“No, never mind: I’ll row the boat for you.”
“Say, you still don’t believe I meant it, do you?” She examined him curiously. “All right, then. I guess I’ll have to go in by myself. You can row the boat, anyway. Come on.”
He fetched the oars and they got in the tender and cast off. “Only I wish you had a bathing suit,” she repeated from the stern. “I’d rather have somebody to go in with me. Couldn’t you go in in your clothes or something? Say, I’ll turn my back, and you take off your clothes and jump in: how about that?”
“I guess not,” he answered in alarm. “I guess I better not do that.”
“Shucks, I wanted somebody to go swimming with me. It’s not any fun, by myself. . . . Take off your shirt and pants, then, and go in your underclothes. That’s almost like a bathing suit. I went in yesterday in Josh’s.”
“I’ll row the boat for you while you go in,” he repeated. The niece said Shucks again. David pulled steadily on upon the mooned and shifting water. Little waves slapped the bottom of the boat lightly as it rose and fell, and behind them the yacht was pure and passionless as a dream against the dark trees.
“I just love tonight,” the niece said. “It’s like we owned everything.” She lay flat on her back on the stern seat, propping her heels against the gunwale. David pulled rhythmically, the motion of the boat was a rhythm that lent to the moon and stars swinging up and down beyond the tapering simplicity of her propped knees a motion slow and soothing as a huge tree in a wind.
“How far do you want to go?” he asked presently.
“I don’t care,” she answered, gazing into the sky. He rowed on, the oarlocks thumping and measured, and she turned onto her belly, dragging her arm in the water while small bubbles of silver fire clung to her arm, broke away reluctantly and swam slowly to the surface, disappeared. . . . Little casual swells slapped the bottom of the boat, lightly, and slid along beside the hull, mooned with bubbling fire. She slid her legs overside and swung from the stern of the boat, dragging through the water. He pulled on a few strokes.
“I can’t row with you hanging there,” he said. Her two hands vanished from the gunwale and her dark head vanished, but when he slewed the boat sharply and half rose, she reappeared, whipping a faint shower of silver drops from her head. The moon slid and ran on her alternate arms and before her spread a fan of silver lines, shifting and spreading and fading.
“Gee,” she said. Her voice came low along the water, not loud but still distinct: little waves lapped at it. “It’s grand: warm as warm. You better come in.” Her head vanished again, he saw her sickling legs as they vanished, and once more she rayed shattered silver from her flung head. She swam up to the boat. “Come on in, David,” she insisted. “Take off your shirt and pants and jump in. I’ll swim out and wait for you. Come on, now,” she commanded.
So he removed his outer garments, sitting in the bottom of the boat, and slid quickly and modestly into the water. “Isn’t it grand?” she called to him. “Come on out here.”
We better not get too far from the boat,” he said cautiously, “she ain’t got any anchor, you know.”
“We can catch it. It won’t drift fast. Come on out here, and I’ll race you back to it.”
He swam out to where her dark wet head awaited him. “I bet I beat you,” she challenged. “Are you ready? One. Two. Three—Go!” And she did beat him and with a single unceasing motion she slid upward and into the tender, and stood erect for the moonlight to slide over her in hushed silver.
“I’ll plunge for distance with you,” she now challenged. David hung by his hands, submerged to his neck. She waited for him to get into the skiff, then she said, “You can dive, can’t you?” But he still clung to the gunwale, looking up at her. “Come on, David,” she said sharply. “Are you timid, or what? I’m not going to look at you, if you don’t want me to.” So he got into the boat, modestly keeping his back to her, but even his wet curious garment could not make ridiculous the young lean splendor of him.
“I don’t see what you are ashamed of. You’ve got a good physique,” she told him. “Tall and hard looking. . . . Are you ready? One. Two. Three—Go!”
But soon she was content to float on her back and recover breath, while he trod water beside her. Little hands of water lapped at her, in her hair and upon her face, and she breathed deeply, closing hereyes against the bland waning moon.
“I’ll hold you up a while,” he offered, putting his hand under the small of her back.
“You sure can,” she said, holding herself motionless. “Is it hard to do? Let me see if I can hold you up. This water is different from seawater: you don’t hardly sink in seawater if you want to.” She let her legs sink and he lay obediently on his back. “I can hold you up, can’t I? Say, can you carry somebody in the water, like lifesavers?”
“A little,” he admitted and she rolled again onto her back, and he showed her how it was done. Then she must try it herself, and he submitted with dubious resignation. Her hard young arm gripped him chokingly across his throat, jamming his wind-pipe, and she plunged violently forward, threshing her legs. He jerked up his arms to remove her strangling elbow and his head went under, openmouthed. He fought free of her and reappeared gasping. Her concerned face came to him and she tried to hold him up, unneccessarily.
“I’m so sorry: I didn’t mean to duck you.”
“It’s all right,” he said, coughing and strangling.
“I didn’t do it right, did I? Are you all right now?” She watched him anxiously, trying to support him.
“I’m all right,” he repeated. “You had the wrong hold,” he explained, treading water. “You had me around the neck.”
“Gee, I thought I was doing it right: I’ll do it right this time.”
