PART III

Produced by Lionel Sear

THE WAVE.

An Egyptian Aftermath.

BY

ALGERNON BLACKWOOD.

Author of 'Education of Uncle Paul,' 'A Prisoner in Fairyland' Etc.

MACMILLAN AND CO LIMITED

St Martin's Street LONDON.

1916

TO: M. S.=k

Egypt's Forgetful and Unwilling Child.

PART I

CHAPTER I

Since childhood days he had been haunted by a Wave.

It appeared with the very dawn of thought, and was his earliest

recollection of any vividness. It was also his first experience of

nightmare: a wave of an odd, dun colour, almost tawny, that rose behind

him, advanced, curled over in the act of toppling, and then stood still.

It threatened, but it did not fall. It paused, hovering in a position

contrary to nature; it waited.

Something prevented; it was not meant to fall; the right moment had not

yet arrived.

If only it would fall! It swept across the skyline in a huge, long curve

far overhead, hanging dreadfully suspended. Beneath his feet he felt the

roots of it withdrawing; he shuffled furiously and made violent efforts;

but the suction undermined him where he stood. The ground yielded and

dropped away. He only sank in deeper. His entire weight became that of a

feather against the gigantic tension of the mass that any moment, it

seemed, must lift him in its rising curve, bend, break, and twist him,

then fling him crashing forward to his smothering fate.

Yet the moment never came. The Wave hung balanced between him and the

sky, poised in mid-air. It did not fall. And the torture of that

infinite pause contained the essence of the nightmare.

The Wave invariably came up behind him, stealthily, from what seemed

interminable distance. He never met it. It overtook him from the rear.

The horizon hid it till it rose.

There were stages in its history, moreover, and in the effect it produced

upon his early mind. Usually he woke up the moment he realised it was

there. For it invariably announced its presence. He heard no sound, but

knew that it was coming--there was a feeling in the atmosphere not unlike

the heavy brooding that precedes a thunderstorm, only so different from

anything he had yet known in life that his heart sank into his boots.

He looked up. There, above his head was the huge, curved monster, hanging

in mid-air. The mood had justified itself. He called it the 'wavy

feeling.' He was never wrong about it.

The second stage was reached when, instead of trying to escape shorewards,

where there were tufts of coarse grass upon a sandy bank, he turned and

faced the thing. He looked straight into the main under-body of the

poised billow. He saw the opaque mass out of which this line rose up and

curved. He stared against the dull, dun-coloured parent body whence it

came--the sea. Terrified yet fascinated, he examined it in detail, as a

man about to be executed might examine the grain of the wooden block close

against his eyes. A little higher, some dozen feet above the level of his

head, it became transparent; sunlight shot through the glassy curve.

He saw what appeared to be streaks and bubbles and transverse lines of

foam that yet did not shine quite as water shines. It moved suddenly;

it curled a little towards the crest; it was about to topple over, to

break--yet did not break.

About this time he noticed another thing: there was a curious faint

sweetness in the air beneath the bend of it, a delicate and indescribable

odour that was almost perfume. It was sweet; it choked him. He called

it, in his boyish way, a whiff. The 'whiff' and the 'wavy feeling'

impressed themselves so vividly upon his mind that if ever he met them in

his ordinary life--out of dream, that is--he was sure that he would know

them. In another sense he felt he knew them already. They were familiar.

But another stage went further than all the others put together.

It amounted to a discovery. He was perhaps ten years old at this time,

for he was still addressed as 'Tommy,' and it was not till the age

of fifteen that his solid type of character made 'Tom' seem more

appropriate. He had just told the dream to his mother for the hundredth

time, and she, after listening with sympathy, had made her ever-green

suggestion--'If you dream of water, Tommy, it means you're thirsty in

your sleep,'--when he turned and stared straight into her eyes with such

intentness that she gave an involuntary start.

'But, mother, it _isn't_ water!'

'Well, darling, if it isn't water, what is it, then?' She asked the

question quietly enough, but she felt, apparently, something of the queer

dismay that her boy felt too. It seemed the mother-sense was touched.

The instinct to protect her offspring stirred uneasily in her heart.

She repeated the question, interested in the old, familiar dream for the

first time since she heard it several years before: 'If it isn't water,

Tommy, what is it? What can it be?' His eyes, his voice, his manner--

something she could not properly name--had startled her.

But Tommy noticed her slight perturbation, and knowing that a boy of his

age did not frighten his mother without reason, or even with it, turned

his eyes aside and answered:

'I couldn't tell. There wasn't time. You see, I woke up then.'

'How curious, Tommy,' she rejoined. 'A wave is a wave, isn't it?'

And he answered thoughtfully: 'Yes, mother; but there are lots of things

besides water, aren't there?'

She assented with a nod, and a searching look at him which he purposely

avoided. The subject dropped; no more was said; yet somehow from that

moment his mother knew that this idea of a wave, whether it was nightmare

or only dream, had to do with her boy's life in a way that touched the

protective thing in her, almost to the point of positive defence.

She could not explain it; she did not like it; instinct warned her--that

was all she knew. And Tommy said no more. The truth was, indeed, that he

did not know himself of what the Wave was composed. He could not have

told his mother even had he considered it permissible. He would have

loved to speculate and talk about it with her, but, having divined her

nervousness, he knew he must not feed it. No boy should do such a thing.

Moreover, the interest he felt in the Wave was of such a deep, enormous

character--the adjectives were his own--that he could not talk about it

lightly. Unless to some one who showed genuine interest, he could not

even mention it. To his brothers and sister, both older and younger than

himself, he never spoke of it at all. It had to do with something so

fundamental in him that it was sacred. The realisation of it, moreover,

came and went, and often remained buried for weeks together; months passed

without a hint of it; the nightmare disappeared. Then, suddenly, the

feeling would surge over him, perhaps just as he was getting into bed, or

saying his prayers, or thinking of quite other things. In the middle of a

discussion with his brother about their air-guns and the water-rat they

hadn't hit--up would steal the 'wavy' feeling with its dim, familiar

menace. It stole in across his brother's excited words about the size and

speed of the rat; interest in sport entirely vanished; he stared at Tim,

not hearing a word he said; he dived into bed; he had to be alone with the

great mood of wonder and terror that was rising. The approach was

unmistakable; he cuddled beneath the sheets, fighting-angry if Tim tried

to win him back to the original interest. The dream was coming; and, sure

enough, a little later in his sleep, it came.

For even at this stage of his development he recognised instinctively this

special quality about it--that it could not, was not meant to be avoided.

It was inevitable and right. It hurt, yet he must face it. It was as

necessary to his well-being as having a tooth out. Nor did he ever seek

to dodge it. His character was not the kind that flinched. The one thing

he did ask was--to understand. Some day, he felt, this full understanding

would come.

There arrived then a new and startling development in this curious

obsession, the very night, Tommy claims, that there had been the fuss

about the gun and water-rat, on the day before the conversation with his

mother. His brother had plagued him to come out from beneath the sheets

and go on with the discussion, and Tommy, furious at being disturbed in

the 'wavy' mood he both loved and dreaded, had felt himself roused

uncommonly. He silenced Tim easily enough with a smashing blow from a

pillow, then, with a more determined effort than usual, buried himself to

face the advent of the Wave. He fell asleep in the attempt, but the

attempt bore fruit. He felt the great thing coming up behind him; he

turned; he saw it with greater distinctness than ever before; almost he

discovered of what it was composed.

That it was _not_ water established itself finally in his mind; but more--

he got very close to deciding its exact composition. He stared hard into

the threatening mass of it; there was a certain transparency about the

substance, yet this transparency was not clear enough for water: there

were particles, and these particles went drifting by the thousand, by the

million, through the mass of it. They rose and fell, they swept along,

they were very minute indeed, they whirled. They glistened, shimmered,

flashed. He made a guess; he was just on the point of guessing right, in

fact, when he saw another thing that for the moment obliterated all his

faculties. There was both cold and heat in the sensation, fear and

delight. It transfixed him. He saw eyes.

Steady, behind the millions of minute particles that whirled and drifted,

he distinctly saw a pair of eyes of light-blue colour, and hardly had he

registered this new discovery, when another pair, but of quite different

kind, became visible beyond the first pair--dark, with a fringe of long,

thick lashes. They were--he decided afterwards--what is called Eastern

eyes, and they smiled into his own through half-closed lids. He thinks he

made out a face that was dimly sketched behind them, but the whirling

particles glinted and shimmered in such a confusing way that he could not

swear to this. Of one thing only, or rather of two, did he feel quite

positive: that the dark eyes were those of a woman, and that they were

kind and beautiful and true: but that the pale-blue eyes were false,

unkind, and treacherous, and that the face to which they belonged,

although he could not see it, was a man's. Dimly his boyish heart was

aware of happiness and suffering. The heat and cold he felt, the joy and

terror, were half explained. He stared. The whirling particles drifted

past and hid them. He woke.

That day, however, the 'wavy' feeling hovered over him more or less

continuously. The impression of the night held sway over all he did and

thought. There was a kind of guidance in it somewhere. He obeyed this

guidance as by an instinct he could not, dared not disregard, and towards

dusk it led him into the quiet room overlooking the small Gardens at the

back of the house, his father's study. The room was empty; he approached

the big mahogany cupboard; he opened one of the deep drawers where he knew

his father kept gold and private things, and birthday or Christmas

presents. But there was no dishonourable intention in him anywhere;

indeed, he hardly knew exactly why he did this thing. The drawer, though

moving easily, was heavy; he pulled hard; it slid out with a rush; and at

that moment a stern voice sounded in the room behind him: 'What are you

doing at my Eastern drawer?'

Tommy, one hand still on the knob, turned as if he had been struck.

He gazed at his father, but without a trace of guilt upon his face.

'I wanted to see, Daddy.'

'I'll show you,' said the stern-faced man, yet with kindness and humour in

the tone. 'It's full of wonderful things. I've nothing secret from you;

but another time you'd better ask first--Tommy.'

'I wanted to see,' faltered the boy. 'I don't know why I did it. I just

had a feeling. It's the first time--_really_.'

The man watched him searchingly a moment, but without appearing to do so.

A look of interest and understanding, wholly missed by the culprit, stole

into his fine grey eyes. He smiled, then drew Tommy towards him, and gave

him a kiss on the top of his curly head. He also smacked him playfully.

'Curiosity,' he said with pretended disapproval, 'is divine, and at your

age it is right that you should feel curiosity about everything in the

world. But another time just ask me--and I'll show you all I possess.'

He lifted his son in his arms, so that for the first time the boy could

overlook the contents of the opened drawer. 'So you just had a feeling,

eh----?' he continued, when Tommy wriggled in his arms, uttered a curious

exclamation, and half collapsed. He seemed upon the verge of tears.

An ordinary father must have held him guilty there and then. The boy

cried out excitedly:

'The whiff! Oh, Daddy, it's my whiff!'

The tears, no longer to be denied, came freely then; after them came

confession too, and confused though it was, the man made something

approaching sense out of the jumbled utterance. It was not mere patient

kindness on his part, for an older person would have seen that genuine

interest lay behind the half-playful, half-serious cross-examination.

He watched the boy's eager, excited face out of the corner of his eyes;

he put discerning questions to him, he assisted his faltering replies, and

he obtained in the end the entire story of the dream--the eyes, the wavy

feeling, and the whiff. How much coherent meaning he discovered in it all

is hard to say, or whether the story he managed to disentangle held

together. There was this strange deep feeling in the boy, this strong

emotion, this odd conviction amounting to an obsession; and so far as

could be discovered, it was not traceable to any definite cause that Tommy

could name--a fright, a shock, a vivid impression of one kind or another

upon a sensitive young imagination. It lay so deeply in his being that

its roots were utterly concealed; but it was real.

Dr. Kelverdon established the existence in his second boy of an

unalterable premonition, and, being a famous nerve specialist, and a

disciple of Freud into the bargain, he believed that a premonition has a

cause, however primitive, however carefully concealed that cause may be.

He put the boy to bed himself and tucked him up, told Tim that if he

teased his brother too much he would smack him with his best Burmese

slipper which had tiny nails in it, and then whispered into Tommy's ear as

he cuddled down, happy and comforted, among the blankets: 'Don't make a

special effort to dream, my boy; but if you do dream, try to remember it

next morning, and tell me exactly what you see and feel.' He used the

Freudian method.

Then, going down to his study again, he looked at the open drawer and

sniffed the faint perfume of things--chiefly from Egypt--that lay inside

it. But there was nothing of special interest in the drawer; indeed, it

was one he had not touched for years.

He went over one by one a few of the articles, collected from various

points of travel long ago. There were bead necklaces from Memphis, some

trash from a mummy of doubtful authenticity, including several amulets and

a crumbling fragment of old papyrus, and, among all this, a tiny packet of

incense mixed from a recipe said to have been found in a Theban tomb.

All these, jumbled together in pieces of tissue-paper, had lain

undisturbed since the day he wrapped them up some dozen years before--

indeed he heard the dry rattle of the falling sand as he undid the

tissue-paper. But a strong perfume rose from the parcel to his nostrils.

'That's what Tommy means by his whiff,' he said to himself. 'That's

Tommy's whiff beyond all question. I wonder how he got it first?'

He remembered, then, that he had made a note of the story connected with

the incense, and after some rummaging he found the envelope and read the

account jotted down at the time. He had meant to hand it over to a

literary friend--the tale was so poignantly human--then had forgotten all

about it. The papyrus, dating over 3000 B.C., had many gaps.

The Egyptologist had admittedly filled in considerable blanks in the

afflicting story:--

'A victorious Theban General, Prince of the blood, brought back a

Syrian youth from one of his foreign conquests and presented him to

his young wife who, first mothering him for his beauty, then made him

her personal slave, and ended by caring deeply for him. The slave,

in return, loved her with passionate adoration he was unable to

conceal. As a Lady of the Court, her quasi-adoption of the youth

caused comment. Her husband ordered his dismissal. But she still

made his welfare her especial object, finding frequent reasons for

their meeting. One day, however, her husband caught them together,

though their meeting was in innocence. He half strangled the youth,

till the blood poured down upon his own hands, then had him flogged

and sent away to On, the City of the Sun.'

'The Syrian found his way back again, vengeance in his fiery blood.

The clandestine yet innocent meetings were renewed. Rank was

forgotten. They met among the sand-dunes in the desert behind the

city where a pleasure tent among a grove of palms provided shelter,

and the slave losing his head, urged the Princess to fly with him.

Yet the wife, true to her profligate and brutal husband, refused his

plea, saying she could only give a mother's love, a mother's care.

This he rejected bitterly, accusing her of trifling with him.

He grew bolder and more insistent. To divert her husband's violent

suspicions she became purposely cruel, even ordering him punishments.

But the slave misinterpreted. Finally, warning him that if caught he

would be killed, she devised a plan to convince him of her sincerity.

Hiding him behind the curtains of her tent, she pleaded with her

husband for the youth's recall, swearing that she meant no wrong.

But the soldier, in his fury, abused and struck her, and the slave,

unable to contain himself, rushed out of his hiding-place and stabbed

him, though not mortally. He was condemned to death by torture.

She was to be chief witness against him.

'Meanwhile, having extracted a promise from her husband that the

torture should not be carried to the point of death, she conveyed

word to the victim that he should endure bravely, knowing that he

would not die. She now realised that she loved. She promised to fly

with him.

'The sentence was duly carried out, the slave only half believing in

her truth. It was a public holiday in Thebes. She was compelled to

see the punishment inflicted before the crowd. There were a thousand

drums. A sand-storm hid the sun.

'Seated beside her husband on a terrace above the Nile, she watched

the torture--then knew she had been tricked. But the Syrian did not

know; he believed her false. As he expired, casting his last glance

of anguish and reproach at her, she rose, leaped the parapet, flung

herself into the river, and was drowned. The husband had their

bodies thrown into the sea, unburied. The same wave took them both.

Later, however, they were recovered by influential friends;

they were embalmed, and secretly laid to rest in his ancestral

Tomb in the Valley of the Kings among the Theban Hills.

In due course the husband, unwittingly, was buried with them.

'Nearly five thousand years later all three mummies were discovered

lying side by side, their story inscribed upon a papyrus inside the

great sarcophagus.'

Dr. Kelverdon glanced through the story he had forgotten,

then tore it into little pieces and threw them into the fireplace.

For a moment longer, however, he stood beside the open drawer

reflectingly. Had he ever told the tale to Tommy? No; it was hardly

likely; indeed it was impossible. The boy was not born even when first he

heard it. To his wife, then? Less likely still. He could not remember,

anyhow. The faint suggestion in his mind--a story communicated

pre-natally--was not worth following up. He dismissed the matter from his

thoughts. He closed the drawer and turned away. The little packet of

incense, however, taken from the Tomb, he did not destroy. 'I'll give it

to Tommy,' he decided. 'Its whiff may possibly stimulate him into

explanation!'

CHAPTER II

As a result of having told everything to his father, Tommy's nightmare,

however, largely ceased to trouble him. He had found the relief of

expression, which is confession, and had laid upon the older mind the

burden of his terror. Once a month, once a week, or even daily if he

wanted to, he could repeat the expression as the need for it accumulated,

and the load which decency forbade being laid upon his mother, the

stern-faced man could carry easily for him.

The comfortable sensation that forgiveness is the completion of confession

invaded his awakening mind, and had he been older this thin end of a

religious wedge might have persuaded him to join what his mother called

that 'vast conspiracy.' But even at this early stage there was something

stalwart and self-reliant in his cast of character that resisted the

cunning sophistry; vicarious relief woke resentment in him; he meant to

face his troubles alone. So far as he knew, he had not sinned, yet the

Wave, the Whiff, the Eyes were symptoms of some fate that threatened him,

a premonition of something coming that he must meet with his own strength,

something that he could only deal with effectively alone, since it was

deserved and just. One day the Wave would fall; his father could not help

him then. This instinct in him remained unassailable. He even began to

look forward to the time when it should come--to have done with it and get

it over, conquering or conquered.

The premonition, that is, while remaining an obsession as before,

transferred itself from his inner to his outer life. The nightmare,

therefore, ceased. The menacing interest, however, held unchanged.

Though the name had not hitherto occurred to him, he became a fatalist.

'It's got to come; I've got to meet it. I will.'

'Well, Tommy,' his father would ask from time to time, 'been dreaming

anything lately?'

'Nothing, Daddy. It's all stopped.'

'Wave, eyes, and whiff all forgotten, eh?'

Tommy shook his head. 'They're still there,' he answered slowly,

'but----' He seemed unable to complete the sentence. His father helped

him at a venture.

'But they can't catch you--is that it?'

The boy looked up with a dogged expression in his big grey eyes.

'I'm ready for them,' he replied. And his father laughed and said,

'Of course. That's half the battle.'

He gave him a present then--one of the packets of tissue-paper--and Tommy

took it in triumph to his room. He opened it in private, but the contents

seemed to him without especial interest. Only the Whiff was, somehow,

sweet and precious; and he kept the packet in a drawer apart where the

fossils and catapult and air-gun ammunition could not interfere with it,

hiding the key so that Tim and the servants could not find it. And on

rare occasions, when the rest of the household was asleep, he performed a

little ritual of his own that, for a boy of his years, was distinctly

singular.

When the room was dark, lit in winter by the dying fire, or in summer by

the stars, he would creep out of bed, make quite sure that Tim was asleep,

stand on a chair to reach the key from the top of the big cupboard, and

carefully unlock the drawer. He had oiled the wood with butter, so that

it was silent. The tissue-paper gleamed dimly pink; the Whiff came out to

meet him. He lifted the packet, soft and crackling, and set it on the

window-sill; he did not open it; its contents had no interest for him, it

was the perfume he was after. And the moment the perfume reached his

nostrils there came a trembling over him that he could not understand.

He both loved and dreaded it. This manly, wholesome-minded, plucky little

boy, the basis of whose steady character was common sense, became the prey

of a strange, unreasonable fantasy. A faintness stole upon him; he lost

the sense of kneeling on a solid chair; something immense and irresistible

came piling up behind him; there was nothing firm he could push against to

save himself; he began shuffling with his bare feet, struggling to escape

from something that was coming, something that would probably overwhelm

him yet must positively be faced and battled with. The Wave was rising.

It was the wavy feeling.

He did not turn to look, because he knew quite well there was nothing in

the room but beds, a fender, furniture, vague shadows and his brother Tim.

That kind of childish fear had no place in what he felt. But the Wave was

piled and curving over none the less; it hung between him and the shadowed

ceiling, above the roof of the house; it came from beyond the world, far

overhead against the crowding stars. It would not break, for the time

had not yet come. But it was there. It waited. He knelt beneath its

mighty shadow of advance; it was still arrested, poised above his eager

life, competent to engulf him when the time arrived. The sweep of its

curved mass was mountainous. He knelt inside this curve, small, helpless,

but not too afraid to fight. The perfume stole about him. The Whiff was

in his nostrils. There was a strange, rich pain--oddly remote, yet oddly

poignant. . . .

And it was with this perfume that the ritual chiefly had to do. He loved

the extraordinary sensations that came with it, and tried to probe their

meaning in his boyish way. Meaning there was, but it escaped him. The

sweetness clouded something in his brain, and made his muscles weak; it

robbed him of that resistance which is fighting strength. It was this

battle that he loved, this sense of shoving against something that might

so easily crush and finish him. There _was_ a way to beat it, a way to

win--could he but discover it. As yet he could not. Victory, he felt,

lay more in yielding and going-with than in violent resistance.

And, meanwhile, in an ecstasy of this half yielding, half resisting, he

lent himself fully to the overmastering tide. He was conscious of

attraction and repulsion, something that enticed, yet thrust him

backwards. Some final test of manhood, character, value, lay in the way

he faced it. The strange, rich pain stole marvellously into his blood and

nerves. His heart beat faster. There was this exquisite seduction that

contained delicious danger. It rose upon him out of some inner depth he

could not possibly get at. He trembled with mingled terror and delight.

And it invariably ended with a kind of inexpressible yearning that choked

him, crumpled him inwardly, as he described it, brought the moisture, hot

and smarting, into his burning eyes, and--each time to his bitter shame--

left his cheeks wet with scalding tears.

He cried silently; there was no heaving, gulping, audible sobbing, just a

relieving gush of heartfelt tears that took away the strange, rich pain

and brought the singular ritual to a finish. He replaced the

tissue-paper, blotted with his tears; locked the drawer carefully; hid the

key on the top of the cupboard again, and tumbled back into bed.

Downstairs, meanwhile, a conversation was in progress concerning the

welfare of the growing hero.

'I'm glad that dream has left him anyhow. It used to frighten me rather.

I did _not_ like it,' observed his mother.

'He doesn't speak to you about it any more?' the father asked.

For months, she told him, Tommy had not mentioned it. They went on to

discuss his future together. The other children presented fewer problems,

but Tommy, apparently, felt no particular call to any profession.

'It will come with a jump,' the doctor inclined to think. 'He's been on

the level for some time now. Suddenly he'll grow up and declare his

mighty mind.'

Father liked humour in the gravest talk; indeed the weightier the subject,

the more he valued a humorous light upon it. The best judgment, he held,

was shaped by humour, sense of proportion lost without it. His wife,

however, thought 'it a pity.' Grave things she liked grave.

'There's something very deep in Tommy,' she observed, as though he were

developing a hidden malady.

'Hum,' agreed her husband. 'His subconscious content is unusual, both in

kind and quantity.' His eyes twinkled. 'It's possible he may turn out an

artist, or a preacher. If the former, I'll bet his output will be

original; and, as for the latter,'--he paused a second--'he's too logical

and too fearless to be orthodox. Already he thinks things out for

himself.'

'I should like to see him in the Church, though,' said Mother. 'He would

do a lot of good. But he _is_ uncompromising, rather.'

'His honesty certainly is against him,' sighed his father. 'What do you

think he asked me the other day?'

'I'm sure I don't know, John.' The answer completed itself with the

unspoken 'He never asks _me_ anything now.'

'He came straight up to me and said, 'Father, is it good to feel pain?

To let it come, I mean, or try to dodge it?''

'Had he hurt himself?' the woman asked quickly. It seemed she winced.

'Not physically. He had been feeling something inside. He wanted to know

how 'a man' should meet the case.'

'And what did you tell him, dear?'

'That pain was usually a sign of growth, to be understood, accepted,

faced. That most pain was cured in that way----'

'He didn't tell you what had hurt him?' she interrupted.

'Oh, I didn't ask him. He'd have shut up like a clam. Tommy likes to

deal with things alone in his own way. He just wanted to know if his way

was--well, _my_ way.'

There fell a pause between them; then Mother, without looking up,

enquired: 'Have you noticed Lettice lately? She's here a good deal now.'

