A Tatter of Scarlet: Adventurous Episodes of the Commune in the Midi 1871

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.

"Aügoos Cawdori – Aügoos, 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. Aügoos 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 Lycée St. André.

"Then you must learn – you must – I shall teach you to speak, and your father shall drill you in the verbs. Listen, Aügoos 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, Aügoos 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-ä-ä-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-Préfet'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!"

CHAPTER XVIII

THE PRINCESS COMMANDS

We slept late the next morning, Hugh and I. Indeed, Hugh always slept late unless he had the luck to be awakened. We did not breakfast till Linn had returned from her watch-dog march along with Alida to the house of the Sous-Préfet.

There was now no regular drill, and instead of roll-call it was regarded sufficient if we reported to the guard which remained in permanence playing at cards and "bouchon" under the central bastion of the fort. This Hugh and I did, remaining a little while to gossip with Victor Dor and others of our company who were lounging about the barrack square. I fear that during those weeks we passed for rather sulky dogs who would not share our bone with our neighbours. For, having little to do, the young fellows of the first Milanese often followed with admiring eyes the daily progress of Alida and Linn in the direction of the Sous-Préfecture. We had requests for introductions even from the younger officers, but all such we referred to Keller Bey, knowing that the old man would be able to deal with any intrusion. And indeed matters stopped there till the regiment was disbanded, and the Italians were sent home at the expense of the French Republic.

Meantime we continued, as Saunders McKie would have said, "living at hack and manger," free of the privileges of the house of Keller Bey and Linn his wife.

Since Alida had taken my advice and written to her father that she would not marry the brown man, nor leave the life for which he had educated her for that of the harem, she had treated me as an intimate friend and adviser. We had long talks together, so often and so long, indeed, that I could see that Keller Bey and Linn were seriously troubled. Perhaps they were a little jealous also, but for all that they did not dream of opposing their wills to the slightest wish of their ward.

"What shall I do when you are gone?" Alida cried one day. It was still early forenoon, for the Sous-Préfet's lady had to attend a Government function. Besides, it was a dismalish day outside with a low crawl of leaden clouds overhead, and along the horizon only one swiftly eclipsed streak of gold bead-work to show where the sunshine was at work.

"I can not stay on here, content with only the round of teaching visits, and the love of these two good souls! 'I have had playmates – I have had companions,' as your poet sings, and now there is you – and Hugh – who have come to me to show me how lonely I was."

She thought a while, and then in her imperious way she sketched a programme.