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. More 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.

"A strange man, so refined and intelligent—why does he live here?…
Why not?"

Returning suddenly to the ilex-trees, which he liked better than the masticks, or the tamarisks, or any fir, he sat down to watch the meadow, thinking there was nothing in the world more beautiful than the moving of shadows of trees and clouds over young grass, and nothing more beautiful than a young shepherd playing a flute: only one thing more beautiful—a young girl carrying an amphora I She passed out of the shadows, wearing a scarlet haik and on her arms and neck a great deal of rough jewellery.

"She is going to the well," he said. The shepherd stopped playing and advanced to meet her. Boy and girl stood talking for a little while. He heard laughter and speech… saw her coming towards him. "She will follow this path to the house, and I shall see her better." A little in front of the ilex-trees she stopped to look back upon the shepherd, leaning the amphora upon her naked hip. The movement lasted only a moment, but how beautiful it was! On catching sight of Owen, she passed rapidly up the path, meeting Béclère on his way.

"Speaking to him in Arabic," Owen said, as he continued to admire the beautiful face he had just seen—a pointed oval, dark eyes, a small, fine nose, red lips, and a skin the colour of yellow ivory. "Still a child and already a woman, not more than twelve or thirteen at the very most; the sun ripens them quickly." This child recalled a dream which he had let drop in Tunis—a dream that he might go into the desert and find an Arab maiden the colour of yellow ivory, and live with her in an oasis, forgetful…. Only by a woman's help could he ever forget Evelyn. The old bitterness welled up bitter as ever. "And I thought she was beginning to be forgotten."

In his youth he had wearied of women as a child wearies of toys. Few women had outlasted the pleasure of a night, all becoming equally insipid and tedious; but since he had met Evelyn he had loved no other. Why did he love her? How was it he could not put her out of his mind? Why couldn't he accept an Arab girl—Béclère's girl? She was younger and more beautiful. If she did not belong to Béclère— Owen looked up and watched them, and seeing Béclère glance in the direction of the shepherd, he added, "Or to the shepherd."

The girl went into the house, and Béclère came down to meet his guest, apologising for having left him so long alone…. He talked to him about the beauty of the morning. The rains were over, or nearly, but very often they began again.

"Cella se pent qu'elle ne soit qu'une courte embellie, mais profitons en," and they turned to admire the roses.

"A beautiful girl, the one you were just speaking to."

"Yes… yes; she is the handsomest in the oasis, and there are many handsome girls here. The Arab race is beautiful, male and female. Her brother, for instance, the shepherd—"

"Her brother," Owen thought. "Ah!" They stopped to watch the shepherd, a boy of sixteen. "About two years older than his sister," Owen remarked, and Béclère acquiesced. The boy had begun to play his flute again. He played at first listlessly, then with all his soul, and then with extraordinary passion. Owen watched the balance of his body and arms, and the movement, extraordinarily voluptuous, of his neck and head. He played on, his breath coming at times so feebly that there was hardly any sound at all, at other times awaking music loud and imperative; and the two men stood listening, for how many minutes they did not know, but for what seemed to them a long while. Their reverie stopped when the music ceased. It was then that a dun-coloured dove with a lilac neck flew through the garden and took refuge in a palm, seen for a moment as she alighted on the flexible djerrid on a background of blue air. She disappeared into the heart of the tree; the leaves were again stirred. She cooed once or twice, and then there was a hush and a stillness in every leaf.

"You would like to see my property?"

Owen said he would like to see all the oasis, or as much as they could see of it in one day without fatiguing themselves.

"You can see it all in a day, for it is but a small island, about a thousand Arabs in the villages."

"So many as that?"

"Well, there has to be, in order to save ourselves from the predatory bands which still exist, for, as I daresay you have already learned, the Arabs are divided into two classes—the agricultural and the nomadic. We have to be in sufficient numbers to save ourselves from the nomads, otherwise we should be pillaged and harried from year's end to year's end—all our crops and camels taken."

"Border warfare—the same as existed in England in the Middle Ages."

