On reaching Luxor at eight o'clock in the morning, to his keen delight an
Arab servant met him with an unexpected invitation. He had meant to go
first to his hotel, but Lettice willed otherwise, everything thought out
beforehand in her loving way. He drove accordingly to her house on the
outskirts of the town towards Karnak, changed and bathed in a room where
he recognised with supreme joy a hundred familiar touches that seemed
transplanted from the Brown Flat at home--and found her at nine o'clock
waiting for him on the verandah. Breakfast was laid in the shady garden
just beyond.
It was ideal as a dream. She stood there dressed in white, wearing a big
sun-hat with little roses, sparkling, radiant, a graceful fairy figure
from the heart of spring. 'Here's the inevitable fly-whisk, Tom,' was the
first thing she said, and as naturally as though they had parted a few
hours before, 'it's to keep the flies away, and to keep you at your
distance too!' And his first remark, escaping him impulsively in place of
a hundred other things he had meant to say, was, 'You look different;
you've changed. Lettice, you're far more lovely than I knew. I've never
seen you look like that before!' He felt his entire being go out to her
in a consuming flame. 'You look perfectly divine.' Sheer admiration took
his breath away. 'I believe you're Isis herself,' he laughed in his
delight, 'come back into her own!'
'Then you must be Osiris, Tom!' her happy voice responded, 'new risen from
his sandy tomb!'
There was no time for private conversation, for Mrs. Haughstone appeared
just then and enquired politely after his health and journey.
'The flies are awful,' she mentioned, 'but Lettice always insists on
having breakfast out of doors. I hope you'll be able to stand it.'
And she continued to flutter her horse-hair whisk as though she would have
liked to sweep Egypt itself from the face of the map. 'No wonder the
Israelites were glad to leave. There's sand in everything you eat and
flies on everything you see.' Yet she said it with what passed in her
case for good nature; she, too, was evidently enjoying herself in Egypt.
Tom said that flies and sand would not trouble him with such gorgeous
sunlight to compensate, and that anyhow they were better than soot and
fogs in London.
'You'll be tired of the sun before a week is over,' she replied,
'and long to see a cloud or feel a drop of rain.' She followed his eyes
which seemed unable to leave the face and figure of his hostess.
'But it all agrees wonderfully with my cousin. Don't you find her looking
well? She's quite changed into another person, _I_ think,' the tone
suggesting that it was not altogether a change that she herself approved
of. 'We're all different here, a little. Even Mr. Winslowe's improved
enormously. He's steadier and wiser than he used to be.' And Tom,
laughing, said he hoped he would improve, too, himself.
The comforting hot coffee, the delicious rolls, the cool iced fruit, and,
above all, Lettice beside him at last in the pleasant shade, gave Tom such
high spirits that the woman's disagreeable personality produced no effect.
Through the gate in the stone wall at the end of the garden, beneath
masses of drooping bougainvillaea, the Nile dreamed past in a sheet of
golden haze; the Theban hills, dipped in the crystal azure of the sky,
rose stern and desolate upon the horizon; the air, at this early hour, was
fresh and keen. He felt himself in some enchanted garden of the ancient
world with a radiant goddess for companion. . . . There was a sound of
singing from the river below--the song of the Nile boatman that has not
changed these thousand years; a quaint piping melody floated in from the
street outside; from the farther shore came the dull beating of a native
tom-tom; and the still, burning atmosphere held the mystery of wonder in
suspension. Her beauty, at last, had found its perfect setting.
'I never saw your eyes so wonderful--so soft and brilliant,' he whispered
as soon as they were alone. 'You're very happy.' He paused, looking at
her. 'That's me, isn't it? Lettice, say it is at once.' He was very
playful in his joy; but he longed eagerly to hear her admit that his
coming meant as much to her as it meant to him.
'I suppose it must be,' she replied, 'but it's the climate too. This keen
dry air and the sunshine bring all one's power out. There's something
magical in it. You forget the years and feel young--against the
background of this old land a lifetime seems like an afternoon, merely.
And the nights--oh, Tom, the stars are too, too marvellous.' She spoke
with a kind of exuberance that seemed new in her.
'They must be,' he rejoined, as he gazed exultantly, 'for they're all in
you, sun, air, and stars. You're a perfect revelation to me of what a
woman----'
'Am I?' she interrupted, fluttering her whisk between her chair and his.
'But now, dear Tom, my headstrong boy, tell me how you are and all about
yourself, your plans, and everything else in the world besides.' He told
her what he could, answered all her questions, declared he and she were
going to have the time of their lives, and behaved generally, as she told
him, like a boy out of school. He admitted it. 'But I'm hungry, Lettice,
awfully hungry.' He kept reminding her that he had been starving for two
long months; surely she was starving too. He longed to hear her confess
it with a sigh of happy relief. 'My arms and lips are hungry,' he went on
incorrigibly, 'but I'm tired, too, from travelling. I feel like putting
my head on your breast and going sound asleep.' 'My boy,' she said
tenderly, 'you shall.' She responded instantly to that. 'You always were
a baby and I'm here to take care of you.' He seized her hand and kissed
it before she could draw it away. 'You must be careful, Tom. Everything
has eyes in Egypt; the Arabs move like ghosts.' She glanced towards the
windows. 'And the gossip is unbelievable.' She was quiet again now, and
very gentle; it struck him how calm and sweet she was towards him, yet
that there was a delightful happy excitement underneath that she only just
controlled. He was aware of something wild in her just out of sight--a
kind of mental effervescence, almost intoxication she deliberately
suppressed.
