"No," said the lawyer, "the woman he is speaking to."
"Mirza?" exclaimed the commandant.
"Yes," said the lawyer. "The centre of affairs, since the world was sent spinning, has always been a woman. Who placed the primal curse of labor on the race? Was it the man, Adam, or the woman, Eve?"
"As I remember," said the commandant, "the serpent was the prime mover in that affair."
"Yes," said the lawyer; "but being "more subtile than any beast in the field," he knew that if he caught the woman the man would follow of his own accord. Julius Caesar and Antony were dwarfed by Cleopatra. Helen of Troy set the world ablaze. Joan of Arc saved France. Catharine I saved Peter the Great. Catharine II made Russia. Marie Antoinette ruled Louis XVI and lost a crown and her head. Fat Anne of England and Sarah Jennings united England and Scotland. Eugenie and the milliners lost Alsace and Lorraine. Victoria made her country the mistress of the world. I have named many women who have played great parts in this drama which we call life. How many of them were good women? By "good" I do not mean virtuous, but simply "good.""
"Out of your list," said the commandant, "I should name Joan of Arc and Victoria."
"A woman," repeated the lawyer, "is the centre of every affair. When you go back to France, what are you looking forward to?"
"My wife"s kiss," said the commandant. "And you, since you are a bachelor?"
"The scolding of my housekeeper," said the lawyer, and he shrugged his shoulders.
The commandant laughed. "But what of Mirza?" he asked. "Why is she so powerful?"
"For the same reason that your wife and my housekeeper are powerful,"
said the lawyer; "she is a woman."
"A woman here," said the commandant, "is a slave."
"A _good_ woman, I grant you," said the lawyer, "but a _bad_ woman, if she chance to be beautiful, is an empress. Do you know how many men it takes to officer a mosque of the first cla.s.s, such a one as we have here? Twelve," and he dropped the cards and began to count his fingers.
"Two _mueddins_ the chaps that call to prayer; two _tolbas_ who read the litanies; two _hezzabin_, who read the Koran; a _mufti_ who interprets the law; a _khetib_ who recites the prayer for the chief of the government each Friday, and who is very unpopular; an _iman_ who reads the five daily prayers; a _chaouch_ who is a secretary to the last of the list, the _oukil_ who collects the funds and pays them out.
The _oukil_ is the man who governs the mosque. He is the man in the green turban whom you saw talking with Mirza. They are partners. He attends to the world, she to the flesh, and both to the devil. It is a strong partnership. It is what, in America, they call a "trust." The _oukil_ sends his clients to Mirza, and she sends hers to the _oukil_.
Look out of the window again. There are three thousand religionists who have pa.s.sed through the hands of the _oukil_ and Mirza, and she, making the most money, has the last word. Do you ask, now, why she is the most powerful person in Biskra?"
"It seems," said the commandant, "that it is because she is a woman, and is bad."
"And beautiful," added the lawyer.
"Do you think her beautiful?" asked the commandant.
The lawyer thought a moment. "Did you ever see a hunting-leopard?" he asked.
"No," said the commandant.
"I used to see them," said the lawyer, "when I was in Sumatra, looking after the affairs of some Frenchmen who were buying pearls from the oyster-beds of Arippo. They were horribly beautiful. Mirza reminds me of them, especially when she seizes her prey. Most beasts of prey are satisfied when they have killed all that they can devour; but the hunting-leopard kills because she loves to kill. So does Mirza. She destroys because she loves to destroy. A hunting-leopard and Mirza are the only two absolutely cruel creatures I have ever seen. Of course,"
he added, "I eliminate the English, who deem the day misspent unless they have killed something, and who give infinite pains and tenderness to the raising of pheasants, that they may slaughter a record number of them at a _battue_. Aside from a hunting-leopard and a hunting- Englishman, I know of no being so cruel as Mirza; no being that takes such delight in mere extermination. They used to call our n.o.bility, in the time of Louis XIV and Louis XV, cruel, but they did not kill, they merely taxed. In the height of the ancient _regime_, it was not good form to kill a peasant, because then the country had one less taxpayer. The height of the art was to take all the peasant had and then to induce him to set to work again. When he had earned another surplus, his lord came and took it. France had an accomplished n.o.bility. England had a brutal one. The latter used to take all the eggs out of the nest and then kill the hen. The French n.o.ble took all the eggs but one or two, and spared the hen. He could rob a nest a dozen times and his English contemporary could rob it but once."
"My friend," said the commandant, laughing, "you rea.s.sure me. When you begin comparing England with France, I know that you have nothing of importance at hand and that your mind is kicking up its heels in vacation. You have a charming mind, my friend, but it has been prost.i.tuted to the law. If you had been bred a soldier--"
He stopped, because the murmur of the square suddenly stopped. The cessation of a familiar clamor is more startling than a sudden cry. The two men ran to the window. The fires under the pots were still burning and the square was light as day. At the opposite side, where the caravan road debouched, three thousand white-robed Mussulmans stood, silent. Above them the commandant and the lawyer could see the heads of the six _spahis_, they and their horses silent. Beyond, were the heads of many camels. The commandant threw up the sash. Across the silent square came a woman"s voice, speaking Arabic in the dialect of Ouled Nail.
