Chapter 5

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_ CHAPTER V

"One cannot yacht in the Baltic or in the Gulf of Mexico," Owen said, and he went to the Mediterranean again to sail about the _AEgean_ Islands, wondering if he should land, changing his mind, deciding suddenly that the celebrated site he was going to see would not interest him. He would stand watching the rocky height dying down, his eyes fixed on the blue horizon, thinking of some Emperor's palace amid the Illyrian hills, till, acting on a sudden impulse, he would call an order to the skipper, an order which he would countermand next day. A few days after the yacht would sail towards the Acropolis as though Owen had intended to drop anchor in the Piraeeus. But he was too immersed in his grief, he thought, to be able to give his attention to ruins, whether Roman or Greek. All the same, he would have to decide if he would return to the islands. He did not know them all; he had never been to Samos, famous for its wine and its women.... The wine cloyed the palate and no woman charmed him in the dance; and he sailed away wondering how he might relieve the tedium of life, until one day, after long voyaging, sufficiently recovered from his grief and himself, he leaned over the taffrail, this time lost in admiration of the rocks and summits above Syracuse, the Sicilian coasts carrying his thoughts out of the present into the past, to those valleys where Theocritus watched his "visionary flocks."

"'His visionary flocks,'" he repeated, wondering if the beautiful phrase had floated accidentally into his mind, hoping that it was his own, and then abandoning hope, for he had nearly succeeded in tracing the author of the phrase; but there was a vision in it more intense than Tennyson's. "Visionary flocks!" For while the shepherds watched Theocritus dreamed the immortal sheep and goats which tempt us for an instant to become shepherds; but Owen knew that the real flocks would seem unreal to him who knew the visionary ones, so he turned away from the coasts without a desire in his heart to trouble the shepherds in the valley with an offer of his services, and walked up and down the deck thinking how he might obtain a translation of the idyls.

"Sicily, Sicily!"

It was unendurable that his skipper should come at such a moment to ask him if he would like to land at Palermo; for why should he land in Sicily unless to meet the goatherd who in order to beguile Thyrsis to sing the song of Daphnis told him that "his song was sweeter than the music of yonder water that is poured from the high face of the rock"? It was in Sicily that rugged Polyphemus, peering over some cliffs, sought to discern Galatea in the foam; but before Owen had time to recall the myth an indenture in the coast line, revealing a field, reminded him how Proserpine, while gathering flowers on the plains of Enna with her maidens, had been raped into the shadows by the dark god. And looking on these waves, he remembered that it was over them that Jupiter in the form of a bull, a garlanded bull with crested horns, had sped, bearing Europa away for his pleasure. Venus had been washed up by these waves! Poseidon! Sirens and Tritons had disported themselves in this sea, the bluest and the beautifullest, the one sea that mattered, more important than all the oceans; the oceans might dry up to-morrow for all he cared so long as this sea remained; and with the story of Theseus and "lonely Ariadne on the wharf at Naxos" ringing in his ears he looked to the north-east, whither lay the Cyclades and Propontis. Medea, too, had been deserted--"Medea deadlier than the sea." Helen! All the stories of the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey" had been lived about these seas, from the coasts of Sicily to those of Asia Minor, whence AEneas had made his way to Carthage. Dido, she, too, had been deserted. All the great love stories of the world had been lived about these shores and islands; his own story! And he mused for a long time on the accident--if it were an accident--which had led him back to this sea. Or had he returned to these shores and islands merely because there was no other sea in which one could yacht? Hardly, and he remembered with pleasure that his story differed from the ancient stories only in this, that Evelyn had fled from him, not be from her. And for such a woeful reason! That she might repent her sins in a convent on the edge of Wimbledon Common, whereas Dido was deserted for--

Again his infernal skipper hanging about. This time he had come with news that the _Medusa_ was running short of provisions. Would Sir Owen prefer that they should put in at Palermo or Tunis?

"Tunis, Tunis."

The steerman put down the helm, and the fore and aft sails went over. Three days later the _Medusa_ dropped her anchor in the Bay of Tunis, and his skipper was again asking Owen for orders.

