The Golden Silence Part 63

"Yes, you can," said Stephen quietly. "She's coming. She started the minute she heard you were ill, and she'll be in Touggourt day after to-morrow."

"You're not--pulling my leg?"

"To do that would be very injurious. But I thought good news would be better than medicine."

"Thank you, Legs. You're a great doctor," was all that Nevill answered.

But his temperature began to go down within the hour.

"He'll get the girl, of course," remarked Lady MacGregor, when Stephen told her. "That is, if he lives."

"He will live, with this hope to buoy him up," said Stephen. "And she can't hold out against him for a minute when she sees him as he is.

Indeed, I rather fancy she's been in a mood to change her mind this last month."

"Why this last month?"

"Oh, I think she misunderstood Nevill's interest in Miss Ray, and that helped her to understand herself. When she finds out that it's for her he still cares, not some one else, she'll do anything he asks."

Afterwards it proved that he was right.

The day after the arrival at Touggourt, the house in its garden near the oasis was very quiet. The Arab servants, whom Lady MacGregor had taken with the place, moved silently, and for Nevill's sake voices were lowered. There was a brooding stillness of summer heat over the one little patch of flowery peace and perfumed shade in the midst of the fierce golden desert. Yet to the five members of the oddly a.s.sembled family it was as if the atmosphere tingled with electricity. There was a curious, even oppressive sense of suspense, of waiting for something to happen.

They did not speak of this feeling, yet they could see it in each other's eyes, if they dare to look.

It was with them as with people who wait to hear a clock begin striking an hour which will bring news of some great change in their lives, for good or evil.

The tension increased as the day went on; still, no one had said to another, "What is there so strange about to-day? Do you feel it? Is it only our imagination--a reaction after strain, or is it that a presentiment of something to happen hangs over us?"

Stephen had not yet had any talk with Victoria. They had seen each other alone for scarcely more than a moment since the night at Toudja; but now that Nevill was better, and the surgeons said that if all went well, danger was past, it seemed to Stephen that the hour had come.

After they had lunched in the dim, cool dining-room, and Lady MacGregor had proposed a siesta for all sensible people, Stephen stopped the girl on her way upstairs as she followed her sister.

"May I talk to you for a little while this afternoon?" he asked.

Voice and eyes were wistful, and Victoria wondered why, because she was so happy that she felt as if life had been set to music. She had hoped that he would be happy too, when Nevill's danger was over, and he had time to think of himself--perhaps, too, of her.

"Yes," she said, "let's talk in the garden, when it's cooler. I love being in gardens, don't you? Everything that happens seems more beautiful."

Stephen remembered how lovely he had thought her in the lily garden at Algiers. He was almost glad that they were not to have this talk there; for the memory of it was too perfect to mar with sadness.

"I'm going to put Saidee to sleep," she went on. "You may laugh, but truly I can. When I was a little girl, she used to like me to stroke her hair if her head ached, and she would always fall asleep. And once she's asleep I shan't dare move, or she'll wake up. She has such happy dreams now, and they're sure to come true. Shall I come to you about half-past five?"

"I'll be waiting," said Stephen.

It was the usual garden of a villa in the neighbourhood of a desert town, but Stephen had never seen one like it, except that of the Cad, in Bou-Saada. There were the rounded paths of hard sand, the colour of pinkish gold in the dappling shadows of date palms and magnolias, and there were rills of running water that whispered and gurgled as they bathed the dark roots of the trees. No gra.s.s grew in the garden, and the flowers were not planted in beds or borders. Plants and trees sprang out of the sand, and such flowers as there were--roses, and pomegranate blossoms, hibiscus, and pa.s.sion flowers--climbed, and rambled, and pushed, and hung in heavy drapery, as best they could without attention or guidance. But one of the princ.i.p.al paths led to a kind of arbour, or temple, where long ago palms had been planted in a ring, and had formed a high green dome, through which, even at noon, the light filtered as if through a dome of emerald. Underneath, the pavement of gold was hard and smooth, and in the centre whispered a tiny fountain ornamented with old Algerian tiles. It trickled rather than played, but its delicate music was soothing and sweet as a murmured lullaby; and from the shaded seat beside it there was a glimpse between tree trunks of the burning desert gold.

On this wooden seat by the fountain Stephen waited for Victoria, and saw her coming to him, along the straight path that led to the round point. She wore a white dress which Lady MacGregor had brought her, and as she walked, the embroidery of light and shadow made it look like lace of a lovely pattern. She stopped on the way, and, gathering a red rose with a long stem, slipped it into her belt. It looked like a spot of blood over her heart, as if a sword had been driven in and drawn out.

Stephen could not bear to see it there. It was like a symbol of the wound that he was waiting to inflict.

She came to him smiling, looking very young, like a child who expects happiness.

"Have I kept you waiting long?" she asked. Her blue eyes, with the shadow of the trees darkening them, had a wonderful colour, almost purple. A desperate longing to take her in his arms swept over Stephen like a wave. He drew in his breath sharply and shut his teeth. He could not answer. Hardly knowing what he did, he held out his hands, and very quietly and sweetly she laid hers in them.

"Don't trust me--don't be kind to me," he said, crushing her hands for an instant, then putting them away.

She looked up in surprise, as he stood by the fountain, very tall and pale, and suddenly rather grim, it seemed to her, his expression out of tune with the peace of the garden and the mood in which she had come.

