The Figure In The Mirage 1905

On a windy night of Spring I sat by a great fire that had been built by Moors on a plain of Morocco under the shadow of a white city, and talked with a fellow-countryman, stranger to me till that day. We had met in the morning in a filthy alley of the town, and had forgathered. He was a wanderer for pleasure like myself, and, learning that he was staying in a dreary hostelry haunted by fever, I invited him to dine in my camp, and to pass the night in one of the small peaked tents that served me and my Moorish attendants as home. He consented gladly. Dinner was over--no bad one, for Moors can cook, can even make delicious caramel pudding in desert places--and Mohammed, my stalwart valet de chambre, had given us most excellent coffee. Now we smoked by the great fire, looked up at the marvellously bright stars, and told, as is the way of travellers, tales of our wanderings. My companion, whom I took at first to be a rather ironic, sceptical, and by nature “unimaginative globe-trotter--he was a hard-looking, iron-grey man of middle-age--related the usual tiger story, the time-honoured elephant anecdote, and a couple of snake yarns of no special value, and I was beginning to fear that I should get little entertainment from so prosaic a sportsman, when I chanced to mention the desert.

“Ah!” said my guest, taking his pipe from his mouth, “the desert is the strangest thing in nature, as woman is the strangest thing in human nature. And when you get them together--desert and woman--by Jove!”

He paused, then he shot a keen glance at me.

“Ever been in the Sahara?” he said.

I replied in the affirmative, but added that I had as yet only seen the fringe of it.

“Biskra, I suppose,” he rejoined, “and the nearest oasis, Sidi-Okba, and so on?”

I nodded. I saw I was in for another tale, and anticipated some history of shooting exploits under the salt mountain of El Outaya.

“Well,” he continued, “I know the Sahara pretty fairly, and about the oddest thing I ever could believe in I heard of and believed in there.”

“Something about gazelle?” I queried.

“Gazelle? No--a woman!” he replied..

As he spoke a Moor glided out of the windy darkness, and threw an armful of dry reeds on the fire. The flames flared up vehemently, and I saw that the face of my companion had changed. The hardness of it was smoothed away. Some memory, that held its romance, sat with him.

“A woman,” he repeated, knocking the ashes out of his pipe almost sentimentally--“more than that, a French woman of Paris, with the nameless charm, the chic, the---- But I’ll tell you. Some years ago three Parisians--a man, his wife, and her unmarried sister, a girl of eighteen, with an angel and a devil in her dark beauty--came to a great resolve. They decided that they were tired of the Français, sick of the Bois, bored to death with the boulevards, that they wanted to see for themselves the famous French colonies which were for ever being talked about in the Chamber. They determined to travel. No sooner was the determination come to than they were off. Hôtel des Colonies, Marseilles; steamboat, Le Général Chanzy; five o’clock on a splendid, sunny afternoon--Algiers, with its terraces, its white villas, its palms, trees, and its Spahis!”

“But----” I began.

He foresaw my objection.

“There were Spahis, and that’s a point of my story. Some fête was on in the town while our Parisians were there. All the African troops were out--Zouaves, chasseurs, tirailleurs. The Governor went in procession to perform some ceremony, and in front of his carriage rode sixteen Spahis--probably got in from that desert camp of theirs near El Outaya. All this was long before the Tsar visited Paris, and our Parisians had never before seen the dashing Spahis, had only heard of them, of their magnificent horses, their turbans and flowing Arab robes, their gorgeous figures, lustrous eyes, and diabolic horsemanship. You know how they ride? No cavalry to touch them--not even the Cossacks! Well, our French friends were struck. The unmarried sister, more especially, was bouleversée by these glorious demons. As they caracoled beneath the balcony on which she was leaning she clapped her little hands, in their white kid gloves, and threw down a shower of roses. The falling flowers frightened the horses. They pranced, bucked, reared. One Spahi--a great fellow, eyes like a desert eagle, grand aquiline profile--on whom three roses had dropped, looked up, saw mademoiselle--call her Valérie--gazing down with her great, bright eyes--they were deuced fine eyes, by Jove!----”

“You’ve seen her?” I asked.

