Brother of Daphne Read online

Beyond saying that I was not responsible for the crass and purblind idiocy of railway officials, I ignored this expression of ingratitude and continued to deal with Daphne.

  “You know,” I said, “there are times when I tremble for you. Only yesterday, just before dinner, I trembled for you like anything.”

  “It’s the heat,” said my target, as if explaining something.

  “And my reward is covert reflections upon my sanity. Need I say more?”

  “No,” said everybody.

  “Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for your kind attention. The next performance will be at four o’clock this afternoon, underneath the promenade pier.”

  I relapsed into comfortable silence and sank back into the bracken. My sister got up from the clump of heather in which she was ensconced, crossed to where I was, took my pipe out of my mouth and kissed me.

  “Sorry, old boy,” she said; “you’re not such a bad sort, really.”

  “Dear love,” said I, “what have you left behind?”

  “My bathing-dress, darling.”

  In spite of the fact that I returned to the hotel and got it, they were positively rude about the bathing-cove I selected.

  “Bathe there?” sneered Berry, as we looked down upon it, all smiling in the sun, from the top of the cliffs. “Thanks awfully, I simply love the flints, don’t you, Jill? Personally, my doctor bled me just before I came away. But don’t let me stop you others. Lead on, brother – lead the way to the shambles!”

  Of course, Daphne took up the running.

  “My dear boy, look at the seaweed on the rocks! Why, we should slip and break our legs before we’d taken two steps!”

  “That’s all right,” said Berry. “We have between us three shirts. Torn into strips, they will make excellent bandages, while for a splint—”

  “The cove,” I said, “is ideal. Its sand is a field of lilies, its sea perfumed, its boulders sweet smelling cushions.”

  “Of course,” said Berry. “Why do you tarry? Forward, friends all! This way to the drug department. To the lions, O Christians! For myself, if I start at once, I shall be able to get back with the coastguard’s ambulance before you’ve been lying there more than an hour or two, and I can wire for your relatives at the same time.”

  “Anybody would think the place was an oubliette,” said I. “As a matter of fact, the path down is an easy one, there are no flints, and there is a singular paucity of seaweed of any description. On the other hand, the sun is hot, the sand is soft, and I have already selected that rock, in the seclusion of whose shade I shall prepare myself for the waves. Sorry it’s too dangerous for you. I’ll write about some bathing-machines tonight. Do you like them with red or green doors?”

  Without waiting for their reply, which would probably have been of the caustic and provocative type, I turned down the path I had not trodden for some three years. At one of the bends I looked up and saw them moving north along the coastline.

  I had the cove to myself, and was soon in my bathing-dress. The water was magnificent. I swam out about forty yards, and turned just in time to see Berry & Co. disappear in the distance, apparently descending into a neighbouring cove. After a rest on a rock, I set out to swim round and join them. It was further than I thought, and I was glad to wade out of the water and lie down on the sand in the sun. No sign of the others, by the way. But hereabouts the coast was very ragged. It must have been the next cove they were making for.

  “Quite still, please,” said somebody, and the next moment a camera clicked.

  “You might have given me time to moisten the lips,” said I.

  “I doubt if it would have done any good.”

  “Thanks, very much. By the way, I suppose you’re The Daily Glass? How did you find me out?”

  “Rumour travels apace, sir.”

  “And I had been congratulating myself on eluding the Press since breakfast. Well, well! Only this morning—”

  “Dry up!”

  I apostrophized the sea.

  “I don’t want to have to report the chap,” I said, “but if—”

  The camera clicked again.

  “I’m not sure this isn’t an assault,” I said. “That it is a trespass, I know. Who are your solicitors? And may I take it that they will accept service?”(Here I rolled over and leaned on my elbow.) “You do look fit. Just move your heel out of that pool – there’s an anemone going to mistake it for a piece of alabaster. That’s right! Oh, but, Mermaid, do tell me how you keep your hair so nice when you’re bathing?”

  “Like it?”

  “I love it.”

  “I simply don’t put my head under.”

