giving himself up to one of his inconsiderate silences--silences which,
far into the evening, he will end by rising and lurching into the dusk,
leaving you a coin with which to pay his shot, as if you were his valet.
Out of those silences something may always come; but any show of
curiosity snaps the time-lock into place. If you question too airily,
you are sure to have to wait until the next day’s sun has renewed all
things. And, with the next day’s sun, Hoyting may be anywhere.
He poured out the vermouth and screwed his lips impatiently. “Yes, I’ve
seen the thing tried--honestly and fervently tried. Did you ever know a
girl named Marriott--Eva Marriott--or a man named Dallas?”
“I’ve known two or three men named Dallas.”
“Was any one of them English?”
“One of them was.”
“What was he like?”
“A red-haired bruiser with a game leg that he got from being thrown in
the hunting-field. Or so he said.”
“Big, then?”
“Six feet three, and bulky in proportion.”
“That is not the man. And you never knew the girl?”
“Never. And I am safe, in any case,” I reminded him.
“Oh--yes. Only I shouldn’t like to ticket them. But since you don’t know
either of them”--Hoyting’s gesture shed the pair down the windy ways of
time.
“She was young, very young; and he had the hopeless un-selfconsciousness
of the pagan. ‘Pagan’ is a stupid word to use; but you know what I
mean.”
Hoyting knitted his brows and jerked his chin towards me inquiringly. I
didn’t know, precisely, but I wasn’t going to delay him over a
definition. “Yes.” I spoke very quietly.
“Well, then, let it go at that. He knew his way about among his
sensations, too, and was as serious about them as if they had been his
morals. Perhaps they were. I don’t mean he was a rotter--though, again,
perhaps he was--but that he couldn’t see why taking a cold bath when you
needed it wasn’t as virtuous as selling all you had and giving to the
poor. He hadn’t any brains, I think; neither had she--not twopence worth
between them. If they had been ants, the community would have executed
them. And, of course, they had to knock up against each other. She was
chaperoned by an intellectual aunt who expected to write a book about
her experiences in those dangerous and exotic lands where Cook has to
buy your railway ticket for you. Nothing could persuade the aunt that
she wasn’t a sort of Marco Polo. She had no brains, either: she was all
intellect. They had got to Biskra, and the aunt was filling note-books.
You can imagine how much brain she had if she was taken in by Biskra. I
won’t stop to explain why I was there myself. You can be sure it was by
no fault of my own.”
“My dear Hoyting,” I ventured, “it’s unworthy of you to apologize.”
“I wasn’t apologizing. I only meant that these people and their kind had
nothing to do with me. I ran into them by accident--as you might run
into sticking-plaster by accident. The result was much the same. I was
caught by the leg in that painted and powdered and generally
meretricious town. For certain reasons, I had to be there a fortnight.
And the woman stalked me--_me_! Some one had told her that I had been in
Persia. She wanted to know all about Persia. Can you imagine me sitting
in the garden of the Palace Hotel answering questions about Persia? I
tried to make it clear to her that she couldn’t go to Persia. I didn’t
think her fit to go anywhere; but I thought she would do less harm in
Biskra than she would anywhere else. Biskra, if she had only known it,
was just her size. I never put her wise; why should I? My chief object
was to keep her in Biskra the rest of her life, so that I should never
have to see her again.”
“What was she like?”
“Haven’t I just told you?”
“Not wholly. She might have been a nice woman or a harpy.”
