The Magpies Nest

by Isabel Paterson

  "Oh, go on," he said, putting his hands in his pockets, still rather ruddier than need be, but smiling perforce. "I let myself in for it, all right. Rub it in. But you know perfectly well what I meant. I just didn't want you to imagine I meant to bother you—to be an ass, that way. Just because I like you—and I..."

  "Have a few bad habits," she said. "No, really, it is quite all right. I promise, I will never even hint at marrying you." And then they both shouted with laughter.

  It was only after he had gone she began to feel like a hypocrite. "He does believe himself," she thought, with unspeakable amazement. "And I really am not even his friend. If he never came again, I wouldn't miss him for more than twenty-four hours—well, a week, if no one else came."

  "I wasn't thinking," he had said, with a great deal more truth than he dreamed.

  And then, at this point in her reflections, Hope pulled off her shoes and threw them across the room with violence, as a slight expression of disgust at herself. Was it possible that she was again flattering herself with that old puerile nonsense about her own importance, and the importance of a moment's fancy of a man for the chance woman? Hadn't she had one quite thorough lesson on that subject? What if he did dig a pit for himself and fall into it? Let him climb out again. It was his own business. "Men had died from time to time, and worms had eaten them, but not for love." What appeared to her as her own monumental conceit toppled and fell on her and she lay meekly prostrate under the ruins.

  And, when he did not come the next day, though he had come every day for a week, she made no attempt to extricate herself from that humble position.

  But as the rain had stopped, making way for a stretch of glorious Indian summer, and her cough continued, she decided she would go out of town for a day, or over the week end, and look at the sea again, her old medicine of the soul. Mrs. Hassard told her of some hotel with an unpronounceable name in some unget-at-able corner of Staten Island, which she was assured would be at once cheap and quiet now, once the summer was over. She went in search of it.

  CHAPTER XXII

  LYING full length on the sun-browned, soft grass, among dead soft yellow leaves and flowers contentedly gone to seed, steeped in sun and a happy sense of general uselessness, Hope surveyed the horizon and completed her delight by assuring herself that there was not a soul in sight. If she stood up, she could see the hotel she had just left, but she did not want to stand up, and she had a positive desire not to see the hotel. It was undoubtedly a useful place to leave a suit-case, but little else could be said for it. She had taken but one full breath of its desolation and fled, hours before. A summer hotel when the season is ended, and in mid-week at that, when there is small chance of even the last leaf fluttering in disconsolately, is not a place of cheer.

  Before her stretched the sea, with lazy six-inch swells creaming up on a beach of spotless, delicate sand. The Atlantic beaches filled Hope with joy; she had not quite imagined them, after the harsher West Coast fringes. There was a touch of exquisiteness about that white, fine path between sea and shore, as if God had made it with care and pleasure. At her back was but the edge of the down and the sky, and she insisted to her drowsily active imagination that the world ended there. Perhaps someone to help her insist would have been agreeable, but that could be dispensed with. Romance dies hard, she reflected, and smiled, and would have slept, perhaps. But the grass. which had not even been whispering to a breeze, swished and crackled softly; and Hope sat up and looked over her shoulder, ready for annoyed flight. Instead, she sat still, and said:

  "Is it you?"

  Norris Carter tried to look surprised. He was not a good actor, but he had an uncritical audience.

  "Mrs. Angell!" he cried.

  "Exactly," she nodded. "Did I follow you here?"

  There are disadvantages about being a fair man. But Hope did not notice his colour.

  "You couldn't have," he said. "I just happened here; I was over in the next town on business. When did you arrive?"

  "When the sun was over there. There is no time here; at least, my watch stopped as soon as I got here."

  "Do you mind if I sit down?" He suited the action to the word.

  "Not at all. I think I must have wished you up out of nowhere—there was a djinn in a bottle, wasn't there? Perhaps you saw him. We are fated to meet, aren't we?"

  "I know I asked you several times before," he said, comfortably rolling a cigarette and unspeakably relieved to find she took his presence so casually, "but haven't we met somewhere, ages ago?"

