all unfamiliar with bone; and that evening he sat on the stone by the
west wall of the court. There was no sound. The full moonless night
came over him. The woman waved in the doorway. He arose at last and
went out of the court, for there was no sound from the desert.
It was exactly so the next night, and during neither of these two days
did he see Anna Erivan. On the third night he arose and left the court
as usual, but there was a light speeding foot behind him, and her hand
touched his sleeve.
"Oh, come back--send Bamban for your bags and come back!"
"My God--why?" he stammered.
"Do as I say--"
"But what have I done?"
"Oh, I cannot let you live another hour with the thought that I was
afraid of what they would think--of your being here. That is a lie.
You must have known I care nothing for that. I thought that sending you
away would make you start on your mission--I used that. It has almost
killed us.... Come in.... Since you will not go--come in to the house
with me."
She brought the candle to his face. "Oh, you poor--poor--"
She seemed not to know whether to say _boy_ or _man_--"how you have
suffered--and for me! ... I do not understand it. It seemed weak for
you to stay. It has been my greatest anguish that I caused you to
stay.... And yet, there is something deathless about it--something I do
not understand."
*10*
There was something about it also that Romney did not understand. Nor
could he speak. He watched her in the light of the single candle.
Again and again, the face of flesh that he knew, faded into a kind of
dream before the intentness of his regard. It was she, and yet another
face might have been painted upon it without changing the real identity.
And all about it was a vapoury white, different from lamp-light. It was
like a visitation from the other side. Out of it her words came to him,
but he did not answer at once. The fact is Romney had banked his fires
of late in such a heavy and draughtless fashion, that they were in
danger of going out.
And queerly enough now, certain hardly remembered passages of strangers
through Nadiram recurred to mind: wild nomads from the Khingan Mountains
driving their scanty flocks to the sparse pastures of the south;
Tartars, the true descendants of Genghis Kahn; Buddhist holy men gaunt
from their days of fasting in the solitudes; once a skeleton troop of
Cossacks that stole in on a mysterious errand and vanished; and the
merchants, the everlasting wigglebrows--all strangers on the long road
through the days of wasting heat and nights of drawing cold.
... She came to him because he did not speak. There seemed a movement
around the room above her head; and the face in the centre of the faint
white ray was at his knees. He felt vaguely that if he spoke, the face
and all would vanish.
"There is something greater than I knew about your waiting," she
whispered. "It belongs to the future ... as all that I thought I knew
belongs to the past.... I see it differently ... not that you should
stay for my sake, but that you felt a woman's need and remained....
Won't you speak?"
His head swung to and fro like one to whom breathing is a burden. His
hand had gone out to her. He could not be sure, but he felt that his
hand touched her throat, that her chin nestled in his palm for a
second.... There was a step in the court--Bamban coming with the bags.
Oddly enough, this aroused Romney from the lulling presence of the
woman. Alone in the room with her now he had found it irresistible. It
was as if he had come home after incredible travail.... The fact is he
had treated himself rather badly; there had been many hours of
self-hatred. He had felt the whole outer world, (which he cared for
second to her)--arousing itself in scorn for him.... He would have been
unconscious before her, had not his servant come.
"Bamban," he muttered, "help me into that room. I am to stay--to stay
here, I believe."
At the door of the room, Romney's back turned, Bamban stood before the
woman a moment. She bowed her head until the servant passed on. Then
she moved swiftly to the fire, stirred it into flame and put on the
kettle.... Through the open door in the candle-light, she saw the man
struggle with his shoe. He seemed unable to see, and his body swayed
weakly as his head bent forward. He gave it up for a moment and sank
back on the cot. She went in to help him. He tried to push her away,
but she resisted:
"Please, I must help you--"
A picture of her brother in the Forward Room had come before him,
hunched and helpless, and he would not.
"Just sit down--if you will," he panted. "Just a little while--so I can
be sure. I am better--"
There was silence.
"... I was leaving the court," he said in an expectant tone, as if ready
to be corrected. "You came after me--"
"You came three nights to be near me at the time of the hyenas--"
"Yes.... And this is the Consulate--the room I first slept in, and you
are here."
