It was midnight when Nevill's car ran into the beautiful oasis town,
guarded by the most curious mountains of the Algerian desert, and they
were at their strangest, cut out clear as the painted mountains of stage
scenery, in the light of the great acetylene lamps. Stephen thought them
like a vast, half-burned Moorish city of mosques and palaces, over which
sand-storms had raged for centuries, leaving only traces here and there
of a ruined tower, a domed roof, or an ornamental frieze.
Of the palms he could see nothing, except the long, dark shape of the
oasis among the pale sand-billows; but early next morning he and Nevill
were up and out on the roof of the little French hotel, while sunrise
banners marched across the sky. Stephen had not known that desert dunes
could be bright peach-pink, or that a river flowing over white stones
could look like melted rubies, or that a few laughing Arab girls,
ankle-deep in limpid water, could glitter in morning light like jewelled
houris in celestial gardens. But now that he knew, he would never forget
his first desert picture.
The two men stood on the roof among the bubbly domes for a long time,
looking over the umber-coloured town and the flowing oasis which swept
to Bou-Saada's brown feet like a tidal wave. It was not yet time to go
and ask questions of the Caïd, whom Nevill knew.
Stephen was advised not to drink coffee in the hotel before starting on
their quest. "We shall have to swallow at least three cups each of _café
maure_ at the Caïd's house, and perhaps a dash of tea flavoured with
mint, on top of all, if we don't want to begin by hurting our host's
feelings," Nevill said. So they fasted, and fed their minds by walking
through Bou-Saada in its first morning glory. Already the old part of
the town was alive, for Arabs love the day when it is young, even as
they love a young girl for a bride.
The Englishmen strolled into the cool, dark mosque, where heavy Eastern
scents of musk and benzoin had lain all night like fugitives in
sanctuary, and where the roof was held up by cypress poles instead of
marble pillars, as in the grand mosques of big cities. By the time they
were ready to leave, dawn had become daylight, and coming out of the
brown dusk, the town seemed flooded with golden wine, wonderful,
bubbling, unbelievable gold, with scarlet and purple and green figures
floating in it, brilliant as rainbow fish.
The Caïd lived near the old town, in an adobe house, with a garden which
was a tangle of roses and pomegranate blossoms, under orange trees and
palms. And there were narrow paths of hard sand, the colour of old gold,
which rounded up to the centre, and had little runnels of water on
either side. The sunshine dripped between the long fingers of the palm
leaves, to trail in a lacy pattern along the yellow paths, and the sound
of the running water was sweet.
It was in this garden that the Caïd gave his guests the three cups of
coffee each, followed by the mint-flavoured tea which Nevill had
prophesied. And when they had admired a tame gazelle which nibbled cakes
of almond and honey from their hands, the Caïd insisted on presenting it
to his good friend, Monsieur Caird.
Over the cups of _café maure_, they talked of Captain Cassim ben Halim,
but their host could or would tell them nothing beyond the fact that Ben
Halim had once lived for a little while not far from Bou-Saada. He had
inherited from his father a country house, about fifty kilometres
distant, but he had never stayed there until after retiring from the
army, and selling his place in Algiers. Then he had spent a few months
in the country. The Caïd had met him long ago in Algiers, but had not
seen him since. Ben Halim had been ill, and had led a retired life in
the country, receiving no one. Afterward he had gone away, out of
Algeria. It was said that he had died abroad a little later. Of that,
the Caïd was not certain; but in any case the house on the hill was now
in the possession of the Caïd of Ain Dehdra, Sidi Elaïd ben Sliman, a
distant cousin of Ben Halim, said to be his only living relative.
Then their host went on to describe the house with the white wall, which
looked down upon a cemetery and a village. His description was almost
precisely what Mouni's had been, and there was no doubt that the place
where she had lived with the beautiful lady was the place of which he
spoke. But of the lady herself they could learn nothing. The Caïd had no
information to give concerning Ben Halim's family.
He pressed them to stay, and see all the beauties of the oasis. He would
introduce them to the marabout at El Hamel, and in the evening they
should see a special dance of the Ouled Naïls. But they made excuses
that they must get on, and bade the Caïd good-bye after an hour's talk.
As for the _gazelle approvoisée_, Nevill named her Josette, and hired an
Arab to take her to Algiers by the diligence, with explicit instructions
as to food and milk.
