One morning a fortnight later, Jack, Dodo, and Edith were sitting
together on the cliff above the bay, looking down to the sandy
foreshore. Jack, finding that Dodo was obliged to stop at Meering with
Nadine, had personally abandoned his third shooting-party, leaving
Berts, whom he implicitly trusted to make himself and everybody else
quite comfortable, in charge. Among the guests was Berts' father, whom
Berts apparently kept in his place. Jack had just told Dodo and Edith
the contents of Berts' letter, received that morning. All was going very
well, but Berts had arranged that his father should escort two ladies of
the party to see the interesting town of Lichfield one afternoon,
instead of shooting the Warren beat, where birds came high and Berts'
father was worse than useless. But it was certain that he would enjoy
Lichfield very much, and the shoot would be more satisfactory without
him. If his mother was still at Meering, Berts sent his love, and knew
she would agree with him.
Edith just now, working her way through the entire orchestra, was
engaged on the _cor anglais_ which, while Hugh was still so ill, Dodo
insisted should not be played in the house. It gave rather melancholy
notes, and was productive of moisture. But she finished a passage which
seemed to have no end, before she acknowledged these compliments. Then
she emptied the _cor anglais_ into the heather.
"Poor Bertie is a drone," she said; "he never thinks it worth while to
do anything well. Berts is better: he thinks it worth while to sit on
his father really properly. I thought my energy might wake Bertie up,
and that was chiefly why I married him. But it only made him go to
sleep. Lichfield is about his level. I don't know anything about
Lichfield, and I don't know much about Bertie. But they seem to me
rather suitable. And much more can be done with the _cor anglais_ than
Wagner ever imagined. The solo in _Tristan_ is absolute child's play. I
could perform it myself with a week's practice."
Dodo had been engaged in a small incendiary operation among the heather,
with the match with which she had lit her cigarette. For the moment it
seemed that her incendiarism was going to fulfil itself on larger lines
than she had intended.
"Jack, I have set fire to Wales, like Lloyd George," she cried. "Stamp
on it with your great feet. What great large strong feet! How beautiful
are the feet of them that put out incendiary attempts in Wales! About
Bertie, Edith, if you will stop playing that lamentable flute for a
moment--"
"Flute?" asked Edith.
"Trombone, if you like. The point is that your vitality hasn't inspired
Bertie; it has only drained him of his. You set out to give him life,
and you have become his vampire. I don't say it was your fault: it was
his misfortune. But Berts is calm enough to keep your family going. The
real question is about mine. Yes, Jack, that was where Hughie went into
the sea, when the sea was like Switzerland. And those are the reefs,
before which, though it's not grammatical, he had to reach the boat. He
swam straight out from where your left foot is pointing. A Humane
Society medal came for him yesterday, and Nadine pinned it upon his
bed-clothes. He says it is rot, but I think he rather likes it. She
pinned it on while he was asleep, and he didn't know what it meant. He
thought it was the sort of thing that they give to guards of railway
trains. The dear boy was rather confused, and asked if he had joined the
station-masters."
Jack shaded his eyes from the sun.
"And a big sea was running?" he asked.
"But huge. It broke right up to the cliffs at the ebb. And into it he
went like a duck to water."
Edith got up.
"I have heard enough of Hugh's trumpet blown," she said.
"And I have heard enough of the _cor anglais_," said Dodo. "Dear Edith,
will you go away and play it there? You see, darling, Jack came out this
morning to talk to me, and I came out to talk to him. Or we will go away
if you like: the point is that somebody must."
"I shall go and play golf," said Edith with dignity. "I may not be back
for lunch. Don't wait for me."
Dodo was roused to reply to this monstrous recommendation.
"If I had been in the habit of waiting for you," she said, "I should
still be where I was twenty years ago. You are always in a hurry,
darling, and never in time."
"I was in time for dinner last night," said Edith.
"Yes, because I told you it was at eight, when it was really at half
past."
Edith blew a melancholy minor phrase.
"_Leit-motif_," she said, "describing the treachery of a friend."
"Tooty, tooty, tooty," said Dodo cheerfully, "describing the gay
impenitence of the same friend."
