Maeddine would gladly have forgotten to post the letter, and could have done so without hurting his conscience. But he had thought it might be better for Knight to know that Miss Ray was starting on a journey, and that there was no hope of hearing from her for a fortnight. Victoria had been ready to show him the letter, therefore she had not written any forbidden details; and Knight would probably feel that she must be left to manage her own affairs in her own way. No doubt he would be curious, and ask questions at the Hotel de la Kasbah, but Maeddine believed that he had made it impossible for Europeans to find out anything there, or elsewhere. He knew that men of Western countries could be interested in a girl without being actually in love with her; and though it was almost impossible to imagine a man, even a European, so cold as not to fall in love with Victoria at first sight, he hoped that Knight was blind enough not to appreciate her, or that his affections were otherwise engaged.
After all, the two had been strangers when they came on the boat, or had met only once before, therefore the Englishman had no right to take steps unauthorized by the girl. Altogether, Maeddine thought he had reason to be satisfied with the present, and to hope in the future.
XXI
Stephen and Nevill Caird returned from Tlemcen to Algiers, hoping for news of Victoria, but there was none; and after two days they left for Grand Kabylia.
The prophetic birds at Mansourah had flown in a south-easterly direction, but when Stephen and Nevill started in search of Josette"s maid Mouni, they turned full east, their faces looking towards the dark heights of Kabylia. It was not Victoria they hoped to find there, however, or Saidee her sister, but only a hint as to their next move.
Nevertheless, Nevill was superst.i.tious about the birds, and said to Stephen when the car had run them out of Algiers, past Maison Carre, into open country: "Isn"t it queer how the birds follow us? I never saw so many before. They"re always with us. It"s just as if they"d pa.s.sed on word, the way chupatties are pa.s.sed on in India, eh? Or maybe Josette has told her protegees to look after us."
And Stephen smiled, for Nevill"s superst.i.tions were engaging, rather than repulsive; and his quaintnesses were endearing him more and more to the man who had just taken up the dropped thread of friendship after eight or nine years. What an odd fellow Nevill was! Stephen thought, indulgently. No wonder he was worshipped by his servants, and even his chauffeur. No wonder Lady MacGregor adored her nephew, though treating him as if he were a little boy!
One of Nevill"s idiosyncrasies, after arranging everything to fit a certain plan, was to rush off at the last minute and do something entirely different. Last night--the night before starting for Grand Kabylia--he had begged Stephen to be ready by eight, at which time the car was ordered. At nine--having sat up till three o"clock writing letters, and then having visited a lately imported gazelle in its quarters--Nevill was still in his bath. At length he arrived on the scene, beaming, with a sulky chameleon in his pocket, and flew about giving last directions, until he suddenly discovered that there was a violent hurry, whereupon he began to be boyishly peevish with the chauffeur for not getting off an hour ago. No sooner had the car started, however, than he fell into a serious mood, telling Stephen of many things which he had thought out in the night--things which might be helpful in finding Victoria. He had been lying awake, it seemed, brooding on this subject, and it had occurred to him that, if Mouni should prove a disappointment, they might later discover something really useful by going to the annual ball at the Governor"s palace. This festivity had been put off, on account of illness in the chief official"s family; but it would take place in a fortnight or so now. All the great Aghas and Cads of the south would be there, and as Nevill knew many of them, he might be able to get definite information concerning Ben Halim. As for Saidee--to hear of Ben Halim was to hear of her. And then it was, in the midst of describing the ball, and the important men who would attend, that Nevill suddenly broke off to be superst.i.tious about birds.
It was true that the birds were everywhere! little greenish birds flitting among the trees; larger grey-brown birds flying low; fairy-like blue and yellow birds that circled round the car as it ran east towards the far, looming mountains of the Djurdjura; larks that spouted music like a fountain of jewels as they soared into the quivering blue; and great, stately storks, sitting in their nests on tall trees or tops of poles, silhouetted against the sky as they gazed indifferently down at the automobile.
"Josette would tell us it"s splendid luck to see storks on their nests," said Nevill. "Arabs think they bring good fortune to places.
That"s why people cut off the tops of the trees and make nests for them, so they can bless the neighbourhood and do good to the crops. Storks have no such menial work here as bringing babies. Arab babies have to come as best they can--sent into the world anyhow; for storks are men who didn"t do their religious duties in the most approved style, so they have to revisit the world next time in the form of beneficent birds."
