The Figure In The Mirage | Page 2

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