Edith exploded with laughter, and put the _cor anglais_ into its
green-baize bag.
"Good-by," she said, "I forgive you."
"Thanks, darling. Mind you play better than anybody ever played before,
as usual."
"But I do," said Edith passionately.
Dodo leaned back on the springy couch of the heather as Edith strode
down the hillside.
"It's not conceit," she observed, "but conviction, and it makes her so
comfortable. I have got a certain amount of it myself, and so I know
what it feels like. It was dear of you to come down, Jack, and it will
be still dearer of you if you can persuade Nadine to go back with you to
Winston."
"But I don't want to go back to Winston. Anyhow, tell me about Nadine. I
don't really know anything more than that she has thrown Seymour over,
and devotes herself to Hugh."
"My dear, she has fallen head over ears in love with him."
"You are a remarkably unexpected family," Jack allowed himself to say.
"Yes; that is part of our charm. I think somewhere deep down she was
always in love with him, but, so to speak, she couldn't get at it. It
was like a seam of gold: you aren't rich until you have got down through
the rock. And Hugh's adventure was a charge of dynamite to her; it sent
the rock splintering in all directions. The gold lies in lumps before
his eyes, but I am not sure whether he knows it is for him or not. He
can't talk much, poor dear; he is just lying still, and slowly mending,
and very likely he thinks no more than that she is only sorry for him,
and wants to do what she can. But in a fortnight from now comes the date
when she was to have married Seymour. He can't have forgotten that."
"Forgotten?" asked Jack.
"Yes; he doesn't remember much at present. He had severe concussion as
well as that awful breakage of the hip."
"Do they think he will recover completely?" asked Jack.
"They can't tell yet. His little injuries have healed so wonderfully
that they hope he may. They are more anxious about the effects of the
concussion than the other. He seems in a sort of stupor still; he
recognizes Nadine of course, but she hasn't, except on that first night,
seemed to mean much to him."
"What was that?"
"He so nearly died then. He kept calling for her in a dreadful strange
voice, and when she came he didn't know her for a time. Then she put her
whole soul into it, the darling, and made him know her, and he went to
sleep. She slept, or rather lay awake, all night by his bed. She saved
his life, Jack; they all said so."
"It seems rather perverse to refuse to marry him when he is sound, and
the moment he is terribly injured to want to," said Jack.
"My darling, it is no use criticizing people," said Dodo, "unless by
your criticism you can change them. Even then it is a great
responsibility. But you could no more change Nadine by criticizing her,
than you could change the nature of the wildcat at the Zoo by sitting
down in front of its cage, and telling it you didn't like its
disposition, and that it had not a good temper. You may take it that
Nadine is utterly in love with him."
"And as he has always been utterly in love with her, I don't know why
you want me to take Nadine away. Bells and wedding-cake as soon as Hugh
can hobble to church."
"Oh, Jack, you don't see," she said. "If I know Hughie at all, he
wouldn't dream of offering himself to Nadine until it is certain that he
will be an able-bodied man again. And she is expecting him to, and is
worrying and wondering about it. Also, she is doing him no good now. It
can't be good for an invalid to have continually before him the girl to
whom he has given his soul, who has persistently refused to accept it.
It is true that they have exchanged souls now--as far as that goes my
darling Nadine has so much the best of the bargain--but Hugh has to
begin the--the negotiations, and he won't, even if he sees that Nadine
is a willing Barkis, until he knows he has something more than a
shattered unmendable thing to offer her. Consequently he is silent, and
Nadine is perplexed. I will go on saying it over and over again if it
makes it any clearer, but if you understand, you may signify your assent
in the usual manner. Clap your great hands and stamp your great feet:
oh, Jack, what a baby you are!"
"Do you suppose she would come away?" said Jack, coughing a little at
the dust his great feet had raised from the loose soil.
"Yes, if you can persuade her that her presence isn't good for Hugh. So
you will try; that's all right. Nadine has a great respect for Papa
Jack's wisdom, and I can't think why. I always thought a lot of your
heart, dear, but very little of your head. You mustn't retort that you
never thought much of either of mine, because it wouldn't be manly, and
I should tell you you were a coward as the Suffragettes do when they hit
policemen in the face."
