Sixty Days to Live (47 page)

‘In six days we’ve covered over forty miles.’

‘Hell! What’s forty miles? It’s at least a thousand to the straits of “Gib”, and Gervaise admits that we’ll have to go much farther south than that before we strike a really decent winter climate.’

‘Now don’t be despondent,’ he chid her gently. ‘Once we’re over the Channel and start moving south the weather will improve with every stage we make. We’ll be able to travel faster then and do a hundred miles a week. We’ve got a rotten month or two ahead of us but once we’re past the snow line we’ll be able to pick up bicycles and with luck we’ll be in North Africa before November’s out.’

‘You seem pretty confident, I must say.’

‘I am. If we can once get across to France I think the odds are ten to one on our reaching a place where we can settle and start our lives afresh in reasonable safety and comfort.’

‘In that case I’ve got to do some pretty hectic thinking.’ Lavina paused and went on after a moment: ‘D’you believe it’s possible for anyone to be in love with two people at the same time, Hemmingway?’

‘I should say,’ he replied slowly, ‘that one can be extremely attracted to quite a number of people but, faced with the old proposition of being able to rescue only one if all of them were swimming round in the sea, one would never have any real hesitation about which of them one meant to save. I can’t conceive
ever being in love with two people at the same time myself; but why d’you ask?’

‘Sam says that although he’s still in love with me he’s now fallen head-over-heels in love with Margery.’

Hemmingway nodded. ‘I guessed that something was boiling up between them long before we left the Ark. What d’you propose to do about it?’

‘I don’t quite know.’

‘I’m sorry. That’s rotten for you. When faced with a choice of ways everything becomes comparatively easy once one has formed a decision. It’s trying to make up one’s mind which is such an ordeal. I can quite understand what’s happened to Sam, though.’

‘You can?’ she exclaimed, opening wide her eyes.

He laughed. ‘Don’t look so surprised, or take what I said as a personal insult. I’m not inferring that Margery’s more attractive than yourself; only that you’re completely different types. When you married Sam you honestly intended to make a go of it if you possibly could, didn’t you?’

‘I did,’ Lavina agreed.

‘Well, I think you might have succeeded in the sort of world we knew before the deluge. There, you would both have been protected from ever getting to know each other too well by a sort of veneer, or, if you like, a series of screens provided, by the many outside activities which would have occupied such a large portion of both your minds. But, as things are, you’ve been thrown too much together and you’ve seen each other much too clearly. You’re a very complex person and, for all your apparent faults, you’re spiritually on a far higher level than Sam. He’s a very simple person, really; so he naturally gravitates towards Margery who is his own type.’

Lavina regarded him thoughtfully for a moment from beneath eyelashes that half-veiled her eyes. ‘What you say is very interesting, Hemmingway, but why do you consider that I’m on a higher spiritual level than Sam or Margery? She’s a much more saintly person than I am.’

‘Not necessarily. She just accepts the dogmas she’s been taught; whereas you have your own code and never allow yourself to be influenced by accepted standards or by what other people may think. By that I don’t mean to imply that either of
you is
better
than the other; only that if one regarded life as a school you would have to sit for your exams in a much higher form.’

‘How do you account for that?’

‘Because you’re what Buddhists call a “twice-born”. Sam and Margery are bound only by the conventions of the time in which they live; the simple rulings of the lower school. But the subconscious memory of past lives compels you to base your judgments on a broader yet more fearful conception of the Law. Their path is easy compared to yours because they only have to play the game as the modern world understands it; whereas you must sometimes appear to do wrong in order to do what you know inside yourself to be right. You either do the right thing regardless of opinion, or if you do the other you do it consciously, knowing quite well that sooner or later you’ll have to pay for your weakness.’

‘You certainly know a lot about me,’ she admitted; ‘because I am like that. But I’ve never had anyone tell me so before. Are you a “twice-born” too?’

‘Yes, I’ve lived many times before. I know that from having recognised places and people that I’d never seen before in this life. In some of those lives we must have met, too, because I felt that I knew you through and through the very moment I set eyes on you.’

