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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10608 ***
+
+The Turquoise Cup, and, The Desert
+
+By
+
+Arthur Cosslett Smith
+
+1903
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+"KHADIJA BELIEVES IN ME"
+
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+ I  The Turquoise Cup
+
+II  The Desert
+
+
+
+
+
+THE TURQUOISE CUP
+
+
+The Cardinal Archbishop sat on his shaded balcony, his well-kept hands
+clasped upon his breast, his feet stretched out so straight before him
+that the pigeon, perched on the rail of the balcony, might have seen
+fully six inches of scarlet silk stocking.
+
+The cardinal was a small man, but very neatly made. His hair was as
+white as spun glass. Perhaps he was sixty; perhaps he was seventy;
+perhaps he was fifty. His red biretta lay upon a near-by chair. His head
+bore no tonsure. The razor of the barber and the scythe of Time had
+passed him by. There was that faint tinge upon his cheeks that comes to
+those who, having once had black beards, shave twice daily. His features
+were clearly cut. His skin would have been pallid had it not been olive.
+A rebellious lock of hair curved upon his forehead. He resembled the
+first Napoleon, before the latter became famous and fat.
+
+The pigeon's mate came floating through the blue sky that silhouetted
+the trees in the garden. She made a pretence of alighting upon the
+balcony railing, sheered off, coquetted among the treetops, came back
+again, retreated so far that she was merely a white speck against the
+blue vault, and then, true to her sex, having proved her liberty only to
+tire of it, with a flight so swift that the eye could scarcely follow
+her, she came back again and rested upon the farther end of the balcony,
+where she immediately began to preen herself and to affect an air of
+nonchalance and virtue.
+
+Her mate lazily opened one eye, which regarded her for a moment, and
+then closed with a wink.
+
+"Ah, my friends," said the cardinal, "there are days when you make me
+regret that I am not of the world, but this is not one of them. You have
+quarrelled, I perceive. When you build your nest down yonder in the
+cote, I envy you. When you are giving up your lives to feeding your
+children, I envy you. I watch your flights for food for them. I say to
+myself, 'I, too, would struggle to keep a child, if I had one. Commerce,
+invention, speculation--why could I not succeed in one of these? I have
+arrived in the most intricate profession of all. I am a cardinal
+archbishop. Could I not have been a stockbroker?' Ah, signore and
+signora," and he bowed to the pigeons, "you get nearer heaven than we
+poor mortals. Have you learned nothing--have you heard no whisper--have
+you no message for me?"
+
+"Your eminence," said a servant who came upon the balcony, a silver tray
+in his hand, "a visitor."
+
+The cardinal took the card and read it aloud--"The Earl of Vauxhall."
+
+He sat silent a moment, thinking. "I do not know him," he said at
+length; "but show him up."
+
+He put on his biretta, assumed a more erect attitude, and then turned to
+the pigeons.
+
+"Adieu," he said; "commercialism approaches in the person of an
+Englishman. He comes either to buy or to sell. You have nothing in
+common with him. Fly away to the Piazza, but come back tomorrow. If you
+do not, I shall miss you sorely."
+
+The curtains parted, and the servant announced, "The Earl of Vauxhall."
+
+The cardinal rose from his chair.
+
+A young man stepped upon the balcony. He was tall and lithe and blond,
+and six-and-twenty.
+
+"Your grace," he said, "I have come because I am in deep trouble."
+
+"In that event," said the cardinal, "you do me much honor. My vocation
+is to seek out those who are in trouble. When _they_ seek _me_ it argues
+that I am not unknown. You are an Englishman. You may speak your own
+language. It is not the most flexible, but it is an excellent vehicle
+for the truth."
+
+"Thank you," said the young man; "that gives me a better chance, since
+my Italian is of the gondolier type. I speak it mostly with my arms,"
+and he began to gesticulate.
+
+"I understand," said the cardinal, smiling, "and I fear that my English
+is open to some criticism. I picked it up in the University of Oxford.
+My friends in the Vatican tell me that it is a patois."
+
+"I dare say," said the young man. "I was at Cambridge."
+
+"Ah," said the cardinal, "how unfortunate. Still, we may be able to
+understand one another. Will you have some tea? It is a habit I
+contracted in England, and I find it to be a good one. I sit here at
+five o'clock, drink my cup of tea, feed the pigeons that light upon the
+railing, and have a half-hour in which to remember how great is England,
+and"--with a bow--"how much the rest of the world owes to her."
+
+"A decent sort of chap, for an Italian," thought the earl. The cardinal
+busied himself with the tea-pot.
+
+"Your grace," said the earl, finally, "I came here in trouble."
+
+"It cannot be of long standing," said the cardinal. "You do not look
+like one who has passed through the fire."
+
+"No," said the earl, "but I scarcely know what to say to you. I am
+embarrassed."
+
+"My son," said the cardinal, "when an Englishman is embarrassed he is
+truly penitent. You may begin as abruptly as you choose. Are you a
+Catholic?"
+
+"No," replied the earl, "I am of the Church of England."
+
+The cardinal shrugged his shoulders the least bit. "I never cease to
+admire your countrymen," he said, "On Sundays they say, 'I believe in
+the Holy Catholic Church,' and, on work-days, they say, 'I believe in
+the Holy Anglican Church.' You are admirably trained. You adapt
+yourselves to circumstances."
+
+"Yes," said the earl, a trifle nettled, "I believe we do, but at present
+I find myself as maladroit as though I had been born on the
+Continent--in Italy, for example."
+
+"Good," laughed the cardinal; "I am getting to be a garrulous old man. I
+love to air my English speech, and, in my effort to speak it freely, I
+sometimes speak it beyond license. Can you forgive me, my lord, and will
+you tell me how I can serve you?"
+
+"I came," said the Earl of Vauxhall, "to ask you if there is any way in
+which I can buy the turquoise cup."
+
+"I do not understand," said the cardinal.
+
+"The turquoise cup," repeated the earl. "The one in the treasury of St.
+Mark's."
+
+The cardinal began to laugh--then he suddenly ceased, looked hard at the
+earl and asked, "Are you serious, my lord?"
+
+"Very," replied the earl.
+
+"Are you quite well?" asked the cardinal.
+
+"Yes," said the earl, "but I am very uncomfortable."
+
+The cardinal began to pace up and down the balcony.
+
+"My lord," he asked, finally, "have you ever negotiated for the Holy
+Coat at Treves; for the breastplate of Charlemagne in the Louvre; for
+the Crown Jewels in the Tower?"
+
+"No," said the earl; "I have no use for them, but I very much need the
+turquoise cup."
+
+"Are you a professional or an amateur?" asked the cardinal, his eyes
+flashing, his lips twitching.
+
+"As I understand it," said the earl, slowly, a faint blush stealing into
+his cheeks, "an 'amateur' is a lover. If that is right, perhaps you had
+better put me down as an 'amateur.'"
+
+The cardinal saw the blush and his anger vanished.
+
+"Ah," he said, softly, "there is a woman, is there?"
+
+"Yes," replied the earl, "there is a woman."
+
+"Well," said the cardinal, "I am listening."
+
+"It won't bore you?" asked the earl. "If I begin about her I sha'n't
+know when to stop."
+
+"My lord," said the cardinal, "if there were no women there would be no
+priests. Our occupation would be gone. There was a time when _men_ built
+churches, beautified them, and went to them. How is it now; even here in
+Venice, where art still exists, and where there is no bourse? I was
+speaking with a man only to-day--a man of affairs, one who buys and
+sells, who has agents in foreign lands and ships on the seas; a man who,
+in the old religious days, would have given a tenth of all his goods to
+the Church and would have found honor and contentment in the remainder;
+but he is bitten with this new-fangled belief of disbelief. He has a
+sneaking fear that Christianity has been supplanted by electricity and
+he worships Huxley rather than Christ crucified--Huxley!" and the
+cardinal threw up his hands. "Did ever a man die the easier because he
+had grovelled at the knees of Huxley? What did Huxley preach? The
+doctrine of despair. He was the Pope of protoplasm. He beat his wings
+against the bars of the unknowable. He set his finite mind the task of
+solving the infinite. A mere creature, he sought to fathom the mind of
+his creator. Read the lines upon his tomb, written by his wife--what do
+they teach? Nothing but 'let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.' If
+a man follows Huxley, then is he a fool if he does not give to this poor
+squeezed-lemon of a world another twist. If I believed there was nothing
+after this life, do you think I should be sitting here, feeding the
+pigeons? Do you think--but there, I have aired my English speech and
+have had my fling at Huxley. Let me fill your cup and then tell me of
+this woman whom I have kept waiting all this time by my vanity and my
+ill manners. Is she English, French, Spanish, or American? There are
+many Americans nowadays."
+
+"No," said the earl, "she is Irish."
+
+"The most dangerous of all," remarked the cardinal.
+
+"It is plain that you know women," said the earl.
+
+"I?" exclaimed the cardinal. "No; nor any living man."
+
+"Her father." resumed the earl, "was a great brewer in Dublin. He made
+ripping stout. Perhaps you use it. It has a green label, with a bull's
+head. He kept straight all through the home-rule troubles, and he
+chipped in a lot for the Jubilee fund, and they made him Lord Vatsmore.
+He died two years ago and left one child. She is Lady Nora Daly. She is
+waiting for me now in the Piazza."
+
+"Perhaps I am detaining you?" said the cardinal.
+
+"By no means," replied the earl. "I don't dare to go back just yet. I
+met her first at home, last season. I've followed her about like a
+spaniel ever since. I started in for a lark, and now I'm in for keeps.
+She has a peculiar way with her," continued the earl, smoothing his hat;
+"one minute you think you are great chums and, the next, you wonder if
+you have ever been presented."
+
+"I recognize the Irish variety," said the cardinal.
+
+"She is here with her yacht," continued the earl. "Her aunt is with her.
+The aunt is a good sort. I am sure you would like her."
+
+"Doubtless," said the cardinal, with a shrug; "but have you nothing more
+to say about the niece?"
+
+"I followed her here," continued the earl, his hands still busy with his
+hat, "and I've done my best. Just now, in the Piazza, I asked her to
+marry me, and she laughed. We went into St. Mark's, and the lights and
+the music and the pictures and the perfume seemed to soften her. 'Did
+you mean it?' she said to me. I told her I did. 'Don't speak to me for a
+little while,' she said, 'I want to think.' That was strange, wasn't
+it?"
+
+"No," said the cardinal, "I don't think that was strange. I think it was
+merely feminine."
+
+"We came out of the church," continued the earl, "and I felt sure of
+her; but when we came into the Piazza and she saw the life of the place,
+the fountain playing, the banners flying, the pigeons wheeling, and
+heard the band, she began to laugh and chaff. 'Bobby,' she said,
+suddenly, 'did you mean it?'
+
+"'Yes,' I said, 'I meant it.' She looked at me for a moment so fixedly
+that I began to think of the things I had done and which she had not
+done, of the gulf there was between us--you understand?"
+
+"Yes," said the cardinal, "I understand--that is, I can imagine."
+
+"And then," continued the earl, "I ventured to look into her eyes, and
+she was laughing at me.
+
+"'Bobby,' she said, 'I believe I've landed you. I know you 're a
+fortune-hunter, but what blame? I dare say I should be one, but for the
+beer. I'm throwing myself away. With my fortune and my figure I think I
+could get a duke, an elderly duke, perhaps, and a little over on his
+knees, but still a duke. A well-brought-up young woman would take the
+duke, but I am nothing but a wild Irish girl. Bobby, you are jolly and
+wholesome, and auntie likes you, and I'll take you--hold hard,' she
+said, as I moved up--'I'll take you, if you'll give me the turquoise
+cup.' 'What's that?' I asked. 'The turquoise cup,' she said; 'the one in
+the treasury of St. Mark's. Give me that and Nora Daly is yours.' 'All
+right,' I said, 'I'll trot off and buy it.'
+
+"Here I am, your grace, an impecunious but determined man. I have four
+thousand pounds at Coutts's, all I have in the world; will it lift the
+cup?"
+
+The cardinal rubbed his white hands together, uncrossed and recrossed
+his legs, struck the arm of his chair, and burst into a laugh so merry
+and so prolonged that the earl, perforce, joined him.
+
+"It's funny," said the latter, finally, "but, all the same, it's
+serious."
+
+"Oh, Love!" exclaimed the cardinal; "you little naked boy with wings and
+a bow! You give us more trouble than all the rest of the heathen deities
+combined--you fly about so--you appear in such strange places--you
+compel mortals to do such remarkable things--you debauch my pigeons,
+and, when the ill is done, you send your victims to me, or another
+priest, and ask for absolution, so that they may begin all over again."
+
+"Do I get the cup?" asked the earl, with some impatience.
+
+"My lord," said the cardinal, "if the cup were mine, I have a fancy that
+I would give it to you, with my blessing and my best wishes; but when
+you ask me to sell it to you, it is as though you asked your queen to
+sell you the Kohinoor. She dare not, if she could. She could not, if she
+dare. Both the diamond and the cup were, doubtless, stolen. The diamond
+was taken in this century; the cup was looted so long ago that no one
+knows. A sad attribute of crime is that time softens it. There is a
+mental statute of limitations that converts possession into ownership.
+'We stole the Kohinoor so long ago,' says the Englishman, 'that we own
+it now.' So it is with the cup. Where did it come from? It is doubtless
+Byzantine, but where did its maker live; in Byzantium or here, in
+Venice? We used to kidnap Oriental artists in the good old days when art
+was a religion. This cup was made by one whom God befriended; by a brain
+steeped in the love of the beautiful; by a hand so cunning that when it
+died art languished; by a power so compelling that the treasuries of the
+world were opened to it. Its bowl is a turquoise, the size and shape of
+an ostrich's egg, sawn through its longer diameter, and resting on its
+side. Four gold arms clasp the bowl and meet under it. These arms are
+set with rubies en cabochon, except one, which is cut in facets. The
+arms are welded beneath the bowl and form the stem. Midway of the stem,
+and pierced by it, is a diamond, as large"--the cardinal picked up his
+teaspoon and looked at it--"yes," he said, "as large as the bowl of this
+spoon. The foot of the cup is an emerald, flat on the bottom and joined
+to the stem by a ferrule of transparent enamel. If this treasure were
+offered for sale the wealth of the world would fight for it. No, no, my
+lord, you cannot have the cup. Take your four thousand pounds to
+Testolini, the jeweller, and buy a string of pearls. Very few good women
+can resist pearls."
+
+"Your grace," said the earl, rising, "I appreciate fully the absurdity
+of my errand and the kindness of your forbearance. I fear, however, that
+you scarcely grasp the situation. I am going to marry Lady Nora. I
+cannot marry her without the cup. You perceive the conclusion--I shall
+have the cup. Good-by, your grace; I thank you for your patience."
+
+"Good-by," said the cardinal, ringing for a servant. "I wish that I
+might serve you; but, when children cry for the moon, what is to be
+done? Come and see me again; I am nearly always at home about this
+hour."
+
+"I repeat, your grace," said the earl, "that I shall have the cup. All
+is fair in love and war, is it not?"
+
+There was a certain quality in the earl's voice--that quiet, even note
+of sincerity which quells riots, which quiets horses, which leads
+forlorn hopes, and the well-trained ear of the cardinal recognized it.
+
+"Pietro," he said to the servant who answered the bell, "I am going out.
+My hat and stick. I will go a little way with you, my lord."
+
+They went down the broad stairs together, and the earl noticed, for the
+first time, that his companion limped.
+
+"Gout?" he asked.
+
+"No," said the cardinal; "the indiscretion of youth. I was with
+Garibaldi and caught a bullet."
+
+"Take my arm," said the earl.
+
+"Willingly," said the cardinal, "since I know that you will bring me
+into the presence of a woman worth seeing; a woman who can compel a peer
+of England to meditate a theft."
+
+"How do you know that?" exclaimed the earl; and he stopped so abruptly
+that the cardinal put his free hand against his companion's breast to
+right himself.
+
+"Because," said the cardinal, "I saw your face when you said good-by to
+me. It was not a pleasant face."
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+They went on silently and soon they came to the Piazza.
+
+"I don't see her," said the earl; "perhaps she has gone back to the
+church."
+
+They crossed the Piazza and entered St. Mark's.
+
+"Not here," said the earl.
+
+They walked up the south aisle and came to the anteroom of the treasury.
+Its door was open. They entered what had once been a tower of the old
+palace. The door of the treasury was also open. They went in and found
+the sacristan and a woman. She held the turquoise cup in her hands.
+
+"Did you buy it, Bobby?" she exclaimed.
+
+She turned and saw that the earl was not alone.
+
+"Your grace," he said, "I present you to Lady Nora Daly."