"And why should it be I to do all this?" asked Jack.
"Because you are Papa Jack," said Dodo, "and a girl listens to a man
when she would not heed a woman. Oh, you might tell her, which is
probably true, that Edith is going away to-morrow, and you want somebody
to take care of you at Winston. I think even Nadine would see that it
would not quite do if she was left here alone with Hughie. At least it
is possible she might see that: you could use it to help to preach down
a stepdaugher's heart. You must think of these things for yourself,
though, because in my heart I am really altogether on Nadine's side. I
think it is wonderful that she should now be waiting so eagerly and
humbly for Hugh, poor crippled Hugh, as he at present is, to speak. She
has chosen the good part like Mary, and I want you for the present to
take it away from her. It's wiser for her to go, but am I," asked Dodo
grammatically, "to supply the ruthless foe, which is you, with guns and
ammunition against my daughter?"
"You can't take both sides," remarked Jack.
"Jack, I wish you were a woman for one minute, just to feel how
ludicrous such an observation is. Our lives--not perhaps Edith's--are
passed in taking both sides. My whole heart goes out to Hugh, who has
been so punished for his gallant recklessness, and then the moment I say
'punished' I think of Nadine's awakened love and shout, 'No, I meant
rewarded.' Then I think of Nadine, and wonder if I could bear being
married to a cripple, and simultaneously, now that she has shown she can
love, I cannot bear the thought of her being married to anybody else.
After all Nelson had only one eye and one arm, and though he wasn't
exactly married to Lady Hamilton, I'm sure she was divinely happy. But
then, best of all, I think of Hugh making a complete recovery, and once
more coming to Nadine with his great brown doggy eyes, and telling
her.... Then for once I don't take both sides, but only one, which is
theirs, and if it would advance their happiness, I would even take away
from poor little Seymour his jade and his Antoinette, which is all that
Nadine left him with, without a single qualm of regret."
Jack considered this a moment.
"After all, she has left him where she found him," said Jack, who had
rather taken Edith's view about their marriage. "He had only his
Antoinette and his jade when she accepted him, and until you make a
further raid, he will have them still."
Dodo shook her head.
"Jack, it is rather tiresome of you," she said. "You are making me begin
to have qualms for Seymour. She had found his heart for him, you see,
and now having taken everything out of it, she has gone away again,
leaving him a cupboard as empty as Mother Hubbard's."
"He will put the jade back--and Antoinette," said Jack hopefully.
Dodo got up.
"That is what I doubt," she said. "Until we have known a thing, we can't
miss it. We only miss it when we have known it, and it is taken away,
leaving the room empty. Then old things won't always go back into their
places again; they look shabby and uninteresting, and the room is
spoiled. It is very unfortunate. But what is to happen when a girl's
heart is suddenly awakened? Is she to give it an opiate? What is the
opiate for heart-ache? Surely not marriage with somebody different. Yet
jilt is an ugly word."
Dodo looked at Jack with a sort of self-deprecation.
"Don't blame Nadine, darling," she said. "She inherited it; it runs in
the family."
Jack jumped up, and took Dodo's hands in his.
"You shall not talk horrible scandal about the woman I love," he said.
"But it's true," said Dodo.
"Therefore it is the more abominable of you to repeat it," said he.
But there was a certain obstinacy about Dodo that morning.
"I think it's good for me to keep that scandal alive in my heart," she
said. "Usen't the monks to keep peas in their boots to prevent them from
getting too comfortable?"
"Monks were idiots," said Jack loudly, "and any one less like a monk
than you, I never saw. Monk indeed! Besides, I believe they used to boil
the peas first."
Dodo's face, which had been a little troubled, cleared considerably.
"That showed great commonsense," she said. "I don't think they can have
been such idiots. Jack, if I boil that pea, would you mind my still
keeping it in my boot?"
"Rather messy," said he. "Better take it out. After all, you did really
take it out when you married me."
Dodo raised her eyes to his.
"David shall take it out," she said.
Jack had not at present heard of this nomenclature. In fact, it does him
credit that he instantly guessed to whom allusion was being made.
"Oh, that's settled, is it?" he said. "And now, David's mother, give me
a little news of yourself. Is all well?"
