"Because there"s hardly a thief in Algiers mean enough to steal from Jeanne Soubise, who gives half she has to the poor. And because, if there were one so mean, Haroun el Raschid would soon let her know what was going on," said Nevill. "His latest disguise is that of a parrot, but he may change it for something else at any moment."
Then Stephen saw, suspended among the crystal chandeliers and antique lamps, a bra.s.s cage, shaped like a domed palace. In this cage, in a coral ring, sat a grey parrot who regarded the two young men with jewel-eyes that seemed to know all good and evil.
"He yells if any stranger comes into the shop when his mistress is out,"
Nevill explained. "I am an humble friend of His Majesty"s, so he says nothing. I gave him to Mademoiselle Jeanne."
Perhaps their voices had been heard. At all events, there was a light tapping of heels on unseen stairs, and from behind a red-curtained doorway appeared a tall young woman, dressed in black.
She was robust as well as tall, and Stephen thought she looked rather like a handsome Spanish boy; yet she was feminine enough in her outlines. It was the frank and daring expression of her face and great black eyes which gave the look of boyishness. She had thick, straight eyebrows, a large mouth that was beautiful when she smiled, to show perfect teeth between the red lips that had a faint, shadowy line of down above them.
"Ah, Monsieur Nevill Caird!" she exclaimed, in English, with a full voice, and a French accent that was pretty, though not Parisian. She smiled at Stephen, too, without waiting to be introduced. "Monsieur Caird is always kind in bringing his friends to me, and I am always glad to see them."
"I"ve brought Mr. Knight, not to buy, but to ask a favour," said Nevill.
"To buy, too," Stephen hastened to cut in. "I see things I can"t live without. I must own them."
"Well, don"t set your heart on anything Mademoiselle Soubise won"t sell.
She bought everything with the idea of selling it, she admits, but now she"s got them here, there are some things she can"t make up her mind to part with at any price."
"Oh, only a few tiles--and some Jewish embroideries--and bits of jewellery--and a rug or two or a piece of pottery--and maybe _one_ copy of the Koran, and a beggar"s bowl," Jeanne Soubise excused herself, hastily adding more and more to her list of exceptions, as her eyes roved wistfully among her treasures. "Oh, and an amphora just dug up near Timgad, with Roman oil still inside. It"s a beauty. Will you come down to the cellar to look at it?"
Nevill thanked her, and reserved the pleasure for another time. Then he inquired what was the latest news from Mademoiselle Josette at Tlemcen; and when he heard that there was nothing new, he told the lady of the curiosity-shop what was the object of the early visit.
"But of course I have heard of Ben Halim, and I have seen him, too," she said; "only it was long ago--maybe ten years. Yes, I could not have been seventeen. It is already long that he went away from Algiers, no one knows where. Now he is said to be dead. Have you not heard of him, Monsieur Nevill? You must have. He lived at Djenan el Hadj; close to the Jardin d"Essai. You know the place well. The new rich Americans, Madame Jewett and her daughter, have it now. There was a scandal about Ben Halim, and then he went away--a scandal that was mysterious, because every one talked about it, yet no one knew what had happened--never surely at least."
"I told you Mademoiselle would be able to give you information!"
exclaimed Nevill. "I felt sure the name was familiar, somehow, though I couldn"t think how. One hears so many Arab names, and generally there"s a "Ben" or a "Bou" something or other, if from the South."
"Flan-ben-Flan," laughed Jeanne Soubise. "That means," she explained, turning to Stephen, "So and So, son of So and So. It is strange, a young lady came inquiring about Ben Halim only yesterday afternoon; such a pretty young lady. I was surprised, but she said they had told her in her hotel I knew everything that had ever happened in Algiers. A nice compliment to my age. I am not so old as that! But," she added, with a frank smile, "all the hotels and guides expect commissions when they send people to me. I suppose they thought this pretty girl fair game, and that once in my place she would buy. So she did. She bought a string of amber beads. She liked the gold light in them, and said it seemed as if she might see a vision of something or some one she wanted to find, if she gazed through the beads. Many a good Mussulman has said his prayers with them, if that could bring her luck."
The two young men looked at one another.
"Did she tell you her name?" Stephen asked.
"But yes; she was Mees Ray, and named for the dead Queen Victoria of England, I suppose, though American. And she told me other things. Her sister, she said, married a Captain Ben Halim of the Spahis, and came with him to Algiers, nearly ten years ago. Now she is looking for the sister."
"We"ve met Miss Ray," said Nevill. "It"s on her business we"ve come. We didn"t know she"d already been to you, but we might have guessed some one would send her. She didn"t lose much time."
"She wouldn"t," said Stephen. "She isn"t that kind."
"I knew nothing of the sister," went on Mademoiselle Soubise. "I could hardly believe at first that Ben Halim had an American wife. Then I remembered how these Mohammedan men can hide their women, so no one ever knows. Probably no one ever did know, otherwise gossip would have leaked out. The man may have been jealous of her. You see, I have Arab acquaintances. I go to visit ladies in the harems sometimes, and I hear stories when anything exciting is talked of. You can"t think how word flies from one harem to another--like a carrier-pigeon! This could never have been a matter of gossip--though it is true I was young at the time."
"You think, then, he would have shut her up?" asked Nevill. "That"s what I feared."
"But of course he would have shut her up--with another wife, perhaps."
"Good Heavens!" exclaimed Stephen. "The poor child has never thought of that possibility. She says he promised her sister he would never look at any other woman."
