"Truly, though I were to die, it would be naught,If I were near my love, for whom my bosom aches,For whom my heart is beating."Yes, I am to die, but death is nothingO ye who pass and see me dying,For I have kissed the eyes, the mouth that I desired."
"Truly, though I were to die, it would be naught,If I were near my love, for whom my bosom aches,For whom my heart is beating."Yes, I am to die, but death is nothingO ye who pass and see me dying,For I have kissed the eyes, the mouth that I desired."
"But that is a sad song," said Victoria, when Maïeddine ceased his tragic chant, after many verses.
"Thou wouldst not say so, if thou hadst ever loved. Nothing is sad to a lover, except to lose his love, or not to have his love returned."
"But an Arab girl has no chance to love," Victoria argued. "Her father gives her to a man when she is a child, and they have never even spoken to each other until after the wedding."
"We of the younger generation do not like these child marriages," Maïeddine apologized, eagerly. "And, in any case, an Arab man, unless he be useless as a mule without an eye, knows how to make a girl love him in spite of herself. We are not like the men of Europe, bound down by a thousand conventions. Besides, we sometimes fall in love with women not of our own race. These we teach to love us before marriage."
Victoria laughed again, for she felt light-hearted in the beautiful morning. "Do Arab men always succeed as teachers?"
"What is written is written," he answered slowly. "Yet it is written that a strong man carves his own fate. And for thyself, wouldst thou know what awaits thee in the future?"
"I trust in God and my star."
"Thou wouldst not, then, that the desert speak to thee with its tongue of sand out of the wisdom of all ages?"
"What dost thou mean?"
"I mean that my cousin, Lella M'Barka, can divine the future from the sand of the Sahara, which gave her life, and life to her ancestors for a thousand years before her. It is a gift. Wilt thou that she exercise it for thee to-night, when we camp?"
"There is hardly any real sand in this part of the desert," said Victoria, seeking some excuse not to hear M'Barka's prophecies, yet not to hurt M'Barka's feelings, or Maïeddine's. "It is all far away, where we see the hills which look golden as ripe grain. And we cannot reach those hills by evening."
"My cousin always carries the sand for her divining. Everynight she reads in the sand what will happen to her on the morrow, just as the women of Europe tell their fate by the cards. It is sand from the dunes round Touggourt; and mingled with it is a little from Mecca, which was brought to her by a holy man, a marabout. It would give her pleasure to read the sand for thee."
"Then I will ask her to do it," Victoria promised.
As the day grew, its first brightness faded. A wind blew up from the south, and slowly darkened the sky with a strange lilac haze, which seemed tangible as thin silk gauze. Behind it the sun glimmered like a great silver plate, and the desert turned pale, as in moonlight. Although the ground was hard under the camels' feet, the wind carried with it from far-away spaces a fine powder of sand which at last forced Victoria to let down the haoulis, and Maïeddine and the two Negroes to cover their faces with the veils of their turbans, up to the eyes.
"It will rain this afternoon," M'Barka prophesied from between her curtains.
"No," Maïeddine contradicted her. "There has been rain this month, and thou knowest better than I do that beyond El Aghouat it rains but once in five years. Else, why do the men of the M'Zab country break their hearts to dig deep wells? There will be no rain. It is but a sand-storm we have to fear."
"Yet I feel in the roots of my hair and behind my eyes that the rain is coming."
Maïeddine shrugged his shoulders, for an Arab does not twice contradict a woman, unless she be his wife. But the lilac haze became a pall of crape, and the noon meal was hurried. Maïeddine saved some of the surprises he had brought for a more favourable time. Hardly had they started on again, when rain began to fall, spreading over the desert in a quivering silver net whose threads broke and were constantly mended again. Then the rough road (to which the little caravan did not keep) and all the many diverging tracks became wide silverribbons, lacing the plain broken with green dayas. A few minutes more—incredibly few, it seemed to Victoria—and the dayas were deep lakes, where the water swirled and bubbled round the trunks of young pistachio trees. A torrent poured from the mourning sky, and there was a wild sound of marching water, which Victoria could hear, under the haoulis which sheltered her. No water came through them, for the arching form of the bassour was like the roof of a tent, and the rain poured down on either side. She peeped out, enjoying her own comfort, while pitying Maïeddine and the Negroes; but all three had covered their thin burnouses with immensely thick, white, hooded cloaks, woven of sheep's wool, and they had no air of depression. By and by they came to an oued, which should have been a dry, stony bed without a trickle of water; but half an hour's downpour had created a river, as if by black magic; and Victoria could guess the force at which it was rushing, by the stout resistance she felt Guelbi had to make, as he waded through.
"A little more, and we could not have crossed," said Maïeddine, when they had mounted up safely on the other side of the oued.
"Art thou not very wet and miserable?" the girl asked sympathetically.
"I—miserable?" he echoed. "I—who am privileged to feast upon the deglet nour, in my desert?"
Victoria did not understand his metaphor, for the deglet nour is the finest of all dates, translucent as amber, sweet as honey, and so dear that only rich men or great marabouts ever taste it. "The deglet nour?" she repeated, puzzled.
"Dost thou not know the saying that the smile of a beautiful maiden is the deglet nour of Paradise, and nourishes a man's soul, so that he can bear any discomfort without being conscious that he suffers?"
"I did not know that Arab men set women so high," said Victoria, surprised; for now the rain had stopped, suddenly asit began, and she could look out again from between the curtains. Soon they would dry in the hot sun.
"Thou hast much to learn then, about Arab men," Maïeddine answered, "and fortunate is thy teacher. It is little to say that we would sacrifice our lives for the women we love, because for us life is not that great treasure it is to the Roumis, who cling to it desperately. We would do far more than give our lives for the beloved woman, we Arabs. We would give our heads, which is the greatest sacrifice a man of Islam could make."
"But is not that the same thing as giving life?"
"It is a thousandfold more. It is giving up the joy of eternity. For we are taught to believe that if a man's head is severed from his body, it alone goes to Paradise. His soul is maimed. It is but a bodiless head, and all celestial joys are for ever denied to it."
"How horrible!" the girl exclaimed. "Dost thou really believe such a thing?"
