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, the 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.
If any weakening of resolve were in himself, it disappeared long before Tony's arrival on the scene. A few private words from Mrs. Haughstone later banished it effectually. 'Your telegram, Mr. Kelverdon, came as a great surprise. We had planned a three-day trip to the Sphinx and Pyramids. Mr. Winslowe had written to you; he hoped to persuade you to join us. Again you left Assouan before the letter arrived. It's a habit with you!'
'Apparently.'
The poison no longer fevered him; he was immune.
'Mr. Winslowe—I had better warn you before he comes—was disappointed.'
'I'm sorry I spoilt the trip. It was most inconsiderate of me. But you can make it later when I'm gone—to Cairo, can't you?'
Mrs. Haughstone watched him somewhat keenly. Did she discover anything, he wondered? Was she aware that he was no longer within reach of her little shafts?
'It's all for the best, I think,' she went on in a casual tone. 'Lettice was too easily persuaded—she didn't really want to go without you. She said so. And Mr. Winslowe soon gets over his sulks——'
Tom interrupted her, turning sharply round. 'Oh,' he laughed, 'was that why he wouldn't come to breakfast, then?' And whether it was pain or pleasure that he felt, he did not know. The moment's anguish—he verily believed it—was for Lettice. And for Tony? Something akin to sympathy perhaps! If Tony should ever suffer pain like his—even temporarily.…!
The other shrugged her angular shoulders a little. 'It's all passed now,' she observed; 'he's forgotten it, I'm sure. You needn't notice anything, by the way,' she added, 'if—if he seems ungracious.'
'Not for worlds,' replied Tom, throwing stones into the sullen river below. 'I'm far too tactful.'
Mrs. Haughstone looked away. There was a moment's expression of admiration on her face. 'You're big, Mr. Kelverdon, very big. I wish all men were as generous.' She spoke hurriedly below her breath. 'I saw this coming before you arrived. I wish I could have saved you. You've got the hero in you.'
Tom changed the subject, and presently moved away: it was time for lunch for one thing, and for another he wanted to hide his face from her too peering eyes. He was not quite sure of himself just then; his lips trembled a little; he could not altogether control his facial muscles. Tony jealous! Lettice piqued! Was this the explanation of her new sweetness towards himself! The position tried him sorely, testing his new strength from such amazing and unexpected angles. It was all beyond him somehow, the reversal of rôles so afflicting, tears and laughter so oddly mingled. Yet the sheet-anchor—his self-less love—held fast and true. There was no dragging, no shuffling where he stood.
Nor was there any weakening of resolution in him, any dimming of the new dawn within his heart. He felt sure of something that he did not understand, aware of a radiant promise some one whispered marvellously in his ear. He was alone, yet not alone, outcast yet companioned sweetly, bereft of all the world holds valuable, yet possessor of riches that the world passed by. He felt a conqueror. The pain was somehow turning into joy. He seemed above the earth. Only one thing mattered—that his ideal love should have no stain upon it.
The lunch he dreaded passed smoothly and without alarm. Tony was gay, light-hearted as usual, belying Mrs. Haughstone's ominous prediction. They smoked together afterwards, walking up and down the garden arm-in-arm, Tony eagerly discussing expeditions, picnics, birds, anything and everything that offered, with keen interest as of old; he even once suggested coming back to Assouan with his cousin—alone… Tom made no comment on the adverb. Nor was his sympathy mere acting; he genuinely felt it; the affection for Tony somehow was not dead.… The joy in him grew, meanwhile, brighter, clearer, higher. It was alive. Some courage of the sun was in him. There seemed a great understanding with it, and a greater forgiveness.
Of one thing only did he feel uncertain. He caught himself sharply wondering more than once. For he had the impression—the conviction almost—that something had happened during his absence at Assouan—that there was a change in her attitude to Tony. It was a subtle change; it was beginning merely; but it was there. Her behaviour at breakfast was not due to pique, not solely due to pique, at any rate. It had a deeper origin. Almost he detected signs of friction between herself and Tony. Very slight they were indeed, if not imagined altogether. His perception was still exceptionally alert, its acuteness left over, apparently, from the earlier days of pain and jealousy. Yet the result upon him was confusing chiefly.
