CHAPTER I

KINDNESS WITHOUT GRATITUDE

I

In the place where Mr. Wriford next found himself he first heard the reverberant thunder of the sea. He realised with sudden terror that he was not holding on; and as one starting out of bad dreams--but he had no dreams--in sudden terror he clutched with both his hands. That which his hands clutched folded soft and warm within their grasp, and then he heard a pleasant voice say:

"Why, there you are! You've kept us waiting a long time, you know!"

He found he was in a bed. A man, and two women who wore white aprons and caps and nice blue dresses, stood at its foot and were smiling at him. The sun was shining on their faces, and it was through windows behind him that the sound of the sea came. While, very puzzled, he watched these smiling strangers, the man stepped to him and slipped firm, reassuring fingers about his wrist where his hand lay clutching the blue quilt that covered him.

"No need to cling on like that, you know," said the man, disengaging his grasp. "You're all right now."

Mr. Wriford made one or two attempts at speech. "I don't--I don't think I--I don't think--"

He checked himself each time. His voice sounded so weak and strange that he thought each time to better it. He was not successful; and he let it go as it would with: "I don't think I ought to be here."

The women smiled at that, and the man said: "Well, I don't know where else you should be, I'm sure. You're very comfortable here."

"You're just in the middle of a nice sleep, you know," said one of the women, bending over the bed-rail towards him. "I think I should just finish it if I were you."

The other one said: "Would you like to hold my hand again?"

"There's an offer for you," said the man. "I'm sure I would."

There was a sound of quiet laughter, and the woman who had last spoken came to a chair by Mr. Wriford's side and sat down and took his hand. He somehow felt that that was what he had wanted, and he closed his eyes.

Thereafter he often--for moments as brief as this first meeting--saw the three again; and learnt to smile when he saw them, responsive to the smiles they always had for him, and became accustomed to their names of "Doctor" and "Sister" and "Nurse." It was "Nurse" who sat beside him and held his hand. When he awoke--or whatever these brief glimpses of these kind strangers were--he always awoke with that same startled clutching as when he had first seen them. If it was only the warm folding stuff that his hands felt he would cling on a moment, vacantly terrified. When Nurse's hand was there he felt all right at once and learnt to smile a kind of apology.

Once--or one day, he had no consciousness of time--when he thus clutched and felt her hand and smiled, she said: "You shouldn't start like that. You needn't now, you know."

"I don't know why I do," he told her.

She said: "I expect you're thinking of--"

But Mr. Wriford wasn't thinking at all. He was only rather vacantly puzzled when he saw his three kind friends. Beyond that his mind held neither thoughts nor dreams.

II

Thought came suddenly in a very roundabout way. Nurse had a very childish face. Her skin was very pink and white, and her eyes very blue, and there was something very childish, almost babyish, about her soft brows and about her rosy mouth. Her face began to have a place with Mr. Wriford, not only when he looked at it, but when he was sleeping. When he was sleeping, though, it had a different body, a different dress. It thus, in that different guise, was with him when one day he awoke and saw her bending close over him, smiling at him. He said at once, the word coming to him without any searching for it, without conscious intention of pronouncing it: "Brida!"

She said "What?" Now thoughts were visibly struggling in his eyes. Nurse could see them changing all the aspect of his face, as though his eyes were a pool up into which, stirred by that word, thoughts came streaming as stilly depths are stirred from their clearness by some fish that darts along their floor and upward clouds their bed. She turned her head and whispered sharply: "Sister!" then back to him and asked him: "What a pretty name! Brida, did you say?"

His mind was rushed long past the word that had awakened it. First, with that awakening, had come the moment when first he had spoken it--"I'm going to call you Brida!" St. James's Park; dusk falling; the rustle of October leaves about their feet; her flower face redly suffused.... More than that called him. More! In this sudden tumult of his brain, these beating pulses, all these noises, more, more than these demanded recognition; fiercely some clamour called him on to emotions that wrapped up these, submerged, enveloped them. There had been one in these emotions that claimed him more than she; there had been fears, pains, perils in them--ah, here with a sudden, overwhelming rush they came! "Wedge in, boy! Wedge in!" He that had called those words was swinging on his hands--hands that had held him!--was swinging on his hands above the swirling water--was down, was gone!

Mr. Wriford screamed out shockingly: "You couldn't swim! You couldn't swim!"

Sister was saying: "There, there! Don't, don't! You're all right now! You're all right now! Look, Nurse will hold your hand."

