This was before the war, and conditions were such that the tragedies
and comedies of private lives seemed still to have importance.
I had not seen my friend Frank Weymouth for some years before coming
across him and his wife that Christmas at the big hotel in Heliopolis.
He was always a sunny fellow with a spilt-wine look about him, which
not even a house-mastership at a Public School had been able to
overcome; his wife, whom I had only met twice before, surprised me a
little. I remembered a quiet, rather dark little person with a doubting
eye; but this was a very kitten of a woman, brimful of mischief and
chaff, and always on the go--reaction, no doubt, from the enforced
decorum of a house where she was foster-mother of forty boys, in
an atmosphere of being under glass and the scrutiny of intensive
propriety. In our Egyptian hotel, with its soft, clever Berberine
servants, its huge hall, palm-garden, and cosmopolitan guests, its
golf-course with little dark, scurrying Arab caddies and the desert at
its doors, Jessie Weymouth frolicked and rolled her large dark eyes,
scratched and caressed us with her little paws. Life had suddenly got
into her, and left its tail outside for her to chase. She dragged us
all along in her gay pursuit of it; Weymouth smilingly acquiesced in
her outrageous ‘goings-on.’ He knew, I suppose, that she was devoted to
him, and her bark no bite. His ‘term’ had been a hard one; he was in
a mood of lying back, physically run down, mentally flattened out. To
soak in idleness and the sun was all he seemed to care about.
I forget who first conceived the notion of our desert trip, but it
was Jessie Weymouth who fostered it. The Weymouths were not rich, and
a desert trip costs money. They, myself, and a certain Breconridge
couple had agreed to combine, when the Breconridges were suddenly
summoned home by their daughter’s illness. Jessie Weymouth danced with
disappointment. “I shall die if we don’t go now,” she cried. “We simply
must scare up somebody.”
We scared up the Radolins, an Austrian couple in our hotel whom we
had been meeting casually after dinner. He was a Count, in a bank at
Constantinople, and she, I think, the daughter of a Viennese painter.
They used to interest me from being so very much the antithesis of
the Weymouths. He was making the most of his holiday, dancing, playing
golf, riding; while she seemed extraordinarily listless, pale, and,
as it were, dragged along by her lively husband. I would notice her
lounging alone in the gorgeous hall, gazing apparently at nothing. I
could not make up my mind about her looks. Her figure was admirable,
so were her eyes--ice-green with dark lashes. But that air of tired
indifference seemed to spoil her face. I remember doubting whether it
were not going to spoil our trip. But Jessie Weymouth could not be
denied, and Radolin, we all admitted, was good company.
We started, then, from Mena House, like all desert excursionists, on
New Year’s Day. We had only a fortnight before us, for the Weymouths
were due back in England on the twentieth.
Our dragoman was a merry scoundrel by disposition and an Algerian
Bedouin by race. Besides him we had twelve Arabs, a Greek cook, seven
camels, four donkeys, and five tents. We took the usual route for the
Fayoum. I remember our start so well. In front, Jessie Weymouth on a
silver-grey donkey, and our scoundrel on his pet camel. Then Radolin,
Weymouth, and I on the other three donkeys, and Hélène Radolin perched
up, remote and swaying, on the other riding-camel. The pack-camels had
gone on ahead. All day we dawdled along, following the river towards
Samara, where we camped at a due distance from that evil-smelling
village. I had the middle tent, Weymouths to my right, Radolins to
my left. Everything was well done by our merry dragoman, and dinner,
thanks to him, Jessie Weymouth, and Radolin, a lively feast. Still,
these first three days, skirting cultivation, were disappointing. But
on the fourth we were well out on the lonely sands, and the desert air
had begun to go to our heads. That night we camped among bare hills
under a wonderful starry sky, cold and clear as crystal. Our scoundrel
surpassed himself at dinner; Jessie Weymouth and Radolin were madcaps;
Weymouth his old sunny self. Only Hélène Radolin preserved her languor;
not offensively, but as though she had lost the habit of gaiety. That
night I made up my mind, however, that she really was a beautiful
woman. The long days in the sun had given her colour, taken the tired
look out of her face, and at least twice during the evening I caught
Weymouth’s eyes fixed on her as if he, too, had made that discovery.
