Complete Works of F Marion Crawford

by F. Marion Crawford

  “He is quite at liberty to do so,” answered the latter with a laugh. “The story is simple enough,” he continued, “and there is no reason why you should not know it. The late Count Skariatine had two sons, of whom the present Count was the younger. Ten years ago, when barely twenty, he quarrelled with his father and elder brother, and they parted in anger. I must say that he seems to have acted hastily, though the old gentleman’s views of life were eccentric, to say the least of it. For some reason or other, the elder brother never married. I have heard it said that he was crippled in childhood. Be that as it may, he was vindictive and spiteful by nature, and prevented the quarrel from being forgotten. The younger brother left the house with the clothes on his back, and steadily refused to accept the small allowance offered him, and which was his by right. And now the father and the eldest son are dead — they died suddenly of the smallpox — and Doctor Grabofsky has come to inform the Count that he is the heir. There you have the story in a nutshell.”

  “Then it is all true, after all!” cried Fischelowitz. “We all thought—”

  “Thinking, when one knows nothing, is a dangerous and useless pastime,” observed the Consul. “I will take a box of these cigarettes with me. They are good.”

  “Thank you most obediently, Milostivy Gosudar!” exclaimed Fischelowitz, bowing low. “I trust that the Gospodin Consul will honour me with his patronage. I have a great variety of tobaccos, Kir, Basma, Samson, Dubec Imperial, Swary—”

  While Fischelowitz was recommending the productions of his Celebrated Manufactory to the Consul, Grabofsky and the Count were walking together up and down the smooth pavement outside.

  “A great change has taken place in your family,” Grabofsky was saying. “Had anything less extraordinary occurred, I should have written to you instead of coming in person. Your brother is dead, Count Skariatine.”

  “Dead!” exclaimed the Count, who had no recollection of the letter abstracted from his pocket by the Cossack. It had reached him after the weekly attack had begun, and the memory of it was gone with that of so many other occurrences.

  “Dead,” repeated the lawyer sharply, as though he would have made a nail of the word to drive it into the coffin.

  “And how many children has he left?” inquired the Count.

  “He died unmarried.”

  “So that I—”

  “You are the lawful heir.”

  “Unless my father marries again.” The colour rose in the Count’s lean cheeks.

  “That is impossible.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he is dead, too.”

  “Then—”

  “You are Count Skariatine, and I have the honour to offer you my services at this important juncture.”

  The Count breathed hard. The shock, overtaking him when he was in his normal condition, was tremendous. The colour came and went rapidly in his features, and he caught his breath, leaning heavily upon the little lawyer, who watched his face with some anxiety. Akulina’s remark about the Count’s madness had made him more careful than he would otherwise have been in his manner of breaking the news.

  “I am not well,” said the Count in a low voice. “To-day is Wednesday — I am never well on Wednesdays.”

  “To-day is Thursday,” answered Grabofsky.

  “Thursday? Thursday—” the Count reeled, and would have fallen, but for the support of the nervous little man’s wiry arm.

  Then, in the space of a second, took place that strange phenomenon of the intelligence which is as yet so imperfectly understood. It is called the “Transfer” in the jargon of the half-developed science which deals with suggestion and the like. Its effects are strange, sudden and complete, often observed, never understood, but chronicled in hundreds of cases and analysed in every seat of physiological learning in Europe. In the twinkling of an eye, a part or the whole of the intelligence, or of the sensations, is reversed in action, and this with a logical precision of which no description can give any idea. It is universally considered as the first step in the direction of recovery.

  The action of the Count’s mind was “transferred,” therefore, since the word is consecrated by usage. Fortunately for him, the transfer coincided with a material change in his fortunes. Had this not been the case it would have had the effect of making him mad through the whole week, and sane only from Tuesday evening until the midnight of Wednesday. As it was, the result was of a contrary nature. Being now in reality restored to wealth and dignity, he was able to understand and appreciate the reality during six days, becoming again, in imagination, a cigarette-maker upon the seventh, a harmless delusion which already shows signs of disappearing, and from which the principal authorities confidently assert that he will soon be quite free.

