Arthur E. P. Brome Weigall

“ And then, quietly and vaguely, out of the picture there came the serene, mysterious face of a woman, a face he had thought forgotten. Her black hair drifted back into his recollection, her grey eyes seemed to gaze into his, and in his inward ear the one word “Monimé” reverberated like an echo of a dream. And suddenly a door seemed to open within him, and with an overwhelming onset, his captive emotions, his feelings, his long-forgotten joys and sorrows, broke out from their prison and surged through him.
He laid his guitar aside, and for a while sat wrapt in a kind of ecstasy. ”

“ Darling he would now be free to slip away as unnoticed as he had come, resuming his life in the Near East as Jim Easton, and being in no way suspected of the crime, for the silence of Smiley-face could be relied on.
But now he was done for! True, he was to-day a widower, and was therefore in a position to marry the woman whom he loved with a passion which seemed only to grow stronger as the complications increased. But he would be obliged to lie to her daily, throughout his life: there would always be this pitiable barrier of deception between them. ”

“ In the name of Jim Easton he had wandered from place to place, and in that name he had obtained this job at the gold mines; and if now he were to die, the fate of James Tundering-West would remain a matter of speculation. That was as it should be: ever since he left England he had been a bird of passage, and is it not a rarity to see a dead bird? Nobody knows where they all die, or how: with few exceptions, they seem, as it were, to fade away; and thus he, too, would disappear.
He rolled his eyes around his prison, and clapped his hand with pathetic drama to his burning forehead. ”

“ Think of the sound of the sea as it slaps the bow of the outbound liner; think of the throb of the screw; think of the noisy boatloads surrounding the ship when the anchor has rattled into the transparent water of a southern harbour; the familiar sound and smells of hot little towns, sheltering under the palms; the soft crunch of camels’ pads upon the desert sands; the far-off cry of the jackals. Think of the unshackled life of the happy wanderer; the freedom from the restraint of the Great Sham; the absence of these posings and pretences of so-called respectability. ”

“ Monimé clasped hold of Jim’s hand. “They are going to speak,” she exclaimed. “They are going to rise up from their four thrones.”
In awe they stood, a little Hop o’ my Thumb and his wife, staring up out of the blue shadows of the terrace to the huge, flushed faces above them. But the miracle was quickly ended. The sun ascended from behind the eastern hills, and in its full radiance the colossal figures were once more turned to inanimate stone, to wait until to-morrow’s recurrence of that one supreme moment in which the pulse of life is vouchsafed to them. ”

“ THE SQUIRE OF EVERSFIELD
The art of life is very largely the art of burying bones. That is the science of mental economy. When a man is confronted with a problem which he cannot solve; when, so to speak, Fate presents him with a bone which he cannot crack, sometimes, without intent, he slinks away with it and, like a dog, buries it, in the undefined hope that at a later date he may unearth it and find it then more manageable.
Even so, during the sea voyage, Jim unconsciously buried the bewildering thought of Monimé. ”

“ Little leaves were just beginning to appear upon the branches, and here and there beneath them, where the ground was free of undergrowth, bluebells and violets appeared amongst the dead bracken and foliage of last year, and the small white wood-anemones like stars were scattered in profusion. The primroses were nearly over, but bracken shoots, curled like young ferns, were pushing up through the brown remnants of a former generation; low-growing creepers and brambles were sprouting into greenness; and the moss and grasses were tender with new life.
Jim’s mood was melancholy, but not sorrowful. ”

“ Naughty!—Good God!—That one word has already sown the seed of corruption in their minds. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”
He had not waited for her reply, but had left the room, and had gone with clenched fists into the woods, his usual refuge, sick at heart, and appalled that his life was linked to such a sham thing as his wife had proved herself to be.
He had longed to get away from her, away from Eversfield, back to his beloved high roads once more, out of this evil stagnation; and all the while the ponderous, black-coated creature of his imagination had leered at him and stroked him. ”

“ The grey and dreamy spires of Oxford themselves had wrought a change in him. No man can come under their influence and maintain his mental liberty: they are like a drug, soothing him into quiescence; they are like a poem that drones into the brain the vanity of vigorous action. From the windows of the manor they could be seen rising out of [99] an almost perpetual haze, and sometimes the breeze carried to this ancient house the ancient sound of their chimes and their tolling. They seemed to preach the blessedness of a quiet, peaceful life—home, marriage, children ”

“ Jim was immensely proud of his son, and many were the plans that developed in his head for the child’s happiness and good standing. It would not be long now before he would be able to confess to Monimé his true name and position, and to tell her that a home and an income were assured to the boy.
Love is a kind of interpreter of the beauties of nature; and in these sun-bathed days Jim’s heart seemed to be opened to a greater appreciation of the wonders of creation than he had ever known before. ”

