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.