The conflict in Tom's puzzled heart sharpened that evening into dreadful
edges that cut him mercilessly whichever way he turned. One minute he
felt sure of Lettice, the next the opposite was clear. Between these two
certainties he balanced in secret torture, one factor alone constant--that
his sense of security was shaken to the foundations.
Belief in his own value had never been thus assailed before; that he was
indispensable had been an ultimate assurance. His vanity and self-esteem
now toppled ominously. A sense of inferiority crept over him, as on the
first day of his arrival at Alexandria. There seemed the flavour of some
strange authority in her that baffled all approach to the former intimacy.
He hardly recognised himself, for, the foundations being shaken, all that
was built upon them trembled too.
The insecurity showed in the smallest trifles--he expressed himself
hesitatingly; he felt awkward, clumsy, ineffective; his conversation
became stupid for all the false high spirits that inflated it, his very
manners gauche; he said and did the wrong things; he was boring. Being
ill at ease and out of harmony with himself, he found it impossible to
play his part in the trio as of old; the trio, indeed, had now divided
itself--one against two.
That is, keenly, and in spite of himself, he watched the other two; he
watched them as a detective does, for evidence. He became uncannily
observant. And since Tony was especially amusing that evening, Lettice,
moreover, apparently absorbed in his stimulating talk, Tom's alternate
gaucheries and silence passed unnoticed, certainly uncommented.
In schoolboy phraseology, Tom felt out of it. His presence was
tolerated--as by favour. The two enjoyed a mutual understanding from
which he was excluded, a private intimacy that was spiritual, mental,--
physical.
He even found it in him for the first time to marvel that Lettice had ever
cared for him at all. Beside Tony's brilliance he felt himself cheaper,
almost insignificant. He felt old. . . . His pain, moreover, was
twofold: his own selfish sense of personal loss produced one kind of
anguish, but the possibility that _she_ was playing false produced
another. The first was manageable: the second beyond words appalling.
Against this background of emotional disturbance he watched the evening
pass. It developed as the hours moved. Tony, he noticed, though so full
of life, betrayed a certain malaise towards himself and avoided that
direct meeting of the eye that was his characteristic. More and more,
especially when Mrs. Haughstone had betaken herself to bed, and the trio
sat in the cooler garden alone, Tom became aware of a subtle intimacy
between his companions that resented all his efforts to include him too.
It was, moreover--his heart warned him now,--an affectionate, a natural
intimacy, built upon many an hour of intercourse while he was yet in
England, and, worst of all, that it was secret. But more--he realised
that the missing part of her was now astir, touched into life by another,
and a younger, man. It was ardent and untamed. It had awakened from its
slumber. He even fancied that something of challenge flashed from her,
though without definite words or gesture.
With a degree of acute perception wholly new to him, he watched the
evidence of inner proximity, yet watched it automatically and certainly
not meanly nor with slyness. The evidence that was sheer anguish thrust
itself upon him. His eyes had opened; he could not help himself.
But he watched himself as well. Only at moments was he aware of this--a
kind of higher Self, detached from shifting moods, looked on calmly and
took note. This Self, placed high above the stage, looked down.
It was a Self that never acted, never wept or suffered, never changed.
It was secure, superb, it was divine. Its very existence in him hitherto
had been unknown. He was now vividly aware of it. It was the Onlooker.
The explanation of his mysterious earlier moods offered itself with a
clarity that was ghastly. Watching the happiness of these two, he
recalled a hundred subconscious hints he had disregarded: the empty letter
at Alexandria, her dislike of being alone with him, the increasing
admiration for his cousin, a thousand things she had left unsaid, above
all, the exuberance and radiant joy that Tony's presence woke in her.
The gradual but significant change, the singular vision in the desert, his
own foretaste of misery as he watched the Theban Hills from the balcony of
his bedroom--all, all returned upon him, arranged in a phalanx of
neglected proofs that the new Tom offered cruelly to the old. But it was
her slight exasperation, her evasion when he questioned her, that capped
the damning list. And her silence was the culminating proof.