  "Where should you say?"

  "I will not quote Henley," he said firmly. "But he may have been right, at that. Because I can't remember where, and I know I have."

  "You couldn't possibly remember," she assured him gravely. "I was too young—no, that's not a joke. We did meet."

  "Where?" he demanded, almost excitedly.

  "You wore a brown Norfolk suit," she went on calmly, "and a green tie with a scarab pin. I didn't know it was a scarab then, and I thought it was rather horrid of you to wear a beetle on your tie. Had you just been to Egypt? You had been growing a moustache, and you'd just shaved it off, your upper lip showed it. I had my hair in curls, and it probably needed combing. I had no shoes. So you wouldn't speak to me, because you were a great big man, and I was a mere, a very mere child. Now do you remember?"

  "I was in Egypt, twelve years ago I think; I came back by the Pacific route..."

  "I think you were on a hunting trip," she added, watching him with a smile. "And you stayed at my father's house, with two other men. One of them was then the sixth vice president of the C. P. R."

  "We stopped—there was a girl there," he said slowly. "But she was grown up; it wasn't you."

  "My oldest sister," said Hope, laughing. "We look a bit alike, but we aren't. She is a respectable married woman, and I am a gipsy. Don't you remember me at all?" She looked mockingly mournful. "A little, scared, homely girl in a corner."

  "There was a little girl," he said. "It was you!" This as if some rare phenomenon had been presented to him.

  "Kittens make cats; little girls grow up," she nodded "It is me."

  "Good Lord!" he remarked, seemingly overcome.

  "Oh, now, it isn't serious," she assured him. "Where are you stopping? Oh. that's where my worldly belongings are checked. But I'm really going to stay out here on the beach.''

  "Then I'll have to stay out too," he declared, "and chase away the lions and crabs à la Newburg, and things." They laughed as if he had said something witty. "Won't you tell me the rest now?" he asked. "If you were there, why are you here? It's a long way."

  "For a little girl with no shoes," she added. He really had been thinking something like that. "All right, if you will tell me about when you were a conquering young hero with a moustache. What do you want to know first?"

  "What's your little name?" he demanded.

  "It is a little name," she owned. "My name is Hope."

  "Hope?" he said, as if expecting her to continue.

  "That's all," she said sadly. "Just Hope. It stopped growing when very young. I think I should have been called Despair. That's very subtle of me, isn't it?"

  "My name's Norris, you know," he said, "but everyone calls me Nick. That's very subtle too—if your last name's Carter."

  "I love silly people," she said solemnly, and they laughed again. "Let's be perfectly silly all afternoon."

  They had a whole world to themselves wherein to be as foolish as they chose; and the mere space and sun were enough to raise the spirits of two reasonably healthy young animals to the bubbling point. They rescued old memories from the limbo of forgotten things and told absurd tales of their childhood and adolescence.

  "My father is really to blame for my being here," she said, when he later harked back to his question, "He went as far as he could in one direction, and I am only exploring the back trail. I couldn't help it; we have to go and go—the Fieldings. He pursued the wilderness, and I am investigating civilisation.
It's wearing work sometimes, and this," she looked about her, "is a relief. The wilderness is gone, so I come down to the sea; the sea doesn't change. Tell me, do you often have such wonderful days as this at this time of year? Is this actually October?" The air was almost languidly warm; it was a rarely perfect day. "I should like to go in swimming," she said idly, and then sat up, the light of daring kindling in her eye. "I will go in swimming," she declared. "I have my bathing suit with me."

  "The water is cold, really it is," he said. She cast a mildly scornful eye on him; he thought of her previous aspersions concerning his fear of the weather, and capitulated without another word. "I will borrow a bathing suit," he said.

  The hotelkeeper looked at him with tolerant contempt, but produced the article; they retained their coats, and went back to the beach.

