Chapter 6

“Oh, yes,” said Isabel. “I’m wonderfully well. How are you? Rather thin, I think—”

“Worked to death—everybody’s old cry. But I’m all right, Ciss. How’s Pervin?—isn’t he here?”

“Oh, yes, he’s upstairs changing. Yes, he’s awfully well. Take off your wet things; I’ll send them to be dried.”

“And how are you both, in spirits? He doesn’t fret?”

“No—no, not at all. No, on the contrary, really. We’ve been wonderfully happy, incredibly. It’s more than I can understand—so wonderful: the nearness, and the peace—”

“Ah! Well, that’s awfully good news—”

They moved away. Pervin heard no more. But a childish sense of desolation had come over him, as he heard their brisk voices. He seemed shut out—like a child that is left out. He was aimless and excluded, he did not know what to do with himself. The helpless desolation came over him. He fumbled nervously as he dressed himself, in a state almost of childishness. He disliked the Scotch accent in Bertie’s speech, and the slight response it found on Isabel’s tongue. He disliked the slight purr of complacency in the Scottish speech. He disliked intensely the glib way in which Isabel spoke of their happiness and nearness. It made him recoil. He was fretful and beside himself like a child, he had almost a childish nostalgia to be included in the life circle. And at the same time he was a man, dark and powerful and infuriated by his own weakness. By some fatal flaw, he could not be by himself, he had to depend on the support of another. And this very dependence enraged him. He hated Bertie Reid, and at the same time he knew the hatred was nonsense, he knew it was the outcome of his own weakness.

He went downstairs. Isabel was alone in the dining-room. She watched him enter, head erect, his feet tentative. He looked so strong-blooded and healthy, and, at the same time, cancelled. Cancelled—that was the word that flew across her mind. Perhaps it was his scars suggested it.

“You heard Bertie come, Maurice?” she said.

“Yes—isn’t he here?”

“He’s in his room. He looks very thin and worn.”

“I suppose he works himself to death.”

A woman came in with a tray—and after a few minutes Bertie came down. He was a little dark man, with a very big forehead, thin, wispy hair, and sad, large eyes. His expression was inordinately sad—almost funny. He had odd, short legs.

Isabel watched him hesitate under the door, and glance nervously at her husband. Pervin heard him and turned.

“Here you are, now,” said Isabel. “Come, let us eat.”

Bertie went across to Maurice.

“How are you, Pervin,” he said, as he advanced.

The blind man stuck his hand out into space, and Bertie took it.

“Very fit. Glad you’ve come,” said Maurice.

Isabel glanced at them, and glanced away, as if she could not bear to see them.

“Come,” she said. “Come to table. Aren’t you both awfully hungry? I am, tremendously.”

“I’m afraid you waited for me,” said Bertie, as they sat down.

Maurice had a curious monolithic way of sitting in a chair, erect and distant. Isabel’s heart always beat when she caught sight of him thus.

“No,” she replied to Bertie. “We’re very little later than usual. We’re having a sort of high tea, not dinner. Do you mind? It gives us such a nice long evening, uninterrupted.”

“I like it,” said Bertie.

Maurice was feeling, with curious little movements, almost like a cat kneading her bed, for his place, his knife and fork, his napkin. He was getting the whole geography of his cover into his consciousness. He sat erect and inscrutable, remote-seeming Bertie watched the static figure of the blind man, the delicate tactile discernment of the large, ruddy hands, and the curious mindless silence of the brow, above the scar. With difficulty he looked away, and without knowing what he did, picked up a little crystal bowl of violets from the table, and held them to his nose.

“They are sweet-scented,” he said. “Where do they come from?”

“From the garden—under the windows,” said Isabel.

“So late in the year—and so fragrant! Do you remember the violets under Aunt Bell’s south wall?”

The two friends looked at each other and exchanged a smile, Isabel’s eyes lighting up.

“Don’t I?” she replied. “_Wasn’t_ she queer!”

“A curious old girl,” laughed Bertie. “There’s a streak of freakishness in the family, Isabel.”

“Ah—but not in you and me, Bertie,” said Isabel. “Give them to Maurice, will you?” she added, as Bertie was putting down the flowers. “Have you smelled the violets, dear? Do!—they are so scented.”

Maurice held out his hand, and Bertie placed the tiny bowl against his large, warm-looking fingers. Maurice’s hand closed over the thin white fingers of the barrister. Bertie carefully extricated himself. Then the two watched the blind man smelling the violets. He bent his head and seemed to be thinking. Isabel waited.

