Part 14 (2/2)
As he sat down at a table in the glittering salle-a-manger, what was his great surprise and even greater delight, to see seated opposite, just slowly finis.h.i.+ng his dessert--a small bowl of sherbet--habited in a perfectly-fitting frock coat with a red carnation in the lapel, the urbane and accomplished prince of the tribe of Al-Yam. Having exchanged mutual expressions of pleasure at this unexpected encounter, Mr. Middleton, overjoyed and elated at the successes of the day, began to pour into the ears of the prince a relation of the events that had resulted from the gift of the treatise of the learned hakim of Madras, which is in India. He told everything from the beginning to the end.
”In the morning,” he said in conclusion, ”I take Mr. Brockelsby home in a cab and get the two hundred dollars.”
”Alas, alas!” said Achmed mournfully, his great liquid brown eyes resting sorrowfully upon Mr. Middleton. ”What a corrupting effect the haste to get rich has upon American youth. My friend, it cannot be that you intend to take the two hundred dollars?”
”But I find old Brock, don't I?'
”That is precisely what you do not do. You know where he is. You put him there. How can you say you found him?”
”All right, I won't do it,” said Mr. Middleton, abashed at Achmed's reproof, a reproof his conscience told him was eminently deserved.
”I thank Allah,” said the prince, ”that I am an Arab and not an American. The fortunes of my line, its glories, were not won in the vulgar pursuits of trade, in the chicanery of business, in the shady paths of speculation, in the questionable manipulation of stocks and bonds. It was not thus that the ancient houses of the n.o.bility of Europe and the Orient built up their honorable fortunes. Never did the men of my house parley with their consciences, never did they strike a truce with their knightly instincts in order to gain gold. Ah, no, no,” mused the prince, looking pensively up at the gaily decorated ceiling as he reflected upon the glories of his line; ”it was in the n.o.ble profession of arms, the ill.u.s.trious practice of warfare that we won our honorable possessions. At the sacking of Medina, the third prince of our house gained a goodly treasure of gold and precious stones, and founded our fortune. In warfare with the Wahabees, we acquired countless herds and the territories for them to roam upon. By descents across the Red Sea into the realms of the Abyssinians, we took hundreds of slaves. From the Dey of Aden we acquired one hundred thousand sequins as the price of peace. In the sacking of the cities of Hedjaz and Yemen and even the dominions of Oman, did we gallantly gain in the perilous and honorable pursuit of war further store of treasure. Ah, those were brave days, those days of old, those knightly days of old! Faugh, I am out of tune with this vile commercial country and this vile commercial age.”
The prince arose as he uttered these last words and in his rhapsody forgetting the presence of Mr. Middleton, without a farewell he stalked through the great apartment, absentmindedly, though gracefully twirling a pair of pearl gray gloves in the long sensitive fingers of his left hand. A little hush fell upon the brilliant a.s.semblage and many a bright eye dwelt admiringly upon the elegant person, so elegantly attired, of the urbane and accomplished prince of the tribe of Al-Yam.
For some time Mr. Middleton sat plunged in abstraction, toying with the three kinds of dessert he had ordered, as he meditated upon the words of the emir. At last rousing himself, he had finished the marrons glacees and was about to begin upon a Nesselrode pudding, when he heard himself addressed, and looking up saw before him a young woman of an exceedingly prepossessing appearance. She was richly dressed with a quiet elegance that bespoke her a person of good taste.
Laughing, roguish eyes illuminated a piquant face in which were to be seen good sense, ingenuousness and kindness, mingled with self-reliance and determination. Mr. Middleton knew not whether to admire her most for the beautiful proportions of her figure, the loveliness of her face, or the fine mental qualities of which her countenance gave evidence. With a delightful frankness in which there was no hint of real or pretended embarra.s.sment, she said:
”Pray pardon this intrusion on the part of a total stranger. I have particular reasons for desiring to know the name and station of the gentleman who left you a short time ago, and knowing no one else to ask, have resolved to throw myself upon your good nature. I will ask of you not to require the reasons of me, a.s.suring you that they are perhaps not entirely unconnected with the welfare of this gentleman. I observed from your manner toward one another that you were acquaintances and that it was no chance conversation between strangers. He is, I take it, an Italian.”
