Stephen and Nevill Caird returned from Tlemcen to Algiers, hoping for
news of Victoria, but there was none; and after two days they left for
Grand Kabylia.
The prophetic birds at Mansourah had flown in a south-easterly
direction, but when Stephen and Nevill started in search of Josette's
maid Mouni, they turned full east, their faces looking towards the dark
heights of Kabylia. It was not Victoria they hoped to find there,
however, or Saidee her sister, but only a hint as to their next move.
Nevertheless, Nevill was superstitious about the birds, and said to
Stephen when the car had run them out of Algiers, past Maison Carré,
into open country: "Isn't it queer how the birds follow us? I never saw
so many before. They're always with us. It's just as if they'd passed on
word, the way chupatties are passed on in India, eh? Or maybe Josette
has told her protegées to look after us."
And Stephen smiled, for Nevill's superstitions were engaging, rather
than repulsive; and his quaintnesses were endearing him more and more to
the man who had just taken up the dropped thread of friendship after
eight or nine years. What an odd fellow Nevill was! Stephen thought,
indulgently. No wonder he was worshipped by his servants, and even his
chauffeur. No wonder Lady MacGregor adored her nephew, though treating
him as if he were a little boy!
One of Nevill's idiosyncrasies, after arranging everything to fit a
certain plan, was to rush off at the last minute and do something
entirely different. Last night--the night before starting for Grand
Kabylia--he had begged Stephen to be ready by eight, at which time the
car was ordered. At nine--having sat up till three o'clock writing
letters, and then having visited a lately imported gazelle in its
quarters--Nevill was still in his bath. At length he arrived on the
scene, beaming, with a sulky chameleon in his pocket, and flew about
giving last directions, until he suddenly discovered that there was a
violent hurry, whereupon he began to be boyishly peevish with the
chauffeur for not getting off an hour ago. No sooner had the car
started, however, than he fell into a serious mood, telling Stephen of
many things which he had thought out in the night--things which might be
helpful in finding Victoria. He had been lying awake, it seemed,
brooding on this subject, and it had occurred to him that, if Mouni
should prove a disappointment, they might later discover something
really useful by going to the annual ball at the Governor's palace. This
festivity had been put off, on account of illness in the chief
official's family; but it would take place in a fortnight or so now. All
the great Aghas and Caïds of the south would be there, and as Nevill
knew many of them, he might be able to get definite information
concerning Ben Halim. As for Saidee--to hear of Ben Halim was to hear of
her. And then it was, in the midst of describing the ball, and the
important men who would attend, that Nevill suddenly broke off to be
superstitious about birds.
It was true that the birds were everywhere! little greenish birds
flitting among the trees; larger grey-brown birds flying low; fairy-like
blue and yellow birds that circled round the car as it ran east towards
the far, looming mountains of the Djurdjura; larks that spouted music
like a fountain of jewels as they soared into the quivering blue; and
great, stately storks, sitting in their nests on tall trees or tops of
poles, silhouetted against the sky as they gazed indifferently down at
the automobile.
"Josette would tell us it's splendid luck to see storks on their
nests," said Nevill. "Arabs think they bring good fortune to places.
That's why people cut off the tops of the trees and make nests for them,
so they can bless the neighbourhood and do good to the crops. Storks
have no such menial work here as bringing babies. Arab babies have to
come as best they can--sent into the world anyhow; for storks are men
who didn't do their religious duties in the most approved style, so they
have to revisit the world next time in the form of beneficent birds."
