The way she quickly looked up at him proved that she divined his meaning.
But the glance had a flash of something that escaped him.
"You"re very observant, Tommy," she said evasively. It seemed impossible for her to say a disparaging thing of anybody. She invariably picked out and emphasised the best. "You don"t admire them?"
"Do _you_, Lettice?"
She paused for an imperceptible second, then smiled. "I rather like big rough hands in a man--perhaps," she said without any particular interest, "though--in a way--they frighten me sometimes. Tony"s are ugly, but there"s power in them." And she placed her own small gloved hand upon his arm. "He"s rather irresponsible, I know," she added gently, "but he"ll grow out of that in time. He"s beginning to improve already."
"You see, he"s got no mother," Tom observed.
"No wife either--yet," she added with a laugh.
"Or work," put in Tom, with a touch of self-praise, and thinking of his own position in the world. Her interest in Tony had the effect of making himself seem worthier, more important. This fine woman, who judged people from so high a standpoint, had picked out--himself! He had an absurd yet delightful feeling as though Tony was their child, and the perfectly natural way she took him under her mothering wing stirred an admiring pity in him.
Then as they walked together through the fragrant pine-woods to the station, an incident at a recent theatre party rose before his memory.
Tony and his Amanda had been with them. The incident in question had left a singular impression on his mind, though why it emerged now, as they wandered through the quiet wood, he could not tell. It had occurred a week or two ago. He now saw it again--in a tenth of the time it takes to tell.
The scene was laid in ancient Egypt, and while the play was commonplace, the elaborate production--scenery, dresses, atmosphere--was good.
But Tom, unable to feel interest in the trivial and badly acted story, had felt interest in another thing he could not name. There was a subtle charm, a delicate glamour about it as of immensely old romance, but some lost romance of very far away. Yet, whether this charm was due to the stage effects or to themselves, sitting there in the stalls together, escaped him. For in some singular way the party, his hostess certainly, seemed to interpenetrate the play itself. She, above all, and Tony vaguely, seemed inseparable from what he gazed at, heard, and felt.
Continually he caught himself thinking how delightful it was to know himself next to Madame Jaretzka, so close that he shared her atmosphere, her perfume, touched her even; that their minds were engaged intimately together watching the same scene; and also, that on her other side, sat Tony, affectionate, whimsical, fascinating Tony, whom they were trying to help "find himself"; and that he, again, was next to a girl he liked.
The harmonious feeling of the four was pleasurable to Tom. He felt himself, moreover, an important and indispensable item in its composition.
It was vague; he did not attempt to a.n.a.lyse it as self-flattery, as vanity, as pride--he was aware, merely, that he felt very pleased with himself and so with everybody else. It was gratifying to sit at the head of the group; everybody could see how beautiful _she_ was; the dream of exclusive ownership stole over him more definitely than ever before.
"She"s chosen _me_! She needs me--a woman like that!"
The audience, the lights, the colour, the music influenced him. It seemed he caught something from the crude human pa.s.sion that was being ranted on the stage and transferred it unconsciously into his relations with the party he belonged to, but, above all, into his relationship with her--and with another. But he refused to let his mind dwell upon that other.
He found himself thinking instead of the divine tenderness that was in her, yet at the same time of her elusiveness and the curious pain it caused him. Whence came, he wondered, the sweet and cruel flavour?
It seemed like a memory of something suffered long ago, the sweetness in it true and exquisite, the cruelty an error on his own part somehow.
The old hint of uneasiness, the strange, rich pain he had known in boyhood, stole faintly over him; its first and immediate effect heightening the sense of dim, old-world romance already present. . . .
And he had turned cautiously to look at her. She was leaning forward a little as though the play absorbed her, and the att.i.tude startled him.
It caused him almost a definite shock. The face had pain in it.