He feared that he had made a mistake, and that she would look upon him as an alien, a pagan, with whom she could have no sympathy. "If I am more modern in my ideas than my forefathers," he said tactfully, "I must not confess it to a Roumia, must I, oh Rose of the West?—for that would be disloyal to Islam. Yet if I did believe, still would I give my head for the love of the one woman, the star of my destiny, she whose sweet look deserves that the word 'aïn' should stand for bright fountain, and for the ineffable light in a virgin's eyes."
"I did not know until to-day, Si Maïeddine, that thou wert a poet," Victoria told him.
"All true Arabs are poets. Our language—the literary, not the common Arabic—is the language of poets, as thou must have read in thy books. But I have now such inspiration as perhaps no man ever had; and thou wilt learn other things about me, while we journey together in the desert."
As he said this he looked at her with a look which even her simplicity could not have mistaken if she had thought of it; but instantly the vision of Saidee came between her eyes and his. The current of her ideas was abruptly changed. "How many days now," she asked suddenly, "will the journey last?"
His face fell. "Art thou tired already of this new way of travelling, that thou askest me a question thou hast not once asked since we started?"
"Oh no, no," she reassured him. "I love it. I am not tired at all. But—I did not question thee at first because thou didst not desire me to know thy plans, while I was still within touch of Europeans. Thou didst not put this reason in such words, for thou wouldst not have let me feel I had not thy full trust. But it was natural thou shouldst not give it, when thou hadst so little acquaintance with me, and I did not complain. Now it is different. Even if I wished, I could neither speak nor write to any one I ever knew. Therefore I question thee."
"Art thou impatient for the end?" he wanted to know, jealously.
"Not impatient. I am happy. Yet I should like to count the days, and say each night, 'So many more times must the sun rise and set before I see my sister.'"
"Many suns must rise and set," Maïeddine confessed doggedly.
"But—when first thou planned the journey, thou saidst; 'In a fortnight thou canst send thy friends news, I hope.'"
"If I had told thee then, that it must be longer, wouldst thou have come with me? I think not. For thou sayest I did not wholly trust thee. How much less didst thou trust me?"
"Completely. Or I would not have put myself in thy charge."
"Perhaps thou art convinced of that now, when thou knowest me and Lella M'Barka, and thou hast slept in the tent of my father, and in the houses of my friends. But I saw in thine eyes at that time a doubt thou didst not wish to let thyselffeel, because through me alone was there a way to reach thy sister. I wished to bring thee to her, for thy sake, and for her sake, though I have never looked upon her face and never shall——"
"Why dost thou say 'never shall'?" the girl broke in upon him suddenly.
The blood mounted to his face. He had made a second mistake, and she was very quick to catch him up.
"It was but a figure of speech," he corrected himself.
"Thou dost not mean that she's shut up, and no man allowed to see her?"
"I know nothing. Thou wilt find out all for thyself. But thou wert anxious to go to her, at no matter what cost, and I feared to dishearten thee, to break thy courage, while I was still a stranger, and could not justify myself in thine eyes. Now, wilt thou forgive me an evasion, which was to save thee anxiety, if I say frankly that, travel as we may, we cannot reach our journey's end for many days yet?"
"I must forgive thee," said Victoria, with a sigh. "Yet I do not like evasions. They are unworthy."
"I am sorry," Maïeddine returned, so humbly that he disarmed her. "It would be terrible to offend thee."
"There can be no question of offence," she consoled him. "I am very, very grateful for all thou hast done for me. I often lie awake in the night, wondering how I can repay thee everything."
"When we come to the end of the journey, I will tell thee of a thing thou canst do, for my happiness," Maïeddine said in a low voice, as if half to himself.
"Wilt thou tell me now to what place we are going? I should like to know, and I should like to hear thee describe it."
He did not speak for a moment. Then he said slowly; "It is a grief to deny thee anything, oh Rose, but the secret is not mine to tell, even to thee."
"The secret!" she echoed. "Thou hast never called it a secret."
"If I did not use that word, did I not give thee to understand the same thing?"
"Thou meanest, the secret about Cassim, my sister's husband?"
"Cassim ben Halim has ceased to live."
Victoria gave a little cry. "Dead! But thou hast made me believe, in spite of the rumours, that he lived."
"I cannot explain to thee," Maïeddine answered gloomily, as if hating to refuse her anything. "In the end, thou wilt know all, and why I had to be silent."
"But my sister?" the girl pleaded. "There is no mystery about her? Thou hast concealed nothing which concerns Saidee?"
"Thou hast my word that I will take thee to the place where she is. Thou gavest me thy trust. Give it me again."
"I have not taken it away. It is thine," said Victoria.
That night they spent in a caravanserai, because, after the brief deluge of rain, the ground was too damp for camping, when an invalid was of the party. When they reached the place after sunset, the low square of the building was a block of marble set in the dull gold of the desert, carved in dazzling white against a deep-blue evening sky. Like Ben Halim's house, it was roughly fortified, with many loopholes in the walls, for it had been built to serve the uses of less peaceful days than these. Within the strong gates, on one side were rooms for guests, each with its own door and window opening into the huge court. On another side of the square were the kitchens and dining-room, as well as living-place for the Arab landlord and his hidden family; and opposite was a roofed, open-fronted shelter for camels and other animals, the ground yellow with sand and spilt fodder. Water overflowed from a small well, making a pool in the courtyard, in which ducks and geese waddled, quacking, turkey-cocks fought in quiet corners, barked at impotently by Kabyle puppies. Tall, lean hounds or sloughis, kept to chase the desert gazelles, wandered near the kitchens, in the hope of bones, and camels gobbled dismally as their tired drivers forced them to their knees, or thrust handfuls of date stones down their throats. There were sheep, too, and goats; and even a cow, the "perpetual mother" loved and valued by Arabs.
M'Barka refused to "read the sand" that night, when Maïeddine suggested it. The sand would yield up its secretsonly under the stars, she said, and wished to wait until they should be in the tents.
All night, outside Victoria's open but shuttered window, there was a stealthy stirring of animals in the dark, a gliding of ghostly ducks, a breathing of sheep and camels. And sometimes the wild braying of a donkey or the yelp of a dog tore the silence to pieces.
