THE COLLECTED WORKS OF E. F. BENSON (Illustrated Edition). E. F. Benson
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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 spoke 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 to-day 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."
"That will be ripping," said Nadine, assuming a sleepy voice.
There was silence for a little. Then once again, but in his own voice, Hugh spoke her name. This time she did not answer, and she felt his hand move till it rested against her plaited hair.
Then in the silence Nadine became conscious of another noise regular and slow as the faint hoarse thunder of the sea, the sound of quiet breathing. After a while the doctor came round the head of the bed.
"We can manage to wrap you up, and make you fairly comfortable," he whispered. "I think he has a better chance of sleeping if you stop there."
The light and radiance in Nadine's eyes were a miracle of beauty, like some enchanted dawn rising over a virgin and unknown land. She smiled her unmistakable answer, but did not speak, and presently Dodo returned with pillows and blankets, which she spread over her and folded round her.
"The nurse will be in the next room," said the doctor; "call her if anything is wanted."
Dodo and the doctor went back to their rooms, and Nadine was left alone with Hugh. That night was the birthnight and the bridal-night of her soul: there was it born, and through the long hours of the winter night it watched beside its lover and its beloved, in that stillness of surrender to and absorption in another, that lies beyond and above the unrest of passion amid the snows and sunshine of the uttermost regions to which the human spirit can aspire. She knew nothing of the passing of the hours, nor for a long time did any thought or desire of sleep come near her eyelids, but the dim room became to her the golden island of which once in uncomprehending mockery she had spoken to Hugh. She knew it to be golden now, and so far from being unreal, there was nothing in her experience so real as it.
She could just turn her head without disturbing Hugh's hand that lay on her plaited hair, and from time to time she looked round at him. His face still wore the sunken pallor of exhaustion, but as his sleep, so still and even-breathing, began to restore the low-ebb of his vital force, it seemed to Nadine that the darkness of the valley of the shadow, to the entrance of which he had been so near, cleared off his face as eclipse passes from the moon. How near he had been, she guessed, but it seemed to her that for the present his face was set the other way. She knew, too, that it was she who had had the power to make him look life-wards again, and the knowledge filled her with a sort of abasing pride. He had answered to her voice when he was past all other voices, and had come back in obedience to it.
She did not and she could not yet be troubled with the thought of anything else besides the fact that Hugh lived. As far as was known yet, he might never recover his activity of movement again, and years of crippled life were all that lay in front of him; but in the passing away of the immediate imminent fear, she could not weigh or even consider what that would mean. Similarly the thought of Seymour lay for the present outside the focus of her mind: everything but the fact that Hugh lived was blurred and had wavering outlines. As the hours went on the oblongs of moonshine on the floor moved across the room, narrowing as they went. Then the moon sank and the velvet of the cloudless sky grew darker, and the stars more luminous. One great planet, tremulous and twinkling, made a glory beside which all the lesser lights paled into insignificance. No wind stirred in the great halls of the night, the moans and yells of its unquiet soul were still, and the boom of the surf grew ever less sonorous, like the thunder of a retreating storm. Occasionally the night-nurse appeared at the doorway of the room adjoining, where she sat, and as often Nadine looked up at her smiling. Once, very softly, she came round the head of the bed, and looked at Hugh, then bent down towards the girl.
"Won't you get some sleep?" she said, and Nadine made a little gesture of raised eyebrows and parted hands that was characteristic of her.
"I don't know," she whispered. "Perhaps not. I don't want to."
Then her solitary night vigil began again, and it seemed to her that she would not have bartered a minute of it for the best hour that her life had known before. The utter peace and happiness of it grew as the night went on, for still close to her head there came the regular uninterrupted breathing, and the weight, just the weight of a hand absolutely relaxed, lay on her hair. Not the faintest stir of movement other than those regular respirations came from the bed, and all the laughter and joy of which her days had been full was as the light of the remotest of stars compared to the glorious planet that sang in the windless sky, when weighed against the joy that that quiet breathing gave her. She did not color her consciousness with hope, she did not illuminate it by prayer; there was no room in her mind for anything except the knowledge that Hugh slept and lived.
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