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diff --git a/22928-8.txt b/22928-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a18a6e7 --- /dev/null +++ b/22928-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,8626 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, Sacrifice, by Stephen French Whitman + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: Sacrifice + + +Author: Stephen French Whitman + + + +Release Date: October 9, 2007 [eBook #22928] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SACRIFICE*** + + +E-text prepared by Al Haines + + + +Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this + file which includes the original illustration. + See 22928-h.htm or 22928-h.zip: + (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/2/9/2/22928/22928-h/22928-h.htm) + or + (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/2/9/2/22928/22928-h.zip) + + + + + +SACRIFICE + +by + +STEPHEN FRENCH WHITMAN + +Author of "Predestined," Etc. + + + + + + + +[Frontispiece: "COME CLOSER, I WANT TO LOOK AT YOU."] + + + +D. Appleton and Company +New York :: 1922 :: London + +Copyright, 1922, by +D. Appleton and Company + +Copyright, 1921-1922, by The Ridgway Company + + + + +SACRIFICE + + +PART ONE + +CHAPTER I + +Lilla Delliver's parents, killed in a railway accident, left their +child a legacy other than the fortune that the New York newspapers +mentioned in the obituaries. + +The mother had been tall, blonde, rather wildly handsome, with the look +of one of those neurotic queens who suppress under a proud manner many +psychic disturbances. Painfully fastidious in her tastes, she had +avoided every unnecessary contact with mediocrity. Reclining on a +couch in her boudoir, she read French novels saturated with an +exquisite sophistication. Then, letting the book slip from her +fingers, she gazed into space, as listless as a lady immured in a +seraglio on the Bosphorous. At night, if the opera was _Tristan_, she +went down to her limousine with the furtive eagerness of a woman +escaping from monotony into a secret world. She drove home with +feverish cheeks, and when her husband spoke to her she gave him the +blank stare of a somnambulist. + +After a busy social season she was liable to melancholia. She sat by +the window in a charming negligée, paler than a camellia, hardly +turning her head when, at twilight, her child was led in to kiss her. + +Recovering, somehow, she traveled. + +On those journeys every possible hardship was neutralized by wealth. +Yet even for her the sea could not always be calm, or the skies of the +Midi and the Riviera blue. In Venice, at midnight, the soft, hoarse +cries of the gondoliers made her toss fretfully on her canopied bed. +In Switzerland, as dawn flushed the snow peaks, awakened by the virile +voices of the guides, she started up from her pillow in a daze of +resentment and perverse antipathy. + +She calmed herself by listening to the sermons of swamis in yellow +robes, and by sitting in cathedrals with her eyes fixed upon the +splendor of the altar. + +Wherever they traveled, her husband went about inquiring for new +physicians--"specialists in neurasthenia." But then he usually felt +the need of a physician's services also. + +He was taller than his wife, a brownish, meager, handsome man with dark +circles round his eyes. A doctor had once told him that some persons +never had more than a limited amount of nervous energy; so he was +always trying to conserve his share, as if the prolongation of his idle +life were very important. Yet he was not dull. He had written several +essays, on classical subjects, that were privately circulated in +sumptuous bindings. He played Brahms with unusual talent. But certain +colors and perfumes set his nerves on edge, while the sight of blood, +if more than a drop or two, made him feel faint. + +Disillusioned from travel, because they had viewed all those fair, +exotic scenes through the blurred auras of their emotional infirmities, +he and his wife returned to their home in New York. There they were +protected against all contact with ugliness, all ignoble influences, +all sources of unhappiness except themselves. + +It was a stately old house--for two hundred years the Dellivers and the +Balbians had been stately families--a house always rather dim, its +shadows aglimmer with richness, and here and there a beam of light +illuminating some flawless, precious object. It was a house of silent +servants, of faces imprinted with a gracious weariness, of beautifully +modulated low voices, of noble reticence. Yet all the while the place +quivered from secret transports of anguish. + +In this atmosphere Lilla, the child, was like a delicate instrument on +which are recorded, to be ultimately reproduced, myriad vibrations too +subtle for appreciation by the five senses. Or, one might say, the +small, apparent form that this man and this woman had created in their +likeness--as it were a fatal sublimation of their blended physical +selves--became the fragile vessel into which, drop by drop, the +essences of all their most unfortunate emotions were being distilled. + +Sometimes, at a moment of perspicacity, the father's face was distorted +by a spasm of remorse. Looking at his child, he was thinking: + +"By what right have we done this?" + +For that matter, he was always oppressed by miseries foreign to normal +men. For instance, he fluctuated between the ardors of a pagan and an +anchorite, at one hour reëmbracing aestheticism, at another fleeing +back to a bleak sanctuary where he hoped to escape some vague, immense +reproach. Too complex for an irrevocable decision, too weak to stand +firm against the pressure either of pantheism or an absolutely +spiritual idea, he was an insignificant creature worried and torn +between two vast antagonists. + +Then, too, he was afflicted with a frequent symptom of neuroticism, +namely, superstition; and this superstition was sharpened by the usual +morbid forebodings--the characteristic expectations of calamity. + +He accepted the idea that there were persons who could fathom the +destinies of others, that the palm of one's hand was cryptic with one's +future fortunes, and that the remotest planets had an influence on +one's life. Furtively, then, as one might enter a place dedicated to +some shameful mystery, this erudite, handsome, wretched gentleman +slipped into the sanctums of the diviners, where, with a feeling of +degradation and imbecility, yet with a pounding heart, he listened to +prophecies uttered by the aid of playing cards, horoscopes, and crystal +balls. + +All he asked was some assurance that he would presently find peace. +They all promised him that this desire of his would soon be realized. + +Perhaps they would have called it realized by that crash of trains in +the night, which he and his wife hardly heard before their fine, +restless bodies were bereft of life. + +So one day, when Lilla was six years old, the drawing-room suddenly +blossomed with white roses. Next morning the orphan was taken away by +Aunt Althea Balbian to another house, on lower Fifth Avenue. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +Miss Balbian's house provided an appropriate setting for its pale, +aristocratic, chastely fervent owner. But its sedate, antiquated, +brick exterior--unaltered since the presidency of Andrew +Jackson--afforded hardly a hint of the conservative beauty that +pervaded it. + +Here the glitter of old chandeliers fell upon the suave outlines of +colonial furniture upholstered with sage green and mulberry-colored +fabrics, chimney pieces of mellow marble carved into graceful +flourishes and bearing on their shelves quaint bric-a-brac, family +portraits in frames that it would have been a sacrilege to furbish +up--ladies dressed in the fashion of 1812, French and English gentlemen +in antique uniforms, a few of these likenesses doubly precious because +they were painted so naïvely. But this "early-American" effect was +adulterated by objects that Miss Balbian had acquired on her travels, +such as medieval chalices, coffers covered with vellum and encrusted +with jewels, and a few authenticated paintings from that period when +the men of Italy, at a breath of inspiration from the Athenian tomb, +perceived, instead of the glamour of a celestial paradise, the +gorgeousness of this world. + +In this gracefully puritanical atmosphere, these latter treasures, +imbued with a disturbing alien richness, were like thoughts that a +woman, hedged round by innumerable obscure oppressions, might gather +from afar and store away in her heart. + +Lilla, in this environment, became a juvenile epicurean, precocious in +aesthetic judgment, intolerant of everything that was not exquisite. +Her opinions amused and touched her aunt, who, for a while, derived +from that imitation a nearly maternal pride. Miss Althea Balbian +redoubled her efforts to form Lilla according to her most exalted +ideas; and, as a result, she implanted in that little charge still more +complexities of impulse--a greater sensitiveness to the lures of mortal +beauty, together with something of her own recoil from all the ultimate +consequences of that sensitiveness. + +In fine, the devoted woman was preparing Lilla unwittingly for an +accentuation of the conflict that already had been prefigured in her +parents. + +The child was so fragile-looking, there was about her so strange an air +of sensibility, that many persons who had known her father and mother +shook their heads in pity. Some suggested that she ought to be reared +in the country, to play hard all day "close to nature." But the play +of other children exhausted her, as if she, too, possessed "only a +limited amount of nervous energy." She had nervous headaches and +feverish spells from no apparent cause. When the weather was changing, +or when a thunder storm impended, the governess found it hard to manage +her. Then, suddenly, certain odors and sounds filled her with +indistinct visions of felicity. At night, when there was music in the +house, she crept from her bed to the staircase, and sat listening with +burning cheeks and icy hands. + +Next day there came over her an immense, hazy discontent with +everything. And her tragic little face--her eyes, skin, and fluffy +hair all harmonized in the most delicate shade of brown--resembled the +face of some European _grande amoureuse_ seen through the small end of +an opera glass. + +"Yes," said Miss Balbian at last to the charming, quiet ladies who sat +in her library drinking tea from old china cups. "Lilla is a strange, +I may say a startling, child." And allowing herself one of her rare +public failures of expression--a look of uneasiness--she added, half +swallowing her words, "I sometimes ask myself----" + + + + +CHAPTER III + +Nearly every spring, Aunt Althea, craving "her beloved Europe," took +Lilla abroad. + +Escorted by an elderly courier who had the appearance of a gentleman in +waiting at the Vatican, they moved with royal deliberation, patronizing +luxurious hotels, celebrated landscapes, notable art collections. The +governess was supplemented with the best local teachers of music and +languages; but it was Aunt Althea, with her proud fastidiousness, her +eclecticism at once virginal and ardent, who set the keynote for +Lilla's education. + +All the young girl's inherited repugnances were enhanced. All her +sensibilities were aggravated. With the lapse of time and the +expansion of her world, her impassionable nature vibrated still more +extravagantly, at the most subtle stimuli, between the poles of +happiness and pain--which two sensations sometimes seemed to her +identical. + +Now she was lovelier than her mother had ever been--a tall, fragile, +pale brown creature whose carefully composed lips, whose deliberately +slow grace, only half concealed that inner intensity of hers. + +She had, indeed, the exceptional, agitating look--that softly fatal +aspect---which is seen in those who are destined to extraordinary +lives. It was as though strange, unprecipitated events were clinging +round her slender body like an aura: the promises of unparalleled +adventures in love, perhaps also in tragedy. Before her twentieth year +she had given this presentiment to many men, who, with a thrill that +may have been partly fear, longed to be the cause of those raptures, +and to accept the perils. + +In an alley of Constantine, in fierce sunshine that oppressed and +stimulated her delicate tissues, she stood before an old Arab who, +seated on the ground, told her fortune by strewing sand on a board. + +"You will be loved by men," he said, after contemplating apathetically +the curlicues of sand. "And will be the death of men," he added, +closing his eyes as if bored; for out there, in the mountains beyond +Constantine, love and death, as partners in the fates of fair women, +were commonplace. + +Before returning to America, Aunt Althea always managed a visit to +Rome. On her first day there, the spinster drove out alone, returning +at twilight with her eyelids swollen and red. She had been, she said, +to the English cemetery; but she declared that nobody whom she had +known was buried there. + +They visited American ladies who had married into the Roman nobility. +In those historic palaces the great rooms were cool, dim, and resonant, +the women's voices died away in space between the tapestried walls and +the ceilings frescoed with pagan deities. Through the tall doorway +entered young men with medieval faces, in quest of a cup of tea. + +To Lilla these descendants of medieval despots seemed curiously dwarfed +by their surroundings. + +But her eyes were apt to turn wistful when she passed the shabby cafés +where famous artists had sat brooding over the masterpieces that she +admired. Then she thought of Bohemian studios at dusk, and of geniuses +aquiver, like dynamos, with the powers that had taken possession of +them. She envied the women whose lives were united to theirs in an +atmosphere where beauty was always being recreated, who basked in that +radiance of art which love, perhaps, had inspired. + +Of all the arts it was music that cast over Lilla the strongest spell. + +During the winter season in New York, she haunted concert halls where +celebrated musicians played their works. The new music, however, +strident with the echoes of industrialism, dissonant with the tumult of +great cities, repelled her. She turned instinctively toward the +harmonious romanticism and idealism of a previous age. She felt that +the compositions of Schumann and Schubert were the language that had +always been imprisoned in her heart, that could never reach her lips, +but that she now heard, by a miracle, freed and in its perfection. + +When the concert was over, she could hardly prevent herself from +joining the women who surged toward the author of those sounds, as if +impelled by an inexorable force--or possibly by an idea that they must +mingle their lives with the life of the stranger who could so interpret +their souls, make clear to them their secrets, and give them, at least +momentarily, a coherent glimpse of their ideals. + +One afternoon, in the exit of a concert hall, Lilla met Brantome, a +critic of music. + +He was a robust-looking old Frenchman with white hair and the mustaches +of a Viking, displaying a leonine countenance out of which gazed a pair +of eyes that seemed to have been made tragical by some profound +chagrin. In his youth, a student in Paris, he had written some scores +of songs, half a dozen sonatas, and a symphony. These efforts, though +technically brilliant, had soon passed into oblivion. After a long +while, during which nobody had heard a sound from him, Brantome had +popped up in the United States to begin his critical career. Now he +was courted not only in artistic circles but also in the fashionable +world, where one might sometimes see his haggard old face relentlessly +revealed beneath fine chandeliers, ironical and weary, as if crushed +beneath the combined weight of disillusionment and renown. + +At sight of Lilla he stopped in the concert hall doorway; and, when he +had peered at her closely, he rumbled in her ear: + +"I see that this afternoon of bad music has not fooled you. You don't +wear the look that I discovered on your face the other day, when they +had been playing Schumann." + +"Oh, but Schumann!" And with a nervous laugh she said, "If I had been +Clara Wieck----" + +"You would have married him just as she did, eh? Ah, well, maybe there +will be other Robert Schumanns. In fact, two years ago I found a +certain young man--but now he is dying." + +He lost the smile that had come to him at this contact. With a shrug +he passed on, leaving with her the thought of beauty enmeshed by death. +She wondered who this young man was, who might have been another Robert +Schumann, but now was dying. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +Of all her suitors the most persistent was Cornelius Rysbroek. + +In their childhood he had drawn for her amusement Spanish galleons, the +domes of Mogul palaces, and a fantastic damsel, that he called a +bayadere, languishing on a balcony. His thin, sallow little face bent +close to the printed page, he had read _Ivanhoe_ to her. At parties, +it was she to whom he had brought the choicest favors. + +Departing to school, he had addressed her in melancholy +verses--doggerel decorated with references to flowers turned to dust, +setting suns that would never rise again, countless symbols of hopeless +passion and impending tragedy. + +But, as an anti-climax, he always showed up alive in vacation time. + +During his college years he had apparently forgotten her, had made +himself conspicuous by some highly pessimistic theories, and had tried +the Byronic gesture. Then, after Commencement, meeting her +unexpectedly, he had turned a yellowish white. + +Now Cornelius Rysbroek had become a lean, neat hypochondriac, highly +cultivated, with fine instincts and excruciating aversions, bored by +his leisure, yet incapable of action, and inconstant in every +aspiration except this love of his. Whenever she refused him he sailed +away, after threatening to plunge into some wild, dramatic waste, but +always compromising on the easiest, beaten path. He returned sadder +and sallower than ever, having contracted in his imagination some new, +obscure ailment, and with his old ailment, his longing for Lilla, still +gnawing at his heart. + +But Lilla, so fragile and moody, dreamed of physical strength and a +triumphant will. + +Where was he? + +She was enervated by melancholy, scorched by impatience, then chilled +by an indefinable foreboding, just as her father had been. Putting on +a figured veil to blur her blush of shame, she slipped away to visit +the soothsayers that fashionable women patronized. In a shadowy room +hung with Oriental curtains, the shrewd crystal gazer informed her that +all would soon be well. "A great love was in store for her." + +She kept in her desk a magazine picture of Lawrence Teck, the explorer, +whom she had never met, but whose likeness, singular amid innumerable +presentments of the human face, had arrested her first glance and +fascinated her mind. + +His aquiline countenance, darkened and corrugated by fierce suns, +expressed that virility which kept driving him back, for his +contentment, into remote and dangerous places. But his salient +features suggested also the patience and wisdom of those who have +suffered hardship and derived extraordinary thoughts from solitude. It +pleased her to note that his was the brow of a scholar--he had written +learned volumes about the jungle peoples, was the most picturesque +authority on the Islamic world since Burton, and his monographs on +African diseases had added to his romantic reputation the luster of +benevolence. She liked to picture him as finding in his travels and +work the stimulation that less serious, aimless men might seek in love. + +When she read his books, there unrolled before her the esoteric corners +of the desert, the strange charm and depravity of little-known Oriental +cities, the deadly richness of equatorial forests, peopled by human +beasts whose claws were hammered steel, whose fangs were poisoned +arrows, and who carried in their thick skulls the condensed miasma of +their hiding places. + +She seemed to see him passing through those physical dangers and +corroding mental influences, a superior being of unalterable health and +sanity, perhaps protected because of a grand destiny still unrevealed +to him. She longed to participate in that destiny, or, at any rate, to +be responsible somehow for it. + +"Where are you? What are your thoughts?" she would whisper, staring at +the likeness of this peculiarly congenial stranger. + +Late at night, at that hour when bizarre fancies and actions may seem +natural, she would ask him: + +"Don't you know that I exist? Then I must make you know it." + +So she tried to cast forth into space a flood of feeling strong enough +to reach him--a projection of her identity, her appearance, and her +infatuation. All her secret ardors that had never been so strongly +focused upon a definite personality found their centering point in him, +whose imagined nature seemed to be so emphatically what she needed to +appease and complete her nature. She was like one of those antique +sorceresses who would cast over distant hearts the spells that must +inevitably recoil upon their makers. + +But when she had remained for a long while motionless and tense, she +rose wearily, with a low laugh of disillusionment and ridicule. + +Little by little her thoughts of him were obscured by other thoughts, +by weakly apposite conjectures that had different men as their objects. +And when different men made love to her, once or twice, maybe at a +conjunction of exquisite scenery, music, and impatience, of confused +longings and eloquent persuasion, she was tempted to consent. But just +in time she stilled that tremulous smile, and averted that dizzy look +in the depths of which lurked a fatal sweetness. + +Then, when life seemed to her unbearably monotonous, she went to a +week-end party at the Brassfields' house in the country. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +The Brassfields' country house was copied from an historic French +chateau. In the drawing-room, the high walls, from which well-known +portraits stood forth, were paneled with amber-hued wood overlaid with +elaborate gilt traceries; they ended in a wide golden frieze that +curved inward to inclose a ceiling painted with roguish goddesses after +the manner of Watteau. Here and there, between chairs and sofas the +arms of which seemed composed of half-melted ingots, appeared a baroque +cabinet filled with small, precious objects. Or from a creamy pedestal +the marble features of some ancient sybarite regarded without surprise +this modern richness based upon the past. + +Emerging from the dining room, the ladies crossed the large amber rug, +like moving images made of multicolored light. + +Below their negligible bodices hung draperies of brocade interwoven +with metallic threads, of lace dyed the colors of exotic flowers, of +tulle embroidered with iridescent beads. Parting into groups, they +dotted the drawing-room with the gorgeousness of peacock blue and jade +green, the joyousness of petunias and the melancholy of orchids, or the +pale, intermelting tints of rainbows seen through the spangle of a +shower. + +Some, unfurling fans before their bosoms, sank down upon the chairs and +sofas. Others stood beside the large chimney piece, talking to the +men, and smoking cigarettes that were thrust into jeweled holders. + +A few emerged through the French windows upon the terrace to enjoy the +moonlit landscape, wherein Nature herself had been taught to show a +charming artificiality. + +An esplanade overlooked an aquatic garden, with three pools full of +water flowers massed round statues. Below, in broad stages that fell +away toward a wooded valley, lay other gardens, deriving a vague +stateliness from their successive balustrades and sculptured fountains. +The moonlight, while blanching the geometrical pattern of the paths, +and frosting the rectangular flowerbeds, imparted to the whole +surrounding, billowing panorama an appearance of unreality. + +"Where's Lilla?" Fanny Brassfield inquired of a young man in the +doorway of the drawing-room, in her clear, grating voice that seemed +made to express an involuntary disdain of everything not comprised in +her luxurious little world. She had just seen one of her most recent +lions, old Brantome, on his way toward the music room amid a group of +ladies; and this had recalled to her mind another celebrity, who, five +minutes before, had arrived from the city after she had given up +expecting him. + +"Shall I find her?" + +"Never mind, my surprise can wait." + +Fanny Brassfield followed Brantome and his coterie into the music room, +her attractive, bony features revealing a quizzical expression. In the +glitter of the big chandelier her coiffure appeared extraordinarily +blonde, her green eyes, especially frosty; and the eighteenth century +ladies in the gilded frames seemed suddenly, despite their histories, +insipid in comparison with this modern face, emancipated from a +thousand traditional reactions. + +As for Lilla, she was sitting in the dim library with Cornelius +Rysbroek, who was harping on the old tune. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +She believed that she could discern in him already the first hints of +middle age. His lifeless, brown hair was receding above his temples. +His small mustaches, which ought to have made him debonair, seemed on +his sallow face like the worthless disguise of a pessimist at the feast +of life. + +Her look of compassion struck him silent. He smiled in self-contempt, +then uttered a sharp sigh, pressed his palm to his forehead, and +produced a tiny silver box, from which he took a tablet. + +"More antipyrene?" she demanded reproachfully. + +"My sinus is pretty bad to-night. This salt air blowing in from the +Sound----" + +He declared that he was going away again. "His health made it +necessary." He had hung round New York long enough, enduring an +impossible climate because of an idiotic hope. He uttered the word +"Arizona." He spoke of hot deserts, solitudes under the stars, mirages +less mocking than his aspirations. As he contemplated her delicately +fervent face, her tapering, graceful body, wrapped like something very +precious in pale gold, his eyes glittered with tears. + +"Dear Cornie----" + +And once more she began the familiar rigmarole. Her lips shaped the +immemorial complaint, "Why isn't our friendship enough--why must we +always be clouding our old congeniality----" And so on. These +inexorable words, combined with her look of pity and reproach--a look +that seemed almost amorous on her fair face--gave him an impression of +immense perfidiousness. + +He turned bitter. He asked her where the ideal suitor could be +loitering--the strange knight for whom she used to watch as a little +girl, the fairytale prince from another kingdom, who was to sweep her +off her feet by the force of his perfections, and carry her away. + +As he spoke, there stole through the doorway the first notes of _Vienna +Carnival_. In the music room old Brantome had been persuaded to play +Schumann. + +"I know, at least," said Cornelius, "that you haven't found him yet!" + +In his voice there was a gloating that made her again turn toward him +that unique face of hers, whose brownish pallor, in harmony with her +large eyes and fluffy hair, appeared to reflect amid the shadows the +radiance disseminated from her dress. In his unhappy eyes she now +perceived something that had not been there before--a desperation, as +though his heart had suffered too long from a sense of inferiority to +the unknown and unrevealed antagonist, who was to win this treasure. +For an instant, in fact, there was something weakly ferocious, not +quite sane, in this visage that had been familiar to her since +childhood. Then his habitual, well-bred, wooden look, as a door might +shut on a glimpse of an inferno. + +He muttered, in his throaty, queerly didactic voice: + +"Well, one must be philosophical in this life. You'll teach me that, +won't you?" He got up, patting the pocket of his waistcoat, where he +kept the little vial of oil of peppermint, which he always touched to +his tongue when he threw aside his cigarette on his way to a dancing +partner. "Are they at it?" he asked, cocking his ear toward the music +of Schumann. "Or is it only that old chap hammering the piano?" + +"Don't ask me to dance to-night," she returned, closing her eyes. + +"I wasn't." With the parody of a merry smile, he explained, "You know +I can't dance with you any more. You know you make my legs tremble +like the devil." + +With an exclamation intended for a laugh, looking unusually bored and +vacuous, he went out of the room like a man in an earthquake sedately +strolling away between reeling and crumbling walls. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +Lilla was approaching the music room doorway--round which some men were +standing with the respectful looks of persons at the funeral of a +stranger--when a laughing young woman intercepted her. + +"Do come over here. Madame Zanidov is telling our fortunes." + +Anna Petrovna Zanidov, one of the Russian aristocrats that the +revolution had scattered through the world, was a thin, black-haired +woman with a faintly Tartar cast of countenance, a dead-white +complexion that made her seem denser than ordinary flesh, and somewhat +the look of an idol before whose blank yet sophisticated eyes had been +performed many extraordinary rites. Tonight her strangeness was made +doubly emphatic by a gown of oxidized silver tissue painted over in +dull colors with a barbaric design. + +She was said to be a clairvoyant. Rumor had it that she had foreseen +her husband's murder by Lenin's Mongolians, and that, since her arrival +in America, she had predicted accurately some sensational events, +including a nearly fatal accident in the polo field. + +Now, turning her sharp, dead-white profile to right and left, +encountering everywhere a frivolous eagerness, Madame Zanidov protested: + +"Really, I ask you if this is the proper atmosphere!" + +She explained that she regarded very seriously "this gift" of hers, +which had astonished people even in her childhood. She agreed that it +was inexplicable, unless by the theory that the future, if it did not +already exist, was at least somehow prefigured. Yet she believed that +this prearrangement of events was not so rigid as to exclude a certain +amount of free will. In other words, one who had been forewarned of a +special result, if a special course were pursued, might escape the +result by pursuing another course. "For as you know," she added, +looking round her at the women who were losing their smiles, "the +impression that I receive is often far from amusing. How can one tell +beforehand? So I consent to do this only because, if what I see is +unpleasant, my warning may possibly help one to evade it." + +A lady objected that prophecy frequently had just the opposite effect. +She referred to the attractive power of anticipation. Then she cited +instances where persons had made every effort to realize even the most +unfortunate predictions, as if hypnotized by their dread into a feeling +that the tragic outcome was inevitable. Of course, on the other hand, +she admitted, a happy prediction might have a tonic effect, heartening +one to pluck victory from apparent failure. Or else, just by setting +in action the magnetic power of expectancy, it might even draw +mysteriously into one's life a wealth or a fame that had seemed +unattainable, a love that had appeared to be impossible. + +When she had voiced this last opinion, the other ladies' faces were +softened by a gentle acquiescence. Their necklaces flashed with the +rising of their bosoms; their heads leaned forward in thought; and the +mingled odors of their perfumes were like exhalations from the +innermost recesses of their hearts. + +By this time, apparently, the proper atmosphere had been established. +Madame Zanidov consented to display her powers. + +All the women drew their chairs closer. + +She took the hand of a young girl whose features were alive with an +invincible gay selfishness. Madame Zanidov hardly glanced at the +other's palm. Closing her almond-shaped eyes, contracting her brows, +she let an unnatural fixed smile settle upon her lips. And now, +indeed, it seemed to them that some of the mystery of Asia had informed +her rigid person, or was escaping, together with a thick, sweet scent, +from the folds of her metallic and barbarically painted gown. + +"Do not be afraid," she said, without opening her eyes. + +Even the girl whose hand she held had ceased to smile. + +There was a long silence, pervaded by the faint harmonies of _Vienna +Carnival_. + +"For you have nothing to fear," the Russian quietly announced at last. +"All that you must pass through--how much confusion and twitter I am +conscious of!--will hardly touch you. Few heartaches, few tears. Some +day you will find yourself in a tawny land of harsh outlines: it is +probably southern Spain. There you will meet a man as lithe as a +panther, his shoulders covered with gold, driving his sword through the +neck of a bull. You are speaking to him at night. He kisses your +hands. But that, too, will soon end in laughter. You will marry three +times, but never be a widow." + +She opened her eyes, to gaze thoughtfully at Lilla. + +They asked Madame Zanidov if she really saw those things. She replied +that her perceptions were at times exactly like pictures. For example, +she had seen the matador's lunge, as a splendid plasticity of violet +silk and tinsel, and then the bright blood gushing from the neck of the +bull. + +In subdued voices they began to discuss "the possession of human beings +by occult forces." One spoke of astounding passages set down through +automatic writing. Another mentioned psychometry. "But psychometrists +got impressions only from the past!" Whereupon they stared at the +Russian. Their eyes, which had been lightly touched with a black +pencil, were no longer sophisticated. Their rouged lips were relaxed +by that superstitious awe which, even in cultivated societies, is ever +waiting to invade the feminine mind. + +Madame Zanidov was still looking at Lilla. + +"Yes," some one proposed. "Try her." + +"She doesn't wish it," Madame Zanidov remarked. + +But after a moment of hesitation Lilla held out her hand. Once more +everybody became silent and intent. The music of Schumann softly +intruded into this stillness. + +"Ah," the Russian murmured, "here is something different." + +With her eyelids pressed together, she began: + +"You are sitting alone. You are writing letters, which will pass +through many hands of different colors. One would think that those +hands would grow warm from touching your letters. Now you are not +writing any more letters. You are wearing a black dress." Madame +Zanidov leaned forward as if striving with her closed eyes to pierce a +sudden opacity. "This is very odd," she declared. "I can see no more +pictures. For there is a darkness which grows larger and larger, which +obscures everything. So now I must discover what this darkness means. +Please be patient for a few moments." + +Some one whispered: + +"It's getting quite uncanny," + +Lilla's senses reached out to clench themselves upon the normality of +her surroundings. But beneath that normality, that familiar solidity, +her innate mysticism, her instinctive habit of foreboding, seemed to +perceive a basis invisible yet similar--a solution, so to speak, from +which material things and events were continually being evolved, the +fluid containing all the elements of the crystalization. And this +foreigner, with her idol-like face and meager, rigid body, her aspect +of long acquaintance with the very essence of materiality, became the +ageless oracle, the rewarder of humanity's incorrigible credulity. So, +like the bejeweled princesses in the Mesopotamian temples, the Latin +ladies who had crept trembling into the Aventine caves, the Renaissance +beauties who, in the huts of witches, had turned whiter than their +ruffs, Lilla remained motionless, her gaze fixed apprehensively on the +clairvoyant. + +The latter said: + +"It will soon be plainer, for the moon is rising. No, what a nuisance! +It is still very dark, because the moonlight is shut out by great +masses of foliage, great tangles of vines. Such a place! Gigantic +thickets, through which wild beasts are prowling, and above them the +trunks of huge trees. Wait, I have found a path. It leads to a +clearing in the midst of this forest. Here I can see much better. +There are human beings here, and a feeling of sadness." + +At a general stir, one of the ladies suggested nervously: + +"Perhaps you'd better----" + +But Madame Zanidov was saying: + +"The people in the clearing are black savages. They sit round a body +that is stretched on the ground and covered with a cloth. Is it the +savages who are so sad? I think not. I cannot describe the one who +lies in the midst of them. The cloth is drawn up to cover even his +face. But I feel that it is some one who has loved you. He is dead. +That is to say, he will be dead when the scene that I am describing is +realized; but now he is alive----" + +Lilla, raising her eyes, saw in the doorway, with Fanny Brassfield, a +tall man, a stranger, whose countenance was aquiline and swarthy. It +was Lawrence Teck, the explorer. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +In the music room some musicians were playing a waltz; but Lilla and +Lawrence Teck were walking on the terrace. + +She said to herself, "This is a dream"; for she had come to believe +that only in dreams did one realize, even in faint counterpart, one's +deepest desires. She stood still. The world--this new world drenched +in an unprecedented quality of moonlight--gradually became distinct. +She gave him, through that veil of silvery beams, a long look of +verification. + +As in his picture he seemed at once rugged and fine, resolute and +gentle. He was very quiet, like one who has willed to be so; but a +certain shyness remained in him, and presently announced itself to her. +Whereupon, remembering that she was beautiful, and that her beauty had +a way of troubling men, Lilla felt her own timidity transmuted into joy. + +"Are your jungles better than this?" she asked. + +"The charm of my jungles overlies a welter of stupid cruelty and deadly +waste. Would it surprise you to know that I should like to see all the +world as nobly ordered as this landscape?" + +She did not grasp the meaning of the words, being too deeply occupied +with seizing upon those syllables, those living tones, and dropping +them one by one into the treasury of her heart. + +Glancing down at the aquatic garden, he remarked: + +"These three basins would please my Mohammedan friends, who like to see +their flowers inverted in still water, like a mirage come true." + +"Yes, no doubt they have their ideals." + +"And often dream of them in very pleasant places." + +He described certain gardens of the East. He made her see nests of +color unexpectedly blooming in the midst of deserts, behind walls of +sundried mud overgrown with Persian roses, and with airy pavilions +mirrored in pools that were seldom darkened by a cloud. Under date +palms the white-robed Arabs sat smoking. From time to time black +slaves brought them coffee flavored with ambergris. After sundown, at +the hour called "maghrib," when the sky was turning green, having +performed their ceremonial ablutions, they prayed. + +"For what?" + +"Behind the formal words? Who knows? For whatever they desired most. +Probably for something that nobody would suspect." + +"And the women?" she ventured, looking at him sidewise. + +In those remote walled towns they still remained invisible. Their +minds, restricted to puerilities, had never grown up. Their bodies +were so lax that their short weekly promenade to the cemetery exhausted +them. Seated on cushions, they spent their time listening to cuckoo +clocks and music boxes, smelling perfumes, putting their jewelry away +in caskets, then bedizening themselves all over again. Their servants, +who had known in childhood the hurly burly of caravanserais and slave +markets, told them of a world where everybody was possessed by a +thousand devils of ingenuity and wit. And those scented ladies with +feeble flesh, hollow eyes, and the brains of parrots, after listening +for a while in vague regret, all at once became bored. Whereupon they +fell to playing parchesi and eating sweetmeats. + +In such sheltered and languid lives Lilla seemed to perceive a +similarity to her own life. Or, at least, she felt that her life, if +he knew it in detail, would seem to him almost as trivial. + +"Poor souls," she said. "But one surely finds others out there," she +persisted, unfurling her large fan of yellow plumes, and looking at it +intently. "White women, for example, the women of the empire builders? +At such meetings, in those far-off places, romance must be almost +inevitable. Each finds in the other an overwhelming congeniality? The +loneliness round about exerts a tremendous persuasion?" + +"Oh, yes," he assented, with a smile. "Especially if the lady smokes a +pipe." + +He told her of an Englishwoman whom he had met in the Masai veldt, +hunting for maneless lions--an amazon in breeches and boots, at the +head of her own safari. Week after week she had led her dark-skinned +retainers through the wilds, cheerily doctoring them in their +sicknesses, herself never ailing or weary. At the charge of a lion she +had withheld her fire till the last possible moment. By night, the +safari encamped, she had sat before her tent in a folding chair, one +knee cocked over the other, a pipe between her teeth, listening to the +gossip of ragged wanderers who had been attracted by the firelight and +the smell of burning fat. + +"I find such women incomprehensible," Lilla declared, with a profound +animosity to that huntress whose body was so strong, whose nerves were +so sound, whose courage had been proved in the face of charging lions, +who took life without a twinge and doubtless gloated over the blood +that she had shed. + +Lawrence Teck, after a moment's struggle with himself, blurted out: + +"I assure you that when we fellows dream of women it's of a different +sort." + +"Oh, of course. Of the one that you've left behind, I suppose." + +Sometimes, he assented presently; in which case the one at home would +be immensely enriched by that wide separation. But it often happened +that such an exile, when no specially congenial woman had given him her +heart, constructed from his imagination an ideal, a vision capable of +brightening the wilderness with the most exquisite charms. Or else he +might find an unattainable ideal ready-made. Thus it was that uncouth +sailors, on long voyages, treasured the photographs of unknown +actresses in fancy costume, as a religious devotee might treasure an +ikon. Or thus a soldier in some Congo fort, while gradually succumbing +to the malefic spell of the encircling forests, yearned toward the +portrait of a princess that he had clipped from an old illustrated +magazine--toward a divinity whom he could never know, but whom he +adored because her nature and life were so different from his. + +"How romantic men are!" she exclaimed, turning away her head. + +He seemed abashed; but he returned: + +"And are women never tempted to renounce that famous practicality of +theirs?" + +She walked on along the terrace. The moonlight intensified her +ethereal aspect; and nothing could have been more emphatic than the +contrast between her seeming fragility and his apparent strength. + +At a recollection she walked more and more slowly, her pace according +with the faltering of her heart beats. But it was in an almost +indifferent tone that she inquired: + +"You are really going back to Africa day after to-morrow?" + +"Yes, everything's settled." + +She paused, staring across the gardens, watching the slow withdrawal +from that scene of its peculiar charm. + +"Why are you returning?" + +He hesitated. Well, he had reason to believe, he said, that not far +north of the Zambesi there was an unmapped, ruined city similar to the +stone city called Zimbabwe, which adventurers from Phoenicia were +supposed to have built four thousand years ago, as a mining town of the +fabled Land of Ophir. Who knew what ancient idols, what Himyarite +inscriptions, what trinkets of gold, might not be found there? + +"How can such a matter be important enough to make you risk your life +amid deadly fevers and insects, venomous reptiles, wild beasts and +wilder men?" + +In that respect the expedition would be tame. The journey into the +interior would consist of undramatic drudgeries and discomforts, of +association with a primitive folk whom he had never failed to make his +friends, of precautions that would confound the reptiles, the fevers, +and the disease-bearing insects. As for the wild beasts, they asked +nothing better than to be left alone. + +"Oh, yes," she assented, trailing her fan along the balustrade, "a hero +must be modest on such points. Yet it seems to me an abnormal vanity +that drives one into those places, just in order that one may say, +'It's I who have found a new pile of ruins, a few scraps of gold, in a +jungle.'" + +After a moment's reflection, he confessed: + +"I gave you my secondary reason, because I thought you might find it +more interesting than my chief one." + +It was true, he said, that he hoped to find a new Zimbabwe there; but +his principal task would be to make a geological survey of some +territory believed to be very rich in certain minerals. He was going +for a group of capitalists who, if he brought back an encouraging +report, would obtain large concessions for exploiting the land. It was +a gamble; the territory in question was virtually unexplored. That +region, moreover, was peopled by a tribe opposed to exploitation, and, +for that matter, even to visits from their white-skinned nominal +rulers. But he had always been successful in dealing with savages; so, +since this was to be as much a diplomatic mission as a geological +survey, he had seemed the one for the task. + +From this explanation she derived the idea that he was not a rich man, +that perhaps until recently he had never thought of money as important, +but that now, for some reason, he had determined that his fortune must +be increased. + +The waltz had ended. The dancers were appearing on the terrace. Some, +descending the staircases between the pools, wandered away through the +gardens. Here and there a match flared up against unnaturally tinted +foliage. Farther on, a spangled dress shimmered beside a fountain, +then, accompanied by a dark shadow, disappeared into a charmille. A +clock in the valley struck eleven, its last vibrations mingling with a +laugh that rose, through the moonbeams, from a marble kiosk enveloped +in flowers. And as the breeze, heavy with the fragrance of many +blossoms, caressed her face, Lilla felt that the gardens must be full +of hidden persons each of whom had at last found the amorous complement. + +At the end of the esplanade, in the light of the French windows, +Cornelius Rysbroek's face appeared, then drifted away. + +"What is that fellow's name?" asked Lawrence Teck. "Just now he wanted +me to take him along to Africa. He seemed quite unhappy, especially +when I had to tell him no. Indeed, he gave me a rather curious +impression of misery and recklessness. What is it? An unfortunate +love affair?" + +"So it's that," she vouchsafed, staring at him intently, "which starts +men off to the wilds?" + +"Sometimes it's that which brings them back from the wilds. I could +give you an instance----" + +They, too, were now descending the steps between the pools. + +The leafy alleys, silvered by the moon, and redolent of flowers that +had been made magical by the alchemy of night, surrounded them. They +came to a spot where a circular wall of foliage, rising behind stone +benches, hemmed in a fountain, above which a marble antique warrior was +lifting in his arms a marble girl, who struggled against that seizure +with a convulsive energy, while her upturned face wore a look of +happiness. Lawrence Teck made the comment: + +"It appears that a rather primitive Greek gentleman has found a nymph +bathing in a pool. If I remember, mortals who tried to capture nymphs +were liable to die." + +"Yes," she assented, staring at the upturned face of the captive. "He +should not have tried." + +"But no doubt it's hard for them to be reasonable at such times, +especially when the person that they try to catch seems so strange, yet +so overwhelmingly congenial--the embodied dream." + +"Then she should have prevented him." + +"Perhaps she tried to, with the usual success when it's a question of +love in opposition to fear." + +Lilla turned aside, drawing a cloud of golden tulle around her slender +shoulders. "Does that acuteness also come to one in the jungle?" She +seated herself upon the nearest stone bench. "What is that story of +yours?" + +"A story of one of those sentimental exiles and the picture of his +ideal." + +The man, he said, had found the picture in a tattered magazine in the +Afrika Hotel at Zanzibar. Of all the thousands of fair faces that he +had seen depicted or in the flesh, it was this face whose peculiar +beauty clutched suddenly at his pulse. But it was not so much the +physical beauty that exerted the spell; nor was it, in this instance, +the attractiveness of the incomprehensible. For the man divined from +his contemplation of those features the nature of the woman, all her +complexities, and even her emotional fragilities. There came to him +the well-known conviction, "It's she that I've always been seeking." +At dawn, smothering under his mosquito net, with the din of Arab and +Hindu, Masai and Swahili voices drifting in through his shutters, his +first waking thought was of her. + +He cut out the picture and kept it in his notebook. + +It was there, against his breast, for many months. It traveled into +still stranger places. It passed, through Gallaland and Abyssinia, +into the country of the Blue Nile spearmen, across Darfur and Wadai, +where the Emir's men rode out in the helmets and chain mail that their +ancestors had copied from the Crusaders. It crossed the Sahara, +skirting the strongholds of the Senussia Brotherhood, penetrating the +wastes patrolled by the Tuaregs, ferocious camel riders whose mouths +were always muffled in black bandages. It went north to the steppes of +the Ziban, from which the tribe of the Ouled Nail scattered their +feather-crowned dancing girls from Ceuta to Suez. And in the Atlas it +entered the hill castles of Kabyles, whose unveiled, fierce-eyed, +red-haired women, drenched with half a dozen perfumes, and clattering +with silver, coral, turquoise and gold, were swifter than snakes with +their knives. + +At last it was yellow and crinkled, that picture of the fair unknown, +which had become for him, in consequence of so many vivid reveries, +like a living companion. + +There were days when he forgot her. Then suddenly, under those desert +constellations, he remembered her with a thrill. Or else, before the +tent of some nomad sheikh, all at once she fluttered from the notebook +to the silken carpet, on which girls with little brown feet had just +been making their cuirasses of gold coins leap to the music of +flageolets and drums. + +And sometimes, though he had never before been superstitious, he felt +that this picture was a sort of amulet. For twice when he was in +danger, and there seemed to be small hope of his survival, there had +come to him the fortifying thought, "Not yet, because I haven't found +her in reality." + +"Just a picture!" Lilla uttered, thinking of another picture that had +been hardly less potent. + +Yes, but when he returned home, after a dozen efforts and +discouragements one day, merely by chance, he saw her alive, breathing. +She whirled past in a limousine. She disappeared into the haze of a +city street in summer. Whereupon he thought, "I was not mistaken; it's +inevitable." He accepted the fatalism of his Arab friends, who believe +that every man's destiny is fixed. + +"He found her again?" + +"Finally. There were difficulties." + +"And they were happy ever after?" + +He did not reply. + +She looked over this magical garden toward the future, which now +appeared like one of those deserts, but bereft of all enchantment, and +covered with clouds that were not positive enough to rain. Then, +gazing at the marble warrior that had seized the marble nymph, she said: + +"I suppose it was you?" + +"Yes," he assented, and pressed her hand to his lips. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +When she had reached her room she stood dazzled by the rays of the +declining moon, and stifled by the sweetness of the night. The clock +in the valley struck one, as if marking the end of a time that had been +interminable in its tediousness and bleakness. In the mirror she saw +her pale brown eyes, skin and tresses invested with a new allurement, a +new ardor. + +His face sprang out before her--against the moonlit wall, in the +glazing of the pictures, on the dial of the clock. She saw his gray +eyes surrounded by the fine wrinkles of those who have peered across +glaring sands, and his black eyebrows united above his aquiline nose. +The qualities that made him her antithesis redoubled his worth; and the +prestige of romance clung round his head like a nimbus. + +As she moved to and fro, the moonbeams followed her and embraced her; +they glorified her slender figure whose reflections she saw with a new +pride. The pale rays passed through her bosom, like a current from the +fabled regions of felicity. They renewed in her breast that agitation +as if all her fibers were emerging from inertia into the fullness of +life. + +She lay on her bed wide eyed, as if floating in a tepid sea, buoyed up +by happiness and wonder. + +Then she sat upright, stricken with terror. She had seen a clearing in +a jungle, and black savages seated round a body covered over with a +cloth. For a moment she thought that she had seen Madame Zanidov also, +trailing her barbaric gown away through a shaft of moonlight. + + + + +CHAPTER X + +It was mid-afternoon when Lilla emerged from her room. + +A servant informed her that "everybody" was motoring or playing golf. +She entered the library, lustrous with its rows of books and its +deep-toned paintings hung against wooden panels. Between half-drawn +window curtains passed rays of sunshine that came to rest upon vases of +flowers arranged in porcelain bowls; but the corners of the room were +steeped in shadows. A man who had been sitting on a couch amid these +shadows rose to his feet. + +She sought the gloom beyond the fireplace, in order that her changed +face might not betray her. But even here her paleness was emphasized, +and her eyes, with faint purple streaks below them, took on a look of +deeper anxiety. Her features began to quiver as if her soul were +revealing itself beneath a transparent mask. + +"What has happened?" + +She managed to reply: + +"A great mistake. Because that picture seemed congenial to you in +those lonely places you thought that the original must be the same? +You were wrong. Physically and temperamentally we belong to different +worlds. You couldn't rest in mine, and I couldn't enter yours. If you +knew me," she added, in a hushed voice, "you'd find me contemptible, in +all my weaknesses." She lowered her head, then, raising her eyes, +which were full of fear, besought him, "Tear it out of your heart! +Destroy it!" + +"There, it's done. How easy it was to obey you!" + +And they stood face to face in a pallor that was like a scintillation +of white-hot metal, both knowing that their lips, though they uttered +first a thousand similar phrases, would presently be united. + +Then he came close, catching in his strong grasp her writhing hands. +But she stopped him with a look like a flashing sword--a look as +poignant as though they had been lovers for years and now must love no +longer. And so, in fact, they had been, heart drawn to heart by a +strange likeness of accidental or of fatal events, one longing groping +through space toward another longing. Apart, just by aid of their +imaginations, they had progressed already from indefinite to precise +emotions, from vague to fixed visions, each attaining in thought a +consummation that mocked this present struggle. And this profound +mutual intimacy, an accomplished fact in the realm of mind, was +suddenly projected into the physical atmosphere, so that the glances of +these two, who had just now met each other, clashed in an almost +terrible intimacy, as though the question were not "Never," but "Never +again." + +Wrenching her hands away, she made a despairing gesture. + +"Tear it out," she repeated. "It's only by doing so that you can +please me." + +"Will you help me to kill it? Will you lend a hand by making your +beauty hideous, your nature repulsive? Come and take a drive with me. +Just an hour or two. How long do you need to destroy it?" + +"Ah," she breathed, closing her eyes in pain. + +In a broad-brimmed hat that matched her muslin gown she went down the +steps to his car. The high, gray walls of the house disappeared behind +a rush of trees; the conical turret roofs of slate sank quickly away. + +From the terrace Cornelius Rysbroek stared at the distant gateway +through which they had vanished. + +The car rushed through the countryside. The orderly fields stretched +away toward gentle slopes on which cows were grazing. Here and there a +village abruptly spread out its roofs, which rotated on the axis of a +spire. All the windows gave back the light of late afternoon; and far +off, against a hollow between two hills, like wine in a cup, there was +a ruddy flash of water. It was the Sound; and beyond the Sound lay the +sea. + +A cloud covered the setting sun. + +"So you pretend to begrudge me this perfected feeling, this +verification, that I'll carry back with me!" + +He told her that over there he would build a perfect similacrum of her +out of his thoughts, as an enchanter might form at will in the +twinkling of an eye the likeness of some one who was far away. "You +shall even move and speak," he predicted, "and I'll make your glances +and your words whatever I want them to be. Look out for yourself! +That is sorcery. I shall have taken a part of you away from yourself, +across the ocean, to Africa where the forests are full of magicians. +Over here you'll no longer be complete. You'll turn your eyes +southeast with a sense of missing something from your heart." + +He gazed ahead at the road that the car was devouring with an endless +purr of triumph. He pursued his fancy, while the car pursued the +glimmer of the Sound, which was escaping amid the first thin veils of +the twilight. + +He promised that she, to whom everything uncouth and primitive was +repugnant, would smile beside him in those equatorial tangles, or, at +any rate, that she would do so in his dream of her. In the camp +surrounded by a hedge of thorns, in the firelight flickering on the +shoulder blades and teeth of the negroes, the wraith of her living self +would sit at his side, radiant in the dress that she had worn last +night. "Real as you'll seem to me," he said, "I sha'n't have to worry +about the striped mosquitoes stinging you on the shoulders; and when we +others go plodding along, no helmet or terai need hide that hair of +yours. Since you'll be made of my thoughts, you'll be invulnerable. +You'll catch up your little train to run across a field of ferns in +pursuit of some small, inquisitive wild beast. When the tribes make +dances for us, they won't know that a beautiful white lady, in a golden +decolleté gown, is seated before them, as happy as if that hullabaloo +were a ballet by Stravinsky." + +In the twilight, by a road hemmed in with sumac, they came to a small, +rustic restaurant, which perched on a cliff above the waters of the +Sound. An old waiter led them between empty tables to a veranda +overlooking the waves. He seated them by the railing, along which +trailed a honeysuckle vine. + +They had come for tea or for dinner? + +"Dinner!" exclaimed Lawrence. "Here, take this, and carry your sane +and practical face away. Wait, you might bring us some tea." He +reached across the table to feel her hand, which was as cold as ice. +"I've frozen you!" + +"No," she returned, almost inaudibly. + +The odor of the honeysuckle was mingled with the smell of the sea. The +old waiter came and departed like a shade. They were alone on the +veranda, above the waves over which the rising moon had just thrown a +silver net. + +But it was a beam of light from the doorway that illuminated the angles +of his face, at which she looked with a sensation of faintness. She +bent her neck; her hat brim concealed her eyes. + +By this time to-morrow! + +"Let me hear your voice," he pleaded. "At least I'll fill my mind with +those tones; and when I'm alone I can put them together into the words, +'I love you.'" + +As if conjured up by this utterance, a breeze swept over them, full of +the fragrance of honeysuckle and the acridity of the sea, like the +immense, soft breath with which nature blows upon the kindled human +heart, fanning it into a sudden conflagration. And the rustling +of the vines, together with the murmur of the water, expanded into +a sigh which seemed to issue from the multitude of lovers who +somewhere--everywhere--at that moment, were swaying toward the +irresistible embrace; and from the innumerable flowers of the earth, in +the act of relinquishing the sweetness beloved by bees; and, indeed, +from that whole spread of mortal consciousness which nature, moved by a +supreme necessity, has subjected to this world-wide tyranny. + +She lifted her head as if striving to rise above that smothering flood, +and in the moonlight her face was revealed to him--her eyes humid, her +lips twisted into an unprecedented shape, her whole aspect, in its +startling maturity, like that of the immortal goddess whose genius and +nature had suddenly possessed this flesh and blood. + +Rising, she turned away in a movement of denial that came too late. He +followed her to the end of the veranda; and there at last--or, as it +seemed to them, again--he took her in his arms. For an instant her +averted face imitated the marble nymph's face, her slender and flexible +body the nymph's struggling body, before she became limp at his kiss. + +In the doorway of the dining room she paused to look back at the +veranda. She wanted to remember every arabesque that the vines were +tracing in silhouette against the moonlit sea; but she could not see +anything distinctly. As she left the restaurant some one presented her +with a little bunch of flowers. + +It was her wedding bouquet. + +They were married in a village rectory. The minister, peering over his +horn-rimmed spectacles, stood before a mantelpiece on which a black +marble clock was flanked by clusters of wax fruit under glass. + +Lilla borrowed a cloak from the minister's wife, and Lawrence drove +straight to New York. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +She appeared in the doorway of the living room wearing a white +burnoose, her pale brown hair caught up in a loose knot, her feet +thrust into yellow Moorish slippers much too large for her. In the +thin morning sunlight Lawrence, dressed for his journey, was locking a +metal trunk. Lilla sat down and fixed her eyes on the clock. + +The furniture of the living room, gathered from various parts of the +Mohammedan world, was carved and inlaid. In the corners long-barreled +muskets, with stocks of mother of pearl, flanked cabinets full of +brittle copies of the Koran, witch doctors' switches, and outlandish +fetishes. Above these objects there dangled from the molding the +cagelike silver head armor of the Wadai cavalry horses, the tassels of +Algerian marriage palanquins, oval shields of bullock-hide and bucklers +of hammered brass, crude drums and harps from Uganda. On the four +walls, against pieces of reddish bark cloth, gleamed savage weapons +arranged in circular trophies--the war spears of the Wanandi, the +swords of the Masai, the bows and poisoned arrows of the Wakamba, +besides jeweled yataghans, scimitars with gilded hilts, and damascened +pistols. Over the bookcases--which were crammed full of heavy volumes, +portfolios, and maps--appeared framed photographs; among the likenesses +of Europeans in duck tunics one saw the visages of Egyptians, Persians, +and Arabs, or some ghastly black apparition daubed with white paint and +crowned with a shako of squirrel fur and plumes. + +In the air there was a faint odor of skins, dried herbs, sandalwood, +and camphor. But on the center table, in a large African gourd that +had been polished till it looked like porcelain, stood the little +bouquet that some one had presented to her at the restaurant. + +These flowers, because neither he nor she had thought to give them +water, were already faded. + +"Have you telephoned to the Brassfields?" + +"Yes," she said, with a wan smile, "and caused quite a sensation." + +A small, wiry, middle-aged man, with an honest, lantern-jawed face, +entered the living room bearing a breakfast tray. After one glance, +keeping his eyes cast down, he bowed respectfully. + +He was Parr, Lawrence Teck's valet in America and right-hand man in +Africa. + +With her head bent forward, she stared at some petals that had fallen +from the gourd. Her neck rose from the white burnoose in a curve of +the palest amber; her delicate lips were parted; her loosened tresses +were filled with the feeble sunshine. She seemed to symbolize quiet. +But when the telephone bell rang she started violently. + +It was a call from Long Island, where Aunt Althea Balbian was +summering. The servants had learned of Lilla's whereabouts from the +Brassfields. Aunt Althea had fallen seriously ill in the night. + +Parr showed his downcast eyelids and lantern jaws in the doorway. + +"A maid is here from madam's house downtown with a steamer trunk and +three suitcases." + +"Tell her to take them back," Lilla said in a muffled voice. + +She had planned to go as far as London with Lawrence. + +She went to a bookcase, knelt down, and scanned the titles of the books. + +"I shall read these," she murmured. "I shall take them home with me, +stack by stack, and read them all. At night I'll read the ones that +are worn from your hands, the dog-eared ones full of pencil marks. +Show me those that you care for most. Have you any little book that's +gone with you everywhere, that's shabby from your constant use? I want +to keep it in my handbag in the daytime and under my pillow at night." + +He turned away to the window. She sat on her heels before the +bookcase, the white folds of the burnoose flowing out round her, her +fragile hands in her lap, her soft palms upturned, her fluffy hair +trailing down to frame her sad face. + +She continued: + +"Don't forget to leave me the key. There will always be flowers here; +but the moment they fade fresh ones will take their place. What chair +do you like to sit in? On winter nights I'll come here, and draw your +favorite chair toward the fire, and sit opposite. I won't let these +cruel weapons, these hideous painted faces, frighten me. I'll tell +myself that nothing can prevent us from being together again. Yes," +she declared, in a deadened voice, "my thoughts are going to form armor +round you. Just wait! When you're alone out there, and everything's +silent, you'll wonder what it is that makes the air round you electric. +It will be my thoughts of you." + +The clock struck the hour. She rose; but at the doorway she paused, +drooping and tremulous, so that he could take her in his arms again. +Her head sank back; her curling lashes veiled her eyes, and a sob, +swelling her throat, escaped through her quivering lips. Her knees +bent, and with a look of anguish she cried distractedly: + +"Good-by! Good-by!" + +She believed that her heart had stopped beating. + +She was in the bedroom, lying on the couch spread over with a leopard +skin. He was sitting beside her. His face expressed alarm; for she +shivered convulsively, turning her head from side to side, and biting +her lips. He urged her to have courage. + +"Courage! When I shall never see you again?" + +"What an idea!" + +She touched his dark cheek with her fingers on which the nails were +like gems. Her eyes, extraordinarily enlarged, and swimming in a +mournful tenderness, regarded his face, as if striving to impress it +forever upon her mind. + +"Give it up," she pleaded once more. "Don't scorn my intuition." + +"It's necessary," he said. "More so now than ever." + +"Money! As if there were no other way! And even if there weren't----" + +Parr knocked on the door. + +"Shall I call the taxi, sir?" + +"Yes." + +Lying motionless, staring at the ceiling, she faltered: + +"All right. I'll dress." + +But she could hardly drag herself to her feet. + +As she pinned on her hat she longed for a veil, such a heavily figured +veil as she had put on when setting out to the fortune teller's, who +had said, "A great love is in store for you." "How dreadfully I look! +This is the picture of me that he must take away with him." She +entered the living room as Parr and the taxi driver were carrying out +the valises. She took a flower from the gourd. A petal fell off; and +the taxi driver, brushing past her, ground it into the rug. + +In the outer corridor, which she did not remember having passed through +last night, she held out her hand. Lawrence gave her the key; she +slipped it down the neck of her muslin frock, and it struck a chill +through her bosom. + +When the ship had carried him away she returned uptown and took a train +for Long Island. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +Aunt Althea lay in a four-post bed near a window through which she +might see the sunshine resting on the small Italian garden. Her +colorless face was stamped with a look of almost infantile +acquiescence, though it was only three days since she had sat out there +in the garden, thinking: + +"When Lilla comes back I'll ask her whether she wouldn't like a little +run over to Rome, before the season sets in." + +The sick woman tell asleep. Her hair appeared grayer, her skin more +nearly transparent, than ordinarily. All her various ardors had not +slipped away from her without leaving on her countenance the marks of +their transmutation, a peculiar nobility that owed half its fineness to +unacknowledged suffering. + +In the night the nurse decided to wake the physician, who was dozing in +one of the guest rooms. Aunt Althea had conquered time, had regained +her "beloved Europe." Somewhere in the New York house there was a +photograph of her, taken in her twenty-fifth year. She, too, it +seemed, had once been charming, full of young grace and eager +expectancy. And now she was in her twenty-fifth year again, and +driving through Rome to the English cemetery. She reached it. She met +some one there, to whom she spoke in Italian. It was a rendezvous of +lovers. And Lilla heard the sigh: + +"Don't go. Don't smile at my intuition----" + +Later, after seeming to listen intently, Aunt Althea cried: + +"What are they calling? All massacred at Adowa!" She uttered a moan, +"I knew it!" + +To the doctor's surprise she lived through the following day. By +evening everybody had become hopeful of her recovery. Aunt Althea, +turning her faded, aristocratic head on the pillow, said: + +"You must go and rest, Lilla. I shall be all right now. How badly you +look! How I must have worried you! They shouldn't have spoiled your +party. You see it wasn't worth while." + +She passed away at dawn. + +It was a morning of unusual brightness. A high wind caught up and +scattered broadcast the petals from the Italian garden, as though that +spot had served its only purpose. Now and then a swift cloud cast a +shadow over the landscape, then passed on, leaving everything as +brilliant as before. The boughs of the trees tapped urgently against +the windowpanes, calling attention to the sparkling clarity of space. +And Lilla, sitting alone in her room, wondered, "Will she meet him out +there? Does fate finally relent? Or are those moments that she had +with him--so few, while others are allowed so many!--supposed to be +enough happiness for her?" + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +For a while Lilla remained in the house on Long Island. + +She sat in the pergola holding on her lap a closed book, between the +pages of which she kept Lawrence's cablegrams and letters from London. +Toward sunset she rose and went down across the meadow to the brook, +where some willows leaned over the water. As the twilight gathered, a +smell of wood smoke made her think of camp fires; and casting a look +around her at the suave landscape she tried to picture the jungle. + +Then, when she recalled their brief hours together, a filmy curtain +appeared to ascend before her eyes; and that relationship, which +because of her profound, psychic agitation had been almost dreamlike +while in progress, assumed a perfect clarity, a new value. And now, +with the dissipation of that haze cast over all her senses by his +nearness, she perceived him, himself, far more distinctly than when he +had been with her. "Ah, what was I thinking of to let him go!" She +felt that another woman, not cursed with her ineptitude in that crisis, +would have held him back. + +"But you were cruel enough not to give up going of your own accord," +she sighed in the twilight. And, turning wearily back toward the +house, she reflected that if she had been fatally weak he had been +fatally strong, and that, after all, those two antithetical defects +were strangely similar. + +When she was most gloomy, Fanny Brassfield came to visit her for a few +days. + +That vigorous blonde woman, ruddy from golf and thin from horseback +riding, with calm nerves and an endless fund of gossip, brought a vital +thrill into the Long Island house. Yet to Lilla this very vigor was +oppressive instead of tonic; and resentment came over her as she +scrutinized her friend's satirical face, which seemed to typify all the +women who progressed successfully through life, as if their natures, +victoriously adamantine, had bestowed upon them this brilliant hardness +of complexion, this sophisticated, frosty, conquering glance. Lucky +women, who were so emphatically of the same essence as the phenomena +round them, who accepted life with the simplicity of natural creatures, +who never saw, beneath the pageantry of these appearances, a peeping +horror that cast one down from joy to despair! Even death seemed +natural to them, apparently, so long as they themselves escaped its +touch. + +"One must resign oneself to all these things," said Fanny, in her +clear, loud voice. "One must learn to rise above them. These periods +of mourning are really a mistake. All this sitting still, dressed in +black! One takes medicine when one's ill. A dose of pleasure ought to +be the prescription when one's sad." + +She added that physical exercise was also very important. + +In a striped woolen sports suit, a felt hat turned over one ear and a +walking stick in her hand, Fanny Brassfield presented herself at +Lilla's bedside while the garden was still full of mist. She +prescribed, on this occasion, a walk before breakfast. + +They trudged through bypaths where the bushes were gemmed with dew. +From a wooded hilltop they saw, gliding along the highway, the cars of +men who were bound for their safe occupations in the city. + +Lilla regained the house exhausted, pale from fatigue, while Fanny +Brassfield seemed bursting with energy. + +In the evening time began to hang rather heavily for Fanny. She +persuaded Lilla to play the piano for her. Then she glanced over the +books in which the paragraphs were shortest, ran through a few +magazines, kicked off her slippers, put her feet on a stool, lighted a +cigarette, and fell back upon gossip. Madame Zanidov was now visiting +in Maine. Cornelius Rysbroek had gone to Mexico. + +"Mexico! Aren't things rather unsettled there?" + +"Perhaps he's gone where things are unsettled because everything is too +much settled here," replied Fanny, with her satirical smile. + +"But Cornie!" + +"Oh," said Fanny, luxuriously stretching herself like a cat that needs +exercise, "if one of these timid souls is hit hard enough, there's no +telling what he'll do." + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +Before the end of summer Lilla returned to the house on lower Fifth +Avenue. + +In the hall paved with black and white tiles, the chasteness of the +ivory-colored wainscot set off two stately consoles, on which lamps +with cylindrical shades of painted parchment were reflected in antique +mirrors. The drawing-room furniture, from the eighteenth century, +displayed its discreet elegance against the sage green walls and the +formal folds of the mulberry-colored curtains; while over the chimney +piece, which was ornamented with three vases of the Renaissance in +silver gilt, a painting by Bronzino focused the gaze upon a triumph of +romance over formality. This painting, in this room, was like a +gesture of Aunt Althea's real self. + +"How well she kept her secret," Lilla thought "She was rather heroic, +it seems." + +And she felt as surprised a sadness as though she were the first who +had not quite appreciated the departed. + +"The departed!" + +The prophecy of Madame Zanidov--"that incredible balderdash!"--even +woke her in the night. + +She discovered the date of Lawrence's birth, then went to a woman with +birdlike eyes, who was seated behind a table on which stood some little +Hindu idols and a vase of gilded lotus buds. The astrologer, when she +had made some marks on a sheet of paper, and had added up some figures, +confessed that "these next few months were going to be a critical time +for him." "You see, here are Saturn and Uranus----" + +Emerging from the sanctum, Lilla felt the pavement move beneath her +feet. + +Presently she sought out the teachers of New Thought, whose faces were +as serene as though they had found a talisman by which death itself +might be vanquished. They calmed her with benignant smiles, then +informed her that fear was as potent in bringing about disaster as +optimism was in preventing it. In those consultation rooms, where the +walls were dotted--rather unnecessarily, it seemed to Lilla--with +mottoes exhorting her to love, they gave her the recipe in gentle +voices that were nearly lyrical. But gradually she got the idea that +they were speaking to her in a foreign language. Drowsiness assailed +her, as though a malignant power, determined that she should not gain +this peace, had cast over her a spell of mental lethargy. + +Nevertheless, she persisted. In the bookshops the customers turned to +regard this tall beauty clad in black, who, with a mournful eagerness, +leaned over the counters devoted to "inspirational literature." + +One rainy afternoon she threw those books aside and went to church. + +Here was an awesomeness appropriate to a mortal conception of God--a +distant glitter of candles beyond colossal pillars, a fragrance of +stale incense, a silence in which the shadowy crimson of banners, +suspended high in the nave, was like a soft blaring of celestial +trumpets. Exaltation took hold of her as she recalled the miracles of +orthodox faith and the eternal promise of compassion. + +She prayed for a long while, lost in the sweetness of the incense, her +heart quivering from the memory of her few hours of love. + +Whenever she received a letter from him she tore open the envelope with +one movement, and pressed against her face those crackling sheets of +paper that seemed to exhale the odor of a far-off land. He had written +it in the wilds, before his tent, while a naked black messenger stood +waiting. The letter sealed, the messenger had stuck it into a split +wand, and straightway had set off at a trot toward the coast. + +Now she wanted to know precisely what his surroundings looked like. +When she had pored over the map she collected all the books about that +region. + +She was surprised to find it impregnated with romance. + +It was the "Eldorado" of remote antiquity. Thither, in the dawn of +recorded history, had gone the Phoenician galleys, full of hook-nosed +men in purple and brass, their beards scented with spikenard. From the +mining towns that they built in the jungle, surrounded by cyclopean +walls and adorned with grotesque stone images, came the stores of gold +with which the Sidonians enriched King Solomon. To-day all those +workings were apparently exhausted. The Zimbabwe--the cities of +stone--had crumbled; the jungle had closed in; and in that wilderness +only a heap of rubble, or the choked mouth of a pit, remained here and +there to mark the source of the metal that had gilded the temple at +Jerusalem, and the Semitic shrines to Baal and Astoreth. + +But a new letter told her that he had crossed the Zambesi. + +He had gone into a land almost wholly unexplored by its present +claimants, full of fever-breeding marshes, barren mountain gorges, and +great forests. The inhabitants were an unconquered race of warriors +called the Mambava, fiercer than the lions and leopards about them, +hostile to strangers, and given to uncanny customs. They worshipped +among other things--perhaps in consequence of the old Phoenician +occupation--the moon. At certain periods of the year their forests +thundered with the music of drums; their towns were deserted except for +the women and children. Then the stranger who had ventured into their +country might see, from his hiding place, hordes of black men moving to +a secret rendezvous, their painted faces framed in monkey hair, their +limbs covered with amulets, their shields rising in time to an +interminable chanting in a minor key. + +Sometimes, in the corridor outside the door of Lawrence's rooms, she +encountered a small, dapper young man with an inquisitive face, who +lived on the floor above. He usually carried under his arm a leather +portfolio. Nothing could have been more interested than his look when +he passed this sad-eyed woman in mourning, whose identity and story he +had learned from the janitor. + +When she had shut the living-room door behind her, for a moment she +closed her eyes in order that she might not see the weapons on the +walls. Then she kindled the fire. The blazing logs sent over her a +wave of heat; but she shivered while listening to the sound of sleet on +the glass. + +"He might be here with me. We might have felt together the security +and peace of this warm room, and laughed at the storm outside." + +One evening she ripped from their frames the photographs of savages +smeared with white paint and crowned with fur and feathers. She threw +them into the fire. As the flames consumed them, she leaned, forward +like those who try to annihilate their enemies by destroying their +likenesses. + +For a long while she sat beside the empty chair, shading her eyes from +the blaze with a translucent hand. But suddenly she stood up, tense +and quaking. Her dilated eyes were fixed upon a point in space, from +which an overwhelming impression had rushed in upon her--a flood of +distant emotion, a sort of voiceless cry, in a flash traversing half +the earth and unerringly reaching her. + +Little by little her nerves and muscles relaxed. Moving as though her +limbs were weighted with lead, after carefully drawing the fire screen +in front of the glowing embers, she put on her black toque, her long +coat of black fur and her black gloves. + +As she crossed the sidewalk to her car, an eddy of wind raised up +before her, head high, a whirl of snowflakes that resembled a wraith +for one moment, before it was whipped away into the darkness. + + + + +PART TWO + + +CHAPTER XV + +A month after that stormy night when Lilla had felt the impact of some +far-off gush of feeling, the newspapers published a despatch reporting +the death of Lawrence Teck at the hands of savages. Four months +passed, however, before Lilla received a letter from Parr, the valet. + +It had happened in the country of the Mambava. That tribe, despite +their well-known animosity to strangers, had not been hostile to +Lawrence. Indeed, he had won the friendship of their king. Yet it was +in the king's stronghold that the tragedy had happened. + +There had been a beer dance, a disorderly festival ending in a clash +between the Mambava warriors and Lawrence's camp police. Almost +without warning the rifles had cracked, the spears had begun to fly. +Lawrence, throwing himself between the parties, had been among the +first to fall. Then a frenzy had seized the savages; a panic, the +intruders. It had been a massacre--a headlong flight amid the Mambava +forests, through which Parr, himself badly wounded, and half the time +unconscious, had been dragged by five Mohammedan survivors. They had +gained an outpost fort where, ever since, Parr had lain hovering +between life and death, not only crippled by his wounds, but also +stricken with the black-water fever. Then, at last, he had gathered +strength enough to scrawl these lines. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + +Her friends were surprised that she "took it as well as she did." +Considering her emotional legacy, they had expected a collapse. On the +contrary she remained, as it seemed, almost passionless. She did not +show even that desire for sympathy which is characteristic of +hysterical natures. + +Fanny Brassfield noticed presently, however, that Lilla could no longer +look at negroes without turning pale, that her antipathy to certain +colors, sounds, and perfumes had increased, and that sometimes she +appeared to be listening to a voice inaudible to others. + +It was the voice of her thoughts, which she heard, now and then, just +as if some one were whispering in her ear. + +She became subject to reveries in which there were frequent lapses from +all mental function. Then, of a sudden, she was filled with a longing +for movement. + +She went abroad alone, and settled herself in a villa on the French +Riviera. + +Every morning there appeared on the terrace of a neighboring villa a +young Frenchwoman in a white straw hat and a white dress, carrying an +ebony cane, and followed by a brown spaniel. In the evening the +stranger might be seen pacing behind the marble urns in a gown of gold +and silver lace, or perhaps in a black dress spotted with large +medallions of pearl and turquoise. A tall man walked by her side; and +when their silhouettes stood out against the luminous sea there came to +Lilla, with the interminable odor of roses, a soft laugh of happiness. + +The sound floated across a gulf as wide as that which separates one +world from another. + +As for Lilla, her world lay in the past; and all this semitropical +luxuriance of nature, enriched and complicated by an insatiable +mankind, was lost in such mistiness as had risen round her in +childhood--when her world had seemed to lie in the future. Sometimes +those past events, from her continual rehearsal of them, attained +recreation; the precious scenes surrounded her visibly and almost +tangibly; and the dark garden of the villa became the other garden, the +threshold of love. Then she realized that this was one more delusion +due to her abnormal state of mind. In her terror she reached out +through the shadows to grasp at something that might help her to regain +contact with reality. She clutched a rose, and as she crushed its +sweetness to her face its thorn pierced her lip. She burst into a fit +of crying and laughing at this reassurance--this proof that there +existed, after all, a material world, of beauty inextricably mingled +with despair. + +But loneliness remained. + +She expected no abatement of this loneliness; for he was gone after +showing her that it was he, of a worldful of men, for whom she had been +waiting. And now, more and more, her objective mind was filled with +hitherto unsuspected memories of him, a thousand fragmentary +recollections that she fitted together into an image more vivid than +the man himself had been. This image, gilded by layer after layer of +pathetic thoughts, enlarged by the continuous enhancement of his value, +gradually assumed an heroic magnitude, and became more splendid than a +statue in a temple. So now it was no longer a man that she +contemplated in her reveries, but a sort of god whose stubbornness had +destroyed her. + +In those nightmares of hers, however, he was still a man, subject to +mortal tragedy. Waking with a cry, she discerned, in the act of fading +away against the curtains, the dead-white, wedge-shaped face of Anna +Zanidov. + +One day she closed the villa and went swiftly to Lausanne. + +She entered a bright consulting room where there rose to meet her, from +behind a desk, a calm-looking man with a bushy red and white beard. +His gaze took in, in a flash, her widow's weeds, her tall, slim person, +her delicate, pale brown face, her features composed and yet a trifle +wild, her whole effect of elegance and singularity. + +"I feel as if I am going mad," she blurted out, by way of greeting. + +The famous physician smoothed his beard reflectively. + +"There is a story, perhaps?" + +And when she had told him everything, he remarked, "I will make out for +you a series of appointments." + +"The cause will remain," she returned. + +"But I shall change your thoughts about the cause," he said paternally. + +"No!" she exclaimed, in a voice vibrant with apprehension. For she +would have gone on risking this madness that she feared, rather than +let him efface from her conscious thoughts, or even dim, one +recollection of Lawrence. + +He understood. Casting down his eyes, he reflected: + +"Apparently this charming person has never been told how extreme an +example she is of our poor civilisées. For the sake of a dead man she +is willing, after all, to commit slow suicide. If she continues to +nurse this grief which is indissoluble from her love, with her +predispositions she will go the usual way, probably ending in a psychic +collapse. Ah, yes, if she had not come to me she would just have +drifted on and on into the devil knows what. As it is, I don't fancy +that I could make her quite unemotional; but that grief--there's no +reason why she should go through life under that additional burden! +She is exquisite, young, sure of many happy years with some one else, +if she is cured of this preoccupation with that fellow who is gone. +Shall I ask permission to try to do her that favor?" + +The celebrated specialist, raising his eyes, said benevolently to Lilla: + +"At least, madam, you have no objection to my stopping those nightmares +of yours?" + +Every day, for three weeks, she returned to the consultation room, sat +down in a deep leather chair, fixed her eyes on a bright metal ball, +and fell asleep. The famous physician found her, as he had expected, +extremely impressionable. On waking, she had no objective recollection +of what had been said to her. + +But the dreams ceased to torment her. + +With a strange, almost unprecedented feeling of peace she traveled down +to Lake Como. Here she dwelt in a house smothered in flowers, on a +promontory that was almost an island. + +In the morning she walked in the garden, drenched in sunshine, +enveloped in the silence of the lake, beyond which she saw, far away, +other villas nestling at the bases of the mountains. A sensation of +humility came to her. Amid that great panorama of blue and gold she +seemed to perceive subtle traces of a beneficent divinity. The +sunshine veiled the hawks that were soaring through the sky in quest of +weaker birds; the waters of the lake concealed the fishes that were +devouring one another; and when, with a timid and pleading naïveté, she +paused before a rosebush, she did not see, behind those petals, the +spiders spinning their traps. + +As she returned toward the house, there stole over her a pleasant +weakness, a childlike and tremulous trust; and she felt the soft air +more keenly, smelled more delicate fragrances, heard a multitude of +infinitesimal sounds that had not reached her ears a moment ago. + +She sat in a high-ceiled, white-walled room with French windows opening +on a terrace where _olea fragans_ blossoms expanded round the base of a +statue by Canova. At last a feeling of incompleteness penetrated her +languor. She rose to pace the mosaic floor on which appeared a design +of mermaids and tritons. + +"What shall I do now? I must fill my life with something. I must find +some way to occupy my mind." + +She thought of mastering another language; for like many persons of +similar temperament she found the learning of foreign tongues a simple +matter. But what language? Already she knew French, Italian, and +German. Russian, then? + +She recoiled from that thought, associated as it was with Anna Zanidov. + +Sitting down at the piano, she played Chopin. + +Her interpretation of the piece was good, but not eloquent. The spirit +that she had heard certain musicians put into it was lacking. She +remembered how differently even old Brantome, the expatriated French +critic, had expressed these phrases. She wondered why, with her +immense passion for music, she had never been able to translate its +profoundest spirit. + +And she recalled an old longing of hers to compose some musical +masterpiece. For that purpose she had faithfully studied harmony, +counterpoint, fugue, and musical form, had steeped herself in the works +of the masters from Palestrina to Stravinsky. Yet her own creative +efforts had ended in platitudes. Was it true that women, supposed to +be more emotional than men, were incapable of employing successfully +the most intense medium for the revealment of emotion? + +"What am I good for? Ah, what shall I do with my life?" + +Late in the afternoon a boatman rowed her out on the lake. At twilight +the mauve shadows on the cliffs combined with the pallor of the Alps to +form round her a setting full of poetry and pathos. She thought how +perfectly these things might once have enclosed her in the scenery of +love--yet now, for some reason, they were incapable of composing with a +proper vividness the scenery of grief. + +She returned to the villa to find visitors, women whom she had known in +girlhood, who had married members of the Italian nobility, and now were +sojourning in the neighborhood. They brought men with them, and +sometimes stayed to dinner. + +One night, as she leaned against the balustrade of the terrace, +watching the strings of lights across the lake, a young Roman, tall, +dark and aquiline, handsome and strong, laid his hand upon hers. + +"It is a world made for happiness," he breathed. + +The others, in the white-walled room now mellow from lamplight, were +clustered round the piano, and one of them was singing a song by Tosti. +Without drawing away her hand, Lilla returned: + +"Happiness. Yes, tell me what it consists in." + +"In the glory of life and love. In the splendors of this world and our +acceptance of them--we who are this world's strange, sensitive +culmination. Not to question, but to feel, with these feelings of ours +that a thousand generations have made so fine, so complex. To be +natural in the heart of nature." + +She smiled mournfully: + +"You realists! And are these things that you celebrate reality? They +fade and die----" + +"But while they live they live," he cried low, with an accent of +austere passion, and seized her in his arms. + +For a moment she did not move. She let herself feel that contact, that +strength and fervor, with a nearly analytical attentiveness, with, a +melancholy curiosity. But of a sudden she pushed him from her with a +surprising strength, her heart beating wildly. She stared at him in +amazement, then entered the house. + +A fortnight later she returned to New York. + +Winter was imminent; but few of her friends had yet appeared in town. +One day on Fifth Avenue, however, she met old Brantome, the critic, who +invited her to an afternoon of music at his apartment. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + +In Brantome's living room the book shelves rose to the ceiling; between +them the spaces on the walls were covered with the mementoes of a long +life. On the tables stood bowls of flowers, stacks of musical scores, +trays of wineglasses, cigarette boxes that had once been jewel cases, +half-empty teacups, and the gold purses or jet handbags of women who +reclined in the deep chairs with their faces turned toward the piano. + +Men leaned smoking in the heavily curtained embrasures of the windows, +their foreheads lowered, their eyebrows casting over their eyes the +shadows as if of a profound fatigue. Beside the hall door loomed the +white mane of Brantome, who turned, at an inflow of artificial light, +to greet the small Italian woman that had recently become a prima donna. + +And presently this song bird warbled for her comrades of the arts, as +she would have done in no other company. The air shook from her agile +cadenzas. A last, long trill, high and pure, died away vibrating in +the vases of iridescent glass. + +Then some one persuaded Brantome to play a piece of Schumann's. And +once more Lilla heard _Vienna Carnival_. + +When he had finished playing, Brantome sat down beside her. + +"So it is as magical as ever, a bit of music?" he inquired, in his +rumbling, hoarse voice. + +"You were playing that at the moment when I first saw my husband," she +said. + +He contemplated her with his haggard old eyes. Patting her hand, he +declared: + +"All these emotions that you, a beautiful young woman, have felt, I +believe that I, an ugly, worn-out old man, have felt, also. I, too, +have felt in my time that the world was at an end. I have suffered +from the same inability to return into life. Well, will you think me +cruel--shall I appear to you as the thief of an inestimable +treasure--if I tell you something? In time, sooner or later, one +recovers. I don't mean that one forgets. It is always there; and a +chance sound or perfume brings it back to one. But at last it returns +so gently! One feels then, instead of pain, almost a gentle, +melancholy pleasure. Then you will learn that there may be certain +subtle joys in grief." + +She lowered her gaze, flinching inwardly, as one sometimes does when +credited with a feeling that one no longer fully deserves. A dismal +perplexity came to her, a little pang of treason, as she asked him: + +"How can I hasten that day?" + +He suggested: + +"You might perhaps find some engrossing interest?" + +Near the piano a group were discussing women's failures in music. One +heard the names of Chaminade, Augusta Holmes, Ethel Smyth. Why had +there been no female Beethovens, Liszts, or even Chopins? The reason, +asserted a middle-aged man, was that women's emotions were too +thoroughly instinctive to be projected in the form of first-class +music, which was, in fine, emotion analyzed, compressed within the +limits of fixed rules, expressed by series of arbitrary signs. In the +midst of his conclusion, however, he lost his self-satisfied smile: he +had caught sight of Lilla, who was looking at him blankly as though he +had slammed a transparent door in her face. + +She heard Brantome benevolently murmuring the platitude: + +"It is often in making others forget their sorrows that one diminishes +one's own, and in doing good to others that one finds good for oneself." + +She showed him a bitter smile. + +"Yes, charity. The usual prescription. I have already tried it." She +added, "Of course those poor people in their poverty and illnesses +merely appeared to me as a means for my own relief. In helping them I +didn't think of their troubles, but of forgetting my own. Sometimes +when I've written a check I almost expect it to buy me a less gloomy +day. At such moments I should be absurd if I weren't contemptible." + +"Bah! you are unjust to yourself." + +It was true. Lilla, who had suffered so much from her exceptional +temperament, could not bear to see others suffer; and in the grip of +her own weaknesses she had always felt compassion for the weak. + +"But I ought not to come here," she said. + +She explained that in this place she "felt her worthlessness." It +would be better, she thought, to remain in the Brassfield state of +mind: thus one might find an anodyne for this sense of insignificance. +For, to those others, of course, wealth and social position were the +important things in life, magnificently making up for the lack of other +qualities. If they had artistic enthusiasms, it was because they +regarded the arts as did the Roman conquerors--as elements created for +no other reason than to enhance their triumphs. Debussy, she +suggested, had been born to give them a cause for displaying their +jewels at the opera, just as Titian had existed in order that their +acquisition of a painting by his hand might be cabled round the world. +In that region of inverted values one took on the egotism of the fabled +frog in the well, who laughed to scorn the frog that came to tell him +of the ocean. + +"But the well is so prettily gilded," Lilla remarked. "And it's lined +with so many nice little mirrors in Louis XVI frames, that you can +hardly blame the frog if he imagines that his importance, like his +reflections, extends to the ends of the earth, in that multiplied +glitter of gilt." + +Brantome began to laugh, then turned serious. + +"You must be desperate," he commented. + +"That is your fault. I've always had a longing for what I find in +these rooms; but that longing isn't backed up by any capacity. When +one of these friends of yours has suffered a loss, his art still +remains. And maybe it becomes a richer art because of his loss." + +She sighed, her pale brown cheek resting against her black-gloved hand, +her black fur collar framing her neck on which the strand of pearls was +less lustrous than the teeth between her parted lips. + +His leonine old visage grew soft as he looked at her, and under his +white mustaches of a Viking there appeared a sad smile, as if he were +thinking that things might have been different with him, had she, with +this beauty and these predilections, been young when he had been young. + +"Oh, no, you must not stop coming here," he protested gently. "It's +only right that these poor fellows should have their glimpses of a +composite of all the beautiful muses--who, as you'll remember, were not +themselves practitioners in the arts, but the inspirers of artists. +Isn't there, for women, besides the joys of personal accomplishment, +another satisfaction, which one might call vicarious?" + +She gave him again her bitter, listless smile. + +"You believe that stuff about women's inspiration?" + +"But why not, good heavens! When it is a fact of life----" + +He bade her consider the great music written by men. Almost invariably +one found in its depths a longing for synthesis with some ideal beauty, +produced by thoughts of some idealized woman. Or else, by woman in the +abstract--that obsession which, ever since the days of Dante and the +troubadours, had attained a nearly religious quality, against whose +pressure even the modern materialist struggled in vain. Yes, ever +since that fatal twelfth century it was woman, the goddess, the +Beatrice-form beckoning on the staircase of Paradise, who attracted +upward the dazzled gaze of man, and who seemed, by an unearthly +smile--with which man himself had possibly endowed her--to promise a +mystical salvation and a sort of celestial bliss. + +"But at times, as I say," he concluded, with a shrug, "some lucky +artist is suddenly confronted by all that in bodily form--by a Beatrice +in a sable coat from Fifth Avenue and a little black hat from Paris." + +But in her silvery voice there was a cadence of irony, when she +demanded: + +"Whom shall I inspire? Show me the one by whose aid I can pretend that +the woman is responsible for the masterpieces, as no doubt Vittoria +Colonna sometimes pretended to herself in the case of Michael Angelo. +But remember that it must be an affair like that one, romantically +platonic--_à la manière de Provence_." + +Brantome nodded benignantly. But old pangs had revived in his heart. + +How well he understood this restlessness of hers, this sense of +impotency, this secret rancor at contemplation of congenial forms of +success! He, by some minute fault, some tiny slip of fate, had long +ago been doomed to these same sensations. In the morning of youth, +when gazing toward the future, he had seen the world at his feet, +unaware of that little flaw in the foundations of his Castle in Spain, +unwarned of the trick that destiny was going to play on him. All these +years it had been here in the bottom of his heart, the sensation of +inferiority, the gnawing chagrin. He had masked it well: one discerned +it only in some rare look when he was off his guard. And now and then, +for a while, he even vanquished it, when some fresh voice rose in the +world of music, and he championed the cause of that new genius so +generously, hotly, and triumphantly that the consequent renown seemed +nearly to be his own, since he had helped by his enthusiasm to +establish it. + +"Yes, certainly, _à la manière de Provence_--since music is so very +impersonal an art," he muttered, with an absentminded, haggard smile. + +But Lilla was watching a man and woman who sat in a shadowy alcove, and +who, as some one began to play a nocturne, let their fingers twine +together. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + +One night, at the end of the winter, she astonished everybody by +appearing with Fanny Brassfield in a box at the opera, wearing a black +velvet dress that made her, in that great horseshoe blooming with +flowerlike gowns, the objective of all eyes. + +"There is hope!" said one young man waggishly to another. "Cornie +Rysbroek ought to see this." + +But Cornelius Rysbroek was traveling far away. + +As for Lawrence, he was slipping farther and farther into the past. +There were times when without the aid of his picture Lilla could no +longer visualize his face. Their moment of love became blurred in her +memory. At times, remorsefully, as if struggling against a lethargy +mysteriously imposed upon her natural instincts, she strove to revive +her grief in its full strength; and then, for an instant, her +recollections became as poignant as though he had been with her only +yesterday. But that perception could not always be evoked at will; and +ordinarily Lilla was aware only of a faint echo from a distant region +of pathos and delight--an echo that reached her, through a host of +other sounds, like the intrinsic spirit of an ultra-modern symphony, so +wrapped up in dissonances as to be nearly unintelligible. + +"Where is he?" she wondered. "Are those right who would say that he +has ceased to exist except in memory?" + +At this thought she wept, not for him so much as for the blurring of +her remembrance of him. And sometimes, when she had not thought of him +all day, she was awakened in the night by her own cry: + +"Give me back my love! Give me back my grief!" + +Rising from her bed, she pored over the books on spiritualism that +still formed a long row on the shelf of her writing desk. She envied +the women who were reported to have received, through automatic +writing, messages from the dead. She sat down, in the silence of the +night, to hold over the clean sheet of paper the perpendicular pencil. +With her head bowed forward, her pose an epitome of patience, she fixed +her eyes upon the pencil point, which slowly made meaningless curlicues. + +But suddenly, when she was expecting nothing, there passed through her +a tingling warmth such as that which must pervade the earth at +spring-time. She stared round the room with the thought, "His spirit +is here!" + +And she uttered, very distinctly, in the hope that the words might +penetrate his world from hers: + +"I love you as much as ever!" + +Those moments became rare. At last they ceased to occur. + +"He has passed so far into the beyond that he can no longer return to +me." + +As if it had been awaiting this acknowledgment, a thicker curtain +descended between Lilla and the past. + +And now she was like some medieval chatelaine who, emerging from a dark +and lonely castle, views all the gewgaws that a far-wandering peddlar +has spread out for her in the sun. + +There were the art galleries filled with statues in inchoate or +tortured forms, or with paintings that seemed to Lilla to have been +conceived by madmen, yet in which certain persons declared that they +could discern a sanity beyond the understanding of the age. And there +were the concert halls given over to the very newest music, from which +Lilla emerged with her nerves exacerbated. + +Then the prosceniums of the theaters framed pageants of Oriental +sensuousness--scenes of hallucinatory seductiveness and splendor, +through which, to a blare of startling music, bounded swarms of +half-naked bodies jingling with jewels. + +Or, abruptly, the softness of oboes and cellos, the flagrancy of musk, +the gleam of purple light on torsoes moist from exertion, a presentment +of love as understood by ancient Eastern despots--a perverse and +gorgeous ideal resuscitated to challenge modern thought. Or perhaps, +with a sudden rush of darkness and return of light, before scenery that +tore at the nerves like a discord of trumpets, a dancer--a heathen +god--leaped high into the air, with muscles gilded as if to add an +overwhelming value to mere human flesh. + +Later, the chandeliers of ballrooms, multiplied by those Louis XVI +mirrors that Lilla had derided, cast their glitter upon the bright +dresses of a new design, the coiffures that had been invented +yesterday, the jewels, maybe souvenirs of old fervors, that had been +ruthlessly reset. In glass galleries banked with azaleas, where the +waltz music was like an echo from a still more desirable world, looks +melted into embraces, or, at least, a whisper promised the kiss that +caution there denied. On all sides love was going forward: men and +women were dancing toward the pain of happiness or the strange +pleasures of tragedy. And even in the brief silence the air seemed to +ring from a concerted laugh of triumph over life. + +Yet all these activities were informed with a feverish haste, a sort of +delirious greediness and apprehension, as though one must feel very +quickly everything that humanity's experiments had made the senses +capable of feeling. + +Lilla stood watching this whirlpool. + +Sometimes she thought of opening the Long Island house and shutting +herself up there, of collecting Chinese porcelains, of studying a new +language or religion. + +"Ah, if I had some real object!" + +One day she put on her hat intending to drive uptown and spend an hour +in Lawrence's old rooms; for nothing was changed there, except that +nowadays the curtains were always drawn, and the hearth was always +cold. But this time she purposed to light the fire, and pretend---- + +Instead, she returned to Brantome's. Some one had just stopped +playing. On the dim divans, men and women sat pensively holding +teacups on their knees. The firelight appeared to give life to the +many rows of books, as though all the fine emotions stored between +those covers were consuming the leather that was intricately tooled +with gold. Together with the wood smoke, and the scents of tobacco and +tea, there stole through the quiet room a redolence not of flowers or +of women's perfumes, but, as it were, the essence of the mementoes on +the walls and cabinets--those souvenirs of old friendships and past +attachments, or maybe of unconfessed infatuations and thwarted longings. + +"I knew you'd come back," said Brantome, looking at Lilla out of his +massive, ruined face. + +He made her sit down beside him on a divan apart from the rest. She +looked like a lady of cavalier days, he told her, in her tricorn hat of +maroon velvet, with a brown plume trailing down to the shoulder from +which was slipping her maroon-colored cloak edged with fur. He assured +her that she had never looked so lovely. + +At these words she felt despondency instead of pleasure. + +Across the room, half in shadow, with a ray of lamplight falling on his +hands, a young man sat sunken in a wheel chair. He was frail, +obviously an invalid; yet in the gloom of the alcove where he was +sitting his complexion seemed bronzed, as if from a life in the sun. +His sensitive face, disfigured by his sufferings and his thoughts, +leaned forward; his eyes were fixed on the keyboard of the piano. + +"What!" Brantome exclaimed, "you don't know David Verne?" + +She thought that she had heard some of his music, but could not recall +the impression it had made on her. + +"The impression produced by Verne's work isn't usually vague." + +"Has he so much talent?" + +"I was confident," said Brantome, "that he would be the great composer +of this age." + +"And now?" + +"It's a question whether he'll live through the spring." + +He told her David Verne's story. + +At the height of his promise, in consequence, it was said by some, of a +certain mental shock, the young composer had fallen victim to a rare, +insidious disease, arising apparently from an organic derangement, +small in itself but deadly in its secondary effects. The chief +characteristics of this malady were a general muscular prostration +growing ever more profound, and a slowly increasing feebleness of vital +action. It was an illness for which medical science had provided no +cure; the physicians could prescribe only such drugs as arsenic and +strychnia, to postpone as long as possible the climax of that fatal +debility. The patient was already afflicted with an immense +exhaustion, incapacitated from any but the slightest of muscular +efforts, unable to carry on the simplest occupation. Yet despite his +almost continuous attacks of headache he could think--of the collapse +of his hopes, of the approaching end. + +In the beginning David Verne had rebelled against this fate with all +the force of one who feels that he is in the world for an unparalleled +purpose--who refuses to believe that any physical affliction is meant +to thwart the unfoldment of his genius. All the splendid raptures +pressing toward expression, the conviction of unique capacity and great +prolificness, reinforced his determination to be well again. Brantome +declared that in those early days it had been like the combat of a hero +against malefic gods--a "sort of Greek tragedy." + +"Well," said Brantome, in a tone of stifled fury, glaring at Lilla with +his eyes of an old conquered Viking, "have you seen these pigmies +brandishing their fists at thunderbolts?" + +Disqualified long ago from walking, to-day David Verne could hardly +raise his hands to lay them limply upon the keyboard of a piano. + +His mind had suffered as sad a deterioration as his body. Formerly +fine, as befitted the source of fine achievements, it was now deformed +by bitterness. The last of those bright qualities, which in other days +had endeared him to his friends, were dying now, or perhaps were +already dead, In fact, Brantome confessed, it was doubly painful to +receive him here; one had to see the wreck not only of a young +physique, but also of an invaluable spirit. + +Lilla sat frozen. At last she uttered: + +"Ah! this world of ours!" + +And she had a vision of a universal monster evolving exquisite forms of +beauty only to destroy them fiendishly. + +"Yes," Brantome assented. He, too, for all his experience with life, +looking crushed anew. Indeed, in his old countenance there was a look +of defeat as dismal as though the ruin of that young man's hopes had +involved one more precious aspiration of his own. After a pause he +exclaimed, "I haven't suggested that you, who have enough unhappy +recollections, meet the poor fellow----" + +"What was the shock that caused it?" + +The old Frenchman made a hopeless gesture, and returned: + +"I don't say it was that. It's only certain persons who say the thing +may sometime be produced that way. Who knows? Too sensitive!--but if +he hadn't been we shouldn't have had the music. These poor chaps, +always balanced between joy and sorrow by a hair!" And he ground out +between his teeth, "One of those Beatrices of ours. As if she had come +to a harp, and had made all its strings vibrate just for the pleasure +of hearing their quality, and then had gone on content----" + +Lilla rose, drew her cloak around her, and departed with an appalling +sensation of pity and resentment. + + + + +CHAPTER XIX + +One afternoon, returning to her house on lower Fifth Avenue, as she +entered the hall paved with black and white tiles she saw a shabby +little man trying to rise from a settee between two consoles, by aid of +a pair of crutches. For an instant she had a hazy idea that he ought +to be holding a breakfast tray in his hands. Then, with a sickening +leap of her heart, she realized that this was Parr, who had been +Lawrence Teck's valet. + +He had thought she would want to receive from him, promptly on his +return, a first-hand report on that African tragedy. + +"But where have you been all this time?" + +He had been a long while recovering from the wound that had crippled +him, and from the black-water fever. Then he had found himself +penniless, dependent on the charity of traders and petty government +officials in the port town lying just above the equator. He had +"drifted about," a reproach, perhaps, to a certain human callousness +engendered by the tropics, till finally an old friend of Lawrence +Teck's had appeared from Mozambique, found him sitting in tatters on +the steps of a grogshop, and paid his passage home. + +"You should have let me know," she said remorsefully. + +He hung his head. + +She led him into the drawing-room, and seated him in one of the +mulberry chairs. He had become an old man. His honest, lantern-jawed +face was gray and drawn. + +And then there had always been the idea in his head that he ought to +have fallen with his master. + +"I couldn't help myself, ma'am," he said in a broken voice. "Before I +hardly knew what was up he was done for, and I had this spear wound in +me, and our gun boys was dragging me off amongst them, shooting to +right and left. I didn't rightly know what was going on any more than +if I'd got mauled by a pack of lions. Once when I kind of come to +myself I tried to make them go back; but they told me they'd seen the +Mambava finishing Mr. Teck as he lay on the ground----" + +She gave a start and a moan. He recoiled in contrition. + +At last, when she had bade him continue: + +"Besides, they was after us all the way. Sometimes they even showed up +in our path instead of behind us, waving their shields and shouting for +a parley. But we'd had enough of their treachery; and our boys let +them have it. Night and day it was dodge and run. Then we got out of +the Mambava forests, and they carried me the rest of the way in a +hammock made of vines and poles. Even then they never dared to light a +fire, because we could always hear the Mambava behind us, telephoning +from one village to another with their drums. But I couldn't hope to +make you feel it, ma'am, even what I took in myself when I wasn't out +of my head. It was just bad. Of course, the worst of it was that Mr. +Teck was gone." + +He began to cry weakly, exclaiming: + +"I'd been with him everywheres!" + +He was living with relatives. He hoped to get a job as a watchman. +This idea was repugnant to her. The shattered, tremulous, little man +was dignified by his grief, the intensity of which, after all this +time, filled her with self-contempt. Then she thought, "But now, by +his aid, I shall regain that dear grief!" She said: + +"You must let me arrange to have your pay go on. That's what Mr. Teck +would have wished." + +She took his address, told a servant to call a taxicab, and went down +the front steps with Parr, holding him by his bony arm as he lowered +his crutches. Overwhelmed by this condescension, he stammered: + +"I was afraid to come here, ma'am." + +She replied: + +"We need each other." + +Next day she sought him out. + +She found him near Stuyvesant Square, in a shabby room overlooking a +back yard in which an ailanthus tree spread its limbs above some +clothes lines. She leaned forward in a raveled chair, with her veil +tucked up so that she could see him better, her gloved hands clasped +tightly in her lap, her eyes intent. When he had recovered from her +simplicity, Parr prepared to tell her what she had come to hear. + +But there were so many tales about the hero to choose from! + +"Anything," she exclaimed. "Make me hear what he used to say, know +what he used to think. Make me see him there. Make him live!" + +She meant, "Make him vivid again in my heart, where, against all my +efforts, his face has faded away." + +Parr held his crutches against his shoulder as if they were the harp of +a minstrel who has come from afar to chant the epic of some already +mythical character. His faded coat was wrinkled round the neck; his +collar was split at the folds; and a faint smell of iodoform mingled +with Lilla's perfume, which a Viennese artist in odors had concocted +especially to "match her temperament." + +"One time in Nyasaland----" + +"Not the jungles!" she protested, flinching back. + +"The desert, then?" he ventured. + +He showed Lawrence to her in the desert that is called Erg, the waste +of shifting sand; and in the desert called Chebka, a wilderness of +boulders; and in the desert called Hamedan, the bleak plateaux where +there are no springs of water; and in the desert called Gaci, the +oases, rich with date palms, pomegranates, and oleanders. The caravan +routes unrolled before her, at sunset. The hills turned to ashes of +rose; the sand dunes to heliotrope; and against the sky appeared a +caravan of many thousands of camels, bearing on their humps, +impoverished from hard travel, the traffic that passes between the +great oases--the rugs and the oil, the sacks of dates and boiled +locusts, and, in the closed palanquins, the women destined to new +slaveries. A great calm descended at dusk; the tents of dingy brown +hair surrounded the sheik's pavilion, which was topped with a plume. +The air was filled with odors of camels, of cous-cous, of sagebrush. +The camp fires of desert grass flared in the night wind. + +He was always well received by the caravan chiefs, the sheiks of the +oases, the heads of the desert monasteries--drowsy towns with arcaded +streets and tunnels of mud, into whose holy precincts came no echoes of +war. He had the knack of endearing himself to fierce men, by something +in his character at the same time inflexible and kindly, by a sympathy +that embraced that other religion, or at least its intrinsic spirit, so +that he could repeat the Fatihah with good grace before the tombs of +saints. Even the Tuaregs, the untamed bandits whose faces were always +muffled in black, received him into their tents of red dyed leather, +where he joked with their wives and daughters, the "little queens," who +were accustomed to ride alone, fifty miles on their trotting camels, to +visit a sweetheart. + +"But my picture was with him," thought Lilla. "I was with him there, +just as he, through his picture, though I had never seen him, was with +me. In our longings, that crossed in space, we were already united. +Even then our actual meeting was predestined--like our parting." + +Once he had encountered a band of Shaambah Arabs, out, like +knights-errant, in quest of any adventure. They had fought him all +afternoon in a desert spotted with gold and purple lilies, the +burnooses flitting in a wide ring as the horses raced through the heat. +Then suddenly they had vanished. The lukewarm water flavored with +goatskin and tar, the draughts of sour camel's milk, had tasted good +after that scrimmage, like a combat in chivalry. + +What was it that had driven him into such places, when there had been a +great, rich world of safety? Some fatal desire for regions where +beauty sported more obviously than here the signs of its origins, or +death the mask of beauty? + +"Yes, there is a fatality in all our preferences. Is that what the +Arabs mean when they say that our destinies are written on our +foreheads?" + +"What is their word for fate?" she inquired of Parr. + +"Mektoub." + +"Mektoub!" And presently, "Do you speak Arabic?" + +"Oh, no, ma'am; but Mr. Teck did, as well as any of 'em." + +"Tell me more," she said. + +So he took her to the oases. As one drew near, there floated from the +minaret a thin cry, "Allah is great! Allah is great! Allah is great!" +In the house of the sheik, sitting among the hawk-nosed horsemen, they +dipped their right hands into couscous flavored with cinnamon, ate +honey cakes and nougat. In the doorways, beyond the range of the lamp, +there was a soft clashing of bangles, a craning of veiled heads. Then +in the cool of the night they walked to the café, where cobwebs hung +from the palmwood rafters, and the raised hearth glowed. Here were the +men drinking coffee infused with rose water, pepper, or mint, smoking +tobacco and hasheesh. And here were the dancing women--"The Pearl," +"Lips of Pomegranate," "The Star"--their foreheads bearing the tattoo +marks of their tribes, their cheeks and chins smeared with saffron, +their fingernails tinted with henna, their bodies moving convulsively +under rose-colored satin dresses. + +But Lilla was no longer listening. + +Dusk had covered the windowpanes; the shabby furniture had turned +nebulous. In these shadows Parr heard the words, meditatively +pronounced: + +"I think I should like to learn Arabic." + +"You, ma'am!" + +He gaped at her vague, pearly face, as if she had suggested some +enormity. It was an ugly language, all bubbling and snorting. And a +very hard one to learn! + +"A hard one? Good. Can you find me a teacher somewhere?" + +The door opened to frame a careworn woman in a gingham dress, who said +shyly to Lilla: + +"Oh, excuse me, ma'am. I thought----" And to Parr, "I'll keep your +supper warm." + +With her sleek bandeaux of lusterless brown hair, and her thick, +straight eyebrows meeting above her nose, she looked like some model +for a fifteenth century Italian painter, who had suddenly faded and now +was exiled from the studio to the region of pots and pans. She was +Parr's niece. + +As Lilla departed down the black staircase redolent of boiled cabbage, +she reflected that these surroundings were going to contaminate the sad +pleasure that she planned to obtain through Parr. Her instinctive +epicureanism demanded that the scene of these evocations should not be +sordid. + +Besides, it was intolerable that Parr, of whom Lawrence had been fond, +should not be better housed. + +So Lilla moved Parr and his astounded relatives to a pretty little +dwelling in Greenwich Village, with waxed floors, chintz hangings at +the windows, and Delia Robbia plaques in the sitting room. After +seeing them installed, she said to herself: + +"Poor things! How abominable I am!" + +At any rate, there was nothing abominable in her having sent Parr to a +surgeon who, though he doubted that the patient would ever be quite +well again, guaranteed to abolish the crutches. + +On the day that Parr was to go to the hospital, Lilla entered the +Greenwich Village house to find a stranger sitting under the Delia +Robbia plaques, He rose with a graceful dignity, bowed, and stood +gazing down at her out of dark, lustrous eyes. + +Parr explained that this stranger was prepared to give lessons in +Arabic. + +He was in his early twenties, though one did not immediately appreciate +his youth because of a very delicate black beard that softened, without +concealing, the lines of his chin. His features appeared to have been +chiseled with great precision out of some pale, tan-colored marble; his +nose was long and straight; his full eyelids gave him a slightly +languorous look; but his lips, as sharply defined as a gem of +carnelian, seemed somehow to be ascetic as well as sensual--virile as +well as effete. Tall and spare, with small hands, he wore an +outrageously inappropriate, ill-fitting sack suit. To Lilla it was as +if some romantic young character from the tales of Scheherazade had +been degraded for his gallantries in this hideous attire. + +His name was Hamoud-bin-Said. He was an Omân Arab from Zanzibar. + +Parr had found him in a Turkish café in Washington Street, oppressed by +the weight of successive misfortunes, and by that sense of fatality +which benumbs the Arab of vitiated stock. For little by little the +soft, moist airs of Zanzibar had corroded the spirit of the Omân Arabs, +who had sailed thither, in the old days, from their own rugged land, in +great fierceness and ruthlessness, unconquered by men, and incapable of +foreseeing that some day they would be vanquished by perfumed breezes. +As for Hamoud-bin-Said, he was typical of his kind to-day in that humid +paradise, where want of energy, and lack of discipline or any +well-defined purpose, affected even the young. + +"As you see him, ma'am, he's down on his luck. But I think he has +seen----" + +The young Arab remained impassive, erect, as handsome as a faintly +tinted statue of Pride, yet pathetic in his salt-and-pepper suit. And +Lilla, despite his costume and his errand, divined in him a certain +subtle relationship to herself, received an impression of +"aristocratic" feeling perhaps derived from a consciousness of superior +birth and fortune. Parr need not have told her--especially in so +audible a stage whisper--that the stranger had "seen better days." + +"You speak English?" she inquired. + +The Arab's limpid eyes were slowly infused with light. His clear-cut +carnelian lips started apart; but he did not answer until the last +vibrations of her voice had died away, like the echo of a silver bell +in a landscape that one had believed to be empty of human life. In a +low, grave, muffled tone, he said: + +"A little. Enough, perhaps, madam, I hope." + +And after a moment, though his face did not change, he gave a sharp +sigh, somehow the last thing that one had expected from him. + +All at once as she stared at him she had a feeling of unreality. Why +were they three standing here? A whim, transformed into a command by a +vision of a Saharan coffee house, had materialized this abjectly +clothed young human exotic in the midst of the blue-and-white Delia +Robbias! But she had a feeling that she had stood here before with +him, or else had dreamed of this, perhaps, in one of those +psychopathological moments that have a prophetic quality. This +sensation of recurrence--or else, this impression of the +unavoidable--gave her a twinge of awe. Was everything, even a baggy +young teacher of Arabic, foreordained? "Am I," she thought, with a +sort of comic despair, "doomed by fate, as well as by my own +foolishness, to learn a language like the snarling of camels? Or is it +that his old Allah has picked me out to tide him along for a while?" +She wanted to laugh aloud, at the restlessness, superstition, weakness, +and folly that had composed her life, and had now produced this +egregious interview. And in the midst of this emotion she was touched +by his statuesque face, with its glimmering suggestion of gentility +cast down, of pride lost in a dread that she might not find him worth +her charity. + +"I shall expect you on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays at eleven +o'clock." + +He bowed in silence. She felt his relief that was mingled with a sense +of abasement; and she wondered what he had been, that he should suffer +from the prospect of turning an honest penny. + + + + +CHAPTER XX + +She received a note from Brantome, informing her that if she went to a +certain orchestral concert she would hear a piece that David Verne had +written at the height of his promise. + +To Lilla it was a new voice in the world of music, ultra-modern, yet +incorrigibly melodic, giving utterance to immemorial emotions with +great nobility. Those passages of almost intolerable aspiration were +underlaid with dissonant harmonies, as if hell itself had poured all +its allurements into tone, to engulf the theme that was struggling to +soar upward. It became a terrific combat, in which beauty was to be +recognized in sublimated form, striving to end its likeness to another +beauty, seductive in a different, monstrous way, yet all too similar. +It was a battle translated into sound, so enlarged and enriched by the +imagination of the composer that a universe, instead of one soul, +seemed to be involved in it. + +Suddenly in the midst of a piercing blare of brass there was a moment +of chaos; then the theme, as if soaring free, lost itself in +extraordinary altitudes, borne up by a whirl of violin notes. A crash +of cymbals ended everything. + +When she roused herself at last, Lilla perceived that the concert hall +was empty except for the ushers who were turning up the seats. + + + + +CHAPTER XXI + +Hamoud-bin-Said suggested that she master first the most difficult +consonants--"ha," to be pronounced with the force at the back of the +palate, "dâd" and "tâ," emphasized by pressing the tongue far back, and +the strong guttural "en." These were sounds that had no association +with any in English, French, German, or Italian. Lilla was filled with +dismay. + +"But this poor young man lost from the _Arabian Nights_ must live," she +reflected, eyeing the salt-and-pepper suit with secret horror. + +He was extremely neat, however; and his small right hand, with which he +turned the pages of the textbook, was as well cared for as hers. He +brought with him into the library an almost imperceptible scent of +burnt aloes. His grave composure sometimes made her forget his youth. + +Now and then, the lesson finished, she detained him in talk, out of +curiosity. + +From his father he had inherited a house in Zanzibar, a mansion, +indeed, of coraline limestone fitted with doors of palmwood elegantly +carved. At the same time he had fallen heir to a grove of clove trees; +in short, he had been wealthy. There had been no end of hospitality in +his home. In the large, white rooms strewn with Persian carpets, where +there were no pictures, but a variety of clocks, the slaves were always +bringing in to visitors an excess of refreshment--stews of mutton, fine +soups, cakes, sherbets, Turkish delight. The world had been a good +place, full of friends. + +And there was no spot as fair as Zanzibar! The hills, crowned with +palms, embraced a sea as deeply blue as lapis-lazuli. The clove trees +were covered with pink blossoms whose fragrance entered the city. It +was a place of brilliant sunshine and purple shadows, of gray walls +over which peacocks hung their tails, of mysterious stairways, and +latticed windows behind which ladies sat peering through their +embroidered face screens resembling semicircular candle shades; and +there was always a marvelous clamor in the streets, and silence in the +patios full of flowers. At dusk, one still saw, sometimes, the +daughters of the rich hurrying through the alleys, muffled up, escorted +by slaves with lanterns, going to call on their women friends, leaving +behind them a trail of perfumes. + +"It was in Zanzibar," thought Lilla, "that Lawrence found my picture." + +And gazing as if indifferently at a vaseful of roses, she asked, with a +feeling of suffocation: + +"Why did you leave there?" + +He did not reply. When she turned her eyes toward him he appeared to +be listening almost drowsily to something that she could not hear, or +else, since his sensitive-looking nostrils were dilated, to be +relishing some sweet odor--perhaps the smell of the roses. She +received an impression of deliberate, yet somnolent, sensuous +enjoyment; and she recalled having seen long ago, in a doorway in +Tunis, this same expression on the face of a beggar who had just been +smoking hasheesh. + +He gave a start, and looked like a man who in his sleep has fallen off +a roof. But immediately, lowering his full eyelids, he became the +handsome statue, or perhaps the delicately bearded effigy, in +tan-colored wax, of a young caliph who had incurred the hatred of the +jinn. + +It was simple. He had squandered his fortune. It had sifted through +his fingers like sand, the price of one clove tree after another, till +the whole grove was gone. Then the Hindu money lenders had got the +ancestral house. The friends had departed to make merry elsewhere; the +gazelle-eyed girls with short, silk dresses and frilled pantalettes had +turned cold; and, in the market, little boys had sung songs about the +ruined young man. Burning with resentment and shame, he had sailed +away in a dhow--it had landed him at Beira--believing that he would +hate Zanzibar forever. + +When he began to starve, he joined the safari of a Muscat trader, +traveled up-country, returned to the coast sick with fever. Late one +night, while walking below the sea wall, yearning for Zanzibar, he saw +a man running, from time to time throwing something into the sea, and +another man running silently in pursuit with a knife in his hand. He +waded along the shore, and presently found in the surf a bag of +gold-dust. Next morning he slipped aboard a north-bound coaster. +Instead of calling at Zanzibar, this time it went clear to Suez! + +In Suez a fortune-telling dervish, perhaps because he had just seen an +American pass by, told Hamoud-bin-Said that his wanderings would take +him to America. Hamoud accepted the words of the holy man as a +second-hand pronouncement of God. At that time there was even a ship +at Suez bound for New York. + +"It was my destiny," he averred, sitting motionless in his atrocious +suit, so young yet so full of bizarre recollections, impassive at the +inevitable thought that this "destiny" of his might be preparing events +stranger still than those which he had endured. + + + + +CHAPTER XXII + +A pallid, black-haired woman with pendent earrings--a woman who rather +resembled Anna Zanidov--was playing a sea-piece by MacDowell in the +light of a tall lamp. The hall door swung open; the unsympathetic face +and square shoulders of David Verne's attendant appeared above the back +of the wheel chair. The invalid, looking up at Brantome, murmured: + +"Let him put me in the alcove, where it's dark enough for your friends +to forget that I'm here. And don't bother about me." + +"What!" Brantome protested. "I'm not even to bring a beautiful lady to +talk to you?" + +"It's rather late for talks with beautiful ladies," David Verne replied +in his weak, dull voice. "Besides, it's music that I've chosen to +torment myself with this afternoon. Where is she?" And when Brantome +had nodded toward Lilla. "Ah, she was here once before." + +Lilla wore a brown coat frock heavily trimmed with fur; her brown +velvet hat, very wide across the forehead, was brightened by a rosette +of silver ribbon. The black pearls in the lobes of her ears, just +visible below her fluffy brown hair, completed the harmony of her +costume with her person, while bestowing upon her face a maturity in +contrast with the invalid's youthfulness--which all his sufferings and +despairs had not eclipsed. + +When she had sat down beside him, he regarded her with a sort of +suppressed aversion. + +The attendant, a bullet-headed fellow with Scandinavian cheek-bones, +leaned down, looking flagrantly solicitous, and inquired in unctuous +tones if there was "anything else at present." At this question David +Verne appeared to be overwhelmed with a dreary contempt. He did not +trouble himself to reply; and the attendant went away, walking +cautiously on the sides of his feet, the back of his head somehow +suggesting that he was gritting his teeth. + +Lilla surprised herself by saying: + +"Why do you have that man?" + +"I don't know. He is appallingly stupid." He paused, with an effect +of still more profound exhaustion, then breathed, "He hates me, no +doubt because I resent his stupidity. I resent stupidity," he +repeated, giving her a glance of weak alarm, as if wondering, "Are you +stupid, too?" He seemed reassured by his scrutiny of her. A coldness +began to melt out of his eyes. + +Then he looked astonished, rather like a child that is unexpectedly led +up before a Christmas tree. + +Now she had analyzed the most touching impression that David Verne +produced--an impression as of a child who has come into the world with +a heart full of blitheness and trust, only to be mistreated. A child, +but an extremely precocious one, with a child's round chin, but with a +brow of genius; with eyes accustomed to visions, but with lips almost +too delicate to belong to a man. Another incongruity was presented in +his complexion--bronzed as though by the sun, mockingly bestowing on +him one of the aspects of health. + +When he listened to music suddenly he became adult. There appeared in +his face a glimpse of a masculine, severely critical soul, a nature to +be satisfied with little less than perfection. And no doubt it was +this habit of stern analysis, involuntarily carried over from art into +life, that had helped to make him "impatient of stupidity." + +The black-haired woman at the piano was attempting Beethoven. + +"Talk to me," said David Verne. "I don't wish to hear this." + +He added that Beethoven was intolerable on the piano--a composer who +had never had a thought that was not orchestral. + +"Like myself," he vouchsafed, with that smile of a mistreated child. +"I, too, thought orchestrally. There was no group of instruments rich +enough to suit my ambitions, just as the scale was too poor for what I +wished to express. A tone speech inadequate to describe what I had to +describe--do you know what I'm talking about?" + +"Yes." + +"Never mind. It is all over." + +He sat in the wheel chair in so collapsed a pose that he seemed +subjected to some exceptional pull of gravitation. His bronzed hands, +on the chair arms, appeared to be welded to the brown wood; his head, +resting against the chair back, never turned. But his troubled eyes, +stealing round in their sockets, surprised on Lilla's countenance a +look as if all her compassions had been united to find the fading young +genius as their congenial object. + +It was hard to talk to him, since every topic must lead to some +interest that he was relinquishing. His doom, hanging over them like a +black cloud, stifled all those gleams of enthusiasm which normally +would have illumined such a conversation. But presently he forgot +himself in watching her moving lips, in gazing at her