"And you didn't like her--then?" Keen disappointment sounded in her
voice.
His heart smote him. The child was young, though possibly not so young
as she looked. She had her ideals, and they would be shattered soon
enough without any help from him.
With a brief laugh he turned aside, dismissing the subject. "That form
of entertainment doesn't appeal to me much," he said. "Now it's your
turn to tell me something. I have been wondering about the colour of
that sea. Would you call it blue--or purple?"
She looked, and again the mystery was in her face. For a moment she did
not speak. Then, "It is violet," she said--"the colour of Rosa Mundi's
eyes."
Ere the frown had died from his face she was gone, pattering lightly
over the sand, flitting like a day-dream into the blinding sunshine that
seemed to drop a veil behind her, leaving him to his thoughts.
* * * * *
Randal Courteney was an old and favoured guest at the Hurley Bay Hotel.
From his own particular corner of the great dining-room he was
accustomed to look out upon the world that came and went. Frequently
when he was there the place was almost deserted, and always he had been
treated as the visitor of most importance. But to-night, for the first
time, he found himself supplanted. Someone of more importance was
staying in the hotel, someone who had attracted crowds, whose popularity
amounted almost to idolatry.
The hotel was full, but Courteney, despite his far-reaching fame, was
almost entirely overlooked. News had spread that the wonderful
Australian dancer was to perform at the Pier Pavilion at the end of the
week, and the crowds had gathered to do her honour. They were going to
strew the Pier with roses on the night of her appearance, and they were
watching even now for the first sign of her with all the eager curiosity
that marks down any celebrity as fair prey. Courteney smiled grimly to
himself. How often it had been his lot to evade the lion-hunters! It was
an unspeakable relief to have the general attention thus diverted from
himself. Doubtless Rosa Mundi would revel in it. It was her _rôle_ in
life, the touchstone of her profession. Adulation was the very air she
breathed.
He wondered a little to find her seeking privacy, even for a few days.
Just a whim of hers, no doubt! Was she not ever a creature of whims? And
it would not last. He remembered how once young Eric Baron had told him
that she needed popularity as a flower needs the sun. His rose of the
world had not been created to bloom unseen. The boy had been absurdly
long-suffering, unbelievably blind. How bitter, how cruel, had been his
disillusion, Courteney could only guess. Had she ever cared, ever
regretted, he wondered? But no, he was sure she had not. She would care
for nothing until the bloom faded. Then, indeed, possibly, remorse might
come.
Someone passing his table paused and spoke--the managing director of the
Hurley Bay Theatre and of a score of others, a man he knew slightly,
older than himself. "The hive swarms in vain," he said. "The queen
refuses to emerge."
Courteney's expression was supremely cynical. "I was not aware that she
was of such a retiring disposition," he said.
The other man laughed. He was an American, Ellis Grant by name, a man of
gross proportions, but keen-eyed, iron-jawed, and successful. "There is
a rumour," he said, "that she is about to be married. Possibly that
might account for her shyness."
His look was critical. Courteney threw back his head almost with
defiance. "It doesn't interest me," he said curtly.
Ellis Grant laughed again and passed on. He valued his acquaintanceship
with the writer. He would not jeopardize it with over-much familiarity.
But he did not believe in the utter lack of interest that he professed.
No living man who knew her could be wholly indifferent to the doings of
Rosa Mundi. The fiery charm of her, her passionate vitality, made that
impossible.
Courteney finished his dinner and went out. The night was almost as hot
as the day had been. He turned his back on the Pier, that was lighted
from end to end, and walked away down the long parade.
He was beginning to wish himself out of the place. He had an absurd
feeling of being caught in some web of Fate that clung to him
tenaciously, strive as he would. Grant's laugh of careless incredulity
pursued him. There had been triumph also in that laugh. No doubt the
fellow anticipated a big haul on Rosa Mundi's night.
And again there rose before him the memory of young Eric Baron's ardent
face. "I'd marry her to-morrow if she'd have me," the boy had said to
him once.
The boy had been a fool, but straight. The woman--well, the woman was
not the marrying sort. He was certain of that. She was elusive as a
flame. Impatiently yet again he flung the thought of her from him. What
did it matter to him? Why should he be haunted by her thus? He would not
suffer it.
He tramped to the end of the parade and stood looking out over the dark
sea. He was sorry for that adopted child of hers. That face of innocence
rose before him clear against the gathering dark. Not much chance for
the child, it seemed! Utterly unspoilt and unsophisticated at present,
and the property of that _demi-mondaine_! He wondered if there could be
any relationship between them. There was something in the child's eyes
that in some strange fashion recalled the eyes of Rosa Mundi. So might
she once have gazed in innocence upon a world unknown.
Again, almost savagely, he strove to thrust away the thoughts that
troubled him. The child was bound to be contaminated sooner or later;
but what was that to him? It was out of his power to deliver her. He was
no rescuer of damsels in distress.
So he put away from him the thought of Rosa Mundi and the thought of the
child called Rosemary who had come to him out of the morning sunlight,
and went back to his hotel doggedly determined that neither the one nor
the other should disturb his peace of mind. He would take refuge in his
work, and forget them.
But late that night he awoke from troubled sleep to hear Ellis Grant
laugh again in careless triumph--the laugh of the man who knows that he
has drawn a prize.
* * * * *
It was not a restful night for Randal Courteney, and in the early
morning he was out again, striding over the sunlit sands towards his own
particular bathing-cove beyond the breakwater.