Then, inexplicably, he shifted to the other side that the old, the normal
Tom presented generously to the new. While this reaction lasted he
laughed away the evidence, and honestly believed he was exaggerating
trifles. The new zest that Egypt woke in her--God bless her sweetness and
simplicity!--was only natural; if Tony stimulated the intellectual side of
her, he could feel only pleasure that her happiness was thus increased.
She was innocent. He could not possibly doubt or question, and shame
flooded him till he felt himself the meanest man alive. Suspicion was no
normal part of him. He crushed it out of sight, scotched as he thought to
death. To lose belief in her would mean to lose belief in everybody.
It was inconceivable. Every instinct in him repelled the vile suggestion.
And while this reaction lasted his security returned.
Only it did _not_ last; it merged invariably into its opposite again; and
the alternating confidence and doubt produced a state of confused emotion
that contained the nightmare touch in its most essential form. The Wave
hung, poised above him--but would not fall--quite yet.
It was later in the evening that the singular intensity introduced itself
into all they said and did, hanging above them like a cloud. It came
curiously, was suddenly there--without hint or warning. Tom had the
feeling that they moved amid invisible dangers, almost as though
explosives lay hidden near them, ready any moment to bring destruction
with a sudden crash--final destruction of the happy pre-existing
conditions. The menace of a thunder-cloud approached as in his
childhood's dream; disaster lurked behind the quiet outer show.
The Wave was rising almost audibly.
For upon their earlier mood of lighter kind that had preceded Mrs.
Haughstone's exit, and then upon the more serious talk that followed in
the garden, there descended abruptly this uncanny quiet that one and all
obeyed. The contrast was most marked. Tom remembered how their voices
hushed upon a given moment, how they looked about them during the brief
silence following, peering into the luminous darkness as though some one
watched them--and how Madame Jaretzka, remarking on the chilly air, then
rose suddenly and led the way into the house. Both she and Tony, he
remembered, had been restless for some little time. 'It's chilly. We
shall be cosier indoors,' she said lightly, and moved away, followed by
his cousin.
Tom lingered a few minutes, watching them pass along the verandah to the
room beyond. He did not like the change. In the open air, the intimacy
he dreaded was less suggested than in the friendly familiarity of a room,
her room; out of doors it was more diffused; he preferred the remoteness
that the garden lent. At the same time he was glad of a moment by
himself--though a moment only. He wanted to collect his thoughts and face
things as they were. There should be no 'shuffling' if he possibly could
prevent it.
He lingered with his cigarette behind the others. A red moon hung above
the mournful hills, and the stars shone in their myriads. Both lay
reflected in the quiet river. The night was very peaceful. No wind
stirred. . . . And he strove to force the exquisite Egyptian silence upon
the turmoil that was in his soul--to gain that inner silence through which
the voice of truth might whisper clearly to him. The poise he craved lay
all about him in the solemn stillness, in stars and moon and desert; the
temple columns had it, the steadfast, huge Colossi waiting for the sun,
the bleak stone hills, the very Nile herself. Something of their
immemorial resolution and resistance he might even borrow for his little
tortured self . . . before he followed his companions. For it came to him
that within the four walls of her room all that he dreaded must reveal
itself in such concentrated, visible form that he no longer would be able
to deny it: the established intimacy, the sweetness, the desire, and--the
love.
He made this effort, be it recorded in his favour, and made it bravely;
while every minute that he left his companions undisturbed was a
long-drawn torment in his heart. For he plainly recognised now a danger
he knew not how he might adequately meet. Here was the strangeness of it:
that he did _not_ distrust Lettice, nor felt resentment against Tony.
Why this was so, or what the meaning was, he could not fathom. He felt
vaguely that Lettice, like himself, was the plaything of greater forces
than she knew, and that her perplexing conduct was based upon disharmony
in herself beyond her possible control. Some part of her, long hidden,
had emerged in Egypt, brought out by the deep mystery and passion of the
climate, by its burning, sensuous splendour: its magic drove her along
unconsciously. There were two persons in her.
