Crockett Samuel Rutherford
A Tatter of Scarlet: Adventurous Episodes of the Commune in the Midi 1871

The delicious little brown head was bent low, and Alida's fingers pulled nervously at the gold threads on the sleeve of her long dressing-gown. She was carefully considering my advice, but I could see that she flushed her brightest scarlet at my words about her father. The proud little spirit within her spoke freely of the Emir, but resented the speech of others. I regretted that I had been so plain, but it was my manifest duty (so at least I regarded it) to save this daintiest of human creatures from the pollution and mental death of a harem, surrounded with evil-talking slave girls and sweet-sucking, moon-faced concubines. Alida was a product of the West, in spite of her ancestry. The whole business appeared ludicrous and impossible. I seemed to be listening and talking in a dream from which I would presently awaken. Alida would don her smart walking dress, and with her brown leather music roll under her arm would set off to give the Sous-Préfet's young wife her daily music lesson, Linn stalking majestically beside her like a great Danish hound on guard.

At last she spoke, but without looking at me.

"Though I agree that the thing itself is impossible – that I cannot marry Ali Mohammed the slave and slave's son – tell me what is to be done? I shall ruin these good people whom I love, who are paid to take care of me. Or if I do not ruin them, I shall be obliged to live on their scanty savings, for I know that they have spent the moneys they received from the Emir on my education."

Linn gave one look at Keller, and flung herself down beside the girl.

"Whatever we have is yours – we shall do very well. Everyone is pleased with you. Your professors prophesy great things for you. Keller, you dumb dog, tell her we shall manage very well, and that she shall never know the difference!"

"If she decides to disobey her father," said Keller Bey, "we must do as things will do with us. But I wash my hands of the responsibility."

For the first time I saw the flash in Linn's eyes.

"Wash your hands of the responsibility, will you, Keller? So did Pilate. But I cannot hear that much good came of that! You and I must stand between, and prevent a Calvary for our Alida – or a Golgotha, for she will never marry that man alive! – I know her – I brought her up, and I never mastered her once. No more shall her father by one letter brought by a brown thick-lipped prince in a frock coat and glossy hat!"

"Let us say no more about it," murmured Alida. "I will send away the slave's son to-morrow. I shall write to my father also. Doubtless he will be angry, but then – surely it is true that he and those about him are imagining a vain thing. He should have kept me veiled and cloistered, without a book, without music, without a mind. Then I might have been fit for the plaything of an idle man, but that time is past. I am a woman of the Occident, fitted to carry out my life alone, to earn my living, and to be the mate of some man who shall be altogether mine!"

CHAPTER XVIII
THE PRINCESS COMMANDS

We slept late the next morning, Hugh and I. Indeed, Hugh always slept late unless he had the luck to be awakened. We did not breakfast till Linn had returned from her watch-dog march along with Alida to the house of the Sous-Préfet.

There was now no regular drill, and instead of roll-call it was regarded sufficient if we reported to the guard which remained in permanence playing at cards and "bouchon" under the central bastion of the fort. This Hugh and I did, remaining a little while to gossip with Victor Dor and others of our company who were lounging about the barrack square. I fear that during those weeks we passed for rather sulky dogs who would not share our bone with our neighbours. For, having little to do, the young fellows of the first Milanese often followed with admiring eyes the daily progress of Alida and Linn in the direction of the Sous-Préfecture. We had requests for introductions even from the younger officers, but all such we referred to Keller Bey, knowing that the old man would be able to deal with any intrusion. And indeed matters stopped there till the regiment was disbanded, and the Italians were sent home at the expense of the French Republic.

Meantime we continued, as Saunders McKie would have said, "living at hack and manger," free of the privileges of the house of Keller Bey and Linn his wife.

Since Alida had taken my advice and written to her father that she would not marry the brown man, nor leave the life for which he had educated her for that of the harem, she had treated me as an intimate friend and adviser. We had long talks together, so often and so long, indeed, that I could see that Keller Bey and Linn were seriously troubled. Perhaps they were a little jealous also, but for all that they did not dream of opposing their wills to the slightest wish of their ward.

