IN HORSESHOE COVE
Lady Ingleby sat in the honeysuckle arbour, pouring her tea from a little
brown earthenware teapot, and spreading substantial slices of home-made
bread with the creamiest of farm butter, when the aged postman hobbled up
to the garden gate of the Moorhead Inn, with a letter for Mrs. O'Mara.
For a moment she could scarcely bring herself to open an envelope bearing
another name than her own. Then, smiling at her momentary hesitation, she
tore it open with the keen delight of one, who, accustomed to a dozen
letters a day, has passed a week without receiving any.
She read Mrs. Dalmain's letter through rapidly; and once she laughed
aloud; and once a sudden colour flamed into her cheeks.
Then she laid it down, and helped herself to honey--real heather-honey,
golden in the comb.
She took up her letter again, and read it carefully, weighing each word.
Then:--"Good old Jane!" she said; "that is rather neatly put: the 'safely
abstract' becoming the 'perilously personal.' She has acquired the knack
of terse and forceful phraseology from her long friendship with the
doctor. I can do it myself, when I try; only, _my_ Sir Derycky sentences
are apt merely to sound well, and mean nothing at all. And--after
all--_does_ this of Jane's mean anything worthy of consideration? Could
six foot five of abstraction--eating its breakfast in complete
unconsciousness of one's presence, returning one's timid 'good-morning'
with perfunctory politeness, and relegating one, while still debating the
possibility of venturing a remark on the weather, to obvious
oblivion--ever become perilously personal?"
Lady Ingleby laughed again, returned the letter to its envelope, and
proceeded to cut herself a slice of home-made currant cake. As she
finished it, with a final cup of tea, she thought with amusement of the
difference between this substantial meal in the honeysuckle arbour of the
old inn garden, and the fashionable teas then going on in crowded
drawing-rooms in town, where people hurried in, took a tiny roll of thin
bread-and-butter, and a sip at luke-warm tea, which had stood
sufficiently long to leave an abiding taste of tannin; heard or imparted
a few more or less detrimental facts concerning mutual friends; then
hurried on elsewhere, to a cucumber sandwich, colder tea, which had stood
even longer, and a fresh instalment of gossip.
"Oh, why do we do it?" mused Lady Ingleby. Then, taking up her scarlet
parasol, she crossed the little lawn, and stood at the garden gate, in
the afternoon sunlight, debating in which direction she should go.
Usually her walks took her along the top of the cliffs, where the larks,
springing from the short turf and clumps of waving harebells, sang
themselves up into the sky. She loved being high above the sea, and
hearing the distant thunder of the breakers on the rocks below.
But to-day the steep little street, down through the fishing village, to
the cove, looked inviting. The tide was out, and the sands gleamed
golden.
Also, from her seat in the arbour, she had seen Jim Airth's tall figure
go swinging along the cliff edge, silhouetted against the clear blue of
the sky. And one sentence in the letter she had just received, made this
into a factor which turned her feet toward the shore.
The friendly Cornish folk, sitting on their doorsteps in the sunshine,
smiled at the lovely woman in white serge, who passed down their village
street, so tall and graceful, beneath the shade of her scarlet parasol.
An item in the doctor's prescription had been the discarding of widow's
weeds, and it had seemed quite natural to Myra to come down to her first
Cornish breakfast in a cream serge gown.
Arrived at the shore, she turned in the direction she usually took when
up above, and walked quickly along the firm smooth sand; pausing
occasionally to pick up a beautifully marked stone, or to examine a
brilliant sea-anemone or gleaming jelly-fish, left stranded by the tide.
Presently she reached a place where the cliff jutted out toward the sea;
and, climbing over slippery rocks, studded with shining pools in which
crimson seaweed waved, crabs scudded sideways from her passing shadow,
and darting shrimps flicked across and buried themselves hastily in the
sand, Myra found herself in a most fascinating cove. The line of cliff
here made a horseshoe, not quite half a mile in length. The little bay,
within this curve, was a place of almost fairy-like beauty; the sand a
soft glistening white, decked with delicate crimson seaweed. The cliffs,
towering up above, gave welcome shadow to the shore; yet the sun behind
them still gleamed and sparkled on the distant sea.
Myra walked to the centre of the horseshoe; then, picking up a piece of
driftwood, scooped out a comfortable hollow in the sand, about a dozen
yards from the foot of the cliff; stuck her open parasol up behind it, to
shield herself from the observation, from above, of any chance passer-by;
and, settling comfortably into the soft hollow, lay back, watching,
through half-closed lids, the fleeting shadows, the blue sky, the gently
moving sea. Little white clouds blushed rosy red. An opal tint gleamed on
the water. The moving ripple seemed too far away to break the restful
silence.
Lady Ingleby's eyelids drooped lower and lower.
"Yes, my dear Jane," she murmured, dreamily watching a snow-white sail,
as it rounded the point, curtseyed, and vanished from view; "undoubtedly
a--a well-expressed sentence; but far from--from--being fact. The safely
abstract could hardly require--a--a--a cameo----"
The long walk, the sea breeze, the distant lapping of the water--all
these combined had done their soothing work.
Lady Ingleby slept peacefully in Horseshoe Cove; and the rising tide
crept in.