9The 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.The next morning when he shaved he cut himself twice, for his face was 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 sayboyorman—"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."10There 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 wasnearest—""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.11Romney 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—"12Romney 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 theSungkiang—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."I wasn't thinking of the months in which you held yourself palms-up to death, and drifted along the water-fronts," she said quickly. "Oh, any one could see that has nothing to do with you now."Romney gasped, and, leaning forward, placed his wide-stretched hand near hers, which went to it."I was thinking of the woman," she said slowly. "I never thought I would feel like this."He was still shaken from the illusion he had suffered, in high voltage. It suddenly occurred to him what it would mean if she had brought a story of an affair with a man—an affair that meant as much to her as Moira Kelvin meant to him. The very thought was torture. There is a touch of insanity in the best of men on this ground. Romney was amazed at his own feelings and at his own simplicity; and over all was a contaminating something that seemed to emerge from his deepest nature—a gladness for her primitive emotion regarding him where another woman was concerned. He wanted to take her close in his arms. An uncertain memory of the night before when he was half-asleep, recurred queerly.... He had not spoken, and yet he knew that in her case, he would want to ask and ask—also that to ask questions meant to bend a mighty pride. He was using his will to be fair—holding that woman is as free an instrument in the world as a man."I love your truth," she said hoarsely. "I think that is all that saves it—saves me—the sense that what you say is true.""There is no more," he whispered. "I have told you all.""I love your truth—but I hate myself—""Anna Erivan, you are superb to me. I think—there is a bit of madness or martyrdom about two coming together this way. I didn't understand what my story could mean to you, until I thought of it the other way—as if you brought it to me—""I have nothing interesting like that," she said with a smile. "I think if I brought you a story like that, it would change me in your eyes.""I would not let it," he said."Your will could not save me," she answered. "A man might say and believe (until his own heart was touched) that a woman has all the rights of man to diffuse herself before her mate arrives, but in his own heart, he would see her differently if she did. Oh, it is not the pressure of centuries of man's possession of women—not altogether his instinctive sense of conservation. That's only physical. There is something back even of the patriarch idea about women. She cannot give herself to one and be the same again—not even in her own mind. There is something sacred about that, which men do not know—and which only great women know—""Then you think a man big enough to place a woman on the same moral footing as himself has not come to the end of the subject?""I think when men are tolerant enough for that, they will be great enough to accept woman's idea of herself, which is greater still.""What is it—can you tell me?""Just so long as a woman has not the spiritual power to formulate her ideal of the one man of her heart, she must accept the nearest, the first or second or third, and must suffer her horrors of mis-mating. But all the time her dream is forming, literally making the one who belongs to her and no other. It builds out of her suffering. It comes out of agony and diffusion, even out of promiscuity. It is the ascent of woman's character into an integrity which can only be touched by one human being. It is not touched if he does not come—"Romney stood before her, looking into two flashing points her eyes had become."It does not play a fortnight—to find out if the man is the one. It does not play at all. It does not suffer from waiting because it does not live in sex. It does not meet its own on any basis of sex—not at first, even though it has passions powerful enough to fire the world—""Anna Erivan—have I lost you—am I too far from the dream?"She arose and came nearer, the table no longer between them."I tell you I hate myself because this has hurt me—""And I tell you that this morning I feel abysses below you—that you are revealed to me higher than I knew and dreamed.""That first night, I thought it was he who had come to me ... and last night, running after you, I was sure—"He started forward, his arms outstretched, but remembered and fell back."I said I would wait until you held out your arms—"Her face turned a little to the side, and he saw a smile suffuse with colour."I did last night," she whispered.13That noon Bamban came and sat in the court for a little period, awaiting any word from his master. It was in Romney's heart to tell him that he meant to start for Wampli to-morrow, and yet he had not spoken of that to Anna Erivan since morning, and he decided to wait until the last judgment of the woman was heard. Bamban smilingly departed, but back of the glittering eyes of the little man, the American fancied an expression:"You are a tarrier with women."An Oriental expresses his deepest scorn in