A ROYAL WATERING-PLACE
Luke Andersen’s trip to Weymouth proved most charming and eventful. He
had scarcely emerged from the crowded station, with its row of antique
omnibuses and its lethargic phalanx of expectant out-porters and
bath-chair men,--each one of whom was a crusted epitome of ingrained
quaintness,--when he caught sight of Phyllis Santon and Annie Bristow
strolling laughingly towards the sea-front. They must have walked to
Yeoborough and entered the train there, for he had seen nothing of them
at Nevilton Station.
The vivacious Polly, a lively little curly-haired child, of some
seventeen summers, was far too happy and thrilled by the adventure of
the excursion and the holiday air of the sea-side, to indulge in any
jealous fits. She was the first of the two, indeed, to greet the elder
girls, both of them quite well known to her, running rapidly after
them, in her white stiffly-starched print frock, and hailing them with
a shout of joyous recognition.
The girls turned quickly and they all three awaited, in perfect good
temper, the stone-carver’s deliberate approach. Never had the spirits
of this latter been higher, or his surroundings more congenial to his
mood.
Anxious not to lose any single one of the exquisite sounds, sights,
smells, and intimations, which came pouring in upon him, as he
leisurely drifted out upon the sunny street, he let his little
companion run after his two friends as fast as she wished, and watched
with serene satisfaction the airy flight of her light figure, with the
deep blue patch of sea-line at the end of the street as its welcome
background.
The smell of sea-weed, the sound of the waves on the beach, the
cries of the fish-mongers, and the coming and going of the whole
heterogeneous crowd, filled Luke’s senses with the same familiar
thrill of indescribable pleasure as he had known, on such an occasion,
from his earliest childhood. The gayly piled fruit heaped up on the
open stalls, the little tobacco-shops with their windows full of
half-sentimental half-vulgar picture-cards, the weather-worn fronts of
the numerous public-houses, the wood-work of whose hospitable doors
always seemed to him endowed with a peculiar mellowness of their
own,--all these things, as they struck his attentive senses, revived
the most deeply-felt stirrings of old associations.
Especially did he love the sun-bathed atmosphere, so languid
with holiday ease, which seemed to float in and out of the open
lodging-house entrances, where hung those sun-dried sea-weeds and
wooden spades and buckets, which ever-fresh installments of bare-legged
children carried off and replaced. Luke always maintained that of all
mortal odours he loved best the indescribable smell of the hall-way
of a sea-side lodging-house, where the very oil-cloth on the floor,
and the dead bull-rushes in the corner, seemed impregnated with long
seasons of salt-burdened sun-filled air.
The fish-shops, the green-grocer’s shops, the second-hand book-shops,
and most of all, those delicious repositories of sea-treasures--foreign
importations all glittering with mother-of-pearl, dried sea-horses,
sea-sponges, sea-coral, and wonderful little boxes all pasted over with
shimmering shells--filled him with a delight as vivid and new as when
he had first encountered them in remote infancy.
This first drifting down to the sea’s edge, after emerging from the
train, always seemed to Luke the very supremacy of human happiness.
The bare legs of the children, little and big, who ran laughing or
crying past him and the tangled curls of the elder damsels, tossed so
coquettishly back from their sun-burnt faces, the general feeling of
irresponsibility in the air, the tang of adventure in it all, of the
unexpected, the chance-born, always wrapped him about in an epicurean
dream of pleasure.
That monotonous splash of the waves against the pebbles,--how he
associated it with endless exquisite flirtations,--flirtations
conducted with adorable shamelessness between the blue sky and the
blue sea! The memory of these, the vague memory of enchanting forms
prone or supine upon the glittering sands, with the passing and
re-passing of the same plump bathing-woman,--he had known her since
his childhood!--and the same donkeys with their laughing burdens, and
the same sweet-sellers with their trays, almost made him cry aloud
with delight, as emerging at length upon the Front, and overtaking his
friends at the Jubilee Clock-Tower, he saw the curved expanse of the
bay lying magically spread out before him. How well he knew it all, and
how inexpressibly he loved it!
The tide was on its outward ebb when the four happy companions jumped
down, hand in hand, from the esplanade to the shingle. The long dark
windrow of broken shells and sea-weed drew a pleasant dividing line
between the dry and the wet sand. Luke always associated the stranded
star-fish and jelly-fish and bits of scattered drift-wood which that
windrow offered, with those other casually tossed-up treasures with
which an apparently pagan-minded providence had bestrewn his way!
