The Second Class Passenger Part 42

Pond.

"Can't," answered the Professor. "Got an engagement in town. I've just time to catch the train back. Now, you quite understand about this case? Just quietness and soothing companions.h.i.+p, you know, fresh air and sleep, and all that."

"We quite understand," said Mary. "We'll do our best."

"I'm sure you will," said Professor Fish cordially. He moved over to where the patient sat; he had not moved at all. He continued to gaze at the carpet while the tall Professor stood over him.

"Now, Smith," said the Professor in his loud voice, "I'm off. You're in good hands here, you know. You've only to take it easy and rest."

"Rest?" Smith repeated the word in a hoa.r.s.e whisper; it was the first he had spoken. He looked up, and his eye went to the Professor's face with a sort of challenge.

"Yes," said the Professor. "Good-bye."

Smith continued to look at him, but answered nothing. Professor Fish shrugged his shoulders and turned away sharply.

"He'll soon pick up," he said to Dr. Pond. "And now I really must go."

He shook hands with Mary with a manner of cheerful vigour, beaming at her through his gold-rimmed gla.s.ses, big, whimsical, and quick. A moment later, Dr. Pond was showing him out, and Mary, alone with her patient, had another glimpse of hate and contempt animating and enlivening that weak and formless face.

She waited till she heard the front door close and the Professor's departing feet crunch on the gravel of the garden path. Then she went and put a hand on the little man's shoulder.

"You look very tired," she said, quietly, in her level, pleasant voice. "Would you like to go to your room and lie down? And I will send you up some tea."

There was a long pause, and she thought he was not going to answer.

But she waited restfully, and at last he sighed.

"Yes," he said wearily, "that's what I want."

His voice had the flat tones of c.o.c.kneydom, but Mary took no note of it.

"Then let me show you the way," she said, still gently; and he rose at the word and followed her upstairs.

In this manner the new patient was installed in the household of Dr.

Pond. He slipped into his place like a shadow, displacing nothing.

The Doctor, swollen with the distinction of a visit by Professor Fish in person, would willingly have made a fuss of him, if it had been possible. But Smith was not amenable to polite attentions. To attempts to render him particular consideration he opposed a barren inertia; one could as easily have been obliging to a lamp-post. The man's consciousness seemed to exist in a vacuum; he lived in a solitude to which the kindly Doctor could never penetrate. Once, certainly, his persistent geniality won him a rebuff. It was at breakfast, and he was following his custom of endeavoring to trap Smith into conversation. Smith sat opposite him at the table, staring vacantly at the tablecloth.

"It is a fine morning," the Doctor observed, "I wonder, now, Mr.

Smith, if you would care for a little drive with me. I have some brief visits to pay here and there, and I could drop you here again before I go on. The fresh air would do you good--freshen you up, you know; put a little life into you. Come, now! what do you say to accompanying me?"

Smith said nothing, but his cheek twitched once. "Come now!" pressed the Doctor persuasively. "See what a lovely day it is. Sun, fresh air, the smell and sight of the fields--it'll put fresh life into you."

Smith's white face worked slightly. "Ere," he said, and paused. The Doctor bent forward, pleased. "Go to 'ell!" said Smith thoughtfully.

Mary had much more success with him; a slender link of sympathy had established itself between the healthy, tranquil girl and this dreary wisp of a man. She asked him no questions, and in return for her forbearance he would sometimes speak to her voluntarily. He would emerge from his trance-like apathy to watch her as she went about her household duties. Professor Fish had spoken truly when he said that Mary Pond knew how to create about her an atmosphere of serenity. The tones of her quiet voice, the gentleness of her movements, the kindly sobriety of her regard seemed to fortify her patient. For her part, a genuine compa.s.sion for the little man was mixed with some liking; he was a furtive and vulgar creature at the best, but his dependence on her, his helplessness and trouble, reached to the maternal in her honest heart. She could manage him; but for her strategy he would have lived in his bed, day and night, in a sort of half torpor.