a statement somewhat of that nature. It touched Romney very lightly on this day. He was not himself—something lifted and expanded far beyond the man he had been; and yet apart from Anna Erivan he was but a creature of listening and turning. On this day, Anna Erivan had entered a domain of his heart which Moira Kelvin had not found. A questing woman brave enough to wait, a woman above playing with senses, who required no experiments to uncover her own. And her head had lain a moment on his breast, her waist in his hard lean arm.... He wasn't untrue to Moira Kelvin in any thought. Even in the illumination of Anna Erivan, there was still a laughing splendour about the other. He could view the yellow-rug woman now with a man's generosity, though he recognised that there was no answer to Anna Erivan's point. He was proud to the very spirit of his being that it was so.... They strode out into the desert together, when the sun was at its highest. She stopped and caught his arm. It was almost as if the cry of the hyenas had come to her:"What is it? What is it?" he asked."Was she very beautiful?"Her art was somehow revealed. Anna Erivan had waited until they were far from the village before asking that question.... He was almost well again—not so robust, perhaps, as when he had come to Nadiram, but healed and glowing to-day, as one filled with light. It was only gradually that he dared let the full light in. Sometimes he seemed to be holding a door against it, lest it be too much for his heart. He had followed her about the house that morning until he was amazed at her power over him, and forced himself apart in the room where he had passed the long night. He had waited with every ounce of will-force, and holding was possible so long as he heard her step, but the moment she was silent he rushed forth as one coming up from deep water.The day was dazzling bright though the heat was not dangerous. She had never been out of the court before in his presence, and something of the gold-brown of the desert came to her, as if all the wasted energy of the sunlight, deluging fruitless rock and barren sand, gathered about her to animate the delicate promise of her being. Desert gold was in her eyes, and noon warmth in her cheeks, her lips parted with joy and ardour and low laughter he had never heard in the house. Clouds were massed into gilded mountains in the low west. The dry heat came up from the sand and the living heat pressed down from the sun. Nadiram was silent behind them, their voices free now in the open, their hearts drinking the power of the light."Think of it," she said halting, "think if we should go on and on—you and I. The nights—""I thought of that before I came to your door—on the road to Turgim. I thought of journeying on and on through the desert with the woman waiting somewhere—""I should be dangerous in a desert-night—""Dangerous?" he laughed."I should be myself at last. You'll find that dangerous. A desert night would set me free. Perhaps I should find a nature very old and abandoned—""In me?""In myself.""Suppose you should hear the cries?"Anna Erivan laughed. "There would be no Forward Room out here. It is the houses and the presence of men that make me afraid."... He did not care much to speak, but regarded her face as he had never used his eyes before. Several times during the morning, she had reverted in her talk to incidents of the night before, when he lay in exhaustion, with only a waver of consciousness from time to time."Did you know that a woman finding her beloved, looks for a man but finds a child?"Romney peered closer, his eyelids all but shut in the vivid light."This morning as the dawn came in, I saw the child so clearly that I had to touch your face. I would have wept had I not run away for a little time."After a moment, she added in whispers and falterings:"Did you know, toward morning, but before the light—when the cold came in—that I was very close to you, leaning forward under the edge of your blanket? ... You were still. Your breathing was like a child's. And then I thought again of your coming in the evening to the court—to the west wall. I don't know how I could have been so hard. I should have broken down in fright, had you not come.""I only knew that I could not leave you," he said."But to-morrow morning—"He was silent."We need not think of it now," she said slowly. "Not until to-night. We shall know best to-night—"She was staring away into the gilded mountains of cloud in the low west. Romney's eyes followed hers. There seemed a movement there, something filmy white like a great bird, against the brilliant horizon. He could not get his mind away from Wampli. Every moment with her, and the parting seemed harder. The larger consciousness that had come from her, at the same time bound him to her.... Leaving her in Nadiram—alone under the Russian flag. It would take seven days at least to get back, even if his mission made it possible for him to remain as short a time as a day in Wampli. That was not likely. The chances were, if he were not held there, his orders would be to push on. The last packet of orders, designated for reading in Wampli, might contain the open orders for a farther journey of weeks. Romney shivered. There was little mercy in the facts. The great continent of Asia was like a dead weight against him. She touched his arm."Look—"What he saw presently, low upon the sand, had the look of a turtle of large size, the head