Dodo's mouth grew extraordinarily tender.
"Oh, so well, Jesse," she said, "so well!"
She was standing a foot or so above him, on the steep hillside, and
bending down to him, kissed him, and was silent a moment. Then she
decided swiftly and characteristically that a few words like those that
had just passed between them were as eloquent as longer speeches, and
became her more usual self again.
"You are such a dear, Jack," she said, "and I will forgive your dreadful
ignorance of the name of David's mother. Oh, look at the sea-gulls
fishing for their lunch. Oh, for the wings of a sea-gull, not to fly
away and be at rest at all, but to take me straight to the dining-room.
And I feel certain Nadine will listen to you, and it would be a good
thing to take her away for a little. She is living on her nerves, which
is as expensive as eating pearls like Cleopatra."
"Drinking," said Jack. "She dissolved them--"
"Darling, vinegar doesn't dissolve pearls: it is a complete mistake to
suppose it does. She took the pearls like a pill, and drank some vinegar
afterwards. Jack, pull me up the hill, not because I am tired, but
because it is pleasanter so. I am sorry you are going to-morrow, and I
shall make love to Hughie after you've gone and pretend it's you. I do
pray Hughie may get quite well, and he and Nadine, and you and I all
have our heart's desire. Edith too: I hope she will write a symphony so
beautiful that by common consent we shall throw away all the works of
Beethoven and Bach and Brahms just as we throw away antiquated
Bradshaws."
She was rather out of breath after delivering herself of this series of
remarkable statements, and Jack got in a word.
"And who was David's mother?" he asked, with a rather tiresome reversion
to an abandoned topic.
"I don't know or care," said Dodo with dignity. "But I'm going to be."
* * * * *
It required all Jack's wisdom to persuade Nadine to go away with him,
more particularly because at the first opening of the subject, Edith,
who was present, and whom Jack had unfortunately forgotten to take into
his confidence, gave a passionate denial to the fact that she was
departing also. But in the end she yielded, for during this last
fortnight she had felt (as by the illumination of her love she could not
help doing) that at present she 'meant' very little to Hugh. Her
presence, which on that first critical night had not done less than set
his face towards life instead of death, had, she felt, since then, dimly
troubled and perplexed him. Every day she had thought that he would need
her, but each day passed, and he still lay there, with a barrier between
him and her. Yet any day he might want her, and she was loth to go. But
she knew how tired and overstrained she felt herself, and the ingenious
Papa Jack made use of this.
"You have given him all you can, my dear, for the present," he said.
"Come away and rest, and--what is Dodo's phrase?--fill your pond again.
You mustn't become exhausted; you will be so much wanted."
"And I may come back if Hughie wants me?" she asked.
That was easy to answer. If Hugh really wanted her, the difficult
situation solved itself. But there was one thing more.
"I don't suppose I need ask it," said Nadine, "but if Hughie gets worse,
much worse, then I may come? I--I couldn't be there, then."
Jack kissed her.
"My dear girl," he said, "what do you take me for? An ogre? But we won't
think about that at all. Please God, you will not come back for that
reason."
Nadine very rudely dried her eyes on his rough homespun sleeve.
"You are such a comfort, Papa," she said. "You're quite firm and strong,
like--like a big wisdom-tooth. And when we are at Winston, will you let
Seymour come down and see me if he wants to? And--and if he comes will
you come and interrupt us in half-an-hour? I've behaved horribly to him,
but I can't help it, and it--that we weren't to be married, I mean--was
in the _Morning Post_ to-day, and it looked so horrible and cold. But
whatever he wants to say to me, I think half-an-hour is sufficient. I
wonder--I wonder if you know why I behaved like such a pig."
"I think I might guess," said Jack.
"Then you needn't, because there's only one possible guess. So we'll
assume that you know. What a nuisance women are to your poor,
long-suffering sex. Especially girls."
Jack laughed.
"They are just as much a nuisance afterwards," said he. "Look at your
mother, how she is making life one perpetual martyrdom to me."
"But she used to be a nuisance to you, Papa Jack," said Nadine.
"There again you are wrong," he said. "I always loved her."
