Laurie didn’t answer the question, because he hadn’t heard it. The first shock was too great either for protest or disguise. He sat for many long seconds, fixed in the dull astonishment and slow comprehension of a mortal wound, his face naked and forgotten in the light of the fire.
He became aware presently of something outside the shell of his own pain. Ralph was kneeling beside the chair, gripping his arm and staring at him. He tried to get his face in order.
“Spud. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” said Laurie stupidly. He put the back of his hand across his eyes; the light felt too bright. “I expect it’s gone through by now.” Dimly he knew that this was unkind, perhaps more; but he had been injured beyond his strength and had to struggle with himself to keep from being much more cruel than this.
There was a long silence after he had spoken. Then Ralph said, with the crudity of deep feeling, “You’ve got someone there.”
“Yes,” Laurie said. Voices came through the shell now; kindness and loyalty tapped remindingly on the walls. He said dully, “But you couldn’t have known that.”
“I could have thought.”
Ralph’s face was still turned from the light, but it ran along his shoulder and arm and caught the edge of his glove, and Laurie, for whom everything was etched as hard and sharp as silverpoint, saw that the padded fingers had become oddly separate in their limpness, quite dissociated from the rest of the hand. “You’ve been there since June, and you—Christ Almighty, I should think anybody could have thought of it.”
“I meant to have told you last time.” Laurie spoke with apology; he felt exhibited now and ashamed. “I was going to tell you here, but there were too many people.”
Ralph said in a neat, quiet voice, “That’s been the trouble, hasn’t it? Too many people.”
He should have asked me first, thought Laurie. It was all beginning now to burn down into his imagination: he could fill with their lost content the stolen days. He’d only met me twice; why should he assume that I’d told him everything? He takes too much on himself; he acts like God.
With all this, he gave no sign of what he thought; for the near presence of great anguish touched some instinct in him, though he was too confused to recognize it except as a phantasm projected on his surroundings by his own pain.
“It was my fault. I ought to have told you. I talked so much, I told you everything but that. I didn’t talk like a person who’s keeping something back.”
“For God’s sake why should you?” Ralph looked down and seemed to notice the clenched hand in the limp glove; there was a kind of distaste in the movement with which he straightened it. “Some people never learn, and it seems I’m one of them.”
“Don’t,” said Laurie, “please.” In the shadows he could feel, more than see, Ralph’s eyes looking into his. “It’s not like you think. It wouldn’t have been any good, ever.”
Ralph said, “The first night we met, in the car. You said something about this.”
“Not really. I talked as if it were years ago. It is my fault, you see.”
“Of course you talked as if it were years ago. So would anyone who—God, you hardly knew me. Just because I’ve been spending my time with a lot of nattering queens—you even told me, and I had to do this to you.”
“Look, Ralph, this had to happen quite soon. It’s better to get it over with.”
Ralph said, looking down at his hands, “Like dying tomorrow instead of next week.”
“Not only like that. It’s been getting risky. You see, he—I think he quite likes me, and he mustn’t ever know. It would spoil his life, and there’s no need. I wonder if this wasn’t meant to happen. One gives oneself away without meaning to. It’s much more important he should be all right.”
He became aware of Ralph staring at him. He couldn’t see the eyes, except as curved reflecting surfaces in a mask of darkness. “Spud, for God’s sake. Stop it. It’s like a ghost.”
“What?” asked Laurie, confused.
“Nothing. Sorry. Well, tell me about him, who is he, what’s he like? Well, come on.”
“Oh, he”—Laurie stared into the fire—“he’s—”
“Well,” said Ralph, his voice suddenly gentle, “he’s a soldier, I suppose?”
“No. No, he works there. He’s a Quaker; a c.o.”
Ralph said, “Jesus Christ.”
“If you met him, you’d understand.”
“Yes, of course. I’m sorry, Spud. You don’t get anything like that at sea.”
“His name’s Andrew. Andrew Raynes.”
“That’s a nice name.”
“He’s younger than I am, quite a bit.”
“Yes. I mean, is he?”
“He’s fair, with gray eyes. … I’m sorry I’ve not got a photograph to show you.”
“You must bring one another day.”
“The thing about him is, he wouldn’t know how to run away from it.”
“That’s always a thing,” said Ralph, in a gentle dead voice. “It makes one feel responsible, doesn’t it?”
“Yes, that’s just it. That’s just how I do feel. There’s no one I could talk about this to, except you.”
“Thank you,” said Ralph. “What about another drink?” He got up and reached for the gin bottle. He still kept his back turned to the fire.
“Yes, I’d like one, please.” Now that the half-seen eyes were no longer there he could bring it out more easily. “You see, when I say there’s no one else I could have told about it, I meant … Those people the other night, for instance. Anything goes. They’d never see it. There was something you did for me once. I expect you’ll have forgotten long ago; but it made all the difference. I just wanted to tell you.” He groped in the leg-pocket of his battle-dress, found what he wanted, and held it out. “Do you remember? You gave me this.”
It must be true, he thought, that Ralph had forgotten; for he stared at it dumbly, almost stupidly, and only reached out to take it just as Laurie was about to put it away again. He carried it over to the table and held it under the shaded reading lamp, standing up so that the light only fell on his hands and on the book. Suddenly Laurie remembered what it had looked like that day in the study, crisp and clean and nearly new. The pool of light was small, but bright and hard: it picked out the bloodstain and the rubbed edges, and the rough whitened patch from the sea. He said, “I’m sorry I’ve not looked after it better.”
“Well,” said Ralph with his back turned, “after all, seven years.” He put the book down on the table, and looked abruptly at his watch. “Look, Spud, I’m sorry, I have to phone the Station now. There’s a man I have to give a message to. It’s all right. I shan’t be long.”
Laurie began to say something, but he had caught up his cap and gone; a few moments later came the slam of the front door, and quick feet on a frosty pavement. Almost as soon as he had gone Laurie noticed the blue topcoat still lying on the bed; but now that he was alone, his own disaster seemed to fill the world, and no one was Ralph’s keeper.
To escape from thought, which told him nothing except that he must bear it, he took down the book nearest to his hand and opened it where it fell apart. He read: … and there shall we see adventures, for so is Our Lord’s will. And when they came thither, they found the ship rich enough, but they found neither man nor woman therein. But they found in the end of the ship two fair letters written, which said a dreadful word and a marvellous: Thou man, which shall enter into this ship, beware thou be in steadfast belief, for I am Faith, and therefore beware how thou enterest, for an thou fail I shall not help thee.
He could take in no more of it; he sat with the open book on his knees and the last sentence ringing in his head like an unanswered bell.
It must have been fifteen minutes or so later when Ralph came back. To Laurie it seemed much more. At first it had been a relief no longer to consider anyone’s feelings but his own; to rest his head in his hands, to be silent. He hardly knew at what point solitude passed into loneliness, and he began to listen for the sound of the door. Footsteps approached and seemed for a moment to be familiar, and came near and were a stranger’s and died away. It was strange, he thought, but true, that even after this catastrophic blunder the instinct still persisted to confide in Ralph and look to him for comfort. Anger was futile and no longer even a relief; it seemed now just a wretched mischance for both of them. His own secretiveness, and Ralph’s weakness for running other people’s lives, had conjoined like adverse stars. Laurie remembered the story of Bim and thought, Poor old Ralph, he does have bad luck.