"Yes."
"And why did you ask me here? ... Or did you tell me already? ... You
see, I wasn't quite all here for a minute."
"I asked you to come, because I was torn with the faith and the will you
have shown. It seemed to me suddenly as great as the quest--something
modern, added to the old dream of going forth--as if you knew that the
quest was _nearest_--"
"I didn't know anything like that. I only knew I loved you," he said
rigidly.
"You felt a woman's need and remained," she said. "Against her will,
and all."
"It was not a woman's need," he muttered. "Everything is out of me, but
naked truth. I loved you--that changed all. I had work. You made me
forget it. You held to the dream. My dream turned to you. It is you
now.... I think I shall not pass this way again. If there is something
more important here below than this love--very well. Let them have it,
who say so. As for me, I love you. I think the great man who said,
'Give all to love,' meant me."
"Wait--"
She went to the fire, her eyes gleaming. The thing there was not
finished. She brought water to him in a basin.
"No--let me," she said, as he would have arisen. "I want to.... It
will make me happier."
He sank back and closed his eyes. The figure of her brother fled from
his mind, as the cool cloth laved his forehead. Bamban had kept his
clothing in order. He had never come to the court at evening other than
as a man who comes to see a maiden. Her will now was to serve him.
There was a magic in the ministry that sent him to the borderlands
again.... Then she brought food, and would not let him help himself.
"I shall be with you to-night.... When you sleep I shall be here. When
you wake you shall find me here.... You must rest ... and every little
while you must have food. You have not taken care of yourself since you
left me--"
The splendour had to do with the spontaneity of it all. Her every
movement was an improvisation. He heard her words separately and as a
whole. He weighed and looked at them--as at coloured lights, studying
the background and distances between them, in that strange altering of
time that one who touches the dream-border knows. Then more words came:
"I shall always serve you now. My will is not broken. It is blent with
yours. I am proud and glad--for yours was greater than mine. It should
be so. But I should have seen it before--"
He was wondering what he would say; at times afraid lest it break some
words of hers; at times unable to think of words.
"Don't try to speak," she whispered.
The old wonder of her understanding recurred to him. It would always be
so.... Two or three times the thought came, almost the words, to ask her
not to lose her rest; that he would do very well now--replenished as he
was, and absolutely comfortable. She left him presently to bring
another sup of the hot liquid hastily prepared; and then it was as if he
had spoken, though he could not remember. Her answer remained in mind:
"You would not deny me the joy of helping you back to strength--you who
have given me so much--"
... Once he opened his eyes and knew by the candle that he had slept.
"I think I must have been looking at you and woke you up," she
whispered. "I won't look at you that way again. Wait--"
She brought something different, hot and in a cup.
... Then long after he heard her say "Yes?" questioningly, and opened
his eyes.
Her head bent toward him. "Were you dreaming?" she asked.... "I
answered because you said, 'Anna Erivan, Anna Erivan.'"
Another candle was upon the table....
Again, much time elapsed, when he started up hearing the hyenas, but her
face was calm and untroubled.
"I must have been dreaming," he said.
"Your dreams should be peaceful. All is well. You must rest, rest."
His hand was taken. After that he did not sleep at once, though his
eyes were closed. He felt his strength coming back into his veins, new
life creeping through him, a resuming of interests in living; all
interests centring in the woman and yet radiating far from her, out into
the world. He thought of the whole story since the night of their
meeting.
It unfolded like a wonderful flower, his mind at peace, his breathing
steady.... And now he knew that the new life was coming to him from her
hand--rare essence of vitality, something finer than he had known. His
mind was full of unfoldings. There was a vision of days ahead--desert
mid-days, desert evenings, with her beside him, the superb magnetism of
her hand and presence. He would not take her strength as to-night; he
would be strength to her. She said her will had blent with his, and yet
in the days to come he would make her will his law.... The position of
her hand did not change and yet she was nearer. The huge blanket that
had overhung from the cot to the floor was lifted to cover her knees.
