Lali

“ Lali’s face underwent a slight change as her husband’s fingers touched her neck.
“I must go,” she said. “I hope I have not broken up a serious conversation—or were you not so serious after all?” she said, glancing archly at General Armour. “We were talking of women,” said Lambert.
“The subject is wide,” replied Lali, “and the speakers many. One would think some wisdom might be got in such a case.”
“Believe me, we were not trying to understand the subject,” said Captain Vidall; “the most that a mere man can do is to appreciate it.” ”

“ When his mother told him what had occurred before Lali entered the breakfast-room, he went directly to what he believed was the cause, and advised tact with conciliation. He also pointed out that Lali was something taller than Marion, and that she might be possessed of that general trait of humanity-vanity. Mrs. Armour had not yet got used to thinking of the girl in another manner than an intrusive being of a lower order, who was there to try their patience, but also to do their bidding. ”

“ Perhaps it was that which drew me to you then—for Lali the Indian girl loved you. Life had been to me pleasant enough—without care, without misery, open, strong and free; our people were not as those others which had learned the white man’s vices. We loved the hunt, the camp-fires, the sacred feasts, the legends of the Mighty Men; and the earth was a good friend, whom we knew as the child knows its mother.”
She paused. Something seemed to arrest her attention. Frank followed her eyes. She was watching Captain Vidall and Marion. ”

“ Lali tossed away the last nutshell, humming lightly to herself. Her dark head bent nearer the Cossack, who no longer took his eyes from her.
“What is evil?” she asked. “And what are we but leaves, on the highway of fate? We know not the road before us. Ai-a, I have known sorrow.”
She rocked in her saddle and her warm fingers touched Ayub’s scarred fist. A shrewder man than the Cossack would have thought Lali’s lament sincere. ”

“ The rush of water and the creaking of the oars did not drown the voice of Lali. The song deepened, sounding the ring of weapons, the thudding of horses’ hoofs, and mellowed to a note of grief, dwindling so that long after she had ceased the warriors strained their ears to catch her voice.
The eyes of the ataman, Demid, sweeping the stretch of gray water, were moody. He was thinking of the steppe, the homeland of the Cossacks, and of another voice. So Ileana, the granddaughter of Rurik had sung to him when he was weary. ”

“ Her tact had grown is her strength had declined. There is something in failing health—ill-health without disease—which sharpens and refines the faculties, and makes the temper exquisitely sensitive—that is, with people of a certain good sort. The aplomb and spirited manner in which Lali had borne herself at the wedding and after, was the last flicker of her old strength, and of the second phase in her married life. ”

“ Togrukh or Balaban could have told the girl that the Cossack had a habit of never repeating an order; nor, once given, did he change the order. Experience had taught them the value of obeying Demid at once, and discussing the wherefore later. But Lali had come from a narrow world where her sisters were mistresses of numberless slaves. Slaves themselves, they often ruled the Moslem men through beguilement and flattery. ”

“ During all this lali, no one is permitted to do a stroke of any work that resembles the cultivation of rice; a parang or a billiong, or any tool used in felling the jungle, is a strictly lali article; should any restless creature express a desire for active work, he is scoffed at and scorned as a spoil-sport and kill-joy.
During the Permantong Padi, the large wooden mortars, wherein the rice is husked, are enclosed in bamboo railings, to prevent human beings, and dogs also, from touching them. ”

“ She already felt that she had got her position in life, from which she was to go out no more for ever. She had been brought up in the shadow of Alnwick Castle, and she knew what was due to her charge—by other people; herself only should have liberty with her. She was taking Lali to the home of General Armour, and that must be kept constantly before her mind. Therefore, from the day they set foot on the Aphrodite, she kept her place beside Mrs. Armour, sitting with her,—they walked very little,—and scarcely ever speaking, either to her or to the curious passengers. ”

