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+Project Gutenberg's The Mission Of Mr. Eustace Greyne, by Robert Hichens
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Mission Of Mr. Eustace Greyne
+       1905
+
+Author: Robert Hichens
+
+Release Date: November 8, 2007 [EBook #23415]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MISSION OF MR. EUSTACE GREYNE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE MISSION OF MR. EUSTACE GREYNE
+
+By Robert Hichens
+
+Frederick A. Stokes Company Publishers
+
+Copyright, 1905
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+Mrs. Eustace Greyne (pronounced Green) wrinkled her forehead--that
+noble, that startling forehead which had been written about in the
+newspapers of two hemispheres--laid down her American Squeezer pen, and
+sighed. It was an autumn day, nipping and melancholy, full of the rustle
+of dying leaves and the faint sound of muffin bells, and Belgrave Square
+looked sad even to the great female novelist who had written her way
+into a mansion there. Fog hung about with the policeman on the pavement.
+The passing motor cars were like shadows. Their stertorous pantings
+sounded to Mrs. Greyne's ears like the asthma of dying monsters. She
+sighed again, and murmured in a deep contralto voice: "It must be so."
+Then she got up, crossed the heavy Persian carpet which had been bought
+with the proceeds of a short story in her earlier days, and placed her
+forefinger upon an electric bell.
+
+Like lightning a powdered giant came.
+
+"Has Mr. Greyne gone out?"
+
+"No, ma'am."
+
+"Where is he?"
+
+"In his study, ma'am, pasting the last of the cuttings into the new
+album."
+
+Mrs. Greyne smiled. It was a pretty picture the unconscious six-footer
+had conjured up.
+
+"I am sorry to disturb Mr. Greyne," she answered, with that gracious,
+and even curling suavity which won all hearts; "but I wish to see him.
+Will you ask him to come to me for a moment?"
+
+The giant flew, silk-stockinged, to obey the mandate, while Mrs. Greyne
+sat down on a carved oaken chair of ecclesiastical aspect to await her
+husband.
+
+She was a famous woman, a personage, this simply-attired lady. With
+an American Squeezer pen she had won fame, fortune, and a mansion
+in Belgrave Square, and all without the sacrifice of principle.
+Respectability incarnate, she had so dealt with the sorrows and evils of
+the world that she had rendered them utterly acceptable to Mrs. Grundy,
+Mr. Grundy, and all the Misses Grundy. People said she dived into the
+depths of human nature, and brought up nothing that need scandalise a
+curate's grandmother, or the whole-aunt of an archdeacon; and this
+was so true that she had made a really prodigious amount of money. Her
+large, her solid, her unrelenting books lay upon every table. Even the
+smart set kept them, uncut--like pretty sinners who have never been
+"found out"--to give an air of haphazard intellectuality to frisky
+boudoirs, All the clergy, however unable to get their tithes, bought
+them. All bishops alluded to them in "pulpit utterances." Fabulous
+prices were paid for them by magazine editors. They ran as serials
+through all the tale of months. The suburbs battened on them. The
+provinces adored them. Country people talked of no other literature. In
+fact, Mrs. Eustace Greyne was a really fabulous success.
+
+Why, then, should she heave these heavy sighs in Belgrave Square? Why
+should she lift an intellectual hand as though to tousle the glossy
+chestnut bandeaux which swept back from her forcible forehead, and screw
+her reassuring features into these wrinkles of perplexity and distress?
+
+The door opened, and Mr. Eustace Greyne appeared, "What is it,
+Eugenia?" upon his lips.
+
+Mr. Greyne was a number of years younger than his celebrated wife,
+and looked even younger than his years. He was a very smart man, with
+smooth, jet-black hair, which he wore parted in the middle; pleasant,
+dark eyes that could twinkle gently; a clear, pale complexion; and a
+nice, tall figure. One felt, in glancing at him, that he had been an
+Eton boy, and had at least thought of going into the militia at some
+period of his life. His history can be briefly told.
+
+Scarcely had he emerged into the world before he met and was married to
+Mrs. Eustace Greyne, then Miss Eugenia Hannibal-Barker. He had had no
+time to sow a single oat, wild or otherwise; no time to adore a barmaid,
+or wish to have his name linked with that of an actress; no time to do
+anything wrong, or even to know, with the complete accuracy desired
+by all persevering young men, what was really wrong. Miss Eugenia
+Hannibal-Barker sailed upon his horizon, and he struck his flag to
+matrimony. Ever since then he had been her husband, and had never, even
+for one second, emerged beyond the boundaries of the most intellectual
+respectability. He was the most innocent of men, although he knew all
+the important editors in London. Swaddled in money by his successful
+wife, he considered her a goddess. She poured the thousands into Coutts'
+Bank, and with the arrival of each fresh thousand he was more firmly
+convinced that she was a goddess. To say he looked up to her would be
+too mild. As the Cockney tourist in Chamounix peers at the summit of
+Mont Blanc, he peered at Mrs. Greyne. And when, finally, she bought the
+lease of the mansion in Belgrave Square, he knew her Delphic.
+
+So now he appeared in the oracle's retreat respectfully, "What is it,
+Eugenia?" upon his admiring lips.
+
+"Sit down, my husband," she murmured.
+
+Mr. Greyne subsided by the fire, placing his pointed patent-leather toes
+upon the burnished fender. Without the fog grew deeper, and the chorus
+of the muffin bells more plaintive. The fire-light, flickering over Mrs.
+Greyne's majestic features, made them look Rembrandtesque. Her large,
+oxlike eyes were fixed and thoughtful. After a pause, she said:
+
+"Eustace, I shall have to send you upon a mission."
+
+"A mission, Eugenia!" said Mr. Greyne in great surprise.
+
+"A mission of the utmost importance, the utmost delicacy."
+
+"Has it anything to do with Romeike & Curtice?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Will it take me far?"
+
+"That is my trouble. It will take you very far."
+
+"Out of London?"
+
+"Oh, yes."
+
+"Out of--not out of England?"
+
+"Yes; it will take you to Algeria."
+
+"Good gracious!" cried Mr. Greyne.
+
+Mrs. Greyne sighed.
+
+"Good gracious!" Mr. Greyne repeated after a short interval. "Am I to
+go alone?" "Of course you must take Darrell." Darrell was Mr. Greyne's
+valet.
+
+"And what am I to do at Algiers?"
+
+"You must obtain for me there the whole of the material for book six
+of 'Catherine's Repentance,'" "Catherine's Repentance" was the gigantic
+novel upon which Mrs. Greyne was at that moment engaged.
+
+"I will not disguise from you, Eustace," continued Mrs. Greyne, looking
+increasingly Rembrandtesque, "that, in my present work, I am taking a
+somewhat new departure."
+
+"Well, but we are very comfortable here," said Mr. Greyne.
+
+With each new book they had changed their abode. "Harriet" took them
+from Phillimore Gardens to Queensgate Terrace; "Jane's Desire" moved
+them on to a corner house in Sloane Street; with "Isobel's Fortune" they
+passed to Curzon Street; "Susan's Vanity" landed them in Coburg Place;
+and, finally, "Margaret's Involution" had planted them in Belgrave
+Square. Now, with each of these works of genius Mrs. Greyne had taken
+what she called "a new departure." Mr. Greyne's remark is, therefore,
+explicable.
+
+"True. Still, there is always Park Lane."
+
+She mused for a moment. Then, leaning more heavily upon the carved lions
+of her chair, she continued:
+
+"Hitherto, although I have sometimes dealt with human frailty, I have
+treated it gently. I have never betrayed a Zola-spirit."
+
+"Zola! My darling!" cried Mr. Eustace Greyne. "You are surely not going
+to betray anything of that sort now!"
+
+"If she does we shall soon have to move off to West Kensington," was his
+secret thought.
+
+"No. But in book six of 'Catherine' I have to deal with sin, with
+tumult, with African frailty. It is inevitable."
+
+She sighed once more. The burden of the new book was very heavy upon
+her.
+
+"African frailty!" murmured the astonished Eustace Greyne.
+
+"Now, neither you nor I, my husband, know anything about this."
+
+"Certainly not, my darling. How should we? We have never explored beyond
+Lucerne."
+
+"We must, therefore, get to know about it--at least you must. For I
+cannot leave London. The continuity of the brain's travelling must not
+be imperiled by any violent bodily activity. In the present stage of my
+book a sea journey might be disastrous."
+
+"Certainly you should keep quiet, my love. But then---"
+
+"You must go for me to Algiers. There you must get me what I want. I
+fear you will have to poke about in the native quarters a good deal for
+it, so you had better buy two revolvers, one for yourself and one for
+Darrell."
+
+Mr. Greyne gasped. The calmness of his wife amazed him. He was not
+intellectual enough to comprehend fully the deep imaginings of a mighty
+brain, the obsession work is in the worker.
+
+"African frailty is what I want," pursued Mrs. Greyne. "One hundred
+closely-printed pages of African frailty. You will collect for me the
+raw material, and I shall so manipulate it that it will fall discreetly,
+even elevatingly, into the artistic whole. Do you understand me,
+Eustace?"
+
+"I am to travel to Algiers, and see all the wickedness to be seen there,
+take notes of it, and bring them back to you."
+
+"Precisely."
+
+"And how long am I to stay?"
+
+"Until you have made yourself acquainted with the depths."
+
+"A fortnight?"
+
+"I should think that would be enough. Take Brush's remedy for
+seasickness and plenty of antipyrin, your fur coat for the crossing, and
+a white helmet and umbrella for the arrival. You have lead pencils?"
+
+"Plenty."
+
+"A couple of Merrin's exercise-books should be enough to contain your
+notes."
+
+"When am I to go?"
+
+"The sooner the better. I am at a standstill for want of the material.
+You might catch the express to Paris to-morrow; no, say the day after
+to-morrow." She looked at him tenderly. "The parting will be bitter."
+
+"Very bitter," Mr. Eustace Greyne replied.
+
+He felt really upset. Mrs. Greyne laid the hand which had brought them
+from Phillimore Gardens to Belgrave Square gently upon his.
+
+"Think of the result," she said. "The greatest book I have done yet. A
+book that will last. A book that will----"
+
+"Take us to Park Lane," he murmured.
+
+The Rembrandtesque head nodded. The noble features, as of a strictly
+respectable Roman emperor, relaxed.
+
+"A book that will take us to Park Lane."
+
+At this moment the door opened, and the footman inquired:
+
+"Could Mademoiselle Verbena see you for a minute, ma'am?"
+
+Mademoiselle Verbena was the French governess of the two little Greynes.
+The great novelist had consented to become a mother.
+
+"Certainly."
+
+In another moment Mademoiselle Verbena was added to the group beside the
+fire.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+We have said that Mademoiselle Verbena was the French governess of
+little Adolphus and Olivia Greyne, and so she was to this extent--that
+she taught them French, and that Mr. and Mrs. Greyne supposed her to be
+a Parisian. But life has its little ironies. Mademoiselle Verbena in the
+house of this great and respectable novelist was one of them; for she
+was a Levantine, born at Port Said of a Suez Canal father and a Suez
+Canal mother. Now, nobody can desire to say anything against Port Said.
+At the same time, few mothers would inevitably pick it out as the ideal
+spot from which a beneficent influence for childhood's happy hour would
+be certain to emanate. Nor, it must be allowed, is a Suez Canal ancestry
+specially necessary to a trainer of young souls. It may not be a
+drawback, but it can hardly be described as an advantage. This,
+Mademoiselle Verbena was intelligent enough to know. She, therefore,
+concealed the fact that her father had been a dredger of Monsieur de
+Lesseps' triumph, her mother a bar-lady of the historic coal wharf where
+the ships are fed, and preferred to suppose--and to permit others to
+suppose--that she had first seen the light in the Rue St. Honoré, her
+parents being a count and countess of some old régime.
+
+This supposition, retained from her earliest years, had affected her
+appearance and her manner. She was a very neat, very trim, even a very
+attractive little person, with dark brown, roguish eyes, blue-black
+hair, a fairy-like figure, and the prettiest hands and feet imaginable.
+She had first attracted Mrs. Greyne's attention by her devotion to St.
+Paul's Cathedral, and this devotion she still kept up. Whenever she had
+an hour or two free she always--so she herself said--spent it in "_ce
+charmant_ St. Paul."
+
+As she entered the oracle's retreat she cast down her eyes, and trembled
+visibly.
