The weeks that followed seemed both brief and long to Tom. The separation
he felt keenly, though as a breathing spell the interval was even welcome
in a measure. Since the days at Montreux he had been living intensely,
swept along by a movement he could not control: now he could pause and
think a moment. He tried to get the bird's-eye view in which alone
details are seen in their accurate relations and proportions.
There was much that perplexed his plain, straightforward nature. But the
more he thought, the more puzzled he became, and in the end he resigned
himself happily to the great flow of life that was sweeping him along.
He was distinctly conscious of being 'swept along.' What was going to
happen would happen. He wondered, watched and waited. The idea of Egypt,
meanwhile, thrilled him with a curious anticipation each time he thought
of it. And he thought of it a good deal.
He received letters from Warsaw, but they told nothing of her life there:
she referred vaguely to duties whose afflicting nature he half guessed
now; and the rest was filled with loving solicitude for his welfare.
Even through the post she mothered him absurdly. He felt his life now
based upon her. Her love was indispensable to him.
The last letters--from Vienna and Trieste--were full of a tenderness most
comforting, and he felt relief that she had 'finished with Warsaw,' as he
put it. His own last letter was timed to catch her steamer. 'You have
all my love,' he wrote, 'but you can give what you can spare to Tony, as
he's in Egypt by now, and tell him I shall be out a month from to-day.
Everything goes well here. I'm to have full charge of the work at
Assouan. The Firm has put everything in my hands, but there won't be much
to do at first, and I shall be with you at Luxor a great deal.
I'm looking forward to Egypt too--immensely. I believe all sorts of
wonderful things are going to happen to us there.'
He was very pleased with himself, and very pleased with her, and very
pleased with everything. The wave of his life was rising still
triumphantly.
He kept her Warsaw letters and reread them frequently. She wrote
admirably. Mrs. Haughstone, it seemed, complained about everything, from
the cabin and hotel room 'which, she declares, are never so good as my
own,' to her position as an invited guest, 'which she accepts as though
she favoured me by coming, thinking herself both chaperone and
indispensable companion. How little some people realise that no one is
ever really indispensable!' And the first letter from Egypt told him to
come out quickly and 'help me keep her in her place, as only a man can do.
Tony wonders why you're so long about it.' It pleased him very much, and
as the time approached for leaving, his spirits rose; indeed, he reached
Marseilles much in the mood of a happy, confident boy who has passed all
exams, and is off upon a holiday most thoroughly deserved.
There had been time for three or four letters from Luxor, and he read them
in the train as he hurried along from Geneva towards the south, leaving
the snowy Jura hills behind him. 'Those are the blue mountains we watched
from Montreux together in the spring,' he said to himself, looking out of
the window. 'Soon, in Egypt, we shall watch the Desert and the Nile
instead.' And, remembering that dream-like, happy time of their earliest
acquaintance, his heart beat in delighted anticipation. He could think of
nothing else but her. Those Montreux days seemed years ago instead of a
brief six months. What a lot he had to tell her, how much they would have
to talk about. Life, indeed, was rich and full. He was a lucky man;
yet--he deserved it all. Belief and confidence in himself increased.
He gazed out of the window, thinking happily as the scenery rushed
by. . . . Then he came back to the letters and read them over yet once
again; he almost knew them now by heart; he opened his bag and read the
Warsaw letters too. Then, putting them all away, he lay back in his
corner and tried to sleep. The express train seemed so slow, but the
steamer would seem slower still. . . . Thoughts and memories passed idly
through his brain, grew mingled and confused; his eyes were closed; he
fell into a doze: he almost slept--when something rose into his drowsy
mind and made him suddenly wakeful.
What was it? He didn't know. It had vanished as soon as it appeared.
But the drowsy mood had passed, the desire to sleep was gone. There was
impatience in him, the keen wish to be in Egypt--immediately. He cursed
the slow means of travel, longed to be out there, on the spot, with her
and Tony. Her last letters had been full of descriptions of the place and
people, of Tony and his numerous friends, his kindness in introducing her
to the most interesting among them, their picnics together on the Nile and
in the Desert, visits to the famous sites of tomb and temple, in
particular of an all-night bivouac somewhere and the sunrise over the
Theban hills. . . . Tom, as he read it all, felt this keen impatience to
be sharing it with them; he was out of it; oh, how he would enjoy it all
when he got there! The words 'Theban hills' called up a vivid and
stimulating picture in particular.
But it was not this that chased the drowsy mood and made him wakeful.
It was the letters themselves, something he had not noticed hitherto,
something that had escaped him as he first read them one by one.
Indefinable, it hid between the lines. Only on reading the series as a
whole was it noticeable at all. He wondered. He asked himself vague
questions.