"What shall I do when you are gone?" Alida cried one day. It was still early forenoon, for the Sous-Préfet's lady had to attend a Government function. Besides, it was a dismalish day outside with a low crawl of leaden clouds overhead, and along the horizon only one swiftly eclipsed streak of gold bead-work to show where the sunshine was at work.

"I can not stay on here, content with only the round of teaching visits, and the love of these two good souls! 'I have had playmates – I have had companions,' as your poet sings, and now there is you – and Hugh – who have come to me to show me how lonely I was."

She thought a while, and then in her imperious way she sketched a programme.

"There is no reason why Keller Bey and Linn should stop here. The house is well placed, and one of the best in the town. It would let to-morrow. Why should we not all go to Aramon and be happy? We could find a house there and company – all those girls, Hugh's sisters, of whom you have told me. I should be so happy. And we would get away from the brown man. He would not know where to find us if he should come back!"

She clapped her hands joyfully, as if the matter were already settled, and ran upstairs to break the matter to Keller and Linn. When next I saw these two I was conscious of a little chill in the atmosphere. They thought that I was responsible for the wish of Alida to leave Autun and go to Aramon.

"Do you think it is a proper thing," said Linn, "that a maid should follow two young men?"

"I think you wrong her," I said, "unwittingly of course, but certainly you mistake Alida. It springs from no feeling of love for either of us, but she has now tasted comradeship and the equality of years for the first time. She thinks there is nothing else worth living for in the world. She will change her mind by and by. Her mind and affection will turn again to her elders."

So I spoke from the unplumbed depths of a youthful self-sufficiency – that curious malady (happily fleeting) which compels all clever young men to feel called upon to lay down rules for their elders and for the world about them, at or about the age of twenty-one.

Linn and Keller looked at one another in a kind of hopeless bewilderment. I think they felt that this was only the first of a series of changes from the quiet life they had been leading. They told themselves that they need expect no more happy uneventful days and delicious nights when they used their house as of old they had done many an Arab encampment, a place to wander and dally in, to lie down and rise up, to drowse and wake, to smoke in, and to play bezique together when the heart told them to. A sort of terror seized them as they saw themselves going off to bed at reasonable hours like mere untravelled burghers, each with a candle in hand, and nothing but the drum of the rain on the roof or the gnawing of a mouse in the wainscot to help them over the dead hours till the sun should rise.

It was Keller who this time broke the silence.

"Of course," he said, speaking slowly, and poising each word carefully, "if Alida has set her heart upon it of her own free will, there is nothing to be said. Linn and I must obey, at whatever cost to ourselves. For all we have is hers, and has come to us because of her. On that score we need not fear. We have enough for ourselves, and enough to leave to Alida. We can go to Aramon, but the business will need to be carefully gone about, and not too soon after your return. Alida is a girl among ten thousand. You are well-looking young men, and doubtless there are as many evil tongues in Aramon as there are in all places where human creatures herd together."

This was a great concession, and accordingly I plucked up heart and began to make plans and suggest ways and means, eager to get ahead of all possible objections on the part of Linn.

"There is an empty house at the corner of my father's property of Gobelet – not one so large as this, but quite large enough and pleasantly situated within the grounds. My father has never let it, but I know that he would be glad of a brave soldier and his wife to take care of it and keep it in order. The place is retired and he would feel protected. The gate in the wall opens on to the road to the lycée of St. André, so that you would come and go without any overlooking. Besides, my father is a student and interferes with no one. He would talk as much Arabic to you as you wish. So too would old Professor Renard up at the College. He was once Vicar Apostolic out in your parts. You would have the best companions for Alida, in the sisters Deventer and their friends. If you like I will write to my father to-day? Not that there is any need. I know that he will be delighted, nay, that he will offer you a wing of Gobelet itself, which is much too large for him. But do not accept, the Garden Cottage is ten times as amusing, and infinitely prettier."

