Except for a postman she saw nobody as she left the flying buttresses of the south wall of the Cathedral behind her and crossed the silent and beautiful Close. She paused, as she had paused in years gone by, to admire the sixteenth-century houses near Kings Gate, and then she walked under the arches of the gate itself, with the Church of St Swithun athwart it, and turned down College Street towards the river.
She passed the College booksellers’ and the house in which Jane Austen died, and admired, on the other side of the road, the grass-plot and rambler roses of the outside wall of the Close. The beautiful little garden was denuded now of its railings, which had all gone for wartime scrap and had not been replaced, but it retained its ancient well, and its tall and brilliant flowers almost hid the stone wall from view.
At the bottom of the street a loose, broad path, a white-painted wicket gate and an avenue of limes led on to the open water-meadows through which ran the main stream of Itchen and those other clear chalk-streams, occasionally green with weed and in places deceptively deep, beside which she, Connie and Mrs Bradley had walked to St Cross on the first afternoon of their stay; and as she walked between streams in that fresh, cold, early morning air, and crossed a two-plank bridge above a six-foot pool, and lingered awhile to look southwards towards Saint Cross and then up at the grove of trees on Saint Catherine’s brow, it began to seem, she confessed to Crete and Connie when she returned, as though there might be something in the letter after all, and that the surprising thing might be, not the sight of the naiad, but the failure to be able to see her. The time, the place and the loved one could so easily be in confluence, she thought.
She added, in exalted mood, that, although no more willing to believe the writer of the letter than she had been when she was in London, she was now prepared to extend to him the freedom of poets’ licence, this for the excellent reason that Truth, as Tagore has said, in her dress of fiction moves with ease.
Crete, obviously bored with all these rhapsodies, went on with her embroidery and said nothing. Connie had not quite forgiven her aunt for the loss of the Andover outing, and would not encourage the conversation by taking part in it. In fact, to her aunt’s disappointment, she remained sulky, and was rather disagreeable.
The rest of the day passed calmly, but immediately after dinner Mr Tidson left his wife in the lounge with the guide book and some coffee, saw that Miss Carmody and Connie were playing two-handed whist, and went forth, rod in hand, at eight o’clock, ostensibly to try his luck at the evening rise of the trout, but really, he told the others, to lie in wait for his shyer quarry, the naiad.
At just after half-past ten he returned, wet through – in fact, soaked to the skin – and in high excitement. His wife, who was inclined to be cross with him for spoiling his suit and shoes, listened with more than her usual attentiveness. Miss Carmody, who had soon given up the whist and gone out to look at the Cathedral by moonlight, had just returned, but Connie, who had decided that the West Front was rather ugly, had left her aunt and gone off for an evening stroll.
Mr Tidson, stuttering a little, declared that he thought he might have caught a glimpse of the naiad. He had been as far as the St Cross water, and, observing that, so far as he could make out in the fading light, spinners were falling on the water, although he could not see what kind, he had tried the evening rise with a fisherman’s curse, but had had no luck at all.
Returning, he had walked to the plank bridge on which Miss Carmody, it transpired, had stood that very morning, and was aware of something glimmering. The stream bent, and as he leaned over the rail of the bridge to try to see round the bend, he lost his balance and fell into the swift-running water. Thence, garlanded with cresses and embellished by a scrased arm and hand (from the gravel at the bottom of the river), he had scrambled on to the bank, where, fortunately, he had left his rod and tackle. He believed himself to have suffered no ill effects except the inconvenience of having to squeeze the water out of his clothes and empty it out of his shoes, and he described, with some gusto, his return in waterlogged discomfort to the hotel.
‘Fortunately,’ he concluded, ‘no one saw me fall in, otherwise I should have felt extremely foolish. But I might very easily have been drowned. I am safe, so there is no need to worry. Unfortunately, if it was the naiad I saw, I am afraid I may have frightened her away.’
‘And a good thing, too!’ said Connie, who had appeared in the vestibule whilst he was talking, and had heard him with growing irritation. ‘For goodness’ sake! You and your naiad, Uncle Edris! I hope you’ve said goodnight to her, that’s all! If not, you had better go and do it!’
‘I shall not go out again this evening. I shall go first thing in the morning,’ said Mr Tidson. ‘To-night I should hardly descry her, but to-morrow I can look for any traces she leaves on the bank.’
‘The only things that leave traces on the bank are cows and rabbits,’ said Connie, with vulgar impatience. ‘You’d much better stay in bed. Don’t you think so, Aunt Prissie? Still, I’m getting up early myself. Do you want me to call you?’
Mr Tidson did get up early and go out. He went out at just before five and returned to an eight o’clock breakfast.
‘Ah, porridge!’ said he, in great good-humour. He certainly seemed none the worse for his ducking of the previous night.
‘And coffee! Splendid! Well, I saw nothing more of my naiad, and nothing of Connie, who very kindly knocked on my door, but, all the same—’
‘Bacon and fried potatoes to follow, sir,’ said the waitress, who was still taking a protective interest in him, an attitude to which he was accustomed. ‘Or scrambled egg on toast.’
‘Dried egg?’ demanded Mr Tidson.
‘Yes, sir, I am afraid so.’
‘Awful stuff,’ said Connie, who had just come in.
‘Excellent!’ said Mr Tidson. ‘I like these scientists’ tricks! Scrambled egg on toast by all means, my dear. Prissie,’ he added, as the waitress went away, ‘it was almost certainly the naiad. You must accompany me at some convenient time. I will point out to you where I saw her!’
He made a hearty breakfast, and, after it, he suggested that Crete might like to go with him to the Cathedral.
‘Whatever for?’ asked his wife, who kept her church-goings for Sundays and not always then.
‘They are doing Stanford in F, dear.’
‘Oh, well, if you really want to go, I suppose we could. I imagine one should see the Cathedral.’
‘Thank you, my dear. I really do want to go. I must not miss Stanford in F. An amusing key.’ He began a contented humming.
It was extraordinary, thought Miss Carmody, putting on a suitable hat and picking up her gloves, how often the meek little man had his own way, even with Crete, who was selfish and hard. Possibly Crete mothered him, she thought. He was, in some matters, very childish. He might also have a child’s capacity for lying, she decided, turning over in her mind his account of his evening’s adventure, and his reiteration that he had actually seen the naiad.
Mr Tidson skipped up the stairs as soon as breakfast was over, and came down with a sandal in his already gloved hand. He said the naiad had left it on the bank. Connie refused to touch it, and remarked that if he supposed that the muddy and battered object he was offering for commendation had ever been on any except a human foot – and a boy’s at that – he was an even sillier old man than she had supposed. She added that, supposing there might be such a pagan creature as a naiad, she would certainly not wear a leather sandal. To Miss Carmody’s consternation, she sounded both angry and frightened, and continued, after all necessity to do so was over, to scold her uncle pettishly.