Béclère agreed that the unsettled vagrant civilisation which existed in the North of Africa up to 1830—which in 1860 was beginning to pass away, and the traces of which still survived in the nineties— resembled very much the border forays for which Northumberland is still famous; and, walking through the palm-groves towards the Arab village, they talked of the Arab race, listening all the while to the singing of doves and of streams, Owen listless and happy.

"But I shall remember her again presently, and the stab will be as bitter as ever!"

Béclère did not believe that the Arab race was ever as great a race as we were inclined to give it credit for being.

"All the same, if it hadn't been for your ancestors, we might have all been Moslems now," Owen said, stopping to admire what remained of the race which had conquered Spain and nearly conquered France. "Now they are outcasts of our civilisation—but what noble outcasts! That fellow, he is old, and without a corner, perhaps, where to lay his head, but he walks magnificently in his ragged bournous. He is poor, but he isn't a beggar; his life is sordid, but it isn't trivial; he retains his grand walk and his solemn salute; and if he has never created an art, himself is proof that he isn't without the artistic sentiment."

Béclère looked at Owen in surprise, and Owen, thinking to astonish him, added:

"His poverty and his filth are sublime; he is a Jew from Amsterdam painted by Rembrandt, or a Jew from Palestine described by the authors of the Pentateuch."

"The Jew is a tougher fellow to deal with; he cannot be eradicated, but the Arab was very nearly passing away. If he had insisted on remaining the noble outcast which you admire, he would not have survived the Red Indian many hundreds of years. I don't contest whether to lose him would be a profit or a loss, but when civilisation comes the native race must accept it or extinction."

"I suppose you're right," Owen answered, "I suppose you're right."

And they stopped to look at an Arab town; some of it was in the plain below, some of it ran up the steep hillside, on the summit of which was a ruined mosque.

"Why did they choose to build up such a steep hillside?"

"The oasis is limited, and the plain is devoted to orchards. Look at the village! If you were to visit their town, you would not find a street in which a camel could turn round, hardly any windows, and the doors always half closed. They are still suspicious of us and anxious to avoid our inquisition. Yes, that is the characteristic of the Arab, to conceal himself; and his wife, and his business from us."

"One can sympathise with the desire to avoid inquisition, and notwithstanding the genius of your race—no one is more sympathetic to you than I am—yet it is impossible not to see that your fault is red tapeism, and that is what the Arab hates. You see I understand."

"I don't think I am unsympathetic, and the Arabs don't think it. Perhaps there is no man in Africa who can travel as securely as I can—even in the Soudan I should be well received—and what other European could say as much? There must be something of the Arab in me, otherwise I shouldn't have lived amongst them so long, nor should I speak Arabic as easily as I do, nor should I look—remember, you thought I was an Arab."

"Yes, at first sight."

The admission was given somewhat unwillingly, not because Owen saw Béclère differently, he still saw an Arab exterior, but he had begun to recognise him as a Frenchman. Race characteristics are generally imaginary; there are, shall we say, twenty millions of Frenchmen in France, and every one is different; how therefore is it possible to speak of race characteristics? Still, if one may differentiate at all between the French and English races (but is there a French and English race?) we know there is a negro race because it is black— however, if there be any difference between England and France, the difference is that France is more inclined to pedantry than England. If one admits any race difference, one may admit this one; and, with such thoughts in his mind, Owen began to perceive Béclère as the typical French pedagogue, a clever man, one who if he had remained in Paris would have become un membre de l'Institut.

Béclère, un membre de l'Institut, talking to the beautiful girl whom Owen had seen that morning! Owen smiled a little under his moustache, and, as there was plenty of time for meditation while waiting for Tahar to return from Ain Mahdy, he spent a great deal of time wondering if any sensual relations existed between Béclère and this girl. Béclère as a lover appeared to him anomalous and disparate—that is how Béclère would word it himself, but these pedants were very often serious sensualists. We easily associate conventional morality with red-tapeism, for it seems impossible to believe that the stodgy girl who spends her morning in the British Museum working at the higher mathematics or Sanscrit is likely to spend her afternoon in bed, yet this is what happens frequently; the real sensualist is the pedant; "and, if one wants love, the real genuine article," whispered a thought, "one must seek it among clergymen's daughters."