  He passed but one moment in a state of semi-consciousness. Then he raised his head, and stood erect, and to the great surprise of Grabofsky, showed no further surprise at the news he had just received.

  “The fact is,” he said, quietly, “I was expecting you yesterday. I had received a letter from the wife of the steward informing me of the death of my father and brother. I think your coming to-day must have disturbed me, as I have some difficulty in recalling the circumstances which attended our meeting here.”

  “A passing indisposition,” suggested Grabofsky. “Nothing more. The weather is warm, sultry in fact.”

  “Yes, it must have been that. And now, we had better communicate the state of things to Herr Fischelowitz, to whom I consider myself much indebted.”

  “Our Consul came with me,” said the lawyer. “He is in the shop. Perhaps you did not notice him.”

  “No — I do not think I did. I am afraid he thought me very careless.”

  “Not at all, not at all.” Grabofsky began to think that there had been some truth in Akulina’s remarks after all, but he kept his opinion to himself, then and afterwards, a course which was justified by subsequent events. He and the Count turned towards the shop, and, entering, found Fischelowitz and the Consul conversing together.

  The Count bowed to the latter with much ceremony.

  “I fear,” he said, “that you must have thought me careless just now. The suddenness of the news I have received has affected me. Pray accept my best thanks for your kindness in accompanying Doctor Grabofsky this morning.”

  “Do not mention it, Count. I am only too glad to be of service.”

  “You are very kind. And now, Herr Fischelowitz,” he continued, turning to the tobacconist, “it is my pleasant duty to thank you also. I looked for these gentlemen yesterday. They have arrived to-day. The change which I expected would take place has come, and I am about to return to my home. The memories of poverty and exile can never be pleasant, but I do not think that I have any just reason to complain. Will it please you, Herr Fischelowitz, and you, gentlemen, to go into the next room with me? I wish to take my leave of those who have so long been my companions.”

  Fischelowitz opened the door of communication and held it back respectfully for the Count to pass. His ideas were exceedingly confused, but his instinct told him to make all atonement in his power for his wife’s outbursts of temper. The Count entered first, and the other three followed him, Grabofsky, the Consul, and Fischelowitz. The little back shop was very full. To judge from the last accents of Akulina’s voice she had been repaying Johann Schmidt with compound interest, now that the right was on her side, for the manner in which he had attacked her. As the Count entered, however, all held their peace, and he began to speak in the midst of total silence. He stood by the little black table upon which his lean, stained fingers had manufactured so many hundreds of thousands of cigarettes.

  “Herr Fischelowitz,” he began, “I am here to say good-bye to you, to your good wife, and to my companions. During a number of years you have afforded me the opportunity of earning an honest living, and I have to thank you very heartily for the forbearance you have shown me. It is not your fault if your consideration for me has sometimes taken a passive rather than
an active form. It was not your business to fight my battles. Give me your hand, Herr Fischelowitz. We part, as we have lived, good friends. I wish you all possible success.”

  The tobacconist bowed low as he respectfully shook hands.

  “Too much honour,” he said.

  “Frau Fischelowitz,” continued the Count, “you have acted according to your lights and your beliefs. I bear you no ill-will. I only hope that if any other poor gentleman should ever take my place you will not make his position harder than it would naturally be, and I trust that all may be well with you.”

  “I never meant it, Herr Graf,” said Akulina, awkwardly, as she took his proffered hand.

  He turned to the Cossack.

  “Good-bye, Johann Schmidt, good-bye. I shall see you again, before long. We have always helped each other, my friend. I have much to thank you for.”

  “You have helped me, you mean,” said the Cossack, in a rather shaky voice.

  “No, no — each other, and we will continue to do so, I hope, in a different way. Good-bye, Dumnoff. You have a better heart than people think.”

  “Are you not going to take me to Russia, after all?” asked the mujik, almost humbly.

  “Did I say I would? Then you shall go. But not as coachman, Dumnoff. Not as coachman, I think. Good-bye, Anna Nicolaevna,” he said, turning to the insignificant girl, who was at last too much awed to giggle.

