CHAPTER XXVI.
..................
YES, SHE WAS ALWAYS ‘TIRED’ now, though the ‘always’ meant but three days at most. It was the starving sense of loneliness, the aching sense of loss, the yearning and the vain desire that made it seem so long. Lettice evaded him with laughter in her eyes, or with a tired smile. But the laughter was for another. It was merciless and terrible—so slightly, faintly indicated, yet so overwhelmingly convincing.
The talk between them rarely touched reality, as though a barrier deadened their very voices. Even her mothering became exasperating; it was so unforced and natural; it seemed still so right that she should show solicitude for his physical welfare. And therein lay the anguish and the poignancy. Yet, while he resented fiercely, knowing this was all she had to offer now, he struggled at the same time to accept. One moment he resisted, the next accepted. One hour he believed in her, the next he disbelieved. Hope and fear alternately made tragic sport of him.
Two personalities fought for possession of his soul, and he could not always keep back the lower of the two. They interpenetrated—as, at Dehr-el-Bahri, two scenes had interpenetrated, something very, very old projected upon a modern screen.
Lettice too—he was convinced of it—was undergoing a similar experience in herself. Only in her case just now it was the lower, the primitive, the physical aspect that was uppermost. She clung to Tony, yet struggled to keep Tom. She could not help herself. And he himself, knowing he must shortly go, still clung and hesitated, hoping against hope. More and more now, until the end, he was aware that he stood outside his present-day self, and above it. He looked back—looked down—upon former emotions and activities; and hence the confusing alternating of jealousy and forgiveness.
There were revealing little incidents from time to time. On the following afternoon he found her, for instance, radiant with that exuberant happiness he had learned now to distrust. And for a moment he half believed again that the menace had lifted and the happiness was for him. She held out both hands towards him, while she described a plan for going to Edfu and Abou Simbel. His heart beat wildly for a second.
‘But Tony?’ he asked, almost before he knew it. ‘We can’t leave him out!’
‘Oh, but I’ve had a letter.’ And as she said it his eye caught sight of a bulky envelope lying in the sand beside her chair.
‘Good,’ he said quietly, ‘and when is he coming back? I haven’t heard from him.’ The solid ground moved beneath his feet. He shivered, even in the blazing heat.
‘To-morrow. He sends you all sorts of messages and says that something you wrote made him very happy. I wonder what it was, Tom?’
Behind her voice he heard the north wind rattling in the palms; he heard the soft rustle of the acacia leaves as well; there was the crashing of little waves upon the river; but a deep, deep shadow fell upon the sky and blotted out the sunshine. The glory vanished from the day, leaving in its place a painful glare that hurt the eyes. The soul in him was darkened.
‘Ah!’ he exclaimed with assumed playfulness, ‘but that’s my secret!’ Men do smile, he remembered, as they are led to execution.
She laughed excitedly. ‘I shall find it out——’
‘You will,’ he burst out significantly, ‘in the end.’
Then, as she passed him to go into the house, he lost control a moment. He whispered suddenly:
‘Love has no secrets, Lettice, anywhere. We’re in the Sea together. I shall never let you go.’ The intensity in his manner betrayed him; he adored her; he could not hide it.
She turned an instant, standing two steps above him; the sidelong downward glance lent to her face a touch of royalty, half pitying, half imperious. Her exquisite, frail beauty held a strength that mocked the worship in his eyes and voice. Almost—she challenged him:
‘Soothsayer!’ she whispered back contemptuously. ‘Do your worst!’—and was gone into the house.
Desire surged wildly in him at that moment; impatience, scorn, fury even, raised their heads; he felt a savage impulse to seize her with violence, force her to confess, to have it out and end it one way or the other. He loathed himself for submitting to her cruelty, for it was intentional cruelty—she made him writhe and suffer of set purpose. And something barbaric in his blood leaped up in answer to the savagery in her own… when at that instant he heard her calling very softly:
‘Tom! Come indoors to me a moment; I want to show you something!’
But with it another sentence sprang across him and was gone. Like a meteor it streaked the screen of memory. Seize it he could not. It had to do with death—his death. There was a thought of blood. Outwardly what he heard, however, was the playful little sentence of to-day. ‘Come, I want to show you something.’
At the sound of her voice so softly calling all violence was forgotten; love poured back in a flood upon him; he would go through fire and water to possess her in the end. In this strange drama she played her inevitable part, even as he did; there must be no loss of self-control that might frustrate the coming climax. There must be no thwarting. If he felt jealousy, he must hide it; anger, scorn, desire must veil their faces.
He crossed the passage and stood before her in the darkened room, afraid and humble, full of a burning love that the centuries had not lessened, and that no conceivable cruelty of pain could ever change. Almost he knelt before her. Even if terrible, she was utterly adorable.
For he believed she was about to make a disclosure that would lay him bleeding in the dust; singularly at her mercy he felt, his heart laid bare to receive the final thrust that should make him outcast. Her little foot would crush him.…
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 kn
ew. 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!
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 la
ughed 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.
The Algernon Blackwood Collection Page 231