He drew his chair closer into the comforting darkness of the night.
All was silent as the grave. The stars wheeled overhead with their accustomed majesty; he could just distinguish the dim river in its ancient bed; the desert lay watchful for the sun, the air was sharp with perfume.
Countless human emotions had these witnessed in the vanished ages, countless pains and innumerable aching terrors; the emotions had pa.s.sed away, yet the witnesses remained, steadfast, unchanged, indifferent.
Moreover, his particular emotion _now_ seemed known to them--known to these very stars, this desert, this immemorial river; they witnessed now its singular repet.i.tion. He was to experience it unto the bitter end again--yet somehow otherwise. He must face it all. Only in this way could the joy at the end of it be reached. . . . He must somehow accept and understand. . . . This confused, unjustifiable a.s.surance strengthened in him.
Yet this last feeling was so delicate that he scarcely recognised its intense vitality. The cruder sensations blinded him as with thick, bitter smoke. He was certain of one thing only--that the fire of jealousy burned him with its atrocious anguish . . . an anguish he had somewhere known before.
Then presently there was a change. This change had begun soon after he drew his chair to the balcony, but he had not noticed it. The effect upon him, nevertheless, had been gradually increasing.
The psychological effects of sound, it would seem, are singular.
Even when heard unconsciously, the result continues; and Tom, hearing this sound unconsciously, did not realise at first that another mood was stealing over him. Then hearing became conscious hearing--listening.
The sound rose to his ears from just below his balcony. He listened.
He rose, leaned over the rail, and stared. The crests of three tall palms immediately below him waved slightly in the rising wind. But the fronds of a palm-tree in the wind produce a noise that is unlike the rustle of any other foliage in the world. It was a curious, sharp rattling that he heard. It was _the_ Sound.
His entire being was at last involved--the Self that used the separate senses. His thoughts swooped in another direction--he suddenly fixed his attention upon Lettice. But it was an inner attention of a wholesale kind, not of the separate mind alone. And this entire Self included regions he did not understand. Mind was the least part of it.
The "whole" of him that now dealt with Lettice was far above all minor and partial means of knowing. For it did not judge, it only saw. It was, perhaps, the soul.
For it seemed the pain bore him upwards to an unaccustomed height.
He stood for a moment upon that level where she dwelt, even as now he stood on this balcony looking down upon the dim Egyptian scene. She was beside him; he gazed into her eyes, even as now he gazed across to the dark necropolis among the Theban hills. But also, in some odd way, he stood outside himself. He swam with her upon the summit of the breaking Wave, lifted upon its crest, swept onward irresistibly. . . . No halt was possible . . . the inevitable crash must come. Yet she was with him.
They were involved together. . . . The sea! . . .
The first bitterness pa.s.sed a little, the sullen aching with it. He was aware of high excitement, of a new reckless courage; a touch of the impersonal came with it all, one Tom playing the part of a spectator to another Tom--an onlooker at his own discomfiture, at his own suffering, at his own defeat.
This new exalted state was very marvellous; for while it lasted he welcomed all that was to come. "It"s right and necessary for me," he recognised; "I need it, and I"ll face it. If I refuse it I prove myself a failure--again. Besides . . . _she needs it too_!"
For the entire matter then turned over in his mind, so that he saw it from a new angle suddenly. He looked at it through a keyhole, as it were--the extent was large yet detailed, the picture distant yet very clearly focussed. It lay framed within his thoughts, isolated from the rest of life, isolated somehow even from the immediate present. There was perspective in it. This keyhole was, perhaps, his deep, unalterable love, but cleansed and purified. . . .
It came to him that she, and even Tony, too, in lesser fashion, were, like himself, the playthings of great spiritual forces that made alone for good. The Wave swept all three along. The att.i.tude of his youth returned; the pain was necessary, yet would bring inevitable joy as its result. There had been cruel misunderstanding on his part somewhere; that misunderstanding must be burned away. He saw Lettice and his cousin helping towards this exquisite deliverance somehow. It was like a moment of clear vision from a pinnacle. He looked down upon it. . . .
