IV
Her pictures and furniture were on view at Christie's in the early spring, and all Owen's friends met each other in the rooms and on the staircase.
The pictures were to be sold on Saturday, the furniture, china, and enamels on the following Monday.
"The pictures don't matter so much, although her own portrait is going to be sold. But the furniture! Dear God, look at that brute trying the springs of the sofa where I have sat so often with her. And there is the chair on which I used to sit listening to her when she sang. And her piano—why, my God, she is selling her piano!— What is to become of that woman? A singer who sells her piano!"
"My dear friend, I suppose she had to sell everything or nothing?"
"But she'll have to buy another piano, and she might have kept the one I gave her. It is extraordinary how religion hardens the heart, Harding. Do you see that fellow, a great nose, lumpy shoulders, trousers too short for him, a Hebrew barrel of grease—Rosental. You know him; I bought that clock from him. He's looking into it to see if anything has been broken, if it is in as good condition as when he sold it. The brutes have all joined the 'knock-out,' and there—"
As he said these words young Mr. Rowe, who believed himself to be connected with society, and who dealt largely in pictures, without, however, descending to the vulgarity of shop-keeping (he would resent being called a picture-dealer), approached and insisted on Sir Owen listening to the story of his difficulties with some county councillors who could not find the money to build an art gallery.
"But I object to your immortality being put on the rates."
"You write books, Mr. Harding; I can't."
As soon as he left them, Harding, who knew the dealer kind, the original stock and the hybrid, told an amusing story of Mr. Rowe's beginnings; and Owen forgot his sentimental trouble; but the story was interrupted by Lady Ascott coming down the room followed by her attendants, her literary and musical critics.
"Every one of them most interesting, I assure you, Sir Owen. Mr.
Homer has just returned from Italy—"
"But I know Mr. Homer; we met long ago at Innes' concerts. If I am not mistaken you were writing a book then about Bellini."
"Yes, 'His Life and Works.' I've just returned from Italy after two years' reading in the public libraries."
Lady Ascott's musical critic was known to Owen by a small book he had written entitled "A Guide to the Ring." Before he was a Wagnerian he was the curator of a museum, and Owen remembered how desirous he was to learn the difference between Dresden and Chelsea china. He had dabbled in politics and in journalism; he had collected hymns, ancient and modern, and Owen was not in the least surprised to hear that he had become the director of a shop for the sale of religious prints and statues, or that he had joined the Roman Church, and the group watched him slinking round on the arm of a young man, one who sang forty-nine songs by all the composers in Europe in exactly the same manner.
"He is teaching Botticelli in his three manners," said Lady Ascott, "and Cyril is thinking of going over to Rome."
"Asher, let us get away from this culture," Harding whispered.
"Yes, let's get away from it; I want to show you a table, the one on which Evelyn used to write her letters. We bought it together at the Salle Druot."
"Yes, Asher, yes; but would you mind coming this way, for I see Ringwood. He goes by in his drooping mantle, looking more like an umbrella than usual. Lady Ascott has engaged him for the season, and he goes out with her to talk literature—plush stockings, cockade. Literature in livery! Ringwood introducing Art!"
Owen laughed, and begged Harding to send his joke to the comic papers.
"An excellent subject for a cartoon."
"He has stopped again. Now I'm sure he's talking of Sophocles. He walks on…. I'm mistaken; he is talking about Molière."
"An excellent idea of yours—'Literature in livery!'"
"His prose is always so finely spoken, so pompous, that I cannot help smiling. You know what I mean."
"I've told you it ought to be sent to the papers. I wish he would leave that writing-table; and Lady Ascott might at least ask him to brush his coat."
"It seems to me so strange that she should find pleasure in such company."
"Men who will not cut their hair. How is it?"
"I suppose attention to externals checks or limits the current of feeling… or they think so."
"I am feeling enough, God knows, but my suffering does not prevent me from selecting my waistcoat and tying my tie."
Harding's eyes implied acquiescence in the folding of the scarf (it certainly was admirably done) and glanced along the sleeves of the coat—a rough material chosen in a moment of sudden inspiration; and they did not miss the embroidered waistcoat, nor the daring brown trousers (in admirable keeping withal), turned up at the ends, of course, otherwise Owen would not have felt dressed; and, still a little conscious of the assistance his valet had been to him, he walked with a long, swinging stride which he thought suited him, stopping now and again to criticise a friend or a picture.
"There's Merrington. How absurdly he dresses! One would think he was an actor; yet no man rides better to hounds. Lady Southwick! I must have a word with her."
Before leaving Harding he mentioned that she attributed her lapses from virtue, not to passionate temperament, but to charitable impulses. "She wouldn't kiss—" and Owen whispered the man's name, "until he promised to give two thousand pounds to a Home for Girl Mothers."
"Now, my dear Lady Southwick, I'm so delighted to see you here. But how very sad! The greatest singer of our time."
"She was exceedingly good in two or three parts."
A dispute arose, in which Owen lost his temper; but, recovering it suddenly, he went down the room with Lady Southwick to show her a Wedgewood dessert service which he had bought some years ago for Evelyn, pressing it upon her, urging that he would like her to have it.
"Every time you see it you will think of us," and he turned on his heel suddenly, fearing to lose Harding, whom he found shaking hands with one of the dealers, a man of huge girth—"like a waggoner," Owen said, checking a reproof, but he could not help wishing that Harding would not shake hands with such people, at all events when he was with him.
"These are the Chadwells, whom—" (Harding whispered a celebrated
name) "used to call the most gentlemanly picture-dealers in
Bond-street." Harding spoke to them, Owen standing apart absorbed in
His grief, until the word "Asher" caught his ear.
"Of whom are you speaking?"
"Of you, of Sir Owen Asher." And Harding followed Owen, intensely annoyed.
"Not even to a gentlemanly picture-dealer should you—"
"You are entirely wrong; I said 'Sir Owen Asher.'"
"Very strange you should say 'Sir Owen Asher'; why didn't you say Sir
Owen?"
Harding did not answer, being uncertain if it would not be better to drop Asher's acquaintance. But they had known each other always. It would be difficult.
"The sale is about to begin," Asher said, and Harding sat down angry with Asher and interested in the auctioneer's face, created, Harding thought, for the job… "looking exactly like a Roman bust. Lofty brow, tight lips, vigilant eyes, voice like a bell…. That damned fellow Asher! What the hell did he mean—"
The auctioneer sat at a high desk, high as any pulpit, and in the benches the congregation crowded—every shade of nondescript, the waste ground one meets in a city: poor Jews and dealers from the outlying streets, with here and there a possible artist or journalist. As the pictures were sold the prices they fetched were marked in the catalogues, and Harding wondered why.
Around the room were men and women of all classes; a good many of Sir Owen's "set" had come—"Society being well represented that day," as the newspapers would put it. All the same, the pictures were not selling well, not nearly so well as Owen and Harding anticipated. Harding was glad of this, for his heart was set on a certain drawing by Boucher.
"I would sooner you had it, Harding, than anybody else. It would be unendurable if one of those picture-dealers should get it; they'd come round to my house trying to sell it to me again, whereas in your rooms—"
"Yes," said Harding, "it will be an excuse to come to see me. Well, if I can possibly afford it—"
"Of course you can afford it; I paid eighty-seven pounds for it years ago; it won't go to more than a hundred. I'd really like you to have it."
