The Golden Silence Part 17

It was not for Stephen to offer objections, though he was in a mood which made him long to push on without stopping, even though there were no motive for haste. He was ashamed of the mood, however, and hardly understood what it meant, since he had come to Algeria in search of peace. When first he landed, and until the day of Victoria's letter, he had been enormously interested in the panorama of the East which pa.s.sed before his eyes. He had eagerly noticed each detail of colour and strangeness, but now, though the London lethargy was gone, in its place had been born a disturbing restlessness which would not let him look impersonally at life as at a picture.

Questioning himself as he lay awake in the Oran hotel, with windows open to the moonlight, Stephen was forced to admit that the picture was blurred because Victoria had gone out of it. Her figure had been in the foreground when first he had seen the moving panorama, and all the rest had been only a magical frame for her. The charm of her radiant youth, and the romance of the errand which had brought her knocking, when he knocked, at the door of the East, had turned the glamour into glory. Now she had vanished; and as her letter said, it might be that she would never come back. The centre of interest was transferred to the unknown place where she had gone, and Stephen began to see that his impatience to be moving was born of the wish not only to know that she was safe, but to see her again.

He was angry with himself at this discovery, and almost he was angry with Victoria. If he had not her affairs to worry over, Africa would be giving him the rest cure he had expected. He would be calmly enjoying this run through beautiful country, instead of chafing to rush on to the end. Since, in all probability, he could do the girl no good, and certainly she could do him none, he half wished that one or the other had crossed from Ma.r.s.eilles to Algiers on a different s.h.i.+p. What he needed was peace, not any new and feverish personal interest in life.

Yes, decidedly he wished that he had never known Victoria Ray.

But the wish did not live long. Suddenly her face, her eyes, came before him in the night. He heard her say that she would give him "half her star," and his heart grew sick with longing.

"I hope to Heaven I'm not going to love that girl," he said aloud to the darkness. If no other woman came into his life, he might be able to get through it well enough with Margot. He could hunt and shoot, and do other things that consoled men for lack of something better. But if--he knew he must not let there be an "if." He must go on thinking of Victoria Ray as a child, a charming little friend whom he wished to help. Any other thought of her would mean ruin.

Before dawn they were called, and started as the sun showed over the horizon.

So they ran into the western country, near to the Morocco border. Dull at first, save for its flooding flowers, soon the way wound among dark mountains, from whose helmeted heads trailed the long plumes of white cascades, and whose feet--like the stone feet of Egyptian kings in ruined temples--were bathed by lakes that glimmered in the depths of gorges.

It was a land of legends and dreams round about Tlemcen, the "Key of the West," city of beautiful mosques. The mountains were honeycombed with onyx mines; and rising out of wide plains were crumbling brown fortresses, haunted by the ghosts of long-dead Arabs who had buried h.o.a.rds of money in secret hiding-places, and died before they could unearth their treasure. Tombs of kings and princes, and koubbahs of renowned marabouts, Arab saints, gleamed white, or yellow as old gold, under the faded silver of ancient olive trees, in fields that ran red with blood of poppies. Minarets jewelled like peac.o.c.ks' tails soared above the tops of blossoming chestnuts. On low trees or bushes, guarding the graves of saints, fluttered many-coloured rags, left there by faithful men and women who had prayed at the shrine for health or fortune; and for every foot of ground there was some wild tale of war or love, an echo from days so long ago that history had mingled inextricably with lore of fairies.

Nevill was excited and talkative as they drove into the old town, once the light of western Algeria. They pa.s.sed in by the gateway of Oran, and through streets that tried to be French, but contrived somehow to be Arab. Nevill told stories of the days when Tlemcen had queened it over the west, and coined her own money; of the marabouts after whom the most famous mosques were named: Sidi-el-Haloui, the confectioner-saint from Seville, who preached to the children and made them sweetmeats; of the lawyer-saint, Sidi Aboul Ha.s.san from Arabia, and others. But he did not speak of Josette Soubise, until suddenly he touched Stephen's arm as they pa.s.sed the high wall of a garden.

"There, that's where _she_ teaches," he said; and it was not necessary to add a name.

Stephen glanced at him quickly. Nevill looked very young. His eyes no longer seemed to gaze at far-away things which no one else could see.

All his interests were centred near at hand.

"Don't you mean to stop?" Stephen asked, surprised that the car went on.

"No; school's begun. We'll have to wait till the noon interval, and even then we shan't be allowed indoors, for a good many of the girls are over twelve, the age for veiling--_hadjabah_, they call it--when they're shut up, and no man, except near relations, can see their faces. Several of the girls are already engaged. I believe there's one, not fourteen, who's been divorced twice, though she's still interested in dolls.