But her husband only smiled, making no direct reply. 'Tommy will have a

hard time of it when he falls in love,' he remarked presently.

'He'll know the real thing and won't stand any nonsense--just as I did.'

Whereupon his wife informed him that if he was not careful he would simply

ruin the boy--and the brief conversation died away of its own accord.

As she was leaving the room a little later, unsatisfied but unaggressive,

he asked her: 'Have you left the picture books, my dear?' and she pointed

to an ominous heap upon the table in the window, with the remark that Jane

had 'unearthed every book that Tommy had set eyes upon since he was three.

You'll find everything that's ever interested him,' she added as she went

out, 'every picture, that is--and I suppose it is the pictures that you

want.'

For an hour and a half the great specialist turned pages without ceasing--

well-thumbed pages; torn, crumpled, blotted, painted pages. It was easy

to discover the boy's favourite pictures; and all were commonplace enough,

the sort that any normal, adventure-loving boy would find delightful.

But nothing of special significance resulted from the search; nothing that

might account for the recurrent nightmare, nothing in the way of eyes or

wave. He had already questioned Jane as to what stories she told him, and

which among them he liked best. 'Hunting or travel or collecting,' Jane

had answered, and it was about 'collecting that he asks most questions.

What kind of collecting, sir? Oh, treasure or rare beetles mostly, and

sometimes--just bones.'

'Bones! What kind of bones?'

'The villin's, sir,' explained the frightened Jane. 'He always likes the

villin to get lost, and for the jackals to pick his bones in the

desert----'

'Any particular desert?'

'No, sir; just desert.'

'Ah--just desert! Any old desert, eh?'

'I think so, sir--as long as it _is_ desert.'

Dr. Kelverdon put the woman at her ease with the humorous smile that made

all the household love--and respect--him; then asked another question, as

if casually: Had she ever told him a story in which a wave or a pair of

eyes were in any way conspicuous?

'No, never, sir,' replied the honest Jane, after careful reflection.

'Nor I wouldn't,' she added, 'because my father he was drowned in a tidal

wave; and as for eyes, I know that's wrong for children, and I wouldn't

tell Master Tommy such a thing for all the world----'

'Because?' enquired the doctor kindly, seeing her hesitation.

'I'd be frightening myself, sir, and he'd make such fun of me,' she

finally confessed.

No, it was clear that the nurse was not responsible for the vivid

impression in Tommy's mind which bore fruit in so strange a complex of

emotions. Nor were other lines of enquiry more successful. There was a

cause, of course, but it would remain unascertainable unless some clue

offered itself by chance. Both the doctor and the father in him were

pledged to a persistent search that was prolonged over several months, but

without result. The most perplexing element in the problem seemed to him

the whiff. The association of terror with a wave needed little

explanation; the introduction of the eyes, however, was puzzling, unless

some story of a drowning man was possibly the clue; but the addition of a

definite odour, an Eastern odour, moreover, with which the boy could

hardly have become yet acquainted,--this combination of the three

accounted for the peculiar interest in the doctor's mind.

Of one thing alone did he feel reasonably certain: the impression had been

printed upon the deepest part of Tommy's being, the very deepest; it arose

from those unplumbed profundities--though a scientist, he considered them

unfathomable--of character and temperament whence emerge the most

primitive of instincts,--the generative and creative instinct, choice of a

mate, natural likes and dislikes,--the bed-rock of the nature. A girl was

in it somewhere, somehow. . . .

Midnight had sounded from the stable clock in the mews when he stole up

into the boys' room and cautiously approached the yellow iron bed where

Tommy lay. The reflection of a street electric light just edged his face.

He was sound asleep--with tear-stains marked clearly on the cheek not

pressed into the pillow. Dr. Kelverdon paused a moment, looked round the

room, shading the candle with one hand. He saw no photograph, no pictures

anywhere. Then he sniffed. There was a faint and delicate perfume in the

air. He recognised it. He stood there, thinking deeply.

'Lettice Aylmer,' he said to himself presently as he went softly out again

to seek his own bed; 'I'll try Lettice. It's just possible. . . . Next

time I see her I'll have a little talk.' For he suddenly remembered that

Lettice Aylmer, his daughter's friend and playmate, had very large and

beautiful dark eyes.

CHAPTER III

Lettice Aylmer, daughter of the Irish Member of Parliament, did not

provide the little talk that he anticipated, however, because she went

back to her Finishing School abroad. Dr. Kelverdon was sorry when he

heard it. So was Tommy. She was to be away a year at least.

'I must remember to have a word with her when she comes back,' thought the

father, and made a note of it in his diary twelve months ahead.

'Three hundred and sixty-five days,' thought Tommy, and made a private

calendar of his own.

It seemed an endless, zodiacal kind of period; he counted the days, a

sheet of foolscap paper for each month, and at the bottom of each sheet

two columns showing the balance of days gone and days to come.

Tuesday, when he had first seen her, was underlined, and each Tuesday had

a number attached to it, giving the total number of weeks since that

wonderful occasion. But Saturdays were printed. On Saturday Lettice had

spoken to him; she had smiled, and the words were, 'Don't forget me,

Tommy!' And Tommy, looking straight into her great dark eyes, that seemed

to him more tender even than his mother's, had stammered a reply that he

meant with literal honesty: 'I won't--never . . .'; and she was gone . . .

to France . . . across the sea.

She took his soul away with her, leaving him behind to pore over his

father's big atlas and learn French sentences by heart. It seemed the

only way. Life had begun, and he must be prepared. Also, his career was

chosen. For Lettice had said another thing--one other thing.

When Mary, his sister, introduced him, 'This is Tommy,' Lettice looked

down and asked: 'Are you going to be an engineer?' adding proudly,

'My brother is.' Before he could answer she was scampering away with Mary,

the dark hair flying in a cloud, the bright bow upon it twinkling like a

star in heaven--and Tommy, hating his ridiculous boyish name with an

intense hatred, stood there trembling, but aware that the die was cast--he

was going to be an engineer.

Trembling, yes; for he felt dazed and helpless, caught in a mist of fire

and gold, the furniture whirling round him, and something singing wildly

in his heart. Two things, each containing in them the essence of genuine

shock, had fallen upon him: shock, because there was impetus in them as of

a blow. They had been coming; they had reached him. There was no doubt

or question possible. He staggered from the impact. Joy and terror

touched him; at one and the same moment he felt the enticement and the

shrinking of his dream. . . . He longed to seize her and prevent her ever

going away, yet also he wanted to push her from him as though she somehow

caused him pain.

For, on the two occasions when speech had taken place between himself and

Lettice, the dream had transferred itself boldly into his objective life--

yet not entirely. Two characteristics only had been thus transferred.

When his sister first came into the hall with 'This is Tommy,' the wavy

feeling had already preceded her by a definite interval that was perhaps a

second by the watch. He was aware of it behind him, curved and risen--not

curving, rising--from the open fireplace, but also from the woods behind

the house, from the whole of the country right back to the coast, from

across the world, it seemed, towering overhead against the wintry sky.

And when Lettice smiled and asked that question of childish admiration

about being an engineer, he was already shuffling furiously with his feet

upon the Indian rug. She was gone again, luckily, he hoped, before the

ridiculous pantomime was noticeable.

He saw her once or twice. He was invariably speechless when she came into

his presence, and his silence and awkwardness made him appear at great

disadvantage. He seemed intentionally rude. Nervous self-consciousness

caused him to bridle over nothing. Even to answer her was a torture.

He dreaded a snub appallingly, and bridled in anticipation. Furious with

himself for his inability to use each precious opportunity, he pretended

he didn't care. The consequence was that when she once spoke to him

sweetly, he was too overpowered to respond as he might have done.

That she had not even noticed his anguished attitude never occurred to

him.

'We're always friends, aren't we, Tommy?'

'Rather,' he blurted, before he could regain his composure for a longer

sentence.

'And always will be, won't we?'

'Rather,' he repeated, cursing himself later for thinking of nothing

better to say. Then, just as she flew off in that dancing way of hers, he

found his tongue. Out of the jumbled mass of phrases in his head three

words got loose and offered themselves: 'We'll always be!' he flung at her

retreating figure of intolerable beauty. And she turned her head over her

shoulder, waved her hand without stopping her career, and shouted

'Rather!'

That was the Tuesday in his calendar. But on Saturday, the printed

Saturday following it, the second characteristic of his dream announced

itself: he recognised the Eyes. Why he had not recognised them on the

Tuesday lay beyond explanation; he only knew it was so. And afterwards,

when he tried to think it over, it struck him that she had scampered out

of the hall with peculiar speed and hurry; had made her escape without the

extra word or two the occasion naturally demanded--almost as though she,

too, felt something that uneasily surprised her.

Tommy wondered about it till his head spun round. She, too, had received

an impact that was shock. He was as thorough about it as an instinctive

scientist. He also registered this further fact--that the dream-details

had not entirely reproduced themselves in the affair. There was no trace

of the Whiff or of the other pair of Eyes. Some day the three would come

together; but then. . . .

The main thing, however, undoubtedly was this: Lettice felt something too:

she was aware of feelings similar to his own. He was too honest to assume

that she felt exactly what he felt; he only knew that her eyes betrayed

familiar intimacy when she said 'Don't forget me, Tommy,' and that when

she rushed out of the hall with that unnecessary abruptness it was

because--well, he could only transfer to her some degree of the 'wavy'

feeling in himself.

And he fell in love with abandonment and a delicious, infinite yearning.

From that moment he thought of himself as Tom instead of Tommy.

It was an entire, sweeping love that left no atom or corner of his being

untouched. Lettice was real; she hid below the horizon of distant France,

yet could not, did not, hide from him. She also waited.

He knew the difference between real and unreal people. The latter wavered

about his life and were uncertain; sometimes he liked them, sometimes he

did not; but the former--remained fixed quantities: he could not alter

towards them. Even at this stage he knew when a person came into his life

to stay, or merely to pass out again. Lettice, though seen but twice,

belonged to this first category. His feeling for her had the Wave in it;

it gathered weight and mass, it was irresistible. From the dim, invisible

foundations of his life it came, out of the foundations of the world, out

of that inexhaustible sea-foundation that lay below everything. It was

real; it was not to be avoided. He knew. He persuaded himself that she

knew too.

And it was then, realising for the first time the searching pain

of being separated from something that seemed part of his being by natural

right, he spoke to his father and asked if pain should be avoided.

This conversation has been already sufficiently recorded; but he asked

other things as well. From being so long on the level he had made a

sudden jump that his father had foretold; he grew up; his mind began to

think; he had peered into certain books; he analysed. Out of the nonsense

of his speculative reflections the doctor pounced on certain points that

puzzled him completely. Probing for the repressed elements in the boy's

psychic life that caused the triple complex of Wave and Eyes and Whiff, he

only saw the cause receding further and further from his grasp until it

finally lost itself in ultimate obscurity. The disciple of Freud was

baffled hopelessly. . . .

Tom, meanwhile, bathed in a sea of new sensations. Distance held meaning

for him, separation was a kind of keen starvation. He made discoveries--

watched the moon rise, heard the wind, and knew the stars shone over the

meadows below the house, things that before had been merely commonplace.

He pictured these details as they might occur in France, and once when he

saw a Swallow Tail butterfly, knowing that the few English specimens were

said to have crossed the Channel, he had a touch of ecstasy, as though the

proud insect brought him a message from the fields below the Finishing

School. Also he read French books and found the language difficult but

exquisite. All sweet and lovely things came from France, and at school he

attempted violent friendships with three French boys and the Foreign

Language masters, friendships that were not appreciated because they were

not understood. But he made progress with the language, and it stood him

in good stead in his examinations. He was aiming now at an Engineering

College. He passed in--eventually--brilliantly enough.

Before that satisfactory moment, however, he knew difficult times.

His inner life was in a splendid tumult. From the books he purloined he

read a good many facts concerning waves and wave-formation. He learned,

among other things, that all sensory impressions reached the nerves by

impact of force in various wave-lengths; heat, light and sound broke upon

the skin and eyes and ears in vibrations of aether or air that advanced in

steady series of wavy formations which, though not quite similar to his

dream-wave, were akin to it. Sensation, which is life, was thus linked on

to his deepest, earliest memory.

A wave, however, instantly rejoined the parent stock and formed again.

And perhaps it was the repetition of the wave--its forming again and

breaking again--that impressed him most. For he imagined his impulses,

emotions, tendencies all taking this wave-form, sweeping his moods up to a

certain point, then dropping back into his centre--the Sea, he called it--

which held steady below all temporary fluctuations--only to form once more

and happen all over again.

With his moral and spiritual life it was similar: a wind came, wind of

desire, wind of yearning, wind of hope, and he felt his strength

accumulating, rising, bending with power upon the object that he had in

view. To take that object exactly at the top of the wave was to achieve

success; to miss that moment was to act with a receding and diminishing

power, to dissipate himself in foam and spray before he could retire for

a second rise. He saw existence as a wave. Life itself was a wave that

rose, swept, curved, and finally--must break.

He merely visualised these feelings into pictures; he did not think them

out, nor get them into words. The wave became symbolic to him of all

life's energies. It was the way in which all sensation expressed itself.

Lettice was the high-water mark on shore he longed to reach and sweep back

into his own tumultuous being. In that great underneath, the Sea, they

belonged eternally together. . . .

One thing, however, troubled him exceedingly: he read that a wave was a

segment of a circle, the perfect form, yet that it never completed itself.

The ground on which it broke prevented the achievement of the circle.

That, he felt, was a pity, and might be serious; there was always that

sinister retirement for another effort that yet never did, and never

could, result in complete achievement. He watched the waves a good deal

on the shore, when occasion offered in the holidays--they came from

France!--and made a discovery on his own account that was not mentioned in

any of the books. And it was this: that the top of the wave, owing to its

curve, was reflected in the under part. Its end, that is, was foretold in

its beginning.

There was a want of scientific accuracy here, a confusion of time and

space, perhaps, yet he noticed the idea and registered the thrill. At the

moment when the wave was poised to fall its crest shone reflected in the

base from which it rose.

But the more he watched the waves on the shore, the more puzzled he

became. They seemed merely a movement of the sea itself. They endlessly

repeated themselves. They had no true, separate existence until they--

broke. Nor could he determine whether the crest or the base was the

beginning, for the two ran along together, and what was above one minute

was below the minute after. Which part started first he never could

decide. The head kept chasing the tail in an effort to join up.

Only when a wave broke and fell was it really--a wave. It had to 'happen'

to earn its name.

There were ripples too. These indicated the direction of the parent wave

upon whose side they happened, but not its purpose. Moods were ripples:

they varied the surface of life but did not influence its general

direction.

His own life followed a similar behaviour; he was full of ripples that

were for ever trying to complete themselves by happening in acts.

But the main Wave was the thing--end and beginning sweeping along

together, both at the same time somehow. That is, he knew the end and

could foretell it. It rose from the great 'beneath' which was the sea in

him. It must topple over in the end and complete itself. He knew it

would; he knew it would hurt; he knew also that he would not shirk it when

it came. For it was a repetition somehow.

'I jolly well mean to enjoy the smash,' he felt. 'I know one pair of Eyes

already; there's only the Whiff and the other Eyes to come. The moment I

find them, I'll go bang into it.' He experienced a delicious shiver at

the prospect.

One thing, however, remained uncertain: the stuff the Wave was made of.

Once he discovered that, he would discover also--_where_ the smash would

come.

CHAPTER IV

'Can a chap feel things coming?' he asked his father. He was perhaps

fifteen or sixteen then. 'I mean, when you feel them coming, does that

mean they _must_ come?'

His father listened warily. There had been many similar questions lately.

'You can feel ordinary things coming,' he replied; 'things due to

association of ideas.'

Tom looked up. 'Association?' he queried uncertainly.

'If you feel hungry,' explained the doctor, 'you know that dinner's

coming; you associate the hunger with the idea of eating. You recognise

them because you've felt them both together before.'

'They _ought_ to come, then?'

'Dinner does come--ordinarily speaking. You've learned to expect it from

the hunger. You could, of course, prevent it coming,' he added dryly,

'only that would be bad for you. You need it.'

Tom reflected a moment with a puckered face. His father waited for him to

ask more, hoping he would. The boy felt the sympathy and invitation.

'_Before_,' he repeated, picking out the word with sudden emphasis, his

mind evidently breaking against a problem. 'But if I felt hungry for

something I _hadn't_ had before----?'

'In that case you wouldn't call it hunger. You wouldn't know what to call

it. You'd feel a longing of some kind and would wonder what it meant.'

Tom's next words surprised him considerably. They came promptly, but with

slow and thoughtful emphasis.

'So that if I know what I want, and call it dinner, or pain, or--love, or

something,' he exclaimed, 'it means that I've had it _before_? And that's

why I know it.' The last five words were not a question but a statement

of fact apparently.

The doctor pretended not to notice the variants of dinner. At least he

did not draw attention to them.

'Not necessarily,' he answered. 'The things you feel you want may be the

things that everybody wants--things common to the race. Such wants are

naturally in your blood; you feel them because your parents, your

grandparents, and all humanity in turn behind your own particular family

have always wanted them.'

'They come out of the sea, you mean?'

'That's very well expressed, Tom. They come out of the sea of human

nature, which is everywhere the same, yes.'

The compliment seemed to annoy the boy.

'Of course,' he said bluntly. 'But--if it hurts?' The words were sharply

emphasised.

'Association of ideas again. Toothache suggests the pincers. You want to

get rid of the pain, but the pain has to get worse before it can get

better. You know that, so you face it gladly--to get it over.'

'You face it, yes,' said Tom. 'It makes you better in the end.'

It suddenly dawned upon him that his learned father knew nothing, nothing

at least that could help him. He knew only what other people knew.

He turned then, and asked the ridiculous question that lay at the back of

his mind all the time. It cost him an effort, for his father would

certainly deem it foolish.

'Can a thing happen before it really happens?'

Dr. Kelverdon may or may not have thought the question foolish; his face

was hidden a moment as he bent down to put the Indian rug straight with

his hand. There was no impatience in the movement, nor was there mockery

in his expression, when he resumed his normal position. He had gained an

appreciable interval of time--some fifteen seconds. 'Tom, you've got good

ideas in that head of yours,' he said calmly; 'but what is it that you

mean exactly?'

Tom was quite ready to amplify. He knew what he meant:

'If I _know_ something is going to happen, doesn't that mean that it has

already happened--and that I remember it?'

'You're a psychologist as well as engineer, Tom,' was the approving reply.

'It's like this, you see: In emotion, with desire in it, can predict the

fulfilment of that desire. In great hunger you imagine you're eating all

sorts of good things.'

'But that's looking forward,'; the boy pounced on the mistake. 'It's not

remembering.'

'That _is_ the difficulty,' explained his father; 'to decide whether

you're anticipating only--or actually remembering.'

'I see,' Tom said politely.

All this analysis concealed merely: it did not reveal. The thing itself

dived deeper out of sight with every phrase. _He_ knew quite well the

difference between anticipating and remembering. With the latter there

was the sensation of having been through it. Each time he remembered

seeing Lettice the sensation was the same, but when he looked forward to

seeing her _again_ the sensation varied with his mood.

'For instance, Tom--between ourselves this--we're going to send Mary to

that Finishing School in France where Lettice is.' The doctor, it seemed,

spoke carelessly while he gathered his papers together with a view to

going out. He did not look at the boy; he said it walking about the room.

'Mary will look forward to it and think about it so much that when she

gets there it will seem a little familiar to her, as if--almost as if she

remembered it.'

'Thank you, father; I see, yes,' murmured Tom. But in his mind a voice

said so distinctly 'Rot!' that he was half afraid the word was audible.

'You see the difficulty, eh? And the difference?'

'Rather,' exclaimed the boy with decision.

And thereupon, without the slightest warning, he looked out of the window

and asked certain other questions. Evidently they cost him effort; his

will forced them out. Since his back was turned he did not see his

father's understanding smile, but neither did the latter see the lad's

crimson cheeks, though possibly he divined them.

'Father--is Miss Aylmer older than me?'

'Ask Mary, Tom. She'll know. Or, stay--I'll ask her for you--if you

like.'

'Oh, that's all right. I just wanted to know,' with an assumed

indifference that barely concealed the tremor in the voice.

'I suppose,' came a moment later, 'a Member of Parliament is a grander

thing than a doctor, is it?'

'That depends,' replied his father, 'upon the man himself. Some M.P.'s

vote as they're told, and never open their mouths in the House.

Some doctors, again----'

But the boy interrupted him. He quite understood the point.

'It's fine to be an engineer, though, isn't it?' he asked. 'It's a real

profession?'

'The world couldn't get along without them, or the Government either.

It's a most important profession indeed.'

Tom, playing idly with the swinging tassel of the window-blind, asked one

more question. His voice and manner were admirably under control, but

there _was_ a gulp, and his father heard and noted it.

'Shall I have--shall I be rich enough--to marry--some day?'

Dr. Kelverdon crossed the room and put his hand on his son's shoulder, but

did not try to make him show his face. 'Yes,' he said quietly, 'you will,

my boy--when the time comes.' He paused a moment, then added: 'But money

will not make you a distinguished man, whereas if you become a famous

engineer, you'll have money of your own and--any nice girl would be proud

to have you.'

'I see,' said Tom, tying the strings of the tassel into knots, then

untying them again with a visible excess of energy--and the conversation

came somewhat abruptly to an end. He was aware of the invitation to talk

further about Lettice Aylmer, but he resisted and declined it. What was

the use? He knew his own mind already about _that_.

Yet, strictly speaking, Tom was not imaginative. It was as if an instinct

taught him. More and more, the Wave, with its accompanying details of

Eyes and Whiff, seemed to him the ghost of some dim memory that brought a

forgotten warning in its train--something missed, something to be

repeated, something to be faced and learned and--mastered. . . .

His father, meanwhile, went forth upon his rounds that day, much

preoccupied about the character of his eldest boy. He felt a particular

interest in the peculiar obsession that he knew overshadowed the young,

growing life. It puzzled him; he found no clue to it; in his thought he

was aware of a faint uneasiness, although he did not give it a definite

name--something akin to what the mother felt. Admitting he was baffled,

he fell back, however, upon such generalities as prenatal influence,

ancestral, racial, and so eventually dismissed it from his active mind.

Tom, meanwhile, for his part, also went along his steep, predestined path.

The nightmare had entirely deserted him, he now rarely dreamed; and his

outer life shaped bravely, as with a boy of will, honesty, and healthy

ambition might be expected. Neither Wavy feeling, Eyes, nor Whiff

obtruded themselves: they left him alone and waited: he never forgot them,

but he did not seek them out. Things once firmly realised remained in his

consciousness; he knew that his life was rising like a wave, that all his

energies worked in the form of waves, his moods and wishes, his passions,

emotions, yearnings--all expressed themselves by means of this unalterable

formula, yet all contributed finally to the one big important Wave whose

climax would be reached only when it fell. He distinguished between Wave

and Ripples. He, therefore, did not trouble himself with imaginary

details; he did not search; he waited. This steady strength was his.

His firm, square jaw and the fearless eyes of grey beneath the shock of

straight dark hair told plainly enough the kind of stuff behind them.

No one at school took unnecessary liberties with Tom Kelverdon.

But, having discovered one pair of Eyes, he did not let them go.

In his earnest, dull, inflexible way he loved their owner with a belief in

her truth and loyalty that admitted of no slightest question.

Had his mother divined the strength and value of his passion, she would

surely have asked herself with painful misgiving: 'Is she--_can_ she be--

worthy of my boy?' But his mother guessed it as little as any one else;

even the doctor had forgotten those early signs of its existence; and Tom

was not the kind to make unnecessary confidences, nor to need sympathy in

any matter he was sure about.

There was down now upon his upper lip, for he was close upon seventeen and

the Entrance Examination was rising to the crest of its particular minor

wave, yet during the two years' interval nothing--no single fact--had

occurred to justify his faith or to confirm its amazing certainty within

his heart. Mary, his sister, had not gone after all to the Finishing

School in France; other girl friends came to spend the holidays with her;

the Irish member of Parliament had either died or sunk into another kind

of oblivion; the paths of the Kelverdons and the Aylmer family had gone

apart; and the name of Lettice no longer thrilled the air across the

tea-table, nor chance reports of her doings filled the London house with

sudden light.

Yet for Tom she existed more potently than ever. His yearning never

lessened; he was sure she remembered him as he remembered her; he

persuaded himself that she thought about him; she doubtless knew that he

was going to be an engineer. He had cut a thread from the carpet in the

hall--from the exact spot her flying foot had touched that Tuesday when

she scampered off from him--and kept it in the drawer beside the Eastern

packet that enshrined the Whiff. Occasionally he took it out and touched

it, fingered it, even caressed it; the thread and the perfume belonged

together; the ritual of the childish years altered a little--worship

raised it to a higher level.