Once well out upon the sands, and while the girls, with little shrieks
and bursts of merriment, were pushing one another into the reach of
the tide, Luke turned to survey with a deep sigh of satisfaction, the
general appearance of the animated scene.
The incomparable watering-place,--with its charming “after-glow,” as
Mr. Hardy so beautifully puts it, “of Georgian gaiety,”--had never
looked so fascinating as it looked this August afternoon.
The queer old-fashioned bathing-machines, one of them still actually
carrying the Lion and Unicorn upon its pointed roof, glittered in the
sunshine with an air of welcoming encouragement. The noble sweep of the
houses behind the crescent-shaped esplanade, with the names of their
terraces--Brunswick, Regent, Gloucester, Adelaide--so suggestive of the
same historic epoch, gleamed with reciprocal hospitality; nor did the
tall spire of St. John’s Church, a landmark for miles round, detract
from the harmony of the picture.
On Luke’s left, as he turned once more and faced the sea, the vibrating
summer air, free at present from any trace of mist, permitted a wide
and lovely view of the distant cliffs enclosing the bay. The great
White Horse, traced upon the chalk hills, seemed within an hour’s walk
of where he stood, and the majestic promontory of the White Nore drew
the eye onward to where, at the end of the visible coast-line, St.
Alban’s Head sank into the sea.
On Luke’s right the immediate horizon was blocked by the grassy
eminence known to dwellers in Weymouth as “the Nothe”; but beyond this,
and beyond the break-water which formed an extension of it, the huge
bulk of Portland--Mr. Hardy’s Isle of the Slingers--rose massive and
shadowy against the west.
As he gazed with familiar pleasure at this unequalled view, Luke could
not help thinking to himself how strangely the pervading charm of
scenes of this kind is enhanced by personal and literary association.
He recalled the opening chapters of “The Well-Beloved,” that curiously
characteristic fantasy-sketch of the great Wessex novelist; and he also
recalled those amazing descriptions in Victor Hugo’s “L’Homme qui Rit,”
which deal with these same localities.
Shouts of girlish laughter distracted him at last from his exquisite
reverie, and flinging himself down on the hot sand he gave himself up
to enjoyment. Holding her tight by either hand, the two elder girls,
their skirts already drenched with salt-water, were dragging their
struggling companion across the foamy sea-verge. The white surf flowed
beneath their feet and their screams and laughter rang out across the
bay.
Luke called to them that he was going to paddle, and implored them to
do the same. He preferred to entice them thus into the deeper water,
rather than to anticipate for them a return home with ruined petticoats
and wet sand-filled shoes. Seeing him leisurely engaged in removing
his boots and socks and turning up his trousers, the three exuberant
young people hurried back to his side and proceeded with their own
preparations.
Soon, all four of them, laughing and splashing one another with water,
were blissfully wading along the shore, interspersing their playful
teasing with alternate complimentary and disparaging remarks, relative
to the various bathers whose isolation they invaded.
Luke’s spirits rose higher and higher. No youthful Triton, with his
attendant Nereids, could have expressed more vividly in his radiant
aplomb, the elemental energy of air and sea. His ecstatic delight
seemed to reach its culmination as a group of extraordinarily beautiful
children came wading towards them, their sunny hair and pearl-bright
limbs gleaming against the blue water.
At the supreme moment of this ecstasy, however, came a sudden pang of
contrary emotion,--of dark fear and gloomy foreboding. For a sudden
passing second, there rose before him,--it was now about half-past four
in the afternoon,--the image of his brother, melancholy and taciturn,
his heart broken by Lacrima’s trouble. And then, like a full dark tide
rolling in upon him, came that ominous reaction, spoken of by the old
pagan writers, and regarded by them as the shadow of the jealousy of
the Immortal Gods, envious of human pleasure--the reaction to the fare
of the Eumenides.
His companions remained as gay and charming as ever. Nothing could
have been prettier than to watch the mixture of audacity and coyness
with which they twisted their frocks round them, nothing more amusing
than to note the differences of character between the three, as they
betrayed their naive souls in their childish abandonment to the joy of
the hour.
