Some days had passed, and various things had happened, important or unimportant as one chose to regard them. It was hardly a matter for the Va-et-Vient column of the Petit Tunisien, for example, that Mr Verney Arden had left the Tunisia Palace Hotel en route for Algiers and Gibraltar; but Mr Thorne missed him very much, and asked Miss Amalia Sherren one evening whether he had really gone or was still hanging about somewhere.
Amalia spoke quickly. ‘Have you seen him?’
‘No – no –’
‘Don’t you think he’s best right away now?’
‘Perhaps, perhaps. If it’s a question of best. It might be best. But he mightn’t be able to do it.’
‘No, I guess starting things is easier than stopping them,’ Amalia said as she walked with hung head away.
In the meantime the girls discussed Xena in Mollie’s bedroom.
‘I’m worried about her. She isn’t herself,’ said Mollie anxiously.
‘What is herself, that’s what I should like to know,’ Cicely Bruce-Harries replied with a lifting of her eyebrowless ridges. ‘When you remember how scared she was if you as much as looked at her –’
‘She hadn’t seen him all the day before, because we were all in the Museum together and in the afternoon she was buying those frocks.’
‘And then they had that day together, and he went off the very next morning.’
‘I don’t care, I think she’s a pet.’
‘Yes, because she lent you the car for your young man.’
‘Anyway I’ve stopped calling her Frankie.’
‘Yes, and if I were you, Mollie –’
But Mrs Van Necker entered, and the advice remained ungiven.
Indeed Xena now looked the more forlorn because of those very frocks. One puts on a beautiful frock out of gladness; but Xena sat of an evening by Mrs Van Necker’s side, looking straight before her for minutes on end, without a tear, but so wistful and dismayed that one imagined tears would have been a relief. Apparently Mr Thorne thought so, for sometimes he watched her over his newspaper, or his little book, as he had watched Verney Arden. And one night Amalia showed Mr Thorne her sketches, as she had shown them to Verney, and sometimes they did not turn over a page for minutes, but their lips went on moving all the time. Then Mr Thorne’s lips only were moving, and Amalia was looking almost as straight in front of her as Xena did.
Amalia was now out all day, taking her midday meal with her and not returning till the evening. She came back very tired. And seeing Amalia setting out from the hotel one morning Xena stopped her.
‘Where are you going today?’ she asked in a dull voice.
‘Oh, not far. Only as far as the Belvedere.’
‘How do you go?’
‘I take the tram.’
‘I’ll drive you if you like.’
‘It’s hardly worth it.’
‘I should like to drive you, Amalia, and I should like to come with you.’
‘All right,’ said Amalia. ‘You’ll have to walk a bit at the other end.’
‘I don’t mind,’ said Xena, and walked slowly away to find Achmed.
The sketch that Amalia was making that morning was of a ruined Moorish pavilion not far from the Koubba, and she pointed it out to Xena as the car approached it – a torrent of crimson bougainvillea a quarter of a mile away, dripping down broken white marble, with a sea-green copper roof that was almost incandescent against the deep blue of the sky. They left the car at the park gates and walked up the slope towards the ruin.
But Xena gave its brilliance hardly a glance. Inside it she threw herself down on the grass among the hawk-weed and marigold and nibbled grass. Amalia got out her sketching tackle and was soon at work. Xena did not speak. She continued to chew grass after grass, spitting the little bits from the tip of her tongue as she had done when she was a little girl. Amalia had her work as a reason for her silence. Nevertheless it was Amalia who, after nearly half an hour, spoke first. Without turning her head or otherwise interrupting herself, and speaking exactly as she had spoken over the sketch-books, she said without preface:
‘Xena, you’re not to quarrel with Mollie.’
Xena took her time about replying. – ‘I haven’t quarrelled with Mollie,’ she answered in a toneless voice.
‘No, but you’re going to.’
Xena did not reply.
