Chapter III: Part 3

Bouvier was a small, pinched man, with a narrow face, evenly red in colour, large ears that stood out from his closely shaven head, and hot-looking, prominent brown eyes.

“Perhaps she’s taken with some Arab,” he said.

“P’f! She’s dropped all that nonsense. The devil! A woman of forty’s an old woman in Africa.”

Bouvier spat.

“Isn’t she?”

“Oh, don’t ask me about women. Young or old, they’re always calling the Devil to their elbow.”

“What for?”

“To put them up to wickedness. Perhaps your wife’s been calling him to-night. You look behind her presently, and you may catch a sight of him. He’s always about where women are.”

“Ha, ha, ha!”

Lemaire laughed mirthlessly.

“D’you think he’d show himself to me?”

He emptied his glass. Bouvier suddenly looked terrible—looked like the man who had put three bullets into his sleeping guest.

“How did I know?” he said.

He leaned across the table towards Lemaire.

“How did I know?” he repeated in a low voice.

“What—when your wife——”

“Yes. They didn’t let me see anything. They were too sharp. No; it was one night I saw _him_, with his mouth at her ear, coming in behind her through the door like a shadow. There!”

He sat back with his hands on his knees. Lemaire stared at him again.

Again the wind rustled furtively through the diseased vine-leaves of the arbour.

“It was then that I got out my revolver and charged it,” continued Bouvier, in a less mysterious voice, as of one returned to practical life. “For I knew she’d been up to some villainy. Pass the bottle!”...

“Pass the bottle!... Why don’t you pass the bottle?”

“Pardon!”

Lemaire pushed the bottle over to his friend.

“What’s the matter with you to-night?”

“Nothing. You mean to say ... why d’you talk such nonsense? D’you think I’m a fool to be taken in by rubbish like that?”

“Well, then, why did you sit just as if you’d seen him?”

“I’m a bit tired to-night, that’s what it is. We went a long way. The wine’ll pull me together.”

He poured out another glass.

“You don’t mean to say,” he continued, “you believe in the Devil?”

“Don’t you?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Why not! Why should I? Nobody does—me, I mean. That sort of thing is all very well for women.”

Bouvier said nothing, but sat with his arms on the table, staring out towards the desert. He looked at the empty road just in front of him, let his eyes travel along until it disappeared into the night.

“I say, that sort of thing is all very well for women,” repeated Lemaire.

“I hear you.”

“But I want to know whether you don’t think the same.”

“As you?”

“Yes; to be sure.”

“I might have done once.”

“But you don’t now?”

“There’s a devil in the desert; that’s certain.”

“Why?”

“Because I tell you he came out of the desert to turn my wife wrong.”

“Then you weren’t joking?”

“Not I. It’s as true as that I went and charged my revolver, because I saw what I told you. Here’s Madame coming out to join us.”

Lemaire shifted heavily and abruptly in his chair.

“Hallo!” he said, in a brutal tone of voice. “What’s up with you to-night?”

As he spoke he stared hard at his wife’s shoulder, just by her ear.

“Nothing. What are you looking at? There isn’t——”

She put up her hand quickly to her shoulder and felt over her dress.

“Ugh!” She shook herself. “I thought you’d seen a scorpion on me.”

Bouvier, whose red face seemed to be deepening in colour under the influence of the red Algerian wine, burst out laughing.

“It wasn’t a scorpion he was looking for,” he exclaimed. His thin body shook with mirth till his chair creaked under him.

“It wasn’t a scorpion,” he repeated.

“What was it, then?” said Madame Lemaire.

She looked from one man to the other—from the one who was strange in his laughter, to the other who was even stranger in his gravity.

“What have you been saying about me?” she said, with a flare-up of suspicion.

“Well,” said Bouvier, recovering himself a little, “if you must know, we were talking about the Devil.”

The woman stared and gave the table a shake. Some of her husband’s wine was spilled over it.

“The Devil take you!” he bawled with sudden fury.

“I only wish he would!”

The two men jumped back as if a viper of the sands had suddenly reared up its thin head between them.

“I only wish he would!”

It was Marie Bretelle who had spoken, the girl of Marseilles, who still lived in the body of Marie Lemaire. But it was Marie Lemaire from whom the two men shrank away—Marie Lemaire changed, startling, terrible, her haggard face furious with expression, her thin hands clutching at the edge of the table, from which the wine-bottle had fallen, to be smashed at their feet.

For a moment there was a dead silence succeeding that second shrill cry. Then Lemaire scrambled up heavily from his chair.

“What do you mean?” he stammered. “What do you mean?”

And then she told him, like a fury, and with the words which had surely been accumulating in her mind, like water behind a dam, for ten years. She told him what she had wanted, and what she had had. And when at last she had finished telling him, she stood for a minute, making mouths at him in silence, as if she still had something to say, some final word of summing up.

“Stop that!”

It was Lemaire who spoke; and as he spoke he thrust out one of his white, shaking hands to cover that nightmare mouth. But she beat his hand down, and screamed, with the gesture.

“And if the Devil himself would come along the road to fetch me from this cursed place, I’d go with him! D’you hear? I’d go with him! I’d go with him!”

When the scream died away, one-eyed Hadj was standing at the entrance to the arbour. Madame Lemaire felt that he was there, turned round, and saw him.

