Chapter XX: Julia Decides

Now the young girl had his letters and her own to read. They were sweet and sad companions and she laid them side by side. She did not weep, because she was not of the weeping type; she had hope.

Her spirits remained singularly even. Madame de la Maine had given her a great deal to live on.

"Julia, what have you done to Robert?"

"Nothing, _ma tante_"

"He has quite changed. This excursion to Africa has entirely altered him. He is naturally so gay," said the Marquise d'Esclignac. "Have you refused him, Julia?"

"_Ma tante_, he has not asked me to be the Duchess de Tremont."

Her aunt's voice was earnest.

"Julia, do you wish to spoil your life and your chances of happiness? Do you wish to mourn for a dead soldier who has never been more than an acquaintance? I won't even say a _friend_."

What she said sounded logical.

"_Ma tante_, I do not think of Monsieur de Sabron as dead, you know."

"Well, in the event that he may be, my dear Julia."

"Sometimes," said the girl, drawing near to her aunt and taking the older lady's hand quietly and looking in her eyes, "sometimes, _ma tante_, you are cruel."

The marquise kissed her and sighed:

"Robert's mother will be so unhappy!"

"But she has never seen me, _ma tante_."

"She trusts my taste, Julia."

"There should be more than 'taste' in a matter of husband and wife, _ma tante_."

After a moment, in which the Marquise d'Esclignac gazed at the bougainvillea and wondered how any one could admire its crude and vulgar color, Miss Redmond asked:

"Did you ever think that the Duc de Tremont was in love?"

Turning shortly about to her niece, her aunt stared at her.

"In love, my dear!"

"With Madame de la Maine."

The arrival of Madame de la Maine had been a bitter blow to the Marquise d'Esclignac. The young woman was, however, much loved in Paris and quite in the eye of the world. There was no possible reason why the Marquise d'Esclignac should avoid her.

"You have been hearing gossip, Julia."

"I have been watching a lovely woman," said the girl simply, "and a man. That's all. You wouldn't want me to marry a man who loves another woman, _ma tante_, when the woman loves him and when I love another man?"

She laughed and kissed her aunt's cheek.

"Let us think of the soldier," she murmured, "let us think just of _him, ma tante_, will you not?"

The Marquise d'Esclignac struck her colors.

In the hallway of the villa, in a snowy gibbeh, (and his clean-washed appearance was much in his favor) Hammet Abou waited to talk with the "grandmother" and the excellency.

He pressed both his hands to his forehead and his breast as the ladies entered the vestibule. There was a stagnant odor of myrrh and sandalwood in the air. The marble vestibule was cool and dark, the walls hung with high-colored stuffs, the windows drawn to keep out the heat.

The Duc de Tremont and Madame de la Maine came out of the salon together. Tremont nodded to the Arab.

"I hope you are a little less--" and he touched his forehead smiling, "to-day, my friend."

"I am as God made me, Monsieur."

"What have you got to-day?" asked Julia Redmond anxiously, fixing her eager eyes upon Hammet.

It seemed terrible to her that this man should stand there with a vital secret and that they should not all be at his feet. He glanced boldly around at them.

"There are no soldiers here?"

"No, no, you may speak freely."

The man went forward to Tremont and put a paper in his hands, unfolding it like a chart.

"This is what monsieur asked me for--a plan of the battle-field. This is the battle-field, and this is the desert."

Tremont took the chart. On the page was simply a round circle, drawn in red ink, with a few Arabian characters and nothing else. Hammet Abou traced the circle with his fingers tipped with henna.

"That was the battle, Monsieur."

"But this is no chart, Hammet Abou."

The other continued, unmoved:

"And all the rest is a desert, like this."

Tremont, over the man's snowy turban, glanced at the others and shrugged. Every one but Julia Redmond thought he was insane. She came up to him where he stood close to Tremont. She said very slowly in French, compelling the man's dark eyes to meet hers:

"You don't wish to tell us, Hammet Abou, anything more. Am I not right? You don't wish us to know the truth."

Now it was the American pitted against the Oriental. The Arab, with deference, touched his forehead before her.

"If I made a true plan," he said coolly, "your excellency could give it to-morrow to the government."

"Just what should be done, Julia," said the Marquise d'Esclignac, in English. "This man should be arrested at once."

"_Ma tante_," pleaded Julia Redmond.

She felt as though a slender thread was between her fingers, a thread which led her to the door of a labyrinth and which a rude touch might cause her to lose forever.

"If you had money would you start out to find Monsieur de Sabron at once?"

"It would cost a great deal, Excellency."

"You shall have all the money you need. Do you think you would be able to find your way?"

"Yes, Excellency."

The Duc de Tremont watched the American girl. She was bartering with an Arabian for the salvation of a poor officer. What an enthusiast! He had no idea she had ever seen Sabron more than once or twice in her life. He came forward.

"Let me talk to this man," he said with authority, and Julia Redmond did not dispute him.