‘Are you going to that dance tomorrow night?’ Amalia was asked.
‘What dance?’
‘At the Café de la Garoun.’
‘I don’t know where the Café de la Garoun is.’
‘No, but I guess Captain Lemoine does.’
Xena was silent once more. Amalia sat on her camp-stool with brush poised and head back and a little on one side.
‘It seems kinder mean to lend Mollie a car one day and then to steal him yourself the next,’ she remarked.
A little gulp broke from Xena – ‘I’m not trying to steal him!’
‘No?’ said Amalia laconically.
‘I don’t tell stories, and I’m not trying to steal him.’
‘All the better. But I guess I’ve enough to answer for as it is, and this is to let you know right now that I’m quitting.’ And Amalia stopped painting for a moment, that Xena might know that she meant it.
At that a fount of piteous tears rushed to Xena’s eyes. She sat half up among the marigolds, her fingers working like things that did not share the life of the rest of her. It was terrible to hear a cry so tragic break from one so young.
‘Don’t leave me, Amalia! Don’t leave me! It gets dark, and I’m frightened, and it’s terribly, terribly lonely!’
Amalia nodded. – ‘I guess it’s lonely. That’s why you spell yourself with an X. You’re the unknown quantity all right.’
But Xena had come to her over the grass on her hands and knees. The working fingers clutched Amalia’s skirt.
‘But you don’t know!’ she cried. ‘You only know that first little bit! I haven’t told you! I haven’t told anybody! There wasn’t anybody to tell but you, because the others wouldn’t understand – ’ And suddenly breaking down with her face in her hands she moaned, ‘Oh, how I wish I could die!’
Amalia put down her brush. – ‘Xena Francavilla,’ she said, ‘it’s a good thing I haven’t any nerves to speak of. What do you mean, you haven’t told me? I guess you’ve told me enough to last my time out!’
‘But I don’t think I ever quite died,’ Xena went unlisteningly on. ‘Something didn’t go back. Do you know where I went the other day?’
Amalia’s muttering was almost inaudible. – ‘I guess we can’t always quit just when we’d like.’
‘I went up the mountain with Verney,’ she went on, suddenly as freely as a child that unburdens itself. ‘And there was a place on the way, and I stopped there first of all to purify myself; and Verney waited in the car, because men aren’t allowed there, so he waited with Achmed in the car. So I came back, and we got there, and sent Achmed away, and started to go up the mountain. And I’d been trying ever so long to love Verney, and it wouldn’t come, but the moment I was purified it came, and oh, I can’t tell you how lovely it was, as long as we were among all the flowers! And I knew all about that, Amalia, I mean about having little babies, and somebody to kiss you always, because I was purified. And Verney and I were looking at one another, on the top of the mountain, and he’d put his hands under my hat, where I had my hair cut off; and he was just going to kiss me, and his face came close, and I was waiting for him to kiss me when that noise came.’
‘What noise?’
‘He said it was some men blasting, but I knew almost for certain what it was, and he didn’t kiss me after all, and my heart will always be broken because of that!’
‘Go on,’ said Amalia in a queer voice.
>
‘So when I heard the noise I knew what it was, and we went to the other part of the mountain, where it was all rocky and frightening, and everything begins to get rather mixed up after that. I was looking for something, and Verney wouldn’t go away when I told him, but wanted to kiss me, and I forget a lot here, but I know I was very angry, because of course he couldn’t kiss me there, and I was going to kill him with a stone. So he went away, and he hadn’t been gone very long before everything got dark. And there were tremendous noises going on, like when they move heavy things about behind the curtain at a theatre, only these were a million times heavier, and I can’t tell you how pitch-dark it was. And tremendous big soft voices were talking all the time, about what place they should make next, because they were making all the places and things; it was the world they were making, you know, and they’d got as far as Africa. And I was lying there waiting, because they were making the big things first, and I was only a little girl after all.’