It may have been absurd to divide the woman and the mother as he did;
probably it was false psychology as well; where love is, mother and woman
blend divinely into one. He did not know: it seemed, as yet, they had not
blended. He was positive only that while part of her was going from him,
if not already gone, the rest, and the major part, was true and loyal,
loving and marvellously tender. The conflict of these certainties left
hopeless disorder in every corner of his being. . . .
Tossing away his cigarette, he moved slowly up the verandah steps.
The Wave was never more sensibly behind, beneath him, than in that moment.
He rose upon it, it was under him, he felt its lift and irresistible
momentum; almost it bore him up the steps. For he meant to face whatever
came; deliberately he welcomed the hurt; it had to come; beyond the
suffering beckoned some marvellous joy, pure as the dawn beyond the cruel
desert. There was in him that rich, sweet pain he knew of old.
It beckoned and allured him even while he shrank. Alone the supreme Self
in him looked calmly on, seeming to lessen the part that trembled and knew
fear.
Then, as he neared the room, a sound of music floated out to meet him--
Tony was singing to his own accompaniment. Lettice, upon a sofa in the
corner, looked up and placed a finger on her lips, then closed her eyes
again, listening to the song. And Tom was glad she closed her eyes, glad
also that Tony's back was towards him, for as he crossed the threshold a
singular impulse took possession of his legs and he was only just able to
stop a ridiculous movement of shuffling with his feet upon the matting.
Quickly he gained a sofa by the window and dropped down upon it, watching,
listening. Tony was singing softly, yet with deep expression half
suppressed:
We were young, we were merry, we were very very wise,
And the door stood open at our feast,
When there passed us a woman with the West in her eyes,
And a man with his back to the East.
O, still grew the hearts that were beating so fast,
The loudest voice was still.
The jest died away on our lips as they passed,
And the rays of July struck chill.
He sang the words with an odd, emphatic slowness, turning to look at
Lettice between the phrases. He was not yet aware that Tom had entered.
The tune held all the pathos and tragedy of the world in it. 'Both going
the same way together,' he said in a suggestive undertone, his hands
playing a soft running chord; 'the man and the woman.' He again leaned in
her direction. 'It's a pregnant opening, don't you think? The music I
found in the very depths of me somewhere. Lettice, I believe you're
asleep!' he whispered tenderly after a second's pause.
She opened her eyes then and looked meaningly at him. Tom made no sound,
no movement. He saw only her eyes fixed steadily on Tony, whose last
sentence, using the Christian name so softly, rang on inside him like the
clanging of a prison bell.
'Sing another verse first,' said Madame Jaretzka quietly, 'and we'll pass
judgment afterwards. But I wasn't asleep, was I, Tom?' And, following
the direction of her eyes, Tony started, and turned round. 'I shut my
eyes to listen better,' she added, almost impatiently. 'Now, please go
on; we want to hear the rest.'
'Of course,' said Tom, in as natural a tone as possible. 'Of course we
do. What is it?' he asked.
'Mary Coleridge--the words,' replied Tony, turning to the piano again.
'In a moment of aberration I thought I could write the music for it----'
The softness and passion had left his voice completely.
'Oh, the tune is yours?'
His cousin nodded. There was a little frown between the watching eyes
upon the sofa. 'Tom, you mustn't interrupt; it spoils the mood--the
rhythm,' and she again asked Tony to go on. The difference in the two
tones she used was too obvious to be missed by any man who heard them--the
veiled exasperation and--the tenderness.
Tony obeyed at once. Striking a preliminary chord as the stool swung
round, he said for Tom's benefit, 'To me there's tragedy in the words,
real tragedy, so I tried to make the music fit it. Madame Jaretzka
doesn't agree.' He glanced towards her; her eyes were closed again; her
face, Tom thought, was like a mask. Tony did not this time use the little
name.
The next verse began, then suddenly broke off. The voice seemed to fail
the singer. 'I don't like this one,' he exclaimed, a suspicion of
trembling in his tone. 'It's rather too awful. Death comes in, the bread
at the feast turns black, the hound falls down--and so on. There's
general disaster. It's too tragic, rather. I'll sing the last verse
instead.'
