Читать книгу The Short Stories of Warwick Deeping - Warwick Deeping - Страница 7

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One day the Hotel Mustapha realized that Wilmer had disappeared.

Gossip put it about that he had gone to the desert. Someone had seen him driven off very early in a closed car; and Mrs. Gallaby, who lived on the same floor, questioned the femme de chambre.

“Yes, madame, Monsieur Wilmer has gone to Bou Saada. He will return in a few days.”

Wilmer saw the sunset from the balcony of the little hotel at Bou Saada. Below him lay a garden with cherries and apricots in blossom and a yellow foliaged lemon tree full of pale fruit. Bou Saada spread itself in brown cubes among the palms and against a streak of yellow sand, with here and there a solitary tower or the dome of a mosque rising above the flat-roofed houses. The mountains were camel coloured. Amid the palms and prickly pear a stream flickered. Somewhere, a blackbird scolded between bursts of deep piping.

Wilmer leaned his arms on the rail. He had come over the Atlas mountains and across the leagues of stony desert that lie beyond Aumale, and he had felt tired, but as he looked at the fruit blossom, the grey-green palms, the flickering water, and the outlined strangeness of the little eastern village, his tiredness seemed to pass. He heard the powerful voice of a muezzin calling the people to prayer. The desert flashed a momentary gold. He could catch the sound of running water, and a sense of peace descended on him.

“This—is what she wished to see. Can she see it? She—does—see it.”

There were violets in the garden below, crimson stocks, and roses. It had been raining earlier in the day, and the air felt fresh. And Wilmer lingered there, watching the light die, and the palms growing black under the stars.

Someone knocked at his door.

“Monsieur, le diner est servi.”

He went down and dined, though he hardly noticed what he ate, or the people at the other tables, and afterwards he returned to the galleried balcony and watched the dim town, and the still dimmer mountains. A great silence held. A murmur of voices came from some of the other rooms, but he was not disturbed by them. A man and a girl came and stood under one of the other arches; he heard their laughter and their soft, happy chatter, and the human part of him was glad.

“Lovers,” he thought, “like we were—and are.”

And his right arm hollowed itself as though to enclose the invisible figure of his mate.

A spiritual calm descended upon him. He went to bed and slept without dreams, to be wakened just before the dawn by the muezzin’s voice. It sent a tremor of awe through him, a quiver of expectation, and he slipped out of bed, and putting on his overcoat, stood on the balcony and watched the dawn.

Birds sang. The hills bathed their faces in the light, and the palms grew gently green under a cloudless sky. The strange town began to add its murmurs to the sound of running water; and Wilmer’s brain seemed to grow as clear and as cloudless as the sky, and a tremor of exultation and of wonder stirred in him. The dawn—the inevitable dawn—symbol of the eternal mystery!

From the very beginning of it that day seemed to him to be unlike all other days. He dressed, and with a strange sense of lightness at the heart he went out and, ignoring the casual crowd of guides and beggars at the hotel door, made his way down to the bed of the stream. He was alone here under the palms, but as he sat among the stones and listened to the running water he felt that he was not alone.

There he remained, with the shadows of the palms and the sunlight falling about him. The hours passed. Time had ceased to count, nor did he feel hunger or thirst, for his body was no more than the shadow of a tree, or the water upon which the sunlight played. He waited, his eyes expectant, his mouth tremulous with a kind of smiling tenderness.

“One whole day thou shalt fast, and towards evening the spirit shall descend upon thee.”

Where he had read these words Wilmer could not remember, but they seemed to come to him out of the clear desert sky.

About sunset he arose and stood leaning against a palm tree, his face to the west. His eyes were lit up.

“Kitty—I cannot go back, unless you go back with me.”

And then, something came to him, a directing impulse, an inward urge, something that he found it impossible to describe.

He felt impelled towards the hotel. He returned to it, walking like a somnambulist, past the chattering Arabs and a staring waiter who said something to him that Wilmer did not hear. He went up to his room, closed the door and locked it, and stood still by the end of the bed.

“What do you want me to do, Kitty?”

He seemed to listen. Then he moved to the table by the window where he had left a note-book and pencil. He sat down, opened the note-book, picked up the pencil, and for a few seconds he remained motionless, rigid. Then the pencil began to move; it jerked, traced a few meaningless scrawls, and then, with a queer aim of deliberate swiftness, it began to write.

Ten minutes later, just as the sun set, Wilmer was holding up the note-book and reading what he had written.

“I am here—Peter—with you—always. Write, write for Kitty. Go back, help, mend life.”

And the handwriting was not his own handwriting—but the handwriting of his wife.