The camp was pitched beyond the city in the green plain that lies
between Tetuan and the sea. From the tents Renfrew and Claire saw the
trains of camels and donkeys passing slowly along the high road towards
the steep and stony hill that leads up to the lower city gate, the
white-washed summer palaces of the wealthy Moors, nestling in gardens,
among green fields and groves of acacias, olives and almond trees, the
far-off line of blue water on the one hand and the fairy-like and ivory
town upon the other. Clouds of brown dust flew up in the air, and the
hoarse cry of "Balak! Balak!" made a perpetual and distant music. Far
more strange and barbarous was this city than Tangier. All traces of
Europe had faded away. Thousands of years seemed now to stand like a
wall between the Continents, and the hordes of dark and fanatical
Moslems gazed upon the great actress and her husband as we gaze at wild
animals whose aspects and whose habits are strange to us.
"I know now what it is to feel like an unclean dog," Claire said, as
they sat at dinner under the stars that night, after their halting
progress through the filthy alleys of the white fairyland on the
hill-side. "It is a grand sensation. I suppose children enjoy it, too.
That must be why they like making mud-pies."
"To-morrow is market-day, Absalem tells me," Renfrew said. "We will
spend it in the town, and you can feel unclean to your heart's
content--you!"
He looked at her and laughed low, with the pride of a lover in a
beautiful woman who is his own.
"They ought to fall down and worship you," he said.
"Moors worship a woman! Desmond, you are mad!"
"No, they are--they are. See, Claire, the moon is coming up already. Can
it be shining on Piccadilly too, and on the facade of the theatre?"
"The theatre! I can't believe I shall ever see it again."
"Nonsense!"
"Is it? This wild country seems to have swallowed me up, and I don't
feel as if it will ever disgorge me again. Desmond, perhaps there are
some lands that certain people ought never to visit. For those lands
love them, and, once they have seized their prey, they will never yield
it up again. Poor men must often feel that when they are dying in
foreign places. It is the land which has taken them to itself as an
octopus takes a drifting boat in a lonely sea. Africa!"
She had risen from her seat and moved out into the vague plain. Renfrew
followed her.
"I wonder in which direction the desert lies nearest," she said. "All
the strange people come in from the desert, as the strange things of
life come in from the future, only one so seldom hears the tinkling
bells of those deadly silent caravans in which they travel. If we could
hear and see them coming, what emotions we should have!"
"There are premonitions, some men say," Renfrew answered.
"The faint bells of the caravans ringing,--do you ever hear them?"
"No, Claire--never. And you?"
"I half thought I did once."
"When was that?"
"Last night. Hark! The men have finished supper and are beginning to
sing. That's a song about dancing."
"To-morrow we are going to feast the soldiers, and have an African
fire."
"Splendid! I think I will leap through the flames."
Renfrew put his arm round her.
"No, no. They might singe your beauty. And yet, you are a flame too. You
have burnt your name, yourself, like a brand upon my heart."
The dancing song rang up in the moonlight like the wailing of dead
masqueraders. All Moorish songs are sad and thrilling, fateful and
pregnant with unrest and with forebodings.
With the daylight the Jews came, in their long and morose garments and
black skull-caps, bearing bales of embroideries, slippers, and uncut
jewels. When they saw the wonderful black pearl upon Claire's finger
their huge eyes flamed with an avarice so fierce and open that Renfrew
instinctively moved between them and Claire, as if to guard her from
assault.
But the wonderful pearl was not for them.
The sun blazed furiously when they got upon their horses to ride to the
Soko. Each day the season was growing hotter, and Absalem told them that
there were no English in Tetuan. Nor did they set eyes on a European
woman until that day when Renfrew rode back, crouching along his horse,
to the villas of Tangier.
Tetuan has more than one open mouth, and when it swallows you the
contemplation of a fairyland is immediately exchanged for a desperate
reality of populous filth, stentorian uproar, uneven boulders, beggars,
bazaars like rabbit hutches, men and children pitted with small-pox till
they appear scarcely human, lepers, Jews, pirates from the Riff
Mountains, fanatics from the Ape's Hill, water-carriers, veiled,
waddling women, dogs like sharp shadows, and monkeys that appear and
vanish in sinister doorways with the rapidity and gestures of demons. On
a market-day the city is so full that it seems as if the circling and
irregular white walls must burst and disgorge the clamouring and
gesticulating inhabitants into the tranquil plain below. Claire surveyed
this blanched hell with a still serenity, as she had often surveyed an
applauding audience at the close of her evening's task, ere she thanked
them with the curious gesture, that was almost a salaam, in which
humility and a remote pride mingled. Noise generally gave her calm; and
when passion broke from her she taught the world to be intensely silent.