He saw her with her hair done up now, long skirts, and a softer expression

in the tender, faithful eyes; the tomboy in her had disappeared; she gazed

at him with admiration. The face was oddly real, it came very close to

his own; once or twice, indeed, their cheeks almost touched: 'almost,'

because he withdrew instantly, uneasily aware that he had gone too far--

not that the intimacy was unwelcome, but that it was somehow premature.

And the instant he drew back, a kind of lightning distance came between

them; he saw her eyes across an immense and curious interval, though

whether of time or space he could not tell. There was strange heat and

radiance in it--as of some blazing atmosphere that was not England.

The eyes, moreover, held a new expression when this happened--pity.

And with this pity came also pain: the strange, rich pain broke over all

the other happier feelings in him and swamped them utterly. . . .

But at that point instinct failed him; he could not understand why she

should pity him, why pain should come to him through her, nor why it was

necessary for him to feel and face it. He only felt sure of one thing--

that it was essential to the formation of the Wave which was his life.

The Wave must 'happen,' or he would miss an important object of his

being--and she would somehow miss it too. The Wave would one day fall,

but when it fell she would be with him, by his side, under the mighty

curve, involved in the crash and tumult--with himself.

CHAPTER V

Then, without any warning, he received a second shock--it fell upon him

from the blue and came direct from Lettice.

The occasion was a tennis party in the garden by the sea where the family

had come to spend the summer holidays. Tom was already at College, doing

brilliantly, and rapidly growing up. The August afternoon was very hot;

no wind ruffled the quiet blue-green water; there were no waves; the

leaves of the privet hedge upon the side of the cliffs were motionless.

A couple of Chalk-Blues danced round and round each other as though a wire

connected them, and Tom, walking in to tea with his partner after a

victorious game, found himself watching the butterflies and making a

remark about them--a chance observation merely to fill an empty pause.

He felt as little interest in the insects as he did in his partner,

an uncommonly pretty, sunburned girl, whose bare arms and hatless light

hair became her admirably. She, however, approved of the remark and by no

means despised the opportunity to linger a moment by the side of her

companion. They stood together, perhaps a dozen seconds, watching the

capricious scraps of colour rise, float over the privet hedge on balanced

wings, dip abruptly down and vanish on the farther side below the cliff.

The girl said something--an intentional something that was meant to be

heard and answered: but no answer was forthcoming. She repeated the

remark with emphasis; then, as still no answer came, she laughed brightly

to make his silence appear natural.

But Tom had no word to say. He had not noticed the manoeuvre of the girl,

nor the manoeuvre of the two Chalk-Blues; neither had he heard the words,

although conscious that she spoke. For in that brief instant when the

insects floated over the hedge, his eyes had wandered beyond them to the

sea, and on the sea, far off against the cloudless horizon, he had seen--

the Wave.

Thinking it over afterwards, however, he realised that it was not actually

a wave he saw, for the surface of the blue-green sea was smooth as the

tennis lawn itself: it was the sudden appearance of the 'wavy feeling'

that made him _think_ he saw the old, familiar outline of his early dream.

He had objectified his emotion. His father perhaps would have called it

association of ideas.

Abruptly, out of nothing obvious, the feeling rose and mastered him: and,

after its quiescence--its absence--for so long an interval, this revival

without hint or warning of any kind was disconcerting. The feeling was

vivid and unmistakable. The joy and terror swept him as of old.

He braced himself. Almost--he began shuffling with his feet. . . .

'Tea's waiting for you,'; his mother's voice floated to his ears across

the lawn, as he turned with an effort from the sea and made towards the

group about the tables. The Wave, he knew, was coming up behind him,

growing, rising, curving high against the evening sky. Beside him walked

the sunburned girl, wondering doubtless at his silence, but happy enough,

it seemed, in her own interpretation of its cause. Scarcely aware of her

presence, however, Tom was searching almost fiercely in his thoughts,

searching for the clue. He knew there was a clue, he felt sure of it; the

'wavy feeling' had not come with this overwhelming suddenness without a

reason. Something had brought it back. But what? Was there any recent

factor in his life that might explain it? He stole a swift glance at the

girl beside him: had she, perhaps, to do with it? They had played tennis

together for the first time that afternoon: he had never seen her before,

was not even quite sure of her name; to him, so far, she was only 'a very

pretty girl who played a ripping game.' Had this girl to do with it?

Feeling his questioning look, she glanced up at him and smiled.

'You're very absent-minded,' she observed with mischief in her manner.

'You took so many of my balls, it's tired you out!' She had beautiful

blue eyes, and her voice, he noticed for the first time, was very

pleasant. Her figure was slim, her ankles neat, she had nice, even teeth.

But, even as he registered the charming details, he knew quite well that

he registered them, one and all, as belonging merely to a member of the

sex, and not to this girl in particular. For all he cared, she might

follow the two Chalk-Blues and disappear below the edge of the cliff into

the sea. This 'pretty girl' left him as untroubled as she found him.

The wavy feeling was not brought by her.

He drank his tea, keeping his back to the sea, and as the talk was lively,

his silence was not noticed. The Wave, meanwhile, he knew, had come up

closer. It towered above him. Its presence would shortly be explained.

Then, suddenly, in the middle of a discussion as to partners for the games

to follow, a further detail presented itself--also apparently out of

nothing. He smelt the Whiff. He knew then that the Wave was poised

immediately above his head, and that he stood underneath its threatening

great curve. The clue, therefore, was at hand.

And at this moment his father came into view, moving across the lawn

towards them from the French window. No one guessed how Tom welcomed the

slight diversion, for the movement was already in his legs and in another

moment must have set his feet upon that dreadful shuffling. As from a

distance, he heard the formal talk and introductions, his father's

statement that he had won his round of golf with 'the Dean,' praise of the

weather, and something or other about the strange stillness of the sea--

but then, with a sudden, hollow crash against his very ear, the appalling

words: '. . . broke his mashie into splinters, yes. And, by the by, the

Dean knows the Aylmers. They were staying here earlier in the summer, he

told me. Lettice, the girl,--Mary's friend, you remember--is going to be

married this week. . . .'

Tom clutched the back of the wicker-chair in front of him. The sun went

out. An icy air passed Up his spine. The blood drained from his face.

The tennis courts, and the group of white figures moving towards them,

swung up into the sky. He gripped the chair till the rods of wicker

pressed through the flesh into the bone. For a moment he felt that the

sensation of actual sickness was more than he could master; his legs bent

like paper beneath his weight.

'_You_ remember Lettice, Tom, don't you?' his father was saying somewhere

in mid-air above him.

'Yes, rather.' Apparently he said these words; the air at any rate went

through his teeth and lips, and the same minute, with a superhuman effort

that only just escaped a stagger, he moved away towards the tennis courts.

His feet carried him, that is, across the lawn, where some figures dressed

in white were calling his name loudly; his legs went automatically.

'Hold steady!' he remembers saying somewhere deep inside him. 'Don't make

an ass of yourself,'; whereupon another voice--or was it still his own?--

joined in quickly, 'She's gone from me, Lettice has gone. She's dead.'

And the words, for the first time in his life, had meaning: for the first

time in his life, rather, he realised what their meaning was. The Wave

had fallen. Moreover--this also for the first time in the history of the

Wave--there was something audible. He heard a Sound.

Shivering in the hot summer sunshine, as though icy water drenched him, he

knew the same instant that he was wrong about the falling: the Wave,

indeed, had curled lower over him than ever before, had even toppled--but

it had not broken. As a whole, it had not broken. It was a smaller wave,

upon the parent side, that had formed and fallen. The sound he heard was

the soft crash of this lesser wave that grew out of the greater mass of

the original monster, broke upon the rising volume of it, and returned

into the greater body. It was a ripple only. The shock and terror he

felt were a foretaste of what the final smothering crash would be.

Yet the Sound he had heard was not the sound of water. There was a sharp,

odd rattling in it that he had never consciously heard before. And it

was--dry.

He reached the group of figures on the tennis-courts: he played: a violent

energy had replaced the sudden physical weakness. His skill, it seemed,

astonished everybody; he drove and smashed and volleyed with a

recklessness that was always accurate: but when, at the end of the amazing

game, he heard voices praising him, as from a distance, he knew only that

there was a taste of gall and ashes in his mouth, and that he had but one

desire--to get to his room alone and open the drawer. Even to himself he

would not admit that he wished for the relief of tears. He put it,

rather, that he must see and feel the one real thing that still connected

him with Lettice--the thread of carpet she had trodden on. That--and the

'whiff'--alone could comfort him.

The comedy, that is, of all big events lay in it; no one must see, no one

must know: no one must guess the existence of this sweet, rich pain that

ravaged the heart in him until from very numbness it ceased aching.

He double-locked the bedroom door. He had waited till darkness folded

away the staring day, till the long dinner was over, and the drawn-out

evening afterwards. None, fortunately, had noticed the change in his

demeanour, his silence, his absentmindedness when spoken to, his want of

appetite. 'She is going to be married . . . this week,' were the only

words he heard; they kept ringing in his brain. To his immense relief the

family had not referred to it again.

And at last he had said good-night and was in his room--alone. The drawer

was open. The morsel of green thread lay in his hand. The faint eastern

perfume floated on the air. 'I am _not_ a sentimental ass,' he said to

himself aloud, but in a low, steady tone. 'She touched it, therefore it

has part of her life about it still.' Three years and a half ago!

He examined the diary too; lived over in thought every detail of their

so-slight acquaintance together; they were few enough; he remembered every

one. . . . Prolonging the backward effort, he reviewed the history of the

Wave. His mind stretched back to his earliest recollections of the

nightmare. He faced the situation, tried to force its inner meaning from

it, but without success.

He did not linger uselessly upon any detail, nor did he return upon his

traces as a sentimental youth might do, prolonging the vanished sweetness

of recollection in order to taste the pain more vividly. He merely 'read

up,' so to speak, the history of the Wave to get a bird's-eye view of it.

And in the end he obtained a certain satisfaction from the process--a

certain strength. That is to say, he did not understand, but he accepted.

'Lettice has gone from me--but she hasn't gone for good.' The deep

reflection of hours condensed itself into this.

Whatever might happen 'temporarily,' the girl was loyal and true: and she

was--his. It never once occurred to him to blame or chide her. All that

she did sincerely, she had a right to do. They were in the 'underneath'

together for ever and ever. They were in the sea.

The pain, nevertheless, was acute and agonising; the temporary separation

of 'France' was nothing compared to this temporary separation of her

marrying. There were alternate intervals of numbness and of acute

sensation; for each time thought and feeling collapsed from the long

strain of their own tension, the relief that followed proved false and

vain. Up sprang the aching pain again, the hungry longing, the dull,

sweet yearning--and the whole sensation started afresh as at the first,

yet with a vividness that increased with each new realisation of it.

'Wish I could cry it out,' he thought. 'I wouldn't be a bit ashamed to

cry.' But he had no tears to spill. . . .

Midnight passed towards the small hours of the morning, and the small

hours slipped on towards the dawn before he put away the parcel of

tissue-paper, closed the drawer and locked it. And when at length he

dropped exhausted into bed, the eastern sky was already tinged with the

crimson of another summer's day. He dreaded it, and closed his eyes.

It had tennis parties and engagements in its wearisome, long hours of heat

and utter emptiness. . . .

Just before actual sleep took him, however, he was aware of one other

singular reflection. It rose of its own accord out of that moment's calm

when thought and feeling sank away and deliberate effort ceased: the fact

namely that, with the arrival of the Sound, all his five senses had been

now affected. His entire being, through the only channels of perception

it possessed, had responded to the existence of the Wave and all it might

portend. Here was no case of a single sense being tricked by some

illusion: all five supported each other, taste being, of course,

a modification of smell.

And the strange reflection brought to his aching mind and weary body a

measure of relief. The Wave was real: being real, it was also well worth

facing when it--fell.

CHAPTER VI

Between twenty and thirty a man rises through years reckless of power and

spendthrift of easy promises. The wave of life is rising, and every force

tends upwards in a steady rush. At thirty comes a pause upon the level,

but with thirty-five there are signs of the droop downhill. Age is first

realised when, instead of looking forward only, he surprises thought in

the act of looking--behind.

Of the physical, at any rate, this is true; for the mental and emotional

wave is still ripening towards its higher curve, while the spiritual crest

hangs hiding in the sky far overhead, beckoning beyond towards unvistaed

reaches.

Tom Kelverdon climbed through these crowded years with the usual scars and

bruises, but steadily, and without the shame of any considerable disaster.

His father's influence having procured him an opening in an engineering

firm of the first importance, his own talent and application maintained

the original momentum bravely. He justified his choice of a profession.

Also, staring eagerly into life's marvellous shop-window, he entered, hand

in pocket, and made the customary purchases of the enchantress behind the

counter. If worthless, well,--everybody bought them; the things had been

consummately advertised; he paid his money, found out their value, threw

them away or kept them accordingly. A certain good taste made his choice

not too foolish: and there was this wholesome soundness in him, that he

rarely repeated a purchase that had furnished him cheap goods. Slowly he

began to find himself.

From learning what it meant to be well thrashed by a boy he loathed, and

to apply a similar treatment himself--he passed on to the pleasure of

being told he had nice eyes, that his voice was pleasant, his presence

interesting. He fell in love--and out again. But he went straight.

Moreover, beyond a given point in any affair of the heart he seemed unable

to advance: some secret, inner tension held him back. While believing he

loved various adorable girls the years offered him, he found it impossible

to open his lips and tell them so. And the mysterious instinct invariably

justified itself: they faded, one and all, soon after separation. There

was no wave in them; they were ripples only. . . .

And, meanwhile, as the years rushed up towards the crest of thirty, he did

well in his profession, worked for the firm in many lands, obtained the

confidence of his principals, and proved his steady judgment if not his

brilliance. He became, too, a good, if generous, judge of other men,

seeing all sorts, both good and bad, and in every kind of situation that

proves character. His nature found excuses too easily, perhaps, for the

unworthy ones. It is not a bad plan, wiser companions hinted, to realise

that a man has dark behaviour in him, while yet believing that he need not

necessarily prove it. The other view has something childlike in it;

Tom Kelverdon kept, possibly, this simpler attitude alive in him, trusting

overmuch, because suspicion was abhorrent to his soul. The man of ideals

had never become the man of the world. Some high, gentle instinct had

preserved him from the infliction that so often results in this

regrettable conversion. Slow to dislike, he saw the best in everybody.

'Not a bad fellow,' he would say of some one quite obviously detestable.

'I admit his face and voice and manner are against him; but that's not his

fault exactly. He didn't make himself, you know.'

The idea of a tide in the affairs of men is obvious, familiar enough.

Nations rise and fall, equally with the fortunes of a family. History

repeats itself, so does the tree, the rose: and if a man live long enough

he recovers the state of early childhood. There is repetition everywhere.

But while some think evolution moves in a straight line forward, others

speculate fancifully that it has a spiral twist upwards. At any given

moment, that is, the soul looks down upon a passage made before--but from

a point a little higher. Without living through events already

experienced, it literally lives them over; it sees them mapped out below,

and with the bird's-eye view it understands them.

And in regard to his memory of Lettice Aylmer--the fact that he was still

waiting for her and she for him--this was somewhat the fanciful conception

that lodged itself, subconsciously perhaps, in the mind of Tom Kelverdon,

grown now to man's estate. He was dimly aware of a curious familiarity

with his present situation, a sense of repetition--yet with a difference.

Something he had experienced before was coming to him again. It was

waiting for him. Its wave was rising. When it happened before it had not

happened properly somehow--had left a sense of defeat, of dissatisfaction

behind. He had taken it, perhaps, at the period of receding momentum, and

so had failed towards it. This time he meant to face it. His own phrase,

as has been seen, was simple: 'I'll let it all come.' It was something

his character needed. Deep down within him hid this attitude, and with

the passage of the years it remained--though remained an attitude merely.

But the attitude, being subconscious in him, developed into a definite

point of view that came, more and more, to influence the way he felt

towards life in general. Life was too active to allow of much

introspection, yet whenever pauses came--pauses in thought and feeling,

still backwaters in which he lay without positive direction--there, banked

up, unchanging in the background, stood the enduring thing: his love for

Lettice Aylmer. And this background was 'the sea' of his boyhood days,

the 'underneath' in which they remained unalterably together. There, too,

hid the four signs that haunted his impressionable youth: the Wave, the

other Eyes, the Whiff, the Sound. In due course, and at their appointed

time, they would combine and 'happen' in his outward life. The Wave

would--fall.

Meanwhile his sense of humour had long ago persuaded him that, so far as

any claim upon the girl existed, or that she reciprocated his own deep

passion, his love-dream was of questionable security. The man in him that

built bridges and cut tunnels laughed at it; the man that devised these

first in imagination, however, believed in it, and waited. Behind thought

and reason, suspected of none with whom he daily came in contact, and

surprised only by himself when he floated in these silent, tideless

backwaters--it persisted with an amazing conviction that seemed deathless.

In these calm deeps of his being, securely anchored, hid what he called

the 'spiral' attitude. The thing that was coming, a tragedy whereof that

childish nightmare was both a memory and a premonition, clung and haunted

still with its sense of dim familiarity. Something he had known before

would eventually repeat itself. But--with a difference; that he would see

it from above--from a higher curve of the ascending spiral.

There lay the enticing wonder of the situation. With his present English

temperament, stolid rather, he would meet it differently, treat it

otherwise, learn and understand. He would see it from another--higher--

point of view. He would know great pain, yet some part of him would look

on, compare, accept the pain--and smile. The words that offered

themselves were that he had 'suffered blindly,' but suffered with fierce

and bitter resentment, savagely, even with murder in his heart; suffered,

moreover, somehow or other, at the hands of Lettice Aylmer.

Lettice, of course,--he clung to it absurdly still--was true and loyal to

him, though married to another. Her name was changed. But Lettice Aylmer

was not changed. And this mad assurance, though he kept it deliberately

from his conscious thoughts, persisted with the rest of the curious

business, for nothing, apparently, could destroy it in him. It was part

of the situation, as he called it, part of the 'sea,' out of which would

rise eventually--the Wave.

Outwardly, meanwhile, much had happened to him, each experience

contributing its modifying touch to the character as he realised it,

instead of merely knowing that it came to others. His sister married;

Tim, following his father's trade, became a doctor with a provincial

practice, buried in the country. His father died suddenly while he was

away in Canada, busy with a prairie railway across the wheat fields of

Assiniboia. He met the usual disillusions in a series, savoured and

mastered them more or less in turn.

He was in England when his mother died; and, while his other experiences

were ripples only, her going had the wave in it. The enormous mother-tie

came also out of the 'sea'; its dislocation was a shock of fundamental

kind, and he felt it in the foundations of his life. It was one of the

things he could not quite realise. He still felt her always close and

near. He had just been made a junior partner in the firm; the love and

pride in her eyes, before they faded from the world of partnerships, were

unmistakable: 'Of course,' she murmured, her thin hand clinging to his

own, 'they had to do it . . . if only your father knew . . .' and she was

gone. The wave of her life sank back into the sea whence it arose.

And her going somehow strengthened him, added to his own foundations, as

though her wave had merged in his.

With her departure, he felt vaguely the desire to settle down, to marry.

Unconsciously he caught himself thinking of women in a new light,

appraising them as possible wives. It was a dangerous attitude rather;

for a man then seeks to persuade himself that such and such a woman may

do, instead of awaiting the inevitable draw of love which alone can

justify a life-long union.

In Tom's case, however, as with the smaller fires of his younger days, he

never came to a decision, much less to a positive confession. His immense

idealism concerning women preserved him from being caught by mere outward

beauty. While aware that Lettice was an impossible dream of boyhood, he

yet clung to an ideal she somehow foreshadowed and typified. He never

relinquished this standard of his dream; a mysterious woman waited for him

somewhere, a woman with all the fairy qualities he had built about her

personality; a woman he could not possibly mistake when at last he met

her. Only he did not meet her. He waited.

And so it was, as time passed onwards, that he found himself standing upon

the little level platform of his life at a stage nearer to thirty-five

than thirty, conscious that a pause surrounded him. There was a lull.

The rush of the years slowed down. He looked about him. He looked--back.

CHAPTER VII

The particular moment when this happened, suitable, too, in a chance, odd

way, was upon a mountain ridge in winter, a level platform of icy snow to

which he had climbed with some hotel acquaintances on a ski-ing

expedition. It was on the Polish side of the Hohe Tatra.

Why, at this special moment, pausing for breath and admiring the immense

wintry scene about him, he should have realised that he reached a similar

position in his life, is hard to say. There is always a particular moment

when big changes claim attention. They have been coming slowly; but at a

given moment they announce themselves. Tom associated that icy ridge

above Zakopane with a pause in the rushing of the years: 'I'm getting on

towards middle age; the first swift climb--impetuous youth--lies now

behind me.' The physical parallel doubtless suggested it; he had felt his

legs and wind a trifle less willing, perhaps; there was still a steep,

laborious slope of snow beyond; he discovered that he was no longer

twenty-five.

He drew breath and watched the rest of the party as they slowly came

nearer in the track he had made through the deep snow below. Each man

made this track in his turn, it was hard work, his share was done.

'Nagorsky will tackle the next bit,' he thought with relief, watching a

young Pole of twenty-three in the ascending line, and glancing at the

summit beyond where the run home was to begin. And then the wonder of the

white silent scene invaded him, the exhilarating thrill of the vast wintry

heights swept over him, he forgot the toil, he regained his wind and felt

his muscles taut and vigorous once more. It was pleasant, standing upon

this level ridge, to inspect the long ascent below, and to know the heavy

yet enjoyable exertion was nearly over.

But he had felt--older. That ridge remained in his memory as the occasion

of its first realisation; a door opened behind him; he looked back.

He envied the other's twenty-three years. It is curious that, about

thirty, a man feels he is getting old, whereas at forty he feels himself

young again. At thirty he judges by the standard of eighteen, at the

later age by that of sixty. But this particular occasion remained vivid

for another reason--it was accompanied by a strange sensation he had

almost forgotten; and so long an interval had elapsed since its last

manifestation that for a moment a kind of confusion dropped upon him, as

from the cloudless sky. Something was gathering behind him, something was

about to fall. He recognised the familiar feeling that he knew of old,

the subterranean thrill, the rich, sweet pain, the power, the reality.

It was the wavy feeling.

Balanced on his ski, the sealskin strips gripping the icy ridge securely,

he turned instinctively to seek the reason, if any were visible, of the

abrupt revival. His mind, helped by the stimulating air and sunshine,

worked swiftly. The odd confusion clouded his faculties still, as in a

dream state, but he pierced it in several directions simultaneously.

Was it that, envying another's youth, he had re-entered imaginatively his

own youthful feelings? He looked down at the rest of the party climbing

towards him. And doing so, he picked out the slim figure of Nagorsky's

sister, a girl whose winter costume became her marvellously, and whom the

happy intimacy of the hotel life had made so desirable that an expedition

without her seemed a lost, blank day. Unless she was of the party there

was no sunshine. He watched her now, looking adorable in her big gauntlet

gloves, her short skirt, her tasselled cap of black and gold, a fairy

figure on the big snowfield, filling the world with sunshine--and knew

abruptly that she meant to him just exactly--nothing. The intensity of

the wavy feeling reduced her to an unreality.

It was not she who brought the great emotion.

The confusion in him deepened. Another scale of measurement appeared.

The crowded intervening years now seemed but a pause, a brief delay; he

had run down a side track and returned. _He_ had not grown older.

Seen by the grand scale to which the Wave and 'sea' belonged, he had

scarcely moved from the old starting-point, where, far away in some

unassailable recess of life, still waiting for him, stood--Lettice Aylmer.

Turning his eyes, then, from the approaching climbers, he glanced at the

steep slope above him, and saw--as once before on the English coast--

something that took his breath away and made his muscles weak. He stared

up at it. It looked down at him.

Five hundred feet above, outlined against the sky of crystal clearness,

ran a colossal wave of solid snow. At the highest point it was, of

course, a cornice, but towards the east, whence came the prevailing

weather, the wind had so manipulated the mass that it formed a curling

billow, twenty or thirty feet in depth, leaping over in the very act of

breaking, yet arrested just before it fell. It hung waiting in mid-air,

perfectly moulded, a wave--but a wave of snow.

It swung along the ridge for half a mile and more: it seemed to fill the

sky; it rose out of the sea of eternal snow below it, poised between the

earth and heavens. In the hollow beneath its curve lay purple shadows the

eye could not pierce. And the similarity to the earlier episode struck

him vividly; in each case Nature assisted with a visible wave as by way of

counterpart; each time, too, there was a girl--as though some significance

of sex hid in the 'wavy feeling.' He was profoundly puzzled.

