by E. F. Benson
CHAPTER IX
It was the morning after Christmas Day, and Dodo and Jack had justdriven off from Meering on their way to Winston, where a shooting-partywas to assemble that day, leaving behind them a party that regrettedtheir departure, but did not mean to repine. Edith Arbuthnot hadpromised to arrive two days before, to take over from Dodo the duty ofchaperone, but she had not yet come, nor had anything whatever beenheard of her.
"Which shows," said Berts lucidly, "that nothing unpleasant can havehappened to mother, or we should have heard."
Until she came Nadine had very kindly consented to act as regent, and inthat capacity she appeared in the hall a little while after Dodo hadgone, with a large red contadina umbrella, a book or two, and anexpressed determination to sit out on the hillside till lunch-time.
"It is boxing-day, I know," she said, "but it is too warm to box, evenif I knew how. The English climate has gone quite mad, and I have toldmy maid to put my fur coat in a box with those little white balls untilMay. Now I suppose you are all going to play the foolish game with thoseother little white balls till lunch."
Seymour was seated in the window-sill, stitching busily at a piece ofembroidery which Antoinette had started for him.
"I am going to do nothing of the sort," he said. "It is much too fine aday to do anything so limited as to play golf. Besides there is no onehere fit to play with. Nadine, will you be very kind and ring for mymaid? I am getting in a muddle."
Berts, who was sitting near him, got up, looking rather ill. Also heresented being told he was not fit to play with.
"May I have my perambulator, please, Nadine?" he asked.
Seymour grinned.
"Berts, you are easier to get a rise out of than any one I ever saw," heremarked. "It is hardly worth while fishing for you, for you are alwayson the feed. And if you attempt to rag, I shall prick you with myneedle."
Nadine lingered a little after the others had gone, and as soon as theywere alone Seymour put down his embroidery.
"May I come and sit on the hillside with you?" he asked. "Or is the--thebox-seat already engaged?"
"Hugh suggested it," she said. "I was going out with him."
Seymour picked up his work again.
"It seems to me I am behaving rather nicely," he said. "At the same timeI'm not sure that I am not behaving rather anemically. I haven't seenyou much since I came down here. And after all I didn't come down hereto see Esther."
Nadine frowned, and laid her hand on his arm. But she did not do itquite instinctively. It was clear she thought it would be appropriate.Certainly that was quite clear to Seymour.
"Take that hand away," he said. "You only put it there because it wassuitable. You didn't want to touch me."
Nadine removed her hand, as if his coat-sleeve was red-hot.
"You are rather a brute," she said.
"No, I am not, unless it is brutal to tell you what you know already. Irepeat that I am behaving rather nicely."
It was owing to him to do him justice.
"I know you are," she said, "you are behaving very nicely indeed. But itis only for a short time, Seymour. I don't mean that you won't alwaysbehave nicely, but that there are only a limited number of days on whichthis particular mode of niceness will be required of you, or be evenpossible. Hugh is going away next week; after that you and I will beDarby and Joan before he sees me again. You are all behaving nicely: heis too. He just wanted one week more of the old days, when we didn'tthink, but only babbled and chattered. I can't say that he is revivingthem with very conspicuous success: he doesn't babble much, and I amsure he thinks furiously all the time. But he wanted the opportunity: itwasn't much to give him."
"Especially since I pay," said Seymour quickly.
He saw the blood leap to Nadine's face.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I oughtn't to have said that, though it is quitetrue. But I pay gladly: you must believe that also. And I'm glad Hugh isbehaving nicely, that he doesn't indulge in--in embarrassingreflections. Also, when does he go away?"
"Tuesday, I think."
"Morning?" asked Seymour hopefully.
Nadine laughed: he had done that cleverly, making a parody and a farceout of that which a moment before had been quite serious.
"You deserve it should be," she said.
"Then it is sure to be in the afternoon. Now I've finished beingspit-fire--I want to ask you something. You haven't been up to yourusual form of futile and clannish conversation. You have been ratherplaintive and windy--"
"Windy?" asked Nadine.
"Yes, full of sighs, and I should say it was Shakespeare. Are youworrying about anything?"