These alleys became like a dream to her, and the tiny interiors of the
bazaars were little histories of visionary lives, some, but only a few,
mysteriously beautiful. One, in a very dark place where, for some
unknown cause, all voices died away till the hot air was full of a
whispering stillness, brought slow tears to Claire's eyes. In the Street
of the Slippers she passed a cupboard of wood raised high from the
pavement, with low roof, leaning walls, and, in front, a little bar like
that which fences an English baby in its chair before the fire. In this
cupboard squatted two tiny Moorish infants, sole occupants of the
cupboard, with solemn faces, bending to ply their trade of pricking
patterns upon rose-coloured Morocco leather. There was no beauty in the
cupboard, sweetness of light, or ease. And the faces of the little boys
were sad and elderly. But, placed carefully between them, was an ugly
three-legged stool, on which stood two dwarf earthen jars containing two
sprigs of orange flower, and, as Claire looked, one of the babes laid
down his leather, lifted his jar, sniffed, with a sort of gentle
resignation, at his flower, and then resumed his diligent labours,
refreshed perhaps, and strengthened. In the action Claire seemed to
catch sight of a little pallid soul striving to exist feebly among the
slippers.
"Did you see?" she cried to Renfrew, when the baby shoemakers were lost
to sight.
He nodded.
"I wish I were a Moorish woman, Desmond."
"Good Heaven! Why!"
"So that I could kiss the infant who smelt the orange flower in his own
language. Little artist!"
Her sudden blaze of enthusiasm was checked by the infernal Soko into
which they now entered. In this unpaved square, upon which the pitiless
sun beat, the earth seemed to have come alive, to have formed itself
into a thousand vague semblances of human figures, and to be shrieking,
moving, twisting, gesticulating, as if striving to impart a thousand
abominable secrets till now hidden from the world that walks upon its
surface. As snow-men resemble the snow, so did these bargainers, these
buyers, sellers, barterers, pedlars, resemble the baked earth on which
they squatted. Shrouded in earth-coloured garments, they shrieked,
strove, rang their bells, kicked their donkeys, elbowed their rivals,
pommelled their camels, recited the Koran, or testified with frenzy, the
terrific honesty of all their dealings. Here and there tents made of
mud-coloured rags cast a grotesque shadow, in which broad women, hidden
by veils like sacks, and dominated by straw hats a yard wide, sat
huddled together and pecked at by wandering fowls. Jew boys, with long
and expressive faces, their black hair plastered upon their foreheads in
fringes that touched their eyes, strolled through the mob in batches,
some of them reading in little books. Soudanese slave girls carried
bouquets of orange flowers. In a corner some Hawadji were leaping
monotonously to the thunder of a Moorish drum made of baked earth and of
parchment. A sheep, escaped from the slaughterer, tumbled with piteous
bleatings into a group of half breeds, Spanish Moors, who were playing
cards near a stall covered with raw meat and great lumps of some
substance that looked like lard. On a huge heap of rotten oranges and
decaying fish, over which millions of flies swarmed, a number of
children in close white caps were moving in some mysterious game in
which two prowling cats occasionally took an unintentional part. Some
Riff Arabs, fierce as tigers, tall and half-naked, stalked feverishly
towards a water-carrier whose lean form, tottering with age, was almost
eclipsed beneath the monstrous bladder he bore incessantly through the
multitude. The horses of Renfrew and of Claire could scarcely plant
their hoofs on anything that was not moving, crying, panting, or
cursing; and they pulled up, and prepared to descend into this human
ocean of which all the waves roared in their deafened ears. As Claire
leant to Renfrew, who stretched his arms to help her, she said to him:--
"Can you swim? If not, you will certainly be drowned."
"You must not be. Cling to my arm."
They sank together to their necks in the sea. In whatever direction they
looked, they saw a mass of heads, an infinite expanse of shouting
mouths. But suddenly the pressure became extraordinary, the uproar
ear-splitting. And with the voices there mingled a piercing music like a
continuous screech. People began to run, to trample in one direction.
The drum of the leaping Hawadji was drowned by a louder drumming that
came from the centre of the square. Children squeaked with excitement.
The Riffians forgot to drink, and slid forward with the cushioned feet
of animals in a jungle. A tempest arose, and in it a whirlpool formed.
It seemed that Renfrew and Claire must be torn in pieces.
"What on earth is happening?" Renfrew exclaimed to Absalem, with the
English anger our countrymen always display when trodden by a foreign
element.
Absalem smiled with airy dignity, and moved forward, beckoning them to
follow.
"Miracle man, all want see him," he remarked. "Great miracle man."
With consummate adroitness he drew them with him to the edge of the
whirlpool. As they reached it, Renfrew felt that Claire's hand suddenly
tightened upon his arm until his flesh puckered between her fingers as
the flesh of a rabbit puckers in a trap. He glanced at her in
astonishment. Her eyes were fixed on something, or some one, beyond
them, even beyond Absalem, who was forcing people out of their way with
his powerful arms and back. Renfrew followed her eyes, and saw the
centre of the whirlpool.
