Complete Works of George Moore

by George Moore

  The wind continued to rise, and he lay rolled in his blanket, uncomfortable, frightened, listening to the wind raging among the rocks and palms, and, between his short, starting sleeps, wondering if it would not have been better to lie in the ravine, in some crevice, rather than in this verminous and viperous place.

  Next day he had an opportunity of contrasting the discomfort of the caravansary with a bivouac under a rainy sky; for at nightfall, within two days’ journey of Laghouat, the caravan halted in a desolate valley, shut in between two lines of reddish hills seemingly as barren as the valley itself. After long searching in the ravines a little brushwood was collected, and an attempt was made to light a fire, which was unsuccessful. The only food they had that night was a few dates and biscuits, and these were eaten under their blankets in the rain, Owen having discovered that it was wetter in his tent than without. This discomfort was the most serious he had experienced, yet he felt it hardly at all, thinking that perhaps it would have been very little use coming to the desert in a railway train or in a mail coach. Only by such adventures is travel made rememberable, and, looking out of his blankets, he was rewarded by a sight which he felt would not be easily forgotten — the camels on their knees about the drivers, who were feeding them from their hands, the poor beasts leaning out their long necks to take what was given to them — a wretched repast, yet their grunts were full of satisfaction.

  In the morning, however, they were irritable, and bleated angrily when asked to kneel down so that their packs might be put upon them; but in the end they submitted, and Owen noticed a certain strain of cheerfulness in their demeanour all that day. Perhaps they scented their destination. Owen’s horse certainly scented a stable within a day’s journey of Laghouat, for he pricked up his ears, and there was nothing else but the instinct of a stable that could have induced him to do so, for on their left was a sinister mountain — sinister always, Owen thought, even in the sunlight, but more sinister than ever in the rainy season, wrapped in a cloud, showing here and there a peak when the clouds lifted. And no mountain seemed harder to leave behind than this one. Owen, who knew that Laghouat was not many miles distant, rode on in front, impatient to see the oasis rise out of the desert. The wind still raged, driving the sand; and before him stretched endless hillocks of yellow sand; and he wandered among these, uncertain whither lay the road, until he happened upon a little convoy bringing grain to the town. The convoy turned to the left…. His mistake was that he had been looking to the right.

  Laghouat, built among rocks, some of which were white, showed up high above the plain; and, notwithstanding his desire for food and shelter, he sat on his horse at gaze, interested in the ramparts of this black town, defended by towers, outlined upon a grey sky.

  VIII

  “WHEN A WOMAN has seen the guest she no longer cares for the master.” An old hunter had told him this proverb, a lame, one-eyed man, an outcast from his tribe, or very nearly, whose wife was so old that Owen’s presence afforded him no cause for jealousy, a friend of the hunter who owned the eagles, so Owen discovered, but not until the end of a week’s acquaintance, which was strange, for he had seen a great deal of this man in the last few days. The explanation he gave one night in the café where Owen went to talk and drink with the Spahis; coming in suddenly, and taking Owen away into a corner, he explained that he had not told him before that his friend Tahar, he who owned the eagles, had gone away to live in another oasis, because it had not occurred to him that Owen was seeking Tahar, fancying somehow that it was another — as if there were hundreds of people in the Sahara who hunted gazelles with eagles!

  “Grand Dieu!” and Owen turned to his own dragoman, who happened to be present. “A-t-on jamais!… Ici depuis trois semaines!”

  The dragoman, who expected an outburst, reminded Owen of the progress he had made in Arabic, and of the storms of the last three weeks, the rain and wind which had made travelling in the desert impossible, and when Owen spoke of starting on the morrow the dragoman shook his head, and the wind in the street convinced Owen that he must remain where he was.

  “Mais si j’avais su—”

  The dragoman pointed out to him the terrible weather they had experienced, and how glad he had been to find shelter in Laghouat.

  “Oui, Sidna, vous êtes maintenant au comble de regrets, mats pour rien au monde vous n’auriez fait ces étapes vers le sud.”

