‘Lettice, my precious, my wonderful!’ Tom whispered as though the breath choked and strangled him. ‘But we stay together through it? We stay together afterwards? You love me still?’ He leaned across and took her other hand. It lay unresistingly in his. It was very cold—without a sign of response.
Her faint reply half staggered him: ‘We are always, always together, you and I. Even if you married, I should still be yours. He will go out——’
Fear clashed with hope in his heart as he heard these words he could not understand. He groped and plunged after their meaning. He was bewildered by the reference to marriage—his marriage! Was she, then, already aware that she might lose him?… But there was confession in them too, the confession that she had been away from him. That he felt clearly. Now that the dividing influence was removed, she was coming back perhaps! If Tony stayed away she would come back entirely; only then the thing that had to happen would be prevented—which was not to be thought of for a moment.… ‘Poor Lettice.…’ He felt pity, love, protection that he burned to give; he felt a savage pain and anger as well. In the depths of him love and murder sat side by side.
‘Oh, Lettice, tell me everything. Do share with me—share it and we’ll meet it together.’ He drew her cold hand towards him, putting it inside his coat. ‘Don’t hide it from me. You’re my whole world. My love can never change.… Only don’t hide anything!’ The words poured out of him with passionate entreaty. The barrier had melted, vanished. He had found her again, the Lettice of his childhood, of his dream, the true and faithful woman he had known first. His inexpressible love rose like a wave upon him. Regardless of where they were he bent over to take her in his arms—when she suddenly withdrew her hand from his. She removed the other from her eyes. He saw her face. And he realised in an instant that his words had been all wrong. He had said precisely again what he ought not to have said. The moment in her had passed.
The sudden change had a freezing effect upon him.
‘Tom, I don’t understand quite,’ she said coldly, her eyes fixed on his almost with resentment in them. ‘I’m not hiding anything from you. Why do you say such things? I’m true—true to myself.’
The barrier was up again in an instant, of granite this time, with jagged edges of cut glass upon it, so that he could not approach it even. It was not Lettice that spoke then:
‘I don’t know what’s come over you out here,’ she went on, each word she uttered increasing the distance between them; ‘you misunderstand everything I say and criticise all I do. You suspect my tenderest instincts. Even a friendship that brings me happiness you object to and— and exaggerate.’
He listened till she ceased; it was as if he had received a blow in the face; he felt disconcerted, keenly aware of his own stupidity, helpless. Something froze in him. He had seen her for a second, then lost her utterly.
‘No, no, Lettice,’ he stammered, ‘you read all that into me—really, you do. I only want your happiness.’
Her eyes softened a little. She sighed wearily and turned her face away.
‘We were only talking of this curious, big feeling that’s come——’ he went on.
‘You were speaking of Tony—that’s what you really meant, Tom,’ she interrupted. ‘You know it perfectly well. It only makes it harder—for me?’
He felt suddenly she was masquerading, playing with him again, playing with his very heart and soul. The devil tempted him. All the things he had decided he would not say rose to the tip of his tongue. The worst of them—those that hurt him most—he managed to force down. But even the one he did suffer to escape gave him atrocious pain:
‘Well, Lettice, to tell the truth, I do think Tony has a bad—a curious influence on you. I do feel he has come between us rather. And I do think that if you would only share with me——’
The sudden way she turned upon him, rising from her chair and standing over him, was so startling that he got up too. They faced each other, he in the blazing sunshine, she in the shade. She looked so different that he was utterly taken aback. She wore that singular Eastern appearance he now knew so well. Expression, attitude, gesture, all betrayed it. That inflexible, cruel thing shone in her eyes.
‘Tom, dear,’ she said, but with a touch of frigid exasperation that for a moment paralysed thought and utterance in him, ‘whatever happens, you must realise this—that I am myself and that I can never allow my freedom to be taken from me. If you’re determined to misjudge, the fault is yours, and if our love, our friendship, cannot understand that, there’s something wrong with it.’
