her by a union with myself."

A dozen things rushing at the same instant to get uttered at his Highness's single mouth, naturally got wedged, like people trying to escape from a burning theatre; and the Prince became crimson, but said nothing at all. Meryon went on.

"But a serious objection has arisen, for which you are primarily to blame, and which you must remove if I am to go on with the scheme. Terah, though I'm confident she's a good little girl, and personally incapable of evil, is nevertheless, conventionally speaking, 'damaged goods.' And it's your fault."

The novelty of his sensations was hypnotising the Prince. His eyes rolled outwards, and his breathing was stertorous. But he no longer attempted to address the meeting.

"Qui factit per alium facit per se," the American continued. "You are to blame for the crimes of your head eunuch, for you ought to have known better than to entrust such a clumsy beast with such delicate responsibilities. Either from brute carelessness or worse, this fellow Hatipha the other day suddenly sprang Terah on me, with her countenance in a condition which I shudder to describe. It—she—I——. In short, her veil was down!"

Here Meryon bowed his head upon his knees, and tremors shook his frame.

Inarticulate gurglings came from the Prince's lips. Drops of sweat formed beneath the rim of his turban, and ran down into his beard. This was a great day for him, never to be forgotten.

"Anyone less magnanimous and charitable than I would have turned his back upon her and you for ever," the artist went on presently. "Such an outrage upon an unsuspecting guest can hardly be too severely resented. But compassion for Terah, who was really as much shocked as I was, and friendship for you led me to forbear. I caused word to be sent to her that, on certain conditions, I would try to overlook the matter. And, I am now here, Prince, to tell you what the conditions are."

His Highness, with eyes goggling on vacancy, stretched out his arms in front of him, and rapidly closed and extended his fingers. It is uncertain whether this indicated that he wished to catch hold of an elusive word or of something more substantial. Either way, it was expressive.

"What I require," said Meryon, with a stern impressiveness, "is your straight-out apology; and to prove its sincerity, it must take the form of delivering up Hatipha into my hands, to be annihilated as I see fit;" Having thus delivered himself, Meryon took another cigarette from his case, signed to the Nubian for a light, and added composedly, "I have spoken."

The spell upon his Highness was broken. A confused roar proceeded from him, which perhaps set out to be a sort of laugh, but went on like the cry of the tiger thirsting for meat. He clapped his hands against his thighs, kicked off both his slippers (which the Nubian with the fan impassively restored to him, receiving in acknowledgment a violent kick in the stomach), and betrayed other symptoms of strong feeling. Gradually the waves of emotion became less agitated, and allowed him to employ human methods of speech.

"Meryon Pasha," he said, "I have been indignant. I heard reports of you which made me wish to kill you. You have spoken and made things look different. I am more indignant than before, and somebody must be killed, but I am willing it should not be you. You have spoken of Hatipha: it shall be he! I will discipline him. I will draw off his hide in strips an inch wide! I will burn out his eyes with hot needles! I will tear out his tongue and cut off his hands and feet! I will rub his carcase with red pepper and syrup, impale him upon a stake ten feet long, and set him in the public square for the flies to eat. Yea, by the beard of the Prophet, he shall be taught etiquette."

Meryon mused and shook his head. "The punishment is too light," he finally said. "Ordinarily I might be satisfied with it, for I am more forgiving and tender-hearted than a woman; but this dogs offence demands some really adequate penalty. I think I must have him boxed up and sent to New York to be naturalised and run for mayor on his record. It is necessary, too, that my own countrymen should see that my honour is vindicated. I will think it over; in the meantime, let him be shadowed."

"Is the penalty you name a very terrible one?" asked the Prince.

Meryon smiled wearily. "Merely to read the account of it in the newspapers is punishment enough for most crimes," he replied. "I hate to inflict it; but mercy is one thing, weak indulgence to sin, such as your proposition would amount to, is another. And from the reputation of the woman I marry every shadow of a stain must be removed."

