Part 16 (1/2)

She shuddered and flung herself back on the cus.h.i.+ons.

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 citizens.h.i.+p, 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.