"Well, for goodness' sake don't talk so loud, somebody will hear you."
The pictures went by—portraits of fair ladies and ancient admirals, landscapes, underwoods and deserts, flower and battle pieces, pathetic scenes and gallantries. There was a time when every one of these pictures was the hope and delight of a human being, now they went by interesting nobody….
At last the first of Evelyn's pictures was hoisted on the easel.
"Good God!" isn't it a miserable sight seeing her pictures going to whomsoever cares to bid a few pounds. But if I were to buy the whole collection—"
"I quite understand, and every one is a piece of your life."
The pictures continued to go by.
"I can't stand this much longer."
"Hush!"
The Boucher drawing went up. It was turned to the right and to the left: a beautiful girl lying on her belly, her legs parted slightly. Therefore the bidding began briskly, but for some unaccountable reason it died away. "Somebody must have declared it to be a forgery," Owen whispered to Harding, and a moment after it became Harding's property for eighty-seven pounds—"The exact sum I paid for it years ago. How very extraordinary!"
"A portrait by Manet—a hundred pounds offered, one hundred," and two grey eyes in a face of stone searched the room for bidders. "One hundred pounds offered, five, thirty, thirty-five, forty, fifty," and so on to two hundred.
"Her portrait will cost me a thousand," Owen whispered to Harding, and, catching the auctioneer's eyes, he nodded again. Seven hundred. "Will they never stop bidding? That fellow yonder is determined to run up the picture." Eight hundred and fifty! The auctioneer raised his hammer, and the watchful eyes went round the room in search of some one who would pay another ten pounds for Evelyn's portrait by Manet. Eight hundred and fifty—eight hundred and fifty. Down came the hammer. The auctioneer whispered "Sir Owen Asher" to his clerk.
"It's a mercy I got it for that; I was afraid it would go over the thousand. Now, come, we have got our two pictures. I'm sick of the place."
Harding had thought of staying on, just to see the end of the sale, but it was easier to yield to Owen than to argue with him; besides, he was anxious to see how the drawing would look on his wall. Of course it was a Boucher. Stupid remarks were always floating about Christie's. But he would know for certain as soon as he saw the drawing in a new light.
He was muttering "It is genuine enough," when his servant opened the door—"Sir Owen Asher."
"I see you have hung up the drawing. It looks very well, doesn't it.
You'll never regret having taken my advice."
"Taken your advice!" Harding was about to answer. "But what is the use in irritating the poor man? He is so much in love he hardly knows what he is saying. Owen Asher advising me as to what I should buy!"
Owen went over and looked into Harding's Ingres.
"Every time one sees it one likes it better." And they talked about Ingres for some time, until Owen's thoughts went back to Evelyn, and looking from the portrait by Ingres to the drawing by Boucher he seemed suddenly to lose control; tears rose to his eyes, and Harding watched him, wondering whither Owen's imagination carried him. "Is he far away in Paris, hearing her sing for the first time to Madame Savelli? Or is he standing with her looking over the bulwarks of the Medusa, seeing the shape of some Greek island dying in the twilight?" And Harding did not speak, feeling the lover's meditation to be sacred. Owen flung himself into an arm-chair, and without withdrawing his eyes from the picture, said, relying on Harding's friendship:
"It is very like her, it is really very like her. I am much obliged to you, Harding, for having bought it. I shall come here to see it occasionally."
"And I'll present you with a key, so that when I am away you can spend your leisure in front of the picture…. Do you know whom I shall feel like? Like the friend of King Condules."
"But she'll not ask you to conspire to assassinate me. My murder would profit you nothing. All the same, Harding, now I come to think of it, there's a good deal of that queen in Evelyn, or did she merely desire to take advantage of the excuse to get rid of her husband?"
"Ancient myths are never very explicit; one reads whatever psychology one likes into them. Perhaps that is why they never grow old."
The door opened… Harding's servant brought in a parcel of proofs.
"My dear Asher, the proof of an article has just come, and the editor tells me he'll be much obliged if I look through it at once."
"Shall I wait?"
"Well, I'd sooner you didn't. Correcting a proof with me means a rewriting, and—"
"You can't concentrate your thoughts while I am roving about the room. I understand. Are you dining anywhere?"
"I'm not engaged."
The thought crossed Harding's mind when Owen left the room that it would be better perhaps to write saying that the proofs detained him, for to spend the evening with Owen would prove wearisome. "No matter what the subject of conversation may be his mind will go back to her very soon…. But to leave him alone all the evening would be selfish, and if I don't dine with him I shall have to dine alone…." Harding turned to his writing-table, worked on his proof for a couple of hours, and then went to meet Owen, whom he found waiting for him at his club.
"My dear friend, I quite agree with you," he said, sitting down to the table; "what you want is change."
"Do you think, Harding, I shall find any interest again in anything?"
"Of course you will, my dear friend, of course you will." And he spoke to his friend of ruined palaces and bas-reliefs; Owen listened vaguely, begging of him at last to come with him.
"It will give you ideas, Harding; you will write better."
Harding shook his head, for it did not seem to him to be his destiny to relieve the tedium of a yachting excursion in the Mediterranean.
V
"One cannot yacht in the Baltic or in the Gulf of Mexico," Owen said, and he went to the Mediterranean again to sail about the Ægean Islands, wondering if he should land, changing his mind, deciding suddenly that the celebrated site he was going to see would not interest him. He would stand watching the rocky height dying down, his eyes fixed on the blue horizon, thinking of some Emperor's palace amid the Illyrian hills, till, acting on a sudden impulse, he would call an order to the skipper, an order which he would countermand next day. A few days after the yacht would sail towards the Acropolis as though Owen had intended to drop anchor in the Piræeus. But he was too immersed in his grief, he thought, to be able to give his attention to ruins, whether Roman or Greek. All the same, he would have to decide if he would return to the islands. He did not know them all; he had never been to Samos, famous for its wine and its women…. The wine cloyed the palate and no woman charmed him in the dance; and he sailed away wondering how he might relieve the tedium of life, until one day, after long voyaging, sufficiently recovered from his grief and himself, he leaned over the taffrail, this time lost in admiration of the rocks and summits above Syracuse, the Sicilian coasts carrying his thoughts out of the present into the past, to those valleys where Theocritus watched his "visionary flocks."
"'His visionary flocks,'" he repeated, wondering if the beautiful phrase had floated accidentally into his mind, hoping that it was his own, and then abandoning hope, for he had nearly succeeded in tracing the author of the phrase; but there was a vision in it more intense than Tennyson's. "Visionary flocks!" For while the shepherds watched Theocritus dreamed the immortal sheep and goats which tempt us for an instant to become shepherds; but Owen knew that the real flocks would seem unreal to him who knew the visionary ones, so he turned away from the coasts without a desire in his heart to trouble the shepherds in the valley with an offer of his services, and walked up and down the deck thinking how he might obtain a translation of the idyls.
"Sicily, Sicily!"
