Two days later Mrs. Clarke sat with the British Ambassadress in the
British Palace at Therapia, a building of wood with balconies looking
over the Bosporus. She was alone with Lady Ingleton in the latter’s
sitting-room, which was filled with curious Oriental things, with
flowers, and with little dogs of the Pekinese breed, who lay about in
various attitudes of contentment, looking serenely imbecile, and as if
they were in danger of water on the brain.
Lady Ingleton was an old friend of Mrs. Clarke, and was a woman wholly
indifferent to the prejudices which govern ordinary persons. She had
spent the greater part of her life abroad, and looked like a weary
Italian, though she was half English, a quarter Irish, and a quarter
French. She was very dark, and had large, dreamy dark eyes which knew
how to look bored, a low voice which could say very sharp things at
times, and a languid manner which concealed more often than it betrayed
an intelligence always on the alert.
“What is it, Cynthia?” said Lady Ingleton. “But first tell me if you
like this Sine carpet. I found it in the bazaar last Thursday, and
it cost the eyes out of my head. Carey, of course, has said for the
hundredth time that I am ruining him, and bringing his red hair in
sorrow to the tomb. Even if I am, it seems to me the carpet is worth
it.”
Mrs. Clarke studied the carpet for a moment with earnest attention.
She even knelt down to look closely at it, and passed her hands over it
gently, while Lady Ingleton watched her with a sort of dark and still
admiration.
“It’s a marvel,” she said, getting up. “If you had let it go I should
almost have despised you.”
“Please tell that to Carey when he comes to you to complain. And now,
what is it?”
“You remember several months ago the tragedy of a man called Dion Leith,
who fought in the South African War, came home and almost immediately
after his return killed his only son by mistake out shooting?”
“Yes. You knew him, I think you said. He was married to that beautiful
Rosamund Everard who used to sing. I heard her once at Tippie
Chetwinde’s. Esme Darlington was a great admirer or hers, of course
_pour le bon motif_.”
“Dion Leith’s here.”
“In Therapia?”
“No, in a hideous little hotel in Constantinople.”
“Why?”
“I don’t think he knows. His wife has given him up. She was a mother,
not a lover, so you can imagine her feelings about the man who killed
her child. It seems she was _une mere folle_. She has left him and,
according to him, has given herself to God. He’s in a most peculiar
condition. He was a model husband, absolutely devoted and entirely
irreproachable. Even before marriage, I should think he had kept out of
the way of--things. The athlete with ideals--he was that, one supposes.”
“How extraordinarily attractive!” said Lady Ingleton, in a lazy and
rather drawling voice.
“So he had a great deal to fasten on the woman who has cast him out.
Just now, like the coffin of Mohammed, he’s suspended. That’s the
impression I get from him.”
“Do you want to bring him down to earth?”
“All he’s known and cared for in life has failed him. He was traveling
under an assumed name even, for fear people should point him out as the
man who killed his own son. All that sort of thing is no use. I gave his
secret away deliberately to young Vane, and asked him to speak to the
Ambassador. And now I’ve come to you. I want you to have him here once
or twice and be nice to him. Then I can see something of him, poor
fellow, and do something for him.”
A faint smile curved Lady Ingleton’s sensitive lips.
“Of course. Then he’s coming to the Bosporus?”
“He’ll probably spend some time at Buyukderer. He must face his fate and
take up life again.”
“He doesn’t intend to do what his wife has done?”
Lady Ingleton was still smiling faintly.
“I should say his experience rather inclines him to take an opposite
direction.”
“Is he good-looking?”
“What he has been through has ravaged his face.”
“That probably makes him much handsomer than he ever was before.”
“He hates the thought of meeting any one. But if you will have him here
once or twice, and people know it, it will make things all right.”
“Will he come?”
“Yes.”
“You know I always do what you want.”
“I never want you to do dull things.”
“That’s true. The dogs don’t come into play against the people you bring
here.”
It was a legend in Constantinople in Embassy circles that Lady Ingleton
always “set the dogs” at bores. Even at official dinners, when she had
as much as she could stand of the heavy bigwigs whom she was obliged
to invite, she surreptitiously touched a bell. This was a signal to
the footman to bring in the dogs, who were trained to yap at and to
investigate closely visitors. The yapping and the investigations created
a feeling of general restlessness and an almost inevitable movement,
which invariably led to the speedy departure of the unwelcome guests;
who went, as Lady Ingleton said, “not knowing why.” Enough that they
went! The dogs were rewarded with lumps of sugar as are the canine
performers in a circus. Sir Carey complained that it was bad
diplomacy, but he was devoted to his wife, and even secretly loved her
characteristic selfishness.