‘It’s queer you should say that, because I felt something, too. When Sam introduced us and we stood looking at each other in your room at St. James’s Square it seemed as though time had ceased to exist for a moment and as though Sam and the room and everything were no longer there. I didn’t recognise you as anyone I’d ever met, but it was like a sudden warning that we had been brought together for some hidden purpose which might be supremely good or incredibly evil.’

‘That was probably a forewarning of the night we were to spend together on Burgh Heath under the influence of the comet. Both of us succumbed to evil then because both of us betrayed a trust and, although you may not realise it, that’s contributed very largely to breaking up your marriage with Sam.’

‘I don’t see that; since he doesn’t know anything about it.’

‘No. But it affected you to such an extent that it was weeks before you could get it out of your mind. Am I right?’

‘Yes.’

‘I tried to help you all I could, and you fought desperately hard to behave as though nothing had happened. Your acting was good enough to prevent Sam from suspecting anything but you didn’t dare to remain alone with him for a moment longer than you had to; and in order to keep up an appearance of gaiety you let yourself go much more than you should have done with Derek.’

She laughed a little ruefully. ‘And I thought I’d hidden it all so cleverly. I think you must be the devil himself from the way you seem to have read my every thought. God! How I dreaded those little petting-parties with Sam down in the storeroom during the first weeks we were in the Ark. But go on. Now the butterfly is under the microscope, tell me a little more.’

‘There isn’t very much more to tell. If there had never been anything between us you would have continued to feel, as well as act, perfectly naturally. You would have sought Sam’s company instead of instinctively avoiding it. You would have made him, instead of Derek, fetch and carry for you and he would have enjoyed it. You would have occupied his mind to such an extent that he would never even have looked at Margery. So you were right in your premonition that meeting me might bring evil to you. Unfortunately there was no way in which I could repair the damage that I’d done.’

‘It wasn’t your fault any more than it was mine.’

‘It was my fault to the extent that, although I lied about it afterwards to make things easier for us both, the comet never really caused me to lose consciousness of what I was doing. I knew quite well that I could have brought you to your senses by slapping your face and that I ought to have done so; but I didn’t.’

‘Well, I lied, too, for the same reason. I don’t mind telling you now. I was never out of my senses and I knew all the time that by one word I could have stopped you; but there came a point when I felt that, whatever happened afterwards, it was worth it, so I deliberately let myself go.’

He nodded. ‘It was just the same with me.’

‘I get the same feeling sometimes with Derek,’ she confessed.

‘That’s hardly surprising. Your guilty conscience built up in your mind a complex adverse to Sam. Derek’s a good-looking
chap, and propinquity can play the very devil with their feelings when two attractive, healthy people are thrown together a great deal. D’you think you would be happy with him?’

‘Yes; for a time, at least. Perhaps for a long time. But how does that square with your theory of types? Derek is even less complex than Sam or Margery.’

‘Perhaps. But in such a tie-up you would be the dominating partner. You know him so intimately that you could play on his every mood, like a pianist on the keyboard of a piano. It’s the easy way, and such unions are often very happy. There’s practically no mental strain at all, you see, because the senior partner runs the whole outfit, and providing they don’t hanker after spiritual companionship they get everything else they want with very little effort.’

‘It might not be a bad thing, then?’ said Lavina.

He laughed. ‘As you’re bone-lazy it might be a very good one!’

‘Am I lazy—in the real sense?’ she smiled.

‘No. You have one of the most active minds I’ve ever met, but, physically, you’d like a man who’d be prepared to wait on you hand and foot, wouldn’t you?’

‘I suppose I should.’

‘And Derek fills that bill admirably.’

‘Yes, but I’m not quite certain yet that I want him to. You see, life with Derek could be grand for a bit but he’s still to some extent an unknown quantity; whereas I know Sam’s worst points and his best. I can’t make up my mind whether to take a gamble on a new deal turning up trumps or to stick to something very fine; because, of course, I only have to lift my little finger to get Sam back.’

