Part 13

“‘The conversation appeared to be carried on by signs,’ he responded. ‘That did not make it less but more dangerous.’

“I’m afraid I was rude, and whistled softly.

“‘Monsieur l’Aumônier,’ I said, ‘you must forgive me, but this air is certainly the very devil.’

“He smiled, not without irony.

“‘I became aware of that myself, monsieur, when first I came to live in Beni-Kouidar. But I am a priest, and—well, monsieur, I was given the strength to say: “Get thee behind me, Satan.”’

“A softer look came into his sunburnt, wrinkled face.

“‘Better take your friend away as soon as possible,’ he added, ‘or there will be trouble.’”

III

“That night I found myself confronted by a Marnier whom I had never seen before. The desert wine had gone to the lad’s brain. That was certain. No intonations of the Oxford don lurked in the voice. No reminiscences of the Oxford ‘High’ clung about the manner. A man sober and the same man drunk are scarcely more different than the Marnier who had ridden with me up the sandy street of Beni-Kouidar the previous day and the man who sat opposite to me at dinner in the ‘Rendezvous des Amis’ that night. I knew in a moment that the aumônier was right, and that I must get the lad away at once from the intoxicant which nature poured out over this far-away city. His eyes were shining feverishly, and when I mentioned Mr. Ruskin in a casual way he looked unutterably bored.

“‘Ruskin and all those fellows seem awfully slow and out of place here,’ he exclaimed. ‘One doesn’t want to bother about them in the Sahara.’

“I changed the subject.

“‘There doesn’t seem very much to see here,’ I said carelessly. ‘We might get away the day after to-morrow, don’t you think?’

“He drew his brows down.

“‘The horses won’t be sufficiently rested,’ he said curtly.

“‘Oh yes; I fancy they will.’

“‘Well, I don’t fancy I shall. The long ride took it out of me.’

“‘Turn in to-night, then, directly after dinner.’

“He looked at me with sharp suspicion. I met his gaze blandly.

“‘I mean to,’ he said after a short pause.

“I knew he was telling me a lie, but I only said: ‘That’s right!’ and resolved to keep an eye on him.

“Directly dinner was over he sprang up from the table.

“‘Good-night,’ he said.

“And before I could reply he was out of the _salle-à-manger_; and I heard him tramp along the brick floor of the passage, go into his room, and bang the door.

“The aumônier was getting up from his little table, and shaking the crumbs from his soutane.

“‘You are quite right, monsieur,’ I said to him. ‘I must get my friend away.’

“‘I shall be sorry to lose you,’ replied the good priest. ‘But—desert air, desert air!’

“He shook his head, half wistfully, half laughingly, bowed, put on his broad-brimmed black hat, and went out.

“After a moment I followed him. I stood in the doorway of the inn, and lit a cigar. I knew Marnier was not going to bed, and meant to catch him when he came out, and join him. In common politeness he could scarcely refuse my company, since he had asked me as a favour to let him come with me to Beni-Kouidar. I waited, watching the moon rise, till my cigar was smoked out. Then I lit another. Still he did not come. I heard the distant throb of tomtoms beyond the Bureau Arabe in the quarter of the freed negroes. They were having a fantasia. I began to think that I must have been mistaken, and that Marnier had really turned in. So much the better. The ash dropped from the stump of my second cigar, and the deserted camel market was flooded with silver from the moon-rays. I knew there was only one door to the inn. Slowly I lit a third cigar.

“A large cloud went over the face of the moon. A gust of wind struck my face. Suddenly the night had changed. The moon looked forth again, and was again obscured. A second gust struck me like a blow, and my face was stung by a multitude of sand grains. I heard steps behind me in the brick passage, turned swiftly, and saw the landlord.

“‘I must shut the door, m’sieu,’ he said. ‘There’s a bad sandstorm coming up.’

“As he spoke the wind roared, and over the camel market a thick fog seemed to fall abruptly. It was a sheet of sand from the surrounding dunes. I threw away my cigar, stepped into the passage, and the landlord banged the door, and drove home the heavy bolts.

“Then I went to Marnier’s room, and knocked. I felt sure, but I thought I would make sure before going to my room.

“No answer.

“I knocked again loudly.

“Again no answer.

“Then I turned the handle, and entered.

