The Moonlit Way: A Novel

Barres, for the moment, dancing with Thessalie, pressed her fingers with mischievous tenderness and whispered:

“The moonlit way once more with you, Thessa! Do you remember our first dance?”

“Can I ever thank God enough for that night’s folly!” she said, with such sudden emotion that his smile altered as he looked into her dark eyes.

“Yet that dance by moonlight exiled you,” he said.

“Do you realise what it saved me from, too? And what it has given me?”

He wondered whether she included Westmore in the gift. The music ceased at that moment, and, though the other orchestra began, they strolled along the flowering balustrade of the terrace together until they encountered Dulcie and Westmore.

“Have you spoken to your hostess?” inquired Westmore. “She’s over yonder on a dais, enthroned like Germania or a Metropolitan Opera Valkyrie. Dulcie and I have paid our homage.”

So Barres and Thessalie went away to comply with the required formality; and, when they returned from the rite, they found Esmé Trenor and Corot Mandel cornering Dulcie under a flowering orange tree while Westmore, beside her, chatted with a most engaging woman who proved, later, to be a practising physician.

Esmé was saying languidly, that anybody could fly into a temper and kick his neighbours, but that indifference 376 to physical violence was a condition of mind attained only by the spiritual intellect of the psychic adept.

“Passivism,” he added with a wave of his lank fingers, “is the first plane to be attained on the journey toward Nirvana. Therefore, I am a pacifist and this silly war does not interest me in the slightest.”

The very engaging woman, who had been chatting with Westmore, looked around at Esmé Trenor, evidently much amused.

“I imagined that you were a pacifist,” she said. “I fancy, Mr. Mandel, also, is one.”

“Indeed, I am, madam!” said Corot Mandel. “I’ve plenty to do in life without strutting around and bawling for blood at the top of my lungs!”

“Thank heaven,” added Esmé, “the President has kept us out of war. This business of butchering others never appealed to me – except for the slightly unpleasant sensations which I experience when I read the details.”

“Oh. Then unpleasant sensations so appeal to you?” inquired Westmore, very red.

“Well, they are sensations, you know,” drawled Esmé. “And, for a man who experiences few sensations of any sort, even unpleasant ones are pleasurable.”

Mandel yawned and said:

“The war is an outrageous bore. All wars are stupid to a man of temperament. Therefore, I’m a pacifist. And I had rather live under Prussian domination than rush about the country with a gun and sixty pounds of luggage on my back!”

He looked heavily at Dulcie, who had slipped out of the corner on the terrace, where he and Esmé had penned her.

“There are other things to do more interesting than jabbing bayonets into Germans,” he remarked. “Did you say you hadn’t any dance to spare us, Miss Soane? Nor you either, Miss Dunois? Oh, well.” He cast a disgusted glance at Barres, squinted at Westmore through his greasy monocle in hostile silence; then, taking Esmé’s arm, made them all a too profound obeisance and sauntered away along the terrace.

“What a pair of beasts!” said Westmore. “They make me actually ill!”

Barres shrugged and turned to the very engaging lady beside him:

“What do you think of that breed of human, doctor?” he inquired.

She smiled at Barres and said:

“Several of my own patients who are suffering from the same form of psycho-neurotic trouble are also peace-at-any-price pacifists. They do not come to me to be cured of their pacifism. On the contrary, they cherish it most tenderly. In examining them for other troubles I happened upon what appeared to me a very close relation between the peculiar attitude of the peace-at-any-price pacifist and a certain type of unconscious pervert.”

“That passivism is perversion does not surprise me,” remarked Barres.

“Well,” she said, “the pacifist is not conscious of his real desires and therefore cannot be termed a true pervert. But the very term, passivism, is usually significant and goes very deep psychologically. In analysing my patients I struck against a buried impulse in them to suffer tyrannous treatment from an omnipotent master. The impulse was so strong that it amounted to a craving and tried to absorb all the psychic material within its reach. They did not recognise 378 the original impulse, because that had long ago been crushed down by the exactions of civilised life. Nevertheless, they were tortured and teased, made unsettled and wretched by a something which continually baffled them. Deep under the upper crust of their personalities was concealed a seething desire to be completely, inevitably, relentlessly, unreservedly overwhelmed by a subjugation from which there was no escape.”

