THE SILVER BOW
Dodo was lying in bed, just aware that a strip of sunlight on the floor
was getting broader. She was not precisely watching it, but,
half-consciously she knew that it had once been a line of light and was
now an oblong, the rest of her perceptions were concerned with the fact
that it was extremely pleasant to have been commanded in a way that made
argument impossible, to remain where she was, and not to get up or think
of doing so until the doctor had visited her, for there was nothing so
repugnant to her mind at the moment as the idea of doing anything. She
believed that she had breakfasted in a drowsy manner, and believed (with
perfect truth) that she had gone to sleep again afterwards, for now the
sunlight made a broad patch on the floor. Collecting her reasoning
faculties, and remembering that her room looked due south, she arrived
at the brilliant conclusion that the morning must have progressed
towards noon. That seemed something of a discovery, and having arrived
at that conclusion she went to sleep again.
She dreamed--the dream being about as vivid as her waking
consciousness--that she was a chicken, and was being put up to auction
in the operating theatre. Two bidders were interested in her, but they
could not buy her till she awoke; One of the bidders was Jack, who stood
on the left of her bed, the other the hospital doctor, on the right,
before whose advent she was not allowed to get up. Then her dream was
whisked off her brain in the manner of a blanket being pulled from her
bed, and becoming wide awake, she was aware that this disconcerting
dream was, as the retailers of incredible stories say, "largely founded
on fact," for there was Jack on one side of her bed and Doctor Ashe on
the other. They did not look like bidders at an auction at all, nor, as
her waking consciousness assured her, did they look at all anxious.
Doctor Ashe seemed to have said "fine sleeper," and Jack, as Dodo opened
her eyes, remarked rather ironically, so she thought, "Good afternoon,
darling."
This annoyed her.
"Why afternoon?" she asked. "Don't be silly."
Then looking at the patch of sunlight again, which seemed the only real
link with the normal world, she saw it had got narrow, and was on the
other side of her bed.
"Very well then, it's afternoon," she said. "Why shouldn't it be? I
never said it wasn't."
"Of course you didn't," said Jack in an absurdly soothing manner. "And
now you'll have a talk with Dr. Ashe."
Dr. Ashe was not in need of great explanations, for being the hospital
doctor, he was already in possession of the main facts of the case. For
the last month Dodo had been increasingly irritable, and increasingly
forgetful. He had urged her many times to go away and have a complete
rest; he had warned her of the possible consequences of neglecting this
advice, but she had scouted the idea of being in need of anything except
strenuous employment. Then, only yesterday afternoon, she had suddenly
fainted, and recovering from that had simply collapsed. She now
accounted to Dr. Ashe for these unusual proceedings with great lucidity.
"I forgot about dinner," she said, "and that came on the top of my being
rather tired. I only wanted a good night's rest, like everybody else,
and I've had that. I'm quite well again. Who is attending to the
stores?"
Dr. Ashe slid his hand on to her wrist.
"Oh, the stores are all right," he said guilefully. "You've had Sister
Alice under you for a couple of months, and you've made her wonderfully
competent. But for your own peace of mind I want you to answer me one
question."
"Go ahead," said Dodo, "I hope it's not crashingly difficult."
"Not a bit. Supposing I told you to get up at once and go back to your
work, do you feel that you would be able to get through a couple of
hours of it? On oath."
Dodo thought over this, trying to imagine herself active. It was
difficult to imagine anything, for she seemed incapable of picturing
herself otherwise than lying in bed. Even then everything was
dream-like; Dr. Ashe did not seem like a real person, and Jack,
dream-like also, had merely melted away. She was only conscious, with a
sense of reality, of an enormous lassitude and languor unlike anything
she had previously experienced. Even the burden of answering a perfectly
simple question was heavy. Every limb seemed weighted with lead, but the
bulk of the lead had been reserved for her brain. She had to make an
effort in order to answer at all.
"I'm not sure," she said, "because I feel so odd. But I think that if
you told me to stand up I should fall down. I can't be certain; that's
only what I think. What's the matter with me?"
A dream-like voice answered her.
"You've got what you asked for," it said. "You wouldn't take a holiday
when you could, and now you've got to. You're just broken down."
This sounded so alarming that Dodo had to make a joke.
"I'm not going to break up, am I?" she asked.
"Of course you're not. Not a chance of it."
"What's to happen to me then?" she asked.
"You're to spend two or three days in bed," said he. "After that we'll
consider. Limit yourself to that for the present."
Something inside Dodo approved strongly of that.