He stared at her. He said brokenly: "Let me alone! Let me alone!"

"Shan't Nurse hold your hand?"

"Please let me alone."

III

He only wanted to be alone--alone with his thoughts that now were full and clear returned to him--alone with that grotesque figure with that grotesque name who had come to him through the water and for him had gone into the water--and could not swim, could not swim!

He slept and awoke now and lay awake in normal periods. He smiled at Nurse and Sister and Doctor but did not talk. He only wanted to be alone. He would lie through the day for hours together with wide, staring eyes, submitting passively when some one came to attend him or to feed him, but never speaking. He only wanted to be alone.

Strangers came sometimes--ladies with flowers, mostly. He came to recognize them. They smiled at him, and he smiled responsively at them. But never spoke. He only wanted to be alone. When they were quite strangers--visitors he had not seen before--he always heard Sister bringing them with the same words: "This is our very interesting patient. Yes, this is the private ward. It is rather nice, isn't it? Our interesting patient. Poor fellow, he--" and then whispering, and then Sister at the foot of the bed with some one who smiled and nodded and said: "Good morning. I hope you are better."

He never turned his head as the voices announced approach from somewhere on his left. He never gave direct thought either to Sister's familiar words that brought them or to the whispering that followed. Voices and persons passed as it were at a very, very long distance before him. He only wanted to be alone; to lie there; to think, to think.

IV

A morning notable in its early hours for much uncommon bustle on the part of Sister and Nurse aroused him at last to consciousness that something was expected of him and that he must give attention to where he was and what was going on about him. Sister and Nurse, who always wore their cheerful blue cotton dresses until the afternoon, appeared this morning in their serge gowns. Doctor, who was generally in a tweed suit with cyclist trouser clips at his ankles, came in a frock-coat and wriggling his hands with the action of a man unaccustomed to having stiff cuffs about his wrists. The blue quilt was exchanged for a white one with roses down the centre associated with the days when a harmonium was played somewhere in the building and when the sound of hymns floated across Mr. Wriford's thoughts.

"Visiting Committee Day to-day," Sister told Mr. Wriford, "and Doctor's going to have a talk with you when he comes. I should try and talk, you know. Isn't there a lot you want to hear about?"

This was a question Sister often asked him, but to which he never responded with more than: "I'd just like to be alone, Sister." To-day the unusual bustle and stir had already shaken the steady vigil of his thoughts, and he said: "Yes--yes, thank you, I think I would."

Then Doctor in the frock-coat and with the wriggling hands--

"Well, we'll just have a talk," said Doctor, speaking to Sister but looking at Mr. Wriford, after the usual examination and questions. And when Sister had left them he sat on the side of the bed and began. "You've had a rough passage, you know," said Doctor. "But you're going on fine now. I've just let you be, but I think you ought to begin to talk a bit now. You're feeling pretty fit?"

"I'm very strong really," said Mr. Wriford. "I'm weak now, but I'm very strong really. I feel all right. I'm sorry I've not said much. I've been thinking."

"That's all right," said Doctor. "You've been mending, too, while you've been quiet. Do you remember everything?"

"Yes, I remember."

"Remember the coastguards finding you?"

"No, I don't remember that."

Doctor laughed. "I expect you're further behind-hand than you think, then. How long do you think you've been here?--nearly two months!"

Mr. Wriford said without emotion: "Two months. Will you tell me the date, please?"

"December--nearly Christmas. It's Christmas next week. Now look here, what about your friends? We must send them a happy Christmas from you, what?"

"I've no friends," said Mr. Wriford.

"No friends! None at all? Come, you must have, you know."

"I've not," said Mr. Wriford. "Look here, as soon as I'm well, I'll go away. That's all I want."

Doctor looked puzzled. "Got a name, I suppose?"

"Wriford."

"Wriford--that's funny. I've just finished reading again--you're no relation to the author, I suppose? Philip Wriford?"

Mr. Wriford smiled and shook his head.

"Jove, he can write!" said Doctor with inconsequent enthusiasm. "Read any of--? You're an educated man, aren't you?"

"I'm a working man," said Mr. Wriford. "No, I don't read much."

Doctor seemed to be thinking for a moment more of the Wriford who wrote than of the Wriford who lay here. Recollecting himself he went on: "How did you get there--where the coastguards found you?"

"I was tramping--looking for work. I got cut off. Will you tell me, please? Where is this place?"