She was not aware that he stared; her attention was fastened upon the stage; but the eyes were fixed, the little mouth was fixed as well, the lips compressed; and all her features wore this expression of curious pain. There was sternness in them, something almost hard. He watched her for some minutes, surprised and fascinated. It came over him that he almost knew what that was in her mind. Another moment and he would discover it--when, past her profile, he caught his cousin"s eyes peering across at him. Tony had felt the direction of his glance and had looked round: and Tony--mischievously--winked!
The spell was broken. In that instant, however, through the heated air of the crowded stalls already weighted with sickly artificial perfumes, there reached him faintly, as from very far away, another and a subtler perfume, something of elusive fragrance in it. It was very poignant, instinct as with forgotten a.s.sociations. It was the Whiff. It came, it went; but it was unmistakable. And he connected it, as by some instantaneous cert.i.tude, with the play--with Egypt.
"What do you think of it, Lettice?" he had whispered, nodding towards the stage.
She turned with a start. She came back. The expression of pain flashed instantly away. She had evidently not been thinking of the performance.
"It"s not much, Tom, is it? But I like the scenery. It makes me feel strange somewhere--the change that comes over me in Egypt. We"ll be there together--some day." She leaned over with her lips against his ear.
And there was significance in the commonplace words, he thought--a significance her whisper did not realise, and certainly did not intend.
"All three of us," he rejoined before he knew what he meant exactly.
And she nodded hurriedly. Either she agreed, or else she had not heard him. He did not insist, he did not repeat, he sat there wondering why on earth he said the thing. A touch of pain p.r.i.c.ked him like an insect"s sting, but a pain he could not account for. His blood, at the same time, leaped as she bent her face so near to his own. He felt his heart swell as he looked into her eyes. Her beauty astonished him; in this twilight of the theatre it glowed and burned like a veiled star. He fancied--it was the trick of the half-light, of course--she had grown darker and that a dusky flush lay on her cheeks.
"What were you thinking about?" he whispered lower again, changing the sentence slightly. And, as he asked it, he saw Tony still watching him, two seats away. It annoyed him; he drew his head back a little so that her face concealed him.
"I don"t know," she whispered back; "nothing in particular." She put her gloved hand stealthily towards him and touched his knee. The gesture, he felt, was intended to supplement the words. For the first time in his life he did not quite believe her. The thought was odious, but not to be denied. It merely flashed across him, however. He forgot it instantly.
"Seems oddly familiar somehow," he said, "doesn"t it?"
Again she nodded, smiling, as she gazed for a moment first into one eye, then into the other, then turned away to watch the stage. And abruptly, as she did so, the entire feeling vanished, the mood evaporated, her expression was normal once more, and he fixed his attention on the stupid play.
He turned his interest into other channels; he would take his party on to supper. He did so. Yet an impression remained--the impression that the Wave had come nearer, higher, that it was rising and gaining impetus, acc.u.mulating ma.s.s, momentum, power. The gay supper could not dissipate that, nor could the happy ten minutes in a taxi, when he drove her to her door, decrease or weaken it. She was very tired. They spoke little, he remembered; she gave him a gentle touch as the cab drew up, and the few things she said had entirely to do with his comfort in his flat. He felt in that touch and in those tender questions the mother only. The woman, it suddenly occurred to him, had gone elsewhere. He had never had it, never even claimed it. A deep sense of loneliness touched him for a moment. His heart beat rapidly. He dreamed. . . .
Why the scene came back to him now as they walked slowly through the summery pine-wood he knew not. He caught himself thinking vividly of Egypt suddenly, of being in Egypt with her--and with another. But on that other he refused to let thought linger. Of set purpose he chose Tony in that other"s place. He saw it in a picture: he and she together helping Tony, she and Tony equally helping him. It pa.s.sed before him merely, a glowing coloured picture set in high light against the heavy background of these English fir-woods and the Kentish sky. Whether it came towards him or retreated, he could not say. It was very brief, instantaneous almost.
The memory of the play, with its numerous attendant correlations, rose up, then vanished.
