Atlantida, Pierre Benoît [reading fiction .TXT] 📗

thinks herself alone, standing before her mirror in expectation of the man she wishes to subdue!

The six incense-burners scattered about the room sent up invisible columns of perfume. The balsam spices of Arabia wore floating webs in which my shameless senses were entangled.... And, back toward me, standing straight as a lily, Antinea smiled into her mirror.

Low steps sounded in the corridor. Antinea immediately fell back into the nonchalant pose in which I had first seen her. One had to see such a transformation to believe it possible.

Morhange entered the room, preceded by a white Targa.

He, too, seemed rather pale. But I was most struck by the expression of serene peace on that face which I thought I knew so well. I felt that I never had understood what manner of man Morhange was, never.

He stood erect before Antinea without seeming to notice her gesture inviting him to be seated.

She smiled at him.

"You are surprised, perhaps," she said finally, "that I should send for you at so late an hour."

Morhange did not move an eyelash.

"Have you considered it well?" she demanded.

Morhange smiled gravely, but did not reply.

I could read in Antinea's face the effort it cost her to continue smiling; I admired the self-control of these two beings.

"I sent for you," she continued. "You do not guess why?... Well, it is to tell you something that you do not expect. It will be no surprise to you if I say that I never met a man like you. During your captivity, you have expressed only one wish. Do you recall it?"

"I asked your permission to see my friend before I died," said Morhange simply.

I do not know what stirred me more on hearing these words: delight at Morhange's formal tone in speaking to Antinea, or emotion at hearing the one wish he had expressed.

But Antinea continued calmly:

"That is why I sent for you—to tell you that you are going to see him again. And I am going to do something else. You will perhaps scorn me even more when you realize that you had only to oppose me to bend me to your will—I, who have bent all other wills to mine. But, however that may be, it is decided: I give you both your liberty. Tomorrow Ceghéir-ben-Cheikh will lead you past the fifth enclosure. Are you satisfied?"

"I am," said Morhange with a mocking smile.

"That will give me a chance," he continued, "to make better plans for the next trip I intend to make this way. For you need not doubt that I shall feel bound to return to express my gratitude. Only, next time, to render so great a queen the honors due her, I shall ask my government to furnish me with two or three hundred European soldiers and several cannon."

Antinea was standing up, very pale.

"What are you saying?"

"I am saying," said Morhange coldly, "that I foresaw this. First threats, then promises."

Antinea stepped toward him. He had folded his arms. He looked at her with a sort of grave pity.

"I will make you die in the most atrocious agonies," she said finally.

"I am your prisoner," Morhange replied.

"You shall suffer things that you cannot even imagine."

"I am your prisoner," repeated Morhange in the same sad calm.

Antinea paced the room like a beast in a cage. She advanced toward my companion and, no longer mistress of herself, struck him in the face.

He smiled and caught hold of her, drawing her little wrists together with a strange mixture of force and gentleness.

King Hiram growled. I thought he was about to leap. But the cold eyes of Morhange held him fascinated.

"I will have your comrade killed before your eyes," gasped Antinea.

It seemed to me that Morhange paled, but only for a second. I was overcome by the nobility and insight of his reply.

"My companion is brave. He does not fear death. And, in any case, he would prefer death to life purchased at the price you name."

So saying, he let go Antinea's wrists. Her pallor was terrible. From the expression of her mouth I felt that this would be her last word to him.

"Listen," she said.

How beautiful she was, in her scorned majesty, her beauty powerless for the first time!

"Listen," she continued. "Listen. For the last time. Remember that I hold the gates of this palace, that I have supreme power over your life. Remember that you breathe only at my pleasure. Remember...."

"I have remembered all that," said Morhange.

"A last time," she repeated.

The serenity of Morhange's face was so powerful that I scarcely noticed his opponent. In that transfigured countenance, no trace of worldliness remained.

"A last time," came Antinea's voice, almost breaking.

Morhange was not even looking at her.

"As you will," she said.

Her gong resounded. She had struck the silver disc. The white Targa appeared.

"Leave the room!"

Morhange, his head held high, went out.

Now Antinea is in my arms. This is no haughty, voluptuous woman whom I am pressing to my heart. It is only an unhappy, scorned little girl.

So great was her trouble that she showed no surprise when I stepped out beside her. Her head is on my shoulder. Like the crescent moon in the black clouds, I see her clear little bird-like profile amid her mass of hair. Her warm arms hold me convulsively.... O tremblant coeur humain....

Who could resist such an embrace, amid the soft perfumes, in the langorous night? I feel myself a being without will. Is this my voice, the voice which is murmuring:

"Ask me what you will, and I will do it, I will do it."

My senses are sharpened, tenfold keen. My head rests against a soft, nervous little knee. Clouds of odors whirl about me. Suddenly it seems as if the golden lanterns are waving from the ceiling like giant censers. Is this my voice, the voice repeating in a dream:

"Ask me what you will, and I will do it. I will do it."

Antinea's face is almost touching mine. A strange light flickers in her great eyes.

