The long green blinds kept out the glare of the sunshine; and at first he saw the room but dimly. Then, slowly, the white form emerged, the broad-brimmed hat, the hanging violet veil, the yellow jacket of soft, clinging silk, the long white gauntlet gloves. He saw her dear face peering through the dimness at him, the eyes burning like two dark precious stones. A table stood between them. There was a square white object on it. A moment’s bewilderment stole over him. Why had she called him in? What was she going to say? Why did she choose this moment? Was it the threat of Tony’s near arrival that made her confession — and his dismissal — at last inevitable?
Then, suddenly, that night in the London theatre flashed back across his mind — her strange absorption in the play, the look of pain in her face, the little conversation, the sense of familiarity that hung about it all. He remembered Tony’s words later: that another actor was expected with whose entry the piece would turn more real — turn tragic.
He waited. The dimness of the room was like the dimness of that theatre. The lights were lowered. They played their little parts. The audience watched and listened.
‘Tom, dear,’ her voice came floating tenderly across the air. ‘I didn’t like to give it you before the others. They wouldn’t understand — they’d laugh at us.’
He did not understand. Surely he had heard indistinctly. He waited, saying nothing. The tenderness in her voice amazed him. He had expected very different words. Yet this was surely Lettice speaking, the Lettice of his spring-time in the mountains beside the calm blue lake. He stared hard. For the voice was Lettice, but the eyes and figure were another’s. He was again aware of two persons there — of perplexing and bewildering struggle. But Lettice, for the moment, dominated as it seemed.
‘So I put it here,’ she went on in a low gentle tone, ‘here, Tommy, on the table for you. And all my love is in it — my first, deep, fond love — our childhood love.’ She leaned down and forward, her face in her hands, her elbows on the dark cloth; she pushed the square, white packet across to him. ‘God bless you,’ floated to him with her breath.
The struggle in her seemed very patent then. Yet in spite of that other, older self within her, it was still the voice of Lettice.…
There was a moment’s silence while her whisper hung, as it were, upon the air. His entire body seemed a single heart. Exactly what he felt he hardly knew. There was a simultaneous collapse of several huge emotions in him.… But he trusted her.… He clung to that beloved voice. For she called him ‘Tommy’; she was his mother; love, tenderness, and pity emanated from her like a cloud of perfume. He heard the faint rustle of her dress as she bent forward, but outside he heard the dry, harsh rattle of the palm trees in the northern wind. And in that — was terror.
‘What — what is it, Lettice?’ The voice sounded like a boy’s. It was outrageous. He swallowed — with an effort.
‘Tommy, you — don’t mind? You will take it, won’t you?’ And it was as if he heard her saying ‘Help me…’ once again, ‘Trust me as I trust you.…’
Mechanically he put his hand out and drew the object towards him. He knew then what it was and what was in it. He was glad of the darkness, for there was a ridiculous moisture in his eyes now. A lump was in his throat!
‘I’ve been neglecting you. You haven’t had a thing for ages. You’ll take it, Tommy, won’t you — dear?’
The little foolish words, so sweetly commonplace, fell like balm upon an open wound. He already held the small white packet in his hand. He looked up at her. God alone knows the strain upon his will in that moment. Somehow he mastered himself. It seemed as if he swallowed blood. For behind the mothering words lurked, he knew, the other self that any minute would return.
‘Thank you, Lettice, very much,’ he said with a strange calmness, and his voice was firm. Whatever happened he must not prevent the delivery of what had to be. Above all, that was clear. The pain must come in full before the promised joy.
Was it, perhaps, this strength in him that drew her? Was it his moment of iron self-mastery that brought her with outstretched, clinging arms towards him? Was it the unshakable love in him that threatened the temporary ascendancy of that other in her who gladly tortured him that joy might come in a morning yet to break?
For she stood beside him, though he had not seen her move. She was close against his shoulder, nestling as of old. It was surely a stage effect. A trap-door had opened in the floor of his consciousness; his first, early love sheltered in his aching heart again. The entire structure of the drama they played together threatened to collapse.
‘Tom… you love me less?’
He held her to him, but he did not kiss the face she turned up to his. Nor did he speak.
