Across the Stream Part 31

"I came in during my stroll with Jessie and took some soda," he said.

"Not a bad drink, but I think it makes one sleepy. I shall go to bed, too."

Jessie left early next morning, expecting to be gone before anybody else made an appearance. But, just as she got into the motor, Archie, rosy and suffused with sleep, like a child that has lain still and grown all night, came flying downstairs in dressing-gown and pyjamas.

"Had to come down and say good-bye, Jessie," he said. "Do come back; come down for next Sunday, and we'll go up together for Helena's wedding. Promise!"

Jessie looked at that "morning face" which glowed with the exuberance of boyish health and happiness. She herself had slept very badly, dozing for a little and then being awakened by the sound of talking next door, and of peremptory resounding tappings. And here was Archie, radiant and fresh and revitalized, and her love glowed at the thought that he wanted her, even though it was but friendship that he sought and friendship that he had to offer.

"Yes, Archie, I should love to come," she said.

"That's ripping. I say, shall I drive with you to the station just as I am? Why shouldn't I? Pyjamas and dressing-gown are perfectly decent if William will fetch me my slippers, which I seem to have forgotten, unless he lends me his boots."

"Your bath's ready, my lord," said William with a broad grin.

"Well, perhaps I'll have it then. Good-bye, Jess. Come early on Sat.u.r.day."

CHAPTER XI

Archie was lying on the turf in front of the enclosed bathing-place where the stream debouched into the lake. There was a good stretch of deep water free from weeds, and for the last half-hour he had been swimming and diving in it. Now, with hair drying back into its crisp curls under the hot sun, he lay on the short warm turf, with his chin supported on his hands, in an ecstasy of animal content. At this edge of the water the bank was made firm and solid with wooden boarding that went down into deep water, but across the estuary of the stream, broadening out into the lake, the shallow margin was fringed with bulrushes and loosestrife. A strip of low-lying meadow land behind was pink with campion and ragged-robin and starred with meadow-sweet, the scent of which mingled with the undefinable cool smell of running water.

A bed of gravel made the bottom of the stream, and through the sunlit water the pebbles gleamed like topazes through some liquid veil.

Never before had Archie been so permeated with the sense of the amazing loveliness of the world, and of the ineffable joy of living and of being part of it. He had wrestled with the swiftness of the stream as it narrowed, had clung to rocks and tree-roots below the surface, letting the current comb over and around and almost through him, then, letting go of his anchorage, had been floated down into the lake again with arms and legs outspread, and now, lying close-pressed to the turf with wet chest and dripping shoulders, he seemed to be part of the triumph of the summer, and of the immortal youth of the world. Surely there was no further heaven than this possible, namely, to be young and to desire and to have desire gratified, and whet the appet.i.te for more. There was no clearer duty in the day than to be bathed in the bliss of life, to suck out the last drop of sweetness from the world which had been created for the joy of men and the glory of G.o.d. There was no such thing as evil; evil was but the label attached by the sour-minded to the impulses and acts for which they had not sufficient vitality... And it was Martin who had taught him all this.

Archie had come back home this morning after a day and a couple of nights in town. He had bought Helena her wedding present, he had taken his completed ma.n.u.script to his publishers, he had dined and danced and supped, and filled the hours of day and night with the extravagant excesses in which up till now he had never indulged. Some innate fastidiousness or morality had led him to look on the looser pleasures of youth with disdain or disgust; now he smiled indulgently at himself for his narrow priggishness. How utterly wrong he had been to think that such things stained or soiled a boy; they had but caused him to realize himself and intensified existence for him. They were the exercise of the faculties and possibilities with which G.o.d had endowed him, and which were not meant to rust in disuse. It was right for him "richly to enjoy," as Martin had said: it was a crime against love and life to starve on a meatless diet... Above all, he had seen Helena again, had confessed and recanted the bitterness he had felt towards her, and she had forgiven him, and welcomed him back "with blessings on the falling out, that all the more endears," as the prim little poem said.

