He walked down the silent street alone. . . . How like a theatre scene it
was! Supers dressed as Arabs passed him without a word or sign; the Nile
was a painted back-cloth; the columns of the Luxor Temple hung on canvas.
The memory of a London theatre flitted through his mind. . . . He was
playing a part upon the stage, but for the second time, and this second
performance was better than the first, different too, a finer
interpretation as it were. He could not manage it quite, but he must play
it out in order to know joy and triumph at the other end.
This sense of the theatre was over everything. How still and calm the
night was, the very stars were painted on the sky, the lights were low,
there lay a hush upon the audience. In his heart, like a weight of metal,
there was sadness, deep misgiving, sense of loss. His life was fading
visibly; it threatened to go out in darkness. Yet, like Ra, great deity
of this ancient land, it would suffer only a temporary eclipse, then rise
again triumphant and rejuvenated as Osiris. . . .
He walked up the sweep of sandy drive to the hotel and went through the
big glass doors. The huge brilliant building swallowed him. Crowds of
people moved to and fro, chattering and laughing, the women gaily,
fashionably dressed; the band played with that extravagant abandon hotels
demanded. The contrast between the dark, quiet street and this busy
modern scene made him feel it was early in the evening, instead of close
on midnight.
He was whirled up to his lofty room above the world. He flung himself
upon his bed; no definite thought was in him; he was utterly exhausted.
There was a vicious aching in his nerves, his muscles were flaccid and
unstrung; a numbness was in his brain as well. But in the heart there was
vital energy. For his heart seemed alternately full and empty; all the
life he had was centred there.
And, lying on his bed in the darkened room, he sighed, as though he
struggled for breath. The recent strain had been even more tense than he
had guessed--the suppressed emotion, the prolonged and difficult effort at
self-control, the passionate yearning that was denied relief in words and
action. His entire being now relaxed itself; and his physical system
found relief in long, deep sighs.
For a long time he lay motionless, trying vainly not to feel. He would
have welcomed instantaneous sleep--ten hours of refreshing, dreamless
sleep. If only he could prevent himself thinking, he might drop into
blissful unconsciousness. It was chiefly forgetfulness he craved.
A few minutes, and he would perhaps have slipped across the border--when
something startled him into sudden life again. He became acutely wakeful.
His nerves tingled, the blood rushed back into the brain. He remembered
Tony's letter--returned from Assouan. A moment later he had turned the
light on and was reading it. It was, of course, several days old
already:--
Savoy Hotel,
Luxor.
Dear old Tom--What I am going to say may annoy you, but I think it best
that it should be said, and if I am all wrong you must tell me. I have
seldom liked any one as much as I like you, and I want to preserve our
affection to the end.
The trouble is this:--I can't help feeling--I felt it at the Bungalow,
in London too, and even heard it _said_ by some one--whom, possibly,
you may guess--that you were very fond of her, and that she was of you.
Various little things said, and various small signs, have strengthened
this feeling. Now, instinctively, I have a feeling also that she and I
have certain things in common, and I think it quite possible that I
might have a bad effect on her.
I do not suppose for one moment that she would ever care for me, but,
from one or two signs in her, I do see possibilities of a sort of
playing with fire between us. One _feels_ these things without
apparent cause; and all I can say is that, absurd as it may sound,
I scent danger. To put it quite frankly, I can imagine myself becoming
sufficiently excited by her to lose my head a little, and to introduce
an element of sex into our friendship which might have some slight
effect on us both. I don't mean anything serious, but, given the
circumstances, I can imagine myself playing the fool; and the only
serious thing is that I can picture myself growing so fond of her that
I would not think it playing the fool at the time.
Now, if I am right in thinking that you love her, it is obvious that I
must put the matter before you, Tom, as I am here doing. I would
rather have your friendship than her possible excitement--and I repeat
that, absurd as it may seem, I do scent the danger of my getting worked
up, and, to some extent, infecting her. You see, I know myself and
know the wildness of my nature. I don't fool about with women at all,
but I have had affairs in my life and can judge of the utter madness of
which I am capable, madness which, to my mind, _must_ affect and
stimulate the person towards whom it is directed.
On my word of honour, Tom, I am not in love with her now at all, and it
will not be a bit hard for me to clear out if you want me to. So tell
me quite straight: shall I make an excuse, as, for example, that I want
to avoid her for fear of growing too fond of her, and go? Or can we
meet as friends? What I want you to do is to be with us if we are
together, so that we may try to make a real trinity of our friendship.
