Marabout

“ Lady Marabout is a very charming person, despite her little foibles, and she gives very pleasant little dinners, both at her house in Lowndes Square and in her jointure villa at Twickenham, where the bad odors of Thames are drowned in the fragrance of the geraniums, piled in great heaps of red, white, and variegated blossom in the flowerbeds on the lawn. ”

“ We shall see the Countess of Marabout moving through London society with a West Indian, who has a skin like Othello; has as much idea of manners as a housemaid that suddenly turns out an heiress, and is invited by people to whom she yesterday carried up their hot water; reflects indelible disgrace on her chaperone by gaucheries unparalleled; throws glass or silver missiles at Soames's head when he doesn't wait upon her at luncheon to her liking, as she has been accustomed to do at the negroes——"
"Philip, pray don't!" cried Lady Marabout, piteously. ”

“ Girls do," thought Lady Marabout, as Cecil Ormsby came in from her ride with the brightest bloom on her cheeks a June breeze ever fanned there. She laid her hat on the table, flung her gauntlets at Bijou, and threw herself on her knees by Lady Marabout, a saucy smile on her face, though her lashes were wet. ”

“ Nor would Lady Marabout have been the same; the sunshine couldn't have shone so brightly, nor the milk of roses flowed so mildly under the weight and wear of marriageable but unmarried daughters; the sunshine would have been fitful, the milk of roses curdled at best. And no wonder! Those poor women! they have so much to go through in the world, and play but such a monotonous rôle, taken at its most brilliant and best, from first to last, from cradle to grave, from the berceaunettes in which they commence their existence to the mausoleum in which they finish it. ”

“ A fear, a hope, a joy, a dread, one so woven with another there was no disentangling them, sprang up like a ray of light in Lady Marabout's heart—a possibility dawned in her: to be rejected as an impossibility? Lady Marabout crossed the ante-room, her heart throbbing tumultuously, spurred on to noble atonement and reckless self-sacrifice, if fate allowed them.
She opened the drawing-room door; Flora Montolieu was alone.
"Flora, you have seen Goodwood?" ”

“ It was careless, silly, unlike you; you know how I dislike men of his—his—objectionable stamp," sighed Lady Marabout, the white and gold namesakes in her coiffure softly trembling a gentle sigh in the perfumy zephyr raised by the rotatory whirl of the waltzers, among whom she watched with a horrible fascination, as one watches a tiger being pugged out of its lair, or a deserter being led out to be shot, Chandos Cheveley, waltzing Rosediamond's priceless daughter down the ball-room. ”

“ Just as we have been talking of him, there is that man again! I must bow to him, I suppose; though if there be a person I dislike——" said Lady Marabout, giving a frigid little bend of her head as her barouche, with its dashing roans, rolled from her door, and a tilbury passed them, driving slowly through the square.
Cecil Ormsby bowed to its occupant with less severity, and laughed under the sheltering shadow of her white parasol-fringe.
"The Ogre has a very pretty trap, though, Lady Marabout, and the most delicious gray horse in it! Such good action!" ”

“ Lady Marabout is not the first person by a good many who has had to smile over sherry with a breaking heart. Ah! lips have quivered as they laughed over Chambertin, and trembled as they touched the bowl of a champagne-glass. Wine has assisted at many a joyous festa enough, but some that has been drunk in gayety has caught gleams, in the eyes of the drinkers, of salt water brighter than its brightest sparkles: water that no other eyes can see. ”

“ If she shouldn't be good style!"
And Lady Marabout's heart palpitated, possibly prophetically, as she set down her little Sèvres cup and rose out of her arm-chair, with Bijou shaking his silver collar and bells, to welcome the new inmate of Lowndes Square, with her sunny smile and her kindly voice, and her soft beaming eyes, which, as I have often stated, would have made Lady Marabout look amiable at an Abruzzi bandit who had demanded her purse, or an executioner who had led her out to capital punishment, and now made her radiate, warm and bright, on a guest whose advent she dreaded. ”

