"I should have thought that nonsense yesterday," said Nadine. "Oh, wait while I finish dressing; I shan't be ten minutes. What meetings we have had in my lovely back room! One, I remember so particularly. You and Esther and Berts all lay on my bed like sardines in evening dresses, and I had just refused to marry Hugh, who was playing billiards with Uncle Algie. Somehow the things like love and devotion seemed to me quite old-fashioned, or anyhow they seemed to me signs of age. They did, indeed. I thought a clear brain was infinitely preferable to a confused heart, especially if it belonged to somebody else. I'm not used to it, Mama: it still seems to me very odd like a hat that doesn't fit. But it's a fact, and I suppose I shall grow into it, not that any one ever grew into a hat. But when Hugh swam out yesterday morning, something came tumbling down inside me. Or was it that only something cracked, like the sh.e.l.l of a nut? It does not much matter, so long as it is not mended again. But how queer that it should happen in a second, like that. I suppose time has nothing to do with what concerns one's soul. I believe Plato says something about it. I don't think I shall look it up.

He wrote wonderfully, but when a thing happens to oneself, that seems to matter more than Plato's reflections on the subject."

There was a short pause as Nadine brushed her teeth, but Dodo sitting on the unslept-in bed did not feel inclined to break it. She wondered whether a particular point in the situation would occur to Nadine, whether her illumination as regards a woman's heart threw any light on that very different affair, a man's heart. She was not left long in doubt. The question of a man's heart was altogether unilluminated, and to Dodo there was something poignantly pathetic about Nadine's blissful ignorance. She came and sat down on the bed close to her mother.

"Hughie will see I love him," she said, "because he won't be able to help it. I shall just wait, oh, so happily, for him to say again what he has so often said before. He will know my answer, before I give it him.

I hope he will say it soon. Then we shall be engaged, and people who are engaged are a little freer, aren't they, Mama?"

Dodo felt incapable of clouding that radiant face, for she knew in the days that were coming, all its radiance would be needed: not a single sparkle of light must be wasted. But it did not seem to her very likely that Hugh, whose joyous strength and splendid activity had been so often rejected by Nadine, would be likely to offer to her again what would be, in all probability, but a crippled parody of himself. But her sense of justice told her that Nadine owed him all the strength and encouragement her eager vitality could give him. It was only fair that she should devote herself to him, and let him feel all the inspiration to live that her care of him could give him. But it seemed to her very doubtful if Hugh would consent, even if he perceived that it was love not warm friendship that she gave him, to let himself and his crippled body appeal to her. In days gone by, she would not marry him for love, and it seemed to Dodo that a real man, as Hugh was, would not allow her to marry him for pity. He had offered her his best, and she had refused it; it would not be surprising if he refused to offer her his worst. The joy that had inspired Dodo so that she had softly melted over the sight of Nadine asleep by Hugh, and had exultantly mopped up the spilt ink with Edith, suddenly evaporated, leaving her dry and cold.

"You must wait, Nadine," she said. "You must make no plans. Give Hughie your vitality, and don't ask more."

She got up.

"Now, my darling, I shall go downstairs," she said, "and order your breakfast. You must be hungry. And then you can say your prayers, and breakfast will be ready."

Nadine, absorbed in her own thoughts, felt nothing of this.

"Prayers?" she said. "Why I was praying all night till dawn. At least, I was wanting, just wanting, and not for myself. Isn't that prayers?"

Dodo loved that: it was exactly what she meant in her inmost heart by prayers. She drew Nadine to her and kissed her.

"Darling, you have said enough for a week," she said, "if not more. And you said them because you must, which is the only proper plan. If you don't feel you must say your prayers, it is just as well not to say them at all. But you shall have breakfast, whether you feel you must or not.

I say you must."

CHAPTER XII

One morning a fortnight later, Jack, Dodo, and Edith were sitting together on the cliff above the bay, looking down to the sandy foresh.o.r.e. 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 pa.s.sage 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 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."

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 pa.s.sionately.

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."

"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.