In the Dwellings of the Wilderness/Chapter VII
CHAPTER VII
The Other Who Returned
erritt sat at the tent door, smoking, glancing now at the long figure on the bed, now out across the night to where the mounds loomed through the darkness. Deane's voice was low, and slow; at times he paused for minutes as though to gather fresh strength.
"I don't remember very clearly about parts of it," he said. "So if I get disconnected now and then, you'll know it's because I can't fit it all together. We searched in circles. For three days the men were all right. Then we worked around to the Rocks, where I had half expected to find at least the remains of the Arabs, but there was nothing. After we left the Rocks the men began to get ugly. They declared there was no use in looking further, and they wanted to return. Every day brought emptiness and failure. Holloway would not have been alive if we had found him, and although I hated to give up, I felt I could not risk the men's lives. So I said that the next day we'd start back. But that night a caravan passed us, twelve or fourteen miles away. My men deserted and went to join it. They took everything but my glass, my compass and waterskin, and what food I had with me. I started back … I started back. On the"—he paused, with a visible effort to fix his attention on his words—"I think it was the third day, the water gave out. The next day at sunrise I saw the flag. It could not be seen with the naked eye; with the glass it was just visible. If it had not been for that, I should have died—out there. I covered a good many miles that morning. There was not a scrap of shade, and the sun was cruel. About noon I saw something running ahead. I thought at first it might be Holloway, still alive by a miracle, gone crazy, you know, with the sun. Anyhow, I was not going to take chances. I chased it. Luckily for me, it went in the general direction of the flag, due east. Then I realised what I was doing, with the sun scorching like a blast of furnace heat. But by that time the mischief was done. My brain was burnt out; there was an iron band across my forehead. I nearly went mad with the pain. I think I got delirious after a while, for every time I woke, I was chasing that infernal thing across the desert. It stopped after a while. I thought it lay down, but that may have been my eyes. I was seeing stars and pinwheels then. And then something cracked inside my head, and the light went out."
He drew a long breath. Always his voice was slow and monotonous, devoid of all expression.
"For a while I … I stayed where I was. Then I swore I'd get back in spite of it, or die on my feet. So I went on, as nearly due east as I could guess, trying to keep in the direction I had been started in. The fear that all unconsciously I would get to walking in a circle, and so keep on until my strength gave out; the feeling of appalling helplessness, of not knowing whether I was headed right or whether I might as well sit down where I was and wait for the finish … I tell you, Merritt, it was a journey to Hell and back again." His voice shook, ever so slightly. Merritt, in the doorway, turned his head away.
"What I'm about to tell you now you may say is nothing but the recollection of a delirium," the monotonous, controlled voice went on. "I don't know how long I had been travelling. It was slow work, as you may guess. Suddenly I tripped over something. I felt around on the ground and my hands struck what had thrown me. It … it was a body, Merritt, a dried husk that sounded hollow when I struck it. I don't know whose. It might have been the boy's. They do dry up so fast, out in this sun, you know … It was a shock, an awful one. I don't know what I did. I was so set, heart and soul, on keeping a straight course, that I scarcely dared turn my face aside or stop moving … I felt for it, to see if I could tell anything by the clothes, but it slipped out of my hands and—and I could not find it again. I groped for it, but dared not move far to either side, lest I get turned around. It may have been lying within a foot of me, and I missed it. So I said—'God have mercy on your soul, whoever you were!' and went on, and left it lying there. But if it were Holloway—if it were the boy! To come across him, and not know him, and leave him!"—A sob shook him from head to foot. He continued, quietly as always.
"He's one of Us, of our speech and of our blood. And we were all he had out here … It isn't profitable talking about those days that followed. I think there were three of them. My waterskin was empty; I chewed on dry biscuit until my mouth bled. In the mornings I set my course by the heat of the rising sun on my face. I broke out the crystal of my watch that I might feel the hands and know when they pointed to noon and the sun would be behind me. I had to travel in the morning so that I might have the feel of the sun to go by, and at night I was afraid to stir lest I get turned around. Oh, those nights! My God! those nights!" His voice dropped to a whisper. In a moment it went quietly on, restrained, devoid of all expression.
"Occasionally I had half-delirious dreams, which I could not distinctly remember afterwards. Usually I was in a garden, where the perfume of the jasmine and the honeysuckle was enough to drag the very heart out of you, and where a woman was with me, whose face I couldn't see. And I dreamt about the Princess a good deal—probably because I had had her on my mind—seeing her always as she must have been once, and never as the—the thing we found. In one dream, which I can remember, and which I'll never be able to forget, I saw the boy—our boy—in this garden place. He was lying face downward on the ground—I swear I could almost have touched him, it was so real!—and a woman was stooping over him—oh, Merritt, the loveliest thing that God or the Devil ever made! I never was much given to running after women, but—in that dream I wanted to strangle him, to crush the life and breath and soul out of him, because that woman was leaning over him, with her breath on him and her hands on his head, and I was mad for her. In a way, I could see myself creeping through that garden towards them, quite without volition of my own, parting the vines and the flowers carefully that they might not rustle. And as I got to them" Deane stopped abruptly. His hand closed hard upon a corner of the blanket.