The next day was hot; so that at noon, when they stopped to eat, the round blot of black shadow under one small tree was precious as a black pearl. And there were flies. Victoria could not understand how they lived in the desert, miles from any house, miles from the tents of nomads; where there was no vegetation, except an occasional scrubby tree, or a few of the desert gourds which the Arabs use to cure the bite of scorpions. But she had not seen the cages of bones, sometimes bleached like old ivory, sometimes of a dreadful red, which told of wayside tragedies. Always when they had come in sight of a skeleton, Maïeddine had found some excuse to make the girl look in another direction; for he wanted her to love the desert, not to feel horror of its relentlessness.
Now for the first time he had full credit for his cleverness as an organizer. Never before had they been so remote from civilization. When travelling in the carriage, stopping each night at the house of some well-to-do caïd or adel, it had been comparatively easy to provide supplies; but to-day, when jellied chicken and cream-cheese, almond cakes and oranges appeared at luncheon, and some popular French mineral water (almost cool because the bottles had been wrapped in wet blanket) fizzed in the glasses, Victoria said that Si Maïeddine must have a tame djinn for a slave.
"Wait till evening," he told her. "Then perhaps thou mayest see something to please thee." But he was delighted with her compliments, and made her drink water from the glass out of which he had drunk, that she might be sure of his good faith in all he had sworn to her yesterday. "They whodrink water from the same cup have made an eternal pact together," he said. "I should not dare to be untrue, even if I would. And thou—I think that thou wilt be true to me."
"Why, certainly I will," answered Victoria, with the pretty American accent which Stephen Knight had admired and smiled at the night he heard it first. "Thou art one of my very best friends."
Maïeddine looked down into the glass and smiled, as if he were a crystal-gazer, and could see something under the bright surface, that no one else could see.
Night folded down over the desert, hot and velvety, like the wings of a mother-bird covering her children; but before darkness fell, the tents glimmered under the stars. There were two only, a large one for the women, and one very small for Maïeddine. The Negroes would roll themselves in their burnouses, and lie beside the animals. But sleeping-time had not come yet; and it was the Soudanese who prepared the evening meal.
One of them was a good cook, and for that reason Maïeddine had begged him from the Agha. He made desert bread, by mixing farina with salted water, and baking it on a flat tin supported by stones over a fire of dry twigs. When the thin loaf was crisply brown on top, the man took it off the fire, and covered it up, on the tin, because it was to be eaten hot.
While Victoria waited for all to be got ready, she strolled a little away from the tents and the group of resting animals, having promised Maïeddine to avoid the tufts of alfa grass, for fear of vipers which sometimes lurked among them. He would have liked to go with her, but the unfailing tact of the Arab told him that she wished to be alone with her thoughts, and he could only hope that they might be of him.
Here, it was no longer beautiful desert. They had passed the charming region of dayas, and were entering the grim world through which, long ago, the ever harried M'Zabites had fled tofind a refuge beyond the reach of greedy pursuers. Nevertheless the enchantment of the Sahara, in all its phases, had taken hold of Victoria. She did not now feel that the desert was a place where a tired soul might find oblivion, though once she had imagined that it would be a land of forgetfulness. Arabs say, in talking idly to Europeans, that men forget their past in the desert, but she doubted if they really forgot, in these vast spaces where there was so much time to think. She herself began to feel that the illimitable skies, where flamed sunsets and sunrises whose miracles no eye saw, might teach her mysteries she had snatched at and lost, in dreams. The immensity of the desert sent her soul straining towards the immensity of the Beyond; and almost, in flashes elusive as the light on a bird's wing, she understood what eternity might mean. She felt that the last days of her childhood had been left behind, on the threshold of these mysterious spaces, this vastness into which she had plunged, as into an ocean. Yet she did not regret the loss, if it were a loss. Never, she thought, whatever might happen, would she wish not to have known this experience, not to have entered upon this great adventure, whose end Maïeddine still hid behind a veil of secrecy.
It was true, as she had told him, that she was not impatient, though she would have liked to count the days like the beads of a rosary. She looked forward to each one, as to the discovery of a beautiful thing new to the world and to her; for though the spaces surrounding her were wide beyond thinking, they were not empty. As ships, great and small, sail the sea, so sailed the caravans of the nomad tribes in the desert which surges on unchecked to Egypt: nomads who come and go, north and south, east and west, under the burning sun and the throbbing stars, as Allah has written their comings and goings in His book: men in white, journeying with their women, their children, and their trains of beasts, singing as they pass, and at night under the black tents resting to the music of the tom-tom and raïta.
Victoria's gaze waded through the shadows that flow over the desert at evening, deep and blue and transparent as water. She searched the distances for the lives that must be going on somewhere, perhaps not far away, though she would never meet them. They, and she, were floating spars in a great ocean; and it made the ocean more wonderful to know that the spars were there, each drifting according to its fate.
The girl drew into her lungs the strong air of the desert, born of the winds which bring life or death to its children.
The scent of the wild thyme, which she could never again disentangle from thoughts of the Sahara, was very sweet, even insistent. She knew that it was loved by nomad women; and she let pictures rise before her mind of gorgeous dark girls on camels, in plumed red bassourahs, going from one desert city to another, to dance—cities teeming with life, which she would never see among these spaces that seemed empty as the world before creation. She imagined the ghosts of these desert beauties crowding round her in the dusk, bringing their fragrance with them, the wild thyme they had loved in life, crushed in their bosoms; pathetic ghosts, who had not learned to rise beyond what they had once desired, therefore compelled to haunt the desert, the only world which they had known. In the wind that came sighing to her ears from the dark ravines of the terrible chebka, she seemed to hear battle-songs and groans of desert men who had fought and died ages ago, whose bones had crumbled under her feet, perhaps, and whose descendants had not changed one whit in religion, custom, or thought, or even in dress.
Victoria was glad that Maïeddine had let her have these desert thoughts alone, for they made her feel at home in the strange world her fancy peopled; but the touch of the thyme-scented ghosts was cold. It was good to turn back at last towards the tents, and see how the camp-fire crimsoned the star-dusk.
"Thou wert happy alone?" Maïeddine questioned her jealously.
"I was not alone."
He understood. "I know. The desert voices spoke to thee, of the desert mystery which they alone can tell; voices we can hear only by listening closely."
"That was the thought in my mind. How odd thou shouldst put it into words."
"Dost thou think it odd? But I am a man of the desert. I held back, for thee to go alone and hear the voices, knowing they would teach thee to understand me and my people. I knew, too, that the spirits would be kind, and say nothing to frighten thee. Besides, thou didst not go to them quite alone, for thine own white angel walked on thy right hand, as always."
