The Wave: An Egyptian Aftermath Part 9

Tom Kelverdon did not forget the childhood part, but he neglected it at first. It was as if he met now for the first time--a woman who charmed him beyond anything known before; he longed for her; that he had longed for her subconsciously these twenty years slipped somehow or other out of memory. With it slipped also those strange corroborative details that imagination had clung to so tenaciously during the interval. The Whiff, the Sound, the other pair of Eyes, the shuffling feet, the joy that cloaked the singular prophecy of pain--all these, if not entirely forgotten, ceased to intrude themselves. Even when looking into her clear, dark eyes, he no longer quite realised them as the 'eastern eyes'

of his dim, dim dream; they belonged to a woman, and a married woman, whom he desired with body, heart and soul. Calm introspection was impossible, he could only feel, and feel intensely. He could not fuse this girl and woman into one continuous picture: each was a fragment of some much older, larger picture. But this larger canvas he could never visualise successfully. It was coloured, radiant, gorgeous; it blazed as with gold, a gold of sun and stars. But the strain of effort caused rupture instantly. The vaster memory escaped him. He was conscious of reserve.

The comedy of telephoning to a name he did not know was obviated next morning by the arrival of a note: 'Dear Tom Kelverdon,' it began, and was signed 'Yours, Lettice Jaretzka.' It invited him to come up for _dejeuner_ in her hotel. He went. The luncheon led naturally to a walk together afterwards, and then to other luncheons and other walks, to evening rows upon the lake, and to excursions into the surrounding country. . . . They had tea together in the lower mountain inns, picked flowers, photographed one another, laughed, talked and sat side by side at concerts or in the little Montreux cinema theatre. It was all as easy and natural as any innocent companionship well could be--because it was so deep. The foundations were of such solid strength that nothing on the surface trembled. . . . Madame de Jaretzka was well known in the hotel-- she came annually, it seemed, about this time and made a lengthy stay,-- but no breath of anything untoward could ever be connected with her.

He, too, was accepted by one and all, no glances came their way.

He was her friend: that was apparently enough. And though he desired her, body, heart and soul, he was quick to realise that the first named in the trio had no role to play. Something in her, something of att.i.tude and atmosphere, rendered it inconceivable. The reserve he was conscious of lay very deep in him; it lay in her too. There was a fence, a barrier he must not, could not pa.s.s--both recognised it. Being a man, romance for him drew some tendril doubtless from the creative physical, but the shade of pa.s.sing disappointment, if it existed, was renounced as instantly as recognised. Yet he was not aware at first of any incompleteness in her.

He felt only a bigger thing. There seemed something in this simple woman that bore him to the stars.

For simple she undoubtedly was, not in the way of shallowness, but because her nature seemed at harmony with itself: uncomplex, natural, frank and open, and with an unconventional carelessness that did no evil for the reason that she thought and meant none. She could do things that must have made an ordinary worldly woman the centre of incessant talk and scandal. There was, indeed, an extraordinary innocence about her that perturbed the judgment, somewhat baffling it. Whereas with many women it might have roused the suspicion of being a pose, an affectation, with her, Tom felt, it was a genuine innocence, beyond words delightful and refreshing. And it arose, he soon discovered, from the fact that, being good and true herself, she thought everybody else was also good and true.

This he realised before two days' intercourse had made it seem as if they had been together always and were made for one another. Something bigger and higher than he had ever felt before stirred in him for this woman, whom he thought of now invariably as Madame de Jaretzka, rather than as Lettice of his younger dream. If she woke something n.o.bler in him that had slept, he did not label it as such: nor, if a portion of his younger dream was fulfilling itself before his eyes, in a finer set of terms, did he think it out and set it down in definite words. There _was_ this intense and intimate familiarity between them both, but somehow he did not call it by these names. He just thought her wonderful--and longed for her. The reserve began to trouble him. . . .

'It's sweet,' she said, 'when real people come together--find each other.'

