II
When he awoke, it was dark. His head felt enormous. It was getting bigger and bigger, till soon it would fill the room. Soon his head would be so big, it would fill all the room, and the room would be too small for it. Oh, horror! He was so frightened, he cried out.
“What’s amiss?” a quick voice was asking.
“Make a light! Make a light!” cried Jack.
Lennie quickly lit a candle, and to Jack’s agonized relief, there was the cubby, the bed, the walls, all of natural dimensions, and Tom and Lennie in their nightshirts standing by his bed.
“What’s a-matter, ol’ dear?” Lennie asked caressively.
“My head! I thought it was getting so big the room wouldn’t hold it.”
“Aw! go on now!” said Lennie. “Y’ face is a bit puffy, but y’ head’s same as ever it was.”
Jack couldn’t believe it. He was so sensually convinced that his head had grown enormous, enormous, enormous.
He stared at Lennie and Tom in dismay. Lennie stroked his hair softly.
“There’s y’ ol’ nut!” he said. “Tain’t no bigger ’n it ever was. Just exactly same life-size.”
Gradually Jack let himself be convinced. And at last he let them blow the candle out. He went to sleep.
He woke again with a frenzy working in him. He had pain, too. But far worse than the pain was the tearing of the raging discomfort, the frenzy of dislocation. And in his stiff swollen head, there was something he remembered but could not drag into light. What was it? What was it? In the frenzy of struggle to know, he went vague.
Then it came to him, words as plain as knives.
“And when I die
In hell I shall lie
With fire and chains
And awful pains.”
The Aunts had repeated this to him, as a child, when he was naughty. And it had always struck a vague terror into his soul. He had forgotten it. Now it came again.
“In hell I shall lie
With fire and chains
And awful pains.”
He had a vivid realisation of this hell. That was where he lay at that very moment.
“You must be a good, loving little boy.”
He had never wanted to be a good, loving little boy. Something in his bowels revolted from being a good, loving little boy, revolted in nausea. “But if you’re not a good, loving little boy.”
Then when you die
In hell you will lie’—etc.
“Let me lie in hell, then,” the bad and unloving little boy had answered, to the shocked horror of the Aunts. And the answer had scared even himself.
And now the hell was on him. And still he was not a good, loving little boy.
He remembered his lessons: Love your enemies.
“Do I love Easu?” he asked himself. And he writhed over in bed in disgust. He loathed Easu. If he could crush him absolutely to powder, he would crush him to powder. Make him extinct.
“Lord, Lord!” he groaned. “I loathe Easu. I loathe him.”
What was amiss with him? Did he want to leave off loathing Easu? Was that the root of his sickness and fever?
But when he thought of Easu’s figure and face, he knew he didn’t want to leave off loathing him. He did loathe him, whether he wanted to or not, and the fact to him was sacred. It went right through the core of him.
“Lord! Lord!” he groaned, writhing in fever. “Lord, help me to loathe him properly. Lord, I’ll kill him if you want me to; and if you don’t want me to, I won’t. I’ll kill him if you want me to. But if you don’t want me to, I won’t care any more.”
The pledge seemed to soothe him. At the back of Jack’s consciousness was always this mysterious Lord, to whom he cried in the night. And this Lord put commands upon him, but so darkly, Jack couldn’t easily find out what the commands were. The Aunts had always said, the command was to be a good, loving little boy. But when he tried being a good, loving little boy, his soul seemed to lose his Lord, and turn wicked. That was what made him fear hell. When he seemed to lose connection with his great, mysterious Lord, with whom he communed absolutely alone, he became aware of hell. And he couldn’t share with his Aunts that Jesus whom they always commended. At the Sacrament, something in his soul stood cold, and he knew this was no Sacrament to him.
He had his own Lord. And when he could get into communication or communion, with his own Lord, he always felt well and right again.
Now, in his pain and battered fever, he was fighting for his Lord again.
“Lord, I don’t love Easu, and I’ll kill him if you want me to. But if you don’t want me to, I won’t, I won’t, I won’t bother any more.”
This pledge and this submission soothed him strangely. He felt he was coming back to his own Lord. It was a pledge, and he would keep it. He gave no pledge to love Easu. Only not to kill him, if the Lord didn’t want it; and to kill him, if the Lord did.
“Lord, I don’t love Monica. I don’t love her. But if she’d give up to me, I’d love her if you wanted me to.”
He thought about this. Somewhere, his soul burned against Monica. And somewhere, his soul burned for her.
But she must give up to him. She must give herself up. He demanded this submission, as if it were a submission to his mysterious Lord. She would never submit to the mysterious Lord direct. Like that old demon of a Gran, who knew the Lord, and played with Him, spited Him even. Monica would have first to submit to himself, Jack, in person, before she would really yield before the immense Lord. And yield before the immense Lord she must. Through him.
“Lord!” he said, invoking the supreme power, “I love Lennie and Tom, and I want always to love them, and I want you to back them.”
The prickles of pain entered his soul again.
“Lord, I don’t love my father, but I don’t want to hurt him. Only, I don’t love him, Lord. And it’s not my fault, though he’s a good man, because I wasn’t born with love for him in me.”
