Certainly it was the most successful cotillion. As Dodo had arranged, all the more unattractive people got selected first, and all the more attractive, as Dodo had foreseen, saw exactly what was happening. The style was distinctly anti-Leap-year and in the mirror-figure men, instead of women, rejected the faces in the glass, and Lord Ayr had nothing whatever to say to his wife, who was instantly accepted by Jack. And at the end, the band preceding, they danced through the entire house, from cellar to garret. They waltzed through drawing-rooms and dining-room, and up the stairs, and through Dodo's bedroom, and through Jack's dressing-room, where his pajamas were lying on his bed (Berts put them onen passant), and intocul-de-sacs, and impenetrable servants' rooms. And somehow it was Dodo all the time who inspired these childish orgies: those near her saw her, those behind danced wildly after her. There was no accounting for it, except in the fact that while she was enjoying herself so enormously, it was impossible not to enjoy too. Sometimes it was she shrieking, "Yes, straight on," sometimes it was her laugh-choked voice, saying "No, don't go in there," but the fact that shewas leading them, with her nursery fender, and her vitality, and her ropes of pearls, and her completeabandonto the spirit of dancing, with Berts for partner in Jack's pajamas, made a magnet that it was impossible not to follow. They passed through bedroom and attic, they went twice round the huge kitchen, where thechef, at Dodo's imperious command, laid down his culinary implements (which at the moment meant an ice-pail) and joined the dance with the first kitchen-maid. Then Dodo saw a footman standing idle, and called to him, "Take my maid, William," and William with a broad grin embraced a perfectly willing Frenchwoman of great attractions, and joined in the dance. Like the fairies in a Midsummer-night's Dream, they danced the whole hour through, Dodo with Berts, the chef with the kitchen-maid, William with Dodo's maid, Lord Ayr with Nadine, Lady Ayr with somebody whom nobody knew by sight, who had probably come there by mistake, and the first twenty couples or so finished up in the cellar. This, though it seemed improvised, had been provided for, and there were cane-chairs to rest in, and bottles instantly opened. The rest, following the band, danced their way back to the supper-room, where they were almost immediately joined by the cellar party, who were hungry as well as thirsty, and had nothing to eat down below.
It was between three and four o'clock that the last guests took their ways. As the dance had been announced to take place from ten till two, the cordialspirit of the invitation had been made good. And at length Dodo found herself alone with Jack.
"Lovely, just lovely," she said, as he unclasped her diamond collar. "Oh, Jack, what a darling world it is!"
"Not tired?"
Dodo faced round, and her brilliance and freshness was a thing to marvel at
"Look at me!" she said. "Tell me if I look tired!"
He laid the collar down on her table: her neck seemed to him so infinitely more beautiful than the gorgeous bauble with which it had been covered, a Beauty released from beauteous bonds.
"Not very. Ah, Dodo, and this is the best of all, when they have all gone, and you are left."
She put her face up to his.
"Why, of course," she said. "Do you suppose I wasn't looking forward to this one minute alone with you all the evening? I was, my dear, though if I said I thought of it all the time, I should be telling a silly lie. But it was anchored firmly in my mind all the time. Oh, what pretty speeches for a middle-aged old couple to make to each other! But the fact is that we get on very nicely together. Good-night, old boy. It's all too lovely. Oh, Daddy! Fancy becoming Daddy! Oh, by the way, did Hugh come? I didn't see him."
"Yes, he sat out a couple of dances with Nadine, and then went away."
"Poor old chap!" said Dodo.
As has been mentioned, Dodo proposed to take her family and a great many other people as well to spend Christmas down at Meering, which at this inclement time of the year often had spells of warm and genial weather. Scattered through the same weeks there were to be several shooting-parties at Winston, but motor-cars, driven at a sufficiently high speed, made light of the difficulty of being in two places at the same time, and on the day after the dance she talked these arrangements over with Nadine.
"In any case," she said, "you can be hostess in one house and I, in the other, so that we can be in two places at once quite easily, so Jack is wrong as usual. Jack dear, I said 'as usual.'"
Jack got up: it was he who had made the ill-considered remark that you can't be in two places at once.
"I heard," he said, "and you may hear, too, that I will not have you going up to North Wales every other day, and flying down again the next. Otherwise you may settle what you like. Personally, I shall be at Winston almost all the time, as there's a heap of business to be done, and as Nadine hates shooting-parties—"
"Oh, a story!" said Nadine.
"Well, my dear, you always do your best to spoil them by making a large quantity of young gentlemen, who have been asked to shoot, sit round you and talk to you instead."
"Papa Jack, if you want to call me a flirt, pray do so. I will forgive you instantly. And to save you trouble, I will tell you what you are driving to—"
"At," said Jack.
"Driving to," repeated Nadine with considerable asperity, for she was aware she was wrong. "You want me to be at Meering, and Mama to be at Winston. So why not say so without calling me a flirt?"
"This daughter of Eve—" began Jack.
"My name is Dorothea," interrupted Dodo, "but they call me Dodo for short. I was never called Eve either before, during, or after baptism."
"All I mean," said Jack, "is that Dorothea is not going to divide the week into week-ends, and be twenty-four hours at Meering and then twenty-four at Winston. The master of the house has spoken."
"What a bully!" said Nadine.
"Then I shan't give you a wedding-present," said Jack.
"Darling Papa Jack, you are not a bully. Let's all go down to Meering in a few days, and stop there over Christmas. Then you and Dorothea shall go to Winston, and I shall be left all alone at Meering, and you shall have your horrid shooting-parties and she shall do the flirting instead of me."
"Strictly speaking, will you be all alone at Meering?"
"Not absolutely. I have asked a few friends."
"Who is going to chaperone you all, darling?" said Dodo.
"We shall chaperone each other, as usual."
"That you and Dodo can settle," said Jack. "Good-by: don't quarrel."
"Indeed, that will be all right, Mama," said Nadine,"or I daresay Edith would come. Anyhow, we were often all together before like that in the summer."
"Yes, my dear, but it's a little different now," said Dodo. "You are engaged to Seymour, and Hugh is going to be there, too."
"Yes, but that makes it all the simpler."
Dodo got up.
"I wonder if you realize that Seymour is in love with you," she said. "In love with you like Hugh is, I mean."
"Perfectly, and he is charming about it," said Nadine. "And I practise every morning being in love with him like that. I think I am getting on very well. I dreamed about him last night. I thought he gave me a great box of jade and when I opened it, there was a rabbit inside—"
"That shows great progress," said Dodo.
"Mama, I think you are laughing at me. But what would you have? I am very fond of him, he is handsome and clever and charming. I expected to find it tiresome when he told me he was in love like that, but it is not the least so."
