While Victoria was still in the lily-garden with her host and his
friend, the cab which she had ordered to return came back to fetch her.
It was early, and Lady MacGregor had expected her to stop for tea, as
most people did stop, who visited Djenan el Djouad for the first time,
because every one wished to see the house; and to see the house took
hours. But the dancing-girl, appearing slightly embarrassed as she
expressed her regrets, said that she must go; she had to keep an
engagement. She did not explain what the engagement was, and as she
betrayed constraint in speaking of it, both Stephen and Nevill guessed
that she did not wish to explain. They took it for granted that it was
something to do with her sister's affairs, something which she
considered of importance; otherwise, as she had no friends in Algiers,
and Lady MacGregor was putting herself out to be kind, the girl would
have been pleased to spend an afternoon with those to whom she could
talk freely. No questions could be asked, though, as Lady MacGregor
remarked when Victoria had gone (after christening the baby panther), it
did seem ridiculous that a child should be allowed to make its own plans
and carry them out alone in a place like Algiers, without having any
advice from its elders.
"I've been, and expect to go on being, what you might call a perpetual
chaperon," said she resignedly; "and chaperoning is so ingrained in my
nature that I hate to see a baby running about unprotected, doing what
it chooses, as if it were a married woman, not to say a widow. But I
suppose it can't be stopped."
"She's been on the stage," said Nevill reassuringly, Miss Ray having
already broken this hard fact to the Scotch lady at luncheon.
"I tell you it's a baby! Even John Knox would see that," sharply replied
Aunt Caroline.
There was nothing better to do with the rest of the afternoon, Nevill
thought, than to take a spin in the motor, which they did, the chauffeur
at the wheel, as Nevill confessed himself of too lazy a turn of mind to
care for driving his own car. While Stephen waited outside, he called at
Djenan el Hadj (an old Arab house at a little distance from the town,
buried deep in a beautiful garden), but the ladies were out. Nevill
wrote a note on his card, explaining that his aunt would like to bring a
friend, whose relatives had once lived in the house; and this done, they
had a swift run about the beautiful country in the neighbourhood of
Algiers.
It was dinner-time when they returned, and meanwhile an answer had come
from Mrs. Jewett. She would be delighted to see any friend of Lady
MacGregor's, and hoped Miss Ray might be brought to tea the following
afternoon.
"Shall we send a note to her hotel, or shall we stroll down after
dinner?" asked Nevill.
"Suppose we stroll down," Stephen decided, trying to appear indifferent,
though he was ridiculously pleased at the idea of having a few
unexpected words with Victoria.
"Good. We might take a look at the Kasbah afterward," said Nevill.
"Night's the time when it's most mysterious, and we shall be close to
the old town when we leave Miss Ray's hotel."
Dinner seemed long to Stephen. He could have spared several courses.
Nevertheless, though they sat down at eight, it was only nine when they
started out. Up on the hill of Mustapha Supérieur, all was peaceful
under the moonlight; but below, in the streets of French shops and
cafés, the light-hearted people of the South were ready to begin
enjoying themselves after a day of work. Streams of electric light
poured from restaurant windows, and good smells of French cooking
filtered out, as doors opened and shut. The native cafés were crowded
with dark men smoking chibouques, eating kous-kous, playing dominoes, or
sipping absinthe and golden liqueurs which, fortunately not having been
invented in the Prophet's time, had not been forbidden by him. Curio
shops and bazaars for native jewellery and brasswork were still open,
lit up with pink and yellow lamps. The brilliant uniforms of young
Spahis and Zouaves made spots of vivid colour among the dark clothes of
Europeans, tourists, or employés in commercial houses out for amusement.
Sailors of different nations swung along arm in arm, laughing and ogling
the handsome Jewesses and painted ladies from the Levant or Marseilles.
American girls just arrived on big ships took care of their chaperons
and gazed with interest at the passing show, especially at the
magnificent Arabs who appeared to float rather than walk, looking
neither to right nor left, their white burnouses blowing behind them.
