Stephen and Nevill Caird were in the cypress avenue when Victoria Ray drove up in a ramshackle cab, guided by an Arab driver who squinted hideously. She wore a white frock which might have cost a sovereign, and had probably been made at home. Her wide brimmed hat was of cheap straw, wound with a scarf of thin white muslin; but her eyes looked out like blue stars from under its dove-coloured shadow, and a lily was tucked into her belt. To both young men she seemed very beautiful, and radiant as the spring morning.
"You aren"t superst.i.tious, engaging a man with a squint," said Nevill.
"Of course not," she laughed. "As if harm could come to me because the poor man"s so homely! I engaged him because he was the worst looking, and n.o.body else seemed to want him."
They escorted her indoors to Lady MacGregor, and Stephen wondered if she would be afraid of the elderly fairy with the face of a child and the manner of an autocrat. But she was not in the least shy; and indeed Stephen could hardly picture the girl as being self-conscious in any circ.u.mstances. Lady MacGregor took her in with one look; white hat, red hair, blue eyes, lily at belt, simple frock and all, and--somewhat to Stephen"s surprise, because she was to him a new type of old lady--decided to be charmed with Miss Ray.
Victoria"s nave admiration of the house and gardens delighted her host and hostess. She could not be too much astonished at its wonders to please them, and, both being thoroughbred, they liked her the better for saying frankly that she was unused to beautiful houses. "You can"t think what this is like after school in Potterston and cheap boarding-houses in New York and London," she said, laughing when the others laughed.
Stephen was longing to see her in the lily-garden, which, to his mind, might have been made for her; and after luncheon he asked Lady MacGregor if he and Nevill might show it to Miss Ray.
The garden lay to the east, and as it was shadowed by the house in the afternoon, it would not be too hot.
"Perhaps you won"t mind taking her yourself," said the elderly fairy.
"Just for a few wee minutes I want Nevill. He is to tell me about accepting or refusing some invitations. I"ll send him to you soon."
Stephen was ashamed of the gladness with which he could not help hearing this proposal. He had nothing to say to the girl which he might not say before Nevill, or even before Lady MacGregor, yet he had been feeling cheated because he could not be alone with Victoria, as on the boat.
"Gather Miss Ray as many lilies as she can carry away," were Nevill"s parting instructions. And it was exactly what Stephen had wished for. He wanted to give her something beautiful and appropriate, something he could give with his own hands. And he longed to see her holding ma.s.ses of white lilies to her breast, as she walked all white in the white lily-garden. Now, too, he could tell her what Mademoiselle Soubise had said about the Kabyle girl, Mouni. He was sure Nevill wouldn"t grudge his having that pleasure all to himself. Anyway he could not resist the temptation to s.n.a.t.c.h it.
He began, as soon as they were alone together in the garden, by asking her what she had done, whether she had made progress; and it seemed that she retired from his questions with a vague suggestion of reserve she had not shown on the ship. It was not that she answered unwillingly, but he could not define the difference in her manner, although he felt that a difference existed.
It was as if somebody might have been scolding her for a lack of reserve; yet when he inquired if she had met any one she knew, or made acquaintances, she said no to the first question, and named only Mademoiselle Soubise in reply to the second.
That was Stephen"s opportunity, and he began to tell of his call at the curiosity-shop. He expected Victoria to cry out with excitement when he came to Mouni"s description of the beautiful lady with "henna-coloured, gold-powdered hair"; but though she flushed and her breath came and went quickly as he talked, somehow the girl did not appear to be enraptured with a new hope, as he had expected.
"My friend Caird proposes that he and I should motor to Tlemcen, which it seems is near the Moroccan border, and interview Mouni," he said. "We may be able to make sure, when we question her, that it was your sister she served; and perhaps we can pick up some clue through what she lets drop, as to where Ben Halim took his wife when he left Algiers--though, of course, there are lots of other ways to find out, if this should prove a false clue."
