The Dead of Night

by Oliver Onions

  ‘What is your work, Verney? Isn’t it funny that I haven’t an idea?’

  ‘It isn’t work. It’s only an experiment. They pay my expenses. Even then my people had to put up some sort of a premium.’

  ‘What’s a premium?’

  ‘Oh . . . ’

  In and out went the feet they had made play with in the Avenue Jules Ferry, she lengthening her step, he shortening his, that they might walk together. But she forgot her question.

  ‘And do you know another thing I’m going to do? I’m going to get Amalia to paint me,’ she said. ‘At first I hated her to study me, but that was while we were still on the boat, before it all happened. Now I shall get her to paint me. Can you guess what for, Verney?’

  ‘Oh, God, what’s happened to us both!’ he almost groaned aloud.

  ‘Can’t you guess? Then I’ll tell you. It will be a present from me to you. I haven’t ever given you a present, and you haven’t ever given me one. But of course there’s heaps of time now. And – ’ for a moment she turned on him a look like the flash of a king-fisher, but made a little laughing face and shook her head – ‘but I shan’t tell you that yet. You’ll have to wait till we get to the top. And do you know I went shopping yesterday? I spent such a lot of money! The frock I have on now is some of it. So is my hat. I like frocks and hats.’

  He was wondering how he had ever dared to kiss those lips, old with such a youth, young with all those mysterious years behind. That had been before the knowledge had come to him. Would the strangeness pass for him also? Was he too presently going to find it beautiful? Before his eyes she had slipped back to ancient things; was he going to slip too? He, a young man of today, with his truck-load of samples and that third suitcase at the hotel? Did he care if he did? Did it matter? Did anything matter except that island of his dreams, where no thought need be given to the morrow, but the fruit came to the mouth fresh and unasked as the kiss, and there were rivers alike of water and love for body and soul to bathe? But he had undergone no purification yet. Perhaps he was not yet worthy. And suddenly, with an ‘Oh, look!’ she drew a deep breath.

  The wonders of the mountain were beginning to unfold. From the path up which they were walking there rose glade after glade of rosy-lilac waves of nodding flowers, chaste purple, the lovely little cyclamen in its countless multitudes. Among it the hawthorn broke into sunny spray, loading the air with its scent. So near was beauty brought that the sun on a swelling bud pushed the glimmering immensities of blue back, merging sky and sea into one. Heavenly hill, with its pines to the north, its arid crags to the south, and the gulfs of flowers far below! The path wound round the contour, discovering ravine after ravine of delight. Some were green with grass, with silver links of water at the bottom, some were dry and bouldered and waterless; and he knew that by his side walked a creature wrapped about in an innocence so perfect that it was old knowledge too. No such knowledge had come to her from that rocky chapel on Monte Pellegrino. That chapel’s Sinai was fierce with lightnings and voices of awe. But here on Baal’s beautiful Hill were flowers and fragrance. Pat-pat, in and out, went the little feet under the earth-stained frock, over cyclamen and geranium, coltsfoot and myrtle and thyme, with sudden bursts of mimosa and yellow broom. And ever she talked, pouring out her purified heart.

  ‘I worried till I nearly cried about whether I should be able to love you properly,’ she poured it out to him. ‘Because if I hadn’t liked you a bit I oughtn’t to have let you kiss me, ought I? But how do people know? I mean you might kiss somebody and even after that not truly love them, but you couldn’t love them without kissing them to see, could you? I mean could you?’

  ‘Oh my God, how I love you!’ broke in a tortured groan from him. For another fear had taken him now, driving out the other cowardice. It was that most beautiful of lovers’ fears, that fear of the very beauty itself, the fear that brings tears to the eyes because of the dread of haplessness and mischance. Her loveliness seemed to prepare a way for itself, marching down upon him like an army with banners. It trampled him, but now he would rather be trampled by her than taken to any other bosom on earth. He flung out his hands. He could not wait another moment for his kiss.

  But she looked at him with that crystal-clear earnestness, and her lips shaped a whispered ‘No.’

