CHAPTER XXI
Hamoud-bin-Said suggested that she master first the most difficult consonants—"ha," to be pronounced with the force at the back of the palate, "dâd" and "tâ," emphasized by pressing the tongue far back, and the strong guttural "en." These were sounds that had no association with any in English, French, German, or Italian. Lilla was filled with dismay.
"But this poor young man lost from the Arabian Nights must live," she reflected, eyeing the salt-and-pepper suit with secret horror.
He was extremely neat, however; and his small right hand, with which he turned the pages of the textbook, was as well cared for as hers. He brought with him into the library an almost imperceptible scent of burnt aloes. His grave composure sometimes made her forget his youth.
Now and then, the lesson finished, she detained him in talk, out of curiosity.
From his father he had inherited a house in Zanzibar, a mansion, indeed, of coraline limestone fitted with doors of palmwood elegantly carved. At the same time he had fallen heir to a grove of clove trees; in short, he had been wealthy. There had been no end of hospitality in his home. In the large, white rooms strewn with Persian carpets, where there were no pictures, but a variety of clocks, the slaves were always bringing in to visitors an excess of refreshment—stews of mutton, fine soups, cakes, sherbets, Turkish delight. The world had been a good place, full of friends.
And there was no spot as fair as Zanzibar! The hills, crowned with palms, embraced a sea as deeply blue as lapis-lazuli. The clove trees were covered with pink blossoms whose fragrance entered the city. It was a place of brilliant sunshine and purple shadows, of gray walls over which peacocks hung their tails, of mysterious stairways, and latticed windows behind which ladies sat peering through their embroidered face screens resembling semicircular candle shades; and there was always a marvelous clamor in the streets, and silence in the patios full of flowers. At dusk, one still saw, sometimes, the daughters of the rich hurrying through the alleys, muffled up, escorted by slaves with lanterns, going to call on their women friends, leaving behind them a trail of perfumes.
"It was in Zanzibar," thought Lilla, "that Lawrence found my picture."
And gazing as if indifferently at a vaseful of roses, she asked, with a feeling of suffocation: