When she reached them they had disentangled Gerda and the bicycle, and Barry held Gerda in his arms. She was unconscious, and a cut in her head was bleeding, darkening her yellow hair, trickling over her colourless face. Her right leg and her left arm lay stiff and oddly twisted.
Barry, his face drawn and tense, said “We must get her up to the path before she comes to, if possible. It’ll hurt like hell if she’s conscious.”
They had all learnt how to help their fellow creatures in distress, and how you must bind broken limbs to splints before you move their owner so much as a yard. The only splint available for Gerda’s right leg was her left, and they bound it tightly to this with three handkerchiefs, then tied her left arm to her side with Nan’s stockings, and used the fourth handkerchief (which was Gerda’s, and the cleanest) for her head. She came to before the arm was finished, roused to pained consciousness by the splinting process, and lay with clenched teeth and wet forehead, breathing sharply but making no other sound.
Then Barry lifted her in his arms and the others supported her on either side, and they climbed slowly and gently up to the path, not by the sheer way of their descent but by a diagonal track that joined the path further down.
“I’m sorry, darling,” Barry said through his teeth when he jolted her. “I’m frightfully sorry. … Only a little more now.”
They reached the path and Barry laid her down on the grass by its side, her head supported on Nan’s knee.
“Very bad, isn’t it?” said Barry gently, bending over her.
She smiled up at him, with twisted lips.
“Not so bad, really.”
“You little sportsman,” said Barry, softly and stooping, he kissed her pale cheek.
Then he stood up and spoke to Nan.
“I’m going to fetch a doctor if there’s one in Talland. Kay must ride back and fetch the Polperro doctor, in case there isn’t. In any case I shall bring up help and a stretcher from Talland and have her taken down.”
He picked up his bicycle and stood for a moment looking down at the face on Nan’s knee.
“You’ll look after her,” he said, quickly, and got on the bicycle and dashed down the path, showing that he too could do that fool’s trick if it served any good purpose.
Gerda, watching him, caught her breath and forgot pain in fear until, swerving round the next bend, he was out of sight.
IX
Nan sat very still by the path, staring over the sea, shading Gerda’s head from the sun. There was nothing more to be done than that; there was no water, even, to bathe the cut with.
“Nan.”
“Yes?”
“Am I much hurt? How much hurt, do you think?”
“I don’t know how much. I think the arm is broken. The leg may be only sprained. Then there’s the cut—I daresay that isn’t very much—but one can’t tell that.”
“I must have come an awful mucker,” Gerda murmured, after a pause. “It must have looked silly, charging over the edge like that. … You didn’t.”
“No. I didn’t.”
“It was stupid,” Gerda breathed, and shut her eyes.
“No, not stupid. Anyone might have. It was a risky game to try.”
“You tried it.”
“Oh, I … I do try things. That’s no reason why you should. … You’d better not talk. Lie quite quiet. It won’t be very long now before they come. … The pain’s bad, I know.”
Gerda’s head was hot and felt giddy. She moved it restlessly. Urgent thoughts pestered her; her normal reticences lay like broken fences about her.
“Nan.”
“Yes. Shall I raise your head a little?”
“No, it’s all right. … About Barry, Nan.”
Nan grew rigid, strung up to endure.
“And what about Barry?”
“Just that I love him. I love him very much; beyond anything in the world.”
“Yes. You’d better not talk, all the same.”
“Nan, do you love him too?”
Nan laughed, a queer little curt laugh in her throat.
“Rather a personal question, don’t you think? Suppose, by any chance that I did? But of course I don’t.”
“But doesn’t he love you, Nan? He did, didn’t he?”
“My dear, I think you’re rather delirious. This isn’t the way one talks. … You’d better ask Barry the state of his affections, since you’re interested in them. I’m not, particularly.”
Gerda drew a long breath, of pain or fatigue or relief.
“I’m rather glad you don’t care for him. I thought we might have shared him if you had, and if he’d cared for us both. But it might have been difficult.”
“It might; you never know. … Well, you’re welcome to my share, if you want it.”
Then Gerda lay quiet, with closed eyes and wet forehead, and concentrated wholly on her right leg, which was hurting badly.
Nan too sat quiet, and she too was concentrating.
Irrevocably it was over now; done, finished with. Barry’s eyes, Barry’s kiss, had told her that. Gerda, the lovely, the selfish child, had taken Barry from her, to keep for always. Walked into Barry’s office, into Barry’s life, and deliberately stolen him. Thinking, she said, that they might share him. … The little fool. The little thief. (She waved the flies away from Gerda’s head.)
And even this other game, this contest of physical prowess, had ended in a hollow, mocking victory for the winner, since defeat had laid the loser more utterly in her lover’s arms, more unshakably in his heart. Gerda, defeated and broken, had won everything. Won even that tribute which had been Nan’s own. “You little sportsman,” Barry had called her, with a break of tenderness in his voice. Even that, even the palm for valour, he had placed in her hands. The little victor. The greedy little grabber of other people’s things. …
Gerda moaned at last.
“Only a little longer,” said Nan, and laid her hand lightly and coolly on the hot wet forehead.
The little winner … damn her. …
The edge
