Djenan El Djouad was a labyrinth. Stephen Knight abandoned all attempt
at keeping a mental clue before he had reached the drawing-room. Nevill
led him there by way of many tile-paved corridors, lit by hanging Arab
lamps suspended from roofs of arabesqued cedar-wood. They went up or
down marble steps, into quaint little alcoved rooms furnished with
nothing but divans and low tables or dower chests crusted with Syrian
mother-o'-pearl, on into rooms where brocade-hung walls were covered
with Arab musical instruments of all kinds, or long-necked Moorish guns
patterned with silver, ivory and coral. Here and there as they passed,
were garden glimpses, between embroidered curtains, looking through
windows always barred with greenish wrought iron, so old as to be rarely
beautiful; and some small windows had no curtains, but were thickly
frilled outside with the violent crimson of bougainvillæa, or fringed
with tassels of wistaria, loop on loop of amethysts. High above these
windows, which framed flowery pictures, were other windows, little and
jewelled, mere plaques of filigree workmanship, fine as carved ivory or
silver lace, and lined with coloured glass of delicate tints--gold,
lilac, and pale rose.
"Here's the drawing-room at last," said Nevill, "and here's my aunt."
"If you can call it a drawing-room," objected a gently complaining
voice. "A filled-in court, where ghosts of murdered slaves come and
moan, while you have your tea. How do you do, Mr. Knight? I'm delighted
you've taken pity on Nevill. He's never so happy as when he's showing a
new friend the house--except when he's obtained an old tile, or a new
monster of some sort, for his collection."
"In me, he kills two birds with one stone," said Stephen, smiling, as he
shook the hand of a tiny lady who looked rather like an elderly fairy
disguised in a cap, that could have been born nowhere except north of
the Tweed.
She had delicate little features which had been made to fit a pretty
child, and had never grown up. Her hair, of a reddish yellow, had faded
to a yellowish white, which by a faint fillip of the imagination could
be made to seem golden in some lights. Her eyes were large and round,
and of a china-blue colour; her eyebrows so arched as to give her an
expression of perpetual surprise, her forehead full, her cheekbones high
and pink, her small, pursed mouth of the kind which prefers to hide a
sense of humour, and then astonish people with it when they have ceased
to believe in its existence. If her complexion had not been netted all
over with a lacework of infinitesimal wrinkles, she would have looked
like a little girl dressed up for an old lady. She had a ribbon of the
MacGregor tartan on her cap, and an uncompromising cairngorm fastened
her fichu of valuable point lace. A figure more out of place than hers
in an ancient Arab palace of Algiers it would be impossible to conceive;
yet it was a pleasant figure to see there, and Stephen knew that he was
going to like Nevill's Aunt Caroline, Lady MacGregor.
"I wish you looked more of a monster than you do," said she, "because
you might frighten the ghosts. We're eaten up with them, the way some
folk in old houses are with rats. Nearly all of them slaves, too, so
there's no variety, except that some are female. I've given you the room
with the prettiest ghosts, but if you're not the seventh son of a
seventh son, you may not see or even hear them."
"Does Nevill see or hear?" asked Stephen.
"As much as Aunt Caroline does, if the truth were known," answered her
nephew. "Only she couldn't be happy unless she had a grievance. Here she
wanted to choose an original and suitable one, so she hit upon
ghosts--the ghosts of slaves murdered by a cruel master."
"Hit upon them, indeed!" she echoed indignantly, making her knitting
needles click, a movement which displayed her pretty, miniature hands,
half hidden in lace ruffles. "As if they hadn't gone through enough, in
flesh and blood, poor creatures! Some of them may have been my
countrymen, captured on the seas by those horrid pirates."
"Who was the cruel master?" Stephen wanted to know, still smiling,
because it was almost impossible not to smile at Lady MacGregor.
"Not my brother James, I'm glad to say," she quickly replied. "It was
about three hundred years before his time. And though he had some quite
irritating tricks as a young man, murdering slaves wasn't one of them.
