Philip Wroughton was sitting (not on the steps, for that would
have been risky, but on a cushion on the steps of the Mena Hotel)
occasionally looking at his paper, occasionally looking at the
Pyramids, in a state of high content. To relieve the reader's mind at
once, it may be stated that Egypt thoroughly suited him, he had not
sneezed nor ached nor mourned since he got here nearly a month ago.
The voyage from Marseilles, it is true, had been detestably rough,
but he blamed nobody for that since he had come under the benediction
of the Egyptian sun, not the captain, nor Messrs. Thomas Cook & Sons,
nor Joyce--nobody. This was the sun's doing: there never was such a
sun: it seemed regulated for him as a man can order the regulation of
the temperature of his bath-water. It was always warm enough; it was
never too hot. If you had your white umbrella you put it up; if you
had forgotten it, it didn't matter: several times he had assured Joyce
that it didn't matter. In every way he felt stronger and better than
he had done for years, and to-day, greatly daring, he was going to
mount himself, with assistance, on an Egyptian ass, and ride to see
the Sphinx and make the tour of the great pyramid, in company with
Craddock. It may be added that his reason for sitting on the hotel
steps was largely in order to make a minute survey of the donkeys on
hire just beyond. He wanted one that was not too spirited, or looked
as if it wanted to canter. There was a pinkish one there that might
do, but it flapped its ears in rather an ominous manner.... Perhaps
Craddock would choose one for him. And glancing again at his paper he
observed with singular glee that there were floods in the Thames valley.
Lady Crowborough and Joyce had gone into Cairo that morning to do
some shopping and lunch with friends. This happened with considerable
frequency. Not infrequently also they went to a dinner or a dance in
that gay city, and stopped the night there. These dinners and dances
had at first been supposed to be for Joyce's sake; they were actually,
and now avowedly, for Lady Crowborough's sake, though Joyce, for more
reasons than one, was delighted to accompany her. On such days as the
two did not go into town, it was pretty certain that small relays of
British officers and others would ride out to have lunch or tea with
them at Ulena, and Lady Crowborough had several new flirts. Altogether
she was amazing, prodigious. She rode her donkey every morning, as
beveiled as the Temple, in a blue cotton habit and with a fly-whisk,
accompanied by a handsome young donkey-boy with milk white teeth, and
an engaging smile. He called her "Princess," being a shrewd young man,
and it is to be feared that he was to be numbered also among the new
flirts. Also, as he ran behind her donkey he used to call out in Arabic
"Make way for the bride O-ah!" which used to evoke shouts of laughter
from his fellows. Then Lady Crowborough would ask what he was saying
that made them all laugh, and with an ingenuous smile he explained
that he told the dogs to get out of the way of the Princess. "And they
laugh," he added "'cause they very glad to see you." This was perfectly
satisfactory and she said "None of your nonsense."
Joyce beyond any doubt whatever was enjoying it all very much. The sun,
the colour, the glories of the antique civilization, the kaleidoscopic
novelties of the Oriental world, the gaiety and hospitality so
lavishly welcoming her grandmother and herself, all these made to
a girl accustomed to the restrictions and bondage of her dutiful
filialness to a thoroughly selfish father, a perpetual festa and
spectacle. But though she was in no way beginning to weary of it, or
even get accustomed to it, she found as the full days went by that two
questions, one retrospective, the other anticipatory, were beginning to
occupy and trouble her. With regard to the future she was aware that
Craddock was exercising his utmost power to please her and gratify
her, and felt no doubt whatever as to what this accumulation of little
benefits was leading up to. Before long she knew well he would ask her
again to give him the right to think for her always, to see after her
welfare in things great and small. In a hundred ways, too, she knew
that her father wished him all success in his desire. Often he made
dreadfully disconcerting remarks that were designed to be understood
in the way Joyce understood them. "Ah, Joyce," he would say, "Mr.
Craddock as usual has seen to that for you.... I declare Mr. Craddock
guesses your inclination before you know it yourself. He has ordered
your donkey for half-past ten."... She felt that assuredly Mr. Craddock
was going to send his bill in--"account rendered" this time--and ask
for payment. But not possibly, not conceivably could she imagine
herself paying it.
The retrospective affair occupied her more secretly, but more
engrossingly. Behind all the splendour and gaiety and interest and
sunlight there hung a background which concerned her more intimately
than any of those things: compared with it, nothing else had colour
or brightness. And her father had told her that this background was
stained and daubed with dirt, with commonness, with things not to be
associated with.... Never had the subject been ever so remotely alluded
to again between them: Charles' name had not crossed her lips or his.
She had never asked him who his informant was, but she felt that any
such question was superfluous. She knew; her whole heart and mind told
her that she knew. Whether she had ever actually believed the tale
she scarcely remembered: anyhow she had accepted it as far as action
went. But now, without further evidence on the subject, she utterly and
passionately disbelieved it. By communing with herself she had arrived
at the unshakeable conviction that it not only was not, but could not
be true. Through quietly thinking of Charles, through telling over,
like rosary beads, the hours of their intercourse together, she had
seen that. It was as clear as the simplest logical proposition.
But she saw also that when Craddock repeated the question he had asked
her last June, he would ask it far more urgently and authentically.
