The Golden Silence Part 6

"I daresay there are still some rich ones. But maybe riches aren't the same with them as with us. That fellow at lunch to-day looks as if he'd plenty of money to spend on embroideries."

"Yes. And he looks important too--as if he might have travelled, and known a great many people of all sorts. I wish it were proper for me to talk to him."

"Good Heavens, why?" asked Stephen, startled. "It would be most improper."

"Yes, I'm afraid so, and I won't, of course, unless I get to know him in some way," went on Victoria. "Not that there's any chance of such a thing."

"I should hope not," exclaimed Stephen, who was privately of opinion that there was only too good a chance if the girl showed the Arab even the faintest sign of willingness to know and be known. "I've no right to ask it, of course, except that I'm much older than you and have seen more of the world--but do promise not to look at that n.i.g.g.e.r. I don't like his face."

"He isn't a n.i.g.g.e.r," objected Victoria. "But if he were, it wouldn't matter--nor whether one liked his face or not. He might be able to help me."

"To help you--in Algiers?"

"Yes, in the same way that you might be able to help me--or more, because he's an Arab, and must know Arabs."

Stephen forgot to press his request for her promise. "How can I help you?" he wanted to know.

"I'm not sure. Only, you're going to Algiers. I always ask everybody to help, if there's the slightest chance they can."

Stephen felt disappointed and chilled. But she went on. "I should hate you to think I _gush_ to strangers, and tell them all my affairs, just because I'm silly enough to love talking. I must talk to strangers. I _must_ get help where I can. And you were kind the other night.

Everybody is kind. Do you know many people in Algeria, or Tunisia?"

"Only one man. His name is Nevill Caird, and he lives in Algiers. My name is Stephen Knight. I've been wanting to tell you--I seemed to have an unfair advantage, knowing yours ever since Paris."

He watched her face almost furtively, but no change came over it, no cloud in the blueness of her candid eyes. The name meant nothing to her.

"I'm sorry. It's hardly worth while my bothering you then."

Stephen wished to be bothered. "But Nevill Caird has lived in Algiers for eight winters or so," he said. "He knows everybody, French and English--Arab too, very likely, if there are Arabs worth knowing."

A bright colour sprang to the girl's cheeks and turned her extreme prettiness into brilliant beauty. It seemed to Stephen that the name of Ray suited her: she was dazzling as suns.h.i.+ne. "Oh, then, I will tell you--if you'll listen," she said.

"If I had as many ears as a spear of wheat, they'd all want to listen."

His voice sounded young and eager. "Please begin at the beginning, as the children say."

"Shall I really? But it's a long story. It begins when I was eight."

"All the better. It will be ten years long."

"I can skip lots of things. When I was eight, and my sister Saidee not quite eighteen, we were in Paris with my stepmother. My father had been dead just a year, but she was out of mourning. She wasn't old--only about thirty, and handsome. She was jealous of Saidee, though, because Saidee was so much younger and fresher, and because Saidee was beautiful--Oh, you can't imagine how beautiful!"

"Yes, I can," said Stephen.

"You mean me to take that for a compliment. I know I'm quite pretty, but I'm nothing to Saidee. She was a great beauty, though with the same colouring I have, except that her eyes were brown, and her hair a little more auburn. People turned to look after her in the street, and that made our stepmother angry. _She_ wanted to be the one looked at. I knew, even then! She wouldn't have travelled with us, only father had left her his money, on condition that she gave Saidee and me the best of educations, and allowed us a thousand dollars a year each, from the time our schooling was finished until we married. She had a good deal of influence over him, for he was ill a long time, and she was his nurse--that was the way they got acquainted. And she persuaded him to leave practically everything to her; but she couldn't prevent his making some conditions. There was one which she hated. She was obliged to live in the same town with us; so when she wanted to go and enjoy herself in Paris after father died, she had to take us too. And she didn't care to shut Saidee up, because if Saidee couldn't be seen, she couldn't be married; and of course Mrs. Ray wanted her to be married. Then she would have no bother, and no money to pay. I often heard Saidee say these things, because she told me everything. She loved me a great deal, and I adored her. My middle name is Cecilia, and she was generally called Say; so she used to tell me that our secret names for each other must be 'Say and Seal.' It made me feel very grown-up to have her confide so much in me: and never being with children at all, gave me grown-up thoughts."

"Poor child!" said Stephen.

"Oh, I was very happy. It was only after--but that isn't the way to tell the story. Our stepmother--whom we always called 'Mrs. Ray,' never 'mother'--liked officers, and we got acquainted with a good many French ones. They used to come to the flat where we lived. Some of them were introduced by our French governess, whose brother was in the army, but they brought others, and Saidee and Mrs. Ray went to parties together, though Mrs. Ray hated being chaperon. If poor Saidee were admired at a dinner, or a dance, Mrs. Ray would be horrid all next day, and say everything disagreeable she could think of. Then Saidee would cry when we were alone, and tell me she was so miserable, she would have to marry in self-defence. That made me cry too--but she promised to take me with her if she went away.

