The caravan stopped in front of the Zaouïa gate. There were great iron
doors in a high wall of toub, which was not much darker in colour than
the deep gold of the desert sand; and because it was after sunset the
doors were closed.
One of the Negroes knocked, and called out something inarticulate and
guttural in a loud voice.
Almost at once the gate opened, and a shadowy figure hovered inside. A
name was announced, which was instantly shouted to a person unseen, and
a great chattering began in the dusk. Men ran out, and one or two kissed
the hand of the rider on the white horse. They explained volubly that
the lord was away, but the newcomer checked them as soon as he could,
saying that he had heard the news in the city. He had with him ladies,
one a relative of his own, another who was connected with the great lord
himself, and they must be entertained as the lord would wish, were he
not absent.
The gates, or doors, of iron were thrown wide open, and the little
procession entered a huge open court. On one side was accommodation for
many animals, as in a caravanserai, with a narrow roof sheltering thirty
or forty stalls; and here the two white meharis were made to kneel, that
the women might descend from their bassourahs. There were three, all
veiled, but the arms of one were bare and very brown. She moved stiffly,
as if cramped by sitting for a long time in one position; nevertheless,
she supported her companion, whose bassour she had shared. The two
Soudanese Negroes remained in this court with their animals, which the
servants of the Zaouïa, began helping them to unload; but the master of
the expedition, with the two ladies of his party and Fafann, was now
obliged to walk. Several men of the Zaouïa acted as their guides,
gesticulating with great respect, but lowering their eyelids, and
appearing not to see the women.
They passed through another court, very large, though not so immense as
the first, for no animals were kept there. Instead of stalls for camels
and horses, there were roughly built rooms for pilgrims of the poorer
class, with little, roofless, open-sided kitchens, where they could cook
their own food. Beyond was the third court, with lodging for more
important persons, and then the travellers were led through a labyrinth
of corridors, some roofed with palm branches, others open to the air,
and still more covered in with the toub blocks of which the walls were
built. Along the sides were crumbling benches of stucco, on which old
men lay rolled up in their burnouses; or here and there a door of
rotting palm wood hung half open, giving a glimpse into a small, dim
court, duskily red with the fire of cooking in an open-air kitchen. From
behind these doors came faint sounds of chanting, and spicy smells of
burning wood and boiling peppers. It was like passing through a
subterranean village; and little dark children, squatting in doorways,
or flattening their bodies against palm trunks which supported palm
roofs, or flitting ahead of the strangers, in the thick, musky scented
twilight, were like shadowy gnomes.
By and by, as the newcomers penetrated farther into the mysterious
labyrinth of the vast Zaouïa, the corridors and courts became less
ruined in appearance. The walls were whitewashed; the palm-wood doors
were roughly carved and painted in bright colours, which could be seen
by the flicker of lamps set high in little niches. Each tunnel-like
passage had a carved archway at the end, and at last they entered one
which was closed in with beautiful doors of wrought iron.
Through the rich network they could see into a court where everything
glimmered white in moonlight. They had come to the court of the mosque,
which had on one side an entrance to the private house of the marabout,
the great Sidi El Hadj Mohammed ben Abd-el-Kader.
* * * * * * *
"Lella Saïda, oh light of the young moon, if it please thee, thou hast
two guests come from very far off," announced an old negress to the
woman who had been looking out over the golden silence of the desert.
It was an hour since she had come down from the roof, and having eaten a
little bread, with soup, she lay on a divan writing in a small book.
Several tall copper lamps with open-work copper shades, jewelled and
fringed with coloured glass, gave a soft and beautiful light to the
room. It had pure white walls, round which, close to the ceiling, ran a
frieze of Arab lettering, red, and black, and gold. The doors and
window-blinds and little cupboards were of cedar, so thickly inlaid with
mother-o'-pearl, that only dark lines of the wood defined the white
patterning of leaves and flowers.
The woman had thrown off the blue drapery that had covered her head, and
her auburn hair glittered in the light of the lamp by which she wrote.
She looked up, vexed.
"Thou knowest, Noura, that for years I have received no guests," she
said, in a dialect of the Soudan, in which most Saharian mistresses of
Negro servants learn to talk. "I can see no one. The master would not
permit me to do so, even if I wished it, which I do not."
"Pardon, loveliest lady. But this is another matter. A friend of our
lord brings these visitors to thee. One is kin of his. She seeks to be
healed of a malady, by the power of the Baraka. But the other is a
Roumia."
The wife of the great marabout shut the book in which she had been
writing, and her mind travelled quickly to the sender of the
carrier-pigeon. A European woman, the first who had ever come to the
Zaouïa in eight years! It must be that she had a message from him.
Somehow he had contrived this visit. She dared ask no more questions.
"I will see these ladies," she said. "Let them come to me here."
"Already the old one is resting in the guest-house," answered the
negress. "She has her own servant, and she asks to see thee no earlier
than to-morrow, when she has rested, and is able to pay thee her
respects. It is the other, the young Roumia, who begs to speak with thee
to-night."
The wife of the marabout was more certain than ever that her visitor
must come from the sender of the pigeon. She was glad of an excuse to
talk with his messenger alone, without waiting.
"Go fetch her," she directed. "And when thou hast brought her to the
door I shall no longer need thee, Noura."
Her heart was beating fast. She dreaded some final decision, or the need
to make a decision, yet she knew that she would be bitterly disappointed
if, after all, the European woman were not what she thought. She shut up
the diary in which she wrote each night, and opening one of the wall
cupboards near her divan, she put it away on a shelf, where there were
many other small volumes, a dozen perhaps. They contained the history of
her life during the last nine years, since unhappiness had isolated her,
and made it necessary to her peace of mind, almost to her sanity, to
have a confidant. She closed the inlaid doors of the cupboard, and
locked them with a key which hung from a ribbon inside her dress.
Such a precaution was hardly needed, since the writing was all in
English, and she had recorded the events of the last few weeks
cautiously and cryptically. Not a soul in the marabout's house could
read English, except the marabout himself; and it was seldom he honoured
her with a visit. Nevertheless, it had become a habit to lock up the
books, and she found a secretive pleasure in it.
She had only time to slip the ribbon back into her breast, and sit down
stiffly on the divan, when the door was opened again by Noura.
"O Lella Saïda, I have brought the Roumia," the negress announced.
A slim figure in Arab dress came into the room, unfastening a white veil
with fingers that trembled with impatience. The door shut softly. Noura
had obeyed instructions.