Memories of the man she had married when she was even younger than Nadine, came unbidden into Dodo's mind: she remembered her first husband's blind, dog-like devotion and her ownennuiwhen he strove to express it, to communicate it to her.
"Nadine," she said, "treat it reverently, my dear. There is nothing in the world that a man can give a woman that is to be compared to that. It is betterthan a rabbit in a jade-box. When I was even younger than you, Papa Jack's cousin gave it me, and—and I didn't reverence it. Don't repeat my irreparable error."
"Weren't you nice to him?" asked Nadine.
"I was a brute beast to him, my darling."
"Oh, I shan't be a brute beast to Seymour," said Nadine. "Besides, I don't suppose you were. You didn't know: wasn't that all?"
Dodo wiped the mist from her eyes.
"No, that wasn't nearly all. But be tender with it, and pray, oh, my dear, pray, that you may catch that—that 'noble fever.' Who calls it that? It is so true. And Hughie? I never saw him last night."
Nadine made a little gesture of despair.
"Ah, dear Hughie," she said. "That is not very happy. That is so largely why I wanted to marry Seymour quickly, in January instead of later, so that it may be done, and Hughie will not fret any more. I hate seeing him suffer, and I can't marry him. It would not be fair: it would be cheating him, as I told him before."
"But you are not cheating Seymour?" asked Dodo.
"Not in the same way. He is not simple, like Hugh. Hugh has only one thought: Seymour has plenty of others. He has such a mind: it is subtle and swift like a woman's. Hughie has the mind of a great retriever dog, and the eyes of one. There is all the difference in the world between them. Seymour knows what he is in for, and still wants it. Hugh thinks he knows, but he doesn't. I understandHugh so well: I know I am right. And I would have given anything to be able to be in love with him. It was a pity!"
There was something here that Dodo had not known and there was a dangerous sound about it.
"Do you mean you wish you were in love with him?" she asked.
"Oh, yes, Mama, but I'm not. I used to practice trying to be for months and months, just as I am practising for Seymour now. La, la, what a world!"
Nadine paused a moment.
"Of course I've quite stopped practising being in love with Hugh since I was engaged to Seymour," she said with an air of the most candid virtue. "Thatwouldbe cheating."
Nadine got up looking like a tall white lily.
"Seymour is so good for me," she said. "He doesn't think much of my brain, you know, and I used to think a good deal of it. He doesn't say I'm stupid, but he hasn't got the smallest respect for my mind. I am not sure whether he is right, but I expect seeing so much of Hugh made me think I was clever. I wonder if being in love makes people stupid. He himself seems to me to be not quite so subtle as he was, and perhaps it's my fault. What do you think, Mama?"
It was the morning after Christmas Day, and Dodo and Jack had just driven off from Meering on their way to Winston, where a shooting-party was to assemble that day, leaving behind them a party that regretted their departure, but did not mean to repine. Edith Arbuthnot had promised to arrive two days before, to take over from Dodo the duty of chaperone, but she had not yet come, nor had anything whatever been heard of her.
"Which shows," said Berts lucidly, "that nothing unpleasant can have happened to mother, or we should have heard."
Until she came Nadine had very kindly consented to act as regent, and in that capacity she appeared in the hall a little while after Dodo had gone, with a large red contadina umbrella, a book or two, and an expressed determination to sit out on the hillside till lunch-time.
"It is boxing-day, I know," she said, "but it is too warm to box, even if I knew how. The English climate has gone quite mad, and I have told my maid to put my fur coat in a box with those little white balls until May. Now I suppose you are all going to play the foolish game with those other little white balls till lunch."
Seymour was seated in the window-sill, stitching busily at a piece of embroidery which Antoinette had started for him.
"I am going to do nothing of the sort," he said. "It is much too fine a day to do anything so limited as to play golf. Besides there is no one here fit to play with. Nadine, will you be very kind and ring for my maid? I am getting in a muddle."
Berts, who was sitting near him, got up, looking rather ill. Also he resented being told he was not fit to play with.
"May I have my perambulator, please, Nadine?" he asked.
Seymour grinned.
"Berts, you are easier to get a rise out of than any one I ever saw," he remarked. "It is hardly worth while fishing for you, for you are always on the feed. And if you attempt to rag, I shall prick you with my needle."
Nadine lingered a little after the others had gone, and as soon as they were alone Seymour put down his embroidery.
"May I come and sit on the hillside with you?" he asked. "Or is the—the box-seat already engaged?"
"Hugh suggested it," she said. "I was going out with him."
Seymour picked up his work again.
"It seems to me I am behaving rather nicely," he said. "At the same time I'm not sure that I am not behaving rather anemically. I haven't seen youmuch since I came down here. And after all I didn't come down here to see Esther."
Nadine frowned, and laid her hand on his arm. But she did not do it quite instinctively. It was clear she thought it would be appropriate. Certainly that was quite clear to Seymour.
"Take that hand away," he said. "You only put it there because it was suitable. You didn't want to touch me."
Nadine removed her hand, as if his coat-sleeve was red-hot.
"You are rather a brute," she said.
"No, I am not, unless it is brutal to tell you what you know already. I repeat that I am behaving rather nicely."
It was owing to him to do him justice.
"I know you are," she said, "you are behaving very nicely indeed. But it is only for a short time, Seymour. I don't mean that you won't always behave nicely, but that there are only a limited number of days on which this particular mode of niceness will be required of you, or be even possible. Hugh is going away next week; after that you and I will be Darby and Joan before he sees me again. You are all behaving nicely: he is too. He just wanted one week more of the old days, when we didn't think, but only babbled and chattered. I can't say that he is reviving them with very conspicuous success: he doesn't babble much, and I am sure he thinks furiously all the time. But he wanted the opportunity: it wasn't much to give him."
"Especially since I pay," said Seymour quickly.
He saw the blood leap to Nadine's face.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I oughtn't to have said that, though it is quite true. But I pay gladly: you must believe that also. And I'm glad Hugh is behaving nicely, that he doesn't indulge in—in embarrassing reflections. Also, when does he go away?"
"Tuesday, I think."
"Morning?" asked Seymour hopefully.
Nadine laughed: he had done that cleverly, making a parody and a farce out of that which a moment before had been quite serious.
"You deserve it should be," she said.
"Then it is sure to be in the afternoon. Now I've finished being spit-fire—I want to ask you something. You haven't been up to your usual form of futile and clannish conversation. You have been rather plaintive and windy—"
"Windy?" asked Nadine.
"Yes, full of sighs, and I should say it was Shakespeare. Are you worrying about anything?"
She looked up at him with complete candor.
"Why, of course, about Hughie," she said. "How should I not?"