Swarms of locusts flew into their faces, and fell into the car, or were
burned to death in the radiator, as they sped along the road towards the
white house on the golden hill. They started from Bou-Saada at ten
o'clock, and though the road was far from good, and they were not always
sure of the way, the noon heat was scarcely at its height when Stephen
said: "There it is! That must be the hill and the white wall with the
towers."
"Yes, there's the cemetery too," answered Nevill. "We're seeing it on
our left side, as we go, I hope that doesn't mean we're in for bad
luck."
"Rot!" said Stephen, promptly. Yet for all his scorn of Nevill's
grotesque superstitions, he was not in a confident mood. He did not
expect much good from this visit to Ben Halim's old country house. And
the worst was, that here seemed their last chance of finding out what
had become of Saidee Ray, if not of her sister.
The sound of the motor made a brown face flash over the top of the tall
gate, like a Jack popping out of his box.
"La Sidi, el Caïd?" asked Nevill. "Is he at home?"
The face pretended not to understand; and having taken in every detail
of the strangers' appearance and belongings, including the motor-car, it
disappeared.
"What's going to happen now?" Stephen wanted to know.
Nevill looked puzzled. "The creature isn't too polite. Probably it's
afraid of Roumis, and has never been spoken to by one before. But I hope
it will promptly scuttle indoors and fetch its master, or some one with
brains and manners."
Several minutes passed, and the yellow motor-car continued to advertise
its presence outside the Caïd's gate by panting strenuously. The face
did not show itself again; and there was no evidence of life behind the
white wall, except the peculiarly ominous yelping of Kabyle dogs.
"Let's pound on the gate, and show them we mean to get in," said
Stephen, angry-eyed.
But Nevill counselled waiting. "Never be in a hurry when you have to do
with Arabs. It's patience that pays."
"Here come two chaps on horseback," Stephen said, looking down at the
desert track that trailed near the distant cluster of mud houses, which
were like square blocks of gold in the fierce sunshine. "They seem to be
staring up at the car. I wonder if they're on their way here!"
"It may be the Caïd, riding home with a friend, or a servant," Nevill
suggested. "If so, I'll bet my hat there are other eyes than ours
watching for him, peering out through some spy-hole in one of the
gate-towers."
His guess was right. It was the Caïd coming home, and Maïeddine was with
him; for Lella M'Barka had been obliged to rest for three days at the
farmhouse on the hill, and the Caïd's guest had accompanied him before
sunrise this morning to see a favourite white mehari, or racing camel,
belonging to Sidi Elaïd ben Sliman, which was very ill, in care of a
wise man of the village. Now the mehari was dead, and as Maïeddine
seemed impatient to get back, they were riding home, in spite of the
noon heat.
Maïeddine had left the house reluctantly this morning. Not that he could
often see Victoria, who was nursing M'Barka, and looking so wistful that
he guessed she had half hoped to find her sister waiting behind the
white wall on the golden hill.
Though he could expect little of the girl's society, and there was
little reason to fear that harm would come to her, or that she would
steal away in his absence, still he had hated to ride out of the gate
and leave her. If the Caïd had not made a point of his coming, he would
gladly have stayed behind. Now, when he looked up and saw a yellow
motor-car at the gate, he believed that his feeling had been a
presentiment, a warning of evil, which he ought so have heeded.
He and the Caïd were a long way off when he caught sight of the car, and
heard its pantings, carried by the clear desert air. He could not be
certain of its identity, but he prided himself upon his keen sight and
hearing, and where they failed, instinct stepped in. He was sure that it
was the car which had waited for Stephen Knight when the _Charles Quex_
came in, the car of Nevill Caird, about whom he had made inquiries
before leaving Algiers. Maïeddine knew, of course, that Victoria had
been to the Djenan el Djouad, and he was intensely suspicious as well as
jealous of Knight, because of the letter Victoria had written. He knew
also that the two Englishmen had been asking questions at the Hotel de
la Kasbah; and he was not surprised to see the yellow car in front of
the Caïd's gates. Now that he saw it, he felt dully that he had always
known it would follow him.