“I guess we better wait and practice it in shallow water sometime,” he demurred quickly.
“Why . . . all right,” she agreed. “I think I know how, now. I guess I had better learn good, first, though. I’m awful sorry I strangled you.”
“It don’t hurt any more. I don’t notice it.”
“But it was such a dumb thing to do. I’ll learn it good next time.”
“You know how now, all right. You just got the wrong hold that time. Try it again: see if you don’t know it.”
“You don’t mind?” she said with quick joy. “I won’t catch you wrong this time. . . . No, no: I might duck you again. I’d better learn it first.”
“Sure you won’t,” he said. “You know how now. You won’t hurt me. Try it.” He turned onto his back.
“Gee, David,” she said. She slid her arm carefully across his chest and beneath his opposite arm. “That’s right? Now, I’m going.”
She held him carefully, intent on doing it correctly, while he encouraged her. But their progress was maddeningly slow: the boat seemed miles away, and so much of her effort was needed to keep her own head above water. Soon she was breathing faster, gulping air and then closing her mouth against the water her thrusting arm swirled up against her face. I will do it, I will do it, she told herself, but it was so much harder than it had looked. The skiff rose and fell against the stars, and mooned water bubbled about her. It would take more effort or she’d have to give up. And she’d drown before that.
The arm that held him was numb, and she swam harder, shifting her grip, and again her hard elbow shut with strangling force upon his windpipe. But he was expecting it and without moving his body he twisted his head aside and filled his lungs and shut his mouth and eyes. . . . Soon she ceased swimming and her arm slid down again, holding him up, and he emptied his lungs and opened his eyes to remark the gunwale of the tender rising and falling against the sky above his head.
“I did make it,” she gasped. “I did make it. Are you all right?” she asked, panting. “I sure did it, David. I knew I could.” She clung to the
skiff, resting her head upon her hands. “I thought for a while, when I had to change my hold, that I was doing it wrong again. But I did it right, didn’t I?” The remote chill stars swung over them, and the decaying disc of the moon, over the empty world in which they clung by their hands, side by side. “I’m pretty near all in,” she admitted.
“It’s pretty hard,” he agreed, “until you’ve practiced a lot. I’ll hold you up until you get your breath.” He put his arm around her under the water.
“I’m not all the way winded,” she protested, but by degrees she relaxed until he supported her whole weight, feeling her heart thumping against his palm, while she clung to the gun-wale resting her bowed head upon her hands; and it was like he had been in a dark room and all of a sudden the lights had come on: simple, like that.
It was like one morning when he was in a bunch of hoboes riding a freight into San Francisco and the bulls had jumped them and they had had to walk in. Along the water-front it was, and there were a lot of boats in the water, kind of rocking back and forth at anchor: he could see reflections of boats and of the piles of the wharves in the water, wavering back and forth; and after a while dawn had come up out of the smoke of the city, like a sound you couldn’t hear, and a lot of yellow and pink had come onto the water where the boats were rocking, and around the piles of the wharf little yellow lines seemed to come right up out of the water; and pretty soon there were gulls looking like they had pink and yellow feathers, slanting and wheeling around.
And it was like there was a street in a city, a street with a lot of trash in it, but pretty soon he was out of the street and in a place where trees were. It must be spring because the trees were not exactly bare, and yet they didn’t exactly have leaves on them, and there was a wind coming through the trees and he stopped and heard music somewhere; it was like he had just waked up and a wind with music in it was coming across green hills brave in a clean dawn. Simple, like that.
She moved at last against his arm. “Maybe I can climb in now. You better gimme a push, I guess.” His hand found her knee slid down, and she raised her foot to his palm. He saw her flat boy’s body against the stars rising, and she was in the boat, leaning down to him. “Catch my hands,” she said, extending them, but for a time he didn’t move at all, but only clung to the gunwale and looked up at her with an utter longing, like that of a dog.
* * *
Mrs. Maurier lay in bed in her darkened room. There was a port just over the bed and a long pencil of moonlight came slanting through it, shattering upon the floor and filling the room with a cold, disseminated radiance. Upon the chair, vaguely, her clothes: a shapeless, familiar mass, comforting; and about her the intimate familiarity of her own possessions—her toilet things, her clothing, her very particular odor with which she had grown so familiar that she no longer noticed it at all.
She lay in bed—her bed, especially built for her, was the most comfortable on board—surrounded, lapped in security and easeful things, walled and secure within the bland, hushed planes of the bulkheads. A faint, happy sound came in to her: little tongues of water lapping ceaselessly alongside the yacht, against her yacht—that island of security that was always waiting to transport her comfortably beyond the rumors of the world and its sorrows; and beyond the yacht, space: water and sky and darkness and silence; a worn cold moon neither merry nor sad. . . . Mrs. Maurier lay in her easy bed, within her comfortable room, weeping long shuddering sobs: a passive terrible hysteria without a sound.