She looked up at him with complete candor.
"Why, of course, about Hughie," she said. "How should I not?"
"I don't care two straws about that," said Seymour, "as long as yourworrying is not connected with me. I mean I am sorry you worry, but Idon't care. Of course you worry about Hugh. I understand that, because Iunderstand what Hugh feels, and one doesn't like one's friends feelinglike that. But it's not about--about you and me?"
Nadine shook her head and Seymour got up.
"Well, let us all be less plaintive," he said. "I have been ratherplaintive too. I think I shall go and take on that great foolish Bertsat golf. He will be plaintive afterwards, but nobody minds what Bertsis."
* * * * *
Whatever plaintiveness there was about, was certainly not shared by theweather, which, if it was mad, as Nadine had suggested, was possessed bya very genial kind of mania. An octave of spring-like days, with serenesuns, and calm seas, and light breezes from the southwest had decreed anoasis in midwinter, warm halcyon days made even in December thesnowdrops and aconites to blossom humbly and bravely, and set the birdsto busy themselves with sticks and straws as if nesting-time was alreadyhere. New grass already sprouted green among the grayness of the oldergrowths, and it seemed almost cynical to doubt that spring was notverily here. Indeed where Hugh and Nadine sat this morning, it was Maynot March that seemed to have invaded and conquered December; there layupon the hillside a vernal fragrance that set a stray bee or two buzzinground the honied sweetness of the gorse with which the time ofblossoming is never quite over, and to-day all the winds were still, andno breeze stirred in the bare slender birches, or set the spring-likestalks of the heather quivering. Only, very high up in the unplumbedblue of the zenith thin fleecy clouds lay stretched in streamers andcombed feathers of white, showing that far above them rivers of airswept headlong and swift.
Nadine had a favorite nook on this steep hillside below the house,reached by a path that stretched out to the south of the bay. It was alittle hollow, russet-colored now with the bracken, of the autumn, andcarpeted elsewhere by the short-napped velvet of the turf. Just infront, the cliff plunged sheer down to the beach, where they had sooften bathed in the summer, and where the reef of tumbled sandstonerocks stretched out into the waveless sea, like brown amphibiousmonsters that were fish at high tide and grazing beasts at the ebb. Downthere below, a school of gulls hovered and fished with wheelings ofwhite wings, but not a ripple lapped the edges of the rocks. Only thesea breathed softly as in sleep, stirring the fringes of brown weed thathad gathered there, but no thinnest line of white showed breaking water.Along the sandy foreshore of the bay there was the same stillness:heaven and earth and ocean lay as if under an enchantment. The sanddunes opposite, and the hills beyond, lay reflected in the sea, as if inthe tranquillity of some land-locked lake. There was a spell, a hushover the world, to be broken by God-knew-what gentle awakening ofactivity, or catastrophic disturbance.
* * * * *
The two had walked to this withdrawn hollow of the hill almost insilence. He had offered to carry her books for her, but she had saidthat they were of no weight, and after pause he had announced afragment of current news to which she had no comment to add, but hadnoticed the windless, unnatural calm of the day. Something in thisunusual stillness of
weather had set her nerves a-quiver, and perhapsthe position she was in, bound as she was to Seymour, not strugglingagainst it, but quite accepting it, made ordinary intercourse difficult.For she had it all her own way, Hugh was behaving with exemplarydiscretion, Seymour was behaving with admirable tolerance, and justbecause they both made her own part so easy for her, she, womanlike,found the smoothed-out performance of it to be difficult. Had sheinstructed each of them how to behave, her instructions were carried outto the letter's foot: they were impeccable as lover and rejected lover,and therefore she wanted something different. The situation wascompletely of her own making: her actors played their parts exactly asshe would have them play, and yet there was something wanting. They weretoo well-drilled, too word-perfect, too certain to say all she haddesigned for them from the right spot, and in the right voice. True, fora moment just now Seymour had shown signs of individualism when hecalled attention to the fact that he was behaving very nicely, and thathe would be glad when the scene was