The pranks of Jessie Weymouth and Radolin reached their limit at
dinner, and they finished by rushing out into the night to the top of
a neighbouring hillock.
Sitting in my tent doorway, counting the stars, I was joined by our
dragoman. The fellow had been in England and knew about Western freedom
and the manners of our women.
“She certainly is a good one, Mrs. Weymut,” he said to me. “Mr. Weymut
a very quiet man. I think he will be tired of her flirts, but he never
say nothing--too b----y gentle. The Count he is a good one too, but the
Countess--ah! she made of ice! We get some fresh fruit to-morrow at the
Fayoum.”
He went on to his men, two hundred yards away among the camels.
It was wonderfully silent. The light from stars and a half-moon
powdered the sands; no wind at all, yet deliciously cold--the desert in
good mood; no influence quite so thrilling to pulses, yet so cooling to
fevers; no sound, no movement in all the night.
“Isn’t it heavenly? Good-night.”
Hélène Radolin was passing me in her fur. She went into her tent. I sat
on, smoking. And presently, outside the dining-tent, I saw Weymouth,
his head thrown back, drawing in deep breaths. By the light of the
lantern over the tent door he had a look as if inspired by a curious
happy wonder. Then he, too, went to his tent. Ten minutes later the
madcaps returned, Mrs. Weymouth in front, very quiet; her face, indeed,
wore a rather mortified expression, as if she had fallen a little in
her own estimation. They went into their tents, and I heard voices a
moment to left and right; then the stillness and the powdering light
enveloped all.
Next day, bored with donkey riding, I walked with the Arabs and saw
little of my companions. Weymouth and the Countess, I think, were on
the two riding-camels, Radolin and Mrs. Weymouth on their donkeys. We
came to the edge of the Fayoum about five o’clock. That camping-ground
was narrow. In tents, when jammed together, one can’t avoid hearing
at least the tone of neighbouring talk, and I was struck by a certain
acrimony in the Weymouth tent. Jessie Weymouth seemed complaining that
Frank hadn’t spoken to her all day.
“I suppose,” she said, “you didn’t like my running out with Countie
last night?”
Weymouth’s voice, quite good-humoured, answered:
“Oh, not a bit, why should I mind?”
By the ensuing silence I seemed to realise that Jessie Weymouth
was disappointed. Perhaps I hadn’t really a feeling of suspense
that evening, but, in reminiscence, it seems to me I had. Dinner
was certainly a disharmonic feast: little Mrs. Weymouth audacious
and rueful, Weymouth and the Countess subdued, Radolin artificial,
our scoundrel and myself had to make the running. That fellow was
needle-sharp, though not always correct in his conclusions.
“Mrs. Weymut got a fly in her little eye,” he said to me as I was
turning in. “I make it all right to-morrow. I get a dancer at
Sennourès. Oho, she is a good one! She make the married couples ’appy.
We get some fresh eggs too.”
Severe silence in the tents to right and left that night.
A whole day’s travelling through the crops of the Fayoum brought
us to the camping-ground outside Sennourès, among a grove of
palm-trees--charming spot, but lacking the clear, cold spirituality of
the desert night.
The dancer was certainly ‘a good one.’ What a baggage! All lithe,
supple enticement, and jangle of shivering beads! The excitement of the
Arabs, the shocked, goggling eyes of Jessie Weymouth--quite a little
Puritan when it came to the point--the laughter of our scoundrel,
Hélène Radolin’s aloofness, which kept even that daughter of Egypt in
her place, were what impressed me during the performance.