“Aren’t they sweet, Maurice?” she said at last, anxiously.

“Very,” he said. And he held out the bowl. Bertie took it. Both he and Isabel were a little afraid, and deeply disturbed.

The meal continued. Isabel and Bertie chatted spasmodically. The blind man was silent. He touched his food repeatedly, with quick, delicate touches of his knife-point, then cut irregular bits. He could not bear to be helped. Both Isabel and Bertie suffered: Isabel wondered why. She did not suffer when she was alone with Maurice. Bertie made her conscious of a strangeness.

After the meal the three drew their chairs to the fire, and sat down to talk. The decanters were put on a table near at hand. Isabel knocked the logs on the fire, and clouds of brilliant sparks went up the chimney. Bertie noticed a slight weariness in her bearing.

“You will be glad when your child comes now, Isabel?” he said.

She looked up to him with a quick wan smile.

“Yes, I shall be glad,” she answered. “It begins to seem long. Yes, I shall be very glad. So will you, Maurice, won’t you?” she added.

“Yes, I shall,” replied her husband.

“We are both looking forward so much to having it,” she said.

“Yes, of course,” said Bertie.

He was a bachelor, three or four years older than Isabel. He lived in beautiful rooms overlooking the river, guarded by a faithful Scottish man-servant. And he had his friends among the fair sex—not lovers, friends. So long as he could avoid any danger of courtship or marriage, he adored a few good women with constant and unfailing homage, and he was chivalrously fond of quite a number. But if they seemed to encroach on him, he withdrew and detested them.

Isabel knew him very well, knew his beautiful constancy, and kindness, also his incurable weakness, which made him unable ever to enter into close contact of any sort. He was ashamed of himself, because he could not marry, could not approach women physically. He wanted to do so. But he could not. At the centre of him he was afraid, helplessly and even brutally afraid. He had given up hope, had ceased to expect any more that he could escape his own weakness. Hence he was a brilliant and successful barrister, also _littérateur_ of high repute, a rich man, and a great social success. At the centre he felt himself neuter, nothing.

Isabel knew him well. She despised him even while she admired him. She looked at his sad face, his little short legs, and felt contempt of him. She looked at his dark grey eyes, with their uncanny, almost childlike intuition, and she loved him. He understood amazingly—but she had no fear of his understanding. As a man she patronized him.

And she turned to the impassive, silent figure of her husband. He sat leaning back, with folded arms, and face a little uptilted. His knees were straight and massive. She sighed, picked up the poker, and again began to prod the fire, to rouse the clouds of soft, brilliant sparks.

“Isabel tells me,” Bertie began suddenly, “that you have not suffered unbearably from the loss of sight.”

Maurice straightened himself to attend, but kept his arms folded.

“No,” he said, “not unbearably. Now and again one struggles against it, you know. But there are compensations.”

“They say it is much worse to be stone deaf,” said Isabel.

“I believe it is,” said Bertie. “Are there compensations?” he added, to Maurice.

“Yes. You cease to bother about a great many things.” Again Maurice stretched his figure, stretched the strong muscles of his back, and leaned backwards, with uplifted face.

“And that is a relief,” said Bertie. “But what is there in place of the bothering? What replaces the activity?”

There was a pause. At length the blind man replied, as out of a negligent, unattentive thinking:

“Oh, I don’t know. There’s a good deal when you’re not active.”

“Is there?” said Bertie. “What, exactly? It always seems to me that when there is no thought and no action, there is nothing.”

Again Maurice was slow in replying.

“There is something,” he replied. “I couldn’t tell you what it is.”

And the talk lapsed once more, Isabel and Bertie chatting gossip and reminiscence, the blind man silent.

At length Maurice rose restlessly, a big, obtrusive figure. He felt tight and hampered. He wanted to go away.

“Do you mind,” he said, “if I go and speak to Wernham?”

“No—go along, dear,” said Isabel.

And he went out. A silence came over the two friends. At length Bertie said:

“Nevertheless, it is a great deprivation, Cissie.”

“It is, Bertie. I know it is.”

“Something lacking all the time,” said Bertie.

“Yes, I know. And yet—and yet—Maurice is right. There is something else, something _there_, which you never knew was there, and which you can’t express.”

“What is there?” asked Bertie.

