And next day there was one more revealing incident that helped, yet also
hindered him, as he moved along his _via dolorosa_. For every step he
took away from her seemed also to bring him nearer. They followed
opposing curves of a circle. They separated ever more widely, back to
back, yet were approaching each other at the same time. They would meet
face to face. . . .
He found her at the piano, practising the song that now ran ever in his
blood; the score, he noticed, was in Tony's writing.
'Unwelcome!' he exclaimed, reading out the title over her shoulder.
'Tom! How you startled me! I was trying to learn it.' She turned to
him; her eyes were shining. He was aware of a singular impression--
struggle, effort barely manageable. Her beauty seemed fresh made; he
thought of a wild rose washed by the dew and sparkling in the sunlight.
'I thought you knew it already,' he observed.
She laughed significantly, looking up into his face so close he could have
kissed her lips by merely bending his head a few inches. 'Not quite--
yet,' she answered. 'Will you give me a lesson, Tom?'
'Unpaid?' he asked.
She looked reproachfully at him. 'The best services are unpaid always.'
'I'm afraid I have neither the patience nor the knowledge,' he replied.
Her next words stirred happiness in him for a moment; the divine trust he
fought to keep stole from his heart into his eyes: 'But you would never,
never give up, Tom, no matter how difficult and obstinate the pupil.
You would always understand. _That_ I know.'
He moved away. Such double-edged talk, even in play, was dangerous.
A deep weariness was in him, weakening self-control. Sensitive to the
slightest touch just then, he dared not let her torture him too much.
He felt in her a strength far, far beyond his own; he was powerless before
her. Had Tony been present he could not have played his part at all.
Somehow he had a curious feeling, moreover, that his cousin was not very
far away.
'Tony will be here later, I think,' she said, as she followed him outside.
'But, if not, he's sure to come to dinner.'
'Good,' he replied, thinking that the train arrived in time to dress, and
in no way surprised that she divined his thoughts. 'We can decide our
plans then.' He added that he might be obliged to go back to Assouan, but
she made no comment. Speech died away between them, as they sat down in
the old familiar corner above the Nile. Tom, for the life of him, could
think of nothing to say. Lettice, on the other hand, wanted to say
nothing. He felt that she _had_ nothing to say. Behind, below the
numbness in him, meanwhile, her silence stabbed him without ceasing.
The intense yearning in his heart threatened any minute to burst forth in
vehement speech, almost in action. It lay accumulating in him
dangerously, ready to leap out at the least sign--the pin-prick of a look,
a word, a gesture on her part, and he would smash the barrier down between
them and--ruin all. The sight of Tony, for instance, just then must have
been as a red rag to a bull.
He traced figures in the sand with his heel, he listened to the wind above
them, he never ceased to watch her motionless, indifferent figure
stretched above him on the long deck-chair. A book peeped out from behind
the cushion where her head rested. Tom put his hand across and took it
suddenly, partly for something to do, partly from curiosity as well.
She made a quick, restraining gesture, then changed her mind. And again
he was conscious of battle in her, as if two beings fought.
'The Mary Coleridge Poems,' she said carelessly. 'Tony gave it me.
You'll find the song he put to music.'
Tom vigorously turned the leaves. He had already glanced at the
title-page with the small inscription in one corner: 'To L. J., from
A. W.' There was a pencil mark against a poem half-way through.
'He's going to write music for some of the others too,' she added,
watching him; 'the ones he has marked.' Her voice, he fancied, wavered
slightly.
Tom nodded his head. 'I see,' he murmured, noticing a cross in pencil.
A sullen defiance rose in his blood, but he forced it out of sight.
He read the words in a low voice to himself. It was astonishing how the
powers behind the scenes forced a contribution from the commonest
incidents:
The sum of loss I have not reckoned yet,
I cannot tell.
For ever it was morning when we met,
Night when we bade farewell.
Perhaps the words let loose the emotion, though of different kinds, pent
up behind their silence. The strain, at any rate, between them tightened
first, then seemed to split. He kept his eyes upon the page before him;
Lettice, too, remained still as before; only her lips moved as she spoke:
'Tom. . . .' The voice plunged into his heart like iron.
'Yes,' he said quietly, without looking up.
'Tom,' she repeated, 'what are you thinking about so hard?'
He found no answer.
'And all to yourself?'
The blood rushed to his face; her voice was so soft.
He met her eyes and smiled. 'The same as usual, I suppose,' he said.
For a moment she made no reply, then, glancing at the book lying in his
hand, she said in a lower voice: 'That woman had suffered deeply.
There's truth and passion in every word she writes; there's a marvellous
restraint as well. Tom,' she added, gazing hard at him, 'you feel it,
don't you? You understand her?' For an instant she knit her brows as if
in perplexity or misgiving.
'The truth, yes,' he replied after a moment's hesitation; 'the restraint
as well.'
'And the passion?'
He nodded curtly by way of agreement. He turned the pages over very
rapidly. His fingers were as thick and clumsy as rigid bits of wood.
He fumbled.
'Will you read it once again?' she asked. He did so . . . in a low voice.
With difficulty he reached the end. There was a mist before his eyes and
his voice seemed confused. He dared not look up.
'There's a deep spiritual beauty,' he went on slowly, making an enormous
effort, 'that's what I feel strongest, I think. There's renunciation,
sacrifice----'
He was going to say more, for he felt the words surge up in his throat.
This talk, he knew, was a mere safety valve to both of them; they used
words as people attacked by laughter out of due season seize upon
anything, however far-fetched, that may furnish excuse for it. The flood
of language and emotion, too long suppressed, again rose to his very
lips--when a slight sound stopped his utterance. He turned. Amazement
caught him. Her frozen immobility, her dead indifference, her boredom
possibly--all these, passing suddenly, had melted in a flood of tears.
Her face was covered by her hands. She lay there sobbing within a foot of
his hungry arms, sobbing as though her heart must break. He saw the drops
between her little fingers, trickling.
It was so sudden, so unexpected, that Tom felt unable to speak or act at
first. Numbness seized him. His faculties were arrested. He watched
her, saw the little body heave down its entire length, noted the small
convulsive movements of it. He saw all this, yet he could not do the
natural thing. It was very ghastly. . . . He could not move a muscle,
he could not say a single word, he could not comfort her--because he knew
those tears were the tears of pity only. It was for himself she sobbed.
The tenderness in her--in 'Lettice'--broke down before his weight of pain,
the weight of pain she herself laid upon him. Nothing that _he_ might do
or say could comfort her. Divining what the immediate future held in
store for him, she wept these burning tears of pity. In that poignant
moment of self-revelation Tom's cumbersome machinery of intuition did not
fail him. He understood. It was a confession--the last perhaps. He saw
ahead with vivid and merciless clarity of vision. Only another could
comfort her. . . . Yet he could help. Yes--he could help--by going.
