Her American daughter

Chapter I

Out of Tangier, to the westward, meanders a road — a rugged, dusty road — that bridges the shallows of a pebbly stream brawling by the city gate, winds its way round naked boulders upstanding in the midst of tropic verdure, cuts so sharply through green hillocks that the banks on either hand are always caving and slipping, and the gold-brown soil atop trickling darkly down the sandy slopes ; then clambers up and up — past wretched mud huts thatched with straw and hedged about with prickly pear, past the whitewashed dwellings of wealthy Jews and Moors, the villas and walled gardens of the foreign legations — upward and upward still, through fragrant orange groves to the summit of Mt. Washington.

Viewed from that height, all the surrounding country appears strangely broken, as though turned up in furrows by a giant plow. The hillsides in the foreground are a vivid emerald, but they grow bluer and bluer as they roll away in the distance, till at last they melt into the sky. The town of Tangier — a crowded mass of white and yellow buildings — nesties in the hollow of the bay. Beyond lie the Straits of Gibraltar — an expanse of shimmering green ; and far, far away, smoke colored and dim, rise the hilly shores of Spain.

For the sake of this wide outlook, strangers are frequently induced to follow the rugged roadway either afoot or on horse-, mule- or donkey-back, vehicles of any description being hardly obtainable; and at the time when our story opens — which is an afternoon in the latter part of January, 1896, — two young Americans, mounted on small gray burros and attended by native donkey boys, were just starting out to make the ascent.

Across the narrow bridge rode a tall youth whose long legs almost touched the ground on either side of his diminutive steed; beside him ran a lad with a sharp stick, who prodded the donkey from time to time when its pace began to fail, and as the trio scampered along they raised a little cloud of dust that glittered in the yellow sunlight.

Behind and with an ever-lengthening space between, the second rider — a girl of about twenty-one — trotted more sedately. She and her young attendant were both very good to look upon, yet the contrast between them was as wide as the east is far from the west. The donkey boy’s features were clear-cut and regular, his skin was a golden brown with red blood mantling the cheeks, his eyes were black, and so was his close-cropped hair. His dress consisted chiefly of a brown, hooded gehab, half slipping from the shoulders and reaching down below the knees ; beneath this he wore a braided crimson vest, and on his head was a red fez with a full blue silk tassel; the wide sleeves of his loose upper garment fell to his wrists, but his bare brown ankles showed above the heelless yellow sandals on his feet. And the girl, whose slim figure was clad in the fashion of her day, whose fair young face was all unveiled to the warm glare and the glance of men, smiled down at him in open friendliness.

“You live Noo Yok?” queried the boy as he swung along beside the burro, one hand sunk caressingly in its shaggy mane. “You live Noo Yok?” he repeated, craning his neck to catch a glimpse of the rider's countenance.

“N-no-o,” she quavered in a laughing tremolo, “my home is in as sunny a clime as yours — and I hope I may live to return there, but this . is the pace . . that kills! Why this inde-

corous haste, Mohammed ? The mountain has awaited us some centuries already; wherefore, O prophet, I beseech thee to restrain the ardor of thine ass !”

“Yeh !” exclaimed Mohammed, with cheerful acquiescence. “You lak he go fas'? Rrrrah! Rrrrrrah!” and he used his sharp prod with such fatal result that the rough canvas pads which balanced each other across the donkey’s spine swayed and rocked alarmingly.

The girl, who sat sideways with her small feet dangling unsupported, her right hand clutching the hempen rein and her left vainly seeking anchorage on Mohammed’s shoulder, gasped an hysterical remonstrance. “Prophet . . . thing of evil! Prophet still ... if boy or . devil !

Make your donkey . . . stop !”

“Sh ! Ssh !” cried a voice behind her on the roadside, and the burro suddenly came to a halt.

With feminine ingratitude, his rider, shifting round on her primitive saddle, turned a flushed and indignant face to the stranger in her pathway. Two mutinous gray eyes challenged his right to command her silence, two soft red lips curved proudly, and despite the bewildering fluff of bronze-brown hair shaken loose and ripppling round her forehead it was a very stern countenance that confronted Eliot Russell as he approached the donkey’s head.