Weird, isn't it? Josette will talk with us in the garden. But we'll have time now to take rooms at the hotel and wash off the dust. To eat something too, if you're hungry."

But Stephen was no hungrier than Nevill, whose excitement, perhaps, was contagious.

The hotel was in a wide _place_, so thickly planted with acacias and chestnut trees as to resemble a shabby park. An Arab servant showed them to adjoining rooms, plain but clean, and a half-breed girl brought tins of hot water and vases of syringas. As for roses, she said in hybrid French, no one troubled about them--there were too many in Tlemcen. Ah!

but it was a land of plenty! The gentlemen would be happy, and wish to stay a long time. There was meat and good wine for almost nothing, and beggars need not ask twice for bread--fine, white bread, baked as the Moors baked, across the border.

As they bathed and dressed more carefully than they had dressed for the early-morning start, strange sounds came up from the square below, which was full of people, laughing, quarrelling, playing games, striking bargains, singing songs. Arab bootblacks clamoured for custom at the hotel-door, pus.h.i.+ng one another aside, fiercely. Little boys in embroidered green or crimson jackets sat on the hard, yellow earth, playing an intricate game like "jack stones," and disputed so violently that men and even women stopped to remonstrate, and separate them; now a grave, prosperous Jew dressed in red (Jewish mourning in the province of Oran); then an old Kabyle woman of the plains, in a short skirt of fiery orange scarcely hiding the thin sticks of legs that were stained with henna half-way up the calves, like painted stockings. Moors from across the frontier--fierce men with eagle faces and striped cloaks--grouped together, whispering and gesticulating, stared at with suspicion by the milder Arabs, who attributed all the crimes of Tlemcen to the wild men from over the border. Black giants from the Negro quarter kept together, somewhat humble, yet laughing and happy. Slender, coffee-coloured youths drove miniature cows from Morocco, or tiny black donkeys, heavily laden and raw with sores, colliding with well-dressed Turks, who had the air of merchants, and looked as if they could not forget that Tlemcen had long been theirs before the French dominion. Bored but handsome officers rode through the square on Arab horses graceful as deer, and did not even glance at pa.s.sing women, closely veiled in long white hacks.

It was lively and amusing in the sunlight; but just as the two friends were ready to go out, the sky was swept with violet clouds. A storm threatened fiercely, but they started out despite its warning, turning deaf ears to the importunities of a Koulougli guide who wished to show them the mosques, "ver' cheap." He followed them, but they hurried on, pus.h.i.+ng so st.u.r.dily through a flock of pink-headed sheep, which poured in a wave over the pavement, that they might have out-run the rain had they not been brought to a sudden standstill by a funeral procession.

It was the strangest sight Stephen had seen yet, and he hardly noticed that, in a burst of sunlight, rain had begun to pelt down through the canopy of trees.

The band of figures in brown burnouses marched quickly, with a sharp rustling of many slippered feet moving in unison, and golden spears of rain seemed to pierce the white turbans of the men who carried the bier.

As they marched, fifty voices rose and fell wildly in a stirring chant, exciting and terrible as the beat-beat of a tom-tom, sometimes a shout of barbaric triumph, sometimes a mourning wail. Then, abruptly, a halt was made in the glittering rain, and the bearers were changed, because of the luck it brings Arab men to carry the corpse of a friend.

Just in front of the two Englishmen the body rested for an instant, stretched out long and piteously flat, showing its thin shape through the mat of woven straw which wrapped it, only the head and feet being wound with linen. So, by and by, it would be laid, without a coffin, in its shallow grave in the Arab cemetery, out on the road to Sidi Bou-Medine.

There were but a few seconds of delay. Then the new bearers lifted the bier by its long poles, and the procession moved swiftly, feverishly, on again, the wild chant trailing behind as it pa.s.sed, like a torn war-banner. The thrill of the wailing crept through Stephen's veins, and roused an old, childish superst.i.tion which an Irish nurse had implanted in him when he was a little boy. According to Peggy Brian it was "a cruel bad omen" to meet a funeral, especially after coming into a new town. "Wait for a corpse," said she, "an' ye'll wait while yer luck goes by."

"They're singing a song in praise of the dead man's good deeds, and of triumph for the joys he'll know in Paradise," explained Nevill. "It's only the women who weep and scratch their faces when those they love have died. The men rejoice, or try to. Soon, they are saying, this one who has gone will be in gardens fair as the gardens of Allah Himself, where sit beautiful houris, in robes woven of diamonds, sapphires, and rubies, each gem of which has an eye of its own that glitters through a vapour of smouldering ambergris, while fountains send up pearly spray in the shade of fragrant cedars."