"Thou makest poetical speeches, Si Maïeddine."
"It is no poetry to speak of thy white angel. We believe that each one of us has a white angel at his right hand, recording his good actions. But ordinary mortals have also their black angels, keeping to the left, writing down wicked thoughts and deeds. Hast thou not seen men spitting to the left, to show despite of their black angels? But because thy soul is never soiled by sinful thoughts, there was no need for a black angel, and whilst thou wert still a child, Allah discharged him of his mission."
"And thou, Si Maïeddine, dost thou think, truly, that a black angel walks ever at thy left side?"
"I fear so." Maïeddine glanced to the left, as if he could see a dark figure writing on a slate. Things concerning Victoria must have been written on that slate, plans he had made, of which neither his white angel nor hers would approve. But, he told himself, if they had to be carried out, she would be to blame, for driving him to extremes. "Whilst thou art near me," he said aloud, "my black angel lags behind, and if thou wert to be with me forever, I——"
"Since that cannot be, thou must find a better way to keephim in the background," Victoria broke in lightly. But Si Maïeddine's compliments were oppressive. She wished it were not the Arab way to pay so many. He had been different at first; and feeling the change in him with a faint stirring of uneasiness, she hurried her steps to join M'Barka.
The invalid reclined on a rug of golden jackal skins, and rested a thin elbow on cushions of dyed leather, braided in intricate strips by Touareg women. Victoria sat beside her, Maïeddine opposite, and Fafann waited upon them as they ate.
After supper, while the Bedouin woman saw that everything was ready for her mistress and the Roumia, in their tent, M'Barka spread out her precious sand from Mecca and the dunes round her own Touggourt. She had it tied up in green silk, such as is used for the turbans of men who have visited Mecca, lined with a very old Arab brocade, purple and gold, like the banners that drape the tombs of marabouts. She opened the bag carefully, until it lay flat on the ground in front of her knees, the sand piled in the middle, as much perhaps as could have been heaped on a soup plate.
For a moment she sat gazing at the sand, her lips moving. She looked wan as old ivory in the dying firelight, and in the hollows of her immense eyes seemed to dream the mysteries of all ages. "Take a handful of sand," she said to Victoria. "Hold it over thine heart. Now, wish with the whole force of thy soul."
Victoria wished to find Saidee safe, and to be able to help her, if she needed help.
"Put back the sand, sprinkling it over the rest."
The girl, though not superstitious, could not help being interested, even fascinated. It seemed to her that the sand had a magical sparkle.
M'Barka's eyes became introspective, as if she waited for a message, or saw a vision. She was as strange, as remote from modern womanhood as a Cassandra. Presently she started, and began trailing her brown fingers lightly over the sand,pressing them down suddenly now and then, until she had made three long, wavy lines, the lower ones rather like telegraphic dots and dashes.
"Lay the forefinger of thy left hand on any figure in these lines," she commanded. "Now on another—yet again, for the third time. That is all thou hast to do. The rest is for me."
She took from some hiding-place in her breast a little old note-book, bound in dark leather, glossy from constant use. With it came a perfume of sandalwood. Turning the yellow leaves of the book, covered with fine Arab lettering, she read in a murmuring, indistinct voice, that sounded to Victoria like one of those desert voices of which Maïeddine had spoken. Also she measured spaces between the figures the girl had touched, and counted monotonously.
"Thy wish lies a long way from thee," she said at last. "A long way! Thou couldst never reach it of thyself—never, not till the end of the world. I see thee—alone, very helpless. Thou prayest. Allah sends thee a man—a strong man, whose brain and heart and arm are at thy service. Allah is great!"
"Tell her what the man is like, cousin," Maïeddine prompted, eagerly.
"He is dark, and young. He is not of thy country, oh Rose of the West, but trust him, rely upon him, or thou art undone. In thy future, just where thou hast ceased to look for them, I see troubles and disappointments, even dangers. That is the time, above all others, to let thyself be guided by the man Allah has sent to be thy prop. He has ready wit and courage. His love for thee is great. It grows and grows. He tells thee of it; and thou—thou seest between him and thee a barrier, high and fearful as a wall with sharp knives on top. For thine eyes it is impassable. Thine heart is sad; and thy words to him will pierce his soul with despair. But think again. Be true to thyself and to thy star. Speak another word, andthrow down that high barrier, as the wall of Jericho was thrown down. Thou canst do it. All will depend on the decision of a moment—thy whole future, the future of the man, and of a woman whose face I cannot see."
M'Barka smoothed away the tracings in the sand.
"What—is there no more?" asked Maïeddine.
"No, it is dark before my eyes now. The light has gone from the sand. I can still tell her a few little things, perhaps. Such things as the luckiest colours to wear, the best days to choose for journeys. But she is different from most girls. I do not think she would care for such hints."
"All colours are lucky. All days are good," said Victoria. "I thank thee for what thou hast told me, Lella M'Barka."
She did not wish to hear more. What she had heard was more than enough. Not that she really believed that M'Barka could see into the future; but because of the "dark man." Any fortune-teller might introduce a dark man into the picture of a fair girl's destiny; but the allusions were so marked that Victoria's vague unrestfulness became distress. She tried to encourage herself by thinking of Maïeddine's dignified attitude, from the beginning of their acquaintance until now. And even now, he had changed only a little. He was too complimentary, that was all; and the difference in his manner might arise from knowing her more intimately. Probably Lella M'Barka, like many elderly women of other and newer civilizations, was over-romantic; and the best thing was to prevent her from putting ridiculous ideas into Maïeddine's head. Such ideas would spoil the rest of the journey for both.
"Remember all I have told thee, when the time comes," M'Barka warned her.
"Yes—oh yes, I will remember."
"Now it is my turn. Read the sand for me," said Maïeddine.
M'Barka made as if she would wrap the sand in its bag. "I can tell thy future better another time. Not now. It would not be wise. Besides, I have done enough. I am tired."
"Look but a little way along the future, then, and say what thou seest. I feel that it will bring good fortune to touch the sand where the hand of Ourïeda has touched it."
Always now, he spoke of Victoria, or to her, as "Rose" (Ourïeda in Arabic); but as M'Barka gave her that name also, the girl could hardly object.
"I tell thee, instead it may bring thee evil."
