Across the Plains, with Other Memories and Essays

at the rocky coast all smothered in billows and sunlit spray some quarter of a mile ahead, and wondering if he would

ble 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 eve

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 his Amphitrite, 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-

ess 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 th

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

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

at sport!

*

o 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. An

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 w

, 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 bonne

I've had such a ripping afternoon. And the c

arion wanted a telegram sent abou

noticed that Jessie was

solutely be relie

y mother might have sent

irl l

re getting in what might be called rather a state about you. I tried to infect them wit

ghtened?" asked Arc

Cousin Mari

ic. I had an awful shave getting i

a. So I preferred to have confidence in you and go for a walk,

s and his coat under his arm. The coat was too wet to put

g afternoon,"

g 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

ribly rash of you! Your mother an

ed nerves," said Archie sententiously. "I am ha

sion on her face that might or might not be a s

about the cigar

. But you weren't rea

he 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.

t 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 inh

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 wo

Archie one morning as they sat af

ind going home alone, if she preferred

shook h

she said, "or she would stop on in spite of

aving headaches

now that. She told me n

te self-possession.

rig

lt quite

e," she continued, "and clearly I am the right per

ll go then,"

y wouldn't hear of your going, and Jessie is enjoying this so much that I cou

f you," said he, only

nt to go, if she thought it was for her sake that I was going with her. So you must go to her, and say you think that it's me whom the heat doesn't sui

ciation of her beauty: her beauty took on a tenderer and more touching look. Before now, it had vaguely occurred to him that, of the two sisters, i

give up your time here

njoy it," she said. "I will if you press me. I'll say

said. "Now I'm to tell my mother that you are fee

that," sa

her perspicacity) to dazzle his eyes by means of touching his heart, for she guessed, with clear-sighted vision, that he was the kind of young man who, if he did not mean everything, would mean nothing, and she believed that she could not entangle his affection by mere superficial appeals. And, indeed, she was not a flirt herself; she was poor, and clever, and attractive, and she proposed to use her cleverness and attraction in the legitimate pursuit of securing a husband who was not poor. That Archie was now Lord Davidstow, and at his father's death would be Lord Tintagel, was in his favour, and to make an impression on him, and then to go self-sacrificingly away, seemed to her a very promising manoeuvre. She was not in the least afraid of leaving Jessie with him, for, with her habitual adroitness, she had

*

resent, but with penetration of light, she knew that there was growing an emotional brightness. It was with light and with a nameless quickening that his eye dwelt on her, and now as they sat in the deep dusk of the garden, illumined only by the stars that twinkled like minute golden oranges in the boughs of the stone-pine, she knew that he was looking at the pale wraith of her face, which was all the starlight left her

unselfish as to accompany Cousin Marion back to town. It would have been extraordinarily pleasant to sit here many times more with Archie, and both watch and take part in the gr

eason seemed to her insignificant. And the success of her plan, the wisdom of which she still en

" she said. "It has been a nice time. I

what is selfish

t evening you shall. I wish I

t a shade cl

ss you quite en

laug

ve your bathing and your boating and your writ

to think

e said. "And I like them. Why shouldn't

id," she

much more than I should have missed

a moment. Then ver

you ver

e, chilly manner swiftly but carefully. And she had calculate

d you?" he asked. "Why

rsed a second's

"You'll have to try harder than that if you want to off

secret delight, just as he was affected in his limbs by some cross-current to the direction of his swimming, or

t me," she

m glad you're going away

ughed

ll if you meant it," she sa

hard to ple

lease me, say that you'll be very g

t say it. You know it quite wel

d forward

e, Archie," she said. "

is head and shouted

e you again in-what was it?

e that it's nice, because you've brought

to the bright square of light cast from the lit passage within.

. "Don't you know, when the two couples wander about? Ah, t

tely Helena's name was called by

rling,"

t's time you went to be

too? She want

the darkness. They knew it, rather than saw it

he said. "Your fault

revue that she and Ar

e house, feeling very well satisfied with herself. She was sure that she had made herself

*

too he had outgrown, to all appearance, those strange abnormal experiences which had been his in childhood, his power of automatic writing and the inexplicable communications from his dead brother. Certainly since his fourteenth year there had been no more of them; it was as if they had belonged entirely to the years when he trailed the clouds of glory that hang about childhood. But even now, in the normal vigour of his young manhood, they did not seem to him to be in the least unreal; indeed, they were to him, in spite of their fantastic and unusual nature, the most substantial treasures in his store-house of memory. The difference was that now they were sealed up: some key had been turned on them in his interior life, and they were inaccessibl