“ Empedocles thinks notoriety everything, and Diogenes thinks quiet everything—each has his own reading of ambition, and Lady Marabout had hers; the Duchess of Doncaster thirsted for the Garter for her husband, Lady Elmers's pride was to possess the smallest terrier that ever took daisy tea and was carried in a monkey-muff, her Grace of Amandine slaved night and day to bring her party in and throw the ministry out. Lady Marabout sighed but for one thing—to win the Pet Eligible of the season, and give éclat for once to one phase of her chaperone's existence. ”

“ Lady Marabout sank back in her chair, and curled Bijou's ears, with a sigh.
"My dear Philip, if everybody always thought of things in time, would there be any follies committed at all? It's precisely because repentance comes too late, that repentance is such a horrible wasp, with such a merciless sting. Besides, could I refuse poor Lilla Montolieu, unhappy as she is with that bear of a man?" ”

“ None can christen her Lady Tattersall any longer with point, for there are no yearling sales in that house in Lowndes Square, whatever there be in the other domiciles of that fashionable quarter. Lady Marabout has shaken that burden off her shoulders, and moves in blissful solitude and tripled serenity through Belgravia, relieved of responsibility, and wearing her years as lightly, losing the odd trick at her whist as sunnily, and beaming on the world in general as radiantly as any dowager in the English Peerage. ”

“ He led the way down steps, which one is continually doing in the Kasbah unless one is walking up them. He would explain nothing. Arriving at a lower level, he stopped before a hut. A filthy beggar lifted her body at our approach, and with skinny fingers indicated a collection of rain-washed ribbons tied upon rings sunk in the mortar of the wall. She lifted a ribbon.
"Marabout," she whined.
Mary and I were indignant. "Stuff and nonsense!" we told her.
"A marabout is a woman," I added.
"Or a harem," continued Mary, doubtful again.
"Or a hole in the door," the Illustrator sneered. ”

“ And I showed him the watch in my hand.
The Marabout quickly put his hand in his waist-belt, to assure himself of the truth, and was quite stupefied at finding the five-franc piece.
The spectators were astounded. Some among them began telling their beads with a vivacity evidencing a certain agitation of mind; but the Marabout frowned without saying a word, and I saw he was spelling over some evil design.
“I now believe in your supernatural power,” he said; “you are a real sorcerer; hence, I hope you will not fear to repeat here a trick you performed in your theatre;” ”

“ If I were a man I don't think I could resist her," thought Lady Marabout, as she sat in her box in the grand tier, tenth from the Queen's, moving her fan slowly, lifting her lorgnon now and then, listening vaguely to the music of the second act of the "Barbiere," for probably about the two hundredth time in her life, and looking at Flora Moutolieu, sitting opposite to her. ”

“ I explained further to the Illustrator on the way back. Mary, as usual, was with the blind guide and twenty-one beggars. If this nail of the girl's was to remain interesting to her, I warned, then it must continue delicately veiled. And even he, while doubting the attraction of a "nail" which was at all secreted, granted that hunting a marabout held possibilities for absorption.
The plot thickened that afternoon. It was Friday, and on Friday the Arabian women take their airing. They do not go shopping, or to the parks, or to the picture films. ”

“ Hush, hush, Lady Marabout, I thought better of you!"
"Good Heavens! where will it end?" thought Lady Marabout, distractedly, as Rosediamond's wayward daughter sprang down at the door with a flush in her face, and a contemptuous anger in her eyes, that made Bijou, jumping on her, stop, stare, and whine in canine dismay.
"And I fancied she was listening passively!" thought Lady Marabout. [Pg 159]
"Well! the man is gone to-day, that is one comfort. I am very thankful I acted as I did," reasoned that ever-worried lady in her boudoir the next morning. ”

“ Scorn our heroes until they die, then put them in a marble cheese-box."
"One must die to become good," completed the Deficient, efficiently.
"Could an old lady sit upon a tomb of a marabout?" I inquired, cautiously.
Old ladies could—and did.
"But the ribbons?" asked the Illustrator in a low voice, hoping that we didn't hear him.
"Come with me this day," urged the Soudanese. "Come with me to El Hamel, and I shall show you the most beautiful tomb of the most wondrous marabout in Africa or the United States— yes, and hung-with ribbons!" ”

