"Tell me," she said, with a pitiful little gesture of appeal, "must I obey my father? They think so, though I know well it will break their hearts as it would mine. Rather would I use this little toy" (she showed a dainty pair of golden scissors, with which the high born of her people sometimes open their arteries in a bath) "than I would go to Brousse to wed the brown man with the skin greasy like that of a toad—A-ä-ä-ch!"
She shuddered and flung herself back on the cushions.
I stood there in my stockinged feet as if I had been in a mosque, but no one remarked my bootless condition.
"Now," said Alida, "you have heard the letter of the Emir, my father—what am I to reply to him? Tell me and I shall say it. You are the gift of God. The messenger with the message. I knew as much when I saw you passing the door. You have come out of the darkness to bring me light."
It was a difficult position for my father's son. I was conscious of no message from heaven. But on my spirits preyed the same disgust as had fallen on her own. It was a thing impossible that this delicate girl, educated, well-read, accomplished, should mate with an African brute, with his Oriental ideas of the servitude of woman.
"Princess Alida," I began, but she cried out instantly, "Alida—just Alida the music mistress—no princess at all!"
"Well, then," I acquiesced, "Alida be it. You ask for my opinion. I will give it you. But I warn you that perhaps I am not the best of advisers, for having a good father after his ideas (which are not mine) I have not obeyed him very well, nor, indeed, has he asked me to obey.
"But it seems to me that your father, by making you over to Keller Bey and Linn there—by ordering you to be brought up as their daughter, by allowing and encouraging you to acquire the tastes and arts of the Western people—has now no right to summon you back to a life which would be worse to you than death. I should refuse now and always. If necessary I should make good my French citizenship, and claim the protection of the Government. The mere threat of the loss of his great pension would be sufficient for Abd-el-Kader!"
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.