A Tatter of Scarlet Part 15

The "Children" of the Milanese regiment could hardly keep their lines.

We front-rank men felt an impulse as if someone were pus.h.i.+ng us from behind. It was the concentred yearning of a thousand men.

Our officers kept whispering to us, "Stand firm. Not just now. He will return. See how the Tanara regiment is standing--would you have them put us to shame before our father?" So the Milanese men stood quivering each like a tuning-fork while their General pa.s.sed by. Bordone was with him, and Ricciotti rode on the side farthest from the lines. I saw him clearly, and noted the waxen pallor of his face. But his eye was still bright, and the smile kindly on his lips as he pa.s.sed down the lines. It was the face of a philosopher, a thinker, or a prophet, rather than that of the greatest leader of irregular troops the world had ever seen. But when the carriage turned at the end of the square, the men could no longer be held. They surrounded the old barouche, hanging round it in cl.u.s.ters, like grapes, or more exactly like bees about their queen in her summer flight. Hugh Deventer and I stood a little back, for we felt that this was, as one might say, a family matter, and no concern of ours. But Ricciotti spied us out, and putting his horse into the press, brought us forward to introduce us personally to his father.

The old man extended his hand which, instead of kissing, we shook in the English fas.h.i.+on. The difference pleased him.

"It is like Sicily to see you here. I had once over eight hundred of you, and not a white feather or a faint heart among them all. I trusted them as I trusted my children. They were as my children. Well may I love England. They fought for me seeking no reward, and afterwards when there was talk of expelling me, they bought my island and gave it to me, so that none could take it away for ever."

He moved on, nodding his head and smiling, while Bordone glooming on the seat opposite seemed vastly relieved. Ricciotti was in high spirits.

"The Chief is better to-day than I have seen him for years," he confided to us. "He said we had done well against Manteuffel--yes, even I, his son whom he never praises."

Victor Dor and Marius Girr came and shook hands with us repeatedly. It was an honour to the company that the General had so distinguished us, and would we tell them what he had said--yes, every word.

From their archway Keller and Linn had beheld, one standing on either side of the door, and a slight vibration of the window curtains suggested that perhaps Alida herself was not wholly without curiosity.

Then the troops were dismissed. The town was placarded with the white oblongs reserved for Government proclamations. The Armistice (they said) had been concluded with the Emperor of Germany, but in the meantime its army of the Vosges was to remain under arms for the reason that poor Bourbaki's army of the East was excepted from the cessation of hostilities. At first no one could imagine why, because it was now little more than a broken troop, hardly able to fight a rearguard action, and ready to be driven through the peris.h.i.+ng cold of the mountain pa.s.ses to surrender to a Swiss colonel beyond the frontier.

Later the truth appeared. By their own politicians the army of the East had been wholly overlooked and forgotten! And Bismarck, irritated by the stubborn resistance of Denfert at Belfort, was willing to take advantage of this fact to overrun two additional French departments.

Thus it came to pa.s.s that we remained full three weeks more kicking our heels in Autun. We were allowed to make our own arrangements for _billets de logement_, which carried us naturally to the house in the square inhabited by Keller Bey, his wife Linn, and--Alida.

The officers all knew that the war was over and chafed at the delay. So I think did most of the soldiers excepting ourselves. Hugh and I alone were content, of all the army of the Vosges encamped in and about Autun.

CHAPTER XVII

A DESERT PRINCESS

We occupied the two big gable rooms looking east on the second floor of the Kellers' house in the market square of Autun. This suited us admirably, though we were obliged to keep quiet so as not to disturb Alida, who had the corresponding suite on the first floor below. We found that the room in the entresol where we had slept the first night was the proper bedroom of Keller and Linn his wife.

But as a matter of habit, neither of them appeared to care very much for a regular night's rest. You would catch them, indeed, closing their eyes after dinner over a newspaper, or when Alida was practising on her n.o.ble grand piano, the chief pride and luxury of the Keller house.

But Hugh and I, who slept with our door of communication open in order to talk to one another in case of sleeplessness, could hear Keller and Linn moving about at all hours of the night down in the silence of the ground floor--sometimes advertising their presence by a little silvery rattle of gla.s.s set on a tray, the dull fall of a log on the chimney and irons, or the curious slip-shuffle of Linn's walk. Sometimes, too, we heard voices, but that not often. Once about the end of the first week, when I could not sleep, I slipped down for a stroll about the town. It was half-past two of a black February morning, and the snow swirls were waltzing like spinning tops all about the market square. But there in the archway, his back to the carven lintel, stood Keller Bey, calmly smoking his pipe and looking out on the black turmoil as though it had been the cool of an August evening. Linn heard us talking, and came quickly to see who was there. Even at that hour she was in her ordinary dress, and she dried her hands composedly on a long sheath ap.r.o.n of blue _toile nationale_.

"Why are you not asleep?" she demanded sharply. "Keller, you are teaching this young man bad habits."

His wife's accusation only made Keller wag his head wisely. Instantly I took all blame upon myself. I had not been able to sleep, I said, I was ashamed to disturb Deventer by my restlessness.

"You drank too much of that black coffee last night, Monsieur Auguste"

(thus had Angus gone wrong). "I must ration you in future, so that you can get your natural sleep as young folks should."

I hastened out into the night with Keller's huge "pellerine" cast about my shoulders, and the hood reaching my ears. It was a comfortable garment of some unknown African cloth, rough as frieze and warm as wool.

The sudden dashes of snow swooping upon me were turned victoriously aside by its formidable brown folds, and I felt as I wandered in the black of the streets with the buildings towering dim and shadowy above me, like one who in a storm has by some magic carried his house along with him.

No soldiers were bivouacking in the streets that night. The squares were void of bonfires. All the red s.h.i.+rts 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 ma.s.s 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 s.p.a.ces. 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 ma.s.ses, 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 pa.s.sing 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.

"Augoos Cawdori--Augoos, 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. Augoos 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 cus.h.i.+ons 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 b.u.t.ton 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, wis.h.i.+ng that I had spent less time on Greek and Latin at the _Lycee_ St. Andre.

"Then you must learn--you must--I shall teach you to speak, and your father shall drill you in the verbs. Listen, Augoos 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d who is the G.o.d 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, Augoos 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 cus.h.i.+ons 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-a-a-ch!"