“The room was empty. I glanced round quickly. The small window was open. All the windows of the inn were barred, but, as I learned later, a bar in Marnier’s had been broken, and was not yet replaced when we arrived at Beni-Kouidar. In consequence of this it was possible to squeeze through into the arcade outside. This was what Marnier had done. My precise, gentlemanly, reserved, and methodical acquaintance had deliberately given me the slip by sneaking out of a window like a schoolboy, and creeping round the edge of the inn to the _fosse_ that lay in the shadow of the sand dunes. As I realised this I realised his danger.

“I ran to my room, fetched my revolver, slipped it into my pocket, and hurried to the front door. The landlord heard me trying to undo the bolts, and came out protesting.

“‘M’sieu cannot go out into the storm.’

“‘I must.’

“‘But m’sieu does not know what Beni-Kouidar is like when the sand is blown on the wind. It is _enfer_. Besides, it is not safe. In the darkness m’sieu may receive a _mauvais coup_.’

“‘Make haste, please, and open the door. I am going to fetch my friend.’

“He pulled the bolts, grumbling and swearing, and I went out into _enfer_. For he was right. A sandstorm at night in Beni-Kouidar is hell.

“Luckily, Safti joined me mysteriously from the deuce knows where, and we staggered to the dancing-house somehow, and struggled in, blinded, our faces scored, our clothes heavy with sand, our pockets, our very boots, weighed down with it.

“The tomtoms were roaring, the pipe was yelling, blown by the frantic demon with his hood full of latch keys, the impassible, bearded faces were watching the painted women who, in their red garments and their golden crowns, promenaded down the earthen floor, between the divans, fluttering their dyed fingers, smiling grotesquely like idols, bending forward their greasy foreheads to receive the tribute of their admirers.

“I ran my eyes swiftly over the mob. Marnier was not in it. I pushed my way towards the doorway on the left which gave on to the court of the dancers.

“Safti caught hold of my arm.

“‘It is not safe to go in there on such a night, Sidi. There are no lamps. It is black as a tomb. And no one can tell who may be there. Nomads, perhaps, men of evil from the south. Many murders have been done in the court on black nights, and no one can say who has done them. For all the time men go in and out to the rooms of the dancers.’

“‘Nevertheless, Safti, I must⸺’

“I stopped speaking, for at this moment Batouch, the brother of the Caïd of Beni-Kouidar, came slowly in through the doorway from the blackness of the sand-swept court. There was a strange smile on his handsome face, and he was caressing his black beard gently with one delicate hand. He saw me, smiled more till I caught the gleam of his white teeth, passed on into the dancing-house, sat down on a divan, and called for coffee. I could not take my eyes from him. Every movement he made fascinated me. He drew from his pale blue robe a silver box, opened it, lifted out a pinch of tobacco, and began carefully to roll a cigarette. And all the time he smiled.

“A glacial cold crept over my body. As he lit his cigarette I caught hold of Safti, and hurried through the doorway into the blackness of the whirling sand.”

* * * * *

Here I stopped.

“Well?” said young England. “Well?”

The doctor did not speak.

“Well,” I answered. “Algia danced that night. While she was dancing we found a dead body in the court. It was Marnier’s. A knife had been thrust into him from behind!”

“Ah!” said the doctor.

“But—” exclaimed young England, “it was that fellow? It was Batouch?”

I shrugged my shoulders.

“Nobody ever found out who did it.”

“Well, but of course⸺”

He checked himself, and an expression of admiration dawned slowly over his healthy, handsome face.

“I say,” he said, “to be able to roll a cigarette directly afterwards! What infernal cheek!”

“Desert air!” I replied. “My dear chap—desert air!”

The doctor nodded.

“_FIN TIREUR_”

Two years ago I was travelling by diligence in the Sahara Desert on the great caravan route, which starts from Beni-Mora and ends, they say, at Tombouctou. For fourteen hours each day we were on the road, and each evening about nine o’clock we stopped at a Bordj, or Travellers’ House, ate a hasty meal, threw ourselves down on our gaudy Arab rugs, and slept heavily till the hour before dawn, drugged by fatigue and by the strong air of the desert. In the late afternoon of the third day of our journeying we drove into a sandstorm. A great wind arose, carrying with it innumerable multitudes of sand grains, which whirled about the diligence and the struggling horses, blotting out the desert as completely as a London fog blots out the street on a November day. The cold became intense, and very soon I began to long for the next halting-place.

“Where do we stop to-night?” I shouted to the French driver, who, with his yellow toque pulled down over his ears, was chirping encouragement to his horses.

