The Golden Silence Part 47

A few yards away from the car, the spark vanished decorously, and Paul was recognizable, in the light of the inside electric lamp, the only illumination they allowed themselves, lest the stranded car prove attractive to neighbouring nomads.

The French officer was at the hotel for the night; the Arab was dining with him, but instead of resting, would go on with his horse and a Negro servant who, it seemed, had been waiting for several days, since their master had pa.s.sed through Touggourt on the way to Algiers.

"Then he didn't come from El Aghouat," said Nevill. "Where is he going?

Did you find out that?"

"Not for certain. But an Arab servant who talks French, says he believes they're bound for a place called Oued Tolga," Paul replied, delighted with the confidence reposed in him, and with the whole adventure.

"That means three days in the dunes for us!" said Nevill. "Aunt Charlotte, you can practice Patience, in Touggourt."

"I shall invent a new game, and call it Hope," returned Lady MacGregor.

"Or if it's a good one, I'll name it Victoria Ray, which is better than Miss Millikens. It will just be done in time to teach that poor child when you bring her back to me."

"Hope wouldn't be a bad name for the game we've all been playing, and have got to go on playing," mumbled Nevill. "We'll give Maeddine just time to turn his back on Touggourt, before we show our noses there. Then you and I, Legs, will engage horses and a guide."

"You deserve your name, Wings," said Stephen. And he wondered how Josette Soubise could hold out against Caird. He wondered also what she thought of this quest; for her sister Jeanne was in the secret. No doubt she had written Josette more fully than Nevill had, even if he had dared to write at all. And if, as long ago as the visit to Tlemcen, she had been slightly depressed by her friend's interest in another girl, she must by this time see the affair in a more serious light. Stephen was cruel enough to hope that she was unhappy. He had heard women say that no cure for a woman's obstinacy was as sure as jealousy.

When they arrived at the hotel, and ordered all in the same breath, a room for a lady, two horses and a guide, only the first demand could be granted. It would be impossible, said the landlady and her son, to produce horses on the instant. There were some to be had, it was true, but they had come in after a hard day's work, and must have several hours' rest. The gentlemen might get off at dawn, if they wished, but not before.

"After all, it doesn't much matter," Nevill said to Stephen. "Even an Arab must have some sleep. We'll have ours now, and catch up with Maeddine while he's taking his. Don't worry. Suppose the worst--that he isn't really going to Oued Tolga. We shall get on his track, with an Arab guide to pilot us. There are several stopping places where we can inquire. He'll be seen pa.s.sing them, even if he goes by."

"But you say Arabs never betray each other to white men."

"This won't be a question of betrayal. Watch and see how ingenuous, as well as ingenious, I'll be in all my inquiries."

"I never heard of Oued Tolga," Stephen said, half to himself.

"Don't confess that to an Arab. It would be like telling a Frenchman you'd never heard of Bordeaux. It's a desert city, bigger than Touggourt, I believe, and--by Jove, yes, there's a tremendously important Zaoua of the same name. Great marabout hangs out there--kind of Mussulman pope of the desert. I hope to goodness----"

"What?" Stephen asked, as Nevill broke off suddenly.

"Oh, nothing to fash yourself about, as the twins would say. Only--it would be awkward if she's there. Harder to get her out. However--time to cross the stile when we come to it."

But Stephen crossed a great many stiles with his mind before that darkest hour before the dawn, when he was called to get ready for the last stage of the journey.

Lady MacGregor was up to see them off, and never had her cap been more elaborate, or her hair been dressed more daintily.

"You'll wire me from the end of the world, won't you?" she asked briskly. "Paul and I (and Hamish and Angus if necessary) will be ready to rush you all three back to civilization the instant you arrive with Miss Ray. Give her my love. Tell her I've brought clothes for her. They mayn't be what she'd choose, but I dare say she won't be sorry to see them. And by the way, if there are telegrams--you know I told the servants to send them on from home--shall I wire them on to Oued Tolga?"

"No. We're tramps, with no address," laughed Nevill. "Anything that comes can wait till we get back."

Stephen could not have told why, for he was not thinking of Margot, but suddenly he was convinced that a telegram from her was on the way, fixing the exact date when she might be expected in England.

XLIII

Since the day when Victoria had called Stephen to her help, always she had expected him. She had great faith, for, in her favourite way, she had "made a picture of him," riding up and down among the dunes, with the "knightly" look on his face which had first drawn her thoughts to him. Always her pictures had materialized sooner or later, since she was a little girl, and had first begun painting them with her mind, on a golden background.

She spent hours on the roof, with Saidee or alone, looking out over the desert, through the field-gla.s.ses which Maeddine had sent to her. Very often Saidee would remain below, for Victoria's prayers were not her prayers, nor were Victoria's wishes her wishes. But invariably the older woman would come up to the roof just before sunset, to feed the doves that lived in the minaret.

At first Victoria had not known that her sister had any special reason for liking to feed the doves, but she was an observant, though not a sophisticated girl; and when she had lived with Saidee for a few days, she saw birds of a different colour among the doves. It was to those birds, she could not help noticing, that Saidee devoted herself. The first that appeared, arrived suddenly, while Victoria looked in another direction. But when the girl saw one alight, she guessed it had come from a distance. It fluttered down heavily on the roof, as if tired, and Saidee hid it from Victoria by spreading out her skirt as she scattered its food.

Then it was easy to understand how Saidee and Captain Sabine had managed to exchange letters; but she could not bear to let her sister know by word or even look that she suspected the secret. If Saidee wished to hide something from her she had a right to hide it. Only--it was very sad.

