“I really can’t let you go to bed, Cecil, without putting you right about poor Charlie Egerton. You mustn’t let Helena prejudice you against him, for she has a way of finding something unpleasant to say about every one. I think you know me well enough by this time, my dear child, to be sure that I should not be likely to countenance anything really unsatisfactory or wrong; but the fact is that, as I said, Charlie has been unfortunate. He is very clever, and a most delightful fellow, but he and his superiors always manage to rub one another the wrong way. I daresay he is very eccentric, and likes to mix with the natives more than Englishmen in the East generally do, but several great men have done the same, and it is only a matter of taste, after all, not a crime. He is very outspoken, too, and perhaps too much disposed to be hail-fellow-well-met with every one he comes across. I verily believe that if he met the Viceroy himself”—Lady Haigh spoke with bated breath—“out for a walk, he would enter into conversation quite coolly and offer him a cigar, just as if he was a man of his own standing. If the Viceroy was a nice sensible sort of man and took it all as it was meant, it would be all right, but if he was angry and tried to snub him, Charlie would be very much hurt, perhaps indignant, and would probably let him know it. You can imagine how a man of this sort comes into collision with some of our stiff-and-starched officials. They can’t understand a surgeon, with not so very many years’ service, trying it on with them in that way, and they consider it impudence; so they snub him, and that produces a coldness. Then Charlie comes across some abuse, or some piece of official neglect which he thinks it his duty to expose, and I should fear, my dear, that, remembering the past, he doesn’t do it as tenderly as he might. Then there are reports and complaints and censures, and finally Dr Egerton is requested to resign. This has happened two or three times.”
“A good man, no doubt, but perhaps not a very wise one,” was Cecil’s comment.
“That’s just it, my dear—as good as gold, but with no worldly wisdom whatever. Well, I have got Sir Dugald to use his influence to get him this post at Baghdad, and I only hope he may keep it. But now I see Marta glaring at me like a reproachful ghost for keeping her up so long, so I must send you away, Cecil. To-morrow night you also will have begun to learn what a tyrant a confidential maid may become.”
Cecil laughed, and said she meant to enjoy her last evening of freedom, which she did by writing a long letter to her father, and describing to him all that she had seen since her landing at Alexandria. Consequently, she overslept herself the next morning and did not wake until Marta brought her in a cup of tea, and informed her that her maid had come and was waiting to see her.
“I didn’t know that Eastern people got up so early in the morning now,” said Cecil to herself as she dressed. “I thought they were always about half a day late, but I suppose this is a unique specimen.”
“Come, Cecil,” said Lady Haigh, tapping at her door, “don’t you want to speak to your maid? She has been waiting quite a long time.” And Cecil hurried through her toilet obediently, and, coming out of her room, found a tall, severe-looking elderly Syrian woman talking to her friend.
“Her name is Khartûm,” said Lady Haigh, turning to Cecil, “but she is always called Um Yusuf—mother of Joseph, that is. It is the custom in Syria, you know. She has been a widow a good many years, and her son is a soldier in the Turkish army. Her last situation was at Constantinople, where she was nurse to the children of Lord Calne, the late Ambassador, so she knows a good deal about the ins and outs of Court life, and will be able to give you all the needed hints as to etiquette, and so on. Of course I shall always be glad to tell you anything; but then you will not have me continually at hand, and really good manners in Turkey are a very complicated business.”
In fact, Um Yusuf’s duties were those of a duenna quite as much as a maid, and she was well fitted in appearance for the post. She wore the long black silk mantle of the respectable Egyptian woman, which enveloped her from head to foot, and Lady Haigh commended the costume as exceedingly sensible and responsible-looking.
“You will have to accompany Miss Anstruther everywhere,” she said to the maid; “and I am sure I can depend upon you to help her with your experience whenever she feels puzzled.”
“She too young,” said Um Yusuf, bending her black brows on Cecil for the first time. We spare the reader the good woman’s pronunciation, while preserving her eccentric grammatical style. “Why she not stay home and get married? Tahir Pasha’s daughter have governess, old lady with spectacles, not like this. Azim Bey very bad boy. Laugh at Mademoiselle Antaza.”