+
+"What is it, Miss Verbena?" inquired Mrs. Greyne, with a kindly English
+accent, calculated to set any poor French creature quite at ease.
+
+Mademoiselle Verbena trembled more.
+
+"I have received bad news, madame."
+
+"I grieve to hear it. Of what nature?"
+
+"Mamma has _une bronchite très grave_."
+
+"A what, Miss Verbena?"
+
+"Pardon, madame. A very grave bronchitis. She cries for me."
+
+"Indeed!"
+
+"The doctors say she will die."
+
+"This is very sad."
+
+The Levantine wept. Even Suez Canal folk are not proof against all human
+sympathy. Mr. Greyne blew his nose beside the fire, and Mrs. Greyne said
+again:
+
+"I repeat that this is very sad."
+
+"Madame, if I do not go to mamma tomorrow I shall not see her more."
+
+Mrs. Greyne looked very grave.
+
+"Oh!" she remarked. She thought profoundly for a moment, and then added:
+"Indeed!"
+
+"It is true, madame."
+
+Suddenly Mademoiselle Verbena flung herself down on the Persian carpet
+at Mrs. Greyne's large but well-proportioned feet, and, bathing them
+with her tears, cried in a heartrending manner:
+
+"Madame will let me go! madame will permit me to fly to poor mamma--to
+close her dying eyes--to kiss once again----"
+
+Mr. Greyne was visibly affected, and even Mrs. Greyne seemed somewhat
+put about, for she moved her feet rather hastily out of reach of the
+dependant's emotion, and made her scramble up.
+
+"Where is your poor mother?"
+
+"In Paris, madame. In the Rue St. Honoré, where I was born. Oh, if she
+should die there! If she should----"
+
+Mrs. Greyne raised her hand, commanding silence.
+
+"You wish to go there?"
+
+"If madame permits."
+
+"When?"
+
+"To-morrow, madame."
+
+"To-morrow? This is decidedly abrupt."
+
+"_Mais la bronchite, madame_, she is abrupt, and death, she may be
+abrupt."
+
+"True. One moment!"
+
+There was an instant's silence for Mrs. Greyne to let loose her brain
+in. She did so, then said:
+
+"You have my permission. Go to-morrow, but return as soon as possible.
+I do not wish Adolphus to lose his still uncertain grasp upon the
+irregular verbs."
+
+In a flood of grateful tears Mademoiselle Verbena retired to make her
+preparations. On the morrow she was gone.
+
+The morrow was a day of much perplexity, much bustle and excitement for
+Mr. Greyne and the valet, Darrell. They were preparing for Algiers. In
+the morning, at an early hour, Mr. Greyne set forth in the barouche with
+Mrs. Greyne to purchase African necessaries: a small but well-supplied
+medicine chest, a pith helmet, a white-and-green umbrella, a Baedeker,
+a couple of Smith & Wesson Springfield revolvers with a due amount of
+cartridges, a dozen of Merrin's exercise-books--on mature reflection
+Mrs. Creyne thought that two would hardly contain a sufficient amount of
+African frailty for her present purpose--a packet of lead pencils, some
+bottles of a remedy for seasickness, a silver flask for cognac, and
+various other trifles such as travellers in distant continents require.
+
+Meanwhile Darrell was learning French for the journey, and packing his
+own and his master's trunks. The worthy fellow, a man of twenty-five
+summers, had never been across the Channel--the Greynes being by no
+means prone to foreign travel--and it may, therefore, be imagined that
+he was in a state of considerable expectation as he laid the trousers,
+coats, and waistcoats in their respective places, selected such boots
+as seemed likely to wear well in a tropical climate, and dropped those
+shirts which are so contrived as to admit plenty of ventilation to the
+heated body into the case reserved for them.
+
+When Mr. Greyne returned from his shopping excursion the barouche,
+loaded almost to the gunwale--if one may be permitted a nautical
+expression in this connection--had to be disburdened, and its contents
+conveyed upstairs to Mr. Greyne's bedroom, into which Mrs. Greyne
+herself presently entered to give directions for their disposing. Nor
+was it till the hour of sunset that everything was in due order, the
+straps set fast, the keys duly turned in the locks--the labels--"Mr.
+Eustace Greyne: Passenger to Algiers: via Marseilles"--carefully written
+out in a full, round hand. Rook's tickets had been bought; so now
+everything was ready, and the last evening in England might be spent
+by Mr. Greyne in the drawing-room and by Darrell in the servants' hall
+quietly, socially, perhaps pathetically.
+
+The pathos of the situation, it must be confessed, appealed more to
+the master than to the servant. Darrell was very gay, and inclined to be
+boastful, full of information as to how he would comport himself with
+"them there Frenchies," and how he would make "them pore, godless Arabs
+sit up." But Mr. Greyne's attitude of mind was very different. As
+the night drew on, and Mrs. Greyne and he sat by the wood fire in the
+magnificent drawing-room, to which they always adjourned after dinner, a
+keen sense of the sorrow of departure swept over them both.
+
+"How lonely you will feel without me, Eugenia," said Mr. Greyne. "I
+have been thinking of that all day."
+
+"And you, Eustace, how desolate will be your tale of days! My mind runs
+much on that. You will miss me at every hour."
+
+"You are so accustomed to have me within call, to depend upon me for
+encouragement in your life-work. I scarcely know how you will get on
+when I am far across the sea."
+
+"And you, for whom I have labored, for whom I have planned and
+calculated, what will be your sensations when you realize that a
+gulf--the Gulf of Lyons--is fixed irrevocably between us?"
+
+So their thoughts ran. Each one was full of tender pity for the other.
+Towards bedtime, however, conscious that the time for colloquy was
+running short, they fell into more practical discourse.
+
+"I wonder," said Mr. Greyne, "whether I shall find any difficulty in
+gaining the information you require, my darling. I suppose these
+places"--he spoke vaguely, for his thoughts were vague--"are somewhat
+awkward to come at. Naturally they would avoid the eye of day."
+
+Mrs. Greyne looked profound.
+
+"Yes. Evil ever seeks the darkness. You will have to do the same."
+
+"You think my investigations must take place at night?"
+
+"I should certainly suppose so."
+
+"And where shall I find a cicerone?"
+
+"Apply to Rook."
+
+"In what terms? You see, dearest, this is rather a special matter, isn't
+it?"
+
+"Very special. But on no account hint that you are in Algiers for
+'Catherine's' sake. It would get into the papers. It would be cabled to
+America. The whole reading world would be agog, and the future interest
+of the book discounted."
+
+Mr. Greyne looked at his wife with reverence. In such moments he
+realized, almost too poignantly, her great position.
+
+"I will be careful," he said. "What would you recommend me to say?"
+
+"Well"--Mrs. Greyne knit her superb forehead--"I should suggest that
+you present yourself as an ordinary traveler, but with a
+specially inquiring bent of mind and a slight tendency towards
+the--the--er--hidden things of life."
+
+"I suppose you wish me to visit the public houses?"
+
+"I wish you to see everything that has part or lot in African frailty.
+Go everywhere, see everything. Bring your notes to me, and I will select
+such fragments of the broken commandments as suit my purpose, which
+is, as always, the edifying of the human race. Only this time I mean to
+purge it as by fire."
+
+"That corner house in Park Lane, next to the Duke of Ebury's, would suit
+us very well," said Mr. Greyne reflectively.
+
+"We could sell our lease here at an advance," his wife rejoined. "You
+will not waste your journey, Eustace?"
+
+"My love," returned Mr. Greyne with decision, "I will apply to Rook on
+arrival, and, if I find his man unsatisfactory, if I have any reason
+to suspect that I am not being shown everything--more especially in the
+Kasbah region, which, from the guide-books we bought to-day, is, I
+take it, the most abandoned portion of the city--I will seek another
+cicerone."
+
+"Do so. And now to bed. You must sleep well to-night in preparation for
+the journey."
+
+It was their invariable habit before retiring to drink each a tumbler
+of barley water, which was set out by the butler in Mrs. Greyne's study.
+After this nightcap Mrs. Greyne wrote up her anticipatory diary, while
+Mr. Greyne smoked a mild cigar, and then they went to bed. To-night,
+as usual, they repaired to the sanctum, and drank their barley water.
+Having done so, Mr. Greyne drew forth his cigar-case, while Mrs. Greyne
+went to her writing-table, and prepared to unlock the drawer in which
+her diary reposed, safe from all prying eyes.
+
+The match was struck, the key was inserted in the lock, and turned. As
+the cigar end glowed the drawer was opened. Mr. Greyne heard a contralto
+cry. He turned from the arm-chair in which he was just about to seat
+himself.
+
+"My love, is anything the matter?"
+
+His wife was bending forward with both hands in the drawer, telling over
+its contents.
+
+"My diary is not here!"
+
+"Your diary!"
+
+"It is gone."
+
+"But"--he came over to her--"this is very serious. I presume, like all
+diaries, it is full of----" Instinctively he had been about to say
+"damning"; he remembered his dear one's irreproachable character and
+substituted "precious secrets."
+
+"It is full of matter which must never be given to the world--my secret
+thoughts, my aspirations. The whole history of my soul is there."
+
+"Heavens! It must be found."
+
+They searched the writing-table. They searched the room. No diary.
+
+"Could you have taken it to my room, and left it there?" asked Mr.
+Greyne.
+
+They hastened thither, and looked--in vain. By this time the servants
+were gone to bed, and the two searchers were quite alone on the ground
+floor of their magnificent mansion. Mrs. Greyne began to look seriously
+perturbed. Her Roman features worked.
+
+"This is appalling," she exclaimed. "Some thief, knowing it priceless,
+must have stolen the diary. It will be published in America. It will
+bring in thousands--but to others, not to us."
+
+She began to wring her hands. It was near midnight.
+
+"Think, my love, think!" cried Mr. Greyne. "Where could you have taken
+it? You had it last night?"
+
+"Certainly. I remember writing in it that you would be sailing to
+Algiers on the _Général Bertrand_ on Thursday of this week, and that on
+the night I should be feeling widowed here. The previous night I wrote
+that yesterday I should have to tell you of your mission. You know I
+always put down beforehand what I shall do, what I shall even think
+on each succeeding day. It is a practice that regulates the mind and
+conduct, that helps to uniformity."
+
+"How true! Who can have taken it? Do you ever leave it about?"
+
+"Never. Am I a madwoman?"
+
+"My darling, compose yourself! We must search the house."
+
+They proceeded to do so, and, on coming into the schoolroom, Mrs.
+Greyne, who was in front, uttered a sudden cry.
+
+Upon the table of Mademoiselle Verbena lay the diary, open at the
+following entry:--
+
+On Thursday next poor Eustace will be on board the _Général Bertrand_,
+sailing for Algiers. I shall be here thinking of myself, and of him in
+relation to myself. God help us both. Duty is sometimes stern. Mem. The
+corner house in Park Lane, next the Duke of Ebury's, has sixty years
+still to run; the lease, that is. Thursday--poor Eustace!
+
+"What does this portend?" cried Mrs. Greyne.
+
+"My darling, it passes my wit to imagine," replied her husband.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+The parting of Mr. and Mrs. Greyne on the following morning was very
+affecting. It took place at Victoria Station, in the midst of a small
+crowd of admiring strangers, who had recognised the commanding
+presence of the great novelist, and had gathered round to observe her
+manifestations.
+
+Mrs. Greyne was considerably shaken by the event of the previous night.
+Although, on the discovery of the diary, the house had been roused, and
+all the servants closely questioned, no light had been thrown upon its
+migration from the locked drawer to the schoolroom table. Adolphus and
+Olivia, jerked from sleep by the hasty hands of a maid, could only weep
+and wan. The powdered footmen, one and all, declared they had never
+heard of a diary. The butler gave warning on the spot, keeping on his
+nightcap to give greater effect to his pronunciamento. It was all most
+unsatisfactory, and for one wild moment Mrs. Greyne seriously thought
+of retaining her husband by her as a protection against the mysterious
+thief who had been at work in their midst. Could it be Mademoiselle
+Verbena? The dread surmise occurred, but Mr. Greyne rejected it.
+
+"Her father was a count," he said. "Besides, my darling, I don't
+believe she can read English; certainly not unless it is printed."
+
+So there the matter rested, and the moment of parting came.
+
+There was a murmur of respectful sympathy as Mrs. Greyne clasped
+her husband tenderly in her arms, and pressed his head against her
+prune-coloured bonnet strings. The whistle sounded. The train moved on.
+Leaning from a reserved first-class compartment, Mr. Greyne waved a silk
+pocket-handkerchief so long as his wife's Roman profile stood out clear
+against the fog and smoke of London. But at last it faded, grew remote,
+took on the appearance of a feebly-executed crayon drawing, vanished. He
+sank back upon the cushions--alone. Darrell was travelling second with
+the dressing-case.
+
+It was a strange sensation, to be alone, and _en route_ to Algiers. Mr.
+Greyne scarcely knew what to make of it. A schoolboy suddenly despatched
+to Timbuctoo could hardly have felt more terribly emancipated than he
+did. He was so absolutely unaccustomed to freedom, he had been for so
+long without the faintest desire for it, that to have it thrust upon
+him so suddenly was almost alarming. He felt lonely, anxious, horribly
+unmarried. To divert his thoughts he drew forth a Merrin's exercise-book
+and a pencil, and wrote on the first page, in large letters, "_African
+Frailty, Notes for_" Then he sat gazing at the title of his first
+literary work, and wondering what on earth he was going to see in
+Algiers.
+
+Vague visions of himself in the bars of African public-houses, in
+mosques, in the two-pair-backs of dervishes, in bazaars--which he
+pictured to himself like those opened by royalties at the Queen's
+Hall--in Moorish interiors surrounded by voluptuous ladies with large
+oval eyes, black tresses, and Turkish trousers of spangled muslin,
+flitted before his mental gaze. When the train ran upon Dover Pier, and
+the white horses of the turbulent Channel foamed at his feet, he started
+as one roused from a Rip Van Winkle sleep. Severe illness occupied his
+whole attention for a time, and then recovery.
+
+In Paris he dined at the buffet like one in a dream, and, at the
+appointed hour, came forth to take the _rapide_ for Marseilles. He
+looked for Darrell and the dressing-case. They were not to be seen.
+There stood the train. Passengers were mounting into it. Old ladies
+with agitated faces were buying pillows and nibbling biscuits. Elderly
+gentlemen with yellow countenances and red ribands in their coats were
+purchasing the _Figaro_ and the _Gil Blas_. Children with bare legs were
+being hauled into compartments. Rook's agent was explaining to a muddled
+tourist in a tam-o'-shanter the exact difference between the words "Oui"
+and "Non" The bustle of departure was in the air, but Darrell was not
+to be seen. Mr. Greyne had left him upon the platform with minute
+directions as to the point from which the train would start and the hour
+of its going. Yet he had vanished. The most frantic search, the most
+frenzied inquiries of officials and total strangers, failed to elicit
+his whereabouts, and, finally, Mr. Greyne was flung forcibly upward
+into the _wagonlit_, and caught by the _contrôleur_ when the train was
+actually moving out of the station.
+
+A moment later he fell exhausted upon the pink-plush seat of his
+compartment, realising his terrible position. He was now utterly alone;
+without servant, hair-brushes, toothbrushes, razors, sponges, pajamas,
+shoes. It was a solitude that might be felt. He thought of the sea
+journey with no kindly hand to minister to him, the arrival in Africa
+with no humble companion at his side, to wonder with him at the black
+inhabitants and help him through the customs--to say nothing of the
+manners. He thought of the dread homes of iniquity into which he
+must penetrate by night in search of the material for the voracious
+"Catherine." He had meant to take Darrell with him to them all--Darrell,
+whose joyful delight in the prospect of exploring the Eastern fastnesses
+of crime had been so boyish, so truly English in its frank, its even
+boisterous sincerity.
+
+And now he was utterly alone, almost like Robinson Crusoe.
+
+The _contrôleur_ came in to make the bed. Mr. Greyne told him the
+dreadful story.
+
+"No doubt he has been lured away, monsieur. The dressing-case was of
+value?"
+
+"Crocodile, gold fittings."
+
+"Probably monsieur will never see him again. As likely as not he will
+sleep in the Seine to-night, and at the morgue to-morrow."
+
+Mr. Greyne shuddered. This was an ill omen for his expedition. He drank
+a stiff whisky-and-soda instead of the usual barley water, and went to
+bed to dream of bloody murders in which he was the victim.
+
+When the train ran into Marseilles next morning he was an unshaven,
+miserable man.
+
+"Have I time to buy a tooth-brush," he inquired anxiously at the
+station, "before the boat sails for Algiers?"
+
+The _chef de gare_ thought so. Monsieur had four hours, if that was
+sufficient. Mr. Greyne hastened forth, had a Turkish bath, purchased a
+new dressing-case, ate a hasty _déjeuner_, and took a cab to the wharf.
+It was a long drive over the stony streets. He glanced from side to
+side, watching the bustling traffic, the hurry of the nations going to
+and from the ships. His eyes rested upon two Arabs who were striding
+along in his direction. Doubtless they were also bound for Algiers. He
+thought they looked most wicked, and hastily took a note of them for
+"African Frailty." Beside his sense of loss and loneliness marched the
+sense of duty. The great woman at home in Belgrave Square, founder of
+his fortunes, mother of his children, she depended upon him. Even in his
+own hour of need he would not fail her. He took a lead pencil, and wrote
+down:
+
+Saw two Arab ruffians. Bare legs. Look capable of anything. Should not
+be surprised to hear that they had----
+
+There he paused. That they had what? Done things. Of course, but what
+things? That was the question. He exerted his imagination, but failed to
+arrive at any conclusion as to their probable crimes. His knowledge
+of wickedness was really absurdly limited. For the first time he felt
+slightly ashamed of it, and began to wish he had gone into the militia.
+He comforted himself with the thought that in a fortnight he would
+probably be fit for the regular army. This thought cheered him slightly,
+and it was with a slight smile upon his face that he welcomed the first
+glimpse of the _Général Bertrand_, which was lying against the quay
+ready to cast off at the stroke of noon. Most of the passengers were
+aboard, but, as Mr. Greyne stepped out of his cab, and prepared to pay
+the Maltese driver, a trim little lady, plainly dressed in black, and
+carrying a tiny and rather coquettish hand-bag, was tripping lightly
+across the gangway. Mr. Greyne glanced at her as he turned to follow,
+glanced, and then started. That back was surely familiar to him. Where
+could he have seen it before? He searched his memory as the little lady
+vanished. It was a smart, even a _chic_ back, a back that knew how to
+take care of itself, a back that need not go through the world alone,
+a back, in fine, that was most distinctly attractive, if not absolutely
+alluring. Where had he seen it before, or had he ever seen it at all?
+He thought of his wife's back, flat, powerful, uncompromising. This was
+very different, more--how should he put it to himself?--more Algerian,
+perhaps. He could vaguely conceive it a back such as one might meet with
+while engaged in adding to one's stock of knowledge of--well--African
+frailty.
+
+At this moment the steward appeared to show him to his cabin, and his
+further reflections were mainly connected with the Gulf of Lyons.
+
+Twilight was beginning to fall when, so far as he was capable of
+thinking, he thought he would like a breath of air. For some moments he
+lay quite still, dwelling on this idea which had so mysteriously come to
+him. Then he got up, and thought again, seated upon the cabin floor.
+He knew there was a deck. He remembered having seen one when he came
+aboard. He put on his fur coat, still sitting on the cabin floor. The
+process took some time--he fancied about a couple of years. At last,
+however, it was completed, and he rose to his feet with the assistance
+of the washstand and the berth.
+
+The ship seemed very busy, full of almost American activity. He thought
+a greater calm would have been more decent, and waited in the hope
+that the floor would presently cease to forget itself. As it showed no
+symptoms of complying with his desire he endeavoured to spurn it, and,
+in the fulness of time, gained the companion.
+
+It was very strange, as he remembered afterwards, that only when he had
+gained the companion did the sense of his utter loneliness rush upon
+him with overwhelming force: one of the ironies of life, he supposed.
+Eventually he shook the companion off with a good deal of difficulty,
+and found himself installed upon planks under a grey sky, and holding
+fast to a railing, which was all that interposed between him and
+eternity.
+
+At first he was only conscious of greyness and the noise of winds
+and waters, but presently a black daub seemed to hover for a second
+somewhere on the verge of his world, to hover and disappear. He wondered
+what it was. A smut, perhaps. He rubbed his face. The daub returned.
+It was very large for a smut. He strove to locate it, and found that it
+must be somewhere on his left cheek. With a great effort he took out his
+pocket-handkerchief. Suddenly the daub assumed monstrous proportions.
+He turned his head, and perceived the lady in black whom he had seen
+tripping over the gangway on his arrival.
+
+She was a few steps from him, leaning upon the rail in an attitude of
+the deepest dejection, with her face averted; yet it struck him that her
+right shoulder was oddly familiar, as her back had surely been. The turn
+of her head, too--he coughed despairingly. The lady took no notice. He
+coughed again. Interest was quickening in him. He was determined to see
+the lady's face.
+
+This time she looked around, showing a pale countenance bedewed with
+tears, and totally devoid of any expression which he could connect with
+a consciousness of his presence. For a moment she stared vacantly at
+him, while he, with almost equal vacancy, regarded her. Then a thrill of
+surprise shook him. A sudden light of knowledge leaped up in him, and he
+exclaimed:
+
+"Mademoiselle Verbena!" "Monsieur?" murmured the lady, with an accent
+of surprise.
+
+"Mademoiselle Verbena! Surely it is--it must be!"
+
+He had staggered sideways, nearing her.
+
+"Mademoiselle Verbena, do you not know me? It is I, Eustace Greyne, the
+father of your pupils, the husband of Mrs. Eustace Greyne?"
+
+An expression of stark amazement came into the lady's face at these
+words. She leaned forward till her eyes were close to Mr. Greyne's then
+gave a little cry.
+
+"_Mon Dieu!_ It is true! You are so altered that I could not recognise.
+And then--what are you doing here, on the wide sea, far from madame?"
+
+"I was just about to ask you the very same question!" cried Mr. Greyne.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+"Alas, monsieur!" said Mademoiselle Verbena in her silvery voice, "I go
+to see my poor mother."
+
+"But I understood that she was dying in Paris."
+
+"Even so. But, when I reached the Rue St. Honoré, I found that they
+had removed to Algiers. It was the only chance, the doctor said--a warm
+climate, the sun of Africa. There was no time to let me know. They took
+her away at once. And now I follow--perhaps to find her dead."
+
+Large tears rolled down her cheeks. Mr. Greyne was deeply affected.
+
+"Let us hope for the best," he exclaimed, seized by a happy inspiration.
+
+The Levantine strove to smile.
+
+"But you, monsieur, why are you here? Ah! perhaps madame is with you!
+Let me go to her! Let me kiss her dear hands once more----"
+
+Mr. Greyne mournfully checked her fond excitement.
+
+"I am quite alone," he said.
+
+A tragic expression came into the Levantine's face.
+
+"But, then----" she began.
+
+It was impossible for him to tell her about "Catherine." He was,
+therefore, constrained to subterfuge.
+
+"I--I was suddenly overtaken by--by influenza," he said, in some
+confusion. "The doctor recommended change of air, of scene."
+
+"He suggested Algiers----"
+
+"_Mon Dieu!_ It is like poor mamma!"
+
+"Precisely. Our constitutions are--are doubtless similar. I shall take
+this opportunity also of improving my knowledge of African manners
+and--and customs."
+
+A strange smile seemed to dawn for a second on Mademoiselle Verbena's
+face, but it died instantaneously in a grimace of pain.
+
+"My teeth make me bad," she said. "Ah, monsieur, I must go below,
+to pray for poor mamma--" she paused, then softly added, "and for
+monsieur."
+
+She made a movement as if to depart, but Mr. Greyne begged her to
+remain. In his loneliness the sight even of a Levantine whom he knew
+solaced his yearning heart. He felt quite friendly towards this poor,
+unhappy girl, for whom, perhaps, such a shock was preparing upon the
+distant shore.
+
+"Better stay!" he said. "The air will do you good."
+
+"Ah, if I die, what matter? Unless mamma lives there is no one in the
+world who cares for me, for whom I care."
+
+"There--there is Mrs. Greyne," said her husband. "And then St.
+Paul's--remember St. Paul's."
+
+"Ah _ce charmant_ St. Paul's! Shall I ever see him more?"
+
+She looked at Mr. Greyne, and suddenly--he knew not why--Mr. Greyne
+remembered the incident of the diary, and blushed.