“Sidi-Hamdane,” he answered, without turning his head. “At the inn of ‘Fin Tireur.’”

Three hours later we drew up before a low building, from which a light shone kindly, and I scrambled down stiffly, and lurched into the longed-for shelter.

There was a man in the doorway, a short, sturdy, middle-aged Frenchman, with strong features, a tuft of grey beard, heavy eyebrows, and dark, prominent eyes, with a hot, shining look in them.

“_Bon soir_, m’sieu,” he said.

“_Bon soir_,” I answered.

This was my host, the innkeeper whom the driver had called “Fin Tireur.”

I found out afterwards that he was not only landlord of the desolate inn, but cook, garcon; in fact, the whole personnel. He lived there absolutely alone, and was the only European in this Arab village lost in the great spaces of the Sahara. This information I drew from him while he waited upon me at dinner, which I ate in solitude. My companions of the diligence were Arabs, who had melted away like ghosts into the desolation so soon as the diligence had rolled into the paved courtyard round which the one-storied house was built.

When I had finished dinner I lit a cigar. I was now quite alone in the bare _salle-à-manger_. The storm was at its height; the sand was driven like hail against the wooden shutters of the windows, and I felt dreary enough. The French driver was no doubt supping in the kitchen with the landlord, perhaps beside a fire. I began to long for company, for warmth, and I resolved to join them. I opened the door, therefore, and peered out into the passage. There was no sound of voices; but I saw a light at a little distance, went towards it, and found myself in a small kitchen, where the landlord was sitting alone by a red wood fire in the midst of his pots and pans, smoking a thin black cigar, and reading a dirty number of the _Journal Anti-Juif_ of Algiers. He put it down politely as I came in.

“You’re alone, monsieur,” I said.

“Yes, m’sieu. The driver has gone to see to the horses.”

I offered him one of my Havanas, which he accepted with alacrity, and drew up with him before the fire.

“You have been living here long, monsieur?”

“Twenty years, m’sieu.”

“Twenty years alone in this desert place!”

“Nineteen years alone, m’sieu. Before that I had my little Marie.”

“Marie?”

“My child, m’sieu. She is buried in the sand behind the inn.”

I looked at him in silence. His brown, wrinkled face was calm, but in his prominent eyes there was still the hot shining look I had observed in them when I arrived.

“The palms begin there,” he added. “Year by year I have saved what I could, and now I have bought all the palm-trees near where she lies.”

He puffed away at his Havana.

“You come from France?” I asked presently.

“From the Midi—I was born at Cassis, near Marseille.”

“Don’t you ever intend to go back there?”

“Never, m’sieu. Would you have me desert my child?”

“But,” I said gently, “she is dead.”

“Yes; but I have promised her that her _bon papa_ will lie with her presently for company. Leave her alone with the Arabs!”

A sudden look of horror came into his face.

“You don’t like the Arabs?”

“Like the dirty dogs! You haven’t been told about me, m’sieu?”

“Only that your name was ‘Fin Tireur.’”

“‘Fin Tireur.’ Yes; that’s what they call me in the desert.”

“You’re a sportsman? A ‘capital shot’?”

He laughed suddenly, and his laugh made me feel cold.

“Oh! they don’t call me ‘Fin Tireur’ because I can hit gazelle, and bring them home for supper. No, no! Shall I tell you why?”

He looked at me half defiantly, half wistfully, I thought.

“But if I do, perhaps your stomach will turn against the food I cooked with these hands,” he added suddenly, stretching out his hands towards me. “You are English, m’sieu?”

“Yes.”

“Then I daresay you won’t understand.”

“I think I shall,” I answered, looking full at him.

The way he had spoken of his child had drawn me to him. Whatever he had done, I felt that chivalry and tenderness were in this man.

“Why do they call you ‘Fin Tireur’?”

“The men of the Midi, m’sieu, are not like the men of the rest of France,” said Fin Tireur—“at least so they say. We are boasters, perhaps; but we’ve got more love of adventure, more wish to see the world, and do something big in it. They’re talkers, you know, in the Midi, and they tell of what they’ve done. I heard them at Cassis when I was a boy, and one day I saw a Zouave in front of the inn balcony, where folks come on fête days to eat the bouillabaisse. The talk I had heard made me wish to rove; but when I saw the Zouave, in his big red trousers and blue and red jacket, I said to myself: ‘As soon as my three years’ service is over I’ll go to Africa, and make my fortune.’ I did my three years at Grenoble, m’sieu, and when it was done I carried out my resolve. I came to Africa; but I didn’t come alone.”

