“Come in,” she said, and led the way to a large comfortable, English drawing-room. I suppose I showed some surprise at finding myself in so thoroughly British an interior, for she said:
“I lead a double life. With the Arabs, I am an Arab; with the Europeans, I am a European. We will have our tea here first,—you will like my tea better than my daughter-in-law’s; then I will take you into the Arab part of the house and introduce you to my son’s wife.”
At the first glance the Lady of Tangiers looked the full-blooded English woman she is by birth. As I talked with her, I felt something Oriental in her expression. You cannot live three parts of your life among an alien race without catching something of the racial look. First, and last, and all the time, I felt her to be a woman of power. The servant who brought the tea said something to her in Arabic.
“Were there many children waiting in the crowd outside the gate?” she asked.
I told her I had seen only two.
“They can wait, or come to-morrow,” she said. “Their mothers have brought them to be vaccinated. When I first came here I once spoke to my husband about a child I thought should be vaccinated, as there was so much small-pox about.”
“How is it done?” he asked.
“I know how it is done,” I said, “and I can do it. That was the beginning. Now I vaccinate hundreds of children every year. That is the sort of missionary work I believe in. There is not the slightest use in sending Christian missionaries to any Mahommedan country, unless they are willing to work without direct religious teaching. Civilize first! Teach the women and the girls to cook and sew, something about the laws of health, and the care of children.”
The Lady of Tangiers is a member of the Church of England, by the way.
I asked about the pretty boy I had met at the gate.