XXVIII

"In the name of the All-Merciful and Pitiful! We seek refuge with the

Lord of the Day, against the sinfulness of beings created by Him;

against all evil, and against the night, lest they overcome us

suddenly."

It was the Prayer of the Dawn, El Fejûr; and Victoria heard it cried in

the voices of the old men of the zmala, early in the morning, as she

dressed to continue her journey.

Every one was astir in the _tente sultane_, behind the different curtain

partitions, and outside were the noises of the douar, waking to a new

day. The girl could not wait for the coffee that Fafann would bring her,

for she was eager to see the caravan that Si Maïeddine was assembling.

As soon as she was ready she stole out into the dim dawn, more mystic in

the desert than moon-rise or moon-setting. The air was crisp and

tingling, and smelled of wild thyme, the herb that nomad women love, and

wear crushed in their bosoms, or thrust up their nostrils. The camels

had not come yet, for the men of the douar had not finished their

prayer. In the wide open space where they had watched the dance last

night, now they were praying, sons of Ishmael, a crowd of prostrate

white figures, their faces against the sand.

Victoria stood waiting by the big tent, but she had not much need for

patience. Soon the desert prayer was over, and the zmala was buzzing

with excitement, as it had buzzed when the travellers arrived.

The Soudanese Negroes who had danced the wild dance appeared leading two

white meharis, running camels, aristocrats of the camel world. On the

back of each rose a cage-like bassour, draped with haoulis, striped

rose-colour and purple. The desert beasts moved delicately, on legs

longer and more slender than those of pack-camels, their necks swaying

like the necks of swans who swim with the tide. Victoria thought them

like magnificent, four-legged cousins of ostriches, and the

superciliousness of their expressions amused her; the look they had of

elderly ladies, dissatisfied with every one but themselves, and

conscious of being supremely "well-connected." "A camel cannot see its

own hump, but it can see those of others," she had heard M'Barka say.

As Victoria stood alone in the dawn, laughing at the ghostly meharis,

and looking with interest at the heavily laden pack-camel and the mule

piled up with tents and mattresses, Maïeddine came riding round from

behind the great tent, all in white, on a white stallion. Seeing the

girl, he tested her courage, and made a bid for her admiration by

reining El Biod in suddenly, making him stand erect on his hind feet,

pawing the air and dancing. But Roumia as she was, and unaccustomed to

such manoeuvres, she neither ran back nor screamed. She was not ashamed

to show her admiration of man and horse, and Maïeddine did not know that

her thoughts were more of El Biod the white, "drinker of air," the

saddle of crimson velvet and tafilet leather embroidered in gold, and

the bridle from Figuig, encrusted with silver, than of the rider.

"This is the horse of whom I told thee," Maïeddine said, letting El Biod

come down again on all four feet. "He was blessed as a foal by having

the magical words 'Bissem Allah' whispered over him as he drew the first

draught of his mother's milk. But thou wilt endow him with new gifts if

thou touchest his forehead with thy hand. Wilt thou do that, for his

sake, and for mine?"

Victoria patted the flesh-coloured star on the stallion's white face,

not knowing that, if a girl's fingers lie between the eyes of an Arab's

horse, it is as much as to say that she is ready to ride with him to the

world's end. But Maïeddine knew, and the thought warmed his blood. He

was superstitious, like all Arabs, and he had wanted a sign of success.

Now he had it. He longed to kiss the little fingers as they rested on El

Biod's forehead, but he said to himself, "Patience; it will not be long

before I kiss her lips."

"El Biod is my citadel," he smiled to her. "Thou knowest we have the

same word for horse and citadel in Arabic? And that is because a brave

stallion is a warrior's citadel, built on the wind, a rampart between

him and the enemy. And we think the angels gave a horse the same heart

as a man, that he might be our friend as well as servant, and carry us

on his back to Paradise. Whether that is true or not, to-day El Biod and

I are already on the threshold of Paradise, because we are thy guides,

thy guardians through the desert which we love."

As he made this speech, Maïeddine watched the girl's face anxiously, to

see whether she would resent the implication, but she only smiled in her

frank way, knowing the Arab language to be largely the language of

compliment; and he was encouraged. Perhaps he had been over-cautious

with her, he thought; for, after all, he had no reason to believe that

she cared for any man, and as he had a record of great successes with

women, why be so timid with an unsophisticated girl? Each day, he told

himself, he would take another and longer step forward; but for the

moment he must be content. He began to talk about the meharis and the

Negroes who would go with them and the beasts of burden.

When it was time for Victoria and M'Barka to be helped into their

bassourahs, Maïeddine would not let the Soudanese touch the meharis. It

was he who made the animals kneel, pulling gently on the bridle attached

to a ring in the left nostril of each; and both subsided gracefully in

haughty silence instead of uttering the hideous gobbling which common

camels make when they get down and get up, or when they are loaded or

unloaded. These beasts, Guelbi and Mansour, had been bought from Moors,

across the border where Oran and Morocco run together, and had been

trained since babyhood by smugglers for smuggling purposes. "If a man

would have a silent camel," said Maïeddine, "he must get him from

smugglers. For the best of reasons their animals are taught never to

make a noise."

M'Barka was to have Fafann in the same bassour, but Victoria would have

her rose and purple cage to herself. Maïeddine told her how, as the

camel rose, she must first bow forward, then bend back; and, obeying

carefully, she laughed like a child as the tall mehari straightened the

knees of his forelegs, bearing his weight upon them as if on his feet,

then got to his hind feet, while his "front knees," as she called them,

were still on the ground, and last of all swung himself on to all four

of his heart-shaped feet. Oh, how high in the air she felt when Guelbi

was up, ready to start! She had had no idea that he was such a tall,

moving tower, under the bassour.

"What a sky-scraping camel!" she exclaimed. And then had to explain to

Maïeddine what she meant; for though he knew Paris, for him America

might as well have been on another planet.

He rode beside Victoria's mehari, when good-byes had been said,

blessings exchanged, and the little caravan had started. Looking out

between the haoulis which protected her from sun and wind, the handsome

Arab on his Arab horse seemed far below her, as Romeo must have seemed

to Juliet on her balcony; and to him the fair face, framed with dazzling

hair was like a guiding star.

"Thou canst rest in thy bassour?" he asked. "The motion of thy beast

gives thee no discomfort?"

"No. Truly it is a cradle," she answered. "I had read that to ride on a

camel was misery, but this is like being rocked on the bough of a tree

when the wind blows."

"To sit in a bassour is very different from riding on a saddle, or even

on a mattress, as the poor Bedouin women sometimes ride, or the dancers

journeying from one place to another. I would not let thee travel with

me unless I had been able to offer thee all the luxuries which a sultana

might command. With nothing less would I have been content, because to

me thou art a queen."

"At least thou hast given me a beautiful moving throne," laughed

Victoria; "and because thou art taking me on it to my sister, I'm happy

to-day as a queen."

"Then, if thou art happy, I also am happy," he said. "And when an Arab

is happy, his lips would sing the song that is in his heart. Wilt thou

be angry or pleased if I sing thee a love-song of the desert?"

"I cannot be angry, because the song will not really be for me,"

Victoria answered with the simplicity which had often disarmed and

disconcerted Maïeddine. "And I shall be pleased, because in the desert

it is good to hear desert songs."

This was not exactly the answer which he had wanted, but he made the

best of it, telling himself that he had not much longer to wait.

"Leaders of camels sing," he said, "to make the beasts' burdens weigh

less heavily. But thy mehari has no burden. Thou in thy bassour art

lighter on his back than a feather on the wing of a dove. My song is for

my own heart, and for thine heart, if thou wilt have it, not for Guelbi,

though the meaning of Guelbi is 'heart of mine.'"

Then Maïeddine sang as he rode, his bridle lying loose, an old Arab

song, wild and very sad, as all Arab music sounds, even when it is the

cry of joy:

"Truly, though I were to die, it would be naught,

If I were near my love, for whom my bosom aches,

For whom my heart is beating.

"Yes, I am to die, but death is nothing

O ye who pass and see me dying,

For I have kissed the eyes, the mouth that I desired."

"But that is a sad song," said Victoria, when Maïeddine ceased his

tragic chant, after many verses.

"Thou wouldst not say so, if thou hadst ever loved. Nothing is sad to a

lover, except to lose his love, or not to have his love returned."

"But an Arab girl has no chance to love," Victoria argued. "Her father

gives her to a man when she is a child, and they have never even spoken

to each other until after the wedding."

"We of the younger generation do not like these child marriages,"

Maïeddine apologized, eagerly. "And, in any case, an Arab man, unless he

be useless as a mule without an eye, knows how to make a girl love him

in spite of herself. We are not like the men of Europe, bound down by a

thousand conventions. Besides, we sometimes fall in love with women not

of our own race. These we teach to love us before marriage."

Victoria laughed again, for she felt light-hearted in the beautiful

morning. "Do Arab men always succeed as teachers?"

"What is written is written," he answered slowly. "Yet it is written

that a strong man carves his own fate. And for thyself, wouldst thou

know what awaits thee in the future?"

"I trust in God and my star."

"Thou wouldst not, then, that the desert speak to thee with its tongue

of sand out of the wisdom of all ages?"

"What dost thou mean?"

"I mean that my cousin, Lella M'Barka, can divine the future from the

sand of the Sahara, which gave her life, and life to her ancestors for a

thousand years before her. It is a gift. Wilt thou that she exercise it

for thee to-night, when we camp?"

"There is hardly any real sand in this part of the desert," said

Victoria, seeking some excuse not to hear M'Barka's prophecies, yet not

to hurt M'Barka's feelings, or Maïeddine's. "It is all far away, where

we see the hills which look golden as ripe grain. And we cannot reach

those hills by evening."

"My cousin always carries the sand for her divining. Every night she

reads in the sand what will happen to her on the morrow, just as the

women of Europe tell their fate by the cards. It is sand from the dunes

round Touggourt; and mingled with it is a little from Mecca, which was

brought to her by a holy man, a marabout. It would give her pleasure to

read the sand for thee."

"Then I will ask her to do it," Victoria promised.

As the day grew, its first brightness faded. A wind blew up from the

south, and slowly darkened the sky with a strange lilac haze, which

seemed tangible as thin silk gauze. Behind it the sun glimmered like a

great silver plate, and the desert turned pale, as in moonlight.

Although the ground was hard under the camels' feet, the wind carried

with it from far-away spaces a fine powder of sand which at last forced

Victoria to let down the haoulis, and Maïeddine and the two Negroes to

cover their faces with the veils of their turbans, up to the eyes.

"It will rain this afternoon," M'Barka prophesied from between her

curtains.

"No," Maïeddine contradicted her. "There has been rain this month, and

thou knowest better than I do that beyond El Aghouat it rains but once

in five years. Else, why do the men of the M'Zab country break their

hearts to dig deep wells? There will be no rain. It is but a sand-storm

we have to fear."

"Yet I feel in the roots of my hair and behind my eyes that the rain is

coming."

Maïeddine shrugged his shoulders, for an Arab does not twice contradict

a woman, unless she be his wife. But the lilac haze became a pall of

crape, and the noon meal was hurried. Maïeddine saved some of the

surprises he had brought for a more favourable time. Hardly had they

started on again, when rain began to fall, spreading over the desert in

a quivering silver net whose threads broke and were constantly mended

again. Then the rough road (to which the little caravan did not keep)

and all the many diverging tracks became wide silver ribbons, lacing

the plain broken with green dayas. A few minutes more--incredibly few,

it seemed to Victoria--and the dayas were deep lakes, where the water

swirled and bubbled round the trunks of young pistachio trees. A torrent

poured from the mourning sky, and there was a wild sound of marching

water, which Victoria could hear, under the haoulis which sheltered her.

No water came through them, for the arching form of the bassour was like

the roof of a tent, and the rain poured down on either side. She peeped

out, enjoying her own comfort, while pitying Maïeddine and the Negroes;

but all three had covered their thin burnouses with immensely thick,

white, hooded cloaks, woven of sheep's wool, and they had no air of

depression. By and by they came to an oued, which should have been a

dry, stony bed without a trickle of water; but half an hour's downpour

had created a river, as if by black magic; and Victoria could guess the

force at which it was rushing, by the stout resistance she felt Guelbi

had to make, as he waded through.

"A little more, and we could not have crossed," said Maïeddine, when

they had mounted up safely on the other side of the oued.

"Art thou not very wet and miserable?" the girl asked sympathetically.

"I--miserable?" he echoed. "I--who am privileged to feast upon the

deglet nour, in my desert?"

Victoria did not understand his metaphor, for the deglet nour is the

finest of all dates, translucent as amber, sweet as honey, and so dear

that only rich men or great marabouts ever taste it. "The deglet nour?"

she repeated, puzzled.

"Dost thou not know the saying that the smile of a beautiful maiden is

the deglet nour of Paradise, and nourishes a man's soul, so that he can

bear any discomfort without being conscious that he suffers?"

"I did not know that Arab men set women so high," said Victoria,

surprised; for now the rain had stopped, suddenly as it began, and she

could look out again from between the curtains. Soon they would dry in

the hot sun.

"Thou hast much to learn then, about Arab men," Maïeddine answered, "and

fortunate is thy teacher. It is little to say that we would sacrifice

our lives for the women we love, because for us life is not that great

treasure it is to the Roumis, who cling to it desperately. We would do

far more than give our lives for the beloved woman, we Arabs. We would

give our heads, which is the greatest sacrifice a man of Islam could

make."

"But is not that the same thing as giving life?"

"It is a thousandfold more. It is giving up the joy of eternity. For we

are taught to believe that if a man's head is severed from his body, it

alone goes to Paradise. His soul is maimed. It is but a bodiless head,

and all celestial joys are for ever denied to it."

"How horrible!" the girl exclaimed. "Dost thou really believe such a

thing?"

He feared that he had made a mistake, and that she would look upon him

as an alien, a pagan, with whom she could have no sympathy. "If I am

more modern in my ideas than my forefathers," he said tactfully, "I must

not confess it to a Roumia, must I, oh Rose of the West?--for that would

be disloyal to Islam. Yet if I did believe, still would I give my head

for the love of the one woman, the star of my destiny, she whose sweet

look deserves that the word 'aïn' should stand for bright fountain, and

for the ineffable light in a virgin's eyes."

"I did not know until to-day, Si Maïeddine, that thou wert a poet,"

Victoria told him.

"All true Arabs are poets. Our language--the literary, not the common

Arabic--is the language of poets, as thou must have read in thy books.

But I have now such inspiration as perhaps no man ever had; and thou

wilt learn other things about me, while we journey together in the

desert."

As he said this he looked at her with a look which even her simplicity

could not have mistaken if she had thought of it; but instantly the

vision of Saidee came between her eyes and his. The current of her ideas

was abruptly changed. "How many days now," she asked suddenly, "will the

journey last?"

His face fell. "Art thou tired already of this new way of travelling,

that thou askest me a question thou hast not once asked since we

started?"

"Oh no, no," she reassured him. "I love it. I am not tired at all.

But--I did not question thee at first because thou didst not desire me

to know thy plans, while I was still within touch of Europeans. Thou

didst not put this reason in such words, for thou wouldst not have let

me feel I had not thy full trust. But it was natural thou shouldst not

give it, when thou hadst so little acquaintance with me, and I did not

complain. Now it is different. Even if I wished, I could neither speak

nor write to any one I ever knew. Therefore I question thee."

"Art thou impatient for the end?" he wanted to know, jealously.

"Not impatient. I am happy. Yet I should like to count the days, and say

each night, 'So many more times must the sun rise and set before I see

my sister.'"

"Many suns must rise and set," Maïeddine confessed doggedly.

"But--when first thou planned the journey, thou saidst; 'In a fortnight

thou canst send thy friends news, I hope.'"

"If I had told thee then, that it must be longer, wouldst thou have come

with me? I think not. For thou sayest I did not wholly trust thee. How

much less didst thou trust me?"

"Completely. Or I would not have put myself in thy charge."

"Perhaps thou art convinced of that now, when thou knowest me and Lella

M'Barka, and thou hast slept in the tent of my father, and in the houses

of my friends. But I saw in thine eyes at that time a doubt thou didst

not wish to let thyself feel, because through me alone was there a way

to reach thy sister. I wished to bring thee to her, for thy sake, and

for her sake, though I have never looked upon her face and never

shall----"

"Why dost thou say 'never shall'?" the girl broke in upon him suddenly.

The blood mounted to his face. He had made a second mistake, and she was

very quick to catch him up.

"It was but a figure of speech," he corrected himself.

"Thou dost not mean that she's shut up, and no man allowed to see her?"

"I know nothing. Thou wilt find out all for thyself. But thou wert

anxious to go to her, at no matter what cost, and I feared to dishearten

thee, to break thy courage, while I was still a stranger, and could not

justify myself in thine eyes. Now, wilt thou forgive me an evasion,

which was to save thee anxiety, if I say frankly that, travel as we may,

we cannot reach our journey's end for many days yet?"

"I must forgive thee," said Victoria, with a sigh. "Yet I do not like

evasions. They are unworthy."

"I am sorry," Maïeddine returned, so humbly that he disarmed her. "It

would be terrible to offend thee."

"There can be no question of offence," she consoled him. "I am very,

very grateful for all thou hast done for me. I often lie awake in the

night, wondering how I can repay thee everything."

"When we come to the end of the journey, I will tell thee of a thing

thou canst do, for my happiness," Maïeddine said in a low voice, as if

half to himself.

"Wilt thou tell me now to what place we are going? I should like to

know, and I should like to hear thee describe it."

He did not speak for a moment. Then he said slowly; "It is a grief to

deny thee anything, oh Rose, but the secret is not mine to tell, even to

thee."

"The secret!" she echoed. "Thou hast never called it a secret."

"If I did not use that word, did I not give thee to understand the same

thing?"

"Thou meanest, the secret about Cassim, my sister's husband?"

"Cassim ben Halim has ceased to live."

Victoria gave a little cry. "Dead! But thou hast made me believe, in

spite of the rumours, that he lived."

"I cannot explain to thee," Maïeddine answered gloomily, as if hating to

refuse her anything. "In the end, thou wilt know all, and why I had to

be silent."

"But my sister?" the girl pleaded. "There is no mystery about her? Thou

hast concealed nothing which concerns Saidee?"

"Thou hast my word that I will take thee to the place where she is. Thou

gavest me thy trust. Give it me again."

"I have not taken it away. It is thine," said Victoria.