This had been a thorn in his consciousness since he was a child. Best get it out now. Because the fear of not loving his father had almost made him hate him. If he ought to love him, and he couldn’t love him, then there was nothing to do but hate him, because of the hopeless obligation. But if he needn’t love him, then he needn’t hate him, and they could both be in peace. He would leave it to his Lord.
“Perhaps I ought to love Mary,” he continued. “But I don’t really love her, because she doesn’t realise about the Lord. She doesn’t realise there is any Lord. She thinks there’s only me, and herself. But there is the Lord. And Monica knows. But Monica is spiteful against the Lord. Lord! Lord!”
He ended on the old human cry of invocation: a cry which is answered, when it comes from the extreme, passionate soul. The strange, dark comfort and power came back to him again, and he could go to sleep once more, with his Lord.
When he woke in the morning, the fever had left him. Lennie was there at dawn, to see if he wanted anything. The quick little Lennie, who always came straight from the Lord, unless his emotions of pity got the better of him. Then he lost his connections, and became maudlin.
Jack wanted the family not to know. But the twins saw his disfigured face, with horror. And Monica knew: it was she who had sent Dr. Rackett and Tom and Alec. And Grace knew. And soon Ma came, and said: “Dear o’ me, Jack Grant, what d’y’mean by going and getting messed up like this!” And Dad came slow and heavy, and said nothing, but looked dark and angry. They all knew.
But Jack wanted to be left alone. He told Tom and Dr. Rackett, and Tom and Dr. Rackett ordered the family to leave him alone.
It was Grace who brought his meals. Poor old Grace, with her big eyes and rather big nose, she had a gentle heart, and more real sense than that Monica. Jack only got to know her while he was sick, and she really touched his heart. She was so kind, and thought so little of herself, and had such a sad wisdom at the bottom of her. Who would have thought it, of the pert, cheeky, nosy Grace?
Monica slipped in, and stood staring down at him with her queer, brooding eyes, that shone with widened pupils. Heaven knows what she was thinking about.
“I was awfully afraid he’d kill you,” she said. “I was so frightened, that’s what made me laugh.”
“Why should I let him kill me?” said Jack.
“How could you help it! He’s much stronger and crueller than you.”
“He may be stronger, but I can match him in other ways.”
She looked at him incredulously. She did not believe him. He could see she did not believe in that other, inward power of his, upon which he himself depended. She thought him in every way weaker, frailer than Easu. Only, of course, nicer. This made Jack very angry.
“I think I punished him as much as he punished me,” he said.
“He’s not laid up in bed,” she replied.
Then, with her quivering, exquisite gentleness, she touched his bandaged hand.
“I’m awfully sorry he hurt you so,” she said. “I know you’ll hate me for it.”
“Why should I?” he replied coldly.
She took up his bandaged hand and kissed it quickly, then she looked him long and beseechingly in the eyes: or the one eye. Somehow she didn’t seem to see his caricature of a face.
“Don’t hate me for it,” she pleaded, still watching him with that strange, pleading, watchful look.
The flame leapt in his bowels, and came into his eyes. And another flame as she, catching the change in his eyes, softened her look and smiled subtly, suddenly taking his wrist in a passionate, secret grasp. He felt the hot blood suffusing him like new life.
“Good-bye!” she said, looking back at him as she disappeared.
And when she had gone, he remembered the watchfulness in her eyes, the cat-like watchfulness at the back of all her winsome tenderness. There it was, like the devil. And he turned his face to the wall, to his Lord, and two smarting tears came under his eyes as if they were acid.
The next day Mary came bringing his pap. She was not going to be kept away any longer. And she would come as a ministering angel.
He saw on her face that she was startled, shocked, and a little repelled by his appearance. She hardly knew him. But she overcame her repulsion at once, and became the more protective.
“Why, how awful it must be for you!” she said.
“Not so bad now,” he said, manfully swallowing his pap.
He could see she longed for him to have his own good-looking face again. She could not bear this strange horror. She refused to believe this was he.
“I shall never forgive that cruel Easu!” she said, and the colour came to her dark cheek. “I hope I never have to speak to him again.”
“Oh, I began it. It was my fault.”
“How could it be!” cried Mary. “That great hulking brute. How dare he lay a finger on you!”
Jack couldn’t smile, his face was of the fixed sort. But his one good eye had a gleam. “He dare, you see,” he answered. But she turned away in smarting indignation.
“It makes one understand why such creatures had their hands cut off in the old days,” she said, with cold fierceness.
“How dare he disfigure your beautiful face! How dare he!” And tears of anger came to her eyes.
A strangled grin caused considerable pain to Jack’s beautiful face.
“I suppose he didn’t rightly appreciate my sort of looks,” he said.
“The jealous brute,” said Mary. “But I hope he’ll pay for it. I hope he will. I do hope he hasn’t really disfigured you,” she ended on a note of agitation.
“No, no! Besides that doesn’t matter all the world.”
“It matters all the world,” she cried, with strange fierceness, “to me.”