The Rain-Girl/Chapter 4
CHAPTER IV
THE CALL OF THE RAIN-GIRL
TO-MORROW," remarked Beresford, as he lay back in a hammock-chair upon the inn lawn, "I set out for the haunts of men."
Tallis, who had called in after dinner for a smoke, did not reply immediately; but for fully a minute sat pulling meditatively at his pipe.
"Any criticisms?" enquired Beresford with a smile.
"That depends on how you propose to go," was the reply.
"Oh, slow, say ten miles a day."
"That's helpful," said Tallis drily.
"Helpful? What the deuce do you mean?"
"I shall know where to have the ambulance."
For a moment Beresford did not reply, then he laughed.
"You certainly are the most extraordinary fellow I ever met," he said. "So you think I can't walk ten miles?"
"You'll collapse before you reach the third mile," Tallis replied, with the air of a man making a simple statement of fact.
"What!" cried Beresford, sitting up straight in his surprise. "Am I as bad as that?"
"You're just weak and want building up," was the reply.
For some time the two men continued to smoke in silence.
"I suppose the war cheapens human life," said Beresford irrelevantly.
Tallis looked across at him; but made no comment.
"I noticed out there," continued Beresford, "that men new to the game seemed so different from those who had been at it a year or two."
"In what way?"
"They seemed more vital. They were interested, curious. They asked all sorts of what seemed to us old hands stupid questions." He paused, and Tallis nodded his head comprehendingly.
"Then they would gradually become absorbed in the atmosphere of fatalism that seemed to grip us all. It was very strange," he added, half to himself.
"What about the cheapening of life?"
"It's a bit difficult to express," said Beresford slowly, "but somehow or other I seem to feel that the old idea of the sacredness of human life has gone for ever as far as I am concerned." Again he paused and for some seconds smoked in silence, then he continued whimsically, "Take an exaggerated case. Before the war if a man had"
"Stolen from you the girl with the eyes, shall we say," suggested Tallis gravely.
"Well, that'll do," he laughed, "I should probably have wanted to knock him down; now I should kill him. Why?"
"Merely a psychological readjustment of your ideas of crime and punishment," said Tallis.
"No, that's not it," said Beresford musingly. "It goes deeper than that. Before the war, killing was an unthinkable crime, now it's little more than kicking a man downstairs. In other words this generation has pricked the bubble of the sacredness of human life."
"I suppose that's it," said Tallis, as if reluctant to admit it. "But"
"That doesn't settle my little hash, you mean?" Beresford interrupted.
"Your little hash will settle itself, my son," replied Tallis with a smile, "unless you're a bit more reasonable," he added.
"I was coming to that. I seem to have lost the will to live. It's odd," Beresford continued musingly, "but when things worry or irritate me, I seem instinctively to fall back on the"
"Hari-kari idea?" suggested Tallis.
"That's it," he nodded. "The way out. Why is it?"
"Liver."
"Oh, rot! If it's liver, why didn't I notice it before the war?"
"Nerves and liver do make cowards of us all," said Tallis sententiously. "Anyhow, don't hurry off from here."
"Very well, I'll put off the start until Monday. Let's see, that'll be June 9th."
Tallis nodded approval.
"You and my host and the nurse and the whole blessed boiling of you have assumed a pretty serious responsibility," continued Beresford. "You've dragged me back resisting into this world of vain endeavour, and I'm not sure that you haven't done an extremely injudicious thing; but that's your affair, not mine."
"What about the girl?" enquired Tallis.
"I ought to be annoyed with you," continued Beresford, ignoring the question, "as a man who has been forced to eat a meal he didn't want and is then asked to pay for it. You've literally hauled me back to earth by the heels; but as I say, that's your affair, not mine."
"Well," said Tallis as he rose and pocketed his pipe, "life always was a funny sort of muddle; but Kaiser Bill has added to its difficulties. I'm not at all sure that we doctors don't do more harm in saving people than in"
"Killing them," suggested Beresford.
