Nothing could be heard of Victoria at any place of departure for ships,
nor at the railway stations. Stephen agreed with Nevill that it would
not be fair to lay the matter in the hands of the police, lest in some
way the girl's mysterious "plan" should be defeated. But he could not
put out of his head an insistent idea that the Arab on board the
_Charles Quex_ might stand for something in this underhand business.
Stephen could not rest until he had found out the name of this man, and
what had become of him after arriving at Algiers. As for the name,
having appeared on the passenger list, it was easily obtained without
expert help. The Arab was a certain Sidi Maïeddine ben el Hadj Messaoud;
and when Jeanne Soubise was applied to for information concerning him,
she was able to learn from her Arab friends that he was a young man of
good family, the son of an Agha or desert chief, whose douar lay far
south, in the neighbourhood of El-Aghouat. He was respected by the
French authorities and esteemed by the Governor of Algiers. Known to be
ambitious, he was anxious to stand well with the ruling power, and among
the dissipated, sensuous young Arabs of his class and generation, he was
looked upon as an example and a shining light. The only fault found in
him by his own people was that he inclined to be too modern, too French
in his political opinions; and his French friends found no fault with
him at all.
It seemed impossible that a person so highly placed would dare risk his
future by kidnapping a European girl, and Jeanne Soubise advised Stephen
to turn his suspicions in another direction. Still he would not be
satisfied, until he had found and engaged a private detective, said to
be clever, who had lately seceded from a Paris agency and set up for
himself in Algiers. Through him, Stephen hoped to learn how Sidi
Maïeddine ben el Hadj Messaoud had occupied himself after landing from
the _Charles Quex_; but all he did learn was that the Arab, accompanied
by his servant and no one else, had, after calling on the Governor, left
Algiers immediately for El-Aghouat. At least, he had taken train for
Bogharie, and was known to have affairs of importance to settle between
his father the Agha, and the French authorities. Secret inquiries at the
Hotel de la Kasbah elicited answers, unvaryingly the same. Sidi
Maïeddine ben el Hadj Messaoud was not a patron of the house, and had
never been seen there. No one answering at all to his description had
stopped in, or even called at, the hotel.
Of course, the value of such assurances was negatived by the fact that
Arabs hold together against foreigners, and that if Si Maïeddine wished
to be incognito among his own people, his wish would probably be
respected, in spite of bribery. Besides, he was rich enough to offer
bribes on his own part. Circumstantial evidence, however, being against
the supposition that the man had followed Victoria after landing,
Stephen abandoned it for the time, and urged the detective, Adolphe
Roslin, to trace the cabman who had driven Miss Ray away from her hotel.
Roslin was told nothing about Victoria's private interests, but she was
accurately described to him, and he was instructed to begin his search
by finding the squint-eyed cab-driver who had brought the girl to lunch
at Djenan el Djouad.
Only in the affair of Cassim ben Halim did Stephen and Nevill decide to
act openly, Nevill using such influence as he had at the Governor's
palace. They both hoped to learn something which in compassion or
prudence had been kept from the girl; but they failed, as Victoria had
failed. If a scandal had driven the Arab captain of Spahis from the
army and from Algiers, the authorities were not ready to unearth it now
in order to satisfy the curiosity, legitimate or illegitimate, of two
Englishmen.
Captain Cassim ben Halim el Cheik el Arab, had resigned from the army on
account of ill-health, rather more than nine years ago, and having sold
his house in Algiers had soon after left Algeria to travel abroad. He
had never returned, and there was evidence that he had been burned to
death in a great fire at Constantinople a year or two later. The few
living relatives he had in Algeria believed him to be dead; and a house
which Ben Halim had owned not far from Bou Saada, had passed into the
hands of his uncle, Caïd of a desert-village in the district. As to Ben
Halim's marriage with an American girl, nobody knew anything. The
present Governor and his staff had come to Algiers after his supposed
death; and if Nevill suspected a deliberate reticence behind certain
answers to his questions, perhaps he was mistaken. Cassim ben Halim and
his affairs could now be of little importance to French officials.
It did not take Roslin an hour to produce the squinting cabman; but the
old Arab was able to prove that he had been otherwise engaged than in
driving Miss Ray on the evening when she left the Hotel de la Kasbah.