  ‘We mustn’t till we get up to the top,’ she told him.

  ‘But you do love me? You have said you love me? Two days ago I could have done without you, but if you don’t love me now I don’t know what I shall do –’

  ‘I know we mustn’t till we get up to the top – ’ she persisted softly.

  ‘Because for two nights I don’t know whether it’s been heaven or hell –’

  ‘Poor boy!’ she smiled her fondness at him. ‘But it won’t be long now, and then we can get married. I had a letter from father last night. He says he watched the boat quite out of sight and then went back to the hotel. And he says I couldn’t have stayed with him for ever. He knows I shall have to get married sometime. And at first I was going to tease you, and tell you that he would never let me marry anybody who wasn’t tremendously rich. But if he didn’t say “Yes”, we’d just get married as we are, and then he’d have to do something.’

  ‘Darling!’ he chokingly thanked her; for he no longer feared to marry her. The centuries’ sport as she was, left over from an older time and cast up again today, his only fear now was that he might even yet miss her.

  They walked on in silence. They were now nearing the northern summit, and the last stage of the climb seemed to come almost suddenly. A narrow path led to a crest, half rocks, half thymy turf. She was a few yards ahead, walking lightly, her cheeks ever so faintly flushed. And after a few more minutes she stopped and turned. Her feet were on the carpet of lavender and thyme, and nothing on the whole mountain was nearer heaven than her head.

  And what a heaven! The sun was south, fiery-towering in the blue, dwarfing the noontide shadow of every stone and bush and flower. She stood there gulls-winged against the light, betrayed, undone, in that gossamer frock with the enbrowned stain. The oyster-shell hat rimmed her head with iridescence, her face was in shadow; but her head might have been roofless, so did the sky seem to shine straight down on her and out again through her eyes. She was looking north over the sea.

  Slowly he climbed up after her and saw what she saw.

  The near mountain fell away in a fringe of pine-tops, of which the needled sprigs were drawn against a sun-white Tunis as if with a brush. Hot and pale the salines glittered, held within the thin arms of La Goulette. Thereafter towns became mere toy-like straggles on that vastness of blue. From the west, sweeping through the whole of the north, and lost to view in the east, sky and sea were confounded. Here for a score of leagues the sea was faintly bluer, then for another twenty leagues it showed a paler band. Sidi Bou Said and Carthage, Porto Farina and the hills of Bizerta’s crest seemed evanescent things, Zembra and Zembretta mere puffs upon it, that might melt away and leave no trace. And Xena’s eyes drank in the colour as if they had been Amalia’s own. They drank it in and gave it out again, as if she and it had been one element, she a lent thing, a hostage held awhile by the firm-footed earth. And there was deep happiness in the eyes, because she was purified. Now that she had reached the mountain-top, she loved, knowing what love meant. She knew why Amalia had given the god the violets. Poor thing, he ought to be given violets. Those other girls who had come with green leaves and berry-stained faces had always given him violets, and Xena knew why. It meant that she too would have a little baby of her very own, with ten little toes to take into her hand and pretend to gobble up with her mouth, and two naughty little eyes to shake her shingled head at. She knew all those things now because her heart was pure. And Verney must be getting impatient.

  He was indeed one ardent flush of love; if she loved him too, how should he not have taken the flame? Nothing could co
me between them now. She was alone with him on the mountain, with only the blue and the fiery-towering sun to be their witness. So they were kind to him now, thenceforward he served whatever gods she served. He was only waiting for one thing, and that was till her eyes should look away from the sea again and into his own, as the deeper. It happened. She turned the eyes to him.

  ‘Darling – ’ she said, and this time her voice did tremble.

  ‘My love – my sweet love that’s sent me –’

  ‘I was only a little girl when you saw me before,’ she faltered, ‘but now I’m not a little girl any more –’

  ‘I don’t care what you are, nor where you have come from, nor where you are going to – I only know I love you –’

  ‘Kiss me now, please, Verney –’

  Glowingly he pressed to her. He put both his hands under the nacred hat. They were on her shingled nape as he bent her head back and approached his lips to hers.

