“Alas, monsieur!” said Mademoiselle Verbèna in her silvery voice, “I go
to see my poor mother.”
“But I understood that she was dying in Paris.”
“Even so. But, when I reached the Rue St. Honoré, I found that they
had removed to Algiers. It was the only chance, the doctor said—a warm
climate, the sun of Africa. There was no time to let me know. They took
her away at once. And now I follow—perhaps to find her dead.”
Large tears rolled down her cheeks. Mr. Greyne was deeply affected.
“Let us hope for the best,” he exclaimed, seized by a happy inspiration.
The Levantine strove to smile.
“But you, monsieur, why are you here? Ah! perhaps madame is with you!
Let me go to her! Let me kiss her dear hands once more⸺”
Mr. Greyne mournfully checked her fond excitement.
“I am quite alone,” he said.
A tragic expression came into the Levantine’s face.
“But, then⸺” she began.
It was impossible for him to tell her about “Catherine.” He was,
therefore, constrained to subterfuge.
“I—I was suddenly overtaken by—by influenza,” he said, in some
confusion. “The doctor recommended change of air, of scene. He
suggested Algiers⸺”
“_Mon Dieu!_ It is like poor mamma!”
“Precisely. Our constitutions are—are doubtless similar. I shall take
this opportunity also of improving my knowledge of African manners
and—and customs.”
A strange smile seemed to dawn for a second on Mademoiselle Verbèna’s
face, but it died instantaneously in a grimace of pain.
“My teeth make me bad,” she said. “Ah, monsieur, I must go below, to
pray for poor mamma—” she paused, then softly added, “and for monsieur.”
She made a movement as if to depart, but Mr. Greyne begged her to
remain. In his loneliness the sight even of a Levantine whom he knew
solaced his yearning heart. He felt quite friendly towards this poor,
unhappy girl, for whom, perhaps, such a shock was preparing upon the
distant shore.
“Better stay!” he said. “The air will do you good.”
“Ah, if I die, what matter? Unless mamma lives there is no one in the
world who cares for me, for whom I care.”
“There—there is Mrs. Greyne,” said her husband. “And then St.
Paul’s—remember St. Paul’s.”
“Ah _ce charmant_ St. Paul’s! Shall I ever see him more?”
She looked at Mr. Greyne, and suddenly—he knew not why—Mr. Greyne
remembered the incident of the diary, and blushed.
“Monsieur has fever!”
Mr. Greyne shook his head. The Levantine eyed him curiously.
“Monsieur wishes to say something to me, and does not like to speak.”
Mr. Greyne made an effort. Now that he was with this gentle lady, with
her white face, her weeping eyes, her plain black dress, the mere
suspicion that she could have opened a locked drawer with a secret key,
and filched therefrom a private record, seemed to him unpardonable.
Yet, for a brief instant, it had occurred to him, and Mrs. Greyne had
seriously held it. He looked at Mademoiselle Verbèna, and a sudden
impulse to tell her the truth overcame him.
“Yes,” he said.
“Tell me, monsieur.”
In broken words—the ship was still very busy—Mr. Greyne related the
incident of the loss and finding of the diary. As he spoke a slight
change stole over the Levantine’s face. It certainly became less pale.
“But you have fever now!” cried Mr. Greyne anxiously.
“I! No; I flush with horror, not with fever! The diary, the sacred
diary of madame, exposed to view, read by the children, perhaps the
servants! That footman, Thomas, with the nose of curiosity! Ah! I
behold that nose penetrating into the holy secrets of the existence of
madame! I behold it—ah!”
She burst into a fit of hysterics, the laughing species, which is
so much more terrible than the other sort. Mr. Greyne was greatly
concerned. He lurched to her, and implored her to be calm; but she only
laughed the more, while tears streamed down her cheeks. The vision of
Thomas gloating over Mrs. Greyne’s diary seemed utterly to unnerve her,
and Mr. Greyne was able to measure, by this ebullition of horror, the
depth of the respect and affection entertained by her for his beloved
wife. When, at length, she grew calmer he escorted her towards her
cabin, offering her his arm, on which she leaned heavily. As soon as
they were in the narrow and heaving passage she turned to him, and said:
“Who can have taken the diary?”