"And does that prevent one's being a nuisance?" asked Nadine. "Are you
sure? Because if you are, you needn't interrupt Seymour quite so soon. I
said half-an-hour, because I thought that would be time enough for him
to tell me what a nuisance I was--"
"You're a heartless little baggage," observed Jack.
"Not quite," said Nadine.
"Well, you're an April day," said he, seeing the smile break through.
"And that is a doubtful compliment," said she. "But you are wrong if you
think I am not sorry for Seymour. Yet what was I to do, Papa Jack, when
I made The Discovery?"
"Well, you're not a heartless little baggage," conceded Jack, "but you
have taken your heart out of one piece of the baggage, and packed it in
another."
"Oh, la, la," said Nadine. "We mix our metaphors."
* * * * *
Nadine left with Jack in the motor soon after breakfast next morning. It
had been settled that she should not tell Hugh she was going, until she
said good-by to him, and when she went to his room next morning to do
so, she found him still asleep, and the tall nurse entirely refused to
have him awakened.
"Much better for him to sleep than to say good-by," said this adamantine
woman. "When he wakes, he shall be told you have gone, if he asks."
"Of course he'll ask," said Nadine.
She paused a moment.
"Will you let me know if he doesn't?" she added.
Nurse Bryerley's grim capable face relaxed into a smile. She did not
quite understand the situation, but she was quite content to do her best
for her patient according to her lights.
"And shall I say that you'll be back soon?" she asked.
Nadine had no direct reply to this.
"Ah, do make him get well," she said.
"That's what I'm here for. And I will say that you'll be back soon,
shall I, if he wants you?"
"Soon?" said Nadine. "That minute."
* * * * *
Hugh slept long that morning, and Dodo was not told he was awake and
ready to receive a morning call till the travelers had been gone a
couple of hours. She had spent them in a pleasant atmosphere of
conscious virtue, engendered by the feeling that she had sent Jack away
when she would much have preferred his stopping here. But as Dodo
explained to Edith it took quite a little thing to make her feel good,
whereas it took a lot to make her feel wicked.
"A nice morning, for instance," she said, "or sending my darling Jack
away because it's good for Nadine, or getting a postal-order. Quite
little things like that make me feel a perfect saint. Whereas the powers
of hell have to do their worst, as the hymn says, to make me feel
wicked."
Edith gave a rather elaborate sigh. She had to sigh carefully because
she had a cigarette and a pen in her mouth, while she was scratching out
a blot she had made on the score she was revising. So care was needed;
otherwise cigarette and pen might have been shot from her mouth. When
she spoke her utterance was indistinct and mumbling.
"I suppose you infer that you are more at home in heaven than hell," she
said, "since just a touch makes you feel a saint. I should say it was
the other way about. You are so at home in the other place that the most
abysmal depths of infamy have to be presented to you before you know
they are wicked at all, whereas you hail as divine the most
infinitesimal distraction that breaks the monotonous round of vice.
Perhaps I am expressing myself too strongly, but I feel strongly. The
world is more high-colored to me than to other people."
"Darling, I never heard such a moderate and well-balanced statement,"
said Dodo. "Do go on."
"I don't want to. But I thought your optimism about yourself was sickly,
and wanted a--a dash of discouragement. But you and Nadine are both the
same: if you behave charmingly, you tell us to give the praise to you;
if you behave abominably you say, 'I can't help it: it was Nature's
fault for making me like that.' Now I am not like that: whatever I do, I
take the responsibility, and say, 'I am I. Take me or leave me.' But I
have no doubt that Nadine believes it has been _too_ wonderful of her to
fall in love with Hugh. And when she jilts Seymour, she says 'Enquire at
Nature's Workshop; this firm is entirely independent.' Bah!"
Dodo laughed, but her laugh died rather quickly.
"Ah, don't be hard, Edith," she said. "We most of us want encouragement
at times, and we have to encourage ourselves by making ourselves out as
nice as we can. Otherwise we should look on the mess we make of things
as a hopeless job. Perhaps it is hopeless but that is the one thing we
mustn't allow. We are like"--Dodo paused for a simile--"we are like
children to whom is given a quantity of lovely little squares of mosaic,
and we know, our souls know, that they can be put together into the most
beautiful patterns. And we begin fairly well, but then the devil comes
along, and jogs our elbow, and smashes it all up. Probably it is our own
stupidity, but it is more encouraging to say it is the devil or nature,
something not ourselves. Good heavens, my elbow has jogged often
enough! And when the pattern gets on well, we encourage ourselves by
saying, 'This is clever and good and wise Me doing it now!' And then
perhaps something very big and solemn comes our way, and we bow our
heads, and know it isn't ourselves at all."