"No wonder the Mohammedan poor don't fear death, if they expect to exchange their hovels for such quarters," said Stephen. "I wish I understood Arabic."

"It's a difficult language to keep in your mind, and I don't know it well," Nevill answered. "But Jeanne and Josette Soubise speak it like natives; and the other day when Miss Ray lunched with us, I thought her knowledge of Arabic wonderful for a person who'd picked it up from books."

Stephen did not answer. He wished that Nevill had not brought the thought of Victoria into his mind at the moment when he was recalling his old nurse's silly superst.i.tion. Victoria laughed at superst.i.tions, but he was not sure that he could laugh, in this barbaric land where it seemed that anything might happen.

XVI

Nevill had not sent word to Josette Soubise that he was coming to see her. He wished to make the experiment of a surprise, although he insisted that Stephen should be with him. At the door in the high white wall of the school-garden, he asked an unveiled crone of a porteress to say merely that two gentlemen had called.

"She'll suspect, I'm afraid," he muttered to Stephen as they waited, "even if her sister hasn't written that I thought of turning up. But she won't have time to invent a valid excuse, if she disapproves of the visit."

In three or four minutes the old woman hobbled back, shuffling slippered feet along the tiled path between the gate and the low whitewashed house. Mademoiselle requested that ces Messieurs would give themselves the pain of walking into the garden. She would descend almost at once.

They obeyed, Nevill stricken dumb by the thought of his coming happiness. Stephen would have liked to ask a question or two about the school, but he refrained, sure that if Nevill were forced into speech he would give random answers.

This was being in love--the real thing! And Stephen dimly envied his friend, even though Caird seemed to have small hope of winning the girl.

It was far better to love a woman you could never marry, than to be obliged to marry one you could never love.

He imagined himself waiting to welcome Margot, beautiful Margot, returning from Canada to him. He would have to go to Liverpool, of course. She would be handsomer than ever, probably, and he could picture their meeting, seven or eight weeks from now. Would his face wear such an expression as Nevill's wore at this moment? He knew well that it would not.

"She is coming!" said Nevill, under his breath.

The door of the schoolhouse was opening, and Nevill moved forward as a tall and charming young woman appeared, like a picture in a dark frame.

She was slender, with a tiny waist, though her bust was full, and her figure had the intensely feminine curves which artists have caused to be a.s.sociated with women of the Latin races; her eyes were like those of her elder sister, but larger and more brilliant. So big and splendid they were that they made the smooth oval of her olive face seem small.

Quant.i.ties of heavy black hair rippled away from a forehead which would have been square if the hair had not grown down in a point like a Marie Stuart cap. Her chin was pointed, with a deep cleft in the middle, and the dimples Nevill had praised flashed suddenly into being, as if a ray of suns.h.i.+ne had touched her pale cheeks.

"Mon bon ami!" she exclaimed, holding out both hands in token of comrades.h.i.+p, and putting emphasis on her last word.

"She's determined the poor chap shan't forget they're only friends,"

thought Stephen, wis.h.i.+ng that Caird had not insisted upon his presence at this first meeting. And in a moment he was being introduced to Mademoiselle Josette Soubise.

"Did I surprise you?" asked Nevill, looking at her as if he could never tear his eyes away, though he spoke in an ordinary tone.

"Ah, I know you want me to say 'yes'," she laughed. "I'd like to tell a white fib, to please you. But no, I am not quite surprised, for my sister wrote that you might come, and why. What a pity you had this long journey for nothing. My Kabyle maid, Mouni, has just gone to her home, far away in a little village near Michelet, in la Grande Kabylia. She is to be married to her cousin, the chief's son, whom she has always loved--but there were obstacles till now."

"Obstacles can always be overcome," broke in Nevill.

Josette would not understand any hidden meaning. "It is a great pity about Mouni," she went on. "Only four days ago she left. I gave her the price of the journey, for a wedding present. She is a good girl, and I shall miss her. But of course you can write to ask her questions. She reads a little French."

"Perhaps we shall go ourselves," Nevill answered, glancing at Stephen's disappointed face. "For I know Miss Ray can't be here, or you would have said so."

"No, she is not here," echoed Josette, looking astonished. "Jeanne wrote about the American young lady searching for her sister, but she did not say she might visit Tlemcen."

"We hoped she would, that's all," explained Nevill. "She's left her hotel in Algiers in a mysterious way, not telling where she meant to go, although she a.s.sured us she'd be safe, and we needn't worry. However, naturally we do worry."