The bivouac was a complete success; all looked back upon it as an unforgettable experience. They declared, of course, they had not slept a wink, yet all had snored quite audibly beneath the wheeling stars. They were fresh and lively enough, certainly, when the sun poured his delicious warmth across the cloudless sky, while Tom and Tony made the fire and set the coffee on for breakfast.
Of the marvellous beauty that preceded the actual sunrise no one spoke; it left them breathless rather; they watched the sky beyond the hills change colour; great shafts of gold transfixed the violet heavens; the Nile shone faintly; then, with a sudden drive, the stars rushed backwards in a shower, and the amazing sun came up as with a shout. Perfumes that have no name rose from the desert and the fields along the distant river banks. The silence deepened, for no birds sang. Light took the world— and it was morning.
And when the donkey-boys arrived at eight o’clock, the party were slow in starting: it was so pleasant to lie and bask in the sumptuous bath of heat and light that drenched them. The night had been chilly enough. They were a tired party. Once home again, all retired with one accord to sleep, remaining invisible until the sun was slanting over Persia and the Indian Ocean, gilding the horizon probably above the starry skies of far Cathay.
But as Tom dozed off behind the shuttered windows in the hotel towards eleven o’clock, having bathed and breakfasted a second time, he thought vaguely of what Mrs. Haughstone had said to him a few hours before. It seemed days ago already. He was too drowsy to hold the thought more than a moment in his mind, much less to reflect upon it. ‘It may be just as well to give a hint,’ occurred to him. ‘Tony is a bit too fond of her—too fond for his happiness, perhaps.’ Nothing had happened at the picnic to revive the notion; it just struck him as he fell asleep, then vanished; it was a moment’s instinct. The vision—it had been an instantaneous flash after all and nothing more—had left his mind completely for the time.
But Tom looked back afterwards upon the all-night bivouac as an occasion marked specially in memory’s calendar, yet for a reason that was unlike the reasons his companions knew. He remembered it with mingled joy and pain, also with a wonder that he could have been so blind—the last night of happiness in his brief Egyptian winter.
CHAPTER XX.
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HE SLEPT THROUGH THE HOT hours of the afternoon. In the cool of the evening, as he strolled along the river bank, he read the few lines Lettice had written to him at Assouan. For the porter had handed him half-a-dozen letters as he left the hotel. Tony’s he put for the moment aside; the one from Lettice was all he cared about, quite forgetting he had promised to tear it up unread. It was short but tender—anxious about his comfort and well-being in a strange hotel ‘when I am not there to take care of you.’ It ended on a complaint that she was ‘tired rather and spending my time at full length on a deck-chair in the garden.’ She promised to write ‘at greater length to-morrow.’
‘Instead of which,’ thought Tom with a boy’s delight, ‘I surprised her and we talked face to face.’ But for the Arab touts who ran beside him, offering glass beads made in Birmingham, he could have kissed the letter there and then.
The resplendent gold on the river blinded him, he was glad to enter the darker street and shake off the children who pestered him for bakshish. Passing the Savoy Hotel, he hesitated a moment, then went on. ‘No, I won’t call in for Tony; I’ll find her alone, and we’ll have a cosy little talk together before the others come.’ He quickened his pace, entered the shady garden, discovered her instantly, and threw himself down upon the cushions beside her deck-chair. ‘Just what I hoped,’ he said, with pleasure and admiration in his eyes, ‘alone at last. That is good luck— isn’t it, Lettice?’
‘Of course,’ she agreed, and smiled lazily, though some might have thought indifferently, as she watched him arranging the cushions. He flung himself back and gazed at her. She wore a dress of palest yellow, and the broad-brimmed hat with the little roses. She seemed part of the flaming sunset and the tawny desert.
‘Well,’ he grumbled playfully, ‘it is true, isn’t it? Our not being alone often, I mean?’ He watched her without knowing that he did so.
‘In a way—yes,’ she said. ‘But we can’t have everything at once, can we, Tom?’ Her voice was colourless perhaps. A tiny frown settled for an instant between her eyes, then vanished. Tom did not notice it. She sighed. ‘You baby, Tom. I spoil you dreadfully, and you know I do.’
