Oriental Encounters Part 18

'Your Honour thinks of settling here among us?' cried his Excellency, with sudden zest, appearing quite enraptured with the notion. He asked then if the French tongue was intelligible to me, and, hearing that it was, talked long in French about my project, which seemed to please him greatly. He said that it would be a blessing for his district to have a highly civilised, enlightened being like myself established in it as the sun and centre of improvement; and what a comfort it would be to him particularly to have an educated man at hand to talk to! He hoped that, when I had set up my model farm--for a model it would be, in every way, he felt quite sure of that, from my appearance and my conversation--I would not limit my attention solely to the work of agriculture, but would go on to improve the native breeds of sheep and oxen. He heard that splendid strains of both were found in England. He wished me to import a lot of English bulls and rams, a.s.suring me of the a.s.sistance of the Government in all that I might do in that direction, since the Sultan ('His Imperial Majesty'

he called him always) took the greatest interest in such experiments.

All this was very far from my original design, which was to lead as far as possible a quiet life. But I promised to give thought to all his Excellency's counsels.

He made me smoke two cigarettes and drink a cup of coffee which his secretary had prepared upon a brazier in a corner of the room; and then, with a sweet smile and deprecating gestures of the hands, he begged me to excuse him if he closed the interview. It was a grief to him to let me go, but he was very busy.

I rose at once, and so did Suleyman.

'But what of the Sheykh Yusuf?' I exclaimed, reminding him.

'Ah, to be sure!' rejoined the Governor with a slight frown. 'Of what religion is he?'

'I suppose a Druze.'

'And the people who attacked him so unmercifully?'

'Are Druzes too.'

'Ah, then, it is all in the family, as the saying goes. And, unless some deputation from the Druze community appeals to me, I should be ill-advised to interfere in its affairs. Our way of government is not identical with that which is pursued with such conspicuous success in highly civilised and settled countries like your own. We leave the various communities and tribes alone to settle their internal differences. It is only where tribe wars on tribe, religion on religion, or their quarrels stop the traffic on the Sultan's highway that we intervene. What would you have, mon ami? We are here in Asia!'

With these words, and a smile of quite ineffable indulgence for my young illusions, his Excellency bowed me out.

In the ante-room Suleyman drew close to my left ear and whispered sharply:

'Give me four mejidis.'

'Whatever for?' I asked in deep amazement.

'That I will tell you afterwards. The need is instant.'

I produced the four mejidis from a trouser-pocket, and, receiving them, he went back to the door by which the usher stood, and whispered to the man, who went inside a moment and came back with the private secretary of the Cammacam. The compliments which pa.s.sed between them seemed to me interminable.

I paced the pavement of the waiting-room, the only figure in the crowd whose att.i.tude bespoke impatience. The others sat or squatted round the walls in perfect resignation, some of them smoking, others munching nuts of various kinds, of which the sh.e.l.ls began to hide the floor adjacent to them. A few of the suppliants had even had the forethought to bring with them bags full of provisions, as if antic.i.p.ating that their time of waiting might endure for several days.

At last, when I was growing really angry with him, Suleyman returned and told me:

'All is well, and we can now be going, if your Honour pleases.'

'I do please,' I rejoined indignantly. 'Why have you kept me waiting all this while? I never wished to come at all into this place, and Allah knows that we have done no good by coming. We have spoilt a morning which we might have spent upon the road.'

'Allah, Allah!' sighed Suleyman long-sufferingly. 'Your Honour is extremely hard to please. Did not his Excellency talk to you exclusively, with every sign of the most lively pleasure for quite half an hour; whereas he scarcely deigned to throw a word to me, although I wooed his ear with language calculated to seduce the mind of kings? I have some cause to be dejected at neglect from one so powerful; but you have every cause to be elated. He is now your friend.'

'I shall never see him in my life again most likely!' I objected.

'Nay, that you cannot tell,' replied my mentor suavely. 'To be acquainted with a person in authority is always well.'

CHAPTER XXIII

CONCERNING BRIBES

'Why did you want those four mejidis?' I inquired severely.

Suleyman shrugged up his shoulders and replied:

'I had to pay the proper fees, since you yourself showed not a sign of doing so, to save our carefully established honour and good name.'

'You don't mean that you gave them to the Cammacam?'

'Allah forbid! Consider, O beloved, my position in this matter. To put it in the form of parables: Suppose a king and his vizier should pay a visit to another king and his vizier. If there were presents to be made, I ask you, would not those intended for the king be offered personally by the king, and those for the vizier by the vizier? It will be obvious to your Honour, upon slight reflection, that if, in our adventure of this morning, a present to the Governor was necessary or desirable, you personally, and no other creature, should have made it.'

'Merciful Allah!' I exclaimed. 'He would have knocked me down.'

'He would have done nothing of the kind, being completely civilised.

He would merely have pushed back your hand with an indulgent smile, pressing it tenderly, as who should say: "Thou art a child in these things, and dost not know our ways, being a stranger." Yet, undoubtedly, upon the whole, your offer of a gift, however small, would have confirmed the good opinion which he formed at sight of you.