That girl Béclère's mistress! Why not? The thought pleased and amused him, reconciled him to Béclère, whom he never should have thought capable of such fine discrimination. But it did not follow that because Béclère had chosen a beautiful girl to love he was susceptible to artistic influences, sculpture excepted. Of the other arts Owen felt instinctively that Béclère knew nothing; indeed, yester evening, when he, Owen, had spoken of "The Ring," Béclère had answered that his business in life had not allowed him to cultivate musical tastes. He had once liked music, but now it interested him no longer.

"Tastes atrophy."

"Of course they do," Owen had answered, and Béclère's knowledge of himself propitiated Owen, who recognised a clever man in the remark, a man of many sympathies, though the exterior was prosaic. All the same Owen would have wished for some music in the evening, and for some musical assistance, for while waiting for the eagles to arrive he spent his time thinking how he might write the songs he heard every morning among the palm-trees; written down they did not seem nearly as original as they did on the lips, and Owen suspected his notation to be deficient. A more skilful musician would be able to get more of these rhythms on paper than he had been able to do, and he regretted his failures, for it would be interesting to bring home some copies of these songs just to show…

But he would never see her again, so what was the good of writing down these songs? What was the good of anything? A strange thing life is, and he paused to consider how the slightest event, the fact that he was unable to give complete expression on paper to an Arab rhythm, brought the old pain back again, and every pang of it. Even the society of Béclère was answerable for his suffering, and he thought how he must go away and travel again; only open solitude and wandering with rough men could still his pain; primitive Nature was the one balm…. That fellow Tahar—why did he delay? Owen thought of the eagles, the awful bird pursuing the fleeting deer, and himself riding in pursuit. This was the life that would cure him— how soon? In three months? in six? in ten years? It would be strange if he were to become a bedouin for love of her, and he walked on thinking how they had lain together one night listening to the silence, hearing nothing but an acacia moving outside their window. Béclère was coming towards him and the vision vanished.

"No news of Tahar yet?"

"No; you are forgetting that we are living in an oasis, where letters are not delivered, and where we bring news of ourselves, and where no news is understood to mean that the spring we were hastening towards was dry, or that a sand-storm—"

"Sand-storms are rare at this season of the year."

"An old bedouin like Tahar is safe enough. To-morrow or the day after… but I see you are impatient, you are growing tired of my company."

Owen assured Béclère he was mistaken, only a sedentary life was impossible to him, and he was anxious to be off again.

"So there is something of the wanderer in you, for no business calls you."

"No, my agent manages everything for me; it is, I suppose, mere restlessness." And Owen spoke of going in quest of Tahar.

"To pass him again in the desert," and they went towards the point where they might watch for Tahar, Béclère knowing by the sun the direction in which to look. There was no route, nothing in the empty space extending from their feet to the horizon—a line inscribed across the empty sky—nothing to be seen although the sun hung in the middle of the sky, the rays falling everywhere; it would have seemed that the smallest object should be visible, but this was not so—there was nothing. Even when he strained his eyes Owen could not distinguish which was sand, which was earth, which was stone, even the colour of the emptiness was undecided. Was it dun? Was it tawny? Striving to express himself, Owen could find nothing more explicit to say than that the colour of the desert was the colour of emptiness, and they sat down trying to talk of falconry. But it was impossible to talk in front of this trackless plain, cela coupe la parole, flowing away to the south, to the west, to the east, ending— it was impossible to imagine it ending anywhere, no more than we can imagine the ends of the sky; and the desert conveyed the same impression of loneliness—in a small way, of course—as the great darkness of the sky; "for the sky," Owen said, half to himself, half to his companion, "is dark and cold the moment one gets beyond the atmosphere of the earth."

