"In a way, yes. Here she might be hidden for a while in some house of the village: it's a rabbit warren, as you can see. Whereas, round the douar lies the desert open to all eyes. Still, it's easier to get out of a tent than a house."
"Well, let's be off and see for ourselves, instead of guessing," proposed his friend with an air of cheerfulness. Manöel knew the errand which had brought Corporal St. George (and incidentally himself) to Djazerta at this eleventh hour, but Max and he had never spoken together of Colonel DeLisle's daughter Sanda except casually, as Ourïeda's guest. Manöel, his thoughts centred upon his own affairs, had no idea that Mademoiselle DeLisle was personally of importance in St. George's life. If he had seen that Max was anxious, he would have taken the anxiety for sympathy with him, or else the nervousness of a keen soldier who had only eight days' leave and small provision for delays.
Having finished their discussion, they politely refused an invitation, in the absent Agha's name, to spend the night in his guest house, and started out to retrace some kilometres of the track they had just travelled. This, thought the Agha's head gatekeeper, was a foolish decision, no matter how pressing might be the soldier's business with Ben Râana, for already it was past sunset, and there was no moon. These men were strangers, and could not know their way to the douar except as it was described to them. But what could one expect? Their leader was a Roumi, a Christian dog, and all such were fools in the eyes of God's children who knew that the lesson of life was patience.
CHAPTER XIX
WHAT HAPPENED AT DAWN
Sanda DeLisle's short life had not been brilliantly happy. She had known the ache of feeling herself unwanted by the only two human beings of paramount importance in her world: her almost unknown father, and her adored "Sir Knight" and hero Richard Stanton. But never for more than a few hours of concentrated pain, like those at Algiers, had she suffered for herself as she suffered for Ourïeda.
The "Little Rose," defenceless against the men who had power over her fate (as all Arab women are defenceless, unless they choose death instead of life), appealed to the latent motherhood that slept in the heart of Sanda, as in the heart of every normal girl: appealed to the romance in her: appealed to the sympathy born of her own love for Stanton, which seemed as hopeless as Ourïeda's love for Manöel Valdez. Would Manöel come in answer to one of those secretly sent letters? Would anything happen to save Ourïeda from Tahar? The girl brought up to be a Roman Catholic prayed to the Blessed Virgin. The girl brought up to be a Mohammedan prayed to Allah. And the prayers of both, ascending from different altars, like smoke of incense in a Christian church and in a mosque, rose toward the same heaven. Yet no help came; and the summer days slipped by, until at last it was September, the month fixed for the wedding.
With the subtlety and soft cowardice of Mussulman women, young or old, Ourïeda said no word to her father of her loathing for Tahar. When Sanda begged her to tell him at least so much of the truth and trust to his love, the girl replied always dully and hopelessly in the same way: it would be useless. He was very fond of her, for her dead mother's sake and her own. But the fire of youth had died down in his heart. He had forgotten how he felt when love was the greatest thing on earth. Besides, his own wife had been the exception to all womanhood, in his eyes. The child she had left had been his dear plaything, his consolation. Now he counted upon her to fulfil the ambitions of his life, thwarted so far, because she had been a daughter. To have his nephew, his heir by law, become the father of his grandsons, was his best hope now, and nothing except Ourïeda's death or Tahar's death would make him give it up.
"My dear nurse Embarka would kill Tahar for me if she could get at him," the "Little Rose" said one day, calmly. "That would end my trouble, but she cannot reach him, and there is no one she can trust among those who cook or serve food in the men's part of our house."