"What style would you like--something modish?"
"No. Simple."
"What figure would the young lady be?"
"I don"t know; about two inches shorter than you, I should say."
"Could you give me her waist measurement?"
Megan"s waist!
"Oh! anything usual!"
"Quite!"
While she was gone he stood disconsolately eyeing the models in the window, and suddenly it seemed to him incredible that Megan--his Megan could ever be dressed save in the rough tweed skirt, coa.r.s.e blouse, and tam-o"-shanter cap he was wont to see her in. The young woman had come back with several dresses in her arms, and Ashurst eyed her laying them against her own modish figure. There was one whose colour he liked, a dove-grey, but to imagine Megan clothed in it was beyond him. The young woman went away, and brought some more. But on Ashurst there had now come a feeling of paralysis. How choose? She would want a hat too, and shoes, and gloves; and, suppose, when he had got them all, they commonised her, as Sunday clothes always commonised village folk! Why should she not travel as she was? Ah! But conspicuousness would matter; this was a serious elopement. And, staring at the young woman, he thought: "I wonder if she guesses, and thinks me a blackguard?"
"Do you mind putting aside that grey one for me?" he said desperately at last. "I can"t decide now; I"ll come in again this afternoon."
The young woman sighed.
"Oh! certainly. It"s a very tasteful costume. I don"t think you"ll get anything that will suit your purpose better."
"I expect not," Ashurst murmured, and went out.
Freed again from the suspicious matter-of-factness of the world, he took a long breath, and went back to visions. In fancy he saw the trustful, pretty creature who was going to join her life to his; saw himself and her stealing forth at night, walking over the moor under the moon, he with his arm round her, and carrying her new garments, till, in some far-off wood, when dawn was coming, she would slip off her old things and put on these, and an early train at a distant station would bear them away on their honeymoon journey, till London swallowed them up, and the dreams of love came true.
"Frank Ashurst! Haven"t seen you since Rugby, old chap!"
Ashurst"s frown dissolved; the face, close to his own, was blue-eyed, suffused with sun--one of those faces where sun from within and without join in a sort of l.u.s.tre. And he answered:
"Phil Halliday, by Jove!"
"What are you doing here?"
"Oh! nothing. Just looking round, and getting some money. I"m staying on the moor."
"Are you lunching anywhere? Come and lunch with us; I"m here with my young sisters. They"ve had measles."
Hooked in by that friendly arm Ashurst went along, up a hill, down a hill, away out of the town, while the voice of Halliday, redolent of optimism as his face was of sun, explained how "in this mouldy place the only decent things were the bathing and boating," and so on, till presently they came to a crescent of houses a little above and back from the sea, and into the centre one an hotel--made their way.
"Come up to my room and have a wash. Lunch"ll be ready in a jiffy."
Ashurst contemplated his visage in a looking-gla.s.s. After his farmhouse bedroom, the comb and one spare shirt regime of the last fortnight, this room littered with clothes and brushes was a sort of Capua; and he thought: "Queer--one doesn"t realise But what--he did not quite know.
When he followed Halliday into the sitting room for lunch, three faces, very fair and blue-eyed, were turned suddenly at the words: "This is Frank Ashurst my young sisters."
Two were indeed young, about eleven and ten. The third was perhaps seventeen, tall and fair-haired too, with pink-and-white cheeks just touched by the sun, and eyebrows, rather darker than the hair, running a little upwards from her nose to their outer points. The voices of all three were like Halliday"s, high and cheerful; they stood up straight, shook hands with a quick movement, looked at Ashurst critically, away again at once, and began to talk of what they were going to do in the afternoon. A regular Diana and attendant nymphs! After the farm this crisp, slangy, eager talk, this cool, clean, off-hand refinement, was queer at first, and then so natural that what he had come from became suddenly remote. The names of the two little ones seemed to be Sabina and Freda; of the eldest, Stella.
Presently the one called Sabina turned to him and said:
"I say, will you come shrimping with us?--it"s awful fun!"
Surprised by this unexpected friendliness, Ashurst murmured:
"I"m afraid I"ve got to get back this afternoon."
