The main difference between people seems to be that one man can
come under obligations on which you can rely--is obligable--and
another is not. As he has not a law within him, there's nothing to
tie him to.--EMERSON.
"Father," said Teddy to Lord Newhaven, "do--do be a horse, and I will
ride you in the water."
"Me, too," said Pauly.
"I am not anxious to be a horse, Teddy. I'm quite content as I am."
Lord Newhaven was stretched in an easy but undefensive attitude on the
heathery bank, with his hands behind his head. His two sons rushed
simultaneously at him and knelt on his chest.
"Promise!" they cried, punching him. "Two turns each." There was a free
fight, and Lord Newhaven promised.
"Honor bright! Two turns each, and really deep!"
"Honor bright," said Lord Newhaven.
His two sons got off his chest, and Teddy climbed on his back in
readiness, as his father sat up and began to unlace his boots.
"Higher!" said Teddy, over his shoulder, his arms tightly clasped round
his father's neck, as Lord Newhaven rolled up his trousers.
"You young slave-driver, they won't go up any higher."
"You said 'honor bright.'"
"Well, Shylock, I _am_ 'honor bright.'"
"You had them over your knees last time."
"I had knickerbockers on, then."
"Won't these do the same?"
"They won't come up another inch."
"Then one, two, three--off!" shrieked Teddy, digging his heels into the
parental back.
The horse displayed surprising agility. It curveted, it kicked, it
jumped a little drain, it careered into the water, making a tremendous
splashing.
The two boys screamed with delight.
But at last the horse sat down on the bank gasping, wiped its forehead,
and, in spite of frenzied entreaties, proceeded to put on its socks and
boots.
Lord Newhaven was not to be moved a second time. He lit a cigarette and
observed that the moment for sailing boats had arrived.
The boats were accordingly sailed. Lord Newhaven tilted his hat over his
eyes and acted as umpire.
"It is not usual to sail boats upsidedown," he said, seeing Teddy
deliberately upset his.
"They are doing it out there," said Teddy, who had a reason for most
things. And he continued to sail his boat upsidedown.
Lord Newhaven got up, and swept the water with his eye. His face became
keen. Then his glance fell anxiously on the children.
"Teddy and Pauly," he said, "promise me that you will both play on this
one bit of sand, and not go in the water till I come back."
They promised, staring bewildered at their father.
In another moment Lord Newhaven was tearing through the brushwood that
fringed the water's edge.
As he neared the boat-house he saw another figure trying to shove out
the remaining boat.
It was Doll. Lord Newhaven pushed her off and jumped in.
Doll was almost speechless. His breath came in long gasps. The sweat
hung on his forehead. He pointed to the black, upturned boat.
"This one leaks," said Lord Newhaven, sharply.
"It's got to go all the same, and sharp," said Doll, hoarsely.
Lord Newhaven seized up a fishing-tin and thrust it into Doll's hands.
"You bale while I row," he said, and he rowed as he had never rowed
before.
"Who is it?" he said, as the boat shot out into the open.
Doll was baling like a madman.
"Scarlett," he said. "And he's over one of the springs. He'll get
cramp."
Lord Newhaven strained at the oars.
* * * * *
Consciousness was coming back, was slowly climbing upwards, upwards
through immense intervals of time and space, to where at last, with a
wrench, pain met it half-way. Hugh stirred feebly in the dark of a great
forlornness and loneliness.
"Rachel," he said--"Rachel."
His head was gently raised, and a cup pressed to his lips. He swallowed
something.
He groped in the darkness for a window, and then opened his eyes. Lord
Newhaven withdrew a pace or two, and stood looking at him.
Their eyes met.
Neither spoke; but Hugh's eyes, dark with the shadow of death, said
plainly, "Hast thou found me, O mine enemy?"
Then he turned them slowly, as an infant turns them to the sky, the
climbing woods, leaning over each other's shoulders to look at him, to
the warm earth on which he lay. At a little distance was stretched a
small rough-haired form. Hugh's eyes fixed on it. It lay very still.
