“I’ve stupidly cut my hand, Sonia. Come and tie it up. Mr. Leith is going in a moment, and then you shall bathe it.”
Sonia looked at Dion, and, without a word, adjusted the handkerchief deftly, and pinned it in place with a safety-pin which she drew out of her dress. Then she left the room with her flat-footed walk. As she shut the door Dion said doggedly:
“You’d better let her bathe it now, because I’m not going in a moment.”
“When I ask you to go you will go.”
“Sit down. I must speak to you.”
He pointed to a large sofa. She went very deliberately to a chair and sat down.
“Why don’t you sit on the sofa?”
“I prefer this.”
He sat on the sofa.
“I must speak to you about Jimmy.”
“Well?”
“What’s the matter with him? What have you been up to with him?”
“Nothing.”
“Then why should he turn against me and not against you?”
“I don’t understand what you mean.”
“You do. It’s since that night in the garden when you made me lie to him. Ever since that night he’s been absolutely different with me. You know it.”
“I can’t help it.”
“He believed your lies to him, apparently. Why doesn’t he believe mine?”
“Of course he believed what you told him.”
“He didn’t, or he wouldn’t have changed. He hates your having anything to do with me. He’s told you so. I’m sure of it.”
“Jimmy would never dare to do that.”
“Anyhow, you know he does.”
She did not deny it.
“Remember this,” Dion said, looking straight at her, “I’m not going to be sacrificed a second time on account of a child.”
After a long pause, during which Mrs. Clarke sat without moving, her lovely head leaning against a cushion which was fastened near the top of the back of the chair, she said:
“What do you mean exactly by being sacrificed, Dion?”
Her manner had changed. The hostility had gone out of it. Her husky voice sounded gentle almost, and she looked at him earnestly.
“I mean just this: my life with the woman I once cared for was smashed to pieces by a child, my own dead child. I’m not going to allow my life with you to be smashed to pieces by Jimmy. Isn’t a man more than a child? Can’t he feel more than a child feels, give more than a child can give? Isn’t a thing full grown as valuable, as worth having as a thing that’s immature?”
He spoke with almost passionate resentment.
“D’you mean to tell me that a man’s love always means less to a woman than a child’s love means?”
Silently, while he spoke, she compared the passion she had had for Dion Leith with the love she would always have for Jimmy. The one was dead; the other could not die. That was the difference between such things.
“The two are so different that it is useless to compare them,” she replied. “Surely you could not be jealous of a child.”
“I could be jealous of anything that threatened me in my life with you. It’s all I’ve got now, and I won’t have it interfered with.”
“But neither must you attempt to interfere with my life with my child,” she said, very calmly.
“You dragged me into your life with Jimmy. You have always used Jimmy as a means. It began long ago in London when you were at Claridge’s.”
“There is no need—”
“There is need to make you see clearly why I have every right to take a stand now against—against——”
“Against what?”
“I feel you’re changing. I don’t trust you. You are not to be trusted. Since Jimmy has been here again I feel that you are different.”
“I am obliged to be specially careful now the boy is beginning to grow up. He notices things now he wouldn’t have noticed a year or two ago. And it will get worse from year to year. That isn’t my fault.”
His sunken eyes looked fixedly at her from the midst of the network of wrinkles which disfigured his face.
“Now what are you trying to lead up to?” he said.
“It’s very foolish of you to be always suspicious. Only stupid people are always suspecting others of sharp practise.”
“I’m stupid compared with you, but I’m not so stupid that I haven’t learnt to know you better than other people know you, better, probably, than any one else on earth knows you. It is entirely through you that Jimmy has got to hate me. I’m not going to let you use his hatred of me as a weapon against me. I’ve been wanting to tell you this, but I thought I’d wait till he had gone.”
“Why should I want to use a weapon against you?”
“I don’t know. It isn’t always easy to know why you want things. You’re such an inveterate liar, and so tricky that you’d puzzle the devil himself.”
“Do you realize that all you are saying to-day implies something? It implies that in your opinion I am not a free agent, that you consider you have a right to govern my actions. But I deny that.”
She spoke firmly, but without any heat.
“Do you mean to say that what we are to each other gives me no more rights over you than mere acquaintances have?”
“It gives you no more rights over me than mere acquaintances have.”
He sat looking at her for a minute. Then he said:
“Cynthia, come and sit here, please, beside me.”
“Why should I?”
“Please come.”
“Very well.”
She got up, came to the sofa with a sort of listless decision, and sat down beside him. He took her uninjured hand. His hand was burning with heat. He closed and unclosed his fingers as he went on speaking.
“What is there in such a relation as ours if it carries no rights? You have altered my whole life. Is that nothing? I live out here only because of you. I have nothing out here but you. All these months, ever since we left Buyukderer, I’ve lived just as you wished. I went into society at Buyukderer because you wished me to. When you didn’t care any more about my doing that I lived in the shade in Galata. I’ve fallen in with every deception you thought necessary, I’ve told every lie you wished me to tell. Ever since you made me lie to Jimmy I haven’t cared much. But you’ll never know, because you can’t understand such things, what the loss of Jimmy’s confidence and respect has meant to me. However, that’s all past. I’m as much of a hypocrite as you are; I’m as false as you are; I’m as rotten as you are—with other people. But don’t, for God’s sake, let’s be rotten with each other. That would be too foul, like thieves falling out.”
