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Dodo's Daughter

<h2>CHAPTER XII</h2> One morning a fortnight later, Jack, Dodo, and Edith were sitting together on the cliff above the bay, looking down to the sandy foreshore. Jack, finding that Dodo was obliged to stop at Meering with Nadine, had personally abandoned his third shooting-party, leaving Berts, whom he implicitly trusted to make himself and everybody else quite comfortable, in charge. Among the guests was Berts' father, whom Berts apparently kept in his place. Jack had just told Dodo and Edith the contents of Berts' letter, received that morning. All was going very well, but Berts had arranged that his father should escort two ladies of the party to see the interesting town of Lichfield one afternoon, instead of shooting the Warren beat, where birds came high and Berts' father was worse than useless. But it was certain that he would enjoy Lichfield very much, and the shoot would be more satisfactory without him. If his mother was still at Meering, Berts sent his love, and knew she would agree with him. Edith just now, working her way through the entire orchestra, was engaged on the cor anglais which, while Hugh was still so ill, Dodo insisted should not be played in the house. It gave rather melancholy notes, and was productive of moisture. But she finished a[Pg 318] passage which seemed to have no end, before she acknowledged these compliments. Then she emptied the cor anglais into the heather. "Poor Bertie is a drone," she said; "he never thinks it worth while to do anything well. Berts is better: he thinks it worth while to sit on his father really properly. I thought my energy might wake Bertie up, and that was chiefly why I married him. But it only made him go to sleep. Lichfield is about his level. I don't know anything about Lichfield, and I don't know much about Bertie. But they seem to me rather suitable. And much more can be done with the cor anglais than Wagner ever imagined. The solo in Tristan is absolute child's play. I could perform it myself with a week's practice." Dodo had been engaged in a small incendiary operation among the heather, with the match with which she had lit her cigarette. For the moment it seemed that her incendiarism was going to fulfil itself on larger lines than she had intended. "Jack, I have set fire to Wales, like Lloyd George," she cried. "Stamp on it with your great feet. What great large strong feet! How beautiful are the feet of them that put out incendiary attempts in Wales! About Bertie, Edith, if you will stop playing that lamentable flute for a moment—" "Flute?" asked Edith. "Trombone, if you like. The point is that your vitality hasn't inspired Bertie; it has only drained him of his. You set out to give him life, and you have become his vampire. I don't say it was your[Pg 319] fault: it was his misfortune. But Berts is calm enough to keep your family going. The real question is about mine. Yes, Jack, that was where Hughie went into the sea, when the sea was like Switzerland. And those are the reefs, before which, though it's not grammatical, he had to reach the boat. He swam straight out from where your left foot is pointing. A Humane Society medal came for him yesterday, and Nadine pinned it upon his bed-clothes. He says it is rot, but I think he rather likes it. She pinned it on while he was asleep, and he didn't know what it meant. He thought it was the sort of thing that they give to guards of railway trains. The dear boy was rather confused, and asked if he had joined the station-masters." Jack shaded his eyes from the sun. "And a big sea was running?" he asked. "But huge. It broke right up to the cliffs at the ebb. And into it he went like a duck to water." Edith got up. "I have heard enough of Hugh's trumpet blown," she said. "And I have heard enough of the cor anglais," said Dodo. "Dear Edith, will you go away and play it there? You see, darling, Jack came out this morning to talk to me, and I came out to talk to him. Or we will go away if you like: the point is that somebody must." "I shall go and play golf," said Edith with dignity. "I may not be back for lunch. Don't wait for me." [Pg 320] Dodo was roused to reply to this monstrous recommendation. "If I had been in the habit of waiting for you," she said, "I should still be where I was twenty years ago. You are always in a hurry, darling, and never in time." "I was in time for dinner last night," said Edith. "Yes, because I told you it was at eight, when it was really at half past." Edith blew a melancholy minor phrase. "Leit-motif," she said, "describing the treachery of a friend." "Tooty, tooty, tooty," said Dodo cheerfully, "describing the gay impenitence of the same