Oddly, again, his heart contracted as this changed aspect of her, due to heightened imagination, rose before the inner eye. A sensation of uncertainty and question slipped in with it, though whence he knew not. A hint of insecurity assailed his soul—almost a sense of inferiority in himself. It even flashed across him that he was under orders. It was inexplicable.… A restlessness in his blood prevented sleep.… He drew the blind up and looked out.
There was no moon. The night was drowned in stars. The train rushed south towards Thebes along the green thread of the Nile; the Lybian desert keeping pace with it, immense and desolate, death gnawing eternally at the narrow strip of life.… And again he knew the feeling that he had stepped from a platform into space. Egypt lay spread below him. He fell towards it, plunging, and as he fell, looked down—upon something vaguely familiar and half known.… An underlying sadness, inexplicable but significant, crept in upon his thoughts.
They rushed past Bedrashein, a straggling Arab village where once great Memphis owned eighteen miles of frontage on the stately river; he saw the low mud huts, the groves of date-palms that now marked the vanished splendour. They slid by in their hundreds, the spectral desert gleaming like snow between the openings. The huge pyramids of Sakkhâra loomed against the faint western afterglow. He saw the shaft of strange green light they call zodiacal.
And the sadness in him deepened inexplicably—that strange Egyptian sadness which ever underlies the brilliance.… The watchful stars looked down with sixty listening centuries between them and a forgotten glory that dreamed now among a thousand sandy tombs. For the silent landscape flying past him like a dream woke emotions both sweet and painful that he could not understand—sweet to poignancy, exquisitely painful.
Perhaps it was natural enough, natural, too, that he should transfer these in some dim measure to the woman now waiting for him among the ruins of many-gated Thebes. The ancient city, dreaming still beside the storied river, assumed an appearance half fabulous in his thoughts. Egypt had wakened imagination in his soul. The change he fancied in Lettice was due, doubtless, to the transforming magic that mingled an actual present with a haunted past. Possibly this was some portion of the truth.… And yet, while the mood possessed him, some joy, some inner sheath, as it were, of anticipated happiness slipped off him into the encroaching yellow sand—as though he surrendered, not so much the actual happiness, as his right to it. A second’s helplessness crept over him; another Self that was inferior peeped up and sighed and whispered.… He was aware of hidden touches that stabbed him into uneasiness, disquiet, almost pain.… Some outer tissue was stripped from his normal being, leaving him naked to the tang of extremely delicate shafts, buried so long that interpretation failed him.
The curious sensation, luckily, did not last; but this hint of a familiarity that seemed both sweet and dangerous, made it astonishingly convincing at the time. Some aspect of vanity, of confidence in himself distinctly weakened.…
It passed with the spectral palm trees as the train sped farther south. He finally dismissed it as the result of fatigue, excitement and anticipation too prolonged.… Yes, he dismissed it. At any rate it passed. It sank out of sight and was forgotten. It had become, perhaps, an integral portion of his being. Possibly, it had always been so, and had been merely waiting to emerge.…
But such intangible and elusive emotions were so new to him that he could not pretend to deal with them. There is a stimulus as of ether about the Egyptian climate that gets into the mind, it is said, and stirs unwonted dreams and fantasies. The climate becomes mental. His stolid temperament was, perhaps, pricked thus half unintelligibly. He could not understand it. He drew the blind down. But before turning out the light, he read over once again the note of welcome Lettice had sent to meet him at the steamer. It was brief, but infinitely precious. The thought of her love sponged all lesser feelings completely from his mind, and he fell asleep thinking only of their approaching meeting, and of his marvellous deep joy.
CHAPTER XIV.
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ON REACHING LUXOR AT EIGHT o’clock in the morning, to his keen delight an Arab servant met him with an unexpected invitation. He had meant to go first to his hotel, but Lettice willed otherwise, everything thought out beforehand in her loving way. He drove accordingly to her house on the outskirts of the town towards Karnak, changed and bathed in a room where he recognised with supreme joy a hundred familiar touches that seemed transplanted from the Brown Flat at home—and found her at nine o’clock waiting for him on the verandah. Breakfast was laid in the shady garden just beyond.