"I don't care two straws about that," said Seymour, "as long as your worrying is not connected with me. I mean I am sorry you worry, but I don't care. Of course you worry about Hugh. I understand that, because I understand what Hugh feels, and one doesn't like one's friends feeling like that. But it's not about—about you and me?"
Nadine shook her head and Seymour got up.
"Well, let us all be less plaintive," he said. "I have been rather plaintive too. I think I shall go and take on that great foolish Berts at golf. He will be plaintive afterwards, but nobody minds what Berts is."
Whatever plaintiveness there was about, was certainly not shared by the weather, which, if it was mad, as Nadine had suggested, was possessed by a very genial kind of mania. An octave of spring-like days, with serene suns, and calm seas, and light breezes from the southwest had decreed an oasis in midwinter, warm halcyon days made even in December the snowdrops and aconites to blossom humbly and bravely, and set the birds to busy themselves with sticks and straws as if nesting-time was already here. New grass already sprouted green among the grayness of the older growths, and it seemed almost cynical to doubt that spring was not verily here. Indeed where Hugh and Nadine sat this morning, it was May not March that seemed to have invaded and conquered December; there lay upon the hillside a vernal fragrance that set a stray bee or two buzzing round the honied sweetness of the gorse with which the time of blossoming is never quite over, and to-day all the winds were still, and no breeze stirred in the bare slender birches, or set the spring-like stalks of the heather quivering. Only, very high up in the unplumbed blue of the zenith thin fleecy clouds lay stretched in streamers and combed feathers of white,showing that far above them rivers of air swept headlong and swift.
Nadine had a favorite nook on this steep hillside below the house, reached by a path that stretched out to the south of the bay. It was a little hollow, russet-colored now with the bracken, of the autumn, and carpeted elsewhere by the short-napped velvet of the turf. Just in front, the cliff plunged sheer down to the beach, where they had so often bathed in the summer, and where the reef of tumbled sandstone rocks stretched out into the waveless sea, like brown amphibious monsters that were fish at high tide and grazing beasts at the ebb. Down there below, a school of gulls hovered and fished with wheelings of white wings, but not a ripple lapped the edges of the rocks. Only the sea breathed softly as in sleep, stirring the fringes of brown weed that had gathered there, but no thinnest line of white showed breaking water. Along the sandy foreshore of the bay there was the same stillness: heaven and earth and ocean lay as if under an enchantment. The sand dunes opposite, and the hills beyond, lay reflected in the sea, as if in the tranquillity of some land-locked lake. There was a spell, a hush over the world, to be broken by God-knew-what gentle awakening of activity, or catastrophic disturbance.
The two had walked to this withdrawn hollow of the hill almost in silence. He had offered to carry her books for her, but she had said that they were of no weight, and after pause he had announced a fragmentof current news to which she had no comment to add, but had noticed the windless, unnatural calm of the day. Something in this unusual stillness of weather had set her nerves a-quiver, and perhaps the position she was in, bound as she was to Seymour, not struggling against it, but quite accepting it, made ordinary intercourse difficult. For she had it all her own way, Hugh was behaving with exemplary discretion, Seymour was behaving with admirable tolerance, and just because they both made her own part so easy for her, she, womanlike, found the smoothed-out performance of it to be difficult. Had she instructed each of them how to behave, her instructions were carried out to the letter's foot: they were impeccable as lover and rejected lover, and therefore she wanted something different. The situation was completely of her own making: her actors played their parts exactly as she would have them play, and yet there was something wanting. They were too well-drilled, too word-perfect, too certain to say all she had designed for them from the right spot, and in the right voice. True, for a moment just now Seymour had shown signs of individualism when he called attention to the fact that he was behaving very nicely, and that he would be glad when the scene was over, but Hugh had shown none whatever, except for the fact that he had been asked to be allowed a few days like the old days agone before he left England. He had assured her in the summer that he would never seek to get back into the atmosphere of unthinking intimacy again, but, poor fellow, when there were to be so few days lefthim, before the situation was sealed and made irrevocable, his heart had cried out against the edict of his will and, foolish though it might be, he had asked for this week of Meering days. But from his point of view, no less than from hers, they had been but a parody of what he had hoped for, they had been frozen and congealed by the reserve and restraint that he dared not break. Below that surface-ice, he knew how swiftly ran the torrent in his soul, but the ice quite stretched from shore to shore. It was this which disappointed Nadine: for she equally with Hugh had expected that he could realize the impossible, and that he, loving her as he did and knowing that she was so soon to give herself to another man, could cast off the knowledge of that, and resume for a space the unshackled intimacy of old. The Ethiopian and the leopard would have found their appropriate feats far easier, for it was Hugh's bones and blood he had to change, not mere skin and hair, and the very strength of the bond that bound him to her made the insuperableness of the barrier. He felt every moment the utter failure of his attempt, while she, who thought she understood him so well, had no notion how radical the failure was. Not loving, she could not understand. He knew that now, and thought bitterly of the little fireworks of words she had once lit for him on that same text, believing that by the light of those quick little squibs, she could read his heart.
So, when they were settled in their nook, once again she tried to recapture the old ease. She pointed downwards over the edge of the cliff.
"Oh, Hughie, what a morning," she said. "Quiet sea and gulls, and bees and gorse. What a summer in December, a truce with winter, isn't it? I've brought a handful of nice books. Shall I read?"
"Oh, soon," said he. "But your summer in December isn't going to last long. There is a wind coming, and a big one. Look at the mare's-tails of clouds up above. Can't you smell the wind coming? I always can. And the barometer has dropped nearly an inch since last night."
He put back his head and sniffed, moving his nostrils rather like a horse.
"Oh, how fascinating," said Nadine. "If I do that shall I smell the wind?"
It made her sneeze instead.
"I don't think much of that," she said. "I expect you looked at the barometer before you smelt the wind. Besides, how is it possible to smell the wind before there is any wind to smell? And when it comes you feel it instead."
"It will be a big storm," said Hugh.
Even as he spoke some current of air stirred the surface of the sea below them, shattering the reflections. It was as if some great angel of the air had breathed on the polished mirror of the water, dimming it. Next moment the breath cleared away again, and the surface was as bright and unwavering as before. But some half-dozen of the gulls that had been hovering and chiding there, rose into the higher air, leaving their feeding-ground, and after circling round once or twice, glided away over the sand dunes inland. Almostimmediately afterwards, another relay followed, and another, till the bay that had been so populous with birds was quite deserted. They did not pause in their flight, but went straight inland, in decreasing specks of white till they vanished altogether.
"The gulls seem to think so, too," said Hugh.