This mass of humanity had now assumed the form of a rough circus, the
ring of which was kept clear. And in this ring a strange figure had just
appeared with upraised arms, and a manner of wild, even of frantic,
authority. This was a gigantic man, almost black, half-naked, with long
arms, furious eyes, and legs which, though muscular, tapered at the
ankles like the legs of a finely bred race-horse. His head was shaved in
front; but at the back the black hair grew in a long and waving lock,
and his features, magnificently cut, might have been those of a grand
European of some headstrong and high-couraged race. Upon this man
Claire's eyes were fixed, with an expression so strange and knowing that
Renfrew turned on her with a sharp exclamation.
"Claire! Claire!"
She slowly withdrew her eyes.
"Yes, Desmond."
A question stammered on his lips; but as she smiled at him, he felt the
mad absurdity of it, and was silent.
"Well, Desmond, what is it?"
"Nothing," he answered.
Absalem now claimed their attention. He was determined that they should
be in the front of the crowd, and ruthlessly pushed away the Moors who
had obtained the best places, pointing at Claire and Renfrew, and wildly
vociferating their mighty rank and enormous wealth. The staring mob gave
way; and in a moment Claire and the miracle man stood face to face. His
frenzied eyes had no sooner seen her than he too fell upon the
surrounding natives, thrusting them violently to one side, and cursing
them for daring to draw near to the great English gentleman and lady. In
the whole mighty mob these two were the only Europeans, and they
attracted as universal an attention as two Aztecs would in a Bank
Holiday gathering at the Crystal Palace. Renfrew could now see that the
screeching music came from one side of the ring, where a couple of men,
clothed in filthy rags, were sitting on the ground, one playing a long
pipe of straw, the other beating an enormous drum. Immediately behind
them a very old man, evidently a maniac, swayed his body violently
backwards and forwards, and at regular intervals uttered a loud and
chuckling cry that might have been the ejaculation of a tipsy
school-boy, and came strangely from withered lips hanging loose with
weakness and with age. This dancing Methuselah caught Renfrew's
attention; and, for the moment, he forgot to look at the miracle man. A
general outcry from the multitude made him turn his head. He saw then
that the miracle man held in his huge hands a sort of kennel of straw,
the mouth of which was closed with a movable flap. Lifting this aloft,
he sprang wildly round the ring, vociferating some words at the top of
his voice; then, suddenly casting it down, he flung himself upon the
ground, which he beat with his forehead, while he shrieked out a prayer
to his patron saint for protection in the great miracle which he was
about to perform.
"What is he doing?" Renfrew asked of Absalem.
"Don't you know?" Claire said.
Her eyes were gleaming with excitement as they stared at the salaaming
figure that grovelled at their feet.
"No. How should I?"
"He is praying to Sidi Mahomet," she said.
And then she looked at Renfrew. He understood. At that moment, despite
the excessive heat engendered by the blazing sun and the pressure of the
crowd, he turned very cold, as if his body was plunged in glacier water.
He thought of the tall figure that had stood before Claire's tent door
in the moonbeams, the lips that had coaxed from the pipe the tune that
charmed all serpents,--that right tune that they must follow, which drew
them from the desert sands to the grass of the oasis, till they wound up
the body of this gaunt and tremendous savage, and hid themselves in his
hairy bosom. This miracle man, then, was a snake-charmer, and Claire had
divined it at once. How? Renfrew put the question quickly.
"How did I know? He is the man who played outside my tent in the night,
Desmond."
"The very man! Impossible."
"The very man."
"Then you were not asleep, not dreaming?"
"How can one tell? Hush!"
She spoke in the low voice of one whose attention is becoming
concentrated, and who cannot endure the interruption. The charmer had
now finished his petition to his god, and, standing up, thrust into his
mouth a handful of some green herb, which he chewed and swallowed. Then
his whole manner abruptly changed. The frenzy died out of his eyes. A
calm suffused his tall and muscular body till it became strangely
statuesque. His lips slowly smiled, and he raised his hands towards the
glaring sky with a sublime gesture of gratitude.
"What an actor!" Renfrew heard Claire murmur softly.
He, too, had become intensely engrossed by this man in whom he, from
this moment, began to see Claire: the exquisite woman whom the civilised
world worshipped in the mighty savage who came from the remote depths of
Morocco; the white being who played with the minds of the capitals of
Europe, in the black being who played with the reptiles of the desert
and of the jungle. For Claire, guided by the spirit that ever goes
before genius bearing the torch, had instinctively divined what she had
never known. In London it seemed that she had entered into the very soul
of this man who now stood before her. She had caught the wild graces of
his bearing. She had reproduced his smile, so full of secrets and of
power. She had moved as he did. She had been motionless as now he was
motionless. In the sun she stood at this moment and beheld the reality
of which she had been the magnificent reflection. And Renfrew felt his
heart oppressed, as if clouds were closing round him.
Now the snake-charmer looked slowly all round the great circle of
watching faces until his eyes rested on Claire. He had taken the straw
kennel into his hands, and he softly lifted the flap, and turned it flat
upon the top of the kennel, leaving the mouth open. Then he thrust one
hand into this mouth, and withdrew it, holding a writhing snake whose
striped satin skin changed colour in the sunshine, turning from pink to
green, from green to black.