“I don’t know—it’s awfully hard to define it—but something strong and immediate. There’s something strange in Maurice’s presence—indefinable—but I couldn’t do without it. I agree that it seems to put one’s mind to sleep. But when we’re alone I miss nothing; it seems awfully rich, almost splendid, you know.”

“I’m afraid I don’t follow,” said Bertie.

They talked desultorily. The wind blew loudly outside, rain chattered on the window-panes, making a sharp, drum-sound, because of the closed, mellow-golden shutters inside. The logs burned slowly, with hot, almost invisible small flames. Bertie seemed uneasy, there were dark circles round his eyes. Isabel, rich with her approaching maternity, leaned looking into the fire. Her hair curled in odd, loose strands, very pleasing to the man. But she had a curious feeling of old woe in her heart, old, timeless night-woe.

“I suppose we’re all deficient somewhere,” said Bertie.

“I suppose so,” said Isabel wearily.

“Damned, sooner or later.”

“I don’t know,” she said, rousing herself. “I feel quite all right, you know. The child coming seems to make me indifferent to everything, just placid. I can’t feel that there’s anything to trouble about, you know.”

“A good thing, I should say,” he replied slowly.

“Well, there it is. I suppose it’s just Nature. If only I felt I needn’t trouble about Maurice, I should be perfectly content—”

“But you feel you must trouble about him?”

“Well—I don’t know—” She even resented this much effort.

The evening passed slowly. Isabel looked at the clock. “I say,” she said. “It’s nearly ten o’clock. Where can Maurice be? I’m sure they’re all in bed at the back. Excuse me a moment.”

She went out, returning almost immediately.

“It’s all shut up and in darkness,” she said. “I wonder where he is. He must have gone out to the farm—”

Bertie looked at her.

“I suppose he’ll come in,” he said.

“I suppose so,” she said. “But it’s unusual for him to be out now.”

“Would you like me to go out and see?”

“Well—if you wouldn’t mind. I’d go, but—” She did not want to make the physical effort.

Bertie put on an old overcoat and took a lantern. He went out from the side door. He shrank from the wet and roaring night. Such weather had a nervous effect on him: too much moisture everywhere made him feel almost imbecile. Unwilling, he went through it all. A dog barked violently at him. He peered in all the buildings. At last, as he opened the upper door of a sort of intermediate barn, he heard a grinding noise, and looking in, holding up his lantern, saw Maurice, in his shirt-sleeves, standing listening, holding the handle of a turnip-pulper. He had been pulping sweet roots, a pile of which lay dimly heaped in a corner behind him.

“That you, Wernham?” said Maurice, listening.

“No, it’s me,” said Bertie.

A large, half-wild grey cat was rubbing at Maurice’s leg. The blind man stooped to rub its sides. Bertie watched the scene, then unconsciously entered and shut the door behind him, He was in a high sort of barn-place, from which, right and left, ran off the corridors in front of the stalled cattle. He watched the slow, stooping motion of the other man, as he caressed the great cat.

Maurice straightened himself.

“You came to look for me?” he said.

“Isabel was a little uneasy,” said Bertie.

“I’ll come in. I like messing about doing these jobs.”

The cat had reared her sinister, feline length against his leg, clawing at his thigh affectionately. He lifted her claws out of his flesh.

“I hope I’m not in your way at all at the Grange here,” said Bertie, rather shy and stiff.

“My way? No, not a bit. I’m glad Isabel has somebody to talk to. I’m afraid it’s I who am in the way. I know I’m not very lively company. Isabel’s all right, don’t you think? She’s not unhappy, is she?”

“I don’t think so.”

“What does she say?”

“She says she’s very content—only a little troubled about you.”

“Why me?”

“Perhaps afraid that you might brood,” said Bertie, cautiously.

“She needn’t be afraid of that.” He continued to caress the flattened grey head of the cat with his fingers. “What I am a bit afraid of,” he resumed, “is that she’ll find me a dead weight, always alone with me down here.”

“I don’t think you need think that,” said Bertie, though this was what he feared himself.

“I don’t know,” said Maurice. “Sometimes I feel it isn’t fair that she’s saddled with me.” Then he dropped his voice curiously. “I say,” he asked, secretly struggling, “is my face much disfigured? Do you mind telling me?”

“There is the scar,” said Bertie, wondering. “Yes, it is a disfigurement. But more pitiable than shocking.”

