"There is my father's douar," said Si Maïeddine; and Victoria's eyes
followed his pointing finger.
Into a stony and desolate waste had billowed one golden wave of sand,
and on the fringe of this wave, the girl saw a village of tents, black
and brown, lying closely together, as a fleet of dark fishing-boats lie
in the water. There were many little tents, very flat and low, crouched
around one which even at a distance was conspicuous for its enormous
size. It looked like a squatting giant among an army of pigmies; and the
level light of late afternoon gave extraordinary value to its colours,
which were brighter and newer than those of the lesser tents. As their
swaying carriage brought the travellers nearer, Victoria could see deep
red and brown stripes, separated by narrow bands of white. For
background, there was a knot of trees; for they had come south of El
Aghouat to the strange region of dayas, where the stony desolation is
broken by little emerald hollows, running with water, like big round
bowls stuck full of delicate greenery and blossoms.
Suddenly, as Victoria looked, figures began running about, and almost
before she had time to speak, ten or a dozen men in white, mounted on
horses, came speeding across the desert.
A stain of red showed in Maïeddine's cheeks, and his eyes lighted up.
"They have been watching, expecting us," he said. "Now my father is
sending men to bid us welcome."
"Perhaps he is coming himself," said Victoria, for there was one figure
riding in the centre which seemed to her more splendidly dignified than
the others, though all were magnificent horsemen.
"No. It would not be right that the Agha himself should come to meet his
son," Maïeddine explained. "Besides he would be wearing a scarlet
burnous, embroidered with gold. He does me enough honour in sending out
the pick of his goum, which is among the finest of the Sahara."
Victoria had picked up a great deal of desert lore by this time, and
knew that the "pick of the goum" would mean the best horses in the
Agha's stables, the crack riders among his trained men--fighting men,
such as he would give to the Government, if Arab soldiers were needed.
The dozen cavaliers swept over the desert, making the sand fly up under
the horses' hoofs in a yellow spray; and nearing the carriage they
spread themselves in a semi-circle, the man Victoria had mistaken for
the Agha riding forward to speak to Maïeddine.
"It is my brother-in-law, Abderrhaman ben Douadi," exclaimed Maïeddine,
waving his hand.
M'Barka pulled her veil closer, and because she did so, Victoria hid her
face also, rather than shock the Arab woman's prejudices.
At a word from his master, the driver stopped his mules so quickly as to
bring them on their haunches, and Maïeddine sprang out. He and his
brother-in-law, a stately dark man with a short black beard under an
eagle nose, exchanged courtesies which seemed elaborate to Victoria's
European ideas, and Si Abderrhaman did not glance at the half-lowered
curtains behind which the women sat.
The men talked for a few minutes; then Maïeddine got into the carriage
again; and surrounded by the riders, it was driven rapidly towards the
tents, rocking wildly in the sand, because now it had left the desert
road and was making straight for the zmala.
The Arab men on their Arab horses shouted as they rode, as if giving a
signal; and from the tents, reddened now by the declining sun, came
suddenly a strange crying in women's voices, shrill yet sweet; a sound
that was half a chant, half an eerie yodeling, note after note of
"you-you!--you-you!" Out from behind the zeribas, rough hedges of dead
boughs and brambles which protected each low tent, burst a tidal wave of
children, some gay as little bright butterflies in gorgeous dresses,
others wrapped in brilliant rags. From under the tents women appeared,
unveiled, and beautiful in the sunset light, with their heavy looped
braids and their dangling, clanking silver jewellery. "You-you!
you-you!" they cried, dark eyes gleaming, white teeth flashing. It was
to be a festival for the douar, this fortunate evening of the son and
heir's arrival, with a great lady of his house, and her friend, a Roumia
girl. There was joy for everyone, for the Agha's relatives, and for each
man, woman and child in the zmala, mighty ones, or humble members of the
tribe, the Ouled-Serrin. There would be feasting, and after dark, to
give pleasure to the Roumia, the men would make the powder speak. It was
like a wedding; and best of all, an exciting rumour had gone round the
douar, concerning the foreign girl and the Agha's son, Si Maïeddine.
