Across the Stream

"Aren't I?" said Archie. "But does Martin never write to you?"

"No, dear; I suppose he cannot."

"And why is he so particularly here?" demanded Archie.

She paused a moment.

"He died here," she said.

"In this house?" asked he. "Which room?"

"Blessington's."

Archie gave a great sigh.

"Oh, mummy, do let me have that room instead of mine!" he said.

BOOK II

CHAPTER V

Archie was precariously perched on the side of his little Una-rigged, red-sailed boat, looking with dancing blue eyes at the rocky coast all smothered in billows and sunlit spray some quarter of a mile ahead, and wondering if he would be able to make the harbour of Silorno on this tack. He wondered also what was the best thing to do if he could not. There seemed to be two alternatives, the one to beat out to sea again and come in on another tack, the other to run before the wind to the head of the bay, away to the right, where he knew there was a sandy beach, tumble himself out as best he might, and, he was afraid, see his beloved Amphitrite being pounded to bits by the rollers; for, with all his optimism, he could not picture himself hauling her up out of harm's way. But even this seemed preferable to the other alternative, for to beat out again in such a sea seemed really a challenge to the elements to swamp him, in which case he was like to lose the Amphitrite and his own life as well.

The wind was blowing with all the violence of a summer Italian gale straight down the bay from the open sea. A high wall of rock against which the breakers smashed themselves, and would smash anything else that rode them, was in front of him; then came the narrow opening into Silorno harbour for which he was making, after which the rocks, on the top of which ran the road to Santa Margharita, continued right up to the head of the bay. It had been rough when he started to sail there, in order to get some cigarettes, which now were stowed away in his coat which he had wrapped round them and placed where it would receive as small a share as possible of the spray that from time to time fell in a solid sheet into the boat. That seemed almost the most important thing of all, to keep the cigarettes dry, for it would be too futile to have taken all this trouble, and so greatly have ventured himself and hisAmphitrite, if at the end the cigarettes should prove to be a mash of tobacco and salt water, for they were only in a cardboard box. And next in importance came the need of demonstrating to his mother and Harry and Helena and Jessie that he had been perfectly wise and prudent in sailing across to Santa Margharita, in spite of their land-lubber fears, in a freshening gale and a lumpy sea, in order to get these Egyptian cigarettes instead of the despised Italian brand. He made no doubt that the whole party of them were at this moment watching him through glasses from the terraced garden of the Castello that sat perched at the top of the steep, olive-clothed hill in front of him, and he spared a second to wave a hand in their direction in case they were there. But he did it in a rather hurried manner, for he wanted that hand to be ready to loosen the sheet in case any more wind was on its way to him, and the other hand must retain its hold on the tiller.

Archie was clad in a jersey stained and whitened with salt-water, and the rest of his attire consisted of grey flannel trousers. His coat was defending to its last dry stitch the trophy of cigarettes; his shoes he had put under his coat, for it was just as well to keep them dry, while, if by any chance he had to swim, they would be of no use to him either dry or wet. The sleeves of his jersey rolled up nearly to his shoulder, disclosed slim, strong arms, incredibly browned with a month of sea-bathing, and his sockless feet were of the same fine tan of constant exposure. His hair, thick and dripping from the spray, had for the present lost its tawny curliness, and he had to throw back his head from time to time, in order to keep it out of his eyes. And in his mind there was the same wildness of out-of-doors rapture that characterized the youth of his supple body: he could have laughed with pleasure at the mere fact of this doubtful battle between himself and the wind-maddened sea. But all the time in some secret chamber of his brain there sat, so to speak, a steadfast and keen observer, who was making notes with all his might, and pushing them down into the cool caves of memory, to be brought forth (in case Archie came safely to land) from their cold storage, and fitted with words which should reproduce the exultation of wind and sun and sea. And in a chamber more secret yet, a chamber not in his brain but in his heart, sat the knowledge that among the others his second cousin, Helena Vautier, in particular was surely looking at him from the terraced garden high above the cliff. She should see (and, for that matter, so should her sister Jessie) how to handle a boat. She had been strong in her dissuasion of his starting at all, and that, if Archie was quite honest with himself, was one of the principal reasons why he had insisted on doing so. She had mentioned casually the other day that there was nothing in the world she liked better than the careless "go-to-the-deuce" attitude towards danger which to her represented manliness, and Archie had been only too delighted to give her this vigorous exhibition of it. But it tremendously pleased him that, on his announcement of his intention to go across the bay, she should have so strenuously dissuaded him. To his mind that conveyed the impression that she liked him as much as she liked exhibitions of manliness.

