KELLER BEY COMES TO ARAMON
Keller Bey came to Aramon ten days after the time of our return. Before
letting us go Alida decided that I must write her every day, and Hugh
once a week. She had never seen a line from either, but she judged from
our faculty of conversation--often quite a false test, as witness Cowper
and Gray.
For the details of that first visit of Keller to Aramon I must have
recourse to the daily letters which I wrote at that time to Alida.
_Monday, February_--, 1871.
"NOBLE AND SWEET,--
"The Bey came last night into the station of
Aramon-les-Ateliers, where Hugh and I met him. A
manifestation of the Internationale was crowding the
platform to welcome some delegate who was to address the
companions in their hall. I could see the old soldier quiver
at the sight of the red flags they carried. If the St. Andre
diligence had not been waiting at the station portico, I
hardly think we could have persuaded him to go on. Any
opposition to the tricolour, which he hates with the hatred
of an old Atlas fighter, appears to excite him. We shall
have trouble with him at Aramon if events thicken as they
seem to be doing.
"But for the time being, everything marched as to music. The
Bey was installed beside me, and Hugh very considerately
took his leave. I am sending him over a message to-day
telling him how matters fell out. The view from the bridge
enchanted Keller. Aramon the Elder was rich with sunset
glow--'a rose-red city half as old as time,' with the tall
Montmorency keep standing up from its rock as firm and proud
as the day it was finished five centuries ago.
"He asked concerning the fort on the top, and gloom
overspread his face when he heard that St. Andre had long
been a famous _lycee_. I think he feared the neighbourhood
of hosts of Jesuits. But I tranquillised his mind, telling
him that he would find Professor Renard as free a thinker
and as tolerant a listener as even my father.
"Before long we stopped at the gate of Gobelet, and to my
astonishment and delight my father opened it in person. He
had even made toilet to the extent of a rough pilot suit and
a pair of patent leather slippers.
"Keller instinctively saluted as my father held out his
hand. He seemed unaccountably shy of taking it, but at last
he did and even shook it warmly if somewhat jerkily, 'after
the English fashion' as he was eager to inform me
afterwards--making a useful comparison of French and English
characteristics between 'serrer la main' and hand-shaking.
"I let the old gentlemen go on by themselves, sure that they
would thus become better friends, and if you will believe
me, Alida, they were not at the corner of the path leading
to the Garden Cottage before they were deep in Arabic, and
the next thing I knew was my father leading the Bey prisoner
through the open windows of his study that he might show him
some singular and infinitely precious manuscript.
"Well, I left them till supper time. We are simple folk and
sup early. Then I went into the study, where I had some
difficulty in awakening them to a world where people washed
hands before eating and drinking.
"'Well, we must thresh that out again,' I heard my father
say, and I am sure he never showed himself so much
interested by any of my performances, not even when I
brought home the gold medal for the first place in the
_baccalaureat_. They could hardly let each other go, and if
you, Alida, were present at that moment in the mind of the
Bey, you were relegated to some distant hinterland, by me
unexplored.
"At supper, before Saunders McKie and the domestics I
steered my barque with care. For the ears of Saunders were
growing long and lop like a rabbit's, with sheer intensity
of listening. Once or twice things became a little sultry,
as when the Bey described the bannered procession he had
seen at the station.
"'Ah, politics,' said my father. 'I am glad they do not
manifest over on this side of the water. White, red, or
tricolour, it is all one to a man among his books.'
"'Not to me!' said the Bey, somewhat explosively.
"'Of course not--you are a soldier, and these things have
been your life's business. But you must make allowances for
a recluse and a scholar!'
"I did not think my father could have been so tactful.
"So _Salaam_, for to-night, dear lady! I kiss your golden
feet."
"_Tuesday._
"The freshness of this high air to you! I take up my tale.
The Bey and my father have continued inseparable. Twice have
I guided Keller to the Garden Cottage, and twice has he
beheld it with wandering eyes. I am so sure that he has
taken little in and that he will be able to give Linn no
proper satisfaction, that I have made a plan of each floor
to scale, marking all the cupboards deep and shallow, all
exits and entrances, and the distance from Gobelet itself,
with the garden walks and coppices on a separate plan. These
I send now, so that you can have them well studied before
the Bey's return, when Linn and you will know a great deal
more about the Garden Cottage than he will. The third expert
in Arabic came to dinner to-night, and to my relief he wore
his college gown. I was afraid that he might appear in the
full black uniform of the Company of Jesus. Keller did not
turn a hair. They addressed each other in the current Arabic
of Algeria, and in a clapping of hands they were deep in the
discussion of Abd-el-Kader and all manner of recent tribal
matters among the clans of the Atlas.
