The Second E. F. Benson Megapack

by E. F. Benson

  Her mother had telegraphed that she was coming at once; and Nadine remembering that she had not told the servants got up and rang the bell. But before it was answered there came an interruption for which she had been waiting. One of the two nurses whom the surgeon from Chester had brought with him knocked at the door. She had been tidying up, and removing all traces of what had been done.

  “The room is neat again now,” she said, “and you may come and just look at him.”

  “Is he conscious or in pain?” asked Nadine.

  “No; but he may regain consciousness at any time, but I don’t think he will have any pain.”

  They went together up the long silent passages in which there hung that curious hush which settles down on a house when death is hovering by it, and came to his door which stood ajar. Then from some sudden qualm and weakness of flesh, Nadine halted, shrinking from entering.

  “Do not come unless you feel up to it,” said Nurse Bryerley. “But there is nothing that will shock you.”

  Nadine hesitated no more, but entered.

  They had carried him not to his own room, but to another with a dressing-room adjoining. His bed stood along the wall to the left of the door, and he lay on his back with his head a little sideways towards it. There was nothing in the room that suggested illness, and when Nadine looked at his face there was nothing there that suggested it either. His eyes were closed, but his face was as untroubled as that of some quiet sleeper. In the wall opposite were the western-looking windows and the room was lit only by that fast-fading splendor. The cloud-island still hung in the sky, but it had turned gray as the light left it.

  Then even as Nadine looked at him, his eyes opened and he saw her.

  “Nadine,” he said.

  The nurse stepped to the bedside.

  “Ah, you are awake again,” she said. “How do you feel?”

  “Rather tired. But I want to speak to Nadine.”

  “Yes, you can speak to her,” she said and signed to the girl to come.

  Nadine came across the room to him, and knelt down.

  “Oh, Hughie,” she said, “well done!”

  He looked at her, puzzled for the moment, with troubled eyes.

  “You said that before,” he said. “It was the last thing you said. Why did you—oh, I remember now. Yes, what a bang I came! How’s the little fellow, the one on my back?”

  “Quite unhurt, Hughie. He is asleep.”

  “I thought he wouldn’t be hurt. It was the best plan I could think of. I say, why did you call to me not to go at first? I had to.”

  “I know now you had to,” said she.

  “I want to ask you something else. How badly am I hurt?”

  Nadine looked up at the nurse a moment, who nodded to her. She understood exactly what that meant.

  “You are very badly hurt, dear Hughie,” she said; “But—but it is worth it fifty times over.”

  Hugh was silent a moment.

  “Am I going to die?” he asked.

  Nadine did not need instruction about this.

  “No, a thousand times, no!” she said. “You’re going to get quite well. But you must be patient and rest and sleep.”

  Nadine’s throat grew suddenly small and aching, and she could not find her voice for a moment.

  “You are quite certainly going to live,” she said. “To begin with, I can’t spare you!”

  Hugh’s eyelids fluttered and quivered.

  “By Jove!” he said, and next moment they had quite closed.

  The nurse signed to Nadine to get up and she rose very softly and tiptoed away. At the door she looked round once at Hugh, but already he was asleep. Then still softly she came back and kissed him on the forehead and was gone again.

  She had been with him but a couple of minutes, but as she went back to her room, she heard the stir of arrivals in the hall, and went down. Dodo had that moment arrived.

  “Nadine, my dear,” she said, “I started the moment I got your telegram. Tell me all you can. How is he? How did it happen? You only said he had had a bad accident, and wanted me.”

  Nadine kissed her.

  “Oh! Mama,” she said. “Thank God it wasn’t an accident. It was done on purpose. He meant it just like that. But you don’t know anything; I forgot. Will you come to my room?”

  “Yes, let us go. Now tell me at once.”

