The Golden Silence Part 24

Nevill broke into more explanations, and evidently they were satisfactory, for, while the dancing and the powder play were stopped, and the squatting ranks of guests stared silently, the two Roumis were conducted into the house.

It was larger than most of the houses in the village, but apart from the stable of the animals through which the visitors pa.s.sed, there was but one room, long and narrow, lighted by two small windows. The darkest corner was the bedroom, which had a platform of stone on which rugs were spread, and there was a lower mound of dried mud, roughly curtained off from the rest with two or three red and blue foutahs suspended on ropes made of twisted alfa, or dried gra.s.s. Toward the farther end, a hole in the floor was the family cooking-place, and behind it an elevation of beaten earth made a wide shelf for a long row of jars shaped like the Roman amphorae of two thousand years ago. Pegs driven into one of the walls were hung with gandourahs and a foutah or two; and of furniture, worthy of that name in the eyes of Europeans, there was none.

At the bedroom end of the room, several women were gathered round a central object of interest, and though the light was dim after the vivid sunshine outside, the visitors guessed that the object of interest was the bride. Decorously they paused near the door, while a great deal of arguing went on, in which the shriller voices of women mingled with the guttural tones of the men. Nevill could catch no word, for they were talking their own Kabyle tongue which had come down from their forefathers the Berbers, lords of the land long years before the Arabs drove them into the high mountains. But at last the group opened, and a young woman stepped out with half-shy eagerness. She was loaded with jewels, and her foutah was barbarically splendid in colour, but she was almost as fair as her father; a slim creature with grey eyes, and brown curly hair that showed under her orange foulard.

Proud of her French, she began talking in that language, welcoming the guests, telling them how glad she was to see friends of her dear Mademoiselle Soubise. But soon she must be gone to her husband's house, and already the dark young bridegroom, son of the Cad, was growing impatient. There was no time to be lost, if they were to learn anything of Ben Halim's wife.

As a preface to what they wished to ask, Nevill made a presentation speech, placing the velvet watch-case in Mouni's hand, and she opened it with a kind of moan expressing intense rapture. Never had she seen anything so beautiful, and she would cheerfully have recalled every phase of her career from earliest babyhood, if by doing so she could have pleased the givers.

"But yes," she answered to Nevill's first questions, "the beautiful lady whom I served was the wife of Sidi Ca.s.sim ben Halim. At first it was in Algiers that I lived with her, but soon we left, and went to the country, far, oh, very far away, going towards the south. The house was like a large farmhouse, and to me as a child--for I was but a child--it seemed fine and grand. Yet my lady was not pleased. She found it rough, and different from any place to which she was used. Poor, beautiful lady! She was not happy there. She cried a great deal, and each day I thought she grew paler than the day before."

Mouni spoke in French, hesitating now and then for a word, or putting in two or three in Arabic, before she stopped to think, as she grew interested in her subject. Stephen understood almost all she said, and was too impatient to leave the catechizing to Nevill.

"Whereabouts was this farmhouse?" he asked. "Can't you tell us how to find it?"

Mouni searched her memory. "I was not yet thirteen," she said. "It is nine years since I left that place; and I travelled in a shut-up carriage, with a cousin, older than I, who had been already in the house of the lady when I came. She told her mistress of me, and I was sent for, because I was quick and lively in my ways, and white of face, almost as white as the beautiful lady herself. My work was to wait on the mistress, and help my cousin, who was her maid. Yamina--that was my cousin's name--could have told you more about the place in the country than I, for she was even then a woman. But she died a few months after we both left the beautiful lady. We left because the master thought my cousin carried a letter for her mistress, which he did not wish sent; and he gave orders that we should no longer live under his roof."

"Surely you can remember where you went, and how you went, on leaving the farmhouse?" Stephen persisted.

"Oh yes, we went back to Algiers. But it was a long distance, and took us many days, because we had only a little money, and Yamina would not spend it in buying tickets for the diligence, all the way. We walked many miles, and only took a diligence when I cried, and was too tired to move a step farther. At night we drove sometimes, I remember, and often we rested under the tents of nomads who were kind to us.