“I’ve always been perfectly straight with you,” she said coldly. “I have nothing to reproach myself with.”
The closing of his fingers on her hand, and their unclosing, irritated her whole body. To-day she disliked his touch intensely, so intensely that she could scarcely believe she had ever liked it, longed for it, schemed for it.
“Please keep your hand still!” she said.
“What?”
“It makes me nervous your doing that. Either hold my hand or don’t hold it.”
“I don’t understand. What was I doing?”
“Oh, never mind. I’ve always been straight with you. I don’t know why you are attacking me.”
“I feel you are changing towards me. So I thought I’d tell you that I don’t intend to be driven out a second time by a child. It’s better you should know that. Then you won’t attempt the impossible.”
She looked into his sunken eyes.
“Jimmy has got to dislike you,” she said. “It’s unfortunate, but it can’t be helped. I don’t know exactly why it is so. It may be because he’s older, just at the age when boys begin to understand about men and women. You’re not always quite so careful before him as you might be. I don’t mean in what you say, but in your manner. I think Jimmy fancies you like me in a certain way. I think he probably took it into his head that you were hanging about the garden that night because perhaps you hoped to meet me there. A very little more and he might begin to suspect me. You have been frank with me to-day. I’ll be frank with you. I want you to understand that if there ever was a question of my losing Jimmy’s love and respect I should fight to keep them, sacrifice anything to keep them. Jimmy comes first with me, and always will. It couldn’t be otherwise. I prefer that you should know it.”
He shot a glance at her that was almost cunning. She had been prepared for a perhaps violent outburst, but he only said:
“Jimmy won’t be here again for some time, so we needn’t bother about him.”
She was genuinely surprised, but she did not show it.
“It was you who brought up the question,” she said.
“Never mind. Don’t worry about it. If Jimmy comes out for the summer holidays——”
“He will, of course.”
“Then I can go away from Buyukderer just for those few weeks.”
“I——” She paused; then went on: “I must tell you that you mustn’t come to Buyukderer again this summer.”
“Then you won’t go there?”
“Of course I must go. I have the villa. I am going there next week.”
“If you go, then I shall go. But I’ll leave when Jimmy comes, as you are so fussed about him.”
She could scarcely believe that it was Dion who was speaking to her. Often she had heard him speak violently, irritably, even cruelly and rudely. But there was a sort of ghastly softness in his voice. His hand still held hers, but its grasp had relaxed. In his touch, as in his voice, there was a softness which disquieted her.
“I’m sorry, but I can’t let you come to Buyukderer this summer,” she said. “Once did not matter. But if you came again my reputation would suffer.”
“Then I’ll stay at some other place on the Bosporus and come over.”
“That would be just as bad.”
“Do you seriously mean that we are to be entirely separated during the whole of this summer?”
“I must be careful of my reputation now Jimmy’s growing up. The Bosporus is the home of malicious gossip.”
“Do answer my question. Do you mean that we are to be separated during the summer?”
“I don’t see how it can be helped.”
“It can be helped very easily. Don’t go to Buyukderer.”
“I must. I have the villa.”
“Let it.”
“I couldn’t possibly stand Constantinople in the summer.”
“There’s no need to do that. There are other places besides Constantinople and Buyukderer. You might go to one of them. Or you might travel.”
She sat down for a moment looking down.
“Do you mean that I might travel with you?” she said, at last.
“Not with me. But I could happen to be where you are.”
“That’s not possible. Some one would get to know of it.”
“How absurdly ingenue you have become all of a sudden!” he said, with soft, but scathing, irony.
And he laughed, let out a long, low, and apparently spontaneous laugh, as if he were genuinely amused.
“Really one would hardly imagine that you were the heroine of the famous divorce case which interested all London not so very long ago. When I remember the life you acknowledged you had lived, the life you were quite defiant about, I can’t help being amused by this sudden access of conventional Puritanism. You declared then that you didn’t choose to live a dull, orthodox life. One would suppose that the leopard could change his spots after all.”
While he was speaking she lifted her head and looked fixedly at him.
“It’s just that very divorce case which has made me alter my way of living,” she said. “Any one who knew anything of the world, any one but a fool, could see that.”
“Ah, but I am a fool,” he returned doggedly. “I was a fool when I ran straight, and it seems I’m a fool when I run crooked. You’ve got to make the best of me as I am. Take your choice. Go to Buyukderer if you like. If you do I shall stay on the Bosporus. Or travel if you like, and I’ll happen to be where you are. It’s quite easy. It’s done every day. But you know that as well as I do. I can’t give you points in the game of throwing dust in the eyes of the public.”
“It’s too late now to let the villa, even if I cared to. And I can’t afford to shut it up and leave it standing empty while I wander about in hotels. I shall go to Buyukderer next week.”
“All right. I’ll go back to the rooms I had last year, and we can live as we did then. Give me the key of the garden gate and I can use the pavilion as my sitting-room again. It’s all quite simple.”
A frown altered her white face. His mention of the pavilion had suddenly recalled to her exactly what she had felt for him last year. She compared it with what she felt for him now. With an impulsive movement she pulled her hand away from his.
“I shall not give you the key. I can’t have you there. I will not. People have begun to talk.”
“I don’t believe it. They never see us together here. You have taken good care of that in the last few months. Why, we’ve met like thieves in the night.”