For days neither of the sisters spoke of the pigeons, though they came often, and the girl could not tell what plans might be in the making, unknown to her. She feared that, if she had not come to Oued Tolga, by this time Saidee would have gone away, or tried to go away, with Captain Sabine; and though, since the night of her arrival, when Saidee had opened her heart, they had been on terms of closest affection, there was a dreadful doubt in Victoria's mind that the confidences were half repented. But when the girl had been rather more than a week in the Zaoua, Saidee spoke out.

"I suppose you've guessed why I come up on the roof at sunset," she said.

"Yes," Victoria answered.

"I thought so, by your face. Babe, if you'd accused me of anything, or reproached me, I'd have brazened it out with you. But you've never said a word, and your eyes--I don't know what they've been like, unless violets after rain. They made me feel a beast--a thousand times worse than I would if you'd put on an injured air. Last night I dreamed that you died of grief, and I buried you under the sand. But I was sorry, and tore all the sand away with my fingers till I found you again--and you were alive after all. It seemed like an allegory. I'm going to dig you up again, you little loving thing!"

"That means you'll give me back your confidence, doesn't it?" Victoria asked, smiling in a way that would have bewitched a man who loved her.

"Yes; and something else. I'm going to tell you a thing you'll like to hear. I've written to _him_ about you--our cypher's ready now--and said that you'd had the most curious effect on me. I'd tried to resist you, but I couldn't, not even to please him--or myself. I told him I'd promised to wait for you to help me; and though I didn't see what you could possibly do, still, your faith was contagious. I said that in spite of myself I felt some vague stirrings of hope now and then. There!

does that please you?"

"Oh Saidee, I _am_ so happy!" cried the girl, flinging both arms round her sister. "Then I did come at the right time, after all."

"The right time to keep me from happiness in this world, perhaps. That's the way I feel about it sometimes. But I can't be sorry you're here, Babe, as I was at first. You're too sweet--too like the child who used to be my one comfort."

"I could almost die of happiness, when you say that!" Victoria answered, with tears in her voice.

"What a baby you are! I'm sure you haven't much more than I have, to be happy about. Ca.s.sim has promised Maeddine that you shall marry him, whether you say 'yes' or 'no'. And it's horrible when an Arab girl won't consent to marry the man to whom her people have promised her. I know what they do. She----"

"Don't tell me about it. I'd hate to hear!" Victoria broke in, and covered her ears with her hands. So Saidee said no more. But in black hours of the night, when the girl could not sleep, dreadful imaginings crept into her mind, and it was almost more than she could do to chase them away by making her "good pictures." "I won't be afraid--I won't, I won't!" she would repeat to herself. "I've called him, and my thoughts are stronger than the carrier pigeons. They fly faster and farther. They travel like the light, so they must have got to him long ago; and he _said_ he'd come, no matter when or where. By this time he is on the way."

So she looked for Stephen, searching the desert; and at last, one afternoon long before sunset, she saw a man riding toward the Zaoua from the direction of the city, far away. She could not see his face, but he seemed to be tall and slim; and his clothes were European.

"Thank G.o.d!" she said to herself. For she did not doubt that it was Stephen Knight.

Soon she would call Saidee; but she must have a little time to herself, for silent rejoicing, before she tried to explain. There was no great hurry. He was far off, still.

She kept her eyes to Maeddine's gla.s.ses, and felt it a strange thing that they should have come to her from him. It was almost as if he gave her to Stephen, against his will. She was so happy that she seemed to hear the world singing. "I knew--I knew, through it all!" she told herself, with a sob of joy in her throat. "It had to come right." And she thought that she could hear a voice saying: "It is love that has brought him. He loves you, as much as you love him."

To her mind, especially in this mood, it was not extraordinary that each should love the other after so short an acquaintance. She was even ready to believe of herself that, unconsciously, she had fallen in love with Stephen the first time she met him on the Channel boat. He had interested her. She had remembered his face, and had been sorry to think that she would never see it again. On the s.h.i.+p, going out from Ma.r.s.eilles, she had been so glad when he came on deck that her heart had begun to beat quickly. She had scolded herself at the time, for being silly, and school-girlishly romantic; but now she realized that her soul had known its mate. It could scarcely be real love, she fancied, that was not born in the first moment, when spirit spoke to spirit. And her love could not have drawn a man hundreds of miles across the desert, if it had not met and clasped hands with his love for her.

"Oh, how happy I am!" she thought. "And the glory of it is, that it's _not_ strange--only wonderful. The most wonderful thing that ever happened or could happen."

Then she remembered the sand-divining, and how M'Barka had said that "her wish was far from her, but that Allah would send a strong man, young and dark, of another country than her own; a man whose brain, and heart, and arm would be at her service, and in whom she might trust."

Victoria recalled these words, and did not try to bring back to her mind what remained of the prophecy.

Almost, she had been foolish enough to be superst.i.tious, and afraid of Maeddine's influence upon her life, since that night; and of course she had known that it was of Maeddine M'Barka had thought, whether she sincerely believed in her own predictions or no. Now, it pleased Victoria to feel that, not only had she been foolish, but stupid. She might have been happy in her childish superst.i.tion, instead of unhappy, because the description of the man applied to Stephen as well as to Maeddine.

For the moment, she did not ask herself how Stephen Knight was going to take her and Saidee away from Maeddine and Ca.s.sim, for she was so sure he had not come across miles of desert in vain, that she took the rest for granted in her first joy. She was certain that Saidee's troubles and hers were over, and that by and by, like the prince and princess in the fairy stories, she and Stephen would be married and "live happily ever after." In these magic moments of rapture, while his face and figure grew more clear to her eyes, it seemed to the girl that love and happiness were one, and that all obstacles had fallen down in the path of her lover, like the walls of Jericho that crumbled at the blast of the trumpet.