+
+She bent with a motion half genuflexion, half courtesy, and then
+straightened herself, smiling.
+
+The cardinal did not notice the obeisance, but he did notice the smile.
+It seemed to him, as he looked at her, that the treasures of St. Mark's,
+the jewelled chalices and patens, the agate and crystal vessels, the
+reliquaries of gold and precious stones, the candlesticks, the two
+textus covers of golden cloisonné, and even the turquoise cup itself,
+turned dull and wan and common by comparison with her beauty.
+
+"Your eminence," she said, "you must pardon Bobby's _gaucherie_. He
+presented you to me and called you 'your grace.' He forgot, or did not
+know, that you are a cardinal--a prince--and that I should have been
+presented to you. Bobby means well, but he is an English peer and a
+guardsman, so we don't expect much else of Bobby."
+
+"He has done a very gracious thing today," said the cardinal. "He has
+brought me to you."
+
+Lady Nora looked up quickly, scenting a compliment, and ready to meet
+it, but the cardinal's face was so grave and so sincere that her
+readiness forsook her and she stood silent.
+
+The earl seemed to be interested in a crucifix of the eleventh century.
+
+"While my lord is occupied with the crucifix," said the cardinal, "will
+you not walk with me?"
+
+"Willingly," said Lady Nora, and they went out into the church.
+
+"My dear lady," said the cardinal, after an interval of silence, "you
+are entering upon life. You have a position, you have wealth, you have
+youth, you have health, and," with a bow, "you have beauty such as God
+gives to His creatures only for good purposes. Some women, like Helen of
+Troy and Cleopatra, have used their beauty for evil. Others, like my
+Queen, Margarita, and like Mary, Queen of the Scots, have held their
+beauty as a trust to be exploited for good, as a power to be exercised
+on the side of the powerless."
+
+"Your eminence," said Lady Nora, "we are now taught in England that
+Queen Mary was not altogether proper."
+
+"She had beauty, had she not?" asked the cardinal.
+
+"Yes," replied Lady Nora.
+
+"She was beheaded, was she not?" asked the cardinal.
+
+"Yes," said Lady Nora, "and by a very plain woman."
+
+"There you have it!" exclaimed the cardinal. "If Elizabeth had been
+beautiful and Mary plain, Mary would have kept her head. It is sad to
+see beautiful women lose their heads. It is sad to see you lose yours."
+
+"Mine?" exclaimed Lady Nora, and she put her hands up to her hat-pins,
+to reassure herself.
+
+"Yes," said the cardinal, "I fear that it is quite gone."
+
+Lady Nora looked at him with questioning eyes. "Yes," she said, "I must
+have lost it, for I do not understand you, and I have not always been
+dull."
+
+"My dear lady," said the cardinal, "the Earl of Vauxhall was good enough
+to pay me a visit this afternoon."
+
+"Oh," exclaimed Lady Nora, clapping her hands, "if I only could have
+been behind the curtains! What did he say?"
+
+"He said," replied the cardinal, "that he had asked you to be his wife."
+
+"Indeed he has," said Lady Nora, "and so have others."
+
+"He also said," continued the cardinal, "that you had promised to marry
+him when he brought you the turquoise cup."
+
+"And so I will," said Lady Nora.
+
+"He proposed to buy the cup," continued the cardinal. "He offered four
+thousand pounds, which, he said, was all he had in the world."
+
+"Good old Bobby!" exclaimed Lady Nora. "That was nice of him, wasn't
+it?" and her eyes glistened.
+
+"Yes," said the cardinal, "that was nice of him; but when I had
+explained how impossible it was to sell the cup he bade me good-by, and,
+as he was going, said, 'I shall have it. All is fair in love and war.' I
+feared then that he meant to take the cup. Since I have seen you I am
+certain of it."
+
+"What larks!" cried Lady Nora. "Fancy Bobby with a dark lantern, a
+bristly beard, and a red handkerchief about his neck. All burglars are
+like that, you know; and then fancy him creeping up the aisle with his
+Johnnie--no, his jimmy--and his felt slippers--fancy Bobby in felt
+slippers--and he reaches the treasury door, and just then the moon comes
+up and shines through that window and illuminates the key in St. Peter's
+hand, and Bobby says, 'An omen,' and he takes out his own key-ring and
+the first one he tries fits the lock and the door flies open, and Bobby
+lifts the cup, locks the door, goes down to the steps by the Doge's
+palace--no gondola--too late, you know, so he puts the cup in his
+teeth, takes a header, and swims to the yacht. When he comes alongside
+they hail him, and he comes up the ladder. 'Where's your mistress?' he
+asks, and they call me, and I come on deck in my pink _saut du lit_, and
+there stands Bobby, the water running off him and the cup in his teeth.
+'There's your bauble,' he says. (Of course he takes the cup out of his
+mouth when he speaks.) 'And here's your Nora,' I say, and the boatswain
+pipes all hands aft to witness the marriage ceremony. No, no, your
+eminence," she laughed, "it's too good to be true. Bobby will never
+steal the cup. He has never done anything in all his life but walk down
+Bond Street. He's a love, but he is not energetic."
+
+"You are doubtless right," said the cardinal, "and my fears are but the
+timidity of age; still--"
+
+The earl joined them. He had just given the sacristan ten pounds, and
+had endeavored to treat the gift as a disinterested _pourboire_. He felt
+that he had failed; that he had overdone it, and had made himself a
+marked man. The sacristan followed him--voluble, eulogistic.
+
+"Tommaso," said the cardinal, "this is the Earl of Vauxhall. He is to
+have every privilege, every liberty. He is to be left alone if he
+desires it. He is not to be bothered with attendance or suggestions. He
+may use a kodak; he may handle anything in the treasury. You will regard
+him as though he were myself."
+
+Tommaso bowed low. The earl blushed.
+
+Lady Nora looked at her watch.
+
+"Five o'clock!" she exclaimed, "and Aunt Molly will be wanting her tea.
+The launch is at the stairs. Will you come, Bobby? And you, your
+eminence, will you honor me?"
+
+"Not to-day, my lady," replied the cardinal, "but perhaps some other."
+
+"To-morrow?" she asked.
+
+"Yes," said the cardinal.
+
+"Thank you," said Lady Nora; "the launch will be at the landing at
+half-past four."
+
+"Is it an electrical contrivance?" asked the cardinal, with a smile.
+
+"Yes," replied Lady Nora.
+
+"Then," said the cardinal, "you need not send it. I will come in my
+barca. Electricity and the Church are not friendly. We have only just
+become reconciled to steam."
+
+Lady Nora laughed. "Good-by," she said, "until to-morrow," and again she
+made her courtesy.
+
+"Until to-morrow," said the cardinal; and he watched them down the
+aisle.
+
+"Tommaso," he said to the sacristan, "give me the turquoise cup."
+
+Tommaso handed it to him, silent but wondering.
+
+"Now lock the door," said the cardinal, "and give me the key."
+
+Tommaso complied. The cardinal put the cup under his robe and started
+down the aisle.
+
+"Tommaso," he said, "you are now closed for the annual cleaning. You
+understand, do you not?"
+
+"Perfectly, your eminence," replied Tommaso, and then he added--"When a
+stranger gives me two hundred and fifty lire it is time to lock my
+door."
+
+The cardinal went out of the church, the turquoise cup under his
+cassock. He crossed the Piazza slowly, for he was both limping and
+thinking. He came to the shop of Testolini, the jeweller, under the
+North arcade, paused a moment, and entered. The clerks behind the
+counters sprang to their feet and bowed low.
+
+"Signor Testolini?" asked the cardinal; "is he within?"
+
+"Yes, your eminence," said the head clerk. "He is in his bureau. I will
+summon him."
+
+"No," said the cardinal, "if he is alone I will go in," and he opened
+the door at the back of the shop and closed it behind him. In ten
+minutes he came out again. Signor Testolini followed, rubbing his hands
+and bowing at each step.
+
+"Perfectly, your eminence," he said. "I quite understand."
+
+"It must be in my hands in ten days," said the cardinal.
+
+"Ten days!" exclaimed Testolini; "impossible."
+
+"What is that strange word?" said the cardinal; "it must be a vulgarism
+of New Italy, that 'impossible.' I do not like it and I will thank you
+not to use it again when speaking to me. In ten days, Signore."
+
+"Yes, your eminence," said Testolini, "but it will be in the afternoon."
+
+"In ten days," said the cardinal, very quietly.
+
+"Yes, your eminence," said Testolini.
+
+"He looks like Napoleon," whispered the head clerk to his neighbor.
+
+The cardinal went limping down the shop. He had almost reached the door
+when he stopped and spoke to a little man who stood behind the show-case
+in which are the enamels.
+
+"Ah, Signore!" he exclaimed, "how come on the wife and baby? I meant to
+see them this afternoon, but I was diverted. I wish you to continue the
+same diet for them--take this"--and he fumbled in his pocket, but drew a
+blank.
+
+"Signor Testolini," he said to the master at his heels, "I find I have
+no money. Kindly loan me fifty lire. Here," he said to the little man,
+and he slipped the money into his hand, "plenty of milk for the child;"
+and he went out of the shop.
+
+"That was not like Napoleon," said the head clerk; and then he added,
+"Occasionally one meets with a priest who rises superior to his
+profession."
+
+The little man behind the enamel counter said nothing, but he drew his
+hand across his eyes.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+The following day was a busy one for the cardinal. While Pietro was
+shaving him he parcelled out the hours.
+
+"What time is it, Pietro?" he asked.
+
+"Three minutes past seven, your eminence."
+
+"Good," said the cardinal; "at half-past I make my mass; at eight, I
+take my coffee; from eight to ten, my poor--by the way, Pietro, is there
+any money in the house?"
+
+"Yes, your eminence," said Pietro; "there are eight hundred lire in your
+desk."
+
+"Take fifty of them to Signor Testolini, in the Piazza, with my thanks,"
+said the cardinal, "and put the rest in my purse. Where was I, Pietro?"
+
+"Your eminence had reached ten o'clock," replied Pietro.
+
+"From ten to eleven," continued the cardinal, "audience for the laity;
+from eleven to half-past, audience for the clergy; half-past eleven, my
+egg and a salad. Keep all who look hungry, Pietro, and ask them to take
+_déjeuner_ with me; at twelve, see the architect who is restoring the
+altar-rail at St. Margaret's; take time to write to the Superior at St.
+Lazzaro in reference to the proof-sheets of the 'Life of Eusebius'; from
+one to three, my poor--we must get some more money, Pietro; from three
+to four--"
+
+"There, your eminence!" exclaimed Pietro, "I have cut you."
+
+"Yes," said the cardinal; "I was about to mention it. Where was I?"
+
+"Your eminence was at four o'clock," replied Pietro.
+
+"Four o'clock already!" exclaimed the cardinal, "and nothing done; from
+four to half-past four, interview with the treasurer of the diocese.
+That's a bad half-hour, Pietro. At half-past four I wish the barca to be
+at the landing. Have the men wear their least shabby liveries. I am to
+visit the English yacht that lies over by St. Giorgio. You must dress me
+in my best to-day."
+
+"Alas, your eminence," said Pietro, "your best cassock is two years
+old."
+
+"How old is the one I wore yesterday?" asked the cardinal.
+
+"Four years at least," said Pietro. "You have your ceremonial dress, but
+nothing better for the street."
+
+"I caught a glimpse of myself in one of Testolini's mirrors yesterday,"
+said the cardinal, "and I thought I looked rather well."
+
+"Your eminence," said Pietro, "you saw your face and not your coat."
+
+"Pietro," said the cardinal, rising, "you should have turned your hand
+to diplomacy; you would have gone far."
+
+At half-past four o'clock the cardinal's barca drew up to the molo. The
+oarsmen were dressed in black, save that their sashes and stockings were
+scarlet. The bowman landed. It was as though a footman came off the box
+of a brougham and waited on the curb. While the figures on the
+clock-tower were still striking the half-hour, the cardinal came limping
+across the Piazza. The gondoliers at the molo took off their hats and
+drew up in two lines. The cardinal passed between them, looking each man
+in the face. He beckoned to one, who left the ranks and came up to him,
+awkward and sheepish.
+
+"Emilio," said the cardinal, "I have arranged your matter. You are to
+pay four lire a week, and are to keep out of the wine-shops. Mind, now,
+no drinking." To another he said, "I have looked into your case, Marco.
+You are perfectly right. I have employed counsel for you. Attend to your
+business and forget your trouble. It is my trouble, now." To a man to
+whom he beckoned next he spoke differently. "How dare you send me such a
+petition?" he exclaimed. "It was false from beginning to end. You never
+served in the legion. The woman you complain of is your lawful wife. You
+married her in Padua ten years ago. You have been imprisoned for petit
+theft. You got your gondolier's license by false pretences. Mark you,
+friends," he said, turning, "here is one of your mates who will bear
+watching. When he slips, come to me," and he stepped into his barca.
+
+"To the English yacht," he said.
+
+When they arrived they found the Tara dressed in flags, from truck to
+deck; Lady Nora stood on the platform of the boarding-stairs, and the
+crew were mustered amidships.
+
+"Your eminence," cried Lady Nora, "you should have a salute if I knew
+the proper number of guns."
+
+"My dear lady," said the cardinal, taking off his hat, "the Church
+militant does not burn gunpowder, it fights hand to hand. Come for me at
+six," he said to his poppe.
+
+"Surely," said Lady Nora, "you will dine with us. We have ices with the
+Papal colors, and we have a little box for Peter's pence, to be passed
+with the coffee. I shall be much disappointed if you do not dine with
+us."
+
+"Wait!" called the cardinal to his barca. The oarsmen put about. "Tell
+Pietro," he said, "to feed the pigeons as usual. Tell him to lay crumbs
+on the balcony railing, and if the cock bird is too greedy, to drive him
+away and give the hen an opportunity. Come for me at nine."
+
+"Thank you," said Lady Nora; "your poor are now provided for."
+
+"Alas, no," said the cardinal; "my pigeons are my aristocratic
+acquaintance. They would leave me if I did not feed them. My real poor
+have two legs, like the pigeons, but God gave them no feathers. They are
+the misbegotten, the maladroit, the unlucky,--I stand by that word,--
+the halt, the blind, those with consciences too tender to make their
+way, reduced gentlefolk, those who have given their lives for the public
+good and are now forgotten, all these are my poor, and they honor me by
+their acquaintance. My pigeons fly to my balcony. My poor never come
+near me. I am obliged, humbly, to go to them."
+
+"Will money help?" exclaimed Lady Nora; "I have a balance at my
+banker's."
+
+"No, no, my lady," said the cardinal; "money can no more buy off poverty
+than it can buy off the bubonic plague. Both are diseases. God sent them
+and He alone can abate them. At His next coming there will be strange
+sights. Some princes and some poor men will be astonished."
+
+Just then, a woman, short, plump, red-cheeked and smiling, came toward
+them. She was no longer young, but she did not know it.
+
+"Your eminence," said Lady Nora, "I present my aunt, Miss O'Kelly."
+
+Miss O'Kelly sank so low that her skirts made what children call "a
+cheese" on the white deck.
+
+"Your imminence," she said, slowly rising, "sure this is the proud day
+for Nora, the Tara, and meself."
+
+"And for me, also," said the cardinal. "From now until nine o'clock I
+shall air my English speech, and I shall have two amiable and friendly
+critics to correct my mistakes."
+
+"Ah, your imminence," laughed Miss O'Kelly, "I don't speak English. I
+speak County Clare."
+
+"County Clare!" exclaimed the cardinal; "then you know Ennis? Fifty odd
+years ago there was a house, just out of the town of Ennis, with iron
+gates and a porter's lodge. The Blakes lived there."
+
+"I was born in that house," said Miss O'Kelly. "It was draughty, but it
+always held a warm welcome."
+
+"I do not remember the draught," said the cardinal, "but I do remember
+the welcome. When I was an undergraduate at Oxford, I made a little tour
+of Ireland, during a long vacation. I had letters from Rome. One of them
+was to the chapter at Ennis. A young priest took me to that house. I
+went back many times. There was a daughter and there were several
+strapping sons. The boys did nothing, that I could discover, but hunt
+and shoot. They were amiable, however. The daughter hunted, also, but
+she did many other things. She kept the house, she visited the poor, she
+sang Irish songs to perfection, and she flirted beyond compare. She had
+hair so black that I can give you no notion of its sheen; and eyes as
+blue as our Venetian skies. Her name was Nora--Nora Blake. She was the
+most beautiful woman I had ever seen--until yesterday."
+
+"She was my mother!" exclaimed Miss O'Kelly.
+
+"And my grandmother," said Lady Nora.
+
+The cardinal drew a breath so sharp that it was almost a sob, then he
+took Lady Nora's hand.