She turned to Westmore:

“It’s purely pathological, the condition of those two self-confessed pacifists. The pacifist loves suffering. The ordinary normal person avoids suffering when possible. He endures it only when something necessary or desirable cannot be gained in any other way. He may undergo agony at the mere thought of it. His bravery consists in facing danger and pain in spite of fear. But the extreme passivist, who is really an unconscious pervert, loves to dream of martyrdom and suffering. It must be a suffering, however, which is forced upon him, and it must be a personal matter, not impersonal and general, as in war. And he loves to contemplate a condition of complete captivity – of irresponsible passivity, in which all resistance is in vain.”

“Do you know, they disgust me, those two!” said Westmore angrily. “I never could endure anything abnormal. And now that I know Esmé is – and that big lout, Mandel – I’ll keep away from them. Do you blame me, doctor?”

“Well,” she said, much amused and turning to go, “they’re very interesting to physicians, you know – these non-resisting, pacifistic perverts. But outside a sanatorium I shouldn’t expect them to be very popular.” And she laughed and joined a big, good-looking 379 man who had come to seek her, and who wore, in his buttonhole, the button of the French Legion of Honour.

Thessalie had strolled forward along the terrace by herself, interested in the pretty spectacle and the play of light on jewels and gowns.

Westmore, busy in expressing to Barres his opinion of Esmé and Mandel, did not at the moment miss Thessalie, who continued to saunter on along the balustrade of the terrace, under the blossoming row of orange trees.

Just below her was another terrace and an oval pool set with tiny jets which seemed to spray the basin with liquid silver. Silvery fish, too, were swimming in it near the surface, sometimes flinging themselves clear out of water as though intoxicated by the unwonted lustre which flooded their crystal pool.

To see them nearer, Thessalie ran lightly down the steps and walked toward the shimmering basin. And at the same time the head and shoulders of a man in evening dress, his bosom crossed by a sash of watered red silk, appeared climbing nimbly from a still lower level.

She watched him step swiftly upon the terrace and cross it diagonally, walking in her direction toward the stone stairs which she had just descended. Then, paying him no further attention, she looked down into the water.

He came along very near to where she stood, gazing into the pool – peered at her curiously – was already passing at her very elbow – when something made her lift her head and look around at him.

The mock moonlight struck full across his features; and the shock of seeing him drove every vestige of colour from her own face.

The man halted, staring at her in unfeigned amazement. Suddenly he snarled at her, baring his teeth in her shrinking face.

“Kismet dir!” he whispered, “it ees you!.. Nihla Quellen! Now I begin onderstan’!.. Yas, I now onderstan’ who arrange it that they haf arrest my good frien’, Tauscher! It ees you, then! Von Igel he has tol’ me, look out once eef she escape – thees yoong leopardess – ”

“Ferez!” Thessalie’s young figure stiffened and the colour flamed in her cheeks.

“You leopardess!” he repeated, every tooth a-grin again with rage, “you misbegotten slut of a hunting cheetah! So thees is ’ow you strike!.. Ver’ well. Yas, I see ’ow it ees you strike at – ”

“Ferez!” she cried. “Listen to me!”

“I ’ear you! Allez!”

“Ferez Bey! I am not afraid of you!”

“Ees it so?”

“Yes, it is so. I never have been afraid of you! Not even there on the deck of the Mirage, that night when you tapped the hilt of your Kurdish knife and spoke of Seraglio Point! Nor when your scared spy shot at me in the corridor of the Tenth Street house; nor afterward at Dragon Court! Nor now! Do you understand, Eurasian jackal! Nor now! Anybody can see what Heruli whelped you! What are you doing in America? Kassim Pasha is your den, where your rayah loll and scratch in the sun! It is their Keyeff! And yours!”

She took a quick step toward him, her eyes flashing, her white hand clenched:

“Allah Kerim– do you say? El Hamdu Lillah! Do you take yourself for the muezzin of all jackals, then, howling blasphemies from some minaret in the 381 hills? Do you understand what they’d do to you in the Hirka-i-Sherif Jamesi? Because you are nothing; do you hear? – nothing but an Eurasian assassin! And Moslem and Christian alike know where you belong among the lost pariahs of Stamboul!”

The girl was utterly transfigured. Whatever of the Orient was in her, now blazed white hot.

“What have I done to you, Ferez? What have I ever done to you that you, even from my childhood, come always stepping noiselessly at my skirt’s edge? – always padding behind me at my heels, silent, sinister, whimpering with bared teeth for the courage to bite which God denies you!”

