I
On an evening of last summer I was dining in London at the Carlton with
two men. One of them was an excellent type of young England, strong,
healthy, athletic, and straightforward. The other was a clever London
doctor who was building up a great practice in the West End. At dessert
the conversation turned upon a then recent tragedy in which a great
reputation had gone down, and young England spoke rather contemptuously
of the victim, with the superior surprise human beings generally express
about the sin which does not happen to be theirs.
“I can’t understand it!” was his conclusion. “It’s beyond me.”
“Climate,” said the doctor quietly.
“What?”
“Climate. Air.”
Young England looked inexpressively astonished.
“But hang it all!” he exclaimed, “you don’t mean to say change of air
means change of nature?”
“Not to everyone. Not to you, perhaps. Have you travelled much?”
“Well, I’ve been to Paris for the Grand Prix, and to Monte----”
“For the gambling. That’s hardly travelling. Now, I’ve studied this
subject a little, quietly in Harley Street. I’m no traveller myself,
but I have dozens of patients who are. And I’m convinced that the modern
facilities for travel, besides giving an infinity of pleasure, bring
about innumerable tragedies.”
He turned to me.
“You go abroad a great deal. What do you say?”
“That you’re perfectly right. And I’m prepared to affirm that, in
highly-strung, imaginative, or over-worked people change of climate does
sometimes actually cause, or seem to cause, change of nature.”
Young England, who was by no means highly-strung or imaginative, looked
politely dubious, but the doctor was evidently pleased.
“An ally!” he cried.
He glanced at me for an instant, then added:
“You’ve got a case that proves it, at any rate to you, in your mind.”
“Quite true.”
“Can you give it us?”
“Jove! let’s have it!” exclaimed young England.
“Certainly, if you like,” I said. “I don’t know whether you ever heard
of the Marnier affair?”
Young England shook his head, but the doctor replied at once.
“Three years ago, wasn’t it?”
“Four.”
“And it happened in some remote place in the Sahara Desert?”
“In Beni-Kouidar. I was with Henry Marnier in Beni-Kouidar at the time.”
“Go ahead!” said young England more eagerly.
“Poor Marnier was not an old friend of mine, but an acquaintance whom I
had met casually at Beni-Mora, which is known as a health resort.”
“I send patients there sometimes,” said the doctor.
“The railway stops at Beni-Mora. To reach Beni-Kouidar one must go on
horse or camel back over between three and four hundred kilometres of
desert, sleeping on the way at Travellers’ Houses--Bordjs as they are
called there. Beni-Kouidar lies in the midst of immeasurable sands,
and the air that blows through its palm gardens, and round its mosque
towers, and down its alleys under the arcades, is startling: dry as the
finest champagne, almost fiercely pure and fresh, exhilarating--well,
too exhilarating for certain people.”
The doctor nodded.
“Champagne goes very quickly to some heads,” he interjected.
“Beni-Kouidar has nothing to say to modern civilisation. It is a wild
and turbulent city, divided into quarters--the Arab quarter, the Jews’
quarter, the freed negroes’ quarter, and so on--and furthermore, is
infested at certain seasons by the Sahara nomads, who camp in filthy
tents on the huge sand dunes round about, and sell rugs, burnouses, and
Touareg work to the inhabitants, buying in return the dates for which
the palms of Beni-Kouidar are celebrated.
“I wanted to see a real Sahara city to which the Cook’s tourist had not
as yet penetrated, and I resolved to ride there from Beni-Mora. When
Henry Marnier heard of it he asked if he might accompany me.
“Marnier was a young man who had recently left Oxford, and who had come
out to Beni-Mora only a week before to see his mother, who was
going through the sulphur cure. He was what is generally called a
‘serious-minded young man’; intellectual, inclined to grave reading and
high thinking, totally devoid of frivolity, a little cold in manner and
temperament, one would have sworn; in fact, a type of a very well-known
kind of Oxford undergraduate, the kind that takes a good tutorship for a
year or so after leaving the University, and then becomes a schoolmaster
or a clergyman. Marnier, by the way, intended to take orders.