“ On the sixth morning, as the sun was rising, the anchor rattled into the blue waters of the roadstead before Larnaca, the chief port of Cyprus; and, after an early breakfast, Jim was rowed in a small boat, manned by a Greek and a negro, towards the little town which stood white and resplendent in the sunshine, its cupolas, minarets, and flat-roofed houses backed by the vivid green of the palms and the saffron of the hills. ”

“ The deft art of suggestion, in the hands of an unscrupulous woman, is dangerous; but in those of a feather-brained little conglomerate of feminine charms and instincts, it is deadly.
These quiet summer and autumn months in the heart of the English countryside had sobered Jim’s mind, and his exalted fancy, which had led him at times as it were to hurl himself at the gates of heaven, was gone from him. ”

“ Before he had inherited the family property his life had been of an indefinite and dreamy character; at Eversfield he had been suppressed and rendered ineffectual; but since he had come to love Monimé he had emerged from this stagnation, and in the strongly contrasted turmoil of his subsequent life he had, as the saying is, found himself.
As the vessel passed up the Thames and approached its moorings at Tilbury, he had the feeling that, grasped in the relentless tentacles, he was being drawn in towards the cold, fat body of the octopus against which he had always fought. ”

“ Their serene eyes are fixed upon the eastern horizon, [263] their lips are a little smiling, their hands rest placidly upon their knees; and now, in the first light of morning, they loomed out of the fading shadow like cold, calm figures of destiny, knowing all that the day would bring forth and finding in that knowledge no cause for vexation.
With a simultaneous impulse Jim and Monimé rose from their bed, and, quickly dressing, hastened up the sandy path to the terrace of the temple, that they might see the first rays of the sun strike upon those great, unblinking eyes. ”

“ His experiences with Dolly had left him with so profound a scepticism in regard to female mentality that even his adoration of Monimé was not wholly proof against it.
She looked down at him, and he seemed to detect an expression upon her face which was almost defiant. “My dear,” she said, “as far as I am concerned, even if you were guilty it would make no difference.”
He stared at her incredulously, for man does not know woman, nor can he penetrate to the source of her deepest convictions. It was not Monimé, it was no individual, who had spoken: it was eternal woman. ”

“ Presently a gust of blistering wind flicked the towel from its nail in the window, and with that the creaking shutter slammed back on its hinges, and the sun streamed full on to the white figure on the floor. Jim opened his eyes, bloodshot and wild, and stared out on to the rocks and sandy drifts. A few sparrows were hopping about languidly in the shade of a ruinous wall, their beaks open as though they were panting for breath. ”

“ James Champernowne Tundering-West, or, as for the time being he preferred to be called, Jim Easton, sat himself down on the camp-bedstead in the middle of the one habitable room of a derelict rest-house, built on the edge of the desert some distance behind the houses of the native town of Kôm-es-Sultân. All day long he had been feeling an uneasiness of body; and now, when the incinerating June sun was sinking towards the glaring mirror of the Nile, this vague disquiet developed into a very tangible malady. ”

“ Monimé, indeed, had difficulty in persuading him to submit at all to her ministrations, dear though they were to him; for the heart is here set upon the idea of physical well-being, and nature thus heals herself.
Sometimes, as Jim walked upon the cliffs in the splendour of the day, his nerves tingling with the joy of life, his thoughts went back to those long years at Eversfield, and he compared his present attitude of mind with that he had known at the manor. There the grey steeples and towers of Oxford, seen beyond the haze of the trees, were sedative and subduing. ”

“ While the congregation in the little church at Eversfield was singing the last hymn of the morning service the October sun passed from behind an extensive bank of cloud, and its rays shot down through the plain glass window upon the figure of a young woman, whose sudden and surprising illumination instantly attracted many pairs of eyes to her. She looked, and knew it, like a little angel as she stood in this shaft of brilliance, hymn-book in hand, singing the well-known words in a voice which enhanced their ancient sweetness ”

“ Glenning, who quarrelled with no man, gazed at him, in church on the following Sunday, with an expression of deep reproof upon his venerable face.
It was after this painful incident that Jim formed the habit of going for long rambling walks by himself, or of wandering deep into the woods near the manor. Sometimes he would sit for hours upon a stile in the fields, sucking a straw and staring vacantly into the distance at the misty towers and spires of the ancient University, or lie in the grass, gazing [114] up at the sky, listening to the far-off bells, his arms behind his head. ”

“ All the years of misery were blotted out in the wonder of this revelation of womanhood, and on the instant his desire for life in unity with her came surging back into his heart.
“Monimé,” he said, “this is the biggest moment of all. Whatever I may suffer will be worth while, because it will have brought me the knowledge that our love transcends the ways of man. By God!—I’ll stand my trial; I’ll make a fight for my life, even though the chances of success are small. ”

