Unknown (68 page)

He craned his neck round, staring at the fire that was now very large and very red. The voice he had heard was that of a man, and it had come from somewhere behind the masonry of the wall, just to the right of that burning blaze. And then, without any ambiguity this time, he heard an unmistakable sound clear and distinct in some room just below his floor. He moved his head back upon his pillow. The sound ceased at once. Again he stretched out his head, like the head of a saurian, over the side of the bed. The sound once more became audible. It was an unmistakable sound; but it was anything but a romantic sound. It was in fact the sound of a man making water.

Mr. Geard could not be mistaken. The man was makh^ water into a metallic chamber-pot: and as he made it he Lr,le wh;i several times. The Mayor of Glastonbury continued to crane hi? neck over the side of his bed. He now became aware of a cr.jjvk. just in that place, between the bare, dark, oak planks jf the flu »:\ A faint, a very faint light was observable through thi* slit ::; :hs floor. He continued to listen with his whole soul. Never had h* listened so intently to any sound in his life. He heard the man replace the chamber-pot ... it must have been made of tin or perhaps of iron . . . and then there were steps and gaspings and creakings and low grumbling groans. Soon he heard another sound, similar to the first and yet dissimiliar. A second human being was making water. This time the flow was noisier* quicker, sooner over. "It's a woman,7' thought Bloody Johnny.

He tried to make his awkward position, as he hung over the crack in the floor, a more comfortable one. He extended his arm until his fingers touched the floor. Yes! this gave a necessary support to his outstretched Head.

There were more shufflings and groanings, more creakings and obscure murmurs, then dead silence. He waited, still stretched out over the crack. He thought to himself, fibA man makes water. A woman makes water. These sounds are being heard all over Somersetshire tonight, in thousands and thousands of bedrooms. Other unpleasant sounds are being heard too. The sounds of the teeth of incredibly ravenous rats inside hundreds of slaughterhouses. I wonder,“ so the thoughts of the Mayor ran on, 'T wonder if there are any ears subtle enough to hear the worms at work in the churchyards? A man making water. A woman making water. Every sound a vibration. Every vibration a radiation, a detonation. Every sound travelling from the earth outward into space. Will the sound of Mr. and Mrs. Bellamy making water in their room at Mark Court go on voyaging through space until it reaches the Milky Way? And not stop even then? No! No! Why should it stop then? Nothing once started can ever stop! It can come back perhaps, if space is round, but that's the best it can do. Here we go round Tom Tiddler's ground! The everlasting pissing of Mr. and Mrs. Bellamy.”

But the silence was broken again now; broken just as the Mayor of Glastonburv was going to withdraw his outstretched head. There was a sound of expectoration; and this sound was a good deal more disagreeable to the ears of Mr. Geard than the other had been. And then he heard with appalling distinctness the voice of the old woman saying to the old man. “'Spit on the brown paper, John. Spit on the brown paper I did lay out for 'ee!”

Bloody Johnny drew back his head and once more pulled the purple coverlet tightly round his chin. “Nineue” he murmured aloud, trying to recall what it had been in the intonation of that voice from behind the fireplace that had given his heart such a shock. Had he dreamed of his heart being sick and yellow, like the driven moon, before he heard that voice crying out? Yes he had. He most assuredly had. And he had been dreaming of the name “Nineue”' before he heard it cried. And he had thought of the word “Nineue” ... it had come suddenly into his head in place of something else . . . before he dreamed of it. Or had he dreamed of it and thought of it too after he had heard that voice?

“Damn!” said Bloody Johnny to himself, "It must have been that old pantaloon, down there, talking to his wife; and in my dream I made it out to be a voice/'

He had reached this point in his cogitations wThen he suddenly found himself sitting straight up in the creaking little bed in a grievous fit of pure fear. He knew that voice was going to be lifted up again. He knew it was. Nothing could stop it from being lifted up again. In just one second he would be hearing it again. It would be crying “Mneue” just as it had done before. “If it does,” he thought, “I shall run out on that bridge. I shall knock at that girl's door. She couldn't not let me in. She couldn't not!”

