<h2><SPAN name="XXX" id="XXX"></SPAN>XXX</h2>
<p>In the morning he was still brooding over the message;
and as they travelled through the black desert on the
way to Ghardaia and the hidden cities of the M'Zab,
he fell into long silences. Then, abruptly, he would
rouse himself to gaiety and animation, telling old legends or
new tales, strange dramas of the desert, very seldom comedies;
for there are few comedies in the Sahara, except for the
children.</p>
<p>Sometimes he was in danger of speaking out words which
said themselves over and over in his head. "If I 'wait too long,
I may wait for ever.' Then, by Allah, I will not wait." But
he kept his tongue in control, though his brain was hot as if
he wore no turban, under the blaze of the sun. "I will leave
things as they are while we are in this black Gehenna," he
determined. "What is written is written. Yet who has seen
the book of the writing? And there is a curse on all this country,
till the M'Zab is passed."</p>
<p>After Bou-Saada, he had gradually forgotten, or almost forgotten,
his fears. He had been happy in the consciousness of
power that came to him from the desert, where he was at home,
and Europeans were helpless strangers. But now, M'Barka's
warnings had brought the fears back, like flapping ravens. He
had planned the little play of the sand-divining, and at first it
had pleased him. M'Barka's vision of the dark man who
was not of Victoria's country could not have been better; and
because he knew that his cousin believed in the sand, he was
superstitiously impressed by her prophecy and advice. In
the end, he had forced her to go on when she would have stopped,<span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_290" id="Page_290"></SPAN></span>
yet he was angry with her for putting doubts into his mind,
doubts of his own wisdom and the way to succeed. With a girl
of his own people, or indeed with any girl, if he had not loved
too much, he would have had no doubts. But he did not know
how it was best to treat Victoria. His love for her was so strong,
that it was like fear, and in trying to understand her, he changed
his mind a dozen times a day. He was not used to this uncertainty,
and hated to think that he could be weak. Would
she turn from him, if he broke the tacit compact of loyal friendship
which had made her trust him as a guide? He could not
tell; though an Arab girl would scorn him for keeping it. "Perhaps
at heart all women are alike," he thought. "And if,
now that I am warned, I should risk waiting, I would be no
man." At last, the only question left in his mind was,
"When?"</p>
<p>For two days they journeyed through desolation, in a burnt-out
world where nothing had colour except the sad violet sky
which at evening flamed with terrible sunsets, cruelly beautiful
as funeral pyres. The fierce glow set fire to the black rocks
which pointed up like dragons' teeth, and turned them to glittering
copper; polishing the dead white chalk of the chebka
to the dull gleam of dirty silver. Far away there were always
purple hills, behind which it seemed that hope and beauty
might come to life again; but travelling from morning to night
they never appeared any nearer. The evil magic of the black
desert, which Maïeddine called accursed because of the
M'Zabites, made the beautiful hills recede always, leaving only
the ugly brown waves of hardened earth, which were disheartening
to climb, painful to descend.</p>
<p>At last, in the midst of black squalor, they came to an oasis
like a bright jewel fallen in the trough of swine. It was Berryan,
the first town of the M'Zabites, people older than the
Arabs, and hated by them with a hatred more bitter than their
loathing for Jews.</p>
<p>Maïeddine would not pass through the town, since it could<span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_291" id="Page_291"></SPAN></span>
be avoided, because in his eyes the Beni-M'Zab were dogs, and
in their eyes he, though heir to an agha, would be as carrion.</p>
<p>Sons of ancient Phœnicians, merchants of Tyre and Carthage,
there never had been, never would be, any lust for battle
in the hearts of the M'Zabites. Their warfare had been waged
by cunning, and through mercenaries. They had fled before
Arab warriors, driven from place to place by brave, scornful
enemies, and now, safely established in their seven holy cities,
protected by vast distances and the barrier of the black desert,
they revenged their wrongs with their wits, being rich, and great
usurers. Though Mussulmans in these days, the schisms with
which they desecrated the true religion were worse in the eyes
of Maïeddine than the foolish faith of Christians, who, at least,
were not backsliders. He would not even point out to Victoria
the strange minaret of the Abadite mosque at Berryan,
which tapered like a brown obelisk against the shimmering
sky, for to him its very existence was a disgrace.</p>
<p>"Do not speak of it; do not even look at it," he said to her,
when she exclaimed at the great Cleopatra Needle. But she
did look, having none of his prejudices, and he dared not bid
her let down the curtains of her bassour, as he would if she had
been a girl of his own blood.</p>
<p>The extraordinary city, whose crowded, queerly-built houses
were blocks of gold in the sunlight, seemed beautiful to Victoria,
coming in sight of it suddenly after days in the black
desert. The other six cities, called holy by the Beni-M'Zab,
were far away still. She knew this, because Maïeddine had
told her they would not descend into the Wady M'Zab till next
day. Berryan and Guerrara were on the upper plateau; and
Victoria could hardly bear to pass by, for Berryan was by far
the most Eastern-seeming place she had seen. She wondered if,
should she ask him as a favour, Maïeddine would rest there
that night, instead of camping somewhere farther on, in the
hideous desert; for already it was late afternoon. But she
would ask nothing of him now, for he was no longer quite the<span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_292" id="Page_292"></SPAN></span>
trusty friend she had persuaded herself to think him. One
night, since the sand-divining, she had had a fearful dream
concerning Maïeddine. Outside her tent she had heard a soft
padding sound, and peeping from under the flap, she had seen
a splendid, tawny tiger, who looked at her with brilliant topaz
eyes which fascinated her so that she could not turn away.