+
+"Monsieur has fever!"
+
+Mr. Greyne shook his head. The Levantine eyed him curiously.
+
+"Monsieur wishes to say something to me, and does not like to speak."
+
+Mr. Greyne made an effort. Now that he was with this gentle lady,
+with her white face, her weeping eyes, her plain black dress, the mere
+suspicion that she could have opened a locked drawer with a secret key,
+and filched therefrom a private record, seemed to him unpardonable.
+Yet, for a brief instant, it had occurred to him, and Mrs. Greyne had
+seriously held it. He looked at Mademoiselle Verbena, and a sudden
+impulse to tell her the truth overcame him.
+
+"Yes," he said.
+
+"Tell me, monsieur."
+
+In broken words--the ship was still very busy--Mr. Greyne related the
+incident of the loss and finding of the diary. As he spoke a slight
+change stole over the Levantine's face. It certainly became less pale.
+
+"But you have fever now!" cried Mr. Greyne anxiously.
+
+"I! No; I flush with horror, not with fever! The diary, the sacred diary
+of madame, exposed to view, read by the children, perhaps the servants!
+That footman, Thomas, with the nose of curiosity! Ah! I behold that nose
+penetrating into the holy secrets of the existence of madame! I behold
+it--ah!"
+
+She burst into a fit of hysterics, the laughing species, which is
+so much more terrible than the other sort. Mr. Greyne was greatly
+concerned. He lurched to her, and implored her to be calm; but she only
+laughed the more, while tears streamed down her cheeks. The vision of
+Thomas gloating over Mrs. Greyne's diary seemed utterly to unnerve her,
+and Mr. Greyne was able to measure, by this ebullition of horror, the
+depth of the respect and affection entertained by her for his beloved
+wife. When, at length, she grew calmer he escorted her towards her
+cabin, offering her his arm, on which she leaned heavily. As soon as
+they were in the narrow and heaving passage she turned to him, and said:
+
+"Who can have taken the diary?"
+
+Mr. Greyne blushed again.
+
+"We think it was Thomas," he said.
+
+Mademoiselle Verbena looked at him steadily for a moment, then she
+cried:
+
+"God bless you, monsieur!"
+
+Mr. Greyne was startled by the abruptness of this pious ejaculation.
+
+"Why?" he inquired.
+
+"You are a good man. You, at least, would not condescend to insult a
+friendless woman by unworthy suspicions. And madame?"
+
+"Mrs. Greyne"--stammered Mr. Greyne--"is convinced that it was Thomas.
+In fact--in fact, she was the first to say so."
+
+Mademoiselle Verbena tenderly pressed his hand.
+
+"Madame is an angel. God bless you both!"
+
+She tottered into her cabin, and, as she shut the door, Mr. Greyne heard
+the terrible, laughing hysterics beginning again.
+
+The next day an influence from Africa seemed spread upon the sea. Calm
+were the waters, calm and blue. No cloud appeared in the sky. The fierce
+activities of the ship had ceased, and Mademoiselle Verbena tripped upon
+the deck at an early hour, to find Mr. Greyne already installed there,
+and looking positively cheerful. He started up as he perceived her, and
+chivalrously escorted her to a chair.
+
+Everyone who has made a voyage knows that the sea breeds intimacies. By
+the time the white houses of Algiers rose on their hill out of the bosom
+of the waves Mademoiselle Verbena and Mr. Greyne were--shall we say like
+sister and brother? She had told him all about her childhood in dear
+Paris, the death of her father the count, murmuring the name of Louis
+XVI., the poverty of her mother the countess, her own resolve to put
+aside all aristocratic prejudices and earn her own living. He, in
+return, had related his Eton days, his momentary bias towards the
+militia, his marriage--as an innocent youth--with Miss Eugenia
+Hannibal-Barker. Coming to later times, he was led to confide to the
+tenderhearted Levantine the fact that he hoped to increase his stock of
+knowledge while in Africa. Without alluding to "Catherine," he hinted
+that the cure of influenza was not his only reason for foreign travel.
+
+"I wish to learn something of men and--and women," he murmured in the
+shell-like ear presented to him. "Of their passions, their desires,
+their--their follies."
+
+"Ah!" cried Mademoiselle Verbena. "Would that I could assist monsieur!
+But I am only an ignorant little creature, and know nothing of the
+world! And I shall be ever at the bedside of mamma."
+
+"You will give me your address? You will let me inquire for the
+countess?"
+
+"Willingly; but I do not know where I shall be. There will be a message
+at the wharf. To what hotel goes monsieur?"
+
+"The Grand Hotel."
+
+"I will write there when I have seen mamma. And meanwhile----"
+
+They were coming into harbour. The heights of Mustapha were visible, the
+woods of the Bois de Boulogne, the towers of the Hotel Splendid.
+
+"Meanwhile, may I beg monsieur not to----" She hesitated.
+
+"Not to what?" asked Mr. Greyne most softly.
+
+"Not to let anyone in England know that I am here?"
+
+She paused. Mr. Greyne was silent, wondering. Mademoiselle Verbena
+drooped her head.
+
+"The world is so censorious. It might seem strange that I--that
+monsieur--a man young, handsome, fascinating--the same ship--I have no
+chaperon--enfin----"
+
+She could get out no more. Her delicacy, her forethought touched Mr.
+Greyne to tears.
+
+"Not a word," he said. "You are right. The world is evil, and, as you
+say, I am a--not a word!"
+
+He ventured to press her hand, as an elder brother might have pressed
+it. For the first time he realised that even to the husband of Mrs.
+Eustace Greyne the world might attribute--Goodness gracious! What might
+not the militia think, for instance?
+
+He felt himself, for one moment, potentially a dog.
+
+They parted in a whirl of Arabs on the quay. Mr. Greyne would have
+stayed to assist Mademoiselle Verbena, but she bade him go.
+
+She whispered that she thought it "better" that they should not seem
+to--_enfin!_
+
+"I will write to-morrow," she murmured. "_Au revoir!_"
+
+On the last word she was gone. Mr. Greyne saw nothing but Arabs and
+hotel porters. Loneliness seemed to close in on him once more.
+
+That very evening, after a cup of tea, he presented himself at the
+office of Rook near the Place du Gouvernement. As he came in he felt a
+little nervous. There were no tourists in the office, and a courteous
+clerk with a bright and searching eye at once took him in hand.
+
+"What can we do for you, sir?"
+
+"I am a stranger here," began Mr. Greyne.
+
+"Quite so, sir, quite so."
+
+The clerk twiddled his business-like thumbs, and looked inquiring.
+
+"And being so," Mr. Greyne went on, "it is naturally my wish to see as
+much of the town as possible; as much as possible, you understand."
+
+"You want a guide? Alphonso!"
+
+Turning, he shouted to an inner room, from which in a moment emerged a
+short, stout, swarthy personage with a Jewish nose, a French head, an
+Arab eye with a squint in it, and a markedly Maltese expression.
+
+"This is an excellent guide, sir," said the clerk. "He speaks
+twenty-five languages."
+
+The stout man, who--as Mr Greyne now perceived--had on a Swiss suit
+of clothes, a panama hat, and a pair of German elastic-sided boots,
+confessed in pigeon English, interspersed occasionally with a word or
+two of something which Mr. Greyne took to be Chinese, that such was
+undoubtedly the case.
+
+"What do you wish to see? The mosque, the bazaars, St. Eugène, La
+Trappe, Mustapha, the baths of the Etat-Major, the Jardin d'Essai,
+the Villa-Anti-Juif, the----"
+
+"One moment!" said Mr. Greyne.
+
+He turned to the clerk.
+
+"May I take a chair?"
+
+"Be seated, sir, pray be seated, and confer with Alphonso."
+
+So saying, he gave himself to an enormous ledger, while Mr. Greyne took
+a chair opposite to Alphonso, who stood in a Moorish attitude looking
+apparently in the direction of Marseilles.
+
+"I have come here," said Mr. Greyne, lowering his voice, "with a
+purpose.".
+
+"You wish to see the Belle Fatma. I will arrange it. She receives every
+evening in her house in the Rue ------"
+
+"One minute! One minute! You said the something 'Fatma'?"
+
+"The Belle Fatma, the most beautiful woman of Africa. She receives
+every----"
+
+"Pardon me! One moment! Is this lady----"
+
+Mr. Greyne paused.
+
+"Sir?" said Alphonso, settling his Spanish neck-tie, and gazing steadily
+towards Marseilles.
+
+"Is this lady--well, sinful?"
+
+Alphonso threw up his hands with a wild Asiatic gesture.
+
+"Sinful! La Belle Fatma! She is a lady of the utmost respectability
+known to all the town. You go to her house at eight, you take coffee
+upon the red sofas, you talk with La Belle, you see the dances and hear
+the music. Do not fear, sir; it is good, it is respectable as England,
+your country----"
+
+"If it is respectable I don't want to see it," interposed Mr. Greyne.
+"It would be a waste of time."
+
+The clerk lifted his head from the ledger, and Alphonso, by means of
+standing with his back almost square to Mr. Greyne, and looking over his
+right shoulder, succeeded at length in fixing his eye upon him.
+
+"I have not travelled here to see respectable things," continued Mr.
+Greyne, with a slight blush. "Quite the contrary."
+
+"Sir?"
+
+The voice of Alphonso seemed to have changed, to have taken on a hard,
+almost a menacing tone. Mr. Greyne thought of his beloved wife, of
+Merrin's exercise-books, and clenched his hands, endeavouring to feel,
+and to go on, like a militiaman.
+
+"Quite the contrary," he repeated firmly; "my object in coming to Africa
+is to--to search about in the Kasbah, and the disrep----"
+
+He choked, recovered himself, and continued: "Disreputable quarters of
+Algiers--hem------"
+
+"What for, sir?"
+
+The voice of Alphonso was certainly changed.
+
+"What for?" said Mr. Greyne, growing purple. "For frailty."
+
+"Sir?"
+
+"For frailty--for wickedness."
+
+A slight cackle emanated from the ledger, but immediately died away. A
+dead silence reigned in the office, broken only by the distant sound of
+the sea, and by the hard breathing of Alphonso, who had suddenly begun
+to pant.
+
+"I wish to go to all the wicked places--_all!_"
+
+The ledger cackled again more audibly. Mr. Greyne felt a prickling
+sensation run over him, but the thought of "Catherine" nerved him to
+his awful task.
+
+"It is my wife's express desire that I should do so," he added
+desperately, quite forgetting Mrs. Greyne's injunction to keep her dark
+in his desire to stand well with Rook's.
+
+The ledger went off into a hyena imitation, and Alphonso, turning
+still more away from Mr. Greyne, so as to get the eye fuller upon him,
+exclaimed, in a mixture of Aryan and Eurasian languages:
+
+"Sir, I am a respectable, unmarried man. I was born in Buenos Ayres,
+educated in Smyrna, came of age in Constantinople, and have practised as
+guide in Bagdad and other particular cities. I refuse to have anything
+to do with you and your wife."
+
+So saying, he bounced into the inner room, and banged the door, while
+the ledger gave itself up to peals of merriment, and Mr. Greyne tottered
+forth upon the sea-front, bathed in a cold perspiration, and feeling
+more guilty than a murderer.
+
+It was a staggering blow. He leaned over the stone parapet of the low
+wall, and let the soft breezes from the bay flit through his hair, and
+thought of Mrs. Greyne spurned by Alphonso. What was he to do? Kicked
+out of Rook's, to whom could he apply? There must be wickedness in
+Algiers, but where? He saw none, though night was falling and stout
+Frenchmen were already intent upon their absinthe.
+
+"Does monsieur wish to see the Kasbah to-night?"
+
+Was it a voice from heaven? He turned, and saw standing beside him a
+tall, thin, audacious-looking young man, with coal-black moustaches,
+magnificent eyes, and an air that was half-languid, half-serpentine.
+
+"Who are you?"
+
+"I am a guide, monsieur. Here are my certificates."
+
+He produced from the inner pocket of his coat a large bundle of dirty
+papers.
+
+"If monsieur will deign to look them over."
+
+But Mr. Greyne waved them away. What did he care for Certificates?
+Here was a guide to African frailty. That was sufficient. He was in a
+desperate mood, and uttered desperate words.
+
+"Look here," he said rapidly, "are you wicked?"
+
+"Very wicked, monsieur."
+
+"Good!"