“I’d go with him if he was an Arab,” she said, but almost muttering now, for her voice had suddenly failed her, though her passion was still red-hot. “Even the Arabs—they’re better than you, absinthe-soaked, do-nothing Roumis, who sit and drink, drink——”

Her voice cracked, went into a whisper, disappeared. She thrust out her hand, swept the glasses off the table to follow the bottle, turned, and went out of the arbour softly on her slippered feet.

And one-eyed Hadj stood there laughing, for he understood French very well, although he was half mad with keef.

“She’d go with an Arab!” he repeated. “She’d go with an Arab!” And then he saw his master.

The two Frenchmen sat staring at one another across the empty table under the shivering vine-leaves, which were now stirred continually by the wind of night. Lemaire’s large face had gone a dusky grey. About his eyes there was a tinge of something that was almost lead colour. His loose mouth had dropped, and the lower lip disclosed his decayed teeth. His hands, laid upon the table as if for support, shook and jumped, were never still even for a second.

Bouvier was almost purple. Veins stood out about his forehead. The blood had gone to his ears and to his eyes. Now he leaned across to Lemaire.

“Beat her!” he said. “Beat her for that! Hadj heard her. If you don’t beat her, the Arabs——”

But before he had finished the sentence Lemaire had got up, with a wild gesture of his shaking hand, and gone unsteadily into the house.

That night Madame Lemaire suffered at the hands of her husband, while Bouvier and Hadj listened in the darkness of the court.

3

It was drawing towards evening on the following day, and Madame Lemaire was quite alone in the inn. Hadj had gone to the village for some more keef, and Lemaire and Bouvier had set out together in the morning for Batna.

So she was quite alone. Her face was bruised and discoloured near the right eye. Her head ached. She felt immensely listless. To-day there was no activity in her misery. It seemed a slow-witted, lethargic thing, undeserving even of respect.

There were no customers. There was nothing to do, absolutely nothing. She went heavily into the arbour, and sank down upon a chair. At first she sat upright. But presently she spread her arms out upon the table, and laid her discoloured face on them, and remained so for a long time.

Any traveller, passing by on the road from the desert, would have thought that she was asleep. But she was not asleep. Nor had she slept all night. It is not easy to sleep after such punishment as she had received.

And no traveller passed by.

The flies, finding that the woman kept quite still, settled upon her face, her hair, her hands, cleaned themselves, stretched their legs and wings, went to and fro busily upon her. She never moved to drive them away.

She was not thinking just then. She was only feeling—feeling how she was alone, feeling that this enormous sun-dried land was about her, stretching away to right and left of her, behind her and before, feeling that in all this enormous, sun-dried land there was nobody who wanted her, nobody thinking of her, nobody coming towards her to take her away into a different life, into a life that she could bear.

All this she was dully feeling.

Perfectly still were the diseased vine-leaves above her head, motionless as she was. On them the insects went to and fro, actively leading their mysterious lives, as the flies went to and fro on her.

For a long time she remained thus. All the white road was empty before her as far as eye could see. No trail of smoke went up by the growing crops beside the distant tents of the Spahis. It seemed as if man had abandoned Africa, leaving only one of God’s creatures there, this woman who leaned across the discoloured table with her bruised face hidden on her arms.

The hour before sunset approached, the miraculous hour of the day, when Africa seems to lift itself towards the light that will soon desert it, as if it could not bear to let the glory go, as if it would not consent to be hidden in the night. Upon the salt mountain the crystals glittered.

The details of the land began to live as they had not lived all day. The wonderful clearness came, in which all things seem filled with supernatural meaning. And, even in the dullness of her misery, habit took hold of Madame Lemaire.

She lifted her head from her arms, and she stared down the long white road. Her gaze travelled. It started from the patch of glaring white before the arbour, and it went away like one who goes to a tryst. It went down the road, and on, and on. It reached the green of the crops. It passed the Spahis’ tents. It moved towards the distant mountains that hid the plains and the palms of Biskra.

The flies buzzed into the air.

Madame Lemaire had got up from her seat. With her hands laid flat upon the table she stared at the thread of white that was the limit of her vision. Then she lifted her hands and curved them, and put them above her eyes to form a shade. And then she moved and came out to the entrance of the arbour.

She had seen a black speck upon the road.

There was dust around it. As so often before she asked herself the question: “Who is it coming towards the inn from the desert?” But to-day she asked herself the question as she had never asked it before, with a sort of violence, with a passionate eagerness, with a leaping expectation. And she stepped right out into the road, as if she would go and meet the traveller, would hasten with stretched-out hands as to some welcome friend.

The sun dropped its burning rays upon her hair, and she realised her folly, took her hands from her eyes, and laughed to herself. Then she went back to the arbour and stood by the table waiting. Slowly—very slowly it seemed to Madame Lemaire—the black speck grew larger on the white. But there was very much dust to-day, and always the misty cloud was round it, stirred up by—was it a camel’s padding feet, or the hoofs of a horse, or—? She could not tell yet, but soon she would be able to tell.

Now it was approaching the watered land, was not far from the Spahis’ tents. And a great fear came upon her that it might turn aside to them, that it might be perhaps a Spahi riding home from his patrol of the desert. She felt that she could not bear to be alone any longer; that if she could not see and speak to someone before sunset she must go mad.

