"Utterly absurd. I should feel it to be almost an insult if you thought anything of the kind. Long before my marriage things that had happened had killed all such feelings outright." She paused for a few seconds and her brow darkened, just as it had done when she had spoken of him in the days immediately preceding her marriage with Willie Connor.
Presently it cleared. "The whole beginning and end of my present feelings," she continued, "is that I'm glad the man I once cared for has won such high distinction, and I'm sorry that such a brave soldier should be wounded."
I could do nothing else than assure her of my perfect understanding. I upbraided myself as a monster of indelicacy for my touch of doubt before dinner; also for a devilish and malicious suspicion that flitted through my brain while she was cataloguing her possible reasons for putting on the old evening dress. The thought of Betty's beautiful arm and the man's bull-neck was a shivering offence. I craved purification.
"If you've finished your coffee," I said, "let us go into the drawing-room and have some music."
She rose with the impulsiveness of a child told that it can be excused, and responded startlingly to my thought.
"I think we need it," she said.
In the drawing-room I swung my chair so that I could watch her hands on the keys. She was a good musician and had the well-taught executant's certainty and grace of movement. It may be the fancy of an outer Philistine, but I love to forget the existence of the instrument and to feel the music coming from the human finger-tips. She found a volume of Chopin's Nocturnes on the rest. In fact she had left it there a fortnight before, the last time she had played for me. I am very fond of Chopin. I am an uneducated fellow and the lyrical mostly appeals to me both in poetry and in music. Besides, I have understood him better since I have been a crock. And I loved Betty's sympathetic interpretation. So I sat there, listening and watching, and I knew that she was playing for the ease of both our souls. Once more I thanked God for the great gift of Betty to my crippled life. Peace gathered round my heart as Betty played.
The raucous buzz of the telephone in the corner of the room knocked the music to shatters. I cried out impatiently. It was the fault of that giant of ineptitude Marigold and his incompetent satellites, whose duty it was to keep all upstairs extensions turned off and receive calls below. Only two months before I had been the victim of their culpable neglect, when I was forced to have an altercation with a man at Harrod's Stores, who seemed pained because I declined to take an interest in some idiotic remark he was making about fish.
"I'll strangle Marigold with my own hands," I cried.
Betty, unmoved by my ferocity, laughed and rose from the piano.
"Shall I take the call?"
To Betty I was all urbanity. "If you'll be so kind, dear," said I.
She crossed the room and stopped the abominable buzzing.
"Yes. Hold on for a minute. It's the post-office"--she turned to me--"telephoning a telegram that has just come in. Shall I take it down for you?"
More urbanity on my part. She found pencil and paper on an escritoire near by, and went back to the instrument. For a while she listened and wrote. At last she said:
"Are you sure there's no signature?"
She got the reply, waited until the message had been read over, and hung up the receiver. When she came round to me--my back had been half turned to her all the time--I was astonished to see her looking rather shaken. She handed me the paper without a word.
The message ran:
"Thanks yesterday's telegram. Just got home. Queen Victoria Hospital, Belton Square. Must have talk with you before I communicate with my mother. Rely absolutely on your discretion. Come to-morrow. Forgive inconvenience caused, but most urgent."
"It's from Boyce," I said, looking up at her.
"Naturally."
"I suppose he omitted the signature to avoid any possible leakage through the post-office here."
She nodded. "What do you think is the matter?"
"God knows," said I. "Evidently something very serious."
She went back to the piano seat. "It's odd that I should have taken down that message," she said, after a while.
"I'll sack Marigold for putting you in that abominable position," I exclaimed wrathfully.
"No, you won't, dear. What does it signify? I'm not a silly child. I suppose you're going to-morrow?"
"Of course--for Mrs. Boyce's sake alone I should have no alternative."
She turned round and began to take up the thread of the Nocturne from the point where she had left off; but she only played half a page and quitted the piano abruptly.
"The pretty little spell is broken, Majy. No matter how we try to escape from the war, it is always shrieking in upon us. We're up against naked facts all the time. If we can't face them we go under either physically or spiritually. Anyhow--" she smiled with just a little touch of weariness,--"we may as well face them in comfort."
She pushed my chair gently nearer to the fire and sat down by my side.
And there we remained in intimate silence until Marigold announced the arrival of her car.