To be sure, they tell strange tales of him here, as I make no doubt
Nevill has already mentioned, because he's immoral enough to be proud of
what he calls the romance. I mean the story of the beautiful Arab lady,
whom James is supposed to have stolen from her rightful husband--that
is, if an Arab can be rightful--and hidden in this house far many a
year, till at last she died, after the search for her had long, long
gone by."
"You're as proud of the romance as I am, or you wouldn't be at such
pains to repeat it to everybody, pretending to think I've already told
it," said Nevill. "But I'm going to show Knight his quarters. Pretty or
plain, there are no ghosts here that will hurt him. And then we'll have
lunch, for which he's starving."
Stephen's quarters consisted of a bedroom (furnished in Tunisian style,
with an imposing four-poster of green and gold ornamented with a gilded,
sacred cow under a crown) and a sitting room gay with colourful
decorations imported from Morocco. These rooms opened upon a wide
covered balcony screened by a carved wooden lattice and from the
balcony Stephen could look over hills, near and far, dotted with white
villas that lay like resting gulls on the green wave of verdure which
cascaded down to join the blue waves of the sea. Up from that far
blueness drifted on the wind a murmurous sound like Æolian harps,
mingled with the tinkle of fairy mandolins in the fountain of the court
below.
At luncheon, in a dining-room that opened on to a white-walled garden
where only lilies of all kinds grew, to Stephen's amazement two
Highlanders in kilts stood behind his hostess's chair. They were young,
exactly alike, and of precisely the same height, six foot two at least.
"No, you are not dreaming them, Mr. Knight," announced Lady MacGregor,
evidently delighted with the admiring surprise in the look he bestowed
upon these images. "And you're quite right. They _are_ twins. I may as
well break it to you now, as I had to do to Nevill when he invited me to
come to Algiers and straighten out his housekeeping accounts: they play
Ruth to my Naomi. Whither I go, they go also, even to the door of the
bathroom, where they carry my towels, for I have no other maid than
they."
Stephen could not help glancing at the two giants, expecting to see some
involuntary quiver of eye or nostril answer electrically to this frank
revelation of their office; but their countenances (impossible to think
of as mere faces) remained expressionless as if carved in stone. Lady
MacGregor took nothing from Mohammed and the other Kabyle servant who
waited on Nevill and Stephen. Everything for her was handed to one of
the Highlanders, who gravely passed on the dish to their mistress. If
she refused a _plat_ favoured by them, instead of carrying it away, the
giants in kilts silently but firmly pressed it upon her acceptance,
until in self-defence she seized some of the undesired food, and ate it
under their watchful eyes.
During the meal a sudden thunderstorm boiled up out of the sea: the sky
became a vast brazen bowl, and a strange, coppery twilight bleached the
lilies in the white garden to a supernatural pallor. The room, with its
embroidered Moorish hangings, darkened to a rich gloom; but Mohammed
touched a button on the wall, and all the quaint old Arab lamps that
stood in corners, or hung suspended from the cedar roof, flashed out
cunningly concealed electric lights. At the same moment, there began a
great howling outside the door. Mohammed sprang to open it, and in
poured a wave of animals. Stephen hastily counted five dogs; a collie, a
white deerhound, a Dandy Dinmont, and a mother and child of unknown
race, which he afterwards learned was Kabyle, a breed beloved of
mountain men and desert tent-dwellers. In front of the dogs bounded a
small African monkey, who leaped to the back of Nevill's chair, and
behind them toddled with awkward grace a baby panther, a mere ball of
yellow silk.
"They don't like the thunder, poor dears," Nevill apologised. "That's
why they howled, for they're wonderfully polite people really. They
always come at the end of lunch. Aunt Caroline won't invite them to
dinner, because then she sometimes wears fluffy things about which she
has a foolish vanity. The collie is Angus's. The deerhound is Hamish's.
The dandy is hers. The two Kabyles are Mohammed's, and the flotsam and
jetsam is mine. There's a great deal more of it out of doors, but this
is all that gets into the dining-room except by accident. And I expect
you think we are a very queer family."
Stephen did think so, for never till now had he been a member of a
household where each of the servants was allowed to possess any animals
he chose, and flood the house with them. But the queerer he thought the
family, the better he found himself liking it. He felt a boy let out of
school after weeks of disgrace and punishment, and, strangely enough,
this old Arab palace, in a city of North Africa seemed more like home to
him than his London flat had seemed of late.