+
+"My child," he said, "I am an old man. I am threescore years and ten,
+and six more, and you bring back to me the happiest days of my youth.
+You are the image of Nora Blake, yes, her very image. I kiss the images
+of saints every day," he added, "why not this one?" and he bent and
+kissed Lady Nora's hand.
+
+There was so much solemnity in the act that an awkward pause might have
+followed it had not Miss O'Kelly been Irish.
+
+"Your imminence," she said, "since you've told us your age, I'll tell
+you mine. I'm two-and-twenty and I'm mighty tired of standin'. Let's go
+aft and have our tay."
+
+They had taken but a few steps when Lady Nora, noticing the cardinal's
+limp, drew his arm through her own and supported him.
+
+"I know the whole story," she whispered. "You loved my grandmother."
+
+"Yes," said the cardinal, "but I was unworthy."
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+They had their tea, two white-clad stewards serving them. The cardinal
+took a second cup and then rose and went to the side. He crumbled a
+biscuit along the rail.
+
+"I have often wondered," he said, "if my pigeons come for me or for my
+crumbs. Nora Blake used to say that her poor were as glad to see her
+without a basket as with one. But she was a saint. She saw things more
+clearly than it is given to us to see them."
+
+The women looked at each other, in silence.
+
+"No," said the cardinal, after an interval, "they do not come; they are
+as satisfied with Pietro's crumbs as with mine. Love is not a matter of
+the stomach;" and he brushed the crumbs overboard. "Perhaps the fishes
+will get them," he added, "and they will not know whence they came.
+Anonymous charity," he continued, coming back to his chair, "is the
+best. It curbs the pride of the giver and preserves the pride of the
+recipient. Open giving is becoming a trade. It is an American invention.
+Very rich men in that country offer so much for an object--a college--a
+hospital--a library--if some one else will give so much. The offer is
+printed in the newspapers of the land and its originator reaps
+much--what is the word I wish?--acclaim? no; kudos? no;--ah, yes,
+advertisement; that is the word. Thank God that charity does not thus
+masquerade in Italy. There are men here, in poor old Venice, who give
+half their goods to feed the poor. Are their names published? No. The
+newspapers reason thus--'Here is a gentleman; let us treat him as one,'
+We have no professional philanthropists in Italy. After all," he added,
+"mere giving is the lowest form of charity. If all the wealth of the
+world were divided the world would be debauched. Binding up wounds,
+pouring in oil and wine, bringing the wronged man to an inn, giving him
+your companionship, your sympathy, so that he shows his heart to you and
+lets you heal its bruises--that is your true charity."
+
+"That's what I'm telling Nora," exclaimed Miss O'Kelly; "she's forever
+drawing checks. There was my nephew, Nora's cousin, Phelim. He gave away
+all he had. He gave it to the piquet players in the Kildare Club. 'Aunt
+Molly,' he said to me, 'piquet has cost me fifteen thousand pounds, and
+I am just beginning to learn the game. Now that I know it a bit, no one
+will play with me. Your bread cast on the waters may come back, but it's
+ten to one it comes back mouldy, from the voyage.' Phelim is the flower
+of the family, your imminence. He is six foot three. He was out twice
+before he was two-and-twenty. The first time was with Liftennant Doyle
+of the Enniskillens. 'Twas about a slip of a girl that they both
+fancied. The Liftennant fired at the word and missed. 'Try your second
+barrel,' called Phelim, 'I'm still within bounds' (that's
+pigeon-shootin' talk, your imminence). The Liftennant laughed and the
+two went off to the club, arm in arm, and they stayed there two days.
+There's waiters in the club yet, that remembers it. The next time Phelim
+was out, 'twas with a little attorney-man from Cork, named Crawford.
+There was no girl this time; 'twas more serious; 'twas about a horse
+Phelim had sold, and the little attorney-man had served a writ, and
+Phelim went down to Cork and pulled the little man's nose. Whin the word
+was given the attorney-man fired and nicked Phelim's ear. Phelim raised
+his pistol, slow as married life, and covered the little man. 'Take off
+your hat!' called Phelim. The little man obeyed, white as paper, and
+shakin' like a leaf. 'Was the horse sound?' called Phelim. 'He was,'
+said the little man 'Was he six years old?' called Phelim. 'At least,'
+said the little man. 'None of your quibbles,' called Phelim. 'He was
+six, to a minute,' said the little man, looking into the pistol, 'Was he
+chape at the price?' asked Phelim. 'He was a gift,' said the attorney
+'Gentlemen,' says Phelim, 'you have heard this dyin' confession--we will
+now seal it,' and he sent a bullet through the attorney-man's hat. I had
+it all from Dr. Clancey, who was out with them. They sent Phelim to
+Parliament after that, but he took the Chiltern Hundreds and came home.
+He said his duties interfered with the snipe-shootin'. You'd like
+Phelim, your imminence."
+
+"I am sure I should," said the cardinal.
+
+"He's in love with Nora," said Miss O'Kelly.
+
+"Ah," said the cardinal, "I spoke too quickly."
+
+Meanwhile the shadows began to creep across the deck. The cardinal rose
+from his chair.
+
+"At what hour do you dine?" he asked.
+
+"I made the hour early when I heard you order your barca for nine," said
+Lady Nora; "I said half-past seven."
+
+"Then," said the cardinal, "I should excuse you, but I do it
+reluctantly. I am keeping you from your toilet."
+
+Miss O'Kelly laughed. "Your imminence," she said, "when a woman reaches
+my age it takes her some time to dress. I told you I was two-and-twenty.
+It will take my maid nearly an hour to make me look it," and, with a
+courtesy, she went below.
+
+Lady Nora stayed behind. "Your eminence," she said, "the evening will be
+fine; shall we dine on deck?"
+
+"That will be charming," said the cardinal.
+
+"Whenever you wish to go to your room," said Lady Nora, "you have but to
+press this button, and the head steward will come." She still loitered.
+"I think it very likely," she said, hesitating, "that the Earl of
+Vauxhall will drop in; he often does. I should have mentioned it before,
+but I was so delighted at your staying that I forgot all about him."
+
+"My dear lady," said the cardinal, "to supplant the Earl of Vauxhall in
+your thoughts is great honor."
+
+She looked at him quickly, blushed, cast down her eyes, and began,
+nervously, to play with a gold boat-whistle that hung at her belt. When
+she had exhausted the possibilities of the whistle she looked up again,
+and the cardinal saw that there were tears upon her cheeks. When she
+knew that he had seen them she disregarded them, and threw up her head,
+proudly.
+
+"Yes," she said, "I think of him far too often; so often that it makes
+me angry, it makes me ashamed. He is an earl; he is tall and straight
+and beautiful and clean, and--he loves me--I know it," she exclaimed,
+her face illumined; "but why," she went on, "should I give myself to him
+on these accounts? Why should he not earn me? Why does he compel me to
+so one-sided a bargain? I, too, am tall and straight and clean, and not
+ill-favored, and, in addition, I have that curse of unmarried women--I
+have money. Why does he not _do_ something to even up the transaction?
+Why does he not write a page that some one will read? Why does he not
+write a song that some one will sing? Why does he not do something that
+will make the world call me his wife, instead of calling him my husband?
+The other day, when he and love were tugging at me, I told him I would
+marry him if he brought me the turquoise cup. It was an idle thing to
+say, but what I say I stand by. I shall never marry him unless he brings
+it to me. You know us Irish women. We have our hearts to contend with,
+but we keep our word. I set my lord a trivial task. If he really wants
+me he will accomplish it. I am not dear at the price."
+
+"With true love," said the cardinal, "I do not think there is any
+question of price. It is an absolute surrender, without terms. I say
+this guardedly, for I am no expert as to this thing called human love. I
+recognize that it is the power that moves the world, but, for more than
+fifty years, I have tried to forget the world."
+
+"Yes," cried Lady Nora, "and, but for a cruel mistake, you would have
+married my grandmother."
+
+"Yes," said the cardinal, "but for a cruel mistake."
+
+"The mistake was hers," exclaimed Lady Nora.
+
+The cardinal threw up his hands. "It was a mistake," he said, "and it
+was buried fifty years ago. Why dig it up?"
+
+"Forgive me," said Lady Nora, and she started toward the hatch.
+
+"My child," said the cardinal, "you say that you will not marry his
+lordship unless he brings you the cup. Do you hope that he will bring
+it?"
+
+She looked at him a moment, the red and white roses warring in her
+cheeks. "Yes," she said, "I hope it, for I love him," and she put her
+hands to her face and ran below.
+
+"If the earl is the man I take him to be," said the cardinal to himself,
+"I fear that I am about to shut my eyes to a felony," and he pressed the
+electric button at his side. The head steward appeared so quickly that
+he overheard the cardinal say--"I certainly should have done it, at his
+age."
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+At six bells there was a tap on the cardinal's door.
+
+"Come in," he said.
+
+The head steward entered. He had exchanged the white duck of the
+afternoon for the black of evening. He was now the major-domo. He wore
+silk stockings and about his neck was a silver chain, and at the end of
+the chain hung a key.
+
+"Your eminence's servant has come on board," he said.
+
+"Pietro?" asked the cardinal.
+
+"I do not know his name," said the steward, "but he is most anxious to
+see your eminence."
+
+"Let him come in at once," said the cardinal. The steward backed out,
+bowing.
+
+There was a loud knock upon the door. "Enter," said the cardinal. Pietro
+came in. He carried a portmanteau.
+
+"What is it?" exclaimed the cardinal. "Is any one dying? Am I needed?"
+
+"No, your eminence," said Pietro, "the public health is unusually good.
+I have come to dress you for dinner with the English."
+
+"They are not English," said the cardinal; "they are Irish."
+
+"In that event," said Pietro, "you will do as you are."
+
+"No," laughed the cardinal, "since you have brought my finery I will put
+it on."
+
+Pietro opened the portmanteau with a sigh. "I thought they were
+English," he said. "The Irish are as poor as the Italians. If I dress
+your eminence as I had intended they will not appreciate it."
+
+"Do not fear," said the cardinal. "Do your best."
+
+At seven bells there was another knock at the cardinal's door. Pietro
+opened it.
+
+"Shall dinner be served, your eminence?" asked the head steward.
+
+"Whenever the ladies are ready," replied the cardinal.
+
+"They are already on deck, your eminence."
+
+"At once, then," said the cardinal, and he went up the companion-way,
+leaning on Pietro's arm. The after-deck was lighted by scores of
+incandescent lamps, each shaded by a scarlet silken flower. The table
+stood, white and cool, glittering with silver and crystal. In its centre
+was a golden vase, and in the vase were four scarlet roses. The deck was
+covered with a scarlet carpet, a strip of which ran forward to the
+galley-hatch, so that the service might be noiseless.
+
+Lady Nora was dressed in white and wore no jewels. Miss O'Kelly was
+partially clad in a brocaded gown, cut as low as even the indiscretion
+of age permits. A necklace of huge yellow topazes emphasized the space
+they failed to cover.
+
+The cardinal came into the glow of the lights. His cassock was black,
+but its hem, its buttons, and the pipings of its seams were scarlet; so
+were his stockings; so was the broad silk sash that circled his waist;
+so were the silk gloves, thrust under the sash; so was the birettina,
+the little skullcap that barely covered his crown and left to view a
+fringe of white hair and the rebellious lock upon his forehead. The lace
+at his wrists was Venice point. His pectoral cross was an antique that
+would grace the Louvre. Pietro had done his work well.
+
+The cardinal came into the zone of light, smiling. "Lady Nora," he said.
+"Ireland is the home of the fairies. When I was there I heard much of
+them. Early in the morning I saw rings in the dew-laden grass and was
+told that they had been made by the 'little people,' dancing. You,
+evidently, have caught a fairy prince and he does your bidding. Within
+an hour you have converted the after-deck into fairy-land; you have--"
+
+Just then, out of the blue darkness that lay between the yacht and
+Venice, burst the lights of a gondola. They darted alongside and, a
+moment after, the Earl of Vauxhall came down the deck.
+
+"Serve at once," whispered Lady Nora to the major-domo.
+
+"Pardon me, your eminence," she said, "you were saying--"
+
+"I was merely remarking," said the cardinal, "that you seem to have a
+fairy prince ready to do your bidding. It seems that I was right. Here
+he is."
+
+Lady Nora smiled. "What kept you, Bobby," she said, "a business
+engagement, or did you fall asleep?"
+
+"Neither," said the earl; "I lost a shirt-stud."
+
+"Your eminence is served," said the major-domo.
+
+They stood while the cardinal said grace, at the conclusion of which,
+all, except the earl, crossed themselves.
+
+"Was it a valuable jewel, my lord?" asked Miss O'Kelly, in an interval
+of her soup.
+
+"No," said the earl; "a poor thing, but mine own."
+
+"How did it happen?" asked Miss O'Kelly; "did your man stale it?"
+
+"Dear, no," said the earl; "it happened while I was putting on my
+shirt."
+
+Miss O'Kelly blushed, mentally, and raised her napkin to her face.
+
+"It twisted out of my fingers," continued the earl, "and rolled away,
+somewhere. I moved every piece of furniture in the room; I got down on
+all fours and squinted along the floor; I went to the dressing-table to
+look for another; my man, after putting out my things, had locked up
+everything and gone to his dinner. I couldn't dine with you, like
+freedom, 'with my bosom bare'--"
+
+"No," said Miss O'Kelly, glancing down at her topazes, "you couldn't do
+that."
+
+"Certainly not," said the earl, "and so I put on my top-coat and went
+out to Testonni's in the Piazza, and bought a stud. I was lucky to find
+them open, for it was past closing time. They told me they were working
+late on a hurry order. I put the stud in my shirt, raced across to the
+molo, jumped into a gondola, and here I am. Am I forgiven?"
+
+"Yes," said Lady Nora; "you were only five minutes late and your excuse
+is, at least, ingenious. You could not have come unadorned."
+
+"Unadorned!" exclaimed the earl; "it was a question of coming
+unfastened."
+
+Pietro began to refill the cardinal's glass, but his master stopped him.
+Pietro bent and whispered. The cardinal laughed. "Pietro tells me," he
+said, "that this is better wine than that which I get at home and that I
+should make the most of it. The only difference I remark in wines is
+that some are red and some are white."
+
+"That minds me of one night when Father Flynn dropped in to dine," said
+Miss O'Kelly--"'twas he had the wooden leg, you remember, Nora,
+dear--and he and Phelim sat so late that I wint in with fresh candles.
+'I call that good whiskey,' says the father as I came in. '_Good_
+whiskey?' exclaimed Phelim; 'did ever you see any whiskey that was
+_bad_.' 'Now that you mintion it,' says his riverince, 'I never did; but
+I've seen some that was scarce.' 'Another bottle, Aunt Molly,' says
+Phelim, 'his riverince has a hollow leg.' When I came back with the
+bottle they were talking to a little, wild gossoon from the hills. He
+was barefooted, bareheaded, and only one suspinder was between him and
+the police. 'Is your mother bad?' asked his riverince. 'Dochtor says
+she'll die afore mornin',' says the gossoon. 'Will you lind me a horse,
+Phelim?' asked his riverince. 'You ride a horse, with that leg!' says
+Phelim. 'No, I'll drive you, in the cart;' and he went off to the
+stables. In five minutes he came back with the dog-cart and the gray
+mare. His riverince got up, with the aid of a chair, the little gossoon
+climbed up behind, and the gravel flew as the gray mare started. They
+wint a matter of ten rods and then I saw the lamps again. They had
+turned, and they stopped before the porch--the gray mare on her
+haunches. 'Phelim,' I says, 'what ails you, you've a light hand whin
+you're sober.' His riverince leaned over and whispered--'The oil cruet,
+Miss Molly, and don't let the gossoon see it,' I wint in, came out with
+the cruet in a paper, and handed it to him. 'All right, Phelim,' he
+says, and the gray mare started. At six in the mornin' I heard the
+gravel crunch, and I wint to the door. There stood the gray mare, her
+head down, and her tail bobbin'. 'You've over-driven her, Phelim,' says
+I. 'Perhaps,' says he, 'but I knew you were sittin' up for me. The curse
+of Ireland,' says he, 'is that her women sit up for her men.' 'How is
+the poor woman?' I says. 'She's dead,' says Phelim; 'Father Flynn is
+waiting for the neighbors to come.' 'And the little gossoon?' says I.
+Phelim leaned down from the dog-cart; 'Aunt Molly,' says he, 'we can't
+afford to keep what we have already, can we?' 'No,' says I. 'Thin,' says
+Phelim, 'we can just as well afford to keep one more; so I told him to
+come to us, after the funeral.'"
+
+"I don't quite follow that reasoning," said the earl.
