A DESERT PRINCESS
We occupied the two big gable rooms looking east on the second floor of
the Kellers' house in the market square of Autun. This suited us
admirably, though we were obliged to keep quiet so as not to disturb
Alida, who had the corresponding suite on the first floor below. We
found that the room in the entresol where we had slept the first night
was the proper bedroom of Keller and Linn his wife.
But as a matter of habit, neither of them appeared to care very much for
a regular night's rest. You would catch them, indeed, closing their eyes
after dinner over a newspaper, or when Alida was practising on her noble
grand piano, the chief pride and luxury of the Keller house.
But Hugh and I, who slept with our door of communication open in order
to talk to one another in case of sleeplessness, could hear Keller and
Linn moving about at all hours of the night down in the silence of the
ground floor--sometimes advertising their presence by a little silvery
rattle of glass set on a tray, the dull fall of a log on the chimney and
irons, or the curious slip-shuffle of Linn's walk. Sometimes, too, we
heard voices, but that not often. Once about the end of the first week,
when I could not sleep, I slipped down for a stroll about the town. It
was half-past two of a black February morning, and the snow swirls were
waltzing like spinning tops all about the market square. But there in
the archway, his back to the carven lintel, stood Keller Bey, calmly
smoking his pipe and looking out on the black turmoil as though it had
been the cool of an August evening. Linn heard us talking, and came
quickly to see who was there. Even at that hour she was in her ordinary
dress, and she dried her hands composedly on a long sheath apron of blue
_toile nationale_.
"Why are you not asleep?" she demanded sharply. "Keller, you are
teaching this young man bad habits."
His wife's accusation only made Keller wag his head wisely. Instantly I
took all blame upon myself. I had not been able to sleep, I said, I was
ashamed to disturb Deventer by my restlessness.
"You drank too much of that black coffee last night, Monsieur Auguste"
(thus had Angus gone wrong). "I must ration you in future, so that you
can get your natural sleep as young folks should."
I hastened out into the night with Keller's huge "pellerine" cast about
my shoulders, and the hood reaching my ears. It was a comfortable
garment of some unknown African cloth, rough as frieze and warm as wool.
The sudden dashes of snow swooping upon me were turned victoriously
aside by its formidable brown folds, and I felt as I wandered in the
black of the streets with the buildings towering dim and shadowy above
me, like one who in a storm has by some magic carried his house along
with him.
No soldiers were bivouacking in the streets that night. The squares were
void of bonfires. All the red shirts and blue breeches had alike found
shelter, for the superfluous regiments were now quartered upon the
neighbouring villages, or had marched to their head-quarters at Dijon.
Back and forth I tramped, from the Mairie clock with its dim one-candle
power illumination of face to the dark mass of the towers of the Holy
Trinity, I patrolled the town from end to end.
It was perhaps an hour or a little more that I wandered so, tiring
myself for sleep, my face beaten upon pleasantly by the fierce gusts of
snow charging down from among the chimney-pots, or driving level across
the open spaces. At last I turned my face towards the market square,
which I entered by the little dusky street of the Arches, and so came
suddenly upon the Keller house at the angle opposite to the mayoral
belfry.
I had expected Keller in the same position waiting for me, but when I
sheltered in the archway, no Keller was in sight. Behind me, however,
the door stood open, and as I stood dusting down and shaking out the
thick folds of Keller's pellerine, I was conscious of a stir behind me.
I turned my head in doubt, and was just in time to see the man himself
whisk upstairs with the curious enamelled iron water-jug in his hand,
which is known through all the South as a "bouillotte."
The fire had newly been made up in the kitchen, and glowed warmly. The
kettle sang shrill, and even the German stove, used on the occasions of
great feast, had hastily been put into commission.
Feeling sure that something was gravely wrong, I took off my boots to
dry slowly on the high bar alongside those of Keller and Hugh. I tiptoed
upward, hoping to gain my room without running across any one. But on
the first floor the door of the sitting-room stood wide open, and all
was bright within. I saw Alida sobbing bitterly, Linn kneeling beside
her with bottles of Cologne water and smelling-salts. She was murmuring
something evidently designed to be comforting. The girl's long dark hair
fell around her in loose masses, overspreading and almost inundating the
low canary-coloured divan of soft Oriental silk on which she was
reclining. Keller hovered helplessly about the couch, or proffered a
suggestion, to be swept off the scene with a sharp word from Linn which
sent him to the far end of the room, only to begin again a stealthy
approach.
I promise you I was passing the door as cautiously as might be, and
giving myself no small credit for my excellent management of the
business, when suddenly I heard my name called as only one in the house
could speak it.
"Auegoos Cawdori--Auegoos, I want you--I want to tell you!"
Alida, leaning on her elbow, had caught sight of me, and I could see
Linn's gesture of something like despair, which I took to
mean--"There---the secret is out. We can never stop it if once she
speaks."