Mr. Greyne blushed again.
“We think it was Thomas,” he said.
Mademoiselle Verbèna looked at him steadily for a moment, then she
cried:
“God bless you, monsieur!”
Mr. Greyne was startled by the abruptness of this pious ejaculation.
“Why?” he inquired.
“You are a good man. You, at least, would not condescend to insult a
friendless woman by unworthy suspicions. And madame?”
“Mrs. Greyne”—stammered Mr. Greyne—“is convinced that it was Thomas. In
fact—in fact, she was the first to say so.”
Mademoiselle Verbèna tenderly pressed his hand.
“Madame is an angel. God bless you both!”
She tottered into her cabin, and, as she shut the door, Mr. Greyne
heard the terrible, laughing hysterics beginning again.
The next day an influence from Africa seemed spread upon the sea. Calm
were the waters, calm and blue. No cloud appeared in the sky. The
fierce activities of the ship had ceased, and Mademoiselle Verbèna
tripped upon the deck at an early hour, to find Mr. Greyne already
installed there, and looking positively cheerful. He started up as he
perceived her, and chivalrously escorted her to a chair.
Everyone who has made a voyage knows that the sea breeds intimacies.
By the time the white houses of Algiers rose on their hill out of the
bosom of the waves Mademoiselle Verbèna and Mr. Greyne were—shall we
say like sister and brother? She had told him all about her childhood
in dear Paris, the death of her father the count, murmuring the name
of Louis XVI., the poverty of her mother the countess, her own resolve
to put aside all aristocratic prejudices and earn her own living.
He, in return, had related his Eton days, his momentary bias towards
the militia, his marriage—as an innocent youth—with Miss Eugenia
Hannibal-Barker. Coming to later times, he was led to confide to the
tender-hearted Levantine the fact that he hoped to increase his stock
of knowledge while in Africa. Without alluding to “Catherine,” he
hinted that the cure of influenza was not his only reason for foreign
travel.
“I wish to learn something of men and—and women,” he murmured in the
shell-like ear presented to him. “Of their passions, their desires,
their—their follies.”
“Ah!” cried Mademoiselle Verbèna. “Would that I could assist monsieur!
But I am only an ignorant little creature, and know nothing of the
world! And I shall be ever at the bedside of mamma.”
“You will give me your address? You will let me inquire for the
countess?”
“Willingly; but I do not know where I shall be. There will be a message
at the wharf. To what hotel goes monsieur?”
“The Grand Hotel.”
“I will write there when I have seen mamma. And meanwhile⸺”
They were coming into harbour. The heights of Mustapha were visible,
the woods of the Bois de Boulogne, the towers of the Hotel Splendid.
“Meanwhile, may I beg monsieur not to⸺” She hesitated.
“Not to what?” asked Mr. Greyne most softly.
“Not to let anyone in England know that I am here?”
She paused. Mr. Greyne was silent, wondering. Mademoiselle Verbèna
drooped her head.
“The world is so censorious. It might seem strange that I—that
monsieur—a man young, handsome, fascinating—the same ship—I have no
chaperon—_enfin_⸺”
She could get out no more. Her delicacy, her forethought touched Mr.
Greyne to tears.
“Not a word,” he said. “You are right. The world is evil, and, as you
say, I am a—not a word!”
He ventured to press her hand, as an elder brother might have pressed
it. For the first time he realised that even to the husband of Mrs.
Eustace Greyne the world might attribute—Goodness gracious! What might
not the militia think, for instance?
He felt himself, for one moment, potentially a dog.
They parted in a whirl of Arabs on the quay. Mr. Greyne would have
stayed to assist Mademoiselle Verbèna, but she bade him go. She
whispered that she thought it “better” that they should not seem
to—_enfin_!
