by Grant Allen
Mansel drew his hand across his brow confusedly.
‘It is a trifle mixed,’ he answered with a puzzled air. ‘But it’s decidedly clever. I should think it ought to prove a perfect mine of wealth to the Inner Temple.’
‘Mine of wealth!’ the Admiral echoed with a snort of delight. ‘I believe you, my boy. Golconda or Kimberley isn’t in it by comparison. The whole estate won’t cover the law charges. For, you see, there’s the lovely question to decide beforehand, did Sir Austen or his cousin die first? And till that’s settled, nothing fixed can be done about the property. Well, Frank Linnell doesn’t mean to let the question drop. He has a twelvemonth to spare, during which time he’s going to work like a nigger to prevent the lady with the classical name from coming into the property. Of course you won’t mention a word of this to her? I tell it you in confidence. That’s all right. Thank you. So Frank thinks of going to Egypt and up the Nile this very next winter as ever is, to see if he can collect any evidence anywhere as to which was killed first — his half-brother Charles, or his cousin Sir Austen. And between you and me, sir — if only you knew these Egyptian fellows as well as I do — the Reverend Frank must be a much more simple-minded person than I take him to be if he doesn’t get at least half a dozen green-turbaned, one-eyed sheikhs to swear by the beard of the Prophet, till all’s blue, that they saw Charles Linnell with their own eyes lying dead at Khartoum, in any position that seems most convenient, while Sir Austen sat in a respectful attitude, shedding a decorous tear or two above his mangled body. An Egyptian, sir,’ the Admiral continued, blinking his small eyes even more vigorously than was his wont— ‘an Egyptian would swear away his own father’s life, bless your soul! for a tin piastre.’
‘Then you think whatever evidence is wanted will be duly forthcoming?’ Mansel asked dubiously.
‘Think? I don’t think. I know it, unless the Reverend Frank’s a born fool. But even after he’s got it, don’t you see, there’s a lot more still left to prove. Yet even so, he stands to play a winning card either way. If he’s legitimate, he’s a baronet of Thorpe Manor; and if he isn’t, he’s heir all the same to Sir Austen’s personalty.’ And the Admiral chuckled.
Mansel looked at him with a curious air of suspended judgment.
‘After all,’ he said slowly, in his critical way, ‘you’re taking a great deal for granted, aren’t you? How on earth do we know, when one comes to think of it, that either of the Linnells is really dead at all? How on earth do we know they aren’t still cooped up in Khartoum, as O’Donovan was in Merv, you recollect, and that they mayn’t turn up unexpectedly some day to defeat all these hasty surmises and guesses? You can’t prove a man’s will till you’ve first proved he’s dead; and who’s to say that either of the Linnells is dead, when one comes to face it?’
The Admiral threw back his head and laughed internally.
‘Dead!’ he answered, much amused. ‘Of course they’re dead. As dead as mutton! As dead as a door-nail! As dead as Julius Cæsar! Do you think the Mahdi’s people, when once they got in, would leave a Christian soul alive in Khartoum? My dear fellow, you don’t know these Egyptians and Soudanese as well as I do — I was out for a year on the Red Sea station. They’d cut every blessed throat in the whole garrison! There’s not a Christian soul alive to-day in Khartoum!’
CHAPTER XXIX.
FRESH ACQUAINTANCES.
It was with a feeling very nearly akin to relief that Psyche found herself, some six weeks later, in a pretty little bedroom in a Moorish villa on the sun-smitten hills of Mustapha Supérieur.
‘Why, I know the very place for you,’ Geraldine Maitland exclaimed with delight, when Psyche informed her on her return to Petherton that medical authority, two deep, had prescribed Algiers for their joint indispositions. ‘A dear little pension on the Mustapha slope. It’s as clean as a pin, and just like a home; and it’s kept by an English officer’s widow, a Mrs. Holliday. It’s not so very dear, either,’ she hastened to add, seeing Psyche’s face growing faintly incredulous. ‘They’d take in friends of ours at special rates. Mamma has sent them such lots of boarders.’
