On the top of a pale golden hill, partly sand, partly rock, rises a
white wall with square, squat towers which look north and south, east
and west. The wall and the towers together are like an ivory crown set
on the hill's brow, and from a distance the effect is very barbaric,
very impressive, for all the country round about is wild and desolate.
Along the southern horizon the desert goes billowing in waves of gold,
and rose, and violet, that fade into the fainter violet of the sky; and
nearer there are the strange little mountains which guard the oasis of
Bou-Saada, like a wall reared to hide a treasure from some dreaded
enemy; and even the sand is heaped in fantastic shapes, resembling a
troop of tawny beasts crouched to drink from deep pools of purple
shadow. Northward, the crumpled waste rolls away like prairie land or
ocean, faint green over yellow brown, as if grass seed had been
sprinkled sparsely on a stormy sea and by some miracle had sprouted. And
in brown wastes, bright emerald patches gleam, vivid and fierce as
serpents' eyes, ringed round with silver. Far away to the east floats
the mirage of a lake, calm as a blue lagoon. Westward, where desert
merges into sky, are high tablelands, and flat-topped mountains with
carved sides, desert architecture, such as might have suggested Egyptian
temples and colossal sphinxes.
Along the rough desert track beneath the hill, where bald stones break
through sandy earth, camels come and go, passing from south to north,
from north to south, marching slowly with rhythmic gait, as if to the
sound of music which only they can hear, glancing from side to side with
unutterable superciliousness, looking wistfully here and there at some
miniature oasis thrown like a dark prayer-carpet on the yellow sand. Two
or three in a band they go, led by desert men in blowing white, or again
in a long train of twelve or twenty, their legs a moving lattice, their
heart-shaped feet making a soft, swishing "pad-pad," on the hard road.
The little windows of the squat, domed towers on the hill are like eyes
that spy upon this road,--small, dark and secret eyes, very weary of
seeing nothing better than camels since old days when there were
razzias, and wars, something worth shutting stout gates upon.
When, after three days of travelling, Victoria came southward along this
road, and looked between the flapping carriage curtains at the white
wall that crowned the dull gold hill, her heart beat fast, for the
thought of the golden silence sprang to her mind. The gold did not burn
with the fierce orange flames she had seen in her dreams--it was a
bleached and faded gold, melancholy and almost sinister in colour; yet
it would pass for gold; and a great silence brooded where prairie
blended with desert. She asked no questions of Maïeddine, for that was a
rule she had laid upon herself; but when the carriage turned out of the
rough road it had followed so long, and the horses began to climb a
stony track which wound up the yellow hill to the white towers, she
could hardly breathe, for the throbbing in her breast. Always she had
only had to shut her eyes to see Saidee, standing on a high white place,
gazing westward through a haze of gold. What if this were the high white
place? What if already Si Maïeddine was bringing her to Saidee?
They had been only three days on the way so far, it was true, and she
had been told that the journey would be very, very long. Still, Arabs
were subtle, and Si Maïeddine might have wanted to test her courage.
Looking back upon those long hours, now, towards evening of the third
day, it seemed to Victoria that she had been travelling for a week in
the swaying, curtained carriage, with the slow-trotting mules.
Just at first, there had been some fine scenery to hold her interest;
far-off mountains of grim shapes, dark as iron, and spotted with snow as
a leper is spotted with scales. Then had come low hills, following the
mountains (nameless to her, because Maïeddine had not cared to name
them), and blue lakes of iris flowing over wide plains. But by and by
the plains flattened to dullness; a hot wind ceaselessly flapped the
canvas curtains, and Lella M'Barka sighed and moaned with the fatigue of
constant motion. There was nothing but plain, endless plain, and
Victoria had been glad, for her own sake as well as the invalid's, when
night followed the first day. They had stopped on the outskirts of a
large town, partly French, partly Arab, passing through and on to the
house of a caïd who was a friend of Si Maïeddine's. It was a primitively
simple house, even humble, it seemed to the girl, who had as yet no
conception of the bareness and lack of comfort--according to Western
ideas--of Arab country-houses. Nevertheless, when, after another tedious
day, they rested under the roof of a village adel, an official below a
caïd, the first house seemed luxurious in contrast. During this last,
third day, Victoria had been eager and excited, because of the desert,
through one gate of which they had entered. She felt that once in the
desert she was so close to Saidee in spirit that they might almost hear
the beating of each other's hearts, but she had not expected to be near
her sister in body for many such days to come: and the wave of joy that
surged over her soul as the horses turned up the golden hill towards the
white towers, was suffocating in its force.