“Let Dion Leith come and I’ll cast my mantle over him--for your sake,
Cynthia. You are a remarkable woman.”
“Why?”
But Lady Ingleton did not say why. There were immense reticences between
her and Cynthia Clarke.
Dion left Hughes’s Hotel and went to Buyukderer.
He had not consciously known why he did this. Until he met Mrs. Clarke
near the British Embassy he had scarcely been aware how sordid and ugly
and common under its small ostentations Hughes’s Hotel was. She made
him see the dreariness of his surroundings, although she had never seen
them; she made him again aware of things. That she was able to affect
him strongly, although he did not care for her, he knew by the sudden
approach to the brink of a complete emotional breakdown which she had
brought about in him at their first meeting. He remembered the hand
he had taken and had put against his forehead. There had been no
cool solace in it for the fever within him. Why, then, did he go to
Buyukderer? Certainly he did not go in hope. He was dwelling in a region
far beyond where hope can live.
But here was some one who was far away from the land that had seen his
tragedy, and who meant something in connexion with him, who intended
something which had to do with him. In England his mother had been
powerless to help him; Beattie had been powerless to help him. Canon
Wilton had tried to use his almost stern power of manly sincerity on
behalf of the soul of Dion. He and Dion had had a long interview after
the inquest on the little body of Robin was over, and he had drawn
nearer to the inmost chamber than any one else had, though Bruce Evelin,
even in his almost fierce grief for Robin, had been wonderfully kind
and understanding. But even Canon Wilton had utterly failed to be of any
real use. Perhaps he had known Rosamund too well.
Till now Mrs. Clarke was the one human being who had succeeded in making
a definite impression on Dion since Robin’s death and Rosamund’s fearful
reception of the news of it. He felt her will, and perhaps he felt
something else in her without telling himself that he did so: her
knowledge of a life absolutely different from the life he had hitherto
known, absolutely different, too, from the life known to, and lived by,
those who had been nearest to him and with whom he had been most closely
intimate. The old life with all its associations had cast him out. That
was his feeling. Possibly, without being aware of it, and driven by the
necessity that is within man to lay hold of something, to seek
after refuge in the blackest moments of existence, he was feebly and
instinctively feeling after an unknown life which was represented to
his imagination by the pale beauty of Mrs. Clarke. She had described
his situation as one of suspension between the heaven and the earth.
His heaven had certainly rejected him. Possibly, without knowing it, and
without any hope of future happiness or even of future peace, he faintly
descried her earth; possibly, in going to Buyukderer, he was making an
unconscious effort to gain it.
He wondered about this afterwards, but not at all in the moment of his
going. Things were not clear to him then. He was still in the vague,
but he was not to walk in vagueness forever. Fate which, by its malign
action, had caused him to inflict a frightful injury upon the good woman
he loved still held in reserve for him new and tremendous experience. He
thought that in Welsley he had reached the ultimate depths which a man
can sound. It was not so.
Dion came to Buyukderer on a breezy blue day, a day which seemed full
of hope and elation, which was radiant with sunlight and dancing waters,
and buoyant with ardent life. Gone were those delicate dreamy influences
which sometimes float over the Bosporus even in the noontides of summer,
when the winds are still, and the long shores of Asia seem to lie
wrapped in a soft siesta, holding their secrets of the Orient closely
hidden from the eyes of Europe. Europe gazes at Asia, but Asia is
gravely indifferent to Europe; she listens only to the voices which come
to her from her own depths, and, like an Almeh reclining, is stirred
only by music unknown to the West.
As the steamer on which he traveled voyaged towards the Black Sea, Dion
paced up and down the deck and looked always at the shore of Asia. That
line of hills represented to him the unknown. If he could only lose
himself in Asia and forget! But there was nothing passionate in his
longing. It was only a gray desire born in a broken mind and a broken
nature.
Once during the voyage he thought of Robin. Did Robin know where he was,
whither he was going? Since Rosamund had utterly rejected him, strangely
his dead boy and he had at moments seemed to Dion to be near to each
other encompassed by the same thick darkness. Even once he had seemed
to see Robin groping, like one lost and vainly seeking after light. His
vagueness was broken upon sometimes by fantastic visions. But to-day
he had no consciousness at all of Robin. The veil of death which hung
between him and the child he had slain seemed to be of stone, absolutely
impenetrable. And all his visions had left him.
