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Updated: May 3, 2025
But the unsheathing of that sword of light convinced her of Ourïeda's wisdom. The girl knew her father. If she dared to urge any further her dislike of Tahar he would believe it was because of Manöel, and hurry rather than delay the wedding. Illness was the only possible plea, and even to that Ben Râana seemed to attach little importance. Marriage meant change and new interests.
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.
In the cafe of Tahar, the Kabyle, there was at present no such woman. His beauties, huddled together on their narrow bench before a table decorated with glasses of water and sprigs of orange blossom in earthen vases, looked dull and cheerless in their gaudy clothes. Their bodies were well formed, but somnolent. Their painted hands hung down like the hands of marionettes.
"No; you are forgetting that we are living in an oasis, where letters are not delivered, and where we bring news of ourselves, and where no news is understood to mean that the spring we were hastening towards was dry, or that a sand-storm " "Sand-storms are rare at this season of the year." "An old bedouin like Tahar is safe enough.
This was the life that would cure him how soon? In three months? in six? in ten years? It would be strange if he were to become a bedouin for love of her, and he walked on thinking how they had lain together one night listening to the silence, hearing nothing but an acacia moving outside their window. Béclère was coming towards him and the vision vanished. "No news of Tahar yet?"
The explanation he gave one night in the café where Owen went to talk and drink with the Spahis; coming in suddenly, and taking Owen away into a corner, he explained that he had not told him before that his friend Tahar, he who owned the eagles, had gone away to live in another oasis, because it had not occurred to him that Owen was seeking Tahar, fancying somehow that it was another as if there were hundreds of people in the Sahara who hunted gazelles with eagles!
Owen smiled a little under his moustache, and, as there was plenty of time for meditation while waiting for Tahar to return from Ain Mahdy, he spent a great deal of time wondering if any sensual relations existed between Béclère and this girl.
It was true, he said, that the queen entertained some idea of making a stand against the French; and it was currently reported also that several chiefs from Borabora, Huwyenee, Raiatair, and Tahar, the leeward islands of the group, were at that very time taking counsel with her as to the expediency of organizing a general movement throughout the entire cluster, with a view of anticipating any further encroachments on the part of the invaders.
He wrote explanations to the officer left in charge at Sidi-bel-Abbés, the man to whom he must report; but no letter could reach DeLisle for many weeks. He was entertained as the Agha's guest, being introduced to Tahar Ben Hadj and several caids invited for the bridegroom's part of the festivities.
They uttered shouts of joy at sight of Sidi Tahar Ben Hadj, as though he had been absent for months instead of a few days, and some of the oldest brown faces bent to kiss his shoulders or elbows. Sanda saw a bare courtyard paved only with hard-packed, yellow sand; and the long front of the house with its few small windows looked unsympathetic and unattractive. The girl felt disappointed.
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