There was no other way. He must slip out.
And, as if prophetically just then, she murmured between her
tight-pressed fingers: 'Leave me, Tom, for a moment . . . please go
away . . . I'm so mortified . . . this idiotic scene. . . . Leave me a
little, then come back. I shall be myself again presently. . . . It's
Egypt--this awful Egypt. . . .'
Tom obeyed. He got up and left her, moving without feeling in his legs,
as though he walked in his sleep, as though he dreamed, as though he
were--dead. He did not notice the direction. He walked mechanically.
It felt to him that he simply walked straight out of her life into a world
of emptiness and ice and shadows. . . .
The river lay below him in a flood of light. He saw the Theban Hills
rolling their dark, menacing wave along the far horizon. In the
blistering heat the desert lay sun-drenched, basking, silent. Its faint
sweet perfume reached him in the northern wind, that pungent odour of the
sand, which is the odour of this sun-baked land etherealised.
A fiery intensity of light lay over it, as though any moment it must burst
into sheets of flame. So intense was the light that it seemed to let
sight through to--to what? To a more distant vision, infinitely remote.
It was not a mirror, but a transparency. The eyes slipped through it
marvellously.
He stood on the steps of worn-out sandstone, listening, staring, feeling
nothing . . . and then a little song came floating across the air towards
him, sung by a boatman in mid-stream. It was a native melody, but it had
the strange, monotonous lilt of Tony's old-Egyptian melody. . . . And
feeling stole back upon him, alternately burning and freezing the currents
of his blood. The childhood nightmare touch crept into him: he saw the
wave-like outline of the gloomy hills, he heard the wind rattling in the
leaves behind him, to his nostrils came the strange, penetrating perfume
of the tawny desert that encircles ancient Thebes, and in the air before
him hung two pairs of eyes, dark, faithful eyes, cruel and at the same
time tender, true yet merciless, and the others--treacherous, false, light
blue in colour. . . . He began to shuffle furiously with his feet. . . .
The soul in him went under. . . . He turned to face the menace coming up
behind . . . the falling Wave. . . .
'Tom!' he heard--and turned back towards her. And when he reached her
side, she had so entirely regained composure that he could hardly believe
it was the same person. Fresh and radiant she looked once more, no sign
of tears, no traces of her recent emotion anywhere. Perhaps the interval
had been longer than he guessed, but, in any case, the change was swift
and half unaccountable. In himself, equally, was a calmness that seemed
unnatural. He heard himself speaking in an even tone about the view, the
river, the gold of the coming sunset. He wished to spare her, he talked
as though nothing had happened, he mentioned the deep purple colour of the
hills--when she broke out with sudden vehemence.
'Oh, don't speak of those hills, those awful hills,' she cried. 'I dread
the sight of them. Last night I dreamed again--they crushed me down into
the sand. I felt buried beneath them, deep, deep down--_buried_.'
She whispered the last word as though to herself. She hid her face.
The words amazed him. He caught the passing shiver in her voice.
'"Again"?' he asked. 'You've dreamed of them before?' He stood close,
looking down at her. The sense of his own identity returned slowly, yet
he still felt two persons in him.
'Often and often,' she said in a lowered tone, 'since Tony came. I dream
that we all three lie buried somewhere in that forbidding valley.
It terrifies me more and more each time.'
'Strange,' he said. 'For they draw me too. I feel them somehow known--
familiar.' He paused. 'I believe Tony was right, you know, when he
said that we three----'
How she stopped him he never quite understood. At first he thought the
curious movement on her face portended tears again, but the next second he
saw that instead of tears a slow strange smile was stealing upon her--
upwards from the mouth. It lay upon her features for a second only, but
long enough to alter them. A thin, diaphanous mask, transparent, swiftly
fleeting, passed over her, and through it another woman, yet herself,
peered up at him with a penetrating yet somehow distant gaze. A shudder
ran down his spine; there was a sensation of inner cold against his heart;
he trembled, but he could not look away. . . . He saw in that brief
instant the face of the woman who tortured him. The same second, so
swiftly was it gone again, he saw Lettice watching him through half-closed
eyelids. He heard her saying something. She was completing the sentence
that had interrupted him:
'We're too imaginative, Tom. Believe me, Egypt is no place to let
imagination loose, and I don't like it.' She sighed: there was exhaustion
in her. 'It's stimulating enough without _our_ help. Besides--' she used
a curious adjective--'it's dangerous too.'
Tom willingly let the subject drop; his own desire was to appear natural,
to protect her, to save her pain. He thought no longer of himself.
Drawing upon all his strength, forcing himself almost to breaking-point,
he talked quietly of obvious things, while longing secretly to get away to
his own room where he could be alone. He craved to hide himself; like a
stricken animal his instinct was to withdraw from observation.
The arrival of the tea-tray helped him, and, while they drank, the sky let
down the emblazoned curtain of a hundred colours lest Night should bring
her diamonds unnoticed, unannounced. There is no dusk in Egypt; the sun
draws on his opal hood; there is a rush of soft white stars: the desert
cools, and the wind turns icy. Night, high on her spangled throne,
watches the sun dip down behind the Libyan sands.
Tom felt this coming of Night as he sat there, so close to Lettice that he
could touch her fingers, feel her breath, catch the lightest rustle of her
thin white dress. He felt night creeping in upon his heart. Swiftly the
shadows piled. His soul seemed draped in blackness, drained of its
shining gold, hidden below the horizon of the years. It sank out of
sight, cold, lost, forgotten. His day was past and over. . . .
They had been sitting silent for some minutes when a voice became audible,
singing in the distance. It came nearer. Tom recognised the
tune--'We were young, we were merry, we were very, very wise,'; and
Lettice sat up suddenly to listen. But Tom then thought of one thing
only--that it was beyond his power just now to meet his cousin.
He knew his control was not equal to the task; he would betray himself;
the role was too exacting. He rose abruptly.
'That must be Tony coming,' Lettice said. 'His tea will be all cold!'
Each word was a caress, each syllable alive with interest, sympathy,
excited anticipation. She had become suddenly alive. Tom saw her eyes
shining as she gazed past him down the darkening drive. He made his
absurd excuse. 'I'm going home to rest a bit, Lettice. I played tennis
too hard. The sun's given me a headache. We'll meet later. You'll keep
Tony for dinner?' His mind had begun to work, too; the evening train from
Cairo, he remembered, was not due for an hour or more yet. A hideous
suspicion rushed like fire through him.
But he asked no question. He knew they wished to be alone together.
Yet also he had a wild, secret hope that she would be disappointed.
He was speedily undeceived.