'But let that pa.s.s! Out of the four mejidis which you gave me so reluctantly (since you ask for an account) I presented one to the usher, and three to his Excellency's private secretary, in your name.

And I have procured it of the secretary's kindness that he will urge his lord to take some measures to protect that ancient malefactor, the Sheykh Yusuf.'

'If I had tipped the Governor, as you suggest that I ought to have done,' I interrupted vehemently, 'do you mean to say he would have taken measures to protect Sheykh Yusuf?'

'Nay, I say not that; but he would at least have had complete conviction that your Honour takes a lively interest in that old churl--a person in himself unpleasant and unworthy of a single thought from any thinking or right-minded individual. Thus, even though he scorned the money, as he would no doubt have done, the offer would have told him we were earnest in our application, and he might conceivably have taken action from desire to do a pleasure to one whom, as I said before, he loved at sight.'

'The whole system is corrupt,' I said, 'and what is worse, unreasonable.'

'So say the Franks,' replied Suleyman, shrugging his shoulders up and spreading wide his hands, as though before a wall of blind stupidity which he knew well could never be cast down nor yet surmounted. 'Our governors, our judges, and the crowd of small officials are not highly paid, and what they do receive is paid irregularly. Then all, whether high or low, must live; and it is customary in our land to offer gifts to persons in authority, because a smile, G.o.d knows, is always better than a frown from such an one. We are not like the Franks, who barter everything, even their most sacred feelings, even love. It gives us pleasure to make gifts, and see them welcomed, even when the recipient is someone who cannot in any way repay us for our trouble, as a Frank would say.'

'But to sell justice; for it comes to that!' I cried, indignant.

'Who talks of selling justice? You are quite mistaken. If I have to go before a judge I make a gift beforehand to his Honour, whose acceptance tells me, not that he will give a verdict in my favour--do not think it!--but merely that his mind contains no grudge against me.

If he refused the gift I should be terrified, since I should think he had been won completely by the other side. To take gifts from both parties without preference, making allowance, when there is occasion, for the man who is too poor to give; and then to judge entirely on the merits of the case; that is the way of upright judges in an Eastern country. The gifts we make are usually small, whereas the fees which lawyers charge in Western countries are exorbitant, as you yourself have told me more than once and I have heard from others. And even after paying those enormous fees, the inoffensive, righteous person is as like to suffer as the guilty. Here, for altogether harmless men to suffer punishment in place of rogues is quite unheard-of; though occasionally one notorious evildoer may be punished for another's crime when this is great and the real criminal cannot be found and there is call for an example to be made upon the instant. This generally happens when a foreign consul interferes, demanding vengeance for some slight offence against his nationals. Things like that take place occasionally when the court is fl.u.s.tered. But in its natural course, believe me, Turkish justice, if slow-moving, is as good as that of Europe and infinitely less expensive than your English law.'

I made no answer, feeling quite bewildered.

Suleyman was always serious in manner, which made it very hard to tell when he was joking or in earnest. Among the natives of the land, I knew, he had the reputation of a mighty joker, but I had learnt the fact from the applause of others. I never should have guessed from his demeanour that he jested consciously.

He also held his peace until we reached our hostelry. There, some half-hour later, when I had given orders for our horses to be ready for a start directly after luncheon--a decision against which Suleyman protested unsuccessfully, declaring it would be too hot for riding--I overheard him telling the whole story of our visit, including the donation of the four mejidis, to Rashid, who was lazily engaged in polishing my horse's withers.

'That secretary is a man of breeding,' he was saying, in a tone of warm approval; 'for I noticed he was careful to receive the present in his left hand, which he placed behind his back in readiness, with great decorum. Nor did he thank me, or give any token of acknowledgment beyond a little friendly twinkle of the eyes.'

At once I pounced on this admission, crying: 'That shows that he regarded the transaction as unlawful! And your remark upon it shows that you, too, think it so.'

Suleyman looked slowly round until his eyes met mine, not one whit disconcerted, though until I spoke he had not known that I was anywhere in earshot.

'Your Honour is incorrigible,' he replied, with a grave smile. 'I never knew your like for obstinacy in a false opinion; which shows that you were born to fill some high position in the world. Of course they all--these fine officials, great and small--regard it as beneath their dignity to take a present which they sorely need. To take such presents greedily would be to advertise their poverty to all the world. And Government appointments swell a man with pride, if nothing else--a pride which makes them anxious to be thought above all fear of want. For that cause, they are half-ashamed of taking gifts. But no one in this country thinks it wrong of them to do so, nor to oblige the giver, if they can, in little ways. It would be wrong if they betrayed the trust reposed in them by their superiors, or were seduced into some act against their loyalty or their religion. But that, praise be to G.o.d, you will not find. It is only in small matters such as acts of commerce or politeness, which hardly come within the sphere of a man's conscience, that they are procurable, and no one in this country thinks the worse of them, whatever people say to you, a foreigner, by way of flattery. It is very difficult for foreigners to learn the truth. Your Honour should be thankful that you have Suleyman for an instructor--and Rashid, too,' he added as an after-thought, seeing that my bodyservant stood close by, expecting mention.