friend." Edith exploded with laughter, and put the cor anglais into its green-baize bag. "Good-by," she said, "I forgive you." "Thanks, darling. Mind you play better than anybody ever played before, as usual." "But I do," said Edith passionately. Dodo leaned back on the springy couch of the heather as Edith strode down the hillside. "It's not conceit," she observed, "but conviction, and it makes her so comfortable. I have got a certain amount of it myself, and so I know what it feels like. It was dear of you to come down, Jack, and it will be still dearer of you if you can persuade Nadine to go back with you to Winston." "But I don't want to go back to Winston. Anyhow, tell me about Nadine. I don't really know anything more than that she has thrown Seymour over, and devotes herself to Hugh." [Pg 321] "My dear, she has fallen head over ears in love with him." "You are a remarkably unexpected family," Jack allowed himself to say. "Yes; that is part of our charm. I think somewhere deep down she was always in love with him, but, so to speak, she couldn't get at it. It was like a seam of gold: you aren't rich until you have got down through the rock. And Hugh's adventure was a charge of dynamite to her; it sent the rock splintering in all directions. The gold lies in lumps before his eyes, but I am not sure whether he knows it is for him or not. He can't talk much, poor dear; he is just lying still, and slowly mending, and very likely he thinks no more than that she is only sorry for him, and wants to do what she can. But in a fortnight from now comes the date when she was to have married Seymour. He can't have forgotten that." "Forgotten?" asked Jack. "Yes; he doesn't remember much at present. He had severe concussion as well as that awful breakage of the hip." "Do they think he will recover completely?" asked Jack. "They can't tell yet. His little injuries have healed so wonderfully that they hope he may. They are more anxious about the effects of the concussion than the other. He seems in a sort of stupor still; he recognizes Nadine of course, but she hasn't, except on that first night, seemed to mean much to him." "What was that?" [Pg 322] "He so nearly died then. He kept calling for her in a dreadful strange voice, and when she came he didn't know her for a time. Then she put her whole soul into it, the darling, and made him know her, and he went to sleep. She slept, or rather lay awake, all night by his bed. She saved his life, Jack; they all said so." "It seems rather perverse to refuse to marry him when he is sound, and the moment he is terribly injured to want to," said Jack. "My darling, it is no use criticizing people," said Dodo, "unless by your criticism you can change them. Even then it is a great responsibility. But you could no more change Nadine by criticizing her, than you could change the nature of the wildcat at the Zoo by sitting down in front of its cage, and telling it you didn't like its disposition, and that it had not a good temper. You may take it that Nadine is utterly in love with him." "And as he has always been utterly in love with her, I don't know why you want me to take Nadine away. Bells and wedding-cake as soon as Hugh can hobble to church." "Oh, Jack, you don't see," she said. "If I know Hughie at all, he wouldn't dream of offering himself to Nadine until it is certain that he will be an able-bodied man again. And she is expecting him to, and is worrying and wondering about it. Also, she is doing him no good now. It can't be good for an invalid to have continually before him the girl to whom he has given his soul, who has persistently refused[Pg 323] to accept it. It is true that they have exchanged souls now—as far as that goes my darling Nadine has so much the best of the bargain—but Hugh has to begin the—the negotiations, and he won't, even if he sees that Nadine is a willing Barkis, until he knows he has something more than a shattered unmendable thing to offer her. Consequently he is silent, and Nadine is perplexed. I will go on saying it over and over again if it makes it any clearer, but if you understand, you may signify your assent in the usual manner. Clap your great hands and stamp your great feet: oh, Jack, what a baby you are!" "Do you suppose she would come away?" said Jack, coughing a little at the dust his great feet had raised from the loose soil. "Yes, if you can persuade her that her presence isn't good for Hugh. So you will try; that's all right. Nadine has a great respect for Papa Jack's wisdom, and I can't think why. I always thought a lot of your heart, dear, but very little of your head. You mustn't retort that you never thought much of either of mine, because it wouldn't be manly, and I should