Part 43 (1/2)
he asked calmly. 'The Semiramis Hotel will find me--in case anything happened. I should have time to think it over--I like that best--if it's really so important. My mind, you know, works slowly.'
Her reply had a curious effect upon him. She needed help--his help.
'Perhaps, Tom. But one can depend so upon your judgment.'
He knew that she was watching his face. With an effort he turned to meet her gaze. He saw her against the background of the hills, whose following ma.s.s towered menacingly above her little outline. And as he looked he was suddenly transfixed, he dropped his reins, he stared without a word.
Two pairs of eyes, two smiles, two human physiognomies once again met his arrested gaze. He knew them, of course, well enough by now, but never before had he caught the two expressions so vividly revealed, so distinctly marked; clear as a composite picture, one face painted in upon another that lay beneath it. There was the darker face--and there was Lettice; and each struggled for complete possession of her features.
There was conflict, sharp and dreadful; one second, the gleam of cruelty flashed out, a yellow of amber in it, as though gold shone reflected faintly--the next, an anguish of tenderness, as though love brimmed her eyes with the moisture of divine compa.s.sion. The conflict was desperate, amazing, painful beyond words. Then the darker aspect slowly waned, withdrawing backwards, melting away into the shadows of the hills behind-- as though it first had issued thence--as though almost it belonged there.
Alive and true, yet vanquished, it faded out. . . . He saw at last the dear, innocent eyes of--Lettice only. It was this Lettice who had spoken.
His donkey stumbled--it was natural enough, seeing that the reins hung loose and his feet had somehow left the stirrups. Tom pitched forward heavily, saving himself and his animal from an ignominious accident just in the nick of time. There were cries and laughter. The sand-cart swerved aside at the same moment, and Tony, from a distance, came galloping back towards them.
Tom recovered his balance and told his donkey in honest English what he thought of it. 'But it was your fault, you careless boy,' cried Lettice; 'you let go the reins and whacked it at the same time. Your eyes were popping out of your head. I thought you'd seen a ghost.'
Tom glanced at her. 'I was nearly off,' he said. 'Another second and it would have been a case of ”Low let me lie where the dead dog----”'
She interrupted him with surprising vehemence:
'Don't, don't, Tom. I hate it! I hate the words and the tune and everything. I won't hear it . . .!'
Tony came clattering up and the incident was over, ended as abruptly as begun. But, as Tom well realised, another hitch had occurred in the lowering of the Curtain. The actors, for a moment, had stood there in their normal fas.h.i.+on, betrayed, caught in the act, a little foolish even.
It was the hand of a woman this time that delayed it.
'Did you hurt yourself anywhere, Tom?' Her question rang in his head like music for the next mile or two. He kept beside the sand-cart until they reached their destination. It was absurd--yet he could not ride in front with Tony lest some one driving behind them should notice--yes, that was the half-comical truth--notice that Tony was round-shouldered--oh, very, very slightly so--whereas his own back was straight! It was ridiculously foolish, yet pathetic. At the same time, it was poignantly dramatic. . . .
And their destination was a deep bay of yellow sand, soft and tawny, ribbed with a series of lesser troughs the wind had scooped out to look like a sh.o.r.e some withdrawing ocean had left exposed below the westering sun. A solitary palm tree stood behind upon a dune.
The afternoon, the beating hotness of the air, the clouds of high, suspended sand, the stupendous sunset--as if the world caught fire and burned along the whole horizon--it was all unforgettable. The yellow sand about them blazed and shone, scorching their bare hands; the Desert was empty, silent, lonely. Only the western heavens, where the sun sank in a red ma.s.s of ominous splendour, was alive with energy. Coloured shafts mapped the vault from horizon to zenith like the spokes of a prodigious wheel of fire. Any minute the air and the sand it pressed upon might burst into a sea of flame. The furnace where the Khamsin brewed in distant Nubia sent its warnings in advance; it was slowly travelling northward. And hence, possibly, arose the disquieting sensation that something was gathering, something that might take them unawares.
The sand lay listening, waiting, watching. There was whispering among the very grains. . . .
It was half way through tea when the first stray puffs of wind came dropping abruptly, sighing away in tiny eddies of dust beyond the circle.
Three human atoms upon the huge yellow carpet, that ere long would shake itself across five hundred miles and rise, whirling, driving, suffocating all life within its folds--three human beings noted the puffs of heated air and reacted variously to the little change. Each felt, it seemed, a slight uneasiness, as though of trouble coming that was yet not entirely atmospherical. Nerves tingled. They looked into each other's faces.
They looked back.
'We mustn't stay too late,' said Tony, filling a basket for the donkey-boys in their dune two hundred yards away. 'We've a long way to go.' He examined the portentous sky. 'It won't come till night,' he added, 'still--they're a bit awkward, these sandstorms, and one never knows.'
'And I've got a train to catch,' Tom mentioned, 'absurd as it sounds in a place like this.' He was sc.r.a.ping his lips with a handkerchief.
'I've eaten enough bread-and-sand to last me till dinner, anyhow.'
He helped his cousin with the Arabs' food. 'They probably don't mind it, they're used to it.' He straightened up from his stooping posture.
Lettice, he saw, was lying with a cigarette against the bank of sloping sand that curved above them. She was intently watching them. She had not spoken for some time; she looked almost drowsy; the eyelids were half closed; the cigarette smoke rose in a steady little thread that did not waver. . . . There was perhaps ten yards between them, but he caught the direction of her gaze, and throwing his own eyes into the same line of sight, he saw what she saw. Instinctively, he took a quick step forward-- hiding Tony from her immediate view.
It was certainly curious, this desire to screen his cousin, to prevent his appearing at a disadvantage. He was impelled, at all costs and in the smallest details, to help the man she admired, to increase his value, to minimise his disabilities, however trivial. It pained him to see Tony even at a physical disadvantage; Tony must show always at his very best; and at this moment, bending over the baskets, the att.i.tude of the shoulders was disagreeably emphasised.
Tom did not laugh, he did not even smile. Gravely, as though it were of importance, he moved forward so that Lettice should not see the detail of the rounded shoulders which, he knew, compared unfavourably with his own straighter carriage. Yet almost the next minute, when he looked back again, he saw that the cigarette had fallen from her fingers, the eyes were closed, her body had slipped into a more rec.u.mbent angle, she seemed actually asleep.
'Give a shout, Tom, and the boys will come to fetch it,' said Tony, when at length the basket was ready. He put his hands to his own mouth to coo-ee across the dunes. Tom stopped him at once. 'Hus.h.!.+ Lettice has dropped off,' he explained, 'you'll wake her. It's the heat. I'll carry the things over to them.' He noticed Tony's hands as he held them to his lips. And again he felt a touch of sympathy, almost pity. Had _she_, so observant, so discerning in her fastidious taste--had she failed to notice the small detail too?
'No, let me take it,' Tony was saying, seizing the hamper from his cousin.
Tom suggested carrying it between them. They tried it, laughing and struggling together with the awkward burden, but keeping their voices low.
They lost the direction too; for all the sand-dunes were alike, and the boys were hidden in a hollow. It ended in Tony going off in triumph with the basket under one arm, guided at length by the faint neighing of a donkey in the distance.