Chapter XXIII: Two Love Stories

If it had not been for her absorbing thought of Sabron, Julia would have reveled in the desert and the new experiences. As it was, its charm and magic and the fact that he traveled over it helped her to endure the interval.

In the deep impenetrable silence she seemed to hear her future speak to her. She believed that it would either be a wonderfully happy one, or a hopelessly withered life.

"Julia, I can not ride any farther!" exclaimed the comtesse.

She was an excellent horsewoman and had ridden all her life, but her riding of late had consisted of a canter in the Bois de Boulogne at noon, and it was sometimes hard to follow Julia's tireless gallops toward an ever-disappearing goal.

"Forgive me," said Miss Redmond, and brought her horse up to her friend's side.

It was the cool of the day, of the fourteenth day since Tremont had left Algiers and the seventh day of Julia's excursion. A fresh wind blew from the west, lifting their veils from their helmets and bringing the fragrance of the mimosa into whose scanty forest they had ridden. The sky paled toward sunset, and the evening star, second in glory only to the moon, hung over the west.

Although both women knew perfectly well the reason for this excursion and its importance, not one word had been spoken between them of Sabron and Tremont other than a natural interest and anxiety.

They might have been two hospital nurses awaiting their patients.

They halted their horses, looking over toward the western horizon and its mystery. "The star shines over their caravan," mused Madame de la Maine (Julia had not thought Thérèse poetical), "as though to lead them home."

Madame de la Maine turned her face and Julia saw tears in her eyes. The Frenchwoman's control was usually perfect, she treated most things with mocking gaiety. The bright softness of her eyes touched Julia.

"Thérèse!" exclaimed the American girl. "It is only fourteen days!"

Madame de la Maine laughed. There was a break in her voice. "Only fourteen days," she repeated, "and any one of those days may mean death!"

She threw back her head, touched her stallion, and flew away like light, and it was Julia who first drew rein.

"Thérèse! Thérèse! We can not go any farther!"

"Lady!" said Azrael. He drew his big black horse up beside them. "We must go back to the tents."

Madame de la Maine pointed with her whip toward the horizon. "It is cruel! It ever recedes!"

* * * * * * *

"Tell me, Julia, of Monsieur de Sabron," asked Madame de la Maine abruptly.

"There is nothing to tell, Thérèse."

"You don't trust me?"

"Do you think that, really?"

In the tent where Azrael served them their meal, under the ceiling of Turkish red with its Arabic characters in clear white, Julia and Madame de la Maine sat while their coffee was served them by a Syrian servant.

"A girl does not come into the Sahara and watch like a sentinel, does not suffer as you have suffered, _ma chère_, without there being something to tell."

"It is true," said Miss Redmond, "and would you be with me, Thérèse, if I did not trust you? And what do you want me to tell?" she added naively.

The comtesse laughed.

"_Vous êtes charmante_, Julia!"

"I met Monsieur de Sabron," said Julia slowly, "not many months ago in Palestine. I saw him several times, and then he went away."

"And then?" urged Madame de la Maine eagerly.

"He left his little dog, Pitchouné, with me, and Pitchouné ran after his master, to Marseilles, flinging himself into the water, and was rescued by the sailors. I wrote about it to Monsieur de Sabron, and he answered me from the desert, the night before he went into battle."

"And that's all?" urged Madame de la Maine.

"That's all," said Miss Redmond. She drank her coffee.

"You tell a love story very badly, _ma chère_."

"Is it a love story?"

"Have you come to Africa for charity? _Voyons!_"

Julia was silent. A great reserve seemed to seize her heart, to stifle her as the poverty of her love story struck her. She sat turning her coffee-spoon between her fingers, her eyes downcast. She had very little to tell. She might never have any more to tell. Yet this was her love story. But the presence of Sabron was so real, and she saw his eyes clearly looking upon her as she had seen them often; heard the sound of his voice that meant but one thing--and the words of his letter came back to her. She remembered her letter to him, rescued from the field where he had fallen. She raised her eyes to the Comtesse de la Maine, and there was an appeal in them.