"Just take her round to Alexandria and wait for me there," he answered, feeling he would not be free from England till she was gone. It was his wish to get away from civilisation for a while, to hear Arabic, to learn it if he could, to wear a bournous, to ride Arab horses, live in a tent, to disappear in the desert, yes, and to be remembered as the last lover of the Mediterranean--that would be _une belle fin de vie, apres tout_.

Then he laughed at his dreams, but they amused him; he liked to look upon his story as one of the love stories of the world. Rome had robbed Dido of her lover and him of his mistress. So far as he could see, the better story was the last, and his thoughts turned willingly to the Virgil who would arise centuries hence to tell it. One thing, however, puzzled him. Would the subject-matter he was creating for the future poet be spoilt if he were to fall in love with an Arab maiden, some little statuette carved in yellow ivory? Or would it be enhanced? Would the future Virgil regard her as an assuagement, a balm? Owen laughed at himself and his dream. But his mood drifted into sadness; and he asked if Evelyn should be punished. If so, what punishment would the poet devise for her? In Theocritus somebody had been punished: a cruel one, who had refused to relieve the burden of desire even with a kiss, had been killed by a seemingly miraculous interposition of Love, who, angered at the sight of the unhappy lover hanging from the neck by the lintel of the doorpost, fell from his pedestal upon the beloved, while he stood heart-set watching the bathers in the beautiful bathing-places.

But Owen could not bring himself to wish for Evelyn's death by the falling of a statue of Our Lady or St. Joseph; such a death would be a contemptible one, and he could not wish that anything contemptible should happen to her, however cruelly she had made him suffer. No, he did not wish that any punishment should befall her; the fault was not hers. And he returned in thought to the end which he had devised for himself--a passing into the desert, leaving no trace but the single fact that on a certain day he had joined a caravan. Going whither? Timbuctoo? To be slain there--an English traveller seeking forgetfulness of a cruel mistress--would be a romantic end for him! But if his end were captivity, slavery? His thoughts turned from Timbuctoo to one of the many oases between Tunis and the Soudan. In one of these it would be possible to make friends with an Arab chieftain and to live. But would she, whose body was the colour of amber, or the desert, or any other invention his fancy might devise, relieve him from the soul-sickness from which he suffered? It seemed to him that nothing would. All the same, he would have to try to forget her, "Evelyn, Evelyn."

The bournous which his Arab servant brought in at that moment might help him. A change of language would be a help, and he might become a Moslem--for he believed in Mohammedanism as much as in Christianity; and an acceptance of the Koran would facilitate travelling in the desert. That and a little Arabic, a few mouthfuls, and no Mahdi would dare to enslave him.... But if he were only sure that none would!

Outside horses were stamping, his escort, seven Arab horses with seven Arabs from the desert, or thereabout, in high-pummelled saddles, wearing white bournous, their brown, lean hands grasping long-barrelled guns with small carven stocks. The white Arab which Owen had purchased yesterday waited, the saddle empty; and, looking at him before mounting, Owen thought the horse the most beautiful thing he had ever seen, more like an ornament than a live thing, an object of luxury rather than of utility. Was he really going to ride this horse for many hours? To do so seemed like making a drudge of some beautiful woman. The horse's quarters curved like a woman's, a woman's skin was hardly finer, nor were a woman's wrists and hands, though she cared for them ever so much, shaping them with files, and polishing them with powders, more delicate than the fetlock and hoof of this wonderful horse. Nor was any woman's eye more beautiful, nor any woman's ears more finely shaped; and the horse's muzzle came to such a little point that one would have been inclined to bring him water in a tumbler. The accoutrements were all Arab; and Owen admired the heavy bits, furnished with many rings and chains, severe curbs, demanding the lightest handling, without being able to guess their use. But in the desert one rides like the Arab, and it would be ridiculous to go away to the Sahara hanging on to a snaffle like an Irishman out hunting.

