XXXV
The caravan stopped in front of the Zaouia gate. There were great irondoors in a high wall of toub, which was not much darker in colour thanthe deep gold of the desert sand; and because it was after sunset thedoors were closed.
One of the Negroes knocked, and called out something inarticulate andguttural in a loud voice.
Almost at once the gate opened, and a shadowy figure hovered inside. Aname was announced, which was instantly shouted to a person unseen, anda great chattering began in the dusk. Men ran out, and one or two kissedthe hand of the rider on the white horse. They explained volubly thatthe lord was away, but the newcomer checked them as soon as he could,saying that he had heard the news in the city. He had with him ladies,one a relative of his own, another who was connected with the great lordhimself, and they must be entertained as the lord would wish, were henot absent.
The gates, or doors, of iron were thrown wide open, and the littleprocession entered a huge open court. On one side was accommodation formany animals, as in a caravanserai, with a narrow roof sheltering thirtyor forty stalls; and here the two white meharis were made to kneel, thatthe women might descend from their bassourahs. There were three, allveiled, but the arms of one were bare and very brown. She moved stiffly,as if cramped by sitting for a long time in one position; nevertheless,she supported her companion, whose bassour she had shared. The twoSoudanese Negroes remained in this court with their animals, which theservants of the Zaouia, began helping them to unload; but the master ofthe expedition, with the two ladies of his party and Fafann, was nowobliged to walk. Several men of the Zaouia acted as their guides,gesticulating with great respect, but lowering their eyelids, andappearing not to see the women.
They passed through another court, very large, though not so immense asthe first, for no animals were kept there. Instead of stalls for camelsand horses, there were roughly built rooms for pilgrims of the poorerclass, with little, roofless, open-sided kitchens, where they could cooktheir own food. Beyond was the third court, with lodging for moreimportant persons, and then the travellers were led through a labyrinthof corridors, some roofed with palm branches, others open to the air,and still more covered in with the toub blocks of which the walls werebuilt. Along the sides were crumbling benches of stucco, on which oldmen lay rolled up in their burnouses; or here and there a door ofrotting palm wood hung half open, giving a glimpse into a small, dimcourt, duskily red with the fire of cooking in an open-air kitchen. Frombehind these doors came faint sounds of chanting, and spicy smells ofburning wood and boiling peppers. It was like passing through asubterranean village; and little dark children, squatting in doorways,or flattening their bodies against palm trunks which supported palmroofs, or flitting ahead of the strangers, in the thick, musky scentedtwilight, were like shadowy gnomes.
By and by, as the newcomers penetrated farther into the mysteriouslabyrinth of the vast Zaouia, the corridors and courts became lessruined in appearance. The walls were whitewashed; the palm-wood doorswere roughly carved and painted in bright colours, which could be seenby the flicker of lamps set high in little niches. Each tunnel-likepassage had a carved archway at the end, and at last they entered onewhich was closed in with beautiful doors of wrought iron.
Through the rich network they could see into a court where everythingglimmered white in moonlight. They had come to the court of the mosque,which had on one side an entrance to the private house of the marabout,the great Sidi El Hadj Mohammed ben Abd-el-Kader.
* * * * * * *
"Lella Saida, oh light of the young moon, if it please thee, thou hasttwo guests come from very far off," announced an old negress to thewoman who had been looking out over the golden silence of the desert.
It was an hour since she had come down from the roof, and having eaten alittle bread, with soup, she lay on a divan writing in a small book.Several tall copper lamps with open-work copper shades, jewelled andfringed with coloured glass, gave a soft and beautiful light to theroom. It had pure white walls, round which, close to the ceiling, ran afrieze of Arab lettering, red, and black, and gold. The doors andwindow-blinds and little cupboards were of cedar, so thickly inlaid withmother-o'-pearl, that only dark lines of the wood defined the whitepatterning of leaves and flowers.
The woman had thrown off the blue drapery that had covered her head, andher auburn hair glittered in the light of the lamp by which she wrote.She looked up, vexed.
"Thou knowest, Noura, that for years I have received no guests," shesaid, in a dialect of the Soudan, in which most Saharian mistresses ofNegro servants learn to talk. "I can see no one. The master would notpermit me to do so, even if I wished it, which I do not."
"Pardon, loveliest lady. But this is another matter. A friend of ourlord brings these visitors to thee. One is kin of his. She seeks to behealed of a malady, by the power of the Baraka. But the other is aRoumia."
The wife of the great marabout shut the book in which she had beenwriting, and her mind travelled quickly to the sender of thecarrier-pigeon. A European woman, the first who had ever come to theZaouia in eight years! It must be that she had a message from him.Somehow he had contrived this visit. She dared ask no more questions.
"I will see these ladies," she said. "Let them come to me here."
"Already the old one is resting in the guest-house," answered thenegress. "She has her own servant, and she asks to see thee no earlierthan to-morrow, when she has rested, and is able to pay thee herrespects. It is the other, the young Roumia, who begs to speak with theeto-night."
The wife of the marabout was more certain than ever that her visitormust come from the sender of the pigeon. She was glad of an excuse totalk with his messenger alone, without waiting.
"Go fetch her," she directed. "And when thou hast brought her to thedoor I shall no longer need thee, Noura."
Her heart was beating fast. She dreaded some final decision, or the needto make a decision, yet she knew that she would be bitterly disappointedif, after all, the European woman were not what she thought. She shut upthe diary in which she wrote each night, and opening one of the wallcupboards near her divan, she put it away on a shelf, where there weremany other small volumes, a dozen perhaps. They contained the history ofher life during the last nine years, since unhappiness had isolated her,and made it necessary to her peace of mind, almost to her sanity, tohave a confidant. She closed the inlaid doors of the cupboard, andlocked them with a key which hung from a ribbon inside her dress.
Such a precaution was hardly needed, since the writing was all inEnglish, and she had recorded the events of the last few weekscautiously and cryptically. Not a soul in the marabout's house couldread English, except the marabout himself; and it was seldom he honouredher with a visit. Nevertheless, it had become a habit to lock up thebooks, and she found a secretive pleasure in it.
She had only time to slip the ribbon back into her breast, and sit downstiffly on the divan, when the door was opened again by Noura.
"O Lella Saida, I have brought the Roumia," the negress announced.
A slim figure in Arab dress came into the room, unfastening a white veilwith fingers that trembled with impatience. The door shut softly. Nourahad obeyed instructions.