"I suppose it must be," she replied, "but it"s the climate too. This keen dry air and the sunshine bring all one"s power out. There"s something magical in it. You forget the years and feel young--against the background of this old land a lifetime seems like an afternoon, merely.
And the nights--oh, Tom, the stars are too, too marvellous." She spoke with a kind of exuberance that seemed new in her.
"They must be," he rejoined, as he gazed exultantly, "for they"re all in you, sun, air, and stars. You"re a perfect revelation to me of what a woman----"
"Am I?" she interrupted, fluttering her whisk between her chair and his.
"But now, dear Tom, my headstrong boy, tell me how you are and all about yourself, your plans, and everything else in the world besides." He told her what he could, answered all her questions, declared he and she were going to have the time of their lives, and behaved generally, as she told him, like a boy out of school. He admitted it. "But I"m hungry, Lettice, awfully hungry." He kept reminding her that he had been starving for two long months; surely she was starving too. He longed to hear her confess it with a sigh of happy relief. "My arms and lips are hungry," he went on incorrigibly, "but I"m tired, too, from travelling. I feel like putting my head on your breast and going sound asleep." "My boy," she said tenderly, "you shall." She responded instantly to that. "You always were a baby and I"m here to take care of you." He seized her hand and kissed it before she could draw it away. "You must be careful, Tom. Everything has eyes in Egypt; the Arabs move like ghosts." She glanced towards the windows. "And the gossip is unbelievable." She was quiet again now, and very gentle; it struck him how calm and sweet she was towards him, yet that there was a delightful happy excitement underneath that she only just controlled. He was aware of something wild in her just out of sight--a kind of mental effervescence, almost intoxication she deliberately suppressed.
"And so are you--unbelievable," he exclaimed impetuously; "unbelievably beautiful. This is your country with a vengeance, Lettice. You"re like an Egyptian queen--a princess of the sun!"
He gazed critically at her till she lowered her eyes. He realised that, actually, they were not visible from the house and that the garden trees were thick about them; but he also received a faint impression that she did not want, did not intend, to allow quite the same intimacy as before.
It just flashed across him with a hint of disappointment, then was gone.
His boyish admiration, perhaps, annoyed her. He had felt for a second that her excuse of the windows and the gossip was not the entire truth.
The merest shadow of a thought it was. He noticed her eyes fixed intently upon him. The same minute, then, she rose quietly and rustled over to his chair, kissed him on the cheek quickly, and sat down again. "There!" she said playfully as though she had guessed his thoughts, "I"ve done the awful thing; now you"ll be reasonable, perhaps!" And whether or not she had divined his mood, she instantly dispelled it--for the moment. . . .
They talked about a hundred things, moving their chairs as the blazing sunshine found them out, till finally they sat with cushions on the steps of stone that led down to the river beneath the flaming bougainvillaea.
He felt the strange touch of Egypt all about them, that touch of eternity that floats in the very air, a hint of something deathless and sublime that whispers in the sunshine. Already he was aware of the long fading stretch of years behind. He thought of Egypt as two vast hands that held him, one of tawny gold and one of turquoise blue--the desert and the sky.
In the hollow of those great hands, he lay with Lettice--two tiny atoms of sand. . . .
He watched her every movement, every gesture, noted the slightest inflection of her voice, was aware that five years at least had dropped from her, that her complexion had grown softer, a shade darker, too, from the sun; but, above all, that there was a new expression, a new light certainly, soft and brilliant, in her eyes. It seemed, briefly put, that she had blossomed somehow into a fuller expression of herself.
An overflowing vitality, masked behind her calmness, betrayed itself in every word and glance and gesture. There was an exuberance he called joy, but it was, somehow, a new, an unexpected joy.
She was, of course, aware of his untiring scrutiny; and presently, in a lull, keeping her eyes on the river below them, she spoke of it.
"You find me a little changed, Tom, don"t you? I warned you that Egypt had a certain effect on me. It enflames the heart and----"
"But a very wonderful effect," he broke in with admiration. "You"re different in a way--yes--but _you_ haven"t changed--not towards me, I mean." He wanted to say a great deal more, but could not find the words; he divined that something had happened to her, in Warsaw probably, and he longed to question her about the "other" who was her husband, but he could not, of course, allow himself to do so. An intuitive feeling came to him that the claim upon her of this other was more remote than formerly.
His dread had certainly lessened. The claims upon her of this "other"
seemed no longer--dangerous. . . . He wondered. . . . There was a certain confusion in his mind.
"You got my letter at Alexandria?" she interrupted his reflections.
He thanked her with enthusiasm, trying to remember what it said--but without success. It struck him suddenly that there was very little in it after all, and he mentioned this with a reproachful smile. "That"s my restraint," she replied. "You always liked restraint. Besides, I wasn"t sure it would reach you." She laughed and blew a kiss towards him.
She made a curious gesture he had never seen her make before. It seemed unlike her. More and more he registered a difference in her, as if side by side with the increase of spontaneous vitality there ran another mood, another aspect, almost another point of view. It was not towards him, yet it affected him. There seemed a certain new lightness, even irresponsibility in her; she was more worldly, more human, not more ordinary by any means, but less "impersonal." He remembered her singular words: "It enflames the heart." He wondered--a little uneasily.
There seemed a new touch of wonder about her that made him aware of something commonplace, almost inferior, in himself. . . .
At the same time he felt another thing--a breath of coldness touched him somewhere, though he could not trace its origin to anything she did or said. Was it perhaps in what she left unsaid, undone? He longed to hear her confess how she had missed him, how thrilled she was that he had come: but she did not say these pa.s.sionately desired things, and when he teased her about it, she showed a slight impatience almost: "Tom, you know I never talk like that. Anything sentimental I abhor. But I live it.
