opened it, a breeze seeming to take it from her hands. He saw her hands
lift quietly, tighten and press across her lips. She seemed to become
less in height. She ran to him, and for the briefest instant touched
her forehead to his breast--the queerest murmuring little cry from her
throat. Something of the picture in the other room had come to him from
her mind. They did not speak. He did not draw her closely, merely
sustained her.
Romney saw it on the floor, the face flattened against the stone, the
arms out. His hand went out to her and pressed upon her breast to keep
the shock from rending her--as if she were carrying a child. The look
of her face frightened him so that he drew her away; yet all the time he
had the sense that the tragedy had somehow set them free.
"You will let me take care of him--come," he whispered.
She followed, obediently. He did not know the way to her room, but took
her to the one he had used, pressed her to lie down. She covered her
face in the pillow where he had lain. Romney feared she was not
breathing and turned her face outward. There he knelt a moment. Her
eyes were open, but did not seem to hold him. Moments passed and then
he heard her words:
"You said you would go to him."
"Yes, but I thought you needed me more, just now," he said.
"You said you would go to him."
Romney left her.
The Russian's body was heavy and still hot. The silence of it was almost
unbelievable, with the great damp chest still radiating heat. The weight
was dead, but disgustingly soft. The American had a fear, with the feet
dragging across the floor, that the body might break and cover the
stones. He laid it upon the couch and listened again for the heart. It
was still, as if pinned to the walls of the chest. Romney wiped his
brow and found that there was a door into the street. He went forth
quickly.
Bamban, so constantly in evidence, was queerly enough not so easy to
find this time. He had to go to the Rest House and ask questions. At
last he could not go further, but bid them to send his servant to him
and hastened back. The face of Anna Erivan, as she had looked into the
open door, was still held in his mind. Bamban was running behind him
before he reached the Consulate. He understood quickly and took charge
of affairs in the Forward Room....
She had not stirred. Romney shut the door and knelt beside her again.
It was a moment before she realised his nearness.
"Did you go to him?" she asked.
"Yes."
"He is dead?"
"Yes. Everything is being done for him.... Anna Erivan, if I could only
do everything for you! I suffer for your suffering. I feel it all--"
Her hand came out and touched his cheek, her eyelids closed.
"Dearest stranger," she whispered.... A moment later she repeated with a
smile, "Stranger."
Her face changed. The unspeakable thing to Romney was that part of the
smile lingered, though her eyes opened and white rays of purest horror
shone in them. Her lips parted, the smile holding to them, as something
holds to life, her fingers plucking his cheek.
"To-night--don't go away from me to-night! I will hear them. They
always come when any one dies. I knew they would come for him, that he
would die or go mad, and they would come.
"They are out in the rocks and sand, they come closer where death is....
And he was good as a boy; a good brother. I came to him and he was
changed. I knew he would never go back. When I heard them the first
time and saw how they affected him, I knew they would come for him."
Romney crushed her leaping fingers in his hand.
"Listen," he said sharply. "Tell me what you mean."
"Oh, have you not heard them laughing and sobbing at night?"
"The hyenas--"
She shuddered full length, hiding her face in his arms.
"I could not have spoken the word," she cried.
He repeated, "I shall be with you, I shall be with you--"
"They always come to the lonely," she whispered. "They would have come
last night, only you were here. No one will ever know what they bring
to me. They are the spirits of the waste-places. They are the darkness
that moves around the night-fires. Where there is death, they come in.
They cry so--where there is death. They know. They are living death.
They are the spirit of the Gobi--"
"No," he said. "They are just fright-things, the saddest of all beasts,
mere cowardly night-roamers. It is only human nerves that make them
terrible. You and I, alone and well, could laugh at them, as at coyotes
and jackals."
"You are but saying that. Have you seen them when the moon-light is
upon the sand and rocks? They have passed death. They are going the
other way. The yellow men understand, but they bring madness to those
who are white. Have you heard that it is not food they want from a
corpse? Have you heard that?"
