Victoria felt as if all her blood were beating in her brain. She could
not think, and dimly she was glad that Saidee did not speak again. She
could not have borne more of those hatefully specious arguments.
For a moment she stood still, pressing her hands over her eyes, and
against her temples. Then, without turning, she walked almost blindly to
a window that opened upon Saidee's garden. The little court was a silver
cube of moonlight, so bright that everything white looked alive with a
strange, spiritual intelligence. The scent of the orange blossoms was
lusciously sweet. She shrank back, remembering the orange-court at the
Caïd's house in Ouargla. It was there that Zorah had prophesied: "Never
wilt thou come this way again."
"I'm tired, after all," the girl said dully, turning to Saidee, but
leaning against the window frame. "I didn't realize it before. The
perfume--won't let me think."
"You look dreadfully white!" exclaimed Saidee. "Are you going to faint?
Lie down here on this divan. I'll send for something."
"No, no. Don't send. And I won't faint. But I want to think. Can I go
out into the air--not where the orange blossoms are?"
"I'll take you on to the roof," Saidee said. "It's my favourite
place--looking over the desert."
She put her arm round Victoria, leading her to the stairway, and so to
the roof.
"Are you better?" she asked, miserably. "What can I do for you?"
"Let's not speak for a little while, please. I can think now. Soon I
shall be well. Don't be anxious about me, darling."
Very gently she slipped away from Saidee's arm that clasped her waist;
and the softness of the young voice, which had been sharp with pain,
touched the elder woman. She knew that the girl was thinking more of
her, Saidee, than of herself.
Victoria leaned on the white parapet, and looked down over the desert,
where the sand rippled in silvery lines and waves, like water in
moonlight.
"The golden silence!" she thought.
It was silver now, not golden; but she knew that this was the place of
her dream. On a white roof like this, she had seen Saidee stand with
eyes shaded from the sun in the west; waiting for her, calling for her,
or so she had believed. Poor Saidee! Poor, beautiful Saidee; changed in
soul, though so little changed in face! Could it be that she had never
called in spirit to her sister?
Victoria bowed her head, and tears fell from her eyes upon her cold bare
arms, crossed on the white wall.
Saidee did not want her. Saidee was sorry that she had come. Her coming
had only made things worse.
"I wish--" the girl was on the point of saying to herself--"I wish I'd
never been born." But before the words shaped themselves fully in her
mind--terrible words, because she had felt the beauty and sacred meaning
of life--the desert spoke to her.
"Saidee does want you," the spirit of the wind and the glimmering sands
seemed to say. "If she had not wanted you, do you think you would have
been shown this picture, with your sister in it, the picture which
brought you half across the world? She called once, long ago, and you
heard the call. You were allowed to hear it. Are you so weak as to
believe, just because you're hurt and suffering, that such messages
between hearts mean nothing? Saidee may not know that she wants you, but
she does, and needs you more than ever before. This is your hour of
temptation. You thought everything was going to be wonderfully easy,
almost too easy, and instead, it is difficult, that's all. But be brave
for Saidee and yourself, now and in days to come, for you are here only
just in time."
The pure, strong wind blowing over the dunes was a tonic to Victoria's
soul, and she breathed it eagerly. Catching at the robe of faith, she
held the spirit fast, and it stayed with her.
Suddenly she felt at peace, sure as a child that she would be taught
what to do next. There was her star, floating in the blue lake of the
sky, like a water lily, where millions of lesser lilies blossomed.
"Dear star," she whispered, "thank you for coming. I needed you just
then."
"Are you better?" asked Saidee in a choked voice.
Victoria turned away from sky and desert to the drooping figure of the
woman, standing in a pool of shadow, dark as fear and treachery.
"Yes, dearest one, I am well again, and I won't have to worry you any
more." The girl gently wound two protecting arms round her sister.
"What have you decided to do?"
Victoria could feel Saidee's heart beating against her own.
