Part 36 (1/2)
Then long staring into the eyes, the eyelids lifted between thumb and finger. And at last (how could he talk so loud! Yet it was a comfort too--he would not talk like that if Derek were going to die!)--Hair cut shorter--ice--watch him like a lynx! This and that, if he came to.
Nothing else to be done. And then those blessed words:
”But don't worry too much. I think it'll be all right.” She could not help a little sigh escaping her clenched teeth.
The doctor was looking at her. His eyes were nice.
”Sister?”
”Cousin.”
”Ah! Well, I'll get back now, and send you out some ice, at once.”
More talk outside the door. Nedda, alone with her lover, crouched forward on her knees, and put her lips to his. They were not so cold as his foot, and the first real hope and comfort came to her. Watch him like a lynx--wouldn't she? But how had it all happened? And where was Sheila? and Uncle Tod?
Her aunt had come back and was stroking her shoulder. There had been fighting in the barn at Marrow Farm. They had arrested Sheila. Derek had jumped down to rescue her and struck his head against a grindstone. Her uncle had gone with Sheila. They would watch, turn and turn about. Nedda must go now and eat something, and get ready to take the watch from eight to midnight.
Following her resolve to make no fuss, the girl went out. The police had gone. The mother-child was putting her little folk to bed; and in the kitchen Felix was arranging the wherewithal to eat. He made her sit down and kept handing things; watching like a cat to see that she put them in her mouth, in the way from which only Flora had suffered hitherto; he seemed so anxious and unhappy, and so awfully sweet, that Nedda forced herself to swallow what she thought would never go down a dry and choky throat. He kept coming up and touching her shoulder or forehead. Once he said:
”It's all right, you know, my pet; concussion often takes two days.”
Two days with his eyes like that! The consolation was not so vivid as Felix might have wished; but she quite understood that he was doing his best to give it. She suddenly remembered that he had no room to sleep in. He must use Derek's. No! That, it appeared, was to be for her when she came off duty. Felix was going to have an all-night sitting in the kitchen. He had been looking forward to an all-night sitting for many years, and now he had got his chance. It was a magnificent opportunity--”without your mother, my dear, to insist on my sleeping.”
And staring at his smile, Nedda thought: 'He's like Granny--he comes out under difficulties. If only I did!'
The ice arrived by motor-cycle just before her watch began. It was some comfort to have that definite thing to see to. How timorous and humble are thoughts in a sick-room, above all when the sick are stretched behind the m.u.f.fle of unconsciousness, withdrawn from the watcher by half-death! And yet, for him or her who loves, there is at least the sense of being alone with the loved one, of doing all that can be done; and in some strange way of twining hearts with the exiled spirit. To Nedda, sitting at his feet, and hardly ever turning eyes away from his still face, it sometimes seemed that the flown spirit was there beside her. And she saw into his soul in those hours of watching, as one looking into a stream sees the leopard-like dapple of its sand and dark-strewn floor, just reached by sunlight. She saw all his pride, courage, and impatience, his reserve, and strange unwilling tenderness, as she had never seen them. And a queer dreadful feeling moved her that in some previous existence she had looked at that face dead on a field of battle, frowning up at the stars. That was absurd--there were no previous existences! Or was it prevision of what would come some day?
When, at half past nine, the light began to fail, she lighted two candles in tall, thin, iron candlesticks beside her. They burned without flicker, those spires of yellow flame, slowly conquering the dying twilight, till in their soft radiance the room was full of warm dusky shadows, the night outside ever a deeper black. Two or three times his mother came, looked at him, asked her if she should stay, and, receiving a little silent shake of the head, went away again. At eleven o'clock, when once more she changed the ice-cap, his eyes had still no l.u.s.tre, and for a moment her courage failed her utterly. It seemed to her that he could never win back, that death possessed the room already, possessed those candle-flames, the ticking of the clock, the dark, dripping night, possessed her heart. Could he be gone before she had been his! Gone! Where? She sank down on her knees, covering her eyes.
What good to watch, if he were never coming back! A long time--it seemed hours--pa.s.sed thus, with the feeling growing deeper in her that no good would come while she was watching. And behind the barrier of her hands she tried desperately to rally courage. If things were--they were! One must look them in the face! She took her hands away. His eyes! Was it light in them? Was it? They were seeing--surely they saw. And his lips made the tiniest movement. In that turmoil of exultation she never knew how she managed to continue kneeling there, with her hands on his. But all her soul shone down to him out of her eyes, and drew and drew at his spirit struggling back from the depths of him. For many minutes that struggle lasted; then he smiled. It was the feeblest smile that ever was on lips, but it made the tears pour down Nedda's cheeks and trickle off on to his hands. Then, with a stoicism that she could not believe in, so hopelessly unreal it seemed, so utterly the negation of the tumult within her, she settled back again at his feet to watch and not excite him. And still his lips smiled that faint smile, and his opened eyes grew dark and darker with meaning.
So at midnight Kirsteen found them.
CHAPTER x.x.x
In the early hours of his all-night sitting Felix had first only memories, and then Kirsteen for companion.
”I worry most about Tod,” she said. ”He had that look in his face when he went off from Marrow Farm. He might do something terrible if they ill-treat Sheila. If only she has sense enough to see and not provoke them.”
”Surely she will,” Felix murmured.
”Yes, if she realizes. But she won't, I'm afraid. Even I have only known him look like that three times. Tod is so gentle--pa.s.sion stores itself in him; and when it comes, it's awful. If he sees cruelty, he goes almost mad. Once he would have killed a man if I hadn't got between them. He doesn't know what he's doing at such moments. I wish--I wish he were back. It's hard one can't pierce through, and see him.”
Gazing at her eyes so dark and intent, Felix thought: 'If YOU can't pierce through--none can.'
He learned the story of the disaster.
Early that morning Derek had a.s.sembled twenty of the strongest laborers, and taken them a round of the farms to force the strike-breakers to desist. There had been several fights, in all of which the strike-breakers had been beaten. Derek himself had fought three times.
In the afternoon the police had come, and the laborers had rushed with Derek and Sheila, who had joined them, into a barn at Marrow Farm, barred it, and thrown mangolds at the police, when they tried to force an entrance. One by one the laborers had slipped away by a rope out of a ventilation-hole high up at the back, and they had just got Sheila down when the police appeared on that side, too. Derek, who had stayed to the last, covering their escape with mangolds, had jumped down twenty feet when he saw them taking Sheila, and, pitching forward, hit his head against a grindstone. Then, just as they were marching Sheila and two of the laborers away, Tod had arrived and had fallen in alongside the policemen--he and the dog. It was then she had seen that look on his face.
Felix, who had never beheld his big brother in Berserk mood, could offer no consolation; nor had he the heart to adorn the tale, and inflict on this poor woman his reflection: 'This, you see, is what comes of the ferment you have fostered. This is the reward of violence!' He longed, rather, to comfort her; she seemed so lonely and, in spite of all her stoicism, so distraught and sad. His heart went out, too, to Tod. How would he himself have felt, walking by the side of policemen whose arms were twisted in Nedda's! But so mixed are the minds of men that at this very moment there was born within him the germ of a real revolt against the entry of his little daughter into this family of hotheads. It was more now than mere soreness and jealousy; it was fear of a danger hitherto but sniffed at, but now only too sharply savored.