+
+"Wicked, monsieur."
+
+"Right!"
+
+"Wrong, monsieur."
+
+"I mean that it is good for me that you are wicked."
+
+"Monsieur is very good."
+
+"Yes; but I wish to be--that is, to see the other thing. Can you
+undertake to show me everything shocking in Algiers?"
+
+"But certainly, monsieur. For a consideration."
+
+"Name your price."
+
+"Two hundred pounds, monsieur."
+
+Mr. Greyne started. It seemed a high figure.
+
+"Monsieur thought it would be more? I make a special price, because
+I have taken a fancy to monsieur. I remove fifty pounds. Monsieur, of
+course, will pay all expenses."
+
+"Of course, of course."
+
+It was no time to draw back.
+
+"How long will it take?"
+
+"To see all the shocking--?"
+
+"Precisely."
+
+"There is a good deal. A fortnight, three weeks. It depends on monsieur.
+If he is strong, and can do without sleep----"
+
+"We shall have to be up at night?"
+
+"Naturally."
+
+"I shall go to bed during the day, and get through it in a fortnight."
+
+"Perfectly."
+
+"Be at the Grand Hotel to-night at ten o'clock precisely."
+
+"At ten o'clock I will be there. Monsieur will pay a little in advance?"
+
+"Here are twenty pounds," cried Mr. Greyne recklessly.
+
+The audacious-looking young man took the notes with decision, made a
+graceful salute, and disappeared in the direction of the quay, while Mr.
+Greyne walked to his hotel, flushed with excitement, and feeling like
+the most desperate criminal in Africa. If the militia could see him now!
+
+At dinner he drank a bottle of champagne, and afterwards smoked a strong
+cigar over his coffee and liqueur. As he was finishing these frantic
+enjoyments the head waiter--a personage bearing a strong resemblance
+to an enlarged edition of Napoleon the First--approached him rather
+furtively, and, bending down, whispered in his ear:
+
+"A gentleman has called to take monsieur to the Kasbah."
+
+Mr. Greyne started, and flushed a guilty red.
+
+"I will come in a moment," he answered, trying to assume a nonchalant
+voice, such as that in which a hardened major of dragoons announces that
+in his time he was a devil of a fellow.
+
+The head waiter retired, looking painfully intelligent, and Mr. Greyne
+sprang upstairs, seized a Merrin's exercise-book and a lead pencil, put
+on a dark overcoat, popped one of the Springfield revolvers into the
+pocket of it, and hastened down into the hall of the hotel, where the
+audacious-looking young man was standing, surrounded by saucy
+chasseurs in gay liveries and peaked caps, by Algerian waiters, and by
+German-Swiss porters, all of whom were smiling and looking choke-full of
+sympathetic comprehension.
+
+"Ha!" said Mr. Greyne, still in the major's, voice. "There you are!"
+
+"Behold me, monsieur."
+
+"That's good."
+
+"Wicked, monsieur."
+
+"Well, let's be off to the mosque."
+
+One of the chasseurs--a child of eight who was thankful that he knew no
+better--burst into a piping laugh. The waiters turned hastily away, and
+the German-Swiss porters retreated to the bureau with some activity.
+
+"To the mosque--precisely, monsieur," returned the guide, with complete
+self-possession.
+
+They stepped out at once upon the pavement, where a carriage was in
+waiting.
+
+"Where are we going?" inquired Mr. Greyne in an anxious voice.
+
+"We are going to the heights to see the Ouled," replied the guide. "_En
+avant!_"
+
+He bounded in beside Mr. Greyne, the coachman cracked his whip, the
+horses trotted. They were off upon their terrible pilgrimage.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+On the following afternoon, at a quarter to three, when Mr. Greyne
+came down to breakfast, he found, lying beside the boiled eggs, a
+note directed to him in a feminine handwriting. He tote it open with
+trembling fingers, and read as follows:--
+
+     1 Rue du Petit Neore.
+
+     Dear Monsieur,--I am here. Poor mamma is in the hospital. I
+     am allowed to see her twice a day. At all other times I
+     remain alone, praying and weeping. I trust that monsieur has
+     passed a good night. For me, I was sleepless, thinking of
+     mamma.    I go now to church.
+
+     Adele Verbena.
+
+He laid this missive down, and sighed deeply. How strangely innocent it
+was, how simple, how sincere! There were white souls in Algiers--yes,
+even in Algiers. Strange that he should know one! Strange that he, who
+had filled a Merrin's exercise-book with tiny writing, and had even
+overflowed on to the cover after "crossing" many pages, should receive
+the child-like confidences of one! "I go now to the church." Tears came
+into his eyes as he laid the letter down beside a pile of buttered toast
+over which the burning afternoon sun of Africa was shining.
+
+"Monsieur will take milk and sugar?"
+
+It was the head waiter's Napoleonic voice. Mr. Greyne controlled
+himself. The man was smiling intelligently. All the staff of the hotel
+smiled intelligently at Mr. Greyne to-day--the waiters, the porters, the
+chasseurs. The child of eight who was thankful that he knew no better
+had greeted him with a merry laugh as he came down to breakfast, and an
+"_Oh, là, là!_" which had elicited a rebuke from the proprietor. Indeed,
+a wave of human sympathy flowed upon Mr. Greyne, whose ashy face and
+dull, washed-out eyes betrayed the severity of his night-watch.
+
+"Monsieur will feel better after a little food."
+
+The head waiter handed the buttered toast with bland majesty, at the
+same time shooting a reproving glance at the little chasseur, who was
+peeping from behind the door at the afternoon breakfaster.
+
+"I feel perfectly well," replied Mr. Greyne, with an attempt at
+cheerfulness.
+
+"Still, monsieur will feel much better after a little food."
+
+Mr. Greyne began to toy with an egg.
+
+"You know Algiers?" he asked.
+
+"I was born here, monsieur. If monsieur wishes to explore to-night again
+the Kasbah I can----"
+
+But Mr. Greyne stopped him with a gesture that was almost fierce.
+
+"Where is the Rue du Petit Nègre?"
+
+"Monsieur wishes to go there to-night?"
+
+"I wish to go there now, directly I have finished break--lunch."
+
+The head waiter's face was wreathed with humorous surprise.
+
+"But monsieur is wonderful--superb! Never have I seen a traveller like
+monsieur!"
+
+He gazed at Mr. Greyne with tropical appreciation.
+
+"Monsieur had better have a carriage. The street is difficult to find."
+
+"Order me one. I shall start at once."
+
+Mr. Greyne pushed away the sunlit buttered toast, and got up.
+
+"Monsieur is superb. Never have I seen a traveller like monsieur!"
+Napoleon's voice was almost reverent. He hastened out, followed slowly
+by Mr. Greyne.
+
+"A carriage for monsieur! Monsieur desires to go to the Rue du Petit
+Nègre!"
+
+The staff of the hotel gathered about the door as if to speed a royal
+personage, and Mr. Greyne noticed that their faces too were touched
+with an almost startled reverence. He stepped into the carriage, signed
+feebly, but with determination, to the Arab coachman, and was driven
+away, followed by a parting "_Oh, là là!_" from the chasseur, uttered in
+a voice that sounded shrill with sheer amazement.
+
+Through winding, crowded streets he went, by bazaars and Moorish
+bath-houses, mosques and Catholic churches, barracks and cafés, till at
+length the carriage turned into an alley that crept up a steep hill. It
+moved on a little way, and then stopped.
+
+"Monsieur must descend here," said the coachman. "Mount the steps, go
+to the right and then to the left. Near the summit of the hill he will
+find the Rue du Petit Nègre. Shall I wait for monsieur?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+The coachman began to make a cigarette, while Mr. Greyne set forth
+to follow his directions, and, at length, stood before an arch, which
+opened into a courtyard adorned with orange-trees in tubs, and paved
+with blue and white tiles. Around this courtyard was a three-storey
+house with a flat roof, and from a bureau near a little fountain a stout
+Frenchwoman called to demand his business. He asked for Mademoiselle
+Verbena, and was at once shown into a saloon lined with chairs covered
+with yellow rep, and begged to take a seat. In two minutes Mademoiselle
+Verbena appeared, drying her eyes with a tiny pocket-handkerchief, and
+forcing a little pathetic smile of welcome. Mr. Greyne clasped her hand
+in silence. She sat down in a rep chair at his right, and they looked at
+each other.
+
+"_Mais, mon Dieu!_ How monsieur is changed!" cried the Levantine. "If
+madame could see him! What has happened to monsieur?"
+
+"Miss Verbena," replied Mr. Greyne, "I have seen the Ouled on the
+heights."
+
+A spasm crossed the Levantine's face. She put her handkerchief to it for
+a moment. "What is an Ouled?" she inquired, withdrawing it.
+
+"I dare not tell you," he replied solemnly.
+
+"But indeed I wish to know, so that I may sympathise with monsieur."
+
+Mr. Greyne hesitated, but his heart was full; he felt the need of
+sympathy. He looked at Mademoiselle Verbena, and a great longing to
+unburden himself overcame him.
+
+"An Ouled," he replied, "is a dancing-girl from the desert of Sahara."
+
+"_Mon Dieu!_ How does she dance? Is it a valse, a polka, a quadrille?"
+"No. Would that it were!" And Mr. Greyne, unable further to govern
+his desire for full expression, gave Mademoiselle Verbena a slightly
+Bowdlerised description of the dances of the desert. She heard him with
+amazement.
+
+"How terrible!" she exclaimed when he had finished. "And does one pay
+much to see such steps of the Evil One?"
+
+"I gave her twenty pounds. Abdallah Jack----"
+
+"Abdallah Jack?"
+
+"My guide informed me that was the price. He tells me it is against
+the law, and that each time an Ouled dances she risks being thrown into
+prison."
+
+"Poor lady! How sad to have to earn one's bread by such devices, instead
+of by teaching to the sweet little ones of monsieur the sympathetic
+grammar of one's native country."
+
+Mr. Greyne was touched to the quick by this allusion, which brought, as
+in a vision, the happy home in Belgrave Square before him.
+
+"You are an angel!" he exclaimed.
+
+Mademoiselle Verbena shook her head.
+
+"And this poor Ouled, you will go to her again?
+
+"Yes. It seems that she is in communication with all the--the--well,
+all the odd people of Algiers, and that one can only get at them through
+her."
+
+"Indeed?"
+
+"Abdallah Jack tells me that while I am here I should pay her a weekly
+salary, and that, in return, I shall see all the terrible ceremonies of
+the Arabs. I have decided to do so------
+
+"Ah, you have decided!"
+
+For a moment Mr. Greyne started. There seemed a new sound in
+Mademoiselle Verbena's voice, a gleam in her dark brown eyes.
+
+"Yes," he said, looking at her in wonder. "But I have not yet told
+Abdallah Jack."
+
+The Levantine looked gently sad again.
+
+"Ah," she said in her usual pathetic voice, "how my heart bleeds for
+this poor Ouled. By the way, what is her name?"
+
+"Aishoush."
+
+"She is beautiful?"
+
+"I hardly know. She was so painted, so tattooed, so very--so very
+different from Mrs. Eustace Greyne."
+
+"How sad! How terrible! Ah, but you must long for the dear bonnet
+strings of madame?"
+
+Did he? As she spoke Mr. Greyne asked himself the question. Shocked as
+he was, fatigued by his researches, did he wish that he were back again
+in Belgrave Square, drinking barley water, pasting notices of his wife's
+achievements into the new album, listening while she read aloud from
+the manuscript of her latest novel? He wondered, and--how strange, how
+almost terrible--he was not sure.
+
+"Is it not so?" murmured Mademoiselle Verbena.
+
+"Naturally I miss my beloved wife," said Mr. Greyne with a certain
+awkwardness. "How is your poor, dear mother?"
+
+Tears came at once into the Levantine's eyes.
+
+"Very, very ill, monsieur. Still there is a chance--just a chance that
+she may not die. Ah, when I sit here all alone in this strange place, I
+feel that she will perish, that soon I shall be quite deserted in this
+cruel, cruel world!"
+
+The tears began to flow down her cheeks with determination. Mr. Greyne
+was terribly upset.
+
+"You must cheer up," he exclaimed. "You must hope for the best."
+
+"Sitting here alone, how can I?"
+
+She sobbed.
+
+"Sitting here alone--very true!"
+
+A sudden thought, a number of sudden thoughts, struck him.
+
+"You must not sit here alone."