“Here, yes. In a great town one can manage, but not in a place like Buyukderer.”
He leaned forward and said, with dogged resolution:
“One thing is certain—I will not be separated from you during the summer. Do whatever you like, but remember that. Make your own plans. I will fall in with them. But I shall pass the summer where you pass it.”
“I—really I didn’t know you cared so much about me,” she murmured, with a faint smile.
“Care for you!”
He stared into her face and the twinkles twitched about his eyes.
“How should I not care for you?”
He gripped her hand again.
“Haven’t you taught me how to live in the dust? Haven’t you shown me the folly of being honorable and the fun of deceiving others? Haven’t you led me into the dark and made me able to see in it? And there’s such a lot to see in the dark! Why, good God, Cynthia, you’ve made a man in your own image and then you’re surprised at his worshipping you. Where’s your cleverness?”
“I often believe you detest me.”
“Oh, as for that, a woman such as you are can be loved and hated almost at the same time. But she can’t be given up. No!”
As she looked at him she saw the red gleam of the torch he carried. Hers had long ago died out into blackness.
“Is it possible that you really wish to ruin my reputation?”
“Not a bit of it! You’re so clever that you can always guard against that.”
“Yes, I can when I’m dealing with gentlemen,” she said, with sudden, vicious sharpness. “But you are behaving like a cad. Of all the men I—”
She stopped. A sort of nervous fury possessed her. It had nearly driven her to make a false step. And yet—would it be a false step? As she paused, looking at Dion, marking the hard obstinacy in his eyes, feeling the hard, hot grip of his hand, it occurred to her that perhaps she had blundered upon the one way out, the way of escape. Amid the wreckage of his beliefs she knew that Dion still held to one belief, which had been shaken once, but which her cool adroitness had saved and made firm in a critical moment. If she destroyed it now would he let her go? Just how low had he fallen through her? She wished she knew. But she did not know, and she waited, looking at him.
“Go on!” he said. “Of all the men you—what?”
“How low down is he? How low down?” she asked herself.
“Can you go on?” he said harshly.
“Of all the men who have cared for me you are the only man who has ever dared to interfere with my freedom,” she said.
Her voice had become almost raucous, and a faint dull red strangely discolored and altered her face.
“I will not permit it. I shall go to Buyukderer, and I forbid you to follow me there. Now it’s getting late and I’m tired. Please go away.”
“Men who have cared for you!”
“Yes. Yes.”
“What d’you mean by that? D’you mean Brayfield?”
“Yes.”
“Have there been many others who have cared as Brayfield did?”
“Yes.”
“Hadi Bey was one of them, I suppose?”
“Yes.”
“And Dumeny was another?”
“Yes.”
“Poor fellows!”
His lips were smiling, but his eyes looked dreadfully intent and searching.
“You made them suffer and gave them no reward. I can see you doing it and enjoying it.”
“That’s untrue.”
“What is untrue?”
“To say that I gave them no reward.”
At this moment there was a tap on the door.
“Come in!” said Mrs. Clarke, in her ordinary voice.
Sonia opened the door and came in.
“Excuse me, Madame,” she said, “but you told me I was to bathe your hand. If it is not bathed it will look horrible to-morrow. I have the warm water all ready.”
She stood in front of her mistress, broad, awkward and yet capable. Dion felt certain this woman meant to get rid of him because she was aware that her mistress wanted him to go. He had always realized that Sonia knew Mrs. Clarke better than any other woman did. As for himself—she had never shown any feeling towards him. He did not know whether she liked him or disliked him. But now he knew that he disliked her.
He looked almost menacingly at her.
“Your mistress can’t go at present,” he said. “Her hand is all right. It was only a scratch.”
Sonia looked at her mistress.
“Sonia is quite right,” said Mrs. Clarke, getting up. “And as the water is warm I will go. Good-by.”
“I will stay here till you have finished,” he said, still looking at Sonia.
“It’s getting very late. We might finish our talk to-morrow.”
“I will stay.”
After a slight pause Mrs. Clarke, whose face was still discolored with red, turned to the maid and said:
“Go away, Sonia.”
Sonia went away very slowly. At the door she stopped for a moment and looked round. Then she disappeared, and the door closed slowly and as if reluctantly behind her.
“Now what did you mean?” Dion said.
He got up.
“What did you mean?”
“Simply this, that my husband ought to have won his case.”
“Ah!”
He stood with his hands hanging at his sides, looking impassive, with his head bent and the lids drooping over his eyes. She waited—for her freedom. She did not mind the disgust which she felt like an emanation in the darkening room, if only it would carry him far enough in hatred of her. Would it do that?
There was a very long silence between them. During it he remained motionless. With his hanging hands and his drooping head he looked, she thought, almost as much like a puppet as like a man. His whole body had a strange aspect of listlessness, almost of feebleness. Yet she knew how muscular and powerful he still was, although he had long ago ceased from taking care of his body. The silence lasted so long, and he stood so absolutely still, that she began to feel uneasy, even faintly afraid. The nerves in her body were tingling. They could have braced themselves to encounter violence, but this immobility and dumbness tormented them. She wanted to speak, to move, but she felt obliged to wait for him. At last he looked up. He came to her, lifted his hands and laid them heavily on her emaciated shoulders.
“So that’s what you are!”
