A fortnight later _The Wanderer_ lay at anchor in the harbor of Algiers.
But only the captain and some of the crew were on board. Mrs. Shiffney,
Max Elliot, and Paul Lane had gone off in a motor to Bou-Saada. Alfred
Waring, the extra man who had come instead of Claude Heath, had run over
to Biskra to see some old friends, and Charmian and Susan Fleet were at
the Hotel St. George at Mustapha Superieur.
Charmian was not very well. The passage from Marseilles had been rough,
and she had suffered. As she had never before seen Algiers she had got
out of the expedition to Bou-Saada. And Susan Fleet had, apparently,
volunteered to stay with her, but had really stayed, as she did a great
many things when she was with Mrs. Shiffney, because there was no one
else to do it and Mrs. Shiffney had told her so.
Nevertheless, though she wanted to see Bou-Saada, she was reconciled to
her lot. She liked Charmian very well, though she knew her very little.
And she had the great advantage in life--so, at least, she considered
it--of being a theosophist.
Mrs. Shiffney had not known how to put Charmian off. After hearing again
_Petite Fille de Tombouctou_ she had felt she must get out of Europe, if
only for five minutes. So she had made the best of things. And Charmian
would rather have died than have given up going after Claude Heath's
refusal to go. A run over to Algiers was nothing. They could be back in
England in two or three weeks. So _The Wanderer_ had gone round to
Marseilles, and the party of six had come out by train to meet her
there.
Susan Fleet was one of those capable and intelligent women who are apt
to develop sturdiness if they do not marry and have children. Susan had
not married, and at the age of forty-nine and nine months she was
sturdy. She wore coats and skirts whenever they could be worn, and some
people professed to believe that she slept in them. Her one extravagance
was the wearing of white gloves which fitted her hands perfectly. Her
collars were immaculate, and she always looked almost startlingly neat.
All her dresses were "off the ground." In appearance she was plain, but
she was not ugly. She had a fairly good nose and mouth, but they were
never admired, thick brown hair which no one ever noticed, and a
passable complexion. Her eyes were her worst feature. They looked as if
they were loose in her head and might easily drop out, and they were
rather glazed than luminous, and were indefinite in color. But they were
eyes which reassured doubtful people, eyes which could be, and were,
trusted "on sight," eyes which had seen a good deal but which could
never take nastiness into the soul to its harming. Her father was dead,
and she had a mother who, at the age of sixty-seven--she had really been
married at sixteen--was living as companion at Folkestone with an old
lady of eighty-two.
Susan Fleet was one of those absolutely unsycophantic and naturally
well-bred persons who are often liked by those "at the top of the tree,"
and who sometimes, without beauty, great talent, money, or other worldly
advantages, and without any thought of striving, achieve "positions"
which everybody recognizes. Susan had a "position." She knew and was
liked by all sorts and conditions of important people, had been about,
had stayed in houses with Royalties, and had always remained just
herself, perfectly natural, quite unpretending, and wholly free from
every grain of nonsense. "There's no nonsense about Susan Fleet!" many
said approvingly, especially those who themselves were full of it. She
possessed one shining advantage, a constitutional inability to be a
snob, and she was completely ignorant of possessing it. Mrs. Shiffney
and various other very rich women could not do without Susan. Unlike her
mother, she had no permanent post. But she was always being "wanted,"
and was well paid, not always in money only, for the excellent services
she was able to render. She never made any secret of her poverty, though
she never put it forward, and it was understood by everyone that she
had to earn her own living. Many years ago she had qualified to do this
by mastering various homely accomplishments. She was a competent
accountant, an excellent typewriter, a lucid writer of letters, knew how
to manage servants, and was a mistress of the art of travelling. When
looking out trains she never made a mistake. She was never sea or train
sick, never lost her temper or her own or other people's luggage, had a
perfect sense of time without being aggressively punctual, and seemed
totally unaffected by changes of climate. And she knew nothing about the
meaning of the word shyness.
When the big motor had gone off with its trio to desert places Charmian
suddenly realized the unexpectedness of her situation--alone above
Algiers with a woman who was almost a stranger. This scarcely seemed
like yachting. They had come up to the hotel because Mrs. Shiffney
always stayed at an hotel, if there was a good one, when the yacht was
in harbor, "to make a change." It was full of English and Americans, but
they knew nobody, and, having two sitting-rooms, had no reason to seek
public rooms where acquaintances are made. Charmian wondered how long
Mrs. Shiffney would stay at Bou-Saada.