But Nevill did not want to answer questions about storks and their
habits. He had tired of them in a moment, and was passionately
interested in mules. "There ought to be an epic written about the mules
of North Africa!" he exclaimed. "I tell you, it's a great subject. Look
at those poor brave chaps struggling to pull carts piled up with casks
of beastly Algerian wine, through that sea of mud, which probably goes
all the way through to China. Aren't they splendid? Wait till you've
been in this country as long as I have, and you'll respect mules as I
do, from army mules down to the lowest dregs of the mule kingdom. I
don't ask you to love them--and neither do they. But how they work here
in Africa--and never a groan! They go on till they drop. And I don't
believe half of them ever get anything to eat. Some day I'm going to
start a Rest Farm for tired mules. I shall pay well for them. A man I
know did write a pæan of praise for mules. I believe I'll have it
translated into Arabic, and handed about as a leaflet. These natives are
good to their horses, because they believe they have souls, but they
treat their mules like the dirt under their feet." And Nevill began
quoting here and there a verse or a line he remembered of the "mule
music," chanting in time to the throbbing of the motor.
"Key A minor, measure common,
One and two and three and four and--
Every hoof-beat half a second
Every hoof-beat linked with heart-beat,
Every heart-beat nearer bursting.
Andantino sostenuto:
In the downpour or the dryness,
Hottest summer, coldest winter;
Sick and sore and old and feeble,
Hourly, hourly; daily, daily,
From the sunrise to the setting;
From the setting to the sunrise
Scarce a break in all the circle
For the rough and scanty eating,
For the scant and muddy drinking,
For the fitful, fearful resting,
For the master haunted-sleeping.
Dreams in dark of God's far heaven
Tempo primo; tempo sempre."
And so, through pools of wild flowers and the blood of poppies, their
road led to wild mountain scenery, then into the embrace of the
Djurdjura mountains themselves--evil, snow-splashed, sterile-seeming
mountains, until the car had passed the fortified town of Tizi Ouzou, an
overgrown village, whose name Stephen thought like a drunken term of
endearment. It was market-day there, and the long street was so full of
Kabyles dressed apparently in low-necked woollen bags, of soldiers in
uniform, of bold-eyed, scantily-clad children, and of dyed sheep and
goats, that the car had to pass at a walk. Nevill bought a good deal of
Kabyle jewellery, necklaces and long earrings, or boxes enamelled in
crude greens and reds, blues and yellows. Not that he had not already
more than he knew what to do with; but he could not resist the handsome
unveiled girls, the wretched old women, or pretty, half-naked children
who offered the work of the neighbouring hill villages, or family
heirlooms. Sometimes he saw eyes which made him think of Josette's; but
then, all beautiful things that he saw reminded him of her. She was an
obsession. But, for a wonder, he had taken Stephen's advice in Tlemcen
and had not proposed again. He was still marvelling at his own strength
of mind, and asking himself if, after all, he had been wise.
After Tizi Ouzou the mountains were no longer sterile-seeming. The road
coiled up and up snakily, between rows of leering cactus; and far below
the densely wooded heights lay lovely plains through which a great river
wandered. There was a homely smell of mint, and the country did not look
to Stephen like the Africa he had imagined. All the hill-slopes were
green with the bright green of fig trees and almonds, even at heights so
great that the car wallowed among clouds. This steep road was the road
to Fort National--the "thorn in the eye of Kabylia," which pierces so
deeply that Kabylia may writhe, but revolt no more. Already it was
almost as if the car had brought them into another world. The men who
occasionally emerged from the woolly white blankets of the clouds, were
men of a very different type from the mild Kabyles of the plains they
had met trooping along towards Algiers in search of work.
These were brave, upstanding men, worthy of their fathers who revolted
against French rule and could not be conquered until that thorn, Fort
National, was planted deeply in heart and eye. Some were fair, and even
red-haired, which would have surprised Stephen if he had not heard from
Nevill that in old days the Christian slaves used to escape from Algiers
and seek refuge in Kabylia, where they were treated as free men, and no
questions were asked.
Without Fort National, it seemed to Stephen that this strange Berber
people would never have been forced to yield; for looking down from
mountain heights as the motor sped on, it was as if he looked into a
vast and intricate maze of valleys, and on each curiously pointed peak
clung a Kabyle village that seemed to be inlaid in the rock like
separate bits of scarlet enamel. It was the low house-roofs which gave
this effect, for unlike the Arabs, whom the ancient Berber lords of the
soil regard with scorn, the Kabyles build their dwellings of stone,
roofed with red tiles.
