Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/67

 God, and her husband would ever be found faithful to me.

While the captain was officiating in the country, and looking after evildoers, I sometimes saw him. He told me that his quarters were bad, but that he had at length found a small house in the village, and was going to have his family down. I thought they would hardly like the change from a city life to the dulness of a village. "The familia," said he, "had been used to it in her father's house, and was fond of goats, and turkeys, and geese, and fowls, and a garden. It would be quite a treat for Fatmeh, who could play about all day long." Familia, or family, is now a common polite word in Turkish for wife.

The captain's occupation ran out; he became a suitor to me again; the treasury, to remit to the foreign creditor, and keep faith with him, held back payments from Osman and other pensioners and home servants; and he was as ill off as ever. Every now and then I got him some little employment, and received his thanks. There was never a Bairam, or Christmas, or Easter, for some years when the complimentary calls in our house did not include Captain Osman Aga, with his wife and daughter. I had become his effective patron and friend, and his devotion went beyond European bounds, though the position of a captain in the army in Turkey is not even yet what it is in Europe. The captain, yuzbashi, or head of a hundred in the regular army, was, till the change was made in my time, no more than a warrant officer; commissions beginning with second majors, and only the sons of country gentlemen or squireens serving as captains and lieutenants. The present Sultan, to elevate the army, has given official precedence to the captains; but they hardly realise their new honours at the tail of the aristocracy. Europeans seldom understand the real status of the captain, and draw very disparaging reflections from incidents which come before them. The captain is often no more than an illiterate common man raised from the ranks—I must add, though, generally a conscientious soldier and thorough master of his drill and business.

A curious story is told of a French ambassador, as an illustration of the want of dignity in what he considered to be Turkish officers. The old general, being present at the grand audience, in the Seraglio at the Bairam, received some attentions from a captain commanding near him. On leaving, his excellency desired his dragoman to tender his thanks to the captain, and invite him, as a brother-officer, to dinner. The captain expressed his gratitude, but continued to hang about, as if wanting something more. "I can settle it," said the dragoman; and he evidently did so, as the captain retired with much expression of contentment. "How did you manage it?" "I gave him a five-franc piece, with which he was much better satisfied than with the honour of dining with your excellency." The ambassador naturally wondered at the low standard of Turkish officers, and it was no business of the Levantine dragoman to undeceive him, and inform him that the captain was not an officer, but a sergeant-major.

As to Osman Aga, both before and after his elevation to the table of precedency as a functionary of state of the fourth class, his devotion to me was the same. It never occurred to him, or to me, that it was a degradation, and it was what he would willingly have shown to his general, or to any dear friend. If we were on a journey, no one but himself was allowed to saddle my horse, if he could help it. He would snatch my boots out of the hands of my men, and polish them himself. There was no act of personal help he would not tender, and this without any sycophantism or loss of respect on either side. The colonel will fill the chibook of his old general—he is as his child. The major will do as much for the colonel, the captain for the major under whom he has served, and so on. Two friends of equal rank will vie which shall seem to kiss the hem of the other's robe; and ladies act in the same way. However undignified this may seem to Europeans, not being Spaniards, it conveys to the Osmanli an idea of dignity; not of humiliation. Under the old constitution (and the impress of it is not yet lost), all was so far democratic that any porter in the street might aspire to the highest honours, and believe himself destined to become grand vizier. Those who attain honours are therefore looked upon as delegates and representatives of the mass, to whom freemen cheerfully do homage. In the course of years, Fatmeh grew bigger, and not so shy, and I found she had been sent to school; on which the captain expressed his sentiments with as much unction as if he had never played the dunce. "The Family," said he, "considers schooling religious and necessary. The Family can read, and Fatmeh, Inshallah, will get on with her learning, as is her duty!"

"Inshallah, please God!" responded I.

By-and-by Fatmeh made progress in her reading, and the reverend schoolmaster, the captain told me, was much satisfied with her. She gave me a specimen of her skill out of one of my books, reading some hard words with all the precision and ceremony of a Hojah; nor did she neglect her needle. Besides work of her mother's, she brought me a handkerchief she had embroidered, and my family looked on her as a bright girl.

Occasionally on festivals we got presents from Adileh Hanum of choice confectionery or pastry, and we found the small household conducted with as much comfort and care as Turkish arrangements will allow.

The poor captain was much pinched after I left; but I am informed that Fatmeh is married to a rising merchant, and that there were great festivities, to which we should all have been invited, had we been on the spot. Adileh Hanum spends some of her time in arranging her daughter's household, and the captain passes his spare time in the warehouse of his son-in-law, where, though his expertness is