“Now, this sort of young man is not precisely my sort, and especially
not my sort in the Sahara Desert. But I did not want to be rude to
Marnier, who was friendly and agreeable, and obviously anxious to
increase his already considerable store of knowledge. So I put my
inclinations in my pocket, and, with inward reluctance, I agreed.
“We set off with Safti, my faithful one-eyed Arab guide, and after three
long days of riding and talking--as I had feared--Maeterlink and
Tolstoy, Henley and Verlaine (this last being utterly condemned by
Marnier as a man of weak character and degraded life) we saw the towers
of Beni-Kouidar aspiring above the shifting sands, the tufted summits of
the thousands of palm-trees, and heard the dull beating of drums and the
cries of people borne to us over the spaces of which silence is the
steady guardian.
“We were all pretty tired, but Marnier was, especially done up. He had
recently been working very hard for the ‘first’ with which he had left
Oxford, and was not in good condition. We were, therefore, glad enough
when we rode through the wide street thronged with natives, turned the
corner into the great camel market, and finally dismounted before
the door of the one inn, the ‘Rendezvous des Amis,’ a mean, dusty,
one-storey building, on whose dirty white wall was a crude painting of a
preposterous harridan in a purple empire gown, pouring wine for a Zouave
who was evidently afflicted with elephantiasis. Yet, tired as I was,
I stepped out into the camel market for a moment before going into the
house, emptied my lungs, and slowly filled them.
“‘What air!’ I said to Marnier, who had followed me.
“‘It is extraordinary,’ he answered in his rather dry tenor voice.
‘I should say like the best champagne, if I did not happen to be a
teetotaller.’
“(The market, I must explain, was not at that moment in active
operation.)
“After a _bain de siege_--we both longed for total immersion--and some
weak tea, in which I mingled a spoonful of rum, we felt better, but
we reposed till dinner, and once again Marnier, in his habitually
restrained and critical manner, discussed contemporary literature, and
what Plato and Aristotle, judging by; their writings, would have been
likely to think of it. And once again I felt as if I were in the ‘High’
at Oxford, and was almost inclined to wish that Marnier was the rowdy
type of undergrad, who ducks people in water troughs and makes bonfires
in quads.”
“H’m!” said the doctor gravely. “Better, perhaps, if he had been.”
“Much better,” I answered. “At seven o’clock we ate a rather tough
dinner in the small, bare _salle-à-manger_, on the red brick floor of
which sand grains were lying. Our only companion was a bearded priest in
a dirty soutane, the aumônier of Beni-Kouidar, who sat at a little table
apart, and greeted our entrance with a polite bow, but did not then
speak to us.
“When the meal was ended, however, he joined us as we stood at the inn
door looking out into the night. A moon was rising above the palms, and
gilding the cupolas of the Bureau Arabe on the far side of the Market
Square. A distant noise of tomtoms and African pipes was audible.
And all down the hill to our left--for the land rose to where the inn
stood--fires gleamed, and we could see half-naked figures passing and
repassing them, and others squatting beside, looking like monks in their
hooped burnouses.
“‘You are going out, messieurs?’ said the aumônier politely.
“I looked at Marnier.
“‘You’re too done up, I expect?’ I said to him.
“His face was pale, and he certainly had the demeanour of a tired man.
“‘No,’ he answered. ‘I should like to stroll in this wonderful air.’
“I turned to the priest.
“‘Yes, monsieur,’ I said.
“‘I come here to take my meals, but I live at the edge of the town.
Perhaps you will permit me to accompany you for a little way.’
“‘We shall be delighted, and we know nothing of Beni-Kouidar.’
“As we stepped out into the market Marnier paused to light his pipe. But
suddenly he threw away the match he had struck.
“‘No, it’s a sin to smoke in this air,’ he said.
“And he drew a deep breath, looking at the round moon.
“The priest smiled.
“‘I have lived here for four years,’ he said, ‘and cannot resist my
cigar. But you are right. The air of Beni-Kouidar is extraordinary. When
first I came here it used to mount to my head like wine.’
“‘Bad for you, Marnier!’ I said, laughing.
“Then I added, to the aumônier:
“‘My friend never drinks wine, and so ought to be peculiarly susceptible
to such an influence.’”