When the gong sounded for dinner, Jim protested to Monimé that he was
ill and did not wish to change his clothes and come down. For a while he
had hoped, in his madness, that when Mrs. Darling saw him again he would
be able to look straight at her and deny that he was her son-in-law. “I
evidently have a double,” he would say. “My name is Easton, madam; the
proprietor of the hotel will tell you that he has known me as such for
the last five years.” A fact, indeed, which was beyond dispute, for he
had stayed here before he went to the gold mines.
But now that the time had come he realized that this was fantastic, and
his one idea was to get away, so that he might make an end of himself
in decent privacy. He was not a coward: he was not afraid of death
or physical suffering. But with all his soul he dreaded captivity or
enforcement of any kind. The possibility of being chased into a corner,
of being handcuffed and put behind bolts and bars, of being compelled and
constrained, and finally led, pinioned, to the gallows, filled him with
horrible terror.
One of the most common forms in which a breakdown of the nervous system
shows itself is that known as claustrophobia, a fear of being shut up or
surrounded and fettered. It is a primitive and primeval dread to which
the disordered consciousness leaps back; it is a survival of the days,
æons ago, when man was both hunter and prey of man; it is, in essence,
the fear of the trap.
Monimé, from whom his mental torture could not be altogether concealed,
looked at him with troubled, anxious eyes. “Oh, Jim,” she said, “what
_is_ the matter with you? There’s something dreadful on your mind;
there’s something worrying you, and you won’t tell me about it.”
“No, there’s nothing, I assure you,” he answered, in quick denial. She
must never know, for knowledge of the whole miserable business might
bring contempt, and her love for him might be killed. Of all his terrors
the terror of losing her love was the most unbearable.
“Come down to dinner, dear,” she persuaded. “It will do you good.” She
bent down and looked intently at him as he sat on the edge of the bed,
scraping the carpet with his feet and staring at the floor, his eyes wild
with alarm. “It isn’t that you are afraid of meeting somebody you don’t
want to see, is it?”
His heart seemed to stop beating for a moment as he denied the
suggestion. She was beginning to guess, she was beginning to suspect.
“Oh, very well, then,” he said, unable to meet her gaze. “I’ll come down.
Perhaps, as you say, it’ll do me good.”
There was the black murk of damnation now in his soul, lit only by the
glow of his fighting instinct. The crisis of terror was passing, and now
he was determined not to be caught. “Go on down, darling,” he said. “I’ll
follow you in a moment.”
She put her arms about him and kissed him, smoothing his forehead with
her cool hand. “Whatever it is that is troubling you,” she whispered,
“remember always that I love you, and shall go to my grave loving you and
you only.”
He closed his eyes, and for a while his head lay upon her breast, like
that of an exhausted child. All the brawn of life had been knocked out of
him. Every hope, every dream, every vestige of content had gone from him;
and in these pitiable straits he desired only to shut out the world, and
to obtain, if but for a moment, a respite from the horror of actuality.
As soon as he was alone he went to his portmanteau, and took from it
his revolver, which he loaded and placed in his pocket. His intention
had been to appear to meet with an accidental death, but if he had left
it now till too late, he would have to blow his brains out. A Bedouin
wanderer such as he, he muttered to himself, must, at any rate, never be
taken alive: a son of the open road must never be led captive.
For a moment he stood irresolute at the open door of his room, and the
sweat gleamed upon his forehead. Then he braced himself, and walked down
the stairs. Monimé was not far ahead of him, and, as he turned the corner
to descend the last flight which led down into the front hall, she paused
at the foot of the steps to wait for him.
He saw her standing there in the light of a large electric globe, her
black hair as vivid as a strong colour, her skin white like marble, her
eyes occult in their serenity, her lips smiling encouragement to him;
but in the same glance he saw also a group of persons standing before the
cashier’s office in the otherwise empty hall, and instantly he knew that
the crisis of his life was upon him.
There, fat but alert, stood Mrs. Darling, still wearing day-dress and
hat; beside her was a quiet-looking Englishman who was the British
Consul, and with whom Jim had had dealings in his gold-mining days; on
her other hand was an Egyptian police-officer; and next to him was the
proprietor of the hotel, whose face was turned in contemplation of the
native policeman standing at the main entrance. It was evident on the
instant that as soon as Mrs. Darling had caught sight of him on his
arrival she had communicated with the police, who, in their turn, had
fetched the Consul.
As Jim appeared at the head of the stairs Mrs. Darling clutched at
the Consul’s arm. “There he is!” she exclaimed excitedly, pointing an
accusing finger at him. “That’s the man!”
He saw Monimé swing round and face them; he saw the policeman put his
hand to his hip-pocket, and turn to the Consul for instructions; and,
as though a flame had been set to straw, his anger blazed up into
unreasoning, passionate hate of all that these people stood for.