“She was a very curious person,” Hoyting mused. “I had some respect for
her, you know. Apparently she had wanted, all her life, to travel in
strange places, and had never been able to stir from her ancestral
homestead. Recently she had inherited a lot of money and a niece to
chaperone; and she had chucked all the photographs and books that she
had been feeding her poor lean soul on, and started out, dragging the
niece with her. She was as respectable as even a woman of her
antecedents could possibly be; but she had no prejudices. That was the
one thing that distinguished her from any other fussy old maid. It made
her rather pathetic. She had gradually, in the long, busy, baffled
years, managed to discard every tradition she had. She was sceptical of
everything that her native community held for gospel. She didn’t believe
in revealed religion, or the Ten Commandments, or the sacredness of the
marriage tie, or the superiority of the female sex, or any of the things
she must have been supposed at home to stand for. She had sat perfectly
still in her own village for fifty years, and her only recreation had
been to burst silently, one by one, her intellectual bonds. She wasn’t
in the least revolutionary; she didn’t want to preach or subvert. She
only wanted to see things with an unprejudiced eye. She might have been
magnificent if she had had youth or strength or beauty; but she had none
of those. Her body went back on her mind at every turn. She was afraid
of every beast that walks, from camels to spiders; she was dependent on
a whole set of special medicaments that had to be renewed every now and
then from America--she couldn’t have conceived of using a foreign
substitute, even British. She kept the vocabulary of her prejudices,
too, though she dispensed with the prejudices. I am sure, for example,
she hadn’t the slightest objection to the Ouled Naïls, but she always
referred to them as ‘fallen women.’ She would have been amusing if she
hadn’t been such a bore. In retrospect, and safe from her, I do find her
amusing. She was naïve to the last degree: any shifty Arab could take
her in. She bought things in the bazaars that simply smelled of
Birmingham. But not the shiftiest Arab of the lot, even if he had once
in a way told her the truth, could have shocked her. And she wasn’t
morbid, you understand. She wasn’t hunting horrors; she was only hunting
something different from all the things she had been fed up with.
Everything was fish that came to her net--everything. But she was about
as well equipped as a baby, to write a book. Now do you know what she
was like? She had sandy hair, and a blue veil that hung crooked over it,
and always wore dirt-colored clothes, and always had a clean
handkerchief in her left hand.”
“I see perfectly,” I replied. “What about the niece?”
“Oh, the niece? Well, little Eva Marriott had all the prejudices her
aunt hadn’t. Morally speaking, she went round in her aunt’s discarded
clothes. But she was exquisitely pretty--even I could see that. I’m no
judge of female beauty--I have lost all my standards--but I could see
that her coloring was exceedingly satisfactory. She had red hair, and a
white skin, and sad green eyes, and a wonderful veil of sweetness over
all. She held herself badly, like all American girls, but you could have
written Chinese poetry to her head and neck. She was about twenty, I
believe, and by the time the aunt clutched me in the hotel garden young
Eva and young Dallas were head over heels in love with each other.”
Hoyting refilled his glass, and turned his head slowly from side to side
as if to feel the wind move across his skin.
“A civilized love-affair is the devil. It doesn’t even interest me. It’s
like trying to wrestle with stays on: a fine exhibition of endurance, no
doubt, but certainly not good wrestling--and most certainly not
beautiful to the onlooker. Oh, the heroine of this tale is the aunt, if
you like. I don’t think even she had any imagination; but a complete
absence of prejudice is almost as good. She liked Dallas no end--I could
see that out of the tail of my eye. They didn’t grow his kind in her
little Colonial village. He was as exotic, from her point of view, as a
palm-tree--and, from mine, no more interesting.”
“Who was interesting, if none of them was?” I asked. Hoyting does not
deal in the platitudinous human, and I didn’t believe for a moment that
he was asking me to assist at any pious dissection of a spinster’s
_wanderlust_.
“None of them was; but the combination of the two young things was
irresistible. Puritan and pagan have met often enough; but never were
two such pure and unprotected specimens of their different types. She
had been bred in the kind of atmosphere that I’d forgotten about. It
never was mine, even when I was a kid, but I’d always heard of it. ‘Eva
reads a great deal--a great deal. I have given up books for life,’ Miss
Marriott said to me once. A perfectly decent thing to do if you don’t
talk about it!--and then gaze like a love-sick owl at the filthy little
‘village nègre’ across the way. You know what ‘villages nègres’ are in
French colonial towns--so new that it’s a wonder they can be so dirty.
The woman was a terrible bore!”
“I didn’t know you were ever terribly bored by the same person more than
once.” Indeed, no one has ever had less right than Hoyting to pose as a
social martyr.
“Um--no. But I was in Biskra because I had to be--as I explained. I had
definite business there. I was bound to be bored anyhow, and I’d rather
be bored sitting still in a hotel garden than riding round on a mule to
see what the avaricious Arab has prepared for people like Miss
Marriott. Of course, sitting still let me in for a certain amount of
Miss Marriott, but it was otherwise comfortable.”
“I didn’t know you ever had business anywhere.”
“I seldom do. But I had then. It was not wholly my own business, so I
won’t go into it.”