"It is food that they want," he said softly. "I have seen that. Please
don't think of them. I will be here--"
"Always when he drank, I seemed to see them around him. When he shut
himself in there, I could hear them. Do you know what frightens me? It
is not the poor body that they will find in the desert. They always
find the bodies. One cannot dig so deep, or cover so heavily with
stones, but they will find them. It is not that. I think the drink has
brought something like them to his soul! Perhaps he is meeting them now.
He feared them so, when he drank."
"Listen," said Romney. "He has done no great harm. The desert is too
much for many men. He did the best he could. The desert was too hard
for him. I think he has taken up already the old good that you knew,
the good that you came out here to find in him."
"Oh, do you think that?" she whispered. "Or do you just say that for me?
Tell me, if you really think that."
*7*
Anna Erivan had arisen. She moved about her work in the house,
accepting the fresh ordeal, as one accustomed to darkness and
difficulty. Romney, in the afternoon, saw the sudden triumph of her
will after hours of utter prostration, an almost irresistible force of
spirit. Bamban had done all that mortal yellow man could do. The day
had been very still and hot; the town had shown an unreasoning
curiosity. In the lull of evening they were very weary. The tea-table
was drawn near the open door by the court. Shadows moved softly between
them.
"To-morrow you must go on your journey," she said.
Coldness and premonition came to the American. He had met her will
before. This from her was a sort of "I have spoken." He seemed to
recognise it in the silence as an old familiar. She had strength, an
integrity terribly-earned and delivered in fulness and order. It was
something hers so absolutely that even her lover could not impinge upon
it. Perhaps it was the sacred thing about her; the essence of a
character, rapidly unfolding to him in the twenty-four hours; a
character that would meet all crises and that had formed itself by
ancient acquaintance with grief.... In the stress of the moment, Romney
tried to evade the issue, but realised the futility of that. His own
volition was upstanding. Very rarely in his life had he felt its power
as now. It was without variableness, too. There was no shadow of
turning in his heart.
"I cannot leave you," he said.
She was very quiet. "I was weak this morning. It was so wonderful for
you to come. When I think of your coming just at this time, I am in awe
before life--the deepness and strangeness of life. We knew each other;
we did not need words. I haunted and tempted you this morning. You
were strong; you would have ridden away. I caught at your foot quite as
a woman does. I asked you twice a question designed to make you linger.
And I knew the answer before the question. I knew that you could not
tell me, without showing how hard it was for you to go; that you had not
trusted yourself to tell me. I knew it all. I loved your courage. I
should have let you go. That was my failing--"
"You would have been here alone to-day, had I gone. You would have
opened the door to the forward room and there would have been none to
stand behind you--"
"Yes," she whispered.
They were silent. She looked out apprehensively at the creeping
darkness.
"But that is past. Perhaps I was meant to have help this one day, but I
cannot take more time from your journey. I think I must have kept some
one from his quest--some time. I must have learned some terrible lesson
that way, for it is so close to me! The price one pays, for keeping a
man from his quest! It is untellable. You must not think of me. You
must not think of staying with me now. When you have finished your
mission, then you may come--quickly."
"I cannot leave you," he said.
"Don't say that again. That hurts me. I can never have a sense of
innocence for my weakness this morning if you hold to that. Won't you
give it back to me?"
"Do you think I would leave you here alone--a white woman in this place,
to arrange your own journey of so many days to Europe, to pass the
nights alone here, till you are ready, to start all alone?"
"I should not leave here for a journey to Europe till I am relieved.
There should be a Russian to attend to all the papers here. The little
but imperative work day by day--I have done most of that heretofore.
There is no one but me to do it now.... I shall be safe enough here.
At most, my part is a little thing. My fears at night-fall--they are
not to be considered now. You are the one to be considered. Do you
think I have failed to comprehend the significance of your mission?"
He followed her eyes into the darkness, thick upon the little court.
"It is not only that," he said. "You have comprehended everything. You
always know before I finish a sentence. I could be with you years and
never explain a meaning.... My mission does not call me to-night. If I
were to go, I should never be able to see past your face, your
frightened face, the face of you here alone at night-fall. I think I
was guided here to be with you through these hard days. Many have said,
'Put love away,' but the greatest have said, 'Give all to love!'"
