"This fire's scorching. Yes, Claire, of savages. Didn't you find that
out this afternoon, when we were in Tetuan? But of course you couldn't.
You couldn't know you'd married such an infernal lunatic."
He broke off. She was watching him with a close attention, and her body
had ceased to tremble under his arm.
"Go on, Desmond."
"You want me to tell you the sort of man you've married?"
"I want you to tell me what you mean."
"Then I will. Claire, this afternoon I took you away from that
snake-charming chap because--well, because you watched him as if he
fascinated you."
"Oh!"
"Of course I knew why. His performance was clever, and he was
picturesque in his way, although, to be sure, it was all put on, as far
as that goes."
"Like my stage performances, Desmond."
"Claire," he said hotly. "How can you?"
"That man acts far better than I do--if he acts at all."
"Was that why he interested you so much?"
"In what other way could he interest me?"
Renfrew kicked at one of the blazing logs and sent up a shower of
red-hot flakes.
"Well, there was your dream, Claire."
"Yes, there was that."
"It was curious, coming just before we saw the fellow. And you say the
two men were alike."
"I did not say alike. I said the same."
"How could that be?"
"How can a thousand things be? Yet we cannot deny them when they are,
any more than we can deny that we feel an earthly immortality within us
and yet crumble into dust. In sleep I saw that man. I saw his snake. I
heard him play."
"Yes, Claire, I know. It's damned strange."
Renfrew's forehead was wrinkled in a meditative frown.
"But, after all, what's a dream?" he exclaimed. "A vagary of a sleeping
brain. And in your dream you wouldn't go to that beggar, Claire."
"No. I wouldn't go, and so I died."
"It all means nothing--nothing at all."
She looked at him gravely.
"I wonder whether there are things in life that we are compelled to do,
Desmond," she said. "I sometimes think there must be. How otherwise can
a thousand strange events be accounted for, especially things that women
do?"
"I don't know," he muttered, staring at her anxiously in the firelight.
"Every one acknowledges the irresistible power of physical force over
physical weakness. Some day, perhaps, when the world has grown a little
older, we shall all understand that the power of mental force is
precisely similar, and can as little be resisted. What's that?"
Renfrew felt that she was suddenly alert. Her thin form grew hard and
quivering, like the body of a greyhound about to be let loose on a
hare. He heard nothing except a sound of music from the darkness, and
the gentle rustle of the wind.
"I hear nothing," he said. "What was it--a cry?"
"No, no!"
"What then?"
"Oh, Desmond--hush!"
He was obedient, and strained his ears, wondering what Claire had heard.
The fire was at last beginning to die down, for the flames had devoured
the masses of dry twigs, and had now nothing to feed upon except the
heavy logs. So the darkness drew a little closer round the camp, as if
the night expanded noiselessly. One of the porters, or, perhaps, one of
the soldiers, was playing a queer little air upon a pipe over and over
again. It was plaintive and very soft. But the tone of the instrument
was strangely penetrating, and the wind carried it along over the plain,
as if anxious to bear it to the sea, that the cave men might hear it,
and the sailors bearing up for the Spanish coast. Was Claire listening
to this odd little tune? Renfrew wondered. There seemed no other sound.
She was moving uneasily now, as if an intense restlessness had taken
hold of her. And she turned her head away from him and gazed into the
night.
Presently she put her hand on Renfrew's arm, which was still round her
waist, and tried to remove it. But he would not yield to her desire. He
only held her closer, and again--he could not tell why--the smouldering
jealousy began to flare up in his heart.
"No, Claire," he said, in answer to her movement, "you are mine. You
have given yourself to me. I alone have the right to keep you, to hold
you close--close to my heart."
"Can you keep me always, Desmond?" she said, suddenly turning on him
with a sort of fierce excitement.
She looked into his eyes as if she would search the very depths of his
soul for strength, for power.
"You have the right. Yes; but that is nothing--nothing."
"Nothing, Claire?"
"You must have the strength, Desmond. That is everything."
There was a look almost of despair in her face. She threw herself
against him as if moved by a sudden yearning for protection, and put her
arms round his shoulders.