hair, her throat, +her hands, in letting his eyes embrace, with reluctance, all her +singularity which was made doubly exquisite by the fastidiousness of +her costume. While he was inhaling her perfume, he listened with a +blank look to the silvery cadence of her voice. + +At last he asked her: + +"Do you come here often?" + +"Oh, no." + +"Why not?" He stared at the abandoned piano. "Why not every week?" +And, in a soft, impulsive rush of words, blurred by haste, and maybe by +intention, "I have so few weeks left." + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII + +As week followed week, it was evident that David Verne watched her and +listened to her as he watched and listened to no other person, with an +attention as though there were something unique in her most trivial +utterance, and with a sadness as though she symbolized all the +allurements of life, from which he must presently depart. And at last +it became evident that he had found in this relationship a charm more +piercing than if their association could have had a different outcome. +For him, no doubt, their hours together were at last suffused with the +mournful glory that concludes a sunset--more valuable, to the +romantically imaginative soul, than the flaming vigor of mid-day. To +have found her, to realize that she must remain as an angel hovering +high over an inferno, to perceive that he must pass from this radiance +into the shades, filled him with a gloomy ecstasy and a pathetic +gratitude. + +A time came when his armor of misanthropy crumbled away; and in the +shadowy alcove of Brantome's living room he confessed to her. + +He told her that she had covered the page on which Finis was already +written with a glow of gold, as though, at the last moment, a shutter +opening on a paradise had swung ajar. + +He declared that she could not imagine the blackness that had +surrounded him at her first appearance. His heart had been cased in +ice; he had hated every one. Then she had come holding beauty in one +hand and tenderness in the other. Although he believed in nothing but +a mechanistic universe, he had thought of those figures, half woman and +half goddess, that descend from another plane, in the old mystical +tales, to lure one back to faith with a celestial smile. He protested +that he was not far from regaining that deep-rooted belief of his race, +of which Brantome had spoken--the idea that woman might be angelic. + +He even said: + +"Suppose your kindness were the reflection of something still more +lovely, which we cannot see with these eyes?" + +He went on to other, similar rhapsodies, such phrases as bubble from +the lips of those who, in the extremity of despair, exhausted by their +sufferings, become, with a sigh of relief, like little children. Amid +the shadows of the alcove his eyes shone; and even his body, helpless +in the wheel chair, quivered as if with new life. + +"If you had appeared sooner! The music I might have written! But +then, everything would be different. There would have been no reason +for your pity." + +On the hearth the log that was nearly consumed fell with a shower of +sparks, shot forth one last flame, which brightened the room that had +become for a moment a whole world. The light flashed over the many +rows of books, which made Lilla imagine a vast human audience, all +aglow from a final blaze of genius. + +She leaned toward him, staring into his eyes as one who would summon +from a sepulchre something more precious than love. + +He understood her, and assented: + +"Yes, what a victory, eh? Even on the threshold of death! And even +though the inspiration was the embodiment of pity only! But men before +me--though not so far gone, perhaps--have transmitted to the world the +songs that rose in their hearts as a result of unconsummated, even +unrequited, love. Who knows? That, too, may come just in time. I may +write one more song." + +Before her mind's eye there sprang out the full picture of her part in +such a triumph. + +Was it not she who would virtually be the creative force? Had he not +become, in these last days of his, a shattered instrument that she, +alone, could make musical again? And her long-thwarted aspirations +coalesced into this desire, in which, it may be, her compassion was +disorganized by egotism, her compunctions swallowed up in ruthlessness. + +"You will do it!" she cried softly, leaning closer still, holding his +hand more tightly, blinding him by the glorification of her smile. + +Hardly knowing what she was saying, finding at the tip of her tongue +all the arguments that had failed to help her in her griefs, she spoke +of the prodigies accomplished by will, the triumphs of faith over fate, +the miracles of love. + +"Of love?" he repeated. + +The log on the hearth was ashes. But that morning there had drifted +through the city a message from the country--of a new spring, which +would not be like nature's previous unfoldments, yet could not, for all +its subtle differences, be denied. Was it something like that in +Lilla, or only a tender duplicity born of this new ruthlessness of +hers, that made her press his limp hand against her kindling cheek? + + + + +CHAPTER XXIV + +It was a romance as nearly incorporeal as mortal romance may be, almost +as though one of the participants had already passed beyond the +sensuous world. + +If Brantome was not at home they had the place to themselves. The fire +no longer burned on the hearth; but the sunshine of the lengthening +days conquered the shadows that had lingered here all winter. And now +the wheel chair was rolled to the open window, so that David might see, +beyond the trees of the square and above the cornices of the tall +houses, the inexhaustible improvisations of nature in the western sky. + +"You have changed everything," he affirmed, drinking in her beauty, her +elegance that was always presented to him in some new guise, her +invariable manifestation of tenderness. "How did it happen? You, so +intensely in the midst of life, so lovely, who might so easily find +elsewhere----" + +She did not tell him that it was the almost phantasmal quality of their +communion that made it possible. + +Yet now and then, for a moment, she forgot his infirmity. He became +the young hero of an idyllic scene such as those that seem attractive +enough in adolescence. But unlike those heroes he spoke only of the +moment, since it was only the moment of which he could be sure. "You +are here!" his eyes said to her, as she entered the room. "I have this +hour at least. Nothing else matters." Then, by aid of the sunset, the +warm breeze in his face, the flowers on the table, the fragrance of her +perfume and the smoothness of her hand, he tried to drown himself in a +sea of sensation, like one who listens, in a glamour of stained glass +and a cloud of incense, to the protracted sweetness of an organ playing +the _Nunc Dimittis_. + +Sometimes he would say: + +"When I am gone you will be as fair as ever. That is good. The +ancients who entered their temples to worship the goddess must have +redoubled their love with the thought that the beauty of her marble +person would survive them." + +Or perhaps: + +"Yes, you will still be young. And presently--no, I shall pretend that +you will never turn to another." + +He thought her ensuing look of sadness was a reproach to him; but she +was reproaching herself. + +But here was a miracle. The invalid had ceased to decline in health. +And that declension, which formerly had been uninterrupted, seemed +stopped just by the hand that she had held out to him on that first +full day of spring--by the slender hand that had owed its beauty to its +apparent uselessness. + +Then he told her that he had begun to jot down, in feeble signs, some +scraps of music. + +That evening, as she drove home, the city seemed hung with banners. +"Ah, fate!" she cried, clenching her fists, and uttering a savage laugh +of defiance. She entered her house radiant, erect, shining with +triumph. In the black-and-white hall, at the entrance to the +drawing-room, a man stood before her, tanned, lean from physical +hardships, strange-looking and yet familiar. Instead of a small +mustache intended to be debonaire, he had a heavy one; his shoulders +were wider and straighter than formerly; he advanced with a quick, +swinging step. + +"Cornie Rysbroek!" + +She laid her palms, on the new shoulders of this friend of her +childhood, and flooded him with her victorious smile. + +"What have you done to yourself?" she laughed, rather wildly. "Where +do you come from? India?" + +"I went on to China." + +He had traveled up the Yangtze River, had crossed Tse-Chouan, had +reached the borders of Thibet. Her happy look continued to embrace +him; but she hardly heard what he said. She did not perceive that he +had undertaken that journey in imitation of the other--perhaps in the +hope of finding in those distant, hard places the secret of Lawrence +Teck's attractiveness. And, in fact, he looked stronger in spirit as +well as in body. The hypochondriac, the timid dilettante, seemed to +have slunk away; in his place stood a man who had forced himself, +against all his natural instincts, to endure extremes of cold and heat, +dirt and famine, hardship and danger. Even now his face was calm; but +he could not keep his eyes from shining at her. + +"You'll stay to dinner, Cornie. Just us." + +From the doorway she came rushing back to throw her arms round him, and +cry like a delighted child: + +"Dear old Cornie! I'm so happy!" + + + + +CHAPTER XXV + +As for David Verne, despite the extraordinary prostration in which +Lilla had found him, it seemed that he had not passed beyond the +vivifying powers of love, which sometimes appear to change the body, as +well as the mind, into a new organism for a while. Week after week, to +the bewilderment--one might almost say the consternation--of the +physician, he refused to imitate the customary progress of that disease +which had been diagnosed as his. And while he acknowledged that this +phenomenon must presently end, David knew that for the moment, at any +rate, love had proved stronger than death. + +To prolong these hours in the transfigured world of sense! To steal +from oblivion one more summer of which she would be the warmth, the +fragrance, the unprecedented beauty! + +In appearing to him she had embodied all that seductiveness which he +had formerly perceived at random, fragmentarily and vaguely, in a +change of light on the sea, in a spread of landscape, in the grace of +animals or the refinements of art, or in those streams of consciousness +that flow as the senses are touched by some reminiscent odor, +apparition, or sound. She was the whole, dear, fading world compressed +into one shape, as the goddesses of ancient times personified +blindingly a host of precious elements that had previously been +diffuse. And since she was so, he determined, with all this new mental +energy evoked by love, to cling to her another day, another week or +season, like a drowning man who, as he sinks, clutches at a flower +hanging over the water, with the thought, "In this flower, whose petals +hold as much wonder as the whole universe, there is surely strength +enough to sustain me till I have filled my throat with one more draught +of life?" + +Inevitably all this fervor and pathos, gratitude and adoration, were +transmuted into a consciousness of music. He felt ever more strongly +the artist's need of expression. Since he had never previously known +such exaltation--or, indeed, such dejection--the music that he finally +produced, his physical weakness notwithstanding, was music such as he +had never written before. + +At Brantome's, when that piece was to be played for the first time, he +sat in his wheel chair suffocated by sudden doubts, as if on trial for +his life. Lilla sat beside him, her hand on his. No one else was +there except Brantome, who bent over the manuscript his haggard old +face, revealing nearly as much agitation as did David. + +At last, raising his head, the critic murmured: + +"You think this is going to be easy for me? Reflect on what I must do. +To satisfy you I must take the rigidity out of all these ink marks, +restore to this score the emotions that you felt in writing it." + +David responded: + +"The emotions that I felt in writing it are not there; for the idea +always loses its original form the moment it is seized by the pen. +That is the first loss. The second comes now. You cannot help it. It +is the old misfortune, the inability to transmit what one feels, the +isolation of the human soul. But nobody could play as well as you +what's left of those thoughts of mine." + +The bullet-headed attendant appeared beside the wheel chair, a bottle +of medicine and a glass of water in his hands. With that pretentious +solicitude of his, he uttered: + +"It is time----" + +David Verne gave a shudder. + +"Ah! At this moment! Will you get out of the room?" And when the +attendant had gone, "Is he, can he be, so stupid? I really think he +does these things on purpose." + +Brantome poised his hands above the keyboard, leaned forward to peer at +a legend scrawled faintly in the corner of the page, then, turning +round on the piano bench, cast at Lilla: + +"Rose-covered Cypresses." + +"What?" she exclaimed, with a start. + +"He has called it that." + +The old Frenchman began to play. + +Not a song after all, but a piano concerto, it described in tone that +goal of all human longings, the conquest of tragedy. + +But this music, although gradually made replete with victory, was not +to end in major chords of triumph. The sadness that seemed, at the +beginning, unassuageable, continued to the end, but--and herein lay the +victory--became ever more exquisite. For this was the utterance of a +man who having had his life transformed by love must soon leave that +love behind him; this glory that had descended upon his sadness was +such a glory as fills the sky for a little while before the inrush of +dusk. At the conclusion, it was as if in the gorgeousness of a sunset +the roses covering the cypresses had become a mist of rare hues, behind +which those trees emblematic of mourning almost lost their +significance. At last, however, one felt that the light was fading, +that the somber silhouettes of the cypresses were more visible than +their poetic embellishment. And finally, with the darkness, a breeze +seemed to bring a long sigh from those elegiac branches, together with +a perfume of the roses that had become unapparent, wet with dew as if +with innumerable tears. + +After a long silence, Brantome lifted his burly, old body from the +piano bench, came to stand before David, then abruptly turned away. + +"It is all your promises fulfilled," he said, as he went out of the +room without looking back. But it was Lilla whose arm he touched in +passing. + +David Verne sat gazing before him, his sunken eyes shining in his face +of a sick, young Apollo in bronze. But soon, turning his eyes toward +Lilla: + +"All you!" + +She gathered his hands against her bosom with a movement that imparted +to him the life so violently pounding in her heart--the pride and the +hope, perhaps even a little of the defiance and belief. She gave him a +look that pierced the caverns of his brain, where his faith in death +resided blackly, with a white-hot faith in life. + +"Have you forgotten," she breathed, "that a little while ago you, and +every one else, would have called this impossible?" + +"Too much!" he whispered, peering at her with a dreadful longing across +the chasm that lay between her will and his terror of extinction. + +"No! You shall see!" + +She felt that this must be the object of her life-long wishes and +antipathies--that her sense of the preciousness of mortal life and +beauty, and her hunger for participation in the development of both, +were instincts intended to make her indomitable now. Suddenly she had +one of those rare moments when the wall is so strengthened by a feeling +of worthy purpose that it becomes tremendous, and everything opposed to +it seems as good as vanquished. It was with an accent of accomplished +victory that she repeated: + +"You shall see!" + +And now, indeed, the drowning man clutched at the flower that +epitomized the dear world. + +"Lilla! Never let go of my hands! Yes, it's true; while I hold them I +hold fast to life; but if you let go of them, in that moment I'll go +tumbling down into the pit. Do you realize that by this time I should +probably be already gone, if you hadn't appeared? I am a dead man who +lives, who even does this work, because of the hold of these slender +hands of yours." + +In that clutch of his, all at once so strong despite his feebleness, +Lilla found no sinister portent. She was thinking: + +"Death conquered me once; but now I shall conquer death." + + + + +CHAPTER XXVI + +Next day, when a maid announced that Hamoud-bin-Said was waiting in the +library, Lilla felt that the time had come to "stop that nonsense." +Her desire to learn Arabic now seemed to her an absurd caprice; and +once more she had reason to wonder at her swift passage from one +enthusiasm to another, her intense preoccupation with things that +suddenly became insufferable. She entered the library dressed and +hatted for the street, pulling on her gloves; and while occupied with +her glove buttons said calmly, in her enchanting voice: + +"I'm going to be very busy for a while. I suppose I ought to have +given you a little notice; so I'm writing you a check for two-weeks' +lessons." + +Hamoud stood before her, tall and spare, in a new, black alpaca suit as +incongruous-looking as the old one. He made no response at once; and +there was no change in his perfectly chiseled, tan features; but for +all his impassiveness he managed remarkably to convey the impression +that an immense calamity had befallen him. His full eyelids remained +lowered, as if he were considering his whole unfortunate destiny; and a +sort of loneliness, produced no doubt by his strangeness in this room, +hovered round his shapely head that was covered with straight, black +locks. + +Lilla felt a twinge of compunction, as she reflected: + +"Who in this town except myself would ever take Arabic lessons! Poor +young caliph! Now he must work or starve." + +She added, aloud: + +"In fact, you've been such a good teacher that I ought--well, haven't I +made great progress?" + +He raised his eyes, and a bitter smile appeared on his gemlike lips. +He replied in Arabic: + +"It is a difficult language, madam. Perhaps you understand what I am +saying now because I am speaking very simply and slowly. But you +yourself can speak only the most ordinary phrases; and I doubt if any +one but I could understand you. However, why should you trouble to +learn this language of mine? It always seemed folly to me. It is just +a part of this life, which has little meaning except to thoughtless +persons, and in which, to the wise, all events are like the shadows of +passing birds." + +Her pride was affronted; and yet it was not as if an inferior had +rebuked her. He picked up his hat, a frightful confection of tan and +yellow straw, and the textbook out of which she had learned--in +heaven's name, why?--the facts that "el" and "al" are assimilated +before dentals, and that "elli" is omitted after general substantives. +Hamoud-bin-Said inclined his handsome head, while concluding: + +"You will soon forget all you have learned from me, and I shall have +received your money for nothing." His impassiveness was deranged by a +look of chagrin, as he blurted out harshly: "I regret that the money +also has flown away, or I should insist----" + +He held his head high, as if trying to rise above his feeling of +degradation. + +Lilla stood looking at him thoughtfully from under the edge of a +verdigris-colored turban that matched the high collar of her walking +suit. She was reluctant to let him drift away to some obscure, +wretched fate, to which his native apathy would surely direct him. She +perceived in him again a certain relationship to herself, a +relationship due not only to his past good fortune, but also to +something in his character--perhaps some likeness of enthusiasm, or +even some identical kind of ardor, or else some weakness that had +ruined him but had not yet ruined her. So it was with a blush that she +suggested: + +"See here, an invalid friend of mine is dissatisfied with the man who +takes care of him----" + +When she had made herself clear, his face turned brick-red, and for an +instant his eyes were terrible. One would have said that some ancestor +uncontaminated by Zanzibar, some true Arab of Omân, stood there in his +place, flaming with outraged dignity. He cast back at her one more +burning look before he stalked from the house. + +The following week, when she had forgotten him, she found him, at +twilight, in the black-and-white hall. + +He looked exhausted, as if he had tramped innumerable miles; and his +face was as pale as death. He bowed humbly, muttering: + +"Madam, if you will forgive, I am now ready to be the servant of that +sick man." + + + + +CHAPTER XXVII + +Sometimes she tried to stand off as a spectator of her emotionalism, to +examine these new feelings. Were they more egotistical than +compassionate, more defiant than gentle? Among them, at any rate, +there was gratitude. She had found an object in life, had splendidly +emerged from her old sensations of incompleteness and inferiority. No +longer that morbid humility struggling in vain to transform itself into +a violent self-assertion. Not since she had become the virtual +creatrix of beauty, even the giver of life! + +And David, because she owed so much to him, became every day more +precious. All this new dignity and worth that now enveloped her, these +self-satisfactions of a Euterpe and a Beatrice, depended on his +survival, would increase, even if he maintained just that strange +equilibrium between life and death, but would die the instant he died. +So for Lilla he took on such importance that everything else in life +turned insignificant: old ardors were all consumed in this new ardor at +once conquering and maternal, vainglorious and passionately grateful. + +Even that wound in her heart from which a corporeal love had been torn +out by the roots, was healed at last, as it seemed, by these new forms +of pride and tenderness that could culminate in no material union. + +She returned less and less often to the little house in Greenwich +Village, where Parr, escaped from his crutches, sat in a chintz-covered +chair, a cane between his knees, his white head lowered, still dreaming +of "those good days." + +"You're better, aren't you? What does the doctor say now? Is there +anything you need here?" + +Her eyes, avoiding his look of humble devotion, roamed over the walls, +as if she were considering the advisability of more Delia Robbia +plaques. The niece, with her sleek brown bandeaux and fifteenth +century profile, passed noiselessly through the hall; and presently a +smell of cooking entered the sitting room. + +"As late as that?" + +Lilla drove uptown, heaped her arms with flowers, entered the rooms to +which Lawrence Teck had led her on the night of their marriage. + +The characteristic odor of the place--the odor of skins and sandalwood, +camphor and dried grasses--nearly stifled her. In the gloom she saw +the savage weapons gleaming. Then the shadow of clustered tomtoms +against the bedroom door made her heart stand still. As if to exorcise +a ghost that she no longer dared to meet, still clutching the mass of +tributary blossoms to her breast, she tore the window curtains apart. +The sunset struck in like a sword blade relentlessly cleaving through +the veils of time. Dust lay over everything. On the center table, in +the polished gourd, a bouquet of winter roses stood rigid, brown, like +the lips of mummies, dry enough to crumble at a touch. + +Standing there in her modish suit so cunningly devised to emphasize her +charms, with the flowers slipping from her arms to the dusty rug, she +wept at the vagueness of her recollections, the fading away of grief, +to which she had once dedicated herself "for life." + +"Why do I keep this place up? It's dreadful that everything should be +just the same here----" + +She meant, "While I am so changed." + +She went downstairs intending to tell the janitor to give the rooms a +cleaning; but she found him--a fat, undersized old fellow in a +skullcap--talking to a young man who had a leather portfolio stuck +under his arm. As her eyes were red, and her voice no doubt still +unsteady, she averted her head, and passed quickly out to her car. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVIII + +Though a genius--at any rate according to Brantome--it was now David +Verne, instead of Lilla, who suffered from the feeling of inferiority. +To hold her, he had only his music, and perhaps his bodily feebleness +that excited her compassion. Yet this feebleness, profound, +insurmountable, was what caused his torments of jealousy. + +The question was, how long would she be content with this wan sort of +love? + +And what did he know of her life during all the hours when she was +invisible to him? What homage, what persuasions, must she, with her +peculiar loveliness, not be object of, out there in the world full of +gaiety and vitality, where strength was always offering itself to +beauty? It would be only natural, he thought, if one of those men +should win her heart away, and she, out of pity, should pretend that +nothing had happened. + +For that matter, perhaps even now---- + +At last she understood why, when she entered the room, he sometimes +transfixed her with that poignant, questioning look. Then his +appearance was the same as on the day of their first meeting, as +though, at that dread, he had lost all the ground that she had helped +him to gain. + +"Oh, what folly!" she cried, aghast more at the change in him than at +this injustice. "If you knew how seldom I see any one these days, +except you!" + +He remained lost in the fatal contemplation of the idea, his body sunk +even deeper in the wheel chair. + +"And what's more there never has been anybody else, except one----" + +A gleam issued from the eyes of the poor wretch who, while hovering so +nicely between life and death, was still, just because he could see +her, hear her voice, and touch her hand, superior to the dead. + +"I am not jealous of him," he affirmed, though not quite convincingly; +since a man may be nearly as jealous of a departed rival as of a +present one. "But every fellow that you know, who walks toward you in +his wholeness and vigor, is my superior. Ah, my music; don't speak of +it! What does all that amount to against those natural qualities, +which I can never regain?" + +His frail, handsome, bronzed, young face expressed a puerile +helplessness. And it was with a maternal pity that she reassured him, +using words such as mothers find for children frightened by the dark. + +"Forgive me, Lilla. But what do you expect? You are my life." + +She reflected that beneath his weakness there was a strength perhaps +greater than the strength of the strong; and now, at last, she thought +of the clutch of the drowning. + +Then, instead of meeting her always at Brantome's, he had himself +wheeled to her house. Two or three times a week, as the summer +advanced, he dined there, in the cream-colored room where Balbians and +Dellivers of Andrew Jackson's day--and even a dandy by Benjamin West in +a sky-blue satin coat--looked down from above the mahogany sideboards +that were laden with Colonial glassware and old Lowenstoft. The +windows were open to the mews; the candle flames flickered in a tepid +breeze. They could hear the faint crash of a band that was playing a +Strauss waltz in Washington Square. + +She had not opened the Long Island house. As for David, he had a house +of his own in a corner of Westchester County, inherited from his +parents, who had been well-to-do. He told her about his family and his +childhood--his feeling of strangeness amid persons who had thought him +very queer, and had tried by every means to make him conform to their +ideals of thought. "I was a sort of black sheep," he declared, +"because some necessity compelled me to be myself. I could never get +over my skepticism about a thousand things that seemed plain to those +good folks----" + +The candles flickered before his hypersensitive face. The band in the +Square continued to play Strauss's _Rosen aus dem Süden_, with its old +suggestions of agile grace, united movement, young men and maidens +joyously dancing away toward kisses and laughter. The servants brought +in the fresh course. Lilla cut up David's food, then held the fork to +his lips; for the man who had scrawled that concerto could not lift his +hands high enough to feed himself. He faltered: + +"Your dinner will get cold." + +"All the better, on such a hot night." + +"Yes," he sighed, "you ought not to be here in this oven of a city." + +"Oh, I!" she retorted, with moisture in her eyes. + +In the drawing-room Hamoud-bin-Said paced to and fro, sometimes +standing before the picture by Bronzino, and seeming to stare clear +through it. He was serene, as water is serene that has been lashed by +tempests, and that holds in the depths of its placidity secrets that +none can discern. He was always near nowadays, on the fringe of their +lives, just beyond the radius of their preoccupations, the silent +witness of this strange love affair, in the humble station that Allah, +for some inscrutable reason, had decreed for him. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIX + +One night when she was expecting David to dinner, she turned round, +from arranging some flowers in a vase in the drawing-room, to see +Cornelius Rysbroek in the doorway. He had come, he declared, to "take +her out somewhere, give her a breath of fresh air, and make her listen +to reason." + +"But I'm dining here, Cornie." + +"Alone?" + +"No." + +Nevertheless, he sat down with a dogged look. + +"What's to be the end of this?" he demanded. "I suppose you know what +a lot of chatter this nonsense of yours has stirred up? They're even +saying that you're engaged to him. It's perfectly monstrous." + +It was his old tone of voice, throaty, quaintly didactic, precise from +spite and yet muffled by rage; but it was not the same face. It was, +instead, the face of a desperate, possibly dangerous man, who had +brooded over this monomania in the gorges of the great Chinese river, +in the filthy yamens of barbarous mountain towns, in the forts of +hill-robbers who practiced extraordinary cruelties. He had fought his +way through rapids whose very names were ominous--"The King of Hell's +Slide," the "Last Look at Home," the "Place Where the Soul Itself Is +Lost." He had sat with the free people of Nosuland, the enemies of the +Chinese, eating from bowls of camphorwood raw sheep's heart minced with +pepper, sometimes expecting permission to go free, sometimes sure of +being tortured with the split bamboo. At last they had sent him back +with gifts. Then, rushing home to her, he had been led by her greeting +to believe that his miseries were ended. + +What a mockery of hope! On those journeys of his, roused from his +acquiescence in ill-health and failure, moved by a savage +determination, he had accomplished the impossible, in body and +character had exceeded his limitations. He had taken as his pattern +the rival whom she had preferred. He had built up in himself the +counterfeits of those qualities by which Lawrence Teck had won her. +Yet now he must see her devoting herself to a man who was the +antithesis of all that she had previously preferred. + +It was unendurable! But how was he to escape it? By hating her? Yes, +surely she was worthy of his hatred, heartless, cruel, the cause of all +these innumerable torments from which he sometimes got a moment of +madness. + +"What do I see in you?" he said between his teeth. + +She had on a copper-colored gown hung over her slender shoulders by two +straps. Maybe because its hue was a deeper shade of the same color as +her hair, her eyes, and even her pale-brown skin, the costume seemed +part of her. He could see nothing about her that was not exquisite--no +detail from which to build up a remedial distaste. So he ground out at +her: + +"Your nature? What rot!--as if that ever attracted me, with its false +pretenses of heart, its instabilities and downright treacheries. What +else do you offer? This that I see? What we human fools call beauty? +What is beauty?" + +She sat down in despair, observing that even his jaws, under his heavy +mustache, looked more salient. It was almost laughable, she thought; +but she was far from laughing. Every moment she expected to hear the +doorbell. + +He continued ferociously: + +"In the beginning these arms and legs of yours were nothing but +appliances for hanging from trees and running away from wild beasts. +Your body was merely a convenient case for a machine that kept your +life ticking along. How does one get the idea that all this is +good-looking? Ages ago men decided to think so for reasons that have +nothing to do with esthetics; they passed the hoax on, and in time +these physical features got themselves surrounded with a perfect fog of +sentimental and romantic balderdash. Take your face. Your nose is +bridged in that so-called ravishing way in order to let a stream of air +into your lungs. Your eyebrows--how many sonnets have been written on +eyebrows!--are there, in the first place, to keep the perspiration from +running into your eyes. Your lips are merely a binding against the +friction of food. How grotesque to find such expedients beautiful! No +doubt in other planets there are creatures that you'd call monsters; +and they'd call you hideous. In fact, there can't be any such thing as +beauty." + +"No doubt you're right, Cornie dear," she responded, looking down at +her beautiful hands. + +"And what's it all for?" he ejaculated, in a stupefied kind of horror. +"All this sordid consolidation of flesh and blood, this disgusting +hallucination of attractiveness? All for----" + +"I know," she assented. "More Lillas, ad infinitum. Isn't it +tiresome?" + +He jumped up, with a groan: + +"I could kill you!" + +"Too late. You ought to have done it when we were children together." + +"Yes, too late, too late." + +He wandered round the room, slapping one fist into the other, glaring +at the walls, from which old-time ladies simpered vapidly at him. His +brain seemed to be whirling round in his skull; his vision became +blurred; and he had a dreadful apprehension of losing contact with +normality. But normality, too--what was it? Normality was being +natural! He came toward her; she rose and recoiled; but he caught hold +of her arms above the elbows, and held her fast when she swayed back +from him with a long shimmer of her copper-colored gown. + +"You're hurting me, Cornie. And there's the bell," she muttered, her +heart going dead. + +He released her with the gesture of a man who hurls an enemy over a +precipice. He gasped: + +"One of these days!" + +And with a livid smile he left the room as David Verne appeared in the +doorway, in his wheel chair, propelled by Hamoud. + +But David, too, was nearly unrecognizable. + +"What is it?" she ejaculated, and turned to catch her reflection in a +mirror. She saw herself in a curious aspect also, white and a little +wild. One of her shoulder straps had slipped down across her arm. + +"What a dress!" she said. + +David carefully pronounced the words: + +"That was Rysbroek, wasn't it?" + +"Yes; I've known him since we were kiddies." + +"I remember your saying so." + +"He brought me bad news," she added, to imply, "That's it." + +"Ah, I'm sorry." + +There was no life in his voice. + +In the dining room the servants moved noiselessly, as though fearful of +disturbing the long silences. A sickly breeze stirred the curtains of +apricot velvet. The brass band in Washington Square was playing +selections from Verdi; the long-drawn wails of the horns crept in +through the windows like snatches of a dirge. She was reduced to +speaking of the sultry air. A thunderstorm was brewing? + +"The air will be clearer," he assented. + +He ate nothing. When Hamoud had wheeled him back to the drawing-room, +he asked: + +"Do you mind if I go? A splitting headache. This weather." + +"You shouldn't have stayed in town, you see," she returned +automatically. + +"Maybe I'll go up to Westchester for a week or so." His dull eyes +rested upon the picture that she made as she stood uneasily before him, +with an appearance of guilt, her figure like a shaft of flame springing +upward from the hearth, her brown head aureoled by the tempestuous +canvas of Bronzino. "Besides," he concluded, "keeping you here all +this while a prisoner----" + +"How can you be so unkind?" + +"At least I'm not ungrateful." + +He made a sign to Hamoud, who stole forward to take his post behind the +wheel chair; and the two faces regarded her with the same brave, secret +look, the same queer impassiveness that was like a deafening cry. Her +nerves began to fail her. With an unaccountable feeling of perfidy she +straightened his cravat, while murmuring: + +"I'll see you first, of course, dear?" + +"Of course." + +But he neither saw her nor telephoned before his departure; nor did he +write to her from the house in Westchester County. On the third day +she went to Brantome, who said: + +"I was coming to see you." + +Fixing her with his tragical old eyes, he informed her that he had +received a long-distance call from David Verne's physician, who had +telephoned from the house in Westchester County. In three days David +seemed to have lost all that he had gained in these months. For some +reason he was letting go of life. + +"Why is that? Is it because he is letting go of you?" + +The Frenchman's leonine countenance took on a hostile expression. He +persisted: + +"Eh? Is it you who have done this?" + +And Lilla understood that to this old devotee of the arts she had +ceased to be anything except a means to an end. + +He seemed contemptible to her with his red-rimmed, fiery eyes, his +Viking mustaches that had turned truculent, his whole aspect of +animosity at this last collapse of hope. And of a sudden she divined +the true basis of those hopes of his--the longing for at least some +vicarious creation, the desire to escape, in part, his own sense of +defeat by aiding, and, therefore, sharing, the triumphs of another. He +put himself in her path: he would not let her go. He was preparing to +hurl at her, who knew what reproaches. + +"Oh, get out of my way!" she cried at last, in a breaking voice. She +pushed him aside so sharply that he tottered back on his heels. She +rushed out of the room, downstairs, into her car. + +The limousine sped northward into the country. + +She watched the placid fields, the wooded hill-tops, the lanes that +wound away between walls of sumac. She thought of another unexpected +ride toward another crisis of life. Her heart was beating wildly; her +breathing was labored; her hands twitched open and shut. She took the +mirror from its rack, and saw her pupils extraordinarily dilated, so +that her eyes appeared black. + +The car left the highway, to enter a park of well-grown trees. She +caught sight of the low, simple mass of the house; its walls of gray +plaster rising between two clumps of evergreens, beyond a garden laid +out in grassy stages, where flagstone paths wound away between beds of +heliotrope. On the terrace, under an awning of striped canvas, stood a +man in a dark-blue robe that opened down the front to reveal a white +under robe confined with a scarlet sash. He had a close-fitting +skullcap on his head, of white, embroidered linen. He was +Hamoud-bin-Said. + +She passed him without a second glance, and found herself face to face +with the physician, who was just starting back to town. + +Dr. Fallows began to talk to her judicially and suavely, with a tone of +regret, but possibly with an undertone of contentment: for this case, +after having immensely bewildered him for a time, was now, at last, +imitating all the proper symptoms again. The patient's recent +improvement had been due, no doubt, to one of those rallies that may +interrupt the progress of many diseases--though in a case of this sort, +whether due to a functional or a pathological cause, Dr. Fallows had +never seen nor heard of an arrest--much less a diminution--of the +general weakness. + +But now the relapse was complete. + +She was aware of a lot of fluted wainscotting around her, and, beyond +Dr. Fallows' head, a Tudor staircase in silhouette against a large bay +window of many leaded panes. Some of these panes, of stained glass in +heraldic patterns, gleamed against a passing cloud like rubies, +emeralds, and sapphires that had lost their fire. Dr. Fallows still +blocked her way--almost another Brantome!--engrossed in his pessimistic +peroration, his visage of an urbane, successful man full of complicated +satisfactions and regrets. Behind him the staircase was suddenly +bathed in sunshine; all the panes of stained glass became sparkling and +rich; and a sheaf of prismatic rays stretched down, through the gloom +of the hall, toward Lilla's upturned face. + +She sped up the staircase. + +All that she saw was the four-post bedstead canopied with cretonne, the +face on the pillow. At her approach, a thrill passed through the air +pervaded by the stagnation of his spirit. He opened his eyes. + +"You! I thought I had unchained you." + +She knelt down beside him, and asked: + +"What have I done to deserve this?" + +He managed to respond: + +"You deserve more, perhaps--a worldful of blessings. But this release +is all that I have to give you." + +"Do you think I care for that man? I even hate him now, if it's he who +has brought you to this." + +He looked like a soul that sees an angel hovering on the threshold of +hell, promising salvation. + +"Oh, if I could believe you!" + +And all the propulsions that had brought this moment to pass now forced +from her lips: + +"I am here to prove it in a way that you can never doubt." + +That day, at twilight, she standing beside his bed, they were married. + + + + +CHAPTER XXX + +Beyond seas, deserts, and snow-capped mountain peaks, in the equatorial +forests where the Mambava spearmen dwelt unconquered, the black king, +Muene-Motapa, sat in the royal house listening to a story teller. + +The king sat on an ebony stool, in a haze of wood smoke, muffled in a +cape of monkey skin embroidered with steel beads; for while it was +summer in America it was winter in his land. Behind him, in a wide +semicircle against the wattled walls, sat his black councilors, war +captains, and wives, their eyeballs and teeth agleam in the light cast +up by the embers. On the other side of the fire, the story teller +discoursed from between two warriors who leaned their heads pensively +against the upright shafts of their stabbing spears. + +At the story teller's gestures--since gestures were needed to explain +these wonders--chains clanked on his wrists. The chains had been +fastened upon his arms and legs long ago, when he had begun to struggle +back to health, surviving wounds that even his hardy captors had +expected to prove fatal. When he fell silent, the councilors, +captains, and women patted their mouths to express their astonishment, +and the king declared: + +"A good tale, Bangana. Do you know still another?" + +So Lawrence Teck resumed his entertainment. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXI + +The house in Westchester County was a pleasant surprise to Lilla. When +she had gotten rid of some furniture and bric-a-brac whose style or +color irritated her, she found herself in a sympathetic atmosphere, +surrounded, as always, by a harmonious and sophisticated richness. + +In the wainscotted hall, which the stained glass of the bay-window on +the staircase landing dappled every day with a prismatic light, a +marble Renaissance mantelpiece supported a mounted knight of the +fifteenth century in stone, a champion who brandished his sword, and +raised his sightless eyes, in an invariable gesture of defiance. +Across the hall from him, a wide doorway opened on the living room, +illuminated from tall windows set with quaint faces in color, and +having at its far end a fine old Flemish tapestry of faded greens and +browns, behind a long table on which stood a bust of a Florentine +noblewoman in polychrome. High sprays of flowers sprang up, here and +there, above sofas and chairs upholstered in antiquated damask, and +seemed to bring into this spacious room walled with fluted wood the +gayety of the garden, which appeared, behind the leaded windowpanes, a +riot of golden marguerites, Chilean lilies, Chinese larkspur, phlox, +asters, and poppy mallows. + +Next, beyond folding doors, stood David's study, a pianoforte between +the mullioned windows, a large carved center table covered with +portfolios and books, the paneled walls hung with framed sheets of +music written and autographed by famous composers. + +Upstairs, however, in her own apartment, Lilla had produced an +eighteenth century air. The walls of her sitting room and bedroom were +remolded in chaste panels of French gray; the new rugs and the canopied +window curtains were the palest orange. Her desk, the most vivid +object in her sitting room, pleased her especially--a high Venetian +desk of green and gold lacquer with pigeon holes and writing shelf of +gold and red. She thought of the letters that must have been written +there by women with dark eyes and powdered coiffures. + +Then she sighed. A look of wonder and depression was reflected by a +mirror framed in gilt; and she turned to stare at a vase in which stood +a bouquet of Louis XVI flowers, a soft blending of mauve, faint yellow, +rose, and pale blue, all fashioned out of tin. + +"Tin flowers! Great heavens, what was I thinking of?" + +She had only now realized the mockery of them. She rang for a maid, +and said: + +"Throw this thing out." + + + + +CHAPTER XXXII + +In September David began to write his tone poem, _Marco Polo_. + +It was not Marco Polo alone, but every man of extraordinary +aspirations, who took that long journey, through semimythical deserts, +into the realm of the Great Khan, and there for many years lived a life +unrelated to the lives of his boyhood companions. + +In far-off Cambulac the Venetian adventurer steeped himself in sights, +odors, and sounds that were the antithesis of those which he had known, +till at last he took on the strangeness of his surroundings. Yet in +the course of time, though covered with wealth and honors, and +habituated to bizarre delights, he began, with the perversity of human +nature, to long for the land of his birth. With a sense of necessity +and foreboding he tore himself loose from the paradise of Cambulac, +traversed the deserts again, regained his own house. None knew him, +for he was old, savory with antipodal spices, outlandishly garbed; and +even his countenance had become like those Oriental faces amid which he +had found unheard-of griefs and joys. In Venice, his birthplace, +instead of a greeting that might ease his nostalgia, he encountered +disbelief in his identity, and ridicule of his tales. He could not +make them credulous of that delicious Cambulac where he had dwelt like +a god: his tidings of unearthly felicities--free to all who would make +that journey--fell upon brutish ears. The very children came to laugh +him to scorn. So finally, stunned by this ingratitude, cut to the +heart by the gibes of these Venetian wretches to whom he had brought +such fine news, he sank into a stupor, and wondered, as he sat alone in +his shame, whether indeed he had been a great and dazzled man in +Cambulac--which, perhaps, after all, had no existence in reality! + +The idea mapped out, there began for David Verne the period of complex +mental tension, of intense concentration, during which an interruption +might scatter forever a sequence of valuable thought. Lilla, knowing +how great this mental and emotional strain must be, wondered that he +was strong enough to bear it. + +But the desire to be to Lilla, despite his infirmity, something that no +other man could be, made him prodigious. As the tone poem expanded +from this inspiration, he gained still greater impetus from the mere +tonic of success. Toward the end of October, his asthenia had +diminished enough to allow him to play the piano weakly in three +octaves. + +Dr. Fallows, on one of his visits a witness of this achievement, went +out thunderstruck to his car, muttering to himself: + +"It is impossible!" + +He looked sternly across the sunny garden, where the last of the summer +flowers--giant daisies above beds of tufted pansies--were triumphantly +flaunting themselves. He had never heard, and he doubted if any one +else had ever heard, of a similar case--the checking and diminishing of +such a prostration. But, knitting his brows, he pondered on the still +chaotic state of the whole data concerning the "endocrine chain," and +on the fallibility of previous unequivocal pronouncements in the +science of medicine. He had a slight feeling of deflation, followed by +a glow of curiosity; and he returned into the house to change his +orders about the medicine. + +He had been prescribing a solution of arsenic, the dose increasing +little by little toward the point of tolerance. Now, for the purpose +of experiment, he ordered that the dose was to remain the same. And in +order to impress his instructions upon the mind of Hamoud-bin-Said, he +said to the Arab severely: + +"Remember, not one drop more!" + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIII + +"Lilla! Lilla!" + +She appeared in the doorway of the study like a muse that David had +summoned by an infallible conjuration. + +His day's work was over. He showed her what he had done. She leaned +down beside the wheel chair to scan the pages; her fluffy, brown hair +filled with the afternoon sunshine. And David, in the exhaustion +following his labor, dreamily immersed his senses in the sight of her +pale-brown cheek so close to his, in the persistent strangeness of her +perfume, in the singular cadences of her voice that were always +inspiring new harmonies, and in the caress of her cool, fragile hands +that had drawn him back from death. + +"Is it good?" + +What he meant was, "Is it good enough to keep you from regrets?" + +She understood, pitied him the more, redoubled her tenderness. And +this wan idyll of theirs, as nearly incorporeal as though she were +indeed an ethereal visitor, took on a new pathos which was accentuated +by the withering of the flowers in the garden, the first hints of the +rigor of winter. + +He marveled at her self-immolation in this lonely house. He wondered +how long such a state of things could last. Then, summoning back his +new courage, he continued his combat against the unknown rivals, who, +perhaps, had not yet revealed themselves to her, or else had thus far +sent to her only ambiguous and subtle heralds of their coming--a breeze +flavored with the past and promising an imitation of old transports, a +cry of departing birds like a reassurance of the inevitable return, not +only of the spring, but also of natural love. + +"What are you reading now?" he would ask her apprehensively; for so +many books were replete with accounts of a different sort of union. + +Or, when she had gone to walk through the grounds at sunset, he, +chained to his wheel chair, watched her departing figure with a +sensation of dread, asking himself what thoughts would come to her out +there, under the immense compulsion of the scarlet clouds. + +His fears, for lack of any other definite object, often veered toward +her memories. + +She rejoined him at dusk, languid from that brief promenade, like those +Eastern women whom Lawrence Teck had once described to her, or like one +who is enervated by a fever stealthily creeping round one at the moment +of tropical twilight. He saw her eyes misty with shadows which +disappeared as she came forward into the lamplight. + +"Yes, she had been thinking of him." + +He suspected that she thought of "him" also in the night. + +"Don't go yet," he would plead, when she came to his bed, into which +Hamoud-bin-Said had tucked him like a child. So she sat down; and the +ray of the night lamp fell across her sensitive lips that had felt the +kisses of "the other." David's thin, romantic, bronzed face, with its +queer comminglement of adolescence and genius, was fortunately in the +shadows cast by the curtains of the bed canopy. + +"Ah, how dull it must be for you! If we had some visitors? +Brantome----" + +"No," she said. + +"And yet it was through him----" + +"What! haven't you seen through him yet?" she returned in a jealous +tone. And presently, with an accent of fear, as if her intuition had +discerned some serious, unrevealed event of which Brantome was going to +be the cause, "I wish we could have met some other place." + +"You dislike him now?" + +She responded: + +"It was he, you know, who told me of that other woman, the one before +me, who had you when you were well." + +She rose, laid a kiss upon his forehead, and went away to her rooms +across the corridor, leaving with him her perfume. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIV + +In New York there were two opinions concerning the change in Cornelius +Rysbroek. + +From his travels, it seemed, he had acquired a certain temperamental as +well as physical hardness. He wore habitually a calm, ironical look, +as though, having found life out, he considered it a phenomenon worthy +only of scorn. He was seen everywhere, fastidiously attired, +self-possessed, taciturn, listening to the chatter of his friends with +sardonic attention, now and then throwing in a blighting comment. It +was curious that these infrequent remarks of his, even though they had +not remotely referred to her, always ended by bringing the conversation +round to Lilla. Thereupon he fell silent, smoked one cigarette after +another, and wore a look of indifference and boredom. At last he would +rise, apparently fatigued by all that trivial gossip, and wander away. + +In solitude he became another man. He would pace the floor for hours, +sometimes all night; and then one might have heard some very peculiar +rigmaroles declaimed aloud, or even shouted out--phrases so jumbled +that they were hardly rational, cries interrupted by groans or +smothered by the grinding of his teeth. Now and then his valet, on +pushing back the window curtains in the morning, discovered a mirror +smashed, or a book torn to tatters. There was something shocking in +the calm set of Cornelius Rysbroek's jaws, the languid contempt of his +eyes, as he remarked to the valet, that "there had been a little +accident last night." + +Once he burned his right hand severely. He had hurled a picture of +Lilla into the fire, then, to rescue it, had plunged his arm to the +elbow into the flames. + +He often drove his car into Westchester County, round and round a wide +network of roads in the center of which lay the house of David Verne. +Suddenly he entered the highway that passed the tall gateposts of the +detestable place. He drove faster and faster. The gateposts were near +at hand. He bent over the wheel, and, without raising his eyes, sent +the car roaring by, as if escaping through a forest in conflagration. +His visage was covered with sweat; his pupils were full of red lights. +He no longer saw the road, or was conscious of driving. Miles beyond, +he became aware that he was calling out maledictions: and strangers, +passing at a decent speed, had a vision of a dapper, ghastly wretch who +appeared to be fleeing on the wings of the wind from the clutch of +insanity. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXV + +Fanny Brassfield, whose country house was not far away, sometimes +dropped in to see Lilla. + +"Hello, David," she said, sitting down beside the tea table, and +crossing her knees. "How's old Marco Polo to-day?" + +Her bony cheeks were rosy from the cold wind; her green eyes glittered +with health; and her whole countenance, under a tilted, putty-colored +toque, expressed her full satisfaction with what she had found in life. +She had no nerves, no remorse nor thwarted ambitions. Because of her +wealth, unscrupulousness, and small imagination, her one constant +craving--for novel experiences--was easily satisfied. A long cigarette +holder between her thin lips, one putty-colored lisle stocking showing +to the knee, she exhaled, together with an odor of Florentine +orris-root, a ruthless vigor and appetency for pleasure. Lilla thought +with envy of all this woman had never imagined nor felt, all that she +had been able to enjoy without self-questioning. + +How simple life was for some people! + +"I'm giving a little party. No doubt it's useless to ask you----" + +Fanny Brassfield interrupted herself to stare at Hamoud-bin-Said, who +had entered the room without a sound. + +He had on a long, dark-blue joho, or robe, embellished down its open +front with a tracery of gold. Underneath he wore the kanzu, the under +robe of fine white cotton, embroidered round the neck with a bit of red +needlework, and reaching to his boots of soft, black leather. Bound +his waist was a blue-and-gold sash, from which protruded the silver +hilt of his J-shaped Zanzibar dagger. His head was covered, as always +in the house, with a white embroidered skullcap. In one small hand he +held a Venetian goblet, in the other a bottle of medicine. + +It was the hour for Dr. Fallows' prescription. + +"Really," Fanny Brassfield exclaimed, in her high-pitched, insolent +voice, "I must get myself one of these--what is he again? Zanzibari?" + +Hamoud, towering there in the attire of an Omân gentleman--which she +took for a specially effective livery--contemplated the great Mrs. +Brassfield. His full eyelids were dreamily lowered over his lustrous +eyes. His long, straight nose seemed narrower than usual, perhaps from +disdain. But his clear-cut carnelian mouth, vivid between his faint +mustache and his delicate beard, did not change expression, although he +was calling the great Mrs. Brassfield a female beneath the contempt of +a Muscat slaver, the progeny of camels and alley dogs, and other names +besides. As if regretfully he turned away to David Verne, measured out +the solution of arsenic, and presented the goblet, a tapering treasure +covered with gilt and crimson protuberances, an antique that had stood +before men in the wave-lapped palaces of Venice, brimming with Greek +wine, or maybe with Renaissance poison. + +David Verne himself raised the goblet. + +"Dr. Fallows has really done wonders, hasn't he?" + +"Wonders," Lilla echoed with a smile. + +In the hall, as she was leaving, Fanny Brassfield said to Lilla: + +"By the way, Anna Zanidov is in town. She was asking after you." + +Without moving, Lilla murmured slowly: + +"Ah, she wants to tell my fortune again, perhaps?" + +"She stopped doing that. It got too uncanny. You know yourself that +everything she ever predicted came to pass. Including three deaths; +that is, two besides----" + +"One must believe that she sees it," Lilla assented, and, frozen by her +thoughts, shuddered violently. "Yes, too uncanny! She did well to +give it up." + +"Especially as people were getting to be afraid of her," said Fanny +Brassfield, while passing through the front doorway. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXVI + +While David worked behind the closed doors of the study, Lilla, sitting +down in a damask-covered chair, tried to concentrate her mind on the +new books from New York. + +She skimmed the novels to the point where the lovers had their first +embrace, then turned to poems by women, which were pervaded with a +melancholy derived perhaps from disillusionment. As a corrective she +read the books on world politics, economics, esthetic philosophy. In +these last she found, eloquently expressed, the most characteristic +argument of the times--a persuasion to that self-abandonment which +follows materialism and moral skepticism, an announcement that +happiness lay in a religion of the senses, in becoming, indeed, +"divinely animal." + +As she laid down the book, there returned to her the words that a young +Roman had poured into her ears one night on Lake Como: + +"The splendors of this world and our acceptance of them. Not to +question, but to feel, with these feelings of ours that a thousand +generations have made so complex." + +Of a sudden New York rose before her, bathed in the glitter from its +lights, ringing with music and laughter. She saw the multitudes of +pleasure seekers streaming hither and thither, immersing themselves in +startling hues and sounds, in abnormal spectacles and freshly +discovered impulses, which the priests of this new-old cult provided +for them benignly in ever more exacerbating forms and combinations. +There, possibly, amid those emotions gradually approaching a Dionysiac +frenzy, was the logical Mecca of her long pilgrimage, the end of all +this hunger for sensuous reactions--for the pleasures that came from +strange fragrances and harmonies, from contacts with precious fabrics +and the patina of perfect porcelains, from the perception of matchless +color in painted canvas and gems, or from the grace that was fluent in +the moving bodies of human beings and beasts? + +She rose, turning away from those books, and from the room full of +objects whose textures were finer and more lasting than flesh. +Crossing the hall, she entered the fernery, where palms rose against +the stone arches of the windows, and hanging baskets overflowed with +long tendrils above a wicker couch that was covered with red cushions. +It was the last refuge of the flowers. Beyond the leaded panes some +snowflakes were floating down upon the flagstone paths of the garden. + +Her gaze was attracted to some potted roses languishing in a corner. + +She recalled having read somewhere, "The color is in us, not in the +rose." She fell to wondering about the miracle of sight, in fact of +all the senses, through which one derived from vibrations a seeming +impression of surrounding things, and called this impression reality. + +Of what nature were those vibrations? Did they truly explain the +objects from which they issued? Suppose the senses caught only the +least of them, or misinterpreted them? In that case one might be +surrounded by things wholly different from what one believed them to +be, awesome things which might be either exquisite or frightful. She +stood horrified by this thought. The familiar world seemed to be +dissolving in a mist, just as in her childhood: and through the mist +she perceived immense, vague apparitions, at once monstrous and +beautiful. + +"Ah! why must these things come to me? What crime have I ever +committed?" + +The huge, invisible cat was resuming its play with the mouse. + +"Yes," she thought, "the capacity for pleasure is balanced by the +capacity for suffering. The more subtle our happy sensations, the more +piercing our painful ones. Yet the thrill from pleasure is gradually +deadened by repetition, and finally, with the passage of time, the +senses no longer feel it; but all the while that pleasure is +diminishing, pain increases. After all, what a tragical farce! Is +there nothing else, nothing better?" + +Lilla began again to shrink from life, to mistrust it. + +She suffered from trivial, groundless fears, which she magnified, then +abruptly forgot. Growing thinner, she found herself enervated as in +the days of her mourning for Lawrence Teck, and all the while something +at once indefinite and priceless seemed to be lost to her. In the +midst of her sadness she would have fleeting perceptions of blue water, +felucca sails, a town on the edge of a lake--maybe Lausanne--a room +where she sat obediently asleep in a deep leather chair. + +Now and again she woke in the morning with dim impressions of having +dreamed a dream of inexpressible grandeur, of supernatural joy, in some +place that she could not remember, and with some person whose face she +could not recall. But as soon as she was wide awake all recollections +of the dream passed away. She found herself burdened with the same +unaccountable distress that she had taken to bed with her last night. + +"All this preoccupation with myself! It must end to-day." + +She determined to lose herself in David, to live and think and feel for +him alone. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXVII + +In the forests of the Mambava, in groves of banana trees, the peaked, +thatched roofs of Muene-Motapa's stronghold rose in concentric circles +round the royal houses. + +Here, all day long, one heard the bleating of goats and fat-tailed +sheep, the coo and whirr of pigeons, the thump of wooden mortars in +which the women, their nude bodies covered with intricate designs of +scars, were grinding millet. At times these noises were pierced by the +clatter of little hammers, with which the smiths were beating into +spear blades the lumps of iron smelted in rude furnaces from +ferriferous quartz. It was an hereditary art. Who had taught it to +them? Perhaps the hook-nosed voyagers from the Phoenician coast, who +had bequeathed to them also a nebulous religious awe of fire, of the +sun, and also of the moon, personified in legend by a pale, ardent, +supernatural woman of surpassing beauty. + +In their low verandas the warriors reclined at full length, their +bangles of copper jingling as they reached out their hands toward the +calabashes full of palm wine, or the smoking gourds charged with hemp. +At the gate of the king's stockade the guards sat with their stabbing +spears across their knees, surrounded by wolflike dogs and naked +children with distended abdomens. + +It was in the royal enclosure that Lawrence Teck had endured his +captivity. + +Beside him, waking and sleeping, there remained two guards, so that in +Muene-Motapa's capital there was a lucid riddle, "What is it that casts +three shadows?" Those two prehistoric warriors were aware of an +incomprehensible great value locked up in the captive's mind; yet at +his first false movement they would have slaughtered him, destroying +cheerfully, like many others before them, what they could never hope to +understand. However, they were kind to him, holding palm leaves over +his head when he crossed the courtyards in the blaze of the sun, +cooling his wrists when he fell ill with fever, and at night, if they +spoke to each other across his body, keeping their voices low so as not +to break his sleep. King Muene-Motapa had said to them long ago: + +"If he escapes, you shall be beaten to death with sticks; but if he +tells me that you have not treated him respectfully, soldier ants shall +eat you alive." + +For despite his chains, Lawrence Teck was the chosen friend of the king. + +Muene-Motapa had been fond of him even before the drunken riot in which +he got his wounds. This friendship had then become a proprietary +emotion, a compound of affection, remorse, the fear of revenge, and +even a sort of proselytizing zeal mixed up with self-interest. +Muene-Motapa hoped that in time his prisoner would renounce all desire +for the white world, embrace the beliefs and habits of the Mambava, +become a subtle counselor in diplomacy as well as in wars of conquest. +In short, those tales of the lands beyond these forests--the wiles of +Islam, the methods by which the Europeans were eating up Africa--had +revived in the king the incoherent and grandiose dreams of his youth. +In this captive, whom he would some day make his brother, co-priest, +and fellow general, he had found the knowledge to supplement his force, +and make himself invincible. + +So, night after night he repeated the same plea, sitting in the royal +pavilion, across the fire from the white man whose guards had been sent +out of doors. + +Muene-Motapa was tall, muscular, bold of gesture and fierce of face. +His word was life and death. Day and night he was surrounded by +chiefs, councilors, wizards, and royal ladies who roared with laughter +when he smiled, gnashed their teeth when he frowned, accompanied his +every comment with moans of admiration and a soft snapping of their +fingers. They were round him now, aligned against the wattled walls, +behind the film of wood smoke; breathlessly awaiting the sound of his +deep voice. + +He began, in a chanting tone, to rehearse the past glories of the +blacks. He spoke of that great ancestor of his, that other +Muene-Motapa, whose kingdom had extended from the country of the +Bushmen to the Indian Ocean, and from Nyasaland to Delagoa Bay. Then +the white men had come. + +"The flies destroyed the horses. The fevers burned up the men. Those +who survived, my forefathers pierced with their spears. Have I shown +you the trophies, Bangana, the hats of steel, the corselets of steel, +the guns that one fires by lighting a string? My forefathers gave +those things to their children for toys, and grass grew through the +bones of those white men. But there came more, and more, and more, +swarming over all the land, till now my country alone is free from +them. Shall that be? Have I eaten rabbits? Am I some village +headman? When I stamp my foot seven thousand spearmen spring from the +ground. I am Muene-Motapa!" + +In the crimson glow from the ashes the chieftains, the councilors, and +the wizards raised their faces which were convulsed with rage. The +wattled walls hurled back a deafening chorus of war cries. + +The king drank from a gourdful of cashew-brandy, wiped his lips, and +shouted: + +"Consent, Bangana! Consent, Mfondolo, who might be my brother lion, +pouncing upon army after army, as the lion pounces upon the antelope. +I have shown you the Zimbabwe, the stone cities of the ancients. With +slaves we will dig the gold out of the quartz reefs, buy guns from the +Arabs, and drive these little yellow-skinned white men back into the +sea. We two will rule over the land of my ancestors, the kingdom of +the first Muene-Motapa. Through your mouth we will treat with the +English, the Arabs, and all the world as equals. I will not kill you, +because you will be my mind. Besides, I love you." + +At a wave of his hand, behind the veils of smoke the women of the royal +household rose and departed, their symmetrically scarred torsoes +shining with oil, so that they resembled statues of polished bronze. +They were slender, graceful, informed with the gentleness of those +reared in the shadow of royalty, showing profiles that suggested the +faces chiseled on Semitic monuments. Fringes of bark cloth hung down +from their yellow girdles to their knees; over their breasts dangled +strings of pearls and amber beads from Bazaruto; each wore on the +middle of her forehead a charm intended to make her fortunate in +marriage. They left behind them an odor of cheap German perfumes, +which Mohammedan traders had brought to the edge of these forests. + +When they had passed beyond earshot--for the mention of sacred things +was not to be thought of while women sat within hearing--the king +continued: + +"What more can I do to show you that I love you, Bangana? I have +initiated you into the mysteries of my people. You know the ceremonies +of the dead, of those who become of age. I have shown you where the +fire is kept from which, once a year, all the fires in my kingdom are +rekindled. I have told you which mountains and streams are holy. I +have admitted you even into the secret of my own divinity. Nay, I have +done still more. I have let you see my people dance for the Lady of +the Moon." + +There was a silence. + +Lawrence Teck remained as before, his bearded face bowed down; but a +slight tremor of horror passed through his shoulders under the +sun-blackened skin. + +The Dances of the Moon! Yes, he had seen them, one time when he was +weak from fever and despair. All the frightfulness of Africa had then +been made manifest to him at last, as if the very soul of destruction +had condensed itself out of the vapors, venoms and invisible menaces of +these primeval forests, to assume, for one night, a horde of nearly +human shapes. But he shuddered not at his memory of that spectacle, +but at its effect on him--an effect that he had denied with a +passionate, clanking gesture of his chained arms, yet that had remained +in the depths of his brain like a serpent, which had always slept till +then, and had ever since been gnawing at his thoughts. + +He recalled the deafening thunder of the drums, the glare and the +blood, the moon peering down through the branches like the face of a +perverse divinity pale from pride, and the thought that had come to him +there, in his sickness and lonely hopelessness--that while some in a +fit of decrepitude and despair might turn to God, others might turn to +the oblivion promised by evil. + +Raising his head, he called out in a voice as strong as the king's: + +"Still dreaming, Muene-Motapa? Awake, and let me go!" + +The king leaped to his feet, to pace the earthen floor. His kilt of +leopards' paws swayed from side to side; his amulets jingled; his +shaven head glistened amid the shadows, like an ebony ball. His court +bowed their naked bodies, muttering: + +"Father of elephants! He shall stamp on this man, and his foot shall +shake the whole earth!" + +Muene-Motapa bitterly asked his captive: + +"Is there not always rich meat, and beer and brandy in season? I have +also hundreds of women who are young, as slender as palm trees, with +teeth like milk. I will buy women from the Arabs, with red or tawny +skin and straight hair like waterfalls. I will send men to steal the +women of Mozambique--white women with hair brighter than firelight. +Why do you not marry my little sisters, my brother? They pine away for +you. Or is it wealth? I know the little bible that you carry in that +pouch! When you look into it, you remember all the quartz reefs in the +gorges of the mountains beyond my forests, with their veins of gold and +of gray and yellow copper; and the river sands full of gold; and the +places where you have seen the iron that draws iron, and the tin, and +the black grease. But I have already told you that you shall be rich. +What is the matter with you, Bangana? Are you deaf?" + +He squatted down before Lawrence Teck, and thrust forward his angry +face; and his pendent, pear-shaped earrings of jasper, which some +Phoenician adventurer had worn perhaps four thousand years ago, +quivered as he shouted with all his might: + +"Are you deaf, I say? Shall I open your ears with a spear point?" + +He stared in stupefaction at Lawrence Teck's stony countenance, then +suddenly burst into sobs. + +"See how I love him!" he moaned, "and yet he hates me; and I shall +never be great." + +The prisoner thought to himself, "Now, if ever, is the time." He laid +his hands on the shoulders of the king with a movement at once +commanding and compassionate. All the courtiers stopped weeping to +gasp in consternation at this sacrilege; one or two stood up; and in +the shadows a blade of steel returned the crimson gleam of the embers. + +Lawrence Teck said gently, as if talking to a child: + +"Alas! my brother, I should lead you only to some death unbefitting a +king. You were happy before you made me your captive; these chains +have tormented you as much as me. Strike them off, and let me go. +Forget me, and free yourself from vain thoughts." + +"I should not forget you, Bangana," the king responded in a small, thin +tone, as though the virile resonance of his voice had passed away with +all his naïve and grandiose hopes. "All those tales! To whom shall I +listen now at night? Besides, it has been good to see you here every +day; for you alone in these forests have really understood my +heart--and have stabbed it to death with your wisdom." + +He pondered dismally, while the councilors and chieftains wept out his +unexpressed grief, so that the whole pavilion was filled with their +full-throated sobbing. + +"Will you ever return, Bangana?" + +"Why not? To persuade you to peace instead of war. To make treaties +for the passage of my workmen through your forests to the new mines, +and to give your people work if they will accept it." + +The king closed his eyes. + +"All that again! What are these white man's promises? Have they made +the other tribes happy in their slavery? No, my face will be glad when +you return to see me; but never ask me to let the white foot wedge +itself in the door of my country. There would only be a great battle +without you to help me in it. I and my race, if we cannot be mighty, +at least will die free men." + +He rose from his heels, and in a strangling voice called out to the +guards, who came headlong, stooping, through the low entrance of the +pavilion, with bared teeth and darting spears. + +"Strike off the chains from my brother!" shouted Muene-Motapa, as one +should say, "Slay my dreams!" + +Then he stalked away, to sit alone in darkness. Next day, with an +escort of Mambava warriors, Lawrence Teck set out for the coast. + +At the bidding of the king, to do honor to the white man who was +leaving them, they had put on their gala paint, and their plumed +headgear bound under their chins with fur lappets. Their bangles made +a cheerful clatter as they marched along the dim trails between the +enormous trees. They carried food for two weeks. + +Emerging from the forests, they saw the lowlands steaming in the heat; +for while it was winter in America, here it was summer. + +They traversed plateaux that were dotted with islets of jungle, plains +covered with flowers and drenched with torrential rains, misty marshes +that suggested landscapes of the Paleozoic Age. They saw sodden herds +of zebras, the tracks of leopards, acacia trees uprooted by elephants. +In a glade filled with blossoms of every color they came upon a family +of lions, one of which they headed off and deftly killed with their +spears. + +The plumes of the warriors bobbed along in single file; at sunset the +spear blades seemed still wet with blood. They raised their long +shields, adorned with crude geometrical designs, and sang for the white +man a rambling song of parting. + +"But he will return some day to bask in the countenance of +Muene-Motapa." + +They all took up the refrain: + +"To bask in the countenance of Muene-Motapa!" + +Their voices rose strongly, full of exultation. On a branch above +them, a python, awakened by those vibrations, revealed itself in an +iridescent gliding of its coils. + +Suddenly, on the edge of a jungle of bamboo, they stood still. Far off +appeared the bastions of a fort, of whitewashed stone, mottled and +streaked with green. A flag was hanging limply from the flagstaff. + +His two shadows, in bidding him farewell, began to weep, their tears +running over the white grease paint with which their cheeks were +bedaubed. They turned away with a choking cry: + +"Farewell!" + +"Farewell!" all the other warriors uttered in unison, fiercely, at the +top of their voices. Their howl passed over his head, like a defiance, +toward the distant fort. + +So Lawrence Teck returned to civilization. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXVIII + +The commandant of the district, a melancholy, flaccid man with a +saffron-colored visage that looked like a half-deflated balloon, a +martyr to prickly heat, anaemia, and monotony, peered up from under the +moving punkah, to inquire of his subordinate in the doorway: + +"He is still sitting there alone?" + +"In the same position," the subordinate assented. + +"I wish now that I hadn't shown it to him," said the commandant of Fort +Pero d'Anhaya, the district judge, the chief of the public works, the +receiver of taxes, the collector of revenues, the postmaster, the poor +exile prematurely aged by the African sun, the sorry "hero on the +outposts of civilization." + +The subordinate shrugged his shoulders, and retorted: + +"They would have told him on the coast." + +"No doubt," said the commandant, giving the other a veiled look of +animosity, expressing thus a little of that loathing which had +gradually come to embrace everything habitual to this pitiless and +violently beautiful land. And when the subordinate had withdrawn, he +muttered to himself, as he returned to his apathetic contemplation of +the papers on his desk, "All the same, an ideal! And I killed it for +him a few days before there was any real need." + +The moist heat of the equatorial summer penetrated the embrasures of +the fort, and made stifling even the dim, whitewashed room where +Lawrence Teck was sitting. Dusky from the sun, and seeming more +aquiline than ever in his gauntness, he remained like an effigy in the +suit of white duck that hung round him in loose folds, without so much +as a movement of his eyes. His hand rested on a tattered copy of an +English journal. + +The commandant had extracted this journal from a pile of newspapers and +magazines of half a dozen countries, all thumbed and ragged from +perusals that had embraced the most trivial advertisements, and all +still precious because by their aid one's spirit could fly home. This +London journal contained at the bottom of a page, amid some gossip +about music in America, the announcement that "the widow of Lawrence +Teck, the explorer," had married the young composer, David Verne. + +Raising his eyes at last toward the casement in the embrasure, Lawrence +Teck saw, against a glaring turquoise sky, the fronds of a borassus +palm, which seemed, like all the rest of nature, to be sleeping. He +leaped to his feet, realizing that he was in Africa, still far from the +coast, and that at this moment, in another hemisphere---- + +The walls, the sleeping borassus palm, the patch of sky, all became red. + +He walked to and fro, saying to himself in what seemed a jocular tone: + +"Didn't wait long. A composer. Think of that!" + +He stood still, his bearded face upturned toward the casement. He let +out a peal of laughter that froze the blood of the white-robed servants +who had been dozing in the stone corridor. They crept beyond earshot +of the stranger who, with his hips wrapped in bark cloth, had suddenly +appeared on the rim of the safe world against a background of shields +painted with the devices of the terrible Mambava. + +But Lawrence Teck quickly recovered an external impassiveness. He sat +down, and considered: + +"How naïve I was. That's when the sentimentalism gushes out, at the +end of long journeys, at the novelty of elegance and sophistication. +One deifies them then: one gives them a place much larger than they +ought to take up in life. How Muene-Motapa would laugh! He, virtually +a Neolithic man, never sinks below manly thoughts: his ambitions are +never enfeebled by the malady of sentimental love. So when he suffers +it is like a man, not like a descendant of medieval mystics and +_cavalieri serventi_." + +His body relaxed, and he muttered: + +"A bit of romance for her in imitation of some favorite play or book. +An emotional hour with the man from Africa--and now a musical fellow." + +After a sharp expulsion of his breath he resumed that immobility which +extended even to his eyes. He recalled the thoughts of her that had +filled his captivity, all his memories of their union which had gained, +from "the pathos of distance," and from the passage of time, an +immaterial, an ideal, nobility, till at last, in the poetic fancy of +his lonely heart, she had become more remote and diffuse than the +moonlight on the mountain peaks, more intoxicating and elusive than the +odors of the equatorial flowers, an influence rather than a woman, a +vague hope, a sort of sanative faith. + +It was, he reflected, all one with the romanticism that had driven him +to those many wanderings, the longing for what was so dissimilar to him +and yet intensely congenial--the magical deserts where one suffered +from heat and thirst, the gaudy jungles where death lay in wait for +one, the woman who concealed beneath an appearance of perfection an +incapacity for a decent period of grief. Ah, there was the perfidy +more deadly to him than all the plagues and vipers and weapons of +Africa! + +He felt a profound revulsion from his own nature, which was flawed with +this sentimentalism, this jejune expectancy. At nightfall, rising +wearily from his chair, he wondered how he was to go on living with +himself. + +"And after all is it her fault? I was dead. No doubt she shed some +tears. Because I loved her I expected too much of her." + +Through the casement he saw a world fading away beneath clouds as black +as ink. A purplish-gray wall of rain was swiftly approaching the fort. +A pink fork of lightning stood out against the clouds: the crash of +thunder was followed by a noise like a thousand waterfalls; and +everything turned black. + +The rolling thunder recalled to him the thunder of the Mambava drums at +the Dances of the Moon; and in the darkness he remembered the voice of +Muene-Motapa pleading with him to cast off the old, to become a new +man, to return amid the black forebears of mankind, kill hope and even +conscience, forget and be at peace. In the turmoil of the storm around +the fort and in his breast he even seemed to see the king in apparition +before him, and to hear the words: + +"Consent, Bangana. Consent." + +"Bah! as if anything in life were worth all this. All sound and fury; +all pompous silliness like this storm. Presently there will not be an +echo or a trace of it." + +He found the door, burst out into the corridor, then walked sedately +under the flickering lamps toward the commandant's rooms. That +yellow-visaged man jumped up from behind his desk, stammering: + +"Yes, it's dinner time." + +The candles on the dinner table jarred at the peals of thunder; but +Lawrence Teck sat impassive. Toward the end of the meal he vouchsafed: + +"Have you reported my showing up?" + +"I was going to put it on the wire to-morrow morning." + +"If it could be arranged I should like to precede the news to America." + +The commandant, without knowing why, felt a touch of alarm. + +"Then I'll send my report direct to the governor, and mark it +confidential at your request." + +That night the commandant, lying under his mosquito net, wakeful from +prickly heat, was haunted by the face of Lawrence Teck. "She must be +very beautiful," he sighed. "Why didn't they print her picture?" And +he occupied himself with trying to imagine what she looked like. + +By the time he was falling asleep he had decided that she must have +yellow hair and large, blue eyes. Just as he dozed off he had a +ravishing impression of her--a composite of an Austrian arch-duchess, +whose likeness he had admired in a periodical, and a Neapolitan singer +who had overwhelmed him in a music hall at home, long ago, when the +world had seemed a place stored with love, fame, and wealth, instead of +with prickly heat, malaria, and shiny, black faces. + +"My angel!" breathed the poor commandant of Fort Pero d'Anhaya, +sleeping for the first time in many a night with an infantile smile on +his countenance that suggested a half-deflated balloon. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIX + +Hamoud, wearing the blue robe edged with gold embroidery, and carrying +in his right hand the Venetian goblet, was half-way out of the +living-room when David Verne resumed: + +"No, you must really go about more, or you will begin to hate me." + +The young Arab paused beyond the living-room door, his handsome head +inclined to one side, waiting for the response--not for the words, but +for the mere tone of her voice. He heard: + +"While you are holding your own, and working so well, I am happy." + +Hamoud closed his eyes, in order to let those silvery vibrations occupy +his whole consciousness. Then, staring before him, he went swiftly +across the wainscotted hall with his lithe, noiseless step, escaping +before that other voice could break the spell. + +David Verne, in his wheel chair that stood beside a tall lamp, gave her +a furtive look, before continuing: + +"Is it always happiness that I discover on your face? Is that what you +show me when you raise your eyes blankly from some book, or return from +the garden after those lonely walks of yours in the twilight? Or is it +pity, not only for me, but also for yourself? Is it then that you see +clearly what you've let yourself in for--what that divine impulse of +yours has brought you to?" + +"David!" she protested, her nerves contracting at this threat of a +scene that must lacerate both their hearts. + +But he persisted: + +"I don't disbelieve what you told me about Rysbroek. It's not he that +I'm jealous of. I can even believe that there's no other living man in +your thoughts. The powers that I can never hope to conquer don't have +to exist in the present, in order to frighten me. They have only to +exist in the past and in the future. Of course the man who is dead +will always triumph over me by comparison. And some day, since mortals +are bound to strive for a duplication of their happiest moments, +another will appear to promise you that duplication." + +How young he seemed in the light of the tall lamp, despite all his +former physical sufferings and his present anxieties! Again there was +a look of childish pain on his lips, and in his large eyes humid +beneath the brow that harbored thoughts of a magnificent precocity. +Again compassion filled her at sight of this weakness, this +helplessness. She returned: + +"How can you say such things? When I refuse to go anywhere, because +you couldn't go with me without being bored----" + +"You mean, without feeling my inferiority." + +"Is it inferiority to be the great artist that you are? What +wickedness! You, with your genius, aren't satisfied, but envy those +commonplace men because their bodies move easily from place to place. +Can their minds soar up like yours?" + +"Perhaps not--nor sink into such depths." + +She rose, to approach the long window against which the night had +plastered its blackness. He watched her inevitably graceful passage +from the light into the shadows, and her nervous attitude, as she stood +with averted face, staring out through the lustrous glass. She was +glamorous with the material elegance that always ended by deriding him. +She was agitated by who knew what secret thoughts in accordance with +that involuntary withdrawal--the movement of a prisoner toward the +window of a cell. + +"Let's not deny the facts of life," he began again. "Or pretend with +each other. Pity doesn't make one incorporeal. All your angelic +compassion can't transform you from a woman into an angel, especially +when you see, at every glance in your mirror, the charms that a moment +of generosity has made futile." + +She came to him quickly, knelt down beside the wheel chair, and put +round him her bare, slender arms. + +"Don't you know that I love you, David?" + +"There are so many kinds of love," he sighed, gazing at her dark eyes +that once had flamed with passion, at her fragile lips that had uttered +such words as he was never to hear, at her whole pale-brown countenance +that would never express for him what it had expressed for the other. + +"I want nothing else," she affirmed, in a voice wherein no one could +have found any insincerity. + +"Perhaps you believe even that. But when it comes to you, then you'll +realize what a trap I've caught you in." He gave her a look of horror. +"Why did you go there that afternoon to Brantome's? When you saw me +there, sitting alone in the shadows, dying with no weight on my +conscience, why didn't you leave me alone? But maybe you had no idea +of the effect you were going to produce on me--that your look, and +voice, and mind, were what I'd always been waiting for. Or since you +had come there why couldn't my conscience die at the moment when you +made me live again? But instead of dying, my conscience is becoming +more and more alive." + +He bit his lips to keep back a groan. She declared: + +"You're harming yourself again. You won't be able to work to-morrow." + +"What is my work worth, if it dooms you to this?" Presently he said in +a quiet tone, "It would be easy to free you." + +"Ah, you are horrible!" + +"Don't be afraid. If there is anywhere beyond this life, anything in +the nature of a heaven, it would seem inferior to this house, where I +can see you without possessing the love that you're capable of, and +hear your voice utter these incredible reassurances. Yes, my +conscience torments me, but not enough for that. While I may, I'll +hold on to you and to life, even when I feel sure that your thoughts +are turning elsewhere, and even if it comes to pass that your bodily +self must follow those thoughts. For as your pity returns, so must you +return to me. What a weapon I've found in pity! What a victory it +will bring me! Some other man may end by winning yourself; but I, as +long as I can keep my grip on life, will cling to this ghost of you!" + +"Do you do this just in order to drive me mad?" she cried. + +"No, you would understand if you could see into my soul. All its +surgings and clashings, its vortexes of pain and joy, the anguish that +somehow produces an audible beauty, and the ecstasies that are struck +mute by these fears! If I could explain all that, you would forgive me +for these moments that are beyond my control. But I can't explain it. +Not even in my music. One is always alone with one's heart." + +Taking his twitching face between her hands, she showed him her eyes +filled with tears. + +"But I do understand," she protested. + +If she did, it was because she also was alone. + +That night, as she was going to her own room, she saw Hamoud in the +upper corridor. Something forlorn and lost in his exotic aspect struck +through her sadness: she remembered how far from home this exile was, +how far removed also from the rank to which he had been born. She +hesitated, then asked remorsefully: + +"Do you hate me, Hamoud?" + +He turned pale, standing before her with the wall light shining upon +his face of a young caliph. + +"I, madam?" + +"Well, for what I've got you into: this service, which must distress +you every day. But what was there to do? It offered itself when +I--you, too, I suppose--could think of nothing else." + +Hamoud-bin-Said, paler than ever, replied in Arabic: + +"You are sorry for me because I have lost my heshma, my prestige? It +is part of the divine wisdom, the foreordained plan of my life. All +things happen for the best. The house is warm, so that one does not +feel the winter. There is food, so that one does not starve. +Therefore, my body is at peace----" He paused to compress his +carnelian lips, before concluding serenely, "And as for my soul, it +rests as always in the palm of God, like a bird waiting to be taught +its ways." + + + + +CHAPTER XL + +When Lilla and David went driving through the country, Hamoud prowled +all over the house. + +He entered the study, to stare at the autographed music framed on the +walls, the manuscript strewn over the center table, the open piano. A +look of contempt appeared upon his face: for one reason, perhaps, +because he belonged to the Ibathi sect, who looked askance at music, +disdaining even the cantatas about the Birth of the Prophet. He went +out of the study in a rage, slammed