Читать книгу The Golden Silence - C. N. Williamson - Страница 12

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As they left the arcaded streets of commercial Algiers, and drove up the long hill towards Mustapha Supérieur, where most of the best and finest houses are, Stephen and Nevill Caird talked of what they saw, and of Victoria Ray; not at all of Stephen himself. Nevill had asked him what sort of trip he had had, and not another question of any sort. Stephen was glad of this, and understood very well that it was not because his friend was indifferent. Had he been so, he would not have invited Stephen to make this visit.

To speak of the past they had shared, long ago, would naturally have led farther, and though Stephen was not sure that he mightn't some day refer, of his own accord, to the distasteful subject of the Case and Margot Lorenzi, he could not have borne to mention either now.

As they passed gateways leading to handsome houses, mostly in the Arab style, Nevill told him who lived in each one: French, English, and American families; people connected with the government, who remained in Algiers all the year round, or foreigners who came out every winter for love of their beautiful villa gardens and the climate.

"We've rather an amusing society here," he said. "And we'd defend Algiers and each other to any outsider, though our greatest pleasure is quarrelling among ourselves, or patching up one another's rows and beginning again on our own account. It's great fun and keeps us from stagnating. We also give quantities of luncheons and teas, and are sick of going to each other's entertainments; yet we're so furious if there's anything we're not invited to, we nearly get jaundice. I do myself—though I hate running about promiscuously; and I spend hours thinking up ingenious lies to squeeze out of accepting invitations I'd have been ill with rage not to get. And there are factions which loathe each other worse than any mere Montagus and Capulets. We have rival parties, and vie with one another in getting hold of any royalties or such like, that may be knocking about; but we who hate each other most, meet at the Governor's Palace and smile sweetly if French people are looking; if not, we snort like war-horses—only in a whisper, for we're invariably polite."

Stephen laughed, as he was meant to do. "What about the Arabs?" he asked, with Victoria's errand in his mind. "Is there such a thing as Arab society?"

"Very little—of the kind we'd call 'society'—in Algiers. In Tunis there's more. Much of the old Arab aristocracy has died out here, or moved away; but there are a few left who are rich and well born. They have their palaces outside the town; but most of the best houses have been sold to Europeans, and their Arab owners have gone into the interior where the Roumis don't rub elbows with them quite as offensively as in a big French town like this. Naturally they prefer the country. And I know a few of the great Arab Chiefs—splendid-looking fellows who turn up gorgeously dressed for the Governor's ball every year, and condescend to dine with me once or twice while they're staying on to amuse themselves in Algiers."

"Condescend!" Stephen repeated.

"By Jove, yes. I'm sure they think it's a great condescension. And I'm not sure you won't think so too, when you see them—as of course you will. You must go to the Governor's ball with me, even if you can't be bothered going anywhere else. It's a magnificent spectacle. And I get on pretty well among the Arabs, as I've learned to speak their lingo a bit. Not that I've worried. But nearly nine years is a long time."

This was Stephen's chance to tell what he chose to tell of his brief acquaintance with Victoria Ray, and of the mission which had brought her to Algiers. Somehow, as he unfolded the story he had heard from the girl on board ship, the scent of orange blossoms, luscious-sweet in this region of gardens, connected itself in his mind with thoughts of the beautiful woman who had married Cassim ben Halim, and disappeared from the world she had known. He imagined her in an Arab garden where orange blossoms fell like snow, eating her heart out for the far country and friends she would never see again, rebelling against a monstrous tyranny which imprisoned her in this place of perfumes and high white walls. Or perhaps the scented petals were falling now upon her grave.

"Cassim ben Halim—Captain Cassim ben Halim," Nevill repeated. "Seems familiar somehow, as if I'd heard the name; but most of these Arab names have a kind of family likeness in our ears. Either he's a person of no particular importance, or else he must have left Algiers before my Uncle James Caird died—the man who willed me his house, you know—brother of Aunt Caroline MacGregor who lives with me now. If I've ever heard anything about Ben Halim, whatever it is has slipped my mind. But I'll do my best to find out something."

"Miss Ray believes he was of importance," said Stephen. "She oughtn't to have much trouble getting on to his trail, should you think?"

Nevill looked doubtful. "Well, if he'd wanted her on his trail, she'd never have been off it. If he didn't, and doesn't, care to be got at, finding him mayn't be as simple as it would be in Europe, where you can always resort to detectives if worst comes to worst."

"Can't you here?" asked Stephen.

"Well, there's the French police, of course, and the military in the south. But they don't care to interfere with the private affairs of Arabs, if no crime's been committed—and they wouldn't do anything in such a case, I should think, in the way of looking up Ben Halim, though they'd tell anything they might happen to know already, I suppose—unless they thought best to keep silence with foreigners."

"There must be people in Algiers who'd remember seeing such a beautiful creature as Ben Halim's wife, even if her husband whisked her away nine years ago," Stephen argued.

"I wonder?" murmured Caird, with an emphasis which struck his friend as odd.

"What do you mean?" asked Stephen.

"I mean, I wonder if any one in Algiers ever saw her at all? Ben Halim was in the French Army; but he was a Mussulman. Paris and Algiers are a long cry, one from the other—if you're an Arab."