"Crack," he said, suddenly, raising himself on his elbow.
There was neither speech nor language. Crack's tail, that courteous
member, made no sign.
"He was under the boat," said Lord Newhaven, looking narrowly at the
exhausted face of the man he had saved, and unable for the life of him
to help a momentary fellow-feeling about the little dog.
Hugh remembered. It all came back, the boat, Crack's dying gasps, the
agonized struggle, the strait gate of death, the difficult passage
through it, the calm beyond. He had almost got through, and had been
dragged back.
"Why did you interfere?" he said, in sudden passion, his eyes flaming in
his white face.
A dull color rose to Lord Newhaven's cheek.
"I thought it was an accident," he said. "If it was not, I beg your
pardon."
There was a moment's silence.
"It _was_ an accident," said Hugh, hoarsely, and he turned on his elbow
and looked fixedly at the water, so that his companion might not see the
working of his face.
Lord Newhaven walked slowly away in the direction of Doll, whose distant
figure, followed by another, was hurrying towards them.
"And so there is a Rachel as well, is there?" he said to himself, vainly
trying to steel himself against his adversary.
"How is he now?" said Doll, coming within ear-shot.
"He's all right; but you'd better get him into dry clothes, and
yourself, too."
"Change on the bank," said Doll, seizing a bundle from the keeper. "It's
as hot as an oven in the sun. Why, Scarlett's sitting up! I thought when
we laid into him on the bank that he was too far gone, didn't you? I
suppose"--hesitating--"Crack?"
Lord Newhaven shook his head.
"I must go back to my boys now," he said, "or they will be getting into
mischief."
Doll nodded. He and Lord Newhaven had had a hard fight to get the
leaking boat to land with Hugh at the bottom of it. It had filled
ominously when Doll ceased baling to help to drag in the heavy,
unconscious body.
There had been a moment when, inapprehensive as he was, Doll had
remembered, with a qualm, that Lord Newhaven could not swim.
"Every fellow ought to swim," was the moral he drew from the incident
and repeated to his wife, who, struck by the soundness of the remark,
repeated it to the Gresleys.
Lord Newhaven retraced his steps slowly along the bank in his
water-logged boots. He was tired, and he did not hurry, for he could see
in the distance two small figures sitting faithfully on a log where he
had left them.
"Good little chaps," he said, half aloud.
In spite of himself his thoughts went back to Hugh. His feelings towards
him had not changed, but they had been forced during the last half-hour
out of their original intrenchments into the open, and were liable to
attack from new directions.
It was not that he had virtually saved Hugh's life, for Doll would never
have got him into the leaking boat and kept it afloat single-handed.
That first moment of enthusiasm, when he had rubbed the senseless limbs
and breathed into the cold lips, and had felt his heart leap when life
came halting back into them, that moment had passed and left him cold.
But Hugh's melancholy eyes, as they opened once more on this world and
met his unflinchingly, haunted him, and the sudden anger at his
interference. It was the intrenchment of his contempt that Lord Newhaven
missed.
A meaner nature would not have let him off so easily as Hugh had done.
"It _was_ an accident," he said to himself, unwillingly. "He need not
have admitted that, but I should have been on a gridiron if he had not.
In different circumstances that man and I might have been friends. And
if he had got into a scrape of this kind a little further afield I might
have helped to get him out of it. He feels it. He has aged during the
last two months. But as it is--Upon my word, if he were a boy I should
have had to let him off. It would have been too bloodthirsty. But he is
seven-and-twenty. He is old enough to know better. She made a fool of
him, of course. She made a greater one of me once, for I--married her."
Lord Newhaven reviewed with a dispassionate eye his courtship and
marriage.
"A wood anemone," he said to himself; "I likened her to a wood anemone.
Good Lord! And I was thirty years of age, while this poor devil is
twenty-seven."
Lord Newhaven stopped short with fixed eyes.
"I believe I should have to let him off," he said, half-aloud. "I
believe I would let him off if I was not as certain as I stand here that
he will never do it."