Dear Doctor Isaacson:
"That strange feeling in my head has returned, and I should like to
see you about it," etc., etc.
Usually he answered such letters with energy, and certainly without any
disgust. They were the letters he wanted. He could scarcely have too
many of them. But to-day a weariness overtook him; almost more than a
weariness, a sort of sick irritation against the life that he had chosen
and that he was making a marvellous success of. Illness, always illness!
Pale faces, disordered nerves, dyspepsia, melancholia, anaemia, all the
troop of ills that afflict humanity, marching for ever into his room!
What company for a man to keep! What company! Suddenly he pushed away
the printed forms, put down his pen, and got up.
He knew quite well what was troubling him. It was the letter he had had
from the Nile. At first it had disturbed him in one way. Now it was
disturbing him in another. It was a call to him from a land which he
knew he must love, a call to him from his own place. For his ancestors
had been Jews of the East, and some of them had been settled in Cairo.
It was a call from the shining land. He remembered how one night, when
Nigel and he were talking about Egypt, Nigel had said: "You ought to go
there. You'd be in your right place there."
If he did go there! If he went soon, very soon--this spring!
But how could he take a holiday in the spring, just when everybody was
coming to town? Then he told himself that he was saying nonsense to
himself. People went abroad in the spring, to India, Sicily, the
Riviera, the Nile. Ah, he was back again on the Nile! But so many people
did not go abroad. It would be madness for a fashionable doctor to be
away just when the season was coming on. Well, but he might run out for
a very short time--for a couple of weeks, something like that. Two
nights from London to Naples; two nights at sea in one of the new, swift
boats, the _Heliopolis_, perhaps; a few hours in the train, and he would
be at Cairo. Five nights' travelling would bring him to the first
cataract. And he would be in the real light.
He stared at the electric bulbs that gleamed on either side of the
mantelpiece. Then he glanced towards the windows, oblongs of dingy grey
looking upon fog and daylight darkness.
That would be good, to be in the real light!
Nigel's letter lay somewhere under the letters from patients. The Doctor
went back to his table, searched for it, and found it. Then he came back
to the fire, and studied the letter carefully again.
"Do you remember our walk home from the concert that night, and how I
said, 'I want to get into the light, the real light'? Well, I'm in it,
and how I wish that you and every one else could be in it too!... Come
to the Nile when next you take a holiday."
It was almost an invitation to go; not quite an invitation, but almost.
Isaacson seemed to divine that the man who wrote wished his friend to
come out and see his happiness, but that he did not quite dare to ask
him to come out; seemed to divine a hostile influence that kept the pen
in check.
"I wonder if she knows of this letter?"
That question came into Isaacson's mind. The last words of the letter
almost implied that she knew. Nigel had meant to tell her of it, had
doubtless told her of it on the day when he wrote it. If Isaacson went
to the Nile, there was one person on the river who would not welcome
him. He knew that well. And Nigel, of course, did not really want him.
Happy people do not really want friends outside to come into the magic
circle and share their happiness. They may say they do, out of
good-will. Even for a moment, moved by an enthusiastic impulse, they may
think that they do. But true happiness is exquisitely exclusive in its
desires.
"Armine would like me just to see it's all right, and then, when I've
seen, he would like to kick me out."
That was how Isaacson summed up eventually Nigel's exact feeling towards
him at this moment. It was hardly worth while undertaking the journey
from England to gratify such a desire of the happy egoist. Better put
the idea away. It was impracticable, and--
"Besides, it's quite out of the question!"
The Doctor returned to his table, and began resolutely to write answers
to his letters, and to fix appointments. He went on writing until every
letter was answered--every letter but Nigel Armine's.
And then again the strong desire came upon him to answer it in person,
one morning to appear on the riverbank where the--what was the
name?--the _Loulia_ was tied up, to walk on deck, and say, "I
congratulate you on your happiness."
How amazed his friend would be! And his enemy--what would her face be
like?
Isaacson always thought of Mrs. Armine as his enemy. She had come into
his life as a spy. He felt as if from the first moment when she had seen
him she had hated him. She had got the better of him, and she knew it.
Possibly now, because of that knowledge, she would like him better. She
had won out. Or had she, now that Lord Harwich had an heir?
As he sat there with Nigel's letter before him, a keen, an almost
intense curiosity was alive in Meyer Isaacson. It was not vulgar, but
the natural curiosity of the psychologist about strange human things.