His son had been ill, and the father had given up work in order to play
nurse. A doctor corroborated this story, and nothing was to be gained in
that direction.
Then it was that Nevill almost timidly renewed his suggestion of a visit
to Tlemcen. They could find out by telegraphing Josette, he admitted,
whether or no Victoria Ray had arrived, but if she were not already in
Tlemcen, she might come later, to see Mouni. And even if not, they might
find out how to reach Saidee, by catechizing the Kabyle girl. Once they
knew the way to Victoria's sister, it was next best to knowing the way
to find Victoria herself. This last argument was not to be despised. It
impressed Stephen, and he consented at once to "try their luck" at
Tlemcen.
Early in the morning of the second day after the coming of Victoria's
letter, the two men started in Nevill's yellow car, the merry-eyed
chauffeur charmed at the prospect of a journey worth doing. He was
tired, he remarked to Stephen, "de tous ces petits voyages d'une
demi-heure, comme les tristes promenades des enfants, sans une seule
aventure."
They had bidden good-bye to Lady MacGregor, and most of the family
animals, overnight, and it was hardly eight o'clock when they left
Djenan el Djouad, for the day's journey would be long. A magical light,
like the light in a dream, gilded the hills of the Sahel; and beyond lay
the vast plain of the Metidja, a golden bowl, heaped to its swelling rim
of mountains with the fairest fruits of Algeria.
The car rushed through a world of blossoms, fragrant open country full
of flowers, and past towns that did their small utmost to bring France
into the land which France had conquered. Boufarik, with its tall
monument to a brave French soldier who fought against tremendous odds:
Blidah, a walled and fortified mixture of garrison and orange-grove,
with a market-place like a scene in the "Arabian Nights": Orleansville,
modern and ostentatiously French, built upon ruins of vast antiquity,
and hotter than all other towns in the dry cup of the Chelif Valley:
Relizane, Perrégaux, and finally Oran (famed still for its old Spanish
forts), which they reached by moonlight.
Always there were fields embroidered round the edges with wild flowers
of blue and gold, and rose. Always there were white, dusty roads, along
which other motors sometimes raced, but oftener there were farm-carts,
wagons pulled by strings of mules, and horses with horned harness like
the harness in Provence or on the Spanish border. There were huge,
two-storied diligences, too, drawn by six or eight black mules, crammed
under their canvas roofs with white- or brown-robed Arabs, and going
very fast.
From Oran they might have gone on the same night, reaching the end of
their journey after a few hours' spin, but Nevill explained that haste
would be vain. They could not see Mademoiselle Soubise until past nine,
so better sleep at Oran, start at dawn, and see something of the
road,--a road more picturesque than any they had travelled.
It was not for Stephen to offer objections, though he was in a mood
which made him long to push on without stopping, even though there were
no motive for haste. He was ashamed of the mood, however, and hardly
understood what it meant, since he had come to Algeria in search of
peace. When first he landed, and until the day of Victoria's letter, he
had been enormously interested in the panorama of the East which passed
before his eyes. He had eagerly noticed each detail of colour and
strangeness, but now, though the London lethargy was gone, in its place
had been born a disturbing restlessness which would not let him look
impersonally at life as at a picture.
Questioning himself as he lay awake in the Oran hotel, with windows open
to the moonlight, Stephen was forced to admit that the picture was
blurred because Victoria had gone out of it. Her figure had been in the
foreground when first he had seen the moving panorama, and all the rest
had been only a magical frame for her. The charm of her radiant youth,
and the romance of the errand which had brought her knocking, when he
knocked, at the door of the East, had turned the glamour into glory. Now
she had vanished; and as her letter said, it might be that she would
never come back. The centre of interest was transferred to the unknown
place where she had gone, and Stephen began to see that his impatience
to be moving was born of the wish not only to know that she was safe,
but to see her again.
He was angry with himself at this discovery, and almost he was angry
with Victoria. If he had not her affairs to worry over, Africa would be
giving him the rest cure he had expected. He would be calmly enjoying
this run through beautiful country, instead of chafing to rush on to
the end. Since, in all probability, he could do the girl no good, and
certainly she could do him none, he half wished that one or the other
had crossed from Marseilles to Algiers on a different ship. What he
needed was peace, not any new and feverish personal interest in life.