"While I was with the lady, I never went outside the great courtyard. It is not strange that now, after all these years, I cannot tell you more clearly where the house was. But it was a great white house, on a hill, and round it was a high wall, with towers that overlooked the country beneath. And in those towers, which were on either side the big, wide gate, were little windows through which men could spy, or even shoot if they chose."

"Did you never hear the name of any town that was near?" Stephen went on.

"I do not think there was a town near; yet there was a village not far off to the south. I saw it from the hill-top, both as I went in at the gate with my cousin, and when, months later, I was sent away with her.

We did not pa.s.s through it, because our road was to and from the north; and I do not even know the name of the village. But there was a cemetery outside it, where some of the master's ancestors and relations were buried. I heard my lady speak of it one day, when she cried because she feared to die and be laid there without ever again seeing her own country and her own people. Oh, and once I heard Yamina talk with another servant about an oasis called Bou-Saada. It was not near, yet I think it could be reached by diligence in a long day."

"Good!" broke in Nevill. "There's our first real clue! Bou-Saada I know well. When people who come and visit me want a glimpse of the desert in a hurry, Bou-Saada is where I take them. One motors there from Algiers in seven or eight hours--through mountains at first, then on the fringe of the desert; but it's true, as Mouni says, going by diligence, and walking now and then, it would be a journey of days. Her description of the house on the hill, looking down over a village and cemetery, will be a big help. And Ben Halim's name is sure to be known in the country round, if he ever lived there."

"He may have been gone for years," said Stephen. "And if there's a conspiracy of silence in Algiers, why not elsewhere?"

"Well, at least we've got a clue, and will follow it up for all we know.

By Jove, this is giving me a new interest in life!" And Nevill rubbed his hands in a boyish way he had. "Tell us what the beautiful lady was like," he went on to Mouni.

"Her skin was like the snow on our mountain-tops when the sunrise paints the white with rose," answered Mouni. "Her hair was redder than the red of henna, and when it was unfastened it hung down below her waist. Her eyes were dark as a night without moon, and her teeth were little, little pearls. Yet for all her beauty she was not happy. She wasted the flower of her youth in sadness, and though the master was n.o.ble, and splendid as the sun to look upon, I think she had no love to give him, perhaps because he was grave and seldom smiled, or because she was a Roumia and could not suit herself to the ways of true believers."

"Did she keep to her own religion?" asked Stephen.

"That I cannot tell. I was too young to understand. She never talked of such things before me, but she kept to none of our customs, that I know.

In the three months I served her, never did she leave the house, not even to visit the cemetery on a Friday, as perhaps the master would have allowed her to do, if she had wished."

"Do you remember if she spoke of a sister?"

"She had a photograph of a little girl, whose picture looked like herself. Once she told me it was her sister, but the next day the photograph was gone from its place, and I never saw it again. Yamina thought the master was jealous, because our lady looked at it a great deal."

"Was there any other lady in that house," Nevill ventured, "or was yours the master's only wife?"

"There was no other lady at that time," Mouni replied promptly.

"So far, so good," said Nevill. "Well, Legs, I don't think there's any doubt we've got hold of the right end of the stick now. Mouni's beautiful lady and Miss Ray's sister Saidee are certainly one and the same. Ho for the white farmhouse on the hill!"

"Must we go back to Algiers, or can we get to Bou-Saada from here?"

Stephen asked.

Nevill laughed. "You are in a hurry! Oh, we can get there from here all right. Would you like to start now?"

Stephen's face reddened. "Why not, if we've found out all we can from this girl?" He tried to speak indifferently.

Nevill laughed again. "Very well. There's nothing left then, except to say good-bye to the fair bride and her relations."

