The Wave: An Egyptian Aftermath Part 35

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 pa.s.sed?

What good did it do to put the same questions over and over again, to pa.s.s from doubt to certainty, only to be flung back again from certainty to 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 circ.u.mstances, 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 a.s.surance 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.

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 a.s.sumed 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sage 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. 'G.o.d 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 knew. 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.