And indeed the rates, as quoted to Haviland Dumaresq some days later, in Mrs. Holliday’s letter, were very special — very special indeed; for a reason which Geraldine Maitland knew best, and which she took care to keep to herself very strictly. ‘I should feel greatly obliged, however,’ Mrs. Holliday wrote, underlining the greatly with two feminine bars, ‘if you would have the kindness to refrain from mentioning these terms I quote to any other of the visitors at the villa, as they are considerably below usual charges, to meet the wishes of my friend Mrs. Maitland.’
Oh, the journey south! The rest and change of it! The delight of getting away from the Wren’s Nest, with its endless obtrusive memories of Linnell! The calm of travel — the momentary oblivion! Paris, Dijon, the Rhone, Marseilles! For twenty-four hours Psyche almost forgot herself.
The dear little pension on the Mustapha slope, too, how thoroughly it deserved Geraldine Maitland’s judicious commendation! It was very pretty and very home-like. After thirty hours’ tossing on the faithless Mediterranean — bluest but most treacherous of all known seas — and that long drive up the dusty road through the vivid town from the quays at Algiers, Psyche was right glad to rest herself at last in that dainty little bedroom at the Villa des Orangers, and to look out of the arcaded Moorish window at the palms and aloes that diversified the garden.
True enough, as Dr. Godichau had confidently predicted, her eyesight came back to her for the nonce at a bound. Wisdom was justified of all her children. Psyche had seen everything all the way up through those crowded streets: she saw everything still with perfect distinctness in the arcades and gardens of that quaint old pension.
It was an antique Moorish country-house, all whitewashed walls and horseshoe arches, planted on the side of a tiny ravine, near the very summit of an Algerian hill, some six hundred feet above a deep-blue bay of that treacherous and all too beautiful Mediterranean. Through the jealously-barred and grated windows of a deep-set chamber in what was once the harem of the old Turkish proprietor, Psyche’s eye just caught faint glimpses westward of a feathery date-palm, a jungle of loquat-trees, and a ruddy hillside of basking sandstone, red as the familiar South Hams of Devonshire. Beyond, the ravine displayed in further perspective a tangled cane-brake, a steep road down whose tortuous slope an old Arab countryman was defiling slowly, cross-legged on his pannier-laden donkey, and a picturesque wine factory, whose snow-white archways and low stories were all gracefully pinked out along their constructive lines with decorative string-courses of Oriental tile-work. A peep of the dim blue Atlas to eastward across a misty plain completed the view from the windows of that quaintly-pretty room — a view which hardly needed the domed and arcaded mansion on the hilltop behind, or the veiled forms of the Moorish women gliding noiselessly down the pathway opposite, to assure Psyche that this was indeed in very truth that wonderful Africa.
Without and within, to say the truth, to Dumaresq and his daughter, the Oriental character of house and surroundings was everywhere most delightfully and undeniably apparent. The tiny round-topped slits pierced through the thickness of the massive wall; the floor covered with Damascus tiles and overlaid in part with pretty Eastern rugs; the pale-green dado and light-blue frieze of distemper on the sides, separated from one another by a verse of the Koran in breezy Arabic letters running round the room between them as a continuous border; the graceful hangings and delicately-covered drapery — all charmed Psyche, weary and heart-sick though she was, with a delicious vague sense of Orientalism and novelty. As she lay on the crimson and blue divan by the open window, rich perfumed whiffs of the Japanese medlars in full flower floated in upon the cool yet summer-like breeze; and the hillside opposite hummed with insects busy among the blossoms of the great African clematis that fell in cataracts over the rocks and branches. For a moment she almost forgot her sorrow; the oculist was right: what she needed was a life of pur
e perception.
To Dumaresq, the charm of these novel surroundings was even greater and more striking than to his heart-broken Psyche. He admired throughout the house the infinite diversity and picturesqueness of the arches; here a semicircular doorway with richly-carved decorations in Arabesque patterns; there a pointed Moorish arcade of Saracenic type; and yonder, again, a flat-topped, horseshoe arch of peculiarly-curved and bulging gracefulness, never to be seen anywhere else save here in Algeria. The long rambling passages, cool and gloomy for the hot African summer; the endless doors and nooks and niches; the grated windows and flat roof; the Oriental terrace; the up-and-down steps and uneven levels of the quaint little garden — formed a very ideal scene for an Arabian night’s adventure of the fine old pattern. The gray old philosopher, startled into a momentary fit of imagination, almost expected to see Bluebeard’s wife emerge unexpectedly from some darkling doorway, or the One-eyed Calender look in upon him unawares through the deep-set window-holes that gave upon the garden.