Hoyting frowned and was silent for a moment. I had naturally no
intention of questioning him further; but it was the first hint I had
ever had of his doing anything save what the instant suggested. Was it
possible that even he was at the mercy of past and future, like the rest
of us? I put the thought aside, for I have got no end of mental luxury,
first and last, out of the Everlasting Now that is Hoyting.
“She let me understand that her young people were engaged. She gave it
to me like a piece of gossip, as if it weren’t her affair. I hadn’t seen
much of young Eva, and scarcely more of young Dallas, but I was curious
to know if the aunt approved. It seemed to me that in her place--though
I don’t pretend to say I could put myself there very successfully--I
shouldn’t. I said something. ‘Oh, it’s Eva’s affair,’ she answered.
‘In----’ (she named their State) ‘a girl’s of age at eighteen.’
“‘My dear Miss Marriott,’ I said, ‘a State in which a girl is of age at
eighteen doesn’t exist north of Cancer or south of Capricorn. I don’t
know much about the laws of my precious country, but I do know something
about climate.’
“‘I think he’s fascinating.’ That is all I could get out of her. Not
that I tried very hard to get anything out of her. It would have been
like going a-fishing in a provincial aquarium.
“Now, mind you”--Hoyting frowned again, then shrugged his great
shoulders as if to reassure himself that the burden was gone from
them--“I don’t say the chap wasn’t fascinating. He had bowled over Eva
Marriott, anyhow. Their love-affair had grown under that sun like the
perfect date-palm in the perfect oasis. It looked as if they’d hunt up
their respective consuls and be married before they left Biskra. But
they didn’t. At least, not before I left Biskra, and I fancy not since.
I am sure not since. He wasn’t fit to marry any one.”
“You said he wasn’t--not past doubt, at least--a rotter.”
“‘Rotter’ has nothing to do with him. You might as well call him
something in Coptic.”
Hoyting frowned again. Then he turned suddenly. “Let’s not talk about
it. I don’t know why I started out to tell you, anyhow. It’s none of
your business or mine. Therefore it doesn’t interest us. Only, you
mentioned love.... Let me tell you about the only time I ever tried
pig-sticking. It was a few months ago, and I must have looked like one
afflicted of God.”
“I’ll hear that later.” I was firm. “Tell me more about these people. I
shall never see them.”
“No, I dare say not. But it isn’t our business, all the same.”
“Probably I shouldn’t agree with you,” I went on. “Until you prove it to
me I sha’n’t believe you know the sacred terror when you see it.”
“‘The sacred terror.’ Um.... Probably, as you say, you won’t agree with
me. But what does it matter? I know what I know.” He sealed his lips for
a moment, and I was afraid I hadn’t overcome his reluctance. But
presently I knew that I had. Hoyting narrowed his eyes until they were
almost shut. Head thrown back, he began to talk.
“I don’t pretend, for a moment, to understand young Dallas. He had
obviously been brought up like every one else, and he certainly had no
theories. I think he just wanted--whatever he wanted at the moment.
Whether it was something to eat, or something to look at, or something
to go out and do, or something to possess. He was a little more
complicated than a faun, but he was more like a faun than like anything
else that has ever had human shape.”
“Furry ears? Donatello? All that sort of thing?”
Hoyting opened his puzzled eyes. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Oh, of course, you never read novels. Go on.”
“If there has ever been a novel about a faun, you can be sure it had
nothing to do with Dallas. I only meant that he seemed to have really no
inhibitions. He tried for what he wanted, and if such brawn and brain as
he had didn’t give it to him, he lay down placidly in the shade, as it
were, and licked his wounds and waited until he wanted something else.
Then he would try for that. He wouldn’t have been likely to raise his
voice unduly or fail to dress for dinner, or blaspheme before ladies;
but if he had thought any of those little things would give him real
pleasure, he’d have done it. He was just a mass of desires and the means
to satisfy them. I said he had no brains. He hadn’t, I think; but he had
a very keen knowledge of what you might call physical arithmetic. He
could calculate his sensations, like lightning, to the fifth place of
decimals. If he wanted a glass of water badly, and he had to go a
distance to get it, he knew like a shot whether the joy of the glass of
water totted up to more or less than the annoyance of going that
distance. And he went, or didn’t, quite regardless of the social
situation at the moment. Do you see what I mean?”
“Quite. But why did you say he wasn’t a rotter?”
“I don’t know.” Hoyting answered very simply. “But there was something
exhilarating in his sweetness, his simplicity, his health, his gayety.
