A week had passed, and the Villa Hafiz had not yet opened its door to
receive its mistress. The servants, with the exception of Sonia, had
arrived. The Greek butler had everything in order downstairs. Above
stairs the big, low bed was made, and there were flowers in the vases
dotted about here and there in the blue-and-green sitting-room. Osman,
the gardener, had trimmed the rose-bushes, had carefully cleaned the
garden seats, and had swept straying leaves from the winding paths. The
fountain sang its under-song above the lilies. On the highest terrace,
beyond the climbing garden, the pavilion waited for the woman and man
who had hidden themselves in it to go down into the darkness. But no one
slept in the big, low bed, or sat in the blue-and-green room; the garden
was deserted; by night no feet trod softly to the pavilion.
For the first time in her life Cynthia Clarke was in the toils. She who
loved her personal freedom almost wildly no longer felt free. She dared
not go to Buyukderer.
She looked back to that night when she had told Dion Leith the truth,
and it stood out among all the nights of her life, more black and fatal
than any of them, because on it she had been false to herself, had
been weak. She had not followed up her strength in words by strength in
action! She had allowed Dion Leith to dominate her that night, to make
of her against her will his creature. In doing that she had taken a step
down--a step away from the path in which hitherto she had always walked.
And that departure from inflexible selfishness seemed strangely to have
weakened her will.
She was afraid of Dion because she felt that he was ungovernable by her,
that her will no longer meant anything to him. He did not brace himself
to defy it; simply, he did not bother about it. He seemed to have passed
into a region where such a trifle as a woman’s will faded away from his
perception.
His serpent had swallowed up hers.
She ought to have defied him that night, to have risked a violent
scene, to have risked everything. Instead, she had come back to the
drawing-room, had gone out into the night with him, had even gone to
the rooms near the Persian Khan. She had put off, had said to herself
“To-morrow”; she had tried to believe that Dion’s desperate mood would
pass, that he needed gentle handling for the moment, and that, if
treated with supreme tact, he would eventually be “managed” into letting
her have her will.
But now she had no illusions. Her distressed eyes saw quite clearly,
and she knew that she had made a fatal mistake in being obedient to Dion
that night. She felt like one at the beginning of an inclined plane that
was slippery as ice. She had stepped upon it, and she could not step
back. She could only go forward and downward.
Dion was reckless. Appeals to reason, to chivalry, to pity, had no
effect upon him. He only laughed at them, took them as part of her
game of hypocrisy. In her genuine and growing fear and distress she had
become almost horribly sincere, but he would not believe in, or heed,
her sincerity. She knew her increasing hatred of him was matched by his
secret detestation of her. Yes, he detested her with all that was most
characteristic in him, with all those inherent qualities of which, do
what he would he was unable to rid himself. And yet there was a link
which bound them together--the link of a common degradation of body.
She longed to smash that link which she had so carefully and sedulously
labored to forge. But he wished to make it stronger. By her violent will
she had turned him to perversity, and now he was actually more perverse
than she was. She saw herself outdistanced on the course towards the
ultimate blackness, saw herself forced to follow where he led.
She dared not got to Buyukderer. She could not, she knew, keep him away
from there. He would follow her from Constantinople, would resume his
life of last summer, would perhaps deliberately accentuate his intimacy
with her instead of being careful to throw over it a veil. In his hatred
and recklessness he might be capable even of that, the last outrage
which a man can inflict upon a woman, to whose safety and happiness
his chivalrous secrecy is essential. His clinging to her in hatred was
terrible to her. She began to think that perhaps he had in his mind
abominable plans for the destruction of her happiness.
One day he told her that if she went to Buyukderer he would not only
follow her there, but he would remain there when Jimmy came out for the
summer holidays.
“Jimmy must learn to like me again,” he said. “That is necessary.”
She shuddered when she realized the tendency of Dion’s mind. Fear made
her clairvoyant. There were moments when she seemed to look into that
mind as into a room through an open window, to see the thoughts as
living things going about their business. There was something appalling
in this man’s brooding desire to strike her in the heart combined with
his determination to continue to be her lover. It affected her as she
had never been affected before. By torturing her imagination it made
havoc of her will-power. Her situation rendered her almost desperate,
and she could not find an outlet from it.
What was she to do? If she went to Buyukderer she felt certain there
would be a scandal. Even if there were not, she could not now dare to
risk having Jimmy out for his holidays. Jimmy and Dion must not meet
again. She might travel in the summer, as Dion had suggested, but if
she did that she would be forced to endure a solitude _a deux_ with him
untempered by any social distractions. She could not endure that. To be
alone with his bitterness, his misery, and his monopolizing hatred of
her would be unbearable. And the problem of Jimmy’s holidays would not
be solved by travel. Unless she traveled to England!