'All right, Tom,' she answered, hardly looking at him. 'And mind you're
not late. Eight o'clock sharp. I'll make Tony stay.'
He was gone. He chose the path along the river bank instead of going by
the drive. He did not look back once. It was when he entered the road a
little later that he met Mrs. Haughstone coming home from a visit to some
friends in his hotel. It was then she told him. . . .
'What a surprise you must have had,' Tom believes he said in reply.
He said something, at any rate, that he hoped sounded natural and right.
'Oh, no,' Mrs. Haughstone explained. 'We were quite prepared. Lettice
had a telegram, you see, to let her know.'
She told him other things as well. . . .
PART IV
CHAPTER XXVIII
Tony had come back. The Play turned very real.
The situation _a trois_ thenceforward became, for Tom, an acutely
afflicting one. He found no permanent resting-place for heart or mind.
He analysed, asked himself questions without end, but a final decisive
judgment evaded him. He wrote letters and tore them up again.
He hid himself in Assouan with belief for a companion, he came back and
found that companion had been but a masquerader--disbelief.
Suspicion grew confirmed into conviction. Vanity persuaded him against
the weight of evidence, then left him naked with his facts. He wanted to
kill, first others, then himself. He laughed, but the same minute he
could have cried. Such complicated tangles of emotion were beyond his
solving--it amazed him; such prolonged and incessant torture, so
delicately applied--he marvelled that a human heart could bear it without
breaking. For the affection and sympathy he felt for his cousin refused
to die, while his worship and passion towards an unresponsive woman
increasingly consumed him.
He no longer recognised himself, his cousin, Lettice; all three, indeed,
were singularly changed. Each duplicated into a double role.
Towards their former selves he kept his former attitude--of affection,
love, belief; towards the usurping selves he felt--he knew not what.
Therefore he drifted. . . . Strange, mysterious, tender, unfathomable
Woman! Vain, primitive, self-sufficing, confident Man! In him the
masculine tried to reason and analyse to the very end; in her the feminine
interpreted intuitively: the male and female attitudes, that is, held true
throughout. The Wave swept him forward irresistibly, his very soul, it
seemed, went shuffling to find solid ground. . . .
Meanwhile, however, no one broke the rules--rules that apparently had made
themselves: subtle and delicate, it took place mostly out of sight, as it
were, inside the heart. Below the mask of ordinary surface-conduct all
agreed to wear, the deeper, inevitable intercourse proceeded, a Play
within a Play, a tragedy concealed thinly by general consent under the
most commonplace comedy imaginable. All acted out their parts, rehearsed,
it seemed, of long ago. For, more and more, it came to Tom that the one
thing he must never lose, whatever happened, was his trust in her.
He must cling to that though it cost him all--trust in her love and truth
and constancy. This singular burden seemed laid upon his soul.
If he lost that trust and that belief, the Wave could never break,
she could never justify that trust and that belief.
This 'enchantment' that tortured him, straining his whole being, was
somehow a test indeed of his final worthiness to win her.
Somehow, somewhence, he owed her this. . . . He dared not fail.
For if he failed the Wave that should sweep her back into the 'sea' with
him would not break--he would merely go on shuffling with his feet to the
end of life. Tony and Lettice conquered him till he lay bleeding in the
sand; Tom played the role of loss--obediently almost; the feeling that
they were set in power over him persisted strangely. It dominated, at any
rate, the resistance he would otherwise have offered. He must learn to do
without her in order that she might in the end be added to him. Thus, and
thus alone, could he find himself, and reach the level where she lived.
He took his fate from her gentle, merciless hands, well knowing that it
had to be. In some marvellous, sweet way the sacrifice would bring her
back again at last, but bring her back completed--and to a Tom worthy of
her love. The self-centred, confident man in him that deemed itself
indispensable must crumble. To find regeneration he must risk
destruction.
Events--yet always inner events--moved with such rapidity then that he
lost count of time. The barrier never lowered again. He played his
ghastly part in silence--always inner silence. Out of sight, below the
surface, the deep wordless Play continued. With Tony's return the drama
hurried. The actor all had been waiting for came on, and took the centre
of the stage, and stayed until the curtain fell--a few weeks, all told, of
their short Egyptian winter.
In the crowded rush of action Tom felt the Wave--bend, break, and smash
him. At its highest moment he saw the stars, at its lowest the crunch of
shifting gravel filled his ears, the mud blinded sight, the rubbish choked
his breath. Yet he had seen those distant stars. . . . Into the
mothering sea, as he sank back, the memory of the light went with him.
It was a kind of incredible performance, half on earth and half in the
air: it rushed with such impetuous momentum.
Amid the intensity of his human emotions, meanwhile, he lost sight of any
subtler hints, if indeed they offered: he saw no veiled eastern visions
any more, divined no psychic warnings. His agony of blinding pain,
alternating with briefest intervals of shining hope when he recovered
belief in her and called himself the worst names he could think of--this
seething warfare of cruder feelings left no part of him sensitive to the
delicate promptings of finer forces, least of all to the tracery of
fancied memories. He only gasped for breath--sufficient to keep himself
afloat and cry, as he had promised he would cry, even to the bitter end:
'I'll face it . . . I'll stick it out . . . I'll trust. . . .!'
The setting of the Play was perfect; in Egypt alone was its production
possible. The brilliant lighting, the fathomless, soft shadows, deep
covering of blue by day, clear stars by night, the solemn hills, and the
slow, eternal river--all these, against the huge background of the Desert,
silent, golden, lonely, formed the adequate and true environment.
In no other country, in England least of all, could the presentation have
been real. Tony, himself, and Lettice belonged, one and all, it seemed,
to Egypt--yet, somehow, not wholly to the Egypt of the tourist hordes and
dragoman, and big hotels. The Onlooker in him, who stood aloof and held a
watching brief, looked down upon an ancient land unvexed by railways,
graciously clothed and coloured gorgeously, mapped burningly mid fiercer
passions, eager for life, contemptuous of death. He did not understand,
but that it was thus, not otherwise, he knew. . . .
Her beauty, too, both physical and spiritual, became for him strangely
heightened. He shifted between moods of worship that were alternately
physical and spiritual. In the former he pictured her with darker
colouring, half barbaric, eastern, her slender figure flitting through a
grove of palms beyond a river too wide for him to cross; gold bands
gleamed upon her arms, bare to the shoulder; he could not reach her;
she was with another--it was torturing; she and that other disappeared
into the covering shadows. . . . In the latter, however, there was no
unworthy thought, no faintest desire of the blood; he saw her high among
the little stars, gazing with tender, pitying eyes upon him, calling
softly, praying for him, loving him, yet remote in some spiritual
isolation where she must wait until he soared to join her.
