CHAPTER XIX
She carried her paralysed thinking to her bedroom. The words, "Never now ... never ... never," were behind her lips. Her jaws parted in the dismay of it. The sight of the mountains drew her through her window on to the loggia. Inevitably her eyes turned towards Henry's window; and quickly, though with assumed unconcern, she withdrew into her room: she had seen him standing on his balcony with hands on its railing, and knew that, with a sidelong look, he was keeping her loggia under view.
She undressed, but very abstractedly, and with long pauses when her hand, holding a garment, dropped to her side. "Never now." Never would there be any fulfilment of her love. Yes—though—there were two ways. Probably neither would happen, but it was a slight relief to picture them. Henry and she could go off together one day, accepting the worldly consequences; or he could come to England once every year, and she could meet him for a week of secret, lawless love (she had told Miss Sims she was ready to do that). Ah, all his actions and words fell into place now, especially that jumbled talk about snapping the world's inhibitions—and timidity holding you back—and not hurting others. But it was proof—it was inflating proof that he loved her.
This sudden thought, which brought happiness that quieted despair, she took into bed with her, that she might close her eyes and examine it. Henry loved her, and she loved him without one lingering doubt, and if at some future day he asked of her anything—any thing—she would give it to him. For the shadowy figure that was his wife, she knew not what she felt; sometimes jealousy and anger, sometimes pity. "Oh, I wouldn't have her suffer as I should, if I were never to have him or see him again." No, the best solution would be the hiding of their love and its secret fulfilment in some snatched weeks every year. Henry was evidently rich, and he would come over to her sometimes. Of course she would do it. And in her case she would injure nobody by giving herself to Henry.
With this vision of the future for consolation she sank into a dream-heated sleep.
Next day, Friday, and their last, on coming downstairs she found that Henry had gone by boat to Lucerne to get money for their departure. It would take him much of the day. So after breakfast she returned to her bedroom, and in a dry despair began her packing. It was manual labour and something to do. But it filled nearly all the morning, for every article was disturbing in its associations, and either she made mistakes that had to be repaired or she lost herself in long musings. When it was finished, except for what would go in to-morrow morning, she let fall the lid of her trunk, and going to the window, looked in the direction of Lucerne, whence Henry's steamer would come.
At lunch Elsie Detmould suggested a last set of tennis. Mr. Clarkson would play and that French girl, Madeleine Louvier. With a quickly donned brightness Daphne answered, "Rather! Only I'll have to play in this dress. I've packed everything else." The word "packed" pierced her.
Out on the tennis court, with its lead-coloured earth, its surrounding nets, and its pathway climbing to the seats under the chestnut and fig trees—all so achingly reminiscent—they arranged their first set—Daphne and Madeleine playing Mr. Clarkson and Elsie. Sometimes Daphne was inattentive and played badly; sometimes she inexplicably lost herself in the game for a few minutes and played well. It was just as she was beginning her service in the fifth game that she heard a crunching on the gravel-drive behind the trees, and, glancing up, saw that Henry had returned. She caught his eyes and, though hers turned away quickly, knew that he had sat down on one of the garden seats.
Self-conscious now, she played erratically, and kept up the formality of joking or even shrieking when she made mistakes or missed easy balls. The sudden sight of him, and then the constant awareness of his presence, had started a dull pain at the thought that this was almost the last time he would be within a few paces of her. As she played and shouted, "Oh, dash!" or teased Mr. Clarkson and Elsie when they were particularly weak, she was really thinking, "Oh, I understand what he meant when he talked about not knowing how to live till the time had passed for living...."
After the seventh game Elsie remembered with dismay something that must be done on this last day, and the set temporarily broke up. Mr. Clarkson offered to pass the meantime by playing against the two girls.
"No," called Daphne, "I'll sit out till Elsie returns." It would be obvious to Henry that this meant she wanted to sit by him, but she didn't care. "I'm awfully tired, really. You two have a single."
"Noh, noh," protested Madeleine.
"Yes, please," urged Daphne. "I really mean it. I'd like to sit down a bit."
And, running, she passed through the gate in the surrounding network and climbed the path to the seat where Henry was sitting. He watched her as she ran towards him, and when she arrived picked up her white coat and put it about her shoulders. They sat down together, Daphne staring at the play of Mr. Clarkson and Madeleine, and Henry fiddling with an unread novel that had been beside her coat. He spoke first.
"It was wretched having to go to Lucerne to-day of all days."
"Yes."
"I don't know what I'm going to do about to-morrow.... I don't want to go at all.... Just got fond of—everybody, and the whole place...."
"Yes, it's rotten."
There was a silence during which several times Henry seemed to take in his breath, as if trying to say something for which he had not the courage. Daphne, without knowing why she made the remark, broke in with:
"But you'll be glad when the time comes to go back to your wife."
"Yes...." He allowed no sign to escape him, any more than she had done before Elsie. "You should have heard me airing my German in Lucerne. I was amazed."
"Why? Did you do it frightfully well?"
"Magnificently."
And again that silence that would not deliver itself of something.
"It's a rotten book, that," said she, after watching him turn over its pages.
"Is it? I——"
But the sharp intake of his breath stopped him.
She told him something of the book's plot, and why it was so stupid, pleased, from some obscure motive, at this acting of naturalness. Then she jumped up.
"Here she is."
"Who?"
"Elsie come back."
He caught his breath again and—before he had time to think, stuttered: "Miss—Miss Bruno, may I say something to you? Oh——" He passed his hand quickly over his eyes. "I wanted to say—couldn't I see you alone somewhere? I shall probably never see you again, and I never get a moment alone with you—quite alone, I mean—and I don't know how I'm going to-morrow ... and can't I see you somewhere this evening by yourself?"
She only stared before her at the game.
"I haven't frightened you, have I?" said he. "I—I don't think I quite know all I'm saying. I don't frighten you, do I?"
She turned towards him.
"No."
"I oughtn't to have spoken, I suppose. It's only despair that made me speak."
Then there was a silence more charged than any. He was obviously waiting for her to encourage him, but she was somehow speechless. Partly because her heart was pounding, and partly because when it came to the moment of encouraging him it seemed the first step in a social disobedience for which she was not competent.
Now Elsie was back on the court and calling:
"Come on, Daphne. We're waiting."
"Righto!" cried Daphne, picking up her racket confusedly, while Henry said in despair:
"May I write you a letter and put it in this book—write what I mean? I'll give it to you as soon as you've finished. May I?"
"Yes," said she, swinging her face quickly to his and back again. "Yes, if you like."
Then she hurried down to the court. And as she played there the side of her eye saw Henry writing something. She trembled to know what it was, and played mechanically at the tennis, longing for it to be over. Yet all the while she provided the necessary banter at other people's failures and explosions at her own. At last it was finished, and when they suggested another set she demurred:
"Oh, no. I can't play any more; I'm not as young as you people. I want to go and write some letters before I dress for dinner."