"As to that," said the Prince, whose natural suavity was returning, "though I suppose what you say of yourself and your nation is true; still I could easily, very easily have your head cut off, and say to your people (when they come to ask) that you had been killed by somebody else. But I too am tender-hearted, and what you say about the Princess is certainly true, for Hatipha himself told me so, and other things. So I should like to have you for a son-in-law, especially if it would benefit my kingdom. But how would it benefit it?"

"Well, looking at it strictly as a financial measure, I should say it would benefit you about a lac of rupees' worth a year, very likely more, what with the summer visitors, the boom in trade, and the new openings for unmarried ladies." After a pause, he added, "But mind you, I haven't yet promised I'll take her. My system got a bad shock that day, and I may never get over it."

The Prince was silent for a long time, doing more thinking than was perhaps good either for him or Meryon. At last he said:

"Allah is great. Man knows little, and sometimes lies. Your words, Meryon Pasha, may be truth or not You wish to live; you also wish, I think, to marry my daughter; but whether you desire the good of my kingdom is as yet hidden from me. But there is a way, if you choose, to prove it."

"Yes." returned Meryon in an indifferent tone.

"Yes. This morning I have news that the Prince, my nearest neighbour, is going to make war on me. I am unprepared, and need help. Beyond the country of my enemy lies another kingdom, whose king is my ally. If a messenger from me could reach him in three days from now I should be safe; but if I send one of my own subjects he would be stopped and slain, for his speech and features would betray him. But you, Meryon Pasha, could go in safety, for there is no war with your country; and, since you are a sovereign, as you say, and able to destroy all who injure you, you have nothing to fear. I will give you a message to my ally, which will tell him that you are my friend and are to be my son-in-law, and that my kingdom is in danger. Now, Meryon Pasha, will you do this thing to win the Princess and save the kingdom?"

The American reflected a moment. The Prince was ingeniously beating him with his own stick, so to say. The threat of war was probably a fact; but the secret embassy was devised as a means of getting rid of him without seeming to do so. On the other hand he could not (after his late magniloquence) decline to do his future father-in-law so ostensibly facile a service. There was but one weak point in his Highness's argument: he put his finger on that.

"The letter which I am to take to your ally will make me known also to your enemy, if he searches me. He would treat me as a spy, and I should have no ground for complaint."

The Prince smiled an Oriental smile. "You are prudent and far-seeing, Meryon Pasha," said he. "But if I protect you from this peril, will you accept the venture?"

"Oh, well, I don't care if I do," replied the other, twisting his red moustachios. He already had a glimpse of an expedient for making the affair serve his own purpose.

"It is well!" said his Highness. "Return to me at sunset to-day, and I will give you the final directions.

"All right!" returned Meryon briefly; and the interview ended.

---

III.

An hour after sunset Meryon, mounted on a thoroughbred Arab, and followed by two camels bearing his luggage, passed out of the gate of the city, and set his course towards the West. A good many things had happened since we saw him last.

Ebal, on hearing the result of the interview, had declared that it meant mischief, and begged to be taken along to share his master's fate. Meryon had a half-formed scheme to profit by the confusion in the harem caused by the disgrace of Hatipha, to carry off the Princess; but the only way to effect it was to have her join him that night beyond the boundary of the principality, which was not more than twenty miles distant. By the connivance of Senuah and the help of Ebal, this might be accomplished, and the latter eagerly agreed to attempt it. There had not been much time to arrange the details of the plot, but a trysting place was fixed upon, a tall, isolated rock near the caravan road, in the enemy's country. Here Meryon was to wait six hours; if Ebal and the Princess did not appear within that time, he was to presume that the plan had miscarried, and keep on alone.

Meanwhile, it transpired that Hatipha had escaped; when the Princess's guards went to get him he had vanished. It was not surprising; the war scare threw everything into hubbub. Had the American not been rendered so conspicuous by his mission he might easily have spirited away the Princess himself. Late in the afternoon a report that the Princess's mother had been taken violently ill added to the confusion. When Meryon went to the Prince for his farewell interview, he was half minded to proclaim and put himself at the head of a revolution, depose his Highness, and assume his throne. The odds were in favour of such a move being successful. Meryon finally resolved against it, from reluctance to be left with a kingdom on his hands so far from New York, and with the home policy still so strong against annexations. He afterwards was sorry he had been so fastidious.