So he mounted, and the cavalcade started amid much noise and dust, which followed it until it turned from the road into the scrub. A heavy dew had fallen during the night, and it glittered like silver rain, producing a slight mirage, which deceived nobody, but which prevented Owen from seeing what the country was like, until the sun shone out. Then he saw that they were crossing an uncultivated rather than a sterile plain, and the word "wilderness" came up in his mind, for the only trees and plants he saw were wildings, wild artichokes, tall stems, of no definite colour, with hairy fruits; rosemary, lavender and yellow broom, and half-naked bushes stripped of their foliage by the summer heat, covered with dust; nowhere a blade of grass--an indurated plain, chapped, rotted by stagnant waters, burnt again by the sun. And they rode over this plain for hours, the horses avoiding the baked earth, choosing the softer places where there was a litter of leaves or moss. Sometimes the cavalcade divided into twos and threes, sometimes it formed into a little group riding to the right or left, with Owen and his dragoman in front, Owen trying to learn Arabic from the dragoman, the lesson interrupted continually by some new sight: by a cloud of thistledown hovering over a great purple field, rising and falling, for there was not wind enough to carry the seed away; by some white vapour on the horizon, which his dragoman told him was the smoke of Arabs clearing the scrub.

"A primitive method, and an easy one, saving the labour of billhook and axe." About nine o'clock he saw some woods lying to the north-west. But the horses' heads were turned eastward to avoid an arm of a great marsh, extending northward to the horizon. It was then that, wearying of trying to get his tongue round certain Arabic words, he rode away from his dragoman, and tried to define the landscape as a painter would; but it was all too vast, and all detail was lost in the vastness, and all was alike. So, abandoning the pictorial, he philosophised, discovering the fallacy of the old saying that we owe everything to the earth, the mother of all. "We owe her very little. The debt is on her side," he muttered. "It is we who make her so beautiful, finding in the wilderness a garden and a statue in a marble block. Man is everything." And the words put the thought into his mind that although they had been travelling for many hours they had not yet seen a human being, nor yet an animal. Whither the Arabs had gone the dragoman could not tell him; he could only say they came to this plain for the spring pasture; their summer pastures were elsewhere, and he pointed to an old olive, brown and bent by the wind, telling Owen it was deemed a sacred tree, to which sterile women came to hang votive offerings. Owen reined up his horse in front of it, and they resumed their journey, meeting with nothing they had not met with before, unless, perhaps, a singular group of date-palms gathered together at one spot, forerunners of the desert, keeping each other company, struggling for life in a climate which was not theirs.

At eleven o'clock a halt was made in the bed of a great river enclosed within steep mudbanks, now nearly as dry as the river they had crossed in the morning; only a few inches of turbid water, at which a long herd of cattle was drinking when they arrived; the banks planted with great trees, olives, tamarisks, and masticks. At three o'clock they were again in the saddle, and they rode on, leaving to the left an encampment (the dragoman told Owen the name of the tribe), some wandering horses, and some camels. The camels, who appeared to have lost themselves, did not gallop away like the horses, but came forward and peaceably watched the cavalcade passing, absent-minded, bored ruminants, with something always on their minds. The sobriety of these animals astonished him. "They're not greedy, and they are never thirsty. Of what do they remind me?" And Owen thought for a while, till catching sight of their long fleecy necks, bending like the necks of birds, and ending in long flexible lips (it was the lips that gave him the clue he was seeking), he said, "The Nonconformists of the four-footed world," and he told his joke to his dragoman, without, however, being able to make him understand.

"These Arabs have no sense of humour," he muttered, as he rode away.

The only human beings he saw on that long day's journey were three shepherds--two youths and an old man; the elder youth, standing on a low wall, which might be Roman or Carthaginian, Turkish or Arabian (an antiquarian would doubtless have evolved the history of four great nations from it), watched a flock of large-tailed sheep and black goats, and blew into his flageolet, drawing from it, not music, only sounds without measure or rhythm, which the wind carried down the valley, causing the sheep-dog to rise up from the rock on which he was lying and to howl dismally. Near by the old man walked, leaning on the arm of the younger brother, a boy of sixteen. Both wore shepherd's garb--tunics fitting tight to the waist, large plaited hats, and sandals cut from sheep-skin. The old man's eyes were weak and red, and he blinked them so constantly that Owen thought he must be blind; and the boy was so beautiful that one of the Arabs cried out to him, in the noble form of Arab salutation:

"Hail to thee, Jacob, son of Isaac; and hail to thy father."