I could see that I was making some way. Linn and her husband looked at each other, and if they did not smile, at least there was a more hopeful look on their faces. Linn was touched by the thought of the companionship of the Deventer girls, for in this matter Autun had been gravely lacking.

Nor did the bribe of Arabic-speaking students to talk with appear to be wholly lost upon Keller Bey, even though he spoke still somewhat restively.

"I have little acquaintance with book Arabic beyond the Koran, but it is a noble language in which to vent one's thoughts."

I reassured him that both the ex-Vicar Apostolic and my father found it so. They would sit smoking and talking Arabic all a long evening over their parchments.

"All this must I come and see for myself," said Keller Bey; "such a plant as Alida is not to be pulled up by the roots till we know where we shall find better ground and more fertile in which to reset her. But tell me, is not this Aramon of yours an unsafe town? The mob had possession of it for some days lately, attacking the works and the manager's house – can we safely take Alida to such a place?"

Then in mighty haste I showed him the difference between the unceasing activity of Aramon-of-the-Workshops and the scholastic calm of Aramon le Vieux. I extended the width of the dividing river to a three-quarters of a mile, a size to which it only reaches in times of flood when the tall ladder of the painted scale by the bridge-end is wholly covered, and still the flood creeps up inch by inch till the people of Vallabrègues and Saint Jacques are crying for succour from the roofs of their drowned-out houses, and the pigs and poultry go out to sea feet up on a six-knot current.

Keller and Linn sat and listened – Linn with a lost air of someone whose scheme of life has suddenly become impossible. I think Linn had expected the quiet days, the morning promenades with Alida, the cheerful suppers of the house in the square in Autun to go on always. Alida would always be as content with them as she had been when a little girl. Had she not come back from school to the warm love and unbounded spoiling which awaited her there?

As they sat and pondered, Alida entered, her roll of music in her hand.

"What," she cried, "you are all sitting as gloomy as crows in a cemetery. Where is Hugh? I want you both to come out and walk by the river. The early violets are out, and yesterday Madame the Sous-Préfet found a daffodil."

"Alida," said I, "at Aramon all the flowers are out, and the broom runs along the river banks like a mile-wide flame of fire. Everywhere is yellow in spring, ranunculus, buttercups, celandine, and the yellow wallflowers sprouting among all the old walls of Gobelet. When will you come and see them?"

Alida went prettily to Linn and kissed her. Then she put her arms about Keller without saying anything. The game was won. No more remained but to make the arrangements.

"As soon as these two dear people will let me!" she said.

Bless her! She might have started next morning if she had been set upon the matter! That is, so far as Keller and Linn were concerned.

Afterwards while we were walking home Hugh looked edgeways at me.

"Angus," said he gravely, "I should not like to have your responsibility. Are you sure that she will take to the family at Château Schneider? Or they to her? We are rather a handful, you know, and she – well, she is not exactly ordinary."

"As to that I don't know," I said sharply, for I did not like to hear my darling project decried or even suspected, "and what is more, I don't care. The garden and the Garden Cottage at Gobelet are large enough and safe enough."

"Pardon," he retorted, more unpleasantly than he had ever spoken to me. "I was under the impression that Alida was going to Aramon for society."

"Well, and suppose she finds it without crossing the bridge – what then?"

"Oh, nothing," he said, "I was only considering what you meant to do for yourself in the way of a career!"

CHAPTER XIX
KELLER BEY COMES TO ARAMON

Keller Bey came to Aramon ten days after the time of our return. Before letting us go Alida decided that I must write her every day, and Hugh once a week. She had never seen a line from either, but she judged from our faculty of conversation – often quite a false test, as witness Cowper and Gray.

For the details of that first visit of Keller to Aramon I must have recourse to the daily letters which I wrote at that time to Alida.

Monday, February– , 1871.