He found the Prince entirely alone, divested for the moment even of his Nubians. He produced a writing done in minute characters on very thin tissue, setting forth that the bearer was the trusted friend of the undersigned, and going on to describe the situation and demand help. When Meryon had finished reading this his Highness drew from the folds of his robe a small gold box richly ornamented, and opened it. There lay a huge ruby, about two inches in length, and shaped like a much elongated egg. Meryon could not suppress an exclamation of surprise; such a stone was never before seen; it could not be bought for a roomful of rupees.

The Prince twisted it between his fingers, and it came apart; it had been cut in two and hollowed out, and the parts made to screw together. The letter was now rolled up and inserted in this precious box, so that there was a vast fortune and a message of life and death all done up in a parcel the size of a man's little finger. The Prince handed it to Meryon.

"Do you expect me to take the responsibility of lugging a bomb-shell like that about the country?" demanded the other, recoiling.

"Death is powerless against him who carries it," replied the other. "It is a talisman, the greatest treasure of my dynasty. Till now no unbeliever has ever seen it—judge then of the confidence I repose in you! When you arrive here with the army of my ally and give me back the Hollow Ruby, I will in return give you my other greatest treasure, my daughter, the Princess Terah, to be the bride of your heart, and the queen of your harem."

"This old pouter-pigeon," said Meryon to himself, "has been smart enough to see that by putting me upon honour he can get the best of me. He has me on toast. I must countermand the orders for the elopement, and play straight ball. These Orientals are too much for us, after all. Kismet! Hand it over then," he added aloud, as if the precious object were a chocolate caramel.

"How will you carry it?" asked his Highness.

"In my waistcoat pocket, of course," replied the American nonchalantly, stuffing it into that receptacle.

"Perhaps it is as well so," said his Highness thoughtfully. "If danger threatens you can readily swallow it," he added. "Remember, Meryon Pasha, it is worth the ransom of a kingdom."

"What? This thing?" exclaimed Meryon, slapping his pocket with a contemptuous smile. "Bless you, the boys where I come from use things like these for sinkers when they go fishing. Good-bye."

On returning to his apartments, he sent for Ebal to tell him of his changed purpose. The boy was not to be found. The hour for starting came, and still no Ebal. After waiting till the last possible moment he was forced to set out with this important detail left at loose ends. He was ill at ease and rather cross. He cared more for Ebal than for anyone in the country except Terah, and feared lest some mishap had overtaken him.

The party consisted of two drivers with their camels, one of whom was guide, loaded with Meryon's luggage, and he himself on his horse, a thorough-bred Arab. The twenty miles to the border was traversed without incident. As they crossed the line the moon rose in its third quarter, throwing her long black shadows before on the sandy plain. Its light also dimly revealed the apex of the great rock appointed as the trysting-place, and where it was still Meryon's intention to camp for the night.

Meanwhile he anticipated being stopped by the officers of customs for his passport, which was in readiness; but none appeared, and they kept on. An hour's further travel brought them to the great rock. The picturesqueness of the scene pleased Meryon's artist eye.

The rock was of a rough conical shape, about a hundred feet high. It stood in the midst of a barren plain; but around it, their roots nourished by the waters of a spring which bubbled from the ground and filled a wide stone basin, was a grove of tall palms and great hemispherical mangos. All was silent and deserted in the moonlight. In the base of the rock was a narrow opening, leading to a small cave or cell, formerly, according to tradition, occupied by a saint and hermit of supernatural powers. Meryon looked into it. and saw a space about eight feet in diameter hewn out of the solid rock. By heaping a few loose boulders at the entrance it might be made a dungeon more secure than a chamber in a New York safe-deposit company's vault.

