The Magpies Nest (25 page)

"I am tired," she said simply. "Thank you. I couldn't have got back alone." A slight breeze touched them; she shivered.

"You're cold," he amended sharply. He was still trying to protect her from the elements; she looked fragile to him, and as if she should be so shielded.

"Yes. Let's run." They did, and fell onto the steps of the hotel out of breath and aglow.

Later, when they had dressed, they went back to the beach again and took up the interrupted tale. She let her hair fly on her shoulders to dry. It had the pleasing quality, rather common to light hair, of not looking stringy when wet, and the light got into it, and gave it more than its natural beauty, for its ordinary shade was very soft, almost dead, fawn-colour without the hint of red which makes chestnut hair so lovely. But hers suited her too pale, waxen skin, and it had a beautiful texture, the hair "like sea-moss" of Alciphron, which Browning recalled. When her face had that ashen look of fatigue her hair looked faded also; but now it was charmingly alive, and curled in feathery ringlets at the nape of her neck. And her crescent brows were ruffled from the drying of her face, so that they rose in a curious peak in the centre, two circumflex accents over her eyes; and she looked much younger than her years. The immaturity of her emotions, checked and arrested in her disastrous love affair, had kept her face as girlish in expression as when she was in her teens. Not even her waning cheek and the fine lines about her eyes could alter it.

"Odd," he said, his words redeemed from banality by his positive interest in the fact, "that we should have met again, after so long. Are you..."

"Am I—what?"

"Glad?" he asked, overcoming his self-consciousness with difficulty.

She thought awhile.

"Yes, of course," she decided finally. "Why, it's almost like going back home. I think that's why I got used to you so quickly. It does seem as if we'd been friends for a long time. Of course I have no one else here. I might be boring you to death!"

"Do I act like it?" he demanded.

"How do you act when you are bored?" she countered.

"I go away," he said truthfully. "And this time I... Will you be angry if I tell you something?"

"Probably," she said. "I have a most cantankerous disposition, and it's been soured by disappointment. But I won't do more than kill you."

"Well..."

"Go on," she said, slightly exasperated. Anything protracted always did exasperate her slightly; she had described herself rightly as wanting to eat life like an orange.

"I followed you here," he said, reddening, and looking slightly defiant. And he picked a blade ot grass and examined it as if with deep interest.

"Where? You mean to the beach—from town?" She looked puzzled, scarcely annoyed. "How did you know?"

"I was called out of town yesterday," he said. "And I wanted to see you to-day. So I telephoned; Mrs. Hassard answered. And she told me, and I came down."

"Well, all right," said Hope. "Don't you think it must be dinner time? I shall have to be careful what I tell Mrs. Hassard—silly old goop.
Hiyu cultus wawa
—she talks too much."

So she dismissed the subject, rising with a dainty yawn and lifting her arms above her head with a fine classic gesture to pin up her hair. Carter sat still a moment merely to watch her; she was so slim and straight, not too thin as he had at first thought, but what the French call
fausse maigre.
He had to recant his opinion that she was not pretty if she chose; or if it were true, then it did not matter.

They strolled back to the hotel and dined, sufficiently if not luxuriously, on the veranda. Moths fluttered round the lamp, which was hardly needed. The sun had gone down, its lingering fires in the west dying slowly. There was no moon. The air remained soft, and yet had a salty tang.

"Listen to the waves," said Hope, leaning her chin on her hands and leaving her coffee neglected. "I am going down to talk to them. They've just been to Europe."

He insisted on taking all the available wraps, and followed her. It was an odd fancy, but the sound of her walking over the grass gave him pleasure. The dark was settling down, and the tide was coming in again, murmurously musical; the soft swish of her feet and the edge of her gown seemed an overtone of a great muted symphony.

They shared his tweed topcoat, spread on the ground, and she was silent, her chin on her hands again, her profile palely indistinct, looking out to sea, where was nothing visible. At last she moved, put down her hand. Hardly conscious of his own action, he laid his over it.

"I told you..." she began, her voice uncertain, soft, the voice one might expect from that little indistinct white face which was yet warm to his gaze. "This is silly."