"It is the snake I saw," Claire whispered to Renfrew.
He did not reply. He seemed fascinated by the savage and the serpent.
Holding the snake at arm's length, the charmer walked softly round the
circle, collecting money from the crowd. He stopped in front of Claire.
The snake thrust out its flat head towards her. She did not shrink from
it; and the charmer cried aloud some words that seemed like praise of
her beauty and of her composure. She gave him a piece of gold. Renfrew
gave him nothing.
Then, standing once more in the centre of the circle, he burst into a
frantic incantation, while the musicians redoubled their efforts, and
the old maniac in the corner gave forth his chuckling cry with greater
force, and swayed his trembling body more vehemently to and fro. The
snake, suddenly brought from the darkness of the kennel to the light of
day, was torpid and weary. It drooped between the charmer's hands. He
shook it, called on it, caught up a stick and struck it. Then, forcing
its mouth wide open, he barred its pink throat with the stick, on which
he made it fix its two fangs, which were like two sharp hooks. Holding
the end of the stick, he came again to Claire, to whom his whole
performance was now exclusively devoted; and, approaching the hanging
reptile close to her eyes, he jumped it up and down to the sound of the
drum and pipe.
"You see," Claire said to Renfrew, "the roof of its mouth is
flesh-colour."
He did not answer. Why did all this mean so much to him? Why did the
clouds grow darker? The music and the cries of the old maniac perturbed
him and bewildered his brain. And he wanted to be calm, and to watch
Claire and this savage with a cool and undivided attention. By this
time the snake was growing irritated. It agitated its long body
furiously; and when the charmer unhooked its fangs from the stick, it
turned its head towards him and made a sudden dart at his face. He
opened his mouth wide, thrust the snake into it, and let the creature
fasten on his tongue, from which blood began to flow. Still bleeding,
and with the snake fixed on his tongue, he danced and sprang into the
air. His eyes grew wild. Foam ran from his mouth, and his whole
appearance became demoniacal. Yet his eyes still fastened themselves
upon Claire. In his most frantic moments his attention was never
entirely distracted from the spot where she was standing. He tore the
snake from his tongue and buried its fangs in the flesh of his left
wrist. Cries broke from the crowd. The sight of the blood had excited
them, for these people love blood as the toper loves wine. They urged
the charmer on to fresh exertions with furious screams of encouragement.
The maniac bent his body like a dervish in the last exercises of his
religion, and the ragged musicians forced a more extreme uproar from
their instruments. The charmer caught the snake by the tail, and strove
to pull it backwards off his wrist. But the reptile's fangs were firmly
fastened. It held on with a terrible tenacity, and a struggle ensued
between it and its master. When at length it gave way, it was streaked
with blood, and now at last thoroughly aroused. The charmer scraped his
tongue with a straw; then, casting himself again upon the earth, he
prayed once more with fury to Sidi Mahomet. Claire watched him always,
with that pale and exquisite attention which one genius gives to the
performance of another. Her face was white and still. Her body never
moved. But her eyes blazed with life, and with the fires of a violent
soul completely awake. Having finished his prayer, which ended in a cry
so poignant that it might have burst from the lips of that world on
which the flood came, the charmer remained upon the ground in a sitting
posture, laid the snake in his lap, and drew from the inside of his
ragged robe a Moorish lute made of a bladder, bamboo, and two strings,
and coloured a pale yellowish-green. He plucked the strings gently, and
played the fragment of a wild tune. Then, suddenly catching up the
snake, and thrusting his tongue far out of his mouth, he poised the
snake upon it, rose to his feet and stood at his full height in front of
Claire, fixing his eyes upon her with a glance that seemed to claim from
her both wonder and worship. The snake reared itself up higher and
higher upon the quivering tongue; and the charmer, extending his long
arms, whirled slowly round as if poised upon a movable platform, while a
terrific clamour broke from the Moors, who seemed to be roused by this
feat to the highest pitch of excitement. Still turning and turning, the
charmer drew from his bosom a second snake that was black and larger
than the first, and coiled it round his sinewy neck like a gigantic
necklace, the darting head in front, resting, a sort of monstrous
pendant, upon his uncovered chest. To Renfrew he looked like some
hateful grotesque in a nightmare, inhuman, endowed with attributes of a
devil. The serpents were part of him, growths of his body, visible signs
of some terrible disease in which he gloried and of which he made a
show. The creature was intolerable. His exhibition had suddenly become
to Renfrew unfit for the eyes of any woman; and, without a word, he took
hold of Claire and pulled her almost violently away from the circle on
which the fascinated mob was beginning to encroach. She resisted him.
"Desmond!" she exclaimed, "what are you doing?"
"Claire--come. I insist upon it!"
Already the Moors had thronged the place which they had left vacant. She
turned a white face on him. There was in her eyes the hideous expression
of a sleep-walker suddenly awakened, and she trembled in every limb. She
swung round from Renfrew, and, above the intercepting Moors, high in the
air, she saw the snake, which seemed climbing to heaven. While she
looked, a huge hand closed upon it and took it out of sight. The
charmer, observing the departure of his distinguished patrons, had
abruptly stopped his performance. Claire made no further resistance.
