He continued to watch the bats, the shadow-shapes on the awning opposite, and the green muslin of the ficus-trees.
And he thought, as he had thought ever since, of the loveliness of one side of that fatal mountain, of the horror of the other. Why hadn’t he kissed her at first, on Bou Kornine’s hither horn, when she had looked at him with that infinity of blue shining back from her eyes? Why had he delayed until they had got to a place where his answer was a lifted stone? Now – oh! how gladly he would have died there among the cyclamen and the thyme, her smile the last thing he saw! But he had to go on living, without a heart.
Why go on living, when it was so easy to do the other thing? Was it that some destiny he shared with her was not even yet complete? He didn’t know, and he didn’t much care. At the last perhaps that was why he was sitting there, dinner-less and with an untouched cup of coffee in front of him. Achmed would have sat so. Strokes of destiny are things that have to be waited for.
He had not to wait long. Even as he was thinking it he saw the shape of her shingled head mingled with the shadows of the café opposite.
And there passed with her an officer in a uniform of horizon-blue.
He was on his feet. That fellow! Once, twice, he had seen that same officer with Mollie Van Necker. And he was the same fellow who, that first afternoon of all, had looked in that hateful way at Xena in the souks, even while Mollie had been giving him a light for his cigarette.
Verney hadn’t paid for his coffee. With his eyes strained on the opposite corner he was calling loudly to the waiter to make haste. Damn the waiter! Damn the coffee! He couldn’t stop there waiting to pay for a few centimes-worth of coffee!
‘M’sieu’?’
It was the waiter. Verney crammed a couple of notes into his hand and dashed away.
Damnation! He had lost them! Captain Lemoine was not the only officer in that uniform in Tunis, and except for her uncovered and shingled head he had had no time to see what Xena wore. He dashed in under the ficus-tree. Up or down there was no sign of them. Then he remembered that a short street ran back in the other direction. He doubled back and looked down its dark length.
He wasn’t sure – there seemed to be figures at the other end. He ran.
He reached a corner where the street was crossed by another. It was they. Facing him a little to the left, in vertical crimson lights against a background of blackness, were the words ‘Café de la Garoun’.
She, who had never gone out in the evenings, now being taken there!
Already they were entering. They disappeared from his view. And they must have booked their table in advance and walked straight in, for they were not to be seen the next moment, when Verney Arden stood in the low-lighted doorway with notes in his hand. A manager was looking him up and down with apologetic regret.
‘Pardon – ’ the eyes were deferential but firm, ‘ – monsieur is not suitably dressed –’
‘I have friends who have just gone in –’
Parfait – but it was a rule of the establishment –
‘Monsieur le Capitaine – ’ he expostulated.
‘Ah ça! But Monsieur le Capitaine was in uniform –
‘It is important – it is very important –’
The manager spoke soothingly. ‘People do not come to the Café de la Garoun and leave immediately, monsieur. You are no doubt staying at the Majestic, at the Tunisia Palace. Both are quite near. The night is yet early –’
It was true. He had forgotten that there was plenty of time.
Already he was hurrying back to his pension to change.
That fellow! The gummy look he had given her in the souks even while another girl was lighting a cigarette for him – oh, he was a bad piece of work, that fellow! And as he hurried towards his pension Verney Arden knew very well what had happened to himself. His torpid heart had come back into his breast and was waking up again.
His lodging was over a bakery in the Rue d’Espagne. And just when he felt, without knowing why, that every instant was of importance, lucklessness dogged him again. He had either forgotten or lost his key. An electric standard stood opposite his door, and the street was empty. He knocked. He knocked again, more loudly, and called ‘Madame! Ouvrez!’ He knocked until a gendarme came up. He explained. Both knocked, and the gendarme raised the voice of authority. At last a glimmer of light appeared. Shuffling feet were heard descending. The door opened, and an aged beldame in a brown blanket showed her single tooth to the light and covered the gendarme with screams of abuse. But Verney did not hear her. He had pushed past her and was running up to his room.
Lucklessness still clung to his heels. At the Tunisia Palace he had always laid his own things neatly out in readiness beforehand; but here they were all bundled together in a strapped trunk. The room had no electric light, and he set a match to the two bougies, but the lamp in the street gave more light than both. He flung the trunk on his bed and began to tug at his straps. He had left the Tunisia Palace in too much agitation to pack methodically, and he didn’t know where anything was. Out his suitcases had to come too, and by the time he had cast half his possessions on the floor he knew less than ever where anything was. And as he hunted and kicked aside and swore there ran ever through his head the thought that she was with him, that bad piece of work, and that he had taken her to a night-club.
Half by candlelight, half by the light of the standards outside, he dressed. He looked at his watch. The Café de la Garoun was less than ten minutes’ walk away, but it was just over an hour since he had been refused admission. His handkerchief – there. His money – there. And this time his key –
But no, he couldn’t begin to look for his key in that litter that filled the room. If it came to the worst and later he found himself locked out he could walk about till morning –
He dashed down the stairs again, came out into the Rue d’Espagne, and made haste to the establishment with the vertical sign in red.