  Owen felt that the man was right, though he would not admit it; the camels themselves could hardly have been persuaded to undertake another day’s march; his horse — well, the vultures might have been tearing him if he had persevered, so instead of going off in one of his squibby little rages, which would have made him ridiculous, Owen suddenly grew sad and invited the hunter to drink with him, and it was arranged that as soon as the wind dropped the quest for Tahar should be pursued.

  He would be found in an oasis not more than two days’ journey from Laghouat, so the hunter said, but the dragoman’s opinion was that the old hunter was not very sure; Tahar would be found there, and if he were not there he was for certain in another oasis three or four days still farther south.

  “But I cannot travel all over the Sahara in search of eagles.”

  “If Sidna would like to return to Tunis?”

  But to return to Tunis would mean returning to England, and Owen felt that his business in the desert was not yet completed; as well travel from one oasis to another in quest of eagles as anything else, and three days afterwards he rode at the head of his caravan, anxious to reach Ain Mahdy, trying to believe he had grown interested in the Arab, and would like to see him living under the rule of his own chief, even though the chief was, to a certain extent, responsible to the French Government; still, to all intents and purposes he would be a free Arab. Yes, and Owen thought he would like to see a Kaid; and wondering what his reception would be like, he rode through the desert thinking of the Kaid, his eyes fixed on the great horizons which had re-appeared, having been lost for many days in mist and rain.

  An exquisite silence vibrated through the great spaces, music for harps rather than for violins, and Owen rode on, reaching the oasis, as he had been told he would, at the end of the second day’s journey. When he arrived the Kaid was engaged in administering justice, and Owen was forced de faire un peu l’anti-chambre; but this was not disagreeable to him. The Arab court-house seemed to him an excellent place for a lesson in the language; and the case the Kaid was deciding was to his taste. A man was suing for divorce, and for reasons which would have astonished Englishmen, and cause the plaintiff to be hurled out of civilised society; but in the Sahara the case did not strike anybody as unnatural; and Owen listened to the woman telling her misfortunes under a veil. But though deeply interested he was forced to leave the building; the flies plagued him unendurably, and presently he found the flies had odious auxiliaries in the carpet, and after explaining his torture to the dragoman, who was not suffering at all, he left the building and walked in the street.

  Half an hour after the Kaid came forward to meet him with a little black sheep in his arms, struggling, frightened at finding itself captured, bleating painfully. The wool was separated, and Owen was invited to feel this living flesh, which in a few hours he would be eating; it would have been impolite to the Kaid to refuse to feel the sheep’s ribs, so Owen complied, though he knew that doing so would prevent him from enjoying his dinner, and he was very hungry at the time. The sheep’s eyes haunted him all through the meal, and his pleasure was still further discounted by the news that though the eagles were at Ain Mahdy, the owner having left them —

  “Having left them,” Owen repeated. “Good God! I was told he was here.”

  “He left here three days ago.”

  Owen cursed his friend in Laghouat. If he had only told him in the beginning of the week! The dragoman answered:

  “Sidna, vous vous en souvenez”

  “Speak to me in Arabic, damn you! There is nothing to do here but to learn Arabic.”

&nb
sp; “Quite true, Sidna, we shall not be able to start to-morrow; the rains are beginning again.”

  “Was there ever such luck as mine, to come to the desert, where it never rains, and to find nothing but rain?” — rain which Owen had never seen equalled except once in Connemara, where he had gone to fish, and it annoyed him to hear that these torrential rains only happened once every three or four years in the Sahara. He was too annoyed to answer his dragoman…. Enfin, Tahar had left his eagles at Ain Mahdy, and Owen fed them morning and evening, gorging them with food, not knowing that one of the great difficulties is to procure in the trained eagle sufficient hunger to induce him to pursue the quarry. It was an accident that some friend of Tahar’s surprised Owen feeding the eagles and warned him.

  “These eagles will not be able to hunt for weeks now.”

  Owen cursed himself and the universe, Allah and the God of Israel, Christ and the prophets.

  “But, Sidna, their hunger can be excited by a drug, and this drug is Tahar’s secret.”