When Lady MacGregor rose and said she must write the note she had
promised Nevill to send Miss Ray, Stephen longed to kiss her. This form
of worship not being permitted, he tried to open the dining-room door
for her to go out, but Angus and Hamish glared upon him so
superciliously that he retired in their favour.
The luncheon hour, even when cloaked in the mysterious gloom of a
thunderstorm, is no time for confidences; besides, it is not conducive
to sustained conversation to find a cold nose in your palm, a baby claw
up your sleeve, or a monkey hand, like a bit of leather, thrust down
your collar or into your ear. But after dinner that night, when Lady
MacGregor had trailed her maligned "fluffiness" away to the
drawing-room, and Nevill and Stephen had strolled with their cigarettes
out into the unearthly whiteness of the lily garden, Stephen felt that
something was coming. He had known that Nevill had a story to tell, by
and by, and though he knew also that he would be asked no questions in
return, now or ever, it occurred to him that Nevill's offer of
confidences was perhaps meant to open a door, if he chose to enter by
it. He was not sure whether he would so choose or not, but the fact that
he was not sure meant a change in him. A few days ago, even this
morning, before meeting Nevill, he would have been certain that he had
nothing intimate to tell Caird or any one else.
They strolled along the paths among the lilies. Moon and sky and flowers
and white-gravelled paths were all silver. Stephen thought of Victoria
Ray, and wished she could see this garden. He thought, too, that if she
would only dance here among the lilies in the moonlight, it would be a
vision of exquisite loveliness.
"For a moment white, then gone forever," he caught himself repeating
again.
It was odd how, whenever he saw anything very white and of dazzling
purity, he thought of this dancing girl. He wondered what sort of woman
it was whose image came to Nevill's mind, in the garden of lilies that
smelt so heavenly sweet under the moon. He supposed there must always be
some woman whose image was suggested to every man by all that was
fairest in nature. Margot Lorenzi was the woman whose image he must keep
in his mind, if he wanted to know any faint imitation of happiness in
future. She would like this moonlit garden, and in one way it would suit
her as a background. Yet she did not seem quite in the picture, despite
her beauty. The perfume she loved would not blend with the perfume of
the lilies.
"Aunt Caroline's rather a dear, isn't she?" remarked Nevill, apropos of
nothing.
"She's a jewel," said Stephen.
"Yet she isn't the immediate jewel of my soul. I'm hard hit, Stephen,
and the girl won't have me. She's poorer than any church or other mouse
I ever met, yet she turns up her little French nose at me and my palace,
and all the cheese I should like to see her nibble--my cheese."
"Her French nose?" echoed Stephen.
"Yes. Her nose and the rest of her's French, especially her dimples. You
never saw such dimples. Miss Ray's prettier than my girl, I suppose. But
I think mine's beyond anything. Only she isn't and won't be mine that's
the worst of it."
"Where is she?" Stephen asked. "In Algiers?"
"No such luck. But her sister is. I'll take you to see the sister
to-morrow morning. She may be able to tell us something to help Miss
Ray. She keeps a curiosity-shop, and is a connoisseur of Eastern
antiquities, as well as a great character in Algiers, quite a sort of
queen in her way--a quaint way. All the visiting Royalties of every
nation drop in and spend hours in her place. She has a good many Arab
acquaintances, too. Even rich chiefs come to sell, or buy things from
her, and respect her immensely. But my girl--I like to call her that--is
away off in the west, close to the border of Morocco, at Tlemcen. I
wish you were interested in mosques, and I'd take you there. People who
care for such things sometimes travel from London or Paris just to see
the mosque of Sidi Bou-Medine and a certain Mirab. But I suppose you
haven't any fad of that kind, eh?"
"I feel it coming on," said Stephen.
"Good chap! Do encourage the feeling. I'll lend you books, lots of
books, on the subject. She's 'malema,' or mistress of an _école
indigène_ for embroideries and carpets, at Tlemcen. Heaven knows how few
francs a month she earns by the job which takes all her time and life,
yet she thinks herself lucky to get it. And she won't marry me."