“I will write to-morrow,” she murmured. “_Au revoir!_”
On the last word she was gone. Mr. Greyne saw nothing but Arabs and
hotel porters. Loneliness seemed to close in on him once more.
That very evening, after a cup of tea, he presented himself at the
office of Rook near the Place du Gouvernement. As he came in he felt a
little nervous. There were no tourists in the office, and a courteous
clerk with a bright and searching eye at once took him in hand.
“What can we do for you, sir?”
“I am a stranger here,” began Mr. Greyne.
“Quite so, sir, quite so.”
The clerk twiddled his business-like thumbs, and looked inquiring.
“And being so,” Mr. Greyne went on, “it is naturally my wish to see as
much of the town as possible; as much as possible, you understand.”
“You want a guide? Alphonso!”
Turning, he shouted to an inner room, from which in a moment emerged a
short, stout, swarthy personage with a Jewish nose, a French head, an
Arab eye with a squint in it, and a markedly Maltese expression.
“This is an excellent guide, sir,” said the clerk. “He speaks
twenty-five languages.”
The stout man, who—as Mr. Greyne now perceived—had on a Swiss suit
of clothes, a panama hat, and a pair of German elastic-sided boots,
confessed in pigeon English, interspersed occasionally with a word or
two of something which Mr. Greyne took to be Chinese, that such was
undoubtedly the case.
“What do you wish to see? The mosque, the bazaars, St. Eugène, La
Trappe, Mustapha, the baths of the Etat-Major, the Jardin d’Essai, the
Villa-Anti-Juif, the⸺”
“One moment!” said Mr. Greyne.
He turned to the clerk.
“May I take a chair?”
“Be seated, sir, pray be seated, and confer with Alphonso.”
So saying, he gave himself to an enormous ledger, while Mr. Greyne took
a chair opposite to Alphonso, who stood in a Moorish attitude looking
apparently in the direction of Marseilles.
“I have come here,” said Mr. Greyne, lowering his voice, “with a
purpose.”
“You wish to see the Belle Fatma. I will arrange it. She receives every
evening in her house in the Rue⸺”
“One minute! One minute! You said the something ‘Fatma’?”
“The Belle Fatma, the most beautiful woman of Africa. She receives
every⸺”
“Pardon me! One moment! Is this lady⸺”
Mr. Greyne paused.
“Sir?” said Alphonso, settling his Spanish neck-tie, and gazing
steadily towards Marseilles.
“Is this lady—well, sinful?”
Alphonso threw up his hands with a wild Asiatic gesture.
“Sinful! La Belle Fatma! She is a lady of the utmost respectability
known to all the town. You go to her house at eight, you take coffee
upon the red sofas, you talk with La Belle, you see the dances and hear
the music. Do not fear, sir; it is good, it is respectable as England,
your country⸺”
“If it is respectable I don’t want to see it,” interposed Mr. Greyne.
“It would be a waste of time.”
The clerk lifted his head from the ledger, and Alphonso, by means of
standing with his back almost square to Mr. Greyne, and looking over
his right shoulder, succeeded at length in fixing his eye upon him.
“I have not travelled here to see respectable things,” continued Mr.
Greyne, with a slight blush. “Quite the contrary.”
“Sir?”
The voice of Alphonso seemed to have changed, to have taken on a hard,
almost a menacing tone. Mr. Greyne thought of his beloved wife, of
Merrin’s exercise-books, and clenched his hands, endeavouring to feel,
and to go on, like a militiaman.
“Quite the contrary,” he repeated firmly; “my object in coming to
Africa is to—to search about in the Kasbah, and the disrep⸺” He
choked, recovered himself, and continued: “Disreputable quarters of
Algiers—hem⸺”
“What for, sir?”
The voice of Alphonso was certainly changed.
“What for?” said Mr. Greyne, growing purple. “For frailty.”
“Sir?”
