CHAPTER XV
THE SECRET LINK
The Hand of Fatma was gone from the sky. Ruby had turned to amethyst, amethyst to the gray-blue of star sapphire, and the red fire of the dunes had burned out to an ashen pallor. The change had come suddenly while the girls talked; and when Sanda realized it, she shivered a little, with a touch of superstition she had learned from her two Irish aunts. All this cold whiteness after the jewelled blaze of colour was like the death of youth and hope. She pushed the thought away hastily, telling herself it had come only because Ourïeda had threatened to put an end to her own life rather than marry Tahar; yet it would not go far away. Like a vaguely visible, ghostly shape it seemed to stand behind the Arab girl as she talked on, telling the story of her childhood and a love that had grown with her growth.
There was another cousin, it appeared, the son of her mother's sister. He was all Spanish. There was not a drop of Arab blood in his veins, unless it came through Saracen ancestors in the days when Moorish kings reigned over Andalusia.
"You know, now you've been with us even these few days," Ourïeda said, "that the harem of an Arab Caïd isn't a nest of wives, as people in Europe who have never seen one suppose! My father has laughed when he told me Christians believed that. Now, Aunt Mabrouka and I and our servants are the only women in my father's harem; but when I was a little girl, before my mother died—I can just remember her—besides my mother herself there was her sister, whose Spanish husband had been drowned at sea. An Arab man thinks it a disgrace if any women related even distantly to him or his wife are thrown on the world to make their own living. It could never happen with an Arab woman if she were respectable. And even though my mother's sister was Spanish and a Christian, my father offered her and her boy a home. Already his own sister, Aunt Mabrouka, had come to stay with us, and had brought her son Tahar. Neither of the boys lived in the harem of course, for they were old enough to be in the men's part of the house, and have men for their servants; but they came every day to see their mothers. Even then, though I was a tiny child, I hated Tahar—and loved Manöel Valdez. Tahar had had smallpox, and looked just as he looks now, only worse, because he has a bad chin that his beard hides; and Manöel was handsome. Oh, you can't imagine how handsome Manöel was! He was like the ideal all girls, even Arab girls, must dream of, I think. I can see him now—as plainly as I see you in this sad, pale light that comes up from the desert at night."
"Is it long since you parted?" Sanda asked quickly, to put away that persistent thought of trouble.
"We parted more than once, because when our two mothers died, one after another, of the same sickness—typhoid fever—Manöel was sent away to school. He's nine years older than I am—twenty-five now; a little more than three years younger than Tahar. My father sent him to the university in Algiers, because, you see, he was Christian—or, rather, he was nothing at all then; he had not settled to any belief. Tahar was like Aunt Mabrouka, very religious, and did not care much to study, except the Koran and a little French. He went once to Paris, but he didn't stay long. He said he was homesick. Oh, he is clever in his way! He has known how to make himself necessary to my father."
"And Manöel Valdez?" asked Sanda.
"My father loved him when he was a boy, because he was of the same blood as my mother. Although Aunt Mabrouka was jealous even then—for she ruled in the house after my mother's death—she couldn't prejudice my father's mind against Manöel, hard as she tried. Manöel was free to come here when he liked, for his holidays, or to the douar if we were there; and he loved life under the great tent. He had a wonderful voice, and he could sing our Arab songs as no one else ever could. Father wished him to be a lawyer, and gave money for his education, because we Arabs often need lawyers who understand us. But Manöel cared more for music than anything else—except for me. When I was eight and he was seventeen I told him I meant to marry him when I grew up, and he said he would wait for me. I suppose he was only joking then; but the thought of him and the love of him in my heart made me begin to grow into a woman sooner than if I had had only the thoughts of a child. It was like the sun opening a flower bud. When he was away I felt hardly alive. When he came back from Spain to our house or to our tent in the douar I lived—lived every minute! It was three years ago, when I was thirteen, that he began to love me as a woman. I shall never forget the day he told me! I was not hadjaba yet. Do you know what that means? I was considered to be a child still, and I could go out with my aunt to the baths, or with one of our servants, unveiled. I was not shut up in the house as I am now. But in my heart I was a woman, because of Manöel. And when he came home after nearly a year in Seville and other parts of Spain he felt and saw the difference in me. We were in the douar, and life was free and beautiful. For three months Manöel and I kept our secret. He said he would do anything to have me for his wife. He would even become Mohammedan, since religion meant little to him, and love everything. He had no money of his own, but he had been told that he could make a fortune with his voice, singing in opera, and he had been taking lessons without telling my father. A Frenchman—is "impresario" the right word?—was having his voice trained, and by and by Manöel would pay him back out of his earnings. We used to call ourselves "engaged," as girls and men in Europe are engaged to each other in secret. But one day, soon after my thirteenth birthday, Aunt Mabrouka, who must have begun to suspect and spy on us, overheard us talking. She told my father. At first he wouldn't believe her, but he surprised me into confessing. I should never have been so stupid, only, from what he said, I thought he already knew everything. After all, it was so little! Just words of love, and some dear kisses! He suspected there was more; and if I hadn't made him understand, he might have killed Manöel, and me, too. But even as it was, my father and Aunt Mabrouka hurried me from the douar in the night, before Manöel knew that anything had happened. I was brought here; and never since have I been outside this garden without a veil. It was months before I went out at all. And Manöel was sent away, cursed by my father for ingratitude and treachery, warned never to come again near Djazerta or the douar as long as he lived, unless he wished for my death as well as his."
"Have you never seen him since?" Sanda asked, her heart beating fast with the rush of the story as Ourïeda had told it.