It was unendurable that his skipper should come at such a moment to ask him if he would like to land at Palermo; for why should he land in Sicily unless to meet the goatherd who in order to beguile Thyrsis to sing the song of Daphnis told him that "his song was sweeter than the music of yonder water that is poured from the high face of the rock"? It was in Sicily that rugged Polyphemus, peering over some cliffs, sought to discern Galatea in the foam; but before Owen had time to recall the myth an indenture in the coast line, revealing a field, reminded him how Proserpine, while gathering flowers on the plains of Enna with her maidens, had been raped into the shadows by the dark god. And looking on these waves, he remembered that it was over them that Jupiter in the form of a bull, a garlanded bull with crested horns, had sped, bearing Europa away for his pleasure. Venus had been washed up by these waves! Poseidon! Sirens and Tritons had disported themselves in this sea, the bluest and the beautifullest, the one sea that mattered, more important than all the oceans; the oceans might dry up to-morrow for all he cared so long as this sea remained; and with the story of Theseus and "lonely Ariadne on the wharf at Naxos" ringing in his ears he looked to the north-east, whither lay the Cyclades and Propontis. Medea, too, had been deserted—"Medea deadlier than the sea." Helen! All the stories of the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey" had been lived about these seas, from the coasts of Sicily to those of Asia Minor, whence Æneas had made his way to Carthage. Dido, she, too, had been deserted. All the great love stories of the world had been lived about these shores and islands; his own story! And he mused for a long time on the accident—if it were an accident—which had led him back to this sea. Or had he returned to these shores and islands merely because there was no other sea in which one could yacht? Hardly, and he remembered with pleasure that his story differed from the ancient stories only in this, that Evelyn had fled from him, not be from her. And for such a woeful reason! That she might repent her sins in a convent on the edge of Wimbledon Common, whereas Dido was deserted for—
Again his infernal skipper hanging about. This time he had come with news that the Medusa was running short of provisions. Would Sir Owen prefer that they should put in at Palermo or Tunis?
"Tunis, Tunis."
The steerman put down the helm, and the fore and aft sails went over.
Three days later the Medusa dropped her anchor in the Bay of
Tunis, and his skipper was again asking Owen for orders.
"Just take her round to Alexandria and wait for me there," he answered, feeling he would not be free from England till she was gone. It was his wish to get away from civilisation for a while, to hear Arabic, to learn it if he could, to wear a bournous, to ride Arab horses, live in a tent, to disappear in the desert, yes, and to be remembered as the last lover of the Mediterranean—that would be une belle fin de vie, après tout.
Then he laughed at his dreams, but they amused him; he liked to look upon his story as one of the love stories of the world. Rome had robbed Dido of her lover and him of his mistress. So far as he could see, the better story was the last, and his thoughts turned willingly to the Virgil who would arise centuries hence to tell it. One thing, however, puzzled him. Would the subject-matter he was creating for the future poet be spoilt if he were to fall in love with an Arab maiden, some little statuette carved in yellow ivory? Or would it be enhanced? Would the future Virgil regard her as an assuagement, a balm? Owen laughed at himself and his dream. But his mood drifted into sadness; and he asked if Evelyn should be punished. If so, what punishment would the poet devise for her? In Theocritus somebody had been punished: a cruel one, who had refused to relieve the burden of desire even with a kiss, had been killed by a seemingly miraculous interposition of Love, who, angered at the sight of the unhappy lover hanging from the neck by the lintel of the doorpost, fell from his pedestal upon the beloved, while he stood heart-set watching the bathers in the beautiful bathing-places.
But Owen could not bring himself to wish for Evelyn's death by the falling of a statue of Our Lady or St. Joseph; such a death would be a contemptible one, and he could not wish that anything contemptible should happen to her, however cruelly she had made him suffer. No, he did not wish that any punishment should befall her; the fault was not hers. And he returned in thought to the end which he had devised for himself—a passing into the desert, leaving no trace but the single fact that on a certain day he had joined a caravan. Going whither? Timbuctoo? To be slain there—an English traveller seeking forgetfulness of a cruel mistress—would be a romantic end for him! But if his end were captivity, slavery? His thoughts turned from Timbuctoo to one of the many oases between Tunis and the Soudan. In one of these it would be possible to make friends with an Arab chieftain and to live. But would she, whose body was the colour of amber, or the desert, or any other invention his fancy might devise, relieve him from the soul-sickness from which he suffered? It seemed to him that nothing would. All the same, he would have to try to forget her, "Evelyn, Evelyn."
The bournous which his Arab servant brought in at that moment might help him. A change of language would be a help, and he might become a Moslem—for he believed in Mohammedanism as much as in Christianity; and an acceptance of the Koran would facilitate travelling in the desert. That and a little Arabic, a few mouthfuls, and no Mahdi would dare to enslave him…. But if he were only sure that none would!
Outside horses were stamping, his escort, seven Arab horses with seven Arabs from the desert, or thereabout, in high-pummelled saddles, wearing white bournous, their brown, lean hands grasping long-barrelled guns with small carven stocks. The white Arab which Owen had purchased yesterday waited, the saddle empty; and, looking at him before mounting, Owen thought the horse the most beautiful thing he had ever seen, more like an ornament than a live thing, an object of luxury rather than of utility. Was he really going to ride this horse for many hours? To do so seemed like making a drudge of some beautiful woman. The horse's quarters curved like a woman's, a woman's skin was hardly finer, nor were a woman's wrists and hands, though she cared for them ever so much, shaping them with files, and polishing them with powders, more delicate than the fetlock and hoof of this wonderful horse. Nor was any woman's eye more beautiful, nor any woman's ears more finely shaped; and the horse's muzzle came to such a little point that one would have been inclined to bring him water in a tumbler. The accoutrements were all Arab; and Owen admired the heavy bits, furnished with many rings and chains, severe curbs, demanding the lightest handling, without being able to guess their use. But in the desert one rides like the Arab, and it would be ridiculous to go away to the Sahara hanging on to a snaffle like an Irishman out hunting.
So he mounted, and the cavalcade started amid much noise and dust, which followed it until it turned from the road into the scrub. A heavy dew had fallen during the night, and it glittered like silver rain, producing a slight mirage, which deceived nobody, but which prevented Owen from seeing what the country was like, until the sun shone out. Then he saw that they were crossing an uncultivated rather than a sterile plain, and the word "wilderness" came up in his mind, for the only trees and plants he saw were wildings, wild artichokes, tall stems, of no definite colour, with hairy fruits; rosemary, lavender and yellow broom, and half-naked bushes stripped of their foliage by the summer heat, covered with dust; nowhere a blade of grass—an indurated plain, chapped, rotted by stagnant waters, burnt again by the sun. And they rode over this plain for hours, the horses avoiding the baked earth, choosing the softer places where there was a litter of leaves or moss. Sometimes the cavalcade divided into twos and threes, sometimes it formed into a little group riding to the right or left, with Owen and his dragoman in front, Owen trying to learn Arabic from the dragoman, the lesson interrupted continually by some new sight: by a cloud of thistledown hovering over a great purple field, rising and falling, for there was not wind enough to carry the seed away; by some white vapour on the horizon, which his dragoman told him was the smoke of Arabs clearing the scrub.