I enjoy talking to her; and I prefer you to be with me when I am with
her--really, believe me, I do.
Words make things sound so absurd, but I am writing like this because I
feel the presence of clouds, almost of tragedy, and I can't for the
life of me think why. I want her friendship and 'motherly' care
badly. I want your affection and friendship exceedingly. But I feel
as though I were unconsciously about to trouble your life and hers; and
I can only suppose it is that hard-working subconsciousness of mine
which sees the possibility of my suddenly becoming attracted to her,
suddenly losing control, and suddenly being a false friend to you both.
Now, Tom, old chap, you must prevent that--either by asking me to keep
away, or else by making yourself a definite part of my friendship with
her.
I want you to say no word to her about this letter, and to keep it
absolutely between ourselves; and I am very hopeful--I feel sure, in
fact--that we shall make the jolliest trio in the world.--Yours ever,
Tony.
Tom, having read it through without a single stop, laid it down upon his
table and walked round the room. In doing so, he passed the door. He
locked it, then paused for a moment, listening. 'Why did I lock it?
What am I listening for?' he asked himself. He hesitated. 'Oh, I know,'
he went on, 'I don't want to be disturbed. Tony knows I shall read this
letter to-night. He might possibly come up--' He walked back to the
table again slowly. 'I couldn't _see_ him,' he realised; 'it would be
impossible!' If any one knocked, he would pretend to be asleep.
His face, had he seen it in the glass, was white and set, but there was a
curious shining in his eyes, and a smile was on the lips, though a smile
his stolid features had never known before. '_I_ knew it,' said the
Smile, '_I_ knew it long ago.'
His hand stretched out and picked the letter up again. But at first he
did not look at it; he looked round the room instead, as though he felt
that he was being watched, as though somebody were hiding. And then he
said aloud, but very quietly:
'Light-blue eyes, by God! _The_ light-blue eyes!'
The sound startled him a little. He repeated the sentence in a whisper,
varying the words. The voice sounded like a phonograph.
'Tony's got light-blue eyes!'
He sat down, then got up again.
'I never, never thought of it! I never noticed. God! I'm as blind as a
bat!'
For some minutes he stood motionless, then turned and read the letter
through a second time, lingering on certain phrases, and making curious
unregulated gestures as he did so. He clenched his fists, he bit his
lower lip. The feeling that he was acting on a stage had left him now.
This was reality.
He walked over to the balcony and drew the cold night air into his lungs.
He remembered standing once before on this very spot, that foreboding of
coming loneliness so strangely in his heart. 'It's come,' he said dully
to himself. 'It's justified. I understand at last.' And then he
repeated with a deep, deep sigh: 'God--how blind I've been! He's taken
her from me! It's all confirmed. He's wakened the woman in her!'
It seemed, then, he sought a mitigation, an excuse--for the man who wrote
it, his pal, his cousin, Tony. He wanted to exonerate, if it were
possible. But the generous impulse remained frustrate. The plea escaped
him--because it was not there. The falseness and insincerity were too
obvious to admit of any explanation in the world but one. He dropped into
a chair, shocked into temporary numbness.
Gradually, then, isolated phrases blazed into prominence in his mind,
clearest of all--that what Tony pretended might happen in the future had
already happened long ago. 'I can picture myself growing too fond of
her,' meant 'I am already too fond of her.' That he might lose his head
and 'introduce an element of sex' was conscience confessing that it had
been already introduced. He 'scented danger . . . tragedy' because both
were in the present--now.
Tony hedged like any other coward. He had already gone too far, he felt
shamed and awkward, he had to put himself right, as far as might be, with
his trusting, stupid cousin, so he warned him that what had already taken
place in the past _might_ take place--he was careful to mention that he
had no self-control--in the future. He begged the man he had injured to
assist him; and the method he proposed was that old, well-proved one of
assuring the love of a hesitating woman--'I'll tell her I'm too fond of
her, and go!'
The letter was a sham and a pretence. Its assurance, too, was
unmistakable: Tony felt certain of his own position. 'I'm sorry, old
chap, but we love each other. Though I've sometimes wondered, you never
definitely told me that _you_ did.'
He read once again the cruellest phrase of all: 'From one or two signs in
her, I do see possibilities of a sort of playing with fire between us.'
It was cleverly put, yet also vilely; he laid half the burden of his
treachery on her. The 'introduction of sex' was gently mentioned three
lines lower down. Tony already had an understanding with her--which meant
that she had encouraged him. The thought rubbed like a jagged file
against his heart. Yet Tom neither thought this, nor definitely said it
to himself. He felt it; but it was only later that he _knew_ he felt it.