Both physically and spiritually, that is, he idealised her--saw her
divinely naked. She did not move. She hung there like a star, waiting
for him, while he was carried past her, swept along helplessly by a tide,
a flood, a wave, though a wave that was somehow rising up to where she
dwelt above him. . . .
It was a marvellous experience. In the physical moods he felt the fires
of jealousy burn his flesh away to the bare nerves--resentment, rage, a
bitterness that could kill; in the alternate state he felt the uplifting
joy and comfort of ultimate sacrifice, sweet as heaven, the bliss of
complete renunciation--for her happiness. If she loved another who could
give her greater joy, he had no right to interfere.
It was this last that gradually increased in strength, the first that
slowly, surely died. Unsatisfied yearnings hunted his soul across the
empty desert that now seemed life. The self he had been so pleased with,
had admired so proudly with calm complacence, thinking it indispensable--
this was tortured, stabbed and mercilessly starved to death by slow
degrees, while something else appeared shyly, gently, as yet unaware of
itself, but already clearer and stronger. In the depths of his being,
below an immense horizon, shone joy, luring him onward and brightening as
it did so.
Love, he realised, was independent of the will--no one can will to love:
she was not anywhere to blame, a stronger claim had come into life and
changed her. She could not live untruth, pretending otherwise.
He, rather, was to blame if he sought to hold her to a smaller love she
had outgrown. She had the inalienable right to obey the bigger claim, if
such it proved to be. Personal freedom was the basis of their contract.
It would have been easier for him if she could have told him frankly,
shared it with him; but, since that seemed beyond her, then it was for him
to slip away. He must subtract himself from an inharmonious three,
leaving a perfect two. He must make it easier for _her_.
The days of golden sunshine passed along their appointed way as before,
leaving him still without a final decision. Outwardly the little party _a
trois_ seemed harmonious, a coherent unit, while inwardly the accumulation
of suppressed emotion crept nearer and nearer to the final breaking point.
They lived upon a crater, playing their comedy within sight and hearing of
destruction: even Mrs. Haughstone, ever waiting in the wings for her cue,
came on effectively and filled her role, insignificant yet necessary.
Its meanness was its truth.
'Mr. Winslowe excites my cousin too much; I'm sure it isn't good for her--
in England, yes, but not out here in this strong, dangerous climate.'
Tom understood, but invariably opposed her:
'If it makes her happy for a little while, I see no harm in it; life has
not been too kind to her, remember.'
Sometimes, however, the hint was barbed as well: 'Your cousin _is_ a
delightful being, but he can talk nonsense when he wants to.
He's actually been trying to persuade me that you're jealous of him.
He said you were only waiting a suitable moment to catch him alone in the
Desert and shoot him!'
Tom countered her with an assumption of portentous gravity: 'Sound travels
too easily in this still air,' he reminded her; 'the Nile would be the
simplest way.' After which, confused by ridicule, she renounced the hint
direct, indulging instead in facial expression, glances, and innuendo
conveyed by gesture.
That there was some truth, however, behind this betrayal of her hostess
and her fellow-guest, Tom felt certain; it lied more by exaggeration than
by sheer invention: he listened while he hated it; ashamed of himself, he
yet invited the ever-ready warnings, though he invariably defended the
object of them--and himself.
Alternating thus, he knew no minute of happiness; a single day, a single
hour contained both moods, trust ousted suspicion, and suspicion turned
out trust. Lettice led him on, then abruptly turned to ice. In the
morning he was first and Tony nowhere, the same afternoon this was
reversed precisely--yet the balance growing steadily in his cousin's
favour, the evidence accumulating against himself. It was not purposely
contrived, it was in automatic obedience to deeper impulses than she knew.
Tom never lost sight of this amazing duality in her, the struggle of one
self against another older self to which cruelty was no stranger--or, as
he put it, the newly awakened Woman against the Mother in her.
He could not fail to note the different effects he and his cousin produced
in her--the ghastly difference. With himself she was captious, easily
exasperated; her relations with Tony, above all, a sensitive spot on which
she could bear no slightest pressure without annoyance; while behind this
attitude, hid always the faithful motherly care that could not see him in
distress. That touch of comedy lay in it dreadfully:--wet feet, cold,
hungry, tired, and she flew to his consoling! Towards Tony this side of
her remained unresponsive; he might drink unfiltered water for all she
cared, tire himself to death, or sit in a draught for hours. It could
have been comic almost but for its significance: that from Tony she
_received_, instead of gave. The woman in her asked, claimed even--of the
man in him. The pain for Tom lay there.
His cousin amused, stimulated her beyond anything Tom could offer; she
sought protection from him, leant upon him. In his presence she blossomed
out, her eyes shone the moment he arrived, her voice altered, her spirits
became exuberant. The wholesome physical was awakened by him. He could
not hope to equal Tony's address, his fascination. He never forgot that
she once danced for happiness. . . . Helplessness grew upon him--he had
no right to feel angry even, he could not justly blame herself or his
cousin. The woman in her was open to capture by another; so far it had
never belonged to him. In vain he argued that the mother was the larger
part; it was the woman that he wanted with it. Having separated the two
aspects of her in this way, the division, once made, remained.
And every day that passed this difference in her towards himself and Tony
grew more mercilessly marked. The woman in her responded to another touch
than his. Though neither lust nor passion, he knew, dwelt in her pure
being anywhere, there were yet a thousand delicate unconscious ways by
which a woman betrayed her attraction to a being of the opposite sex; they
could not be challenged, but equally they could not be misinterpreted.
Like the colour and perfume of a rose, they emanated from her inmost
being. . . . In this sense, she was sexually indifferent to Tom, and
while passion consumed his soul, he felt her, dearly mothering, yet cold
as ice. The soft winds of Egypt bent the full-blossomed rose into
another's hand, towards another's lips. . . . Tony had entered the garden
of her secret life.
CHAPTER XXIX
And so the fires of jealousy burned him. He struggled hard, smothering
all outward expression of his pain, with the sole result that the
suppression increased the fury of the heat within. For every day the
tiniest details fed its fierceness. It was inextinguishable. He lost his
appetite, his sleep, he lost all sense of what is called proportion.
There was no rest in him, day and night he lived in the consuming flame.
His cousin's irresponsibility now assumed a sinister form that shocked
him. He recognised the libertine in his careless play with members of the
other sex who had pleased him for moments, then been tossed aside.
He became aware of grossness in his eyes and lips and bearing.
He understood, above all, his--hands.
Against the fiery screen of his emotions jealousy threw violent pictures
which he mistook for thought . . ., and there burst through this screen,
then, scattering all lesser feelings, the flame of a vindictive anger that
he believed was the protective righteous anger of an outraged man.
'If Tony did her wrong,' he told himself, 'I would kill him.'