over, but Hugh had shown nonewhatever, except for the fact that he had been asked to be allowed a fewdays like the old days agone before he left England. He had assured herin the summer that he would never seek to get back into the atmosphereof unthinking intimacy again, but, poor fellow, when there were to be sofew days left him, before the situation was sealed and madeirrevocable, his heart had cried out against the edict of his will and,foolish though it might be, he had asked for this week of Meering days.But from his point of view, no less than from hers, they had been but aparody of what he had hoped for, they had been frozen and congealed bythe reserve and restraint that he dared not break. Below thatsurface-ice, he knew how swiftly ran the torrent in his soul, but theice quite stretched from shore to shore. It was this which disappointedNadine: for she equally with Hugh had expected that he could realize theimpossible, and that he, loving her as he did and knowing that she wasso soon to give herself to another man, could cast off the knowledge ofthat, and resume for a space the unshackled intimacy of old. TheEthiopian and the leopard would have found their appropriate feats fareasier, for it was Hugh's bones and blood he had to change, not mereskin and hair, and the very strength of the bond that bound him to hermade the insuperableness of the barrier. He felt every moment the utterfailure of his attempt, while she, who thought she understood him sowell, had no notion how radical the failure was. Not loving, she couldnot understand. He knew that now, and thought bitterly of the littlefireworks of words she had once lit for him on that same text, believingthat by the light of those quick little squibs, she could read hisheart.
So, when they were settled in their nook, once again she tried torecapture the old ease. She pointed downwards over the edge of thecliff.
"Oh, Hughie, what a morning," she said. "Quiet sea and gulls, and beesand gorse. What a summer in December, a truce with winter, isn't it?I've brought a handful of nice books. Shall I read?"
"Oh, soon," said he. "But your summer in December isn't going to lastlong. There is a wind coming, and a big one. Look at the mare's-tails ofclouds up above. Can't you smell the wind coming? I always can. And thebarometer has dropped nearly an inch since last night."
He put back his head and sniffed, moving his nostrils rather like ahorse.
"Oh, how fascinating," said Nadine. "If I do that shall I smell thewind?"
It made her sneeze instead.
"I don't think much of that," she said. "I expect you looked at thebarometer before you smelt the wind. Besides, how is it possible tosmell the wind before there is any wind to smell? And when it comes youfeel it instead."
"It will be a big storm," said Hugh.
Even as he spoke some current of air stirred the surface of the seabelow them, shattering the reflections. It was as if some great angel ofthe air had breathed on the polished mirror of the water, dimming it.Next moment the breath cleared away again, and the surface was as brightand unwavering as before. But some half-dozen of the gulls that had beenhovering and chiding there, rose into the higher air, leaving theirfeeding-ground, and after circling round once or twice, glided away overthe sand dunes inland. Almost immediately afterwards, another relayfollowed, and another, till the bay that had been so populous with birdswas quite deserted. They did not pause in their flight, but wentstraight inland, in decreasing specks of white till they vanishedaltogether.
"The gulls seem to think so, too," said Hugh.
"Then they are perfectly wrong," said Nadine. "The instincts Natureimplants in animals are almost invariably incorrect. For instance, theSiberian tigers at the Zoo. For several years they never grew wintercoats, and all the naturalists went down on their knees and said: 'Owonderful Mother Nature! their instincts tell them this is a milderclimate than Siberia.' But this winter, the mildest ever known, the poorthings have grown the thickest winter coats ever seen. So all thenaturalists had to get up again, and dust their trousers where they hadknelt down."
"Put your money on the gulls and me," said Hugh. "Look there again, faraway along the sands."
To Nadine, the most attractive feature about Hugh was his eyes. They hada far-away look in them that had nothing whatever spiritual orsentimental in it, but was simply due to the fact that he hadextraordinarily long sight. She obediently screwed up her eyes andfollowed his direction, but saw nothing whatever of import.
"It's getting nearer: you'll see it soon," said Hugh.
