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."
Again the words came singing into his head. She was white--white as this
lacelike foam that silvered the Mediterranean blue; but she had not gone
forever, as he had thought when he likened her whiteness to the
spindrift on the dark Channel waves. She had come into his life once
more, unexpectedly; and she might brighten it again for a short time on
land, in that unknown garden his thoughts pictured, behind the gate of
the East. Yet she would not be of his life. There was no place in it for
a girl. Still, he thought of her, and went on thinking, involuntarily
planning things which he and Nevill Caird would do to help the child, in
her romantic errand. Of course she must not be allowed to travel about
Algeria alone. Once settled in Algiers she must stay there quietly till
the authorities found her sister.
He used that powerful-sounding word "authorities" vaguely in his mind,
but he was sure that the thing would be simple enough. The police could
be applied to, if Nevill and his friends should be unable to discover
Ben Halim and his American wife. Almost unconsciously, Stephen saw
himself earning Victoria Ray's gratitude. It was a pleasant fancy, and
he followed it as one wanders down a flowery path found in a dark
forest.
Victoria's thoughts of him were as many, though different.
She had never filled her mind with nonsense about men, as many girls do.
As she would have said to herself, she had been too busy. When girls at
school had talked of being in love, and of marrying, she had been
interested, as if in a story-book, but it had not seemed to her that she
would ever fall in love or be married. It seemed so less than ever, now
that she was at last actually on her way to look for Saidee. She was
intensely excited, and there was room only for the one absorbing thought
in mind and heart; yet she was not as anxious as most others would have
been in her place. Now that Heaven had helped her so far, she was sure
she would be helped to the end. It would be too bad to be true that
anything dreadful should have happened to Saidee--anything from which
she, Victoria, could not save her; and so now, very soon perhaps,
everything would come right. It seemed to the girl that somehow Stephen
was part of a great scheme, that he had been sent into her life for a
purpose. Otherwise, why should he have been so kind since the first, and
have appeared this second time, when she had almost forgotten him in the
press of other thoughts? Why should he be going where she was going, and
why should he have a friend who had known Algiers and Algeria since the
time when Saidee's letters had ceased?
All these arguments were childlike; but Victoria Ray had not passed far
beyond childhood; and though her ideas of religion were her
own--unlearned and unconventional--such as they were they meant
everything to her. Many things which she had heard in churches had
seemed unreal to the girl; but she believed that the Great Power moving
the Universe planned her affairs as well as the affairs of the stars,
and with equal interest. She thought that her soul was a spark given out
by that Power, and that what was God in her had only to call to the All
of God to be answered. She had called, asking to find Saidee, and now
she was going to find her, just how she did not yet know; but she hardly
doubted that Stephen Knight was connected with the way. Otherwise, what
was the good of him to her? And Victoria was far too humble in her
opinion of herself, despite that buoyant confidence in her star, to
imagine that she could be of any use to him. She could be useful to
Saidee; that was all. She hoped for nothing more. And little as she knew
of society, she understood that Stephen belonged to a different world
from hers; the world where people were rich, and gay, and clever, and
amused themselves; the high world, from a social point of view. She
supposed, too, that Stephen looked upon her as a little girl, while she
in her turn regarded him gratefully and admiringly, as from a distance.
And she believed that he must be a very good man.
It would never have occurred to Victoria Ray to call him, even in
thought, her "White Knight," as Margot Lorenzi persisted in calling him,
and had called him in the famous interview. But it struck her, the
moment she heard his name, that it somehow fitted him like a suit of
armour. She was fond of finding an appropriateness in names, and
sometimes, if she were tired or a little discouraged, she repeated her
own aloud, several times over: "Victoria, Victoria. I am Victoria,"
until she felt strong again to conquer every difficulty which might rise
against her, in living up to her name. Now she was of opinion that
Stephen's face would do very well in the picture of a young knight of
olden days, going out to fight for the True Cross. Indeed, he looked as
if he had already passed through the preparation of a long vigil, for
his face was worn, and his eyes seldom smiled even when he laughed and
seemed amused. His features gave her an idea that the Creator had taken
a great deal of pains in chiselling them, not slighting a single line.
She had seen handsomer men--indeed, the splendid Arab on the ship was
handsomer--but she thought, if she were a general who wanted a man to
lead a forlorn hope which meant almost certain death, she would choose
one of Stephen's type. She had the impression that he would not hesitate
to sacrifice himself for a cause, or even for a person, in an emergency,
although he had the air of one used to good fortune, who loved to take
his own way in the small things of life.
And so she finally went to sleep thinking of Stephen.