Palaces and villas came into sight and vanished; Yildiz upon its hill
scattered among the trees of its immense park; Dolmabaghcheh stretched
out along the water’s edges, with its rose-beds before it; and its
gravely staring sentinels; Beylerbey Serai on the Asian shore, with its
marble quay and its terraced gardens, not far from Kandili and the sweet
waters of Asia. Presently the Giant’s Mountain appeared staring across
the water at Buyukderer. The prow of the steamer was headed for the
European shore. Dion saw the bay opening to receive them under its
wooded hills which are pierced by the great valley. It stretched its
arms as if in welcome, and very calm was the water between them. Here
the wind failed. Along the shore were villas, and gardens rising
in terraces, where roses, lemon trees, laurels grew in almost rank
abundance. Across the water came the soft sound of music, a song of
Greece lifted above the thrumming of guitars. And something in the
aspect of this Turkish haven, sheltered from the winds of that Black Sea
which had come into sight off Kirech Burnu, something in the song which
floated over the water, struck deep into Dion’s heart. Abruptly he
was released from his frozen detachment; tears sprang into his eyes,
memories surged up in his mind--memories of a land not very far from
this land; of the maidens of the Porch; of the hill of Drouva kept by
the stars and the sleeping winds; of Zante dreaming of the sunset; of
Hermes keeping watch over the child in the green recesses of Elis.
“Why do I come here? What have I to do here, or in any place dedicated
to beauty and to peace?”
His brown face twitched, and the wrinkles which sprayed out from his
eyelids over his thin cheeks worked till the network of them seemed to
hold an independent and furious life.
“If I were a happy traveler as I once was!”
The thought pierced him, and was followed immediately by the remembrance
of some words spoken by Mrs. Clarke:
“My friend, it will have to come.”
That which had to come, would it come here, in this sheltered place,
where the song died away like a thing enticed by the long valley to
be kept by the amorous trees? Mrs. Clarke’s voice had sounded full of
inflexible knowledge when she had spoken these words, and she had looked
at him with eyes that were full of knowledge. It was as if those eyes
had seen the weeping of many men.
The steamer drew near to the shore. The bright bustle of the quay was
apparent. Dion made his effort and conquered himself. But he felt almost
afraid of Buyukderer. In the ugly roar of the Grande Rue he had surely
been safer than he would be here in this place which seemed planned for
intimate happiness.
The steamer came alongside the pier.
When Dion stepped on to the quay a tall young Englishman with broad
shoulders, rather a baby face, and large intelligent blue eyes
immediately walked up to him.
“Are you Mr. Dion Leith?”
Dion, startled, was about to say “No” with determined hostility when he
remembered Mrs. Clarke. He had come here; he was, he supposed, going to
stay here for some days at least; of course he must face things.
“Yes,” he said gruffly.
In an easy, agreeable manner the stranger explained that he was Cyril
Vane, second secretary of the British Embassy, and a friend of Mrs.
Clarke’s, and that he had come down at her request to meet Dion, and to
tell him that there was a charming room reserved for him at the Belgrad
Hotel.
“I’ll walk up with you if you like,” he added, in a casual voice. “It’s
no distance. That your luggage?”
He put it in the charge of a porter from the hotel.
“I’m over at Therapia just now. The Ambassador hopes to see you. He’s a
delightful fellow.”
He talked pleasantly, and looked remarkably unobservant till they
reached the hotel, where he parted from Dion.
“I dare say I shall see you soon. Very glad to do anything I can for
you. Mrs. Clarke lies at the Villa Hafiz. Any one can tell you where it
is.”
He walked coolly away in the sun, looking like an immense fair baby in
his thin, light-colored clothes.
“Does he know?” thought Dion, looking after him.
Then he went up into his bedroom which looked out upon the sea. When the
luggage had been brought in and the door was shut, he sat down on the
edge of the bed and stared at the polished uncarpeted floor.
“Why have I come here? What have I to do here?” he thought.
He missed the uproar of Pera. It had exercised a species of pressure
upon his soul, a deadening influence.