Without a word, she permitted Renfrew to lead her to the horses and
help her into the saddle. They rode down the hill to the camp without
exchanging a word.
When Claire had dismounted, she stood for a moment twisting her whip in
her hands. Then she said:--
"Desmond, I must ask you never to startle me again as you did to-day, by
sudden action. You can't understand how such an interruption hurts a
nature like mine. I would rather you had struck me. That would only have
wounded my body."
She turned and went into her tent, leaving Renfrew in an agony of
penitence and self-reproach. All the rest of the afternoon she was very
cold and silent, rather dreamy than sullen, but obviously disinclined
for conversation, and still more obviously unwilling to endure even the
slightest demonstration of affection on the part of Renfrew. When the
sheep which were to be slaughtered for the soldiers' feast were driven
bleating into the camp, she retired into her tent, and remained there,
resting, until the sun was low in the heavens, and the porters and
mule-drivers went gaily out to search for the materials of the African
fire with which the night was to be celebrated. They returned, singing
the Moorish conquest of Granada, with their strong arms full of canes,
dry and brittle branches of trees, logs that looked like whole trunks,
and huge shrubs, green and sweet-smelling. Hearing their song, Claire
came out of her tent. The sky was red, and, in the southwest, turrets of
vapour rose and streamed out, assuming mysterious and thin shapes in the
gathering dimness. A great flock of birds, flying very high, and forming
a definite and beautiful pattern, passed slowly on the wing towards the
kingdom of the storks, that lies near the sand banks of Ceuta. They
moved in silence, and faded away in the twilight stealthily, like things
full of quiet intention and governed by some furtive, but inexorable,
desire. Renfrew, who was wandering rather miserably near the camp,
watching descending pilgrims from the city melt into the vast bosom of
the plain, saw Claire's white figure in the tent door, half hidden in a
soft rosy mist which stole from the lips of evening as scent steals from
the lips of a flower. He felt afraid to go to her. He possessed her; and
yet it seemed to him now that he scarcely knew her. He was only an
ordinary man. She was a strange woman; not merely because of her
womanhood, as all women are to all men, but strange in that which lay
beyond and beneath her womanhood, in her genius, and in the dull or
ardent moods that stood round it, one, and yet not one, with it. In the
tent door she leaned like a spirit born of the evening, a child of
fading things, dying lights, fainting colours, retreating sounds,--a
spirit waiting for the coming of the stars, and the rising of the moon,
and the mysteries of the night, and the subtle odours that the winds of
Northern Africa bring with them over the mountains and down the lonely
valleys, when the sun descends. And as a spirit may listen to the songs
of men, with the melancholy of a thing apart, she listened to the songs
of the Moors, until at length they seemed to be in her own heart that
evening, as if they were songs of her own country. And these dark men
with wild eyes who sang them, while they flung upon the grass their
burdens from the thickets, and from the hedgeless and wide fields, were
no longer alien to her. She stood in the tent door, and, without any
conscious effort of the imagination, became their fancied mate,--a woman
sprung from the same soil, or come in--like the strange people--from the
deserts of their country. Only she was not as one of their women,
mindless, patient, and concealed; but as their women should be, strong,
hot-blooded, brave, serene, and looked upon by a world without reproach.
Absalem came up to her to tell her some details of the night's
festivity. Before he spoke she said to him:--
"Where does the desert lie?"
He told her.
"Does the miracle man come from there?"
Absalem answered that no one knew. He had been much in Wasan, the sacred
city of Morocco; but none knew his birthplace, his tribe, his name.
Often he disappeared, no man could tell whither. But, doubtless, he
made vast journeys. Some said that he had exhibited his snakes on the
banks of the Nile, that he had gone with the pilgrim trains to Mecca,
that he knew Khartoum as he knew Marakesh, and that he never ceased from
wandering.
"What is his age?" Claire asked.
Absalem answered that he must be old, but that Time had no power over
him.
"He miracle man; he live long as he wish."
Last she asked when he would leave Tetuan.
"Perhaps this night. Perhaps to-morrow night, perhaps never. Perhaps he
go already."
"Already!"
Suddenly Claire moved out from the tent, and joined Renfrew, who was
still watching her, and weaving lover's fancies about her white figure.
"Have you been here long, Desmond?" she asked.
"Very long, dearest. Are you rested?"
"Quite. From here you can see all the people travelling away from the
city towards the sea?"
"Yes."
"Have you been watching them?"
"Yes, indeed; for half the afternoon."
She turned her great eyes on him searchingly, and seemed as if she
checked a question which was almost on her lips.
"They must have been a strange multitude," she said at length. "I wonder
where they are all going?"
"Some to the villages in the plain, some to the coast. I saw the Riffs
who were in the Soko pass by. I suppose they were returning to the
caverns from which they plunder becalmed vessels, Spanish and
Portuguese."
