XXIX

That night they spent in a caravanserai, because, after the brief deluge

of rain, the ground was too damp for camping, when an invalid was of the

party. When they reached the place after sunset, the low square of the

building was a block of marble set in the dull gold of the desert,

carved in dazzling white against a deep-blue evening sky. Like Ben

Halim's house, it was roughly fortified, with many loopholes in the

walls, for it had been built to serve the uses of less peaceful days

than these. Within the strong gates, on one side were rooms for guests,

each with its own door and window opening into the huge court. On

another side of the square were the kitchens and dining-room, as well as

living-place for the Arab landlord and his hidden family; and opposite

was a roofed, open-fronted shelter for camels and other animals, the

ground yellow with sand and spilt fodder. Water overflowed from a small

well, making a pool in the courtyard, in which ducks and geese waddled,

quacking, turkey-cocks fought in quiet corners, barked at impotently by

Kabyle puppies. Tall, lean hounds or sloughis, kept to chase the desert

gazelles, wandered near the kitchens, in the hope of bones, and camels

gobbled dismally as their tired drivers forced them to their knees, or

thrust handfuls of date stones down their throats. There were sheep,

too, and goats; and even a cow, the "perpetual mother" loved and valued

by Arabs.

M'Barka refused to "read the sand" that night, when Maïeddine suggested

it. The sand would yield up its secrets only under the stars, she said,

and wished to wait until they should be in the tents.

All night, outside Victoria's open but shuttered window, there was a

stealthy stirring of animals in the dark, a gliding of ghostly ducks, a

breathing of sheep and camels. And sometimes the wild braying of a

donkey or the yelp of a dog tore the silence to pieces.

The next day was hot; so that at noon, when they stopped to eat, the

round blot of black shadow under one small tree was precious as a black

pearl. And there were flies. Victoria could not understand how they

lived in the desert, miles from any house, miles from the tents of

nomads; where there was no vegetation, except an occasional scrubby

tree, or a few of the desert gourds which the Arabs use to cure the bite

of scorpions. But she had not seen the cages of bones, sometimes

bleached like old ivory, sometimes of a dreadful red, which told of

wayside tragedies. Always when they had come in sight of a skeleton,

Maïeddine had found some excuse to make the girl look in another

direction; for he wanted her to love the desert, not to feel horror of

its relentlessness.

Now for the first time he had full credit for his cleverness as an

organizer. Never before had they been so remote from civilization. When

travelling in the carriage, stopping each night at the house of some

well-to-do caïd or adel, it had been comparatively easy to provide

supplies; but to-day, when jellied chicken and cream-cheese, almond

cakes and oranges appeared at luncheon, and some popular French mineral

water (almost cool because the bottles had been wrapped in wet blanket)

fizzed in the glasses, Victoria said that Si Maïeddine must have a tame

djinn for a slave.

"Wait till evening," he told her. "Then perhaps thou mayest see

something to please thee." But he was delighted with her compliments,

and made her drink water from the glass out of which he had drunk, that

she might be sure of his good faith in all he had sworn to her

yesterday. "They who drink water from the same cup have made an eternal

pact together," he said. "I should not dare to be untrue, even if I

would. And thou--I think that thou wilt be true to me."

"Why, certainly I will," answered Victoria, with the pretty American

accent which Stephen Knight had admired and smiled at the night he heard

it first. "Thou art one of my very best friends."

Maïeddine looked down into the glass and smiled, as if he were a

crystal-gazer, and could see something under the bright surface, that no

one else could see.

Night folded down over the desert, hot and velvety, like the wings of a

mother-bird covering her children; but before darkness fell, the tents

glimmered under the stars. There were two only, a large one for the

women, and one very small for Maïeddine. The Negroes would roll

themselves in their burnouses, and lie beside the animals. But

sleeping-time had not come yet; and it was the Soudanese who prepared

the evening meal.

One of them was a good cook, and for that reason Maïeddine had begged

him from the Agha. He made desert bread, by mixing farina with salted

water, and baking it on a flat tin supported by stones over a fire of

dry twigs. When the thin loaf was crisply brown on top, the man took it

off the fire, and covered it up, on the tin, because it was to be eaten

hot.