A gleam of hope came to her as she thought of England. Dion had fled
from England. Would he dare to go back there, to the land which had seen
his tragedy, and where the woman lived who had cast him out? Mrs. Clarke
wondered, turning the thought of England over and over in her mind.
The longer she thought on the matter the more convinced she became that
she had hit upon a final test, by means of which it would be possible
for her to ascertain Dion’s exact mental condition. If he was ready
to follow her even to England, to show himself there as her intimate
friend, if not as her lover, than the man whom she had known in London
was dead indeed beyond hope of resurrection.
She resolved to find out what Dion’s feeling about England was.
Since the evening when she had told him the truth she had seen him--he
had obliged her to see him--every day, but he had not come again to her
flat. They had met in secret, as they had been meeting for many months.
For the days when they had wandered about Stamboul together, when she
had tried to play to him the part Dumeny had once played to her, were
long ago over.
On the day when the thought of England occurred to Mrs. Clarke as a
possible place of refuge she had promised to meet Dion late in the
evening at their rooms near the Persian Khan. She loathed going to those
rooms. They reminded her painfully of all she had felt for Dion and felt
no longer. They spoke to her of the secrecy of a passion that was dead.
She was afraid of them. But she was still more afraid of seeing Dion
in her flat. Nevertheless, now the gleam of hope which had come to her
suddenly woke up in her something of her old recklessness. Since the
servants had gone to the Villa Hafiz she had been living in the flat
with Sonia, who was an excellent cook as well as a capital maid. She
resolved to ask Dion to dinner that night, and to try her fortune once
more with him. England must be horrible to him. Then she would go to
England. And if he followed her there he would at least be punished for
his persecution of her.
Already she called his determination not to break their intrigue
persecution. She had a short memory.
After a talk with Sonia she summoned a messenger and sent Dion a note,
asking him to dinner that night. He replied that he would come. His
answer ended with the words: “We can go to the rooms later.”
As Mrs. Clarke read them her fingers closed on the paper viciously, and
she said to herself:
“I’ll not go. I’ll never go to them again.”
She told Sonia about the dinner. Then she dressed and went out.
It was a warm and languid day. She took a carriage and told the coachman
to drive to Stamboul--to drive on till she gave him the direction where
to go in Stamboul. She had no special object in view. But she longed to
be out in the air, to drive, to see people about her, the waterway,
the forest of shipping, the domes and the minarets, the cypresses, the
glades stretching towards Seraglio Point, the long, low hills of Asia.
She longed, too, to hear voices, hurrying feet, the innumerable sounds
of life. She hoped by seeing and hearing to fortify her will. The spirit
of adventure was the spirit that held her, was the most vital part
within her, and such a spirit needed freedom to breathe in. She was
fettered. She had been a coward, or almost a coward, false, perhaps, to
her fortunate star. Hitherto she had always followed Nietzsche’s advice
and had lived perilously. Was she now to be governed by fear? Even to
keep Jimmy’s respect and affection could she endure such dominion? As
the sun touched her with his fingers of gold, and the air, full of a
strangely languid vitality, whispered about her, as she heard the cries
from the sea, and saw human beings, vividly egoistic, going by on their
pilgrimage, she said to herself, “Not even for Jimmy!” The clamorous
city, with its fierce openness and its sinister suggestions of hidden
things, woke up in her the huntress, and, for the moment, lulled the
mother to sleep.
“Not even for Jimmy!” she thought. “I must be myself. I cannot be
otherwise. I must live perilously. To live in any other way for me would
be death.”
And the line in “The Kasidah” which Dion had pondered over came to her,
and she thought of the “death that walks in form of life.”
As the carriage went upon the bridge she looked across to Stamboul, and
was faced by the Mosque of the Valideh. So familiar to her was the sight
of its facade, of its cupolas and minarets, that she seldom now even
thought of it when she crossed the bridge; but to-day, perhaps because
she was unusually strung up, was restive and almost horribly alert, she
gazed at it and was intensely conscious of it. She had once said to Dion
that Stamboul was the City of the Unknown God, and now suddenly she felt
that she was nearing His altars. A strange, perverse desire to pray came
to her; to go up into one of the mosques of this mysterious city which
she loved, and to pray for her release from Dion Leith.
She smiled faintly as this idea came into her mind. The Unknown God had
surely made her as she was, had made her a huntress. Well, then, surely
she had the right to pray to Him to give her a free course for her
temperament.