Archie laughed quietly to himself and said aloud:

"When we fall out with those we love, And kiss again with tears."

"But there weren't many tears," he added.

He understood Helena now. She wanted, so sensibly, to make herself quite comfortable for this journey through life. If Marquises with millions desired her to go shares with them, naturally she consented. But to do that was not the least the same as taking vows and going into a nunnery.

It was the nunnery that she was coming out of. Of course, just for the present Archie understood he would not see her, for she and the Bradshaw were going a yachting tour in the Norwegian fjords. But they would be back again before the end of September. So much and no more had her voice told him, but her eyes said much more intimate things, though naturally she did not express them, and when he asked if he might kiss her (that cousinly kiss which she had wanted at Silorno) her lips agreed with what her eyes said. She had never been so adorably pretty, and she had never been so demurely clever. She had said nothing which a girl who was to become another man's wife in a few days should not say, and yet Archie felt that he understood perfectly all the things she did not say.

Most brilliant perhaps of all was her warning, "I shall tell the Bradshaw that I allowed you to kiss me," she cried. "But I'm not frightened: he is such a dear."

Gone, then, were all Archie's troubles and bitternesses on this point.

He had love to cling to, and he scarcely felt jealous of the Bradshaw.

For, if things had been the other way about, and Helena had been engaged to him, would she have allowed the Bradshaw to kiss her? He knew very well that she would not.

Archie turned over on to his back, and lay with arms and legs spread out to the sun, warming himself as with the memory of that expedition to London. But he had not in the least wished to postpone his return, since the joy of life lay so largely in its contrasts, and after thirty-six hours of that fiery furnace there had come a temporary satiety, and he wanted to lie and sleep like a gorged tiger. Soon he would awake and be hungry again, but it was part of the joy of life to be satisfied and doze, and stretch out tranquil limbs. And, lying there, his ribs began to twitch again into laughter as he thought of the contract he had made with his father last Sunday. Archie had entered into it, with the view of encouraging and helping his father to rid himself of the chain that was riveted so closely round him, and he was delighted to do it, if his father derived support for his abstinence in the thought that he was helping Archie. But Archie need not abstain, so long as his father thought he was doing so, and only just now he had filled with water and sunk in the weeds several empty bottles that he had brought out in his towels from his bedroom. He knew perfectly well that he was in no danger of becoming a slave to the habit, it had served him as medicine to mitigate his misery with regard to Helena, and, now that that was quite removed, it helped him to get into communication with Martin. Of that he felt convinced. Once or twice he had tried to do so without drinking, and had failed; but alcohol seemed to drug the surface-consciousness and clear the way of access, and it was for that he used it now. It was more that it cleared the access than that it drugged him, for he found that it produced not the least effect in the way of making his head hazy or his movements wavering: it only seemed to sweep clean those mysterious channels through which communication came. The power of communicating he could not possibly give up: all happiness and joy of life sprang from it; therefore he could not possibly give up that which facilitated it.

But he performed the purpose of the contract by keeping his indulgences secret from his father, and once again Archie's ribs, with their smoothly swelling muscles under his brown skin, throbbed with amus.e.m.e.nt as he pictured his father's heroic struggle with himself. Occasionally Archie had doubts whether that struggle was quite consistently successful, for once or twice Lord Tintagel had shown signs of evening content and serenity, followed by morning shakiness, which indicated that he had made some temporary armistice. Archie thought that perhaps he would lay some trap for his father, or make some quiet detective investigations to satisfy himself on this point. But beyond doubt his father was putting up quite a good fight on behalf of a non-existent cause. His will was to abstain, and, if occasionally he failed, it was unchristian to judge failure hardly. Besides, Archie only conjectured that sometimes his father's resolution was unequal to the strain imposed on it; he did not know.

All this week Archie's sense of comradeship and brotherliness with Martin had marvellously increased. There was nothing priggish or puritanical about Martin, nor anything namby-pamby that suggested wings and halos and hymns. He was intensely human, and sympathized completely with the fact of Archie's being a glorious young animal, bursting with exuberant health. That seemed quite clear, for when this morning, sometime about four o'clock, Archie had gently let himself into the house in Grosvenor Square a little ashamed and weary, and went up to his bedroom, he became instantly aware that Martin was waiting for him.