It was ideal as a dream. She stood there dressed in white, wearing a big sun-hat with little roses, sparkling, radiant, a graceful fairy figure from the heart of spring. ‘Here’s the inevitable fly-whisk, Tom,’ was the first thing she said, and as naturally as though they had parted a few hours before, ‘it’s to keep the flies away, and to keep you at your distance too!’ And his first remark, escaping him impulsively in place of a hundred other things he had meant to say, was, ‘You look different; you’ve changed. Lettice, you’re far more lovely than I knew. I’ve never seen you look like that before!’ He felt his entire being go out to her in a consuming flame. ‘You look perfectly divine.’ Sheer admiration took his breath away. ‘I believe you’re Isis herself,’ he laughed in his delight, ‘come back into her own!’
‘Then you must be Osiris, Tom!’ her happy voice responded, ‘new risen from his sandy tomb!’
There was no time for private conversation, for Mrs. Haughstone appeared just then and enquired politely after his health and journey. ‘The flies are awful,’ she mentioned, ‘but Lettice always insists on having breakfast out of doors. I hope you’ll be able to stand it.’ And she continued to flutter her horse-hair whisk as though she would have liked to sweep Egypt itself from the face of the map. ‘No wonder the Israelites were glad to leave. There’s sand in everything you eat and flies on everything you see.’ Yet she said it with what passed in her case for good nature; she, too, was evidently enjoying herself in Egypt.
Tom said that flies and sand would not trouble him with such gorgeous sunlight to compensate, and that anyhow they were better than soot and fogs in London.
‘You’ll be tired of the sun before a week is over,’ she replied, ‘and long to see a cloud or feel a drop of rain.’ She followed his eyes which seemed unable to leave the face and figure of his hostess. ‘But it all agrees wonderfully with my cousin. Don’t you find her looking well? She’s quite changed into another person, I think,’ the tone suggesting that it was not altogether a change that she herself approved of. ‘We’re all different here, a little. Even Mr. Winslowe’s improved enormously. He’s steadier and wiser than he used to be.’ And Tom, laughing, said he hoped he would improve, too, himself.
The comforting hot coffee, the delicious rolls, the cool iced fruit, and, above all, Lettice beside him at last in the pleasant shade, gave Tom such high spirits that the woman’s disagreeable personality produced no effect. Through the gate in the stone wall at the end of the garden, beneath masses of drooping bougainvillæa, the Nile dreamed past in a sheet of golden haze; the Theban hills, dipped in the crystal azure of the sky, rose stern and desolate upon the horizon; the air, at this early hour, was fresh and keen. He felt himself in some enchanted garden of the ancient world with a radiant goddess for companion.… There was a sound of singing from the river below—the song of the Nile boatman that has not changed these thousand years; a quaint piping melody floated in from the street outside; from the farther shore came the dull beating of a native tom-tom; and the still, burning atmosphere held the mystery of wonder in suspension. Her beauty, at last, had found its perfect setting.
‘I never saw your eyes so wonderful—so soft and brilliant,’ he whispered as soon as they were alone. ‘You’re very happy.’ He paused, looking at her. ‘That’s me, isn’t it? Lettice, say it is at once.’ He was very playful in his joy; but he longed eagerly to hear her admit that his coming m
eant as much to her as it meant to him.
‘I suppose it must be,’ she replied, ‘but it’s the climate too. This keen dry air and the sunshine bring all one’s power out. There’s something magical in it. You forget the years and feel young—against the background of this old land a lifetime seems like an afternoon, merely. And the nights—oh, Tom, the stars are too, too marvellous.’ She spoke with a kind of exuberance that seemed new in her.