Always, at this extravagant moment, however, he reached a climax, then
calmed down again. A sense of humour rose incongruously to check loss of
self-restraint. The memory of her daily tenderness swept over him; and
shame sent a blush into his cheeks. He felt mortified, ungenerous, a
foolish figure even. While the reaction lasted he forgave, felt her above
reproach, cursed his wretched thoughts that had tried to soil her, and
lost the violent vindictiveness that had betrayed him. His affection for
his cousin, always real, and the sympathy between them, always genuine,
returned to complete his own discomfiture. His mood swayed back to the
first, happy days when the three of them had laughed and played together.
And to punish himself while this reaction lasted, he would seek her out
and see that she inflicted the punishment itself. He would hear from her
own lips how fond she was of Tony, fighting to convince himself, while he
listened, that she was above suspicion, and that his pain was due solely
to unworthy jealousy. He would be specially nice to Tony, making things
easier for him, even urging him, as it were, into her very arms.
These moments of generous reaction, however, seemed to puzzle her.
The exalted state of emotion was confined, perhaps, to himself.
At any rate, he produced results the very reverse of what he intended;
Tony became more cautious, Lettice looked at himself with half-questioning
eyes. . . . There was falseness in his attitude, something unnatural.
It was not the part he was cast for in the Play. He could not keep it up.
He fell back once more to watching, listening, playing his proper role of
a slave who was forced to observe the happiness of others set somehow over
him, while suffering in silence. The inner fires were fed anew thereby.
He knew himself flung back, bruised and bleeding, upon his original fear
and jealousy, convinced more than ever before that this cruelty and
torture had to be, and that his pain was justified. To resist was only to
delay the perfect dawn.
The sum of loss I have not reckoned yet,
I cannot tell
For ever it was morning when we met,
Night when we bade farewell.
He changed the pronouns in the last two lines, for always it was morning
when _they_ met, night when _they_ bade farewell.
Mrs. Haughstone, meanwhile, neglected no opportunity of dotting the vowel
for his benefit; she crossed each _t_ that the writing of the stars
dropped fluttering across her path. 'Mr. Winslowe has emotions,' she
mentioned once, 'but he has no heart. If he ever marries and settles
down, his wife will find it out.'
'My cousin is not the kind to marry,' Tom replied. 'He's too changeable,
and he knows it.'
'He's young,' she said, 'he hasn't found the right woman yet. He will
improve--a woman older than himself with the mother strong in her might
hold him. He needs the mother too. Most men do, I think; they're all
children really.'
Tom laughed. 'Tony as father of a family--I can't imagine it.'
'Once he had children of his own,' she suggested, 'he would steady
wonderfully. Those men often make the best husbands--don't you think?'
'Perhaps,' Tom replied briefly. 'Provided there's real heart beneath.'
'In the woman, yes,' returned the other quietly. 'Too much heart in the
man can so easily cloy. A real man is always half a savage; that's why
the woman likes him. It's the woman who guards the family.'
Tom, knowing that her words veiled other meanings, pretended not to
notice. He no longer rose to the bait she offered. He detected the
nonsense, the insincerity as well, but he could not argue successfully,
and generalisations were equally beyond him. Too polite to strike back,
he always waited till she had talked herself out; besides he often
acquired information thus, information he both longed for yet disliked
intensely. Such information rarely failed: it was, indeed, the desire to
impart it with an air of naturalness that caused the conversation almost
invariably. It appeared now. It was pregnant information, too.
She conveyed it in a lowered tone: there was news from Warsaw.
The end, it seemed, was expected by the doctors; a few months at most.
Lettice had been warned, however, that her appearance could do no good;
the sufferer mistook her for a relative who came to persecute him.
Her presence would only hasten the end. She had cabled, none the less, to
say that she would come. This was a week ago; the answer was expected in
a day or two.
And Tom had not been informed of this.
'Mr. Winslowe thinks she ought to go at once. I'm sure his advice is
wise. Even if her presence can do no good, it might be an unceasing
regret if she was not there. . . .'
'Your cousin alone can judge,' he interrupted coldly. 'I'd rather not
discuss it, if you don't mind,' he added, noticing her eagerness to
continue the conversation.
'Oh, certainly, Mr. Kelverdon--just as you feel. But in case she asks
your advice as well--I only thought you'd like to know--to be prepared,
I mean.'
Only long afterwards did it occur to him that Tony's informant was
possibly this jealous parasite herself, who now deliberately put the
matter in another light, hoping to sow discord to her own eventual
benefit. All he realised at the moment was the intolerable pain that
Lettice should tell him nothing. She looked to Tony for help, advice,
possibly for consolation too.
There were moments of another kind, however, when it seemed quite easy to
talk plainly. His position was absurd, undignified, unmanly. It was for
him to state his case and abide by the result. Hearts rarely break in
two, for all that poets and women might protest.
These moments, however, he did not use. It was not that he shrank from
hearing his sentence plainly spoken, nor that he decided he must not
prevent something that had to be. The reason lay deeper still:--it was
impossible. In her presence he became tongue-tied, helpless. His own
stupidity overwhelmed him. Silence took him. He felt at a hopeless
disadvantage, ashamed even. No words of his could reach her through the
distance, across the barrier, that lay between them now. He made no
single attempt. His aching heart, filled with an immeasurable love,
remained without the relief of utterance. He had lost her. But he loved
now something in her place beyond the possibility of loss--an
indestructible ideal.
Words, therefore, were not only impossible, they were vain. And when the
final moment came they were still more useless. He could go, but he could
not tell her he was going. Before that moment came, however, another
searching experience was his: he saw Tony jealous--jealous of himself!
He actually came to feel sympathy with his cousin who was his rival!
It was his faithful love that made that possible too.
He realised this suddenly one day at Assouan.
He had been thinking about the long conversations Tony and Lettice enjoyed
together, wondering what they found to discuss at such interminable
length. From that his mind slipped easily into another question--how she
could be so insensible to the pain she caused him?--when, all in a flash,
he realised the distance she had travelled from him on the road of love
towards Tony. The moment of perspective made it abruptly clear. She now
talked with Tony as once, at Montreux and elsewhere, she had talked with
himself. He saw his former place completely occupied. As an accomplished
fact he saw it.
The belief that Tony's influence would weaken deserted him from that
instant. It had been but a false hope created by desire and yearning.
There was a crash. He reached the bottom of despair. That same evening,
on returning to his hotel from the Works, he found a telegram. It had
been arranged that Lettice, Tony, Miss de Lorne and her brother should
join him in Assouan. The telegram stated briefly that it was not possible
after all:--she sent an excuse.
The sleepless night was no new thing to him, but the acuteness of new
suffering was a revelation. Jealousy unmasked her amazing powers of
poisonous and devastating energy. . . . He visualised in detail.