"That sounds quite nice," she said. "I shall sleep, and then I shall
sleep, and then I shall sleep."
That anticipation proved to be quite correct. Dodo was roused for her
meals, resented her toilet, and for the next forty-eight hours was
either fast asleep or at the least dozing in a vacancy of brain that she
found extremely pleasurable. At the end of that time she entered with
zest into future plans with the doctor and Jack.
"You may leave out a rest-cure," she said, "because if you want me to
stop in bed for a month I won't. I should hate it so much that I would
take care that it shouldn't do me any good."
"It would be the best thing for you," said the doctor.
"Then you must choose the second best. It would make me ill to stop in
bed for a month, and so I should have to recover all over again
afterwards. Oh Jack, you owl, for God's sake tell me what I do want,
because I don't know. I know lots of things I don't want. I don't want
you, darling, because you would look anxious, and don't want David,
because I couldn't amuse him, and I certainly don't want a nurse to blow
my nose and brush my teeth and wash me."
Dodo sat up in bed.
"I'm getting brilliant," she said. "I am beginning to know what I want.
I want to go somewhere where there isn't anybody or anything. Isn't
there some place where there is just the sea----"
"A voyage?" asked Jack.
"Certainly not; because of submarines and being unwell. I should like
the sea to be there, but there mustn't be any bathing-machines, and I
should like a great flat place without any hills. The sea and a marsh,
and nobody and nothing. Isn't there an empty place anywhere?"
Dr. Ashe listened to this, watching her, with a diagnostic mind.
"Let's hear more about it," he said. "You don't want to be bothered with
anybody or anything. Is that it?"
Dodo's right arm lying outside the bedclothes suddenly twitched.
"Who did that?" she said. "Why doesn't it keep still? I've got the
jumps, and I want to be quiet. Can't either of you understand?"
"And you want to go somewhere empty and quiet?" asked Jack.
"Yes, I've said so several times. And I don't want to talk any more."
They left her alone again after this, and presently when they returned,
it appeared that Jack had once spent a couple of weeks one November at a
small Norfolk village near the sea. The object of the expedition had
been duck-shooting, but as far as duck went, it had been disappointing,
for they usually got up a mile or two away, and flew out to sea in a
straight line with the speed of an express train and never came back any
more. But apart from duck, the village of Truscombe had promising
features as regarded their present requirements, for Jack was not able
to recollect any feature of the slightest interest about it. It squatted
on the edge of marshes, there was the sea within a mile of it; he
supposed there were some inhabitants, for there was a small but
extremely comfortable inn. Now in July there would not even be any
intending duck-shooters there; it promised to be an apotheosis of
nothing at all.
Dodo roused herself to take an interest in this, as the colourless
account of it proceeded, and even under cross-examination Jack could not
recollect anything that marred the tranquillity of the picture. Yes,
there was a post-office where you could get a daily paper if you wanted
one, but on the other hand if you did not want one, he hastened to add,
you needn't; there was also a windmill, the sails of which were always
stationary. There were no duck, there was no pier, there as no band, the
nearest station was four miles away; really, in fact, there wasn't
anything.
The lust for nothingness gleamed in Dodo's eyes.
"It sounds delicious," she said. "When may I go to Truscombe, Dr. Ashe?"
"Have a couple more days in bed," said he, "and then you can go as soon
as you like, if you will promise not to make any exertion for which you
don't feel inclined----"
"But that's why I'm going," she interrupted. "Telegraph to the inn,
Jack, and engage me a couple of rooms--oh, my dear, I feel in my bones
that Truscombe is just what I want. They will meet me at the station
with a very slow old cab, or better still with a dog-cart. It sounds
just precisely right. Shall I call myself Mrs. Dodo of London? It's all
too blessed and lovely."
Three evenings later accordingly, Dodo arrived at Holt. She found a
dog-cart waiting for her, exactly as she had anticipated, and a whisper
of north wind off the sea. Her driver, a serene and smiling octogenarian
began by talking to her for a little, and his conversation reminded her
of bubbles coming up through tranquil water, as he asked her how the war
was getting on. They didn't hear much about the war down at Truscombe,
but the crops were doing well, though the less said about apples the
better. After this information he sank into a calm sleep, and so did the
pony which walked in its sleep.