The animals were watered and fed. The camels squatted in their usual absurd fashion, with their legs under them and their noses on a parallel with the horizon. The drivers curled up beside them and promptly went to sleep. Meryon did not feel sleepy. He wandered about, thinking over what had happened, and speculating as to what might be to come.

It was like a mixture of the "Arabian Nights" and a comic opera at the Casino, this predicament into which his artistic and susceptible temperament and devil-may-care habit had brought him. No doubt his mother-wit and audacity had that day saved his neck, but only to put it into yet graver jeopardy. Again, supposing all to turn out well, what sort of a figure would his Oriental bride cut in the drawing-rooms of the Four Hundred, and at Newport, Lenox, and at Bar Harbour?

"She'll cut a swathe, that's what she'll do!" said he to himself, with a chuckle. But the chuckle died away. How about his being hanged for a spy?

Would Ebal succeed in bringing her to-night? The lover hoped ardently that he would; then the man of the world took a hand and hoped he would not. The adventure was as near being desperate as it could be already; with her to take care of it would lap over about ninety per cent. on the wrong, side. No; the Princess was safest in her own harem for the present.

The moon mounted to the apex of the dome of heaven.

In another hour or two dawn would begin. It became chilly. The stillness was broken only by the low gurgling of the spring, a sigh from the camels, or the sound of the horse cropping the herbage. The artist thought he would turn in for an hour's nap. Hark!

A noise like a faint pulsation afar off. It grew stronger, but he could not yet fix its direction. It came nearer. It was approaching from the city. A horse—a single horse. Ebal alone—he had not brought Terah. "Confound him!" muttered the lover. "A good thing, too!" muttered the sane person.

The horseman, whoever he was, now came up rapidly, yet, in that strange light, it was difficult to distinguish him. At times he utterly vanished, like a phantom; then he reappeared shadowlike, but each time nearer. All at once, as it were, up he rode in flesh and blood. Yes, it was Ebal.

"Well, my boy, so you didn't get her?" said Meryon, stepping up. Ebal was evidently very much exhausted, he reeled in the saddle, and would have tumbled off if Meryon had not caught him. "Why, you poor little kid!" muttered he compassionately.

Then he gave a sudden start and stared at the youth's face. Ebal's soot-black hair, his eyes and features; but this supple young body which his arms held was the body not of a boy but of a girl! He almost dropped her in astonishment.

"Terah! What, Terah? Well, by the great horn spoon! Why, you cunning little sweetness!" Here he kissed her. "Tuckered out, eh? I should think she might! And all sole alone! What became of Ebal?"

The Princess was nearly at the end of her tether. Being an Oriental, she did not faint—that art is little understood in the East—but she rested in her lover's arms like a little sack of soft peaches, and did not in the least resent his demonstrations of affection.

"Light of my soul," she murmured, "am I safe? Oh, I am so thirsty and hungry! Oh, such a ride! That hard saddle, I can hardly move my legs. Are we alone? It's so strange being without a veil. These men's clothes, how I must look!"

Meryon set her down on a pile of rugs beside the spring. He got a bottle of wine and some food, and made her as comfortable as he could. "You look like an angel," said he, "though not like a male one, in spite of that rig. You're feminine, my dear, inside and out. Luckily, that Arab streak in you, wherever you got it—Ebal has it too—keeps you from being so plump as most of them; and that burnous doesn't tell much. Still, the sex is written all over you, and whoever takes you for a boy is an ass. But what about Ebal? What's the matter that he didn't escort you?"

The Princess, whom the wine was beginning to restore, laughed faintly, as a school-girl over some bit of roguery.

"We exchanged dresses and places, lord of my heart," said she. "Ah, I often wished before I got here that I was safe back among the soft cushions again. But now I am glad, and when I have smoked some cigarettes and had a good long sleep I shall be all right."

