"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."