He puffed at his cigar for a minute or two, and the hot look in his eyes became more definite, like a fanned flame.

“You took a comrade?”

“I took a wife, a girl of Cassis. A good girl she was then.”

He paused again, then continued, in rather a loud voice: “She was good, m’sieu, because she had seen nothing. That’s often the way. It was I who put it into her head that there were things to be seen better than rocks, and dead white dusty roads, and fishing boats against the quay. I’ve thought of that since I—since I got my name of Fin Tireur. Her name was Marie, and she was eighteen when we stood before the priest. Next day we went to Marseille, and took the boat for Algiers. Our heads were full of I don’t know what. We thought we were clever ones, and should do well in a country like Africa. And so we did at first. We got into a hotel at Algiers. She was housemaid, and I was porter in the hall, and what with the goings and comings—strangers giving us a little when we’d done our best for them—we made some money, and we saved it. And I wish to God we’d spent it, every sou!”

His voice became fierce for a moment. Then he continued, with an obvious effort to be calm: “You see, m’sieu, at Algiers we had nothing to say to the Arabs. With the money we’d saved we left Algiers, and came into the desert to take a café which was to let near the station at Beni-Mora.”

“I’ve just come from there.”

“They call it ‘Au Retour du Sahara.’”

“I’ve had coffee there.”

“That was ours, and there little Marie was born. In those days there weren’t many strangers in Beni-Mora. The railway had only just come there, and it was wild enough. Very few, except the Arabs. Well, they were often our customers. We learned to talk a bit of their language, and they a bit of ours; and, having no friends out there, I might say we made sort of friends with some of them. The dirty dogs! The camels!”

He struck his clenched hand down on the table. As he talked he had lost his former consciousness of my close observation.

“But they know how to please women, m’sieu.”

“They are often very handsome,” I said.

“It isn’t only that. They can stare a woman down as a wild beast can, and that’s what women like. I never so much as looked on them as men—not in that way, for a Cassis woman, m’sieu. But Marie⸺”

He choked, ground his teeth on his cigar stump, let it drop, and stamped out the glowing end on the brick floor with his heel.

“She served them, m’sieu,” he resumed, after clearing his throat. “But I was mostly there, and I don’t see how—but women can always find the way. Well, one day she went to what they call a sand-diviner. She didn’t pretend anything. She told me she wanted to go, and I was ready. I was always ready that she should have any little pleasure. I couldn’t leave the café, so she went off alone to a room he had by the Garden of the Gazelles, at the end of the dancing-street.”

“I know—over the place where they smoke the kief.”

“She didn’t answer, but went and sat down under the arbour, opposite to where they wash the clothes. I followed her, for she looked ill.

“‘Did he read in the sand for you?’ I said.

“‘Yes,’ she said; ‘he did.’

“‘What things did he read?’

“She turned, and looked right at me. ‘That my fate lies in the sand,’ she said—‘and yours, and hers.’

“And she pointed at little Marie, who was playing with a yellow kid we had then just by the door.

“‘What’s that to be afraid of?’ I asked her. ‘Haven’t we come to the desert to make our fortune, and isn’t there sand in the desert?’

“‘Not much by here,’ she said.

“And that’s true, m’sieu. It’s hard ground, you know, at Beni-Mora.”

“Yes,” I said, offering him another cigar.

He refused it with a quick gesture.

“She never would say another word as to what the sand-diviner had told her; but she was never the same from that day. She was as uneasy as a lost bitch, m’sieu; and she made me uneasy too. Sometimes she wouldn’t speak to our little one when the child ran to her, and sometimes she’d catch her up, and kiss her till the little one’s cheek was as red as if you’d been striking it. And then one day, after dark, she went.”

“Went!”

“I’d been ill with fever, and gone to spend the night at the sulphur baths; you know, m’sieu, Hammam-Salahkin, under the mountains. I came back just at dawn to open the café. When I got off my mule at the door I heard”—his face twitched convulsively—“the most horrible crying of a child. It was so horrible that I just stood there, holding on to the bridle of the mule, and listening, and didn’t dare go in. I’d heard children cry often enough before; but—_mon Dieu!_—never like that. At last I dropped the bridle, and went in, with my legs shaking under me. I found the little one alone in the house, and like a mad thing. She’d been alone all night.”