He was already opposite the opening into the harbour and still several hundred yards distant, and for the time all the attention of the observer who some day was going to put this experience into words, and of the other observer who knew that Helena was watching him, was diverted to the job that engaged his more superficial self. But that part of him, intent and eager though it was on the hazard that lay before it, sang and shouted with glee at the fact that he was alone out here on the sea. For this very sane and healthy personage, Archie Morris, might almost be described as an aqua-maniac, so intense was his passion for that gladdest and most glorious creature of God. He did not want to be a sailor, for a sailor inhabited an impregnable fort which, though surrounded by sea, was still impenetrably removed from it, and defied it by means of colossal cylinders and pounding pistons and steel sides. Best of all was to be swimming in the sea, but not far removed from that was to coax and wheedle the sea through the medium of a big sail and a tiny boat: being alone with the sea, as with all lovers, was necessary to the full realization of passion. A river was a fair substitute for the sea or a lake; but there had to be a quantity of water. He loved to dive, and open his eyes under water, so as to see the sun shining through it. That was a very early passion, dating from the time when he had stepped out of a boat in his anxiety about a pike that was on the end of his line…

Then, for a moment, all other considerations were subordinated to keen physical activity. The wind was sweeping him across the mouth of the harbour, and he had either to put about at once to avoid being taken onto the rocks at its northern end, or, risking being swamped, put his helm even harder a-port, and tighten his sheet. With his habit of swift decision, he determined to go for it, and, throwing his leg across the tiller, he pulled on his sheet with both hands. The spray from the waves that broke themselves on the rocks fell solid and drenched him, but next moment, with but a yard or two to spare, he skimmed by them into the broadening harbour. There the promontory on which the Castello stood came between him and the wind, his sail flapped idly, and in dead calm he picked up his sculls to row the Amphitrite to her anchorage. But, before he took them up, he laughed aloud.

"Gosh, what sport!" he said.

* * * * *

The anchorage of the Amphitrite lay in a bay not far from the entrance to the harbour, screened by the steep-climbing olive groves belonging to this Castello of Silorno which Archie's mother had taken for the months of May and June: Silorno itself, that incredibly picturesque huddle of pink and yellow walls, of campaniles, and lacemakers, who, with bright coloured kerchiefs over their comely heads, plied their wooden bobbins all day in the shade of its narrow streets, rose, roof over roof, at the head of the harbour. A big cobbled piazza sloped down to the quay wall where sailors chatted and dozed in the shadow all day, putting to sea for their night-fishing by the light of flares about the time of sunset. The village was impenetrable to wheeled traffic, for the road along the bay came to an end at its outskirts, and thereafter became a narrow cobbled track, built in steps where the steepness of its streets demanded. Round the town rose an amphitheatre of hills broken only by the low saddle, where the final promontory on which the Castello stood swam out seawards in three wooded humps of hills. And, sitting here, you could observe on days like these the breakers crashing on the reefs to the right, where the seas rolled in from the open Mediterranean, while the land-locked harbour, into which Archie had just brought his boat, lay smooth as a mirror at your feet towards the left. Straight in front ran the ascending path that passed below the Castello to the head of the promontory, where enlightened Italian enterprise was building an execrable and totally useless lighthouse to supplant the little Madonna chapel that had stood there for centuries.

Archie took down his sail, anchored the Amphitrite, and punted himself across in a small boat to the landing-stage at the foot of the hill on which the Castello stood. Here the trees stood untroubled by the gale that poured high over them from the south, though on the other side of the harbour the wind roared in the olives, and turned their green to the grey of the underleaf, and the great surges beat and burst on the rocks he had narrowly avoided. But here that tumultuous stir was unfelt, and the resinous smell of pines and the clean odour of the eucalyptus-trees hung in the warm and sheltered air. Out of that denser shade he passed into the belt of olives that grew higher on the slope, mixed with angled and contorted fig-trees, where the fruit was already beginning to swell and ripen. Above rose the great grey bastion of the retaining fortress wall, tufted with stone-crop and valerian that was rooted in the crevices, and above that again was spread the umbrella of the stone-pine that grew at the corner of the garden. The path he followed wound round the base of this wall and passed below its easterly side, where he came into the blast of the warm south wind again that swept along the face of the Castello, and made the cypresses bend and buckle like fishing-rods which feel the jerk and pull of some hooked giant of the waters. The hillside here plunged very precipitously downwards to the bay three hundred feet below, wrinkled with waves, and feathered with foam, and, lover of the sea though he was, he felt content to observe that tumult of windy water. Not a sail was visible right across to the farther shore of the gulf, and to-night there would be no illumination of the fishing-boats that in calm weather rode out there, twinkling and populous as a town. But he stood looking at the sea a moment before he turned into the narrow stone passage that led to the gate of the house, as a man may look with love on his horse that, unruly and obstreperous, has yet carried him so gallantly.