"For good or evil, I will have the fortune now," Maïeddine insisted.
"Be it upon thy head, oh cousin, not mine. Take thy handful of sand, and make thy wish."
Maïeddine took it from the place Victoria had touched, and his wish was that, as the grains of sand mingled, so their destinies might mingle inseparably, his and hers.
M'Barka traced the three rows of mystic signs, and read her notebook, mumbling. But suddenly she let it drop into her lap, covering the signs with both thin hands.
"What ails thee?" Maïeddine asked, frowning.
"I saw thee stand still and let an opportunity slip by."
"I shall not do that."
"The sand has said it. Shall I stop, or go on?"
"Go on."
"I see another chance to grasp thy wish. This time thou stretchest out thine hand. I see thee, in a great house—the house of one thou knowest, whose name I may not speak. Thou stretchest out thine hand. The chance is given thee——"
"What then?"
"Then—I cannot tell thee, what then. Thou must not ask. My eyes are clouded with sleep. Come Ourïeda, it is late. Let us go to our tent."
"No," said Maïeddine. "Ourïeda may go, but not thou."
Victoria rose quickly and lightly from among the jackal skins and Touareg cushions which Maïeddine had provided for her comfort. She bade him good night, and with all his oldcalm courtesy he kissed his hand after it had pressed hers. But there was a fire of anger or impatience in his eyes.
Fafann was in the tent, waiting to put her mistress to bed, and to help the Roumia if necessary. The mattresses which had come rolled up on the brown mule's back, had been made into luxurious looking beds, covered with bright-coloured, Arab-woven blankets, beautiful embroidered sheets of linen, and cushions slipped into fine pillow-cases. Folding frames draped with new mosquito nettings had been arranged to protect the sleepers' hands and faces; and there was a folding table on which stood French gilt candlesticks and a glass basin and water-jug, ornamented with gilded flowers; just such a basin and jug as Victoria had seen in the curiosity-shop of Mademoiselle Soubise. There were folded towels, too, of silvery damask.
"What wonderful things we have!" the girl exclaimed. "I don't see how we manage to carry them all. It is like a story of the 'Arabian Nights,' where one has but to rub a lamp, and a powerful djinn brings everything one wants."
"The Lord Maïeddine is the powerful djinn who has brought all thou couldst possibly desire, without giving thee even the trouble to wish for things," said Fafann, showing her white teeth, and glancing sidelong at the Roumia. "These are not all. Many of these things thou hast seen already. Yet there are more." Eagerly she lifted from the ground, which was covered with rugs, a large green earthern jar. "It is full of rosewater to bathe thy face, for the water of the desert here is brackish, and harsh to the skin, because of saltpetre. The Sidi ordered enough rosewater to last till Ghardaia, in the M'Zab country. Then he will get thee more."
"But it is for us both—for Lella M'Barka more than for me," protested Victoria.
Fafann laughed. "My mistress no longer spends time in thinking of her skin. She prays much instead; and the Sidi has given her an amulet which touched the sacred Black Stoneat Mecca. To her, that is worth all the rest; and it is worth this great journey, which she takes with so much pain. The rosewater, and the perfumes from Tunis, and the softening creams made in the tent of the Sidi's mother, are all offered to thee."
"No, no," the girl persisted, "I am sure they are meant more for Lella M'Barka than for me. She is his cousin."
"Hast thou never noticed the caravans, when they have passed us in the desert, how it is always the young and beautiful women who rest in the bassourahs, while the old ones trot after the camels?"
"I have noticed that, and it is very cruel."
"Why cruel, oh Roumia? They have had their day. And when a man has but one camel, he puts upon its back his treasure, the joy of his heart. A man must be a man, so say even the women. And the Sidi is a man, as well as a great lord. He is praised by all as a hunter, and for the straightness of his aim with a gun. He rides, thou seest, as if he were one with his horse, and as he gallops in the desert, so would he gallop to battle if need be, for he is brave as the Libyan lion, and strong as the heroes of old legends. Yet there is nothing too small for him to bend his mind upon, if it be for thy pleasure and comfort. Thou shouldst be proud, instead of denying that all the Sidi does is for thee. My mistress would tell thee so, and many women would be dying of envy, daughters of Aghas and even of Bach Aghas. But perhaps, as thou art a Roumia, thou hast different feelings."
"Perhaps," answered Victoria humbly, for she was crushed by Fafann's fierce eloquence. And for a moment her heart was heavy; but she would not let herself feel a presentiment of trouble.
"What harm can happen to me?" she asked. "I haven't been guided so far for nothing. Si Maïeddine is an Arab, and his ways aren't like the ways of men I've known, that's all. My sister's husband was his friend—a great friend, whomhe loved. What he does is more for Cassim's sake than mine."
Her cheeks were burning after the long day of sun, and because of her thoughts; yet she was not glad to bathe them with Si Maïeddine's fragrant offering of rosewater, some of which Fafann poured into the glass basin.
Not far away Maïeddine was still sitting by the fire with M'Barka.
"Tell me now," he said. "What didst thou see?"
"Nothing clearly. Another time, cousin. Let me have my mind fresh. I am like a squeezed orange."
"Yet I must know, or I shall not sleep. Thou art hiding something."
"All was vague—confused. I saw as through a torn cloud. There was the great house. Thou wert there, a guest. Thou wert happy, thy desire granted, and then—by Allah, Maïeddine, I could not see what happened; but the voice of the sand was like a storm in my ears, and the knowledge came to me suddenly that thou must not wait too long for thy wish—the wish made with the sand against thine heart."
"Thou couldst not see my wish. Thou art but a woman."
"I saw, because I am a woman, and I have the gift. Thou knowest I have the gift. Do not wait too long, or thou mayest wait for ever."
"What wouldst thou have me do?"
"It is not for me to advise. As thou saidst, I am but a woman. Only—act! That is the message of the sand. And now, unless thou wouldst have my dead body finish the journey in the bassour, take me to my tent."
Maïeddine took her to the tent. And he asked no more questions. But all night he thought of what M'Barka had said, and the message of the sand. It was a dangerous message, yet the counsel was after his own heart.
In the morning he was still brooding over the message; and as they travelled through the black desert on the way to Ghardaia and the hidden cities of the M'Zab, he fell into long silences. Then, abruptly, he would rouse himself to gaiety and animation, telling old legends or new tales, strange dramas of the desert, very seldom comedies; for there are few comedies in the Sahara, except for the children.