“ The open desert with its wind-swept spaces of glistening sand, and its ranges of low hills which carried the eye ever forward into its mysterious depths, enthralled him like an endless tale of adventure, or like a native flute-song that rises and falls in continuous changing melody. With Monimé he left the hotel each morning, and, having conducted her to her tent, he would wander over the untrodden wastes until the luncheon hour brought him back to her to share their picnic meal. ”

“ Sometimes in his rambles he would disturb the slumbers [268] of a little jackal, which would go scuttling off into the desert, while he waved his hand to it. Or again, a lizard basking on a rock, or a pair of white butterflies dancing in the sunlit air, would hold him for a moment enthralled.
The grasses and creepers which grew amidst the tumbled boulders at the edge of the Nile would now attract his attention; and again a great palm, spreading its rustling branches to the sunlight and casting a liquid blue shadow upon the ground, would hold his gaze. ”

“ Fortunately, Monimé was very hard at work on the completion of her paintings, and he was therefore able to go away alone into the desert for hours [285] at a time, under the pretence of writing his verses, and thus obtain a respite from the strain of appearing cheerful and normal. The great untenanted spaces soothed the clamour of his brain; and, wandering there alone over the golden sand or the shelving rocks, in the blazing sunlight, between the vacancy of earth and the void of heaven, there passed into his mind a kind of calmness which remained with him when Monimé was again at his side. ”

“ Jim’s eyes were wild. “The same old game!” he muttered to himself, as he peered at them between the wet, brown leaves of the bracken.
“You need a man to take care of you,” Merrivall continued. “How long must we wait before we can announce our engagement?”
“You are impatient, George,” she replied. “Even though I never really loved Jim, I feel I ought to give his memory the tribute of the usual year. People who don’t know how he forced me to marry him and how brutally he ill-treated me, would say unkind things if I married you any sooner than that.” ”

“ Here there was the ribbed back of a sand-drift to delight him with its symmetry; there a distant headland jutting out into the mirror of the water. Sometimes he would lie face downwards upon the sand to admire the vari-coloured pebbles and fragments of stone—gypsum, quartz, flint, cornelian, diorite, syenite, hæmatite, serpentine, granite, and so forth; and sometimes he would go racing over the desert, bewitched by the riotous north wind itself and the sparkle of the air. ”

“ A Bedouin wanderer such as he, he muttered to himself, must, at any rate, never be taken alive: a son of the open road must never be led captive.
For a moment he stood irresolute at the open door of his room, and the sweat gleamed upon his forehead. Then he braced himself, and walked down the stairs. Monimé was not far ahead of him, and, as he turned the corner to descend the last flight which led down into the front hall, she paused at the foot of the steps to wait for him. ”

“ Thus you thought to escape from the bonds of wedlock, and with a lie upon your lips you returned to the arms of your mistress, proposing to her a bigamous marriage. But, fearing detection, and needing money, you sneaked home; lured into the woods the sorrowing woman who, deeming herself a widow, mourned your memory; and there did her to death.”
“I am innocent!” he gasped, looking about him in desperation at the hard faces which surrounded him and hemmed him in. “Of her death at any rate I am innocent.” ”

“ A scramble over the sand and the boulders around the foot of the headland brought one to the terraced forecourt of the temple where sat the four colossal statues; and at the side of this there was a mighty [265] slope of golden sand, sweeping down from the summit of the cliffs, as though in an attempt to engulf the whole temple. A laborious climb up this drift led to the flat, open desert, which extended away into the distance, until, sharply defined against the intense blue of the sky, the far hills of the horizon shut off the boundless and vacant spaces of the Sahara beyond. ”

“ The road passed across the bare, sunburnt uplands, and was flanked by scattered rocks, from which the basking lizards scampered as the carriage approached. Occasionally they passed a cart drawn by two long-horned bullocks, led by a scarlet-capped peasant; or a solitary shepherd driving his flock; or some cloaked and bearded rider upon a mule, jingling down to the coast. The glare of the road was great; but under the shelter of the dusty awning of [191] the carriage Jim was cool enough, and there was a refreshing following-wind blowing up from the sea, which tempered the autumn heat. ”

“ I’ll tell everybody: I’ll make your name stink in the nostrils of every man who is a gentleman.”
Jim shrugged his shoulders; and, suddenly, to his amazement she leapt at him and dug her nails into his face. He grabbed hold of her arms, and for a dreadful moment they struggled like two savages. Then she broke loose from him and dashed away amongst the misty trees at the side of the pathway, stumbling through the bracken, and crying out to him disjointed words of fury. For some moments Jim stood staring after her, listening to the crackling of the twigs which marked her progress. ”