The Second Class Passenger Part 43

"I--I can't understand it," said Mary. "I'm sure there's a mistake somewhere."

Young Wylde nodded. "We'll call it a mistake," he said. "He was injured on the Underground in London and taken to St. Brigid's Hospital, where he died. I remember reading about it. Now, of course, I shan't say anything to anybody; but you ought to have an explanation.

Fish--is that his name--seems to have played it pretty low down on you." He gathered up his bridle and nodded to her with intent.

"Good afternoon, Miss Pond," he said. "Sorry to make trouble, but I couldn't leave you in the dark about a thing like this."

Mary walked on to the churchyard in considerable bewilderment. With the character of a patient who came under her care she had no particular concern; a nurse must be as little discriminating as death. But she did not like the story; it troubled and offended her-- its connexion with matters that interested the police, and all its suggestion that she and her father were being used as a means of hiding, touched her with a sense of disgust. It did not occur to her to doubt Harry Wylde; he had been altogether too circ.u.mstantial to be doubted.

She reached the low wall that separated the churchyard from the road.

The old graces, with their tombstones leaning awry, like gapped, uneven teeth, reminded her of her errand, and soon she saw Smith. He had found himself a seat where an old tomb with railings and monument was overrun with ground ivy; he sat among the coa.r.s.e green of it, staring before him with his chin propped on one hand. All the glory of the western sky was beyond him; his profile stood out against it like a sharp silhouette. Mary stopped to look, and for the time forgot the wretched story she had just heard. The man was as motionless as the stone on which he sat-still with such a stillness as one sees not in the living. But it was not that which held. Mary gazing; it came suddenly to her that in his att.i.tude there was something apt; and significant, something with a meaning, requiring only a key to interpret it. She wondered about it, vaguely, and without framing words for her thoughts it occurred to her that the stillness, the att.i.tude, the mute surrender that spoke in every contour of the silhouetted figure, the very posture of rest, bespoke contentment, tile welcome of relief which one feels on reaching one's own place, one's familiar atmosphere, one's due haven.

Minutes pa.s.sed, and still she stood gazing; then, as though restive under the impressions that invaded her, she moved forward and entered the churchyard. It was not till she stood before him that Smith was aware of her; with a wrinkling of his brow and a sigh, he came back to his surroundings. Mary saw and noted how the raptness of his face gave way to its usual feebleness as he roused himself.

"You have been out a long time, nearly three hours," he said. "I think you ought to come in now."

He sighed again. "All right," he said slowly. But he did not rise, and Mary did not hurry him. She stood looking down at him, while his slack lips fidgeted and his pale eyes flitted here and there over the ancient graves.

"Why did you come here to this place?" she asked him presently. Her voice was very low.

He hesitated. "It's where I ought to be," he said heavily. "Only I didn't have no luck." One hand went out uncertainly and he pointed to the graves. "Them chaps is past bothering," he said. "There's no gettin' at them."

He shook his head--it was as though he s.h.i.+vered--and relapsed into silence again.

"You shouldn't think about things like that," Mary said.

He looked up at her almost shrewdly. "Think!" he repeated. "I got no need to think. I know."

"Know--what?"

"Ah!" he said, and gat brooding. "I'm alive, I am," he said, at last; "but I been better off once. There's no way of tellin' it, 'cos it don't' fit into words. Words wasn't meant to show such things. But I wasn't just a limpin', squintin' little welsher; I was something that could feel the meaning of things and the reason for them, just like you can feel 'eat and cold. Could feel and know things such as n.o.body can't feel or know till 'e's done with this rotten bustle of livin'

and doin' things. That's what I know, Miss; that's what I found out when I died in that there 'orspital."

Mary stared at him; a brief vivacity was in his face as he spoke, a tone of certainty in his voice.

"But," she cried, "you're alive."

"Ay," he said. "I'm alive. That's the doin' of that Fish. He's the man; proddin' and workin' away there in that big room of his with the bottles and machines, and bits of dead men on the tables. 'E thinks I'm a bit touched in the brain, but I know, I do! I remember all right that mornin', with the grey sky showin' over the wire blinds and the noise of the carts just beginnin' in the streets. There was sparkles in my eyes, flashes and colors, you know, and a feelin' as if I was all wet with warm water. I couldn't see at first, but by an'

by I put up my 'and and cleared my eyes--all pins and needles, my 'and was. Then I got on my elbow, and saw--the room and the bottles and all, and me naked on a table under a big light. An' against the wall, at the other side o' the room, there was 'im--Fish--in a white- rubber gown and a face like chalk, shakin' an' sweatin' an' starin'

at me. His eyes were all big an' flat; an' I lay there an' looked at him, while he bit his lips an' got a hold on himself. At last 'e come over to me. ''Ow are you feeling?' 'e says. I'd been thinking. 'You devil, you've brought me back,' I shouted. He was shakin' still like a flag in the wind. 'Yes,' he says, 'unless I'm mad, I've brought you back.' I 'adn't the strength to do no more than lie still; so I just watched 'im while 'e got brandy and drank it from the bottle. Oh, I remember; I remember the whole thing. That Fish can fool you an' old Pond, but there's no foolin' me. I know!"

He leaned forward and spat; the gesture emphasised the hard deliberation of his speech. The look he gave her now was much more a.s.sured than her own.

"We must be getting back," Mary said uneasily. She remembered what Professor Fish had mentioned of Smith's delusions. But the strangeness and a.s.surance of what he had said were not in accord with what she knew of unstable minds.