CHAPTER XVIII
I shrink morbidly from visiting strange houses. I shrink from the unknown discomforts and trivial humiliations they may hold for me. I hate, for instance, not to know what kind of a chair may be provided for me to sit on. I hate to be carried up many stairs even by my steel-crane of a Marigold. Just try doing without your legs for a couple of days, and you will see what I mean. Of course I despise myself for such nervous apprehensions, and do not allow them to influence my actions--just as one, under heavy fire, does not satisfy one's simple yearning to run away. I would have given a year's income to be able to refuse Boyce's request with a clear conscience; but I could not. I shrank all the more because my visit in the autumn to Reggie Dacre had shaken me more than I cared to confess. It had been the only occasion for years when I had entered a London building other than my club. To the club, where I was as much at home as in my own house, all those in town with whom I now and then had to transact business were good enough to come. This penetration of strange hospitals was an agitating adventure. Apart, however, from the mere physical nervousness against which, as I say, I fought, there was another element in my feelings with regard to Boyce's summons. If I talk about the Iron Hand of Fate you may think I am using a cliche of melodrama. Perhaps I am. But it expresses what I mean. Something unregenerate in me, some lingering atavistic savage instinct towards freedom, rebelled against this same Iron Hand of Fate that, first clapping me on the shoulder long ago in Cape Town, was now dragging me, against my will, into ever thickening entanglement with the dark and crooked destiny of Leonard Boyce.
I tell you all this because I don't want to pose as a kind of apodal angel of mercy.
I was also deadly anxious as to the nature of the communication Boyce would make to me, before his mother should be informed of his arrival in London. In spite of his frank confession, there was still such a cloud of mystery over the man's soul as to render any revelation possible. Had his hurt declared itself to be a mortal one? Had he summoned me to unburden his conscience while yet there was time? Was it going to be a repetition, with a difference, of my last interview with Reggie Dacre? I worried myself with unnecessary conjecture.
After a miserable drive through February rain and slush, I reached my destination in Belton Square, a large mansion, presumably equipped by its owner as a hospital for officers, and given over to the nation. A telephone message had prepared the authorities for my arrival.
Marigold, preceded by the Sister in charge, carried me across a tesselated hall and began to ascend the broad staircase.
I uttered a little gasp and looked around me, for in a flash I realised where I was. Twenty years ago I had danced in this house. I had danced here with my wife before we were married. On the half landing we had sat out together. It was the town house of the late Lord Madelow, with whose wife I shared the acquaintance of a couple of hundred young dancing men inscribed on her party list. Both were dead long since. To whom the house belonged now I did not know. But I recognised pictures and statuary and a conservatory with palms. And the place shimmered with brilliant ghosts and was haunted by hot perfumes and by the echo of human voices and by elfin music. And the cripple forgot that he was being carried up the stairs in the grip of the old soldier. He was mounting them with heart beating high and the presence of a beloved hand on his arm.... You see, it was all so sudden. It took my breath away and sent my mind whirling back over twenty years.
It was like awaking from a dream to find a door flung open in front of me and to hear the Sister announce my name. I was on the threshold not of a ward, but of a well-appointed private room fairly high up and facing the square, for the first thing I saw was the tops of the leafless trees through the windows. Then I was conscious of a cheery fire. The last thing I took in was the bed running at right angles to door and window, and Leonard Boyce lying in it with bandages about his face. For the dazed second or two he seemed to be Reggie Dacre over again. But he had thrown back the bedclothes and his broad chest and great arms were free. His pleasant voice rang out at once.
"Hallo! Hallo! You are a good Samaritan. Is that you, Marigold? There's a comfortable chair by the bedside for Major Meredyth."
He seemed remarkably strong and hearty; far from any danger of death.
Stubs of cigarettes were lying in an ash-tray on the bed. In a moment or two they settled me down and left me alone with him.
As soon as he heard the click of the door he said:
"I've done more than I set out to do. You remember our conversation. I said I should either get the V.C. or never see you again. I've managed both."
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"I shall never see you or anybody else again, or a dog or a cat, or a tree or a flower."
Then, for the first time the dreadful truth broke upon me.
"Good Heavens!" I cried. "Your eyes--?"
"Done in. Blind. It's a bit ironical, isn't it?" He laughed bitterly.