When the dinner was over, the company returned to the drawing-room. The
conversation began in French, but in deference to Mr. Bradshaw, who did
not understand that language, changed to German.
The American directed the conversation toward the dying races of the
New World, and the tragedy of their disappearance. Eva encouraged him,
and he told of an experience he had had among the Navaho Indians.
The Navaho tribe had offered the longest resistance to Christianity
and to its civilization. To subdue them the United States Government
forbade the practice of the immemorial Yabe Chi dance, the most
solemn ritual of their cult. The commissioner who was to convey this
order, and on whose staff Mr. Bradshaw had been, yielded to the
passionate entreaty of the tribal chief, and gave permission for a
final celebration of the dance. At midnight, by the light of campfires
and of pine torches, the brilliantly feathered and tattooed dancers
and singers appeared. The singers sang songs which told of the fates
of three heroes, who had been captured by a hostile tribe and freed by
the god Ya. He taught them to ride the lightning; they fled into the
cave of the Grizzly Bear, and thence into the realm of butterflies.
The dances gave a plastic representation of these adventures. While
the craggy mountains re-echoed the songs, and the contorted dances in
the tawny glow rose to an ecstasy of despair, a terrific storm broke.
Cascades of water poured from the sky and filled the dried river-beds
with roaring torrents; the fires were extinguished; the medicine men
prayed with uplifted arms; the dancers and singers, certain now that
they had incurred the anger of their god, whose sacred ceremony they
had consented to betray, hurled themselves in their wild pain into the
turbulent waters, which carried their bodies far down into the plain.
When Mr. Bradshaw had ended, Eva said: “The gods are vengeful; even the
gentlest will defend their seats.”
“That is a heathen view,” said Amadeus, in a sharp and challenging
voice. “There are no gods. There are idols, to be sure, and these must
be broken.” He looked defiantly about him, and added in a dragging
tone: “For the Lord saith, no man can look upon me and live.”
Smiles met his outburst. Tavera had not understood, and turned to
Wiguniewski, who whispered an explanation in French. Then the Spaniard
smiled too, compassionately and maliciously.
Voss arose with a tormented look on his face. The merriment in those
faces was like a bodily chastisement to him. From behind his glittering
eye-glasses he directed a venomous glance toward Eva, and said in
troubled tones: “In the same context of Scripture the Lord bids Israel
hurl aside its adornments that He may see what He will do with them.
The meaning is clear.”
“He cannot expiate the lust of the eye,” Christian thought, and avoided
Eva’s glance.
Amadeus Voss left the company and the house. On the street he ran
as though pursued, clasping his hands to his temples. He had pushed
his derby hat far back. When he reached his room, he opened his box
and drew out a package of letters. They were the stolen letters of
the unknown woman F. He sat down by his lamp, and read with tense
absorption and a burning forehead. It was not the first night that he
had passed thus.
When Eva was alone with Christian, she asked: “Why did you bring that
man with you?”
He laughed, and lifted her up in his arms, and carried her through many
flights of rooms and out of light into darkness.
“The sea cries!” her lips said at his ear.
He prayed that all sounds might die out of the world except the thunder
of the sea and that young voice at his ear. He prayed that those two
might silence the disquiet that overcame him in her very embraces and
made him, at the end of every ecstasy, yearn for its renewal.
That slender, passionate body throbbed toward him. Yet he heard the
lamentation of an alien voice: What shall we do?
“Why did you bring this man?” Eva asked him far in the night, between
sleep and sleep. “I cannot bear him. There is always sweat on his
forehead. He comes from a sinister world.”
There was a bluish twilight in the room that came from the blue flame
of a blue lamp, and a bluish darkness lay beyond the windows.
“Why don’t you answer me?” she urged, and raised herself, showing the
pale face amid its wilderness of brown hair.
He had no answer for her. He feared the insufficiency of any
explanation, as well as the replies that she would find.
“What is the meaning of it all? What ails you, dearest?” Eva drew him
toward her, and clung to him, and kissed his eyes thirstily.
“I’ll ask him to avoid your presence,” said Christian. And suddenly he
saw himself and Voss in the farm yard of Nettersheim, saw the kneeling
men and maid servants, the old rusty lantern, the dead woman, and the
carpenter who was measuring her for her coffin.
“Tell me what he means to you,” whispered Eva. “It seems to me suddenly
as though you were gone. Where are you really? Tell me, dear friend.”
“You should have let me love you in those old days in Paris,” said
Christian gently, and softly rested his cheek against her bosom, “in
those days when Crammon and I came to you.”
“Speak, only speak,” Eva breathed, seeking to hide the fright in her
heart.
Her eyes gleamed, and her skin was like luminous white satin. In the
darkness her face had a spiritualized thinness; the restrained charm of
her gestures mastered the hour, and her smile was deep and intricate of
meaning, and everything about her was play and mirroring and raptness
and unexpected magic. Christian looked upon her.
“Do you remember words that you once spoke to me?” he asked. “You said:
‘Love is an art like poetry or music, and he who does not understand
that, finds no grace in love’s sight.’ Were not those your words?”
“Yes, they were. Speak to me, my darling!”
He held her in his arms, and the life of her body, its warmth, its
blood that was conscious of him, and its vibration that was toward
him, made speech a little easier. “You see,” he said thoughtfully, and
caressed her hand, “I have only enjoyed women. Nothing more. I have
been ignorant of that love which is an art. It was so easy. They adored
me, and I took no pains. They put no hindrances on my path, and so
my foot passed over them. Not one demanded a fulfilment of me. They
were happy enough if I was but contented. But you, Eva, you’re not
satisfied with me. You look at me searchingly and watch me; and your
vigil continues even at those moments when one floats beyond thought
and knowledge. And it is because you are not satisfied with me. Or is
that an error, a deception?”
“It is so very late,” said Eva, and, leaning her head back upon the
pillows, she closed her eyes. She listened to the perished echo of her
own voice, and the oppression of her heart almost robbed her of breath.