LTHOUGH we had taken Mary to Algeria that she might "forget," the girl had faith that any effort on our part to separate her from a certain charming and therefore ineligible young man would be frustrated by a higher power than ourselves, and that she and the tabooed one would meet in some miraculous way, after we had put several thousand miles of water and desert sands between them.
As a rule, under such circumstances, we would have been on Mary's side. The Illustrator was ever keen to champion a lady's cause, and I, having made some such marriage as our protégée was seeking, and found the result satisfactory, saw no reason why the girl shouldn't have a charming one herself. But what hurt us was the way that Mary granted any higher power than our own high-powered motor-car, even to the point of assuring us that it would outstrip our efforts, and arrange matters to her satisfaction in the very teeth of our perfected mechanical appliances. As the Illustrator said, there was no better engine in the world than ours, nor lamps that threw a farther light, nor tires that could run longer without bursting, and, like Robert of Sicily, "he was the King."
These were not our only assets. The young man, in a fashion, was another. He had gone off in that stubborn, crushed state which is so comprehensible to such of us who live by our hearts, and so perplexing to Mary's family who live by their heads, and had completely broken off with Mary until such time as her people would welcome him as an equal, or—he longed to say, but did not—as a superior. And now, as the girl ever concluded in rehearsing the tale, the thing for her to do was to search him out and talk him over.
The palm-trees outside our windows in Algiers were no more incessant in their whispering than were we in our rooms after Mary was nightly sent to bed. There was no necessity for aspirates. Lacking an easy-chair at home, the main idea of the Arab is to meet in the square on which our hotel gave, and scream his family scandals to his friends. The noise is unvaried and endless, and any plot from the undermining of a nation to the breaking of a young woman's heart could be discussed at full lung power. But the Illustrator enjoyed intrigue and kept his voice down, hissing platitudes at me like a stage villain.
On this especial evening he gave utterance to the mighty novelty that, as one nail drives out another, the best plan for us was to find a nail that would be of sufficient interest to Mary to drive out all recollection of the charming one, and to prove to her that a girl can be happy even if she doesn't marry an ineligible. I agreed with him, suggesting, however, that the nail be not young, good looking, or a gentleman. And the Illustrator, in turn, accepted my addendum piously. "Besides," he added, "there are many other interests in Africa. For instance, the dancing girls—"
The promulgation of this thought died in his throat in a lame whistle, as he caught my eye. We had been spending that evening among the dancing girls for their "local color," or anything else that the Illustrator could think of calling them, and while they had not been up to the picturesque standards of our Eastern dancers as seen in the Western world, they had afforded him an enjoyment which he had endeavored to conceal beneath a bored exterior.
We had decided at first that Mary was too tired to see the Algerians dance, for the reason that public entertainers in Africa are not the kind of ladies she would meet at afternoon teas, nor do they live in Moorish domiciles whose janitors have scruples. As man and wife we could go, and therefore were not tired, but the girl had better stay in the dull hotel and rest. However, there was a certain cold deadliness in the way our ward kept putting on her hat that brought us to silence after we had exclaimed over her fatigue several times.
"For you know," concluded Mary, after she had completed her outdoor toilet—"you know, I shall find him somewhere—and it may be there."
The Illustrator had smothered an exclamation of horror, fearing if he suggested that it was no place for a young man it would be no place for us, and followed the girl and the guide, as he wound us in and out of the narrow ways of the Kasbah, the while stoutly maintaining that Mary was right.
The very next morning, however, we found a decent "nail" which attracted Mary and held an enjoyable prospect for us, and I should have been entirely pleased but that my delight was mixed with the uncanny fear that I had made the discovery by some of Mary's white magic. If I could do this so quickly just by wishing it, what could not Mary, with her sublime faith, accomplish?