Soon she saw. A whirlwind of sand was advancing towards them along thebeach below, revolving giddily. As it came nearer they could see theloose pieces of seaweed and jetsam being caught up into it. It cameforward in a straight line, perhaps as fast as a man might run, gettingtaller as it approached and gyrating more violently. Then in its advanceit came into collision with the wall of cliff on which they sat, and wasshattered. They could hear, like the sound of rain, the sand and rubbishof which it was composed falling upon the rocks.
"Oh, but did you invent that, Hughie?" she said. "It was quite a prettytrick. Was it a sign to this faithless generation, which is me, that youcould smell the wind? Or did the gulls do it? Prophesy to me again!"
He lay back on the dry grass.
"Trouble coming, trouble coming," he said.
"Just the storm?" she asked. "Or is this more prophecy?"
"Oh, just the storm," he said. "I always feel depressed and irritatedbefore a storm."
"Are you depressed and irritated?" she asked. "Sorry. I thought it wassuch a nice, calm morning."
Hugh took up a book at random, which proved to be Swinburne's "Poems andBallads." At random he opened it, and saw the words:
"And though she saw all heaven in flower above, She would not love."
"Oh, do read," said Nadine. "Anything: just where you opened it."
Hugh sat up, a bitterness welling in his throat. He read:
"And though she saw all heaven in flower above, She would not love."
Nadine flushed slightly, and was annoyed with herself for flushing. Shecould not help knowing what must be in his mind, and tried to make adiversion.
"I don't think she was to be blamed," she said. "A quantity of flowersstuck all over the sky would look very odd, and I don't think wouldkindle anybody's emotions. That sounds rather a foolish poem. Readsomething else."
Hugh shut the book.
"'Though all we fell on sleep, she would not weep,' is the end ofanother stanza," he said.
Nadine looked at him for a long moment, her lips parted as if to speak,but they only quivered; no words came. There was no doubt whatever as towhat Hugh meant, but still, with love unawakened, and with hertremendous egotism rampant, she saw no further than he was behaving verybadly to her. He had come down here to renew the freedom and intimacy ofold days: till to-day he had been silent, stupid, but when he spoke likethis, silence and stupidity were better. She was sorry for him, verysorry, but the quiver of her lips half at least consisted of self-pitythat he made her suffer too.
"You mean me," she said, speaking at length, and speaking very rapidly."It is odious of you.
You know quite well I am sorry: I have told youso. I cried: I remember I cried when you made that visit to Winston, andthe cow looked at me. I daresay you are suffering damned torments, butyou are being unfair. Though I don't love you--like that, I wish I did.Do you think I make you suffer for my own amusement? Is it fun to see mybest friend like that? Is it my fault? You have chosen to love thisheartless person, me. If I had no liver, or no lungs, instead of noheart, you would be sorry for me. Instead you reproach me. Oh, not inwords, but you meant me, when you said that. Where is the book out ofwhich you read? There, I do that to it: I send it into the sea, and whenthe gulls come back they will peck it, or the sea will drown it first,and the wind which you smell will blow it to America. You don'tunderstand: you are more stupid than the gulls."
She made one swift motion with her arm, and "Poems and Ballads" floppedin the sea as the book dived clear of the cliff into the high-water seabelow.
More imminent than the storm which Hugh had prophesied was the storm intheir souls. He, with his love baffled, raged at the indifference withwhich she had given herself to another, she, distrusting for the firsttime, the sense and wisdom of her gift, raged at him for his rebellionagainst her choice.
"Don't speak," she said, "for I will tell you more things first. You arejealous of Seymour--"
Hugh threw back his head and laughed.
"Jealous of Seymour?" he cried. "Do you really think I would marry youif you consented in the spirit in which you are taking him? Once, it istrue, I wanted to. You refused to cheat me--those were your words--and Ibegged you to cheat me, I implored you to cheat me, so long as you gaveme yourself.
"I didn't care how you took me, so long as you took me. But now Iwouldn't take you like that. Now, for this last week, I have seen youand him together, and I know what it is like."
"You haven't seen us together much," said Nadine.
"I have seen you enough: I told you before that your marriage was afarce. I was wrong. It's much worse than a farce. You needn't laugh at afarce. But you can't help laughing, at least I can't, at a tragedy soludicrous."
