Nadine sat there very quiet both in mind and body. She did not want to rave or rebel, she merely let her mind sit, as it were, in front of these things, and contemplate them, like a picture, until they became familiar. She felt they were not familiar yet; though she knew them to be true, they were somehow unreal and incredible. She did not yet grasp them: it seemed to her that her mind was stunned and was incapable of apprehending them. So she had to keep her attention fixed on them, until they became real. Yet she found it difficult to control her mind: it kept wandering off into concentric circles round the center of the only significant thing in the world.
Out on the sea the sun had set, and there were cloud-bars of fading crimson on the horizon level across a field of saffron yellow. This yellow toned off into pale watery green, and high up in the middle of that was one little cloud like an island that still blazed in the sunlight of the upper air. Somehow that aroused a train of half-forgotten reminiscences. There had been a patch of sunlight once like an island, on the gray of the sea … it was connected with a picture … yes, it was a sketch which Esther had made for Hugh, and she had put in the island reluctantly, saying it looked unreal in nature and would be worse in art. But Hugh had wanted it there, and, as Esther worked, she herself had walked with him along the beach from which he had been carried up to-day, and she had told him that he lived in unrealities, and pictured to himself that some day he and she would live on some golden sunlit island together. She remembered it all now.
Her mind came back to the center again, and started off anew on that splendid deed of the morning. She had quite lost her head when she called out, "No, Hughie, not you!" It must have been Hugh to do it, no one else could have done it. The idea of Berts or Seymour wrestling with and overcoming that mountainous and maddened sea was unthinkable. Only Hugh could have done it, and the deed was as much part of him as his brown eyes or his white strong teeth. And if at the end the sea had flung him down and broken him, that was after he had laughed at the peril and snatched its prey out of its very jaws! Even as things were now with him, Nadine could not regret what he had done, and if time had run back, and she saw him again plunging into that riot and turmoil, she felt that she would not now cry out to him like that. She would have called Godspeed to him instead.
Once again her mind rippled away from its center. She had called out to Seymour or Berts to go. At the time it had been quite instinctive, but she saw now what had prompted her instinct. She meant – though then she did not know she meant it – that she could spare any one but Hugh. That was what it came to, and she wondered if Hugh had understood that. Seymour without doubt must have done so: he was so clever. Probably he would tell her he understood, and ask her if it was not that which was implied. But all such consideration seemed to her to matter very little. There was only one thing that mattered, and that was not whether Hugh lived or died even, but simply the fact of Hugh.
Her mother had telegraphed that she was coming at once; and Nadine remembering that she had not told the servants got up and rang the bell. But before it was answered there came an interruption for which she had been waiting. One of the two nurses whom the surgeon from Chester had brought with him knocked at the door. She had been tidying up, and removing all traces of what had been done.
"The room is neat again now," she said, "and you may come and just look at him."
"Is he conscious or in pain?" asked Nadine.
"No; but he may regain consciousness at any time, but I don't think he will have any pain."
They went together up the long silent passages in which there hung that curious hush which settles down on a house when death is hovering by it, and came to his door which stood ajar. Then from some sudden qualm and weakness of flesh, Nadine halted, shrinking from entering.
"Do not come unless you feel up to it," said Nurse Bryerley. "But there is nothing that will shock you."
Nadine hesitated no more, but entered.
They had carried him not to his own room, but to another with a dressing-room adjoining. His bed stood along the wall to the left of the door, and he lay on his back with his head a little sideways towards it. There was nothing in the room that suggested illness, and when Nadine looked at his face there was nothing there that suggested it either. His eyes were closed, but his face was as untroubled as that of some quiet sleeper. In the wall opposite were the western-looking windows and the room was lit only by that fast-fading splendor. The cloud-island still hung in the sky, but it had turned gray as the light left it.
Then even as Nadine looked at him, his eyes opened and he saw her.
"Nadine," he said.
The nurse stepped to the bedside.
"Ah, you are awake again," she said. "How do you feel?"
"Rather tired. But I want to speak to Nadine."
"Yes, you can speak to her," she said and signed to the girl to come.
Nadine came across the room to him, and knelt down.
"Oh, Hughie," she said, "well done!"
He looked at her, puzzled for the moment, with troubled eyes.
"You said that before," he said. "It was the last thing you said. Why did you – oh, I remember now. Yes, what a bang I came! How's the little fellow, the one on my back?"
"Quite unhurt, Hughie. He is asleep."
"I thought he wouldn't be hurt. It was the best plan I could think of. I say, why did you call to me not to go at first? I had to."