the folding doors behind him, and +stood eyeing the damask-covered chair in which she usually sat. + +He recalled the old tales of the lovers, he a Mohammedan and she a +Christian, who always fled away on a magic carpet to the safety of +Islam. + +If it was an hour appointed for prayer, he went up to his room, closed +the door, took the Koran out of his Zanzibar box, a carved and brightly +painted chest bound with iron and furnished with padlocks. He opened +the Koran, but recited the verses from memory, trying to feel behind +the words the esoteric meanings expounded in the commentaries. This +done, he took out from his bosom the talisman that he wore attached to +a silver chain--a silver disc having on one side a square made up of +sacred characters, and on the other side the seal of Solomon. The +talisman recalled to him the careless days of good fortune; and he +became homesick. + +Thereupon he produced a little censer, kindled a piece of charcoal, and +sprinkled the coal with aloes, gum incense, and musk. Sitting on his +heels, with the censer between his small hands, he lowered his face +toward the fumes, became drunk with sad memories. His tears hissed on +the red coal, and through a glittering film he saw the ancestral house, +the blush of the clove trees, the deep blue sea with the dhows slipping +out toward Muscat. He dried his eyes, put everything away, concealed +in his palm a tiny, empty, square vial of glass enameled with gold. He +appeared in the corridor, calm, stately, giving a passing housemaid a +look of scorn. + +When all was silent he entered Lilla's rooms. Hamoud drew in through +his expanded nostrils the unique fragrance of this place, and trembled +as he looked round him at the walls of French gray, the faintly orange +hangings, all the charming objects that were so artfully arranged. He +passed into her bedroom, stood pensive before the dressing table whose +mirrors were accustomed to reflect her, reached out to touch the +handles of her brushes, as if expecting them to be still warm from her +hands. He remembered the tiny empty vial, at the same moment that he +heard the car returning. + +Lilla, on entering her bedroom, found the air heavier than usual with +her perfume. It occurred to her that one of the servants must have +been taking some; and she was vexed to think that a housemaid should go +to meet a sweetheart wearing the fragrance that a Viennese expert in +odors had concocted "to express her special temperament." + + + + +CHAPTER XLI + +Now and then, craving a glimpse of the gay streets and the shops, Lilla +went into town "to see that everything was all right" in the house on +lower Fifth Avenue, or else, "to make sure that Parr was comfortable." + +One afternoon, at a stoppage of the traffic her limousine came side by +side with that of Fanny Brassfield, who persuaded her to look in at a +horse show. + +She found herself in a box on the edge of an arena, amid a concourse of +people whose unrelated movements and chatter combined in a species of +visible and audible mist, which encircled the spread of tan bark. In +the midst of everything, in the dusty glitter that poured down from the +high roof, horses and men were moving like automata. The thud of the +hoofs was lost in a great buzzing of voices. The odor of stables was +impregnated with the scent of winter flowers and sachets. + +Round Lilla there was an accentuated stir. Even across the arena some +women were staring through their glasses. The reporters came hurriedly +to verify the rumor that it was she. Those who were promenading below +the boxes walked more slowly, feasting their eyes on her. + +She eat proudly erect, her fur-trimmed cloak drawn round her tightly; +and none could have suspected the confusion of her brain after so much +solitude. + +Fanny Brassfield's piercing voice struck through the fanfare of a bugle: + +"Look here, Lilla, I'm giving quite a dinner tonight. You stay in town +for once, and have a little fun. We can stop and buy you a perfect +gown that I saw yesterday----" + +And when Lilla had shaken her head, the blonde, lean temptress +exclaimed in exasperation: + +"I declare, you're no good to anybody any more!" + +A sleek-looking man in riding clothes stepped down into the box. Fanny +Brassfield, who had been craning her neck indignantly, disregarded his +outstretched hand to give his arm a push, while crying out: + +"Go get her for me, Jimmy. Anna Zanidov. There, with those people in +the aisle." + +The Russian woman appeared before them in a black turban and a +voluminous black cloak. Her flat, vermilion lips were parted in a +social smile; but her Tartar eyes remained inscrutable. Her face, +wedge-shaped, dead white, with its look of being made from some +material more rigid than flesh, was as startling as the countenance of +an Oriental image, in its frame of glossy black fur. Sitting down, she +assumed that close-kneed hieratic attitude habitual to her, which made +Lilla see her once more in the barbarically painted evening gown, amid +superstitious women breathless from awe. + +"Do you care for this idolatry?" Madame Zanidov asked Lilla, in her +precise English. "But then after all so few are here to worship the +animals. Perhaps rather to be worshipped," she suggested pleasantly, +casting her glance over Lilla's face and costume. + +All around her, indeed, Lilla could see the pretty women in their +slate-gray and rust-colored cloaks, in their rakish little toques from +under which their sophisticated eyes peeped out in search of homage. +Some had the expression of those for whom love is an assured phenomenon +solving all questions. Others seemed to be waiting impatiently for its +advent or its departure. But all, Lilla thought, looked assured either +of its persistence or its recurrence. Amid them she felt as isolate as +a ghost. + +The men approached them with confident smiles, long limbed, with +leisurely and supple movements, smart in their heavy tweeds or riding +breeches that suggested habits of strenuous exertion. When they +removed their hats, one saw their close-clipped heads bending forward +confidentially toward the fair faces: and their eyes slowly followed +the eyes of the women who were contemplating absentmindedly the +rippling muscles of the horses in the arena. A band in a balcony began +to play Strauss's _Wiener Mad'l_, the strains of music muffled by the +dust, the lights, the movement of the audience, the pain in Lilla's +breast. And the vague savor of stables and flowers, the statuesque +postures of beasts and the expectant attitudes of human beings, were +suddenly fused together into one hallucination--a flood of sensory +impressions at once unreal and too actual, in which Lilla found herself +sinking and smothering. + +Anna Zanidov was looking at her intently. + +"You do not often come to town, they tell me," the Russian murmured. + +"No, why should I?" Lilla returned, as if violently aroused from sleep. +She saw beyond Anna Zanidov, on the steps of the box, a man whose +visage was lined across the forehead and under the cheekbones, and who +showed, under his heavy, mouse-colored mustache, a stony, courteous +smile. + +It was the new face of Cornelius Rysbroek. + +"No, sit here," said the Russian, "I wish to talk with Fanny." + +He seated himself beside Lilla, and, after watching a horse clear a +jump, remarked: + +"Do you know I'm living near you?" + +He had taken a house in Westchester County, five miles away from hers. +He had been looking for quiet, because he was writing a book about his +journey in China--"just for the fun of the thing." + +"Yesterday," he added indifferently, "I happened to pass your gates. +At least I suppose they were. I had a mind to call." + +His hands, clasped round his knee, attracted her unwilling notice. +They had become sinewy. He appeared like a hard-muscled elder brother +of the listless hypochondriac who in the old days had paid feeble court +to her: and strangeness enveloped him, not only because of the changes +in his body and character, but also because of the hardships and +escapes that he had experienced in the Chinese mountains. Yet in this +strangeness Lilla found a disturbingly familiar quality, like an echo +of something lost, a vague and diminished reapparition of an old ideal. + +"Yes," she said softly, "I wish we could be friends again. But the +situation at home is so very delicate." + +After a long silence, he uttered, so low that she could hardly hear him: + +"Are there no other places?" + +The band still played _Wiener Mad'l_. + +"It's getting late," she faltered, wondering where she was going to +find the strength to rise from her chair. + +"Yes, go back to your tomb. Are there any mirrors in it? Do you ever +look in them? Do you see in them what's happening to you? Your eyes +are losing their luster; you're getting haggard, and in a little while +one will see the bones under your skin. At this moment you look like +the devil." Without raising his voice, without ceasing to stare as +though bored at the old Russian silver box from which he was taking a +cigarette with trembling fingers, he pronounced malignantly, "You are +losing your beauty, Lilla--all that you ever had to plunge a man into +hell. Presently, thank God, there will be nothing to love." + +It seemed to her that he had shouted the words at the top of his voice, +that the whole multitude must have heard him, and must have seen the +look that he showed her for the briefest instant--the look of a damned +soul peering through flames that only she could quench. + +At the full impact of pity and remorse at last, she felt her spirit +stumbling toward his through that inferno. + +The promenaders perceived a woman and a man, expressionless though +rather worn and pale, exchanging apparently commonplace words, while +staring down at the horses. + +"I'll phone you to-night----" + +"Not the phone." + +"With an indolent movement he thrust his shaking hands into his coat +pockets, and tried again: + +"I'll drive over in the morning. You might be taking a walk----" + +Weak and sick, she glanced down at the buttons of her gloves, before +rising to her feet. She heard Anna Zanidov saying to Fanny Brassfield, +"Well, I've lost those friends of mine. No matter. I'll find a taxi." +Pouncing upon this chance to escape, for the moment, from him and from +herself, Lilla blurted out: + +"Let me give you a lift. Come on." + +Cornelius Rysbroek saw her lovely head turning away from him, the swirl +of her cloak as she ascended the steps, the flash of her tapering boot +heel. He then stood looking round him through his ironical, weary +mask, one hand on the back of a chair, however, as if without that +support his quaking legs might let him fall to the floor. + + + + +CHAPTER XLII + +The limousine glided northward. A cold rain was falling. Behind the +glistening windowpanes the scene was continually melting from one + blackness into another. At each flash of radiance +Madame Zanidov was revealed motionless in her corner, muffled in her +cloak, with closed eyes. + +"Is she reading my thoughts?" Lilla wondered. + +No matter: by this time the whole world must know them, released as +they had been, into that eager public air, like a deafening cry of +confession. "What's to be the end of this?" she asked herself, +appalled, as she felt her life being whirled along from one fatal +impulse to another, just as she was being whisked by the limousine from +darkness to darkness. To check that inexorable progress! to see some +constant light! + +Anna Zanidov turned her wedge-shaped face toward Lilla, with the words: + +"I have thought of you many times." + +"I can say the same." + +"To be sure," the Russian declared, "I have stopped doing that, you +know. I didn't want to end by being shunned." + +"I suppose you still have the gift?" + +"No doubt." + +The limousine halted. Across its path rumbled a street car mistily +bright behind the rain, crowded with people who represented a rational +humanity aloof from the little compartment in which were shut up these +two victims of remarkable beliefs. Then, the limousine moving on, the +blurred phantasmagoria closed in again:--and the northern vista took on +the ambiguity of Lilla's life, a compound of darknesses and deceptive +gleams, stretching away toward what? She uttered: + +"Nevertheless, to know the future!" And as the Russian remained mute +and motionless, she faltered, "No matter what one learned, the suspense +would be over." + +"Would it, indeed?" + +"I am desperate," Lilla responded in low tones. + +After a while Madame Zanidov, with a compassionate austerity, responded: + +"Remember, then, that it is you who wished this." + +Their hands touched. In the rushing limousine, in this fluidity of +lights and darkness, they were intent on the phenomenon that both +believed to be a revelation of fate. At last the clairvoyant quietly +began: + +"I am out of doors, far away." + +The glare of passing headlights displayed her closed, oblique eyes, her +parted, flat lips, her idol-like aspect, which bestowed on her the +impressiveness, the seeming infallibility, of those oracles that were +anciently supposed to describe some future mood of the chaotic ebb and +surge that human beings call life. + +"Very old tree trunks. Great trailing vines. Huge flowers black in +the moonlight. It is the very same place. Here is that clearing, and +the squatting black men. Their hands are folded; their heads are bowed +forward; they are filled with sadness. Near them, on the ground, lies +the dead man whose body is covered with a cloth. It is the man who has +loved you." She dropped Lilla's hand, protesting, "This is incredible!" + +"Incredible?" + +"Yes, because this scene appears to be still in the future. Do you +understand me? Hasn't happened yet." + +The limousine stopped before the Russian's door as Lilla, disgusted by +this anticlimax, replied: + +"You've repeated your old prophecy because it has haunted my mind ever +since you made it that night at the Brassfields'. You've merely gotten +back from me the impression that you stamped on my consciousness then." + +"Then that is something new. These perceptions of mine have never +referred to the past. Besides, I had just now--but how shall I explain +it?--a powerful sense of the future. Ah, well, maybe this gift of mine +is leaving me, since I've refused to use it. I sha'n't be sorry." As +she got out of the car, she amended, "At least, I don't think I'm sorry +to have disappointed you." + +The door snapped shut on that hope: the world became fluid again: and +Lilla was borne away toward another pity and another remorse. + + + + +CHAPTER XLIII + +Hamoud opened the front door, and told her: + +"They are waiting for you." + +"They? Who is here?" + +"Mr. Brantome." + +She stood for a moment staring balefully at the stone knight above the +fireplace of the hall, who still raised his sightless face, and +brandished his blunt sword, with that stupid appearance of defying +everything. Then she tossed aside her cloak and hat, and went straight +into the living room, peeling off her gloves, saying in a gracious +voice: + +"Hello! How nice! But how foolish to wait for me. You must both be +starved." + +"No, but David has been imagining all sorts of calamities," Brantome +returned, with a loud, artificial laugh, and a look of anxiety in the +depths of his old eyes. As for the invalid, silent in his wheel chair +before the Flemish tapestry, he showed her a frozen smile, a travesty +of approval. + +They went in to dinner. As soon as they had sat down she began, with +an unnatural vivacity, to tell them where she had been. That horse +show! It had never seemed so silly to her. The same old stable slang +interspersed with the same old scandal. And to-night Fanny Brassfield, +instead of falling upon her bed in a stupor of futility, was going to +give a big dinner for the very same people. "I'm surprised," she +exclaimed, turning her flushed face toward Brantome, "that you weren't +dragged into it. They usually sacrifice a captive from the land of +art." + +David remained quite still, his frail shoulders bowed forward, his head +advanced, his eyes intently watching her moving lips. She could not +abate that frozen smile of his. Brantome, his portly body thrown back, +his white mane and long mustaches shimmering like spun glass in the +candle light, seemed still to wear on his tragical old face a look of +uneasiness. She had the feeling of sitting before two judges who were +weighing not only her words, but her tone of voice and appearance. She +wondered what appearance she presented. + +"Why don't you eat your dinner?" she asked David. + +"I am interested," he replied rather hoarsely. + +"At what? I was wondering what right I had to inflict all this on you. +I suppose when I came in you were talking of something worth while." +She turned again to Brantome. "And _Marco Polo_?" + +"The best tone poem since _Don Quixote_," he said, rising and making +her a bow. "As far as it has gone. It is not finished yet." + +"It soon will be. Won't it, David?" + +"Oh, another month with luck," he returned lightly, trying to lift a +wineglass, and spilling on the cloth the champagne that had been +prescribed by Dr. Fallows. + +She caught his wrist. A pang passed through her heart. She showed +them a new expression, or else an old one for which they had been +hoping, as she exclaimed in alarm: + +"You're not so well to-night!" + +And, as Hamoud was wheeling David into the living room, she protested +to Brantome: + +"I can't leave him for a day without something happening." + +"Then for God's sake don't, at least till this piece is done." The old +Frenchman pulled her back, and whispered, "Why, this afternoon he was +nearly beside himself. How can he work----" + +"About what?" she ejaculated, glancing down at his hand on her arm. + +"How should I know, if you don't?" + +In the living room Brantome did not sit down. Flushed from the wine +that he had drunk, striding to and fro, he began a rigmarole about +"David's future." His voice was nearly ferocious when he prophesied +the subjugation of the public, which might be aroused, by precisely the +right persuasion, to a tumult of applause. Yes, they must all be +conquered, until, as in the case of Beethoven for instance, the name of +the genius appeared as though written like a portent in the sky, above +the heads even of throngs that knew nothing of music, that would never +hear these harmonies, but that would be filled all the same with +reverential awe. + +He had never before revealed this thirst for undiscriminating homage. +They hardly recognized him. The old leonine fellow was transfigured, +as though by megalomania. He seemed larger, and slowly made the +gestures of an emperor. + +He darted into the study, as Lilla said to David: + +"The piece will stand up for itself, I think. He's becoming almost too +ridiculous." + +But in the other room Brantome began beating out fragments of _Marco +Polo_. The familiar sounds took on a startling majesty in the +atmosphere heavily charged with the player's exultation. One had an +illusion that this music was irradiating from the house all over the +earth. Then, in the silence, the rustle of the rain seemed a long +murmur of enthusiastic comment. + +Abruptly Brantome reappeared in the doorway with his mane disheveled, +like a lion let out of a cage; but Lilla was too wretched to laugh at +him. Now he was bursting with memories of those, since great, with +whom he had chummed in his youth, when he, too, had expected to be +great. He swept his listeners away to foreign studios, where they saw +young men poising for flights amid the stars. + +"And here," he affirmed, whirling round to Lilla, "is something better, +in humor, in tragedy, in dignity, in richness of invention, in +everything." + +"I know it," she responded, reaching out to lay her hand upon David's +hand. + +"Something better," he repeated, in a changed voice, with an effect of +shrinking to his usual proportions. His arm fell to his side, and he +turned away to hide his altered look. "I'll fight for this boy," he +said. "I'll fight the whole world for him." + +"You looked," suggested Lilla gently, "as if you were going to fight +me, too." + +"You? No, you are my ally. Or, if you please, I am yours; for neither +of us can do anything without you." + +At midnight, when Lilla returned to the doorway of his bedroom, David +was not asleep. + +She sat down on the edge of the bed. A beam of light from the corridor +touched her slender figure wrapped in yellow silk, and her braided hair +outlined, round her head, by a narrow golden halo. The rain had +ceased, and the breeze from the window was laden with the odor of the +saturated earth. Falteringly he asked her if she was chilly. + +She was surprised, having been aware for a long while only of this pity +and this remorse. + +"You have suffered to-day," she said. + +He responded: + +"The penalty one pays for having acquired great riches is the fear of +losing them." + +She was silent for a time, then murmured: + +"When this piece is finished, or to-morrow if you like, we might go +abroad? Over there we could find any number of nice, secluded places. +Some Greek island might please you? The climate is very invigorating." + +"Would you like it?" + +"If it would make you happier." + +He uttered a groan: + +"How I torment you! It must be some devil in me that prompts me to +this ingratitude. All that you've done for me, and I'm not satisfied. +You are perfection." + +She laughed dismally, raising her face in the gloom of the bed canopy +that enshrouded them like the shadows of a catafalque. Perfection! A +pitiable heroine, an unstable creature tossed about from one compassion +to another, from a contemptible dissatisfaction here to a +half-hypocritical idea of reparation there, and now to self-abasement! +She was sick from disgust at her ingratitude to this poor invalid, +through whom she had become majestic, holding fate back so that beauty, +and even life, might miraculously survive. She seemed to have emerged +from an ignoble dream; she longed to merit again, at least in her +devotion to this supine figure, that word, perfection. Suddenly her +bosom swelled not only with compunction, but with love also--since it +was she, indeed, who had recreated him, and since without the +nourishment of her daily reassurances he must die. + +"Help me to deserve those words," she besought him, bending down +through the shadows. Her tears moistened his lips, and upon that +revelation he stammered: + +"At this moment I feel that you're mine." + +"Not only this moment. Always." + + + + +CHAPTER XLIV + +In the morning, when Brantome had departed for the city, Lilla said to +Hamoud: + +"Please tell the servants that if any one should ask for me I'm not at +home." + +Soon afterward, while David was at work shut up in the study, and Lilla +was trying to read a book in the living room, the doorbell rang. When +she heard Hamoud, in the hall, speaking quickly in Arabic, her body +relaxed. She thought: + +"He has found one of his own people. I am glad. He must have been so +lonely all this while!" + +She heard another voice, deeper and more vibrant. "Yes, Arabic," she +said, smiling contentedly. Of a sudden, for some inexplicable reason, +she felt as if she were going to faint. + +She raised her eyes from the book, and saw a tall man with a black +beard, standing in the hall doorway, watching her. + +She was seized with the paralyzing chill that comes to those who seem +to be confronted by apparitions of the dead. Her conviction that she +saw no living man was strengthened by his physical alteration. His +black beard, which covered even his cheekbones, masked a shriveled +countenance. His eyes had receded into their sockets; his lips were +stretched over his teeth; and the swarthiness of his skin had become +sulphurous. The stillness of his attitude, and his blank, attentive +look, completed the effect of unreality. + +Then she thought, "Perhaps it's I who am dead." Her surroundings +melted away. All her obligations related to these surroundings melted +also. She began to float toward him, over the floor that she no longer +felt beneath her feet, so that her disembodied spirit might be merged +with this other spirit. Her half-raised hands prepared to cling to +him--as though one phantom could cling fast to another! But abruptly +an invisible force seemed to check her progress mid-way; and she stood +before him with her arms, that had meant to embrace him, lifted in what +appeared to be a gesture of horrified denial. + +There was no change in his face disfigured by unhappiness and illness. + +The air round them began to tremble with strains of music--harmonies +mounting up toward a climax of intolerable beauty. It came, this +perfect epitome of love, from behind the closed doors of the study, +where David Verne was playing as never before. + +"Lilla!" + +A profound silence followed the call that neither of these two had +uttered. And from behind the closed doors, David, transported by his +exultation, cried out again to the Muse: + +"Lilla! Lilla!" + +Swaying aside, she sank down into a chair. "Oh," she breathed, looking +at the rug as though some very precious object had slipped from her +hands and broken at her feet. As she sat there, a huddle of +coffee-colored fabric and pallid flesh, the sunlight burst through the +clouds to smite her all over with its glory, igniting her hair, turning +her face into incandescent gold. + +Lawrence Teck watched this transformation. + +He became natural--ready to fight for this woman, though still +believing that he despised everything about her except her loveliness. +All at once he was like a man who stands on the edge of a chasm, who +has an idea that he may be able to leap across, from a bitterness +endured alone to a bitterness shared with another. He took the leap. +He put her to the test. + +She saw him walking across the living room toward the closed doors of +the study. + +Noiselessly, as swift as her dreadful thought, she rose, traversed the +room, passed him, and whirled round against the door. She flung out +her arms in a movement that nailed her against the panels as to a +cross. She could not speak; but he read on her lips, as if she had +cried it in his face: + +"No!" + +The music began again, at first soft and simply melodious, soon complex +and thunderous. The door at her back vibrated from the sound, and the +quivering penetrated her body and her brain. She was filled with a new +horror, at the new, miraculous strength evinced in that playing. + +And again that voice exulting in the study: + +"Lilla? Oh, where are you?" + +"Come away from here," she muttered, giving Lawrence an awful stare, +snatching at his sleeve, dragging him after her across the room, her +feet as heavy as if fleeing through a nightmare. Now, straining at his +arm, she was in the wainscotted hall before the stone mantelpiece that +bore up the defiant knight. Now she reached the fernery. The palms +leaped back into place behind them as she collapsed upon the red +cushions of the settee. + +He stood watching her as before, erect, breathing, alive, even though +he lay smashed in the depths of that chasm which she had prevented him +from clearing. + + + + +CHAPTER XLV + +"And your idea is," Lawrence inquired calmly, "that he mustn't know at +all?" She continued to weep in silence, the tears running quickly down +her cheeks and falling like brilliants upon the fur edging of her house +gown. He added, "I merely mean, is it practicable?" + +Incoherently she started to tell the whole story over again. + +"But how can I make you understand? My wits are gone. He was utterly +helpless, done for, you might as well say dead. All the life blazing +and throbbing round him--and round me, too; for I was as good as dead +also. Two dead people meeting and trying to find their way back, +through each other, to some sort of life. But he didn't know that he +was helping me; that is my secret. Yet it wasn't all selfishness with +me. In the end I was persuaded just by pity. Have you seen a sick +animal looking at you pleadingly? Pity is a monster! First one +tentacle, then another, and finally one is pulled under and devoured. +One should never feel pity. But you were gone." + +She pressed her fingers to her temples, and closed her eyes. + +"Don't you know this will kill him?" she asked. "But how could you +know that? It's so, all the same. It's just I who have kept him +alive. It's just by holding on to me that he's held on to life." + +She gave a cry: + +"Ah! This is too much! What am I to do?" + +She writhed amid the red cushions of the settee till he commanded +sternly: + +"Calm yourself. It's time we began to talk sensibly." + +She sat still, looking at him in terror. + +"Yes," she whispered. + +His erect immobility, his emotional self-containment, recalled to her, +by contrast, the feebleness and helplessness that had lured her into +this trap. Once more she perceived in this man the refuge that her +frailty of nerves and tissues had always yearned for; and the miracle +that she had accomplished in his absence became the work of a stranger. +Ah, to let go of heroism now, to be once more her true self--the +fragile complement of this strength! But in the very moment when she +visualized the consummation of that wish, she saw with her mind's eye +the other sitting at the piano in his wheel chair, his music strewn +round him, the air still vibrant with triumph and gratitude, his face +turned eagerly toward the door as toward the source of an infallible +reassurance, of beautiful accomplishment, of life itself. + +The palms, forming an arch above him, cast a greenish shadow over +Lawrence's bearded visage, which was shrunken and yellow from the last +attack of fever, in the coast town. This head of his, hovering before +her in a frame of ragged greenery, seemed about to melt away amid one +of her old illusions of the jungle. Gradually she understood that this +was not he whom she had married on that night of romance. + +All those thoughts of his were what had changed his face into this new +appearance, hard and misunderstanding, incredulous and ironical, and +crushed with an utter weariness of spirit. And Lilla did not know how +to summon back into being the man that he had been; for all her +inspiration was dragged down by guilt. She remembered the dusty rooms +where even her last tribute of flowers had now turned to dust. She +recalled the victorious seductiveness of genius, of egotism, the lure +of a world in which a myriad women had seemed to be dancing away from +her toward happiness; and then, her moment of complex treason at the +horse show. She quailed as she heard again her vow to Lawrence on +their wedding night, "Forever!" and that word was blended with the +"Forever!" which, a few hours ago, she had uttered in the gloom of +David's bedroom. + +He felt her sense of guilt, and misinterpreted it. When her +protestations became more intimate, a smile, half contemptuous and half +commiserating, appeared on his shrunken lips. It struck her silent. + +"As I understand it," said Lawrence Teck, "this is your plan, which; +seems to me, in the light of common sense, perfectly hopeless. In +short, he's not to know. You've refused to let me face him----" + +"Ah, yes," she sighed, and quoted, "'Infirm of purpose, give me the +daggers.' You'd kill him for me, wouldn't you?" + +"You exaggerate. If he were as delicately poised as that, I shouldn't +want his death on my hands. These people who kill one another, and +even themselves, for love, exist of course; but to me they're +ridiculous. The game isn't worth it. There are too many other things +in life. As for me, my work, that part of it out there unfinished, +dropped so that I could run back here and clear this matter up----" + +"No, I'm the one that you're killing," she returned, bowing her head +that was glorified in the sunshine pouring round her, as if with a +crown of celestial happiness. + +He went on in a deliberate, grave tone, feeling logical and dizzy, +replete with self-justification, magnanimity, and horror: + +"I managed to arrive in this country secretly. There are only three +persons in New York who know that I'm here, or, for that matter, alive. +It may help a little if I succeed in slipping away as quietly as I +came. You can get your divorce on grounds of desertion. I'm sorry +enough to have let you in for this. It's my fault from beginning to +end. I shouldn't have appeared then, and worst of all I shouldn't have +reappeared now." He hesitated; then, glancing toward the door of the +fernery, "No doubt you'll discover how to smooth it out with him. +After all, if he were the most sensitive creature on earth, he ought to +be satisfied when he understands that though I've popped up alive he is +the one you've chosen." + +"You are mad," she gasped, giving a convulsive bound amid the red +cushions. + +He wondered if it were so. + +Here she was before his eyes, more beautiful than in any of his dreams, +a diffuse vision compressed once more into a tangible form, fragrant +and warm, full of coursing blood and tremors, no doubt still capable of +those same ecstatic appearances and vocal rhapsodies. All his +swarming, jealous thoughts were consuming him, as warrior ants might +consume some wretched victim of King Muene-Motapa. He felt that this +deliberate farce must end, that he must spring through the door, find +the other, kill him with one blow, and then rush away from this woman +who, like a fallen deity, lay weeping again, her face between her arms, +somehow pathetic under this retribution for the inconstancy that she +pretended was pity. + +She raised her face, and pronounced: + +"There must be some way. But I can't think any more." + +"There are two ways. One is for me to go. The other is to tell him." + +She sat up and clutched the cushions on each side of her. + +"You ask me to go into that room, and you might as well say shoot him +through the heart?" + +He said to himself, "How she sticks to it! This pretense is all she +has to cling to, poor thing, in lieu of saying straight out, 'I can't +return to that old adventure now. Too much time has intervened; I'm no +longer the same woman. I must stick to this new romance.'" He said to +himself, "I shall get away from here this moment." He turned toward +the doorway. + +"Remember," he told her wearily, "I'm depending on your silence." + +Struck by the folly of that caution, he hurried into the hall, as +though to escape an outburst of laughter. + +He was close to the front door when she appeared in his path, +materialized from thin air. + +"Wait outside. I'll go with you." + +She stood tearing her handkerchief to pieces, looking at him strangely +out of her swollen eyes, her cheeks flushed. She went on: + +"Why, we must talk. We can surely find the way out. But not here. At +the rooms." A film passed over her eyes. She caught him fast round +the neck, raised her lips toward his, and whispered, with a distracted +appearance that seemed guilty as well as passionate, "You still love +me? As much as ever?" + +He felt that he and she had reached the depths. This temptation +capping the climax of her rejection--this monstrous inversion of the +classic triangle! "What is she, then?" he asked himself, "and what am +I?" For he caught hold of her as if he were going to crush her doubly +perfidious, inexplicable heart, and fastened his lips to hers in a kiss +that burned her up, before he thrust her from him with a gesture meant +to express all his loathing of her, of himself, of the whole of life. + +"Oh, wait!" she cried, as he fumbled with the door. + +To hold her off with the first words that came into his head, he cast +at her: + +"To-morrow!" + +She remained facing the closed door, softly repeating: + +"To-morrow." + + + + +CHAPTER XLVI + +Cornelius Rysbroek had just driven up before the house in a blue +runabout. Now, sunk down behind the steering wheel, he gaped at the +black-bearded man who stood like a rock at the foot of a low flight of +steps. + +Lawrence Teck put on his hat, gave Cornelius Rysbroek a blind stare, +climbed into a hired car. In doing so he showed his aquiline profile; +and Cornelius recalled the moonlit terrace of the Brassfields' country +house. + +"It's he!" + +The hired car set out for New York; and behind it, all the way, went +the blue runabout. + + + + +CHAPTER XLVII + +She entered her sitting room, locked the door, threw herself upon the +couch. Round lunch time there came a creaking in the corridor, a +knock. It was David in his wheel chair, propelled by Hamoud. + +"No lunch. And perhaps no dinner. It's only a headache, dear. I +shall be all right." + +"Your voice sounds----" + +"Why not, since I'm suffering a little?" + +The creaking sound died away. + +At the first glimmer of dawn she was up. An hour later she entered +David's bedroom, dressed, hatted, and gloved. Her skin appeared +translucent. Her hands, drawing her cloak round her shivering body, +seemed almost too weak for that task. + +"Why, where are you going?" + +"To town. It seems that Parr has fallen ill." + +She leaned over him quickly, thinking of all the kisses of betrayal +that had ever been bestowed upon the unaware. She went out leaving him +dumfounded by her appearance of feverish eagerness, energy, and illness. + +On the ride to New York she lay back in the corner of the limousine, +her face burning, her lips pressed together. "He thinks I don't love +him, it seems!" That was the tender menace she hurled ahead of her, as +the car carried her swiftly--yet how slowly!--toward his rooms. + +She remembered Anna Zanidov. + +"The infallible clairvoyant! All that solemn nonsense! Ha, ha, ha! +Ha, ha, ha!" + +She found herself at the door of his rooms, ringing, knocking, calling +his name through the panels. She recollected that she had the key in +her purse. The door swung back with a bang, and she ran through the +shaded apartment that was filled with the dull gleaming of weapons. +She stopped before the bed that had not been slept in. She returned to +the living room, and gazed at the withered petals lying round the gourd. + +The doorway framed an undersized, obese old man who wore a skullcap of +black silesia. He was the janitor. + +"Where is Mr. Teck?" + +"Mr. Teck!" the janitor exclaimed in a shocked voice. + +The words tumbled out of her mouth: + +"He was here yesterday, surely. Didn't he leave any word?" + +"Mr. Lawrence Teck?" the old fellow repeated, in consternation. + +Behind him hesitated, in passing by, a young man with an inquisitive +face, who had under his arm a leather portfolio. She slammed the door +on them. In the shadowy room the very walls seemed to be crumbling. + +She searched everywhere for a note, for some sign that he had been +here; but there was no object in the place not covered with dust. + +Then, sunk in a stupor, she drove to the little house in Greenwich +Village. Her ring was answered by Parr's niece, the woman with the +sleek bandeaux. Mr. Teck had been here twice, the second time late +last night. On that occasion he had taken Parr away with him. + +"Where to?" + +"Ah, ma'am, if only I knew!" + +Those faded, medieval eyes gazed at the benefactress in a sudden +understanding and intimacy; and Lilla thought, "You, too, perhaps in +some region far removed from your pots and pans, have had such a moment +as this!" And she would have liked to let her face fall forward upon +the bosom of that threadbare working dress, feel those toil-worn arms +close round her, and utter the plea, "Tell me how to bear such things, +to survive, to emerge into that strange serenity of yours." + +She drove to Brantome's. The whole world was now tumbling down about +her ears. + +Brantome rose from his desk, where perhaps he had been sketching out +some brilliant appreciation of _Marco Polo_. After one glance at Lilla: + +"What's happened?" + +She showed him a look of hatred that embraced the whole room; for it +was not only he, but also this abode of his, that had entrapped her. +In accents that lashed him like whips she told him everything. + +The old Frenchman sat down with a thump, and let his ruined face droop +forward. She heard the hoarse rumble: + +"What shall I do now?" + +"Find him!" + +She returned to the house in the country. + +In the middle of the third night, the telephone beside her pillow gave +a buzz, more terrifying than a shout of fire, an earthquake, a knife at +the throat. Brantome was speaking. Parr had returned to the house in +Greenwich Village. Lawrence Teck had sailed secretly, that day, for +Africa. + +She replaced the receiver on the hook, rested her head on her hands, +and remained thus for a long while. In the end she formed the words: + +"That woman." + +She was thinking of "the infallible clairvoyant." + + + + +PART III + + +CHAPTER XLVIII + +In the early morning, while the trees round the house were still full +of mist, Lilla, in her sitting room, at the tall Venetian desk of green +and gold lacquer, redrafted for the twentieth time the message that she +wanted to send after Lawrence Teck by wireless. The rich +scintillations from the polished surfaces before her enveloped her +distracted countenance in a new, greenish pallor, as she traced, now +heavily, now very faintly, the words: + +"If you knew what you've done----" + +She paused; for the confusion of her brain made her think of a squirrel +frantically racing in a revolving cage. Then, seeing nothing except +the pen point, she wrote slowly, "What have you done? What have you +done?" And suddenly, in a convulsive hand that sprawled over half the +page, "Betrayed!" She stared at these words in amazement. + +Hamoud-bin-Said entered the sitting room. He had on the dark blue joho +edged with a red pattern. His snowy under robe was bound with a blue +and red sash from which protruded the silver hilt of his dagger. His +tan-colored, clear-cut, delicately bearded face was expressionless, as +he said softly: + +"The morning paper." + +And she realized that the whole story had been discovered, scattered +broadcast. + +For a time Hamoud regarded the prostration of her spirit from the +heights of fatalism. But presently, as he contemplated that limp pose, +which added one more novelty to her innumerable beautiful appearances, +the stoicism that had made him look mature gave way to the fervor of +youth--his limpid eyes turned to fire; his full, precisely chiseled +lips were distorted by a pang. He appeared as before, however, when +she raised her head and uttered: + +"Burn it." + +His reverie had a flavor of commiseration now, as though he were saying +to himself, "Who can catch all the leaves before they fall to the +ground? Who can sweep back the waves of the sea?" He responded: + +"The men who make these things have been telephoning half the night. +And now they are here themselves." + +"Here!" + +"They are sitting on the steps," he affirmed, lost in a gloomy, +relishing consideration of the wonders of life. "They wish to talk to +you and to Mr. Verne." + +He pronounced these words as if he had no idea of their enormity. + +Her spirit stirred at this threat. All seemed lost except the +phenomenon of David living, by which, in her distraction, she hoped +somehow to justify herself. To the amazement of the world one might +oppose the fact of genius miraculously unfolding through her sacrifice. +But she thought, "The world! What is that?" And thereupon, "All the +same it shall not strike down this helpless creature." And the world +became a monster, unfeeling, indeed immeasurably malign, lying far off +with the teeming cells of its brain all plotting to rob her of her +wretched victory, and with the claws of one outstretched paw already +touching the threshold of this house. + +"You are to drive them away." + +She went on groping for phrases as one gropes for objects in the dark, +telling Hamoud that henceforth nobody from outside the house was to see +David till she had been informed, that all newspapers and letters must +come first to her, that the servants must not show by so much as a +look---- She became aware that among these phrases she was uttering, +with an air of calm consideration, others that had no intelligible +meaning, no relation to her objective thoughts. She heard herself say, +"Perhaps I had better see the servants myself. It would be a queer +thing if there were a draft from the pantry. There is a red pillow in +the fernery; it must be hidden--the spears, too----" She gazed in +perplexity at Hamoud, who appeared to be floating before her at the end +of a dark tunnel. + +"For how long?" he sighed. + +"For how long?" she repeated plaintively. + +He seemed to grow taller. His face, which had taken on a blank aspect, +resembled the faces of those who, in Oriental tales, stand waiting to +fulfil a wish too sinister to have become an audible command. In that +instant she saw all problems rushing to their solution, except one; all +treasures recaptured, except the peace of conscience. She struggled as +one might to awake from some hypnotic spell in which one has been +assailed with frightful suggestions. She sprang up and transfixed him +with a look. + +"Go! Do as I say!" + +He bowed and departed. + +At once she became so weary that she could hardly reach her couch. + +"What am I to do?" she asked herself in a lost voice. + +Somewhere, no doubt, there was another Lilla, sane, able to act as well +as to think, capable of solving even this dilemma. But that other +Lilla remained far away, perhaps in the realm of those who, with an +Alexandrian gesture, ruthlessly cut the knot of interwoven scruples, +and for a brief season triumphed over the accidents of life! Raising +her eyes in despair, she saw trembling on the ceiling a ray of light +that resembled the blade of a spear. + +There descended upon her the full weight of her forebodings--the +superstitious dread that was typical of her emotional defectiveness, +and that had its origin, perhaps, in those two unhappy persons who had +been her parents. Yet when she moaned, "Ah, Anna Zanidov!" it was with +an accent of reproach as keen as though the prophetess of a tragedy +must be the cause of it. + +The sunshine was dissolving the luxurious room. There came to her, +like a dullness from a drug, the fancy that this world had no existence +except that with which her credulity had endowed it. "All my life I +have been dreaming this dream in which Lawrence and David, Hamoud and +Anna Zanidov, America and Africa, are figments. Presently I shall wake +and wonder why all these figments gave me so much pain." + +She floated deliciously in this thought. She reflected, with a vague +smile: + +"I must go and restore the appearance of happiness to that poor phantom +downstairs." + + + + +CHAPTER XLIX + +Lilla descended the staircase in the transplendency of the many colored +windowpanes. The red of rubies, the blue of sapphires, the green of +emeralds, enwrapped her slim body that was still phenomenally moving in +its habitual harmoniousness. The serene progress of her person through +prismatic light, the smile that passed unchanged through rays of +varying resplendence, added another stanza to the poetry of flesh, a +stanza differing from all the rest, however, in its ominous quality of +strangeness. For now, bathed in the fortuitous magnificence of the +stained glass, she shone in herself with an unearthly bloom, as if an +abnormality that had always permeated her seductiveness were now at its +apogee--as if, with no one to witness, she had reached the utter +expression of her loveliness, which blazed forth for an instant +completely, before dissolving in this strange element that mingled with +it. + +The multicolored lights released