‘They must be,’ he rejoined, as he gazed exultantly, ‘for they’re all in you, sun, air, and stars. You’re a perfect revelation to me of what a woman——’
‘Am I?’ she interrupted, fluttering her whisk between her chair and his. ‘But now, dear Tom, my headstrong boy, tell me how you are and all about yourself, your plans, and everything else in the world besides.’ He told her what he could, answered all her questions, declared he and she were going to have the time of their lives, and behaved generally, as she told him, like a boy out of school. He admitted it. ‘But I’m hungry, Lettice, awfully hungry.’ He kept reminding her that he had been starving for two long months; surely she was starving too. He longed to hear her confess it with a sigh of happy relief. ‘My arms and lips are hungry,’ he went on incorrigibly, ‘but I’m tired, too, from travelling. I feel like putting my head on your breast and going sound asleep.’ ‘My boy,’ she said tenderly, ‘you shall.’ She responded instantly to that. ‘You always were a baby and I’m here to take care of you.’ He seized her hand and kissed it before she could draw it away. ‘You must be careful, Tom. Everything has eyes in Egypt; the Arabs move like ghosts.’ She glanced towards the windows. ‘And the gossip is unbelievable.’ She was quiet again now, and very gentle; it struck him how calm and sweet she was towards him, yet that there was a delightful happy excitement underneath that she only just controlled. He was aware of something wild in her just out of sight—a kind of mental effervescence, almost intoxication she deliberately suppressed.
‘And so are you—unbelievable,’ he exclaimed impetuously; ‘unbelievably beautiful. This is your country with a vengeance, Lettice. You’re like an Egyptian queen—a princess of the sun!’
He gazed critically at her till she lowered her eyes. He realised that, actually, they were not visible from the house and that the garden trees were thick about them; but he also received a faint impression that she did not want, did not intend, to allow quite the same intimacy as before. It just flashed across him with a hint of disappointment, then was gone. His boyish admiration, perhaps, annoyed her. He had felt for a second that her excuse of the windows and the gossip was not the entire truth. The merest shadow of a thought it was. He noticed her eyes fixed intently upon him. The same minute, then, she rose quietly and rustled over to his chair, kissed him on the cheek quickly, and sat down again. ‘There!’ she said playfully as though she had guessed his thoughts, ‘I’ve done the awful thing; now you’ll be reasonable, perhaps!’ And whether or not she had divined his mood, she instantly dispelled it—for the moment.…
They talked about a hundred things, moving their chairs as the blazing sunshine found them out, till finally they sat with cushions on the steps of stone that led down to the river beneath the flaming bougainvillæa. He felt the strange touch of Egypt all about them, that touch of eternity that floats in the very air, a hint of something deathless and sublime that whispers in the sunshine. Already he was aware of the long fading stretch of years behind. He thought of Egypt as two vast hands that held him, one of tawny gold and one of turquoise blue—the desert and the sky. In the hollow of those great hands, he lay with Lettice—two tiny atoms of sand.…
He watched her every movement, every gesture, noted the slightest inflection of her voice, was aware that five years at least had dropped from her, that her complexion had grown softer, a shade darker, too, from the sun; but, above all, that there was a new expression, a new light certainly, soft and brilliant, in her eyes. It seemed, briefly put, that she had blossomed somehow into a fuller expression of herself. An overflowing vitality, masked behind her calmness, betrayed itself in every word and glance and gesture. There was an exuberance he called joy, but it was, somehow, a new, an unexpected joy.
She was, of course, aware of his untiring scrutiny; and presently, in a lull, keeping her eyes on the river below them, she spoke of it. ‘You find me a little changed, Tom, don’t you? I warned you that Egypt had a certain effect on me. It enflames the heart and——’
‘But a very wonderful effect,’ he broke in with admiration. ‘You’re different in a way—yes—but you haven’t changed—not towards me, I mean.’ He wanted to say a great deal more, but could not find the words; he divined that something had happened to her, in Warsaw probably, and he longed to question her about the ‘other’ who was her husband, but he could not, of course, allow himself to do so. An intuitive feeling came to him that the claim upon her of this other was more remote than formerly. His dread had certainly lessened. The claims upon her of this ‘other’ seemed no longer—dangerous.… He wondered.… There was a certain confusion in his mind.