And rather languidly, with head down, she strolled through the network and up to the seat for her coat. Henry rose and gave it to her. The others, agreeing that they had had enough, were coming up.
"And here's your novel," said Henry.
"Oh, thanks."
She took it in a hand that was shaking traitorously. Calling to the other people, "Well, I've got a lot to do, I can't hang about with all you idlers," she walked—almost ran—towards the hotel entrance. In the vestibule and the lift she kept the book near her shoulder. Along the corridor of her floor she hurried to her bedroom with shoulders swinging. In the bedroom, with the door closed, she nervously opened the book, and saw a half-sheet of note-paper on which was written in pencil:
"DEAR,—I must see you for a little while before I go. I simply don't know how I am going in the morning, but I feel if I could have you for an hour or so to myself I could go with greater courage. Dear, there is only one place I can suggest. I would not suggest it if there were any other place or time possible, but there isn't. Trust me, and come to my bedroom after the others have gone to bed. It's the only place where we can be unseen, and you untalked about. Dear, love cannot hurt where it loves. My dear, I have not sought this thing like some silly adventurer looking for a holiday romance—good God, it hurts too much. If I could be quit of it I would. No, though, I wouldn't. I don't know how it came. From the first minute I saw you, I think—with your wonderful little head and your great eyes and your childish clothes. I think I hoped to find you empty of ideas and be cured, but soon I loved your mind and your" (a word had been omitted here) "more than anything else about you. Dear, I do not fully know your ideas about religion and things, but if you see anything in this letter that needs forgiveness, forgive me. I cannot help loving you. If you don't come, I shall understand fully. I hardly know what I am writing about. My love for you fills everything. I can only stare at it. I cannot see before or behind or after it.
"H. D."
She let her hand with the note in it fall to the table-top. For the moment everything was lost in the joy of possessing it. Oh, she would go to him, as he asked. Of course, she would go. Wearied with the strain of it all she lay down upon her bed, holding the note by her side. She floated away on her thoughts, for how long she knew not. She was happy. She could not see beyond that "hour together." All the misery of the next morning's departure was hidden behind it. An hour? It would be no hour, but a long night. How could either, when the hour was over, draw away? Real and awful though she knew her love to be, the romantic aspect of this last hidden union could not wholly fail to please her. To the æsthete that must ever be in her and in Henry it was a fitting climax.
Gradually the fall in the light persuaded her to look at her watch, and she saw that it was seven o'clock. She must rise and dress. It always took her so long to dress when she was lost in thoughts. Slowly, and making many mistakes, she put on one of the "childish dresses," arranged her hair, and clasped a rope of pearls about her neck. Her cheeks had hollowed and her eyes were under-scored with darkness. The tired skin of her face she tried to make good with powder.
When she went down with her father to their table she was able to see, by one of her quick over-shoulder glances, that Henry was already seated with his sister. She had hardly taken her own chair before Elsie came up.
"Are you both coming on the trip round the lake to-night?"
"Certainly not," said Mr. Bruno. "What is it?"
"One of the steamers starts at nine. It's to be illuminated, and there's to be dancing on deck, and refreshments. It's the very thing for a last night. Come and be really childish."
"It sounds as though it would suit my daughter—not me."
"Well, Daphne, then, will you come?"
Daphne was troubled. Did Henry want her to go or to stay behind? Perhaps he would like her to linger in the hotel, emptied by the steamer, and if so, she would be angry with them for having dragged her into their sickly gaieties. But since it was impossible to ask his movements, politeness compelled her to reply:
"Oh, yes, I should love it. When do we start?"
"Nine, and back at eleven. It'll be gorgeous."
The dinner dawdled along to dessert and wine and coffee. And at about half-past eight the quiet air of the lake was shattered by an explosion like a gun's. An exclamation came from Mr. Bruno, and Henry walked up.
"That's a signal," said he, with a smile that comprised father and daughter. "It means that the weather's favourable and the boat will go."
The explosion came a second time as he said it.
He walked to the window and looked towards the Brunnen boat-landing.
"Yes, the steamer's there; looking very fine with its illuminations. Quite a lot of people are going on board all ready. Some seem to be going independently in rowing boats. They are hanging all round it, and lighting up Chinese lanterns." He turned to Daphne. "You're going, aren't you, Miss Bruno?"
"Yes. Are you?"
"I suppose so. But I guess it'll be cold."
"Go then at once and get a coat," said Mr. Bruno to his daughter.
Daphne hurried to the lift and was soon upstairs. She selected the white tennis coat because of its memories. Then she joined the Detmoulds and Mr. Clarkson and Madeleine in hall. The night, as they passed into it, was unencouraging. Flaky clouds had floated over the sky, and the few stars that danced between them were ineffectual. Not yet was the moon above the mountains.
On the little boat-landing men and women of all classes were crowding to the gangway; most were hatless; some of the men were in evening dress of British, German, or French design, and their women had veils or mantillas over their heads; other people were in tweeds or Swiss National costume. On the deck, under the Chinese lanterns hung from the awnings, several couples were already dancing, excited to it by four bandsmen, fancy-dressed as Venetian gondoliers, who were jigging their bodies in conscientious gaiety.
Henry, embarrassed, walked with any one rather than Daphne. Hatless, his hair blowing, he led the party on to the deck. Daphne walked last. There were no unoccupied seats anywhere, so they went and stood against a railing on the farther side and looked at the smaller craft, whose lanterns made a ring round the ship.
"If we can't sit down we may as well dance," said Mr. Clarkson to Daphne. "May I have the pleasure of this waltz?"
There was no escape. She took off her white coat and looked for somewhere to place it. Henry, with set lips, stretched out a hand to receive it. She went off on the arm of Mr. Clarkson, angry with him for dragging her away, and yet glad that Henry had seen her in request. In the waltz she chatted gaily, though always waiting for the moment when their arrival at one corner in the hustled crowd showed her, as her head swung round, Henry leaning against the rail and holding her white coat. The dance finished; but as all the couples clapped, the bandsmen repeated the tune and the merry jigging of their bodies. Her partner seized her again, and she was once more in the dance. Now a slight moving of the floor told her that the boat had started. Cheers came from the shore, and one of the rowing boats shot up a rocket which rained golden fire on the departing steamer.
On her return Henry put the coat round her shoulders, and she thanked him, and, looking up, said:
"Aren't you going to dance?"
"No."
At that moment a Swiss was brought up and introduced to her. He asked her in French for the next dance, and she replied: "Oui, monsieur." And with the band's first notes she accepted his arm and walked back to the dancer's deck. Why she danced she could not tell; her body was exhausted and her mind fixedly miserable. Perhaps it was because the awkwardness and silence of Henry made standing beside him so difficult. And dancing was as good as thinking.
