Chapter 31

"He and an officer leave for Touggourt in private carriage three horses relays ordered. Have interviewed livery stable. They start at five will travel all night. I follow."

"Probably some officer was going on military business, and Maïeddine's asked for a lift," Nevill said to Lady MacGregor. "Well, it's too late for us to get away now; but we'll be off as early as you like to-morrow morning."

"If I weren't going, would you start to-day?" his aunt inquired.

"Yes, I suppose so. But----"

"Then please give orders for the car. I'm ready to leave at five minutes' notice, and I can go on as long as you can. I'm looking forward to the trip."

"But I've often offered to take you to Biskra."

"That's different. Now I've got an incentive."

XLII

Just as he came in sight of the great chott between Biskra and Touggourt, Stephen heard a sound which struck him strangely in the silence of the desert. It was the distant teuf-teuf of a powerful motor car, labouring heavily through deep sand.

Stephen was travelling in a carriage, which he had hired in Biskra, and was keeping as close as he dared to the vehicle in front, shared by Maïeddine and a French officer. But he never let himself come within sight or sound of it. Now, as he began to hear the far-off panting of a motor, he saw nothing ahead but the vast saltpetre lake, which, viewed from the hill his three horses had just climbed, shimmered blue and silver, like a magic sea, reaching to the end of the world. There were white lines like long ruffles of foam on the edges of azure waves, struck still by enchantment while breaking on an unseen shore; and far off, along a mystic horizon, little islands floated on the gleaming flood. Stephen could hardly believe that there was no water, and that his horses could travel the blue depths without wetting their feet.

It was just as he was thinking thus, and wondering if Victoria had passed this way, when the strange sound came to his ears, out of the distance. "Stop," he said in French to his Arab driver. "I think friends of mine will be in that car." He was right. A few minutes later Nevill and Lady MacGregor waved to him, as he stood on the top of a low sand-dune.

Lady MacGregor was more fairylike than ever in a little motoring bonnet made for a young girl, but singularly becoming to her. They had had a glorious journey, she said. She supposed some people would consider that she had endured hardships, but they were not worth speaking of. She had been rather bumped about on the ghastly desert tracks since Biskra, but though she was not quite sure if all her bones were whole, she did not feel in the least tired; and even if she did, the memory of the Gorge of El Kantara would alone be enough to make up for it.

"Anything new?" asked Nevill.

"Nothing," Stephen answered, "except that the driver of the carriage ahead let drop at the last bordj that he'd been hired by the French officer, who was taking Maïeddine with him."

"Just what we thought," Lady MacGregor broke in.

"And the carriage will bring the Frenchman back, later. Maïeddine's going on. But I haven't found out where."

"H'm! I was in hopes we were close to our journey's end at Touggourt," said Nevill. "The car can't get farther, I'm afraid. The big dunes begin there."

"Whatever Maïeddine does, we can follow his example. I mean, I can," Stephen amended.

"So can Nevill. I'm no spoil-sport," snapped the old lady, in her childlike voice. "I know what I can do and what I can't. I draw the line at camels! Angus and Hamish will take care of me, and I'll wait for you at Touggourt. I can amuse myself in the market-place, and looking at the Ouled Naïls, till you find Miss Ray, or----"

"There won't be an 'or,' Lady MacGregor. We must find her. And we must bring her to you," said Stephen.

He had slept in the carriage the night before, a little on the Biskra side of Chegga, because Maïeddine and the French officer had rested at Chegga. Nevill and Lady MacGregor had started from Biskra at five o'clock that morning, having arrived there the evening before. It was now ten, and they could make Touggourt that night. But they wished Maïeddine to reach there first, so they stopped by the chott, and lunched from a smartly fitted picnic-basket Lady MacGregor had brought. Stephen paid his Arab coachman, told him he might go back, and transferred a small suitcase--his only luggage--from the carriage to the car. They gave Maïeddine two hours' grace, and having started on, always slowed up whenever Nevill's field-glasses showed a slowly trotting vehicle on the far horizon. The road, which was hardly a road, far exceeded in roughness the desert track Stephen had wondered at on the way from Msila to Bou-Saada; but Lady MacGregor had the courage, he told her, of a Joan of Arc.

They bumped steadily along, through the heat of the day, protected from the blazing sun by the raised hood, but they were thankful when, after the dinner-halt, darkness began to fall. Talking over ways and means, they decided not to drive into Touggourt, where an automobile would be a conspicuous object since few motors risked springs and tyres by coming so far into the desert. The chauffeur should be sent into the town while the passengers sat in the car a mile away.

Eventually Paul was instructed to demand oil for his small lamps, by way of an excuse for having tramped into town. He was to find out what had become of the two men who must have arrived about an hour before, in a carriage.

