Book: The Red Planet

W >> William J. Locke >> The Red Planet




"That would be absurd," said I.

"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.

What I said by way of sympathy and consolation is neither here nor
there. I spoke sincerely from my heart, for I felt overwhelmed by
the tragedy of it all. He stretched out his hand and grasped mine.

"I knew you wouldn't fail me. Your sort never does. You understand
now why I wanted you to come?--To prepare the old mother for the
shock. You've seen for yourself that I'm sound of wind and limb--
as fit as a fiddle. You can make it quite clear to her that I'm
not going to die yet awhile. And you can let her down easy on the
real matter. Tell her I'm as merry as possible and looking forward
to going about Wellingsford with a dog and string."

"You're a brave chap, Boyce," I said.

He laughed again. "You're anticipating. Do you remember what I
said when you asked me what I should do if I won all the pots I
set my heart on and came through alive? I said I should begin to
try to be a brave man. God! It's a tough proposition. But it's
something to live for, anyway."

I asked him how it happened.

"I got sick," he replied, "of bearing a charmed life and nothing
happening. The Bosch shell or bullet that could hit me wasn't
made. I could stroll about freely where it was death for anyone
else to show the top of his head. I didn't care. Then suddenly one
day things went wrong. You know what I mean. I nearly let my
regiment down. It was touch and go. And it was touch and go with
my career. I just pulled through, however. I'll tell you all about
it one of these days--if you'll put up with me."

Again the familiar twitch of the lips which looked ghastly below
the bandaged eyes. "No one ever dreamed of the hell I went
through. Then I found I was losing the nerve I had built up all
these months. I nearly went off my head. At last I thought I would
put an end to it. It was a small attack of ours that had failed.
The men poured back over the parapet into the trench, leaving
heaven knows how many dead and wounded outside. I'm not
superstitious and I don't believe in premonitions and warnings,
and so forth; but in cases of waiting like mine a man suddenly
gets to know that his hour has come. ... I got in six wounded. Two
men were shot while I was carrying them. How I lived God knows. It
was cold hell. My clothes were torn to rags. As I was going for
the seventh, the knob of my life-preserver was shot away and my
wrist nearly broken. I wore it with a strap, you know. The
infernal thing had been a kind of mascot. When I realised it was
gone I just stood still and shivered in a sudden, helpless funk.
The seventh man was crawling up to me. He had a bloody face and
one dragging leg. That's my last picture of God's earth. Before I
could do anything--I must have been standing sideways on--a
bullet got me across the bridge of the nose and night came down
like a black curtain. Then I ran like a hare. Sometimes I tripped
over a man, dead or wounded, and fell on my head. I don't remember
much about this part of it. They told me afterwards. At last I
stumbled on to the parapet and some plucky fellow got me into the
trench. It was the regulation V.C. business," he added, "and so
they gave it to me."

"Specially," said I.

"Consolation prize, I suppose, for losing my sight. They had just
time to get me away behind when the Germans counter attacked. If I
hadn't brought the six men in, they wouldn't have had a dog's
chance. I did save their lives. That's something to the credit
side of the infernal balance."

"There can be no balance now, my dear chap," said I. "God knows
you've paid in full."

He lifted his hand and dropped it with a despairing gesture.

"There's only one payment in full. That was denied me. God, or
whoever was responsible, had my eyes knocked out, and made it
impossible for ever. He or somebody must be enjoying the farce."

"That's all very well," said I. "A man can do no more than his
utmost--as you've done. He must be content to leave the rest in
the hands of the Almighty."

"The Almighty has got a down on me," he replied. "And I don't
blame Him. Of course, from your point of view, you're right.
You're a normal, honourable soldier and gentleman. Anything you've
got to reproach yourself with is of very little importance. But
I'm an accursed freak. I told you all about it when you held me up
over the South African affair. There were other affairs after
that. Others again in this war. Haven't I just told you I let my
regiment down?"

"Don't, my dear man, don't!" I cried, in great pain, for it was
horrible to hear a man talk like this. "Can't you see you've wiped
out everything?"

"There's one thing at any rate I can't ever wipe out," he said in
a low voice. Then he laughed. "I've got to stick it. It may be
amusing to see how it all pans out. I suppose the very last
passion left us is curiosity."

"There's also the unconquerable soul," said I.

