"I don"t know what I mean, but _I should have known_. I should have felt her death, like a string snapping in my heart. Instead, I heard her calling to me--I hear her always. She wants me. She needs me. I know it, and nothing could make me believe otherwise. So now you understand how, if anything were to be done, I had to do it myself. When I was quite little, I thought by the time I should be sixteen or seventeen, and allowed to leave school--or old enough to run away if necessary--I"d have a little money of my own. But when my stepmother died I felt sure I should never, never get anything from Mr. Potter."
"But that old friend you spoke of, who wanted to upset the will?
Couldn"t he have done anything?" Stephen asked.
"If he had lived, everything might have been different; but he was a very old man, and he died of pneumonia soon after Saidee married Ca.s.sim ben Halim. There was no one else to help. So from the time I was fourteen, I knew that somehow I must make money. Without money I could never hope to get to Algiers and find Saidee. Even though she had disappeared from there, it seemed to me that Algiers would be the place to begin my search. Don"t you think so?"
"Yes, Algiers is the place to begin," Stephen echoed. "There ought to be a way of tracking her. _Some one_ must know what became of a more or less important man such as your brother-in-law seems to have been. It"s incredible that he should have been able to vanish without leaving any trace."
"He must have left a trace, and though n.o.body else, so far, has found it, I shall find it," said the girl. "I did what I could before. I asked everybody to help; and when I got to New York last year, I used to go to Cook"s office, to inquire for people travelling to Algiers. Then, if I met any, I would at once speak of my sister, and give them my address, to let me know if they should discover anything. They always seemed interested, and said they would really do their best, but they must have failed, or else they forgot. No news ever came back. It will be different with me now, though. I shall find Saidee, and if she isn"t happy, I shall bring her away with me. If her husband is a bad man, and if the reason he left Algiers is because he lost his money, as I sometimes think, I may have to bribe him to let her go. But I have money enough for everything, I hope--unless he"s very greedy, or there are difficulties I can"t foresee. In that case, I shall dance again, and make more money, you know--that"s all there is about it."
"One thing I do know, is that you are wonderful," said Stephen, his conscience p.r.i.c.king him because of certain unjust thoughts concerning this child which he had harboured since learning that she was a dancer.
"You"re the most wonderful girl I ever saw or heard of."
She laughed happily. "Oh no, I"m not wonderful at all. It"s funny you should think so. Perhaps none of the girls you know have had a big work to do."
"I"m sure they never have," said Stephen, "and if they had, they wouldn"t have done it."
"Yes, they would. Anybody would--that is, if they wanted to, _enough_.
You can always do what you want to _enough_. I wanted to do this with all my heart and soul, so I knew I should find the way. I just followed my instinct, when people told me I was unreasonable, and of course it led me right. Reason is only to depend on in scientific sorts of things, isn"t it? The other is higher, because instinct is your _You_."
"Isn"t that what people say who preach New Thought, or whatever they call it?" asked Stephen. "A lot of women I know had rather a craze about that two or three years ago. They went to lectures given by an American man they raved over--said he was "too fascinating." And they used their "science" to win at bridge. I don"t know whether it worked or not."
"I never heard any one talk of New Thought," said Victoria. "I"ve just had my own thoughts about everything. The attic at school was a lovely place to think thoughts in. Wonderful ones always came to me, if I called to them--thoughts all glittering--like angels. They seemed to bring me new ideas about things I"d been born knowing--beautiful things, which I feel somehow have been handed down to me--in my blood."
"Why, that"s the way my friends used to talk about "waking their race-consciousness." But it only led to bridge, with them."
"Well, it"s led me from Potterston here," said Victoria, "and it will lead me on to the end, wherever that may be, I"m sure. Perhaps it will lead me far, far off, into that mysterious golden silence, where in dreams I often see Saidee watching for me: the strangest dream-place, and I"ve no idea where it is! But I shall find out, if she is really there."
"What supreme confidence you have in your star!" Stephen exclaimed, admiringly, and half enviously.
"Of course. Haven"t you, in yours?"
"I have no star."
She turned her eyes to his, quickly, as if grieved. And in his eyes she saw the shadow of hopelessness which was there to see, and could not be hidden from a clear gaze.
"I"m sorry," she said simply. "I don"t know how I could have lived without mine. I walk in its light, as if in a path. But yours must be somewhere in the sky, and you can find it if you want to very much."
He could have found two in her eyes just then, but such stars were not for him. "Perhaps I don"t deserve a star," he said.
"I"m sure you do. You are the kind that does," the girl comforted him.
"Do have a star!"
"It would only make me unhappy, because I mightn"t be able to walk in its light, as you do."
"It would make you very happy, as mine does me. I"m always happy, because the light helps me to do things. It helped me to dance: it helped me to succeed."
"Tell me about your dancing," said Stephen, vaguely anxious to change the subject, and escape from thoughts of Margot, the only star of his future. "I should like to hear how you began, if you don"t mind."
"That"s kind of you," replied Victoria, gratefully.
He laughed. "Kind!"