her. A pale, cold atmosphere closed +round her as she traversed the sunless hall and living room. Beyond +the doorway of the study this cold pallor rested on the figure in the +wheel chair--the phantom because of which that other phantom was +traveling toward an exotic semblance of death. He had not heard her +footsteps. He remained with his head bowed forward, a prey, no doubt, +to such anxiety as ghosts experience. He expressed perfectly that +helplessness with which, when she had believed him to be real, he had +laid hold of her pity. + +The outlines of all objects round her were clear and hard: everything +had assumed a look of preternatural density. She stood paralyzed by +the thought, "It is not illusion. It is reality." + +He was looking at her. + +What did he read in her face? Had he, too, heard the command that +seemed to have been shouted in her ears, "Tell him! Strike and be +free!" + +"What is it?" he whispered. + +Her lips parted, writhed, and uttered no sound. She was struck dumb, +no doubt by the feeling that if she spoke she would blurt out +everything, in obedience to that atrocious command. + +All at once she seemed to have flames in her eyes. Everything had +turned the color of gold. She stood with her head thrown back, her +face changed by anguish; then she fled through that golden dazzle. On +the staircase the many-colored rays reached out to hold her, to restore +her to that exquisite transfiguration; she passed through them in a +flash; and indeed they could now have enhanced, instead of beauty, only +the triumph of that element which had made her beauty strange. She +stretched herself upon her couch, on her back, in the attitude of the +dead. She pronounced with an extreme rapidity, in muffled tones: + +"I am on the ship----Faster! Faster!" + +She uttered a cry that was heard all over the house. + +When Hamoud and the servants came running, they found her rigid; but +while they were telephoning for the nearest physician the convulsions +began. Tossing about, she showed intense fear of all who tried to +approach her. The women ran from the room. Hamoud remained, rigid at +the foot of the bed, his face a dingy white, staring before him as one +who meditates on some immense, intolerable injury. When her cries +burst forth, he laid his hand upon his dagger, as if against these +invisible forces, these jinn from the Pit, that had taken possession of +her. + +The physician arrived to find the convulsions ended. Hamoud, now +gripping his dagger as if he would presently escape this scene by +plunging the blade into his breast, uttered: + +"Dying?" + +"It will pass," the physician answered, with a movement of reproof. + +Hamoud, afflicted by disbelief, by a despair that swept away his +fatalism, by a fury that called for revenge, bared his teeth and +demanded: + +"I shall bring him? We show her to him?" + +"Who?" + +Hamoud glanced malignantly toward the floor. + +"Hardly!" + +The physician resumed his contemplation of the patient, who had +descended into a stupor that was to last for days. + + + + +CHAPTER L + +There was a hush over the house amid the old trees. The servants moved +softly through the corridors, paused to whisper to one another, then +hurried out of sight as David Verne appeared in his wheel chair, slowly +propelled toward the sick room by Hamoud. + +She seemed hardly to breathe as she lay in the gloom through which +drifted the white uniforms of the nurses, amid a dim glamour from all +the charming objects that had been meant to please her senses. Her +hair was spread out on the pillow to frame her colorless face, which +had now attained indeed the look of the "angelic messenger." But the +angelic messenger, the bearer of life to him, seemed to David on the +point of returning to the source of life. + +He sat at the bedside, sometimes unable to extend his hand to touch her +hand, as though his strength were wholly a reflection of her strength, +so that with the latter's waning the former must flicker out. + +"What is it?" he thought, lost in misery and wonder. + +The physicians and the nurse looked at him askance, their secret pent +in behind their lips. + +He felt round him the pressure of this secret. The air was full of +thoughts that he could not apprehend. Behind the benignant evasiveness +of the doctors he seemed to discern a fact, like a thunderbolt +withheld. He recoiled from his conjectures, to cower amid these +shadows which he felt might be less agonizing than that flash of light. + +There was no reason for alarm, they told him. And instead of being +mysterious it was a perfectly defined case of nerves, hysteria, +emotional collapse. + +Ah, yes; but from what cause? + +Even Hamoud, he was sure, knew something that he did not know. The +Arab, while apparently as solicitous as ever, was changed. He had +taken on, merely in his physical aspect, a new quality: he seemed +taller than formerly, and older. Amid all his tasks he moved with a +sort of feline restlessness. He took to prowling at night, round and +round the bleak garden. The robed figure paced the paths with an +effect of stealing carefully toward an enemy. In the light from a +window his fine profile appeared for an instant like a presentment of +vengeance--with something sensual in its look of cruelty. + +Now and then, in the middle of the night, David became aware that +Hamoud had entered the room without a sound, to watch him from the +deepest mass of shadows. One could make out only the pale blotch that +was his white skullcap, and the long pale streak that was the uncovered +portion of his white under robe. The eyes, the expression of the face, +were lost in blackness. + +"I thought you called." + +And he was gone. + +In his own room, having noiselessly closed and locked the door, he drew +from his bosom the Koran. Holding the book reverently in his small, +right hand, he raised his head, and stood waiting with closed eyes for +inspiration. Presently, opening the Koran, he read: + +"The doom of God cometh to pass." + +This text was the answer to his prayer for guidance? + +He seated himself by the window, and gazed out into the darkness. He +considered piously the wonders of terrestrial life, a succession of +accidents all foreordained by God, an apparent drifting that was in +fact one steady propulsion by the hand of fate. From the rich, +ancestral house of coraline limestone across the sea to strange lands. +From dignity to abasement. From loneliness to this faint, delicious +fragrance in which the heart dissolved. From a dream of freedom to the +service of love through the agency of death. + + + + +CHAPTER LI + +It was twilight. David Verne sat in the study, his chin on his breast. +Hamoud, appearing in the doorway, gazed round the room. He had a +folded newspaper in his hand. + +He looked carefully at the fireplace, where logs were piled ready for +lighting over a heap of brushwood and crumpled wrapping paper. Then he +regarded the center table, on which stood the Venetian goblet, the +caraffe, and the bottle filled with the medicine prescribed by Dr. +Fallows. In the expiring daylight Hamoud, motionless in his robes, +loomed paler than usual, his handsome face very grave. + +The piano attracted his attention. In the shadows it had the aspect of +a squatting monster that bared at him the teeth of its wide mouth. As +if he had been awaiting this grotesque effect of challenge, he moved +toward the hazy windows, and began to curtain them. + +David murmured listlessly: + +"Has the doctor gone?" + +Hamoud gave a slight start. With his hand on the last window curtain, +he inclined his head, listening in awe to the tremor of that voice. +When he had passed his tongue over his lips he responded: + +"Yes." + +He drew the last curtain slowly. As he did so, his visage, sharpened +by the dying light, was turned toward David; his gemlike lips, without +parting, seemed to say, "Look! it is the world of sky and trees, of +sunrise and noon, sunset and night, that I am shutting out." + +The study lay in darkness. + +Through this darkness Hamoud moved silently toward the center table. +He tweaked the lamp cord: a gush of mellow rays leaped out to cover the +scattered piles of manuscript, the Venetian goblet, the bottle of +medicine. Hamoud moved the wheel chair closer to these objects, so +that David by reaching forth his hand might touch them if he wished. +Then, after stepping back to consider this arrangement with a strained +look, he went to the fireplace, lighted a match, blew it out, and laid +it on the hearth. David stared at him. + +"You have not lighted the fire. It is cold tonight." + +Again Hamoud listened in awe to the sound of that voice. + +"It is cold," he assented softly, with a shiver. + +Still kneeling on the hearth, he contemplated the other as though he +were seeing him now for the first time. The feeble, romantic face +before him was not so pallid as his face; those enlarged, questioning +eyes were not so strange as his eyes. At that stare of undefined alarm +he felt, despite all his jealousy, contempt, and hatred, a twinge of +weakness; he remembered all the other's helpless attitudes that he had +sustained and eased. Of a sudden the habit of protection grappled with +his resolve, and might have conquered, for a time at any rate, had he +not recalled the sufferings of the beloved. + +He rose and approached the wheel chair. The newspaper was in his left +hand, half concealed, like a weapon, in the folds of his robe. + +He heard a feeble cry: + +"What has happened? What has happened?" + +"And I who have eaten his bread," thought Hamoud, in sudden shame and +horror. + +If only some one would come! But the shadowy perspective of the living +room remained empty; and there was nowhere any sound except the beating +of his heart. + +He lifted the bottle containing the solution of arsenic. + +"Have not taken any of this?" He pronounced in a tone of suffocation. +"Remember must never take it until Hamoud has dropped it." + +He set down the bottle. It fell upon its side. But alas! it did not +break. + +"Hamoud! what has happened?" + +In mercy, with a violent gesture, with a sensation of sickness, he +thrust the newspaper into David's hands. "Done! No chance to turn +back now!" He rolled the folding doors together behind him and leaned +against them, his face beaded with sweat, panting as if in escaping +that room he had run a mile. He listened. How his heart thumped! He +heard nothing. "Has he the courage, though? Alone with those +thoughts!" Leaning against the door, through which came never a sound, +Hamoud began to weep, for the man whom he had served, for her, and for +himself. + +Yes, the Omân stock, cruel and remorseless in its pristine state, had +deteriorated in the lax paradise of Zanzibar; the old impulses were +there, but in abortive form; and the deed that Hamoud's forefathers +would have done less indirectly, and without a twinge, aroused in +Hamoud that pity which an ironist has called "the mask of weakness." + +Next morning, when they asked him to state his whole knowledge of the +matter, he told them that as he had been about to light the fire Mr. +Verne had seen, amid the brushwood, a bit of newspaper showing his name +in large type. It was there, no doubt, in consequence of the servants' +carelessness. + +"But you gave it to him," the local chief of police remarked severely. + +"Before I knew." + +Their indignation was softened by his crushed mien, and by his inflamed +eyes. Having arrived at their verdict, they discussed Arabs--or, as +they called them, "Ayrabs"--and one honest old fellow even paid the +race a compliment, in saying: + +"It's said that when they like a person they will do anything for them." + +It was Hamoud who told her. + +The nurse, stealing a nap on the couch in the sitting room, did not +stir as he passed into the bedchamber; but Lilla awoke at the command +of his eyes. When he had finished speaking: + +"No!" she sighed, as the world burst into fragments, and, like the bits +of colored glass in a kaleidoscope, slid swiftly into a new pattern. +"Ah, the poor soul! The poor soul!" She saw him more clearly, she +understood him better, than in life. "All for nothing!" + +No, surely not all for nothing! + +At any rate, these were tears of convalescence. + + + + +CHAPTER LII + +A fortnight later, as she sat in a deep chair in the living room, +Hamoud presented himself in the doorway, to announce: + +"He is here." + +Parr crept into her presence. + +The little, grizzled fellow advanced a few steps, limping on his cane, +then halted, frightened by this thin, white-faced woman who, her chin +in her cupped hand, sat staring at him with the cold eyes of a queen +about to condemn a malefactor to death. She was wrapped in a negligée +of peach-colored silk from the flowing sleeves of which long tassels +trailed on the rug. The morning light, as though lured from all other +objects in the room by this motionless, fine figure, accentuated her +appearance of iciness. She spoke, too, in the voice of a stranger, in +accents that thrilled with a force produced incongruously from so +emaciated a body. + +"Come closer. I want to look at you." + +He resumed his tremulous advance very slowly, because he was so heavily +burdened by his loyalty to the beloved master and his treason to this +once gentle benefactress. Casting down his eyes, he stood before her +abjectly leaning on his cane. His honest, deeply lined face twitched +painfully; for he could feel her scorn passing over him like a winter +blast. He faltered: + +"I was helpless, ma'am. I only did as he ordered. He thought it best. +He believed it wouldn't leak out. We took all precautions." He told +her how Lawrence Teck had taken him from the Greenwich Village house to +an obscure hotel, where they had found a strange gentleman, slender, +with a fatigued, nervous face, almost too fastidiously dressed to be +another traveler, smoking constantly, saying nothing. This gentleman's +name--it was altogether a disjointed, feverish business anyway--had +never been pronounced in Parr's hearing. The stranger had seemed at +once a torment and a comfort to Mr. Teck. Occasionally, when Parr +entered, it was as if he had interrupted a distressing scene. Mr. Teck +had then jumped up with a queer smile, knocking against the chairs as +he went to look out of the window. There the strange gentleman would +join him, to put his hand on his shoulder, soothe him in a low voice. +Then one morning Mr. Teck's rooms were empty; and the hotel clerk +handed Parr an envelope containing some banknotes and the scrawl, +"Good-by. God bless you. Remember, keep quiet." + +"Here it is, ma'am." + +She snatched the note from him, pored over it fiercely, and thrust it +into the bosom of her gown. Her lashes wearily veiled her implacable +stare. + +"You fool. You should have seen that he wasn't in his senses. Where +is he now?" + +"He should be there," Parr quavered. "By this time he might be inland." + +She saw a stream of men flowing in through the jungle, a human river +doomed to roll at last over some tragic brink. She clenched her hands, +seemed about to rise and rush out, as she was, in pursuit. She said: + +"You are going with me." + +His jaw sagged. Gaping round him, taking the whole room as witness to +this folly, he cried out, "Where to?" When she began to speak he +sagged forward over his cane, drinking in the verification of her +incredible desire. Her attitude did not change; her face remained +cold; her lips hardly moved; but he was aware of a tremendous force +behind the words, of something inflexible, invincible, grand--perhaps +of a flame without heat that filled her empty heart with an unearthly +coruscation, like a radiance thrown back from the walls of a cavern of +ice. + +"Do you want to die, ma'am?" + +"I?" Her voice expressed in that syllable such arrogance as youth +feels at the thought of death; yet she did not look young--she looked +as old as eternity, and as passionless and overpowering. + +He bowed his head beneath the pressure of this will, and the weight of +his obligation. He perceived the uselessness of describing to her the +dangers that she would run there, especially at the season that was +beginning. Still, for a moment he pondered the trouble he would have +in taking his broken body on that pilgrimage. "And this time it will +get me: just one or two little chills," he reflected, thinking of +black-water fever. The thought came to him, however, that his life was +no longer worth much, even to himself. This sitting with folded hands, +a cane between one's knees, in the tidy little house that she had given +him--and but for her it might have been the crutches! + +Besides, if he lasted that long, he might fill his nostrils once more +with the smell of Africa, see the little fires of the safari flickering +against the green cane brakes, hear the songs of the march and the +crooning of the camp and the voices of the jungle under the crowded +stars. + + + + +CHAPTER LIII + +She crossed the Atlantic, traveled swiftly down from Cherbourg to +Marseilles, embarked on a ship that steamed through the Mediterranean +toward the Orient. At last she saw Port Said, Suez, and the red and +purple lava islands of the Red Sea, splendid in a sunset of extravagant +hues. + +The heat was intense. + +But the ship emerged from the Gulf of Aden into a still greater heat; +and suddenly the air was saturated with moisture. The walls and the +ceiling of her cabin were covered with drops of water; exposed objects +were defaced by rust and mildew overnight; while the human body seemed +to be deliquescing in a torrid steam. A sickly breeze, filled with the +odors of a strange world, hardly rippled the languid sea. + +On the right, beyond a heat mist through which flying fish were +darting, loomed a new coastline. Yellow beaches appeared, interrupted +by lagoons where the slow waves abruptly spouted high into the +air--white geysers against somber forests and jungles. From these dark +green fastnesses, ascending threads of smoke inveigled the gaze far +upward into space, to where, above a belt of hazy blue that one had +taken for the sky, mountain peaks revealed themselves, unrelated to the +earth, and half dissolved, like a mirage. + +Night fell. The velvety blackness of the heavens was powdered with +star dust; in the wash of the ship there gleamed a profound +phosphorescence, as from a decaying ocean. The coast hung like a mass +of inky vapor above the fitful shimmer of the surf from which was +wafted a faint, interminable booming that suggested the roaring of +lions and the thunder of savage drums. + +Lilla emerged from her cabin, crossed the deck, and laid her hands upon +the softly quivering rail. Close beside her the darkness gave up a +ghost--Hamoud, who also stood silent, gazing toward the coast. His +robes exhaled an odor of musk and aloes. + +"Africa, madam," he uttered at last in a voice that lost itself in the +clinging darkness and the smothering heat. + +And soon a languid ecstasy stole over him. + +His heart swelled as he drank in, at the same time, the exhalations of +his native land and the faint fragrance of her hair. In the darkness +he perceived with his mind's eye both her beauty and the +well-remembered beauty of the spice isles. The palm-crowned hills +encircled the lapis-lazuli harbor of Zanzibar, on whose waters he saw +himself sailing, with this mortal treasure, in a handsome dhow, the +tasseled prow shaped like the head of the she-camel sent from heaven to +the Thamud tribesmen, the mast fluttering the pennants of ancient +sultans. Then the dhow with the camel prow became a panoplied camel, +on which he and she were being borne away to Omân, the land of his +fathers, which he had never seen. There, in those rugged mountains, he +would become, as his ancestors had been--vigorous of will, fierce and +great, triumphant in war and love. + +For a long while he stood there trembling gently in unison with the +ship, thought linking itself to thought, and image to image, his +fancies growing ever more bizarre yet ever more distinct, as though he +were inhaling, instead of the faint perfume of her hair, the smoke of +hasheesh. + +But she had forgotten him. + + + + +CHAPTER LIV + +In the thick sunshine, below the cloudlike mountains, sandbanks +unrolled themselves between the mouths of the equatorial rivers flanked +by mangrove forests. At last, in the depths of a bay of glittering, +brownish water, the port town appeared, a mass of red-tiled roofs +spread along the gray seawall that suggested a fortress. + +Through sandy thoroughfares bordered with acacia trees rode hollow-eyed +Europeans in little cars, which half-naked negroes pushed along a +narrow-gauge railway. The languor of those recumbent figures was +abruptly disturbed, at the apparition of a woman clad in snowy linen, +who advanced between a tall, young Zanzibar Arab and a small, limping +white man, with the step of a convalescent, but with eyes that were +filled with an extraordinary resolution. That evening, at the club +house, one brought word to the rest that she was Lawrence Teck's wife. + +There was a chorus of profane surprise in half a dozen tongues; for +this was the end of March, the climax of the rainy summer, when the +land was full of rotting vegetation and mephitic vapors, of mosquitoes +and tsetse flies, malaria and fever. + +"Is he coming out, then?" said one. "Where is he this time, by the +way?" "All the same," another remarked, "I'll wager that he isn't +aware of this. Looks as if she were planning a reconciliation by +surprise!" + +"She seems ill already. She'll last in this place about as long as an +orchid in a saucepan." + +"But, my friend, she wants to go in after him, it appears. She's with +the governor now." + +At that moment, indeed, the governor was patiently repeating his +remonstrances to Lilla. + +They sat in a large, white room with shuttered windows, beneath a +punkah that kept churning up the dead air, beside a carved table on +which stood a tray of untouched coffee cups. The governor was a +studious, sick-looking gentleman with a _pince-nez_ over his jaundiced +eyes, and with long mustaches frizzed out before his ears. He wore a +white duck uniform adorned with gilt shoulder straps, an aiguillette, +and a bar of service ribbons brilliantly plaided and striped. Anaemic +from malaria, and harassed by fever, he showed while he was talking to +Lilla a look of exhaustion and pain. Now and again, after puffing his +cigarette, he gave a feeble cough and rolled up his eyes. Then, in a +monotonous, dull tone he began again to express his various objections. + +Mr. Teck had gone in from a northern port a month ago. He had passed +by Fort Pero d'Anhaya, telling the commandant there that he was bound +back for the region in which his principals might presently seek a +concession. He was, no doubt, at present in the gorges beyond the +forests of the Mambava. He had with him a strong safari and a +gentleman friend. + +"What friend?" asked Lilla, who had been listlessly waiting for this +monologue to cease. + +"I don't remember. But I can, of course, find out." + +"It's not worth while. All that I want is----" + +The governor raised his hand, which trembled visibly. + +"Pray let me finish, madam. Mr. Teck is in a very dangerous place. We +have never conquered the Mambava; they are a ferocious people, and the +man who enters their country does so at his own risk. Had it not been +that Mr. Teck's venture, because of his peculiar relationship to King +Muene-Motapa, might end in winning over the Mambava to peaceful labor +and trade, we should never have given permission. As for you, madam, +such a journey is not to be thought of. I say nothing about the +climate at this season. But, if you will pardon me, as I look at you +the idea of your traveling inland on safari at any time of year--in +fact, I ask myself----" He stared round him at the mildewed, white +walls, and explained, "I ask myself, indeed, if you are real." + +For even in her white terai and belted suit of white linen she was a +vision appropriate only to the far-off world that this man had left +behind him at the call of duty--a world of delicate living and subtle +sensations, of frail flesh in luxurious settings, of sophistication +that would have shrunk from every crudity, and exquisiteness that would +have shriveled at the touch of hardship. This studious-looking, +fever-stricken soldier, a nobleman under a bygone regime and in his +youth a great amateur of love, had known well many women of whom this +suppliant was the virtual counterpart, fragile, complex, too sensitive, +too ardent, the predestined prey of impulses and disabilities that none +but themselves, their adorers, and specialists in neurasthenia, could +conceive of. In the present woman he discerned the same lovely and +neurotic countenance, the same traces of mingled fastidiousness and +desperation, the same promises of exceptionally passionate and tragic +happenings. + +"Ah, yes," he reflected, coughing feebly, so as not to make his head +ache, "ah, yes, she is fatal. Twenty years ago I would have killed men +for her with pleasure," he told himself, watching her pale, golden +face. "Fatal! fatal!"--but he did not ask himself what fatality had +brought her here. He knew her story, as by this time every one knew it +who had ever heard of Lawrence Teck, or David Verne, or her. + +"So it is this one that she really loves?" he thought, contemplating +rather dismally her bitten lips, her lowered eyelashes, the throb of +her throat, the working of her slim fingers. "I know: now she must +find him quickly, quickly, quickly. She cannot sleep; she cannot eat; +but she can drink, because she is always burning; and she can think, +yes--but one thought, only. Ah, the lucky man!" he sighed, while +beginning to shiver from his evening chill. + +As though she had read his mind, or at least had discerned his capacity +for understanding her, she leaned forward, laid her hand on his sleeve, +and murmured: + +"You have told me why I must not go. Now give me permission." + +"Do you then wish to risk death just at this time? I should have +thought----" He shook his head. "No, I will telegraph to Fort Pero +d'Anhaya; the commandant there will send messengers to the border of +the Mambava country; the Mambava will telephone your message through +their forests by drum beat, and in one night every village will have +the news. They will find him and tell him, and he will come here to +you." + +"Too much time has passed already. Even now I may be too late. +Besides, he must not come to me; it's I who must go to him." She +blurted out in a soft voice, "On my knees, all the way----" She +recovered herself; but two tears suddenly rolled down her cheeks, and +she faltered, "Look here, you know, if you prevent me you'll be doing a +terrible thing." + +He got up to pace the floor. He was of short stature, and his +shoulders were rounded by desk work and the debility from the tropics; +yet in the lost paradise of youth fair women had shed tears before him +and made him wax in their hands. He came back to the table, +absentmindedly drank a cup of tepid coffee, and said indignantly: + +"Nevertheless, you look far from well at this moment." + +"I have never been so strong," she retorted. + +"She dares everything, and no doubt all the while she fears terribly +what she dares. She is sublime! Who am I, a lump of sick flesh in +this fever trap, to interfere so strictly with this thing of white +flame?" + +He said to her: + +"Listen. I will give you permission to travel on safari as far as Fort +Pero d'Anhaya. Beyond that point I cannot promise you protection; so +beyond you are not to go. Mr. Teck must come to you there. To-morrow +I will see these people of yours, to make sure that they are competent +men, able to take all possible precautions for your welfare. Now, +then, tell me at least that I am not as cruel and as stupid as you +thought." + +When she had gone, a young man in a white uniform entered with a sheaf +of papers. The governor smothered a groan. + +"The summary of the hut tax, Excellency. The post-office reports for +last month. The reports of new public works--by the way, the new +bridge at Maquival has been finished." + +"Ah," said the governor profoundly, staring into space, "the new bridge +of Maquival has been finished!" + + + + +CHAPTER LV + +The equatorial wilds spread before the safari its wealth of extravagant +hues and forms, all its perfidies veiled for the allurement of mortals +who would trust nature in her richest manifestations. The sun shone on +a rain-drenched world; the earth steamed; and through a mist like that +which prefaced the second Biblical version of creation the splendor of +the jungle seemed to be taking shape for the first time, at the command +of a power for whom beauty was synonymous with peril. + +Nevertheless, the safari men were singing. + +Askaris led the way, Somalis in claret-colored fezzes and khaki +uniforms, bare legged, with bandoliers across their chests and rifles +over their shoulders. Their small, dark faces were sharp and fierce; +they marched with the swing of desert men; their glances expressed +their pride, their contempt for the humble, melodious horde that +followed after them. + +Four negroes, naked to the waist, supported a machilla, a canopied +hammock of white duck that swung from a bamboo pole. They were Wasena, +specially trained for this fatiguing work, maintaining a smooth step +over the roughest ground. Lilla reclined in the hammock. Her face, +half concealed by the fringe of the awning, appeared opalescent in the +filtered sunlight. Her tapering figure had the grace of Persian queens +and Roman empresses floating along in their litters on ripples of dusky +muscles. + +So this delicate, white product of modernity, this embodiment of +civilization's perceptions and all that it pays for them, was borne at +last into the primordial world on the shoulders of savages. + +Behind her streamed a hundred porters balancing on their heads the +personal baggage, rolled tents, chop boxes, sacks of safari food. They +were men from Manica, Sofala, and Tete, some of pure strain, others +with Arab and Latin blood in their veins. Their bare torsoes were the +color of chocolate, of ebony, or even of saddle leather; but all their +foreheads bulged out in the same way, all their noses were short and +flat, all their chins receded. On their breasts and arms were charms +of crocodiles' teeth and leopards' claws, to keep them safe from +beasts, rheumatism, arrows, pneumonia, snake bite, and skin diseases. +In the distended lobes of their ears were stuffed cigarettes, horn +snuffboxes, or flowers from the port town. + +They were followed by the camp servants in long, white robes, +Beira-boys and Swahilis, driving before them a little flock of sheep. +Parr, at the head of another squad of askaris, brought up the rear, +riding a Muscat donkey. He raised his head, and his withered mouth, +emerging from the shadow of his helmet, showed a melancholy smile. + +He was drinking in the smell of Africa, and listening to the song of +the safari. + +At times the song died down into a hum. But soon a quavering falsetto +was heard formulating a new motive, expressing a new thought. Other +voices joined the leader's; a minor refrain swept up and down the line; +and abruptly the climax swelled out in a diapason descending far into +the bass. So that every one could sing, the improvisor had phrased his +thoughts in Swahili, the inter-tribal language of Africa. He sang of +the Bibi from afar, her skin like a bowl of milk, who was traveling as +a bride to Fort Pero d'Anhaya. + +"She is rich. She is the daughter of a sultan. She is ill, but she +will be well. She is sad, but she will be happy. We shall eat much +meat at her wedding." + +The deep chorus rolled out to a banging of sticks on the sides of the +balanced boxes. + +"Wah! This Bibi is rich! We shall eat much meat at her wedding!" + +"They sing of you," said Hamoud, turning his limpid eyes toward her +face which was veiled by swaying fringes of the awning. She unclenched +her fists; her body slowly relaxed; and a look of incredulity appeared +in her eyes, as she returned from afar to this oscillating world of +steamy heat, throbbing with aboriginal song, impregnated with the smell +of putrefying foliage and of sweat. From under the feet of the +machilla carriers a cloud of mauve butterflies rose like flowers to +strew themselves over her soft body. It was as if the machilla had +suddenly become a bier. + +"God forbid it!" Hamoud muttered, averting his face from that sign. + +He wore a tight turban of many colored stripes cocked up over one ear; +he had bared his legs, and bound sandals on his small feet; and round +his waist, over the sash that held his dagger, he had fastened a web +belt sustaining a bolstered pistol. He never left the side of the +moving machilla. + +They soon put behind them the mangroves of the coast. They passed +through brakes of white-tipped feathery reeds, beyond which expanded +forests whose velvety foliage was mingled with gray curtains of moss. +On their left a little river kept reappearing. From the islands of +marsh grass that floated down the stream, egrets and kingfishers flew +away. On sandbars some dingy, log-like shapes, beginning stealthily to +move toward the water, were revealed as crocodiles. + +In a bend of the river cashew trees overshadowed the thatch of fishing +huts. Beyond fields of lilies one made out, flitting away, sooty +wanderers clad in ragged kilts and carrying thin-bladed spears. Then +marshes spread afar: the transparent stalks of papyrus trembled above +the bluish pallor of lotuses. As the declining sun poured its gold +across the world, the air over the marshes was jeweled from a great +rush of geese, ducks, heron, ibises, and storks. + +They camped on the clean, white sand beside the stream. + +The luxury that had always been her atmosphere still clung round her +here, taking on an Oriental quality from this host of unfettered +slaves, these dusky armed guards, these scurrying, white-robed servants +who, in the light of the sunset, composed with the speed of enchantment +her habitation for the night. The green tent, its fly extended like an +awning, awaited her entrance. The floor sheet was strewn with rugs; +the snowy camp bed was made; her toilet case stood open on the folding +table. The tent boys, their faces obsequiously lowered, were pouring +hot water into the canvas tub. + +Bareheaded, but wrapped in a tan polo coat, she emerged from the tent +to find the dinner table ready under the fly. They offered _hors +d'oeuvres_, a jellied soup, a curry, fruit tarts, and coffee. She +shook her head, and continued to stare at the candles on the table. +Fluffy, white moths were burning themselves in the flames. + +Parr protested that she must eat. In this climate one did not fast +with impunity. + +"I sha'n't collapse," she replied, that stony look returning to her +face. + +Night fell like the abruptly loosened folds of a great curtain. The +air became vibrant with the shrilling of insects. Fireflies filled the +darkness with a twinkling mist, so that the immense spangle of the +purple sky seemed to have invaded the purple ambiguities of earth. But +along the river bank shone the fires of the safari--points of flame +that outlined, like a binding of copper wire, the silhouettes of +squatting men, or turned a half-inchoate face to molten bronze, or +illuminated, against the lustrous blackness of the water, the fragment +of a muscular back, the crook of an arm, a stare of eyeballs, a display +of teeth that seemed to be swimming there unrelated to a head. + +The babble of the camp--a continuous chattering, crooning, and +guffawing, blended with the indignant cries of monkeys. It was, she +thought, all one threnody of purely natural creatures, of which one +species, by some accident of structure and unplanned immunity, had +enlarged its powers of experiment and imitation to this point of +triumph--the kindling of fires, the eating of cooked food, the +gradually enhanced capacity for suffering. + +"Are you religious, Parr?" she asked the little man who sat huddled in +a faded ulster, sucking at a cold pipe. What she meant was, "Do you +believe, poor traveler, that you have a soul--some spark that these +black savages share with you perhaps, but that those chattering monkeys +lack?" + +His pinched, gray countenance took on a timid look. + +"I hope so, ma'am," he stammered, and tried to assume an expression of +befitting dignity. + +"So you can pray without laughing at yourself!" + +Her cold voice was replete with the bitterness of those who have got +from suffering nothing except rancor, as if at some vast hoax. + +Parr was frightened by this glimpse into her disillusionment; and +prayer, which he himself had abandoned in his childhood, seemed +suddenly worthy of his timid championship. He mumbled something about +faith; he had, it appeared, seen some of its achievements. He recalled +the faith of strong men, which had accomplished prodigies; the +confidence of youth---- + +"And when one is old and weak? So it is all a physical phenomenon?" + +When she had slowly and relentlessly flung this retort at him, for want +of a better object for her scorn, she turned her head away. Her eyes +fell upon Hamoud who, sitting on his heels near her chair, was watching +her face by the light of the talc-sided lanterns that dangled from the +tent-fly. But Parr, not utterly crushed, proffered faintly that he +knew he could not argue with the likes of her, being without education, +having taken life as it came, mostly obeying orders---- + +"Like Hamoud," she commented. "Hamoud has taken life as it came, +obeying the orders of fate. What is your word for resignation, Hamoud? +The word that brought you across the ocean into Mr. Verne's service, +and then back across the ocean into this place?" + +"Mektoub," he vouchsafed, after lowering his eyes so that she should +not see the flames in them. "And why not, since none can hope to +escape his destiny? We--this whole safari--are here in the palm of +God's hand. None knows what God has prepared for us; yet every +footprint that we make has been marked before our feet." + +On these words, his handsome, lightly bearded visage was touched with a +look of beatitude, as though speaking in his sleep he was dreaming of +some unrevealed delight. + +"Then our will is nothing?" + +"Ah, if our will is victorious it is the will of God." + +As she made no response, and since the hour called "Isheh" was +approaching, he rose and departed to pray. + +"Will!" she thought. "No, there is nothing else. Will is the +Thing-in-Itself." + +The tent curtain fell behind her. She heard Parr's voice call out the +command for silence. His words were taken up by the askaris on guard. +The camp noises ceased; one heard only the scolding of the monkeys, the +drumming of partridges, and the far-off roar of a lion that had eaten +his fill. The earth seemed to tremble slightly from that distant sound. + +She lay on her bed, under the muslin mosquito net through which +strained the pearly gleam of a lantern. Once more it was all an +illusion which must be allowed to endure till reality could be gained. +For Lilla, the only reality was comprised at this moment into one more +meeting with him, in the sight of his living face, in the sound of his +voice pronouncing words of forgiveness, of love, perhaps even of +remorse. Should she reach him too late for that--find this longing +also part of the illusion? The prophesy of Anna Zanidov had gained a +still greater power from those deep forests, those sudden apparitions +in vaporous clearings of men armed with gleaming spears, and now from +the greenish infiltration of the moonlight. + +Another lion roared in the depths of the night. + +"Why should one fear even these strange forms of death? What has my +life been that I should find it precious? What does anything matter +except one hour with him? I really ask only a moment. No, all that I +fear is death before I find him, before I've won from him a last kiss +of understanding and pardon. Will! That shall be my strength and my +immunity all the way!" + +At last she dozed, to dream that Hamoud had confronted a lion just as +the beast was about to pounce upon Madame Zanidov, who, wearing the +dress of oxidized silver barbarically painted, crouched in a moonlit +clearing. "No, Hamoud, let him have her!" Hamoud, with a smile, stood +aside. Then she saw Lawrence approaching, his face and body wrapped in +a white cloth. "Too late," he uttered, and was unveiling his face when +she sat up in bed with a scream. + +Instantly the curtain let in a flash of moonlight. Hamoud stood at the +bedside, his hand on the hilt of his dagger. From behind him entered +the voices Of the guards calling out to one another. Then a murmur of +other voices broke like a wave. + +"There is nothing here," Hamoud said gently, when he had looked round +the tent. As she made no reply, he was about to withdraw; but, +kneeling down, instead, he raised the weighted hem of the mosquito net, +to take her hand and press it to his brow. + +"Sleep always without fear. Till Hamoud is dead no harm shall come to +you." + +"And dreams?" she moaned, letting her hand go limp in his frozen grasp. +"Oh, Hamoud, and dreams?" + +In the pearly light, beneath the cloudy net, in the air that was +fragrant with the odors of soap and cologne, her upturned countenance +and swelling throat gave forth a gleam as if of flesh transfigured by +love instead of grief. He felt himself falling through space into a +bottomless anguish. He clutched at the thought, "Yet who knows His +designs?" and hung in that void alive, his secret still locked in his +breast, the delicious pain of her daily condescension still assured to +him. + +"Ah, if you were of my faith you would have heard that life is all a +dream, that there is no reality except paradise and hell." + +He rose, and stole away from paradise to hell. + + + + +CHAPTER LVI + +In the dawn Parr hobbled down the line of yawning porters, checking the +reapportionment of burdens. The machilla men, still nibbling at chunks +of cold porridge, approached with the hammock swinging from their +shoulders. + +The safari resumed its march. + +Its course was northwest, through jungles of bamboo, round the rims of +marshes, past forests filmed with the blue and yellow of convolvulus. +The mountains remained apparently as far away as ever, now indistinct +behind the heat mist of the lowlands, now disappearing beyond the +rainstorms that swept across the plateaux like the robes of colossal +gods. + +The safari passed leopard traps, graves decked with broken pottery and +little banners of rags, then, circling fields of maize, entered a +village. The huts stood in a ring inside a rude stockade. The village +headman advanced, bending forward from the waist and scraping first one +foot and then the other. He made obeisance before the machilla, in +which men of his own kind bore up a delicate, pale prodigy, an +incredible creature from another aeon or planet. + +He was a wizened, old man with shreds of white wool on his chin. His +eyeballs were tinctured with yellow. His right shoulder was a mass of +long-healed scars from the claws and teeth of some beast. Behind him, +against a solid wall of his people, young girls with shaved heads, +awe-stricken, held gourds of beer as pink as coral and as thick as +gruel. + +The village headman revealed the news of the wilds, which had been +transmitted from tribe to tribe by native travelers, or by the +far-carrying beat of wooden gongs. A safari, passing to the north, had +penetrated the land of the Mambava. In that safari there were two +white men and many askaris. They had now journeyed through the forests +of the people of Muene-Motapa. They were in the granite gorges of the +waterfalls. + +He pointed toward where the floating mountains rose in a peak that was +lightly silvered with snow. + +Parr, on the Muscat donkey, looking more haggard than ever in the +sunshine, demanded: + +"Is it the white man who is called the Bwana Bangana?" + +That was the name that had accompanied the news. + +The safari marched faster than before, toward the exalted masses that +trembled behind the heat. They emerged upon rolling plains remotely +dotted with herds of zebras and antelope. In the blinding sky they saw +kites, buzzards, and crows, rising from the carcasses that had been +left half devoured by noctambulant beasts of prey. At nightfall the +lightning flashed above the mountains in yellow sheets or rosy zigzags. +Thunder rolled out across the plain in majestic detonations. + +Lilla, watching the storm from the doorway of her tent, told herself +that he, too, must hear these sounds; that she had come near enough to +share with him at any rate this sensation--unless her dread had already +been realized, and he had sunk into a sleep from which even such noises +could not wake him. + +Hamoud appeared at her side. He quoted from the _Uncreated Book_: + +"He showeth you the lightning, a source of awe and hope." + +Her heart swelled; she turned to that fervent, handsome face beneath +the turban a look of peculiar tenderness like a sword thrust, and +responded in liquid tones: + +"What should I have done without you?" + + + + +CHAPTER LVII + +Lawrence Teck was not in the gorges of the waterfalls. + +While marching in through the lowlands he had been seized with a fever +that he had failed to shake off on the plateaux. Every day he had +grown a little worse, indeed, till finally the choice had seemed to lie +between resignation of his work and serious illness. Turning back +toward the coast, he had now regained the forests of the Mambava. +Here, in his second night's camp, he had suffered a collapse. + +He lay abed in his tent. On the waterproof floor cloth squatted a +Mambava warrior, a messenger from King Muene-Motapa. + +"Give the word, Bangana. Give the word, Brother of the King. We will +carry you to the King's town on a litter as soft as the clouds. The +wizards shall work their charms to make you well. The Dances of the +Moon are about to begin: it is the time of answered prayers. Your +medicines have failed; now try ours. One word, Bangana! Gladden the +heart of the King!" + +The messenger's almost Semitic visage, upturned in the lamplight, was +smeared with ambassadorial signs in yellow paint. On his head he wore +a bonnet of marabout feathers that floated like a tiara of gossamer; +his arms and legs were armored with copper bangles. In his voice there +throbbed a tenderness and pathos, as if he were making vocal the very +essence of the king's desire. His eyes even swam in moisture, as he +repeated the conjuration: + +"Speak! Speak the word!" + +Lawrence Teck returned: + +"Say this to Muene-Motapa. The medicine that might cure me is far +beyond the sea. I thought I might do without it; but see what the lack +of it has brought me to. A little chill, a headache--the strong man +rejoicing in the world shakes his shoulders and they are gone. But +death in one of its multitude of forms stands at the door of the heart +that has ceased to take pleasure in life." + +His voice was feeble. His bearded face, bending forward under the net, +was blank from exhaustion and unnaturally flushed. His teeth clashed +together, as he concluded: + +"There is no medicine in this land to cure this sickness." + +The messenger groaned, and said compassionately: + +"It is sad to see the great deserted by their gods. Yet our gods +remain!" He pressed his palms on the floor sheet and leaned forward, +his filmy headdress drifting over his glittering eyes. "Surely, +Bangana, now is the time to