The hidden Moor was still playing the same monotonous little tune, an
African aria, as wild as a bird that flies over the desert, or a cloud
that is driven across the sky above a dangerous sea. It was imaginative,
and, as all tunes seem to have a shape, this melody was misshapen and
yet delicious, like a twisted tangled creature that has the smile of a
sweet woman, or the eyes of an alluring child. In its plaintiveness
there was the atmosphere of solitary places. And there was a sound of
love in it, too, but of a love so uncivilised as to be almost monstrous.
Some earth man of a dead age might have sung it to his mate in a land
where the sun looked down on things primeval. It might have caught the
heart of maidens very long ago, before they learned to think of passion
as the twin of law, and to regard a kiss as the seal set upon the tape
of matrimony. The queer sorrow of it could hardly have moved any eyes to
tears. Yet few women could have heard it without a sense of desolation.
It ran through the darkness as cold water runs in the black shadow of a
forest, a trickle of sound as thin and persistent as the cry of a wild
creature in the night.
Renfrew thrilled under the touch of Claire's hand.
"You can give me the strength every woman seeks in the man she yields
herself up to," he said.
"How?"
"By loving me."
"Ah, yes. But the strength must not come, however subtly, from the
woman. No--no."
Again she leaned away from him, with her face turned towards the
darkness. Tremors ran through her, and her hands dropped almost feebly
from Renfrew's shoulders, as the hands of an invalid fall away, and
down, after an embrace.
"Oh, no," she reiterated, and her voice was almost a wail. "It must be
there, in the man, part of him, whether he is with the woman in the
night, or alone--far off--in the jungle, or in the--the desert. He must
have the strange strength that comes from solitude. Where can the men of
our country find that now?"
"They find strength in the clash of wills, Claire, and in the battles of
love."
"Most of them never find it at all," she said, with a sort of sullen
resignation. "And most of the women do not want it, or ask for it, or
know what it is. The danger is when some accident or some fate teaches
them what it is. Then--then--"
She stopped, and glanced at Renfrew suspiciously, as if she had so
nearly betrayed a secret that he might, nay, must have guessed it.
"What do you mean? Then they seek it away from--?"
"Where they know they will find it," she said, almost defiantly.
Renfrew's face grew cold and rigid.
"What are you saying to me, Claire?"
"What is true of some women, Desmond."
He was silent. Pain and fear invaded his heart; and, by degrees, the
little tune played by the Moor seemed to approach him, very quietly, and
to become one with this slow agony. Music, among its many and terrible
powers, numbers one that is scarcely possessed as forcibly by any other
art. It can glide into a man and direct his emotions as irresistibly as
science can direct the flow of a stream. It can penetrate as a thing
seen cannot penetrate. For that which is invisible is that which is
invincible. And this tune of the Moor, while it added to Renfrew's
distress, touched his distress with confusion and bewilderment. At first
he did not realise that the music had anything to do with his state of
mind, or with the growing turmoil of his heart and brain; but he felt
that something was becoming intolerable to him, and pushing him on in a
dangerous path. He thought it was the statement of Claire; and, for the
first time in his life, he was stirred by an anger against her that was
horrible to him. He released her from his arm.
"How dare you say that to me?" he asked. "Do you understand what your
words imply, that--Good God!--that women are like animals, creatures
without souls, running to the feet of the master who has the whip with
the longest, the most stinging lash? Why, such a creed as yours would
keep men savages, and kill all gentleness out of the world. Curse that
chap! That hideous music of his--"
He had suddenly become aware that the Moor's melody added something to
his torment. At his last exclamation, the sullen look in Claire's pale
face gave way to an expression of fear and of startling solicitude.
"Desmond, you are putting a wrong interpretation on what I said," she
began hastily.
But he was excited, and could not endure any interruption.
"And you imply a degrading immorality as a prevailing characteristic of
women too," he went on, "that they should leave their homes, deny their
obligations, because they find elsewhere--away, out in some dark place
with a blackguard--a powerful will to curb them and keep them down,
like--why, like these wretched women all round us here in this
country,--the women we saw in Tetuan only to-day, veiled, hidden, loaded
with burdens, worse off than animals, because their masters doubt them,
and would not dream of trusting them. Claire, there's something
barbarous about you."
He spoke the words with the intonation of one who thinks he is uttering
an insult. But she smiled.
"It's the something barbarous about me that has placed me where I am,"
she said, with a cold pride. "It is that which civilisation worships in
me, that which has set me above the other women of my time. It is even
that which has made you love me, Desmond, whether you know it or not."