Instantly he whipped out his revolver and shouted to them: “Put up your
hands, or I shoot!” at the same time running downstairs and straight
at them across the hall—a wild, grey-flannelled figure, his dark hair
tumbling over his pallid face, and his eyes burning like coals of fire.
All the hands in the group went up together, and he saw Mrs. Darling’s
face grow livid with alarm.
Monimé ran forward. “Jim! Oh, Jim!” she cried, trying to seize his arm.
“I’m innocent!” he gasped. “But I won’t be taken alive by a damned set of
bungling parasites.”
Still covering them with his revolver he backed towards the garden
entrance, and the next moment was out in the chill night air and running
like a madman down the path between the palms and shrubs. The darkness
was intense, and more than once he fell into the flower-beds, kicking the
soft earth in all directions. He heard shouts and cries behind, but the
thunder of his own brain rendered these meaningless as he dashed onwards
under the stars.
Soon he came to the back wall of the garden, and this he scaled like
a cat, dropping into the narrow lane on the other side and continuing
his flight between the walls of the silent native huts and enclosures.
At length he emerged, breathless, into the open space not far from the
railway-station, where, under a flickering street-lamp, a two-horsed
carriage was standing awaiting hire.
He hailed the red-fezzed driver with as much composure as he could
command, and told him to drive “like the wind” to the temple of Karnak.
This, at any rate, would take him clear of the town, and near the open
fields; and to the driver he would seem to be but a somewhat impatient
Cook’s tourist, anxious to see the ruins by night. Perhaps there was no
need to kill himself: he might go into hiding and ultimately fly to the
uttermost ends of the earth.
As the carriage lurched and swayed along the embanked road, he turned
in his seat to watch for his pursuers; but there was no sign of them.
Yet this fact now brought no comfort to him. With returning sanity he
realized clearly enough that escape was impossible. Were he to hide in
the desert, the Ababdeh trackers, always employed by the police in these
districts, would soon hunt him down. Were he to take refuge amongst the
natives, his hiding-place would be revealed in a few hours in response to
the official offer of a reward. And, anyway, to abandon Monimé, and to
have no likely means of communicating with her, would make the smart of
life unbearable.
There was no way out, and his present flight resolved itself into a wild
attempt to obtain breathing space in which to prepare himself for the
end, and, if possible, to see Monimé once again to bid her farewell. The
jury at home would be bound to find him guilty: the evidence was too
damning. Some tramp had murdered Dolly, and was now lost forever; or
else, and more probably, Merrivall’s housekeeper had actually done it,
but was now unalterably acquitted. It was certain that he would be hanged
in the end, and it would therefore be far better to finish it this very
night.
In these moments he drank the cup of bitterness to the dregs; and the
comparative calmness which now succeeded his frenzy was the calmness of
utter despair. Thus, when the driver pulled up his horses in the darkness
before the towering pylons of the main gateway of the temple of Karnak,
Jim paid him off and approached the ancient courts of Ammon, determined
only to keep his pursuers at bay until he could make his confession to
Monimé and die in the peace of her forgiveness.
The watchman at the gateway, being used to the eccentric ways of the
foreigner, admitted him without comment, and left him to wander alone
amongst the vast black ruins, which were massed around him in a silence
broken only by the distant yelping of the jackals and the nearer hooting
of the owls. Through the roofless Hypostyle Hall he went, a desolate
little figure, dwarfed into insignificance by the stupendous pillars
which mounted up about him into the stars; and here, presently, he stood
for a while with arms outstretched and face upturned, in an agony of
supplication.
“O Almighty You,” he prayed, “Who, under this name or under that, have
ever been the God of the wretched, and the Father of the broken-hearted,
look down upon this miserable little grub whom You have created, and
whose brain You had filled with all those splendid dreams which now You
have shattered and swept aside. Before I come to You, grant me this last
request: give me a little time with the woman I love, so that I may make
my peace with her and hear her words of forgiveness.”
He walked onwards, past the huge obelisk of Hatshepsut, and in amongst
the mass of fallen blocks of stone which lie heaped before the Sanctuary;
but now frenzy seized him again, and, furiously resolving to meet his
fate, he swung round and retraced his steps back to the first court,
breathing imprecations as he went. Somehow, by some means, he must see
Monimé before the final production of the handcuffs gave him the signal
for his suicide, which it was now too late to disguise as an accident.
“Blast them!” he muttered. “Blast them! Blast them! I’ll show them that
they can’t go chasing innocent men across the world. I’ll shoot the lot
of them, and then I’ll shoot myself.” He stumbled over a fallen column.
“Damnation!” he cried. “Who the devil left that thing lying about?—the
silly idiots!”
Suddenly voices at the gateway came to his ears, and, with hammering
heart, he realized that he had been tracked and that his hour was come.