+
+"Monsieur!"
+
+"You must come out. You must drive. You must see the town, distract
+yourself."
+
+"But how? Can a--a girl go about alone in Algiers?"
+
+"Heaven forbid! No; I will escort you."
+
+"Monsieur!"
+
+A smile of innocent, girlish joy transformed her face, but suddenly she
+was grave again.
+
+"Would it be right, _convenable?_"
+
+Mr. Greyne was reckless. The dog potential rose up in him again.
+
+"Why not? And, besides, who knows us here? Not a soul."
+
+"That is true."
+
+"Put on your bonnet. Let us start at once!"
+
+"But I do not wear the bonnet. I am not like madame."
+
+"To be sure. Your hat."
+
+And as she flew to obey him, Mr. Eustace Greyne found himself impiously
+thanking the powers that be for this strange chance of going on the
+spree with a toque. When Mademoiselle Verbena returned he was looking
+almost rakish. He eyed her neat black hat and close-fitting black jacket
+with a glance not wholly unlike that of a militiaman. In her hand she
+held a vivid scarlet parasol.
+
+"Monsieur," she said, "it is terrible, this _ombrelle_, when mamma lies
+at death's door. But what can I do? I have no other, and cannot afford
+to buy one. The sun is fierce. I dare not expose myself to it without a
+shelter."
+
+She seemed really distressed as she opened the parasol, and spread the
+vivid silk above her pretty black-clothed figure; but Mr. Greyne thought
+the effect was brilliant, and ventured to say so. As they passed the
+bureau by the fountain on their way out the stout Frenchwoman cast an
+approving glance at Mademoiselle Verbena.
+
+"The little rat will not see much more of the little negro now," she
+murmured to herself. "After all the English have their uses."
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+In Belgrave Square Mrs. Eustace Greyne was beginning to get slightly
+uneasy. Several things combined to make her so. In the first place,
+Mademoiselle Verbena had never returned from her mother's Parisian
+bedside, and had not even written a line to say how the dear parent was,
+and when the daughter's nursing occupation was likely to be over. In the
+second place, Adolphus, in consequence of the Levantine's absence, had
+totally lost his grasp, always uncertain, upon the irregular verbs.
+In the third place, Darrell, the valet, had returned to London the day
+after his departure from it, minus not only his master's dressing-case,
+but minus everything he possessed. His story was that, while waiting at
+the station in Paris for his master's appearance, he had entered into
+conversation with an agreeable stranger, and been beguiled into the
+acceptance of an absinthe at a café just outside. After swallowing
+the absinthe he remembered nothing more till he came to himself in a
+deserted waiting-room at the Gare du Nord, back to which he had been
+mysteriously conveyed. In his pocket was no money, no watch, only
+the return half of a second-class ticket from London to Paris. He,
+therefore, wandered about the streets till morning broke, and then came
+back to London a crestfallen and miserable man, bemoaning his untoward
+fate, and cursing "them blasted Frenchies" from the bottom of his
+British heart.
+
+Mrs. Greyne's anxiety on her husband's behalf, now that he was thrown
+absolutely unattended upon the inhospitable shores of Africa, was not
+lessened by a fourth circumstance, which, indeed, worried her far
+more than all the others put together. This was Mr. Greyne's prolonged
+absence from her side. Precisely one calendar month had now elapsed
+since he had buried his face in her prune bonnet strings at Victoria
+Station, and there seemed no prospect of his return. He wrote to her,
+indeed, frequently, and his letters were full of wistful regret and
+longing to be once more safe in the old homestead in Belgrave Square,
+drinking barley water, and pasting Romeike & Curtice notices into the
+new album which lay, gaping for him, upon the table of his sanctum. But
+he did not come; nay, more, he wrote plainly that there was no prospect
+of his coming for the present. It seemed that the wickedness of Africa
+was very difficult to come at. It did not lie upon the surface, but was
+hidden far down in depths to which the ordinary tourist found it almost
+impossible to penetrate. In his numerous letters Mr. Greyne described
+his heroic and unremitting exertions to fill the Merrin's note-books
+with matter that would be suitable for the purging of humanity. He set
+out in full his interview with Alphonso at the office of Rook, and
+his definite rejection by that cosmopolitan official. According to
+the letters, after this event he had spent no less than a fortnight
+searching in vain for any sign of wickedness in the Algerian capital. He
+had frequented the cafés, the public bars, the theatres, the churches.
+He had been to the Velodrome. He had sat by the hour in the Jardin
+d'Essai. At night he had strolled in the fairs and hung about the
+circus. Yet nowhere had he been able to perceive anything but the
+most innocent pleasure, the simple merriment of a gay and guileless
+population to whom the idea of crime seemed as foreign as the idea of
+singing the English national anthem.
+
+During the third week it was true that matters--always according to Mr.
+Greyne's letters home--slightly improved. While walking near the quay,
+in active search for nautical outrage, he saw an Arab dock labourer,
+who had been over-smoking kief, run amuck, and knock down a couple of
+respectable snake-charmers who were on the point of embarkation for
+Tunis with their reptiles. This incident had filed up a half-score of
+pages in exercise-book number one, and had flooded Mr. Greyne with hope
+and aspiration. But it was followed by a stagnant lull which had lasted
+for days and had only been disturbed by the trifling incident of
+a gentleman in the Jewish quarter of the town setting fire to a
+neighbour's bazaar, in the very natural endeavour to find a French
+half-penny which he had chanced to drop among a bale of carpets while
+looking in to drive a soft bargain. As Mrs. Greyne wired to Algiers,
+such incidents were of no value to "Catherine."
+
+A very active interchange of views had gone on between the husband and
+wife as time went by, and the book was at a standstill. At first Mrs.
+Greyne contented herself with daily letters, but latterly she had
+resorted to wires, explanatory, condemnatory, hortatory, and even
+comminatory. She began bitterly to regret her husband's well-proven
+innocence, and wished she had despatched an uncle of hers by marriage,
+an ex-captain in the Royal Navy, who, she began to feel certain, would
+have been able to find far more frailty in Algiers than poor Eustace, in
+his simplicity, would ever come at. She even began to wish that she had
+crossed the sea in person, and herself boldly set about the ingathering
+of the material for which she was so impatiently waiting.
+
+Her uneasiness was brought to a head by a letter from a house agent,
+stating that the corner mansion in Park Lane next to the Duke of
+Ebury's was being nibbled at by a Venezuelan millionaire. She wired this
+terrible fact at once to Africa, adding, at an enormous expenditure of
+cash:
+
+     This will never do. You are too innocent, and cannot see
+     what lies before you. Obtain assistance. Go to the British
+     consul.
+
+Mr. Greyne at once cabled back:
+
+     Am following your advice. Will wire result. Regret my
+     innocence, but am distressed that you should so utterly
+     condemn it.
+
+Upon receiving this telegram at night, before a lonely dinner, Mrs.
+Eustace Greyne was deeply moved. She felt she had been hasty. She knew
+that to very few women was it given to have a husband so free from
+all masculine infirmities as Mr. Greyne. At the same time there was
+"Catherine," there was the mansion in Park Lane, there was the Venezuelan
+millionaire. She began to feel distracted, and, for the first time in
+her life, refused to partake of sweetbreads fried in mushroom ketchup,
+a dish which she had greatly affected from the time when she wrote her
+first short story. While she was in the very act of waving away this
+delicacy a footman came in with a foreign telegram. She opened it
+quickly, and read as follows:--
+
+     British consul horrified; was ignominiously expelled from
+     consulate; great scandal; am much upset, but will never give
+     in, for your sake.                           Eustace.
+
+As the dread meaning of these words penetrated at length to Mrs.
+Greyne's voluminous brain a deep flush overspread her noble features.
+She rose from the table with a determination that struck awe to the
+hearts of the powdered underlings, and, drawing herself up to her full
+height, exclaimed:
+
+"Send Mrs. Forbes at once to my study, if you please--at once, do you
+understand?"
+
+In a moment Mrs. Forbes, who was the great novelist's maid, appeared on
+the threshold of the oracle's lair. She was a sober-looking, black-silk
+personage, who always wore a pork-pie cap in the house, and a Mother
+Hubbard bonnet out of it. Having been in service with Mrs. Greyne ever
+since the latter penned her last minor poetry--Mrs. Greyne had been a
+minor poet for three years soon after she put her hair up--Mrs. Forbes
+had acquired a certain literary expression of countenance and a manner
+that was decidedly prosy. She read a good deal after her supper of an
+evening, and was wont to be the arbiter when any literary matter was
+discussed in the servants' hall.
+
+"Madam?" she said, respectfully entering the room, and bending the
+pork-pie cap forward in an attentive attitude.
+
+Mrs. Greyne was silent for a moment. She appeared to be thinking deeply.
+Mrs. Forbes gently closed the door, and sighed. It was nearly her
+supper-time, and she felt pensive.
+
+"Madam?" she said again.
+
+Mrs. Greyne looked up. A strange fire burned in her large eyes.
+
+"Mrs. Forbes," she said at length, with weighty deliberation, "the
+mission of woman in the world is a great one."
+
+"Very true, madam. My own words to Butler Phillips no longer ago than
+dinner this midday."
+
+"It is the protecting of man--neither more nor less."
+
+"My own statement, madam, to Second Footman Archibald this self-same day
+at the tea-board."
+
+"Man needs guidance, and looks for it to us--or rather to me."
+
+At the last word Mrs. Forbes pinched her lips together, and appeared
+older than her years and sourer than her normal temper.
+
+"At this moment, Mrs. Forbes," continued Mrs. Greyne, with rising
+fervour, "he looks for it to me from Africa. From that dark continent
+he stretches forth his hands to me in humble supplication."
+
+"Mr. Greyne has not been taken with another of his bilious attacks, I
+hope, madam?" said Mrs. Forbes.
+
+Mrs. Greyne smiled. The ignorance of the humbly born entertained her. It
+was so simple, so transparent.
+
+"You fail to understand me," she answered. "But never mind; others have
+done the same."
+
+She thought of her reviewers. Mrs. Forbes smiled. She also could be
+entertained.
+
+"Madam?" she inquired once more after a pause.
+
+"I shall leave for Africa to-morrow morning," said Mrs. Greyne. "You
+will accompany me."
+
+There was a dead silence.
+
+"You will accompany me. Do you understand? Obtain assistance from
+the housemaids in the packing. Select my quietest gowns, my least
+conspicuous bonnets. I have my reasons for wishing, while journeying to
+Africa and remaining there, to pass, if possible, unnoticed."
+
+Again there was a pause. Mrs. Greyne looked up at Mrs. Forbes, and
+observed a dogged expression upon her countenance.
+
+"What is the matter?" she asked the maid.
+
+"Do we go by Paris, madam?" said Mrs. Forbes.
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"Then, madam, I'm very sorry, but I couldn't risk it, not if it was ever
+so----"
+
+"Why not? Why this fear of Lutetia?"
+
+"Madam, I'm not afraid of any Lutetia as ever wore apron, but to go
+to Paris to be drugged with absint, and put away in a third-class
+waiting-room like a package--I couldn't madam, not even if I have to
+leave your service."
+
+Mrs. Greyne recognised that the episode of the valet had struck home to
+the lady's maid.
+
+"But you will not leave my side."
+
+"They will absint you, madam."
+
+"But you will travel first in a sleeping-car."
+
+Mrs. Forbes put up her hand to her pork-pie cap, as if considering.
+
+"Very well, madam, to oblige you I will undergo it," she said at length.
+"But I would not do the like for another living lady."
+
+"I will raise your wages. You are a faithful creature."
+
+"Does master expect us, madam?" asked Mrs. Forbes as she prepared to
+retire.
+
+A bright and tender look stole into Mrs. Greyne's intellectual face.
+
+"No," she replied.
+
+She turned her large and beaming eyes full upon the maid.
+
+"Mrs. Forbes," she said, with an amount of emotion that was very rare in
+her, "I am going to tell you a great truth."
+
+"Madam?" said Mrs. Forbes respectfully.
+
+"The sweetest moments of life, those which lift man nearest heaven, and
+make him thankful for the great gift of existence, are sometimes those
+which are unforeseen."
+
+She was thinking of Mr. Greyne's ecstasy when, upon the inhospitable
+African shore where he was now enduring such tragic misfortunes, he
+perceived the majestic form of his loved one--his loved one whom he
+believed to be in Belgrave Square--coming towards him to soothe, to
+comfort, to direct. She brushed away a tear.