While Victoria waited for all to be got ready, she strolled a little

away from the tents and the group of resting animals, having promised

Maïeddine to avoid the tufts of alfa grass, for fear of vipers which

sometimes lurked among them. He would have liked to go with her, but the

unfailing tact of the Arab told him that she wished to be alone with her

thoughts, and he could only hope that they might be of him.

Here, it was no longer beautiful desert. They had passed the charming

region of dayas, and were entering the grim world through which, long

ago, the ever harried M'Zabites had fled to find a refuge beyond the

reach of greedy pursuers. Nevertheless the enchantment of the Sahara, in

all its phases, had taken hold of Victoria. She did not now feel that

the desert was a place where a tired soul might find oblivion, though

once she had imagined that it would be a land of forgetfulness. Arabs

say, in talking idly to Europeans, that men forget their past in the

desert, but she doubted if they really forgot, in these vast spaces

where there was so much time to think. She herself began to feel that

the illimitable skies, where flamed sunsets and sunrises whose miracles

no eye saw, might teach her mysteries she had snatched at and lost, in

dreams. The immensity of the desert sent her soul straining towards the

immensity of the Beyond; and almost, in flashes elusive as the light on

a bird's wing, she understood what eternity might mean. She felt that

the last days of her childhood had been left behind, on the threshold of

these mysterious spaces, this vastness into which she had plunged, as

into an ocean. Yet she did not regret the loss, if it were a loss.

Never, she thought, whatever might happen, would she wish not to have

known this experience, not to have entered upon this great adventure,

whose end Maïeddine still hid behind a veil of secrecy.

It was true, as she had told him, that she was not impatient, though she

would have liked to count the days like the beads of a rosary. She

looked forward to each one, as to the discovery of a beautiful thing new

to the world and to her; for though the spaces surrounding her were wide

beyond thinking, they were not empty. As ships, great and small, sail

the sea, so sailed the caravans of the nomad tribes in the desert which

surges on unchecked to Egypt: nomads who come and go, north and south,

east and west, under the burning sun and the throbbing stars, as Allah

has written their comings and goings in His book: men in white,

journeying with their women, their children, and their trains of beasts,

singing as they pass, and at night under the black tents resting to the

music of the tom-tom and raïta.

Victoria's gaze waded through the shadows that flow over the desert at

evening, deep and blue and transparent as water. She searched the

distances for the lives that must be going on somewhere, perhaps not far

away, though she would never meet them. They, and she, were floating

spars in a great ocean; and it made the ocean more wonderful to know

that the spars were there, each drifting according to its fate.

The girl drew into her lungs the strong air of the desert, born of the

winds which bring life or death to its children.

The scent of the wild thyme, which she could never again disentangle

from thoughts of the Sahara, was very sweet, even insistent. She knew

that it was loved by nomad women; and she let pictures rise before her

mind of gorgeous dark girls on camels, in plumed red bassourahs, going

from one desert city to another, to dance--cities teeming with life,

which she would never see among these spaces that seemed empty as the

world before creation. She imagined the ghosts of these desert beauties

crowding round her in the dusk, bringing their fragrance with them, the

wild thyme they had loved in life, crushed in their bosoms; pathetic

ghosts, who had not learned to rise beyond what they had once desired,

therefore compelled to haunt the desert, the only world which they had

known. In the wind that came sighing to her ears from the dark ravines

of the terrible chebka, she seemed to hear battle-songs and groans of

desert men who had fought and died ages ago, whose bones had crumbled

under her feet, perhaps, and whose descendants had not changed one whit

in religion, custom, or thought, or even in dress.

Victoria was glad that Maïeddine had let her have these desert thoughts

alone, for they made her feel at home in the strange world her fancy

peopled; but the touch of the thyme-scented ghosts was cold. It was good

to turn back at last towards the tents, and see how the camp-fire

crimsoned the star-dusk.

"Thou wert happy alone?" Maïeddine questioned her jealously.

"I was not alone."

He understood. "I know. The desert voices spoke to thee, of the desert

mystery which they alone can tell; voices we can hear only by listening

closely."

"That was the thought in my mind. How odd thou shouldst put it into

words."

"Dost thou think it odd? But I am a man of the desert. I held back, for

thee to go alone and hear the voices, knowing they would teach thee to

understand me and my people. I knew, too, that the spirits would be

kind, and say nothing to frighten thee. Besides, thou didst not go to

them quite alone, for thine own white angel walked on thy right hand, as

always."

"Thou makest poetical speeches, Si Maïeddine."

"It is no poetry to speak of thy white angel. We believe that each one

of us has a white angel at his right hand, recording his good actions.

But ordinary mortals have also their black angels, keeping to the left,

writing down wicked thoughts and deeds. Hast thou not seen men spitting

to the left, to show despite of their black angels? But because thy soul

is never soiled by sinful thoughts, there was no need for a black angel,

and whilst thou wert still a child, Allah discharged him of his

mission."

"And thou, Si Maïeddine, dost thou think, truly, that a black angel

walks ever at thy left side?"

"I fear so." Maïeddine glanced to the left, as if he could see a dark

figure writing on a slate. Things concerning Victoria must have been

written on that slate, plans he had made, of which neither his white

angel nor hers would approve. But, he told himself, if they had to be

carried out, she would be to blame, for driving him to extremes. "Whilst

thou art near me," he said aloud, "my black angel lags behind, and if

thou wert to be with me forever, I----"

"Since that cannot be, thou must find a better way to keep him in the

background," Victoria broke in lightly. But Si Maïeddine's compliments

were oppressive. She wished it were not the Arab way to pay so many. He

had been different at first; and feeling the change in him with a faint

stirring of uneasiness, she hurried her steps to join M'Barka.

The invalid reclined on a rug of golden jackal skins, and rested a thin

elbow on cushions of dyed leather, braided in intricate strips by

Touareg women. Victoria sat beside her, Maïeddine opposite, and Fafann

waited upon them as they ate.

After supper, while the Bedouin woman saw that everything was ready for

her mistress and the Roumia, in their tent, M'Barka spread out her

precious sand from Mecca and the dunes round her own Touggourt. She had

it tied up in green silk, such as is used for the turbans of men who

have visited Mecca, lined with a very old Arab brocade, purple and gold,

like the banners that drape the tombs of marabouts. She opened the bag

carefully, until it lay flat on the ground in front of her knees, the

sand piled in the middle, as much perhaps as could have been heaped on a

soup plate.

For a moment she sat gazing at the sand, her lips moving. She looked wan

as old ivory in the dying firelight, and in the hollows of her immense

eyes seemed to dream the mysteries of all ages. "Take a handful of

sand," she said to Victoria. "Hold it over thine heart. Now, wish with

the whole force of thy soul."

Victoria wished to find Saidee safe, and to be able to help her, if she

needed help.

"Put back the sand, sprinkling it over the rest."

The girl, though not superstitious, could not help being interested,

even fascinated. It seemed to her that the sand had a magical sparkle.

M'Barka's eyes became introspective, as if she waited for a message, or

saw a vision. She was as strange, as remote from modern womanhood as a

Cassandra. Presently she started, and began trailing her brown fingers

lightly over the sand, pressing them down suddenly now and then, until

she had made three long, wavy lines, the lower ones rather like

telegraphic dots and dashes.

"Lay the forefinger of thy left hand on any figure in these lines," she

commanded. "Now on another--yet again, for the third time. That is all

thou hast to do. The rest is for me."

She took from some hiding-place in her breast a little old note-book,

bound in dark leather, glossy from constant use. With it came a perfume

of sandalwood. Turning the yellow leaves of the book, covered with fine

Arab lettering, she read in a murmuring, indistinct voice, that sounded

to Victoria like one of those desert voices of which Maïeddine had

spoken. Also she measured spaces between the figures the girl had

touched, and counted monotonously.

"Thy wish lies a long way from thee," she said at last. "A long way!

Thou couldst never reach it of thyself--never, not till the end of the

world. I see thee--alone, very helpless. Thou prayest. Allah sends thee

a man--a strong man, whose brain and heart and arm are at thy service.

Allah is great!"

"Tell her what the man is like, cousin," Maïeddine prompted, eagerly.

"He is dark, and young. He is not of thy country, oh Rose of the West,

but trust him, rely upon him, or thou art undone. In thy future, just

where thou hast ceased to look for them, I see troubles and

disappointments, even dangers. That is the time, above all others, to

let thyself be guided by the man Allah has sent to be thy prop. He has

ready wit and courage. His love for thee is great. It grows and grows.

