She hadn’t even answered my polite questions. I might have been speaking
to a wax-work. It is uncanny to go on talking to a person who pays no
attention--who doesn’t even smirk; and after five minutes I stopped. I
was glad to have her go away. I learned from Miss Marriott that they had
reached Touggourt on their camels, and that the next morning she and her
niece had taken the _diligence_ back. Dallas had stayed behind and said
he was going to Guerrara--perhaps on to Ghardaïa. She didn’t know when
he would return.
“‘Then the desert wasn’t so romantic as you thought it would be--if your
little trip went to smash?’
“She didn’t answer straight, only said: ‘I’m not broken in to camels
yet, I find. I was really ill when we got to Touggourt.’
“Poor thing! She did look a beastly color. I hoped she had had all her
American medicines in her _attatouch_. I was sure she had needed them.
“‘Did your niece mind it?’
“‘Oh, Eva soon learned. She wasn’t ill, anyhow.’
“‘Very sporting of her! So Dallas wanted to go on, and as you weren’t up
to it, you had to bring your niece back? It’s a pity they weren’t
married before you started.’
“I was being merely flippant, and you can imagine that I was surprised
when she laid her foolish-virgin claw on my arm and exclaimed tearfully:
‘Oh, it is! it is!’
“‘Do you mean it’s off, and that’s why Dallas has gone to Guerrara? Did
the desert finish them?’
“Miss Marriott mopped her eyes with the crumpled handkerchief, and
pulled herself together.
“‘I suppose it did. I shouldn’t have taken them. But Eva is a little
fool.’ Her tone was not untender.
“‘She looks as if she were paying for it, then. Isn’t she ill?’
“‘Eva’s never ill. She was gloriously well when we reached Touggourt.’
“‘And Dallas?’
“Miss Marriott looked back across the garden at the lighted windows of
the hotel. Then she spoke, as it seemed to me, irrelevantly.
“‘I wish you would take me to one of those Ouled Naïl places.’
“‘And Eva?’ I mocked.
“‘Certainly not Eva. She’s gone to bed.’
“I paused a moment. I didn’t want to insult the woman; but for pure
maniacal cheek!
“‘I’m sorry to be disobliging, Miss Marriott, but I certainly won’t. Let
me tell you something: it’s either a silly make-believe and not worth
paying for, or it’s the real thing, and in that case you’ve no business
there. I dare say one of your pet native guides will take you, but I
won’t.’
“‘Have you prejudices, then?’
“‘A few.’
“‘Ah, I have none.’
“I had heard her affirm that many times, but never before in the tone of
despair. I turned and looked at her.
“‘What _is_ up, Miss Marriott?’
“A mesh of her sandy hair was straying across her forehead. She pushed
it back, and still it wouldn’t stay. Finally she drew out a hairpin and
stuck it through the lock like a skewer. When she had succeeded in
making herself uglier than ever, she gazed up at me, with her pale,
stupid eyes.
“‘I suppose you think it’s very queer of me. But I thought perhaps it
would help me to understand.’
“‘Understand what?’
“‘Eva and Herbert Dallas. There are two points of view there, you see.
They seem to me to have quarrelled over nothing. That sort of thing is
very strange to me. I have never been in love. They are, you
know--immensely. I thought I should like to watch them. And they’ve come
to grief, and talking to Eva does no good.’
“‘What did you expect the Ouled Naïls would do for you?’
“‘I thought,’ the flat little voice of this extraordinary creature went
on, ‘that if they were very disgusting, I might work myself up to be
more tactful with Eva. I have been very tactless. But of course nothing
does disgust me.’ She sighed. ‘To tell the truth, I’m very tired of her.
I quite hated her in the _diligence_.’
“‘What did happen out there?’ I really wanted to know.
“The first and last gleam of humor I ever detected in Marco Polo came
into her eyes then. ‘I don’t think I can tell you--though I haven’t any
prejudices. I’m just not used to talking about such things. My words
would probably shock you.’
“‘No one could shock me.’
“‘Oh yes, _I_ could!’ And she got up and trailed into the hotel, her
dust-colored skirt hanging somehow like an Englishwoman’s.
“I sat there for some time, wondering. As far as I could make it out,
young Eva and young Dallas had quarrelled about the Ouled Naïls. Yet
they were much too directly and personally in love with each other to
let sociology separate them. Still, Marco Polo was _capable de tout_.