Edith had finished erasing her blot, and was gathering her sheets
together. She tapped them dramatically with an inky forefinger.
"This is big and solemn," she said. "But it's Me. The artist's
inspiration never comes from outside: it is always from within. I'm
going to send it to have the band parts copied to-day."
At the moment the message came that Hugh received, and Dodo got up. He
had received Edith one morning, but the effect was that he had eaten no
lunch and had dozed uneasily all afternoon. Edith had been content with
the explanation that her vitality was too strong for him, and, while
ready to give him another dose of it, did not press the matter; anyhow,
she had other business on hand.
He lay propped up in bed, with a wad of pillows at his back. He looked
far more alert and present than he had yet done. Hitherto, he had been
slow to grasp the meaning of what was said to him, and he hardly ever
volunteered a statement or question, but this morning he smiled and
spoke with quite unusual quickness.
"Morning, Aunt Dodo," he said. "I'm awfully brisk to-day."
Nurse Bryerley put in a warning word.
"Don't be too brisk," she said. "Please don't let him be too brisk," she
added, looking at Dodo.
"Hughie, dear, you do look better," she said; "but we'll all be quite
calm, and self-contained like flats."
Hugh frowned for a moment; then his face cleared again.
"I see," he said. "Bright, aren't I? Aunt Dodo, I have certainly woke up
this morning. You look real, do you know; before I was never quite
certain about you. You looked as if you might be a good forgery, but
spurious. Have a cigarette, and why shouldn't I?"
"Wiser not," said Nurse Bryerley laconically.
Hugh's briskness did not seem to be entirely good-natured.
"How on earth could a cigarette hurt me?" he said. "Perhaps it would be
wiser for Lady Chesterford not to smoke either. Aunt Dodo, you mustn't
smoke. Wiser not."
Nurse Bryerley smiled with secret content.
"That's right, Mr. Graves," she said. "I like to see my patients
irritable. It always shows they are getting better."
"I should have thought you might have seen that without annoying me,"
said Hugh.
"Well, well, I don't mind your having one cigarette to keep Lady
Chesterford company," said the nurse. "But you'll be disappointed."
Dodo took out her case as Nurse Bryerley left the room. "Here you are,
Hughie," she said.
Hugh lit one, and blew a cloud of smoke through his nostrils.
"Are they quite fresh, Aunt Dodo?" he said.
"Yes, dear, quite. Doesn't it taste right?"
"Yes, delicious," said Hugh, absolutely determined not to find it
disappointing. "I say, what a sunny morning!"
"Is it too much in your eyes?"
"It is rather. Will you ask Nurse Bryerley to pull the blind down? Why
should you?"
"Chiefly, dear, because it isn't any trouble."
Dodo pulled down the blind too far on the first attempt to be pleasing,
not far enough on the second. Hugh felt she was very clumsy.
"Isn't Nadine coming to see me this morning?" he asked. "But I daresay
she is tired of sitting with me every day."
Dodo came back to her chair by the bed again.
"She went off with Jack to Winston this morning," she said. "Just for a
change. She was very much tired and overdone. You've been a fearful
anxiety to her, you dear bad boy."
Hugh put his cigarette down and shut his mouth, as if firmly determined
never to speak again.
"She came in to say good-by to you," she said, "but you were asleep and
they didn't want to wake you."
There was still dead silence on Hugh's part.
"It was only settled she should go yesterday," she continued, "and she
had to be persuaded. But Jack wanted one of us, and, as I say, she was
very much overdone. Now I'm not the least overdone. So I stopped. But I
wish she could have seen how much more yourself you were when you woke
to-day."
At length Hugh spoke.
