worst comes to worst, there's an old fellow I know who sells parrots
and cockatoos and marmosets, and perhaps he'd like an odalisque."
"I will send her," said the emir.
"So it's a she," quoth Mr. Middleton to himself. He had used the
feminine in the broad way that it is applied indefinitely to ships,
railways trains, political parties etc., etc., with no thought of
fitting a fact.
"I will give you fifteen hundred dollars for her maintenance. Having
brought her so far, I feel a responsibility----"
"But that is such a large sum. I really wouldn't need so much----"
"That is none too large," rejoined the emir. "I wish her to be treated
well and I believe you will do it. At first, she will not understand
anything you say to her, of course, but she will soon learn what you
mean. The tone, as much as the words, enlightens, and I think you will
have very little trouble in managing her."
"Is there a cage?" hazarded Mr. Middleton, "or won't I need one?"
"Lock her in a room, if you are afraid she will run away, though such
a fear is groundless. Or if you wish to punish her, the rhinoceros
whips would do better than a cage. A cage is so large and I could
never see any advantage in it. But you will probably never have
occasion to use even a whip. You will have but this one odalisque. Had
you two or three, they might get to quarreling among themselves and
you might have use for a whip. But toward you, she will be all
gentleness, all submission."
Mr. Middleton and the emir then turned to the counting and accounting
of the fifteen hundred dollars, and so occupied, the lawyer missed
seeing Mesrour pass with the odalisque and did not know she had been
put in the hack until the emir had so apprised him.
"She is in a big coffee sack," said the emir. "The meshes of the
fabric are sufficiently open to afford her ample facility for
breathing, and yet she can't get out. Then, too, it will simplify
matters when you get to your lodgings. You will not have to lead her
and urge her, frightened and bewildered by so much moving about, but
pack her upon your back in the bag and carry her to your room with
little trouble.
"And now," continued the emir, grasping Mr. Middleton's hands warmly,
"for the last time do I give you God-speed from this door. I will not
disguise my belief that our intimacy has in a measure come to an end.
As a married man, I shall not be so free as I have been. I am no
longer in need of seeking out knowledge of strange adventures. The
tyrannical imam of Oman, who imprisoned my brother, is dead, and his
successor, commiserating the poor youth's sorrows, has not only
liberated him, but given him the vermillion edifice of his
incarceration. This my brother intends to transmute into gold, for he
has hit upon the happy expedient of grinding it up into a face powder,
a rouge, beautiful in tint and harmless in composition, for the rock
was quarried in one of the most salubrious locations upon the upper
waters of the great river Euphrates. I trust I shall sometimes see you
at our place, where I am sure I shall be joined in welcoming you by
Mrs.--Mrs.--well, to tell the truth," said the emir in some slight
confusion, "I don't know what her name will be, for it is obviously
out of the question to call her Mrs. Achmed Ben Daoud, and she objects
to the tribal designation of Alyam, which I had temporarily adopted
for convenience's sake, as ineuphonious."
"Sir, friend and benefactor, guiding lamp of my life, instructor of my
youth and moral exemplar," said Mr. Middleton, in the emotion of the
moment allowing his speech an Oriental warmth which the cold
self-consciousness of the Puritan would have forbade, had he been
addressing a fellow American, "I cannot tell you the advantages that
have flowed from my acquaintance with you. It was indeed the turning
point of my life. The pleasure I will leave untouched upon, as I must
alike on the present occasion, the profits. Let me briefly state that
they foot up to $3760. A full accounting of how they accrued, would
consume the rest of the night, and so it must be good-bye."
As Mr. Middleton looked back for the last time upon that hospitable
doorway, he saw the gigantic figure of Mesrour silhouetted against the
dim glow beyond and there solemnly boomed on the night air, the Arabic
salutation, "Salaam aleikoom."
