The Essential E. F. Benson: 53+ Titles in One Volume (Illustrated Edition). E. F. Benson
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she always lagged a little behind, just as Hugh lagged so much more behind her. She was still gasping from the violence of his seizure of her, when he had descended, so to speak, a thousand feet or so. Tenderness still clung about her like soaked raiment.
"Oh, Seymour," she said. "I didn't realize you felt like that: I didn't, really. What are you going to do?"
His clever handsome face wore an uncompromising look, but there was humor in his eyes.
"I may take to drink," he said, "like your angelic father. Very likely I shan't, because I notice that it spoils your breakfast if you are intoxicated the evening before. I shall certainly try to get some more jade, and I shan't marry Antoinette, because she is buxom. If I marry, I shall marry some girl who reminds me of asparagus, like you. Not the stout French asparagus, of course, but the lean English variety. I should not wonder if I came to your wedding, and wrote an account of it to a ladies' newspaper. I shall say you were looking hideous. I haven't got any other plans, except to go away from this place. You are a sort of chucker-out, Nadine, at Winston. You chucked out Hugh in the summer, and now in the winter you chuck me out. You are a vampire, I think. You suck people dry, and then you throw them away like orange skins. Don't argue with me: if you argued I should become rude. I was rude to Aunt Dodo the other day, when she showed me you sleeping on the floor by Hugh's bed. It was a sickening spectacle: I told her so at the time, and I tell you so now."
Poor complicated Nadine! Her complications had been canceled like vulgar fractions, and she was left in a state of the most deplorable simplicity. There was a numerator, and that was Hugh; there was a nought below and that was she. The simplest arithmetician could see that the nought "went into" the numerator an infinite number of times. The result was that there was Hugh and nothing else at all. Her surrendered reply indicated this: it indicated also her knowledge of it.
"But it was Hughie there," she said.
And then suddenly Seymour's unexpanded parachute opened, and he floated in liquid air, with the azure encompassing him.
"Your Hughie," he said.
"Mine," said Nadine.
There came an interruption. A footman entered with a telegram which he gave to Nadine. And once again the ineffable light came into her face, coming from below, transfiguring it.
"That's from the cripple," said Seymour unerringly.
She passed him the words Hugh had written that morning. They could not have been simpler, nor could he, by any expenditure of separate half-pennies have said more.
"Come back," he had written, "important. Good news."
Seymour got up.
"So you are going," he said.
Nadine did not seem to hear this. She addressed the footman.
"Tell them to send round the Napier car at once," she said.
"Yes, Miss. But his lordship ordered the Napier to meet the shooters—"
"Has it gone?"
"No, Miss: it was to pick up Lady Esther—"
"Then I want it at once, instead. I am going to start instantly. Tell them to send the car round at once. And tell my maid to pack a bag for me, and follow with the rest of my luggage."
"Yes, Miss. Where to, shall I say?"
"Meering, of course. She will go by train."
She turned her unclouded radiance to Seymour again, and held out both her hands.
"Oh, Seymour," she said. "I feel such a brute, such a brute. But it's my nature to."
"Clearly. Go and put on your hat."
"Will you let me hear of you sometimes?" she asked.
"I don't see why I should write to you, if you mean that," he said.
"Nor do I, now I come to think of it. I made a conventional observation. Will you let them know if you want lunch, or want to be taken to the station?"
"Yes. Thanks. Good-by. And good luck."
She lingered one moment more.
"Thank you," she said. "And don't think of me without remembering I am sorry."
It was still an hour short of sunset when the car emerged from the mountainous inland on to the coast. The plain and the line of sand-dunes that bordered the sea slept under a haze of golden winter sun; a few wisps of light cloud hung round the slopes of Snowdon, but otherwise the sky was of pale unflecked blue, from rim to rim, and the sea was as untroubled as the turquoise vault which it reflected. Though January had still a half-dozen of days to run, a hint and promise of spring was in the air, and Nadine sat in the open car unchilled by its headlong passage. They had taken but five hours to come from the midlands, and they seemed to have passed for her in one throb of eager consciousness, so that she looked bewildered to find that the familiar landmarks of home were close about her, and that they were already close to their journey's end. Soon they began to climb out of the plain again up the outlying flank of hill that formed the south end of the bay, and culminated in the steep bluff of rock at the top of which she and Hugh had sat and quarreled and been reconciled on the morning of the gale. To-day no tumult of maddened water beat at the base of it, nor did thunder of surges break into spray and flying foam, and the line of reef that ran out from it lay, with its huge scattered rocks, as quiet as a herd of sea-beasts grazing. As they got higher she could see over the sand-dunes the beach itself; no ramparts and towers of surf or ruins of shattered billows fringed it now; a child could have played on that zone of shattering and resistless forces. Of its dangers and menaces nothing was left; the great gift that it had brought to Nadine's heart alone remained, and flowered there like the rose-pink almond blossom in spring. Nature had healed where she had hurt, and what had seemed but a blind and wanton stroke, had proved to be the smiting of the rock, so that the spring burst forth, and rivers ran in the dry places.
The house, gray and welcoming, stood dozing in the afternoon sun, and Nadine, suddenly conscious that they had arrived without a halt, said a contrite word to the chauffeur on the subject of lunch. She recollected also that she had sent no reply to Hugh's telegram, and that her arrival would be unexpected. Unexpected it certainly was, and Dodo, who had just seen Edith off to play golf better than anybody else had ever done, jumped up with a scream as she entered.
"But, my darling, is it you?" she cried. "We have been expecting to hear from you, but seeing is better than hearing. Oh, Nadine, such news! Of course you guess it, so I shall not tell you, as it is unnecessary, and besides Hughie must do that. He has been shaved, and looks quite clean and young again. Will you go up to see him at once? Perhaps it is equally unnecessary to ask that. Shall I come up with you? My darling, there's a third unnecessary question. Of course I shall do nothing of the kind. Ask the great grenadier if you may go in to him without his being told you are coming. It might be rather a shock, but personally I believe shocks of joy are always good for one. At least they have never hurt me. Go upstairs, dear, and after an unreasonable time you might ring for me."
The nurse's room was a dressing-room attached to the bedroom where Hugh lay. Nadine went in through this, and the door into the room beyond being open, she saw that Nurse Bryerley was in there. At this moment she looked up and saw Nadine. She turned towards Hugh's bed.
"Here's a visitor for you," she said, and beckoned to Nadine to enter. She heard Hugh ask "Who?" in a voice that sounded somehow expectant, and she went in. In the doorway she passed Nurse Bryerley coming out, and the door closed behind her.
Hugh had raised himself on his elbow in bed, and the light in his eyes showed that, though he had asked who his visitor was, his heart knew. He neither spoke nor moved while Nadine came across the room to his bedside. Then in a whisper:
"It is Nadine," he said.
She knelt down by the bed.
"Yes, Hughie. You wanted me," she said.
"I always want you," he answered.
For a moment Nadine hid her face in her hands without replying. Then she