"What is the use of telling me that sort of tale?" he said. "She is
going to be married to Seymour in a few days. She has gone away for
that. I suppose in some cold-blooded way she thought it better to sneak
off without telling me. No doubt it was very tactful of her."
Dodo turned round towards him.
"No, Hughie, you are quite wrong," she said. "Nadine is not going to
marry Seymour at all."
Hugh lifted his right hand, and examined it cursorily. A long cut, now
quite healed, ran up the length of his forefinger.
"I see," he said. "She said she would marry Seymour in order to get rid
of me, and now that I have been got rid of in other ways, she has no
further use for him. Isn't that it?"
His face had become quite white, and the hand with the healed wound
trembled so violently that the bed shook.
"No, that is not it," said Dodo quietly. "And don't be so nervous and
fidgety, my dear."
Suddenly the trembling ceased.
"Aunt Dodo, if it is not that, what is it?" he asked, in a voice that
would have melted Rhadamanthus.
She turned a shining face on him, and laid her hand on his.
"Oh, Hughie, lie still and get well," she said. "And then ask Nadine
herself. She will come back when you want her. She told Nurse Bryerley
to tell you so, if you asked."
Hugh moved across his other hand, so that Dodo's lay between his.
"I must ask you one more thing," he said. "Is it because of me in any
way that she chucked Seymour? I entreat you to say 'no' if it is 'no.'"
"I can't say 'no,'" said Dodo.
Hugh drew one long sobbing breath.
"It's mere pity then," he said. "Nadine always liked me, and she was
always impulsive like that. I daresay she won't marry him till I'm
better, if I am ever better. She will wait till I am strong enough to
enjoy it thoroughly."
Dodo interrupted him.
"Hughie, don't say bitter and untrue things like that," she said. "And
don't feel them. She is not going to marry Seymour, either now or
afterwards."
Once again Hugh was silent, and after an interval Dodo spoke, divining
exactly what was in his irritable convalescent mind.
"I have never deceived you before, Hughie," she said, "and you have no
right to distrust me now. I am telling you the truth. I also tell you
the truth when I say you must get bitter thoughts out of your mind. Ah,
my dear, it is not always easy. There's a beast within each of us."
"There's a beast within me," said Hugh.
"And there's a dear brave fellow whom I am so proud of," said Dodo.
Hugh's lip quivered, but there was a quality in his silence as different
from that which had gone before, as there was between his callings for
Nadine on the night when she fought death for him.
"And now that's enough," said Dodo. "Shall I read to you, Hughie, or
shall I leave you for the present?"
He held her hand a moment longer.
"I think I will lie still and--and think," he said.
"Good luck to your fishing, dear," said she, rising.
"Good luck to your fishing?" he said. "It's on a picture. Small boy
fishing, kneeling in the waves."
Dodo beat a strategic retreat.
"Is it?" she said.
But it seemed to Hugh that her voice lacked the blank enquiry tone of
ignorance.
Hugh settled himself a little lower down on his backing of pillows,
after Dodo had left him, and tried to arrange his mind, so that the
topics that concerned it stood consecutively. But Dodo's last remark,
which certainly should have stood last also in his reflections, kept on
shouldering itself forward. She had wished him "good luck to his
fishing," and he could not bring himself to believe that, consciously or
unconsciously, there was not in her mind a certain picture, of a little
winged boy, kneeling in the waves, who dropped a red line into the
unquiet sea. He could not, and did not try to remember the painter, but
certainly the picture had been at some exhibition which he and Nadine
had attended together. A little winged boy.... The title was printed
after the number in the catalogue.
Nadine was not to marry Seymour now or afterwards.... There came a black
speck again over his thoughts. He himself had been got rid of by this
crippling accident, and now she had expunged Seymour also. 'And though
she saw all heaven in flower above, she would not love.' The lines came
into his mind without any searching for them; for the moment he could
not remember where he had heard them. And then memory began to awake.
Hitherto, he had not been able to recall anything of the day or two that
preceded his catastrophe. A few of the immediate events before it he had
never forgotten. He remembered Nadine calling out, "No Hugh, not you,"
he remembered her cry of "Well done"; he remembered that he had toppled
in on that line of toppling waters with a small boy on his back. But now
a fresh line of memory had been awakened: some connection in his brain
had been restored, and he remembered their quarrel and reconciliation on
the day the gale began; how she had said, "Oh, Hughie, if only I loved
you!" Soon after came the portentous advent of the wind, with the
blotting out of the sun, and the transformation of the summer sea.