The man stood almost motionless, moistening his dry lips with his tongue, but his eyes moved continually, stealing uneasy glances around him and upward, where, on the main terrace above them, the heads of the throng passed and repassed.

“Nihla,” he said, “for all thees scorn and abuse of me, you know, in the false heart of you, why it ees so if I have seek you.”

“You dealer in lies! You would have sold me to d’Eblis! You thought you had sold me! You were paid for it, too!”

“An’ still!” He looked at her furtively.

“What do you mean? You conspired with d’Eblis to ruin me, soul and body! You involved me in your treacherous propaganda in Paris. Through you I am an exile. If I go back to my own country, I shall go to a shameful death. You have blackened my honour in my country’s eyes. But that was not enough. No! You thought me sufficiently broken, degraded, terrified to listen to any proposition from you. You sent your agents to me with offers of money if I would betray my country. Finding I would not, you whined 382 and threatened. Then, like the Eurasian dog you are, you tried to bargain. You were eager to offer me anything if I would keep quiet and not interfere – ”

“Nihla!”

“What?” she said, contemptuously.

“In spite of thees – of all you say – I have love you!”

“Liar!” she retorted wrathfully. “Do you dare say that to me, whom you have already tried to murder?”

“I say it. Yas. Eef it has not been so then you were dead long time.”

“You – you are trying to tell me that you spared me!” she demanded scornfully.

“It ees so. Alexandre – d’Eblis, you know? – long time since he would have safety for us all – thees way. Non! Je ne pourrais pas vouz tuer, moi! It ees not in my heart, Nihla… Because I have love you long time – ver’ long time.”

“Because you have feared me long time, ver’ long time!” she mocked him. “That is why, Ferez – because you are afraid; because you are only a jackal. And jackals never kill. No!”

“You say thees-a to me, Nihla?”

“Yes, I say it. You’re a coward! And I’ll tell you something more. I am going to make a complete statement to the French Government. I shall relate everything I know about d’Eblis, Bolo Effendi, a certain bureaucrat, an Italian politician, a Swiss banker, old Von-der-Goltz Pasha, Heimholz, Von-der-Hohe Pasha, and you, my Ferez – and you, also!

“Do you know what France will do to d’Eblis and his scoundrel friends? Do you guess what these duped Americans will do to Bolo Effendi? And to you? And to Von Papen and Boy-ed and Von Igel – yes, and to Bernstorff and his whole murderous herd of Germans? And can you imagine what my own doubly duped 383 Government will surely, surely do, some day, to you, Ferez?”

She laughed, but her dark eyes fairly glittered:

“My martyrdom is ending, God be thanked! And then I shall be free to serve where my heart is … in Alsace!.. Alsace! – forever French!”

In the white light she saw the sweat break out on the man’s forehead – saw him grope for his handkerchief – and draw out a knife instead – never taking his eyes off her.

She turned to run; but he had already blocked the way to the stone steps; and now he came creeping toward her, white as a cadaver, distracted from sheer terror, and rubbing the knife flat against his thigh.

“So you shall do thees – a filth to me – eh, Nihla?” he whispered with blanched lips. “It ees on me, your frien’, you spring to keel me, eh, my leopardess? Ver’ well. But firs’ I teach you somethings you don’ know! – thees-a way, my Nihla!”

He came toward her stealthily, moving more swiftly as she put the stone basin of the pool between them and cast an agonised glance up at the distant terrace.

“Jim!” she cried frantically. “Jim! Help me, Jim!”

The gay din of the music above drowned her cry; she fled as Ferez darted toward her, but again he doubled and sprang back to bar the stone steps, and she halted, white and breathless, yet poised for instant flight.

Again and again she called out desperately for aid; the noise of the orchestra smothered her cry. And if, indeed, anybody from the terrace above chanced to glance down, it is likely that they supposed these two were skylarking merrymakers at some irresponsible game of catch-who-can.

Suddenly Thessalie remembered the lower level, where the automobiles were parked, and from which Ferez had first appeared. She could escape that way. There were the steps, not very far behind her. The next instant she turned and ran like a deer.

And after her sped Ferez, his broad, thin-bladed knife pressed flat against the crimson sash across his breast, his dead-white visage distorted with that blind, convulsive fear which makes murderers out of cowards.