Part 3 (1/2)

Hilary preferred it to be the other way about, for, though she did not really like either of them, she disliked the costume less than she disliked Rosalind.

”It's quite in the fas.h.i.+on,” Neville a.s.sured her, and Mrs. Hilary, remarking that she was sure of that, splashed her head and face and pushed off, mainly to escape from Rosalind, who always sat in the foam, not being, like the Hilary family, an active swimmer.

Already Pamela and Gilbert were far out, swimming steadily against each other, and Nan was tumbling and turning like an eel close behind them.

Neville and Mrs. Hilary swam out a little way.

”I shall now float on my back,” said Mrs. Hilary. ”You swim on and catch up with the rest.”

”You'll be all right?” Neville asked, lingering.

”Why shouldn't I be all right? I bathe nearly every day, you know, even if I am sixty-three.” This was not accurate; she only bathed as a rule when it was warm, and this seldom occurs on our island coasts.

Neville, saying, ”Don't stop in long, will you,” left her and swam out into the blue with her swift, over-hand stroke. Neville was the best swimmer in a swimming family. She clove the water like a torpedo destroyer, swift and untiring between the hot summer sun and the cool summer sea. She shouted to the others, caught them up, raced them and won, and then they began to duck each other. When the Hilary brothers and sisters were swimming or playing together, they were even as they had been twenty years ago.

Mrs. Hilary watched them, swimming slowly round, a few feet out of her depth. They seemed to have forgotten her and her birthday. The only one who was within speaking distance was Rosalind, wallowing with her big white limbs in tumbling waves on the sh.o.r.e; Rosalind, whom she disliked; Rosalind, who was more than her costume, which was not saying much; Rosalind, before whom she had to keep up an appearance of immense enjoyment because Rosalind was so malicious.

”You wonderful woman! I can't think how you _do_ it,” Rosalind was crying to her in her rich, ripe voice out of the splas.h.i.+ng waves. ”But fancy their all swimming out and leaving you to yourself. Why, you might get cramp and sink. _I'm_ no use, you know; I'm hopeless; can't keep up at all.”

”I shan't trouble you, thank you,” Mrs. Hilary called back, and her voice shook a little because she was getting chilled.

”Why, you're s.h.i.+vering,” Rosalind cried. ”Why don't you come out? You _are_ wonderful, I do admire you.... It's no use waiting for the others, they'll be ages.... I say, look at Neville; fancy her being forty-three.

I never knew such a family.... Come and sit in the waves with me, it's lovely and warm.”

”I prefer swimming,” said Mrs. Hilary, and she was s.h.i.+vering more now.

She never stayed in so long as this; she usually only plunged in and came out.

Grandmama, stopping on the esplanade in her donkey chair, was waving and beckoning to her. Grandmama knew she had been in too long, and that her rheumatism would be bad.

”_Come out, dear_,” Grandmama called, in her old thin voice. ”_Come out.

You've been in far too long._”

Mrs. Hilary only waved her hand to Grandmama. She was not going to come out, like an old woman, before the others did, the others, who had swum out and left her alone on her birthday bathe.

They were swimming back now, first all in a row, then one behind the other; Neville leading, with her arrowy drive, Gilbert and Pamela behind, so alike, with their pale, finely cut, intellectual faces, and their sharp chins cutting through the sea, and their quick, short, vigorous strokes, and Nan, still far out, swimming lazily on her back, the sun in her eyes.

Mrs. Hilary's heart stirred to see her swimming brood, so graceful and strong and swift and young. They possessed, surely, everything that was in the heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the water over the earth. And she, who was sixty-three, possessed nothing. She could not even swim with her children. They might have thought of that, and stayed with her.... Neville, anyhow. Jim would have, said Mrs. Hilary to herself, half knowing and half not knowing that she was lying.

”_Come out, dear!_” called Grandmama from the esplanade. ”_You'll be ill!_”

Back they came, Neville first. Neville, seeing from afar her mother's blue face, called ”Mother dear, how cold you are! You shouldn't have stayed in so long!”

”I was waiting,” Mrs. Hilary said, ”for you.”

”Oh why, dear?”

”Don't know. I thought I would.... It's pretty poor fun,” Mrs. Hilary added, having failed after trying not to, ”bathing all alone on one's birthday.”

Neville gave a little sigh, and gently propelled her mother to the sh.o.r.e.

She hadn't felt like this on _her_ birthday, when Kay and Gerda had gone off to some avocation of their own and left her in the garden. Many things she had felt on her birthday, but not this. It is an undoubted truth that people react quite differently to birthdays.