He tells thee of it; and thou--thou seest between him and thee a

barrier, high and fearful as a wall with sharp knives on top. For thine

eyes it is impassable. Thine heart is sad; and thy words to him will

pierce his soul with despair. But think again. Be true to thyself and to

thy star. Speak another word, and throw down that high barrier, as the

wall of Jericho was thrown down. Thou canst do it. All will depend on

the decision of a moment--thy whole future, the future of the man, and

of a woman whose face I cannot see."

M'Barka smoothed away the tracings in the sand.

"What--is there no more?" asked Maïeddine.

"No, it is dark before my eyes now. The light has gone from the sand. I

can still tell her a few little things, perhaps. Such things as the

luckiest colours to wear, the best days to choose for journeys. But she

is different from most girls. I do not think she would care for such

hints."

"All colours are lucky. All days are good," said Victoria. "I thank thee

for what thou hast told me, Lella M'Barka."

She did not wish to hear more. What she had heard was more than enough.

Not that she really believed that M'Barka could see into the future; but

because of the "dark man." Any fortune-teller might introduce a dark man

into the picture of a fair girl's destiny; but the allusions were so

marked that Victoria's vague unrestfulness became distress. She tried to

encourage herself by thinking of Maïeddine's dignified attitude, from

the beginning of their acquaintance until now. And even now, he had

changed only a little. He was too complimentary, that was all; and the

difference in his manner might arise from knowing her more intimately.

Probably Lella M'Barka, like many elderly women of other and newer

civilizations, was over-romantic; and the best thing was to prevent her

from putting ridiculous ideas into Maïeddine's head. Such ideas would

spoil the rest of the journey for both.

"Remember all I have told thee, when the time comes," M'Barka warned

her.

"Yes--oh yes, I will remember."

"Now it is my turn. Read the sand for me," said Maïeddine.

M'Barka made as if she would wrap the sand in its bag. "I can tell thy

future better another time. Not now. It would not be wise. Besides, I

have done enough. I am tired."

"Look but a little way along the future, then, and say what thou seest.

I feel that it will bring good fortune to touch the sand where the hand

of Ourïeda has touched it."

Always now, he spoke of Victoria, or to her, as "Rose" (Ourïeda in

Arabic); but as M'Barka gave her that name also, the girl could hardly

object.

"I tell thee, instead it may bring thee evil."

"For good or evil, I will have the fortune now," Maïeddine insisted.

"Be it upon thy head, oh cousin, not mine. Take thy handful of sand, and

make thy wish."

Maïeddine took it from the place Victoria had touched, and his wish was

that, as the grains of sand mingled, so their destinies might mingle

inseparably, his and hers.

M'Barka traced the three rows of mystic signs, and read her notebook,

mumbling. But suddenly she let it drop into her lap, covering the signs

with both thin hands.

"What ails thee?" Maïeddine asked, frowning.

"I saw thee stand still and let an opportunity slip by."

"I shall not do that."

"The sand has said it. Shall I stop, or go on?"

"Go on."

"I see another chance to grasp thy wish. This time thou stretchest out

thine hand. I see thee, in a great house--the house of one thou knowest,

whose name I may not speak. Thou stretchest out thine hand. The chance

is given thee----"

"What then?"

"Then--I cannot tell thee, what then. Thou must not ask. My eyes are

clouded with sleep. Come Ourïeda, it is late. Let us go to our tent."

"No," said Maïeddine. "Ourïeda may go, but not thou."

Victoria rose quickly and lightly from among the jackal skins and

Touareg cushions which Maïeddine had provided for her comfort. She bade

him good night, and with all his old calm courtesy he kissed his hand

after it had pressed hers. But there was a fire of anger or impatience

in his eyes.

Fafann was in the tent, waiting to put her mistress to bed, and to help

the Roumia if necessary. The mattresses which had come rolled up on the

brown mule's back, had been made into luxurious looking beds, covered

with bright-coloured, Arab-woven blankets, beautiful embroidered sheets

of linen, and cushions slipped into fine pillow-cases. Folding frames

draped with new mosquito nettings had been arranged to protect the

sleepers' hands and faces; and there was a folding table on which stood

French gilt candlesticks and a glass basin and water-jug, ornamented

with gilded flowers; just such a basin and jug as Victoria had seen in

the curiosity-shop of Mademoiselle Soubise. There were folded towels,

too, of silvery damask.

