Across the Stream

by E. F. Benson

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Lady Tintagel with Jessie and Archie were going up to town on Monday to attend Helena's wedding the day after, and all through the hours of that week-end there was piling up ever higher and more menacingly the storm that so soon was to burst upon Europe in tempest of shot and shell. Before they left on Monday afternoon war was already declared between Russia and Germany, between Germany and France, the territory of Belgium was violated by the barbarian hordes who issued from the Central Empires, and Belgium had appealed to England to uphold the treaty which Germany had torn up to light the fires or war. But, as in so many English homes in these days, the inevitable still seemed the incredible, and, though from time to time they discussed the situation, life went on its normal course. Indeed, there was nothing else to be done: whether England was going to war or not, dinner-time came round as usual…

Of them all, it was on Lord Tintagel that the suspense and anxiety beat most strongly, and that because the panic on the Stock Exchanges of Europe threatened him with losses that might bring him within reach of ruin. But Lady Tintagel still clung to a baseless hope, less substantial than a mirage in the desert, that diplomacy would still avert disaster, Archie went about the customary diversions of life with more than usual enjoyment and absorption, while for Jessie there loomed in the immediate foreground a dread and a horror, which, though it concerned not warring millions, but just one individual, engrossed her entire soul.

It was as if she saw him whom she loved with all the strength of her deep and loyal heart in danger of drowning, not in material waters that could but kill the body and set free the soul, but in some awful flooding evil which threatened to submerge and swallow the very source and spiritual life of him. And, all the time, he swam and splashed about in those waters, below which lay hell itself, with the same joyful gaiety as he used to churn his way out to sea at Silorno. As by some hideous irony, the love of deep waters far from shore that all his life had possessed him, so that his physical self was at the zenith of its capacity for enjoyment when the profound gulfs were below him, and the land far off, so now evil, essential and primeval evil, had beckoned his soul out over unplumbed depths that seemed to him bright with celestial sunshine. Not yet was he doomed to sink there, though she guessed, as in a nightmare, in what deadly peril he stood, for now and again some inkling of that which menaced him reached his true self, and he turned back with shuddering and contrition from some evil prompting. All the time this betrayed itself to Jessie in things that might so reasonably have been called mere trifles. An impatient, impetuous boy, as Archie undoubtedly was, might so naturally have lost his temper with a decrepit old dog which strayed on to the path of his flying car, and made him say that it would be the kindest thing to run over it. That same boy might so naturally have felt an unedifying curiosity in two drunken women fighting together, or have reasonably been annoyed when, in a hurry to change his clothes, he found that his old nurse had taken them away. Indeed, it was the strength of his own reaction against such impulses that showed how alien he knew them to be to his real self. But her own feeling about them was the final test, for she knew it was based on the infallible intuition of her love for him. It was impossible that that should be mistaken, and it told her that it was not Archie at all who had committed these acts, which might be trifling in themselves, but, like wisps of cloud in the sky, showed which way the great winds were blowing. And on the top of these was something which Jessie could not conceive of as being a trifle, namely, Archie's complete reconciliation with her sister. She could not believe that it was a noble impulse which prompted that, and extinguished his bitter resentment against her as easily as a candle is blown out. He was right to be bitter against her, and the love, with which he seemed inspired again, was not love at all. But he believed that this desire was love, and according to his account it was the spirit of Martin which had taught him that and opened his blinded eyes. It was Martin, then, who possessed him. And that, to Jessie, was the most incredible of all. It was not, and it could not be, Martin.

She sat by her open window that Sunday night, wishing that she could think that some madness had fallen upon her, which caused her to conceive such inconceivable things. Archie's laugh still sounded in her ears, gay and boyish, as she had heard it but two minutes before she came up to bed. And she shuddered at the cause of it. Once again, she and Archie had strolled out after dinner, and, on passing the windows of his father's study, their steps noiseless on the grass, Archie had laid his hand on her arm with a gesture to command silence, and had tiptoed with her across the gravel to his father's windows. Lord Tintagel was inside, and, even as they looked, he took a bottle out of which he had been pouring something, and locked it up in a cupboard.

Archie turned a face beaming with merriment on her.

"Come in," he whispered, "to say good-night. Leave it all to me. It will be huge fun."

He waited a moment, and began talking loudly to her on some indifferent subject for a few seconds. The he said:

"Come and say good-night to my father, Jessie," and they entered together.

Lord Tintagel was seated in his chair by this time: there was just one empty glass on the tray, with a syphon, and no sign of a second one. Archie began walking up and down the room, his eyes looking swiftly and stealthily in every direction.