he? What could he do? And when she learned that perhaps he could be induced to
send her home, her head dropped on her breast.
"What am I to do when I get there?" she murmured with an intonation so just,
with an accent so penetrating—the charm of her voice did not fail her even in
whispering—that Heyst seemed to see the illusion of human fellowship on earth
vanish before the naked truth of her existence, and leave them both face to face in a
moral desert as arid as the sands of Sahara, without restful shade, without
refreshing water.
She leaned slightly over the little table, the same little table at which they had sat
when they first met each other; and with no other memories but of the stones in the
streets her childhood had known, in the distress of the incoherent, confused,
rudimentary impressions of her travels inspiring her with a vague terror of the
world she said rapidly, as one speaks in desperation:
" You do something! You are a gentleman. It wasn't I who spoke to you first, was
it? I didn't begin, did I? It was you who came along and spoke to me when I was
standing over there. What did you want to speak to me for? I don't care what it is,
but you must do something."
Her attitude was fierce and entreating at the same time—clamorous, in fact
though her voice had hardly risen above a breath. It was clamorous enough to be
noticed. Heyst, on purpose, laughed aloud. She nearly choked with indignation at
this brutal heartlessness.
"What did you mean, then, by saying 'command me!'?" she almost hissed.
Something hard in his mirthless stare, and a quiet final "All right," steadied her.
"I am not rich enough to buy you out," he went on, speaking with an
extraordinary detached grin, "even if it were to be done; but I can always steal
you."
She looked at him profoundly, as though these words had a hidden and very
complicated meaning.
"Get away now," he said rapidly, "and try to smile as you go."
She obeyed with unexpected readiness; and as she had a set of very good white
teeth, the effect of the mechanical, ordered smile was joyous, radiant. It astonished
Heyst. No wonder, it flashed through his mind, women can deceive men so
completely. The faculty was inherent in them; they seemed to be created with a
special aptitude. Here was a smile the origin of which was well known to him; and
yet it had conveyed a sensation of warmth, had given him a sort of ardour to live
which was very new to his experience.
By this time she was gone from the table, and had joined the other "ladies of the
orchestra." They trooped towards the platform, driven in truculently by the haughty
mate of Zangiacomo, who looked as though she were restraining herself with
difficulty from punching their backs. Zangiacomo followed, with his great,
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pendulous dyed beard and short mess-jacket, with an aspect of hang-dog
concentration imparted by his drooping head and the uneasiness of his eyes, which
were set very close together. He climbed the steps last of all, turned about,
displaying his purple beard to the hall, and tapped with his bow. Heyst winced in
anticipation of the horrible racket. It burst out immediately unabashed and awful.
At the end of the platform the woman at the piano, presenting her cruel profile, her
head tilted back, banged the keys without looking at the music.
Heyst could not stand the uproar for more than a minute. He went out, his brain
racked by the rhythm of some more or less Hungarian dance music. The forests
inhabited by the New Guinea cannibals where he had encountered the most
exciting of his earlier futile adventures were silent. And this adventure, not in its
execution, perhaps, but in its nature, required even more nerve than anything he
had faced before. Walking among the paper lanterns suspended to trees he
remembered with regret the gloom and the dead stillness of the forests at the back
of Geelvink Bay, perhaps the wildest, the unsafest, the most deadly spot on earth
from which the sea can be seen. Oppressed by his thoughts, he sought the obscurity
and peace of his bedroom; but they were not complete. The distant sounds of the
safe in there; for that sentiment depends not on extraneous circumstances but on
our inward conviction. He did not attempt to go to sleep; he did not even unbutton
the top button of his tunic. He sat in a chair and mused. Formerly, in solitude and in
silence, he had been used to think clearly and sometimes even profoundly, seeing
life outside the flattering optical delusion of everlasting hope, of conventional self-
deceptions, of an ever-expected happiness. But now he was troubled; a light veil
seemed to hang before his mental vision; the awakening of a tenderness, indistinct
and confused as yet, towards an unknown woman.
Gradually silence, a real silence, had established itself round him. The concert
was over; the audience had gone; the concert-hall was dark; and even the Pavilion,
where the ladies' orchestra slept after its noisy labours, showed not a gleam of light.
Heyst suddenly felt restless in all his limbs, as this reaction from the long
immobility would not be denied, he humoured it by passing quietly along the back
veranda and out into the grounds at the side of the house, into the black shadows
under the trees, where the extinguished paper lanterns were gently swinging their
globes like withered fruit.
