The Marriage

On the Bosphorus, on summer afternoons, the boats of Istanbul's leisured families glided between the shores; and among them, one was always watched: the boat of Firdevs Hanım and her two daughters. Firdevs Hanım was a widow, still beautiful, who had never cared much for her husband, Melih Bey; she had loved admiration, outings, society, and had answered the attentions of other men. Melih Bey, finding the letters his wife had written to her admirers, had said nothing, and had died not long after, of grief. Firdevs Hanım did not grieve long. What she feared most in the world was growing old: she competed with her own daughters, and the idea of becoming a mother-in-law, and then a grandmother, horrified her; she would have kept them unmarried for ever, to remain young beside them.

Her elder daughter, Peyker, did not listen; she married, against her mother's wishes, Nihat Bey, a young man who wanted, through the marriage, to enter the world of the great families. The younger, Bihter, was twenty-two, and the most beautiful girl on the Bosphorus; and she had begun to resent her mother, and the reputation that clung to the women of that house.

On the opposite shore, in a great waterside mansion, a yalı, there lived Adnan Bey, a wealthy and cultivated gentleman of good family, about forty-five years old, a widower. His wife had died and left him two children, a daughter, Nihal, and a little son, Bülent; and in the house lived also his nephew Behlül, a handsome, idle, amusing young man, a great success with women, who came and went as he pleased; Mademoiselle de Courton, an old French governess, who had raised Nihal and loved her as her own; and a crowd of servants, among them Beşir, a young Abyssinian servant, devoted to Nihal as a dog to its master, silent and watchful.

Nihal was a fragile, nervous, intelligent girl, still half a child, who had been deeply shaken by her mother's death; her father was everything to her. They lived for each other: he took her for walks, played the piano with her, laughed at her games; and she, jealous of every hour he spent away from her, believed that nothing would ever come between them.

Firdevs Hanım had noticed Adnan Bey; she had hoped, in her vanity, that he would ask for her own hand. But Adnan Bey, who believed, like many rich men, that a young woman could easily be won with money and comfort, chose the daughter. He asked for Bihter.

Firdevs Hanım was wounded and furious; she opposed the marriage, and her opposition only made Bihter more determined. Bihter wanted, above all, to leave her mother's house and its reputation; to be the mistress of a great house; to be respected. She did not love Adnan Bey; she thought she would come to love him. And so, in spite of her mother, Bihter became Adnan Bey's wife and the mistress of the yalı.

For Nihal it was the first blow of her life. She had a stepmother; her father, whose heart she had thought all hers, now belonged to another. And the blows followed. The new mistress changed the household: some of the old servants were dismissed; little Bülent was sent away to a boarding school; and Mademoiselle de Courton, who had been the only mother Nihal had known since her own mother's death, was sent away from the yalı. Nihal held Bihter responsible for everything. She withdrew into herself, grew pale and thin, played the piano alone, and had no one left to confide in but Beşir, who watched over her in silence.

At first the marriage went well. Bihter was proud of her house, her carriages, her jewels, her position; Adnan Bey adored her, and showed her off. But the difference of their ages was great; and Firdevs Hanım, who came often to the yalı, did not miss a chance to remind her daughter, with a smile, of what she had given up.