CHAPTER XVI

As a matter of fact I didn’t win the diving-competition; I wasn’t even second; and my defeat was brought about simply by my own exceeding eagerness to show off.

On that Saturday the village was a holiday village. The men and boys perspired freely under heavy, ugly, Sunday clothes, and the women and girls were decked out in all kinds of finery――bright dresses, trinkets, ribbons, and cheap but brilliant hats. Why was it, I wondered, that all these fine garments should have been chosen apparently for a mysterious property they had of bringing out in the appearance of their wearers a coarseness I never noticed on ordinary occasions? Sam Geoghegan’s salmon-pink tie, Mr. McCann’s fancy waistcoat, the peacock-blue dress of Annie Breen, with its white lace collar――these were things positively bewildering, if one realized that they represented the actual taste of the persons they adorned.

Every year the same programme was followed. In the morning the water-races――boat-races and swimming-races――took place; in the afternoon there were sports――foot-races, tugs-of-war, wrestling――held in one of Mrs. Carroll’s fields.

I drifted about in the crowd with a group of boys. Our swimming-races came off fairly early, but I was only third in each, and George Edge second, for a youth, whom neither of us had ever seen or heard of before, turned up and carried off both first prizes. This made me anxious about the diving-competition, which he had also entered for. We were to go in off the end of the pier, where a platform with a spring-board had been erected for us. Then, when we had dived, we swam round to the ladder and climbed up to take our turn again. It was the last event but one of the morning’s programme, and had always been the most popular. When the hour for it came round, having learned in the meantime from some of the spectators that the victorious stranger was a poor diver, I had regained confidence, and, as the crowd drew in closer to watch us, I was fully prepared to show them what was what. As a matter of fact, my first two dives were all right, but, before my third and last, I caught sight of Katherine standing quite close to me, and the result of this was that I determined to excel anything ever seen. I took a tremendous race the full length of the platform, but, just at the end of the spring-board, my foot slipped and I sprawled in flat on my belly. The shock knocked all the wind out of me, and the smack I gave the water could have been heard half a mile away. It was extremely painful, and it put me out of the competition; yet when I clambered up the iron ladder I was greeted by volleys of laughter and humorous remarks. My accident, indeed, appeared to be by far the most enjoyable event of the morning. It did not seem to occur to anybody, except one of the stewards, that I might be badly hurt, and him, when he came to ask me if I were all right, I sent about his business. I put on my overcoat and went to the dressing-shed in a furious temper.

The field where the sports took place lay about a mile out of the village. Mrs. Carroll and some other ladies were dispensing refreshments to all comers, and afterwards the prizes would be given out. I went up to Derryaghy to call for Katherine and Gerald, to go with them, but found they were going to ride over, and were all ready to start when I arrived. It was the first time I had seen Katherine on horseback, and she looked to me more beautiful than ever. In her dark-blue riding-habit, with her sparkling eyes and rosy cheeks, her radiant youth and health, she made me think of the girl in the equestrian portrait by Millais and Landseer, a coloured reproduction of which I had cut out of a Christmas number and tacked up on the wall in my bedroom. And straightway I saw in myself the page-boy who stands by the gateway in that picture, his eyes fixed in rapt admiration upon his mistress. They rode away, an amazingly handsome pair, telling me they would see me later up at the field, and to this I answered, “Yes.” Mrs. Carroll and Miss Dick had already gone on in the carriage, so I was left quite alone. I decided immediately that I wouldn’t go to the sports: if they chose to leave me like this I wasn’t going to run after them. I mooned about, building a romance on the equestrian portrait _motif_. I imagined myself as dying; some accident had happened to me, and suddenly Katherine rode up and springing down from her horse threw her arms round me, kneeling in the blood and dust of the road. She kissed me passionately, careless of all the people who watched her, repeating again and again, “I love you――I love you――I love you.”

I gloated over this imaginary scene till I had squeezed the last drop of colour out of it, and it ceased, by dint of much repetition, to thrill me even faintly: then I went into the house and nosed about for a book. A dozen had just come down from the library in town, and, with a couple of volumes of “Two on a Tower” under my arm, I made my way to the shore.

Gradually, in the warmth of the sunlight, I grew drowsy, and the beautiful, breaking sea, and the harsh crying of the gulls, soothed me and seemed to build up an enchanted world about me, where I was shut in with the romance of the tale I was reading. By and by, after perhaps two hours, I closed my book, though still keeping my finger in the place. I reflected that nobody up at the field had spent such an afternoon as I had spent, and I compared my spiritual pleasure with their rough commonplace pleasures, and the extraordinary superiority of my soul became immediately apparent. Then my thoughts turned to the story I had been reading. My sympathies were entirely enlisted by Lady Constantine and her youthful astronomer, but particularly by Lady Constantine. Even the fact that she was so much older than her lover appealed to me. Her gentleness; her intense femininity; her dark eyes; the softness of her skin; the perfume of her hair; and the delight of her caresses――these were present to me vividly, almost physically, and I rejoiced in the love-scenes in the tower with a frank and innocent sensuality, filling in the picture, where it was blurred or vague, from my own imaginings.