The same second, in this wintry world where movement, sound, and perfume

have no place, there stole to his nostrils across the desolate ranges

another detail. It was more intimate in its appeal even than the wavy

feeling, yet was part of it. He recognised the Whiff. And the joint

attack, both by its suddenness and by its intensity, overwhelmed him.

Only the Sound was lacking, but that, too, he felt, was on the way.

Already a sharp instinctive movement was running down his legs. He began

to shuffle on his ski. . . .

A chorus of voices, as from far away, broke round him, disturbing the

intense stillness; and he knew that the others had reached the ridge.

With a violent effort he mastered the ridiculous movement of his

disobedient legs, but what really saved him from embarrassing notice was

the breathless state of his companions, and the fact that his action

looked after all quite natural--he seemed merely rubbing his ski along the

snow to clean their under-surface.

Exclamations in French, English, Polish rose on all sides, as the view

into the deep opposing valley caught the eye, and a shower of questions

all delivered at once, drew attention from himself. What scenery, what a

sky, what masses of untrodden snow! Should they lunch on the ridge or

continue to the summit? What were the names of all these peaks, and was

the Danube visible? How lucky there was no wind, and how they pitied the

people who stayed behind in the hotels! Sweaters and woollen waistcoats

emerged from half a dozen knapsacks, cooking apparatus was produced, one

chose a spot to make a fire, while another broke the dead branches from a

stunted pine, and in five minutes had made a blaze behind a little wall of

piled-up snow. The Polish girl came up and asked Tom for his Zeiss

glasses, examined the soaring slope beyond, then obediently put on the

extra sweater he held out for her. He hardly saw her face, and certainly

did not notice the expression in her eyes. All took off their ski and

plunged them upright in the nearest drift. The sun blazed everywhere, the

snow crystals sparkled. They settled down for lunch, a small dark clot of

busy life upon the vast expanse of desolate snow . . . and anything

unusual about Tom Kelverdon, muffled to the throat against the freezing

cold, his eyes, moreover, concealed by green snow-spectacles, was

certainly not noticed.

Another party, besides, was discovered climbing upwards along their own

laborious track: in the absorbing business of satisfying big appetites,

tending the fire, and speculating who these other skiers might be, Tom's

silence caused no comment. His self-control, for the rest, was soon

recovered. But his interest in the expedition had oddly waned; he was

still searching furiously in his thoughts for an explanation of the

unexpected 'attack,' waiting for the Sound, but chiefly wondering why his

boyhood's nightmare had never revealed that the Wave was of snow instead

of water--and, at the same time, oddly convinced that he had moved but

_one_ stage nearer to its final elucidation. That it was solid he had

already discovered, but that it was actually of snow left a curious doubt

in him.

Of all this he was thinking as he devoured his eggs and sandwiches,

something still trembling in him, nerves keenly sensitive, but not _quite_

persuaded that this wave of snow was the sufficient cause of what he had

just experienced--when at length the other climbers, moving swiftly, came

close enough to be inspected. The customary remarks and criticisms passed

from mouth to mouth, with warnings to lower voices since sound carried too

easily in the rarefied air. One of the party was soon recognised as the

hotel doctor, and the other, first set down as a Norwegian owing to his

light hair, shining hatless in the sunlight, proved on closer approach to

be an Englishman--both men evidently experienced and accomplished

'runners.'

In any other place the two parties would hardly have spoken, settling down

into opposing camps of hostile silence; but in the lonely winter mountains

human relationship becomes more natural; the time of day was quickly

passed, and details of the route exchanged; the doctor and his friend

mingled easily with the first arrivals; all agreed spontaneously to take

the run home together; and finally, when names were produced with laughing

introductions, the Englishman--by one of those coincidences people pretend

to think strange, but that actually ought to occur more often than they

do--turned out to be known to Tom, and after considerable explanations was

proved to be more than that--a cousin.

Welcoming the diversion, making the most of it in fact, Kelverdon

presented Anthony Winslowe to his Polish companions with a certain zeal to

which the new arrival responded with equal pleasure. The light-haired

blue-eyed Englishman, young and skilful on his ski, formed a distinct

addition to the party. He was tall, with a slight stoop about the

shoulders that suggested study; he was gay and very easy-going too.

It was 'Tom' and 'Tony' before lunch was over; they recalled their private

school, a fight, an eternal friendship vowed after it, and the twenty

intervening years melted as though they had not been.

'Of course,' Tom said, proud of his new-found cousin, 'and I've read your

bird books, what's more. By Jove, you're quite an authority on natural

history, aren't you?'

The other modestly denied any notoriety, but the girls, especially

Nagorsky's sister, piqued by Tom's want of notice, pressed for details in

their pretty broken English. It became a merry and familiar party, as the

way is with easy foreigners, particularly when they meet in such wild and

unconventional surroundings. Winslowe had lantern slides in his trunk:

that night he promised to show them: they chattered and paid compliments

and laughed, Tony explaining that he was on his way to Egypt to study the

bird-life along the Nile. Natural history was his passion; he talked

delightfully; he made the bird and animal life seem real and interesting;

there was imagination, humour, lightness in him. There was a fascination,

too, not due to looks alone. It was in his atmosphere, what is currently,

perhaps, called magnetism.

'No animals _here_ for you,' said a girl, pointing to the world of white

death about them.

'There's something better,' he said quickly in quite decent Polish.

'We're all in the animal kingdom, you know.' And he glanced with a bow of

admiration at the speaker, whom the others instantly began to tease.

It was Irena, Nagorsky's sister; she flushed and laughed. 'We thought,'

she said, 'you were Norwegian, because of your light hair, and the way you

moved on your ski.'

'A great compliment,' he rejoined, 'but I saw _you_ long ago on the ridge,

and I knew at once that you were--Polish.'

The girl returned his bow. 'The largest compliment,' she answered gaily,

'I had ever in my life.'

Tom had only arrived two days before, bringing a letter of introduction to

the doctor, and that night he changed his hotel, joining his new friends

and his cousin at the Grand. An obvious flirtation, possibly something

more, sprung up spontaneously between him and the Polish girl, but

Kelverdon welcomed it and felt no jealousy. 'Not trespassing, old chap,

am I?' Tony asked jokingly, having divined on the mountains that the girl

was piqued. 'On the contrary,' was the honest assurance given frankly,

'I'm relieved. A delightful girl, though, isn't she? And fascinatingly

pretty!'

For the existence of Nagorsky's sister had become suddenly to him of no

importance whatsoever. It was strange enough, but the vivid recurrence of

long-forgotten symbols that afternoon upon the heights had restored to him

something he had curiously forgotten, something he had shamefully

neglected, almost, it seemed, had been in danger of losing altogether.

It came back upon him now. He clung desperately to it as to a real, a

vital, a necessary thing. It was a genuine relief that the relationship

between him and the girl might be ended thus. In any case, he reflected,

it would have 'ended thus' a little later--like all the others. No trace

or sign of envy stayed in him. Irena and Tony, anyhow, seemed admirably

suited to one another; he noticed on the long run home how naturally they

came together. And even his own indifference would not bring her back to

him. He felt quite pleased and satisfied. He had a long talk with Tony

before going to bed. He felt drawn to him. There was a spontaneous

innate sympathy between them.

They had many other talks together, and Tom liked his interesting,

brilliant cousin. A week passed; dances, ski-ing trips, skating, and the

usual programme of wintry enjoyments filled the time too quickly;

companionship became intimacy; all sat at the same table: Tony became a

general favourite. He had just that combination of reserve and abandon

which--provided something genuine lies behind--attracts the majority of

people who, being dull, have neither. Most are reserved, through

emptiness, or else abandoned--also through emptiness. Tony Winslowe, full

of experience and ideas, vivid experience and original ideas, combined the

two in rarest equipoise. It was spontaneous, and not calculated in him.

There was a stimulating quality in his personality. Like those tiny,

exciting Japanese tales that lead to the edge of a precipice, then end

with unexpected abruptness that is their purpose, he led all who liked him

to the brink of a delightful revelation--then paused, stopped, vanished.

And all did like him. He was light and gay, for all the depth in him.

Something of the child peeped out. He won Tom Kelverdon's confidence

without an effort. He also won the affectionate confidence of the Polish

girl.

'You're not married, Tony, are you?' Tom asked him.

'Married!' Tony answered with a flush--he flushed so easily when teased--

'I love my wild life and animals far too much.' He stammered slightly.

Then he looked up quickly into his cousin's eyes with frankness.

Tom, without knowing why, almost felt ashamed of having asked it. 'I--I

never can go beyond a certain point,' he said, 'with girls. Something

always holds me back. Odd--isn't it?' He hesitated. Then this flashed

from him: 'Bees never sip the last, the sweetest drop of honey from the

rose, you know. The sunset always leaves one golden cloud adrift--eh?'

So there was poetry in him too!

And Tom, simpler, as well as more rigidly moulded, felt a curious touch of

passionate sympathy as he heard it. His heart went out to the other

suddenly with a burst of confidence. Some barrier melted in him and

disappeared. For the first time in his life he knew the inclination, even

the desire, to speak of things hidden deep within his heart. His cousin

would understand.

And Tony's sudden, wistful silence invited the confession. They had

already been talking of their forgotten youthful days together.

The ground was well prepared. They had even talked of his sister, Mary,

and her marriage. Tony remembered her distinctly. He spoke of it,

leaning forward and putting a hand on his cousin's knee. Tom noticed

vaguely the size of the palm, the wrist, the fingers--they seemed

disproportionate. They were ugly hands. But it was subconscious notice.

His mind was on another thing.

'I say,' Tom began with a sudden plunge, 'you know a lot about birds and

natural history--biology too, I suppose. Have you ever heard of the

spiral movement?'

'Spinal, did you say?' queried the other, turning the stem of his glass

and looking up.

'No--_spiral_,' Tom repeated, laughing dryly in spite of himself.

'I mean the idea--that evolution, whether individually in men and animals,

or with nations--historically, that is--is not in a straight line ahead,

but moves upwards--in a spiral?'

'It's in the air,' replied Tony vaguely, yet somehow as if he knew a great

deal more about it. 'The movement of the race, you mean?'

'And of the individual too. We're here, I mean, for the purpose of

development--whatever one's particular belief may be--and that this

development, instead of going forwards in a straight line, has a kind of--

spiral movement--upwards?'

Tony looked wonderfully wise. 'I've heard of it,' he said. 'The spiral

movement, as you say, is full of suggestion. It's common among plants.

But I don't think science--biology, at any rate--takes much account of

it.'

Tom interrupted eagerly, and with a certain grave enthusiasm that

evidently intrigued his companion. 'I mean--a movement that is always

upwards, always getting higher, and always looking down upon what has gone

before. That, if it's true, a soul can look back--look down upon what it

has been through before, but from a higher point--do you see?'

Tony emptied his glass and then lit a cigarette. 'I see right enough,' he

said at length, quick and facile to appropriate any and every idea he came

across, yet obviously astonished by his companion's sudden seriousness.

'Only the other day I read that humanity, for instance, is just now above

the superstitious period--of the Middle Ages, say--going over it again--

but that the recrudescence everywhere of psychic interests--

fortune-telling, palmistry, magic, and the rest--has become

quasi-scientific. It's going through the same period, but seeks to

explain and understand. It's above it--one stage or so. Is that what you

mean, perhaps?'

Tom drew in his horns, though for the life of him he could not say why.

Tony appropriated his own idea too easily somehow--had almost read his

thoughts. Vaguely he resented it. Tony had stolen from him--offended

against some schoolboy _meum_ and _tuum_ standard.

'That's it--the idea, at any rate,' he said, wondering why confidence had

frozen in him. 'Interesting, rather, isn't it?'

And then abruptly he found that he was staring at his cousin's hands,

spread on the table palm downwards. He had been staring at them for some

time, but unconsciously. Now he saw them. And there was something about

them that he did not like. Absurd as it seemed, his change of mood had to

do with those big, ungainly hands, tanned a deep brown-black by the sun.

A faint shiver ran through him. He looked away.

'Extraordinary,' Tony went chattering on. 'It explains these new wild

dances perhaps. Anything more spiral and twisty than these modern

gyrations I never saw!' He turned it off in his light amusing way, yet as

though quite familiar with the deeper aspects of the question--if he

cared. 'And what the body does,' he added, 'the mind has already done a

little time before!'

He laughed, but whether he was in earnest, or merely playing with the

idea, was uncertain. What had stopped Tom was, perhaps, that they were

not in the same key together; Tom had used a word he rarely cared to use--

soul--it had cost him a certain effort--but his cousin had not responded.

That, and the hands, explained his change of mood. For the first time it

occurred to his honest, simple mind that Tony was of other stuff, perhaps,

than he had thought. That remark about the bees and sunset jarred a

little. The lightness suggested insincerity almost.

He shook the notion off, for it was disagreeable, ungenerous as well.

This was holiday-time, and serious discussion was out of place. The airy

lightness in his cousin was just suited to the conditions of a

winter-sport hotel; it was what made him so attractive to all and sundry,

so easy to get on with. Yet Tom would have liked to confide in him, to

have told him more, asked further questions and heard the answers;

stranger still, he would have liked to lead from the spiral to the wave,

to his own wavy feeling, and, further even--almost to speak of Lettice and

his boyhood nightmare. He had never met a man in regard to whom he felt

so forthcoming in this way. Tony surely had seriousness and depth in him;

this irresponsibility was on the surface only. . . . There was a queer

confusion in his mind--several incongruous things trying to combine. . . .

'I knew a princess once--the widow of a Russian,' Tony was saying.

He had been talking on, gaily, lightly, for some time, but Tom, busy with

these reflections, had not listened properly. He now looked up sharply,

something suddenly alert in him. 'They're all princes in Russia,' Tony

laughed; 'it means less than Count in France or _von_ in Germany.'

He stopped and drained his glass. 'But you know,' he went on, his

thoughts half elsewhere, it seemed, 'it's bad for a country when titles

are too common, it lowers the aristocratic ideal. In the Caucasus--

Batoum, for instance--every Georgian is a noble, your hotel porter a

prince.' He broke off abruptly as though reminded of something.

'Of course!' he exclaimed, 'I was going to tell you about the Russian

woman I knew who had something of that idea of yours.' He stopped as his

eye caught his cousin's empty glass. 'Let's have another,' he said,

beckoning to the waitress, 'it's very light stuff, this beer. These long

ski-trips give one an endless thirst, don't they?' Tom didn't know

whether he said yes or no. 'What idea?' he asked quickly. 'What do you

mean exactly?' A curious feeling of familiarity stirred in him.

This conversation had happened before.

'Eh?' Tony glanced up as though he had again forgotten what he was going

to say. 'Oh yes,' he went on, 'the Russian woman, the Princess I met in

Egypt. She talked a bit like that once . . . I remember now.'

'Like what?' Tom felt a sudden, breathless curiosity in him: he was

afraid the other would change his mind, or pass to something else, or

forget what he was going to say. It would prove another Japanese tale--

disappear before it satisfied.

But Tony went on at last, noticing, perhaps, his cousin's interest.

'I was up at Edfu after birds,' he said, 'and she had a _dahabieh_ on the

river. Some friends took me there to tea, or something. It was nothing

particular. Only it occurred to me just now when you talked of spirals

and things.'

'_You_ talked about the spiral?' Tom asked. 'Talked with _her_ about it,

I mean?' He was slow, almost stupid compared to the other, who seemed to

flash lightly and quickly over a dozen ideas at once. But there was this

real, natural sympathy between them both again. It seemed he knew exactly

what his cousin was going to say.

Tony, blowing the foam off his beer glass, proceeded to quench his

wholesome thirst. 'Not exactly,' he said at length, 'but we talked, I

remember, along that line. I was explaining about the flight of birds--

that all wild animal life moves in a spontaneous sort of natural rhythm--

with an unconscious grace, I mean, we've lost because we think too much.

Birds in particular rise and fall with a swoop, the simplest, freest

movement in the world--like a wave----'

'Yes?' interrupted Tom, leaning over the table a little and nearly

upsetting his untouched glass. 'I like that idea. It's true.'

'And--oh, that all the forces known to science move in a similar way--by

wave-form, don't you see? Something like that it was.' He took another

draught of the nectar his day's exertions had certainly earned.

'_She_ said that?' asked Tom, watching his cousin's face buried in the

enormous mug.

Tony set it down with a sigh of intense satisfaction, '_I_ said it,' he

exclaimed with a frank egoism. 'You're too tired after all your falls

this afternoon to listen properly. _I_ was the teacher on that occasion,

she the adoring listener! But if you want to know what _she_ said too,

I'll tell you.'

Tom waited; he raised his glass, pretending to drink; if he showed too

much interest, the other might swerve off again to something else.

He knew what was coming, yet could not have actually foretold it.

He recognised it only the instant afterwards.

'She talked about water,' Tony went on, as though he had difficulty in

recalling what she really had said, 'and I think she had water on the

brain,' he added lightly. 'The Nile had bewitched her probably; it

affects most of 'em out there--the women, that is. She said life moved

in a stream--that she moved down a stream, or something, and that only

things going down the stream with her were real. Anything on the banks--

stationary, that is--was not real. Oh, she said a lot. I've really

forgotten now--it was a year or two ago--but I remember her mentioning

shells and the spiral twist of shells. In fact,' he added, as if there

was no more to tell, 'I suppose that's what made me think of her just

now--your mentioning the spiral movement.'

The door of the room, half _cafe_ and half bar, where the peasants sat at

wooden tables about them, opened, and the pretty head of Irena Nagorsky

appeared. A burst of music came in with her. 'We dance,' she said, a

note of reproach as well as invitation in her voice--then vanished.

Tony, leaving his beer unfinished, laughed at his cousin and went after

her. 'My last night,' he said cheerily. 'Must be gay and jolly. I'm off

to Trieste tomorrow for Alexandria. See you later, Tom--unless you're

coming to dance too.'

But, though they saw each other many a time again that evening, there was

no further conversation. Next day the party broke up, Tom returning to

the Water Works his firm was constructing outside Warsaw, and Tony taking

the train for Budapesth _en route_ for Trieste and Egypt. He urged Tom to

follow him as soon as his work was finished, gave the Turf Club, Cairo, as

his permanent address where letters would always reach him sooner or

later, waved his hat to the assembled group upon the platform, and was

gone. The last detail of him visible was the hand that held the waving

hat. It looked bigger, darker, thought Tom, than ever. It was almost

disfiguring. It stirred a hint of dislike in him. He turned his eyes

away.

But Tom Kelverdon remembered that last night in the hotel for another

reason too. In the small hours of the morning he woke up, hearing a sound

close beside him in the room. He listened a moment, then turned on the

light above the bed. The sound, of an unusual and peculiar character,

continued faintly. But it was not actually in the room as he first

supposed. It was outside.

More than ten years had passed since he had heard that sound. He had

expected it that day on the mountains when the wavy feeling and the Whiff

had come to him. Sooner or later he felt positive he would hear it.

He heard it now. It had merely been delayed, postponed. Something

gathering slowly and steadily behind his life was drawing nearer--had come

already very close. He heard the dry, rattling Sound that was associated

with the Wave and with the Whiff. In it, too, was a vague familiarity.

And then he realised that the wind was rising. A frozen pine-branch,

stiff with little icicles, was rattling and scraping faintly outside the

wooden framework of the double windows. It was the icy branch that made

the dry, rattling sound. He listened intently; the sound was repeated at

certain intervals, then ceased as the wind died down. And he turned over

and fell asleep again, aware that what he had heard was an imitation only,

but an imitation strangely accurate--of a reality. Similarly, the wave of

snow was but an imitation of a reality to come. This reality lay waiting

still beyond him. One day--one day soon--he would know it face to face.

The Wave, he felt, was rising behind his life, and his life was rising

with it towards a climax. On the little level platform where the years

had landed him for a temporary pause, he began to shuffle with his feet in

dream. And something deeper than his mind--looked back. . . .

The instinct, or by whatever name he called that positive, interior

affirmation, proved curiously right. Life rose with the sweep and power

of a wave, bearing him with it towards various climaxes. His powers, such

as they were, seemed all in the ascendant. He passed from that level

platform as with an upward rush, all his enterprises, all his energies,

all that he wanted and tried to do, surging forward towards the crest of

successful accomplishment.

And a dozen times at least he caught himself asking mentally for his

cousin Tony; wishing he had confided in him more, revealed more of this

curious business to him, exchanged sympathies with him about it all.

A kind of yearning rose in him for his vanished friend. Almost he had

missed an opportunity. Tony would have understood and helped to clear

things up; to no other man of his acquaintance could he have felt

similarly. But Tony was now out of reach in Egypt, chasing his birds

among the temples of the haunted Nile, already, doubtless, the centre of a

circle of new friends and acquaintances who found him as attractive and

fascinating as the little Zakopane group had found him. Tony must keep.

Tom Kelverdon meanwhile, his brief holiday over, returned to his work at

Warsaw, and brought it to a successful conclusion with a rapidity no one

had foreseen, and he himself had least of all expected. The power of the

rising wave was in all he did. He could not fail. Out of the success

grew other contracts highly profitable to his firm. Some energy that

overcame all obstacles, some clarity of judgment that selected unerringly

the best ways and means, some skill and wisdom in him that made all his

powers work in unison till they became irresistible, declared themselves,

yet naturally and without adventitious aid. He seemed to have found

himself anew. He felt pleased and satisfied with himself: always

self-confident, as a man of ability ought to be, he now felt proud; and,

though conceit had never been his failing, this new-born assurance moved

distinctly towards pride. In a moment of impulsive pleasure he wrote to

Tony, at the Turf Club, Cairo, and told him of his success. . . .

The senior partner, his father's old friend, wrote and asked his advice

upon certain new proposals the firm had in view; it was a question of big

docks to be constructed at Salonica, and something to do with a barrage on

the Nile as well--there were several juicy contracts to choose between,

it seemed,--and Sir William proposed a meeting in Switzerland, on his way

out to the Near East; he would break the journey before crossing the

Simplon for Milan and Trieste. The final telegram said Montreux, and

Kelverdon hurried to Vienna and caught the night express to Lausanne by

way of Bale.

And at Montreux further evidence that the wave of life was rising then

declared itself, when Sir William, having discussed the various

propositions with him, listening with attention, even with deference, to

Kelverdon's opinion, told him quietly that his brother's retirement left a

vacancy in the firm which--he and his co-directors hoped confidently--

Kelverdon might fill with benefit to all concerned. A senior partnership

was offered to him before he was thirty-five! Sir William left the same

night for his steamer, and Tom was to wait at Montreux, perhaps a month,

perhaps six weeks, until a personal inspection of the several sites

enabled the final decision to be made; he was then to follow and take

charge of the work itself.

Tom was immensely pleased. He wrote to his married sister in her Surrey

vicarage, told her the news with a modesty he did not really feel, and

sent her a handsome cheque by way of atonement for his bursting pride.

For simple natures, devoid of a saving introspection and self-criticism,

upon becoming unexpectedly successful easily develop an honest yet none

the less corroding pride. Tom felt himself rather a desirable person

suddenly; by no means negligible at any rate; pleased and satisfied with

himself, if not yet overweeningly so. His native confidence took this

exaggerated turn and twist. His star was in the ascendant, a man to be

counted with. . . .

The hidden weakness rose--as all else in him was rising--with the Wave.

But he did not call it pride, because he did not recognise it. It was

akin, perhaps, to that fatuous complacency of the bigoted religionist who,

thinking he has discovered absolute truth, looks down from his narrow cell

upon the rest of the world with a contemptuous pity that in itself is but

the ignorance of crass self-delusion. Tom felt very sure of himself.

For a rising wave drags up with it the mud and rubbish that have hitherto

lain hidden out of sight in the ground below. Only with the fall do these

undesirable elements return to their proper place again--where they belong

and are of value. Sense of proportion is recovered only with perspective,

and Tom Kelverdon, rising too rapidly, began to see himself in

disproportionate relation to the rest of life. In his solid, perhaps

stolid, way he considered himself a Personality--indispensable to no small

portion of the world about him.

PART II

CHAPTER VIII

It was towards the end of March, and spring was flowing down almost

visibly from the heights behind the town. April stood on tiptoe in the

woods, finger on lip, ready to dance out between the sunshine and the

rain.

Above four thousand feet the snows of winter still clung thickly, but the

lower slopes were clear, men and women already working busily among the

dull brown vineyards. The early mist cleared off by ten o'clock, letting

through floods of sunshine that drenched the world, sparkled above the

streets crowded with foreigners from many lands, and lay basking with an

appearance of July upon the still, blue lake. The clear brilliance of the

light had a quality of crystal. Sea-gulls fluttered along the shores,

tame as ducks and eager to be fed. They lent to this inland lake an

atmosphere of the sea, and Kelverdon found himself thinking of some

southern port, Marseilles, Trieste, Toulon.

