He couldn't be bothered with Tolstoy any longer. It was unbearable to be treated as an invalid. What woman outside a Victorian novel could care for an invalid? It was all very well for Tolstoy to preach non-resistance: he had had his heroic violent hour at Sebastopol. Digby got out of bed and saw in the long narrow mirror his thin body and his grey hair and his beard. . .
The door opened: it was Dr Forester. Behind him, eyes lowered, subdued like someone found out, came Johns. Dr Forester shook his head and, "It won't do, Digby," he said, "it won't do. I'm disappointed."
Digby was still watching the sad grotesque figure in the mirror. He said, "I want my clothes. And a razor."
"Why a razor?"
"To shave. I'm certain this beard doesn't belong. . ."
"That only shows your memory isn't returning yet."
"And I had no paper this morning," he went weakly on.
Dr Forester said, "I gave orders that the paper was to be stopped. Johns has been acting unwisely. These long conversations about the war. . . You've excited yourself. Poole has told me how excited you were yesterday."
Digby, with his eyes on his own ageing figure in the striped pyjamas, said, "I won't be treated like an invalid or a child."
"You seem to have got it into your head," Dr Forester said, "that you have a talent for detection, that you were a detective perhaps in your previous life. . ."
"That was a joke," Digby said.
"I can assure you you were something quite different. Quite different," Dr Forester repeated.
"What was I?"
"It may be necessary one day to tell you," Dr Forester said, as though he were uttering a threat. "If it will prevent foolish mistakes. . ." Johns stood behind the doctor looking at the floor.
"I'm leaving here," Digby said.
The calm noble old face of Dr Forester suddenly crumpled into lines of dislike. He said sharply, "And paying your bill, I hope?"
"I hope so too."
The features reformed, but they were less convincing now. "My dear Digby," Dr Forester said, "you must be reasonable. You are a very sick man. A very sick man indeed. Twenty years of your life have been wiped out. That's not health. . . and yesterday and just now you showed an excitement which I've feared and hoped to avoid." He put his hand gently on the pyjama sleeve and said, "I don't want to have to restrain you, to have you certified. . ."
Digby said, "But I'm as sane as you are. You must know that."
"Major Stone thought so too. But I've had to transfer him to the sick bay. . . He had an obsession which might at any time have led to violence."
"But I. . ."
"Your symptoms are very much the same. This excitement. . ." The doctor raised his hand from the sleeve to the shoulder: a warm, soft, moist hand. He said, "Don't worry. We won't let it come to that, but for a little we must be very quiet. . . plenty of food, plenty of sleep. . . some very gentle bromides. . . no visitors for a while, not even our friend Johns. . . no more of these exciting intellectual conversations."
"Miss Hilfe?" Digby said.
"I made a mistake there," Dr Forester said. "We are not strong enough yet. I have told Miss Hilfe not to come again."
Chapter 2
THE SICK BAY
"Wherefore shrink from me? What have
I done that you should fear me? You
have been listening to evil tales, my child."
The Little Duke
1
WHEN a man rubs out a pencil-mark he should be careful to see that the line is quite obliterated. For if a secret is to be kept, no precautions are too great. If Dr Forester had not so inefficiently rubbed out the pencil-marks in the margins of Tolstoy's What I Believe, Mr Rennit might never have learnt what had happened to Jones, Johns would have remained a hero-worshipper, and it is possible that Major Stone would have slowly wilted into further depths of insanity between the padded hygienic walls of his room in the sick bay. And Digby? Digby might have remained Digby.
For it was the rubbed-out pencil-marks which kept Digby awake and brooding at the end of a day of loneliness and boredom. You couldn't respect a man who dared not hold his opinions openly, and when respect for Dr Forester was gone, a great deal went with it. The noble old face became less convincing: even his qualifications became questionable. What right had he to forbid the newspapers -- above all, what right had he to forbid the visits of Anna Hilfe?
Digby still felt like a schoolboy, but he now knew that his headmaster had secrets of which he was ashamed: he was no longer austere and self-sufficient. And so the schoolboy planned rebellion. At about half-past nine in the evening he heard the sound of a car, and watching between the curtains he saw the doctor drive away. Or rather Poole drove and the doctor sat beside him.
Until Digby saw Poole he had planned only a petty rebellion -- a secret visit to Johns' room; he felt sure he could persuade that young man to talk. Now he became bolder; he would visit the sick bay itself and speak to Stone. The patients must combine against tyranny, and an old memory slipped back of a deputation he had once led to his real headmaster because his form against all precedent -- for it was a classical form -- had been expected by a new master to learn trigonometry. The strange thing about a memory like that was that it seemed young as well as old: so little had happened since that he could remember. He had lost all his mature experience.
A bubble of excited merriment impeded his breath as he opened the door of his room and took a quick look down the corridor. He was afraid of undefined punishments, and for that reason he felt his action was heroic and worthy of someone in love. There was an innocent sensuality in his thought; he was like a boy who boasts of a beating he has risked to a girl, sitting in the sunshine by the cricket-ground, drinking ginger-beer, hearing the pad-pad of wood and leather, under the spell, day-dreaming and in love. . .
There was a graduated curfew for patients according to their health, but by half-past nine all were supposed to be in bed and asleep. But you couldn't enforce sleep. Passing Davis's door he could hear the strange uncontrollable whine of a man weeping. . . Farther down the passage Johns' door was open and the light was on. Taking off his bedroom slippers, he passed quickly across the door-way, but Johns wasn't there. Incurably sociable he was probably chatting with the housekeeper. On his desk was a pile of newspapers; he had obviously picked them out for Digby before the doctor had laid his ban. It was a temptation to stay and read them, but the small temptation didn't suit the mood of high adventure. Tonight he would do something no patient had ever voluntarily done before -- enter the sick bay. He moved carefully and silently -- the words "Pathfinder" and "Indian" came to his mind -- downstairs.
In the lounge the lights were off, but the curtains were undrawn and the moonlight welled in with the sound of the splashing fountain and the shadow of silver leaves. The Tatlers had been tidied on the tables, the ashtrays taken away, and the cushions shaken on the chairs -- it looked now like a room in an exhibition where nobody crosses the ropes. The next door brought him into the passage by Dr Forester's study. As he quietly closed each door behind him he felt as though he were cutting off his own retreat. His ribs seemed to vibrate to the beat-beat of his heart. Ahead of him was the green baize door he had never seen opened, and beyond that door lay the sick bay. He was back in his own childhood, breaking out of dormitory, daring more than he really wanted to dare, proving himself. He hoped the door would be bolted on the other side; then there would be nothing he could do but creep back to bed, honour satisfied. . .