The traveller passed before the Spahis’ camp without turning aside; and now the dust was less, and Madame Lemaire could see that it was a Nomad mounted on a camel.

With a smothered exclamation she hurried into the inn. A sudden resolve possessed her. She would prepare a couscous. And then, if the Nomad desired to pass on without entering the inn, she would detain him.

She would offer him a couscous for nothing, only she must have company. Whoever the stranger was, however poor, however filthy, ragged, hideous, or even terrible, he must stay a while at the inn, distract her thoughts for an instant.

Without that she would go mad.

Quickly she began her preparations. There was time. He could not be here for twenty minutes yet, and the meal for a couscous was all ready. She had only to——

She moved frantically about the kitchen.

Twenty minutes later she heard the peevish roar of a camel from the road, and ran out to meet the Nomad, carrying the couscous. As she came into the arbour she noticed that it was already dark outside.

The night had fallen suddenly.

* * * * *

That night, as Lemaire and Bouvier were nearing the inn, riding slowly upon their mules, they heard before them in the darkness the angry snarling of a camel.

Almost immediately it died away.

“Madame has company,” said Bouvier. “There’s a customer at the Retour du Desert.”

“Some damned Arab!” said Lemaire. “Come for a coffee or a couscous. Much good that’ll do us!”

They rode on in silence. When they reached the inn, the road before it was empty.

“_Mai foi_,” said Bouvier. “Nobody here! The camel was getting up, then, and Madame is alone again.”

“Marie!” called Lemaire. “Marie! The absinthe!”

There was no reply.

“Marie! _Nom d’un chien!_ Marie! The absinthe! Marie!”

He let his heavy body down from the mule.

“Where the devil is she? Marie! Marie!”

He went into the arbour, stumbled over something, and uttered a curse.

In reply to it there was a shrill and prolonged howl from the court.

“What is it? What’s the dog up to?” said Bouvier, whipping out his revolver and following Lemaire. “The table knocked over! What’s up? D’you think there’s anything wrong?”

The Kabyle dog howled again, slunk into the arbour from the court, and pressed itself against Lemaire’s legs. He gave it a kick in the ribs that sent it yelping into the night.

“Marie! Marie!”

There was the anger of alarm in his voice now; but no one answered his call.

Walking furtively, the two men passed through the doorway into the kitchen. Lemaire struck a match, lit a candle, took it in his hand, and they searched the inn, and the court, then returned to the arbour. In the arbour, close to the overturned table, they found a broken bowl, with a couscous scattered over the earth beside it. Several vine-leaves were trodden into the ground near by.

“Someone’s been here,” said Lemaire, staring at Bouvier in the candlelight, which flickered in his angry and distressed eyes. “Someone’s been. She was bringing him a couscous. See here!”

He pointed with his foot.

Bouvier laughed uneasily.

“Perhaps,” he said—“perhaps it was the Devil come for her. You remember! She said last night, if he came, she’d go with him.”

The candle dropped from Lemaire’s shaking hand.

“Damn you! Why d’you talk like that?” he exclaimed furiously. “She must be somewhere about. Let’s have an absinthe. Perhaps she’s gone to the village.”

They had an absinthe and searched once more.

Presently Hadj, who was half mad with keef, joined them. The rumour of what was going forward had got about in the village; and other Arabs glided noiselessly through the night to share in the absinthe and the quest, for that night Lemaire forgot to lock up the bottle.

* * * * *

But the hostess of the inn at El-Kelf has not been seen again.

THE CRUCIFIXION OF THE OUTCAST

By W. B. YEATS

From The Secret Rose, by W. B. Yeats.
Copyright, 1914, by the Macmillan Company.

A man, with thin brown hair and a pale face, half ran, half walked along the road that wound from the south to the Town of the Shelly River. Many called him Cumhal, the son of Cormac, and many called him the Swift, Wild Horse; and he was a gleeman, and he wore a short parti-coloured doublet, and had pointed shoes, and a bulging wallet. Also he was of the blood of the Ernaans, and his birth-place was the Field of Gold; but his eating and sleeping places were the four provinces of Eri, and his abiding place was not upon the ridge of the earth. His eyes strayed from the Abbey tower of the White Friars and the town battlements to a row of crosses which stood out against the sky upon a hill a little to the eastward of the town, and he clenched his fist, and shook it at the crosses. He knew they were not empty, for the birds were fluttering about them; and he thought, how, as like as not, just such another vagabond as himself was hanged on one of them; and he muttered; “If it were hanging or bow-stringing, or stoning or beheading, it would be bad enough. But to have the birds pecking your eyes and the wolves eating your feet! I would that the red wind of the Druids had withered in his cradle the soldier of Dathi, who brought the tree of death out of barbarous lands, or that the lightning, when it smote Dathi at the foot of the mountain, had smitten him also, or that his grave had been dug by the green-haired and green-toothed merrows deep at the roots of the deep sea.”