She might have got them going some evening under the desert moon. What a
fool! I made nothing of it, except that there must have been a quarrel,
or Dallas wouldn’t have gone on by himself to Guerrara. I don’t know how
long I sat there in the sweet air. I know that, at one moment, a white
figure suddenly stood before me. It was Eva Marriott, and she looked,
all in white, with her white face and her tortured, flaming hair, like a
ghost that has just begun to burn in hell. I pulled out a chair for
her, and she sat down. It was certainly her turn to speak, so I waited
for her.
“She said nothing for a long time. Then she looked at me.
“‘Do you like my aunt?’
“‘Very much. Why?’
“‘I don’t. I think she’s dreadful.’
“‘Well, my child, does it really matter?’
“‘It matters, since she’s all I’ve got in the world.’
“‘What about Dallas?’
“‘Oh, I mustn’t have him--I mustn’t.’ Not ‘can’t’ or ‘won’t,’ you
notice, but ‘mustn’t.’
“‘Why not?’
“‘Didn’t Aunt Cordelia tell you? She came out here with you after
dinner.’
“‘She did not. She said only that you and your fiancé had quarrelled. I
should have known that anyhow, from the fact that you came back without
him.’
“‘Well, I can’t tell you.’
“‘Apparently no one can. But why you both want to talk to me about
something you can’t tell me, puzzles me a good deal.’
“‘Did Aunt Cordelia say nothing else?’
“‘Nothing except that she didn’t like camels. I could have told her that
before, but she wouldn’t listen to me.’
“‘Yes; she was awfully ill before we got to Touggourt.’ The girl spoke
listlessly.
“I had an indiscreet impulse, which I followed. ‘She wanted me to take
her to see the Ouled Naïls dance. I wouldn’t.’
“‘Oh, the dreadful, dreadful creature!’ Eva Marriott wailed.
“‘I don’t believe she’s dreadful, you know, for a moment. Every one
goes. I’d have taken her like a shot if the notion hadn’t bored me so.’
“‘It would be more to the point,’ Eva Marriott said suddenly, ‘if you’d
take me.’
“‘So I gathered from your aunt--though she didn’t tell me why, any more
than you do. But how can you call her dreadful, after what you’ve just
said?’
“‘She _is_ dreadful. She is.’
“‘She strikes me as being an unusually nice woman.’ I don’t know why I
flung compliments at Marco Polo’s back. Probably because it didn’t seem
wise to sow dissension between the two.
“‘Do you think any one can change?’
“‘Do you mean your aunt? I shouldn’t want her to.’
“‘No, I mean myself.’
“‘Oh, I shouldn’t want you to, either.’
“I don’t know where those silly answers of mine came from. I felt like a
heavy fool making them. A trained nurse read me a lot of Tauchnitz trash
in a hospital once. Perhaps my faithless memory was doing it for me. In
any case, that girl wasn’t real. You _couldn’t_ talk to her. If she
hadn’t been so deadly white, I’d have turned my back on her.
“‘But I want to. I want to change, for Herbert. He doesn’t like me the
way I am.’
“‘More probably you don’t like him the way he is.’
“‘Oh, I don’t, I don’t! And yet I do. Don’t you see?’ She broke down and
cried hard. Fortunately there was no one else in that corner of the
garden. ‘I don’t see’--she got her words out between sobs--‘who brought
him up. He’s been to Eton and Oxford like any one else. Are all men like
that? No, they aren’t, for I’ve known men before--nice ones.’
“‘Then you did discuss sociology, you little fools!’
“‘We never discussed anything, he and I. Aunt Cordelia did all the
discussing--afterwards.’
“‘Do you mean that’--I fished about for a word--‘he insulted you’?
“‘He was perfectly lovely to me. But of course I went away.’ Lucid,
wasn’t it? But I knew that she wouldn’t have defined over-insistent
love-making as ‘lovely,’ whatever she might have felt about it. Dallas,
in the sandy distance, suddenly grew interesting to me. I tried another
lead.
“‘If you don’t want to marry him, you’ve only to say so.’
“The fire stole down into her face again for an instant, but it couldn’t
strive against that whiteness.
“‘I want dreadfully to marry him! If he would only say the right things,
I would. But he won’t.’
“‘Have you given him a chance?’
“‘He didn’t wait for it. So he can’t have meant to say them.’
“I was desperate. I couldn’t stand this much longer. I _was_ beginning
to feel like Gulliver. I got up and stood in front of her. It was a
relief to find that I was able to get up. They had rooted me there so
long, those two!
“‘Is he still in love with you?’
“‘He says he is.’
“‘Dallas would never say it if he weren’t.’
“‘So I should think. Yet how can he be? Perhaps he is. But what
difference does it make--except that, in that case, I can’t ever see him
again. For I am so in love with him that my principles would never hold
out against him.’