Nadine got up. The situation was as violent and sudden as some electricstorm. What had been pent-up in him all this week, had exploded:something in her exploded also.
"I think I hate you," she said.
"I am sure I despise you," said he.
He got up also, facing her. It was like the bursting of a reservoir: thegreat sheet of quiet water was suddenly turned into torrents and foam.
"I despise you," he said again. "You intended me to love you; youencouraged me to let myself go. All the time you held yourself in,though there was nothing to hold in; you observed, you dissected. Youcut down with your damned scalpels and lancets to my heart, and said,'How interesting to see it beating!' Then you looked coolly over yourshoulder and saw Seymour, and said, 'He will do: he doesn't love me andI don't love him!' But now he does love you, and you probably guessthat. So, very soon, your lancet will come out again, and you will seehis heart beating. And again you will say, 'How interesting!' But therewill be blood on your lancet. You are safe, of course, from reprisals.No one can cut into you, and see your blood flow, because you haven'tany blood. You are something cold and hellish. You often said youunderstood me too well. Now you understand me even better. Toast myheart, fry it, eat it up! I am utterly at your mercy, and you haven'tgot any mercy. But I can manage to despise you: I can't do much else."
Nadine stood quite still, breathing rather quickly, and that movement ofthe nostrils, which she had tried to copy from him, did not make hersneeze now.
"It is well we should know each other," she said with an awful coldbitterness, "even though we shall know each other for so little timemore. It is always interesting to see the real person--"
"If you mean me," he said hotly, "I always showed you the real person. Ihave never acted to you, nor pretended. And I have not changed. I am notresponsible if you cannot see!"
Nadine passed her tongue over her lips. They seemed hard and dry, notflexible enough for speech.
"It was my blindness then," she said. "But we know where we are now. Ihate you, and you despise me. We know now."
Then suddenly an impulse, wholy uncontrollable, and coming from she knewnot where, seized and compelled her. She held out both her hands to him.
"Hughie, shake hands with me," she said. "This has been nightmare talk,a bad thing that one dreams. Shake hands with me, and that will wake usboth up. What we have been saying to each other is impossible: it isn'treal or true. It is utter nonsense we have been talking."
How he longed to take her hands and clasp them and kiss them! How helonged to wipe off all he had said, all she had said. But somehow it wasbeyond him to do it. It was by honest impulse that the words of hate andcontempt had risen to their lips; the words might be canceled, but whatcould not be quenched, until some mistake was shown in the workings oftheir souls, was the thought-fire that had made them boil up. She stoodthere, lovely and welcoming, the girl whom his whole soul loved, whoseconduct his whole soul despised, eager for reconciliation, yearning fora mutual forgiveness. But her request was impossible. God could notcancel the bitterness that had made him speak. He threw his hands wide.
"It's no good," he said. "I am sorry I said certain things, for therewas no use in saying them. But I can't help feeling that which made mesay them. Cancel the speeches by all means. Let the words be unsaid withall my heart."
"But let us be prepared to say them again?" said Nadine quietly. "Itcomes to that."
"Yes, it comes to that. I am not jealous of Seymour. I laughed when yousuggested it; and I am not jealous, because you don't love him. If youloved him, I should be jealous, and I should say, 'God bless you!' As itis--"
"As it is, you say 'Damn you,'" said Nadine.
Hugh shook his head.
"You don't understand anything about love," he said. "How can you untilyou know a little bit what it means? I could no more think or say 'Damnyou,' than I could say 'God bless you.'"
Nadine had withdrawn from her welcome and desire for reconciliation.
"Neither would make any difference to me," she said.
"I don't suppose they would, since I make no difference to you," saidhe. "But there is no sense in adding hypocrisy to our quarrel."
Nadine sat down again on the sweet turf.
"I cancel my words, then, even if you do not," she said. "I don't hateyou. I can't hate you, any more than you can despise me. We must havebeen talking in nightmare."
"I am used to nightmare," said Hugh. "I have had six months ofnightmare. I thought that I could wake; I thought I could--could pinchmyself awake by seeing you and Seymour together. But it's stillnightmare."
