INTO THE DESERT
A week after the caravan of the Duc de Tremont left Algiers, Julia
Redmond came unexpectedly to the villa of Madame de la Maine at an
early morning hour. Madame de la Maine saw her standing on the
threshold of her bedroom door.
"_Chère_ Madame," Julia said, "I am leaving to-day with a dragoman
and twenty servants to go into the desert."
Madame de la Maine was still in bed. At nine o'clock she read her
papers and her correspondence.
"Into the desert--alone!"
Julia, with her _cravache_ in her gloved hands, smiled sweetly though
she was very pale. "I had not thought of going alone, Madame," she
replied with charming assurance, "I knew you would go with me."
On a chair by her bed was a wrapper of blue silk and lace. The
comtesse sprang up and then thrust her feet into her slippers and
stared at Julia.
"What are you going to do in the desert?"
"Watch!"
"Yes, yes!" nodded Madame de la Maine. "And your aunt?"
"Deep in a bazaar for the hospital," smiled Miss Redmond.
Madame de la Maine regarded her slender friend with admiration and
envy. "Why hadn't I thought of it?" She rang for her maid.
"Because your great-grandfather was not a pioneer!" Miss Redmond
answered.
* * * * * * *
The sun which, all day long, held the desert in its burning embrace,
went westward in his own brilliant caravan.
"The desert blossoms like a rose, Thérèse."
"Like a rose?" questioned Madame de la Maine.
She was sitting in the door of her tent; her white dress and her
white hat gleamed like a touch of snow upon the desert's face. Julia
Redmond, on a rug at her feet, and in her khaki riding-habit the
color of the sand, blended with the desert as though part of it. She
sat up as she spoke.
"How divine! See!" She pointed to the stretches of the Sahara
before her. On every side they spread away as far as the eye could
reach, suave, mellow, black, undulating finally to small hillocks
with corrugated sides, as a group of little sand-hills rose softly
out of the sea-like plain. "Look, Thérèse!"
Slowly, from ocher and gold the color changed; a faint wave-like
blush crept over the sands, which reddened, paled, faded, warmed
again, took depth and grew intense like flame.
"The heart of a rose! _N'est-ce pas_, Thérèse?"
"I understand now what you mean," said madame. The comtesse was not
a dreamer. Parisian to the tips of her fingers, elegant, fine, she
had lived a conventional life. Thérèse had been taught to conceal
her emotions. She had been taught that our feelings matter very
little to any one but ourselves. She had been taught to go lightly,
to avoid serious things. Her great-grandmother had gone lightly to
the scaffold, exquisitely courteous till the last.
"I ask your pardon if I jostled you in the tumbrel," the old comtesse
had said to her companion on the way to the guillotine. "The springs
of the cart are poor"--and she went up smiling.
In the companionship of the American girl, Thérèse de la Maine had
thrown off restraint. If the Marquise d'Esclignac had felt Julia's
influence, Thérèse de la Maine, being near her own age, echoed
Julia's very feeling.
Except for their dragoman and their servants, the two women were
alone in the desert.
Smiling at Julia, Madame de la Maine said: "I haven't been so far
from the Rue de la Paix in my life."
"How can you speak of the Rue de la Paix, Thérèse?"
"Only to show you how completely I have left it behind."
Julia's eyes were fixed upon the limitless sands, a sea where a faint
line lost itself in the red west and the horizon shut from her sight
everything that she believed to be her life.
"This is the seventh day, Thérèse!"
"Already you are as brown as an Arab, Julia!"
"You as well, _ma chère amie_!"
"Robert does not like dark women," said the Comtesse de la Maine, and
rubbed her cheek. "I must wear two veils."
"Look, Thérèse!"
Across the face of the desert the glow began to withdraw its curtain.
The sands suffused an ineffable hue, a shell-like pink took
possession, and the desert melted and then grew colder--it waned
before their eyes, withered like a tea-rose.
"Like a rose!" Julia murmured, "smell its perfume!" She lifted her
head, drinking in with delight the fragrance of the sands.
"_Ma chère_ Julia," gently protested the comtesse, lifting her head,
"perfume, Julia!" But she breathed with her friend, while a sweetly
subtle, intoxicating odor, as of millions and millions of roses,
gathered, warmed, kept, then scattered on the airs of heaven,
intoxicating her.
To the left were the huddled tents of their attendants. No sooner
had the sun gone down than the Arabs commenced to sing--a song that
Julia had especially liked.
"Love is like a sweet perfume,
It comes, it escapes.
When it's present, it intoxicates;
When it's a memory, it brings tears.
Love is like a sweet breath,
It comes and it escapes."
The weird music filled the silence of the silent place. It had the
evanescent quality of the wind that brought the breath of the
sand-flowers. The voices of the Arabs, not unmusical, though hoarse
and appealing, cried out their love-song, and then the music turned
to invocation and to prayer.
The two women listened silently as the night fell, their figures
sharply outlined in the beautiful clarity of the eastern night.
Julia stood upright. In her severe riding-dress, she was as slender
as a boy. She remained looking toward the horizon, immovable,
patient, a silent watcher over the uncommunicative waste.
"Perhaps," she thought, "there is nothing really beyond that line, so
fast blotting itself into night!--and yet I seem to see them come!"
Madame de la Maine, in the door of her tent, immovable, her hands
clasped around her knees, looked affectionately at the young girl
before her. Julia was a delight to her. She was carried away by
her, by her frank simplicity, and drawn to her warm and generous
heart. Madame de la Maine had her own story. She wondered whether
ever, for any period of her conventional life, she could have thrown
everything aside and stood out with the man she loved.
Julia, standing before her, a dark slim figure in the night--isolated
and alone--recalled the figurehead of a ship, its face toward heaven,
pioneering the open seas.
* * * * * * *
Julia watched, indeed. On the desert there is the brilliant day, a
passionate glow, and the nightfall. They passed the nights sometimes
listening for a cry that should hail an approaching caravan,
sometimes hearing the wild cry of the hyenas, or of a passing vulture
on his horrid flight. Otherwise, until the camp stirred with the
dawn and the early prayer-call sounded "Allah! Allah! Akbar!" into
the stillness, they were wrapped in complete silence.