"I've decided to pray about deciding, and then to decide. Whatever's
best for you, I will do, I promise."
"And for yourself. Don't forget that I'm thinking of you. Don't believe
it's _all_ cowardice."
"I don't believe anything but good of my Saidee."
"I envy you, because you think you've got Someone to pray to. I've
nothing. I'm--alone in the dark."
Victoria made her look up at the moon which flooded the night with a sea
of radiance. "There is no dark," she said. "We're together--in the
light."
"How hopeful you are!" Saidee murmured. "I've left hope so far behind,
I've almost forgotten what it's like."
"Maybe it's always been hovering just over your shoulder, only you
forgot to turn and see. It can't be gone, because I feel sure that truth
and knowledge and hope are all one."
"I wonder if you'll still feel so when you've married a man of another
race--as I have?"
Victoria did not answer. She had to conquer the little cold thrill of
superstitious fear which crept through her veins, as Saidee's words
reminded her of M'Barka's sand-divining. She had to find courage again
from "her star," before she could speak.
"Forgive me, Babe!" said Saidee, stricken by the look in the lifted
eyes. "I wish I needn't remind you of anything horrid to-night--your
first night with me after all these years. But we have so little time.
What else can I do?"
"I shall know by to-morrow what we are to do," Victoria said cheerfully.
"Because I shall take counsel of the night."
"You're a very odd girl," the woman reflected aloud. "When you were a
tiny thing, you used to have the weirdest thoughts, and do the quaintest
things. I was sure you'd grow up to be absolutely different from any
other human being. And so you have, I think. Only an extraordinary sort
of girl could ever have made her way without help from Potterston,
Indiana, to Oued Tolga in North Africa."
"I _had_ help--every minute. Saidee--did you think of me sometimes, when
you were standing here on this roof?"
"Yes, of course I thought of you often--only not so often lately as at
first, because for a long time now I've been numb. I haven't thought
much or cared much about anything, or--or any one except----"
"Except----"
"Except--except myself, I'm afraid." Saidee's face was turned away from
Victoria's. She looked toward Oued Tolga, the city, whither the
carrier-pigeon had flown.
"I wondered," she went on hastily, "what had become of you, and if you
were happy, and whether by this time you'd nearly forgotten me. You were
such a baby child when I left you!"
"I won't believe you really wondered if I could forget. You, and
thoughts of you, have made my whole life. I was just living for the time
when I could earn money enough to search for you--and preparing for it,
of course, so as to be ready when it came."
Saidee still looked toward Oued Tolga, where the white domes shimmered,
far away in the moonlight, like a mirage. Was love a mirage, too?--the
love that called for her over there, the love whose voice made the
strings of her heart vibrate, though she had thought them broken and
silent for ever. Victoria's arms round her felt strong and warm, yet
they were a barrier. She was afraid of the barrier, and afraid of the
girl's passionate loyalty. She did not deserve it, she knew, and she
would be more at ease--she could not say happier, because there was no
such word as happiness for her--without it. Somehow she could not bear
to talk of Victoria's struggle to come to her rescue. The thought of all
the girl had done made her feel unable to live up to it, or be grateful.
She did not want to be called upon to live up to any standard. She
wanted--if she wanted anything--simply to go on blindly, as fate led.
But she felt that near her fate hovered, like the carrier-pigeon; and
some terrible force within herself, which frightened her, seemed ready
to push away or destroy anything that might come between her and that
fate. She knew that she ought to question Victoria about the past years
of their separation, one side of her nature was eager to hear the story.
But the other side, which had gained strength lately, forced her to
dwell upon less intimate things.
"I suppose Mrs. Ray managed to keep most of poor father's money?" she
said.
"Mrs. Ray died when I was fourteen, and after that Mr. Potter lost
everything in speculation," the girl answered.
"Everything of yours, too?"
"Yes. But it didn't matter, except for the delay. My dancing--_your_
dancing really, dearest, because if it hadn't been for you I shouldn't
have put my heart into it so--earned me all I needed."