“A pretty bad scar, though,” said Maurice.

“Oh, yes.”

There was a pause.

“Sometimes I feel I am horrible,” said Maurice, in a low voice, talking as if to himself. And Bertie actually felt a quiver of horror.

“That’s nonsense,” he said.

Maurice again straightened himself, leaving the cat.

“There’s no telling,” he said. Then again, in an odd tone, he added: “I don’t really know you, do I?”

“Probably not,” said Bertie.

“Do you mind if I touch you?”

The lawyer shrank away instinctively. And yet, out of very philanthropy, he said, in a small voice: “Not at all.”

But he suffered as the blind man stretched out a strong, naked hand to him. Maurice accidentally knocked off Bertie’s hat.

“I thought you were taller,” he said, starting. Then he laid his hand on Bertie Reid’s head, closing the dome of the skull in a soft, firm grasp, gathering it, as it were; then, shifting his grasp and softly closing again, with a fine, close pressure, till he had covered the skull and the face of the smaller man, tracing the brows, and touching the full, closed eyes, touching the small nose and the nostrils, the rough, short moustache, the mouth, the rather strong chin. The hand of the blind man grasped the shoulder, the arm, the hand of the other man. He seemed to take him, in the soft, travelling grasp.

“You seem young,” he said quietly, at last.

The lawyer stood almost annihilated, unable to answer.

“Your head seems tender, as if you were young,” Maurice repeated. “So do your hands. Touch my eyes, will you?—touch my scar.”

Now Bertie quivered with revulsion. Yet he was under the power of the blind man, as if hypnotized. He lifted his hand, and laid the fingers on the scar, on the scarred eyes. Maurice suddenly covered them with his own hand, pressed the fingers of the other man upon his disfigured eye-sockets, trembling in every fibre, and rocking slightly, slowly, from side to side. He remained thus for a minute or more, whilst Bertie stood as if in a swoon, unconscious, imprisoned.

Then suddenly Maurice removed the hand of the other man from his brow, and stood holding it in his own.

“Oh, my God’ he said, “we shall know each other now, shan’t we? We shall know each other now.”

Bertie could not answer. He gazed mute and terror-struck, overcome by his own weakness. He knew he could not answer. He had an unreasonable fear, lest the other man should suddenly destroy him. Whereas Maurice was actually filled with hot, poignant love, the passion of friendship. Perhaps it was this very passion of friendship which Bertie shrank from most.

“We’re all right together now, aren’t we?” said Maurice. “It’s all right now, as long as we live, so far as we’re concerned?”

“Yes,” said Bertie, trying by any means to escape.

Maurice stood with head lifted, as if listening. The new delicate fulfilment of mortal friendship had come as a revelation and surprise to him, something exquisite and unhoped-for. He seemed to be listening to hear if it were real.

Then he turned for his coat.

“Come,” he said, “we’ll go to Isabel.”

Bertie took the lantern and opened the door. The cat disappeared. The two men went in silence along the causeways. Isabel, as they came, thought their footsteps sounded strange. She looked up pathetically and anxiously for their entrance. There seemed a curious elation about Maurice. Bertie was haggard, with sunken eyes.

“What is it?” she asked.

“We’ve become friends,” said Maurice, standing with his feet apart, like a strange colossus.

“Friends!” re-echoed Isabel. And she looked again at Bertie. He met her eyes with a furtive, haggard look; his eyes were as if glazed with misery.

“I’m so glad,” she said, in sheer perplexity.

“Yes,” said Maurice.

He was indeed so glad. Isabel took his hand with both hers, and held it fast.

“You’ll be happier now, dear,” she said.

But she was watching Bertie. She knew that he had one desire—to escape from this intimacy, this friendship, which had been thrust upon him. He could not bear it that he had been touched by the blind man, his insane reserve broken in. He was like a mollusc whose shell is broken.

MONKEY NUTS

At first Joe thought the job O.K. He was loading hay on the trucks, along with Albert, the corporal. The two men were pleasantly billeted in a cottage not far from the station: they were their own masters, for Joe never thought of Albert as a master. And the little sidings of the tiny village station was as pleasant a place as you could wish for. On one side, beyond the line, stretched the woods: on the other, the near side, across a green smooth field red houses were dotted among flowering apple trees. The weather being sunny, work being easy, Albert, a real good pal, what life could be better! After Flanders, it was heaven itself.

