‘Is Amalia the girl who paints?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are – are you frightened now?’
The look of uttermost candour was on him again. – ‘Oh no. It’s beautiful now,’ she replied.
It might be beautiful, but somehow he found it a little intimidating. But he had better hear her account of it.
‘You’ve never been in Tunis before?’
‘No.’
‘You say something began on the boat, and then comes something you’d rather not tell me, and that other girl said something, and you thought there was another lake. What comes after that, Xena?’
‘Nothing till I got off the boat.’
‘And then what?’
‘I don’t know yet.’
‘You don’t know – yet?’
Her lids were dropped again. The musical voice too was lowered. She must be very careful not to tell him a story. ‘Well, I think I know in a way,’ she answered softly.
‘Is that all you can tell me?’
‘It’s all I can tell you so far, Verney.’
Verney Arden was not himself given to remembering lakes and mountains he had never seen before. Neither did he use ‘so far’s with quite that tranquil confidence that more was to come. Amalia Sherren’s last words became more puzzling than ever.
‘What did that girl who paints mean when she said that?’ he demanded.
‘That about my legs and eyes?’
‘No. About people going out and sometimes not coming back.’
No sooner had it escaped him than he could have kicked himself. Ass! She hadn’t been there, and hadn’t heard. She had been making herself ready in the hotel. Amalia might even not have said it had she been there.
‘Did she say that?’ Xena asked, without surprise.
‘Never mind.’
‘Because I think that’s quite possible,’ Xena went on with deep gravity. ‘You see there was that feeling I had, just like Christian having his Burden of Sin taken off. Only of course this wasn’t sin. I don’t quite know what sort of a burden it was, except that we’re all sinners, aren’t we? So it must have been a burden of another kind. Amalia’s very clever. She knows things that other people don’t. She says I know things that other people don’t too.’
At that moment Hayoun entered with the coffee-tray, and no more could be said about Amalia and people having their burdens taken off.
If that ice-water woman was trying to frighten this child with her talk about knowing things that other people didn’t (Verney thought) she ought to have a straight talking-to. Still, he himself had rubbed shoulders with a good many people and types during the past six months, and it was astonishing how even six months in the Levant made a fellow less cocksure about things. He had sometimes thought that if he had lived (for example) under a volcano and a long time ago, he might have been inclined to put a giant or a devil or a something there. Still, he was C. of E. A fellow had to be something, and in England he had been C. of E. But Hayoun, talking to Xena in Arabic there, wasn’t, and other people had their beliefs too. They were in the middle of the Ancient world, and important things had happened here before England had been heard of. ‘Ex Africâ – ’ he finished the tag.
‘But we are impolite,’ Hayoun said suddenly in French.
He meant that Verney did not understand Arabic, and the talk passed to French again.
Xena was gazing about Hayoun’s shop, at the sound-deadening carpets on the walls, at his bric-à-brac, at the semi-transparent mat of plaited grass that fell half across the doorway, at the shelf of blue and green pots high on the wall. And as she looked the mat was drawn aside, and a young Arab head was thrust in. The lad said something to Hayoun in Arabic, who excused himself and rose. It was business, he said, and promising that he would not be long he waddled to the door. His bulk darkened the entrance for a moment; then the alfa-mat rustled back, and Verney and Xena were left together.
There was a long silence. Then, ‘You were saying about Amalia,’ he resumed.
But apparently Xena didn’t want to talk about Amalia any more. It was as if something that puzzled him was already plain to herself.
‘I wish I could tell you everything,’ she said wistfully, ‘but I can’t, can I, if it drags other people in?’