"I said you were extraordinary! But how queer it seems to hear those
names again. Mrs. Ray. Mr. Potter. They're like names in a dream. How
wretched I used to think myself, with Mrs. Ray in Paris, when she was so
jealous and cross! But a thousand times since, I've wished myself back
in those days. I was happy, really. I was free. Life was all before me."
"Dearest! But surely you weren't miserable from the very first,
with--with Cassim?"
"No-o. I suppose I wasn't. I was in love with him. It seemed very
interesting to be the wife of such a man. Even when I found that he
meant to make me lead the life of an Arab woman, shut up and veiled, I
liked him too well to mind much. He put it in such a romantic way,
telling me how he worshipped me, how mad with jealousy he was even to
think of other men seeing my face, and falling in love with it. He
thought every one must fall in love! All girls like men to be
jealous--till they find out how sordid jealousy can be. And I was so
young--a child. I felt as if I were living in a wonderful Eastern poem.
Cassim used to give me the most gorgeous presents, and our house in
Algiers was beautiful. My garden was a dream--and how he made love to me
in it! Besides, I was allowed to go out, veiled. It was rather fun being
veiled--in those days, I thought so. It made me feel mysterious, as if
life were a masquerade ball. And the Arab women Cassim let me know--a
very few, wives and sisters of his friends--envied me immensely. I loved
that--I was so silly. And they flattered me, asking about my life in
Europe. I was like a fairy princess among them, until--one day--a woman
told me a thing about Cassim. She told me because she was spiteful and
wanted to make me miserable, of course, for I found out afterwards she'd
been expressly forbidden to speak, on account of my 'prejudices'--they'd
all been forbidden. I wouldn't believe at first,--but it was true--the
others couldn't deny it. And to prove what she said, the woman took me
to see the boy, who was with his grandmother--an aunt of Maïeddine's,
dead now."
"The boy?"
"Oh, I forgot. I haven't explained. The thing she told was, that Cassim
had a wife living when he married me."
"Saidee!--how horrible! How horrible!"
"Yes, it was horrible. It broke my heart." Saidee was tingling with
excitement now. Her stiff, miserable restraint was gone in the feverish
satisfaction of speaking out those things which for years had corroded
her mind, like verdigris. She had never been able to talk to anyone in
this way, and her only relief had been in putting her thoughts on paper.
Some of the books in her locked cupboard she had given to a friend, the
writer of to-day's letter, because she had seen him only for a few
minutes at a time, and had been able to say very little, on the one
occasion when they had spoken a few words to each other. She had wanted
him to know what a martyrdom her life had been. Involuntarily she talked
to her sister, now, as she would have talked to him, and his face rose
clearly before her eyes, more clearly almost than Victoria's, which her
own shadow darkened, and screened from the light of the moon as they
stood together, clasped in one another's arms.
"Cassim thought it all right, of course," she went on. "A Mussulman may
have four wives at a time if he likes--though men of his rank don't, as
a rule, take more than one, because they must marry women of high birth,
who hate rivals in their own house. But he was too clever to give me a
hint of his real opinions in Paris. He knew I wouldn't have looked at
him again, if he had--even if he hadn't told me about the wife herself.
She had had this boy, and gone out of her mind afterwards, so she wasn't
living with Cassim--that was the excuse he made when I taxed him with
deceiving me. Her father and mother had taken her back. I don't know
surely whether she's living or dead, but I believe she's dead, and her
body buried beside the grave supposed to be Cassim's. Anyhow, the boy's
living, and he's the one thing on earth Cassim loves better than
himself."
"When did you find out about--about all this?" Victoria asked, almost
whispering.