uplifted from time to time. The strangeness of the creature and the way it moved stirred him oddly.... The thing was yellow—the noon light showed that, the deep satisfying embrowned yellow of some object in which the sun has sunk for ages and ages. This is the yellow of the Gobi at a certain moment of evening. It was the yellow of Moira Kelvin's rug—and this was a robe of a Chinese Holy Man. In India they would have called him a Sannysin.Hastening forward, they saw that the head, lifted from time to time, was shaven and literally fallen in from emaciation. The gray of death suffused the brown skin, especially where it was thinnest, in lip and temple and nostril. The creature crawled; his age must have been very great, his grasp of life a miracle, yet the robe he wore was woven from the breasts of young camels and coloured, as the priests would say, with God's own light. This is a colour princes dare not wear. It trailed upon the sand and took no hurt or stain; it was fine as leather can be, a protection from the sun and a saving grace from cold."He is my Ancient!" Anna Erivan cried. "He is the one who came to the court long ago, and left me such strength. He is very dear and very wise."This robe was first to show Romney the quality of his guest, but he was soon conscious of something beside, that made him very tender, so that he knelt and gently lifted the ancient ascetic by the shoulders. The chin now rested in the hollow of his arm. The old man leaned there as if in peace. Presently Romney's eyes were called back to the town—a mere low jagged contour behind in the blinding stillness. Bamban was running toward them. At a little distance, he halted, dropped to his knees, and thus came forward, the expression on his face altogether new. Indeed, it was dissolute with devotion.And now the old Father appeared to sleep in Romney's arm, and thus was carried between the men, a light burden, back to the Consulate in Nadiram.They brought a cot to the living-room, Anna Erivan joyously preparing food, filling the begging-bowl with the choicest that her house afforded. Yet it was hours before the old priest awoke, and during this time Bamban never moved from his devotional posture by the door of the court. It appeared now that the aged Buddhist had pushed his austerities somewhat farther than usual, almost extinguishing the flicker of life that remained in his wasted breast. His opening speech had to do with the absolute rightness of all things, especially with the excellence of the universe and the exceeding rightness of right knowledge, to all of which Romney attentively agreed and Bamban degraded himself to accept. The Sannysin advanced deeper into the thought, enunciating his conviction that all was well in Nadiram and in the house. He spoke briefly of his all-readiness for departure from this life, saying that he had been ready three days before in the desert, that he was ready now to pass or presently. Having impressed his readiness, he ventured to add his personal point of view to the effect that he considered it a misery to be called back into life through the medium of strong food, but qualified this opinion by inquiring if he had not returned to the hideous pressure of the flesh with some slight degree of calmness and cheer. Romney encouraged him to believe this, hastily translating for the woman; and Bamban projected himself in abasement, whereupon the Sannysin slept again.Toward evening, the ancient head was once more raised into the hollow of Romney's arm. Bamban had scarcely left the Consulate for a moment throughout this extended interval. The Buddhist raised his eyes to Romney's face, saying that he was now acquainted with the deep reason for his misery in being so relentlessly called back to the coils of matter; that he recognised in the white man a younger brother, a true Brahman, whereupon he gave Romney a small bit of parchment, the size of three postage-stamps, upon which was written a Sanscrit phrase, having to do with the inspiration of the soul, and a few further marks which even Romney, though he deciphered them, could not understand.Thus was the coming of Rajananda and his passing likewise, for he asked that he be carried forth at sundown, to the exact spot where they had first seen the upraised head. There they placed the body upon the sand, accepted a cold claw and a gesture to return to Nadiram. The Buddhist then slept, the withered yellow cheek pressed upon the breast of his old Mother, the desert.The disquieting part of the whole affair was that Bamban appeared to have acquired the habit of abasing himself in Romney's presence, though more than ever his eyes avoided Anna Erivan's. The three returned to the Consulate in the early darkness and Bamban's impulse to kow tow again asserted itself on the flags of the court."Come, come, Bamban; get up and go to the Rest House for your supper. I'm the same friend of yours—as always."The Chinese obeyed, and Romney turned from where he stood in the court, to the door-way. Anna Erivan stood there—as on the evening of his arrival.
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.
The next morning when he shaved he cut himself twice, for his face was 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 sayboyorman—"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 wasnearest—"
"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 theSungkiang—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.