As the vanished sun began to set the north-west sky on fire, this
deliberate equipage emerged from the wooded inlands into flat and ample
spaces that smouldered beneath an enormous sky. Across the open the sea
gleamed like an indigo wire laid down as in some coloured map along the
edge of the land, and a spiced and vivid savour which set the pony
sneezing, awoke him, and with a toss of his head he began of his own
accord to trot. In time that unusual motion aroused his driver, and they
jogged along at a livelier pace. The air seemed charged with the very
elixir of life; it was like some noble atmospheric vintage that
enlightened the eye and set the pulses beating full and steady.
Presently they came to the village with the brick-facings of the
flint-built houses glowing in the last of the sunset and the
night-stocks redolent in their gardens. To the left stretched vast
water-meadows intersected with dykes where loose-strife and willow-herb
smouldered among the tall grasses, and tasselled reeds gave harbourage
to moor-hens. Out of all the inhabitants of Truscombe but one
representative seemed to be in the street, and he slowly trundled a
barrow in front of him and let it be known that he had fresh mackerel
for sale. Short spells of walking alternated with longer sittings on the
handle of his barrow, but whether he sat or whether he walked no one
bought his mackerel.
The Laighton Arms stood on a curve of the sole street through the
village, and Dodo entered as into a land full of promise. An old setter,
lying in the passage thumped her a welcome with his tail, as if she was
already a familiar and friendly denizen, just returning from some
outing. She dined alone at a plain good hospitable board, and presently
strolled out again through the front door that stood permanently open
into an empty street. It was night now, and the sky was set with drowsy
stars that glowed rather than sparkled, and up the street there flowed,
not in puffs and gusts, but with the current of a slow moving tide the
salt sweetness of the marshes and the sea. Very soon her strolling steps
had carried her past the last houses, and in the deep dusk she stood
looking out over the empty levels. A big grass-grown bank built to keep
out high tides from the meadows zig-zagged obscurely towards the sea,
and there was nothing there but the emptiness of the land and the
star-studded sky. She waited just to see the moon come up over the
eastern horizon and its light confirmed the friendliness of the huge
solitude. Then returning, she found a candle set ready for her, which
was a clear invitation to go to bed, and looking out below her blind she
saw in front a stretch of low land with pools of water reflecting the
stars. Six geese, one behind the other, like a frieze, were crossing it
very slowly in the direction of the salt-water creek that wound
seawards.
For the next week Dodo pursued complete and intentional idleness with
the same zeal which all her life had inspired her activities. She got up
very late after long hours of smooth deep sleep, and taking a book and a
packet of sandwiches in her satchel strolled out along the bank to the
ridge of loose shingle that ran east and west along the edge of the sea.
At high tide the waves broke against this, and since walking along it
was an exercise of treadmill laboriousness she was content to encamp
there in some sunny hollow and laze the morning away. Sometimes, for
form's sake, she opened her book, read a paragraph or two, wondered what
it was about, and then transferred her gaze to the sea. An hour or so
passed swiftly in stupefied content, and then shifting her position she
probably lay down on her back. Bye and bye hunger dictated the
consumption of her sandwiches, and refreshed and revived she would begin
a pencilled note to Jack. But after a few words she usually found that
she had nothing to say, and watched the sea-gulls (she supposed they
were sea-gulls) that patrolled the edge of the breaking waves for food,
and dived like cast plummets into the water. Then on the retreat of the
tide, the ebb disclosed stretches of hard sand tattooed with pebbles,
where walking was easy, and she would wander away towards the point of
tumbled sand-dunes that lay westward. A coast-guard station stood there,
brought into touch with the world by means of the row of telegraph-posts
that ran, mile after mile, straight as an arrow, along this
shingle-bank, which defended from the sea the miles of marshes and sand
flats which lay on the landward side of it. Through the middle of them
broadening into a glittering estuary when the tide was high ran the
river that debouched into the sea beyond the point; at low tide it was
but a runnel of water threading its way through the enormous flatness of
shoal and mud-bank where flocks of sea-birds hovered.
This great stretch of solitude attracted Dodo more even than the
familiar emptiness of the sea. Once across the bank of shingle the sea
was out of sight, and it lay spread out, this strange untrodden
wildness, wearing an aspect of hospitable loneliness, and sun-steeped
quiet. Narrow channels and meandering dykes, full at high tide and empty
at the ebb, zig-zagged about the marsh which was clad in unfamiliar
vegetation. There were tracts waist-high in some stiff heather-like
growth, and between them lawns of sea-lavender now breaking out into
full flower, and above high-water mark clumps of thrift and sea-campion
and horned poppy. Overhead the gulls slid and chided balancing
themselves on stiff pinions against the wind, or, relaxing that tense
bow of flight were swept away out of sight across the flats. For miles
there was but one house set on a spit of stony land, and even that
seemed an outrage against the spell of solitariness till Dodo discovered
that it was undwelled in, and therefore innocuous.