There was no need for him to light his electric lamps, for dawn was already breaking, and, drawing his curtains apart, he threw off his clothes, so as to let the delicious chill of morning refresh his skin, and sat down for a moment in front of his dressing-table and looked fixedly at a bright point of light on the bevel of his looking-gla.s.s.

Almost immediately the waves of light and shadow began to pa.s.s before his eyes, and the room was full of vivid, peremptory tappings. Then he was aware that there appeared in the reflected image of himself a strange luminous focus over his left breast and a little wisp of mist, like a puff of escaping steam, began to come from it. This grew and collected in wavering ma.s.ses of weaving lines, formless at first, but then arranging themselves into definite shapes, and he saw, with a thrill of excitement and wonder, that out of them there was being built up the image of Martin, which had issued out of himself. Soon it was complete, and Archie in the gla.s.s beheld Martin's face leaning lovingly over his shoulder, and Martin's arm bare like his own, and, warm and solid to the touch, was thrown round his neck.

"Archie, I've been with you all night," he said. "I love to see you and feel you realize yourself. Throw yourself into life: live to the uttermost, and have no thought for the morrow. There is nothing in the world but love and joy. Cling to them, press close to them, lose yourself in them..."

Martin's smile was compa.s.sionate no longer: it was a sunbeam of radiant happiness, and that happiness, so it seemed to Archie, had its source in sympathy with and love for him.

"Don't ever think you are yielding to base impulses," he went on, "provided only you are happy. Happiness is the seal and witness of what is right for you: it is the mark of G.o.d's approval. Evil is always painful and repugnant; that is the seal and witness of it. The fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace; and aren't you more at peace, more full of joy now that you have resolved to put hate out of your heart? Isn't it sweeter to kiss Helena than to curse her?"

Suddenly, like the stroke of a black wing, there pa.s.sed through Archie an impulse of sheer abhorrence. All that Martin said sounded divinely comforting and uplifting, but did there not lurk in it the whole gospel of Satanism? And, as that thought crossed his mind, he saw an expression of the tenderest reproach dim for a moment the brightness of his brother's eyes, and the mouth drooped.

"But you are tired now," said he, "and your trust in me is a little weakened. Sleep well: it is dawn already."

The apparition faded, or rather it appeared to be withdrawn again into himself, and, emerging from the light trance, Archie was conscious only of an overpowering but delicious fatigue, the fatigue of utter satisfaction. He had had a glorious thirty-six hours, and, as Martin said, he was tired. And Martin approved.

He slept the deep, recuperative sleep of youth for four or five hours, and awoke hungry and eager, and clear-eyed. He left town immediately after breakfast, motored himself down home with William holding on to the side of the car as he slowed round corners and came straight out to his beloved bathing-place. It was bliss to be alive.

He had not seen Jessie during his short raid on London, for really there had not been a moment to spare; besides, Jessie was coming down next day for the week-end. But she knew he had been in town, for Helena said she had seen him, and, with her usual acuteness, had told her sister that Archie was deliciously his old self again, and that they were the greatest friends. That, to Jessie's very sensible judgment and to the intuition her love gave her, was the most inexplicable of developments.

Only a week ago there was no reproach bitter enough for Archie's opinion on Helena's conduct to him, no angry taunt of misery sufficient for her vilification. And then, in a moment, the whole of that bitterness had been dried up, the Marah had been sweetened. More than that, the normal joy of life had returned in full flood to him, and the cause of all this was, in his account, the fact that the spirit of Martin had shown him the true light. That Archie possessed that mysterious, and, in her view, dangerous gift of mediumistic perception she did not doubt, for there was no questioning those weird manifestations of occult power which she knew had occurred in his childhood, and she felt now that she ought only to stand in an awed wonder and thankfulness that this supernormal perception of his had, in a moment, worked in him what could be called no less than a miracle. But, though she ought to feel that, she knew that she felt nothing of the kind, and, as she travelled down next day to Lacebury, she set herself to a.n.a.lyse the causes of her mistrust.

