Bless Pelleas. And I confess that I was not unwilling to rest. So the two went away again, and I believe that Pelleas did sleep; but Little Invalid and I, though we pretended to be asleep, sat with our heads turned away from each other, staring out to sea. I do not know how it may have been with her, but as for me I was happy out of all proportion to the encouragement of that noisy veranda. Perhaps it was the look of the sea line, pricked with sails, or the mere rough, indifferent touch of the salt wind.
Presently we all pretended to wake and talk a little; and then we saw Bessie and Henny coming back and at a sign from Pelleas we all shut our eyes again, though Pelleas appeared to awake very crossly and bade them go back and not disturb us unless they wanted to be great nuisances. So they ran back, and we laughed at them in secret, and Little Invalid sat happily holding the mysterious hourglass. And then a band began to play in the pavilion—a dreadful band I thought until I saw the ecstatic delight of Little Invalid, whereupon I discovered that there was a lilt in its clamour.
When the bathers went in we found a glass for her, and she spent a pleasant half hour watching the ropes. And twice more Bessie and Henny came back and both times we pretended to be asleep, and Pelleas awoke more testily each time and scolded them back. The second time he thrust something in their hands.
“Just pitch this in the ocean,” he said crossly, “or eat it up. It worries me.”
Secretly I looked from one eye and saw Nichola’s lunch disappearing.
When they came back at six o’clock we consented to be awake, for it was time for Pelleas and me to go home. They stood before us trying with pleasant awkwardness to make us know various things, and Little Invalid kept tightly hold of my fingers. When I bent to kiss her good-bye she pressed something in my hand, and it was the great coloured button-picture of Bessie.
“Keep it,” she said, “to remember us by. There ain’t nothink else fit to give you!”
Henny handed me to the carriage in an anguish of polite anxiety, and they all three waved their hands so long as we could see them. They were to stay two hours longer and finish that honeymoon.
As Pelleas and I drove up the long street, our backs to the sea, we turned for one look at the moving gold of it under the falling sun. We felt its breath in our faces for the last time—well, who knows? When one is seventy every time may be the last time, though indeed I should not have been surprised to find us both sea-bathing before the Summer was over.
Pelleas looked at me with troubled eyes.