He saw Lettice and his cousin together in the very situations he had
hitherto reserved imaginatively for himself, both sweets hoped for and
delights experienced, but raised now a hundredfold in actuality.
Like pictures of flame they rose before his inner eye; they seared and
scorched him; his blood turned acid; the dregs of agony were his to drink.
The happiness he had planned for himself, down to the smallest minutiae of
each precious incident, he now saw transferred in this appalling way--to
another. Not deliberately summoned, not morbidly evoked--the pictures
rose of their own accord against the background of his mind, yet so
instinct with actuality, that it seemed he had surely lived them, too,
himself with her, somewhere, somehow . . . before. There was that same
haunting touch of familiarity about them.
In the long hours of this particular night he reached, perhaps, the acme
of his pain; imagination, whipped by jealousy, stoked the furnace to a
heat he had not known as yet. He had been clinging to a visionary hope.
'I've lost her . . . lost her . . . lost her,' he repeated to himself,
as though with each repetition the meaning of the phrase grew clearer.
Numbness followed upon misery; there were long intervals when he felt
nothing at all, periods when he thought he hated her, when pride and anger
whispered he could do without her. . . . A state of negative
insensibility followed. . . . On the heels of it came a red and violent
vindictiveness; next--resignation, complete acceptance, almost peace.
Then acute sensitiveness returned again--he felt the whole series of
emotions over and over without one omission. This numbness and
sensitiveness alternated with a kind of rhythmic succession. . . .
He reviewed the entire episode from beginning to end, recalled every word
she had uttered, traced the gradual influence of Tony on her, from its
first faint origin to its present climax. He saw her struggles and her
tears . . . the mysterious duality working to possess her soul. It was
all plain as daylight. No justification for any further hope was left to
him. He must go. . . . It was the thunder, surely, of the falling Wave.
For Tony, he realised at last, had not merely usurped his own place, but
had discovered a new Lettice to herself, and setting her thus in a new, a
larger world, had taught her a new relationship. He had achieved--perhaps
innocently enough so far as his conscience was concerned?--a new result,
and a bigger one than Tom, with his lesser powers, could possibly have
effected.
There was no falseness, no duplicity in her. 'She still loves me as
before, the mother still gives me what she always gave,' Tom put it to
himself, 'but Tony has ploughed deeper--reached the woman in her.
He loves a Lettice I have never realised. It is this new Lettice that
loves him in return. . . . What right have I, with my smaller claim, to
stand in her way a single moment? . . . I must slip out.'
He had lost the dream that Tony but tended a blossom, the fruit of which
would come sweetly to his plucking afterwards. The intense suffering
concealed all prophecy, as the jealousy killed all hope. He spent that
final night of awful pain on his balcony, remembering how weeks before in
Luxor the first menacing presentiment had come to him. He stared out into
the Egyptian wonder of outer darkness. The stillness held a final menace
as of death. He recalled a Polish proverb: 'In the still marshes there
are devils.' The world spread dark and empty like his life; the Theban
Hills seemed to have crept after him, here to Assouan; the stars,
incredibly distant, had no warmth or comfort in them; the river roared
with a dull and lonely sound; he heard the palm trees rattling in the
wind. The pain in him was almost physical. . . .
Dawn found him in the same position--yet with a change. Perhaps the
prolonged agony had killed the ache of ceaseless personal craving, or
perhaps the fierceness of the fire had burned it out. Tom could not say;
nor did he ask the questions. A change was there, and that was all he
knew. He had come at last to a decision, made a final choice. He had
somehow fought his battle out with a courage he did not know was courage.
Here at Assouan, he turned upon the Wave and faced it. He saw _her_
happiness only, fixed all his hope and energy on that. A new and loftier
strength woke in him. There was no shuffling now.
He would give her up. In his heart she would always remain his dream and
his ideal--but outwardly he would no longer need her. He would do without
her. He forgave--if there was anything to forgive--forgave them
both. . . .
Something in him had broken.
He could not explain it, though he felt it. Yet it was not her that he
had given up--it was himself.
The first effect of this, however, was to think that life lay in ruins
round him, that, literally, the life in him was smothered by the breaking
wave. . . .
And yet he did not break--he did not drown.
For, as though to show that his decision was the right, inevitable one,
small outward details came to his assistance. Fate evidently approved.
For Fate just then furnished relief by providing another outlet for his
energies: the Works went seriously wrong: Tom could think of nothing else
but how he could put things right again. Reflection, introspection,
brooding over mental and spiritual pain became impossible.
The lieutenants he trusted had played him false; sub-contracts of an
outrageous kind, flavoured by bribery, had been entered into; the cost of
certain necessaries had been raised absurdly, with the result that the
profits of the entire undertaking to the Firm must be lowered
correspondingly. And the blame, the responsibility was his own; he had
unwisely delegated his powers to underlings whose ambitions for money
exceeded their sense of honour. But Tom's honour was involved as well.
He had delegated his powers in writing. He now had to pay the price of
his prolonged neglect of duty.
The position was irremediable; Tom's neglect and inefficiency were
established beyond question. He had failed in a position of high trust.
And to make the situation still less pleasant, Sir William, the Chairman
of the Company--Tom's chief, the man to whom he owed his partnership and
post of trust--telegraphed that he was on the way at last from Salonika.
One way alone offered--to break the disastrous contracts by payments made
down without delay. Tom made these payments out of his own pocket; they
were large; his private resources disappeared in a single day. . . .
But, even so, the delay and bungling at the Works were not to be
concealed. Sir William, shrewd, experienced man of business, stern of
heart as well as hard of head, could not be deceived. Within half an hour
of his arrival, Tom Kelverdon's glaring incompetency--worse, his
unreliability, to use no harsher word--were all laid bare. His position
in the Firm, even his partnership, perhaps, became untenable. Resignation
stared him in the face.
He saw his life go down in ruins before his very eyes; the roof had fallen
long ago. The pillars now collapsed. The Wave, indeed, had turned him
upside down; its smothering crash left no corner of his being above water;
heart, mind, and character were flung in a broken tangle against the cruel
bottom as it fell to earth.
But, at any rate, the new outlet for his immediate energies was offered.
He seized it vigorously. He gave up his room at Luxor, and sent a man
down to bring his luggage up. He did not write to Lettice. He faced the
practical situation with a courage and thoroughness which, though too
late, were admirable. Moreover, he found a curious relief in the new
disaster, a certain comfort even. There was compensation in it
somewhere. Everything was going to smash--the sooner, then, the better!
This recklessness was in him. He had lost Lettice, so what else mattered?
His attitude was somewhat devil-may-care, his grip on life itself seemed
slipping.
This mood could not last, however, with a character like his. It seized
him, but retained no hold. It was the last cry of despair when he touched
bottom, the moment when weaker temperaments think of the emergency exit,
realise their final worthlessness--proving themselves worthless, indeed,
thereby.