In the morning he watched the graceful fishing-boats set forth, and at

night, when only the glitter of the lamps painted the gleaming water for a

little distance, he saw the swans, their heads tucked back impossibly into

the centre of their backs, scarcely moving on the unruffled surface as

they slept into the night. The first sounds he heard soon after dawn

through his wide-opened windows were the whanging strokes of their

powerful wings flying low across the misty water; they flew in twos and

threes, coming from their nests now building in the marshes beyond

Villeneuve. This, and the screaming of the gulls, usually woke him.

The summits of Savoy, on the southern shore, wore pink and gold upon their

heavy snows; the sharp air nipped; far in the west a few stars peeped

before they faded; and in the distance he heard the faint, drum-like

mutter of a paddle-steamer, reminding him that he was in a tourist centre

after all, and that this was busy, little, organised Switzerland.

But sometimes it was the beating strokes of the invisible paddle-steamer

that woke him, for it seemed somehow a continuation of dreams he could

never properly remember. That he had been dreaming busily every night of

late he knew as surely as that he instantly forgot these dreams.

That muffled, drum-like thud, coming nearer and nearer towards him out of

the quiet distance, had some connection--undecipherable as yet--with the

curious, dry, rattling sound belonging to the Wave. The two were so

dissimilar, however, that he was unable to discover any theory that could

harmonise them. Nor, for that matter, did he seek it. He merely

registered a mental note, as it were, in passing. The beating and the

rattling were associated.

He chose a small and quiet hotel, as his liking was, and made himself

comfortable, for he might have six weeks to wait for Sir William's

telegram, or even longer, if, as seemed likely, the summons came by post.

And Montreux was a pleasant place in early spring, before the heat and

glare of summer scorched the people out of it towards the heights.

He took long walks towards the snow-line beyond Les Avants and Les

Pleiades, where presently the carpets of narcissus would smother the

fields with white as though winter had returned to fling, instead of

crystal flakes, a hundred showers of white feathers upon the ground.

He discovered paths that led into the whispering woods of pine and

chestnut. The young larches wore feathery green upon their crests,

primroses shone on slopes where the grass was still pale and dead,

snowdrops peeped out beside the wooden fences, and here and there, shining

out of the brown decay of last year's leaves and thick ground-ivy, he

found hepaticas. He had never felt the spring so marvellous before; it

rose in a wave of colour out of the sweet brown earth.

Though outwardly nothing of moment seemed to fill his days, inwardly he

was aware of big events--maturing. There was this sense of approach, of

preparation, of gathering. How insipid external events were after all,

compared to the mass, the importance of interior changes! A change of

heart, an altered point of view, a decision taken--these were the big

events of life.

Yet it was a pleasant thing to be a senior partner. Here by the quiet

lake, stroking himself complacently, he felt that life was very active,

very significant, as he wondered what the choice would be. He rather

hoped for Egypt, on the whole. He could look up Tony and the birds.

They could go after duck and snipe together along the Nile. He would,

moreover, be quite an important man out there. Pride and vanity rose in

him, but unobserved. For the Wave was in this too.

One afternoon, late, he returned from a long scramble among icy rocks

about the Dent de Jaman, changed his clothes, and sat with a cigarette

beside the open window, watching the throng of people underneath.

In a steady stream they moved along the front of the lake, their voices

rising through the air, their feet producing a dull murmur as of water.

The lake was still as glass; gulls asleep on it in patches, and here and

there a swan, looking like a bundle of dry white paper, floated idly.

Off-shore lay several fishing-boats, becalmed; and far beyond them, a

rowing-skiff broke the surface into two lines of widening ripples.

They seemed floating in mid-air against the evening glow. The Savoy Alps

formed a deep blue rampart, and the serrated battlements of the Dent du

Midi, full in the blaze of sunset, blocked the Rhone Valley far away with

its formidable barricade.

He watched the glow of approaching sunset with keen enjoyment; he sat

back, listening to the people's voices, the gentle lap of the little

waves; and the pleasant lassitude that follows upon hard physical exertion

combined with the even pleasanter stimulus of the tea to produce a state

of absolute contentment with the world. . . .

Through the murmur of feet and voices, then, and from far across the

water, stole out another sound that introduced into his peaceful mood an

element of vague disquiet. He moved nearer to the window and looked out.

The steamer, however, was invisible; the sea of shining haze towards

Geneva hid it still; he could not see its outline. But he heard the

echoless mutter of the paddle-wheels, and he knew that it was coming

nearer. Yet at first it did not disturb him so much as that, for a

moment, he heard no other sound: the voices, the tread of feet, the

screaming of the gulls all died away, leaving this single, distant beating

audible alone--as though the entire scenery combined to utter it.

And, though no ordinary echo answered it, there seemed--or did he fancy

it?--a faint, interior response within himself. The blood in his veins

went pulsing in rhythmic unison with this remote hammering upon the water.

He leaned forward in his chair, watching the people, listening intently,

almost as though he expected something to happen, when immediately below

him chance left a temporary gap in the stream of pedestrians, and in this

gap--for a second merely--a figure stood sharply defined, cut off from the

throng, set by itself, alone. His eyes fixed instantly upon its

appearance, movements, attitude. Before he could think or reason he heard

himself exclaim aloud:

'Why--it's----'

He stopped. The rest of the sentence remained unspoken. The words rushed

down again. He swallowed, and with a gulp he ended--as though the other

pedestrians all were men--'----a woman!'

The next thing he knew was that the cigarette was burning his fingers--had

been burning them for several seconds. The figure melted back into the

crowd. The throng closed round her. His eyes searched uselessly; no

space, no gap was visible; the stream of people was continuous once more.

Almost, it seemed, he had not really seen her--had merely thought her--up

against the background of his mind.

For ten minutes, longer perhaps, he sat by that open window with eyes

fastened on the moving crowd. His heart was beating oddly; his breath

came rapidly. 'She'll pass by presently again,' he thought; 'she'll come

back!' He looked alternately to the right and to the left, until,

finally, the sinking sun blazed too directly in his eyes for him to see at

all. The glare blurred everybody into a smudged line of golden colour,

and the faces became a series of artificial suns that mocked him.

He did, then, an unusual thing--out of rhythm with his normal self,--he

acted on impulse. Kicking his slippers off, he quickly put on a pair of

boots, took his hat and stick, and went downstairs. There was no

reflection in him; he did not pause and ask himself a single question; he

ran to join the throng of people, moved up and down with them, in and out,

passing and re-passing the same groups over and over again, but seeing no

sign of the particular figure he sought so eagerly. She was dressed in

black, he knew, with a black fur boa round her neck; she was slim and

rather tall; more than that he could not say. But the poise and attitude,

the way the head sat on the shoulders, the tilt upwards of the chin--he

was as positive of recognising these as if he had seen her close instead

of a hundred yards away.

The sun was down behind the Jura Mountains before he gave up the search.

Sunset slipped insensibly into dusk. The throng thinned out quickly at

the first sign of chill. A dozen times he experienced the thrill--his

heart suddenly arrested--of seeing her, but on each occasion it proved to

be some one else. Every second woman seemed to be dressed in black that

afternoon, a loose black boa round the neck. His eyes ached with the

strain, the change of focus, the question that burned behind and in them,

the joy--the strange rich pain.

But half, at least, of these dull people, he renumbered, were birds of

passage only; to-morrow or the next day they would take the train.

He said to himself a dozen times, 'Once more to the end and back again!'

For she, too, might be a bird of passage, leaving to-morrow or the next

day, leaving that very night, perhaps. The thought afflicted, goaded him.

And on getting back to the hotel he searched the _Liste des Etrangers_ as

eagerly as he had searched the crowded front--and as uselessly, since he

did not even know what name he hoped to find.

But later that evening a change came over him. He surprised some sense of

humour: catching it in the act, he also surprised himself a little--

smiling at himself. The laughter, however, was significant. For it was

just that restless interval after dinner when he knew not what to do with

the hours until bedtime: whether to sit in his room and think and read, or

to visit the principal hotels in the hope of chance discovery. He was

even considering this wild-goose chase to himself, when suddenly he

realised that his course of procedure was entirely the wrong one.

This thing was going to happen anyhow, it was inevitable; but--it would

happen in its own time and way, and nothing he might do could hurry it.

To hunt in this violent manner was to delay its coming. To behave as

usual was the proper way. It was then he smiled.

He crossed the hall instead, and put his head in at the door of the little

Lounge. Some Polish people, with whom he had a bowing acquaintance, were

in there smoking. He had seen them enter, and the Lounge was so small

that he could hardly sit in their presence without some effort at

conversation. And, feeling in no mood for this, he put his head past the

edge of the glass door, glanced round carelessly as though looking for

some one--then drew sharply back. For his heart stopped dead an instant,

then beat furiously, like a piston suddenly released. On the sofa,

talking calmly to the Polish people, was--the figure. He recognised her

instantly.

Her back was turned; he did not see her face. There was a vast excitement

in him that seemed beyond control. He seemed unable to make up his mind.

He walked round and round the little hall examining intently the notices

upon the walls. The excitement grew into tumult, as though the meeting

involved something of immense importance to his inmost self--his soul.

It was difficult to account for. Then a voice behind him said, 'There is

a concert to-night. Radwan is playing Chopin. There are tickets in the

Bureau still--if Monsieur cares to go.' He thanked the speaker without

turning to show his face: while another voice said passionately within

him, 'I was wrong; she is slim, but she is not so tall as I thought.'

And a minute later, without remembering how he got there, he was in his

room upstairs, the door shut safely after him, standing before the mirror

and staring into his own eyes. Apparently the instinct to see what he

looked like operated automatically. For he now remembered--realised--

another thing. Facing the door of the Lounge was a mirror, and their eyes

had met. He had gazed for an instant straight into the kind and beautiful

Eyes he had first seen twenty years ago--in the Wave.

His behaviour then became more normal. He did the little, obvious things

that any man would do. He took a clothes-brush and brushed his coat; he

pulled his waistcoat down, straightened his black tie, and smoothed his

hair, poked his hanging watch-chain back into its pocket. Then, drawing a

deep breath and compressing his lips, he opened the door and went

downstairs. He even remembered to turn off the electric light according

to hotel instructions. 'It's perfectly all right,' he thought, as he

reached the top of the stairs. 'Why shouldn't I? There's nothing unusual

about it.' He did not take the lift, he preferred action. Reaching the

_salon_ floor, he heard voices in the hall below. She was already leaving

therefore, the brief visit over. He quickened his pace. There was not

the slightest notion in him what he meant to say. It merely struck him

that--idiotically--he had stayed longer in his bedroom than he realised;

too long; he might have missed his chance. The thought urged him forward

more rapidly again.

In the hall--he seemed to be there without any interval of time--he saw

her going out; the swinging doors were closing just behind her.

The Polish friends, having said good-bye, were already rising past him in

the lift. A minute later he was in the street. He realised that, because

he felt the cool night air upon his cheeks. He was beside her--looking

down into her face.

'May I see you back--home--to your hotel?' he heard himself saying.

And then the queer voice--it must have been his own--added abruptly, as

though it was all he really had to say: 'You haven't forgotten me really.

I'm Tommy--Tom Kelverdon.'

Her reply, her gesture, what she did and showed of herself in a word, was

as queer as in a dream, yet so natural that it simply could not have been

otherwise: 'Tom Kelverdon! So it is! Fancy--_you_ being here!'

Then: 'Thank you very much. And suppose we walk; it's only a few

minutes--and quite dry.'

How trivial and commonplace, yet how wonderful!

He remembers that she said something to a coachman who immediately drove

off, that she moved beside him on this Montreux pavement, that they went

up-hill a little, and that, very soon, a brilliant door of glass blazed in

front of them, that she had said, 'How strange that we should meet again

like this. Do come and see me--any day--just telephone. I'm staying some

weeks probably,'--and he found himself standing in the middle of the road,

then walking wildly at a rapid pace downhill, he knew not whither, that he

was hot and breathless, that stars were shining, and swans, like bundles

of white newspaper, were asleep on the lake, and--that he had found her.

He had walked and talked with Lettice. He bumped into more than one

irate pedestrian before he realised it; they knew it better than he did,

apparently. 'It was Lettice Aylmer, Lettice . . .' he kept saying to

himself. 'I've found her. She shook hands with me. That was her voice,

her touch, her perfume. She's here--here in little Montreux--for several

weeks. After all these years! Can it be true--really true at last?

She said I might telephone--might go and see her. She's glad to see me--

again.'

How often he paced the entire length of the deserted front beside the lake

he did not count: it must have been many times, for the hotel door, which

closed at midnight, was locked and the night-porter let him in. He went

to bed--if there was rose in the eastern sky and upon the summits of the

Dent du Midi, he did not notice it. He dropped into a half-sleep in which

thought continued but not wearingly. The excitement of his nerves

relaxed, soothed and mothered by something far greater than his senses,

stronger than his rushing blood. This greater Rhythm took charge of him

most comfortably. He fell back into the mighty arms of something that was

rising irresistibly--something inevitable and--half-familiar. It had long

been gathering; there was no need to ask a thousand questions, no need to

fight it anywhere. From the moment when he glanced idly into the Lounge

he had been aware of it. It had driven him downstairs without reflection,

as it had driven him also uphill till the blazing door was reached.

He smelt it, heard it, saw it, touched it. It was the Wave.

Time certainly proved its unreality that night; the hours seemed both

endless and absurdly brief. His mind flew round and round in a circle,

lingering over every detail of the short interview with a tumultuous

pleasure that hid pain very thinly. He felt afraid, felt himself on the

brink of plunging headlong into a gigantic whirlpool. Yet he wanted to

plunge. . . . He would. . . . He had to. . . . It was irresistible.

He reviewed the scene, holding each detail forcibly still, until the last

delight had been sucked out of it. At first he remembered next to

nothing--a blur, a haze, the houses flying past him, no feeling of

pavement under his feet, but only her voice saying nothing in particular,

her touch, as he sometimes drew involuntarily against her arm, her eyes

shining up at him. For her eyes remained the chief impression perhaps--so

kind, so true, so very sweet and frank--soft Irish eyes with something

mysterious and semi-eastern in them. The conversation seemed to have

entirely escaped recovery.

Then, one by one, he remembered things that she had said. Sentences

offered themselves of their own accord. He flung himself upon them,

trying to keep tight hold of their first meaning--before he filled them

with significance of his own. It was a desperate business altogether;

emotion distorted her simple words so quickly. 'I was thinking of you

only to-day. I had the feeling you were here. Curious, wasn't it?'

He distinctly remembered her saying this. And then another sentence:

'I should have known you anywhere; though, of course, you've changed a

lot. But I knew your eyes. Eyes don't change much, do they?'

The meanings he read into these simple phrases filled an hour at least; he

lost entirely their simple first significance. But this last remark

brought up another in its train. As the tram went past them she had

raised her voice a little and looked up into his face--it was just then

they had cannonaded. People who like one another always cannonade, he

reflected. And her remark--'Ah, it comes back to me. You're so very like

your sister Mary. I've seen her several times since the days in Cavendish

Square. There's a strong family likeness.'

He disliked the last part of the sentence. Mary, besides, had mentioned

nothing; her rare letters made no reference to it. The schooldays'

friendship had evaporated perhaps. This sent his thoughts back upon the

early trail of those distant months when Lettice was at a Finishing School

in France and he had kept that tragic Calendar. . . .

Another sentence interrupted them: 'I had, oddly enough, been thinking of

you this very afternoon. I knew you the moment you put your head in at

the door, but, for the life of me, I couldn't get the name. All I got was

'Tommy'!' And only his sense of humour prevented the obvious rejoinder,

'I wish you would always call me that.' It struck him sharply. Such talk

could have no part in a meeting of this kind; the idea of flirtation was

impossible, not even thought of. Yet twice she had said, 'I was thinking

of you only to-day!'

But other things came back as well. It was strange how much they had

really said to each other in those few brief minutes. Next day he

retraced the way and discovered that, even walking quickly, it took him a

good half hour; yet they had walked slowly, even leisurely. But, try as

he would, he was unable to force deeper meanings into these other remarks

that he recalled. She was evidently pleased to see him, that at least was

certain, for she had asked him to come and see her, and she meant it.

He remembered his reply, 'I'll come to-morrow--may I?' and then abruptly

realised for the first time that the plunge was taken. He felt himself

committed, sink or swim. The Wave already had lifted him off his feet.

And it was on this his whirling thoughts came down to rest at last, and

sleep crept over him--just as dawn was breaking. He felt himself in the

'sea' with Lettice, there was nothing he could do, no course to choose, no

decision to be made. Though married, she was somehow free--he felt it in

her attitude. That sense of fatalism known in boyhood took charge of him.

The Wave was rising towards the moment when it must invariably break and

fall, and every impulse in him rising in it without a shade of denial or

resistance. It would hurt--the fall and break would cause atrocious pain.

But it was somewhere necessary to him. No atom of him held back or

hesitated. For there was joy beyond it somehow--an intense and lasting

joy, like the joy that belongs to growth and development after accepted

suffering.

Vaguely--not put into definite words--it was this he felt, when at length

sleep took him. Yet just before he slept he remembered two other little

details, and smiled to himself as they rose before his sleepy mind, yet

not understanding exactly why he smiled: for he did not yet know her

name--and there was, of course, a husband.

CHAPTER IX

This resumption of a childhood's acquaintance that, by one at least, had

been imaginatively coaxed into a relationship of ideal character, at once

took on a standing of its own. It started as from a new beginning.

Tom Kelverdon did not forget the childhood part, but he neglected it at

first. It was as if he met now for the first time--a woman who charmed

him beyond anything known before; he longed for her; that he had longed

for her subconsciously these twenty years slipped somehow or other out of

memory. With it slipped also those strange corroborative details that

imagination had clung to so tenaciously during the interval. The Whiff,

the Sound, the other pair of Eyes, the shuffling feet, the joy that

cloaked the singular prophecy of pain--all these, if not entirely

forgotten, ceased to intrude themselves. Even when looking into her

clear, dark eyes, he no longer quite realised them as the 'eastern eyes'

of his dim, dim dream; they belonged to a woman, and a married woman, whom

he desired with body, heart and soul. Calm introspection was impossible,

he could only feel, and feel intensely. He could not fuse this girl and

woman into one continuous picture: each was a fragment of some much older,

larger picture. But this larger canvas he could never visualise

successfully. It was coloured, radiant, gorgeous; it blazed as with gold,

a gold of sun and stars. But the strain of effort caused rupture

instantly. The vaster memory escaped him. He was conscious of reserve.

The comedy of telephoning to a name he did not know was obviated next

morning by the arrival of a note: 'Dear Tom Kelverdon,' it began, and was

signed 'Yours, Lettice Jaretzka.' It invited him to come up for

_dejeuner_ in her hotel. He went. The luncheon led naturally to a walk

together afterwards, and then to other luncheons and other walks, to

evening rows upon the lake, and to excursions into the surrounding

country. . . . They had tea together in the lower mountain inns, picked

flowers, photographed one another, laughed, talked and sat side by side at

concerts or in the little Montreux cinema theatre. It was all as easy and

natural as any innocent companionship well could be--because it was so

deep. The foundations were of such solid strength that nothing on the

surface trembled. . . . Madame de Jaretzka was well known in the hotel--

she came annually, it seemed, about this time and made a lengthy stay,--

but no breath of anything untoward could ever be connected with her.

He, too, was accepted by one and all, no glances came their way.

He was her friend: that was apparently enough. And though he desired her,

body, heart and soul, he was quick to realise that the first named in the

trio had no role to play. Something in her, something of attitude and

atmosphere, rendered it inconceivable. The reserve he was conscious of

lay very deep in him; it lay in her too. There was a fence, a barrier he

must not, could not pass--both recognised it. Being a man, romance for

him drew some tendril doubtless from the creative physical, but the shade

of passing disappointment, if it existed, was renounced as instantly as

recognised. Yet he was not aware at first of any incompleteness in her.

He felt only a bigger thing. There seemed something in this simple woman

that bore him to the stars.

For simple she undoubtedly was, not in the way of shallowness, but because

her nature seemed at harmony with itself: uncomplex, natural, frank and

open, and with an unconventional carelessness that did no evil for the

reason that she thought and meant none. She could do things that must

have made an ordinary worldly woman the centre of incessant talk and

scandal. There was, indeed, an extraordinary innocence about her that

perturbed the judgment, somewhat baffling it. Whereas with many women it

might have roused the suspicion of being a pose, an affectation, with her,

Tom felt, it was a genuine innocence, beyond words delightful and

refreshing. And it arose, he soon discovered, from the fact that, being

good and true herself, she thought everybody else was also good and true.

This he realised before two days' intercourse had made it seem as if they

had been together always and were made for one another. Something bigger

and higher than he had ever felt before stirred in him for this woman,

whom he thought of now invariably as Madame de Jaretzka, rather than as

Lettice of his younger dream. If she woke something nobler in him that

had slept, he did not label it as such: nor, if a portion of his younger

dream was fulfilling itself before his eyes, in a finer set of terms, did

he think it out and set it down in definite words. There _was_ this

intense and intimate familiarity between them both, but somehow he did not

call it by these names. He just thought her wonderful--and longed for

her. The reserve began to trouble him. . . .

'It's sweet,' she said, 'when real people come together--find each other.'

'Again,' he added. 'You left that out. For _I've_ never forgotten--all

these years.'

She laughed. 'Well, I'll tell you the truth,' she confessed frankly.

'I hadn't forgotten either; I often thought of you and wondered----'

'What I was like now?'

'What you were doing, where you were,' she said. 'I always knew what you

were like. But I often wondered how far on you had got.'

'You had no news of me?'

'None. But I always believed you'd do something big in the world.'

Something in her voice or manner made it wholly natural for him to tell

her of his boyhood love. He mentioned the Wave and wavy feeling, the

nightmare too, but when he tried to go beyond that, something checked him;

he felt a sudden shyness. It 'sounds so silly,' was his thought.

'But I always know a real person,' he said aloud, 'anybody who's going to

be real in my life; they always arrive on a wave, as it were. My wavy

feeling announces them.' And the interest with which she responded

prevented his regretting having made his confession.

'It's an instinct, I think,' she agreed, 'and instincts are meant to be

listened to. I've had something similar, though with me it's not a wave.'

Her voice grew slower, she made a pause; when he looked up--her eyes were

gazing across the lake as though in a moment of sudden absent-mindedness.

. . . 'And what's yours?' he asked, wondering why his heart was beating as

though something painful was to be disclosed.

'I see a stream,' she went on slowly, still gazing away from him across

the expanse of shining water, 'a flowing stream--with faces on it. They

float down with the current. And when I see one I know it's somebody

real--real to me. The unreal faces are always on the bank. I pass them

by.'

'You've seen mine?' he asked, unable to hide the eagerness. 'My face?'

'Often, yes,' she told him simply. 'I dream it usually, I think: but it's

quite vivid.'

'And is that all? You just see the faces floating down with the current?'

'There's one other thing,' she answered, 'if you'll promise not to laugh.'

'Oh, I won't laugh,' he assured her. 'I'm awfully interested. It's no

funnier than my Wave, anyhow.'

'They're faces I have to save,' she said. 'Somehow I'm meant to rescue

them.' In what way she did not know. 'Just keep them above water, I

suppose!' And the smile in her face gave place to a graver look.

The stream of faces was real to her in the way his Wave was real.

There was meaning in it. 'Only three weeks ago,' she added, 'I saw _you_

like that.' He asked where it was, and she told him Warsaw. They

compared notes; they had been in the town together, it turned out.

Their outer paths had been converging for some time, then.

'Why--did you leave?' he asked suddenly. He wanted to ask why she was

there at all, but something stopped him.

'I usually come here,' she said quietly, 'about this time. It's restful.

There's peace in these quiet hills above the town, and the lake is

soothing. I get strength and courage here.'

He glanced at her with astonishment a moment. Behind the simple language

another meaning flashed. There was a look in the eyes, a hint in the

voice that betrayed her. . . . He waited, but she said no more. Not that

she wished to conceal, but that she did not wish to speak of something.

Warsaw meant pain for her, she came here to rest, to recuperate after a

time of stress and struggle, he felt. And looking at the face he

recognised for the first time that behind its quiet strength there lay

deep pain and sadness, yet accepted pain and sadness conquered, a

suffering she had turned to sweetness. Without a particle of proof, he

yet felt sure of this. And an immense respect woke in him. He saw her

saving, rescuing others, regardless of herself: he felt the floating faces

real; the stream was life--her life. . . . And, side by side with the

deep respect, the bigger, higher impulse stirred in him again. Name it he

could not: it just came: it stole into him like some rare and exquisite

new fragrance, and it came from her. . . . He saw her far above him,

stooping down from a higher level to reach him with her little hand. . . .