Yes, decidedly he wished that he had never known Victoria Ray.
But the wish did not live long. Suddenly her face, her eyes, came before
him in the night. He heard her say that she would give him "half her
star," and his heart grew sick with longing.
"I hope to Heaven I'm not going to love that girl," he said aloud to the
darkness. If no other woman came into his life, he might be able to get
through it well enough with Margot. He could hunt and shoot, and do
other things that consoled men for lack of something better. But if--he
knew he must not let there be an "if." He must go on thinking of
Victoria Ray as a child, a charming little friend whom he wished to
help. Any other thought of her would mean ruin.
Before dawn they were called, and started as the sun showed over the
horizon.
So they ran into the western country, near to the Morocco border. Dull
at first, save for its flooding flowers, soon the way wound among dark
mountains, from whose helmeted heads trailed the long plumes of white
cascades, and whose feet--like the stone feet of Egyptian kings in
ruined temples--were bathed by lakes that glimmered in the depths of
gorges.
It was a land of legends and dreams round about Tlemcen, the "Key of the
West," city of beautiful mosques. The mountains were honeycombed with
onyx mines; and rising out of wide plains were crumbling brown
fortresses, haunted by the ghosts of long-dead Arabs who had buried
hoards of money in secret hiding-places, and died before they could
unearth their treasure. Tombs of kings and princes, and koubbahs of
renowned marabouts, Arab saints, gleamed white, or yellow as old gold,
under the faded silver of ancient olive trees, in fields that ran red
with blood of poppies. Minarets jewelled like peacocks' tails soared
above the tops of blossoming chestnuts. On low trees or bushes, guarding
the graves of saints, fluttered many-coloured rags, left there by
faithful men and women who had prayed at the shrine for health or
fortune; and for every foot of ground there was some wild tale of war or
love, an echo from days so long ago that history had mingled
inextricably with lore of fairies.
Nevill was excited and talkative as they drove into the old town, once
the light of western Algeria. They passed in by the gateway of Oran, and
through streets that tried to be French, but contrived somehow to be
Arab. Nevill told stories of the days when Tlemcen had queened it over
the west, and coined her own money; of the marabouts after whom the most
famous mosques were named: Sidi-el-Haloui, the confectioner-saint from
Seville, who preached to the children and made them sweetmeats; of the
lawyer-saint, Sidi Aboul Hassan from Arabia, and others. But he did not
speak of Josette Soubise, until suddenly he touched Stephen's arm as
they passed the high wall of a garden.
"There, that's where _she_ teaches," he said; and it was not necessary
to add a name.
Stephen glanced at him quickly. Nevill looked very young. His eyes no
longer seemed to gaze at far-away things which no one else could see.
All his interests were centred near at hand.
"Don't you mean to stop?" Stephen asked, surprised that the car went on.
"No; school's begun. We'll have to wait till the noon interval, and even
then we shan't be allowed indoors, for a good many of the girls are over
twelve, the age for veiling--_hadjabah_, they call it--when they're shut
up, and no man, except near relations, can see their faces. Several of
the girls are already engaged. I believe there's one, not fourteen,
who's been divorced twice, though she's still interested in dolls.
Weird, isn't it? Josette will talk with us in the garden. But we'll
have time now to take rooms at the hotel and wash off the dust. To eat
something too, if you're hungry."
But Stephen was no hungrier than Nevill, whose excitement, perhaps, was
contagious.
The hotel was in a wide _place_, so thickly planted with acacias and
chestnut trees as to resemble a shabby park. An Arab servant showed them
to adjoining rooms, plain but clean, and a half-breed girl brought tins
of hot water and vases of syringas. As for roses, she said in hybrid
French, no one troubled about them--there were too many in Tlemcen. Ah!
but it was a land of plenty! The gentlemen would be happy, and wish to
stay a long time. There was meat and good wine for almost nothing, and
beggars need not ask twice for bread--fine, white bread, baked as the
Moors baked, across the border.