"Eight months after we were married I heard about his wife. I think
Cassim was true to me, in his way, till that time. But we had an awful
scene. I told him I'd never live with him again as his wife, and I never
have. After that day, everything was different. No more happiness--not
even an Arab woman's idea of happiness. Cassim began to hate me, but
with the kind of hate that holds and won't let go. He wouldn't listen
when I begged him to set me free. Instead, he wouldn't let me go out at
all, or see anyone, or receive or send letters. He punished me by
flirting outrageously with a pretty woman, the wife of a French officer.
He took pains that I should hear everything, through my servants. But
his cruelty was visited on his own head, for soon there came a dreadful
scandal. The woman died suddenly of chloral poisoning, after a quarrel
with her husband on Cassim's account, and it was thought she'd taken too
much of the drug on purpose. The day after his wife's death, the officer
shot himself. I think he was a colonel; and every one knew that Cassim
was mixed up in the affair. He had to leave the army, and it seemed--he
thought so himself--that his career was ruined. He sold his place in
Algiers, and took me to a farm-house in the country where we lived for a
while, and he was so lonely and miserable he would have been glad to
make up, but how could I forgive him? He'd deceived me too horribly--and
besides, in my own eyes I wasn't his wife. Surely our marriage wouldn't
be considered legal in any country outside Islam, would it? Even you, a
child like you, must see that?"
"I suppose so," Victoria answered, sadly. "But----"
"There's no 'but.' I thought so then. I think so a hundred times more
now. My life's been a martyrdom. No one could blame me if--but I was
telling you about what happened after Algiers. There was a kind of armed
truce between us in the country, though we lived only like two
acquaintances under the same roof. For months he had nobody else to talk
to, so he used to talk with me--quite freely sometimes, about a plan
some powerful Arabs, friends of his--Maïeddine and his father among
others--were making for him. It sounded like a fairy story, and I used
to think he must be going mad. But he wasn't. It was all true about the
plot that was being worked. He knew I couldn't betray him, so it was a
relief to his mind, in his nervous excitement, to confide in me."
"Was it a plot against the French?"
"Indirectly. That was one reason it appealed to Cassim. He'd been proud
of his position in the army, and being turned out, or forced to go--much
the same thing--made him hate France and everything French. He'd have
given his life for revenge, I'm sure. Probably that's why his friends
were so anxious to put him in a place of power, for they were men whose
watchword was 'Islam for Islam.' Their hope was--and is--to turn France
out of North Africa. You wouldn't believe how many there are who hope
and band themselves together for that. These friends of Cassim's
persuaded and bribed a wretched cripple--who was next of kin to the last
marabout, and ought to have inherited--to let Cassim take his place.
Secretly, of course. It was a very elaborate plot--it had to be. Three
or four rich, important men were in it, and it would have meant ruin if
they'd been found out.
"Cassim would really have come next in succession if it hadn't been for
the hunchback, who lived in Morocco, just over the border. If he had any
conscience, I suppose that thought soothed it. He told me that the real
heir--the cripple--had epileptic fits, and couldn't live long, anyhow.
The way they worked their plan out was by Cassim's starting for a
pilgrimage to Mecca. I had to go away with him, because he was afraid to
leave me. I knew too much. And it was simpler to take me than to put me
out of the way."
"Saidee--he would never have murdered you?" Victoria whispered.
"He would if necessary--I'm sure of it. But it was safer not. Besides,
I'd often told him I wanted to die, so that was an incentive to keep me
alive. I didn't go to Mecca. I left the farm-house with Cassim, and he
took me to South Oran, where he is now. I had to stay in the care of a
marabouta, a terrible old woman, a bigot and a tyrant, a cousin of
Cassim's, on his mother's side, and a sister of the man who invented the
whole plot. The idea was that Cassim should seem to be drowned in the
Bosphorus, while staying at Constantinople with friends, after his
pilgrimage to Mecca. But luckily for him there was a big fire in the
hotel where he went to stop for the first night, so he just disappeared,
and a lot of trouble was saved. He told me about the adventure, when he
came to Oran. The next move was to Morocco. And from Morocco he
travelled here, in place of the cripple, when the last marabout died,
and the heir was called to his inheritance. That was nearly eight years
ago."