+
+"I am more sure than ever, that I should like Phelim," said the
+cardinal. "Why do you not have him on?"
+
+"He's six foot three," explained Miss O'Kelly; "the yacht wouldn't fit
+him. He couldn't stand up, below. There is six foot seven between decks,
+but the electric lights project four inches. Then the beds--there isn't
+one more than six foot six. We had Phelim on board and tried him. He
+stayed one night. 'Aunt Molly,' he said, in the mornin', 'Nora has a
+beautiful boat, plenty of towels, and a good cook. I should like to go
+with you, but I'm scared. I kept awake last night, with my knees drawn
+up, and all went well, but if ever I fall asleep and straighten out,
+I'll kick the rudder out of her.' We couldn't have Phelim aboard, your
+imminence; he'd cancel the marine insurance."
+
+While Miss O'Kelly had been running on, the cardinal had been politely
+listening. He had also been discreetly observing. He had the attribute
+of politicians and ecclesiastics--he could exercise all his senses
+together. While he was smiling at Miss O'Kelly he had seen Lady Nora
+take from the gold vase one of the scarlet roses, press it, for an
+instant, to her lips and then, under cover of the table, pass it to the
+earl. He had seen the earl slowly lift the rose to his face, feigning to
+scent it while he kissed it. He had seen quick glances, quivering lips
+that half-whispered, half-kissed; he had seen the wireless telegraphy of
+love flashing messages which youth thinks are in cipher, known only to
+the sender and the recipient; and he, while laughing, had tapped the
+wire and read the correspondence.
+
+"It is all over," he said to himself. "They are in love. The little
+naked boy with the bow has hit them both."
+
+Promptly at nine, Pietro announced the barca. The cardinal made his
+adieus. "My lord," he said to the earl, "if you are for the shore, I
+should be honored by your company."
+
+"Thank you," said the earl, "but I ordered my gondola at ten."
+
+Lady Nora and the earl stood watching the cardinal's lantern as it sped
+toward Venice. It was soon lost in the night. Lady Nora's hand rested
+upon the rail. The earl covered it with his own. She did not move.
+
+"Have you bought the cup, Bobby," she asked.
+
+"Not yet," he answered, "but I shall have it. The treasury is closed for
+the annual cleaning."
+
+"When you bring it," she said, "you will find me here. I should like you
+to give it me on the Tara. There is your gondola light. Aunt Molly seems
+to be asleep in her chair. You need not wake her to say good-night."
+
+"I sha'n't," said the earl.
+
+Her hand still rested upon the rail--his hand still covered hers. She
+was gazing across the harbor at the countless lights of Venice. The warm
+night breeze from the lagoon dimpled the waters of the harbor until the
+reflected lights began to tremble. There was no sound, save the tinkle
+of the water against the side and the faint cry of a gondolier, in the
+distance.
+
+"Bobby," said Lady Nora, finally, "it is nice to be here, just you and
+I."
+
+He made a quick motion to take her in his arms, but she started back.
+"No, no," she said, "not yet; not till you earn me. There may be many a
+slip 'twixt the cup and"--she put her fingers to her lips.
+
+Miss O'Kelly's chin fell upon her topazes so sharply that she wakened
+with a start.
+
+"Nora, darlin'?" she cried, looking about her.
+
+"Here I am," said Lady Nora, coming into the light.
+
+"Ah," said her aunt, "and Lord Robert, too. I thought he had gone. I
+must have had forty winks."
+
+"I was only waiting," said the earl, "to bid you good-night."
+
+"An Irishman," said Miss O'Kelly, "would have taken advantage of me
+slumbers, and would have kissed me hand."
+
+"An Englishman will do it when you are awake," said the earl.
+
+"That's nice," said Miss O'Kelly; "run away home now, and get your
+beauty-sleep."
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+During the following week the cardinal was so occupied with his poor
+that he nearly forgot his rich. He saw the yacht whenever he took his
+barca at the molo, and once, when he was crossing the Rialto, he caught
+a glimpse of Lady Nora and her aunt, coming up the canal in their
+gondola.
+
+As for the earl, he haunted St. Mark's. Many times each day he went to
+the treasury only to find it locked. The sacristan could give him no
+comfort. "Perhaps to-morrow, my lord," he would say when the earl put
+his customary question; "it is the annual cleaning, and sometimes a
+jewel needs resetting, an embroidery to be repaired--all this takes
+time--perhaps to-morrow. Shall I uncover the Palo d'Oro, my Lord, or
+light up the alabaster column; they are both very fine?" And the earl
+would turn on his heel and leave the church, only to come back in an
+hour to repeat his question and receive his answer.
+
+One day the earl spoke out--"Tommaso," he said, "you are not a rich man,
+I take it?"
+
+"My lord," replied Tommaso, "I am inordinately poor. Are you about to
+tempt me?"
+
+The earl hesitated, blushed, and fumbled in his pocket. He drew out a
+handful of notes.
+
+"Take these," he said, "and open the treasury."
+
+"Alas, my lord," said Tommaso, "my virtue is but a battered thing, but I
+must keep it. I have no key."
+
+The earl went out and wandered through the arcades. He came upon Lady
+Nora and Miss O'Kelly. They were looking at Testolini's shop-windows.
+Lady Nora greeted him with a nod--Miss O'Kelly with animation.
+
+"I'm havin' a struggle with me conscience," she said.
+
+So was the earl.
+
+"Do ye see that buttherfly?" continued Miss O'Kelly, putting her finger
+against the glass; "it's marked two hundred lire, and that's eight
+pounds. I priced one in Dublin, just like it, and it was three hundred
+pounds. They don't know the value of diamonds in Italy. I've ten pounds
+that I got from Phelim yesterday, in a letther. He says there's been an
+Englishman at the Kildare Club for three weeks, who thought he could
+play piquet. Phelim is travellin' on the Continent. Now, the question in
+me mind is, shall I pay Father Flynn the ten pounds I promised him, a
+year ago Easter, or shall I buy the buttherfly? It would look illigant,
+Nora, dear, with me blue bengaline."
+
+Lady Nora laughed, "I am sure, Aunt Molly," she said, "that Phelim would
+rather you bought the butterfly, I'll take care of your subscription to
+Father Flynn."
+
+With an exclamation of joy, Miss O'Kelly ran into the shop.
+
+"Nora," said the earl, "the treasury is still closed."
+
+"Oh," said Lady Nora, "why do you remind me of such tiresome things as
+the treasury? Didn't you hear Aunt Molly say that Phelim is on the
+Continent? I had a wire from him this morning. Read it; it's quite
+Irish."
+
+She handed the earl a telegram.
+
+"Shall I read it?" he asked.
+
+"Of course," she answered.
+
+He read--"_I'm richer, but no shorter. Is there a hotel in Venice big
+enough to take me in? Wire answer._ PHELIM."
+
+"Will you send this reply for me?" she asked, when the earl had read
+Phelim's telegram.
+
+"To be sure I will," he said.
+
+"How many words are there?" she asked. "I'll pay for it."
+
+Thus compelled, the earl read her answer--"_Come, rich or poor, long or
+short. Come._ NORA."
+
+The earl went off with the telegram, thinking.
+
+The next afternoon the earl came out of the church--his fifth visit
+since ten o'clock--and there, near the fountain, were Lady Nora and her
+aunt. The earl marked them from the church steps. There was no mistaking
+Miss O'Kelly's green parasol.
+
+This time Lady Nora met him with animation. She even came toward him,
+her face wreathed in smiles.
+
+"Phelim has come!" she exclaimed.
+
+"Quite happy--I'm sure," said the earl. "He's prompt, isn't he?"
+
+"Yes," said Lady Nora, "he's always prompt. He doesn't lose shirt-studs,
+and he never dawdles."
+
+"Ah!" said the earl.
+
+"Here he comes!" exclaimed Lady Nora, and she began to wave her
+handkerchief.
+
+The earl turned and saw, coming from the corner by the clock-tower, a
+man. He had the shoulders of Hercules, the waist of Apollo, the legs of
+Mercury. When he came closer, hat in hand, the earl saw that he had
+curling chestnut locks, a beard that caressed his chin, brown eyes, and
+white teeth, for he was smiling.
+
+"Nora," he cried, as he came within distance, "your friend the cardinal
+is a good one. He puts on no side. He had me up on the balcony, opened
+your letter, took out the check, and read the letter before even he
+looked at the stamped paper. When a man gets a check in a letter and
+reads the letter before he looks at the check, he shows breedin'."
+
+"The Earl of Vauxhall," said Lady Nora, "I present Mr. Phelim Blake."
+
+The two men nodded; the earl, guardedly; Phelim, with a smile.
+
+"I think, my lord," said Phelim, "that you are not in Venice for her
+antiquities. No more am I. I arrived this mornin' and I've been all over
+the place already. I was just thinkin' that time might hang. Twice a day
+I've to go out to the yacht to propose to Nora. Durin' the intervals we
+might have a crack at piquet."
+
+The earl was embarrassed. He was not accustomed to such frankness. He
+was embarrassed also by the six feet three of Phelim. He himself was
+only six feet.
+
+"I do not know piquet," he said.
+
+"Ah," said Phelim, "it cost me much to learn what I know of it, and I
+will gladly impart that little for the pleasure of your companionship. I
+will play you for love."
+
+The earl took counsel with himself--"So long as he is playing piquet
+with me," he said to himself, "so long he cannot be making love to
+Nora."
+
+"How long will it take me to learn the game?" he asked.
+
+"As long," answered Phelim, "as you have ready money. When you begin to
+give due bills you have begun to grasp the rudiments of the game."
+
+"Then," said the earl, "I shall be an apt pupil, for I shall give an IOU
+the first time I lose"
+
+"In piquet," said Phelim, squaring himself, and placing the index finger
+of his right hand in his left hand, after the manner of the didactic,
+"the great thing is the discard, and your discard should be governed by
+two considerations--first, to better your own hand, and second, to
+cripple your opponent's. Your moderate player never thinks of this
+latter consideration. His only thought is to better his own hand. He
+never discards an ace. The mere size of it dazzles him, and he will keep
+aces and discard tens, forgetting that you cannot have a sequence of
+more than four without a ten, and that you can have one of seven without
+the ace, and that a king is as good as an ace, if the latter is in the
+discard. I am speakin' now," continued Phelim, "of the beginner. Let us
+suppose one who has spent one thousand pounds on the game, and is
+presumed to have learned somethin' for his money. His fault is apt to be
+that he sacrifices too much that he may count cards. I grant you that
+you cannot count sixty or ninety if your opponent has cards, but you
+may, if cards are tied. When I was a beginner I used to see Colonel
+Mellish make discards, on the mere chance of tyin' the cards, that
+seemed to me simply reckless. I soon discovered, however, that they were
+simply scientific. One more thing--always remember that there is no
+average card in a piquet pack. The average is halfway between the
+ten-spot and the knave. Now, what are the chances of the junior hand
+discardin' a ten and drawin' a higher card? In the Kildare Club they are
+understood to be two and three-eighths to one against, although Colonel
+Mellish claims they are two and five-eighths to one. The colonel is an
+authority, but I think he is a trifle pessimistic. He--"
+
+"There, Phelim," said Lady Nora, "I think that is enough for the first
+lesson. We dine at eight. If Lord Vauxhall has nothing better to do
+perhaps he will come with you."
+
+"We'll dine on deck, Phelim, dear," said Miss O'Kelly. "You won't have
+to go below."
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+
+The next morning the earl went to the church, as usual. He had not slept
+well. The advent of Phelim had set him to thinking. Here was a rival;
+and a dangerous one. He admitted this grudgingly, for an Englishman is
+slow to see a rival in a foreigner, and who so foreign as an Irishman?
+
+At dinner, on the yacht, the night before, Phelim had been much in
+evidence. His six feet three had impressed the earl's six feet. Phelim
+had been well dressed. "Confound him," thought the earl, "he goes to
+Poole, or Johns & Pegg. Why doesn't he get his clothes at home?" Then
+Phelim had talked much, and he had talked well. He had told stories at
+which the earl had been compelled to laugh. He had related experiences
+of his home-life, of the peasants, the priests, the clubs, hunting and
+shooting, his brief stay in Parliament, what he had seen in Venice
+during the last few days; and, when dinner was over, Lady Nora, who had
+been all attention, said: "Sing for us, Phelim," and they had gone
+below, Phelim stooping to save his head; and he had struck those
+mysterious chords upon the piano, by way of prelude, that silence talk,
+that put the world far away, that set the men to glancing at the women,
+and the women to glancing at the floor and making sure of their
+handkerchiefs, and then--he had sung.
+
+How can one describe a song? As well attempt to paint a perfume.
+
+When Phelim finished singing Miss O'Kelly went over and kissed him, and
+Lady Nora went away, her eyes glistening.
+
+The earl remembered all these things as he went up the aisle. He had
+passed that way five times each day for nine days. He came to the door
+of the treasury, thinking, not of Nora, but of Phelim--and the door was
+open.
+
+He went in. The gorgeous color of the place stopped him, on the
+threshold. He saw the broidered vestments upon which gold was the mere
+background; jacinths were the stamens of the flowers, and pierced
+diamonds were the dewdrops on their leaves; he saw the chalices and
+patens of amethyst and jade, the crucifixes of beaten gold, in which
+rubies were set solid, as if they had been floated on the molten metal;
+he saw the seven-light candelabrum, the bobèches of which were sliced
+emeralds, and then his eyes, groping in this wilderness of beauty,
+lighted on the turquoise cup.
+
+"My God!" he exclaimed, "she is right. She is selling herself for the
+most beautiful thing in the world. To steal it is a crime like
+Cromwell's--too great to be punished," and he put out his hand.
+
+Then, with the cup and Nora within his reach, he heard a still, small
+voice, and his hand fell.
+
+He began to argue with his conscience. "Who owns this cup?" he asked.
+"No one. The cardinal said it had been stolen. He said no one could sell
+it because no one could give title. Why, then, is it not mine as well as
+any one's? If I take it, whom do I wrong? Great men have never let
+trifles of right and wrong disturb their conduct. Who would ever have
+won a battle if he had taken thought of the widows? Who would ever have
+attained any great thing if he had not despised small things?" and he
+put out his hand again; and then came surging into his mind the
+provisions of that code which birth, associations, his school life, and,
+most of all, his mother, had taught him. What would they say and do at
+his clubs? Where, in all the world, could he hide himself, if he did
+this thing? He turned and fled, and, running down the church steps, he
+came face to face with Lady Nora and Phelim. They were laughing gayly;
+but, when they saw the earl's face, their laughter ceased.
+
+"Have you seen a ghost, my lord?" asked Phelim.
+
+The earl did not answer; he did not even hear. He stood gazing at Lady
+Nora. For one brief moment, when he stood before the cup, he had
+questioned whether a woman who would impose such a condition could be
+worth winning; and now, before her, her beauty overwhelmed him. He
+forgot Phelim; he forgot the passers-by; he forgot everything, except
+the woman he loved--the woman he had lost.
+
+"Nora," he said, "I give you back your promise. I cannot give you the
+cup."
+
+The color left her cheeks and her hands flew up to her heart--she gazed
+at him with love and pity in her eyes, and then, suddenly, her cheeks
+flamed, her white teeth pressed her lower lip, her little foot stamped
+upon the pavement.
+
+"Very well," she said, "I regret having given you so much trouble;" and
+she went toward the landing. She took three steps and then turned. The
+two men stood as she had left them.
+
+"Phelim," she said, smiling, "_you_ would do something for me, if I were
+to ask you, would you not?"
+
+"Try me," said Phelim. "Would you like the Campanile for a
+paper-weight?"
+
+"No," she said, "not that, but something else. Come here."
+
+He went to her, and she whispered in his ear.
+
+"I'll bring it you in half an hour, aboard the yacht," said Phelim, and
+he started across the Piazza.
+
+Lady Nora went on toward the landing. The earl stood watching her. She
+did not look back. The earl looked up at the clock-tower. "In half an
+hour," he said to himself, "he will bring it to her, aboard the yacht;"
+and he turned and re-entered the church. He went up the aisle, nodded to
+the sacristan, entered the treasury, took the turquoise cup, came out
+with it in his hand, nodded again to the sacristan, went down the steps,
+crossed the Piazza, ran down the landing-stairs, and jumped into a
+gondola.
+
+"To the English yacht!" he cried.
+
+He looked at his watch. "It seems," he said to himself "that one can
+join the criminal classes in about six minutes. I've twenty-four the
+start of Phelim."
+
+They came alongside the Tara, and the earl sprang up the ladder.
+
+"Lady Nora?" he asked of the quartermaster.
+
+"She is below, my lord. She has just come aboard, and she left orders to
+show you down, my lord."