He heard with unspeakable irritation the entry of Nurse Bryerley. That
seemed an unwarrantable intrusion, for he felt as if he had been alone
with Nadine, and now this assiduous grenadier broke in upon them with a
hundred fidgety offices to perform. She restored to him a fallen pillow,
she closed a window through which a breeze was blowing rather freely,
she brought him a cup of chicken-broth. It seemed an eternity before she
asked him if he was comfortable, and made her long-delayed exit. Even
then she reminded him that the doctor was due in half-an-hour.
But for half-an-hour he would be alone now, and for the first time since
his accident he found that he wanted to think. Hitherto his mind had sat
vacant, like an idle passenger who sees without observation or interest
the transit of the country. But Dodo's visit this morning and her
communications to him had made life appear a thing that once more
concerned him; till now it was but a manoeuver taking place round him,
but outside him. Now the warmth of it reached him again, and began to
circulate through him. And what she had told him was being blown out, as
it were, in his brain, even as a lather of soapsuds is blown out into an
iridescent bubble, on which gleam all the hues of sunset and moonrise
and rainbow. The rainbow was not one of the vague dreams in which,
lately, his mind had moved; it was a real thing, not receding but coming
nearer to him, blown towards him by some steady breeze, not idly vagrant
in the effortless air. Should it break on his heart, not into
nothingness, but into the one white light out of which the sum of all
lights and colors is made?
He could not doubt that it was this which Dodo meant. Nadine had thrown
over Seymour and that concerned him. And then swift as the coming of the
storm which they had seen together, came the thought, clear and precise
as the rows of thunder-clouds, that for all he knew a barrier forever
impenetrable lay between them. For he could never offer to her a
cripple; the same pride that had refused to let him take an intimate
place beside her after she, by her acceptance of Seymour, had definitely
rejected him, forbade him, without possibility of discussion, to let her
tie herself to him, unless he could stand sound and whole beside her. He
must be competent in brain and bone and body to be Nadine's husband. And
for that as yet he had no guarantee.
Since his accident he had not up till now cared to know precisely what
his injuries were, nor whether he could ever completely recover from
them. The concussion of the brain had quenched all curiosity, and
interest not only in things external to him, but in himself, and he had
received the assurance that he was going on very well with the unconcern
that we feel for remote events. But now his thoughts flew back from
Nadine and clustered round himself. He felt that he must know his
chances, the best or the worst ... and yet he dreaded to know, for he
could live for a little in a paradise by imagining that he would get
completely well, instead of in a shattered ruin which the knowledge of
the worst would strew round him.
But this morning the energy of life which for those two weeks had lain
dormant in him, began to stir again. He wanted. It seemed to him but a
few moments since his nurse left him that Dr. Cardew came in. He saw the
flushed face and brightened eyes of his patient, and after an enquiry
or two took out the thermometer which he had not used for days, and
tested Hugh's temperature. He put it back again in its nickel case with
a smile.
"Well, it's not any return of fever, anyhow," he said. "Do you feel
different in any way this morning?"
"Yes. I want to get well."
"Highly commendable," said Dr. Cardew.
Hugh fingered the bed-clothes in sudden agitation.
"I want to know if I shall get well," he said. "I don't mean half well,
in a Bath-chair, but quite well. And I want to know what my injuries
were."
Dr. Cardew looked at him a moment without speaking. But it was perfectly
clear that this fresh color and eagerness in Hugh's face was but the
lamp of life burning brighter. There was no reason that he should not
know what he asked, now that he cared to know.
"You broke your hip-bone," he said. "You also had very severe concussion
of the brain. There were a quantity of little injuries."
"Oh, tell me the best and the worst of it quickly," said Hugh with
impatience.
"I can tell you nothing for certain for a few days yet about the
fracture. There is no reason why it should not mend perfectly. And
to-day for the first time I am not anxious about the other."
Quite suddenly Hugh put his hands before his face and broke into a
passion of weeping.