The Frenchwoman leaned over and kissed Julia. She asked nothing more. She had not learned her lessons in discretion to no purpose.

At night they sat out in the moonlight, white as day, and the radiance over the sands was like the snow-flowers. Wrapped in their warm coverings, Julia and Thérèse de la Maine lay on the rugs before the door of their tent, and above their heads shone the stars so low that it seemed as though their hands could snatch them from the sky. At a little distance their servants sat around the dying fire, and there came to them the plaintive song of Azrael, as he led their singing:

"And who can give again the love of yesterday?
Can a whirlwind replace the sand after it is scattered?
What can heal the heart that Allah has smited?
Can the mirage form again when there are no eyes to see?"

"I was married," said Madame de la Maine, "when I was sixteen."

Julia drew a little nearer and smiled to herself in the shadow.

This would be a real love story.

"I had just come out of the convent. We lived in an old château, older than the history of your country, _ma chère_, and I had no _dot_. Robert de Tremont and I used to play together in the _allées_ of the park, on the terrace. When his mother brought him over, when she called on my grandmother, he teased me horribly because the weeds grew between the stones of our terrace. He was very rude.

"Throughout our childhood, until I was sixteen, we teased each other and fought and quarreled."

"This is not a love-affair, Thérèse," said Miss Redmond.

"There are all kinds, _ma chère_, as there are all temperaments," said Madame de la Maine. "At Assumption--that is our great feast, Julia--the Feast of Mary--it comes in August--at Assumption, Monsieur de la Maine came to talk with my grandmother. He was forty years old, and bald--Bob and I made fun of his few hairs, like the children in the Holy Bible."

Julia put out her hand and took the hand of Madame de la Maine gently. She was getting so far from a love-affair.

"I married Monsieur de la Maine in six weeks," said Thérèse.

"Oh," breathed Miss Redmond, "horrible!"

Madame de la Maine pressed Julia's hand.

"When it was decided between my grandmother and the comte, I escaped at night, after they thought I had gone to bed, and I went down to the lower terrace where the weeds grew in plenty, and told Robert. Somehow, I did not expect him to make fun, although we always joked about everything until this night. It was after nine o'clock."

The comtesse swept one hand toward the desert. "A moon like this--only not like this--_ma chère_. There was never but that moon to me for many years.

"I thought at first that Bob would kill me,--he grew so white and terrible. He seemed suddenly to have aged ten years. I will never forget his cry as it rang out in the night. 'You will marry that old man when we love each other?' I had never known it until then.

"We were only children, but he grew suddenly old. I knew it then," said Madame de la Maine intensely, "I knew it then."

She waited for a long time. Over the face of the desert there seemed to be nothing but one veil of light. The silence grew so intense, so deep; the Arabs had stopped singing, but the heart fairly echoed, and Julia grew meditative--before her eyes the caravan she waited for seemed to come out of the moonlit mist, rocking, rocking--the camels and the huddled figures of the riders, their shadows cast upon the sand.

And now Tremont would be forever changed in her mind. A man who had suffered from his youth, a warm-hearted boy, defrauded of his early love. It seemed to her that he was a charming figure to lead Sabron.

"Thérèse," she murmured, "won't you tell me?"

"They thought I had gone to bed," said the Comtesse de la Maine, "and I went back to my room by a little staircase, seldom used, and I found myself alone, and I knew what life was and what it meant to be poor."

"But," interrupted Julia, horrified, "girls are not sold in the twentieth century."

"They are sometimes in France, my dear. Robert was only seventeen. His father laughed at him, threatened to send him to South America. We were victims."

"It was the harvest moon," continued Madame de la Maine gently, "and it shone on us every night until my wedding-day. Then the duke kept his threat and sent Robert out of France. He continued his studies in England and went into the army of Africa."

There was a silence again.

"I did not see him until last year," said Madame de la Maine, "after my husband died."