"Back to-morrow!" she had said airily as she waved her hand. The
assertion meant next week if only she were sufficiently amused.
Charmian had been really stricken on the stormy voyage, and still had a
sensation of oppression in the head, of vagueness, of smallness, and of
general degradation. She felt also terribly depressed, like one under
sentence not of death, but of something very disagreeable. And when
Susan Fleet said to her in a chest voice, "Do you want to do anything
this afternoon?" she answered:
"I'll keep quiet to-day. I'll sit in the garden. But, please, don't
bother about me."
"I'll come and sit in the garden, too," said Miss Fleet in a calm and
business-like manner.
Charmian thought she was going to add, "And bring my work with me." But
she did not.
On the first terrace there were several people in long chairs looking
lazy; women with picture papers, men smoking, old buffers talking about
politics and Arabs. Charmian glanced at them and instinctively went on,
descending toward a quieter part of the prettily and cleverly arranged
garden. The weather was beautiful, warm, but not sultry. Already she was
conscious of a feeling of greater ease.
"Shall we sit here?" she said, pointing to two chairs under some palm
trees by a little table.
"Yes. Why not?" returned Susan Fleet.
They sat down.
"Do you feel better?" asked Susan.
"I shall."
"It must be dreadful being ill at sea. I never am."
"And you have travelled a great deal, haven't you?"
"Yes, I have. I often go with Adelaide. Once we went to India."
"Was it there you became a Theosophist?"
"That had something to do with it, I suppose. When we were at Benares
Adelaide thought she would like to live there. The day after she thought
so she found we must go away."
Miss Fleet carefully peeled off her white gloves and leaned back. Her
odd eyes seemed to drop in their sockets, as if they were trying to
tumble out.
"Isn't it--" Charmian began, and stopped abruptly.
"Yes?"
"I don't know what I was going to say."
"Perhaps a great bore not to be one's own mistress?" suggested Miss
Fleet, composedly.
"Something of that sort perhaps."
"Oh, no! I'm accustomed to it. Freedom is a phrase. I'm quite as free as
Adelaide. It's usually a great mistake to pity servants."
"And oneself? I suppose you would say it was a great mistake to pity
oneself?"
"I never do it," replied Miss Fleet.
She had charming hands. One of them lay on the little table with a beam
of the sun on it.
"Perhaps you haven't great desires? Perhaps you don't want many
things?"
"I suppose I've been like most women in that respect. But I shall be
fifty almost directly."
"How frightful!" was Charmian's mental comment.
"No, it isn't."
"Isn't what?" said Charmian, startled.
"It isn't at all awful to be fifty, or any other age, if you accept it
quietly as inevitable. But everything one kicks against hurts one, of
course. I expect to pass a very pleasant day on my fiftieth birthday."
Charmian put her chin in her hand.
"How did you know what I thought?"
"A girl of your age would be almost certain to think something of that
kind."
"Yes, I suppose so."
Charmian sighed, and then suddenly felt rather angry, and lifted her
chin.
"But surely I need not be exactly like every other girl of twenty-one!"
she exclaimed, with much more vivacity.
"You aren't. No girl is. But you all think it must be dreadful to be a
moneyless spinster of fifty. I believe, for my part, that there's many a
_vieille fille_ who is not particularly sorry for herself or for the man
who didn't want to marry her."
Miss Fleet was smiling.
"But I'm not a pessimist as regards marriage," she added. "And I think
men are quite as good as women, and quite as bad."
"How calm you are!"
"Why not?"
"I could never be like that."
"Perhaps when you are fifty."
"Not if I'm unmarried!" said Charmian, with a bluntness, a lack of
caution very rare in her.
"I don't think you will be, unless you go on before you are fifty."
Charmian gazed at Miss Fleet, and was conscious that she herself was
entirely concentrated on the present life; she was a good girl, she had
principles, even sometimes desires not free from nobility. She believed
in a religion--the Protestant religion it happened to be. And yet--yes,
certainly--she was absolutely concentrated on the present life. She even
felt as if it were somehow physically impossible for her to be anything
else. To "go on" before she was fifty! What a horror in that idea! To
"go on" at all, ever--how strange, how dreadful! She was silent for some
minutes, with her pretty head against the back of a chair.
An Arab dragoman went by among the trees. The strangled yelp of a
motor-car rose out of a cloud of white dust at the bottom of the garden.