The tide was coming in, and the dashing water filled all the world with
its music. A brisk wind was blowing, and the waves were high.
It was the sort of sea that Courteney revelled in, and he trusted that,
at that early hour, he would be free from all intrusion. So accustomed
to privacy was he that he had come to regard the place almost as his
own.
But as he topped the breakwater he came upon a sight that made him draw
back in disgust. A white mackintosh lay under a handful of stones upon
the shingly beach. He surveyed it suspiciously, with the air of a man
who fears that he is about to walk into a trap.
Then, his eyes travelling seaward, he spied a red cap bobbing up and
down in the spray of the dancing waves.
The impulse to turn and retrace his steps came to him, but some unknown
force restrained him. He remembered suddenly the current that had more
than once drawn him out of his course when bathing in those waters, and
the owner of the red cap was alone. He stood, uncertain, on the top of
the breakwater, and watched.
Two minutes later the very event he had pictured was taking place under
his eyes, and he was racing over the soft sand below the shingle at the
top of his speed. Two arms were beating wildly out in the shining
sparkle of water, as though they strove against the invisible bars of a
cage, and a voice--the high, frightened voice of a child--was calling
for help.
He flung off his coat as he ran, and dashed without an instant's pause
straight into the green foaming waves. The water swirled around him as
he struck out; he clove his way through it, all his energies
concentrated upon the bobbing red cap and struggling arms ahead of him.
Lifted on the crest of a rushing wave, he saw her, helpless as an infant
in the turmoil. Her terrified eyes were turned his way, wildly
beseeching him. He fought with the water to reach her.
He realized as he drew nearer that she was not wholly inexperienced. She
was working against the current to keep herself up, but no longer
striving to escape it. He saw with relief that she had not lost her
head.
He had been prepared to approach her with caution, but she sent him a
sudden, brave smile that reassured him.
"Be quick!" she gasped. "I'm nearly done."
The current caught him, but with a powerful stroke or two he righted his
course and reached her. Her hand closed upon his shoulder.
"I'm all right now," she panted, and despite the distress of her
breathing, he caught the note of confidence in her voice.
"We've got to get out of it," he made grim answer. "Get your hand in my
belt; that'll help you best. Then, when you're ready, strike out with
the other and make for the open sea! We shall get out of this infernal
current that way."
She obeyed him implicitly, asking no question. Side by side they drew
out of the current, the man pulling strongly, his companion seconding
his efforts with a fitfulness that testified to her failing powers. They
reached calmer water at length, and then curtly he ordered her to turn
on her back and rest.
Again without a word she obeyed him, and he floated beside her,
supporting her. The early sun smote down upon them with increasing
strength. Her face was deathly pale against the red of her cap.
"We must get to shore," said Courteney, observing her.
"That dreadful current!" she gasped through quivering lips.
"No. We can avoid that. It will mean a scamper over the sands when we
get there, but that will do you good. Stay as you are! I will tow you."
Had she been less obedient, he would have found his task infinitely
harder. But she was absolutely submissive to his will. Ten minutes later
he landed her close to his own bathing-cove, which he discovered with
relief to be deserted.
She would have subsided in a heap upon the sand the moment she felt it
warm and dry beneath her feet; but he held her up.
"No. A good run is what you need. Come! Your mackintosh is half-a-mile
away."
She looked at him with dismay, but he remained inexorable. He had no
desire to have her fainting on his hands. As if she had been a boy, he
gripped her by the elbow.
Again she submitted stumblingly to his behest, but when they had covered
half the distance Courteney had mercy.
"You're fagged out," he said. "Rest here while I go and fetch it!"
She sank down thankfully on the shingle, and he strode swiftly on.
When he returned she had hollowed a nest for herself, and was lying
curled up in the sun. Her head was pillowed on her cap, and the soft
golden curls waved tenderly above her white forehead. Once more she
seemed to him a mere child, and he looked down upon her with compassion.
She sat up at his approach with a boyish, alert movement, and lifted
her eyes to his. He likened them half-unconsciously to the purple-blue
of hare-bells, in the ardent light of the early morning.
"You are kind!" she said gratefully.
He placed the white mackintosh around her slim figure. "Take my advice,"
he said in his brief fashion, "and don't come bathing alone in this
direction again!"
She made a small shy gesture of invitation. "Sit down a minute!" she
said half-pleadingly. "I know you are very wet; but the sun is so warm,
and they say sea-water never chills."
He hesitated momentarily; then, possibly because she had spoken with so
childlike an appeal, he sat down in the shingle beside her.
She stretched out a slender hand to him, almost as though feeling her
way. And when he took it she made a slight movement towards him, as of
one about to make a confidence. "Now we can talk," she said.
He let her hand go again, and felt in the pocket of his coat, which he
carried on his arm, for his pipe.
She drew a little nearer to him. "Mr. Courteney," she said, "doesn't
'Thank you' sound a silly thing to say?"
He drew back. "Don't! Please don't!" he said, and flushed uneasily as he
opened his tobacco-pouch. "I would infinitely rather you said nothing at
all to any one. Don't do it again, that's all."
"Mustn't I even tell Rosa Mundi?" she said.
His flush deepened as he remembered that she would probably know him by
name. She must have known in those far-off Australian days that he was
working with all his might to free young Baron from her toils.
He sat in silence till, "Will you tell me something?" whispered
Rosemary, leaning nearer.