The night seemed heavy upon her; her words came from the heart of it:
"Can it be that you would lower the meaning of the great ones who say,
'Give all to love'? I'm afraid they do not mean the love of man and
woman. Give all to the love _of the world_. Give all to the love of
the weak and the little ones--that is the meaning of the great ones. No
one knows that better than you. This is the place of meetings and
partings. You know that. Was there ever a lingering together of lovers
here that was proof against _ennui_, against satiety? It is only the
weak who linger, who make their beds at the meeting-places. The great
ones go on."
She had arisen. She was farther from him, but higher to his eyes....
And just then there came from out the darkness of the desert, a horrid
puking laugh--like a jangling of stones in a thick glass bottle. It had
nothing to do with distance. From near or far it reached them, and
seemed to linger in the room like an evil odour.
It broke the woman for the moment. She caught him in her arms and cried
out words that were like a command:
"... You cannot, you must not leave me now!"
*8*
It was not capitulation. The clinging of Anna Erivan was but momentary.
Though they had already talked together almost from the first as if the
relation of man and woman were old and established, nothing of the
exterior obstacles had been removed. In each of the three days that
followed, Anna Erivan asked him in a different way to continue his
journey. He refused. They spoke little otherwise. There were
occasional passages of kindness between them, when they seemed to touch
the great yearning of heart for heart, but their emotions were not
brought to words. Toward evening they would draw together a little, but
separate early to their rooms. The second night, soon after he had
entered his room, the laugh of the hyenas came again from the desert.
He went to the living-room, and stood near her door.
He saw the knob turn from within--knew she was pressing against it--but
the laugh was not repeated. She mastered her terror.... These nights
were hard for him, for he slept little; and the days were hard. Though
he was near her, the woman was very far away. He had the sense of
carrying a broken courage; that he was a weakling remaining in camp with
the women, while the warriors went forth for the hunt. He missed
nothing of the pull of the task, but the holding of the woman was
greater.
His will did not change. Nadiram was all that was sinister and
detestable. He could not leave her there alone. Sometimes he yearned
for the mission, the perils of it, subtle and open, the worst that it
could bring in exposure and famine and fear. Her presence haunted him
with every beauty and mystery. He found himself dwelling for many rapt
moments on the scenes of their meeting--the first night and morning.
Sometimes he felt that this was only a door that was shut between them;
that all the love was there, waiting for one will to break. Sometimes
again he was in the utter darkness that came from the conviction that he
had forfeited everything by remaining. In the main, she gave no sign.
It was a very still place in his life. He had no thought of food,
though to pass the time he explored the town to purchase little
delicacies for the table and comforts for the house. He did not go near
the Rest House. In the sight of the resting camels was something both
indolent and insolent. Bamban was ever within call--apparently true and
uncritical, though sometimes Romney fancied a reproach. The forward
room where the brother had lain, was opened and clear. The few callers
were received there, the woman attending.
Romney ate little or nothing. He thought he would see more clearly, and
all his inclinations were against food. On the third day, though she
did not speak, he saw that he was making her suffer. The fear came that
she might think he was trying for her pity--that nauseated him. He fell
to--and perceived her relief.
"I thought it was a good chance. A man ought to fast occasionally," he
explained. "Especially a man who does not work, should not eat."
"A woman sees something personal in a man's fasting," she said with a
trace of a smile.
They laboured again that third night at the old subject--but all had
been covered. Their eyes were weary. She would lift her eyes to him,
saying that his mission awaited; and he could only reply that he would
not leave her.... The fourth night something hard and resolute was in
her eyes. He knew that she would speak when the tea was poured. He
waited, more afraid than he had ever been before:
"Do you know," she said steadily, "it is not just the thing for you to
be here with me. I am alone. One does not live alone in a house with a
man--"
Her finger was tapping the table. She saw that he regarded it and
dropped her hand to her knee. It was the hardest moment since their
first trial together. It did not seem to belong to her. They had
needed no laws. They were human adults. They were a universe apart in
the same house. It hurt him to the core--such words from her. Many
times of late the sense of his own smallness had come, but he had never
fallen so little that he could not ignore a sham of this kind.