Doctor told him. This was Port Rannock--the cottage hospital. The coastguards had found him wedged up on the cliff and brought him in. Touch and go for a very long time while he lay unconscious--unconscious nearly a month. They had mended his legs--one broken, the knee of the other sprained--fever--"all sorts of things," said Doctor, smiling. "But we've fixed you up now," he ended. "You're on the road now all right," and he went on to explain the real business of this talk and of the Visiting Committee's intentions when they came. Mr. Wriford was to be moved. "Only a Cottage Hospital, you see," and the bed was wanted. There had been a landslip where some local men were working--five cases--the main ward simply crowded out. Mr. Wriford must go to the town infirmary over at Pendra--unless--

"Sure you haven't any friends?" said Doctor, looking at Mr. Wriford closely. "Quite sure? Committee here? All right, Sister, I'm coming. Quite sure?"

Mr. Wriford said: "Quite. I had one. He was with me. He was drowned. Did they find--?"

"Why, the coastguards who found you found a body on the shore the same day. Was that your friend? A big man--stout?"

"That was my friend," said Mr. Wriford; and asked: "Is he buried here?"

"In the churchyard. We knew nothing who he was, of course. There's just a wooden cross. You'd like to see it when you're better. They've kept his things, or at least a list of them. You could identify by them. Had he any friends?"

"Only me. I think only me. We met on the road."

"Poor chap," said Doctor. "Washed off, I suppose?"

"No, he jumped off. He couldn't swim."

Doctor, who was going obedient to Sister's call, turned and exclaimed: "Jumped off? Why?"

But Mr. Wriford was lying back as he had lain these many days, thinking.

V

Visiting Committee. Visiting Committee tramped and shuffled into the room and grouped about his bed and stared at him--one clergyman addressed as Vicar, one very red gentleman addressed as Major, two other men and two ladies; all rather fat and not very smartly groomed as though one rather ran to seed at Port Rannock and didn't bother much about brushing one's coat-collar or pressing one's trousers or--for the ladies--keeping abreast of the fashions. All meaning to be kind, but all, after a while, rather inclined to be huffy with this patient whose story Doctor had reported, whom Doctor considered fit to be moved, but who displayed no gratitude for all that had been done for him, nor any sort of emotion when told that he would be sent to Pendra Infirmary at the end of the week.

Visiting Committee opened with a cheery joke on the part of Major at which everybody smiled towards the patient, but to which the patient made no sort of response. Visiting Committee in the persons of Major and Vicar fired a few questions based upon Doctor's information, at first kindly and then rather abrupt. Patient just lay with wide eyes that never turned towards the speaker and either answered: "Yes, thank you," or "No, thank you," or did not answer at all. Visiting Committee thought patient ungracious and said so to itself as it moved away.

"You ought to have spoken to them," said Nurse a little reproachfully, coming to him afterwards. "You ought just to have said a little, Wriford--that's your name, isn't it? I think they'd have let you stay over Christmas if you had. Wouldn't you have liked to stay with us for Christmas?"

"I just want to be alone," said Mr. Wriford.

"I told him," said Nurse, reporting this conversation to Sister later in the day, "I told him that of course he'd had a terrible time, but that he ought really to try not to think so much about himself. You know, when I said that he turned his head right round to me, a thing he never does, and stared at me in the oddest way."

VI

If that was so it remained the only thing that aroused him all the time he was at the Cottage Hospital. Even when the ambulance came over from Pendra Infirmary, and Nurse and Sister tucked him up in it and commended him to the care of the Infirmary nurse who came in the carriage, even then, beyond thanking them quietly, he neither turned his head for a last look nor seemed in any degree distracted from his steady thoughts. He just lay as before, gazing straight before him and thinking, and continued so to lie and think when they got him to bed in the large convalescent ward at the Infirmary.

"Matey," said a husky voice from the bed beside him, "Matey, I've got me portograph in the Daily Mirror paper. I'm the oldest sea-captain living, and I've got all me faculties except only me left eye. Can't you move, Matey? I've got me portograph in the Daily Mirror paper. I'll show you, Matey."

A sharp call down the ward. "Father! Get back into bed this minute, Father! I never did! What are you thinking about? Get back this minute, Father!"

The oldest sea-captain living objected querulously:

"I've got me portograph in the Daily Mirror paper."

"Yes, and I'll take it away from you if you don't lie still."

"Matey," said the oldest sea-captain living, "Matey, I've got me portograph in the Daily Mirror paper."

He lay gazing before him, just thinking, thinking.