The Golden Silence

by C. N. Williamson; A. M. Williamson

"Dance then, in thine own way, O daughter," Lella Alonda was forced to say; for it did not even occur to her that she might disobey her husband.

Victoria smiled at them all; at M'Barka and Aichouch, and Aichouch's dignified husband, Si Abderrhaman: at Alonda and the Agha, and at Maïeddine, as, when a child, she would have smiled at her sister, when beginning a dance made up from one of Saidee's stories.

She had told Stephen of an Eastern dance she knew, but this was something different, more thrilling and wonderful, which the wild music put into her heart. At first, she hardly knew what was the meaning she felt impelled to express by gesture and pose. The spirit of the desert sang to her, a song of love, a song old as the love-story of Eve; and though the secret of that song was partly hidden from her as yet, she must try to find it out for herself, and picture it to others, by dancing.

Always before, when she danced, Victoria had called up the face of her sister, to keep before her eyes as an inspiration. But now, as she bent and swayed to catch the spirit's whispers, as wheat sways to the whisper of the wind, it was a man's face she saw. Stephen Knight seemed to stand in the tent, looking at her with a curiously wistful, longing look, over the heads of the Arab audience, who sat on their low divans and piled carpets.

She thrilled to the look, and the desert spirit made her screen her face from it, with a sequined gauze scarf which she wore. For a few measures she danced behind the glittering veil, then with a sudden impulse which the music gave, she tossed it back, holding out her arms, and smiling up to Stephen's eyes, above the brown faces, with a sweet smile very mysterious to the watchers. Consciously she called to Stephen then, as she had promised she would call, if she should ever need him, for somehow she did need and want him;—not for his help in finding Saidee: she was satisfied with all that Maïeddine was doing—but for herself. The secret of the music which she had been trying to find out, was in his eyes, and learning it slowly, made her more beautiful, more womanly, than she had ever been before. As she danced on, the two long plaits of her red hair loosened and shook out into curls which played round her white figure like flames. Her hands fluttered on the air as they rose and fell like the little white wings of a dove; and she was dazzling as a brandished torch, in the ill-lit tent with its dark hangings.

M'Barka had given her a necklace of black beads which the negresses had made of benzoin and rose leaves and spices, held in shape with pungent rezin. Worn on the warm flesh, the beads gave out a heady perfume, which was like the breath of the desert. It made the girl giddy, and it grew stronger and sweeter as she danced, seeming to mingle with the crying of the raïta and the sobbing of the ghesbah, so that she confused fragrance with music, music with fragrance.

Maïeddine stared at her, like a man who dreams with his eyes open. If he had been alone, he could have watched her dance on for hours, and wished that she would never stop; but there were other men in the tent, and he had a maddening desire to snatch the girl in his arms, smothering her in his burnous, and rushing away with her into the desert.

Her dancing astonished him. He did not know what to make of it, for she had told him nothing about herself, except what concerned her errand in Africa. Though he had been in Paris when she was there, he had been deeply absorbed in business vital to his career, and had not heard of Victoria Ray the dancer, or seen her name on the hoardings.

Like his father, he knew that European women who danced were not as the African dancers, the Ouled Naïls and the girls of Djebel Amour. But an Arab may have learned to know many things with his mind which he cannot feel with his heart; and with his heart Maïeddine felt a wish to blind Abderrhaman, because his eyes had seen the intoxicating beauty of Victoria as she danced. He was ferociously angry, but not with the girl. Perhaps with himself, because he was powerless to hide her from others, and to order her life as he chose. Yet there was a kind of delicious pain in knowing himself at her mercy, as no Arab man could be at the mercy of an Arab woman.

The sight of Victoria dancing, had shot new colours into his existence. He understood her less, and valued her more than before, a thousand times more, achingly, torturingly more. Since their first meeting on the boat, he had admired the American girl immensely. Her whiteness, the golden-red of her hair, the blueness of her eyes had meant perfection for him. He had wanted her because she was the most beautiful creature he had seen, because she was a Christian and difficult to win; also because the contrast between her childishness and brave independence was piquant. Apart from that contrast, he had not thought much about her nature. He had looked upon her simply as a beautiful girl, who could not be bought, but must be won. Now she had become a bewildering houri. Nothing which life could give him would make up for the loss of her. There was nothing he would not do to have her, or at least to put her beyond the reach of others.