The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne Part 13

"I'm sorry to have--" I began. I stopped short. I could scarcely believe my eyes. There, conversing with Pasquale and lolling on the sofa, as if she had known him for years, was Carlotta.

She must have seen righteous disapprobation on my face, for she came running up to me.

"You see, I've made Miss Carlotta's acquaintance," said Pasquale.

"So I perceive," said I.

"Stenson told me you wanted me to come to the drawing-room in my red slippers," said Carlotta.

"I am afraid Stenson must have misdelivered my message," said I.

"Then you do not want me at all, and I must go away?"

Oh, those eyes! I am growing so tired of them. I hesitated, and was lost.

"Please let me stay and talk to Pasquale."

"Mr. Pasquale," I corrected.

She echoed my words with a cooing laugh, and taking my consent for granted, curled herself up in a corner of the sofa. I resumed my seat with a sigh. It would have been boorish to turn her out.

"This is much nicer than Alexandretta, isn't it?" said Pasquale familiarly. "And Sir Marcus is an improvement on Hamdi Effendi."

"Oh, yes. Seer Marcous lets me do whatever I like," said Carlotta.

"I'm shot if I do," I exclaimed. "The confinement of your existence in the East makes you exaggerate the comparative immunity from restriction which you enjoy in England."

I notice that Carlotta is always impressed when I use high sounding words.

"Still, if you could make love over garden walls, you must have had a pretty slack time, even in Alexandretta," said Pasquale.

Obviously Carlotta had saved me the trouble of explaining her.

"I once met our friend Hamdi," Pasquale continued. "He was the politest old ruffian that ever had a long nose and was pitted with smallpox."

"Yes, yes!" cried Carlotta, delighted. "That is Hamdi."

"Is there any disreputable foreigner that you are not familiar with?" I asked, somewhat sarcastically.

"I hope not," he laughed. "You must know I had got into a deuce of a row at Aleppo, about eighteen months ago, and had to take to my heels.

Alexandretta is the port of Aleppo and Hamdi is a sort of boss policeman there."

"He is very rich."

"He ought to be. My interview with him cost me a thousand pounds--the bald-headed scoundrel!"

"He is a shocking bad man," said Carlotta, gravely.

"I'm afraid it is Mr. Pasquale who is the shocking bad man," I said, amused. "What had you been doing in Aleppo?"

"_Maxime debetur_," said he.

"English are very wicked when they go to Syria," she remarked.

"How can you possibly know?" I said.

"Oh, I know," replied Carlotta, with a toss of her chin.

"My friend," said Pasquale, lighting a cigarette, "I have travelled much in the East, and have had considerable adventures by the way; and I can a.s.sure you that what the oriental lady doesn't know about essential things is not worth knowing. Their life from the cradle to the grave is a concentration of all their faculties, mortal and immortal, upon the two vital questions, digestion and s.e.x."

"What is s.e.x?" asked Carlotta.

"It is the Fundamental Blunder of Creation," said I.

"I do not understand," said Carlotta.

"n.o.body tries to understand Sir Marcus," said Pasquale, cheerfully. "We just let him drivel on until he is aware no one is listening."

"Seer Marcous is very wise," said Carlotta, in serious defence of her lord and master. "All day he reads in big books and writes on paper."

I have been wondering since whether that is not as ironical a judgment as ever was pa.s.sed. Am I wise? Is wisdom attained by reading in big books and writing on paper? Solomon remarks that wisdom dwells with prudence and finds out knowledge of witty inventions; that the wisdom of the prudent is to understand his way; that wisdom and understanding keep one from the strange woman and the stranger which flattereth with her words. Now, I have not been saved from the strange young woman who has begun to flatter with her words; I don't in the least understand my way, since I have no notion what I shall do with her; and in taking her in and letting her loll upon my sofa of evenings, so as to show off her red slippers to my guests, I have thrown prudence to the winds; and my only witty invention was the idea of teaching her typewriting, which is futile. If the philosophy of the excellent aphorist is sound, I certainly have not much wisdom to boast of; and none of the big books will tell me what a wise man would have done had he met Carlotta in the Embankment Gardens.

I did not think, however, that my wisdom was a proper subject for discussion. I jerked back the conversation by asking Carlotta why she called Hamdi Effendi a shocking bad man. Her reply was startling.

"My mother told me. She used to cry all day long. She was sorry she married Hamdi."

"Poor thing!" said I. "Did he ill-treat her?"

"Oh, ye-es. She had small-pox, too, and she was no longer pretty, so Hamdi took other wives and she did not like them. They were so fat and cruel. She used to tell me I must kill myself before I married a Turk.

Hamdi was going to make me marry Mohammed Ali one--two years ago; but he died. When I said I was so glad" (that seems to be her usual formula of acknowledgment of news relating to the disasters of her acquaintance), "Hamdi shut me up in a dark room. Then he said I must marry Mustapha.

That is why I ran away with Harry. See? Oh, Hamdi is shocking bad."

From this and from other side-lights Carlotta has thrown on her upbringing, I can realise the poor, pretty weak-willed baby of a thing that was her mother, taking the line of least resistance, the husband dead and the babe in her womb, and entering the shelter offered by the amorous Turk. And I can picture her during the fourteen years of her imprisoned life, the disillusion, the heart-break, the despair. No wonder the invertebrate soul could do no more for her daughter than teach her monosyllabic English and the rudiments of reading and writing.

Doubtless she babbled of western life with its freedom and joyousness for women; but four years have elapsed since her death, and her stories are only elusive memories in Carlotta's mind.

It is strange that among the deadening influences of the harem she has kept the hereditary alertness of the Englishwoman. She has a baby mouth, it is true; she pleads to you with the eyes of a dog; her pretty ways are those of a young child; but she has not the dull, soulless, sensual look of the pure-bred Turkish woman, such as I have seen in Cairo through the transparent veils. In them there is no attraction save of the flesh; and that only for the male who, deformity aside, reckons women as merely so much cubical content of animated matter placed by Allah at his disposal for the satisfaction of his desires and the procreation of children. I cannot for the life of me understand an Englishman falling in love with a Turkish woman. But I can quite understand him falling in love with Carlotta. The hereditary qualities are there, though they have been forced into the channel of s.e.x, and become a sort of diabolical witchery whereof I am not quite sure whether she is conscious. For all that, I don't think she can have a soul.

I have made up my mind that she hasn't, and I don't like having my convictions disturbed.

Until I saw her perched in the corner of the sofa, with her legs tucked up under her, and the light playing a game of magic amid the reds and golds and browns of her hair, while she cheerily discoursed to us of Hamdi's villainy, I never noticed the dull decorum of this room. I was struck with the decorative value of mere woman.

I must break myself of the habit of wandering off on a meditative tangent to the circle of conversation. I was brought back by hearing Pasquale say:

"So you're going to marry an Englishman. It's all fixed and settled, eh?"

"Of course," laughed Carlotta.

"Have you made up your mind what he is to be like?"