Nadine looked up at him.
"Oh, Hughie, if I loved you!" she said.
Hugh looked at her a moment, and then turned away from her. Outside ofhis control certain muscles worked in his throat; he felt strangled.
"I can say 'God bless you' for that, Nadine," he said huskily. "I do sayit. God bless you, my darling."
Nadine had leaned her face on her hands when he turned away. She divinedwhy he turned from her, she heard the huskiness of his voice, and thethought of Hughie wanting to cry gave her a pang that she had never yetknown the like of. There was a long silence, she sitting withhand-buried face, he seeing the sunlight swim and dance through histears. Then he touched her on the shoulder.
"So we are friends again in spite of ourselves," he said. "Just onething more then, since we can talk without--without hatred and contempt.Why did you refuse to marry me, because you did not love me, and yetconsent to marry Seymour like that?"
She looked up at him.
"Oh, Hughie, you fool," she said. "Because you matter so much more."
He smiled back at her.
"I don't want to wish I mattered less," he said.
"You couldn't matter less."
He had no reply to this, and sat down again beside her. After a littleNadine turned to him.
"And I said I
thought it was such a calm morning," she said.
"And I said that storm was coming," said he.
She laid her hand on his knee.
"And will there be some pleasant weather now?" she said. "Oh, Hughie,what wouldn't I give to get two or three of the old days back again,when we babbled and chattered and were so content?"
"Speak for yourself, miss," said Hugh. "And for God's sake don't let usbegin again. I shall quarrel with you again, and--and it gives me apain. Look here, it's a bad job for me all this, but I came here to getan oasis: also to pinch myself awake: metaphors are confusing things.Bring on your palms and springs. They haven't put in an appearance yet.Let's try anyhow."
Nadine sat up.
"Talking of the weather--" she began.
"I wasn't."
"Yes, you were, before we began to exchange compliments."
She broke off suddenly.
"Oh, Hughie, what has happened to the sun?" she said.
"I know it is the moon," said Hugh.
"You needn't quote that. The shrew is tamed for a time. It's ashrew-mouse, a lady mouse with a foul temper; do you think? About thesun--look."
It was worth looking at. Right round it, two or three diameters away,ran a complete halo, a pale white line in the abyss of the blue sky. Thelittle feathers of wind-blown clouds had altogether vanished, and theheavens were untarnished from horizon to zenith. But the heat of therays had sensibly diminished, and though the sunshine appeared aswhole-hearted as ever, it was warm no longer.
"This is my second conjuring-trick," said Hugh. "I make you a whirlwind,and now I make you a ring round the sun, and cut off the heatingapparatus. Things are going to happen. Look at the sea, too. Myorders."
The sea was also worth looking at. An hour ago it had been turquoiseblue, reflecting the sky. Now it seemed to reflect a moonstone. It wasgray-white, a corpse of itself, as it had been. Then even as theylooked, it seemed to vanish altogether. The horizon line was blottedout, for the sky was turning gray also, and both above and below, overthe cliff-edge, there was nothing but an invisible gray of emptiness.The sun halo spread both inwards and outwards, so that the sun itselfpeered like a white plate through some layer of vapor that had suddenlyformed across the whole field of the heavens. And still not a whistle orsigh of wind sounded.
Hugh got up.
"As I have forgotten what my third conjuring trick is," he said, "Ithink we had better go home. It looks as if it was going to be a violentone."
He paused a moment, peering out into the invisible sea. Then there camea shrill faint scream from somewhere out in the dim immensity.
"Hold on to me, Nadine," he cried. "Or lie down."
He felt her arm in his, and they stood there together.