Tom met the blow in other fashion. He saw himself unworthy, but by no
means worthless. Suicide, whether of death or of final collapse, did not
enter his mind even. He faced the Wave, he did not shuffle now. He sent
a telegram to Lettice to say he was detained; he wrote to Tony that he had
given up his room in the Luxor hotel, an affectionate, generous note,
telling him to take good care of Lettice. It was only right and fair that
Tony should think the path for himself was clear. Since he had decided to
'slip out' this attitude towards his cousin was necessarily involved.
It must not appear that he had retired, beaten and unhappy. He must do no
single thing that might offer resistance to the inevitable fate, least of
all leave Tony with the sense of having injured him. True sacrifice
forbade; renunciation, if real, was also silent--the smiling face, the
cheerful, natural manner!
Tom, therefore, fixed his heart more firmly than ever upon one single
point: her happiness. He fought to think of that alone. If he knew her
happy, he could live. He found life in her joy. He lived in that.
By 'slipping out,' no word of reproach, complaint, or censure uttered, he
would actually contribute to her happiness. Thus, vicariously, he almost
helped to cause it. In this faint, self-excluding bliss, he could live--
even live on--until the end. That seemed true forgiveness.
Meanwhile, not easily nor immediately, did he defy the anguish that,
day and night, kept gnawing at his heart. His one desire was to hide
it, and--if the huge achievement might lie within his powers--
to change it sweetly into a source of strength that should redeem him.
The 'sum of loss,' indeed, he had not 'reckoned yet,' but he was
beginning to add the figures up. Full measurement lay in the long, long
awful years ahead. He had this strange comfort, however--that he now
loved something he could never lose because it could not change.
He loved an ideal. In that sense, he and Lettice were in the 'sea'
together. His belief and trust in her were not lost, but heightened.
And a hint of mothering contentment stole sweetly over him behind this
shadowy yet genuine consolation.
The childhood nightmare was both presentiment and memory. The crest of
the falling Wave was reflected in its base.
CHAPTER XXX
Tom took his passage home; he also told Sir William that his resignation,
whether the Board accepted it or not, was final. His reputation, so far
as the Firm was concerned, he knew was lost. His own self-respect had
dwindled dangerously too. He had the feeling that he wanted to begin all
over again from the very bottom. It seemed the only way. The prospect,
at his age, was daunting. He faced it.
At the very moment in life when he had fancied himself most secure, most
satisfied mentally, spiritually, materially--the entire structure on which
self-confidence rested had given way. Even the means of material support
had vanished too. The crash was absolute. This brief Egyptian winter
had, indeed, proved the winter of his loss. The Wave had fallen at last.
During the interval at Assouan--ten days that seemed a month!--he heard
occasionally from Lettice. 'To-day I miss you,' one letter opened.
Another said: 'We wonder when you will return. We _all_ miss you very
much: it's not the same here without you, Tom.' And all were signed
'Your ever loving Lettice.' But if hope for some strange reason refused
to die completely, he did not allow himself to be deceived. His task--no
easy one--was to transmute emotion into the higher, self-less, ideal love
that was now--oh, he knew it well enough--his only hope and safety.
In the desolate emptiness of desert that yawned ahead, he saw this single
tree that blossomed, and offered shade. Beauty and comfort both were
there. He believed in her truth and somehow in her faithfulness as well.
Tom sent his heavy luggage to Port Said, and took the train to Luxor.
He had decided to keep his sailing secret. He could mention honestly that
he was going to Cairo. He would write a line from there or, better still,
from the steamer itself.
And the instinct that led to this decision was sound and wise. The act
was not as boyish as it seemed. For he feared a reaction on her part that
yet could be momentary only. His leaving so suddenly would be a shock, it
might summon the earlier Lettice to the surface, there might be a painful
scene for both of them. She would realise, to some extent at any rate,
the immediate sense of loss; for she would surely divine that he was
going, not to England merely, but out of her life. And she would suffer;
she might even try to keep him--the only result being a revival of pain
already almost conquered, and of distress for her.
For such reaction, he divined, could not be permanent. The Play was over;
it must not, could not be prolonged. He must go out. There must be no
lingering when the curtain fell. A curtain that halts in its descent upon
the actors endangers the effect of the entire Play.
He wired to Cairo for a room. He wired to her too: 'Arrive to-morrow,
_en route_ Cairo. Leave same night.' He braced himself. The strain
would be cruelly exacting, but the worst had been lived out already; the
jealousy was dead; the new love was established beyond all reach of
change. These last few hours should be natural, careless, gay, no hint
betraying him, flying no signals of distress. He could just hold out.
The strength was in him. And there was time before he caught the evening
train for a reply to come: 'All delighted; expect you breakfast.
Arranging picnic expedition.--Lettice.'
And that one word 'all' helped him unexpectedly to greater steadiness.
It eliminated the personal touch even in a telegram.
In the train he slept but little; the heat was suffocating; there was a
Khamsin blowing and the fine sand crept in everywhere. At Luxor, however,
the wind remained so high up that the lower regions of the sky were calm
and still. The sand hung in fog-like clouds shrouding the sun, dimming
the usual brilliance. But the heat was intense, and the occasional stray
puffs of air that touched the creeping Nile or passed along the sweltering
street, seemed to issue from the mouth of some vast furnace in the
heavens. They dropped, then ceased abruptly; there was no relief in them.
The natives sat listlessly in their doorways, the tourists kept their
rooms or idled complainingly in the hotel halls and corridors.
The ominous touch was everywhere. He felt it in his heart as well--the
heart he thought broken beyond repair.
Tom bathed and changed his clothes, then drove down to the shady garden
beside the river as of old. He felt the gritty sand between his teeth, it
was in his mouth and eyes, it was on his tongue. . . . He met Lettice
without a tremor, astonished at his own coolness and self-control; he
watched her beauty as the beauty of a picture, something that was no
longer his, yet watched it without envy and, in an odd sense, almost
without pain. He loved the fairness of it for itself, for her, and for
another who was not himself. Almost he loved their happiness to come--for
_her_ sake. Her eyes, too, followed him, he fancied, like a picture's
eyes. She looked young and fresh, yet something mysterious in the
following eyes. The usual excited happiness was less obvious, he thought,
than usual, the mercurial gaiety wholly absent. He fancied a cloud upon
her spirit somewhere. He imagined tiny, uncertain signs of questioning
distress. He wondered. . . . This torture of a last uncertainty was also
his.
Yet, obviously, she was glad to see him; her welcome was genuine; she came
down the drive to meet him, both hands extended. Apparently, too, she was
alone, Mrs. Haughstone still asleep, and Tony not yet arrived. It was
still early morning.