"You're very comforting," said he. "If I were in your place, I'd
leave a chap like me to the worms." He drew a long breath. "I
suppose I'll pull through all right."

"Of course you will," said I.

"I feel tons better, thanks to you, already."

"That's right," said I.

He fumbled for the box of cigarettes on the bed. Instinctively I
tried to help him, but I was tied to my fixed chair. It was a
trivial occasion; but I have never been so terrified by the sense
of helplessness. Just think of it. Two men of clear brain and, to
all intents and purposes, of sound bodily health, unable to reach
an object a few feet away. Boyce uttered an impatient exclamation.

"Get hold of that box for me, like a good chap," he said, his
fingers groping wide of the mark.

"I can't move," said I.

"Good Lord! I forgot."

He began to laugh. I laughed, too. We laughed like fools and the
tears ran down my cheeks. I suppose we were on the verge of
hysterics.

I pulled myself together and gave him a cigarette from my case.
And then, stretch as I would, I could not reach far enough to
apply the match to the end of the cigarette between his lips. He
was unable to lift his head. I lit another match and, like an
idiot, put it between his fingers. He nearly burned his moustache
and his bandage, and would have burned his fingers had not the
match--a wooden one--providentially gone out. Then I lit a
cigarette myself and handed it to him.

The incident, as I say, was trivial, but it had deep symbolic
significance. All symbols in their literal objectivity are
trivial. What more trivial than the eating of a bit of bread and
the sipping from a cup of wine? This trumpery business with the
cigarette revolutionised my whole feelings towards Boyce. It
initiated us into a sacred brotherhood. Hitherto, it had been his
nature which had reached out towards me tentacles of despair. My
inner self, as I have tried to show you, had never responded. It
was restrained by all kinds of doubts, suspicions, and repulsions.
Now, suddenly, it broke through all those barriers and rushed
forth to meet him. My death in life against which I had fought, I
hope like a brave man (it takes a bit of fighting) for many years,
would henceforth be his death in life, at whose terrors he too
would have to snap a disdainful finger. I had felt deep pity for
him; but if pity is indeed akin to love, it is a very poor
relation. Now I had cast pity and such like superior sentiment
aside and accepted him as a sworn brother. The sins, whatever they
were, that lay on the man's conscience mattered nothing. He had
paid in splendid penance and in terrible penalty.

I should have liked to express to him something of this surge of
emotion. But I could find no words. As a race, our emotions are
not facile, and therefore we lack the necessary practice in
expressing them. When they do come, they come all of a heap and
scare us out of our wits and leave us speechless. So the immediate
outcome of all this psychological upheaval was that we went on
smoking and said nothing more about it. As far as I remember we
started talking about the recruiting muddle, as to which our views
most vigorously coincided.

We parted cheerily. It was only when I got outside the room that
the ghastly irony of the situation again made my heart as lead. We
passed by the conservatory and the statuary and down the great
staircase, but the ghosts had gone. Yet I cast a wistful glance at
the spot--it was just under that Cuyp with the flashing white
horse--where we had sat twenty years ago. But the new tragedy had
rendered the memory less poignant.

"It's a dreadful thing about the Colonel, sir," said Marigold as
we drove off.

"More dreadful than anyone can imagine," said I.

"What he's going to do with himself is what I'm wondering," said
Marigold.

What indeed? The question went infinitely deeper than the
practical dreams of Marigold's philosophy. My honest fellow saw
but the outside--the full-blooded man of action cabined in his
lifelong darkness. I, to whom chance had revealed more, trembled
at the contemplation of his future. The man, goaded by the Furies,
had rushed into the jaws of death. Those jaws, by some divine
ordinance, had ruthlessly closed against him. The Furies meanwhile
attended him unrelenting. Whither now would they goad him? Into
madness? I doubted it. In spite of his contradictory nature, he
did not seem to be the sort of man who would go mad. He could
exercise over himself too reasoned a control. Yet here were
passions and despairs seething without an outlet. What would be
the end? It is true that he had achieved glory. To the end of his
life, wherever he went, he would command the honour and admiration
of men. Greater achievement is granted to few mortals. In our
little town he would be the Great Hero. But would all that human
sympathy and veneration could contrive keep the Furies at bay and
soothe the tormented spirit?

