Chapter 5

"Yes. His name was Cassim ben Halim el Cheikh el Arab. Before he had known Saidee two weeks, he proposed. She took a little while to think it over, and I begged her to say 'no'--but one day when Mrs. Ray had been crosser and more horrid than usual, she said 'yes'. Cassim ben Halim was Mohammedan, of course, but he and Saidee were married according to French law. They didn't go to church, because he couldn't do that without showing disrespect to his own religion, but he promised he'd not try to change hers. Altogether it seemed to Saidee that there was no reason why they shouldn't be as happy as a Catholic girl marrying a Protestant--or _vice versa_; and she hadn't any very strong convictions. She was a Christian, but she wasn't fond of going to church."

"And her promise that she'd take you away with her?" Stephen reminded the girl.

"She would have kept it, if Mrs. Ray had consented--though I'm sure Cassim didn't want me, and only agreed to do what Saidee asked because he was so deep in love, and feared to lose my sister if he refused her anything. But Mrs. Ray was afraid to let me go, on account of the condition in father's will that she should keep me near her while I was being educated. There was an old friend of father's who'd threatened to try and upset the will, for Saidee's sake and mine, so I suppose she thought he might succeed if she disobeyed father's instructions. It ended in Saidee and her husband going to Algiers without me, and Saidee cried--but she couldn't help being happy, because she was in love, and very excited about the strange new life, which Cassim told her would be wonderful as some gorgeous dream of fairyland. He gave her quantities of jewellery, and said they were nothing to what she should have when she was in her own home with him. She should be covered from head to foot with diamonds and pearls, rubies and emeralds, if she liked; and of course she would like, for she loved jewels, poor darling."

"Why do you say 'poor?'" asked Stephen. "Are you going to tell me the marriage wasn't a success?"

"I don't know," answered the girl. "I don't know any more about her than if Cassim ben Halim had really carried my sister off to fairyland, and shut the door behind them. You see, I was only eight years old. I couldn't make my own life. After Saidee was married and taken to Algiers, my stepmother began to imagine herself in love with an American from Indiana, whom she met in Paris. He had an impressive sort of manner, and made her think him rich and important. He was in business, and had come over to rest, so he couldn't stay long abroad; and he urged Mrs. Ray to go back to America on the same ship with him. Of course she took me, and this Mr. Henry Potter told her about a boarding-school where they taught quite little girls, not far from the town where he lived. It had been a farmhouse once, and he said there were 'good teachers and good air.' I can hear him saying it now. It was easy to persuade her; and she engaged rooms at a hotel in the town near by, which was called Potterston, after Mr. Potter's grandfather. By and by they were married, but their marriage made no difference to me. It wasn't a bad little old-fashioned school, and I was as happy as I could be anywhere, parted from Saidee. There was an attic where I used to be allowed to sit on Saturdays, and think thoughts, and write letters to my sister; and there was one corner, where the sunlight came in through a tiny window shaped like a crescent, without any glass, which I named Algiers. I played that I went there to visit Saidee in the old Arab palace she wrote me about. It was a splendid play--but I felt lonely when I stopped playing it. I used to dance there, too, very softly in stockinged feet, so nobody could hear--dances she and I made up together out of stories she used to tell me. The Shadow Dance and the Statue Dance which you saw, came out of those stories, and there are more you didn't see, which I do sometimes--a butterfly dance, the dance of the wheat, and two of the East, which were in stories she told me after we knew Cassim ben Halim. They are the dance of the smoke wreath, and the dance of the jewel-and-the-rose. I could dance quite well even in those days, because I loved doing it. It came as natural to dance as to breathe, and Saidee had always encouraged me, so when I was left alone it made me think of her, to dance the dances of her stories."

"What about your teachers? Did they never find you out?" asked Stephen.

"Yes. One of the young teachers did at last. Not in the attic, but when I was dancing for the big girls in their dormitory, at night--they'd wake me up to get me to dance. But she wasn't much older than the biggest of the big girls, so she laughed--I suppose I must have looked quaint dancing in my nighty, with my long red hair. And though we were all scolded afterwards, I was made to dance sometimes at the entertainments we gave when school broke up in the summer. I was the youngest scholar, you see, and stayed through the vacations, so I was a kind of pet for the teachers. They were of one family, aunts and nieces--Southern people, and of course good-natured. But all this isn't really in the story I want to tell you. The interesting part's about Saidee. For months I got letters from her, written from Algiers. At first they were like fairy tales, but by and by--quite soon--they stopped telling much about herself. It seemed as if Saidee were growing more and more reserved, or else as if she were tired of writing to me, and bored by it--almost as if she could hardly think of anything to say. Then the letters stopped altogether. I wrote and wrote, but no answer came--no answer ever came."

"You've never heard from your sister since then?" The thing appeared incredible to Stephen.

"Never. Now you can guess what I've been growing up for, living for, all these years. To find her."