For half a dozen days it was enough for her to sit on the edge of the
shingle or stroll through the sea-lavender of the marshes, hardly
recording the sounds and the sights that made up the spell, but merely
lying open to the dew of their silent enchantments. Then, as her vigour
began to ooze into her like these tides that imperceptibly filled the
channels in the marshes, she extended her radius and came at last to the
sand-dunes that were clumped together like a hammer-head on the shaft
of the shingle-ridge. There the telegraph-posts took a right-angled turn
towards the mouth of the estuary, where there were signs of inhabited
places, shanties nestling in hollows, stranded ships made fast with
chains, with the washing a-flutter on their decks. Votaries of solitude,
botanists and ornithologists she was told, spent summer weeks here, but
she never saw petticoat or trouser. Probably they too avoided the
presence of others and sought refuge in the sand-dunes when her fell
form appeared, just as she herself would undoubtedly have done at a
glimpse of a human creature. Here then, while physically she inhaled the
vitality that tingled in marsh and sea-beach and lonely places, she
spent long solitary hours, dozing among the dunes, following the arrow
flight of terns, wondering at the plants that seemed to draw nourishment
from the barrenness of sand, and yet all the time pushing her roots,
like them, into some underlying fertility.
She was almost sorry when her mind, stained deep with these indelible
days of unrelieved hard work in her hospital, began to show signs of its
own colour again. Mental fatigue, too, had stricken her with a far
severer stroke than had been laid on her body, and it was with something
of a shock that she began to be interested in her surroundings instead
of merely observing them. What started this first striving occurred
during a walk she took along the upper ridges of the beach outside the
sand-dunes. There had been shrill scoldings and screamings in the air
above her from certain sharp-winged birds which clearly resented her
intrusion, and, at this moment, she had suddenly to check her foot and
step sideways in order to avoid treading on a clutch of four eggs with
brown mottled markings that lay on the protective colouring of the
shingle. A couple of yards further on was another potential nursery, and
soon she found that the whole of this ridge was a populous
nesting-place. It was natural to connect these aerial screamings from
the hundreds of birds that hovered above her with the treasures at her
feet, and her interest as opposed to her contemplation awoke. Someone
had told her that a very high tide in June had washed away the eggs of
hundreds of sea-birds, and here they were again industriously raising a
second brood.... Had there been, instead of birds, hundreds of human
mothers and fathers yelling at her to take care not to tread on their
babies, she would have fled from adults and infants alike. But, though
still shunning her own kind, she adored these shy wild things that
gabbled at her, and wondered what they were.
On her way home she noticed a crop of transparent erect stalks growing
thickly from a mud-bank. It looked like some emerald-green minute
asparagus. Then what was the shrubby stiff-stemmed thing that seemed to
imitate a Mediterranean heath? And a pink-streaked convolvulus that,
behaving as no known convolvulus had ever behaved, flowered out of the
sand? Really if you wanted to avoid human beings, it might be as well to
make acquaintance with these silent companions of solitude. So thinking
to start with a known specimen, she picked a sprig of sea-lavender, and
stepped into a remarkably deep bog-hole. Thereupon her leg, as far as
her knee, wore a shining stocking of rich black mud, and it was
necessary to cross the bank of shingle, wash it in the sea, and leave
the shoe to dry. For the sake of symmetry she pulled off the other shoe
and stocking, and paddled about, rinsing out the mud in the tepid water.
Dodo spread the mired stocking out to dry on the pebbles, just out of
reach of the crisply-breaking ripples. Then she saw a most marvellous,
translucent pebble, orange-red in colour, just being sucked into the
backwash of a wave. Then a small crab, truculent and menacing, sidled
towards her, and the next wave rolled it over with gaping pincers, and
returned the cornelian to her feet. An interesting piece of drift-wood
demanded investigation, and a little further on she found a starfish
which she threw back into the sea. Then she remembered her stocking and
turned back. There was no sign of that stocking, but the other one and
her two shoes were just recoverable from the edge of the incoming tide.
With them in her hand she paddled homewards along the "liquid rims" of
the sea.
That evening Dodo sent an immense telegram to her housekeeper in London
for a standard book on British birds and another on British plants.