tell you you were a coward as the Suffragettes do when they hit policemen in the face." "And why should it be I to do all this?" asked Jack. "Because you are Papa Jack," said Dodo, "and a girl listens to a man when she would not heed a woman. Oh, you might tell her, which is probably true, that Edith is going away to-morrow, and you want somebody to take care of you at Winston. I[Pg 324] think even Nadine would see that it would not quite do if she was left here alone with Hughie. At least it is possible she might see that: you could use it to help to preach down a stepdaugher's heart. You must think of these things for yourself, though, because in my heart I am really altogether on Nadine's side. I think it is wonderful that she should now be waiting so eagerly and humbly for Hugh, poor crippled Hugh, as he at present is, to speak. She has chosen the good part like Mary, and I want you for the present to take it away from her. It's wiser for her to go, but am I," asked Dodo grammatically, "to supply the ruthless foe, which is you, with guns and ammunition against my daughter?" "You can't take both sides," remarked Jack. "Jack, I wish you were a woman for one minute, just to feel how ludicrous such an observation is. Our lives—not perhaps Edith's—are passed in taking both sides. My whole heart goes out to Hugh, who has been so punished for his gallant recklessness, and then the moment I say 'punished' I think of Nadine's awakened love and shout, 'No, I meant rewarded.' Then I think of Nadine, and wonder if I could bear being married to a cripple, and simultaneously, now that she has shown she can love, I cannot bear the thought of her being married to anybody else. After all Nelson had only one eye and one arm, and though he wasn't exactly married to Lady Hamilton, I'm sure she was divinely happy. But then, best of all, I think of Hugh making a complete recovery, and once more coming to Nadine with his great brown doggy[Pg 325] eyes, and telling her.... Then for once I don't take both sides, but only one, which is theirs, and if it would advance their happiness, I would even take away from poor little Seymour his jade and his Antoinette, which is all that Nadine left him with, without a single qualm of regret." Jack considered this a moment. "After all, she has left him where she found him," said Jack, who had rather taken Edith's view about their marriage. "He had only his Antoinette and his jade when she accepted him, and until you make a further raid, he will have them still." Dodo shook her head. "Jack, it is rather tiresome of you," she said. "You are making me begin to have qualms for Seymour. She had found his heart for him, you see, and now having taken everything out of it, she has gone away again, leaving him a cupboard as empty as Mother Hubbard's." "He will put the jade back—and Antoinette," said Jack hopefully. Dodo got up. "That is what I doubt," she said. "Until we have known a thing, we can't miss it. We only miss it when we have known it, and it is taken away, leaving the room empty. Then old things won't always go back into their places again; they look shabby and uninteresting, and the room is spoiled. It is very unfortunate. But what is to happen when a girl's heart is suddenly awakened? Is she to give it an opiate? What is the opiate for heart-ache? Surely[Pg 326] not marriage with somebody different. Yet jilt is an ugly word." Dodo looked at Jack with a sort of self-deprecation. "Don't blame Nadine, darling," she said. "She inherited it; it runs in the family." Jack jumped up, and took Dodo's hands in his. "You shall not talk horrible scandal about the woman I love," he said. "But it's true," said Dodo. "Therefore it is the more abominable of you to repeat it," said he. But there was a certain obstinacy about Dodo that morning. "I think it's good for me to keep that scandal alive in my heart," she said. "Usen't the monks to keep peas in their boots to prevent them from getting too comfortable?" "Monks were idiots," said Jack loudly, "and any one less like a monk than you, I never saw. Monk indeed! Besides, I believe they used to boil the peas first." Dodo's face, which had been a little troubled, cleared considerably. "That showed great commonsense," she said. "I don't think they can have been such idiots. Jack, if I boil that pea, would you mind my still keeping it in my boot?" "Rather messy," said he. "Better take it out. After all, you did really take it out when you married me." Dodo raised her eyes to his. [Pg 327] "David shall take it out," she said. Jack had not at present heard of this nomenclature. In fact, it does him credit that he instantly guessed to whom allusion was being made. "Oh, that's settled, is it?" he