Yet it was pleasant to find, in spite of the persistent odour of Islam which pervaded the house, that the villa had been modernized and Anglicised after all in a way to suit the most luxurious English taste. It was four o’clock when they arrived at their temporary home, and at five a smiling little Swiss maid brought in a tea-tray with a steaming pot that reminded Psyche of dear old-fashioned Petherton. Tea and the Arabesque are too much all at once. So much modern comfort seems half out of place, side by side with such delicious antique Orientalism.
Psyche would have liked them to spend that evening by themselves in their own rooms; but her father overruled her wishes in that respect. It was best for her, he said, to go out to dinner: to mix at once with the world of Algiers: to conquer these morbid desires for seclusion: to throw herself as far as possible into the new situation. And Psyche, now clay in the potter’s hands, yielded unwillingly to his wishes.
At the table-d’hôte they were shown to seats near the bottom of the table by a Swiss waiter with his hair cut short, and a general expression of bland good-nature pervading all his stumpy features. The seats opposite them were already occupied by two tall and very stately girls, accompanied by a young man of an open and naïf, but somewhat unfinished, type of countenance. The girls quite frightened Psyche at the very first glance; they looked so queenly and magnificent and awful. Geraldine Maitland herself was hardly half so grand. Their ears were thin and delicately pink; their complexions shone with a transparent lustre; their necks were high and exquisitely moulded; their hands might have come out of a portrait of Sir Peter Lely’s. Altogether, Psyche made up her mind at once that the strangers were at the very least duchesses: ladies of the ancien régime to a certainty, so calm and clear-cut and dainty were their lineaments. They weren’t English; she could see that at a glance: there was something very foreign in the cut of their figures, and of their rich dresses. Psyche was sure she would never be able to say a word to them: so much high-born stateliness fairly took her breath away.
Presently a few more visitors came in, and, seating themselves, began to talk across the table with perfect sang-froid to the magnificent strangers. Psyche envied them their boldness of address. How could they dare to approach such aristocrats?
‘Well, did you have your photographs taken, after all, Miss Vanrenen?’ a lady opposite asked, with a smile of recognition.
‘No, ma’am,’ the tallest and stateliest of the beautiful girls answered promptly, with a polite nod. ‘We went into the city and had a lovely time, but we couldn’t agree upon the currency question. We asked the photographer his lowest cash quotation for doing us in a group under the doorway here in Arab costume, and he gave us an estimate for as much as comes to fourteen dollars. Corona and I don’t mind expense, but we’re dead against extortion; and we consider fourteen dollars for taking your likeness in an Arab dress downright extortionate. So we concluded to do without the pictures for the present, and to save our specie for a better occasion.’
‘I reckon,’ the second queenly creature remarked, with a graceful bow, ‘we can be taken just as well on Vesuvius when we go along to Naples.’
‘That’s so,’ the first divine efflorescence answered, acquiescent. ‘We don’t stand out for the Arab dress in itself, you see, ma’am: we only want to be taken somewhere, with something distinctively European or African loafing around in the background — a mosque, or a cathedral, or a burning mountain — so as we can take the picture home and let folks see we’re not a fraud — we’ve really travelled up and down the world a bit.’
‘Still,’ the brother said, looking round at his sisters with a half-regretful air, ‘I must say I wanted Sirena to go the fourteen dollars blind for all that. You see, Mrs. Prendergast, we might have been taken all in a group under the Moorish archway there; and Miss Maitland would have joined us to complete the picture in that elegant airy Arab get-up of hers.’
‘You know Miss Maitland, then?’ Psyche ventured to put in timidly, with the natural diffidence of the latest comer.
