A Tatter of Scarlet Part 16

She shuddered and flung herself back on the cushions.

I stood there in my stockinged feet as if I had been in a mosque, but no one remarked my bootless condition.

"Now," said Alida, "you have heard the letter of the Emir, my father--what am I to reply to him? Tell me and I shall say it. You are the gift of G.o.d. The messenger with the message. I knew as much when I saw you pa.s.sing the door. You have come out of the darkness to bring me light."

It was a difficult position for my father's son. I was conscious of no message from heaven. But on my spirits preyed the same disgust as had fallen on her own. It was a thing impossible that this delicate girl, educated, well-read, accomplished, should mate with an African brute, with his Oriental ideas of the servitude of woman.

"Princess Alida," I began, but she cried out instantly, "Alida--just Alida the music mistress--no princess at all!"

"Well, then," I acquiesced, "Alida be it. You ask for my opinion. I will give it you. But I warn you that perhaps I am not the best of advisers, for having a good father after his ideas (which are not mine) I have not obeyed him very well, nor, indeed, has he asked me to obey.

"But it seems to me that your father, by making you over to Keller Bey and Linn there--by ordering you to be brought up as their daughter, by allowing and encouraging you to acquire the tastes and arts of the Western people--has now no right to summon you back to a life which would be worse to you than death. I should refuse now and always. If necessary I should make good my French citizenship, and claim the protection of the Government. The mere threat of the loss of his great pension would be sufficient for Abd-el-Kader!"

The delicious little brown head was bent low, and Alida's fingers pulled nervously at the gold threads on the sleeve of her long dressing-gown.

She was carefully considering my advice, but I could see that she flushed her brightest scarlet at my words about her father. The proud little spirit within her spoke freely of the Emir, but resented the speech of others. I regretted that I had been so plain, but it was my manifest duty (so at least I regarded it) to save this daintiest of human creatures from the pollution and mental death of a harem, surrounded with evil-talking slave girls and sweet-sucking, moon-faced concubines. Alida was a product of the West, in spite of her ancestry.

The whole business appeared ludicrous and impossible. I seemed to be listening and talking in a dream from which I would presently awaken.

Alida would don her smart walking dress, and with her brown leather music roll under her arm would set off to give the Sous-Prefet's young wife her daily music lesson, Linn stalking majestically beside her like a great Danish hound on guard.

At last she spoke, but without looking at me.

"Though I agree that the thing itself is impossible--that I cannot marry Ali Mohammed the slave and slave's son--tell me what is to be done? I shall ruin these good people whom I love, who are paid to take care of me. Or if I do not ruin them, I shall be obliged to live on their scanty savings, for I know that they have spent the moneys they received from the Emir on my education."

Linn gave one look at Keller, and flung herself down beside the girl.

"Whatever we have is yours--we shall do very well. Everyone is pleased with you. Your professors prophesy great things for you. Keller, you dumb dog, tell her we shall manage very well, and that she shall never know the difference!"

"If she decides to disobey her father," said Keller Bey, "we must do as things will do with us. But I wash my hands of the responsibility."

For the first time I saw the flash in Linn's eyes.

"Wash your hands of the responsibility, will you, Keller? So did Pilate.

But I cannot hear that much good came of that! You and I must stand between, and prevent a Calvary for our Alida--or a Golgotha, for she will never marry that man alive!--I know her--I brought her up, and I never mastered her once. No more shall her father by one letter brought by a brown thick-lipped prince in a frock coat and glossy hat!"

"Let us say no more about it," murmured Alida. "I will send away the slave's son to-morrow. I shall write to my father also. Doubtless he will be angry, but then--surely it is true that he and those about him are imagining a vain thing. He should have kept me veiled and cloistered, without a book, without music, without a mind. Then I might have been fit for the plaything of an idle man, but that time is past. I am a woman of the Occident, fitted to carry out my life alone, to earn my living, and to be the mate of some man who shall be altogether mine!"

CHAPTER XVIII

THE PRINCESS COMMANDS

We slept late the next morning, Hugh and I. Indeed, Hugh always slept late unless he had the luck to be awakened. We did not breakfast till Linn had returned from her watch-dog march along with Alida to the house of the Sous-Prefet.

There was now no regular drill, and instead of roll-call it was regarded sufficient if we reported to the guard which remained in permanence playing at cards and "bouchon" under the central bastion of the fort.

This Hugh and I did, remaining a little while to gossip with Victor Dor and others of our company who were lounging about the barrack square. I fear that during those weeks we pa.s.sed for rather sulky dogs who would not share our bone with our neighbours. For, having little to do, the young fellows of the first Milanese often followed with admiring eyes the daily progress of Alida and Linn in the direction of the Sous-Prefecture. We had requests for introductions even from the younger officers, but all such we referred to Keller Bey, knowing that the old man would be able to deal with any intrusion. And indeed matters stopped there till the regiment was disbanded, and the Italians were sent home at the expense of the French Republic.

Meantime we continued, as Saunders McKie would have said, "living at hack and manger," free of the privileges of the house of Keller Bey and Linn his wife.

Since Alida had taken my advice and written to her father that she would not marry the brown man, nor leave the life for which he had educated her for that of the harem, she had treated me as an intimate friend and adviser. We had long talks together, so often and so long, indeed, that I could see that Keller Bey and Linn were seriously troubled. Perhaps they were a little jealous also, but for all that they did not dream of opposing their wills to the slightest wish of their ward.

"What shall I do when you are gone?" Alida cried one day. It was still early forenoon, for the Sous-Prefet's lady had to attend a Government function. Besides, it was a dismalish day outside with a low crawl of leaden clouds overhead, and along the horizon only one swiftly eclipsed streak of gold bead-work to show where the sunshine was at work.