'And so are you--unbelievable,' he exclaimed impetuously; 'unbelievably
beautiful. This is your country with a vengeance, Lettice. You're like
an Egyptian queen--a princess of the sun!'
He gazed critically at her till she lowered her eyes. He realised that,
actually, they were not visible from the house and that the garden trees
were thick about them; but he also received a faint impression that she
did not want, did not intend, to allow quite the same intimacy as before.
It just flashed across him with a hint of disappointment, then was gone.
His boyish admiration, perhaps, annoyed her. He had felt for a second
that her excuse of the windows and the gossip was not the entire truth.
The merest shadow of a thought it was. He noticed her eyes fixed intently
upon him. The same minute, then, she rose quietly and rustled over to his
chair, kissed him on the cheek quickly, and sat down again. 'There!' she
said playfully as though she had guessed his thoughts, 'I've done the
awful thing; now you'll be reasonable, perhaps!' And whether or not she
had divined his mood, she instantly dispelled it--for the moment. . . .
They talked about a hundred things, moving their chairs as the blazing
sunshine found them out, till finally they sat with cushions on the steps
of stone that led down to the river beneath the flaming bougainvillaea.
He felt the strange touch of Egypt all about them, that touch of eternity
that floats in the very air, a hint of something deathless and sublime
that whispers in the sunshine. Already he was aware of the long fading
stretch of years behind. He thought of Egypt as two vast hands that held
him, one of tawny gold and one of turquoise blue--the desert and the sky.
In the hollow of those great hands, he lay with Lettice--two tiny atoms of
sand. . . .
He watched her every movement, every gesture, noted the slightest
inflection of her voice, was aware that five years at least had dropped
from her, that her complexion had grown softer, a shade darker, too, from
the sun; but, above all, that there was a new expression, a new light
certainly, soft and brilliant, in her eyes. It seemed, briefly put, that
she had blossomed somehow into a fuller expression of herself.
An overflowing vitality, masked behind her calmness, betrayed itself in
every word and glance and gesture. There was an exuberance he called joy,
but it was, somehow, a new, an unexpected joy.
She was, of course, aware of his untiring scrutiny; and presently, in a
lull, keeping her eyes on the river below them, she spoke of it.
'You find me a little changed, Tom, don't you? I warned you that Egypt
had a certain effect on me. It enflames the heart and----'
'But a very wonderful effect,' he broke in with admiration. 'You're
different in a way--yes--but _you_ haven't changed--not towards me, I
mean.' He wanted to say a great deal more, but could not find the words;
he divined that something had happened to her, in Warsaw probably, and he
longed to question her about the 'other' who was her husband, but he could
not, of course, allow himself to do so. An intuitive feeling came to him
that the claim upon her of this other was more remote than formerly.
His dread had certainly lessened. The claims upon her of this 'other'
seemed no longer--dangerous. . . . He wondered. . . . There was a certain
confusion in his mind.
'You got my letter at Alexandria?' she interrupted his reflections.
He thanked her with enthusiasm, trying to remember what it said--but
without success. It struck him suddenly that there was very little in it
after all, and he mentioned this with a reproachful smile. 'That's my
restraint,' she replied. 'You always liked restraint. Besides, I wasn't
sure it would reach you.' She laughed and blew a kiss towards him.
She made a curious gesture he had never seen her make before. It seemed
unlike her. More and more he registered a difference in her, as if side
by side with the increase of spontaneous vitality there ran another mood,
another aspect, almost another point of view. It was not towards him, yet
it affected him. There seemed a certain new lightness, even
irresponsibility in her; she was more worldly, more human, not more
ordinary by any means, but less 'impersonal.' He remembered her singular
words: 'It enflames the heart.' He wondered--a little uneasily.
There seemed a new touch of wonder about her that made him aware of
something commonplace, almost inferior, in himself. . . .
At the same time he felt another thing--a breath of coldness touched him
somewhere, though he could not trace its origin to anything she did or
said. Was it perhaps in what she left unsaid, undone? He longed to hear
her confess how she had missed him, how thrilled she was that he had come:
but she did not say these passionately desired things, and when he teased
her about it, she showed a slight impatience almost: 'Tom, you know I
never talk like that. Anything sentimental I abhor. But I live it.
Can't you see?' His ungenerous fancies vanished then at once; at a word,
a smile, a glance of the expressive eyes, he instantly forgot all else.