  And at that moment, a mile away in the mountain behind them, there was a dull explosion, as if a gun had gone off. It echoed and died away again.

  But the two mouths had not met.

  For she had started violently in his arms, and had given a swift look back over her shoulder. That way looked south, where the moun­tains frowned. Leaden bright under the torrid sun rose the ragged skyline of Djebel Recas and the menacing mass of Zaghouan. The air might have been made of sand-flies, it seemed so to hop and dance over their pale shapes: and in between lay Bou Kornine’s other horn, across a stony saddle-shaped sag.

  ‘What was that?’ she asked in a faint voice. Her lips were parted, and the young cheeks seemed to have dropped.

  ‘I know they quarry farther south. It was only a blasting-charge, darling,’ he said in a shaky voice. He still held her.

  ‘No, no – it wasn’t that – and I seem to remember – that they used to quarry here – wait – keep so –’

  They waited, but no other sound came. The scattered men, if it was a blast, had come together again.

  And suddenly she struggled free. ‘No – no – ’ she panted. ‘It’s this way –’

  Running quickly ahead she began to descend the slope. The crest on which they stood seemed to rise up behind them. Carthage, Sidi Bou Said and the sea disappeared.

  They were in a rock bowl, that seemed filled with the silence of the suddenly shut-off airs. Its stones gave off an increased heat, and the flowers were sparser. Many wild pigeons flew overhead. The rough irregular slopes might have been arranged as an amphitheatre for the staging of some primal drama on sunny, arid Zaghouan. Burnt patches seemed the skins of lions, spread for the watchers to recline on. He was frightened of the solitude and silence of the place, of the threat of that fiery blue overhead.

  ‘Love, let’s go back,’ he besought her, taking her hand. But she only muttered. – ‘No, it is this way – it is somewhere here – ’ She drew her hand away.

  ‘Darling, let’s go.’

  But she only muttered again. – ‘The Rock was there, and this is here, and there were quarries –’

  ‘What is here?’

  ‘There used to be a temple,’ she replied.

  With a face as altered as the mountain itself, he stood watching her while she wandered vainly about. Sometimes she returned to him, but when she did not he followed her at a little distance. Round and round she went, over an area of nearly a quarter of a mile; then, finding a patch of stone and a tamarisk bush, she crouched down, curling herself up. Her face was blank. She was looking at him apparently without seeing him. He crossed to her and knelt down beside her.

  ‘Come away, dear love, back where the flowers are,’ he begged her.

  ‘It used to be here,’ she said, on the brink of tears. He sought to pass his arm about her, but she put the arm rebukefully away.

  ‘We mustn’t do that here, Verney,’ she said. ‘They would be angry. This is a very holy place.’

  ‘It is Bou Kornine, only just outside Tunis,’ he faltered.

  ‘Yes. It is Bou Kornine. I saw it from the ship. But what have they done with the temple?’

  ‘What do you want the temple for?’

  ‘To make my sacrifice.’

  ‘What sacrifice?’

  But her spirit seemed to have to go a long way for the answer, and then it came back without one.

  ‘I forget, and I ought not to forget,’ she said unhappily.

  ‘Oh, let me kiss you, and kiss this dreadful thing away!’ he cried in sudden dread.

  This time surprise, expostulation almost, were in the look she turned on him.

  ‘But you have kissed me, Verney,’ she said, as if he ought to have known better than that.

  ‘And I’m going to kiss you again, now, and then take you away.’

  ‘Here?’ The eyes looked the unthinkableness of it. ‘Something very, very dreadful would happen if you did,’ she assured him without anger.

  ‘But we’re going to be married – you have said you loved me – we were up there in the sun, among the scents and flowers, and you were going to kiss me –’

  She put her hand quickly to her breast. She closed her eyes. She opened them again, and a forlornness the like of which he had never seen brimmed from them.

  ‘I’m afraid you must go now,’ she said in a hurried little voice. ‘I want to make my sacrifice.’

  ‘I can’t leave you here, in this ghastly spot.’

  ‘You must please go. You must go now.’