“Santa Sophia!” she called to the coachman.
He cracked his whip and drove furiously on to Stamboul. In less than
a quarter of an hour he pulled up his horses before the vast Church of
Santa Sophia.
Mrs. Clarke sat still in the carriage for a moment looking up at the
ugly towering walls, covered with red and white stripes. Her face was
haggard in the sunshine, and her pale lips were set together in a hard
line. A beggar with twisted stumps instead of arms whined a petition to
her, but she neither saw him nor heard him. As she stared at the walls
on which the sun blazed she was wondering about her future. The love
of life was desperately strong within her that day. The longing for new
experiences tormented her physically. She felt as if she could not wait,
could not be patient any more. If Dion to-night refused again to give
her her freedom she must do something desperate. She must get away
secretly and hide herself from him, take a boat to Greece or Rumania, or
slip into the Orient express and vanish over the tracks of Europe.
But first she must go into the church and pray to the Unknown God.
She got out of the carriage. The beggar thrust one of his diseased
stumps in front of her face. She turned on him with a malignant look,
and the whining petition died on his lips. Then she made her way to
the Porta Basilica and passed into the church. But as its great spaces
opened out before her a thought, childishly superstitious, came to her,
and she turned abruptly, went out, made her way to the beggar who had
worried her, gave him a coin and said something kind to him. His almost
soprano voice, raised in clamorous benediction, followed her as she
returned to the church, moving slowly with horrible loose slippers
protecting its floor from her Christian feet. She always laughed in
her mind when she wore those slippers and thought of what she was. This
sanctuary of the unknown God must, it seemed, be protected from her
because she was a Christian!
There were a good many people in the church, but it looked almost empty
because of its immense size. She knew it very well, better perhaps than
she knew any other sacred building, and she cared for it very much.
She was fond of mosques, delighting in their airy simplicity, in their
casual holiness which seemed to say to her, “Worship in me if you will.
If you will not, never mind; dream in me with open eyes, or, if you
prefer it, go to sleep in a corner of me. When you wake you can mutter a
prayer, or not, just as you please.”
Santa Sophia did not, perhaps, say that, though it had now for long
years been in use as a mosque, and always seemed to Mrs. Clarke more
like a mosque than like a church. It was richly adorned, and something
of Christianity still lingered within it. In it there seemed, even
to Mrs. Clarke, to be something impelling which asked of each one who
entered it more than mere dreams, more than those long meditations which
are like prayers of the mind separated from the prayers of the heart
and soul. But it possessed the air of freedom which is characteristic
of mosques, did not seize those who entered it in a clutch of tenacious
sanctity; but seemed to let them alone, and to influence them by just
being wonderful, beautiful, unself-consciously sacred.
At first Mrs. Clarke wandered slowly about the church, without any
purpose other than that of gathering to herself some of its atmosphere.
During the last few days she had been feeling really tormented. Dion had
once said she looked punished. Now he had made her feel punished. And
she sought a moment of peace. It could not come to her from mysticism,
but it might come to her from great art, which suggests to its votaries
mystery, the something beyond, untroubled and shiningly serene.
Presently Mrs. Clarke felt the peace of Santa Sophia, and she felt it in
a new way, because she had recently suffered, indeed was suffering still
in a new way; she felt it as something desirable, which might be of
value to her, if she were able to take it to herself and to fold it
about her own life. Had she made a mistake in living perilously through
many years? Her mind went to the woman who had abandoned Dion and
entered a Sisterhood to lead a religious life. She seldom thought about
Rosamund except in relation to Dion. She had scarcely known her, and
since her first few interviews with Dion in this land of the cypress he
had seldom mentioned his wife. She neither liked, nor actively disliked,
Rosamund, whose tacit rejection of her acquaintance had not stirred in
her any womanly hatred; for though she was a ruthless woman she was not
venomous towards other women. She did not bother about them enough for
that. But now she considered that other woman with whom she had shared
Dion Leith, or rather who, not knowing it doubtless, had shared Dion
Leith with her. And she wondered whether Rosamund, in her Sisterhood,
was happier than she was in the world. In the Sisterhood there must
surely be peace--monotony, drudgery, perhaps, but peace.