Towards the end the Egyptian made a dead set at Weymouth, and, getting
nothing out of him except his smile, became quite cross. Leaning down
to our scoundrel and slinking her eyes round at the Countess, she
murmured something malicious. Our laughing scoundrel patted her, and
we broke up. In ten minutes our camp was empty--dancer, Arabs, all had
gone off to the village. I went out and stood in darkness among the
palm-trees, listening to the shivering of their leaves.
In the dining-tent Radolin was playing the guitar--a soothing sound
after the vibrant Arab music. Presently I saw Weymouth come out. He
stood under the lamp at the entrance, looking back; his face was fully
lighted for me, but invisible, I think, to those within. I can still
see the look on it. Adoration incarnate!
‘Hallo!’ I thought, ‘what’s this?’ And just then Hélène Radolin came
out too. She passed him quietly; he did not attempt to speak or
follow; but she saw. Oh, yes, she saw; then vanished into her tent.
And Weymouth stood, rooted, as if struck by lightning, while, on and
on, behind him rose the thrum of that guitar and all around us the
shivering of the palm-leaves in a gusty breeze.
Quite the custom, I believe, in these days to laugh at this sort of
thing--at such sudden leaps of an irresponsible force; to suggest that
they are old-fashioned, overrated--literary, in fact. The equality of
the sexes--they say--the tendency of women towards brains and trousers,
have diminished Venus; and yet, I fancy what happened to my friend
Weymouth may still happen to young gentlemen who talk as if love had no
fevers and no proprietary instincts; as if, when you burn for a woman,
you are willing to leave her to another, or share her with him without
fuss. Of course there are men who have no blood in their veins; but
my friend Weymouth unfortunately had--not for nothing was the sunny,
spilt-wine look about his hair and cheeks and dark-blue eyes.
For the rest of our desert trip the situation hopelessly promoted that
adoration. Little Jessie Weymouth certainly did her best to help. She
was the only one of us blind to what had happened. Her perceptions, you
see, were blunted by the life of strenuous duty which she and Weymouth
led in term time, and by the customary exhaustion of her husband
during the holidays. She could not imagine him otherwise than sober.
But now--if ever a man were drunk! The thing became so patent that it
was quite painful to see her continued blindness. Not till sunset of
the second day, with the Fayoum behind us, in our high camp on the
desert’s edge, did she appreciate tragedy. _Those two_ were sitting
in camp-chairs close together, watching the sun go down. The Arabs,
presented with a ram to soothe their grief at abandoning the joys of
the Fayoum, were noisily preparing the animal to the idea of being
eaten. Our scoundrel and Radolin were absent; I was sketching; Jessie
Weymouth lying down in her tent. Those two were alone--their faces
turned towards each other, their hands, perhaps, touching. A strange
violet was in the light over the bare hills; how much they saw of it I
know not, nor what they were saying to each other, when Jessie Weymouth
came out of her tent, stretching and yawning, and, like the kitten
she was, went stealing up behind, to startle them. Three yards away,
unseen, unheard, I saw her stop. Her lips opened, her eyes went wide
with amazement. Suddenly she covered them with her hands, turned round,
and stole back into her tent.
Five minutes later out she came again, with bright, hard spots of
colour in her cheeks. I saw her run up to them, her feverish attempts
at gaiety; and I saw, too, that to them she simply did not exist. We
none of us existed for them. They had found a world of their own, and
we were shadows in the unreal world which they had left. You know the
pink-flowered daphne, the scent of whose blossoms is very sweet, heavy,
and slightly poisonous; sniff it too much and a kind of feverish fire
will seize you. Those two had sniffed the daphne!
Walls have a singular value for civilised beings. In my thin tent
between the thin tents of those two couples, prevented by lack of walls
from any outlet to their feelings, I seemed to hear the smothered
reproaches, the smothered longings. It was the silence of those two
suddenly stricken lovers that was so impressive. I, literally, did not
dare to speak to Weymouth while we were all mixed up like that. This
English schoolmaster had lost, as if by magic, all power of seeing
himself as others saw him. Not that those two ‘carried on’--nothing
so normal; they just seemed to have stepped into quiet oblivion of
everything but each other.