  “A most dangerous practice, believe me.”

  “It’s worth the risk.”

  “I believe it is.”

  She was sitting on a low slab of rock, clad in a bathing-costume of plain dark blue, and fashioned just like my own. Her dark hair was parted in the middle and divided at the back into two long, thick plaits which were turned up and hair pinned round the top of her head. Her features were beautiful and her eyes big and dark as her hair. Her figure was slim and graceful, and her arms and hands and feet were very shapely. One brown knee was crossed over the other, and her left hand held the camera.

  “I do have luck, you know,” I said.

  “What luck?”

  “Well, honestly, it’s a great pleasure to meet you like this, when I might have spent all day talking with my silly crowd and never have known of your existence. Don’t be afraid. I merely mean that I am enjoying your society, and I’m glad I came round the corner. I’m not in love with you, and I don’t want never to leave your side again, but – oh, you understand, Mermaid, don’t you? You look as if you could if you liked.”

  My companion stared out to sea with a faint smile on her lips. I flung out an arm with a gesture of despair.

  “Oh, if you knew how sick I am of the girl about town, the girl of today, who won’t be natural herself, and won’t let you be natural either, who is always bored, and who has no use for anyone who isn’t forever making mock love to her, or – Why on earth can’t a man tell a woman he likes her company, and mean it, without the woman thinking he wants to kiss her, or marry her, or something?”

  I broke off and looked at her.

  “Go on,” she said. “You interest me.”

  “Oh, Heavens,” I said falteringly. “Why have you got such big eyes?”

  At this, to my discomfiture, she broke into peals of merriment.

  “Before you looked at me like that, I was really enjoying your company without wanting to kiss you.”

  “Steady!”

  “Besides your eyes, there’s your – Look here, it isn’t fair.”

  “That’ll do. I’ll race you to that rock out there.”

  She was in the water first, but I beat her easily. We swam back together, and she took her seat on the slab, while I stretched myself on the sand by her side.

  “You’re a very singular man,” she said after a while.

  “I have been told so of many.”

  “And rather dull.”

  I sat up.

  “Don’t say you want me to make love to you!”

  “Not much!” This emphatically.

  “Ah, glad of a change, I suppose.”

  There was a silence, while she eyed me suspiciously. At length: “I shall ask you to leave my cove if you’re not careful,” she said.

  “Mermaid,” I said, “I apologize. I was unaware that I had the honour to speak to the lady of the manor.”

  “Well, if you didn’t really know who I was – But you mustn’t be dull.”

  I drew her attention to a sailing ship in the distance. “Now, that,” I said, “is what I call a really good ship.”

  “Barque!”

  “Barque, I mean. It must be—”

  “About five thousand tons.”

  “Burthen. Exactly. By the way, I never know what that really means unless it means that, if you wanted to lift it,
you couldn’t.”

  “Try displacement.”

  “Thank you. It was off just such an one that I was cast away two years ago come Michaelmas. We were just standing by in the offing, when she sterruck with a grinding crash. There was a matter of seventy souls aboard, and I shall never forget the look on the captain’s face as the ship’s cat stole his place in the stern sheets of the jolly boat. I was thrown up on a desert island, I was. You ought to have seen me milking the goats on Spyglass Hill.”

  “Did you wear a goatskin cap?”

  “Did not I? And two muskets. But my snake belt was the great thing. You see—”

  “Which reminds me – I think it’s about time I got civilized again.”

  “Not yet, Mermaid,” I pleaded; “the sun is yet high.”

  “You don’t suppose I’m going to stay here all day, do you? We’re not on your precious island now.”

  “I only wish we were. I had my loaf of bread and jug of wine all right, but the one thing I wanted, Mermaid, was—”

  “A woman to keep him company without thinking he wanted to kiss her, or marry her, or something. Whatever’s that?”

  I jumped to my feet and looked towards where she was pointing.

  “It looks rather like – forgive me – a chemise.”

  “Good Heavens!”