The Third Day
This morning waked in a quiet fathomless mist. It was upon the world of water unstirred; soon the first faint wind of morning would thin it away, but now it was about the Nausikaa timelessly: the yacht was a thick jewel swaddled in soft gray wool, while in the wool somewhere dawn was like a suspended breath. The first morning of Time might well be beyond this mist, and trumpets preliminary to a golden flourish; and held in suspension in it might be heard yet the voices of the Far Gods on the first morning saying, It is well: let there be light. A short distance away, a shadow, a rumor, a more palpable thickness: this was the shore. The water fading out of the mist became as a dark metal in which the Nausikaa was rigidly fixed, and the yacht was motionless, swaddled in mist like a fat jewel.
FIVE O’CLOCK
Up from the darkness of the companionway the niece came, naked and silent as a ghost. She stood for a space, but there was no sound from anywhere, and she crossed the deck and stopped again at the rail, breathing the soft chill mist into her lungs, feeling the mist swaddling her firm simple body with a faint lingering chillness. Her legs and arms were so tan that naked she appeared to wear a bathing suit of a startling white. She climbed the rail. The tender rocked a little under her, causing the black motionless water to come alive, making faint sounds. Then she slid over the stern and swam out into the mist.
The water divided with oily reluctance, closing again behind her with scarce a ripple. Here, at the water level, she could see nothing save a grayness and flaccid disturbed tongues of water lapping into it, leaving small fleeting gaps between mist and water before the mist filled them again silently as settling wings. The hull of the yacht was a vague thing, a thing felt, known, rather than seen. She swam slowly, circling the place where she knew it should be.
She swam slowly and steadily, trying to keep her approximate distance from the yacht by instinct. But, consciously thi.s was hard to do; consciously in this vague restricted immensity, this limitless vagueness whose center was herself, the yacht could be in any direction from her. She paused and trod water while little tongues of water kissed her face, lapping against her lips. It’s on my right, she told herself. It’s on my right, over there. Not fear: merely a faint unease, an exasperation; but to reassure herself she swam a few strokes in that direction. The mist neither thickened nor thinned.
She trod water again and water licked at her face soundlessly. Damn your fool soul, she whispered, and at that moment a round huge thing like a dead lidless eye watched her suddenly from the mist and there came a faint sound from somewhere in the mist above her head. In two strokes she touched the hull of the yacht: a vindication, and she knew a faint pride and a touch of relief as she swam along the hull and circled the stern. She grasped the gunwale of the tender and hung there for a while, getting her wind back.
That faint sound came again from the deck; a movement, and she spoke into the mist: “David?” The mist took the word, sweeping it lightly against the hull, then it rebounded again and the mist absorbed it. But he had heard and he appeared vaguely above her at the rail, looking down at her where she hung in the water. “Go away, so I can get out,” she said. He didn’t move, and she added, “I haven’t got on a bathing suit. Go away a minute, David.”
But he didn’t move. He leaned over the rail, looking at her with a dumb and utter longing and after a while she slid quickly and easily into the tender, and still he remained motionless, making no move to help her as her grave simple body came swiftly aboard the yacht. “Be back in a minute,” she said over her shoulder and her startling white bathing suit sped across the deck and out of the ken of his dog’s eyes. The mist without thinning was filling with light: an imminence of dawn like a glory, a splendor of trumpets unheard.
Her minute was three minutes. She reappeared in her little colored linen dress, her dark coarse hair still damp, carrying her shoes and stockings in her hand. He hadn’t moved at all.
“Well, let’s get going,” she said. She looked at him impatiently. “Aren’t you ready yet?” He stirred at last, watching her with the passive abjectness of a dog. “Come on,” she said sharply. “Haven’t you got the stuff for breakfast yet? What’s the matter with you, David? Snap out of your trance.” She examined him again, with a sober impersonality. “You didn’t believe I was going to do it—is that it? Or are you backing out yourself? Come on, say so now, if you want to call it off.” She came nearer, examining his face with her grave opaque eyes. Sh
e extended her hand. “David?”
He took her hand slowly, looking at her, and she grasped his hand and shook his arm sharply. “Wake up. Say, you haven’t—Come on, let’s get some stuff for breakfast, and beat it. We haven’t got all day.”
He followed her and in the galley she switched on the light and chose a flat box of bacon and a loaf of bread, putting them on a table and delving again among boxes and lockers and shelves. “Have you got matches? a knife?” she asked over her shoulder, “And—where are oranges? Let’s take some oranges. I love oranges, don’t you?” She turned her head to look at him. His hand was just touching her sleeve, so diffidently that she had not felt it. She turned suddenly, putting the oranges down, and put her arms about him, hard and firm and sexless, drawing his cheek down to her sober moist kiss. She could feel his hammering erratic heart against her breast, could hear it surging in the silence almost as though it were in her own body. His arms tightened and he moved his head, seeking her mouth, but she evaded him with a quick movement, without reproof.
“No, no, not that. Everybody does that.” She strained him against her hard body again, then released him. “Come on, now. Have you got everything?” She examined the shelves again, finding at last a small basket. It was filled with damp lettuce but she dumped the lettuce out and put her things in it. “You take my shoes. They’ll go in your pocket, won’t they?” She crumpled her limp blond stockings into her slippers and gave them to him. Then she picked up the basket and snapped off the light.
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