While he spoke, he shivered from head to foot, and the sweat came out upon his face, and he knew not why, for he had looked upon many crosses. He passed over two hills and under the battlemented gate, and then round by a left-hand way to the door of the Abbey. It was studded with great nails, and when he knocked at it, he roused the lay brother who was the porter, and of him he asked a place in the guest-house. Then the lay brother took a glowing turf on a shovel, and led the way to a big and naked outhouse strewn with dirty rushes: and lighted a rush-candle fixed between two of the stones of the wall, and set the glowing turf upon the hearth and gave him two unlighted sods and a wisp of straw, and showed him a blanket hanging from a nail, and a shelf with a loaf of bread and a jug of water, and a tub in a far corner. Then the lay brother left him and went back to his place by the door. And Cumhal the son of Cormac began to blow upon the glowing turf, that he might light the two sods and the wisp of straw; but his blowing profited him nothing, for the sods and the straw were damp. So he took off his pointed shoes, and drew the tub out of the corner with the thought of washing the dust of the highway from his feet; but the water was so dirty that he could not see the bottom. He was very hungry, for he had not eaten all that day; so he did not waste much anger upon the tub, but took up the black loaf, and bit into it, and then spat out the bite, for the bread was hard and mouldy. Still he did not give way to his wrath, for he had not drunken these many hours; having a hope of heath beer or wine at his day’s end, he had left the brooks untasted, to make his supper the more delightful. Now he put the jug to his lips, but he flung it from him straightway, for the water was bitter and ill-smelling. Then he gave the jug a kick, so that it broke against the opposite wall, and he took down the blanket to wrap it about him for the night. But no sooner did he touch it than it was alive with skipping fleas. At this, beside himself with anger, he rushed to the door of the guest-house, but the lay brother, being well accustomed to such outcries, had locked it on the outside; so Cumhal emptied the tub and began to beat the door with it, till the lay brother came to the door, and asked what ailed him, and why he woke him out of sleep. “What ails me!” shouted Cumhal, “are not the sods as wet as the sands of the Three Headlands? and are not the fleas in the blanket as many as the waves of the sea and as lively? and is not the bread as hard as the heart of a lay brother who has forgotten God? and is not the water in the jug as bitter and as ill-smelling as his soul? and is not the foot-water the colour that shall be upon him when he has been charred in the Undying Fires?” The lay brother saw that the lock was fast, and went back to his niche, for he was too sleepy to talk with comfort. And Cumhal went on beating at the door, and presently he heard the lay brother’s foot once more, and cried out at him, “O cowardly and tyrannous race of friars, persecutors of the bard and the gleeman, haters of life and joy! O race that does not draw the sword and tell the truth! O race that melts the bones of the people with cowardice and with deceit!”

“Gleeman,” said the lay brother, “I also make rhymes; I make many while I sit in my niche by the door, and I sorrow to hear the bards railing upon the friars. Brother, I would sleep, and therefore I make known to you that it is the head of the monastery, our gracious Coarb, who orders all things concerning the lodging of travellers.”

“You may sleep,” said Cumhal, “I will sing a bard’s curse on the Coarb.” And he set the tub outside down under the window, and stood upon it, and began to sing in a very loud voice. The singing awoke the Coarb, so that he sat up in bed and blew a silver whistle until the lay brother came to him. “I cannot get a wink of sleep with that noise,” said the Coarb. “What is happening?”

“It is a gleeman,” said the lay brother, “who complains of the sods, of the bread, of the water in the jug, of the foot-water, and of the blanket. And now he is singing a bard’s curse upon you, O brother Coarb, and upon your father and your mother, and your grandfather and your grandmother, and upon all your relations.”

“Is he cursing in rhyme?”

“He is cursing in rhyme, and with two assonances in every line of his curse.”

The Coarb pulled his night-cap off and crumpled it in his hands, and the circular brown patch of hair in the middle of his bald head looked like an island in the midst of a pond, for in Connaught they had not yet abandoned the ancient tonsure for the style then coming into use. “If we do not somewhat,” he said, “he will teach his curses to the children in the street, and the girls spinning at the doors, and to the robbers on the mountain of Gulben.”

“Shall I go then,” said the other, “and give him dry sods, a fresh loaf, clean water in a jug, clean foot-water, and a new blanket, and make him swear by the blessed St. Benignus, and by the sun and moon, that no bond be lacking, not to tell his rhymes to the children in the street, and the girls spinning at the doors, and the robbers on the mountain of Gulben?”

“Neither our blessed Patron nor the sun and the moon would avail at all,” said the Coarb: “for to-morrow or the next day the mood to curse would come upon him, or a pride in those rhymes would move him, and he would teach his lines to the children, and the girls, and the robbers. Or else he would tell another of his craft how he fared in the guest-house, and he in his turn would begin to curse, and my name would wither. For learn there is no steadfastness of purpose upon the roads, but only under roofs, and between four walls. Therefore I bid you go and awaken Brother Kevin, Brother Dove, Brother Little Wolf, Brother Bald Patrick, Brother Bald Brandon, Brother James and Brother Peter. And they shall take the man, and bind him with ropes, and dip him in the river that he may cease to sing. And in the morning, lest this but make him curse the louder, we will crucify him.”

“The crosses are all full,” said the lay brother.