_What Befell Mr. Middleton Because of the Eighth and Last Gift of the
Emir._
Getting into the hack and settling into the sole remaining vacant
space Mesrour had left in loading the vehicle with the emir's gifts,
Mr. Middleton was so preoccupied by a gloomy dejection as he reflected
that a most agreeable, not to say inspiring and educating, intimacy
was at last ended, that he reached his lodgings and had begun to
unload his new possessions, before he thought of the odalisque. There
lay the coffee sack lengthwise on the front seat and partially
reclining against the side of the carriage. He was greatly surprised
at the size of the unknown creature and began to surmise that it was
an anthropoid ape, though before his speculations had ranged from
parrots through dogs to domesticated leopards. Leaving the coffee sack
until the last, he gingerly seized the slack of the top of the bag and
proceeded to pull it upon his shoulders, taking care to avoid holding
the creature where it could kick or struggle effectually, for despite
all the emir had told him of the gentleness of the odalisque, he was
resolved to take no chances. Whatever the creature was, she had slid
down, forming a limp lump at the end of the bag, when he charily
deposited it on the floor and turned to consult his dictionary before
untying it. He was going to know what the creature was before he dealt
with her further, a creature so large as that.
_Odalisque._ A slave or concubine in a Mohammedan harem!!
A woman!!!
Mr. Middleton tore at the string by which the bag was tied, full of
the keenest self-reproach. The uncomfortable position during the long
ride, the worse position in which she now lay. The knots refused to
budge and snatching a knife, with a mighty slashing, he ripped the bag
all away and disclosed the slender form of a woman crouched, huddled,
collapsed, face downward, head upon her knees. Turning her over and
supporting her against his breast in a sitting posture, Mr. Middleton
looked upon the most loveliness, unhappiness, and helplessness he had
ever beheld.
For a moment his heart almost stopped as he looked into the still
face, but he saw the bosom faintly flutter, slow tears oozed out from
under the long lashes of the closed lids, and the cupid's bow mouth
gave little twitches of misery and hopelessness. With what exquisite
emotions was he filled as he looked down upon the head pillowed upon
his breast, with what sentiments of anger, with what noble chivalry!
A Moslem woman. A Moslem woman, who even in the best estate of her sex
as free and a wife, goes to her grave like a dog, with no hope of a
life beyond, unless her husband amid the joys of Paradise should turn
his thoughts back to earth and wish for her there among his houris.
But this poor sweet flower had not even this faint expectation, for
she was no wife nor could be, slave of a Mohammedan harem. No rights
in this world nor the next. Not even the attenuated rights which law
and custom gave the free woman. No sustaining dream of a divine
recompense for the unmerited unhappiness of this existence. A slave, a
harem slave, wanted only when she smiled, was gay, and beautiful; who
must weep alone and in silence, in silence, with never a sympathetic
shoulder to weep upon after they sold her from her mother's side. Tied
in a bag, going she knew not whither, thrown in a carriage like so
much carrion, in these indignities she only wept in silence, for her
lord, the man, must not be discomposed. Like the timorous, helpless
wild things of the woods whose joys and sorrows must ever be voiceless
lest the bloody tyrants of their domain come, who even in the crunch
of death hold silence in their weak struggles, this poor young thing
bore her sufferings mutely, for her lord, the man, must not be
discomposed, choking her very breath lest a sob escape. Mr. Middleton,
in a certain illuminating instinct which belongs to women but only
occasionally comes to some men, saw all this in a flash without any
pondering and turning over and reflecting and comparing, and he said
to himself under his breath, not eloquently, but well, as there came
home to him the heinousness of that abhorrant social system dependent
upon the religious system of the Prophet of Mecca, "Damn the emir and
Mohammed and the whole damned Mohammedan business, kit and boodle!"
In this imprecation there was a piece of grave injustice which Mr.
Middleton would not have allowed himself in calmer mood, for the emir
was about to become a member of one of the largest and most
fashionable Presbyterian congregations in the city and ought not to
have been included in an anathema of Moslemry and condemned for
anything he upheld while in the benighted condition of Mohammedanism.
Mr. Middleton continuing to gaze, as who could not, upon that
beautiful unhappy face, suddenly he imprinted upon the quivering lips
a kiss in which was the tender sympathy of a mother, the heartening
encouragement of a friend, and the ardent passion of a lover. The
odalisque opened her lovely hazel eyes and _seeing_ corroboration of
all the _touch_ of the kiss had told her, as she looked into eyes that
brimmed with tears like hers, upon lips that quivered like hers, she
let loose the flood gates of her woes in a torrent of sobs and tears,
and throwing herself upon his shoulders, poured out her long pent
sorrows in a good cry.
