My awakening had come; and the whole thing had happened so suddenly that I do not know which of us was more surprised. All I do know is that the shame and consternation on her face at seeing me were so comic that, but for my anxiety to spare her blushes, I should have laughed outright. Small time, however, had I to laugh; small time had she to blush; for, in her dismay, she suddenly let go her hold of the edge of the boat, which, released from her weight, rolled over like a turning porpoise, as neatly tilting me out of the other side and into the water as if I had been a left crust shaken out of an up-gathered tablecloth by a housewife's hand.
That those who begin by playing the fool generally end by finding the fat in the fire is proverbial. In making free with other folk's property I had behaved not only like a fool, but like a mannerless schoolboy; and now, if the fat could not exactly be said to be in the fire, the fool was undoubtedly in the water. Fortunately for this particular fool he happened to be an expert swimmer, or my silly holiday escapade might have ended tragically for my fair capsizer as well as for myself. She, however, showed herself as what, in sporting parlance, is known as "a good pluck'd 'un."
A moment's hysterical screaming and frantic beating of the water may be passed by as no more than a concession to her sex, an acknowledgment of a woman's weakness, and can in no way be said to detract from the courage which she afterwards displayed. In the next instant she had grabbed me (somewhat painfully for me, I admit) by the hair, and manfully—if I may use that word of a woman—raising my head out of the water, had gasped agitatedly, "Can you swim?"
I do not deny that I behaved abominably. I was already as over head and eyes in love with this peerless Lady of the Lake as I had a moment ago been over head and ears in water; and to swim unromantically ashore, there perhaps to be handed over to the care of the local constable, with the prospect of being brought up before my fair capsizer's father (who was very possibly a magistrate) as a common trespasser, if not as a common thief, did not appeal to me as either romantic or as likely to further my suit. But to appear to owe my life to her, to be in a position to hail her as a heroine and as my preserver, and myself henceforth and for ever her grateful and adoring slave, who, even if he devoted all his remaining years to her service, could never hope to repay her for thus snatching him from a watery grave—to do this was to put myself in a very different light. Were I to admit that I could swim, she would, without the shadow of a doubt, haughtily point me in one direction, while she with equal haughtiness would swim away in the other. But to proclaim myself no swimmer, and consequently helpless, would constitute an appeal to her womanhood which she, being clearly an expert in the water, could not and would not refuse. To do so would at once establish a relationship between us more intimate than I could hope to attain in a twelvemonth spent or misspent in meeting her at her own home (even could I get invited there), or at the houses of mutual acquaintances, supposing such mutual acquaintances to exist. Frankly, I would have pawned my soul for another five minutes in her company. To speak the unpalatable truth meant that the five minutes would undoubtedly be denied me;—meant that she and I must part, never perhaps to meet again. To lie, meant not only making that coveted five minutes my own, but possibly meant more—immeasurably, infinitely more, than this. The thought of what that lie might mean, might win for me, turned my love-sick soul well-nigh delirious. It might mean (and to one man, at least, on earth Paradise seemed possible again) that a hand so soft, so delicate that I could have crushed a dozen such hands in my own huge grasp as easily as one crumples up a score of rose-leaves, yet so fateful for all its feebleness that, even as easily as one could crush the rose-leaves, so more easily could that tiny hand crush and kill the joy which was upspringing in my heart;—a hand so small that it could not span the half of my wrist, yet could hold the whole of my hopes and my heaven—a lie might mean that this tiny hand would for full five paradisiacal minutes be given into my care and keeping, while its owner should be my guardian angel, a wingless angel in a bathing dress, to guide me safely ashore!
Which was it to be—Truth or Falsehood?
"Speak the truth and you'll shame the Devil!" thundered Duty.
"Tell a falsehood, and you won't make a fool of yourself," whispered Desire.
Unhesitatingly I plumped for falsehood.
"I can't swim a stroke," I said.