The Bride of the Nile — Complete by Georg Ebers (best historical fiction books of all time txt) 📖

Mary soon saw that no one but Katharina was in pursuit; she moderated her pace, and awaited her cast-off friend under the shade of a tall shrub. In a moment Katharina was facing her; with a heightened color she seized both her hands and exclaimed passionately:

“What was it you said? You—you—If I did not know what a wrong-headed little simpleton you were, I could....”

“You could accuse me falsely!—But now, leave go of my hands or I will bite you. And as Katharina, at this threat, released her she went on vehemently.

“Oh! I know you now—since yesterday! And I tell you, once for all, I say thank you for nothing for such friends. You ought to sink into the earth for shame of the sin you have committed. I am only ten years old, but rather than have done such a thing I would have let myself be shut up in that hot hole with poor, innocent Perpetua, or I would have let myself be killed, as you want poor, honest Hiram to be! Oh, shame!”

Katharina’s crimson cheeks bad turned pale at this address and, as she had no answer ready, she could only toss her head and say, with as much pride and dignity as she could assume:

“What can a child like you know about things that puzzle the heads of grown-up people?”

“Grown-up people!” laughed Mary, who was not three inches shorter than her antagonist. “You must be a great deal taller before I call you grown up! In two years time, you will scarcely be up to my eyes.” At this the irascible Egyptian fired up; she gave the child a slap in the face with the palm of her hand. Mary only stood still as if petrified, and after gazing at the ground for a minute or two without a cry, she turned her back on her companion and silently went back into the shaded walk.

Katharina watched her with tears in her eyes. She felt that Mary was justified in disapproving of what she had done the day before; for she herself had been unable to sleep and had become more and more convinced that she had acted wrongly, nay, unpardonably. And now again she had done an inexcusable thing. She felt that she had deeply hurt the child’s feelings, and this sincerely grieved her. She followed Mary in silence, at some little distance, like a maid-servant. She longed to hold her back by her dress, to say something kind to her, nay, to ask her pardon. As they drew near to the spot where the governess had dropped into her chair again, a hapless victim to the heat of Egypt, Katharina called Mary by her name, and when the child paid no heed, laid her hand on her shoulder, saying in gentle entreaty: “Forgive me for having so far forgotten myself. But how can I help being so little? You know very well when any one laughs at me for it....”

“You get angry and slap!” retorted the child, walking on. “Yesterday, perhaps, I might have laughed over a box on the ear—it is not the first—or have given it to you back again; but to-day!—Just now,” and she shuddered involuntarily, “just now I felt as if some black slave had laid his dirty hand on my cheek. You are not what you were. You walk quite differently, and you look—depend upon it you do not look as nice and as bright as you used, and I know why: You did a very bad thing last evening.”

“But dear pet,” said the other, “you must not be so hard. Perhaps I did not really tell the judges everything I knew, but Orion, who loves me so, and whose wife I am to be....”

“He led you into sin!—Yes; and he was always merry and kind till yesterday; but since—Oh, that unlucky day!”

Here she was interrupted by Eudoxia, who poured out a flood of reproaches and finally desired her to resume her task. The child obeyed unresistingly; but she had scarcely settled to her wax tablets again when Katharina was by her side, whispering to her that Orion would certainly not have asserted anything that he did not believe to be true, and that she had really been in doubt as to whether a gem with a gold back, or a mere gold frame-work, had been hanging to Paula’s chain. At this Mary turned sharply and quickly upon her, looked her straight in the eyes and exclaimed—but in Egyptian that the governess might not understand, for she had disdained to learn a single word of it:

“A rubbishy gold frame with a broken edge was hanging to the chain, and, what is more, it caught in your dress. Why, I can see it now! And, when you bore witness that it was a gem, you told a lie—Look here; here are the laws which God Almighty himself gave on the sacred Mount of Sinai, and there it stands written: ‘Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.’ And those who do, the priest told me, are guilty of mortal sin, for which there is no forgiveness on earth or in Heaven, unless after bitter repentance and our Saviour’s special mercy. So it is written; and you could actually declare before the judges a thing that was false, and that you knew would bring others to ruin?”

The young criminal looked down in shame and confusion, and answered hesitatingly:

“Orion asserted it so positively and clearly, and then—I do not know what came over me—but I was so angry, so—I could have murdered her!”

“Whom?” asked Mary in surprise. “You know very well: Paula.”

“Paula!” said Mary, and her large eyes again filled with tears. “Is it possible? Did you not love her as much as I do? Have not you often and often clung about her like a bur?”

“Yes, yes, very true. But before the judges she was so intolerably proud, and then.—But believe me, Mary you really and truly cannot understand anything of all this.”

“Can I not?” asked the child folding her arms.

“Why do you think me so stupid?”

“You are in love with Orion—and he is a man whom few can match, over head and ears in love; and because Paula looks like a queen by the side of you, and is so much handsomer and taller than you are, and Orion, till yesterday—I could see it all—cared a thousand times more for her than for you, you were jealous and envious of her. Oh, I know all about it.—And I know that all the women fall in love with him, and that Mandaile had her ears cut off on his account, and that it was a lady who loved him in Constantinople that gave him the little white dog. The slave-girls tell me what they hear and what I like.—And after all, you may well be jealous of Paula, for if she only made a point of it, how soon Orion would make up his mind never to look at you again! She is the handsomest and the wisest and the best girl in the whole world, and why should she not be proud? The false witness you bore will cost poor Hiram his life: but the merciful Saviour may forgive you at last. It is your affair, and no concern of mine; but when Paula is forced to leave the house and all through you, so that I shall never, never, never see her any more—I cannot forget it, and I do not think I ever shall; but I will pray God to make me.”

She