  The water was cold, but intensely invigorating. Hope was not a strong swimmer, but she liked the green depths, the little sparkling waves, the buoyant, yielding, enfolding embrace of the salt water, and struck out steadily seaward, swimming slowly, her wet face upturned to the sun. He stayed at her elbow, with some difficulty restraining his stroke; he swam like a seal. His damp yellow hair glistened, like a lost treasure; she saw that his arms and neck were as tanned as his face; and the gleam of his blue eyes between his spray-beaded lashes was like a reflection of the sky. Esthetically, she admitted, he was very satisfactory; not like some of the poor things she had seen on the beaches, who looked wilted and bleached and miserably exposed, like ill-grown celery untimely brought to the light of day.

  She was breathing quickly, and her stroke faltered.

  "Shall we turn back?" he asked.

  She smiled, and followed his suggestion. And then she realised that the tide was going out; it had borne her farther than she knew, and she could make little headway against it. It drew her slowly, irresistibly, making sport of her will; the slight undertow caught at her feet; the whole great ocean seemed set against her, bent on carrying her far out, beyond sight of the land and all familiar things. She was not terrified, but she felt immensely insignificant, and curiously exalted, as if she were a part of the encompassing flood and for a moment, forgetting that she was not alone, there was a strange temptation to yield herself to the strength of the tide, to go with it as far as it would take her. In a little while longer she would certainly have felt fear, but she had no sensation of sinking yet; she was simply poised between her own efforts and the pull of the tide. Norris spoke in her ear: "Put your hand on my shoulder," He had seen quite clearly that she was powerless. She looked at him quickly, and obeyed. He went ahead in a sudden noiseless spurt, cleaving the water as if it were his native element, making nothing of the drag she must have been to him. She did what she could, but it was not much. Yet it seemed the briefest minute—it was perhaps ten—until she felt the firm sand beneath her feet and stood up, with that heavy languorous feeling of one who has come out of the water to the lighter ether.

  "I am tired," she said simply. "Thank you. I couldn't have got back alone." A slight breeze touched them; she shivered.

  "You're cold," he amended sharply. He was still trying to protect her from the elements; she looked fragile to him, and as if she should be so shielded.

  "Yes. Let's run." They did, and fell onto the steps of the hotel out of breath and aglow.

  Later, when they had dressed, they went back to the beach again and took up the interrupted tale. She let her hair fly on her shoulders to dry. It had the pleasing quality, rather common to light hair, of not looking stringy when wet, and the light got into it, and gave it more than its natural beauty, for its ordinary shade was very soft, almost dead, fawn-colour without the hint of red which makes chestnut hair so lovely. But hers suited her too pale, waxen skin, and it had a beautiful texture, the hair "like sea-moss" of Alciphron, which Browning recalled. When her face had that ashen look of fatigue her hair looked faded also; but now it was charmingly alive, and curled in feathery ringlets at the nape of her neck. And her crescent brows were ruffled from the drying of her face, so that they rose in a curious peak in the centre, two circumflex accents over her eyes; and she looked much younger than her years. The immaturity of her emotions, checked and arrested in her disastrous love affair, had kept her face as girlish in expression as when she was in her teens. Not even her waning cheek and the fine lines about her eyes could alter it.

  "Odd," he said, his words redeemed from banality by his positive interest in the fact, "that we should have met again, after so long. Are you..."

  "Am I—what?"

  "Glad?" he asked, overcoming his self-consciousness with difficulty.

  She thought awhile.

  "Yes, of course," she decided finally. "Why, it's almost like going back home. I think that's why I got used to you so quickly. It does seem as if we'd been friends for a long time. Of course I have no one else here. I might be boring you to death!"

  "Do I act like it?" he demanded.

  "How do you act when you are bored?" she countered.

  "I go away," he said truthfully. "And this time I... Will you be angry if I tell you something?"

  "Probably," she said. "I have a most cantankerous disposition, and it's been soured by disappointment. But I won't do more than kill you."

  "Well..."

  "Go on," she said, slightly exasperated. Anything protracted always did exasperate her slightly; she had described herself rightly as wanting to eat life like an orange.

  "I followed you here," he said, reddening, and looking slightly defiant. And he picked a blade ot grass and examined it as if with deep interest.

  "Where? You mean to the beach—from town?" She looked puzzled, scarcely annoyed. "How did you know?"

