Arrived home, I found that S`lam had been dispatched to the city to market, and that Maman had gone with him. Alas! the little bottle had disappeared; it was no longer in the niche which could be seen every time the door was passed. Miss Z—— arrived in the afternoon. By that time some other occult influence had come to work in Tahara's mind, and directly Miss Z—— spoke to her it was evident that she was hedging. As long as she was terrified and had lost her head she blurted out the truth; but given time to think the matter over, a thousand side-issues weighed with her, and she was no more inclined to trust us than she would have been to trust a Moorish woman, who is brought up to lies, intrigue, and diplomacy, and fed upon such axioms as "When you have nothing else to tell, tell the truth." The bottle, she said, had been taken away by S`lam and his mother. It belonged to his mother. It was poison to poison people in the Riff. A little later on she said it had nothing whatever to do with S`lam, and that it had only water in it—that S`lam had told her so. That she had never seen him put anything into her food. That he was "good." That she only had a bad pain last night. That she did not know why the bottle had been brought there. And so on. Her one prayer was that the signoritas would forget all that had happened. But for days she would not let us: by creeping up when S`lam was out of the way and putting her finger on her lips, by anxious questionings and gesticulations, the thing was never allowed to rest. She felt, probably, that she was past one danger—there was no more to fear in that direction for the present; but that if her Riffi husband ever suspected she had "given him away," he would soon dispose of so troublesome an incubus.
And so we found the matter had come to a deadlock: more we shall not know. It was typical of the Moors and their ways. It was, I cannot help thinking, rather a shady business. Taking into consideration S`lam's manner towards us for days after, added to those intuitions which one has and cannot put into words, it struck us that S`lam himself did not think the bottle had only water in it.
Ask no questions in this strange land. Lies are the portion meted out to the inquirer: it is not well to know too much. "Knowledge and virtue and a horse's mouth should not pass through too many hands," and "If you question knowledge, it falls from its estate"—thus the Moors.
I shall hear from Miss Z—— of Tahara's future welfare, unless she is moved from Tetuan. If she comes to an untimely end within the next year or so, our suspicions were not groundless. For the present we "forget," of course. For the whole affair—
Oh no, we never mention it;
Its feet are never heard!