He stared into her haggard face. She met his eyes resolutely.
“That’s what you are!”
“Yes.”
“Why have you told me this to-day?”
“Of course you knew it long ago.”
“Answer me. Why have you told me to-day?”
“I don’t know.”
“I do. You have told me to-day because you have had enough of me. You meant to use Jimmy to get rid of me as you once used him to get to know me more intimately. When you found that wouldn’t serve your turn, you made up your mind to speak a word or two of truth. You thought you would disgust me into leaving you.”
“Of course you knew it long ago,” she repeated in a dull voice.
“I didn’t know it. I might have suspected it. In fact, once I did, and I told you so. But you drove out my suspicion. I don’t know exactly how. And since then—after you got your verdict in London I saw Dumeny smile at you as he went out of the Court. I have never been able to forget that smile. Now I understand it. One by one you’ve managed to get rid of them all. And now at last you’ve arrived at me, and you’ve said to yourself, ‘It’s his turn to be kicked out now.’ Haven’t you?”
“Nothing can last forever,” she murmured huskily.
“No. But this time you’re not going to scrawl ‘finis’ exactly when you want to.”
“It’s getting dark, and I’m tired. My hand is hurting me.”
He gripped her shoulders more firmly.
“If you meant some day to get rid of me, to kick me out as you’ve kicked out the others,” he said grimly, “you shouldn’t have made me come to you that night when Jimmy was at Buyukderer. That was a mistake on your part.”
“Why?” she asked, almost in a whisper.
“Because that night through you I lost something; I lost the last shred of my self-respect. Till that night I was still clinging on to it. You struck my hands away and made me let go. Now I don’t care. And that’s why I’m not going to let you make the sign of the cross over me and dismiss me into hell. Your list closes with me, Cynthia. I’m not going to give you up.”
She shook slightly under his hands.
“Why are you trembling?”
“I’m not trembling; but I’m tired; let me alone.”
“You can go to Sonia now if you like, and have your hand bathed.”
He lifted his hands from her shoulders, but she did not move.
“What are you going to do?” she asked.
“I shall wait for you here.”
“Wait for me?”
“Yes. We’ll dine together to-night.”
“Where?” she said helplessly.
“Here, if you like.”
“There’s scarcely anything to eat. I didn’t intend——”
“I’ll take you out somewhere. It’s going to be a dark night. We’ll manage so that no one sees us. We’ll dine together and, after dinner——”
“I must come home early. I’m very tired.”
“After dinner we’ll go to those rooms you found so cleverly near the Persian Khan.”
She shuddered.
“Now go and bathe your hand, and I’ll wait here. Only don’t be too long or I shall come and fetch you. And don’t send Sonia to make excuses, for it will be no use.”
He sat down on the sofa.
She stood for a moment without moving. She put her bandaged hand up to her discolored face. Then she went slowly out of the room.
He sat waiting for her to come back, with his elbows on his knees and his face hidden in his hands.
He felt like a man sunk in mire. He felt the mire creeping up to his throat.
Almost at that same hour beside a platform at Victoria Station in London a long train with “Dover” placarded on it was drawn up. Before the door of a first-class carriage two women in plain traveling dresses were standing with a white-haired clergyman. Presently the shorter of the two women said to the other:
“I think I’ll get in now, and leave you to last words.”
She held out her hand to the clergyman.
“Good-by, Father Robertson.”
He grasped her hand warmly, and looked at her with a great tenderness shining in his eyes.
“Take good care of her. But you will, I know,” he said.
Beatrice Daventry got into the carriage, and stood for a moment at the door. There were tears in her eyes as she looked at the two figures now pacing slowly up and down on the platform; she wiped them away quickly, and sat down. She was bound on a long journey. And what would be the end? In her frail body Beatrice had a strong soul, but to-night she was stricken with a painful anxiety. She said to herself that she cared about something too much. If the object of this journey were not attained she felt it would break her heart. She shut her eyes, and she conjured up a child whom she had loved very much and who was dead.
“Come with us, Robin!” she whispered. “Come with us to your father.”
And the whisper was like a prayer.
“Beattie!”
Rosamund’s voice was speaking.
“We are just off.”
“Are we?”
“Take your seats, please!” shouted a loud bass voice.
There was a sound of the banging of doors.
Rosamund leaned out of the window.
“Good-by, Father!”
The train began to move.
“Good-by. Cor meum vigilat.”
Rosamund pulled down her veil quickly over her face.
She was weary of rebellion. Yet she knew that deep down within her dwelt one who was still a rebel. She was starting on a great journey but she could not foresee what would happen at its end. For she no longer knew what she was capable of doing, and what would be too great a task for her poor powers. She was trying; she would try; that was all she knew.
As the train pushed on through the fading light she said to herself again and again:
“La divina volontate! La divina volontate!”
CHAPTER XIII
A week had passed, and the Villa Hafiz had not yet opened its door to receive its mistress. The servants, with the exception of Sonia, had arrived. The Greek butler had everything in order downstairs. Above stairs the big, low bed was made, and there were flowers in the vases dotted about here and there in the blue-and-green sitting-room. Osman, the gardener, had trimmed the rose-bushes, had carefully cleaned the garden seats, and had swept straying leaves from the winding paths. The fountain sang its under-song above the lilies. On the highest terrace, beyond the climbing garden, the pavilion waited for the woman and man who had hidden themselves in it to go down into the darkness. But no one slept in the big, low bed, or sat in the blue-and-green room; the garden was deserted; by night no feet trod softly to the pavilion.
