Poor odalisque! Why cannot he speak to you and tell you? You would wash away those yellow stains with your own blood, if you thought he wished it. Forego tobacco? Why, you would cease to inhale the breath of life itself, for his sake.
Out of the grave came all the dead Puritan ancestors of Mr. Middleton, a long procession back to Massachusetts Bay. The elders of Salem who had ordained that a man should not smoke within five miles of a house, the lawgivers who had prescribed the small number, brief length, and sad color of ribbons a woman might wear and who forbade a man to kiss his wife on Sunday, all these righteous and uncomfortable folk stirred in Mr. Middleton’s blood and obsessed him.
Fatima, Nouronhor, or whatever your name might be, my fair Moslem, why did fate throw you in with a Puritan? Yet I wot that had it been one from a strain of later importation from Europe, you had not been so safe there last night. The Puritans may be disagreeable, but they are safe, safe.
Part of this Mr. Middleton was saying over and over to himself – the latter part. The Puritans are safe. The young lady of Englewood was safe. She was good, she was beautiful, too, in her calm, sweet, Puritan way. He must see her at once, he would go – A sigh, not altogether of content, absolute and complete, recalled to him the woman pressed against his side. She must be taken care of, disposed of. Asylum? No. Factory? No, no. Theater, museum? No, no, no. He would find some man to marry her. There must be someone, lots of men, in fact, who would marry a girl so lovely, who needn’t find out she smoked until after marriage, or who would not care anyway. All this might take time. He would be as expeditious as possible, however. He called Mrs. Leschinger, the landlady, and entrusting the girl to her care, departed to visit a matrimonial agency he knew of.
He looked over the list of eligibles. He read their misspelled, crabbedly written letters. There was not one in the lot to whom a man of conscience could entrust the Moslem flower, even if she did smoke.
“There is apparently not one man of education or refinement in the whole lot,” exclaimed Mr. Middleton.
“That’s about right,” said the president of the agency. “Between you and I, there ain’t many people of refinement who would go at marrying in that way. You don’t know what a lot of jays and rubes I have to deal with. Often I threaten to retire. But occasionally a real gentleman or lady does register in our agency. Object, fun or matrimony. Now I have one client that is all right, all right except in one particular. He is a man of thirty-five or six, fine looking, has a nice house and five thousand dollars a year clear and sure. But he’s stone deaf. He wants a young and handsome girl. Now I could get him fifty dozen homely young women, or pretty ones that weren’t chickens any longer, real pretty and refined, but you see a real handsome young girl sort of figures her chances of marrying are good, that she may catch a man who can hear worth as much as this Crayburn, which ain’t a whole lot, or that if she does marry a poor young chap, he’ll have as much as Crayburn does when he is as old as Crayburn. Now I’m so sure you’ll only have your trouble for your pains, that I won’t charge you anything for his address and a letter of introduction. I don’t believe you have got a girl who will suit, for if you have, she won’t take Crayburn. Here’s his picture.”
Mr. Middleton looked upon the photograph of a man who seemed to be possessed of some of the best qualities of manhood. It was true that there was a slight suspicion of weakness in the face, but above all it was kindly and sympathetic.
“A good looking man,” said Mr. Middleton.
“Smart man, too,” said the matrimonial agent. “He graduated from the university in Evanston and was a lawyer and a good one, until a friend fired off one of those big duck guns in his ear for a joke.”
Taking the odalisque with him in a cab, Mr. Middleton was off for the residence of Mr. Crayburn.
“Will she have me?” asked Mr. Crayburn, when he had read Mr. Middleton’s hastily penciled account of the main facts of his connection with the fair Moslem, wherein for brevity’s sake he had omitted any mention of the fifteen hundred dollars the emir had given him for assuming charge of her.
“Of course,” wrote Mr. Middleton.
“I never saw a more beautiful woman,” exclaimed Mr. Crayburn. “By the way, have you noticed any predilections, habits, wants, it would be well for me to know about?”
“She smokes,” wrote Mr. Middleton, not knowing why he wrote it, and wishing like the devil that he hadn’t the moment he had.
“All Oriental women smoke. I will ask her not to as soon as she learns English.”
Mr. Middleton was amazed to think that such a simple solution had not occurred to him. But he was glad it was so, for he had not been unscathed by Cupid’s darts there last night and he might not now be about to visit the young lady of Englewood.
“Your fee,” said Mr. Crayburn.
Mr. Middleton had not thought of this. He looked about at the handsomely furnished room. He thought of the five thousand dollars a year and the very much smaller income he could offer the young lady of Englewood. He thought of these things and other things. He thought of the young lady of Englewood; of the odalisque, toward whom he occupied the position of what is known in law as next friend. She sat behind him, out of his sight, but he saw her, saw her as he saw her for the first time, when, ripping the bag away, she lay there in her piteous, appealing helplessness.
“There is no fee. The maiden even has a dowry of fifteen hundred dollars. Please invest it in her name. Oh, sir, treat her kindly.”
“Treat her kindly!” exclaimed the deaf man with emotion. “He would be a hound who could ill treat one so helpless and friendless, a stranger in a strange land, whose very beauty would be her undoing, were she without a protector.”
Much relieved, Mr. Middleton prepared to depart and the odalisque saw she was not to be included in his departure. She noted the luxurious appointments of the house, so different from the threadbare and seedy furnishings of Mr. Middleton’s one lone room, but rather a thousand times would she have been there. A tumult of yearning and love filled her heart, but beyond the slow tears in her eyes and the trembling lips, no one could have guessed it. Once more she was a Moslem slave, sold by the man whom last night she had thought – She bowed to kismet and strangled her feelings as she had so many times before. And so after a shake of the hand, Mr. Middleton left her, left her to learn as the idol of Mr. Crayburn’s life, with every whim gratified, that the first American she had known was but one of millions.
Away toward Englewood hastened Mr. Middleton, reasoning with himself in a somewhat casuistical manner. His conscience smote him as he thought of the previous night. But what else could anybody have done? Deprived of the power of communicating by the means of words, he had by caresses assuaged her grief and stilled her fears and now it was too plain he had made her love him and he had left her in desolation. But heigho! what was the use of repining over spilled milk and nicotined fingers that another man and good would care for, and he himself had not been unscathed by Cupid’s darts there the night before.
The young lady of Englewood was just putting on her hat to go out and was standing before the mirror in the hallway. Mr. Middleton had never called at that hour of the day. For months he had not called at all and she never expected that he would again. So without any apprehension at all, she was wearing one of the green silk shirt waists she had made from the Turkish trousers he had given her, and had just got her hat placed to suit her, when there he was!
She turned, blushing furiously. Whether it was the confusion caused her by being discovered in this shirt waist, or the joy of seeing him again and the complete surrender, she made in this joy, so delectable and unexpected and which was not unmixed with a little fear that if he went away this time, he would never come back again, never! whether it was these things or what not, she made no struggle at all as Mr. Middleton threw his arms about her, threw them about her as if she were to rescue him from some fate, and though he said nothing intelligible for some time, but kissed her lips, cheeks, and nose, which latter she had been at pains to powder against the hot sun then prevailing, she made no resistance at all and breathed an audible “yes,” when he uttered a few incoherent remarks which might be interpreted as a proposal of marriage.
Here let us leave him, for all else would be anti-climax to this supreme moment of his life. Here let us leave him where I wish every deserving bachelor may some day be: in the arms of an honest and loving woman who is his affianced wife.