"This is going to be the devil," thought Meryon, referring to the situation. "Here she is dressed like my footboy and acting like the Princess. We ought to be off in an hour, and she's booked herself for a nine-hours' nap. Hannibal getting his army over the Alps was nothing to my getting this girl over fifty miles of flat plain. I must try fixing her up a bed on camel-back, and letting the beast rock her to sleep. And Ebal——By the way, Terah," he said aloud, "how is it about Ebal? Do you mean that he has taken your place as Princess in the harem? But he'll be found out, won't he? and what will they do with him then?"

"Where are the cigarettes?" demanded the Princess. "Ebal? Oh, the Prince will impale him, I suppose. Or, perhaps, since he's so young, he will only bastinado him and cut off his head. I don't know, but Ebal won't mind; it was he that proposed the exchange; and he's only a slave, you know. Where am I to sleep?"

"We won't sleep at present," returned the American, with sudden sternness. "Listen to me! Do you mean to say seriously that Ebal will be killed for getting you off?"

She stared at him with eyes of lazy wonder and laughed.

"Light of my soul, if he had deceived you like that, would not you kill him? Bismillah! My father is a man."

Meryon jumped to his feet.

"I'll show you and your father the kind of man I am!" said he. "That boy is not going to be killed. We are going back to prevent it. Ebal impaled? I guess not! This elopement is indefinitely postponed. Why, what a cold-blooded little thing you are! The embassy may go to the devil! Hey, you fellows! wake up, and pack up, do you hear? We're going home—— Hallo! what's all this!"

They were surrounded by a score of horsemen, among the foremost of whom Meryon recognised the fat figure and malignant grimace of his enemy Hatipha, with a huge pistol in his hand.

---

IV.

The battle (considering the romantic environment) did not amount to much. Meryon began it with two impulses, both foolish. The first was to put himself between Terah and danger, which, since they were both already surrounded by the enemy, was impossible except he formed himself into a hollow square, which is well known to be impracticable. His next idea was to swallow the Hollow Ruby, which would have resulted, had he accomplished it, in his being cut asunder like a bean-pod for the sake of what was inside. He put his hand to his pocket and felt the ruby there, but it had slipped through a hole and lodged in the lining. While he was frantically fishing for it, he heard Terah cry out; the memory of his dream flashed over him, but where were the black mountains and the embroidered eagle? He felt a burning, numbing sensation in his right shoulder, and would have fallen over backwards, but that he was sent the other way by a bang on the back of the head, after which he knew nothing.

Death is said to be a painless operation. When Meryon came to himself he was assured of continued existence by the excruciating discomfort which he suffered. He was in a small dark place—the cave in the big rock, as he rightly surmised—with a gag in his mouth, a bullet-wound in his shoulder, a gash in the back of his head, and a splitting headache. A raging thirst beset him, hiding from him the fact that he was also fainting with hunger. The first thing he did was to feel in his pocket. The ruby (as he expected) was gone.

In his gropings, however, his hand came in contact with his canteen, which he had filled at the spring just before Terah's arrival. After a fierce struggle, he succeeded in getting his gag off, and took a drink—the best drink he ever had, before or after. Why had he been gagged at all? Why shut up in the rock? There were several perplexing features about this affair. Meanwhile, he was not going to submit without a struggle to being buried alive. He got to his feet and dragged himself to the doorway of the cave, revealed by gleams of light coming through chinks, and found it stopped by a mass of rock. With all his remaining might he gave this rock a kick; to his astonishment it fell outward, being only a slab resting against the aperture. He staggered over it out into dazzling daylight, and into the arms of a man in European dress, who exclaimed, in some surprise, "Hullo, Fred Meryon! I might have known it would be you," in the voice of his old friend Horace Chase, the surgeon. Meryon said, "Great Scott, Horace!" and fainted, not being an Oriental.

The meeting had come about thus: The English had a "post" in the capital of the Prince's ally, and hearing that a row was brewing between the two other principalities, sent a detachment out to stop it. Chase went with it to cut off arms and legs in case anyone was injured. After transactions which do not concern us, they get on the trail of a marauding party, and captured them with their booty, among which was a young person dressed like a boy, but a girl underneath. She said she was a Princess, and told a queer tale, in consequence of which they kept on until they came to a tall conical rock, and were about to investigate it when it opened and out popped Meryon as we have seen.