For the first time in her life Cynthia Clarke was in the toils. She who loved her personal freedom almost wildly no longer felt free. She dared not go to Buyukderer.
She looked back to that night when she had told Dion Leith the truth, and it stood out among all the nights of her life, more black and fatal than any of them, because on it she had been false to herself, had been weak. She had not followed up her strength in words by strength in action! She had allowed Dion Leith to dominate her that night, to make of her against her will his creature. In doing that she had taken a step down—a step away from the path in which hitherto she had always walked. And that departure from inflexible selfishness seemed strangely to have weakened her will.
She was afraid of Dion because she felt that he was ungovernable by her, that her will no longer meant anything to him. He did not brace himself to defy it; simply, he did not bother about it. He seemed to have passed into a region where such a trifle as a woman’s will faded away from his perception.
His serpent had swallowed up hers.
She ought to have defied him that night, to have risked a violent scene, to have risked everything. Instead, she had come back to the drawing-room, had gone out into the night with him, had even gone to the rooms near the Persian Khan. She had put off, had said to herself “To-morrow”; she had tried to believe that Dion’s desperate mood would pass, that he needed gentle handling for the moment, and that, if treated with supreme tact, he would eventually be “managed” into letting her have her will.
But now she had no illusions. Her distressed eyes saw quite clearly, and she knew that she had made a fatal mistake in being obedient to Dion that night. She felt like one at the beginning of an inclined plane that was slippery as ice. She had stepped upon it, and she could not step back. She could only go forward and downward.
Dion was reckless. Appeals to reason, to chivalry, to pity, had no effect upon him. He only laughed at them, took them as part of her game of hypocrisy. In her genuine and growing fear and distress she had become almost horribly sincere, but he would not believe in, or heed, her sincerity. She knew her increasing hatred of him was matched by his secret detestation of her. Yes, he detested her with all that was most characteristic in him, with all those inherent qualities of which, do what he would he was unable to rid himself. And yet there was a link which bound them together—the link of a common degradation of body. She longed to smash that link which she had so carefully and sedulously labored to forge. But he wished to make it stronger. By her violent will she had turned him to perversity, and now he was actually more perverse than she was. She saw herself outdistanced on the course towards the ultimate blackness, saw herself forced to follow where he led.
She dared not got to Buyukderer. She could not, she knew, keep him away from there. He would follow her from Constantinople, would resume his life of last summer, would perhaps deliberately accentuate his intimacy with her instead of being careful to throw over it a veil. In his hatred and recklessness he might be capable even of that, the last outrage which a man can inflict upon a woman, to whose safety and happiness his chivalrous secrecy is essential. His clinging to her in hatred was terrible to her. She began to think that perhaps he had in his mind abominable plans for the destruction of her happiness.
One day he told her that if she went to Buyukderer he would not only follow her there, but he would remain there when Jimmy came out for the summer holidays.
“Jimmy must learn to like me again,” he said. “That is necessary.”
She shuddered when she realized the tendency of Dion’s mind. Fear made her clairvoyant. There were moments when she seemed to look into that mind as into a room through an open window, to see the thoughts as living things going about their business. There was something appalling in this man’s brooding desire to strike her in the heart combined with his determination to continue to be her lover. It affected her as she had never been affected before. By torturing her imagination it made havoc of her will-power. Her situation rendered her almost desperate, and she could not find an outlet from it.
What was she to do? If she went to Buyukderer she felt certain there would be a scandal. Even if there were not, she could not now dare to risk having Jimmy out for his holidays. Jimmy and Dion must not meet again. She might travel in the summer, as Dion had suggested, but if she did that she would be forced to endure a solitude a deux with him untempered by any social distractions. She could not endure that. To be alone with his bitterness, his misery, and his monopolizing hatred of her would be unbearable. And the problem of Jimmy’s holidays would not be solved by travel. Unless she traveled to England!
A gleam of hope came to her as she thought of England. Dion had fled from England. Would he dare to go back there, to the land which had seen his tragedy, and where the woman lived who had cast him out? Mrs. Clarke wondered, turning the thought of England over and over in her mind.
The longer she thought on the matter the more convinced she became that she had hit upon a final test, by means of which it would be possible for her to ascertain Dion’s exact mental condition. If he was ready to follow her even to England, to show himself there as her intimate friend, if not as her lover, than the man whom she had known in London was dead indeed beyond hope of resurrection.
She resolved to find out what Dion’s feeling about England was.
Since the evening when she had told him the truth she had seen him—he had obliged her to see him—every day, but he had not come again to her flat. They had met in secret, as they had been meeting for many months. For the days when they had wandered about Stamboul together, when she had tried to play to him the part Dumeny had once played to her, were long ago over.
On the day when the thought of England occurred to Mrs. Clarke as a possible place of refuge she had promised to meet Dion late in the evening at their rooms near the Persian Khan. She loathed going to those rooms. They reminded her painfully of all she had felt for Dion and felt no longer. They spoke to her of the secrecy of a passion that was dead. She was afraid of them. But she was still more afraid of seeing Dion in her flat. Nevertheless, now the gleam of hope which had come to her suddenly woke up in her something of her old recklessness. Since the servants had gone to the Villa Hafiz she had been living in the flat with Sonia, who was an excellent cook as well as a capital maid. She resolved to ask Dion to dinner that night, and to try her fortune once more with him. England must be horrible to him. Then she would go to England. And if he followed her there he would at least be punished for his persecution of her.
