The Golden Silence Part 37

The woman on the roof s.h.i.+vered. The chill of the coming night cooled her excitement. She was afraid of the future, and the sadness which had fallen upon the desert was cold in her heart. The caravan was not far from the gate of the Zaoua, but she was tired of watching it. She turned and went down the narrow stairs that led to her rooms, and to the little garden where the fragrance of orange blossoms was too sweet.

x.x.xV

The caravan stopped in front of the Zaoua gate. There were great iron doors in a high wall of toub, which was not much darker in colour than the deep gold of the desert sand; and because it was after sunset the doors were closed.

One of the Negroes knocked, and called out something inarticulate and guttural in a loud voice.

Almost at once the gate opened, and a shadowy figure hovered inside. A name was announced, which was instantly shouted to a person unseen, and a great chattering began in the dusk. Men ran out, and one or two kissed the hand of the rider on the white horse. They explained volubly that the lord was away, but the newcomer checked them as soon as he could, saying that he had heard the news in the city. He had with him ladies, one a relative of his own, another who was connected with the great lord himself, and they must be entertained as the lord would wish, were he not absent.

The gates, or doors, of iron were thrown wide open, and the little procession entered a huge open court. On one side was accommodation for many animals, as in a caravanserai, with a narrow roof sheltering thirty or forty stalls; and here the two white meharis were made to kneel, that the women might descend from their ba.s.sourahs. There were three, all veiled, but the arms of one were bare and very brown. She moved stiffly, as if cramped by sitting for a long time in one position; nevertheless, she supported her companion, whose ba.s.sour she had shared. The two Soudanese Negroes remained in this court with their animals, which the servants of the Zaoua, began helping them to unload; but the master of the expedition, with the two ladies of his party and Fafann, was now obliged to walk. Several men of the Zaoua acted as their guides, gesticulating with great respect, but lowering their eyelids, and appearing not to see the women.

They pa.s.sed through another court, very large, though not so immense as the first, for no animals were kept there. Instead of stalls for camels and horses, there were roughly built rooms for pilgrims of the poorer cla.s.s, with little, roofless, open-sided kitchens, where they could cook their own food. Beyond was the third court, with lodging for more important persons, and then the travellers were led through a labyrinth of corridors, some roofed with palm branches, others open to the air, and still more covered in with the toub blocks of which the walls were built. Along the sides were crumbling benches of stucco, on which old men lay rolled up in their burnouses; or here and there a door of rotting palm wood hung half open, giving a glimpse into a small, dim court, duskily red with the fire of cooking in an open-air kitchen. From behind these doors came faint sounds of chanting, and spicy smells of burning wood and boiling peppers. It was like pa.s.sing through a subterranean village; and little dark children, squatting in doorways, or flattening their bodies against palm trunks which supported palm roofs, or flitting ahead of the strangers, in the thick, musky scented twilight, were like shadowy gnomes.

By and by, as the newcomers penetrated farther into the mysterious labyrinth of the vast Zaoua, the corridors and courts became less ruined in appearance. The walls were whitewashed; the palm-wood doors were roughly carved and painted in bright colours, which could be seen by the flicker of lamps set high in little niches. Each tunnel-like pa.s.sage had a carved archway at the end, and at last they entered one which was closed in with beautiful doors of wrought iron.

Through the rich network they could see into a court where everything glimmered white in moonlight. They had come to the court of the mosque, which had on one side an entrance to the private house of the marabout, the great Sidi El Hadj Mohammed ben Abd-el-Kader.

"Lella Sada, oh light of the young moon, if it please thee, thou hast two guests come from very far off," announced an old negress to the woman who had been looking out over the golden silence of the desert.

It was an hour since she had come down from the roof, and having eaten a little bread, with soup, she lay on a divan writing in a small book.

Several tall copper lamps with open-work copper shades, jewelled and fringed with coloured gla.s.s, gave a soft and beautiful light to the room. It had pure white walls, round which, close to the ceiling, ran a frieze of Arab lettering, red, and black, and gold. The doors and window-blinds and little cupboards were of cedar, so thickly inlaid with mother-o'-pearl, that only dark lines of the wood defined the white patterning of leaves and flowers.

The woman had thrown off the blue drapery that had covered her head, and her auburn hair glittered in the light of the lamp by which she wrote.

She looked up, vexed.

"Thou knowest, Noura, that for years I have received no guests," she said, in a dialect of the Soudan, in which most Saharian mistresses of Negro servants learn to talk. "I can see no one. The master would not permit me to do so, even if I wished it, which I do not."

"Pardon, loveliest lady. But this is another matter. A friend of our lord brings these visitors to thee. One is kin of his. She seeks to be healed of a malady, by the power of the Baraka. But the other is a Roumia."

The wife of the great marabout shut the book in which she had been writing, and her mind travelled quickly to the sender of the carrier-pigeon. A European woman, the first who had ever come to the Zaoua in eight years! It must be that she had a message from him.

Somehow he had contrived this visit. She dared ask no more questions.

"I will see these ladies," she said. "Let them come to me here."

"Already the old one is resting in the guest-house," answered the negress. "She has her own servant, and she asks to see thee no earlier than to-morrow, when she has rested, and is able to pay thee her respects. It is the other, the young Roumia, who begs to speak with thee to-night."

The wife of the marabout was more certain than ever that her visitor must come from the sender of the pigeon. She was glad of an excuse to talk with his messenger alone, without waiting.