Lifting his hat gravely, he said: “Pardon me! But your donkey boy has evidently omitted to give you the usual instructions. In the language to which your steed is accustomed, Sh! is equivalent to Whoa!”

“Oh, is it?” she murmured, comprehension and apology blending rosily in her half-averted face. “You should have told me that, Mohammed.”

“Ah theenk you want go fas’ lak heem,” said the boy quite innocently, pointing as he spoke to the rider in advance of them, whose burro trotted forward at such a rapid gait that his guide had much ado to keep abreast of it.

“Heaven forbid !” exclaimed the girl, administering a few restorative pats to her loosened hairpins. “I am very much obliged to you,” she added, turning graciously to her preserver. “At first I mistook your friendly intervention for a reproof to my unguarded speech. ,,

Russell smiled. “If I may venture so far, I would like to suggest that while your escort could never have heard of Edgar Poe, his limited vocabulary is very likely to include certain profane expressions, so your future quotations might be more prudently selected. ,,

“You are right,” she said. “I might have given serious offense. Thank you again,” and she gathered up the hempen reins between her fingers, preparatory to another start.

“In case you should ever want to mend your pace, you must say Rrrrah!” added Russell, with an excellent imitation of the guttural cry in common use. “And Baidak! means 'Clear the way!’ ”

“Indeed?” replied the girl, a sparkle of mischief lighting her gray eyes : “Let me see. I suppose — by way of illustration — it would now be correct to say Rrrah! to the donkey and Balaak! to you?”

“Quite correct,” he admitted briefly; and once more raising his soft felt hat, he stepped aside out of her path.

Immediately the burro waggled its long ears and trotted off, with Mohammed at its heels; and the girl, looking back over her shoulder, waved her hand in a laughing farewell to the man, who stood bareheaded in the sunshine.

Chapter II

The sun had gone down behind the hills; from the mueddin towers the city had been summoned to prayer, and now within every mosque could be heard the chanting of the faithful; but the civilization of our western world had lit its torches in the crooked little streets, for here and there along the walls electric bulbs glowed opalescent through the violet dusk.

Down one of the narrow alleys passed two youngmen in earnest conversation.

“I've been anticipating this recall ever since we started for Fez,” the younger of these was saying. “It ought to have reached me a week ago — that’s the worst of these God- forsaken regions! I’m awfully sorry, Russell, but you see yourself how it is — I must take the next steamer home.”

“Of course, if your presence there is requisite,” agreed his companion. “But it’s hard lines having your holiday cut short, — and I need not tell you, Thornton, what the loss of a kindred spirit means to me.”

The other man laughed shortly. “What troubles me most, my dear fellow, is not that, much as my vanity may overestimate it. I am thinking of the other complication.”

“What complication?” demanded Russell.

“My sister Isabel. She hates having her plans upset — by other people. She would have all the universe revolving staidly in orbits of her own appointing, while she performed erratic flights at unexpected moments in contravention of all celestial or terrestrial laws.”

Russell's silence breathed disapproval, and his friend, perceiving it, laid one hand upon his arm in affectionate protest.

“You think I’m severe. You believe in your heart that I have never properly appreciated Isabel — although, with the rest of the family, I have figured constantly in the tail of the comet ever since poor Dering’s death. The attraction of a pretty, overindulged woman, my dear Russell, is sometimes too coercive for the comfort of her immediate circle — as you might better understand if you had ever had a sister of your own.”

They had now reached the door of their hotel, so Russell was spared a reply; but as he followed his companion into the dining room his thoughts were busy with Mrs. Dering. Although he had seen little of her since her marriage and widowhood, he remembered her as a very charming girl, and the brother’s attitude struck him as disloyal.

