Chapter 9

"Flan-ben-Flan," laughed Jeanne Soubise. "That means," she explained, turning to Stephen, "So and So, son of So and So. It is strange, a young lady came inquiring about Ben Halim only yesterday afternoon; such a pretty young lady. I was surprised, but she said they had told her in her hotel I knew everything that had ever happened in Algiers. A nice compliment to my age. I am not so old as that! But," she added, with a frank smile, "all the hotels and guides expect commissions when they send people to me. I suppose they thought this pretty girl fair game, and that once in my place she would buy. So she did. She bought a string of amber beads. She liked the gold light in them, and said it seemed as if she might see a vision of something or some one she wanted to find, if she gazed through the beads. Many a good Mussulman has said his prayers with them, if that could bring her luck."

The two young men looked at one another.

"Did she tell you her name?" Stephen asked.

"But yes; she was Mees Ray, and named for the dead Queen Victoria of England, I suppose, though American. And she told me other things. Her sister, she said, married a Captain Ben Halim of the Spahis, and came with him to Algiers, nearly ten years ago. Now she is looking for the sister."

"We've met Miss Ray," said Nevill. "It's on her business we've come. We didn't know she'd already been to you, but we might have guessed some one would send her. She didn't lose much time."

"She wouldn't," said Stephen. "She isn't that kind."

"I knew nothing of the sister," went on Mademoiselle Soubise. "I could hardly believe at first that Ben Halim had an American wife. Then I remembered how these Mohammedan men can hide their women, so no one ever knows. Probably no one ever did know, otherwise gossip would have leaked out. The man may have been jealous of her. You see, I have Arab acquaintances. I go to visit ladies in the harems sometimes, and I hear stories when anything exciting is talked of. You can't think how word flies from one harem to another--like a carrier-pigeon! This could never have been a matter of gossip--though it is true I was young at the time."

"You think, then, he would have shut her up?" asked Nevill. "That's what I feared."

"But of course he would have shut her up--with another wife, perhaps."

"Good Heavens!" exclaimed Stephen. "The poor child has never thought of that possibility. She says he promised her sister he would never look at any other woman."

"Ah, the promise of an Arab in love! Perhaps she did not know the Arabs--that sister. It is only the men of princely families who take but one wife. And he would not tell her if he had already looked at another woman. He would be sure, no matter how much in love a Christian girl might be, she would not marry a man who already had a wife."

"We might find out that," suggested Stephen.

"It would be difficult," said the Frenchwoman. "I can try, among Arabs I know, but though they like to chat with Europeans, they will not answer questions. They resent that we should ask them, though they are polite. As for you, if you ask men, French or Arab, you will learn nothing. The French would not know. The Arabs, if they did, would not tell. They must not talk of each other's wives, even among themselves, much less to outsiders. You can ask an Arab about anything else in the world, but not his wife. That is the last insult."

"What a country!" Stephen ejaculated.

"I don't know that it has many more faults than others," said Nevill, defending it, "only they're different."

"But about the scandal that drove Ben Halim away?" Stephen ventured on.

"Strange things were whispered at the time, I remember, because Ben Halim was a handsome man and well known. One looked twice at him in his uniform when he went by on a splendid horse. I believe he had been to Paris before the scandal. What he did afterwards no one can say. But I could not tell Mees Ray what I had heard of that scandal any more than I would tell a young girl that almost all Europeans who become harem women are converted to the religion of Islam, and that very likely the sister wasn't Ben Halim's first wife."

"Can you tell us of the scandal, or--would you rather not talk of the subject?" Stephen hesitated.

"Oh, I can tell you, for it would not hurt your feelings. People said Ben Halim flirted too much with his Colonel's beautiful French wife, who died soon afterwards, and her husband killed himself. Ben Halim had not been considered a good officer before. He was too fond of pleasure, and a mad gambler; so at last it was made known to him he had better leave the army of his own accord if he did not wish to go against his will; at least, that was the story."

"Of course!" exclaimed Nevill. "It comes back to me now, though it all happened before I lived in Algiers. Ben Halim sold his house and everything in it to a Frenchman who went bankrupt soon after. It's passed through several hands since. I go occasionally to call on Mrs. Jewett and her daughter."