Already she called his determination not to break their intrigue persecution. She had a short memory.
After a talk with Sonia she summoned a messenger and sent Dion a note, asking him to dinner that night. He replied that he would come. His answer ended with the words: “We can go to the rooms later.”
As Mrs. Clarke read them her fingers closed on the paper viciously, and she said to herself:
“I’ll not go. I’ll never go to them again.”
She told Sonia about the dinner. Then she dressed and went out.
It was a warm and languid day. She took a carriage and told the coachman to drive to Stamboul—to drive on till she gave him the direction where to go in Stamboul. She had no special object in view. But she longed to be out in the air, to drive, to see people about her, the waterway, the forest of shipping, the domes and the minarets, the cypresses, the glades stretching towards Seraglio Point, the long, low hills of Asia. She longed, too, to hear voices, hurrying feet, the innumerable sounds of life. She hoped by seeing and hearing to fortify her will. The spirit of adventure was the spirit that held her, was the most vital part within her, and such a spirit needed freedom to breathe in. She was fettered. She had been a coward, or almost a coward, false, perhaps, to her fortunate star. Hitherto she had always followed Nietzsche’s advice and had lived perilously. Was she now to be governed by fear? Even to keep Jimmy’s respect and affection could she endure such dominion? As the sun touched her with his fingers of gold, and the air, full of a strangely languid vitality, whispered about her, as she heard the cries from the sea, and saw human beings, vividly egoistic, going by on their pilgrimage, she said to herself, “Not even for Jimmy!” The clamorous city, with its fierce openness and its sinister suggestions of hidden things, woke up in her the huntress, and, for the moment, lulled the mother to sleep.
“Not even for Jimmy!” she thought. “I must be myself. I cannot be otherwise. I must live perilously. To live in any other way for me would be death.”
And the line in “The Kasidah” which Dion had pondered over came to her, and she thought of the “death that walks in form of life.”
As the carriage went upon the bridge she looked across to Stamboul, and was faced by the Mosque of the Valideh. So familiar to her was the sight of its facade, of its cupolas and minarets, that she seldom now even thought of it when she crossed the bridge; but to-day, perhaps because she was unusually strung up, was restive and almost horribly alert, she gazed at it and was intensely conscious of it. She had once said to Dion that Stamboul was the City of the Unknown God, and now suddenly she felt that she was nearing His altars. A strange, perverse desire to pray came to her; to go up into one of the mosques of this mysterious city which she loved, and to pray for her release from Dion Leith.
She smiled faintly as this idea came into her mind. The Unknown God had surely made her as she was, had made her a huntress. Well, then, surely she had the right to pray to Him to give her a free course for her temperament.
“Santa Sophia!” she called to the coachman.
He cracked his whip and drove furiously on to Stamboul. In less than a quarter of an hour he pulled up his horses before the vast Church of Santa Sophia.
Mrs. Clarke sat still in the carriage for a moment looking up at the ugly towering walls, covered with red and white stripes. Her face was haggard in the sunshine, and her pale lips were set together in a hard line. A beggar with twisted stumps instead of arms whined a petition to her, but she neither saw him nor heard him. As she stared at the walls on which the sun blazed she was wondering about her future. The love of life was desperately strong within her that day. The longing for new experiences tormented her physically. She felt as if she could not wait, could not be patient any more. If Dion to-night refused again to give her her freedom she must do something desperate. She must get away secretly and hide herself from him, take a boat to Greece or Rumania, or slip into the Orient express and vanish over the tracks of Europe.
But first she must go into the church and pray to the Unknown God.
She got out of the carriage. The beggar thrust one of his diseased stumps in front of her face. She turned on him with a malignant look, and the whining petition died on his lips. Then she made her way to the Porta Basilica and passed into the church. But as its great spaces opened out before her a thought, childishly superstitious, came to her, and she turned abruptly, went out, made her way to the beggar who had worried her, gave him a coin and said something kind to him. His almost soprano voice, raised in clamorous benediction, followed her as she returned to the church, moving slowly with horrible loose slippers protecting its floor from her Christian feet. She always laughed in her mind when she wore those slippers and thought of what she was. This sanctuary of the unknown God must, it seemed, be protected from her because she was a Christian!
There were a good many people in the church, but it looked almost empty because of its immense size. She knew it very well, better perhaps than she knew any other sacred building, and she cared for it very much. She was fond of mosques, delighting in their airy simplicity, in their casual holiness which seemed to say to her, “Worship in me if you will. If you will not, never mind; dream in me with open eyes, or, if you prefer it, go to sleep in a corner of me. When you wake you can mutter a prayer, or not, just as you please.”
Santa Sophia did not, perhaps, say that, though it had now for long years been in use as a mosque, and always seemed to Mrs. Clarke more like a mosque than like a church. It was richly adorned, and something of Christianity still lingered within it. In it there seemed, even to Mrs. Clarke, to be something impelling which asked of each one who entered it more than mere dreams, more than those long meditations which are like prayers of the mind separated from the prayers of the heart and soul. But it possessed the air of freedom which is characteristic of mosques, did not seize those who entered it in a clutch of tenacious sanctity; but seemed to let them alone, and to influence them by just being wonderful, beautiful, unself-consciously sacred.