There had been no fire behind it then: now, she saw that he was
kindled. Before, he used to look at her with unconcealed glances
of direct admiration, make her great speeches of open compliment,
comparing her to a Greek Victory, a Bacchante. Now he looked at her
more shyly, more surreptitiously, and he paid her compliments no
longer, just because they no longer expressed all he had to say about
her: they had become worn, like defaced coins out of currency.
But this acquired seriousness and sincerity of feeling on his part,
which before would have earned at any rate her sympathy, now, in the
conviction she held that it was he who had spoken of Charles to her
father, made him the more detestable as a wooer, even as in ordinary
converse he now excited her disgustful antipathy. He was as pleasant,
as agreeable, as clever and adaptable as before, but her conjectured
knowledge had spread through his whole personality staining and
poisoning it. He had thought--so she now supposed--to put a rival out
of the field by this treacherous stab in the back, to unhorse him and
ride over him. In that he had bitterly erred, and though still thinking
he had succeeded, deep in her heart was his disgraceful failure
blazoned. And daily she felt the nightmare of his renewed proposal
was coming nearer. Very possibly, she thought, he was delaying
speech until they should go up the Nile, and should be leading a more
leisurely, and, she was afraid, a more intimate life in the comparative
quietude of Luxor, where they proposed to make a long stay. For that
reason, largely, she gladly joined her grandmother in her amazing
activities in Cairo and gave the kindliest welcome to those pleasant
young English soldiers who were so ready to come out to them.
But most of all Joyce loved to wander over the hot yellow sands of the
desert, or go out alone if possible, and sit looking at the pyramids,
or at the wonderful beast that lay looking earthwards with fathomless
eyes of everlasting mystery, as if waiting patiently through the
unnumbered centuries for the dawning of some ultimate day. Or else,
ensconced in some wrinkles of the undulating ground, she would watch
the hawks circling in the fathomless sky, or let her eyes wander over
the peacock green of the springing crops to the city sparkling very
small and bright on the edge of the Nile. A long avenue of carob trees,
giving the value of Prussian blue against the turquoise of the sky and
the vivid green of the rising maize and corn led in a streak across the
plain to it.
She was not conscious of consecutive or orderly thought in these
solitary vigils. But she knew that in some way, even as her mind and
her eye were expanded by those new wonders of old time that waited
alert and patient among the desert sands, so her soul also was growing
in the stillness of its contemplation. She made no efforts to pry it
open, so to speak, to unfold its compacted petals, for it basked in
the sun and psychical air that was appropriate to it, expanding daily,
silent, fragrant....
Philip had not to wait long for his escorting Craddock. He mused
gleefully over the news of floods in the Thames valley, he remembered
it was New Year's day to-morrow, he kept his eye on the pinkish donkey,
and felt confidently daring. The pinkish donkey looked very quiet,
except for the twitching ears; he hoped that Craddock would approve
his choice and not want to mount him on the one that shook itself.
Craddock had proposed this expedition himself, and for a minute or two
Philip wondered whether he wanted to talk about anything special, Joyce
for example. But he felt so well that he did not care just now what
Craddock talked about, or what happened to anybody. He felt sure, too,
that he would be hungry by lunch time. Really, it was insane to have
let that Reynolds hang on the wall so many years and rot like blotting
paper in the Thames valley. But then he had no notion that he could get
five thousand pounds for it. He owed a great deal to Craddock, who at
this moment came out of the hotel, large and fat and white, reassuring
himself as to that point about a whisker.... Suddenly he struck Philip
as being rather like a music-master on holiday at Margate who had
ordered new smart riding-clothes in order to create an impression on
the pier. But he looked rich.
As usual he was very, very deferential and attentive, highly approved
Philip's penchant for the pinkish donkey, and selected for himself
a small one that resembled in some essential manner a depressed
and disappointed widow. His large legs almost touched the ground on
either side of it, he could almost have progressed in the manner of
the ancient velocipede. And Philip having made it quite clear that if
his donkey attempted to exceed a foot's pace, he should go straight
home, and give no backshish at all, they made a start as smooth and
imperceptible as the launching of a ship.
Craddock had interesting communications to make regarding the monarchs
of the fourth dynasty, but his information was neither given nor
taken as if it was of absorbing importance. Philip, indeed, was
entirely wrapped up in observation of his donkey's movements, and the
satisfaction he felt in not being in the Thames valley.
"Indeed, so long ago as that," he said. "How it takes one back! And
even then the Nile floods came up here did they? Ah, by the way, the
Thames is in flood. Probably my lawn is under water: I should have been
a cripple with rheumatism if I had stopped there. Don't make those
clicking noises, Mohammed. We are going quite fast enough. Yes, and
there were three dynasties before that! I don't find the movement at
all jerky or painful, my dear Craddock. I should not wonder if I rode
again. Fancy my riding! I should not have believed it possible. As for
you, you manage like a positive jockey. What do I say, Mohammed, if I
should want to stop?"
The positive jockey, whose positiveness apparently consisted in size
and weight, decided to slide away from the fourth dynasty to times and
persons who more immediately concerned him.
"Indeed it is difficult to imagine such things as floods and rain," he
said, "when we bask in this amazing illumination. I can't express to
you my gratitude in allowing me to join your happy harmonious party."
Philip just waved his fly-whisk in the direction of the Sphinx, as if
to acknowledge without making too much of its presence.