If only he had been in the house, it would not have mattered. He would
have been able to prevent Knight and Caird from seeing Victoria, or even
from having the slightest suspicion that she was, or had been, there. It
was the worst of luck that he should be outside the gates, for now he
could not go back while the Englishmen were there. Knight would
certainly recognize him, and guess everything that he did not know.
Maïeddine thought very quickly. He dared not ride on, lest the men in
the car should have a field-glass. The only thing was to let Ben Sliman
go alone, so that, if eyes up there on the hill were watching, it might
seem that the Caïd was parting from some friend who lived in the
village. He would have to trust Elaïd's discretion and tact, as he knew
already he might trust his loyalty. Only--the situation was desperate.
Tact, and an instinct for the right word, the frank look, were worth
even more than loyalty at this moment. And one never quite knew how far
to trust another man's judgment. Besides, the mischief might have been
done before Ben Sliman could arrive on the scene; and at the thought of
what might happen, Maïeddine's heart seemed to turn in his breast. He
had never known a sensation so painful to body and mind, and it was
hideous to feel helpless, to know that he could do only harm, and not
good, by riding up the hill. Nevertheless, he said to himself, if he
should see Victoria come out to speak with these men, he would go. He
would perhaps kill them, and the chauffeur too. Anything rather than
give up the girl now; for the sharp stab of the thought that he might
lose her, that Stephen Knight might have her, made him ten times more in
love than he had been before. He wished that Allah might strike the men
in the yellow car dead; although, ardent Mussulman as he was, he had no
hope that such a glorious miracle would happen.
"It is those men from Algiers of whom I told thee," he said to the Caïd.
"I must stop below. They must not recognize me, or the dark one who was
on the ship, will guess. Possibly he suspects already that I stand for
something in this affair."
"Who can have sent them to my house?" Ben Sliman wondered. The two drew
in their horses and put on the manner of men about to bid each other
good-bye.
"I hope, I am almost sure, that they know nothing of _her_, or of me.
Probably, when inquiring about Ben Halim, in order to hear of her
sister, and so find out where she has gone, they learned only that Ben
Halim once lived here. If thy servants are discreet, it may be that no
harm will come from this visit."
"They will be discreet. Have no fear," the Caïd assured him. Yet it was
on his tongue to say; "the lady herself, when she hears the sound of the
car, may do some unwise thing." But he did not finish the sentence. Even
though the young girl--whom he had not seen--was a Roumia, obsessed with
horrible, modern ideas, which at present it would be dangerous to try
and correct, he could not discuss her with Maïeddine. If she showed
herself to the men, it could not be helped. What was to be, would be.
Mektûb!
"Far be it from me to distrust my friend's servants," said Maïeddine;
"but if in their zeal they go too far and give an impression of
something to hide, it would be as bad as if they let drop a word too
many."
"I will ride on and break any such impression if it has been made," Ben
Sliman consoled him. "Trust me. I will be as gracious to these Roumis as
if they were true believers."
"I do trust thee completely," answered the younger man. "While they are
at thy gates, or within them, I must wait with patience. I cannot remain
here in the open--yet I wish to be within sight, that I may see with my
own eyes all that happens. What if I ride to one of the black tents, and
ask for water to wash the mouth of my horse? If they have it not, it is
no matter."
"Thine is a good thought," said Ben Sliman, and rode on, putting his
slim white Arab horse to a trot.
To the left from the group of adobe houses, and at about the same
distance from the rough track on which they had been riding, was a
cluster of nomad tents, like giant bats with torpid wings spread out
ink-black on the gold of the desert. A little farther off was another
small encampment of a different tribe; and their tents were brown,
striped with black and yellow. They looked like huge butterflies
resting. But Maïeddine thought of no such similes. He was a child of the
Sahara, and used to the tents and the tent-dwellers. His own father, the
Agha, lived half the year in a great tent, when he was with his douar,
and Maïeddine had been born under the roof of camel's hair. His own
people and these people were not kin, and their lives lay far apart; yet
a man of one nomad tribe understands all nomads, though he be a chief's
son, and they as poor as their own ill-fed camels. His pride was his
nomad blood, for all men of the Sahara, be they princes or
camel-drivers, look with scorn upon the sedentary people, those of the
great plain of the Tell, and fat eaters of ripe dates in the cities.