These were to be despatched to her immediately, with some field-glass
highly recommended for the observation of small distant objects. That
done she spent a studious evening in planning out a scheme of study. She
would take out with her in the morning the books on birds and flowers,
and make a _cache_ for them in the shrubby thing of which she would soon
know the name. Then for two hours she would collect plants in the marsh,
and, returning with her spoils, identify them in her book. After lunch
she would take the book on birds to some commanding spot and bowl out
the gulls with her field-glass and her authorities. There must be a
note-book and a quantity of well-sharpened pencils. Two note-books, in
fact, one for birds and one for botany.
Imperceptibly and instinctively after the start had been made Dodo began
to run in the strenuous race again. She bought a bathing-dress and a
morning paper at the post-office and some bull's-eyes, and there arrived
for her an admirable field-glass of German manufacture, with a copy of
Bleichroder's "Birds of Great Britain" in six volumes and Kuhlmann's
"English Botany" in eight. She was rather shocked at this exhibition of
Hun industry, but speedily got over it, and drove down to the sea with
these treasures and the key of a bathing-hut which she proposed to
convert into a library. With the help of Bleichroder's "Birds," and
Zeiss's field-glass she was almost certain that she saw a golden eagle
and a hoopoe (those rare visitors to Norfolk), of which she made an
entry with a query in the ornithological note-book. Then she bathed and
then she had lunch, and then, after smoking four cigarettes, she went to
sleep in the shadow of the library and had an uneasy dream about Berlin.
After that she botanised: the heathery-looking shrub proved to be
"shrubby sea-blite," and she duly noted its name in the botany
note-book. Then there was orache and thrift, and sea-campion and
stinking Archangel (this was thrilling) to be noted down, and then,
returning to the birds, she put down tern, and great black-backed gull,
and ringed plover and sparrow (probably Tree). Subsequently she crossed
out the golden eagle and the hoopoe, for it was hardly possible that her
first glance through her Zeiss should have revealed a couple of such
distinguished visitors. Of course, it was possible that she had seen
them, since the possible could be stretched to any degree of elasticity,
but it was better to be cautious and wait for further appearances before
astounding the entire world of ornithologists.
Dodo took a volume of Bleichroder's "Birds" back to her hotel that
night, leaving the rest of the library in the bathing-hut. It contained
admirable pictures, but what really struck her most about those pictures
was the vivid resemblance between the birds which they portrayed and
human beings. The Shoveller, especially with the addition (lightly
pencilled and then erased) of spectacles looked precisely like Dr. Ashe,
while Richardson's Skua without any addition at all recalled Edith with
extraordinary vividness. She wondered who Richardson was; if he had sent
in his card just then, she would have been entranced to have a talk to
him about his Skua. She wondered also how they were all getting on at
Winston that evening; she wondered if Jack had got back from France, if
David was asleep, if Edith was composing an unrivalled symphony, if Lord
Ardingly was meditating on the duties of the upper classes towards the
lower.... And then she became aware that the human race was beginning to
interest her again. Up till now she had, at the most, been concerned
with starfish and terns and shrubby sea-blite, things that touched her
mind impersonally. Now she began to picture herself shewing these
pleasant creatures to a person of some sort; she imagined herself
directing David's field-glasses towards Richardson's Skua. When he had
seen it, they would restore Bleichroder's monumental work to the shelf
in the sea-library and go to bathe.
Suddenly the thought of the three weeks more which she had promised to
spend here became intolerable, if she had to stay here alone. The hotel
was quite empty, save for herself and her maid, and why should not her
beloved David come straight here for a week when his term was over? A
telegram in the morning would settle that, and if Jack was home from
France, he could easily run over for next Sunday. She would continue
this rest-cure just as before; in fact, if somebody didn't come down she
would get bored with it to-morrow or the next day, and undo all the good
that it had brought her. Sea-blite and skuas had helped her enormously,
but their efficacy would begin to wane if now she could not shew them to
somebody. She had shewn a piece of sea-blite to her maid, and told her
how very local it was, but Miss Henderson had replied in an acid voice,
"It looks to me quite like a common weed, my lady...."
Somewhere down the street a gramophone was jigging out a lively tune,
and Dodo stole forth, making a pretext to herself that she wanted to
observe the stars of which there was a great number to-night, but she
knew that she longed to be near human movement again. A rhythmical thump
accompanied the gramophone's shrillness, and she wondered if there might
happen to be a little dancing going on. She soon localised the sound;
there was a room facing the street with curtains discreetly drawn, so as
to conform with the lighting order, but the thump of feet went gaily on
inside. She forgot about the stars; they belonged to that steadfast
imperishable thing called Nature that could be appealed to when you were
tired. A dance to the wheezings of a gramophone, with the handsome
girls of the village and the boys back on leave from France had become
far more enthralling than Bleichroder's "Birds" lying open on her table
in the inn, or the wheeling heavens above her. There she lingered,
rather like the Ancient Mariner without a wedding-guest to whom she
might soliloquise.