"What wonderful things we have!" the girl exclaimed. "I don't see how we

manage to carry them all. It is like a story of the 'Arabian Nights,'

where one has but to rub a lamp, and a powerful djinn brings everything

one wants."

"The Lord Maïeddine is the powerful djinn who has brought all thou

couldst possibly desire, without giving thee even the trouble to wish

for things," said Fafann, showing her white teeth, and glancing sidelong

at the Roumia. "These are not all. Many of these things thou hast seen

already. Yet there are more." Eagerly she lifted from the ground, which

was covered with rugs, a large green earthern jar. "It is full of

rosewater to bathe thy face, for the water of the desert here is

brackish, and harsh to the skin, because of saltpetre. The Sidi ordered

enough rosewater to last till Ghardaia, in the M'Zab country. Then he

will get thee more."

"But it is for us both--for Lella M'Barka more than for me," protested

Victoria.

Fafann laughed. "My mistress no longer spends time in thinking of her

skin. She prays much instead; and the Sidi has given her an amulet which

touched the sacred Black Stone at Mecca. To her, that is worth all the

rest; and it is worth this great journey, which she takes with so much

pain. The rosewater, and the perfumes from Tunis, and the softening

creams made in the tent of the Sidi's mother, are all offered to thee."

"No, no," the girl persisted, "I am sure they are meant more for Lella

M'Barka than for me. She is his cousin."

"Hast thou never noticed the caravans, when they have passed us in the

desert, how it is always the young and beautiful women who rest in the

bassourahs, while the old ones trot after the camels?"

"I have noticed that, and it is very cruel."

"Why cruel, oh Roumia? They have had their day. And when a man has but

one camel, he puts upon its back his treasure, the joy of his heart. A

man must be a man, so say even the women. And the Sidi is a man, as well

as a great lord. He is praised by all as a hunter, and for the

straightness of his aim with a gun. He rides, thou seest, as if he were

one with his horse, and as he gallops in the desert, so would he gallop

to battle if need be, for he is brave as the Libyan lion, and strong as

the heroes of old legends. Yet there is nothing too small for him to

bend his mind upon, if it be for thy pleasure and comfort. Thou shouldst

be proud, instead of denying that all the Sidi does is for thee. My

mistress would tell thee so, and many women would be dying of envy,

daughters of Aghas and even of Bach Aghas. But perhaps, as thou art a

Roumia, thou hast different feelings."

"Perhaps," answered Victoria humbly, for she was crushed by Fafann's

fierce eloquence. And for a moment her heart was heavy; but she would

not let herself feel a presentiment of trouble.

"What harm can happen to me?" she asked. "I haven't been guided so far

for nothing. Si Maïeddine is an Arab, and his ways aren't like the ways

of men I've known, that's all. My sister's husband was his friend--a

great friend, whom he loved. What he does is more for Cassim's sake

than mine."

Her cheeks were burning after the long day of sun, and because of her

thoughts; yet she was not glad to bathe them with Si Maïeddine's

fragrant offering of rosewater, some of which Fafann poured into the

glass basin.

Not far away Maïeddine was still sitting by the fire with M'Barka.

"Tell me now," he said. "What didst thou see?"

"Nothing clearly. Another time, cousin. Let me have my mind fresh. I am

like a squeezed orange."

"Yet I must know, or I shall not sleep. Thou art hiding something."

"All was vague--confused. I saw as through a torn cloud. There was the

great house. Thou wert there, a guest. Thou wert happy, thy desire

granted, and then--by Allah, Maïeddine, I could not see what happened;

but the voice of the sand was like a storm in my ears, and the knowledge

came to me suddenly that thou must not wait too long for thy wish--the

wish made with the sand against thine heart."

"Thou couldst not see my wish. Thou art but a woman."

"I saw, because I am a woman, and I have the gift. Thou knowest I have

the gift. Do not wait too long, or thou mayest wait for ever."

"What wouldst thou have me do?"

"It is not for me to advise. As thou saidst, I am but a woman.

Only--_act_! That is the message of the sand. And now, unless thou

wouldst have my dead body finish the journey in the bassour, take me to

my tent."

Maïeddine took her to the tent. And he asked no more questions. But all

night he thought of what M'Barka had said, and the message of the sand.

It was a dangerous message, yet the counsel was after his own heart.