“It was all said rather stupidly, yet with obvious sincerity. I shook my
head.
“‘When is he coming back?’
“‘In a week, I think. Just long enough to give me time. But I’ve had as
much time as I can stand. It will kill me. He’ll never say the right
thing. How can I marry him?’
“‘Of course I don’t know what you want him to say. But if you make love
to him, he’ll say it.’
“I know I was brutal, but she was such a negligible little idiot! My
relief in knowing that a crisis, which would come after Dallas’s return,
would also come after my own departure, was too great. I couldn’t choose
words.
“‘Oh no, not that! That wouldn’t prove anything, you see.’
“I did see, of course, perfectly; but it seemed too arrogant for a child
like that to expect to be both loved and ‘understood.’ I lost all
patience with her.
“‘You had better go to bed now, and buy a lot of things in the bazaars
to-morrow. A whole new shipload has come in from Germany while you’ve
been away. Run along, there’s a good girl. And I wouldn’t worry. Worry
never cleared up any situation.’ Then I repented a little, for her
suffering would have been clear to a blind man. ‘Don’t you see, my dear
Miss Marriott, that, when you won’t tell me the whole thing, I can’t
advise? But it doesn’t matter, for I honestly believe that even Solomon
would be a mere nuisance to people who are in love with each other. They
don’t need advice. Or put it that it’s of no use to them. Good-night.’
“‘I wish I were different,’ she sighed out, ‘even if it meant that I was
wrong.’ Then she slipped away, and I could get them off my mind.
“Nor did I keep them on my mind the next day. I went out to El-Kantara,
merely to get rid of the Marriotts. If you realize that I went with a
Cook’s automobile party, you can imagine how much I wanted to get rid
of them. I should have changed my hotel but for the nuisance of it.
Besides, Miss Marriott would have hunted me down anywhere, if she had
felt like it. She had no prejudices. I dined elsewhere; but I went back
to the Palace in the evening. Luckily the Marriotts weren’t about. I was
just turning to go out into the garden (having assured myself by careful
reconnaissance that they weren’t in the landscape) when I heard some
stir behind me. There, very dusty, very worn and tired, but handsome as
usual, stood Dallas. I nodded at him and almost ran. I didn’t even go to
the garden. I went to my room. I had no reason to suppose that Dallas
would pursue me, but you never could tell. I decided to be safe, though
hot, in my own quarters. Didn’t I curse the Marriotts as I sat there
under the lamp! Why are we such a beastly articulate race? There are
people in the world, you know, who keep their affairs to themselves.
Creatures that are so damn confidential ought to be made to stay at
home!”
Hoyting flung his latest cigarette away half smoked. The silence round
us was phenomenal. I ought to have been able to hear the _patron_ and
his wife snoring, but I couldn’t. Perhaps they slept without it. No;
that was inconceivable. In such ridiculous little spirals my mind went
wandering while Hoyting took breath beside me.
“Let’s get this thing over. I’m sleepy. I’ll compress as much as I
can.... The end of that was that after an hour or two, when I thought I
was safe, I sneaked down to the garden to get some air. Would you
believe it? I had no sooner sat down and hidden myself well in the
foliage when Dallas was upon me like a cat. I don’t know where he had
come from, or how he had seen me. He had to talk to me, too,
apparently. Well: even that was almost better than staying within--and
indeed Dallas was the only one of the three about whom I had the least
curiosity left.
“He did give me the clue--the key to the enigma. Apparently, by the way,
he had sent up word to Miss Marriott that he had returned, and she had
sent word down that Eva was asleep and she herself in bed, and that she
would see him in the morning.
“He had given up going to Guerrara when he was a few miles out of
Touggourt--couldn’t stand the notion; had rushed back to Touggourt and
come on to Biskra as fast as he could, by the same old blessed
_diligence_. He _was_ in a state! He asked me about the Marriotts, first
off; and when I told him I could make nothing out except that there was
a moral crisis of sorts, which the aunt and niece were both muddling
according to their respective stupidities, he didn’t wait for more. He
blurted out the whole thing....