Both Phyllis and Annie were tall and slender and dark. But there the
likeness between them ceased. Annie had red pouting lips, the lower
one of which protruded a little beyond its fellow, giving her face in
repose a quite deceptive look of sullenness and petulance. Her features
were irregular and a little heavy, the beauty of her countenance
residing in the shadowy coils of dusky hair which surmounted it, and
in the velvet softness of her large dark eyes. For all the heaviness
of her face, Annie’s expression was one of childlike innocence and
purity; and when she flirted or made love, she did so with a clinging
affectionateness and serious gravity which had much of the charm of
extreme youth.
Phyllis, on the contrary, had softly outlined features of the most
delicate regularity, while from her hazel eyes and laughing parted lips
perpetual defiant provocations of alluring mischief challenged everyone
she approached. Annie was the more loving of the two, Phyllis the more
lively and amorous. Both of them made constant fun of their little
curly-headed companion, whose direct boyish ways and whimsical speeches
kept them in continual peals of merriment.
Tired at last of paddling, they all waded to the shore, and crossing
the warm powdery sand, which is one of the chief attractions of the
place, they sat down on the edge of the shingle and dried their feet
in the sun.
Reassuming their shoes and stockings, and demurely shaking down their
skirts, the three girls followed the now rather silent Luke to the
little tea-house opposite the Clock-Tower, in an upper room of which,
looking out on the sea, were several pleasant window-seats furnished
with convenient tables.
The fragrant tea, the daintiness of its accessories, the fresh taste of
the bread and butter, not to speak of the inexhaustible spirits of his
companions, soon succeeded in dispelling the stone-carver’s momentary
depression.
When the meal was over, as their train was not due to leave till nearly
seven, and it was now hardly five, Luke decided to convey his little
party across the harbour-ferry. They strolled out of the shop into the
sunshine, not before the stone-carver had bestowed so lavish a tip upon
the little waitress that his companions exchanged glances of feminine
dismay.
They took the road through the old town to reach the ferry, following
the southern of the two parallel streets that debouch from the Front at
the point where stands the old-fashioned equestrian statue of George
the Third. Luke nourished in his heart a sentimental tenderness for
this simple monarch, vaguely and quite erroneously associating the
royal interest in the place with his own dreamy attachment to it.
When they reached the harbour they found it in a stir of excitement
owing to the arrival of the passenger-boat from the Channel Islands,
one of the red-funneled modern successors to those antique
paddle-steamers whose first excursions must have been witnessed from
his Guernsey refuge by the author of the “Toilers of the Deep.” Side by
side with the smartly painted ship, were numerous schooners and brigs,
hailing from more northern regions, whose cargoes were being unloaded
by a motley crowd of clamorous dock-hands.
Luke and his three companions turned to the left when they reached the
water’s edge and strolled along between the warehouses and the wharves
until they arrived at the massive bridge which crosses the harbour.
Leaning upon the parapet, whose whitish-grey fabric indicated that the
dominion of Leo’s Hill gave place here to the noble Portland Stone,
they surveyed with absorbed interest the busy scene beneath them.
The dark greenish-colored water swirled rapidly seaward in the
increasing ebb of the tide. White-winged sea-gulls kept swooping down
to its surface and rising again in swift air-cutting curves, balancing
their glittering bodies against the slanting sunlight. Every now
and then a boat-load of excursionists would shoot out from beneath
the shadow of the wharves and shipping, and cross obliquely the
swift-flowing tide to the landing steps on the further shore.
The four friends moved to the northern parapet of the bridge, and the
girls gave little cries of delight, to see, at no great distance, where
the broad expanse of the back-water began to widen, a group of stately
swans, rocking serenely on the shining waves. They remained for some
while, trying to attract these birds by flinging into the water bits
of broken cake, saved by the economic-minded Annie from the recent
repast. But these offerings only added new spoil to the plunder of the
greedy sea-gulls, from whose rapid movements the more aristocratic
inland creatures kept haughtily aloof.
Preferring to use the ferry for their crossing rather than the bridge,
Luke led his friends back, along the wharves, till they reached the
line of slippery steps about which loitered the lethargic owners of
the ferry-boats. With engaging alarm, and pretty gasps and murmurs of
half-simulated panic, the three young damsels were helped down into
one of these rough receptacles, and the bare-necked, affable oarsman
proceeded, with ponderous leisureliness, to row them across.
As the heavy oars rattled in their rowlocks, and the swirling tide
gurgled about the keels, Luke, seated in the stern, between Annie
and Phyllis, felt once more a thrilling sense of his former emotion.
With one hand round Phyllis’ waist, and the other caressing Annie’s
gloveless fingers, he permitted his gaze to wander first up, then down,
the flowing tide.