“ After the magic circle has been limned on the ground, a Marabout announces that a woman may step within the inspired figure and that, by Allah's will, she will fall asleep and have a vision which shall contain certain guidance for the tribe in this hour of trial. The Marabouts always choose a woman that is far from young and usually in some way abnormal. When his subject falls asleep, she sees in her dream the legendary, mysterious traveler, Ali ben Abi Thaleb, with whom she speaks in a loud voice, while the Marabout constructs from her words new horoscopes for the guidance of the tribe. ”

“ The soul of Lady Marabout had been disquieted ever since her son's suggestions at Lady George Frangipane's morning party, and she began to worry: for herself, for Valencia, for Goodwood, for Cardonnel, for her responsibilities in general, and for her "dearest Adeliza's" alternate opinions of her duenna qualifications in particular. Lady Marabout had an intense wish, an innocent wish enough, as innocent and very similar in its way to that of an Eton boy to make a centre at a rifle-contest, viz., to win the Marquis of Goodwood ”

“ Lady Marabout played a little tattoo with her spoon in perplexity.
"My dear Philip, you know as well as I do what I mean. One might think you were a boy of twenty to hear you!"
"My dear mother, like all disputants, when beaten in argument and driven into a corner, you resort to vituperation of your opponent!" laughed Carruthers, as he left her and lounged away to pick up the stick with which pretty Flora Elmers had just knocked the pipe out of Aunt Sally's head on to the velvet lawn of Lady George Frangipane's dower-house, leaving his mother by no means tranquillized by his suggestions. ”

“ You see, there are so few whom it doesn't hit somewhere," returned Lady Marabout, quite innocent of the neat satire of her own last sentence.
Cecil Ormsby laughed, and threw herself down by her chaperone's side:
"Never mind: I can bear their enmity; it is a greater compliment than their liking. The women whom women love are always quiet, colorless, inoffensive—foils. Lady Marabout, tell me, why did you give that general order to Mason?"
"I have told you before, my dear. Because I have no wish to know Mr. Chandos Cheveley," returned Lady Marabout, as stiffly as she could say anything. ”

“ Can anything be more comfortable, more tranquil, than I am now? I swing through life in a rocking-chair; if I'm a trifle bored now and then, it's my heaviest trial. I float as pleasantly on the waves of London life, in my way, as the lotus-eaters of poetry on the Ganges in theirs; and you'd have the barbarity to introduce into my complacent existence the sting of matrimony, the phosphorus of Hymen's torch, the symbolical serpent of a wedding-ring?—for shame!"
Lady Marabout laughed despite herself, and the solemnity, in her eyes, of the subject. ”

“ But the more hints, innuendoes, questions, and adroitly concealed but simply suggested animadversion Lady Marabout received, the greater was her glory, the warmer her complacency, when she saw her Little Montolieu, who was not little at all, leading, as she undoubtedly did lead, the most desired eligible of the day captive in her chains, sent bouquets by him, begged for waltzes by him, followed by him at the Ride, riveting his lorgnon at the Opera, monopolizing his attention—though, clever little intriguer, she knew too well how to pique him ever to let him monopolize hers. ”

“ Lady Marabout was silent: no Andalusian ever worried her fan more ceaselessly in coquetry than she did in [Pg 111] perplexity. Her heart was appealed to, and when that was enlisted, Lady Marabout was lost!
"But—but—my dear Major Cardonnel, you are aware——" she began, and stopped. I should suppose it may be a little awkward to tell a man to his face he is "not desirable!"
"I am aware that I cannot match with Goodwood? I am; but I know, also, that Goodwood's love cannot match with mine, and that your niece's affection is not his. ”

“ Next morning, after the Arabs and blacks had gone through their usual ceremonies, we were brought out, with our arms bound to our sides.
The marabout had, in the meantime, been among the people, endeavouring to excite them against us, and they now gathered round from every side with savage gestures, hurling bitter curses at our heads, calling us vile Christians, despisers of the true Prophet, Nazarene dogs, accursed infidels, children of Satan, and similar names, till they had exhausted their vocabulary of abuse. ”