“ Does a clipped hawk fly back to the hunter? The daughter of Macari is not one in heart with the Moslems; in her veins is the blood of her people. Does the noble lord think that now, when she is restored to us, she will be off at once to that demon’s place, Aleppo?”
The noble lord looked at Ibnol Hammamgi thoughtfully. To tell the truth he had not reflected much upon Lali. The singing girl, that evening, had assured him that she would journey with the Cossacks to the castle of Sidi Ahmad, and Demid had found it a fruitless task to try to reason out why a woman—Lali especially—did things. ”

“ The Indian girl shook her head with a pretty vagueness, and vanished with them. General Armour walked up and down the room briskly, then turned on his wife and said: “Wife, it was a brutal thing: Frank doesn’t deserve to be—the father of her child.”
But Lali had moods—singular moods. She indulged in one three days after the arrival of Marion and Mrs. Townley. She had learned to ride with the side-saddle, and wore her riding-dress admirably. Nowhere did she show to better advantage. She had taken to riding now with General Armour on the country roads. ”

“ Many within the palace will have their eyes on the festival—on the lamps, and their ears will heed the kettledrums and pipes.”
“Even so, what if Lali whispers one word to Sidi Ahmad——”
“She could not go back to her people. The girl has a spirit of flame, there is nothing she will not dare. Besides, she has a longing to go back to her tribe. We will see.”
And Demid, in a whisper, told Michael what he must do to aid him. ”

“ Whatever Lālia's past life had been, I could never help admiring her many noble traits of character. I owed her life-long gratitude for her heroic self-sacrifice on the fateful night of the wreck of the Leonora; by me, at least, she will never be forgotten. Poor Lālia! Brave, loving, lovely child of the charmed isles of the southern main! reckless alike in love and hate, who shall judge? who condemn thee? Not I!
Kusis, Tulpé, and Kinie clung to me as if they could not bear to say farewell. ”

“ Lalia was accepted without suspicion by the children not as a nurse, but as a playmate. Weeks passed. The four played together with a greater harmony than the three had ever attained. Day after day the Reverend Orme sat waiting in his study and brooding. The dreaded call never came. He began to distrust his messenger.
Then one stifling afternoon as he sat dozing in his chair a sharp rap on the study door awakened him with a start.
"Master! Master!" called Lalia's voice.
"Yes, yes," cried Leighton; "come in."
As he rose from his chair Lalia entered. She was breathless with running. ”

“ Laline stopped short in her walk and looked at him intently. It was past five o'clock, but the sky was lighter since the snowfall and she could see his face clearly, the broad forehead and straight nose, the square outline, firm jaw, and handsome mouth softened now into tenderness, the clear olive skin and crisply curling black hair. Every feature seemed refined and idealised [Pg 119] from what she remembered of the man a few years before, at which time his mouth was hidden under a heavy moustache and his brow darkened by loosely-falling hair. ”

“ The words passed over Lalie's head, on into the house, and crashed against Madeleine's heart. Lalie started off at once, calling back:
"Nêne, I'm going; papa said so."
Michael was now raking together the little heaps of dead leaves and dry twigs he had assembled all over the pasture. Every time he flung an armful of the fuel on the fire, it flamed up, crackled prettily and sent up innumerable sparks.
Lalie danced around the fire, clapping her hands. Michael had gathered some early chestnuts and put them for her on a bed of embers that he had raked together at one side of the bonfire. ”

“ Then she took out the little vests and stockings, the baby's bibs, and Lalie's pinafores and hair ribbons. When she had them all spread out on the table, she emptied her bottle on them, drop by drop, as if she were sprinkling holy water.
"My little darlings—may it bring you happiness!"
She wanted to do something more for them, but it was late; and so that she might not call attention to her doings, she stepped out of her wooden shoes and went about the room noiselessly.
She found holes in Jo's stockings and mended them. Lalie was growing fast; her Sunday pinafore had become too short. ”