"I did not think of that. We seemed to be under a law of our own--"
"But the others," she said steadily.
"You mean Nadiram?"
"Yes--you see I have the office--"
"Ah, yes--the office.... I shall go to the Rest House, of course.
Shall I go to-night--or to-morrow morning?"
"To-morrow morning."
"Very well."
She was whiter than ever. There was no word at all at breakfast.
Bamban came for the bags.
"Please," he said, as he was leaving, "don't fail to use me. We are not
enemies. Do you know--it is hard for us to remember--that all there is
between us is a difference of opinion--each for the other's good. We
cannot go far astray that way. Please use me. The days are so long."
Her lips moved. They moved again into a smile. It was one of the
bravest smiles.
"Of course, I shall try to think of something--"
That night he came to her court a little before sundown. There was a
stone there by the west wall, and he sat and smoked until long after
full darkness. As a rule the hyenas were heard early in the evening,
when they were near Nadiram. She came to the door several times before
dusk, smiled and waved to him. When he turned away in the full night,
it was as if there was some part of him that refused to leave; and when
he pushed on, straightening his shoulders, this part tore loose from him
with numbing pain.
Bamban sat on the floor across the room at the Rest House. Bamban's
eyes gleamed.
"Since there are no orders here, and to-morrow is the fifth day, it
might be well for the messenger and his servant to push on to Wampli
tomorrow."
"It might be well," said Romney, "But I don't think I shall be able to
clear to-morrow. Your country and your countrymen have taught me how to
wait, Bamban.... I recall Tushi-kow when I was very impatient and the
delightful Fai Ming would not let us even talk about the matter of our
journey for nearly as many days as we have waited here in Nadiram--"
"Might it not be well for the messenger's servant to travel on to Wampli
alone if the interval of waiting is still to be extended, in order to
ascertain the orders there, or to be there if orders come?"
"Would orders be delivered to the messenger's servant?" Romney asked.
"In case the messenger is unavoidably detained."
There was no longer any doubt in the American's mind that Minglapo had
given him more than a servant.
"I may think more about that," said he.
But he didn't. He thought about the woman. His faith was shaken now,
and his pride was harshly wounded. The devotion he had come to know was
a madness and a martyrdom. Compared to it, all the things that men do
with their boundaries, ambitions, conspiracies, and sundry national
businesses, belonged to a lower dimension of life. He saw all his
activities of the past as little and lesser movements. He could not
have lived through them had he known how futile they were, how empty his
heart was.
The great burden now was this meeting of the old world in her heart--her
sending him away because they were man and woman alone. Man and woman,
as he had thought, in the strangest and deepest moments of their lives.
He loved the quest spirit in her eyes; he loved her capacity to
sacrifice; he loved her mighty will for him to go and the cry of her
most human heart for him to stay in the fright from the hyenas. He
loved her now with this taint of the old upon her--that was the
torturing truth. But he was disappointed.
He had been so far from the truck of convention, that he had neglected
to speak of this point first. Had he spoken of it, he would have
expected her to deny any cause for his changing from the Consulate to
the Rest House in so far as a convention was concerned.... He felt
himself in the old madness. These were the days of Hankow again, with
all the added forces and energies of his life making hell for him. He
was like an engine thrashing itself to pieces with its own power,
because she had cut herself from him. He saw ahead a redder rending
than he had known before, and which had brought him close to death.
He felt at rage with the world; capable even of telling Anna Erivan how
vindictive was this hurt for a man who would die for her. But Romney
unfrequently spoke in his rage. It came very seldom, and he had made it
a law to laugh and speak of other things until it passed.
"Bamban," he said, "you Chinese men do not consider a woman."
"Ah, yes," said the wise little man.
"You do not consider the interests of the heart of man or woman
comparable to the interests of one's country or business--"
"We keep them apart."
"That does not answer. If one's country or business demand the man, the
woman must wait--"
"Yes."