And his mind, so heavily bruised, limped badly. The same thoughts rose
again and again. He had no notion what he meant to do. There was an odd,
half-boyish astonishment in him that the accumulated warnings of these
recent days had not shown him the truth before. How could he have known
the Eyes of his Dream for months, have lived with them daily for three
weeks--the light-blue eyes--yet have failed to recognise them? It passed
understanding. Even the wavy feeling that had accompanied Tony's arrival
in the Carpathians--the Sound heard in his bedroom the same night--had
left him unseeing and unaware. It seemed as if the recognition had been
hidden purposely; for, had he recognised it, he would have been prepared,
he might even have prevented. It now dawned upon him slowly that the
inevitable may not be prevented. And the cunning of it baffled him
afresh: it was all planned consummately.
Tom sat for a long time before the open window in a state of half stupor,
staring at the pictures his mind offered automatically. A deep, vicious
aching gnawed without ceasing at his heart: each time a new picture rose a
fiery pang rose with it, as though a nerve were bared. . . .
He drew his chair closer into the comforting darkness of the night.
All was silent as the grave. The stars wheeled overhead with their
accustomed majesty; he could just distinguish the dim river in its ancient
bed; the desert lay watchful for the sun, the air was sharp with perfume.
Countless human emotions had these witnessed in the vanished ages,
countless pains and innumerable aching terrors; the emotions had passed
away, yet the witnesses remained, steadfast, unchanged, indifferent.
Moreover, his particular emotion _now_ seemed known to them--known to
these very stars, this desert, this immemorial river; they witnessed now
its singular repetition. He was to experience it unto the bitter end
again--yet somehow otherwise. He must face it all. Only in this way
could the joy at the end of it be reached. . . . He must somehow accept
and understand. . . . This confused, unjustifiable assurance strengthened
in him.
Yet this last feeling was so delicate that he scarcely recognised its
intense vitality. The cruder sensations blinded him as with thick, bitter
smoke. He was certain of one thing only--that the fire of jealousy burned
him with its atrocious anguish . . . an anguish he had somewhere known
before.
Then presently there was a change. This change had begun soon after he
drew his chair to the balcony, but he had not noticed it. The effect upon
him, nevertheless, had been gradually increasing.
The psychological effects of sound, it would seem, are singular.
Even when heard unconsciously, the result continues; and Tom, hearing this
sound unconsciously, did not realise at first that another mood was
stealing over him. Then hearing became conscious hearing--listening.
The sound rose to his ears from just below his balcony. He listened.
He rose, leaned over the rail, and stared. The crests of three tall palms
immediately below him waved slightly in the rising wind. But the fronds
of a palm-tree in the wind produce a noise that is unlike the rustle of
any other foliage in the world. It was a curious, sharp rattling that he
heard. It was _the_ Sound.
His entire being was at last involved--the Self that used the separate
senses. His thoughts swooped in another direction--he suddenly fixed his
attention upon Lettice. But it was an inner attention of a wholesale
kind, not of the separate mind alone. And this entire Self included
regions he did not understand. Mind was the least part of it.
The 'whole' of him that now dealt with Lettice was far above all minor and
partial means of knowing. For it did not judge, it only saw. It was,
perhaps, the soul.
For it seemed the pain bore him upwards to an unaccustomed height.
He stood for a moment upon that level where she dwelt, even as now he
stood on this balcony looking down upon the dim Egyptian scene. She was
beside him; he gazed into her eyes, even as now he gazed across to the
dark necropolis among the Theban hills. But also, in some odd way, he
stood outside himself. He swam with her upon the summit of the breaking
Wave, lifted upon its crest, swept onward irresistibly. . . . No halt was
possible . . . the inevitable crash must come. Yet she was with him.
They were involved together. . . . The sea! . . .
The first bitterness passed a little, the sullen aching with it. He was
aware of high excitement, of a new reckless courage; a touch of the
impersonal came with it all, one Tom playing the part of a spectator to
another Tom--an onlooker at his own discomfiture, at his own suffering, at
his own defeat.
This new exalted state was very marvellous; for while it lasted he
welcomed all that was to come. 'It's right and necessary for me,' he
recognised; 'I need it, and I'll face it. If I refuse it I prove myself a
failure--again. Besides . . . _she needs it too_!'
