“Be quiet!” shouted Mr. May fiercely. “You unnerve me with all this snivelling!—and I won’t be unnerved! I’m going myself to the cove—I’ll soon clear up this business! I don’t believe anything has happened to Diana,—it’s a fine morning, and she’s probably enjoying a swim,—she can swim like a fish—you know she can!—she couldn’t drown!”
And with a half-suppressed oath he trotted out, all fuss and feathers, like an angry turkey-cock, his whole mentality arrayed against fate and circumstance, resolved to show that he was stronger than either.
By this time the ill news had spread, and the servants, the gardeners, and a few of the villagers went running down to the cove. It was true there had been a high tide that morning,—there was yet the glistening trail of the loftiest wave on the rocks where the freshly tossed seaweed clung. Safe out of all possible reach of the water, and neatly piled together on a ledge of rock, were Diana’s simple garments, as Grace had said,—with her hat, stockings and shoes and the unused bathing towel. A veteran sailor had joined the group of onlookers, and now, drawing his pipe from his mouth, he asked:
“What time did the leddy coom down ’ere?”
Mr. May had by now lost a little of his self-assertiveness and was feeling distinctly uncomfortable. He was not a man of sentiment; though he could often feign emotion successfully enough to deceive the very elect. But just now he was, as he would himself have said, “very much upset.” He knew that he ought to appear to his own servants and to the villagers like a fond father distracted with anxiety and suspense, and he was aware that his dumpy figure in tight white flannels did not “dress” the part. He replied curtly:
“She was here a little before six, I’m told——”
“Ah, poor thing, then she’s been carried out of her depth!” said the old “salt.” “There’s a main deal o’ suction with the sea in this ’ere cove when full tide cooms in——”
“She’s an excellent swimmer,” said Mr. May, gazing at the sea in a vaguely disappointed way, as though he thought each wave that swept slowly in ought to bring Diana riding triumphantly on top of it.
“Ay, ay!—that may be!—but swimmin’ winnot allers save a woman what’s light weight an’ ain’t got the muscles of a man. There’s a force o’ water ’ere sometimes as ’ud sweep a cart an’ ’oss off like a bit o’ straw! Ay, ay!—she’s gone for sure! an’ mebbe her poor body’ll never come nigh—leastways not ’ere,—it might, lower down the coast.”
Here Grace Laurie, who was with the other servants watching, began to cry bitterly.