SANDA'S WEDDING NIGHT

What arguments the explorer used none save himself and the priest from Touggourt would ever know. But the priest came and married Sanda to Stanton according to the rites of the Catholic Church. In his eyes, as in the eyes of the girl, it was enough; for was she not, in the sight of heaven, a wife?

Stanton professed himself not only glad, but thankful, to have Max as a recruit for his expedition. He agreed with Sanda that it would be Quixotic, in the circumstances, to go back to Sidi-bel-AbbÉs.

"You'd be a damn fool, my boy," he said emphatically, "to go and offer yourself a lamb for the sacrifice!" It did not occur to him that Max was offering himself on the altar of another temple of sacrifice. He thought the young man was "jolly lucky" to escape from the mess he had tumbled into and get the chance of a glorious adventure with Richard Stanton. It had been a blow and even a humiliation to the explorer that all the Europeans he had asked to accompany him had refused, either on the spot, or after deliberation. He believed in himself and his vision so completely, and had snatched so many successes out of the jaws of disaster, that it was galling not to be believed in by others, in this, the crowning venture of his life. If he could find the Lost Oasis he would be the most famous man in the world, or so he put it to himself; and any European with him would share the glory. It had been almost maddening to combat vainly, for once in his career, the objections and sneers of skeptics.

People had said that if no European, not even a doctor, would join him in his "mad mission," he would be forced to give it up. But he had found a fierce satisfaction in disappointing them and in showing the world that he, unaided, could carry through a project which daunted all who heard of it. He had triumphed over immense obstacles in getting together his caravan, for Arabs and Soudanese had been superstitiously depressed by the fact that the mighty Stanton could persuade no man of his own race to believe in the Lost Oasis. It was only his unique force of character that had made the expedition possible at last; that and his knowledge of medicine, even of "white and black" magic, his mastery of desert dialects, his eloquence in the language of those who hesitated, working them up to his own pitch of enthusiasm by descriptions of what he believed the Lost Oasis to be: a land of milk and honey, with wives and treasure enough for all, even the humblest. Napoleon, the greatest general of the French, had wished to search for the Lost Oasis, marching from Tripolitania to Egypt, but had abandoned the undertaking because of other duties, not because he ceased to believe. The golden flower of the desert had been left for Stanton and his band to pluck. Threats, persuasion, bribes, had collected for him a formidable force. If he had lingered at Touggourt, after getting the necessary men together, no one had dared to suggest in his hearing that it was because a desert dancing-woman was beautiful. He had always had weighty reasons to allege, even to himself: the stores were not satisfactory; the oil provided was not good; camels fell ill and substitutes had to be got; he was obliged to wait for corn to be ground into the African substitute for macaroni; Winchester rifles and ammunition promised for his fighting men did not turn up till long after the date specified in his contract. But now he was off on the great adventure; and, gloriously sure that all credit would be his, he was sincerely glad to have Max as a follower, humble yet congenial.

His meeting with Sanda seemed to Stanton a good omen. Since Ahmara had deserted him in a fury, because of the humiliation put upon her during DeLisle's visit, he had been in a black rage. Days had been lost in searching for her, because she had disappeared. He had dreamed at night of choking the dancer's life out, and shooting the man who had stolen her from him, for he had no doubt of the form her revenge had taken. In the end, he had decided to put her from his mind, persuading himself that he was sick to death of the tigress-woman whom he had thought of carrying with him on the long desert march. Still, he had been sad and thwarted, and the music of the tomtoms and rÄitas, instead of tributes to his triumph, had been like voices mocking at his failure. Then Sanda had magically appeared in the desert: fair and sweet as the moon in contrast with the parching sun. He had held out his arms on the impulse and she had fallen into them. Her youth, her white beauty in the blue night, lit a flame in him, and he fanned it greedily. It was good to know that he was young enough still to light another fire so soon on half-cold ashes. He revelled in making himself believe that he loved the girl. He respected and admired himself for it, and he drank in eagerly the story she told him in whispers, at the door of her tent in the night: the story of childish, hopeless hero-worship for her "Sir Knight." He was so confident of her adoring love that jealousy of Max would have seemed absurd, though Max was twenty-six and Stanton twenty years older. If it had occurred to him that Max might be romantically in love with Sanda, the idea would not have displeased him or made him hesitate to take the younger man as a member of his escort. There was a cruel streak running through Stanton's nature which even Sanda dimly realized, though it did not diminish her love. There were moods when he enjoyed seeing pain and inflicting it; and there were stories told of things he had done in such moods: stories told in whispers; tales of whipping black men to death when they had been caught deserting from his caravans; tales of striking down insubordinates and leaving them unconscious to die in the desert. It would have amused Stanton, if the idea had presented itself, to think of a love-sick young man helplessly watching him teach an uninstructed young girl the art of becoming a woman. But the idea did not present itself. He was too deeply absorbed in himself, and in trying to think how infinitely superior was a white dove like Sanda to a creature of the Ahmara type. He wished savagely that Ahmara might hear—when it was too late—of his marriage within a few days after their parting.