said. "And now, David's mother, give me a little news of yourself. Is all well?" Dodo's mouth grew extraordinarily tender. "Oh, so well, Jesse," she said, "so well!" She was standing a foot or so above him, on the steep hillside, and bending down to him, kissed him, and was silent a moment. Then she decided swiftly and characteristically that a few words like those that had just passed between them were as eloquent as longer speeches, and became her more usual self again. "You are such a dear, Jack," she said, "and I will forgive your dreadful ignorance of the name of David's mother. Oh, look at the sea-gulls fishing for their lunch. Oh, for the wings of a sea-gull, not to fly away and be at rest at all, but to take me straight to the dining-room. And I feel certain Nadine will listen to you, and it would be a good thing to take her away for a little. She is living on her nerves, which is as expensive as eating pearls like Cleopatra." "Drinking," said Jack. "She dissolved them—" "Darling, vinegar doesn't dissolve pearls: it is a complete mistake to suppose it does. She took the pearls like a pill, and drank some vinegar afterwards. Jack, pull me up the hill, not because I am tired, but because it is pleasanter so. I am sorry you are going to-morrow, and I shall make love to Hughie after[Pg 328] you've gone and pretend it's you. I do pray Hughie may get quite well, and he and Nadine, and you and I all have our heart's desire. Edith too: I hope she will write a symphony so beautiful that by common consent we shall throw away all the works of Beethoven and Bach and Brahms just as we throw away antiquated Bradshaws." She was rather out of breath after delivering herself of this series of remarkable statements, and Jack got in a word. "And who was David's mother?" he asked, with a rather tiresome reversion to an abandoned topic. "I don't know or care," said Dodo with dignity. "But I'm going to be." <hr class="tb" /> It required all Jack's wisdom to persuade Nadine to go away with him, more particularly because at the first opening of the subject, Edith, who was present, and whom Jack had unfortunately forgotten to take into his confidence, gave a passionate denial to the fact that she was departing also. But in the end she yielded, for during this last fortnight she had felt (as by the illumination of her love she could not help doing) that at present she 'meant' very little to Hugh. Her presence, which on that first critical night had not done less than set his face towards life instead of death, had, she felt, since then, dimly troubled and perplexed him. Every day she had thought that he would need her, but each day passed, and he still lay there, with a barrier between him and her. Yet any day he might want her, and she was loth to go.[Pg 329] But she knew how tired and overstrained she felt herself, and the ingenious Papa Jack made use of this. "You have given him all you can, my dear, for the present," he said. "Come away and rest, and—what is Dodo's phrase?—fill your pond again. You mustn't become exhausted; you will be so much wanted." "And I may come back if Hughie wants me?" she asked. That was easy to answer. If Hugh really wanted her, the difficult situation solved itself. But there was one thing more. "I don't suppose I need ask it," said Nadine, "but if Hughie gets worse, much worse, then I may come? I—I couldn't be there, then." Jack kissed her. "My dear girl," he said, "what do you take me for? An ogre? But we won't think about that at all. Please God, you will not come back for that reason." Nadine very rudely dried her eyes on his rough homespun sleeve. "You are such a comfort, Papa," she said. "You're quite firm and strong, like—like a big wisdom-tooth. And when we are at Winston, will you let Seymour come down and see me if he wants to? And—and if he comes will you come and interrupt us in half-an-hour? I've behaved horribly to him, but I can't help it, and it—that we weren't to be married, I mean—was in the Morning Post to-day, and it looked so horrible and cold. But whatever he[Pg 330] wants to say to me, I think half-an-hour is sufficient. I wonder—I wonder if you know why I behaved like such a pig." "I think I might guess," said Jack. "Then you needn't, because there's only one possible guess. So we'll assume that you know. What a nuisance women are to your poor, long-suffering sex. Especially girls." Jack laughed. "They are just as much a nuisance afterwards," said he. "Look at your mother, how she is making life one perpetual martyrdom to me." "But she used to be a nuisance to you, Papa Jack," said Nadine. "There again you are wrong," he said. "I always loved her." "And does that prevent one's being a nuisance?" asked Nadine. "Are