"I wasn't thinking of the months in which you held yourself palms-up to death, and drifted along the water-fronts," she said quickly. "Oh, any one could see that has nothing to do with you now."
Romney gasped, and, leaning forward, placed his wide-stretched hand near hers, which went to it.
"I was thinking of the woman," she said slowly. "I never thought I would feel like this."
He was still shaken from the illusion he had suffered, in high voltage. It suddenly occurred to him what it would mean if she had brought a story of an affair with a man—an affair that meant as much to her as Moira Kelvin meant to him. The very thought was torture. There is a touch of insanity in the best of men on this ground. Romney was amazed at his own feelings and at his own simplicity; and over all was a contaminating something that seemed to emerge from his deepest nature—a gladness for her primitive emotion regarding him where another woman was concerned. He wanted to take her close in his arms. An uncertain memory of the night before when he was half-asleep, recurred queerly.... He had not spoken, and yet he knew that in her case, he would want to ask and ask—also that to ask questions meant to bend a mighty pride. He was using his will to be fair—holding that woman is as free an instrument in the world as a man.
"I love your truth," she said hoarsely. "I think that is all that saves it—saves me—the sense that what you say is true."
"There is no more," he whispered. "I have told you all."
"I love your truth—but I hate myself—"
"Anna Erivan, you are superb to me. I think—there is a bit of madness or martyrdom about two coming together this way. I didn't understand what my story could mean to you, until I thought of it the other way—as if you brought it to me—"
"I have nothing interesting like that," she said with a smile. "I think if I brought you a story like that, it would change me in your eyes."
"I would not let it," he said.
"Your will could not save me," she answered. "A man might say and believe (until his own heart was touched) that a woman has all the rights of man to diffuse herself before her mate arrives, but in his own heart, he would see her differently if she did. Oh, it is not the pressure of centuries of man's possession of women—not altogether his instinctive sense of conservation. That's only physical. There is something back even of the patriarch idea about women. She cannot give herself to one and be the same again—not even in her own mind. There is something sacred about that, which men do not know—and which only great women know—"
"Then you think a man big enough to place a woman on the same moral footing as himself has not come to the end of the subject?"
"I think when men are tolerant enough for that, they will be great enough to accept woman's idea of herself, which is greater still."
"What is it—can you tell me?"
"Just so long as a woman has not the spiritual power to formulate her ideal of the one man of her heart, she must accept the nearest, the first or second or third, and must suffer her horrors of mis-mating. But all the time her dream is forming, literally making the one who belongs to her and no other. It builds out of her suffering. It comes out of agony and diffusion, even out of promiscuity. It is the ascent of woman's character into an integrity which can only be touched by one human being. It is not touched if he does not come—"
Romney stood before her, looking into two flashing points her eyes had become.
"It does not play a fortnight—to find out if the man is the one. It does not play at all. It does not suffer from waiting because it does not live in sex. It does not meet its own on any basis of sex—not at first, even though it has passions powerful enough to fire the world—"
"Anna Erivan—have I lost you—am I too far from the dream?"
She arose and came nearer, the table no longer between them.
"I tell you I hate myself because this has hurt me—"
"And I tell you that this morning I feel abysses below you—that you are revealed to me higher than I knew and dreamed."
"That first night, I thought it was he who had come to me ... and last night, running after you, I was sure—"
He started forward, his arms outstretched, but remembered and fell back.
"I said I would wait until you held out your arms—"
Her face turned a little to the side, and he saw a smile suffuse with colour.
"I did last night," she whispered.
13
That noon Bamban came and sat in the court for a little period, awaiting any word from his master. It was in Romney's heart to tell him that he meant to start for Wampli to-morrow, and yet he had not spoken of that to Anna Erivan since morning, and he decided to wait until the last judgment of the woman was heard. Bamban smilingly departed, but back of the glittering eyes of the little man, the American fancied an expression:
"You are a tarrier with women."
