The Golden Silence Part 64

"I used to believe it wrong to marry a person one didn't love,"

Victoria broke in, quickly. "But it's so different when one talks of an imaginary case. This poor girl loves you?"

"I suppose she thinks she does."

"She's poor?"

"Yes."

"And she depends upon you."

"Of course she counts on me. I always expected to keep my word."

"And now you'd break it--for me! Oh, no, I couldn't let you do it. Were you--does she expect to be married soon?"

Stephen's face grew red, as if it had been struck. "Yes," he answered, in a low voice.

"Would you mind--telling me how soon?"

"As soon as she gets back from Canada."

Victoria's bosom rose and fell quickly.

"Oh!--and when----"

"At once. Almost at once."

"She's coming back immediately?"

"Yes. I--I'm afraid she's in England now."

"How dreadful! Poor girl, hoping to see you--to have you meet her, maybe, and--you're here. You're planning to break her heart. It breaks mine to think of it. I _couldn't_ have you fail."

"For G.o.d's sake don't send me away from you. I can't go. I won't."

"Yes, if I beg you to go. And I do. You must stand by this poor girl, alone in the world except for you. I see from what you tell me, that she needs you and appeals to your chivalry by lacking everything except what comes from you. It can't be wrong to protect her, after giving your promise, even though you mayn't love her in the way you once thought you did: but it _would_ be wrong to abandon her now----"

A rustling in the long path made Stephen turn. Some one was coming. It was Margot Lorenzi.

He could not believe that it was really she, and stared stupidly, thinking the figure he saw an optical illusion.

She had on a grey travelling dress, and a grey hat trimmed with black ribbon, which, Stephen noted idly, was powdered with dust. Her black hair was dusty, too, and her face slightly flushed with heat, nevertheless she was beautiful, with the luscious beauty of those women who make a strong physical appeal to men.

Behind her was an Arab servant, whom she had pa.s.sed in her eagerness. He looked somewhat troubled, but seeing Stephen he threw up his hands in apology, throwing off all responsibility. Then he turned and went back towards the house.

Margot, too, had seen Stephen. Her eyes flashed from him to the figure of the girl, which she saw in profile. She did not speak, but walked faster; and Victoria, realizing that their talk was to be interrupted by somebody, looked round, expecting Lady MacGregor or Saidee.

"It is Miss Lorenzi," Stephen said, in a low voice. "I don't know how--or why--she has come here. But for your sake--it will be better if you go now, at once, and let me talk to her."

There was another path by which Victoria could reach the house. She might have gone, thinking that Stephen knew best, and that she had no more right than wish to stay, but the tall young woman in grey began to walk very fast, when she saw that the girl with Stephen was going.

"Be kind enough to stop where you are, Miss Ray. I know you must be Miss Ray," Margot called out in a loud, sharp voice. She spoke as if Victoria were an inferior, whom she had a right to command.

Surprised and hurt by the tone, the girl hesitated, looking from the newcomer to Stephen.

At first glance and at a little distance, she had thought the young woman perfectly beautiful, perhaps the most beautiful creature she had ever seen--even more glorious than Saidee. But when Miss Lorenzi came nearer, undisguisedly angry and excited, the best part of her beauty was gone, wiped away, as a face in a picture may be smeared before the paint is dry. Her features were faultless, her hair and eyes magnificent. Her dress was pretty, and exquisitely made, if too elaborate for desert travelling; her figure charming, though some day it would be too stout; yet in spite of all she looked common and cruel. The thought that Stephen Knight had doomed himself to marry this woman made Victoria s.h.i.+ver, as if she had heard him condemned to imprisonment for life.

She had thought before seeing Miss Lorenzi that she understood the situation, and how it had come about. She had said to Stephen, "I understand." Now, it seemed to her that she had boasted in a silly, childish way. She had not understood. She had not begun to understand.

Suddenly the girl felt very old and experienced, and miserably wise in the ways of the world. It was as if in some other incarnation she had known women like this, and their influence over men: how, if they tried, they could beguile chivalrous men into being sorry for them, and doing almost anything which they wished to be done.