you sure? Because if you are, you needn't interrupt Seymour quite so soon. I said half-an-hour, because I thought that would be time enough for him to tell me what a nuisance I was—" "You're a heartless little baggage," observed Jack. "Not quite," said Nadine. "Well, you're an April day," said he, seeing the smile break through. "And that is a doubtful compliment," said she. "But you are wrong if you think I am not sorry for Seymour. Yet what was I to do, Papa Jack, when I made The Discovery?" "Well, you're not a heartless little baggage," conceded[Pg 331] Jack, "but you have taken your heart out of one piece of the baggage, and packed it in another." "Oh, la, la," said Nadine. "We mix our metaphors." <hr class="tb" /> Nadine left with Jack in the motor soon after breakfast next morning. It had been settled that she should not tell Hugh she was going, until she said good-by to him, and when she went to his room next morning to do so, she found him still asleep, and the tall nurse entirely refused to have him awakened. "Much better for him to sleep than to say good-by," said this adamantine woman. "When he wakes, he shall be told you have gone, if he asks." "Of course he'll ask," said Nadine. She paused a moment. "Will you let me know if he doesn't?" she added. Nurse Bryerley's grim capable face relaxed into a smile. She did not quite understand the situation, but she was quite content to do her best for her patient according to her lights. "And shall I say that you'll be back soon?" she asked. Nadine had no direct reply to this. "Ah, do make him get well," she said. "That's what I'm here for. And I will say that you'll be back soon, shall I, if he wants you?" "Soon?" said Nadine. "That minute." <hr class="tb" /> Hugh slept long that morning, and Dodo was not told he was awake and ready to receive a morning[Pg 332] call till the travelers had been gone a couple of hours. She had spent them in a pleasant atmosphere of conscious virtue, engendered by the feeling that she had sent Jack away when she would much have preferred his stopping here. But as Dodo explained to Edith it took quite a little thing to make her feel good, whereas it took a lot to make her feel wicked. "A nice morning, for instance," she said, "or sending my darling Jack away because it's good for Nadine, or getting a postal-order. Quite little things like that make me feel a perfect saint. Whereas the powers of hell have to do their worst, as the hymn says, to make me feel wicked." Edith gave a rather elaborate sigh. She had to sigh carefully because she had a cigarette and a pen in her mouth, while she was scratching out a blot she had made on the score she was revising. So care was needed; otherwise cigarette and pen might have been shot from her mouth. When she spoke her utterance was indistinct and mumbling. "I suppose you infer that you are more at home in heaven than hell," she said, "since just a touch makes you feel a saint. I should say it was the other way about. You are so at home in the other place that the most abysmal depths of infamy have to be presented to you before you know they are wicked at all, whereas you hail as divine the most infinitesimal distraction that breaks the monotonous round of vice. Perhaps I am expressing myself too strongly, but I feel strongly. The world is more high-colored to me than to other people." [Pg 333] "Darling, I never heard such a moderate and well-balanced statement," said Dodo. "Do go on." "I don't want to. But I thought your optimism about yourself was sickly, and wanted a—a dash of discouragement. But you and Nadine are both the same: if you behave charmingly, you tell us to give the praise to you; if you behave abominably you say, 'I can't help it: it was Nature's fault for making me like that.' Now I am not like that: whatever I do, I take the responsibility, and say, 'I am I. Take me or leave me.' But I have no doubt that Nadine believes it has been too wonderful of her to fall in love with Hugh. And when she jilts Seymour, she says 'Enquire at Nature's Workshop; this firm is entirely independent.' Bah!" Dodo laughed, but her laugh died rather quickly. "Ah, don't be hard, Edith," she said. "We most of us want encouragement at times, and we have to encourage ourselves by making ourselves out as nice as we can. Otherwise we should look on the mess we make of things as a hopeless job. Perhaps it is hopeless but that is the one thing we mustn't allow. We are like"—Dodo paused for a simile—"we are like children to whom is given a quantity of lovely little squares of mosaic, and we know, our souls know, that they can be put together into the most beautiful patterns. And we begin fairly well, but then the devil comes along, and jogs