"I can _not_ stay on here, content with only the round of teaching visits, and the love of these two good souls! 'I have had playmates--I have had companions,' as your poet sings, and now there is you--and Hugh--who have come to me to show me how lonely I was."

She thought a while, and then in her imperious way she sketched a programme.

"There is no reason why Keller Bey and Linn should stop here. The house is well placed, and one of the best in the town. It would let to-morrow.

Why should we not all go to Aramon and be happy? We could find a house there and company--all those girls, Hugh's sisters, of whom you have told me. I should be so happy. And we would get away from the brown man.

He would not know where to find us if he should come back!"

She clapped her hands joyfully, as if the matter were already settled, and ran upstairs to break the matter to Keller and Linn. When next I saw these two I was conscious of a little chill in the atmosphere. They thought that I was responsible for the wish of Alida to leave Autun and go to Aramon.

"Do you think it is a proper thing," said Linn, "that a maid should follow two young men?"

"I think you wrong her," I said, "unwittingly of course, but certainly you mistake Alida. It springs from no feeling of love for either of us, but she has now tasted comradeship and the equality of years for the first time. She thinks there is nothing else worth living for in the world. She will change her mind by and by. Her mind and affection will turn again to her elders."

So I spoke from the unplumbed depths of a youthful self-sufficiency--that curious malady (happily fleeting) which compels all clever young men to feel called upon to lay down rules for their elders and for the world about them, at or about the age of twenty-one.

Linn and Keller looked at one another in a kind of hopeless bewilderment. I think they felt that this was only the first of a series of changes from the quiet life they had been leading. They told themselves that they need expect no more happy uneventful days and delicious nights when they used their house as of old they had done many an Arab encampment, a place to wander and dally in, to lie down and rise up, to drowse and wake, to smoke in, and to play bezique together when the heart told them to. A sort of terror seized them as they saw themselves going off to bed at reasonable hours like mere untravelled burghers, each with a candle in hand, and nothing but the drum of the rain on the roof or the gnawing of a mouse in the wainscot to help them over the dead hours till the sun should rise.

It was Keller who this time broke the silence.

"Of course," he said, speaking slowly, and poising each word carefully, "if Alida has set her heart upon it of her own free will, there is nothing to be said. Linn and I must obey, at whatever cost to ourselves.

For all we have is hers, and has come to us because of her. On that score we need not fear. We have enough for ourselves, and enough to leave to Alida. We can go to Aramon, but the business will need to be carefully gone about, and not too soon after your return. Alida is a girl among ten thousand. You are well-looking young men, and doubtless there are as many evil tongues in Aramon as there are in all places where human creatures herd together."

This was a great concession, and accordingly I plucked up heart and began to make plans and suggest ways and means, eager to get ahead of all possible objections on the part of Linn.

"There is an empty house at the corner of my father's property of Gobelet--not one so large as this, but quite large enough and pleasantly situated within the grounds. My father has never let it, but I know that he would be glad of a brave soldier and his wife to take care of it and keep it in order. The place is retired and he would feel protected. The gate in the wall opens on to the road to the _lycee_ of St. Andre, so that you would come and go without any overlooking. Besides, my father is a student and interferes with no one. He would talk as much Arabic to you as you wish. So too would old Professor Renard up at the College. He was once Vicar Apostolic out in your parts. You would have the best companions for Alida, in the sisters Deventer and their friends. If you like I will write to my father to-day? Not that there is any need. I know that he will be delighted, nay, that he will offer you a wing of Gobelet itself, which is much too large for him. But do not accept, the Garden Cottage is ten times as amusing, and infinitely prettier."

I could see that I was making some way. Linn and her husband looked at each other, and if they did not smile, at least there was a more hopeful look on their faces. Linn was touched by the thought of the companionship of the Deventer girls, for in this matter Autun had been gravely lacking.

Nor did the bribe of Arabic-speaking students to talk with appear to be wholly lost upon Keller Bey, even though he spoke still somewhat restively.

"I have little acquaintance with book Arabic beyond the Koran, but it is a n.o.ble language in which to vent one's thoughts."

I rea.s.sured him that both the ex-Vicar Apostolic and my father found it so. They would sit smoking and talking Arabic all a long evening over their parchments.

"All this must I come and see for myself," said Keller Bey; "such a plant as Alida is not to be pulled up by the roots till we know where we shall find better ground and more fertile in which to reset her. But tell me, is not this Aramon of yours an unsafe town? The mob had possession of it for some days lately, attacking the works and the manager's house--can we safely take Alida to such a place?"

Then in mighty haste I showed him the difference between the unceasing activity of Aramon-of-the-Workshops and the scholastic calm of Aramon le Vieux. I extended the width of the dividing river to a three-quarters of a mile, a size to which it only reaches in times of flood when the tall ladder of the painted scale by the bridge-end is wholly covered, and still the flood creeps up inch by inch till the people of Vallabregues and Saint Jacques are crying for succour from the roofs of their drowned-out houses, and the pigs and poultry go out to sea feet up on a six-knot current.

Keller and Linn sat and listened--Linn with a lost air of someone whose scheme of life has suddenly become impossible. I think Linn had expected the quiet days, the morning promenades with Alida, the cheerful suppers of the house in the square in Autun to go on always. Alida would always be as content with them as she had been when a little girl. Had she not come back from school to the warm love and unbounded spoiling which awaited her there?

As they sat and pondered, Alida entered, her roll of music in her hand.

"What," she cried, "you are all sitting as gloomy as crows in a cemetery. Where is Hugh? I want you both to come out and walk by the river. The early violets are out, and yesterday Madame the Sous-Prefet found a daffodil."