"This is my sister's husband. He too speaks Arabic, but my father not so much." The boy introduced his brother-in-law. "Messaud-ben-Arzen is the son of our Caïd," (he spoke proudly). "Will you tell him and my father what your business is with Mouni?"
Nevill broke into more explanations, and evidently they were satisfactory, for, while the dancing and the powder play were stopped, and the squatting ranks of guests stared silently, the two Roumis were conducted into the house.
It was larger than most of the houses in the village, but apart from the stable of the animals through which the visitors passed, there was but one room, long and narrow, lighted by two small windows. The darkest corner was the bedroom, which had a platform of stone on which rugs were spread, and there was a lower mound of dried mud, roughly curtained off from the rest with two or three red and blue foutahs suspended on ropes made of twisted alfa, or dried grass. Toward the farther end, a hole in the floor was the family cooking-place, and behind it an elevation of beaten earth made a wide shelf for a long row of jars shaped like the Roman amphoræ of two thousand years ago. Pegs driven into one of the walls were hung with gandourahs and a foutah or two; and of furniture, worthy of that name in the eyes of Europeans, there was none.
At the bedroom end of the room, several women were gathered round a central object of interest, and though the light was dim after the vivid sunshine outside, the visitors guessed that the object of interest was the bride. Decorously they paused near the door, while a great deal of arguing went on, in which the shriller voices of women mingled with the guttural tones of the men. Nevill could catch no word, for they were talking their own Kabyle tongue which had come down from their forefathers the Berbers, lords of the land long years before the Arabs drove them into the high mountains. But at last the group opened, and a young woman stepped out with half-shy eagerness. She was loaded with jewels, and her foutah was barbarically splendid in colour, but she was almost as fair as her father; a slim creature with grey eyes, and brown curly hair that showed under her orange foulard.
Proud of her French, she began talking in that language, welcoming the guests, telling them how glad she was to see friends of her dear Mademoiselle Soubise. But soon she must be gone to her husband's house, and already the dark young bridegroom, son of the Caïd, was growing impatient. There was no time to be lost, if they were to learn anything of Ben Halim's wife.
As a preface to what they wished to ask, Nevill made a presentation speech, placing the velvet watch-case in Mouni's hand, and she opened it with a kind of moan expressing intense rapture. Never had she seen anything so beautiful, and she would cheerfully have recalled every phase of her career from earliest babyhood, if by doing so she could have pleased the givers.
"But yes," she answered to Nevill's first questions, "the beautiful lady whom I served was the wife of Sidi Cassim ben Halim. At first it was in Algiers that I lived with her, but soon we left, and went to the country, far, oh, very far away, going towards the south. The house was like a large farmhouse, and to me as a child—for I was but a child—it seemed fine and grand. Yet my lady was not pleased. She found it rough, and different from any place to which she was used. Poor, beautiful lady! She was not happy there. She cried a great deal, and each day I thought she grew paler than the day before."
Mouni spoke in French, hesitating now and then for a word, or putting in two or three in Arabic, before she stopped to think, as she grew interested in her subject. Stephen understood almost all she said, and was too impatient to leave the catechizing to Nevill.
"Whereabouts was this farmhouse?" he asked. "Can't you tell us how to find it?"
Mouni searched her memory. "I was not yet thirteen," she said. "It is nine years since I left that place; and I travelled in a shut-up carriage, with a cousin, older than I, who had been already in the house of the lady when I came. She told her mistress of me, and I was sent for, because I was quick and lively in my ways, and white of face, almost as white as the beautiful lady herself. My work was to wait on the mistress, and help my cousin, who was her maid. Yamina—that was my cousin's name—could have told you more about the place in the country than I, for she was even then a woman. But she died a few months after we both left the beautiful lady. We left because the master thought my cousin carried a letter for her mistress, which he did not wish sent; and he gave orders that we should no longer live under his roof."