"When we had been in Paris about two months, Saidee came to bed one night after a ball, and waked me up. We slept in the same room. She was excited and looked like an angel. I knew something had happened. She told me she'd met a wonderful man, and every one was fascinated with him. She had heard of him before, but this was the first time they'd seen each other. He was in the French army, she said, a captain, and older than most of the men she knew best, but very handsome, and rich as well as clever. It was only at the last, after she'd praised the man a great deal, that she mentioned his having Arab blood. Even then she hurried on to say his mother was a Spanish woman, and he had been partly educated in France, and spoke perfect French, and English too. They had danced together, and Saidee had never met so interesting a man. She thought he was like the hero of some romance; and she told me I would see him, because he'd begged Mrs. Ray to be allowed to call. He had asked Saidee lots of questions, and she'd told him even about me--so he sent me his love. She seemed to think I ought to be pleased, but I wasn't. I'd read the 'Arabian Nights', with pictures, and I knew Arabs were dark people. I didn't look down on them particularly, but I couldn't bear to have Say interested in an Arab. It didn't seem right for her, somehow."

The girl stopped, and apparently forgot to go on. She had been speaking with short pauses, as if she hardly realized that she was talking aloud.

Her eyebrows drew together, and she sighed. Stephen knew that some memory pressed heavily upon her, but soon she began again.

"He came next day. He was handsome, as Saidee had said--as handsome as the Arab on board this s.h.i.+p, but in a different way. He looked n.o.ble and haughty--yet as if he might be very selfish and hard. Perhaps he was about thirty-three or four, and that seemed old to me then--old even to Saidee. But she was fascinated. He came often, and she saw him at other houses. Everywhere she was going, he would find out, and go too. That pleased her--for he was an important man somehow, and of good birth.

Besides, he was desperately in love--even a child could see that. He never took his eyes off Saidee's face when she was with him. It was as if he could eat her up; and if she flirted a little with the real French officers, to amuse herself or tease him, it drove him half mad. She liked that--it was exciting, she used to say. And I forgot to tell you, he wore European dress, except for a fez--no turban, like this man's on the boat, or I'm sure she couldn't have cared for him in the way she did--he wouldn't have seemed _possible_, for a Christian girl. A man in a turban! You understand, don't you?"

"Yes, I understand," Stephen said. He understood, too, how violently such beauty as the girl described must have appealed to the dark man of the East. "The same colouring that I have," Victoria Ray had said. If he, an Englishman, accustomed to the fair loveliness of his countrywomen, were a little dazzled by the radiance of this girl, what compelling influence must not the more beautiful sister have exercised upon the Arab?

"He made love to Saidee in a fierce sort of way that carried her off her feet," went on Victoria. "She used to tell me things he said, and Mrs.

Ray did all she could to throw them together, because he was rich, and lived a long way off--so she wouldn't have to do anything for Say if they were married, or even see her again. He was only on leave in Paris.

He was a Spahi, stationed in Algiers, and he owned a house there."

"Ah, in Algiers!" Stephen began to see light--rather a lurid light.

"Yes. His name was Ca.s.sim ben Halim el Cheikh el Arab. Before he had known Saidee two weeks, he proposed. She took a little while to think it over, and I begged her to say 'no'--but one day when Mrs. Ray had been crosser and more horrid than usual, she said 'yes'. Ca.s.sim ben Halim was Mohammedan, of course, but he and Saidee were married according to French law. They didn't go to church, because he couldn't do that without showing disrespect to his own religion, but he promised he'd not try to change hers. Altogether it seemed to Saidee that there was no reason why they shouldn't be as happy as a Catholic girl marrying a Protestant--or _vice versa_; and she hadn't any very strong convictions.

She was a Christian, but she wasn't fond of going to church."

"And her promise that she'd take you away with her?" Stephen reminded the girl.

"She would have kept it, if Mrs. Ray had consented--though I'm sure Ca.s.sim didn't want me, and only agreed to do what Saidee asked because he was so deep in love, and feared to lose my sister if he refused her anything. But Mrs. Ray was afraid to let me go, on account of the condition in father's will that she should keep me near her while I was being educated. There was an old friend of father's who'd threatened to try and upset the will, for Saidee's sake and mine, so I suppose she thought he might succeed if she disobeyed father's instructions. It ended in Saidee and her husband going to Algiers without me, and Saidee cried--but she couldn't help being happy, because she was in love, and very excited about the strange new life, which Ca.s.sim told her would be wonderful as some gorgeous dream of fairyland. He gave her quant.i.ties of jewellery, and said they were nothing to what she should have when she was in her own home with him. She should be covered from head to foot with diamonds and pearls, rubies and emeralds, if she liked; and of course she would like, for she loved jewels, poor darling."

"Why do you say 'poor?'" asked Stephen. "Are you going to tell me the marriage wasn't a success?"

