He loathed it: he detested the livid skies by day against which tossing waves showed black: he hated every wave at night and their ceaseless unseen motion. McKay had been "cured." McKay was very, very ill.
There came to him, at intervals, a girl who stole through the obscurity of the pitching corridors guiding him from one faint blue light to the next--a girl who groped out the way with him at night to the deck by following the painted arrows under foot. Also sometimes she sat at his bedside through the unreal flight of time, her hand clasped over his. He knew that he had been brutal to her during his "cure."
He was still rough with her at moments of intense mental pressure--somehow; realised it--made efforts toward self-command--toward reason again, mental control; sometimes felt that he was on the way to acquiring mental mastery.
But traces of injury to the mind still remained--sensitive places--and there were swift seconds of agony--of blind anger, of crafty, unbalanced watching to do harm. Yet for all that he knew he was convalescent--that alcohol was no longer a necessity to him; that whatever he did had now become a choice for him; that he had the power and the authority and the will, and was capable, once more, of choosing between depravity and decency. But what had been taken out of his life seemed to leave a dreadful silence in his brain. And, at moments, this silence became dissonant with the clamour of unreason.
On one of his worst days when his crippled soul was loneliest the icy seas became terrific. Cruisers and destroyers of the escort remained invisible, and none of the convoyed transports were to be seen. The watery, lowering daylight faded: the unseen sun set: the brief day ended. And the wind went down with the sun. But through the thick darkness the turbulent wind appeared to grow luminous with tossing wraiths; and all the world seemed to dissolve into a nebulous, h.e.l.l-driven thing, unreal, dreadful, unendurable!
"Mr. McKay!"
He had already got into his wool dressing-robe and felt shoes, and he sat now very still on the edge of his berth, listening stealthily with the cunning of distorted purpose.
Her tiny room was just across the corridor. She seemed to be eternally sleepless, always on the alert night and day, ready to interfere with him.
Finally he ventured to rise and move cautiously to his door, and he made not the slightest sound in opening it, but her door opened instantly, and she stood there confronting him, an ulster b.u.t.toned over her nightdress.
"What is the matter?" she said gently.
"Nothing."
"Are you having a bad night?"
"I"m all right. I wish you wouldn"t const.i.tute yourself my nurse, servant, mentor, guardian, keeper, and personal factotum!" Sudden rage left him inarticulate, and he shot an ugly look at her. "Can"t you let me alone?" he snarled.
"You poor boy," she said under her breath.
"Don"t talk like that! d.a.m.nation! I--I can"t stand much more--I can"t stand it, I tell you!"
"Yes, you can, and you will. And I don"t mind what you say to me."
His malignant expression altered.
"Do you know," he said, in a cool and evil voice, "that I may stop SAYING things and take to DOING them?"
"Would you hurt me physically? Are you really as sick as that?"
"Not yet.... How do I know?" Suddenly he felt tired and leaned against the doorway, covering his dulling eyes with his right forearm. But his hand was now clenched convulsively.
"Could you lie down? I"ll talk to you," she whispered. "I"ll see you through."
"I can"t--endure--this tension," he muttered. "For G.o.d"s sake let me go!"
"Where?"
"You know."
"Yes.... But it won"t do. We must carry on, you and I."
"If you--knew--"
"I do know! When these crises come try to fix your mind on what you have become."
"Yes.... A h.e.l.l of a soldier. Do you really believe that my country needs a thing like me?" She stood looking at him in silence--knowing that he was in a torment of some terrible sort. His eyes were still covered by his arm. On his boyish brow the blonde-brown hair had become damp.
She went across and pa.s.sed her arm through his. His hand rested, fell to his side, but he suffered her to guide him through the corridors toward a far bluish spark that seemed as distant as Venus, the star.
They walked very slowly for a while on deck, encountering now and then the shadowy forms of officers and crew. The personnel of the several hospital units in transit were long ago in bed below.
Once he said: "You know, Miss Erith, it is not _I_ who behaves like a scoundrel to you."
"I know," she said with a dauntless smile.
"Because," he went on, searching painfully for thought as well as words, "I"m not really a brute--was not always a blackguard--"
"Do you suppose for one moment that I blame a man who has been irresponsible through no fault of his, and who has made the fight and has won back to sanity?"
"I--am not yet--well!"
"I understand."
They paused beside the port rail for a few moments.
"I suppose you know," he muttered, "that I have thought--at times--of ending things--down there. ... You seem to know most things. Did you suspect that?"
"Yes."
"Don"t you ever sleep?"
"I wake easily."
"I know you do. I can"t stir in bed but I hear you move, too.... I should think you"d hate and loathe me--for all I"ve done--for all I"ve cost you."
"Nurses don"t loathe their patients," she said lightly.
"I should think they"d want to kill them."
"Oh, Mr. McKay! On the contrary they--they grow to like them--exceedingly."
"You dare not say that about yourself and me."
Miss Erith shrugged her pretty shoulders: "I don"t have to say anything, do I?"
He made no reply. After a long silence she said casually: "The sea is calmer, I think. There"s something resembling faint moonlight up among those flying clouds."
He lifted his tragic face and gazed up at the storm-wrack speeding overhead. And there through the hurrying vapours behind flying rags of cloud, a pallid l.u.s.tre betrayed the smothered moon.
There was just enough light, now, to reveal the forward gun under its jacket, and the shadowy gun-crew around it where the ship"s bow like a vast black, plough ripped the sea asunder in two deep, foaming furrows.
"I wish I knew where we are at this moment," mused the girl. She counted the days on her fingertips: "We may be off Bordeaux.... It"s been a long time, hasn"t it?"