Among the prisoners was a fat old person whom the Princess denounced as her father's chief eunuch, a fugitive from justice, and the shooter of her lover. This creature, upon interrogation, denied not only what was charged against him, but, most shrilly of all, something which was not—namely, that he had taken the Hollow Ruby. Further inquiry developed that he had got together this band of cut-throats ostensibly to waylay Meryon and capture the Princess, who was to be held for ransom; but he himself had secret knowledge of the Ruby, and designed to get that for himself. Accordingly he had shot Meryon, gagged him lest he would recover and swallow the stone, and deposited the body in the rock, meaning to sneak unobserved and hunt for the jewel at his leisure. Fate had then stepped in and laid him by the heels as narrated.

What was the Hollow Ruby? The Englishman wanted to know. Terah told them; though it was news to her that Meryon had had it in his keeping. Where, then, was the Hollow Ruby now? Hatipha was not only searched outwardly, but fed for a day or two on a diet of castor-oil and soap-suds, to no purpose. Meryon's clothes, he being still unconscious in the delirium of fever, were examined; and they even sent back and searched the cell in the rock; the ruby was not to be found. At this juncture Meryon came to himself, learned from his friend Chase what had been going on, and spake. It should be premised that the English had brought their prisoners to a city of the hostile country; and that Terah had become an object of general admiration. "That old swine Hatipha has it, depend on it," said Meryon. "We can cut him open—there's nothing else left to do to him," said the always low-voiced and undemonstrative Chase in a dreamy, professional tone. "But I fancy you swallowed it yourself."

"With that gag in ray jaws! But I see your game. You want to incise my epigastrium and get the glory of an operation. All right! Only, mind you, if ever I get well again, I'll give you such a licking as——"

"Don't excite yourself. I won't risk it, then, for my operations always succeed. This wound of yours is enough for the present."

"Why not try the experiment of removing the bullet?" growled Meryon testily.

"Dear boy, it just went in one door and out at the other. Here's the aperture of exit at the back."

"I can feel it all the same. Why doesn't my Princess come and nurse me?"

"Your Princess?" Chase repressed a smile. "She's busy."

"What the devil do you mean?"

"Look here, my boy," said Chase gently, "don't agitate yourself; but what is she anyway? You were always a fool about girls; it's your temperament, you know. But you can hardly be quite such an imbecile as to mean anything serious with her?"

"Dr. Chase, I consider your remarks damned insulting! I want no more of them! I shall marry the Princess and take her to New York, and whoever doesn't pay her proper respect as my wife will regret it. Do you understand?"

The surgeon was imperturbable. "You should have had her boxed up in the harem and expressed through to your New York residence, and married her as she stepped out; and afterwards keep her in the meat-safe, or some equally cool and secure retreat. For, to be frank with you, she has been carrying on here in a manner that may be natural to an Oriental Princess, with a taste for variety long repressed and finally indulged, but which, were she my fiancée, would make a murderer and suicide of me in five minutes. Why, you great red-headed calf, if she'd been able she would have been married by this time to the entire detachment, from the drummer-boy to the captain. You can punch my head, you know, but I'm giving you cold facts. Of course, I don't blame her; who would? It's the way she's made, and would be just right in a Nautch girl; but as Mrs. Fred. Meryon, of Murray Hill and Beacon Street, eh? Come, man, swallow your medicine!"

"Are you giving me this straight?" inquired Meryon after a short and pregnant silence.

"Straight and cold, and a good bit diluted, too."

There was another silence, long and meditative. "Poor little thing!" at last muttered the artist. "It's my fault. To marry her would make it worse. We don't understand these Eastern women, their warm blood or their cold blood either. But now she has found out what freedom is, it would be cruel to take her back to be shut up again. Still, what else——"

"We'll take her back and see if something nice can't be done for her," said Chase; "meanwhile I'll see she gets into no mischief here, and do you keep quiet and get that shoulder healed."