“For frailty—for wickedness.”
A slight cackle emanated from the ledger, but immediately died away. A
dead silence reigned in the office, broken only by the distant sound of
the sea, and by the hard breathing of Alphonso, who had suddenly begun
to pant.
“I wish to go to all the wicked places—_all_!”
The ledger cackled again more audibly. Mr. Greyne felt a prickling
sensation run over him, but the thought of “Catherine” nerved him to
his awful task.
“It is my wife’s express desire that I should do so,” he added
desperately, quite forgetting Mrs. Greyne’s injunction to keep her dark
in his desire to stand well with Rook’s.
The ledger went off into a hyena imitation, and Alphonso, turning still
more away from Mr. Greyne, so as to get the eye fuller upon him,
exclaimed, in a mixture of Aryan and Eurasian languages:
“Sir, I am a respectable, unmarried man. I was born in Buenos Ayres,
educated in Smyrna, came of age in Constantinople, and have practised
as guide in Bagdad and other particular cities. I refuse to have
anything to do with you and your wife.”
So saying, he bounced into the inner room, and banged the door, while
the ledger gave itself up to peals of merriment, and Mr. Greyne
tottered forth upon the sea-front, bathed in a cold perspiration, and
feeling more guilty than a murderer.
It was a staggering blow. He leaned over the stone parapet of the low
wall, and let the soft breezes from the bay flit through his hair, and
thought of Mrs. Greyne spurned by Alphonso. What was he to do? Kicked
out of Rook’s, to whom could he apply? There must be wickedness in
Algiers, but where? He saw none, though night was falling and stout
Frenchmen were already intent upon their absinthe.
“Does monsieur wish to see the Kasbah to-night?”
Was it a voice from heaven? He turned, and saw standing beside him a
tall, thin, audacious-looking young man, with coal-black moustaches,
magnificent eyes, and an air that was half-languid, half-serpentine.
“Who are you?”
“I am a guide, monsieur. Here are my certificates.”
He produced from the inner pocket of his coat a large bundle of dirty
papers.
“If monsieur will deign to look them over.”
But Mr. Greyne waved them away. What did he care for certificates?
Here was a guide to African frailty. That was sufficient. He was in a
desperate mood, and uttered desperate words.
“Look here,” he said rapidly, “are you wicked?”
“Very wicked, monsieur.”
“Good!”
“Wicked, monsieur.”
“Right!”
“Wrong, monsieur.”
“I mean that it is good for me that you are wicked.”
“Monsieur is very good.”
“Yes; but I wish to be—that is, to see the other thing. Can you
undertake to show me everything shocking in Algiers?”
“But certainly, monsieur. For a consideration.”
“Name your price.”
“Two hundred pounds, monsieur.”
Mr. Greyne started. It seemed a high figure.
“Monsieur thought it would be more? I make a special price, because I
have taken a fancy to monsieur. I remove fifty pounds. Monsieur, of
course, will pay all expenses.”
“Of course, of course.”
It was no time to draw back.
“How long will it take?”
“To see all the shocking?”
“Precisely.”
“There is a good deal. A fortnight, three weeks. It depends on
monsieur. If he is strong, and can do without sleep⸺”
“We shall have to be up at night?”
“Naturally.”
“I shall go to bed during the day, and get through it in a fortnight.”
“Perfectly.”
“Be at the Grand Hotel to-night at ten o’clock precisely.”
“At ten o’clock I will be there. Monsieur will pay a little in advance?”
“Here are twenty pounds,” cried Mr. Greyne recklessly.
The audacious-looking young man took the notes with decision, made a
graceful salute, and disappeared in the direction of the quay, while
Mr. Greyne walked to his hotel, flushed with excitement, and feeling
like the most desperate criminal in Africa. If the militia could see
him now!