Far out to sea, he perceived a large war-ship, like a great drowsy
sea-monster, lying motionless between sky and wave; and sweeping in,
round the little pier’s point, came a light full-sailed skiff, with the
water foaming across its bows.
With the same engaging trepidation in his country-bred comrades, they
clambered up the landing-steps, the lower ones of which were covered
with green sea-weed, and the upper ones worn smooth as marble by long
use, and thence emerged upon the little narrow jetty, bordering upon
the harbour’s edge.
Here were a row of the most enchanting eighteenth century
lodging-houses, interspersed, at incredibly frequent spaces, by small
antique inns, bearing quaint names drawn from British naval history.
Skirting the grassy slopes of the Nothe, with its old-fashioned fort,
they rounded the small promontory and climbed down among the rocks and
rock-pools which lay at its feet. It was pretty to observe the various
flutterings and agitations, and to hear the shouts of laughter and
delight with which the young girls followed Luke over these perilous
and romantic obstacles, and finally paused at his side upon a great
sun-scorched shell-covered rock, surrounded by foamy water.
The wind was cool in this exposed spot, and holding their hats in their
hands the little party gave themselves up to the freedom and freshness
of air and sea.
But the wandering interest of high-spirited youth is as restless as the
waves. Very soon Phyllis and Polly had drifted away from the others,
and were climbing along the base of the cliff above, filling their
hands with sea-pinks and sea-lavender, which attracted them by their
glaucous foliage.
Left to themselves, Luke removed his shoes and stockings, and dangled
his feet over the rock’s edge, while Annie, prone upon her face, the
sunshine caressing her white neck and luxuriant hair, stretched her
long bare arms into the cool water.
Leaning across the prostrate form of his companion, and gazing down
into the deep recesses of the tidal pool which separated the rock
they reclined on from the one behind it, the stone-carver was able to
make out the ineffably coloured tendrils and soft translucent shapes
of several large sea-anemones, submerged beneath the greenish water.
He pointed these out to his companion, who moving round a little, and
tucking up her sleeves still higher, endeavoured to reach them with her
hand. In this she was defeated, for the deceptive water was much deeper
than either of them supposed.
“What are those darling little shells, down there at the bottom, Luke?”
she whispered. Luke, with his arm round her neck, and his head close to
hers, peered down into the shadowy depths.
“They’re some kind of cowries,” he said at last, “shells that in
Africa, I believe, they use as money.”
“I wish they were money here,” murmured the girl, “I’d buy mother one
of those silver brushes we saw in the shop.”
“Listen!” cried Luke, and taking a penny from his pocket he let it fall
into the water. They both fancied they heard a little metallic sound
when it struck the bottom.
Suddenly Annie gave a queer excited laugh, shook herself free from her
companion’s arm, and scrambled up on her knees. Luke lay back on the
rock and gazed in wonder at her flushed cheeks and flashing eyes.
“What’s the matter, child?” he enquired.
She fumbled at her bosom, and Luke noticed for the first time that
she was wearing round her neck a little thin metal chain. At last
with an impatient movement of her fingers she snapped the resisting
cord and flung it into the tide. Then she held out to Luke a small
golden object, which glittered in the palm of her hand. It was a
weather-stained ring, twisted and bent out of all shape.
“It’s _her_ ring!” she cried exultantly. “Crazy Bert got it out of that
hole, with a bit of bent wire, and Phyllis squirmed it away from him
by letting him give her a lift in the wagon. He squeezed her dreadful
hard, she do say, and tickled her awful with straws and things, but
before evening she had the ring away from him. You can bet I kissed her
and thanked her, when I got it! Us two be real friends, as you might
call it! Phyllis cried, in the night, dreaming the idiot was pinching
her, and she not able to slap ’im back. But I got the ring, and there’t
be, Luke, glittering-gold as ever, though ’tis sad bended and battered.”
Luke made a movement to take the object, but the girl closed her
fingers tightly upon it and held it high above his head. With her arm
thus raised and the glitter of sea and sun upon her form, she resembled
some sweetly-carved figure-head on the bows of a ship. The wind fanned
her hot cheeks and caressed, with cool touch, her splendid coils of
hair. Luke was quite overcome by her beauty, and could only stare at
her in dazed amazement, while she repeated, in clear ringing tones, the
words of the old country game.
“My lady’s lost her golden ring;
Her golden ring, her golden ring;
My lady’s lost her golden ring;
I pitch upon you to find it!”