But Nevill did not want to answer questions about storks and their habits. He had tired of them in a moment, and was pa.s.sionately interested in mules. "There ought to be an epic written about the mules of North Africa!" he exclaimed. "I tell you, it"s a great subject. Look at those poor brave chaps struggling to pull carts piled up with casks of beastly Algerian wine, through that sea of mud, which probably goes all the way through to China. Aren"t they splendid? Wait till you"ve been in this country as long as I have, and you"ll respect mules as I do, from army mules down to the lowest dregs of the mule kingdom. I don"t ask you to love them--and neither do they. But how they work here in Africa--and never a groan! They go on till they drop. And I don"t believe half of them ever get anything to eat. Some day I"m going to start a Rest Farm for tired mules. I shall pay well for them. A man I know did write a paean of praise for mules. I believe I"ll have it translated into Arabic, and handed about as a leaflet. These natives are good to their horses, because they believe they have souls, but they treat their mules like the dirt under their feet." And Nevill began quoting here and there a verse or a line he remembered of the "mule music," chanting in time to the throbbing of the motor.
"Key A minor, measure common, One and two and three and four and-- Every hoof-beat half a second Every hoof-beat linked with heart-beat, Every heart-beat nearer bursting.
Andantino sostenuto: In the downpour or the dryness, Hottest summer, coldest winter; Sick and sore and old and feeble, Hourly, hourly; daily, daily, From the sunrise to the setting; From the setting to the sunrise Scarce a break in all the circle For the rough and scanty eating, For the scant and muddy drinking, For the fitful, fearful resting, For the master haunted-sleeping.
Dreams in dark of G.o.d"s far heaven Tempo primo; tempo sempre."
And so, through pools of wild flowers and the blood of poppies, their road led to wild mountain scenery, then into the embrace of the Djurdjura mountains themselves--evil, snow-splashed, sterile-seeming mountains, until the car had pa.s.sed the fortified town of Tizi Ouzou, an overgrown village, whose name Stephen thought like a drunken term of endearment. It was market-day there, and the long street was so full of Kabyles dressed apparently in low-necked woollen bags, of soldiers in uniform, of bold-eyed, scantily-clad children, and of dyed sheep and goats, that the car had to pa.s.s at a walk. Nevill bought a good deal of Kabyle jewellery, necklaces and long earrings, or boxes enamelled in crude greens and reds, blues and yellows. Not that he had not already more than he knew what to do with; but he could not resist the handsome unveiled girls, the wretched old women, or pretty, half-naked children who offered the work of the neighbouring hill villages, or family heirlooms. Sometimes he saw eyes which made him think of Josette"s; but then, all beautiful things that he saw reminded him of her. She was an obsession. But, for a wonder, he had taken Stephen"s advice in Tlemcen and had not proposed again. He was still marvelling at his own strength of mind, and asking himself if, after all, he had been wise.
After Tizi Ouzou the mountains were no longer sterile-seeming. The road coiled up and up snakily, between rows of leering cactus; and far below the densely wooded heights lay lovely plains through which a great river wandered. There was a homely smell of mint, and the country did not look to Stephen like the Africa he had imagined. All the hill-slopes were green with the bright green of fig trees and almonds, even at heights so great that the car wallowed among clouds. This steep road was the road to Fort National--the "thorn in the eye of Kabylia," which pierces so deeply that Kabylia may writhe, but revolt no more. Already it was almost as if the car had brought them into another world. The men who occasionally emerged from the woolly white blankets of the clouds, were men of a very different type from the mild Kabyles of the plains they had met trooping along towards Algiers in search of work.
These were brave, upstanding men, worthy of their fathers who revolted against French rule and could not be conquered until that thorn, Fort National, was planted deeply in heart and eye. Some were fair, and even red-haired, which would have surprised Stephen if he had not heard from Nevill that in old days the Christian slaves used to escape from Algiers and seek refuge in Kabylia, where they were treated as free men, and no questions were asked.
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.
This was a wild, tormented world, broken into a hundred sharp mountain ridges which seemed to cut the sky, because between the high peaks and the tangled skein of far-away villages surged foaming seas of cloud, which appeared to separate high, bright peaks from shadowed vales, by incredible distances. As far as the eye could travel with utmost straining, away to the dark, imposing background of the Djurdjura range, billowed ridges and ravines, ravines and ridges, each pointing pinnacle or razor-shelf adorned with its coral-red hamlet, like a group of poisonous fungi, or the barnacles on a ship"s steep side. Such an extraordinary landscape Stephen had never imagined, or seen except on a j.a.panese fan; and it struck him that the scene actually did resemble quaint prints picturing half-real, half-imaginary scenes in old j.a.pan.
