The Golden Silence Part 62

"From the broken tower?"

"Yes. As you came, you must have sighted the men from Azzouz. But tell me the rest."

"There's little to tell, and I want your news more than you can want mine. The Arabs' animals were fresh, and ours tired, for I'd given them no rest. The brutes had a good start of us and made the best of it, but at first I thought we were gaining. We got within gunshot, and fired after them. Two at least were hit. We came on traces of fresh blood afterward, but the birds themselves were flown. In any case, it was to bring help I came, not to make captures. Do you think _she_ would like me to see her now?"

"Come with me and try, before the other rescue party arrives. I'm glad the surgeon's with you. I'm worried about Caird, and we're all a bit dilapidated. How we're to get him and the ladies away from this place, I don't know. Our animals are dead or dying."

"You will probably find that the enemy has been generous in spite of himself and left you some--all that couldn't be taken away. Strange how those men looked like Touaregs! You are sure of what they really were?"

"Sure. But since no one else knows, why should the secret leak out?

Better for the ladies if the Touareg disguise should hide the truth, as it was meant to do."

"Why not indeed? Since we weren't lucky enough to rid his wife--and the world of the marabout."

"Then we're agreed: unless something happens to change our minds, we were attacked by Touaregs."

Sabine smiled grimly. "Duprez bet," he answered, "that I should find they were not Arabs, but Touaregs. He will enjoy saying 'I told you so.'"

That night, and for many nights to come, there was wailing in the Zaoua. The marabout had gone out to meet his son, who had been away from school on a pilgrimage, and returning at dark, to avoid the great heat of the day, had been bitten by a viper. Thus, at least, p.r.o.nounced the learned Arab physician. It was of the viper bite he died, so it was said, and no one outside the Zaoua knew of the great man's death until days afterwards, when he was already buried. Even in the Zaoua it was not known by many that he had gone away or returned from a journey, or that he lay ill. In spite of this secrecy and mystery, however, there was no gossip, but only wild wailing, of mourners who refused to be comforted. And if certain persons, to the number of twenty or more, were missing from their places in the Zaoua, nothing was said, after Si Maeddine had talked with the holy men of the mosque. If these missing ones were away, and even if they should never come back, it was because they were needed to carry out the marabout's wishes, at a vast distance.

But now, the dearest wishes of Sidi Mohammed would never be fulfilled.

That poignant knowledge was a knife in every man's heart; for men of ripe age or wisdom in the Zaoua knew what these wishes were, and how some day they were to have come true through blood and fire.

All were sad, though no tongue spoke of any other reason for sadness, except the inestimable loss of the Saint. And sadder than the saddest was Si Maeddine, who seemed to have lost his youth.

LII

It is a long cry from the bordj of Toudja among the dunes of the southern desert, to Algiers, yet Nevill begged that he might be taken home. "You know why," he said to Stephen, and his eyes explained, if Stephen needed explanations. Nevill thought there might be some chance of seeing Josette in Algiers, if he were dying. But the army surgeon from Oued Tolga p.r.o.nounced it unsafe to take him so far.

Yet away from Toudja he must go, since it was impossible to care for him properly there, and the bullet which had wounded him was still in his side.

Fortunately the enemy had left plenty of camels. They had untethered all, hoping that the animals might wander away, too far to be caught by the Europeans, but more than were needed remained in the neighbourhood of Toudja, and Rostafel took possession of half a dozen good meharis, which would help recoup him for his losses in the bordj. Not one animal had any mark upon it which could identify the attackers, and saddles and accoutrements were of Touareg make. The dead men, too, were impossible to identify, and it was not likely that much trouble would be taken in prosecuting inquiries. Among those whose duty it is to govern Algeria, there is a proverb which, for various good reasons, has come to be much esteemed: "Let sleeping dogs lie."

Not a man of the five who defended the bordj but had at least one wound to show for his night's work. Always, however, it is those who attack, in a short siege, who suffer most; and the Europeans were not proud of the many corpses they had to their credit. There was some patching for the surgeon to do for all, but Nevill's was the only serious case. The French doctor, De Vigne, did not try to hide the truth from the wounded man's friend; there was danger. The best thing would have been to get Nevill to Algiers, but since that was impossible, he must travel in a ba.s.sour, by easy stages, to Touggourt. Instead of two days' journey they must make it three, or more if necessary, and he--De Vigne--would go with them to put his patient into the hands of the army surgeon at Touggourt.

They had only the one ba.s.sour; that in which Saidee and Victoria had come to Toudja from Oued Tolga, but Nevill was delirious more often than not, and had no idea that a sacrifice was being made for him. Blankets, and two of the mattresses least damaged by fire in the barricade, were fastened on to camels for the ladies, after the fas.h.i.+on in use for Bedouin women of the poorest cla.s.s, or Ouled Nals who have not yet made their fortune as dancers; and so the journey began again.

There was never a time during the three days it lasted, for Stephen to confess to Victoria. Possibly she did not wish him to take advantage of a situation created as if by accident at Toudja. Or perhaps she thought, now that the common danger which had drawn them together, was over, it would be best to wait until anxiety for Nevill had pa.s.sed, before talking of their own affairs.

At Azzouz, where they pa.s.sed a night full of suffering for Nevill, they had news of the marabout's death. It came by telegraph to the operator, just before the party was ready to start on; yet Saidee was sure that Sabine had caused it to be sent just at that time. He had been obliged to march back with his men--the penalty of commanding the force for which he had asked; but a letter would surely come to Touggourt, and Saidee could imagine all that it would say. She had no regrets for Ben Halim, and said frankly to Victoria that it was difficult not to be indecently glad of her freedom. At last she had waked up from a black dream of horror, and now that it was over, it hardly seemed real. "I shall forget," she said. "I shall put my whole soul to forgetting everything that's happened to me in the last ten years, and every one I've known in the south--except one. But to have met him and to have him love me, I'd live it all over again--all."