Sometimes he was in danger of speaking out words which said themselves over and over in his head. "If I 'wait too long, I may wait for ever.' Then, by Allah, I will not wait." But he kept his tongue in control, though his brain was hot as if he wore no turban, under the blaze of the sun. "I will leave things as they are while we are in this black Gehenna," he determined. "What is written is written. Yet who has seen the book of the writing? And there is a curse on all this country, till the M'Zab is passed."
After Bou-Saada, he had gradually forgotten, or almost forgotten, his fears. He had been happy in the consciousness of power that came to him from the desert, where he was at home, and Europeans were helpless strangers. But now, M'Barka's warnings had brought the fears back, like flapping ravens. He had planned the little play of the sand-divining, and at first it had pleased him. M'Barka's vision of the dark man who was not of Victoria's country could not have been better; and because he knew that his cousin believed in the sand, he was superstitiously impressed by her prophecy and advice. In the end, he had forced her to go on when she would have stopped,yet he was angry with her for putting doubts into his mind, doubts of his own wisdom and the way to succeed. With a girl of his own people, or indeed with any girl, if he had not loved too much, he would have had no doubts. But he did not know how it was best to treat Victoria. His love for her was so strong, that it was like fear, and in trying to understand her, he changed his mind a dozen times a day. He was not used to this uncertainty, and hated to think that he could be weak. Would she turn from him, if he broke the tacit compact of loyal friendship which had made her trust him as a guide? He could not tell; though an Arab girl would scorn him for keeping it. "Perhaps at heart all women are alike," he thought. "And if, now that I am warned, I should risk waiting, I would be no man." At last, the only question left in his mind was, "When?"
For two days they journeyed through desolation, in a burnt-out world where nothing had colour except the sad violet sky which at evening flamed with terrible sunsets, cruelly beautiful as funeral pyres. The fierce glow set fire to the black rocks which pointed up like dragons' teeth, and turned them to glittering copper; polishing the dead white chalk of the chebka to the dull gleam of dirty silver. Far away there were always purple hills, behind which it seemed that hope and beauty might come to life again; but travelling from morning to night they never appeared any nearer. The evil magic of the black desert, which Maïeddine called accursed because of the M'Zabites, made the beautiful hills recede always, leaving only the ugly brown waves of hardened earth, which were disheartening to climb, painful to descend.
At last, in the midst of black squalor, they came to an oasis like a bright jewel fallen in the trough of swine. It was Berryan, the first town of the M'Zabites, people older than the Arabs, and hated by them with a hatred more bitter than their loathing for Jews.
Maïeddine would not pass through the town, since it couldbe avoided, because in his eyes the Beni-M'Zab were dogs, and in their eyes he, though heir to an agha, would be as carrion.
Sons of ancient Phœnicians, merchants of Tyre and Carthage, there never had been, never would be, any lust for battle in the hearts of the M'Zabites. Their warfare had been waged by cunning, and through mercenaries. They had fled before Arab warriors, driven from place to place by brave, scornful enemies, and now, safely established in their seven holy cities, protected by vast distances and the barrier of the black desert, they revenged their wrongs with their wits, being rich, and great usurers. Though Mussulmans in these days, the schisms with which they desecrated the true religion were worse in the eyes of Maïeddine than the foolish faith of Christians, who, at least, were not backsliders. He would not even point out to Victoria the strange minaret of the Abadite mosque at Berryan, which tapered like a brown obelisk against the shimmering sky, for to him its very existence was a disgrace.
"Do not speak of it; do not even look at it," he said to her, when she exclaimed at the great Cleopatra Needle. But she did look, having none of his prejudices, and he dared not bid her let down the curtains of her bassour, as he would if she had been a girl of his own blood.
The extraordinary city, whose crowded, queerly-built houses were blocks of gold in the sunlight, seemed beautiful to Victoria, coming in sight of it suddenly after days in the black desert. The other six cities, called holy by the Beni-M'Zab, were far away still. She knew this, because Maïeddine had told her they would not descend into the Wady M'Zab till next day. Berryan and Guerrara were on the upper plateau; and Victoria could hardly bear to pass by, for Berryan was by far the most Eastern-seeming place she had seen. She wondered if, should she ask him as a favour, Maïeddine would rest there that night, instead of camping somewhere farther on, in the hideous desert; for already it was late afternoon. But she would ask nothing of him now, for he was no longer quite thetrusty friend she had persuaded herself to think him. One night, since the sand-divining, she had had a fearful dream concerning Maïeddine. Outside her tent she had heard a soft padding sound, and peeping from under the flap, she had seen a splendid, tawny tiger, who looked at her with brilliant topaz eyes which fascinated her so that she could not turn away. But she knew that the animal was Maïeddine; that each night he changed himself into a tiger; and that as a tiger he was more his real self than when by day he appeared as a man.
They filed past Berryan; the meharis, the white stallion, the pack-camel, and the mule, in slow procession, along a rough road which wound close to the green oasis. And from among the palm trees men and women and little children, gorgeous as great tropical birds, in their robes of scarlet, ochre-yellow, and emerald, peered at the little caravan with cynical curiosity. Victoria looked back longingly, for she knew that the way from Berryan to the Wady M'Zab would be grim and toilsome under the burning sun. Hill after hill, they mounted and descended; hills stony yet sandy, always the same dull colour, and so shapeless as to daze the brain with their monotony. But towards evening, when the animals had climbed to the crest of a hill like a dingy wave, suddenly a white obelisk shot up, pale and stiff as a dead man's finger. Tops of tall palms were like the dark plumes on the heads of ten thousand dancing women of the Sahara, and as a steep descent began, there glittered the five hidden cities, like a strange fairyland lost in the desert. The whole Wady M'Zab lay under the eyes of the travellers, as if they looked down over the rim of an immense cup. Here, some who were left of the sons of Tyre and Carthage dwelt safe and snug, crouching in the protection of the valley they had found and reclaimed from the abomination of desolation.