'But I _am_ different in Egypt,' she warned him playfully again, half
closing her eyelids as she said it. 'I wonder if you'll like me--quite as
well.'
'More,' he replied ardently, 'a thousand times more. I feel it already.
There's mischief in you,' he went on watching the half-closed eyes,
'a touch of magic too, but very human magic. I love it.' And then he
whispered, 'I think you're more within my reach.'
'Am I?' She looked bewitching, a being of light and air.
'Everybody will fall in love with you at sight.' He laughed happily,
aware of an enchantment that fascinated him more and more, but when he
suddenly went over to her chair, she stopped him with decision.
'Don't, Tom, please don't. Tony'll be here any minute now. It would be
unpleasant if he saw you behaving wildly like this! He wouldn't
understand.'
He drew back. 'Oh, Tony's coming--then I must be careful!' He laughed,
but he was disappointed and he showed it: it was their first day together,
and eager though he was to see his cousin, he felt it might well have been
postponed a little. He said so.
'One must be natural, Tom,' she told him in reply; 'it's always the best
way. This isn't London or Montreux, you see, and----'
'Lettice, I understand,' he interrupted, a trifle ashamed of himself.
'You're quite right.' He tried to look pleased and satisfied, but the
truth was he felt suddenly--stupid. 'And we've got lots of time--three
months or more ahead of us, haven't we?' She gave him an expressive,
tender look with which he had to be contented for the moment.
'And by the by, how is old Tony, and who is his latest?' he enquired
carelessly.
'Very excited at your coming, Tom. You'll think him improved, I hope.
I believe _I_'m his latest,' she added, tilting her chin with a delicious
pretence at mischief. And the gesture again surprised him. It was new.
He thought it foreign to her. There seemed a flavour of impatience, of
audacity, almost of challenge in it.
'Finding himself at last. That's good. Then you've been fishing to some
purpose.'
'Fishing?'
'Rescuing floating faces.'
She pouted at him. 'I'm not a saint, Tom. You know I never was.
Saints are very inspiring to read about, but you couldn't live with one--
or love one. Could you, now?'
He gave an inward start she did not notice. The same instant he was aware
that it was her happy excitement that made her talk in this exaggerated
way. That was why it sounded so unnatural. He forgot it instantly.
They laughed and chatted as happily as two children--Tom felt a boy
again--until Mrs. Haughstone appeared, marching down the river bank with
an enormous white umbrella over her head, and the talk became general.
Tom said he would go to his hotel and return for lunch; he wanted to
telephone to Assouan. He asked where Tony was staying. 'But he knew I
was at the Winter Palace,' he exclaimed when she mentioned the Savoy.
'He found some people there he wanted to avoid,' she explained, 'so moved
down to the Savoy.'
Tom said he would do the same; it was much nearer to her house, for one
thing: 'You'll keep him for lunch, won't you?' he said as he went off.
'I'll try,' she promised, 'but he's so busy with his numerous friends as
usual that I can't be sure of him. He has more engagements here than in
London,'--whereupon Mrs. Haughstone added, 'Oh, he'll stay, Mr. Kelverdon.
I'm sure he'll stay. We lunch at one o'clock, remember.'
And in his room at the hotel Tom found a dozen signs of tenderness and
care that increased his happiness; there were touches everywhere of her
loving thought for his comfort and well-being--flowers, his favourite
soap, some cigarettes, one of her own deck-chairs, books, and even a big
box of crystallised dates as though he was a baby or a little boy.
It all touched him deeply; no other woman in the world could possibly have
thought out such dear reminders, much less have carried them into effect.
There was even a writing-pad and a penholder with the special nib he
liked. He laughed. But her care for him in such trivial things was
exquisite because it showed she claimed the right to do them.
His heart brimmed over as he saw them. It was impossible to give up any
room, even a hotel room, into which she had put her sweet and mothering
personality. He could do without Tony's presence and companionship,
rather than resign a room she had thus prepared for him. He engaged it
permanently therefore. Then, telephoning to Assouan, he decided to take
the night train and see what had to be done there. It all sounded most
satisfactory; he foresaw much free time ahead of him; occasional trips to
the work would meet the case at present. . . .
Happier than ever, he returned to a lunch in the open air with her and
Tony, and it was the gayest, merriest meal he had ever known.
Mrs. Haughstone retired to sleep through the hotter hours of the
afternoon, leaving the trio to amuse themselves in freedom. And though
they never left the shady garden by the Nile, they amused themselves so
well that tea was over and it was time for Tom to get ready for his train
before he realised it. Tony and Madame Jaretzka drove him to his hotel,
and afterwards to the station, sitting in the compartment with him until
the train was actually moving. He watched them standing on the platform
together, waving their hands. He waved his own. 'I'll be back to-morrow
or the next day,' he cried. Emotions and sensations were somewhat tangled
in him, but happiness certainly was uppermost.
'Don't forget,' he heard Tony shout. . . . And her eyes were on his own
until the trees on the platform hid her from his sight behind their long
deep shadows.