He knew a yearning to climb up to her--a sudden and searching yearning in

his soul. 'She's come back to fetch me,' ran across his mind before he

realised it; and suddenly his heart became so light that he thought he had

never felt such happiness before. Then, before he realised it, he heard

himself saying aloud--from his heart:

'You do me an awful lot of good--really you do. I feel better and happier

when I'm with you. I feel--' He broke off, aware that he was talking

rather foolishly. Yet the boyish utterance was honest; she did not think

it foolish apparently. For she replied at once, and without a sign of

lightness:

'Do I? Then I mustn't leave you, Tom!'

'Never!' he exclaimed impetuously.

'Until I've saved you.' And this time she did not laugh.

She was still looking away from him across the water, and the tone was

quiet and unaccented. But the words rang like a clarion in his mind.

He turned; she turned too: their eyes met in a brief but penetrating gaze.

And for an instant he caught an expression that frightened him, though he

could not understand its meaning. Her beauty struck him like a sheet of

fire--all over. He saw gold about her like the soft fire of the southern

stars. With any other woman, at any other time, he would--but the thought

utterly denied itself before it was half completed even. It sank back as

though ashamed. There was something in her that made it ugly, out of

rhythm, undesirable, and undesired. She would not respond--she would not

understand.

In its place another blazed up with that strange, big yearning at the back

of it, and though he gazed at her as a man gazes at a woman he needs and

asks for, her quiet eyes did not lower or turn aside. The cheaper feeling

'I'm not worthy of you,' took in his case a stronger form: 'I'll be

better, bigger, for you.' And then, so gently it might have been a

mother's action, she put her hand on his with firm pressure, and left it

lying there a moment before she withdrew it again. Her long white glove,

still fastened about the wrist, was flung back so that it left the palm

and fingers bare, and the touch of the soft skin upon his own was

marvellous; yet he did not attempt to seize it, he made no movement in

return. He kept control of himself in a way he did not understand.

He just sat and looked into her face. There was an entire absence of

response from her--in one sense. Something poured from her eyes into his

very soul, but something beautiful, uplifting. This new yearning emotion

rose through him like a wave, bearing him upwards. . . . At the same time

he was vaguely aware of a lack as well . . . of something incomplete and

unawakened. . . .

'Thank you--for saying that,' he was murmuring; 'I shall never forget it,';

and though the suppressed passion changed the tone and made it tremble

even, he held himself as rigid as a statue. It was she who moved.

She leaned nearer to him. Like a flower the wind bends on its graceful

stalk, her face floated very softly against his own. She kissed him.

It was all very swift and sudden. But, though exquisite, it was not a

woman's kiss. . . . The same instant she was sitting straight again,

gazing across the blue lake below her.

'You're still a boy,' she said, with a little innocent laugh, 'still a

wonderful, big boy.'

'Your boy,' he returned. 'I always have been.'

There was deep, deep joy in his heart, it lifted him above the world--with

her. Yet with the joy there was this faint touch of disappointment too.

'But, I say--isn't it awfully strange?' he went on, words failing him

absurdly. 'It's very wonderful, this friendship. It's so natural.'

Then he began to flush and stammer.

In an even tone of voice she answered: 'It's wonderful, Tom, but it's not

strange.' And again he was vaguely aware that something which might

have made her words yet more convincing was not there.

'But I've got that curious feeling--I could swear it's all happened

before.' He moved closer as he spoke; her dress was actually against his

coat, but he could not touch her. Something made it impossible, wrong,

a false, even a petty thing. It would have taken away the kiss.

'Have _you_?' he asked abruptly, with an intensity that seemed to startle

her, 'have _you_ got that feeling of familiarity too?'

And for a moment in the middle of their talk they both, for some reason,

grew very thoughtful. . . .

'It had to be--perhaps,' she answered simply a little later. 'We are both

real, so I suppose--yes, it _has_ to be.'

There was the definite feeling that both spoke of a bigger thing that

neither quite understood. Their eyes searched, but their hearts searched

too. There was a gap in her that somehow must be filled, Tom felt. . . .

They stared long at one another. He was close upon the missing thing--

when suddenly she withdrew her eyes. And with that, as though a wave had

swept them together and passed on, the conversation abruptly changed its

key. They fell to talking of other things. The man in him was again

aware of disappointment.

The change was quite natural, nothing forced or awkward about it.

The significance had gone its way, but the results remained. They were in

the 'sea' together. It 'had to be.' As from the beginning of the world

they belonged to one another, each for the other--real. There was nothing

about it of a text-book 'love affair,' absolutely nothing. Deeper far

than a passional relationship, guiltless of any fruit of mere propinquity,

the foundations of the sudden intimacy were as ancient as immovable.

The inevitable touch lay in it. And Tom knew this partly confirmed, at

any rate, by the emotion in him when she said 'my boy,' for the term woke

no annoyance, conveyed no lightness. Yet there was a flavour of

disappointment in it somewhere--something of necessary value that he

missed in her. . . . To a man in love it must have sounded superior,

contemptuous: whereas to him it sounded merely true. He was her boy.

This mother-touch was in her. To care, to cherish, somehow even to

rescue, she had come to find him out--again. She had come _back_. . . .

It was thus, at first, he felt it. From somewhere above, beyond the place

where he now stood in life, she had 'come back, come down, to fetch him.'

She was further on than he was. He longed to stand beside her. Until he

did so . . . this gap in her must prevent absolute union. On both sides

it was not entirely natural as yet. . . . Thought grew confused in him.

And, though he could not understand, he accepted it as inevitable.

The joy, moreover, was so urgent and uprising, that it smothered a

delicate whisper that yet came with it--that the process involved also--

pain. Though aware, from time to time, of this vague uneasiness, he

easily brushed it aside. It was the merest gossamer-thread of warning

that with each recurrent appearance became more tenuous, until finally it

ceased to make its presence felt at all. . . .

In the entire affair of this sudden intercourse he felt the Wave, yet the

Wave, though steadily rising, ceased to make its presence too consciously

known; the Whiff, the Sound, the Eyes seemed equally forgotten: that is,

he did not realise them. He was living now, and introspection was a waste

of time, living too intensely to reflect or analyse. He felt swept

onwards upon a tide that was greater than he could manage, for instead of

swimming consciously, he was borne and carried with it. There was

certainly no attempt to stem. Life was rising. It rushed him forwards

too deliciously to think. . . .

He began asking himself the old eternal question: 'Do I love? Am I in

love--at last, then?' . . . Some time passed, however, before he realised

that he loved, and it was in a sudden, curious way that this realisation

came. Two little words conveyed the truth--some days later, as they were

at tea on the verandah of her hotel, watching the sunset behind the blue

line of the Jura Mountains. He had been talking about himself, his

engineering prospects--rather proudly--his partnership and the letter he

expected daily from Sir William. 'I hope it will be Assouan,' he said,

'I've never been in Egypt. I'm awfully keen to see it.' She said she

hoped so too. She knew Egypt well: it enchanted, even enthralled her:

'familiar as though I'd lived there all my life. A change comes over me,

I become a different person--and a much older one; not physically,' she

explained with a curious shy gaze at him, 'but in the sense that I feel a

longer pedigree behind me.' She gave the little laugh that so often

accompanied her significant remarks. 'I always think of the Nile as the

'stream' where I see the floating faces.'

They went on chatting for some minutes about it. Tom asked if she had met

his cousin out there; yes, she remembered vaguely a Mr. Winslowe coming to

tea on her _dahabieh_ once, but it was only when he described Tony more

closely that she recalled him positively. 'He interested me,' she said

then: 'he talked wildly, but rather picturesquely, about what he called

the 'spiral movement of life,' or something.' 'He goes after birds,' Tom

mentioned. 'Of course,' she replied, 'I remember distinctly now. It was

something about the flight of birds that introduced the spiral part of it.

He had a good deal in him, that man,' she added, 'but he hid it behind a

lot of nonsense--almost purposely, I felt.'

'That's Tony all over,' Tom assented, 'but he's a rare good sort and I'm

awfully fond of him. He's 'real' in our sense too, I think.'

She said then very slowly, as though her thoughts were far away in Egypt

at the moment: 'Yes, I think he is. I've seen _his_ face too.'

'Floating down, you mean--or on the bank?'

'Floating,' she answered. 'I'm sure I have.'

Tom laughed happily. 'Then you've got him to rescue too,' he said.

'But, remember, if we're both drowning, I come first.'

She looked into his face and smiled her answer, touching his fingers with

her hand. And again it was not a woman's touch.

'He was in Warsaw, too, a few weeks ago,' Tom went on, 'so we were all

three there together. Rather odd, you know. He was ski-ing with me in

the Carpathians,'; and he described their meeting at Zakopane after the

long interval since boyhood. 'He told me about you in Egypt, too, now I

come to think of it. He mentioned the _dahabieh_, but called you a

Russian--yes, I remember now,--and a Russian Princess into the bargain.

Evidently you made less impression on Tony than----'

It was then he stopped as though he had been struck. The idle

conversation changed. He heard her interrupting words from a curious

distance. They fell like particles of ice upon his heart.

'Polish, of course, not Russian,' she mentioned casually, 'but the rest is

right, though I never use the title. My husband, in his own country, is a

Prince, you see.'

Something reeled in him, then instantly righted itself. For a moment he

felt as though the freedom of their intercourse had received a shock that

blighted it. The words, 'my husband,' struck chill and ominous into his

heart. The recovery, however,--almost simultaneous--showed him that both

the freedom and the intercourse were right and unashamed. She gave him

nothing that belonged to any other: she was loyal and true to that other

as she was loyal and true to himself. Their relationship was high above

mere passional intrigue; it could exist--in the way she knew it, felt it--

side by side with that other one, before that other one's very eyes, if

need be. . . . He saw it true: he saw it innocent as daylight. . . .

For what he felt was somehow this: the woman in her was not his, but more

than that--it was not any one's. It still lay dormant. . . .

If there was a momentary confusion in his own mind, there was none, he

felt positive, in hers. The two words that struck him such a blow, she

uttered as lightly, innocently, as the rest of the talk between them.

Indeed, had that other--even in thought Tom preferred the paraphrase--been

present, she would have introduced them to each other then and there.

He heard her saying the little phrases even: 'My husband,' and, 'This is

Tom Kelverdon whom I've loved since childhood.'

Nothing brought more home to him the high innocence, the purity and

sweetness of this woman than the reflections that flung after one another

in his mind as he realised that his hope of her being a widow was not

justified, and at the same moment that he desired exclusive possession of

her--that he was definitely in love.

That she was unaware of any discovery, even if she divined the storm in

him at all, was clear from the way she went on speaking. For, while all

this flashed through his mind, she added quietly: 'He is in Warsaw now.

He--lives there. I go to him for part of every year.' To which Tom heard

his voice reply something as natural and commonplace as 'Yes--I see.'

Of the hundred pregnant questions that presented themselves, he did not

ask a single one: not that he lacked the courage so much as that he felt

the right was--not yet--his. Moreover, behind her quiet words he divined

a tragedy. The suffering that had become sweetness in her face was half

explained, but the full revelation of it belonged to 'that other' and to

herself alone. It had been their secret, he remembered, for at least

fifteen years.

CHAPTER X

Yet, knowing himself in love, he was able to set his house in order.

Confusion disappeared. With the method and thoroughness of his character

he looked things in the face and put them where they belonged.

Even to wake up to an untidy room was an affliction. He might arrive in a

hotel at midnight, but he could not sleep until his trunks were empty and

everything in its place. In such outer details the intensity of his

nature showed itself: it was the intensity, indeed, that compelled the

orderliness.

And the morning after this conversation, he woke up to an ordered mind--

thoughts and emotions in their proper places where he could see and lay

his hand upon them. The strength and weakness of his temperament betrayed

themselves plainly here, for the security that pedantic order brought

precluded the perspective of a larger vision. This careful labelling

enclosed him within somewhat rigid fences. To insist upon this precise

ticketing had its perilous corollary; the entire view--perspective,

proportion, vision--was lost sight of.

'I'm in love: she's beautiful, body, mind and soul. She's high above me,

but I'll climb up to where she is.' This was his morning thought, and the

thought that accompanied him all day long and every day until the moment

came to separate again. . . . 'She's a married woman, but her husband has

no claim on her.' Somehow he was positive of that; the husband had

forfeited all claim to her; details he did not know; but she was free; she

did no wrong.

In imagination he furnished plausible details from sensational experiences

life had shown him. These may have been right or wrong; possibly the

husband had ill-treated, then deserted her; they were separated possibly,

though--she had told him this--there were no children to complicate the

situation. He made his guesses. . . . There was a duty, however, that

she would not, did not neglect: in fulfilment of its claim she went to

Warsaw every year. What it was, of course, he did not know; but this

thought and the emotions caused by it, he put away into their proper

places; he asked no questions of her; the matter did not concern him

really. The shock experienced the day before was the shock of realising

that--he loved. Those two significant words had suddenly shown it to him.

The order of his life was changed. 'She is essential to me; I am

essential to her.' But 'She's all the world to me,' involved equally

'I'm all the world to her.' The sense of his own importance was

enormously increased. The Wave surged upwards with a sudden leap. . . .

There was one thing lacking in this love, perhaps, though he hardly

noticed it--the element of surprise. Ever since childhood he had

suspected this would happen. The love was predestined, and in so far

seemed a deliberate affair, pedestrian, almost calm. This sense of the

inevitable robbed it of that amazing unearthly glamour which steals upon

those who love for the first time, taking them deliciously by surprise.

He saw her beautiful, and probably she was, but her beauty was familiar to

him. He had come up with the childhood dream, and in coming up with it he

recognised it. It seemed thus somewhat. . . . But her mind and soul were

beautiful too, only these were more beautiful than he had dreamed.

In that lay surprise and wonder too. There was genuine magic here,

discovery and exhilarating novelty. He had not caught up with _that_.

The love as a whole, however, was expected, natural. It was inevitable.

The familiarity alone remained strange, a flavour of the uncanny about it

almost--yet certainly real.

And these things also he tried to face and label, though with less

success. To bring order into them was beyond his powers. She had

outstripped him somehow in her soul, but had come back to fetch him--also

to get something for herself she lacked. The rest was oddly familiar: it

had happened before. It was about to happen now again, but on a higher

level; only before it could happen completely he must overtake her.

The spiral idea lay in it somewhere. But the Wave contained and drove

it. . . . His mind was not supple; analogy, that spiritual solvent, did

not help him. Yet the fact remained that he somehow visualised the thing

in picture form; a rising wave bore them charging up the spiral curve to a

point whence they both looked down upon a passage they had made before.

She was always a little in front of him, beyond him. But when the Wave

finally broke they would rush together--become one . . . there would be

pain, but joy would follow.

And during all their subsequent happy days of companionship this one thing

alone marred his supreme contentment--this sense of elusiveness, that

while he held her she yet slipped between his fingers and escaped.

He loved; but whereas to most men love brings a feeling of finality and

rest, as of a search divinely ended, to Tom came the feeling that his

search was merely resumed, or, indeed, had only just begun. He had not

come into full possession of this woman: he had only found her. . . .

She was deep; her deceptive simplicity hid surprises from him; much--and

it was the greater part--he could not understand. Only when he came up

with that would possession be complete. Not that she said or did a single

thing that suggested this; she was not elusive of set purpose; she was

entirely guiltless of any desire to hold back a fraction of herself, and

to conceal was as foreign to her nature as to play with him; but that

some part of her hung high above his reach, and that he, knowing this,

admitted a subtle pain behind the joy. 'I can't get at her--quite,' he

put it to himself. 'Some part of her is not mine yet--doesn't belong to

me.'

He thought chiefly, that is, of his own possible disabilities rather than

of hers.

'I often wonder why we've come together like this,' he said once, as they

lay in the shade of a larch wood above Corvaux and looked towards the

snowy summits of Savoy. 'What brought us together, I mean? There's

something mysterious about it to me----'

'God,' she said quietly. 'You needed me. You've been lonely. But you'll

never be lonely again.'

Her introduction of the Deity into a conversation did not displease.

Fate, or any similar word, could have taken its place; she merely conveyed

her sense that their coming together was right and inevitable.

Moreover, now that she said it, he recognised the fact of loneliness--that

he always had been lonely, but that it was no longer possible. He felt

like a boy and spoke like a boy. She had come to look after, care for

him. She asked nothing for herself. The thought gave him a sharp and

sudden pang.

'But my love means a lot to you, doesn't it?' he asked tenderly.

'I mean, you need me too?'

'Everything, Tom,' she told him softly. He was conscious of the mother in

her, as though the mother overshadowed the woman. But while he loved it,

the tinge of resentment still remained.

'You couldn't do without me, could you?' He took the hand she placed upon

his knee and looked up into her quiet eyes. 'You'd be lonely too if--I

went?'

For a moment she gazed down at him and did not answer; he was aware of

both the pain and sweetness in her face; an interval of thoughtfulness

again descended on them both: then a great tenderness came welling up into

her eyes as she answered slowly: 'You couldn't go, Tom. You couldn't

leave me ever.'

Her hand was on his shoulder, almost about his neck as she said it, and he

came in closer, and before he knew what he was doing his face was buried

in her lap. Her hand stroked his hair. Twenty-five years dropped from

him--he was a child again, a little boy, and she, in some divine,

half-impersonal sense he could not understand, was mothering him.

No foolish feeling of shame came with it; the mood was too sudden for

analysis, it passed away swiftly too; but he knew, for a brief second, all

the sensations of a restless and dissatisfied boy who needed above all

else--comfort: the comfort that only an inexhaustible mother-love could

give. . . . And this love poured from her in a flood. Till now he had

never known it, nor known the need of it. And because it had been

curiously lacking he suddenly wondered how he had done without it.

A strange sense of tears rose in his heart. He felt pain and tragedy

somewhere. For there was another thing he wanted from her too. . . .

Through the sparkle of his joy peeped out that familiar, strange, rich

pain, but so swiftly he hardly recognised it. It withdrew again.

It vanished.

'But _you_ couldn't leave me either, could you?' he asked, sitting erect

again. He made a movement as though to draw her head down upon his

shoulder in the protective way of a man who loves, but--he could not do

it. It was curious. She did nothing to prevent, only somehow the

position would be a false one. She did not need him in that way. He was

not yet big enough to protect. It was she who protected him. And when

she answered the same second, the familiar sentence flashed across his

mind again: 'She has come back to fetch me.'

'I shall never, never leave you, Tom. We're together for always. I know

it absolutely.' The girl of seventeen, the unawakened woman who was

desired, the mother who thought not of herself,--all three spoke in those

quiet words; but with them, too, he was aware of this elusive other thing

he could not name. Perhaps her eyes conveyed it, perhaps the pain and

sweetness in the little face so close above his own. She was bending over

him. He looked up. And over his heart rushed again that intolerable

yearning--the yearning to stand where she stood, far, far beyond him, yet

with it the certainty that pain must attend the effort. Until that pain,

that effort were accomplished, she could not entirely belong to him.

He had to win her yet. Yet also he had to teach _her_ something. . . .

Meanwhile, in the act of protecting, mothering him she must use pain, as

to a learning child. Their love would gain completeness only thus.

Yet in words he could not approach it; he knew not how to.

'It's a strange relationship,' he stammered, concealing, as he thought,

the deep emotions that perplexed him. 'The world would misunderstand it

utterly.' She smiled, nodding her head. 'I wish----' he added, 'I mean

it comes to me sometimes--that you don't need me quite as I need you.

You're my whole life, you know--now.'

'You're growing imaginative, Tom,' she teased him smilingly.

Then, catching the earnest expression in his face, she added: 'My life has

been very full, you see, and I've always had to stand alone. There's been

so much for me to do that I've had no time to feel loneliness perhaps.'

'Rescuing the other floating faces!'

A slight tinge of a new emotion slipped through his mind, something he had

never felt before, yet so faint he could not even recapture it, much less

wonder whether it were jealousy or envy. It rose from the depths; it

vanished into him again. . . . Besides, he saw that she was smiling; the

teasing mood that so often baffled him was upon her; he heard her give

that passing laugh that almost 'kept him guessing,' as the Americans say,

whether she was in play or earnest.

'It's worth doing, anyhow--rescuing the floating faces,' she said: 'worth

living for.' And she half closed her eyes so that he saw her as a girl

again. He saw her as she had been even before he knew her, as he used to

see her in his dream. It was the dream-eyes that peered at him through

long, thick lashes. They looked down at him. He felt caught away to some

remote, strange place and time. He was aware of gold, of colour, of a

hotter blood, a fiercer sunlight. . . .

And the sense of familiarity became suddenly very real; he knew what she

was going to say, how he would answer, why they had come together. It all

flashed near, yet still just beyond his reach. He almost understood.

They had been side by side like this before, not in this actual place, but

somewhere--somewhere that he knew intimately. Her eyes had looked down

into his own precisely so, long, long ago, yet at the same time strangely

near. There was a perfume, a little ghostly perfume--it was the Whiff.

It was gone instantly, but he had tasted it. . . . A veil drew up. . . .

He saw, he knew, he remembered--_almost_. . . . Another second and he

would capture the meaning of it all. Another moment and it would reveal

itself--then, suddenly, the whole sensation vanished. He had missed it by

the minutest fraction in the world, yet missed it utterly. It left him

confused and baffled.

The veil was down again, and he was talking with Madame Jaretzka, the

Lettice Aylmer of his boyhood days. Such moments of the _deja-vu_ leave

bewilderment behind them, like the effect of sudden change of focus in the

eye; and with the bewilderment a sense of insecurity as well.

'Yes,' he said half dreamily, 'and you've rescued a lot already, haven't

you?' as though he still followed in speech the direction of the vanished

emotion.

'You know that, Tom?' she enquired, raising her eyelids, thus finally

restoring the normal.

He stammered rather: 'I have the feeling--that you're always doing good to

some one somewhere. There's something,'--he searched for a word--

'impersonal about you--almost.' And he knew the word was nearly right,

though found by chance. It included 'un-physical,' the word he did not

like to use. He did not want an angel's love; the spiritual, to him, rose

from the physical, and was not apart from it. He was not in heaven yet,

and had no wish to be. He was on earth; and everything of value--love,

above all--must spring from earth, or else remain incomplete, insecure,

ineffective even.

And again a tiny dart of pain shot through him. Yet he was glad he said

it, for it was true. He liked to face what hurt him. To face it was to

get it over. . . .

But she was laughing again gently to herself, though certainly not at him.

'What were you thinking about so long?' she asked. 'You've been silent

for several minutes and your thoughts were far away.' And as he did not

reply immediately, she went on: 'If you go to Assouan you mustn't fall

into reveries like that or you'll leave holes in the dam, or whatever your

engineering work is--_Tom_!'

She spoke the name with a sudden emphasis that startled him. It was a

call.

'Yes,' he said, looking up at her. He was emerging from a dream.

'Come back to me. I don't like your going away in that strange way--

forgetting me.'

'Ah, I like that. Say it again,' he returned, a deeper note in his voice.

'You _were_ away--weren't you?'

'Perhaps,' he said slowly. 'I can't say quite. I was thinking of you,

wherever I was.' He went on, holding her eyes with a steady gaze:

'A curious feeling came over me like--like heat and light. You seemed so

familiar to me all of a sudden that I felt I had known you ages and ages.

I was trying to make out where--it was----'

She dropped her eyelids again and peered at him, but no longer smiling.

There was a sterner expression in her face. The lips curved a moment in a

new strange way. The air seemed to waver an instant between them.

She peered down at him as through a mist. . . .

'There--like that!' he exclaimed passionately. 'Only I wish you wouldn't.

There's something I don't like about it. It hurts,'--and the same minute

felt ashamed, as though he had said a foolish thing. It had come out in

spite of himself.

'Then I won't, Tom--if you'll promise not to go away again. I was

thinking of Egypt for a second--I don't know why.'

But he did not laugh with her; his face kept the graver expression still.

'It changes you--rather oddly,' he said quietly, 'that lowering of the

eyelids. I can't say why exactly, but it makes you look----Eastern.'

Again he had said a foolish thing. A kind of spell seemed over him.

'Irish eyes!' he heard her saying. 'They sometimes look like that, I'm

told. But you promise, don't you?'

'Of course I promise,' he answered bluntly enough, because he meant it.

'I can never go away from you because,'--he turned and looked very hard at

her a moment--'because there's something in you I need in my very soul,'

he went on earnestly, 'yet that always escapes me. I can't get hold of--

all of you.'