+
+"Me?" exclaimed the earl.
+
+"She didn't name you, my lord;" said the quartermaster, "what she said
+was--'A gentleman will come on board soon; show him below.'"
+
+The earl speculated a moment as to whether he were still a gentleman,
+and then went down the companion-way. He came to the saloon. The door
+was open. He looked in. Lady Nora was seated at the piano, but her hands
+were clasped in her lap. Her head was bent and the earl noticed, for the
+thousandth time, how the hair clustered in her neck and framed the
+little, close-set ear. He saw the pure outlines of her shoulders;
+beneath the bench, he saw her foot in its white shoe; he saw, or felt,
+he could not have told you which, that here was the one woman in all
+this great world. To love her was a distinction. To sin for her was a
+dispensation. To achieve her was a coronation.
+
+He tapped on the door. The girl did not turn, but she put her hands on
+the keys quickly, as if ashamed to have them found idle.
+
+"Ah, Phelim," she said, "you are more than prompt; you never keep one
+waiting," and she began to play very softly.
+
+The earl was embarrassed. Despite his crime, he still had breeding left
+him, and he felt compelled to make his presence known. He knocked again.
+
+"Don't interrupt me, Phelim," she said; "this is my swan-song; listen;"
+and she began to sing. She sang bravely, at first, with her head held
+high, and then, suddenly, her voice began to falter.
+
+"Ah, Phelim, dear," she cried, "I've lost my love! I've lost my love!"
+and she put her hands to her face and fell to sobbing.
+
+"Nora!" said the earl. It was the first word he had spoken, and she
+raised her head, startled.
+
+"Here is the cup, Nora," he said.
+
+She sprang to her feet and turned to him, tears on her cheeks, but a
+light in her eyes such as he had never seen.
+
+"Oh, my love," she cried, "I should have known you'd bring it."
+
+"Yes," he said, "you should have known."
+
+She stood, blushing, radiant, eager, waiting.
+
+He stood in the doorway, pale, quiet, his arms at his side, the cup in
+his hand.
+
+"Nora," he said, "I've brought you the cup, but I do not dare to give it
+to you. I stole it."
+
+"What?" she cried, running toward him. She stopped suddenly and began to
+laugh--a pitiful little laugh, pitched in an unnatural key. "You
+shouldn't frighten me like that, Bobby," she said; "it isn't fair."
+
+"It is true," said the earl; "I am a thief."
+
+She looked at him and saw that he was speaking the truth.
+
+"No," she cried, "'tis I am the thief, not you. The cardinal warned me
+that I was compelling you to this, and I laughed at him. I thought that
+you would achieve the cup, if you cared for me; that you would render
+some service to the State and claim it as your reward--that you would
+make a fortune, and buy it--that you would make friends at the
+Vatican--that you would build churches, found hospitals, that even the
+Holy Father might ask you to name something within his gift--I thought
+of a thousand schemes, such as one reads of--but I never thought you
+would take it. No, no; I never thought that."
+
+"Nora," said the earl, "I didn't know how to do any of those things, and
+I didn't have time to learn."
+
+"I would have waited for you, always," she said.
+
+"I didn't know that," said the earl.
+
+"I hoped you didn't," said Lady Nora. "Come!" and she sprang through the
+door. The earl followed her. They ran up the companion-way, across the
+deck, down the boarding-stairs. The earl's gondola was waiting.
+
+"To the molo in five minutes," cried Lady Nora to the poppe, "and you
+shall be rich."
+
+They went into the little cabin. The earl still held the cup in his
+hand. They sat far apart--each longing to comfort the other--each afraid
+to speak. Between them was a great gulf fixed--the gulf of sin and
+shame.
+
+Half-way to the landing, they passed Phelim's gondola, making for the
+yacht. The cabin hid them and he passed in silence.
+
+"I sent him for some bon-bons," said Lady Nora. "I did it to make you
+jealous."
+
+They reached the molo in less than five minutes and Lady Nora tossed her
+purse to the oarsmen, and sprang out.
+
+"Put the cup under your coat," she said. The earl obeyed. He had stolen
+it openly. He brought it back hidden. They crossed the Piazza as rapidly
+as they dared, and entered the church. The sacristan greeted them with a
+smile and led the way to the treasury.
+
+"They haven't missed it yet," whispered Lady Nora.
+
+The sacristan unlocked the outer and the inner door, bowed, and left
+them.
+
+Lady Nora seized the cup and ran to its accustomed shelf. She had her
+hand outstretched to replace it, when she uttered a cry.
+
+"What is it?" exclaimed the earl.
+
+She did not answer, but she pointed, and the earl, looking where she
+pointed, saw, on the shelf--the turquoise cup.
+
+They stared at the cup on the shelf--at the cup in Lady Nora's
+hand--and at each other--dumfounded.
+
+They heard a limping step on the pavement and the cardinal came in. His
+face was very grave, but his voice was very gentle.
+
+"My children," he said, "I prayed God that you would bring back the cup,
+but, _mea culpa_, I lacked faith, and dared not risk the original. Would
+God let Nora Blake's granddaughter make shipwreck? The cup you have, my
+child, is but silver-gilt and glass, but it may serve, some other day,
+to remind you of this day. Look at it when your pride struggles with
+your heart. Perhaps the sight of it may strengthen you. Take it, not as
+the present of a cardinal, or an archbishop, but as the wedding-gift of
+an old man who once was young, and once knew Nora Blake."
+
+"A wedding-gift?" exclaimed Lady Nora. "What man would ever marry such a
+wretch as I?"
+
+"Nora!" cried the earl; and he held out his arms.
+
+"My pigeons are waiting for me," said the cardinal; and he went away,
+limping.
+
+
+
+
+THE DESERT
+
+
+Far down in the Desert of Sahara is the little oasis of El Merb. It is
+so small that our crude atlases miss it. It has but one well, and the
+fertile land is not more than forty rods in diameter. It has a mosque,
+a bazaar, a slave-market, and a café. It is called by the traders of
+Biskra "The Key of the Desert." It is called by the Mohammedan priests
+of Biskra "The Treasury of the Desert." It is called by the French
+commandant at Biskra "A place to be watched." The only communication
+between El Merb and Biskra is by camels, and Abdullah was once the
+chief caravan-master.
+
+      *       *       *       *       *
+
+Abdullah, having felt the humps of his camels, turned to his driver.
+
+"We start to-morrow, Ali," he said; "the beasts are fit."
+
+Ali bowed and showed his white teeth.
+
+"To-morrow," continued Abdullah, "since it is Friday; and immediately
+after the middle prayer. I hear in the bazaar that the well at Okba is
+choked. Can we make forty-two miles in one day, so as to cut Okba out?"
+
+"We can," said Ali, "during the first three days, when the beasts do
+not drink; after that--no."
+
+"Good," said Abdullah; "I will make a route."
+
+Some one plucked at his sleeve and he turned.
+
+"Sir," said a man with a white beard and eager eyes, "I learn that you
+start for Biskra to-morrow."
+
+"If Allah wills," said Abdullah.
+
+"In crossing the desert," said the old man, "I am told there are many
+dangers."
+
+"Friend," said Abdullah, "in sitting at home there are many dangers."
+
+"True," said the old man; and, after an interval, he added, "I think I
+may trust you."
+
+Abdullah shrugged his shoulders and rolled a cigarette.
+
+"Would it please you," said the old man, "to take a passenger for
+Biskra?"
+
+"At a price," replied Abdullah, striking a match.
+
+"What is the price?" asked the old man.
+
+"Do you pay in dates, hides, ivory, or gold-dust?"
+
+"In dust," replied the old man.
+
+Abdullah threw away his cigarette. "I will carry you to Biskra," said
+he, "for eight ounces, and will furnish you with dates. If you desire
+other food, you must provide it. You shall have water, if I do."
+
+"It is not for myself that I seek passage," said the old man, "but for
+my daughter."
+
+"In that event," said Abdullah, "the price will be nine ounces. Women
+cast responsibility upon me."
+
+"And her maid-servant?" asked the old man.
+
+"Eight ounces," replied Abdullah.
+
+"It is all I have," said the old man, "but I will give it."
+
+"If you have no more," said Abdullah, "Allah forbid that I should strip
+you. I will carry the two for sixteen ounces."
+
+"Allah will make it up to you," said the old man. "If you will deign to
+accompany me to the bazaar, I will pay you immediately."
+
+They went to the arcades about the square and entered the shop of
+Hassan, the money-changer.
+
+The old man pulled at his girdle and produced, after many contortions,
+a purse of gazelle skin.
+
+"Friend Hassan," he said, "I wish to pay to this, my son, sixteen
+ounces. Kindly weigh them for me."
+
+Hassan produced his scales. They consisted of two metal disks,
+suspended by silk threads from the ends of a fern stem. He balanced
+this stem upon the edge of a knife, fixed above his table. In one of
+the pans he placed a weight, stamped with Arabic characters. The pan
+fell to the table. Hassan produced a horn spoon, which he blew upon and
+then carefully wiped with the hem of his burnoose. He handed the spoon
+to the old man, who felt of the bowl.
+
+"It is dry," he said; "nothing will stick to it."
+
+Hassan plunged the spoon into the bag and brought it out, filled with
+gold-dust, which he poured into the empty pan. The scales rose, fell,
+trembled, and then settled even.
+
+"I nearly always can judge an ounce," said Hassan; "a grain is another
+matter."
+
+He weighed out sixteen ounces. The last ounce he left in the pan. Then
+he turned and, with a sweep of his arm, caught a fly from off the wall.
+He handled it with the greatest care until he held it in the tips of
+his fingers; then he put it into his mouth and closed his lips. In a
+moment he took it out. The fly was moist and dejected. He placed it
+upon the gold-dust in the pan. The fly began to beat its wings and work
+its legs. In a moment its color changed from blue-black to yellow. It
+was coated with gold-dust. Hassan lifted it with a pair of tweezers,
+and popped it into an inlaid box.
+
+"My commission," he said. "Good-by. Allah be with you."
+
+The old man tied up his bag, which seemed to be as heavy as ever.
+
+"I thought," said Abdullah, glancing at the purse, "that seventeen
+ounces was all you had."
+
+"What remains," said the old man, and there was a twinkle in his eye,
+"belongs to Allah's poor, of whom I am one."
+
+"I regret," said Abdullah, with some heat, "that I did not treble my
+usual price. I merely doubled it for you."
+
+The old man's face clouded, but only for an instant.
+
+"My son," he said, "I am glad that I have intrusted my daughter to you.
+You will bring her to Biskra in safety. At what hour do you start?"
+
+"Immediately after the noon prayer," answered Abdullah, "and I wait for
+no one."
+
+"Good," said the old man, "we shall be there; _slama_."
+
+"_Slama_," said Abdullah, and they parted.
+
+Abdullah went back to his camels. He found Ali asleep between the black
+racer and the dun leader. He kicked him gently, as though he were a
+dog, and Ali sat up smiling and pleased to be kicked, when he saw his
+master.
+
+"We take two women with us," said Abdullah.
+
+"Allah help us," said Ali.
+
+"He has already," said Abdullah; "I have sixteen ounces in my girdle."
+
+"It seems, then," said Ali, grinning, "that not only Allah has helped
+you, but you have helped yourself."
+
+"Peace," said Abdullah, "you know nothing of commerce."
+
+"I know, however," said Ali, "that the Englishwoman whom we carried two
+years ago, and who made us stop two days at the wells of Okba, because
+her dog was ailing, gave me a bad piece of silver that I could not
+spend in Biskra. 'T was she of the prominent teeth and the big feet. I
+used to see her feet when she mounted her camel, and I used to see her
+teeth when I saw nothing else."
+
+"Peace," said Abdullah. "Allah who made us made also the English."
+
+"Perhaps," said Ali, "but one cannot help wondering why He did it."
+
+"If we carry these two women," said Abdullah, "we must leave the cargo
+of two beasts behind. Leave four bales of hides; I took them
+conditioned upon no better freight offering; and put the women on the
+two lame camels. In this way we profit most, since we sacrifice least
+merchandise. The porters will be here at sunrise to help you load. See
+that they are careful. You remember what happened last time, when our
+cargoes kept shifting. All seems well to-night, except you have loaded
+that red camel yonder too high on the right side. How can a camel rest
+if, when he kneels, his load does not touch the ground? He must support
+the weight himself."
+
+"I intended to alter that in the morning," said Ali.
+
+"The morning may never dawn," said Abdullah, "and meanwhile you rob the
+beast of one night's rest. Attend to it at once. The speed of a caravan
+is the speed of its slowest camel."
+
+"Who should know that better than I?" exclaimed Ali. "Have I not
+crossed the desert nine times with you? Oh, master, bear with me, I am
+growing old."
+
+"What is your age?" asked Abdullah.
+
+"One-and-thirty," replied Ali.
+
+"My friend," said Abdullah, "you are good for another voyage; and know
+this, when you fail me, I quit the desert, and turn householder, with a
+wife or two, and children, if Allah wills it. I myself am
+six-and-twenty. I have earned a rest. _Slama_." And he turned on his
+heel to go, but he turned again.
+
+"Ali," he said, "who lives in the first house beyond the mosque, on the
+left--the house with the green lattices?"
+
+"I do not know, my master," replied Ali, "but I shall tell you in the
+morning."
+
+"Good," said Abdullah; "and there is a damsel who sits behind the
+lattice, and always wears a flower in her hair, a red flower, a flower
+like this," and he put his hand into the folds of his burnoose and
+brought out a faded, crumpled, red oleander. "Who is she?"
+
+"Tomorrow," said Ali.
+
+"Good," said Abdullah, and he went away.
+
+"_Slama_" said Ali, and then he added, to himself, "There goes a
+masterful man, and a just one, but love has caught him."
+
+And he hurriedly eased the red camel of her load.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+The next morning the departing caravan had many visitors. The merchants
+from the arcades came to see that their ventures were properly loaded.
+They passed comments upon the camels as Englishmen and Americans do
+upon horses in the paddock or the show-ring. Some they criticised, some
+they praised, but they were of one mind as to their condition.
+
+"Their humps are fat," they all agreed; and, as a camel draws upon his
+hump for food as he draws upon the sacs surrounding his stomach for
+water, the condition of the caravan was declared to be _mleh_, which is
+the Arabic equivalent for "fit."
+
+Abdullah was a busy man. He signed manifests, received money, receipted
+for it, felt of surcingles, tightened them, swore at the boys who were
+teasing the camels, kicked Ali whenever he came within reach, and in
+every way played the _rôle_ of the business man of the desert.
+
+Suddenly, from the minaret of the mosque came the cry of the mueddin.
+The clamor of the market ceased and the Mussulmans fell upon their
+knees, facing the east and Mecca. The camels were already kneeling, but
+they were facing the north and Biskra.
+
+While the faithful were praying, the unbelievers from the Soudan fell
+back and stood silent. A cry to God, no matter what god, silences the
+patter of the market-place. Abdullah prayed as a child beseeches his
+father.
+
+"Give me, Allah, a safe and quick journey. Unchoke the wells at Okba.
+Strengthen the yellow camel. Make high the price of dates and low the
+price of hides; 'tis thus I have ventured. Bring us in safety to
+Biskra. And bring me to the damsel who sits behind the green lattice.
+These things I pray--thy sinful son, Abdullah."
+
+He rose, and the old man stood at his elbow. Abdullah had forgotten his
+passengers.
+
+"This," said the old man, turning to a woman veiled to her eyes, "is my
+daughter, and this," he added, "is her maid," and a negress, comely and
+smiling, made salaam. "I pray thee," he continued, "to deliver this
+invoice," and he handed Abdullah a paper.
+
+Abdullah was too busy to notice his passengers. "Let them mount at
+once," he said, slipping the paper under his girdle, and he left them
+to Ali, who came up showing his white teeth.
+
+There were the last words, instructions, cautions, adieus, and then
+Abdullah held up his hand. Ali gave the cry of the camel-driver and the
+uncouth beasts, twisting and snarling under their loads, struggled to
+their feet.
+
+Another cry, and they began their voyage. They traversed the square,
+passed the mosque, turned down a narrow street, and in five minutes
+crossed the line that bounded the oasis, and entered upon the desert.
+
+Immediately the dun leader took his place at the left and slightly in
+advance. The fourth on the right of the dun was the black racer. He
+carried two water-skins and Abdullah's saddle. Then came, in ranks,
+fifteen camels, Ali riding in the centre. On the right flank rode the
+two women, with enormous red and white cotton sunshades stretched
+behind them. Then, at an interval of six rods, came fifteen camels
+unattended. They simply followed the squad in front. The dun leader and
+the black racer had lanyards about their necks. The other camels had no
+harness save the surcingles that held their loads.