"What a country for war! What a country for defence!" he said to himself, as Nevill"s yellow car sped along the levels of narrow ridges that gave, on either hand, vertical views far down to fertile valleys, rushed into clouds of weeping rain, or out into regions of sunlight and rainbows.
It was three o"clock when they reached Michelet, but they had not stopped for luncheon, as both were in haste to find Mouni: and Mouni"s village was just beyond Michelet. Since Fort National, they had been in the heart of Grand Kabylia; and Michelet was even more characteristic of this strange mountain country, so different from transplanted Arabia below.
Not an Arab lived here, in the long, straggling town, built on the crest of a high ridge. Not a minaret tower pointed skyward. The Kabyle place of worship had a roof of little more height or importance than those that cl.u.s.tered round it. The men were in striped brown gandourahs of camel"s hair; the lovely unveiled women were wrapped in woollen foutahs dyed red or yellow, blue or purple, and from their little ears heavy rings dangled. The blue tattoo marks on their brown cheeks and foreheads, which in forgotten times had been Christian crosses, gave great value to their enormous, kohl-encircled eyes; and their teeth were very white as they smiled boldly, yet proudly, at Stephen and Nevill.
There was a flight of steps to mount from the car to the hotel, and as the two men climbed the stairs they turned to look, across a profound chasm, to the immense ma.s.s of the Djurdjura opposite Michelet"s thin ledge. From their point of view, it was like the Jungfrau, as Stephen had seen it from Murren, on one of his few trips to Switzerland.
Somehow, those little conventional potterings of his seemed pitiable now, they had been so easy to do, so exactly what other people did.
It was long past ordinary luncheon time, and hunger constrained the two men to eat before starting out to find the village where Mouni and her people lived. It was so small a hamlet, that Nevill, who knew Kabylia well, had never heard of it until Josette Soubise wrote the name for him on one of her own cards. The landlord of the hotel at Michelet gave rapid and fluent directions how to go, saying that the distance was two miles, but as the way was a steep mountain path, les messieurs must go on foot.
Immediately after lunching they started, armed with a present for the bride; a watch encrusted with tiny brilliants, which, following Josette"s advice, they had chosen as the one thing of all others calculated to win the Kabyle girl"s heart. "It will be like a fairy dream to her to have a watch of her own," Josette had said. "Her friends will be dying of envy, and she will enjoy that. Oh, she will search her soul and tell you everything she knows, if you but give her a watch!"
For a little way the friends walked along the wild and beautiful road, which from Michelet plunges down the mountains toward Bougie and the sea; but soon they came to the narrow, ill-defined footpath described by the landlord. It led straight up a steep shoulder of rock which at its highest part became a ledge; and when they had climbed to the top, at a distance they could see a cl.u.s.ter of red roofs apparently falling down a precipice, at the far end.
Here and there were patches of snow, white as fallen lily-petals on the pansy-coloured earth. Looking down was like looking from a high wave upon a vast sea of other waves, each wave carrying on its apex a few bits of broken red mosaic, which were Kabyle roofs; and the pale sky was streaked with ragged violet clouds exactly like the sky and clouds painted on screens by j.a.panese artists.
They met not a soul as they walked, but while the village was still far away and unreal, the bark of guns, fired quickly one after the other, jarred their ears, and the mountain wind brought a crying of ratas, African clarionettes, and the dull, yet fierce beat of tom-toms.
"Now I know why we"ve met no one," said Nevill. "The wedding feast"s still on, and everybody who is anybody at Yacoua, is there. You know, if you"re an Arab, or even a Kabyle, it takes you a week to be married properly, and you have high jinks every day: music and dancing and eating, and if you"ve money enough, above all you make the powder speak.
Mouni"s people are doing her well. What a good thing we"ve got the watch! Even with Josette"s introduction we mightn"t have been able to come near the bride, unless we had something to offer worth her having."
The mountain village of Yacoua had no suburbs, no outlying houses. The one-story mud huts with their pointed red roofs, utterly unlike Arab dwellings, were huddled together, with only enough distance between for a man and a mule or a donkey to pa.s.s. The best stood in pairs, with a walled yard between; and as Stephen and Nevill searched anxiously for some one to point out the home of Mouni, from over a wall which seemed to be running down the mountain-side, came a white puff of smoke and a strident bang, then more, one after the other. Again the wailing of the rata began, and there was no longer any need to ask the way.
"That"s where the party is--in that yard," said Nevill, beginning to be excited. "Now, what sort of reception will they give us? That"s the next question."
"Can"t we tell, the first thing, that we"ve come from Algiers with a present for the bride?" suggested Stephen.