The word ‘friendship’ was like a sword thrust. It went right through him. ‘I trust you,’ he faltered, ‘I trust you wholly. I know you’re true.’ But the words, it seemed, gave expression to an intense desire, a fading hope. He did not say it with conviction. She gazed at him for a moment through half-closed eyelids.
‘Do you, Tom?’ she whispered.
‘Lettice…!’
‘Then believe at least—’ her voice wavered suddenly, there came a little break in it—’that I am true to you, Tom, as I am to myself. Believe in that… and—Oh! for the love of heaven—help me!’
Before he could respond, before he could act upon the hope and passion her last unexpected words set loose in him—she turned away to go into the house. Voices were audible behind them, and Miss de Lorne was coming up the sandy drive with Mrs. Haughstone. Tom watched her go. She moved with a certain gliding, swaying walk as she passed along the verandah and disappeared behind the curtains of dried grass. It almost seemed—though this must certainly have been a trick of light and shadow—that she was swathed from head to foot in a clinging garment not of modern kind, and that he caught the gleam of gold upon the flesh of dusky arms that were bare above the elbow. Two persons were visible in her very physical appearance, as two persons had just been audible in her words. Thence came the conflict and the contradictions.
CHAPTER XXV.
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A FEW MINUTES LATER LETTICE was presiding over her luncheon table as though life were simple as the sunlight in the street outside, and no clouds could ever fleck the procession of the years. She was quiet and yet betrayed excitement. Tom, at the opposite end of the table, watched her girlish figure, her graceful gestures. Her eyes were very bright, no shadows in their depths; she returned his gaze with untroubled frankness. Yet the set of her little mouth had self-mastery in it somewhere; there was no wavering or uncertainty; her self-possession was complete. But above his head the sword of Damocles hung. He saw the thread, taut and gleaming in the glare of the Egyptian sunlight.… He waited upon his cousin’s return as men once waited for the sign thumbs up, thumbs down.…
‘Molly has sent me her album,’ mentioned Mrs. Haughstone when the four of them were lounging in the garden chairs; ‘she wonders if you would write your name in it. It’s her passion—to fill it with distinguished names.’ And when the page was found, she pointed to the quotation against his birthday date with the remark, in a lowered voice: ‘It’s quite appropriate, isn’t it? For a man, I mean,’ she added, ‘because when a man’s unhappy he’s more easily tempted to suspicion than a woman is.’
‘What is the quotation?’ asked Lettice, glancing up from her deck chair.
Tom was carefully inscribing his ‘distinguished’ name in the child’s album, as Mrs. Haughstone read the words aloud over his shoulder:
‘"Whatever the circumstances, there is no man so miserable that he need not be true.” It’s anonymous,’ she added, ‘but it’s by some one very wise.’
‘A woman, probably,’ Miss de Lorne put in with a laugh.
They discussed it, while Tom laboriously wrote his name against it with a fountain pen. His writing was a little shaky, for his sight was blurred and ice was in his veins.
‘There’s no need for you to hurry, is there?’ said Lettice presently. ‘Won’t you stay and read to me a bit? Or would you rather look in—after dinner—and smoke?’ The two selves spoke in that.
It was as if the earlier, loving Lettice tried to assert itself, but was instantly driven back again. How differently she would have said it a few months ago.… He made excuses, saying he would drop in after dinner if he might. She did not press him further.
‘I am tired a little,’ she said gently. ‘I’ll sleep and rest and write letters too, then.’
She was invariably tired now, Tom soon discovered—until Tony returned from Cairo.…
And that evening he escaped the invitations to play bridge, and made his way back, as in a dream, to the little house upon the Nile. He found her bending over the table so that the lamp shone on her abundant coils of hair, and as he entered softly he saw the address on the envelope beside her writing pad, several pages of which were already covered with her small, fine writing. He read the name before he could turn his eyes away.