  “Then to-morrow we start, though there be sand storms or rain storms, whatever the weather may be.”

  The dragoman condoned Owen’s mistake in feeding the eagles.

  “The gazelles come down from the mountains after the rains; we shall catch sight of some on our way.”

  A few hours after he rode up to Owen and said, “Gazelles!”

  When he looked to the right of the sunset Owen could see yellow, spotted with black; something was moving over yonder among the patches of rosemary and lavender.

  The gazelles were far away when the caravan reached the rosemary, but their smell remained, overpowering that of the rosemary and lavender; it seemed as if the earth itself breathed nothing but musk, and Owen’s surprise increased when he saw the Arabs collecting the droppings, and on asking what use could be made of these he was told that when they were dried they were burnt as pastilles; when the animal had been feeding upon rosemary and lavender they gave out a delicious odour.

  Then the dragoman told Owen to prepare for sand grouse; and a short while afterwards one of the Arabs cried, “Grouse! Grouse!” and a pack of thirty or forty flew away, two falling into the sand.

  They came upon a river in flood, and while the Arabs sought a ford Owen went in search of blue pigeons, and succeeded in shooting several; and these were plucked and eaten by the camp fire that night, the coldest he had known in the Sahara. When the fire burnt down a little he awoke shivering. And he awoke shivering again at daybreak; and the cavalcade continued its march across a plain, flat and empty, through which the river’s banks wound like a green ribbon…. Some stunted vegetation rose in sight about midday, and Owen thought that they were near the oasis towards which they were journeying; but on approaching he saw that what he had mistaken for an oasis was but the ruins of one that had perished last year owing to a great drought, only a few dying palms remaining. Oases die, but do new ones rise from the desert? he wondered. A ragged chain of mountains, delightfully blue in the new spring weather, entertained him all the way across an immense tract of barren country; and at the end of it his searching eyes were rewarded by a sight of his destination — some palms showing above the horizon on the evening sky.

  IX

  AS THE CARAVAN approached the beach he caught sight of an Arab, or one whom he thought was an Arab, and riding straight up to him, Owen asked:

  “Do you know Tahar?”

  “The hunter?”

  “Yes,” and breathing a sigh, he said he had travelled hundreds of miles in search of him— “and his eagles.”

  “He left here two or three days ago for Ain Mahdy.”

  “Left here! Good God!” and Owen threw up his arms. “Left two days ago, and I have come from Ain Mahdy, nearly from Tunis, in search of him! We have passed each other in the desert,” he said, looking round the great plain, made of space, solitude, and sun. It had become odious to him suddenly, and he seemed to forget everything.

  As if taking pity on him, Monsieur Béclère asked him to stay with him until Tahar returned.

  “We will hunt the gazelles together.”

  “That is very kind of you.”

  And Owen looked into the face of the man to whom he had introduced himself so hurriedly. He had been so interested in Tahar, and so overcame by the news of his absence, that he had not had time to give a thought to the fact that the conversation was being carried on in French. Now the thought suddenly came into his mind that the man he was speaking to was not an Arab but a Frenchman. “He must certainly be a Frenchman, no one but a Frenchman could express himself so well in French.”

  “You are very kind,” he said, and they strolled up the oasis together, Owen telling Monsieur Béclère that at first he had mistaken him for an Arab. “Only your shoulders are broader, and you are not so tall; you walk like an Arab, not quite so loosely, not quite the Arab shuffle, but still—”

  “A cross between the European spring and the loose Arab stride?”

  “Do you always dress as an Arab?”

  “Yes, I have been here for thirty-one years, ever since I was fourteen.” Owen looked at him.

  “Here, in an oasis?”

  “Yes, in an oasis, a great deal of which I have created for myself. The discovery of a Roman well enabled me to add many hundred hectares to my property.

  “The rediscovery of a Roman well!”

  “Yes. If the Sahara is barren, it is because there is no water.” Owen seemed to be on the verge of hearing the most interesting things about underground lakes only twenty or thirty feet from the surface. “But I will tell you more about them another time.”