And though she refused his very earnest mood, she answered with obvious

sincerity at once. 'That's as it should be, Tom. A man tires of a woman

the moment he gets to the end of her.' She gave her little laugh and

touched his hand. 'Perhaps that's what I'm meant to teach you. When you

know all of me----'

'I shall never know all of you,' said Tom.

'You never will,' she replied with meaning, 'for I don't even know it all

myself.' And as she said it, he thought he had never seen anything so

beautiful in all the world before, for the breeze caught her long gauzy

veil of blue and tossed it across her face so that the eyes seemed gazing

at him from a distance, but a distance that had height in it. He felt her

above him, beyond him, on this height, a height he must climb before he

could know complete possession.

'By Jove!' he thought, 'isn't it rising just!' For the Wave was under

them tremendously.

April meanwhile had slipped into May, and their daily companionship had

become the most natural thing in the world, when the telegram arrived that

threatened to interrupt the delightful intercourse. But it was not the

telegram Tom expected. Neither Greece nor Egypt claimed his talents yet,

for the contracts both at Assouan and Salonica were postponed until the

autumn, and the routine of a senior partner's life in London was to be his

immediate fate. He brought her the news at once: they discussed it

together in all its details and as intimately as though it affected their

joint lives similarly. His first thought was to run and talk it over with

her; hers, how the change might influence their intercourse, their present

and their future. Their relationship was now established in this solid,

natural way. He told her everything as a son might tell his mother: she

asked questions, counselled, made suggestions as a woman whose loving care

considered his welfare and his happiness before all else.

However, it brought no threatened interruption after all--involved,

indeed, less of separation than if he had been called away as they

expected: for though he must go to London that same week, she would

shortly follow him. 'And if you go to Egypt in the autumn, Tom,'--she

smiled at the way they influenced the future nearer to the heart's

desire--'I may go with you. I could make my arrangements accordingly--

take my holiday out there earlier instead of here as usual in the spring.'

The days passed quickly. Her first duty was to return to Warsaw; she

would then follow him to London and help him with his flat. No man could

choose furniture and carpets and curtains properly. They discussed the

details with the enthusiasm of children: she would come up several times a

week from her bungalow in Kent and make sure that his wall-papers did not

clash with the general scheme. Brown was his colour, he told her, and

always had been. It was the dominant shade of her eyes as well. He made

her promise to stand in the rooms with her eyes opened very wide so that

there could be no mistake, and they laughed over the picture happily.

She came to the train, and although he declared vehemently that he

disliked 'being seen off,' he was secretly delighted. 'One says such

silly things merely because one feels one must say something. And those

silly things remain in the memory out of all proportion to their value.'

But she insisted. 'Good-byes are always serious to me, Tom. One never

knows. I want to see you to the very last minute.' She had this way of

making him feel little things significant with Fate. But another little

thing also was in store for him. As the train moved slowly out he noticed

some letters in her hand; and one of them was addressed to Warsaw.

The name leaped up and stung him--Jaretzka. A spasm of pain shot through

him. She was leaving in the morning, he knew. . . .

'Write to me from Warsaw,' he said. 'Take care! We're moving!'

'I'll write every day, my dearest Tom, my boy. You won't forget me.

I shall see you in a fortnight.'

He let go the little hand he held till the last possible minute.

The bells drowned her final words. She stood there waving her hand with

the unposted letters in them, till the station pillars intervened and hid

her from him.

And this time no 'silly last things' had been said that could 'stay in the

memory out of all proportion to their value.' It was something he had

noticed on the envelope that stayed--not the husband's name, but a word in

the address, a peculiar Polish word he happened to know:--'Tworki'--the

name of the principal _maison de sante_ that stood just outside the city

of Warsaw. . . .

Half an hour, perhaps an hour, he sat smoking in his narrow sleeping

compartment, thinking with a kind of intense confusion out of which no

order came. . . . At Pontarlier he had to get out for the Customs

formalities. It was midnight. The stars were bright. The keen spring

air from the wooded Jura Mountains had a curious effect, for he returned

to his carriage feeling sleepy, the throng of pictures drowned into

calmness by one master-thought that reduced their confusion into order.

He looked back over the past weeks and realised their intensity.

He had lived. There was a change in him, the change of growth,

development. He loved. There was now a woman who was his entire world,

essential to him. He was essential to her too. And the importance of

this ousted all lesser things, even the senior partnership. This was the

master-thought--that he now lived for her. He was 'real' even as she was

'real,' each to the other _real_. The Wave had lifted him to a level

never reached before. And it was rising still. . . .

He fell asleep on this, to dream of a mighty stream that swept them

together irresistibly towards some climax that he never could quite see.

She floated near to save him. She floated down. Her little hands were

stretched. It was a gorgeous and stupendous dream--a dream of rising life

itself--rising till it would curve and break and fall, and the inevitable

thing would happen that would bring her finally into his hungry arms,

complete, mother and woman, a spiritual love securely founded on the sweet

and wholesome earth. . . .

CHAPTER XI

During the brief separation of a fortnight Tom was too busy in London to

allow himself much reflection. Absence, once the first keen sense of loss

is over, is apt to bring reaction. The self makes an automatic effort to

regain the normal life it led before the new emotion dislocated the

long-accustomed routine. It tries to run back again along the line of

least resistance that habit has made smooth and easy. If the reaction

continues to assert its claim, the new emotion is proved thereby a

delusion. The test lies there.

In Tom's case, however, the reaction was a feeble reminder merely that he

had once lived--without her. It took the form of regret for all the best

years of his life he had endured--how, he could not think--without this

tender, loving woman at his side. That is, he recognised that his love

was real and had changed his outlook fundamentally. He could never do

without her from this moment onwards. She equally needed him. He would

never leave her. . . . Further than that, for the present, he did not

allow himself to think. Having divined something of her tragedy, he

accepted the definite limitations. Speculations concerning another he

looked on as beside the point. As far as possible he denied himself the

indulgence in them. But another thing he felt as well--the right to claim

her, whether he exercised that right or not.

Concerning his relationship with her, however, he did not deny

speculation, though somehow this time the perspective was too vast for him

to manage quite. There was a strange distance in it: he lost himself in

remoteness. In either direction it ran into mists that were interminable,

as though veils and curtains lifted endlessly, melting into shadowy

reaches beyond that baffled all enquiry. The horizons of his life had

grown so huge. This woman had introduced him to a scale of living that he

could only gaze at with wondering amazement and delight, too large as yet

to conform to the order that his nature sought. He could not properly

find himself.

'It feels almost as if I've loved her before like this--yet somehow not

enough. That's what I've got to learn,' was the kind of thought that came

to him, at odd moments only. The situation seemed so curiously familiar,

yet only half familiar. They were certainly made for one another, and the

tie between them had this deep touch of the inevitable about it that

refused to go. That notion of the soul's advance in a spiral cropped up

in his mind again. He saw her both coming nearer and retreating--as a

moving figure against high light leaves the spectator uncertain whether it

is advancing or retiring. He would have liked to talk to Tony all about

it, for Tony would be sympathetic. He wanted a confidant and turned

instinctively to his cousin. . . . _She_ already understood more than he

did, though perhaps not consciously, and therein lay the secret of her odd

elusiveness. Yet, in another sense, his possession was incomplete because

a part of her still lay unawakened. 'I must love her more and more and

more,' he told himself. But, at the same time, he took it for granted

that he was indispensable to her, as she was to him.

These flashes of perception, deeper than anything he had experienced in

life hitherto, came occasionally while he waited in London for her return;

and though puzzled--his straightforward nature disliked all mystery--he

noted them with uncommon interest. Nothing, however, could prevent the

rise upwards of the Wave that bore the situation on its breast.

The affair swept him onwards; it was not to be checked or hindered.

He resigned direction to its elemental tide.

The faint uneasiness, also, recurred from time to time, especially now

that he was alone again. He attributed it to the unsatisfied desire in

his heart, the knowledge that as yet he had no exclusive possession, and

did not really own her; the sense of insecurity unsettled him, the feeling

that she was open to capture by any one--'who understands and appreciates

her better than I do,' was the way he phrased it sometimes. He was

troubled and uneasy because so much of her lay unresponsive to his touch--

not needing him. While he was climbing up to reach her, another, with a

stronger claim, might step in--step back--and seize her.

It made him smile a little even while he thought of it, for her truth and

constancy were beyond all question. And then, suddenly, he traced the

uneasiness to its source. There _was_ 'another' who had first claim upon

her--who had it once, at any rate. Though at present some cloud obscured

and negatived that claim, the cloud might lift, the situation change, the

claim become paramount again, as once it surely had been paramount.

And, disquieting though the possibility was, Tom was pleased with

himself--he was so naive and simple towards life--for having discerned it

clearly. He recognised the risk and thus felt half prepared in

advance. . . . In another way it satisfied him too. With this dream-like

suggestion that it all had happened before, he had always felt that a

further detail was lacking to complete the scene he half remembered.

Something, as yet, was wanting. And this item needed to make the strange

repetition of the scene fulfil itself seemed, precisely, the presence of

'another.'

Their intercourse, meanwhile, proved beyond words delightful during the

following weeks, when, after her return from Warsaw, she kept her word and

helped him in the prosaic business of furnishing his flat and settling

down, as in a hundred other details of his daily life as well. All that

they did and said together confirmed their dear relationship and

established it beyond reproach. There was no question of anything false,

illicit, requiring concealment: nothing to hide and no one to evade.

In their own minds their innocence was so sure, indeed, that it was not

once alluded to between them. It was impossible to look at her and doubt:

nor could the most cynical suspect Tom Kelverdon of an undesirable

intrigue with the wife of another man. His acquaintance, moreover, were

not of the kind that harboured the usual 'worldly' thoughts; he went

little into society, whereas the comparatively few Londoners she knew were

almost entirely--he discovered it by degrees--people whose welfare in one

way or another she had earnestly at heart. It was a marvel to him,

indeed, how she never wearied of helping ungrateful folk, for the wish to

be of service seemed ingrained in her. Her first thought on making new

acquaintances was always what she could do for them, not with money

necessarily, but by 'seeing' them in their proper _milieu_ and planning to

bring about the conditions they needed in order to realise themselves

fully. Failure, discontent, unhappiness were due to wrong conditions more

than to radical fault in the people themselves; once they 'found

themselves,' the rest would follow. It amounted to a genius in her.

It seemed the artist instinct that sought this unselfish end rather than

any religious tendency. She felt it ugly to see people at issue with

their surroundings. Her religion was humanity, and had no dogmas.

Even Tony Winslowe, now in England again, came in for his share of this

sweet fashioning energy in her; much to his own bewilderment and to Tom's

amusement. . . .

The summer passed towards early autumn and London emptied, but it made no

difference to them. Tom had urgent work to do and was absorbed in it,

never forgetting for a moment that he was now a Partner in the Firm.

He spent frequent week-ends at Madame Jaretzka's Kentish bungalow, where

she had for companion at the moment an Irish cousin who, as Tom easily

guessed, was also a dependant. This cousin had been invited with her

child, Molly, for the summer holidays, and these summer holidays had run

on into three months at least.

A tall, thin, angular woman, of uncertain manners and capricious

temperament, Mrs. Haughstone had perhaps lived so long upon another's

bounty that she had come to take her good fortune for granted, and

permitted herself freely two cardinal indulgences--grumbling and

jealousy. Having married unwisely, in order to better herself rather than

because she loved, her shiftless husband had disgraced himself with an

adventuress governess, leaving her with three children and something below

150 pounds a year. Madame Jaretzka had stepped in to bring them together

again: she provided schooling abroad, holidays, doctors, clothes, and all

she could devise by way of helping them 'find themselves' again, and so

turning their broken lives to good account. With the husband, sly, lazy,

devoid of both pride and honesty, she could do little, and she was quite

aware that he and his wife put their heads together to increase the flow

of 'necessaries' she generously supplied.

It was a sordid, commonplace story, sordidly treated by the soured and

vindictive wife, whose eventual aims upon her saviour's purse were too

obvious to be mistaken. Even Tom perceived the fact without delay.

He also perceived, behind the flattering tongue, an acid and suspicious

jealousy that regarded new friends with ill-disguised alarm.

Mrs. Haughstone thought of herself and her children before all else.

She mistook the impersonal attitude of her benefactress for credulous

weakness. A new friend was hostile to her shameless ambitions and

disliked accordingly. . . . Tom scented an enemy the first time he met

her. To him she expressed her disapproval of Tony, and _vice versa_,

while to her hostess she professed she liked them both--'but': the 'but'

implying that men were selfish and ambitious creatures who thought only of

their own advantage.

His country visits, therefore, were not made happier by the presence in

the cottage of this woman and her child, but the manner in which the

benefactress met the situation justified the respect he had felt first

months before. It increased his love and admiration. Madame Jaretzka

behaved unusually. That she grasped the position there could be no doubt,

but her manner of dealing with it was unique. For when Mrs. Haughstone

grumbled, Madame Jaretzka gave her more, and when Mrs. Haughstone yielded

to jealousy, Madame Jaretzka smiled and said no word. She won her

victories with further generosity.

'Another face that has to be rescued?' Tom permitted himself to say once,

after an unfortunate scene in which his hostess had been subtly accused of

favouritism to another child in the house. He could hardly suppress the

annoyance and impatience that he felt.

'Oh, I never thought about it in that way,' she answered with her little

laugh, quite unruffled by what had happened. 'The best way is to help

them to--see themselves. Then they try to cure themselves.' She laughed

again, as though she had said a childish thing instead of something

distinctly wise. 'I can't _cure_ them,' she added. 'I can only help.'

Tom looked at her. 'Help others to see themselves--as they are,'

he repeated slowly. 'So that's how you do it, is it?' He reflected a

moment. 'That's being impersonal. You rouse no opposition that way.

It's good.'

'Is it?' she replied, as though guiltless of any conscious plan.

'It seems the natural thing to do.' Then, as he was evidently preparing

for discussion in his honest and laborious way, she stopped him with a

look, smiling, sighing, and holding up her little finger warningly.

He understood. Analysis and argument she avoided always; they obscured

the essential thing; here was the intuitive method of grasping the

solution the instant the problem was stated. Detailed examination

exhausted her merely. And Tom obeyed that look, that threatening finger.

In little things he invariably yielded, while in big things he remained

firm, even obstinate, though without realising it.

Her head inclined gracefully, acknowledging her victory. 'That's one

reason I love you, Tom,' she told him as reward; 'you're a boy on the

surface and a man inside.'

Tom saw beauty flash about her as she said it; emotion rose through him in

a sudden tumult; he would have seized her, kissed her, crumpled her little

self against his heart and held her there, but for the tantalising truth

that the thing he wanted would have escaped him in the very act.

The loveliness he yearned for, craved, was not open to physical attack; it

was a loveliness of the spirit, a bird, a star, a wild flower on some high

pinnacle near the snow: to obtain it he must climb to where it soared

above the earth--rise up to her.

He laughed and took her little finger in both hands. He felt awkward, big

and clumsy, a giant trying to catch an elusive butterfly. 'You turn us

all round _that_!' he declared. 'You turn her,' nodding towards the door,

'and me,' kissing the tip quickly, 'and Tony too. Only she and Tony don't

know you twiddle them--and I do.'

She let him kiss her hand, but when he drew nearer, trying to set his lips

upon the arm her summer dress left bare, she put up her face instead and

kissed him lightly on the cheek. Her free hand made a caressing gesture

across his neck and shoulder, as she stood on tiptoe to reach him.

The mother in her, not the woman, caressed him dearly. It was wonderful;

but the surge of mingled emotions clouded something in his brain, and a

string of words came tumbling out in a fire of joy and pain. 'You're a

queen and a conqueror,' he said, longing to seize her, yet holding himself

back strongly. 'Somewhere I'm your helpless slave, but somewhere I'm your

master.' The protective sense came up in him. 'It's too delicious!

I'm in a dream! Lettice,' he whispered, 'it's my Wave! The Wave is behind

it! It's behind us both!'

For an instant she half closed her eyelids in the way she knew both

pleased and frightened him. Invariably this gave her the advantage.

He felt her above him when she looked like this, he kneeling with hands

outstretched, yearning to be raised to where she stood. 'You're a baby, a

poet, and a man rolled into a dear big boy,' she said quickly, moving

towards the door away from him. 'And now I must go and get my garden hat,

for it's time to meet Tony and Moyra at the train, and as you have so much

surplus energy to-day we'll walk through the woods instead of going in the

motor.' She waved her hand and vanished behind the door. He heard the

patter of her feet as she ran upstairs.

He went to the open window, lit his pipe, leaned out with his head among

the climbing roses, and thought of many things. Great joy was in him, but

behind it, far down where he could not reach it quite, hid a gnawing pain

that was obscure uneasiness. Pictures came floating across his mind,

rising and falling, sometimes rushing hurriedly; he saw things and faces

mixed, his own and hers chief among them. Her little finger pointed to a

star. He sighed, he wondered, he half prayed. Would he ever understand,

rise to her level, possess her for his very own? She seemed so far beyond

him. It was only part of her he touched.

The faces fluttered and looked into his own, one among them an imagined

face--the husband's. It was a face with light blue eyes, moreover.

He saw Tony's too, frank, laughing, irresponsible, and the face of the

Irish girl who was Tony's latest passion. Tony could settle down to no

one for long. Tom remembered suddenly his remark at Zakopane months ago,

that the bee never sipped the last drop of honey from the flower. . . .

His thoughts tumbled and flew in many directions, yet all at once.

Life seemed very full and marvellous; it had never seemed so intense

before; it bore him onwards, upwards, forwards, with a rush beyond all

possible control and guidance. He acknowledged a rather delicious sense

of helplessness. The Wave was everywhere behind and under him. It was

sweeping him along.

Then thought returned to Tony and the Irish girl who were coming down for

the Sunday, and he smiled to himself as he recalled his cousin's ardent

admiration at a theatre party a few nights ago in town. Tony had

something that naturally attracted women, dominating them too easily.

Was he heartless a little in the business? Would he never, like Tom,

settle down with one? His thought passed to the latest capture: there

were signs, indeed, that here Tony was caught at last.

For Tom, Tony, and Madame Jaretzka formed an understanding trio, and there

were few expeditions, town or country, of which the lively bird-enthusiast

did not form an active member. Tony took it all very lightly, unaware of

any serious intention behind the pleasant invitations. Tom was amused by

it. He looked forward to his cousin's visit now. He was feeling the need

of a confidant, and Tony might so admirably fill the role. It was

curious, a little: Tom often felt that he wanted to confide in Tony, yet

somehow or other the confidences were never actually made. There was

something in Tony that invited that free, purging confidence which is a

need of every human being. It was so easy to tell things, difficult

things, to this careless, sympathetic being; yet Tom never passed the

frontier into definite revelation. At the last moment he invariably held

back.

Thought passed to his hostess, already manoeuvring to help Tony 'find

himself.' It amused Tom, even while he gave his willing assistance; for

Tony was of evasive, slippery material, like a fluid that, pressed in one

given direction, resists and runs away into several others. 'He scatters

himself too much,' she remarked, 'and it's a pity; there's waste.'

Tom laughed, thinking of his episodic love affairs. 'I didn't mean that,'

she added, smiling with him; 'I meant generally. He's full of talent and

knowledge. His power over women is natural, but it comes of mere

brilliance. If all that were concentrated instead, he would do something

real; he might be extraordinarily effective in life. Yes, Tom, I mean

it.' But Tom, though he smiled, agreed with her, feeling rather flattered

that she liked his cousin.

'But he breaks too many hearts,' he said lightly, thinking of his last

conquest, and then added, hardly knowing why he said it, 'By the by, did

you ever notice his hands?'

The way she quickly looked up at him proved that she divined his meaning.

But the glance had a flash of something that escaped him.

'You're very observant, Tommy,' she said evasively. It seemed impossible

for her to say a disparaging thing of anybody. She invariably picked out

and emphasised the best. 'You don't admire them?'

'Do _you_, Lettice?'

She paused for an imperceptible second, then smiled. 'I rather like big

rough hands in a man--perhaps,' she said without any particular interest,

'though--in a way--they frighten me sometimes. Tony's are ugly, but

there's power in them.' And she placed her own small gloved hand upon his

arm. 'He's rather irresponsible, I know,' she added gently, 'but he'll

grow out of that in time. He's beginning to improve already.'

'You see, he's got no mother,' Tom observed.

'No wife either--yet,' she added with a laugh.

'Or work,' put in Tom, with a touch of self-praise, and thinking of his

own position in the world. Her interest in Tony had the effect of making

himself seem worthier, more important. This fine woman, who judged people

from so high a standpoint, had picked out--himself! He had an absurd yet

delightful feeling as though Tony was their child, and the perfectly

natural way she took him under her mothering wing stirred an admiring pity

in him.

Then as they walked together through the fragrant pine-woods to the

station, an incident at a recent theatre party rose before his memory.

Tony and his Amanda had been with them. The incident in question had left

a singular impression on his mind, though why it emerged now, as they

wandered through the quiet wood, he could not tell. It had occurred a

week or two ago. He now saw it again--in a tenth of the time it takes to

tell.

The scene was laid in ancient Egypt, and while the play was commonplace,

the elaborate production--scenery, dresses, atmosphere--was good.

But Tom, unable to feel interest in the trivial and badly acted story, had

felt interest in another thing he could not name. There was a subtle

charm, a delicate glamour about it as of immensely old romance, but some

lost romance of very far away. Yet, whether this charm was due to the

stage effects or to themselves, sitting there in the stalls together,

escaped him. For in some singular way the party, his hostess certainly,

seemed to interpenetrate the play itself. She, above all, and Tony

vaguely, seemed inseparable from what he gazed at, heard, and felt.

Continually he caught himself thinking how delightful it was to know

himself next to Madame Jaretzka, so close that he shared her atmosphere,

her perfume, touched her even; that their minds were engaged intimately

together watching the same scene; and also, that on her other side, sat

Tony, affectionate, whimsical, fascinating Tony, whom they were trying to

help 'find himself'; and that he, again, was next to a girl he liked.

The harmonious feeling of the four was pleasurable to Tom. He felt

himself, moreover, an important and indispensable item in its composition.

It was vague; he did not attempt to analyse it as self-flattery, as

vanity, as pride--he was aware, merely, that he felt very pleased with

himself and so with everybody else. It was gratifying to sit at the head

of the group; everybody could see how beautiful _she_ was; the dream of

exclusive ownership stole over him more definitely than ever before.

'She's chosen _me_! She needs me--a woman like that!'

The audience, the lights, the colour, the music influenced him. It seemed

he caught something from the crude human passion that was being ranted on

the stage and transferred it unconsciously into his relations with the

party he belonged to, but, above all, into his relationship with her--and

with another. But he refused to let his mind dwell upon that other.

He found himself thinking instead of the divine tenderness that was in

her, yet at the same time of her elusiveness and the curious pain it

caused him. Whence came, he wondered, the sweet and cruel flavour?

It seemed like a memory of something suffered long ago, the sweetness in

it true and exquisite, the cruelty an error on his own part somehow.

The old hint of uneasiness, the strange, rich pain he had known in

boyhood, stole faintly over him; its first and immediate effect

heightening the sense of dim, old-world romance already present. . . .

And he had turned cautiously to look at her. She was leaning forward a

little as though the play absorbed her, and the attitude startled him.

It caused him almost a definite shock. The face had pain in it.

She was not aware that he stared; her attention was fastened upon the

stage; but the eyes were fixed, the little mouth was fixed as well, the

lips compressed; and all her features wore this expression of curious

pain. There was sternness in them, something almost hard. He watched her

for some minutes, surprised and fascinated. It came over him that he

almost knew what that was in her mind. Another moment and he would

discover it--when, past her profile, he caught his cousin's eyes peering

across at him. Tony had felt the direction of his glance and had looked

round: and Tony--mischievously--winked!

The spell was broken. In that instant, however, through the heated air of

the crowded stalls already weighted with sickly artificial perfumes, there

reached him faintly, as from very far away, another and a subtler perfume,

something of elusive fragrance in it. It was very poignant, instinct as

with forgotten associations. It was the Whiff. It came, it went; but it

was unmistakable. And he connected it, as by some instantaneous

certitude, with the play--with Egypt.

'What do you think of it, Lettice?' he had whispered, nodding towards the

stage.

She turned with a start. She came back. The expression of pain flashed

instantly away. She had evidently not been thinking of the performance.

'It's not much, Tom, is it? But I like the scenery. It makes me feel

strange somewhere--the change that comes over me in Egypt. We'll be there

together--some day.' She leaned over with her lips against his ear.

And there was significance in the commonplace words, he thought--a

significance her whisper did not realise, and certainly did not intend.