our elbow, and smashes it all up. Probably it is our own stupidity, but it is more encouraging to say it is the devil or nature, something not ourselves. Good heavens, my elbow[Pg 334] has jogged often enough! And when the pattern gets on well, we encourage ourselves by saying, 'This is clever and good and wise Me doing it now!' And then perhaps something very big and solemn comes our way, and we bow our heads, and know it isn't ourselves at all." Edith had finished erasing her blot, and was gathering her sheets together. She tapped them dramatically with an inky forefinger. "This is big and solemn," she said. "But it's Me. The artist's inspiration never comes from outside: it is always from within. I'm going to send it to have the band parts copied to-day." At the moment the message came that Hugh received, and Dodo got up. He had received Edith one morning, but the effect was that he had eaten no lunch and had dozed uneasily all afternoon. Edith had been content with the explanation that her vitality was too strong for him, and, while ready to give him another dose of it, did not press the matter; anyhow, she had other business on hand. He lay propped up in bed, with a wad of pillows at his back. He looked far more alert and present than he had yet done. Hitherto, he had been slow to grasp the meaning of what was said to him, and he hardly ever volunteered a statement or question, but this morning he smiled and spoke with quite unusual quickness. "Morning, Aunt Dodo," he said. "I'm awfully brisk to-day." Nurse Bryerley put in a warning word. [Pg 335] "Don't be too brisk," she said. "Please don't let him be too brisk," she added, looking at Dodo. "Hughie, dear, you do look better," she said; "but we'll all be quite calm, and self-contained like flats." Hugh frowned for a moment; then his face cleared again. "I see," he said. "Bright, aren't I? Aunt Dodo, I have certainly woke up this morning. You look real, do you know; before I was never quite certain about you. You looked as if you might be a good forgery, but spurious. Have a cigarette, and why shouldn't I?" "Wiser not," said Nurse Bryerley laconically. Hugh's briskness did not seem to be entirely good-natured. "How on earth could a cigarette hurt me?" he said. "Perhaps it would be wiser for Lady Chesterford not to smoke either. Aunt Dodo, you mustn't smoke. Wiser not." Nurse Bryerley smiled with secret content. "That's right, Mr. Graves," she said. "I like to see my patients irritable. It always shows they are getting better." "I should have thought you might have seen that without annoying me," said Hugh. "Well, well, I don't mind your having one cigarette to keep Lady Chesterford company," said the nurse. "But you'll be disappointed." Dodo took out her case as Nurse Bryerley left the room. "Here you are, Hughie," she said. [Pg 336] Hugh lit one, and blew a cloud of smoke through his nostrils. "Are they quite fresh, Aunt Dodo?" he said. "Yes, dear, quite. Doesn't it taste right?" "Yes, delicious," said Hugh, absolutely determined not to find it disappointing. "I say, what a sunny morning!" "Is it too much in your eyes?" "It is rather. Will you ask Nurse Bryerley to pull the blind down? Why should you?" "Chiefly, dear, because it isn't any trouble." Dodo pulled down the blind too far on the first attempt to be pleasing, not far enough on the second. Hugh felt she was very clumsy. "Isn't Nadine coming to see me this morning?" he asked. "But I daresay she is tired of sitting with me every day." Dodo came back to her chair by the bed again. "She went off with Jack to Winston this morning," she said. "Just for a change. She was very much tired and overdone. You've been a fearful anxiety to her, you dear bad boy." Hugh put his cigarette down and shut his mouth, as if firmly determined never to speak again. "She came in to say good-by to you," she said, "but you were asleep and they didn't want to wake you." There was still dead silence on Hugh's part. "It was only settled she should go yesterday," she continued, "and she had to be persuaded. But Jack wanted one of us, and, as I say, she was very much[Pg 337] overdone. Now I'm not the least overdone. So I stopped. But I wish she could have seen how much more yourself you were when you woke to-day." At length Hugh spoke. "What is the use of telling me that sort of tale?" he said. "She is going to be married to Seymour in a few days. She has gone away for that. I suppose in some cold-blooded way she thought it better to sneak off without telling me. No doubt it was very tactful of her." Dodo turned round towards him. "No, Hughie, you are quite wrong," she said. "Nadine is not going to marry Seymour at all." Hugh lifted his right hand, and examined it cursorily. A long cut, now quite healed, ran up the length of his forefinger. "I see," he said. "She said she would marry Seymour in order to get rid of me, and now that I have been got rid of in other ways, she has no further use for him. Isn't that it?" His face had become quite white, and the hand with the healed wound trembled so violently that the bed shook. "No, that is not it," said Dodo quietly. "And don't be so nervous and fidgety, my dear." Suddenly the trembling ceased. "Aunt Dodo, if it is not that, what is it?" he asked, in a voice that would have melted Rhadamanthus. She turned a shining face on him, and laid her hand on his. "Oh, Hughie, lie still and get well," she said.