A Diversity of Creatures Part 11

'Me? I need a keeper myself much more--_this_ night of all!'

'This night? Have you a night, then? They disbelieved _me_ when I told them of mine.' She leaned back and laughed, always slowly. 'Aren't doctors stu-upid? They don't know.'

She leaned her elbow on her knee, lifted her veil that had fallen, and, chin in hand, stared at him. He looked at her--till his eyes were blurred with tears.

'Have I been there, think you?' she said.

'Surely--surely,' Conroy answered, for he had well seen the fear and the horror that lived behind the heavy-lidded eyes, the fine tracing on the broad forehead, and the guard set about the desirable mouth.

'Then--suppose we have one--just one apiece? I've gone without since this afternoon.'

He put up his hand, and would have shouted, but his voice broke.

'Don't! Can't you see that it helps me to help you to keep it off? Don't let's both go down together.'

'But I want one. It's a poor heart that never rejoices. Just one. It's my night.'

'It's mine--too. My sixty-fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh.' He shut his lips firmly against the tide of visualised numbers that threatened to carry him along.

'Ah, it's only my thirty-ninth.' She paused as he had done. 'I wonder if I shall last into the sixties.... Talk to me or I shall go crazy. You're a man. You're the stronger vessel. Tell me when you went to pieces.'

'One, two, three, four, five, six, seven--eight--I beg your pardon.'

'Not in the least. I always pretend I've dropped a st.i.tch of my knitting. I count the days till the last day, then the hours, then the minutes. Do you?'

'I don't think I've done very much else for the last--' said Conroy, s.h.i.+vering, for the night was cold, with a chill he recognised.

'Oh, how comforting to find some one who can talk sense! It's not always the same date, is it?'

'What difference would that make?' He unb.u.t.toned his ulster with a jerk.

'You're a sane woman. Can't you see the wicked--wicked--wicked' (dust flew from the padded arm-rest as he struck it) unfairness of it? What have I done?'

She laid her large hand on his shoulder very firmly.

'If you begin to think over that,' she said, 'you'll go to pieces and be ashamed. Tell me yours, and I'll tell you mine. Only be quiet--be quiet, lad, or you'll set me off!' She made s.h.i.+ft to soothe him, though her chin trembled.

'Well,' said he at last, picking at the arm-rest between them, 'mine's nothing much, of course.'

'Don't be a fool! That's for doctors--and mothers.'

'It's h.e.l.l,' Conroy muttered. 'It begins on a steamer--on a stifling hot night. I come out of my cabin. I pa.s.s through the saloon where the stewards have rolled up the carpets, and the boards are bare and hot and soapy.'

'I've travelled too,' she said.

'Ah! I come on deck. I walk down a covered alleyway. Butcher's meat, bananas, oil, that sort of smell.'

Again she nodded.

'It's a lead-coloured steamer, and the sea's lead-coloured. Perfectly smooth sea--perfectly still s.h.i.+p, except for the engines running, and her waves going off in lines and lines and lines--dull grey. All this time I know something's going to happen.'

'I know. Something going to happen,' she whispered.

'Then I hear a thud in the engine-room. Then the noise of machinery falling down--like fire-irons--and then two most awful yells. They're more like hoots, and I know--I know while I listen--that it means that two men have died as they hooted. It was their last breath hooting out of them--in most awful pain. Do you understand?'

'I ought to. Go on.'

'That's the first part. Then I hear bare feet running along the alleyway. One of the scalded men comes up behind me and says quite distinctly, "My friend! All is lost!" Then he taps me on the shoulder and I hear him drop down dead.' He panted and wiped his forehead.

'So that is your night?' she said.

'That is my night. It comes every few weeks--so many days after I get what I call sentence. Then I begin to count.'

'Get sentence? D'you mean _this_?' She half closed her eyes, drew a deep breath, and shuddered. '"Notice" I call it. Sir John thought it was all lies.'

She had unpinned her hat and thrown it on the seat opposite, showing the immense ma.s.s of her black hair, rolled low in the nape of the columnar neck and looped over the left ear. But Conroy had no eyes except for her grave eyes.

'Listen now!' said she. 'I walk down a road, a white sandy road near the sea. There are broken fences on either side, and Men come and look at me over them.'

'Just men? Do they speak?'

'They try to. Their faces are all mildewy--eaten away,' and she hid her face for an instant with her left hand. 'It's the Faces--the Faces!'

'Yes. Like my two hoots. I know.'

'Ah! But the place itself--the bareness--and the glitter and the salt smells, and the wind blowing the sand! The Men run after me and I run.... I know what's coming too. One of them touches me.'

'Yes! What comes then? We've both s.h.i.+rked that.'

'One awful shock--not palpitation, but shock, shock, shock!'

'As though your soul were being stopped--as you'd stop a finger-bowl humming?' he said.

'Just that,' she answered. 'One's very soul--the soul that one lives by--stopped. So!'

She drove her thumb deep into the arm-rest. 'And now,' she whined to him, 'now that we've stirred each other up this way, mightn't we have just one?'

'No,' said Conroy, shaking. 'Let's hold on. We're past'--he peered out of the black windows--'Woking. There's the Necropolis. How long till dawn?'

'Oh, cruel long yet. If one dozes for a minute, it catches one.'

'And how d'you find that this'--he tapped the palm of his glove--'helps you?'

'It covers up the thing from being too real--if one takes enough--you know. Only--only--one loses everything else. I've been no more than a bogie-girl for two years. What would you give to be real again? This lying's such a nuisance.'

'One must protect oneself--and there's one's mother to think of,' he answered.

'True. I hope allowances are made for us somewhere. Our burden--can you hear?--our burden is heavy enough.'

She rose, towering into the roof of the carriage. Conroy's ungentle grip pulled her back.