As they bathed and dressed more carefully than they had dressed for the
early-morning start, strange sounds came up from the square below, which
was full of people, laughing, quarrelling, playing games, striking
bargains, singing songs. Arab bootblacks clamoured for custom at the
hotel-door, pushing one another aside, fiercely. Little boys in
embroidered green or crimson jackets sat on the hard, yellow earth,
playing an intricate game like "jack stones," and disputed so violently
that men and even women stopped to remonstrate, and separate them; now a
grave, prosperous Jew dressed in red (Jewish mourning in the province of
Oran); then an old Kabyle woman of the plains, in a short skirt of fiery
orange scarcely hiding the thin sticks of legs that were stained with
henna half-way up the calves, like painted stockings. Moors from across
the frontier--fierce men with eagle faces and striped cloaks--grouped
together, whispering and gesticulating, stared at with suspicion by the
milder Arabs, who attributed all the crimes of Tlemcen to the wild men
from over the border. Black giants from the Negro quarter kept together,
somewhat humble, yet laughing and happy. Slender, coffee-coloured youths
drove miniature cows from Morocco, or tiny black donkeys, heavily laden
and raw with sores, colliding with well-dressed Turks, who had the air
of merchants, and looked as if they could not forget that Tlemcen had
long been theirs before the French dominion. Bored but handsome officers
rode through the square on Arab horses graceful as deer, and did not
even glance at passing women, closely veiled in long white haïcks.
It was lively and amusing in the sunlight; but just as the two friends
were ready to go out, the sky was swept with violet clouds. A storm
threatened fiercely, but they started out despite its warning, turning
deaf ears to the importunities of a Koulougli guide who wished to show
them the mosques, "ver' cheap." He followed them, but they hurried on,
pushing so sturdily through a flock of pink-headed sheep, which poured
in a wave over the pavement, that they might have out-run the rain had
they not been brought to a sudden standstill by a funeral procession.
It was the strangest sight Stephen had seen yet, and he hardly noticed
that, in a burst of sunlight, rain had begun to pelt down through the
canopy of trees.
The band of figures in brown burnouses marched quickly, with a sharp
rustling of many slippered feet moving in unison, and golden spears of
rain seemed to pierce the white turbans of the men who carried the bier.
As they marched, fifty voices rose and fell wildly in a stirring chant,
exciting and terrible as the beat-beat of a tom-tom, sometimes a shout
of barbaric triumph, sometimes a mourning wail. Then, abruptly, a halt
was made in the glittering rain, and the bearers were changed, because
of the luck it brings Arab men to carry the corpse of a friend.
Just in front of the two Englishmen the body rested for an instant,
stretched out long and piteously flat, showing its thin shape through
the mat of woven straw which wrapped it, only the head and feet being
wound with linen. So, by and by, it would be laid, without a coffin, in
its shallow grave in the Arab cemetery, out on the road to Sidi
Bou-Medine.
There were but a few seconds of delay. Then the new bearers lifted the
bier by its long poles, and the procession moved swiftly, feverishly, on
again, the wild chant trailing behind as it passed, like a torn
war-banner. The thrill of the wailing crept through Stephen's veins, and
roused an old, childish superstition which an Irish nurse had implanted
in him when he was a little boy. According to Peggy Brian it was "a
cruel bad omen" to meet a funeral, especially after coming into a new
town. "Wait for a corpse," said she, "an' ye'll wait while yer luck goes
by."
"They're singing a song in praise of the dead man's good deeds, and of
triumph for the joys he'll know in Paradise," explained Nevill. "It's
only the women who weep and scratch their faces when those they love
have died. The men rejoice, or try to. Soon, they are saying, this one
who has gone will be in gardens fair as the gardens of Allah Himself,
where sit beautiful houris, in robes woven of diamonds, sapphires, and
rubies, each gem of which has an eye of its own that glitters through a
vapour of smouldering ambergris, while fountains send up pearly spray in
the shade of fragrant cedars."
"No wonder the Mohammedan poor don't fear death, if they expect to
exchange their hovels for such quarters," said Stephen. "I wish I
understood Arabic."
"It's a difficult language to keep in your mind, and I don't know it
well," Nevill answered. "But Jeanne and Josette Soubise speak it like
natives; and the other day when Miss Ray lunched with us, I thought her
knowledge of Arabic wonderful for a person who'd picked it up from
books."
Stephen did not answer. He wished that Nevill had not brought the
thought of Victoria into his mind at the moment when he was recalling
his old nurse's silly superstition. Victoria laughed at superstitions,
but he was not sure that he could laugh, in this barbaric land where it
seemed that anything might happen.