"You said—we should be."

"No; I didn't mean—What did you say?"

"I don't know," he said quietly, as if it were just then out of his power to interrogate himself, retrace time and recall what had been.

"Friends," she said, as if she were questioning something, not themselves. And again, as he did not answer, and she felt herself swayed by some invisible force and there pressed on her heart the knowledge that to take her hand from his would destroy the strange beauty of the night and mar the rhythm of the little lapping waves and cover her with loneliness and the dark, she cried out softly, "You were talking nonsense—and this is foolishness!"

"No," he said. "I wasn't—I will do anything you say."

But he put his arms about her, not closely, but so that she was aware of their restrained strength. She remembered the smooth, powerful play of his shoulders, how the muscles rippled and flexed under her hand, when he swam in with her. And the stark reality of him, the sense of him as flesh and blood instead of the sublimated figure out of an old tale that she had loved in Tony Yorke, took her breath away. She was no longer safe behind the veil of her own illusions, a Princess of the Glass Tower, ardent only in imagination, cold to her lover's lips. Seeing Nick human, she must needs see herself also in the same case; and she knew that if she would make the venture, as she had that afternoon, she had no just right to look to him for help. Even if he were stronger, and why should he be? For the tide had them again; she felt it; it drew her again with that implacable, irresistible ease. The waves were sharply sweet, closing over her head, as they reached hands to one another and felt the flood engulf them. Whether they kissed or not, they hardly knew.

"Ah, no, no," she cried again, but it was herself she spoke to, close against his shoulder. "I am sorry— what did we say?"

The word was magic to unlock his clasp.

"Don't be sorry—my fault—I'll go now." So much she heard, and without his touching her, she could feel him call on all his healthy young strength, gathering himself up tensely to breast the tide again. He would go away, if she said he must; if she would send him away.

For the space of a heart beat, her brain was clear as crystal, and she saw the forfeit, and the gain, as if they had been held in either hand. Nothing impalpable, remote, no stuff of dreams, but the common place essentials of life from day to day, were in the balance now. Would she put in pawn the countenance of the world, order, freedom of all small things, for this? The blood flowed hotly to her heart. The prudence that would draw back and bargain now, when she had been so lavish for the tinsel imitation, struck her as contemptible. For she knew she had found her unknown good.

"Oh-h-h," she said, the word spilling into a little laugh, "what does it matter what we said? I forget." She held out both her hands to him, and to life, seizing her immortal moment without fear.

CHAPTER XXIII

THE Chinese have a naïve way of calling their children by some derogatory nickname, during their tender years, thus pretending before the gods that the treasure of their hearts lies elsewhere. We laugh at this, but sometimes imitate it.

Hope, her head bent over her drawing-board, appeared to be entirely absorbed in her work. If she admitted any extraneous thought, it was for other material affairs. She did not feel well. She had got a chill from her belated swim. She hated rising in the morning, and came home with unspeakable relief She felt very cold all day, and now a burning languor possessed her. But the day's work must be finished. A natural tenacity and single-mindedness, which amounted almost to stupidity, helped her to concentrate. There was nothing in her attitude that indicated she might be waiting for anything or anyone.

Yet, when the door-bell rang, she sprang up instantly, and went rather unsteadily but quickly down the hall. Mrs. Hassard was out. Hope opened the door, and then leaned against the wall. Nick noticed that first.

"What's the matter, dear?" he asked. "Are you sick?"

"Tired," she said, watching him with that curious tentative look he had come to know. He glanced down the hall first, and then without words picked her up and carried her back to her room with the greatest ease. As if that served instead to tell her what she sought to know, she broke into laughter.

"Heap big Injun," she remarked approvingly. "For a little man, that is."

"Ha," he said ferociously, "a little man, am I? You snippet—apologise!" He put her up on his shoulder and she wound her fingers in his hair and drummed on his chest with her heels. One of her shabby blue satin slippers fell off.

"For a mejurn-sized man," she amended meekly. "Lemme down; I'm a sick woman." So he laid her on the couch in a careful bundle, picked up the slipper, and put it on with a kiss.