+
+"Go, Mrs. Forbes," she said.
+
+And Mrs. Forbes retired, smiling.
+
+An epic might well be written on the great novelist's journey to Africa,
+upon her departure from Charing Cross, shrouded in a black gauze veil,
+her silent thought as the good ship _Empress_ rode cork-like upon the
+Channel waves, her ascetic lunch--a captain's biscuit and a glass of
+water--at the buffet at Calais, her arrival in Paris when the shades
+of night had fallen. An epic might well be written. Perhaps some day it
+will be, by herself.
+
+In Paris she suffered a good deal on account of Mrs. Forbes, who, in her
+fear of "ab-sint," became hysterical, and caused not a little annoyance
+by accusing various inoffensive French travellers of nefarious designs
+upon her property and person. In the Gulf of Lyons she suffered even
+more, and as, unluckily, the wind was contrary and the sea prodigious
+during the whole of the passage across the Mediterranean, both she and
+Mrs. Forbes arrived at Algiers four hours late, in a condition which may
+be more easily imagined than properly described.
+
+Genius in thrall to the body, and absolutely dependent upon green
+chartreuse for its flickering existence, is no subject for even a
+sympathetic pen. Sufficient to say that, when the ship came in under the
+lights of Algiers, the crowd of shouting Arabs was struck to silence by
+the spectacle of Mrs. Greyne and Mrs. Forbes endeavouring to disembark,
+in bonnets that were placed seaward upon the head instead of landward,
+unbuttoned boots, and gowns soaked with the attentions of the waves.
+
+After being gently and permanently relieved of their light hand-baggage,
+the mistress and maid, who seemed greatly overwhelmed by the sight
+of Africa, and who moved--or rather were carried--as in a dream, were
+placed reverently in the nearest omnibus, and conveyed to the farthest
+hotel, which was situated upon a lofty hill above the town. Here a
+slightly painful scene took place.
+
+Having been assisted by the staff into a Moorish hall, Mrs. Greyne
+inquired in a reticent voice for her husband, and was politely informed
+that there was no person of the name of Greyne in the hotel. For a
+moment she seemed threatened with dissolution, but with a supreme effort
+calling upon her mighty brain she surmised that her husband was possibly
+passing under a pseudonym in order to throw America off the scent. She,
+therefore, demanded to have the guests then present in the hotel at once
+paraded before her. As there was some difficulty about this--the guests
+being then at dinner--she whispered for the visitors' book, thinking
+that, perchance, Mr. Greyne had inscribed his name there, and that the
+staff, being foreign, did not recognise it as murmured by herself. The
+book was brought, upon its cover in golden letters the words: "Hôtel
+Loubet et Majestic." Then explanations of a somewhat disagreeable nature
+occurred, and Mrs. Greyne and Mrs. Forbes, after a heavy payment had
+been exacted for their conveyance to a place they had desired not to
+go to, were carried forth, and consigned to another vehicle, which at
+length brought them, on the stroke of nine, to the Grand Hotel.
+
+Having been placed reverently in the brilliantly-lighted hall, they were
+surrounded by the proprietor, the _maître d'hôtel_ and his assistants,
+the porters, and the chasseurs, with all of whom Mr. Greyne was
+now familiar. Brandy and water having been supplied, together with
+smelling-salts and burnt feathers, Mrs. Greyne roused herself from an
+acute attack of lethargy, and asked for Mr. Greyne. A joyous smile ran
+round the circle.
+
+"Monsieur Greyne," said the proprietor, "who is living here for the
+winter?" 4
+
+"Mr. Eustace Greyne," murmured the great novelist, grasping her bonnet
+with both hands.
+
+The _maître d'hôtel_ drew nearer.
+
+"Madame wishes to see Monsieur Greyne?" he asked.
+
+"I do--at once."
+
+A blessed consciousness of Mother Earth was gradually beginning to steal
+over her. She even strove feebly to sit up on her chair, a German-Swiss
+porter of enormous size assisting her.
+
+"But Monsieur Greyne is out."
+
+"Out?"
+
+"Yes, madame. Monsieur Greyne is always out at night."
+
+The eyes of the little chasseur who knew no better began to twinkle.
+Mrs. Forbes gave a slight cough. Tears filled the novelist's eyes.
+
+"God bless my Eustace!" she murmured, deeply touched by this evidence of
+his devotion to her interests.
+
+"Madame says----" asked the proprietor.
+
+"Where does Mr. Greyne go?" inquired the novelist.
+
+"To the Kasbah, madame."
+
+"I knew it!" cried Mrs. Greyne, with returning animation. "I knew it
+would be so!"
+
+"Madame is acquainted with Monsieur Greyne?" said the _maître d'hôtel_,
+while the little crowd gathered more closely about the wave-worn group.
+
+"I am Mrs. Eustace Greyne," returned the great novelist recklessly. "I
+am the wife of Mr. Eustace Greyne."
+
+There was a moment of supreme silence. Then a loud, an even piercing
+"_Oh, là, là,_ broke upon the air, succeeded instantaneously by a burst
+of laughter that seemed to thrill with all the wild blessedness of
+boyhood. It came, of course, from the little chasseur; it came, and
+stayed. Nothing could stop it, and eventually the happy child had to be
+carried forth upon the sea-front to enjoy his innocent mirth at leisure
+and in solitude beneath the African stars. Mrs. Greyne did not notice
+his disappearance. She was intent upon important matters.
+
+"At what time does Mr. Greyne usually set forth?" she asked of the
+proprietor, whose face now bore a strangely twisted appearance, as if
+afflicted by a toothache.
+
+"Immediately after dinner, madame, if not before. Of late it has
+generally been before."
+
+"And he stays out late?"
+
+"Very late, madame."
+
+The twisted appearance began to seem infectious. It was visible upon the
+faces of most of those surrounding Mrs. Greyne and Mrs. Forbes. Indeed,
+even the latter showed some signs of it, although the large shadow cast
+over her features by the hind side of her Mother Hubbard bonnet to some
+extent disguised them from the public view.
+
+"Till what hour?" pursued Mrs. Greyne in a voice of almost yearning
+tenderness and pity.
+
+"Well, madame"--the proprietor displayed some slight confusion--"I
+really can hardly say. The _maître d'hôtel_ can perhaps inform you."
+
+Mrs. Greyne turned her ox-like eyes upon the enlarged edition of
+Napoleon the First.
+
+"Monsieur Greyne seldom returns before seven or eight o'clock in the
+morning, madame. He then retires to bed, and comes down to breakfast at
+about four o'clock in the afternoon."
+
+Mrs. Greyne was touched to the very quick. Her husband was sacrificing
+his rest, his health--nay, perhaps even his very life--in her service.
+It was well she had come, well that a period was to be put to these
+terrible researches. They should be stopped at once, even this very
+night. Better a thousand literary failures than that her husband's
+existence should be placed in jeopardy. She rose suddenly from her
+chair, tottered, gasped, recovered herself, and spoke.
+
+"Prepare dinner for me at once," she said, "and order a carriage and a
+competent guide to be before the door in half-an-hour."
+
+"Madame is going out? But madame is ill, tired!"
+
+"It matters not."
+
+"Where does madame wish to go?"
+
+"I am going to the Kasbah to find my husband."
+
+"I will escort madame."
+
+The proprietor, the _maître d'hôtel_, the waiters, the porters, the
+chasseurs, Mrs. Greyne and Mrs. Forbes, all turned about to face the
+determined speaker.
+
+And there before them, his dark eyes gleaming, his long moustaches
+bristling fiercely--here stood Abdallah Jack.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+Man is a self-deceiver. It must, therefore, ever be a doubtful point
+whether Mr. Eustace Greyne, during his residence in Africa, absolutely
+lost sight of his sense of duty; whether, beguiled by the lively
+attentions of a fiercely foreign town, he deliberately resolved to
+take his pleasure regardless of consequences and of the sacred ties of
+Belgrave Square. We prefer to think that some vague idea of combining
+two duties--that which he owed to himself and that which he owed to Mrs.
+Greyne--moved him in all he did, and that the subterfuge into which
+he was undoubtedly led was not wholly selfish, not wholly criminal.
+Nevertheless, that he had lied to his beloved wife is certain. Even
+while she sat over a cutlet and a glass of claret in the white-and-gold
+dining-room of the Grand Hotel, preparatory to her departure to the
+Kasbah with Abdallah Jack, the dozen of Merrin's exercise-books lay
+upstairs in Mr. Greyne's apartments filled to the brim with African
+frailty. Already there was material enough in their pages to furnish
+forth a library of "Catherines." Yet Mr. Greyne still lingered far from
+his home, and wired to that home fabricated accounts of the singular
+innocence of Algiers. He even allowed it to be supposed that his
+own innocence stood in the way of his fulfilment of Mrs. Greyne's
+behests--he who could now have given points in knowledge of the world to
+whole regiments of militiamen!
+
+It was not right, and, doubtless, he must stand condemned by every
+moralist. But let it not be forgotten that he had fallen under the
+influence of a Levantine.
+
+Mademoiselle Verbena's mother, hidden in some unnamed hospital of
+Algiers, appeared to be one of those ingenious elderly ladies who can
+hover indefinitely upon the brink of death without actually dying.
+During the whole time that Mr. Greyne had been in Africa her state had
+been desperate, yet she still clung to life. As her daughter said, she
+possessed extraordinary vitality, and this vitality seemed to have been
+inherited by her child. Despite her grave anxieties Mademoiselle Verbena
+succeeded in sustaining a remarkable cheeriness, and even a fascinating
+vivacity, when in the company of others. As she said to Mr. Greyne,
+she did not think it right to lay her burdens upon the shoulders of her
+neighbours. She, therefore, forced herself to appear contented, even at
+various moments gay, when she and Mr. Greyne were lunching, dining, or
+supping together, were driving upon the front, sailing upon the azure
+waters of the bay, riding upon the heights beyond El-Biar, or, ensconced
+in a sumptuous private box, listening to the latest French farce at one
+or another of the theatres. Only one day, when they had driven out to
+the monastery at La Trappe de Staouëli, did a momentary cloud descend
+upon her piquant features, and she explained this by the frank
+confession that she had always wished to become a nun, but had been
+hindered from following her vocation by the necessity of earning money
+to support her aged parents. Mr. Greyne had never seen the Ouled since
+his first evening in Algiers, but he still paid her a weekly salary,
+through Abdallah Jack, who explained to him that the interesting lady,
+in a discreet retirement, was perpetually occupied in arranging the
+exhibitions of African frailty at which he so frequently assisted.
+She was, in fact, earning her liberal salary. Mademoiselle Verbena
+and Abdallah Jack had met on several occasions, and Mr. Greyne had
+introduced the latter to the former as his guide, and had generously
+praised his abilities; but in Mademoiselle Verbena took very little
+notice of him, and, as time went on, Abdallah Jack seemed to conceive
+a most distressing dislike of her. On several occasions he advised Mr.
+Greyne not to frequent her company so assiduously, and when Mr. Greyne
+asked him to explain the meaning of his monitions he took refuge in
+vague generalities and Eastern imagery. He had a profound contempt
+for women as companions, which grieved Mr. Greyne's Western ideas,
+and evidently thought that Mademoiselle Verbena ought to be clapped
+forthwith into a long veil, and put away in a harem behind an iron
+grille. When Mr. Greyne explained the English point of view Abdallah
+Jack took refuge in a sulky silence; but during the week immediately
+preceding the arrival of Mrs. Greyne his temper had become actively
+bad, and Mr. Greyne began seriously to consider whether it would not
+be better to pay him a last _douceur_, and tell him to go about his
+business.
+
+Before doing this, however, Mr. Greyne desired to have one more
+interview with the mysterious Ouled on the heights, to whom he owed the
+knowledge which would henceforth enable him to cut out the militia. He
+said so to Abdallah Jack. The latter agreed sulkily to arrange it;
+and matters so fell out that on the night of Mrs. Greyne's arrival
+her husband was seated in a room in one of the remotest houses of the
+Kasbah, watching the Ouled's mysterious evolutions, while Mademoiselle
+Verbena--as she herself had informed Mr.4 Greyne--sat in the hospital by
+the bedside of her still dying mother. Abdallah Jack had apparently been
+most anxious to assist at Mr. Greyne's interview with the Ouled, but
+Mr. Greyne had declined to allow this. The evil temper of the guide was
+beginning to get thoroughly upon his employer's nerves, and even the
+natural desire to have an interpreter at hand was overborne by the
+dislike of Abdallah Jack's morose eyes and sarcastic speeches about
+women. Moreover, the Ouled spoke a word or two of uncertain French.