He rose and accompanied her docilely enough, but the strength that had furnished him with force to speak seemed to last only while he was in the churchyard. As they went along the quiet road he was again the flimsy, unlovely sh.e.l.l of a man she had first known. They went slowly, for Mary accommodated her gait to his; he walked weakly, looking down always. Where the road pa.s.sed the end of the village a few people turned to look after them with slow curiosity. The village policeman, chin in hand, stared with bovine intensity; his big, simple face was clenched in careful observation. Mary recalled Harry Wylde's story, and his warning that the authorities had been seeking for Smith; she quickened her pace a little to get out of that mild publicity.

"What were you before you--before you met Professor Fish?" she asked him suddenly.

"A bettin' tout," he answered, "and a thief." He spoke absently and with complete composure.

"Well," said Mary, "will you do something for me if I ask you?"

He looked aside at her. "Don't ask," he said. "Don't ask me to do anything. 'Cos I can't."

"It's only this," said Mary. "What you told me in the churchyard was very wonderful and dreadful; but even if it was true, it would be a bad thing for you to think much about. It couldn't help you to live; it could only come between you and being well. So I want you, as far as you can, not to think about it. Try to forget it. Will you?"

He made some inarticulate sound with his lips. "Did Fish warn you?"

he asked. "Did he tell you I was crazy and had notions? Ah!" he exclaimed, "I can see he did. He's as cunning as a fox, he is. He's got me tied hand and foot!"

"Hus.h.!.+ Don't talk like that!" bade Mary. "Do as I ask you. You know I'm your friend. Don't you?"

He shrugged uncertainly. "You would be if you knew how," he said slowly. "But, Lord! you don't know nothing that matters. It's only us that knows what's what--only us."

"Who's us?" asked Mary involuntarily.

He looked full at her. "The dead," he answered, and after that they went on in silence.

It was not easy for Mary to marshal her thoughts that evening, when Smith, after a silent meal, had gone to bed, and left her alone with her father. He had spoken with such an effect of intensity that the impression of it persisted in her memory like the pain that remains from a blow; the figure of him, sitting on the grave, telling his strange story in words of impressive simplicity, haunted her obstinately. She could see easily the picture he had conjured for her of a big electric-lighted room, silent save for remote noises from without, and its equipment of dissecting-tables, bottles, and the machinery of an anatomist. Wylde's story had sunk into the background of her concerns; yet it was of that she had to speak to her father, and she was glad rather than surprised when he made an opening for her himself.

"Smith seems to be rather a mystery at the village," he remarked.

"That manner of his is causing talk." He laughed gently. "White--you know Ephraim White, the policeman--he asked me what I knew about him."

"Yes?" said Mary. "Well, young Mr. Wylde asked me the same thing. He was sure he had recognized him."

"Ah! And who was he supposed to be?"

Mary told him what Harry Wylde had said to her in the afternoon, not omitting the mention of the mutilated ear. Dr. Pond heard it without disturbance, nodding thoughtfully as she spoke.

"Ye-es," he said. "It's curious. It would explain the delusions, you know. Smith, bearing a marked resemblance to somebody who is dead--a resemblance that even extends to a certain wound--identifies himself with that person. A rather dramatic position, isn't it? Still, I hope we are not going to have a police inquiry. I shall certainly let Fish know that people are becoming suspicious. What did young Wylde say the other man's name was?"

"Woolley," answered Mary. "Then you will write to Professor Fish, father?"

"Yes," said the Doctor; "He ought to know. I'll write to-night."

"I think I would," agreed Mary thoughtfully, and rose to get him writing materials. But some inward function of her was uneasy; she felt as though she had failed the little man whose reliance was in her. "You know I'm your friend," she had said to him, and this reference to the Professor had not the flavor of full friends.h.i.+p. The same compunction remained with her next morning, and made her specially gentle with Smith. He had fallen back to his usual condition of vacuity and inertia; she had to rouse him to eat and drink when he sat at table with a face as void of life as a death- mask, and eyes empty and unseeing. Dr. Pond had given up his attempts to make conversation with him, and saw him with a slight exasperation which he was sedulous to conceal, so that he was altogether dependent on Mary's unfailing patience.

Professor Fish was not slow to reply to the letter. A telegram from him arrived at lunch time, stating that he would come down next day, and asking that his train might be met.

"That means you'll have to go again, Mary," said Dr. Pond. "I've an appointment at that very hour."

Mary nodded, not displeased at having an opportunity of sounding the Professor before anybody else. She saw that Smith had looked up at the mention of Fish's name with some quickening of interest. She smiled to him and helped him to salad.

The morning of the next day came in squally and wild, with starts of rain, a sharp interruption to the summer's tranquillity. Mary was rather troubled to dispose of Smith during her absence, but ensconced him at last in the room which was known as "the study," an upper chamber where Dr. Pond kept his books and those other possessions which were not in frequent use. Here was a window giving a view over the rain-blurred hedgerows, clear to the swell of the downs, and an arm-chair in which Smith could sit in peace and wear undisturbed his semblance of a man in a trance. With some notion of leaving nothing undone, Mary routed out for him a bundle of old ill.u.s.trated magazines, and left them on the unused writing-table at his side; he did not glance at them.

"Now," she said, when all was done, "I must go. I shall be back soon.

Shake hands with me and say thank you."

She smiled down into his face, as he looked slowly up at her, huddled like a lay figure between the arms of the big chair.