Chapter V: Part 5

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 Verbèna!”

“Monsieur?” murmured the lady, with an accent of surprise.

“Mademoiselle Verbèna! Surely it is—it must be!”

He had staggered sideways, nearing her.

“Mademoiselle Verbèna, 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 Verbèna 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 Verbèna’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 Verbèna, 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 Verbèna 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 Verbèna 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 Verbèna 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 Verbèna 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 tender-hearted 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 Verbèna. “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 Verbèna 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 Verbèna, 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 tore it open with trembling fingers, and read as follows:—

+1 Rue du Petit Negre.+

+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 Verbèna, 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 Verbèna 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 Verbèna,” 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 Verbèna, 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 Verbèna 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 Verbèna 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 Verbèna’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 Verbèna.

“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 Verbèna 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 Verbèna.

“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 Verbèna 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 “absint,” 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 _mâitre 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?”

“Mr. Eustace Greyne,” murmured the great novelist, grasping her bonnet with both hands.

The _mâitre 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 _mâitre 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—there stood Abdallah Jack.

VII