A girl came up the cobbled way from the town just as he turned in. She had on a very simple linen dress that the wind blew close to her body, and a flapping linen sunbonnet, tied below her chin, to prevent the wind capturing it. She was tall and slight, moved easily, as with a boyish carelessness; a very pleasant face, also boyish and quite plain, peered from under her flapping bonnet. Her hands were noticeable: they were large but extremely well shaped, and the fingers showed both perception and efficiency. It may be remarked that Archie had never noticed her hands at all.

"Hullo, Jess," said he. "I'm just back. Lord, I've had such a ripping afternoon. And the cigarettes are quite dry. Where have you been?"

"Just down into Silorno. Cousin Marion wanted a telegram sent about their sleeping-berths to-morrow."

Archie frowned. He had noticed that Jessie was often sent on errands.

People who can absolutely be relied on usually are.

"I should have thought my mother might have sent Pasqualino," he observed.

The girl laughed.

"Oh, she wanted to, but I said I would go instead. You see, Cousin Marion and Helena were getting in what might be called rather a state about you. I tried to infect them with my own calm, but they wouldn't catch it. So I thought a little walk would be pleasant."

"Oh, was Helena frightened?" asked Archie rather greedily.

"Yes. So was Cousin Marion. I wasn't."

"Then you were beastly unsympathetic. I had an awful shave getting into the harbour," remarked Archie.

"But you knew what you were about, and I didn't, nor did Helena. So I preferred to have confidence in you and go for a walk, rather than observe you in what looked remarkably like danger."

Archie had walked up from the landing-stage with his shoes and his coat under his arm. The coat was too wet to put on, so he dusted his feet with it, and resumed his shoes.

"Oh, a ripping afternoon," he said again.

The sound of the clanging gate into the Castello was heard out in the garden, and as they walked up the dim stone-flagged passage that led out into it, another girl came running in. She, like her sister, was tall and slight, but there the resemblance altogether ended. A delicate, small-featured face, entirely feminine, gleamed below yellow hair; her eyes, set rather wide apart, giving her an adorably childish look, opened very widely below their dark eyelashes. Beside her, Jessie looked somewhat like a well-bred plough-boy.

"Oh, Archie!" she cried. "How horribly rash of you! Your mother and I have had a terrible half-hour."

"I bring you cigarettes to soothe your disordered nerves," said Archie sententiously. "I am happy to say that they are dry, though I am not."

Jessie had walked on, with that pleasant expression on her face that might or might not be a smile, and the two were left alone for a moment.

"As if I cared about the cigarettes," she said.

"You did this morning. But you weren't really anxious, were you?"

"Indeed I was. You were naughty to sail back in this gale. Do be good now and change your clothes at once. I will bring you some fresh tea into the garden. Cousin Marion and I have had tea. We drank cup after cup to fortify ourselves, and looked over the wall at your boat between each sip. Then we trembled and had another sip. Before you got past that horrid rock, we had drained the teapot and broken our chairs with our tremblings."

The strict veracity of this entertaining summary did not of course concern Archie; it was sufficient that it had Helena's light and picturesque touch. It made a tableau that caused him to smile to himself as he changed his shirt, that was now stiffening with salt, and put on a pair of socks over his tanned feet. All this he did hurriedly, for it was the last evening, so he told himself, that they would all be together, by which he really meant that it was the last evening on which Helena would be here, since to-morrow, at break of dawn, she and his mother would start for England, leaving Jessie, Harry Travers, and himself to follow after another fortnight. When, a week before, that scheme had been suggested, it seemed to Archie the most admirable of plans, since, though his mother and Helena would be gone, he would secure another fortnight of intercourse with his beloved sea instead of inhabiting that smoky cave known as London. But since then Helena had begun to dawn on him, though as yet it would be an exaggeration to say that he was in love with her. But she was dawning, her light illuminated the sky above the horizon, and, if the plan was to be suggested again to him in his present attitude of attracted expectancy, it is probable that he would have voted for London and Helena, rather than an extension of his days at the Castello.

The scheme had originally been Helena's, and, like all her plans, had been exceedingly well thought out, before it was produced in the guise of an impulse, prompted by kindliness and thought for others. It was, when edited as an impulse, of the simplest and most considerate sort. The hot weather did not really suit Cousin Marion, so why should not Cousin Marion go back to England with herself, Helena, as travelling companion? Of course Silorno was the most delicious place, and she would be ever so sorry to go, but certainly Cousin Marion felt the heat, and, though she was far too unselfish to suggest breaking up the party, she would be glad to go northwards earlier than the end of June, when her two months' tenancy expired.

Helena had produced this plan to Archie one morning as they sat after breakfast under the stone-pine.

"But my mother would not in the least mind going home alone, if she preferred to go before the end of June," he said.

Helena shook her head.

"Oh, I know she would say she didn't mind," she said, "or she would stop on in spite of her headaches sooner than break up the party – "

"Has she been having headaches?" asked Archie.

"Yes, but you mustn't know that. She told me not to tell any one," said

Helena, with complete self-possession. "Promise, Archie."