by Edith Nesbit
“After all, even a lunatic has a right to walk out in the forest if it wants to,” she told herself, “and it didn’t know I was there, I expect, really. But I think I’ll go and stay at some other hotel.”
She asked, when her “complete coffee” came to her, what the mad gentleman did all day.
“He is not so stupid as Mademoiselle supposes,” said Marie. “All the artists are insane, and he, he is only a little more insane than the others. He is not a real mad, all the same, see you. To-day he makes drawings at Montigny.”
“Which way is Montigny?” asked Betty. And, learning, strolled, when her coffee was finished, by what looked like the other way.
It took her to the river.
“It’s like the Medway,” said Betty, stooping to the fat cowslips at her feet, “only prettier; and I never saw any cowslips here — You dears!”
Betty would not look at her sorrow in this gay, glad world. But she knew at last what her sorrow’s name was. She saw now that it was love that had stood all the winter between her and Vernon, holding a hand of each. In her blindness she had called it friendship, — but now she knew its real, royal name.
She felt that her heart was broken. Even the fact that her grief was a thing to be indulged or denied at will brought her no doubts. She had always wanted to be brave and noble. Well, now she was being both.
A turn of the river brought to sight a wide reach dotted with green islands, each a tiny forest of willow saplings and young alders.
There was a boat moored under an aspen, a great clumsy boat, but it had sculls in it. It would be pleasant to go out to the islands.
She got into the boat, loosened the heavy rattling chain and flung it in board, took up the sculls and began to pull. It was easy work.
“I didn’t know I was such a good oar,” said Betty as the boat crept swiftly down the river.
As she stepped into the boat, she noticed the long river reeds straining down stream like the green hair of hidden water-nixies.
She would land at the big island — the boat steered easily and lightly enough for all its size — but before she could ship her oars and grasp at a willow root she shot past the island.
Then she remembered the streaming green weeds.
“Why, there must be a frightful current!” she said. What could make the river run at this pace — a weir — or a waterfall?
She turned the boat’s nose up stream and pulled. Ah, this was work! Then her eyes, fixed in the exertion of pulling, found that they saw no moving banks, but just one picture: a willow, a clump of irises, three poplars in the distance — and the foreground of the picture did not move. All her pulling only sufficed to keep the boat from going with the stream. And now, as the effort relaxed a little it did not even do this. The foreground did move — the wrong way. The boat was slipping slowly down stream. She turned and made for the bank, but the stream caught her broadside on, whirled the boat round and swept it calmly and gently down — towards the weir — or the waterfall.
Betty pulled two strong strokes, driving the boat’s nose straight for the nearest island, shipped the sculls with a jerk, stumbled forward and caught at an alder stump. She flung the chain round it and made fast. The boat’s stern swung round — it was thrust in under the bank and held there close; the chain clicked loudly as it stretched taut.
“Well!” said Betty. The island was between her and the riverside path. No one would be able to see her. She must listen and call out when she heard anyone pass. Then they would get another boat and come and fetch her away. She would not tempt fate again alone in that boat. She was not going to be drowned in any silly French river.
She landed, pushed through the saplings, found a mossy willow stump and sat down to get her breath.
It was very hot on the island. It smelt damply of wet lily leaves and iris roots and mud. Flies buzzed and worried. The time was very long. And no one came by.
“I may have to spend the day here,” she told herself. “It’s not so safe in the boat, but it’s not so fly-y either.”
And still no one passed.
Suddenly the soft whistling of a tune came through the hot air. A tune she had learned in Paris.
“C’etait deux amants.”
“Hi!” cried Betty in a voice that was not at all like her voice. “Help! — Au secours!” she added on second thoughts.
“Where are you?” came a voice. How alike all Englishmen’s voices seemed — in a foreign land!
“Here — on the island! Send someone out with a boat, will you? I can’t work my boat a bit.”
