ALL THINGS PASS AWAY.
Ten years had passed since the painful event that had consigned the daughter of the sheik, the Flower of Praousta, to so early a grave, and caused him who had loved her a long and severe illness.
Ten years! To the happy, when he looks back at them, they are but a few days of sunshine, the contemplation of which delights him, and the memory of which softens his heart. To the unhappy they are as a cold, desolate eternity of torment, and he looks back with reluctance at them, and the misery he has endured, measuring the days of anguish that are still to come.
Ten years! In Cavalla they had changed nothing. They had only left their handwriting on the faces of those who had been living ten years before, and had witnessed those painful events. The faces of men had changed, but the sea then, as at that time, shone in the beauty and freshness of eternal youth, and still surged in majesty along its rock-bound coast, and over the deep, the unknown grave of the beautiful Masa, the forgotten one.
Yes, the forgotten one!
All things pass away; grief as well as joy is forgotten. The years roll on over both, like the waves of the deep over the bodies consigned to its keeping.
All things pass away! Man has only to learn and to wait in patience.
No matter how pain may rend his soul, if he only knows how to wait in patience, the balm of time will gradually heal his wounds and soothe his soul. All things pass away!
To be sure there are hopeless and weak natures who refuse to wait for this soothing balm of time; natures which destroy themselves in fiery torture, or in their cowardly weakness are destroyed by the dark genius of despair.
The poor sheik had not been able to bear the loss of his only child, his Masa. He had died of grief. He had called for his Masa with his last breath.
No one now speaks of her. The young girls of that time have now become mothers, and sometimes tell their little ones of the Flower of Praousta and her death, as of a fairy tale of the olden time.
It has become a fairy-tale, and has been written in verses which the fisher-boys sing when they go out upon the waves. They have almost forgotten that only ten years have passed since Masa's death; and when they gaze at the pale, earnest face of Mohammed Ali as he passes through the streets of Cavalla in his business occupations, they scarcely remember that he it is who was the cause of her death.
Does he remember it himself?
All things pass away, grief and joy alike. He has suffered much since those days, but he has suffered in silence; few know that he loved Masa, and these few have considerately refrained from touching the wound that had once bled in his heart, lest it might not yet be healed.
When found on the sea-shore that morning by the father of his friend Osman, Mohammed Ali was taken up to the governor's house, where he was tenderly cared for.
For many days he remained entirely unconscious of all that was going on around him. He lay there coffined in his grief, as in living death. They cooled his feverish brow, and poured strengthening cordials between his lips. The magi cians and sorcerers, as well as the physicians of Cavalla and the neighboring cities, were summoned to his assistance by the tschorbadji and his son. But neither amulets nor talismans, neither medicines nor herbs, could heal the wounds which did not bleed, or cool the burning pain of his soul.
He lay there motionless, his eyes gazing fixedly at vacancy, and yet they constantly saw the one fearful yet blissful picture, the Flower of Praousta, the white dove, as she lay there in the early dawn, her large eyes fixed on him tenderly ; and saw, too, the fearful, the never-to-be-forgotten event. As the dark body sank beneath the waves, a shudder would course through his whole being, and a scarcely-audible cry escape his lips. The ear of his listening friend Osman would catch the word that escaped him, and this word was "Revenge! revenge!"With time all things pass away. There is a limit to the profoundest pain, to the profoundest torpor. One day Mohammed raised his hand and in a low voice called for water.
Consciousness had returned. He now felt the torment that glowed in his soul. When a man has become conscious of his suffering, there is a possibility of relief.
The water at least cooled his lips; and the tender, affectionate words of his friend, and the tears of sympathy that fell upon his countenance, at last cooled the fire that burned in his soul.
Happy is be who can impart his grief to others, whom Fate does not compel to confine it within his own bosom, and let it gnaw at his vitals. Happy is he who can pour out the burden of his sorrow and suffering in the ear of a friend! That grief of which one can speak is not mortal.
But there is another kind of grief and suffering more bitter than that--it is deep, like the grave. Black like the night is the grief that can find no utterance, that is chained to the heart by a sense of duty.
Are such the grief and suffering that burden the breast of the pale man who stands there on the shore gazing out at the sea? Are such the grief and suffering that sometimes break in upon the solitude and stillness of the night in low sobs from the lips of the man who, but ten years ago, was so full of the courage, energy, and joyousness of youth?
Osman had not nursed his friend alone. A woman had stood at his side; the beautiful Ada, of whom Osman some times whispered to his friend that she loved him.
Upon hearing of his grief and illness, Ada, conscious of her love only, and casting aside all the fetters that bound her, had left her husband's house and came to the palace of her uncle, with whom she was a great favorite. With glowing words she told him that she would never return to the house of her husband, who had long tormented her with his fierce jealousy, because he well knew that his wife did not love him, but loved the friend of his relative, young Mohammed Ali.