They bowed a welcome to his transformed appearance. From the farther end of a short corridor came sounds of music. He had never been in the place before, but apparently the ballroom was at the end. He pushed at double doors and there it was, a large oblong room with a floor that was sunk a foot or so like a shallow swimming-bath. Surrounding this, where the dressing-rooms of the swimming-bath might have been, were interrupted bays, with three or four supper-tables in each. The room was lighted from above in the usual way, and some thirty or forty couples were already dancing. There were many watchers, and half-way down on the left was a table apparently of a different character from the others. Over-hatted professional partners sat there, or left their wraps and encumbrances when they danced.
But he did not see Xena.
And yet, as his eyes became accustomed to the lights and the stir of dancers in the well, he vaguely saw somebody with Xena’s shingled head. Across the room, over the dancers’ heads, the watchers were clustered more densely, culminating towards the middle in a group of pale blue. Some seven or eight officers made a party there, with ladies. But the girl who resembled Xena was not of their party. She sat in front, with another officer, and there was champagne in a bucket on the table between them. And this girl who resembled Xena appeared to be wearing only a single garment, and a scanty one at that. The officer was smearing her over with his eyes, and his frizzed moustache was close to her nape as he poured her out more champagne.
Then she lifted her eyes, and across the room they met Verney’s.
It was Xena.
Had the whole French Army stood between, those eyes would have brought him to her side. Jostled by the moving dancers, as a spun top moves the little wooden toys about, he made his way across the dancing-floor.
Only then, while he was still in the well, did the monstrous falsity of his position flash upon him.
Why had he come? And now that
he was here what was he going to do?
And he saw now what the frock was. Actually it was the usual two or three garments, but so close was their mimicry of herself that she appeared merely to have tossed a shawl of many-coloured sequins sparsely sewn on black lace about herself; in her own bathroom. Even the professional dancing-partners glanced at her and pushed out their lips, and there were bursts of laughter from the group of officers behind, not perhaps at her, but only too obviously at something of which she had been the original cause.
But her eyes met Verney’s again, and with a leap that was pure anguish his heart broke once more to life and suffering in his breast. Never, never had he seen her eyes so. He had seen that first look of all, when they had supplicated him to love her, and she would love him if love between them was to be. He had seen them when he had kissed her in Hayoun’s shop, full of a strange waiting and wonder. He had seen them childish and petulant, when she had told him that if he didn’t want to come to the mountain she would go by herself. He had seen them at that mountain’s top, shining with that light of uttermost readiness, calling him to kiss her and not to cease kissing her till death. And he had seen them fixed on his own with an infernal light, while her hand had held aloft a stone. But this profundity of pellucid grief! This basic and immemorial look, as if all the other looks were mere variants, and to this she must return! She seemed, in that lewd fraud of a frock, to be bidding him a sorrowful and endless goodbye. He could not bear it. He was out of the well and by her side.
‘Darling!’ broke from that newly-found heart, strong now to endure a thousand years of pain again. ‘What is it?’
She did not speak. She only looked.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘It’s – it’s only seeing you,’ she gasped.
‘Yes, I’m here, love. We’re both here. Sit quite still and don’t think for a minute. I’ll – I’ll try to think.’
‘I’m here with Captain Lemoine.’ And then she began to use words he didn’t understand. ‘I ought to be sorry for him too. But I don’t think it hurts them all the same way. That’s why I picked him, and not what Amalia thinks. And if I promise him, I don’t mean really saying yes, but just nodding, perhaps I shan’t have to give him even one, and then yours will be the last one of all, Verney.’
‘The last what?’
He hardly heard her reply. – ‘I mean that time in the carpet-shop.’
She continued to gaze straight before her.
There was no third chair, even had Verney Arden been asked to sit down. Captain Lemoine sat there with his head thrown back, so that Verney could see through the frizz of his brown moustache. He gave no sign that he had heard his name spoken.
Then Verney thought he saw a way out. He spoke low and rapidly.
‘Look here. I can’t take you away. That would be worse than ever. Mrs Van Necker ought to be here. But I saw Mr Thorne over there. Will you let him take you back to the hotel?’
Slowly but steadfastly she shook her head. – ‘No. I have to stay here now. Because I’ve thought of a plan. It’s almost sure to be all right if I’m very, very careful.’
‘I wish you’d –’
Suddenly Captain Lemoine turned his head slightly towards Verney. After all there does come a moment when an intruder who hasn’t been asked to sit down has stayed long enough.
‘Vous parlez français, monsieur?’
‘Oui, monsieur.’
‘Vous êtes seul ici?’
‘Oui, monsieur.’
‘Moi-vous voyez –’
And with a shrug of the blue shoulders up went the moustache into the air again.
Verney Arden had one crumb of satisfaction. He had suffered much at the hands of Frenchmen who understood his French best when he invited them to dinner. At any rate Captain Lemoine spoke no English.