+
+In a panic, a sand-storm, a fusillade from Bedouins, a mirage, and a
+race for water, if Abdullah and Ali could grasp these lanyards, the
+caravan was saved, since the other camels followed the dun leader and
+the black racer as sheep follow the bell-wether.
+
+Abdullah walked at the left, abreast of the dun. At intervals he rode
+the black racer.
+
+The pace of a caravan is two miles an hour, but Abdullah's, the two
+cripples included, could make two miles and a quarter. The black racer
+could make sixty miles a day for five days, without drinking, but at
+the end of such a journey his hump would be no larger than a
+pincushion, and his temper--?
+
+For centuries it has been the custom of Sahara caravans to travel not
+more than five miles the first day. Abdullah, the iconoclast, made
+thirty-three. Ali came to him at two o'clock.
+
+"Shall we camp, master?" he asked.
+
+"When I give the word," replied Abdullah. "You forget that the wells at
+Okba are choked. We shall camp at El Zarb."
+
+"El Zarb," exclaimed Ali. "We should camp there to-morrow."
+
+"Must I continually remind you," said Abdullah, "that to-morrow may
+never dawn? We camp at El Zarb to-night."
+
+At nine o'clock they marched under the palms of El Zarb. Abdullah held
+up his hands; Ali ran to the head of the dun leader; the caravan
+halted, groaned, and knelt. The first day's journey was over.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+The moment that the halt was accomplished, Abdullah went about, loosing
+the surcingles of his camels. Then he began to pitch his tent. It was
+of camel-skins, stretched over eight sticks, and fastened at the edges
+with spikes of locust wood. It was entirely open at the front, and when
+he had the flaps pinned, he gathered a little pile of camels' dung,
+struck a match, and began to make his tea. He had no thought for his
+passengers. His thoughts were with his heart, and that was back at the
+house beyond the bazaar--the house with the green lattices. Before the
+water boiled, Ali came up, eager, breathless.
+
+"Master," he said, "the passengers are cared for, and the mistress
+wears a flower like--like _that_; the one you showed me;" and he
+pointed to Abdullah's bosom.  "You are either a faithful servant," said
+Abdullah, "or you are a great liar. The morrow will tell." And he
+started toward the passengers' tent. He found it closed. Being a
+woman's tent, it had front flaps, and they were laced. He walked back
+and forth before it. He was master of the caravan, more autocratic than
+the master of a ship. He might have cut the laces, entered, and no one
+could have questioned. That is the law of the desert. He could more
+easily have cut his own throat than that slender cord.
+
+He wandered back and forth before the tent. The twilight faded. The
+shadows turned from saffron to violet, to purple, to cobalt. Out of the
+secret cavern of the winds came the cool night-breeze of the Sahara.
+
+Still he paced up and down, before the little tent. And as he measured
+the sands, he measured his life. Born of a camel-driver by a slave;
+working his way across the desert a score of times before his wages
+made enough to buy one bale of hides; venturing the earnings of a
+lifetime on one voyage--making a profit, when a loss would have put him
+back to the beginning--venturing again, winning again--buying three
+camels--leasing them--buying three more--starting an express from the
+Soudan to Biskra one day short of all others;--carrying only dates and
+gold-dust--insuring his gold-dust, something he learned from the French
+in Biskra;--buying thirty camels at a plunge--at once the master
+camel-driver of the Sahara--and here he was, pacing up and down before
+a laced tent which held behind it--_a woman_.
+
+The night of the desert settled down, and still he paced. The stars
+came up--the stars by which he laid his course; and, finally, pacing,
+he came for the hundredth time to the tent's front and stopped.
+
+"Mistress?" he whispered. There was no answer, "Mistress?" he called,
+and then, after an interval, the flies of the tent parted--a white
+hand, and a whiter wrist, appeared, and a red oleander fell on the
+sands of the desert.
+
+Abdullah was on his knees. He pressed the flower to his lips, to his
+heart. Kneeling he watched the flaps of the tent. They fluttered; the
+laces raced through the eyelets; the flaps parted, and a girl,
+unveiled, stepped out into the firelight. They stood, silent, gazing
+one at the other.
+
+"You have been long in coming," she said, at length.
+
+There is no love-making in the desert. Thanks to its fervent heat, love
+there comes ready-made.
+
+"Yes," said Abdullah, "I have tarried, but now that I have come, I stay
+forever;" and he took her in his arms.
+
+"When did you love me first?" she whispered, half-released.
+
+"When first I saw you, behind the green lattice," gasped Abdullah.
+
+"Ah, that green lattice," whispered the girl; "how small its openings
+were. And still, my heart flew through them when first you passed. How
+proudly you walked. Walk for me now--here, in the firelight, where I
+may see you--not so slowly with your eyes turned toward me, but
+swiftly, smoothly, proudly, your head held high--that's it--that is the
+way you passed my lattice, and as you passed my heart cried out, 'There
+goes my king.' Did you not hear it?"
+
+"No," said Abdullah; "my own heart cried so loudly I heard naught
+else."
+
+"What did it cry? What cries it now?" she said; and she placed her
+cheek against his bosom, her ear above his heart. "I hear it," she
+whispered, "but it beats so fast I cannot understand."
+
+"Then," said Abdullah, "I must tell thee with my lips."
+
+"Oh, beloved," she whispered, "the camels will see us."
+
+"What matters," he said; "they belong to me."
+
+"Then they are my brethren," she said, "since I, also, belong to thee,"
+and with arms entwined they passed out of the fire-light into the
+purple of the desert.
+
+      *       *       *       *       *
+
+When they came back, the hobbled camels were snoring, and the unfed
+fires were smouldering.
+
+"Allah keep thee," said Abdullah, at the door of her tent.
+
+"And thee, my master," said the girl, and the flaps fell.
+
+Abdullah went slowly toward his own tent. He stopped a moment by one of
+the lame camels. "Thou broughtest her to me," he said, and he eased the
+beast's surcingle by a dozen holes.
+
+He reached his tent, paused, faced the western horizon, lifted his
+arms, breathed in the sweet, cool air of the desert, and entered.
+
+Ali had spread a camel's hide, had covered a water-skin with a burnoose
+for a pillow, and had left, near it, a coiled wax-taper and a box of
+matches. Abdullah untwined his turban, loosened his sash, felt
+something escape him, fell on his knees, groped, felt a paper, rose,
+went to the tent's door, recognized the invoice which the old man had
+given him, went out, kicked up the embers of the fire, knelt, saw that
+the paper was unsealed, was fastened merely with a thread, played with
+the thread, saw it part beneath his fingers, saw the page unfold,
+stirred up the embers, and read:
+
+"_To Mirza, Mother of the Dancers at Biskra, by the hand of Abdullah. I
+send thee, as I said, the most beautiful woman in the world. She has
+been carefully reared. She has no thought of commercialism. Two and two
+are five to her as well as four. She is unspoiled. She never has had a
+coin in her fingers, and she never has had a wish ungratified. She
+knows a little French; the French of courtship merely. Her Arabic is
+that of Medina. You, doubtless, will exploit her in Biskra. You may
+have her for two years. By that time she may toss her own handkerchief.
+Then she reverts to me. I shall take her to Cairo, where second-rate
+Englishmen and first-rate Americans abound.
+
+"This is thy receipt for the thirty ounces you sent me._
+
+"ILDERHIM."
+
+When Abdullah had read this invoice of his love, he sat long before the
+little fire as one dead. Then he rose, felt in his bosom, and drew out
+two flowers, one withered, the other fresh. He dropped these among the
+embers, straightened himself; lifted his arms toward heaven, and slowly
+entered his tent.
+
+The little fires smouldered and died, and the great desert was silent,
+save for the sighing of the camels and the singing of the shifting
+sands.
+
+
+
+
+THE MAN WHO KEEPS GOATS
+
+
+I
+
+The next morning broke as all mornings break in the desert, first
+yellow, then white, and always silent. The air bore the scent of sage.
+The hobbled camels had broken every shrub within their reach, and
+stunted herbage is, almost always, aromatic.
+
+Abdullah gave no heed to the sun. He who for ten years had been the
+most energetic man of the desert had overnight become the most
+nonchalant. Like Achilles, he sulked in his tent.
+
+At five o'clock Ali ventured to bring his master's coffee. He found
+Abdullah fully dressed and reading a paper, which he hurriedly thrust
+into his burnoose when he was interrupted.
+
+"Your coffee, master," said Ali. "We have twelve leagues to make
+to-day."
+
+"Ali," said Abdullah, "the night before we started I asked you who
+lived in the house with the green lattices--the next house beyond the
+mosque--and you promised to tell me in the morning."
+
+"Yes, master," said Ali, "but in the morning you did not ask me."
+
+"I ask you now," said Abdullah.
+
+Ali bowed. "Master," he answered, "the house is occupied by Ilderhim,
+chief of the tribe of Ouled Nail. He hires it for five years, and he
+occupies it for the three months, Chaban, Ramadan, and Chaoual, of each
+year. He has also the gardens and four water-rights. He deals in ivory,
+gold-dust, and dancing-girls. He formerly lived in Biskra, but the
+French banished him. They have also banished him from Algiers, and he
+has been warned from Cairo and Medina. He has a divorced wife in each
+of those cities. They are the mothers of the dancing-girls. The one in
+Biskra is Mirza. Every one in Biskra knows Mirza. Doubtless you,
+master--"
+
+"Yes," said Abdullah, "but the damsel. Who is she?"
+
+"His daughter," replied Ali.
+
+"How know you this?" demanded Abdullah, fiercely.
+
+"Master," said Ali, "last night, when you were looking at the stars
+with the mistress, I had a word with the maid. She came to me, while I
+was asleep by the dun leader, and shook me as if I had been an old
+friend.
+
+"'Save her,' she whispered, as I rubbed my eyes.
+
+"'Willingly,' I replied. 'Who is she?'
+
+"'My mistress,' said the maid. 'They are taking her to Biskra. She has
+been sold to Mirza. She will dance in the cafés. This sweet flower will
+be cast into the mire of the market-place. Save her.'
+
+"'How know you this?' I asked.
+
+"'Ah,' she answered, 'this is not the first time I have crossed the
+desert with one of Ilderhim's daughters. Save her.'
+
+"'Does the damsel know nothing of this--does she not go with her eyes
+open?' I asked.
+
+"'She thinks,' said the maid, 'that she goes to Biskra to be taught the
+manners and the learning of the French women--to read, to sing, to know
+the world. Her heart is even fairer than her face. She knows no evil.
+Save her.'"
+
+Abdullah groaned and hung his head.
+
+"Forgive me, Allah," he said, "for that I doubted her. Forgive me for
+that I burned the flowers she gave to me," and he went out.
+
+"Your coffee, master," cried Ali, but Abdullah paid no heed. He went
+swiftly to the little tent, and there was the damsel, veiled, and
+already mounted on the lame camel, ready to march.
+
+"Beloved," said Abdullah, "you must dismount," and he lifted her from
+the back of the kneeling beast.
+
+"Ali," he cried, "place the damsel's saddle on the black racer, and put
+mine on the dun. We two start on at once for the oasis of Zama. We can
+make it in thirteen hours. Give us a small water-skin and some dates. I
+leave everything else with you. Load, and follow us. We will wait for
+you at Zama. I go to counsel with the Man who Keeps Goats."
+
+In five minutes the black racer and the dun leader were saddled.
+
+"Come, beloved," said Abdullah, and without a word she followed him.
+She had asked no question, exhibited no curiosity. It was enough for
+her that Abdullah said, "Come."
+
+They rode in silence for some minutes. Then Abdullah said: "Beloved, I
+do not know your name."
+
+She dropped her veil, and his heart fell to fluttering.
+
+"The one who loves me calls me 'beloved,'" she said, "and I like that
+name."
+
+"But your real name?" said Abdullah.
+
+"I was baptized 'Fathma,'" she said, smiling.
+
+"Doubtless," said Abdullah; "since all women are named for the mother
+of the Prophet; but what is your other name, your house name?"
+
+"Nicha," she answered; "do you like it?"
+
+"Yes," he said, "I like it."
+
+"I like 'beloved' better," said the girl.
+
+"You shall hear it to your heart's content," said Abdullah.
+
+They went on again, in silence, which was broken by the girl.
+
+"Master," she said, "if you do not care to speak to me further, I will
+put up my veil."
+
+"Do not," exclaimed Abdullah, "unless," he added, "you fear for your
+complexion."
+
+"I do not fear for my complexion," said the girl, "but for my
+reputation; and she smiled again.
+
+"That," said Abdullah, "is henceforth in my keeping. Pay no heed to
+it."
+
+"I am not yet your wife," said the girl.
+
+"True," said Abdullah, "and we are making this forced march to learn
+how I may make you such. Who is your father, beloved?"
+
+"Ilderhim," she answered; "but why do you ask? You saw him when we
+started from El Merb."
+
+"Do you love him?" asked Abdullah.
+
+"I scarcely know," answered the girl, after a pause. "I have not seen
+him often. He is constantly from home. He buys me pretty clothes and
+permits me to go to the cemetery each Friday with my maid. I suppose I
+love him--not as I love you, or as I love the camel that brought me to
+you, or the sandal on your foot, or the sand it presses--still, I think
+I must love him--but I never thought about it before."
+
+"And your mother?" asked Abdullah.
+
+"I have no mother," said the girl. "She died before I can remember."
+
+"And why do you go to Biskra?" asked Abdullah.
+
+"My father sends me," said the girl, "to a great lady who lives there.
+Her name is Mirza. Do you not know her, since you lived in Biskra?"
+
+Abdullah did not answer. Something suddenly went wrong with his saddle,
+and he busied himself with it.
+
+"I am to be taught the languages and the ways of Europe," continued the
+girl, "music and dancing, and many things the desert cannot teach. I am
+to remain two years, and then my father fetches me. Now that I consider
+the trouble and expense he is put to on my account, surely I should
+love him, should I not?"
+
+Abdullah's saddle again required attention.
+
+They rode for hours, sometimes speaking, sometimes silent. Twice
+Abdullah passed dates and water to the girl, and always they pressed
+on. A camel does not trot, he paces. He moves the feet of his right
+side forward at once, and follows them with the feet of his left side.
+This motion heaves the rider wofully. The girl stood it bravely for six
+hours, then she began to droop. Abdullah watched her as her head sank
+toward the camel's neck; conversation had long ceased. It had become a
+trial of endurance. Abdullah kept his eye upon the girl. He saw her
+head bending, bending toward her camel's neck; he gave the cry of halt,
+leaped from the dun, while yet at speed, raced to the black, held up
+his arms and caught his mistress as she fell.
+
+There was naught about them save the two panting camels, the brown
+sands, the blue sky, and the God of Love. Abdullah lifted her to the
+earth as tenderly, as modestly, as though she had been his sister. It
+is a fine thing to be a gentleman, and the God of Love is a great God.
+
+It proved that the girl's faintness came from the camel's motion and
+the cruel sun. Abdullah made the racer and the dun kneel close
+together. He spread his burnoose over them and picketed it with his
+riding-stick. This made shade. Then he brought water from the little
+skin; touched the girl's lips with it, bathed her brow, sat by her,
+silent, saw her sleep; knelt in the sand and kissed the little hand
+that rested on it, and prayed to Him that some call God, and more call
+Allah.
+
+In an hour the girl whispered, "Abdullah?"
+
+He was at her lips.
+
+"Why are we waiting?" she asked.
+
+"Because I was tired," he answered.
+
+"Are you rested?" she asked.
+
+"Yes," he answered.
+
+"Then let us go on," she said.
+
+They rode on, hope sustaining Abdullah, and love sustaining Nicha, for
+she knew nothing but love.
+
+Then, after eight hours, on the edge of the desert appeared a little
+cloud, no larger than a man's hand.
+
+Abdullah roused himself with effort. He watched the cloud resolve
+itself into a mass of green, into waving palms--then he knew that Zama
+was before him, and that the march was ended.
+
+He turned and spoke to the girl. They had not spoken for hours.
+"Beloved," he said, "a half-hour, and we reach rest."
+
+She did not answer. She was asleep upon her saddle.
+
+"Thank Allah," said Abdullah, and they rode on.
+
+Suddenly the trees of the oasis were blotted out. A yellow cloud of
+dust rolled in between them and the travellers, and Abdullah said to
+himself, "It is he whom I seek--it is He who Keeps Goats."
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+They met. In the midst of threescore goats whose feet had made the
+yellow cloud of dust was a man, tall, gaunt, dressed in the garb of the
+desert, and burned by the sun as black as a Soudanese.
+
+"Ah, my son," he cried, in French, when he was within distance, "you
+travel light this time. Whom have you with you, another mistress, or,
+at last, a wife?"