[Pg 338] "And then ask Nadine herself. She will come back when you want her. She told Nurse Bryerley to tell you so, if you asked." Hugh moved across his other hand, so that Dodo's lay between his. "I must ask you one more thing," he said. "Is it because of me in any way that she chucked Seymour? I entreat you to say 'no' if it is 'no.'" "I can't say 'no,'" said Dodo. Hugh drew one long sobbing breath. "It's mere pity then," he said. "Nadine always liked me, and she was always impulsive like that. I daresay she won't marry him till I'm better, if I am ever better. She will wait till I am strong enough to enjoy it thoroughly." Dodo interrupted him. "Hughie, don't say bitter and untrue things like that," she said. "And don't feel them. She is not going to marry Seymour, either now or afterwards." Once again Hugh was silent, and after an interval Dodo spoke, divining exactly what was in his irritable convalescent mind. "I have never deceived you before, Hughie," she said, "and you have no right to distrust me now. I am telling you the truth. I also tell you the truth when I say you must get bitter thoughts out of your mind. Ah, my dear, it is not always easy. There's a beast within each of us." "There's a beast within me," said Hugh. "And there's a dear brave fellow whom I am so proud of," said Dodo. [Pg 339] Hugh's lip quivered, but there was a quality in his silence as different from that which had gone before, as there was between his callings for Nadine on the night when she fought death for him. "And now that's enough," said Dodo. "Shall I read to you, Hughie, or shall I leave you for the present?" He held her hand a moment longer. "I think I will lie still and—and think," he said. "Good luck to your fishing, dear," said she, rising. "Good luck to your fishing?" he said. "It's on a picture. Small boy fishing, kneeling in the waves." Dodo beat a strategic retreat. "Is it?" she said. But it seemed to Hugh that her voice lacked the blank enquiry tone of ignorance. Hugh settled himself a little lower down on his backing of pillows, after Dodo had left him, and tried to arrange his mind, so that the topics that concerned it stood consecutively. But Dodo's last remark, which certainly should have stood last also in his reflections, kept on shouldering itself forward. She had wished him "good luck to his fishing," and he could not bring himself to believe that, consciously or unconsciously, there was not in her mind a certain picture, of a little winged boy, kneeling in the waves, who dropped a red line into the unquiet sea. He could not, and did not try to remember the painter, but certainly the picture had been at some exhibition which he and Nadine had attended together. A little[Pg 340] winged boy.... The title was printed after the number in the catalogue. Nadine was not to marry Seymour now or afterwards.... There came a black speck again over his thoughts. He himself had been got rid of by this crippling accident, and now she had expunged Seymour also. 'And though she saw all heaven in flower above, she would not love.' The lines came into his mind without any searching for them; for the moment he could not remember where he had heard them. And then memory began to awake. Hitherto, he had not been able to recall anything of the day or two that preceded his catastrophe. A few of the immediate events before it he had never forgotten. He remembered Nadine calling out, "No Hugh, not you," he remembered her cry of "Well done"; he remembered that he had toppled in on that line of toppling waters with a small boy on his back. But now a fresh line of memory had been awakened: some connection in his brain had been restored, and he remembered their quarrel and reconciliation on the day the gale began; how she had said, "Oh, Hughie, if only I loved you!" Soon after came the portentous advent of the wind, with the blotting out of the sun, and the transformation of the summer sea. He heard with unspeakable irritation the entry of Nurse Bryerley. That seemed an unwarrantable