‘Not to me, I assure you,’ said Conroy, and they leaned back and laughed at the flatness of the words, after the hells through which they had just risen.
‘And now,’ she said, strict eyes on Conroy, ‘why wouldn’t you take me — not with a million in each stocking?’
‘I don’t know. That’s what I’ve been puzzling over.’
‘So have I. We’re as handsome a couple as I’ve ever seen. Are you well off, lad?’
‘They call me so,’ said Conroy, smiling.
‘That’s North country.’ She laughed again. Setting aside my good looks and yours, I’ve four thousand a year of my own, and the rents should make it six. That’s a match some old cats would lap tea all night to fettle up.’
‘It is. Lucky Toots!’ said Conroy.
‘Ay,’ she answered, ‘he’ll be the luckiest lad in London if I win through. Who’s yours?’
‘No — no one, dear. I’ve been in Hell for years. I only want to get out and be alive and — so on. Isn’t that reason enough?’
‘Maybe, for a man. But I never minded things much till George came. I was all stu-upid like.’
‘So was I, but now I think I can live. It ought to be less next month, oughtn’t it?’ he said.
‘I hope so. Ye-es. There’s nothing much for a maid except to be married, and I ask no more. Whoever yours is, when you’ve found her, she shall have a wedding present from Mrs. George Skinner that — ’
‘But she wouldn’t understand it any more than Toots.’
‘He doesn’t matter — except to me. I can’t keep my eyes open, thank God! Good-night, lad.’
Conroy followed her with his eyes. Beauty there was, grace there was, strength, and enough of the rest to drive better men than George Skinner to beat their heads on piano-tops — but for the new-found life of him Conroy could not feel one flutter of instinct or emotion that turned to herward. He put up his feet and fell asleep, dreaming of a joyous, normal world recovered — with interest on arrears. There were many things in it, but no one face of any one woman.
* * *
Thrice afterward they took the same train, and each time their trouble shrank and weakened. Miss Henschil talked of Toots, his multiplied calls, the things he had said to his sisters, the much worse things his sisters had replied; of the late (he seemed very dead to them) M. Najdol’s gifts for the soul-weary; of shopping, of house rents, and the cost of really artistic furniture and linen.
Conroy explained the exercises in which he delighted — mighty labours of play undertaken against other mighty men, till he sweated and, having bathed, slept. He had visited his mother, too, in Hereford, and he talked something of her and of the home-life, which his body, cut out of all clean life for five years, innocently and deeply enjoyed. Nurse Blaber was a little interested in Conroy’s mother, but, as a rule, she smoked her cigarette and read her paper-backed novels in her own compartment.
On their last trip she volunteered to sit with them, and buried herself in The Cloister and the Hearth while they whispered together. On that occasion (it was near Salisbury) at two in the morning, when the Lier-in-Wait brushed them with his wing, it meant no more than that they should cease talk for the instant, and for the instant hold hands, as even utter strangers on the deep may do when their ship rolls underfoot.
‘But still,’ said Nurse Blaber, not looking up, ‘I think your Mr. Skinner might feel jealous of all this.’
‘It would be difficult to explain,’ said Conroy.
‘Then you’d better not be at my wedding,’ Miss Henschil laughed.
‘After all we’ve gone through, too. But I suppose you ought to leave me out. Is the day fixed?’ he cried.
‘Twenty-second of September — in spite of both his sisters. I can risk it now.’ Her face was glorious as she flushed.
‘My dear chap!’ He shook hands unreservedly, and she gave back his grip without flinching. ‘I can’t tell you how pleased I am!’
‘Gracious Heavens!’ said Nurse Blaber, in a new voice. ‘Oh, I beg your pardon. I forgot I wasn’t paid to be surprised.’
‘What at? Oh, I see!’ Miss Henschil explained to Conroy. ‘She expected you were going to kiss me, or I was going to kiss you, or something.’
‘After all you’ve gone through, as Mr. Conroy said,’
‘But I couldn’t, could you?’ said Miss Henschil, with a disgust as frank as that on Conroy’s face. ‘It would be horrible — horrible. And yet, of course, you’re wonderfully handsome. How d’you account for it, Nursey?’