Besides the long table at which he and Thornton took their places, there were two others, each seating about twenty persons — all of them utter strangers, for tourists seldom linger more than a day or two in Tangier, and Russell and his friend had only that morning returned from a two weeks’ excursion through the interior of the country. As his quiet glance swept over the assembled company without encountering one familiar face, he became subconsciously aware of a disappointment. Since afternoon it had been in his mind that he would probably discover among his fellow-guests the owner of a pair of mocking gray eyes, but evidently she was stopping at the other hotel.

Scarcely had he arrived at this conclusion, however, when two ladies entered the room and seated themselves in the only unoccupied chairs at his own table. One of them was a colorless little person of uncertain age; the other was a slim young creature in a dark blue gown, whom he recognized at once, although the expression of her face was now wholly serious. As their eyes met across the table, she bowed sedately, and he decided that her gravity became her. But it quickly passed, for she was soon engaged in an animated conversation with her immediate neighbors — a brown-bearded man of distinctly pleasing appearance and an overgrown youth with a dimple in his chin. Snatches of their talk came to Russell at intervals during the meal, and Thornton found in him a very inattentive hearer. Finally, perceiving the cause, he broke off in the middle of an argument, demanding : “Who’s that pretty girl just going out?”

“I wish I knew,” replied his friend, pushing aside his coffee cup with impatience and joining in the general exodus from the dining room. But he reached the hall too late for more than a fleeting glimpse of a dark blue gown disappearing up the winding stairway.

He was now both piqued and disappointed. Without being a conceited man, he had seen too much of the world — and the women of it — not to have a just appreciation of his own attractive personality, and he had fancied that the girl would make it easier for him. The hall below was filled with knots of people, most of them sociably inclined; conventions count for so little on the outskirts of civilization, and one cannot afford to shut oneself away from all pleasant companionship just for lack of a common friend to pronounce the open sesame.

Opposition, however, stimulates desire. He bethought him next of the two men who had evidently been of the same party, and pacing slowly down the hall he perceived the brown-bearded man in consultation with the office clerk, while the tall boy with the dimpled chin stood by with both hands in his pockets and a cigarette between his laughing lips. There was something very prepossessing about this young fellow.

She called him Peter. Peter what ? wondered Russell, and the hotel register naturally suggesting itself, he sauntered over to the desk and studied the arrivals of the week. There was but one Peter among them all, and his signature was boldly scrawled across the page: Peter Harding , Rhode Island , U. S. A. Two lines above were registered Henry Stafford and wife , New York; and just between, in a feminine hand, Raven Woodward , Charleston, South Carolina. At the moment when Russell’s finger paused beneath this name, Thornton leaned over his shoulder.

“Well,” said the latter carelessly.

“This must be she,” declared Russell with conviction.

“Who?” asked Thornton obtusely; but his companion closed the book without further explanation.

“I've just been re-reading Isabel’s letter,” said the younger man, as they strolled to the open doorway with their cigars. The air outside was as mild as a night in spring, and the sky was of that purplish black which one sees so often in southern latitudes.

“She is still in Paris ?” Russell inquired.

“Yes; but she is leaving this week. I doubt if a letter would have time to reach her there.”

“And your failure to meet her in Madrid will be a disappointment.”

“Oh, the disappointment’s a trifle. What worries me is that she and Aunt Elizabeth may attempt to carry out their original program without me.”

“Would there be any objection to that?”

Thornton hesitated. “Why — do you really think it would be advisable at the present crisis for two women to travel alone all over southern Spain? Suppose the clamor of our Cuban sympathizers terminates in some official action that inflames the Spaniards! — If Isabel were not so self-willed and obstinate — ”

“It seems to me,” Russell hastily put in, “that with her aunt, her courier and her maid she would be safe enough. But in case of any real emergency, you may be sure, Thornton, that your father’s daughter will never need a protector while I am within reach of her.”

The brow of the younger man instantly cleared. “I thought you would say that ! It seems a shame to impose my responsibilities on you, but I must go home immediately, and this question of Isabel’s movements was a load on my mind. Of course, it is unlikely that any trouble will arise in the next month or two, but if it should — ”

“I give you my promise that Mrs. Dering shall have my escort and protection as far as the Spanish frontier.”