Then he thought the candle expired, but it was only shielded from his
eyes. The warmth of her was healing and fragrant.... There was a touch
upon his cheek, and it was day.
*11*
Romney washed and shaved, listening to her step outside. It gave him a
joy that he had never known before. The morning sun was bright and
warm, and the wind that came steadily through seemed less of the arid
Gobi than on other mornings, having for his replenished heart the
freshness of grass and fruitful valleys.... Her step--the step of a
man's woman in the house. He laughed at himself; no one could
understand but the man. It would sound banal if he tried to tell what
it meant to him--the step so light and swift and for him. Presently he
made haste; was quite concerned about moments that continued to pass
apart from her, so that his hand trembled in the last small tasks.
The little table was spread in white; the kettle steamed; the sunlight
crossed the stone flags almost to the fireplace. She was standing by
the table, her shoulder bent a little to the right, something shy in her
smile. He moved closer and she turned--the way free between them.
Romney's arm lifted but fell again. That other old moment bewildered
him--the moment he took her and it was not right. He had said that she
must hold out her arms. It was from this mental turning that the big
thought came....
"You are better," she said.
"I shall be ready to travel to-morrow," he answered.
She turned away and he was close to her shoulder, but behind.
"I'm strong enough for anything--after last night," he added. "I
suppose we must put our house in order now."
She went to the fireplace and returned, pouring the boiling water on the
tea. They sat down together.
"No one goes to Wampli from here," she said at last.
"It's the orders I received--three days into the west--"
"But the desert tribes--"
"I have certain credentials and money to pay their tariffs--"
"Life is terrible," she said strangely. "Sometimes I am afraid of the
intensity of life. I saw your face last night--white it seemed in the
dusk--and suddenly I found myself running after you and all I had
thought before looked wrong. I think we were dying because we were
apart in this thing.... Isn't it strange? We have spoken none of the
little things, that lead up to these deeper revelations between man and
woman.... Running to you, I felt something great and new in your
holding for my sake. I could hardly breathe until I told you that the
sick and hated convention was a lie. I think now a lie is always wrong.
Yesterday I thought it a good and worthy thing if it were powerful
enough to help you on to your journey."
He leaned forward listening. She had so many things to say, the order
was slow in coming to them.
"Now I see that a lie is always wrong. The truth would have sent you
forth before this. It is the truth that makes you ready now. And yet
last night I did not change in order to make you go."
Romney spoke slowly:
"It did not come to me until just now. You have said it. We are given
just so much intensity--then there is a rest. It was like reaching the
top of a mountain--last night--"
"But we have to begin all over again to-day," she said dully. "The
truth starts you on your journey. Yesterday I wanted you to start. It
seemed a test. I could not see the truth I wanted about you--with your
staying on here. I felt that I was the cause, and that some ancient
wickedness must adhere to me. I did everything to make you go--but first
of all I made you stay--clung to your stirrup that first morning. I do
not understand myself--"
"That first morning held a very real moment to me," Romney said.
"But that's not all," she went on, appearing not to hear.
"What more?"
"Now again, I want--oh, it's hard to have you go."
Romney was silent.
"Must we always be apart?" she asked in the same dull way. "Last night
it all looked different. You said such an incomparable thing to a
woman. You said that you had turned from your work to me--that your
dream had become me. I never shall forget your face--dazed, not
realising hardly that I had brought you back into this house. It was as
if you were on a ridge between heaven and hell, and but one true thing
remained for you to say.... 'I think I shall not pass this way again.
If there is something more important here below than this love--very
well. Let them have it who say so. As for me, I love you. I think the
great man who said, "Give all to love," meant me.'"
"A thousand times I have re-pictured that night coming into the court,"
he told her. "Who would have thought of such a meeting in the Gobi? I
once heard that it wasn't a matter of place, but of time--"
The thought of Moira Kelvin had hardly recurred with her in the room,
and there was something strange about this, considering the proneness of
the human mind to make contrasts. Moira Kelvin had been his
master--perhaps that was the secret of her falling away so cleanly from
his heart. His first thought that her capacity of appeal was so largely
histrionic, scarcely recurred in the later days of their fortnight, and
left only a memory. There had been an early sense of her ruthlessness,
but that had not lived out their period. He held her to splendour.