Nurse Blaber shook her head. ‘I was hired to cure you of a habit, dear. When you’re cured I shall go on to the next case — that senile-decay one at Bourne-mouth I told you about.’
‘And I shall be left alone with George! But suppose it isn’t cured,’ said Miss Henschil of a sudden. Suppose it comes back again. What can I do? I can’t send for him in this way when I’m a married woman!’ She pointed like an infant.
‘I’d come, of course,’ Conroy answered. ‘But, seriously, that is a consideration.’
They looked at each other, alarmed and anxious, and then toward Nurse Blaber, who closed her book, marked the place, and turned to face them.
‘Have you ever talked to your mother as you have to me?’ she said.
‘No. I might have spoken to dad — but mother’s different. What d’you mean?’
‘And you’ve never talked to your mother either, Mr. Conroy?’
‘Not till I took Najdolene. Then I told her it was my heart. There’s no need to say anything, now that I’m practically over it, is there?’
‘Not if it doesn’t come back, but — ’ She beckoned with a stumpy, triumphant linger that drew their heads close together. ‘You know I always go in and read a chapter to mother at tea, child.’
‘I know you do. You’re an angel,’ Miss Henschil patted the blue shoulder next her. ‘Mother’s Church of England now,’ she explained. ‘But she’ll have her Bible with her pikelets at tea every night like the Skinners.’
‘It was Naaman and Gehazi last Tuesday that gave me a clue. I said I’d never seen a case of leprosy, and your mother said she’d seen too many.’
‘Where? She never told me,’ Miss Henschil began.
‘A few months before you were born — on her trip to Australia — at Mola or Molo something or other. It took me three evenings to get it all out.’
‘Ay — mother’s suspicious of questions,’ said Miss Henschil to Conroy. ‘She’ll lock the door of every room she’s in, if it’s but for five minutes. She was a Tackberry from Jarrow way, yo’ see.’
‘She described your men to the life — men with faces all eaten away, staring at her over the fence of a lepers’ hospital in this Molo Island. They begged from her, and she ran, she told me, all down the street, back to the pier. One touched her and she nearly fainted. She’s ashamed of that still.’
‘My men? The sand and the fences?’ Miss Henschil muttered.
‘Yes. You know how tidy she is and how she hates wind. She remembered that the fences were broken — she remembered the wind blowing. Sand — sun — salt wind — fences — faces — I got it all out of her, bit by bit. You don’t know what I know! And it all happened three or four months before you were born. There!’ Nurse Blaber slapped her knee with her little hand triumphantly.
‘Would that account for it?’ Miss Henschil shook from head to foot.
‘Absolutely. I don’t care who you ask! You never imagined the thing. It was laid on you. It happened on earth to you! Quick, Mr. Conroy, she’s too heavy for me! I’ll get the flask.’
Miss Henschil leaned forward and collapsed, as Conroy told her afterwards, like a factory chimney. She came out of her swoon with teeth that chattered on the cup.
‘No — no,’ she said, gulping. ‘It’s not hysterics. Yo’ see I’ve no call to hev ‘em any more. No call — no reason whatever. God be praised! Can’t yo’ feel I’m a right woman now?’
‘Stop hugging me!’ said Nurse Blaber.
‘You don’t know your strength. Finish the brandy and water. It’s perfectly reasonable, and I’ll lay long odds Mr. Conroy’s case is something of the same. I’ve been thinking — ’
‘I wonder — ’ said Conroy, and pushed the girl back as she swayed again.
Nurse Blaber smoothed her pale hair. ‘Yes. Your trouble, or something like it, happened somewhere on earth or sea to the mother who bore you. Ask her, child. Ask her and be done with it once for all.’
‘I will,’ said Conroy.... ‘There ought to be — ’ He opened his bag and hunted breathlessly.
‘Bless you! Oh, God bless you, Nursey!’ Miss Henschil was sobbing. ‘You don’t know what this means to me. It takes it all off — from the beginning.’
‘But doesn’t it make any difference to you now?’ the nurse asked curiously. ‘Now that you’re rightfully a woman?’
Conroy, busy with his bag, had not heard. Miss Henschil stared across, and her beauty, freed from the shadow of any fear, blazed up within her. ‘I see what you mean,’ she said. ‘But it hasn’t changed anything. I want Toots. He has never been out of his mind in his life — except over silly me.’