"Go fetch her," she directed. "And when thou hast brought her to the door I shall no longer need thee, Noura."

Her heart was beating fast. She dreaded some final decision, or the need to make a decision, yet she knew that she would be bitterly disappointed if, after all, the European woman were not what she thought. She shut up the diary in which she wrote each night, and opening one of the wall cupboards near her divan, she put it away on a shelf, where there were many other small volumes, a dozen perhaps. They contained the history of her life during the last nine years, since unhappiness had isolated her, and made it necessary to her peace of mind, almost to her sanity, to have a confidant. She closed the inlaid doors of the cupboard, and locked them with a key which hung from a ribbon inside her dress.

Such a precaution was hardly needed, since the writing was all in English, and she had recorded the events of the last few weeks cautiously and cryptically. Not a soul in the marabout's house could read English, except the marabout himself; and it was seldom he honoured her with a visit. Nevertheless, it had become a habit to lock up the books, and she found a secretive pleasure in it.

She had only time to slip the ribbon back into her breast, and sit down stiffly on the divan, when the door was opened again by Noura.

"O Lella Sada, I have brought the Roumia," the negress announced.

A slim figure in Arab dress came into the room, unfastening a white veil with fingers that trembled with impatience. The door shut softly. Noura had obeyed instructions.

x.x.xVI

For ten years Victoria had been waiting for this moment, dreaming of it at night, picturing it by day. Now it had come.

There was Saidee standing before her, found at last. Saidee, well and safe, and lovely as ever, hardly changed in feature, and yet--there was something strange about her, something which stopped the joyous beating of the girl's heart. It was almost as if she had died and come to Heaven, to find that Heaven was not Heaven at all, but a cold place of fear.

She was shocked at the impression, blaming herself. Surely Saidee did not know her yet, that was all; or the surprise was too great. She wished she had sent word by the negress. Though that would have seemed ba.n.a.l, it would have been better than to see the blank look on Saidee's face, a look which froze her into a marble statue. But it was too late now. The only thing left was to make the best of a bad beginning.

"Oh, darling!" Victoria cried. "Have I frightened you? Dearest--my beautiful one, it's your little sister. All these years I've been waiting--waiting to find a way. You knew I would come some day, didn't you?"

Tears poured down her face. She tried to believe they were tears of joy, such as she had often thought to shed at sight of Saidee. She had been sure that she could not keep them back, and that she would not try. They should have been sweet as summer rain, but they burned her eyes and her cheeks as they fell. Saidee was silent. The girl held out her arms, running a step or two, then, faltering, she let her arms fall. They felt heavy and stiff, as if they had been turned to wood. Saidee did not move. There was an expression of dismay, even of fear on her face.

"You don't know me!" Victoria said chokingly. "I've grown up, and I must seem like a different person--but I'm just the same, truly. I've loved you so, always. You'll get used to seeing me changed. You--you don't think I'm somebody else pretending to be Victoria, do you? I can tell you all the things we used to do and say. I haven't forgotten one. Oh, Saidee, dearest, I've come such a long way to find you. Do be glad to see me--do!"

Her voice broke. She put out her hands pleadingly--the childish hands that had seemed pathetically pretty to Stephen Knight.

A look of intense concentration darkened Saidee's eyes. She appeared to question herself, to ask her intelligence what was best to do. Then the tense lines of her face softened. She forced herself to smile, and leaning towards Victoria, clasped the slim white figure in her arms, holding it tightly, in silence. But over the girl's shoulder, her eyes still seemed to search an answer to their question.

When she had had time to control her voice and expression, she spoke, releasing her sister, taking the wistful face between her hands, and gazing at it earnestly. Then she kissed lips and cheeks.

"Victoria!" she murmured. "Victoria! I'm not dreaming you?"

"No, no, darling," the girl answered, more hopefully. "No wonder you're dazed. This--finding you, I mean--has been the object of my life, ever since your letters stopped coming, and I began to feel I'd lost you.

That's why I can't realize your being struck dumb with the surprise of it. Somehow, I've always felt you'd be expecting me. Weren't you? Didn't you know I'd come when I could?"

Saidee shook her head, looking with extraordinary, almost feverish, interest at the younger girl, taking in every detail of feature and complexion, all the exquisite outlines of extreme youth, which she had lost.

"No," she said slowly. "I thought I was dead to the world. I didn't think it would be possible for anyone to find me, even you."

"But--you are glad--now I'm here?" Victoria faltered.

"Of course," Saidee answered unhesitatingly. "I'm delighted--enchanted--for my own sake. If I'm frightened, if you think me strange--_farouche_--it's because I'm so surprised, and because--can you believe it?--this is the first time I've spoken English with any human being for nine years--perhaps more. I almost forget--it seems a century. I talk to myself--so as not to forget. And every night I write down what has happened, or rather what I've thought, because things hardly ever do happen here. The words don't come easily. They sound so odd in my own ears. And then--there's another reason why I'm afraid.

It's on your account. I'd better tell you. It wouldn't be fair not to tell. I--how are you going to get away again?"

She almost whispered the last words, and spoke them as if she were ashamed. But she watched the girl's face anxiously.

Victoria slipped a protecting arm round her waist. "We are going away together, dearest," she said. "Unless you're too happy and contented.

But, my Saidee--you don't look contented."