She kept Victoria with her continually, and in the physical weakness and nervous excitement which followed the strain she had gone through, she seemed to have forgotten her interest in Victoria's affairs. She did not know that her sister and Stephen had talked of love, for at Toudja after the fight began she had thought of nothing but the danger they shared.

Altogether, everything combined to delay explanations between Stephen and Victoria. He tried to regret this, yet could not be as sorry as he was repentant. It was not quite heaven, but it was almost paradise to have her near him, though they had a chance for only a few words occasionally, within earshot of Saidee, or De Vigne, or the twins, who watched over Nevill like two well-trained nurses. She loved him, since a word from her meant more than vows from other women. Nothing had happened yet to disturb her love, so these few days belonged to Stephen.

He could not feel that he had stolen them. At Touggourt he would find a time and place to speak, and then it would be over forever. But one joy he had, which never could have come to him, if it had not been for the peril at Toudja. They knew each other's hearts. Nothing could change that. One day, no doubt, she would learn to care for some other man, but perhaps never quite in the same way she had cared for him, because Stephen was sure that this was her first love. And though she might be happy in another love--he tried to hope it, but did not succeed sincerely--he would always have it to remember, until the day of his death, that once she had loved him.

As far out from Touggourt as Temacin, Lady MacGregor came to meet them, in a ramshackle carriage, filled with rugs and pillows in case Nevill wished to change. But he was not in a state to wish for anything, and De Vigne decided for him. He was to go on in the ba.s.sour, to the villa which had been let to Lady MacGregor by an officer of the garrison. It was there the little Mohammed was to have been kept and guarded by the Highlanders, if the great scheme had not been suddenly changed in some of its details. Now, the child had inherited his father's high place.

Already the news had reached the marabout of Temacin, and flashed on to Touggourt. But no one suspected that the viper which had bitten the Saint had taken the form of a French bullet. Perhaps, had all been known to the Government, it would have seemed poetical justice that the arch plotter had met his death thus. But his plots had died with him; and if Islam mourned because the Moul Saa they hoped for had been s.n.a.t.c.hed from them, they mourned in secret. For above other sects and nations, Islam knows how to be silent.

When they were settled in the villa near the oasis (Saidee and Victoria too, for they needed no urging to wait till it was known whether Nevill Caird would live or die) Lady MacGregor said with her usual briskness to Stephen: "Of course I've telegraphed to that _creature_."

Stephen looked at her blankly.

"That hard-hearted little beast, Josette Soubise," the fairy aunt explained.

Stephen could hardly help laughing, though he had seldom felt less merry. But that the tiny Lady MacGregor should refer to tall Josette, who was nearly twice her height, as a "little beast," struck him as somewhat funny. Besides, her toy-terrier snappishness was comic.

"I've nothing _against_ the girl," Lady MacGregor felt it right to go on, "except that she's an idiot to bite off her nose to spite her own face--and Nevill's too. I don't approve of her at all as a wife for him, you must understand. Nevill could marry a _princess_, and she's nothing but a little school-teacher with a dimple or two, whose mother and father were less than _n.o.body_. Still, as Nevill wants her, she might have the grace to show appreciation of the honour, by not spoiling his life. He's never been the same since he went and fell in love with her, and she refused him."

"You've telegraphed to Tlemcen that Nevill is ill?" Stephen ventured.

"I've telegraphed to the creature that she'd better come here at once, if she wants to see him alive," replied Lady MacGregor. "I suppose she loves him in her French-Algerian way, and she must have saved up enough money for the fare. Anyhow, if Nevill doesn't live, I happen to know he's left her nearly everything, except what the poor boy imagines I ought to have. That's pouring coals of fire on her head!"

"Don't think of his not living!" exclaimed Stephen.

"Honestly I believe he won't live unless that idiot of a girl comes and purrs and promises to marry him, deathbed or no deathbed."

Again Stephen smiled faintly. "You're a matchmaker, Lady MacGregor," he said. "You are one of the most subtle persons I ever saw."

The old lady took this as a compliment. "I haven't lived among Arabs, goodness knows how many years, for nothing," she retorted. "I telegraphed for her about five minutes after you wired from Azzouz. In fact, my telegram went back by the boy who brought yours."

"She may be here day after to-morrow, if she started at once," Stephen reflected aloud.

"She did, and she will," said Lady MacGregor, drily.

"You've heard?"

"The day I wired."

"You have quite a nice way of breaking things to people, you dear little ladys.h.i.+p," said Stephen. And for some reason which he could not in the least understand, this speech caused Nevill's aunt to break into tears.

That evening, the two surgeons extracted the bullet from Nevill's side.

Afterwards, he was extremely weak, and took as little interest as possible in things, until Stephen was allowed to speak to him for a moment.

Most men, if told that they had just sixty seconds to spend at the bedside of a dear friend, would have been at a loss what to say in a s.p.a.ce of time so small yet valuable. But Stephen knew what he wished to say, and said it, as soon as Nevill let him speak; but Nevill began first.

"Maybe--going to--deserve name of Wings," he muttered. "Shouldn't wonder. Don't care much."

"Is there any one thing in this world you want above everything else?"

asked Stephen.

"Yes. Sight of--Josette. One thing I--can't have."