The faint cry of a siren came up from the distant sea where _The
Wanderer_ lay at rest. And suddenly Charmian thought, "When am I going
to be here again?"
"Do you ever feel you have lived before in some place when you visit it
for the first time?" she said, moving her head from the back of her
chair.
"I did once."
"Do you ever feel you will live in a place that's new to you, that you
have no connection with, and that you have only come to for a day or
two?"
"I can't say I do."
"I suppose we all have lots of absurd fancies."
"I don't think I do," responded Miss Fleet, quite without arrogance.
"I--I wish you'd tell me where you got that coat and skirt," said
Charmian.
"I will. I got it at Folkestone. I'll give you the address when we go on
board again. My mother lives at Folkestone. She is a companion to a dear
old Mrs. Simpkins, so I go down there whenever I have time."
One's mother companion to a dear old Mrs. Simpkins! How extraordinary!
And why did it make Charmian feel as if she were almost fond of Susan
Fleet?
"And I get really well-cut things for a very small price there, so I'm
lucky."
"I think you are lucky in another way," hazarded Charmian.
"Yes?"
"To be as you are."
After that day in the garden Charmian knew that she was going to be
fond of Susan Fleet. Mrs. Shiffney, of course, did not return on the
following afternoon.
"I daresay she'll be away for a week," Susan said. "If you feel better
we might go and see the town and visit some of the villas. There are
several that are beautiful."
Quite eagerly Charmian acquiesced. But she soon had reason to be sorry
that she had done so. For much that she saw increased her misery. Boldly
now she applied that word to her condition, moved perhaps to be at last
frank with herself by the frankness of her quite unintrusive companion.
Algiers affected her somewhat as the _Petite Fille de Tombouctou_ had
affected her, but much more powerfully. This was exactly how she put it
to herself: it made her feel that she was violently in love with Claude
Heath. What a lie that had been before the mirror after Max Elliot's
party. How dreadful it was to walk in these exquisite and tropical
gardens, to stand upon these terraces, to wander over these marble
pavements and beneath these tiled colonnades, to hear these fountains
singing under orange trees, to see these far stretches of turquoise and
deep blue water, to watch Arabs on white roads passing noiselessly by
night under a Heaven thick with stars, and to know "He is not here and I
am nothing to him!"
Charmian's romantic tendency, her sense of, and desire for, wonder were
violently stirred by the new surroundings. She was painfully affected.
She began to feel almost desperate. That terrible sensation, known
perhaps in its frightening nightmare fulness only to youth, "My life is
done, all real life is at an end for me, because I cannot be linked with
my other half, because I have found it, but it has not found me!"
besieged, assailed her. It shook her, as neurasthenia shakes its victim,
squeezing as if with fierce and powerful hands till the blood seems to
be driven out of the arteries. It changed the world for her, making of
beauty a phenomenon to terrify. She looked at loveliness, and it sent a
lacerating ache all through her, because only the half looked at it and
not the whole, some hideous astral shape, not the joyous, powerful body
meant for the life of this splendid world, at home in the atmosphere
specially created for it. She began to be frightened and to think, "But
what can I do? How will it end?" She longed to do something active, to
make an exertion, and struggle out of all this assailing strangeness.
Like one attacked in a tunnel by claustrophobia, she had an impulse to
dash open doors and windows, to burst arching, solid walls, and to be
elsewhere.
At first she carefully concealed her condition from Susan Fleet, but
when three days had gone by, and no word came from Mrs. Shiffney, she
began to feel that fate had left her alone with the one human being of
whom she could make a confidante. Again and again she looked furtively
at Miss Fleet's serene and practical face, and wondered what effect her
revelation would have upon the very sensible personality it indicated.
"She'll think it is all nonsense, that it doesn't matter at all!"
thought Charmian. And more than ever she wanted to tell Miss Fleet. In
self-restraint she became violently excited. Often she felt on the verge
of tears. And at last, very suddenly and without premeditation, she
spoke.
They were visiting "Djenan el Ali," the lovely villa of an acquaintance
of Mrs. Shiffney's who was away in Europe. Miss Fleet had been there
before and knew the servants, who gladly gave her permission to show
Charmian everything. After wandering through the house, which was a pure
gem of Arab architecture, five hundred years old, and in excellent
preservation, they descended into the garden, which was on the slope of
the hill over which the houses of Mustapha Superieur are scattered. Here
no sounds of voices reached them, no tram bells, no shrieks from motors
buzzing along the white road high above them. The garden was large and
laid out with subtle ingenuity. The house was hidden away from the world
that was so near.