"Then they are perfectly wrong," said Nadine. "The instincts Nature implants in animals are almost invariably incorrect. For instance, the Siberian tigers at the Zoo. For several years they never grew winter coats, and all the naturalists went down on their knees and said: 'O wonderful Mother Nature! their instincts tell them this is a milder climate than Siberia.' But this winter, the mildest ever known, the poor things have grown the thickest winter coats ever seen. So all the naturalists had to get up again, and dust their trousers where they had knelt down."
"Put your money on the gulls and me," said Hugh. "Look there again, far away along the sands."
To Nadine, the most attractive feature about Hugh was his eyes. They had a far-away look in them that had nothing whatever spiritual or sentimental in it, but was simply due to the fact that he had extraordinarily long sight. She obediently screwed up her eyes and followed his direction, but saw nothing whatever of import.
"It's getting nearer: you'll see it soon," said Hugh.
Soon she saw. A whirlwind of sand was advancing towards them along the beach below, revolving giddily. As it came nearer they could see the loose pieces of seaweed and jetsam being caught up into it.It came forward in a straight line, perhaps as fast as a man might run, getting taller as it approached and gyrating more violently. Then in its advance it came into collision with the wall of cliff on which they sat, and was shattered. They could hear, like the sound of rain, the sand and rubbish of which it was composed falling upon the rocks.
"Oh, but did you invent that, Hughie?" she said. "It was quite a pretty trick. Was it a sign to this faithless generation, which is me, that you could smell the wind? Or did the gulls do it? Prophesy to me again!"
He lay back on the dry grass.
"Trouble coming, trouble coming," he said.
"Just the storm?" she asked. "Or is this more prophecy?"
"Oh, just the storm," he said. "I always feel depressed and irritated before a storm."
"Are you depressed and irritated?" she asked. "Sorry. I thought it was such a nice, calm morning."
Hugh took up a book at random, which proved to be Swinburne's "Poems and Ballads." At random he opened it, and saw the words:
"And though she saw all heaven in flower above,She would not love."
"Oh, do read," said Nadine. "Anything: just where you opened it."
Hugh sat up, a bitterness welling in his throat. He read:
"And though she saw all heaven in flower above,She would not love."
Nadine flushed slightly, and was annoyed with herself for flushing. She could not help knowing what must be in his mind, and tried to make a diversion.
"I don't think she was to be blamed," she said. "A quantity of flowers stuck all over the sky would look very odd, and I don't think would kindle anybody's emotions. That sounds rather a foolish poem. Read something else."
Hugh shut the book.
"'Though all we fell on sleep, she would not weep,' is the end of another stanza," he said.
Nadine looked at him for a long moment, her lips parted as if to speak, but they only quivered; no words came. There was no doubt whatever as to what Hugh meant, but still, with love unawakened, and with her tremendous egotism rampant, she saw no further than he was behaving very badly to her. He had come down here to renew the freedom and intimacy of old days: till to-day he had been silent, stupid, but when he spoke like this, silence and stupidity were better. She was sorry for him, very sorry, but the quiver of her lips half at least consisted of self-pity that he made her suffer too.
"You mean me," she said, speaking at length, and speaking very rapidly. "It is odious of you. You know quite well I am sorry: I have told you so. I cried: I remember I cried when you made that visit to Winston, and the cow looked at me. I daresay youare suffering damned torments, but you are being unfair. Though I don't love you—like that, I wish I did. Do you think I make you suffer for my own amusement? Is it fun to see my best friend like that? Is it my fault? You have chosen to love this heartless person, me. If I had no liver, or no lungs, instead of no heart, you would be sorry for me. Instead you reproach me. Oh, not in words, but you meant me, when you said that. Where is the book out of which you read? There, I do that to it: I send it into the sea, and when the gulls come back they will peck it, or the sea will drown it first, and the wind which you smell will blow it to America. You don't understand: you are more stupid than the gulls."
She made one swift motion with her arm, and "Poems and Ballads" flopped in the sea as the book dived clear of the cliff into the high-water sea below.
More imminent than the storm which Hugh had prophesied was the storm in their souls. He, with his love baffled, raged at the indifference with which she had given herself to another, she, distrusting for the first time, the sense and wisdom of her gift, raged at him for his rebellion against her choice.
"Don't speak," she said, "for I will tell you more things first. You are jealous of Seymour—"
Hugh threw back his head and laughed.
"Jealous of Seymour?" he cried. "Do you really think I would marry you if you consented in the spirit in which you are taking him? Once, it is true, I wanted to. You refused to cheat me—those were your words—and I begged you to cheat me, I imploredyou to cheat me, so long as you gave me yourself.
"I didn't care how you took me, so long as you took me. But now I wouldn't take you like that. Now, for this last week, I have seen you and him together, and I know what it is like."
"You haven't seen us together much," said Nadine.
"I have seen you enough: I told you before that your marriage was a farce. I was wrong. It's much worse than a farce. You needn't laugh at a farce. But you can't help laughing, at least I can't, at a tragedy so ludicrous."
Nadine got up. The situation was as violent and sudden as some electric storm. What had been pent-up in him all this week, had exploded: something in her exploded also.
"I think I hate you," she said.
"I am sure I despise you," said he.
He got up also, facing her. It was like the bursting of a reservoir: the great sheet of quiet water was suddenly turned into torrents and foam.
"I despise you," he said again. "You intended me to love you; you encouraged me to let myself go. All the time you held yourself in, though there was nothing to hold in; you observed, you dissected. You cut down with your damned scalpels and lancets to my heart, and said, 'How interesting to see it beating!' Then you looked coolly over your shoulder and saw Seymour, and said, 'He will do: he doesn't love me and I don't love him!' But now he does love you, and you probably guess that. So, very soon, yourlancet will come out again, and you will see his heart beating. And again you will say, 'How interesting!' But there will be blood on your lancet. You are safe, of course, from reprisals. No one can cut into you, and see your blood flow, because you haven't any blood. You are something cold and hellish. You often said you understood me too well. Now you understand me even better. Toast my heart, fry it, eat it up! I am utterly at your mercy, and you haven't got any mercy. But I can manage to despise you: I can't do much else."
Nadine stood quite still, breathing rather quickly, and that movement of the nostrils, which she had tried to copy from him, did not make her sneeze now.
"It is well we should know each other," she said with an awful cold bitterness, "even though we shall know each other for so little time more. It is always interesting to see the real person—"
"If you mean me," he said hotly, "I always showed you the real person. I have never acted to you, nor pretended. And I have not changed. I am not responsible if you cannot see!"
Nadine passed her tongue over her lips. They seemed hard and dry, not flexible enough for speech.
"It was my blindness then," she said. "But we know where we are now. I hate you, and you despise me. We know now."