"Ah, the promise of an Arab in love! Perhaps she did not know the Arabs--that sister. It is only the men of princely families who take but one wife. And he would not tell her if he had already looked at another woman. He would be sure, no matter how much in love a Christian girl might be, she would not marry a man who already had a wife."
"We might find out that," suggested Stephen.
"It would be difficult," said the Frenchwoman. "I can try, among Arabs I know, but though they like to chat with Europeans, they will not answer questions. They resent that we should ask them, though they are polite.
As for you, if you ask men, French or Arab, you will learn nothing. The French would not know. The Arabs, if they did, would not tell. They must not talk of each other"s wives, even among themselves, much less to outsiders. You can ask an Arab about anything else in the world, but not his wife. That is the last insult."
"What a country!" Stephen e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed.
"I don"t know that it has many more faults than others," said Nevill, defending it, "only they"re different."
"But about the scandal that drove Ben Halim away?" Stephen ventured on.
"Strange things were whispered at the time, I remember, because Ben Halim was a handsome man and well known. One looked twice at him in his uniform when he went by on a splendid horse. I believe he had been to Paris before the scandal. What he did afterwards no one can say. But I could not tell Mees Ray what I had heard of that scandal any more than I would tell a young girl that almost all Europeans who become harem women are converted to the religion of Islam, and that very likely the sister wasn"t Ben Halim"s first wife."
"Can you tell us of the scandal, or--would you rather not talk of the subject?" Stephen hesitated.
"Oh, I can tell you, for it would not hurt your feelings. People said Ben Halim flirted too much with his Colonel"s beautiful French wife, who died soon afterwards, and her husband killed himself. Ben Halim had not been considered a good officer before. He was too fond of pleasure, and a mad gambler; so at last it was made known to him he had better leave the army of his own accord if he did not wish to go against his will; at least, that was the story."
"Of course!" exclaimed Nevill. "It comes back to me now, though it all happened before I lived in Algiers. Ben Halim sold his house and everything in it to a Frenchman who went bankrupt soon after. It"s pa.s.sed through several hands since. I go occasionally to call on Mrs.
Jewett and her daughter."
"It is said they wish you would call oftener, Monsieur Caird."
Nevill turned red. Stephen thought he could understand, and hid a smile.
No doubt Nevill was a great "catch" in Algerian society. And he was in love with a teacher of Arab children far away in Tlemcen, a girl "poor as a church mouse," who wouldn"t listen to him! It was a quaint world; as quaint in Africa as elsewhere.
"What did you tell Miss Ray?" Nevill hurried to ask.
"That Ben Halim had left Algiers nine years ago, and had never been heard of since. When I saw she did not love his memory, I told her people believed him to be dead; and this rumour might be true, as no news of him has ever come back. But she turned pale, and I was sorry I had been so frank. Yet what would you? Oh, and I thought of one more thing, when she had gone, which I might have mentioned. But perhaps there is nothing in it. All the rest of the day I was busy with many customers, so I was tired at night, otherwise I would have sent a note to her hotel. And this morning since six I have been hurrying to get off boxes and things ordered by some Americans for a ship which sails at noon. But you will tell the young lady when you see her, and that will be better than my writing, because sending a note would make it seem too important. She might build hopes, and it would be a pity if they did explode."
Both men laughed a little at this ending of the Frenchwoman"s sentence, but Stephen was more impatient than Nevill to know what was to come next. He grudged the pause, and made her go on.
"It is only that I remember my sister telling me, when she was at home last year for a holiday, about a Kabyle servant girl who waits on her in Tlemcen. The girl is of a great intelligence, and my sister takes an interest in her. Josette teaches her many things, and they talk.
Mouni--that is the Kabyle"s name--tells of her home life to my sister.
One thing she did was to serve a beautiful foreign lady in the house of a rich Arab. She was only a child then, not more than thirteen, for such girls grow up early; but she has always thought about that lady, who was good to her, and very sad. Mouni told Josette she had never seen any one so beautiful, and that her mistress had hair of a natural colour, redder than hair dyed with henna and powdered with gold dust. It was this describing of the hair which brought the story back to my head when Miss Ray had gone, because she has hair like that, and perhaps her sister had it too."
"By Jove, we"ll run over to Tlemcen in the car, and see that Kabyle girl," Nevill eagerly proposed, carefully looking at his friend, and not at Jeanne Soubise. But she raised her eyebrows, then drew them together, and her frank manner changed. With that shadow of a frown, and smileless eyes and lips, there was something rather formidable about the handsome young woman.
"Mees Ray may like to manage all her own beesiness," she remarked. And it occurred to Stephen that it would be a propitious moment to choose such curios as he wished to buy. In a few moments Mademoiselle Soubise was her pleasant self again, indicating the best points of the things he admired, and giving him their history.
"There"s apparently a conspiracy of silence to keep us from finding out anything about Miss Ray"s sister as Ben Halim"s wife," he said to Nevill when they had left the curiosity-shop. "Also, what has become of Ben Halim."
"You"ll learn that there"s always a conspiracy of silence in Africa, where Arabs are concerned," Nevill answered. There was a far-off, fatal look in his eyes as he spoke, those blue eyes which seemed at all times to see something that others could not see. And again the sense of an intangible, illusive, yet very real mystery of the East, which he had felt for a moment before landing, oppressed Stephen, as if he had inhaled too much smoke from the black incense of Tombouctou.
XI