"You are both more than good," Victoria answered, "but I mustn"t let you go so far for me. Perhaps, as you say, I shall be able to find out in other ways, from some one here in Algiers. It does sound as if it might be my sister the maid spoke of to Mademoiselle Soubise. How I should love to hear Mouni talk!--but you must wait, and see what happens, before you think of going on a journey for my sake."
"If only there were some woman to take you, you might go with us," said Stephen, more eagerly than he was aware, and thinking wild thoughts about Lady MacGregor as a chaperon, or perhaps Mademoiselle Soubise--if only she could be persuaded to leave her beloved shop, and wouldn"t draw those black brows of hers together as though tabooing a forbidden idea.
"Let"s wait--and see," Victoria repeated. And this patience, in the face of such hope, struck Stephen as being strange in her, unlike his conception of the brave, impulsive nature, ready for any adventure if only there were a faint flicker of light at the end. Then, as if she did not wish to talk longer of a possible visit to Tlemcen, Victoria said: "I"ve something to show you: a picture of my sister."
The white dress was made without a collar, and was wrapped across her breast like a fichu which left the slender white stem of her throat uncovered. Now she drew out from under the muslin folds a thin gold chain, from which dangled a flat, open-faced locket. When she had unfastened a clasp, she handed the trinket to Stephen. "Saidee had the photograph made specially for me, just before she was married," the girl explained, "and I painted it myself. I couldn"t trust any one else, because no one knew her colouring. Of course, she was a hundred times more beautiful than this, but it gives you some idea of her, as she looked when I saw her last."
The face in the photograph was small, not much larger than Stephen"s thumb-nail, but every feature was distinct, not unlike Victoria"s, though more p.r.o.nounced; and the nose, seen almost in profile, was perfect in its delicate straightness. The lips were fuller than Victoria"s, and red as coral. The eyes were brown, with a suggestion of coquetry absent in the younger girl"s, and the hair, parted in the middle and worn in a loose, wavy coil, appeared to be of a darker red, less golden, more auburn.
"That"s exactly Saidee"s colouring," repeated Victoria. "Her lips were the reddest I ever saw, and I used to say diamonds had got caught behind her eyes. Do you wonder I worshipped her--that I just _couldn"t_ let her go out of my life forever?"
"No, I don"t wonder. She"s very lovely," Stephen agreed. The coquetry in the eyes was pathetic to him, knowing the beautiful Saidee"s history.
"She was eighteen then. She"s twenty-eight now. Saidee twenty-eight! I can hardly realize it. But I"m sure she hasn"t changed, unless to grow prettier. I used always to think she would." Victoria took back the portrait, and gazed at it. Stephen was sorry for the child. He thought it more than likely that Saidee had changed for the worse, physically and spiritually, even mentally, if Mademoiselle Soubise were right in her surmises. He was glad she had not said to Victoria what she had said to him, about Saidee having to live the life of other harem women.
"I bought a string of amber beads at that curiosity-shop yesterday," the girl went on, "because there"s a light in them like what used to be in Saidee"s eyes. Every night, when I"ve said my prayers and am ready to go to sleep, I see her in that golden silence I told you about, looking towards the west--that is, towards me, too, you know; with the sun setting and streaming right into her eyes, making that jewelled kind of light gleam in them, which comes and goes in those amber beads. When I find her, I shall hold up the beads to her eyes in the sunlight and compare them."
"What is the golden silence like?" asked Stephen. "Do you see more clearly, now that at last you"ve come to Africa?"
"I couldn"t see more clearly than I did before," the girl answered slowly, looking away from him, through the green lace of the trees that veiled the distance. "Yet it"s just as mysterious as ever. I can"t guess yet what it can be, unless it"s in the desert. I just see Saidee, standing on a large, flat expanse which looks white. And she"s dressed in white. All round her is a quivering golden haze, wave after wave of it, endless as the sea when you"re on a ship. And there"s silence--not one sound, except the beating which must be my own heart, or the blood that sings in my ears when I listen for a long time--the kind of singing you hear in a sh.e.l.l. That"s all. And the level sun shining in her eyes, and on her hair."