He looked at her like a man half dazed.
"I frighten the dove-cotes. I can make men tremble by my outbursts of
passion, and women faint because I am sad; and even the stony-hearted
sob when I die. And I can make you love me, Desmond. Yes, perhaps I am
more barbarous than other women. But do you think I am sorry for it?
No."
"Some day you may be, Claire."
He spoke more gently. The wonder and worship he had for this woman
stirred in him again. While she had been speaking, she had instinctively
risen to her feet, and she stood in the dull red glow of the waning
fire, looking down at him as if he were a creature in a lower world than
the one in which she could walk at will.
"I shall never choose to be sorry," she said, "whatever my fate may be.
To be sorry is to be feeble, and to be feeble is to be unfit to live,
and unfit to die. Never, never think of me as being sorry for anything I
have done, or may do. Never deceive yourself about me."
A great log, eaten through by a flame at its heart, broke gently asunder
on the summit of the heaped wood. One half of it, red-hot, and alive
with multitudes of flickering fires, gold, primrose, steel-blue, and
deep purple, dropped and fell at Claire's feet. She glanced down at it,
and at Renfrew.
"My deeds may burn me up," she said, "as those coloured fires burn up
that wood, until it is no longer wood but fire itself. They shall never
drench me with wretched, contemptible tears."
He got up; and, when he was on his feet, he seemed to hear the incessant
music more clearly, blending with the words of Claire. The notes were
like hot sparks falling on him. He winced under them, and looked round
almost wildly. Then, without speaking, he hurried away in the darkness
to the place where the soldiers were feasting, and the men of the camp
were holding their fantasia. Claire divined why he went. She started a
step forward as if to try and stop him; but his movement had been so
abrupt that she was too late. She had to let him go. Her hands fell at
her sides, and she waited by the dying fire in the attitude of one who
listens intently. The soft melody of that hidden and persistent musician
wailed in her ears, on and on. It came again and again, never ceasing,
never altering in time. And its influence upon Claire was terrible as
the influence of the dream music in the valley beneath the Kasbar. She
longed to go to it. She seemed to belong to it,--to be its possession,
and to have erred when she separated herself from it. In the darkness it
was awaiting her, and it sent out its crying voice in the night as a
message, as a summons soft, clear, and quietly determined. She clenched
her hands as she stood by the fire. She strove to root her feet in the
ground. If there had been anything to cling to just then, she would have
stretched forth her arms and clung to it, resisting what she loved from
fear of the future. But there was nothing. And she thought of the
children and of the Pied Piper. But they were legendary beings of a
fable long ago. And she thought of Renfrew and of his love. But that
seemed nothing. That could not keep her. He was a pale phantom, and her
career was a handful of dust, and her name was as the name graven upon a
tomb, and her life was but as a gift to be offered to an unknown
destiny,--while that melody called to her. Had any one seen her then in
the glow of the firelight, she would have seemed to him terrible. For
suddenly she let the djelabe of Absalem slip from her shoulders to the
ground. And, in the fiercely flickering light, that makes all things and
people assume unearthly aspects, her thin figure in its white robe
looked like the white body of a serpent, erect and trembling, under the
influence of the charmer. But the melody grew softer and softer, more
faint, more dreamy in the darkness. Presently it ceased. As it did so,
Claire drew a deep breath, lifted her head like one released from a
thraldom, and turned her face towards the camp.
Almost directly she saw Renfrew returning towards her. He looked
puzzled.
"It wasn't any of the men playing," he said to her.
"No?"
Claire bent, caught up the djelabe and drew it over her.
"I went to them, and found them listening to some story Absalem was
telling. They were all gathered close round him, huddled up together in
the dark. And the piping came from quite another direction--not from the
soldiers either. It must have been some vagabond out of Tetuan. I was
just going to make a search for him, when the noise stopped. He must
have heard me coming."
He still looked disturbed and angry, and this break in their
conversation was final. It seemed impossible to take up the thread of it
again. They stood together watching the fire fade away till it was a
faint glow almost level with the ground. Then at last Renfrew spoke, in
a voice that was almost timid.
"Claire," he said.
"Yes," she answered out of the dull twilight that would soon be
darkness.