Lettice smiled into his eyes through half-closed eyelids. Her smile was strangely distant, strangely precious: she was love and tenderness incarnate; her little hands held both of his. . . . Through these very eyes, this smile, these little hands, his pain would come; she would herself inflict it--because she could not help herself; she played her inevitable role as he did. Yet he kissed the eyes, the hands, with an absolute self-surrender he did not understand, willing and glad that they should do their worst. He had somewhere dreadfully misjudged her; he must, he would atone. This pa.s.sion burned within him, a pa.s.sion of sacrifice, of resignation, of free, big acceptance. He felt joy at the end of it all--the joy of perfect understanding . . . and forgiveness . . . on both sides. . . .
And the moment of clear vision left its visible traces in him even after it had pa.s.sed. If he felt contempt for his cousin, he felt for Lettice a deep and searching pity--she was divided against herself, she was playing a part she had to play. The usual human emotions were used, of course, to convey the situation, yet in some way he was unable to explain she was-- _being_ driven. In spite of herself she must inflict this pain. . . .
It was a mystery he could not solve. . . .
His exaltation, naturally, was of brief duration. The inevitable reaction followed it. He saw the situation again as an ordinary man of the world must see it. . . . The fires of jealousy were alight and spreading.
Already they were eating away the foundations of every generous feeling he had ever known. . . . It was not, he argued, that he did not trust her.
He did. But he feared the insidious power of infatuation, he feared the burning glamour of this land of pa.s.sionate mirages, he feared the deluding forces of s.e.x which his cousin had deliberately awakened in her blood--and other nameless things he feared as well, though he knew not exactly what they were. For it seemed to him that they were old as dreams, old as the river and the menace of these solemn hills. . . . From childhood up, his own trust in her truth and loyalty had remained unalterably fixed, ingrained in the very essence of his being. It was more than his relations with a woman he loved that were in danger: it was his belief and trust in Woman, focussed in her self symbolically, that were threatened. . . .
It was his belief in Life.
With Lettice, however, he felt himself in some way powerless to deal; he could watch her, but he could not judge . . . least of all, did he dare prevent. . . . _Her_ att.i.tude he could not know nor understand. . . .
There was a pink glow upon the desert before he realised that a reply to Tony"s letter was necessary; and that pink was a burning gold when he knew his answer must be of such a kind that Tony felt free to pursue his course unchecked. Tom held to his strange belief to "Let it all come," he would not try to prevent; he would neither shirk nor dodge. He doubted whether it lay in his power now to hinder anything, but in any case he would not seek to do so. Rather than block coming events, he must encourage their swift development. It was the best, the only way; it was the right way too. He belonged to his destination. He went into his own background. . . .
The sky was alight from zenith to horizon, the Nile aflame with sunrise, by the time the letter was written. He read it over, then hurriedly undressed and plunged into bed. A long, dreamless sleep took instant charge of him, for he was exhausted to a state of utter depletion.
Dear Tony--I have read your letter with the greatest sympathy--it was forwarded from a.s.souan. It cost you a good deal, I know, to say what you did, and I"m sure you mean it for the best. I feel it like that too--for the best.
But it is easier for you to write than for me to answer.
Her position, of course, is an awfully delicate one; and I feel-- no doubt you feel too--that her standard of conduct is higher than that of ordinary women, and that any issue between us--if there is an issue at all!--should be left to her to decide.
Nothing can touch my friendship with her; you needn"t worry about _that_. But if you can bring any added happiness into her life, it can only be welcomed by all three of us. So go ahead, Tony, and make her as happy as you can. The important things are not in our hands to decide in any case; and, whatever happens, we both agree on one thing--that her happiness is the important thing.--Yours ever, Tom.
CHAPTER XXIII
He was wakened by the white-robed Arab housemaid with his breakfast.
He felt hungry, but still tired; sleep had not rested him. On the tray an envelope caught his eye--sent by hand evidently, since it bore no stamp.
The familiar writing made the blood race in his veins, and the instant the man was gone he tore it open. There was burning in his eyes as he read the pencilled words. He devoured it whole with a kind of visual gulp--a flash; the entire meaning first, then lines, then separate words.
Come for lunch, or earlier. My cousin is invited out, and Tony has suddenly left for Cairo with his friends. I shall be lonely.
How beautiful and precious you were last night. I long for you to comfort me. But don"t efface yourself again--it gave me a horrid, strange presentiment--as if I were losing you--almost as if you no longer trusted me. And don"t forget that I love you with all my heart and soul. I had such queer, long dreams last night--terrible rather.
I must tell you. _Do_ come.--Yours, L.
P.S. Telephone if you can"t.