“My dear fellow, I don’t know how to thank you ! It was too much to ask of your friendship for me, but for my father’s sake — ”

“For your sister’s own sake I shall be only too glad to be of any service,” insisted Russell cordially. “I shall probably return to Madrid by the first of February — and I wish I were half as sure of Mrs. Dering’s welcome as I used to be of little Isabel Thornton’s in my college davs.”

“You were always a favorite of hers,” said the brother smiling; and then silence fell between them — a silence in which all the dissonances of the night were audible.

“I must go to Gibraltar to-morrow morning,” Thornton remarked presently. “The steamer is due there next day. I suppose I can count on your company as far as the Rock ?”

“Why, of course,” returned Russell. “I have nothing to keep me here.” But even as he spoke there came to him, unbidden, a fleeting memory of the girl in blue.

Outside in the street, amid the babel of the city's noises, certain sounds grew more insistent — the high screeching of wind instruments, the clash and clang of discordant cymbals and the hollow rattle of a toneless drum. Nearer and nearer they came, voices mingling with them, and hoof beats, and the shuffle of sandalled feet.

“A Moorish wedding procession, ladies and gentlemen !” cried the voice of the hotel guide.

At this announcement the idlers in the hall crowded to the doorway, and in another moment Peter of the dimpled chin was at Russell's elbow : it was the chance for which the latter had been waiting.

“Take my place,” he remarked, as the wedding company approached. “I have been long enough in Morocco for such sights to lose something of their novelty. In a country where the average man has three or four wives, they are apt to be rather frequent.”

“Thanks, awfully,” said the boy. “But isn't it curious ! Is the poor bride shut up in that ridiculous birdcage?”

“I believe so,” Russell answered, and then conversation became impossible.

At the head of the clamorous throng, borne on the back of a patient mule, was the birdcage to which Peter had referred — a tiny palanquin hung with red and yellow curtains ; next followed a man with a torch of sputtering candles, and after him trooped the musicians, making the night hideous.

“What a concord of sweet sounds !” Thornton ejaculated. “Russell, do you think a taste for this sort of thing would be incompatible with treason ?”

But, quickly as it had come, the procession passed on and disappeared around a corner, where the uncouth sounds, imprisoned between narrowing walls, grew faint and muffled. In the lull that followed, the guide’s professional tones could be heard going on with a glib recital.

“ — and the bride, a girl of fourteen or fifteen, is being carried from mosque to mosque to be blessed before entering the home of her future husband. To-morrow morning some of her family will pay him a visit to inquire if she comes up to specifications; if so, a gun will be fired by way of salute; but if the husband has reason to think he has made a bad bargain, the lady may be returned to her relatives. And at any time during their wedded life a writ of divorce may be obtained from the lawyers for about forty reals — or two dollars in American money.”

“Miss Ray ought to be here,” murmured Peter, as the speaker paused for breath. “She’s lost the opportunity of her life! You haven’t met Miss Woodward yet, have you? She’s the girl that sits next to me at table. I remember seeing you at dinner, — perhaps you noticed us?”

Russell confessed that he had.

“This was the opportunity of her life,” the boy repeated, “and if she’d been here you bet she wouldn’t have let it slip ! She’s a South Carolinian, Miss Ray is; and if that guide had given her half a chance, she’d have capped his story with the remark that the only two places on earth where divorce is not permitted by law are South Carolina and — I forget the other, but it doesn’t matter. South Carolina’s the thing! The sun rises and sets there.”

“Oh, does it?” laughed Thornton, who had overheard. “Well, / have no objection, and although Russell here was born at the Hub, I think he is fast degenerating into a cosmopolitan — such is the ill effect of travel!”

“I don’t believe it will have any such effect on Miss Ray!” declared Peter. “You ought to hear her talk! I’ll introduce you to-morrow morning,” he added patronizingly.

“Thank you,” said both men with becoming gratitude.