Then suddenly he was conscious of suppressed sounds of mirth behind him. A voice said ‘Monsieur’, and he turned. A stout major with a jovial face had ceremoniously set a gilt rout-chair for him within a yard or so of Xena’s table, and two ladies of the party were whispering behind their hands with their smiling eyes on him.
It took him some moments to realise what was happening. Then he thought he saw. Captain Lemoine did not appear to be too popular with his brother-officers. The comedy of Captain Lemoine with a half-undressed girl and a young Englishman who was plainly told to go and yet remained was too good to miss. Probably they had laughed at his ill-breeding in remaining so long; now they were receiving him with open arms and pressing him to remain. The fat major with the jovial face had even put a glass of champagne into his hand; that too was part of it – to see on which table he would set it down. He wondered whether they would have done so had they seen Xena’s eyes. But Xena had her back to them, and her eyes were on his own again.
He bowed to the fat major, put the glass of champagne on the floor, and sat down.
Several minutes passed, during which Captain Lemoine evidently thought the position over. Then Xena spoke.
‘Verney – ’ she faltered.
‘Love?’ (Would he ever say ‘Love’ to her again?)
‘If you please, I want you to forgive me.’
‘About sending me away from the mountain, my darling?’
‘No. I mean for having looked at you that day in the garden. It had to be that day, because of everything that had happened, and you were the only person I knew. Will you forgive me?’
‘No,’ he murmured slowly. ‘When I’ve nothing else to thank the world for I shall still thank you for that.’
‘And he’ll hardly feel it. He won’t feel it like you. Mollie knows he’s half a dozen girls, and it isn’t what Amalia thought. It isn’t even like those poor sailors who got drowned.’
‘What sailors, heart’s love?’
‘I haven’t time to tell you now. Amalia knows. I’ve got to smile at him now. Then he’ll take it all off; and it’ll be over. I hope another little girl like me won’t get it next time, and perhaps it will get lost altogether, and you couldn’t kiss me any more, if we were ever so alone, but you can look at me just once –’
Slowly she turned on him the long blue farewell.
Suddenly the whole room was transformed. The ceiling lights went out. The shallow sides of the dancing-well were of greenish glass; they became flooded with light. It gleamed on the calves of the dancers, who danced in a sea of light. Across the tumult of dark heads only the matches and cigarettes of the other side of the room could be seen. Verney had turned his head for a moment. When he turned it again she was not there. She and Captain Lemoine had left the table and had joined the dancers.
He sat there, mechanically counting how many times the strongly-sprung calves, the honeysuckle shape, the flimsy sequined shawl came round. He sat as he had sat at the café, with that dull feeling that though he had finished he had one final act to perform. He heard a woman’s compassionate murmur behind him, ‘Non, non, c’est trop cruel – ’ but if she meant him she was quite mistaken. The cruel thing would have been to go back to Greenway’s Bottled Products again.
The dance ended and the lights went up again. Xena and Captain Lemoine returned to the table. His face was flushed with exultation. Aha, Captain Lemoine knew his sex! Obviously he had had his promise. Give him the promise and it would be an odd thing if the kiss didn’t follow! And with the kiss would come that more-than-a-kiss that he hoped for. He poured Xena out more champagne. He swallowed a glass at a gulp himself. Then he turned insolently to Verney.
‘Vous vous amusez, monsieur?’
And because Verney Arden had not yet talked with Amalia, and did not understand that though Captain Lemoine might get the kiss he would get no more, nor that twice, nor as much as that if Xena was to be believed, he frowningly watched Xena drink the champagne. It was the last of the bottle, but Capt
ain Lemoine, perfect host, had evidently given orders, for another bottle was on the table instantly.
‘Vous vous amusez, monsieur?’ the officer again asked the uninvited young man.
Verney Arden attempted a shrug.
‘It is a pity I do not speak English,’ said the Frenchman in French.
‘I answer mademoiselle in the same language she speaks to me in,’ Verney coldly replied.
‘Still, if you wish to dance, you also, there are ladies over there –’
‘I do not wish to dance.’
‘Only to sit?’
‘For the moment only to sit,’ said Verney, withdrawing his chair one farther neutral inch.
‘Perhaps to see that Mademoiselle behaves herself?’
Xena sat like a half-stripped penitent with her eyes upon the ground.
‘To see that you give her no more champagne,’ said Verney Arden suddenly, with his eyes on the bottle.
‘It is perhaps permitted to offer a cigarette?’ the Frenchman mocked, producing his case and proffering it to Xena.
After that it could only be a matter of moments. Captain Lemoine’s hand was on the bottle.
‘Mademoiselle –’
Verney sprang up. She was his love, his life, what remained of it. But for fatality he and she might have been speeding together to her father now. Her eyes might bid him goodbye, but he would not let her go. His voice was raised.
‘Monsieur, this lady is promised to me.’
‘Truly, monsieur?’ came the ironical reply.
‘We are engaged to be married –’
‘Permettez, mademoiselle –’
‘You shall not –’
Captain Lemoine looked haughtily at Verney. – ‘Vous êtes commis voyageur, monsieur? You have the manners of one.’
The Dead of Night Page 41