Then suddenly an impulse, wholy uncontrollable, and coming from she knew not where, seized and compelled her. She held out both her hands to him.
"Hughie, shake hands with me," she said. "Thishas been nightmare talk, a bad thing that one dreams. Shake hands with me, and that will wake us both up. What we have been saying to each other is impossible: it isn't real or true. It is utter nonsense we have been talking."
How he longed to take her hands and clasp them and kiss them! How he longed to wipe off all he had said, all she had said. But somehow it was beyond him to do it. It was by honest impulse that the words of hate and contempt had risen to their lips; the words might be canceled, but what could not be quenched, until some mistake was shown in the workings of their souls, was the thought-fire that had made them boil up. She stood there, lovely and welcoming, the girl whom his whole soul loved, whose conduct his whole soul despised, eager for reconciliation, yearning for a mutual forgiveness. But her request was impossible. God could not cancel the bitterness that had made him speak. He threw his hands wide.
"It's no good," he said. "I am sorry I said certain things, for there was no use in saying them. But I can't help feeling that which made me say them. Cancel the speeches by all means. Let the words be unsaid with all my heart."
"But let us be prepared to say them again?" said Nadine quietly. "It comes to that."
"Yes, it comes to that. I am not jealous of Seymour. I laughed when you suggested it; and I am not jealous, because you don't love him. If you loved him, I should be jealous, and I should say, 'God bless you!' As it is—"
"As it is, you say 'Damn you,'" said Nadine.
Hugh shook his head.
"You don't understand anything about love," he said. "How can you until you know a little bit what it means? I could no more think or say 'Damn you,' than I could say 'God bless you.'"
Nadine had withdrawn from her welcome and desire for reconciliation.
"Neither would make any difference to me," she said.
"I don't suppose they would, since I make no difference to you," said he. "But there is no sense in adding hypocrisy to our quarrel."
Nadine sat down again on the sweet turf.
"I cancel my words, then, even if you do not," she said. "I don't hate you. I can't hate you, any more than you can despise me. We must have been talking in nightmare."
"I am used to nightmare," said Hugh. "I have had six months of nightmare. I thought that I could wake; I thought I could—could pinch myself awake by seeing you and Seymour together. But it's still nightmare."
Nadine looked up at him.
"Oh, Hughie, if I loved you!" she said.
Hugh looked at her a moment, and then turned away from her. Outside of his control certain muscles worked in his throat; he felt strangled.
"I can say 'God bless you' for that, Nadine," he said huskily. "I do say it. God bless you, my darling."
Nadine had leaned her face on her hands when he turned away. She divined why he turned from her, she heard the huskiness of his voice, and the thought of Hughie wanting to cry gave her a pang that she had never yet known the like of. There was a long silence, she sitting with hand-buried face, he seeing the sunlight swim and dance through his tears. Then he touched her on the shoulder.
"So we are friends again in spite of ourselves," he said. "Just one thing more then, since we can talk without—without hatred and contempt. Why did you refuse to marry me, because you did not love me, and yet consent to marry Seymour like that?"
She looked up at him.
"Oh, Hughie, you fool," she said. "Because you matter so much more."
He smiled back at her.
"I don't want to wish I mattered less," he said.
"You couldn't matter less."
He had no reply to this, and sat down again beside her. After a little Nadine turned to him.
"And I said I thought it was such a calm morning," she said.
"And I said that storm was coming," said he.
She laid her hand on his knee.
"And will there be some pleasant weather now?" she said. "Oh, Hughie, what wouldn't I give to get two or three of the old days back again, when we babbled and chattered and were so content?"
"Speak for yourself, miss," said Hugh. "And for God's sake don't let us begin again. I shall quarrelwith you again, and—and it gives me a pain. Look here, it's a bad job for me all this, but I came here to get an oasis: also to pinch myself awake: metaphors are confusing things. Bring on your palms and springs. They haven't put in an appearance yet. Let's try anyhow."
Nadine sat up.
"Talking of the weather—" she began.
"I wasn't."
"Yes, you were, before we began to exchange compliments."
She broke off suddenly.
"Oh, Hughie, what has happened to the sun?" she said.
"I know it is the moon," said Hugh.
"You needn't quote that. The shrew is tamed for a time. It's a shrew-mouse, a lady mouse with a foul temper; do you think? About the sun—look."
It was worth looking at. Right round it, two or three diameters away, ran a complete halo, a pale white line in the abyss of the blue sky. The little feathers of wind-blown clouds had altogether vanished, and the heavens were untarnished from horizon to zenith. But the heat of the rays had sensibly diminished, and though the sunshine appeared as whole-hearted as ever, it was warm no longer.
"This is my second conjuring-trick," said Hugh. "I make you a whirlwind, and now I make you a ring round the sun, and cut off the heating apparatus. Things are going to happen. Look at the sea, too. My orders."
The sea was also worth looking at. An hour ago it had been turquoise blue, reflecting the sky. Now it seemed to reflect a moonstone. It was gray-white, a corpse of itself, as it had been. Then even as they looked, it seemed to vanish altogether. The horizon line was blotted out, for the sky was turning gray also, and both above and below, over the cliff-edge, there was nothing but an invisible gray of emptiness. The sun halo spread both inwards and outwards, so that the sun itself peered like a white plate through some layer of vapor that had suddenly formed across the whole field of the heavens. And still not a whistle or sigh of wind sounded.
Hugh got up.
"As I have forgotten what my third conjuring trick is," he said, "I think we had better go home. It looks as if it was going to be a violent one."
He paused a moment, peering out into the invisible sea. Then there came a shrill faint scream from somewhere out in the dim immensity.
"Hold on to me, Nadine," he cried. "Or lie down."
He felt her arm in his, and they stood there together.
The scream increased in volume, becoming a maniac bellow. Then, like a solid wall, the wind hit them. It did not begin, out of the dead calm, as a breeze; it did not grow from breeze to wind; it came from seawards, like the waters of the Red Sea on the hosts of Pharaoh, an overwhelming wall of riot and motion. Nadine's books, all but the one she had cast over thecliff's edge, turned over, and lay with flapping pages; then like wounded birds they were blown along the hillside. The hat she had brought out with her, but had not put on, rose straight in the air, and vanished. Hugh, with Nadine on his arm, had leaned forward against this maniac blast, and the two were not thrown down by it. The path to the house lay straight up the steep hillside behind them, and turning they were so blown up it, that they stumbled in trying to keep pace to that irresistible torrent of wind that hurried them along. It took them but five minutes to get up the steep brae, while it had taken them ten minutes to walk down, and already there flew past them seaweed and sand and wrack, blown up from the beach below. Above, the sun was completely veiled, a riot of cloud had already obscured the higher air, but below, all was clear, and it looked as if a stone could be tossed upon the hills on the farther side of the bay.