The romance in Victoria's nature was stirred by her reception; by the
white-clad riders on their slender horses, and the wild "you-yous" of
the women and little girls. Maïeddine saw her excitement and thrilled to
it. This was his great hour. All that had gone before had been leading
up to this day, and to the days to come, when they would be in the fiery
heart of the desert together, lost to all her friends whom he hated with
a jealous hatred. He helped M'Barka to descend from the carriage: then,
as she was received at the tent door by the Agha himself, Maïeddine
forgot his self-restraint, and swung the girl down, with tingling hands
that clasped her waist, as if at last she belonged to him.
Half fearful of what he had done, lest she should take alarm at his
sudden change of manner, he studied her face anxiously as he set her
feet to the ground. But there was no cause for uneasiness. So far from
resenting the liberty he had taken after so many days of almost
ostentatious respect, Victoria was not even thinking of him, and her
indifference would have been a blow, if he had not been too greatly
relieved to be hurt by it. She was looking at his father, the Agha, who
seemed to her the embodiment of some biblical patriarch. All through her
long desert journey, she had felt as if she had wandered into a dream of
the Old Testament. There was nothing there more modern than "Bible
days," as she said to herself, simply, except the French quarters in the
few Arab towns through which they had passed.
Not yet, however, had she seen any figure as venerable as the Agha's,
and she thought at once of Abraham at his tent door. Just such a man as
this Abraham must have been in his old age. She could even imagine him
ready to sacrifice a son, if he believed it to be the will of Allah; and
Maïeddine became of more importance in her eyes because of his
relationship to this kingly patriarch of the Sahara.
Having greeted his niece, Lella M'Barka, and passed her hospitably into
the tent where women were dimly visible, the Agha turned to Maïeddine
and Victoria.
"The blessing of Allah be upon thee, O my son," he said, "and upon thee,
little daughter. My son's messenger brought word of thy coming, and thou
art welcome as a silver shower of rain after a long drought in the
desert. Be thou as a child of my house, while thou art in my tent."
As she gave him her hand, her veil fell away from her face, and he saw
its beauty with the benevolent admiration of an old man whose blood has
cooled. He was so tall that the erect, thin figure reminded Victoria of
a lonely desert palm. The young girl was no stern critic, and was more
inclined to see good than evil in every one she met; therefore to her
the long snowy beard, the large dreamy eyes under brows like
Maïeddine's, and the slow, benevolent smile of the Agha meant nobility
of character. Her heart was warm for the splendid old man, and he was
not unaware of the impression he had made. As he bowed her into the tent
where his wife and sister and daughter were crowding round M'Barka, he
said in a low voice to Maïeddine: "It is well, my son. Being a man, and
young, thou couldst not have withstood her. When the time is ripe, she
will become a daughter of Islam, because for love of thee, she will wish
to fulfil thine heart's desire."
"She does not yet know that she loves me," Maïeddine answered. "But when
thou hast given me the white stallion El Biod, and I ride beside the
girl in her bassour through the long days and the long distances, I
shall teach her, in the way the Roumi men teach their women to love."
"But if thou shouldst not teach her?"
"My life is in it, and I shall teach her," said Maïeddine. "But if
Chitan stands between, and I fail--which I will not do--why, even so, it
will come to the same thing in the end, because----"
"Thou wouldst say----"
"It is well to know one's own meaning, and to speak of--date stones. Yet
with one's father, one can open one's heart. He to whom I go has need of
my services, and what he has for twelve months vainly asked me to do, I
will promise to do, for the girl's sake, if I cannot win her without."
"Take care! Thou enterest a dangerous path," said the old man.
"Yet often I have thought of entering there, before I saw this girl's
face."
"There might be a great reward in this life, and in the life beyond. Yet
once the first step is taken, it is irrevocable. In any case, commit me
to nothing with him to whom thou goest. He is eaten up with zeal. He is
a devouring fire--and all is fuel for that fire."
"I will commit thee to nothing without thy full permission, O my
father."
"And for thyself, think twice before thou killest the sheep. Remember
our desert saying. 'Who kills a sheep, kills a bee. Who kills a bee,
kills a palm, and who kills a palm, kills seventy prophets.'"
"I would give my sword to the prophets to aid them in killing those who
are not prophets."
"Thou art faithful. Yet let the rain of reason fall on thy head and on
thine heart, before thou givest thy sword into the hand of him who waits
thine answer."
"Thine advice is of the value of many dates, even of the _deglet nour_,
the jewel date, which only the rich can eat."