It seemed to Victoria that she looked on one of the great sights of the world: the five cities, gleaming white, and glowing bronze, closely built on their five conical hills, which rose steeply fromthe flat bottom of the gold-lined cup—Ghardaia, Beni-Isguen, Bou-Noura, Melika, and El-Ateuf. The top of each hill was prolonged to a point by the tapering minaret of one of those Abadite mosques which the girl thought the most Eastern of all things imported from the East. The oasis which gave wealth to the M'Zabites surged round the towns like a green sea at ebb tide, sucked back from a strand of gold; and as the caravan wound down the wonderful road with which the Beni-M'Zab had traced the sheer side of their enchanted cup, the groaning of hundreds of well-chains came plaintively up on the wind.
The well-stones had the obelisk shape of the minarets, in miniature; and Negroes—freed slaves of the rich M'Zabites—running back and forth in pairs, to draw the water, were mere struggling black ants, seen from the cup's rim. The houses of the five towns were like bleached skeletons, and the arches that spanned the dark, narrow streets were their ribs.
Arrived at the bottom of the cup, it was necessary to pass through the longest and only modern street of Ghardaia, the capital of the M'Zab. A wind had sprung up, to lift the sand which sprinkled the hard-trodden ground with thick powder of gold dust, and whirl it westward against the fire of sunset, red as a blowing spray of blood. "It is a sign of trouble when the sand of the desert turns to blood," muttered Fafann to her mistress, quoting a Bedouin proverb.
The men of the M'Zab do not willingly give lodging to strangers, least of all to Arabs; and at Beni-Isguen, holy city and scene of strange mysteries, no stranger may rest for the night. But Maïeddine, respected by the ruling power, as by his own people, had a friend or two at every Bureau Arabe and military station. A French officer stationed at Ghardaia had married a beautiful Arab girl of good family distantly related to the Agha of the Ouled-Serrin, and being at Algiers on official business, his wife away at her father's tent, he had promised to lend his house, a few miles out of the town, to Si Maïeddine. Itwas a long, low building of toub, the sun-dried sand-blocks of which most houses are made in the ksour, or Sahara villages, but it had been whitewashed, and named the Pearl.
There they slept, in the cool shadow of the oasis, and early next morning went on.
As soon as they had passed out of this hidden valley, where a whole race of men had gathered for refuge and wealth-building, Victoria felt, rather than saw, a change in Maïeddine. She hardly knew how to express it to herself, unless it was that he had become more Arab. His courtesies suggested less the modern polish learned from the French (in which he could excel when he chose) than the almost royal hospitality of some young Bey escorting a foreign princess through his dominions. Always "très-mâle," as Frenchwomen pronounced him admiringly, Si Maïeddine began to seem masculine in an untamed, tigerish way. He was restless, and would not always be contented to ride El Biod, beside the tall, white mehari, but would gallop far ahead, and then race back to rejoin the little caravan, rushing straight at the animals as if he must collide with them, then, at the last instant, when Victoria's heart bounded, reining in his horse, so that El Biod's forefeet—shod Arab-fashion—pawed the air, and the animal sat upon his haunches, muscles straining and rippling under the creamlike skin.
Or, sometimes, Maïeddine would spring from the white stallion's back, letting El Biod go free, while his master marched beside Guelbi, with that panther walk that the older races, untrammelled by the civilization of towns, have kept unspoiled.
The Arab's eyes were more brilliant, never dreamy now, and he looked at Victoria often, with disconcerting steadiness, instead of lowering his eyelids as men of Islam, accustomed to the mystery of the veil, unconsciously do with European women whom they respect, though they do not understand.
So they went on, travelling the immeasurable desert; and Victoria had not asked again, since Maïeddine's refusal, the name of the place to which they were bound. M'Barka seemedbrighter, as if she looked forward to something, each day closer at hand; and her courage would have given Victoria confidence, even if the girl had been inclined to forebodings. They were going somewhere, Lella M'Barka knew where, and looked forward joyously to arriving. The girl fancied that their destination was the same, though at first she had not thought so. Words that M'Barka let drop inadvertently now and then, built up this impression in her mind.
The "habitude du Sud," as Maïeddine called it, when occasionally they talked French together, was gradually taking hold of the girl. Sometimes she resented it, fearing that by this time it must have altogether enslaved Saidee, and dreading the insidious fascination for herself; sometimes she found pleasure and peace in it; but in every mood the influence was hard to throw off.
"The desert has taken hold of thee," Maïeddine said one day, when he had watched her in silence for a while, and seen the rapt look in her eyes. "I knew the time would come, sooner or later. It has come now."
"No," Victoria answered. "I do not belong to the desert."
"If not to-day, then to-morrow," he finished, as if he had not heard.
They were going on towards Ouargla. So much he had told her, though he had quickly added, "But we shall not stop there." He was waiting still, though they were out of the black desert and the accursed land of the renegades. He was not afraid of anything or anyone here, in this vastness, where a European did not pass once a year, and few Arabs, only the Spahis, carrying mails from one Bureau Arabe to another, or tired soldiers changing stations. The beautiful country of the golden dunes, with its horizon like a stormy sea, was the place of which he said in his thoughts, "It shall happen there."
On the other side of Ghardaia, even when Victoria had ceased to be actually impatient for her meeting with Saidee, she had longed to know the number of days, that she mightcount them. But now she had drunk so deep of the colour and the silence that, in spite of herself, she was passing beyond that phase. What were a few days more, after so many years? She wondered how she could have longed to go flying across the desert in Nevill Caird's big motor-car; nevertheless, she never ceased to wish for Stephen Knight. Her thoughts of him and of the desert were inextricably and inexplicably mingled, more than ever since the night when she had danced in the Agha's tent, and Stephen's face had come before her eyes, as if in answer to her call. Constantly she called him now. When there was some fleeting, beautiful effect of light or shadow, she said, "How I wish he were here to see that!" She never named him in her mind. He was "he": that was name enough. Yet it did not occur to her that she was "in love" with Knight. She had never had time to think about falling in love. There had always been Saidee, and dancing; and to Victoria, the desire to make money enough to start out and find her sister, had taken the place which ideas of love and marriage fill in most girls' heads. Therefore she did not know what to make of her feeling for Stephen. But when a question floated into her brain, she answered it simply by explaining that he was different from any other man she had met; and that, though she had known him only a few days, from the first he had seemed more a friend than Si Maïeddine, or any one else whom she knew much better than Stephen.
As they travelled, she had many thoughts which pleased her—thoughts which could have come to her nowhere else except in the desert, and often she talked to herself, because M'Barka could not understand her feelings, and she did not wish to make Maïeddine understand.