"It's remarkable what a control you have over these low natures, Mary," Dr. Pond said to her. He had come home one afternoon to find that she had actually sent Smith out for a walk. "I confess it's a case that's beyond me altogether. There doesn't seem to be any thing to take hold of in the man. It would be better if he felt a little pain now and again; it would give one an opening, as it were."

Seated in a low chair in the window, Mary was hemming dusters. She looked up at him thoughtfully.

"Father," she said, "what do you think was the matter with him in the first place? What was the disease that Professor Fish cured?"

Dr. Pond shook his white head vaguely.

"Impossible to say," he answered. "It looks like, a mental case, doesn't it? And yet----You see, Fish has had so many specialities. He was in practice in Harley Street as a nerve man. Then, next thing, one hears of him in heart surgery. He's had a go at electricity lately. And between you and me--he's a great man, of course--but if it wasn't for his position and all that, we'd be calling him a quack."

"Then you can't tell what the disease was?" persisted Mary.

"No," said Dr. Pond. "Nor even if there was a disease. For all I know, Fish may have been vivisecting him. He wouldn't stop at a thing like that, if I know anything about him."

"He ought to have told us," said Mary.

"Yes," agreed the Doctor. "But Fish always does as he likes. How long has Smith been out now, Mary?"

"He went out at three," she answered. "And now it's half-past five.

He ought to be in. I think I'll put my hat on, father, and go after him."

Dr. Pond nodded. "I would," he said.

The road along which Smith had departed ran past the village, and Mary walked forth by it to seek her patient. It was a splendid still afternoon; the trees by the wayside stood motionless in the late heat, their shadows in jet black twined and laced upon the white road. Far ahead of her she could see the land undulating in easy green bosoms against the radiant west; the sun was in her face as she walked. She had no fear that Smith had wandered far; for one thing, he had no strength to do so, and for another, she knew intuitively that the man lacked any purpose to carry him away. Therefore she walked at her ease, keeping cool and comely, and at the first corner in the road met a slim youth on horseback, who stopped to salute her.

It was Harry Wylde, son of the great man of the neighborhood.

"Afternoon, Miss Pond," he called cheerfully. "Have you lost a little thing about the size of a pickpocket?"

"A little bigger than that, I think," she answered. "Have you seen him, Mr. Wylde?"

"Yes," said Harry Wylde. "I've seen him before, too, I'll swear. I knew the little beast at once. I say, Miss Pond, how the d.i.c.kens did you manage to get mixed up with him?"

"He's my patient," said Mary. "Where did you see him, please?"

Harry Wylde pointed down the road. "I pa.s.sed him just now," he said.

"He was in the churchyard."

"The churchyard?"

"Yes, sitting on the gra.s.s, having no end of a time. Looked as happy as a trout in a sand-bath. I knew him at once."

"How did you know him?" demanded Mary.

Harry Wylde leaned forward over his saddle. "Miss Pond," he said seriously, "there's hardly a man that goes to races in all England that doesn't know him. His name's Woolley--that's one of his names, anyhow. He was a kind of jockey once, and since then he's been the lowest, meanest little sharper in all the dirty little turf swindles that was ever kicked off a racecourse. If I wasn't sure I wouldn't say so; but you ought to know whom you are entertaining."

"But you must be utterly mistaken," cried Mary. "Professor Fish brought him to us. It's impossible."

"Case of Fish and foul," suggested the youth. "But I'm not mistaken.

The man I mean has lost the tip of his ear, the left one. Somebody bit it off, I believe. Now, have you noticed your chap's ear?"

He looked at her acutely, and she colored in hot distress.

"I see you have," he said. "I'd ask this Fish person for an explanation, if I were you; particularly as Woolley is supposed to be dead. The police want him pretty badly, you know. It looks queer, doesn't it?"