Meanwhile, she tiptoed back to her bed, and sat on the edge of it, to wait. At last the thread of light, fine as a red-gold hair, vanished from the door; but as it disappeared a line of moonlight was drawn in silver along the crack. Victoria must have left her windows wide open, or there would not have been light enough to paint this gleaming streak.
Saidee sat on her bed for nearly half an hour, trying to concentrate her thoughts on the present and future, yet unable to keep them from flying back to the past, the long-ago past, which lately had seemed unreal, as if she had dreamed it; the past when she and Victoria had been all the world to each other.
There was no sound in the next room, and when Saidee was weary of her strained position, she crossed the floor on tiptoe again, to shut the door. But she could not resist a temptation to peep in.
It was as she had expected. Victoria had left the inlaid cedar-wood shutters wide open, and through the lattice of old wrought-iron, moonlight streamed. The room was bright with a silvery twilight, like a mysterious dawn; but because the bed-linen and the embroidered silk coverlet were white, the pale radiance focused round the girl, who lay asleep in a halo of moonbeams.
"She looks like an angel," Saidee thought, and with a curious mingling of reluctance and eagerness, moved softly toward the bed, her little velvet slippers from Tunis making no sound on the thick rugs.
Very well the older woman remembered an engaging trick of the child"s, a way of sleeping with her cheek in her hand, and her hair spread out like a golden coverlet for the pillow. Just so she was lying now; and in the moonlight her face was a child"s face, the face of the dear, little, loving child of ten years ago. Like this Victoria had lain when her sister crept into their bedroom in the Paris flat, the night before the wedding, and Saidee had waked her by crying on her eyelids. Ca.s.sim"s unhappy wife recalled the clean, sweet, warm smell of the child"s hair when she had buried her face in it that last night together. It had smelled like grape-leaves in the hot sun.
"If you don"t come back to me, I"ll follow you all across the world,"
the little girl had said. Now, she had kept her promise. Here she was--and the sister to whom she had come, after a thousand sacrifices, was wishing her back again at the other end of the world, was planning to get rid of her.
Suddenly, it was as if the beating of Saidee"s heart broke a tight band of ice which had compressed it. A fountain of tears sprang from her eyes. She fell on her knees beside the bed, crying bitterly.
"Childie, childie, comfort me, forgive me!" she sobbed.
Victoria woke instantly. She opened her eyes, and Saidee"s wet face was close to hers. The girl said not a word, but wrapped her arms round her sister, drawing the bowed head on to her breast, and then she crooned lovingly over it, with little foolish mumblings, as she used to do in Paris when Mrs. Ray"s unkindness had made Saidee cry.
"Can you forgive me?" the woman faltered, between sobs.
"Darling, as if there were anything to forgive!" The clasp of the girl"s arms tightened. "Now we"re truly together again. How I love you! How happy I am!"
"Don"t--I don"t deserve it," Saidee stammered. "Poor little Babe! I was cruel to you. And you"d come so far."
"You weren"t cruel!" Victoria contradicted her, almost fiercely.
"I was. I was jealous--jealous of you. You"re so young and beautiful--just what I was ten years ago, only better and prettier.
You"re what I can never be again--what I"d give the next ten years to be. Everything"s over with me. I"m old--old!"
"You"re not to say such things," cried Victoria, horrified. "You weren"t jealous. You----"
"I was. I am now. But I want to confess. You must let me confess, if you"re to help me."
"Dearest, tell me anything--everything you choose, but nothing you don"t choose. And nothing you say can make me love you less--only more."
"There"s a great deal to tell," Saidee said, heavily "And I"m tired--sick at heart. But I can"t rest now, till I"ve told you."
"Wouldn"t you come into bed?" pleaded Victoria humbly. "Then we could talk, the way we used to talk."
Saidee staggered up from her knees, and the girl almost lifted her on to the bed. Then she covered her with the thyme-scented linen sheet, and the silk coverlet under which she herself lay. For a moment they were quite still, Saidee lying with her head on Victoria"s arm. But at last she said, in a whisper, as if her lips were dry: "Did you know I was sorry you"d come?"
"I knew you thought you were sorry," the girl answered. "Yet I hoped that you"d find out you weren"t, really. I prayed for you to find out--soon."
"Did you guess why I was sorry?"
"Not--quite."
"I told you I--that it was for your sake."
"Yes."
"Didn"t you believe it?"
"I--felt there was something else, beside."