He had expected to get back to Algiers that night, slipping away from the high pa.s.ses of Grand Kabylia before dusk, and reaching home late, by lamplight. But now the plan was changed. They were not to see Algiers again until Stephen had made acquaintance with the desert. By setting off at once, they might arrive at Bou-Saada some time in the dark hours; and Nevill upset his old arrangements with good grace. Why should he mind? he asked, when Stephen apologized shame-facedly for his impatience. Bou-Saada was as good a place as any, except Tlemcen, and this adventure would give him an excuse for a letter, even two letters, to Josette Soubise. She would want to hear about Mouni's wedding, and the stately Kabyle home which they had visited. Besides she would be curious to know whether they found the white farmhouse on the hill, and if so, what they learned there of the beautiful lady and her mysterious fate. Oh yes, it would certainly mean two letters at least: one from Bou-Saada, one after the search for the farmhouse; and Nevill thought himself in luck, for he was not allowed to write often to Josette.

After Michelet the road, a mere shelf projecting along a precipice, slants upward on its way to the Col de Tirouda, sharp as a knife aimed at the heart of the mountains. From far below clouds boil up as if the valleys smoked after a destroying fire, and through flying mists flush the ruddy earth, turning the white film to pinkish gauze. Crimson and purple stones shine like uncut jewels, and cascades of yellow gorse, under red-flowering trees, pour down over low-growing white flowers, which embroider the rose-coloured rocks.

Then, suddenly, gone is the green Kabyle mountain-world, gone like a dream the tangle of ridges and chasms, the bright tapestry of fig trees and silver olives, dark karoubias (the wild locusts of John the Baptist) and climbing roses. Rough, coa.r.s.e gra.s.s has eaten up the flowers, or winds sweeping down from the Col have killed them. Only a few stunted trees bend grotesquely to peer over the sheer sides of shadowed gorges as the road strains up and up, twisting like a scar left by a whip-lash, on the naked brown shoulders of a slave. So at last it flings a loop over the Col de Tirouda. Then, round a corner the wand of an invisible magician waves: darkness and winter cold become summer warmth and light.

This light was the level golden glory of late afternoon when Stephen saw it from Nevill's car; and so green were the wide stretching meadows and shining rivers far below, that he seemed to be looking at them through an emerald, as Nero used to gaze at his gardens in Rome. Down the motor plunged towards the light, threading back and forth a network of zig-zags, until long before sunset they were in the warm lowlands, racing towards Bordj-bou Arreredj and Msila. Beyond Msila, they would follow the desert track which would bring them by and by to the oasis town of Bou-Saada.

If Stephen had been a tourist, guide-book in hand, he would have delighted in the stony road among the mountains between Bordj-bou Arreredj and Msila; but it was the future, not the past, which held his thoughts to-day, and he had no more than a pa.s.sing glance for ruined mosques and palaces. It was only after nightfall, far beyond the town of Msila, far beyond the vast plain of the Hodna, that his first dim glimpse of the desert thrilled him out of self-absorption.

Even under the stars which crusted a moonless sky, the vast stretches of billowing sand glimmered faintly golden as a phosph.o.r.escent sea. And among the dimly gleaming waves of that endless waste the motor tossed, rocking on the rough track like a small boat in mid-ocean.

Nowhere was there any sound except the throbbing of their machinery, and a fairy fiddling of unseen crickets, which seemed to make the silence more intense, under the great sparkling dome that hung over the gold.

"Now I am in the place where she wished to be: the golden silence,"

Stephen said to himself. And he found himself listening, as if for the call Victoria had promised to give if she needed him.

XXIII

On the top of a pale golden hill, partly sand, partly rock, rises a white wall with square, squat towers which look north and south, east and west. The wall and the towers together are like an ivory crown set on the hill's brow, and from a distance the effect is very barbaric, very impressive, for all the country round about is wild and desolate.

Along the southern horizon the desert goes billowing in waves of gold, and rose, and violet, that fade into the fainter violet of the sky; and nearer there are the strange little mountains which guard the oasis of Bou-Saada, like a wall reared to hide a treasure from some dreaded enemy; and even the sand is heaped in fantastic shapes, resembling a troop of tawny beasts crouched to drink from deep pools of purple shadow. Northward, the crumpled waste rolls away like prairie land or ocean, faint green over yellow brown, as if gra.s.s seed had been sprinkled spa.r.s.ely on a stormy sea and by some miracle had sprouted. And in brown wastes, bright emerald patches gleam, vivid and fierce as serpents' eyes, ringed round with silver. Far away to the east floats the mirage of a lake, calm as a blue lagoon. Westward, where desert merges into sky, are high tablelands, and flat-topped mountains with carved sides, desert architecture, such as might have suggested Egyptian temples and colossal sphinxes.

