The Golden Silence Part 26

To the left from the group of adobe houses, and at about the same distance from the rough track on which they had been riding, was a cl.u.s.ter of nomad tents, like giant bats with torpid wings spread out ink-black on the gold of the desert. A little farther off was another small encampment of a different tribe; and their tents were brown, striped with black and yellow. They looked like huge b.u.t.terflies resting. But Maeddine thought of no such similes. He was a child of the Sahara, and used to the tents and the tent-dwellers. His own father, the Agha, lived half the year in a great tent, when he was with his douar, and Maeddine had been born under the roof of camel's hair. His own people and these people were not kin, and their lives lay far apart; yet a man of one nomad tribe understands all nomads, though he be a chief's son, and they as poor as their own ill-fed camels. His pride was his nomad blood, for all men of the Sahara, be they princes or camel-drivers, look with scorn upon the sedentary people, those of the great plain of the Tell, and fat eaters of ripe dates in the cities.

The eight or ten black tents were gathered round one, a little higher, a little less ragged than the others--the tent of the Kebir, or headman; but it was humble enough. There would have been room and to spare for a dozen such under the _tente sultane_ of the Agha, at his douar south of El Aghouat.

As Maeddine rode up, a buzz of excitement rose in the hive. Some one ran to tell the Kebir that a great Sidi was arriving, and the headman came out from his tent, where he had been meditating or dozing after the chanting of the midday prayer--the prayer of noon.

He was a thin, elderly man, with an eagle eye to awe his women-folk, and an old burnous of sheep's wool, which was of a deep cream colour because it had not been washed for many years. Yet he smelt good, with a smell that was like the desert, and there was no foul odour in the miniature douar, as in European dwellings of the very poor. There is never a smell of uncleanliness about Arabs, even those people who must perform most of the ablutions prescribed by their religion with sand instead of water.

But the Saharian saying is that the desert purifies all things.

The Kebir was polite though not servile to Maeddine, and while the horse borrowed from the Cad was having its face economically sprinkled with water from a brown goat-skin, black coffee was being hospitably prepared for the guest by the women of the household, unveiled of course, as are all women of the nomad tribes, except those of highest birth.

Maeddine did not want the coffee, but it would have been an insult to refuse, and he made laboured conversation with the Kebir, his eyes and thoughts fixed on the Cad's gate and the yellow motor-car. He hardly saw the tents, beneath whose low-spread black wings eyes looked out at him, as the bright eyes of chickens look out from under the mother-hen's feathers. They were all much alike, though the Kebir's, as befitted his position, was the best, made of wide strips of black woollen material st.i.tched together, spread tightly over stout poles, and pegged down into the hard sand. There was a part.i.tion dividing the tent in two, a part.i.tion made of one or two old hacks, woven by hand, and if Maeddine had been interested, he could have seen his host's bedding arranged for the day; a few coa.r.s.e rugs and _frechias_ piled up carelessly, out of the way. There was a bale of camels' hair, ready for weaving, and on top of it a little boy was curled up asleep. From the tent-poles hung an animal's skin, drying, and a cradle of netted cords in which swung and slept a swaddled baby no bigger than a doll. It was a girl, therefore its eyes were blackened with kohl, and its eyebrows neatly sketched on with paint, as they had been since the unfortunate day of its birth, when the father grumbled because it was not a "child," but only a worthless female.

The mother of the four weeks' old doll, a fine young woman tinkling with Arab silver, left her carpet-weaving to grind the coffee, while her withered mother-in-law brightened with brushwood the smouldering fire of camel-dung. The women worked silently, humbly, though they would have been chattering if the great Sidi stranger had not been there; but two or three little children in orange and scarlet rags played giggling among the rubbish outside the tent--a broken ba.s.sour-frame, or palanquin, waiting to be mended; date boxes, baskets, and wooden plates; old kous-kous bowls, bundles of alfa gra.s.s, chicken feathers, and an infant goat with its mother.

The sound of children's shrill laughter, which pa.s.sed unnoticed by the parents, who had it always in their ears, rasped Maeddine's nerves, and he would have liked to strike or kick the babies into silence. Most Arabs worship children, even girls, and are invariably kind to them, but to-day Maeddine hated anything that ran about disturbingly and made a noise.

Now the Cad had reached the gate, and was talking to the men in the motor-car. Would he send them away? No, the gate was being opened by a servant. Ben Sliman must have invited the Roumis in. Possibly it was a wise thing to do, yet how dangerous, how terribly dangerous, with Victoria perhaps peeping from one of the tiny windows at the women's corner of the house, which looked on the court! They could not see her there, but she could see them, and if she were tired of travelling and dancing attendance on a fidgety invalid--if she repented her promise to keep the secret of this journey?

Maeddine's experience of women inclined him to think that they always did forget their promises to a man the moment his back was turned.