"Dear Joyce!" he said. "I think it has been and will continue to be a
happy time for her. It gave me a great deal of satisfaction to be able
to bring her out, though of course it entailed a certain sacrifice.
Alone, I should have been able to compass the journey, I think, on the
interest of what the Reynolds picture brought me: with her I have had
necessarily to part with capital. Still, of what use is money except
to secure health and enjoyment for others? She is looking wonderfully
well."
Craddock, who had till now been standing outside his topic, took a
sudden header into the very depth of it, rather adroitly.
"There is no money I would not spend on Miss Joyce's health and
enjoyment," he said. "There is nothing nearer to my heart than that."
This sounded very pleasing and satisfactory, for the more Philip
saw of Craddock, the more he liked him as a prospective son-in-law.
But everything seemed slightly remote and unimportant to-day, in
comparison with his own sense of comfort and well-being.
"My dear friend, I renew my assurance of sympathy and good wishes," he
said. "Ah, I was afraid my donkey was going to stumble then. But I held
it up: I held it up."
Craddock's habit of attention to Philip found expression before he
continued that which he had come out to say.
"Anyone can see you are a rider," he said rather mechanically. "Of
course you must know that my pleasure in being out here with you
consisted largely in the furthering of the hope that is nearest my
heart. But since we have been here (I am coming to you for counsel) I
have seen so little of Miss Joyce. Often, of course, she is engaged,
and that I quite understand. But she has seemed to me rather to avoid
me, to--to shun my presence. And hers, I may say, grows every day more
dear and precious to me."
Craddock was really moved. Beneath his greed for money, his
unscrupulousness in getting it, his absorption in his plundering of and
battening on those less experienced than he, there was something that
was capable of feeling, and into that something Joyce had certainly
made her way. The depth of the feeling was not to be gauged by the
fact, that, in its service, he would do a dishonourable thing, for
that, it is to to be feared, was a feat that presented no overwhelming
natural difficulties to him. But his love for Joyce had grown from
liking and admiration into a thing of fire, into a pure and luminous
element. It did not come wholly from outside; it was not like some
rainbow winged butterfly, settling for a moment on carrion. It was
more like some celestial-hued flower growing, if you will, out of a
dung-heap. It might, it is true, have been fed and nourished in a soil
of corruption and dishonour, but by that divine alchemy that love
possesses, none of this had passed into its colour and its fragrance.
It was not dimmed or cankered by the nature of the soil from which it
grew, it was splendid with its own nature. And every day, even as he
had said, it became more dear and precious to him.
"I don't know if you have noticed any of this, I mean any of her
avoidance of me."
Philip was able to console, quite truthfully. He hadn't noticed
anything at all, being far too much taken up in himself.
"Indeed I have seen nothing of the kind," he said, "and I do not think
I am naturally very unobservant. Besides, Joyce, I think, guesses how
warmly I should welcome you as a son-in-law. Ah, I held my donkey
up again! He would have been down unless I had been on the alert.
No, no, my dear Craddock, you are inventing trouble for yourself.
Lovers habitually do that: they fancy their mistress is unkind. I
recommend you to wait a little, be patient, until we get out of all
this _va-et-vient_ of Cairo. It is true Joyce is much taken up with
my mother and her social excesses--I think I am not harsh in calling
them excesses at her age. In the romance and poetry of--of Luxor and
all that--you will find my little Joyce a very tender-hearted girl,
very affectionate, very grateful for affection. Not that I admit she
has shunned or avoided you, not for a moment. Far from it. Don't you
remember how pleased she was when she knew you were coming with us?
Mohammed, stop the donkey: I am out of breath."
Craddock reined in also: the depressed widow was not very unwilling to
stop and he stepped off her, and stood by Philip.
"This is not too much for you, I hope," he said.
"Not at all, not at all. I am enjoying my ride, and positively I have
not had to use my fly-whisk at all. I was wondering how I should manage
it as well as my reins. But there are no flies. No, my dear fellow,
don't be down-hearted. Joyce likes you very well."
"Then I shall tempt my fate without waiting any longer," he said.
"If I am fortunate, I shall be happiest of men, and, I may add, the
cheerfulest of travelling companions. If otherwise, I think I shall go
back to England at once. The situation would be intolerable."
Philip was perfectly aghast. For a moment he could say nothing whatever.
"But that would be out of the question," he said. "I do not see how we
could get on without you. Who would make our arrangements, and settle
the hundred little questions that arise when one is travelling. I could
not do it: my health would completely break down. Perhaps, too, my
mother will stay on in Cairo: if it suits her fancy, I am sure she
will, and Joyce is utterly incapable of arranging for our comfort in
the way in which you do. I should be left without a companion, for, as
you see, Joyce has become totally independent of me. And your valet,
who, at your direction, is so kind as to look after me, and pack for
me, and see to my clothes, no doubt you would take him with you. It
was understood, I thought, that you would make the entire journey
with us: you can hardly mean what you have just said. It would spoil
everything; it would break up our party altogether. Pray assure me that
you do not mean what you say. The idea agitates me, and any agitation,
as you know, is so bad for me. Besides, of course this is the root of
the whole matter--that is why I state it to you last after those minor
considerations--your best opportunity, your most favourable chance,
is when we are alone and quiet up the Nile. We are living in a mere
railway station here: none of us have a minute to ourselves."