"Why, it"s nothing of a story. Luckily, I"d always danced. So when I was fourteen, and began to think I should never have any money of my own after all, I saw that dancing would be my best way of earning it, as that was the one thing I could do very well. Afterwards I worked in real earnest--always up in the attic, where I used to study the Arabic language too; study it very hard. And no one knew what I was doing or what was in my head, till last year when I told the oldest Miss Jennings that I couldn"t be a teacher--that I must leave school and go to New York."
"What did she say?"
"She said I was crazy. So did they all. They got the minister to come and argue with me, and he was dreadfully opposed to my wishes at first.
But after we"d talked a while, he came round to my way."
"How did you persuade him to that point of view?" Stephen catechized her, wondering always.
"I hardly know. I just told him how I felt about everything. Oh, and I danced."
"By Jove! What effect had that on him?"
"He clapped his hands and said it was a good dance, quite different from what he expected. He didn"t think it would do any one harm to see. And he gave me a sort of lecture about how I ought to behave if I became a dancer. It was easy to follow his advice, because none of the bad things he feared might happen to me ever did."
"Your star protected you?"
"Of course. There was a little trouble about money at first, because I hadn"t any, but I had a few things--a watch that had been my mother"s, and her engagement ring (they were Saidee"s, but she left them both for me when she went away), and a queer kind of brooch Ca.s.sim ben Halim gave me one day, out of a lovely mother-o"-pearl box he brought full of jewels for Saidee, when they were engaged. See, I have the brooch on now--for I wouldn"t _sell_ the things. I went to a shop in Potterston and asked the man to lend me fifty dollars on them all, so he did. It was very good of him."
"You seem to consider everybody you meet kind and good," Stephen said.
"Yes, they almost always have been so to me. If you believe people are going to be good, it _makes_ them good, unless they"re very bad indeed."
"Perhaps." Stephen would not for a great deal have tried to undermine her confidence in her fellow beings, and such was the power of the girl"s personality, that for the moment he was half inclined to feel she might be right. Who could tell? Maybe he had not "believed" enough--in Margot. He looked with interest at the brooch of which Miss Ray spoke, a curiously wrought, flattened ring of dull gold, with a pin in the middle which pierced and fastened her chiffon veil on her breast. Round the edge, irregularly shaped pearls alternated with roughly cut emeralds, and there was a barbaric beauty in both workmanship and colour.
"What happened when you got to your journey"s end?" he went on, fearing to go astray on that subject of the world"s goodness, which was a sore point with him lately. "Did you know anybody in New York?"
"n.o.body. But I asked the driver of a cab if he could take me to a respectable theatrical boarding-house, and he said he could, so I told him to drive me there. I engaged a wee back room at the top of the house, and paid a week in advance. The boarders weren"t very successful people, poor things, for it was a cheap boarding-house--it had to be, for me. But they all knew which were the best theatres and managers, and they were interested when they heard I"d come to try and get a chance to be a dancer. They were afraid it wasn"t much use, but the same evening they changed their minds, and gave me lots of good advice."
"You danced for them?"
"Yes, in such a stuffy parlour, smelling of gas and dust and there were holes in the carpet it was difficult not to step into. A dear old man without any hair, who was on what he called the "Variety Stage," advised me to go and try to see Mr. Charles Norman, a fearfully important person--so important that even I had heard of him, away out in Indiana.
I did try, day after day, but he was too important to be got at. I wouldn"t be discouraged, though. I knew Mr. Norman must come to the theatre sometimes, so I bought a photograph in order to recognize him; and one day when he pa.s.sed me, going in, I screwed up my courage and spoke. I said I"d been waiting for days and days. At first he scowled, and I think meant to be cross, but when he"d given me one long, terrifying glare, he grumbled out: "Come along with me, then. I"ll soon see what you can do." I went in, and danced on an almost dark stage, with Mr. Norman and another man looking at me, in the empty theatre where all the chairs and boxes were covered up with sheets. They seemed rather pleased with my dancing, and Mr. Norman said he would give me a chance. Then, if I "caught on"--he meant if people liked me--I should have a salary. But I told him I must have the salary at once, as my money would only last a few more days. I"d spent nearly all I had, getting to New York. Very well, said he, I should have thirty dollars a week to begin with, and after that, we"d see what we"d see. Well, people did like my dances, and by and by Mr. Norman gave me what seemed then a splendid salary. So now you know everything that"s happened; and please don"t think I"d have worried you by talking so much about myself, if you hadn"t asked questions. I"m afraid I oughtn"t to have done it, anyway."
Her tone changed, and became almost apologetic. She stirred uneasily in her deck chair, and looked about half dazedly, as people look about a room that is new to them, on waking there for the first time. "Why, it"s grown dark!" she exclaimed.
This fact surprised Stephen equally. "So it has," he said. "By Jove, I was so interested in you--in what you were telling--I hadn"t noticed.
I"d forgotten where we were."
"I"d forgotten, too," said Victoria. "I always do forget outside things when I think about Saidee, and the golden dream-silence where I see her.
All the people who were near us on deck have gone away. Did you see them go?"
"No," said Stephen, "I didn"t."
"How odd!" exclaimed the girl.