‘Well, I’m dashed!’ she said, at sight of the naked Laura. ‘Here, Dog, wait for me!’ In a wriggle, a squirm and a couple of heaving thrusts she was out of her clothes, and two seconds later she had entered the six-foot pool, an arrow of thin, pale light, like a willow wand newly-peeled or the sound of a silver trumpet.
Mrs Bradley sighed, and, as though in echo of her nostalgia, from far away on the other side of the meadows a cow lowed, only once, and sadly, and she thought of the Border ballads, and Apuleius’ Eros and Psyche, and Hans Anderson’s little mermaid, and Frederick Ashton’s Leda and the Swan.
The risen sun flung gold upon the shallows of the water, but the deep pool kept its shadow and greenish gloom. Larks ascended. The sky began to deepen and grow nearer. It was by this time intensely blue, and gave promise of the finest day of the summer. A breeze, very soon to die away and give place to intense and vital warmth, began to stir among the leaves of the willows, and the world was again composed of water, the air and the sun, as it had been at the time of Creation.
Mrs Bradley cheered up. The nymphs emerged, and shared Laura’s towel beneath a pollarded willow, and then they trotted fast – Mrs Bradley retained an old-fashioned faith in the benefits of blood-stirring exercise after bathing – in the direction of the road bridge a couple of hundred yards off. They crossed the bridge and Mrs Bradley, who had been walking rapidly behind them, found them leaning over the second bridge, east of the first, and watching the water dividing itself between a tiny lock, and a culvert on the opposite side of the road.
She joined them for the next ten minutes, for rushing water has the fascination of its own apparent endlessness, and then the three walked on together. They turned alongside the railway path below Saint Catherine’s Hill, and soon reached the spot where Alice had seen the boy lying on his face on the concrete below the weir. Laura and Alice poked about, and Mrs Bradley, seated on her waterproof coat on the brickwork, watched them with benign indifference until Laura, who had gone down stream a little, came running back.
‘I think I’ve found the raft!’ she said. ‘Come and see! Those kids could identify it, couldn’t they?’
Chapter Twelve
‘More and more each year does nymph fishing become a part of the modern angler’s equipment, and he who does not possess the art is gravely handicapped.’
J. W. HILLS (A Summer on the Test)
‘IT IS curious and instructive,’ said Mrs Bradley, regarding Mr Tidson benignly, ‘how loth I was to believe you when you said you had seen the naiad.’
‘I don’t know that I ever went so far as to say that I had actually seen her,’ Mr Tidson replied, regarding her with a cautious, propitiatory smile. ‘Ah, thank you, my dear.’ He turned with some relief to the waitress who had brought him, at his request, a box of matches.
‘Ah, then I must claim to be further on in my researches than you are with yours,’ said Mrs Bradley. She continued to look at him thoughtfully and with the kindliness of a gourmet giving eye to a dish which presently he knows he will devour. Her manner appeared to disconcert Mr Tidson, for he pulled the matchbox open so suddenly and clumsily that half the contents were spilt on to the cloth.
‘I don’t understand you,’ he said feebly. ‘You are not trying to tell me—?’
‘Oh, but I am,’ said Mrs Bradley earnestly. ‘That is just what I am trying to tell you. I saw the water-nymph, and not longer ago than this morning. At least, to be accurate—’
‘Ah!’ said Mr Tidson, giving up rescuing his matches and bestowing on her a look in which artfulness, innocence and triumph were nicely blended. ‘You propose to be accurate? I see.’ His manner was less offensive than his words.
‘Yes. I saw the naiad when she was pointed out to me,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘I was not the first to see her.’
‘You really mean—But what did she look like?’ There was no doubt that he was badly startled at last.
‘Oh,’ replied Mrs Bradley, waving a yellow claw, ‘she looked exactly like the poem, you know. Sabrina fair, the green, pellucid wave, and all the rest of it.’
Mr Tidson spilt the rest of his matches, deliberately this time, and began to make patterns with them, moving them about on the cloth.
‘I don’t quite follow you,’ he said. ‘Are you telling me you actually saw her?’
‘You mean you don’t believe me,’ said Mrs Bradley serenely. ‘Perhaps you don’t think me the kind of person to whom a naiad would think it worth while to appear?’
‘I – I don’t think so at all,’ said Mr Tidson, frowning in concentration upon the matches. ‘I can’t understand, as I say, but, then, one doesn’t pretend to understand miracles. I – Where did you say you saw her?’
‘Come with me whenever you like, and I will show you the exact spot. You must often have passed it, I am sure.’
She rose from her table, and, followed by the enquiring gaze of those guests who had been fortunate enough to overhear the conversation, she went out of the dining-room followed by Mr Tidson. Crete had not come in to dinner. She had pleaded a headache. Miss Carmody, who owned to considerable anxiety on Connie’s behalf, had caught the mid-morning train to Waterloo and had not yet come back to the Domus, and Alice, who had now joined forces openly with Laura and Kitty, had, in their company, left the dining-room some ten minutes before Mrs Bradley’s conversation with Mr Tidson. The two of them were therefore alone.
‘Would you like coffee?’ Mr Tidson enquired. ‘Perhaps we’d better have it in the lounge.’
‘I should like coffee very much,’ Mrs Bradley replied, ‘and I should also like some brandy. I wonder what Thomas can do? We had better find out. What about this walk? Would to-night be the best time? Perhaps not. The naiad might be resting. What do you think?’
‘Not brandy for me,’ said Mr Tidson. ‘And I think, on the whole, that coffee so near my bedtime would not be the wisest thing. Some other time, perhaps. And the naiad—? Perhaps to-morrow – I don’t think to-night. No, I really do not think to-night!’
He rose, and almost fled from her presence. Mrs Bradley ordered coffee and brandy, and when Thomas brought the tray she looked up to see Miss Carmody come into the room.
‘You will be in time for dinner, I think, if you go straight in,’ said Mrs Bradley. Miss Carmody shook her head and dropped wearily into a chair. The weariness was exaggerated, Mrs Bradley thought, but, without doubt, Miss Carmody showed signs of pessimism.
‘I don’t want any dinner. Connie has gone for good!’ Miss Carmody said tragically. ‘I’ve looked in at my flat. I’ve looked everywhere! I’ve questioned or rung up her friends. She was always a thoughtless, selfish girl, but I really can’t understand her going off like this without a word. I am worried and displeased. I feel very tired after my long, fruitless day. I shall go to bed. I think she must have caught a touch of the sun. Nothing else would excuse her!’
‘Are you still determined not to consult the police?’
‘Oh, she can’t be in any danger, wherever she is. But I will still think that over. It is not a step that one takes lightly. There is something degrading in going to the police to find one’s relatives. I do not like the idea of it at all.’
Mrs Bradley agreed that it was not a very pleasant idea, and again suggested that Miss Carmody would be much better off if she dined. Miss Carmody allowed herself to be persuaded of this, and went off to the dining-room. Mrs Bradley was about to go to her bedroom when Thomas came into the lounge to say that she was wanted on the telephone.