'All three of us,' he rejoined before he knew what he meant exactly.

And she nodded hurriedly. Either she agreed, or else she had not heard

him. He did not insist, he did not repeat, he sat there wondering why on

earth he said the thing. A touch of pain pricked him like an insect's

sting, but a pain he could not account for. His blood, at the same time,

leaped as she bent her face so near to his own. He felt his heart swell

as he looked into her eyes. Her beauty astonished him; in this twilight

of the theatre it glowed and burned like a veiled star. He fancied--it

was the trick of the half-light, of course--she had grown darker and that

a dusky flush lay on her cheeks.

'What were you thinking about?' he whispered lower again, changing the

sentence slightly. And, as he asked it, he saw Tony still watching him,

two seats away. It annoyed him; he drew his head back a little so that

her face concealed him.

'I don't know,' she whispered back; 'nothing in particular.' She put her

gloved hand stealthily towards him and touched his knee. The gesture, he

felt, was intended to supplement the words. For the first time in his

life he did not quite believe her. The thought was odious, but not to be

denied. It merely flashed across him, however. He forgot it instantly.

'Seems oddly familiar somehow,' he said, 'doesn't it?'

Again she nodded, smiling, as she gazed for a moment first into one eye,

then into the other, then turned away to watch the stage. And abruptly,

as she did so, the entire feeling vanished, the mood evaporated, her

expression was normal once more, and he fixed his attention on the stupid

play.

He turned his interest into other channels; he would take his party on to

supper. He did so. Yet an impression remained--the impression that the

Wave had come nearer, higher, that it was rising and gaining impetus,

accumulating mass, momentum, power. The gay supper could not dissipate

that, nor could the happy ten minutes in a taxi, when he drove her to her

door, decrease or weaken it. She was very tired. They spoke little, he

remembered; she gave him a gentle touch as the cab drew up, and the few

things she said had entirely to do with his comfort in his flat. He felt

in that touch and in those tender questions the mother only. The woman,

it suddenly occurred to him, had gone elsewhere. He had never had it,

never even claimed it. A deep sense of loneliness touched him for a

moment. His heart beat rapidly. He dreamed. . . .

Why the scene came back to him now as they walked slowly through the

summery pine-wood he knew not. He caught himself thinking vividly of

Egypt suddenly, of being in Egypt with her--and with another. But on that

other he refused to let thought linger. Of set purpose he chose Tony in

that other's place. He saw it in a picture: he and she together helping

Tony, she and Tony equally helping him. It passed before him merely, a

glowing coloured picture set in high light against the heavy background of

these English fir-woods and the Kentish sky. Whether it came towards him

or retreated, he could not say. It was very brief, instantaneous almost.

The memory of the play, with its numerous attendant correlations, rose up,

then vanished.

'Give me your arm, Tom, you mighty giant: these pine-needles are so

slippery.' He felt her hand creep in and rest upon his muscles, and a

glow of boyish pride came with it. In her summer dress of white, her big

garden hat and flowing violet veil, she looked adorable. He liked the

long white gauntlet gloves. The shadows of the trees became her well:

against the thick dark trunks she seemed slim and dainty as a flower that

the breeze bent over towards him. 'You're so horribly big and strong,'

she said, and her eyes, full of expression, glanced up at him. He watched

her little feet in the neat white shoes peep out in turn as they walked

along; her fingers pressed his arm. He tried to take her parasol, but she

prevented him, saying it was her only weapon of defence against a giant,

'and there _is_ a giant in this forest, though only a baby one perhaps!'

He felt the mother in her pour over him in a flood of tenderness that

blessed and soothed and comforted. It was as if a divine and healing

power streamed from her into him.

'And what _were_ you thinking about, Tom?' she enquired teasingly.

'You haven't said a word for a whole five minutes!'

'I was thinking of Egypt,' he answered with truth.

She looked up quickly.

'I'm to go out in December,' he went on. 'I told you. It was decided at

our last Board Meeting.'

She said she remembered. 'But it's funny,' she added, 'because I was

thinking of Egypt too just then--thinking of the Nile, my river with the

floating faces.'

The week-end visit was typical of many others; Mrs. Haughstone, seeing

safety in numbers possibly, was pleasant on the surface, Molly deflecting

most of her poisoned darts towards herself; while Tom and Tony shared the

society of their unconventional hostess with boyish enjoyment.

Tom modified the air of ownership he indulged when alone with her, and

no one need have noticed that there was anything more between them than a

hearty, understanding friendship. Tony, for instance, may have guessed

the true situation, or, again, he may not; for he said no word, nor showed

the smallest hint by word, by gesture, or by silence--most significant

betrayal of all--that he was aware of any special tie. Though a keen

observer, he gave no sign. 'She's an interesting woman, Tom,' he remarked

lightly yet with enthusiasm once, 'and a rare good hostess--a woman in a

thousand, I declare. We make a famous trio. As you've got that Assouan

job we'll have some fun next winter in Egypt, eh?'

And Tom, pleased and secretly flattered by the admiration, tried to make

his confidences. Unless Tony had liked her this would have been

impossible. But they formed such a natural, happy trio together, giving

the lie to the hoary proverb, that Tom felt it was permissible to speak of

her to his sympathetic cousin. Already they had laughingly discussed the

half-forgotten acquaintanceship begun in the _dahabieh_ on the Nile, Tony

making a neat apology by declaring to her, 'Beautiful women blind me so,

Madame Jaretzka, that I invariably forget all lesser details. And that's

why I told Tom you were a Russian.'

On this particular occasion, too, it was made easier because Tony had

asked his cousin's opinion about the Irish girl, invited for his special

benefit. 'I was never so disappointed in my life,' he said in his

convincing yet airy way. 'She looked so wonderful the other night.

It was the evening dress, I suppose. You should always see a girl first

in the daytime; the daylight self is the real self.' And Tom, amused by

the irresponsible attitude towards the sex, replied that the right woman

looked herself in any dress because it was as much a part of her as her

own skin. 'Yes,' said Tony, 'it's the thing inside the skin that counts,

of course; you're right; the rest is only a passing glamour. But

friendship with a woman is the best of all, for friendship grows

insensibly into the best kind of love. It's a delightful feeling,' he

added sympathetically, 'that kind of friendship. Independent of what they

wear!'

He enjoyed his pun and laughed. 'I say, Tom,' he went on suddenly with a

certain inconsequence, 'have you ever met the Prince--Madame Jaretzka's

husband--by the way? I wonder what he's like.' He looked up carelessly

and raised his eyebrows.

'No,' replied Tom in a quiet tone, 'but I--exp--hope to some day.'

'I think he ran away and left her, or something,' continued the other.

'He's dead, anyhow, to all intents and purposes. But I've been wondering

lately. I'll be bound there was ill-treatment. She looks so sad

sometimes. The other night at the theatre I was watching her----'

'That Egyptian play?' broke in Tom.

'Yes; it was bad enough to make any one look sad, wasn't it? But it was

curious all the same----'

'I didn't mean the badness.'

'Nor did I. It was odd. There was atmosphere in spite of everything.'

'I thought you were too occupied to notice the performance,' Tom hinted.

Tony laughed good-naturedly. 'I was a bit taken up, I admit,' he said.

'But there was something curious all the same. I kept seeing you and our

hostess on the stage----'

'In Egypt!'

'In a way, yes.' He hesitated.

'Odd,' said his cousin briefly.

'Very. It seemed--there was some one else who ought to have been there as

well as you two. Only he never came on.'

Tom made no comment. Was this thought-transference, he wondered?

The natural sympathy between them furnished the requisite conditions

certainly.

'He never came on,' continued Tony, 'and I had the queer feeling that he

was being kept off on purpose, that he was busy with something else, but

that the moment he came on the play would get good and interesting--real.

Something would happen. And it was then I noticed Madame Jaretzka----'

'And me, too, I suppose,' Tom put in, half amused, half serious.

There was an excited yet uneasy feeling in him.

'Chiefly her, I think. And she looked so sad,--it struck me suddenly.

D'you know, Tom,' he went on more earnestly, 'it was really quite curious.

I got the feeling that we three were watching that play together from

above it somewhere, looking down on it--sort of from a height above----'

'Above,' exclaimed his cousin. There was surprise in him--surprise at

himself. That faint uneasiness increased. He realised that to confide in

Tony was impossible. But why?

'H'm,' Tony went on in a reflective way as if half to himself. 'I may

have seen it before and forgotten it.' Then he looked up at his cousin.

'And what's more--that we three, as we watched it, knew the same thing

together--knew that we were waiting for another chap to come on, and that

when he came the silly piece would turn suddenly interesting, dramatic in

a true sense, only tragedy instead of comedy. Did _you_, Tom?' he asked

abruptly, screwing up his eyes and looking quite serious a moment.

Tom had no answer ready, but his cousin left no time for answering.

'And the fact is,' he continued, lowering his voice, 'I had the feeling

the other chap we were waiting for was _him_.'

Tom was too interested to smile at the grammar. 'You mean--her husband?'

he said quietly. He did not like the turn the talk had taken; it pleased

him to talk of her, but he disliked to bring the absent husband in.

There was trouble in him as he listened.

'Possibly it was,' he added a trifle stiffly. Then, ashamed of his

feeling towards his imaginative cousin, he changed his manner quickly.

He went up and stood behind him by the open window. 'Tony, old boy, we're

together somehow in this thing,' he began impulsively; 'I'm sure of it.'

Then the words stuck. 'If ever I want your help----'

'Rather, Tom,' said the other with enthusiasm, yet puzzled, turning with

an earnest expression in his frank blue eyes. In another moment, like two

boys swearing eternal friendship, they would have shaken hands. Tom again

felt the impulse to make the confidences that desire for sympathy

prompted, and again realised that it was difficult, yet that he would

accomplish it. Indeed, he was on the point of doing so, relieving his

mind of the childhood story, the accumulated details of Wave and Whiff and

Sound and Eyes, the singular Montreux meeting, the strange medley of joy

and uneasiness as well, all in fact without reserve--when a voice from the

lawn came floating into the room and broke the spell. It lifted him

sharply to another plane. He felt glad suddenly that he had not spoken--

afterwards, he felt very glad. It was not right in regard to her, he

realised.

'You're never ready, you boys,' their hostess was saying, 'and Miss

Monnigan declares that men always wait to be fetched. The lunch-baskets

are all in, and the motor's waiting.'

'We didn't want to be in the way,' cried Tony gaily, ever ready with an

answer first. 'We're both so big and clumsy. But we'll make the fire in

the woods and do the work that requires mere strength without skill all

right.' He leaped out of the window to join them, while Tom went by the

door to fetch his cap and overcoat. Turning an instant he saw the three

figures on the lawn standing in the sunlight, Madame Jaretzka with a

loose, rough motor-coat over her white dress, a rose at her throat and the

long blue veil he loved wound round her hair and face. He saw her eyes

look up at Tony and heard her chiding him. 'You've been talking mischief

in there together,' she was saying laughingly, giving him a searching

glance in play, though the tone had meaning in it. 'We were talking of

you,' swore Tony, 'and you,' he added, turning by way of polite

after-thought to the girl. And one of his big hands he laid for a moment

upon Madame Jaretzka's arm.

Tom turned sharply and hurried on into the hall. The first thought in his

mind was how tender and gentle Madame Jaretzka looked standing in the

sunshine, her eyes turned up at Tony. His second thought was vaguer: he

felt glad that Tony admired and liked her so. The third was vaguer still:

Tony didn't really care for the girl a bit and was only amusing himself

with her, but Madame Jaretzka would protect her and see that no harm came

of it. She could protect the whole world. That was her genius.

In a moment these three thoughts flashed through him, but while the last

two vanished as quickly as they came, the first lingered like sunlight in

him. It remained and grew and filled his heart, and all that day it kept

close by him--her love, her comfort, her mothering compassion.

And Tom felt glad for some reason that his confidences to Tony after all

had been interrupted and prevented. They remained thus interrupted and

prevented until the end, even when the 'other' came upon the scene, and

above all while that 'other' stayed. It all seemed curiously inevitable.

CHAPTER XII

The last few weeks of September they were much alone together, for Mrs.

Haughstone had gone back to her husband's tiny house at Kew, Molly to the

Dresden school, and Tony somewhere into space--northern Russia, he said,

to watch the birds beginning to leave.

Meanwhile, with deepening of friendship, and experiences whose

ordinariness was raised into significance because this woman shared them

with him, Tom saw the summer fade in England and usher in the longer

evenings. Light and heat waned from the sighing year; winds, charged with

the memory of roses, took the paling skies; the swallows whispered

together of the southern tour. New stars swam into their autumnal places,

and the Milky Way came majestically to its own. He watched the curve of

it on moonless nights, pouring its grand river across the heavens. And in

the heart of its soft brilliance he saw Cygnus, cruciform and shining,

immersed in the white foam of the arching wave.

He noticed these things now, as once long ago in early boyhood, because a

time of separation was at hand. His yearning now was akin to his yearning

then--it left a chasm in his soul that beauty alone could help to fill.

At fifteen he was thirty-five, as now at thirty-five he was fifteen again.

Lettice was not, indeed, at a Finishing School across the Channel, but she

was shortly going to Warsaw to spend October with her husband, and in

November she was to sail for Egypt from Trieste. Tom was to follow in

December, so a separation of three months was close at hand. 'But a

necessary separation,' she said one evening as they motored home beneath

the stars, 'is always bearable and strengthening; we shall both be

occupied with things that must--I mean, things we ought to do. It's the

needless separations that are hard to bear.' He replied that it would be

wonderful meeting again and pretending they were strangers. He tried to

share her mood, her point of view with honesty. 'Yes,' she answered,

'only that wouldn't be quite true, because you and I can never be

separated--really. The curve of the earth may hide us from each other's

sight like that,'--and she pointed to the sinking moon--'but we feel the

pull just the same.'

They leaned back among the cushions, sharing the mysterious beauty of the

night-sky in their hearts. They lowered their voices as though the hush

upon the world demanded it. The little things they said seemed suddenly

to possess a significance they could not account for quite and yet

admitted.

He told her that the Milky Way was at its best these coming months, and

that Cygnus would be always visible on clear nights. 'We'll look at that

and remember,' he said half playfully. 'The astronomers say the Milky Way

is the very ground-plan of the Universe. So we all come out of it.

And you're Cygnus.' She called him sentimental, and he admitted that

perhaps he was. 'I don't like this separation,' he said bluntly. In his

mind he was thinking that the Milky Way had his wave in it, and that its

wondrous arch, like his life and hers, rose out of the 'sea' below the

world. In that sea no separation was possible.

'But it's not that that makes you suddenly poetic, Tom. It's something

else.'

'Is it?' he answered. A whisper of pain went past him across the night.

He felt something coming; he was convinced she felt it too. But he could

not name it.

'The Milky Way is a stream as well as a wave. You say it rises in the

autumn----?' She leaned nearer to him a little.

'But it's seen at its best a little later--in the winter, I believe.'

'We shall be in Egypt then,' she mentioned. He could have sworn she would

say those very words.

'Egypt,' he repeated slowly. 'Yes--in Egypt.'

And a little shiver came over him, so slight, so quickly gone again, that

he hoped it was imperceptible. Yet she had noticed it.

'Why, Tom, don't you like the idea?'

'I wonder--' he began, then changed the sentence--'I wonder what it will

be like. I have a curious desire to see it--I know that.'

He heard her laugh under her breath a little. What came over them both in

that moment he couldn't say. There was a sense of tumult in him

somewhere, a hint of pain, of menace too. Her laughter, slight as it was,

jarred upon him. She was not feeling quite what he felt--this flashed,

then vanished.

'You don't sound enthusiastic,' she said calmly.

'I am, though. Only--I had a feeling----' He broke off. The truth was

he couldn't describe that feeling even to himself.

'Tom, dear, my dear one--' she began, then stopped. She also stopped an

impulsive movement towards him. She drew back her sentence and her arms.

And Tom, aware of a rising passion in him he might be unable to control,

turned his face away a moment. Something clutched at his heart as with

cruel pincers. A chill followed close upon the shiver. He felt a moment

of keen shame, yet knew not exactly why he felt it.

'I am a sentimental ass!' he exclaimed abruptly with a natural laugh.

His voice was tender. He turned again to her. 'I believe I've never

properly grown up.' And before he could restrain himself he drew her

towards him, seized her hand and kissed it like a boy. It was that kiss,

combined with her blocked sentence and uncompleted gesture, rather than

any more passionate expression of their love for one another, that he

remembered throughout the empty months to follow.

But there was another reason, too, why he remembered it. For she wore a

silk dress, and the arm against his ear produced a momentary rustling that

brought back the noise in the Zakopane bedroom when the frozen branch had

scraped the outside wall. And with the Sound, absent now so long, the old

strange uneasiness revived acutely. For that caressing gesture, that

kiss, that phrase of love that blocked its own final utterance brought

back the strange rich pain.

In the act of giving them, even while he felt her touch and held her

within his arms--she evaded him and went far away into another place where

he could not follow her. And he knew for the first time a singular

emotion that seemed like a faint, distant jealousy that stirred in him,

yet a spiritual jealousy . . . as of some one he had never even seen.

They lingered a moment in the garden to enjoy the quiet stars and see the

moon go down below the pine-wood. The tense mood of half an hour ago in

the motor-car had evaporated of its own accord apparently.

A conversation that followed emphasised this elusive emotion in him,

because it somehow increased the remoteness of the part of her he could

not claim. She mentioned that she was taking Mrs. Haughstone with her to

Egypt in November; it again exasperated him; such unselfishness he could

not understand. The invitation came, moreover, upon what Tom felt was a

climax of shameless behaviour. For Madame Jaretzka had helped the family

with money that, to save their pride, was to be considered lent.

The husband had written gushing letters of thanks and promises that--Tom

had seen these letters--could hardly have deceived a schoolgirl.

Yet a recent legacy, which rendered a part repayment possible, had been

purposely concealed, with the result that yet more money had been 'lent'

to tide them over non-existent or invented difficulties.

And now, on the top of this, Madame Jaretzka not only refused to divulge

that the legacy was known to her, but even proposed an expensive two

months' holiday to the woman who was tricking her.

Tom objected strongly for two reasons; he thought it foolish kindness, and

he did not want her.

'You're too good to the woman, far too good,' he said. But his annoyance

was only increased by the firmness of the attitude that met him.

'No, Tom; you're wrong. They'll find out in time that I know, and see

themselves as they are.'

'You forgive everything to everybody,' he observed critically. 'It's too

much.'

She turned round upon him. Her attitude was a rebuke, and feeling rebuked

he did not like it. For though she did not quote 'until seventy times

seven,' she lived it.

'When she sees herself sly and treacherous like that, she'll understand,'

came the answer, 'she'll get her own forgiveness.'

'Her own forgiveness!'

'The only real kind. If I forgive, it doesn't alter her. But if she

understands and feels shame and makes up her mind not to repeat--that's

forgiving herself. She really changes then.'

Tom gasped inwardly. This was a level of behaviour where he found the air

somewhat rarified. He saw the truth of it, but had no answer ready.

'Remorse and regret,' she went on, 'only make one ineffective in the

present. It's looking backwards, instead of looking forwards.'

He felt something very big in her as she said it, holding his eyes firmly

with her own. To have the love of such a woman was, indeed, a joy and

wonder. It was a keen happiness to feel that he, Tom Kelverdon, had

obtained it. His admiration for himself, and his deep, admiring love for

her rose side by side. He did not recognise the flattery of self in this

attitude. The simplicity in her baffled him.

'I could forgive _you_ anything, Lettice!' he cried.

'Could you?' she said gently. 'If so, you really love me.'

It was not the doubt in her voice that overwhelmed him then; she never

indulged in hints. It was a doubt in himself, not that he loved her, but

that his love was not yet big enough, unselfish enough, sufficiently large

and deep to be worthy of this exquisite soul beside him. Perhaps it was

realising he could not yet possess her spirit that made him seize the

precious little body that contained it. Nothing could stop him. He took

her in his arms and held her till she became breathless. The passionate

moment expressed real spiritual yearning. And she knew it. She did not

struggle, yet neither did she respond. They stood upon different levels

somehow.

'There'll be nothing left to love,' she gasped, 'if you do that often!'

She released herself quietly, tidying her hair and putting her hat

straight while she smiled at him. Her dark veil had caught in his

tie-pin. She disentangled it, her hands touching his mouth as she did so.

He kissed them gently, bending his head down with an air of repentance.

'My God, Lettice--you're precious to me!' he stammered.

But even as he said it, even while he still felt her soft cheeks against

his lips, her frail unresisting figure within his arms, there came this

pang of sudden pain that was so acute it frightened him. There was

something impersonal in her attitude that alarmed him. What was it?

He was helpless to understand it. The excitement in his blood obscured

inner perception. . . . Such tempestuous moments were rare enough between

them, and when they came he felt that she endured them rather than

responded. He was aware of a touch of shame in himself. But this

pain----? Even while he held her it seemed again that she escaped him

because of the heights she lived on, yet partly, too, because of the

innocence which had not yet eaten of the tree of knowledge. . . . Was

that, then, the lack in her? Had she yet to learn that the spiritual dare

not be divorced wholly from the physical and that the divine blending of

the two in purity of heart alone brings safety?

She slipped from his encircling arms and--rose. He struggled after her.

But that air he could not breathe. She was too far above him. She had to

stoop to meet the passionate man in him that sought to seize and hold her.

She had--the earlier phrase returned--come back to fetch him. He did not

really love yet as he ought to love. He loved himself--in her; selfishly

somehow, somewhere. But this thought he did not capture wholly. It cast

a shadow merely and was gone.

Somewhere, too, there was jealous resentment in him. He could not feel

himself indispensable to a woman who occupied a pinnacle.

His cocksureness wavered a little before the sharp attack. Pang after

pang stung him shrewdly, stung his pride, his confidence, his vanity,

shaking the platform on which he stood till each separate plank trembled

and the sense of security grew less.

But the confusion in his heart and mind bewildered him. It was all so

strange and incomprehensible; he could not understand it. He knew she was

true and loyal, her purity beyond reproach, her elusiveness not calculated

or intended, yet that somewhere, somehow she could do without him, and

that if he left her she--almost--would have neither remorse nor regret.

She would just accept it and--forgive. . . .

And he thought suddenly with an intense bitterness that amazed him--of the

husband. The thought of that 'other' who had yet to come afflicted him

desperately. When he met those light-blue eyes of the Wave he would

surely know them . . .! He felt again the desire to seek counsel and

advice from another, some one of his own sex, a sympathetic and

understanding soul like Tony.

The turmoil in him was beyond elucidation: thoughts and emotions of

nameless kind combined to produce a fluid state of insecurity he could not

explain. As usual, however, there emerged finally the solid fact which

seemed now the keynote of his character; at least, he invariably fell back

upon it for support against these occasional storms: 'She has singled me

out; she can't really do without me; we're necessary to each other; I'm

safe.' The rest he dismissed as half realised only and therefore not

quite real. His position with her was unique, of course, something the

world could not possibly understand, and, while resenting what he called

the 'impersonal' attitude in her, he yet knew that it was precisely this

impersonal attitude that justified their love. Their love, in fine, was

proved spiritual thereby. They were in the 'sea' together. Invariably in

the end he blamed himself.

The rising Wave, it seemed, was bringing up from day to day new,

unexpected qualities from the depths within him, just as it brings up mud

and gravel from the ground-bed of the shore. He felt it driving him

forward with increasing speed and power. With an irresistible momentum

that left him helpless, it was hurrying him along towards the moment when

it would lower its crest again towards the earth--and break.

He knew now where the smothering crash would come, where he would finally

meet the singular details of his boyhood's premonition face to face,--the

Sound, the Whiff, the other pair of Eyes. They awaited him--in Egypt.

In Egypt, at last, he would find the entire series, recognise each item.

He would also discover the nature of the wave that was neither of water

nor of snow. . . .

Yet, strange to say, when he actually met the pair of light-blue eyes, he

did not recognise them. He encountered the face to which they belonged,

but was not warned. While fulfilling its prophecy, the premonition

failed, of course, to operate.

For premonitions are a delicate matter, losing their power in the act of

justifying themselves. To prevent their fulfilment were to stultify their

existence. Between a spiritual warning and its material consummation

there is but a friable and gossamer alliance. Had he recognised, he might

possibly have prevented; whereas the deeper part of him unconsciously

invited and said, Come.

And so, not recognising the arrival of the other pair of eyes, Tom, when

he met them, knew himself attracted instead of repelled. Far from being

warned, he knew himself drawn towards their owner by natural sympathy, as

towards some one whose deep intrusion into his inner life was necessary to

its fuller realisation--the tumultuous breaking of the rapidly

accumulating Wave.

PART III