The lovelorn boy had left. Eva seemed to have forgotten him, and there
was no shadow upon the brunette pallor of her face. She sat down again,
and after a brief exchange of questions she told him of an experience
that she had had.
The reason for her telling the story seemed to inhere in thoughts which
she did not express. Her glance rested calmly in the illimitable. Her
eyes knew no walls in their vision; no one could assert that she looked
at him. She merely gazed.
Susan Rappard sat by the tile-oven, resting her chin upon her arm,
while her fingers, gliding past the furrowed cheeks, clung amid her
greyish hair.
At Arles in Provence a young monk named Brother Leotade had often
visited Eva. He was not over twenty-five, vigorous, a typical Frenchman
of the South, though rather taciturn.
He loved the land and knew the old castles. Once he spoke to her of a
tower that stood on a cliff, a mile from the city; he described the
view from the top of the tower in words that made Eva long to enjoy it.
He offered to be her guide, and they agreed on the hour and the day.
The tower had an iron gate which was kept locked, and the key was in
the keeping of a certain vintner. It was late afternoon when they set
out, but on the unshaded road it was still hot. They meant to be back
before night fall, and so they walked quickly; but when they reached
the tower the sun had already disappeared behind the hills.
Brother Leotade opened the iron gate and they saw a narrow spiral
staircase of stone. They climbed a few stairs. Then the monk turned
suddenly, locked the door from within, and slipped the key into the
pocket of his cowl. Eva asked his reason. He replied that it was safer
so.
It was dim in the vaulted tower, and Eva saw a menacing gleam in the
monk’s eyes. She let him precede her, but on a landing he turned and
grasped her. She was silent, although she felt the pressure of his
fingers. Still silent, she glided from his grasp, and ran up as swiftly
as she could. She heard no steps behind her in the darkness, and the
stairs seemed endless. Still she climbed until her breath gave out, and
she panted for the light. Suddenly the greenish bell of the sky gleamed
into the shaft; and as she mounted, the circle of her vision widened to
the scarlet of the West, and when she stood on the last step and on the
platform, having emerged from the mustiness of the old walls into the
balsamic coolness and the multiform and tinted beauty of earth and air,
the danger seemed wholly past.
She waited and watched the dark hole from which she had come. The monk
did not appear. His treacherous concealment strained her nerves to the
uttermost. The brief twilight faded; evening turned into night; there
was no sound, no tread. Not until late did it occur to her that she
could call for help. She cried out into the land, but she saw that it
was a desolate region in which no one dwelled. And when her feeble cry
had died away, the shape of Brother Leotade appeared at the head of the
stairs.
The expression on his face filled her now with an even greater horror.
He murmured something and stretched out his arms after her. She bounded
backward, groping behind her with her hands. He followed her, and she
leaped upon the parapet, crouched near the pinnacle, hard by the outer
rim of the wall, her head and shoulders over the abyss. The wind caught
the veil that had been wound about her head and it streamed forth like
a flag. The monk stood still, bound to the spot by her eyes. His own
were fixed relentlessly upon her, but he dared not move, for he saw the
determination in her face: if he moved toward her, she would leap to
her death.
And yet a rage of desire kept flaring in his eyes.
The hours passed. The monk stood there as though cast of bronze, while
she crouched on the parapet, motionless but for her fluttering veil,
and held him with her eye as one holds a wolf. Stars gathered in the
sky; from time to time she glanced for a second at the firmament. Never
had she been so near to the eternal flame. She seemed to hear the
melody of a million worlds singing in their orbits; her unmoving limbs
seemed to vibrate; the hands with which she clung to the harsh wall
seemed to upbear the adamantine roof of the cosmos, while below her was
the created thing, blind and wracked by passion and sworn to a God whom
it belied.
Gradually the rim of heaven grew bright and the birds began to flutter
upward. Then Brother Leotade threw himself upon his face and began to
pray aloud. And as the East grew brighter he lifted up more resonantly
the voice of his prayer. He crept toward the stairs. Then he arose and
disappeared.
She saw him issue from the gate below and disappear in the dawn among
the vineyards. Eva lay long in the grass below, worn and dull, before
she could walk back to the city.
“It may be,” she said at the end of her story, “that some one looked on
from Sirius, some one who will come soon and perhaps be my friend.” She
smiled.