  “We have had a frightful gale,” she said, “and this morning Hughie saw a fishing-boat close in land, driving on to the reef. There was just one shrimp of a boy on it, and Hughie went straight in, like a duck to water, and got him off and swam back with him. There was a rope and Seymour and Berts pulled him in. And when they got close in, Hughie put the boy on his back—oh, Mama, thank God for men like that!—and the breakers banged him down on the beach, and the boy was unhurt. And Hughie may die very soon, or he may live—”

  Nadine’s voice choked for a moment. All day she had not felt a sob rise in her throat.

  “And if he lives,” she said, “he may never be able to walk again, and I love him.”

  Then came the tempest of tears, tears of joy and sorrow, a storm of them, fruitful as autumn rain, fruitful as the sudden deluges of April, with God-knows-what warmth of sun behind. The drought of summer in her, the ice of winter in her had been broken up in the rain that makes the growth and the life of the world. The frozen ground melted under it, the soil, cracked with drought, drank it in: the parody of life that she had lived became but the farce that preceded sweet serious drama, tragedy it might be, but something human.… And Dodo, woman also, understood that: she too had lived years that parodied herself, and knew what the awakening to womanhood was, and the immensity of that unsuspected kingdom. It had come late to her, to Nadine early: some were almost born in consciousness of their birthright, others died without realizing it. So, mother and daughter, they sat there in silence, while Nadine wept her fill.

  “It was the splendidest adventure,” she said at length, lifting her head. “It was all so gay. He shouted to that little boy in the boat to encourage him to cling on, and oh, those damned reefs were so close. And when they rode in, Hughie like a horse with a child on his back over that—that precipice, he said something again to encourage him.”

  Nadine broke down again for a moment.

  “Hughie never thought about himself at all,” she said. “He used always to think about me. But when he went on his adventure he didn’t think about me. He thought only of that little stupid boy, God bless him. And, oh, Mummie, I gave myself away—I got down to the beach just before Hughie went in, and I lost my head and I screamed out, ‘Not you, Hughie: Seymour, Berts, anybody, but not you!’ It wasn’t I who screamed; something inside me screamed, and the one who screamed was—was my love for Hughie, and I never knew of it. But inside me something swelled, and it burst. Yes: Hughie heard, I am sure, and Seymour heard, and I don’t care at all.”

  Nadine sat up, with a sort of unconscious pride in her erectness.

  “I saw him just now,” she said, “and he quite knew me, and asked if he was going to die. I told him ‘he certainly was not; I couldn’t spare him.’”

  Nadine gave a little croaking laugh.

  “And he instantly went to sleep,” she said.

  The veracious historian is bound to state that this was an adventure absolutely after Dodo’s heart. All her life she had loved impulse, and disregarded its possibly appalling consequences. Never had she reasoned before she acted, and she could almost have laughed for joy at these blind strokes of fate. Hugh’s splendid venture thrilled her, even as it thrilled Nadine, and for the moment the result seemed negligible. A great thing had ‘got done’ in the world: now by all means let them hope for the best in its sequel, and do their utmost to bring about the best, not with a fainting or regretful heart, but with a heart that rejoiced and sang over the glory of the impetuous deed that brought about these dealings of love and life.

  Dodo’s eyes danced as she spoke, danced and were dim at the same time. />
  “Oh, Nadine, and you saw it!” she said. “How glorious for you to see that, and to know at the same moment that you loved him. And, my dear, if Hughie is to die, you must thank God for him without any regret. There is nothing to regret. And if he lives—”

  “Oh, Mama, one thing at a time,” said Nadine. “If he only lives, if only I am going to be allowed to take care of him, and to do what can be done.”

  She paused a moment.

  “I am so glad you have come,” she said; “it was dear of you to start at once like that. Did Papa Jack want you not to go?”

  “My dear, he hurried me off to that extent that I left the only bag that mattered behind.”

  “That was nice of him. They have been so hopeless, all of them here, because they didn’t understand. Berts has been looking like a funeral all day, the sort with plumes. And Edith has been running in and out with soup for me, soup and mince and glasses of port I think—I think Seymour understood though, because he was quite cheerful and normal. Oh, Mama, if Hughie only lives, I will marry Seymour as a thank-offering.”