Miss Fleet strolled on, descending by winding paths, closely followed by
Charmian, till she came to a sheet of artificial water, whose uneven
banks were covered with masses of azaleas, rhododendrons, bamboos, and
flowering shrubs. In the midst of this lake there was a tiny island,
just big enough to give room for the growth of one gigantic date palm,
and for a mass of arum lilies from which it rose towering toward the
delicate blue of the cloudless sky. The lilies and the palm--they were
the island, round which slept greenish-yellow water guarded by the
azaleas, the rhododendrons, the bamboos, and the shrubs. And on the path
where Charmian and Miss Fleet stood there was a long pergola of roses,
making a half-moon.
Charmian stood still and looked. The ground formed a sort of basin
sheltering the little lake. Even the white Arab house was hidden from it
by a screen of trees. The island, a wonderfully clever thing, attained
by artificiality a sort of strange exoticism which almost intoxicated
Charmian. Perhaps nothing wholly natural could have affected her in
quite the same way. There was something of the art of a Ferdinand Rades
in the art which had created that island, had set it just where it was.
It had been planned to communicate a thrill to highly civilized people,
to suggest to them--what? the Fortunate Isles, perhaps, the strange
isles, which they dream of when they have a moment to dream, but which
they will certainly never see. It was a suggestive little isle. One
longed to sail away, to land on it--and then?
Charmian stood as if hypnotized by it. Her eyes went from the lilies up
the great wrinkled trunk of the palm to its far away tufted head, then
travelled down to the big white flowers. She sighed and gazed. And just
at that moment she felt that she was going to tell Susan Fleet
immediately.
On the shore of the lake there was a seat.
"I must tell you something," Charmian said, sinking down on it. "I'm
very unhappy."
She looked again at the island and the tears came to her eyes.
"He never has even let me hear a note of his music!" she thought,
connecting Claude Heath's talent with the lilies and the palm in some
strange way that seemed inevitable.
Susan Fleet sat down and folded her white-gloved hands in her neat
tailor-made lap.
"I'm sorry for that," she said.
"And seeing that island, seeing all these lovely places and things makes
it so much worse. I didn't know--till I came here. At least, I didn't
really know I knew. Oh, Miss Fleet, how happy I could be here if I
wasn't so dreadfully wretched."
A sort of wave of desperation--it seemed a hot wave--surged through
Charmian. All the strangeness of Claude Heath flowed upon her and
receded from her, leaving her in a sort of dreadful acrid dryness.
"Surely," she said, "when you are in places like this you must feel that
nothing is of any real use if one has it alone."
"But I'm with you now," returned Miss Fleet, evidently wishing to give
Charmian a chance to regain her reserve.
"With me! What's the use of that? You must know what I mean."
"I suppose you mean a man."
Charmian blushed.
"That sounds--oh, well, how can we help it? It is not our fault. We have
to be so, even if we hate it. And I do hate it. I don't want to care
about him. I never have. He's not in my set. He doesn't know anyone I
know, or do anything I do, or care for almost anything I care
for--perhaps. But I feel I could do such things for him, that he will
never do for himself. And I want to do them. I must do them, but he will
never let me."
"I hope he's a gentleman. I don't believe in mixing classes, simply
because it seems to me that one class never really understands another,
not at all because one class isn't just as good as another."
"Of course he's a gentleman. Mrs. Shiffney asked him to come on the
yacht."
"Oh! Mr. Heath!" observed Miss Fleet.
Charmian thought she detected a slight change in the deep chest tone of
her companion's voice.
"D'you know him?" she asked, almost sharply.
"No."
"Have you seen him?"
"No, never. I only heard that he might be coming from Adelaide, and then
that he wasn't coming."
"He knew I was coming and he refused to come. Isn't it degrading?"
"Is he a great friend of yours?"
"No, but he is of my mother's. What must you think of me? What do you
think of me?"
Charmian put her hand impulsively on Miss Fleet's arm.
"I didn't know till I came here. I thought I disliked him, I almost
thought I hated him."
"That's always a bad sign, I believe," said Miss Fleet.
"Yes, I know. But he doesn't hate me. He doesn't think about me. He's
mother's friend and not even my enemy. Do tell me, Miss Fleet--or may I
call you Susan to-day?"