When the wedding ceremony was over the caravan started on at once, in order to reach, not too late, a certain small oasis on the route where Stanton wished to camp on his marriage night. He described the place glowingly to Max. There was no town there, he said, only a few tents belonging to the chief of a neighbour tribe to Ben RÂana's. The men there guarded an artesian well whose water spouted up like a fountain. Though the oasis was small, its palms were unusually beautiful, and the group of tall trees with their spreading branches was like a green temple set in the midst of the desert. Altogether, Stanton remarked, it was an ideal spot for the beginning of a honeymoon. His eyes were more brilliant than ever as he spoke, and Max turned his head away not to see the other man's face, because the look on it made him want to kill Stanton. The martyrdom he knew awaited him had already begun.

Before starting into the unknown Max bought from the leader of his own camel-men some garments which Khadra had washed for her husband at Ben RÂana's douar. They were to be ready for his return to Touggourt, and were still as clean as the brackish water of the desert could make them. Dressed as an Arab, Max made a parcel of his uniform with its treasured red stripes of a corporal; and having addressed it for the post, paid the camel-driver to send it off for him from Touggourt to Sidi-bel-AbbÉs. The unpardonable sin of a deserting Legionnaire is to rob France of the uniform lent him for his soldiering. But returning her property to the Republic, Max sent no letter of regret or apology. He was a deserter, and to excuse himself for deserting would be an insult to the Legion. Nobody except DeLisle could possibly understand, and Max did not mean to offer explanations, even to his colonel. If in his heart Sanda's father could ever secretly pardon a deserter, it must be of his own accord, not because of what that deserter had to say on his own behalf.

Out of the little caravan Max had to discharge, Stanton kept the mehari with the bassourah which Sanda had ridden during the journey from Ben RÂana's douar. It was, he said, laughing, a present direct from Providence to his bride, since not without delay could he have provided her with anything so comfortable for travelling. The finely bred camel and many other animals of the escort might fail or die en route, but there were places on the way where others could be got, as well as men to replenish vacancies made by deaths. Stanton was too old an explorer not to have calculated each step of the way, as far as any white man's story or black man's rumour described it. And he talked stoically of the depletion of his ranks. It was only his own failure or death which appeared to be for him incredible.

Stanton rode all day at the head of the caravan, with Sanda, on her mehari, looking down at him, "like the Blessed Damozel" as he had said, between her curtains. Max, on a strong pony which Stanton had bought as an "understudy" for his own horse, kept far in the rear. The desert had been beautiful for him yesterday. It was hideous to-day. He thought it must always be hideous after this. They saw the new moon for the first time that afternoon. Sanda, lost in a dream of happiness, pointed it out to Stanton, but he was vexed because they caught a glimpse of it over the left shoulder. It was a bad sign, he said, and Sanda laughed at him for being superstitious. As if anything could be a bad sign for them on that day!

"Little White Moon," OurÏeda and the other Arab women had called her at Djazerta. Stanton said it was just the name for her, when she told him. The girl was perfectly happy now that Max was rescued. She had no regrets, no cares; for, though she dearly loved her father, it would have been long before she saw him again even if she had gone to Sidi-bel-AbbÉs; and she knew he had hated the necessity for leaving her there without him. She believed it would be a great relief to such a keen soldier as he was not to be burdened with a girl. Often she felt it had been wrong and selfish of her to run away from the aunts and throw herself upon his mercy. Their few weeks together, learning to know and love each other, had been delicious, but the future might have been difficult if she had stayed.

Surely her father would be glad to have her married to his friend, and, even if there were dangers to be feared in the unknown desert, why, Colonel DeLisle was a soldier, and she was a soldier's daughter.

She wrote a letter to her father and gave it to the priest who had married her. Some day it must reach its destination, and there were things in it which would make Colonel DeLisle happy. Sanda believed there would be tender romance for him, as for her, in the thought of the marriage near Touggourt, where his love had come to him from half across the world.

Not a rap did the girl care for the hardships in front of her. She laughed and thought it a great adventure that she had no "trousseau," but only the few clothes which were wearable after her long visit to Djazerta. And if they were never to find the Lost Oasis, or if they themselves were to be lost, she would go forth with the same untroubled heart.