When she returned from this second dance he muttered, as if continuing their last conversation:
"I can't vulgarise what I feel for you by dancing with this crowd."
She sat down on a seat now vacant, and her head drooped. Henry stood by with folded arms, saying nothing. The next dance began and the bandsmen sang as they played. Many of the watchers who were not dancing joined in the song. In the voices of women the singing added to itself an extrinsic beauty from the darkness, the water and the foreign tongue. Daphne kept her head down, partly from the ache of exhaustion in neck and shoulders, and partly from fear of meeting Henry's eyes.
"You're looking done for," said Henry suddenly. "Come and get a strong coffee or something. Let's go downstairs to the saloon and get out of this silly jigging crowd."
She got up obediently.
"All right. It has been horribly cold, ever since the boat started moving."
Going in front, he threaded her through the jostling people. They went down the stairs and into the noisy saloon only to find another orchestra playing there while couples danced between the tables.
"Oh, damn!" muttered Henry. "Isn't there a quiet place anywhere?"
He ordered two coffees from the steward and asked Daphne rather fatuously, "Where are we to sit?"
"I don't know," she said. "It's so crowded, isn't it?"
"Foul!"
They wandered among the tables, but nowhere was there a place for them. And before they had decided anything the steward appeared with the two cafés on a tray. Henry took it abruptly from him, and walked out of the saloon right away to the stern of the boat, Daphne following. All the seats that they passed were occupied by foolish couples dallying with flirtation between the dances. Henry pushed past their knees till he saw, across an intervening bar, a platform on which rested one of the ship's boats. He stepped over the bar, and Daphne bent her head and went under. The tray he laid on the boat's seat, and pointing to the boat's side, said:
"Sit there. You're tired out."
She climbed on to the side, and this position left her crossed feet dangling. It was true she was tired out. Her body sagged as she sat. She took the coffee and sipped it.
"I am going to speak low," began Henry, "in case any of these detestable people are nearer than they appear and can speak English.... My dear, I can't tell what you're feeling or thinking—I simply haven't the courage to ask you for fear of learning that I've built too much on your—oh, but I'll leave that—but I know I never want to suffer again what I've gone through the last few days. Sometimes I've wondered what the morning of departure would be like, and how I could stand it. Often I've wished the wrench were over, and I could be away from you. I've said, 'My God, I'm glad I'm going soon. I can't stick it.'"
Her head still hung over the cup in her lap.
"You see—you see," he pursued, stuttering, "I don't know how it all happened. It's an abrupt mystery to me. I seemed to find myself suddenly floundering and struggling in a love—and it was a love such as I'd never experienced before and never expected to.... It stands alone, dear, in my life, and always will do.... I thought I'd like you to know that much in case we don't ... lest we never..."
He paused long and beat with his feet on the ground.
"Often I wished I'd never seen you at all, and then I thought immediately, 'No, I wouldn't have missed this awful pain.' An idiot's business."
Daphne wanted to nod her bent head as if to show that she understood him; but she couldn't, and she didn't know whether he was looking at her or away.
"I wanted you to know something of the strength—the uncontrollable strength of what I felt for you; so that you could understand that it was something too big for me that forced me to speak. At one time I hoped it'd be enough if I just hung about near you and waited for the end. One might as well have expected one of these ghastly Swiss waterfalls to stand still.... My God, I hate everything about Switzerland, and yet I love it next to you.... I wish I understood anything on earth ... and what I'm saying...."
A dance must have finished, for more couples came towards the seats the other side of the bar. Daphne moved as if to drop from the boat's side to the ground, but Henry stopped her with a slight touch of his hand.
"No; don't go. Please don't go. They'll only think we're sitting out. Stay—stay as long as you can."
They stayed in silence; and when many of the couples had returned to the deck for another dance, Henry adventured his hand towards Daphne's on the boat's rim, and touched it with his fingers. She did not move it away or show any feeling, though at his touch the temperature of her body fluctuated as in a rigor. His hot, trembling palm and fingers closed on hers, feeling it, pressing it.
Speech yielded to this, and many minutes must have passed before their silence was disturbed by an excitement on the boat, everybody crowding to the starboard side and staring over the water. Many hurried past their retreat.
Henry muttered, withdrew his hand, and looked in the direction of some pointing fingers. Daphne, hardly moving her body, also turned her head. They saw that a chalet on the side of the wooded mountain had been illuminated with a red flare to greet the passing pleasure-steamer. The red glow reached its most brilliant and died down, to be succeeded by a pale green flare. On the water under the trees a rowing boat had also lit a sea-green flare, and its reflection came trilling down the surface as far as the steamer.
"It's the Rutli," people were saying in several languages. They clapped loudly, the women with their hands as high as their heads, hoping that their grateful applause might reach the chalet on the mountain. A boom from the funnel also acknowledged the courtesy. Automatically and dreamily Henry joined in the clapping, and a laugh that was rather frightening because so mixed up with despair shook in Daphne's throat. For a long time the people watched the alternating lights till they had left the chalet far on their quarter and its last red flare was like the glow of a camp fire behind the pines.
"And there's another!" cried an English voice.
The boat was swinging round; and Tell's Chapel, at the mountain's foot, had come into view. Its front was flaring with a crimson light in honour of this advancing boat-load of happy people. And when the boat had completely turned in its course a Brunnen hotel lit up its long façade. Again the grateful people clapped and cheered and the funnel boomed.
Henry turned to Daphne.
"You say nothing, dear. Tell me—tell me this much: does this pleasure hurt you as it does me?"
"A little," she acknowledged. Her hair was blown about in the breeze and she tried to steady and straighten it with her hand.
The flares ashore died down and the people returned to their dancing.
"Hadn't we better be getting back?" ventured Daphne, after a long pause.
"Oh, no—no.... How can you want to go back? ... The others won't even notice our absence ... or if they do, I don't care.... They'll probably only think we're flirting.... God! Flirting! ..."
So the silence was resumed, he standing by her, and she sitting on the boat's edge. He did not again seek her hand. Once or twice he broke the silence. "Dear, I want to say this: I don't know what's going to happen in the future, but if—if we never——" The sentence was left incomplete. "I want you to promise never to look back upon what I felt for you and think of it as some holiday infatuation—don't profane it by thinking that.... I know when I look back on it I shall never soil it by seeing any folly or wrong in it.... It's somehow true, and I'm not ashamed of it."
And later: "Perhaps such a love is too terrible to last—I don't know.... I can't imagine now that it would ever end.... No, it never could—it must always be there in some form. At present my one wish is to have you evermore and alone.... You don't say much, dear."
Daphne looked up at him.
"I'm awfully tired, somehow."
"Of course you are."
Nothing more was said till he exclaimed, "We're pushing into Brunnen already. It's nearly ten past eleven."