This was a wild, tormented world, broken into a hundred sharp mountain
ridges which seemed to cut the sky, because between the high peaks and
the tangled skein of far-away villages surged foaming seas of cloud,
which appeared to separate high, bright peaks from shadowed vales, by
incredible distances. As far as the eye could travel with utmost
straining, away to the dark, imposing background of the Djurdjura range,
billowed ridges and ravines, ravines and ridges, each pointing pinnacle
or razor-shelf adorned with its coral-red hamlet, like a group of
poisonous fungi, or the barnacles on a ship's steep side. Such an
extraordinary landscape Stephen had never imagined, or seen except on a
Japanese fan; and it struck him that the scene actually did resemble
quaint prints picturing half-real, half-imaginary scenes in old Japan.
"What a country for war! What a country for defence!" he said to
himself, as Nevill's yellow car sped along the levels of narrow ridges
that gave, on either hand, vertical views far down to fertile valleys,
rushed into clouds of weeping rain, or out into regions of sunlight and
rainbows.
It was three o'clock when they reached Michélet, but they had not
stopped for luncheon, as both were in haste to find Mouni: and Mouni's
village was just beyond Michélet. Since Fort National, they had been in
the heart of Grand Kabylia; and Michélet was even more characteristic of
this strange mountain country, so different from transplanted Arabia
below.
Not an Arab lived here, in the long, straggling town, built on the crest
of a high ridge. Not a minaret tower pointed skyward. The Kabyle place
of worship had a roof of little more height or importance than those
that clustered round it. The men were in striped brown gandourahs of
camel's hair; the lovely unveiled women were wrapped in woollen foutahs
dyed red or yellow, blue or purple, and from their little ears heavy
rings dangled. The blue tattoo marks on their brown cheeks and
foreheads, which in forgotten times had been Christian crosses, gave
great value to their enormous, kohl-encircled eyes; and their teeth
were very white as they smiled boldly, yet proudly, at Stephen and
Nevill.
There was a flight of steps to mount from the car to the hotel, and as
the two men climbed the stairs they turned to look, across a profound
chasm, to the immense mass of the Djurdjura opposite Michélet's thin
ledge. From their point of view, it was like the Jungfrau, as Stephen
had seen it from Mürren, on one of his few trips to Switzerland.
Somehow, those little conventional potterings of his seemed pitiable
now, they had been so easy to do, so exactly what other people did.
It was long past ordinary luncheon time, and hunger constrained the two
men to eat before starting out to find the village where Mouni and her
people lived. It was so small a hamlet, that Nevill, who knew Kabylia
well, had never heard of it until Josette Soubise wrote the name for him
on one of her own cards. The landlord of the hotel at Michélet gave
rapid and fluent directions how to go, saying that the distance was two
miles, but as the way was a steep mountain path, les messieurs must go
on foot.
Immediately after lunching they started, armed with a present for the
bride; a watch encrusted with tiny brilliants, which, following
Josette's advice, they had chosen as the one thing of all others
calculated to win the Kabyle girl's heart. "It will be like a fairy
dream to her to have a watch of her own," Josette had said. "Her friends
will be dying of envy, and she will enjoy that. Oh, she will search her
soul and tell you everything she knows, if you but give her a watch!"
For a little way the friends walked along the wild and beautiful road,
which from Michélet plunges down the mountains toward Bougie and the
sea; but soon they came to the narrow, ill-defined footpath described by
the landlord. It led straight up a steep shoulder of rock which at its
highest part became a ledge; and when they had climbed to the top, at a
distance they could see a cluster of red roofs apparently falling down a
precipice, at the far end.
Here and there were patches of snow, white as fallen lily-petals on the
pansy-coloured earth. Looking down was like looking from a high wave
upon a vast sea of other waves, each wave carrying on its apex a few
bits of broken red mosaic, which were Kabyle roofs; and the pale sky was
streaked with ragged violet clouds exactly like the sky and clouds
painted on screens by Japanese artists.
