Read Ebook: Here and Hereafter by Pain Barry

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Ebook has 1635 lines and 94670 words, and 33 pages

"You don't burn those in the fireplace, do you?"

"No. I--I don't think you'd understand."

The words were said gently, almost sadly, without offensive intention. But they annoyed me a little--I did not like to be told by this scarecrow that I could not understand.

"Very well," I said. "Now then, where's your wife?"

He pointed to a door at the further end of the room, on the right of the fireplace. "Through there," he said. "I--I don't know if you speak French."

"I do."

"Mala speaks French more easily than English. She lived for many years in Paris--was born there. You'll find in that room the things a chemist in Helmstone thought might be wanted. If you need anything else, or want my help in any way, I shall be here."

"Good," I said, and passed through the door he had indicated.

I must remember that I am not writing for doctors. All I need say of the case is that it was a good thing Tarn fetched me. It was a case where the intervention of a medical man was imperatively necessary. Otherwise all went perfectly well. The child was born in a little more than an hour after my arrival, a girl, healthy and vigorous, and as black as the ace of spades. Tarn did all that was required of him perfectly--quickly, but without noise or hurry, and with great intelligence.

Mala, his wife, seemed to me to be very young. She was a girl of splendid physique; her face, like the face of every negress, repelled me. She showed affection for her child, and expressed her intention of nursing it herself, of which she seemed capable. This was all natural--more natural than normal unfortunately--but all the time I was conscious that I was attending a woman of morbid psychology. When I left her asleep, it was to join a man of morbid psychology in the great living-room.

"All well?" asked Tarn, as I entered.

"Quite. Both asleep." My body was tired, and I dare say I ought to have been sleepy myself, but my mind was awake and alert. The unusual nature of the experience may account for it. I sat down and gave him some instructions and advice about his wife, to which he paid close attention.

"Must you come here again?" he asked. I thought it a question that might have been better expressed.

"Yes," I said. "I don't want to pile up the visits, but I must do what's wanted."

"I didn't mean that. I meant that unless you were coming again in any case, I should have to make arrangements for fetching you if the need arose."

I laughed. "Arrangements? Well, you've nobody to send but yourself?"

"There's the dog."

"But he doesn't know where I live."

"I was meaning to teach him that to-morrow. I'd better do it in any case--one never knows what may happen." He sighed profoundly.

"Teach him to fetch the doctor--eh? He must be a clever beggar. What do you call him?"

"He has no name. He's not a pet. You must take some refreshment before you go. Whisky?"

"Ah, a drop of whisky and a biscuit would be rather welcome. Thanks."

He brought out a jar of whisky, a gasogen of soda-water, and some large hard biscuits in their native tin.

"To your daughter's health," I said, as I raised my glass.

He suddenly put his glass down. "Farce," he said savagely. "But it's all farce--this--this fuss, She's born to die, isn't she? It's the common lot. She's hauled out of nothing by blind Chance, to be tossed back into nothing by blind Chance. Drink the health of the seaweed that the tide throws up on the shore and the tide sucks back again? No! Not I!"

The whole thing had been so strange that this outbreak did not particularly astonish me. "You'd be a happier man, Mr Tarn, and a more sensible man, if you would simply accept Nature as you find it. You can't alter it and you can't understand it. You're beating your head against a wall."

This ragged fellow took on an air of superiority that annoyed me. "Yes, yes," he said. "I've heard all that--and so often. It's the point of view of ordinary materialistic science. You are not a religious man."

"Certainly," I said, "I don't pretend that I know what I do not know. Nor am I fool enough, Mr Tarn, to complain of what from insufficient data I am unable to understand. Put in other words, I am neither an orthodox believer nor an atheist. Do I understand that you are a religious man yourself?"

"The religion of Mala and her people is mine."

"Really? You turn the tables on the missionaries. Well, the theological discussion is interesting but it is often interminable; and I have work to do to-morrow. I must be getting on."

"I will come with you as far as the car. But first, doctor, the dog must learn that you are welcome here and that he is never to harm you. Call him and give him a bit of biscuit."

I called him. He looked up from his place before the fire but did not move. Then Tarn made a movement with his hand, and the dog got up, shook himself, and walked slowly towards me. He went all round me, sniffing. I held out the biscuit to him, and he looked away to his master and whined. Tarn nodded, and the dog immediately took the food from my hand.

"Yes," said Tarn, as if answering what I was thinking, "he has never been allowed to take food from any hand but mine. He will never forget you. You can come here at any hour of the day or night now with perfect safety. It's--it's the freedom of the city."