She looked towards the shore and saw Brunnen in darkness and their vast hotel with only a few lights in the bedroom windows. The crowd on the boat was already beginning to pack towards the gangway, leaving them alone. She dropped to her feet, but immediately he stayed her.
"No, wait. Wait a little. We've hardly once been alone."
When their end of the boat was quite deserted, he put his arm round her waist and kissed her.
She could not so lie as to resist or reproach him; but she had received only, and not given. They walked towards the gangway—the coffee cups remaining in the boat unreturned, as they were unpaid for. She reflected that neither had said a word about his letter asking her to come to his room; he, doubtless, because he had dreaded hearing her say No—wherefore he had kissed lest it were their last privacy; and she because she was shy of saying Yes, she would come.
They found the rest of their party at the head of the gangway and crowded down it with them. On the pier Mr. Clarkson said:
"Come along, children. Are we all here?" And he put an arm into Elsie's and Madeleine's arms and began to walk them along the road to the hotel. Elsie had thrust an arm into Daphne's. Henry walked in front, unlinked, remote. Daphne was obliged to fall into step with the other three as they hurried along to Mr. Clarkson's "Left, Right, Left—Right, Left—Right."
CHAPTER XX
When she got back to her room she sat on her bed with her head down in the same attitude as she had maintained throughout the pleasure-sailing. She could not remember in all her life such tiredness. There was a permanent ache in the small of her back and on her thighs and across her shoulder-blades. Her head was confused and her eyes (she knew) were staring blankly on any object where they fell. Almost she wished she could throw herself straight upon her bed, released from the duty of going to Henry.
What a pity she was so exhausted! It would spoil her "hour" with him. Eyes shut, she drew the back of her hand across her forehead. Then she pulled herself together, stood up, and walked to the drawer where her diary was kept. Taking it out, she opened it and wrote "August 3rd." She marked the date with an asterisk, making the eight-pointed sign with dreaming elaboration, and leaving a long space for filling in details one day.
She walked on to her loggia and looked up at his window. It was alight, and he was standing on his balcony, to all appearance staring over the water, but doubtless looking obliquely at her window. Instantly she stepped back.
"He's waiting for me."
There had been, of course, a light in her father's room next door, and she would have to delay till it had been out for half an hour before she fled up the stairs to where Henry waited for her. And it would probably be a long time before her father extinguished the light, since he always read himself to sleep. She lay down to rest a little that she might not be so tired when she went to Henry. Her curtains she left apart so as to see the disappearance of her father's reflected light. When it should have gone she would get up and do her hair and powder her face again.
She had kept no count of the time when the light snapped out suddenly. Stepping off the bed, she walked to the window, but not so as Henry, were he still on his balcony, could see her. Throwing up a quick glance she saw that though he was not there his light was the one square of brightness on the night.
She went to her dressing-table and did her hair, and with the powder once more made as much as possible of her tired and hollowed face. Then she sat on the edge of her bed to wait a little longer. All this time there would recur in her mouth—on tongue and palate—a bad taste, obliging her to get up repeatedly and take a little water from the glass on the washstand. When it was time to move, she walked again to the window and saw Henry's room still the only wakeful place in the Brunnen night. She walked across the room to her door and opened it.
But courage would not come to enable her to rush along that corridor and fly up the stairs. Supposing she should pass anybody! Supposing her father had suspected something and was watching! She would wait longer. It was a quarter past one. "At twenty-five past I'll make a run for it," she said, and sat again upon her bed.
What would happen when she went to Henry she but vaguely conceived. He would throw wide his arms and she would rush into them. They would sit on a long sofa. In nothing would he hurt her—of that she was sure as she was sure of anything in life. But they would talk of the future. By coming to him she would have confessed her readiness to break with things and to take the lawless road one day. Ever in her mind were his stuttered words about the call of life and the path of danger—words in which she saw, more clearly than some, more mistily than many, a glimmer of truth. And so she thought of her rush to his room as a decisive rush through a gateway towards adventure, experience, beauty perhaps—and wisdom.
When her watch showed twenty-five past she got up and walked to her open door. She even stepped into the passage and took several paces towards the one light that burned over the staircase.
"No, I can't just yet. I'll wait till half-past.... Besides, I wonder if he's given me up, now it's so late."
One part of her could hope he had done so; and for the hundredth time, as it seemed, she walked back to her window. No, his balcony was still washed in light.
She swallowed some more water to remove the taste on her palate, and sat on the bed again, grasping her knee, to wait for half-past one. A bell from the village sounded the half-hour, and she rose and walked to the door. So tired was she that she supported herself by resting her hand on the jamb. A long way down the corridor burned the dim light over the staircase.
No, she couldn't do it. This was proving itself to her. She wasn't big enough so to break with things. "I simply haven't got the courage." Her mouth was parted as she strolled back into the room. She was too near her childhood for such a step and too muddled. As Henry had said, one didn't solve the riddles of how to live until it was too late to live.
"Oh, but I must go. I may never see him again and he's waiting for me."
She walked to the door and was summoning courage for the rush when the passage outside seemed to creak with a step. Instantly she shut her guilty door and put out the incriminating light.
This was the end, she knew. She would not go now.
That might have been a night-porter's step, or it might have been Henry wandering along her passage, in which case she had shut the door on him, or it might have been nothing. But the creak, with its reminder of a world looking on, had settled everything. Settled everything. How much of her life, she wondered, did that phrase imply?
"I can't go now. And I think I'm glad. I'm so tired. I think he did frighten me a little with his intensity. I'll be awake at six o'clock in the morning, and wave to him when he goes; and he will understand that I was not angry with his suggestion. He mustn't think that for ever.... And now I'll try to sleep. It must be two o'clock."
In her night-dress under the sheet she relaxed her aching limbs and lay on her back and flung an arm on either side. She tightened the closing of her eyes, as if that would help her to sleep. But no sleep would come. Her mind would picture the past evening and the past weeks, and Henry at this moment putting out his light in disappointment. And she would tell herself, "I'm glad it's ending to-morrow. It's too awful—oh, but no, it's worth having been born to have gone through it.... But I wouldn't, if I could, have it cut out.... Oh, this can't be all. I must be destined to see him again some time. The world is small and time is big."
This last sentence, which had formed itself spontaneously in her mind, pleased her literary sense, and she repeated it to herself for her relief, thinking that in the quiet surrender to the future which it urged she might find some sleep. But sleep hung aloof. She wondered if she would ever sleep again.
It was while wondering this that she saw a huge room, partly hung with pale-blue and pink curtains—a rather sickly room, and yet it was a home that was being prepared for Henry and her—unfurnished as yet except for a wicker chair in which Henry was sitting. She walked towards him and saw that she was walking up a steep country road in England. There was a glow in the sky for a whole village was burning somewhere, and she had no desire to go to any one's assistance, for Henry was waiting for her somewhere on the crown of the hill. Now, strangely enough, she was not dreaming about him at all—he might never have existed—a thought that was with her as she dreamt—she was laughing in a drawing-room with friends she had known, Trudy Wayne and Miss Sims and Owen.
