Part 8 (1/2)
”By loving me.”
”Ah, yes. But the strength must not come, however subtly, from the woman. No--no.”
Again she leaned away from him, with her face turned towards the darkness. Tremors ran through her, and her hands dropped almost feebly from Renfrew's shoulders, as the hands of an invalid fall away, and down, after an embrace.
”Oh, no,” she reiterated, and her voice was almost a wail. ”It must be there, in the man, part of him, whether he is with the woman in the night, or alone--far off--in the jungle, or in the--the desert. He must have the strange strength that comes from solitude. Where can the men of our country find that now?”
”They find strength in the clash of wills, Claire, and in the battles of love.”
”Most of them never find it at all,” she said, with a sort of sullen resignation. ”And most of the women do not want it, or ask for it, or know what it is. The danger is when some accident or some fate teaches them what it is. Then--then--”
She stopped, and glanced at Renfrew suspiciously, as if she had so nearly betrayed a secret that he might, nay, must have guessed it.
”What do you mean? Then they seek it away from--?”
”Where they know they will find it,” she said, almost defiantly.
Renfrew's face grew cold and rigid.
”What are you saying to me, Claire?”
”What is true of some women, Desmond.”
He was silent. Pain and fear invaded his heart; and, by degrees, the little tune played by the Moor seemed to approach him, very quietly, and to become one with this slow agony. Music, among its many and terrible powers, numbers one that is scarcely possessed as forcibly by any other art. It can glide into a man and direct his emotions as irresistibly as science can direct the flow of a stream. It can penetrate as a thing seen cannot penetrate. For that which is invisible is that which is invincible. And this tune of the Moor, while it added to Renfrew's distress, touched his distress with confusion and bewilderment. At first he did not realise that the music had anything to do with his state of mind, or with the growing turmoil of his heart and brain; but he felt that something was becoming intolerable to him, and pus.h.i.+ng him on in a dangerous path. He thought it was the statement of Claire; and, for the first time in his life, he was stirred by an anger against her that was horrible to him. He released her from his arm.
”How dare you say that to me?” he asked. ”Do you understand what your words imply, that--Good G.o.d!--that women are like animals, creatures without souls, running to the feet of the master who has the whip with the longest, the most stinging lash? Why, such a creed as yours would keep men savages, and kill all gentleness out of the world. Curse that chap! That hideous music of his--”
He had suddenly become aware that the Moor's melody added something to his torment. At his last exclamation, the sullen look in Claire's pale face gave way to an expression of fear and of startling solicitude.
”Desmond, you are putting a wrong interpretation on what I said,” she began hastily.
But he was excited, and could not endure any interruption.
”And you imply a degrading immorality as a prevailing characteristic of women too,” he went on, ”that they should leave their homes, deny their obligations, because they find elsewhere--away, out in some dark place with a blackguard--a powerful will to curb them and keep them down, like--why, like these wretched women all round us here in this country,--the women we saw in Tetuan only to-day, veiled, hidden, loaded with burdens, worse off than animals, because their masters doubt them, and would not dream of trusting them. Claire, there's something barbarous about you.”
He spoke the words with the intonation of one who thinks he is uttering an insult. But she smiled.
”It's the something barbarous about me that has placed me where I am,”
she said, with a cold pride. ”It is that which civilisation wors.h.i.+ps in me, that which has set me above the other women of my time. It is even that which has made you love me, Desmond, whether you know it or not.”
He looked at her like a man half dazed.
”I frighten the dove-cotes. I can make men tremble by my outbursts of pa.s.sion, and women faint because I am sad; and even the stony-hearted sob when I die. And I can make you love me, Desmond. Yes, perhaps I am more barbarous than other women. But do you think I am sorry for it?
No.”
”Some day you may be, Claire.”
He spoke more gently. The wonder and wors.h.i.+p he had for this woman stirred in him again. While she had been speaking, she had instinctively risen to her feet, and she stood in the dull red glow of the waning fire, looking down at him as if he were a creature in a lower world than the one in which she could walk at will.