But she knew that the animal was Maïeddine; that each night
he changed himself into a tiger; and that as a tiger he was more
his real self than when by day he appeared as a man.</p>
<p>They filed past Berryan; the meharis, the white stallion,
the pack-camel, and the mule, in slow procession, along a rough
road which wound close to the green oasis. And from among
the palm trees men and women and little children, gorgeous
as great tropical birds, in their robes of scarlet, ochre-yellow,
and emerald, peered at the little caravan with cynical curiosity.
Victoria looked back longingly, for she knew that the way
from Berryan to the Wady M'Zab would be grim and toilsome
under the burning sun. Hill after hill, they mounted and
descended; hills stony yet sandy, always the same dull colour,
and so shapeless as to daze the brain with their monotony.
But towards evening, when the animals had climbed to the crest
of a hill like a dingy wave, suddenly a white obelisk shot up,
pale and stiff as a dead man's finger. Tops of tall palms
were like the dark plumes on the heads of ten thousand dancing
women of the Sahara, and as a steep descent began, there
glittered the five hidden cities, like a strange fairyland lost in
the desert. The whole Wady M'Zab lay under the eyes of the
travellers, as if they looked down over the rim of an immense
cup. Here, some who were left of the sons of Tyre and
Carthage dwelt safe and snug, crouching in the protection of
the valley they had found and reclaimed from the abomination
of desolation.</p>
<p>It seemed to Victoria that she looked on one of the great sights
of the world: the five cities, gleaming white, and glowing bronze,
closely built on their five conical hills, which rose steeply from<span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_293" id="Page_293"></SPAN></span>
the flat bottom of the gold-lined cup—Ghardaia, Beni-Isguen,
Bou-Noura, Melika, and El-Ateuf. The top of each hill was
prolonged to a point by the tapering minaret of one of those
Abadite mosques which the girl thought the most Eastern of
all things imported from the East. The oasis which gave
wealth to the M'Zabites surged round the towns like a green
sea at ebb tide, sucked back from a strand of gold; and as the
caravan wound down the wonderful road with which the Beni-M'Zab
had traced the sheer side of their enchanted cup, the
groaning of hundreds of well-chains came plaintively up on the
wind.</p>
<p>The well-stones had the obelisk shape of the minarets, in
miniature; and Negroes—freed slaves of the rich M'Zabites—running
back and forth in pairs, to draw the water, were mere
struggling black ants, seen from the cup's rim. The houses
of the five towns were like bleached skeletons, and the arches
that spanned the dark, narrow streets were their ribs.</p>
<p>Arrived at the bottom of the cup, it was necessary to pass
through the longest and only modern street of Ghardaia, the
capital of the M'Zab. A wind had sprung up, to lift the sand
which sprinkled the hard-trodden ground with thick powder
of gold dust, and whirl it westward against the fire of sunset,
red as a blowing spray of blood. "It is a sign of trouble when
the sand of the desert turns to blood," muttered Fafann to her
mistress, quoting a Bedouin proverb.</p>
<p>The men of the M'Zab do not willingly give lodging to
strangers, least of all to Arabs; and at Beni-Isguen, holy city
and scene of strange mysteries, no stranger may rest for the
night. But Maïeddine, respected by the ruling power, as by
his own people, had a friend or two at every Bureau Arabe and
military station. A French officer stationed at Ghardaia had
married a beautiful Arab girl of good family distantly related to
the Agha of the Ouled-Serrin, and being at Algiers on official
business, his wife away at her father's tent, he had promised to
lend his house, a few miles out of the town, to Si Maïeddine. It<span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_294" id="Page_294"></SPAN></span>
was a long, low building of toub, the sun-dried sand-blocks of
which most houses are made in the ksour, or Sahara villages,
but it had been whitewashed, and named the Pearl.</p>
<p>There they slept, in the cool shadow of the oasis, and early