Ever since Robin’s death he had lived in towns, and had walked about
streets. He had been for a time in Paris, then in Marseilles, where he
had stayed for more than two months haunted by an idea of crossing over
to Africa and losing himself in the vastness of the lands of the
sun. But something had held him back, perhaps a dread of the immense
loneliness which would surely beset him on the other side of the sea;
and he had gone to Geneva, then to Zurich, to Milan, Genoa, Naples,
Berlin and Budapest. From Budapest he had come to Constantinople. He had
known the loneliness of cities, but an instinct had led him to avoid
the loneliness of the silent and solitary places. There had been
an atmosphere of peace in quiet Welsley. He was afraid of such an
atmosphere and had sought always its opposite.
“Why have I come here?” he thought again.
In this small place he felt exposed, almost as if he were naked and
could be seen by strangers. In Pera at least he was covered.
“I shall have to go away from here,” he thought.
He got up from the bed and began to unpack. As he did this, the
uselessness of what he was doing, the arid futility of every bit of the
web of small details which, in their sum, were his life, flowed upon
his soul like stagnant water forced into movement by some horrible
machinery. He was like something agitating in a vast void, something
whose incessant movements produced no effect, had no sort of relation
to anything. In his loneliness of the cities he had begun to lose that
self-respect which belongs to all happy Englishmen of his type. Mrs.
Clarke had immediately noticed that certain details in his dress showed
a beginning of neglect. Since he had met her he had rectified them,
almost unconsciously. But now suddenly the burden of detail seemed
unbearable.
It was only by an almost fierce exercise of the will that he forced
himself to finish unpacking, and to lay his things out neatly in drawers
and on the dressing-table. Then he took off his boots and his jacket,
stretched himself out on the bed with his arms behind him and his hands
grasping the bedstead, and shut his eyes.
There was something shameful in his flaccid idleness, in the aimlessness
of his whole life now, devoid of all work, undirected towards any
effort. But that was not his fault. He had worked with energy in
business, with equal energy in play, worked for self’s sake, for love’s
sake, and for country’s sake. And for all he had done, for his effort of
purity as a boy and a youth, for his effort of love as a husband and a
father, for his effort of valor as a soldier, he had been rewarded
with the most horrible punishment which can fall upon a man. Effort,
therefore, on his part was useless; it was worse than useless, it was
grotesque. Let others make their efforts, his were done.
He wished that he could sleep.
* * * * *
The dreadful inertia of Dion did not seem to be dreadful to Mrs. Clarke.
Perhaps she was more intelligent than most women, and generated within
herself so much energy of some kind that she was not driven to seek for
it in others; or perhaps she was more sympathetic, more imaginative,
than most women, and pardoned because she understood. At any rate, she
accepted Dion as he was, and neither criticized him, attempted to bully
him, nor seemed to wish to change him.
She had indeed insisted that he must face his fate and had ruthlessly
given him back his name; she had also deliberately set about to entangle
him in the silken cords of a social relation. But he knew within a
couple of days of his arrival at Buyukderer that he did not fear her.
No woman perhaps ever lived who worried a man less in friendship, or who
gave, without any insistence upon it, a stronger impression of loyalty,
of tenacity in affection to those for whom she cared. Although often
almost delicately blunt in words, in action she was full of tact. She
was one of those rare women who absolutely understand men, and who know
how to convey to men instantly the fact of their understanding. Such
women are always attractive to men. Even if they are plain, and not
otherwise specially clever, they possess for men a lure.
Mrs. Clarke had told Dion in Constantinople that she meant him to come
to Buyukderer. This was an almost insolent assertion of will-power. But
when he was there she let him alone. On the day of his arrival there
had come no message from the Villa Hafiz to his hotel. He had, perhaps,
expected one; he knew that he was relieved not to receive it. Late in
the afternoon he went for a solitary walk up the valley, avoiding the
many people who poured forth from the villas and hotels to take their
air, as the sun sank low behind Therapia, and the light upon the water
lost in glory and gained in magic. Gay parties embarked in caiques.
Some people drove in small victorias drawn by spirited, quick-trotting
horses; others rode; others strolled up and down slowly by the edge of
the sea. A gay brightness of sociable life made Buyukderer intimately
merry as evening drew on. Instinctively Dion left the laughter and the
voices behind him.
His wandering led him to the valley of roses, where he sat down by the
stream, and for the first time tasted something of the simplicity and
charm of Turkish country life. It did not charm him, but in a dim way
he felt it, was faintly aware of a soothing influence which touched him
like a cool hand. For a long time he stayed there, and he thought, “If I
remain at Buyukderer I shall often visit this place beside the stream.”