The crescent moon had dropped behind the horizon, like a bracelet in the sea, before they came in sight of the oasis where they were to spend the wedding night; but the sky glittered with encrusting stars that spread a silver background for the tall, dark palms. As the caravan descended into a wide valley between dunes, Max heard Stanton's voice shouting to him. He rode forward to the side of the "Chief," as the explorer was called by his men.

"Like a good chap, gallop ahead with my fellows and see that our tent is set up in the best place," said Stanton in his deep, pleasant voice. "I should like Sanda to find it all ready when she gets there. Have it put where my wife would think it prettiest; you'll know the right place; place you'd choose yourself if it was your honeymoon!"

There was no conscious malice in the words, but they cut like a lash in a raw wound. Max had the impulse to strike his horse with the whip, but he was ashamed of it and stroked the animal's neck instead, as with a word he urged it on.

"I must watch myself if this isn't to turn me into a beast," he thought. "It shan't, or I'll be worse than useless to her. She shan't fall between two brutes."

Stanton had already selected the men who were to pitch his bridal tent, and Max rode ahead with them and their loaded camels. He chose a spot between a miniature palm grove separated from the main oasis and the artesian well, far enough from the gushing water for its bubbling to be heard through canvas walls soothingly, like the music of a fountain.

Fortunately for the comfort of the unprepared-for bride, Stanton was a man who "did himself well" when he could, though he had always been ready to face hardship if necessary. He had not considered it necessary to stint himself when starting on this expedition, although, later on, he would be quite ready to throw luxuries away as encumbrances. There were cushions and thick rugs and fine linen and soft blankets. There was also some folding furniture; and one object which revealed itself among the rugs at first surprised, then unpleasantly enlightened, Max. It was a rather large mirror with a gilded French frame, such as Arab women admire. For himself, Stanton would have had a shaving-glass a foot square, and the gaudy ornament made Max's blood boil. Stanton had certainly brought it for a woman: Ahmara. Before the quarrel, then, he had intended to take her with him! It was only by a chance that he had gathered a fair white lily instead of a desert poppy.

Max would have liked to break the mirror, but, instead, he saw that it was safely hung on one of the tent-hooks and supported by a brightly painted Moorish chest.

As he stepped out of the tent when all was finished and ready for the bride—even to a vase of orange blossoms brought by the priest from Touggourt—the caravan, which had been moving slowly at the last, had not yet arrived. Two elderly Arabs hovered near, however, the men who lived in the oasis to guard the well and the date palms in season. As Max spoke to them in his laboured Arabic he saw in the distance the form of a woman. Standing as she did, in the open ground with no trees between her and the far silver horizon, she was a noble and commanding figure, slender and tall like a daughter of the palms. She was for Max no more than a graceful silhouette, majestically poised, for he could not see her face, or even be sure that the effect of crown and plumes on her high-held head was not a trick of shadow. Indeed it seemed probable that it was a mere illusion, for crowns and waving plumes were worn by desert dancers, and it did not appear likely that a wife or daughter of the well-guardians should be so adorned.

As he exchanged elaborate compliments with the Arabs the woman's figure vanished and he thought no more of it, for Sanda and Stanton were arriving. Max turned away his eyes as Stanton took the bride out of her bassourah and half carried her toward their tent without waiting to thank the man who had placed it. Max busied himself feverishly in superintending the arrangements of the camp, which Stanton had asked him as his "lieutenant" to undertake that night.

The kneeling camels were tethered in long lines. No zareba would be raised, for there would be many a long march before the caravan reached perilous country. Here a fire could be built, for there was no danger in showing smoke and raising a rose-red glow against the silver. The unveiled women, whom Stanton had diplomatically allowed to accompany their husbands, began to cook supper for the men; couscous and coffee and thin, ash-baked bread. It was a long time since Stanton had taken Sanda to the tent under the little grove of palms, but he had given no orders yet for food to be prepared. Max thought it unlikely that he should be asked to eat with them, but if he were invited he intended to refuse. In spite of himself, he could not help glancing now and then toward the tent. The door-flaps had not been let down, but there was no light inside. Turning involuntarily that way, as iron turns to a magnet, at last he saw a man and woman come out of the tent. But the woman was not Sanda!

Max realized this with a shock. He saw both figures for an instant painted in blue-black against the light, khaki-coloured canvas. The woman was very tall, as tall as Stanton, and on her head was something high, like a crown set with plumes. Stanton led her away, walking quickly. They went toward the low, black tents of the guardians of the oasis.

Max stood still with a curious sensation of being dazed after a stunning blow half forgotten. How long he remained without moving he could not have told. His eyes had not followed the two figures very far. They returned to the tent and focussed there in anguish. Some scene there must have been between those three. He was not surprised when, after a short time—or a long time, he did not know which—Sanda appeared. He wondered if his soul had called her, and she was coming in answer to the call.