‘Yes,’ Hemmingway agreed, ‘and perhaps that might suit you best.’

Lavina remained silent for a moment. Suddenly she shivered. Sitting there motionless had caused her to become very cold although she had not noticed it while they had been talking. She shook herself and stood up. ‘All you’ve said has been terribly interesting and it’s helped me a lot, much more than even you can realise. But I’m simply frozen. Let’s get upstairs now and warm ourselves by the fires.

That night she was unusually silent, but even Hemmingway, who guessed that she was preoccupied with their conversation of earlier in the day, could not tell whether her inclination was veering towards a definite understanding with Derek or a determination to recapture Sam.

On the eighth morning the blizzard had ceased, so they took to the road again. Their enforced rest had made them the more eager to push on and after they had passed the roof-tops of Sittingbourne they made good going on a long, straight stretch of road, covering six miles before they halted at the village of Ospringe. They put up there for the night in the straw-filled loft of a high barn, there being no necessity for them to look for a house which might contain stores as they had renewed their supplies from the mansion outside Sittingbourne.

The next was a harder day as they lost their way while passing Faversham; but they found it again and accomplished another five miles, arriving late in the afternoon at Broughton Street. Snow had fallen again during the preceding night, and with that of the blizzard which had held them up for a day, it now buried all but the tallest houses to near their roofs; while the cottages and two-storeyed buildings were entirely submerged, only their gables being indicated by hillocks in the snow.

From Broughton Street they proceeded towards Canterbury, which was easily discernible in the distance as its Cathedral
tower could still be seen dominating the almost buried city. When they were within a mile of it Gervaise called to Lavina to incline right, so that instead of entering its maze of roof-tops they would by-pass the city and pick up the road again on its southeastern side.

His idea very nearly proved their undoing as, half a mile farther on, Lavina led the party up a slope on to a flat plateau which appeared to consist of firm snow. It bore her weight and that of Margery who followed; but the sledge party had not advanced more than ten yards on to it before the crust of snow gave way.

The sledge plunged downwards and the men with it, who were buried up to their arm-pits. The plateau of snow concealed a closely planted orchard where air-pockets still remained beneath the branches of the trees. Fortunately none of them was injured and they soon scrambled out, but the heavy sledge was in a hole eight feet deep, and when they had succeeded in scraping away the snow that had fallen on it they found that its weight was too great for them to drag it out. They had to unpack most of their gear before they could lighten the sledge sufficiently to pull it up, and the misadventure delayed them for over an hour.

They were now so far from the highway that it seemed better to go on than to go back; but for the next half-mile, until they reached a row of roof-tops which indicated another road, Lavina had to test the snow-crust every few yards of the way by jumping on it with her ski-sticks. Once they got above the road again they were happier, and picking out their way between the lines of chimney-pots on the south-eastern outskirts of Canterbury they eventually succeeded in locating the Dover road once more.

Darkness was falling when they halted for their tenth night after leaving London, but their short cut had enabled them to place another seven miles of the way behind them. They slept in the attic of a road-side inn and, by combing the place, managed to add a few items to their stores.

On the eleventh day they again did well—seven more miles—but night and snow caught them on the open road, which was now so difficult to follow that, fearing to lose it, they were forced to bivouac in the open; and, although she kept face before the others, Lavina’s limbs ached so with the cold that once in her fur bag she cried herself to sleep.

The twelfth day was the worst they had so far experienced as the road was now almost untraceable and snow fell at intervals further delaying their progress. Although Lavina did her utmost to keep to the track there were many occasions when she led the party off it and the heavy sledge got ditched in the treacherous drifts which concealed deep culverts by the road-side. Half the day was spent in pulling the sledge out of holes and, although the whole party were exhausted when twilight came, they had only managed to do four miles. But they had good quarters for the night as Lavina led them to another inn which was standing at a crossroads with its slate roof still showing above the surface.