The nearer they came, the less impressive seemed the building. After
all, it was not the great Arab stronghold it had looked from far away,
but a fortified farmhouse a century old, at most. Climbing the hill,
too, Victoria saw that the golden colour was partly due to a monstrous
swarm of ochre-hued locusts, large as young canary birds, which had
settled, thick as yellow snow, over the ground. They were resting after
a long flight, and there were millions and millions of them, covering
the earth in every direction as far as the eye could reach. Only a few
were on the wing, but as the carriage stopped before the closed gates,
fat yellow bodies came blundering against the canvas curtains, or fell
plumply against the blinkers over the mules' eyes.
Si Maïeddine got down from the carriage, and shouted, with a peculiar
call. There was no answering sound, but after a wait of two or three
minutes the double gates of thick, greyish palm-wood were pulled open
from inside, with a loud creak. For a moment the brown face of an old
man, wrinkled as a monkey's, looked out between the gates, which he held
ajar; then, with a guttural cry, he threw both as far back as he could,
and rushing out, bent his white turban over Maïeddine's hand. He kissed
the Sidi's shoulder, and a fold of his burnous, half kneeling, and
chattering Arabic, only a word of which Victoria could catch here and
there. As he chattered, other men came running out, some of them
Negroes, all very dark, and they vied with one another in humble kissing
of the master's person, at any spot convenient to their lips.
Politely, though not too eagerly, he made the gracious return of seeming
to kiss the back of his own hand, or his fingers, where they had been
touched by the welcoming mouths, but in reality he kissed air. With a
gesture, he stopped the salutations at last, and asked for the Caïd, to
whom, he said, he had written, sending his letter by the diligence.
Then there were passionate jabberings of regret. The Caïd, was away, had
been away for days, fighting the locusts on his other farm, west of
Aumale, where there was grain to save. But the letter had arrived, and
had been sent after him, immediately, by a man on horseback. This
evening he would certainly return to welcome his honoured guest. The
word was "guest," not "guests," and Victoria understood that she and
Lella M'Barka would not see the master of the house. So it had been at
the other two houses: so in all probability it would be at every house
along their way unless, as she still hoped, they had already come to the
end of the journey.
The wide open gates showed a large, bare courtyard, the farmhouse, which
was built round it, being itself the wall. On the outside, no windows
were visible except those in the towers, and a few tiny square apertures
for ventilation, but the yard was overlooked by a number of small glass
eyes, all curtained.
As the carriage was driven in, large yellow dogs gathered round it,
barking; but the men kicked them away, and busied themselves in chasing
the animals off to a shed, their white-clad backs all religiously turned
as Si Maïeddine helped the ladies to descend. Behind a closed window a
curtain was shaking; and M'Barka had not yet touched her feet to the
ground when a negress ran out of a door that opened in the same distant
corner of the house. She was unveiled, like Lella M'Barka's servants in
Algiers, and, with Fafann, she almost carried the tired invalid towards
the open door. Victoria followed, quivering with suspense. What waited
for her behind that door? Would she see Saidee, after all these years of
separation?
"I think I'm dying," moaned Lella M'Barka. "They will never take me away
from this house alive. White Rose, where art thou? I need thy hand under
my arm."
Victoria tried to think only of M'Barka, and to wait with patience for
the supreme moment--if it were to come. Even if she had wished it, she
could not have asked questions now.