"A primitive method, and an easy one, saving the labour of billhook and axe." About nine o'clock he saw some woods lying to the north-west. But the horses' heads were turned eastward to avoid an arm of a great marsh, extending northward to the horizon. It was then that, wearying of trying to get his tongue round certain Arabic words, he rode away from his dragoman, and tried to define the landscape as a painter would; but it was all too vast, and all detail was lost in the vastness, and all was alike. So, abandoning the pictorial, he philosophised, discovering the fallacy of the old saying that we owe everything to the earth, the mother of all. "We owe her very little. The debt is on her side," he muttered. "It is we who make her so beautiful, finding in the wilderness a garden and a statue in a marble block. Man is everything." And the words put the thought into his mind that although they had been travelling for many hours they had not yet seen a human being, nor yet an animal. Whither the Arabs had gone the dragoman could not tell him; he could only say they came to this plain for the spring pasture; their summer pastures were elsewhere, and he pointed to an old olive, brown and bent by the wind, telling Owen it was deemed a sacred tree, to which sterile women came to hang votive offerings. Owen reined up his horse in front of it, and they resumed their journey, meeting with nothing they had not met with before, unless, perhaps, a singular group of date-palms gathered together at one spot, forerunners of the desert, keeping each other company, struggling for life in a climate which was not theirs.
At eleven o'clock a halt was made in the bed of a great river enclosed within steep mudbanks, now nearly as dry as the river they had crossed in the morning; only a few inches of turbid water, at which a long herd of cattle was drinking when they arrived; the banks planted with great trees, olives, tamarisks, and masticks. At three o'clock they were again in the saddle, and they rode on, leaving to the left an encampment (the dragoman told Owen the name of the tribe), some wandering horses, and some camels. The camels, who appeared to have lost themselves, did not gallop away like the horses, but came forward and peaceably watched the cavalcade passing, absent-minded, bored ruminants, with something always on their minds. The sobriety of these animals astonished him. "They're not greedy, and they are never thirsty. Of what do they remind me?" And Owen thought for a while, till catching sight of their long fleecy necks, bending like the necks of birds, and ending in long flexible lips (it was the lips that gave him the clue he was seeking), he said, "The Nonconformists of the four-footed world," and he told his joke to his dragoman, without, however, being able to make him understand.
"These Arabs have no sense of humour," he muttered, as he rode away.
The only human beings he saw on that long day's journey were three shepherds—two youths and an old man; the elder youth, standing on a low wall, which might be Roman or Carthaginian, Turkish or Arabian (an antiquarian would doubtless have evolved the history of four great nations from it), watched a flock of large-tailed sheep and black goats, and blew into his flageolet, drawing from it, not music, only sounds without measure or rhythm, which the wind carried down the valley, causing the sheep-dog to rise up from the rock on which he was lying and to howl dismally. Near by the old man walked, leaning on the arm of the younger brother, a boy of sixteen. Both wore shepherd's garb—tunics fitting tight to the waist, large plaited hats, and sandals cut from sheep-skin. The old man's eyes were weak and red, and he blinked them so constantly that Owen thought he must be blind; and the boy was so beautiful that one of the Arabs cried out to him, in the noble form of Arab salutation:
"Hail to thee, Jacob, son of Isaac; and hail to thy father."
Owen repeated the names "Jacob!" "Isaac!" a light came into his face, and he drew himself up in his saddle, understanding suddenly that he had fallen out of the "Odyssey," landing in the very midst of the Bible; for there it was, walking about him: Abraham and Isaac, the old man willing to sacrifice his son to please some implacable God hidden behind a cloud; Jacob selling his birthright to Esau, the birthright of camels, sheep, and goats. And down his mind floated the story of Joseph sold by his brethren, and that of Ruth and Boaz: "Thy people shall be my people, thy God shall be my God," a story of corn rather than of flocks and herds. For the sake of Boaz she would accept Yahveh. But would he accept such a God for Evelyn's sake, and such a brute?—always telling his people if they continued to adore him they would be given not only strength to overcome their enemies, but even the pleasure of dashing out the brains of their enemies' children against the stones; and thinking of the many apocalyptic inventions, the many-headed beasts of Isaiah, the Cherubim and Seraphim, who were not stalwart and beautiful angels, but many-headed beasts from Babylonia, Owen remembered that these revolting monsters had been made beautiful in the Ægean: sullen Astaarte, desiring sacrifice and immolation, had risen from the waters, a ravishing goddess with winged Loves marvelling about her, Loves with conches to their lips, blowing the glad news to the world.
"How the thought wanders!" he said, "A moment ago I was among the abominations of Isaiah. Now I am back, if not with the Greek Venus, 'whom men no longer call the Erecine,' at all events with an enchanting Parisian, nearly as beautiful, and more delightful—a voluptuous goddess, laughing amid her hair, drawn less austerely than Ingres, but much more firmly than Boucher or Fragonard… a fragrant goddess."
And meditating with half his mind, he admired the endurance of his horse with the other, who, though he could neither trot, nor gallop, nor walk, could amble deliciously.
"If not a meditative animal himself, his gait conduces to meditation," Owen said, and he continued to dream that art could only be said to have flourished among Mediterranean peoples, until he was roused from his reverie by his horse, who suddenly pricked up his ears and broke into a canter. He had been travelling since six in the morning, and it was now evening; but he was fresh enough to prick up his ears, scenting, no doubt, an encampment, the ashes of former fires, the litter left by some wayfarers, desert wanderers, bedouins, Hebrews.
Owen began his dream again, and he could do so without danger, for his horse hardly required the direction of the bridle even in the thick wood; and while admiring his horse's sagacity in avoiding the trees he pursued his theological fancies, an admirable stillness gathering the while, shadows descending, unaccompanied by the slightest wind, and no sound. Yes, a faint sound! And reigning in his horse, he listened, and all the Arabs about him listened, to the babble coming up through the evening—a soft liquid talking like the splashing of water, or the sound of wings, or the mingling of both, some language more liquid than Italian. What language was being spoken over yonder? One of the Arabs answered, "It is the voice of the lake."
As the cavalcade rode out of the wood the lake lay a glittering mirror before Owen, about a mile wide; he could not determine its length, for the lake disappeared into a distant horizon, into a semblance of low shores, still as stagnant water, reflecting the golden purple of the sunset, and covered with millions of waterfowl. The multitude swimming together formed an indecisive pattern, like a vague, weedy scum collected on the surface of a marsh. Ducks, teal, widgeon, coots, and divers were recognisable, despite the distance, by their prow-like heads, their balance on the water, and their motion through it, "like little galleys," Owen said. Nearer, in the reeds agitated with millions of unseen inhabitants, snipe came and went in wisps, uttering an abrupt cry, going away in a short, crooked flight and falling abruptly. In the distance he saw grey herons and ibises from Egypt. The sky darkened, and through the dusk, from over the hills, thousands of birds continued to arrive, creating a wind in the poplars. Like an army marching past, battalion succeeded battalion at intervals of a few seconds; and the mass, unwinding like a great ribbon, stretched across the lake. Then the mist gathered, blotting out everything, all noise ceased, and the lake itself disappeared in the mist.
Turning in the saddle, Owen saw a hillock and five olive-trees. A fire was burning. This was the encampment.
VI
He had undertaken this long journey in the wilderness for the sake of a few days' falconry, and dreaded a disappointment, for all his life long, intermittently of course, he had been interested in hawks. As a boy he had dreamed of training hawks, and remembered one taken by him from the nest, or maybe a gamekeeper had brought it to him, it was long ago; but the bird itself was remembered very well, a large, grey hawk—a goshawk he believed it to be, though the bird is rare in England. As he lay, seeking sleep, he could see himself a boy again, going into a certain room to feed his hawk. It was getting very tame, coming to his wrist, taking food from his fingers, and, not noticing the open window, he had taken the hawk out of its cage. Was the hawk kept in a cage or chained to the perch? He could not remember, but what he did remember, and very well, was the moment when the bird fluttered towards the window; he could see it resting on the sill, hesitating a moment, doubting its power of flight. But it had ventured out in the air and had reached a birch, on which it alighted. There had been a rush downstairs and out of the house, but the hawk was no longer in the birch, and was never seen by him again, yet it persisted in his memory.