Albert, the corporal, was a clean-shaven, shrewd-looking fellow of about forty. He seemed to think his one aim in life was to be full of fun and nonsense. In repose, his face looked a little withered, old. He was a very good pal to Joe, steady, decent and grave under all his “mischief”; for his mischief was only his laborious way of skirting his own _ennui_.

Joe was much younger than Albert—only twenty-three. He was a tallish, quiet youth, pleasant looking. He was of a slightly better class than his corporal, more personable. Careful about his appearance, he shaved every day. “I haven’t got much of a face,” said Albert. “If I was to shave every day like you, Joe, I should have none.”

There was plenty of life in the little goods-yard: three porter youths, a continual come and go of farm wagons bringing hay, wagons with timber from the woods, coal carts loading at the trucks. The black coal seemed to make the place sleepier, hotter. Round the big white gate the station-master’s children played and his white chickens walked, whilst the stationmaster himself, a young man getting too fat, helped his wife to peg out the washing on the clothes line in the meadow.

The great boat-shaped wagons came up from Playcross with the hay. At first the farm-men waggoned it. On the third day one of the land-girls appeared with the first load, drawing to a standstill easily at the head of her two great horses. She was a buxom girl, young, in linen overalls and gaiters. Her face was ruddy, she had large blue eyes.

“Now that’s the waggoner for us, boys,” said the corporal loudly.

“Whoa!” she said to her horses; and then to the corporal: “Which boys do you mean?”

“We are the pick of the bunch. That’s Joe, my pal. Don’t you let on that my name’s Albert,” said the corporal to his private. “I’m the corporal.”

“And I’m Miss Stokes,” said the land-girl coolly, “if that’s all the boys you are.”

“You know you couldn’t want more, Miss Stokes,” said Albert politely. Joe, who was bare-headed, whose grey flannel sleeves were rolled up to the elbow, and whose shirt was open at the breast, looked modestly aside as if he had no part in the affair.

“Are you on this job regular, then?” said the corporal to Miss Stokes.

“I don’t know for sure,” she said, pushing a piece of hair under her hat, and attending to her splendid horses.

“Oh, make it a certainty,” said Albert.

She did not reply. She turned and looked over the two men coolly. She was pretty, moderately blonde, with crisp hair, a good skin, and large blue eyes. She was strong, too, and the work went on leisurely and easily.

“Now!” said the corporal, stopping as usual to look round, “pleasant company makes work a pleasure—don’t hurry it, boys.” He stood on the truck surveying the world. That was one of his great and absorbing occupations: to stand and look out on things in general. Joe, also standing on the truck, also turned round to look what was to be seen. But he could not become blankly absorbed, as Albert could.

Miss Stokes watched the two men from under her broad felt hat. She had seen hundreds of Alberts, khaki soldiers standing in loose attitudes, absorbed in watching nothing in particular. She had seen also a good many Joes, quiet, good-looking young soldiers with half-averted faces. But there was something in the turn of Joe’s head, and something in his quiet, tender-looking form, young and fresh—which attracted her eye. As she watched him closely from below, he turned as if he felt her, and his dark-blue eye met her straight, light-blue gaze. He faltered and turned aside again and looked as if he were going to fall off the truck. A slight flush mounted under the girl’s full, ruddy face. She liked him.

Always, after this, when she came into the sidings with her team, it was Joe she looked for. She acknowledged to herself that she was sweet on him. But Albert did all the talking. He was so full of fun and nonsense. Joe was a very shy bird, very brief and remote in his answers. Miss Stokes was driven to indulge in repartee with Albert, but she fixed her magnetic attention on the younger fellow. Joe would talk with Albert, and laugh at his jokes. But Miss Stokes could get little out of him. She had to depend on her silent forces. They were more effective than might be imagined.

Suddenly, on Saturday afternoon, at about two o’clock, Joe received a bolt from the blue—a telegram: “Meet me Belbury Station 6.00 p.m. today. M.S.” He knew at once who M.S. was. His heart melted, he felt weak as if he had had a blow.

“What’s the trouble, boy?” asked Albert anxiously.

“No—no trouble—it’s to meet somebody.” Joe lifted his dark-blue eyes in confusion towards his corporal.

“Meet somebody!” repeated the corporal, watching his young pal with keen blue eyes. “It’s all right, then; nothing wrong?”

“No—nothing wrong. I’m not going,” said Joe.