Still (she thought) he might guess, even if she didn’t say that about Mollie. She no longer wished she hadn’t seen Mollie being kissed. She was glad she had seen. At first it had made her unable to think of her father or say her prayers properly, but it had brought other things instead, and each one of them was becoming lovelier than the last. There was even one little joke she had all to herself – for she knew that she had been very mischievous not to look at Verney in the dining-room. She knew that he must wonder about that – why she hadn’t looked herself; but had told Mrs Van Necker that there in the corner was a friend of her father’s and she wanted to give him a surprise, and might he be asked to coffee? For he didn’t know that she had seen him first. But she had. She had seen him as she had come into the hotel, by the glass panes of the dining-room, looking in, though only the waiters were there. She had known him in a moment and of course it wasn’t like Cairo now. And she had gone up to her room, and had thought very quickly, and it had come to her suddenly what to do. On the boat Mollie had known that she was being looked at without lifting her eyes from her plate. At first Xena had wondered how she did it, as if it had been a conjuring-trick. But all at once, making up her mind in her room, she had somehow known, and it was true, because it had worked instantly, looking at Verney like that under the palm. Now she could do something she hadn’t known about before. What a lot she had learned in twenty-four hours! Why should people go in procession to a wet grotto, where once a miracle had been done, when there were miracles of one’s very own, like this, to do?
And if she could do all this she could also please herself whether she did it or not. That was a thing she would have to be very conscientious about. She wanted to be good, and not to let first one man kiss her and then another, as she knew from their talk Mollie did. How clean and pretty Verney looked by the side of his fat Mahommedan friend! He had a nice small head, and looked as if he could run lightly, and swim, and catch a horse and ride it. He seemed part of this new thing, that for a moment had frightened her, but after that had grown more beautiful with each hour that passed. So far she had only shown him her eyes; she herself didn’t know what she could do with her lips, the way Mollie did. She wished she hadn’t drunk this heavy, sweet, thrice-pounded, thrice-boiled coffee. She would rather have had her mouth as scented as flowers, as fresh as fruit, for the kiss she knew he was going to have as soon as she had made up her mind.
She had only to look at him in the new way and she knew he would have to kiss her.
What he saw was a strong, straight-backed figure sitting with knees pressed close together, loins taut, hands on the divan at her sides. In a blue hat and a Lanvin frock, she sat strangely as Egyptian figures sit, to whom time is nothing, so certain are they of the end.
And he too knew that she had only to raise those lids and his life thenceforward was a sealed-up thing. His fate would be hers, whatever that was. He could not alter it, he would not attempt to alter it. He saw the lids quiver. They lifted. Straightway he dropped on his knees before her.
‘I love you, I love you,’ he said.
He had taken the young hands. The clear eyes looked down on his face.
‘Do you, Verney?’ the fresh voice said.
‘Do you love me?’
As well as of the wish to love and be loved, the eyes were full of sweet scruples and truth-speaking too.
‘I think I do, Verney dear. I like you to love me. I think I should like loving somebody too.’
‘Oh, love me!’
‘Even in Cairo I thought your hair was
nice, but it isn’t any good talking about Cairo now, is it?’
‘I’ve thought of you ever since then –’
‘Have you? Then perhaps now you may kiss me,’ said the daughter of Umberto Francavilla.
He drew her head down. The two heads lay together on Hayoun’s divan, his fair head, the tossed blue hat. And his soul passed to that unravished Punic rose of her mouth.
6
‘So the gods didn’t get her after all,’ Mrs Van Necker jested.
They were back in the hotel lounge, which they had to themselves. It was not yet the dressing-hour, and chatter of the afternoon was being exchanged. Amalia Sherren was turning over the pages of a sketch book, but in her right hand a stump of pencil was palmed, ready for use. The two Bruce-Harries girls were scribbling picture-postcards at a writing-table, and Verney Arden had dutifully returned Xena to Mrs Van Necker.
‘How far did you get in the guide book, mother?’ her daughter asked lazily from the depths of a low chair, where she lay with legs crossed and hands clasped behind her head.
‘Now you’re all laughing,’ said Mrs Van Necker, but with the air of one about to turn the laugh. ‘You think I didn’t read any, but just to show you you’re wrong I’m going to tell you the most romantic thing.’
‘Oh, do tell us, mother. I’m dying for a romance.’