The sport of hawking is not quite extinct in England, and at various times he had caused inquiries to be made, and had arranged once to go to the New Forest and on another occasion to Wiltshire. But something had happened to prevent him going, and he had continued to dream of hawking, of the mystery whereby the hawk could be called out of the sky by the lure—some rags and worsted-work in the shape of a bird whirled in the air at the end of a string. Why should the hawk leave its prey for such a mock? Yet it did; and he had always read everything that came under his hand about hawking with a peculiar interest, and in exhibitions of pictures had always stood a long time before pictures of hawking, however bad they might be.
But Evelyn had turned his thoughts from sport to music, and gradually he had become reconciled to the idea that his destiny was never to see a hawk strike down a bird. But the occasion long looked for had come at last, to-morrow morning the mystery of hawking would cease to be a mystery for him any longer; and as he lay in his tent, trying to get a few hours' sleep before dawn, he asked himself if the realisation of his dream would profit him much, only the certain knowledge that hawks stooped at their prey and returned to the lure; another mystery would have been unravelled, and there were few left; he doubted if there was another; all the sights and shows with which life entices us were known to him, all but one, and the last would go the way the others had gone. Or perhaps it were wiser to leave the last mystery unravelled.
Wrapping himself closer in his blanket he sought sleep again, striving to quiet his thoughts; but they would not be quieted. All kinds of vain questions ran on, questions to which the wisest have never been able to find answers: if it were good or ill-fortune to have been called out of the great void into life, if the gift of life were one worth accepting, and if it had come to him in an acceptable form. That night in his tent it seemed clear that it would be better to range for ever, from oasis to oasis with the bedouins, who were on their way to meet him, than to return to civilisation. Of civilisation it seemed to him that he had had enough, and he wondered if it were as valuable as many people thought; he had found more pleasure in speaking with his dragoman, learning Arabic from him, than in talking to educated men from the universities and such like. Riches dry up the soul and are an obstacle to the development of self. If he had not inherited Riversdale and its many occupations and duties, he would be to-day an instinctive human being instead of a scrapbook of culture. For a rich man there is no escape from amusements which do not amuse; Riversdale had robbed him of himself, of manhood; what he understood by manhood was not brawn, but instincts, the calm of instincts in contradiction to the agitation of nerves. It would have been better to have known only the simple life, the life of these Arabs! Now they were singing about the camp fires. Queer were the intervals, impossible of notation, but the rhythms might be gathered… a symphony, a defined scheme…. The monotony of the chant hushed his thoughts, and the sleep into which he fell must have been a deep one.
A long time seemed to have passed between sleeping and waking….
Throwing his blanket aside, he seized his revolvers. The night was filled with cries as if the camp had been attacked. But the disturbances was caused by the stampeding of the horses; three had broken their tethers and had gone away, after first tumbling into the reeds, over the hills, neighing frantically. As his horse was not one of the three it did not matter; the Arabs would catch their horses or would fail to catch them, and indifferent he stood watching the moon hanging low over the landscape, a badly drawn circle, but admirably soft to look upon, casting a gentle, mysterious light down the lake. The silence was filled with the lake's warble, and the ducks kept awake by the moon chattered as they dozed, a soft cooing chatter like women gossiping; an Arab came from the wood with dry branches; the flames leaped up, showing through the grey woof of the tent; and, listening to the crackling, Owen muttered "Resinous wood… tamarisk and mastic." He fell asleep soon after, and this time his sleep was longer, though not so deep… He was watching hawks flying in pursuit of a heron when a measured tramp of hooves awoke him, and hard, guttural voices.
"The Arabs have arrived," he said, and drawing aside the curtain of his tent, he saw at least twenty coming through the blue dusk, white bournous, scimitars, and long-barrelled guns! "Saharians from the desert, the true bedouin."
"The bedouin but not the true Saharian," his dragoman informed him.
And Owen retreated into his tent, thinking of the hawks which the
Arabs carried on their wrists, and how hawking had been declining in
Europe since the sixteenth century. But it still flourished in
Africa, where to-day is the same as yesterday.
And while thinking of the hawks he heard the voices of the Arabs growing angrier. Some four or five spurred their horses and were about to ride away; but the dragoman called after them, and Owen cried out, "As if it matters to me which hawk is flown first." The quarrel waxed louder, and then suddenly ceased, and when Owen came out of his tent he saw an Arab take the latchet of a bird's hood in his teeth and pull the other end with his right hand. "A noble and melancholy bird," he said, and he stood a long while admiring the narrow, flattened head, the curved beak, so well designed to rend a prey, and the round, clear eye, which appeared to see through him and beyond him, and which in a few minutes would search the blue air mile after mile.
The hawk sprang from the wrist, and he watched the bird flying away, like a wild bird, down the morning sky, which had begun in orange, and was turning to crimson. "Never will they get that bird back! You have lost your hawk," Owen said to the Arab.
The Arab smiled, and taking a live pigeon out of his bournous, he allowed it to flutter in the air for a moment, at the end of a string. A moment was sufficient; the clear round eye had caught sight of the flutter of wings, and soon came back, sailing past, high up in the air.
"A fine flight," the Arab said, "the bird is at pitch; now is the time to flush the covey." A dog was sent forward, and a dozen partridges got up. And they flew, the terrible hawk in pursuit, fearing their natural enemy above them more than any rain of lead. Owen pressed his horse into a gallop, and he saw the hawk drop out of the sky. The partridge shrieked, and a few seconds afterwards some feathers floated down the wind.
Well, he had seen a falcon kill a partridge, but would the falconer be able to lure back his hawk? That was what he wanted to see, and, curious and interested as a boy in his first rat hunt, he galloped forward until stopped by the falconer, who explained that the moment was always an anxious one, for were the hawk approached from behind, or approached suddenly, it "might carry"—that is to say, might bear away its prey for a hundred yards, and when it had done this once it would be likely to do so again, giving a good deal of trouble. The falconer approached the hawk very gently, the bird raised its head to look at the falconer, and immediately after dipped its beak again into the partridge's breast.
Owen expected the bird to fly away, but, continuing to approach, the falconer stooped and reaching out his hand, drew the partridge towards him, knowing the hawk would not leave it; and when he had hold of the jesses, the head was cut from the partridge and opened, for it is the brain the hawk loves; and the ferocity with which this one picked out the eye and gobbled it awoke Owen's admiration again.
"Verily, a thing beyond good and evil, a Nietzschean bird."
He had seen a hawk flown and return to the lure, he had seen a hawk stoop at its prey, and had seen a hawk recaptured; so the mystery of hawking was at an end for him, the mystery had been unravelled, and now there was nothing for him to do but to watch other birds and to learn the art of hawking, for every flight would be different.
The sun had risen, filling the air with a calm, reposeful glow; the woods were silent, the boughs hung lifeless and melancholy, every leaf distinct at the end of its stem, weary of its life, "unable to take any further interest in anything" Owen said, and the cavalcade rode on in silence.
