"It's hell,-isn't it, Trascott?" asked Ainsworth, dismally.
"My dear fellow," protested the shocked curate, "such liberty of
expression, to put it mildly-"
"Fudge!" interrupted his friend. "You divines all agree as to the
existence of an infernal region. Why shouldn't I introduce a comparison
if I choose? If you don't like its rugged exterior you can at least
appreciate the sentiment. It's hell-isn't it?"
"Well, well, it's decidedly unpleasant," grumbled Trascott.
"It's a bally shame!" said the lawyer, tritely. "Britton takes us away
on his uncle's yacht for a cruise of the African shore of the
Mediterranean. Witness our cruise! We get as far as Algiers and there
his two long-suffering comrades have to stagnate while he plays the
gallant to a blonde will-o'-the-wisp whom he made a show of rescuing.
He found her maid, installed her at the Hotel de --, attended to her
remittances from England in her stranded position and played the modern
hero role to a triple curtain call-which he is certainly getting!"
"Of course the yacht had to be repaired," put in Trascott, as if it was
his kindly duty to find some extenuation.
"Of course!" echoed Ainsworth sarcastically, waving a hand to where the
_Mottisfont_, quite intact, rode proudly at anchor.
The two men were standing on the harbor piers above the landing-stages,
and they had a good view of the vessel. Behind them the capital of
Algeria rose precipitously up the sides of an immense hill a mile in
length at the base by five hundred feet in height. The foot of the
picturesque city was the sprawling sea; the head was the Casbah, the
ancient fortress of the Deys. Up on the hill reposed the old or high
town with its quaint Moorish edifices, while sloping below to the rim of
the port lay the lower, new, or French town filled with government
buildings, squares and streets, together with lines of warehouses and
wharves, dotted here and there by mosques that looked strangely out of
place amid the European architecture.
Blocked out against the harbor water from their conspicuous stand, the
two friends were very dissimilar in appearance. Ainsworth's was the
short, squat figure, Trascott's the tall, lanky one. The lawyer, in
spite of the disadvantage of height, probably weighed more than the
curate. His stockily-built body filled out his gray tweeds, while the
black garments of Trascott hung loosely on his hollow frame. A gray cap
of the same material as his suit was jauntily perched on the lawyer's
head, but his companion wore the familiar and inevitable round, dark
hat.
Still, if Trascott's form lost dignity beside Ainsworth's, that dignity
was more than regained when it came to a comparison of faces. The
lawyer had a gray-eyed, regular countenance, smooth and unmarked by any
dissipation, but it lacked the shading that beautified his friend's. The
curate's features, though more rugged in casting, had the high lights of
earnestness glowing in his brown eyes, the deeper tones of endeavor
blending in the moulding of the chin, while the shadows of
responsibility rested in the firm curve of his lips.
Cyril Ainsworth, with his unchanging mask of precision, was the keen,
well-oiled machine which cut straight to the core of things in the
performance of its work. Bertrand Trascott was the living actor of a
great belief, the exponent of a mighty drama calculated to uplift and
regenerate his fellow-beings. Each had his part in the work of the
present-day world, and, strange to say, men loved the machine-like
precision of Ainsworth almost as well as the generous heart of Trascott.
The lawyer again called the curate's attention to the yacht with another
motion of his hand.
"The yacht had to be repaired," he snapped. "It took three days to
splice the timbers and rivet the plates. We should then have proceeded
with our cruise. There was no impediment, for the steamship company
settled the damages in full. Yet here we have been for two weeks-and so
has the woman! At this rate we may be here for two months-and so may
the woman!"
They sat down upon the piers for their after-supper smoke, having fared
sumptuously on board the _Mottisfont_, in an effort to reconcile
themselves to the inertia under which they chafed. The soft dusk began
to glide in from the sea and enfold the dark wharves in misty wreaths.
One by one the riding lanterns of the harbor vessels shone out like
stars in a fog, and the rhythm of an Arab sailor song came swelling over
the broad bay.
The two friends smoked in silence as the dusk grew deeper. Presently
the beacon light flashed up on Matifou ten miles away, sending out its
nightly warning to the ships at sea. A thousand lamps flared in the
lower town, and far up the hill the boulevard lanterns starred the gloom
with their fiery eyes.
"Can you tell me the space of time an Algerian romance requires?" asked
Ainsworth, finally.
Trascott's cheery laugh was the only answer.
"In England," the lawyer mused, "I would give them six weeks. In this
southern climate, where the blood runs hot, the climax must come in less
time, but just how long only Britton knows."
Trascott tapped his pipe upon the pier, refilled it and settled back
with a sigh.
"Do you think this affair is really serious?" he asked, with a certain
earnestness and anxiety.