‘I was writing to Tony,’ she said, looking up with an untroubled smile, ‘but I can finish later. And you’ve come just in time to take my part. Ettie’s been scolding me severely again.’
She blotted the lines and put the paper on one side, then turned with a challenging expression at her cousin who was knitting by the open window. The little name sounded so incongruous; it did not suit the big gaunt woman who had almost a touch of the monstrous in her. Tom stared a moment without speaking. The playful challenge had reality in it. Lettice intended to define her position openly. She meant that Tom should support her too.
He smiled as he watched them. But no words came to him. Then, remembering all at once that he had not kept his promise, he said quietly: ‘I must send a line as well. I quite forgot.’
‘You can write it now,’ suggested Lettice, ‘and I’ll enclose it in mine.’ And she pointed to the envelopes and paper before him on the table.
There was a moment of acute and painful struggle in him; pride and love fought the old pitched battle, but on a field of her own bold choosing! Tom knew murder in his heart, but he knew also that strange rich pain of sacrifice. It was theatrical: he stood upon the stage, an audience watching him with intent expectancy, wondering upon his decision. Mrs. Haughstone, Lettice and another part of himself that was Onlooker were the audience; Mrs. Haughstone had ceased knitting, Lettice leaned back in her chair, a smile in the eyes, but the lips set very firmly together. The man in him, with scorn and anger, seemed to clench his fists, while that other self—as with a spirit’s voice from very far away—whispered behind his pain: ‘Obey. You must. It has to be, so why not help it forward!’
To play the game, but to play it better than before, flashed through him.… Half amazed at himself, yet half contented, he sat down mechanically and scribbled a few lines of urgent entreaty to his cousin to come back soon.… ‘We want you here, it’s dull, we can’t get on without you…’ knowing that he traced the sentences of his own death-warrant. He folded it and passed it across to Lettice, who slipped it unread into her envelope. ‘That ought to bring him, you think?’ she observed, a happy light in her eyes, yet with a faint sigh half suppressed, as though she did a thing which hurt her too.
‘I hope so,’ replied Tom. ‘I think so.’
He knew not what she had written to Tony; but whatever it was, his own note would appear to endorse it. He had perhaps placed in her hand the weapon that should hasten his own defeat, stretch him bleeding on the sand. And yet he trusted her; she was loyal and true throughout. The quicker the climax came, the sooner would he know the marvellous joy that lay beyond the pain. In some way, moreover, she knew this too. Actually they were working together, hand in hand, to hasten its inevitable arrival. They merely used such instruments as fate offered, however trivial, however clumsy. They were being driven. They could neither choose nor resist. He found a germ of subtle comfort in the thought. The Wave was under them. Upon its tumultuous volume they swept forward, side by side… striking out wildly.
‘And will you also post it for me when you go?’ he heard. ‘I’ll just add a line to finish up with.’ Tom watched her open the writing-block again and trace a hurried sentence or two; she did it openly; he saw the neat, small words flow from the nib; he saw the signature: ‘Lettice.’
‘Fasten it down for me, Tom, will you? It’s such an ugly thing for a woman to do. It’s absurd that science can’t invent a better way of closing an envelope, isn’t it?’ He was oddly helpless; she forced him to obey out of some greater knowledge. And while he did the ungraceful act, their eyes met across the table. It was the other person in her—the remote, barbaric, eastern woman, set somehow in power over him—who watched him seal his own discomfiture, and smiled to know his obedience had to be. It was, indeed, as though she tortured him deliberately, yet for some reason undivined.
For a passing second Tom felt this—then the strange exaggeration vanished. They played a game together. All this had been before. They looked back upon it, looked down from a point above it.… Tom could not read her heart, but he could read his own.
In a few minutes at most all this happened. He put the letter in his pocket, and Lettice turned to her cousin, challenge in her manner, an air of victory as well. And Tom felt he shared that victory somehow too. It was a curious moment, charged with a subtle perplexity of emotions none of them quite understood. It held such singular contradictions.