Owen repeated the names "Jacob!" "Isaac!" a light came into his face, and he drew himself up in his saddle, understanding suddenly that he had fallen out of the "Odyssey," landing in the very midst of the Bible; for there it was, walking about him: Abraham and Isaac, the old man willing to sacrifice his son to please some implacable God hidden behind a cloud; Jacob selling his birthright to Esau, the birthright of camels, sheep, and goats. And down his mind floated the story of Joseph sold by his brethren, and that of Ruth and Boaz: "Thy people shall be my people, thy God shall be my God," a story of corn rather than of flocks and herds. For the sake of Boaz she would accept Yahveh. But would he accept such a God for Evelyn's sake, and such a brute?--always telling his people if they continued to adore him they would be given not only strength to overcome their enemies, but even the pleasure of dashing out the brains of their enemies' children against the stones; and thinking of the many apocalyptic inventions, the many-headed beasts of Isaiah, the Cherubim and Seraphim, who were not stalwart and beautiful angels, but many-headed beasts from Babylonia, Owen remembered that these revolting monsters had been made beautiful in the AEgean: sullen Astaarte, desiring sacrifice and immolation, had risen from the waters, a ravishing goddess with winged Loves marvelling about her, Loves with conches to their lips, blowing the glad news to the world.

"How the thought wanders!" he said, "A moment ago I was among the abominations of Isaiah. Now I am back, if not with the Greek Venus, 'whom men no longer call the Erecine,' at all events with an enchanting Parisian, nearly as beautiful, and more delightful--a voluptuous goddess, laughing amid her hair, drawn less austerely than Ingres, but much more firmly than Boucher or Fragonard... a fragrant goddess."

And meditating with half his mind, he admired the endurance of his horse with the other, who, though he could neither trot, nor gallop, nor walk, could amble deliciously.

"If not a meditative animal himself, his gait conduces to meditation," Owen said, and he continued to dream that art could only be said to have flourished among Mediterranean peoples, until he was roused from his reverie by his horse, who suddenly pricked up his ears and broke into a canter. He had been travelling since six in the morning, and it was now evening; but he was fresh enough to prick up his ears, scenting, no doubt, an encampment, the ashes of former fires, the litter left by some wayfarers, desert wanderers, bedouins, Hebrews.

Owen began his dream again, and he could do so without danger, for his horse hardly required the direction of the bridle even in the thick wood; and while admiring his horse's sagacity in avoiding the trees he pursued his theological fancies, an admirable stillness gathering the while, shadows descending, unaccompanied by the slightest wind, and no sound. Yes, a faint sound! And reigning in his horse, he listened, and all the Arabs about him listened, to the babble coming up through the evening--a soft liquid talking like the splashing of water, or the sound of wings, or the mingling of both, some language more liquid than Italian. What language was being spoken over yonder? One of the Arabs answered, "It is the voice of the lake."

As the cavalcade rode out of the wood the lake lay a glittering mirror before Owen, about a mile wide; he could not determine its length, for the lake disappeared into a distant horizon, into a semblance of low shores, still as stagnant water, reflecting the golden purple of the sunset, and covered with millions of waterfowl. The multitude swimming together formed an indecisive pattern, like a vague, weedy scum collected on the surface of a marsh. Ducks, teal, widgeon, coots, and divers were recognisable, despite the distance, by their prow-like heads, their balance on the water, and their motion through it, "like little galleys," Owen said. Nearer, in the reeds agitated with millions of unseen inhabitants, snipe came and went in wisps, uttering an abrupt cry, going away in a short, crooked flight and falling abruptly. In the distance he saw grey herons and ibises from Egypt. The sky darkened, and through the dusk, from over the hills, thousands of birds continued to arrive, creating a wind in the poplars. Like an army marching past, battalion succeeded battalion at intervals of a few seconds; and the mass, unwinding like a great ribbon, stretched across the lake. Then the mist gathered, blotting out everything, all noise ceased, and the lake itself disappeared in the mist.

Turning in the saddle, Owen saw a hillock and five olive-trees. A fire was burning. This was the encampment. _

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