"Oh!"
"Can"t you put it off?"
Ashurst turned to the new speaker, Stella, shook his head, and smiled.
She was very pretty! Sabina said regretfully: "You might!" Then the talk switched off to caves and swimming.
"Can you swim far?"
"About two miles."
"Oh!"
"I say!"
"How jolly!"
The three pairs of blue eyes, fixed on him, made him conscious of his new importance--The sensation was agreeable. Halliday said:
"I say, you simply must stop and have a bathe. You"d better stay the night."
"Yes, do!""
But again Ashurst smiled and shook his head. Then suddenly he found himself being catechised about his physical achievements. He had rowed--it seemed--in his college boat, played in his college football team, won his college mile; and he rose from table a sort of hero. The two little girls insisted that he must see "their" cave, and they set forth chattering like magpies, Ashurst between them, Stella and her brother a little behind. In the cave, damp and darkish like any other cave, the great feature was a pool with possibility of creatures which might be caught and put into bottles. Sabina and Freda, who wore no stockings on their shapely brown legs, exhorted Ashurst to join them in the middle of it, and help sieve the water. He too was soon bootless and sockless. Time goes fast for one who has a sense of beauty, when there are pretty children in a pool and a young Diana on the edge, to receive with wonder anything you can catch! Ashurst never had much sense of time. It was a shock when, pulling out his watch, he saw it was well past three. No cashing his cheque to-day-the bank would be closed before he could get there. Watching his expression, the little girls cried out at once:
"Hurrah! Now you"ll have to stay!"
Ashurst did not answer. He was seeing again Megan"s face, when at breakfast time he had whispered: "I"m going to Torquay, darling, to get everything; I shall be back this evening. If it"s fine we can go to-night. Be ready." He was seeing again how she quivered and hung on his words. What would she think? Then he pulled himself together, conscious suddenly of the calm scrutiny of this other young girl, so tall and fair and Diana-like, at the edge of the pool, of her wondering blue eyes under those brows which slanted up a little. If they knew what was in his mind--if they knew that this very night he had meant! Well, there would be a little sound of disgust, and he would be alone in the cave. And with a curious mixture of anger, chagrin, and shame, he put his watch back into his pocket and said abruptly:
"Yes; I"m dished for to-day."
"Hurrah! Now you can bathe with us."
It was impossible not to succ.u.mb a little to the contentment of these pretty children, to the smile on Stella"s lips, to Halliday"s "Ripping, old chap! I can lend you things for the night!" But again a spasm of longing and remorse throbbed through Ashurst, and he said moodily:
"I must send a wire!"
The attractions of the pool palling, they went back to the hotel.
Ashurst sent his wire, addressing it to Mrs. Narracombe: "Sorry, detained for the night, back to-morrow." Surely Megan would understand that he had too much to do; and his heart grew lighter. It was a lovely afternoon, warm, the sea calm and blue, and swimming his great pa.s.sion; the favour of these pretty children flattered him, the pleasure of looking at them, at Stella, at Halliday"s sunny face; the slight unreality, yet extreme naturalness of it all--as of a last peep at normality before he took this plunge with Megan! He got his borrowed bathing dress, and they all set forth. Halliday and he undressed behind one rock, the three girls behind another. He was first into the sea, and at once swam out with the bravado of justifying his self-given reputation. When he turned he could see Halliday swimming along sh.o.r.e, and the girls flopping and dipping, and riding the little waves, in the way he was accustomed to despise, but now thought pretty and sensible, since it gave him the distinction of the only deep-water fish. But drawing near, he wondered if they would like him, a stranger, to come into their splashing group; he felt shy, approaching that slim nymph.
Then Sabina summoned him to teach her to float, and between them the little girls kept him so busy that he had no time even to notice whether Stella was accustomed to his presence, till suddenly he heard a startled sound from her: She was standing submerged to the waist, leaning a little forward, her slim white arms stretched out and pointing, her wet face puckered by the sun and an expression of fear.
"Look at Phil! Is he all right? Oh, look!"