  Owen looked at Béclère again, thinking that he liked the broad, flat strip of forehead between the dark eyebrows, and the dark hair, streaked with grey, the eyes deep in the head, and of an acrid blackness like an Arab’s; the long, thin nose like an Arab’s — a face which could have had little difficulty in acquiring the Arab cast of feature; and there had been time enough to acquire it, though Béclère was not more than forty-five.

  “No doubt you speak Arabic like French.”

  “Yes, I speak modern Arabic as easily as French. The language of the Koran is different.” And Béclère explained that there was no writing done in the dialects. When an Arab wrote to another, he wrote in the ancient language, which was understood everywhere.

  “You have learned a little Arabic, I see,” Béclère said, and Owen foresaw endless dialogues between himself and Monsieur Béclère, who would instruct him on all the points which he was interested in. The orchards they were passing through (apricot, apple, and pear-trees) were coming into blossom.

  “I had expected oranges and lemons.”

  “They don’t grow well here, but we have nearly all our own vegetables — haricot-beans, potatoes, artichokes, peas.”

  “Of course there are no strawberries?”

  “No, we don’t get any strawberries. There is my house.” And within a grove of beautiful trees, under which one could sit, Owen caught sight of a house, half Oriental, half European. He admired the flat roofs and the domes, which he felt sure rose above darkened rooms, where Béclère and those who lived with him slept in the afternoons. “You must be tired after your long ride, and would like to have a bath.”

  Owen followed Béclère through a courtyard, where a fountain sang in dreamy heat and shade, bringing a little sensation of coolness into the closed room, which did not strike him as being particularly Moorish, notwithstanding the engraved brass lamps hanging from the ceiling, and the Oriental carpet on the floor, and the screen inlaid with mother-of-pearl. Owen did not know whether linen sheets were a European convention, and could be admitted into an Eastern dwelling-house, but he was not one of those who thought everything should be in keeping. He liked incongruities, being an inveterate romancist and only a bedouin by caprice. One appreciates sheets after months of pilgrimage, and one appreciates a good meal after having eaten nothing for a long while better than sand-goose roasted at the camp fire. Mor
e than the pleasure of the table was the pleasure of conversation with one speaking in his native language. Béclère’s mind interested him; it was so steady, it looked towards one point always. That was his impression when he left his host after a talk lasting till midnight; and, thinking of Béclère and his long journey to him, he sat by his window watching stars of extraordinary brilliancy, and breathing a fragrance rising from the tropical garden beneath him — a fragrance which he recognised as that of roses; and this set him thinking that it was the East that first cultivated roses; and amid many memories of Persia and her poets, he threw himself into bed, longing for sleep, for a darkness which, in a few hours, would pass into a delicious consciousness of a garden under exquisite skies.

  His awakening was even more delightful than he anticipated. The fragrance that filled his room had a magic in it which he had never known before, and there was a murmur of doves in the palms and in the dovecot hanging above the dog-kennel. As he lay between sleeping and waking, a pair of pigeons flew past his window, their shadows falling across his bed. An Arab came to conduct him to his bath; and after bathing he returned to his room, glad to get into its sunlight again, and to loiter in his dressing, standing by the window, admiring the garden below, full of faint perfume. The roses were already in blossom, and through an opening in the ilex-trees he caught sight of a meadow overflowing with shadow, the shadow of trees and clouds, and of goats too, for there was a herd feeding and trying to escape from the shepherd (a young man wearing a white bournous and a red felt cap) towards the garden, where there were bushes. On the left, amid a group of palms, were the stables, and Owen thought of his horse feeding and resting after his long journey. And there were Béclère’s horses too. Owen had not seen them yet; nor had he seen the dog, nor the pigeons. This oasis was full of pleasant things to see and investigate, and he hurried through his meal, longing to get into the open air and to gather some roses. All about him sounds were hushing, and lights breaking, and shadows floating, and every breeze was scented. As he followed the finely-sanded walks, he was startled by a new scent, and with dilating nostrils tried to catch it, tried to remember if it were mastick or some resinous fir; and, walking on like one in a trance, he admired Béclère’s taste in the planting of this garden.