  ‘I will not go.’

  And he seized her.

  Like a panther she was on her feet. There was a baleful blaze in the blue eyes, and in her hand was a stone. Her voice broke with indignation at his blasphemy.

  ‘What? When I tell you that I want to make my sacrifice? You say you will not go? You will not?’ The stone was raised to strike him down.

  His head fell. He waited. Best so now, perhaps; let her strike him down. If she wished to make her sacrifice he had no more business here than he had at the Rock. How were her gods his gods if he refused her this?

  ‘Are you going?’ Her voice was utterly unrecognisable.

  He lifted his defeated eyes.

  ‘I will go. I will wait for you down there.’

  The lead they mine in Zaghouan was not heavier than his heart as he turned brokenly away.

  That night, in his neat room at the Tunisia Palace, Verney Arden had a dream. He dreamed that he was a junior boy at Win­chester again, answering to call-over on St Catherine’s Hill. Archie Hemingway, his great chum was there, who had gone on to Merton before Verney had been offered this job in the Levant. He and Verney had had tremendous confidences together that they had never shared with anybody, and had sometimes told one another about the girls they hoped to marry. Verney had hardly thought of Archie for months, but there Archie was, bursting into his room with his face all radiant, and though Verney didn’t catch her name he knew that Archie was telling him about the most wonderful girl in all the world. ‘I’ve told her all about you, and she’s dying to meet you,’ Archie said, and he brought the girl . . . and it wasn’t St Catherine’s Hill now, but the bright cricket-field where Verney had caught-and-bowled Ronnie Bruce-Harries, and all the fellows’ pretty sisters were there, and Verney had the ball in his hand. And Archie looked a perfect ass for happiness, and he knew by the girl’s face that Archie had told her what chums they were, and her eyes wished Verney luck too. And Verney laughed, and said he mustn’t think of that just now, because he was going on to bowl, and she took the ball from him. And suddenly her eyes blazed, and the ball became a stone in her hand, and Verney gave a loud cry that woke him.

  But he went to sleep again, if it could be called sleep, and Mr Thorne was telling him what a wise choice he had made in coming to the Mediterranean instead of going on to College. But Hayoun
said No, because there were better things for young people to do than go sell carpets and brass bowls. They ought to go up into the mountain and gather flowers, Hayoun said, and gaze at one another, drawing ever nearer and nearer, till they kissed. And he was drawing nearer and nearer to Xena, with his hands on the nape under her hat, and she was full of sanctification and gladness, and then came a fearful bang that woke him again. But it was only the door of another room . . . or else the door of the Itala as he and Achmed waited for her to come down again. Not that he could possibly ride back with her after that, but he must make sure she did come down, or what would Mrs Van Necker think?

  So down she came again for the twentieth time since he had gone to bed, and he was glad he had stood behind the green-shuttered café out of sight, for she had got straight into the car without asking for him and had driven off. That in some ways had been the worst of all – that she should think he had brought her out and left her to find her way back alone. Alone? Who was now more alone than he, unless it was herself? Why should morning come at all? That he might sell Greenway’s Bottled Products here in Tunis? In Constantine? In Algiers? In Gib.? ‘Adoptez-les: take them on? Agence Unique: Sole Representative?’ Why?

  Waking again to see what time it was he found that he had omitted to wind up his watch, which had stopped.

  But it was no more at a standstill than his heart.

  11

  ‘I don’t blame the girls. I blame that woman.’

  ‘Her own daughter spends her afternoons outside the Cercle Milit­aire with a young officer.’

  ‘Some of the frocks that Francavilla girl wears really verge on an outrage –’

  ‘No mother I expect –’

  ‘And far too much money –’

  ‘I suppose that other girl’s all right, sketching all day by herself?’

  ‘Well, if it were any of my business –’

  Thus the older folk of the hotel had begun to talk, notably old Lady Lyle and the Dean. Lady Lyle had taken the two Bruce-Harries girls much under her own rather scaly wing. The Dean was of the opinion that a properly-couched letter from one of his cloth to Xena’s father might be of help in the circumstances.