He paced there to and fro for a long time, a calm, meditative ghost in his white
drill-suit, revolving in his head thoughts absolutely novel, disquieting, and
seductive; accustoming his mind to the contemplation of his purpose, in order that
by being faced steadily it should appear praiseworthy and wise. For the use of
reason is to justify the obscure desires that move our conduct, impulses, passions,
prejudices, and follies, and also our fears.
He felt that he had engaged himself by a rash promise to an action big with
incalculable consequences. And then he asked himself if the girl had understood
what he meant. Who could tell? He was assailed by all sorts of doubts. Raising his
head, he perceived something white flitting between the trees. It vanished almost at
once; but there could be no mistake. He was vexed at being detected roaming like
this in the middle of the night. Who could that be? It never occurred to him that
perhaps the girl, too, would not be able to sleep. He advanced prudently. Then he
saw the white, phantom-like apparition again; and the next moment all his doubts
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as to the state of her mind were laid at rest, because he felt her clinging to him
after the manner of supplicants all the world over. Her whispers were so incoherent
that he could not understand anything; but this did not prevent him from being
profoundly moved. He had no illusions about her; but his sceptical mind was
dominated by the fulness of his heart.
"Calm yourself, calm yourself," he murmured in her ear, returning her clasp at
first mechanically, and afterwards with a growing appreciation of her distressed
humanity. The heaving of her breast and the trembling of all her limbs, in the
closeness of his embrace, seemed to enter his body, to infect his very heart. While
she was growing quieter in his arms, he was becoming more agitated, as if there
were only a fixed quantity of violent emotion on this earth. The very night seemed
more dumb, more still, and the immobility of the vague, black shapes, surrounding
him more perfect.
"It will be all right," he tried to reassure her, with a tone of conviction, speaking
into her ear, and of necessity clasping her more closely than before.
Either the words or the action had a very good effect. He heard a light sigh of
relief. She spoke with a calmed ardour.
"Oh, I knew it would be all right from the first time you spoke to me! Yes,
indeed, I knew directly you came up to me that evening. I knew it would be all
right, if you only cared to make it so; but of course I could not tell if you meant it.
'Command me,' you said. Funny thing for a man like you to say. Did you really
mean it? You weren't making fun of me?"
He protested that he had been a serious person all his life.
"I believe you," she said ardently. He was touched by this declaration. "It's the
way you have of speaking as if you were amused with people," she went on. "But I
wasn't deceived. I could see you were angry with that beast of a woman. And you
are clever. You spotted something at once. You saw it in my face, eh? It isn't a bad
face—say? You'll never be sorry. Listen—I'm not twenty yet. It's the truth, and I
can't be so bad looking, or else—I will tell you straight that I have been worried
and pestered by fellows like this before. I don't know what comes to them—"
She was speaking hurriedly. She choked, and then exclaimed, with an accent of
despair:
"What is it? What's the matter?"
Heyst had removed his arms from her suddenly, and had recoiled a little. "Is it
my fault? I didn't even look at them, I tell you straight. Never! Have I looked at
you? Tell me. It was you that began it."
In truth, Heyst had shrunk from the idea of competition with fellows unknown,
with Schomberg the hotel-keeper. The vaporous white figure before him swayed
pitifully in the darkness. He felt ashamed of his fastidiousness.
"I am afraid we have been detected," he murmured. "I think I saw somebody on
the path between the house and the bushes behind you."
He had seen no one. It was a compassionate lie, if there ever was one. His
compassion was as genuine as his shrinking had been, and in his judgement more
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honourable.
She didn't turn her head. She was obviously relieved.
"Would it be that brute?" she breathed out, meaning Schomberg, of course. "He's
getting too forward with me now. What can you expect? Only this evening, after
supper, he—but I slipped away. You don't mind him, do you? Why, I could face
him myself now that I know you care for me. A girl can always put up a fight. You
believe me? Only it isn't easy to stand up for yourself when you feel there's nothing
and nobody at your back. There's nothing so lonely in the world as a girl who has
got to look after herself. When I left poor dad in that home—it was in the country,
near a village—I came out of the gates with seven shillings and threepence in my
old purse, and my railway ticket. I tramped a mile, and got into a train—"
She broke off, and was silent for a moment.