The old man laid his hand, still strong and firm, on his son's shoulder,
and together they went into the great tent, that part of it where the
women were, for all were closely related to them, excepting the Roumia,
who had been received as a daughter of the house.
* * * * * * *
When it was evening, the douar feasted, in honour of the guests who had
come to the _tente sultane_. The Agha had given orders that two sheep
should be killed. One was for his own household; his relatives, his
servants, many of whom lived under the one vast roof of red, and white,
and brown. His daughter, and her husband who assisted him in many ways,
and was his scribe, or secretary, had a tent of their own close by, next
in size to the Agha's; but they were bidden to supper in the great tent
that night, for the family reunion. And because there was a European
girl present, the women ate with the men, which was not usual.
The second sheep was for the humbler folk of the zmala, and they roasted
it whole in an open space, over a fire of small, dry wood, and of dead
palm branches brought on donkey back twenty miles across the desert,
from the nearest oasis town, also under dominion of the Agha. He had a
house and garden there; but he liked best to be in his douar, with only
his tent roof between him and the sky. Also it made him popular with
the tribe of which he was the head, to spend most of his time with them
in the desert. And for some reasons of which he never spoke, the old man
greatly valued this popularity, though he treasured also the respect of
the French, who assured his position and revenues.
The desert men had made a ring round the fire, far from the green
_daya_, so that the blowing sparks might not reach the trees. They sat
in a circle, on the sand, with a row of women on one side, who held the
smallest children by their short skirts; and larger children, wild and
dark, as the red light of the flames played over their faces, fed the
fire with pale palm branches. There was no moon, but a fountain of
sparks spouted towards the stars; and though it was night, the sky was
blue with the fierce blue of steel. Some of the Agha's black Soudanese
servants had made kous-kous of semolina with a little mutton and a great
many red peppers. This they gave to the crowd, in huge wooden bowls; and
the richer people boiled coffee which they drank themselves, and offered
to those sitting nearest them.
When everybody had eaten, the powder play began round the fire, and at
each explosion the women shrilled out their "you-you, you-you!" But this
was all for the entertainment of outsiders. Inside the Agha's tent, the
family took their pleasure more quietly.
Though a house of canvas, there were many divisions into rooms. The
Agha's wife had hers, separated completely from her sister's, and there
was space for guests, besides the Agha's own quarters, his reception
room, his dining-room (invaded to-night by all his family) the kitchen,
and sleeping place for a number of servants.
There were many dishes besides the inevitable cheurba, or Arab soup, the
kous-kous, the mechoui, lamb roasted over the fire. Victoria was almost
sickened by the succession of sweet things, cakes and sugared preserves,
made by the hands of the Agha's wife, Alonda, who in the Roumia's eyes
was as like Sarah as the Agha was like Abraham. Yet everything was
delicious; and after the meal, when the coffee came, lagmi the desert
wine distilled from the heart of a palm tree, was pressed upon Victoria.
All drank a little, for, said Lella Alonda, though strong drink was
forbidden by the Prophet, the palms were dear to him, and besides, in
the throats of good men and women, wine was turned to milk, as Sidi
Aissa of the Christians turned water to wine at the marriage feast.
When they had finished at last, a Soudanese woman poured rose-water over
their hands, from a copper jug, and wiped them with a large damask
napkin, embroidered by Aichouch, the pretty, somewhat coquettish married
daughter of the house, Maïeddine's only sister. The rose-water had been
distilled by Lella Fatma, the widowed sister of Alonda, who shared the
hospitality of the Agha's roof, in village or douar. Every one
questioned Victoria, and made much of her, even the Agha; but, though
they asked her opinions of Africa, and talked of her journey across the
sea, they did not speak of her past life or of her future. Not a word
was said concerning her mission, or Ben Halim's wife, the sister for
whom she searched.
While they were still at supper, the black servants who had waited upon
them went quietly away, but slightly raised the heavy red drapery which
formed the partition between that room and another. They looped up the
thick curtain only a little way, but there was a light on the other
side, and Victoria, curious as to what would happen next, spied the
servants' black legs moving about, watched a rough wooden bench placed
on the blue and crimson rugs of Djebel Amour, and presently saw other
black legs under a white burnous coil themselves upon the low seat.
Then began strange music, the first sound of which made Victoria's heart
leap. It was the first time she had heard the music of Africa, except a
distant beating of tobols coming from a black tent across desert
spaces, while she had lain at night in the house of Maïeddine's friends;
or the faint, pure note of a henna-dyed flute in the hand of some boy
keeper of goats--a note pure as the monotonous purling of water, heard
in the dark.