‘It’s all right,’ said Conroy, stooping under the lamp, Bradshaw in hand. ‘If I change at Templecombe — for Bristol (Bristol — Hereford — yes) — I can be with mother for breakfast in her room and find out.’
‘Quick, then,’ said Nurse Blaber. ‘We’ve passed Gillingham quite a while. You’d better take some of our sandwiches.’ She went out to get them. Conroy and Miss Henschil would have danced, but there is no room for giants in a South-Western compartment.
‘Good-bye, good luck, lad. Eh, but you’ve changed already — like me. Send a wire to our hotel as soon as you’re sure,’ said Miss Henschil. ‘What should I have done without you?’
‘Or I?’ said Conroy. ‘But it’s Nurse that’s saving us really.’
‘Then thank her,’ said Miss Henschil, looking straight at him. ‘Yes, I would. She’d like it.’
When Nurse Blaber came back after the parting at Templecombe her nose and her eyelids were red, but, for all that, her face reflected a great light even while she sniffed over The Cloister and the Hearth.
Miss Henschil, deep in a house furnisher’s catalogue, did not speak for twenty minutes. Then she said, between adding totals of best, guest, and servants’ sheets, ‘But why should our times have been the same, Nursey?’
‘Because a child is born somewhere every second of the clock,’ Nurse Blaber answered. ‘And besides that, you probably set each other off by talking and thinking about it. You shouldn’t, you know.’
‘Ay, but you’ve never been in Hell,’ said Miss Henschil.
The telegram handed in at Hereford at 12.46 and delivered to Miss Henschil on the beach of a certain village at 2.7 ran thus:
‘“Absolutely confirmed. She says she remembers hearing noise of accident in engine-room returning from India eighty-five.”‘
‘He means the year, not the thermometer,’ said Nurse Blaber, throwing pebbles at the cold sea.
‘“And two men scalded thus explaining my hoots.” (The idea of telling me that!) “Subsequently silly clergyman passenger ran up behind her calling for joke, ‘Friend, all is lost,’ thus accounting very words.”‘
Nurse Blaber purred audibly.
‘“She says only remembers being upset minute or two. Unspeakable relief. Best love Nursey, who is jewel. Get out of her what she would like best.” Oh, I oughtn’t to have read that,’ said Miss Henschil.
‘It doesn’t matter. I don’t want anything,’ said Nurse Blaber, ‘and if I did I shouldn’t get it.’
* * *
‘HELEN ALL ALONE’
There was darkness under Heaven
For an hour’s space —
Darkness that we knew was given
Us for special grace.
Sun and moon and stars were hid,
God had left His Throne,
When Helen came to me, she did,
Helen all alone!
Side by side (because our fate
Damned us ere our birth)
We stole out of Limbo Gate
Looking for the Earth.
Hand in pulling hand amid
Fear no dreams have known,
Helen ran with me, she did,
Helen all alone!
When the Horror passing speech
Hunted us along,
Each laid hold on each, and each
Found the other strong.
In the teeth of things forbid
And Reason overthrown,
Helen stood by me, she did,
Helen all alone!
When, at last, we heard the Fires
Dull and die away,
When, at last, our linked desires
Dragged us up to day,
When, at last, our souls were rid
Of what that Night had shown,
Helen passed from me, she did,
Helen all alone!
Let her go and find a mate,
As I will find a bride,
Knowing naught of Limbo Gate
Or Who are penned inside.
There is knowledge God forbid
More than one should own.
So Helen went from me, she did,
Oh my soul, be glad she did!
Helen all alone!
* * *
The Honours of War
(1911)
A hooded motor had followed mine from the Guildford Road up the drive to The Infant’s ancestral hall, and had turned off to the stables.
‘We’re having a quiet evening together. Stalky’s upstairs changing. Dinner’s at 7.15 sharp, because we’re hungry. His room’s next to yours,’ said The Infant, nursing a cobwebbed bottle of Burgundy.
Then I found Lieutenant-Colonel A.L. Corkran, I.A., who borrowed a collar-stud and told me about the East and his Sikh regiment.