"What is the matter?" she asked, simply.

"Everything. I hardly know how to begin to tell you. Yet I must. Perhaps you'll think I shouldn't have waited till now. But there's been no chance--at least, I----"

"No, there's been no chance for us to talk, or even to think very much about ourselves," Victoria tried to rea.s.sure him. "Begin just as you like. Whatever you say, whatever you have to tell, I won't misunderstand."

"First of all, then," Stephen said, "you know I love you. Only you don't know how much. I couldn't tell you that, any more than I could tell how much water there is in the ocean. I didn't know myself that it was possible to love like this, and such a love might turn the world into heaven. But because I am what I am, and because I've done what I have done, it's making mine h.e.l.l. Wait--you said you wouldn't misunderstand!

The man who loves you ought to offer some sort of spiritual gold and diamonds, but I've got only a life half spoiled to offer you, if you'll take it. And before I can even ask you to take it, I'll have to explain how it's spoiled."

Victoria did not speak, but still looked at him with that look of an expectant, anxious child, which made him long to s.n.a.t.c.h her up and turn his back forever on the world where there was a Margot Lorenzi, and gossiping people, and newspapers.

But he had to go on. "There's a woman," he said, "who--perhaps she cares for me--I don't know. Anyhow, she'd suffered through our family. I felt sorry for her. I--I suppose I admired her. She's handsome--or people think so. I can hardly tell how it came about, but I--asked her to marry me, and she said yes. That was--late last winter--or the beginning of spring. Then she had to go to Canada, where she'd been brought up--her father died in England, a few months ago, and her mother, when she was a child; but she had friends she wanted to see, before--before she married. So she went, and I came to Algiers, to visit Nevill. Good heavens, how ba.n.a.l it sounds! How--how different from the way I feel!

There aren't words--I don't see how to make you understand, without being a cad. But I must tell you that I didn't love her, even at first.

It was a wish--a foolish, mistaken wish, I see now--and I saw long ago, the moment it was too late--to make up for things. She was unhappy, and--no, I give it up! I can't explain. But it doesn't change things between us--you and me. I'm yours, body and soul. If you can forgive me for--for trying to make you care, when I had no right--if, after knowing the truth, you'll take me as I am, I----"

"Do you mean, you'd break off your engagement?"

Perhaps it was partly the effect of the green shadows, but the girl looked very pale. Except for her eyes and hair, and the red rose that was like a wound over her heart, there was no colour about her.

"Yes, I would. And I believe it would be right to break it," Stephen said, forcefully. "It's abominable to marry some one you don't love, and a crime if you love some one else."

"But you must have cared for her once," said Victoria.

"Oh, cared! I cared in a way, as a man cares for a pretty woman who's had very hard luck. You see--her father made a fight for a t.i.tle that's in our family, and claimed the right to it. He lost his case, and his money was spent. Then he killed himself, and his daughter was left alone, without a penny and hardly any friends----"

"Poor, poor girl! I don't wonder you were sorry for her--so sorry that you thought your pity was love. You couldn't throw her over now, you know in your heart you couldn't. It would be cruel."

"I thought I couldn't, till I met you," Stephen answered frankly. "Since then, I've thought--no, I haven't exactly thought. I've only felt. That night at Toudja, I knew it would be worse than death to have to keep my word to her. I wouldn't have been sorry if they'd killed me then, after you said--that is, after I had the memory of a moment or two of happiness to take to the next world."

"Ah, that's because I let you see I loved you," Victoria explained softly, and a little shyly. "I told you I wouldn't misunderstand, and I don't. Just for a minute I was hurt--my heart felt sick, because I couldn't bear to think--to think less highly of you. But it was only for a minute. Then I began to understand--so well! And I think you are even better than I thought before--more generous, and chivalrous. You were sorry for _her_ in those days of her trouble, and then you were engaged, and you meant to marry her and make her happy. But at Toudja I showed you what was in my heart--even now I'm not ashamed that I did, because I knew you cared for me."

"I worshipped you, only less than I do now," Stephen broke in. "Every day I love you more--and will to the end of my life. You can't send me away. You can't send me to another woman."

"I can, for my sake and yours both, because if I kept you, feeling that I was wronging some one, neither of us could be happy. But I want you to know I understand that you have _me_ to be sorry for now, as well as her, and that you're torn between us both, hardly seeing which way honour lies. I'm sure you would have kept true to her, if you hadn't hated to make me unhappy. And instead of needing to forgive you, I will ask you to forgive me, for making things harder."

"You've given me the only real happiness I've ever known since I was a boy," Stephen said.

"If that's true--and it must be, since you say it--neither of us is to be pitied. I shall be happy always because you loved me enough to be made happy by my love. And you must be happy because you've done right, and made me love you more. I don't think there'll be any harm in our not trying to forget, do you?"

"I could as easily forget to breathe."

"So could I. Ever since the first night I met you, you have seemed different to me from any other man I ever knew, except an ideal man who used to live in the back of my mind. Soon, that man and you grew to be one. You wouldn't have me separate you from him, would you?"

"If you mean that you'll separate me from your ideal unless I marry Margot Lorenzi, then divide me from that cold perfection forever. I'm not cold, and I'm far from perfect. But I can't feel it a decent thing for a man to marry one woman, promising to love and cherish her, if his whole being belongs to another. Even you can't----"