"Noble and Sweet, —

"The Bey came last night into the station of Aramon-les-Ateliers, where Hugh and I met him. A manifestation of the Internationale was crowding the platform to welcome some delegate who was to address the companions in their hall. I could see the old soldier quiver at the sight of the red flags they carried. If the St. André diligence had not been waiting at the station portico, I hardly think we could have persuaded him to go on. Any opposition to the tricolour, which he hates with the hatred of an old Atlas fighter, appears to excite him. We shall have trouble with him at Aramon if events thicken as they seem to be doing.

"But for the time being, everything marched as to music. The Bey was installed beside me, and Hugh very considerately took his leave. I am sending him over a message to-day telling him how matters fell out. The view from the bridge enchanted Keller. Aramon the Elder was rich with sunset glow – 'a rose-red city half as old as time,' with the tall Montmorency keep standing up from its rock as firm and proud as the day it was finished five centuries ago.

"He asked concerning the fort on the top, and gloom overspread his face when he heard that St. André had long been a famous lycée. I think he feared the neighbourhood of hosts of Jesuits. But I tranquillised his mind, telling him that he would find Professor Renard as free a thinker and as tolerant a listener as even my father.

"Before long we stopped at the gate of Gobelet, and to my astonishment and delight my father opened it in person. He had even made toilet to the extent of a rough pilot suit and a pair of patent leather slippers.

"Keller instinctively saluted as my father held out his hand. He seemed unaccountably shy of taking it, but at last he did and even shook it warmly if somewhat jerkily, 'after the English fashion' as he was eager to inform me afterwards – making a useful comparison of French and English characteristics between 'serrer la main' and hand-shaking.

"I let the old gentlemen go on by themselves, sure that they would thus become better friends, and if you will believe me, Alida, they were not at the corner of the path leading to the Garden Cottage before they were deep in Arabic, and the next thing I knew was my father leading the Bey prisoner through the open windows of his study that he might show him some singular and infinitely precious manuscript.

"Well, I left them till supper time. We are simple folk and sup early. Then I went into the study, where I had some difficulty in awakening them to a world where people washed hands before eating and drinking.

"'Well, we must thresh that out again,' I heard my father say, and I am sure he never showed himself so much interested by any of my performances, not even when I brought home the gold medal for the first place in the baccalauréat. They could hardly let each other go, and if you, Alida, were present at that moment in the mind of the Bey, you were relegated to some distant hinterland, by me unexplored.

"At supper, before Saunders McKie and the domestics I steered my barque with care. For the ears of Saunders were growing long and lop like a rabbit's, with sheer intensity of listening. Once or twice things became a little sultry, as when the Bey described the bannered procession he had seen at the station.

"'Ah, politics,' said my father. 'I am glad they do not manifest over on this side of the water. White, red, or tricolour, it is all one to a man among his books.'

"'Not to me!' said the Bey, somewhat explosively.

"'Of course not – you are a soldier, and these things have been your life's business. But you must make allowances for a recluse and a scholar!'

"I did not think my father could have been so tactful.

"So Salaam, for to-night, dear lady! I kiss your golden feet."

"Tuesday.

"The freshness of this high air to you! I take up my tale. The Bey and my father have continued inseparable. Twice have I guided Keller to the Garden Cottage, and twice has he beheld it with wandering eyes. I am so sure that he has taken little in and that he will be able to give Linn no proper satisfaction, that I have made a plan of each floor to scale, marking all the cupboards deep and shallow, all exits and entrances, and the distance from Gobelet itself, with the garden walks and coppices on a separate plan. These I send now, so that you can have them well studied before the Bey's return, when Linn and you will know a great deal more about the Garden Cottage than he will. The third expert in Arabic came to dinner to-night, and to my relief he wore his college gown. I was afraid that he might appear in the full black uniform of the Company of Jesus. Keller did not turn a hair. They addressed each other in the current Arabic of Algeria, and in a clapping of hands they were deep in the discussion of Abd-el-Kader and all manner of recent tribal matters among the clans of the Atlas.