It was only a summer shower and the sun soon shone. She did not weep
long. Too filled with wonder and surpassing delight was this daughter
of the Orient in her first experience with the chivalry of the
Occident. She must needs look again at this man whose eyes had welled
full in compassion for her. She would court again his light and
soothing caresses, his gentle ministrations, so different from the
brutal pawing of the male animals of her own race, the moiety with
souls. Ah, how poignantly sweet, how amazing, that which to her
American sisters was the usual, the commonplace, the everyday!
She raised her head. Her tears no longer flowed, but her lips still
quivered, in a pleading little smile; and her bosom still fluttered,
in a shy and doubting joy, and in her mind floated a half-formed
prayer that the genii whose craft had woven this rapturous dream,
would not too soon dispel it.
Mr. Middleton gazed at her. He had never seen a face like that, so
perfectly oval; never such vermillion as showed under the dusk of her
cheeks and stained the lips, narrow, but full. What wondrous eyes were
those, so large and lustrous, illumining features whose basal lines of
classic regularity were softly tempered into a fluent contour. A
circlet of gold coins bound her brow, shining in bright relief against
the luxuriant masses of chestnut hair. A delicate and slender figure
had she, yet well cushioned with flesh and no bones stood out in her
bare neck.
Moved not by his own discomfort on the hard floor, but by the possible
discomfort of the odalisque, Mr. Middleton at length raised her and
conducted her to a red plush sofa obtained by the landlady for soap
wrappers and a sum of money, which having turned green in places and
therefore become no longer suitable for a station in the parlor, had
been placed in this room a few days before. Upon this imposing article
of furniture the two sat down, and though at first Mr. Middleton did
no more than place his arm gently and reassuringly about the girl's
waist and hold her hand lightly, in the natural evolution,
progression, and sequence of events, following the rules of contiguity
and approach--rhetorical rules, but not so here--before long the cheek
of the fair Arab lay against that of the son of Wisconsin and her arm
was about his neck and every little while she uttered a little sigh of
complete, of unalloyed content. What had been yesterday, what might be
to-morrow, she was now happy. As for Mr. Middleton, what a stream of
delicious thoughts, delicious for the most part because of their
unselfishness and warm generosity, flowed through his head. What a joy
it would be to make happy the path of this girl who had been so
unhappy, to lay devotion at the feet of her who had never dreamed
there was such a thing in the world, to bind himself the slave of her
who had been a slave.
Then, too, he luxuriated in the simple, elementary joy of possession
and the less elementary joy of possession of new things, whether new
hats, new clothes, new books, new horses, new houses, or new girls,
and which is the cause why so many of us have new girls and new beaux.
And when he looked ahead and saw only one logical termination of the
episode, he swelled with a pride that was honest and unselfish, as he
thought how all would look and admire as he passed with this lovely
woman, his wife.
He could have sat thus the whole night through, but the girl must be
tired, worn by the sufferings of this day and many before. He motioned
toward the bed and indicated by pantomime that she should go to it.
She would have descended to her knees and with her damask lips brushed
the dust from his shoes, if she had thought he wished it, but she knew
not what he meant by his gesturing and sat bewildered in eager and
anxious willingness. So arranging the bed for her occupancy, he took
her in his arms and bore her to it and dropped her in. The riotous
blushes chased each other across her cheeks as she lay there with eyes
closed, so sweet, so helpless, so alone.
For a little season he stood there gazing, gloating, enravished, like
to hug himself in the keen titillation of his ecstasy and this was not
all because this lovely being was his, but because he was hers.
Glancing about the room preliminarily to leaving, and wondering what
further was to be done for the girl's comfort and peace of mind, he
bethought him of an ancient tale he had once read. In this narration,
fate having made it unavoidable that a noble lord should pass the
night in a castle tower with a fair dame of high degree and there
being but one bed in the apartment, he had placed a naked sword in the
middle of the bed between them and so they passed the night, guarded
and menaced by the falchion, for the nonce become the symbol of bright
honor and cold virtue. Mr. Middleton had often wondered why the knight
did not sleep on the floor, or outside the door, as he himself now
intended doing. But it occurred to him that some such symbol might
reassure the Arab damosel and having no sword, he drew one of the
large pistols the emir had given him and approached the bed to lay it
there.