Santa Sophia, with its vast spaces, its airy dome, its great arches and
galleries, its walls of variegated marble, its glittering mosaics
and columns of porphyry, to-day made her realize that in her life of
adventure and passion she was driven, as if by a demon with a whip,
and that her horrible situation with Dion was but the culmination of
a series of horrible situations. She had escaped from them only after
devastating battles, in which she had had to use all her nervous energy
and all her force of will. Was it worth while? Was the game she was
always playing worth the candles she was always burning? Would it not be
wiser to seek peace and ensue it? As she drove to Santa Sophia she had
longed fiercely to be free so that she might begin again; might again
have adventures, might again explore the depths of human personalities,
and satisfy her abnormal curiosities and desires. Now she was full of
unusual hesitation. Suppose she did succeed in getting rid of Dion by
going to England, suppose her prayer--she had not offered it up yet, but
she was going to offer it up in a moment--to the Unknown God received a
favorable answer, might it not be well for her future happiness if she
retired from the passionate life, with its perpetual secrecies, and
intrigues, and lies, and violent efforts, into the life of the ideal
mother, solely devoted to her only child?
She felt that the struggle with Dion, the horrible scenes she had had
with him, the force of her hatred of him and his hatred of her, the
necessity of yielding to him in hatred that which should never be given
save with desire, had tried her as nothing else had ever tried her.
She felt that her vitality was low, and she supposed that out of that
lowered vitality had come her uncharacteristic desire for peace. She had
almost envied for a moment the woman whom she had replaced in the life
of Dion. Even now--she sighed; a great weariness possessed her. Was she
going to be subject to a weakness which she had always despised, the
weakness of regret?
She paused beside a column not very far from the raised tribune on the
left of the dome which is set apart for the use of the Sultan, and is
called the Sultan’s seat. Her large eyes stared at it, but at first
she did not see it. She was looking onward upon herself. Then, in some
distant part of the mosque, a boy’s voice began to sing, loudly, almost
fiercely. It sounded fanatical and defiant, but tremendously believing,
proud in the faith which it proclaimed to faithful and unfaithful alike.
It echoed about the mosque, raising a clamor which nobody seemed to
heed; for the few ulemas who were visible continued reading the Koran
aloud on the low railed-in platforms which they frequent; a Dervish in
a pointed hat slept peacefully on, stretched out in a corner; before
the prayer carpet of the Prophet, not far from the Mihrab, a half-naked
Bedouin, with a sheep-skin slung over his bronzed shoulders, preserved
his wild attitude of savage adoration; and here and there, in the
distance, under the low hanging myriads of lamps, the figures of Turkish
soldiers, of street children, of travelers, moved noiselessly to and
fro.
The voice of this boy, heedless and very powerful, indeed almost
impudent, stirred Mrs. Clarke. It brought her back to her worship of
force. One must worship something, and she chose force--force of will,
of temperament, of body, of brain. Now she saw the Sultan’s tribune, and
it made her think of an opera box and of the worldly life. The boy sang
on, catching at her mind, pulling her towards the East. The curious
peace of any religious life was certainly not for her, yet to-day she
felt weary of the life in her world. And she wished she could have
in her existence peace of some kind; she wished that she were not a
perpetual wanderer. She remembered some of those with whom from time to
time, she had linked herself--her husband, Hadi Bey, Dumeny, Brayfield,
Dion Leith. Now she was struggling, and so far in vain, to thrust Dion
out of her life. If she succeeded--what then? Where was stability in her
existence? Her love for Jimmy was the only thing that lasted, and that
often made her afraid now. She was seized by an almost sentimental
desire to lose herself in a love for a man that would last as her love
for Jimmy had lasted, to know the peace of an enduring and satisfied
desire.
The voice of the boy died away. She turned in the direction of the
Mihrab to offer up her prayer to the Unknown God, as the pious Mussulman
turns in the direction of the Sacred City when he puts up his prayer to
Allah.
Her eyes fell upon the Bedouin.
As she looked at him, this man of the desert come up into the City, with
the fires of the dunes in his veins, the vast spaces mirrored in
his eyes, the passion for wandering in his soul, she felt that in a
mysterious and remote way she was akin to him, despite all her culture,
her subtle mentality, the difference of her life from his. For she had
her wildness of nature, dominant and unceasing, as he had his. He was
forever traveling in body and she in mind. He sought fresh, and ever
fresh, camping-places, and so did she. The black ashes of burnt-out
fires marked his progress and hers. She looked at him as she uttered her
prayer to the Unknown God.
And she prayed for a master, that she might meet a man who would be able
to dominate her, to hold her fast in the grip of his nature. At this
moment Dion dominated her in an ugly way, and she knew it too well. But
she needed some one whom she would willingly obey, whom she would lust
to obey, because of love. The restlessness in her life had been caused
by a lack; she had never yet found the man who could be not her tyrant
for a time, but her master while she lived. Now she prayed for that, the
only peace that she really wanted.