Once he was disturbed by the noise of a cantering horse in the lane
close by, but otherwise he was fortunate that day; few people came
to his retreat, and none of them were foreigners. Two or three Turks
strolled by, holding their beads; and once some veiled women came,
escorted by a eunuch, threw some petals of flowers upon the surface of
the tinkling water, and walked on up the narrow valley, chattering in
childish voices, and laughing with a twitter that was like the twitter
of birds.
In the soft darkness he walked slowly back to his hotel. And that night
he slept better than he had ever slept in Pera.
On the following day there was still no message from the Villa Hafiz,
and he did not see Mrs. Clarke. He took a row boat, with a big Albanian
boatman for company, and rowed out on the Bosporus till they came in
sight of the Black Sea. The wind got up; Dion stripped to his shirt and
trousers, rolled his shirt sleeves up to the shoulders, and had a long
pull at the oars. He rowed till the perspiration ran down his lean body.
The boatman admired his muscles and his strength.
“Inglese?” he asked.
Dion nodded.
“Les Inglesi tres forts, molto forte!” he observed, mixing French with
Italian to show his linguistic accomplishments, “Moi tres fort aussi.”
Dion talked to the man. When he left the boat at the quay he said
he would take it again on the morrow. The intention to go away from
Buyukderer, to drown himself again in the uproar of Pera, was already
fading out of his mind. Mrs. Clarke’s silence had, perhaps, reassured
him. The Villa Hafiz did not summon him. He could seek it if he would.
Evidently it was not going to seek him.
Again he felt grateful to Mrs. Clarke. Her silence, her neglect of him,
increased his faith in her friendship for him.
His second day in Buyukderer dawned; in the late afternoon of it, now
sure of his freedom, he went to the Villa Hafiz.
He did not know that Mrs. Clarke was rich. Indeed he had heard in London
that she only had a small income, but that she “did wonders” with it.
In London he had seen her at Claridge’s and at the marvelous flat
in Knightsbridge. Now, at Buyukderer, he found her in a small, but
beautifully arranged and furnished, villa with a lovely climbing garden
behind it. Evidently she could not live in ugly surroundings or among
cheap and unbeautiful things. He saw at a glance that the rugs and
carpets on the polished floors of the villa were exquisite, that the
furniture was not merely graceful and in place but really choice and
valuable, and that the few ornaments and pieces of china scattered
about, with the most deft decision as to the exactly right place for
each mirror, bowl, vase and incense holder, were rarely fine. Yet in the
airy rooms there was no dreary look of the museum. On the contrary, they
had an intimate, almost a homely air, in spite of their beauty. Books
and magazines were allowed their place, and on a grand piano, almost
in the middle of the largest room, which opened by long windows into an
adroitly tangled rose garden where a small fountain purred amongst blue
lilies, there was a quantity of music. The whole house was strongly
scented with flowers. Dion was greeted at its threshold by a wave of
delicious perfume.
Mrs. Clarke received him in her most casual, most impersonal manner, and
made no allusion to the fact that she knew he had already been for two
days in Buyukderer without coming near her. She asked him if his room at
the hotel was all right, and when he thanked her for bothering about him
said that Cyril Vane had seen to it.
“He’s a kind, useful sort of boy,” she added, “and often helps me with
little things.”
That day she said nothing about the Ambassador and Lady Ingleton, and
showed no disposition to assume any proprietorship over Dion. She took
him over the house, and also into the garden.
Upon the highest terrace of the latter, far above the house, between two
magnificent cypresses, there stood a pavilion. It was made of the wood
of the plane tree, was painted dull green, had trees growing thickly at
its back, and was partially concealed by a luxuriant creeper with deep
orange-colored flowers, not unlike orange-colored jasmine, which Mrs.