Finding her with Nifton Bend fastened it forever in his mind. Her quest
was the certain spirit of a man--and yet he remembered the passion of
her. He felt that great natures are built upon such passions, and
considered it nothing at all to his credit that he had held her passion
sacred since she had nothing else for him.
She had shown him in a thousand ways that there is a new order of
conduct in the love-relations of the world--that man in general is very
much in need of learning to wait, to hold and to serve. He held Moira
Kelvin as a great friend now--one to reverence and to rely upon among
the rarest passages of his life. All that she had said had proven true.
He had brought Anna Erivan a different treasure because of that meeting.
It had proved an initiation, and the one dark moment of Nadiram was his
taking Anna Erivan in his arms at the wrong moment. He would pay for
that in good measure....
She had been silent, and spoke now as if the words escaped: "Do you
think that because you were so ready--because you had been waiting and
had pictured the one woman--that I more or less fell into it?"
He leaned forward longingly. Her shyness in asking such a question
quickened her attraction.
"That first night--that night of fighting--I thought there must be
something insane about me--to let you take hold so utterly. Why, it was
as if everything else were done--a new era entered on. The whole world
would say I'm yellow to stick here--instead of pushing on for that which
I was sent. I sat in the court during those nights apart from you--or
thinking I was apart on that conventional thing--and felt Bamban,
Nadiram, the Big Three and all of New China pouring scorn upon me. Yet
what hurt me more was being apart from you. You see, that seemed a
difference we couldn't overcome."
She seemed to be looking into his heart and finding something there
which had little to do with his words. She felt the silence again, and
it was plain to him when she spoke that she had taken up some secondary
matter less hard to broach.
"I have sometimes felt that you were not sure of the work you were
on--as if you doubted, perhaps, since you were out here, the wisdom or
the goodness of those who sent you."
Romney was startled at the foreignness of the observation at this
moment. Nothing seemed normal that had not to do with their story. He
found himself telling her hastily of the suspicion he had encountered in
regard to New China's idea of waging war--if she were called to war; and
also of the incident of the Japanese spy.
"That was hard to take," he added. "I thought I was pretty well
orientalised, but the old western training cropped up. I tried to make
myself believe that I wasn't responsible for his capture, but I didn't
make a very good job of that. I had run him down. Perhaps they would
have got him, but the fact is, they got him where they did because of my
efforts. It broke me for a moment--the little man being put out that
way at my feet--"
"You speak of things as they happened--not making them less to save
yourself," she said.
"That would be short-sighted and unsatisfactory."
"What must you have thought of me for telling you an untruth to make you
go on?"
"I didn't think of it as an untruth. You wanted me to go for the good
of others--and that way came to you--"
"But you would not have descended to such a trick--"
"Trick!" he said impatiently; "don't speak of it that way. Who am I to
forget what you said--about the little ones needing a voice and a sign?
... And I want to add about the men who have sent me: they are pure.
They hold their own lives as cheap as those whom they find necessary to
put out of the way.
"They loved the little spy, too. They have a dream of a purer world. I
don't think anywhere on earth the dream is so close to coming true as it
is in the minds of those men. I am proud to serve them."
"I cannot see you running after the little spy, through the streets--"
"I'm sorry you have to see it at all."
"I had to ask, as if its presence in your mind made me draw it forth. I
will help you forget it--"
"There's something very dear to me in that," he answered. "You--yes,
you can make me forget it."
There was a pause, and Romney laughed. "I show you things I never could
show any one before," he said. "Why, a man doesn't talk of such
compunctions. I think we go about the world without telling each
other--I mean the men we meet--any more than the foam of reality. A
man's woman takes everything--"
"A man's woman," she repeated. "There's something primitive in
that--and something that is ahead, too.... I don't know exactly what
thrilled me so last night as I ran after you. I believe that the
patience and wonder of your staying and coming to the court each night
had something to do with that primitive thing which 'a man's woman'
suggests.... And also with the big stories of men and women as they will
be lived in the future. The wonder does not pass. The thought was with
me all night--as I watched near you. It made me want to ask something
else--"
"What--?"