The girl's eyes had now opened and Mr. Middleton started as he beheld
her face. Once more the hunted, helpless look it had worn when first
he had looked on it. But more. Such an utter fear and sickening unto
death. But not fear, terror for herself. Fear for the death of an
ideal, a fear caused by her misinterpretation of his intent with the
pistol. It had not been real, it had not been real. He was as other
men, the men of her world and all the world was alike and life not
worth living. With a finesse he had not suspected he possessed, he
laid the pistol on a pile of legal papers on a table at the bed's
head, a pile whose sheets a suddenly entering breeze was whirling
about the room. How obvious it was he had brought the pistol for a
paper weight. Once more the girl was smiling as he drew the clothes
over her, all dressed as she was, and kissing shut her drowsy eyes, he
left her in her virginal couch.
On the mat before the door in the hallway without, he disposed himself
as comfortably as he could. With due regard for the romantic
proprieties, he tried to keep within the bounds of the mat. But it was
too short, his curled up position too uncomfortable, and so he
overflowed it and could scarcely be said to be sleeping on the mat. It
was too late to arouse the landlady and although he was there by
choice, it could not have been otherwise.
After snatches of broken sleep, after dreams waking and dreams
sleeping, which were all alike and of one thing and indistinguishable,
he was at length fully awake at a little before six and aware of an
odor of tobacco smoke. Applying his nose to the crack of the door, he
finally became convinced that it came from his room. Wondering what it
could possibly mean, and accordingly opening the door, opening it so
slowly and gradually that the odalisque could have ample time to seek
the cover of the bed clothes, he stepped in.
There sat the odalisque on the edge of the bed, fully dressed, puffing
away at his big meerschaum, blowing clouds that filled the room. On
the table lay an empty cigarette box that had been full the night
before. This had not belonged to Mr. Middleton, who was not a
cigarette smoker and despised the practice, but had been forgotten by
Chauncy Stackelberg on a recent visit. The fingers of her right hand
were stained yellow, not by the cigarettes of that one box, but the
unnumbered cigarettes of years. Mr. Middleton had not noticed these
fingers the night before, but had been absorbed by her face, and this
as beautiful, as piquant, as bewitching as before, looked up at him,
the lips puckered, waiting, longing.
He stood there, stock-still, stern, troubled, dismayed.
She moved over, where she sat on the edge of the bed, with mute
invitation, and Mr. Middleton continuing to stand and stare, she moved
again and yet again, until she was against the headboard. And still he
did not sit beside her, thinking all the time of the young lady of
Englewood whose pure Puritan lips never had been and never could be
defiled by cigarettes and tobacco. The young lady of Englewood, the
young lady of Englewood, what a jewel of women was she and what a fool
he had been and how unkind and inconsiderate! Recalled by a little
snuffle from the odalisque, he saw the puckered lips were relaxing
sorrowfully and fearing the girl would cry, he hastily sat down beside
her and put his right arm about her. But he did not take the shapely
hand that now laid down the meerschaum, and though her head fell on
his shoulder and her breath came and went with his, he did not kiss
her, for that breath was laden with tobacco. Nor did his fingers stray
through those masses of silken hair, for he was sure they were full of
the fumes of tobacco. There with his arm about the soft, uncorsetted
form of that glorious beauty, her own white forearm smooth and cool
about his neck, he was thinking of the young lady of Englewood.
Poor odalisque! Why cannot he speak to you and tell you? You would
wash away those yellow stains with your own blood, if you thought he
wished it. Forego tobacco? Why, you would cease to inhale the breath
of life itself, for his sake.
Out of the grave came all the dead Puritan ancestors of Mr. Middleton,
a long procession back to Massachusetts Bay. The elders of Salem who
had ordained that a man should not smoke within five miles of a house,
the lawgivers who had prescribed the small number, brief length, and
sad color of ribbons a woman might wear and who forbade a man to kiss
his wife on Sunday, all these righteous and uncomfortable folk stirred
in Mr. Middleton's blood and obsessed him.
Fatima, Nouronhor, or whatever your name might be, my fair Moslem, why
did fate throw you in with a Puritan? Yet I wot that had it been one
from a strain of later importation from Europe, you had not been so
safe there last night. The Puritans may be disagreeable, but they are
safe, safe.