The song’s refrain died away over the waves, and was answered by the
scream of an astonished cormorant, and by a mocking shout from a group
of idle soldiers on the grassy terrace above the cliff.
“Shall us throw her ring out to sea?” cried Annie. “They say a ring
lost so, means sorrow for her that owns it. Say ‘yes,’ and it’s gone,
Luke!”
While the girl’s arm swung backwards and forwards above him, the
stone-carver’s thoughts whirled even more rapidly through his brain. A
drastic and bold idea, that had often before crossed the threshold of
his consciousness, now assumed a most dominant shape. Why not ask Annie
to marry him?
He was growing a little weary of his bachelor-life. The wayward track
of his days had more than once, of late, seemed to have reached a sort
of climax. Why not, at one reckless stroke, end this epoch of his
history, and launch out upon another? His close association with James
had hitherto stood in the way of any such step, but his brother had
fallen recently into such fits of gloomy reticence, that he had found
himself wondering more than once whether such a drastic troubling of
the waters, as the introduction of a girl into their ménage, would not
ease the situation a little. It was not for a moment to be supposed
that he and James could separate. If Annie did marry him, she must do
so on the understanding of his brother’s living with them.
Luke began to review in his mind the various cottages in Nevilton which
might prove available for this adventure. It tickled his fancy a great
deal, the thought of having a house and garden of his own, and he was
shrewd enough to surmise that of all his feminine friends, Annie was
by far the best fitted to perform the functions of the good-tempered
companion of a philosophical sentimentalist. The gentle creature had
troubled him so little by jealous fits in her rôle of sweetheart, that
it did not present itself as probable that she would prove a shrewish
wife. Glancing across the blue water to the great Rock-Island opposite
them, Luke came rapidly to the conclusion that he would take the risk
and make the eventful plunge. He knew enough of himself to have full
confidence in his power of dealing with the delicate art of matrimony,
and the very difficulties of the situation, implied in the number
of his contemporary amours, only added a tang and piquancy to the
enterprise.
“Well,” cried Annie. “Shall us throw the pretty lady’s ring into the
deep sea? It’ll mean trouble for her, trouble and tears, Luke! Be ’ee
of a mind to do it, or be ’ee not? ’Tis your hand must fling it, and
with the flinging of it, her heart’ll drop, splash--splash--into deep
sorrow. She’ll cry her eyes out, for this ’ere job, and that’s the
truth of it, Luke darling. Be ’ee ready to fling it, or be ’ee not
ready? There’ll be no getting it back, once us have throwed it in.”
She held out her arm towards him as she spoke, and with her other
hand pushed back her hair from her forehead. For so soft and tender a
creature as the girl was, it was strange, the wild Maenad-like look,
which she wore at that moment. She might have been an incarnation of
the avenging deities of sea and air, threatening disaster to some
unwitting Olympian.
Luke scrambled to his feet, and seizing her wrist with both his hands,
forced her fingers apart, and possessed himself of the equivocal
trinket.
“If I throw it,” he cried, in an excited tone, “will you be my wife,
Annie?”
At this unexpected word a complete collapse overtook the girl. All
trace of colour left her cheeks and a sudden trembling passed through
her limbs. She staggered, and would have fallen, if Luke had not seized
her in his arms.
In the shock of saving her, the stone-carver’s hand involuntarily
unclosed, and the piece of gold, slipping from his fingers, fell down
upon the slope of the rock, and sliding over its edge, sank into the
deep water.
“Annie! Annie! What is it, dear?” murmured Luke, making the trembling
girl sit down by his side, and supporting her tenderly.
For her only answer she flung her arms round his neck and kissed him
passionately again and again. It was not only of kisses that Luke
became conscious, for, as she pressed him to her, her breast heaved
pitifully under her print frock, and when she let him go, the taste of
her tears was in his mouth. For the first time in his life the queer
wish entered the stone-carver’s mind that he had not, in his day, made
love quite so often.
There was something so pure, so confiding, and yet so passionately
tender, about little Annie’s abandonment, that it produced, in the
epicurean youth’s soul, a most quaint sense of shame and embarrassment.
It was deliciously sweet to him, all the same, to find how, beyond
expectation, he had made so shrewd a choice. But he wished some
humorous demon at the back of his mind wouldn’t call up before him at
that moment the memory of other clinging arms and lips.
