Part 8 (1/2)

Though outwardly nothing of moment seemed to fill his days, inwardly he was aware of big events--maturing. There was this sense of approach, of preparation, of gathering. How insipid external events were after all, compared to the ma.s.s, the importance of interior changes! A change of heart, an altered point of view, a decision taken--these were the big events of life.

Yet it was a pleasant thing to be a senior partner. Here by the quiet lake, stroking himself complacently, he felt that life was very active, very significant, as he wondered what the choice would be. He rather hoped for Egypt, on the whole. He could look up Tony and the birds.

They could go after duck and snipe together along the Nile. He would, moreover, be quite an important man out there. Pride and vanity rose in him, but un.o.bserved. For the Wave was in this too.

One afternoon, late, he returned from a long scramble among icy rocks about the Dent de Jaman, changed his clothes, and sat with a cigarette beside the open window, watching the throng of people underneath.

In a steady stream they moved along the front of the lake, their voices rising through the air, their feet producing a dull murmur as of water.

The lake was still as gla.s.s; gulls asleep on it in patches, and here and there a swan, looking like a bundle of dry white paper, floated idly.

Off-sh.o.r.e lay several fis.h.i.+ng-boats, becalmed; and far beyond them, a rowing-skiff broke the surface into two lines of widening ripples.

They seemed floating in mid-air against the evening glow. The Savoy Alps formed a deep blue rampart, and the serrated battlements of the Dent du Midi, full in the blaze of sunset, blocked the Rhone Valley far away with its formidable barricade.

He watched the glow of approaching sunset with keen enjoyment; he sat back, listening to the people's voices, the gentle lap of the little waves; and the pleasant la.s.situde that follows upon hard physical exertion combined with the even pleasanter stimulus of the tea to produce a state of absolute contentment with the world. . . .

Through the murmur of feet and voices, then, and from far across the water, stole out another sound that introduced into his peaceful mood an element of vague disquiet. He moved nearer to the window and looked out.

The steamer, however, was invisible; the sea of s.h.i.+ning haze towards Geneva hid it still; he could not see its outline. But he heard the echoless mutter of the paddle-wheels, and he knew that it was coming nearer. Yet at first it did not disturb him so much as that, for a moment, he heard no other sound: the voices, the tread of feet, the screaming of the gulls all died away, leaving this single, distant beating audible alone--as though the entire scenery combined to utter it.

And, though no ordinary echo answered it, there seemed--or did he fancy it?--a faint, interior response within himself. The blood in his veins went pulsing in rhythmic unison with this remote hammering upon the water.

He leaned forward in his chair, watching the people, listening intently, almost as though he expected something to happen, when immediately below him chance left a temporary gap in the stream of pedestrians, and in this gap--for a second merely--a figure stood sharply defined, cut off from the throng, set by itself, alone. His eyes fixed instantly upon its appearance, movements, att.i.tude. Before he could think or reason he heard himself exclaim aloud:

'Why--it's----'

He stopped. The rest of the sentence remained unspoken. The words rushed down again. He swallowed, and with a gulp he ended--as though the other pedestrians all were men--'----a woman!'

The next thing he knew was that the cigarette was burning his fingers--had been burning them for several seconds. The figure melted back into the crowd. The throng closed round her. His eyes searched uselessly; no s.p.a.ce, no gap was visible; the stream of people was continuous once more.

Almost, it seemed, he had not really seen her--had merely thought her--up against the background of his mind.

For ten minutes, longer perhaps, he sat by that open window with eyes fastened on the moving crowd. His heart was beating oddly; his breath came rapidly. 'She'll pa.s.s by presently again,' he thought; 'she'll come back!' He looked alternately to the right and to the left, until, finally, the sinking sun blazed too directly in his eyes for him to see at all. The glare blurred everybody into a smudged line of golden colour, and the faces became a series of artificial suns that mocked him.

He did, then, an unusual thing--out of rhythm with his normal self,--he acted on impulse. Kicking his slippers off, he quickly put on a pair of boots, took his hat and stick, and went downstairs. There was no reflection in him; he did not pause and ask himself a single question; he ran to join the throng of people, moved up and down with them, in and out, pa.s.sing and re-pa.s.sing the same groups over and over again, but seeing no sign of the particular figure he sought so eagerly. She was dressed in black, he knew, with a black fur boa round her neck; she was slim and rather tall; more than that he could not say. But the poise and att.i.tude, the way the head sat on the shoulders, the tilt upwards of the chin--he was as positive of recognising these as if he had seen her close instead of a hundred yards away.

The sun was down behind the Jura Mountains before he gave up the search.

Sunset slipped insensibly into dusk. The throng thinned out quickly at the first sign of chill. A dozen times he experienced the thrill--his heart suddenly arrested--of seeing her, but on each occasion it proved to be some one else. Every second woman seemed to be dressed in black that afternoon, a loose black boa round the neck. His eyes ached with the strain, the change of focus, the question that burned behind and in them, the joy--the strange rich pain.

But half, at least, of these dull people, he renumbered, were birds of pa.s.sage only; to-morrow or the next day they would take the train.

He said to himself a dozen times, 'Once more to the end and back again!'

For she, too, might be a bird of pa.s.sage, leaving to-morrow or the next day, leaving that very night, perhaps. The thought afflicted, goaded him.

And on getting back to the hotel he searched the _Liste des Etrangers_ as eagerly as he had searched the crowded front--and as uselessly, since he did not even know what name he hoped to find.

But later that evening a change came over him. He surprised some sense of humour: catching it in the act, he also surprised himself a little-- smiling at himself. The laughter, however, was significant. For it was just that restless interval after dinner when he knew not what to do with the hours until bedtime: whether to sit in his room and think and read, or to visit the princ.i.p.al hotels in the hope of chance discovery. He was even considering this wild-goose chase to himself, when suddenly he realised that his course of procedure was entirely the wrong one.

This thing was going to happen anyhow, it was inevitable; but--it would happen in its own time and way, and nothing he might do could hurry it.

To hunt in this violent manner was to delay its coming. To behave as usual was the proper way. It was then he smiled.

He crossed the hall instead, and put his head in at the door of the little Lounge. Some Polish people, with whom he had a bowing acquaintance, were in there smoking. He had seen them enter, and the Lounge was so small that he could hardly sit in their presence without some effort at conversation. And, feeling in no mood for this, he put his head past the edge of the gla.s.s door, glanced round carelessly as though looking for some one--then drew sharply back. For his heart stopped dead an instant, then beat furiously, like a piston suddenly released. On the sofa, talking calmly to the Polish people, was--the figure. He recognised her instantly.

Her back was turned; he did not see her face. There was a vast excitement in him that seemed beyond control. He seemed unable to make up his mind.

He walked round and round the little hall examining intently the notices upon the walls. The excitement grew into tumult, as though the meeting involved something of immense importance to his inmost self--his soul.

It was difficult to account for. Then a voice behind him said, 'There is a concert to-night. Radwan is playing Chopin. There are tickets in the Bureau still--if Monsieur cares to go.' He thanked the speaker without turning to show his face: while another voice said pa.s.sionately within him, 'I was wrong; she is slim, but she is not so tall as I thought.'