"The Riffs--yes?"
Her intonation suggested that she was waiting for some further
information. Renfrew's curiosity was aroused.
"Why do you look at me like that?" he asked. "What do you want to know?"
"Nothing, Desmond. How dark it is getting! There is Mohammed ringing the
bell. And look, those must be the soldiers. They are just marching in
from the city."
With the coming of night a wind arose, blowing towards the sea from the
mountains; and with it came up a troop of clouds which blotted out stars
and moon, and plunged the plain into a gulf of darkness. Tetuan does not
gleam with lamps at night like a European city, and all the distant
villas of the Moors were closely shuttered. So the wind, warm and
scented and strong, swept over a black land, deserted and vacant. Only
in the camp was there movement, music, and an illumination that strove
up in the night, as if it would climb to the clouds. Scarcely had Claire
and Renfrew finished dinner, when Absalem and Mohammed ceremoniously
appeared to conduct them out to the bare space before the tents on
which the African fire had been carefully built. Absalem carried a lamp
which swung in the wind, and, behind, there appeared from the kitchen
tent some of the porters, bearing burning brands, the flames of which
were at right angles to the wood from which they sprung. The guard of
soldiers, one dozen in all, armed with immense guns and wrapped in
hooded cloaks, were already crouched in a silent mass before the
lifeless and portentous erection which came out of the darkness, as
Absalem swung forward the lamp, like the skeleton of a monster. They
turned their shadowy faces on Claire, and stared with eyes intent and
unself-conscious as those of an animal. The porters flung their brands
on to the mountain of twigs, and instantaneously a huge sheet of livid
gold sprang up against the black background of the night, as if it had
been shaken out on the wind by invisible hands. This sheet expanded,
swayed, fluttered in ragged edges, and cast forth a cloud of sparks
which were carried away into the air and vanished in the sky. The shrubs
caught fire and crackled furiously, and finally the foundation of
gigantic logs began to glow steadily, and to fill the wind with a
scorching heat. The camp was gradually defined, at first vaguely and in
sections,--the peak of a tent, the head of a mule, a startled pariah
dog, a Moor set in the eye of the flames; then clearly, as the buildings
one may see in a furnace, complete and glowing. The faces of the
soldiers were barred with flickering orange, and red lights played in
their huge and staring eyeballs. The horses and mules could be counted.
Before the kitchen tent the sacrifice of sheep was visible, stewing in
enormous pans upon red embers in a trench of earth. And the grave cook,
who was distinguished by a white turban, shone like a pantomime magician
at the mouth of an enchanted cave. Warmth, light, life poured upon the
night, and the voices of men began to mingle with the continuous voice
of this superb fire. The Moors, soldiers, servants, porters, kindled
into furious gaiety with the swiftness of the canes and olive boughs.
They sprang up from the ground, pulled the shrouding hoods from their
faces, tossed away their djelabes, and began, with shouts and
ejaculations, to dance up and down before the golden sheet, spreading
their hands to it with the glee of children. A sudden joy beamed in the
dusky and solemn faces, twinkled in the sombre eyes. One man flung away
his fez, another dashed his turban to the ground. Round, shaven heads,
bare arms, brown legs, half concealed by fluttering linen
knickerbockers, lithe bodies emerged with eager haste into the light.
Shadows became abruptly men, formless humps athletes. Mutes sent out
great voices to startle the sweeping bats. Mourners turned into maniacs.
It was a fantasia that exploded into life like a rocket, shedding a
stream of vivid human fire. Mohammed drew away from the flames, taking
a dozen swift footsteps to the rear. Then, with a shout, he dashed
forward, bounded into the golden sheet, and disappeared as a clown
disappears through a paper hoop. Only the paper closed up behind him. He
leaped through light to darkness, pursued by a thousand eager sparks.
One soldier followed him, then another, and another. The porters,
linking hands, leaped in twos and threes. Even the cook, old, and
serious with a weight of savoury knowledge, tottered to the edge of the
fire, which was now becoming a furnace, and took it as an Irish horse
takes a stone wall, striking the topmost branches with his bare feet
amid a chorus of yells.
Claire watched the darting figures with a silent gravity. She did not
seem to be stirred by the fantasia of the firelight, or to catch any
gaiety or life from the boisterous activity of those about her. The
flames lit up the whiteness of her face, and showed Renfrew that she was
looking gloomy and even despairing.
"Is anything the matter, Claire?" he asked anxiously.
"No. How could there be?"
The wind, which was increasing in violence, blew her thin dress forward,
and she shivered. Absalem noticed it.
"Wear djelabe, lady," he said.
And in a moment he had taken his off, and was carefully wrapping Claire
in it. She seemed glad of it, thanked him, and, with a quick gesture
that hurt Renfrew, pulled the big brown hood up over her head, so that
her face was entirely concealed from view. She now looked exactly like a
Moor, and might have been mistaken for one of the soldiers before the
fire was lit and all impeding garments were thrown aside.