“Then I saw what a damned fool Marco Polo had been. To take those young
things out into the desert! I suppose there are young things you could
take into the desert with impunity; but Dallas! Even a woman who had
never laid eyes on any man before ought to have seen that Dallas was a
special, a very special case. She did see; she liked him because he was
so special; but--well, it doesn’t do for ignorance to have no
prejudices. Dallas was in no condition for a journey of that sort with a
very beautiful girl who loved him and whom he was anxious, for every
reason, to marry as soon as possible. He didn’t insult Eva
Marriott--except in one indirect but fatally illuminating way, as you’ll
see. If he had insisted on their being married by a _marabout_ at
M’raïer or Djemaâ or some other Saharan hole on the way, I’m not
absolutely sure she wouldn’t have done it--it being perfectly
understood that they should run to their consuls as soon as they got
back. She was off her head about him. And he, who had never seen why he
shouldn’t have anything his organism craved, had had, for the first time
in his life, I judged, an inhibition. That is, he _didn’t_ ask her to be
married to him by a _marabout_. He didn’t say a word to her. He hadn’t
even seen her alone since they left Biskra. Miss Marriott wanted to
watch romance; I wonder if she ever considered whether romance would
like to watch her. Eva Marriott must have managed to madden Dallas
without much talk ... and you can imagine them at the door of a Saharan
caravanserai, under a Saharan moon--with Marco Polo egging them on.
Humph! The indencies of the decent are among the strangest things in the
world.
“Oh, well, never mind.... Isn’t there any end to this thing?... Yes,
there was an end, just there in Touggourt, where they turned up at
nightfall after six days at camels’ pace. Miss Marriott was completely
done up, and Eva had to look after her. And Dallas--well, Dallas broke
away and ran amok in the Sahara. Touggourt isn’t very big, but it’s big
enough for that. Almost any place is, in point of fact; and the Sahara
would, of course, have understood Dallas perfectly.”
“And you said he wasn’t a rotter?”
“I didn’t say he wasn’t a rotter. I said it seemed a singularly inept
word to apply to him. I tell you he was like a faun. Fauns aren’t
perpetually sitting for their portraits, are they? They’re very pretty
when they are; but they must eat and drink, and scratch themselves, and
sprawl in the sun. After all, he could have carried young Eva off if he
had decided to. I give you my word he could. Do you suppose any Bedouin
or Berber of them all would have stopped him, so long as he could pay
more than the aunt? And he didn’t so much as touch the hem of her skirt.
She was the cause of it all; but the results had nothing to do with her.
That, at least, was the way Dallas saw it.
“He was as much in love with Eva Marriott,” went on Hoyting, with
annoyance, as if I had interrupted him, “as he could be with any one;
that is to say, he worshipped her face. He wouldn’t have understood the
‘soul’ part of it. Neither did she, if she had but known it. But she
mixed up his inches with the Ten Commandments. I’m not defending him;
defending him would imply a point of view, and I have none. I mean only
that, take him as he was, he behaved as he couldn’t help behaving. And
she couldn’t see it. Certainly he was no person for her to marry, since
she couldn’t see it. I don’t say she oughtn’t to have been shocked. I
say that she never understood. She would have forgiven him like a shot
for any insult to herself--though he hadn’t the faintest wish to insult
her, poor pagan!” (Hoyting said it as one says “poor devil!”) “She would
have condoned any sin if he had once admitted that he had sinned, and
was sorry. He was sorry enough; but he couldn’t consider that he had
sinned. He was willing to die if he had hurt her--willing to die at the
thought that he had hurt her--willing to admit that it was natural she
should be hurt; but as for sin, he didn’t know what it meant. He must
have heard about it all his life, but his organism had thrown it off
like a germ; he was perfectly immune to any such notion as hers of
‘morality.’ ... So they came back to Biskra, and he tried to go to
Guerrara, and couldn’t.”
“Do you mean to say that he owned up, and they had it out in
Touggourt?”
“I don’t think he so much owned up as was taxed with it by the aunt and
didn’t lie. I doubt if there was anything very explicit said, but the
women somehow jumped to the right conclusion. A little place like
that--it would have been easy enough. His apologies didn’t satisfy
Eva--of course fauns weren’t made for apologizing--and she left.”
“Naturally,” I retorted.
“Yes, naturally,” Hoyting rejoined quietly. “Well, you see that Dallas’s
confession to me threw a white light on all that Eva Marriott had said
the night before. I couldn’t say anything to him except that I thought
he and Eva were utterly unsuited to each other. That sounded rather
colorless, but what else could I say? I got up and went in; left him
there with a puzzled look on his face. He understood jealousy, he
understood pique, he understood passion; but he didn’t understand why,
if she could personally forgive him and take him back, she still had to
nourish a grievance on behalf of the Almighty. Just couldn’t understand.
And as long as he couldn’t understand that, she wouldn’t take him back.
A nice thing Miss Marriott did when she took to travelling!