“I’m sorry to say we’ve got to leave here to-morrow,” Peter continued. “We are going back to Gib. en route for Madrid. We came over on the Gebal Tarik, three days ago — ” and he rattled on for some minutes more, describing with humorous touches their experiences in Tangier. But Russell lent only half an ear to this chatter ; he was thinking that for once fate was strangely complaisant.

At the breakfast table next morning Peter fulfilled his promise, but the meal was too hurried for conversation and Miss Woodward appeared preoccupied.

In Henry Stafford, however, Russell identified a New York painter of some slight repute, so he was not surprised later on to encounter him with color box and brushes sketching busily in an angle of the old town wall. Through a low arch, glimpses could be had of the Sok — or market-place, crowded with strange figures, tents and booths, in the centre of which a group of kneeling camels were resting after a fifteen days’ journey across the desert and through the hills. As the artist pointed out to his companion some striking bit of color, or the felicitous grouping of the figures near the gateway, his rather melancholy brown eyes were lit by an expression which to Russell was something of a surprise.

“That man” — he thought, after they had parted company — “has been capable of real enthusiasms, but he gives me the impression of a person in whom the wine of life has all turned flat.” Then, as a memory of the Southern girl rose up in striking contrast, a slow smile crept around his own grave lips; but much as he was inclined to admire her happy effervescence, he wondered, like a wise man, what might be the quality of the spirit beneath it. “One rarely discovers a nature that is sweet and wholesome to the very lees,” he decided ; then his thoughts were all devoted to the task of threading the labyrinth of crooked streets.

The one in which he found himself had been described by Peter the night before as “exactly one donkey wide.” It was darkened here and there by an overhanging story that completely shut out the heavens; but wherever the morning beams could find their way the plastered walls were bathed in a white glow. Just before him, at the intersection of another street, was a small sunny court; as he approached it a chorus of shrill voices reached his ear, and what he presently saw made him quicken his pace to a run.

In the centre of a group of turbulent children stood Mohammed, the young donkey driver, with a scowl on his handsome face and a stout stick in his right hand; an angry woman, whose vituperative energy had disarranged the folds of her white haik enough to disclose a shrewish countenance, cursed and threatened the lad from a doorway opposite, and on the other side of the court, standing with her back against the wall, an open sketchbook in one hand and a pencil pressed dubiously against her chin, was the girl in blue. Her expression of amused perplexity gave place to unmistakable relief as Russell appeared.

“May I ask the meaning of all this?” he inquired, a hasty survey convincing him that she was unaccompanied.

“Too much zeal,” she answered, laughing. “There is such a thing as having too warm a champion ! I was sitting on yonder doorstep, sketching in peace — if not in comfort — with half the small boys in Tangier looking over my shoulders, when Nemesis overtook me in the person of Mohammed. He fell upon my tormentors with wrath unbounded and ordered them to instantly balaak! They naturally resented it.”

“Very naturally,” he concurred, with meaning.

A sudden blush overspread her cheeks, for one moment contrition was plainly visible in the gray eyes — then laughter overflowed them. Russell smiled back at her — the inscrutable masculine smile which is intended to cloak a half reluctant admiration, and consulting his watch observed that it was eleven o’clock, that the boat was scheduled to leave at noon, so there would be no more time for sketching.

“It doesn’t matter,” she replied serenely, as they turned their steps hotelward. “As Peter would say, I’ve done all the harm I can in one morning, I’ve filled three pages of my sketchbook with bad drawings, I’ve called on a sweet faced Moorish woman who permitted me to pry into her housekeeping arrangements, and I’ve instigated a street riot — all in two hours.”

“Do you mean to say that you ventured alone into one of these houses ?” he gravely asked.

“Why certainly. It was the cleanest place, with whitewashed walls and blue tiled floors and dear little cupboards full of charming pottery. I sat on a rug and played with the baby, and felt that I was in another world — as real as my own, yet so different ! That’s the wonderful thing to me — these people are living their usual lives; it’s not just a show arranged for our entertainment.”

“Yes, it is all real enough,” said Russell, “but not much of it is admirable, for Tangier is overrun with the offscourings of two continents. I don’t think I quite approve — ” he added presently, “of your going out alone and visiting in strange houses.”

