Part 22 (1/2)

'We're very rarely alone now, are we, Lettice?' Tom began abruptly the instant they were together. At the back of his mind rose something he did not understand that forced more significance into his tone than he intended. He felt very full--an acc.u.mulation that must have expression.

He blurted it out without reflection. 'Hardly once since I arrived two weeks ago, now I come to think of it.' He looked at her half playfully, half reproachfully. 'We're always three,' he added with the frank pathos of a boy. And while one part of him felt ashamed, another part urged him onward and was glad.

But the way she answered startled him.

'Tom dear, don't scold me now. I _am_ so tired.' It was the tone that took his breath away. For the first time in their acquaintance he noticed something like exasperation. 'I've been doing too much,' she went on more gently, smiling up into his face: 'I feel it. And that dreadful thing-- that insect,'--she shuddered a little--'I never meant to hurt it.

It's upset me. All this daily excitement, and the sun, and the jolting of that rickety sand-cart--There, Tom, come and sit beside me a moment and let's talk before you go. I'm really too done up to drive you to the station to-night. You'll understand and forgive me, won't you?'

Her voice was very soft. She was excited, too, talking at random rather.

Her being seemed confused.

He took his place on a st.u.r.dy cus.h.i.+on at her feet, full of an exaggerated remorse. She looked pale, though her eyes were very sparkling. His heart condemned him. He said nothing about the 'dreadful incident.'

'Lettice, dearest girl, I didn't mean anything. You have been doing far too much, and it's my fault; you've done it all for me--to give me pleasure. It's been too wonderful.' He took her hand, while her other stroked his head. 'You must rest while I'm away.'

'Yes,' she murmured, 'so as to be quite fresh when you come back.

You won't be _very_ long, will you?' He said he would risk his whole career to get back within the week. 'But, you know, I have neglected things rather--up there.' He smiled fondly as he said 'up there.'

She looked down tenderly into his eyes. 'And I have neglected you--down here,' she said. 'That's what you mean, boy, isn't it?' And for the first time he did not like the old mode of address he once thought perfect. There seemed a flavour of pity in it. 'It _would_ be nice to be alone sometimes, wouldn't it, Lettice? Quite alone, I mean,' he said with meaning.

'We shall be, we will be--later, Tom,' she whispered; '_quite_ alone together.' She paused, then added louder: 'The truth is, Egypt--the air and climate--stimulates me too much; it makes me restless. It excites me in a way I can't quite understand. I can't sit still and talk and be idle as one does in sleepy, solemn England.'

He was explaining with laborious logic that it was the dryness of the air that exhausted the nerves a bit, when she straightened herself up and took her hand away. 'Oh yes, Tom, I know, I know. That's perfectly true, and everybody says that--I mean, everybody feels it, don't they?' She said it quickly, almost impatiently.

The old uneasiness flashed through him at that moment: it occurred to him, 'I'm dull, I'm boring her.' She was over-tired, he remembered then, her nerves on edge a trifle; it was natural enough; he would just kiss her and leave her to rest quietly. Yet a tiny sense of resentment, even of chill, crept over him. This impatience in her was new to him. He wondered an instant, then crushed back the words that tried to rise. He said goodbye, taking her in his arms for a moment with an overmastering impulse he could not check. Deep love and tenderness were in his heart and eyes.

He yearned to protect and guide her--keep her safe from harm. He felt his older years, his steadier strength; he was a man, she but a little gentle woman. And the elemental powers of life were very strong. With a sudden impulsive gesture, then, that surprised him, she returned the embrace with a kind of vehemence, pressing him closely to her heart and kissing him repeatedly on the cheeks and eyes.

Tom had expected her to resist and chide him. He was bewildered and delighted; he was also puzzled--for the first second only. 'You darling woman,' he cried, forgetting utterly the suspicion, the uneasiness, the pa.s.sing cold of a moment before. He marvelled that his heart could have let such fancies come to birth. Surely he had changed for such a thing to be possible at all! . . . Various impulses and emotions that clamoured in him he kept back with an effort. He was aware of clas.h.i.+ng contradictions.

Confidence was less in him. He felt curiously unsure of himself--also, in a cruel, subtle way--of her. There was a new thing in her--rising.

Was it against himself somewhere? The tangle in his heart and mind seemed inextricable: he wanted to seize her and carry her away, struggling but captured, and at the same time--singular contradiction--to entreat her humbly, though pa.s.sionately, to love him more, and to _show_ more that she loved him. Surely there were two selves in him.

He moved over to the door. 'Cataract Hotel, remember, finds me.'

He stood still, looking back at her.

She smiled, repeating the words after him. 'And Lettice, you _will_ write?' She blew a kiss to him by way of answer. Then, charged to the brim with a thousand things he ached to say, yet would not, almost dared not say, he added playfully--a child must have noticed that his voice was too deep for banter and his breath came oddly:

'And mind you don't let Tony lose his head _too_ much. He's pretty far gone, you know, already.'

The same instant he could have bitten his tongue off to recall the words.

Somewhere he had been untrue to himself, almost betrayed himself.

She rose suddenly from her sofa and came quickly towards him across the floor; he felt his heart sink a moment, then start hammering irregularly against his ribs. Something frightened him. For he caught in her face an expression he could not understand--the struggle of many strong emotions--anxiety and pa.s.sion, fear and love; the eyes were s.h.i.+ning, though the lids remained half closed; she made a curious gesture: she moved swiftly. He braced himself as against attack. He shrank.

Her power over him was greater than he knew.

For he saw her in that instant as another person, another woman, foreign-- almost Eastern; the barbaric primitive thing flamed out of her, but with something regal, queenly, added to it; she looked Egyptian; the Princess, as he called her sometimes, had come to life. And the same moment in himself this curious sense of helplessness appeared--he raged against it inwardly--as though he were in her power somehow, as though her little foot could crush him--too--into the yellow sand. . . .

A spasm of acute and aching pain shot through him; he winced; he wanted to turn and fly, yet was held rooted to the floor. He could not escape. It had to be. For oddly, mysteriously, he felt pain in her quick approach: she was coming to do him injury and hurt. The incident of the afternoon flashed again upon his mind--with the idea of cruelty in it somewhere, but a deep surge of strange emotion that flung wild sentences into his mind at the same instant. He tightly shut his lips, lest a hundred thoughts that had lain in him of late might burst into words he would later regret intensely. He must not avoid, delay, an inevitable thing.