Collected Works of Algernon Blackwood

by Algernon Blackwood

  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 Khamsîn 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 Khamsîn — —’

  ‘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.

  And the rest of that long day of stifling heat was similarly a dream shot through with incongruous touches of reality, yet also a reality shot through with the glamour of some incredibly ancient dream. Not till he stood later upon the steamer deck, the sea-wind in his face and the salt spray on his lips, did he awake fully and distinguish the dream from the reality — or the reality from the dream. Nor even then was the deep, strange confusion wholly dissipated. To the end of life, indeed, it remained an unsolved mystery, labelled a Premonition Fulfilled, without adequate explanation.…

  The time passed listlessly enough, to the accompaniment of similar idle talk, careless, it seemed to Tom, with the ghastly sense of the final minutes slipping remorselessly away, so swiftly, so poignantly unused. For each moment was gigantic, brimmed full with the distilled essence, as it were, of intensest value, value that yet was not his to seize. He never lost the point of view that he watched a picture that belonged to some one else. His own position was clear; he had already leaped from a height; he counted, as he fell, t
he blades of grass, the pebbles far below; slipping over Niagara’s awful edge, he noted the bubbles in the whirlpools underneath. They talked of the weather.…!

  ‘It’s clearing,’ said Lettice. ‘There’ll be sand in our tea and thin bread and butter. But anything’s better than sitting and stifling here.’

  Tom readily agreed. ‘You and I and Tony, then?’

  ‘I thought so. We don’t want too many, do we?’

  ‘Not for our la — not for a day like this.’ He corrected himself just in time. ‘Tony will be here for lunch?’ he asked.

  She nodded. ‘He said so, at any rate, only one never quite knows with Tony.’ And though Tom plainly heard, he made no comment. He was puzzled.

  Most of the morning they remained alone together. Tom had never felt so close to her before; it seemed to him their spirits touched; there was no barrier now. But there was distance. He could not explain the paradox. A vague sweet feeling was in him that the distance was not of height, as formerly. He had risen somehow; he felt higher than before; he saw over the barrier that had been there. Pain and sacrifice, perhaps, had lifted him, raised him to the level where she dwelt; and in that way he was closer. A new strength was in him. At the same time, behind her outer quietness and her calm, he divined struggle still. In her atmosphere was a hint of strain, disharmony. He was positive of this. From time to time he caught trouble in her eyes. Could she, perhaps, discern — foreknow — the shadow of the dropping Curtain? He wondered.… He detected something in her that was new.