They were simple enough. First of all, there was her rooted antipathy to the whole notion of spirit-communication. Instinctively it shocked her and seemed opposed to all religious faith. Beyond that, there were but a couple of the most insignificant matters that appeared to her possibly connected with her mistrust, the one that Archie had made a false, swift invention to account for the noises she had heard coming from his room, the other that he had proposed to get William to spy on his father with a view to ascertaining whether he was keeping his part of their bargain.

She knew they were both tiny incidents, but the spirit that prompted them was in both cases utterly unlike Archie. She could not imagine Archie making such an invention or such a suggestion, from what she knew of him, it was outside him to do so. And if it was the influence--to call it no more than that--of Martin which prompted these things, if it was the same direction as that which had taken away all his bitterness towards Helena, what sort of influence was that? Finally, could it be right that the boy whom Helena had so cruelly led on only to disappoint should, on the eve of her marriage, suddenly become close friends with her again? There certainly he obeyed the precept of that which had spoken with him, and had promised to communicate again, and she could not but think it a dangerous, if not a diabolical counsel. But she tried to reserve her judgment; in a few minutes now she would see Archie again, and could note what change for good or ill this week had brought.

Very likely she had been disquieting herself in vain, making wounds out of pin-p.r.i.c.ks and mountains out of mole-hills.

Archie had come to meet her, and, as the train slowed down into the station, she saw him out of the carriage window. But he did not see her, for his eyes were intent on a very horrible sight. There were two tipsy women violently quarrelling, and, just as the train got in, they flew at each other, scratching and striking. The encounter lasted not more than a few seconds, for a couple of porters ran in and separated them, but Jessie had seen Archie's face alight with glee and amus.e.m.e.nt. As they were separated he frowned and shrugged his shoulders, and seemed to remonstrate with the man who had stopped their fighting. At that instant he saw her get out of her compartment, and ran to meet her, his face quite changed. But the moment before it had not been Archie's face at all: it had been the face of some beautiful and devilish creature, alert with evil excitement.

"Hullo, Jessie, there you are," he said. "It's ripping to see you. Look at those two viragos there; they flew at each other like wild beasts. It was a horrible sight."

He turned a sideways eye on her, cunning and watchful, which utterly belied the frankness of his speech, and her heart sank, and a vague, nameless terror seized her, as once again she found herself thinking that this was not Archie, who so gaily took her bag for her, and ever and again looked back to where a small crowd had collected round the two women. They had a few minutes to wait, while her luggage was brought out, and once more he sauntered back into the station, leaving her in the car. From outside she could hear hoa.r.s.e screams, and, long after her trunk had been put into the car, she watched the door for Archie's exit.

First one and then the other of the women were brought out to be taken to the police-station, and at last he emerged.

"Sorry to keep you waiting, Jessie," he said. "But my mother wanted some magazine from the bookstall. Now, if you aren't nervous, we'll make up for lost time."

The road lay straight and empty before them, opening out like torn linen as they raced along it. Some way ahead there were a couple of cottages by the road-side, and, as they came near them, there wandered out into the road an old and lame collie. Instantly Archie's face changed into a mask of impatient malignancy.

"Archie, take care," said Jessie, "there's a dog on the road."

"Well, that's the dog's look-out," said he. "What right has a mangy brute like that to stop us?"

He made no attempt whatever to slow down, but just at the last moment he caused the car to swerve violently, and they missed the dog by a hair's-breadth. And he turned on her a face from which all impatience and anger had vanished, and from it looked out Archie's soul in agonized struggle.

"I couldn't, I couldn't!" he said. "I didn't touch it, Jessie: it's all right."

"I thought you must run over it," said she. "Why didn't you slow down, Archie?"

That glimpse of the agonized soul utterly vanished again.