"As I got to them, the woman looked over her shoulder at me. From that point it's all confused and vague, as dreams will be, and I've lost the details. I only know that she left the boy lying on the ground, and moved away; that I followed her, and caught her, and she did not struggle, but put her arms about my neck and held her lips to mine. I tell you, I felt the weight of her body and the warmth of her breath as though I had held her in the flesh. And when earth and hell and heaven itself held nothing but the madness of her beauty, I felt a change. She seemed to stiffen in my grasp; her arms dropped from my shoulders. And then I saw a change. Saw it as plainly as though I had been awake and she was there in actual fact. I saw her flesh shrivel and the skin cling tight to the bones. I saw her face sink in until the eyes were gone, and the cheeks were gaunt and covered with wrinkled brown parchment, and the lips were grinning like the jaws of a skull. And the thing slid out of my arms and lay on the ground, stark and rigid. Then I thought that Holloway, from the ground, spoke, without moving, and said—'It isn't worth while, after all, is it?' And I woke in a cold sweat of abject terror, with his voice ringing in my ears so that I could have sworn that someone had just spoken … Oh, it was maudlin, I don't deny it, and I was well over the edge of madness!" His voice all at once was strained and tired. "Three times I had that dream. I used to wait for it, and long for it, to intoxicate myself with her loveliness, but even in my sleep I was conscious of trying desperately to waken before the—the change should come. I never succeeded, and when I did wake, it was always in the same shiver of mortal fear, with that thing, dark and stiff, on the ground at my feet. And the third time …"
Again he stopped, controlling himself with an effort, gathering fresh strength to continue.
"Have you ever roused suddenly from sleep at night, for no apparent cause, and realised that your mind, your consciousness, was broadly awake while for a bare instant your body still slept, as it were? It gives you the physical sensation of sleep; you feel that your whole being is at lowest ebb, that your heart is beating slower, that your limbs are weighed down by faint numbness, that you are profoundly immovable. You are not, of course; when you make the conscious effort, you can move with perfect ease. It lasts barely a second. That is how I woke, the third time. And in that instant, while I lay feeling as though I could not stir hand or foot to save my soul, yet with every mental faculty waking to alertness, I got the impression of arms—soft human arms—removed from my neck, and knew that something beside me had sprung away, swiftly and silently. Dear Lord in heaven, how I cursed my blindness then! Not to know whether I was the plaything of strange forces, none the less real because I could not understand them, or whether it was all the workings of a fever-haunted brain—whether something was actually happening out there in the desert, or whether I was merely playing the fool—luckily with nobody at hand to take in the full beauty of the spectacle … Oh, well! The only conclusion I can come to is that during those three days I was undoubtedly insane. And … I hope to God it's the correct one … It seemed as though this went on for cycles of time; shivering nights spent half in a state of maudlin, sensuous bliss—half in a panic of crazy fear; blistering days, crawling on, inch by inch, over red-hot sands, in a blackness that was swimming with blood-red mist … I soberly thought I had walked for weeks when I heard voices that sounded quite close at hand. I forgot that sound carries over the desert almost as over water, and thought I was right among you. I heard Ibraheem screaming to his 'Lord-God' about something, and I ran … That's all."
His slow voice stopped with a gasp of utter exhaustion. And for a long space was silence.
When at last Merritt spoke, huskily, no answer came. He went to the bed, shielding his light with care, and stood looking down. Deane's gaunt frame was relaxed, his drawn face, graven into new deep lines of suffering, was quiet, his darkened eyes were closed. Merritt turned the lamp out and stole noiselessly from the tent…
In spite of Merritt's anxious care, Deane did not seem to rally from the effects of that desert journey. So that Merritt wished to hasten the work, and get away, but to this Deane obstinately refused to listen. He argued forcefully that no time was like the present; that they did not know if they could ever get out again; that if his eyes could be cured at all, a few weeks' delay would not harm them. In the end Merritt yielded, partly because he wished to believe what Deane said, partly because all his heart was in his work. Soon Deane learned to go about by himself, with the aid of a stick, stumbling at first, for the ground was badly cut up, later with comparative ease and rapidity. That his helplessness was worse to him than the bitterness of death, Merritt knew unerringly. Of this Deane never spoke, but his face, when he failed in some erstwhile easy task, all unconsciously betrayed him. Continually he was restless, ill at ease, yet striving doggedly to get himself in hand. Merritt began to notice in him a desire for companionship, especially towards nightfall; noticed with opened eyes that Deane kept himself always near a group of men, even though he sat silent, taking no part in their talk. Twice, Merritt, going late at night cautiously to his tent to see that he wanted nothing, found it empty. At first this frightened him, suggesting thoughts of Deane wandering alone in the darkness, until he remembered that night and day were as the same to Deane.
So a week went by; and the Evil that brooded over them awoke once more and stalked abroad.