‘Cyrus don’t know anybody else, almost,’ the taller girl replied, with a smile. ‘He was over here alone from Amurrica last fall, and spent the winter by himself in this city; and every letter he wrote us home was a sort of a bulletin about Geraldine Maitland. It was Geraldine Maitland went here; Geraldine Maitland went there; Geraldine Maitland says this; Geraldine Maitland thinks that; till we began to conclude at last for ourselves there weren’t any other young ladies at all in Europe except Geraldine Maitland. So Corona and I — that’s my sister — we said to ourselves we’d come along this year and inspect for ourselves what sort of a person this girl Geraldine was, before Cyrus brought her home anyway for a permanency.’
‘Now, Sirena!’ the young man interposed, looking very sheepish, ‘I’m a modest man; don’t reveal my blushes.’
Psyche was fairly taken aback at this boldness of speech. She had met very few Americans before, and was little accustomed to so much freedom in the public discussion of unfinished matrimonial projects; but her awe at the queenly young women outlived even the discovery of their Western accent, and she only said in a very timid tone:
‘We know Miss Maitland, too. She’s a very great friend of mine.’
‘Then I guess Cyrus and you’ll get on together,’ Sirena said briskly, ‘for whoever likes Geraldine Maitland confers a private obligation, I conjecture, upon Cyrus.’
‘We’re going to have a very great honour here,’ the young man Cyrus interposed sharply, with an evident desire to change the conversation. ‘Have you heard, sir, that the great philosopher, Haviland Dumaresq, intends to winter in this city?’
At the words, Psyche coloured up to the roots of her hair; but her father, bowing his stateliest and most distant bow, made answer serenely, without moving a muscle of that stoical face:
‘Sir, my name is Haviland Dumaresq!’
He had scarcely spoken the word, when Cyrus Vanrenen rose from his seat and walked round the table with immense enthusiasm, but great deliberation.
‘Mr. Dumaresq,’ he said, seizing the old man’s hand in his and wringing it hard, ‘allow me the pleasure. Well, now, this is a very great honour, sir. I haven’t read your books, Mr. Dumaresq — at least, to any extent, being otherwise engaged myself in business — but I know your name well; and in my country, sir, your works are much admired and highly respected. In the city where I reside — you don’t happen to know Cincinnati? No; I thought as much — we set very great store by your valuable writings. The Cincinnati Observer, I recollect, on one occasion described you in one of its editorial columns as the “greatest metaphysician of this or any other age.” That was high praise, Mr. Dumaresq, from the editorial columns of such an influential print as the Cincinnati Observer.’
‘I’m glad to learn that I have deserved the commendation of so critical an authority upon philosophical questions,’ Haviland Dumaresq answered with grave irony.
But his delicate sarcasm was thrown away upon the honest and innocent y
oung American. That anyone could feel otherwise than pleased and flattered at the polite attentions of the Cincinnati Observer was an idea that could never for a moment have entered his good straightforward business head.
‘Yes; it’s a right smart paper,’ he went on with friendly communicativeness. ‘Largest circulation of any journal in the State of Ohio: and down the Mississippi Valley we go it blind on culture nowadays, I can tell you. Culture’s on the boom in the West at present. No journal that didn’t go it blind on culture and philosophy would stand a chance of success in the struggle for life in the Mississippi Valley. Survival of the fittest’s our rule out there. We’re down upon frauds, but we respect live concerns. If ever you were to light out for Cincinnati, Mr. Dumaresq, you’d find our citizens very appreciative: they’d be honoured to give you a warm welcome.’
‘I am much obliged to them for their vivid personal interest in philosophy,’ Haviland Dumaresq answered, going on with his soup, and smiling inwardly.
‘And is this your daughter, sir?’ Cyrus asked once more, as he regained his place and glanced across at Psyche.
Psyche bowed, and faltered ‘Yes’ with very mixed feelings at being thus trotted out before a whole tableful of utter strangers.
‘It must be a very great privilege, Miss Dumaresq,’ Sirena remarked, in a clear, unembarrassed American voice, right across the table, ‘to pass your life and receive your education in the midst of such cultured European surroundings. Where did you make your recitations? I suppose, now, you’ve graduated?’