+
+"Hush," said Abdullah, "she is a little damsel who has ridden twelve
+leagues and is cruel tired."
+
+"God help her," said the man of the goats; "shall I give her some warm
+milk--there is plenty?"
+
+"No," said Abdullah; "let us go to thy house," and the goats, at the
+whistle of their master, turned, and followed the camels under the
+palms of the oasis of Zama.
+
+They halted before a little hut, and Abdullah held up his hand. The
+camels stopped and kneeled. The girl did not move. Abdullah ran to her,
+took her in his arms, lifted her, turned, entered the hut, passed to
+the inner room, laid her upon a low couch, beneath the window, put away
+her veil, kissed her hand, not her lips, and came out.
+
+In the outer room he found his host. Upon the table were some small
+cheeses, a loaf of bread, a gourd of milk. Abdullah fell upon the food.
+
+"Well, my son," said his host, after Abdullah began to pick and choose,
+"what brings you to me?"
+
+"This," said Abdullah, and he felt in his bosom, and drew out the
+invoice of his passenger.
+
+His host took from a book upon the table a pair of steel-bowed
+spectacles--the only pair in the Sahara. He placed the bow upon his
+nose, the curves behind his ears, snuffed the taper with his fingers,
+took the invoice from Abdullah, and read. He read it once, looked up,
+and said nothing. He read it a second time, looked up, and said: "Well,
+what of it?"
+
+"Is it legal?" asked Abdullah.
+
+"Doubtless," said his host, "since it is a hiring, merely, not a sale;
+and it is to be executed in Biskra, which is under the French rule."
+
+"The French rule is beneficent, doubtless?" asked Abdullah.
+
+His host did not answer for some minutes; then he said: "It is a
+compromise; and certain souls deem compromises to be justice. The real
+men of this age, as of all others, do not compromise; they fight out
+right and wrong to a decision. The French came into Algeria to avenge a
+wrong. They fought, they conquered, and then they compromised. Having
+compromised, they must fight and conquer all over again."
+
+"You are a Frenchman, are you not?" asked Abdullah.
+
+"No," replied his host, "I am a Parisian."
+
+"Ah," exclaimed Abdullah, "I thought they were the same thing."
+
+"Far from it," replied his host. "In Brittany, Frenchmen wear black to
+this day for the king whom Parisians guillotined."
+
+"Pardon," said Abdullah; "I have been taught that Paris is French."
+
+"Not so, my son," rejoined his host; "Paris is universal. If you will
+go to the Museum of the Louvre, and take a seat before the Venus of
+Milo, and will remain long enough, everybody in this world, worth
+knowing, will pass by you; crowned heads, diplomats, financiers, the
+demimonde; you may meet them all. They tell me that the same thing
+happens to the occupant of the corner table of the Café de la Paix--the
+table next to the Avenue de l'Opéra; if he waits long enough, he will
+see every one--"
+
+"Pardon me, Monsieur," said Abdullah, "but I care to see no one save
+the little maid sleeping within."
+
+"Ah," said his host, "it is love, is it? I thought it was
+commercialism."
+
+"No," said Abdullah; "it is a question of how I can keep the woman I
+love, and still keep my commercial integrity. She is consigned to me by
+her father, to be delivered to Mirza, the mother of the dancers, in
+Biskra. I am the trusted caravan owner between El Merb and Biskra. In
+the last ten years I have killed many men who tried to rob my freight
+of dates, and hides, and gold-dust. Now I long to rob my own freight of
+the most precious thing I have ever carried. May I do it, and still be
+a man; or must I deliver the damsel, re-cross the desert, return the
+passage money to her father, come once more to Biskra, and find my love
+the sport of the cafés?"
+
+The Man who Keeps Goats rose and paced the floor.
+
+"My son," he said, finally, "when the French occupied Algeria, they
+made this bargain--'Mussulmans shall be judged by their civil law.' It
+was a compromise and, therefore, a weakness. The civil law of the
+Mohammedans is, virtually, the Koran. The law of France is, virtually,
+the Code Napoléon. The parties to the present contract being
+Mohammedans, it will be construed by their law, and it is not repugnant
+to it. If, on the contrary, the damsel were a Christian, the French
+commandant at Biskra would tear the contract to pieces, since it is
+against morals. Better yet, if _you_ were a Christian, and the damsel
+your wife, you might hold her in Biskra against the world."
+
+Abdullah sat silent, his eyes half closed.
+
+"Monsieur," he said at length, "is it very difficult to become a
+Christian?"
+
+The Man who Keeps Goats sat silent--in his turn.
+
+"My son," he said, finally, "I myself am a priest of the Church. I have
+lived in the desert for twenty years, but I have never been unfrocked.
+I cannot answer you, but I can tell you what a wiser than I declared to
+a desert traveller who put this same question nineteen hundred years
+ago."
+
+He took up the book upon the table, turned a few pages, and read--"'And
+the angel of the Lord spake unto Philip, saying, Arise, and go toward
+the south unto the way that goeth down from Jerusalem unto Gaza, which
+is desert. And he arose and went: and, behold, a man of Ethiopia, a
+eunuch of great authority under Candace queen of the Ethiopians, who
+had the charge of all her treasure, and had come to Jerusalem for to
+worship, was returning, and sitting in his chariot read Esaias the
+prophet.... And Philip ran thither to _him_, and heard him read the
+prophet Esaias, and said, Understandest thou what thou readest? And he
+said, How can I, except some man should guide me? And he desired Philip
+that he would come up and sit with him.... Then Philip opened his
+mouth, and began at the same scripture, and preached unto him Jesus.
+And as they went on _their_ way, they came unto a certain water: and
+the eunuch said, See, _here is_ water; what doth hinder me to be
+baptized?
+
+"'And Philip said, If thou believest with all thine heart, thou mayest.
+And he answered and said, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of
+God.
+
+"'And he commanded the chariot to stand still: and they went down both
+into the water, both Philip and the eunuch; and he baptized him.'"
+
+Scarcely had the reader ceased when Abdullah sprang to his feet.
+"Father," he cried, "see, _here_ is water. What doth hinder _me_ to be
+baptized?"
+
+"My son," said the old man, "how canst thou believe with all thine
+heart? No Philip has preached Jesus unto thee."
+
+"What need?" exclaimed Abdullah. "Can a man's belief need preaching to
+in such a case as this? How long must I believe a religion that saves
+her I love? A month, a year, until it avails nothing, and she is gone?
+This eunuch was a blacker man than I; like me, he was a man of the
+desert. He did not ride with Philip long. I have not only heard what
+Philip said to him, but I have also heard what you have said to me.
+Both of you have preached unto me Jesus. What right have you to doubt
+my belief in a God who will save my love to me? Again, I ask you, what
+doth hinder me to be baptized?"
+
+"Nothing," said the old man, and they went out both to the well,
+sparkling beneath the palms, both Abdullah and the Man who Keeps Goats;
+and he baptized him.
+
+When Abdullah rose from his knees, his forehead dripping, he drew his
+hand across his face and asked, "Am I a Christian?"
+
+"Yes," said the priest, "so far as I can make you one."
+
+"Thank you," said Abdullah; "you have done much, and in the morning you
+shall do more, for then you shall baptize the damsel and shall marry us
+according to your--pardon me--our religion."
+
+They entered the hut, and the priest, pointing toward the chamber-door,
+asked: "Does she believe?"
+
+"She believes what I believe," said Abdullah.
+
+The priest shook his head. "You speak," he said, "not as a Christian,
+but as a Moslem. You were brought up to look upon woman as a mere
+adjunct, a necessary evil, necessary because men must be born into the
+world. A female child, with you, was a reproach; she was scarcely seen
+by her parents until she was brought out to be sold in marriage. With
+Christians it is different. A woman has a soul--"
+
+"Hush," said Abdullah, "or you will awaken the camels with that strange
+doctrine. A woman has a soul, has she? You read me no such proposition
+from your prophets, a half-hour ago. Woman was not mentioned by Philip
+or by the Ethiopian in what you read to me. Is there aught in your book
+that argues that woman has a soul?"
+
+"Doubtless," said the priest, "but I do not recall it."
+
+He caught up his Bible. He opened it unluckily, for the first words
+that met his eye were these, and he read them: "Woman, what have I to
+do with thee?" and he paused, embarrassed.
+
+"Whose words were those?" asked Abdullah.
+
+The priest hesitated, crossed himself, and answered: "They were the
+words of Jesus."
+
+"To whom were they spoken?" asked Abdullah.
+
+The answer lagged. Finally, the priest said, "To His mother."
+
+"Master," said Abdullah, "the more I learn of my new religion, the more
+I am enamoured of it;" and he went to the chamber-door and knocked.
+
+"Beloved," he said, and waited.
+
+He knocked again, and again he said, "Beloved."
+
+"Who art thou?" came a voice.
+
+"'Tis I, Abdullah," he said.
+
+"Enter," said the voice.
+
+"Not so," said Abdullah; "but come you out."
+
+"Art thou alone?" asked the voice.
+
+"No," replied Abdullah, "the man who keeps goats is here."
+
+"I have no light," said the voice.
+
+Abdullah took the taper from the table, opened the door six inches,
+felt a warm soft hand meet his own, pressed it, left the taper in it,
+closed the door, and groped in darkness to his seat.
+
+"Father," he said, after some moments of silence, "_have_ women souls?"
+
+"Doubtless," answered the priest.
+
+"God help them," said Abdullah; "have they not trouble enough, without
+souls to save?"
+
+The two men sat silent in the darkness.
+
+The door creaked, a line of light appeared; the door swung wide out,
+and on the threshold stood Nicha, the taper in her hand.
+
+The two men sat silent, gazing.
+
+She had put off her outer costume of white linen and stood dressed for
+the house, the seraglio. Upon her head was a _chachia_, a little velvet
+cap, embroidered with seed-pearls. Her bust was clothed with a _rlila_,
+or bolero of brocaded silk, beneath which was a vest of muslin, heavy
+with gold buttons. About her slim waist was a _fouta_, or scarf of
+striped silk. Below came the _serroual_, wide trousers of white silk
+that ended mid-leg. Upon her feet were blue velvet slippers, pointed,
+turned up at the toes and embroidered with gold. About her ankles were
+_redeefs_, or bangles of emeralds, pierced, and strung on common
+string. At her wrists hung a multitude of bangles, and on her bare left
+arm, near the shoulder, was a gold wire that pinched the flesh, and
+from it hung a filigree medallion that covered her crest, tattooed
+beneath the skin. It is always so with the tribe of Ouled Nail.
+
+This was the costume of the woman, but the woman herself, as she stood
+in the doorway, the taper in her hand, who may describe her? Tall,
+lithe, laughing--her black hair, braided, tied behind her neck, and
+still reaching the ground; her eyebrows straight as though pencilled;
+her ears small and closely set; her nose straight and thin, with
+fluttering nostrils; her shoulders sloping; her bust firm and pulsating
+beneath her linen vest; her slender waist; her little feet, in the blue
+velvet slippers; the charm of breeding and of youth; the added charm of
+jewels and of soft textures; what wonder that the two men sat silent
+and gazing?
+
+Abdullah spoke first. "Beloved," he said, "I have broken your night's
+rest that you may have eternal rest."
+
+The girl laughed. "That is a long way off," she said. "The cemetery,
+with the cypress-trees, is beautiful, but this hut, with thee, is
+better. Why did you wake me?"
+
+"Because, since you slept," said Abdullah, "I have changed my
+religion."
+
+"Good," exclaimed the girl; "then I change mine. I am tired of a
+religion that makes me plait my hair for eight hours of the day and
+sends no man to see it."
+
+"What religion do you choose?" asked Abdullah.
+
+"Yours," said the girl, seating herself and dropping her hands,
+interlaced, and covered with turquoise rings, about her knees; "why
+should a woman question anything when her husband has passed upon it?"
+
+"Did I not tell thee?" said Abdullah.
+
+"Yes," said the priest, "but I waited for her own words."
+
+"You have them now," said Abdullah, and they went out to the spring.
+
+"I name thee Marie," said the priest, "since it is the name borne by
+the Mother of our Lord."
+
+"Ah," said the girl, "I was baptized Fathma, after the Mother of the
+Prophet. There seems to be not so much difference thus far."
+
+When the sacrament had been administered and they had returned to the
+hut, the priest addressed his converts. "My children," he said, "in
+order to do a great right I have done a little wrong. I have baptized
+you into a religion that you know nothing of. How should you? You,
+Abdullah--I beg your pardon, Philip--that was the name I gave you, was
+it not?"
+
+Abdullah bowed.
+
+"You, Philip," resumed the priest, "have changed your religion to win a
+woman whom you love; and you, Marie, have changed yours because the man
+you love bade you. Neither of you knows anything of the faith you have
+adopted. I have had no chance to instruct you; but one thing I declare
+to you, the Christian religion tolerates but one husband and one wife."
+
+Nicha rose, pale, hesitating. She stepped slowly into the light. Her
+beauty added to the light.
+
+"Beloved," she said, "knew you this?"
+
+"No," he said, "but I know it now, and welcome it."
+
+"Oh, my beloved," she cried, "to think that you are all my own, that I
+do not have to share you," and she flung her arms about him.
+
+"Hush," said the priest, "or, as Philip says, you will wake the
+camels."
+
+"Father," asked Abdullah, "will you now marry us, since we are
+Christians?"
+
+"I would," answered the priest, "but it is necessary to have two
+witnesses."
+
+Abdullah's face fell, but in an instant it brightened again. He went to
+the door of the hut and stood, listening. In a moment he turned and
+said, "Allah is good, or, rather, God is good. This new religion works
+well. Here are our witnesses."
+
+And, even as he spoke, there came out of the darkness the halt-cry of
+the camel-driver.
+
+"It is Ali," said Abdullah, "and Nicha's maid is with him. They have
+caught us up."
+
+He ran out and found the camels kneeling and Ali easing the surcingles.
+
+"Ali," he cried, "you must change your religion."
+
+"Willingly," said Ali; "what shall the new one be? The old one has done
+little for me."
+
+"Christian," said Abdullah.
+
+"That suits me," said Ali; "under it one may drink wine, and one may
+curse. It is a useful religion for a trader."
+
+"And the maid?" asked Abdullah.
+
+"We have travelled a day and a part of a night together," said Ali,
+"and she will believe what I tell her to believe."
+
+"The old religion is good in some respects," said Abdullah. "Call the
+maid;" and they went to the hut.
+
+"Here are the witnesses," said Abdullah, "ready to be Christians."
+
+"It is not necessary," said the priest, "if they can make their mark;
+that is all that is required."
+
+So, in the little hut, before an improvised altar, they were
+married--the camel-driver and the daughter of the Chief of Ouled Nail.
+
+The next morning the caravan took up the march for Biskra.
+
+
+
+
+THE MOTHER OF THE ALMEES
+
+
+It was the great fast of Rhamadan, and the square of Biskra was crowded
+with white-robed men waiting for the sun to set that they might eat.
+
+The rough pavement was dotted with fires over which simmered pots
+filled with what only a very jealous God indeed would have called food.
+About them were huddled the traders from the bazaars, the camel-drivers
+from the desert, the water-carriers from Bab el Derb. Each man held a
+cigarette in his left hand and a match in his right. He would smoke
+before he ate.
+
+In the long arcades the camels, in from the Soudan, knelt, fasting. An
+Arab led a tame lion into the square and the beast held back on his
+chain as he passed the flesh-pots, for he, too, was fasting. Crowds of
+little children stood about the circle of the fires, fasting. A God was
+being placated by the sufferings of His creatures.
+
+There is little twilight in the latitude of Biskra. There is the hard,
+white light of the daytime, five minutes of lavender and running
+shadows, and then the purple blackness of the night.
+
+The mueddin took his place on the minaret of the mosque. His shadow ran
+to the centre of the square and stopped. He cried his admonition, each
+white-robed figure bowed to the earth in supplication, a cannon-shot at
+the citadel split the hot air, and in an instant the square was dotted
+with sparks. Each worshipper had struck his match. The fast was over
+until sunrise.
+
+The silence became a Babel. All fell to eating and to talking. A
+marabout, graceful as a Greek statue, came out of the mosque and made
+his way among the fires. As he passed, the squatting Mussulmans caught
+at his robe and kissed it. Mirza, the mother of the Almee girls, her
+golden necklaces glinting in the firelight, came walking by. As she
+passed the marabout he drew back and held his white burnoose across his
+face. She bent her knee and then went on, but as she passed she laughed
+and whispered, "Which trade pays best, yours or mine?" and she shook
+her necklaces.
+
+"Daughter," said the marabout, "there is but one God."