next morning went on.</p>
<p>As soon as they had passed out of this hidden valley, where
a whole race of men had gathered for refuge and wealth-building,
Victoria felt, rather than saw, a change in Maïeddine. She
hardly knew how to express it to herself, unless it was that he had
become more Arab. His courtesies suggested less the modern
polish learned from the French (in which he could excel when
he chose) than the almost royal hospitality of some young Bey
escorting a foreign princess through his dominions. Always
"<i>très-mâle</i>," as Frenchwomen pronounced him admiringly, Si
Maïeddine began to seem masculine in an untamed, tigerish
way. He was restless, and would not always be contented to
ride El Biod, beside the tall, white mehari, but would gallop
far ahead, and then race back to rejoin the little caravan,
rushing straight at the animals as if he must collide with them,
then, at the last instant, when Victoria's heart bounded, reining
in his horse, so that El Biod's forefeet—shod Arab-fashion—pawed
the air, and the animal sat upon his haunches,
muscles straining and rippling under the creamlike skin.</p>
<p>Or, sometimes, Maïeddine would spring from the white stallion's
back, letting El Biod go free, while his master marched
beside Guelbi, with that panther walk that the older races,
untrammelled by the civilization of towns, have kept unspoiled.</p>
<p>The Arab's eyes were more brilliant, never dreamy now, and
he looked at Victoria often, with disconcerting steadiness, instead
of lowering his eyelids as men of Islam, accustomed to the
mystery of the veil, unconsciously do with European women
whom they respect, though they do not understand.</p>
<p>So they went on, travelling the immeasurable desert; and
Victoria had not asked again, since Maïeddine's refusal, the
name of the place to which they were bound. M'Barka seemed<span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_295" id="Page_295"></SPAN></span>
brighter, as if she looked forward to something, each day closer
at hand; and her courage would have given Victoria confidence,
even if the girl had been inclined to forebodings. They were
going somewhere, Lella M'Barka knew where, and looked
forward joyously to arriving. The girl fancied that their destination
was the same, though at first she had not thought so.
Words that M'Barka let drop inadvertently now and then,
built up this impression in her mind.</p>
<p>The "habitude du Sud," as Maïeddine called it, when occasionally
they talked French together, was gradually taking
hold of the girl. Sometimes she resented it, fearing that by
this time it must have altogether enslaved Saidee, and dreading
the insidious fascination for herself; sometimes she found
pleasure and peace in it; but in every mood the influence was
hard to throw off.</p>
<p>"The desert has taken hold of thee," Maïeddine said one
day, when he had watched her in silence for a while, and seen
the rapt look in her eyes. "I knew the time would come,
sooner or later. It has come now."</p>
<p>"No," Victoria answered. "I do not belong to the desert."</p>
<p>"If not to-day, then to-morrow," he finished, as if he had
not heard.</p>
<p>They were going on towards Ouargla. So much he had told
her, though he had quickly added, "But we shall not stop there."
He was waiting still, though they were out of the black desert
and the accursed land of the renegades. He was not afraid
of anything or anyone here, in this vastness, where a European
did not pass once a year, and few Arabs, only the Spahis, carrying
mails from one Bureau Arabe to another, or tired soldiers
changing stations. The beautiful country of the golden dunes,
with its horizon like a stormy sea, was the place of which he
said in his thoughts, "It shall happen there."</p>
<p>On the other side of Ghardaia, even when Victoria had
ceased to be actually impatient for her meeting with Saidee,
she had longed to know the number of days, that she might<span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_296" id="Page_296"></SPAN></span>
count them. But now she had drunk so deep of the colour
and the silence that, in spite of herself, she was passing beyond
that phase. What were a few days more, after so many years?