"Don't you throw me over now," she went on. "If you did, what should I do? I
should have to live, to be sure, because I'd be afraid to kill myself, but you would
have done a thousand times worse than killing a body. You told me you had been
always alone, you had never had a dog even. Well, then, I won't be in anybody's
way if I live with you—not even a dog's. And what else did you mean when you
came up and looked at me so close?"
"Close? Did I?" he murmured unstirring before her in the profound darkness. "So
close as that?"
She had an outbreak of anger and despair in subdued tones.
"Have you forgotten, then? What did you expect to find? I know what sort of girl
I am; but all the same I am not the sort that men turn their backs on—and you
ought to know it, unless you aren't made like the others. Oh, forgive me! You aren't
like the others; you are like no one in the world I ever spoke to. Don't you care for
me? Don't you see—?"
What he saw was that, white and spectral, she was putting out her arms to him
out of the black shadows like an appealing ghost. He took her hands, and was
affected, almost surprised, to find them so warm, so real, so firm, so living in his
grasp. He drew her to him, and she dropped her head on his shoulder with a deep-
sigh.
"I am dead tired," she whispered plaintively.
He put his arms around her, and only by the convulsive movements of her body
became aware that she was sobbing without a sound. Sustaining her, he lost himself
in the profound silence of the night. After a while she became still, and cried
quietly. Then, suddenly, as if waking up, she asked:
"You haven't seen any more of that somebody you thought was spying about?"
He started at her quick, sharp whisper, and answered that very likely he had been
mistaken.
"If it was anybody at all," she reflected aloud, "it wouldn't have been anyone but
that hotel woman—the landlord's wife."
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"Mrs. Schomberg," Heyst said, surprised.
"Yes. Another one that can't sleep o' nights. Why? Don't you see why? Because,
of course, she sees what's going on. That beast doesn't even try to keep it from her.
If she had only the least bit of spirit! She knows how I feel, too, only she's too
frightened even to look him in the face, let alone open her mouth. He would tell her
to go hang herself."
For some time Heyst said nothing. A public, active contest with the hotel-keeper
was not to be thought of. The idea was horrible. Whispering gently to the girl, he
tried to explain to her that as things stood, an open withdrawal from the company
would be probably opposed. She listened to his explanation anxiously, from time to
time pressing the hand she had sought and got hold of in the dark.
"As I told you, I am not rich enough to buy you out so I shall steal you as soon as
I can arrange some means of getting away from here. Meantime it would be fatal to
be seen together at night. We mustn't give ourselves away. We had better part at
once. I think I was mistaken just now; but if, as you say, that poor Mrs. Schomberg
can't sleep of nights, we must be more careful. She would tell the fellow."
The girl had disengaged herself from his loose hold while he talked, and now
sto
od free of him, but still clasping his hand firmly.
"Oh, no," she said with perfect assurance. "I tell you she daren't open her mouth
to him. And she isn't as silly as she looks. She wouldn't give us away. She knows a
trick worth two of that. She'll help—that's what she'll do, if she dares do anything at
all."
"You seem to have a very clear view of the situation," said Heyst, and received a
warm, lingering kiss for this commendation.
He discovered that to-part from her was not such an easy matter as he had
supposed it would be.
"Upon my word," he said before they separated, "I don't even know your name."
"Don't you? They call me Alma. I don't know why. Silly name! Magdalen too. It
doesn't matter; you can call me by whatever name you choose. Yes, you give me a
name. Think of one you would like the sound of—something quite new. How I
should like to forget everything that has gone before, as one forgets a dream that's
done with, fright and all! I would try."
"Would you really?" he asked in a murmur. "But that's not forbidden. I
understand that women easily forget whatever in their past diminishes them in their
eyes."
"It's your eyes that I was thinking of, for I'm sure I've never wished to forget
anything till you came up to me that night and looked me through and through. I
know I'm not much account; but I know how to stand by a man. I stood by father
ever since I could understand. He wasn't a bad chap. Now that I can't be of any use
to him, I would just as soon forget all that and make a fresh start. But these aren't
things that I could talk to you about. What could I ever talk to you about?"
"Don't let it trouble you," Heyst said. "Your voice is enough. I am in love with it,
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whatever it says."
She remained silent for a while, as if rendered breathless by this quiet statement.
"Oh! I wanted to ask you—"
He remembered that she probably did not know his name, and expected the
question to be put to him now; but after a moment of hesitation she went on:
"Why was it that you told me to smile this evening in the concert-room there—
you remember?"
"I thought we were being observed. A smile is the best of masks. Schomberg was