Renfrew, uneasy, and wondering what conduct on his part would best suit
her mysterious mood, after one or two remarks to which she barely
replied, drew away a little, and gave his attention to the antics of the
soldiers. Some of them were already resuming their djelabes, in
preparation for the feast, which they sniffed even through the odour of
burning wood and leaves. The cook, after his emotional and acrobatic
outburst, had returned to his pans, which he was stirring tenderly with
a stick. When Renfrew again looked towards Claire, he found it
impossible to tell which cloak shrouded her from his sight. Four or five
hooded figures stood near the fire. She must be one of them. He
approached the group, but found, to his surprise, that all the members
of it were soldiers. Claire had moved away. Renfrew stood for a few
minutes with the men, till they were summoned to their feast, which,
strangely enough, was to take place away from the fire in the dense
darkness behind the tents. Then he was left alone by the huge mass of
flame, which roared hoarsely in the wind. Where could Claire be? On any
ordinary occasion Renfrew would certainly have sought for her, but
to-night something held him back. He knew very well that she wished to
be alone, that something was closely occupying her mind. Whether she was
still brooding over the event of the afternoon, when he had forcibly led
her away in the very crisis of the snake-charmer's performance, he could
not tell. To an ordinary woman such a matter would have been a trifle;
but Renfrew understood that Claire felt it more deeply. Her mind
appeared to be mysteriously moved and awakened by this savage from the
depths of Morocco. Various circumstances combined to render him more
interesting to her than he could possibly be to any ordinary traveller.
Renfrew recognised that fully and quietly. The genius of Claire had
enabled her to realise in London all the wildly picturesque
idiosyncrasies of a man whom she had never seen or heard of. Suddenly
fate had led her to him, and she had beheld her own performance, the
original of her imitation. As Renfrew stood by the fire, he began to
feel the folly of his proceeding of the afternoon, and to imagine more
clearly than before the condition into which it had thrown Claire. It is
a sin to disturb the contemplations of genius. It is sacrilege. And then
Renfrew had been moved to his act by a preposterous access of jealousy.
He acknowledged this to himself. He had been jealous of Claire's
interest in this man's performance, jealous perhaps even of her dream
among the hills in the midnight camp, where the man stood before her
sleeping eyes, and played with his visionary serpent. How mad can a
lover be? He resolved to go to Claire, and ask her pardon. This resolve
thrilled him. To carry it out, he would have to draw very near to
Claire, to unpack his heart to her. After all, she had given herself to
him. But he had appreciated the wonder of his role as possessor so
keenly, that he had waited upon her moods with an almost trembling awe.
Now, in asking pardon, he would show that in his passion he could be
strong. Women want to see the man in the lover, as well as the devotee.
Renfrew, in acknowledging his jealousy of a black savage, meant to clasp
Claire with the arms of a whirlwind.
Meanwhile she was hidden from him. The wind blew strongly. The sparks
leaped away in clouds toward the sea. From the dense darkness behind him
came a sound of music. The soldiers were feasting. The porters were
striking the lute, and singing songs of the dance and of love and of
victory. It was a night of comradeship and of rejoicing. Yet he stood
alone; and the turmoil of his heart was unheeded. He tried to explore
the blackness of the night which stood round the golden fire with his
eyes. Claire must be in that blackness close to him. Doubtless she saw
him, a red and yellow creature, painted into fictitious brilliance by
the illumination which was shed upon him. She saw him and kept from
him. Renfrew resolved to be patient. When her mood of reserve died she
would come to him, in her dress of a Moor, and he would kiss the white
face beneath the hood, and put his arms round the thin figure that was
lost in the djelabe of brawny Absalem, and tell her the true story of
his heart, never fully told to her yet. He squatted down before the
fire, lit his pipe, shrugged his shoulders against the tempest from the
mountains, and waited, listening to the weird music that swept by him
like a hidden bird on the wind.
And Claire--where was she? When Absalem wrapped her in the huge djelabe
it seemed to Claire that he had divined her secret longing to be in
hiding. She disappeared into the mighty hood of the garment as into a
cave. Its shadow concealed her from the watching eyes of Renfrew. There
was warmth in it and a beautiful darkness. She desired both. She saw
Renfrew turn to watch the leaping soldiers, and stole away out of the
illuminated circle formed by the glow from the fire, into the night
beyond. She did not go far, only into the nearest shadow. And there she
sat down on the short dry grass, and forgot Renfrew, the roaring flames,
the wind that felt incessantly at her robe, the shouting guard, the
radiant and dancing attendants. She forgot them all as completely as if
they had never been in her life; for the strangeness of certain
incidents preoccupied her, to the exclusion of everything else. In the
double existence of a really great actress there are many moments in
which the truths of the imagination seem more important than the truths
of physical phenomena of things seen by the eye, of sounds received and
appreciated by the ear. In these moments, genius usurps the throne of
reason, and the mind beholds fancies as sunlit gods, facts as timid and
scarcely defined shadows. So it was with Claire now. Even the
snake-charmer, as he gave his performance in the Soko, was a shadow in
comparison with that man who summoned her to the tent door in the
solitary encampment. And behind and beyond both these figures of truth
and dreaming stood a third, created for herself by Claire in London,
that figure into whom she had poured her soul as into a mould, when she
charmed imaginary serpents, and prayed to the god in whom, for a moment,
she believed with the passion of the perfect mime. This trio Claire
placed in line, and reviewed: charmer of her imagination, of her dream,
of the Soko.