Even our scoundrel was puzzled. “In my house, when my wife behave bad,
I beat her,” he said to me; “when I behave bad she scratch my face.”
But there it was--we had no walls; Hélène Radolin could not be beaten,
Weymouth could not have his face scratched--most awkward.
Things come to an end, and I never breathed more freely than when Mena
House delivered us from that frightful close companionship.
As if by common consent, we dined at separate tables. After dinner I
said to Weymouth:
“Come up and see the Sphinx by moonlight.”
He came, still in his dream. We reached the Sphinx in silence, and sat
down over against her on the sand. At last I said:
“What are you going to do now, old man?”
“I can’t leave her.” It was as if we had discussed the thing a dozen
times already.
“But you have to be back on the twentieth?”
“I know.”
“My dear fellow, it’s ruination. And Jessie?”
“She must do what she likes.”
“This is madness, Frank!”
“Perhaps. I can’t go; that’s all.”
“What about _her_?”
“I don’t know. I only know that where she goes I must.”
I just sat staring at the blunt shadow of the Sphinx’s broken profile
on the moonlit sand. The strange, actionless, desert love-dream was at
an end! Something definite--horrible, perhaps--must happen now! And I
stammered out:
“For God’s sake, old boy, think of your wife, your work, yourself--be
reasonable! It isn’t worth it, really!”
“Perhaps not. This has nothing to do with reason.”
From a master at an English Public School the remark appeared to me
fantastic. And, suddenly, he got up, as if he had been bitten. He
was realising suddenly the difference that walls make. His face had
a tortured look. The woman he loved, walled up with the man she had
married! Behind us the desert, hundreds of miles of clean, savage
sand, and in it we humans--tame and spiritual! Before us walls, and we
humans--savage, carnal again! Queer! I doubt if he saw the irony; but
he left me sitting there and went hurrying back to the hotel.
I stayed on a little with the riddle of the Ages, feeling it simple
compared with this riddle of the moment. Then I followed him down.
Would it resolve itself in terms of l. s. d.? After all, these four
people had to live--could they afford to play fast and loose with the
realities? Hélène Radolin had no money; Weymouth his mastership and a
few hundreds saved; Jessie Weymouth a retired Colonel for a father;
Radolin his banking partnership.
A night of walls had its effect. Radolin took his wife back to
Heliopolis next day. The Weymouths remained at Mena House; in three
days they were due to sail.
I well remember thinking: ‘There, you see, it doesn’t do to exaggerate.
This was a desert mirage and will pass like one. People are not
struck by lightning!’ But in a mood of morbid curiosity I went out to
Heliopolis.
In the tramcar on the way I felt a sort of disappointment--Hélène
Radolin was a Roman Catholic, Frank Weymouth an English gentleman. The
two facts put a stopper on what I wanted stopped. Yet we all have a
sneaking love for the romantic, or--shall we say?--dramatic.
Well! The Radolins were gone. They had started that morning for
Constantinople. In the Oriental hall where all this had begun I sat,
browsing over my Turkish coffee, seeing again my friend Weymouth,
languid and inert; his little wife’s flirtatious liveliness; Radolin so
debonair; Hélène Radolin, silent, her ice-green eyes slightly reddened
in the lids as if she had been crying. The white-garbed Berberines
slipped by; Greek gentlemen entertained their dubious ladies; Germans
raised a guttural racket; the orchestra twanged out the latest tango.
Nothing was changed but those figures of my vision. And suddenly
Weymouth materialised--standing as if lost, just where the lobby opened
into the hall. From his face it was clear to me that he knew the
Radolins were gone; before I could join him he went out hastily. I am
sorry now that I did not follow.
That evening at Mena House I was just beginning to undress when Jessie
Weymouth tapped on my door.
“Have you seen Frank?”