“Then we must make another cross. If we do not make an end of him another will, for who can eat and sleep in peace while men like him are going about the world? Ill should we stand before blessed St. Benignus, and sour would be his face when he comes to judge us at the Last Day, were we to spare an enemy of his when we had him under our thumb! Brother, the bards and the gleemen are an evil race, ever cursing and ever stirring up the people, and immoral and immoderate in all things, and heathen in their hearts, always longing after the Son of Lir, and Angus, and Bridget, and the Dagda, and Dana the Mother, and all the false gods of the old days; always making poems in praise of those kings and queens of the demons, Finvaragh of the Hill in the Plain, and Red Aodh of the Hill of the Shee, and Cleena of the Wave, and Eiveen of the Grey Rock, and him they call Don of the Vats of the Sea; and railing against God and Christ and the blessed Saints.” While he was speaking he crossed himself, and when he had finished he drew the night-cap over his ears, to shut out the noise, and closed his eyes, and composed himself to sleep.

The lay brother found Brother Kevin, Brother Dove, Brother Little Wolf, Brother Bald Patrick, Brother Bald Brandon, Brother James and Brother Peter sitting up in bed, and he made them get up. Then they bound Cumhal, and they dragged him to the river, and they dipped him in at the place which was afterwards called Buckley’s Ford.

“Gleeman,” said the lay brother, as they led him back to the guest-house, “why do you ever use the wit which God has given you to make blasphemous and immoral tales and verses? For such is the way of your craft. I have, indeed, many such tales and verses well nigh by rote, and so I know that I speak true! And why do you praise with rhyme those demons, Finvaragh, Red Aodh, Cleena, Eiveen and Don? I, too, am a man of great wit and learning, but I ever glorify our gracious Coarb, and Benignus our Patron, and the princes of the province. My soul is decent and orderly, but yours is like the wind among the salley gardens. I said what I could for you, being also a man of many thoughts, but who could help such a one as you?”

“My soul, friend,” answered the gleeman, “is indeed like the wind, and it blows me to and fro, and up and down, and puts many things into my mind and out of my mind, and therefore am I called the Swift, Wild Horse.” And he spoke no more that night, for his teeth were chattering with the cold.

The Coarb and the friars came to him in the morning, and bade him get ready to be crucified, and led him out of the guest-house. And while he still stood upon the step a flock of great grass-barnacles passed high above him with clanking cries. He lifted his arms to them and said, “O great grass-barnacles, tarry a little, and mayhap my soul will travel with you to the waste places of the shore and to the ungovernable sea!” At the gate a crowd of beggars gathered about them, being come there to beg from any traveller or pilgrim who might have spent the night in the guest-house. The Coarb and the friars led the gleeman to a place in the woods at some distance, where many straight young trees were growing, and they made him cut one down and fashion it to the right length, while the beggars stood round them in a ring, talking and gesticulating. The Coarb then bade him cut off another and shorter piece of wood, and nail it upon the first. So there was his cross for him; and they put it upon his shoulder, for his crucifixion was to be on the top of the hill where the others were. A half-mile on the way he asked them to stop and see him juggle for them: for he knew, he said, all the tricks of Angus the Subtle-Hearted. The old friars were for pressing on, but the young friars would see him: so he did many wonders for them, even to the drawing of live frogs out of his ears. But after a while they turned on him, and said his tricks were dull and a shade unholy, and set the cross on his shoulders again. Another half-mile on the way, and he asked them to stop and hear him jest for them, for he knew, he said, all the jests of Conan the Bald, upon whose back a sheep’s wool grew. And the young friars, when they had heard his merry tales, again bade him take up his cross, for it ill became them to listen to such follies. Another half-mile on the way, he asked them to stop and hear him sing the story of White-Breasted Deirdre, and how she endured many sorrows, and how the sons of Usna died to serve her. And the young friars were mad to hear him, but when he had ended, they grew angry, and beat him for waking forgotten longings in their hearts. So they set the cross upon his back, and hurried him to the hill.

When he was come to the top, they took the cross from him, and began to dig a hole to stand it in, while the beggars gathered round, and talked among themselves. “I ask a favour before I die,” says Cumhal.

“We will grant you no more delays,” says the Coarb.

“I ask no more delays, for I have drawn the sword, and told the truth, and lived my vision and am content.”

“Would you then confess?”

“By sun and moon, not I; I ask but to be let eat the food I carry in my wallet. I carry food in my wallet whenever I go upon a journey, but I do not taste of it unless I am well-nigh starved. I have not eaten now these two days.”

“You may eat, then,” says the Coarb, and he turned to help the friars dig the hole.

The gleeman took a loaf and some strips of cold fried bacon out of his wallet and laid them upon the ground. “I will give a tithe to the poor,” says he, and he cut a tenth part from the loaf and the bacon. “Who among you is the poorest?” And thereupon was a great clamour, for the beggars began the history of their sorrows and their poverty, and their yellow faces swayed like the Shelly River when the floods have filled it with water from the bogs.

He listened for a little, and, says he, “I am myself the poorest, for I have travelled the bare road, and by the glittering footsteps of the sea; and the tattered doublet of parti-coloured cloth upon my back, and the torn pointed shoes upon my feet have ever irked me, because of the towered city full of noble raiment which was in my heart. And I have been the more alone upon the roads and by the sea, because I heard in my heart the rustling of the rose-bordered dress of her who is more subtle than Angus, the Subtle-Hearted, and more full of the beauty of laughter than Conan the Bald, and more full of the wisdom of tears than White-Breasted Deirdre, and more lovely than a bursting dawn to them that are lost in the darkness. Therefore, I award the tithe to myself; but yet, because I am done with all things, I give it unto you.”