"Letting them die as they deserve," concluded Tallis quietly. "So long," and he strolled across the lawn into "The Two Dragons," leaving his patient to his thoughts.
Beresford found himself looking forward to the day of his emancipation with all the eagerness of a schoolboy anticipating the summer holidays. The past few weeks had resulted in an entire readjustment of his ideas. The open road no longer seemed to attract him. Hitherto it had appeared the only thing that mattered; now into all his plans and projects the Rain-Girl seemed to precipitate herself.
Try as he might, he found it impossible to develop a scheme for the future from which she was excluded. A few weeks previously his one idea in life had been to get away from the London that jarred so upon his nerves. He could not breathe in its heavy, smoky atmosphere, he had told himself, and he had longed for the quiet of the countryside, where he could think and, mentally, put his house in order. Now everything was changed. Why? It seemed to have become a world of "Whys."
Convalescence to him could not mean the going away to some quiet spot where his health might be completely restored. It meant a definite and active campaign in search of this girl; yet he had seen her only twice. It was all so strange, so bewildering. Time after time he asked himself what she had thought of his conduct in not keeping the implied appointment for breakfast. Had she decided that he had forgotten, or overslept himself? He had learned that it was nearly eleven on that unfortunate second of May before his condition was discovered by the chambermaid.
Of course it did not matter to the Rain-Girl, he told himself. By now, in all probability, she had forgotten his very existence; but for himself, well, find her he would, even if he had to search London as the girl in history had done for her lover. He could not remember who it was; thinking fatigued him excessively these days. Upon one thing he congratulated himself, he possessed a clue in the name of the hotel at which she was to stay.
When at last the day of his emancipation came, Beresford found himself as excited as a child upon the morning of a school-treat. Soon after dawn he was gazing out of the window to assure himself that the weather was not about to play him another scurvy trick, such as it had done on the first day of his adventure. With a sigh of content he saw that the sky over the pinewoods opposite was blue-grey and cloudless. He returned to bed thinking, not of the weather, but of the Rain-Girl.
Soon after breakfast Tallis called to bid him good-bye.
"Now, young fellow," he said, "no tricks. Remember you are weak, and won't be able to stand much fatigue. If you set out to walk ten miles a day, or anything like it, your little worries and problems will settle themselves; but don't do it. I'm frightfully busy, and inquests are the devil."
"You've got a cheerful way of putting things," said Beresford drily.
"I've discovered that it's no use putting things to you in the normal way," replied Tallis with a smile. "To say that you are pig-headed is unfair to the porker. Remember," he added, warningly, "three miles at the outside to-day; I doubt if you'll want to do more than two."
"Oh, rot!" cried Beresford. "Look here, I'll give you two pounds for every half-mile I do under three, and you give me one pound for every mile I do over."
"No," said Tallis, shaking his head, "that would be compounding a suicide. Your will might carry you on for four miles; but you'd finish the journey on a gate."
"You're as gloomy as a panel-doctor during an epidemic," laughed Beresford. "That's the worst of you medicos, you do everything by rule of thumb. You say certain things have happened and consequently certain other things must grow out of them as a natural sequence. You make no allowance for the personal equation."
"I've made a great deal of allowance for your personal equation, my son," replied Tallis grimly, "otherwise I should long ago have certified you insane."
"Why, I'm a perfect epic of sanity compared with you," protested Beresford. "Look how you used to scandalise the nurse by the way you talked to me when, according to all the rules of the game, I ought to have been left quiet."
"And which soothed you the most," enquired Tallis quietly, "being left alone to your thoughts, or told what you wanted to know?"
"Oh, it answered all right, of course."
Tallis shrugged his shoulders.
"It's too bad," laughed Beresford, "here have you dragged me back to life again, and now I'm bullying you. It's been ripping having you about. God knows what I should have done if you hadn't been here," he added as he rose and stretched himself.
"Well, don't break down again," said Tallis, "and above all things go slow. Let me hear how you get on and—if you find her."