‘You’ve changed somewhere?’ she whispered. ‘You, too, have changed?’
There was a pause before he found words that he could utter. He dared not yield. To do so would be vain in any case.
‘N — no, Lettice. But I can’t say what it is. There is pain.… It has turned some part of me numb… killed something, brought something else to life. You will come back to me… but not quite yet.’
In spite of the darkness, he saw her face clearly then. For a moment — it seemed so easy — he could have caught her in his arms, kissed her, known the end of his present agony of heart and mind. She would have come back to him, Tony’s claim obliterated from her life. The driving power that forced an older self upon her had weakened before the steadfast love he bore her. She was ready to capitulate. The little, childish present in his hands was offered as of old.… Tears rose behind his eyes.
How he resisted he never understood. Some thoroughness in him triumphed. If he shirked the pain to-day, it would have to be faced to-morrow — that alone was clear in his breaking heart. To be worthy of the greater love, the completer joy to follow, they must accept the present pain and see it through — experience it — exhaust it once for all. To refuse it now was only to postpone it. She must go her way, while he went his.…
Gently he pushed her from him, released his hold; the little face slipped from his shoulder as though it sank into the sea. He felt that she understood. He heard himself speaking, though how he chose the words he never knew. Out of new depths in himself the phrases rose — a regenerated Tom uprising, though not yet sure of himself:
‘You are not wholly mine. I must first — oh, Lettice! — learn to do without you. It is you who say it.’
Her voice, as she answered, seemed already changed, a shade of something harder and less yielding in it:
‘That which you can do without is added to you.’
‘A new thing… beginning,’ he whispered, feeling it both belief and prophecy. His whisper broke in spite of himself. He saw her across the room, the table between them again. Already she looked different, ‘Lettice’ fading from her eyes and mouth.
She said a marvellous, sweet thing before that other self usurped her then:
‘One day, Tom, we shall find each other in a crowd.…’
There was a yearning cry in him he did not utter. It seemed she faded from the atmosphere as the dimness closed about her. He saw a darker figure with burning eyes upon a darker face; there was a gleam of gold; a faint perfume as of ambra hung about the air, and outside the palm leaves rattled in the northern wind. He had heard awful words, it seemed, that sealed his fate. He was forsaken, lonely, outcast. It was a sentence of death, for she was set in power over him.…
A flood of dazzling sunshine poured into the room from a lifted blind, as the others looked in from the verandah to say that they were going and wanted to say good-bye. A moment later all were discussing plans in the garden, Tom as loudly and eagerly as any of them. He held his square white packet. But he did not open it till he reached his room a little later, and then arranged the different articles in a row upon his table: the favourite cigarettes, the soap, the pair of white tennis socks with his initial neatly sewn on, the tie in the shade of blue that suited him best… the writing-pad and the dates!<
br />
A letter from Tony next caught his eye and he opened it, slowly, calmly, almost without interest, knowing exactly what it would say:
‘… I was delighted, old chap, to get your note,’ he read. ‘I felt sure it would be all right, for I felt somehow that I had exaggerated your feeling towards her. As you say, what one has to think of with a woman in so delicate a position is her happiness more than one’s own. But I wouldn’t do anything to offend you or cause you pain for worlds, and I’m awfully glad to know the way is clear. To tell you the truth, I went away on purpose, for I felt uneasy. I wanted to be quite sure first that I was not trespassing. She made me feel I was doing you no wrong, but I wanted your assurance too.…’
There was a good deal more in similar vein — he laid the burden upon her — ending with a word to say he was coming back to Luxor immediately. He would arrive the following day.
As a matter of fact Tony was already then in the train that left Cairo that evening and reached Luxor at eight o’clock next morning. Tom, who had counted upon another twenty-four hours’ respite, did not know this; nor did he know till later that another telegram had been carried by a ghostly little Arab boy, with the result that Tony and Lettice enjoyed their hot rolls and coffee alone together in the shady garden where the cool northern wind rattled among the palm trees. Mrs. Haughstone mentioned it in due course, however, having watched the tête-à-tête from her bedroom window, unobserved.
CHAPTER XXVII.
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.
Collected Works of Algernon Blackwood Page 189