'I want to hear it, Tony. I insist,' came the command from the sofa.
'I want the tragic part.'
To Tom it seemed precisely as though the voice had said, 'I want to see
Tom suffer. He knows the meaning of it. It's right, it's good, it's
necessary for him.'
Tony obeyed. He sang both verses:
The cups of red wine turned pale on the board,
The white bread black as soot.
The hound forgot the hand of his lord,
She fell down at his foot.
Low let me lie, where the dead dog lies,
Ere I sit me down again at a feast,
When there passes a woman with the West in her eyes,
And a man with his back to the East.
The song stopped abruptly, the music died away, there was an interval of
silence no one broke. Tom had listened spellbound, haunted. He was no
judge of poetry or music; he did not understand the meaning of the words
exactly; he knew only that both words and music expressed the shadow of
tragedy in the air as though they focussed it into a tangible presence.
A woman and a man were going in the same direction; there was an
onlooker. . . . A spontaneous quality in the words, moreover, proved that
they came burning from the writer's heart, and in Tony's music, whether
good or bad, there was this same proof of genuine feeling. Judge or no
judge, Tom was positive of that. He felt himself the looker-on, an
intruder, almost a trespasser.
This sense of exclusion grew upon him as he listened; it passed without
warning into the consciousness of a mournful, freezing isolation.
These two, sitting in the room, and separated from him by a few feet of
coloured Persian rug, were actually separated from him by unbridgeable
distance, wrapped in an intimacy that kept him inexorably outside--because
he did not understand. He almost knew an objective hallucination--that
the sofa and the piano drew slightly nearer to one another, whereas his
own chair remained fixed to the floor, immovable--outside.
The intensity of his sensations seemed inexplicable, unless some reality,
some truth, lay behind them. The bread at the feast turned black before
his very eyes. But another line rang on with a sound of ominous and
poignant defeat in his heart, now lonely and bereft: 'Low let me lie,
where the dead dog lies . . .' To the onlooker the passing of the pair
meant death. . . .
Then, through his confusion, flashed clearly this bitter certitude: Tom
suddenly realised that after all he knew nothing of her real, her inner
life; he knew her only through himself and in himself--knew himself in
her. Tony, less self-centred, less rigidly contained, had penetrated her
by an understanding sympathy greater than his own. She was unintelligible
to him, but not to Tony. Tony had the key. . . . He had touched in her
what hitherto had slept.
As the music wailed its dying cadences into this fateful silence, Tom met
her eyes across the room. They were strong, and dark with beauty. He met
them with no outer quailing, though with a sense of drenching tears
within. They seemed to him the eyes of the angel gazing through the gate.
He was outside. . . .
He was the first to break a silence that had grown unnatural, oppressive.
'What was it?' he asked again abruptly. 'Has it got a name, I mean?'
His voice had the cry of a wounded creature in it.
Tony struck an idle chord from the piano as he turned on his stool,
'Oh, yes, it's got a name. It's called "Unwelcome." And Tom, aware that
he winced, was also aware that something in his life congealed and stopped
its normal flow.
'Tony, you _are_ a genius,' broke in quickly the voice from the other side
of the room; 'I always said so. Do you know, that's the most perfect
accompaniment I ever heard.' She spoke with feeling, her tone full of
admiration.
Tony made no reply. He strummed softly, swaying to the rhythm of what he
played.
'I meant the setting,' explained Lettice, 'the music. It expresses the
emotion of the words too, _too_ exactly. It's wonderful!'
'I didn't know you composed,' put in Tom stupidly. He had to say
something. He saw them exchange a glance. She smiled. 'When did you do
it?'
'Oh, the other day in a sudden fit,' said Tony, without turning.
'While you were at Assouan, I think.'
'And the words, Tom; don't you think they're wonderful, too, and strange?'
asked Lettice. 'I find them really haunting.'
'Y-es,' he agreed, without looking at her. He realised that the lyric,
though new to him, was not new to them; they had discussed it together
already; they felt the same emotion about it; it had moved and stirred
them before, moved Tony so deeply that he had found the music for it in
the depths of himself. It was an enigmatical poem, it now became
symbolic. It embodied the present situation somehow for him. Tom did not
understand its meaning as they did; to him it was a foreign language.
