XIX
Christian could not be without Eva. If he left her for the shortest period, the world about him grew dark.
Yet all their relations had the pathos of farewells. If he walked beside her, it seemed to be for the last time. Every touch of their hands, every meeting of their eyes had the dark glow and pain of the irrevocable.
His love for her was in harmony with this condition. It was clinging, giving, patient, at times even obedient.
It showed its nature in the way he held her cloak for her, gave her a glass that her lips were to touch, supported her when she was weary, waited for her if she was later than he at some appointed spot.
She felt that often and questioned him; but he had no answer. He might have conveyed his sensation of an eternal farewell, but he could not have told her what was to follow it. And it became very clear to him, that not a farewell from her alone was involved, but a farewell from everything in the world that had hitherto been clear and pleasant and indispensable to him. Beyond that fact he understood nothing; he had no plans and did not make any.
He was so void of any desire or demand that Eva yielded recklessly to a hundred wishes, and was angry when none remained unfulfilled. She wanted to see the real ocean. He rented a yacht, and they cruised on the Atlantic for two weeks. She had a longing for Paris, and he took her there in his car. They had dinner at Foyot in the Rue de Tournon, where they had invited friends—writers, painters, musicians. On the following day they returned. They heard of a castle in Normandy which was said to be like a dream of the early Middle Age. She desired to see it by moonlight; so they set out while the moon was full and cloudless nights were expected. Then the cathedral at Rouen lured her; next the famous roses of a certain Baron Zerkaulen near Ghent; then an excursion into the forest of Ardennes, or a sunset over the Zuyder Zee, or a ride in the park at Richmond, or a Rembrandt at The Hague, or a festive procession in Antwerp.
“Do you never get tired?” Christian asked one day, with that unquiet smile of his that seemed a trifle insincere.
Eva answered: “The world is big and youth is brief. Beauty yearns toward me, exists for me, and droops when I am gone. Since Ignifer is mine, my hunger seems insatiable. It is radiant over my earth, and makes all my paths easy. You see, dear, what you have done.”
“Beware of Ignifer,” said Christian, with that same, apparently secretive smile.
Eva’s lids drooped heavily. “Fyodor Szilaghin has arrived,” she said.
“There are so many,” Christian answered, “I can’t possibly know them all.”
“You see none, but they all see you,” said Eva. “They all wonder at you and ask: Who is that slender, distinguished man with very white teeth and blue eyes? Do you not hear their whispering? They make me vain of you.”
“What do they know of me? Let them be.”
“Women grow pale when you approach. Yesterday on the promenade there was a flower-seller, a Flemish girl. She looked after you, and then she began to sing. Did you not hear?”
“No. What was the song she sang?”
Eva covered her eyes with her hands, and sang softly and with an expression on her lips that was half pain and half archness:
“‘Où sont nos amoureuses?
Elles sont au tombeau,
Dans un séjour plus beau
Elles sont heureuses.
Elles sont près des anges
Au fond du ciel bleu,
Où elles chantent les louanges
De la Mère de Dieu.’
“It touched my very soul, and for a minute I hated you. Ah, how much beauty of feeling streams from human hearts, and finds no vessel to receive it!”
Suddenly she arose, and said with a burning glance: “Fyodor Szilaghin is here.”
Christian went to the window. “It is raining,” he said.
Thereupon Eva left the room, singing with a sob in her throat:
“Où sont nos amoureuses?
Elles sont au tombeau.”
That evening they were walking down the beach. “I met Mlle. Gamaleja,” Eva told him. “Fyodor Szilaghin introduced her to me. She is a Tartar and his mistress. Her beauty is like that of a venomous serpent, and as strange as the landscape of a wild dream. There was a silent challenge in her attitude to me, and a silent combat arose between us. We talked about the diary of Marie Bashkirtseff. She said that such creatures should be strangled at birth. But I see from your expression, dear man, that you have never heard of Marie Bashkirtseff. Well, she was one of those women who are born a century before their time and wither away like flowers in February.”
Christian did not answer. He could not help thinking of the faces of the dead fishermen which he had seen the night before.
“Mlle. Gamaleja was in London recently and brought me a message from the Grand Duke,” Eva continued; “he’ll be here in another week.”
Christian was still silent. Twelve women and nineteen children had stood about the dead men. They had all been scantily clad and absorbed in their icy grief.
They walked up the beach and moved farther away from the tumult of the waves. Eva said: “Why don’t you laugh? Have you forgotten how?” The question was like a cry.
Christian said nothing. “To-morrow,” she remarked swiftly, and caught her veil which was fluttering in the breeze, “to-morrow there’s a village fair at Dudzeele. Come with me to Dudzeele. Pulcinello will be there. We will laugh, Christian, laugh!”
“Last night there was a storm here,” Christian began at last. “You know that, for we were long among the dunes up there. Toward morning I walked toward the beach again, because I couldn’t sleep. Just as I arrived they were carrying away the bloated corpses of the fishermen. Three boats went to pieces during the night; it was quite near Molo, but there was no chance for help. They carried seven men away to the morgue. Some people, all humble folk, went along, and so did I. There in that death chamber a single lantern was burning, and when they put down the drenched bodies, puddles gathered on the floor. Coats had been spread over the faces of the dead men; and of the women I saw but a single one shed tears. She was as ugly as a rotten tree-trunk; but when she wept all her ugliness was gone. Why should I laugh, Eva? Why should I laugh? I must think of the fishermen who earn their bread day after day out on the sea. Why should I laugh? And why to-day?”
With both hands Eva pressed her veil against her cheeks.
In that tone of his, which was never rudely emphatic, Christian continued: “Yesterday at the bar Wiguniewski and Botho Thüngen showed me a man of about fifty, a former star at the opera, who had been famous and made money in his day. The day before he had broken down on the street—from starvation. But in his pocket, they found twenty francs. When he was asked why, having the money, he had not satisfied his hunger, he answered that the money was an advance given him toward travelling expenses. He had been engaged to sing at a cabaret in Havre. It had taken him months to find this employment. But the fare to Havre is thirty-five francs, and for six days he had made frantic efforts to scrape together the additional fifteen francs. He had resisted every temptation to touch the twenty francs, for he knew that if he took but a single centime his life would be finally wrecked. But on this day the date of the beginning of his engagement had lapsed, and he returned the twenty francs to the agent. They pointed this man out to me. Leaning on his arms, he sat before an empty cup. I meant to sit down by him, but he went away. Why should I laugh, Eva, when there are such things to think about? Don’t ask me to-day of all days that I should laugh.”
Eva said nothing. But when they were at home, she flung herself in his arms, as though beside herself, and said: “I must kiss you.”
And she kissed him and bit his lip so hard that drops of blood appeared.
“Go now,” she said with a commanding gesture, “go! But don’t forget that to-morrow we shall visit the fair at Dudzeele.”