Victoria was different from the women of his race, or those he had met in Paris, yet she was, after all, a woman; and there was no truer saying than that you might more easily prophesy the direction of the wind than say what a woman was likely to do. The coffee which the Kebir handed him made him feel sick, as if he had had a touch of the sun. What was happening up there on the hill, behind the gates which stood half open?

What would she do--his Rose of the West?

XXV

It was a relief to Stephen and Nevill to see one of the hors.e.m.e.n coming up the rough hill-track to the gate, and to think that they need no longer wait upon the fears or inhospitable whims of the Arab servants on the other side of the wall.

As soon as the rider came near enough for his features to be sketched in clearly, Nevill remembered having noticed him at one or two of the Governor's b.a.l.l.s, where all Arab dignitaries, even such lesser lights as cads and adels show themselves. But they had never met. The man was not one of the southern chiefs whom Nevill Caird had entertained at his own house.

Stephen thought that he had never seen a more personable man as the Cad rode up to the car, saluting courteously though with no great warmth.

His face was more tanned than very dark by nature, but it seemed brown in contrast to his light hazel eyes. His features were commanding, if not handsome, and he sat his horse well. Altogether he was a notable figure in his immensely tall white turban, wound with pale grey-brown camel's-hair rope, his grey cloth burnous, embroidered with gold, flung back over an inner white burnous, his high black boots, with wrinkled brown tops, and his wonderful Kairouan hat of light straw, embroidered with a leather applique of coloured flowers and silver leaves, steeple-crowned, and as big as a cart-wheel, hanging on his shoulders.

He and Nevill politely wished the blessings of Allah and Mohammed his Prophet upon each other, and Nevill then explained the errand which had brought him and his friend to the Cad's house.

The Cad's somewhat heavy though intelligent face did not easily show surprise. It changed not at all, though Stephen watched it closely.

"Thou art welcome to hear all I can tell of my dead relation, Ben Halim," he said. "But I know little that everybody does not know."

"It is certain, then, that Ben Halim is dead?" asked Nevill. "We had hoped that rumour lied."

"He died on his way home after a pilgrimage to Mecca," gravely replied the Cad.

"Ah!" Nevill caught him up quickly. "We heard that it was in Constantinople."

Ben Sliman's expression was slightly strained. He glanced from Nevill's boyish face to Stephen's dark, keen one, and perhaps fancied suspicion in both. If he had intended to let the Englishmen drive away in their motor-car without seeing the other side of his white wall, he now changed his mind. "If thou and thy friend care to honour this poor farm of mine by entering the gates, and drinking coffee with me," he said, "We will afterwards go down below the hill to the cemetery where my cousin's body lies buried. His tombstone will show that he was El Hadj, and that he had reached Mecca. When he was in Constantinople, he had just returned from there."

Possibly, having given the invitation by way of proving that there was nothing to conceal, Ben Sliman hoped it would not be accepted; but he was disappointed. Before the Cad had reached the top of the hill, Nevill had told his chauffeur to stop the motor, therefore the restless panting had long ago ceased, and when Ben Sliman looked doubtfully at the car, as if wondering how it was to be got in without doing damage to his wall, Nevill said that the automobile might stay where it was. Their visit would not be long.

"But the longer the better," replied the Cad. "When I have guests, it pains me to see them go."

He shouted a word or two in Arabic, and instantly the gates were opened.

The sketchily clad brown men inside had only been waiting for a signal.

"I regret that I cannot ask my visitors into the house itself, as I have illness there," Ben Sliman announced; "but we have guest rooms here in the gate-towers. They are not what I could wish for such distinguished personages, but thou canst see, Sidi, thou and thy friend, that this is a simple farmhouse. We make no pretension to the luxury of towns, but we do what we can."

As he spoke, the brown men were scuttling about, one unfastening the door of a little tower, which stuck as if it had not been opened for a long time, another darting into the house, which appeared silent and tenantless, a third and fourth running to a more distant part, and vanishing also through a dark doorway.

The Cad quickly ushered his guests into the tower room, but not so quickly that the eyes of a girl, looking through a screened window, did not see and recognize both. The servant who had gone ahead unbarred a pair of wooden shutters high up in the whitewashed walls of the tower, which was stiflingly close, with a musty, animal odour. As the opening of the shutters gave light, enormous black-beetles which seemed to Stephen as large as pigeon's eggs, crawled out from cracks between wall and floor, stumbling awkwardly about, and falling over each other. It was a disgusting sight, and did not increase the visitors' desire to accept the Cad's hospitality for any length of time. It may be that he had thought of this. But even if he had, the servants were genuinely enthusiastic in their efforts to make the Roumis at home. The two who had run farthest returned soonest. They staggered under a load of large rugs wrapped in unbleached sheeting, and a great sack stuffed full of cushions which bulged out at the top. The sheeting they unfastened, and, taking no notice of the beetles, hurriedly spread on the rough floor several beautifully woven rugs of bright colours. Then, having laid four or five on top of one another, they clawed the cushions out of the sack, and placed them as if on a bed.