"I did not understand very much, and indeed even the scholarly Arabic of my father was momentarily put out by words and expressions so richly local that the recollection of them caused the Vicar Apostolic to laugh aloud.

"As far as I could make out, however, there was talk of a threatened rebellion because of the defeat and humiliation of France, and how, from his home in Brousse, Abd-el-Kader was doing all he could to prevent it. The dinner was a great success, but my chief amusement was to watch the face of old Saunders McKie.

"'Losh-an-entie, Maister Aängus,' he said afterwards, 'to think that men wha can talk a reasonable civilised langwage like English, or even a chatter-chatter like the French, should bemean themselves to roar at yin anither like the beasts o' the forest!'

"I told him that in all probability Jesus of Nazareth and his disciples spoke a dialect of it. Now I did not know how closely Aramaic approached Arabic, but I did know that the argument was calculated to impress Saunders. However, he only said, 'Maybe, but I think none the mair o' them for a caper like that, and I have ay been informed by them that kens a deal mair than you, Maister Aängus, that when the disceeples spak' or wrote, they set their tongues to the Greek, which is a decent responsible dead language, and weel thocht o' amang learned folks, or they would never spend sae muckle time learning it to the puir divinity laddies at the college.' I argued, somewhat foolishly, that most universities now had a professor of Arabic, but Saunders only said, 'Guid peety them that has to sit under him!'

"Before going out, for I had stayed behind to smoke a cigarette and enjoy the dismay of the old servant, Saunders betrayed the reason of his anger at the use of Arabic.

"'And to think,' he grumbled, as he went about dumping trays on the sideboard, 'that there's Mistress Syme and a' the rest o' them in the kitchen waiting for me to tell them a' that was said, and me has to gang doon never a bit the wiser, wi' my finger in my mouth like a bairn that hasna learned his lesson!'"

So much I wrote to Alida of the successful reception and early doings of Keller Bey, ancient war-leader under the Emir of the Atlas. He had taken enthusiastically to Aramon le Vieux, and certainly Aramon in the person of my father and Professor Renard had taken enthusiastically to him. My father duly made the offer that I had side-tracked by anticipation. There was room enough for half a dozen families of that size in Gobelet. The servants were lazy, and needed something to do. Renard should come down, and all of them should dwell together in a haze of Arabic poetry and tobacco smoke. Besides, my father found the Bey a night-bird after his own heart, and absolutely rejoiced in having someone under his roof whom at any hour he might find awake and smoking in the library, if he should find himself restless.

But this I would have at no price. I begged Keller Bey to remember that he was here to arrange for Alida and Linn. If they were to be under my father's roof, they would be eternally exposed to the jealous spying of Saunders and of the other servants, while at the Garden Cottage they would have a wall, and if necessary a locked gate, between them and any espionage.

But by far the most delicate part of my mission was to break the news to the Deventer family. I had sworn Hugh by solemn oath not to forestall me in the matter, and I think he awaited my attempt with a kind of malicious pleasure.

Certainly it was a large task to explain an unseen Alida to such a contradictory and turbulent family as the Deventers. Yet upon them and their manner of receiving Alida, befriending or showing her the cold shoulder, the whole success of the plan depended.

I might indeed bluster to Hugh that we could make a society sufficient for her within the garden bounds of Gobelet, but even as I spoke I knew the emptiness of the boast. To be happy Alida must meet and mix with girls of her own education and, so far as the Western world was concerned, social position.

I resolved to begin with Rhoda Polly, and a Rhoda Polly not argumentative and combative as in the family circle, but Rhoda Polly walking along the river bank, her eyes full of the sunset light, and the reeds whistling musically in a gentle fanning wind from the west.

Not till two days after the return of Keller Bey to Autun did I get my chance, which brought us to Saturday afternoon. The occupancy of the Garden Cottage was decided upon, and after a severe struggle on my father's part a rent, low yet not merely nominal, was agreed upon. But I knew from the expression of my father's face that he meant to be even with his tenant for all that.