But they knew the language easily. It betrayed their deep emotional
intimacy.
'You didn't hear the first part?' said Tony.
'Not quite. You had just started--when I came in.' Tom easily read the
meaning in the question. And in his heart the name of the poem repeated
itself with significant insistence: _Unwelcome_! It had come like a blow
in the face when Tony mentioned it, bruising him internally. He was
bleeding. . . . He watched the big, dark hands upon the keys as they
moved up and down. It suddenly seemed they moved towards himself.
There was power, menace in them--there was death. He felt as if they
seized--choked him. . . . They grew stained. . . .
The voices of his companions came to him across great distance; there was
a gulf between them, they on that side, he on this: he was aware of
antagonism between himself and Tony, and between himself and Lettice.
It was very dreadful; his feet and hands were cold; he shivered. But he
gave no outer sign that he was suffering, and a desperate pride--though he
knew it was but a sham, a temporary pride--came to his assistance. Yet at
the same time--he saw red. He felt like a boy at school again.
In imagination, then, he visualised swiftly a definite scene:
'Tony,' he heard himself say, 'you're coming between us. It means all the
world to me, to you it means only a passing game. If it means more, it's
time for you to say so plainly--and let _her_ decide.'
The situation seemed all cleared up; the clouds of tragedy dissipated, the
dreadful accumulation of emotion, suspense, and hidden pain, too long
suppressed, too intense to be borne another minute, discharged itself in
an immense relief. Lettice at last spoke freely and explained: Tony
expressed regret, laughing it all away with his accustomed brilliance and
irresponsibility.
Then, horribly, he heard Tony give a different answer that was far more
possible and likely:
'I knew you were great friends, but I did not guess there was anything
more between you. You never told me. I'm afraid I--I _am_ desperately
fond of her, and she of me. We must leave it--yes, to her. There is no
other way.'
He was lounging on his sofa by the window, his eyes closed, while these
thoughts flashed through him. He had never known such insecurity before;
he felt sure of nothing; the foundations of his being seemed sliding into
space. . . . For it came to him suddenly that he was a slave and that she
was set upon a throne far, far beyond his reach. . . .
Across the room, lit only by a single lamp upon the piano, the voices of
his companions floated to him, low pitched, a ceaseless murmuring stream.
He had been listening even while busy with his own reflections, intently
listening. They were still talking of the poem and the music, exchanging
intimate thoughts in the language he could not understand. They had
passed on to music and poetry at large--dangerous subjects by whose means
innocent words, donning an easy mask, may reveal passionate states of
mental and physical kind--and so to personal revelations and confessions
the apparently innocent words interpreted. He heard and understood, yet
could not wholly follow because the key was missing. He could not take
part, much less object. It was all too subtle for his mind.
He listened. . . .
The moonlight fell upon his stretched-out figure, but left his face in
shadow; opening his eyes, he could see the others clearly; the intent
expression upon _her_ face fascinated him as he watched. Yet before his
eyes had opened, the feeling again came to him that they had changed their
positions somehow, and the verification of this feeling was the first
detail he then noticed. Tony's stool was nearer to the bass keys of the
piano, while the sofa Lettice lay upon had certainly been drawn up towards
him. And Tony leaned over as he talked, bringing their lips within
whispering distance. It was all done with that open innocence which
increased the cruelty of it. Tom saw and heard and felt all over his
body. He lay very still. He half closed his eyes again.
'I do believe Tom's dropped asleep,' said Lettice presently. 'No, don't
wake him,' as Tony half turned round, 'he's tired, poor boy!'
But Tom could not willingly listen to a private conversation.
'I'm not asleep,' he exclaimed, 'not a bit of it,' and noticed that they
both were startled by the suddenness and volume of his voice. 'But I
_am_ tired rather,' and he got up, lit a cigarette, wandered about the
room a minute, and then leaned out of the open window. 'I think I shall
slip off to bed soon--if you'll forgive me, Lettice.'