“ Meanwhile Laili was living in the jungle where her husband had left her a little heap of ashes. As soon as Majnun had gone, the fakir had taken her ashes and made them quite clean, and then he had mixed clay and water with the ashes, and made the figure of a woman with them, and so Laili regained her human form, and Khuda sent life into it. But Laili had become once more a hideous old woman, with a long, long nose, and teeth like tusks; just such an old woman, excepting her teeth, as she had been when she came out of the Rohu fish ”

“ Laili said, "Oh, that is quite easy. Khuda will make me a young girl again. In two days' time you must go into the garden, and there you will see a beautiful fruit. You must gather it and bring it into your room and cut it open yourself very gently, and you must not open it when your father or anybody else is with you, but when you are quite alone; for I shall be in the fruit quite naked, without any clothes at all on." In the morning Laili took her little dog's form, and disappeared in the garden.
Prince Majnun told all this to his father, who told him to do all the old woman had bidden him. ”

“ Prince Majnun was in great sorrow and grief when he saw his dear Laili turned into a little heap of ashes; and he went straight home to his father, and for a long, long time he would not be comforted. After a great many years he grew more cheerful and happy, and began to go again into his father's beautiful garden with Husain Mahamat. King Dantal wished his son to marry again. "I will only have Laili for my wife; I will not marry any other woman," said Prince Majnun.
"How can you marry Laili? Laili is dead. She will never come back to you," said the father. ”

“ So the angel came to Laili again as a fakir and carried her to King Dantal's garden. "Now," he said, "it is Khuda's command that you stay here till Prince Majnun comes to walk in the garden, and then you may show yourself to him. But you must not speak to him, if he is afraid of you; and should he be afraid of you, you will the next day become a little white dog." He then told her what she must do as a little dog to regain her human form.
Laili stayed in the garden, hidden in the tall grass, till Prince Majnun and Husain Mahamat came to walk in the garden. ”

“ Laila, on the contrary, lost all her beauty seen against the background of a modern hat. She looked darker, older, and harder in outline; and, seeing this herself, she pettishly tossed aside a black Leghorn in which Ourïeda had looked distractingly pretty. “I am Arab,” the elder girl said, “and I am proud of it. My face belongs to all time, not to the moment. Things like these take away the mystery which gives women their greatest charm. I want nothing but the chechia or the veil, ever!”
And it was then that Laila reminded Miss Luck of her promise to show them her brother's picture. ”

“ It is true that Lally’s father was a corn-chandler, but he was an honest one, and more than that, he was an intelligent, upright gentlemen. You arch your brows, as if a man could not be a tradesman and a gentleman. ”

“ We love each other--you've done it in your time, I'm told! I've been coming here, night after night, to see her; she wears that dress to please me--there! Now you've got it! And to-night, some devil--she says Roshan Khân, but she's dreaming; what can he have to do with it?--stood there and fired--at me, I think; but she flung herself--Ah! Laila, my darling, why did you? Now, will that satisfy you--you--you--"
"Hush!" came Laila's voice--"there is no use in being angry. Besides, he understands; he knows what it is to be in love quite well. Don't you, guardian? ”

“ Norah soothed her. “Nor would thy sister tell even a white fib about thee, I am sure.”
“Nevertheless, thou shalt hear the dream from me,” said the girl, pale and excited now, her great eyes reproaching Laila, who laughed impishly. “It is nothing at all—nothing. Only thou canst see—or thou soon wilt—what our life is in our father's house. I do not read many novels of the world outside, as Laila does, for the sidi, our father, does not wish it, and I love him so much, I hate to deceive him. ”

“ It was Lallie who spoke. "How dare you speak to her like that? Oh, you----"
Mrs. Atwood covered her face with her hands and fled from the room.
"Listen to me, Lallie! Don't let her come between us."
He spoke in sobbing gasps and caught at one of Lallie's hands. She drew it away.
"She has not come between us," she said scornfully; "it is yourself. You might have told me that it had all been the worst thing possible, and I could have forgiven you. Who am I to judge a man? But not this. You went back on her. You put her to open shame before me. You are a coward, Mr. Ballinger." ”