Thereupon he ran headlong through the dark forecourt of the small
temple of Rameses the Third which stands at the south side of the main
courtyard, and concealed himself, panting, in the sanctuary at its far
end, a place to which there was but the one entrance.
Here he stood in the darkness, fingering his revolver, while the
squeaking bats darted in and out of the doorway like little flying
goblins. Presently he could see figures lit by lanterns coming towards
him, and could plainly hear their voices.
“Here I am, you fools!” he called out loudly and defiantly; and the
searchers came to an immediate halt, holding up their lanterns and
peering through the darkness. “I have my revolver covering you,” he
shouted, “so don’t come close, unless you want to be killed. Do any of
you know where my wife is?”
“I’m here, Jim,” came her quiet voice in the darkness. “Let me come to
you.”
“It’s no good,” said the Consul. “You’d better surrender at once. You
can’t escape. Will you let me come and speak to you?”
“No,” Jim answered. “I’ll shoot anybody who tries to get in here, except
my wife. Let me have a talk to her privately, and then you can come and
take me and I won’t resist.” He might have added that by then he would be
beyond resistance.
The night air was chilly, and the Consul did not relish the thought of
waiting about while the criminal exchanged confidences with his wife.
He therefore sharply ordered him to submit, and took two or three paces
forward to emphasize his words. He came to a sudden standstill, however,
when Jim’s voice from the sanctuary told him in unmistakable tones that
one further step would mean instant death.
“Oh, very well,” he replied, with irritation. “I’ll give you a quarter of
an hour.” He pulled his pipe and pouch from his pocket, and prepared to
smoke. He prided himself on his heartlessness. He had once been a Custom
House official.
“You’ll give me as long as I choose to take,” said Jim, again flaring up,
“unless you prefer bloodshed. Come, Monimé, I have a lot to say to you.”
She turned to her companions. “Have I your word of honour that you will
leave him unmolested while we talk?”
“All right,” the Consul replied, setting his lantern down on the
ground, and casually lighting his pipe. His shadow was thrown across
the forecourt and up the side wall like some monstrous and menacing
apparition.
Thereat Monimé ran forward into the sanctuary, and a moment later her
arms were about her husband, and her lips were whispering words of
encouragement and love.
“Oh, Jim, Jim!” she murmured at last. “Tell me what it’s all about. They
say you were married and that you killed your wife. Tell me the truth, I
beg you.”
“That is why I wanted to talk to you,” he panted, putting his hand upon
her throat as though he would throttle her. “You must know the truth.
Ever since I met you again in Cyprus, I’ve been aching to tell you all
about it; but I was a coward. I so dreaded the possibility of losing
you.” He threw out his arms and then clapped his hands to his head.
She seated herself on a fallen block of stone, and he slid to the ground
at her feet. She was wearing an evening cloak, heavy with fur, and
against this his face rested, while her mothering arms encircled him, and
her hands were clasped upon his. The distant flicker of the lanterns made
it possible for him dimly to discern the outline of her pale face; and in
this uncertain light she seemed to become a celestial figure gazing down
at him with such infinite tenderness that the ferment of his brain abated.
At first in halting phrases, but presently with increasing fluency,
he told her of his inheritance of Eversfield Manor, of his marriage
to Dolly, and of the three dreary years which followed. Then briefly
he described his escape, his supposed death, and his wanderings which
brought him to Cyprus.
“When I went back to England,” he said, “it was with the idea of
obtaining a divorce, so that you and I might be married. I had come to
love you with every fibre of my being, and life without you seemed
unthinkable.”
He told her of Smiley-face, of his meeting with Dolly in the woods, and
how next day he had read of her murder. “I swear to you, as God sees me,”
he declared, “that I had nothing to do with her death. But who is going
to believe me? I was the last person to be with her: my supposed motive
is clear!”
He went on to relate how he had fled back to Egypt, and how, finding that
the crime was placed at the door of another, he had felt himself free
to ask her to marry him. Then had come the devastating news that he was
wanted by the police, and his worst fears had been substantiated when he
had caught sight of Mrs. Darling on his arrival at the hotel.
“The rest you know,” he said. “I ran away just now in a frenzy of fear
and rage; but that has left me and I am prepared. Feel my hand: it
doesn’t shake, you see. I am quite cool, now. They shall never take me to
the scaffold, Monimé. They shall never make our story a public scandal.
In a few minutes I am going to shoot myself....”
She uttered a low cry of anguish. “Jim, Jim! What are you saying? We’ll
fight the case. We’ll get the best lawyers in England to defend you.
They’ll have to realize that you are innocent.”
“Do you believe I am innocent?” he asked.
“Yes, yes!” she cried. “I believe every word you have told me. My
intuition is never wrong: and I know what you have told me is the truth.”
The relief he felt at her belief in him was immediate, and yet he was
not able to grasp at once its full significance.