They had to cross the garden before they came to the house. Already two trees had fallen before this hurricane-blast, and even as they hurried over the lawn, an elm, screaming in all its full-foliaged boughs, leaned towards them, and cracked and fell. Then a chimney in the house itself wavered in outline, and next moment it crashed down upon the roof, and a covey of flying tiles fell round them.
It required Hugh's full strength to close the door again, after they had entered, and Nadine turned to him, flushed and ecstatic.
"Hughie, how divine!" she said. "It can't be measured, that lovely force. It's infinite. I neverknew there was strength like that. Why have we come in? Let's go out again. It's God: it's just God."
His eyes, too, were alight with it and his soul surged to his lips.
"Yes, God," he said. "And that's what love is. Rather—rather big, isn't it?"
And then for the first time, Nadine understood. She did not feel, but she was able to understand.
"Oh, Hughie," she said, "how splendid it must be to feel like that!"
The section of the party which had gone to play golf on this changeable morning, were blown home a few minutes later, and they all met at lunch. Edith Arbuthnot had arrived before any of them got back, and asked if the world had been blown away. As it had not, she expressed herself ready to chaperone anybody.
"And Berts is happy too," said Seymour, when he came in very late for lunch, since he wished to change all his clothes first, as they 'smelled of wind,' "because Berts has at last driven a ball two hundred yards. Don't let us mention the subject of golf. It would be tactless. There was no wind when he accomplished that remarkable feat, at least not more wind than there is now. What there was was behind him, and he topped his ball heavily. I said 'Good shot.' But I have tact. Since I have tact, I don't say to Nadine that it was a good day to sit out on the hillside and read. I would scorn the suggestion."
A sudden sound as of drums on the window interrupted this tactful speech, and the panes streamed.
"Anyhow I shall play golf," said Edith. "What does a little rain matter? I'm not made of paper."
"That's a good thing, Mother," said Berts.
"If you want to win a match, play with Berts," said Seymour pensively. "But if you only want to be blown away and killed, anybody will do. I shall get on with my embroidery this afternoon, and my maid will sit by me and hold my hand. Dear me, I hope the house is well built."
For the moment it certainly seemed as if this was not the case, for the whole room shook under a sudden gust more appalling than anything they had felt yet. Then it died away again, and once more the windows were deluged with sheets of rain flung, it seemed, almost horizontally against them. For a few minutes only that lasted, and then the wind settled down, so it seemed, to blow with a steady uniform violence.
Nadine had finished lunch and gone across to the window. The air was perfectly clear, and the hills across the bay seemed again but a stone's-throw away. Overhead, straight across the sky, stretched a roof of cloud, but away to the West, just above the horizon line, there was an arch of perfectly clear sky, of pale duck's-egg green, and out of this it seemed as out of a funnel the fury of the gale was poured. The garden was strewn with branches and battered foliage and the long gravel path flooded by the tempest of rain was discharging itself upon the lawn, where pools of bright yellow water were spreading. Across it too lay thewreck of the fallen trees, the splintered corpses of what an hour ago had been secure and living things, waiting, warm and drowsy, for the tingle of springtime and rising sap. Like the bodies of young men on a battlefield, with their potentialities of love and life unfulfilled, there, by the blast of the insensate fury of the wind they lay stricken and dead, and the birds would no more build in their branches, nor make their shadowed nooks melodious with love-songs. No more would summer clothe them in green, nor autumn in their liveries of gold: they were dead things and at the most would make a little warmth on the hearth, before the feathery ash, all that was left of them, was dispersed on the homeless winds.
But the pity of this blind wantonness of destruction was more than compensated for in the girl's mind by the savagery and force of the unlooked-for hurricane, and she easily persuaded Hugh to come out with her and be beaten and stormed upon. Always sensitive to the weather, this portentous storm had aroused in her a sort of rapture of restlessness: she rejoiced in it, and somehow feared it for its ruthlessness and indifference.
They took the path that led downward to the beach, for it was the tumult and madness of the sea that Nadine especially wished to observe. Though as yet the gale had been blowing only an hour or two, it had raised a monstrous sea, and long before they came down within sight of it, they heard the hoarse thunder and crash of broken waters penetrating the screaming bellow of the gale, and the air was salt with spray andflying foam. To the West there was still clear that arch of open sky through which the gale poured; somewhere behind the clouds to the left of it, the sun was near to its setting, and a pale livid light shone out of it, catching the tops of the breakers as they streamed landwards. Between these foam-capped tops lay gray hollows and darknesses, out of which would suddenly boil another crest of mountainous water. The tide was only at half flood, but the sea, packed by the astounding wind, was already breaking at the foot of the cliffs themselves, while in the troughs of the waves as they rode in, there appeared and disappeared again the scattered rocks from some remote cliff-fall, that were strewn about the beach. Sometimes a wave would strike one of these full, and be shattered against it, spouting heavenwards in a column of solid water; oftener the breakers swept over them unbroken, until with menace of their toppling crests they flung themselves with huge tongues of hissing water on the rocks at the foot of the cliffs. Then with the scream of the withdrawn shingle the spent water was furiously dragged back to the base of the next incoming wave, and was caught up again to hurl itself against the land. Sometimes a sudden blast of wind would cut off the crest of the billow even as it curled over, and fling it, a monstrous riband of foam, through the air, sometimes two waves converging rose up in a fountain of water, and fell back without having reached the shore. This way and that, rushing and rolling, in hills and valleys of water, the maddened sea crashed and thundered, and every moment the sprayrose more densely from the infernal cauldron. Then as the tide rose higher, the waves came in unbroken, and hurled their tons of water against the face of the cliff itself. Above, continuous as a water-fall, rose the roar and scream of the gale, ominous, insensate, bewildering: it was as if the elements were being transferred back into the chaos out of which they came.
Nadine and Hugh, clinging together for support, stood there for some minutes, half-way down the side of the cliff, watching the terror and majesty of the spectacle, she utterly absorbed in it and cruelly unconscious of him. Then, since they could no longer get down to the base of the cliff, they skirted along it till they came to the sandy foreshore of the bay. There from water-level they could better see the hugeness of the tumult, the strange hardness and steepness of the wave-slopes. It was as if a line of towers and great buildings were throwing themselves down upon the sands, and breaking up into walls and eddies of foam-sheeted water, while behind them there rose again another street of toppling buildings, which again shattered itself on the beach. Great balls of foam torn from the spent water trundled by them on the sands, and bunches of brown seaweed torn from the rocks were flung in handfuls at their feet. Once from the arch in the sky westwards, a dusky crimson light suddenly burned, turning the wave crests to blood, and then as the darkness of the early winter sunset gathered, they turned, and were blown up the steep cliff-path again, wet and buffeted. Conversationhad been altogether impossible, and they could but communicate with pointing finger, and nodding head. Yet, somehow, to be together thus, cut off by the rise of winds and waves, from all sense of the existence of others, in that pandemonium of tempest, gave to Hugh at least a closer feeling of intimacy with Nadine, than he had ever yet known. She clung to him, she sheltered under his shoulder, unconsciously, instinctively, as an animal trusts his master, without knowing it is trusting. And that to his aching hunger for her was something....
