The Sheik

With the traits he had inherited from his mother's people and with his

desert upbringing he looked, as he does now, pure Arab. When he was

fifteen my father induced the Sheik to send him to Paris to be

educated. With his own European tendencies the Sheik had wished it

also, but he could not bring himself to part with the boy before, and

it was a tremendous wrench to let him go when he did. It was then that

I first saw him. I was eighteen at the time, and had just begun my

military training, but as my regiment was stationed in Paris I was able

to be at home a good deal. He was such a handsome, high-spirited lad.

Men mature very young in the desert and in many ways he was a great

deal older than I was, in spite of my three years' seniority. But, of

course, in other ways he was a perfect child. He had a fiendish temper

and resented any check on his natural lawless inclinations. He loathed

the restrictions that had to be put upon him and he hated the restraint

of town life.

He had been accustomed to having his own way in nearly

everything, and to the constant adulation of the tribesmen, and he was

not prepared to give to anybody else the obedience that he gave

willingly to the Sheik. There were some very stormy times, and I never

admired my father in anything so much as his handling of that young

savage. His escapades were nerve-racking and his beaux yeux led

him into endless scrapes. The only threat that reduced him to order was

that of sending him home to the Sheik in disgrace. He would promise

amendment and take himself off to the Bois to work off his superfluous

energy on my father's horses--until he broke out again. But in spite of

his temper and his diableries he was very lovable and everybody

liked him.

"After a year with us in Paris my father, always mindful of his real

nationality, sent him for two years to a tutor in England, where I had

myself been. The tutor was an exceptional man, used to dealing with

exceptional boys, and Ahmed did very well with him. I don't mean that

he did much work--that he evaded skilfully and spent most of his time

hunting and shooting. The only thing that he studied at all seriously

was veterinary surgery, which he knew would be useful to him with his

own horses, and in which his tutor was level-headed enough to encourage

him. Then at the end of two years he came back to us for another year.

He had gone to the desert every summer for his holidays, and on each

occasion the Sheik let him return with greater reluctance. He was

always afraid that the call of civilisation would be too much for his

adopted son, especially as he grew older, but although Ahmed had

changed very much from the wild desert lad who had first come to us,

and had developed into a polished man of the world, speaking French and

English as fluently as Arabic, with plenty of means to amuse himself in

any way that he wished--for the Sheik was very rich and kept him

lavishly supplied with money--and though in that last year he was with

us he was courted and feted in a way that would have turned most

people's heads, he was always secretly longing for the time when

he would go back to the desert. It was the desert, not civilisation

that called loudest to him. He loved the life and he adored the man

whom he thought was his father. To be the son and heir of Ahmed Ben

Hassan seemed to him to be the highest pinnacle that any man's ambition

could reach. He was perfectly indifferent to the flattery and attention

that his money and his good looks brought him. My father entertained

very largely and Ahmed became the fashion--'Le bel Arabe' he

was called, and he enjoyed a succes fou which bored him to

extinction--and at the end of the year, having written to the Sheik for

permission to go home, he shook the dust of Paris off his feet and went

back to the desert. I went with him. It was my first visit and the

first time that I had experienced Ahmed en prince. I had never

seen him in anything but European clothes, and I got quite a shock when

I came up on deck the morning that we arrived at Oran and found an Arab

of the Arabs waiting for me. The robes and a complete change of

carriage and expression that seemed to go with them altered him

curiously and I hardly recognised him. Some of his men were waiting for

him on the quay and their excitement was extraordinary. I realised from

the deference and attention that the French officials paid to Ahmed the

position that the old Sheik had made for himself and the high esteem in

which he was held.