She wondered how she could have longed to go flying across
the desert in Nevill Caird's big motor-car; nevertheless, she
never ceased to wish for Stephen Knight. Her thoughts of
him and of the desert were inextricably and inexplicably mingled,
more than ever since the night when she had danced in the
Agha's tent, and Stephen's face had come before her eyes, as
if in answer to her call. Constantly she called him now. When
there was some fleeting, beautiful effect of light or shadow,
she said, "How I wish he were here to see that!" She never
named him in her mind. He was "he": that was name enough.
Yet it did not occur to her that she was "in love" with Knight.
She had never had time to think about falling in love. There
had always been Saidee, and dancing; and to Victoria, the
desire to make money enough to start out and find her sister,
had taken the place which ideas of love and marriage fill in
most girls' heads. Therefore she did not know what to make
of her feeling for Stephen. But when a question floated into
her brain, she answered it simply by explaining that he was
different from any other man she had met; and that, though she
had known him only a few days, from the first he had seemed
more a friend than Si Maïeddine, or any one else whom she
knew much better than Stephen.</p>
<p>As they travelled, she had many thoughts which pleased her—thoughts
which could have come to her nowhere else except in
the desert, and often she talked to herself, because M'Barka
could not understand her feelings, and she did not wish to make
Maïeddine understand.</p>
<p>"Burning, burning," was the adjective which she repeated
oftenest, in an almost awestruck whisper, as her eyes travelled
over immense spaces; for she thought that the desert might have
dropped out of the sun. The colour of sand and sky was colour
on fire, blazing. The whole Sahara throbbed with the un<span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_297" id="Page_297"></SPAN></span>imaginable
fire of creative cosmic force, deep, vital orange,
needed by the primitive peoples of the earth who had not
risen high enough yet to deserve or desire the finer vibrations.</p>
<p>As she leaned out of the bassour, the heat of the sun pressed
on her lightly veiled head, like the golden lid of a golden box.
She could feel it as an actual weight; and invisible behind it
a living power which could crush her in an instant, as the paw
of a lion might crush a flower petal.</p>
<p>Africa itself was this savage power, fierce as fire, ever smouldering,
sometimes flaming with the revolt of Islam against
other creeds; but the heart of the fire was the desert. Only
the shady seguias in the oasis towns cooled it, like children's
fingers on a madman's forehead; or the sound of a boy's flute
in a river bed, playing the music of Pan, changeless, monotonous
yet thrilling, as the music of earth and all Nature.</p>
<p>There were tracts in the desert which colour-blind people
might have hated; but Victoria grew to think the dreariest
stretches beautiful; and even the occasional plagues of flies
which irritated M'Barka beyond endurance, only made Victoria
laugh.</p>
<p>Sometimes came caravans, in this billowing immensity between
the M'Zab and Ouargla—city of Solomon, whither
the Queen of Sheba rode on her mehari: caravans blazing red
and yellow, which swept like slow lines of flame across the
desert, going east towards the sunrise, or west where the sunset
spreads over the sky like a purple fan opening, or the tail of a
celestial peacock.</p>
<p>What Victoria had once imagined the desert to be of vast
emptiness, and what she found it to be of teeming life, was like
the difference between a gold-bright autumn leaf seen by the
naked eye, and the same leaf swarming under a powerful microscope.</p>
<p>The girl never tired of following with her eyes the vague
tracks of caravans that she could see dimly sketched upon the
sand, vanishing in the distance, like lines traced on the water<span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_298" id="Page_298"></SPAN></span>
by a ship. She would be gazing at an empty horizon when
suddenly from over the waves of the dunes would appear a dark
fleet; a procession of laden camels like a flotilla of boats in a
desolate sea.</p>
<p>They were very effective, as they approached across the
desert, these silent, solemn beasts, but Victoria pitied them,
because they were made to work till they fell, and left to die
in the shifting sand, when no longer useful to their unloving
masters.</p>
<p>"My poor dears, this is only one phase," she would say to
them as they plodded past, their feet splashing softly down on
the sand like big wet sponges, leaving heart-shaped marks
behind, which looked like violets as the hollows filled up with
shadow. "Wait till your next chance on earth. I'm sure it
will make up for everything."</p>
<p>But Maïeddine told her there was no need to be sorry for
the sufferings of camels, since all were deserved. Once, he
said, they had been men—a haughty tribe who believed themselves
better than the rest of the world. They broke off from
the true religion, and lest their schism spread, Allah turned the
renegades into camels. He compelled them to bear the weight
of their sins in the shape of humps, and also to carry on their
backs the goods of the Faithful, whose beliefs they had trampled
under foot. While keeping their stubbornness of spirit they
must kneel to receive their loads, and rise at the word of command.