As Tarn climbed with me up to the car, he spoke again on the subject of my fee. "I suppose I should not have offered it in advance," he said. "But it occurred to me that, as I never think about clothes, I looked very poor, and that the place where I have chosen to live also looked very poor. And you did not know me. As a matter of fact, I am bothered with far more money than I want."

"Ah!" I laughed. "I could do with a little worry of that sort."

As he fixed up the lamps he thanked me warmly for what I had done for Mala, and asked what time he might expect me on the morrow. I opened my pocket-book and looked at it by the light of the lamp. "Well, I've a light day to-morrow, barring accidents. I shall be here some time in the afternoon."

The drive home was accomplished without incident. I ran the car into the coach-house and went straight to bed. But for more than an hour I could not get to sleep. I was haunted by that man and his negress wife, building theories about them, trying to account for them. Just as I was dropping off I was awakened again by a smell of bitter smoke in my nostrils--the smell of burning juniper leaves. Then I recognised that the smell was a memory-illusion, and fell asleep in real earnest.

I got back from my Sunday morning round before one. Helmstone was rather full of visitors that day, and there were many cars before the big hotel in the Queen's Road. As my man was driving slowly through the traffic I saw, a hundred yards away, Tarn striding along, in the same shabby clothes, with his retriever at his heel. He turned down a side-street, and I saw no more of him. On inquiry I found that he had not called at my house. He had merely been there, as he said, to give the dog his lesson.

I drove myself, and the track across the downs looked worse in daylight than it had done by night. Still it seemed reasonable to suppose that what the car had done then it could do now. I could see more clearly now what had been done in the way of repairs to that ruined and long-deserted farm-house. The pointed roof over the big room where I had sat the night before had been mended and made weather-tight. The chimney-stack was new, and so were the window-casements. Adjoining the big room was a building of irregular shape that might possibly have contained three or four other rooms, roofed with new corrugated iron. One or two outbuildings looked as if they had been newly constructed from old materials. But that part of the farm-house which had originally been two-storied had been left quite untouched. Half the roof of it was down, the windows were without glass, and one saw through them the broken stairs and torn wall-paper peeling off and flapping in the brisk March breeze. On the grass-field beyond the court-yard two good Alderney cows were grazing. Most of the land looked neglected; but Tarn had no help and had everything to do himself. An orchard of stunted and miserable-looking fruit trees was sheltered by a dip of the land from north and east.

The dog barked furiously when he heard my car, and before I began the climb down to the farm-house I picked up two or three flints with intent to use them if he went for me. But all signs of hostility vanished when he saw me. He did not leap and gambol for joy, but he thrust his nose into my hand and then walked just in front of me, wagging his tail, and looking back from time to time to see that I understood and was following him.

He led the way across the court-yard, through the open outer door, and across the hall to the door of the big room. He scratched at the door. From impatience I knocked and entered.

Tarn had fallen asleep before the fire in one of the windsor chairs. He was just rousing himself as I entered. He had taken off his coat and his heavy boots and wore felt slippers that had a home-made look. From the table beside him it appeared that he had lunched frugally on whisky, milk and hard biscuits.

"Sorry I was asleep," he said. "But the dog knew."

"Ah!" I said. "You'd a long walk this morning. I saw you at Helmstone."

"Yes. I told you."

"You should have come into my house for a rest. How's your wife getting on--had a good night?"

"It seems so. She has slept a long time. So has the child. I will find out if she will see you." He passed into the inner room.

If she had expressed any disinclination to see me I should have been extremely angry; also, I might have thought it right to disregard the disinclination. But Tarn reappeared almost directly and asked me to go in

I found that all was going as well as possible both with her and with the child. She really was a splendid animal, unhurt either by excessive work or--as many modern mothers are--by a rotten fashionable life. With me she was reticent, almost sullen in manner; yet she seemed docile and had carried out my orders. The only difficulty was, as I had expected, to get her to remain in bed. With her child she showed white teeth in ecstasies of maternal joy. Before I had finished with her I heard the rain pattering on the iron roof of her room.

I went back into the great living-room. It was rather dark there, for the sky was heavily clouded and the windows, placed high up, gave but little light. The table had been cleared, and Tarn was not there. I sat down to wait for him, and the dog got up from the fire and came over to me and laid his head on my knee. He was an enormous and very powerful brute, as much retriever as anything, but evidently with another strain in his composition. I felt quite safe with him now, talked to him and patted him--attentions which he received gravely, without resistance but without any signs of pleasure.

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