Till he heard this rapid staccato speech, Craddock felt he had never
really known what egotism meant. Here it was _in excelsis:_ almost
grand and awe-compelling in this gigantic and inspired exhibition of
it....
"I am very much agitated," said Philip, haloing and crowning it. "Do
not leave my donkey, Mohammed."
In spite of the danger of prolonging this agitation Craddock was silent
for a moment, and Philip had one more remark to make.
"It would be very selfish," he said, "and very unlike you. And I am
sure it would not be wise."
Craddock hesitated no longer. He had received a certain
assurance--though he could not estimate its value--that his
interpretation of Joyce's bearing towards him was mistaken; he had
been recommended, a course which seemed sensible, to wait for the
comparative quiet of Luxor, where the relations of their party would
naturally be more intimate and familiar; he had also had ocular
evidence that Philip was perfectly capable of having a fit, if he
precipitated matters unsuccessfully, and returned home. All these
considerations pointed one way.
"Certainly I will continue your journey with you," he said. "It is
delightful to me to find how solidly you have been counting on me.
And from my point of view--my own personal point of view--I think you
have probably indicated to me the most promising course. I exceedingly
regret the agitation I have caused you."
Philip mopped his forehead.
"It is nothing," he said. "I will make an effort, and become my own
master again. But I do not think I feel up to continuing our ride. Let
us turn. Perhaps to-morrow I shall feel more robust. I should like to
rest a little before lunch. And take heart of grace, my dear man: I
felt just like you once, and how happily it turned out for me."
This was not true: Philip had never been in love with anybody. Joyce's
mother, however, had soon overcome his somewhat feeble resistance to
her charms, and had led him a fine life for the few years that she was
spared to him.
* * * * *
Our party had designed to stay in Egypt two months altogether, and a
month being now spent and Lady Crowborough being at length a little
fatigued by her whirl of gaiety in Cairo, it was settled that day at
lunch that they should proceed southwards up the Nile in a few days'
time, going by steamer all the way, in order to save Philip's nerves
the jar and jolting of the ill-laid line. Lady Crowborough's flirts
came in flocks to see her off, bringing bouquets and confectionery
enough to fill both her cabin and Joyce's, and she made a variety of
astounding speeches in a brilliant monologue to them all, addressing
first one and then another.
"All you young men are trying to spoil me," she said, "and it's lucky
I've got my grand-daughter with me to play chaperone and see you don't
go too far. And are these chocolates for me, too? Joyce, my dear, put
them in my cabin, and lock them up; I shall have a good blow-out of
them as soon as we start. As for you, Mr. Wortledge, I daren't stop in
Cairo a day longer because of you. You'd be coming round for me in a
cab and driving me off to a mosque or a synagogue or some such heathen
place of worship, to be married to you, under pretence of showing me
the antiquities, and what would Mr. Stuart do then? I never saw such
roses, Mr. Stuart. Joyce, my dear--oh, she's gone with the chocolate.
I shall wear a fresh one every day, that's what I shall do, and make
pot-pourri of the leaves, and put it among my clothes, if that'll
content you. And there's a note attached to them, I see. I shan't open
that till I'm alone, so that no one shall see my blushes. And I'll be
bound you'll all be flirting with some other old woman the moment my
back's turned, because I know your ways."
A shrill whistle warned her that this court _de congé_ must draw to an
end, and she began shaking hands with them all.
"You've all made my stay in Cairo uncommonly pleasant," she said, "and
I thank you all with all my heart. You're dear nice boys, all of you,
and I'm really broken-hearted to say goodbye to you. Goodbye all of
you."
And this charming old lady, with real tears in her eyes, put up all her
veils, and kissed away handfuls of her delicious little white fingers,
as the boat began to churn the green Nile water into foam. Then she
went to her cabin, had a good blow-out of chocolate, and slept the
greater part of the three days' voyage up to Luxor with intervals for
food, and a few expeditions to temples on donkey-back. She had bought
ropes and ropes of ancient Egyptian beads in the bazaars, with which
she adorned herself, and when a professor of antiquities (otherwise
promising) hinted that they were modern and came from Manchester, she
told him he knew nothing about it, and was dead cuts with him ever
afterwards.
