As a matter of fact I didn’t win the diving-competition; I wasn’t even
second; and my defeat was brought about simply by my own exceeding
eagerness to show off.
On that Saturday the village was a holiday village. The men and boys
perspired freely under heavy, ugly, Sunday clothes, and the women and
girls were decked out in all kinds of finery――bright dresses, trinkets,
ribbons, and cheap but brilliant hats. Why was it, I wondered, that all
these fine garments should have been chosen apparently for a mysterious
property they had of bringing out in the appearance of their wearers
a coarseness I never noticed on ordinary occasions? Sam Geoghegan’s
salmon-pink tie, Mr. McCann’s fancy waistcoat, the peacock-blue
dress of Annie Breen, with its white lace collar――these were things
positively bewildering, if one realized that they represented the
actual taste of the persons they adorned.
Every year the same programme was followed. In the morning the
water-races――boat-races and swimming-races――took place; in the
afternoon there were sports――foot-races, tugs-of-war, wrestling――held
in one of Mrs. Carroll’s fields.
I drifted about in the crowd with a group of boys. Our swimming-races
came off fairly early, but I was only third in each, and George Edge
second, for a youth, whom neither of us had ever seen or heard of
before, turned up and carried off both first prizes. This made me
anxious about the diving-competition, which he had also entered for.
We were to go in off the end of the pier, where a platform with a
spring-board had been erected for us. Then, when we had dived, we swam
round to the ladder and climbed up to take our turn again. It was the
last event but one of the morning’s programme, and had always been the
most popular. When the hour for it came round, having learned in the
meantime from some of the spectators that the victorious stranger was a
poor diver, I had regained confidence, and, as the crowd drew in closer
to watch us, I was fully prepared to show them what was what. As a
matter of fact, my first two dives were all right, but, before my third
and last, I caught sight of Katherine standing quite close to me, and
the result of this was that I determined to excel anything ever seen.
I took a tremendous race the full length of the platform, but, just at
the end of the spring-board, my foot slipped and I sprawled in flat on
my belly. The shock knocked all the wind out of me, and the smack I
gave the water could have been heard half a mile away. It was extremely
painful, and it put me out of the competition; yet when I clambered
up the iron ladder I was greeted by volleys of laughter and humorous
remarks. My accident, indeed, appeared to be by far the most enjoyable
event of the morning. It did not seem to occur to anybody, except one
of the stewards, that I might be badly hurt, and him, when he came to
ask me if I were all right, I sent about his business. I put on my
overcoat and went to the dressing-shed in a furious temper.
The field where the sports took place lay about a mile out of
the village. Mrs. Carroll and some other ladies were dispensing
refreshments to all comers, and afterwards the prizes would be given
out. I went up to Derryaghy to call for Katherine and Gerald, to go
with them, but found they were going to ride over, and were all ready
to start when I arrived. It was the first time I had seen Katherine
on horseback, and she looked to me more beautiful than ever. In her
dark-blue riding-habit, with her sparkling eyes and rosy cheeks,
her radiant youth and health, she made me think of the girl in the
equestrian portrait by Millais and Landseer, a coloured reproduction
of which I had cut out of a Christmas number and tacked up on the wall
in my bedroom. And straightway I saw in myself the page-boy who stands
by the gateway in that picture, his eyes fixed in rapt admiration upon
his mistress. They rode away, an amazingly handsome pair, telling me
they would see me later up at the field, and to this I answered, “Yes.”
Mrs. Carroll and Miss Dick had already gone on in the carriage, so I
was left quite alone. I decided immediately that I wouldn’t go to the
sports: if they chose to leave me like this I wasn’t going to run after
them. I mooned about, building a romance on the equestrian portrait
_motif_. I imagined myself as dying; some accident had happened to me,
and suddenly Katherine rode up and springing down from her horse threw
her arms round me, kneeling in the blood and dust of the road. She
kissed me passionately, careless of all the people who watched her,
repeating again and again, “I love you――I love you――I love you.”
I gloated over this imaginary scene till I had squeezed the last drop
of colour out of it, and it ceased, by dint of much repetition, to
thrill me even faintly: then I went into the house and nosed about for
a book. A dozen had just come down from the library in town, and, with
a couple of volumes of “Two on a Tower” under my arm, I made my way to
the shore.
Gradually, in the warmth of the sunlight, I grew drowsy, and the
beautiful, breaking sea, and the harsh crying of the gulls, soothed
me and seemed to build up an enchanted world about me, where I was
shut in with the romance of the tale I was reading. By and by, after
perhaps two hours, I closed my book, though still keeping my finger
in the place. I reflected that nobody up at the field had spent such
an afternoon as I had spent, and I compared my spiritual pleasure with
their rough commonplace pleasures, and the extraordinary superiority
of my soul became immediately apparent. Then my thoughts turned to
the story I had been reading. My sympathies were entirely enlisted by
Lady Constantine and her youthful astronomer, but particularly by Lady
Constantine. Even the fact that she was so much older than her lover
appealed to me. Her gentleness; her intense femininity; her dark eyes;
the softness of her skin; the perfume of her hair; and the delight of
her caresses――these were present to me vividly, almost physically, and
I rejoiced in the love-scenes in the tower with a frank and innocent
sensuality, filling in the picture, where it was blurred or vague, from
my own imaginings.