They met not a soul as they walked, but while the village was still far
away and unreal, the bark of guns, fired quickly one after the other,
jarred their ears, and the mountain wind brought a crying of raïtas,
African clarionettes, and the dull, yet fierce beat of tom-toms.
"Now I know why we've met no one," said Nevill. "The wedding feast's
still on, and everybody who is anybody at Yacoua, is there. You know, if
you're an Arab, or even a Kabyle, it takes you a week to be married
properly, and you have high jinks every day: music and dancing and
eating, and if you've money enough, above all you make the powder speak.
Mouni's people are doing her well. What a good thing we've got the
watch! Even with Josette's introduction we mightn't have been able to
come near the bride, unless we had something to offer worth her having."
The mountain village of Yacoua had no suburbs, no outlying houses. The
one-story mud huts with their pointed red roofs, utterly unlike Arab
dwellings, were huddled together, with only enough distance between for
a man and a mule or a donkey to pass. The best stood in pairs, with a
walled yard between; and as Stephen and Nevill searched anxiously for
some one to point out the home of Mouni, from over a wall which seemed
to be running down the mountain-side, came a white puff of smoke and a
strident bang, then more, one after the other. Again the wailing of the
raïta began, and there was no longer any need to ask the way.
"That's where the party is--in that yard," said Nevill, beginning to be
excited. "Now, what sort of reception will they give us? That's the next
question."
"Can't we tell, the first thing, that we've come from Algiers with a
present for the bride?" suggested Stephen.
"We can if they understand Arabic," Nevill answered. "But the Kabyle
lingo's quite different--Berber, or something racy of the soil. I ought
to have brought Mohammed to interpret."
So steeply did the yard between the low houses run downhill, that,
standing at the top of a worn path like a seam in some old garment, the
two Europeans could look over the mud wall. Squalid as were the mud huts
and the cattle-yard connecting them, the picture framed in the square
enclosure blazed with colour. It was barbaric, and beautiful in its
savagery.
Squatting on the ground, with the last rank against the house wall, were
several rows of women, all unveiled, their uncovered arms jewelled to
the elbows, embracing their knees. The afternoon sunlight shone on their
ceremonial finery, setting fire to the red, blue and green enamel of
their necklaces, their huge hoop earrings and the jewelled silver chains
pinned to their scarlet or yellow head-wrappings, struck out strange
gleams from the flat, round brooches which fastened their gaily striped
robes on their shoulders, and turned their great dark eyes into brown
topazes. Twenty or thirty men, dressed in their best burnouses, draped
over new gandourahs, their heads swathed in clean white muslin turbans,
sat on the opposite side of the court, watching the "powder play"
furnished by two tall, handsome boys, who handled with delicate grace
and skill old-fashioned, long-muzzled guns inlaid with coral and silver,
heirlooms perhaps, and of some value even to antiquaries.
While the powder spoke, nobody had a thought for anything else. All eyes
were upon the boys with the guns, only travelling upward in ecstasy to
watch the puffs of smoke that belched out round and white as fat
snowballs. Then, when the music burst forth again, and a splendidly
handsome young Kabyle woman ran forward to begin the wild dance of the
body and of the hands--dear to the mountain men as to the nomads of the
desert--every one was at first absorbed in admiration of her movements.
But suddenly a child (one of a dozen in a row in front of all the women)
tired of the show, less amusing to him than the powder play, and looking
up, saw the two Roumis on the hill behind the wall. He nudged his
neighbour, and the neighbour, who happened to be a little girl, followed
with her eyes the upward nod of his head. So the news went round that
strangers had come uninvited to the wedding-feast, and men began to
frown and women to whisper, while the dancer lost interest in her own
tinklings and genuflections.
It was time for the intruders to make it known that business of some
sort, not idle curiosity, had brought them on the scene, and Nevill
stepped forward, holding out the visiting card given him by Josette, and
the crimson velvet case containing the watch which Stephen had bought in
Algiers.