THE NEW MOON
Grouped in the hostel porch, the other girls were chaffing, in
whispers, the Principal Boy.
"Well, you had all the luck! Not a word or a look for any of us!"
they complained. "You were the one, Pansy!"
"Me? Nit," declared Pansy, winking in a fashion for which she had
been more than once gently taken to task by Miss Eleanor Urquhart.
It was a wink epitomising the experience of five crowded years upon
the boards. "_Me_ indeed!"
"Now, just _hark_ at you again!" protested the Jam-Hand, huskily.
"You weren't half getting off with your Lieutenant Daring the
Cliff-climber, oh, no!"
"Getting off? Scored off, you mean," scoffed Pansy. "Played off,
more like!"
"Played off?" queried the Typist, hopefully. "Played off against
who?"
"Oh, you get the call-boy to wake you up when it's time for you to
come on!" laughed the Principal Boy, under her breath. "D'you mean
to say you weren't on to that inside of half-a-minute at the Hotel
this afternoon? Who d'you s'pose _he's_ here for? Don't strain
yourselves guessing. I'll show you presently."
What she showed them presently (when, taking the slim Annie by one
arm and Mabel Beading by the other, she drove the Jam-Hand and the
Typist, also arm-in-arm ahead of them, along the stretch of beach
below the sandhills) was Miss Rosamond Fayre, with the young man who
had been their guest of the afternoon, walking along (but not
arm-in-arm) some distance behind.
Perhaps they walked more slowly than they knew. And for perhaps the
sixth time since their first breathless encounter of the morning that
now seemed such ages away, now in the soft gathering dusk above the
sands that had been so dazzlingly sunny, Rosamond found herself
thinking, "_Now!_"
She waited for him to speak.
He spoke. He said, "Don't you think it's a bit too cold for it?"
"Cold," repeated Rosamond, "too cold for what?"
"Why, for the phosphorescence," he explained, turning his eyes to the
water's edge where the waves came tumbling in, nearer and nearer to
the last tide-mark. Now one ran up in advance, filling with water
the hollowed tracks left by the girls ahead; then swirled back,
leaving a stretch of smooth brown mirror in which gleamed the
reflections of a pearl and apricot sky, a towering sunset cloud, the
point of light from a single star. "I don't think we shall see any
to-night."
"There was some a night or two ago."
"Ah, yes," said Urquhart. "But I only came over last night."
This, thought Rosamond, was the opening. But he didn't go on. Very
well! To return, while he sought for another opening, to the subject
of the phosphorescence.
"It looked like summer-lightning on the waves," she told him. "All
pale green--wonderful----"
"Ah, but you don't really get enough of it just in the shallow waters
here, and in these cool climates. The French coast in August is no
place for the real thing," returned the young man. "Right out at
sea--in the Tropics at night--that's when it's 'wonderful.' The wake
of a ship, where it looks as if she'd turned up a furrow of silver
fire as the plough turns up earth. That's where you ought to see it
from," he told her, thinking, "and so you shall, and soon! Wait
until I carry you off on a honeymoon-cruise round the world, Nell!
What would you say to that?"
The girl whom his increasingly venturesome thoughts were addressing
as "Nell" said, composedly, "Yes, it must be rather delightful to be
able to travel, like that."
"It would be, you darling," responded Mr. Ted Urquhart promptly--but
not aloud. So that she still waited for him to say something.
His next remark was more or less an excuse to check their advance for
a moment, while the others--their chattering young voices raised from
time to time in snatches of musical comedy song--swung on further
ahead. Young Urquhart, standing still on the sand, pointed out to
the apricot-shading-to-pearl sweep of sky above the tumbling waves
and said, "Hullo! The new moon."
"Oh, yes," said Rosamond politely, following his glance at the curve
of thin silver over the rim of an indigo cloud. "So it is."
"Doesn't that mean that one ought to curtsey, or bow seven times, or
touch gold, or something?" asked Ted Urquhart. And in spite of his
care to keep his voice as well under control as his eyes, a shade of
difference crept into his tone with the words, "Isn't one supposed to
get a new moon wish?"
A shade of difference of another sort was to be detected in the tone
of Miss Fayre's "I believe there is some old superstition of the
kind. It begins to grow dark quite soon now, doesn't it!"
"Ah, putting me in what you consider my place, Nell?" This was her
companion's mental comment. His spoken one was, "Yes, and yet it
seems only a few days since we were at the longest day."
To-day had seemed sufficiently long and crowded to Rosamond Fayre.
Yet this young man didn't appear to find time in it to remember the
most rudimentary beginnings of his manners. After all her "of
courses" he was not seizing this opportunity to let her know his
name! Here he was strolling by the lacey hem of the waves on the
sand and at her side, and the most obvious thing to say remained
unspoken. He merely asked if those were the Boulogne harbour-lights
that one saw down there to the left?
"Yes." (Did he imagine they were the Lights o' London?)
"And it's not so much further along to Wimereux?"
"No," said Rosamond Fayre.
Here two white-clad figures that had been walking along the sands
behind them overtook them, with a cheery "Good-evening!" to Urquhart,
who lifted his straw hat. They were the Americans, the honeymoon
couple from his hotel, and the little bride gave the swiftest glance
of sympathetic interest at the other couple as they passed.
"Why, Lucius, if it isn't that perfectly lovely girl from the Hostel
with the nice-looking Englishman from the de la Plage that asked you
for matches," she murmured to her own escort. "Now, how thrilling!
Don't they just look _fine_ together, with their reflections in that
wet sand below them and the new moon just over their heads; isn't it
a _picture_! May their own moon rise soon," concluded the just
married girl, happily, "for it's easy to see what's doing _there_!"