The scream increased in volume, becoming a maniac bellow. Then, like asolid wall, the wind hit them. It did not begin, out of the dead calm,as a breeze; it did not grow from breeze to wind; it came from seawards,like the waters of the Red Sea on the hosts of Pharaoh, an overwhelmingwall of riot and motion. Nadine's books, all but the one she had castover the cliff's edge, turned over, and lay with flapping pages; thenlike wounded birds they were blown along the hillside. The hat she hadbrought out with her, but had not put on, rose straight in the air, andvanished. Hugh, with Nadine on his arm, had leaned forward against thismaniac blast, and the two were not thrown down by it. The path to thehouse lay straight up the steep hillside behind them, and turning theywere so blown up it, that they stumbled in trying to keep pace to thatirresistible torrent of wind that hurried them along. It took them butfive minutes to get up the steep brae, while it had taken them tenminutes to walk down, and already there flew past them seaweed and sandand wrack, blown up from the beach below. Above, the sun was completelyveiled, a riot of cloud had already obscured the higher air, but below,all was clear, and it looked as if a stone could be tossed upon thehills on the farther side of the bay.
They had to cross the garden before they came to the house. Already twotrees had fallen before this hurricane-blast, and even as they hurriedover the lawn, an elm, screaming in all its full-foliaged boughs, leanedtowards them, and cracked and fell. Then a chimney in the house itselfwavered in outline, and next moment it crashed down upon the roof, and acovey of flying tiles fell round them.
It required Hugh's full strength to close the door again, after they hadentered, and Nadine turned to him, flushed and ecstatic.
"Hughie, how divine!" she said. "It can't be measured, that lovely force.It's infinite. I never knew there was strength like that. Why have wecome in? Let's go out again. It's God: it's just God."
His eyes, too, were alight with it and his soul surged to his lips.
"Yes, God," he said. "And that's what love is. Rather--rather big, isn'tit?"
And then for the first time, Nadine understood. She did not feel, butshe was able to understand.
"Oh, Hughie," she said, "how splendid it must be to feel like that!"
* * * * *
The section of the party which had gone to play golf on this changeablemorning, were blown home a few minutes later, and they all met at lunch.Edith Arbuthnot had arrived before any of them got back, and asked ifthe world had been blown away. As it had not, she expressed herselfready to chaperone anybody.
"And Berts is happy too," said Seymour, when he came in very late forlunch, since he wished to change all his clothes first, as they 'smelledof wind,' "because Berts has at last driven a ball two hundred yards.Don't let us mention the subject of golf. It would be tactless. Therewas no wind when he accomplished that remarkable feat, at least not morewind than there is now. What there was was behind him, and he topped hisball heavily. I said 'Good shot.' But I have tact. Since I have tact, Idon't say to Nadine that it was a good day to sit out on the hillsideand read. I would scorn the suggestion."
A sudden sound as of drums on the window interrupted this tactfulspeech, and the panes streamed.
"Anyhow I shall play golf," said Edith. "What does a little rain matter?I'm not made of paper."
"That's a good thing, Mother," said Berts.
"If you want to win a match, play with Berts," said Seymour pensively."But if you only want to be blown away and killed, anybody will do. Ishall get on with my embroidery this afternoon, and my maid will sit byme and hold my hand. Dear me, I hope the house is well built."
For the moment it certainly seemed as if this was not the case, for thewhole room shook under a sudden gust more appalling than anything theyhad felt yet. Then it died away again, and once more the windows weredeluged with sheets of rain flung, it seemed, almost horizontallyagainst them. For a few minutes only that lasted, and then the windsettled down, so it seemed, to blow with a steady uniform violence.
Nadine had finished lunch and gone across to the window. The air wasperfectly clear, and the hills across the bay seemed again but astone's-throw away. Overhead, straight across the sky, stretched a roofof cloud, but away to the West, just above the horizon line, there wasan arch of perfectly clear sky, of pale duck's-egg green, and out ofthis it seemed as out of a funnel the fury of the gale was poured. Thegarden was strewn with branches and battered foliage and the long gravelpath flooded by the tempest of rain was discharging itself upon thelawn, where pools of bright yellow water were spreading. Across it toolay the wreck of the fallen trees, the splintered corpses of what anhour ago had been secure and living things, waiting, warm and drowsy,for the tingle of springtime and rising sap. Like the bodies of youngmen on a battlefield, with their potentialities of love and lifeunfulfilled, there, by the blast of the insensate fury of the wind theylay stricken and dead, and the birds would no more build in theirbranches, nor make their shadowed nooks melodious with love-songs. Nomore would summer clothe them in green, nor autumn in their liveries ofgold: they were dead things and at the most would make a little warmthon the hearth, before the feathery ash, all that was left of them, wasdispersed on the homeless winds.