“The jury won’t believe me,” he said. “I meant to die by what would
appear an accident; but things reached the crisis too quickly. I lost my
head. If I don’t end things here and now, our son will be branded as the
son of a man who was hanged. Once I’m arrested I shall be watched night
and day: there will not be another chance to die honourably.”
“You mustn’t speak of dying, my beloved,” she murmured. “If you were to
go, do you think I could live without you? I have got to bring up our son
and watch over him until he can fend for himself. Do you think I shall be
able to live long enough to do so if you have left me? If you die, Jim,
my life will be so smashed that even the power of motherhood will fail to
keep the breath in my body. If we had no child it might be different; we
would go together now, into the valley of the shadows, and side by side
we would find our way to the City of God, if at all it may be found. But
as it is, I can’t come with you; and you can’t have the heart to leave me
behind while there’s still a chance that you need not have gone.”
“Monimé,” he answered, “listen to me. There is no hope. You are asking me
to submit to imprisonment, a thing unthinkable to a wanderer like myself.
You are asking me to submit to a trial in which your name will be dragged
through the dirt as well as mine. You will be called the ‘woman in the
case’; my passion for you will be recorded as my motive. The story of our
love will be travestied and brought up against you and our son all your
lives. Whereas, if I end it now, most of the tale will never be told in
open court, and the whole thing will soon be forgotten.”
She laughed. “Do you think I weigh gossip against the chance, however
remote, of the trial going in your favour? Do you think I care what they
say against me in the court if there is any hope of your acquittal? My
darling, I shall fight for your life and your good name, which is mine
and Ian’s, too, to my last ounce of strength and my last penny; and in
the end there will be victory, because you are innocent, and innocence
shows its face as surely as guilt.”
“You really do believe what I say—that I had absolutely nothing to do
with her death?” he asked, still hardly daring to credit her trust. His
experiences with Dolly had left him with so profound a scepticism in
regard to female mentality that even his adoration of Monimé was not
wholly proof against it.
She looked down at him, and he seemed to detect an expression upon her
face which was almost defiant. “My dear,” she said, “as far as I am
concerned, even if you were guilty it would make no difference.”
He stared at her incredulously, for man does not know woman, nor can he
penetrate to the source of her deepest convictions. It was not Monimé, it
was no individual, who had spoken: it was eternal woman.
“Nothing can alter love,” she explained. “Can’t a man understand that?”
“No,” he answered, “only woman and God love in that way.”
Suddenly he seemed to realize to the full the glory of her sympathy and
understanding. It was as though their love in this moment of bitter trial
had passed the greatest of all tests, and stood now triumphant, the
conqueror of life and death.
All the years of misery were blotted out in the wonder of this revelation
of womanhood, and on the instant his desire for life in unity with her
came surging back into his heart.
“Monimé,” he said, “this is the biggest moment of all. Whatever I may
suffer will be worth while, because it will have brought me the knowledge
that our love transcends the ways of man. By God!—I’ll stand my trial;
I’ll make a fight for my life, even though the chances of success are
small. I didn’t know that such love existed.”
She laughed. “You didn’t know,” she whispered, “because, as I once told
you, men don’t bother to study women.”
He looked up at her in the dim light, and of a sudden it seemed to his
overwrought fancy that the sanctuary was filled with her presence, as
though she were one with the women of all the ages, pressing forward from
every side to tend him, to bind up his wounds, to stand by him in his
adversity, to forgive his sins. He saw her revealed to him as the eternal
woman, the everlasting companion, wife and mother, for ever watching over
his welfare, for ever acting upon a code of principles other than that
of man, for ever drawing knowledge from sources unattainable to man.
Of no account were the little shams of the sex, such as Dolly; they
were swamped amidst the hosts of the good and the true. It had been his
misfortune to encounter one of the former; but his disillusionment was
forgotten in the all-pervading sympathy which now enfolded him like the
tender wings of Hathor.
He scrambled to his feet and stood before her, gazing into her shadowy
face. “Come,” he said, “the night air is too chilly for you. You must
go back to the hotel, and I must go with these confounded little tin
soldiers.” His voice was cheery and his head was held high once more.
They came out of the black sanctuary hand-in-hand, and stood in the
columned portico before the entrance, in the dimly reflected light of the
lanterns.
“Well, have you finished?” the Consul asked, knocking out the ashes from
his pipe against the uplifted heel of his boot.
“Yes, I am ready now,” Jim replied very quietly.
He unloaded his revolver, shaking the cartridges into his hand,
thereafter holding out the empty weapon to the native policeman, who,
being a Soudani, was the first to take the risk of approach.
“Give me the handcuffs,” said the Consul to the police officer.
Jim extended his wrists, and as he did so his face was averted and his
eyes were fixed upon Monimé. On her lips was the smile of Hathor and of
Isis—serene, confident, inscrutable, all-wise.