"Jove! You don't think——"

"You've spotted it. That's what I do think."

"That he shut her up?"

"That he forced her to live the life of a Mussulman woman. Why, what else could you expect, when you come to look at it?"

"But an American girl——"

"A woman who marries gives herself to her husband's nation as well as to her husband, doesn't she—especially if he's an Arab? Only, thank God, it happens to very few European girls, except of the class that doesn't so much matter. Think of it. This Ben Halim, a Spahi officer, falls dead in love with a girl when he's on leave in Paris. He feels he must have her. He can get her only by marriage. They're as subtle as the devil, even the best of them, these Arabs. He'd have to promise the girl anything she wanted, or lose her. Naturally he wouldn't give it away that he meant to veil her and clap her into a harem the minute he got her home. If he'd even hinted anything of that sort she wouldn't have stirred a step. But for a Mussulman to let his wife walk the streets unveiled, like a Roumia, or some woman of easy virtue, would be a horrible disgrace to them both. His relations and friends would cut him, and hoot her at sight. The more he loved his wife, the less likely he'd be to keep a promise, made in a different world. It wouldn't be human nature—Arab human nature—to keep it. Besides, they have the jealousy of the tiger, these Eastern fellows. It's a madness."

"Then perhaps no one ever knew, out here, that the man had brought home a foreign wife?"

"Almost surely not. No European, that is. Arabs might know—through their women. There's nothing that passes which they can't find out. How they do it, who can tell? Their ways are as mysterious as everything else here, except the lives of us hiverneurs, who don't even try very hard to hide our own scandals when we have any. But no Arab could be persuaded or forced to betray another Arab to a European, unless for motives of revenge. For love or hate, they stand together. In virtues and vices they're absolutely different from Europeans. And if Ben Halim doesn't want anybody, not excepting his wife's sister, to get news of his wife, why, it may be difficult to get it, that's all I say. Going to Miss Ray's hotel, you could see something of that Arab street close by, on the fringe of the Kasbah—which is what they call, not the old fort alone, but the whole Arab town."

"Yes. I saw the queer white houses, huddled together, that looked like blank walls only broken by a door, with here and there a barred window."

"Well, what I mean is that it's almost impossible for any European to learn what goes on behind those blank walls and those little square holes, in respectable houses. But we'll hope for the best. And here we are at my place. I'm rather proud of it."

They had come to the arched gateway of a white-walled garden. The sun had set fire to the gold of some sunken Arab lettering over the central arch, so that each broken line darted forth its separate flame. "Djenan el Djouad; House of the Nobleman," Nevill translated. "It was built for the great confidant of a particularly wicked old Dey of Algiers, in sixteen hundred and something, and the place had been allowed to fall into ruin when my uncle bought it, about twenty or thirty years ago. There was a romance in his life, I believe. He came to Algiers for his health, as a young man, meaning to stay only a few months, but fell in love with a face which he happened to catch a glimpse of, under a veil that disarranged itself—on purpose or by accident—in a carriage belonging to a rich Arab. Because of that face he remained in Algiers, bought this house, spent years in restoring it, exactly in Arab style, and making a beautiful garden out of his fifteen or sixteen acres. Whether he ever got to know the owner of the face, history doesn't state: my uncle was as secretive as he was romantic. But odd things have been said. I expect they're still said, behind my back. And they're borne out, I'm bound to confess, by the beauty of the decorations in that part of the house intended for the ladies. Whether it was ever occupied in Uncle James's day, nobody can tell; but Aunt Caroline, his sister, who has the best rooms there now, vows she's seen the ghost of a lovely being, all spangled gauze and jewels, with silver khal-khal, or anklets, that tinkle as she moves. I assure my aunt it must be a dream, come to punish her for indulging in two goes of her favourite sweet at dinner; but in my heart I shouldn't wonder if it's true. The whole lot of us, in our family, are romantic and superstitious. We can't help it and don't want to help it, though we suffer for our foolishness often enough, goodness knows."

The scent of orange blossoms and acacias was poignantly sweet, as the car passed an Arab lodge, and wound slowly up an avenue cut through a grove of blossoming trees. The utmost pains had been taken in the laying out of the garden, but an effect of carelessness had been preserved. The place seemed a fairy tangle of white and purple lilacs, gold-dripping laburnums, acacias with festoons of pearl, roses looping from orange tree to mimosa, and a hundred gorgeous tropical flowers like painted birds and butterflies. In shadowed nooks under dark cypresses, glimmered arum lilies, sparkling with the diamond dew that sprayed from carved marble fountains, centuries old; and low seats of marble mosaiced with rare tiles stood under magnolia trees or arbours of wistaria. Giant cypresses, tall and dark as a band of Genii, marched in double line on either side the avenue as it straightened and turned towards the house.

White in the distance where that black procession halted, glittered the old Arab palace, built in one long façade, and other façades smaller, less regular, looking like so many huge blocks of marble grouped together. Over one of these blocks fell a crimson torrent of bougainvillæa; another was veiled with white roses and purple clematis; a third was showered with the gold of some strange tropical creeper that Stephen did not know.