A little while ago Victoria had been thinking and speaking of Margot Lorenzi as "poor girl," and urging Stephen to be true to her for his own sake as well as hers. But now, in a moment, everything had changed. A strange flash of soul-lightning had shown her the real Margot, unworthy of Stephen at her best, crus.h.i.+ng to his individuality and aspirations at her worst. Victoria did not know what to think, what to do. In place of the sad and lonely girl she had pictured, here stood a woman already selfish and heartless, who might become cruel and terrible. No one had ever looked at Victoria Ray as Miss Lorenzi was looking now, not even Miluda, the Ouled Nal, who had stared her out of countenance, curiously and maliciously at the same time.

"I have heard a great deal about Miss Ray in Algiers," Margot went on.

"And I think--you will _both_ understand why I made this long, tiresome journey to Touggourt."

"There is no reason why Miss Ray should understand," said Stephen quickly. "It can't concern her in the least. On your own account it would have been better if you had waited for me in London. But it's too late to think of that now. I will go with you into the house."

"No," Margot answered. "Not yet. And you're not to put on such a tone with me--as if I'd done something wrong. I haven't! We're engaged, and I have a perfect right to come here, and find out what you've been doing while I was at the other side of the world. You promised to meet me at Liverpool--and instead, you were here--with _her_. You never even sent me word. Yet you're surprised that I came on to Algiers. Of course, when I was _there_, I heard everything--or what I didn't hear, I guessed. You hadn't bothered to hide your tracks. I don't suppose you so much as thought of me--poor me, who went to Canada for your sake really. Yes!

I'll tell you why I went now. I was afraid if I didn't go, a man who was in love with me there--he's in love with me now and always will be, for that matter!--would come and kill you. He used to threaten that he'd shoot any one I might marry, if I dared throw him over; and he's the kind who keeps his word. So I didn't want to throw him over. I went myself, and stayed in his mother's house, and argued and pleaded with him, till he'd promised to be good and let me be happy. So you see--the journey was for you--to save you. I didn't want to see him again for myself, though _his_ is real love. You're cold as ice. I don't believe you know what love is. But all the same I can't be jilted by you--for another woman. I won't have it, Stephen--after all I've gone through. If you try to break your solemn word to me, I'll sue you. There'll be another case that will drag your name before the public again, and not only yours----"

"Be still, Margot," said Stephen.

She grew deadly pale. "I will not be still," she panted. "I _will_ have justice. No one shall take you away from me."

"No one wishes to take me away," Stephen flung at her hotly. "Miss Ray has just refused me. You've spared me the trouble of taking her advice----"

"What was it?" Margot looked suddenly anxious, and at the same time self-a.s.sertive.

"That I should go at once to England--and to you."

Victoria took a step forward, then paused, pale and trembling. "Oh, Stephen!" she cried. "I take back that advice. I--I've changed my mind.

You can't--you can't do it. You would be so miserable that she'd be wretched, too. I see now, it's not right to urge people to do things, especially when--one only _thinks_ one understands. She doesn't love you really. I feel almost sure she cares more for some one else, if--if it were not for things you have, which she wants. If you're rich, as I suppose you must be, don't make this sacrifice, which would crush your soul, but give her half of all you have in the world, so that she can be happy in her own way, and set you free gladly."

As Victoria said these things, she remembered M'Barka, and the prophecy of the sand; a sudden decision to be made in an instant, which would change her whole life.

"I'll gladly give Miss Lorenzi more than half my money," said Stephen.

"I should be happy to think she had it. But even if you begged me to marry her, Victoria, I would not now. It's gone beyond that. Her ways and mine must be separate forever."

Margot's face grew eager, and her eyes flamed.

"What I want and insist on," she said, "is that I must have my rights.

After all I've hoped for and expected, I _won't_ be thrown over, and go back to the old, dull life of turning and twisting every s.h.i.+lling. If you'll settle thirty thousand pounds on me, you are free, so far as I care. I wouldn't marry a man who hated me, when there's one who adores me as if I were a saint--and I like him better than ever I did you--a lot better. I realize that more than I did before."

The suggestion of Margot Lorenzi as a saint might have made a looker-on smile, but Victoria and Stephen pa.s.sed it by, scarcely hearing.

"If I give you thirty thousand pounds, it will leave me a poor man," he said.

"Oh, _do_ give her the money and be a poor man," Victoria implored. "I shall be so happy if we are poor--a thousand times happier than she could be with millions."