Shadows of Flames Part 62

"_Grazie_," murmured Sophy. She was sorry that the poor, pa.s.see rose had been beheaded for her, but very kindly she fastened it in her belt.

Then, leaning on the low railing, she watched the fine rhythm of Cecil's arm, as it rose and fell, shearing the blue water. He was only a few yards from sh.o.r.e. He swam in a big semi-circle. Now he was returning.

She was glad he was coming back. It seemed to her that he had been long enough in the autumn-chilled water.... But now he seemed to have stopped swimming. Ah, he was treading water. She felt a little vexed with him for lingering--but then, she realised that this was to be his last free, vigorous pleasure for so long. Still, he really should be coming back.

She stood up and called him:

"Cecil!... Do come out!"

She could see his face plainly. All at once she gave a startled movement. He was answering her with grimaces ... frightful grimaces. She knew his sardonic ideas of "fun," but this struck her as unnatural ...

cruel.

"Don't ... don't...." she cried to him. "You frighten me.... Come back!"

The Padrone had approached again.

"_Il signore ama scherzare_" (The gentleman likes fun), he observed, smiling. Sophy did not hear him. Half frightened, half indignant, she was staring at the grimacing face. All this had pa.s.sed within a few seconds. Suddenly Cecil went under---- She held her breath.

"_Che Ercole!_" (What a Hercules!), observed the Padrone admiringly.

But she was holding her breath with the man under water. It seemed to her as though he would never come up again. Then she saw him. And still he made those odious grimaces. But now he called something. What was it?

Her heart checked. It seemed to her that he cried "Help!" and as he cried it, he went under the second time.

All at once the Padrone gave a howl of terror.

"_Ma! s'annega! s'annega!_" (He's drowning! He's drowning!), screamed the man.

In an instant the terrace swarmed with shouting people. Sophy rushed blindly for the sh.o.r.e. The crowd, still shouting, pressed after her. The water for yards out was horribly smooth. No object broke its surface.

"Help! Help!" Sophy cried, strangling. She looked for men to plunge at once into the Lake. Not one did so. A voice called: "A chair! Throw him a chair!" She dashed knee-deep into the water. Some one dragged her back. She was struggling with two cowards who dragged her back from that smooth, tranquil expanse under which Cecil was suffocating. A woman threw her arms around her, sobbing, "_Poverina! Poverina! E matta_...."

She fought wildly against the heaving, enveloping breast of this woman.

"Cowards!" she cried. The Italian word came to her, "_Vigliacchi!

Vigliacchi!_" she raged at them, beating the woman's heavy breast with her hands. The woman let her go, but a man caught her arms from behind.

In her struggles her long hair came loose and blew back into the man's face, blinding him. Still he grasped her stoutly, though his face was covered with her thick hair, and her frantic movements dragged him inch by inch towards the water that he dreaded. Now there was a chair floating on it ... a little yellow chair that bobbed drolly with the motion of the bright wavelets. And still people shouted, and ran to and fro along the edge of the water, like terriers wildly excited over a flung stick which they are afraid to plunge in and fetch. One or two had rushed off towards Ghiffa, still shouting and gesticulating. Boats had put out from the village. The men in the boats shouted and gesticulated also. When they reached the spot where Chesney had gone down, they leaned over, gazing into the water. They rowed back and forth, stopping every now and then to gaze into the water. Suddenly there rose a cry: "_L'e li! L'e li! Vardel!_" (There he is! See!) But no one went overboard. It seemed to Sophy that her heart would burst her bosom. She tried to find some terrible word that would rouse them to manhood. But even her voice failed her. It was like trying to cry out in a nightmare.

Only a hoa.r.s.e sound escaped her. Her eyes felt full of blood.

Then suddenly a figure came running, bounding. "_Dove? Dove?_" (Where?

Where?) it called as it pelted down the terrace steps.

It was Peppin, Amaldi's sailor, bare-armed and bare-legged, in blue singlet and canvas trousers rolled to the knee.

Sophy's haggard blood-shot eyes fixed on the half-naked sailor as though he had been G.o.d.

The little crowd on sh.o.r.e bristled with pointing arms. "Out there! Just there!" they called in unison.

Sophy tried to cry "Save him!" to Peppin, but her voice only croaked harshly in her throat.

He did not even hear her. He had thrown his whole seaman's consciousness ahead into that clear yet impenetrable water. Even as she tried to call to him, his body, flashing obedience to his thought, shot into the lake with the curved bound of a dolphin. The water leaped up about him as in applause. Here at last was a _man_.

"_Bravo, Marinaio! Bravo! Bravo!_" shrieked the craven throng.

