The Golden Silence Part 29

Her dancing astonished him. He did not know what to make of it, for she had told him nothing about herself, except what concerned her errand in Africa. Though he had been in Paris when she was there, he had been deeply absorbed in business vital to his career, and had not heard of Victoria Ray the dancer, or seen her name on the h.o.a.rdings.

Like his father, he knew that European women who danced were not as the African dancers, the Ouled Nals and the girls of Djebel Amour. But an Arab may have learned to know many things with his mind which he cannot feel with his heart; and with his heart Maeddine felt a wish to blind Abderrhaman, because his eyes had seen the intoxicating beauty of Victoria as she danced. He was ferociously angry, but not with the girl.

Perhaps with himself, because he was powerless to hide her from others, and to order her life as he chose. Yet there was a kind of delicious pain in knowing himself at her mercy, as no Arab man could be at the mercy of an Arab woman.

The sight of Victoria dancing, had shot new colours into his existence.

He understood her less, and valued her more than before, a thousand times more, achingly, torturingly more. Since their first meeting on the boat, he had admired the American girl immensely. Her whiteness, the golden-red of her hair, the blueness of her eyes had meant perfection for him. He had wanted her because she was the most beautiful creature he had seen, because she was a Christian and difficult to win; also because the contrast between her childishness and brave independence was piquant. Apart from that contrast, he had not thought much about her nature. He had looked upon her simply as a beautiful girl, who could not be bought, but must be won. Now she had become a bewildering houri.

Nothing which life could give him would make up for the loss of her.

There was nothing he would not do to have her, or at least to put her beyond the reach of others.

If necessary, he would even break his promise to the Agha.

While she danced inside the great tent, outside in the open s.p.a.ce round the fire, the dwellers in the little tents sat with their knees in their arms watching the dancing of two young Negroes from the Soudan. The blacks had torn their turbans from their shaven heads, and thrown aside their burnouses. Naked to their waists, with short, loose trousers, and sashes which other men seized, to swing the wearers round and round, their sweating skin had the gloss of ebony. It was a whirlwind of a dance, and an old wizard with a tom-tom, and a dark giant with metal castanets made music for the dancers, taking eccentric steps themselves as they played. The Soudanese fell into an ecstasy of giddiness, running about on their hands and feet like huge black tarantulas, or turning themselves into human wheels, to roll through the bed of the dying fire and out on the other side, sending up showers of sparks. All the while, they uttered a barking chant, in time to the wicked music, which seemed to shriek for war and bloodshed; and now and then they would dash after some toddling boy, catch him by the scalp-lock on his shaved head (left for the grasp of Azral the death-angel) and force him to join the dance.

Mean-faced Kabyle dogs, guarding deserted tents, howled their hatred of the music, while far away, across desert s.p.a.ces, jackals cried to one another. And the scintillating network of stars was dimmed by a thin veil of sand which the wind lifted and let fall, as Victoria lifted and let fall the spangled scarf that made her beauty more mysterious, more desirable, in the eyes of Maeddine.

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 Fejur; 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 part.i.tions, 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 Maeddine was a.s.sembling.

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 s.p.a.ce 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 ba.s.sour, 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, Maeddine 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 Maeddine 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," Maeddine 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 Maeddine knew, and the thought warmed his blood. He was superst.i.tious, 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, Maeddine 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 ba.s.sourahs, Maeddine 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 Maeddine, "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 ba.s.sour, but Victoria would have her rose and purple cage to herself. Maeddine 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 ba.s.sour.

"What a sky-sc.r.a.ping camel!" she exclaimed. And then had to explain to Maeddine 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 ba.s.sour?" 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 ba.s.sour 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 Maeddine. "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 ba.s.sour 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 Maeddine 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 pa.s.s and see me dying, For I have kissed the eyes, the mouth that I desired."

"But that is a sad song," said Victoria, when Maeddine 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,"

Maeddine 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 G.o.d 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 Maeddine'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."