* * * * *
Jack arrived on Saturday night, and next morning Dodo seemed to feel
that what she called a "picnic-service" on the beach would be rather a
treat instead of going to church. Accordingly they took out a Bible and
Prayer Book, and Dodo, whose bent was not strictly ecclesiastical, read
a quantity of chapters out of Ecclesiastes for a first lesson and for a
second lesson the chapter out of Corinthians which the Church had
mistakenly appointed for Quinquagesima. Then she read the twenty-third
Psalm, and rapidly turned over the next leaves.
"There's at least one more," she said, "and I can't find it. It's about
the House of Defence and the satisfaction of a long life."
"Try the ninety-first," said Jack.
"Darling, how clever of you. I never had a head for numbers. After that
we'll talk; I'm beginning to want to talk dreadfully."
Dodo read her psalms quite beautifully, and lay back on the warm
shingle.
"Oh, Jack, I feel so clean and washed," she said. "These weeks which
I've had quite alone have been like a lovely cold bath on a hot day,
or, if you like, a lovely hot bath after a cold day. I'm beginning to
see what they have done for me, besides resting me. I think people and
things are meant to cure each other."
"How?" asked Jack.
"Well, take my case. I was absolutely Fed Up with people, human beings,
when I came here. You see, ill human beings are concentrated human
beings. All the material side of them is exaggerated; you only think of
them as bones to be mended and flesh to be healed. My soul got so sick
of them, and when I came here I wanted never to see anybody again. Nor
did I want to think any more; that I suppose was mere fatigue. The whole
caboodle--living, I mean--wasn't worth the bother it gave one. Are you
following, darling, or are you only thinking about those pebbles which
you are piling so beautifully on the top of each other?"
"Not on the top of _each_ other," remarked Jack. "Otherwise----"
"Oh, don't be grammatical. On the top of _each_ other."
"I'm following," said Jack.
"Very well. So I took the lid off my brain, let the stuffy air escape,
and let in the wind and the sea. Now don't say 'water on the brain,'
because it isn't true. It just lay open, and then after a time the
sea-gulls and--and I've forgotten the name of the blighted thing, and
that reminds me that it's sea-blite--the sea-gulls and the sea-blite
got in; I think the gulls nested in the blite. So I got interested in
them, but still I didn't want to see a single soul, not even you and
David. But I sent for enormous books on birds and botany, and you'll
find them in my bathing-hut with the bill: unpaid. Those jolly insolent
things, going where they chose and growing where they chose healed me of
people-sickness. They didn't care, bless them, if a convoy of wounded
came in, or if nobody loved me. One of them squawked, and the other
pricked my large ankles."
Dodo sat up.
"Yes, what made me want to see you and David again," she said, "was a
course of sea-blite and Richardson's skuas. That's what I mean by people
and things healing each other. I think I shall go back to Winston
to-morrow."
"If I thought you meant that," said he, "I should tell you that you
would do nothing of the sort."
Dodo looked wildly round.
"Oh, don't tell me that!" she said, "or out of pure self-willed vitality
I should do it."
"Very well; you will go back to Winston to-morrow," said Jack.
"That's sweet of you; now I shan't. I think if Sister Ellen came and
asked me if the seven-tailed bandages had arrived, I should gibber in
her face. She hasn't got a face, by the way, she has only two profiles.
How funnily people are made! She's got two profiles and no face, and
David has got a duck of a face and no profile: just the end of his nose
comes out of a round, plump cheek. I wish I was eleven years old again.
I wish I was a cat with nine lives, or is it tails? Seven lives, isn't
it? Or is seven rather too many? How many lives do you want, Jack?
Choose!"
Jack threw down his beautiful tower of stones.
"Oh, this one will do," he said. "This and the next. If I must choose, I
choose whatever happens. I might spoil everything by choosing."
"But if you could have your life over again, wouldn't you choose that
many things should be different?" she asked.
"I don't think so. If things had been different, they wouldn't be as
they are at this moment. You and me."
Dodo laid her hand on his.
"My dear, are you content?" she asked.
His eyes answered her.