“--and flashed a smile at her with his white teeth. It was his last day in the service. He was in grand spirits. ‘Mem Dieu! Mais quelles dents!’ she sang out. Her people laughed at her. The Spahi looked at her again-- not smiling. She shrank back on the balcony. Then his place was taken by the Governor--small imperial, chapeau de forme, evening dress, landau and pair. Mademoiselle was désolée. Why couldn’t civilised men look like Spahis? Why were all Parisians commonplace? Why--why? Her sister and brother-in-law called her the savage worshipper, and took her down to the café on the terrace to dine. And all through dinner mademoiselle talked of the beaux Spahis--in the plural, with a secret reservation in her heart. After Algiers our Parisians went by way of Constantine to Biskra. Now they saw desert for the first time--the curious iron-grey, velvety-brown, and rose-pink mountains; the nomadic Arabs camping in their earth-coloured tents patched with rags; the camels against the skyline; the everlasting sands, broken here and there by the deep green shadows of distant oases, where the close-growing palms, seen from far off, give to the desert almost the effect that clouds give to Cornish waters. At Biskra mademoiselle--oh! what she must have looked like under the mimosa-trees before the Hôtel de l’Oasis!------”

“Then you’ve seen her,” I began.

“--mademoiselle became enthusiastic again, and, almost before they knew it, her sister and brother-in-law were committed to a desert expedition, were fitted out with a dragoman, tents, mules--the whole show, in fact--and one blazing hot day found themselves out in that sunshine--you know it--with Biskra a green shadow on that sea, the mountains behind the sulphur springs turning from bronze to black-brown in the distance, and the table flatness of the desert stretching ahead of them to the limits of the world and the judgment day.”

My companion paused, took a flaming reed from the fire, put it to his pipe bowl, pulled hard at his pipe--all the time staring straight before him, as if, among the glowing logs, he saw the caravan of the Parisians winding onward across the desert sands. Then he turned to me, sighed, and said:

“You’ve seen mirage?”

“Yes,” I answered.

“Have you noticed that in mirage the things one fancies one sees generally appear in large numbers--buildings crowded as in towns, trees growing together as in woods, men shoulder to shoulder in large companies?”

My experience of mirage in the desert was so, and I acknowledged it.

“Have you ever seen in a mirage a solitary figure?” he continued.

I thought for a moment. Then I replied in the negative.

“No more have I,” he said. “And I believe it’s a very rare occurrence. Now mark the mirage that showed itself to mademoiselle on the first day of the desert journey of the Parisians. She saw it on the northern verge of the oasis of Sidi-Okba, late in the afternoon. As they journeyed Tahar, their dragoman--he had applied for the post, and got it by the desire of mademoiselle, who admired his lithe bearing and gorgeous aplomb--Tahar suddenly pulled up his mule, pointed with his brown hand to the horizon, and said in French:

“‘There is mirage! Look! There is the mirage of the great desert!’

“Our Parisians, filled with excitement, gazed above the pointed ears of their beasts, over the shimmering waste. There, beyond the palms of the oasis, wrapped in a mysterious haze, lay the mirage. They looked at it in silence. Then Mademoiselle cried, in her little bird’s clear voice:

“‘Mirage! But surely he’s real?’

“‘What does mademoiselle see?’ asked Tahar quickly.

“‘Why, a sort of faint landscape, through which a man--an Arab, I suppose--is riding, towards Sidi--what is it?--Sidi-Okba! He’s got something in front of him, hanging across his saddle.’

“Her relations looked at her in amazement.

“‘I only see houses standing on the edge of water,’ said her sister.

“‘And I!’ cried the husband.

“‘Houses and water,’ assented Tahar. ‘It is always so in the mirage of Sidi-Okba.’

“‘I see no houses, no water,’ cried mademoiselle, straining her eyes. ‘The Arab rides fast, like the wind. He is in a hurry. One would think he was being pursued. Why, now he’s gone!’

“She turned to her companions. They saw still the fairy houses of the mirage standing in the haze on the edge of the fairy water.

“‘But,’ mademoiselle said impatiently, ‘there’s nothing at all now--only sand.’

“‘Mademoiselle dreams,’ said Tahar. ‘The mirage is always there.’