Since the Armines had left London and he had known of their marriage,
Isaacson had thought of them often, but a little vaguely, as of people
who had quite gone out of his life for a time. He had to concentrate on
his own affairs. But now, with this letter, despite the great distance
between the Armines and himself, they seemed to be quite near him. All
his recollection of his connection with them started up in his mind,
vivid and almost fierce. Especially he remembered the clever woman, the
turn of her beautiful head, the look in the eyes contradicting the
lovely line of the profile, the irony of her smile, the attractive
intonations of her lazy voice. He remembered his two visits to her, how
she had secretly defied him. He recalled exactly her appearance when he
had bade her good-bye for the last time, eight days before she had been
married to Nigel. She had stood by the hearth, in a rose-coloured gown,
with smoke-wreaths curling round her. And she had looked quite lovely in
her secret triumph. But as he went out, he had noticed the tiny wrinkles
near her eyes, the slight hardness about her cheek-bones, the cynical
droop at the corners of her mouth.
And he had remembered these things when he learnt of the marriage, and
he had foreseen disaster.
He smoothed out Nigel's letter, and he took up his pen to answer it.
Since he could not answer it in person, he must despatch the substitute.
But now the dreary quiet of the London Sunday distressed him as if it
were noise. He found himself listening to it with a sort of anxiety; he
felt as if he must struggle against it before he could write sincerely
to Nigel. There was something paralyzing in this dark and foggy peace.
Why was he heaping up money, grasping at fame, dedicating himself to
imprisonment within the limits of this house, within this sunless town?
Why was he starving his love of beauty, his natural love of adventure,
his quick feeling for romance? Or was it quick any longer? Things not
encouraged die sometimes. Certainly, he was starving deliberately much
of himself.
Again came the desire to let, for once, a strong impulse have its way,
to forget, for once, that he was a man under strict discipline--the
discipline of his own cruel will--or to remember and mutiny. For a
moment his thoughts were almost like a schoolboy's. The fun of it! The
fun of rapid packing, of saying to Henry (unboundedly amazed), "Call me
a four-wheeler!" of the drive to Charing Cross, of the registering of
the luggage, of the rapid flight through the wintry landscape till the
grey sea beat up almost against the line, of the--
And presently Naples! A blue sea, the mountains of Crete, the iron
ridges of Zante, and at last a laughing harbour, boats with bellying
lateen sails manned by dark men in turbans, white houses, flat roofs,
palm-trees!
It would be good! It would be splendid!
If he answered Nigel's letter, he would not yield to his impulse. And if
he did not answer it--?
After long hesitation, he put the letter aside, he got out of a drawer
his pile of manuscript paper, and he set himself to work. And presently
he forgot that it was Sunday in London; he forgot everything except what
he was doing. But in the evening, when he was dining alone, the longing
to be off returned, and though he said to himself that he would not
yield to it, he did not answer Nigel's letter. Absurdly, he felt that by
not answering it he left the door open to this possible pleasure.
He never answered that letter. Day after day went by. He worked with
unflagging energy. He seemed as attentive to, as deeply interested in,
his patients as usual. But all the time that he sat in his
consulting-room, that he listened to accounts of symptoms, that he gave
advice and wrote out prescriptions, he was secretly playing with the
idea that perhaps this spring he would take a holiday in Egypt. He had
an ardent, though generally carefully controlled imagination. Just now
he gave it the reins. In the darkest days he saw himself in sunlight.
When he looked at the bare trees in the parks, they changed in a moment
to opulent palms. He heard a soft wind stirring their mighty leaves. It
spoke to him of the desert. Never before had he gained such definite
pleasure from his imagination. Had he become a child again? It almost
seemed so. If his patients only knew the present truths of the man whom
they begged to lead them to health! If they only knew his wanderings
while they were unfolding their tales of wonder and woe! But his face
told nothing. It did not cry to them, "I am in Egypt!" And so they were
never perturbed.
February slipped away.
If he really meant to go to the Nile, he must not delay his departure.
Did he mean to go? So long now had he played with the delightful
imagination of a voyage to the sun that he began to say to himself that
he had had his pleasure and must rest satisfied. He even told himself
the commonplace lie that the thought of a thing is more satisfactory
than the thing itself could ever be, and that to him the real Egypt
would prove a disappointment after the imagined Egypt of his winter
dreams. And he decided that he would not go, that he had never intended
to go.