For the entire matter then turned over in his mind, so that he saw it from
a new angle suddenly. He looked at it through a keyhole, as it were--the
extent was large yet detailed, the picture distant yet very clearly
focussed. It lay framed within his thoughts, isolated from the rest of
life, isolated somehow even from the immediate present. There was
perspective in it. This keyhole was, perhaps, his deep, unalterable love,
but cleansed and purified. . . .
It came to him that she, and even Tony, too, in lesser fashion, were, like
himself, the playthings of great spiritual forces that made alone for
good. The Wave swept all three along. The attitude of his youth
returned; the pain was necessary, yet would bring inevitable joy as its
result. There had been cruel misunderstanding on his part somewhere; that
misunderstanding must be burned away. He saw Lettice and his cousin
helping towards this exquisite deliverance somehow. It was like a moment
of clear vision from a pinnacle. He looked down upon it. . . .
Lettice smiled into his eyes through half-closed eyelids. Her smile was
strangely distant, strangely precious: she was love and tenderness
incarnate; her little hands held both of his. . . . Through these very
eyes, this smile, these little hands, his pain would come; she would
herself inflict it--because she could not help herself; she played her
inevitable role as he did. Yet he kissed the eyes, the hands, with an
absolute self-surrender he did not understand, willing and glad that
they should do their worst. He had somewhere dreadfully misjudged her;
he must, he would atone. This passion burned within him, a passion of
sacrifice, of resignation, of free, big acceptance. He felt joy at
the end of it all--the joy of perfect understanding . . . and forgiveness
. . . on both sides. . . .
And the moment of clear vision left its visible traces in him even after
it had passed. If he felt contempt for his cousin, he felt for Lettice a
deep and searching pity--she was divided against herself, she was playing
a part she had to play. The usual human emotions were used, of course, to
convey the situation, yet in some way he was unable to explain she was--
_being_ driven. In spite of herself she must inflict this pain. . . .
It was a mystery he could not solve. . . .
His exaltation, naturally, was of brief duration. The inevitable reaction
followed it. He saw the situation again as an ordinary man of the world
must see it. . . . The fires of jealousy were alight and spreading.
Already they were eating away the foundations of every generous feeling he
had ever known. . . . It was not, he argued, that he did not trust her.
He did. But he feared the insidious power of infatuation, he feared the
burning glamour of this land of passionate mirages, he feared the deluding
forces of sex which his cousin had deliberately awakened in her blood--and
other nameless things he feared as well, though he knew not exactly what
they were. For it seemed to him that they were old as dreams, old as the
river and the menace of these solemn hills. . . . From childhood up, his
own trust in her truth and loyalty had remained unalterably fixed,
ingrained in the very essence of his being. It was more than his relations
with a woman he loved that were in danger: it was his belief and trust in
Woman, focussed in her self symbolically, that were threatened. . . .
It was his belief in Life.
With Lettice, however, he felt himself in some way powerless to deal; he
could watch her, but he could not judge . . . least of all, did he dare
prevent. . . . _Her_ attitude he could not know nor understand. . . .
There was a pink glow upon the desert before he realised that a reply to
Tony's letter was necessary; and that pink was a burning gold when he
knew his answer must be of such a kind that Tony felt free to pursue his
course unchecked. Tom held to his strange belief to 'Let it all come,' he
would not try to prevent; he would neither shirk nor dodge. He doubted
whether it lay in his power now to hinder anything, but in any case he
would not seek to do so. Rather than block coming events, he must
encourage their swift development. It was the best, the only way; it was
the right way too. He belonged to his destination. He went into his own
background. . . .
The sky was alight from zenith to horizon, the Nile aflame with sunrise,
by the time the letter was written. He read it over, then hurriedly
undressed and plunged into bed. A long, dreamless sleep took instant
charge of him, for he was exhausted to a state of utter depletion.
Dear Tony--I have read your letter with the greatest sympathy--it was
forwarded from Assouan. It cost you a good deal, I know, to say what
you did, and I'm sure you mean it for the best. I feel it like that
too--for the best.
But it is easier for you to write than for me to answer.
Her position, of course, is an awfully delicate one; and I feel--
no doubt you feel too--that her standard of conduct is higher than
that of ordinary women, and that any issue between us--if there is
an issue at all!--should be left to her to decide.
Nothing can touch my friendship with her; you needn't worry about
_that_. But if you can bring any added happiness into her life, it can
only be welcomed by all three of us. So go ahead, Tony, and make her
as happy as you can. The important things are not in our hands to
decide in any case; and, whatever happens, we both agree on one
thing--that her happiness is the important thing.--Yours ever,
Tom.