It is seldom that even the _Charles Quex_, one of the fastest ships
plying between Marseilles and Algiers, makes the trip in eighteen hours,
as advertised. Generally she takes two half-days and a night, but this
time people began to say that she would do it in twenty-two hours. Very
early in the dawning she passed the Balearic Isles, mysterious purple in
an opal sea, and it was not yet noon when the jagged line of the Atlas
Mountains hovered in pale blue shadow along a paler horizon. Then, as
the turbines whirred, the shadow materialized, taking a golden solidity
and wildness of outline. At length the tower of a lighthouse started out
clear white against blue, as a shaft of sunshine struck it. Next, the
nearer mountains slowly turned to green, as a chameleon changes: the
Admiralty Island came clearly into view; the ancient nest of those
fierce pirates who for centuries scourged the Mediterranean; and last of
all, the climbing town of Algiers, old Al-Djézair-el-Bahadja, took form
like thick patterns of mother-o'-pearl set in bright green enamel, the
patterns eventually separating themselves into individual buildings.
The strange, bulbous domes of a Byzantine cathedral on a hill sprang up
like a huge tropical plant of many flowers, unfolding fantastic buds of
deep rose-colour, against a sky of violet flame.
"At last, Africa!" said Victoria, standing beside Stephen, and leaning
on the rail. She spoke to herself, half whispering the words, hardly
aware that she uttered them, but Stephen heard. The two had not been
long together during the morning, for each had been shy of giving too
much of himself or herself, although they had secretly wished for each
other's society. As the voyage drew to a close, however, Stephen was no
longer able to resist an attraction which he felt like a compelling
magnetism. His excuse was that he wanted to know Miss Ray's first
impressions of the place she had constantly seen in her thoughts during
ten years.
"Is it like what you expected?" he asked.
"Yes," she said, "it's like, because I have photographs. And I've read
every book I could get hold of, old and new, in French as well as
English. I always kept up my French, you know, for the same reason that
I studied Arabic. I think I could tell the names of some of the
buildings, without making mistakes. Yet it looks different, as the
living face of a person is different from a portrait in black and white.
And I never imagined such a sky. I didn't know skies could be of such a
colour. It's as if pale fire were burning behind a thin veil of blue."
It was as she said. Stephen had seen vivid skies on the Riviera, but
there the blue was more opaque, like the blue of the turquoise. Here it
was ethereal and quivering, like the violet fire that hovers over
burning ship-logs. He was glad the sky of Africa was unlike any other
sky he had known. It intensified the thrill of enchantment he had begun
to feel. It seemed to him that it might be possible for a man to forget
things in a country where even the sky was of another blue.
Sometimes, when Stephen had read in books of travel (at which he seldom
even glanced), or in novels, about "the mystery of the East," he had
smiled in a superior way. Why should the East be more mysterious than
the West, or North, or South, except that women were shut up in harems
and wore veils if they stirred out of doors? Such customs could scarcely
make a whole country mysterious. But now, though he had not yet landed,
he knew that he would be compelled to acknowledge the indefinable
mystery at which he had sneered. Already he fancied an elusive
influence, like the touch of a ghost. It was in the pulsing azure of the
sky; in the wild forms of the Atlas and far Kabyle mountains stretching
into vague, pale distances; in the ivory white of the low-domed roofs
that gleamed against the vivid green hill of the Sahel, like pearls on a
veiled woman's breast.
"Is it what you thought it would be?" Victoria inquired in her turn.
"I hadn't thought much about it," Stephen had to confess, fearing she
would consider such indifference uninteresting. He did not add what
remained of the truth, that he had thought of Algiers as a refuge from
what had become disagreeable, rather than as a beautiful place which he
wished to see for its own sake. "I'd made no picture in my mind. You
know a lot more about it all than I do, though you've lived so far away,
and I within a distance of forty-eight hours."
"That great copper-coloured church high on the hill is Notre Dame
d'Afrique," said the girl. "She's like a dark sister of Notre Dame de la
Garde, who watches over Marseilles, isn't she? I think I could love her,
though she's ugly, really. And I've read in a book that if you walk up
the hill to visit her and say a prayer, you may have a hundred days'
indulgence."
Much good an "indulgence" would do him now, Stephen thought bitterly.
As the ship steamed closer inshore, the dreamlike beauty of the white
town on the green hillside sharpened into a reality which might have
seemed disappointingly modern and French, had it not been for the
sprinkling of domes, the pointing fingers of minarets with glittering
tiles of bronzy green, and the groups of old Arab houses crowded in
among the crudities of a new, Western civilization. Down by the wharf
for which the boat aimed like a homing bird, were huddled a few of these
houses, ancient dwellings turned into commercial offices where shipping
business was transacted. They looked forlorn, yet beautiful, like
haggard slavewomen who remembered days of greatness in a far-off land.
The _Charles Quex_ slackened speed as she neared the harbour, and every
detail of the town leaped to the eyes, dazzling in the southern
sunshine. The encircling arms of break-waters were flung out to sea in a
vast embrace; the smoke of vessels threaded with dark, wavy lines the
pure crystal of the air; the quays were heaped with merchandise, some of
it in bales, as if it might have been brought by caravans across the
desert. There was a clanking of cranes at work, a creaking of chains, a
flapping of canvas, and many sounds which blend in the harsh poetry of
sea-harbours. Then voices of men rose shrilly above all heavier noises,
as the ship slowly turned and crept beside a floating pontoon. The
journey together was over for Stephen Knight and Victoria Ray.