‘Xena Francavilla!’
‘So I lay there waiting till it came to my turn, and they were moving about, making things all the time, and they came nearer, and one of them said, “What shall we do with this?” And one said “Kill it”, but another said “No, I think I could love that”, and they talked about me, and then they decided to gamble for me. And the knocking went on all the time in the darkness, and the big deep voices counting as they gambled for me. And then somebody said “She’s his”, and another voice said “Yes, she’s mine”, and all at once everything smelt cold and salty, and I fell and hurt myself and made a mark here –’
And she pulled down the crêpe-de-chine and showed, purply-faint between her breasts, a triple sign, at which Amalia looked attentively.
‘Poseidon,’ she muttered, in a voice that Xena did not hear. ‘That’s his trident.’
‘So long as I belonged to somebody and wasn’t going to be killed I didn’t mind,’ Xena went on. ‘He was rough, but very good-tempered in between, and he said that by and by when all the things were made and he’d a little time, he’d make me somebody all to myself, to love always, because I like that best. But they weren’t all good-tempered, because every now and then a quarrel broke out about who the things they were making belonged to. And a very long time seemed to go by, and one day another quarrel broke out, and I knew it was all about me.’
‘Xena Francavilla!’
She looked soberly up from Amalia’s knee and nodded.
‘It was, because one of them said I’d drowned some of his sailors. And my one stood up for me, but the others shouted him down, and they said I should have to be tried. So they tried me, and asked me what I wanted most. I was frightened, but I said that most of all I wanted to love somebody and be loved by them. And they told me because I’d drowned those sailors and made all their girls very unhappy I shouldn’t ever have that, and the punishment was that I should just be going to love people, and then something would happen and they would be taken away, like Verney.’
Amalia’s voice was a whisper. – ‘And has it been so? All the time?’
Xena gave a deep sigh – ‘I expect so.’
‘And they –’
‘I’m allowed to kiss them once, not loving them frightfully, but then when I begin to love them frightfully they’re taken away. And I don’t think that’s fair, because it’s punishing them too. But’ – her voice dropped to a whisper and she looked mysteriously – ‘I’ve thought of something about that!’
‘I guess you would.’
‘You’d have to help me though.’
‘You stray little thing, I guess I helped to lose you.’
Xena put her hands to Amalia’s neck, drew her ear down close, and whispered. Then she nodded once or twice. Amalia started.
‘Wherever did you hear that?’
‘I think in the mountain, but I’m not sure. But it’s true, and ever so old. Then of course it thinks it’s another person, and it can’t find it’s way back, and I’ve thought about it for three whole days, and I’ve decided that would be the best.’
This time Amalia did not even exclaim ‘Xena Francavilla!’
‘And of course you’d have to be careful not to wake me, or it would know the trick after that.’
‘The trick! Sakes!’ Amalia breathed.
‘And I can’t do it myself; because I know, and it would know what I was doing.’
Slowly Amalia took up her brush again. The purple bougainvillea she had put on in a rich raw mass, and she wanted lemon-yellow for the copper-green that burned so vividly against the blue. Xena’s hand went to the tube in Amalia’s fingers.
‘Do, please, Amalia,’ she pleaded.
Amalia began to paint busily. Besides the green and the purple and the deep African blue there were arabesques of coloured porcelain inside the ruin, lost in shadow, with a dazzling white marble column cutting straight across them. With an unsteady hand Amalia went on painting. Not to disturb her, Xena crept quietly back to her place among the hawk-weed and marigolds again. At any rate Amalia knew all about it now, and that it would be the same the next time, and the next, and always something would happen, and each time she would have to begin all over again. It had tired her to tell Amalia all this. The grass had a nice burnt smell. She wondered how Amalia could go on working as hard as that.
Five minutes later Amalia, looking round, saw that Xena was fast asleep.
To have her face disguised while she slept, so that the soul, returning from its flight abroad, should not recognise its habitation, but should remain shut out for ever!