"There was!" Saidee confessed. "You know now--at least you know part. I was jealous. I am still--but I"m ashamed of myself. I"m sick with shame.
And I do love you!"
"Of course--of course you do, darling."
"But--there"s somebody else I love. A man. And I couldn"t bear to think he might see you, because you"re so much younger and fresher than I."
"You mean--Ca.s.sim?"
"No. Not Ca.s.sim."
Silence fell between the two. Victoria did not speak; and suddenly Saidee was angry with her for not speaking.
"If you"re shocked, I won"t go on," she said. "You can"t help me by preaching."
"I"m not shocked," the girl protested. "Only sorry--so sorry. And even if I wanted to preach, I don"t know how."
"There"s nothing to be shocked about," Saidee said, her tears dry, her voice hard as it had been at first. "I"ve seen him three times. I"ve talked with him just once. But we love each other. It"s the first and only real love of my life. I was too young to know, when I met Ca.s.sim.
That was a fascination. I was in love with romance. He carried me off my feet, in spite of myself."
"Then, dearest Saidee, don"t let yourself be carried off your feet a second time."
"Why not?" Saidee asked, sharply. "What incentive have I to be true to Ca.s.sim?"
"I"m not thinking about Ca.s.sim. I"m thinking of you. All one"s world goes to pieces so, if one isn"t true to oneself."
"_He_ says I can"t be true to myself if I stay here. He doesn"t consider that I"m Ca.s.sim"s wife. I _thought_ myself married, but was I, when he had a wife already? Would any lawyer, or even clergyman, say it was a legal marriage?"
"Perhaps not," Victoria admitted. "But----"
"Just wait, before you go on arguing," Saidee broke in hotly, "until I"ve told you something you haven"t heard yet. Ca.s.sim has another wife now--a lawful wife, according to his views, and the views of his people.
He"s had her for a year. She"s a girl of the Ouled Nal tribe, brought up to be a dancer. But Ca.s.sim saw her at Touggourt, where he"d gone on one of his mysterious visits. He doesn"t dream that I know the whole history of the affair, but I do, and have known, since a few days after the creature was brought here as his bride. She"s as ignorant and silly as a kitten, and only a child in years. She told her "love story" to one of her negresses, who told Noura--who repeated it to me. Perhaps I oughtn"t to have listened, but why not?"
Victoria did not answer. The clouds round Saidee and herself were dark, but she was trying to see the blue beyond, and find the way into it, with her sister.
"She"s barely sixteen now, and she"s been here a year," Saidee went on.
"She hadn"t begun to dance yet, when Ca.s.sim saw her, and took her away from Touggourt. Being a great saint is very convenient. A marabout can do what he likes, you know. Mussulmans are forbidden to touch alcohol, but if a marabout drinks wine, it turns to milk in his throat. He can fly, if he wants to. He can even make French cannon useless, and withdraw the bullets from French guns, in case of war, if the spirit of Allah is with him. So by marrying a girl brought up for a dancer, daughter of generations of dancing women, he washes all disgrace from her blood, and makes her a female saint, worthy to live eternally. The beautiful Miluda"s a marabouta, if you please, and when her baby is taken out by the negress who nurses it, silly, bigoted people kneel and kiss its clothing."
"She has a baby!" murmured Victoria.
"Yes, only a girl, but better than nothing--and she hopes to be more fortunate next time. She isn"t jealous of me, because I"ve no children, not even a girl, and because for that reason Ca.s.sim could repudiate me if he chose. She little knows how desperately I wish he would. She believes--Noura says--that he keeps me here only because I have no people to go to, and he"s too kind-hearted to turn me out alone in the world, when my youth"s past. You see--she thinks me already old--at twenty-eight! Of course the real reason that Ca.s.sim shuts me up and won"t let me go, is because he knows I could ruin not only him, but the hopes of his people. Miluda doesn"t dream that I"m of so much importance in his eyes. The only thing she"s jealous of is the boy, Mohammed, who"s at school in the town of Oued Tolga, in charge of an uncle. Ca.s.sim guesses how Miluda hates the child, and I believe that"s the reason he daren"t have him here. He"s afraid something might happen, although the excuse he makes is, that he wants his boy to learn French, and know something of French ways. That pleases the Government--and as for the Arabs, no doubt he tells them it"s only a trick to keep French eyes shut to what"s really going on, and to his secret plans. Now, do you still say I ought to consider myself married to Ca.s.sim, and refuse to take any happiness if I can get it?"