  "I was called out of town yesterday," he said. "And I wanted to see you to-day. So I telephoned; Mrs. Hassard answered. And she told me, and I came down."

  "Well, all right," said Hope. "Don't you think it must be dinner time? I shall have to be careful what I tell Mrs. Hassard—silly old goop. Hiyu cultus wawa—she talks too much."

  So she dismissed the subject, rising with a dainty yawn and lifting her arms above her head with a fine classic gesture to pin up her hair. Carter sat still a moment merely to watch her; she was so slim and straight, not too thin as he had at first thought, but what the French call fausse maigre. He had to recant his opinion that she was not pretty if she chose; or if it were true, then it did not matter.

  They strolled back to the hotel and dined, sufficiently if not luxuriously, on the veranda. Moths fluttered round the lamp, which was hardly needed. The sun had gone down, its lingering fires in the west dying slowly. There was no moon. The air remained soft, and yet had a salty tang.

  "Listen to the waves," said Hope, leaning her chin on her hands and leaving her coffee neglected. "I am going down to talk to them. They've just been to Europe."

  He insisted on taking all the available wraps, and followed her. It was an odd fancy, but the sound of her walking over the grass gave him pleasure. The dark was settling down, and the tide was coming in again, murmurously musical; the soft swish of her feet and the edge of her gown seemed an overtone of a great muted symphony.

  They shared his tweed topcoat, spread on the ground, and she was silent, her chin on her hands again, her profile palely indistinct, looking out to sea, where was nothing visible. At last she moved, put down her hand. Hardly conscious of his own action, he laid his over it.

  "I told you..." she began, her voice uncertain, soft, the voice one might expect from that little indistinct white face which was yet warm to his gaze. "This is silly."

  "You said—we should be."

  "No; I didn't mean—What did you say?"

  "I don't know," he said quietly, as if it were just then out of his power to interrogate himself, retrace time and recall what had been.

  "Friends," she said, as if she were questioning something, not themselves. And again, as he did not answer, and she felt herself swayed by some invisible force and there pressed on her hea
rt the knowledge that to take her hand from his would destroy the strange beauty of the night and mar the rhythm of the little lapping waves and cover her with loneliness and the dark, she cried out softly, "You were talking nonsense—and this is foolishness!"

  "No," he said. "I wasn't—I will do anything you say."

  But he put his arms about her, not closely, but so that she was aware of their restrained strength. She remembered the smooth, powerful play of his shoulders, how the muscles rippled and flexed under her hand, when he swam in with her. And the stark reality of him, the sense of him as flesh and blood instead of the sublimated figure out of an old tale that she had loved in Tony Yorke, took her breath away. She was no longer safe behind the veil of her own illusions, a Princess of the Glass Tower, ardent only in imagination, cold to her lover's lips. Seeing Nick human, she must needs see herself also in the same case; and she knew that if she would make the venture, as she had that afternoon, she had no just right to look to him for help. Even if he were stronger, and why should he be? For the tide had them again; she felt it; it drew her again with that implacable, irresistible ease. The waves were sharply sweet, closing over her head, as they reached hands to one another and felt the flood engulf them. Whether they kissed or not, they hardly knew.

  "Ah, no, no," she cried again, but it was herself she spoke to, close against his shoulder. "I am sorry— what did we say?"

  The word was magic to unlock his clasp.

  "Don't be sorry—my fault—I'll go now." So much she heard, and without his touching her, she could feel him call on all his healthy young strength, gathering himself up tensely to breast the tide again. He would go away, if she said he must; if she would send him away.

  For the space of a heart beat, her brain was clear as crystal, and she saw the forfeit, and the gain, as if they had been held in either hand. Nothing impalpable, remote, no stuff of dreams, but the common place essentials of life from day to day, were in the balance now. Would she put in pawn the countenance of the world, order, freedom of all small things, for this? The blood flowed hotly to her heart. The prudence that would draw back and bargain now, when she had been so lavish for the tinsel imitation, struck her as contemptible. For she knew she had found her unknown good.