There followed a week that for Carew was a period of uninterrupted suffering, suffering that seemed to grow more acute, more unbearable with each succeeding day. With nothing to look forward to, with no hope to ease the burden of his loneliness and longing, with the bitter knowledge burning into him that barely half-a-mile away in her prison house of misery she too was suffering, he struggled through days that seemed endless and nights that were torment.
Seeking for distraction, for anything that would occupy his enforced leisure and turn the trend of his thoughts, he offered his services to Morel and toiled in the scientist’s laboratory from early morning till late in the evening, endeavouring by hard work to deaden the pain that never left him. During the long hours of self-imposed labour he strove to banish her from his mind, to concentrate solely on the experiments that at any other time would have claimed his whole attention. But the remembrance of her was with him continually. While he carried out Morel’s instructions with mechanical precision he seemed to feel her presence close beside him, to see clearly before his eyes the piteous tear-stained face that would always haunt him, and through the stillness of the silent workroom he could almost hear the sobbing tones of her anguished voice. “Gervas, I can’t live without you!” And he had left her, left her to Geradine’s mercy. If, in the grip of this tremendous passion that had come to him so strangely, he had sought to entice her from a husband who cared, or from one who—though indifferent—still treated her with ordinary decency and respect, he would have known his offence to be unforgivable. But chained as she was to a beast like Geradine, the marks of whose brutality he had himself seen on her delicate face, was there not excuse for his love, for the raging temptation that still assailed him to take her from a life of martyrdom and give her the happiness that was her youth’s prerogative? How had she come to be the wife of that drunken, hectoring bully—what unthinkable ordering could have linked her life with his? Impossible that she could ever have loved him. Surely the mere brute strength of the man could not have attracted her, inducing her to a step she had lived to rue. Five years, she had said. Five years ago she must have been only a child—she was little more now. What circumstances or what tragedy had thrust an immature girl into the keeping of such a profligate! And what had those five years meant to her! As the days dragged slowly by and he applied himself to the work to which he forced his wandering attention he wrestled with a problem he could not hope to solve, racking himself with the thought of what she must have endured and would still have to endure.
But it was the nights he dreaded most. The nights when, waking from fitful sleep that, dream-haunted, gave him no rest, he stared wide-eyed into the darkness murmuring her name, aching for her, till the pain of it drove him out into the garden there to tramp the dark tree-bordered alleys and star-lit stretches of grass until bodily fatigue brought him back to the house to toss wakefully and watch for the dawn when he could start for the early morning rides that were his only alleviation. It was in the lonely hours of the night that the thought of her suffering was strongest with him. It was then that his fevered mind, unchecked in his solitude, became the prey of ghastly imaginings until, half mad with his own thoughts, he almost yielded to the temptings of the insidious inward voice that bade him forego honor and take the happiness he had sacrificed. Was he to stand aside while her youth and health were wrecked? Was she to be offered up on the altar of his conscience? Must she be the victim of his scruple? “She would have gone with you—she would have gone with you that morning—” Night after night the mocking voice rang in his ears, and night after night he fought the same fight in anguish of soul, battling with the promptings of his heart.
Then came a day when a telephone message from Morel, who had received an urgent summons to Paris, put a stop to the work at the laboratory and left him to face inactivity he viewed with dismay. In no mood for the society of either General Sanois or the officers at the barracks, resolved to run no chance of a further meeting with the woman he had determined never to see again, he passed the long hours of the morning, sitting on the verandah with a medical book in his hand which he did not read, and in restless wandering about the lovely garden whose loveliness was lost on him.
Utterly weary of himself, for the first time in days, he would have welcomed the companionship of Saba. But the blind boy was at the camp near Blidah whither he had been despatched when Carew had decided to remain on in Algiers. The day seemed interminable.
Worn out with sleepless nights he slept heavily for the greater part of the afternoon and was awakened with difficulty by Hosein in time for the solitary dinner he thought would never end. Afterwards, ordering coffee to be brought to him, he strolled through the silent halls and empty rooms back to the verandah where he had spent most of the day.
The night was singularly dark but the darkness agreed with his own gloomy thoughts and after he had finished his coffee he extinguished the reading lamp on the table near him and sat for a long time staring fixedly into blackness.
Inaction became at last impossible. He had sat for two hours and his limbs were cramped and his head throbbing for need of physical exercise. Two more hours and he would be ready to blow his brains out, he reflected with a dreary laugh. Going to his bedroom he changed quickly into Arab dress and left the house unseen.
Beyond the door in the wall he hesitated frowning. Then with a shrug and a muttered oath he turned in the direction of de Granier’s villa. To torture himself by gazing on the house was not to see her, he argued. By no reasoning could he be said to be breaking the resolution he had made. The road was free to him as to any other. And what chance was there of seeing her at this time of night! Jerking his heavy cloak back he stopped to light a cigarette and then strode on with the slow step to which flowing robes had accustomed him.