Remembering their past, they never failed to protest
with roarings, against these indignities, nor did their faces
ever lose the old look of sullen pride. But, in common with
the once human storks, they had one consolation. Their sins
expiated, they would reincarnate as men; and some other rebellious
tribe would take their place as camels.</p>
<p>Five days' journeying from Ghardaia brought the travellers
to a desert world full of movement and interest. There were
many caravans going northward. Pretty girls smiled at them
from swaying red bassourahs, sitting among pots and pans,<span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_299" id="Page_299"></SPAN></span>
and bundles of finery. Little children in nests of scarlet rags,
on loaded camels, clasped squawking cocks and hens, tied by
the leg. Splendid Negroes with bare throats like columns of
black marble sang strange, chanting songs as they strode along.
White-clad Arabs whose green turbans told that they had been
to Mecca, walked beside their young wives' camels. Withered
crones in yellow smocks trudged after the procession, driving
donkeys weighed down with sheepskins full of oil. Baby
camels with waggling, tufted humps followed their mothers.
Slim grey sloughis and Kabyle dogs quarrelled with each other,
among flocks of black and white goats; and at night, the sky
pulsed with the fires of desert encampments, rosy as northern
lights.</p>
<p>Just before the walled city of Ouargla, Victoria saw her
first mirage, clear as a dream between waking and sleeping.
It was a salt lake, in which Guelbi and the other animals appeared
to wade knee-deep in azure waves, though there was
no water; and the vast, distant oasis hovered so close that the
girl almost believed she had only to stretch out her hand and
touch the trunks of the crowding palm trees.</p>
<p>M'Barka was tired, and they rested for two days in the
strange Ghuâra town, the "City of Roses," founded (according
to legend), by Solomon, King of Jerusalem, and built for him
by djenoum and angels in a single night. They lived as usual
in the house of the Caïd, whose beautiful twin daughters told
Victoria many things about the customs of the Ghuâra people,
descendants of the ancient Garamantes. How much happier
and freer they were than Arab girls, how much purer though
gayer was the life at Ouargla, Queen of the Oases, than at any
other less enlightened desert city; how marvellous was the
moulet-el-rass, the dance cure for headache and diseases of the
brain; how wonderful were the women soothsayers; and what
a splendid thing it was to see the bridal processions passing
through the streets, on the one day of the year when there is
marrying and giving in marriage in Ouargla.<span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_300" id="Page_300"></SPAN></span></p>
<p>The name of the prettier twin was Zorah, and she had black
curls which fell straight down over her brilliant eyes, under
a scarlet head-dress. "Dost thou love Si Maïeddine?" she
asked the Roumia, with a kind of innocent boldness.</p>
<p>"As a friend who has been very kind," Victoria answered.</p>
<p>"Not as a lover, oh Roumia?" Zorah, like all girls of
Ouargla, was proud of her knowledge of Arabic.</p>
<p>"No. Not as a lover."</p>
<p>"Is there then one of thine own people whom thou lovest as
a lover, Rose of the West?"</p>
<p>"I have no lover, little white moon."</p>
<p>"Si Maïeddine will be thy lover, whether thou desirest him
or not."</p>
<p>"Thou mistakest, oh Zorah."</p>
<p>"I do not mistake. If thou dost not yet know I am right,
thou wilt know before many days. When thou findest out all
that is in his heart for thee, remember our talk to-day, in the
court of oranges."</p>
<p>"I will tell thee thou wert wrong in this same court of oranges
when I pass this way again without Si Maïeddine."</p>
<p>The Ghuâra girl shook her head, until her curls seemed to
ring like bells of jet. "Something whispers to my spirit that
thou wilt never again pass this way, oh Roumia; that never
again will we talk together in this court of oranges."<span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_301" id="Page_301"></SPAN></span></p>
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