He didn’t even seem precisely selfish. He simply carried on the business
of his own organism as piously and efficiently as if it had been a model
orphanage. I didn’t like either of them--but I saw trouble ahead, in
spite of Miss Marriott’s optimism. And the trouble came.
“You see, he had fallen in love with Eva Marriott. His desires were
concentrated upon her. And she was in love with him. I think she thought
her soul was in love with him--though how a soul can be in love with a
man passes my comprehension. If we have souls, I’m sure they don’t mess
about like that. Anyhow, the two had so little in common,
temperamentally, that it must have been what you call the ‘sacred
terror.’ You couldn’t account for it except by the unforeknowable
thunderbolt. Her face, I suppose, had focussed his desires; he would
never be satisfied until he had kissed it into weariness. She--oh, I
suppose he stood to her for all kinds of things she had never so much as
laid her fingers on. Probably in her village none of the worthy male
souls had had such exteriors. _A fortiori_, the soul inside his exterior
must be ten times worthier than they. I may be wrong, but that’s the way
I figured it out. The aunt loved him for his looks and his way of
getting things. It was extraordinarily interesting to her to find a man
who owned up to his physical tastes. She had been used to seeing all
desires either concealed or apologized for.
“If Dallas had had any brains, I think he could have taught Eva Marriott
his own hedonism. She was a blank page, in spite of those austere
Puritan head-lines; and I fancy anything that sounded theoretical could
have got her for a disciple in no time. But Dallas couldn’t explain
anything; he could only manifest himself. And she was taken by that
supple exhibition. They wanted each other--that was what it came to. Why
reason about it any more? You can take my word for it that they did. And
I suppose he must have seemed to her very much her own kind when all
North Africa was jostling them in the streets. But the aunt! No, I never
supposed that her sort existed. It was too futile. I dare say her sort
doesn’t really exist--she was probably a ‘sport.’ But she was there in
the flesh, anyhow.
“And then she decided that she wanted to go to Touggourt. Some women in
the hotel had been, and that started her off. She wouldn’t go alone with
Eva, though. She found the natives much too interesting to be
trustworthy. Eva wouldn’t go without Dallas--not she! Miss Marriott
therefore said Dallas might go. I advised her to give it up; especially
as she wouldn’t go by _diligence_. She wanted a little caravan of her
own--camels, and the rest. It shocked me to think of Miss Marriott on a
camel; it somehow seemed disrespectful both to the camel and to her. Let
Dallas and Eva go to Touggourt on their honeymoon if they wanted to, but
why drag two young things, who had to be chaperoned, out into the
desert? They would either be dreadfully bored or frightfully unhappy.
Hotel life and the distractions of Biskra--the day all chopped up into
little amusements--were much better for them. But the aunt wouldn’t see
it. She thought it would be romantic. What my senses told me wasn’t her
business. I only gave her the results in a little brief advice.
“‘They are very much in love,’ she remarked. ‘I should like to see them
in the desert.’
“The retort was easy enough, but I couldn’t make it. I couldn’t even
tell her just why I thought they would be very unhappy in the desert. If
she wanted to sacrifice them to her lack of prejudices, I couldn’t stop
her without being rude. I’m not sure I could have stopped her even then.
She was a most extraordinary creature. I knew enough about the desert to
know she’d be damned sorry, some time, that she had done it--that is, if
she had a grain of the human aunt left in her--but my lips were sealed.
After all, from any serious point of view, young Dallas and young Eva
were perfectly unimportant. And the relief of getting them all out of
Biskra would be very great.
“Well--they went. Dallas made their arrangements for them. They were so
busy for two days beforehand that I hardly saw them. But I did see them
start. It came over me then, like a presentiment, that it was all wrong.
It isn’t safe to have no more prejudices than Miss Marriott. She ought
to have seen that God never meant her to go anywhere on a camel; that He
never even meant her to go to the places that camels take you to.