The eight or ten black tents were gathered round one, a little higher, a
little less ragged than the others--the tent of the Kebir, or headman;
but it was humble enough. There would have been room and to spare for a
dozen such under the _tente sultane_ of the Agha, at his douar south of
El Aghouat.
As Maïeddine rode up, a buzz of excitement rose in the hive. Some one
ran to tell the Kebir that a great Sidi was arriving, and the headman
came out from his tent, where he had been meditating or dozing after the
chanting of the midday prayer--the prayer of noon.
He was a thin, elderly man, with an eagle eye to awe his women-folk, and
an old burnous of sheep's wool, which was of a deep cream colour because
it had not been washed for many years. Yet he smelt good, with a smell
that was like the desert, and there was no foul odour in the miniature
douar, as in European dwellings of the very poor. There is never a smell
of uncleanliness about Arabs, even those people who must perform most of
the ablutions prescribed by their religion with sand instead of water.
But the Saharian saying is that the desert purifies all things.
The Kebir was polite though not servile to Maïeddine, and while the
horse borrowed from the Caïd was having its face economically sprinkled
with water from a brown goat-skin, black coffee was being hospitably
prepared for the guest by the women of the household, unveiled of
course, as are all women of the nomad tribes, except those of highest
birth.
Maïeddine did not want the coffee, but it would have been an insult to
refuse, and he made laboured conversation with the Kebir, his eyes and
thoughts fixed on the Caïd's gate and the yellow motor-car. He hardly
saw the tents, beneath whose low-spread black wings eyes looked out at
him, as the bright eyes of chickens look out from under the mother-hen's
feathers. They were all much alike, though the Kebir's, as befitted his
position, was the best, made of wide strips of black woollen material
stitched together, spread tightly over stout poles, and pegged down into
the hard sand. There was a partition dividing the tent in two, a
partition made of one or two old haïcks, woven by hand, and if Maïeddine
had been interested, he could have seen his host's bedding arranged for
the day; a few coarse rugs and _frechias_ piled up carelessly, out of
the way. There was a bale of camels' hair, ready for weaving, and on top
of it a little boy was curled up asleep. From the tent-poles hung an
animal's skin, drying, and a cradle of netted cords in which swung and
slept a swaddled baby no bigger than a doll. It was a girl, therefore
its eyes were blackened with kohl, and its eyebrows neatly sketched on
with paint, as they had been since the unfortunate day of its birth,
when the father grumbled because it was not a "child," but only a
worthless female.
The mother of the four weeks' old doll, a fine young woman tinkling with
Arab silver, left her carpet-weaving to grind the coffee, while her
withered mother-in-law brightened with brushwood the smouldering fire of
camel-dung. The women worked silently, humbly, though they would have
been chattering if the great Sidi stranger had not been there; but two
or three little children in orange and scarlet rags played giggling
among the rubbish outside the tent--a broken bassour-frame, or
palanquin, waiting to be mended; date boxes, baskets, and wooden plates;
old kous-kous bowls, bundles of alfa grass, chicken feathers, and an
infant goat with its mother.
The sound of children's shrill laughter, which passed unnoticed by the
parents, who had it always in their ears, rasped Maïeddine's nerves, and
he would have liked to strike or kick the babies into silence. Most
Arabs worship children, even girls, and are invariably kind to them, but
to-day Maïeddine hated anything that ran about disturbingly and made a
noise.
Now the Caïd had reached the gate, and was talking to the men in the
motor-car. Would he send them away? No, the gate was being opened by a
servant. Ben Sliman must have invited the Roumis in. Possibly it was a
wise thing to do, yet how dangerous, how terribly dangerous, with
Victoria perhaps peeping from one of the tiny windows at the women's
corner of the house, which looked on the court! They could not see her
there, but she could see them, and if she were tired of travelling and
dancing attendance on a fidgety invalid--if she repented her promise to
keep the secret of this journey?
Maïeddine's experience of women inclined him to think that they always
did forget their promises to a man the moment his back was turned.
Victoria was different from the women of his race, or those he had met
in Paris, yet she was, after all, a woman; and there was no truer saying
than that you might more easily prophesy the direction of the wind than
say what a woman was likely to do. The coffee which the Kebir handed him
made him feel sick, as if he had had a touch of the sun. What was
happening up there on the hill, behind the gates which stood half open?
What would she do--his Rose of the West?