A. M. Williamson

“ M'Barka had given her a necklace of black beads which the negresses had made of benzoin and rose leaves and spices, held in shape with pungent rezin. Worn on the warm flesh, the beads gave out a heady perfume, which was like the breath of the desert. It made the girl giddy, and it grew stronger [Pg 262] and sweeter as she danced, seeming to mingle with the crying of the raïta and the sobbing of the ghesbah, so that she confused fragrance with music, music with fragrance.
Maïeddine stared at her, like a man who dreams with his eyes open. ”

“ Stephen and Nevill Caird were in the cypress avenue when Victoria Ray drove up in a ramshackle cab, guided by an Arab driver who squinted hideously. She wore a white frock which might have cost a sovereign, and had probably been made at home. Her wide brimmed hat was of cheap straw, wound with a scarf of thin white muslin; but her eyes looked out like blue stars from under its dove-coloured shadow, and a lily was tucked into her belt. To both young men she seemed very beautiful, and radiant as the spring morning.
"You aren't superstitious, engaging a man with a squint," said Nevill. ”

“ The luncheon hour, even when cloaked in the mysterious gloom of a thunderstorm, is no time for confidences; besides, it is not conducive to sustained conversation to find a cold nose in your palm, a baby claw up your sleeve, or a monkey hand, like a bit of leather, thrust down your collar or into your ear. But after dinner that night, when Lady MacGregor had trailed her maligned "fluffiness" away to the drawing-room, and Nevill and Stephen had strolled with their cigarettes out into the unearthly whiteness of the lily garden, Stephen felt that something was coming. ”

“ A man must be a man, so say even the women. And the Sidi is a man, as well as a great lord. He is praised by all as a hunter, and for the straightness of his aim with a gun. He rides, thou seest, as if he were one with his horse, and as he gallops in the desert, so would he gallop to battle if need be, for he is brave as the Libyan lion, and strong as the heroes of old legends. Yet there is nothing too small for him to bend his mind upon, if it be for thy pleasure and comfort. Thou shouldst be proud, instead of denying that all the Sidi does is for thee. ”

“ 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.
"As a friend who has been very kind," Victoria answered.
"Not as a lover, oh Roumia?" Zorah, like all girls of Ouargla, was proud of her knowledge of Arabic.
"No. Not as a lover."
"Is there then one of thine own people whom thou lovest as a lover, Rose of the West?" ”

“ Without Fort National, it seemed to Stephen that this strange Berber people would never have been forced to yield; for looking down from mountain heights as the motor sped on, it was as if he looked into a vast and intricate maze of valleys, and on each curiously pointed peak clung a Kabyle village that seemed to be inlaid in the rock like separate bits of scarlet enamel. It was the low house-roofs which gave this effect, for unlike the Arabs, whom the ancient Berber lords of the soil regard with scorn, the Kabyles build their dwellings of stone, roofed with red tiles. ”

“ Turning the yellow leaves of the book, covered with fine Arab lettering, she read in a murmuring, indistinct voice, that sounded to Victoria like one of those desert voices of which Maïeddine had spoken. Also she measured spaces between the figures the girl had touched, and counted monotonously.
"Thy wish lies a long way from thee," she said at last. "A long way! Thou couldst never reach it of thyself—never, not till the end of the world. I see thee—alone, very helpless. Thou prayest. Allah sends thee a man—a strong man, whose brain and heart and arm are at thy service. Allah is great!" ”

“ It was the usual garden of a villa in the neighbourhood of a desert town, but Stephen had never seen one like it, except that of the Caïd, in Bou-Saada. There were the rounded paths of hard sand, the colour of pinkish gold in the dappling shadows of date palms and magnolias, and there were rills of running water that whispered and gurgled as they bathed the dark roots of the trees. No grass grew in the garden, and the flowers were not planted in beds or borders. ”

“ Of the palms he could see nothing, except the long, dark shape of the oasis among the pale sand-billows; but early next morning he and Nevill were up and out on the roof of the little French hotel, while sunrise banners marched across the sky. Stephen had not known that desert dunes could be bright peach-pink, or that a river flowing over white stones could look like melted rubies, or that a few laughing Arab girls, ankle-deep in limpid water, could glitter in morning light like jewelled houris in celestial gardens. ”

“ They played, as the man talked, with a piece of bread, and often he glanced down at them, with the long eyes which had a blue shadow underneath, like a faint smear of kohl.
Stephen wondered what Victoria Ray thought of her vis-à-vis; but in the presence of the staring bride and groom he could ask no questions, and the expression of her face, as once she quietly regarded the Arab, told nothing. It was even puzzling, as an expression for a young girl's face to wear in looking at a handsome man so supremely conscious of sex and of his own attraction. ”