"I did not understand very much, and indeed even the
scholarly Arabic of my father was momentarily put out by
words and expressions so richly local that the recollection
of them caused the Vicar Apostolic to laugh aloud.
"As far as I could make out, however, there was talk of a
threatened rebellion because of the defeat and humiliation
of France, and how, from his home in Brousse, Abd-el-Kader
was doing all he could to prevent it. The dinner was a great
success, but my chief amusement was to watch the face of old
Saunders McKie.
"'Losh-an-entie, Maister Aaengus,' he said afterwards, 'to
think that men wha can talk a reasonable civilised langwage
like English, or even a chatter-chatter like the French,
should bemean themselves to roar at yin anither like the
beasts o' the forest!'
"I told him that in all probability Jesus of Nazareth and
his disciples spoke a dialect of it. Now I did not know how
closely Aramaic approached Arabic, but I did know that the
argument was calculated to impress Saunders. However, he
only said, 'Maybe, but I think none the mair o' them for a
caper like that, and I have ay been informed by them that
kens a deal mair than you, Maister Aaengus, that when the
disceeples spak' or wrote, they set their tongues to the
Greek, which is a decent responsible dead language, and weel
thocht o' amang learned folks, or they would never spend sae
muckle time learning it to the puir divinity laddies at the
college.' I argued, somewhat foolishly, that most
universities now had a professor of Arabic, but Saunders
only said, 'Guid peety them that has to sit under _him_!'
"Before going out, for I had stayed behind to smoke a
cigarette and enjoy the dismay of the old servant, Saunders
betrayed the reason of his anger at the use of Arabic.
"'And to think,' he grumbled, as he went about dumping trays
on the sideboard, 'that there's Mistress Syme and a' the
rest o' them in the kitchen waiting for me to tell them a'
that was said, and me has to gang doon never a bit the
wiser, wi' my finger in my mouth like a bairn that hasna
learned his lesson!'"
So much I wrote to Alida of the successful reception and early doings of
Keller Bey, ancient war-leader under the Emir of the Atlas. He had taken
enthusiastically to Aramon le Vieux, and certainly Aramon in the person
of my father and Professor Renard had taken enthusiastically to him. My
father duly made the offer that I had side-tracked by anticipation.
There was room enough for half a dozen families of that size in Gobelet.
The servants were lazy, and needed something to do. Renard should come
down, and all of them should dwell together in a haze of Arabic poetry
and tobacco smoke. Besides, my father found the Bey a night-bird after
his own heart, and absolutely rejoiced in having someone under his roof
whom at any hour he might find awake and smoking in the library, if he
should find himself restless.
But this I would have at no price. I begged Keller Bey to remember that
he was here to arrange for Alida and Linn. If they were to be under my
father's roof, they would be eternally exposed to the jealous spying of
Saunders and of the other servants, while at the Garden Cottage they
would have a wall, and if necessary a locked gate, between them and any
espionage.
But by far the most delicate part of my mission was to break the news to
the Deventer family. I had sworn Hugh by solemn oath not to forestall me
in the matter, and I think he awaited my attempt with a kind of
malicious pleasure.
Certainly it was a large task to explain an unseen Alida to such a
contradictory and turbulent family as the Deventers. Yet upon them and
their manner of receiving Alida, befriending or showing her the cold
shoulder, the whole success of the plan depended.
I might indeed bluster to Hugh that we could make a society sufficient
for her within the garden bounds of Gobelet, but even as I spoke I knew
the emptiness of the boast. To be happy Alida must meet and mix with
girls of her own education and, so far as the Western world was
concerned, social position.
I resolved to begin with Rhoda Polly, and a Rhoda Polly not
argumentative and combative as in the family circle, but Rhoda Polly
walking along the river bank, her eyes full of the sunset light, and the
reeds whistling musically in a gentle fanning wind from the west.
Not till two days after the return of Keller Bey to Autun did I get my
chance, which brought us to Saturday afternoon. The occupancy of the
Garden Cottage was decided upon, and after a severe struggle on my
father's part a rent, low yet not merely nominal, was agreed upon. But I
knew from the expression of my father's face that he meant to be even
with his tenant for all that.