But this music was so close to her, that it was like the throbbing of
her own heart. And it was no sweet, pure trickle of silver, but the cry
of passion, passion as old and as burning as the desert sands outside
the lighted tent. As she listened, struck into pulsing silence, she
could see the colour of the music; a deep crimson, which flamed into
scarlet as the tom-tom beat, or deepened to violent purple, wicked as
belladonna flowers. The wailing of the raïta mingled with the heavy
throbbing of the tom-tom, and filled the girl's heart with a vague
foreboding, a yearning for something she had not known, and did not
understand. Yet it seemed that she must have both known and understood
long ago, before memory recorded anything--perhaps in some forgotten
incarnation. For the music and what it said, monotonously yet fiercely,
was old as the beginnings of the world, old and changeless as the
patterns of the stars embroidered on the astrological scroll of the sky.
The hoarse derbouka, and the languorous ghesbah joined in with the
savage tobol and the strident raïta; and under all was the tired
heart-beat of the bendir, dull yet resonant, and curiously exciting to
the nerves.
Victoria's head swam. She wondered if it were wholly the effect of the
African music, or if the lagmi she had sipped was mounting to her brain.
She grew painfully conscious of every physical sense, and it was hard to
sit and listen. She longed to spring up and dance in time to the
droning, and throbbing, and crying of the primitive instruments which
the Negroes played behind the red curtain. She felt that she must dance,
a new, strange dance the idea of which was growing in her mind, and
becoming an obsession. She could see it as if she were looking at a
picture; yet it was only her nerves and her blood that bade her dance.
Her reason told her to sit still. Striving to control herself she shut
her eyes, and would have shut her ears too, if she could. But the music
was loud in them. It made her see desert rivers rising after floods, and
water pounding against the walls of underground caverns. It made her
hear the wild, fierce love-call of a desert bird to its mate.
She could bear it no longer. She sprang up, her eyes shining, her cheeks
red. "May I dance for you to that music, Lella Alonda?" she said to the
Agha's wife. "I think I could. I long to try."
Lella Alonda, who was old, and accustomed only to the dancing of the
Almehs, which she thought shameful, was scandalized at the thought that
the young girl would willingly dance before men. She was dumb, not
knowing what answer to give, that need not offend a guest, but which
might save the Roumia from indiscretion.
The Agha, however, was enchanted. He was a man of the world still,
though he was aged now, and he had been to Paris, as well as many times
to Algiers. He knew that European ladies danced with men of their
acquaintance, and he was curious to see what this beautiful child wished
to do. He glanced at Maïeddine, and spoke to his wife: "Tell the little
White Rose to dance; that it will give us pleasure."
"Dance then, in thine own way, O daughter," Lella Alonda was forced to
say; for it did not even occur to her that she might disobey her
husband.
Victoria smiled at them all; at M'Barka and Aichouch, and Aichouch's
dignified husband, Si Abderrhaman: at Alonda and the Agha, and at
Maïeddine, as, when a child, she would have smiled at her sister, when
beginning a dance made up from one of Saidee's stories.
She had told Stephen of an Eastern dance she knew, but this was
something different, more thrilling and wonderful, which the wild music
put into her heart. At first, she hardly knew what was the meaning she
felt impelled to express by gesture and pose. The spirit of the desert
sang to her, a song of love, a song old as the love-story of Eve; and
though the secret of that song was partly hidden from her as yet, she
must try to find it out for herself, and picture it to others, by
dancing.
Always before, when she danced, Victoria had called up the face of her
sister, to keep before her eyes as an inspiration. But now, as she bent
and swayed to catch the spirit's whispers, as wheat sways to the whisper
of the wind, it was a man's face she saw. Stephen Knight seemed to stand
in the tent, looking at her with a curiously wistful, longing look, over
the heads of the Arab audience, who sat on their low divans and piled
carpets.
She thrilled to the look, and the desert spirit made her screen her face
from it, with a sequined gauze scarf which she wore. For a few measures
she danced behind the glittering veil, then with a sudden impulse which
the music gave, she tossed it back, holding out her arms, and smiling up
to Stephen's eyes, above the brown faces, with a sweet smile very
mysterious to the watchers. Consciously she called to Stephen then, as
she had promised she would call, if she should ever need him, for
somehow she did need and want him;--not for his help in finding Saidee:
she was satisfied with all that Maïeddine was doing--but for herself.
