The Boy with Wings 32Part III · The Soul of Undine
18
Literature · Romance
The Boy with Wings 32
Part III · The Soul of Undine
RuckEnglish
"Hul-lo!" he shouted. The echo answered as he sat in the boat staring about him....
Then he felt a twitch at one of his sculls. It turned in his hand; was wrenched from him.
"What the deuce----" he began, surprised.
Then he heard a laugh.
"What on earth----"
It was nothing on earth that had greeted him. It was something of the water that laughed up into his face and called, "Hullo, husband!"
A mermaid, a water-nymph, a little white-shouldered Undine was peeping up and mocking him! She trod water, turned over on her side, swam with easy strokes.
For always Gwenna had been proud of her swimming.
She had won a medal for it at that Aberystwith school of hers; but she wanted more than a mere medal for it now. She wanted her boy to see her swimming, and to praise her stroke. She had looked forward to that. She wanted to show him that she could make as graceful movements with her own body in the water as he could make with his biplane in the air. She could! He should see! She made these movements. She had thought of making them--just so--on the morning of her marriage. Only then she had thought it would be in the sea off Brighton beach, with whole crowds of other stupid people about in dark-blue or Turkey-red "costumes." Here it was so much lovelier; a whole mountain-side and a clear lake to herself in which to show off her pet accomplishment to her lover. She was one innocent and pretty Vanity incarnate as she glided along beside his boat. She gave a quick twist. There was a commotion of translucent amber water, a gleam of coral white that shaded down into peaty brown as she dived, reappearing on the other side of the boat, looking up at him, blinking as her curls streamed water into her eyes.
His eyes, blue and direct and adoring, were upon her.
"I say," he said admiringly, "I didn't know you could swim like that. Jolly!"
This moment of achievement was possibly the most exquisite in the whole of Gwenna's life.
Shaking the wet from her hair, she laughed with pure, completed, rapturous joy; glorying in her youth, in the life that charged each little blue vein of her, in this power of swimming that she felt had been given her only to please him.
"Why, I could swim you to--Oh! Mind you don't upset!" she exclaimed.
For Paul had stooped; leaning over the side of the boat he had passed one arm beneath her shoulders; he was bending over her to take a kiss, all fresh with lake-water.
"You'll topple over," she warned him.
"Pooh," he said. "One, Gwenna!"
He always said her name as if it were "darling"--he did not call her "dear" or "darling" much. She found that she adored him for this, as for everything that he said or did. Once, in one of those old-time talks of theirs, Leslie had said, "For every three times a man asks for a kiss refuse him twice. An excellent plan, Taffy----" The happy girl-wife thought there need be no use of "plans" with him and her. She teased him--if she wanted to.
Eyes laughed into eyes now. She threw back her head, evading him, but only for a second. His mouth met hers, dewy as a lotus-bud. The boy and girl kissed closely. Nothing could come between that kiss, she thought.
Then, sudden as a flash of summer lightning, something came.
A thought; a shadow; a fear at last.
All these halcyon hours she had known no fear. All those weeks that her husband had been in France she had been certain, at the bottom of her heart, of his safety. She had known by that queer sense of presentiment she possessed that he would come back to her. He'd come back to make this perfect time for which all her unawakened girlhood had been waiting. And now, by that same queer sixth sense, she suddenly found herself realising that he would not--No, no! That he might not come back to her the second time.... Suddenly, suddenly the shadow crept over her, taking the glow and colour out of their idyll even at this golden moment. With his lips warms on hers she shivered as if the water in which she swayed had suddenly grown many degrees colder. Supposing he should not return? In two days' time now he was leaving her. Supposing that she were never to see him again? She shut her eyes, felt herself for a horrible second surrounded by darkness, and alone.... She heard his sharp question, "What's the matter?" and opened her eyes again.
His head was dark against the blue little ripples of light passed over his blonde face; ripples cast up from the water. The boat tilted, and his arm held her more tightly. He said again, "What is it?"
Then, in her own ears, her voice said serenely, "It's all right."
The cloud had passed, as suddenly as it had fallen. She knew, somehow, that it would be "all right." Whatever happened, this worst catastrophe of all was not going to fall upon her. She was not going to be left alone and in darkness, her sun of Love gone down. Such a light could not have been kindled, just to be put out again. She would not be forced to live without him. That could not be. Why, the thing was unthinkable. Yet, somehow that was going to be made "all right."
"You swim back again and get your things on, as quick as you can," he ordered her. "That was a touch of cramp you got, I expect."
"I'm all right now," she again said.
She sighed when at last they left that lovely Paradise of theirs behind them.
They went down hill at a good swinging pace, his arm again girdling the dove-grey frock. He said, "We'll get tea and topping light-cakes at one of those cottages before we come to the village, shall we? Are you starving, Little Thing? I know I am. Soon be there now."
"I know," she said, "I wasn't sighing because I wanted my tea. Only because ... It seems such a pity that we ever have to come down from here!" she told him, nestling in his arm.
But she did not tell him of her sudden fear, nor of its sudden passing, though (in her heart that beat below his hand) the thought of both remained.