'Again,' he added. 'You left that out. For _I've_ never forgotten--all these years.'

She laughed. 'Well, I'll tell you the truth,' she confessed frankly.

'I hadn't forgotten either; I often thought of you and wondered----'

'What I was like now?'

'What you were doing, where you were,' she said. 'I always knew what you were like. But I often wondered how far on you had got.'

'You had no news of me?'

'None. But I always believed you'd do something big in the world.'

Something in her voice or manner made it wholly natural for him to tell her of his boyhood love. He mentioned the Wave and wavy feeling, the nightmare too, but when he tried to go beyond that, something checked him; he felt a sudden shyness. It 'sounds so silly,' was his thought.

'But I always know a real person,' he said aloud, 'anybody who's going to be real in my life; they always arrive on a wave, as it were. My wavy feeling announces them.' And the interest with which she responded prevented his regretting having made his confession.

'It's an instinct, I think,' she agreed, 'and instincts are meant to be listened to. I've had something similar, though with me it's not a wave.'

Her voice grew slower, she made a pause; when he looked up--her eyes were gazing across the lake as though in a moment of sudden absent-mindedness.

. . . 'And what's yours?' he asked, wondering why his heart was beating as though something painful was to be disclosed.

'I see a stream,' she went on slowly, still gazing away from him across the expanse of shining water, 'a flowing stream--with faces on it. They float down with the current. And when I see one I know it's somebody real--real to me. The unreal faces are always on the bank. I pa.s.s them by.'

'You've seen mine?' he asked, unable to hide the eagerness. 'My face?'

'Often, yes,' she told him simply. 'I dream it usually, I think: but it's quite vivid.'

'And is that all? You just see the faces floating down with the current?'

'There's one other thing,' she answered, 'if you'll promise not to laugh.'

'Oh, I won't laugh,' he a.s.sured her. 'I'm awfully interested. It's no funnier than my Wave, anyhow.'

'They're faces I have to save,' she said. 'Somehow I'm meant to rescue them.' In what way she did not know. 'Just keep them above water, I suppose!' And the smile in her face gave place to a graver look.

The stream of faces was real to her in the way his Wave was real.

There was meaning in it. 'Only three weeks ago,' she added, 'I saw _you_ like that.' He asked where it was, and she told him Warsaw. They compared notes; they had been in the town together, it turned out.

Their outer paths had been converging for some time, then.

'Why--did you leave?' he asked suddenly. He wanted to ask why she was there at all, but something stopped him.

'I usually come here,' she said quietly, 'about this time. It's restful.

There's peace in these quiet hills above the town, and the lake is soothing. I get strength and courage here.'

He glanced at her with astonishment a moment. Behind the simple language another meaning flashed. There was a look in the eyes, a hint in the voice that betrayed her. . . . He waited, but she said no more. Not that she wished to conceal, but that she did not wish to speak of something.

Warsaw meant pain for her, she came here to rest, to recuperate after a time of stress and struggle, he felt. And looking at the face he recognised for the first time that behind its quiet strength there lay deep pain and sadness, yet accepted pain and sadness conquered, a suffering she had turned to sweetness. Without a particle of proof, he yet felt sure of this. And an immense respect woke in him. He saw her saving, rescuing others, regardless of herself: he felt the floating faces real; the stream was life--her life. . . . And, side by side with the deep respect, the bigger, higher impulse stirred in him again. Name it he could not: it just came: it stole into him like some rare and exquisite new fragrance, and it came from her. . . . He saw her far above him, stooping down from a higher level to reach him with her little hand. . . .

He knew a yearning to climb up to her--a sudden and searching yearning in his soul. 'She's come back to fetch me,' ran across his mind before he realised it; and suddenly his heart became so light that he thought he had never felt such happiness before. Then, before he realised it, he heard himself saying aloud--from his heart:

'You do me an awful lot of good--really you do. I feel better and happier when I'm with you. I feel--' He broke off, aware that he was talking rather foolishly. Yet the boyish utterance was honest; she did not think it foolish apparently. For she replied at once, and without a sign of lightness:

'Do I? Then I mustn't leave you, Tom!'

