A little cold wind rose from the centre of the lake and blew upon them, and the stars went misty suddenly and dim, and it was that hour of night when all is silent and stilclass="underline" no movement of bird or beast, no whisper in the reeds, and nothing sounding but the breaking of the sea upon the shingle.
"Do you think," she said, "that La Mouette is waiting for you, out there, on the sea, and that you will find her in the morning?"
"Yes," he said.
"And you will climb aboard and be master of her again, and hold the wheel in your hand, and feel the deck under your feet?"
"Yes," he said.
"And William," she said, "William who does not like the sea, he will be ill and wish himself back at Navron again."
"No," he said, "William will feel the salt on his lips, and the wind in his hair, and before night-fall perhaps, if the breeze is steady, he will look upon the land again, and smell the warm grass on the headland, and it will mean Brittany and home."
She lay on her back as he did, with her hands behind her head, and now there was a change in the sky, a pallor of false dawn, and the little wind blew stronger than before.
"I wonder," he said, "when it was that the world first went amiss, and men forgot how to live and to love and to be happy. For once, my Dona, there was a lake like this one in the life of every man."
"Perhaps there was a woman," she said, "and the woman told her man to build a house of reeds, and after that a house of wood, and after that a house of stone, and there came other men and other women, and soon there were no more hills and no more lakes, nothing but little round stone houses all alike."
"And you and I," he said, "we have our lake and our hills, for this night only, and we have only three hours now to sunrise."
It seemed to them, when the day came, that there was a whiteness and a cold clarity about it that they had never known before. The sky was hard and bright, and the lake lay at their feet like a sheet of silver. They got up from the spit of sand, and he bathed in the chill water, which was cold like the frozen water of the north. Presently the birds began to murmur and whisper in the woods, and he left the lake and dressed, and walked out onto the shingle beach where the tide was high, and a ridge of foam lapped against the stones. A hundred yards away from the beach a little fishing boat rocked at anchor, and when William saw the figures on the beach he drew out the long paddles and pulled towards them.
They stood there together on the beach, waiting for the boat, and suddenly on the far horizon Dona saw the white topsail of a ship, and the ship was drawing in towards the land. And the ship took shape and form, and she had raking crimson masts, and her sails were full.
La Mouette was returning for her master, and as he climbed into the waiting fishing boat, and hoisted the little sail on the single mast, it seemed to Dona that this moment was part of another moment, long ago, when she had stood upon a headland and looked out across the sea. The ship drifted on the horizon like a symbol of escape, and there was something strange about her in the morning light, as though she had no part in the breaking of the day, but belonged to another age and to another world.
She seemed a painted ship upon the still white sea, and Dona shivered suddenly, for the shingle felt cold and chill on her bare feet, while a little wave splashed upon them, and sighed, and was no more. Then out of the sea, like a ball of fire, the sun came hard and red.
The End
About the Author
DAPHNE DU MAURIER (May 13, 1907-), English novelist was born in London. She is the granddaughter of the artist and novelist George Du Maurier, author of'Trilby and Peter Ibbetson, and the daughter of Gerald Du Maurier, the noted actor, and of Muriel (Beaumont) Du Maurier. She writes: "I was brought up and educated at home, with my two sisters, and had six months in Paris when I was eighteen. I read extensively in French and English, and started composing poems and writing short stories during adolescence."
"My earliest literary influences were Katherine Mansfield, Mary Webb, and, curiously enough, Guy de Maupassant. Nowadays I care little for contemporary literature, but read for choice Jane Austen, Anthony Trollope, Robert Louis Stevenson, etc."
"My hobbies are anything to do with the country — walking, gardening, bird-watching, sailing. My dislikes are town life, entertainments, parties, and large social gatherings. I have no feeling for any political party, but am convinced that human selfishness is the root of all the trouble in the world, and that no lasting contribution can be made towards universal peace unless every living man and woman stops thinking and working for personal success and profit. I am certain it is possible to live to a high standard and be happy and make other people happy, without adopting a censorious and preaching attitude to the rest of humanity. I believe in the principles of Moral Re-Armament, but am definitely not a member of the Oxford Group."
Besides her novels, Miss Du Maurier is the author of two charming books on her own family — Gerald, a study of her father, and The Du Manners, which goes back three generations and is a delightful genre picture and has historical as well as literary interest.
— from Twentieth Century Authors, The H. W. Wilson Company