Sophy stood still enough now. There was no need to hold her. She stood as though her soul had gone from her and entered the body of the sailor who was swimming strong and straight for the point where Cecil had gone down.

The Padrone, who had seemed paralysed until now, came as suddenly to life as Sophy had turned to stone.

"_Il dottore!_" he shouted imperiously. "_Vaa cercare il dottore!_"

Now Peppin had reached the spot about which the boats were gathered. He trod water with head bent low, peering intently into the blue depths.

The boats hung near. The boatmen shouted more than ever. They pointed downwards. "_L'e lit! L'e lit!_" they cried eagerly. All at once the sailor dived. It was as if he turned a somersault in the water. His bare, wet legs flashed up into the sunshine as he plunged.

Long seconds went by ... an eternity of minute-long seconds. Yet through this horror of blank pause, wherein time seemed suspended ... which might have been a day or an aeon ... Sophy stood waiting for Peppin to bring her husband back to her. She was sure that Peppin would not come back without him. The primordial woman in her had recognised primordial man in the stout sailor. The feminine at its limit waited on the completion of virility. What she could not do, Peppin was doing. So she waited while cycles seemed to pa.s.s. She had lost her sense of time.

A sudden roar went up--from the sh.o.r.e, from the waiting boats. The dark blob of Peppin's head had appeared above water. Then it was submerged again for an instant. But now the boats were closer--arms reached out.

He was caught--sustained by those eager arms--he and his burden.

Ah!--they were trying to lift what Peppin grasped into a boat--but that huge, flaccid body dragged the boatedge over--down--down to the very water. A ma.s.s of clutching hands grasped here, there. Now it was half over the edge--but the boat lay on her side. The great, naked body glistened white like a monstrous fish in the sunlight. Now ... now ...

all together!

There was another roar. Then the sailor also was hauled aboard.... The boat pulled for sh.o.r.e....

XLIII

They lifted him out and laid him on the warm beach. The crowd stood aside, respectful and expectant. All eyes turned to Sophy. They were waiting for the thrilling moment when the stone image would spring to life, shriek and cast itself upon her husband's body. There was a hush as in a theatre, just before the eagerly expected catastrophe breaks into a scream or dagger-stroke. But the moment failed of its zest.

Slowly, as though moving in its sleep, the tall figure went over to the drowned man, knelt down beside him, laid a white hand on the drenched, sunburnt chest. Then she looked dully up at Peppin, who stood by, honest pity on his rough face, the water that streamed from his clothes making a little patter on the hot pebbles.

"It doesn't beat," she said in English, not heeding that the man could not understand her. "What will you do now...?" she asked. And her eyes still gazed up at the sailor as though he had been G.o.d.

The woman with the heavy breast, that Sophy had struck in her frantic efforts to escape, began to sob. The little, yellow wooden chair still bobbed up and down in the sunlight as some current bore it away towards Ghiffa.

Peppin kneeled down, too. He put his square, dark hand, with its broken nails and tattooed wrist, beside the white one.

Then he sprang up and began fiercely talking and gesticulating to the others. He was telling them that they must help him try to revive the _Scior_. They shrank. It is not considered wise on Lago Maggiore to meddle with a drowned man before the civil authorities come on the scene. One may get involved in all sorts of unpleasantness. Peppin berated them roundly, with good work-a-day oaths. He, too, called them "_Vigliacchi_." But though most of his angry dialect was but gibberish to Sophy, certain words she understood. And these words acted on her like an elixir of life. The blood flashed into her white face. She sprang to her feet.

"I will help you! Show me!" she cried. "_Io_.... _Io_...." (I--I) she kept repeating, striking her breast sharply to show him what she meant.

She caught the sailor's hand in hers and drew him towards Chesney. She pointed to the drowned man, and then to herself and Peppin. In her broken Italian--stammering with eagerness--she urged the sailor to let her help revive her husband.

He understood, but he was at a loss. He knew that she could not a.s.sist in the violent measures that were necessary. The drowned man must first of all be made to disgorge the water that he had swallowed. This poor _Sciora_ could not help him. He stood bewildered while Sophy held his hand, pouring out her eager, broken words.... And as he stood there, at his wit's end, a new cry went up:

"_Il dottore! Il dottore!_"

The doctor, whose name was Morelli, had a way with him that Peppin thoroughly approved. He ordered the curious throng to keep back, in so sharp a tone of authority that he was actually obeyed. Then he spoke to Sophy, very gently, but in the same authoritative manner. He told her that she must leave him to take at once the necessary measures for reviving her husband.

"I implore you to return to the hotel, signora," he said earnestly. "It will not be well for you to remain here."

Sophy rose at once, but her eyes fastened on Peppin's face.

"Will _you_ stay with him, too?" she asked.