+
+"Yes," she replied, "but He has many prophets, and, of them all, you
+are the most beautiful," and she went on.
+
+An officer of _spahis_ rode in and, stopping his horse before the
+arched door of the commandant, stood motionless. The square was filled
+with color, with life, with foreignness, with the dancing flames, the
+leaping shadows, the fumes of the cook-pots, the odor of Arabian
+tobacco, the clamor of all the dialects of North Africa.
+
+A bugle sounded. Out of a side street trotted a cavalcade. The iron
+shoes of the horses rang on the pavement, and the steel chains of the
+curbs tinkled. The commandant dismounted and gave his bridle to his
+orderly.
+
+The commandant walked through the square. He wore a fatigue cap, a
+sky-blue blouse, with white loopings, white breeches, tight at the
+knee, and patent-leather boots, with box spurs. He walked through the
+square slowly, smoking cigarette after cigarette. He was not only the
+commandant but he was the commissioner of police. With seventy men he
+ruled ten thousand, and he knew his weakness. The knowledge of his
+weakness was his strength.
+
+As he walked through the square he met Mirza. He passed her without a
+sign of recognition and she, on her part, was looking at the minaret of
+the mosque.
+
+In their official capacities they were strangers. On certain occasions,
+when the commandant was in _mufti_ they had, at least, passed the time
+of day. The commandant walked through the long rows of fires, speaking
+to a merchant here, nodding to a date-grower there, casting quick
+glances and saying nothing to the spies who, mingling with the people,
+sat about the kouss-kouss pots, and reported to the commandant, each
+morning, the date set for his throat-cutting. This was many years ago,
+before there was a railroad to Biskra.
+
+The commandant, having made the round of the fires, crossed over to his
+house under the arcades. He dismissed the sergeant and the guard, and
+they rode away to the barracks, the hoof-beats dying in the distance.
+The _spahi_ remained, silent, motionless. The commandant was about to
+enter his door, when a man sprang from behind one of the pillars of the
+arcade and held out to him a paper. The commandant put his hands behind
+his back. The _spahi_ edged his horse up closely.
+
+"Who are you?" asked the commandant, in French.
+
+The man shook his head, but still held out the paper.
+
+"Who are you?" asked the commandant again, but now in Arabic.
+
+"I am Ali, the slave of Abdullah," answered the man, "and he sends you
+this letter."
+
+The commandant remained motionless. "Will your horse stand, corporal?"
+he asked of the _spahi_.
+
+"Perfectly, my colonel."
+
+"Leave him, then," said the commandant, "and bring one of your
+pistols."
+
+The _spahi_ gathered his long blue cloak off the quarters of his horse,
+took a revolver from its holster, swung his right leg over his horse's
+head, so that he might not for an instant turn his back, threw the
+reins over his horse's neck, brought the heels of his red boots
+together, saluted, and stood silent.
+
+The horse began to play with the pendant reins and to shift his
+loosened bit.
+
+"Go in," said the commandant, and the _spahi_ opened the door. "You
+next," and Ali followed. The commandant brought up the rear.
+
+They entered at once not a hall but a room. So all Eastern houses are
+ordered. A lamp was burning, the walls were hung with maps of France
+and of North Africa, a few shelves held a few books and many tin cases
+labelled "Forage," "Hospital," "Police." Behind a desk sat a little
+man, dressed in black, who was dealing cards to himself in a game of
+solitaire. He rose and bowed when the commandant entered, and then he
+went on with his game.
+
+"Stand there," said the commandant, pointing to a corner, "and put your
+hands over your head."
+
+Ali obeyed.
+
+"Search him," said the commandant.
+
+The _spahi_ began at Ali's hair and ended with his sandals.
+
+"He has nothing," he reported.
+
+"Now give me the letter," said the commandant.
+
+Ali twisted himself, fumbled at his waist, and drew out a knife. He
+placed it on the desk, smiling.
+
+"Do not blame the corporal for overlooking this," he said; "I am so
+thin from the journey that he took it for one of my ribs."
+
+"I will trust you," said the commandant, and he took the letter.
+
+The little man in black kept dealing solitaire.
+
+The commandant read the letter to himself and laughed, and then he read
+it aloud:
+
+"_To Monsieur the COUNT D'APREMONT, Commandant at Biskra.
+
+"MONSIEUR: Since last I saw you strange things have happened. I have
+turned Christian, and I have married. I wonder at which of these
+statements you will laugh most.
+
+"May I bring my wife to your house? She will be the only Christian
+woman in Biskra. Say 'yes' or 'no' to the bearer. I am halted a mile
+outside of the town, awaiting your answer.
+
+"Mirza, the mother of the Almees, has a certain claim upon my wife; how
+valid I do not know. I need counsel, but first of all I need shelter.
+May I come?_
+
+"ABDULLAH."
+
+"Of course he may come," said the commandant; "what is to prevent?"
+
+"The law, perhaps," said the little man in black, shuffling the cards.
+
+The commandant turned quickly. "Why the law, Monsieur the Chancellor?"
+he asked.
+
+"Because," answered the little man, still shuffling the cards, "he says
+that Mirza has a certain claim upon his wife, how valid he does not
+know; and he needs counsel and he needs shelter. When a man writes like
+this, he also needs a lawyer;" and he commenced a new deal.
+
+The commandant stood a moment, thinking. Then he raised his head with a
+jerk, and said to Ali: "Tell your master that I say 'yes.'"
+
+Ali made salaam and glided from the room.
+
+"He has left his knife," said the lawyer.
+
+The commandant turned to the _spahi_. "Corporal," he said, "go to the
+citadel and bring back twelve men. Place six of them at the entrance of
+the square, and six of them before my house. When Abdullah's caravan
+has entered the square, have the further six close in behind. You may
+take your time. It will be an hour before you are needed."
+
+The _spahi_ saluted, and went out.
+
+The commandant turned to the little man in black.
+
+"Why in the world," he asked, "did you object to my harboring Abdullah?
+He is my friend and yours. He is the best man that crosses the desert.
+He has eaten our salt many times. If all here were like him, you and I
+might go home to France, with our medals and our pensions."
+
+"True," said the lawyer, gathering his cards, "and very likely there is
+no risk in harboring him and his wife." He shuffled the cards
+mechanically, his eyes fixed on the opposite wall.
+
+"My friend," he said, at length, "whom do you consider the most
+powerful person in Biskra, the person to be first reckoned with?"
+
+The commandant laughed. "As I am in command," he said, "I should be
+court-martialled if I denied my own superiority."
+
+"And yet," said the lawyer, "you are only a poor second."
+
+The commandant, who was sitting astride of his chair, his hands upon
+its back, demi-vaulted as if he were in the saddle of a polo pony.
+
+"What do you mean?" he demanded.
+
+The lawyer kept shuffling the cards, but he paid no attention to them.
+
+"Go to the window," he said, "and tell me what you see."
+
+The commandant rose, and went to the window, his spurs jingling. He
+drew the curtain and looked out.
+
+"What do you see?" asked the counsellor.
+
+"I see the square," answered the commandant, "with five hundred
+kettle-lights, and three thousand Mussulmans gorging themselves, making
+up lost time."
+
+"Look over at the left corner," said the lawyer.
+
+"I see the mosque," said the commandant, "with its lamps burning."
+
+"There you have it," cried the lawyer. "This religion that you and I
+are sent to conquer keeps its lamps burning constantly, while the
+religion that comes to conquer lights its candles only for the mass.
+Mankind loves light and warmth. What do you see now?"
+
+"I see Mirza," replied the commandant; "she is walking up the centre
+line of the fires. Now she stops. She meets a man, draws him hurriedly
+aside, and is speaking close to his ear."
+
+"Has he a green turban?" asked the lawyer. "Has he been to Mecca?"
+
+"Yes," answered the commandant.
+
+"There you see the most powerful person in Biskra," said the
+counsellor.
+
+"Who?" asked the commandant. "The man in the green turban?"
+
+"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. Eugénie 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 class, 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 passed 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
+nobility, in the time of Louis XIV and Louis XV, cruel, but they did
+not kill, they merely taxed. In the height of the ancient _régime_, 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
+nobility. England had a brutal one. The latter used to take all the
+eggs out of the nest and then kill the hen. The French noble 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 reassure 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
+prostituted 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. Reassured
+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 passed the night in the arcades, among the camels. The
+next morning I went to the hotel and asked for the Grand Duke.
+'Monsieur,' I said to him, 'I am Mirza. I would not _sell_ myself to
+you, but if you will take me as a gift, behold, here am I.' He took me
+to Paris, to Vienna, to St. Petersburg. For a year he did not tire of
+me. That was a long time for a savage to amuse a Grand Duke, was it
+not? Then one day he gave me money, bade me keep the jewels he had
+given me, and sent me back to Biskra. Since then I have been, first a
+dancing-girl, and then, the mother of them all. I have never given the
+authorities any trouble. I have observed the laws of France. What will
+the laws of France do for me?" and she handed to the commandant the
+invoice which Abdullah had brought with his freight.
+
+The commandant read the paper and his face grew troubled.
+
+"Chancellor," he said, "is this binding?"
+
+The lawyer read the paper twice. "Yes," he said, "it is a mere hiring;
+it is not a sale. I don't see how we can interfere."
+
+"Mirza," said the commandant, "it seems that you have a good contract,
+under Moslem law."
+
+"Excellent," cried the _oukil_, rubbing his hands.
+
+"Silence," thundered the commandant. "Speak French, and that only when
+you are spoken to. Abdullah, have you anything which you wish to say to
+me?"
+
+Abdullah bent and whispered in the ear of the girl who sat trembling;
+then he stepped forward.
+
+"Monsieur le Commandant," he said, "will you have the kindness to read
+this?" and he held out a paper. It was yellow with age and of quarto
+size and twice folded. The commandant took it, unfolded it, and read
+aloud, "_The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen_."
+
+"Why, this is the last page of a Bible," he said.
+
+"I do not know," said Abdullah. "He tore it from a book upon his table.
+It was the only paper that he had. Upon the other side is writing."
+
+The commandant reversed the paper and again read:
+
+   _THIS is to Certify that on the nineteenth day of February,
+   187-, in the Oasis of Zama, in the Great Sahara, having first
+   baptized them, I did unite in marriage Philip (formerly Abdullah)
+   and Marie (formerly Nicha), in accordance with the rites of our
+   holy Church_.
+
+                    JOSEPH,
+                   _Who Keeps Goats_.
+
+   _Witness_,
+                         his
+   Ali, _the son of Ali_  X
+                         mark
+
+                             her
+   ZINA, _parentage unknown_  X
+                             mark
+
+"Ah, ha," exclaimed the lawyer, "this changes the complexion of
+affairs," and he threw the cards upon the floor. "I could swear to
+Joseph's handwriting, I have his IOU's, but as I am now sitting as a
+magistrate, I cannot swear to anything. Where are the witnesses,
+Abdullah?"
+
+"With the camels, across the square," said Abdullah; "if you will
+permit the corporal to go for them--"
+
+"Pardon," said the _oukil_; "if I am permitted to speak I can save you
+the trouble. We admit all that the goatherd certifies."
+
+"Then," said the chancellor, "you admit yourselves out of court, since,
+if one Christian marries another, the law of France obtains, and this
+contract which Mirza produces is abhorrent to the law of France, being
+immoral."
+
+"Pardon," said the _oukil_. "In every word you speak I recognize my
+master, but is it not possible that my master may nod? As one of a
+conquered people, I have studied the code of my conqueror. It is true
+that a religious ceremony has been performed here, but how about the
+civil marriage which, as I read the French code, is absolutely
+necessary?"
+
+The lawyer sat silent. Then he put out his hand. "My friend," he said,
+"I have done you a great wrong. I have looked upon you as a mere
+religionist. It seems that you are a student. You remind me of my duty.
+I, as the chief legal officer of this colony, should marry these people
+at once. Thank you many times for reminding me."
+
+"Pardon," said the _oukil_; "but if I have read the laws of France
+aright, there cannot be a civil marriage without the consent of the
+parents."
+
+"My friend," said the lawyer, "will you place me doubly in your debt by
+shaking hands with me a second time? If you were to exchange your green
+turban for the silk hat of the boulevards, your photograph would soon
+be in the shops. You know my law much better than I know yours, and I
+shake hands with you intellectually, not socially. Who is your father,
+Abdullah?" he asked.
+
+"I do not know his name," answered Abdullah; "he was a camel-driver of
+the Sahara."
+
+"And your mother?" asked the lawyer.
+
+"How can one, born as I, know his mother?" replied Abdullah.
+
+"And you," said the lawyer, turning to Nicha, "who is your father?"
+
+"Ilderhim of El Merb," she answered.
+
+"And your mother?" asked the lawyer.
+
+"She died before I can remember."
+
+"Her father, Ilderhim," said the _oukil_, "signs the invoice which you
+have read. He does not consent."
+
+"He is nobody," said the lawyer. "He was banished from Algeria years
+ago. It is as though he had never existed."
+
+"I had overlooked that," said the _oukil_; and then he added, "As the
+mistake this time is mine, perhaps you will again shake hands."
+
+"No," said the lawyer; "I pay penance only when I am in the wrong."
+
+The _oukil_ bowed low, but when he drew himself up to his full height
+there was murder in his eye.
+
+"Well," said the commandant, "what is the solution?"
+
+"I advise you," said the lawyer, "that this contract comes under the
+law of France and is void, because it is immoral and opposed to public
+policy. It comes under the law of France because the young woman is a
+Christian and has married a Christian. The religious marriage is
+complete. The civil marriage is only delayed that the young woman may
+present proofs of her mother's death. Her father is already civilly
+dead."
+
+"Mirza," said the commandant, "do you hear?"
+
+"Yes," she said, "I hear, and, being a woman, I am accustomed to such
+decisions. I pay thirty ounces to Ilderhim for two years' hire of a
+girl. The girl turns Christian and I lose the thirty ounces."
+
+"Not so," said Abdullah; "they are here," and he placed a bag upon the
+commandant's table.
+
+"Take it," said Mirza; and she tossed it to the _oukil_.
+
+"To make his contract good," she continued, "Ilderhim, my former
+husband, pays sixteen or seventeen ounces' freight on the girl and her
+maid. The girl turns Christian. Who loses the freight?"
+
+"I," said Abdullah, and he placed another bag upon the table.
+
+"Take it," said Mirza, and the _oukil_ grasped it.
+
+"Let us see this girl who has kept us all up so late," said Mirza, and
+she strode over to Nicha. Abdullah put out his hand to keep her off.
+
+"You've won," she said; "why be disagreeable? Let us see what you have
+gained and I have lost," and she stripped the veil and the outer
+garment from the girl, who sat passive. When the veil and the burnoose
+fell, the beauty of the girl filled the room as would a perfume.
+
+The commandant and the lawyer sat speechless, gazing. The _oukil_ wrung
+his hands and exclaimed: "What have we lost!" Abdullah stood, proud and
+happy. The corporal at the door shifted his feet and rattled his
+side-arms, and Mirza laughed. Then she stepped back a pace; the
+laughter died upon her lips, and her hands flew to her bosom.
+
+"Little one," she said, "the life you would have lived with me would
+not have been so hard when one remembers what the life of woman is, at
+best. It is to amuse, to serve, to obey. You are too young to
+understand. You are, perhaps, fourteen?"
+
+"Yes," said Nicha.
+
+"When I was fourteen," said Mirza, "I too was beautiful; at least my
+husband and my mirror told me so. There is something in your face that
+reminds me of the face I used to see in my glass, but when one grows
+old, and I am eight-and-twenty, one is sure to see resemblances that do
+not exist. How prettily they have dressed you! Did Ilderhim, your
+father, give you these silks and these emeralds?"
+
+"Yes," said Nicha.
+
+"If you are hoping to be a good wife," said Mirza, "you must not think
+too much of silks and jewels. When I was in Paris, with the Grand Duke,
+I noticed that the women who had sold themselves had taken their pay in
+pearls and diamonds. The honest women went more soberly. I see you are
+of the old tribe--the tribe of Ouled Nail. Let me see your name."
+
+She raised the filigree medallion that hung upon Nicha's upper arm. She
+looked at the tattooed crest, started, drew her hand across her eyes,
+looked again, and fell to trembling. She stood a moment, swaying, and
+then she staggered to the commandant's table. She rested one hand upon
+it and with the other she began playing with Ali's knife. Her face was
+gray but her lips were pitifully smiling.
+
+"Monsieur the Chancellor," she said, each word a sob, "you need no
+longer delay the civil marriage.--I consent to it,--This is my
+daughter.--It seems," she added, in a whisper, "that Allah has not
+altogether forgotten me.--He has saved my child from me." And with an
+exceeding bitter cry she went out.
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10608 ***