With an inward grin of sardonic commentary upon his melting mood, the
cynical thought passed through his mind, how strange it was, in this
mortal world, that human kisses should all so lamentably resemble one
another, and that human tears should all leave behind them the same
salt taste! Life was indeed a matter of “eternal recurrence,” and
whether with Portland and its war-ships as the background, or with
Nevilton Mount and its shady woods, the same emotions and the same
reactions must needs come and go, with the same inexorable monotony!
He glanced down furtively into the foam-flecked water, but there was
no sign of the lost ring. The tide seemed to have turned now, and
the sea appeared less calm. Little flukes of white spray surged up
intermittently on the in-rolling waves, and a strong breath of wind,
rising with the sinking of the sun, blew cool and fresh upon their
foreheads.
“Her ring’s gone,” whispered Annie, pulling down her sleeves over her
soft arms, and holding out her wrists, for him to fasten the bands,
“and you do belong to none but I now, Luke. When shall us be married,
dear?” she added, pressing her cool cheek against his, and running her
fingers through his hair.
The words, as well as the gesture that accompanied them, jarred upon
Luke’s susceptibilities.
“Why is it,” he thought, “that girls are so extraordinarily stupid in
these things? Why do they always seem only waiting for an opportunity
to drop their piquancy and provocation, and become confident, assured,
possessive, complacent? Have I,” he said to himself, “made a horrible
blunder? Shall I regret this day forever, and be ready to give anything
for those fatal words not to have been uttered?”
He glanced down once more upon the brimming, in-rushing tide that
covered Gladys’ ring. Then with a jerk he pulled out his watch.
“Go and call the others,” he commanded, “I’m going to have a dip before
we start.”
Annie glanced quickly into his face, but reassured by his friendly
smile, proceeded to obey him, with only the least little sigh.
“Don’t drown yourself, dear,” she called back to him, as she made her
way cautiously across the rocks.
Luke hurriedly undressed, and standing for a moment, a slim golden
figure, in the horizontal sunlight, swung himself lightly down over the
rock’s edge and struck out boldly for the open sea.
With vigorous strokes he wrestled with the inflowing tide. Wave after
wave splashed against his face. Pieces of floating sea-weed and
wisps of surf clung to his arms and hair. But he held resolutely on,
breathing deep breaths of liberty and exultation, and drinking in, as
if from a vast wide-brimmed cup, the thrilling spaciousness of air and
sky.
Girls, love-making, marriage,--the whole complication of the cloying
erotic world,--fell away from him, like the too-soft petals of some
great stifling velvet-bosomed flower; and naked of desire, as he was
naked of human clothes, he gave himself up to the free, pure elements.
In later hours, when once more the old reiterated tune was beating time
in his brain, he recalled with regret the large emancipation of that
moment.
As he splashed and spluttered, and turned over deliciously in the
water, like some exultant human-limbed merman, returning, after a long
inland exile, to his natural home, he found his thoughts fantastically
reverting to those queer, mad ideas, about the evil power of the stone
they both worked upon, to which James Andersen had given expression
when his wits were astray. Here at any rate, in the solid earth’s
eternal antagonist, was a power capable of destroying every sinister
spell.
He remorsefully blamed himself that he had not compelled his brother to
come down with them to the sea. He recalled the half-hearted invitation
he had extended to James, not altogether sorry to have it refused,
and not repeating it. He had been a selfish fool, he thought. Were
James swimming now by his side, his pleasure in that violet-coloured
coast-line and that titanic rock-monster, would have been doubled by
the revival of indescribably appealing memories.
He made a vigorous resolution that never again--whatever mood his
brother might be in--would he allow the perilous lure of exquisite
femininity, to come between him and the nobler classic bond, of the
love that “passeth the love of women.”
Conscious that he must return without a moment’s further delay if they
were to catch their train, he swung round in the water and let the full
tide bear him shoreward.
On the way back he was momentarily assailed by a slight touch of
cramp in his legs. It quickly passed, but it was enough to give the
life-enamoured youth a shock of cold panic. Death? _That_, after all,
he thought, was the only intolerable thing. As long as one breathed
and moved, in this mad world, nothing that could happen greatly
mattered! One was conscious,--one could note the acts and scenes of
the incredible drama; and in this mere fact of consciousness, one
could endure anything. But to be dead,--to be deprived of the sweet
air,--that remained, that must always remain, the one absolute Terror!