'Never!' he exclaimed impetuously.

'Until I've saved you.' And this time she did not laugh.

She was still looking away from him across the water, and the tone was quiet and unaccented. But the words rang like a clarion in his mind.

He turned; she turned too: their eyes met in a brief but penetrating gaze.

And for an instant he caught an expression that frightened him, though he could not understand its meaning. Her beauty struck him like a sheet of fire--all over. He saw gold about her like the soft fire of the southern stars. With any other woman, at any other time, he would--but the thought utterly denied itself before it was half completed even. It sank back as though ashamed. There was something in her that made it ugly, out of rhythm, undesirable, and undesired. She would not respond--she would not understand.

In its place another blazed up with that strange, big yearning at the back of it, and though he gazed at her as a man gazes at a woman he needs and asks for, her quiet eyes did not lower or turn aside. The cheaper feeling 'I'm not worthy of you,' took in his case a stronger form: 'I'll be better, bigger, for you.' And then, so gently it might have been a mother's action, she put her hand on his with firm pressure, and left it lying there a moment before she withdrew it again. Her long white glove, still fastened about the wrist, was flung back so that it left the palm and fingers bare, and the touch of the soft skin upon his own was marvellous; yet he did not attempt to seize it, he made no movement in return. He kept control of himself in a way he did not understand.

He just sat and looked into her face. There was an entire absence of response from her--in one sense. Something poured from her eyes into his very soul, but something beautiful, uplifting. This new yearning emotion rose through him like a wave, bearing him upwards. . . . At the same time he was vaguely aware of a lack as well . . . of something incomplete and unawakened. . . .

'Thank you--for saying that,' he was murmuring; 'I shall never forget it,'; and though the suppressed pa.s.sion changed the tone and made it tremble even, he held himself as rigid as a statue. It was she who moved.

She leaned nearer to him. Like a flower the wind bends on its graceful stalk, her face floated very softly against his own. She kissed him.

It was all very swift and sudden. But, though exquisite, it was not a woman's kiss. . . . The same instant she was sitting straight again, gazing across the blue lake below her.

'You're still a boy,' she said, with a little innocent laugh, 'still a wonderful, big boy.'

'Your boy,' he returned. 'I always have been.'

There was deep, deep joy in his heart, it lifted him above the world--with her. Yet with the joy there was this faint touch of disappointment too.

'But, I say--isn't it awfully strange?' he went on, words failing him absurdly. 'It's very wonderful, this friendship. It's so natural.'

Then he began to flush and stammer.

In an even tone of voice she answered: 'It's wonderful, Tom, but it's not strange.' And again he was vaguely aware that something which might have made her words yet more convincing was not there.

'But I've got that curious feeling--I could swear it's all happened before.' He moved closer as he spoke; her dress was actually against his coat, but he could not touch her. Something made it impossible, wrong, a false, even a petty thing. It would have taken away the kiss.

'Have _you_?' he asked abruptly, with an intensity that seemed to startle her, 'have _you_ got that feeling of familiarity too?'

And for a moment in the middle of their talk they both, for some reason, grew very thoughtful. . . .

'It had to be--perhaps,' she answered simply a little later. 'We are both real, so I suppose--yes, it _has_ to be.'

There was the definite feeling that both spoke of a bigger thing that neither quite understood. Their eyes searched, but their hearts searched too. There was a gap in her that somehow must be filled, Tom felt. . . .

They stared long at one another. He was close upon the missing thing-- when suddenly she withdrew her eyes. And with that, as though a wave had swept them together and pa.s.sed on, the conversation abruptly changed its key. They fell to talking of other things. The man in him was again aware of disappointment.