Sweetness and pain rose in him, then numbness. For his mind flung itself with violence upon two sentences: he was "beautiful and precious"; she longed for him to "comfort" her. Why, he asked himself, was his conduct beautiful and precious? And why did she need his comfort? The words were like vitriol in the eyes.
Long before reason found the answer, instinct--swift, merciless interpreter--told him plainly. While the brain fumbled, the heart already understood. He was stabbed before he knew what stabbed him.
And hope sank extinguished. The last faint doubt was taken from him.
It was not possible to deceive himself an instant longer, for the naked truth lay staring into his eyes.
He swallowed his breakfast without appet.i.te . . . and went downstairs.
He sighed, but something wept inaudibly. A wall blocked every step he took. The devastating commonplace was upon him--it was so ordinary.
Other men . . . oh, how often he had heard the familiar tale! He tried to grip himself. "Others . . . of course . . . but _me_!" It seemed impossible.
In a dream he crossed the crowded hall, avoiding various acquaintances with unconscious cunning. He found the letter-box and--posted his letter to Tony. "That"s gone, at any rate!" he realised. He told the porter to telephone that he would come to lunch. "That"s settled too!"
Then, hardly knowing what blind instinct prompted, he ordered a carriage . . . and presently found himself driving down the hot, familiar road to--Karnak. For some faultless impulse guided him. He turned to the gigantic temple, with its towering, immense proportions--as though its grandeur might somehow protect and mother him.
In those dim aisles and mighty halls brooded a Presence that he knew could soothe and comfort. The immensities hung still about the fabulous ruin.
He would lose his tortured self in something bigger--that beauty and majesty which are Karnak. Before he faced Lettice, he must forget a moment--forget his fears, his hopes, his ceaseless torment of belief and doubt. It was, in the last resort, religious--a cry for help, a prayer.
But also it was an inarticulate yearning to find that state of safety where he and she dwelt secure from separation--in the "sea." For Karnak is a spiritual experience, or it is nothing. There, amid the deep silence of the listening centuries, he would find peace; forgetting himself a moment, he might find--strength.
Then reason pa.r.s.ed the sentences that instinct already understood complete. For Lettice--the tender woman of his first acquaintance--had obviously experienced a moment of reaction. She realised he was wounded at her hands. She felt shame and pity. She craved comfort and forgiveness--his comfort, his forgiveness. Conscience whispered.
As against the pain she inflicted, he had been generous, long-suffering-- therefore his conduct was "beautiful and precious." Tony, moreover, had hidden himself until his letter should be answered--and she was "lonely."
With difficulty Tom suppressed the rising bitterness of contempt and anger in him. His cousin"s obliquity was a sordid touch. He forgot a moment the loftier point of view; but for a short time only. The contempt merged again in something infinitely greater. The anger disappeared. _Her_ att.i.tude occupied him exclusively. The two phrases rang on with insistent meaning in his heart, as with the clang of a fateful sentence of exile, execution--death:
"How beautiful you were last night, and precious . . . I long for you to comfort me. . . ."
While the carriage crawled along the sun-baked sand, he watched the Arab children with their blue-black hair, who ran beside it, screaming for bakshish. The little faces shone like polished bronze; they held their hands out, their bare feet pattered in the sand. He tossed small coins among them. And their cries and movements fell into the rhythm of the song, whose haunting refrain pulsed ever in his blood: "We were young, we were merry, we were very very wise. . . ."
They were soon out-distanced, the palm-trees fell away, the soaring temple loomed against the blazing sky. He left the _arabyieh_ at the western entrance and went on foot down the avenue of headless rams. The huge Khonsu gateway dropped its shadow over him. Pa.s.sing through the Court with its graceful colonnades, and the Chapel, flanked by cool, dark chambers, where the Sacred Boat floated on its tideless sea beyond the world, he moved on across the sandy waste of broken stone again, and reached in a few minutes the towering grey and reddish sandstone that was Amon"s Temple.
This was the goal of his little pilgrimage. Sublimity closed round him.
The gigantic pylon, its shoulders breaking the sky four-square far overhead, seemed the prodigious portal of another world. Slowly he pa.s.sed within, crossed the Great Court where the figures of ancient Theban deities peered at him between the forest of broken monoliths and lovely Osiris pillars, then, moving softly beneath the second enormous pylon, found himself on the threshold of the Great Hypostyle Hall itself.