She might not have come to this conclusion--or, again, she might--if
she had overheard the dialogue at that moment halting along between
this likely-looking couple.
"I believe there are good links at Wimereux," Ted Urquhart said. "Do
you play golf?"
"No," said Rosamond Fayre.
"Do you go into Boulogne much?"
"No," said Rosamond.
"I expect you find quite enough to do in this place?"
"Yes," said Rosamond.
"Baggage! I recognise the style of your letters in all this.
There's an end coming to this kind of thing though, the very first
time I manage to get you to myself--really to myself--for an
afternoon," said Urquhart--but not aloud. Aloud he said, "Ripping
places for picnics, I should think, all about here."
"Yes, I should think so," agreed Rosamond politely. "I think we
ought--as our old lady likes getting our supper over early--I think
we ought to be going in now."
It seemed to him that he was allowed only another second of walking
beside her, stealing sideway glances at her through the silver-blue
gloaming, before she had recalled and collected her chattering
flock--before they were again gathered about the entrance to the
Hostel, gleaming ghostly-white in the dusk. The light through the
Refectory windows pointed a bright, mocking finger across the shrubs,
across the shelly path to the provoked and eager and impatient face
of that young man outside the gate of twisted iron-work, holding his
hat with his walking-stick in his left hand.
Rosamond had only bowed as she said (still as politely)
"Good-evening!"
"Good-night," said Ted Urquhart shortly. But whatever else he had
chosen to say as he turned away, he could scarcely have made Rosamond
Fayre feel very much angrier with him, than she was already feeling
at that moment.
Rude young man!
Horribly rude!
What earthly reason could he have for keeping his absurd name
(whatever it was) to himself? It made _her_ feel so ridiculous!
For instance, when she told Eleanor--as she was, of course, bound to
tell Eleanor--about that escapade of Annie's and Pansy's on the
cliff, and how they owed their foolhardy necks to a young Englishman
who had--et cetera, what could she reply to Eleanor's natural first
question of "Who was _he_?"
"Oh, he didn't tell us who he was. He came to tea with us
afterwards, and he went for a walk on the shore with us, but he
didn't give any name----" "Really?" Rosamond could imagine the
little line between Eleanor's brows at this. "How very odd!"
Precisely!
Well, she (Rosamond) couldn't help it. It had nothing more to do
with her. The young man with the deep cleft in his firm chin had
rescued two of the girls; he'd been thanked, he had been asked to tea
and had been entertained (by Pansy). Everybody had said "Good-bye"
to him quite nicely just now, he'd gone, and there was no reason why
Rosamond should think any more about him.
Thinking of him as she presided over the girls' supper of cocoa and
_charcuterie_ and bread and butter cut from yard-long French loaves,
Rosamond admitted to herself that the young man with those very white
teeth had at least one saving grace. He hadn't tried to worm himself
into their society under an assumed name! Rosamond _had_ heard of
people on holidays who had tried to do this. Really horrid young
men, of course. Not the sort of young man that one could feel at
home with in every other sort of way, as, to do him justice, one
might have done with--but he'd gone. Probably he was off to Wimereux
to play golf on those links to-morrow. Why waste another thought on
him?
Another thing about that young man with the frank and laughing eyes,
thought Rosamond after supper, when the Refectory table had been
cleared and the girls had gathered round the piano to sing to the
accompaniments that Miss Fayre could play without notes, he had
seemed to wish to be friendly and sociable in every other way. He
might--if he'd only been sensible--have had quite a jolly time,
picnicing and going for excursions with them all; with the girls,
with Eleanor when she returned in four days' time, and with herself.
He'd only himself to thank that he wasn't going to see anything more
of the English contingent while he was here, and that they weren't
thinking of inviting him again--or thinking of him anyhow!
The thought with which Rosamond Fayre amused herself as she unwound
the golden rope of her hair that night and brushed it into a shining
shawl over her nightgown was "supposing the reason was that his name
was so hideous or so funny that he didn't like me--us to know it!"
She laughed and mentally ran over all the ugly or ludicrously
sounding surnames that she had ever heard.
"Hogg ... Dolittle ... Mr. Prate ... Carrotts ... Gotobed ... Tombs!
And there was that new butler at The Court whose name Mr. Urquhart
simply had to change to Beeton. His real one was '_Beetles_.'
Heavens! Fancy marrying a man called Mr. Beetles. Still, it wasn't
_his_ fault (the butler's, I mean). It was only his affliction. The
type of mind that would make fun of a man because of his surname,"
concluded Rosamond Fayre, dividing the gold on either side of her
face, "is the type that would laugh at a little child in irons. And
as I shall never know what his is, why worry about it any more?"
Going back to the subject as she nestled her pretty head down into
the pillow with Eleanor's clear marking of "URQUHART. HOSTEL.
1914," it struck Rosamond that it was rather a pity that there was to
be no further opportunity for snubbing that nameless young man.
Hadn't he rather put on "side" here and there? Hadn't he been just a
tiny bit "superior"? About that phosphorescence, for instance? "In
the Tropics at night ... that's where it's so wonderful!" As much as
telling her, Rosamond Fayre, that nothing _she'd_ ever seen could
compare with a man's wider experience. She was glad she'd been so
very distant about the New Moon.
That moon had set hours ago; only starlight watched the flat Normandy
lands, the leafy garden outside her window. Every evening now the
moon would grow, though. How glorious when it was full moon over the
sea here! "Silver fire" of phosphorescence in the tropic seas
through which the good ship ploughed her way--Pooh!
Thinking of him and----
But here Rosamond Fayre fell off to sleep.