But the pity of this blind wantonness of d
estruction was more thancompensated for in the girl's mind by the savagery and force of theunlooked-for hurricane, and she easily persuaded Hugh to come out withher and be beaten and stormed upon. Always sensitive to the weather,this portentous storm had aroused in her a sort of rapture ofrestlessness: she rejoiced in it, and somehow feared it for itsruthlessness and indifference.
They took the path that led downward to the beach, for it was the tumultand madness of the sea that Nadine especially wished to observe. Thoughas yet the gale had been blowing only an hour or two, it had raised amonstrous sea, and long before they came down within sight of it, theyheard the hoarse thunder and crash of broken waters penetrating thescreaming bellow of the gale, and the air was salt with spray andflying foam. To the West there was still clear that arch of open skythrough which the gale poured; somewhere behind the clouds to the leftof it, the sun was near to its setting, and a pale livid light shone outof it, catching the tops of the breakers as they streamed landwards.Between these foam-capped tops lay gray hollows and darknesses, out ofwhich would suddenly boil another crest of mountainous water. The tidewas only at half flood, but the sea, packed by the astounding wind, wasalready breaking at the foot of the cliffs themselves, while in thetroughs of the waves as they rode in, there appeared and disappearedagain the scattered rocks from some remote cliff-fall, that were strewnabout the beach. Sometimes a wave would strike one of these full, and beshattered against it, spouting heavenwards in a column of solid water;oftener the breakers swept over them unbroken, until with menace oftheir toppling crests they flung themselves with huge tongues of hissingwater on the rocks at the foot of the cliffs. Then with the scream ofthe withdrawn shingle the spent water was furiously dragged back to thebase of the next incoming wave, and was caught up again to hurl itselfagainst the land. Sometimes a sudden blast of wind would cut off thecrest of the billow even as it curled over, and fling it, a monstrousriband of foam, through the air, sometimes two waves converging rose upin a fountain of water, and fell back without having reached the shore.This way and that, rushing and rolling, in hills and valleys of water,the maddened sea crashed and thundered, and every moment the spray rosemore densely from the infernal cauldron. Then as the tide rose higher,the waves came in unbroken, and hurled their tons of water against theface of the cliff itself. Above, continuous as a water-fall, rose theroar and scream of the gale, ominous, insensate, bewildering: it was asif the elements were being transferred back into the chaos out of whichthey came.
Nadine and Hugh, clinging together for support, stood there for someminutes, half-way down the side of the cliff, watching the terror andmajesty of the spectacle, she utterly absorbed in it and cruellyunconscious of him. Then, since they could no longer get down to thebase of the cliff, they skirted along it till they came to the sandyforeshore of the bay. There from water-level they could better see thehugeness of the tumult, the strange hardness and steepness of thewave-slopes. It was as if a line of towers and great buildings werethrowing themselves down upon the sands, and breaking up into walls andeddies of foam-sheeted water, while behind them there rose again anotherstreet of toppling buildings, which again shattered itself on the beach.Great balls of foam torn from the spent water trundled by them on thesands, and bunches of brown seaweed torn from the rocks were flung inhandfuls at their feet. Once from the arch in the sky westwards, a duskycrimson light suddenly burned, turning the wave crests to blood, andthen as the darkness of the early winter sunset gathered, they turned,and were blown up the steep cliff-path again, wet and buffeted.Conversation had been altogether impossible, and they could butcommunicate with pointing finger, and nodding head. Yet, somehow, to betogether thus, cut off by the rise of winds and waves, from all sense ofthe existence of others, in that pandemonium of tempest, gave to Hugh atleast a closer feeling of intimacy with Nadine, than he had ever yetknown. She clung to him, she sheltered under his shoulder,unconsciously, instinctively, as an animal trusts his master, withoutknowing it is trusting. And that to his aching hunger for her wassomething....
But the gale was to bring them closer together yet.