"Surely she must love you, at least a little, if you care so much for
her," Stephen tried to console his friend.
"Oh, she does, a lot," replied Nevill with infinite satisfaction. "But,
you see--well, you see, her family wasn't up to much from a social point
of view--such rot! The mother came out from Paris to be a nursery
governess, when she was quite young, but she was too pretty for that
position. She had various but virtuous adventures, and married a
non-com. in the Chasseurs d'Afrique, who chucked the army for her. The
two kept a little hotel. Then the husband died, while the girls were
children. The mother gave up the hotel and took in sewing. Everybody was
interested in the family, they were so clever and exceptional, and
people helped in the girls' education. When their mother became an
invalid, the two contrived to keep her and themselves, though Jeanne was
only eighteen then, and Josette, my girl, fifteen. She's been dead now
for some years--the mother. Josette is nearly twenty-four. Do you see
why she won't marry me? I'm hanged if I do."
"I can see what her feeling is," Stephen said. "She must be a ripping
girl."
"I should say she is!--though as obstinate as the devil. Sometimes I
could shake her and box her ears. I haven't seen her for months now.
She wouldn't like me to go to Tlemcen--unless I had a friend with me,
and a good excuse. I didn't know it could hurt so much to be in love,
though I was in once before, and it hurt too, rather. But that was
nothing. For the woman had no soul or mind, only her beauty, and an
unscrupulous sort of ambition which made her want to marry me when my
uncle left me his money. She'd refused to do anything more serious than
flirt and reduce me to misery, until she thought I could give her what
she wanted. I'd imagined myself horribly in love, until her sudden
willingness to take me showed me once for all what she was. Even so, I
couldn't cure the habit of love at first; but I had just sense enough to
keep out of England, where she was, for fear I should lose my head and
marry her. My cure was rather slow, but it was sure; and now I know that
what I thought was love then wasn't love at all. The real thing's as
different as--as--a modern Algerian tile is from an old Moorish one. I
can't say anything stronger! That's why I cut England, to begin with,
and after a while my interests were more identified with France.
Sometimes I go to Paris in the summer--or to a little place in Dauphiny.
But I haven't been back to England for eight years. Algeria holds all my
heart. In Tlemcen is my girl. Here are my garden and my beasts. Now you
have my history since Oxford days."
"You know something of _my_ history through the papers," Stephen blurted
out with a desperate defiance of his own reserve.
"Not much of your real history, I think. Papers lie, and people
misunderstand. Don't talk of yourself unless you really want to. But I
say, look here, Stephen. That woman I thought I cared for--may I tell
you what she was like? Somehow I want you to know. Don't think me a cad.
I don't mean to be. But--may I tell?"
"Of course. Why not?"
"She was dark and awfully handsome, and though she wasn't an actress,
she would have made a splendid one. She thought only of herself.
I--there was a picture in a London paper lately which reminded me of
her--the picture of a young lady you know--or think you know.
They--those two--are of the same type. I don't believe either could make
a man happy."
Stephen laughed--a short, embarrassed laugh. "Oh, happy!" he echoed.
"After twenty-five we learn not to expect happiness. But--thank you
for--everything, and especially for inviting me here." He knew now why
it had occurred to Nevill to ask him to Algiers. Nevill had seen
Margot's picture. In silence they walked towards the open door of the
dining-room. Somewhere not far away the Kabyle dogs were barking
shrilly. In the distance rose and fell muffled notes of strange passion
and fierceness, an Arab tom-tom beating like the heart of the conquered
East, away in the old town.
Stephen's short-lived gaiety was struck out of his soul.
"For a moment white, then gone forever."
He pushed the haunting words out of his mind. He did not want them to
have any meaning. They had no meaning.
It seemed to him that the perfume of the lilies was too heavy on the
air.
X
A white peacock, screaming in the garden under Stephen's balcony, waked
him early, and dreamily his thoughts strayed towards the events planned
for the day.
They were to make a morning call on Mademoiselle Soubise in her
curiosity-shop, and ask about Ben Halim, the husband of Saidee Ray.