Through the twittering leaves she saw something white waving. Next moment a big splash. She could see, through a little gap, a white blazer thrown down on the bank — a pair of sprawling brown boots; in the water a sleek wet round head, an arm in a blue shirt sleeve swimming a strong side stroke. It was the lunatic; of course it was. And she had called to him, and he was coming. She pushed back to the boat, leaped in, and was fumbling with the chain when she heard the splash and the crack of broken twigs that marked the lunatic’s landing.
She would rather chance the weir or the waterfall than be alone on that island with a maniac. But the chain was stretched straight and stiff as a lance, — she could not untwist it. She was still struggling, with pink fingers bruised and rust-stained, when something heavy crashed through the saplings and a voice cried close to her:
“Drop it! What are you doing?” — and a hand fell on the chain.
Betty, at bay, raised her head. Lunatics, she knew, could be quelled by the calm gaze of the sane human eye.
She gave one look, and held out both hands with a joyous cry.
“Oh, — it’s you! I am so glad! Where did you come from? Oh, how wet you are!”
Then she sat down on the thwart and said no more, because of the choking feeling in her throat that told her very exactly just how frightened she had been.
“You!” Temple was saying very slowly. “How on earth? Where are you staying? Where’s your party?”
He was squeezing the water out of sleeves and trouser legs.
“I haven’t got a party. I’m staying alone at a hotel — just like a man. I know you’re frightfully shocked. You always are.”
“Where are you staying?” he asked, drawing the chain in hand over hand, till a loose loop of it dipped in the water.
“Hotel Chevillon. How dripping you are!”
“Hotel Chevillon,” he repeated. “Never! Then it was you!”
“What was me?”
“That I was sheep-dog to last night in the forest.”
“Then it was you? And I thought it was the lunatic! Oh, if I’d only known! But why did you come after me — if you didn’t know it was me?”
Temple blushed through the runnels of water that trickled from his hair.
“I — well, Madame told me there was an English girl staying at the hotel — and I heard some one go out — and I looked out of the window and I thought it was the girl, and I just — well, if anything had gone wrong — a drunken man, or anything — it was just as well there should be someone there, don’t you know.”
“That’s very, very nice of you,” said Betty. “But oh!” — She told him about the lunatic.
“Oh, that’s me!” said Temple. “I recognise the portrait, especially about the hat.”
He had loosened the chain and was pulling with strong even strokes across the river towards the bank where his coat lay.
“We’ll land here if you don’t mind.”
“Can’t you pull up to the place where I stole the boat?”
He laughed:
“The man’s not living who could pull against this stream when the mill’s going and the lower sluice gates are open. How glad I am that I — And how plucky and splendid of you not to lose your head, but just to hang on. It takes a lot of courage to wait, doesn’t it?”
Betty thought it did.
“Let me carry your coat,” said Betty as they landed. “You’ll make it so w
et.”
He stood still a moment and looked at her.
“Now we’re on terra cotta,” he said, “let me remind you that we’ve not shaken hands. Oh, but it’s good to see you again!”
“Look well, my child,” said Madame Chevillon, “and when you see approach the Meess, warn me, that I may make the little omelette at the instant.”
“Oh, la, la, madame!” cried Marie five minutes later. “Here it is that she comes, and the mad with her. He talks with her, in laughing. She carries his coat, and neither the one nor the other has any hat.”
“I will make a double omelette,” said Madame. “Give me still more of the eggs. The English are all mad — the one like the other; but even mads must eat, my child. Is it not?”
CHAPTER XXIII. TEMPERATURES.
“It isn’t as though she were the sort of girl who can’t take care of herself,” said Lady St. Craye to the Inward Monitor who was buzzing its indiscreet common-places in her ear. “I’ve really done her a good turn by sending her to Grez. No — it’s not in the least compromising for a girl to stay at the same hotel. And besides, there are lots of amusing people there, I expect. She’ll have a delightful time, and get to know that Temple boy really well. I’m sure he’d repay investigation. If I weren’t a besotted fool I could have pursued those researches myself. But it’s not what’s worth having that one wants; it’s — it’s what one does want. Yes. That’s all.”