He said it on impulse; he did not really mean to go; to leave them alone
together was beyond his strength. She merely nodded. The woman he had
felt so proudly would put Tony in his place--nodded consent!
'I must be going too in a moment,' Tony murmured. He meant it even less
than Tom did. He shifted his stool towards the middle of the piano and
began to strum again.
'Sing something more first, Tony; I love your ridiculous voice.'
Tom heard it behind his back; it was said half in banter, half in earnest;
yet the tone pierced him. She used the private language she and Tony
understood. The little sentence was a paraphrase that, being interpreted,
said plainly: 'He'll go off presently; then we can talk again of the
things we love together--the things he doesn't understand.'
With his face thrust into the cold night air Tom felt the blood go
throbbing in his temples. He watched the moonlight on the sandy garden
paths. The leaves were motionless, the river crept past without a murmur,
the dark hills rose out of the distant desert like a wave. There was
faint fragrance as of wild flowers, very tiny, very soft. But he kept his
eyes upon the gliding river rather than on those dark hills crowded with
their ancient dead. For he felt as if some one watched him from their dim
recesses. It almost seemed that from those bleak, lonely uplands, silent
amid the stream of hurrying life to-day, came his pain, his agony.
He could not understand it; the strange, sinister mood he had known
already once before stole out from the desolate Theban hills and mastered
him again. Any moment, if he looked up, he would meet eyes--eyes that
gazed with dim yet definite recognition into his own across the night.
They would gaze up at him, for somehow he was placed above them. . . .
He had known all this before, this very situation, these very actors--he
now looked down upon it all, a scene mapped out below him. There were two
pictures that yet were one.
'What shall it be?' the voice of Tony floated past him through the open
window.
'The gold and ambra one--I like best of all,' her voice followed like a
sigh across the air. 'But only once--it makes me cry.'
To Tom, as he heard it, came the shattering conviction that the words were
not in English, and that it was neither Lettice nor his cousin who had
used them. Reality melted; he felt himself--brain, heart, and body--
dropping down through empty space as though towards the speakers.
This was another language that they spoke together. _He_ had forgotten
it. . . . They were themselves, yet different. Amazement seized him.
A familiarity, intense with breaking pain, came with it.
Where, O where . . .?
He heard the music steal past him towards these Theban hills.
His heart was no longer beating; it was still. Life paused, as it were,
to let the voice insert itself into another setting, out of due place, yet
at the same time true and natural. An intolerable sweetness in the music
swept him. But there was anguish too. The pain and pleasure were but one
sensation. . . . All the melancholy blue and gold of Egypt's beauty
passed in that singing before his soul, and something of transcendant
value he had lost, something ancient it seemed as those mournful Theban
hills, rose with it. It was offered to him again. He saw it rise within
his reach--once more. Upon this tide of blue and of gold it floated to
his hand, could he but seize it. . . . Emotion then blocked itself
through sheer excess; the tide receded, the vision dimmed, the gold turned
dull and faded, the music and the singing ceased. Yet an instant, above
the pain, Tom had caught a flush of inexplicable happiness. Beyond the
anguish he felt joy breaking upon him like the dawn. . . .
'Joy cometh in the morning,' he remembered, with a feeling as of some
modern self and sanity returning. He had been some one else; he now was
Tom again. The pain belonged to that 'some one else.' It must be faced,
for the final outcome would be joy. . . . He turned round into the room
now filled with tense silence only.
'Tony,' he asked, 'what on earth was it?' His voice was low but did not
tremble. The atmosphere seemed drawn taut before him as though it must
any instant split open upon a sound of crying. He saw Lettice on her
sofa, the lamplight in her wide-open eyes that shone with moisture.
She looked at Tony, not at him. There was no decipherable expression on
her face. That elusive Eastern touch hung mysteriously about her. It was
all half fabulous.
Without turning Tony answered shortly: 'Oh, just a little native Egyptian
song--very old--dug up somewhere, I believe,' and he strummed softly to
himself as though he did not wish to talk more about it.
