The Golden Silence Part 38

Saidee flushed faintly. "You mean--I look old--haggard?"

"No--no!" the girl protested. "Not that. You've hardly changed at all, except--oh, I hardly know how to put it in words. It's your expression.

You look sad--tired of the things around you."

"I am tired of the things around me," Saidee said. "Often I've felt like a dead body in a grave with no hope of even a resurrection. What were those lines of Christina Rossetti's I used to say over to myself at first, while it still seemed worth while to revolt? Some one was buried, had been buried for years, yet could think and feel, and cry out against the doom of lying 'under this marble stone, forgotten, alone.' Doesn't it sound agonizing--desperate? It just suited me. But now--now----"

"Are things better? Are you happier?" Victoria clasped her sister pa.s.sionately.

"No. Only I'm past caring so much. If you've come here, Babe, to take me away, it's no use. I may as well tell you now. This is prison. And you must escape, yourself, before the gaoler comes back, or it will be a life-sentence for you, too."

It warmed Victoria's heart that her sister should call her "Babe"--the old pet name which brought the past back so vividly, that her eyes filled again with tears.

"You shall not be kept in prison!" she exclaimed. "It's monstrous--horrible! I was afraid it would be like this. That's why I had to wait and make plenty of money. Dearest, I'm rich. Everything's for you. You taught me to dance, and it's by dancing I've earned such a lot--almost a fortune. So you see, it's yours. I've got enough to bribe Ca.s.sim to let you go, if he likes money, and isn't kind to you. Because, if he isn't kind, it must be a sign he doesn't love you, really."

Saidee laughed, a very bitter laugh. "He does like money. And he doesn't like me at all--any more."

"Then--" Victoria's face brightened--"then he will take the ten thousand dollars I've brought, and he'll let you go away with me."

"Ten thousand dollars!" Saidee laughed again. "Do you know who Ca.s.sim--as you call him--is?"

The girl looked puzzled. "Who he is?"

"I see you don't know. The secret's been kept from you, somehow, by his friend who brought you here. You'll tell me how you came; but first I'll answer your question. The Ca.s.sim ben Halim you knew, has been dead for eight years."

"They told me so in Algiers. But--do you mean--have you married again?"

"I said the Ca.s.sim ben Halim you knew, is dead. The Ca.s.sim _I_ knew, and know now, is alive--and one of the most important men in Africa, though we live like this, buried among the desert dunes, out of the world--or what you'd think the world."

"My world is where you are," Victoria said.

"Dear little Babe! Mine is a terrible world. You must get out of it as soon as you can, or you'll never get out at all."

"Never till I take you with me."

"Don't say that! I must send you away. I _must_--no matter how hard it may be to part from you," Saidee insisted. "You don't know what you're talking about. How should you? I suppose you must have heard _something_. You must anyhow suspect there's a secret?"

"Yes, Si Maeddine told me that. He said, when I talked of my sister, and how I was trying to find her, that he'd once known Ca.s.sim. I had to agree not to ask questions,--and he would never say for certain whether Ca.s.sim was dead or not, but he promised sacredly to bring me to the place where my sister lived. His cousin Lella M'Barka Bent Djellab was with us,--very ill and suffering, but brave. We started from Algiers, and he made a mystery even of the way we came, though I found out the names of some places we pa.s.sed, like El Aghouat and Ghardaia----"

Saidee's eyes widened with a sudden flash. "What, you came here by El Aghouat and Ghardaia?"

"Yes. Isn't that the best way?"

"The best, if the longest is the best. I don't know much about North Africa geographically. They've taken care I shouldn't know! But I--I've lately found out from--a person who's made the journey, that one can get here from Algiers in a week or eight days. Seventeen hours by train to Biskra: Biskra to Touggourt two long days in a diligence, or carriage with plenty of horses; Touggourt to Oued Tolga on camel or horse, or mule, in three or four days going up and down among the great dunes. You must have been weeks travelling."

"We have. I----"

"How very queer! What could Si Maeddine's reason have been? Rich Arabs love going by train whenever they can. Men who come from far off to see the marabout always do as much of the journey as possible by rail. I hear things about all important pilgrims. Then why did Si Maeddine bring you by El Aghouat and Ghardaia--especially when his cousin's an invalid? It couldn't have been just because he didn't want you to be seen, because, as you're dressed like an Arab girl no one could guess he was travelling with a European."

"His father lives near El Aghouat," Victoria reminded her sister. And Maeddine had used this fact as one excuse, when he admitted that they might have taken a shorter road. But in her heart the girl had guessed why the longest way had been chosen. She did not wish to hide from Saidee things which concerned herself, yet Maeddine's love was his secret, not hers, therefore she had not meant to tell of it, and she was angry with herself for blushing. She blushed more and more deeply, and Saidee understood.

"I see! He's in love with you. That's why he brought you here. How _clever_ of him! How like an Arab!"

For a moment Saidee was silent, thinking intently. It could not be possible, Victoria told herself, that the idea pleased her sister. Yet for an instant the white face lighted up, as if Saidee were relieved of heavy anxiety.

She drew Victoria closer, with an arm round her waist. "Tell me about it," she said. "How you met him, and everything."