renounce the old, to embrace the true! To +cast the spear of scorn and come in behind our shields till you are +strong again. We will make you forget! Give yourself up but once to +our ancient mysteries! Have you forgotten the Dances of the Moon?" + +There rose before Lawrence Teck a vision of an inferno deep in these +forests, red from great fires that devoured the moonlight. The scene +was peopled by thousands of beings too dreadful, surely, in their +appearance and actions, to be human--beings that danced in regiments +with foaming lips, that howled out their frenzy amid the roar of drums, +that fell right and left, convulsed, insane, cataleptic, while the +witch doctors, impassive in their masks, emerged through the smoke of +the fires with bloody hands. It was the reign of nature in its densest +stronghold; it was that which hovers like an echo over the suave, +ordered landscapes of civilization; it was the seductive horror that +invades the modern brain in dreams, or in some moment of utter +bitterness and despair. + +For a moment he still leaned forward, peering into those glittering, +dark eyes, though what he saw was something beyond that face--the +destruction of all the toil of fifty thousand years, the suicide of a +soul. With a shudder he lay back upon the bed. + +"Return to the King." + +For five minutes the messenger sat motionless; but Lawrence Teck did +not speak again. Rising at last, in a fluff of his marabout plumes, he +armed himself with his spear and his oval shield covered with an +heraldic design. + +"The King will weep," he said. "And the little sisters of the King, +and all those who loved you, oh, dead man." + +He raised the curtain, and stalked away through the camp, clashing +superbly between the fires, while the clustered askaris and porters +regarded him dismally. + +A white man in a fleece-lined coat, who had been waiting in the open +for the messenger to depart, entered the tent and sat down beside the +bed. + +He was Cornelius Rysbroek. + +"Shall you try to march to-morrow?" + +Lawrence Teck did not reply. There was no strength in him even to move +his hand, after that gesture with which he had put from him, though +half lost in fever, the ultimate temptation. Cornelius Rysbroek, +believing that he saw here defeat instead of victory, smiled. + +In his eyes appeared, perfected, the light that had made them +exceptional for years, a flash from that psychical lake of fire and +brimstone in which his heart had so long been burning up. For the +tables were turned at last: the weak one, the inferior, had become the +stronger, the better. A thousand wounds seemed to heal themselves in +him as he contemplated the prostration of the enemy whom he had hated, +just from premonition, even before his appearance. There was true +madness in that look, arising from the long privation, the interminable +jealousy, the consequent monomania of revenge. "He will die," he +reflected, gloating with half-shut eyes, his face, that had once been +puerile, now dignified by triumph. "He will never leave this forest," +he sang to himself, curling up his mouse-colored mustaches as if at a +mirror before sallying out to some pleasure in which there was no +sting. But suddenly he remembered that this prostrate rival was still +his conqueror, had won what he had not been able to win, would recall, +no doubt, in his last moment of consciousness, that love in all its +details. + +Out of the silent night the spirit of Africa crept into the dim tent, +completing his madness. + +To one of the little fires came softly Lawrence Teck's tent boy, a +turbaned Persian, lemon-hued, with the beak of a parrot and the mouth +of a cruel woman. He sat down close beside a Swahili gun bearer, who +was frying a mess of white ants. + +"Our Bwana has fallen asleep," he uttered in a voice that would have +been inaudible to white men. "The other Bwana is sitting by the bed." +He waited till the ants were cooked to a turn, then murmured, in a tone +like aeolian harp strings caressed by the faintest zephyr, "If our +Bwana does not die of the fever the other Bwana will kill him." + +The brown Swahili, his pan half raised, turned his face which seemed to +have been smashed flat, and gave the speaker a slow, fierce look of +inquiry. The Persian breathed: + +"With our Bwana's own pistol. As if he had killed himself. I peeped +through the curtain. The pistol was hanging from the tent-pole. When +he looked at it, and then at our Bwana, I read everything in his mind. +But if this also is the will of God it will not happen until some hour +when the camp is still--when we are all asleep." + + + + +CHAPTER LVIII + +The safari that was seeking him marched and camped, marched and camped, +marched and camped. + +Every afternoon the northeastern monsoon wafted in its sticky moisture, +releasing in the jungles the nauseating sweetness of incredible +flowers. Smoky-brown flies were seen on the necks of the sheep. The +beasts began to sicken and die. The porters ate fresh meat. + +But the porters no longer sang. The Wasena, who bore the hammock, +muttered to one another dolefully as they shuffled along. All knew by +this time that they were not headed for Fort Pero d'Anhaya. Avoiding +that last outpost of civilization, they were approaching the country of +the Mambava, which lay behind the steamy sunshine, below the blue and +lavender battlements of granite, in the uplands covered with forests. + +The askaris alone, the lean, khaki-clad Somalia, remained indifferent +to this atmosphere of disquiet that was more debilitating to the +porters than the fever-laden mists. For these fierce, restless men +from the northern deserts were of a breed that found its true +contentment in danger and violence. They were cheered, perhaps, by the +possibility of bloodshed, sustained by the automatism resulting from +their faith, and, despite their disdain of women, inspired by their +admiration of this frail personage who was always urging more speed +toward the fabulous regions of peril. + +As for her, she no longer saw anything except that deep green zone +which quivered behind the heat. + +"I shall find him not in the gorges, but in those forests." + +For the scene of Anna Zanidov's prophecy was laid in a forest. + +She lay in the machilla like a tightly drawn bow. Her skin, now ashen, +now bright from a touch of fever, stretched over a visage of apparently +new contours: round her cheekbones and jaws were suggestions of +previously unsuspected strength. Her tender lips had assumed an almost +cruel aspect; her sunken eyes, growing ever larger in her diminishing +face, were harder than gems. She was the personification of will. + +And Parr, sagging, shivering, softly groaning on the back of the Muscat +donkey, and Hamoud, ever pacing beside her, and the askaris with their +rifle barrels glinting against their fezzes, and the porters and the +camp boys, were only the instrument that her will had welded together. +They were wraiths obediently advancing her dream of one fleeting moment +of triumph over fate. They were nothing, since she had summoned them +out of the void of this world by an imperious cry. They were +everything; for without them her dream would fade. + +Sometimes the green zone of the uplands was lost in a blur not of heat, +but of fever. Sharp pains stabbed her temples, and, when the dream +became distinct again, she saw black men walking like giants, their +heads in the white-hot sky. But just as she had conquered fear, so, by +a supreme resolution, she conquered her vertigo, the burning of her +emaciated limbs, the quaking of her body which a moment before had been +bathed in moisture. At sunset she descended from the machilla to give +Hamoud a look of astonishment, while replying: + +"No, I am well." + +Yet she cast a look of dread at the rising tent, thinking of the hours +of sleeplessness, of appalling thoughts on the borderline between +nightmares and flashes of fever. + +Now and then, as she escaped shivering from the hot bath, she lost hold +of her new strength. + +"If you knew!" she whimpered. + +The lost, safe life rose before her. She saw against the green tent +walls the painting by Bronzino, the jeweled perspective of Fifth Avenue +at night, Fanny Brassfield's necklace sparkling in the blaze of the +opera house. The music of waltzes mingled with the strains of David's +tone poem; and she smelled at the same time the tanbark of the horse +show, the pastilles at Brantome's, and the flowers surrounding the +marble warrior and the marble nymph. She was seized with panic, on +realizing the remoteness of security. + +"Where am I? Africa! But why?" + +She stood motionless, aghast at her inability to remember why she was +here. + +Hamoud's voice came to her from beyond the curtain: + +"There is going to be a shauri, a talk with these porters of yours." + +"Ah, my God! What is it now?" + +Hamoud cast back at her through the curtain, in a tone of bitterness: + +"Rebellion." + +She wrapped herself in her robe and cowered on the bed. + +Half an hour passed. Hamoud's voice was heard again: + +"Madam, all is ready." + +She emerged victorious once more, her face stony, her lips compressed, +her eyes as cold as ice. + +On each side of her tent a clump of askaris stood leaning on their +rifles. Over against her chair the porters were aligned in a great +semicircle, tribe by tribe. The intervening flames of a camp fire +shone richly on the massed bronze bodies and the brutish faces that had +turned, for once, inexpressive. As Lilla sat down in her chair, a low +murmur passed through their ranks and lost itself in the gilded fronds +of palm trees that hung stiffly, like the scenery of a theater, above +this spectacle. + +Amid the shrilling of crickets a Wasena, the leader of the machilla +bearers, spoke first. He was a thin mulatto with filed teeth; the +sores on his shoulders were smeared with an ointment made of charcoal +and oil. His voice rose explosively, in a sort of childish defiance, +persisted for a long while, then suddenly died away. One heard from +the depths of the jungle the tittering of a hyena. + +An askari spat to the left contemptuously. + +The leader of the porters from Tete sprang forward with a cry of +exasperation. For this occasion he had bound round his waist the pelt +of one of the slaughtered sheep, and had made a head-dress of draggled +turaco feathers. He waved his sinewy arms, crouched, postured, tossed +back his head. His oration was less coherent than the Wasena's, but +more dramatic. + +"The first moon since the rains! The season when the Mambava hold +their great dances! It is now that their forest will be full of music, +while their warriors gather in the place that they know of, to dance to +the moon. We will not enter the country of the Mambava while they +dance to the moon!" + +A hoarse outcry rose toward the multitude of stars: + +"We will not enter the country of the Mambava when they dance to the +moon!" + +The askaris, their fezzes cocked jauntily, impatiently shuffled their +sandals of giraffe hide, and hitched up their belts in which were +thrust broad-bladed Somali knives. + +"They are rabbits," the askaris affirmed. "Even this lady shames them. +They are less than women." They turned their fierce eyes toward Lilla, +calling out to her, "Here we stand, Ya Bibi!" There was a savage +insinuation in that cry. + +In order to respond, Parr sat down in a chair, the immemorial symbol of +authority. He spoke in Swahili. After each sentence he paused, so +that his words might be translated by the headmen of the porters into +their tribal dialects. His voice rose faintly, almost ineffectually +contending against the sounds of the insects. He looked very small and +ghastly in the firelight; he was sick to his bones, feeling just as he +had felt before the black-water fever. The great semicircle of hostile +eyes perceived all his weakness. In the opinion of his antagonists his +face bore the seal of death. This representative of the white-skinned +super-race was revealed as weaker than they--no trace of the white +man's conquering will was to be discerned in his feeble countenance. +Why listen any more? + +Their leaders no longer troubled to translate his words. + +He went on, however, with the last of his strength holding fast to the +thought of paying his debt in full. + +In that land, he declared, none would dare to hurt the friends of +Muene-Motapa's friend. They should return telling how they had passed +unharmed, even honored, through the country of the Mambava. He +promised them double pay--while groping for some further argument, he +seemed to be sinking in upon himself. His face drooped forward. + +From the horde of porters came scattered shouts: + +"Enough! The shauri is over! In the morning we return!" + +"What do they say, Hamoud?" + +"They say that in the morning they will return to the coast." + +She sat stunned. + +The orator from Tete moved with a kind of spasmodic dancing gait toward +Parr. Never thus had the white man's genius lain prostrate before him. +He was the symbol of a race abruptly exalted from inferiority to +dominance. There came over him a frenzy of pride and malice; it was +the realization of the dreams that burn the brains of all the dark +people of the earth. "Do you hear?" he howled, and brandished his +fists as though about to strike that lowered head. + +An askari glided forward reversing his rifle. There was a cracking +sound as the gun butt struck the orator from Tete in the middle of the +forehead. With a drowsy look the smitten man sank down as gently as if +falling into a mound of feathers, and deliberately composed himself in +sleep, his brown face against the brown earth. + +In all that throng there was suddenly not the slightest movement, and +no sound was to be heard except the trill of the insects. + +She was standing, staring from the prostrate body to the mass of +porters, whose eyes were fixed upon the victim with one look, of +mournful awakening. Then they saw her whom they had forgotten, or, in +their transport, considered negligible. But when they had read her +face it was they who were frightened. + +"You! You! To stop me!" + +And a homicidal gesture completed her appearance of fury. + +"Wallahi!" the askaris called out to one another. "She has given the +order!" + +They spread out to right and left with a clicking of their rifle locks; +they drove the porters together, close to the fire. A soft moan arose +from the huddled crowd. They had seen the whips of hippopotamus hide, +long and flexible, translucent in the firelight like streams of amber. + +As the lash described a flourish above the first outstretched back she +turned away to her tent. Hamoud was before her, raising the curtain. +He said: + +"They will speak no more about the coast when we are through with them." + + + + +CHAPTER LIX + +At dawn he came to tell her that Parr had the black-water fever. + +The sick man was unconscious when they sent him off, in the machilla, +toward Fort Pero d'Anhaya, with three of the askaris and fifteen of the +porters. They soon disappeared into a jungle of spear grass, above +which the sunrise was spreading its bands of smoky gold and rose. The +chosen porters forgot their lacerated bodies; a song floated back from +them to those who must still press onward. + +"I have killed him, Hamoud." + +"Who knows? It is true that he is old and has had this fever before. +But we do not need him. Maybe he has fulfilled his destiny. And we +have not." In the glory of the sunrise he turned to meditate over her +thin, tortured face. He observed, with a lyrical sadness, "What is +life? A running this way and that after mirages. A thirsting for +sweet wells of which one has heard in a dream. Does one ever taste +those waters? Are they sweet or bitter? Perhaps this is the +secret--that to taste them is death." + +The safari marched on. She rode the Muscat donkey, which was dying +from the bites of tsetse flies. + + + + +CHAPTER LX + +Next morning she marched afoot in the blaze of the sun. Trailing +thorns pierced her ankles; the stipa shrubs showered her with little +barbs, and from another bush was detached an invisible pollen that +penetrated her clothing and burned her skin. At the noon halt they +made a hammock of tent cloth, in which she was carried all the +afternoon by four porters. At nightfall they saw, across a valley, the +edge of the Mambava forests, the towering tree trunks banked with huge +thickets and bound together by nets of vines. + +They camped in the valley, where a stream flowed through a tangle of +indigo plants. The warm bath steamed in her tent; the fresh evening +garments were laid out; everything was the same in this canvas ark that +proceeded farther and farther into the wilds with its atmosphere of +rude luxury intact. When she emerged from the tent, in her polo coat +and suede mosquito boots, the table glistened with its china and +glassware. + +She sat looking at the black forest. + +"He is there!" + +But she was very tired. + +Ah, to lie down, grope no longer for her will, drift away into a region +where there was no love or remorse, sleep forever! Why should she feel +like this with the goal so near at last, unless from a premonition that +all her efforts were useless? + +Never before had this land and its phenomena appeared so cruel, so +perfectly the manifestation of a superhuman force that clothed its +malignancy in a primordial splendor. Here, she reflected, was the +quintessence of earthly beauty inextricable from the quintessence of +horror; here was the source of all that she had trusted elsewhere in +countless perfidious disguises and refinements. + +Poisonous in some subtle element behind its visible vapors, it +corrupted not only the flesh, but also the souls that had emerged +elsewhere into forms of affection and compassion. Two nights ago even +she had greeted the crack of the whips with the furious thought, +"Strike again!"--and now there stole into her brain, together with the +light hallucinations of fever, a hatred of these cringing black men who +for a moment had dared to stand before her as antagonists. The evening +breeze brought to her, from the porters' fires, the odor of savage +bodies that had labored and been beaten for the cause of love; and her +disgust was tinctured with the fierce intolerance of all those +impressionable beings from what is called civilization, whom Africa had +debased--or else, made "natural" again. + +Through the buzz of insects there came from the forest, gradually +blending over wide distances, a gentle throbbing. The porters lifted +their round heads beyond the fires. The sharp profiles of the askaris +were motionless. A wail floated over the camp: + +"The drums of the Mambava!" + +The throbbing died away. But soon it began again in the north, then in +the south, and swelled to a continuous rumbling. + +On the edge of the sky the moon appeared, blood red, nearly full. + +There was a rush of feet, a scuffle in the bushes, and two askaris +advanced into the firelight, dragging between them a creature that they +seemed to have plucked out of some grotesque dream. + +He was an albino. His gray skin, because of its lack of pigmentation, +was splotched with eczema; his wool was a dirty, yellowish white; his +features were permanently distorted because of his lifelong efforts to +keep the light from paining his pink eyes. The askaris threw this +monstrosity upon his face before Lilla's chair. He lay moaning and +feebly moving his hands, as if he were caressing the earth. + +Suddenly he sat up on his haunches. His body jumped from the beating +of his heart. He fixed on Lilla a look that was the utmost caricature +of terror and entreaty. + +An askari let out a neighing laugh: + +"So this is one of the dangerous Mambava!" + +But the albino was not one of the Mambava. + +He was a man of the Manyazombe, who dwelt in the north--an exile, a +solitary wanderer, a lost soul. Who knew what aversion, what +indefinable dread, his dissimilarity had produced in his own people, +what village calamities he had been blamed for, what persecutions he +had suffered? For some reason he had fled from his own tribe, to be +greeted at the outskirts of alien villages with showers of spears. He +had learned to reciprocate the horror of mankind. Then he had dwelt in +the jungle, joining the furtive beasts. But still, moved by an +obscure, invincible need, he crept in thickets from which he might +watch the life of human beings, feasting his eyes on the fire-splashed +bodies of men and women, listening to the songs and the laughter, +filling his nostrils with the savor of his kind, as a damned spirit +might creep back to the warmth of life from a desolate hereafter. + +But what did he see now? Was she who sat before him human or +divine--one of those who must be placated by strict deeds, by charms or +the blood of animals and captives; some spirit of the jungle that had +made herself visible, in her marvelous pallor and uncanny costume, amid +a retinue of mortals inured to her magic? + +"Tell him that he is safe," she said, with a movement of loathing. + +Falling forward, he embraced her boots with his hands. + +A porter who understood his language was summoned to question him. The +albino had just now crept through the country of the Mambava. He had +not dared to linger there; for on all the forest trails bands of +warriors were moving in toward the rendezvous where, as soon as the +moon was full, they would hold the dances. Yet in the midst of those +forests he had seen the camp of white men. + +"He has seen it!" she cried, leaning forward to devour with her eyes +that hideous and precious instrument of fate. "Hamoud, he has seen +him! He can guide us there!" And with a look of tenderness she +murmured, "You will show us the way? Ah, I will give you--I will give +you----" + +She saw herself pouring gold over the pariah. + +He bowed his head till his dirty, yellowish poll nearly touched his +gray knees that were covered with callouses. Amid the close-packed, +silent audience a smothered phrase rose to the ears of the interpreter. +Hamoud, turning away his face, cast forth the words: + +"Too late." + +For the albino, while creeping round that camp in the Mambava forests, +had heard of a strange thing, of the shooting of one of the white men +in the night. Those discussing the matter had not known how it had +happened, since they had all been asleep. The white man was then +dying. By this time, no doubt, he was dead. + +She sank back as if she, too, had received a bullet. But after a time, +during which that dark throng had not stirred, she rose and entered her +tent. There Hamoud found her standing, swaying slightly, with closed +eyes. An invisible hand had brushed across her countenance, effacing +the last traces of her beauty. + +"Do we still go on?" breathed Hamoud. + +Without opening her eyes she returned, in a loud voice: + +"He shall not die till I get there." + +Hamoud's look of sadness gave place to a look of peace. + + + + +CHAPTER LXI + +At daybreak the safari entered the forest. + +Two askaris went first, guarding the albino. Next, since the forest +trail was too narrow for hammock travel, Lilla came afoot with Hamoud, +seeing nothing, hearing nothing, feeling no physical weariness or pain. +Behind her the rest of the askaris herded along the porters. + +The huge tree trunks sprang up toward a firmament of somber green, from +which descended dense festoons of vines. Through this twilight flitted +birds of brilliant plumage and long-haired monkeys. The place had a +morose, nefarious beauty, like the forest in the prophecy of Anna +Zanidov. + +Now and then a glade appeared, hung with flowers of mustard yellow or +diaphanous purple. Then again the tunnel-like trail, the green +twilight, the flapping of carmine wings, and a shaft of sunshine +piercing the canopy to rest upon the gnawed bones of a forest deer. +Here and there stood clumps of brown reeds, without twigs or buds, as +though a band of warriors had buried their spear blade down in the +earth before vanishing into the thickets. But one saw no faces except +those of the monkeys. + +They camped in a glade beside a spring. The drums filled the night +with their throbbing, which seemed part of the throbbing in Lilla's +feverish head. The askaris kept double guard; but at dawn eleven of +the porters were missing. + +Ahead of the marching safari, in a clearing spotted with large, +dirty-white blossoms, six black men sat motionless round the ashes of a +camp fire. They were watchers posted here to see that no strangers +entered their land at the season of the dances. + +Although they could not take part in those mysteries they wore the full +dance regalia. They were crowned with towering shakoes of +black-and-white monkey hair, fastened under their chins with beaded +straps, and bristling with egrets. Their bodies were smeared with +indigo and blotched with large discs of white paint; their faces were +painted white, but their noses were covered with soot. They wore not a +scrap of clothing; but around their necks and on their arms and legs +they had a wealth of talismans--tiny figures fashioned from clay, from +iron, from copper and from stones, in which one might discern the +characteristics of Phoenician images debased by thousands of years of +savage inspiration. In their painted, plumed, bedizened immobility +they appeared inhuman, or perhaps less than human--the personifications +of Africa's blind and vivid soul, the full efflorescence of this +gloomy, white-splotched clearing. + +They raised their heads as a seventh, crowned and painted as they were, +stood forth from a curtain of vines. On his left arm he wore a shield +covered with black-and-white patterns; above the shield rim glittered +the blades of three spears. + +He described what he had seen. + +He told of a train of dark-skinned men, guided by one with +unexceptional features, but with yellowish wool and a skin that +resembled the belly of a dead fish. These intruders served a personage +such as had never been seen. For she--if indeed a woman--was tall, +with a face the color of the highest mountain peaks, and eyes gleaming +like strange stones. She walked as if in a trance; but in her +trancelike face was a cold grief, or maybe a cold fury, like that of +some goddess whose taboos had been broken, and who was marching to +vengeance. + +They sat awe-stricken, filled with that dread of the supernatural which +possesses the savage who is confronted with anything unheard of. +Besides, the spell of the dances was upon them, remote though they were +from that scene--the far-off frenzies that were preparing had begun to +trouble their nerves. But at last their leader rose. Moved by the +mysticism of the season, when every act must take on a liturgical +quality, he chanted the question: + +"Who is the woman with the cold face who enters our country at the time +of the Dances of the Moon?" + +All his companions repeated his question in a low, singing tone, +touching their amulets, and raising their whitened visages toward the +interlaced branches and vines. + +The leader's high, tremulous voice was heard again: + +"Is it a woman of flesh and blood; or is it the Lady of the Moon?" + +It was the genius of the ancient Phoenicians, the spirit of Astoreth, +surviving distorted through all these ages in the depths of the jungle, +exerting its spell. + +But a look of cunning entered his blood-shot eyes; and his flexible +mask of white was creased by a smile. He cried out in a new voice: + +"If she is the Lady of the Moon our spears will not hurt her!" + +He bounded into the air, stamped his feet, shook his headdress, and +crouched in an attitude of war. + +"But if she is flesh and blood our spears will tell us so!" + +All leaped to their feet. Their brandished spears made nimbuses over +their heads; and this time their response was like the baying of +hounds. Then, one by one, stepping lightly, they slipped through the +curtain of vines. + + + + +CHAPTER LXII + +Trees, trees, trees. They were colossal, draped in moss and lichen, +ferns growing from the crooks of their limbs, above the impenetrable +thickets of broad-leaved plants from which came the tinkle of rills. +Here and there had fallen across the narrow corridor a tree trunk +riddled by ants; as Lilla stepped over it blue scorpions scuttled away. + +Hour after hour there floated before her the fezzes and khaki-covered +backs of the two leading askaris, trim, narrow, jaunty backs flanking +the leprous shoulders of the albino. Now and again Hamoud, a robed +figment always beside her, addressed her in an unintelligible language. + +"Dying. Dying. Dying." + +Too late, perhaps, even for that last embrace of glances, that moment +of pardon and love which was all that she had asked. Closed eyes, +sealed lips, a similacrum to mock her will, left behind by the spirit +that had gone where she and the safari could not follow. + +"All the same, I shall not be far behind you! My spirit, when it has +shaken off this flesh, will travel faster than yours, on the wings of a +supreme necessity. I shall find you!" + +She stopped short, bewildered by a new hallucination--a flash of +silvery light across her face. She saw one of the leading askaris +kneel down and stretch himself upon his face, as if trying to press +against the ground a thin shaft that seemed to be lying crosswise under +his chest. Then she heard an explosion, and perceived a film of smoke +full of horizontal gleams--the blades of flying spears. + +She had a fleeting impression of Hamoud, his arm outstretched, his hand +spitting fire. Beyond him the albino vanished in mid-air. The second +askari, his rifle lowered, was staring in vague surmise at his breast, +from which protruded a piece of polished wood. At that moment she +found herself surrounded by khaki-clad forms all moving with catlike +grace. The dark faces under the fezzes were changed by the fervor of +battle; the bared teeth shone out beside the locks of the rifles. +These thin, hard bodies, buffeting her about, formed round her a +rampart from which the blades of steel were answered by blades of flame. + +Hamoud rose from the ground at her feet, drawing his dagger. An askari +grunted and sat down with a thud. Then she saw that they were in the +midst of a glade. Among the bushes flitted the pattern of a shield, a +clump of egrets, a whitened visage that seemed to lack a nose. The +askaris' rifles rose, spouted fire, sank down with a click, rose, +crashed again. Silence fell. + +The blue veil of smoke rose slowly, all in one piece. + +Then, without warning, came the charge. + +She became aware of an incredible apparition--a sort of naked +harlequin, magnified by a towering headdress, sailing high, twisting +over his shield like a pole vaulter over a pole, coming down asprawl in +a bed of crimson flowers. Another followed, crouching--or else this +was only a swiftly advancing shield, topped by a tuft of egrets. But +from one side of the shield darted out along, indigo arm, releasing a +spear: an askari leaned against Lilla, coughed, and slipped to the +ground. The advancing shield doubled up, to reveal a warrior who, with +a somersault, a rattle of amulets, a blur of broad polka dots, lay +flat, his face blown away. + +More shields were rushing upon the guns, however. + +The Mambava, shot through and through, feeling death upon them, +maintained their momentum long enough to drive their weapons through +the khaki jackets, or, at the least, to go down with their teeth buried +in the riflemen's necks, as if that draught of blood might reanimate +them. The wrestlers sank to earth inextricably mingled, a fist perhaps +sticking up above the tangle and slowly relinquishing a broad-bladed +Somali knife. + +One remained apart, some dozen yards away, shot through the hips, but +still dragging himself forward. From his open month, yawning black in +the whitened face, issued roars like those of a crippled lion, as with +a lion's courage he still came on, his legs trailing, his body scraping +the soil, a spear in one clenched paw. + +Lilla stood paralyzed, alone before that inexorable advance. + +For the rampart of askaris had become a circle of dead men, expressing +with their last gestures a deep desire to be remerged with this rich, +dark, ancient earth. + +But all at once, as though a bit of blue sky had fallen into the glade, +there appeared between Lilla and the crawling warrior, a figure of +trailing blue robes, bent double, running. It was Hamoud, his turban +gone, his cheek smeared with loam, one shoulder of his robe stained a +deep violet. + +Clapping his sandaled foot upon the spear blade, he seized the Mambava +by his plume of egrets. The painted head was dragged back. The +Zanzibar dagger shone through the ribbons of smoke. + +Her mouth twisted in abnormal shapes as she struggled to cry out. +"Hamoud!" she screamed at last, raising her arms as high as she could, +and trying to tear her gaze away from that spectacle. The Arab's pose, +as he bent over his enemy, was a frightful burlesque of solicitude. +How many times had she not seen him bending thus over David, maybe to +smooth his pillow? And now, against the colonnade of gloomy trees, +there was something sacrificial in that tableau--the blue robe, the wet +dagger, the plumed head pulled back, with glazed eyes fixed on the +woman who stood rigid, her arms upstretched, transformed from the giver +of life into the giver of death. + +She fled, stumbled, stood still in the entrance to the back-trail. In +that leafy tunnel, as far as the eye could see, was no one living or +dead. The porters, the tent boys, all were gone in a stampede for +safety. The baggage lay scattered among the fern beds. She saw +bundles of green canvas, chop boxes, rags, bursting sacks of grain. +Beside a mossy rock lay her dressing case smashed open, its mirror, +brushes, and vials trampled into the mud. + +"Ah, my mirror is broken." + +She wandered through the wreckage, uttering peals of laughter. + + + + +CHAPTER LXIII + +The light of the full moon, penetrating the high canopy of leaves, +illuminated the contorted vines that hung motionless in mid-air like +pythons of silver. Here, miles beyond the place of battle, apart from +the trail, in a covert that seemed made for them, the woman and the man +sat resting, she on a mound of moss as soft as a pile of velvet +cushions, he at her feet. A moonbeam rested on her loosened hair and +her dress that was torn to tatters. She raised her head as the sound +of the drums came to her from far away. + +To-night there was a new accent in that throbbing, a wilder cadence, a +suggestion of tumult, a hint of the infernal. In her fancy she +perceived a multitude of naked, painted figures dancing in the glamor +of great fires. + +A shudder passed through her from head to foot, as she said: + +"Now you will confess that we have come into a place where God does not +exist." + +He cast round her his blood-stained robe. Through a rent in his white +kanzu, which was glued to his body, his shoulder appeared, covered with +a black encrustation. + +"Wherever we turn," he answered, "there is the face of God." + +"So you still believe? You could even pray, perhaps?" + +By way of response, casting up his dark eyes, he pronounced the +Fatihah, his low voice mingling with the mutter of the drums: + +"In the name of God, the Compassionate! Praise belongeth to God, the +Lord of the Worlds, the King of the Day of Doom. Thee do we serve, and +of Thee do we ask aid. Guide us in the straight path, the path of +those to whom Thou hast been gracious, not of those with whom Thou art +angered, or of those who stray. Amen." + +"Delusion!" she moaned. + +His gaze embraced her in pity. His precisely modeled face, still so +youthful despite his delicate beard, and almost spiritually handsome in +the moonlight, yearned toward her as he returned, with a caressing +gentleness: + +"Yes, surely this present life is only a play, a pastime. This world, +and all in it, are shadows cast upon the screen of eternity. But God +is real. Everything may go to destruction, but not the face of God. +Ah," he sighed, "if only the Lord had opened your heart to Islam, had +willed that you might feel the Inner Light! No matter what may happen, +there is peace." He dreamed sadly for a time, then said, "Fair-seeming +to men are women; but God--goodly the home with him!" And he averted +his head from her, as though from a temptation to apostasy. + +Something moved in the bushes. Hamoud raised a rifle from the moss +into his lap. Amid the leaves two balls of green fire appeared and +disappeared. It was a leopard that had peeped out at them. + +The drum music swelled through the forest. + +"To-morrow they will find us," she reflected. + +"Meanwhile we live in this flesh, subject to its beliefs, still able to +trust in its seeming powers of delight." + +So, after a long hush, he took from his bosom a little glass bottle of +square surfaces enameled with gold, uncorked it, and held it out to +her. There came to her nostrils the odor of her own perfume, which she +had worn in a lost world. + +"Clothe yourself in this sweetness," he whispered. "Touch it once more +to your temples, your hair, your lips. Let it float about you like a +veil that covers a beauty remembered from old dreams. These rags will +become cloth of gold on the body of the Sultana of Sultanas. I shall +sit while still alive in those gardens beneath whose shades the rivers +flow--those charming abodes that are in the Garden of Eden. This, and +not Paradise, shall be the great bliss." + +She poured the few drops of perfume into her palms, and held out her +hands. + +"Ah, Hamoud----" + +"Do not speak," he protested, catching her hands in his. "It is this +moment for which I became a servant, did things that you will never +know of, and followed you here." + +She sat in the blood-stained robe, in the dark forest vibrating from +the drums and rustling with stealthy beasts, lost, bereft of beauty and +faith, yet aware of one more miracle--realizing that even now, out of +her poverty, she could still bestow happiness. + + + + +CHAPTER LXIV + +At daybreak they went on. + +With his shoulders bowed under a distended sack and a canvas water +bottle, and with his rifle at trail, he guided her feeble steps along +the path. Now and then he besought her to rest. She shook her head. + +Bees hummed above them in the festoons of flowers. Purple parrots with +scarlet crests went fluttering away. At noon they paused, ate some +biscuits, then pressed ahead, she driven by her obsession and he, as he +believed, by the purposes of Allah. + +Just as a rosy warmth was invading the upper foliage, Hamoud pushed her +from him, and struck at the ground with his gun butt. He had stepped +upon a puff adder. + +He sat down to examine his ankle, on which four tiny pinpricks were +visible. He looked up with a fixed smile. + +There it lay, a little, crushed reptile, a trivial fragment of matter, +its triangular head flattened out, its scales of pinkish gray, black, +slate, and lemon yellow already turning dull. Yet the man, a rational +being, with power for good as well as evil, for love as well as hatred, +was even now dying from it. But his face expressed the fortitude that +was at the same time the blessing and the curse of his religion, as he +said to her: + +"Go. I do not wish you to see me die this death." + +She knelt down to peer at those almost imperceptible punctures. + +"From that?" + +As she spoke he seized his leg above the knee, to choke back the first +excruciating pang. Rocking backward and forward, he began to repeat +scattered texts from the Koran: + +"The recompense of the life to come is better, for those who have +believed and feared God----" With a groan he let go of his leg and +clutched at his abdomen. He gasped, "Adorned shall they be with golden +bracelets and with pearls, and their raiment shall be of silk---- Go! +go! Oh, my star, I do not want you to see me die this death!" He +arched his back, then lay flat, his skin colorless, bedewed with a +sudden moisture. "Praise be to God, who hath allowed release from all +this, my Master, the Knowing, the Wise! Into gardens beneath whose +shades---- Ah, but you will not be there! You will not be there!" + +He was silent, twisting like the serpent whose head he had crushed. + + + + +CHAPTER LXV + +Night was falling: it was the time when the beasts of prey begin to +stir from their lairs. Sitting beside the semblance of Hamoud, she +examined in the last of the twilight the well-worn Koran. She hurled +the book from her. It was swallowed by the gloom. "You have won," she +thought, regarding the murky thickets that were hung with morbific +blossoms, the trees that remained a labyrinth even while they dissolved +in the night. + +In her progress hither she had cast off, one by one, all her +repugnances and terrors, all her proud and luxurious impulses, all her +charms. Nothing had remained except a love that expected and desired +no physical rewards, and a power of will that she had conjured up +apparently out of nothing. + +Now both will and love lay vanquished. + +The drums were not yet beating. Silence filled the forest that should +have been alive with little furtive noises. Nature, of which this +place was the core and utmost manifestation, seemed to brood with bated +breath. + +She began to speak, urgently, seductively: + +"When they come you will wake up and protect me, Hamoud? You love me, +and I once read somewhere that love can be stronger than death. But +now sleep; get back your strength. I'll keep watch. I'm not afraid; +for I have only to reach out my hand to touch you." + +She touched the cold forehead and muttered, "How chilly you are!" and +threw over the body of the martyr the torn joho, which she had been +wearing round her shoulders. There was long silence. The whole forest +sighed softly, as if weary of waiting. + +"What did you say, Hamoud? A play of shadows? And above it a +permanence that you call the face of God? What queer things your God +must see in this shadow play of ours!" + +She laughed indulgently, then caught her breath. The darkness was +filled with an amazing sight. + +Before her a great pyramid of bodies rose toward an apex surrounded by +flashes of pink lightning--the seething bodies of all humanity, and of +all the animals and reptiles of the earth. Each struggled to extricate +itself from the rest, to surmount its neighbors, to wriggle toward the +apex. The bare breasts of women, whose handsome ball gowns were torn +and covered with mud, strained to be free from the enwrapping trunks of +elephants, and the coils of pythons. The torsoes of dusky savages and +the limbs of white men writhed under the fangs of lions and hyenas, +which were transfixed by spears, or lacerated by wounds that they had +inflicted on one another. The countless faces exposed on that quaking +mountain of flesh, male and female, light and dark, fair and hideous, +brutish and sensitive, expressed one look of stupid and yet agonized +desire--all eyes were turned upward toward the summit wreathed with +lightning. There those who had just gained their goal, lightly touched +by the tips of the rose-colored bolts, sank back inanimate, went +tumbling down the slope with astonishment frozen on their faces, +scattering broadcast from their hands a cascade of treasures--jewels, +scraps of paper, purses, images of gold and ivory, wreaths of laurel or +of lilies, scepters, and objects in which no one could have discovered +any meaning or any worth. + +But what was the goal toward which this mass of flesh was striving so +frantically? Above the apex of the pyramid, amid the sheen of the +lightning, was revealed a vast figure, naked and indeterminate, dim and +yet seeming of a denser texture than the most abysmal beasts, a figure +at the same time human and serpentine, that twisted in attitudes of +human anguish, yet appeared, like a maddened serpent, to be stinging +itself to death. + +The whole vision vanished. + +"Hamoud! Hamoud! Now I'm afraid!" + +But she could not wake the protector. She was alone. + +"God, then!" + +And in one last flash of distracted irony: + +"If I called God in Arabic?" + +She had an idea that the silently brooding forest was smiling in the +darkness. + +Yes, she felt, alone; since even the God of Hamoud could not be aware +of this world, in which everything desired by the senses, or +apprehensible by them, was going to destruction--so futile a tragedy, +so contemptible a fleeting dream, a nothingness of which the miserable +woman seemed to see herself, at last, as the most insignificant part. + +"But I have cast it off, left it all behind me! You must hear me! You +shall hear me!" + +When her voice, a thin blade of sound, pierced the silence of the black +forest, without a premonitory thud the rumble of the drums began, as +though the roused spirit of the jungle were trying to drown out this +cry. The drum music swelled louder and louder in the breathless night, +its mingled rhythms combining into a thunder. But once more the cry, +"Hear me!" rose to contest with that demoniacal uproar. + +When she had remained motionless for a while with upturned face, +weariness rolled down upon her like an avalanche. + +The moonlight, creeping through the tangles, covered her prostrate +body. She was dreaming that Anna Zanidov stood before her in the +barbarically painted evening gown. She sat up with a bound. Hands had +embraced her feet. A grayish form crouched before her. + +The albino had heard her. + + + + +CHAPTER LXVI + +Sitting back upon his heels, hugging against his breast a small bow and +a handful of arrows, the albino scrutinized the fallen divinity. Yes, +by some pass of magic she had been changed into a helpless human being, +full of human despair. The poor pariah contemplated her in her +abasement from an eminence of pity. + +He rose with an uncouth gesture of invitation. He guided her through +the mottled labyrinth. Stumbling over the roots, bursting her way +through the vines, she pressed after the bent figure whose very +loathsomeness now seemed precious to her. + +He had found the lost path. He crept forward more quickly, halted at +last, and pointed. Ahead there expanded a wide sheen of moonlight, in +the midst of which she discerned a man standing like a statue, a fez on +his head and a rifle over his arm. + +The albino was gone. + +A challenge rang out as she stood forth on the edge of the clearing. +Beyond the sentinel she saw red embers and tents, rising black skulls, +and agitated fezzes. But in the midst of a broad pool of moonlight was +spread a tent cloth through which appeared the outline of a body. + +She sank down upon her knees, turned back the tent cloth from the +inscrutable face. + +It was the face of Cornelius Rysbroek, who, in the dead of night, +beside his sleeping rival, while drawing the pistol from the holster, +had been shot in the back. + +She perceived, on the curtain of a tent before her, a hand that thrust +back the folds, a hand that moved, that lived. Under the tent fly +emerged a man cadaverous from fever, to gaze at another chimera, of +tatters and gaunt pallor, in which he found at last a resemblance to +the woman he had loved. Though Lawrence was sure that this could not +be reality, life bubbled up in him as she drew nearer. He found +somehow the power to stand firm, to hold her fast when she sagged down +in his arms. + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SACRIFICE*** + + +******* This file should be named 22928-8.txt or 22928-8.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/2/9/2/22928 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. 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