Anything so silly as that had to come to grief. It made me sick; and I
was glad to see the last of Miss Marriott’s blue veil. She was so
exalted that she hardly spoke to me; she was surer than ever that she
was Marco Polo. Miss Marriott was capable of anything; but I was a
little puzzled by Dallas’s acquiescence. If you could have seen Miss
Marriott hunched up in an _attatouch_! I was sure that he would much
rather have stayed respectably behind and made love to Eva in Biskra. I
know he wanted to marry her on the spot; and I gathered that she
wouldn’t. There are women--girls, anyhow--who love being engaged. It’s
like--well, never mind what it’s like. They don’t analyze; they merely
know it’s delightful. I fancy most men don’t find it delightful, and
Dallas was certainly the last man in the world to find it so. The fact
that he did go to Touggourt with no trouble showed me at least that he
wasn’t liking Biskra, and that he was probably in a state of nerves. The
rate of progress of a Saharan camel wasn’t going to improve his nerves;
neither was Touggourt, or any other place where he didn’t have to dress
for dinner--where the physical habits of the European world couldn’t be
reproduced. I’ve seen men in that condition before, plenty of times. We
all have. But I never saw one in that condition going to Touggourt, on a
camel, with Miss Marriott.”
Hoyting spoke almost with bitterness. I could have fancied that in his
heart of hearts he blamed young Dallas for everything--whatever it
was--that had happened. In spite of his cynical flings at the aunt, it
was clear that he had a particular respect for her. He couldn’t have
been more irritated by her follies if he had been really fond of her.
The evening was wearing on to night--François was dropping with sleep
somewhere behind us. I summoned him, and had with him a brief whispered
colloquy while Hoyting, his back turned to us, snuffed up the wind as
thirstily as if it had been a love-philtre. I didn’t know how long the
tale might last, and I wanted to forestall any interruption by a poor
creature who had to work and therefore had to sleep. Our table was
outside in the garden, and from the garden a little path led, by way of
a gate in the scrubby hedge, to the sea-strand. I paid for the vermouth
that stood on the table, and bade François lock up the café behind us
and leave us to our talk. A few sibilant whispers arranged it, and
François had disappeared before Hoyting had got his fill of the wind.
Whether he knew what had been accomplished behind his back, I could not
tell. Hoyting never troubles himself with details. The world more or
less swings into his stride, I’ve noticed. Finally he turned to me and
looked me straight in the eyes.
“Never mind what I thought.... Let’s get ahead with this. I’ve a notion
I shall sleep to-night, and sleep’s a good thing. Um.”
You understand that I can’t report Hoyting verbatim. He has no
structure. But I’ve learned to remember the gist of what he says, and
more or less in his own words. I wish I could remember his every phrase,
for my own equivalents are poor stuff. But Hoyting wouldn’t help you
reproduce him if he could. He talks obstinately into the void. If he
ever saw himself recorded, he’d never speak again. Yet the best I have
to give is Hoyting’s. You’ll pardon my way of dealing with him, I hope.
“Never mind me.” It was with some such phrase that he returned to the
tale. “I put in ten days more in Biskra. I had to. Never Biskra again
for me! Odd, isn’t it, how you hate any place where you’ve ever had to
be?--even though, if you like to look at it in that way, you’ve always
got to be somewhere or other until you die. Anyhow, in about eight days,
Miss Marriott and her niece returned to the hotel. They came suddenly
into the dining-room one night, and I knew that if they had been to
Touggourt at all, they must have come back by _diligence_. Their kind of
camel--for even Miss Marriott had had the wit to stop short of a
_mehari_--couldn’t have done the round trip under a fortnight. Dallas
wasn’t with them; and, somehow, from the moment I saw them come in, I
knew he wasn’t even in Biskra. My first thought was that I had been
plain cheated. I had expected to be off well before they returned, and
if I ever saw Marco Polo again, it wouldn’t be my fault.”
“Come, Hoyting, you liked her!”
“I didn’t like her. I don’t like people I run across in that way--women,
especially. I should be a nervous ghost by this time if I had stopped to
like people. Fancy all one’s chance encounters turning into pulls on
one’s affection--like the ropes the Lilliputians tied round Gulliver. If
I had been Gulliver, I should have gone mad. I’d rather be tied with one
stout steel cable than with a million threads. Liked her! Ugh!”
“Very well: you didn’t like her. What did she do?”
“She did nothing--except crumple her handkerchief hard in her left hand.
She spoke to me with a kind of gasp. The girl was white as a Carrara
cliff. All her color had gone into her hair: that flamed out in the most
wicked way, as if every curl had been a licking tongue of fire. After
dinner, Miss Marriott indicated that she would like to talk to me. I
responded, for evidently my purgatory wasn’t yet over. I must have
sinned pretty often to have had that Biskra sojourn so prolonged.