At dinner he drank a bottle of champagne, and afterwards smoked a
strong cigar over his coffee and liqueur. As he was finishing these
frantic enjoyments the head waiter—a personage bearing a strong
resemblance to an enlarged edition of Napoleon the First—approached him
rather furtively, and, bending down, whispered in his ear:
“A gentleman has called to take monsieur to the Kasbah.”
Mr. Greyne started, and flushed a guilty red.
“I will come in a moment,” he answered, trying to assume a nonchalant
voice, such as that in which a hardened major of dragoons announces
that in his time he was a devil of a fellow.
The head waiter retired, looking painfully intelligent, and Mr. Greyne
sprang upstairs, seized a Merrin’s exercise-book and a lead pencil,
put on a dark overcoat, popped one of the Springfield revolvers into
the pocket of it, and hastened down into the hall of the hotel, where
the audacious-looking young man was standing, surrounded by saucy
chasseurs in gay liveries and peaked caps, by Algerian waiters, and by
German-Swiss porters, all of whom were smiling and looking choke-full
of sympathetic comprehension.
“Ha!” said Mr. Greyne, still in the major’s voice. “There you are!”
“Behold me, monsieur.”
“That’s good.”
“Wicked, monsieur.”
“Well, let’s be off to the mosque.”
One of the chasseurs—a child of eight who was thankful that he knew no
better—burst into a piping laugh. The waiters turned hastily away, and
the German-Swiss porters retreated to the bureau with some activity.
“To the mosque—precisely, monsieur,” returned the guide, with complete
self-possession.
They stepped out at once upon the pavement, where a carriage was in
waiting.
“Where are we going?” inquired Mr. Greyne in an anxious voice.
“We are going to the heights to see the Ouled,” replied the guide. “_En
avant!_”
He bounded in beside Mr. Greyne, the coachman cracked his whip, the
horses trotted. They were off upon their terrible pilgrimage.
V
On the following afternoon, at a quarter to three, when Mr. Greyne
came down to breakfast, he found, lying beside the boiled eggs, a
note directed to him in a feminine handwriting. He tore it open with
trembling fingers, and read as follows:—
+1 Rue du Petit Negre.+
+Dear Monsieur+,—I am here. Poor mamma is in the hospital. I am
allowed to see her twice a day. At all other times I remain alone,
praying and weeping. I trust that monsieur has passed a good night.
For me, I was sleepless, thinking of mamma. I go now to church.
+Adele Verbena.+
He laid this missive down, and sighed deeply. How strangely innocent it
was, how simple, how sincere! There were white souls in Algiers—yes,
even in Algiers. Strange that he should know one! Strange that he, who
had filled a Merrin’s exercise-book with tiny writing, and had even
overflowed on to the cover after “crossing” many pages, should receive
the child-like confidences of one! “I go now to the church.” Tears came
into his eyes as he laid the letter down beside a pile of buttered
toast over which the burning afternoon sun of Africa was shining.
“Monsieur will take milk and sugar?”
It was the head waiter’s Napoleonic voice. Mr. Greyne controlled
himself. The man was smiling intelligently. All the staff of the hotel
smiled intelligently at Mr. Greyne to-day—the waiters, the porters, the
chasseurs. The child of eight who was thankful that he knew no better
had greeted him with a merry laugh as he came down to breakfast, and
an “_Oh, là, là_!” which had elicited a rebuke from the proprietor.
Indeed, a wave of human sympathy flowed upon Mr. Greyne, whose ashy
face and dull, washed-out eyes betrayed the severity of his night-watch.
“Monsieur will feel better after a little food.”
The head waiter handed the buttered toast with bland majesty, at the
same time shooting a reproving glance at the little chasseur, who was
peeping from behind the door at the afternoon breakfaster.
“I feel perfectly well,” replied Mr. Greyne, with an attempt at
cheerfulness.
“Still, monsieur will feel much better after a little food.”
Mr. Greyne began to toy with an egg.
“You know Algiers?” he asked.
“I was born here, monsieur. If monsieur wishes to explore to-night
again the Kasbah I can⸺”
But Mr. Greyne stopped him with a gesture that was almost fierce.