I tried to eat a meal at the club, but the food choked me. I got
into the car as soon as possible and reached Wellingsford with
head and heart racked with pain. But before I could go home I had
to execute Boyce's mission.

If I accomplished it successfully, my heart and not my wearied
mind deserves the credit. At first Mrs. Boyce broke down under the
shock of the news, for all the preparation in the world can do
little to soften a deadly blow; but breed and pride soon asserted
themselves, and she faced things bravely. With charming dignity
she received Marigold's few respectful words of condolence. And
she thanked me for what I had done, beyond my deserts. To show how
brave she was, she insisted on accompanying us downstairs and on
standing in the bleak evening air while Marigold put me in the
car.

"After all, I have my son alive and in good strong health. I must
realise how merciful God has been to me." She put her hand into
mine. "I shan't see you again till I bring him home with me. I
shall go up to London early to-morrow morning and stay with my old
friend Lady Fanshawe--I think you have met her here--the widow of
the late Admiral Fanshawe. She has a house in Eccleston Street,
which is, I think, in the neighbourhood of Belton Square. If I
haven't thanked you enough, dear Major Meredyth, it is that, when
one's heart is full, one can't do everything all at once."

She waved to me very graciously as the car drove off--a true
"Spartian" mother, dear lady, of our modern England.

Oh! the humiliation of possessing a frail body and a lot of
disorganized nerves! When I got home Marigold, seeing that I was
overtired, was all for putting me to bed then and there. I spurned
the insulting proposal in language plain enough even to his wooden
understanding. Sometimes his imperturbability exasperated me. I
might just as well try to taunt a poker or sting a fire-shovel
into resentment of personal abuse.

"I'll see you hanged, drawn, and quartered before I'll go to bed,"
I declared.

"Very good, sir." The gaunt wretch was carrying me. "But I think
you might lie down for half an hour before dinner."

He deposited me ignominiously on the bed and left the room. In
about ten minutes Dr. Cliffe, my inveterate adversary who has kept
life in me for many a year, came in with his confounded pink
smiling face.

"What's this I hear? Been overdoing it?"

"What the deuce are you doing here?" I cried. "Go away. How dare
you come when you're not wanted?"

He grinned. "I'm wanted right enough, old man. The good Marigold's
never at fault. He rang me up and I slipped round at once."

"One of these days," said I, "I'll murder that fellow."

He replied by gagging me with his beastly thermometer. Then he
felt my pulse and listened to my heart and stuck his fingers into
the corners of my eyes, so as to look at the whites; and when he
was quite satisfied with himself--there is only one animal more
self-complacent than your medical man in such circumstances, and
that is a dog who has gorged himself with surreptitious meat--he
ordained that I should forthwith go properly to bed and stay there
and be perfectly quiet until he came again, and in the meanwhile
swallow some filthy medicine which he would send round.

"One of these days," said he, rebukingly, "instead of murdering
your devoted Sergeant, you'll be murdering yourself, if you go on
such lunatic excursions. Of course I'm shocked at hearing about
Colonel Boyce, and I'm sorry for the poor lady, but why you should
have been made to half kill yourself over the matter is more than
I can understand."

"I happen," said I, "to be his only intimate friend in the place."

"You happen," he retorted, "to be a chronic invalid and the most
infernal worry of my life."

"You're nothing but an overbearing bully," said I.

He grinned again. That is what I have to put up with. If I curse
Marigold, he takes no notice. If I curse Cliffe, he grins. Yet
what I should do without them, Heaven only knows.

"God bless 'em both," said I, when my aching body was between the
cool sheets.

Although it was none of his duties, Marigold brought me in a light
supper, fish and a glass of champagne. Never a parlour-maid would
he allow to approach me when I was unwell. I often wondered what
would happen if I were really ill and required the attendance of a
nurse. I swear no nurse's touch could be so gentle as when he
raised me on the pillows. He bent over the tray on the table by
the bed and began to dissect out the back-bone of the sole.

"I can do that," said I, fretfully.

He cocked a solitary reproachful eye on me. I burst out laughing.
He looked so dear and ridiculous with his preposterous curly wig
and his battered face. He went on with his task.

"I wonder, Marigold," said I, "how you put up with me."

He did not reply until he had placed the neatly arranged tray
across my body.

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