"But surely," Stephen argued, "there must have been some way to----"

"Not any way that was in my power, till now. You see I was helpless. I had no money, and I was a child. I'm not very old yet, but I'm older than my years, because I had this thing to do. There I was, at a farmhouse school in the country, two miles out of Potterston--and you would think Potterston itself not much better than the backwoods, I'm sure. When I was fourteen, my stepmother died suddenly--leaving all the money which came from my father to her husband, except several thousand dollars to finish my education and give me a start in life; but Mr. Potter lost everything of his own and of mine too, in some wild speculation about which the people in that part of Indiana went mad. The crash came a year ago, and the Misses Jennings, who kept the school, asked me to stay on as an under teacher--they were sorry for me, and so kind. But even if nothing had happened, I should have left then, for I felt old enough to set about my real work. Oh, I see you think I might have got at my sister before, somehow, but I couldn't, indeed. I tried everything. Not only did I write and write, but I begged the Misses Jennings to help, and the minister of the church where we went on Sundays. The Misses Jennings told the girls' parents and relations whenever they came to visit, and they all promised, if they ever went to Algiers, they would look for my sister's husband, Captain Cassim ben Halim, of the Spahis. But they weren't the sort of people who ever do go such journeys. And the minister wrote to the American Consul in Algiers for me, but the only answer was that Cassim ben Halim had disappeared. It seemed not even to be known that he had an American wife."

"Your stepmother ought to have gone herself," said Stephen.

"Oh--_ought_! I very seldom saw my stepmother after she married Mr. Potter. Though she lived so near, she never asked me to her house, and only came to call at the school once or twice a year, for form's sake. But I ran away one evening and begged her to go and find Saidee. She said it was nonsense; that if Saidee hadn't wanted to drop us, she would have kept on writing, or else she was dead. But don't you think I should have _known_ if Saidee were dead?"

"By instinct, you mean--telepathy, or something of that sort?"

"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 Cassim 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 nobody 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 pricking 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 Cassim 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?"

"Nobody. 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 passed 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.

"Do you think so? You had taken me to the golden silence with you."

"Where can everybody be?" She spoke anxiously. "Is it late? Maybe they've gone to get ready for dinner."

From a small bag she wore at her belt, American tourist-fashion, she pulled out an old-fashioned gold watch of the kind that winds up with a key--her mother's, perhaps, on which she had borrowed money to reach New York. "Something must be wrong with my watch," she said. "It can't be twenty minutes past eight."

The same thing was wrong with Stephen's expensive repeater, whose splendour he was ashamed to flaunt beside the modesty of the girl's poor little timepiece. There remained now no reasonable doubt that it was indeed twenty minutes past eight, since by the mouths of two witnesses a truth can be established.

"How dreadful!" exclaimed Victoria, mortified. "I've kept you here all this time, listening to me."

"Didn't I tell you I'd rather listen to you than anything else? Eating was certainly not excepted. I don't remember hearing the bugle."

"And I didn't hear it."

"I'd forgotten dinner. You had carried me so far away with you."

"And Saidee," added the girl. "Thank you for going with us."

"Thank you for taking me."

They both laughed, and as they laughed, people began streaming out on deck. Dinner was over. The handsome Arab passed, talking with the spare, loose-limbed English parson, whom he had fascinated. They were discussing affairs in Morocco, and as they passed Stephen and Victoria, the Arab did not appear to turn; yet Stephen knew that he was thinking of them and not of what he was saying to the clergyman.

"What shall we do?" asked Victoria.

Stephen reflected for an instant. "Will you invite me to dine at your table?" he asked.

"Maybe they'll tell us it's too late now to have anything to eat. I don't mind for myself, but for you----"

"We'll have a better dinner than the others have had," Stephen prophesied. "I guarantee it, if you invite me."

"Oh, do please come," she implored, like a child. "I couldn't face the waiters alone. And you know, I feel as if you were a friend, now--though you may laugh at that."

"It's the best compliment I ever had," said Stephen. "And--it gives me faith in myself--which I need."

"And your star, which you're to find," the girl reminded him, as he unrolled her from her rug.

"I wish you'd lend me a little of the light from yours, to find mine by," he said half gaily, yet with a certain wistfulness which she detected under the laugh.

"I will," she said quickly. "Not a little, but half."

VI

Stephen's prophecy came true. They had a better dinner than any one else had, and enjoyed it as an adventure. Victoria thought their waiter a particularly good-natured man, because instead of sulking over his duties he beamed. Stephen might, if he had chosen, have thrown another light upon the waiter's smiles; but he didn't choose. And he was happy. He gave Victoria good advice, and promised help from Nevill Caird. "He's sure to meet me at the ship," he said, "and if you'll let me, I'll introduce him to you. He may be able to find out everything you want to know."

Stephen would have liked to go on talking after dinner, but the girl, ashamed of having taken up so much of his time, would not be tempted. She went to her cabin, and thought of him, as well as of her sister; and he thought of her while he walked on deck, under the stars.

"For a moment white, then gone forever."