‘It’s about the Greek ship that’s in the Museum here. I expect you know all about it.’ The last words were to Verney.
‘No.’
‘Then listen. A ship went down off this coast nearly two thousand years ago. It stayed there till 1907, and then one day the men found it as they were diving for sponges. Or rather they found what it had been loaded with, marbles and terracottas and bronzes. And they got them up, and they’re all in the Museum here. I’ve been telling Amalia about it while you were out. We’re going tomorrow.’
But she showed them the cover of the guide book with its account of that most wondrous of salvages, the fouilles sousmarines of Mahdia.
‘But these ancient names are very confusing,’ she chattered on. ‘Sometimes its Ceres and sometimes it’s Demeter, and among these things there’s a Hermes that seems to be a Dionysos too, and it’s by somebody called – I forget his name, but anyway tell me now I was asleep!’
‘No, mother gets the marks this time,’ her daughter conceded.
‘Nearly two thousand years ago, in the First Century, and there these wonderful things have been till nearly up to the Great War!’
‘That,’ Amalia remarked as she turned the pages of the sketch book, ‘ought to interest Xena.’
‘It ought to interest anybody,’ Mrs Van Necker declared.
‘And gods can take their own time, I guess,’ said Amalia.
From over by the writing-table the voices of the Bruce-Harries sisters were raised.
‘I like them. They always look so wicked and good-tempered. And there’s one here that’s the image of her.’
‘Let me look.’ Daphne leaned over. ‘Oh, isn’t it! We ought to make her up as one sometime!’
‘With that crimpy bandeau thing that makes them look as if butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths –’
‘And those draperies – where’s the one with the draperies?’
Mrs Van Necker turned. – ‘What are you two talking about?’
They brought her over a postcard. It was one of three busts side by side, and one of them was a wide-templed young woman.
‘Isn’t that exactly like Frankie? Even to her ears being a bit higher than anybody else’s –’
Amalia muttered to the sketch book. – ‘So they are. Hats don’t show ears much nowadays.’
‘Amalia ought to draw her.’
‘All blowy draperies –’
‘When they had any – they seem to have worn them a bit off and on –’
‘Well, it isn’t for the modern girl to talk,’ Mollie remarked tolerantly.
‘It certainly isn’t for you to talk, the way you’re sitting now –’
Amalia closed the sketch book. ‘I’ll wait till you’ve put that make-up on her; then I’ll sketch her,’ she said as she turned away.
Xena had not spoken since she had come in. She now felt herself a very important person, and it pleased her that they should talk about her like that, because it was her due. Of course she wasn’t going to tell any of them she had been kissed. She hadn’t told about Mollie being kissed. But they might guess if they liked. She wasn’t sure Amalia didn’t guess; Amalia was so clever. But even if they all guessed she belonged to herself. And it might be rather fun to let them dress her up as they suggested. Not with just a white frock and a posy and a chaplet, but with draperies like the postcard, and those other things one saw pictures of on vases – long sticks with leaves on them and fir-cones on the end, and things to clap in your hands, and a harp made of the skull of an animal. But she felt that all this ought to be on an occasion of some kind. In Sicily it was just before Lent. They put the white wigs on and made up their eyes, and the young men had whiskers of burnt cork. Verney would look funny with his fair brown hair and whiskers of burnt cork. She had seen one procession all decorated motor cars, full of white-wigged girls who threw flowers, and one car she had particularly liked. They had made it into a sea-horse, with an enormous papier maché head over the bonnet and a vast cockleshell for its tail, and it had puffed out a bright spume of confetti as it had passed along. And they used scents too. Hayoun’s shop had been all scenty with amber, and she felt all scenty still, perhaps dispersing it, as tobacco-flowers give off those faint tracts that you can’t smell if you get too close to the flower itself. She didn’t care if they did smell her. Verney loved her, and it was lovely being loved, and she was honestly going to try to love Verney too. Then it would be more than just two people loving separately. She didn’t quite know how it would be more, but it would, like the two halves of something that aren’t any good by themselves. And though she didn’t think she would drink aperitifs any more, or smoke, because she wanted to smell nice for Verney, there would always be that once a year, like the carnival, when they got out the sticks with the green leaves, and danced about and had wine.