“From Sirius?” The voice of Susan was heard. “Where will he get pearls
and diadems? What crowns will he offer you, and what provinces? Let us
have no dealings with beggars, even though they come from the sky.”
“Keep quiet, you Sancho Panza!” Eva said. “All that I ask is that
he can laugh, laugh marvellously--laugh like that young muleteer at
Cordova! Do you remember him? I want him to laugh so that I can forget
my ambitions.”
Hers is a virtue that hardly begs for pennies, thought Crammon, and
determined to be on his guard and seek security while there was time.
For in his breast he felt a new, unknown, and melancholy burning, and
he knew well that he could not laugh like that young Cordovan muleteer
and make an ambitious woman forget her striving.
V
Felix Imhof arrived, and with him Wolfgang Wahnschaffe, a very tall
young man of twenty-two. There was an elegance about the latter that
suggested unlimited means. His father was one of the German steel kings.
Crammon’s refusal of his invitation had annoyed Wahnschaffe, and he was
anxious to secure the older man’s friendship. It was characteristic of
the Wahnschaffes to desire most strongly whatever seemed to withhold
itself from their grasp.
They went to the Théâtre Sapajou, and Felix Imhof agreed that the
dancer was incomparable. Plans at once flew from his mind like sparks
from beaten iron in a smithy. He talked of founding an Academy of the
Dance, of hiring an impresario for a tour through Europe, of inventing
a pantomime. All this was to be done, so to speak, over night.
They sat together and drank a good deal--first wine, then champagne,
then ale, then whiskey, then coffee, then wine once more. The excess
had no effect on Imhof at all; in his soberest moments he was like
others in the ecstasy of drunkenness.
He celebrated the praises of Gauguin, of Schiller, and of Balzac, and
developed the plan for a great experiment in human eugenics. Faultless
men and women were to be chosen and united and to beget an Arcadian
race.
In the midst of it all he quoted passages of Keats and Rabelais, mixed
drinks of ten kinds, and related a dozen succulent anecdotes from his
wide experience with women. His mouth with its sensual lips poured
forth superlatives, his protruding negroid eyes sparkled with whim and
wit, and his spare, sinewy body seemed to suffer if it was forced to
but a minute’s immobility.
The other two nearly fell asleep through sheer weariness. He grew
steadily more awake and noisy, waved his hands, beat on the table,
inhaled the smoky air luxuriously, and laughed with his gigantic bass
voice.
Five successive nights were spent in this way. That was enough for
Crammon and he determined to leave. Wolfgang Wahnschaffe had invited
him to a hunting party at Waldleiningen.
It was at eleven in the forenoon when Felix Imhof burst in on Crammon.
In the middle of the room stood a huge open trunk. Linen, clothes,
books, shoes, cravattes were scattered about like things hastily saved
in a fire. Outside of the window swayed in flaming yellow the tree-tops
of the Park Monceau.
Crammon sat in an armchair. He was naked but for a pair of long hose.
He had breakfasted thus, and his expression was sombre. His square
Gothic head and his broad, muscular torso seemed made of bronze.
The day before Felix Imhof had made the acquaintance of Cardillac,
ruler of the Paris Bourse, and was on his way to him now. He was
going to embark on some enterprise of Cardillac to the extent of two
millions, and asked Crammon in passing whether the latter did not wish
to risk something too. A trifle, say fifty thousand francs, would
suffice. Cardillac was a magician who trebled one’s money in three
days. Then you had had the pleasure of the game and the suspense.
“This Cardillac,” he said, “is a wonder. He began life as an errand boy
in an hotel. Now he is chief shareholder in thirty-seven corporations,
founder of the Franco-Hispanic Bank, owner of the zinc mines of Le
Nère, ruler of a horde of newspapers, and master of a fortune running
into the hundreds of millions.”
Crammon arose, and from the heaps on the floor drew forth a violet
dressing gown which he put over his shivering body. He looked in it
like a cardinal.
“Do you happen to know,” he asked, thoughtfully and sleepily, “or did
you by chance ever observe how the young muleteers in Cordova laugh?”
Imhof’s helpless astonishment made him look stupid. He was silent.
Crammon took a large peach from a plate and began to eat it. You could
see drops of the amber juice.
“There’s no way out,” he said, and sighed sadly, “I shall have to go to
Cordova myself.”