"It is said they wish you would call oftener, Monsieur Caird."

Nevill turned red. Stephen thought he could understand, and hid a smile. No doubt Nevill was a great "catch" in Algerian society. And he was in love with a teacher of Arab children far away in Tlemcen, a girl "poor as a church mouse," who wouldn't listen to him! It was a quaint world; as quaint in Africa as elsewhere.

"What did you tell Miss Ray?" Nevill hurried to ask.

"That Ben Halim had left Algiers nine years ago, and had never been heard of since. When I saw she did not love his memory, I told her people believed him to be dead; and this rumour might be true, as no news of him has ever come back. But she turned pale, and I was sorry I had been so frank. Yet what would you? Oh, and I thought of one more thing, when she had gone, which I might have mentioned. But perhaps there is nothing in it. All the rest of the day I was busy with many customers, so I was tired at night, otherwise I would have sent a note to her hotel. And this morning since six I have been hurrying to get off boxes and things ordered by some Americans for a ship which sails at noon. But you will tell the young lady when you see her, and that will be better than my writing, because sending a note would make it seem too important. She might build hopes, and it would be a pity if they did explode."

Both men laughed a little at this ending of the Frenchwoman's sentence, but Stephen was more impatient than Nevill to know what was to come next. He grudged the pause, and made her go on.

"It is only that I remember my sister telling me, when she was at home last year for a holiday, about a Kabyle servant girl who waits on her in Tlemcen. The girl is of a great intelligence, and my sister takes an interest in her. Josette teaches her many things, and they talk. Mouni--that is the Kabyle's name--tells of her home life to my sister. One thing she did was to serve a beautiful foreign lady in the house of a rich Arab. She was only a child then, not more than thirteen, for such girls grow up early; but she has always thought about that lady, who was good to her, and very sad. Mouni told Josette she had never seen any one so beautiful, and that her mistress had hair of a natural colour, redder than hair dyed with henna and powdered with gold dust. It was this describing of the hair which brought the story back to my head when Miss Ray had gone, because she has hair like that, and perhaps her sister had it too."

"By Jove, we'll run over to Tlemcen in the car, and see that Kabyle girl," Nevill eagerly proposed, carefully looking at his friend, and not at Jeanne Soubise. But she raised her eyebrows, then drew them together, and her frank manner changed. With that shadow of a frown, and smileless eyes and lips, there was something rather formidable about the handsome young woman.

"Mees Ray may like to manage all her own beesiness," she remarked. And it occurred to Stephen that it would be a propitious moment to choose such curios as he wished to buy. In a few moments Mademoiselle Soubise was her pleasant self again, indicating the best points of the things he admired, and giving him their history.

"There's apparently a conspiracy of silence to keep us from finding out anything about Miss Ray's sister as Ben Halim's wife," he said to Nevill when they had left the curiosity-shop. "Also, what has become of Ben Halim."

"You'll learn that there's always a conspiracy of silence in Africa, where Arabs are concerned," Nevill answered. There was a far-off, fatal look in his eyes as he spoke, those blue eyes which seemed at all times to see something that others could not see. And again the sense of an intangible, illusive, yet very real mystery of the East, which he had felt for a moment before landing, oppressed Stephen, as if he had inhaled too much smoke from the black incense of Tombouctou.

XI

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 superstitious, 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 nobody 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 circumstances. 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 naïve 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 masses 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 snatch 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 pronounced; 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 shell. 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 pronounced 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 associate 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 God 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.

It had occurred to him while helping his aunt with the invitations, that something of interest to Miss Ray might be learned at the Governor's house. He knew the Governor more or less, in a social way. Now he asked Victoria if she would like him to make inquiries about Ben Halim's past as a Spahi?

"I've already been to the Governor," replied Victoria. "I got a letter to him from the American Consul, and had a little audience with him--is that what I ought to call it?--this morning. He was kind, but could tell me nothing I didn't know--any way, he would tell nothing more. He wasn't in Algiers when Saidee came. It was in the day of his predecessor."