"Right-o," he gripped the doctor's hand, "and now, like Dick Whittington, I'm off to discover London town."
He shook hands with the proprietor, and thanked him for all he had done and, with the good wishes of the whole staff, turned his head northwards in the direction of London, conscious that before him lay an even greater adventure than the one he had sought on that unforgettable first of May.
It seemed as if Nature, conscious of having failed him once, was now endeavouring to make amends for her lapse. Birds were fluting and calling from every branch and hedge, as if it were the first day of Spring. The trees, vivid in the morning sunlight, swayed and rustled gently in the breeze; the air, soft as a maiden's kiss, was heavily perfumed. It was a day for love and lingering.
As he walked slowly along the high-road drinking in the beauty of the morning, Beresford recalled with a smile Tallis' warning. Ten miles would be a trifle on a day such as this, he decided. Still he would take no undue risks and walk slowly, loiter in fact.
He had lost thirty-eight days. It was now June 9th. It was strange how a man's ideas could change. A month ago there had been nothing he desired beyond the open road; now his face was turned London-wards. Why? Again that inevitable "Why."
The country-side was evidently no place for a man who would seek quiet and a day's delight. It seemed capable of providing a veritable orgy of incident. George Borrow was right after all.
After half an hour's sauntering, he was glad to rest on a wayside stone-heap. There was plenty of time, he told himself, and no need to hurry. Again, it was pleasant sitting by the road-side, listening to the birds and watching the life of the hedges. He had become conscious of a strange lassitude, and a still stranger inclination on the part of his legs to double up beneath him. His head, too, seemed to be behaving quite unreasonably. There were curious buzzings in his ears, and every now and then a momentary giddiness assailed him. What if Tallis should prove right after all, that he really was totally unfit for more than a mile or two?
As if to disprove such a suggestion he rose and continued his way, telling himself that as he became more accustomed to the exercise, these little manifestations of reluctance on the part of his legs and head would disappear.
At the end of three hours he had covered about two miles. The rests had been more frequent, and the distances covered between them shorter. It now became too obvious for argument or doubt that he was in no fit state for the high-road. In a way he was not sorry, although it was undignified to have to confess himself beaten. Still London was calling as she had never called to him before, not even in those nightmare-days in flooded trenches during 1914. After all perhaps it would be wiser to take train and run no risks. Tallis had been very definite about the unwisdom of over-exertion.
The sight of an approaching cart decided him. As it drew almost level Beresford hailed the driver, a little, weather-beaten old man with ragged whiskers and kindly blue eyes, asking if he would give him a lift.
The man pulled up and invited him to jump in, explaining that he was bound for Leatherhead.
As he climbed into the cart, Beresford was conscious that it meant surrender; but he was quite content.
Thus it happened that at half-past three on the afternoon of the day he had set out from "The Two Dragons," Beresford found himself at Waterloo Station, with no luggage other than his rucksack and a walking-stick, wondering where he should spend the night. He had taken the precaution of booking a room at the Ritz-Carlton; but he was not due there until the following Monday. In any case he could not very well turn up without luggage and in his present kit.
Having sent a telegram to Tallis telling him of the accuracy of his lugubrious prophesies, Beresford hailed a taxi and drove to the Dickens Hotel in Bloomsbury, where he was successful in obtaining a room, owing to the sudden departure of a guest called away to the death-bedside of a relative.
That night he slept the sleep of the physically exhausted.
The morrow and the remainder of the week he devoted to shopping. He found that an hour in the morning, with another hour in the afternoon, after he had been fortified by lunch, was as much as he could stand. His tailor was frankly pleased to see him, and tactfully dissimulated the surprise he felt. In the matter of expedition he achieved the impossible. By the end of the week Beresford found himself completely equipped with all that was necessary to enable him to proceed upon his great search.
On the Monday morning when he drove from the Dickens Hotel to the Ritz-Carlton, he was conscious of two things, a thrill of anticipation and the blatant newness of his luggage.