"I know now you had to," said she.
"I want to ask you something else. How badly am I hurt?"
Nadine looked up at the nurse a moment, who nodded to her. She understood exactly what that meant.
"You are very badly hurt, dear Hughie," she said; "But – but it is worth it fifty times over."
Hugh was silent a moment.
"Am I going to die?" he asked.
Nadine did not need instruction about this.
"No, a thousand times, no!" she said. "You're going to get quite well. But you must be patient and rest and sleep."
Nadine's throat grew suddenly small and aching, and she could not find her voice for a moment.
"You are quite certainly going to live," she said. "To begin with, I can't spare you!"
Hugh's eyelids fluttered and quivered.
"By Jove!" he said, and next moment they had quite closed.
The nurse signed to Nadine to get up and she rose very softly and tiptoed away. At the door she looked round once at Hugh, but already he was asleep. Then still softly she came back and kissed him on the forehead and was gone again.
She had been with him but a couple of minutes, but as she went back to her room, she heard the stir of arrivals in the hall, and went down. Dodo had that moment arrived.
"Nadine, my dear," she said, "I started the moment I got your telegram. Tell me all you can. How is he? How did it happen? You only said he had had a bad accident, and wanted me."
Nadine kissed her.
"Oh! Mama," she said. "Thank God it wasn't an accident. It was done on purpose. He meant it just like that. But you don't know anything; I forgot. Will you come to my room?"
"Yes, let us go. Now tell me at once."
"We have had a frightful gale," she said, "and this morning Hughie saw a fishing-boat close in land, driving on to the reef. There was just one shrimp of a boy on it, and Hughie went straight in, like a duck to water, and got him off and swam back with him. There was a rope and Seymour and Berts pulled him in. And when they got close in, Hughie put the boy on his back – oh, Mama, thank God for men like that! – and the breakers banged him down on the beach, and the boy was unhurt. And Hughie may die very soon, or he may live – "
Nadine's voice choked for a moment. All day she had not felt a sob rise in her throat.
"And if he lives," she said, "he may never be able to walk again, and I love him."
Then came the tempest of tears, tears of joy and sorrow, a storm of them, fruitful as autumn rain, fruitful as the sudden deluges of April, with God-knows-what warmth of sun behind. The drought of summer in her, the ice of winter in her had been broken up in the rain that makes the growth and the life of the world. The frozen ground melted under it, the soil, cracked with drought, drank it in: the parody of life that she had lived became but the farce that preceded sweet serious drama, tragedy it might be, but something human… And Dodo, woman also, understood that: she too had lived years that parodied herself, and knew what the awakening to womanhood was, and the immensity of that unsuspected kingdom. It had come late to her, to Nadine early: some were almost born in consciousness of their birthright, others died without realizing it. So, mother and daughter, they sat there in silence, while Nadine wept her fill.
"It was the splendidest adventure," she said at length, lifting her head. "It was all so gay. He shouted to that little boy in the boat to encourage him to cling on, and oh, those damned reefs were so close. And when they rode in, Hughie like a horse with a child on his back over that – that precipice, he said something again to encourage him."
Nadine broke down again for a moment.
"Hughie never thought about himself at all," she said. "He used always to think about me. But when he went on his adventure he didn't think about me. He thought only of that little stupid boy, God bless him. And, oh, Mummie, I gave myself away – I got down to the beach just before Hughie went in, and I lost my head and I screamed out, 'Not you, Hughie: Seymour, Berts, anybody, but not you!' It wasn't I who screamed; something inside me screamed, and the one who screamed was – was my love for Hughie, and I never knew of it. But inside me something swelled, and it burst. Yes: Hughie heard, I am sure, and Seymour heard, and I don't care at all."
Nadine sat up, with a sort of unconscious pride in her erectness.
"I saw him just now," she said, "and he quite knew me, and asked if he was going to die. I told him 'he certainly was not; I couldn't spare him.'"
Nadine gave a little croaking laugh.
"And he instantly went to sleep," she said.
The veracious historian is bound to state that this was an adventure absolutely after Dodo's heart. All her life she had loved impulse, and disregarded its possibly appalling consequences. Never had she reasoned before she acted, and she could almost have laughed for joy at these blind strokes of fate. Hugh's splendid venture thrilled her, even as it thrilled Nadine, and for the moment the result seemed negligible. A great thing had 'got done' in the world: now by all means let them hope for the best in its sequel, and do their utmost to bring about the best, not with a fainting or regretful heart, but with a heart that rejoiced and sang over the glory of the impetuous deed that brought about these dealings of love and life.