‘You got my letter at Alexandria?’ she interrupted his reflections. He thanked her with enthusiasm, trying to remember what it said—but without success. It struck him suddenly that there was very little in it after all, and he mentioned this with a reproachful smile. ‘That’s my restraint,’ she replied. ‘You always liked restraint. Besides, I wasn’t sure it would reach you.’ She laughed and blew a kiss towards him. She made a curious gesture he had never seen her make before. It seemed unlike her. More and more he registered a difference in her, as if side by side with the increase of spontaneous vitality there ran another mood, another aspect, almost another point of view. It was not towards him, yet it affected him. There seemed a certain new lightness, even irresponsibility in her; she was more worldly, more human, not more ordinary by any means, but less ‘impersonal.’ He remembered her singular words: ‘It enflames the heart.’ He wondered—a little uneasily. There seemed a new touch of wonder about her that made him aware of something commonplace, almost inferior, in himself.…
At the same time he felt another thing—a breath of coldness touched him somewhere, though he could not trace its origin to anything she did or said. Was it perhaps in what she left unsaid, undone? He longed to hear her confess how she had missed him, how thrilled she was that he had come: but she did not say these passionately desired things, and when he teased her about it, she showed a slight impatience almost: ‘Tom, you know I never talk like that. Anything sentimental I abhor. But I live it. Can’t you see?’ His ungenerous fancies vanished then at once; at a word, a smile, a glance of the expressive eyes, he instantly forgot all else.
‘But I am different in Egypt,’ she warned him playfully again, half closing her eyelids as she said it. ‘I wonder if you’ll like me—quite as well.’
‘More,’ he replied ardently, ‘a thousand times more. I feel it already. There’s mischief in you,’ he went on watching the half-closed eyes, ‘a touch of magic too, but very human magic. I love it.’ And then he whispered, ‘I think you’re more within my reach.’
‘Am I?’ She looked bewitching, a being of light and air.
‘Everybody will fall in love with you at sight.’ He laughed happily, aware of an enchantment that fascinated him more and more, but when he suddenly went over to her chair, she stopped him with decision. ‘Don’t, Tom, please don’t. Tony’ll be here any minute now. It would be unpleasant if he saw you behaving wildly like this! He wouldn’t understand.’
He drew back. ‘Oh, Tony’s coming—then I must be careful!’ He laughed, but he was disappointed and he showed it: it was their first day together, and eager though he was to see his cousin, he felt it might well have been postponed a little. He said so.
‘One must be natural, Tom,’ she told him in reply; ‘it’s always the best way. This isn’t London or Montreux, you see, and——’
‘Lettice, I understand,’ he interrupted, a trifle ashamed of himself. ‘You’re quite right.�
�� He tried to look pleased and satisfied, but the truth was he felt suddenly—stupid. ‘And we’ve got lots of time—three months or more ahead of us, haven’t we?’ She gave him an expressive, tender look with which he had to be contented for the moment.
‘And by the by, how is old Tony, and who is his latest?’ he enquired carelessly.
‘Very excited at your coming, Tom. You’ll think him improved, I hope. I believe I‘m his latest,’ she added, tilting her chin with a delicious pretence at mischief. And the gesture again surprised him. It was new. He thought it foreign to her. There seemed a flavour of impatience, of audacity, almost of challenge in it.
‘Finding himself at last. That’s good. Then you’ve been fishing to some purpose.’
‘Fishing?’
‘Rescuing floating faces.’
She pouted at him. ‘I’m not a saint, Tom. You know I never was. Saints are very inspiring to read about, but you couldn’t live with one— or love one. Could you, now?’
He gave an inward start she did not notice. The same instant he was aware that it was her happy excitement that made her talk in this exaggerated way. That was why it sounded so unnatural. He forgot it instantly.
They laughed and chatted as happily as two children—Tom felt a boy again—until Mrs. Haughstone appeared, marching down the river bank with an enormous white umbrella over her head, and the talk became general. Tom said he would go to his hotel and return for lunch; he wanted to telephone to Assouan. He asked where Tony was staying. ‘But he knew I was at the Winter Palace,’ he exclaimed when she mentioned the Savoy. ‘He found some people there he wanted to avoid,’ she explained, ‘so moved down to the Savoy.’
The Algernon Blackwood Collection Page 217