Without pausing to reflect that the emir might not be at all pleased to have this young woman know of his ident.i.ty, Mr. Middleton exclaimed hastily and with a gesture of expostulation:
”Oh, no! He is not a Dago,” and then after a pause he remarked impressively, ”He is an Arab,” and then after a still longer pause, he said still more impressively, ”He is the Emir Achmed Ben Daoud, hereditary prince of the tribe of Al-Yam, which ranges on the borders of that fertile and smiling region of Arabia known as Yemen, or Arabia the Happy.”
”He is not a Dago!” said the young woman, clasping her hands with delighted fervor.
”He is not a Dago!” said another voice, and Mr. Middleton became aware that at his back stood a second young woman scarcely less charming than the first. ”He is not a Dago!” she repeated, scarcely less delighted than the first.
Mr. Middleton arose and a.s.sumed an att.i.tude which was at once indicative of proper deference toward his fair questioners and enabled him the better to feast his entranced eyes upon them. Moreover, on all sides he observed that people were looking at them and he needed no one to tell him that his conversation with these two daughters of the aristocracy was causing the a.s.semblage to regard him as an individual of social importance. He gave the emir's address upon Clark Street and after dwelling some time upon his graces of person and mind, related how it was that this Eastern potentate was resident in the city of Chicago in a comparatively humble capacity.
”His brother is shut up in a vermillion tower.”
”Vermillion, did you say?” breathlessly asked the first young lady.
”Oh, how romantic!” exclaimed the second young lady. ”A tower of vermillion! Is he good looking, like this one? Do you suppose he will come here? Oh, Mildred, I must meet him. And the imam of Oman is going to give the vermillion tower to the brother, when he is released. We could send one of papa's whalebacks after it. What a lovely house on Prairie Avenue it would make. 'The Towers,' we would call it. No, 'Vermillion Towers.' How lovely it would sound on a card, 'Wednesdays, Vermillion Towers.' We must get him out. Can't we do it?”
”If it were in this country,” said Mr. Middleton, ”I would engage to get him out. I would secure a writ of habeas corpus, or devise other means to speedily release him. But unfortunately, I am not admitted to practice in the dominions of Oman. But I do not pity the young man.
One could well be willing to suffer incarceration in a tower of vermillion, if he knew he were an object of solicitude to one so fair as yourself. One could wear the gyves and shackles of the most terrible tyranny almost in happiness, if he knew that such lovely eyes grew moist over his fate and such beauteous lips trembled when they told the tale of his imprisonment.”
Now such gallant speeches were all very well in the days of knee-breeches and periwigs, but in this age and in Chicago, they are an anachronism and the two young ladies started as if they had suddenly observed that Mr. Middleton had on a low-cut vest, or his trousers were two years behind the times, and somewhat curtly and coolly making their adieus, they sailed rapidly away, leaving Mr.
Middleton--who was not the most obtuse mortal in the world--to savagely fill with large pieces of banana pie the orifice whence had lately issued the words which had cut short his colloquy with the two beauties. He deeply regretted that in his a.s.sociation with Prince Achmed he had fallen into a flowery and Oriental manner of speech and resolved henceforth to eschew such fas.h.i.+on of discourse.
The clocks were solemnly tolling the hour of midnight when Mr.
Augustus Alfonso Brockelsby rubbed his eyes and sat up in the revolving chair in the main office of his suite. Mr. Middleton was standing near, hastily putting away a razor. A warm odor lay on the still air of the room.
”h.e.l.lo, isn't it daylight yet?” asked Mr. Brockelsby. The hot cakes that had but lately been applied to his shaven crown, seemed to have dispelled the fogs of intoxication and he was master of himself.
”It is twelve o'clock,” said Mr. Middleton.
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