Opening his bag again, he went through the letters in the order of their
arrival; then put them back inside the elastic ring with a sensation of
relief and a happy sigh. He had discovered the faint, elusive impression
that had made him wakeful, but in discovering it had satisfied himself
that it was imagination--caused by the increasing impatience of his
impetuous heart. For it had seemed to him that he was aware of a change,
though so slight as to be scarcely perceptible, and certainly not
traceable to actual words or sentences. It struck him that the Warsaw
letters felt the separation more keenly, more poignantly, than the
Egyptian letters. This seemed due rather to omissions in the latter than
to anything else that he could name, for while the Warsaw letters spoke
frequently of the separation, of her longing to see him close, those from
Luxor omitted all such phrases. There were pleas in plenty for his
health, his comfort, his welfare and success--the Mother found full
scope--but no direct expression of her need for him. This, briefly, was
the notion he had caught faintly from 'between the lines.'
But, having run it to earth, he easily explained it too. At Warsaw she
was unhappy; whereas now, in Egypt, their reunion was almost within sight:
she felt happier, too, her unpleasant duties over. It was all natural
enough. 'What a sentimental donkey a man is when he's in love!' he
exclaimed with a self-indulgent smile of pleased forgiveness; 'but the
fact is--when she's not by me to explain--I could imagine anything!'
And he fell at length into the doze his excited fancy had postponed.
After leaving Marseilles his impatience grew with the slowness of the
steamer. The voyage of four days seemed interminable. The sea and sky
took on a deeper blue, the air turned softer, the sweetness of the south
became more marked. His exhilaration increased with every hour, the
desire to reach his destination increasing with it. There was an
intensity about his feelings he could not entirely account for.
The longing to see Egypt merged with the longing to see Lettice.
But the two were separate. The latter was impatient happiness, while the
former struck a slower note--respect and wonder that contained a hint of
awe.
Somewhere in this anticipatory excitement, too, hid drama. And his first
glimpse of the marvellous old land did prove dramatic in a sense.
For when a passenger drew his attention to the white Alexandrian harbour
floating on the shining blue, he caught his breath a moment and his heart
gave a sudden unexpected leap. He saw the low-lying coast, a palm, a
mosque, a minaret; he saw the sandy lip of--Africa.
That shimmering line of blue and gold was Egypt. . . . He had known it
would look exactly thus, as he now saw it. The same instant his heart
contracted a little. . . . He leaned motionless upon the rail and watched
the coast-line coming nearer, ever nearer. It rose out of the burning
haze of blue and gold that hung motionless between the water and the air.
Bathed in the drenching sunlight, the fringe of the great thirsty Desert
seemed to drink the sea. . . .
His entry was accompanied by mingled emotions and sensations.
That Lettice stood waiting for him somewhere behind the blaze of light
contributed much; yet the thrill owned a more complex origin, it seemed.
To any one not entirely callous to the stab of strange romance and
stranger beauty, the first sight of Egypt must always be an event, and
Tom, by no means thus insensitive, felt it vividly. He was aware of
something not wholly unfamiliar. The invitation was so strong, it seemed
to entice as with an attraction that was almost summons. As the ship drew
nearer, and thoughts of landing filled his mind, he felt no opposition, no
resistance, no difficulty, as with other countries. There was no hint of
friction anywhere. He seemed instantly at home. Egypt not merely
enticed--she pulled him in.
'Here I am at last!' whispered a voice, as he watched the noisy throng of
Arabs, Nubians, Soudanese upon the crowded wharf. He delighted in the
colour, the gleaming eyes, bronze skins, the white caftans with their red
and yellow sashes. The phantasmal amber light that filled the huge, still
heavens lit something similar in his mind and thoughts. Only the train,
with its luxurious restaurant car, its shutters to keep out the dust and
heat, appeared incongruous. He lost the power to think this or that.
He could only feel, and feel intensely. His feet touched Egypt, and a
deep glow of inner happiness possessed him. He was not disappointed
anywhere, though as yet he had seen nothing but a steamer quay. Then he
sent a telegram to Lettice: 'Arrived safely. Reach Luxor eight o'clock
to-morrow morning.'; and, having slid through the Delta country with the
flaming sunset, he had his first glimpse of the lordly Pyramids as the
train drew into Cairo. Dim and immense he saw them across the
swift-falling dusk, shadowy as forgotten centuries that cannot die.
Though too distant to feel their menace, he yet knew them towering over
him, mysterious, colossal, unintelligible, the sentinels of a gateway he
had passed.
Such was the first touch of Egypt on his soul. It was as big and magical
as he had known it would be. The magnificence and the glamour both were
there. Europe already lay forgotten far behind him, non-existent.
Some one tapped him on the shoulder, whispered a password, he was--
in. . . .