She hesitated at first, as if not sure where to go. Then catching sight of him at a distance, with the light of the fire ruddy on his face, she began to run. Almost instantly, however, she stopped, paused for a second or two, and it seemed to Max that she swayed a little as if she might fall. He started toward her with great strides; but he had not taken more than three or four when he saw that she was walking slowly but steadily straight toward him. He felt then, with a mysterious but complete certainty, that she wished him to go no farther, but to wait. He stopped, and in a moment she was by his side. She did not speak, but stood with her head drooping. Max could not see her face. After the first eagerly questioning glance he turned his eyes away. She did not wish him to look at her or break the silence. He held his tongue, but he was afraid she might hear the pounding of his heart and his breath coming and going. If she did she would guess that he knew something which, perhaps, she did not mean to let him know. At last, however, he could bear the strain no longer; besides, Stanton might come back. If there were anything he could do for her, if she wanted him to take her away—God! how his blood sang at the thought of it!—there was no more time to waste.

His tone sounded flat and ineffectual in his own ears as he spoke. The effort to keep it down to calmness made it almost absurd, as it would have been to mention the weather in that tingling instant. He asked simply: "Is there something—something I can do?"

"No," she said. "Nothing, thank you. Nothing any one can do."

The voice was not like the voice of Sanda, which Max had once compared in his mind to the ripple of a brook steeped in sunshine. It was thin and weak, almost like the voice of a little, broken old woman. But, praise heaven, she was young, so very young that she would live this down, and, some day, almost forget. If she would let him take her back to Sidi-bel-AbbÉs after all! This marriage by a priest without sanction of the law need not stand. She was not a wife yet, but a girl, oh! thank God for that! It was not too late. If only he could say these things to her. But it seemed that he must stand like a block of wood and wait for her to point the way.

"Are you—perhaps you're homesick?" he dared to give her a cue.

"Homesick?" Her voice broke and, instead of being like an old woman's, it was like a little child's. "Yes, that's it, I'm homesick! And—and I think I'm not very well. I want my father, I want him so much!"

The heart of the man who was not her father yearned toward the girl.

"Shall I take you back?" he panted. "We're not far past Touggourt. To-morrow it will be too late, but now—now——"

"Now it's already too late. Oh, Soldier! to have yesterday again!"

He did not ask her what she meant. He did not need to ask.

"It can be yesterday for you," he urged.

"No. Yesterday I was Sanda DeLisle. To-day I'm Sanda Stanton. Nothing can change that."

"If you're unhappy your father can change it. You see, it's only the church that——"

"Only the church!"

"Forgive me. But the law would say——"

"It doesn't matter to me what the law would say. It's the thing what you don't think matters that matters entirely to me. And even if it were so—even if I were—unhappy instead of only homesick, and somehow ill, I wouldn't go back if I could. I've written to my father. And that priest from Touggourt will have told the Amaranthes. Every one knows. It would be a disgrace to——"

"No! Not to you."

"I think it would. And to Richard. I have taken him by storm and almost forced him to marry me. I would die and be left alone in the desert rather than disgrace him in the world's eyes just when he's starting out on the crowning expedition of his life."

"Who put such an idea into your head that you'd taken him by storm, that——"

"Never mind. It is in my head, and it's true. I know it. Soldier, I'm glad, oh, so glad, that you're here! Will you help me?"

"You know I will," Max said, his heart bursting. If he had needed payment for what he had done, he had it in full measure. She was glad he was with her!

"Well, I've told you that I'm ill. It's my head—it aches horribly. I hardly know what I'm doing or saying. I can't be—in that tent to-night!"

"You shall have mine," Max assured her quickly. "It's a good little tent, got for the French doctor Stanton was telling us about, who decided at the last minute not to come."

"Oh, thank you a thousand times. But you?"

"I shall rig up something splendid. They've got more tents than they know what to do with. Several men fell out after Stanton had bought his supplies."

"You are good. Could I go to your tent now?"

"Of course. I'll take you there, and fetch your luggage myself. But you're sure you won't go back while there's time?"

"Sure."

"If you're ill you can't ride on with the caravan."

"I shall be better to-morrow. God will help me, and you will help me, too. I shall be able to go on for a while. Maybe it need not be for long. People die in the desert. I've always thought it a beautiful death. When you promise to marry a person it's for better or worse. And I've never said I was not happy, Soldier! Only a little homesick and tired."

"Come with me to my tent," Max said, realizing that all his persuasions would be in vain. "Come quietly now, and I'll explain to—to Stanton."

"He knows I feel ill," she answered. "I told him. He will understand."