“Did you hurt yourself?” she asked, in her quick, cool, unemotional way.
“No!” he shouted derisively.
“Give me the machine, won’t you?” she said, holding out her woolly hand. “I believe I’m safer.”
“Do you want it?” he shouted.
“Yes, I’m sure I’m safer.”
He handed her the little brown dispatch-case, which was really a Marconi listening machine for her deafness. She marched erect as ever. He shoved his hands deep in his overcoat pockets and slouched along beside her, as if he wouldn’t make his legs firm. The road curved down in front of them, clean and pale with snow under the lamps. A motor-car came churning up. A few dark figures slipped away into the dark recesses of the houses, like fishes among rocks above a sea-bed of white sand. On the left was a tuft of trees sloping upwards into the dark.
He kept looking around, pushing out his finely shaped chin and his hooked nose as if he were listening for something. He could still hear the motor-car climbing on to the Heath. Below was the yellow, foul-smelling glare of the Hampstead Tube station. On the right the trees.
The girl, with her alert pink-and-white face looked at him sharply, inquisitively. She had an odd nymph-like inquisitiveness, sometimes like a bird, sometimes a squirrel, sometimes a rabbit: never quite like a woman. At last he stood still, as if he would go no farther. There was a curious, baffled grin on his smooth, cream-coloured face.
“James,” he said loudly to her, leaning towards her ear. “Do you hear somebody laughing?”
“Laughing?” she retorted quickly. “Who’s laughing?”
“I don’t know. Somebody!” he shouted, showing his teeth at her in a very odd way.
“No, I hear nobody,” she announced.
“But it’s most extraordinary!” he cried, his voice slurring up and down. “Put on your machine.”
“Put it on?” she retorted. “What for?”
“To see if you can hear it,” he cried.
“Hear what?”
“The laughing. Somebody laughing. It’s most extraordinary.”
She gave her odd little chuckle and handed him her machine. He held it while she opened the lid and attached the wires, putting the band over her head and the receivers at her ears, like a wireless operator. Crumbs of snow fell down the cold darkness. She switched on: little yellow lights in glass tubes shone in the machine. She was connected, she was listening. He stood with his head ducked, his hands shoved down in his overcoat pockets.
Suddenly he lifted his face and gave the weirdest, slightly neighing laugh, uncovering his strong, spaced teeth and arching his black brows, and watching her with queer, gleaming, goat-like eyes.
She seemed a little dismayed.
“There!” he said. “Didn’t you hear it?”
“I heard you!” she said, in a tone which conveyed that that was enough.
“But didn’t you hear it?” he cried, unfurling his lips oddly again.
“No!” she said.
He looked at her vindictively, and stood again with ducked head. She remained erect, her fur hat in her hand, her fine bobbed hair banded with the machine-band and catching crumbs of snow, her odd, bright-eyed, deaf nymph’s face lifted with blank listening.
“There!” he cried, suddenly jerking up his gleaming face. “You mean to tell me you can’t –” He was looking at her almost diabolically. But something else was too strong for him. His face wreathed with a startling, peculiar smile, seeming to gleam, and suddenly the most extraordinary laugh came bursting out of him, like an animal laughing. It was a strange, neighing sound, amazing in her ears. She was startled, and switched her machine quieter.
A large form loomed up: a tall, clean-shaven young policeman.
“A radio?” he asked laconically.
“No, it’s my machine. I’m deaf!” said Miss James quickly and distinctly. She was not the daughter of a peer for nothing.
The man in the bowler hat lifted his face and glared at the fresh-faced young policeman with a peculiar white glare in his eyes.
“Look here!” he said distinctly. “Did you hear someone laughing?”
“Laughing? I heard you, sir.”
“No, not me.” He gave an impatient jerk of his arm, and lifted his face again. His smooth, creamy face seemed to gleam, there were subtle curves of derisive triumph in all its lines. He was careful not to look directly at the young policeman. “The morst extraordinary laughter I ever heard,” he added, and the same touch of derisive exultation sounded in his tones.
The policeman looked down on him cogitatingly.
“It’s perfectly all right,” said Miss James coolly. “He’s not drunk. He just hears something that we don’t hear.”
“Drank!” echoed the man in the bowler hat, in profoundly amused derision. “If I were merely drunk –” And off he went again in the wild, neighing, animal laughter, while his averted face seemed to flash.
At the sound of the laughter something roused in the blood of the girl and of the policeman. They stood nearer to one another, so that their sleeves touched and they looked wonderingly across at the man in the bowler hat. He lifted his black brows at them.
“Do you mean to say you heard nothing?” he asked.
“Only you,” said Miss James.
“Only you, sir!” echoed the policeman.
“What was it like?” asked Miss James.
“Ask me to describe it!” retorted the young man, in extreme contempt. “It’s the most marvellous sound in the world.”
And truly he seemed wrapped up in a new mystery.
“Where does it come from?” asked Miss James, very practical.
“Apparently,” he answered in contempt, “from over there.” And he pointed to the trees and bushes inside the railings over the road.
“Well, let’s go and see!” she said. “I can carry my machine and go on listening.”
The man seemed relieved to get rid of the burden. He shoved his hands in his pockets again and sloped off across the road. The policeman, a queer look flickering on his fresh young face, put his hand round the girl’s arm carefully and subtly, to help her. She did not lean at all on the support of the big hand, but she was interested, so she did not resent it. Having held herself all her life intensely aloof from physical contact, and never having let any man touch her, she now, with a certain nymph-like voluptuousness, allowed the large hand of the young policeman to support her as they followed the quick wolf-like figure of the other man across the road uphill. And she could feel the presence of the young policeman, through all the thickness of his dark-blue uniform, as something young and alert and bright.
When they came up to the man in the bowler hat, he was standing with his head ducked, his ears pricked, listening beside the iron rail inside which grew big black holly-trees tufted with snow, and old, ribbed, silent English elms.
The policeman and the girl stood waiting. She was peering into the bushes with the sharp eyes of a deaf nymph, deaf to the world’s noises. The man in the bowler hat listened intensely. A lorry rolled downhill, making the earth tremble.
“There!” cried the girl, as the lorry rumbled darkly past. And she glanced round with flashing eyes at her policeman, her fresh soft face gleaming with startled life. She glanced straight into the puzzled, amused eyes of the young policeman. He was just enjoying himself.
“Don’t you see?” she said, rather imperiously.
“What is it, Miss?” answered the policeman.