  Then he came to Vjera’s place. The girl was leaning forward, hiding her face in her hands, and resting her small, pointed elbows on the table.

  “Vjera, dear,” he said, bending down to her, “will you come with me, now?”

  She looked up, suddenly, and her face was very white and drawn, and wet with tears.

  “Oh no, no!” she said in a low voice. “How can I ever be worthy of you, since it is really true?”

  But the Count put his arm round the poor little shell-maker’s waist, and made her stand beside him in the midst of them all.

  “Gentlemen,” he said, in his calmly dignified manner, “let me present to you the Countess Skariatine. She will bear that name to-morrow. I owe you a confession before leaving you, in her honour and to my humiliation. I had contracted a debt of honour, and I had nothing wherewith to pay it. There was but an hour left — an hour, and then my life and my honour would have been gone together.”

  Vjera looked up into his face with a pitiful entreaty, but he would go on.

  “She saved me, gentlemen,” he continued. “She cut off her beautiful hair from her head, and sold it for me. But that is not the reason why she is to be my wife. There is a better reason than that. I love her, gentlemen, with all my heart and soul, and she has told me that she loves me.”

  He felt her weight upon him, and, looking down, he saw that she had fainted in his arms, with a look of joy upon her poor wan face which none there had ever seen in the face of man or woman.

  And so love conquered.

  THE END

  Khaled

  A TALE OF ARABIA

  Khaled: A Tale of Arabia was first published by Macmillan & Co in London and New York in May 1891. The London edition consisted of two volumes and there were 2,000 copies printed, while the New York edition, which was also the second British edition, was published in one volume, with 10,000 copies being printed. The first proper American edition of the novel was not released until the summer of 1901, when it was bound with the sixth edition of A Cigarette-Maker’s Romance. Crawford began work on the book at the end of 1890 and finished two months later during his travels to what are now known as the countries of Saudi Arabia and Iraq. It was during his stay in the Middle East that his health began to really improve and by the time he returned to Sorrento in late April he had almost completely recovered from his illness.

  A fantasy novel, Khaled: A Tale of Arabia begins with Khaled relating the tale of how he murdered an Indian prince for attempting to deceive Zehowah, the daughter of the Sultan of ‘‘Nejed’ (Najd) by pretending to convert to Islam. Allah decrees that Khaled will be spared hell for murdering the man and granted a soul if he can win the love of Zehowah. He is immediately successful in convincing Zehowah to marry him, but she agrees for political reasons and not for love and so begins his true struggle to regain his soul. He attempts to impress her by proving his bravery in war while leading the Sultan to victory and performing ever greater and more dangerous feats in battle.

  2nd British edition published in the USA in 1891

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER I

  CHAPTER II

  CHAPTER III

  CHAPTER IV

  CHAPTER V

  CHAPTER VI

  CHAPTER VII

  CHAPTER VIII

  CHAPTER IX

  CHAPTER X

  CHAPTER XI

  CHAPTER XII

  CHAPTER I

  KHALED STOOD IN the third heaven, which is the heaven of precious stones, and of Asrael, the angel of Death. In the midst of the light shed by the fruit of the trees Asrael himself is sitting, and will sit until the day of the resurrection from the dead, writing in his book the names of those who are to be born, and blotting out the names of those who have lived their years and must die. Each of the trees has seventy thousand branches, each branch bears seventy thousand fruits, each fruit is composed of seventy thousand diamonds, rubies, emeralds, carbuncles, jacinths, and other precious stones. The stature and proportions of Asrael are so great that his eyes are seventy thousand days’ journey apart, the one from the other.

  Khaled stood motionless during ten months and thirteen days, waiting until Asrael should rest from his writing and look towards him. Then came the holy night called Al Kadr, the night of peace in which the Koran came down from heaven. Asrael paused, and raising his eyes from the scroll saw Khaled standing before him.