On the roof of brown and dark-green tiles, the sunlight poured, making each tile lustrous as the scale of a serpent, and all along the edge grew tiny flowers and grasses, springing out of interstices to wave filmy threads of pink and gold.

The principal façade was blank as a wall, save for a few small, mysterious windows, barred with grilles of iron, green with age; but on the other façades were quaint recessed balconies, under projecting roofs supported with beams of cedar; and the door, presently opened by an Arab servant, was very old too, made of oak covered with an armour of greenish copper.

Even when it had closed behind Stephen and Nevill, they were not yet in the house, but in a large court with a ceiling of carved and painted cedar-wood supported by marble pillars of extreme lightness and grace. In front, this court was open, looking on to an inner garden with a fountain more delicate of design than those Stephen had seen outside. The three walls of the court were patterned all over with ancient tiles rare as some faded Spanish brocade in a cathedral, and along their length ran low seats where in old days sat slaves awaiting orders from their master.

Out from this court they walked through a kind of pillared cloister, and the façades of the house as they passed on, were beautiful in pure simplicity of line; so white, they seemed to turn the sun on them to moonlight; so jewelled with bands and plaques of lovely tiles, that they were like snowy shoulders of a woman hung with necklaces of precious stones.

By the time they had left this cloistered garden and threaded their way indoors, Stephen had lost his bearings completely. He was convinced that, once in, he should never find the clue which would guide him out again as he had come. There was another garden court, much larger than the first, and this, Nevill said, had been the garden of the palace-women in days of old. It had a fountain whose black marble basin was fringed with papyrus, and filled with pink, blue, and white water lilies, from under whose flat dark pads glimmered the backs of darting goldfish. Three walls of this garden had low doorways with cunningly carved doors of cedar-wood, and small, iron-barred windows festooned with the biggest roses Stephen had ever seen; but the fourth side was formed by an immense loggia with a dais at the back, and an open-fronted room at either end. Walls and floor of this loggia were tiled, and barred windows on either side the dais looked far down over a world which seemed all sky, sea, and garden. One of the little open rooms was hung with Persian prayer-rugs which Stephen thought were like fading rainbows seen through a mist; and there were queer old tinselled pictures such as good Moslems love: Borak, the steed of the prophet, half winged woman, half horse; the Prophet's uncle engaged in mighty battle; the Prophet's favourite daughter, Fatma-Zora, daintily eating her sacred breakfast. The other room at the opposite end of the tiled loggia was fitted up, Moorish fashion, for the making of coffee; walls and ceiling carved, gilded, and painted in brilliant colours; the floor tiled with the charming "windmill" pattern; many shelves adorned with countless little coffee cups in silver standards; with copper and brass utensils of all imaginable kinds; and in a gilded recess was a curious apparatus for boiling water.

Nevill Caird displayed his treasures and the beauties of his domain with an ingenuous pride, delighted at every word of appreciation, stopping Stephen here and there to point out something of which he was fond, explaining the value of certain old tiles from the point of view of an expert, and gladly lingering to answer every question. Some day, he said, he was going to write a book about tiles, a book which should have wonderful illustrations.

"Do you really like it all?" he asked, as Stephen looked out from a barred window of the loggia, over the wide view.

"I never even imagined anything so fantastically beautiful," Stephen returned warmly. "You ought to be happy, even if you could never go outside your own house and gardens. There's nothing to touch this on the Riviera. It's a palace of the 'Arabian Nights.'"

"There was a palace in the 'Arabian Nights,' if you remember," said Nevill, "where everything was perfect except one thing. Its master was miserable because he couldn't get that thing."

"The Roc's egg, of Aladdin's palace," Stephen recalled. "Do you lack a Roc's egg for yours?"

"The equivalent," said Nevill. "The one thing which I want, and don't seem likely to get, though I haven't quite given up hope. It's a woman. And she doesn't want me—or my palace. I'll tell you about her some day—soon, perhaps. And maybe you'll see her. But never mind my troubles for the moment. I can put them out of my mind with comparative ease, in the pleasure of welcoming you. Now we'll go indoors. You haven't an idea what the house is like yet. By the way, I nearly forgot this chap."

He put his hand into the pocket of his grey flannel coat, and pulled out a green frog, wrapped in a lettuce leaf which was inadequate as a garment, but a perfect match as to colour.

"I bought him on the way down to meet you," Nevill explained. "Saw an Arab kid trying to sell him in the street, poor little beast. Thought it would be a friendly act to bring him here to join my happy family, which is large and varied. I don't remember anybody living in this fountain who's likely to eat him, or be eaten by him."

Down went the frog on the wide rim of the marble fountain, and sat there, meditatively, with a dawning expression of contentment, so Stephen fancied, on his green face. He looked, Stephen thought, as if he were trying to forget a troubled past, and as if his new home with all its unexplored mysteries of reeds and lily pads were wondrously to his liking.

"I wish you'd name that person after me," said Stephen. "You're being very good to both of us—taking us out of Hades into Paradise."

"Come along in," was Nevill Caird's only answer. But he walked into the house with his hand on Stephen's shoulder.