They were the same, and yet not the same. For the first was dominated,
even was created by her. The second stood above her, like some magician,
and summoned her as one possessing a right. The third--what of him? He
was a wild creature of blood and foam, crafty, a player like herself, a
maker of money, a savage in sacking, and almost nothing to her now. Out
of the desert he came. Into the desert he was, perhaps, even now,
returning, with his snakes sleeping in his bosom, and the money of the
Tetuan Moors jingling in his pouch.
Yes, she saw him, travelling like a shadow in the night, one of those
grotesques which leap on bedroom walls when a lamp flares in the wind
that sighs through an open casement. He was going; but the man of the
dream remained. The dream man had come up out of the world that is
vaguer to us than the desert when we wake, and clearer to us than the
desert when we sleep. Claire saw him still, and, while the wonderful
mountebank of the Soko passed, he stood in the tent door like a statue
of ebony, a rooted reality. And the snake was in his bosom; and the pipe
was at his lips; and the power was in his heart. And as he played,
Claire thought beneath the djelabe of Absalem, there came to him, with
the faltering steps of a thing irresistibly charmed, that third man
whose soul she had seen in London, like approaching like, with the
manner of a slave and the glance of the conquered. And her soul was
still within that charmed figure. She could not rescue it now from the
place where she had put it. And the statue at the tent door played the
irresistible melody until his wild and cringing double stole to his very
feet, and nearer and nearer, till they melted together, and where two
men had been, there was only one. He smiled with a subtle triumph, laid
down his pipe, stretched out his arms and vanished. But within him now
was the soul of Claire, borne wherever he should go, his captive, his
possession for all eternity.
Behind her, in the cloudy darkness, Claire heard a movement, and the
gliding of soft feet on grass. She did not turn her head, supposing that
one of the soldiers was keeping his guard. The movement ceased. But the
little noise had broken the thread on which her fancies were strung.
They were scattered like beads. She found herself feeling quite
ordinary, and listening with an urging attention for a renewal of the
trifling noise behind her. In the distance she could see Renfrew, now
crouching before the fire, which poured colour and a piercing vitality
upon him. She heard also, and for the first time, the sound of the
porters' music, which had been audible in the night all through her
reverie, though she was entirely unaware of the fact. She realised that
the soldiers were devouring the stew of mutton, and that she was in a
gay camp, full of human beings in a state of unusual satisfaction. One
of these human beings must be close to her. She turned her head. But she
was sitting in the darkness beyond the illumination of the fire, and
beyond her the night was like a black wall. Whatever had moved there was
invisible to her. She had not heard the gliding step go away, and she
felt that she was not alone. This feeling began to render her uneasy.
She got up, with the intention of returning to the firelight and to
Renfrew. Indeed she had taken a step or two in his direction, when she
was checked by an unreasonable desire to see who had come so close to
her, who had broken her reverie. Acting upon the sudden impulse, she
turned swiftly and came on into the darkness. Almost instantly she stood
before the dim outline of a man, and paused. Here in the night it was
very lonely, even though the illuminated camp was so near. Claire
hesitated to approach this man who seemed to be on watch and who was
perfectly motionless. She waited a moment, wishing that he would come to
her in order that she might see what he was like, whether he carried a
gun and was a soldier. But it was soon evident that he did not mean to
move. Then Claire went up so close to him that his coarse garment rubbed
against her djelabe and his eyes stared right down into hers. And she
saw that it was the snake-charmer from the Soko, who was looking into
her face with the very smile of the man in her dream. Round his bare
throat one of his snakes was twined, and he held its neck between the
fingers of his left hand. The wind tossed his short and ragged cloak
wildly to and fro, and whirled the long lock of hair at the back of his
shaven head about, and made it dance like a living thing. When Claire
came up to him, he never said a word, or moved at all. It seemed to her
that his face was that of some dark and triumphant being, waiting
immovably for something that was certain to come to him, and to come so
close that he need not even stretch out his hand to take it as his
possession. What was the thing he waited for? She looked at his black
face and at the snake which moved slowly, trying to thrust its way
downward into the warmth of his bosom, out of the reach of the wind and
of the night. And, when the man's fingers unclosed to release it, and it
slid away and softly disappeared beneath his garment, Claire shuddered
under the influence of a sensation that was surely mad. For she felt
that she envied the snake, and that the charmer was waiting there in the
darkness for her. As the snake vanished, Claire recoiled towards the
fire. The charmer did not attempt to follow her, and his huge and
watchful figure quickly faded from Claire's eyes till his blackness had
become one with the blackness of the night.