intrusion, for he felt as if he had been alone with Nadine, and now this assiduous grenadier broke in upon them with a hundred fidgety offices to perform. She restored to him a fallen pillow, she closed a window[Pg 341] through which a breeze was blowing rather freely, she brought him a cup of chicken-broth. It seemed an eternity before she asked him if he was comfortable, and made her long-delayed exit. Even then she reminded him that the doctor was due in half-an-hour. But for half-an-hour he would be alone now, and for the first time since his accident he found that he wanted to think. Hitherto his mind had sat vacant, like an idle passenger who sees without observation or interest the transit of the country. But Dodo's visit this morning and her communications to him had made life appear a thing that once more concerned him; till now it was but a man&oelig;uver taking place round him, but outside him. Now the warmth of it reached him again, and began to circulate through him. And what she had told him was being blown out, as it were, in his brain, even as a lather of soapsuds is blown out into an iridescent bubble, on which gleam all the hues of sunset and moonrise and rainbow. The rainbow was not one of the vague dreams in which, lately, his mind had moved; it was a real thing, not receding but coming nearer to him, blown towards him by some steady breeze, not idly vagrant in the effortless air. Should it break on his heart, not into nothingness, but into the one white light out of which the sum of all lights and colors is made? He could not doubt that it was this which Dodo meant. Nadine had thrown over Seymour and that concerned him. And then swift as the coming of the storm which they had seen together, came the thought,[Pg 342] clear and precise as the rows of thunder-clouds, that for all he knew a barrier forever impenetrable lay between them. For he could never offer to her a cripple; the same pride that had refused to let him take an intimate place beside her after she, by her acceptance of Seymour, had definitely rejected him, forbade him, without possibility of discussion, to let her tie herself to him, unless he could stand sound and whole beside her. He must be competent in brain and bone and body to be Nadine's husband. And for that as yet he had no guarantee. Since his accident he had not up till now cared to know precisely what his injuries were, nor whether he could ever completely recover from them. The concussion of the brain had quenched all curiosity, and interest not only in things external to him, but in himself, and he had received the assurance that he was going on very well with the unconcern that we feel for remote events. But now his thoughts flew back from Nadine and clustered round himself. He felt that he must know his chances, the best or the worst ... and yet he dreaded to know, for he could live for a little in a paradise by imagining that he would get completely well, instead of in a shattered ruin which the knowledge of the worst would strew round him. But this morning the energy of life which for those two weeks had lain dormant in him, began to stir again. He wanted. It seemed to him but a few moments since his nurse left him that Dr. Cardew came in. He saw the flushed face and brightened eyes of[Pg 343] his patient, and after an enquiry or two took out the thermometer which he had not used for days, and tested Hugh's temperature. He put it back again in its nickel case with a smile. "Well, it's not any return of fever, anyhow," he said. "Do you feel different in any way this morning?" "Yes. I want to get well." "Highly commendable," said Dr. Cardew. Hugh fingered the bed-clothes in sudden agitation. "I want to know if I shall get well," he said. "I don't mean half well, in a Bath-chair, but quite well. And I want to know what my injuries were." Dr. Cardew looked at him a moment without speaking. But it was perfectly clear that this fresh color and eagerness in Hugh's face was but the lamp of life burning brighter. There was no reason that he should not know what he asked, now that he cared to know. "You broke your hip-bone," he said. "You also had very severe concussion of the brain. There were a quantity of little injuries." "Oh, tell me the best and the worst of it quickly," said Hugh with impatience. "I can tell you nothing for certain for a few days yet about the fracture. There is no reason why it should not mend perfectly. And to-day for the first time I am not anxious about the other." Quite suddenly Hugh put his hands before his face and broke into a passion of weeping. <hr class="chap" />[Pg 344] <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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