When she got back to her room she sat on her bed with her head down
in the same attitude as she had maintained throughout the
pleasure-sailing. She could not remember in all her life such
tiredness. There was a permanent ache in the small of her back and
on her thighs and across her shoulder-blades. Her head was confused
and her eyes (she knew) were staring blankly on any object where they
fell. Almost she wished she could throw herself straight upon her
bed, released from the duty of going to Henry.
What a pity she was so exhausted! It would spoil her "hour" with
him. Eyes shut, she drew the back of her hand across her forehead.
Then she pulled herself together, stood up, and walked to the drawer
where her diary was kept. Taking it out, she opened it and wrote
"August 3rd." She marked the date with an asterisk, making the
eight-pointed sign with dreaming elaboration, and leaving a long
space for filling in details one day.
She walked on to her loggia and looked up at his window. It was
alight, and he was standing on his balcony, to all appearance staring
over the water, but doubtless looking obliquely at her window.
Instantly she stepped back.
"He's waiting for me."
There had been, of course, a light in her father's room next door,
and she would have to delay till it had been out for half an hour
before she fled up the stairs to where Henry waited for her. And it
would probably be a long time before her father extinguished the
light, since he always read himself to sleep. She lay down to rest a
little that she might not be so tired when she went to Henry. Her
curtains she left apart so as to see the disappearance of her
father's reflected light. When it should have gone she would get up
and do her hair and powder her face again.
She had kept no count of the time when the light snapped out
suddenly. Stepping off the bed, she walked to the window, but not so
as Henry, were he still on his balcony, could see her. Throwing up a
quick glance she saw that though he was not there his light was the
one square of brightness on the night.
She went to her dressing-table and did her hair, and with the powder
once more made as much as possible of her tired and hollowed face.
Then she sat on the edge of her bed to wait a little longer. All
this time there would recur in her mouth--on tongue and palate--a bad
taste, obliging her to get up repeatedly and take a little water from
the glass on the washstand. When it was time to move, she walked
again to the window and saw Henry's room still the only wakeful place
in the Brunnen night. She walked across the room to her door and
opened it.
But courage would not come to enable her to rush along that corridor
and fly up the stairs. Supposing she should pass anybody! Supposing
her father had suspected something and was watching! She would wait
longer. It was a quarter past one. "At twenty-five past I'll make a
run for it," she said, and sat again upon her bed.
What would happen when she went to Henry she but vaguely conceived.
He would throw wide his arms and she would rush into them. They
would sit on a long sofa. In nothing would he hurt her--of that she
was sure as she was sure of anything in life. But they would talk of
the future. By coming to him she would have confessed her readiness
to break with things and to take the lawless road one day. Ever in
her mind were his stuttered words about the call of life and the path
of danger--words in which she saw, more clearly than some, more
mistily than many, a glimmer of truth. And so she thought of her
rush to his room as a decisive rush through a gateway towards
adventure, experience, beauty perhaps--and wisdom.
When her watch showed twenty-five past she got up and walked to her
open door. She even stepped into the passage and took several paces
towards the one light that burned over the staircase.
"No, I can't just yet. I'll wait till half-past.... Besides, I
wonder if he's given me up, now it's so late."
One part of her could hope he had done so; and for the hundredth
time, as it seemed, she walked back to her window. No, his balcony
was still washed in light.
She swallowed some more water to remove the taste on her palate, and
sat on the bed again, grasping her knee, to wait for half-past one.
A bell from the village sounded the half-hour, and she rose and
walked to the door. So tired was she that she supported herself by
resting her hand on the jamb. A long way down the corridor burned
the dim light over the staircase.
No, she couldn't do it. This was proving itself to her. She wasn't
big enough so to break with things. "I simply haven't got the
courage." Her mouth was parted as she strolled back into the room.
She was too near her childhood for such a step and too muddled. As
Henry had said, one didn't solve the riddles of how to live until it
was too late to live.
"Oh, but I must go. I may never see him again and he's waiting for
me."
She walked to the door and was summoning courage for the rush when
the passage outside seemed to creak with a step. Instantly she shut
her guilty door and put out the incriminating light.
This was the end, she knew. She would not go now.
That might have been a night-porter's step, or it might have been
Henry wandering along her passage, in which case she had shut the
door on him, or it might have been nothing. But the creak, with its
reminder of a world looking on, had settled everything. Settled
everything. How much of her life, she wondered, did that phrase
imply?
"I can't go now. And I think I'm glad. I'm so tired. I think he
did frighten me a little with his intensity. I'll be awake at six
o'clock in the morning, and wave to him when he goes; and he will
understand that I was not angry with his suggestion. He mustn't
think that for ever.... And now I'll try to sleep. It must be two
o'clock."
In her night-dress under the sheet she relaxed her aching limbs and
lay on her back and flung an arm on either side. She tightened the
closing of her eyes, as if that would help her to sleep. But no
sleep would come. Her mind would picture the past evening and the
past weeks, and Henry at this moment putting out his light in
disappointment. And she would tell herself, "I'm glad it's ending
to-morrow. It's too awful--oh, but no, it's worth having been born
to have gone through it.... But I wouldn't, if I could, have it cut
out.... Oh, this can't be all. I must be destined to see him again
some time. The world is small and time is big."