“I found the next morning, to my delight, that I could leave Biskra in
twenty-four hours more. I didn’t even have to go to El-Kantara again,
for Dallas himself, after one interview with Miss Marriott, had gone
there. I knew I must bid farewell to Marco Polo, so I sent word to her
that I should hope for a few minutes after dinner in the garden.
“She came--with Eva. And the first thing she asked me--before the
girl--was what Dallas had said to me the night before. Imagine my
position! I would have talked biology all night with Miss Marriott if
necessary, but I wasn’t going to discuss Dallas’s temperament with his
ex-fiancée. So I held my tongue.
“‘But I want to know.’ This, if you please, from the ex-fiancée.
“I was desperate. ‘I won’t tell you. What Dallas said is Dallas’s
affair. You have already made each other suffer a good deal. I should
advise you both to go away from Biskra--in opposite directions.
Otherwise you will make each other suffer more.’
“‘He wants to marry me, and I want to marry him; but he won’t, he just
won’t, make it right for me to.’ Apparently Eva Marriott couldn’t face
my knowledge of the situation, for, with that despairing little
utterance, she fled.
“Marco Polo could face anything, though. ‘You are a fool, Eva,’ she
called after the girl, in her flat, slightly nasal voice. There was no
reply from the speeding white figure--just a little twitch of the
shoulder, as if she had heard.
“I turned to the aunt. ‘So you sympathize with Dallas?’
“‘I don’t sympathize with him!’ She blushed--actually blushed and turned
her head away. But the weakness was very brief. ‘How should I?’ she went
on. ‘But I do think she’s a fool not to marry him.’
“‘Can’t you understand her principles?’
“‘Who should if I don’t? I was brought up on them. But they haven’t
anything to do with life as I see it. Those two want each other
desperately. Why shouldn’t they take each other?’
“‘Because your niece disapproves of him.’ That was easy.
“Then Marco Polo turned her face away and stared hard at a palm. ‘I’ve
never been in love with any one in my life,’ she said. ‘I don’t know
what it may do to you. But I am quite sure that, if Eva wants him, she
had better take him while he wants her.’
“‘And you didn’t disapprove of his behavior?’
“She turned her pale eyes on me. ‘I thought it very interesting. I have
never seen human passion at such close range before.’
“Really, she made me sit up, that woman. ‘You’d trust your niece to him,
then?’
“‘I would. He’s fascinating. But she won’t have him because he won’t lie
to her. He told me this morning that he had tried. He said: “I’d say
anything, Miss Marriott; but she’d catch me out, because, you see, I
can’t get it through my head what she really wants me to say.”’
“‘Can’t you get it through yours, Miss Marriott, and put him wise?’
“‘Oh, _I_ understand what she wants. But she’ll never get it out of him.
He’d make some mistake. I shall pack her off home, and she can marry a
vestryman. There’s one who wants her.’
“‘I can’t understand why you take his side.’ Nor could I.
“Miss Marriott rose. ‘Because he’s so real. That vestryman isn’t. And I
have no prejudices.’
“She shook hands with me and went into the hotel. That was the last I
saw of any of them.
“I left, the next morning, myself. I happen to know from other sources
that young Dallas went to Egypt immediately and stayed there many
months, and I heard last year, in Trebizond, of a solitary woman who had
been there en route for Persia, and who sounded, in the descriptions I
got, extraordinarily like Marco Polo. I didn’t follow up her trail to
see. Obviously, the affair never came off. The faun couldn’t twist his
lips to a Christian confession. If you had ever seen Dallas, you would
know what I mean. He really couldn’t. That section of his brain didn’t
work; it was atrophied. Eva Marriott could have walked all over him, but
he couldn’t lie his way about among her convictions. He wasn’t a rotter.
He was made like that. I don’t believe the girl married her vestryman,
though. You wouldn’t, you know, after you had been in love with a faun.
“And all that is left of it for me, really”--Hoyting threw away the
ultimate cigarette, and rose--“is that sometimes, in a tropically
humorous situation, I see that blue veil, and hear that flat voice
saying: ‘You know, I have no prejudices.’ If you ever run across the
woman in the flesh, telegraph me. I’ll get into the other hemisphere.”
I made no reply, for evidently Hoyting had absolutely nothing more to
say. We went through the little gate. I closed it carefully, and five
minutes later I separated from Hoyting on the deserted strand.
IV
MARTIN’S HOLLOW
I have always been of the opinion that, as a good wine needs no bush, a
good story needs no psychology to speak of. Yet before I tell mine, I
think I had better describe myself briefly as I seem to myself to have
been at the moment of my adventure.