"We can if they understand Arabic," Nevill answered. "But the Kabyle lingo"s quite different--Berber, or something racy of the soil. I ought to have brought Mohammed to interpret."
So steeply did the yard between the low houses run downhill, that, standing at the top of a worn path like a seam in some old garment, the two Europeans could look over the mud wall. Squalid as were the mud huts and the cattle-yard connecting them, the picture framed in the square enclosure blazed with colour. It was barbaric, and beautiful in its savagery.
Squatting on the ground, with the last rank against the house wall, were several rows of women, all unveiled, their uncovered arms jewelled to the elbows, embracing their knees. The afternoon sunlight shone on their ceremonial finery, setting fire to the red, blue and green enamel of their necklaces, their huge hoop earrings and the jewelled silver chains pinned to their scarlet or yellow head-wrappings, struck out strange gleams from the flat, round brooches which fastened their gaily striped robes on their shoulders, and turned their great dark eyes into brown topazes. Twenty or thirty men, dressed in their best burnouses, draped over new gandourahs, their heads swathed in clean white muslin turbans, sat on the opposite side of the court, watching the "powder play"
furnished by two tall, handsome boys, who handled with delicate grace and skill old-fashioned, long-muzzled guns inlaid with coral and silver, heirlooms perhaps, and of some value even to antiquaries.
While the powder spoke, n.o.body had a thought for anything else. All eyes were upon the boys with the guns, only travelling upward in ecstasy to watch the puffs of smoke that belched out round and white as fat s...o...b..a.l.l.s. Then, when the music burst forth again, and a splendidly handsome young Kabyle woman ran forward to begin the wild dance of the body and of the hands--dear to the mountain men as to the nomads of the desert--every one was at first absorbed in admiration of her movements.
But suddenly a child (one of a dozen in a row in front of all the women) tired of the show, less amusing to him than the powder play, and looking up, saw the two Roumis on the hill behind the wall. He nudged his neighbour, and the neighbour, who happened to be a little girl, followed with her eyes the upward nod of his head. So the news went round that strangers had come uninvited to the wedding-feast, and men began to frown and women to whisper, while the dancer lost interest in her own tinklings and genuflections.
It was time for the intruders to make it known that business of some sort, not idle curiosity, had brought them on the scene, and Nevill stepped forward, holding out the visiting card given him by Josette, and the crimson velvet case containing the watch which Stephen had bought in Algiers.
XXII
An elderly man, with a reddish beard, got up from the row of men grouped behind the musicians, and muttered to one of the youths who had been making the powder speak. They argued for a moment, and then the boy, handing his gun to the elder man, walked with dignity to a closed gate, large enough to let in the goats and donkeys pertaining to the two houses. This gate he opened half-way, standing in the aperture and looking up sullenly as the Roumis came down the narrow, slippery track which led to it.
"Cebah el-kheir, ia Sidi--Good day, sir," said Nevill, agreeably, in his best Arabic. "Ta" rafi el-a" riya?--Do you speak Arabic?"
The young man bowed, not yet conciliated. "Ach men sebba jit lhena, ia Sidi?--Why have you come here, sir?" he asked suspiciously, in very guttural Arabic.
Relieved to find that they would have no great difficulty in understanding each other, Nevill plunged into explanations, pointing to Josette"s card. They had come recommended by the malema at Tlemcen. They brought good wishes and a present to the bride of the village, the virtuous and beautiful Mouni, from whom they would gladly receive information concerning a European lady. Was this the house of her father? Would they be permitted to speak with her, and give this little watch from Algiers?
Nevill made his climax by opening the velvet case, and the brown eyes of the Kabyle boy flashed with uncontrollable admiration, though his face remained immobile. He answered that this was indeed the house of Mouni"s father, and he himself was the brother of Mouni. This was the last day of her wedding-feast, and in an hour she would go to the home of her husband. The consent of the latter, as well as of her father, must be asked before strangers could hope to speak with her.
Nevertheless, the Roumis were welcome to enter the yard and watch the entertainment while Mouni"s brother consulted with those most concerned in this business.
The boy stood aside, inviting them to pa.s.s through the gate, and the Englishmen availed themselves of his courtesy, waiting just inside until the red-bearded man came forward. He and his son consulted together, and then a dark young man in a white burnous was called to join the conclave. He was a handsome fellow, with a haughtily intelligent face, and an air of breeding superior to the others.
"This is my sister"s husband. He too speaks Arabic, but my father not so much." The boy introduced his brother-in-law. "Messaud-ben-Arzen is the son of our Cad," (he spoke proudly). "Will you tell him and my father what your business is with Mouni?"