Paris was growing intolerable. But for — well, a thousand reasons — Lady St. Craye would already have left it. The pavements were red-hot. When one drove it was through an air like the breath from the open mouth of a furnace.
She kept much within doors, filled her rooms with roses, and lived with every window open. Her balcony, too, was full of flowers, and the striped sun-blinds beyond each open window kept the rooms in pleasant shadow.
“But suppose something happens to her — all alone there,” said the Inward Monitor.
“Nothing will. She’s not that sort of girl.” Her headache had been growing worse these three days. The Inward Monitor might have had pity, remembering that — but no.
“You told Him that all girls were the same sort of girls,” said the pitiless voice.
“I didn’t mean in that way. I suppose you’d have liked me to write that anonymous letter and restore her to the bosom of her furious family? I’ve done the girl a good turn — for what she did for me. She’s a good little thing — too good for him, even if I didn’t happen to — And Temple’s her ideal mate. I wonder if he’s found it out yet? He must have by now: three weeks in the same hotel.”
Temple, however, was not in the same hotel. The very day of the river rescue and the double omelette he had moved his traps a couple of miles down the river to Montigny.
A couple of miles is a good distance. Also a very little way, as you choose to take it.
“You know it was a mean trick,” said the Inward Monitor. “Why not have let the girl go away where she could be alone — and get over it?”
“Oh, be quiet!” said Lady St. Craye. “I never knew myself so tiresome before. I think I must be going to be ill. My head feels like an ice in an omelette.”
Vernon, strolling in much later, found her with eyes closed, leaning back among her flowers as she had lain all that long afternoon.
“How pale you look,” he said. “You ought to get away from here.”
“Yes,” she said, “I suppose I ought. It would be easier for you if you hadn’t the awful responsibility of bringing me roses every other day. What beauty-darlings these are!” She dipped her face in the fresh pure whiteness of the ones he had laid on her knee. Their faces felt cold, like the faces of dead people. She shivered.
“Heaven knows what I should do without you to — to bring my — my roses to,” he said.
“Do you bring me anything else to-day?” she roused herself to ask. “Any news, for instance?”
“No,” he said. “There isn’t any news — there never will be. She’s gone home — I’m certain of it. Next week I shall go over to England and propose for her formally to her step-father.”
“A very proper course!”
It was odd that talking to some one else should make one’s head throb like this. And it was so difficult to know what to say. Very odd. It had been much easier to talk to the Inward Monitor.
She made herself say: “And suppose she isn’t there?” She thought she said it rather well.
“Well, then there’s no harm done.”
“He doesn’t like you.” She was glad she had remembered that.
“He didn’t — but the one little word ‘marriage,’ simply spoken, is a magic spell for taming savage relatives. They’ll eat out of your hand after that — at least so I’m told.”
It was awful that he should decide to do this — heart-breaking. But it did not seem to be hurting her heart. That felt as though it wasn’t there. Could one feel emotion in one’s hands and feet? Hers were ice cold — but inside they tingled and glowed, like a worm of fire in a chrysalis of ice. What a silly simile.
“Must you go?” was what she found herself saying. “Suppose she isn’t there at all? You’ll simply be giving her away — all her secret — and he’ll fetch her home.”
That at least was quite clearly put.
“I’m certain she is at home,” he said. “And I don’t see why I am waiting till next week. I’ll go to-morrow.”
If you are pulling a rose to pieces it is very important to lay the petals in even rows on your lap, especially if the rose be white.