Craddock, now that he was committed not to separate himself from the
party, was in no hurry to put his fortune to the test. In spite of
Philip's assurance, he still fancied he had been right regarding
Joyce's avoidance of him, and until their stay was beginning to draw
to an end and Philip had begun to fuss about having a sufficiency
of warmer underclothing put in his steamer trunk, so that even when
the weather grew colder as they sailed northwards again across the
Mediterranean, he should be able to sit out on deck without risk of
chill, devoted himself to restoring Joyce's confidence in and ease
of intercourse with him. Many times, it so happened, he was alone
with her, going on some expedition that Philip declared himself not
equal to, while Lady Crowborough's appetite for antiquities had
proved speedily satiated. Indeed, she announced when she had been
at Luxor a week that the sight of any more temples would make her
sick. Thus he was often Joyce's only companion and, while waiting his
time, made himself an admirable guide and comrade. He had studied
the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties before, and with the air of
a friendly tutor interested her in the history and monuments. He
soon saw how apt she was to learn and appreciate, and by degrees
re-established unembarrassing relations with her, winning her back
to frank intercourse with him. With his knowledge and his power of
vividly and lightly presenting it, he succeeded in weaving their
true antique charm about the temples and silent tombs, and Joyce
found herself taking the keenest enjoyment in their long sunny days
together. To her immense relief, he seemed to have banished altogether
his yearning for another relationship, and she told herself she must
have been quite wrong in imagining that he would approach her again,
and this time with fire. Yet she had been so convinced of it, and
here he was with day-long opportunities at his disposal, plunging her
to her infinite satisfaction in the heresies of Amenhotep, and the
Elizabethan rule of Hatasoo. He unfolded the stories of the carven
walls for her, with their hawk-faced gods or adoring kings. He traced
for her the merchandise that the queen's expedition to the Land of
Plenty brought back with it, ivory and apes, as in the days of Solomon,
and gold weighed in the balances by overseers. He told her of Sen-mut
the architect of Deir-el-Bahari, to whom the queen showed all her
heart, and entrusted with the secrets of her will, and how Thothmes,
on his mother's death, erased from the inscriptions all mention of
the low-born fellow.... Then day by golden day went on, and Joyce's
confidence increased, and her debt of pleasant hours to him grew
heavier and was less felt by her. But never did she quite get out of
her mind that it was he who had said, she knew not quite what, to her
father, speaking evil of the boy who painted beside the weir. Could
she have been wrong about that, too? If so, she had indeed wronged
this large kindly man, who was never weary of his pleasant efforts to
interest her. Her manner to him changed as her confidence returned,
and with the changing of her manner, he drew nearer to confidence in
himself.
But it must not be imagined that all life's inner workings, with
regard to Craddock, were centred in this successful charming of Joyce
to comradeship with him, nor in restraining himself from attempting to
pluck the fruit while clearly unripe. Week by week there came to him
the most satisfactory accounts from the box-office with regard to the
reaped and ever-ripening harvest, so to speak, of "Easter Eggs." But
against that solid asset he had to set, not indeed a positive loss, but
a sacrifice of what might have been a tremendous gain. For "The Long
Lane that had Five Turnings"--was there ever so insolently careless a
title?--had appeared early in January, and all London rocked with it.
Akroyd had clearly made the biggest hit of his industrious career,
and the author had leaped at this second spring over the heads of all
other dramatists. Critics, even the most cautious of them, seemed
to have lost their heads, and "Sheridan redivivus" was among their
less extravagant expressions. His informant as to all this was Frank
Armstrong himself, who very thoughtfully sent him a stout packet of
these joyful cries, as supplied to him by a press-agency, and with it a
letter that seemed to touch the pinnacles of impertinence.
"You have often told me," wrote this amiable young man, "of the great
interest you take in my work, and so I am certain you will be pleased
to hear of the success of the play. I have to thank you also for the
hint you so kindly gave me about screwing Akroyd up to favourable
terms, and I made a bargain for myself about the scale of royalties
that really was stupendous. About the play itself--it is not being a
very good theatrical season generally, and even Peter, I hear, isn't
panning out very well, but you should see the queues at the Pall-Mall.
Golly! It's the same in the stalls and boxes. Mrs. Fortescue has taken
a box every night next week, and I think I have persuaded Akroyd to
raise prices. He says it is illegitimate, but I rather think he will
do it. After all the rule of supply and demand must affect prices. I'm
afraid 'Easter Eggs' is bound to suffer; indeed, it was distressingly
empty the other night, but the box office says it will recover again
... I see there is a flat vacant just below yours in Berkeley Square.
I am thinking of taking it. It will be nice to be near you. I can
never forget what you did for me over my first play.... Also, after
an unpropitious beginning, I have struck up a friendship with Charles
Lathom. He has told me, in confidence, how you played Providence to
him. I hope you will do well over him. I should think you would, people
are talking about him, and he has several sitters. I tried to tell
him all you have done for me, but the recollection was too much. The
words wouldn't come, so I pretended to burn my finger over a pipe I was
lighting, and said 'Damn!' Was not that clever and dramatic?
"I enclose quantities of press-notices, and I wish I could see your
delight over them. It was very vexing that you were not here for the
first night, for I should have liked to have seen what you said. But
perhaps when I saw it, I shouldn't have liked it, as I remember you
didn't think very much of the play when I read it to you. Perhaps I
shall take a long holiday now, not write again at all for a year or
two. I am besieged with repeats, of course."
That threat did not much alarm Craddock. He felt as convinced, as he
felt with regard to the rising of the sun, that the young man could not
keep off it. But there was the very scorpion of a sting in the sentence
immediately preceding, in which he was reminded of his own rejection
of the play. His wits must have been wandering that night; his _flair_
for anticipating public taste had never betrayed him with so desperate
a lapse of perception. And somehow it gave him unease to think that
an assured enemy of his, sharper than a serpent's tooth, should have
thus leaped into affluence as well as prominence. Nor did he like this
growing friendship between Charles and the other--he did not like any
of the letter, nor any of the press notices. His evening was completely
spoiled and Mr. Wroughton beat him at bézique. But next morning, with
that power which was not the least of his gifts, he switched his mind
off these disturbances and fixed himself heart and soul on that which
lay before him here and now.