The girl knew she would have to tell, since her sister had guessed, but there were many other things which it seemed more important to say and hear first. She longed to hear all, all about Saidee's existence, ever since the letters had stopped; why they had stopped; and whether the reason had anything to do with the mystery about Ca.s.sim. Saidee seemed willing to wait, apparently, for details of Victoria's life, since she wanted to begin with the time only a few weeks ago, when Maeddine had come into it. But the girl would not believe that this meant indifference. They must begin somewhere. Why should not Saidee be curious to hear the end part first, and go back gradually? Saidee's silence had been a torturing mystery for years, whereas about her, her simple past, there was no mystery to clear up.

"Yes," she agreed. "But you promised to tell me about yourself and--and----"

"I know. Oh, you shall hear the whole story. It will seem like a romance to you, I suppose, because you haven't had to live it, day by day, year by year. It's sordid reality to me--oh, _how_ sordid!--most of it. But this about Maeddine changes everything. I must hear what's happened--quickly--because I shall have to make a plan. It's very important--dreadfully important. I'll explain, when you've told me more.

But there's time to order something for you to eat and drink, first, if you're tired and hungry. You must be both, poor child--poor, pretty child! You _are_ pretty--lovely. No wonder Maeddine--but what will you have. Which among our horrid Eastern foods do you hate least?"

"I don't hate any of them. But don't make me eat or drink now, please, dearest. I couldn't. By and by. We rested and lunched this side of the city. I don't feel as if I should ever be hungry again. I'm so----"

Victoria stopped. She could not say: "I am so happy," though she ought to have been able to say that. What was she, then, if not happy? "I'm so excited," she finished.

Saidee stroked the girl's hand, softly. On hers she wore no ring, not even a wedding ring, though Ca.s.sim had put one on her finger, European fashion, when she was a bride. Victoria remembered it very well, among the other rings he had given during the short engagement. Now all were gone. But on the third finger of the left hand was the unmistakable mark a ring leaves if worn for many years. The thought pa.s.sed through Victoria's mind that it could not be long since Saidee had ceased to wear her wedding ring.

"I don't want to be cruel, or frighten you, my poor Babe," she said, "but--you've walked into a trap in coming here, and I've got to try and save you. Thank heaven my husband's away, but we've no time to lose.

Tell me quickly about Maeddine. I've heard a good deal of him, from Ca.s.sim, in old days; but tell me all that concerns him and you. Don't skip anything, or I can't judge."

Saidee's manner was feverishly emphatic, but she did not look at Victoria. She watched her own hand moving back and forth, restlessly, from the girl's finger-tips, up the slender, bare wrist, and down again.

Victoria told how she had seen Maeddine on the boat, coming to Algiers; how he had appeared later at the hotel, and offered to help her, hinting, rather than saying, that he had been a friend of Ca.s.sim's, and knew where to find Ca.s.sim's wife. Then she went on to the story of the journey through the desert, praising Maeddine, and hesitating only when she came to the evening of his confession and threat. But Saidee questioned her, and she answered.

"It came out all right, you see," she finished at last. "I knew it must, even in those few minutes when I couldn't help feeling a little afraid, because I seemed to be in his power. But of course I wasn't really.

G.o.d's power was over his, and he felt it. Things always _do_ come out right, if you just _know_ they will."

Saidee shivered a little, though her hand on Victoria's was hot. "I wish I could think like that," she half whispered. "If I could, I----"

"What, dearest?"

"I should be brave, that's all. I've lost my spirit--lost faith, too--as I've lost everything else. I used to be quite a good sort of girl; but what can you expect after ten years shut up in a Mussulman harem? It's something in my favour that they never succeeded in 'converting' me, as they almost always do with a European woman when they've shut her up--just by tiring her out. But they only made me sullen and stupid. I don't believe in anything now. You talk about 'G.o.d's power.' He's never helped me. I should think 'things came right' more because Maeddine felt you couldn't get away from him, then and later, and because he didn't want to offend the marabout, than because G.o.d troubled to interfere. Besides, things _haven't_ come right. If it weren't for Maeddine, I might smuggle you away somehow, before the marabout arrives. But now, Maeddine will be watching us like a lynx--or like an Arab. It's the same thing where women are concerned."

"Why should the marabout care what I do?" asked Victoria. "He's nothing to us, is he?--except that I suppose Ca.s.sim must have some high position in his Zaoua."

"A high position! I forgot, you couldn't know--since Maeddine hid everything from you. An Arab man never trusts a woman to keep a secret, no matter how much in love he may be. He was evidently afraid you'd tell some one the great secret on the way. But now you're here, he won't care what you find out, because he knows perfectly well that you can never get away."

Victoria started, and turned fully round to stare at her sister with wide, bright eyes. "I can and I will get away!" she exclaimed. "With you. Never without you, of course. That's why I came, as I said. To take you away if you are unhappy. Not all the marabouts in Islam can keep you, dearest, because they have no right over you--and this is the twentieth century, not hundreds of years ago, in the dark ages."

"Hundreds of years in the future, it will still be the dark ages in Islam. And this marabout thinks he _has_ a right over me."

"But if you know he hasn't?"

"I'm beginning to know it--beginning to feel it, anyhow. To feel that legally and morally I'm free. But law and morals can't break down walls."

"I believe they can. And if Ca.s.sim----"