The girls stared eagerly, too, at the few veiled and swathed figures of
native women who mingled with the crowd, padding timidly with bare feet
thrust into slippers. The foreigners mistook them no doubt for Arab
ladies, not knowing that ladies never walk; and were but little
interested in the old, unveiled women with chocolate-coloured faces, who
begged, or tried to sell picture-postcards. The arcaded streets were
full of light and laughter, noise of voices, clatter of horses' hoofs,
carriage-wheels, and tramcars, bells of bicycles and horns of motors.
The scene was as gay as any Paris boulevard, and far more picturesque
because of the older, Eastern civilization in the midst of, though never
part of, an imported European life--the flitting white and brown
figures, like thronging ghosts outnumbering the guests at a banquet.
Stephen and Nevill Caird went up the Rue Bab-el-Oued, leading to the old
town, and so came to the Hotel de la Kasbah, where Victoria Ray was
staying. It looked more attractive at night, with its blaze of
electricity that threw out the Oriental colouring of some crude
decorations in the entrance-hall, yet the place appeared less than ever
suited to Victoria.
An Arab porter stood at the door, smoking a cigarette. His fingers were
stained with henna, and he wore an embroidered jacket which showed
grease-spots and untidy creases. It was with the calmest indifference he
eyed the Englishmen, as Nevill inquired in French for Miss Ray.
The question whether she were "at home" was conventionally put, for it
seemed practically certain that she must be in the hotel. Where could
she, who had no other friends than they, and no chaperon, go at night?
It was with blank surprise, therefore, that he and Stephen heard the
man's answer. Mademoiselle was out.
"I don't believe it," Stephen muttered in English, to Nevill.
The porter understood, and looked sulky. "I tell ze troot," he
persisted. "Ze gentlemens no believe, zay ask some ozzer."
They took him at his word, and walked past the Arab into the hotel. A
few Frenchmen and Spaniards of inferior type were in the hall, and at
the back, near a stairway made of the cheapest marble, was a window
labelled "Bureau." Behind this window, in a cagelike room, sat the
proprietor at a desk, adding up figures in a large book. He was very
fat, and his chins went all the way round his neck in grooves, as if his
thick throat might pull out like an accordion. There was something
curiously exotic about him, as there is in persons of mixed races; an
olive pallor of skin, an oiliness of black hair, and a jetty brightness
of eye under heavy lids.
This time it was Stephen who asked for Miss Ray; but he was given the
same answer. She had gone out.
"You are sure?"
"Mais, oui, monsieur."
"Has she been gone long?" Stephen persisted, feeling perplexed and
irritated, as if something underhand were going on.
"Of that I cannot tell," returned the hotel proprietor, still in
guttural French. "She left word she would not be at the dinner."
"Did she say when she would be back?"
"No, monsieur. She did not say."
"Perhaps the American Consul's family took pity on her, and invited her
to dine with them," suggested Nevill.
"Yes," Stephen said, relieved. "That's the most likely thing, and would
explain her engagement this afternoon."
"We might explore the Kasbah for an hour, and call again, to inquire."
"Let us," returned Stephen. "I should like to know that she's got in all
right."
Five minutes later they had left the noisy Twentieth Century behind
them, and plunged into the shadowy silence of a thousand years ago.
The change could not have been more sudden and complete if, from a gaily
lighted modern street, full of hum and bustle, they had fallen down an
oubliette into a dark, deserted fairyland. Just outside was the imported
life of Paris, but this old town was Turkish, Arab, Moorish, Jewish and
Spanish; and in Algeria old things do not change.
After all, the alley was not deserted, though it was soundless as a tomb
save for a dull drumming somewhere behind thick walls. They were in a
narrow tunnel, rather than a street, between houses that bent towards
each other, their upper stories supported by beams. There was no
electric light, scarcely any light at all save a strip of moonshine,
fine as a line of silver inlaid in ebony, along the cobbled way which
ascended in steps, and a faint glimmer of a lamp here and there in the
distance, a lamp small and greenish as the pale spark of a glow-worm. As
they went up, treading carefully, forms white as spirits came down the
street in heelless babouches that made no more noise than the wings of a
bat. These forms loomed vague in the shadow, then took shape as Arab
men, whose eyes gleamed under turbans or out from hoods.
Moving aside to let a cloaked figure go by, Stephen brushed against the
blank wall of a house, which was cold, sweating dampness like an
underground vault. No sun, except a streak at midday, could ever
penetrate this tunnel-street.