At last she awoke; and, not at once but very soon, sickened to see the sun pouring through her undrawn curtains. Frantically she looked at her watch. It was a quarter to eight: Henry had started more than an hour ago. A chapel bell was ringing to Mass. An audible moan came from her throat and a rebel's tear rushed to her eyes. Leaping up, she ran to the window as though there were still time to see him. But there were only the mountains hooded in low clouds, and the water filmed and sluggish like a thing unawake.
A wicked and loathsome trick of Chance to make her sleep too long! A moment for blasphemies. Why wouldn't these rebel's tears that had gushed to her eyes pour out? But now she felt dry and hard. Her chief emotion was a desire to insult and injure the inaccessible gods. "Well, I must dress. It's late; it's awfully late." And her clothes immediately reminded her that it was all over—that she was on the other side of the parting. "He's gone." For a minute's luxury of despair she flung herself face downwards on the bed.
Then with deliberation she jumped up to dress and finish her packing; and the courage of it pleased her.
"I think I must be less lacking in courage than I thought. I believe that with an effort of the will I could get up and dress like this on the morning of my execution."
The words reminded her of the old game she used to play when she walked to her death inspired by the verses:
He nothing common did nor mean
Upon that memorable scene...
And this morning, dramatising herself as resigned, controlled and brave, she dressed and closed her trunks. At her glass the whiteness of her face, the hollowness of her cheeks and the shadows under her eyes startled her. "I wonder if I'm going to be ill, as people sometimes are on occasions like this."
She ran and knocked on her father's door, and hearing his grunt, "Come in," entered to find him tying his tie.
"I only wanted to see that you were properly up," said she. "It's after eight, and I slept longer than I meant——" Her jaw dropped as she uttered the sentence.
"You would after such a frivolous and racketing night." He had looked at her in his mirror, and at once, in his tact, averted his eyes. The movement told her that he was seeing everything and filling with pity. But he was a wise student of humanity and knew that this was no moment for sympathy, no moment for observing anything at all, no moment for aught but the old chaff.
"I could hear the noise you made on the water till—well, it must have been midnight.... Go down and order breakfast. Get some strong coffee and plenty of it. I shall be glad of it too."
"Righto!" She was glad to be alone again.
She wandered down the great stairway, preferring its solitude to the company of the man in the lift. On the ground floor she met other guests who said:
"You're off, I hear."
"Yes," she laughed. "By the nine-thirty boat for Alpnachstad. I'd better say good-bye now, I suppose."
They shook her hand.
"So sorry you're going."
"Yes, so'm I. I've enjoyed it all tremendously. I don't want to go a bit."
She walked along with them to the office of the concierge, and saw in the little pigeon-hole marked with the number of her room a letter. Her heart jumped. It could only be a last letter from Henry.
"Is that something for me?" she smiled at the concierge.
"Yes, miss. Mr. Detmould asked me to give it to you."
He drew it out, absurdly uninterested in what he was handling, and gave it to her. She ran hurriedly with it to the privacy of the terrace where was no one but a man in a green baize apron sweeping. With shaking, uncontrolled fingers she opened and read:
"MY DEAR,—Good-bye. Think of me as one who will carry your memory with him always. The picture I shall try to see most often will be that of you leaving your tennis and coming up the path to me, as you did yesterday. I am glad I have known you. I wouldn't have missed it. I half hoped I should have seen something of you before I started, but you were very tired and slept, I suspect. It was natural, dear. Good-bye.
"H.D."
"Oh, I must write to him," thought Daphne passionately, the tears now brimming at her eyes. "I must write and tell him that I wasn't offended at his invitation and didn't mean not to say good-bye."
She ran to the lounge and got some note-paper—glad that it was the hotel note-paper with the picture of the hotel on its top—and started a draft, but soon crumpled it up and started another.... Her father appeared, and she crumpled up both drafts and put them in her pocket.
"Ah, ten minutes exactly for breakfast," said he. "Come along, Duffs."
CHAPTER XXI
In half an hour Mr. Bruno and his daughter were on the jetty watching the boat approaching from Treib. Their labelled luggage waited by them. It was a sunny morning now that the clouds and mists had dispersed, but Daphne felt cold and at length put on the white coat which had hung over her arm. She gathered it tight about her for warmth and comfort. Often she looked back at the great hotel and the windows that had been hers and his, and the horse-chestnuts about the tennis-court, and the long terrace where they had sat in the evenings. If was a relief when the boat came alongside and they had to bustle with the crowd on to its decks. They mounted to the higher deck of the first-class passengers, and Daphne, passing the saloon and the engines down in the well, saw with a pang that the ship was a twin to the pleasure-steamer of the night before. There were the same "Avis aux Voyageurs" in the alley-ways, and a stairway to the deck exactly similar to that down which Henry, ten or eleven hours earlier, had taken her in search of coffee. Perhaps it was the same boat. On deck she walked straight to a seat in the stern, where she sat sideways, with her elbow on the seat's back, her face in the cup of her hand, and her eyes towards the hotel. She gathered the coat farther about her.
The siren sounded and the boat swung away from the pier. The engines throbbed and the paddles chuffed out on to the lake, while Daphne stared at the hotel to watch it recede. Fast now it diminished and lost its exactness and detail. There was a pulling at her heart and throat, and warmth behind her ears and over the skin of her face.
"The world is small and time is big. Who knows what may happen? ... Oh, there's nothing can happen."
She turned and commenced to talk cheerfully to her father and kept it up for quite a while, till she felt caught in it, anxious to escape from it, and to lose herself again in her pain. Her answers became abstracted, and her father, saying something about the view from the bows, got up and strolled away, doubtless on purpose. Once more her chin went into her hand and her elbow rested on the seat's back, and she stared in the ship's wake—not at the hotel, for it had disappeared, but at the twin points of the Mythen, which could still be seen. The boat plied from station to station along the lake; from Treib to Gersau and Beckenried and Vitznau and Weggis. Each time it left the station's pier the gazing crowd waved to the departing steamer, and the people on board, whether or not they had friends ashore, waved back. At first Daphne had no heart to wave. Then she remembered how she prided herself on her courage and waved to them regularly.
At Alpnachstad they took the train to go over the Brunig Pass. Their car was an observation car with galleries for viewing the scenery. A kindly conductor came and told them that if they wanted to see the best of the valleys and the pass they should sit on the right of the carriage. So, opposite her father, with her face towards the train's progress, she sat in her corner, her elbow on the window out of which she stared. Sometimes her father ventured a sportive remark, and she looked up and answered with a smile. Sometimes she sank so deep into the gulf of despair that she shook her shoulders and told herself she must have courage. Then instantly, at the effort of her will, all the pain would disappear, and she would want to whistle or hum.... But then she missed the beloved pain. It was better to suffer it than to annihilate it with the will.