She bent forward and spoke earnestly into Alida's ear. But the girl
merely signed to Linn to retire. The gesture was made unconsciously, but
with all the dignity of a princess accustomed to be unquestioningly
obeyed.
"Let Monsieur Cawdori come hither at once. I must speak with him. His
advice is good. You and Keller Bey are old and speak as the old. Auegoos
Cawdori is young as I am young, but he has the wise heart. So much I
have seen from the first."
She spoke in French, but with a curious redundancy and largeness of
phrasing unnatural to a language which is an exact science. In all
moments of agitation Alida seemed to be translating from another and
more copious tongue.
Obedient to her command I entered the sitting-room where she was lying
among the cushions of the yellow divan. The room was fitted up with a
certain barbaric splendour, and the only touches of modern life to be
seen were a bookcase of prettily bound books--red, green, and gold--set
in a corner, the big Steinway Grand with its cabinets of music ready to
hand, and the piano-stool upon which Alida often amused herself by
spinning round and round, her tiny feet in their heelless slippers of
golden brocade showing beneath the flutter of her light silk robe.
As she lay on the divan, I could see that she wore under her
dressing-gown a blouse of white silk flowered with gold, and an abundant
pair of trousers of the same gathered close about her ankles by a button
and a knot of golden cord.
"I will speak," she cried. "This young man is worthy of my confidence,
and you know it, Linn. If my father had wished me to go with Said Ali
Mohammed, the slave prince, he would not have committed me to you. No,
he would have sent me to nibble sweetmeats among the women behind the
veil. But I am not a woman of the harem. I am free and French. Obey I
shall not. I would rather die!"
She suddenly threw off a slipper, reached out a bare brown foot
exquisitely moulded, deftly picked up a letter from the floor with her
toes, and handed it to me. It was in Arabic, and at the sight of the
characters I shook my head.
"My father could read it, but not I," I said mournfully, wishing that I
had spent less time on Greek and Latin at the _Lycee_ St. Andre.
"Then you must learn--you must--I shall teach you to speak, and your
father shall drill you in the verbs. Listen, Auegoos Cawdori, I am not,
save in love and in the kindness which not even my life could repay, the
daughter of these best and dearest folk in the world. No, parents are
not so kind as Keller and Linn. They are more selfish, though God forbid
that I should speak so of my father. He was, ever since I can remember,
a prisoner of war--even the great Emir Abd-el-Kader himself. I am the
daughter of his one Queen, his first wife--no child of the 'Smala,' but
a princess, the daughter of a princess. Abd-el-Kader, thinking himself
near his end, committed me to the care of his old officer and his wife,
instructing them that in all things I should be brought up as a maiden
of the Franks. This they have done. You Linn, and you Keller, have kept
watch about me day and night. The God who is the God of Jesus and of
Mahomet reward you, as surely he will. I am a European girl in that
which I have learned. I have chosen a profession in which I can be
happy, here in this little town among the hills, till I seek larger
fields and try my fate in other cities."
She paused in her tale and smiled. The tears were falling steadily down
Linn's face, and she seemed suddenly to have aged a quarter of a
century. But Keller Bey, no longer restless, stood stiffly at attention
as if he had been listening to the commands of his master, the great
Emir. Alida looked from one to the other. Then lightly as a cat leaping
from the floor to a window-sill, she sprang to her feet and embraced
them tenderly.
"I am your true daughter always. Do not forget it. I owe everything to
you, and I shall never quit you if you will let me stay."
She sat down again, and taking her letter, she began:
"This is from my father, Abd-el-Kader, presently living at Brousse in
Syria on the road to Damascus. He is old, he says, and he desires to see
me about him in his latter days. All is good in Syria. The water of
Brousse is sweet, and the French Government gives him much money. He has
found a husband for me, a prince royal of Egypt, though not of Arab
race. Sidi ben Mohammed is his name, the man whom he sends with a letter
that I may see him, upon receipt of which his servant Keller Bey and his
wife will hasten to bring me to Brousse under the protection and escort
of this Prince of Egypt. Upon my arrival the solemn rites shall be
observed, and I shall be the first wife of Ali Mohammed the Prince, a
worthy man and one of great power in his own country.
"So it is written, and my father signs and seals, but whether it was
written for him or by him, I cannot tell. At any rate he has made his
signature with the flourish which none can mistake, and an order is an
order. What say you, Auegoos Cawdori? Must I obey, and become the chief
wife of this coffee-coloured fellah, no Arab of my father's race, say
the Egyptians what they will?"
Alida sat among the scatter of cushions regarding me fixedly.
"Tell me," she said, with a pitiful little gesture of appeal, "must I
obey my father? _They_ think so, though I know well it will break their
hearts as it would mine. Rather would I use this little toy" (she showed
a dainty pair of golden scissors, with which the high born of her people
sometimes open their arteries in a bath) "than I would go to Brousse to
wed the brown man with the skin greasy like that of a toad--A-ae-ae-ch!"
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 God. The messenger with the message. I knew as much when I
saw you passing 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!"