"Do they buy commissions over the way still?"
"No; that system has been abolished."
"It is well," he remarked, with a scarcely suppressed sneer. "It was incredible that a great nation and a fighting nation should make a traffic of the command of men, as if a clump of spears were a kintal of maize," and as he relapsed into silence a soldierly fire gleamed in his irides, his frame seemed to straighten and swell, and the nature of the prophet retired before that of the warrior.
From where we stood we could ferret out a house with a veranda in front, built on a terrace and begirt with trees. That was the residence of His Highness; but we turned our eyes in another direction, lest we should be suspected of rude curiosity by this courteous African. I was trying to divine the tally of years our host had numbered. No Arab knows his own age, and here it may be useful to tell the reader wherein the distinction lies between the Moor and the Arab. Virtually they are the same; but the name of Moor is given to those who dwell in cities, of Arab to those who roam the plains. Mahomet came to my aid. His Highness had whiskers when Tangier was bombarded by Prince de Joinville. That was in August, 1844, a good nine-and-twenty years before, so that Abd-es-Salam must have long doubled the cape of forty, which would leave him considerably the senior of his Frankish wife.
We turned at a noise—the creak of a rustic wooden gate on its hinges; a figure approached. And then it was given to me to gaze upon Her Highness the Shereefa of Wazan. She was not called Zuleika, but Emily—her maiden name had been Keene, and she came not from the rose-bordered bowers of Bendemeer's stream, nightingale-haunted, but from the prosaic levels of South London, where her father was governor of a gaol. Truly she was a vision of gratefulness in that paynim tract—a rich brunette, with large black eyes, long black ringletted tresses, and a well-filled shape with goodly bust. Her attire was neat and graceful and not Oriental. She was clad in a riding-habit of ruby brocaded velvet, with jacket to match, had a cloud of lace round her throat, and an Alpine hat with cock's feather poised on her well-set head. She might serve as the model for a Spanish Ann Chute. Bracelets on her plump wrists and rings on her taper fingers caught the sunshine as she occasionally twirled her cutting-whip. Her voice was bell-like and melodious, with the faintest accent of decision, and her manner, after an opening flush of embarrassment, was cordial and debonair. The embarrassment was because of her inability to extend to us the hospitality she desired. She explained that she had to receive us in the garden as the house was undergoing repairs. After the customary commonplaces, she freely entered into conversation, and took opportunity at once to deny that she was a renegade; she wore European costume, as we saw, and attended the rites of the English Church, for it was one of the stipulations of the marriage contract that she should have perfect liberty to follow her own faith.
"I wish every English girl were as happily married as I," she said, "and had as loving a husband."
It was gratifying, therefore, to note that she found herself as women wish to be who love their lords. She had been married on the 27th of January, and as the Shereef had entered into his present residence but recently, they were still at sixes and sevens. It was his habit to spend the winter in the country and the summer in town. She had been but two years in Morocco, and had not yet mastered Arabic.
"His Highness understands English?" She shook her head, and quickly interpreting a lifting of my eyelids, she smilingly added, "Spanish was the medium of our courtship." And then, as we promenaded the garden path, she became communicative, and dwelt with pardonable expansion on the virtues of her lord and master, who followed behind side by side with the portly Yorkshireman. His charity, she said, was unbounded. Slaves were frequently sent to him as presents, but he kept none. He was modest on his own merits, and yet he was the most enlightened of Moors. He had visited Marseilles, a war-ship having been put at his disposal by the French Government, and was most anxious to take a tour to Paris and Vienna, and above all to England. It was his desire that railways should be constructed in Morocco, and he was glad when he was told that there was some likelihood of a telegraph cable being laid to Tangier.
"Then," interrupted I, "with your Highness's influence on the tribes around, exercised through your husband, there should be a fair prospect of pushing civilization here."
"Ah, yes!" she exclaimed, with a glow on her cheeks, "that is one of my dearest hopes, that is my great ambition. I believe that my marriage, which has been cruelly commented upon in England, may effect good both for these poor misunderstood Moors and my own country people."