Clarke had seen first in Egypt and had acclimatized in Turkey. The
center of the front of this pavilion was open to the terrace, but could
be closed by sliding doors which, when pushed back, fitted into the
hollow walls on either side. The interior was furnished with bookcases,
divans covered with cushions and embroideries, coffee tables, and
Eastern rugs. Antique bronze lamps hung by chains from the painted
ceiling, which was divided into lozenges alternately dull green and dull
gold. The view from this detached library was very beautiful. Over the
roof of the villa, beyond the broad white road and the quay, the long
bay stretched out into the Bosporus. Across its tranquil waters, and the
waters beaten up into waves by the winds from the Black Sea, rose the
shores of Asia, Beikos, Anadoli Kavak, Anadoli Fanar, with lines of
hills and the Giant’s Mountain. Immediately below, and stretching away
to right and left, were the curving shores of Europe, with the villas
and palaces of Buyukderer held between the blue sea and the tree-covered
heights of Kabatash; the park of the Russian Palace, the summer home
of Russia’s representative at the Sublime Porte, gardens of many rich
merchants of Constantinople and of Turkish, Greek and Armenian magnates,
and the fertile and well-watered country extending to Therapia, Stania
and Bebek on the one hand, and to Rumili Kavak, with the great Belgrad
forest behind it, and to Rumili Fanar, where the Bosporus flows into the
Black Sea, on the other.
“Come up here whenever you like,” Mrs. Clarke said to Dion. “You can
ring at the side gate of the garden, and come up without entering the
house or letting me know you are here. I have my own sitting-room on the
first floor of the villa next to my bedroom, the little blue-and-green
room I showed you just now. The books I’m reading at present are there.
No one will bother you, and you won’t bother any one.”
He thanked her, not very warmly, perhaps, but with a genuine attempt
at real gratitude, and said he would come. They walked up and down the
terrace for a little while, in silence for the most part. Before they
went down he mentioned that he had been out rowing.
“I ride for exercise,” said Mrs. Clarke. “You can easily hire a good
horse here, but I have one of my own, Selim. Nearly every afternoon I
ride.”
“Were you riding the day before yesterday?” Dion asked.
“Yes, in the Kesstane Dereh, or Valley of Roses, as many people call
it.”
“Were you alone?”
“Yes.”
Dion had thought of the cantering horse which he had heard in the lane
as he sat beside the stream. He felt sure it was Selim he had heard.
Mrs. Clarke did not ask the reason for his questions. She seemed to him
a totally incurious woman. Presently they descended to the house, and
he wished her good-by. She did not ask him to stay any longer, did not
propose any expedition, or any day or hour for another meeting. She just
let him go with a grave, and almost abstracted good-by.
When he was alone he realized something; she had assumed that he was
going to make a long stay in Buyukderer. Once, in speaking of the
foliage, she had said, “You will notice in September----” Why was she
so certain he would stay on? There was nothing to prevent him from going
away by the steamer on the morrow. She did nothing to curb his freedom;
she seemed almost indifferent to the fact of his presence there; yet
she had told him he would come, and was evidently certain that he would
stay.
He wondered a little, but only a little, about her will. Then his mind
returned to an old haunt in which continually it wandered, obsessed by
a horror that seemed already ancient, the walled garden at Welsley in
which he had searched in the dark for a fleeing woman. Perpetually he
heard the movement of that woman’s dress as she disappeared into the
darkness, and the sound of a door, the door of his own home, being
locked against him to give her time to escape from him. That sound had
cut his life in two. He saw, as he had seen many times in the past, the
falling downwards of edges that bled, the edges of his severed life.
And he forgot the garden of the Villa Hafiz, the pavilion which stood on
the hill looking over the sea to Asia, the grave woman who had told him,
indifferently, that he could go to it when he would.
Nevertheless on the following day he found himself at the garden
gate; he rang the bell; he was admitted by Osman, the placidly smiling
gardener, and he ascended to the pavilion. No one was there. He stayed
for three hours, and nobody came to interrupt him. Down below the wooden
villa held closely the secret of its life. Once, as he gazed down on
it, he wondered for a moment about Mrs. Clarke, how she passed her
hours without a companion, which she was doing just then. The siren of
a steamer sounded in the bay. He went into the pavilion. On one of the
coffee-tables he found lying a small thin book bound in white vellum. He
took it up and read the name in gold letters: “The Kasidah of Haji Abdu
El-Yezdi.” It was the book he had found Beattie reading on the night
when Robin was born, on the night when Bruce Evelin and Guy had
discussed Mrs. Clarke’s divorce case and Mrs. Clarke. He shuddered in
the warmth of the pavilion. Then resolutely he picked the book up.
At the beginning, after some blank pages, there was a portrait of Sir
Richard Burton. Dion looked at the strong, tragic face, with its burning
expression, for a long time. Then he stretched himself on one of the
divans and began to read the book.