  Asrael knew Khaled, who was one of the genii converted to the faith on hearing Mohammed read the Koran by night in the valley Al Nakhlah. He wondered, however, when he saw him standing in his presence; for the genii are not allowed to pass even the gate of the first heaven, in which the stars hang by chains of gold, each star being inhabited by an angel who guards the entrance against the approach of devils.

  Asrael looked at Khaled in displeasure, therefore, supposing that he had eluded the heavenly sentinels and concealed an evil purpose. But Khaled inclined himself respectfully.

  ‘There is no Allah but Allah. Mohammed is the prophet of Allah,’ he said, thus declaring himself to be of the Moslem genii, who are upright and are true believers.

  ‘How camest thou hither?’ asked Asrael.

  ‘By the will of Allah, who sent his angel with me to the gate,’ Khaled answered. ‘I am come hither that thou mayest write down my name in the book of life and death, that I may be a man on earth, and after an appointed time thou shalt blot it out again and I shall die.’

  Asrael gazed at him and knew that this was the will of Allah, for the angels are thus immediately made conscious of the divine commands. He took up his pen to write, but before he had traced the first letter he paused.

  ‘This is the night Al Kadr,’ he said. ‘If thou wilt, tell me therefore thy story, for I am now at leisure to hear it.’

  ‘Thou knowest that I am of the upright genii,’ Khaled answered, ‘and I am well disposed towards men. In the city of Riad, in Arabia, there rules a powerful king, the Sultan of the kingdom of Nejed, blessed in all things save that he has no son to inherit his vast dominions. One daughter only has been born to him in his old age, of such marvellous beauty that even the Black Eyed Virgins enclosed in the fruit of the tree Sedrat, who wait for the coming of the faithful, would seem but mortal women beside her. Her eyes are as the deep water in the wells of Zobeideh when it is night and the stars are reflected therein. Her hair is finer than silk, red with henna, and abundant as the foliage of the young cypress tree. Her face is as fair as the kernels of young almonds, and her mouth is sweeter than the mellow date and more fragrant than ‘Ood mingled with ambergris. She possesses moreove
r all the virtues which become women, for she is as modest as she is beautiful and as charitable as she is modest. From all parts of Arabia and Egypt, and from Syria and from Persia, and even from Samarkand, from Afghanistan, and from India princes and kings’ sons continually come to ask her in marriage, for the fame of her beauty and of her virtues is as wide as the world. But her father, desiring only her happiness, leaves the choice of a husband to herself, and for a long time she refused all her suitors. For there is in the palace at Riad a certain secret chamber from which she can observe all those who come and hear their conversation and see the gifts which they bring with them.

  ‘At last there came as a suitor an unbeliever, a prince of an island by the shores of India, beautiful as the moon, whose speech was honey, and who surpassed all the suitors in riches and in the magnificence of the presents he brought. For he came bearing with him a hundred pounds’ weight of pure gold, and five hundred ounces of ambergris, and a great weight of musk and aloes and sandal wood, and rich garments without number, and many woven shawls of Kashmir, of which the least splendid was valued at a thousand sherifs of gold. An innumerable retinue accompanied him, and twenty elephants, and horses without number, besides camels.

  ‘The Sultan’s daughter beheld this beautiful prince from her secret hiding-place, and all that he had brought with him. The Sultan received him with kindness and hospitality, but assured him that unless he would renounce idolatry and embrace the true faith he could not hope to succeed in his purpose. Thereupon he was much cast down, and soon afterwards, having received magnificent gifts in his turn, he would have departed on his way, disappointed and heavy at heart. But Zehowah sent for her father and entreated him to bid the young prince remain. “For it is not impossible,” she said, “that he may yet be converted to the true faith. And have I the right to refuse to sacrifice my freedom when the sacrifice may be the means of converting an idolater to the right way? And if I marry him and go with him to his kingdom, shall we not make true believers of all his subjects, so that I shall deserve to be called the mother of the faithful like Ayesha, beloved by the Prophet, upon whom be peace?” The Sultan found it hard to oppose this argument which was founded upon virtue and edified in righteousness. He therefore entreated the Indian prince to remain and to profess Islam, promising the hand of Zehowah when he should be converted.