* * * * *
Thus passed for them at Luxor a complete moon, which among other
celestial offices had magically illumined for them an hour of night
among the ruins of Karnak. Then, too, they had gone about, and there up
till then had come the hardest struggle in restraint for him. All the
spell of the starry-kirtled night was woven round them while the huge
monoliths and spent glory of the columned hall reminded him, urgently,
insistently, how short life was, how soon for the generations of men
nothing but the hard granite of their work remains, no joy, no rapture
any more, for eyes are closed and mouths dumb, and the soft swift limbs
laid to rest, where at the most they can but feel the grasses that
wave over their graves, or, more horribly, injected and wrapped in
cero-cloth and bitumen to be preserved as a parody and mocking of what
they once were. And this--these few years--was his time, his innings
before the silence that preceded closed in on him again. All he wanted
stood in front of him now, as Joyce leaned on a fragment of wall white
and tall in the moonlight, and let her great eyes wander over the
outlined columns, with young fresh mouth a little parted, and hand
almost resting on his.
"Yes, it is all later than----" he heard his voice saying, and suddenly
he stopped, feeling that to talk here and now and to her of Egyptian
kings was a mere profanity, in this temple which his love had built, so
much holier than all that had ever been made with hands.
But at his sudden cessation, he saw Joyce withdraw herself a little,
instinctively on guard. Bitterly he saw that.
"It is all so woundingly sad," he said, "this eternal glorious moon and
sky, looking down on to what in so few years is but ruin and decay. And
yet they thought that their houses would endure for ever----"
Joyce instantly recovered her confidence, and flowed to meet him on
this.
"Oh, yes, oh yes," she said, "all this month that has been haunting me.
I think I hate the moon to-night. It is like some dreadful imperishable
governess, always presiding and watching us poor children."
That broke the tension.
"Oh, Mistress Moon," said Craddock laughing. "But she is a governess of
remarkable personal attractions...."
Then the last day of their sojourn came. Joyce, immensely reassured
by her own mistaken conviction that he was going to speak that night
at Karnak, and slightly ashamed of herself, had nothing left of the
trouble she had anticipated at Cairo, and with regard to retrospect,
that which had also been a conviction to her, though not absolutely
vanished, was as remote as the imperishable governess. That day the
two companions had settled to spend not in detailed study, for indeed
they had gathered a most creditable crop, nor even in farewell visits
to shrines, but in a general out-door survey and assimilation of
river and temple and desert and sky, a long exposed photograph, so to
speak, of panorama to take back to the fogs of a northern February.
Soon after breakfast they took ferry over the Nile, and joining their
donkeys there, rode straight away from the river, going neither to the
right nor left, up the narrow path between fast-rising stretches of
lengthening crops, past the two great silent dwellers on the plain,
who, looking ever eastward, wait for the ultimate dawn that shall
touch mute lips again to song, through the huddled mud-houses of
Gûrnak, and up and beyond and out till the level green was left below
them, and they met the sand-dried untainted air of the desert. Here on
the brow of the sandstone cliffs they dismounted, while Josef bestowed
their lunch in a cool shadow of a rock in this thirsty land.
Joyce sat down on this bluff.
"We can't dispose of the flesh-pots of Egypt yet," she said, nodding at
the provision basket. "May we sit here a little, Mr. Craddock, and will
you let me say my eighteenth dynasty catechism, and then----"
Joyce turned to him.
"We must plan out this day so carefully," she said, "as it is the last.
I want to sit here quite silent for about half-an-hour, and if it isn't
rude, out of sight of you, and everybody, and just look, look, get all
that--the river, the crops, the sky, the temples, right deep down. Then
let us have lunch, and then let us go a long ride out into the desert,
where there isn't anybody or anything. And then, oh, oh, we shall have
to go back, and the last day will be over. I promised father to go and
call on the chaplain after tea with him. Chaplain! He's a dear man, but
think--chaplain on the last day!"
Joyce's desired menu of the mind was served to her. She said her
eighteenth dynasty kings, and then strolled along the edge, of the
cliffs till she was out of sight and sound of donkey and donkey-boy and
Craddock. The magic of the land indeed had made its spell for her, and
now she wanted just to look, to absorb, to be wrapped in it. Then, just
because she had planned this her mind grew restive and fidgetty....
She had determined on her own account to speak a grateful word to Mr.
Craddock to-day for all he had done for her, and she felt she must
thank him too for his unremitting attention to her father. He, she felt
sure, would not do so, and Joyce felt that the family must discharge
that indebtedness. It seemed a simple task enough to perform, but she
could not in imagination frame a suitable sentence, either about that
or her own debt to him, and insensibly beginning to worry about it,
she lost the mood that she had come here to capture. Craddock and her
imminent acknowledgment to him "drave between her and the sun" and her
half hour alone proved a not very satisfactory item.
She went back to him at the end of it, and found that he had already
spread their lunch.
"And you have had a 'heart-to-heart' talk with Egypt?" he asked. "I
thought I heard sobs."
Joyce laughed.
"They were sobs of rage then," she said. "My plan broke down. I could
think of everything under the sun except Egypt. Just because I meant
to gaze and meditate, I could not meditate at all. But I am so hungry;
that is something. How good of you to have made ready!"