Dodo's eyes danced as she spoke, danced and were dim at the same time.
"Oh, Nadine, and you saw it!" she said. "How glorious for you to see that, and to know at the same moment that you loved him. And, my dear, if Hughie is to die, you must thank God for him without any regret. There is nothing to regret. And if he lives – "
"Oh, Mama, one thing at a time," said Nadine. "If he only lives, if only I am going to be allowed to take care of him, and to do what can be done."
She paused a moment.
"I am so glad you have come," she said; "it was dear of you to start at once like that. Did Papa Jack want you not to go?"
"My dear, he hurried me off to that extent that I left the only bag that mattered behind."
"That was nice of him. They have been so hopeless, all of them here, because they didn't understand. Berts has been looking like a funeral all day, the sort with plumes. And Edith has been running in and out with soup for me, soup and mince and glasses of port I think – I think Seymour understood though, because he was quite cheerful and normal. Oh, Mama, if Hughie only lives, I will marry Seymour as a thank-offering."
Dodo looked at her daughter in amazement.
"Not if Seymour understands," she said.
Nadine frowned.
"It's the devil's own mess," she observed.
"But the devil never cleans up his messes," said Dodo. "That's what we learn by degrees. He makes them, and we clean them up. More or less, that is to say."
She paused a moment, and flung the spirit of her speech from her.
"I don't mean that," she said. "It is truer to say that God makes beautiful things, and we spoil them. And then He makes them beautiful again. It is only people who can't see at all, that see the other aspect of it. I think they call them realists – I know it ends in 'ist.' But it doesn't matter what you call them. They are wrong. We have got to hold our hearts high, and let them beat, and let ourselves enjoy and be happy and taste things to the full. It is easier to be miserable, my dear, for most people. We are the lucky ones. Oh, if I had been a charwoman, like that thing in the play, with a husband who stole and was sent to prison, I should have found something to be happy about. Probably a large diamond in the grate, which I should have sold without being traced."
These remarkable statements were not made without purpose. Dodo knew quite well that courage and patience and cheerfulness would be needed by Nadine, and she was willing to talk the most outrageous nonsense to give the sense of vitality to her, to make her see that no great happening like this, whatever the end, was a thing to moan and brood over. It must be taken with much more than resignation – a quality which she despised – and with hardly less than gaiety. Such at any rate was her private human gospel, which she found had not served her so badly.
"I have quite missed my vocation," she said. "I ought to have been born in poverty-stricken and criminal classes to show the world that being hungry does not make you unhappy any more than having three diamond tiaras makes you happy. You've got that birthright, Nadine, live up to it. Never anticipate trouble, and if it comes embrace and welcome it: it is part of life, and thus it becomes your friend. Oh, I wish I had been here this morning! I would have shouted for glee to see that darling Hughie go churning out to sea. I am jealous of you. Just think: if Papa Jack had come a-wooing of you, as I really thought he might be doing in the summer, you would have married him and I should be looking after Hughie. Isn't that like me? I want everybody's good times myself."
These amazing statements were marvelously successful.
"I won't give my good time away even to you," said Nadine.
"No, you are sharper than a serpent's tooth. Now, darling, we will go very quietly along the passage, and just see if Hughie is asleep. I should so like to wake him up – I know he is asleep – in order to tell him how splendid it all is. Don't be frightened: I'm not going to. We will just go to the door, and that enormous nurse whom I saw peering over the banisters, will tell us to go away. And then I shall go to dress for dinner, and you will too – "
"Oh, Mama, I can't come down to dinner," said Nadine.
"Yes, dear, you can and you will. There's going to be no sadness in my house. If you don't, I shall send Edith up to you with mince and her 'cello and soup. Oh, Nadine, and it was all just for a little stupid boy, who very likely would have been better dead. He will now probably grow up, and be an anxiety to his parents, if he's got any – they usually haven't – and come to a bad and early end. What a great world!"
CHAPTER XI
Nadine enquired at Hugh's door again that night before she went to bed, and found that he was still asleep. She had promised her mother not to sit up, but as she undressed she almost smiled at the uselessness of going to bed, so impossible did it seem that sleep should come near her. After her one outburst of crying, she had felt no further agitation, for something so big and so quiet had entered her heart that all poignancy of anxiety and suspense were powerless to disturb it. As has been said, it was scarcely even whether Hugh lived or died that mattered: the only thing that mattered was Hugh. Had she been compelled to say whether she believed he would live or not, she would have given the negative. And yet there was a quality of peace in her that could not be shaken. It was a peace that humbled and exalted her. It wrapped her round very close, and yet she looked up to it, as to a mountain-peak on which dawn has broken.