"The desert is, at all events, warm," Béclère interjected.

Hot, trackless spaces, burning solitudes through which nobody ever went or came. It was the silence that frightened Owen; not even in the forest, in the dark solitudes avoided by the birds, is there silence. There is a wind among the tree-tops, and when the wind is still the branches sway a little; there is nearly always a swaying among the branches, and even when there is none, the falling of some giant too old to subsist longer breaks the silence, frightens the wild beast, who retires growling. The sea conveys the same sense of primal solitude as the forest, but it is less silent; the sea tears among the rocks as if it would destroy the land, but when its rage is over the sea laughs, and leaps, and caresses, and the day after fawns upon the land, drawing itself up like a woman to her lover, as voluptuously. Nowhere on earth only in the desert, is there silence; even in the tomb there are worms, but in some parts of the desert there are not even worms, the body dries into dust without decaying. Owen imagined the resignation of the wanderer who finds no water at the spring, and lies down to die amid the mighty indifference of sterile Nature; and breaking the silence, somewhat against his will, he communicated his thoughts to Béclère, that an unhappy man who dare not take his life could not do better than to lose himself in the desert. Death would come easily, for seeing nothing in front of him but an empty horizon, nothing above him but a blank sky, and for a little shelter a sand dune, which the wind created yesterday and will uncreate to-morrow he would come to understand all that he need know regarding his transitory and unimportant life. Does Nature care whether we live or die? We have heard often that she cares not a jot for the individual…. But does she care for the race—for mankind more than for beastkind? His intelligence she smiles at, concerned with the lizard as much as with the author of "The Ring." Does she care for either? After all, what is Nature? We use words, but words mean so little. What do we mean when we speak of Nature? Where does Nature begin? Where does she end? And God? We talk of God, and we do not know whether he sleeps, or drinks, or eats, whether he wears clothes or goes naked; Moses saw his hinder parts, and he used to be jealous and revengeful; but as man grows merciful God grows merciful with him, we make him to our own likeness, and spend a great deal of money on the making.

"Yes, God is a great expense, but government would be impossible without him."

Béclère's answer jarred Owen's mood a little, without breaking it, however, and he continued to talk of how words like "Nature," and "God," and "Liberty" are on every lip, yet none is able to define their meaning. Liberty he instanced as a word around which poems have been written, "yet no poet could tell what he was writing about; at best we can only say of liberty that we must surrender something to gain something; in other words, liberty is a compromise, for no one can be free to obey every impulse the moment one enters into his being.

"Good God, Béclère! it is terrible to think one knows nothing, and life, like the desert, is full of solitude."

Béclère did not answer, and, forgetful that it was impossible to answer a cry of anguish, Owen began to suspect Béclère of thoughts regarding the perfectibility of mankind, of thinking that with patience and more perfect administration, &c. But Béclère was thinking nothing of the kind; he was wondering what sort of reason could have sent Owen out of England. Some desperate love affair perhaps, his wife may have run away from him. But he did not try to draw Owen into confidence, speaking instead of falconry and Tahar's arrival, which could not be much longer delayed.

"After all, if you had not missed him in the desert we never should have known each other."

"So much was gained, and if you ever come to England—" Béclère smiled. "So you think we shall never meet again, and that we are talking out our last talk on the edge of this gulf of sand?"

"We shall meet again if you come to the desert to hunt with eagles."

"But you will not come to England?" Béclère did not think it necessary to answer. "But in France? You will return to France some day?"

"Why should I? Whom do I know in France? Je ne suis plus un des vôtres. Qu'irais-je y faire? But we are not talking for the last time, Tahar has yet to arrive, he will be here to-morrow and we'll go hunting; and after our hunting I hope to induce you to stop some while longer. You see, you haven't seen the desert; the desert isn't the desert in spring. To see the desert you will have to stop till July. This sea of sand will then be a ring of fire, and that sky, now so mild, will be dark blue and the sun will hang like a furnace in the midst of it. Stay here even till May and you will see the summer, chez lui."