"And he's never been found out?"
"No. And he never will be. He's far too clever. Outwardly he's hand in
glove with the French. High officials and officers come here to consult
with him, because he's known to have immense influence all over the
South, and in the West, even in Morocco. He's masked, like a Touareg,
and the French believe it's because of a vow he made in Mecca. No one
but his most intimate friends, or his own people, have ever seen the
face of Sidi Mohammed since he inherited the maraboutship, and came to
Oued Tolga. He must hate wearing his mask, for he's as handsome as he
ever was, and just as vain. But it's worth the sacrifice. Not only is he
a great man, with everything--or nearly everything--he wants in the
world, but he looks forward to a glorious revenge against the French,
whose interests he pretends to serve."
"How can he revenge himself? What power has he to do that?" the girl
asked. She had a strange impression that Saidee had forgotten her, that
all this talk of the past, and of the marabout, was for some one else of
whom her sister was thinking.
"He has tremendous power," Saidee answered, almost angrily, as if she
resented the doubt. "All Islam is at his back. The French humour him,
and let him do whatever he likes, no matter how eccentric his ways may
be, because he's got them to believe he is trying to help the Government
in the wildest part of Algeria, the province of Oran--and with the
Touaregs in the farthest South; and that he promotes French interests in
Morocco. Really, he's at the head of every religious secret society in
North Africa, banded together to turn Christians out of Mussulman
countries. The French have no idea how many such secret societies exist,
and how rich and powerful they are. Their dear friend, the good, wise,
polite marabout assures them that rumours of that sort are nonsense. But
some day, when everything's ready--when Morocco and Oran and Algeria and
Tunisia will obey the signal, all together, then they'll have a
surprise--and Cassim ben Halim will be revenged."
"It sounds like the weavings of a brain in a dream," Victoria said.
"It will be a nightmare-dream, no matter how it ends;--maybe a nightmare
of blood, and war, and massacre. Haven't you ever heard, or read, how
the Mussulman people expect a saviour, the Moul Saa, as they call
him--the Man of the Hour, who will preach a Holy War, and lead it
himself, to victory?"
"Yes, I've read that----"
"Well, Cassim hopes to be the Moul Saa, and deliver Islam by the sword.
I suppose you wonder how I know such secrets, or whether I do really
know them at all. But I do. Some things Cassim told me himself, because
he was bursting with vanity, and simply had to speak. Other things I've
seen in writing--he would kill me if he found out. And still other
things I've guessed. Why, the boys here in the Zaouïa are being brought
up for the 'great work,' as they call it. Not all of them--but the most
important ones among the older boys. They have separate classes.
Something secret and mysterious is taught them. There are boys from
Morocco and Oran, and sons of Touareg chiefs--all those who most hate
Christians. No other zaouïa is like this. The place seethes with hidden
treachery and sedition. Now you can see where Si Maïeddine's power over
Cassim comes in. The Agha, his father, is one of the few who helped make
Cassim what he is, but he's a cautious old man, the kind who wants to
run with the hare and hunt with the hounds. Si Maïeddine's cautious too,
Cassim has said. He approves the doctrines of the secret societies, but
he's so ambitious that without a very strong incentive to turn against
them, in act he'd be true to the French. Well, now he has the incentive.
You."
"I don't understand," said Victoria. Yet even as she spoke, she began to
understand.
"He'll offer to give himself, and to influence the Agha and the Agha's
people--the Ouled-Sirren--if Cassim will grant his wish. And it's no use
saying that Cassim can't force you to marry any man. You told me
yourself, a little while ago, that if you saw harm coming to me----"
"Oh don't--don't speak of that again, Saidee!" the girl cried, sharply.
"I've told you--yes--that I'll do anything--anything on earth to save
you pain, or more sorrow. But let's hope--let's pray."
"There is no hope. I've forgotten how to pray," Saidee answered, "and
God has forgotten me."