She laughed at that, and studied him quizzically before replying. “Do you know, for a Northern man — you are a Northerner, I suppose? — you remind me very much of a Charlestonian.” He accepted this statement in silence, with another inscrutable smile ; so, as they entered the hotel door, she paused a moment and faced him seriously. “It wouldn’t have been inappropriate, just now,” she declared, “if you had — thanked me.”

Russell saw the gauntlet, but he let it lie, discreetly saying: “I appreciate the compliment.”

Chapter III

At half past twelve o’clock, the Hercules , an apoplectic little steamer, was puffing its way out toward the green waters of the Straits with six passengers aboard. There were no cabin accommodations whatever, so the tiny deck was encumbered with handbags and all the impedimenta which Russell and Thornton had accumulated during their journeyings. In one corner, partly sheltered from the wind by a narrow strip of awning, her pallid countenance wearing an expression of cheerful suffering, sat Mrs. Stafford. Her husband’s campstool was beside her. But in the stern the four other passengers leaned over the rail with their faces to Tangier.

“I wonder — ” mused Miss Woodward softly, “whether all other people are conscious of a pang when saying farewell to a place they are never likely to revisit. Because I can’t help thinking now of the days that are yet coming to this quaint town, of the rising of the sun and the going down of the same, of the little round of customary things — all so strange to our western eyes — that will still go on and on, though I am no longer here to see.”

Russell, who was standing next to her, turned slightly so that he might look into her face and slowly quoted :

“ ‘What will be will be well — for what is is well,

To take interest is well, and not to take interest shall be well.’ ”

Ray shifted her gaze a moment to meet his. “That sounds like Walt Whitman,” she exclaimed.

“It is,” said he.

“Ah,” she sighed, “I haven’t yet achieved that point of view. But The Professor would understand me when I say that just now I am dying out of Tangier and suffering the pangs of dissolution.”

Russell was silent, observing the very real regret in the gray eyes ; but Peter put in a word that broke the spell. “Sure an’ you do make a beautiful corpse !” he cried, and the girl herself led the laugh that followed.

Hitherto, the day had been mild and cloudless ; but now mountains of white cumuli were heaped on the horizon, and at intervals the blue overhead was darkened by gray scuds.

“If I were sailing in Charleston harbor, I would say, Look out for squalls!” remarked Ray with a weatherwise glance at the sky. She was buttoned up to the chin in a blue mackintosh and her hat was pulled well forward over her brow, but already the wind had loosened a tendril of the bronze-tinted hair and presently a stronger gust caught the brim of her hat and tossed it gaily over the rail. The three men each made valiant efforts to rescue it from a watery grave, but without success, and it disappeared at last in the trough of a green billow. For a second or two its owner gazed after it with wide eyes of dismay, then she nonchalantly pulled forward the pointed hood of her mackintosh.

“Now you look like Mohammed in his gehab ” said Peter, with frank disapproval. “A charming adaptation of the Tangerine fashion,” amended Thornton. But Russell, after one glance into the depths of the disfiguring cowl, sauntered away with an air of utter indifference.

The captain of the Hercules , a surly old Englishman, had neither words nor smiles to waste upon his passengers; but the mate, who constituted the only visible portion of the crew, was a cheery Frenchman, small and lean and brown, with sharp black eyes and mustaches that curled fiercely in military fashion. To him had Peter paid court already; and now, as he chanced to pass the group in the stern, he paused long enough to point a knotty forefinger at a solitary red and black smokestack on the horizon line and to chuckle: “Voila messieurs, you see ze navy of Morocco !”

“That man, I imagine, has something of a history,” was Thornton’s aside to Miss Woodward while Peter was putting a question. Ray nodded and then turned to listen to the mate’s reply.

“Ven ve reach Gibraltar? Mon Dieu, how can I tell you zat ! Tree hour, seex hour, ten hour — ” and a shrug completed the sentence. “Zese Strait, zey is sometime in league vid ze debil! Ven you see cloud like zose — ” he pointed upward, “prenez garde !”