  Dodo looked at her daughter in amazement.

  “Not if Seymour understands,” she said.

  Nadine frowned.

  “It’s the devil’s own mess,” she observed.

  “But the devil never cleans up his messes,” said Dodo. “That’s what we learn by degrees. He makes them, and we clean them up. More or less, that is to say.”

  She paused a moment, and flung the spirit of her speech from her.

  “I don’t mean that,” she said. “It is truer to say that God makes beautiful things, and we spoil them. And then He makes them beautiful again. It is only people who can’t see at all, that see the other aspect of it. I think they call them realists—I know it ends in ‘ist.’ But it doesn’t matter what you call them. They are wrong. We have got to hold our hearts high, and let them beat, and let ourselves enjoy and be happy and taste things to the full. It is easier to be miserable, my dear, for most people. We are the lucky ones. Oh, if I had been a charwoman, like that thing in the play, with a husband who stole and was sent to prison, I should have found something to be happy about. Probably a large diamond in the grate, which I should have sold without being traced.”

  These remarkable statements were not made without purpose. Dodo knew quite well that courage and patience and cheerfulness would be needed by Nadine, and she was willing to talk the most outrageous nonsense to give the sense of vitality to her, to make her see that no great happening like this, whatever the end, was a thing to moan and brood over. It must be taken with much more than resignation—a quality which she despised—and with hardly less than gaiety. Such at any rate was her private human gospel, which she found had not served her so badly.

  “I have quite missed my vocation,” she said. “I ought to have been born in poverty-stricken and criminal classes to show the world that being hungry does not make you unhappy any more than having three diamond tiaras makes you happy. You’ve got that birthright, Nadine, live up to it. Never anticipate trouble, and if it comes embrace and welcome it: it is part of life, and thus it becomes your friend. Oh, I wish I had been here this morning! I would have shouted for glee to see that darling Hughie go churning out to sea. I am jealous of you. Just think: if Papa Jack had come a-wooing of you, as I really thought he might be doing in the summer, you would have married him and I should be looking after Hughie. Isn’t that like me? I want everybody’s good times myself.”

  These amazing statements were marvelously successful.

  “I won’t give my good time away even to you,” said Nadine.

  “No, you are sharper than a serpent’s tooth. Now, darling, we will go very quietly along the passage, and just see if Hughie is asleep. I should so like to wake him up—I know he is asleep—in order to tell him how splendid it all is. Don’t be frightened: I’m not going to. We will just go to the door, and that enormous nurse whom I saw peering over the banisters, will tell us to go away. And then I shall go to dress for dinner, and you will too—”

  “Oh, Mama, I can’t come down to dinner,” said Nadine.

  “Yes, dear, you can and you will. There’s going to be no sadness in my house. If you don’t, I shall send Edith up to you with mince and her ’cello and soup. Oh, Nadine, and it was all just for a little stupid boy, who very likely would have been better dead. He will now probably grow up, and be an anxiety to his parents, if he’s got any—they usually haven’t—and come to a bad and early end. What a great world!”

  CHAPTER XI

  Nadine enquired at Hugh’s door again that night before she went to bed, and found that he was still asleep. She had promised her mother not to sit up, but as she undressed she almost smiled at the uselessness of going to bed, so impossible did it seem that sleep should come near her. After her one outburst of crying, she had felt no further agitation, for something so big and so quiet had entered her heart that all poignancy of anxiety and suspense were powerless to disturb it. As has been said, it was scarcely even whether Hugh lived or died that mattered: the only thing that mattered was Hugh. Had she been compelled to say whether she believed he would live or not, she would have given the negative. And yet there was a quality of peace in her that could not be shaken. It was a peace that humbled and exalted her. It wrapped her round very close, and yet she looked up to it, as to a mountain-peak on which dawn has broken.

