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."