In a tone different from the light and mocking one that he had hitherto used to the Arab, Tremont began to ask a dozen questions severely, and in his answers to the young Frenchman, Hammet Abou began to make a favorable impression on every one save the Marquise d'Esclignac, who did not understand him. There was a huge bamboo chair on a dais under a Chinese pagoda, and the Marquise d'Esclignac took the chair and sat upright as on a throne. Mimi, who had just been fed, came in tinkling her little bells and fawned at the sandals on Hammet Abou's bare feet. After talking with the native, Tremont said to his friends:

"This man says that if he joins a Jewish caravan, which leaves here to-morrow at sundown, he will be taken with these men and leave the city without suspicion, but he must share the expenses of the whole caravan. The expedition will not be without danger; it must be entered into with great subtlety. He is either," said Tremont, "an impostor or a remarkable man."

"He is an impostor, of course," murmured the Marquise d'Esclignac. "Come here, Mimi."

Tremont went on:

"Further he will not disclose to us. He has evidently some carefully laid plan for rescuing Sabron."

There was a pause. Hammet Abou, his hands folded peacefully across his breast, waited. Julia Redmond waited. The Comtesse de la Maine, in her pretty voice, asked quickly:

"But, _mes amis_, there is a man's life at stake! Why do we stand here talking in the antechamber? Evidently the war office has done all it can for the Capitaine de Sabron. But they have not found him. Whether this fellow is crazy or not, he has a wonderful hypothesis."

A brilliant look of gratitude crossed Julia Redmond's face. She glanced at the Comtesse de la Maine.

"Ah, she's got the heart!" she said to herself. "I knew it." She crossed the hall to the Comtesse de la Maine and slipped her arm in hers.

"Has Monsieur de Sabron no near family?"

"No," said the Marquise d'Esclignac from her throne. "He is one of those unfamilied beings who, when they are once taken into other hearts are all the dearer because of their orphaned state."

Her tone was not unkind. It was affectionate.

"Now, my good man," she said to Hammet Abou, in a language totally incomprehensible to him, "money is no object in this question, but what will you do with Monsieur de Sabron if you find him? He may be an invalid, and the ransom will be fabulous."

The Comtesse de la Maine felt the girl's arm in hers tremble. Hammet Abou answered none of these questions, for he did not understand them. He said quietly to Tremont:

"The caravan starts to-morrow at sundown and there is much to do."

Tremont stood pulling his mustache. He looked boyish and charming, withal serious beyond his usual habit. His eyes wandered over to the corner where the two women stood together.

"I intend to go with you, Hammet Abou," said he slowly, "if it can be arranged. Otherwise this expedition does not interest me."

Two women said:

"Oh, heavens!" at once.

Robert de Tremont heard the note of anxiety in the younger voice alone. He glanced at the Comtesse de la Maine.

"You are quite right, Madame," he said, "a man's life is at stake and we stand chaffing here. I know something of what the desert is and what the natives are. Sabron would be the first to go if it were a question of a brother officer."

The Marquise d'Esclignac got down from her throne, trembling. Her eyes were fixed upon her niece.

"Julia," she began, and stopped.

Madame de la Maine said nothing.

"Robert, you are my godson, and I forbid it. Your mother--"

"--is one of the bravest women I ever knew," said her godson. "My father was a soldier."

Julia withdrew her arm from the Comtesse de la Maine as though to leave her free.

"Then you two girls," said the Marquise d'Esclignac, thoroughly American for a moment, "must forbid him to go." She fixed her eyes sternly upon her niece, with a glance of entreaty and reproach. Miss Redmond said in a firm voice:

"In Monsieur de Tremont's case I should do exactly what he proposes."

"But he is risking his life," said the Marquise d'Esclignac. "He is not even an intimate friend of Monsieur de Sabron!"

Tremont said, smiling:

"You tell us that he has no brother, _marraine_. _Eh bien_, I will pass as his brother."

A thrill touched Julia Redmond's heart. She almost loved him. If, as her aunt had said, Sabron had been out of the question...

"Madame de la Maine," said the Marquise d'Esclignac, her hands shaking, "I appeal to you to divert this headstrong young man from his purpose."

The Comtesse de la Maine was the palest of the three women. She had been quietly looking at Tremont and now a smile crossed her lips that had tears back of it--one of those beautiful smiles that mean so much on a woman's face. She was the only one of the three who had not yet spoken. Tremont was waiting for her. Hammet Abou, with whom he had been in earnest conversation, was answering his further questions. The Marquise d'Esclignac shrugged, threw up her hands as though she gave up all questions of romance, rescue and disappointed love and foolish girls, and walked out thoroughly wretched, Mimi tinkling at her heels. The Comtesse de la Maine said to Julia:

"_Ma chère_, what were the words of the English song you sang last night--the song you told me was a sort of prayer. Tell me the words slowly, will you?"

They walked out of the vestibule together, leaving Hammet Abou and Tremont alone.