While she prayed she was conscious always of the attitude of the
Bedouin, which suggested the fierce yielding of one who could never be
afraid of the God he worshiped. Nor could she be afraid. For she was
not ashamed of what she was, though she hid what she was from motive of
worldly prudence and for the sake of her motherhood. She believed that
she was born into the world not in order to be severely educated, but in
order that she might live to the uttermost, according to the dictates of
her temperament. Now at last she knew what that temperament needed,
what it had been seeking, why it had never been able to cease from its
journeying. Santa Sophia had told her.
Her knowledge roused in her a sort of fury of longing for release from
Dion Leith. She saw the Bedouin riding across the sands in the freedom
he had captured, and she ached to be free that she might seek her
master. Somewhere there must be the one man who had the power to fasten
the yoke on her neck.
“Let me find him!” she prayed, almost angrily, and using her will.
She had forgotten Jimmy. Her whole nature was concentrated in the desire
for immediate release from Dion Leith in order that she might be free
to pursue consciously the search which till this moment she had pursued
unconsciously.
The Bedouin did not move. His black, bird-like eyes were wide open, but
he seemed plunged in a dream as he gazed at the Sacred Carpet. He
was absolutely unaware of his surroundings and of Mrs. Clarke’s
consideration of him. There was something animal and something royal in
his appearance and his supreme unconsciousness of others. He looked as
if he were a law unto himself, even while he was adoring. How different
he was from Dion Leith.
She shut her eyes as she prayed that Dion might be removed from her
life, somehow, anyhow, by death if need be. In the dark she created for
herself she saw the minarets pointing to the sky as she and Dion had
seen them together from the hill of Eyub as they sat under the giant
cypress. Then she had wanted Dion; now she prayed:
“Take him away! Let me be free from him! Let me never see him again!”
And she felt as if the Unknown God were listening to her somewhere far
off, knew all that was in her mind.
A stealthy movement quite near to her made her open her eyes. The
Bedouin had risen to his feet and was approaching her, moving with a
little step over the matting on his way out of the church. As he passed
Mrs. Clarke he enveloped her for a moment in an indifferent glance of
fire. He burnt her with his animal disdain of her observation of him, a
disdain which seemed to her impregnated with flame. She felt the sands
as he passed. When he was gone a sensation of loneliness, even of
desolation, oppressed her.
She hesitated for a moment; then she turned and followed him slowly. He
went before her, wrapped in his supreme indifference, through the Porta
Basilica, and came out into the blaze of the sunshine. As she emerged,
she saw him standing quite still. He seemed--she was just behind him--to
be staring at a very fair woman who, accompanied by a guide, was coming
towards the church. Mrs. Clarke, intent on the Bedouin, was aware of
this woman’s approach, but felt no sort of interest in her until she was
quite close; then something, some dagger-thrust of the mind, coming from
the woman, pierced Mrs. Clarke’s indifference.
She looked up and met the sad, pure eyes of Rosamund Leith.
For a moment she stood perfectly still gazing into those eyes.
Rosamund had stopped, but she made no gesture of recognition and did not
open her lips. She only looked at Mrs. Clarke, and as she looked a deep
flush slowly spread over her face and down to her throat.
The Greek guide said something to her; she moved, lowered her eyes and
went on into the church without looking back.
The Bedouin strode slowly away into the blaze of the sunshine.
Mrs. Clarke remained where she was, motionless. For the first time
perhaps in her life she was utterly amazed by an event. Rosamund Leith
here in Constantinople! What did that mean?
Mrs. Clarke knew the arrival of Rosamund meant something that might be
tremendously important to herself. As she stood there before the church
she was groping to find this something; but her mental faculties seemed
to be paralyzed, and she could not find it. Rosamund Leith’s eyes had
told Mrs. Clarke something, that Rosamund knew of Dion’s unfaithfulness
and who the woman was. What did the fact of Rosamund’s coming to
Constantinople in possession of that knowledge mean?
From the minaret above her head the _muezzin_ in a piercing and nasal
voice began the call to prayer. His cry seemed to tear its way through
Mrs. Clarke’s inertia. Abruptly she was in full possession of her
faculties. That Eastern man up there, nearer to the blue than she was,
cried, “Come to prayer!” But she had already uttered her prayer, and
surely Rosamund Leith was the answer.
As she drove away towards the Golden Horn she passed the Bedouin
striding along in the sun.
She looked at him, but he took no notice of her; the indifference of the
desert was about him.