"A little too warm the day is, without sufficient zest in it," one of the falconers remarked, for his hawk was flying lazily, only a few yards above the ground, too idle to mount the sky, to get at pitch; and as the bird passed him, Owen admired the thin body, and the javelin-like head, and the soft silken wings, the feathered thighs, and the talons so strong and fierce.
"He will lose his bird if he doesn't get at pitch," the falconer muttered, and he seemed ashamed of his hawk when it alighted in the branches, and stood there preening itself in the vague sunlight. But suddenly it woke up to its duty, and going in pursuit of a partridge, stooped and brought it to earth.
"A fine kill; we shall have some better sport with the ducks."
Owen asked the dragoman to translate what the falconer said.
"He said it was a fine kill. He is proud of his bird."
Some Arabs rode away, and Owen heard that a boat would be required to put up the ducks; and he was told the duck is the swiftest bird in the air once it gets into flight, but if the peregrine is at pitch it will stoop, and bring the duck to earth, though the duck is by five times the heavier bird. The teal is a bird which is even more difficult for the hawk to overtake, for it rises easier than the duck; but if the hawk be at pitch it will strike down the quick teal. One of the Arabs reined in his horse, and following the line of the outstretched finger Owen saw far away in a small pool or plash of water three teal swimming. As soon as the hawk swooped the teal dived, but not the least disconcerted, the hawk, as if understanding that the birds were going to be put up, rose to pitch and waited, "quite professional like," Owen said. The beautiful little drake was picked out of a tuft of alfa-grass. But perhaps it was the snipe that afforded the best sport.
At mid-day the falconers halted for rest and a meal, and Owen passed all the hawks in review, learning that the male, the tercel, is not so much prized in falconry as the female, which is larger and fiercer. There was not one Barbary falcon, for on making inquiry Owen was told that the bird he was looking at was a goshawk, a much more beautiful hawk it seemed to him than the peregrine, especially in colour; the wings were not so dark, inclining to slate, and under the wings the breast was white, beautifully barred. It stood much higher than the other hawks; and Owen admired the bird's tail, so long, and he understood how it governed the bird's flight, even before he was told that if a hawk lost one of its tail feathers it would not be able to fly again that season unless the feather was replaced; and the falconer showed Owen a supply of feathers, all numbered, for it would not do to supply a missing third feather with a fourth; and the splice was a needle inserted into the ends of the feathers and bound fast with fine thread. The bird's beauty had not escaped Owen's notice, but he had been so busy with the peregrines all the morning that he had not had time to ask why this bird wore no hood, and why it had not been flown. Now he learnt that the gosshawk is a short-winged hawk, which does not go up in the air, and get at pitch, and stoop at its prey like the peregrine, but flies directly after it, capturing by speed of wing, and is used principally for ground game, rabbits, and hares. He was told that it seized the hare or the rabbit by the hind quarters and moved up, finding the heart and lungs with its talons. So he waited eagerly for a hare to steal out of the cover; but none appeared, much to the bird's disappointment—a female, and a very fine specimen, singularly tame and intelligent. The hawk seemed to understand quite well what was happening, and watched for an opportunity of distinguishing herself, looking round eagerly; and so eager was she that sometimes she fell from the falconer's wrist, who took no notice, but let her hang until she fluttered up again; and when Owen reproved his cruelty, he answered:
"She is a very intelligent bird and will not hang by her legs longer than she wants to."
It was in the afternoon that her chance came, and a rare one it was. Two bustards rose out of a clump of cacti growing about a deserted hermitage. The meeting of the birds must have been a chance one, for they went in different directions, and flying swiftly, soon would have put the desert between themselves, and the falconers, and each other, if the bird going eastward had not been frightened by the Arabs coming up from the lake, and, losing its head, it turned back, and flying heavily over the hawking party, gave the goshawk her single chance, a chance which was nearly being missed, the hawk not making up her mind at once to go in pursuit; she had been used for hunting ground game; and for some little while it was not certain that the bustard would not get away; this would have been a pity, for, as Owen learned afterwards, the bird is of great rarity, almost unknown.
"She will get him, she will get him!" the falconer cried, seeing his hawk now flying with determination, and a moment after the bustard was struck down.
As far as sport was concerned the flight was not very interesting, but the bustard is so rarely seen and so wary a bird that even the Arabs, who are not sportsmen, will talk with interest about it, and Owen rode up curious to see this almost fabulous bird, known in the country as the habara, a bird which some ornithologists deny to be the real bustard. Bustard or no bustard, the bird was very beautiful, six or seven pounds in weight, the size of a small turkey, and covered with the most beautiful feathers, pale yellow speckled with brown, a long neck and a short, strong beak, long black legs with three toes, the fourth, the spur, missing. That a hawk should knock over a bustard had not happened often, and he regretted that he knew not how to save the bird's skin, for though stuffed birds are an abomination, one need not always be artistic. And there were plenty at Riversdale. His grandfather had filled many cases, and this rare bird merited the honour of stuffing. All the same, it would have to be eaten, and with the trophy hanging on his saddle bow Owen rode back to the encampment, little thinking he was riding to see the flight which he had been longing to see all his life.
One of the falconers had sent up a cast of hawks, and an Arab had ridden forward in the hope of driving some ducks out of the reeds; but instead a heron rose and, flopping his great wings, went away, stately and decorative, into the western sky. The hawks were far away down on the horizon, and there was a chance that they might miss him; but the falconer waved his lure, and presently the hawks came back; it was then only that the heron divined his danger, and instead of trying to outdistance his pursuers as the other birds had done, and at the cost of their lives, he flopped his wings more vigorously, ringing his way up the sky, knowing, whether by past experience or by instinct, that the hawks must get above him. And the hawks went up, the birds getting above the heron. Soon the attack would begin, and Owen remembered that the heron is armed with a beak on which a hawk might be speared, for is it not recorded that to defend himself the heron has raised his head and spitted the descending hawk, the force of the blow breaking the heron's neck and both birds coming down dead together.
"Now will this happen?" he asked himself as he watched the birds now well above the heron. "That one," Owen cried, "is about to stoop."
And down came the hawk upon the heron, but the heron swerved cleverly. Owen followed the beautiful shape of the bird's long neck and beak, and the trailing legs. The second hawk stooped. "Ah! now he is doomed," Owen cried. But again the heron dodged the hawk cleverly, and the peregrine fell past him, and Owen saw the tail go out, stopping the descent.
Heron and hawks went away towards the desert, Owen galloping after them, watching the aerial battle from his saddle, riding with loose rein, holding the rein lightly between finger and thumb, leaving his horse to pick his way. Again a hawk had reached a sufficient height and stooped; again the heron dodged, and so the battle continued, the hawks stooping again and again, but always missing the heron, until at last, no doubt tired out, the heron failed to turn in time: heron and hawk came toppling out of the sky together; but not too quickly for the second hawk, which stooped and grappled the prey in mid-air.
Owen touched his horse with the spur; and, his eyes fixed on the spot where he had seen the heron and hawks falling, he galloped, regardless of every obstacle, forgetful that a trip would cost him a broken bone, and that he was a long way from a surgeon.