So he flung the bread and the strips of bacon among the beggars, and they fought with many cries until the last scrap was eaten. But meanwhile the friars nailed the gleeman to his cross, and set it upright in the hole, and shovelled the earth in at the foot, and trampled it level and hard. So then they went away, but the beggars stared on, sitting round the cross. But when the sun was sinking, they also got up to go, for the air was getting chilly. And as soon as they had gone a little way, the wolves, who had been showing themselves on the edge of a neighbouring coppice, came nearer, and the birds wheeled closer and closer. “Stay, outcasts, yet a little while,” the crucified one called in a weak voice to the beggars, “and keep the beasts and the birds from me.” But the beggars were angry because he had called them outcasts, so they threw stones and mud at him, and went their way. Then the wolves gathered at the foot of the cross, and the birds lighted all at once upon his head and arms and shoulders, and began to peck at him, and the wolves began to eat his feet. “Outcasts,” he moaned, “have you also turned against the outcast?”

THE DRUMS OF KAIRWAN

By the MARQUESS CURZON OF KEDLESTON

From Tales of Travel, by The Marquess Curzon of Kedleston.
Copyright, 1923, by George H. Doran Company..

When the appointed hour arrived, I presented myself at the mosque, which is situated outside the city walls of Kairwan, not far from the Bab-el-Djuluddin, or Tanners’ Gate. Passing through an open courtyard into the main building, I was received with a dignified salaam by the sheik, who forthwith led me to a platform or divan at the upper end of the central space. This was surmounted by a ribbed and white-washed dome, and was separated from two side aisles by rows of marble columns with battered capitals, dating from the Empire of Rome. Between the arches of the roof small and feeble lamps—mere lighted wicks floating on dingy oil in cups of coloured glass—ostrich eggs, and gilt balls were suspended from wooden beams. From the cupola in the centre hung a dilapidated chandelier in which flickered a few miserable candles. In one of the side aisles a plastered tomb was visible behind an iron lattice. The _mise en scène_ was unprepossessing and squalid.

My attention was next turned to the _dramatis personae_. Upon the floor in the centre beneath the dome sat the musicians, ten or a dozen in number, cross-legged, the chief presiding upon a stool at the head of the circle. I observed no instrument save the _darabookah_, or earthen drum, and a number of tambours, the skins of which, stretched tightly across the frames, gave forth, when struck sharply by the fingers, a hollow and resonant note. The rest of the orchestra was occupied by the chorus. So far no actors were visible. The remainder of the floor, both under the dome and in the aisles, was thickly covered with seated and motionless figures, presenting in the fitful light a weird and fantastic picture. In all there must have been over a hundred persons, all males, in the mosque.

Presently the sheik gave the signal for commencement, and in a moment burst forth the melancholy chant of the Arab voices and the ceaseless droning of the drums. The song was not what we should call singing, but a plaintive and quavering wail, pursued in a certain cadence, now falling to a moan, now terminating in a shriek, but always pitiful, piercing and inexpressibly sad. The tambours, which were struck like the keyboard of a piano, by the outstretched fingers of the hand, and, occasionally, when a louder note was required, by the thumb, kept up a monotonous refrain in the background. From time to time, at moments of greater stress, they were brandished high in the air and beaten with all the force of fingers and thumb combined. Then the noise was imperious and deafening.

Among the singers, one grizzled and bearded veteran, with a strident and nasal intonation, surpassed his fellows. He observed the time with grotesque reflections of his body; his eyes were fixed and shone with religious zeal.

The chant proceeded, and the figures of the singers, as they became more and more excited, rocked to and fro. More people poured in at the doorway, and the building was now quite full. I began to wonder whether the musicians were also to be the performers, or when the latter would make their appearance.

Suddenly a line of four or five Arabs formed itself in front of the entrance on the far side of the orchestra, and exactly opposite the bench on which I was sitting. They joined hands, the right of each clasped in the left of his neighbour, and began a lurching, swaying motion with their bodies and feet. At first they appeared simply to be marking time, first with one foot and then with the other; but the movement was gradually communicated to every member of their bodies; and from the crown of the head to the soles of the feet they were presently keeping time with the music in convulsive jerks and leaps and undulations, the music itself being regulated by the untiring orchestra of the drums.

This mysterious row of bobbing figures seemed to exercise an irresistible fascination over the spectators. Every moment one or other of these left his place to join its ranks. They pushed their way into the middle, severing the chain for an instant, or joined themselves on to the ends. The older men appeared to have a right to the centre, the boys and children—for there were youngsters present not more than seven or eight years old—were on the wings. Thus the line ever lengthened; originally it consisted of three or four, presently it was ten or twelve, anon it was twenty-five or thirty, and before the self-torturings commenced there were as many as forty human figures stretching right across the building, and all rocking backwards and forwards in grim and ungraceful unison, Even the spectators who kept their places could not resist the contagion; as they sat there they unconsciously kept time with their heads and shoulders, and one child swung his little head this way and that with a fury that threatened to separate it from his body.