"Of course, and to-morrow, too."
"Thank you. You've seen lots of people. Do you think I have personality?
Do you think I--am I just like everyone else? That's such a hideous
idea! Have I anything that stamps me? Am I a little different from all
the other girls--you know, in our sort of set? Do tell me!"
There was something humble in her quivering eagerness that quite touched
Susan Fleet.
"No, I don't think you're just like everyone else."
"You aren't. And he isn't. He's not in the least like any other man I
ever saw. That's the dreadful part of it. I can't imagine why I care for
him, and that's why I know I shall never care for anyone else."
"Perhaps he likes you."
"No, no! No, I'm sure he doesn't. He thinks, like everyone else, that I
have nothing particular in me. But it isn't true. Susan, sometimes we
know a thing by instinct--don't we?"
"Certainly. Instinct is often the experience of the past working within
us."
"Well, I know that I am the woman who could make Claude Heath famous,
who could do for him what he could never do for himself. He has genius,
I believe. Max Elliot says so. And I feel it when I'm with him. But he
has no capacity for using it, as it ought to be used, to dominate the
world. He's never been in the world. He knows, and wishes to know,
nothing of it. That's absurd, isn't it? We ought to give, if we have
anything extraordinary to give. Oh, if you knew how I've longed and
pined to be extraordinary!"
"Extraordinary? In what way?"
"In gifts, in talent! I've suffered dreadfully because I simply can't
endure just to be one of the silly, dull crowd. But lately--quite
lately--I've begun to realize what I could be, do. I could be the
perfect wife to a great man. Don't laugh at me!"
"I'm not laughing."
"Aren't you? You are a dear! I knew you would understand. You see I've
always been among people who matter. I've always known clever men who've
made their names. I've always breathed in the atmosphere of culture. I'm
at home in the world. I know how to take people. I have social
capacities. Now he's quite different. The fact is, I have all he hasn't.
And he has what I haven't, his talent. He's remarkable. Anyone would
feel it in an instant. I believe he's a great man _manque_ because of a
sort of kink in his temperament. And--I know that I could get rid of
that kink _if_--"
She stopped. The tears rushed into her eyes. "Oh, isn't it awful to be
madly in love with a man who doesn't care for you?" she exclaimed,
almost fiercely.
"I'm not," returned Susan Fleet, quietly. "But I daresay it is."
"When I look at that island--"
Charmian stopped and took out her handkerchief. After using it she said,
in a way that made Susan think of a fierce little cat spitting:
"But I will bring out what is in me! I will not let all my capacities go
to rust."
Quite abruptly, she could not tell why, Charmian felt that there was a
dawning of hope in her sky. Her depression seemed to lift a little. She
was conscious of her youth, of her grace and charm, her prettiness, her
intelligence. She was able to put a little trust in them.
"Susan," she said, clasping her companion's left hand, "the other day,
when we were in the garden of the hotel, such a strange feeling came to
me. I couldn't trust it then. I thought it must be nonsense. But it has
come to me again. It seems somehow to be connected with all sorts of
things--here."
"Tell me what it is."
"Yes, I must. The other day it came when I saw the dragoman, Mustapha
Ali, walking toward the hotel--when he was just under that arch of pink
roses. The horn of a motor sounded in the road, and the white dust flew
up in a cloud. Then I heard, far away, the siren of a ship. It was all
an impression of Algiers. It was Algiers. And I felt--I shall be here
again with _him_."
She gazed at Susan. Romance was alight in her long eyes.
"And now, when I look at that island, the feeling comes again. It seems
to come to me out of the palm trunk and the lilies, almost as if they
knew, and told me."
Susan Fleet looked at Charmian with a new interest.
"It may be so," she said. "Perhaps part of your destiny is to learn
through that man, and to teach him."
"Oh, Susan! If it should be!"
Life suddenly seemed glittering with wonder to Charmian, quivering with
possibility.
"But you must learn to love, if you are to do any real good."
"Learn! Why, I've just told you--"
"No, no. You don't quite understand me. Our personal loves must be
expanded. They must become universal. We must overflow with love."
Charmian stared. This very quiet, very neat, and very practical woman
had astonished her.
"Do you?" she almost blurted out.
"It's very, very difficult. But I wish to and try to. Do you know, I
think perhaps that is why you have told me all this."
"Perhaps it is," said Charmian. "I could never have told it to anyone
else."