"If I have said anything to-night to hurt you, don't think of it, don't
remember it. I don't know--I don't seem to have been like myself
to-night. I believe that cursed music irritated me, so ugly, and so
monotonous; it got right on my nerves, I think."
"Did it?"
"Without my knowing it."
He felt for one of her hands and clasped it.
"Yes, dear. We both said more than we meant. Didn't we?"
Claire did not assent; but she let her hand lie in his. That satisfied
him then, although afterwards he remembered her silence. Soon the fire
was dead; and they said good-night in the wind, which seemed colder
because there was no more light.
* * * * *
Renfrew went to his tent, undressed, and got into bed. The wind roared
against the canvas. But the pegs had been driven stoutly into the ground
by the porters, and held the cords fast. He felt very tired and
depressed, and thought he would not fall asleep quickly. But he soon
began to be drowsy, and to have a sense of dropping into the very arms
of the tempest, lulled by its noise. He slept for a time. Presently,
however, and while it was still quite dark, he woke up. He heard the
wind as before, but was troubled by an idea that some other sound was
mingling with it, some murmur so indistinct that he could not decide
what it was, although he was aware of it. He sat up and strained his
ears, and wished the wind would lull, if only for a moment, or that this
other sound--which had surely been the cause of his waking--would
increase, and stand out distinctly in the night. And, at last, by dint
of listening with all his force, Renfrew seemed to himself to compel the
sound to greater clearness. Then he knew that somewhere, far off perhaps
in the wind, the player on the pipe reiterated his soft and stealthy
music. It was swept on the tempest like a drowning thing caught in a
whirlpool. It was so faint as to be almost inaudible. But in all its
weakness it retained most completely its character, and made the same
impression upon Renfrew as when it was near and distinct. It irritated
and it repelled him. And, with an angry exclamation, he flung himself
down and buried his head in the pillow, stopping his ears with his
hands.
* * * * *
With daylight the camp was in a turmoil. Claire was gone. Her bed had
not been slept in. She had not undressed. She had not even taken off
Absalem's djelabe. At least it could not be found. Renfrew, frantic,
almost mad with anxiety, explored the plain, rode at a gallop to the
gate of the city, called upon the Governor of Tetuan to help him in his
search, and summoned the Consul to his aid in his despair. Every effort
was made to find the missing woman; but no success crowned the quest,
either at that time, or afterwards, when weeks became months, and months
grew into years. A great actress was lost to the world. His world was
lost to Renfrew. He rode back at last one day to the villas of Tangier,
bent down upon his horse, broken, alone. In his despair he cursed
himself. He accused himself of cruelty to Claire that night beside the
African fire, when he had been roused to a momentary anger against her.
He even told himself that he had driven her away from him. But other
men, who had known Claire and the strangeness of her caprices, said to
each other that she had got tired of Renfrew and given him the slip,
wandering away disguised in the djelabe of a Moor, and that some fine
day she would turn up again, and re-appear upon the stage that had seen
her glory.
Later on, when Renfrew at last, after long searching, came hopelessly
back to England, so changed that his friends scarcely recognised him, he
was sometimes seized with strange and terrible thoughts as he sat
brooding over the wreck of his love. He seemed to see, as in a pale
vision of flame and darkness, a little dusky Moorish boy bending to
smell at a withered sprig of orange flower, and to remember that
once--how long ago it seemed--Claire had wished to kiss that boy as a
Moorish woman might have kissed him. And then he saw a veiled figure,
that he seemed to know even in its deceitful robe, bend down to the boy.
And the vision faded. At another time he would hear the little tune that
had persecuted him in the night. And then he recalled the music of
Claire's dream, and the melody that charmed the snakes; and he
shuddered. For the miracle man had never been seen in Tetuan since the
day when Claire had watched him in the Soko. Nor could Renfrew ever find
out whither he had wandered.
* * * * *
Very long afterwards, however,--although this fact was never known to
Renfrew,--two Russian travellers in the Great Sahara desert witnessed
one evening, as they sat in their tent door, the performance of a savage
charmer of snakes who carried upon his body three serpents,--one
striped, one black, one white. And the younger of them noticed, and
remarked to the other, that the charmer wore half-way up the little
finger of his left hand a thin gold circle in which there was set a
magnificent black pearl.