Romney laughed. Bamban waited for him to speak.
"You keep them behind lattices. You do not give them the breath of
life. You feel that they belong to a man's weakness rather than his
strength. You do not see that the girl is equal to the boy; that the
two are one so far as the future is concerned. You think that all women
are wanton, unless they are repressed."
"We do not consider that women belong to the larger affairs of man's
life," said Bamban.
Romney laughed again.
"That's why as a nation, the Chinese Empire is ninety-seven hundredths
putrified," said he.
There was not a look in Bamban's clearly-formed face to denote if the
depth and delicacy of his regard were shaken.
"You are the messenger of our country," he said.
"Hardly that--a messenger of the remaining three per cent," said Romney.
*9*
The next morning he went to the court of the Consulate, without anything
in his hands. The night had been so rough for him that he was uncentred
enough to seek the woman for a moment--just to look upon her, to ease
off the mighty ache across his chest. He had become very humble from
wanting her. Last night he had been touched with the coldness and
hatred that seemed close to destroying the attraction between them, but
the emptiness and irony of all life without her, had come in the hours
following the talk with Bamban. The thing that he had called a taint
diminished to one of the minor mysteries of womanhood, and Anna Erivan,
brave enough not to quibble about the wonder of their meeting, and of
spiritual force to forget her own longing and passion, stood forth with
augmented light and lure.
As he waited a mere moment within the gate of the court, it seemed that
he would die if she did not come quickly. The pain that he had learned
to identify with her in moments of their separation in presence or
thought--a pain that began in the pit of his left arm and stretched to
the centre of his breast--awakened to burning and agony in that moment
before he heard her step. Words were on his lips to say that he loved
her, that nothing mattered but that to him, that he wanted to die if he
could not have her, that her own terms were his, that he could not take
his thoughts much less his presence again from the place where she
abode--a rush of confession and revelation altogether unlike the man
that others knew or that he had hitherto known himself.
She had been in the Forward Room. He heard the door and her step in the
living-room; then at last she came to the door of the court, and all
that he could say was:
"Are you all right?"
"Yes."
She looked so white that he was awed by the frailness of her life. He
could not speak, and the sense of hanging there, impotent, presently
prevailed upon his pride, and he went away. During the day Bamban twice
mentioned the town of Wampli, and each time Romney turned away and
smiled.
Always when driven to the last ditch, he smiled. One can best survey
the humour of the world from the last ditch. And this day moved on,
hour by hour, the slowest caravan in the reach of mortal
conception--hours to the dusk, deadly, crawling. And when the dusk came
on, he went to the court of the Consulate and sat upon a stone by the
west wall, and smoked there, waiting for the full night. Once the woman
came to the doorway and waved at him. And that night, leaving, he was
torn again. As he stretched out on his blankets, Bamban brought a
candle.
... Romney suddenly reached for the yellow hand. At the touch of it, a
sob came from him, and for an hour he apologised. Still an hour later he
awoke, sweating, with a start, dreaming that the laugh had come. Bamban
was still sitting by the candle.
"Was that the hyenas?" the American asked.
"No, there has been silence. You were dreaming."
"Ah, yes."
Bamban watched him for a time.
"You do not eat. You do not sleep. You are losing strength for your
journey. Will not the woman wait for you?"
"I feel as if I needed some new power," Romney said strangely. "I feel
the need of a master."
"When that comes to a man, the master is near," Bamban said quietly.
"What do you mean? You see I have stopped talking to you as a servant."
"I am your servant," Bamban responded simply.
"But what did you mean about the master being near?"
"It is a saying among the Buddhists that the master is ready when the
man is; but I wonder if he will find his disciple with great joy, when
that disciple delays his mission for a woman. Remember I am talking
still as your servant."
"I appreciate you, Bamban."
"You are the chosen one. I wait for you to remember your mission, and
to have done with the lesser drawing principle--"
Romney laughed. "It's a clash of the East and West," he said.
"But they thought you were of the East. They are waiting now in
Peking--in the conviction of your loyalty--"
Romney turned away as if to sleep again.