On the day when he took this decision, he got a letter from a patient
whom he had sent to winter on the Nile. She wrote from Luxor many
details of her condition, which he read slowly and with care. Towards
the end of the letter, perhaps made frolicsome by confession, she broke
into gossip, related several little scandals of various hotels, and
concluded with this paragraph:
"Quite an excitement has been caused here by the arrival of a marvellous
dahabeeyah called the _Loulia_. She is the most lovely boat on the Nile,
I am told, and every one is longing to go over her. But there is no
chance for any of us. In the first place the _Loulia_ is tied up at the
western bank, on the Theban side of the river, and, in the second place,
she belongs for the season to the Nigel Armines. And, as of course you
remember, Mrs. Nigel Armine was Mrs. Chepstow, and _utterly impossible_.
Now she is married again she may think she will be received, but she
never will be. Of course, if she could have had the luck one day to
become Lady Harwich, it might have become possible. A great position
like that naturally makes people think differently. And, after all, the
woman is married now. But no use talking about it! The twins have
effectually knocked that possibility on the head. They say she nearly
went mad with fury when she heard the news. It seems he had never given
her a hint before the wedding. Wise man! He evidently knew his Mrs.
Chepstow. Nevertheless, to give the devil her due, I hear she seems
quite wrapped up in her husband. I saw him for a minute the other day,
when I was crossing to go to the tombs of the Kings. He was looking
awfully ill, I thought, such an extraordinary colour! I didn't see her,
but they say she looks younger than ever, and much more beautiful than
when she was in London. Marriage evidently suits her, though it doesn't
seem to suit him," etc., etc.
This letter arrived by an evening post, and Isaacson read it after his
day's work was done. When he had finished it, he took out from a drawer
Nigel's letter to him, which he had kept, and compared the two. It was
not necessary to do this, for Nigel's words were in his memory. Isaacson
could not have said exactly why he did it. The sight of the two letters
side by side made a strongly disagreeable impression upon him, and
perhaps, in comparing them thus, he had almost unconsciously been
seeking such an impression.
"Never in my life have I been in such splendid health."
"He was looking awfully ill--such an extraordinary colour!"
What had happened between the writing of the first letter and the
writing of the last? What had produced this change?
After a few minutes, Isaacson put both the letters away and softly shut
the drawer of the writing-table. He had dined. The night was his. He had
his nargeeleh brought, and told Henry that he was not to be disturbed.
Not since that night of autumn when Nigel had said of Mrs. Chepstow,
"She talks of coming to Egypt for the winter," had Isaacson taken the
long and snake-like pipe-stem into his hand. Only when his mind was
specially alive, almost excitedly alive, and when he wished to push that
vitality to its limit, did he instinctively turn to the nargeeleh. Then
his fingers and his lips needed it. His eyes needed it, too. Some breath
of the East ran through him, stirring inherited instincts, inherited
needs, to life. Now he turned out all the electric lights, he sat down
in the dim glow from the fire, and he took once again, eagerly, between
his thin fingers the snake-like stem of the nargeeleh. The water bubbled
in the cocoanut. He filled his lungs with the delicious tumbak, he let
it out in clouds through his nostrils.
London slept, and he sat there still. In his shining eyes the intense
life of his mind was revealed. But there was no one to mark it, no one
with him to love or to fear it.
At last, in the very deep of the night, he got up from his chair. He sat
down at his writing-table. And he worked till the morning came, writing
letters to patients whose names he looked out in his book of
appointments, and whose addresses he turned up in the Red Book, or found
in letters which he had kept by him, going through accounts, studying
his bank-book, writing to his banker and his stockbroker, to hospitals
with which he was connected, to societies for which he sometimes
delivered addresses; doing a multitude of things which might
surely--might they not?--have waited till day. And when at length there
was a movement in the house which told of the servants awakening, he
pushed the bell with a long finger.
Presently Henry came, trying to hide a look of amazement.
"Directly Cook's office in Piccadilly opens I shall want this letter
taken there. The messenger must wait for an answer."
He held out a letter.
"Yes, sir."
"All these are for the post."
"Yes, sir."
"You might order Arthur to get ready my bath."
"Yes, sir."
The doctor stood up.
"I shall see patients to-day. To-morrow, or the next day, at latest, I
shall leave London. I'm going to Egypt for a few weeks."
There was a pause. Then Henry uttered his formula.
"Yes, sir," he murmured.
He turned and went slowly out.
His sloping shoulders looked as if the Heavens had fallen--on them.