The Rain-Girl. Herbert George Jenkins
Table of Contents
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