But the gale was to bring them closer together yet.
All the evening and all night long the gale continued. Now and then the constant scream of it would leap upwards a couple of octaves as a shriller blast struck the houses and again for a moment the mad chant would drop into silence. From time to time like a tattoo of drums the rain battered at the window-panes, but through it all, whether in hushes of the wind or when its fiercest squall descended, the beat of the surf sounded ever louder. And all through the night, the result perhaps of his agitated talk with Nadine in the morning, or of his intimate gale-encompassed isolation with her in the afternoon, Hugh turned and tossed midway between sleeping and waking. Sometimes he seemed to himself to be yelling round the house among the spirits of the air seeking admittance, sometimes it seemed to him that he was being beaten on by the hammer of the surf, and whether he was homelessly wandering outside among the spirits of the wind, or was being done to death by those incessant blows of the beating waves, it was Nadine that he sought. And as the night went on the anguish of his desire grew ever more acute, and the beating of the waves a more poignant torture, until while yet no faintest lightening of winter's dawn hadtouched the gross blackness of the night, he roused himself completely, and sat up in bed and turned on his light.
To him awake the riot outside was vastly magnified compared with the dimmer trouble of his dream; so was his yearning for Nadine. His windows looked eastwards away from the quarter of the gale, and getting out of bed, he lifted a sash, and peered out. Nothing whatever could be seen; it was as if he gazed into the darkness of the nethermost pit, out of which blown by the blast of the anger of God came the shrieks of souls that might not rest, driven forever along, drenched by the river of their unavailing tears. Even though he was awake the strange remote horror of nightmare was on him, and it was in vain that he tried to comfort himself, by saying, like some child repeating a senseless lesson, "A deep depression has reached us traveling eastwards from the Atlantic." He tried to read, but still the nightmare-sense possessed him, and he fancied he had to read a whole line, neither more nor less, between the poundings of the waves. Then as usually happens towards the end of these Walpurgis nights, he got back to bed again, and slept calmly and dreamlessly.
He and Seymour alone out of the party put in an appearance at breakfast time: it seemed probable that the others were compensating themselves for a disturbed night by breakfasting upstairs, and afterwards the two went out together to look at the doings of the night. By this time the wind had considerably moderated, the rain had ceased altogether, and the thickpall of cloud that had last night overlain the sky was split up into fragments and islands, and flying vapors, so that here and there pale shafts of sunlight shone upon land and sea. But the thunder of the surf had immeasurably increased, and when they went to the cliff-edge which he and Nadine had passed down yesterday afternoon, they looked upon an indescribable confusion of tremendous waters. The tide was low, but the bay was still packed with the sea heaped-up by the wind, and the end of the reef with its big scattered rocks was out beyond the walls of breaking water. The sea appeared to have been driven distraught by the stress of the night; cross currents carried the waves in all directions: it almost seemed that some, shrinking from the wall of cliff in front, were trying to beat out to sea again. Quite out, away from land, they jousted and sparred with each other, not jestingly, but, it seemed, with some grim purpose, as if they were practising their strength for deeds of earnest violence, as for some fierce civil war among themselves. It was round the furthest rocks of the reef that this sport of billowy giants most centered: right across the bay ran some current that set on to the end of the reef, and there it met with the waves coming straight in-shore from the direction of the blowing of the gale. Then they spouted and foamed together, yet not in play: some purpose, so regular were these rounds of combat, seemed to underlie their wrestlings.
Hugh threw away a charred peninsula of paper, once a cigarette, which the wind had smoked for him.He never had felt much sense of comradeship in the presence of Seymour, and their after-breakfast stroll had no more virtue than was the reward of necessary politeness.
"There is something rather senseless in this display of wasted energy," said Seymour. "Each of those waves would probably cook a dinner, if its force was reasonably employed."
Hugh, in spite of his restless night, had something of Nadine's thrilled admiration for the turmoil, and felt slightly irritated.
"They would certainly cook your goose or mine," he remarked.
Seymour wondered whether it would be well to say, "Do you allude to Nadine as our goose?" but, perhaps wisely, refrained.
"That would be to the good," he said. "Goose is a poor bird at any time, but uneatable unless properly roasted."
Hugh did not attend to this polite rejoinder, for he had caught sight of something incredible not so far out at sea, and he focused his eyes instantly on it. For the moment, what he thought he had seen completely vanished; directly afterwards he caught sight of it again, a fishing-boat with mast broken, reeling drunkenly on the top of a huge wave. His quick, long-sighted eye told him in that one moment of slewing deck that it presented to them, before it was swallowed from sight in the trough of the next wave, that there were two figures on it, clinging to the stump of the broken mast.
"Look," he said, "there is a boat out there."
It rose again to the crest of a wave and again plunged giddily out of sight. The incoming tide was bearing it swiftly shorewards, swiftly also the cross-current that set towards the end of the reef was bearing it there.
Hugh did not pause. He laid hold of Seymour by the shoulder.
"Run up to the house," he said, "and fetch a couple of men. Bring down with you as much rope as you can find. Don't say anything to Nadine and the women. But be quick."
He ran down to the beach himself, as Seymour went on his errand, seeing at once that there were two things that might happen to this stricken wanderer of a ship. In one case, the incoming tide with its following waves might bear it straight on to the sandy beach; in the other the cross-current, in which now it was laboring, might carry it across to the reef where the waves were wrestling and roaring together. It was in case of this first contingency that he ran down upon the sands to be ready. The beach was steep there: it would ride it until it was flung down by that fringe of toppling, hard-edged breakers. In that tumble and scurry of surf it might easily be that strong arms could drag out of the fury of the backwash whatever was cast there. The boat, a decked fishing-boat, would be dumped down on the sand: there would be a half-minute, or a quarter-minute, when something might be done. On the other hand this greedy sucking current might carry it on to thereef. Then, by the mercy of God, a rope might be of some avail, if a man could reach them.