His face set rigidly.

“And her mother knew I should be all night at the Hammam,” he said. “Fin Tireur—yes, it was coming back, and finding my little one left like that in such a place, made me earn the name.”

He fell suddenly into a moody silence. I broke it by saying: “It was the sand-diviner?”

He looked at me sharply. “I don’t know.”

“You never found out?”

“At Beni-Mora the women go veiled,” he said harshly.

Suddenly I realised the horror of the situation: the deserted husband living on with his child in the midst of the ordained and close secrecy of Beni-Mora, where many of the women never set foot out of doors, and those who do, unless they are the public dancers, are so heavily veiled that their features cannot be recognised.

“What did you do?” I asked.

“I searched, as far as one can search in an Arab town, and found out nothing. I wanted to tear the veil from every woman in the place; and then I was sent away from Beni-Mora.”

“By whom?”

“The French authorities, my own countrymen,” he laughed bitterly. “To save me from getting myself murdered, m’sieu.”

“You would have been.”

“Why not? Then I came here to keep the inn for the diligence that carries the mails to the south, for I wouldn’t leave the country till⸺”

He paused.

“And the sand-diviner?”

“I left him at Beni-Mora. He smiled, and said he knew no more than I; and perhaps he didn’t. How was I to tell?”

“But your name of Fin Tireur?”

“Ah!”—the thing in his eyes glowed like a thing red-hot—“I’d been here eleven months when, one afternoon of summer, just near sunset, I heard a noise of drums beating and African pipes screaming, and the snarl of camels on the road you came to-night. I was in the house, in this room where we are sitting now, and little Marie was playing just outside by the well, so that I could see her through the window. By the sounds, I knew a great caravan was coming up, and passing towards the south. They always water at the well, and I stood by the window to see them. Little Marie stood too, shading her eyes with her bit of a hand. The drums and pipes got louder, and round the corner of the inn came as big a caravan as I’ve ever seen; near a hundred camels, horsemen, and led mules and donkeys, Kabyle dogs and goats, the music playing all the time, and a Caïd’s flag flying in the front. They made for the well, as I knew they would, and little Marie stood all the while watching them. M’sieu, there were square packs on some of the camels, and veiled women on the packs.”

He looked across at me hard.

“Veiled women?” I repeated.

“When they got to the well they made the camels kneel for the women to get down; and one of the women, when she was down, caught sight of Marie standing there, with her little hand shading her eyes. That woman gave a great cry behind her veil. I heard it, m’sieu, as I stood by the window there, and I saw the woman run at the little one.”

He got up from his seat slowly, and stood by the wooden shutter, against which the sand was driven by the wind.

“In a place like this, m’sieu, one keeps a revolver here.”

He put his hand to a pocket at the back of his breeches, brought out a revolver, and pointed it at the shutter.

“When I heard the woman cry I took my revolver out. When I saw the woman run I fired, and the bullet struck the veil.”

He put the revolver back into his pocket, and sat down again quietly.

“And that’s why they call me Fin Tireur.”

I said nothing, and sat staring at him.

“When the camels had been watered the caravan went on.”

“But—but the Arabs⸺”

“The Caïd had the body tied across a donkey—they told me.”

“You didn’t see?”

“No. I took the little one in. She was screaming, and I had to see to her. It was two days afterwards, when I was at the market, that a scorpion stung her. She was dead when I came back. Well, m’sieu, are you sorry you ate your supper?”

Before I could reply, the door opening into the courtyard gaped, and the driver entered, followed by a cloud of whirling sand grains.

“_Nom d’un chien!_” he exclaimed. “Get me a tumbler of wine, for the love of God, Fin Tireur. My throat’s full of the sand. _Sacré nom d’un nom d’un nom!_”

He pulled off his coat, turned it upside down, and shook the sand out of the pockets, while Fin Tireur went over to the corner of the kitchen where the bottles stood in a row against the earthen wall.

_HALIMA AND THE SCORPIONS_

In travelling about the world one collects a number of those trifles of all sorts, usually named “curiosities,” many of them worthless if it were not for the memories they recall. The other day I was clearing out a bureau before going abroad, and in one of the drawers I came across a hedgehog’s foot, set in silver, and hung upon a tarnished silver chain. I picked it up in the Sahara, and here is its history.