Can"t you see?" His ungenerous fancies vanished then at once; at a word, a smile, a glance of the expressive eyes, he instantly forgot all else.
"But I _am_ different in Egypt," she warned him playfully again, half closing her eyelids as she said it. "I wonder if you"ll like me--quite as well."
"More," he replied ardently, "a thousand times more. I feel it already.
There"s mischief in you," he went on watching the half-closed eyes, "a touch of magic too, but very human magic. I love it." And then he whispered, "I think you"re more within my reach."
"Am I?" She looked bewitching, a being of light and air.
"Everybody will fall in love with you at sight." He laughed happily, aware of an enchantment that fascinated him more and more, but when he suddenly went over to her chair, she stopped him with decision.
"Don"t, Tom, please don"t. Tony"ll be here any minute now. It would be unpleasant if he saw you behaving wildly like this! He wouldn"t understand."
He drew back. "Oh, Tony"s coming--then I must be careful!" He laughed, but he was disappointed and he showed it: it was their first day together, and eager though he was to see his cousin, he felt it might well have been postponed a little. He said so.
"One must be natural, Tom," she told him in reply; "it"s always the best way. This isn"t London or Montreux, you see, and----"
"Lettice, I understand," he interrupted, a trifle ashamed of himself.
"You"re quite right." He tried to look pleased and satisfied, but the truth was he felt suddenly--stupid. "And we"ve got lots of time--three months or more ahead of us, haven"t we?" She gave him an expressive, tender look with which he had to be contented for the moment.
"And by the by, how is old Tony, and who is his latest?" he enquired carelessly.
"Very excited at your coming, Tom. You"ll think him improved, I hope.
I believe _I_"m his latest," she added, tilting her chin with a delicious pretence at mischief. And the gesture again surprised him. It was new.
He thought it foreign to her. There seemed a flavour of impatience, of audacity, almost of challenge in it.
"Finding himself at last. That"s good. Then you"ve been fishing to some purpose."
"Fishing?"
"Rescuing floating faces."
She pouted at him. "I"m not a saint, Tom. You know I never was.
Saints are very inspiring to read about, but you couldn"t live with one-- or love one. Could you, now?"
He gave an inward start she did not notice. The same instant he was aware that it was her happy excitement that made her talk in this exaggerated way. That was why it sounded so unnatural. He forgot it instantly.
They laughed and chatted as happily as two children--Tom felt a boy again--until Mrs. Haughstone appeared, marching down the river bank with an enormous white umbrella over her head, and the talk became general.
Tom said he would go to his hotel and return for lunch; he wanted to telephone to a.s.souan. He asked where Tony was staying. "But he knew I was at the Winter Palace," he exclaimed when she mentioned the Savoy.
"He found some people there he wanted to avoid," she explained, "so moved down to the Savoy."
Tom said he would do the same; it was much nearer to her house, for one thing: "You"ll keep him for lunch, won"t you?" he said as he went off.
"I"ll try," she promised, "but he"s so busy with his numerous friends as usual that I can"t be sure of him. He has more engagements here than in London,"--whereupon Mrs. Haughstone added, "Oh, he"ll stay, Mr. Kelverdon.
I"m sure he"ll stay. We lunch at one o"clock, remember."
And in his room at the hotel Tom found a dozen signs of tenderness and care that increased his happiness; there were touches everywhere of her loving thought for his comfort and well-being--flowers, his favourite soap, some cigarettes, one of her own deck-chairs, books, and even a big box of crystallised dates as though he was a baby or a little boy.
It all touched him deeply; no other woman in the world could possibly have thought out such dear reminders, much less have carried them into effect.
There was even a writing-pad and a penholder with the special nib he liked. He laughed. But her care for him in such trivial things was exquisite because it showed she claimed the right to do them.
His heart brimmed over as he saw them. It was impossible to give up any room, even a hotel room, into which she had put her sweet and mothering personality. He could do without Tony"s presence and companionship, rather than resign a room she had thus prepared for him. He engaged it permanently therefore. Then, telephoning to a.s.souan, he decided to take the night train and see what had to be done there. It all sounded most satisfactory; he foresaw much free time ahead of him; occasional trips to the work would meet the case at present. . . .
Happier than ever, he returned to a lunch in the open air with her and Tony, and it was the gayest, merriest meal he had ever known.
Mrs. Haughstone retired to sleep through the hotter hours of the afternoon, leaving the trio to amuse themselves in freedom. And though they never left the shady garden by the Nile, they amused themselves so well that tea was over and it was time for Tom to get ready for his train before he realised it. Tony and Madame Jaretzka drove him to his hotel, and afterwards to the station, sitting in the compartment with him until the train was actually moving. He watched them standing on the platform together, waving their hands. He waved his own. "I"ll be back to-morrow or the next day," he cried. Emotions and sensations were somewhat tangled in him, but happiness certainly was uppermost.
"Don"t forget," he heard Tony shout. . . . And her eyes were on his own until the trees on the platform hid her from his sight behind their long deep shadows.
CHAPTER XV
The first excitement of arrival over, he drew breath, as it were, and looked about him. Egypt delighted and amazed him, surpa.s.sing his expectations. Its effect upon him was instantaneous and profound.
The decisive note sounded at Alexandria continued in his ears. Egypt drew him in with golden, powerful arms. In every detail it was strange, yet with the strangeness of a predetermined welcome. It was not strange to _him_. The thrill of welcome made him feel at home. He had come back. . . .
Here, at a.s.souan, he was aware of Africa, mystic, half-monstrous continent, lying with its heat and wonder just beyond the horizon.