  Before I had time to move, she rushed into the surf and secured the floating garment, made another dart at something else, and was knocked down by a roller. I had her on her feet in a moment, but she dashed the water out of her eyes and looked wildly to and fro over the sea.

  “What is it, Mermaid?”

  She tried to stamp her foot; but the four inches of water in which she was standing were against her.

  “Can’t you see, idiot? This is mine – this chemise – so’s this shoe. The tide’s come up into my cave while I’ve been making a fool of myself talking to you, and all my things are gone. There’s the other shoe.”

  “All right – I’ll get it.”

  I got it, and one stocking, but though I swam about till I was tired, and even climbed on to the rock, now almost submerged, to which we had raced, I could see nothing else. I returned temporarily exhausted to the cove. She waded out to meet me.

  “Tell me exactly where your cave is,” I said, as I handed her the flotsam.

  She showed me, and, after a moment or two’s rest, I swam out and round to the mouth, only to find the water too high to enter. I did try, but a wave lifted me up to the roof, and I only saved a broken head at the expense of a nasty cut on the back of my hand.

  She was anxiously awaiting me, and listened to my report without a word. When I had finished, she deliberately wrung the last atom of water out of the derelict stocking, smoothed it out carefully by the side of the chemise in the sun, laid herself down on the sand, and burst into tears.

  I tried to comfort her. I patted her shoulder and took her hand in mine.

  “Don’t worry, Mermaid dear,” I said “Trust me – I’ll think of something. I know. I’ll swim round to my cove and dress, and then go and get you some fresh clothes before anyone’s the wiser. See? I’ll go now,” I added, getting up and licking the blood off my hand. “You wait here and—”

  I broke off abruptly, and one of the more violent expletives, indicative of combined horror and amazement, escaped my lips before I could stop it.

  “What is it?” wailed the Mermaid.

  On the crest of a wave, some thirty yards from the shore, danced my grey hat. Beyond it, a little to the right, was something which might be a shirt.

  Stammering incoherent sentences, I staggered into the water and swam for the hat. When I had caught it, I went on to get the shirt. I would have gone on round the headland to my cove, only the shirt was not my shirt. It was Berry’s! Yes, it was – had his name on it and all. And not ten yards away floated Daphne’s straw hat. For the next two minutes I was in imminent danger of drowning. At last I began to swim feebly, blindly back. When I reached the shore, I fell on my knees in the surf and laughed till the eighth wave knocked me head over heels and the ninth broke into my open jaws and choked me. The next moment the girl caught me by the arm, and I stumbled out and lay down on the dry sand with the shirt clasped to my breast. My hat had gone again ages ago. Then I looked at the girl kneeling anxiously by my side, and began to laugh again. She sat back on her heels, with one hand to her lips and a scared expression on her face.

  “He’s mad,” she said, half to herself, “mad! Must have been stung by a jellyfish or something. I’ve heard—”

  I cut her short.

  “Mermaid dear, I’m as sane as you are, only—”

  “Only what?”

  “Everybody’s doing it” – she recoiled – “doing it! Listen to me. True, that is your chemise. True, that out there is my hat – there it is. But here is Berry’s shirt, and miles out there is Daphne’s straw hat. If I’d stayed long enough, I’ve no doubt I should have seen Jonah’s trousers and Jill’s chemisette, which means or mean – whichever you like – that…”

  Hurriedly I explained, and then fell again into uproarious laughter. This time she joined me in my mirth. At length: “But, after all,” she said, “it doesn’t make it any better for me, because I’m all alone, while you’re a party.”

  “I admit it has been said that Unity is Strength,” said I, “but I don’t know that that exactly applies—”

  “And I can’t walk home like this, even with that on.” She indicated the chemise.

  “Certainly not with that on: it’d only make it more indec—”

  “More what?”

  “Er – unusual. Indeed, it would.”

  She regarded me suspiciously. Then: “What about you?”

  “Me? How d’you mean?” I said uneasily.

  “Well, couldn’t you slip back to the hotel somehow? Quite quietly, I mean, and—”

  “I could slip all right,” said I. “The short grass on the top of the cliffs would help me there. But, my dear girl, how on earth can I do anything quietly in this dress?”

