A Soldier of the Legion

by C. N. Williamson; A. M. Williamson

Ourïeda no longer pleaded. She had given up hope, and resigned herself with the deadly calmness of resignation which only women of the Mussulman faith can feel. It was clear that her will was not as Allah's will. And women came not on earth for happiness. It was not sure that they even had souls.

"Allah has appointed that I marry my cousin Tahar," she said to Sanda, "and I shall marry him, because I have not another stiletto nor any poison, and I am always watched so that, even if I had the courage, I could not throw myself down from the roof. But afterward—I am not sure yet what I shall do. All I know is that I shall never be a wife to Tahar. Something will happen to one of us. It may be to me, or it may be to him. But something must happen."

The Agha himself had caused to be built at Djazerta a hammam copied in miniature after a fine Moorish bath in Algiers, at which he bathed when he went north to attend the governor's yearly ball. All Arab brides of high rank or low must go through great ceremonies of the bath in the week of the wedding feast, and no exception could be made in Ourïeda's case. The privacy of the hammam was secured for the Agha's daughter by hiring it for a day, and no one was to be admitted to the women's part of the bath except the few ladies who had enough social importance to expect invitations. That Lella Mabrouka and Sanda would be there was a matter of course; and, besides them, there were the wives and daughters of two or three sheikhs and caids, all of whom Sanda already knew by sight, as they had paid ceremonious visits to the great man's harem since her arrival at Djazerta.

The Agha had a carriage, large, old-fashioned, and musty-smelling, but lined with gold-stamped crimson silk from Tunis. It could be used only between his house and the town, or to reach the oasis just beyond, for there was nowhere else to go; but, drawn by stalwart mules in Spanish harness, for years it had taken the ladies of his household to the baths and back. Lella Mabrouka and Taous (both veiled, though they had passed the age of attractiveness when hiding the face is obligatory) chaperoned the bride and her friend, the coachman and his assistant being fat and elderly eunuchs.

At the doorway of the domed building, the only new one in Djazerta, there was much stately fuss of screening the ladies as they left the seclusion of the carriage. Then came a long, tiled corridor, which opened into a room under the dome of the hammam, and there the party was met not only by bowing female attendants, but by the guests, who had arrived early to welcome them. Ourïeda was received with pretty cries and childlike, excited chattering, not only by her girl friends, but the older women. All were undressed, ready for the bath, or they could not have followed the bride to the hot rooms; and that was the object and pleasure of the visit. Every one shrieked compliments as the clothing of the Agha's daughter was delicately removed by the beaming negresses; and gifts of gold-spangled bonbons, wonderfully iced cakes, crystallized fruit, flowers, gilded bottles of concentrated perfume, mother-o'-pearl and tortoise boxes, gaudy silk handkerchiefs made in Paris for Algerian markets, and little silver fetiches were presented to the bride. She thanked the givers charmingly, though in a manner so subdued and with a face so grave that the visitors would have been astonished had not Lella Mabrouka explained that she had been ill with an attack of fever.

From hot room to hotter room the women trooped, resting, when they felt inclined, upon mattings spread on marble, while the bride, the queen of the occasion, was given a divan. They ate sweets and drank pink sherbet or syrup-sweet coffee, and, instead of being bathed by one of the attendants, Ourïeda was waited upon by a great personage who came to Djazerta only for the weddings of the highest. Originally she was from Tunis, where her profession is a fine art; but having been superseded there she had moved to Algiers, then to Touggourt; and thence the Agha had summoned her for his daughter. She was Zakia, la hennena, a skilled beautifier of women; and she had been sent for, some days in advance of the great occasion, in order (being past her youth) to recover from the fatigue of the journey. None of the young girls had ever seen her, and exclaiming with joy they fingered her scented pastes and powders.

This bridal bath ceremony, being more intricate than any ordinary bath, took a long time, and when it was over, and Ourïeda a perfumed statue of ivory, the cooling-room was entered for the dyeing of the bride's hair. The girl's face showed how she disliked the process; but it being an unwritten law that the hair of an Arab bride must be coloured with sabgha, she submitted. After the first shudder she sat with downcast eyes, looking indifferent, for nothing mattered to her now. Since Manöel would never see it again, and perhaps it would soon lie deep under earth in a coffin, she cared very little after all that the long hair he had thought beautiful must lose its lovely sheen for fashion's sake.

Now and then, as she worked, Zakia stooped over her victim, bringing her old, peering face close to the bowed face of the girl to make sure the dye did not touch it. Sanda, who had been grudgingly granted a thin muslin robe for the bath because of her strange Roumia ideas of baring the face and covering the body, noticed these bendings of la hennena, but thought nothing of them until she happened to catch a new expression in Ourïeda's eyes. Suddenly the gloom of hopelessness had gone out of them: and it could not be that this was the effect of the compliments rained upon her in chorus by the guests, for until that instant the most fantastic praise of hair, features, and figure had not extorted a smile. What could the woman have said to give back in an instant the girl's lost bloom and sparkle? Sanda wondered. It was like a miracle. But it lasted only for a moment. Then it seemed that by an effort Ourïeda masked herself once more with tragedy. She turned one of her slow, sad glances toward her aunt; and Sanda was sure she looked relieved on seeing Lella Mabrouka absorbed in talk with the plump wife of a caid.

According to custom in great houses of the south, la hennena was escorted, after the women's fête at the hammam, to the home of the bride, where she was to spend the remainder of the festive week in heightening the girl's beauty. She was given the guest-room of the harem, second in importance to that occupied by Colonel DeLisle's daughter. This, as it happened, was nearer to Ourïeda's room than Sanda's or even Lella Mabrouka's; and as, during the two days that followed, Zakia was almost constantly occupied in blanching the bride's ivory skin with almond paste, staining her fingers red as coral with a decoction of henna and cochineal, and saturating her hair and body with a famous permanent perfume, sometimes Lella Mabrouka and Taous ventured to leave the two girls chaperoned only by la hennena. That was because neither had seen the sudden light in Ourïeda's eyes after the face of Zakia had approached hers at the hammam.

For the first day there was no solution of the mystery for Sanda, who had waited to hear she knew not what. But at last, in a room littered with pastes and perfume bottles, and lighted by the traditional long candles wound with coloured ribbon, Ourïeda spoke, in Arabic, that the hennena might not be hurt.