But Owen's horse picked his way very cleverly through the numerous rubble-heaps, avoiding the great stones protruding from the sand…. These seemed to be becoming more numerous; and Owen reined in his horse…. He was amid the ruins of a once considerable city, of which nothing remained but the outlying streets, some doorways, and many tombs, open every one of them, as if the dead had already been resurrected. Before him lay the broken lid of a sarcophagus and the sarcophagus empty, a little sand from the desert replacing the ashes of the dead man. Owen's horse approached it, mistaking it for a drinking trough; "and it will serve for one," he said, "in a little while after the next rainfall. Some broken capitals, fragments of columns, a wall built of narrow bricks, a few inscriptions… all that remains of Rome, dust and forgetfulness."
About him the Arabs were seeking a heron and hawks; a falconer galloped across the plain, waving a lure, in pursuit of another hawk, so Owen was informed by his dragoman—as if falcon or heron could interest him at that moment—and he continued to peer into the inscription, leaving the Arabs to find the birds. And they were discovered presently among some marbles, the heron's wings outstretched in death, the great red wound in its breast making it seem still more beautiful.
VII
The lake water was salt, but there was a spring among the hills, and when the hawks were resting (they rested every second day) Owen liked to go there and lie under the tamarisks, dreaming of Sicily, of "the visionary flocks" and their shepherds no less visionary, comparing the ideal with the real, for before him flocks grazed up the hillside and his eyes followed the goats straying in quest of branches, their horns tipped with the wonderful light which threw everything into relief—the bournous of the passing bedouin, the woman's veil, whether blue or grey, the queer architecture of the camels and dromedaries coming up through a fold in the hills from the lake, following the track of the caravans, their long, bird-like necks swinging, looking, Owen thought, like a great flock of migrating ostriches.
It was pleasant to lie and dream this pastoral country and its people, seen through a haze of fine weather which looked as if it would never end. The swallows had just come over and were tired; Owen was provoking enough to drive them out of the tamarisks just to see how tired they were, and was sorry for one poor bird which could hardly keep out of his way. Whence had they come? he asked, returning to a couch of moss. Had any of them come from Riversdale? Perhaps some had been hatched under his own eaves? (Any mention of Riversdale was sufficient to soften Owen's heart.) And now under the tamarisks his thoughts floated about that bleak house and its colonnade, thinking of a white swallow which had appeared in the park one year; friends were staying with him, every one had wanted to shoot it, but leave had not been granted; and his natural kindness of heart interested him as he lay in the shade of the tamarisks, asking himself if the white swallow would appear, thinking that the bird ought to nod to him as it passed, smiling at the thought, and the smile dying as his dragoman approached; for he was coming to teach him Arabic. Owen liked to exercise his intelligence idly; a number of little phrases had already been picked up, and his learning he tried on the bedouins as they came up the hill from the lake, preferring speech with them rather than with his own people, for his own people might affect to understand him, his dragoman might have prompted them, whereas the new arrivals afforded a more certain examination, and Owen was pleased when the bedouin understood him.
Next day he was hawking, and the day after he was again under the tamarisks learning Arabic, and so the days went by between sport and study without his perceiving them until one morning Owen found the spring in possession of a considerable caravan, some five and twenty or thirty camel-drivers and horsemen; and anxious to practise the last phrases he had acquired, he went forward to meet the Saharians, for they were easily recognisable as such by the blacker skin and a pungent blackness in the eyes. The one addressed by Owen delighted him by answering without hesitation:
"From Laghouat."
The hard, guttural sound he gave to the syllables threw the word into wonderful picturesqueness, enchanting Owen. It was the first time he had heard an Arab pronounce this word, so characteristically African; and he asked him to say it again for the pleasure of hearing it, liking the way the Saharian spoke it, with an accent at once tender and proud, that of a native speaking of his country to one who has never seen it.
"How far away is—?"
Owen tried to imitate the guttural.
"Fifteen days' journey."
"And what is the road like?"
With the superlative gesture of an Arab the man showed the smooth road passing by the encampment, moving his arms slowly from east to west to indicate the circuit of the horizon.
"That is the Sahara," he added, and Owen could see that for the bedouin there was nothing in the world more beautiful than empty space and low horizons. It was his intention to ask what were the pleasures of the Sahara, but he had come to the end of his Arabic and turned to his dragoman reluctantly. Dragoman and Saharian engaged in conversation, and presently Owen learned that the birds in the desert were sand grouse and blue pigeons, and when the Saharian gathered that these did not afford sufficient sport he added, not wishing a stranger should think his country wanting in anything:
"There are gazelles."
"But one cannot catch gazelles with hawks."
"No," the Saharian answered, "but one can catch them with eagles."
"Eagles!" Owen repeated. "Eagles flying after gazelles!" And he looked into the Arab's face, lost in wonderment, seeing a picturesque cavalcade going forth, all the horses beautiful, champing at their bits.
"But the Arab is too picturesque," he thought; for Owen, always captious, was at that moment uncertain whether he should admire or criticise; and the Arabs sat grandly upright in their high-pummelled saddles of red leather or blue velvet their slippered feet thrust into great stirrups. He liked the high-pummelled saddles; they were comfortable to ride long distances in, and it was doubtless on these high pummels that the Arabs carried the eagles (it would be impossible to carry so large a bird on a gloved hand); and criticism melted into admiration. He could see them riding out with the eagles tied to the pummels of their saddles, looking into the yellow desert; the adjective seemed to him vulgar—afterwards he discovered the desert to be tawny. "It must be a wonderful sight… the gazelle pursued by the eagle!" So he spoke at once to his dragoman, telling him that he must prepare for a long march to the desert.
"To the desert!" the dragoman repeated.
"Yes, I want to see gazelles hunted by eagles," and the grave Arab looked into Owen's blonde face, evidently thinking him a petulant child.
"But your Excellency—" He began to talk to Owen of the length of the journey—twenty days at least; they would require seven, eight, or ten camels; and Owen pointed to the camels of the bedouins from the Sahara. The dragoman felt sure that his Excellency had not examined the animals carefully; if his Excellency was as good a judge of camels as he was of horses, he would see that these poor beasts required rest; nor were they the kind suited to his Excellency. So did he talk, making it plain that he did not wish to travel so far, and when Owen admitted that he had not fixed a time to return to Tunis the dragoman appeared more unwilling than ever.
"Well, I must look out for another dragoman"; and remembering that one of his escort spoke French, and that himself had learned a little Arabic, he told the dragoman he might return to Tunis.
"Well, my good man, what do you want me to do?" And seeing that the matter would be arranged with or without him, the Arab offered his assistance, which was accepted by Owen, and it now remained for the new dragoman to pay commission to the last, and for both to arrange with the Saharians for the purchase of their camels and their guidance. Laghouat was Owen's destination; from thence he could proceed farther into the desert and wander among the different archipelagoes until the summer drove him northward.
The sale of the camels—if not their sale, their hire—for so many months was the subject of a long dispute in which Owen was advised not to interfere. It would be beneath his dignity to offer any opinion, so under the tamarisks he sat smoking, watching the Arabs taking each other by the shoulders and talking with an extraordinary volubility. It amused him to watch two who appeared to have come to an understanding. "They're saying, 'Was there ever any one so unreasonable? So-and-so, did you hear what he said?'" Drawing long pipes from their girdles, these two would sit and smoke in silence till from the seething crowd a word would reach them, and both would rush back and engage in the discussion as violently as before.