"Serious!" Ainsworth snorted, "it's the most serious thing that ever
happened him. Do you understand Britton's disposition? He's a
whole-hearted fellow full of generous and chivalric impulses, with a
belief in the goodness of all the feminine sex. He has run against
nothing to knock those notions into chaos. Do you think he can view
that fine-looking woman unmoved? Do you think that she is going to pass
by Reginald Britton, the heir to Britton Hall and old Oliver's estates?
Not if I know anything, Trascott! And mark me, I don't like the woman.
She's fair enough for a lord-but I don't like her. Please remember
that, Trascott."
The curate started, for he had earlier confessed to himself a similar
dislike of the blonde beauty who had taken the yacht and Britton and the
port itself, as well as the great English hotels, by storm. However, he
was too fair-minded not to combat such an antipathy so far unwarranted.
"Why do you not like her?" he asked, seeking perhaps in Ainsworth's
attitude a solution of his own state of mind.
"Intuition, I suppose," the lawyer answered gruffly. "When I see a lady
travelling alone, except for her maid, coming apparently from nowhere
and heading for a destination wholly indefinite, I always regard her
with suspicion. What has Britton learned about this woman? He knows her
name is Maud Morris. He knows she can madden him with those eyes and
lips. That is the extent of his knowledge. Does he know her home, her
county, her family, her support? No! I have questioned Britton, not to
mention warning him-"
"You have!" exclaimed the curate, "and what did he say?"
"Told me to go to that infernal region I mentioned. He can't listen to
sound reason. They never can!"
"Ah, well," sighed Trascott, "I intended dropping a hint, but since
you've anticipated me without result-"
"Might as well talk to a log!" Ainsworth cut in. "I shall be glad when
the thing has run its course and we get out of here. This Algerian
scenery palls on me! If something would only happen to hasten the
climax, it might cheer my heart. I believe I shall hire some dogs of
Arabs to abduct the fair princess and let Britton play the rescuer
somewhere out on the Djujuras."
"It may not be necessary," said Trascott. "He's going to that dance
to-night."
"Yes," muttered the lawyer, "he's been dressing and fussing ever since
supper. There's the launch now!"
The gasoline craft spluttered and danced over the waves to the pier
where Ainsworth and the curate were smoking.
"You lazy duffers," Britton cried, "aren't you going up?"
He stepped out of the launch, a tall, handsome figure in his evening
clothes and top-hat. His paletot hung on his left arm, which was now
entirely well, and as he faced his friends they both thought how
singularly powerful he looked. Broad of shoulder and deep of chest, it
seemed as if the frames of the other two men together would have been
required to equal his bulk. His straight, finely-cut features and blue
eyes held an expression unmistakably aristocratic.
"Aren't you going up?" he repeated.
"We'll look into the reading-room later on," replied Ainsworth. "I
don't care to dance, and it disagrees with Trascott's digestion."
"See you there, then," was his farewell. "Don't forget you can get all
you want to eat in the dining-room for the sum of six francs."
A _fiacre_ pulled up near the wharf at his hail.
"Hotel de --," he said, jumping in with an object-lesson of alacrity.
The driver accepted the hint and dashed away at a swift pace through the
lower town till the long ascent which led up to Mustapha Superieure
compelled him to walk his animal.
The last two weeks had passed for Rex Britton as a single day. Not a
minute of the whole time dragged, for the reason that he had spent every
available minute with Maud Morris. He considered the sojourn, which he
had lengthened day by day, as Paradise-the direct antithesis, in fact,
of Ainsworth's view! He had pursued the wild dream of that first night
on the harbor with all his passionate persistence till it suddenly
ensnared him in its tangible and compelling reality.
The lawyer back on the pier was wishing for something to hasten the
climax. In spite of his faculty of shrewd observation, Ainsworth did
not dream of how deeply Britton was already involved with the woman whom
he, Ainsworth, mistrusted.
It would take a wise man indeed to time and trace the development of a
romance when the setting lies between the pagan Djujuras and the
legend-steeped Mediterranean. Britton would have been filled with
dismay had he stopped to inspect, analyze and adjudge his actions during
those two weeks. His impulses were at riot under the sway of a heavenly
elixir which the woman held to his lips; he never looked back; his mind
was centred on the days ahead, planning a wonderful permanency for the
exotic, filmy atmosphere of present experiences.
As the _fiacre_ climbed the Mustapha Superieure Britton could possess in
vision the whole expanse of the port, the wharves dimly lighted and busy
with the night-labor that the volume of trade enforced, the illuminated
vessels in the wide anchorage and the mingling gleams that marked the
Mustapha Inferieure.