Despite her conviction that sleep was impossible, she had hardly closed her eyes, when it embraced and swallowed up all her consciousness. This cyclone of emotion, in the center of which dwelt the windless calm, had utterly tired her out, though she was unaware of fatigue, and her rest was dreamless. Then suddenly she was aware that there was light in the room, and that she was being spoken to, and she passed from unconsciousness back to the full possession of her faculties, as swiftly as they had been surrendered. She found Dodo bending over her.
"Come, my darling," she said.
Nadine had no need to ask any question, but as she put on her slippers and dressing-gown Dodo spoke again.
"He has been awake for an hour and asking for you," she said. "The nurse and the doctor are with him: they think you had better come. It is possible that if he sees you there, he may go off to sleep again. But it is possible – you are not afraid, darling?"
Nadine's mouth quivered into something very like a smile.
"Afraid 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.
It was now near the dawning of the winter day; the stars were paling in the sky, and the sky grew ensaffroned with the indescribable hue that heralds day. Footfalls, muffled and remote, began to stir in the house, and far away there came the sound of crowing cocks, faint but exultant, hailing the dawn. About that time, Nadine looked round once more at Hugh, and saw in the pallid light of morning that the change she had noticed before was more distinct. There had come back to his face something of the firm softness of youth, there had been withdrawn from it the droop and hardness of exhaustion. And turning again, she gave one sigh and fell fast asleep.
Lover and beloved they lay there sleeping, while the dawn brightened in the sky, she leaning against the bed where he was stretched, he with his hand on her hair. And strangely, the moment that she slept, their positions seemed to be reversed, and Hugh in his sleep appeared unconsciously to keep watch over and guard her, though all night she had been awake for him. Once her head slipped an inch or two, so that his hand no longer lay on her hair, but it seemed as if that movement reached down to him fathom-deep in his slumber and immediately afterwards his hand, which had lain so motionless and inert all night, moved, as if to a magnet, after that bright hair, seeking and finding it again. And dawn brightened into day, and the sun leaped up from his lair in the East, and still Nadine slept, and Hugh slept. It was as if until then the balance of vitality had kept the girl awake to pour into him of her superabundance: now she was drained, and sleep with the level stroke of his soft hand across the furrows of trouble and the jagged edges of injury and exhaustion comforted both alike.
It had been arranged after these events of storm that the party should disperse, and Dodo went to early breakfast downstairs with her departing guests, who were leaving soon after. But first she went into the nurse's room, next door to where Hugh lay, to make enquiries, and was taken by her to look into the sick-room. With daylight their sleep seemed only to have deepened: it was like the slumber of lovers who have been long awake in passion of mutual surrender, and at the end have fallen asleep like children, with mere effacement of consciousness. Nadine's head was a little bowed forward, and her breath came not more evenly than his. It was the sleep of childlike content that bound them both, and bound them together.
Dodo looked long, and then with redoubled precaution moved softly into the nurse's room again, with mouth quivering between smiles and tears.
"My dear, I never saw anything so perfectly sweet," she said. "Do let them have their sleep out, nurse. And Nadine has slept in Hugh's room all night. What ducks! Please God it shall so often happen again!"
Nurse Bryerley was not unsympathetic, but she felt that explanations were needed.
"I understood the young lady was engaged to some one else," she said.
Dodo smiled.
"But until now no one has quite understood the young lady herself," she said. "Least of all, has she understood herself. I think she will find that she is less mysterious now."
"Mr. Graves will have to take some nourishment soon," said Nurse Bryerley.
Dodo considered.
"Then could you not give him his nourishment very cautiously, so that he will go to sleep again afterwards?" she asked. "I should like them to sleep all day like that. But then, you see, nurse, I am a very odd woman. But don't disturb them till you must. I think their souls are getting to know each other. That may not be scientific nursing, but I think it is sound nursing. It's too bad we can't eternalize such moments of perfect equilibrium."
"Certainly the young lady was awake till nearly dawn," said Nurse Bryerley. "It wouldn't hurt her to have a good rest."
Dodo beamed.
"Oh, leave them as long as possible," she said. "You have no idea how it warms my heart. There will be trouble enough when they awake."
Seymour was among those who were going by the early train, and when Dodo came down he had finished breakfast. He got up just as she entered.
"How is he?" he asked.
Dodo's warm approbation went out to him.
"It was nice of you to ask that first, dear Seymour," she said. "He is asleep: he has slept all night."