But he clenched his hands together stubbornly and stared at the red fire, resolute, in his massive way, to beat down this fear, to beat it down and hold it down, so that it should not grow into panic; so that it should not get into his legs. So far it wTas only in his heart and in his throat But he could feel it descending. It ran. down a funnel ... the fear-funnel it was that it ran down . . . inside his ribs . . . no, between his spine and his stomach. Tightly, tightly, he clasped his hands together staring at the fire.

He thought of various quiet, sturdy people in his life. He thought of Megan sleeping in their familiar room.

And then, in a flash, he thought of Canon Crow. The Canon had been accustomed to read Rabelais to him sometimes of a night, when the servants were in bed. The Cair.r* had laughed at him at such times and called him “Friar John de= E::io:nmcures/” "Friar John of the Funnels/* He was all one great Funnel now . . . waiting till the repetition of that voire punited fear into him . . . out of him . . . through him . . . pumped . . . pumped, . . . But all might yet be well if this fear didn't get into his legs!

Now came a second of time when he actually wanted the voice to come again. “When it's come, it's come/* he thought. ”It's past then . . . come and gone.“ But it was his own mouth that now opened like a crack in thick ice. It was his own voice that resounded wildly through King Mark's chamber, till the rafters rang again; ”Nineue! NineueP

He did feel a certain relief when he had uttered this rending and tearing scream. He found he had sufficient self-control now to ask himself what it had been in the intonation of that voice that had made his heart so sick. The horror he had felt was not precisely fear, What it really was was pity* It was pity carried to such a point by the intonation of that reiterated '“Nineue! Nineue!” that it became worse than fear. The relief he experienced when—impelled by a nervous force he was unable to resist—he had himself cried out that name was like the relief which some spectator at the Colosseum might have felt, when unable to endure what he saw, he had jumped down into the arena and was fighting there tooth and nail among the murderers and the murdered.

He now found himself mumbling forth a sort of personal appeal to the Being who had cried “Nineue! Nineue!”

"Why don't you come forth? Why don't you show yourself? Yes, yes, why don't you come forth now, close up to my bed, near me, near me, so that I can touch you, see you, feel you?'*

He uttered these words in a low tone, swaying and shivering there in the reddish fire-gleams. If any human eye had been watching him he would have resembled a picture that one could imagine being painted by Rembrandt if Rembrandt had gone mad.

The fire-gleams flickered upon the tight woolen vest that covered the exposed half of his protuberant belly. They flickered upon his great white face. They flickered upon the headless falcon embroidered on the torn rug about his legs. They flickered on his stockinged feet, which stuck out grotesquely beyond the end of his diminutive bed.

"Why don't you let me see you?'* he whined again in a voice that was almost wheedling; and he began suddenly nodding his great head in a manner that suggested the impulse of a powerful dog anxious to propitiate a yet more powerful dog by an obsequious fawning and wagging of its great tail.

“Let me see you! Yes, yes; let me touch you with my hands!”

It was as if he were addressing a Being whose presence he felt much more certainly, much more closely than he felt the pressure of that heraldic rug at which he now began twitching; pinching it with his fingers and thumbs, much as a dying man plays wTith the bedclothes that cover his nakedness. What he felt in all his pulses was that if this desperate lover of Xineue . * . this great and lost magician . • . were to come forth now from behind that reddened smoke and approach his bed his heart would have become calm as a saint's.

It was the tone of that cry. He could not bear it. If he heard it again his heart would crack. Pity carried to that point was intolerable. ... He ceased his picking at the rug. He bent his great head as a wrestler or a boxer might have done. And he took hold of his heavy, phlegmatic soul in the iron pincers of his massive will and he pressed it down, like a bar of molten metal into those lower levels of his thick nature where he h^ld fast hold of his Christ.

And then Mr. Geard gathered himself together. There were physical movements in his body of which he was quite unconscious. His thick shoulders under his woolen vest heaved and shuddered. His exposed belly went in and out, sinking and expanding; while the stature of his torso from hips to crown palpably distended. Three times he struggled to utter words; but in vain. He attempted it the fourth time; but in vain. Then the fifth time, or his Atlantean heaving . . . words came; words mingled with bloody spume came: forcing themselves out of his mouth they came; with a wrench as if they brought his entrails with them.