At first Mrs. Clarke wandered slowly about the church, without any purpose other than that of gathering to herself some of its atmosphere. During the last few days she had been feeling really tormented. Dion had once said she looked punished. Now he had made her feel punished. And she sought a moment of peace. It could not come to her from mysticism, but it might come to her from great art, which suggests to its votaries mystery, the something beyond, untroubled and shiningly serene.
Presently Mrs. Clarke felt the peace of Santa Sophia, and she felt it in a new way, because she had recently suffered, indeed was suffering still in a new way; she felt it as something desirable, which might be of value to her, if she were able to take it to herself and to fold it about her own life. Had she made a mistake in living perilously through many years? Her mind went to the woman who had abandoned Dion and entered a Sisterhood to lead a religious life. She seldom thought about Rosamund except in relation to Dion. She had scarcely known her, and since her first few interviews with Dion in this land of the cypress he had seldom mentioned his wife. She neither liked, nor actively disliked, Rosamund, whose tacit rejection of her acquaintance had not stirred in her any womanly hatred; for though she was a ruthless woman she was not venomous towards other women. She did not bother about them enough for that. But now she considered that other woman with whom she had shared Dion Leith, or rather who, not knowing it doubtless, had shared Dion Leith with her. And she wondered whether Rosamund, in her Sisterhood, was happier than she was in the world. In the Sisterhood there must surely be peace—monotony, drudgery, perhaps, but peace.
Santa Sophia, with its vast spaces, its airy dome, its great arches and galleries, its walls of variegated marble, its glittering mosaics and columns of porphyry, to-day made her realize that in her life of adventure and passion she was driven, as if by a demon with a whip, and that her horrible situation with Dion was but the culmination of a series of horrible situations. She had escaped from them only after devastating battles, in which she had had to use all her nervous energy and all her force of will. Was it worth while? Was the game she was always playing worth the candles she was always burning? Would it not be wiser to seek peace and ensue it? As she drove to Santa Sophia she had longed fiercely to be free so that she might begin again; might again have adventures, might again explore the depths of human personalities, and satisfy her abnormal curiosities and desires. Now she was full of unusual hesitation. Suppose she did succeed in getting rid of Dion by going to England, suppose her prayer—she had not offered it up yet, but she was going to offer it up in a moment—to the Unknown God received a favorable answer, might it not be well for her future happiness if she retired from the passionate life, with its perpetual secrecies, and intrigues, and lies, and violent efforts, into the life of the ideal mother, solely devoted to her only child?
She felt that the struggle with Dion, the horrible scenes she had had with him, the force of her hatred of him and his hatred of her, the necessity of yielding to him in hatred that which should never be given save with desire, had tried her as nothing else had ever tried her. She felt that her vitality was low, and she supposed that out of that lowered vitality had come her uncharacteristic desire for peace. She had almost envied for a moment the woman whom she had replaced in the life of Dion. Even now—she sighed; a great weariness possessed her. Was she going to be subject to a weakness which she had always despised, the weakness of regret?
She paused beside a column not very far from the raised tribune on the left of the dome which is set apart for the use of the Sultan, and is called the Sultan’s seat. Her large eyes stared at it, but at first she did not see it. She was looking onward upon herself. Then, in some distant part of the mosque, a boy’s voice began to sing, loudly, almost fiercely. It sounded fanatical and defiant, but tremendously believing, proud in the faith which it proclaimed to faithful and unfaithful alike. It echoed about the mosque, raising a clamor which nobody seemed to heed; for the few ulemas who were visible continued reading the Koran aloud on the low railed-in platforms which they frequent; a Dervish in a pointed hat slept peacefully on, stretched out in a corner; before the prayer carpet of the Prophet, not far from the Mihrab, a half-naked Bedouin, with a sheep-skin slung over his bronzed shoulders, preserved his wild attitude of savage adoration; and here and there, in the distance, under the low hanging myriads of lamps, the figures of Turkish soldiers, of street children, of travelers, moved noiselessly to and fro.
The voice of this boy, heedless and very powerful, indeed almost impudent, stirred Mrs. Clarke. It brought her back to her worship of force. One must worship something, and she chose force—force of will, of temperament, of body, of brain. Now she saw the Sultan’s tribune, and it made her think of an opera box and of the worldly life. The boy sang on, catching at her mind, pulling her towards the East. The curious peace of any religious life was certainly not for her, yet to-day she felt weary of the life in her world. And she wished she could have in her existence peace of some kind; she wished that she were not a perpetual wanderer. She remembered some of those with whom from time to time, she had linked herself—her husband, Hadi Bey, Dumeny, Brayfield, Dion Leith. Now she was struggling, and so far in vain, to thrust Dion out of her life. If she succeeded—what then? Where was stability in her existence? Her love for Jimmy was the only thing that lasted, and that often made her afraid now. She was seized by an almost sentimental desire to lose herself in a love for a man that would last as her love for Jimmy had lasted, to know the peace of an enduring and satisfied desire.
The voice of the boy died away. She turned in the direction of the Mihrab to offer up her prayer to the Unknown God, as the pious Mussulman turns in the direction of the Sacred City when he puts up his prayer to Allah.
