For a few seconds the three sat, unable to move. They simply could not believe their eyes. The thing had happened in a flash. At one instant, two young men riding on a motor bicycle: at the next instant, this. Dermot shut his eyes. He was dreaming. When he opened them, there would be nothing there. He opened them, but the horror was still there. A red pool was beginning to spread from the first crumpled shape.
With a groan, Con got off, and went forward. He said nothing, but kept waving a hand behind him, motioning Eileen not to follow. Very white, she climbed out of the sidecar, and went after him. A moment’s hesitation, and Dermot followed.
Con reached the huddled shapes. His face had turned an indescribable colour, as if it were going to burst, and he was breathing loudly through his nose. He did not concern himself with the first figure, but bent over the pillion rider, and with infinite caution pulled at one of the lapels of his coat. Then, abruptly, he straightened up.
“He’s alive, poor devil,” he said, in a startled voice. For a moment he stood, staring at Eileen, the unnatural colour slowly draining from his face. “He’s alive,” he repeated, as they came closer. “What can we do? ”
Trying to keep their eyes from the smashed, split thing a yard or two away, they came, and looked down on the survivor. He was obviously in a very bad way. Blood was trickling from one of his ears: his face was almost plum colour, and his chest seemed somehow to be crushed. He breathed slowly with a laboured, snoring sound.
“Couldn’t we lift him in—or something.”
Feeling themselves ineffectual and helpless, they stooped, and tried to raise the man’s head. Though clearly unconscious, he groaned, and they desisted in something like panic.
“I wish I knew——”
Con, pale and anguished, stood, his legs wide apart, his great hands hanging down by his sides. Eileen looked into his face. Then, startling them into action, came the welcome sound of a car from the opposite direction. With a gasp of relief, Con bounded out into the roadway, holding up his hands.
The driver of the car slowed, saw the mess, swerved, and pulled up. He and a companion came running back.
“Still alive—this chap—he may have a chance——”
“Yes, yes.”
The stranger, a dark middle-aged man with a black moustache, assented to Con’s hurried explanation, and bent over the survivor. He examined him briefly, and pursed up his lips.
“No good, I’m afraid ;” he said, with a queer emphasis. “Still, if you’ll help me into the car with him, I’ll rush him to the nearest doctor. There’s one a mile down the road. What the——? ”
They all started, for a horrible hollow retching sound broke out behind them. Turning, they saw the stranger’s companion staggering away to the roadside, trying to be sick. He had unwisely gone on to inspect the second victim.
The stranger swore at him, then stooped with Con to lift the living man. Eileen hastily made a bed of rugs, and together they laid him in the back of the car.
“Are you staying there, or coming with me?” called the stranger to his friend, callously.
“I’m——I’m all right now.”
“Lep in, so.”
The poor man made haste to climb in, giving Con a pitiful smile as he did so.
“Thanks. I’ll get on quick. Sorry, but I must leave you to——”
He nodded towards the gatepost. The car jerked forward, collected itself, and shot off at a high speed. They stood, watching it go. It left the road very empty and very still. Almost lovingly they watched it out of sight, for no one could wish to turn round and face what lay there still untended.
Con and Eileen looked in each other’s eyes. They did not speak. Then, with a single movement, they turned and went straight to the dead man.
Seeing them go, Dermot looked too. The sight was not really horrible, from where he was, for it did not look human. That queer red spongy thing—was it apart of his face—what was it? He took a step forward, to see better ; but the two cried out sharply to him to stay where he was. They were stooping over the shape. Eileen was down on one knee, beside the end that looked like its head.
The ground began to sway under Dermot, and the sky went dark, and the breeze on his forehead felt extraordinarily cold. This was the sort of thing he had always dreaded, yet half wanted to see. Better test himself. Better not be a coward.
“I’d better see, you know,” he said steadily, and forced his feet one in front of the other. “I’d better see, don’t you think.” I’m not a child now, he was going to add, when Eileen looked up at him and he stopped, transfixed by the extraordinary beauty of her face. It was still with exaltation and pity, like an angel’s.
“Dermot,” she said, “will you please get me my parcel out of the sidecar? ”
He gazed at her. His lips opened three times before the words came.
“Th—the stockings? ”
“Yes. Would you, please? ”
He turned stupidly round, and went to the sidecar. She is keeping her voice calm for my benefit, he said to himself, because she is afraid I will break down. Here—the sidecar. Yes. In there. That is it. There. The stockings.
He took the parcel, and walked across to Eileen, keeping his eyes fixed upon her face.
“Here it is.”
He gave it into her hand, and stood, still gazing at her.
“Now am I to go away again? ”
“I think it would be better.” She looked up at him, and saw his face, set and luminous. “Do as you like, Dermot boy,” she said.
So Dermot stayed. Without horror, without fear, he saw her take out the new white stockings and with them bind together the shattered pieces that had been a head, winding them round and round, covering the poor unseemly ruin from casual eyes. When, at last, they came to lift him from the ground, Dermot saw that the top part of his body was crushed like a concertina. White splinters stuck through the dark wet bundle, and he realised, with academic surprise, that they were splinters of bone.