Victoria was coming to luncheon, for she had accepted Lady MacGregor's
invitation. Her note had been brought in last night, while he and Nevill
walked in the garden. Afterwards Lady MacGregor had shown it to them
both. The girl wrote an interesting hand, full of individuality, and
expressive of decision. Perhaps on her arrival they might have something
to tell her.
This hope shot Stephen out of bed, though it was only seven, and
breakfast was not until nine. He had a cold bath in the private
bathroom, which was one of Nevill's modern improvements in the old
house, and by and by went for a walk, thinking to have the gardens to
himself. But Nevill was there, cutting flowers and whistling tunefully.
It was to him that the jewelled white peacock had screamed a greeting.
"I like cutting the flowers myself," said he. "I don't think they care
to have others touch them, any more than a cow likes to be milked by a
stranger. Of course they feel the difference! Why, they know when I
praise them, and preen themselves. They curl up when they're scolded, or
not noticed, just as I do when people aren't nice to me. Every day I
send off a box of my best roses to Tlemcen. _She_ allows me to do that."
Lady MacGregor did not appear at breakfast, which was served on a
marble loggia; and by half-past nine Stephen and Nevill were out in the
wide, tree-shaded streets, where masses of bougainvillæa and clematis
boiled over high garden-walls of old plaster, once white, now streaked
with gold and rose, and green moss and lichen. After the thunderstorm of
the day before, the white dust was laid, and the air was pure with a
curious sparkling quality.
They passed the museum in its garden, and turned a corner.
"There's Mademoiselle Soubise's shop," said Nevill.
It was a low white building, and had evidently been a private house at
one time. The only change made had been in the shape and size of the
windows on the ground-floor; and these were protected by green
_persiennes_, fanned out like awnings, although the house was shaded by
magnolia trees. There was no name over the open door, but the word
"_Antiquités_" was painted in large black letters on the house-wall.
Under the green blinds was a glitter of jewels displayed among brocades
and a tangle of old lace, or on embossed silver trays; and walking in at
the door, out of the shadowy dusk, a blaze of colour leaped to the eyes.
Not a soul was there, unless some one hid and spied behind a carved and
gilded Tunisian bed or a marqueterie screen from Bagdad. Yet there was a
collection to tempt a thief, and apparently no precaution taken against
invaders.
Delicate rugs, soft as clouds and tinted like opals, were heaped in
piles on the tiled floor; rugs from Ispahan, rugs from Mecca; old rugs
from the sacred city of Kairouan, such as are made no more there or
anywhere. The walls were hung with Tunisian silks and embroidered stuffs
from the homes of Jewish families, where they had served as screens for
talismanic words too sacred to be seen by common eyes; and there was
drapery of ancient banners, Tyrian-dyed, whose gold or silver fringes
had been stained with blood, in battle. From the ceiling were suspended
antique lamps, and chandeliers of rare rock crystal, whose prisms gave
out rose and violet sparks as they caught the light.
On shelves and inlaid tables were beggars' bowls of strange dark woods,
carried across deserts by wandering mendicants of centuries ago, the
chains, which had hung from throats long since crumbled into dust,
adorned with lucky rings and fetishes to preserve the wearer from evil
spirits. There were other bowls, of crystal pure as full-blown bubbles,
bowls which would ring at a tap like clear bells of silver. Some of
these were guiltless of ornament, some were graven with gold flowers,
but all seemed full of lights reflected from tilted, pearl-framed
mirrors, and from the swinging prisms of chandeliers.
Chafing-dishes of bronze at which vanished hands had been warmed, stood
beside chased brazen ewers made to pour rose-water over henna-stained
fingers, after Arab dinners, eaten without knives or forks. In the
depths of half-open drawers glimmered precious stones, strangely cut
pink diamonds, big square turquoises and emeralds, strings of creamy
pearls, and hands of Fatma, a different jewel dangling from each
finger-tip.