He liked her in this quiet, teasing mood; it was often the prelude to more delightful spoiling. He was in high spirits. ‘You look as fresh as a girl of sixteen, Lettice,’ he declared. ‘I believe you’re only this instant out of your bath and bed. D’you know, I slept like a baby too— the whole afternoon——’
He interrupted himself, for at that moment a cigarette-case on the sand beside him caught his eye. He picked it up—he recognised it. ‘Yes—I wish you’d smoke,’ she said the same instant, brushing a fly quickly from her cheek.
‘Tony’s,’ he exclaimed, examining the case.
He noticed at the same time several burnt matches between his cushions and her chair.
‘But he’d love you to smoke them: I’ll take the responsibility.’ She laughed quietly. ‘I’m sure they’re good—better than yours; he’s wickedly extravagant.’ She watched him as he took one out, examining the label critically, then lighting it slowly and inhaling the smoke to taste it. There was a faint perfume that clung to the case and its contents. ‘Ambra,’ said Lettice, a kind of watchful amusement in her eyes. ‘You don’t like it!’
Tom looked up sharply.
‘Is that it? I didn’t know.’
She nodded. ‘It’s Tony’s smell; haven’t you noticed it? He always has it about him. No, no,’ she laughed, noticing his expression of disapproval, ‘he doesn’t use it. It’s just in his atmosphere, I mean.’
‘Oh, is it?’ said Tom.
‘I rather like it,’ she went on idly, ‘but I never can make out where it comes from. We call it ambra—the fragrance that hangs about the bazaars: I believe they used it for the mummies; but the desert perfume is in it too. It’s rather wonderful—it suits him—don’t you think? Penetrating, and so delicate.’
What a lot she had to say about it! He made no reply. He was looking down to see what caused him that sudden, inexplicable pain—and discovered that the lighted match had burned his fingers. The next minute he looked up again—straight into her eyes.
But, somehow, he did not say exactly what he meant to say. He said, in fact, something that occurred to him on the spur of the moment. His mind was simple, possibly, yet imps occasionally made use of it. An imp just then reminded him: ‘Her letter made no mention of the picnic, of Tony’s sudden change of plan, yet it was written yesterday morning when both were being arranged.’
So Tom did not refer to the ambra perfume, nor to the fact that Tony had spent the afternoon with her. He said quite another thing—said it rather bluntly too: ‘I’ve just got your letter from Assouan, Lettice, and I clean forgot my promise that I wouldn’t read it.’ He paused a second. ‘You said nothing about the picnic in it.’
‘I thought you’d be disappointed if you knew,’ she replied at once. ‘That’s why I didn’t want you to read it.’ And she fell to scolding him in the way he usually loved,—but at the moment found less stimulating for some reason. He smoked his stolen cigarette with energy for a measurable period.
‘You’re the spoilt child, not I,’ he said at length, still looking at her. ‘You said you were tired and meant to rest, and then you go for an exhausting expedition instead.’
The tiny frown reappeared between her eyes, lingered a trifle longer than before, and vanished. She made a quick gesture. ‘You’re in a very nagging mood, Tom; bivouacs don’t agree with you.’ She spoke lightly, easily, in excellent good temper really. ‘It was Tony persuaded me, if you want to know the truth. He found himself free unexpectedly; he was so persistent; it’s impossible to resi
st him when he’s like that—the only thing is to give in and go.’
‘Of course.’ Tom’s face was like a mask. He thought so, at least, as he laughed and agreed with her, saying Tony was an unscrupulous rascal at the best of times. Apparently there was a struggle in him; he seemed in two minds. ‘Was he here this afternoon?’ he asked. He learned that Tony had come at four o’clock and had tea with her alone. ‘We didn’t telephone because he said it would only spoil your sleep, and that a man who works as well as plays must sleep—longer than a younger man.’ Then, as Tom said nothing, she added, ‘Tony is such a boy, isn’t he?’