“One minute.”
They laid him down again, and Con went over to the machine. From the back of the carrier he unstripped a roll, which proved to be a mackintosh ground sheet. Another minute, and they had tenderly rolled the dead man into it.
He looked strange and ungainly, when at last he was seated in the sidecar. The groundsheet was draped about his head and shoulders, and a corner of it stuck grotesquely forward, like a snout. Suddenly, Dermot thought of the Elephant’s Child.
“I won’t be long,” said Con. They were talking, instinctively, almost in whispers.
“Do you know where to——”
“Yes.”
The machine started up, and set off slowly down the road. Dermot and Eileen sat on a green bank. They felt tired, and shaky at the knees. Neither spoke. Dermot lifted up his face to a shaft of sun that came hot through the trees, and Eileen dreamily plucked at the grass by her side.
A car had come, and stopped. Eileen was speaking.
“There’s been an accident,” she repeated. “No, no. We’re all right. One of the men has been taken off in a car, and my brother has taken the one who was killed. Yes. He’s coming back for us. No, thanks. It’s awfully good of you. Quite sure, thanks.”
A second car stopped, and another. News of the accident had spread, and people, eager for excitement, began to arrive on foot.
“Here,” said Eileen in a low voice, after the fifth or sixth explanation, “this is getting too much of a good thing. I vote we go on to meet Con.”
Dermot glanced at the front of her frock and coat.
“You can’t, very well, like that,” he said. “Everyone’ll stop you, just the same.”
She looked down, and made a wry face. Then, catching his eye, she burst out laughing.
“The chance of a lifetime, for some of these chaps,” she said, “to try and help a damsel in distress. I think we’ll go on, all the same. You feel all right, don’t you? ” she added, with real concern.
“Perfec
tly all right, thanks.”
With Eileen, as long as she felt all right, he knew he would feel all right anywhere.
“Come on, then.”
They turned to go. Already a little crowd was standing round the wrecked machine and staring fascinated at the pool of blood.
“A’ ye sure ye’re all right to go on, now? A’ ye sure——”
“Quite sure, thanks.”
“Ah, I’d wait, miss. I’d wait a bit, till ye’d feel more steadier in yerself.”
“Dig ye see what happened? ” A big man, with a wet open mouth, fastened on Dermot. “Dig ye see——”
“Yes,” he answered, with rising distaste. At once, three or four gathered round him.
“Ye seen it happen, is it? Ye seen it yerself? ”
“How was it? ”
“Eh, young lad? ”
“What way was it, young fella?”
“Did he go full puck into the wall? ”
A firm hand took his arm, and he saw it was Eileen’s.
“Come on, Dermot. Will you let us pass, please? Thank you.”
They walked on, leaving a murmur of surprise behind them. The road was getting full. People were running. As they caught sight of Eileen’s frock and arms, their faces lit up with unholy eagerness. One after another, Dermot saw them decide to stop her, and fail at the last moment. The hand on his arm was tense and quivering. Stealing a glance at her face, he saw that it was set in a strange, cold smile.
Suddenly, to their relief, they caught sight of Con, making his way back in a veritable stream of traffic. He was very pale, but he grinned as he saw them coming.
“Thank the Lord,” said Eileen, grinning back, as she jumped into the sidecar. “Here, son. Hop on, quick.”
“I’ll go on, and round. Quicker than going back.”
Facing round once more to the scene of the smash, they saw that a small crowd had actually been following them down the road.
“Hey! Hey! Hey !”
Con sounded his horn and bellowed, as he approached the gates, and the crowd in the road jumped and scooted to either side. As they passed, Dermot, out of the corner of his eye, saw a man wiping the gatepost with a bit of newspaper. He called something over his shoulder as he did so, and grinned, the sun flashing on his teeth. Then they were gone.
As soon as they had got well away, on a side road, they pulled up, and sat on a sunny bank, facing the sea. Con wanted to “steady down,” as he expressed it, before driving any further.
For a while they sat, looking out on the calm expanse of Killiney Bay. The sound of the breakers, sleepy and forgetful, came lazily to their ears. They ranged in series down the long curve of the strand, falling heaviest in front of the three, a little to their left, and passing gently down, like the slow opening of a vast blue fan with snowy edges.
The sun was hot. Eileen took off her mackintosh. The peace and warmth of it all made what had happened seem a nightmare. Only the stains on Eileen’s frock attested to its reality. Even so, their avoidance of the subject was artificial, and they were glad when Con re-opened it.
“Thank God I pulled up,” he said.
Dermot rolled over on to his stomach. He had been thinking about this very point.
“You mean that we would have been near the gates, and made it harder for them to turn? ” he said.
“I mean a lot more,” retorted Con, looking at him.
“Do——”
“I thought you meant you’d be feeling perhaps to blame for the smash, if you’d been near,” countered Dermot quickly, determined to get his thought out. Con nodded impatiently.