So she let herself fall back, trying to see again Henry's face and tracing in her imagination the line of his hair, brow, nose and chin.
"Isn't it beastly cold?" she said to her father.
"Not at all. You're getting the first breath from the snow-fields."
"Well, I feel shivery," she laughed, and snuggled farther into her coat.
To herself she was thinking, "I wonder if I'm going to be ill. Didn't Dante nearly die when he lost Beatrice? If I'm ill I hope Henry hears of it."
There were two English women in the carriage who were discussing with enthusiasm their climbs and excursions while staying at Lucerne. Daphne listened to their talk. She envied their capacity to find happiness in scenery and strange buildings; and at the same time she was sorry for them, since their holiday had given them no such ecstasy as hers.
All the while her father's sham wall of naturalness was the very proof of his understanding; and through this humbug tacitly agreed upon, she felt the strength of his support. She could feel his unspoken love and rest in it. Once she even caught herself playing up to the part of a cruelly wounded girl; and it struck her as strange and horrible that in the midst of a mental pain which was the most awful that had ever come to her, she could yet be pleased with it as an object of interest to some one else—and to some one, moreover, who was kind.
There was a pendulum swing in and out of despair. Sometimes she felt she would be able to get rid of her harrowing love and that already the healing had begun; she would take an interest in the train's slow climb among the pines, with the valley far below; and then the sudden memory of some movement of Henry's mouth would make her start and cry inwardly, "Never again to see him.... Oh, it won't be thought.... I can't think it."
At Brunig the train stopped for half an hour to allow the passengers to have lunch at the station restaurant.
"I don't think I want any," said she. "I don't know why it is. Perhaps it's the change in the air."
"Well, have a good stiff café-au-lait," said Mr. Bruno.
Back in the train to proceed to Brienz. She relapsed into her corner seat and her thoughts. The people on the platforms as the train arrived relieved her mind by occupying it. She studied the middle-aged married couples with their children. Too old for first love, these people; they had to exchange this emotion for the love of children. And that wasn't the same; it might be nobler, but it couldn't be so wonderful to suffer and to enjoy. None the less, she found herself looking forward to her own middle age, when all the wounds of love would be healed by time and she could smile and be gay and pleasant. Once she saw a tweed shoulder and the back of a head that gave her a stab and a shudder—it was like Henry's. But no. At that moment he was climbing towards the Furka Pass.... Never probably to be met with again.
At Interlaken they crossed to the Bernese Oberland Railway, and this train dragged them to Grindelwald. The snow caps and shawls of the Jungfrau, the Eiger and the Monch came into view. There was a new bracing freshness in the air. And she thought:
"I must get well here. I must drink in this tonic air and make a real holiday of my stay. I'll have some really good weeks."
They were at their station, and she jumped up, feeling quite natural and lively, with only a dull memory of some recent anguish. Immediately she drew back about her the pain she had thrown off. "Oh, not this annihilation of feeling," she told herself as she stepped on to the busy platform. "I would rather feel..."
"Now, then," said her father, laying down a bag and looking for his tickets. "Where the devil——?"
But she, holding her properties, was thinking, "I can't stand it. Never will I do what I've often fancied I'd like to do—what I tried to do with Roger—try to make men love me whether I love them or not. The pain is too awful. I wouldn't give it to any one...."
She followed her father through the exit of the station and up the glaring gravel path of the hotel.
She was shown to her room, and this changed place of sleeping, with its different furniture, stressed her exile from the story of Brunnen. She stood there, staring at the snow-line of the mountains. Soon the porter brought her trunks and laid them on the trestle support and on a chair. Mechanically she opened one and began to take out her dresses. Each carried a memory of some evening on the terrace at Brunnen.
Having hung them mechanically in the wardrobe, she stopped unpacking and stood again to stare vacantly before her. She hardly knew whether she was thinking or whether she had suspended thought; whether this was the uttermost despair or an atrophy of feeling. Once she heard herself saying, "O God, give me some rest—some rest from all this...."
CHAPTER XXII
She had no address of Henry's, but that evening she wrote to the hotel at Brunnen, trusting that it would be forwarded to him somewhere. The composing of the letter gave her much mental debate. She wanted to pour out passionately all that she was really feeling—the mere phrasing of love was relief and almost joy; but the old muddle as to whether it was fair to write thus to a man who was returning from her to his wife intervened. And finally her letter amounted to little more than saying, "I never meant not to say good-bye to you." But she hoped he would read everything in her few lines.
There was a moment's afterglow of bygone happiness as she put the letter in the concierge's box. From that moment she encouraged the conviction that he would write a reply to her—just one, before the silence settled. She would stop and stand in the passage of the hotel while she deliberated where he would first be able to write and how long the letter would take to reach her.
Friday morning, she decided, was the earliest she could expect it.
Then, walking on, she would compose his letter.
Now Owen joined them from the camp at Aldershot where the Sillborough Cadet Corps had been training. He was full of the war rumours in England, and Daphne, going for walks with him, pretended to listen. Sometimes she played against him a desultory set of tennis, though the game and everything about it, its cries and its scoring, had a stab for her.
On the Friday morning, when she dared to hope that his letter might have come, she was afraid to approach the pigeon-holes in the concierge's office; and yet, by a will-effort, she walked there quickly, satisfied with her pluck. Sickness took her heart when she saw her pigeon-hole empty and many of the others full. In despairing hope she asked the concierge had that morning's post been.
Yes.
She turned about gaily.
"He hasn't had time to write. Or letters take a long time over these slow mountain railways. I'll give him till to-morrow morning."
Still, at each of the other posts during the day she looked for the letter and suffered the blow of disappointment to see her empty pigeon-hole. Sometimes she would go back and look in the other holes in case her letter had been put in one of them by mistake.
On the Saturday morning she went with a sudden high hope to the place.... But her throat was affected and her mouth dried when again the empty pigeon-hole stared at her. There must be one. And she asked the concierge merrily:
"What, isn't there really a letter for me?"
"No, Miss Bruno."
And she laughed:
"Oh, what a shame!"
Walking away, she told herself that he was writing a long one and adding to it day by day.
The next morning, as nervously she approached the office, she saw that there was a single white envelope in her space. Her heart thumping with eagerness and terror, she said to the concierge:
"There is one this time!"
"Yes, Miss Bruno, there's one for you," and he took it out and gave it to her.
The handwriting was Miss Carrell's.
The August days went by, and the pain of going to the office after each post, or of returning from a walk in the hope that the letter would be there, was slowly drugged down by monotony. "He'll never write now. After all, why should he? Mine was nothing but an answer to his good-bye letter."