‘There, Ettie!’ she exclaimed, as much as to say ‘Now you can’t scold me any more. You see how little Mr. Kelverdon minds!’
While she flitted into the next room to fetch a stamp, Mrs. Haughstone, her needles arrested in mid-air, looked steadily at Tom. Her face was white. She had watched the little scene intently.
‘The only thing I cannot understand, Mr. Kelverdon,’ she said in a low tone, her voice both indignant and sympathetic, ‘is how my cousin can give pain to a man like you. It’s the most heartless thing I’ve ever seen.’
‘Me!’ gasped Tom. ‘But I don’t understand you!’
‘And for a creature like that!’ she went on quickly, as Lettice was heard in the passage; ‘a libertine,’—she almost hissed the word out—’who thinks every pretty woman is made for his amusement—and false into the bargain——’
Tom put the stamp on. A few minutes later he was again walking along the narrow little Luxor street, the sentences just heard still filling the silent air about him, emotions charging wildly, each detail of the familiar little journey associated already with present pain and with prophecies of pain to come. The bewilderment and confusion in him were beyond all quieting. One moment he saw the picture of a slender foot that deliberately crushed life into the dust, the next he gazed into gentle, loving eyes that would brim with tears if a single hair of his head were injured.
A cold and mournful wind blew down the street, ruffling the darkened river. The black line of hills he could not see. Mystery, enchantment hung in the very air. The long dry fingers of the palm trees rattled overhead, and looking up, he saw the divine light of the starry heavens.… Surely among those comforting stars he saw her radiant eyes as well.…
A voice, asking in ridiculous English the direction to a certain house, broke his reverie, and, turning round, he saw the sheeted figure of an Arab boy, the bright eyes gleaming in the mischievous little face of bronze. He pointed out the gateway, and the boy slipped off into the darkness, his bare feet soundless and mysterious on the sand. He disappeared up the driveway to the house—her house. Tom knew quite well from whom the telegram came. Tony had telegraphed to let her know of his safe arrival. So even that was necessary! ‘And to-morrow morning,’ he thought, ‘he’ll get my letter too. He’ll come posting back again the very next day.’ He clenched his teeth a moment; he shuddered. Then he added: ‘So much the better!’ and walked on quickly up the street. He posted her letter at the corner.
He went up to his bedroom. His sleepless nights had begun now.…
What was the use of thinking, he asked himself as the hours passed? What good did it do to put the same questions over and over again, to pass from doubt to certainty, only to be flung back again from certainty t
o doubt? Was there no discoverable centre where the pendulum ceased from swinging? How could she be at the same time both cruel and tender, both true and false, frank and secretive, spiritual and sensual? Each of these pairs, he realised, was really a single state of which the adjectives represented the extremes at either end. They were ripples. The central personality travelled in one or other direction according to circumstances, according to the pull or push of forces—the main momentum of the parent wave. But there was a point where the heart felt neither one nor other, neither cruel nor tender, false nor true. Where, on the thermometer, did heat begin and cold come to an end? Love and hate, similarly, were extremes of one and the same emotion. Love, he well knew, could turn to virulent hatred—if something checked and forced it back upon the line of natural advance. Could, then, her tenderness be thus reversed, turning into cruelty.… Or was this cruelty but the awakening in her of another thing?…
Possibly. Yet at the centre, that undiscovered centre at present beyond his reach, Lettice, he knew, remained unalterably steadfast. There he felt the absolute assurance she was his exclusively. His centre, moreover, coincided with her own. They were in the ‘sea’ together. But to get back into the sea, the Wave now rolling under them must first break and fall.…
The sooner, then, the better! They would swing back with it together eventually.
He chose, that is—without knowing it—a higher way of moulding destiny. It was the spiritual way, whose method and secret lie in that subtle paradox: Yield to conquer.
The Algernon Blackwood Collection Page 230