“There’s that too,” he said, “and thank the Lord we’ve nothing like that on our minds. But we might very likely have no minds left for it to be on.”
“No minds——? ”
“Don’t you realise that, if we’d carried on at the pace we were going, they’d have gone slap into us? ”
Chapter XXXII
We are proud of our loyalties, yet most of them are determined by pure accident. The influence of a place or person is enough to range the majority of mankind under the green, the red, or any other banner. A cast in childhood, an angle of approach once learned, persuades the intellect to work in a given way, and exalt above all others a single facet of experience. When the loyalty is helped by a genuine antipathy to what appears to be on the other side, conversion can be violent.
The death of the two cyclists would not have been enough to make Dermot believe in the all-seeing providence of the Almighty, because the matter did not seem as simple to him as to the folk at Delgany. To assume that the two young men had met their end because they were irreligious, and that Con, Eileen, and he had been preserved for the contrary reason, seemed a little too easy. Doubts intruded ; and he much resented his father’s commentary on the accident, since it stated, forcibly and without reverence, his own secret feeling. While he wavered, circumstance again took charge, and saw to it that he made up his mind.
A joint expedition to the theatre in Dublin, light-heartedly proposed by Uncle Ben, was accepted by Walmer Villa for want of an excuse. The two parties did not mix well as a rule, and had few tastes in common: but there was a musical comedy running, The Count of Luxemburg, of which everyone spoke well, and Granny had not visited a theatre for years. Accordingly, after some misgivings, the Grays decided that the jaunt might be very pleasant for all concerned. Only Grandpapa stood out. Wild horses, he declared, should not force him to enter a theatre at his age.
“And I wonder, Amelia,” he added severely, “you to have no more sense.”
The old lady looked across at him, the happiness fading from her face. It had taken them some time to persuade her.
“Well, now, maybe you’re right, Alfred. I think I’d better stay.”
“No, no, no backing out now, Granny. You’ve promised to come.”
“If you don’t go, I won’t go. So there, Granny.”
“Well, sure, I don’t know …” She looked round, smiling vaguely on them all. Grandpapa got up, folding his paper.
“Ah, faith,” he said. “You’re all of a mind. You’re all of a mind. I’d best leave you and me old woman together.”
He paused by the door, chuckling with sardonic good-humour.
“A theatre, indeed,” he said. “Why, the next thing, you’ll want to be going to a dance.”
So it was all settled, and the seats booked—nine of them, all in a row ; parterre seats, close to the stage, so that Granny should see the faces and the dresses. A full three days before, Mr. Gray was up at Delgany, trying to organise the going-in and the getting-out-again. He returned to Walmer Villa, frowning at the Delgany lack of business sense. Only the most casual attention, he protested: nothing definite at all. “What’s the hurry?” had been the best he could get out of them. Dermot saw perfectly well what had happened. The Delgany folk, delighted at “poor Ernest’s fussing,” had purposely withheld information. Nor could Mr. Gray get any from them, save a curt message, on the morning of the day itself, that the theatre train left at seven-twenty-five.
That evening was one which might well have been inscribed in the annals of Mr. Pooter. Con, who left the message, omitted to add that the theatre train, so called, was usually late, that most theatre goers did not trust it, and that the Delgany contingent was travelling by tram. Little imagination is needed to picture the state of Mr. Gray, realising for half an hour that they would all be late, and dumped finally, five minutes after the rise of the curtain, some little distance from a theatre to which he did not know the way. They were in their seats at sixteen minutes past, met with unrepentant grins, and whispered expressions of surprise at their late arrival. The only unruffled person was poor Granny. Her eyes, from the first second, were fixed upon the stage ; and once she got her breath back, she proceeded to enjoy the piece whole-heartedly. Even Mr. Gray presently forgot his anger, or put it into safe keeping till afterwards.
“You and I, just We two
Girl and
boy, one hour of joy …”
The rich voice of Bertram Wallis floated out into the theatre, comforting them all, lulling them with its sense of after-dinner romance. The production was a sumptuous one for Dublin, as the company and most of the principals had been imported immediately the London run was over. Granny loved it all—but her favourite was Horace Mills, the comedian. “‘Is it necessary?’” she kept quoting, days and days afterwards, from his song which, among other matters, hit so neatly at “that horrid” Lloyd George. It was an evening Dermot long remembered, apart from its preliminary discomforts. It came back to him time and again as a picture from a life which had vanished for ever.
“Disgustingly casual, and downright thoughtless,” Mr. Gray repeated, gazing round indignantly on his audience. “Your Granny here, dragged about, and hurried from pillar to post—to say nothing of our missing the first quarter of an hour. After all, they know the place. This is their town ; and the whole outing was undertaken at their suggestion. They give me to understand that they are going in by the theatre train—”
“They said the theatre train went at seven-twenty-five,” put in Dermot. “They didn’t say they were going by it.”
“A mere quibble,” snorted his father. “Of course, I naturally took it to mean that they intended to travel by it. How else was I—why, I didn’t even know the way to the theatre. They knew we were utterly dependent on them.”
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