An Oriental expresses his deepest scorn in a statement somewhat of that nature. It touched Romney very lightly on this day. He was not himself—something lifted and expanded far beyond the man he had been; and yet apart from Anna Erivan he was but a creature of listening and turning. On this day, Anna Erivan had entered a domain of his heart which Moira Kelvin had not found. A questing woman brave enough to wait, a woman above playing with senses, who required no experiments to uncover her own. And her head had lain a moment on his breast, her waist in his hard lean arm.... He wasn't untrue to Moira Kelvin in any thought. Even in the illumination of Anna Erivan, there was still a laughing splendour about the other. He could view the yellow-rug woman now with a man's generosity, though he recognised that there was no answer to Anna Erivan's point. He was proud to the very spirit of his being that it was so.... They strode out into the desert together, when the sun was at its highest. She stopped and caught his arm. It was almost as if the cry of the hyenas had come to her:
"What is it? What is it?" he asked.
"Was she very beautiful?"
Her art was somehow revealed. Anna Erivan had waited until they were far from the village before asking that question.... He was almost well again—not so robust, perhaps, as when he had come to Nadiram, but healed and glowing to-day, as one filled with light. It was only gradually that he dared let the full light in. Sometimes he seemed to be holding a door against it, lest it be too much for his heart. He had followed her about the house that morning until he was amazed at her power over him, and forced himself apart in the room where he had passed the long night. He had waited with every ounce of will-force, and holding was possible so long as he heard her step, but the moment she was silent he rushed forth as one coming up from deep water.
The day was dazzling bright though the heat was not dangerous. She had never been out of the court before in his presence, and something of the gold-brown of the desert came to her, as if all the wasted energy of the sunlight, deluging fruitless rock and barren sand, gathered about her to animate the delicate promise of her being. Desert gold was in her eyes, and noon warmth in her cheeks, her lips parted with joy and ardour and low laughter he had never heard in the house. Clouds were massed into gilded mountains in the low west. The dry heat came up from the sand and the living heat pressed down from the sun. Nadiram was silent behind them, their voices free now in the open, their hearts drinking the power of the light.
"Think of it," she said halting, "think if we should go on and on—you and I. The nights—"
"I thought of that before I came to your door—on the road to Turgim. I thought of journeying on and on through the desert with the woman waiting somewhere—"
"I should be dangerous in a desert-night—"
"Dangerous?" he laughed.
"I should be myself at last. You'll find that dangerous. A desert night would set me free. Perhaps I should find a nature very old and abandoned—"
"In me?"
"In myself."
"Suppose you should hear the cries?"
Anna Erivan laughed. "There would be no Forward Room out here. It is the houses and the presence of men that make me afraid."
... He did not care much to speak, but regarded her face as he had never used his eyes before. Several times during the morning, she had reverted in her talk to incidents of the night before, when he lay in exhaustion, with only a waver of consciousness from time to time.
"Did you know that a woman finding her beloved, looks for a man but finds a child?"
Romney peered closer, his eyelids all but shut in the vivid light.
"This morning as the dawn came in, I saw the child so clearly that I had to touch your face. I would have wept had I not run away for a little time."
After a moment, she added in whispers and falterings:
"Did you know, toward morning, but before the light—when the cold came in—that I was very close to you, leaning forward under the edge of your blanket? ... You were still. Your breathing was like a child's. And then I thought again of your coming in the evening to the court—to the west wall. I don't know how I could have been so hard. I should have broken down in fright, had you not come."
"I only knew that I could not leave you," he said.
"But to-morrow morning—"
He was silent.
"We need not think of it now," she said slowly. "Not until to-night. We shall know best to-night—"
She was staring away into the gilded mountains of cloud in the low west. Romney's eyes followed hers. There seemed a movement there, something filmy white like a great bird, against the brilliant horizon. He could not get his mind away from Wampli. Every moment with her, and the parting seemed harder. The larger consciousness that had come from her, at the same time bound him to her.... Leaving her in Nadiram—alone under the Russian flag. It would take seven days at least to get back, even if his mission made it possible for him to remain as short a time as a day in Wampli. That was not likely. The chances were, if he were not held there, his orders would be to push on. The last packet of orders, designated for reading in Wampli, might contain the open orders for a farther journey of weeks. Romney shivered. There was little mercy in the facts. The great continent of Asia was like a dead weight against him. She touched his arm.