While the chauffeur was gone, Lady MacGregor played Patience and insisted on teaching Stephen and Nevill two new games. She said that it would be good discipline for their souls; and so perhaps it was. But Stephen never ceased calculating how long Paul ought to be away. Twenty minutes to walk a mile--or thirty minutes in desert sand; forty minutes to make inquiries; surely it needn't take longer! And thirty minutes back. But an hour and a half dragged on, before there was any sign of the absentee; then at last, Stephen's eye, roving wistfully from the cards, saw a moving spark at about the right height above the ground to be a cigarette.

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 passed 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 Maïeddine 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 Maïeddine 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 passing 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 Zaouïa 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-glasses which Maïeddine 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 Zaouïa, 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. Cassim has promised Maïeddine 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 Zaouïa 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 God!" 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 Maïeddine's glasses, 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 ship, going out from Marseilles, 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 superstitious, and afraid of Maïeddine's influence upon her life, since that night; and of course she had known that it was of Maïeddine 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 superstition, instead of unhappy, because the description of the man applied to Stephen as well as to Maïeddine.

For the moment, she did not ask herself how Stephen Knight was going to take her and Saidee away from Maïeddine and Cassim, 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.

When she had looked through the glass until she could distinctly see Stephen, and an Arab who rode at a short distance behind him, she called her sister.

Saidee came up to the roof, almost at once, for there was a thrill of excitement in Victoria's voice that roused her curiosity.

She thought of Captain Sabine, and wondered if he were riding toward the Zaouïa. He had come, before his first encounter with her, to pay his respects to the marabout. That was long ago now, yet there might be a reason, connected with her, for a second visit. But the moment she saw Victoria's face, even before she took the glasses the girl held out, she guessed that, though there was news, it was not of Captain Sabine.

"You might have been to heaven and back since I saw you; you're so radiant!" she said.

"I have been to heaven. But I haven't come back. I'm there now," Victoria answered. "Look--and tell me what you see."

Saidee put the glasses to her eyes. "I see a man in European clothes," she said. "I can see that he's young. I should think he's a gentleman, and good looking----"

"Oh, he is!" broke in Victoria, childishly.

"Do you know him?"

"I've been praying and longing for him to find me, and save us. He's an Englishman. His name is Stephen Knight. He promised to come if I called, and I have. Oh, _how_ I've called, day and night, night and day!"

"You never told me."

"I waited. Somehow I--couldn't speak of him, even to you."

"I've told _you_ everything."

"But I had nothing to tell, really--nothing I could have put into words. And you might only have laughed if I'd said 'There's a man I know in Algiers who hasn't any idea where I am, but I think he'll come here, and take us both away.'"

"Are you engaged to each other?" Saidee asked, curiously, even enviously.

"Oh no! But--but----"

"But what? Do you mean you will be--if you ever get away from this place?"

"I hope so," the girl answered bravely, with a deep blush. "He has never asked me. We haven't known each other long--a very little while, only since the night I left London for Paris. Yet he's the first man I ever cared about, and I think of him all the time. Perhaps he thinks of me in the same way."

"Of course he must, Babe, if he's really come to search for you," Saidee said, looking at her young sister affectionately.

"Thank you a hundred times for saying that, dearest! I do _hope_ so!" Victoria exclaimed, hugging the elder woman impulsively, as she used when she was a little child.

But Saidee's joy, caught from her sister's, died down suddenly, like a flame quenched with salt. "What good will it do you--or us--that he is coming?" she asked bitterly. "He can ask for the marabout, and perhaps see him. Any traveller can do that. But he will be no nearer to us, than if we were dead and in our graves. Does Maïeddine know about him?"

"They saw each other on the ship, coming to Algiers--and again just as we landed."

"But has Maïeddine any idea that you care about each other?"

"I had to tell him one day in the desert (the day Si Maïeddine said he loved me, and I promised to consent if _you_ put my hand in his) that--that there was a man I loved. But I didn't say who. Perhaps he suspects, though I don't see why he should. I might have meant some one in America."

"You may be pretty sure he suspects. People of the old, old races, like the Arabs, have the most wonderful intuitions. They seem to _know_ things without being told. I suppose they've kept nearer nature than more civilized peoples."

"If he does suspect, I can't help it."

"No. Only it's still more sure that your Englishman won't be able to do us any good. Not that he could, anyhow."

"But Si Maïeddine's been very ill since he came back, M'Barka says. Mr. Knight will ask for the marabout."

"Maïeddine will hear of him. Not five Europeans in five years come to Oued Tolga. If only Maïeddine hadn't got back! This man may have been following him, from Algiers. It looks like it, as Maïeddine arrived only yesterday. Now, here's this Englishman! Could he have found out in any way, that you were acquainted with Maïeddine?"

"I don't know, but he might have guessed," said Victoria. "I wonder----"

"What? Have you thought of something?"