“Where is the Rue du Petit Nègre?”
“Monsieur wishes to go there to-night?”
“I wish to go there now, directly I have finished break—lunch.”
The head waiter’s face was wreathed with humorous surprise.
“But monsieur is wonderful—superb! Never have I seen a traveller like
monsieur!”
He gazed at Mr. Greyne with tropical appreciation.
“Monsieur had better have a carriage. The street is difficult to find.”
“Order me one. I shall start at once.”
Mr. Greyne pushed away the sunlit buttered toast, and got up.
“Monsieur is superb. Never have I seen a traveller like monsieur!”
Napoleon’s voice was almost reverent. He hastened out, followed slowly
by Mr. Greyne.
“A carriage for monsieur! Monsieur desires to go to the Rue du Petit
Nègre!”
The staff of the hotel gathered about the door as if to speed a royal
personage, and Mr. Greyne noticed that their faces too were touched
with an almost startled reverence. He stepped into the carriage, signed
feebly, but with determination, to the Arab coachman, and was driven
away, followed by a parting “_Oh, là, là_!” from the chasseur, uttered
in a voice that sounded shrill with sheer amazement.
Through winding, crowded streets he went, by bazaars and Moorish
bath-houses, mosques and Catholic churches, barracks and cafés, till at
length the carriage turned into an alley that crept up a steep hill. It
moved on a little way, and then stopped.
“Monsieur must descend here,” said the coachman. “Mount the steps, go
to the right and then to the left. Near the summit of the hill he will
find the Rue du Petit Nègre. Shall I wait for monsieur?”
“Yes.”
The coachman began to make a cigarette, while Mr. Greyne set forth to
follow his directions, and, at length, stood before an arch, which
opened into a courtyard adorned with orange-trees in tubs, and paved
with blue and white tiles. Around this courtyard was a three-storey
house with a flat roof, and from a bureau near a little fountain
a stout Frenchwoman called to demand his business. He asked for
Mademoiselle Verbèna, and was at once shown into a saloon lined with
chairs covered with yellow rep, and begged to take a seat. In two
minutes Mademoiselle Verbèna appeared, drying her eyes with a tiny
pocket-handkerchief, and forcing a little pathetic smile of welcome.
Mr. Greyne clasped her hand in silence. She sat down in a rep chair at
his right, and they looked at each other.
“_Mais, mon Dieu!_ How monsieur is changed!” cried the Levantine. “If
madame could see him! What has happened to monsieur?”
“Miss Verbèna,” replied Mr. Greyne, “I have seen the Ouled on the
heights.”
A spasm crossed the Levantine’s face. She put her handkerchief to it
for a moment.
“What is an Ouled?” she inquired, withdrawing it.
“I dare not tell you,” he replied solemnly.
“But indeed I wish to know, so that I may sympathise with monsieur.”
Mr. Greyne hesitated, but his heart was full; he felt the need of
sympathy. He looked at Mademoiselle Verbèna, and a great longing to
unburden himself overcame him.
“An Ouled,” he replied, “is a dancing-girl from the desert of Sahara.”
“_Mon Dieu!_ How does she dance? Is it a valse, a polka, a quadrille?”
“No. Would that it were!”
And Mr. Greyne, unable further to govern his desire for full
expression, gave Mademoiselle Verbèna a slightly Bowdlerised
description of the dances of the desert. She heard him with amazement.
“How terrible!” she exclaimed when he had finished. “And does one pay
much to see such steps of the Evil One?”
“I gave her twenty pounds. Abdallah Jack⸺”
“Abdallah Jack?”
“My guide informed me that was the price. He tells me it is against the
law, and that each time an Ouled dances she risks being thrown into
prison.”
“Poor lady! How sad to have to earn one’s bread by such devices,
instead of by teaching to the sweet little ones of monsieur the
sympathetic grammar of one’s native country.”
