“Just listen to me, Bill. I know it sounds a bit startling at first, but there’s nothing crazy about it. It’s all quite clear-and it’s not very easy.
“All this”-she waved her hand around-“it’s done something to me, It’s like suddenly seeing everything differently. And one of the things I think I see is that those of us who get through are going to be much nearer to one another, more dependent on one another, more like-well, more like a tribe than we ever were before.
“All day long as we went about I’ve been seeing unfortunate people who are going to die very soon. And all the time I’ve been saying to myself: ‘There, but for the grace of God . . ‘
And then I’ve told myself: ‘This is a miracle! I don’t deserve anything better than any of these people. But it has happened. Here I still am-so now it’s up to me to justify it.’ Somehow it’s made me feel closer to other people than I have ever done before. That’s made me keep wondering all the time what I can do to help some of them.
“You see, we must do something to justify that miracle, Bill. I might have been any of these blind girls; you might have been any of these wandering men. There’s nothing big we can do. But if we try to look after just a few and give them what happiness we can, we shall be paying back a little-just a tiny part of what we owe. You do see that, don’t you, Bill?”
I turned it over in my mind for a minute or more.
“I think,” I said, “that that’s the queerest argument I’ve heard today-if not ever. And yet-”
“And yet it’s right, isn’t it, Bill? I know it’s right. I’ve tried to put myself in the place of one of those blind girls, and I know. We hold the chance of as full a life as they can have, for some of them. Shall we give it them as part of our gratitude-or shall we simply withhold it on account of the prejudices we’ve been taught? That’s what it amounts to.”
I sat silently for a time. I had not a moment’s doubt that Josella meant every word she said. I ruminated a little on the ways of purposeful, subversive-minded women like Florence Nightingale and Elizabeth Fry. You can’t do anything with such women-and they so often turn out to have been right after all.
“Very well,” I said at last. “If that’s the way you think it ought to be. But I hope-”
She cut me short.
“Oh, Bill, I knew you’d understand. Oh, I’m glad-so very glad. You’ve made me so happy.”
After a time:
“I hope-” I began again.
Josella patted my hand.
“You won’t need to worry at all, my dear. I shall choose two nice, sensible girls.”
“Oh,” I said.
We went on sitting there on the wall hand in hand, looking at the dappled trees-but not seeing them very much; at least I wasn’t. Then, in the building behind us, someone started up a phonograph, playing a Strauss waltz. It was painfully nostalgic as it lilted though the empty courtyard. For an instant the road before us became the ghost of a ballroom: a swirl of color, with the moon for a crystal chandelier.
Josella slid off the wall. With her arms outstretched, her wrists and fingers rippling, her body swaying, she danced, light as a thistledown, in a big circle in the moonlight. She came round to me, her eyes shining and her arms beckoning.
And we danced, on the brink of an unknown future, to an echo from a vanished past
FRUSTRATION
I was walking through an unknown and deserted city where a bell rang dismally and a sepulchral, disembodied voice called in the emptiness: “The Beast is Loose! Beware! The Beast is Loose!” when I woke to find that a bell really was ringing. It was a handbell that jangled with a brassy double clatter so harsh and startling that for a moment I could not remember where I was. Then, as I sat up still bemused, there came a sound of voices calling “Fire!” I jumped just as I was from my blankets, and ran into the corridor. There was a smell of smoke there, a noise of hurried feet, doors banging. Most of the sound seemed to come from my right where the bell kept on clanging and the frightened voices were calling, so it was that way I turned and ran. A little moonlight filtered in through tall windows at the end of the passage, relieving the dimness just enough for me to keep to the middle of the way, and avoid the people who were feeling their way along the walls.
I reached the stairs. The bell was still clanging in the hail below. I made my way down as fast as I could through smoke that grew thicker. Near the bottom I tripped, and fell forward. The dimness became a sudden darkness in which a light burst like a cloud of needles, and that was all
The first thing was an ache in my head. The next was a glare when I opened my eyes. At the first blink it was as dazzling as a klieg light, but when I started again and edged the lids up more cautiously it turned out to be only an ordinary window, and grimy, at that. I knew I was lying on a bed, but I did not sit up to investigate further; there was a piston pounding away in my head that discouraged any kind of movement. So I lay there quietly and studied the ceiling-until I discovered that my wrists were tied together.
That snapped me out of my lethargy, in spite of the thumping head. I found it a very neat job. Not painfully tight, but perfectly efficient. Several turns of insulated wire on each wrist, and a complex knot on the far side where it was impossible for me to reach it with my teeth. I swore a bit and looked around. The room was small and, save for the bed on which I lay, empty.
“Hey!” I called. “Anybody around here?”
After half a minute or so there was a shuffle of feet outside. The door was opened, and a head appeared. It was a small head with a tweed cap on the top of it. It had a stringy-looking choker beneath and a dark unshaveness across its face. It was not turned straight at me, but in my general direction
“‘Ullo, cock,” it said, amiably enough. “So you’ve come to, ‘ave yer? ‘Ang on a bit, an’ I’ll get you a cup o’ char.” And it vanished again.
The instruction to hang on was superfluous, but I did not have to wait long. In a few minutes he returned, carrying a wire-handled can with some tea in it.
“Where are yer?” he said.
“Straight ahead of you, on the bed,” I told him.
He groped forward with his left hand until he found the foot of the bed, then he felt his way round it and held out the can.
“‘Ere y’are, chum. It’ll taste a bit funny-like, ‘cause ol’ Charlie put a shot of rum in it, but I reckon you’ll not mind that.”
I took it from him, holding it with some difficulty between my bound hands. It was strong and sweet, and the rum hadn’t been stinted. The taste might be queer, but it worked like the elixir of life itself.
“Thanks,” I said. “You’re a miracle worker. My name’s Bill.” His, it seemed, was All.
“What’s the line, Alf? What goes on here?” I asked him. He sat down on the side of the bed and held Out a packet of cigarettes with a box of matches. I took one, lit the first, then my own, and gave him back the box.
“It’s this way, mate,” he said. “You know there was a bit of a shindy up at the university yesterday morning-maybe you was there?”
I told him I’d seen it.
“Well, after that lark, Coker-he’s the chap what did the talking-he got kinda peeved. ‘Hokay,’ ‘e says, nasty-like. ‘The–-s’ve asked for it. I put it to ‘em fair and square in the first place. Now they can take what’s comm’ to them.’ Well, we’d met up with a couple of other fellers and one old girl what can still see, an’ they fixed it all up between them. He’s a lad, that Coker.”
“You mean-he framed the whole business-there wasn’t any fire or anything?” I asked.
“Fire-my aunt Fanny! What they done was fix up a trip wire or two, light a lot of papers and sticks in the hail, an’ start in ringing the ol’ bell. We reckoned that them as could see ‘ud be the first along, on account of there bein’ a bit o’ light still from the moon. And sure enough they was. Coker an’ another chap was givi n’ them the k.o. as they tripped, an’ passin’ them along to some of us chaps to carry out to the truck. Simple as kiss your ‘and.”