VIII
He sat down thankfully on the hard chair by Herbert’s side, glad to get away from women. Glad to be with men, if it was only Herbert. Glad to doze and feel alone: to feel alone.
He awoke with a jerk and a cramped neck, and there was Tom peeping in. Tom? They must be back. Jack’s chair creaked as he made a movement to get up. But Tom only waved his hand and disappeared. Mean of Tom.
They must be back. The twins must be back. The family was replenished. He stared with sleepy eyes, and a heavy, sleepy, sleepy head.
And the next thing he heard was a soft, alert voice saying: “Hello, Bow!” Queer how it echoed in his dark consciousness as he slept, this soft “Hello, Bow!”
There they were, both laughing, fresh with the wind and rain. Grace standing just behind Monica, Monica’s hair all tight crisp with rain, blond at the temples, darker on the head, and her fresh face laughing, and her yellow eyes looking with that long, meaningful look that had no meaning, peering into his sleepy eyes. He felt something stir inside him.
“Hello, Bow!” she said again, putting her fingers on his sleeve, “We’ve got back.” And still in his sleep-stupor he stared without answering a word.
“You aren’t awake!” she whispered, putting her cold hand suddenly on his face, and laughing as he started back. A new look came into his eyes as he stared startled at her, and she bent her head, turning aside.
“Poo! Smells of stinking candles in here!” whispered Grace.
Someone else was there. It was Red Easu in the doorway, saying in a hoarse voice:
“Want me to take a spell with Herbert?”
Monica glanced back at him with a strange look. He loomed weird and tall, with his rather long, red neck and glistening beard and quick blue eyes. A certain sense of power came with him.
“Hello, girls, got back!” he added to the twins, who watched him without speaking.
“Who’s there?” said Gran’s voice from the other side of the screen. “Is it the girls back? Has Mary come with you?”
As if in answer to the summons, Mary appeared in the doorway, wearing a white apron. She glanced first at Jack, with her black eyes, and then at Gran. Monica was watching her with a sideways lynx look, and Grace was looking at everybody with big blue eyes, while Easu looked down from his uncouth, ostrich height.
“Hello, Gran!” said Mary, going to the other side of the screen to kiss the old lady. The twins followed suit.
“Want me to take a spell in here?” said Easu, jerking his thumb at the sleeping Herbert. Easu wore black trousers hitched up high with braces over a dark-grey flannel shirt, and leather leggings, but no boots. His shirt-sleeves were rolled up from his sinewy brown arms. His reddish fair hair was thick and rather long. He spoke in a deep gruff voice, that he made as quiet as possible, and he seemed to show a gruff sort of submissiveness to Jack, at the moment.
“No, Easu,” replied Gran, “I can’t do with you, Jack Grant will manage.”
The sick man was sleeping through it all like the dead.
“I can take a turn,” said Mary’s soft, low, insidious voice.
“No, not you either, Mary. You go to ’sleep after that drive. Go, all of you, go to bed. I can’t do with you all in here. Has Dr. Rackett come?”
“No,” said Easu.
“Then go away, all of you. I can’t do with you,” said Gran.
Mary came round the screen and shook hands with Jack, looking him full in the eyes with her black eyes, so that he was uncomfortable. She made him more uncomfortable than Monica did. Monica had slunk also round the screen, and was standing with one foot trailing, watching. She watched just as closely when Mary shook hands with the embarrassed Easu.
They all retreated silently to the door. Grace went first. And with her big, dark-blue eyes she glanced back inquisitively at Jack. Mary went next—she too turning in the door to give him a look and an intimate, furtive-seeming smile. Then came Monica, and like a wolf she lingered in the door looking back with a long, meaningful, meaningless sidelong look before she took her departure. Then on her heels went Easu, and he did not look back. He seemed to loom over the girls.
“Blow the light out,” said Gran.
He went round to blow out the candle. Gran lay there like an old angel. Queer old soul—framed by pillow frills.
“Yourself is God!”
Jack thought of that with a certain exultance.
He went over and made up the fire. Then he sat in the arm-chair. Herbert was moving. He went over to soothe him. The sick man moaned steadily for some time, for a long time, then went still again. Jack slept in the hard chair.
He woke up cramped and cold, and went round to the arm-chair by the fire. Gran was sleeping like an inert bit of ivory. He softly attended to the fire and sat down in the arm-chair.
He was riding a horse a long, long way, on a journey that would never end. He couldn’t stop the horse till it stopped of itself. And it would never stop. A voice said: What has he done? And a voice answered: Conquered the world.—But the horse did not stop. And he woke and saw shadows on the wall, and slept again. Things had all turned to dough—his hands were heavy with dough. He woke and looked at his hands to see if it were so. How loudly and fiercely the clock ticked!
Not dough, but boxing gloves. He was fighting inside a ring, fighting with somebody who was and who wasn’t Easu. He could beat Easu—he couldn’t beat Easu. Easu had knocked him down; he was lying writhing with pain and couldn’t rise, while they were counting him out. In three more seconds he would be counted out! Horror!
He woke, it was midnight and Herbert was writhing.
“Did I sleep a minute, Herbert?” he whispered.
“My head! My head! It jerks so!”
“Does it, old man? Never mind.”
And the next thought was: “There must have been gun-powder in that piece of wood, in the fire.”