Beyond, I see the gleaming eyes of King Hiram. Beside him, there is a little table of Kairouan, blue and gold. On that table I see the gong with which Antinea summons the slaves. I see the hammer with which she struck it just now, a hammer with a long ebony handle, a heavy silver head ... the hammer with which little Lieutenant Kaine dealt death....

I see nothing more....

 

 

XVII THE MAIDENS OF THE ROCKS

 

I awakened in my room. The sun, already at its zenith, filled the place with unbearable light and heat.

The first thing I saw, on opening my eyes, was the shade, ripped down, lying in the middle of the floor. Then, confusedly, the night's events began to come back to me.

My head felt stupid and heavy. My mind wandered. My memory seemed blocked. "I went out with the leopard, that is certain. That red mark on my forefinger shows how he strained at the leash. My knees are still dusty. I remember creeping along the wall in the room where the white Tuareg were playing at dice. That was the minute after King Hiram had leapt past them. After that ... oh, Morhange and Antinea.... And then?"

I recalled nothing more. I recalled nothing more. But something must have happened, something which I could not remember.

I was uneasy. I wanted to go back, yet it seemed as if I were afraid to go. I have never felt anything more painful than those conflicting emotions.

"It is a long way from here to Antinea's apartments. I must have been very sound asleep not to have noticed when they brought me back—for they have brought me back."

I stopped trying to think it out. My head ached too much.

"I must have air," I murmured. "I am roasting here; it will drive me mad."

I had to see someone, no matter whom. Mechanically, I walked toward the library.

I found M. Le Mesge in a transport of delirious joy. The Professor was engaged in opening an enormous bale, carefully sewed in a brown blanket.

"You come at a good time, sir," he cried, on seeing me enter. "The magazines have just arrived."

He dashed about in feverish haste. Presently a stream of pamphlets and magazines, blue, green, yellow and salmon, was bursting from an opening in the bale.

"Splendid, splendid!" he cried, dancing with joy. "Not too late, either; here are the numbers for October fifteenth. We must give a vote of thanks to good Ameur."

His good spirits were contagious.

"There is a good Turkish merchant who subscribes to all the interesting magazines of the two continents. He sends them on by Rhadamès to a destination which he little suspects. Ah, here are the French ones."

M. Le Mesge ran feverishly over, the tables of contents.

"Internal politics: articles by Francis Charmes, Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu, d'Haussonville on the Czar's trip to Paris. Look, a study by Avenel of wages in the Middle Ages. And verse, verses of the young poets, Fernand Gregh, Edmond Haraucourt. Ah, the resumé of a book by Henry de Castries on Islam. That may be interesting.... Take what you please."

Joy makes people amiable and M. Le Mesge was really delirious with it.

A puff of breeze came from the window. I went to the balustrade and, resting my elbows on it, began to run through a number of the Revue des Deux Mondes.

I did not read, but flipped over the pages, my eyes now on the lines of swarming little black characters, now on the rocky basin which lay shivering, pale pink, under the declining sun.

Suddenly my attention became fixed. There was a strange coincidence between the text and the landscape.

"In the sky overhead were only light shreds of cloud, like bits of white ash floating up from burnt-out logs. The sun fell over a circle of rocky peaks, silhouetting their severe lines against the azure sky. From on high, a great sadness and gentleness poured down into the lonely enclosure, like a magic drink into a deep cup...."[17]

I turned the pages feverishly. My mind seemed to be clearing.

Behind me, M. Le Mesge, deep in an article, voiced his opinions in indignant growls.

I continued reading:

"On all sides a magnificent view spread out before us in the raw light. The chain of rocks, clearly visible in their barren desolation which stretched to the very summit, lay stretched out like some great heap of gigantic, unformed things left by some primordial race of Titans to stupefy human beings. Overturned towers...."

"It is shameful, downright shameful," the Professor was repeating.

"Overturned towers, crumbling citadels, cupolas fallen in, broken pillars, mutilated colossi, prows of vessels, thighs of monsters, bones of titans,—this mass, impassable with its ridges and gullies, seemed the embodiment of everything huge and tragic. So clear were the distances...."

"Downright shameful," M. Le Mesge kept on saying in exasperation, thumping his fist on the table.

"So clear were the distances that I could see, as if I had it under my eyes, infinitely enlarged, every contour of the rock which Violante had shown me through the window with the gesture of a creator...."

Trembling, I closed the magazine. At my feet, now red, I saw the rock which Antinea had pointed out to me the day of our first interview, huge, steep, overhanging the reddish brown garden.

"That is my horizon," she had said.

M. Le Mesge's excitement had passed all bounds.

"It is worse than shameful; it is infamous."

I almost wanted to strangle him into silence. He seized my arm.

"Read that, sir; and, although you don't know a great deal about the subject, you will see that this article on Roman Africa is a miracle of misinformation, a monument of ignorance. And it is signed ... do you know by whom it is signed?"

"Leave me alone," I said brutally.

"Well, it is signed Gaston Boissier. Yes, sir! Gaston Boissier, grand officer of the Legion of Honor, lecturer at the Ecole Normale Supérieure, permanent secretary of the French Academy, member of the Academy of