Mr. Greyne was touched to the quick by this allusion, which brought, as
in a vision, the happy home in Belgrave Square before him.
“You are an angel!” he exclaimed.
Mademoiselle Verbèna shook her head.
“And this poor Ouled, you will go to her again?”
“Yes. It seems that she is in communication with all the—the—well, all
the odd people of Algiers, and that one can only get at them through
her.”
“Indeed?”
“Abdallah Jack tells me that while I am here I should pay her a weekly
salary, and that, in return, I shall see all the terrible ceremonies of
the Arabs. I have decided to do so⸺”
“Ah, you have decided!”
For a moment Mr. Greyne started. There seemed a new sound in
Mademoiselle Verbèna’s voice, a gleam in her dark brown eyes.
“Yes,” he said, looking at her in wonder. “But I have not yet told
Abdallah Jack.”
The Levantine looked gently sad again.
“Ah,” she said in her usual pathetic voice, “how my heart bleeds for
this poor Ouled. By the way, what is her name?”
“Aishoush.”
“She is beautiful?”
“I hardly know. She was so painted, so tattooed, so very—so very
different from Mrs. Eustace Greyne.”
“How sad! How terrible! Ah, but you must long for the dear bonnet
strings of madame?”
Did he? As she spoke Mr. Greyne asked himself the question. Shocked
as he was, fatigued by his researches, did he wish that he were back
again in Belgrave Square, drinking barley water, pasting notices of his
wife’s achievements into the new album, listening while she read aloud
from the manuscript of her latest novel? He wondered, and—how strange,
how almost terrible—he was not sure.
“Is it not so?” murmured Mademoiselle Verbèna.
“Naturally I miss my beloved wife,” said Mr. Greyne with a certain
awkwardness. “How is your poor, dear mother?”
Tears came at once into the Levantine’s eyes.
“Very, very ill, monsieur. Still there is a chance—just a chance that
she may not die. Ah, when I sit here all alone in this strange place,
I feel that she will perish, that soon I shall be quite deserted in
this cruel, cruel world!”
The tears began to flow down her cheeks with determination. Mr. Greyne
was terribly upset.
“You must cheer up,” he exclaimed. “You must hope for the best.”
“Sitting here alone, how can I?”
She sobbed.
“Sitting here alone—very true!”
A sudden thought, a number of sudden thoughts, struck him.
“You must not sit here alone.”
“Monsieur!”
“You must come out. You must drive. You must see the town, distract
yourself.”
“But how? Can a—a girl go about alone in Algiers?”
“Heaven forbid! No; I will escort you.”
“Monsieur!”
A smile of innocent, girlish joy transformed her face, but suddenly she
was grave again.
“Would it be right, _convenable_?”
Mr. Greyne was reckless. The dog potential rose up in him again.
“Why not? And, besides, who knows us here? Not a soul.”
“That is true.”
“Put on your bonnet. Let us start at once!”
“But I do not wear the bonnet. I am not like madame.”
“To be sure. Your hat.”
And as she flew to obey him, Mr. Eustace Greyne found himself impiously
thanking the powers that be for this strange chance of going on the
spree with a toque. When Mademoiselle Verbèna returned he was looking
almost rakish. He eyed her neat black hat and close-fitting black
jacket with a glance not wholly unlike that of a militiaman. In her
hand she held a vivid scarlet parasol.
“Monsieur,” she said, “it is terrible, this _ombrelle_, when mamma lies
at death’s door. But what can I do? I have no other, and cannot afford
to buy one. The sun is fierce. I dare not expose myself to it without a
shelter.”
She seemed really distressed as she opened the parasol, and spread
the vivid silk above her pretty black-clothed figure; but Mr.
Greyne thought the effect was brilliant, and ventured to say so. As
they passed the bureau by the fountain on their way out the stout
Frenchwoman cast an approving glance at Mademoiselle Verbèna.
“The little rat will not see much more of the little negro now,” she
murmured to herself. “After all, the English have their uses.”