Only once did her control utterly fail her. It was after dinner in the lounge, and her father, Owen and she were listening to the string band. She had been talking vivaciously, almost happily, to some friends in the neighbouring chairs. Then the band struck up a selection from Tannhäuser, and the familiar tunes stopped all talk. She leaned back in her chair and stared at a hunting picture on the wall. The music, good or bad, well played or badly played, was stirring up all the pain which she temporarily trampled down. The Pilgrims' Chorus seemed the very notes and chords of her despair. And the song "O Star of Eve" was one of its melodies. As the tune went on inclemently she felt her breath getting shorter and a misery rising in her so massed and tumultuous that if it did not burst in tears it would madden and kill her.
She got up while control was still with her, walked across the lounge, and once outside the door, rushed up the stairs to her bedroom. There she flung herself on her bed, and passionately crying, kept repeating aloud, "I don't care how soon the end comes.... I don't care how soon the end comes...." At intervals she would stop her crying and muttering to think, "But no, I don't want to die and be out of the world where Henry is.... I must be in the same world as he is.... If only he would die and I could die too...."
Mr. Bruno had instantly guessed what her abrupt departure meant. At the end of the Brunnen stay he had learned with surprise that the American boy whose appearance, even if it held a remarkable mind, suggested a callow undergraduate, was a married man. And Daphne was much in love with him. It looked horribly like the real thing. Her request to be taken away he assumed to have followed a confession of the boy's, who certainly struck him as a gentil youth. He blamed neither. What was the good of telling people not to love if they did? And now Daphne was in the grip of her tragedy—Daphne suffering! He must go to her. He mustn't leave her to writhe in it alone. But he didn't know what to say. Now that he came to think of it he had never spoken seriously to her in his life—always behind a veil of banter. "I can't get through to her. I never have been able to get through to her."
In the applause after the orchestra's finale he rose from his seat, saying to Owen, "Keep my place for me, old man," and walked upstairs. The passage and door of Daphne's room frightened him, and for a long time he strode up and down wondering what he was going to say. What could he give her of comfort and advice? Though he had written forty books, he had no complete and rounded code of living. And of religion, nothing.
Well, there it was. He knocked on her door. No answer came, though he heard a quick movement inside.
"Daphne."
She did not reply, and he walked back along the corridor, abandoning the task. But at the head of the stairs he stopped.
"No, poor darling, I must go in and see her. I shall find something to say when I'm there."
He walked slowly back, and, without knocking, turned the handle of her door. It was unlocked and he stepped into the room. He saw Daphne in the long easy-chair, sitting sideways, her heels drawn up under her, her elbow hanging over the arm but bent to make a support for her head. Her hair was tumbled and falling, her shoulders shuddering.
"Duffy, my darling!"
She did not move, but now her shoulders steadied as if petrified.
"Duffy, what's the matter?"
He was annoyed with his feebleness. How could she answer such a question?
"My dear.... I know all about it.... Daphne, I can't bear to see you suffering...."
She raised her head and looked up at him, admitting all in a sentence.
"Daddy, how do people stand it?"
What answer could he give to that? The child ought to have some religion—some stay—some hope. He stood there awkwardly with two fingers of his right hand pushed into his waistcoat pocket. Then he began to walk up and down as he struggled to express for her the few things that he believed.
He had searched nature in vain, he said, for a God of pity. All that he was able to see was that men had pity. Pity for all things ... and amazing courage when God or nature was showing no pity to them. And in spite of modern thought-waves, the unshakable conviction was still with him that men were only at their best and happy when they were yielding to their pity. Or, of course, when they were summoning a defiant courage about them and lifting their heads above their trouble.
"I'm trying, dear, to give you the minimum of religion that I have found, and perhaps you'll be able to build more on it. It's rather a rebel's creed, I'm afraid. It amounts to saying that men, because they have pity and unconquerable courage, are greater than God, Who seems to have no pity.... And then I think, if that is so, let us glory in transcending him. Let us at all costs keep these things.... I don't know how far I have kept them myself, but I should like you to...."
His daughter smiled her affection through her tears.
So much of a general code he tried to give her. In meeting her present need he felt he was happier. Daphne was staring at him as he spoke with interested eyes. To begin with, said he, she was much, much better off than many, because her love had apparently been returned. Many had loved as passionately but without requital, and had survived. It would be futile to tell her to cut out her love, but what she must do was to transmute it. One could transmute a suppressed love into two things: into service of others and into art. Didn't Dante transmute his love for Beatrice into his "Divina Commedia"? So his love was always with him and always expressed.
"You used to want to write, dear. I hope you will. You'll find that much of what you are suffering now will escape into that, and it will be ever so much better than it would otherwise have been. Remember, there have been little housemaids in London who have had to suppress their love and have had no mind to understand these things ... and yet they have endured and survived.... But I'll tell you one thing that you must guard against. Books and Art are very great, and no life is half a life without them; but they are apt to become a fixed idea, excluding everything—unselfishness and all the rest. And so you get set as selfish, and only occasionally a kindly impulse in you shows you what you might have been.... So the remedy, I feel, is to get this other idea equally—the idea that there is no happiness apart from pity and service...."
His daughter had risen and was standing before him.
"Daddy, I always think you're wonderful.... Don't—don't tell Owen anything about it, will you?"
He passed his hand over the back of her head, aware of moistened eyes.
"Don't suffer too much, my Daphne. I can't stand it."
Daphne shook her head and smiled confidently.
PART IV: Things as They Are
CHAPTER XXIII
A day in September Mr. Bruno and his children came again to the little garden of firs. The news from South Africa had been such that he preferred to be in France with a view to winding up his affairs there in the event of an early return to England. And Daphne was glad to be out of Switzerland. She had not been able to bear the conversations of guests who mentioned places associated with Henry—the Urirotstock, the Rutli, the Furka Pass, the Mythen. All mountains hurt her.
On the doorstep Miss Carrell greeted the family, inquiring of Daphne:
"Have you had a nice holiday, dear?"
"Absolutely ripping," said Daphne.
And with this sickening lie she carried her wooden despair into the house.
A wooden despair it was, these first weeks. She would take her memories with her on lonely walks in the Montmorency Forest. Its autumnal lights pierced her. She made a pilgrimage to the grave to Géneviève Rollier in Taverney Churchyard; and now more than ever did the tawdry wreaths and the words "A Man Epouse," "Nous ne t'oublierons jamais," inflate her to pity. She really felt, as her father had encouraged her to feel, an infinite gentleness towards all the world.
"You can't reach to pain fully," said she, remembering some words of Henry's, "till you have suffered yourself." And she was aware of a little pride in her suffering.