‘And are your subalterns as good as ever?’ I asked.
‘Amazin’ — simply amazin’! All I’ve got to do is to find ‘em jobs. They keep touchin’ their caps to me and askin’ for more work. ‘Come at me with their tongues hangin’ out. I used to run the other way at their age.’
‘And when they err?’ said I. ‘I suppose they do sometimes?’
‘Then they run to me again to weep with remorse over their virgin peccadilloes. I never cuddled my Colonel when I was in trouble. Lambs — positive lambs!’
‘And what do you say to ‘em?’
‘Talk to ‘em like a papa. Tell ‘em how I can’t understand it, an’ how shocked I am, and how grieved their parents’ll be; and throw in a little about the Army Regulations and the Ten Commandments. ‘Makes one feel rather a sweep when one thinks of what one used to do at their age. D’you remember — ’
We remembered together till close on seven o’clock. As we went out into the gallery that runs round the big hall, we saw The Infant, below, talking to two deferential well-set-up lads whom I had known, on and off, in the holidays, any time for the last ten years. One of them had a bruised cheek, and the other a weeping left eye.
‘Yes, that’s the style,’ said Stalky below his breath. ‘They’re brought up on lemon-squash and mobilisation text-books. I say, the girls we knew must have been much better than they pretended they were; for I’ll swear it isn’t the fathers.’
‘But why on earth did you do it?’ The Infant was shouting. ‘You know what it means nowadays.’
‘Well, sir,’ said Bobby Trivett, the taller of the two, ‘Wontner talks too much, for one thing. He didn’t join till he was twenty-three, and, besides that, he used to lecture on tactics in the ante-room. He said Clausewitz was the only tactician, and he illustrated his theories with cigar-ends. He was that sort of chap, sir.’
‘And he didn’t much care whose cigar-ends they were,’ said Eames, who was shorter and pinker.
‘And then he would talk about the ‘Varsity,’ said Bobby. ‘He got a degree there. And he told us we weren’t i
ntellectual. He told the Adjutant so, sir. He was just that kind of chap, sir, if you understand.’
Stalky and I backed behind a tall Japanese jar of chrysanthemums and listened more intently.
‘Was all the Mess in it, or only you two?’ The Infant demanded, chewing his moustache.
‘The Adjutant went to bed, of course, sir, and the Senior Subaltern said he wasn’t going to risk his commission — they’re awfully down on ragging nowadays in the Service — but the rest of us — er — attended to him,’ said Bobby.
‘Much?’ The Infant asked. The boys smiled deprecatingly.
‘Not in the ante-room, sir,’ said Eames. ‘Then he called us silly children, and went to bed, and we sat up discussin’, and I suppose we got a bit above ourselves, and we — er — ’
‘Went to his quarters and drew him?’ The Infant suggested.
‘Well, we only asked him to get out of bed, and we put his helmet and sword-belt on for him, and we sung him bits out of the Blue Fairy Book — the cram-book on Army organisation. Oh yes, and then we asked him to drink old Clausewitz’s health, as a brother-tactician, in milk-punch and Worcester sauce, and so on. We had to help him a little there. He bites. There wasn’t much else that time; but, you know, the War Office is severe on ragging these days.’ Bobby stopped with a lopsided smile.
‘And then,’ Eames went on, ‘then Wontner said we’d done several pounds’ worth of damage to his furniture.’
‘Oh,’ said The Infant, ‘he’s that kind of man, is he? Does he brush his teeth?’
‘Oh yes, he’s quite clean all over!’ said Trivett; ‘but his father’s a wealthy barrister.’
‘Solicitor,’ Eames corrected, ‘and so this Mister Wontner is out for our blood. He’s going to make a first-class row about it — appeal to the War Office — court of inquiry — spicy bits in the papers, and songs in the music-halls. He told us so.’
‘That’s the sort of chap he is,’ said Trivett. ‘And that means old Dhurrah-bags, our Colonel, ‘ll be put on half-pay, same as that case in the Scarifungers’ Mess; and our Adjutant’ll have to exchange, like it was with that fellow in the 73rd Dragoons, and there’ll be misery all round. He means making it too hot for us, and his papa’ll back him.’
Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) Page 481