  “Everybody will be—”

  “Just finishing lunch or sitting on the terrace. Thanks very much.”

  “There’s a back door.”

  “I never thought of that. Splendid! Leading to the kitchen, of course. They’d never notice me there. And I could just drop in at the office for the key of my room, and see if there were any letters on the way up, and – My dear girl, how can I? I admit I’ve a good deal of nerve, but there is a limit. I know one can do most things nowadays, but—”

  “But this is a special occasion.”

  “You seem to want to make it one.”

  “And it can’t be helped. This sort of modesty’s out of date.”

  “Not my date.”

  “Besides, everybody’d understand.”

  “I know they would. That’s just what I’m afraid of.”

  “Well, we must do something, and if you—”

  Suddenly there fell upon our ears the scrambling, clattering noise which invariably accompanies the descent of anybody rash enough to enter a Cornish cove with undue haste in leather-soled shoes. The Mermaid darted behind a rock, and I advanced gratefully up the foreshore to the fringe of stones. The noise grew louder, and the slips more frequent, until there was one long one, and then a thud. Up rose a fat oath. After a moment or two, there limped into sight – oh, blessed spectacle! – one of the hotel porters, conventionally hatless and coatless.

  “Ah!” said I.

  “The coastguard you sent hailed me, sir, across the fields yonder. Said something had happened – he didn’t know what – but he heard the word ‘hotel.’ You see, you shouting to him from here, and he being up on top, he couldn’t hear anything else rightly, so I came straight down.”

  “Why didn’t be come down himself when – er – when I shouted?”

  “He was taking a telegram to the post office sir. Said he told you so; but I suppose you didn’t hear.”

  Berry’s coastg
uard. Berry’s porter.

  I told him that my clothes had been washed away, and that the mermaid was in the same plight. I gave him implicit instructions and, with her assistance, the numbers of our respective rooms. He wrote it all down. He was to get some clothes for me himself, and enlist the services of a chambermaid for my companion.

  “Be as quick as you can,” I said, as he turned to go. “You’re sure you’ll know this cove again? They’re all rather alike.”

  “That’s all right, sir.”

  The next moment he was halfway up the path. If he had looked back, he would have beheld the singular and doubtless pleasing spectacle of the Mermaid and myself doing the real Argentine tango along the stretch of yellow sand.

  She did not see the blood on my hand for a minute or two. Then: “My dear lad, what have you done to your hand?”

  “Cut on the rocks,” I said laconically. “Nothing of any consequence, I assure you. I shall be able to proceed home.”

  “After attention. Let me look at it.”

  And so it came about that, when the boots returned, my left hand was bound up with a strip of chemise, and the bandage was tied with the pale pink ribbon that had lately lain upon the Mermaid’s shoulder.

  We received him delightedly. The Mermaid’s garments had been placed by the thoughtful chambermaid in a little dressing case. Mine were tied together with a piece of string, after the manner of costumes at Nathan’s. But they were all right.

  The girl started to dress behind a rock, and I told the fellow to wait at the foot of the path.

  “I have reason,” I said, “reason to believe that there are others even now in the same or self-same plight as that in which you found us. Therefore remain within call. Don’t investigate for yourself. This is my show. But don’t go.”

  He promised.

  Half an hour later he was once more on his way to the hotel with a note from me for Daphne’s maid, and the promise of half a sovereign, while the Mermaid and I stood at the top of the path which led down to the cove where the rest of my party were chafing in exasperated idleness – with the exception of Berry, that is. Prior to our arrival, he had been hovering about on the top of the cliff, but the instant he descried us, and while we were yet a great way off, he had retired precipitately, and was now busy rejoining the others with Agag’s walk and a profusion of embryo profanity. He explained afterwards that if he had been wearing his own bathing dress, instead of a green and red striped one – his own was being mended – he should have remained, but that he did not like to be seen wearing the colours of the Redruth Rangers before he had been elected.