Amalia began to paint still more feverishly. She knew that she herself had sinned. Out of an idle itch she had experimented with a soul, and a soul that gods had gambled for in that ancient darkness of the making of the world. She had not intended that that soul should pass the experiment on to another, but that too was a consequence she had incurred. What should she do? Give the tossed spirit rest the way she said, and then do something about herself? What world did this morsel of spindrift that called itself Xena Francavilla live in anyway? Who should say it was killing? Whoever before had killed with a few touches of water-colour and a sable brush? There she slept, her face in the pavilion’s shadow and one arm stretched out on the sunny grass. Amalia could dodge Achmed, leave the park by another way, take the tram back to the hotel, and with a little veronal her own amends and peace would be made too.
Softly she put down her work and approached the sleeping Xena. She bent over her. The paintbox was within reach of her hand.
But she remembered that water-colour is wet. At the first touch of the cold brush Xena would start and wake, and the spirit would be nimbly home again.
Slowly she turned away from the sleeping girl, took up her sketch again, and went on painting.
Xena woke with a yawn and a drowsy limpid look. She stretched herself.
‘What time is it? How long have I been asleep?’
‘Not long. About a quarter of an hour.’
‘Have you nearly finished your sketch?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Then I think I shall go back to the hotel. If you’ll tell me what time I’ll send the car.’
‘It doesn’t matter. The walk will do me good,’ said Amalia with a brush between her teeth.
Xena walked down the sunny slope in the direction of the car, and Amalia went on painting.
12
There walked about Tunis – for though he had left his hotel he had not found strength to leave the town – a young man of two-and-twenty whose breast no longer contained a heart. He wasn’t quite sure what had become of his heart; sometimes he thought he had left it up a mountain, and sometimes that a stone, lifted to break his head, had somehow got into his bosom instead. His funds were low, but there was a certain consolation in the thought that it didn’t really matter whether he made a liv
ing or not. People may go short in the Levant, but they can always beg. Much more than the making of a living was the remembered dream of an island, for his desolation was simple and complete, and the dream had vanished too.
He had taken a bedroom in a cheap pension, but he was seldom to be found there. He called at no offices, never mentioned Greenway’s Bottled Products. He had not even left an address for his letters. What should he want letters for? A man with no desire in life has little use for letters. Let them think he had perished. All that mattered of him had in fact perished. What, if not dead, is a young man without a heart?
Yet he was incapable of leaving Tunis. He would probably have stayed inertly on even if she had no longer been there. And while the quays saw his face, drawn like that of a middle-aged man, and the native quarters and the waste and pasture-land towards Carthage, he knew there was one danger-zone he was best away from. This was the neighbourhood of the Tunisia Palace Hotel.
Yet while avoiding the danger he toyed with it. There was, for example, the question of hours. The terraced café was certainly better avoided during the busy time of the day. Sitting there he might see her pass at any moment. But the evening was different. Negligently chaperoned as he knew her to be, he had not yet known her to go out in the evening. At the same time there was always the remote chance that something might bring her abroad, and therein lay the fascination. For two nights, alone and without a heart, he had sat on the café’s terrace. On the third night he sat there again, with a cup of coffee in front of him that he had ordered because he had had to order something. The few salted wafers he had eaten at a counter could hardly be called dinner. He hated to think he had a stomach when he hadn’t a heart.
Opposite him the flickering bats played among the telegraph-wires, and the tall electric standards made muslin of the ficus-tree. The awning of the café opposite was a shadow-show of moving shapes. To his right was the glow of the music-hall, beyond that the hotel. Fez and bowler, burnous and black veil, passed within a few feet of him without knowing they passed a young man who no longer had a heart. To have got up and sought his shabby pension would have required more effort than he felt capable of. He would get up when they closed the cafe. That was long enough yet.
The Dead of Night Page 40