He dined in Cairo and took the night train on to Luxor, the white,
luxurious _wagon lit_ again striking an incongruous note. For he had
stepped from a platform into space, a space that floated suns and
constellations. About him was that sense of the illimitable which broods
everywhere in Egypt, in sand and sky, in sun and stars; it absorbed him
easily, small human speck in a toy train with electric lights and modern
comforts! An emotion difficult to seize gripped his heart, as he slid
deeper and deeper into the land towards Lettice. . . . For Lettice also
was involved in this. With happiness, yet somehow, too, with tears, he
thought of her waiting for him now, expecting him, perhaps reading his
telegram for the twentieth time. Through a mist of blue and gold she
seemed to beckon to him across the shimmer of the endless yellow sands.
He saw the little finger he had kissed. The dear face smiled. But there
was a change upon it somewhere, though a change too subtle to be precisely
named. The eyelids were half closed, and in the smile was power; the
beckoning finger conveyed a gesture that was new--command. It seemed to
point; it had a motion downwards; about her aspect was some flavour of
authority almost royal, borrowed, doubtless, from the regal gold and
purple of the sky's magnificence.
Oddly, again, his heart contracted as this changed aspect of her, due to
heightened imagination, rose before the inner eye. A sensation of
uncertainty and question slipped in with it, though whence he knew not.
A hint of insecurity assailed his soul--almost a sense of inferiority in
himself. It even flashed across him that he was under orders. It was
inexplicable. . . . A restlessness in his blood prevented sleep. . . .
He drew the blind up and looked out.
There was no moon. The night was drowned in stars. The train rushed
south towards Thebes along the green thread of the Nile; the Lybian desert
keeping pace with it, immense and desolate, death gnawing eternally at the
narrow strip of life. . . . And again he knew the feeling that he had
stepped from a platform into space. Egypt lay spread _below_ him.
He fell towards it, plunging, and as he fell, looked down--upon something
vaguely familiar and half known. . . . An underlying sadness,
inexplicable but significant, crept in upon his thoughts.
They rushed past Bedrashein, a straggling Arab village where once great
Memphis owned eighteen miles of frontage on the stately river; he saw the
low mud huts, the groves of date-palms that now marked the vanished
splendour. They slid by in their hundreds, the spectral desert gleaming
like snow between the openings. The huge pyramids of Sakkhara loomed
against the faint western afterglow. He saw the shaft of strange green
light they call zodiacal.
And the sadness in him deepened inexplicably--that strange Egyptian
sadness which ever underlies the brilliance. . . . The watchful stars
looked down with sixty listening centuries between them and a forgotten
glory that dreamed now among a thousand sandy tombs. For the silent
landscape flying past him like a dream woke emotions both sweet and
painful that he could not understand--sweet to poignancy, exquisitely
painful.
Perhaps it was natural enough, natural, too, that he should transfer these
in some dim measure to the woman now waiting for him among the ruins of
many-gated Thebes. The ancient city, dreaming still beside the storied
river, assumed an appearance half fabulous in his thoughts. Egypt had
wakened imagination in his soul. The change he fancied in Lettice was
due, doubtless, to the transforming magic that mingled an actual present
with a haunted past. Possibly this was some portion of the truth. . . .
And yet, while the mood possessed him, some joy, some inner sheath, as it
were, of anticipated happiness slipped off him into the encroaching yellow
sand--as though he surrendered, not so much the actual happiness, as his
right to it. A second's helplessness crept over him; another Self that
was inferior peeped up and sighed and whispered. . . . He was aware of
hidden touches that stabbed him into uneasiness, disquiet, almost
pain. . . . Some outer tissue was stripped from his normal being, leaving
him naked to the tang of extremely delicate shafts, buried so long that
interpretation failed him.
The curious sensation, luckily, did not last; but this hint of a
familiarity that seemed both sweet and dangerous, made it astonishingly
convincing at the time. Some aspect of vanity, of confidence in himself
distinctly weakened. . . .
It passed with the spectral palm trees as the train sped farther south.
He finally dismissed it as the result of fatigue, excitement and
anticipation too prolonged. . . . Yes, he dismissed it. At any rate it
passed. It sank out of sight and was forgotten. It had become, perhaps,
an integral portion of his being. Possibly, it had always been so, and
had been merely waiting to emerge. . . .
But such intangible and elusive emotions were so new to him that he could
not pretend to deal with them. There is a stimulus as of ether about the
Egyptian climate that gets into the mind, it is said, and stirs unwonted
dreams and fantasies. The climate becomes mental. His stolid temperament
was, perhaps, pricked thus half unintelligibly. He could not understand
it. He drew the blind down. But before turning out the light, he read
over once again the note of welcome Lettice had sent to meet him at the
steamer. It was brief, but infinitely precious. The thought of her love
sponged all lesser feelings completely from his mind, and he fell asleep
thinking only of their approaching meeting, and of his marvellous deep
joy.