And she didn’t see how Verney could feel more scenty and glowy than she did, but if he loved her more than she loved him she supposed it was so.
‘Time to get ready for dinner,’ Mrs Van Necker remarked, rising.
In his tidy room Verney Arden sat down on the edge of his bed. He knew that there was now no hope in life for him except to kiss her so till the hour came for him to die. Life was unthinkable without her as its sun and centre. And only this morning she had been a faintly-moving memory, no more! He now had one immediate, practical question to ask himself. What was he going to do about it?
But he couldn’t come to earth quite so suddenly as that. He couldn’t face it, yet, that she was the child of immense wealth, he an impecunious drummer with a taxi-load of samples and a suitcase full of ‘literature’. It was still all mixed up with bright fragments of the afternoon – his love under the palm, her sunny feet by his side, Hayoun, the alfa-mat across the doorway, the kiss. Hateful that there should be jobs to do! What was this civilisation that put this burden first of all? What were these Arabs, Frenchmen, negroes, Jews, himself, all doing? Passing a few coins or a few soiled notes to one another and then taking them back again. Buying clothes, wearing them out; eating, fasting; walking the same pavements to the same offices, casting up the same ledgers at the end of the day. No, he couldn’t face all that yet. Better the thought of that sunny island in the blue, of the next kiss. When was that to be? And the next? And all the others?
He hoped that Mr Thorne would not be too chatty at dinner that evening.
Mr Thorne was not. Apparently it had struck Mr Thorne that some paragraph in the afternoon paper, a paragraph of no importanc
e, might interest Verney, and he passed him the paper across the table, with his finger on the part he was to read. When Verney had read the paragraph and put the paper down again he saw that Mr Thorne was deep in a little book. That seemed to excuse him. If Mr Thorne would rather read than talk, so would he. He propped up the paper, and pretended to be reading it till the end of the meal.
A young man who has been introduced to a party of five girls, and only wants one of them, nevertheless has uses for the others. It would obviously be sowing the good seed, for example, to cultivate Mollie Van Necker. The two English girls he was less sure about. But it was neither Mollie nor a Bruce-Harries with whom he spent the later part of that evening. He spent it with Amalia Sherren.
The lounge or drawing-room was half full of the hotel residents. In their accustomed corner General Lorimer and his party played bridge. The Dean was buried behind a Church newspaper, and his wife was busy with her fancy-work. The two English girls sat each on a hassock at the feet of old Lady Lyle, with whom they had discovered common acquaintance, and Mollie Van Necker was at a writing-table, apparently replying to a very long and closely-written letter, with a much-stamped envelope, over which she pored from time to time. Her mother and Xena were in the curve of a corner sofa, and Mrs Van Necker appeared to be making much of her young charge, questioning, nodding, smiling, occasionally patting her hand. Amalia had brought down half a dozen sketch books this time, and sat on a central sofa that commanded the door to the hall and dining-room.
There was no escape from her watery glance of invitation, even had her first words not been what they were.
‘You might be asked over later, but you won’t yet,’ she said, scarcely moving her lips. Her voice, like the rest of her, seemed to lack emphasis. ‘She’s finding out all about father, I guess. You may as well sit here and watch her and look at my sketches.’
Verney Arden sat abruptly down on the sofa by her side.
She drew well, with an almost uncanny simplification, that brought meanings down to a few heavily-charged lines. This trip to the Old World was the first adventure of her life, and her sketch books held the fruits of it. But Amalia’s sketch books were the last thing Verney Arden was thinking about. Amalia had seen – about himself and Xena. Possibly the whole hotel would see presently. Perhaps that was why Mr Thorne had read the book. Vaguely he asked Amalia why she didn’t ‘finish’ her sketches, and Amalia shut the book in her hand.
The Dead of Night Page 35