She climbed scratched and dripping up the farther bank and continued her way. It was a few minutes later that two alarming thoughts struck her almost simultaneously. The first thought was that she must have lost her way, since she had reached the second stream, which was broader and overgrown with brambles, but found no bridge, and was now following a path going uphill parallel to the stream. The second thought was that she had left the suitcase behind in the White Lion. At this second thought Dora gave a wail of despair. It was bad enough to have missed lunch. This second imbecility would make Paul cross for days, even provided the suitcase had not meanwhile been stolen. She turned about, meaning to run back to the village and try to get it at once. But she felt so hot and so tired and so hungry, and it was such a long way and there were so many nettles suddenly all around and anyway she was lost. I am a perfect idiot, thought Dora.
At that moment she heard a rustling of leaves from further down the path, in the direction from which she had come, and a figure emerged from the wood, parting the tangled greenery in front of him. It was Michael Meade.
He seemed surprised to see Dora there and came towards her with a smiling questioning look.
“Oh, Mr Meade,” said Dora, “I think I’m lost.” She felt shy at finding herself alone with the leader of the community.
“I saw the colour of your dress through the trees,”said Michael, “and I couldn’t think what it was. I thought at first it was one of Peter’s rare birds! Yes, if you’re making for the house, you’ve come up the wrong path. I was just visiting the watercress beds. We grow cress on a section of the other stream. It’s out of season now, of course, but one has to keep it cleared out. It’s pretty up here, isn’t it?”
“Oh, lovely,” said Dora, and then to her dismay found that she was starting to cry. She felt a little faint from hunger and the intense heat, more breathless than ever under the canopy of the wood.
“You’re feeling the heat, you know,” said Michael.“Sit down here for a moment on this tree trunk. Put your head well forward, that’s right. You’ll feel better in a moment.” His hand touched her neck.
“It’s not that,” said Dora. Finding she had no handkerchief she wiped her eyes with the hem of her dress, and then rubbed her face with the back of a muddy and perspiring hand. “I went to fetch the suitcase, you know, the one I left on the train, and I got it, and now I’ve left it behind again in the White Lion!”Her voice ended in a wail.
Michael looked at her for a moment. Then he began to laugh too, rather ruefully.
“I’m so sorry,” said Michael, “but it did sound comic, the way you said it! Cheer up, there’s no tragedy. I have to go to the village this evening in the Land-Rover and I’ll fetch it back then. It’ll be quite safe at the White Lion. Did you have any lunch, by the way? We were wondering about you.”
“Well, no,” said Dora. “I had a drink. But they hadn’t got any sandwiches.”
“Let’s go straight back to the house,” said Michael,“and Mrs Mark will find you something to eat. Then you ought to lie down. You’ve given yourself a strenuous morning. We’ll go this way, up the hill, and cross by the stepping stones. It’s just as quick from here and rather cooler. Up you get and follow me. I won’t go fast.”
He helped Dora to her feet. She smiled at him, pushed the damp hair back from her brow, feeling a little better now, and followed him as he set off along the path. She felt no more anxiety about the suitcase, as if everything had been made simple and settled by Michael’s laughter. She was grateful to him for that. Last night he had seemed just a thin pale man, over-tired and inattentive. But today she saw him as a decisive and gentle person, and even his narrow face seemed browner and his hair more golden. With eyes so close together he would always look anxious, but how blue the eyes were after all.
So for a minute or two Dora followed Michael along the path, feeling calm again, looking at her guide’s sunburnt and bony neck, revealed above the sagging collar of a rather dirty white shirt. Then she saw that he had stopped abruptly and was staring at something ahead. Without saying anything Dora came quietly up to him to see what it was that had made him stop. She looked over his shoulder.
There was a little clearing in the wood, and the stream had made itself a pool, with mossy rocks and close grass at the edge. In the centre it seemed deep and the water was a cool dark brown. Dora looked, and did not at first see anything except the circle of water and the moving chequers of the foliage behind, unevenly penetrated by the sun. Then she saw a pale figure standing quite still on the far side of the pool. It took her another moment, after the first shock of surprise, to see who it was. It was Toby, dressed in a sun hat and holding a long stick, which he had thrust into the water and with which he was stirring up the mud from the bottom. Dora saw at once, saw sooner than her recognition, that except for his sun hat Toby was quite naked. His very pale and slim body was caressed by the sun and shadow as the willow tree under which he stood shifted slightly in the breeze. He bent over his stick, intent upon the water, not knowing he was observed, and looked in the moment like one to whom nakedness is customary, moving with a lanky bony slightly awkward grace. The sight of him filled Dora with an immediate tremor of delight, and a memory came back to her from her Italian journey, the young David of Donatello, casual, powerful, superbly naked, and charmingly immature.
If Dora had been alone she would have called out at once to Toby, so little was she embarrassed and so much amused and pleased by what she saw. But the proximity of Michael, which she had for a moment forgotten, made her pause, and turning to him she had a sense of embarrassment, not so much because of his presence as on his behalf, since he would perhaps imagine some embarrassment in her. Michael’s face, as she now saw, was indeed troubled as he still looked upon the boy. Then he turned quietly about, and touching Dora’s arm led her noiselessly back along the path by which they had come. Toby was not disturbed. All this seemed to Dora to show a foolish delicacy, but she followed, stepping softly.
When they had gone a little way Michael said, “We gave him the afternoon off. I was wondering where he had got to. I thought we’d better leave him to have his swim in peace. We’ll go back the other way.”
“Yes, of course,” said Dora. She looked boldly now at Michael, feeling a complicity between them because of the pastoral vision which they had enjoyed together. Michael seemed to her all at once to have become delightfully shy. She remembered the touch of his hand upon her neck. Their strange experience had created between them a tremulous beam of physical desire which had not been present before. This secret homage was tender and welcome to Dora, and as they descended the path together she smiled to herself over her theory, apprehending in her companion a new consciousness of herself as incarnate, a potentially desirable, potentially naked woman, very close beside him in the warmth of the afternoon.
CHAPTER 6
MICHAEL MEADE was awakened by a strange hollow booming sound which seemed to come from the direction of the lake. He lay rigid for a moment listening anxiously to the silence which had succeeded the sound, and then got out of bed and went to the open window. His room faced the Abbey. It was a bright moonlit night and he could see as he looked out, intent and nervous, the great expanse of the lake, and the Abbey wall opposite to “him, clearly revealed in the blazing splendour of the moon which was well risen above the market garden. Everything looked familiar and at the same time rather eerie. He looked further along, his eyes following the wall towards the place where it ended and the Abbey grounds stretched unwalled to the edge of the water, descending to a wide pebbly strand. Here to his surprise Michael saw with extreme clarity that a number of figures were gathered. Several nuns were standing close beside the lake. He could see their black shapeless habits swaying as they moved and the sharp outline of the blue shadows which the moon cast behind them, and by some trick of the light they seemed strangely near. They were leaning down now over something which they were drawing slowly out of the water. It was something large and heavy at which several of them were awkwardly grasping and pulling. He thought he could hear the thing grating upon the pebbles. Then he realized with a thrill of terror that the long limp object which they were pulling out onto the shore was a human body. They were taking a corpse out of the lake. Michael stood chilled and paralysed, not knowing what to do, and wondering what strange disaster it was of which he was witnessing the final scene. Who was the drowned person whose form lay now quite still upon the farther shore? The fantastic thought came to him suddenly that it was someone whom the nuns themselves had murdered. The scene was so unutterably sinister and uncanny that a suffocating fear came upon him and he pulled desperately at the neck of his pyjamas while trying in vain to utter a cry of alarm.