Britton knew every nook of the climbing city, old, by almost a thousand
years, in story and conflict. With the lady of pale-gold beauty he had
explored all the charming retreats of both towns. They had loitered in
the Place Royale amid the orange and lime trees, finding pleasure in
watching the cosmopolitan crowds which thronged that oblong space in the
centre of the city. The traits of character disclosed by
representatives of so many different nations-Moors, Jews and Arabs,
Germans, Spaniards, French, Corsicans, Italians and Maltese, and scores
of other races-proved very interesting to the English observers.
The mild, balmy Algerian evenings seemed temptations to roam abroad, and
the two had grown accustomed to promenade the Bab-el-Ouad and the
Bab-azoun, which ran north and south in a parallel direction for half a
mile. Those walks down the dim vista of flanking colonnades beneath an
ivory moon, the same that lighted the Sahara caravans through the desert
tracts, intoxicated senses and blood alike.
They had delved into the _djamas_, or superior mosques, the _mesjids_,
or inferior ones, and the _marabouts_, which were the tombs or
sanctuaries of the ancient Moorish saints; they had plunged into the
market rabbles on the Squares de Chartres, d'Isly and Mahon, lolled in
the Parisian-like boulevards and arcades of the new town, sat upon the
flat-roofed, prison-windowed houses at sunset to catch the tang of the
sweeping sea-wind on their faces, journeyed in the yacht as far as the
lighthouse on Cape Matifou and the forbidding brow of Cape Caxine, or
stretched their land-legs in the ascent of the narrow, jagged street
called the Casbah that led up to the old Moorish fortress of the same
name perched high on the steep, and commanding all Algiers.
Standing on the height of the Mustapha Superieure where the _fiacre_ had
left him in front of the hotel piazza, Britton felt as if under some
binding spell which the land of the sheik had cast upon him, a spell
from which he would not willingly escape, for the delicious, cobwebby
fetters only thrilled instead of chafing.
Dismissing his driver with a liberal fee, Britton ran lightly up the
steps of the magnificent hostelry, resplendent with blazing lights and
ornate structural patterns designed to rival the architectural beauties
of the other fashionable resorts that contested for the patronage of the
most select people who came to stay at Algiers.
The obsequious concierge, stationed in the hall to look after
new-comers, directed a servant to appropriate Britton's coat and hat and
bowed the Englishman toward the reception-room with a flood of welcoming
French.
The reception-room-which some took the liberty of calling the
morning-room-was a cosy, oak-panelled, damask-hung chamber where hotel
inmates and visitors could meet or wait for friends. It gave one the
impression of being very well appointed with rugs, round tables,
leather-covered chairs, cushioned divans, pictures, mantels and
window-seats.
At Britton's entrance the solitary occupant of the reception-room rose
from a divan. She came forward with a glad, excited light beautifying
her face, the filmy, silver-colored gown she wore sweeping gracefully
about her slim, exquisite figure.
Quite close to Britton she paused and took hold of the lapels of his
coat, smoothing them with her soft white fingers.
Had the lawyer been there to see, this action would have settled once
for all the question of Britton's relation to Maud Morris. In her
movement was the suggestion of intimate possession never to be mistaken
for anything else. It told more than could be expressed in whole
chapters of explanation.
"The dance has begun," she murmured, looking up, her eyes soft and
shining beneath the burnished gold of her hair, "and everybody has gone
either to take part or to watch. You are somewhat late, aren't you?"
"Yes, I am late," Britton said softly-"later than I thought, but I am
glad, for my tardiness lets me meet you like this!" He nodded around
the empty room.
She smiled into Britton's dancing eyes. He laid his hands gently upon
hers, and the touch brought the delicate rose to her cheek, but the
concierge's rapid French jabber warned them. Someone was approaching the
reception-room. She slipped a hand in Britton's arm and turned to the
door.
"Let us go to the concert-room," she said simply.
Britton bowed courteously as an attache from the British Consulate
entered with a party of ladies, and they went out amid the customary
admiring stares.
They passed the rooms whence came the rattle of ping-pong, the whirr of
billiards or the almost noiseless shuffle of bridge, and finally came to
the ballroom. A ravishing Hungarian waltz swelled up from the palm
screens which hid the orchestra; a hundred couples tripped the glassy
floor-space, the conventional black-and-white attire of the gentlemen
lending an effective contrast to the wonderful, daring toilettes of the
ladies.
Everybody portrayed supreme happiness as well as a nice consciousness of
what was correct, and everybody seemed to be trying to outdo everyone
else in the ardor of enjoyment.
Not least by any means among the joy-seekers was Rex Britton.
His arm encircled his companion's waist and they stepped out, the
handsomest couple in the room, swaying a second to the time of the
orchestra. Then they glided away, captivated by the pulsating strains
of the waltz, and lost themselves in the maze.