“Eustace,” she said, suddenly feeling quite coherent, “I wish you wouldn’t go away from Paris just now. I don’t believe you’d find her. I have a feeling that she’s not far away. I think that is quite sensible. I am not saying it because I — And — I feel very ill, Eustace. I think I am — Oh, I am going, to be ill, very ill, I think! Won’t you wait a little? You’ll have such years and years to be happy in. I don’t want to be ill here in Paris with no one to care.”
She was leaning forward, her hands on the arms of her chair, and for the first time that day, he saw her face plainly. He said: “I shall go out now, and wire for your sister.”
“Not for worlds! I forbid it. She’d drive me mad. No — but my head’s running round like a beetle on a pin. I think you’d better go now. But don’t go to-morrow. I mean I think I’ll go to sleep. I feel as if I’d tumbled off the Eiffel tower and been caught on a cloud — one side of it’s cold and the other’s blazing.”
He took her hand, felt her pulse. Then he kissed the hand.
“My dear, tired Jasmine Lady,” he said, “I’ll send in a doctor. And don’t worry. I won’t go to-morrow. I’ll write.”
“Oh, very well,” she said, “write then, — and it will all come out — about her being here alone. And she’ll always hate you. I don’t care what you do!”
“I suppose I can write a letter as though — as though I’d not seen her since Long Barton.” He inwardly thanked her for that hint.
“A letter written from Paris? That’s so likely, isn’t it? But do what you like. I don’t care what you do.”
She was faintly, agreeably surprised to notice that she was speaking the truth. “It’s rather pleasant, do you know,” she went on dreamily, “when everything that matters suddenly goes flat, and you wonder what on earth you ever worried about. Why do people always talk about cold shivers? I think hot shivers are much more amusing. It’s like a skylark singing up close to the sun, and doing the tremolo with its wings. I’m sorry you’re going away, though.”
“I’m not going away,” he said. “I wouldn’t leave you when you’re ill for all the life’s happinesses that ever were. Oh, why can’t you cure me? I don’t want to want her; I want to want you.”
“I’m certain,” said Lady St. Craye brightly, “that what you’ve just been saying’s most awfully interesting, but I like to hear things said ever so many times. Then the seventh time you understand everything, and the col
dness and the hotness turn into silver and gold and everything is quite beautiful, and I think I am not saying exactly what you expected. — Don’t think I don’t know that what I say sounds like nonsense. I know that quite well, only I can’t stop talking. You know one is like that sometimes. It was like that the night you hit me.”
“I? Hit you?”
He was kneeling by her low chair holding her hand, as she lay back talking quickly in low, even tones, her golden eyes shining wonderfully.
“No — you didn’t call it hitting. But things aren’t always what we call them, are they? You mustn’t kiss me now, Eustace. I think I’ve got some horrid fever — I’m sure I have. Because of course nobody could be bewitched nowadays, and put into a body that feels thick and thin in the wrong places. And my head isn’t too big to get through the door. — Of course I know it isn’t. It would be funny if it were. I do love funny things. — So do you. I like to hear you laugh. I wish I could say something funny, so as to hear you laugh now.”
She was holding his hand very tightly with one of hers. The other held the white roses. All her mind braced itself to a great exertion as the muscles do for a needed effort. She spoke very slowly.
“Listen, Eustace. I am going to be ill. Get a nurse and a doctor and go away. Perhaps it is catching. And if I fall through the floor,” she added laughing, “it is so hard to stop!”
“Put your arms round my neck,” he said, for she had risen and was swaying like a flame in the wind — the white rose leaves fell in showers.
“I don’t think I want to, now,” she said, astonished that it should be so.
“Oh, yes, you do!” — He spoke as one speaks to a child. “Put your arms round Eustace’s neck, — your own Eustace that’s so fond of you.”
“Are you?” she said, and her arms fell across his shoulders.
“Of course I am,” he said. “Hold tight.”
He lifted her and carried her, not quite steadily, for carrying a full-grown woman is not the bagatelle novelists would have us believe it.
He opened her bedroom door, laid her on the white, lacy coverlet of her bed.