“ If Maïeddine could help, well and good. But would the Agha yield to his influence?
"Not the Agha," Maïeddine answered, "but the Agha's people. They are my people, too, and they look to me as their future head. My father is old. There is nothing I cannot make the Ouled-Sirren do, nowhere I cannot bid them go, if I lead."
"And wilt thou lead in the right way? If I give thee thy desire, wilt thou not forget, when it is already thine?" the marabout asked. "When a man wears a jewel on his finger, it does not always glitter so brightly as when he saw and coveted it first." ”

“ 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.
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. ”

“ In the heat of the day nothing stirred, not even the air, though the distance shimmered and trembled with heat; but towards night jackals padded lithely from one rock shelter to another. The carriage drove through a vast plain, rimmed with far-away mountains, red as porphyry, but fading to purple at the horizon. Victoria felt that she would never come to the end of this plain, that it must finish only with eternity; and she wished in an occasional burst of impatience that she were travelling in Nevill Caird's motor-car. ”

“ And I myself have seen Cassim ben Halim."
"Thou hast seen him!" Victoria cried, clasping her hands tightly together. She longed to press them over her heart, which was like a bird beating its wings against the bars of a cage.
"Long ago. I am much younger than he."
"Yes, I see that," Victoria answered. "But thou knewest him! That is something. And my sister. Didst thou ever hear of her?"
"We of the Mussulman faith do not speak of the wives of our friends, even when our friends are absent. Yet—I have a relative in Algiers who might know something, a lady who is no longer young. ”

“ It is from this journey together—the long, long journey—that I hope everything. No pains shall be spared. No luxury shall she lack even on the hardest stretches of the way. She shall know that she owes all to my thought and care. In three weeks I can pull down that high wall between us. She will have learned to depend on me, to need me, to long for me when I am out of her sight, as the gazelle longs for a fountain of sweet water."
"Poet and dreamer thou hast become, Maïeddine," said Lella M'Barka with a tired smile. ”

“ 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 hoardings.
Like his father, he knew that European women who danced were not as the African dancers, the Ouled Naïls 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 Maïeddine felt a wish to blind Abderrhaman, because his eyes had seen the intoxicating beauty of Victoria as she danced. ”

“ His own father, the Agha, lived half the year in a great tent, when he was with his douar, and Maïeddine 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. ”

“ And Victoria was far too humble in her opinion of herself, despite that buoyant confidence in her star, to imagine that she could be of any use to him. She could be useful to Saidee; that was all. She hoped for nothing more. And little as she knew of society, she understood that Stephen belonged to a different world from hers; the world where people were rich, and gay, and clever, and amused themselves; the high world, from a social point of view. She supposed, too, that Stephen looked upon her as a little girl, while she in her turn regarded him gratefully and admiringly, as from a distance. ”

“ He supposed there must always be some woman whose image was suggested to every man by all that was fairest in nature. Margot Lorenzi was the woman whose image he must keep in his mind, if he wanted to know any faint imitation of happiness in future. She would like this moonlit garden, and in one way it would suit her as a background. Yet she did not seem quite in the picture, despite her beauty. The perfume she loved would not blend with the perfume of the lilies.
"Aunt Caroline's rather a dear, isn't she?" remarked Nevill, apropos of nothing.
"She's a jewel," said Stephen. ”

“ That there should be a Black Sultan sounds like a fairy tale. And I like fairy tales next to bon-bons and new hats."
So they made their pilgrimage to the third treasure of the hill-village; and then away to where the crumbling walls of Mansourah, and that great tower, which is one of the noblest Moorish relics in all Algeria, rise out of a flowering plain.
Cherry blossoms fell in scented snow over their heads as the car ran back to Tlemcen, and out once more, through the Moorish Porte de Fez, past the reservoir built by a king for an Arab beauty to sail her boats upon. ”

“ A strange flash of soul-lightning had shown her the real Margot, unworthy of Stephen at her best, crushing to his individuality and aspirations at her worst. Victoria did not know what to think, what to do. In place of the sad and lonely girl she had pictured, here stood a woman already selfish and heartless, who might become cruel and terrible. No one had ever looked at Victoria Ray as Miss Lorenzi was looking now, not even Miluda, the Ouled Naïl, who had stared her out of countenance, curiously and maliciously at the same time. ”

“ Maïeddine prompted, eagerly.
"He is dark, and young. He is not of thy country, oh Rose of the West, but trust him, rely upon him, or thou art undone. In thy future, just where thou hast ceased to look for them, I see troubles and disappointments, even dangers. That is the time, above all others, to let thyself be guided by the man Allah has sent to be thy prop. He has ready wit and courage. His love for thee is great. It grows and grows. He tells thee of it; and thou—thou seest between him and thee a barrier, high and fearful as a wall with sharp knives on top. For thine eyes it is impassable. ”

“ 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 bassour?" he asked. "The motion of thy beast gives thee no discomfort?" ”