"All worn out," she said thoughtfully. "Look; my toe is coming out of the other one." He struck an operatic attitude, and sang, in a tragic barytone:

"My God, my God, your little feet are frozen!"

"What is that charming bit?" she inquired, mirthfully.

"Rodolphe's song—or is it Marcel's? Very free translation. Never seen
La Bohème?
We must go some time. To appreciate
La Bohème,
of course, you've got to have lobster and champagne afterward; we'll do that too. Not to-night, no?"

"Please, nothing to-night," she said. "Let's be devilish, and play seven-up for pennies. Nick, have you got a lobster and champagne income?"

"No, dear, I haven't," he said candidly. "I have only my paltry stipend from the Cornwall Motor Works, and a rich uncle whose health is positively irritating. But I have enough—more than enough for one," he said hastily. "Hope, is there anything —do you want..."

She did not seem to hear him.

The Cornwall Motor Works made high-power engines of all kinds, but chiefly marine engines of the smaller types, for motor boats and such craft. Nick sold them, or demonstrated them, or did whatever was required of him. Sometimes he drove in motor-boat or motor-car races, but only incidentally. (It always made Grace very angry.) He was well liked; he knew himself marked for promotion if he worked for it; and lately, without explaining to himself just why, he had worked for it. He liked machinery; he liked anything that would go.

"Won't you hand me my drawing things, and a cushion; I have a little bit of work to do," said Hope.

"I hate to see you work when you're sick," he said gloomily, doing her bidding.

"Well," she said with assumed carelessness, "you won't, for a week or two. I am to have a rest, the doctor told me. And I told my editor."

"The doctor?" He pounced on the word. "You
are
ill. What else did he say?"

"Nothing else. I've got a low fever; I knew that anyway; and nerves. Don't look so horrified; it's about equivalent to chickenpox. Change of climate, I daresay."

She was quite as much concerned about what her editor had not said as over what the doctor did say. He had been going out when she caught him, and had borne her along with him, in his casual, friendly way, saying he was meaning to confer with her about something. Whatever it was, he let it go by when she made her plea for a brief respite, and, as the only expression of sympathy he could think of, made her drink a champagne cocktail and put her on the subway for home. But she was sure he had been thinking her work unsatisfactory; and equally sure that she had not yet struck the right note. Kennard had not been sorry to lay her off; that was too plain. Something with more "punch" in it; that was what they all wanted; Heaven alone knew what the imbecile phrase meant, and she would have to find out. No doubt it could be done, but the immediate prospect was not comforting. Her mind was as sluggish as her limbs; it refused to be spurred to fresh efforts, or even to keep the old pace.

"You stay in bed," Nick commanded, "till you're perfectly well."

"And let the ravens feed me?" she inquired.

"Certainly; I've got a herd of trained ravens," he said. "Look here, Hope, have you got plenty of money?" He spoke very fast.

"Yes," she said cheerfully, "lots." She made a mental reckoning; she could afford to stop work for what seemed a long time, in prospect; ample time to recover tn.

"I hate to see you sick," he said again, with some indignation at the powers that be.

"Oh, I don't mind," she said absently. "Not for a few days; it's rather luxurious." She was thinking that the respite should enable her to coax back her inventiveness, to formulate new ideas. "I'm sure that under more favourable circumstances I should be a confirmed
malade imaginaire.
But don't let me be a nuisance to you."

Hecaught up her hands and held them against his heart.

"Don't," he said. "Don't laugh at me. I—love you."

When he said that, her laughter went quickly enough. She was afraid to hear it. She was afraid of vows, of all the spoken ritual, the winged words that return as arrows from the bow of wrath when the cord of faith is loosed. Therefore, inconsistently, she had made a vow to let each day be sufficient unto itself. Her sense of humour must have been dormant just then. It should have reminded her that of the three parties concerned, only one had said anything at all about this preposterous contract, and that one herself. Dealing with the devil in the middle ages was more comfortable than making terms to-day with the Great Unknowable; one could get security or acknowledgment occasionally.