"I don't know," answered the girl. "I don't know any more about her than if Ca.s.sim ben Halim had really carried my sister off to fairyland, and shut the door behind them. You see, I was only eight years old. I couldn't make my own life. After Saidee was married and taken to Algiers, my stepmother began to imagine herself in love with an American from Indiana, whom she met in Paris. He had an impressive sort of manner, and made her think him rich and important. He was in business, and had come over to rest, so he couldn't stay long abroad; and he urged Mrs. Ray to go back to America on the same s.h.i.+p with him. Of course she took me, and this Mr. Henry Potter told her about a boarding-school where they taught quite little girls, not far from the town where he lived. It had been a farmhouse once, and he said there were 'good teachers and good air.' I can hear him saying it now. It was easy to persuade her; and she engaged rooms at a hotel in the town near by, which was called Potterston, after Mr. Potter's grandfather. By and by they were married, but their marriage made no difference to me. It wasn't a bad little old-fas.h.i.+oned school, and I was as happy as I could be anywhere, parted from Saidee. There was an attic where I used to be allowed to sit on Sat.u.r.days, and think thoughts, and write letters to my sister; and there was one corner, where the sunlight came in through a tiny window shaped like a crescent, without any gla.s.s, which I named Algiers. I played that I went there to visit Saidee in the old Arab palace she wrote me about. It was a splendid play--but I felt lonely when I stopped playing it. I used to dance there, too, very softly in stockinged feet, so n.o.body could hear--dances she and I made up together out of stories she used to tell me. The Shadow Dance and the Statue Dance which you saw, came out of those stories, and there are more you didn't see, which I do sometimes--a b.u.t.terfly dance, the dance of the wheat, and two of the East, which were in stories she told me after we knew Ca.s.sim ben Halim. They are the dance of the smoke wreath, and the dance of the jewel-and-the-rose. I could dance quite well even in those days, because I loved doing it. It came as natural to dance as to breathe, and Saidee had always encouraged me, so when I was left alone it made me think of her, to dance the dances of her stories."

"What about your teachers? Did they never find you out?" asked Stephen.

"Yes. One of the young teachers did at last. Not in the attic, but when I was dancing for the big girls in their dormitory, at night--they'd wake me up to get me to dance. But she wasn't much older than the biggest of the big girls, so she laughed--I suppose I must have looked quaint dancing in my nighty, with my long red hair. And though we were all scolded afterwards, I was made to dance sometimes at the entertainments we gave when school broke up in the summer. I was the youngest scholar, you see, and stayed through the vacations, so I was a kind of pet for the teachers. They were of one family, aunts and nieces--Southern people, and of course good-natured. But all this isn't really in the story I want to tell you. The interesting part's about Saidee. For months I got letters from her, written from Algiers. At first they were like fairy tales, but by and by--quite soon--they stopped telling much about herself. It seemed as if Saidee were growing more and more reserved, or else as if she were tired of writing to me, and bored by it--almost as if she could hardly think of anything to say.

Then the letters stopped altogether. I wrote and wrote, but no answer came--no answer ever came."

"You've never heard from your sister since then?" The thing appeared incredible to Stephen.

"Never. Now you can guess what I've been growing up for, living for, all these years. To find her."

"But surely," Stephen argued, "there must have been some way to----"

"Not any way that was in my power, till now. You see I was helpless. I had no money, and I was a child. I'm not very old yet, but I'm older than my years, because I had this thing to do. There I was, at a farmhouse school in the country, two miles out of Potterston--and you would think Potterston itself not much better than the backwoods, I'm sure. When I was fourteen, my stepmother died suddenly--leaving all the money which came from my father to her husband, except several thousand dollars to finish my education and give me a start in life; but Mr.

Potter lost everything of his own and of mine too, in some wild speculation about which the people in that part of Indiana went mad. The crash came a year ago, and the Misses Jennings, who kept the school, asked me to stay on as an under teacher--they were sorry for me, and so kind. But even if nothing had happened, I should have left then, for I felt old enough to set about my real work. Oh, I see you think I might have got at my sister before, somehow, but I couldn't, indeed. I tried everything. Not only did I write and write, but I begged the Misses Jennings to help, and the minister of the church where we went on Sundays. The Misses Jennings told the girls' parents and relations whenever they came to visit, and they all promised, if they ever went to Algiers, they would look for my sister's husband, Captain Ca.s.sim ben Halim, of the Spahis. But they weren't the sort of people who ever do go such journeys. And the minister wrote to the American Consul in Algiers for me, but the only answer was that Ca.s.sim ben Halim had disappeared.

It seemed not even to be known that he had an American wife."

"Your stepmother ought to have gone herself," said Stephen.

"Oh--_ought_! I very seldom saw my stepmother after she married Mr.

Potter. Though she lived so near, she never asked me to her house, and only came to call at the school once or twice a year, for form's sake.

But I ran away one evening and begged her to go and find Saidee. She said it was nonsense; that if Saidee hadn't wanted to drop us, she would have kept on writing, or else she was dead. But don't you think I should have _known_ if Saidee were dead?"

"By instinct, you mean--telepathy, or something of that sort?"