Part 27 (2/2)

She hesitated for a fraction of a second.

'The woman in you,' he put in, turning the knife this time with his own fingers deliberately. The words seemed driven out by their own impetus; he did not choose them. A faint ghastly hope was in him--that she would shake her head and contradict him.

She waited a moment, then turned her eyes aside. 'Perhaps, Tom.

I wonder. . . .!'

And as she said it, Tom knew suddenly another thing as well. It stood out clearly, as with big printed letters that violent advertis.e.m.e.nts use upon the h.o.a.rdings. Her new joy and excitement, her gaiety and zest for life-- all had been caused, not by himself, but by another. Heavens! how blind he had been! He understood at last, and a flood of freezing water drenched him. His heart stopped beating for a moment. He gasped.

He could not get his breath. His acc.u.mulating doubts. .h.i.therto unexpressed, almost unacknowledged even, were now confirmed.

He got up stiffly, awkwardly, from his cus.h.i.+ons, and moved a few steps towards the house, for there stole upon her altered face just then the very expression of excitement, of radiant and spontaneous joy, he had believed until this moment were caused by himself. Tony was coming up the darkened drive. He was exactly in her line of sight. And a severe, embittered struggle then took place in a heart that seemed strangely divided against itself. He felt as though a second Tom, yet still himself, battled against the first, exchanging thrusts of indescribable torture. The complexity of emotions in his heart was devastating beyond anything he had ever known in his thirty-five years of satisfied, self-centred life. Two voices spoke in clear, sharp sentences, one against the other:

'Your suspicions are unworthy, shameful. Trust her. She's as loyal and true and faithful as yourself!' cried the first.

And the second:

'Blind! Can't you see what's going on between them? It has happened to other men, why not to you? She is playing with you; she has outgrown your love.' It was the older voice that used the words.

'Impossible, ridiculous!' the first voice cried. 'There's something wrong with me that I can have such wretched thoughts. It's merely innocence and joy of life. No one can take _my_ place.'

To which, again, the second Tom made bitter answer. 'You are too old for her, too dull, too ordinary! You hold the loving mother still, but a younger man has waked the woman in her. And you must let it come.

You dare not blame. Nor have you the right to interfere.'

So acute, so violent was the perplexity in him that he knew not what to say or do at first. Unable to come to a decision, he stood there, waving his hand to Tony with a cry of welcome. His first vehement desire to be alone, to make an excuse, to get to his room and think, had pa.s.sed: a second, a maturer att.i.tude, conquered it: to take whatever came, to face it, in a word to know the worst. . . . And the extraordinary pain he hid by an exuberance of high spirits that surprised himself. It was, of course, the suppressed emotional energy finding another outlet. A similar state had occurred that 'Karnak night' of a long ten days ago, though he had not understood it then. Behind it lay the misery of loneliness that he knew in his very bones was coming.

'Tony! So it is. I was afraid he'd change his mind and leave us in the lurch.'

Tom heard the laugh of happiness as she said it; he heard the voice distinctly--the change of tone in it, the softness, the half-caressing tenderness that crept unconsciously in, the faint thrill of womanly pa.s.sion. Unconsciously, yes! he was sure, at least, of that. She did not know quite yet, she did not realise what had happened. Honest to the core, he felt her. His love surged up tumultuously. He could face pain, loss, death--or, as he put it, 'almost anything,' if it meant happiness to her. The thought, at any rate, came to him thus. . . . And Tom believed it.

At the same moment he heard her voice, close behind him this time.

She had left her chair, meaning to go indoors and prepare for supper before Tony actually arrived. 'Tom, dear boy,' her hand upon his shoulder a moment as she pa.s.sed, 'you're tired or something. I can see it.

I believe you're worrying. There's something you haven't told me--isn't there now?' She gave him a loving glance that was of purest gold.

'You shall tell me all about it when we're alone. You must tell me everything.'

The pain and joy in him were equal then. He was a boy of eighteen, aching over his first love affair; and she was divinely mothering him. It was extraordinary; it was past belief; another minute, had they been alone, he could almost have laid his head upon her breast, complaining in anguish to the mother in her that the woman he loved was gone: 'I feel you're slipping from me! I'm losing you . . .!'

Instead he stammered some commonplace unreality about his work at a.s.souan and heard her agree with him that he certainly must not neglect it--and she was gone into the house. The swinging curtains of dried gra.s.ses hid her a few feet beyond, but between them, he felt, stretched five thousand years and half a dozen continents as well.

'Tom, old chap, did you get my letter? You promised to read it. Is it all right, I mean? I wouldn't for all the world let anything----'

Tom stopped him abruptly. He wished to read the letter for himself without foreknowledge of its contents.

'Eh? No--that is, I got it,' he said confusedly, 'but I haven't read it yet. I slept all the afternoon.'

An expression of anxiety in Tony's face came and vanished. 'You can tell me to-morrow--frank as you like, mind,' he replied, to which Tom said quite eagerly, 'Rather, Tony: of course. I'll read your old letter the moment I get back to-night.' And Tony, merry as a sandboy, changed the subject, declaring that he had only one desire in life just then, and that was--food.

CHAPTER XXI

The conflict in Tom's puzzled heart sharpened that evening into dreadful edges that cut him mercilessly whichever way he turned. One minute he felt sure of Lettice, the next the opposite was clear. Between these two certainties he balanced in secret torture, one factor alone constant--that his sense of security was shaken to the foundations.

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