*

a breath of breeze sighed in the pine, and of the fierceness of those uproarious hours there was nothing left but the ever-diminishing thunder of the waves three hundred feet below. From horizon to zenith the sky was bare and kirtled with stars, and to the east over the hills across the ba

then over his adventures of the afternoon, but always bringing it back to the half-hour he had sat with Helena, close to where he now lay. He had, as sleep approached, the vague sense of sinking into some quiet depth; bu

house, was standing a white marble statue. This brought his legs over the side of his hammock, and he got up to go and look at it, and then remembered, so he thought, all about it. It was the statue of Helena, which she had told him was a gift from her to him, and it did not seem at all unnatural that it should have been brought out and put in the garden. But, as he had not seen it yet, he walked now across to it, and found an admirable and lovely figure. It was clad in a long Greek chiton, low at the throat and reaching nearly to her feet, which were sandalled. One hand was advanced to him

there was a small dark spot, and, taking a step nearer, he put out his hand to flick it away. But it did not come away: it was as if some little excrescence had stuck to the marble, and, making a second attempt, he felt that it was soft, and that it grew a little longer. It moved, too; it wriggled like the head of a

out those loathsome reptiles. Some nightmare of catalepsy invaded him; he could not move, he could not call out, he could not turn away his eyes, but he had to watch until where lately this masterpiece of lo

o help came. Already he could feel the touch of those horrible things, and with a supreme effort he managed to move his head away from that myriad loathsome touch, and lo! he wa

d also the memory of what his dream had been: there had been something about a statue, something about worms, something connected with Helena. Even as he thought about it, it continued to recede from him, and before he dozed off again, the whole thing had slipped out of his memory, and

e incessant practice in the endless and elusive art of writing prose. The love of expressing what he loved in words was no less than a passion with him, and it is almost needless to add that the sea was his inspiring theme. He certainly had the prime essential of devotion both to his subject and to the technique of his art, and these little essays, called Idylls of the Sea, promised, if ever he could persuade himself to finish them, to be a re

by it, secure in its enveloping presence, even as in the days of childhood he would lie happy and serene in the knowledge that Blessington was close by him. Or he would dive deep and see through "the fallen day" the dazzle of the sun of the surface far above him, and then swim up again, and, after the greenness and the paleness below, find a red and glowing firmament. But best of all was it to swim out very far from land, and then just exist with arms and legs spread wide, encompassed and surrounded by mere sea. He did not want to think about anything at all, or to belabour his brain with strivings to cast into words the sea-sense; that would come afterwards, when with gnawed pencil and erased sentences he sat in the garden; but he only opened himself out to i

s following the strokes of his strong legs. Thereafter he would cast himself onto the beach with a straw hat tipped over his eyes, and his sun-tanned legs and arms spread star-fish fashion, and lie there drinking in the sun, while Harry and Jessie reviled him for causing lunch, for which they hungered, to be again half an hour behind the scheduled time. And Archie, lighting a cigaret

ost productive hours of work, and wide-eyed and eager he would sit with jotted notes and scribbling-paper round him, read over the last few pages of his current story, and correct and erase and rewrite with an unquenchable optimism. There would be moments of despair, moments of wrestling with a recalcitrant sentence, when he walked about in the blaze of the sun, and bit his pencil till his teeth cracked through

ad employed himself in sharpening a couple of pencils (for the work of transcription into ink came later in the day), so as not to interrupt, by any physical intrusion, the flow of all he knew was ready t

the sharpening of the

e is signalled,

e lead-dust fr

Lord! I'm full of great thoughts.

e joi

," she said, "like Dora in David Copperfield

e lau

"You would be making an unc

are p

you to be offended and go away. I want Harry to go away to

reading out here," said Jessie. "I fee

ing funny," remarked Arc

e. Say your grace and g

ou remember how you us

n made us behave prope

ehave improperl

hat Browning calls 'Time's Revenges.' I couldn't put on yours now, could I? The Italian authorities would prosecute me for indecency. Lord! what a little fellow you are, Harr

head is held quite still. Presently the wicked ceased from troubling, and Archie was left alone. But after Jessie had gone to her room she stood still a moment before making herself comfortable for her nap, and then she laid across her nose and mouth