+
+Thus, therefore, things fell out, and such was the precise situation
+when Mrs. Greyne flicked a crumb from her chocolate brocade gown, tied
+her bonnet strings, and rose from table to set forth to the Kasbah with
+Abdallah Jack.
+
+It was a radiant night. In the clear sky the stars shone brilliantly,
+looking down upon the persistent convulsions of the little chasseur, who
+had not yet recovered from his attack of merriment on learning who
+Mrs. Greyne was. The sea, quite calm now that the great novelist was no
+longer upon it, lapped softly along the curving shores of the bay. The
+palm-trees of the town garden where the band plays on warm evenings
+waved lazily in the soft and scented breeze. The hooded figures of the
+Arabs lounged against the stone wall that girdles the sea-front. In the
+brilliantly-illuminated restaurants the rich French population gathered
+about the little tables, while the withered beggars stared in upon the
+oyster shells, the champagne bottles, and the feathers in the women's
+audacious hats.
+
+When Mrs. Greyne emerged upon the pavement before the Grand Hotel,
+attended by Mrs. Forbes and the guide, she paused for a moment, and cast
+a searching glance upon the fairy scene. In this voluptuous evening and
+strange environment life seemed oddly dreamlike. She scarcely felt like
+Mrs. Greyne. Possibly Mrs. Forbes also felt unlike herself, for she
+suddenly placed one hand upon her left side, and tottered. Abdallah Jack
+supported her. She screamed aloud.
+
+"Madam!" she said. "It is the vertigo. I am overtook!"
+
+She was really ill; her face, indeed, became the colour of a plover's
+egg.
+
+"Let me go to bed, madam," she implored. "It is the vertigo, madam. I
+am overtook!"
+
+Under ordinary circumstances Mrs. Greyne would have prescribed a dose of
+Kasbah air, but to-night she felt strange, and she wanted strangeness.
+Mrs. Forbes with the vertigo, in a small carriage, would be
+inappropriate. She, therefore, bade her retire, mounted into the vehicle
+with Abdallah Jack, and was quickly driven away, her bonnet strings
+floating upon the winsome wind.
+
+"You know my husband?" she asked softly of the guide.
+
+Abdallah Jack replied in French that he rather thought he did.
+
+"How is he looking?" continued Mrs. Greyne in a slightly yearning voice.
+"My Eustace!" she added to herself, "my devoted one!"
+
+"Monsieur Greyne is pale as washed linen upon the Kasbah wall," replied
+Abdallah Jack, lighting a cigarette, and wreathing the great novelist in
+its grey-blue smoke. "He is thin as the Spahi's lance, he is nervous as
+the leaves of the eucalyptus-tree when the winds blow from the north."
+
+Mrs. Greyne was seriously perturbed.
+
+"Would I had come before!" she murmured, with serious self-reproach.
+
+"Monsieur Greyne is worse than all the English," pursued Abdallah Jack
+in a voice that sounded to Mrs. Greyne decidedly sinister. "He is worse
+than the tourists of Rook, who laugh in the doorways of the mosques and
+twine in their hair the dried lizards of the Sahara. Even the guide
+of Rook rejected him. I only would undertake him because I am full of
+evil."
+
+Mrs. Greyne began to feel distinctly uncomfortable, and to wish she
+had not been so ready to pander to Mrs. Forbes' vertigo. She stole a
+sidelong glance at her strange companion. The carriage was small. The
+end of his bristling black moustache was very near. What he said of
+Mr. Greyne did not disturb her, because she knew that her Eustace had
+sacrificed his reputation to do her service; but what he said about
+himself was not reassuring.
+
+"I think you must be doing yourself an injustice," she said in a rather
+agitated voice.
+
+"Madame?"
+
+"I do not believe you are so bad as you imply," she continued.
+
+The carriage turned with a jerk out of the brilliantly-lighted
+thoroughfare that runs along the sea into a narrow side street, crowded
+with native Jews, and dark with shadows.
+
+"Madame does not know me."
+
+The exact truth of this observation struck home, like a dagger, to the
+mind of Mrs. Greyne.
+
+"I am a wicked person," added Abdallah Jack, with a profound conviction.
+"That is why Monsieur Greyne chose me as his guide."
+
+The novelist began to quake. Her chocolate brocade fluttered. Was she
+herself to learn at first hand, and on her first evening in Africa,
+enough about African frailty to last her for the rest of her life? And
+how much more of life would remain to her after her stock of knowledge
+had been thus increased? The carriage turned into a second side street,
+narrower and darker than the last.
+
+"Are we going right?" she said apprehensively.
+
+"No, madame; we are going wrong--we are going to the wicked part of the
+city."
+
+"But--but--you are sure Mr. Greyne will be there?"
+
+Abdallah Jack laughed sardonically.
+
+"Monsieur Greyne is never anywhere else. Monsieur Greyne is wicked as is
+a mad Touareg of the desert."
+
+"I don't think you quite understand my husband," said Mrs. Greyne,
+feeling in duty bound to stand up for her poor, maligned Eustace.
+"Whatever he may have done he has done at my special request."
+
+"Madame says?"
+
+"I say that in all his proceedings while in Algiers Mr. Greyne has been
+acting under my directions."
+
+Abdallah Jack fixed his enormous eyes steadily upon her.
+
+"You are his wife, and told him to come here, and to do as he has done?"
+
+"Ye-yes," faltered Mrs. Greyne, for the first time in her life feeling
+as if she were being escorted towards the criminal dock by a jailer with
+Puritan tendencies.
+
+"Then it is true what they say on the shores of the great canal," he
+remarked composedly.
+
+"What do they say?" inquired Mrs. Greyne.
+
+"That England is a land of female devils," returned the guide as the
+carriage plunged into a filthy alley, between two rows of blind houses,
+and began to ascend a steep hill.
+
+Mrs. Greyne gasped. She opened her lips to protest vigorously, but her
+head swam--either from indignation or from fatigue--and she could
+not utter a word. The horses mounted like cats upward into the dense
+blackness, from which dropped down the faint sounds of squealing music
+and of hoarse cries and laughter. The wheels bounded over the stones,
+sank into the deep ruts, scraped against the sides of the unlighted
+houses. And Abdallah Jack sat staring at Mrs. Greyne as an English
+clergyman's wife might stare at the appalling rites of some deadly
+cannibal encountered in a far-off land, with a stony wonder, a sort of
+paralysed curiosity.
+
+Suddenly the carriage stopped on a piece of waste land covered with
+small pebbles. Abdallah Jack sprang out.
+
+"Why do we stop?" said Mrs. Greyne, turning as pale as ashes.
+
+"The carriage can go no farther. Madame must walk."
+
+Mrs. Greyne began to tremble.
+
+"We are to leave the coachman?"
+
+"I shall escort madame, alone."
+
+The great novelist's tongue cleaved to the roof of her mouth. She felt
+like a Merrin's exercise-book, every leaf of which was covered with
+African frailty. However, there was no help for it. She had to descend,
+and stand among the pebbles.
+
+"Where are we going?"
+
+Abdallah Jack waved his hand towards a stone rampart dimly seen in the
+faint light that emanated from the starry sky.
+
+"Down there into the alley of the Dead Dervishes."
+
+Mrs. Greyne could not repress a cry of horror. At that moment she would
+have given a thousand pounds to have Mrs. Forbes at her side.
+
+Abdallah Jack grasped her by the hand, and led her ruthlessly forward.
+Gazing with terror-stricken eyes over the crumbling rampart of the
+Kasbah, she saw the city far below her, the lights of the streets, the
+lights of the ships in harbour. She heard the music of a bugle, and
+wished she were a Zouave safe in barracks. She wished she were a
+German-Swiss porter, a merry chasseur--anything but Mrs. Eustace Greyne.
+One thing alone supported her in this hour of trial, the thought of her
+husband's ecstasy when she appeared upon the dread scene of his awful
+labours, to tell him that he was released, that he need visit them no
+more.
+
+The alley of the Dead Dervishes is long and winding. To Mrs. Greyne it
+seemed endless. As she threaded it with faltering step, gripped by the
+feverish hand of Abdallah Jack, who now began to display a strange and
+terrible excitement, she became a centre of curiosity. Unwashed Arabs,
+rakish Zouaves in blue and red, wandering Jews of various nationalities,
+unveiled dancing-girls covered with jewels, stared in wonder upon the
+chocolate brocade and the floating bonnet strings, followed upon her
+footsteps, pointing with painted fingers, and making remarks of a
+personal nature in French, Arabic, and other unknown tongues. She moved
+in the midst of a crowd, on and on before lighted interiors from which
+wild music flowed.
+
+"Shall we never be there?" she panted to Abdallah Jack. "My limbs refuse
+their office." She jogged against a Tunisian Jewess in a pointed hat,
+and rebounded upon an enormous Riff in a tattered sheep-skin. "I can go
+no farther."
+
+"We are there! Behold the house of the Ouled!"
+
+As he uttered the last word he burst into a bitter laugh, and drew Mrs.
+Greyne, now gasping for breath, through an open doorway into a little
+hall of imitation marble, with fluted pillars adorned with oilcloth, and
+walls hung with imported oleographs. From a chamber on the right, near
+a winding staircase covered with blue-and-white tiles, came the sound of
+laughter, of song, and of a hideous music conveyed to the astonied ear
+by pipes and drums.
+
+"They are in there!" exclaimed Abdallah Jack, folding his arms, and
+looking at Mrs. Greyne. "Go to your husband!"
+
+Mrs. Greyne put her hands to her magnificent forehead, and tottered
+forward. She reached the door, she pushed it, she entered. There upon a
+wooden dais, surrounded by gilt mirrors and artificial roses, she beheld
+her husband, in a check suit and a white Homburg hat, performing the
+wildest evolutions, while opposite him a lady, smothered in coloured
+silks and coins, tattooed and painted, dyed and scented, covered with
+kohl and crowned with ostrich feathers, screamed a nasal chant of the
+East, and bounded like an electrified monkey.
+
+"Eustace!" cried Mrs. Greyne, leaning for support against an oleograph.
+
+Her husband turned.
+
+"Eustace!" she cried again. "It is I!"
+
+He stood as if turned to stone. Mrs. Greyne hesitated, started, moved
+forward to the dais, and stared upon the Ouled, who had also ceased from
+dancing, and looked strangely surprised, even confused, by the great
+novelist's intrusion.
+
+"Miss Verbena!" she exclaimed. "Miss Verbena in Algiers!"
+
+"Eugenia!" said Mr. Greyne in a husky voice, "what is this you say?
+This lady is the Ouled."
+
+A sardonic laugh came from the doorway. They turned. There stood
+Abdallah Jack. He advanced roughly to the Ouled.
+
+"Come," he said angrily. "Have we not earned the money of the stranger?
+Have we not earned enough? To-morrow you shall marry me as you have
+promised, and we will return to our own land, to the canal where you and
+I were born. And nevermore shall the Levantine instruct the babes of
+the English devils, but dwell veiled and guarded in the harem of her
+master."
+
+"Mademoiselle Verbena!" said Mr. Greyne in a more husky voice.
+"But--but--your dying mother?"
+
+"She sleeps, monsieur, in the white sands of Ismailia, beside the
+bitter lake. I trust that madame can now go on with the respectable
+'Catherine.'"
+
+And with an ironic reverence to Mrs. Eustace Greyne she placed her hand
+in Abdallah Jack's and vanished from the room.
+
+"Catherine's Repentance," published in a gigantic volume not many weeks
+ago, was preceded by Mr. Eustace Greyne's. When last heard of he was
+seated in the magnificent library of the corner house in Park Lane next
+to the Duke of Ebury's, busily engaged in pasting the newspaper notices
+of Mrs. Greyne's greatest work into a superb new album.
+
+The Abdallah Jacks have returned to the Suez Canal, bearing with them
+a snug little fortune to be invested in the purchase of a coal wharf
+at Port Said, and a remarkably handsome crocodile dressing-case, fitted
+with gold, and monogrammed with the initials "E. G."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Mission Of Mr. Eustace Greyne, by 
+Robert Hichens
+
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