Along the rough desert track beneath the hill, where bald stones break through sandy earth, camels come and go, pa.s.sing from south to north, from north to south, marching slowly with rhythmic gait, as if to the sound of music which only they can hear, glancing from side to side with unutterable superciliousness, looking wistfully here and there at some miniature oasis thrown like a dark prayer-carpet on the yellow sand. Two or three in a band they go, led by desert men in blowing white, or again in a long train of twelve or twenty, their legs a moving lattice, their heart-shaped feet making a soft, swishing "pad-pad," on the hard road.

The little windows of the squat, domed towers on the hill are like eyes that spy upon this road,--small, dark and secret eyes, very weary of seeing nothing better than camels since old days when there were razzias, and wars, something worth shutting stout gates upon.

When, after three days of travelling, Victoria came southward along this road, and looked between the flapping carriage curtains at the white wall that crowned the dull gold hill, her heart beat fast, for the thought of the golden silence sprang to her mind. The gold did not burn with the fierce orange flames she had seen in her dreams--it was a bleached and faded gold, melancholy and almost sinister in colour; yet it would pa.s.s for gold; and a great silence brooded where prairie blended with desert. She asked no questions of Maeddine, for that was a rule she had laid upon herself; but when the carriage turned out of the rough road it had followed so long, and the horses began to climb a stony track which wound up the yellow hill to the white towers, she could hardly breathe, for the throbbing in her breast. Always she had only had to shut her eyes to see Saidee, standing on a high white place, gazing westward through a haze of gold. What if this were the high white place? What if already Si Maeddine was bringing her to Saidee?

They had been only three days on the way so far, it was true, and she had been told that the journey would be very, very long. Still, Arabs were subtle, and Si Maeddine might have wanted to test her courage.

Looking back upon those long hours, now, towards evening of the third day, it seemed to Victoria that she had been travelling for a week in the swaying, curtained carriage, with the slow-trotting mules.

Just at first, there had been some fine scenery to hold her interest; far-off mountains of grim shapes, dark as iron, and spotted with snow as a leper is spotted with scales. Then had come low hills, following the mountains (nameless to her, because Maeddine had not cared to name them), and blue lakes of iris flowing over wide plains. But by and by the plains flattened to dullness; a hot wind ceaselessly flapped the canvas curtains, and Lella M'Barka sighed and moaned with the fatigue of constant motion. There was nothing but plain, endless plain, and Victoria had been glad, for her own sake as well as the invalid's, when night followed the first day. They had stopped on the outskirts of a large town, partly French, partly Arab, pa.s.sing through and on to the house of a cad who was a friend of Si Maeddine's. It was a primitively simple house, even humble, it seemed to the girl, who had as yet no conception of the bareness and lack of comfort--according to Western ideas--of Arab country-houses. Nevertheless, when, after another tedious day, they rested under the roof of a village adel, an official below a cad, the first house seemed luxurious in contrast. During this last, third day, Victoria had been eager and excited, because of the desert, through one gate of which they had entered. She felt that once in the desert she was so close to Saidee in spirit that they might almost hear the beating of each other's hearts, but she had not expected to be near her sister in body for many such days to come: and the wave of joy that surged over her soul as the horses turned up the golden hill towards the white towers, was suffocating in its force.

The nearer they came, the less impressive seemed the building. After all, it was not the great Arab stronghold it had looked from far away, but a fortified farmhouse a century old, at most. Climbing the hill, too, Victoria saw that the golden colour was partly due to a monstrous swarm of ochre-hued locusts, large as young canary birds, which had settled, thick as yellow snow, over the ground. They were resting after a long flight, and there were millions and millions of them, covering the earth in every direction as far as the eye could reach. Only a few were on the wing, but as the carriage stopped before the closed gates, fat yellow bodies came blundering against the canvas curtains, or fell plumply against the blinkers over the mules' eyes.