"Give me your arm, Tom, you mighty giant: these pine-needles are so slippery." He felt her hand creep in and rest upon his muscles, and a glow of boyish pride came with it. In her summer dress of white, her big garden hat and flowing violet veil, she looked adorable. He liked the long white gauntlet gloves. The shadows of the trees became her well: against the thick dark trunks she seemed slim and dainty as a flower that the breeze bent over towards him. "You"re so horribly big and strong,"
she said, and her eyes, full of expression, glanced up at him. He watched her little feet in the neat white shoes peep out in turn as they walked along; her fingers pressed his arm. He tried to take her parasol, but she prevented him, saying it was her only weapon of defence against a giant, "and there _is_ a giant in this forest, though only a baby one perhaps!"
He felt the mother in her pour over him in a flood of tenderness that blessed and soothed and comforted. It was as if a divine and healing power streamed from her into him.
"And what _were_ you thinking about, Tom?" she enquired teasingly.
"You haven"t said a word for a whole five minutes!"
"I was thinking of Egypt," he answered with truth.
She looked up quickly.
"I"m to go out in December," he went on. "I told you. It was decided at our last Board Meeting."
She said she remembered. "But it"s funny," she added, "because I was thinking of Egypt too just then--thinking of the Nile, my river with the floating faces."
The week-end visit was typical of many others; Mrs. Haughstone, seeing safety in numbers possibly, was pleasant on the surface, Molly deflecting most of her poisoned darts towards herself; while Tom and Tony shared the society of their unconventional hostess with boyish enjoyment.
Tom modified the air of ownership he indulged when alone with her, and no one need have noticed that there was anything more between them than a hearty, understanding friendship. Tony, for instance, may have guessed the true situation, or, again, he may not; for he said no word, nor showed the smallest hint by word, by gesture, or by silence--most significant betrayal of all--that he was aware of any special tie. Though a keen observer, he gave no sign. "She"s an interesting woman, Tom," he remarked lightly yet with enthusiasm once, "and a rare good hostess--a woman in a thousand, I declare. We make a famous trio. As you"ve got that a.s.souan job we"ll have some fun next winter in Egypt, eh?"
And Tom, pleased and secretly flattered by the admiration, tried to make his confidences. Unless Tony had liked her this would have been impossible. But they formed such a natural, happy trio together, giving the lie to the h.o.a.ry proverb, that Tom felt it was permissible to speak of her to his sympathetic cousin. Already they had laughingly discussed the half-forgotten acquaintanceship begun in the _dahabieh_ on the Nile, Tony making a neat apology by declaring to her, "Beautiful women blind me so, Madame Jaretzka, that I invariably forget all lesser details. And that"s why I told Tom you were a Russian."
On this particular occasion, too, it was made easier because Tony had asked his cousin"s opinion about the Irish girl, invited for his special benefit. "I was never so disappointed in my life," he said in his convincing yet airy way. "She looked so wonderful the other night.
It was the evening dress, I suppose. You should always see a girl first in the daytime; the daylight self is the real self." And Tom, amused by the irresponsible att.i.tude towards the s.e.x, replied that the right woman looked herself in any dress because it was as much a part of her as her own skin. "Yes," said Tony, "it"s the thing inside the skin that counts, of course; you"re right; the rest is only a pa.s.sing glamour. But friendship with a woman is the best of all, for friendship grows insensibly into the best kind of love. It"s a delightful feeling," he added sympathetically, "that kind of friendship. Independent of what they wear!"
He enjoyed his pun and laughed. "I say, Tom," he went on suddenly with a certain inconsequence, "have you ever met the Prince--Madame Jaretzka"s husband--by the way? I wonder what he"s like." He looked up carelessly and raised his eyebrows.
"No," replied Tom in a quiet tone, "but I--exp--hope to some day."
"I think he ran away and left her, or something," continued the other.
"He"s dead, anyhow, to all intents and purposes. But I"ve been wondering lately. I"ll be bound there was ill-treatment. She looks so sad sometimes. The other night at the theatre I was watching her----"
"That Egyptian play?" broke in Tom.