There were several emotions in Tom just then. He hardly knew which was the true, or at least, the dominant one. He was thinking of several things at once too: of her letter, of that faint peculiar odour, of Tony’s coming to tea, but chiefly, perhaps, of the fact that Lettice had not mentioned it,—but that he had found it out.… His heart sank. It struck him suddenly that the mother in her sought to protect him from the pain the woman gave.
‘Is he—yes,’ he said absent-mindedly. And she repeated quietly, ‘Oh, I think so.’
The brief eastern twilight had meanwhile fallen, and the rapidly cooling air sighed through the foliage. It grew darker in their shady corner. The western sky was still a blaze of riotous colour, however, that filtered through the trees and shed a luminous glow upon their faces. It was a bewitching light—there was something bewitching about Lettice as she lay there. Tom himself felt a touch of that deep Egyptian enchantment. It stole in among his thoughts and feelings, colouring motives, lifting into view, as from far away, moods that he hardly understood and yet obeyed because they were familiar.
This evasive sense of familiarity, both welcome and unwelcome, swept in, dropped a fleeting whisper, and was gone again. He felt himself for an instant—some one else: one Tom felt and spoke, while another Tom looked on and watched, a calm, outside spectator. And upon his heart came a touch of that strange, rich pain that was never very far away in Egypt.
‘I say, Lettice,’ he began suddenly, as though he came to an abrupt decision. ‘This is an awful place for talk—these Luxor hotels——’ He stuck. ‘Isn’t it? You know what I mean.’ His laborious manner betrayed intensity, yet he meant to speak lightly, easily, and thought his voice was merely natural. He stared hard at the glowing tip of his cigarette.
Lettice looked across at him without speaking for a moment. Her eyelids were half closed. He felt her gaze and raised his own. He saw the smile steal down towards her lips.
‘Tom, why are you glaring at me?’
He started. He tried to smile, but there was no smile in him.
‘Was I, Lettice? Forgive me.’ The talk that was coming would hurt him, yet somehow he desired it. He would give his little warning and take the consequences. ‘I was devouring your beauty, as the Family Herald says.’ He heard himself utter a dry and unconvincing laugh. Something was rising through him; it was beyond control; it had to come. He felt stupid, awkward, and was angry with himself for being so. For, somehow, at the same time he felt powerless too.
She came to the point with a directness that disconcerted him. ‘Who has been talking about me?’ she enquired, her voice hardening a little; ‘and what does it matter if they have?’
Tom swallowed. There was something about her beauty in that moment that set him on fire from head to foot. He knew a fierce desire to seize her in his arms, hold her for ever and ever—lest she should escape him.
But he was unable to give expression in any way to what was in him. All he did was to shift his cushions slightly farther from her side.
‘It’s always wiser—safer—not to be seen about too much with the same man—alone,’ he fumbled, recalling Mrs. Haughstone’s words, ‘in a place like this, I mean,’ he qualified it. It sounded foolish, but he could evolve no cleverer way of phrasing it. He went on quicker, a touch of nervousness in his voice he tried to smother: ‘No one can mistake our relationship, or think there’s anything wrong in it.’ He stopped a second, as she gazed at him in silence, waiting for him to finish. ‘But Tony,’ he concluded, with a gulp he prayed she did not notice, ‘Tony is a little——’
‘Well?’ she helped him, ‘a little what?’
‘A little different, isn’t he?’
Tom realised that he was producing the reverse of what he intended. Somehow the choice of words seemed forced upon him. He was aware of his own helplessness; he felt almost like a boy scolding his own wise, affectionate mother. The thought stung him into pain, and with the pain rose, too, a first distant hint of anger. The turmoil of feeling confused him. He was aware—by her silence chiefly—of the new distance between them, a distance the mention of Tony had emphasised. Instinctively he tried to hide both pain and anger—it could only increase this distance that was already there. At the same time he saw red.… Her answer, then, so gently given, baffled him absurdly. He felt out of his depth.
‘I’ll be more careful, Tom, dear—you wise, experienced chaperone.’