"That is Mirza," said the lawyer.
Then there came a man"s voice, evidently in reply.
"That is Abdullah," said the lawyer.
"How can you distinguish at this distance?" asked the commandant.
The lawyer shrugged his shoulders. "While you are drilling your soldiers," he said, "I am drilling myself. If a man yonder sneezes, I can name his tribe. A sneeze, being involuntary, cannot be artificial, and therefore it is the true index of race and character. Take the Oriental Express any night from Paris to Vienna. If you will sit up late enough and walk up and down the aisle, you may tell from the sneezes and the coughs the nationality of the occupant of each berth. A German sneezes with all his might, and if there is a compatriot within hearing he says, "_Gesundheit_." An Italian sneezes as if it were a crime, with his hand over his face."
"Hush," said the commandant.
Out from the white-robed crowd came two forms, Mirza and the _oukil_.
Mirza held a paper in her hand. They went to the nearest fire and Mirza gave the paper to the man with the green turban. He read it, thought a moment, read it again, and then the two went back to the silent crowd by the mosque. There was conversation, there were vehement exclamations which, if they had been in English, would have been oaths--there was a sudden movement of the horses and the camels; the outskirts of the crowd surged and broke, and then, above their heads, flashed the sabres of the _spahis_.
The commandant went to the door. "Corporal," he said, "take your men to the mosque, join your comrades, and bring to me Abdullah, his wife, Mirza, and the _oukil_."
The corporal saluted, gave an order, and the little troop trotted across the square. The commandant closed the shutters of the window.
"I do not care to see the row," he said, and he lit a cigarette. But if he did not see the row, he heard it, for presently came the yelp and snarl of an Oriental mob.
"It is growing warm," said the commandant. "Hospitality cannot be lightly practised here."
"Nor anywhere," said the lawyer, who had resumed his cards; "because it is a virtue, and the virtues are out of vogue. The only really successful life, as the world looks upon success now, is an absolutely selfish life. It is the day of specialists, of men with one idea, one object, and the successful man is the one who permits nothing to come between him and his object. Wife, children, honor, friendship, ease, all must give place to the grand pursuit; be it the gathering of wealth, the discovery of a disease germ, the culture of orchids, or the breeding of a honey-bee that works night and day. Human life is too short to permit a man to do more than one thing well, and money is becoming so common that its possessors require the best of everything."
"Old friend," said the commandant, "you are a many-sided man, and yet you are one of the best lawyers in France."
"You have said it," exclaimed the lawyer; "_one_ of the best, not _the_ best. The one thing I have earnestly striven for I have not attained."
"What is that?" asked the commandant. "Do you wish to be Minister of Justice?"
"No," said the lawyer; "but I should like to be known as the best player of Napoleon solitaire."
A sabre-hilt rapped on the door.
"Enter," cried the commandant.
The door opened, and there entered first the sharp cries of the mob, and then the corporal, Abdullah, a woman clothed all in white, the _oukil_, and, last of all, Mirza. The moment she was within the room she dominated it. The other occupants were blotted out by comparison.
She entered, debonair, smiling, and, as she crossed the threshold, she flung up her hand in a military salute.
"Hail, my masters," she cried in Arabic. "Would you believe it? but just now I was nearly robbed, before your windows, of merchandise that cost me thirty ounces."
"Be good enough to speak French," said the commandant; "it is the etiquette of the office."
"And to you?" exclaimed Mirza, in the speech of Paris, "to you, who speak such charming Arabic. It was only last week, the evening you did me the honor of supping with me, that Miriam--perhaps you will pay her the compliment of remembering her--the little girl who played and danced for you, and who, when you were going, hooked on your sword for you, and gave you a light from her cigarette?--well, Miriam said, when you were gone, "It is a pity the gracious commandant speaks any language save Arabic, he speaks that so convincingly." What could you have whispered to her, Monsieur le Commandant, as you left my poor house?"
The commandant moved nervously in his chair and glanced out of the corner of his eye at the lawyer, who had resumed his cards. Rea.s.sured by the apparent abstraction of his friend, the commandant gathered himself and essayed a pleasantry.
"I told her," he said, "that if she lived to be twice her age, she might be half as beautiful as you."
Mirza made an exaggerated courtesy and threw a mocking kiss from her finger-tips. "I thought," she said, "that a woman"s age was something that no well-bred Frenchman would speak of." Then she drew herself up and her face, from mocking, became hard and cruel.
"I know," she said, slowly, "that I am old. I am eight-and-twenty. I was a wife at twelve, and a mother at thirteen. Such matters are ordered differently here, Monsieur. A girl is a woman before she has had any childhood. I married Ilderhim. Of course, I had never seen him until we stood before the cadi. I had the misfortune to bear him a daughter, and he cursed me. When I was fourteen, a Russian Grand Duke came to Biskra and my husband sold me to him. I refused to submit myself. Then Ilderhim beat me and turned me out of his house. You understand, Monsieur le Commandant, that under our blessed religion a man may have as many wives as he chooses and may divorce them when he chooses. Well, there I was, without a husband, without a home, without my child, and I pa.s.sed the night in the arcades, among the camels. The next morning I went to the hotel and asked for the Grand Duke.