"It may make me seem less to you--"
"That cannot be."
"I never thought I would feel like this--but I seem to feel her about
you--some woman you must have loved greatly--"
*12*
Romney forgot the Gobi. Rarely were they altogether out of its
influence in Nadiram and this room, but the story that was called
stirred him to the old beat of the world. He felt distantly as he had
during his tests in the house of Minglapo. This killed out instantly
any idea of policy. The truth was all he knew, but the truth here was a
different affair from dealing with Chinese who might take or leave what
he had to offer according to their whim. Here was a tense face of a
woman who had crushed her pride to ask such a question.... He told her
how the big devils and virtues had opened in him from the encounter with
Moira Kelvin, what he had been before the meeting on the deck of the
_Sungkiang_--and what he had been since.
He told her in ten minutes how he had cast all into the Great Drift, and
had been spared in spite of himself--how the thrall of Moira Kelvin had
gone out of his heart, and how he had met her again in the presence of
her mate.
"She made me know that there can be no doubt in a great love-story," he
added. "She made me know that there is no such thing as a triangle;
that a man or a woman in doubt between two, loves neither as the world
shall presently know love. She made me know that love cannot be
altogether on one side--that mine could not hold because she had not the
same for me. The mystery of its falling from me in the Great Drift
revealed that. She opened my heart for the woman I was to find. I did
not believe when she told me that, but I have come to believe it. After
I saw her behind the low shoulders of Nifton Bend--I knew that my
heart's desire was still a-field, and that all she had said was truth.
The power of this truth was opened to me the night I rode into this
little court--"
Her eyes were turned out to the sunlight.
"It seemed that I had come home that moment," he added. "I did not want
to leave you that night. I never did a harder thing than to call for
the camels the next morning. And when you put your hand on the leather
at my foot--it was not until then that I knew what our meeting meant to
you. Realising that--the transaction was finished, so far as I was
concerned."
"I never thought I would feel like this," she repeated.
"It was like a review of all the hells," he said, meaning the Drift. "I
look at the years before that as a kind of semi-sleep. I moved about
only partly conscious--studying, watching, laughing at things, fancying
I was somebody, thinking I had done something when I got into the pulse
of China. The fact is, the Romney of those days wasn't ready to come
into the court of this little Consulate--"
Her face was still turned away. Very quickly the flaw appeared in his
last sentences. He was making very light of a wastrel period--a period
without will and organised manhood of any kind.
"Don't think I fail to see the other side," he said hastily. "Something
of quiet and power has seemed to come out of it, but it was abandonment.
It was weak. A better man would not have thought of letting go as I
did. Even if he didn't want to live he would have put himself out of the
way in a clean-cut abrupt fashion--"
She shook her head quickly, as if pained at some picture in her mind.
"A real man would have done neither," he added. "He would have taken
his medicine and not thought of death. There is always a yellow streak
in letting go.... I'm sorry to bring you such a story. It has no
virtue save that of being true. Also it is back--finished."
Her silence was destroying him. The panorama of his abandonment rushed
past in a kind of red dark. His voice had a whimper, for his own ears,
as he said:
"At least, it was all in the year. I drank little before, I drink
nothing now."
The absurdity of it now prevailed. His story had taken her away from
him. Much thinking had made him lose the ugliness. He had told her
matters which were so horrible as to break the spell between them. She
seemed to be slipping away, and just now he thought of the man in the
Forward Room in relation to that year in the Drift. She was not the
first woman who had reached the end of endurance in this business. The
laugh formed deep within him--the laugh of a man at the last ditch
again. What a fool he had been to tell her what had happened--to forget
the part that this particular devil had played in her life! ... He would
go on to Wampli now--without a woman waiting. The laugh was twisting in
his lips, and he had the sense that if it came it would slay the last
hope.
Anna Erivan turned and started at the sight of his face.