Meanwhile, the music had been growing in intensity, the orchestra sharing the excitement, which they communicated. The drummers beat their tambours with redoubled force, lifting them high above their heads and occasionally, at some extreme pitch, tossing them aloft and catching them again as they fell. Sometimes in the exaltation of frenzy they started spasmodically to their feet and then sank back into their original position. But ever and without a pause continued the insistent accompaniment of the drums.

And now the oscillating line in front of the doorway for the first time found utterance. As they leaped high on one foot, alternately kicking out the other, as their heads wagged to and fro and their bodies quivered with the muscular strain, they cried aloud in praise of Allah. _La ilaha ill Allah!_ (There is no God but Allah)—this was the untiring burden of their strain. And then came _Ya Allah!_ (O God), and sometimes _Ya Kahhar!_ (O avenging God), _Ya Hakk!_ (O just God), while each burst of clamorous appeal culminated in an awful shout of _Ya Hoo!_ (O Him).

The rapidity and vehemence of their gesticulations was now appalling; their heads swung backwards and forwards till their foreheads almost touched their breasts, and their scalps smote against their backs. Sweat poured from their faces; they panted for breath; and the exclamations burst from their mouths in a thick and stertorous murmur. Suddenly, and without warning, the first phase of the _zikr_ ceased, and the actors stood gasping, shaking, and dripping with perspiration.

After a few seconds’ respite the performance recommenced, and shortly waxed more furious than ever. The worshippers seemed to be gifted with an almost superhuman strength and energy. As they flung themselves to and fro, at one moment their upturned faces gleamed with a sickly polish under the flickering lamps, at the next their turbaned heads all but brushed the floor. Their eyes started from the sockets; the muscles on their necks and the veins on their foreheads stood out like knotted cords. One old man fell out of the ranks, breathless, spent, and foaming. His place was taken by another, and the tumultuous orgy went on.

Presently, as the ecstasy approached its height and the fully initiated became _melboos_ or possessed, they broke from the stereotyped litany into domoniacal grinning and ferocious and bestial cries. These writhing and contorted objects were no longer rational human beings, but savage animals, caged brutes howling madly in the delirium of hunger or of pain. They growled like bears, they barked like jackals, they roared like lions, they laughed like hyænas; and ever and anon from the seething rank rose a diabolical shriek, like the scream of a dying horse, or the yell of a tortured fiend. And steadily the while in the background resounded the implacable reverberation of the drums.

The climax was now reached; the requisite pitch of cataleptic inebriation had been obtained, and the rites of Aissa were about to begin. From the crowd at the door a wild figure broke forth, tore off his upper clothing till he was naked to the waist, and, throwing away his fez, bared a head close-shaven save for one long and dishevelled lock that, springing from the scalp, fell over his forehead like some grisly and funereal plume. A long knife, somewhat resembling a cutlass, was handed to him by the sheik, who had risen to his feet, and who directed the phenomena that ensued. Waving it wildly above his head and protruding the forepart of his figure, the fanatic brought it down blow after blow against his bared stomach, and drew it savagely to and fro against the unprotected skin. There showed the marks of a long and livid weal, but no blood spurted from the gash. In the intervals between the strokes he ran swiftly from one side to the other of the open space, taking long stealthy strides like a panther about to spring, and seemingly so powerless over his own movements that he knocked blindly up against those who stood in his way, nearly upsetting them with the violence of the collision.

The prowess or the piety of this ardent devotee proved extraordinarily contagious. First one and then another of his brethren caught the afflatus and followed his example. In a few moments every part of the mosque was the scene of some novel and horrible rite of self-mutilation, performed by a fresh aspirant to the favour of Allah. Some of these feats did not rise above the level of the curious but explicable performances which are sometimes seen upon English stages; _e.g._, of the men who swallow swords, and carry enormous weights suspended from their jaws; achievements which are in no sense a trick or a deception, but are to be attributed to abnormal physical powers or structure developed by long and often perilous practice. In the Aissaiouian counterpart of these displays there was nothing specially remarkable, but there were others less commonplace and more difficult of explanation.

At length, several long iron spits or prongs were produced and distributed; these formidable implements were about two and a half feet in length and sharply pointed, and they terminated at the handle in a circular wooden knob about the size of a large orange. There was great competition for these instruments of torture, which were used as follows: Poising one in the air, an Aissioui would suddenly force the point into the flesh of his own shoulder in front just below the shoulder blade. Thus transfixed, and holding the weapon aloft, he strode swiftly up and down. Suddenly, at a signal, he fell on his knees, still forcing the point into his body, and keeping the wooden head uppermost. Then there started up another disciple armed with a big wooden mallet, and he, after a few preliminary taps, rising high on tip-toe with uplifted weapon would, with an ear-splitting yell, bring it down with all his force upon the wooden knob, driving the point home through the shoulder of his comrade. Blow succeeded blow, the victim wincing beneath the stroke, but uttering no sound, and fixing his eyes with a look of ineffable delight upon his torturer, till the point was driven right through the shoulder and projected at the back. Then the patient marched backwards and forwards with the air and the gait of a conquering hero. At one moment there were four of these semi-naked maniacs within a yard of my feet, transfixed and trembling, but beatified and triumphant. Amid the cries and the swelter, there never ceased for one second the sullen and menacing vociferation of the drums.

Another man seized an iron skewer, and, placing the point within his open jaws, forced it steadily through his cheek until it protruded a couple of inches on the outside. He barked savagely like a dog, and foamed at the lips.