As he ran down the cliff, a sudden splash of sunlight broke through the clouds, making a bright patch of illumination round the boat as it swung over another breaker. There was only one figure there now, lying full length on the deck, and clinging with both hands to the stump of the mast. Then once again the water broke over it, lucidly green in the sunlight, and all Hugh's heart went out to that solitary prone body, lying there helpless in the hands of God and the gale. His heart stood still to see whether when next the drifting boat reappeared it would be tenantless, and with a sob in his throat, "Oh, thank God," he said, when he saw it again.
It was still doubtful whether the current or the tide would win, and Hugh pulled off his coat and waistcoat, and threw them on the beach, in order to be able to rush in unimpeded of hand and muscle. Then with a strange sickness of heart, he saw that the boat was getting in nearer, but moving sideways across to the left, where the reef lay. And he waited, in the suspense of powerlessness. The wind now had quite abated; it was as if it had done its work, in making ready this theater of plunging water; now waited to observe what drama should be moving across the stage of billows.
Soon from behind, he heard across the shingle at the top of the beach the approach of the others. Seymour had brought Berts and two men with him, and they brought with them half-a-dozen long coilsof rope, part of the fire-rescue apparatus of the house. While watching and waiting for them, his plan was quite made. It was no longer possible to hope that the boat would come to land on the sandy beach, where without doubt two or three able-bodied men could rescue any one cast up, but was driving straight on to the rocks. Once there, rescue was all but impossible; the only chance lay in reaching it before it was smashed to atoms on the immense boulders and sharp-toothed fangs. Quickly he tied three of the ropes together, and fastened the end round his body just below the shoulders, and took off his boots.
"I'm going in," he said; "you all hold the rope and pay it out. If I come near the end of it, tie a fresh piece on—"
Suddenly across the shingle came footsteps, and a cry. Nadine ran down the beach towards them. She was clad only in a dressing-gown, that rainbow-hued one in which one night last June she had entertained a company in her bedroom, and slippers so that her ankles showed white and bare. She saw what Hugh intended, and something within her, some denizen of her soul, who till that moment had been unknown to her, took possession of her.
"No, Hughie, not you, not you," she screamed. "Seymour, anybody, but not you!"
The cry had come from her very heart; she could no more have stifled it than she could have stopped the beating of it. Then, suddenly, she realized what she had said, and sank down on the beach, burying her face in her hands.
"Take care of her, Seymour," said Hugh, and there was more heroism required for these few little words, than for the desperate feat he was about to attempt. He did not look round again, nor wish to say anything more, and there was no time to lose.
"Now, you chaps!" he called out, and ran forward to the edge of the water.
At the moment an immense billow poised and curled just in front of him. The wash of it covered him waist-deep and he floundered and staggered as the rush of water went by him. Then as it drew out to sea again he ran with it, to where another breaker was toppling in front of him. With a low outward spring he dived into the hollowed water head foremost and passed through it.
The beach was very steep here, and coming up again through and beyond the line of surf, he found himself in deep water. Behind him lay the breaking line of billows, but in front the huge mountains of water rose and fell unbroken. As he was lifted up on the first of these, swimming strongly against it, he saw not a hundred yards from him his helpless and drifting goal. He could see, too, who it was who lay there, desperately clinging to the stump of the mast with white slender wrists; it was quite a young boy. And at that sight, Hugh's pity and determination were strung higher than ever. Here was a young creature, in desperate plight among these desperate waterways, one who should not yet have known what peril meant. And at the risk of spending a little strength, when strength was so valuable, Hugh gave agreat shout of notice and encouragement. Then he was swallowed up in the trough of a wave again. But when he rose next, he saw that the boy had raised his head, and that he saw him.
The current that swept towards the rocks, swept also a little shorewards, and Hugh measuring the distance between the boat and the fatal breakers with his eye, and measuring again the distance between the boat and himself, knew that he must exert himself to the point of exhaustion to get to the boat before it was drifted to its final destruction. But as he swam he knew he had made a mistake in not taking off his shirt and trousers also and giving himself an unimpeded use of his limbs. His trousers particularly dragged and hampered him; then suddenly he remembered a water-game at which he used to be expert at school, namely taking a header into the bathing-place in flannels and undressing in the water. It seemed worth while to sacrifice a few seconds to accomplish that, and, as cool and collected as when he was doing it for mere sport at school, he trod water, slipped his legs out of his trousers, and saw them float away from him. Then twice as vigorous, he struck out again. His shirt did not bother him: besides, the rope was tied round his chest, and there was not time for more disencumbrances.
For the next five minutes, for he was fighting the tide, he just swam and swam. Occasionally rising to a wave it seemed to him that he was making no headway at all, but somehow that did not discourage him. The only necessity that concerned him wasthat he must go till he could go no longer. And all the time, like a dream and yet like a draught of wine to him was Nadine's involuntary cry, "No, Hughie, not you!" He did not trouble to guess what that meant. He was only conscious that it invigorated and inspired him.
The minutes passed; once the rope seemed to jerk him back, and he found himself swearing underneath his breath. Then, though it was terribly heavy, he realized that it was free again, and that he was not being hampered. Then he suddenly found himself much closer to the boat than he had any idea of, and this, though he was getting very tired, gave him a new supply of nervous force. He swam into three valleys more, he surmounted three ridges of water, and lo, the boat was on the peaks directly opposite to him, and from opposite sides they plunged into the same valley together. Not fifty yards off to the left, incredible fountains of foam spouted and aspired.
Then, oh, blessed moment! he caught hold of the side of the lurching fishing-smack, and a pale little boyish frightened face was close to his. He clung for a second to the side, and they went up and down two big billows together. Then he got breath enough to speak.
"Now, little chap," he said, "don't be frightened, for we're all right. Catch hold of the rope here, close to my body, and just jump in. Yes, that's right. Plucky boy! Take hold with both hands of the rope. Not so cold, is it?"
Once again, before he let go of the boat, they roseto an immense wall of water, and Hugh saw the figures on the beach, four of them standing in the wash of the sea, paying out the rope, and one standing there also a little apart waving seawards, clapping her hands. And what she said came to him clear and distinct across the hills and valleys of destruction.
"Oh, Hughie, well done, well done!" she cried.
"Now pull, all of you, pull him in!"
He was glad she added that, for in the hurry of the moment he had given no instructions as to what they were to do when he reached the boat; and what seemed so obvious out here might not have seemed so obvious to those on the beach, and he was not sure that there was enough power left in him to shout to them. But Nadine understood: once she had said she understood him too well. It was enough now that she understood him enough.
He let go of the boat. For a moment it seemed inclined to follow them, and he thought the bowsprit was going to hit him. Then he felt a little pull on the rope under his shoulders, and the boat made a sort of bow of farewell, and slid away towards the spouting towers of foam. Hugh was utterly exhausted: he could just paddle with a hand or kick downwards to keep his head above water, but he gave away one breath yet.