Hard-boiled eggs and sandwiches, however hungry the attack, do not
need much time for their due disposition, and in a quarter of an
hour Craddock had lit a cigarette, preparatory for their ride into
the desert. And this seemed to Joyce a very suitable moment for the
dischargal of her thanks and compliments.
"I've had a burden on my mind so long, Mr. Craddock," she said, "and
that is to let you know just in so many words how I appreciate all that
you have done for us. Your presence has made the whole difference to my
father----"
She had begun to speak, not looking at him, but at the hot sand at her
feet. But here a sudden movement of his, a shifting of his place so
that he sat just a little nearer her, made her look up. At the same
moment she saw that he flung away the cigarette he had only just lit.
Then she looked at his face, and saw that his mouth was a little open,
and that his breath came quickly. And she knew the moment she had
feared a month ago, but had allowed herself to think of as averted,
hovered close to her.
"And has my presence made any difference to you?" he asked.
Joyce knew the futility of fencing, as everybody does who knows a
crisis is inevitable. But until the end of the world everybody will
continue to fence.
"Of course it has," she said. "I was just going to speak of that and
thank you for it all."
He drew himself quite close to her.
"There is just one way, and no more in which you can thank me," he
said, "and it is by letting me offer for your acceptance all my
services and all my devotion."
The fire, the authentic primal need was there, and though she shrank
from it, though instinctively she hated it, she could refuse it neither
with respect nor sympathy. She could not interrupt him, either: what he
had to say must come: it was his bare right to speak.
He took up her hand, and clasped it with both of his, enclosing it, as
it were, in a damp dark cavern. At that, without being able to help it,
she drew back a little.
"O stop: don't," she said.
He seemed not to hear.
"I offer you much more than I knew was mine to offer last June," he
said. "You were so right, Joyce, to refuse me. But it is so different
now. You have woke in me, or created in me, a power for love which I
did not know was mine. Surely you know that. You created it: it is
yours. Take it, for what you made is me."
He paused a moment; then seemed suddenly to realize that he had said
all that could be said.... A little wind drove upwards from the plain
below, fluttering the papers which had held their sandwiches. Joyce
hated herself for noticing that. Then she tried to withdraw her hand.
"Oh I am so sorry, so sorry," she said. "It is quite impossible, more
impossible than ever. I mean--I don't know what I mean. But I can't."
She knew very well what she meant when she said "more impossible than
ever." And mixed with her regret which was wholly genuine, was a sort
of nausea of her soul.... Once more she felt she knew who had spoken to
her father of Charles. The motive, too, was as clear as the sunshine.
She loathed this continued contact. But it only lasted a second more.
The tone of her reply would have carried conviction to the most ardent
of lovers. He dropped her hand.
"I have done," he said.
He got up, and walked a few paces away, and stood there with his back
to her. A quantity of disconnected pictures went through the blank
impassivity of his mind. He remembered the look of the green packet of
tickets for their passage down the Nile to-morrow, which he had seen on
his table before he went out this morning. He heard Philip's voice say,
"Take care of my little Joyce!" He felt himself licking the envelope
which contained Mr. Ward's cheque for five thousand pounds. He had the
vision of another cheque for ten thousand and one hundred pounds. He
saw the sketch of Joyce that had stood beneath the lamp in her room on
the evening the chimneys smoked at the Mill House. He heard himself
console Charles for the "queer note" Philip Wroughton had written him.
Collectively, these presented their whole case, his whole connection
with the Wroughtons, succinctly and completely. And the curtain fell on
them.
He went back to Joyce, who was sitting by the side of the fluttering
paper with her head in her hands.
"What would you like to do?" he said. "Shall we take our ride into the
desert or go home?"
Joyce got up.
"Oh, let us go home," she said. "Please call Mohammed. And do realize I
am sorry, I am very sorry."
But there was nothing in him now that could respond to or help the
girl's evident distress. It seemed that the wonderful flower that grew
out of him had been plucked.... Only the soil out of which it grew
remained, and that was exactly what it had always been.
That night when Lady Crowborough went up to bed, she was not surprised
to hear Joyce's tap on her door a moment afterwards. She had felt the
constraint that had hung over dinner like a thunder-cloud, though
Philip, flushed with victory at the ideal disposition in the packing of
his underclothing which had occurred to him as he dozed or slept,--he
thought "slept,"--before dinner, had been unconscious of all else.
"Come in, my dear," she said, "and tell me all that's happened."
"Oh, Granny, he has proposed again," said Joyce.
"Lor', my dear, do you think I didn't guess that? And you needn't
trouble to tell me that you refused him. Well, Joyce, I can't say I'm
sorry, though I suppose he's rich and agreeable enough, for I never
could stand stout white men myself. Give me one of my cigarettes,
dear, and sit down and have a talk. There's nothing I enjoy more than
a cigarette and a talk about love just before going to bed. Gives such
pleasant dreams."
Joyce could not help giggling. But she knew well the golden heart that
beat behind these surprising flippancies.
"But I'm sorry, Granny," she said, "but--but I'm afraid I'm not sorry
enough."
"No, my dear," said this astute old lady, "if you were sorry enough
you'd say 'yes' instead of 'no.' Let me see, this is the second go,
isn't it?"
"Yes."
"Well, then I hope this time that you made it plain. The man whom you
don't mean to have gets tedious if he goes on. I used to tell them so."