A week later they set out and proceeded by easy stages, carrying Meryon on a palanquin. Terah and Hatipha were of the party, much against the will of both. But, whereas Hatipha's only objection was that he would be flayed and impaled at the end of the trip, the poor little Princess had to tear out of her heart some thirty or forty vigorous young flirtations. It may be stated here that during the first night's encampment this young lady disappeared, and with her a handsome young camel-driver and a camel; and there is reason to think that she has been living happily ever since.

Upon arriving at the Prince's palace, they found changes.

It appeared, in the first place that the Princess, the mother of Terah, having been taken very ill of a dropsy, and at the point of death, summoned the Prince to a private interview, at which she informed him that Terah was not his daughter, but that as compensation Ebal, who had been brought up as a slave, was, in truth, his lawful son and heir. Their remarkable likeness to each other was due to their both favouring their mother. The lady further explained that her infidelity and deception had been carried out in retaliation for disappointment the Prince had given her, some fifteen years before, in the matter of a box of sweetmeats. She died, with a smile of satisfaction, just as the executioner, whom the Prince had lost not an instant in sending for, arrived with his bowstring, too late.

But his Highness was indignant, and someone must be impaled. He sent for Terah. It was then discovered for the first time that she had eloped with Meryon, and left the slave-boy Ebal, now the true Prince, in her place. The latter was brought to his father, expecting instant death; but as his Highness needed an heir and had no other, he was forced to spare him. He sent, however, for the father of Terah, whoever he might be.

The messenger learned that he used to be a gardener in the service of the harem, and that he had died a natural and easy death only a week before.

Here truly was a maddening state of things: four impalements missed one after another, and Hatipha and Meryon also out of reach. Someone must be slaughtered, and at once; but who? No one who had offended the Prince could be got at, and nobody who could be got at would offend him. His Highness's wrath, which had been warming up for eight-and-forty hours, now attained the temperature of super-heated steam, and the boiler exploded. In other words, this great and worthy potentate expired of an apoplexy in the midst of his trembling courtiers, who instantly, with hosannas of joy, prostrated themselves at the feet of the astonished Ebal, and proclaimed him their ruler.

Someone must be impaled

By the time Meryon, Chase, and the others arrived, the young monarch was well settled on his throne, and was showing himself a wise, skilful, and merciful administrator. He welcomed the artist with heartfelt joy, and they told all their adventures to each other. Meryon was given a suite of rooms next to the Prince's own, and they were always together, with Chase in the chair as moderator. The Prince expressed regret at the miscarriage of the Terah affair; he had no better substitute to offer than Senuah, who was his half-sister by another mother, and Terah's father—a rather obscure and roundabout relationship.

"She's a nice girl," said Meryon, "and her birth would be no obstacle; but I'm not marrying just now."

"We haven't got any air-tight harems in the States yet," commented Chase, "but we may come to it later."

"I still shall hope to visit you some time in New York," said his Highness, "and see the White House and the ward politicians and the other things; meantime, the misfortune that keeps you on this divan is my gain, for it compels you to stay with me."

"You must thank Chase," replied Meryon, with a moody grin; "he won't treat it as I advise."

"The man imagines that the bullet is still in the wound," Chase explained. "His real trouble is the block of wood in his head, which will only come away with the head itself."

"I wish I were as sure of the whereabouts of the Hollow Ruby as of that bullet," Meryon observed; and, having said this, he shut his eyes as if intending a nap.

In fact, he remained motionless and seemingly asleep for about twenty minutes, during which the Prince and surgeon conversed in low tones and smoked their nargilehs.

Then Meryon opened his eyes, and fixed them upon Chase with a strange expression.

"Horace," said he, in a husky voice, "something queer has happened. I've been back in that cell in the big rock, and saw myself there as I was when those fellows threw me in. I saw all I did while I was in there, and I know what became of the ruby."