The secret of the music which she had been trying to find out, was in
his eyes, and learning it slowly, made her more beautiful, more womanly,
than she had ever been before. As she danced on, the two long plaits of
her red hair loosened and shook out into curls which played round her
white figure like flames. Her hands fluttered on the air as they rose
and fell like the little white wings of a dove; and she was dazzling as
a brandished torch, in the ill-lit tent with its dark hangings.
M'Barka had given her a necklace of black beads which the negresses had
made of benzoin and rose leaves and spices, held in shape with pungent
rezin. Worn on the warm flesh, the beads gave out a heady perfume, which
was like the breath of the desert. It made the girl giddy, and it grew
stronger and sweeter as she danced, seeming to mingle with the crying
of the raïta and the sobbing of the ghesbah, so that she confused
fragrance with music, music with fragrance.
Maïeddine stared at her, like a man who dreams with his eyes open. If he
had been alone, he could have watched her dance on for hours, and wished
that she would never stop; but there were other men in the tent, and he
had a maddening desire to snatch the girl in his arms, smothering her in
his burnous, and rushing away with her into the desert.
Her dancing astonished him. He did not know what to make of it, for she
had told him nothing about herself, except what concerned her errand in
Africa. Though he had been in Paris when she was there, he had been
deeply absorbed in business vital to his career, and had not heard of
Victoria Ray the dancer, or seen her name on the hoardings.
Like his father, he knew that European women who danced were not as the
African dancers, the Ouled Naïls and the girls of Djebel Amour. But an
Arab may have learned to know many things with his mind which he cannot
feel with his heart; and with his heart Maïeddine felt a wish to blind
Abderrhaman, because his eyes had seen the intoxicating beauty of
Victoria as she danced. He was ferociously angry, but not with the girl.
Perhaps with himself, because he was powerless to hide her from others,
and to order her life as he chose. Yet there was a kind of delicious
pain in knowing himself at her mercy, as no Arab man could be at the
mercy of an Arab woman.
The sight of Victoria dancing, had shot new colours into his existence.
He understood her less, and valued her more than before, a thousand
times more, achingly, torturingly more. Since their first meeting on the
boat, he had admired the American girl immensely. Her whiteness, the
golden-red of her hair, the blueness of her eyes had meant perfection
for him. He had wanted her because she was the most beautiful creature
he had seen, because she was a Christian and difficult to win; also
because the contrast between her childishness and brave independence
was piquant. Apart from that contrast, he had not thought much about her
nature. He had looked upon her simply as a beautiful girl, who could not
be bought, but must be won. Now she had become a bewildering houri.
Nothing which life could give him would make up for the loss of her.
There was nothing he would not do to have her, or at least to put her
beyond the reach of others.
If necessary, he would even break his promise to the Agha.
While she danced inside the great tent, outside in the open space round
the fire, the dwellers in the little tents sat with their knees in their
arms watching the dancing of two young Negroes from the Soudan. The
blacks had torn their turbans from their shaven heads, and thrown aside
their burnouses. Naked to their waists, with short, loose trousers, and
sashes which other men seized, to swing the wearers round and round,
their sweating skin had the gloss of ebony. It was a whirlwind of a
dance, and an old wizard with a tom-tom, and a dark giant with metal
castanets made music for the dancers, taking eccentric steps themselves
as they played. The Soudanese fell into an ecstasy of giddiness, running
about on their hands and feet like huge black tarantulas, or turning
themselves into human wheels, to roll through the bed of the dying fire
and out on the other side, sending up showers of sparks. All the while,
they uttered a barking chant, in time to the wicked music, which seemed
to shriek for war and bloodshed; and now and then they would dash after
some toddling boy, catch him by the scalp-lock on his shaved head (left
for the grasp of Azraïl the death-angel) and force him to join the
dance.
Mean-faced Kabyle dogs, guarding deserted tents, howled their hatred of
the music, while far away, across desert spaces, jackals cried to one
another. And the scintillating network of stars was dimmed by a thin
veil of sand which the wind lifted and let fall, as Victoria lifted and
let fall the spangled scarf that made her beauty more mysterious, more
desirable, in the eyes of Maïeddine.