CHAPTER XXII
BETWEEN DIANA AND DACIER: THE WIND EAST OVER BLEAK LAND
On the third day of the Easter recess Percy Dacier landed from the Havre
steamer at Caen and drove straightway for the sandy coast, past fields of
colza to brine-blown meadows of coarse grass, and then to the low dunes
and long stretching sands of the ebb in semicircle: a desolate place at
that season; with a dwarf fishing-village by the shore; an East wind
driving landward in streamers every object that had a scrap to fly. He
made head to the inn, where the first person he encountered in the
passage was Diana's maid Danvers, who relaxed from the dramatic
exaggeration of her surprise at the sight of a real English gentleman in
these woebegone regions, to inform him that her mistress might be found
walking somewhere along the sea-shore, and had her dog to protect her. They were to stay here a whole week, Danvers added, for a conveyance of her private sentiments. Second thoughts however whispered to her shrewdness that his arrival could only be by appointment. She had been anticipating something of the sort for some time.
Dacier butted against the stringing wind, that kept him at a rocking
incline to his left for a mile. He then discerned in what had seemed a
dredger's dot on the sands, a lady's figure, unmistakably she, without
the corroborating testimony of Leander paw-deep in the low-tide water. She was out at a distance on the ebb-sands, hurtled, gyred, beaten to all shapes, in rolls, twists, volumes, like a blown banner-flag, by the pressing wind. A kerchief tied her bonnet under her chin. Bonnet and breast-ribands rattled rapidly as drummer-sticks. She stood near the little running ripple of the flat sea-water, as it hurried from a long streaked back to a tiny imitation of spray. When she turned to the shore she saw him advancing, but did not recognize; when they met she merely looked with wide parted lips. This was no appointment.
'I had to see you,' Dacier said.
She coloured to a deeper red than the rose-conjuring wind had whipped in
her cheeks. Her quick intuition of the reason of his coming barred a
mental evasion, and she had no thought of asking either him or herself
what special urgency had brought him.
'I have been here four days.'
'Lady Esquart spoke of the place.'
'Lady Esquart should not have betrayed me.'
'She did it inadvertently, without an idea of my profiting by it.'
Diana indicated the scene in a glance. 'Dreary country, do you think?'
'Anywhere!'—said he.
They walked up the sand-heap. The roaring Easter with its shrieks and
whistles at her ribands was not favourable to speech. His 'Anywhere!' had
a penetrating significance, the fuller for the break that left it vague.
Speech between them was commanded; he could not be suffered to remain. She descended upon a sheltered pathway running along a ditch, the border of pastures where cattle cropped, raised heads, and resumed their one comforting occupation.
Diana gazed on them, smarting from the buffets of the wind she had met.
'No play of their tails to-day'; she said, as she slackened her steps. 'You left Lady Esquart well?'
'Lady Esquart . . . I think was well. I had to see you. I thought you
would be with her in Berkshire. She told me of a little sea-side place
close to Caen.'
'You had to see me?'
'I miss you now if it's a day!'
'I heard a story in London . . .'
'In London there are many stories. I heard one. Is there a foundation for
it?'
'No.'
He breathed relieved. 'I wanted to see you once before . . . if it was
true. It would have made a change in my life-a gap.'
'You do me the honour to like my Sunday evenings?'
'Beyond everything London can offer.'
'A letter would have reached me.'
'I should have had to wait for the answer. There is no truth in it?'
Her choice was to treat the direct assailant frankly or imperil her
defence by the ordinary feminine evolutions, which might be taken for
inviting: poor pranks always.
'There have been overtures,' she said.