The floor was encumbered, not only with rugs, but with heaps of
priceless tiles, Persian and Moorish, of the best periods and patterns,
taken from the walls of Arab palaces now destroyed; huge brass salvers;
silver anklets, and chain armour, sabres captured from Crusaders, and
old illuminated Korans. It was difficult to move without knocking
something down, and one stepped delicately in narrow aisles, to avoid
islands of piled, precious objects. Everywhere the eye was drawn to
glittering points, or patches of splendid colour; so that at a glance
the large, dusky room was like a temple decorated with mosaics. There
was nothing that did not suggest the East, city or desert, or mountain
village of the Kabyles; and the air was loaded with Eastern perfumes,
ambergris and musk that blended with each other, and the scent of the
black incense sticks brought by caravan from Tombouctou.
"Why doesn't some one come in and steal?" asked Stephen, in surprise at
seeing the place deserted.
"Because there's hardly a thief in Algiers mean enough to steal from
Jeanne Soubise, who gives half she has to the poor. And because, if
there were one so mean, Haroun el Raschid would soon let her know what
was going on," said Nevill. "His latest disguise is that of a parrot,
but he may change it for something else at any moment."
Then Stephen saw, suspended among the crystal chandeliers and antique
lamps, a brass cage, shaped like a domed palace. In this cage, in a
coral ring, sat a grey parrot who regarded the two young men with
jewel-eyes that seemed to know all good and evil.
"He yells if any stranger comes into the shop when his mistress is out,"
Nevill explained. "I am an humble friend of His Majesty's, so he says
nothing. I gave him to Mademoiselle Jeanne."
Perhaps their voices had been heard. At all events, there was a light
tapping of heels on unseen stairs, and from behind a red-curtained
doorway appeared a tall young woman, dressed in black.
She was robust as well as tall, and Stephen thought she looked rather
like a handsome Spanish boy; yet she was feminine enough in her
outlines. It was the frank and daring expression of her face and great
black eyes which gave the look of boyishness. She had thick, straight
eyebrows, a large mouth that was beautiful when she smiled, to show
perfect teeth between the red lips that had a faint, shadowy line of
down above them.
"Ah, Monsieur Nevill Caird!" she exclaimed, in English, with a full
voice, and a French accent that was pretty, though not Parisian. She
smiled at Stephen, too, without waiting to be introduced. "Monsieur
Caird is always kind in bringing his friends to me, and I am always glad
to see them."
"I've brought Mr. Knight, not to buy, but to ask a favour," said Nevill.
"To buy, too," Stephen hastened to cut in. "I see things I can't live
without. I must own them."
"Well, don't set your heart on anything Mademoiselle Soubise won't sell.
She bought everything with the idea of selling it, she admits, but now
she's got them here, there are some things she can't make up her mind to
part with at any price."
"Oh, only a few tiles--and some Jewish embroideries--and bits of
jewellery--and a rug or two or a piece of pottery--and maybe _one_ copy
of the Koran, and a beggar's bowl," Jeanne Soubise excused herself,
hastily adding more and more to her list of exceptions, as her eyes
roved wistfully among her treasures. "Oh, and an amphora just dug up
near Timgad, with Roman oil still inside. It's a beauty. Will you come
down to the cellar to look at it?"
Nevill thanked her, and reserved the pleasure for another time. Then he
inquired what was the latest news from Mademoiselle Josette at Tlemcen;
and when he heard that there was nothing new, he told the lady of the
curiosity-shop what was the object of the early visit.
"But of course I have heard of Ben Halim, and I have seen him, too," she
said; "only it was long ago--maybe ten years. Yes, I could not have been
seventeen. It is already long that he went away from Algiers, no one
knows where. Now he is said to be dead. Have you not heard of him,
Monsieur Nevill? You must have. He lived at Djenan el Hadj; close to the
Jardin d'Essai. You know the place well. The new rich Americans, Madame
Jewett and her daughter, have it now. There was a scandal about Ben
Halim, and then he went away--a scandal that was mysterious, because
every one talked about it, yet no one knew what had happened--never
surely at least."
"I told you Mademoiselle would be able to give you information!"
exclaimed Nevill. "I felt sure the name was familiar, somehow, though I
couldn't think how. One hears so many Arab names, and generally there's
a 'Ben' or a 'Bou' something or other, if from the South."
"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.