"Christ have mercy upon you!*5 gasped Mr. Geard. The words were no sooner out of his mouth than a relaxed shivering fit seized upon him and his head fell forward. His whole body drooped forward, bending at the waist, the arms limp. Had there been anyone to see his face at that moment it would have appeared like the face of a corpse before its fallen chin has been caught up and bandaged.

Perfectly still he remained, his eyelids drooping, his whole frame limp. He was like a person who has been shaken by the convulsions of some terrible fit, till, in the ensuing stillness, his spirit seems to have gone out of him.

He remained, for what seemed to his own dazed consciousness like several hours, in this position. Then, very slowly the life-energy returned to him. All his dread was over now and a great peacefulness descended upon him. Leisurely and comfortably and with an exquisite feeling of sensual contentment he stretched himself out once more in his little bed and pulled the purple coverlet over his shoulders.

He began to feel very sleepy and with his sleepiness there fell upon him a delicious sense of inscrutable, unutterable achievement. But the Mayor of Glastonbury was not allowed just yet to enjoy his hard-earned repose.

There came a very definite sound to his ears at the end of the room, at that place in the wall of King Mark's chamber where was the door leading out upon the Bridge of Sighs. It was the sound of that little door opening inward upon its rusty hinges. With a drowsy and a rather irritable movement he heaved himself up again in his bed.

And the door was closed carefully and gently, there before him; and a slender black figure, holding a flat candlestick in its hand, advanced with bare feet across the floor towards his bed.

Rachel Zoyland did not utter a word till she reached his bedside. Then in a voice that trembled on the edge of a child's passionate crying-fit she said brokenly:

“I heard ... I heard ... I was listening ... I couldn't sleep ... I heard. . . .”

The long black cloak she was wearing fell open displaying her white night-gown.

He stretched out his arm. Not for the first time in his life Bloody Johnny became uncomfortably aware of the grotesque-ness of his physical appearance. He took hold of her hand and tried to make her sit down at the foot of his bed, but she remained standing there in her naked feet, her long straight night-gown showing white as her cloak swung open. Her brown hair fell in tumbled curls over one of her small bare shoulders. Her childish mouth, twitching in the light of the candle which she clutched, could not utter a word. The candle was so shaken by the way she was trembling that its grease began to drip upon the emblazoned coverlet.

“I heard ... I heard you call c . . and I had to come,” she whispered.

Bloody Johnny, blinking with his sleepy eyelids because of the flame of the candle, made a humorous grimace and pointed to the floor at her feet.

“The Bellamys are just below,” he whispered hoarsely. “For God's sake don't get me into trouble with the household! If you heard me shout, I'm afraid they must; and they may be rushing in now any second!”

He uttered these words in so whimsical a manner and smiled at her so naturally and so quietly that the girl swallowed her approaching sobs in a gallant gulp.

“Put down the candle, Lady Rachel,” he said gravely, sinking back on his pillow; “you're spilling the grease on your father's rug.”

She obeyed him with docility now and sat down on the flimsy couch, which promptly gave vent to an ominous creak.

But he stretched out his arm, in its tight woolen sleeve, and took her hand.

“It'll stand your weight,” he said, “if it's stood all my antics.”

“Don't make me go to Miss Crow,” she whispered. “Let me come and live with you!”

He looked at her through his half-shut eyelids, while the syllables “Nineue” floated dreamily through his sooilud L-miscious-ness. It was indeed the first time in Bioudy Joimrn's lile that the indescribable magic of a young girl's identity dominated his mind. It floated forth from everything about her, from the soft brown curls resting on her exposed shoulder, where her cloak had slipped, from the fragrant warmth of her licrht HiaLs. from the cold virginal curves of her mouth, from the tiny rondures, like water-lilies under her night-gown, of her girl's breasts, from the softness about her childish figure that made it different from what a boy's would have been, and beyond and above all these from a flower-like sweetness which emanated rather from her soul than from her body, troubling the senses of Mr, Geard with an awakened consciousness of the loveliness which all the youns leaves and shoots and petals out there in that spring wind must have possessed this Easter night