"It is a picture," said Stephen.
"Wherever Say was, there would always be a picture," Victoria said with the unselfish, unashamed pride she had in her sister.
"How I hope Saidee knows I"m near her," she went on, half to herself.
"She"d know that I"d come to her as soon as I could--and she may have heard things about me that would tell her I was trying to make money enough for the journey and everything. If I hadn"t hoped she _might_ see the magazines and papers, I could never have let my photograph be published. I should have hated that, if it hadn"t been for the thought of the portraits coming to her eyes, with my name under them; "Victoria Ray, who is dancing in such and such a place." _She_ would know why I was doing it; dancing nearer and nearer to her."
"You darling!" Stephen would have liked to say. But only as he might have spoken caressingly to a lovely child whose sweet soul had won him.
She seemed younger than ever to-day, in the big, drooping hat, with the light behind her weaving a gold halo round her hair and the slim white figure, as she talked of Saidee in the golden silence. When she looked up at him, he thought that she was like a girl-saint, painted on a background of gold. He felt very tender over her, very much older than she, and it did not occur to him that he might fall in love with this young creature who had no thought for anything in life except the finding of her sister.
A tiny streak of lily-pollen had made a little yellow stain on the white satin of her cheek, and under her blue eyes were a few faint freckles, golden as the lily-pollen. He had seen them come yesterday, on the ship, in a bright glare of sunlight, and they were not quite gone yet. He had a foolish wish to touch them with his finger, to see if they would rub off, and to brush away the lily-pollen, though it made her skin look pure as pearl.
"You are an inspiration!" was all he said.
"I? But how do you mean?" she asked.
He hardly knew that he had spoken aloud; yet challenged, he tried to explain. "Inspiration to new life and faith in things," he answered almost at random. But hearing the words p.r.o.nounced by his own voice, made him realize that they were true. This child, of whose existence he had not known a week ago, could give him--perhaps was already giving him--new faith and new interests. He felt thankful for her, somehow, though she did not belong to him, and never would--unless a gleam of sunshine can belong to one on whom it shines. And he would always a.s.sociate her with the golden sunshine and the magic charm of Algeria.
"I told you I"d given you half my star," she said, laughing and blushing a little.
"Which star is it?" he wanted to know. "When I don"t see you any more, I can look up and hitch my thought-wagon to Mars or Venus."
"Oh, it"s even grander than any planet you can see, with your real eyes.
But you can look at the evening star if you like. It"s so thrilling in the sunset sky, I sometimes call it my star."
"All right," said Stephen, with his elder-brother air. "And when I look I"ll think of you."
"You can think of me as being with Saidee at last."
"You have the strongest presentiment that you"ll find her without difficulty."
"When _I_ say "presentiment," I mean creating a thing I want, making a picture of it happening, so it _has_ to happen by and by, as G.o.d made pictures of this world, and all the worlds, and they came true."
"By Jove, I wish I could go to school to you!" Stephen said this laughing; but he meant every word. She had just given him two new ideas.
He wondered if he could do anything with them. Yet no; his life was cut out on a certain plan. It must now follow that plan.
"If you should have any trouble--not that you _will_--but just "if,"
you know," he went on, "and if I could help you, I want you to remember this, wherever you are and whatever the trouble may be; there"s nothing I wouldn"t do for you--nothing. There"s no distance I wouldn"t travel."
"Why, you"re the kindest man I ever met!" Victoria exclaimed, gratefully. "And I think you must be one of the best."
"Good heavens, what a character to live up to!" laughed Stephen.
Nevertheless he suddenly lost his sense of exaltation, and felt sad and tired, thinking of life with Margot, and how difficult it would be not to degenerate in her society.
"Yes. It"s a good character. And I"ll promise to let you know, if I"m in any trouble and need help. If I can"t write, I"ll _call_, as I said yesterday."
"Good. I shall hear you over the wireless telephone." They both laughed; and Nevill Caird, coming out of the house was pleased that Stephen should be happy.