Soon they were sitting side by side, looking down into the water. The clouds of steam rising round them seemed to shut off the outside world. Eustace looked admiringly at Hilda’s long slim legs.

‘I didn’t fill the bath any fuller,’ he said, in a low voice, ‘because of the marks. It might be dangerous, you know.’

Hilda looked at the bluish chips in the enamel, which spattered the sides of the bath. Eustace’s superstitions about them, and his fears of submerging them, were well known to her.

‘They won’t let you do that at school,’ she said.

‘Oh, there won’t be any marks at school. A new system of plumbing and sanitarization was installed last year. The prospectus said so. That would mean new baths, of course. New baths don’t have marks. Your school may be the same, only the prospectus didn’t say so. I expect baths don’t matter so much for girls.’

‘Why not?’

‘They’re cleaner, anyway. Besides, they wash.’ Eustace thought of washing and having a bath as two quite different, almost unconnected things. ‘And I don’t suppose they’ll let us put our feet in mustard and water.’

‘Why not?’ repeated Hilda.

‘Oh, to harden us, you know. Boys have to be hard. If they did, it would be for a punishment, not fun like this. . . . Just put your toe in, Hilda.’

Hilda flicked the water with her toe, far enough to start a ripple, and then withdrew it.

‘It’s still a bit hot. Let’s wait a minute.’

‘Yes,’ said Eustace. ‘It would spoil everything if we turned on the cold water.’

They sat for a moment in silence. Eustace examined Hilda’s toes. They were really as pretty as fingers. His own were stunted and shapeless, meant to be decently covered.

‘Now, both together!’ he cried.

In went their feet. The concerted splash was magnificent, but the agony was almost unbearable.

‘Put your arm round me, Hilda!’

‘Then you put yours round me, Eustace!’

As they clung together their feet turned scarlet, and the red dye ran up far above the water-level almost to their knees. But they did not move, and slowly the pain began to turn into another feeling, a smart still, but wholly blissful.

‘Isn’t it wonderful?’ cried Eustace. ‘I could never have felt it without you!’

Hilda said nothing, and soon they were swishing their feet to and fro in the cooling water. The supreme moment of trial and triumph had gone by; other thoughts, not connected with their ordeal, began to slide into Eustace’s mind.

‘Were you in time to do it?’ he asked.

‘Do what?’

‘Well, what you were going to do when you left me on the sands.’

‘Oh, that,’ said Hilda indifferently. ‘Yes, I was just in time.’ She thought a moment, and added: ‘But don’t ask me what it was, because I shan’t ever tell you.’

TWO FOR THE RIVER

TWO FOR THE RIVER

Mid-August was a dull time in my garden—the drought had seen to that. Flowers there were, but even the hardiest were only half their normal size; the Japanese anemones looked like shillings, not half-crowns. Because the garden lay beside the river, and sometimes, in wet seasons, under it, people thought the subsoil must be moist, but it was not; the rain ran off the steep slope without sinking in, the river drained the ground without irrigating it.

But the river-banks had just been in full glory, two interminable winding borders on which grew willow-weed and loosestrife, the lilac clusters of hemp agrimony, deep yellow ragwort, lemon-yellow chick-weed, the peeping purple of the woody nightshade, the orange drops of the ranunculus, the youthful, tender teazle-cones of palest pink contrasting with their hard, brown, dried-up predecessors of the year before—and, a newcomer to the district but very much at home, the tall white balsam. Did the other flowers realize their danger from this rampant stranger with its innocent baby-face? Did they foresee the day when it, and only it, would occupy their standing room, making a close-set jungle through which a man could hardly force his way—while the plants, if it was their shooting season, popped off their pods at him? Nor would the invasion stop at the river-bank; it would follow up its conquest through the meadows. And how would the fishermen fare, who even now had to hack out from the massed vegetation steps and nests for themselves on competition days? Only the water-lilies would be safe, and the armies of reeds and rushes—the sword-shaped ones of yellow-green, the round pike-shafts of bluish-green, tufted with pennons—for they would have the water to protect them.

On the garden and river-bank alike autumn had already laid its spoiling finger, bringing languor and disarray to the luxuriance of summer, making it flop and sprawl. To this the river itself bore witness, for on its grey-green surface floated the earliest victims of the year’s decline, yellow willow leaves tip-tilted like gondolas, that twirled and sported in the breeze, until the greedy water sucked them under.

But the flowers grew farther upstream. On my stretch of the river there were none; trees overhung it on both sides, on mine a copper beech, a mountain ash, a square-cut bay-tree, a silver birch, a box elder, and in the corner by the boathouse, threatening its foundations, a dome-capped sycamore. A low stone wall divided the river from the garden, which was narrow for its length and sloping steeply to the lawn; and from the outward-curving terrace in front of the house you could see the river, a mirror broken here and there by tree-trunks, and darkened by the reflections of the trees on the farther bank; or maybe by the image of a cow, suspended in mid-water upside-down, the shadowy feet seeming almost to touch the real feet. Sometimes these reflections were clearer than the things reflected, so little current was there in the summer, or breeze to ruffle them. But faithful likenesses though they were, they had no colour, except a darker shade of olive-green. The river imposed its own colour on everything it looked at, even the sky.

‘Shall I bathe?’ I thought. Flanking the boathouse was a flight of steps, ending in a large square flagstone, only a few inches above the water level. Ideal for a dive! And the water was deep almost at once, twenty feet deep, some said; I hadn’t plumbed it. It did invite me. I laid aside my pen, for I was writing in the open air, a thing I seldom do—the open air has so many distractions, so many claims on one’s attention: the river itself, for instance! But no, it was too late to bathe: the August sun hung over Follet Down, and my circulation wasn’t what it used to be. Tomorrow at midday, perhaps . . .

As I was taking up my pen again, with the dull, cold sense of self-congratulation that an unwilling act of prudence sometimes brings, I saw a ripple spreading on the river, convex at first, then slightly concave. It was the swans, angry as usual. What trouble those odious birds had given me! He, the cob, was much the worse of the two; she was a nasty creature, with a supercilious, inquisitive expression, but she only aided and abetted him. He was a demon. An inveterate oarsman with a large experience of swans, I had often thought that this one was possessed: Jupiter in disguise perhaps, or not even in disguise. He seemed to think I had designs on her. A Leda-complex! I shouldn’t have thought of bathing if I’d known he was about, for he had a bad record with bathers. And with boaters a worse one; but I was his favourite target. He had only to see me in my skiff to go for me. It was a slender craft, hard to trim and easily upset: if I had had hair enough to matter I should have parted it in the middle. His methods of attack varied from infighting, when he would try to get his wing under the boat, to dive-bombing tactics. These were still more alarming. Spying me from afar he would come after me, skimming over the water and then, when I was bracing myself to take the impact of this living rocket, subside behind me in a smother of foam. The four-barred iron seat in the stern defended me: he dared not risk collision with it. But he had found a way round it, and now his system was to by-pass the stern and try to land on one of the sculls. So far he had missed his mark, but if he hit it . . .