Down below, in the villa, Mrs. Clarke was sitting in the green-and-blue
room in the first floor with Lady Ingleton, and they were talking about
Dion.
“He’s here now,” said Mrs. Clarke to her friend.
“Where?”
“In the garden. I haven’t seen him, but Osman tells me he has gone up to
the pavilion.”
“We can stroll up there later on, and then you can introduce him if you
want to.”
“No.”
Lady Ingleton did not look surprised on receiving this brusk negative.
“Shall I get Carey to see him first?” she asked, in her lazy voice.
“Cyril Vane has prepared the way before him, and Carey is all sympathy
and readiness to do what he can. The Greek tragedy of the situation
appeals to him tremendously, and of course he has a hundredfold more
tact than I have.”
“Mr. Leith must go to the Embassy. But what he has been through has
developed in him a sort of wildness that is almost like that of an
animal. If he saw an outstretched hand he would probably bolt.”
“And yet he’s sitting in your pavilion.”
“Because he knows he won’t see any outstretched hand there. He was here
for two days without coming near me, and even then he only came because
I had taken no notice of him.”
“I know. You spread the food outside, go indoors and close the shutters,
and then, when no one is looking, it creeps up, takes the food, and
vanishes.”
“A very great grief eats away the conventions, and beneath the
conventions there is always something strongly animal.”
For a moment Lady Ingleton looked at Mrs. Clarke and was silent. Then
she said, very quietly and simply:
“Does he realize yet how cruel you are?”
“He isn’t thinking about me.”
“But he will.”
Mrs. Clarke stared at the wall for a minute. Then she said:
“Ask the Ambassador if he will ride with me to-morrow afternoon, will
you, unless he’s engaged?”
“At what time?”
“Half-past four. Perhaps he’ll dine afterwards.”
“Very well. And now I’m going up to the pavilion.”
But she did not go, although she was genuinely curious about the man who
had killed his son and had been cast out by the woman he loved. Secretly
Lady Ingleton was much more softly romantic than Mrs. Clarke was. She
was hard on bores, and floated in an atmosphere of delicate selfishness,
but she could be very kind if her imagination was roused, and though
almost strangely devoid of prejudices she had instincts that were not
unsound.
That evening she gave Mrs. Clarke’s message to her husband.
“To-morrow--to-morrow?” he said, in his light tenor voice, inquiringly.
“Yes, I can go. As it happens, I’m breakfasting with Borinsky at
the Russian Palace, so I shall be on the spot. John can meet me with
Freddie.”
Freddie was the Ambassador’s favorite horse.
“But can Borinsky put up with you till half-past four?”
“Cynthia Clarke won’t mind if I turn up before my time.”
“No. She’s devoted to you, and you know it, and love it.”
Sir Carey smiled. He and his wife were happy people, and he never wished
to stray from his path of happiness, not even with Mrs. Clarke. But
he had been a beautiful youth, whom many women had loved, and was
a remarkably handsome man, although his red hair was turning gray.
Honestly he liked to be admired by women, and to feel that his
fascination for them was still intact. And he did not actively object
to the fact of his wife’s being aware of it. For he loved her very much,
and he knew that a woman does not love a man less because other women
feel his power.
He appreciated Mrs. Clarke, and thought her full of intelligence, of
nuances, and _tres fine_. Her husband had been his right-hand man at
the Embassy, but he had taken Mrs. Clarke’s part when the divorce
proceedings were initiated, and had stood up for her ever since. Like
Esme Darlington he believed that she was a wild mind in an innocent
body.
On the following day he rode with her towards Rumili Kavak, and
presently, returning, to the four cross-roads at the mouth of the Valley
of Roses. A Turkish youth was standing there. Mrs. Clarke spoke to him
in Turkish and he replied. She turned to the Ambassador.
“You do want a cup of coffee, don’t you?”
“If you tell me I do.”
“By the stream just beyond the lane. And I’ll ride home. I’ve ordered
all the things you like best for dinner. Ahmed Bey and Madame Davroulos
will make a four.”
“And Delia and Cyril Vane a two!”
“You must try to control your very natural jealousy.”
“I will.”
He dismounted and gave the reins to the Turkish youth.
Sitting very erect on her black Arab horse, Mrs. Clarke watched him
disappear down the lane in which Dion had heard the cantering feet of a
horse as he sat alone beside the stream.
Then she rode back to Buyukderer.