She set to work again upon her book "Madame Rolland." There was a whole reservoir of manuscript to be distilled into some last shapely urn. But now, as she studied it—on the other side of her great experience—it seemed shallow, light, unfelt, invented. "Invention's the very opposite of creation," Henry had said; and this minute she saw its truth.
The clearer parts of her brain told her brutally what she ought to do. She ought to scrap every bit of this stuff, even though it were the product of two years' brain-bullying, because it had been written when her angle was all wrong, and would only go lumpy and formless if she tried so late to infiltrate it with truth. More, since Henry was always correct, she ought to postpone writing for publication till she had read much more and learned something of "the best that had been thought and written throughout the ages."
But could she do this? Could she scrap it all and postpone, even abandon, the thought of fame? No, the old Daphne of three months ago was too strong to be shed at once by this new creature of selfishness and consecration. She would re-fashion the book to meet her truer measures, but she must keep her eyes on fame. Next year, or the year after, she must make her little stir whose ripples would reach to Henry.
So she struggled on with "Madame Rolland," though sensible of compromise and conflict. The sceptic in the corner kept protesting, "In spite of me you're heading for one more blunder."
Another subject, besides her book and her settled sadness, found a small welcome at her door. This talk about war in South Africa—it was always dramatic. The letters of Owen, who had returned to Sillborough, were full of it. It was thrilling to read each morning in the English or French papers of the Boers' impudent ultimatum and the British Government's haughty refusal to discuss such terms; of the threatening mobilisation in the Orange Free State and the calling out of the reserves in England; of the last dark summoning of Parliament. But this interest was mild compared with her interest in her book. It occupied about the same relation to "Madame Rolland" as a bright little grocer's boy, calling every day, occupies to the mistress of a house.
This grocer's boy, however, came in and sat down in the best room during the days when war was declared. The English papers were better than any drama now, with their huge pictures of Sir Redvers Buller in his cocked hat, about whom she had misgivings because his chin receded, and of that old darling Oom Paul Kruger, who, with his curtain-fringe of beard and chimney-pot hat, was so ugly as to be perfectly sweet. The French papers, with their abuse of the English, were things to be read; and in a moment of patriotic fervour she was anxious to shake off the dust of her heels on such a rude country.
"I vote we go," said she to her father.
And her father shocked her by saying cold-bloodedly:
"But my sympathies, I'm afraid, are rather with Oom Paul than with Tante Victoria."
"Daddy!" she exclaimed, after a shriek of laughter at such a name for the venerable Queen, "how can you say such a thing? You're not a pro-Boer."
But all he did was to smile and murmur, "Et tu, Daphne."
"I don't see there's any Et tu, Daphne about it. You can't think they're right."
"Neither side's ever perfectly right, dear. But that's no reason why the big man should start to pummel the little fellow and kick his posterior. Little men are always self-assertive or nobody'd notice them much.... However, the damage is done. And now it's for us to wonder how long our house and our lives will be safe among these emotional French." (Mr. Bruno knew there was nothing in this alarmist suggestion, but could not resist uttering it. His difference from the ordinary panic-monger was his ability to stand outside himself and laugh at his own delight.) "Supposing they burn our house about our heads."
"Will they really? How ripping! Is it going to be as exciting as that?"
"Who knows? The French are without some principle of balance. However, I shouldn't talk to Miss Carrell about these things; and certainly not to Hollins. Panic is a light sleeper in minds that have never been properly trued."
"Oh, no, I won't," promised Daphne, proud to be held of stabler make than Miss Carrell and Hollins, and impressed (as often during talks with her father) at the enormous number of defective people in the world. She was struck, too, at his originality in being a pro-Boer, and wondered whether to learn up the part and be one herself.
"Besides," Mr. Bruno concluded, "we shan't be able to keep up these two homes. No one'll buy any books."
The early and continued successes of the Boers, however, alienated his sympathy from them. It was as if he felt they were going too far. And one morning, on finishing his perusal of a smashing Boer victory, he turned to Daphne and said, "Well, dammit, I think we'd better win now," which relieved her considerably. Then they prepared to return to England. On a day in December, after the incredible defeats at Stormberg, Magersfontein and Colenso, the trunks of the Brunos were packed, labelled, and standing in the hall at St. Leu.
Daphne went for a farewell walk along the roads of the forest. The trees were quite bare, but many of the dead leaves still littered the paths. Though mid-afternoon, the sun-rays, slanting through the boles, had the sad effulgence of evening. Her random progress led her as far as the Pont de Diable and back upon her tracks. It was on this homeward stroll, just as she was nearing the edge of the trees, that she was abruptly withdrawn from her inward thinking by the sight of a man approaching her. The cut of his black overcoat and his height suggested that he was English. On his perceiving her he quickened his steps. It was Roger Muirhead surely. Yes, it was he; and tall and handsome he looked. He was now smiling recognition, and she replying with questioning eyebrows. That he had come in search of her was manifest, and the thought could only please. A rapid wonder passed by her mind: was she to be given at last the opportunity of saying, as she had always wished to do, "It's no good, Roger. I don't love you"? But now, in her dominant gentleness, she had lost the desire to say it. He mustn't be hurt like that. Not more than was inevitable. Less, much less, were it possible.... And while she thought these things she was smiling at him with questioning eyebrows.
"What on earth's produced you in these parts?"
Roger lifted his shoulders and looked embarrassed.
"Oh, I was in Paris ... and thought I might as well look you up. Your people at the house told me you were here, so I said I'd come and look for you ... as I've got to go back to Paris almost at once."
"It's awfully nice of you."
"Oh, no, it isn't.... At least ... Oh, I'd better tell you the reason why I've come. (May I walk back with you?) What do you think it is?"
"You've just said: to see us; to see some English friends who happen to be in the same strange land as you are in. I always find that people whom one would hardly know in England, if one meets them in a racket of foreigners, are one's best friends."
Roger gave silence to this as he walked by her side, and she feared she had hurt him more than she meant. So she hastily added:
"It's topping to see you."
"No—no—I ... Duffy, it was to find you, and you only, that I came." Her heart throbbed. "I wasn't really staying in Paris. I left England on the impulse of the moment last night, and I shall have to get back to-night."
She said nothing, but walked on with him, occasionally kicking at the dead leaves.
"Duffy, I've been in love with you ever since you appeared at that ball. No, please let me go on. I—I'm sure you were meant for me, because each time the first sight of you has been enough to make me fall in love with you. That blasted waltz—I've been humming it ever since, on purpose to work myself into a sad condition."
"But——" she began.
"No, please let me go on. This is what made me come out. I've joined Sinclair's Horse, and I'm going to South Africa almost immediately. I expect my orders for the front any day now. It's all been perfectly glorious except—well, I've been dreaming how splendid it would be if I could go out engaged to you. I can't bear to think of any one else walking off with you in the meantime.... So I resolved to charge straight at it.... Duffy, if we were engaged I should be able to write to you. And——"