Lindy nods and keeps right on bastin" the sleeve.
"But how did you ever come to marry such a person, Lindy?" Sadie demands.
Carlos executes another smile at this and bows polite. "It was my fault," says he. "I was in England, waiting for a little affair that happened in Barcelona to blow over. By chance I saw her in her father"s shop. Ah, you may find it difficult to believe now, Madam, but she was quite charming,--cheeks flushed like dawn on the desert, eyes like the sea, and limbs as lithe as an Arab maiden"s! I talked. She listened. My English was poor; but it is not always words that win. These British girls, though! They cannot fully understand romance. It was she who insisted on marriage. I cared not a green fig. What to me was the mumbling of a churchman, I who cared not for the priests of my mother nor the rabbi of my father? Pah! Two weeks later I gave her some money and left her. Once more in the mountains of Spain I could breathe again--and I made the first English we caught settle the whole bill.
That is how it came to be, Madam. Ask her."
Sadie looks at Lindy, who nods. "Father drove me out when I went back,"
says she; "so I came over here. Carlos had told me where to write. You got all my letters, did you, Carlos?"
"Oh, yes," says he. Then, turnin" to Sadie, "A wonderful writer of letters, Madam,--one every month!"
"Then you knew about little Carlos?" puts in Lindy. "It was a pity. Such lovely big black eyes. He was nearly two. I wish you could have seen him."
"I also had regret," says Carlos. "I read that letter many times. It was because of that, I think, that I continued to read the others, and was at pains to have them sent to me. They would fill a hamper, all of them."
"What!" says Sadie. "After you knew the kind of monster he was, Lindy, did you keep on writing to him?"
"But he was still my husband," protested Lindy.
"Bah!" says Sadie, throwin" a scornful glance at the Pasha.
Don Carlos he spreads out his hands, and shrugs his shoulders. "These English!" says he. "At first I laughed at the letters. They would come at such odd times; for you can imagine, Madam, that my life has been--well, not as the saints". And to many different women have I read bits of these letters that came from so far,--to dancing girls, others.
Some laughed with me, some wept. One tried to stab me with a dagger afterward. Women are like that. You never know when they will change into serpents. All but this one. Think! Month after month, year after year, letters, letters; about nothing much, it is true, but wishing me good health, happiness, asking me to have care for myself, and saying always that I was loved! Well? Can one go on laughing at things like that? Once I was dangerously hurt, a spearthrust that I got near Biskra, and the letter came to me where I lay in my tent. It was like a soothing voice, comforting one in the dark. Since then I have watched for those letters. When chance brought me to this side of the world, I found myself wishing for sight of the one who could remain ever the same, could hold the faith in the faithless for so long. So here I am."
"Yes, and you ought to be in jail," says Sadie emphatic. "But, since you"re not, what do you propose doing next?"
"I return day after to-morrow," says Don Carlos, "and if the lady who is my wife so wills it she shall go with me."
"Oh, shall she!" says Sadie sarcastic. "Where to, pray?"
"To El Kurfah," says he.
"And just where," says Sadie, "is that?"
"Three days by camel south from Moorzook," says he. "It is an oasis in the Libyan Desert."
"Indeed!" says Sadie. "And what particular business are you engaged in there,--gambling, robbing, slave selling, or----"
"In El Kurfah," breaks in Don Carlos, bowin" dignified, "I am Pasha Dar Bunda, Minister of Foreign Affairs and chief business agent to Hamid-al-Illa; who, as you may know, is one of the half-dozen rulers claiming to be Emperor of the Desert. Frankly, I admit he has no right to such a t.i.tle; but neither has any of the others. Hamid, however, is one of the most up-to-date and successful of all the desert chieftains.
My presence here is proof of that. I came to arrange for large shipments of dates and ivory, and to take back to Hamid an automobile and the latest phonograph records."
"I don"t like automobiles," says Lindy, finishin" up the sleeve.