"Burning, burning," was the adjective which she repeated oftenest, in an almost awestruck whisper, as her eyes travelled over immense spaces; for she thought that the desert might have dropped out of the sun. The colour of sand and sky was colour on fire, blazing. The whole Sahara throbbed with the unimaginable fire of creative cosmic force, deep, vital orange, needed by the primitive peoples of the earth who had not risen high enough yet to deserve or desire the finer vibrations.
As she leaned out of the bassour, the heat of the sun pressed on her lightly veiled head, like the golden lid of a golden box. She could feel it as an actual weight; and invisible behind it a living power which could crush her in an instant, as the paw of a lion might crush a flower petal.
Africa itself was this savage power, fierce as fire, ever smouldering, sometimes flaming with the revolt of Islam against other creeds; but the heart of the fire was the desert. Only the shady seguias in the oasis towns cooled it, like children's fingers on a madman's forehead; or the sound of a boy's flute in a river bed, playing the music of Pan, changeless, monotonous yet thrilling, as the music of earth and all Nature.
There were tracts in the desert which colour-blind people might have hated; but Victoria grew to think the dreariest stretches beautiful; and even the occasional plagues of flies which irritated M'Barka beyond endurance, only made Victoria laugh.
Sometimes came caravans, in this billowing immensity between the M'Zab and Ouargla—city of Solomon, whither the Queen of Sheba rode on her mehari: caravans blazing red and yellow, which swept like slow lines of flame across the desert, going east towards the sunrise, or west where the sunset spreads over the sky like a purple fan opening, or the tail of a celestial peacock.
What Victoria had once imagined the desert to be of vast emptiness, and what she found it to be of teeming life, was like the difference between a gold-bright autumn leaf seen by the naked eye, and the same leaf swarming under a powerful microscope.
The girl never tired of following with her eyes the vague tracks of caravans that she could see dimly sketched upon the sand, vanishing in the distance, like lines traced on the waterby a ship. She would be gazing at an empty horizon when suddenly from over the waves of the dunes would appear a dark fleet; a procession of laden camels like a flotilla of boats in a desolate sea.
They were very effective, as they approached across the desert, these silent, solemn beasts, but Victoria pitied them, because they were made to work till they fell, and left to die in the shifting sand, when no longer useful to their unloving masters.
"My poor dears, this is only one phase," she would say to them as they plodded past, their feet splashing softly down on the sand like big wet sponges, leaving heart-shaped marks behind, which looked like violets as the hollows filled up with shadow. "Wait till your next chance on earth. I'm sure it will make up for everything."
But Maïeddine told her there was no need to be sorry for the sufferings of camels, since all were deserved. Once, he said, they had been men—a haughty tribe who believed themselves better than the rest of the world. They broke off from the true religion, and lest their schism spread, Allah turned the renegades into camels. He compelled them to bear the weight of their sins in the shape of humps, and also to carry on their backs the goods of the Faithful, whose beliefs they had trampled under foot. While keeping their stubbornness of spirit they must kneel to receive their loads, and rise at the word of command. Remembering their past, they never failed to protest with roarings, against these indignities, nor did their faces ever lose the old look of sullen pride. But, in common with the once human storks, they had one consolation. Their sins expiated, they would reincarnate as men; and some other rebellious tribe would take their place as camels.
Five days' journeying from Ghardaia brought the travellers to a desert world full of movement and interest. There were many caravans going northward. Pretty girls smiled at them from swaying red bassourahs, sitting among pots and pans,and bundles of finery. Little children in nests of scarlet rags, on loaded camels, clasped squawking cocks and hens, tied by the leg. Splendid Negroes with bare throats like columns of black marble sang strange, chanting songs as they strode along. White-clad Arabs whose green turbans told that they had been to Mecca, walked beside their young wives' camels. Withered crones in yellow smocks trudged after the procession, driving donkeys weighed down with sheepskins full of oil. Baby camels with waggling, tufted humps followed their mothers. Slim grey sloughis and Kabyle dogs quarrelled with each other, among flocks of black and white goats; and at night, the sky pulsed with the fires of desert encampments, rosy as northern lights.
Just before the walled city of Ouargla, Victoria saw her first mirage, clear as a dream between waking and sleeping. It was a salt lake, in which Guelbi and the other animals appeared to wade knee-deep in azure waves, though there was no water; and the vast, distant oasis hovered so close that the girl almost believed she had only to stretch out her hand and touch the trunks of the crowding palm trees.
M'Barka was tired, and they rested for two days in the strange Ghuâra town, the "City of Roses," founded (according to legend), by Solomon, King of Jerusalem, and built for him by djenoum and angels in a single night. They lived as usual in the house of the Caïd, whose beautiful twin daughters told Victoria many things about the customs of the Ghuâra people, descendants of the ancient Garamantes. How much happier and freer they were than Arab girls, how much purer though gayer was the life at Ouargla, Queen of the Oases, than at any other less enlightened desert city; how marvellous was the moulet-el-rass, the dance cure for headache and diseases of the brain; how wonderful were the women soothsayers; and what a splendid thing it was to see the bridal processions passing through the streets, on the one day of the year when there is marrying and giving in marriage in Ouargla.
The name of the prettier twin was Zorah, and she had black curls which fell straight down over her brilliant eyes, under a scarlet head-dress. "Dost thou love Si Maïeddine?" she asked the Roumia, with a kind of innocent boldness.
"As a friend who has been very kind," Victoria answered.
"Not as a lover, oh Roumia?" Zorah, like all girls of Ouargla, was proud of her knowledge of Arabic.
"No. Not as a lover."
"Is there then one of thine own people whom thou lovest as a lover, Rose of the West?"
"I have no lover, little white moon."
"Si Maïeddine will be thy lover, whether thou desirest him or not."
"Thou mistakest, oh Zorah."
"I do not mistake. If thou dost not yet know I am right, thou wilt know before many days. When thou findest out all that is in his heart for thee, remember our talk to-day, in the court of oranges."
"I will tell thee thou wert wrong in this same court of oranges when I pass this way again without Si Maïeddine."
The Ghuâra girl shook her head, until her curls seemed to ring like bells of jet. "Something whispers to my spirit that thou wilt never again pass this way, oh Roumia; that never again will we talk together in this court of oranges."