Her eyes fell upon the Bedouin.
As she looked at him, this man of the desert come up into the City, with the fires of the dunes in his veins, the vast spaces mirrored in his eyes, the passion for wandering in his soul, she felt that in a mysterious and remote way she was akin to him, despite all her culture, her subtle mentality, the difference of her life from his. For she had her wildness of nature, dominant and unceasing, as he had his. He was forever traveling in body and she in mind. He sought fresh, and ever fresh, camping-places, and so did she. The black ashes of burnt-out fires marked his progress and hers. She looked at him as she uttered her prayer to the Unknown God.
And she prayed for a master, that she might meet a man who would be able to dominate her, to hold her fast in the grip of his nature. At this moment Dion dominated her in an ugly way, and she knew it too well. But she needed some one whom she would willingly obey, whom she would lust to obey, because of love. The restlessness in her life had been caused by a lack; she had never yet found the man who could be not her tyrant for a time, but her master while she lived. Now she prayed for that, the only peace that she really wanted.
While she prayed she was conscious always of the attitude of the Bedouin, which suggested the fierce yielding of one who could never be afraid of the God he worshiped. Nor could she be afraid. For she was not ashamed of what she was, though she hid what she was from motive of worldly prudence and for the sake of her motherhood. She believed that she was born into the world not in order to be severely educated, but in order that she might live to the uttermost, according to the dictates of her temperament. Now at last she knew what that temperament needed, what it had been seeking, why it had never been able to cease from its journeying. Santa Sophia had told her.
Her knowledge roused in her a sort of fury of longing for release from Dion Leith. She saw the Bedouin riding across the sands in the freedom he had captured, and she ached to be free that she might seek her master. Somewhere there must be the one man who had the power to fasten the yoke on her neck.
“Let me find him!” she prayed, almost angrily, and using her will.
She had forgotten Jimmy. Her whole nature was concentrated in the desire for immediate release from Dion Leith in order that she might be free to pursue consciously the search which till this moment she had pursued unconsciously.
The Bedouin did not move. His black, bird-like eyes were wide open, but he seemed plunged in a dream as he gazed at the Sacred Carpet. He was absolutely unaware of his surroundings and of Mrs. Clarke’s consideration of him. There was something animal and something royal in his appearance and his supreme unconsciousness of others. He looked as if he were a law unto himself, even while he was adoring. How different he was from Dion Leith.
She shut her eyes as she prayed that Dion might be removed from her life, somehow, anyhow, by death if need be. In the dark she created for herself she saw the minarets pointing to the sky as she and Dion had seen them together from the hill of Eyub as they sat under the giant cypress. Then she had wanted Dion; now she prayed:
“Take him away! Let me be free from him! Let me never see him again!”
And she felt as if the Unknown God were listening to her somewhere far off, knew all that was in her mind.
A stealthy movement quite near to her made her open her eyes. The Bedouin had risen to his feet and was approaching her, moving with a little step over the matting on his way out of the church. As he passed Mrs. Clarke he enveloped her for a moment in an indifferent glance of fire. He burnt her with his animal disdain of her observation of him, a disdain which seemed to her impregnated with flame. She felt the sands as he passed. When he was gone a sensation of loneliness, even of desolation, oppressed her.
She hesitated for a moment; then she turned and followed him slowly. He went before her, wrapped in his supreme indifference, through the Porta Basilica, and came out into the blaze of the sunshine. As she emerged, she saw him standing quite still. He seemed—she was just behind him—to be staring at a very fair woman who, accompanied by a guide, was coming towards the church. Mrs. Clarke, intent on the Bedouin, was aware of this woman’s approach, but felt no sort of interest in her until she was quite close; then something, some dagger-thrust of the mind, coming from the woman, pierced Mrs. Clarke’s indifference.
She looked up and met the sad, pure eyes of Rosamund Leith.
For a moment she stood perfectly still gazing into those eyes.
Rosamund had stopped, but she made no gesture of recognition and did not open her lips. She only looked at Mrs. Clarke, and as she looked a deep flush slowly spread over her face and down to her throat.
The Greek guide said something to her; she moved, lowered her eyes and went on into the church without looking back.
The Bedouin strode slowly away into the blaze of the sunshine.
Mrs. Clarke remained where she was, motionless. For the first time perhaps in her life she was utterly amazed by an event. Rosamund Leith here in Constantinople! What did that mean?
Mrs. Clarke knew the arrival of Rosamund meant something that might be tremendously important to herself. As she stood there before the church she was groping to find this something; but her mental faculties seemed to be paralyzed, and she could not find it. Rosamund Leith’s eyes had told Mrs. Clarke something, that Rosamund knew of Dion’s unfaithfulness and who the woman was. What did the fact of Rosamund’s coming to Constantinople in possession of that knowledge mean?
From the minaret above her head the muezzin in a piercing and nasal voice began the call to prayer. His cry seemed to tear its way through Mrs. Clarke’s inertia. Abruptly she was in full possession of her faculties. That Eastern man up there, nearer to the blue than she was, cried, “Come to prayer!” But she had already uttered her prayer, and surely Rosamund Leith was the answer.
As she drove away towards the Golden Horn she passed the Bedouin striding along in the sun.
She looked at him, but he took no notice of her; the indifference of the desert was about him.