Part of this Mr. Middleton was saying over and over to himself--the
latter part. The Puritans are safe. The young lady of Englewood was
safe. She was good, she was beautiful, too, in her calm, sweet,
Puritan way. He must see her at once, he would go---- A sigh, not
altogether of content, absolute and complete, recalled to him the
woman pressed against his side. She must be taken care of, disposed
of. Asylum? No. Factory? No, no. Theater, museum? No, no, no. He would
find some man to marry her. There must be someone, lots of men, in
fact, who would marry a girl so lovely, who needn't find out she
smoked until after marriage, or who would not care anyway. All this
might take time. He would be as expeditious as possible, however. He
called Mrs. Leschinger, the landlady, and entrusting the girl to her
care, departed to visit a matrimonial agency he knew of.
He looked over the list of eligibles. He read their misspelled,
crabbedly written letters. There was not one in the lot to whom a man
of conscience could entrust the Moslem flower, even if she did smoke.
"There is apparently not one man of education or refinement in the
whole lot," exclaimed Mr. Middleton.
"That's about right," said the president of the agency. "Between you
and I, there ain't many people of refinement who would go at marrying
in that way. You don't know what a lot of jays and rubes I have to
deal with. Often I threaten to retire. But occasionally a real
gentleman or lady does register in our agency. Object, fun or
matrimony. Now I have one client that is all right, all right except
in one particular. He is a man of thirty-five or six, fine looking,
has a nice house and five thousand dollars a year clear and sure. But
he's stone deaf. He wants a young and handsome girl. Now I could get
him fifty dozen homely young women, or pretty ones that weren't
chickens any longer, real pretty and refined, but you see a real
handsome young girl sort of figures her chances of marrying are good,
that she may catch a man who can hear worth as much as this Crayburn,
which ain't a whole lot, or that if she does marry a poor young chap,
he'll have as much as Crayburn does when he is as old as Crayburn. Now
I'm so sure you'll only have your trouble for your pains, that I won't
charge you anything for his address and a letter of introduction. I
don't believe you have got a girl who will suit, for if you have, she
won't take Crayburn. Here's his picture."
Mr. Middleton looked upon the photograph of a man who seemed to be
possessed of some of the best qualities of manhood. It was true that
there was a slight suspicion of weakness in the face, but above all it
was kindly and sympathetic.
"A good looking man," said Mr. Middleton.
"Smart man, too," said the matrimonial agent. "He graduated from the
university in Evanston and was a lawyer and a good one, until a friend
fired off one of those big duck guns in his ear for a joke."
Taking the odalisque with him in a cab, Mr. Middleton was off for the
residence of Mr. Crayburn.
"Will she have me?" asked Mr. Crayburn, when he had read Mr.
Middleton's hastily penciled account of the main facts of his
connection with the fair Moslem, wherein for brevity's sake he had
omitted any mention of the fifteen hundred dollars the emir had given
him for assuming charge of her.
"Of course," wrote Mr. Middleton.
"I never saw a more beautiful woman," exclaimed Mr. Crayburn. "By the
way, have you noticed any predilections, habits, wants, it would be
well for me to know about?"
"She smokes," wrote Mr. Middleton, not knowing why he wrote it, and
wishing like the devil that he hadn't the moment he had.
"All Oriental women smoke. I will ask her not to as soon as she learns
English."
Mr. Middleton was amazed to think that such a simple solution had not
occurred to him. But he was glad it was so, for he had not been
unscathed by Cupid's darts there last night and he might not now be
about to visit the young lady of Englewood.
"Your fee," said Mr. Crayburn.
Mr. Middleton had not thought of this. He looked about at the
handsomely furnished room. He thought of the five thousand dollars a
year and the very much smaller income he could offer the young lady of
Englewood. He thought of these things and other things. He thought of
the young lady of Englewood; of the odalisque, toward whom he occupied
the position of what is known in law as next friend. She sat behind
him, out of his sight, but he saw her, saw her as he saw her for the
first time, when, ripping the bag away, she lay there in her piteous,
appealing helplessness.
"There is no fee. The maiden even has a dowry of fifteen hundred
dollars. Please invest it in her name. Oh, sir, treat her kindly."