Sometimes everything seemed to have been arranged and the dragoman approached Owen with a proposal, but before the proposal could be put into words the discussion was renewed.
"In England such a matter as the sale of a few camels would not occupy more than half a dozen minutes."
"All countries have their manners and all have their faults," the dragoman answered, an answer which irritated Owen; but he had to conceal his irritation, for to show it would only delay his departure, and he was tired of hawking, tired of the lake and anxious to see the great desert and its oases. And he felt it to be shameful to curse the camels. Poor animals! they had come a long way and required a few days' rest before beginning their journey homewards.
Three days after they were judged to be sufficiently rested; this did not seem to be their opinion, for they bleated piteously when they were called upon to kneel down, so that their packs might be put upon them, and upon inquiring as to the meaning of their bleats Owen was told they were asking for a cushion—"Put a cushion on my back to save me from being skinned."
"Hail to all!"
And the different caravans turned north and south, Owen riding at the head of his so that he might think undisturbed, for now that everything had been decided, he was uncertain if the pleasure he would get from seeing gazelles torn by eagles, would recompense him for the trouble, expense, and fatigue of this long journey. He turned his horse to the right, and moved round in his saddle, so that he might observe the humps and the long, bird-like necks and the shuffling gait of the camels. They never seemed to become ordinary to him, and he liked them for their picturesqueness, deciding that the word "picturesque" was as applicable to them as the word "beautiful" is applicable to the horse. He liked to see these Arab horses champing at their cruel bits, arching their crests; he liked their shining quarters, his own horse a most beautiful, courageous, and faithful animal, who would wait for him for hours, standing like a wooden horse; Owen might let him wander at will: for he would answer his whistle like a dog and present the left side for him to mount, from long habit no doubt. And the moment Owen was in the saddle his horse would draw up his neck and shake all the jingling accoutrements with which he was covered, arch his neck, and spring forward; and when he did this Owen always felt like an equestrian statue. And he admired the camel-drivers, gaunt men so supple at the knee that they could walk for miles, and when the camel broke into a trot the camel-driver would trot with him. And the temperance of these men was equal to that of their beasts, at least on the march; a handful of flour which the camel-driver would work into a sort of paste, and a drink from a skin was sufficient for a meal. Running by the side of their beasts, they urged them forward with strange cries; and they beguiled the march with songs. His musical instincts were often awakened by these and by the chants which reached him through the woof of his tent at night. He fell to dreaming of what a musician might do with these rhythms until his thoughts faded into a faint sleep, from which he was awakened suddenly by the neighing of a horse: one had suddenly taken fire at the scent of a mare which a breeze had carried through the darkness.
The first bivouacs were the pleasantest part of his journey, despite the fact that he could find no answer to the question why. he had undertaken it, or why he was learning Arabic; all the same, these days would never be forgotten; and he looked round… especially these nights, every one distinct in his mind, the place where yesterday's tent had been pitched, and the place where he had laid his head a week ago, the stones which three nights ago had prevented him from sleeping.
"These experiences will form part of my life, a background, an escapement from civilisation when I return to it. We must think a little of the future—lay by a store like the bees"; and next morning he looked round, his eyes delighting in the beauty of the light. Truly a light sent from beyond skies in which during the course of the day every shade of blue could be distinguished. A thin, white cloud would appear towards evening, stretch like a skein of white silk across the sky, to gather as the day declined into one white cloud, which would disappear, little by little, into the sunset. As Owen rode at the head of his cavalcade he watched this cloud, growing smaller, and its diminishing often inspired the thought of a ship entering into a harbour, sail dropping over sail.
The pale autumn weather continued day after day; everything in the landscape seemed fixed; and it seemed impossible to believe that very soon dark clouds would roll overhead, and wind tear the trees, and floods dangerous to man and horse rush down the peaceful river beds, now nearly dry, only a trickle of water, losing itself among sandy reaches.
During the long march of twenty days the caravan passed through almost every kind of scenery—long plains in which there was nothing but reeds and tussocked grass, and these plains were succeeded by stony hills covered with scrub. Again they caught sight of Arab fires in the morning like a mist, at night lighting up the horizon; and a few days afterwards they were riding through an oak forest whose interspaces were surprisingly like the tapestries at Riversdale, only no archer came forward to shoot the stag; and he listened vainly, for the sounds of hunting horns.
On debouching from the forest they passed through pleasantly watered valleys, the hillsides of which were cultivated. It was pleasant to see fields again, though they were but meagre Arab fields. All the same Owen was glad to see the blue shadows of the woods marking the edge of these fields, for they carried his thoughts back to England, to his own fields, and in his mood of mind every remembrance of England was agreeable. He was beginning to weary of wild nature, so it was pleasant to see an Arab shepherd emerge from the scrub and come forward to watch for a moment and then go away to the edge of a ravine where his goats were browsing, and sit upon a rock, followed by a yellow dog with a pointed face like a fox. It was pleasant, too, to discover the tents of the tribe at a little distance, and the next day to catch sight of a town, climbing a hill so steep that it was matter for wonderment how camels could be driven through the streets.
The same beautiful weather continued—blue skies in which every shade of blue could be studied; skies filled with larks, the true English variety, the lark which goes about in couples, mounting the blue air, singing, as they mounted, a passionate medley of notes, interrupted by a still more passionate cry of two notes repeated three or four times, followed again by the same disordered cadenzas. The robin sings in autumn, and it seemed strange to Owen to hear this bird singing a solitary little tune just as he sings it in England—a melancholy little tune, quite different from the lark's passionate outpouring, just its own quaint little avowal, somewhat autobiographical, a human little admission that life, after all, is a very sad thing even to the robin? Why shouldn't it be? for he is a domestic bird of sedentary habits, and not at all suited to this African landscape. All the same, it was nice to meet him there. A blackbird started out of the scrub, chattered, and dived into a thicket, just as he would in Riversdale.
"The same things," Owen said, "all the world over." On passing through a ravine an eagle rose from a jutting scarp; and looking up the rocks, two or three hundred feet in height, Owen wondered if it was among these cliffs the bird built its eerie, and how the young birds were taken by the Arabs. Crows followed the caravan in great numbers, and these reminded Owen of his gamekeeper, a solid man, six feet high, with reddish whiskers, the most opaque Englishman Owen had ever seen. "'We must get rid of some of them,'" Owen muttered, quoting Burton. "'Terrible destructive, them birds,'"
Among these remembrances of England, a jackal running across the path, just as a fox would in England, reminded Owen that he was in Africa; and though occasionally one meets an adder in England, one meets them much more frequently in the North of Africa. It was impossible to say how many Owen had not seen lying in front of his horse like dead sticks. As the cavalcade passed they would twist themselves down a hole. As for rats, they seemed to be everywhere, and at home everywhere, with the adders and with the rabbits; any hole was good enough for the rat. The lizards were larger and uglier than the English variety, and Owen never could bring himself to look upon them with anything but disgust—their blunt head, the viscous jaws exuding some sort of scum; and he left them to continue their eternal siesta in the warm sand.
That evening, after passing through a succession of hills and narrow valleys, the caravan entered the southern plain, an immense perspective of twenty or thirty miles; and Owen reined up his horse and sat at gaze, watching the dim greenness of the alfa-grass striped with long rays of pale light and grey shadows. But the extent of the plain could not be properly measured, for the sky was darkening above the horizon.