Others, afflicted with exquisite spasms of hunger, knelt down before the chief, whimpering like children for food, and turning upon him imploring glances from their glazed and bloodshot eyes. His control over his following was supreme. Some he gratified, others he forbade. At a touch from him, they were silent and relaxed into quiescence. One maddened wretch who, fancying himself some wild beast, plunged to and fro, roaring horribly, and biting and tearing with his teeth at whomever he met, was advancing, as I thought, with somewhat truculent intent in my direction, when he was arrested by his superior and sent back, cringing and cowed.

For those whose ravenous appetites he was content to humour the most singular repast was prepared. A plate was brought in, covered with huge jagged pieces of broken glass, as thick as a shattered soda-water bottle. With greedy chuckles and gurglings of delight, one of the hungry ones dashed at it, crammed a handful into his mouth, and crunched it up as though it were some exquisite dainty, a fellow-disciple calmly stroking the exterior of his throat, with intent, I suppose, to lubricate the descent of the unwonted morsels. A little child held up a snake or a sand-worm by the tail, placing the head between his teeth, and gulped it gleefully down. Several acolytes came in, carrying a big stem of the prickly pear, or _fico d’India_, whose leaves are as thick as a one-inch plank, and are armed with huge projecting thorns. This was ambrosia to the starving saints. They rushed at it with passionate emulation, tearing at the solid slabs with their teeth, and gnawing and munching the coarse fibers, regardless of the thorns which pierced their tongues and cheeks as they swallowed them down.

The most singular feature of all, and the one that almost defies belief, though it is none the less true, was this—that in no case did one drop of blood emerge from scar, or gash, or wound. This fact I observed most carefully, the _mokaddem_ standing at my side, and each patient in turn coming to him when his self-imposed torture had been accomplished, and the cataleptic frenzy had spent its force. It was the chief who cunningly withdrew the blade from cheek or shoulder or body, rubbing over the spot what appeared to me to be the saliva of his own mouth; then he whispered an absolution in the ear of the disciple, and kissed him on the forehead, whereupon the patient, but a moment before writhing in maniacal transports, retired tranquilly and took his seat upon the floor. He seemed none the worse for his recent paroxysm, and the wound was marked only by a livid blotch or a hectic flush.

This was the scene that for more than an hour went on without pause or intermission before my eyes. The building might have been tenanted by the Harpies or Laestrygones of Homer, or by some inhuman monsters of legendary myth. Amid the dust and sweat and insufferable heat the naked bodies of the actors shone with a ghastly pallor and exhaled a sickening smell. The atmosphere reeked with heavy and intoxicating fumes. Above the despairing chant of the singers rang the frenzied yells of the possessed, the shrieks of the hammerer, and the inarticulate cries, the snarling and growling, the bellowing and miauling of the self-imagined beasts. And ever behind and through all re-echoed the perpetual and pitiless imprecation of the drums.

As I witnessed the disgusting spectacle and listened to the pandemonium of sounds, my head swam, my eyes became dim, my senses reeled, and I believed that in a few moments I must have fainted, had not one of my friends touched me on the shoulder, and, whispering that the _mokaddem_ was desirous that I should leave, escorted me hurriedly to the door. As I walked back to my quarters, and long after through the still night, the beat of the tambours continued, and I heard the distant hum of voices, broken at intervals by an isolated and piercing cry. Perhaps yet further and more revolting orgies were celebrated after I had left. I had not seen, as other travellers have done, the chewing and swallowing of red-hot cinders,[1] or the harmless handling and walking upon live coals. I had been spared that which others have described as the climax of the gluttonous debauch, _viz._, the introduction of a live sheep, which then and there is savagely torn to pieces and devoured raw by these unnatural banqueters. But I had seen enough, and as I sank to sleep my agitated fancy pursued a thousand avenues of thought, confounding in one grim medley all the carnivorous horrors of fact and fable and fiction. Loud above the din and discord the tale of the false prophets of Carmel, awakened by the train of association, rang in my ears, till I seemed to hear intoned with remorseless repetition the words: “They cried aloud and cut themselves after their manner with knives and lancets, till the blood gushed out upon them”; and in the ever-receding distance of dreamland, faint and yet fainter, there throbbed the inexorable and unfaltering delirium of the drums.

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[1] For an account of this exploit, _vide_ Lane’s _Modern Egyptians_, cap. xxv.; and compare the description of Richardson, the famous fire-eater, in Evelyn’s _Memoirs_ for October 8, 1672.

A LIFE—A BOWL OF RICE

By L. DE BRA

Bow Sam stood in the doorway by his sugar-cane stand and watched with narrowed eyes an old man who shuffled uncertainly down the alley towards him.

“_Hoo la ma!_” cried Bow Sam, in surprised Cantonese as the old man drew near. “Hello, there! I scarcely knew you, venerable Fa’ng!”

Fa’ng, the hatchetman, straightened his bent shoulders and looked up. There was a gleam in his deep bronze eyes that was hardly in keeping with his withered frame.

“_Hoo la ma_, Bow Sam,” he said, his voice strangely deep and vibrant.

“You have grown very thin,” remarked Bow Sam with friendly interest.

“_Hi low_; that is true. But why carry around flesh that is not food?”