So they went on from one alley into another, as if lost in a catacomb,
or the troubling mazes of a nightmare. Always the walls were blank, save
for a deep-set, nail-studded door, or a small window like a square dark
hole. Yet in reality, Nevill Caird was not lost. He knew his way very
well in the Kasbah, which he never tired of exploring, though he had
spent eight winters in Algiers. By and by he guided his friend into a
street not so narrow as the others they had climbed, though it was
rather like the bed of a mountain torrent, underfoot. Because the moon
could pour down a silver flood it was not dark, but the lamps were so
dull that the moonlight seemed to put them out.
Here the beating was as loud as a frightened heart. The walls resounded
with it, and sent out an echo. More than one nailed door stood open,
revealing a long straight passage, with painted walls faintly lighted
from above, and a curtain like a shadow, hiding the end. In these
passages hung the smoky perfume of incense; and from over tile-topped
walls came the fragrance of roses and lemon blossoms, half choked with
the melancholy scent of things old, musty and decayed. Beautiful
pillars, brought perhaps from ruined Carthage, were set deeply in the
whitewashed walls, looking sad and lumpy now that centuries of
chalk-coats had thickened their graceful contours. But to compensate for
loss of shape, they were dazzling white, marvellous as columns of carved
pearl in the moonlight, they and their surrounding walls seeming to send
out an eerie, bleached light of their own which struck at the eye. The
uneven path ran floods of moonlight; and from tiny windows in the
leaning snow-palaces--windows like little golden frames--looked out the
faces of women, as if painted on backgrounds of dull yellow,
emerald-green, or rose-coloured light.
They were unveiled women, jewelled like idols, white and pink as
wax-dolls, their brows drawn in black lines with herkous, their eyes
glittering between bluish lines of kohl, their lips poppy-red with the
tint of mesouak, their heads bound in sequined nets of silvered gauze,
and crowned with tiaras of gold coins. The windows were so small that
the women were hidden below their shoulders, but their huge
hoop-earrings flashed, and their many necklaces sent out sparks as they
nodded, smiling, at the passers; and one who seemed young and beautiful
as a wicked fairy, against a purple light, threw a spray of orange
blossoms at Stephen's feet.
Then, out of that street of muffled music, open doors, and sequined
idols, the two men passed to another where, in small open-air cafés,
bright with flaring torches or electric light squatting men smoked,
listening to story-tellers; and where, further on, Moorish baths belched
out steam mingled with smells of perfume and heated humanity. So, back
again to black tunnels, where the blind walls heard secrets they would
never tell. The houses had no eyes, and the street doors drew back into
shadow.
"Do you wonder now," Nevill asked, "that it's difficult to find out what
goes on in an Arab's household?"
"No," said Stephen. "I feel half stifled. It's wonderful, but somehow
terrible. Let's get out of this 'Arabian Nights' dream, into light and
air, or something will happen to us, some such things as befell the
Seven Calendars. We must have been here an hour. It's time to inquire
for Miss Ray again. She's sure to have come in by now."
Back they walked into the Twentieth Century. Some of the lights in the
hotel had been put out. There was nobody in the hall but the porter, who
had smoked his last cigarette, and as no one had given him another, he
was trying to sleep in a chair by the door.
Mademoiselle might have come in. He did not know. Yes, he could ask, if
there were any one to ask, but the woman who looked after the bedrooms
had an evening out. There was only one _femme de chambre_, but what
would you? The high season was over. As for the key of Mademoiselle,
very few of the clients ever left their keys in the bureau when they
promenaded themselves. It was too much trouble. But certainly, he could
knock at the door of Mademoiselle, if the gentlemen insisted, though it
was now on the way to eleven o'clock, and it would be a pity to wake the
young lady if she were sleeping.
"Knock softly. If she's awake, she'll hear you," Stephen directed. "If
she's asleep, she won't."
The porter went lazily upstairs, appearing again in a few minutes to
announce that he had obeyed instructions and the lady had not answered.
"But," he added, "one would say that an all little light came through
the keyhole."
"Brute, to look!" mumbled Stephen. There was, however, nothing more to
be done. It was late, and they must take it for granted that Miss Ray
had come home and gone to bed.