The words, the manner, stung him. Another emotion, wounded vanity, came into play. To laugh at himself was natural and right, but to be laughed at by a woman, a woman whom he loved, whom he regarded as exclusively his own, against whom, moreover, he had an accumulating grievance—it hurt him acutely, although he seemed powerless to prevent it. He felt his own stupidity increase.
‘It’s just as well, I think, Lettice.’ It was the wrong, the hopeless thing to say, but the words seemed, in a sense, pushed quickly out of his mouth lest he should find better ones. He anticipated, too, her exasperation before her answer proved it: ‘But, really, Tom, you know, I can look after myself rather well as a rule—don’t you think?’
He interrupted her then, a mixture of several feelings in him—shame, the pain of frustrate yearning, perversity too. For, in spite of himself, he wanted to hear how she would speak of Tony. He meant to punish himself by hearing her praise him. He, too, meant to speak well of his cousin.
‘He’s a bit careless, though,’ he blurted, ‘irresponsible, in a way—where women are concerned. I’m sure he means no harm, of course, but——’ He paused in confusion, he was no longer afraid that harm might come to Tony; he was afraid for her, but now also for himself as well.
‘Tom, I do believe you’re jealous!’
He laughed boisterously when he heard it. It was really comical, absurdly comical, of course. It sounded, too, the way she said it—ugly, mean, contemptible. The touch of shame came back.
‘Lettice! But what an idea!’ He gasped, turning round upon his other elbow, closer to her. But the sinking of his heart increased; he felt an inner cold. And a moment of deep silence followed the empty laughter. The rustle of the foliage alone was audible.
Lettice looked down sideways at him through half-closed eyelids; propped on his cushions beside her, this was natural: yet he felt it mental as well as physical. There was pity in her attitude, a concealed exasperation, almost contempt. At the same time he realised that she had never seemed so adorably lovely, so exquisite, so out of his reach. He had never felt her so seductively desirable. He made an impetuous gesture towards her before he knew it.
‘Don’t, Tom; you’ll upset my papers and everything,’ she said calmly, yet with the merest suspicion of annoyance in her tone. She was very gentle, she was also very cold—cold as ice, he felt her, while he was burning as with fire. He was aware of this unbridgeable distance between his passion and her indifference; and a dreadful thought leaped up in him with stabbing pain: ‘Her answer to Tony would have been quite otherwise.’
‘I’m sorry, Lettice—so sorry,’ he said brusquely, to hide his mortification. ‘I’m awfully clumsy.’ She was putting her papers tidy again with calm fingers, while his own were almost cramped with the energy of suppressed desire. ‘But, seriously,’ he went on, refusing the rebuff by pretending it was play on his part, ‘it isn’t very wise to be seen about so much alone with Tony. Believe me, it isn’t.’ For the first time, he noticed
, it was difficult to use the familiar and affectionate name. But for a sense of humour he could have said ‘Anthony.’
‘I do believe you, Tom. I’ll be more careful.’ Her eyes were very soft, her manner quiet, her gentle tone untinged with any emotion. Yet Tom detected, he felt sure, a certain eagerness behind the show of apparent indifference. She liked to talk—to go on talking—about Tony. ‘Do you really think so, really mean it?’ he heard her asking, and thus knew his thought confirmed. She invited more. And, with open eyes, with a curious welcome even to the pain involved, Tom deliberately stepped into the cruel little trap. But he almost felt that something pushed him in. He talked exactly like a boy: ‘He—he’s got a peculiar power with women,’ he said. ‘I can’t make it out quite. He’s not good-looking—exactly—is he?’ It was impossible to conceal his eagerness to know exactly what she did feel.
‘There’s a touch of genius in him,’ she answered. ‘I don’t think looks matter so much—I mean, with women.’ She spoke with a certain restraint, not deliberately saying less than she thought, but yet keeping back the entire truth. He suddenly realised a relationship between her and Tony into which he was not admitted. The distance between them increased visibly before his very eyes.
And again, out of a hundred things he wanted to say, he said—as though compelled to—another thing.
‘Rather!’ he burst out honestly. ‘I should hate it if—you hadn’t liked him.’ But a week ago he would have phrased this differently—’If he had not liked you.’
The Algernon Blackwood Collection Page 224