  Despite her conviction that sleep was impossible, she had hardly closed her eyes, when it embraced and swallowed up all her consciousness. This cyclone of emotion, in the center of which dwelt the windless calm, had utterly tired her out, though she was unaware of fatigue, and her rest was dreamless. Then suddenly she was aware that there was light in the room, and that she was being spoken to, and she passed from unconsciousness back to the full possession of her faculties, as swiftly as they had been surrendered. She found Dodo bending over her.

  “Come, my darling,” she said.

  Nadine had no need to ask any question, but as she put on her slippers and dressing-gown Dodo spoke again.

  “He has been awake for an hour and asking for you,” she said. “The nurse and the doctor are with him: they think you had better come. It is possible that if he sees you there, he may go off to sleep again. But it is possible—you are not afraid, darling?”

  Nadine’s mouth quivered into something very like a smile.

  “Afraid of Hughie?” she asked.

  They went up the stairs, and along the passage together. The moon that last night had been hidden by the tempest of storm-clouds, or perhaps blown away from the sky by the wind, now rode high and cloudlessly amid a multitude of stars. No wind moved across those ample floors: only from the beach they heard the plunge and thunder of the sea that could not so easily resume its tranquillity. The moonlight came through the window of Hugh’s room also, making on the floor a shadow-map of the bars.

  He was lying again with his face towards the door, but now his eyes were vacantly open, and his whole face had changed. There was an agony of weariness over it, and from his eyes there looked out a dumb, unavailing rebellion. Before they had got to the door they had heard a voice inside speaking, a voice that Nadine did not recognize. It kept saying over and over again, “Nadine, Nadine.”

  As she came across the room to the bed, he looked straight at her, but it was clear he did not see her, and the monotonous, unrecognizable voice went on saying, “Nadine, Nadine.”

  The doctor was standing by the head of the bed, looking intently at Hugh, but doing nothing: the nurse was at the foot.

  He signed to Nadine to come, and took a step towards her.

  “You’ve got to make him feel you are here,” he said. Then with his hand he beckoned to the nurse and to Dodo, to stand out of sight of Hugh, so that by chance he might think himself alone with the girl.

  Nadine knelt down on the floor, so that her face was close to those unseeing eyes, and the mouth that babbled her name. And the great peace was with her still. She spo
ke in her ordinary natural voice without tremor.

  “Yes, Hughie, yes,” she said. “Don’t go on calling me. Here I am. What’s the use of calling now? I came as soon as I knew you wanted me.”

  “Nadine, Nadine,” said Hughie, in the same unmeaning monotone.

  “Hughie, you are quite idiotic!” she said. “As if you didn’t know in your own heart that I would always come when you wanted me. I always would, my dear. You need never be afraid that I shall leave you. I am yours, don’t you see?”

  “Nadine, Nadine,” said Hugh.

  Nadine’s whole soul went into her words.

  “Hughie, you are not with me yet,” she said. “I want you, too, and I mean to have you. I didn’t know till today that I wanted you, and now I can’t do without you. Hughie, do you hear?” she said. “Oh, answer me, Hughie dear!”

  There was dead silence. Then Hugh gave a great sigh.

  “Nadine!” he said. But it was Hugh’s voice that spoke then.

  She bent forward.

  “Oh, Hughie, you have come then,” she said. “Welcome; you don’t know how I wanted you!”

  “Yes, I’m here all right,” said Hugh in a voice scarcely audible. “But I’m so tired. It’s horrible; it’s like death!”

  Nadine gave her little croaking laugh.

  “It isn’t like anything of the kind,” she said. “But of course you are tired. Wouldn’t it be a good thing to go to sleep?”

  “I don’t know,” said Hugh.

  “But I do. I’m tired too, Hughie, awfully tired. If I leaned my head back against your bed I should go to sleep too.”

  “Nadine, it is you?” said Hugh.

  “Oh, my dear! What other girl could be with you?”

  “No, that’s true. Nadine, would it bore you to stop with me a bit? We might talk afterwards, when—when you’ve had a nap.”