Hardly had they finished, when the first servant who had disappeared came back, carrying over his arm a folding table, and dishes in his hands. The only furniture already in the tower consisted of two long, low wooden benches without backs; and as the servant from the house set up the folding table, he who had opened the windows placed the benches, one on either side. At the same moment, through the open door, a man could be seen running with a live lamb flung over his shoulder.

"Good heavens, what is he going to do with that?" Stephen asked, stricken with a presentiment.

"I'm afraid," Nevill answered quickly in English, "that it's going to be killed for our entertainment." His pink colour faded, and in Arabic he begged the Cad to give orders that, if the lamb were for them, its life be spared, as they were under a vow never to touch meat. This was the first excuse he could think of; and when, to his joy, a message was sent after the slayer of innocence, he added that, very unfortunately, they had a pressing engagement which would tear them away from the Cad's delightful house all too soon.

Perhaps the Cad's face expressed no oppressive regret, yet he said kindly that he hoped to keep his guests at least until next morning. In the cool of the day they would see the cemetery; they would return, and eat the evening meal. It would then be time to sleep. And with a gesture he indicated the rugs and cushions, under which the beetles were now buried like mountain-dwellers beneath an avalanche.

Nevill, still pale, thanked his host earnestly, complimented the rugs, and a.s.sured the Cad that, of course, they would be extraordinarily comfortable, but even such inducements did not make it possible for them to neglect their duty elsewhere.

"In any case we shall now eat and drink together," said Ben Sliman, pointing to the table, and towards a servant now arriving from the house with a coffee-tray. The dishes had been set down on the bare board, and one contained the usual little almond cakes, the other, a conserve of some sort bathed in honey, where already many flies were revelling. The servant who had spread the table, quietly pulled the flies out by their wings, or killed them on the edge of the dish.

Nevill, whiter than before, accepted cordially, and giving Stephen a glance of despair, which said: "n.o.blesse oblige," he thrust his fingers into the honey, where there were fewest flies, and took out a sweetmeat.

Stephen did the same. All three ate, and drank sweet black _cafe maure_.

Once the Cad turned to glance at something outside the door, and his secretive, light grey eyes were troubled. As they ate and drank, they talked, Nevill tactfully catechizing, the Cad answering with pleasant frankness. He did not inquire why they wished to have news of Ben Halim, who had once lived in the house for a short time, and had now long been dead. Perhaps he wished to give the Roumis a lesson in discretion; but as their friendliness increased over the dripping sweets, Nevill ventured to ask a crucial question. What had become of Ben Halim's American wife?

Then, for the first time, the Cad frowned, very slightly, but it was plain to see he thought a liberty had been taken which, as host, he was unable to resent.

"I know nothing of my dead cousin's family," he said. "No doubt its members went with him, if not to Mecca, at least a part of the way, and if any such persons wished to return to Europe after his death, it is certain they would have been at liberty to do so. This house my cousin wished me to have, and I took possession of it in due time, finding it empty and in good order. If you search for any one, I should advise searching in France or, perhaps, in America. Unluckily, there I cannot help. But when it is cool, we will go to the cemetery. Let us go after the prayer, the prayer of _Moghreb_."

But Nevill was reluctant. So was Stephen, when the proposal was explained. They wished to go while it was still hot, or not at all. It may be that even this eccentric proposal did not surprise or grieve the Cad, though as a rule he was not fond of being out of doors in the glare of the sun.

He agreed to the suggestion that the motor-car should take all three down the hill, but said that he would prefer to walk back.

The "teuf-teuf" of the engine began once more outside the white gates; and for the second time Victoria flew to the window, pressing her face against the thick green moucharabia which excluded flies and prevented any one outside from seeing what went on within.

"Calm thyself, O Rose," urged the feeble voice of Lella M'Barka. "Thou hast said these men are nothing to thee."

"One is my friend," the girl pleaded, with a glance at the high couch of rugs on which M'Barka lay.

"A young girl cannot have a man for a friend. He may be a lover or a husband, but never a friend. Thou knowest this in thy heart, O Rose, and thou hast sworn to me that never hast thou had a lover."

Victoria did not care to argue. "I am sure he has come here to try and find me. He is anxious. That is very good of him--all the more, because we are nothing to each other. How can I let him go away without a word?

It is too hard-hearted. I do think, if Si Maeddine were here, he would say so too. He would let me see Mr. Knight and just tell him that I'm perfectly safe and on the way to my sister. That once she lived in this house, and I hoped to find her here, but----"

"Maeddine would not wish thee to tell the young man these things, or any other things, or show thyself to him at all," M'Barka persisted, lifting herself on the bed in growing excitement. "Dost thou not guess, he runs many dangers in guiding thee to the wife of a man who is as one dead? Dost thou wish to ruin him who risks his whole future to content thee?"