Sixty Days to Live

When they had put their candles on the mantel and settled themselves in the chairs Lavina said:

'What d'you think our chances are of coming through?'

'At least fifty-fifty,' Hemmingway smiled. 'Unless we're hung up permanently by a blizzard during the next fortnight, we ought to make it.'

'You really think that? You're not just saying it to keep me cheerful?'

'No. I honestly believe it. We're all fit, we haven't suffered severely from the cold, we've got plenty of stores to go on with, and there are lots of places along the road where we can pick up more.'

She shivered. 'Don't run away with the idea that I don't suffer from the cold because I'm not always moaning about it. At times I could scream, it makes me so miserable, and we seem to have been trudging through the snow for half a lifetime already.'

'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 sub-conscious 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 soner 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 I 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.'