Reaching his starting-place, Luke was amused to observe that the tide
was already splashing over their rock, and in another minute or two
would have drenched his clothes. He chuckled to himself as he noted
how this very practical possibility jerked his mind into a completely
different vein. Love, philosophy, friendship, all tend to recede to the
very depths of one’s invaluable consciousness, when there appears a
risk of returning to a railway station in a drenched shirt.
He collected his possessions with extreme rapidity, and holding them
in a bundle at arm’s length from his dripping body, clambered hastily
up the shore, and humorously waving back his modest companions, who
were now being chaffed by quite a considerable group of soldiers on the
cliff above, he settled himself down on a bank of sea-weed and began
hurriedly to dry, using his waistcoat as a towel.
He was soon completely dressed, and, all four of them a little
agitated, began a hasty rush for the train.
Phyllis and Polly scolded him all the way without mercy. Had he brought
them out here, to keep them in the place all night? What would their
mothers say, and their fathers, and their brothers, and their aunts?
Annie, alone of the party, remained silent, her full rich lips closed
like a sleepy peony, and her heavy-lidded velvety eyes casting little
timid affectionate glances at her so unexpectedly committed lover.
The crossness of the two younger girls grew in intensity when,
the ferry safely crossed, Luke dragged them at remorseless speed
through the crowded town. Pitiful longing eyes were cast back at the
glittering shops and the magical picture-shows. Why had he taken them
to those horrid rocks? Why hadn’t he given them time to look at the
shop-windows? They’d promised faithfully to bring back something for
Dad and Betty and Queenie and Dick.
Phyllis had ostentatiously flung into the harbour her elaborately
selected bunch of sea-flora, and the poor ill-used plants, hot from
the girl’s hand, were now tossing up and down amid the tarry keels and
swaying hawsers. The girl regretted this action now,--regretted it more
and more vividly as the station drew near. Mummy always loved a bunch
o’ flowers, and they were so pretty! She was sure it was Luke who had
made her lose them. He had pushed her so roughly up those nasty steps.
Tears were in Polly’s eyes as, bedraggled and panting, they emerged
on the open square where the gentle monarch looks down from his
stone horse. There were sailors now, mixed with the crowd on the
esplanade,--such handsome boys! It was cruel, it was wicked, that they
had to go, just when the real sport began.
The wretched Jubilee Clock--how they all hated its trim
appearance!--had a merciless finger pointing at the very minute their
train was due to start, as Luke hurried them round the street-corner.
Polly fairly began to cry, as they dragged her from the alluring
scene. She was certain that the Funny Men were just going to begin. She
was sure that that distant drum meant Punch and Judy!
Breathlessly they rushed upon the platform. Wildly, with anxious
eyes and gasping tones, they enquired of the first official they
encountered, whether the Yeoborough train had gone.
Observing the beauty of the three troubled girls, this placid authority
proceeded to tantalize them, asking “what the hurry was,” and whether
they wanted a “special,” and other maddening questions. It was only
when Luke, who had rushed furiously to the platform’s remote end,
was observed to be cheerfully and serenely returning, that Phyllis
recovered herself sufficiently to give their disconcerted insulter what
she afterwards referred to as “a bit of lip in return for his blarsted
sauce.”
No,--the train would not be starting for another ten minutes. Fortunate
indeed was this accident of a chance delay on the Great Western
Railroad,--the most punctual of all railroads in the world,--for it
landed Luke with three happy, completely recovered damsels, and in
a compartment all to themselves, when the train did move at last.
Abundantly fortified with ginger-pop and sponge-cake,--how closely Luke
associated the savour of both these refreshments with such an excursion
as this!--and further cheered by the secure possession of chocolates,
bananas, “Ally Sloper’s Half Holiday,” and the “Illustrated London
News,”--the girls romped, and sang, and teased each other and Luke, and
whispered endearing mockeries out of the window to sedately unconscious
gentlemen, at every station where they stopped until the aged guard’s
paternal benevolence changed to irritable crossness, and Luke himself
was not altogether sorry when the familiar landscape of Yeoborough,
dusky and shadowy in the twilight, hove in sight.
Little Polly left them at the second of the two Yeoborough stations,
and the others, crowding at the window to wave their good-byes, were
carried on in the same train to Nevilton.
During this final five minutes, Annie slipped softly down upon her
lover’s knees and seemed to wish to indicate to Phyllis, without the
use of words, that her relations with their common friend were now on a
new plane,--at once more innocent and less reserved.