"Neither does Hamid," says Pasha; "but he says we ought to have one standing in front of the royal palace to impress the hill tribesmen when they come in. Do you go back to El Kurfah with me, Mrs. Vogel?"
"Yes," says Lindy, rollin" up her ap.r.o.n.
"But, Lindy!" gasps Sadie. "To such a place, with such a man!"
"He is my husband, you know," says she.
And Lindy seems to think when she"s put that over that she"s said all there was to say on the subject. Sadie protests and threatens and begs.
She reminds her what a deep-dyed villain this Carlos party is, and forecasts all sorts of dreadful things that will likely happen to her if she follows him off. But it"s all wasted breath.
And all the while Pasha Dar Bunda, alias Don Carlos Vogel, stands there smilin" polite and waitin" patient. But in the end he walks out triumphant, with Lindy, holdin" her little black bag in one hand and her old umbrella in the other, followin" along in his wake.
Then last Friday we went down to one of them Mediterranean steamers to see "em actually start. And, say, this slim, graceful party in the snappy gray travelin" dress, with the smart lid and all the gray veils on, looks about as much like the Lindy we"d known as a hard-boiled egg looks like a frosted cake. Lindy has bloomed out.
"And when we get to El Kurfah guess what Carlos is going to give me!"
she confides to Sadie. "A riding camel and Batime. He"s one of the best camel drivers in the place, Batime. And I have learned to salaam and say "Allah il Allah." Everyone must do that there. And in our garden are dates and oranges growing. Only fancy! There will be five slaves to wait on me, and when we go to the palace I shall wear gold bracelets on my ankles. Won"t that seem odd? It"s rather warm in El Kurfah, you know; but I sha"n"t mind. Early in the morning, when it is cool, I shall ride out into the sandhills with Carlos. He is going to teach me how to shoot a lion."
She was chatterin" along like a schoolgirl, and when the boat pulls out of the slip she waves jaunty to us. Don Carlos, leanin" over the rail alongside of her, gazes at her sort of admirin".
"El Kurfah, eh?" says I to Sadie. "That"s missin" the Old Ladies" Home by some margin, ain"t it?"
CHAPTER X
A CASE OF n.o.bODY HOME
"Yes," says J. Bayard Steele, adjustin" the chin part in his whiskers and tiltin" back comf"table in his chair, "I am beginning to think that the late Pyramid Gordon must have been a remarkably good judge of human nature."
"For instance?" says I.
"His selection of me as an executor of his whimsical will," says he.
"Huh!" says I. "How some people do dislike themselves! Now, if you want to know my views on that subject, J. B., I"ve always thought that was one of his battiest moves."
But he"s got a hide like a sample trunk, Mr. Steele has. He only shrugs his shoulders. "Yes, you have given me similar subtle hints to that effect," says he. "And I will admit that at first I had doubts as to my fitness. The doing of kind and generous acts for utter strangers has not been a ruling pa.s.sion with me. But so far I have handled several a.s.signments--in which have I failed?"
"Look who"s been coachin" you, though!" says I.
J. Bayard bows and waves a manicured hand graceful. "True," he goes on, "your advice has been invaluable on occasions, friend McCabe; especially in the early stages of my career as a commissioned agent of philanthropy. But I rather fancy that of late I have developed an altruistic instinct of my own; an instinct, if I may say so, in which kindly zeal is tempered by a certain amount of practical wisdom."
"Fine!" says I. "Bein" a little floral tribute, I take it, from Mr.
Steele to himself."
"Unless it should occur to you, McCabe," says he, "to make the distinction between offensive egoism and pardonable pride."
"I don"t get you," says I; "but I feel the jab. Anyhow, it"s instructin"
and elevatin" to hear you run on. Maybe you"ve got somethin" special on your mind?"
"I have," says he, producin" an envelope with some notes scribbled on the back.
"Is that No. 6 on the list?" says I. "Who"s the party?"