"Look—"
What he saw presently, low upon the sand, had the look of a turtle of large size, the head uplifted from time to time. The strangeness of the creature and the way it moved stirred him oddly.... The thing was yellow—the noon light showed that, the deep satisfying embrowned yellow of some object in which the sun has sunk for ages and ages. This is the yellow of the Gobi at a certain moment of evening. It was the yellow of Moira Kelvin's rug—and this was a robe of a Chinese Holy Man. In India they would have called him a Sannysin.
Hastening forward, they saw that the head, lifted from time to time, was shaven and literally fallen in from emaciation. The gray of death suffused the brown skin, especially where it was thinnest, in lip and temple and nostril. The creature crawled; his age must have been very great, his grasp of life a miracle, yet the robe he wore was woven from the breasts of young camels and coloured, as the priests would say, with God's own light. This is a colour princes dare not wear. It trailed upon the sand and took no hurt or stain; it was fine as leather can be, a protection from the sun and a saving grace from cold.
"He is my Ancient!" Anna Erivan cried. "He is the one who came to the court long ago, and left me such strength. He is very dear and very wise."
This robe was first to show Romney the quality of his guest, but he was soon conscious of something beside, that made him very tender, so that he knelt and gently lifted the ancient ascetic by the shoulders. The chin now rested in the hollow of his arm. The old man leaned there as if in peace. Presently Romney's eyes were called back to the town—a mere low jagged contour behind in the blinding stillness. Bamban was running toward them. At a little distance, he halted, dropped to his knees, and thus came forward, the expression on his face altogether new. Indeed, it was dissolute with devotion.
And now the old Father appeared to sleep in Romney's arm, and thus was carried between the men, a light burden, back to the Consulate in Nadiram.
They brought a cot to the living-room, Anna Erivan joyously preparing food, filling the begging-bowl with the choicest that her house afforded. Yet it was hours before the old priest awoke, and during this time Bamban never moved from his devotional posture by the door of the court. It appeared now that the aged Buddhist had pushed his austerities somewhat farther than usual, almost extinguishing the flicker of life that remained in his wasted breast. His opening speech had to do with the absolute rightness of all things, especially with the excellence of the universe and the exceeding rightness of right knowledge, to all of which Romney attentively agreed and Bamban degraded himself to accept. The Sannysin advanced deeper into the thought, enunciating his conviction that all was well in Nadiram and in the house. He spoke briefly of his all-readiness for departure from this life, saying that he had been ready three days before in the desert, that he was ready now to pass or presently. Having impressed his readiness, he ventured to add his personal point of view to the effect that he considered it a misery to be called back into life through the medium of strong food, but qualified this opinion by inquiring if he had not returned to the hideous pressure of the flesh with some slight degree of calmness and cheer. Romney encouraged him to believe this, hastily translating for the woman; and Bamban projected himself in abasement, whereupon the Sannysin slept again.
Toward evening, the ancient head was once more raised into the hollow of Romney's arm. Bamban had scarcely left the Consulate for a moment throughout this extended interval. The Buddhist raised his eyes to Romney's face, saying that he was now acquainted with the deep reason for his misery in being so relentlessly called back to the coils of matter; that he recognised in the white man a younger brother, a true Brahman, whereupon he gave Romney a small bit of parchment, the size of three postage-stamps, upon which was written a Sanscrit phrase, having to do with the inspiration of the soul, and a few further marks which even Romney, though he deciphered them, could not understand.
Thus was the coming of Rajananda and his passing likewise, for he asked that he be carried forth at sundown, to the exact spot where they had first seen the upraised head. There they placed the body upon the sand, accepted a cold claw and a gesture to return to Nadiram. The Buddhist then slept, the withered yellow cheek pressed upon the breast of his old Mother, the desert.
The disquieting part of the whole affair was that Bamban appeared to have acquired the habit of abasing himself in Romney's presence, though more than ever his eyes avoided Anna Erivan's. The three returned to the Consulate in the early darkness and Bamban's impulse to kow tow again asserted itself on the flags of the court.
"Come, come, Bamban; get up and go to the Rest House for your supper. I'm the same friend of yours—as always."
The Chinese obeyed, and Romney turned from where he stood in the court, to the door-way. Anna Erivan stood there—as on the evening of his arrival.