In very trivial ways the change betrayed itself. The talk between the three of them remained incongruously upon the surface always. The play and chatter went on independently of the Play beneath, almost ignoring it. In that Wordless Play, however, the change was registered.
'Tom, you've got the straightest back of any man I ever saw,' Lettice exclaimed once, eyeing them critically with an amused smile as they came back towards her chair. 'I've just been watching you both.'
They laughed, while Tony turned it wittily into fun. 'It's always safer to look a person in the face,' he observed. If he felt the comparison was made to his disadvantage he did not show it. Tom, wondering what she meant and why she said it, felt that the remark annoyed him. For there was disparagement of Tony in it.
'I can read your soul from your back alone,' she added.
'And mine!' cried Tony, laughing: 'what about my back too? Or have I got no soul misplaced between my shoulder-blades?'
Tom laid his hand between those slightly-rounded shoulders then—and rather suddenly.
'It's bent from too much creeping after birds,' he exclaimed. 'In your next life you'll be on all fours if you're not careful.'
The Arab appeared to say the donkeys and sand-cart were waiting in the road, and Tony went indoors to get cameras and other paraphernalia essential to a Desert picnic. Lettice continued talking idly to Tom, who stood beside her, smoking.… The feeling of dream and reality were very strong in him at the moment. He hardly realised what the nonsense was he had said to his cousin. There was a slight sense of discomfort in him. The little, playful conversation just over had meaning in it. He missed that meaning. Somehow the comparison in his favour was disagreeable—he preferred to hear his cousin praised, but certainly not belittled. Perhaps vanity was wounded there—that his successful rival woke contempt in her was unendurable.… And he thought of his train for the first time with a vague relief.
'Birds,' she was saying, half to herself, the eyes beneath the big sun-hat looking beyond him, 'that reminds me, Tom—a dream I had. A little bird left its nest and hopped about to try all the other branches, because it thought it ought to explore them—had to, in a way. And it got into all sorts of danger, and ran fearful risks, and couldn't fly or use its wings properly,—till finally——'
She stopped, and her eyes turned full upon his own. The love in his face was plain to read, though he was not conscious of it. He waited in silence:
'Till finally it crept back up into its own nest again,' she went on, 'and found its wings lying there all the time. It had forgotten them! And it got in, felt warm and safe and cosy—and fell asleep.'
'Whereupon you woke and found it was all a dream,' said Tom. His tone, though matter-of-fact, was lower than usual, but it was firm. No sign of emotion now was visible in his face. The eyes were steady, the lips betrayed no hint. Her little dream, the way of telling it rather, perplexed him.
'Yes,' she said, 'but I found somehow that the bird was me.' She sighed a little.
It flashed upon him suddenly that she was exhausted, wearied out; that her heart was beating with some interior stress and struggle. She seemed on the point of giving up, some long long battle in her ended. There was something she wished to say to him—he got this impression too—something she could not bring herself to say, unless he helped her, unless he asked for it. The duality was ending, perhaps fused into unity again?… The intense and burning desire to help her rose upon him, the desire to protect. And the word 'Warsaw' fled across his mind… as though it fell through the heated air into his mind… from hers.
'Tony declares,' she was saying, 'that our memories are packed away under pressure like steam in a boiler, and the dream is their safety-valve… I wonder.… He read it somewhere. It's not his own, of course. But Tony never explains—because he doesn't really know. He's flashy—not the depth we thought—the truth… Tom!'
She called his name with emphasis, as if annoyed that he showed so little interest. There was an instant's cloud upon her face; the eyes wavered, then looked away; he felt again there was disappointment somewhere in her —with himself or with Tony, he did not know.… He kept silent. He could think of nothing by way of answer—nothing appropriate, nothing safe.
She waited, keeping silent too. The Curtain was lowering, its shadow growing on the air.
'I dream so little,' he stammered at length, 'I can't say.' It enraged him that he faltered. He turned away.… Tony at that moment arrived. The cart and animals were ready, everything was collected. He announced it loudly, urging them with a certain impatience, as though they caused the delay. He stared keenly at them a moment.… They started.