This last sentence, which had formed itself spontaneously in her
mind, pleased her literary sense, and she repeated it to herself for
her relief, thinking that in the quiet surrender to the future which
it urged she might find some sleep. But sleep hung aloof. She
wondered if she would ever sleep again.
It was while wondering this that she saw a huge room, partly hung
with pale-blue and pink curtains--a rather sickly room, and yet it
was a home that was being prepared for Henry and her--unfurnished as
yet except for a wicker chair in which Henry was sitting. She walked
towards him and saw that she was walking up a steep country road in
England. There was a glow in the sky for a whole village was burning
somewhere, and she had no desire to go to any one's assistance, for
Henry was waiting for her somewhere on the crown of the hill. Now,
strangely enough, she was not dreaming about him at all--he might
never have existed--a thought that was with her as she dreamt--she
was laughing in a drawing-room with friends she had known, Trudy
Wayne and Miss Sims and Owen.
At last she awoke; and, not at once but very soon, sickened to see
the sun pouring through her undrawn curtains. Frantically she looked
at her watch. It was a quarter to eight: Henry had started more than
an hour ago. A chapel bell was ringing to Mass. An audible moan
came from her throat and a rebel's tear rushed to her eyes. Leaping
up, she ran to the window as though there were still time to see him.
But there were only the mountains hooded in low clouds, and the water
filmed and sluggish like a thing unawake.
A wicked and loathsome trick of Chance to make her sleep too long! A
moment for blasphemies. Why wouldn't these rebel's tears that had
gushed to her eyes pour out? But now she felt dry and hard. Her
chief emotion was a desire to insult and injure the inaccessible
gods. "Well, I must dress. It's late; it's awfully late." And her
clothes immediately reminded her that it was all over--that she was
on the other side of the parting. "He's gone." For a minute's
luxury of despair she flung herself face downwards on the bed.
Then with deliberation she jumped up to dress and finish her packing;
and the courage of it pleased her.
"I think I must be less lacking in courage than I thought. I believe
that with an effort of the will I could get up and dress like this on
the morning of my execution."
The words reminded her of the old game she used to play when she
walked to her death inspired by the verses:
He nothing common did nor mean
Upon that memorable scene...
And this morning, dramatising herself as resigned, controlled and
brave, she dressed and closed her trunks. At her glass the whiteness
of her face, the hollowness of her cheeks and the shadows under her
eyes startled her. "I wonder if I'm going to be ill, as people
sometimes are on occasions like this."
She ran and knocked on her father's door, and hearing his grunt,
"Come in," entered to find him tying his tie.
"I only wanted to see that you were properly up," said she. "It's
after eight, and I slept longer than I meant----" Her jaw dropped as
she uttered the sentence.
"You would after such a frivolous and racketing night." He had
looked at her in his mirror, and at once, in his tact, averted his
eyes. The movement told her that he was seeing everything and
filling with pity. But he was a wise student of humanity and knew
that this was no moment for sympathy, no moment for observing
anything at all, no moment for aught but the old chaff.
"I could hear the noise you made on the water till--well, it must
have been midnight.... Go down and order breakfast. Get some strong
coffee and plenty of it. I shall be glad of it too."
"Righto!" She was glad to be alone again.
She wandered down the great stairway, preferring its solitude to the
company of the man in the lift. On the ground floor she met other
guests who said:
"You're off, I hear."
"Yes," she laughed. "By the nine-thirty boat for Alpnachstad. I'd
better say good-bye now, I suppose."
They shook her hand.
"So sorry you're going."
"Yes, so'm I. I've enjoyed it all tremendously. I don't want to go
a bit."
She walked along with them to the office of the concierge, and saw in
the little pigeon-hole marked with the number of her room a letter.
Her heart jumped. It could only be a last letter from Henry.
"Is that something for me?" she smiled at the concierge.
"Yes, miss. Mr. Detmould asked me to give it to you."
He drew it out, absurdly uninterested in what he was handling, and
gave it to her. She ran hurriedly with it to the privacy of the
terrace where was no one but a man in a green baize apron sweeping.
With shaking, uncontrolled fingers she opened and read:
"MY DEAR,--Good-bye. Think of me as one who will carry your memory
with him always. The picture I shall try to see most often will be
that of you leaving your tennis and coming up the path to me, as you
did yesterday. I am glad I have known you. I wouldn't have missed
it. I half hoped I should have seen something of you before I
started, but you were very tired and slept, I suspect. It was
natural, dear. Good-bye.
"H.D."
"Oh, I must write to him," thought Daphne passionately, the tears now
brimming at her eyes. "I must write and tell him that I wasn't
offended at his invitation and didn't mean not to say good-bye."
She ran to the lounge and got some note-paper--glad that it was the
hotel note-paper with the picture of the hotel on its top--and
started a draft, but soon crumpled it up and started another.... Her
father appeared, and she crumpled up both drafts and put them in her
pocket.
"Ah, ten minutes exactly for breakfast," said he. "Come along,
Duffs."