Lettice watched him for several minutes, then fixed her eyes on Tom;
they stared at each other across the room; her expression was enigmatical,
yet he read resolution into it, a desire and a purpose. He returned her
gaze with a baffled yearning, thinking how mysteriously beautiful she
looked, frail, elusive, infinitely desirable, yet hopelessly beyond his
reach. . . . And then he saw the eyelids lower slightly, and a shadowy
darkness like a veil fall over her. A smile stole down towards the lips.
Terror and fascination caught him; he turned away lest she should reach
his secret and communicate her own. She looked right through him.
Words, too, were spoken, ordinary modern words, though he did not hear
them properly: 'You're tired out . . . you know. There's no need to be
formal where I'm concerned . . .' or something similar. He listened, but
he did not hear; they were remote, unreal, not audible quite; they were
far away in space. He was only aware that the voice was tender and the
tone was very soft. . . .
He made no answer. The pain in her leaped forth to clasp his own, it
seemed. For in that instant he knew that the joy divined a little while
before was _her_, but also that he must wade through intolerable pain to
reach it.
The spell was broken. The balance of the evening, a short half-hour at
the most, was uninspired, even awkward. There was strain in the
atmosphere, cross-purposes, these purposes unfulfilled, each word and
action charged with emotion that was unable to express itself.
A desultory talk between Tony and his hostess seemed to struggle through
clipped sentences that hung in the air as though afraid to complete
themselves. The unfinished phrases floated, but dared not come to earth;
they gathered but remained undelivered. Tom had divined the deep,
essential intimacy at last, and his companions knew it.
He lay silent on his sofa by the window, or nearly silent. The moonlight
had left him, he lay in shadow. Occasionally he threw in words, asked a
question, ventured upon a criticism; but Lettice either did not hear or
did not feel sufficient interest to respond. She ignored his very
presence, though readily, eagerly forthcoming to the smallest sign from
Tony. She hid herself with Tony behind the shadowy screen of words and
phrases.
Tony himself was different too, however. There was acute disharmony in
the room, where a little time before there had been at least an outward
show of harmony. A heaviness as of unguessed tragedy lay upon all three,
not only upon Tom. Spontaneous gaiety was gone out of his cousin, whose
attempts to be his normal self became forced and unsuccessful. He sought
relief by hiding himself behind his music, and his choice, though natural
enough, seemed half audacious and half challenging--the choice of a
devious soul that shirked fair open fight and felt at home in subterfuge.
From Grieg's _Ich liebe Dich_ he passed to other tender, passionate
fragments Tom did not recognise by name yet understood too well, realising
that sense of ghastly comedy, and almost of the ludicrous, which ever
mocks the tragic.
For Tony certainly acknowledged by his attitude the same threatening sense
of doom that lay so heavy upon his cousin's heart. There was presentiment
and menace in every minute of that brief half-hour. Never had Tom seen
his gay and careless cousin in such guise: he was restless, silent,
intense and inarticulate. 'He gives her what I cannot give,' Tom faced
the situation. 'They understand one another. . . . It's not _her_
fault. . . . I'm old, I'm dull. She's found a stronger interest. . . .
The bigger claim at last has come!'
They brewed their cocoa on the spirit-lamp, they munched their biscuits,
they said good-night at length, and Tom walked on a few paces ahead,
impatient to be gone. He did not want to go home with Tony, while yet he
could not leave him there. He longed to be alone and think. Tony's hotel
was but a hundred yards away. He turned and called to him. He saw them
saying goodnight at the foot of the verandah steps. Lettice was looking
up into his cousin's face. . . .
They went off together. 'Night, night,' cried Tony, as he presently
turned up the path to his own hotel. 'See you in the morning.'
And Tom walked down the silent street alone. On his skin he still felt
her fingers he had clasped two minutes before. But his eyes saw only--her
face and figure as she stood beside his cousin on the steps. For he saw
her looking up into his eyes as once before on the lawn of her English
bungalow four months ago. And Tony's two great hands were laid upon her
arm.
'Lettice, poor child . . .!' he murmured strangely to himself. For he
knew that her suffering and her deep perplexity were somewhere, somehow
almost equal to his own.