"Oh! that's it, is it?" returned Chase, slipping his fingers on his friend's pulse and winking to the Prince to humour the sick man's fancy. "We were just wondering what had become of you."

"You think I'm cracked, but the story will prove I'm not," continued the other, speaking with emphasis but not wildly. "I lay stunned for a while; when I came to I was delirious, and that's the reason I wasn't able till now to remember what happened. But the ruby was on my mind, and the first thing I did was to hunt in my pocket for it, and there it was all safe. I tried to get it in my mouth, but for some reason I couldn't understand—it was the gag, of course—it wouldn't go in."

"Well," said the surgeon, regarding him with mingled perplexity and interest.

"Then I thought I was standing in front of a safe in a vault," Meryon went on, "and I was being hunted by thieves, who wanted to get the ruby from me. The safe wouldn't open! I felt all over in the dark to find an opening. At last I found one—a small hole in the upper part; but when I touched it, something sharp came and gave me a jab, so that I yelled with pain. But the thieves were close up by that time, and my only chance was to get the ruby through that hole, if I died for it. So just as they appeared, I made a desperate effort and crammed it in, and got a jab that sent me off unconscious again. The next thing I knew—however, that's no matter; the ruby's in that hole."

"What does the boy mean?" said Chase, impressed by the force and vividness with which the tale was told.

"I understand him," interposed the Prince gravely. "The stone is in his shoulder. Allah is great!"

"I wish some of your brains would get into Horace's skull," sighed Meryon, relapsing on his cushion. "If he'd followed my directions in the first place, the thing would have been cleared up and I should have been a well man by this time. I knew there was something there, and naturally supposed that it was a bullet. But there's no arguing with a man who can't see further than his nose. Get your instruments, now," he added testily, "and have the job over. If it hadn't been for my vision, I should have gone to my grave with that confounded talisman in my body, and a cloud on my reputation. Let this be a lesson to you."

It is not necessary for us to assist at a surgical operation. In ten minutes it was over. The Hollow Ruby, cleansed from its gory stains, was lying on a white satin cushion, upon which it shed its glorious light; Meryon was reclining on the divan with an expression of pardonable self-satisfaction on his pallid features; Chase was looking subdued and thoughtful, and the Prince said—

"Meryon, my friend, the jewel is yours! My only sorrow at its loss was that I was thus prevented from giving it to you. No less precious a keepsake would be worthy of our friendship. If it bring you no good fortune, may it remind you at least of the youth who loved you, to whom in his obscurity you were as a light of day and the warmth of the sun at noon."

This was very handsome, too much so, indeed, and Meryon would have declined the gift on the spot, but from unwillingness to hurt the Princes feelings. Perhaps, however, it was not quite so valuable as the Prince supposed. I saw it last year in Meryon's studio, and I must say that it seemed to me—but after ail I am not an expert in these things.

Hatipha, in another attempt to escape, fell head foremost into a waterbutt, and was wedged in so tightly that he drowned before they could get him out. As for Senuah, ah! yes; there is something to tell about her.

She made herself very useful and agreeable during Meryon's convalescence—a period of a month or more. But for her skilful and tender nursing he might have been bedridden twice as long. He and Chase had agreed to go home to New York together as soon as he got well. But one morning the surgeon came into his room, and after examining him and pronouncing him fit to travel, added, "By the way, you'll have to excuse me."

"What for?"

"About going home, I mean; I shall have to stay here for the present. The fact is, I have another patient—at least, you'll have to congratulate me, old man."

"What ails you, Horace?"

"Senuah is a capital nurse, and a most charming and lovely girl. A way in front of Terah in all respects."

"Horace, you don't mean to—"

"We're to be married to-morrow. And whoever doesn't pay respect to my wife will regret it, do you understand?"

"If you don't regret it, my dear boy, you may be sure I sha'n't," replied Meryon, with a broad smile; and up to last accounts, I am happy to add, there seems to have been no cause for dissatisfaction. Yet we should not forget, in considering the incident, that it is an exception and not a precedent that confronts us.