'Well, and how did you get on without me--all of you?' he asked, adding
the last three words with emphasis.
'I thought you were never coming back, Tom; I had the feeling you were
bored here at Luxor and meant to leave us.' She looked him up and down
with a curious look--of admiration almost, an admiration he believed he
had now learned to do without. 'How lean and brown and well you look!'
she went on, 'but thin, Tom. You've grown thinner.' She shook her finger
at him. Her voice was perilously soft and kind, a sweet tenderness in her
manner, too. 'You've been over-working and not eating enough. You've not
had me to look after you.'
He flushed. 'I'm awfully fit,' he said, smiling a little shyly.
'I may be thinner. That's the heat, I suppose. Assouan's a blazing
place--you feel you're in Africa.' He said the banal thing as usual.
'But was there no one there to look after you?' She gave him a quick
glance. 'No one at all?'
Tom noticed the repeated question, wondering a little. But there was no
play in him; in place of it was something stern, unyielding as iron,
though not tested yet.
'The Chairman of my Company, nine hundred noisy tourists, and about a
thousand Arabs at the Works,' he told her. 'There was hardly a soul I
knew besides.'
She said no more; she gave a scarcely audible sigh; she seemed unsatisfied
somewhere. To his surprise, then, he noticed that the familiar little
table was only laid for two.
'Where's Tony?' he asked. 'And, by the by, how is he?'
He thought she hesitated a moment. 'Tony's not coming till later,' she
told him. 'He guessed we should have a lot to talk about together, so he
stayed away. Nice of him, wasn't it?'
Behind the commonplace sentences, the hidden wordless Play also drew on
towards its Curtain.
'Well, it is my turn rather for a chat, perhaps,' he returned presently
with a laugh, taking his cup of steaming coffee from her hand. 'I can see
him later in the day. You've arranged something, I'm sure. Your wire
spoke of a picnic, but perhaps this heat--this beastly Khamsin----'
'It's passing,' she mentioned. 'They say it blows for three days, for six
days, or for nine, but as a matter of fact, it does nothing of the sort.
It's going to clear. I thought we might take our tea into the Desert.'
She went on talking rapidly, almost nervously, it seemed to Tom. Her mind
was upon something else. Thoughts of another kind lay unexpressed behind
her speech. His own mind was busy too--Tony, Warsaw, the long long
interval he had been away, what had happened during his absence, and so
forth? Had no cable come? What would she feel this time to-morrow when
she knew?--these and a hundred others seethed below his quiet manner and
careless talk. He noticed then that she was exquisitely dressed; she
wore, in fact, the very things he most admired--and wore them purposely:
the orange-coloured jacket, the violet veil, the hat with the little roses
on the brim. It was his turn to look her up and down.
She caught his eye. Uncannily, she caught his thought as well.
Tom steeled himself.
'I put these on especially for you, you truant boy,' she said deliciously
across the table at him. 'I hope you're sensible of the honour done you.'
'Rather, Lettice! I should think I am, indeed!'
'I got up half an hour earlier on purpose too. Think what that means to a
woman like me.' She handed him a grape-fruit she had opened and prepared
herself.
'My favourite hat, and my favourite fruit! I wish I were worthy of them!'
He stammered slightly as he said the stupid thing: the blood rushed up to
his very forehead, but she gave no sign of noticing either words or blush.
The strong sunburn hid the latter doubtless. There was a desperate
shyness in him that he could not manage quite. He wished to heaven the
talk would shift into another key. He could not keep this up for long;
it was too dangerous. Her attitude, it seemed, had gone back to that of
weeks ago; there was more than the mother in it, he felt: it was almost
the earlier Lettice--and yet not quite. Something was added, but
something too was missing. He wondered more and more . . . he asked
himself odd questions. . . . It seemed to him suddenly that her mood was
assumed, not wholly natural. The flash came to him that disappointment
lay behind it, yet that the disappointment was not with--himself.
'You're wearing a new tie, Tom,' her voice broke in upon his moment's
reverie. 'That's not the one _I_ gave you.'
It was so unexpected, so absurd. It startled him. He laughed with
genuine amusement, explaining that he had bought it in Assouan in a moment
of extravagance--'the nearest shade I could find to the blue you gave me.
How observant you are!' Lettice laughed with him. 'I always notice
little things like that,' she said. 'It's what you call the mother in me,
I suppose.' She examined the tie across the table, while they smoked
their cigarettes. He looked aside. 'I hope it was admired. It suits
you.' She fingered it. Her hand touched his chin.
'Does it? It's your taste, you know.'
'But _was_ it admired?' she insisted almost sharply.
'That's really more than I can say, Lettice. You see, I didn't ask Sir
William what he thought, and the natives are poor judges because they
don't wear ties.' He was about to say more, talking the first nonsense
that came into his head, when she did a thing that took his breath away,
and made him tremble where he sat. Regardless of lurking Arab servants,
careless of Mrs. Haughstone's windows not far behind them, she rose
suddenly, tripped round the little table, kissed him on his cheek--and was
back again in her chair, smoking innocently as before. It was a
repetition of an earlier act, yet with a difference somewhere.
The world seemed unreal just then; things like this did not happen in real
life, at least not quite like this; nor did two persons in their
respective positions talk exactly thus, using such banal language, such
insignificant phrases half of banter, half of surface foolishness.
The kiss amazed him--for a moment. Tom felt in a dream. And yet this
very sense of dream, this idle exchange of trivial conversation cloaked
something that was a cruel, an indubitable reality. It was not a dream
shot through with reality, it was a reality shot through with dream.
But the dream itself, though old as the desert, dim as those grim Theban
Hills now draped with flying sand, was also true and actual.
The hidden Play had broken through, merging for an instant with the upper
surface-life. He was almost persuaded that this last, strange action had
not happened, that Lettice had never really left her chair. So still and
silent she sat there now. She had not stirred from her place. It was the
burning wind that touched his cheek, a waft of heated atmosphere, lightly
moving, that left the disquieting trail of perfume in the air.
The glowing heavens, luminous athwart the clouds of fine, suspended sand,
laid this ominous hint of dream upon the entire day. . . . The recent act
became a mere picture in the mind.
Yet some little cell of innermost memory, stirring out of sleep, had
surely given up its dead. . . . For a second it seemed to him this heavy,
darkened air was in the recesses of the earth, beneath the burden of
massive cliffs the centuries had piled. It was underground. In some
cavern of those mournful Theban Hills, some one--had kissed him! For over
his head shone painted stars against a painted blue, and in his nostrils
hung a faint sweetness as of ambra. . . .
He recovered his balance quickly. They resumed their curious masquerade,
the screen of idle talk between significance and emptiness, like sounds of
reality between dream and waking.