Joyce had come here to do much more than merely announce the event to
her grandmother. There was so much more she wanted to say, but she felt
it would be easier if it came out in answer to questions. Probably
Grannie was wise enough to ask the right questions....
"I think I made it plain," she said. "I said it was quite impossible:
more impossible than ever."
Lady Crowborough in the dusk allowed herself to beam all over her face.
"And what did you mean by that, my dear?" she said. "To me it sounds as
if there was nobody else last June, but somebody else now."
"Oh, Grannie, it means just that," said Joyce in a whisper.
"And was it any of my flirts in Cairo?" asked Lady Crowborough, who
liked a little joking even when her heart was most entirely tender and
sympathetic. Quite truly, she believed it "helped things out" to grin
over them.
Joyce grinned.
"No, not in Cairo," she said.
"Then it was that flirt of mine down at the Mill House, who's going to
paint my picture," she exclaimed. "Don't deny it, my dear. A nice boy,
too, though he ain't got a penny. However, we'll talk about the pennies
afterwards. Now do you think he fancies you at all? Don't be so silly,
Joyce, hiding your face like that."
"Yes, Grannie, I think he does. I can't be sure, you know I--I haven't
had any experience."
"Lor', my dear, what do you want with experience over that sort o'
thing?" asked Lady Crowborough. "And if you're too modest to say,
I'll say it for you. He does like you and you know it. I saw him, the
wretch, looking at you in the right way. So I don't understand what all
the fuss is about. You like him, and he likes you. Eh?"
The cleverest of grandmothers could not guess the further confidence
that Joyce wanted to make. She had to open it herself.
"But--but there's a difficulty, Grannie," she said. "Somebody has told
father that he's not--not nice, that he isn't the sort of person he
would like me to know. Father wouldn't let him come down to see his
copy of the Reynolds while we were there because of that. And I feel
sure I know who it is who told him that, and why he said it."
"That Craddock?" asked Lady Crowborough quickly.
"Yes: and I can't believe it is true. I don't believe it. Oh, Grannie,
dear, what a comfort you are."
Lady Crowborough's shrewd little face entirely ceased to beam.
"And I don't believe it either, my dear," she said. "He seemed as
decent a young fellow as I ever saw. But you can leave that to me. I'll
find out, if it was your Craddock who said it first of all. It's only
your suspicion as yet, Joyce, and whatever you do, my dear, don't you
go through life suspecting anybody, and then not doing him the justice
to find out if you're right. And then after that we must find out if
there's any truth in it, and what the truth is."
"Oh, but will you, can you?" asked Joyce.
"Yes, my dear, unless I die in the night, which God forbid. I'll
Craddock him! And here am I doing just the same as you, and treating
your suspicions as true before I know. Lor, but it does seem likely,
don't it? And now about what has happened to-day? Are you going to tell
your father or is he?"
"Mr. Craddock thought we had better say nothing about it at present,"
said Joyce. "I expect he is quite right. He said he thought father
would be very much upset. That was as we rode back. Oh, Grannie, fancy
saying that! I think he meant it as a sort of final appeal. Or perhaps
he meant it quite nicely. I'm sure Father wanted me to marry him. But
that didn't seem a good enough reason."
Lady Crowborough began to beam again.
"Not with your Mr. Lathom waiting for you," she said. "Well, now, my
dear, you must let me go to bed. I'm glad you told me all about it, and
I can tell you now I should have thought very poorly of you if you had
accepted this Mr. Craddock. Did he kiss you, my dear?"
Joyce again felt an inward bubble of laughter.
"No, thank goodness," she said.
"That's a good thing. You wait till you get back to town. There's
somebody there--bless me, how I keep getting ahead. Now send me my
maid, Joyce, and don't give way, my dear. And when I say my prayers I'm
not sure I shan't give thanks that you ain't going to be Mrs. Craddock.
I don't like the man and I don't like the name, and that's sufficient."
* * * * *
In spite of this distaste, Lady Crowborough did Craddock the justice
to admit that he behaved very well next day. His invaluable gift for
"switching off" stood him in good stead, his manner was perfectly
normal again, and sitting on the deck of the northward going steamer
after lunch he talked to her about the Exhibition of old Masters at
Burlington House, which was now open.
"There are a dozen fine Reynolds there," he said, "but none finer, I
think, than the one that used to be at the Mill House."
Lady Crowborough affected a very skilful carelessness.
"But what prices for a bit of canvas and a daub of paint," she said. "I
can't see a bit of difference between it and the copy. That was a nice
young fellow who did it too. I was sorry that you had to give so bad a
report of him to my son."
Craddock hardly paused. He assumed that Philip had said something to
his mother about it, and though he would not have chosen that his name
should have been mentioned as informant, he felt it was useless to deny
it. Nor did he wish to: jealousy, impotent and bitter, took hold of him.
"Yes, a loose young fellow, I am afraid," he said. "But I am doing what
I can for him, for his gift is perfectly marvellous. Indeed, I should
not wonder if he is some day known among the greatest English masters.
As I was saying, there are some very fine Reynolds in the Exhibition. I
had the pleasure of getting hold of one or two for them. You must see
it...."
"Oh, drat the Exhibition," she said.
She explained that a sudden twinge of neuralgia had visited her, and
put on several veils.